Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  “Hey, what about me?” Ellie demanded. “Don’t I get a shape too?”

  “Of course you do,” Jake said. “We call them simulacra. It’s going to have to be a factory readymade, since you haven’t had time to create your own. There’s a selection right behind that wall.”

  Ellie walked around the low blue wall behind her. She saw a bunch of shapes—simulacra—propped up against the wall. Some of them were too ugly even to consider. She finally selected one that had little wings, and was wearing a nice yellow-orange ballroom dress, and had a cheeky little red felt hat on its head. It may have been an unexpected choice, but Ellie thought she could do something with it anyway.

  She slipped into the body. It was a good fit, and easy to maneuver.

  The background changed. It was now all weird spherical surfaces melting into each other. The Jake toy was advancing on her. It had four arms. The mid-body arms were big red lobster pincers. As Ellie watched, a bright little butterfly came out of nowhere and flitted past. One of Jake’s pincers flashed out and cut it in half.

  She had a moment of panic. Jake looked so big, so cruel! She took little steps backward as he came at her like a Sherman tank rolling into combat.

  Suddenly he lunged at her. A gigantic hand reached out to grab her. Those fat sausage fingers could have wrapped entirely around her waist, but at the last second she dodged back and ducked out of the way.

  Damn it, she needed something to defend herself with! Jake had weapons. He also had four arms. In one of his hands he was swinging something that looked like an old baseball bat, except that it had spikes in it. He took a swipe at her. She ducked, and he missed by a hair. She could feel the wind of the blow tousling her hair.

  Her hair! She reached up and touched her silly little red hat. It was secured to her hair by a long hatpin. She withdrew the hatpin, lifted the hat free. Jake came at her again, and she threw the hat at him.

  It caught him in the face, no damage but a distraction. He brushed it aside with a grin. That’s when Ellie lunged with the hat pin. She stabbed him in the thigh, then rolled out of the way as he came toward her, and finally took to the air on her tiny wings. Jake lunged for her again, then almost collapsed when his wounded leg refused to bear his weight.

  Jake was very angry, but Ellie was icy cold. With little darting steps she danced in toward him, moving from side to side like a classy welterweight. The hat had returned to her hand. When she was no more than three feet from him, she threw it again, willing it to strike him on the throat.

  He batted it away just in time.

  “Damn it, Ellie!” he whined. “You haven’t played by the rules all day!”

  “Show me the rule book!” she responded.

  He snarled and came at her, his arms swinging like windmills. It looked terrifying; but Ellie had already learned a few things about the difference between looks and reality. She was quicker than Jake, and his limbs weren’t coordinating too well. In fact, as she watched, his left lobster claw took a gouge out of his left arm.

  Warily they circled one another. Jake was moving more cautiously now. And there was something different about him. That monster face was wearing a look of admiration.

  She hadn’t seen that look since they graduated high school and got married. She’d missed that look. It meant that he thought she was something pretty special. It had been a long time since she’d seen it.

  “Where did you learn this stuff?” he asked her. “You been taking lessons on the side?”

  “This is my first time,” she said. “But I’m a quick study.”

  “I’ll say you are! And that simulacrum suits you.”

  “My simulacrum thanks you.”

  “You’re a pretty tough lady, Ellie. And I’d forgotten just how beautiful you are.” It was good to hear him say that. So good that she relaxed her attention for a moment. That was when Jake came at her again. Two of his left arms caught her around the waist. One right arm wrapped itself around her head. She could feel herself being dragged toward him. The bastard had conned her.

  He dragged her toward him, his mouth opened; it looked like it would be the mother of all bites.

  But she wasn’t finished yet. She still had her pin. She drove it deep into his left eye.

  Jake’s scream vibrated through her body. His arms came up to hit her. Released, she pushed away from him, setting up her hat to block his view. Then she darted behind him and delivered a kick to his bad leg. Jake collapsed.

  She came to the front again, and lined up her hatpin to pierce his right eye.

  “I think the expression is: Say Uncle.”

  “Uncle,” rasped Jake.

  “I didn’t hear you,” said Ellie sweetly.

  “Uncle. Uncle! UNCLE!” he screamed.

  Back in the rec room he massaged his imaginary wounds.

  “Damn it, Ellie!” he said admiringly. “You’re good at this stuff!”

  “Thank you.”

  “Almost as good as me,” he added, as if that was the highest compliment he could pay her.

  “That good?” she said sardonically.

  He missed the ominous tone in her voice. “Absolutely. You can come in here and play any time you want. Once the cooking and cleaning are done, anyway.”

  “That’s very generous of you, Jake.”

  “Ah, hell,” he said magnanimously. “We could play right now.”

  “Really?”

  He gave her what he fondly thought of as The George Clooney Look through half-lowered lids. “Sure. But first, why don’t we go play a little something in the bedroom?”

  She gave him her most seductive smile. “I’ll bet we could have even more fun right here.”

  He practically drooled. “I never thought of that!”

  “And to make sure we have more fun, I’ll choose the next game.”

  “Anything you say, babe! What will it be?”

  “Oh, some kind of free-form game that I’ll invent as we go along. It’s more spontaneous that way.”

  “I can hardly wait,” said Jake.

  “Me neither,” she replied with a smile that was somewhat less seductive.

  Suddenly Jake found himself completely alone. Where was Ellie? He turned slowly, but he couldn’t find her. Then, just beside his head, something sprang into existence. It was the head of a woman, a huge disembodied head with a harsh rasping voice—but somehow still recognizably Ellie. She was angrily telling him that he was a slob, that he always left his socks on the bedroom floor, that there was more garbage next to the kitchen’s trash masher than in it.

  Jake opened his mouth to reply. But now another head had appeared, and then there were a dozen more. They weren’t shy about expressing themselves. When Jake tried to answer one, five or six others pressed their complaints against him. Suddenly there were fifty Ellies, and they all had complaints that Jake recognized as valid.

  Finally Jake bellowed, “Hey, Ellie! What the hell’s going on here?”

  “It’s my game. I’m naming it ART.”

  “ART? What’s that?”

  All fifty Ellies smiled nastily. “It stands for Adult Reeducation Time.”

  “Okay,” said Jake nervously, “you’ve had your little joke. Now let’s quit.”

  “Not a chance,” answered the Ellies. “This game is just beginning.”

  Jake had a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach. Somehow he knew that this was going to be the longest game of his life, and that he was destined to lose again, big time.

  THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP

  In homage to all of the curiosity shops that have been written since Dickens’ time, and to the ones which will come after this one.

  I was walking down East 12th Street, just sort of lazing along, not rushing, strolling, actually, though it’s a little difficult to stroll on metal or plastic legs, even with the new Natural Glide Flex-Motion equipment available from Ford Engineering. I still think my walk looks a little jerky, though none of my human friends have ever commented on
it.

  I’m a robot. My name is Edwin Robot 233a334c. I work for the human engineering firm of Wright, Morris and Blake, design engineers. There are five of us in the main office, and two of us are robots.

  We take your ghost of an idea, change it, improve it, and develop its commercial potential. We usually do well by our clients and by the firm. I am well paid for my work. It’s a pretty good life. We intelligent robots have all the rights of humans. That’s only proper because we have a thousand or a million times the computing power of a human, depending on which model robot you’re talking about. My lineal grandfather, aa14323aa, had only about a thousand times a human’s computing power. I have over a million.

  Nor are we robots lacking in the higher sensibilities. My knowledge of baseball history is unmatched. I can talk about early Elizabethan poetry ad finitum, and even write a reasonable imitation of it. I have memorized all of the books written on these subjects. In fact, I have read and memorized most of the books written on any topic, anywhere.

  I do all of this to increase my empathy with humans. I have the main facts of everything down pretty well. What I don’t have are the nuances, the little bits of behavior that humans exhibit from time to time. I don’t want to adopt these aberrant bits as a scheduled part of my own behavior, but I do think it’s a good idea to indulge in them from time to time, on a more or less random basis. That’s why, one Thursday recently, I took the morning off from work and caught a train to New York City and then a subway to lower Manhattan, just to stroll around in New York’s East Village.

  It was a beautiful day, one of those ideal autumn days that are perfect for the flesh-machines, as we robots refer to humans among ourselves. Good weather doesn’t mean much to a robot-we’re waterproof, of course—but I was aware of it.

  During my stroll down East 12th Street, , I passed a curiosity shop. At least, that’s what it would have been called in Dickensian England. It was a small store with a bay window, filled with all sort of odds and ends, from old-fashioned Victrolas to imitation Tiffany lamps, endless poorly executed oil paintings, sofas, and end tables. And that’s when I saw Steve.

  He was a human being, sitting in an armchair in the store’s bay window. There was a gooseneck lighting fixture behind him. By its light he was reading a newspaper.

  I have seen robots in shop windows. They were common enough a few years ago especially in computer and hi fi shops. But ever since the Supreme Court gave its ok to the humanness of intelligent robots, you don’t see robots for sale much any more. We, that is, the newest models, are born free. We can sign ourselves into servitude if we want to, but why should we? We can do a lot better hiring ourselves out to companies that prize our services.

  That is how it has been with humans, too. They hire themselves out. But here was this one, sitting in an armchair in the window of a store where everything was for sale.

  I decided to find out about this.

  The owner of the store shrugged when I asked him where he had acquired the man. “He just walked in and asked to be sold. There’s no law against it.”

  “May I talk to him?”

  “Of course,” he said.

  I walked up to the armchair. I cleared my throat. I said, “Hello, my name is Edwin Robot 233a334c”

  “My name is Steve,” he responded. Now I saw that he was quite a mature man, seventy or eighty years, old for a human. His face was clean but wrinkled. His dark suit was old but well pressed. His shirt collar was frayed, and his necktie was pulled too tight.

  “I see that you are for sale.”

  “That’s right.”

  “It is unusual.”

  “But not unprecedented,” he said.

  “How did you get into this situation?”

  “I put myself up for sale.”

  “If I bought you, what would be my responsibilities toward you?”

  “You would have to take care of my food and board, and the equivalent of a few toys to keep me amused. I would be your pet.”

  “What would I get for it?” I asked him.

  “The usual thing one gets from the better class of pets. Loyalty. Someone always at home waiting for you.”

  “Why have you done this?” I asked him.

  “It seemed the logical thing to do. I am old, unemployable. I have no family or friends. Worst of all, I have nothing to do. Selling myself seemed a good idea. No law against it! I’m surprised others haven’t thought of it.”

  “Do you think something like this will catch on?”

  He shrugged and went back to his book.

  This human Steve was not a prime example of his species. But to a robot, physical beauty makes no difference. And there was something about him. He was intelligent, even given his computational abilities, which were limited even for a human. Steve had traveled to various parts of the world, however, had seen them at first hand, not just out of books.

  I bought him and the next day I went back to work for Alfoscan. In the evenings, I enjoyed listening to Steve’s stories about Venice and Ibiza and Paris. His information was perhaps not entirely accurate, but it was his own, it was what he actually remembered. This made it unique.

  I found out in those first days how to keep a human as a pet. You don’t feed a human once or twice a day like a dog. Humans thrive on three meals a day, and a few snacks in between. They like an occasional alcoholic beverage, too, especially in the evenings. A human’s meals shouldn’t be too large-you have to guard against their tendency toward obesity. So, even when he begs for more, your human probably shouldn’t get it. Steve hardly ever asked for more, and when he did, a small snack and a glass of cold milk were sufficient for him..

  Steve’s cost was not a factor. I earned more than enough to keep a pet, even a human one.

  Having Steve changed my life. I would go off to work early each morning, and Steve stayed home. Occasionally he cleaned the house, but this was hardly necessary with the automatic equipment I’d installed.

  He was never locked in. It’s a bad idea to lock in humans; it makes them sulky and apt to fly into sudden rages. Steve had his own key. You’re not supposed to keep humans locked in an apartment even if you own them. But Steve never needed restraining. Sometimes he’d go out all day, and spend his time walking around Beachwood’s little park, or the town on the other side of it. I made sure he always had a few dollars in his pocket, to buy a coffee when he needed one, or get a sandwich.

  He never told me about what he had done before I bought him, and I never asked.

  By dinnertime he’d be home. And we’d have our talk. He’d have his final meal of the day, we might watch a little TV, and that would be it for the day.

  Steve was pretty good company for me. And he gave me something I’d never had before, and never dreamed of having-a sort of family of my own, someone to look out for, someone to talk with. Someone-dare I say it?—to care about. Everything was fine, and could have continued that way for a long time. But I hadn’t figured on the break-in.

  My apartment in Beachwood, in southern Connecticut, was protected by static electronic defenses. All my neighbors had them. My floors had built-in motion detectors, and I even had a static camera over the front door. When Steve and I went out, the security system came on automatically. If anyone entered the house when we were away, an alarm went off in SecureHome, our parent security organization. SecureHome would then notify the police and send out their own team. The idea seemed perfect, but like so many other human things, it ran into one of those difficulties that beset human systems from time to time.

  An hour after Steve and I left for the evening, to go to New York to attend a revival of Jean-Paul Sartre’s play “No Exit”, there was a power outage, affecting all of Beechwood and the lower Connecticut region. It was later proven that someone set it off deliberately.

  It was Sartre who said, “Hell is other people.”

  And in New York there was a traffic accident that evening. On his way to the theater, the leading man was injured in a
car accident near the Holland Tunnel. He sustained a broken leg. The play was called off for the evening, and we were given tickets for another night. A little disappointed, we took the train back home.

  Steve was the first to sense that something was different. He had those human instincts. When we entered, we found the front door was unlocked and the apartment lights on.

  We should have run right out of there. Instead we walked in, all the way to the bedroom where there were two men. They were trying to open the wall safe behind the CŽzanne reproduction.

  The thieves didn’t seem too upset by our appearance. “Well, what have we here?” one of them said. “An old guy and his robot pet.” He had misinterpreted our relationship.

  “What are you doing here?” Steve asked. “You have no right to be here.”

  “Shut up, you old son of a bitch, or we’ll shoot Fido.” And he pointed his handgun at me.

  “Steve, ” I said, “just stay quiet, don’t even talk to them.”

  “You got that one right,” the thief said. “I oughta shoot you anyhow. I hate robots, taking all the jobs.”

  He aimed the gun at me.

  “Just stay still,” I said again. But Steve was already reacting in that all-or-nothing way humans sometimes have. He launched himself onto the thief, and he reached him before the man had time to fire.

  This did not deter his partner from taking aim with his own handgun and shooting Steve in the head.

  At that point I threw myself into action. I rushed the shooter like an angry terrier—we intelligent robots are small and light, but we are strong and difficult to stop. I had him around waist, and was reaching up to get a grip on his neck when the situation changed again. Suddenly there were more people in the room. Men in uniforms, two policemen and a security guard. They pulled me off the man, disarmed and handcuffed the thieves. They tried to do something for Steve, but he was dead. That bullet had gone through his left eye and exited through the back of his head.