Love and Robotics (35 page)

“If you must, but we’re coming too,” Alfred said.

***

Clockwork City should have been paradise. It was a land of pneumatic artifice, of manufactured fantasy. The architect had decided the City of Tomorrow should be pristine and spare no expense. The lawns were ironed every morning, the sunrises and sunsets operated by a technician.

Cora loved it. She snapped up an apartment, persuaded Alfred to take one down the street. This excited comment: he was the first human many of the robots had seen. He had to spend the first few days convincing the securibots he wasn’t a mangled reject.

It was bewildering to traverse a world where ordinary rules didn’t apply. The majority of robots didn’t eat so you had to forage. The weather was a hot dry bubble with choreographed ripples of wind. Robots were sprayed, waxed and repaired in the workshops at the end of every block. The city went into shutdown at eighteen. If you sat on your balcony and watched, you saw it fan across the landscape, from the holographic billboards to the skyways. When Josh became restless he walked the precincts until dawn.

Clockwork City was the spiritual home of all robots. Even the coffee robots at CER were wistful when it was mentioned. Josh had bought into this myth: he’d read the ten volume history, quizzed the functionals on the Mariana. How could he not be tempted?

It was when he had wandered the deserted streets three nights in a row, seeking a natural scent in vain, he realised what was wrong. He missed humans. He missed the chaos they trailed behind them, their moods and spontaneity. Artificials lacked the capacity to surprise or change. You talked to them and they displayed the same expressions, read from the same script. He’d crave a connection but only be met by uncomprehending blue stares. (All Arkan artificials had blue eyes, regardless of ethnicity).

Cora was no help. “Of course you’ll alienate them if you talk about Life and Death with a capital L and D! Get friends! I’ll find you some.”

She befriended other robots effortlessly. Kiki, a dizzy fitness robot she met waiting in line. Finn, who worked in one of the repair shops. Sam and Glen, the public faces of Clockwork City. Josh couldn’t see their appeal. She had a platinum pompadour and the face of a pampered pedigree; he had a roast beef tan and gravity defying quiff. “The perfect couple”, they feuded when the cams stopped rolling. Sam was besotted with her owner while Glen carried a torch for Cora.

Josh tried to mix. Even Alfred encouraged it: “It’ll do you good to meet other bots.” But the more time he spent with other artificials, the more he felt like an outsider. Would he ever belong? He was too robotic for the humans, too human for the robots.

The most unsettling thing about Cora’s group was their promiscuity. Josh was clueless about such matters despite what he’d glimpsed in Timothy’s room. Cora dissected her sexual partners, particularly Nick. “Hung like a peewit, and as much use,” she’d declare, while Kiki giggled and clapped her hands.

One day he met them sitting in the plaza, sharing a jug of Formula 40. (This was the robots’ food substitute. It tasted like a petrol stained glove dipped in cherry juice). They were telling a smutty story, Cora, Sam and Kiki tittering.

“Can I join you?” he asked.

Cora offered him a chair and returned to whatever Sam had been saying. She seemed to mime eating a red hot carrot. Kiki banged her head on the table.

“Sam on the casting couch,” Cora explained. Kiki guffawed, Sam said that wasn’t the
only
reason she landed the job.

“Sure it is. Enough of this guff, you’ll scare the boy.”

Two pairs of eyes - Kiki’s huge and guileless, Sam’s narrow and shrewd - swivelled. “Josh is a
virgin
?”

“Maybe he hasn’t met the right girl,” Sam husked, crossing one long bronzed leg over the other.

Whatever she meant, he didn’t like it. He pretended to see Alfred in the distance and left.

The days went by. Sam and Glen’s celebrity status earned them passes to the premiere of
Escape from Planet Dinosaur.
Cora was invited, along with Kiki and Finn. Josh hadn’t planned to go but Alfred was out on one of his mysterious errands.

They piled into Cora’s Comet. Glen wore a glitzy tux, Finn was ill at ease in a borrowed dinner jacket. There was an awkward moment when Sam’s pompadour didn’t fit inside the vix. They were ordered to shut their eyes while she fixed it.

Josh hadn’t known the film was such an event. He remembered it as a crummy script shoved at him ages ago. Some visionary had pumped five million Q into it, the Blossom’s most respected acting talent -

“And Brad Dion,” Kiki sighed. Her feather boa was moulting, her sea green gown was inside out. She looked what she was, scatty and indefatigably nice.

Brad Dion was said to be the future of acting. He’d been spotted selling ice in the capital. The execs realised they could put their plan into motion. If they slotted Dion into a big budget movie and no one guessed, it could be repeated until
all
actors were robots.

Sam declared that this was a “very big deal”. Glen muttered, “Should’ve been me.” Kiki drew a smiley cat in the window steam. Finn popped the drinks holder in and out. Josh tried to screen out the noise.

“Shoot!” Cora exclaimed.“Have you ever seen such a whopper?”

Tora Chen, the architect who designed Clockwork City, planned it with utility in mind. Shutdown times were scrupulously implemented, unnecessary functions didn’t exist. She had decreed all roads should be divided into four lanes, two going away, two coming back, and only a set number of vehicles could use them. This system had worked for thirty years.

Chen hadn’t included eagerness to see the first robot idol in her list of factors.

Vixes were decked along the outgoing lanes, nose to rear. Since the city’s roads were cut in lines of geometric straightness, you couldn’t see the end. Because the drivers and passengers were robots, you didn’t get hoots, yells and breaks for freedom, but rows of prisoners accepting their lot.

Josh imagined what Gwyn would have done. “This is creepy,” he said.

“We can play games,” Finn piped up. “There’s this great one we play in the workshop. You see something, everyone’s got to guess – ”

“I Spy, by any chance?” Glen had been in a foul mood all evening.

“You know it?”

Cora punched the control panel. “We’ll never get there if this keeps up.”

“What?” Kiki’s voice came out in a wobbly wail. “We’re not gonna see Brad?” She bawled into Josh’s lap.

“Ssh.” He looked to the others for support. “Of course you will. We’ve got the most famous arties in Arkan in here, they’ll give us right of way -”
He HHeHe

“Josh, you’re a genius!” Cora exclaimed. “Sam, strut your stuff.”

Sam got up, rescuing her pompadour just in time, and twanged Glen’s strap. “Coming?”

“Must I?”

“You don’t have a choice,” she snarled through a million kilowatt smile.

“Bitch.”

“Fag.”

“Whoretart.”

“That’s not even a word, you moron!”

Glen caressed his quiff and opened the door. He pressed his Adam’s apple, magnified his voice to ten times its usual volume. “Hey, y’all! It’s me, Glen Temple -”

Sam jabbed him in the ribs. “And me, Sam Sawyer!”

Every vix pulled out of their path. A queer clicking sound Josh couldn’t place. It was the robot equivalent of applause. Sam and Glen basked in adoration, industrial grins flashing, until Cora had had enough. “Let’s go before I barf.”

“I was enjoying that!” Glen whined.

“Too bad.”

Kiki stopped practising her wave. Finn chuntered on the theme of how it “made me feel like
some
body,” before he petered out in embarrassment.

“I
was
somebody,” Cora said. “Look where it got me. You’re better off as you are, bucko.”

Finn sighed. Like most service robots he was built for size and strength; he looked like a dim, friendly troll. Greatness would elude him.

The premiere was in the Dome, the one structure large enough to hold the City’s population. Everything was black glass: balconies, lifts, chandeliers. Sam said she must love them and leave them, and gave them each a phony nose rub. Glen was busy chatting up the pretty lift operator.

“Get your butt here!” Sam screamed.

The robots filing up the escalators buzzed. Were Clockwork City’s golden couple on the rocks? The rumours weren’t helped by her kicking him all the way up the corridor.

Finn found their seats on the top tier. While he and Kiki gabbled, Josh noticed that Cora seemed distant. “Are you okay?”

“Me? Super duper.”

“Look, if Nick tried anything -” He knew immediately he’d said the wrong thing.

“When I’m meant to be incognito, don’t go blurting my owner’s name! Got me?”

A spotlight washed the stage. Sam and Glen appeared - him going through the motions, her shrill and desperate.

“Hello and welcome to this most spectacular of extravaganzas!”

“This crowning achievement,” Glen droned.

“This turning in the tide of robotic history ...”

“This ... mmm ...” Glen slumped forward, cold and rigid.

Stunned silence. Would there be a riot? The tension was broken by titters, chuckles and finally howls of laughter. Even the functionals rocked on their haunches. Sam grabbed Glen by his feet and dragged him off stage.

Cora shook with laughter. “Poor Sam! There goes her career!”

“What will she do now?” Josh asked.

She shrugged. “Darce’ll find her something. She’s got him wrapped round her little finger. Zip it, film’s starting!”

I wish I could report that
Escape from Planet Dinosaur
was a revolutionary piece of film making with sensitive direction, truthful acting and believable special effects. I wish it could have enriched the lives of everyone fortunate enough to watch it. I would be lying through my teeth.

Like many films in its genre it suffered from lazy plotting and a half baked script. The characters were ludicrous. The lead was a twenty something prize winning scientist who could talk to dinosaurs - and found himself on a planet teeming with them!

“I could’ve wrote better,” Finn muttered.

Who cared about such failings when you had Brad Dion? Even though the dinosaurs were the most painstakingly realised yet - you saw every claw, feather, gleam of malice - they were nothing to Brad. You were mesmerised by the sheen of his skin, his silky hair, the teeth and torso he kept displaying.

“He is a god!” Kiki squealed.

The seats between her and Josh stood empty. Half way through the screening somebody sat in one. Josh couldn’t see him properly, only that he wore a cap and sunglasses.

“Enjoying the movie?” the newcomer asked.

“I adore it!” Kiki exclaimed. “It’s the greatest film I’ve seen!”

“Neat-o! I can see you and I are destined to -” he locked his fingers together - “connect.”

Josh started. The oiled movements, neon teeth - they were all echoed above him, twenty times life size. The stranger lifted his shades.

“Brad!” Kiki’s hands flew to her mouth.

“The one and only, babe.”

Josh tried to concentrate on the film but it was impossible. He wished Alfred was there; he’d be an antidote to the infatuated pair. Finn scribbled a film treatment on a flattened popcorn box. Cora –

The reason he wasn’t seeing Cora was because she wasn’t there. He hurried into the auditorium. “Cor!”

He scanned the black mirrors, pitched his ears. The lifts and escalators were dead. Where could she hide? Where could Nick have taken her?

“Over here!”

She was standing by the only window in the building. He laid a hand on her shoulder.

“He’s out there. I can feel him.”

“I thought you hadn’t been chipped?”

“That’s what he said. But he lies.”

He tried to reassure her. “He can’t come into the city without a permit.”

“He still owns me.”

“Alfred burned your papers -”

She shook her head. “His word against mine. Who d’you think the humans are gonna believe?”

“Us. We have right on our side.”

“You’re so young. You don’t know how the world works.”

They watched the city power down. As the audience trickled out of the screening, she whispered, “Happy face. We don’t want to upset them.”

Finn was first out, flapping his sheets of card. “I’ve wrote a movie!” Behind him were Kiki and Brad. She hung on his arm like a bracelet, finishing his sentences.

“Where’ve you been?” she demanded. Brad stuck out his hand. “Hi, I’m Brad. You might know me as Dr Lightfoot –”

Give me strength
, Josh and Cora signalled to each other.

Although she loved Josh, Cora didn’t tell him everything. His innocence meant he would blunder into danger without a thought. Nick thought nothing of killing a human enemy or smelting a robotic one. She needed someone capable of forward planning, who wouldn’t balk at extreme measures. Someone who could think like a bastard. She needed Alfred.