Me? I'd been sneaking out for as long as I'd known it existed. Here was real life. No company puppet masters. This was the place I felt I belonged. I liked the mix of people and shops and entertainment you found here. Antiques and bric-a-brac; second-hand books, music and instruments; vintage clothing, and cheap clones of electrical goods, you could buy them all in the outskirts. And there were cheap restaurants and bars to suit all tastes. And greasy spoon cafes.
Nathan’s arm still wasn’t working right: pulling open the café door had dislocated his elbow again, so he was eating one-handed. I tried to cut his bacon into bite-sized bits, but succeeded only in stretching it the width of the plate. He shrugged, speared the whole rubbery mass with his fork and shoved it in his mouth. I watched him chew, chin shiny with grease, and swallow – his eyes glazed over for a moment as he reached that point where you have to either retch or keep swallowing until the elastic strands are all the way down. Nathan managed it, just, and followed it with a good slurp of the stewed brown tea.
"If we can borrow some tools, I could probably fix your arm. Adjust the tension between the servos," I said, as we were finishing up.
"It’s okay, I have a friend who fixes it for me," Nathan said. He stood and stretched his good arm. "Come on, I want you to meet Geppetto, I think you’ll like him. He’s a genius."
Chapter Four
Nathan led me through the outskirts to Raoul’s Robot Repair Shop. It was a shack in the middle of an old auto scrap yard. The wooden building leaned in several directions and – with its faded sign and cracked, dirty windows – it looked all but abandoned. The area it stood in had once been a thriving industrial zone, but the yard was surrounded now by decaying warehouse buildings and a weed-infested wasteland of bulldozed brick.
Raoul had apparently built up a moderately successful business by providing a (sometimes) prompt and (occasionally) reliable service, fixing robots that most respectable repair shops considered beyond repair. Museum pieces and machines from manufacturers no one had heard of were patched up using salvaged spare parts, duct tape, and liberal amounts of hot glue. It was strictly a mom and pop enterprise, with Raoul’s wife of forty-odd years, Phyllis, providing ‘customer service.’ A little videophone trickery helped them present the right ‘corporate image.’ Phyllis had a broad, plain face with a little fringe of white toothbrush bristles under her chin. She was somewhere between old-style hospital matron and boot camp drill-sergeant, and her tongue had an edge on it like a racketeer's razor. She smoked cigars about the size and colour of a well-developed Asian, and it made me wince when she bit the end off one and lit it. If I told you she wore army boots, you'd think I was exaggerating, but she did. And thick stockings the colour of mummified flesh. At least, I hope they were stockings.
The 'phone was ringing when Nathan and I arrived.
"Hello, Raoul's Robot Repairs, how may I help you?" Phyllis said, oh-so politely.
The video-phone was linked by a multi-coloured ribbon connector to an ancient disc player with its guts exposed. When the 'phone rang, the little silver disc began to spin unevenly and there was a smell of hot solder. The caller would see a pretty blonde receptionist sitting behind a large desk, looking like a TV newsreader, with a robot logo on the pastel blue wall behind her. That's what was recorded on the disc, a short loop of digitised video. The images weren't exactly hi-def, and pressing the button beneath the strip of yellowed masking tape with INTERFERENCE scrawled on it in thick lead pencil, ensured that there was enough static so that the caller wouldn't notice that the voice and lip movements didn't correspond.
"I am calling to see whether you have managed to repair my little Poochie. You collected her almost a week ago." The customer was making great efforts to give the impression that she was well-bred and well-heeled: if that had been the case, she wouldn't have entrusted her robot pet to the care of a chicken-poop company like Raoul's.
"One moment, madam, while I consult our computer." Phyllis put the caller on hold and leaned back in her chair. "Hey, Geppetto," she called towards a tatty hessian curtain hanging in the doorway behind her. "What have you done with this bitch's dog? Is it fixed yet?" Her voice sounded like someone sandpapering a double bass.
There was a pause, I didn't hear Raoul's answer.
"What do you mean almost? Either it's fixed, or it isn't."
Another, longer, pause.
"No, you lame brain, you can't put a donkey penis on a dog." Phyllis was permanently teed off with her husband, that's just the way she was.
Pause.
"I don't care if you have run out of dog danglies, use something a little closer. I mean, it isn't even the same colour! And on a miniature poodle, geez – " Attracted by a flicker of movement, Phyllis peered through a ragged hole in the curtain. "Oh, and Geppetto, dogs are supposed to have four legs."
Pause.
"Well, it had more than three when it came in here!" She turned back to the 'phone. "Hello, madam, sorry to keep you waiting. I have checked our records, and your poodle was despatched from our workshop yesterday: if it doesn't arrive today, it should be with you early tomorrow at the latest. I am most terribly sorry for the inconvenience." She hung up, and spat in the general direction of the waste-paper bin: I guess she didn't like having to be nice to people. "Geppetto, make sure you give that poodle a liberal sprinkling of fleas – and diarrhoea!"
Pause.
"Forget it, it doesn't matter." Phyllis looked up and spotted Nathan and I in the doorway. "What are you half-wits gawping at?" She sucked on her cigar in a most unnerving manner.
"We’re just stunned by your sheer professionalism," I said.
Go away, she said. Or something to that effect.
Nathan hustled me through the ragged curtain into Geppetto’s workshop.
‘Geppetto’ was Doctor Raoul Zacharias. Nathan said he’d once been a highly paid researcher, head of a major cybernetics project for one of the companies. I suppose I was expecting a white-haired, lab-coated backstreet dentist type, a typical eccentric professor. I wasn’t prepared for a guy in patched Levi’s, faded Muppet Show sweatshirt and ancient Reeboks.
"Doc’s carrying on his research," Nathan told me on the way over, a note of pride in his voice like he was talking about his dad. "He’s working on a design for the perfect prosthetic muscle mechanism."
Raoul had a handsome moustache, and a kind of pinched, Lee Van Cleef face. His heavy gold ear-ring made him look sort of like the Gypsy who gets chomped by Lon Chaney Jr. or whoever in werewolf movies. He also had thin, delicate fingers that seemed twice as long as a normal person’s and looked like they could dismantle a watch mechanism and put it back together with about as much effort as you or I put into tying our shoelaces.
"Doc had to leave Falchion because he couldn’t stand the corporate lifestyle," Nathan had explained when we came in sight of the repair shop. "He’s a rebel. He’s just like us!"
Raoul Zacharias was just like us – an outcast. A loser.
Raoul shook my hand when we were introduced, then he took Nathan’s and detached his arm, and began working on the mechanism.
"What heppened to it this time?" The old man asked; this was obviously an oft-repeated scene.
"Just a little accident," Nathan lied badly. "I fell, dislocated the elbow again."
"I see," Raoul said, without looking up. "Was your friend also hurt when the two of you stole the Strider?" Raoul had a strange sort of accent I couldn’t quite place, all his vowels were e – maybe South African; maybe Norwegian; maybe just badly fitting dentures.
"How’d you know?" Nathan asked.
"I watch the news. You weren’t named, but when I heard how the demage at the MinoTech college had been caused, I knew you’d be involved."
Nathan grinned at me, as if I should take this feat of deductive reasoning as indication of Raoul's Sherlockian abilities.
The old man was spreading bits of Nathan's arm across his workbench. "I don't hev many spares, unfortunately," he said.
"When he's perfected his design, Doc's going to build me a new arm," Nathan said, watching his hero work. "One that looks and works like a real arm."
What could I say? Nathan believed this. Maybe he needed to believe it. I felt this horrible sadness rising in my throat and had to swallow it.
"Upper servo is done for," Raoul said. He surveyed the assorted debris which littered the bench tops. "I'm not sure whether I have a suitable replacement – "
I picked up an old robot arm and snapped open the casing. Using a jeweller's screwdriver I got the servo-motor out and passed it to Raoul. The old man looked at me over his spectacles and raised an eyebrow.
"Steven's into robotics," Nathan said.
"Thet explains how you managed to get the Strider up and running, so to speak." Raoul eased the motor into Nathan's arm. "Perfect fit."
I pretended to examine the contents of a bucket full of robot fingers and thumbs while the repaired arm was refitted to Nathan's shoulder rig.
"Next time you call, I'll show you my design for a replacement for servo-mechanisms," Raoul said. "I think is will revolutionise robotics as well as prosthetics."
I turned, but the old man had his back to me, packing away his tools.
"Thanks, doc," Nathan said, flexing his mechanical arm.
"Any time. No more heroics for a while though, okay?"
"Sure, doc, anything you say."
Raoul sighed and turned. "Try and keep him out of trouble," he said to me.
"I'll see what I can do."
"Let's take the scenic route," Nathan said. I followed him without any clear idea of where we were, but I soon recognised the surroundings: a collection of squat grey buildings and graffitied walkways, bare courtyards and dark alleys. Typical conurbation architecture. This was Conurb 7, according to a mutilated sign we passed, but it could have been any of the twelve city housing complexes. The windows of the ground floor buildings were boarded over, or protected by opaque plexiglass and bars or steel mesh. Most of the street lamps were broken and wires sprouted from the security camera poles like parasitic plants. The asphalt of the roads was cracked and missing in places, weeds growing where dirt was exposed: no road traffic here.
"Stay in the middle of the road," Nathan cautioned.
"Nice area," I said.
Although I knew of the conurbations, had driven past them, this was my first close-up experience of them. I think Nathan knew this.
"This is where my family are from," he said. "My grandparents lived over there."
"Is it as bad as it looks?" I asked.
Nathan laughed. "How bad does it look?"
"It looks pretty grim."
"Depends how you look at it. Everyone has a roof over their heads, heat and light, clothes, and enough to eat. It's all quite humane. Of course, the clothing you get isn't exactly the height of fashion, the healthcare is only a step above Third World, and the Good Food Guide classes this as a no-go area. But the people survive. And they have TV to keep them informed and entertained. Each apartment has a TV set with an armoured glass screen built into the wall. They only receive state TV, but they syndicate old networks shows. The only news is the official version."
I knew that over eighty-percent of the local population lived within the city limits, most of them by choice. Many people still remembered the energy shortages and the breakdown of the country's transport system. Food and medicine hadn't reached many areas; water and electricity supplies had failed. People moved towards the safety of the city, and overcrowded slums once more became the norm. Nottingham began to look like it had during the days of the industrial revolution – smoky and grim and wet. Look at images from the two periods and the only difference is that the second lot are in colour. Not that there was much colour in people's lives.
Faced with a massive increase in population, the city brought in restrictive laws in an attempt to control the people. They used Emergency Powers brought in during the Oil Wars, which even now they are reluctant to give up, after almost twenty years of peace. The conurbations were built to house the masses. And to contain them.
"There's a rumour that the police watch people through the TV screens, but I don't think that's true," Nathan said. "The people here aren't worth watching. There are some police informers here, I suppose: there are still rewards for those who report law breakers. But most people are too afraid to speak out, and keep themselves to themselves. My grandparents hardly ever left their apartment. Nobody used the communal areas which were designed to 'foster a feeling of community and encourage social interaction.'"
"I guess if they made it too nice, everyone would want to move here, and then who would want to work for the companies?" I said. I hadn't meant to be flippant, but it came out wrong.
"It's not all free food and TV," Nathan said. "Conurb dwellers can be drafted to do work for the tax-payer who supports them: menial stuff they wouldn't even give a robot to do. Punishment for being poor."
"How do people get out of here?" I asked. Nathan's parents had obviously made it somehow.
"There are state schools here," he said. "Every year there are tests, and those that are smart enough can apply for sponsorship from one of the companies who run the local academies. Those lucky few get to move up to the same level as your parents. That's how my father got out, and my mother."
I began to see why his parents had been so upset when Nathan had rebelled against the corporate lifestyle they had fought so hard to attain.
"Other kids who are fit enough and mean enough might be selected to join state or company security programs," Nathan said. "They're taken off to the police academy to have their brains removed and their muscles built up so they can operate an exo-suit.
"Kids who are outstanding in a particular sport are signed up by commercial teams, and occasionally an actor or musician makes a big enough impression to be recruited by one of the networks. So there is some hope, just not a lot of it to go around."
We walked on in silence for a while. The surroundings were bleak, oppressive, even in the bright afternoon sunshine. A half-dozen shadows detached themselves from the murk of an alleyway up ahead and lumbered out into the road ahead of us. Pale faced with red rimmed eyes, they looked like extras from a zombie movie.
"How you doing, Davies?" Nathan greeted the first of them.
"Na-than?" The zombie said, eyes unfocused.
"That's right. See you around, Davies."
We hurried past.
"See-you," Davies intoned. "See-you Na-than."
"Friend of yours?" I asked.
"Used to be," Nathan said. "He lived on the same block as my grandparents."
"What happened to him?"
"Kids here all think they're going to be 'spotted.' They all believe they're special, that they have what the outside world is looking for. Less than one percent actually make it out.
"If you're an ordinary, dumb kid, it's probably not so bad, you don't expect much out of life, so you're not disappointed. But if you're above average, you can see what it is that you're missing. Being above average here isn't enough: you have to excel."
"I see," I said, thinking that this must be Davies' story.
"Do you?" Nathan said. He walked on a few paces before he started talking again. "Davies made it out. He was the best mechanic I'd ever seen. He repaired machines for people. Built his first car when he was twelve or thirteen. He was spotted and given a scholarship to the Cazique International technical college: a major car manufacturer was paying his fees. He got out of here. He was this close to making it, can you believe that?" He held up thumb and forefinger, almost touching.
"What happened?"
"You know what the pressure is like in the academy," Nathan said. "Imagine how it feels to be the first kid in your family to be given that kind of chance. Imagine the additional burden of ex
pectation he was under."
"He burned out?"
"Made it half-way through his second semester and then flunked out. Once your grades start to slip, your sponsors start asking questions, and then... dream over." Nathan looked at me, to make sure I knew what he meant. I nodded.
So-called 'natural' narcotics no longer found their way into the country: the drug war had been won by making opiates unprofitable. Synthetics are cheap and widely available, easily within the reach of those who need them. SweetDream was the drug everyone had heard of. Technically it was illegal, but no one cared enough to enforce the ban. The drug induces an almost coma-like sleep with intense dreaming. Watching videos of fights, sex, war, flying or whatever can act as an initial stimulus for the course of the dream that will follow. It was like fully immersive virtual reality for poor people. It was supposed to be harmless and non-addictive, but looking at Davies and his zombie cronies, I suspected that wasn't the case.
"They reckon heavy use makes you sterile, did you know that?" Nathan asked. "Isn't that just the perfect form of birth control for those who contribute nothing to the economy? And the answer is: yes."
"What?"
"You were wondering if I ever took SweetDream," Nathan said. "Yeah, I did. For about six months after my accident. I needed to dream." He shrugged. "Who wants to bring a child into this world anyway."
Chapter Five
When the 'phone rang in my pocket I was sitting on the ledge on the top floor of an office block – startled by the noise, I almost fell. It was Raoul with a dinner invitation, which I gladly accepted: my money had all-but disappeared, and I was beginning to wonder about such basics as food and shelter. I often make my way up onto the roof of a high building when I need to think. There's the hum of air-conditioning units and the sound of the wind, and not much else. No air traffic within the confines of the city, unless you're someone like the mayor. It's like a different world up there. Buildings as far as the eye can see. Pick the right vantage point, and you can see the water that is slowly reclaiming the lowlands below the sandstone cliffs. When the sun breaks through the clouds, the water gleams like grey metal. They reckon that within a hundred years, the waters will have risen so much that Nottingham will be on the east coast of England. I've never seen the sea.
Robot Wrecker Page 4
