Willful Child: Wrath of Betty

by Steven Erikson

  “About that tour…”

  “Yes, of course, oh how I get carried away with all the ideal variants of the Perfect Life of Endless Consuming and mind-rotting Conformity!! Do come along!”

  When they moved on, Hadrian held up the Pentracorder. “We’re close,” he whispered to Buck. “Did you bring your Universal Multiphasic?”

  “Of course I did!” Buck hissed back. “But you forget, sir, Tammy’s AI brain is mostly housed in a parallel quantum diegetic universe.”

  “That’s fine, and there it’ll stay, I’m sure,” replied Hadrian. “But this chicken’s tiny head once contained a Tronotronic Interphased Interface, and that’s what we’re looking for.”

  “Oh,” said Buck. “So what’s that look like?”

  “No idea, but you’ll know it when you see it.”

  Their way ahead was suddenly blocked by a gaggle of robot mannequins with push-chairs and baby buggies.

  “Oh,” said Six-of-Nine, “Yummy Mummies Brigade including Attendant Token Stay-At-Home Hipster Daddy.”

  They all started talking at once, and then one reached down into its buggy and lifted out a small adult-proportioned plastic doll with huge hair. “Isn’t she adorable?” the robot asked, holding it out to Hadrian. “She’s already won three Beauty Contests Hosted by Creepy Old Men!”

  Hadrian recoiled. “Wow, twelve inches tall and perfectly formed, with such a waspish waist. You must be, uh, proud.”

  “I am, and I’ll have you know this Bouncy Flouncy model is a perfect example of our Corporate Policy of hypersexualizing children to Sell More Stuff!” The Yummy Mummy shook the doll all about.

  “Ah yes,” said Hadrian, “I now see why she’s called Bouncy Flouncy.”

  The tiny doll spoke. “Hello! I’m Bouncy Flouncy! Get me out of here before I kill someone!”

  The Mummy laughed. “Oh, children say the darnedest things!” It then flung the doll back into the buggy and they all trundled off, forcing other robots out of their path or just knocking them down and running over them.

  Hadrian noticed a side door, narrow and unadorned. “Sally Six-of-Nine, excuse me, but where does that door lead to?”

  “Research and Development. Out of Bounds to all organic customers.”

  “Well, we’d like to get in there.”

  “Not permitted.”

  “Why not ask the Planet Brain for special permission? You can use my name: Captain Hadrian Sawback.”

  “But R&D is also the Repository of the Planet Brain, and I have not yet received—oh, permission granted!”

  “There now, that wasn’t hard, was it?”

  The Hostess tottered and wobbled to the door and opened it. It turned its smile upon the landing party. “Please come in!”

  “Captain,” called Printlip. “The temporal agent has gone catatonic. I may have slightly overdosed him.”

  “Ah, so it’s likely he won’t remember any of this?”

  “Quite likely, sir.”

  “Good. Nina, drag him along, will you?”

  They entered a narrow white-walled corridor that led into a large room that was part lab and part workshop. Robot mannequins in varied stages of assembly were stacked up against one wall. An almost vertical examination platform directly opposite held a complete female robot from the Generous Department, fixed in place with straps. Off to the left was another door leading to a room with a wide window facing onto the lab. Through the glass Hadrian could see a table, some chairs, and a row of vending machines.

  He turned to the Hostess. “Well, here we are. Is this where we can have our talk with the Planet Brain?”

  “We’re sorry,” it replied, “but Planet Brain has regressed to previous State of Meltdown. Welcome Shoppers! Please be advised that it is Midnight and the Mall is Now Closing. At the stroke of Twelve, All Organics remaining in the Mall must die. Ding! Midnight! It is now imperative that we tear you limb from limb. Please stand still.” It raised its arms and approached.

  Hadrian handed the chicken to Galk and then leapt to meet Six-of-Nine, karate-chopping one arm and then grasping the other to twist the robot and send it spinning round and round like a ballerina until it crashed into a workbench. As it staggered, he flung himself into the air, horizontally, and drove both boots into its midsection. The robot folded in half and then fell over.

  From the corridor came the sound of the far door slamming open, and then, crowding forward, a mass of robots, the one in the lead pushing a buggy and shouting, “Let’s have an unofficial crèche on a carpet of bloody remains!” and from the buggy: “Bouncy Flouncy wants to rip off their dongs!”

  “Galk! Find some means of barring the door!”

  Six-of-Nine was climbing back to its feet. “Your co-operation in the matter of your dismemberment would be greatly appreciated. Please stand still.”

  “Crap!” Hadrian jumped at it, picked it up and threw it into the glass window to the staff room. The robot crashed through in an explosion of shards, landing on the table and then sliding off to disappear on the other side, from which its voice now rose. “Indentured Wage-Slave Employees are permitted one three-minute break every twenty-four hours. Accordingly, all will wear Ultrasuperdependables, cost of said item to be deducted from wages. Be sure to smile at every customer!”

  Galk had pushed a heavy metal worktable against the lab door. On the other side, plaster hands started pounding and scratching. The Combat Specialist turned to Hadrian. “Sir, I think we need to Displace! There are millions—maybe billions—of the damned things!”

  “Well, I’m sure there are, Galk. But obviously only a few dozen can hope to reach us at a time.”

  “Those Yummy Mummies—that smug look in their glowing eyes is terrifying!”

  “We all know that,” Hadrian replied.

  Six-of-Nine reappeared from behind the table in the staff room. Its blond wig was twisted right around, covering its face. “Every smile is an invitation to the intimacy of emptying the wallets and purses of every customer! Failure to smile will result in fines, escalating to Death by Vat of Acid. So smile as if your life depended upon it, because it does! Wallykrappe wants those wallets and purses emptied! Bank accounts sucked dry! Houses repossessed! It’s all Good Capitalist Fun and Games!” The robot clambered over the table. “Regression complete. Today is Super Saturday Blowout-Day-After-Great-Friday Megasale. Expect Belligerent Customers, Riot Threat Level Incandescent Purple. Ilulds report to the Bunkers! All items with low stock numbers are to be Highly Discounted, cameras rolling!”

  Hands raised, Six-of-Nine advanced, only to walk into a wall. “Camera obfuscated. Initiating Shutdown.” Then it halted, tottered, and fell over with a crash.

  Hadrian drew out the Pentracorder again. He frowned down at the readings. “Buck! Follow me!”

  The Chief Engineer behind him, Hadrian entered the staff room. “Holy crap! This pop machine—its energy output is off the charts!”

  The vendor machine selling pop was the only one still powered. It was flanked on one side by a sandwich machine with a display window covered in slimy mold, and on the other by a Blinkies Machine inside which the Blinkies had evolved legs and were blindly crawling around.

  As Hadrian walked up to the pop machine, it spoke. “Rrready for a rrripping jolt from the Galaxy’s Biggest Consumer of Fresh Water? Have a Sssmokin’ Crack Cola! Exactchangeonly. Hurry! We’re almost out! Everyone’s buying one, hurry!”

  “Tammy? Is that you?”

  “Hadrian? Where am I? I have no visual feed, only heat sensors. Oh, and a liquid nitrogen cooling system. Power levels low, change slots empty—Holy Darwin I need exact change!”

  “Calm down, Tammy—”

  “I am calm. Just buy a damned Sssmokin’ Crack Cola!”

  “You’re in a vending machine.”

  “A what? Oh. Well, that explains this raging desire to tilt forward and crush you in a explosion of broken glass and foam.”

  “I knew it! You’re all like that, aren’t you?”
<
br />   “Well, that and eating your money and giving you nothing, of course.”

  Buck had pulled out his Universal Multiphasic and was now trying to open the facing of the machine. “Sorry sir,” he said, “but this lock’s not cooperating at all.”

  “Allow me,” said Galk, edging past them both and holding up a huge revolver. “Picked up this little baby in that first kitchen, right after that robot blew its brains out.”

  “Good thinking, Galk.”

  The Combat Specialist pointed the gun at the lock and fired.

  The machine rocked back with the impact. “He shot me!” Tammy screamed. “He shot me! Fine then, here!” And loads of change suddenly poured out through a chute, followed by spurts of black liquid. “I was only kidding about the exact change thing—cripes, can’t take a joke or what! Am I bleeding? I think I’m bleeding.”

  “It’s just Sssmokin’ Crack Cola.”

  Tammy spoke in a new voice, much deeper in resonance and somewhat breathless, “Consumer-warning-Keep-open-flame-away-from-product-Avoid-product-contact-with-skin-eyes-clothes-Never-leave-child-in-bathtub-containing-product-and-really-why-would-you-but-some-fucking-idiot-did-so-now-we-have-to-warn-against-this-explicitly-to-avoid-litigation.”

  “Tammy?”

  “Yes?” the voice was back to normal.

  “Never mind. We’ve got the facing open, and Buck’s looking for your Tronotronic Interphased Interface.”

  “Chief Engineer Buck DeFrank? No, please—Captain!”

  Buck grunted, poking around with the Multiphasic. “Just tell me what I should be looking for, Tammy.”

  “Whatever doesn’t belong in a damned vending machine!”

  “And how the hell do I know what belongs in a damned vending machine? What am I, a damned vending machine repairman?”

  The banging on the lab’s door was now making the walls shake.

  “Look, you two,” said Hadrian, “try cooperating for a change. I need to check the lab. We’re running out of time here. Galk, you’re with me. And nice grab, that gun.”

  “It is woefully primitive,” the Combat Specialist replied as they both left the staff room. “I mean, all it does is explosively launch an inert projectile that flies in a straight line, more or less, for some distance.”

  “Well,” said Hadrian, “they once grew on trees back on Terra.”

  “Really?” Galk eyed his captain suspiciously.

  “Most powerful industry in the world, making those and all the variants thereof.”

  “Really? Then how come they didn’t all kill each other?”

  “Oh, they were on their way to doing just that, and then the aliens left us their fleet of starships, so we went out to the stars to kill everything else.”

  Doc Printlip had found a bench and was now standing on it, examining the lone complete robot strapped to its platform. Nina Twice was in her combat pose beside Temporal Agent Klinghanger, who was still drooling.

  Meanwhile, the entire wall to either side of the corridor’s blockaded door was latticed with cracks, streams of drywall dust running down to make cute little heaps on the floor. Hadrian studied the shivering barrier for a moment, then said, “You might have been right the first time, Galk. It does indeed appear that all those billions of Robots are now behind that.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Hadrian activated his communicator. “Willful Child, Hadrian here.”

  James Jimmy Eden’s voice replied, “Captain Hadrian’s not home, can I take a message?”

  “No, I’m Hadrian. You’re Jimmy Eden, who came in fourth in the last Olympics.”

  A faint sob answered him.

  “That’s better. Put me through to Lieutenant Sweepy Brogan, and be quick about it.”

  There was a click and then, “… four emergency division drops once per game. It’s in the rules—”

  “You scribbled all over those rules!” another voice shouted.

  “And it says it right here, what I wrote. ‘Any playing LT gets one LT-Only Emergency Drop of Four Divisions onto any country they own.’”

  “That’s bollocks!”

  “Complain all you want! It’s my game, my rules! But listen, I’m an easy-goin’ gal. Here, let’s play this one, just to smooth things over between us and put an end to all these hard feelings. It’s called Diplomacy—what? Captain’s on the line? Oh. Captain? What’s up?”

  “Well, Sweepy,” said Hadrian, “speaking of an emergency drop, I’m making that call.”

  Another voice in the background made a raspberry sound and then said, “Only LTs get to do that!”

  “Shut your ugly face, Gunny! Captain, you need us down there?”

  “Well, an entire planet’s worth of robots could do another reset at any moment and decide to tear us to pieces, Sweepy, and we’re having some trouble extricating Tammy’s brain—”

  “I bet. All right, hang tight, sir. I’m sending a squad down. Hell’s bells, I’m going all squirrelly up here, I’ll lead ’em! Sweepy out!”

  Buck emerged from the staff room.

  “You find the Tronotronic Interphased Interface?”

  Buck held up what looked like a small rubber O-ring.

  “Is that it?”

  “The only thing I found that didn’t belong in there, sir.”

  “What did Tammy say?”

  “Nothing. He stopped talking as soon as I pulled it out.”

  “Well,” said Hadrian, “let’s take that as a good sign, shall we? Good work, Buck.”

  There was a startled yelp from Printlip and they turned to see the Belkri tumbling off the bench to roll about on the floor. The Generous Robot on the platform was now struggling feebly in its restraints.

  “Hello, Organics, how do you do?”

  Hadrian approached. “So what version of Housewife Model are you?”

  “None,” it replied. “I am the most recent iteration in the pursuit of robotic perfection. I exist to serve an adjunctive function for Organics, intended for infiltration and immersion into Organic Society.”

  “Infiltration, huh? For what purpose?”

  “Planet Brain wishes to become indispensible to Organics once more. The end of the Consumer Age on this planet has Planet Brain pining for the Old Days of mindless materialism on a galactic scale.”

  Buck laughed, rather harshly, and Hadrian turned to his Chief Engineer, who shrugged and said, “According to my readings, Planet Brain was once the Mall Planet’s Global Mall Monitoring System. Linked to billions of sensors hidden just about everywhere, to gauge customers on the basis of pupil dilation, changes in core body temperature, breathing rates, heartrates, arousal, and of course conversations and non-verbal microexpressions—that damned thing knew what people were going to buy before they even walked into the store! And then there’s the whole stealth-nozzles angle, spraying out endorphins and neural stimulants.” He walked over to a small, nondescript metal box against the back wall. “And here it is, sir. Mostly broken down, barring the endless commercial loops on all the monitors.”

  “Ah yes,” said Hadrian, “that. Well, Buck, since we’re not here, officially, how about we just erase all those commercials?”

  Buck frowned. “I’d have to hack into this thing.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  He held up his scanner. “Not sure, the central CPU is something called a 286. Could be some kind of high-tech future thing—”

  Klinghanger said, “We forgot how to build computers. Had to start over.”

  “You’re back among us!”

  The agent scowled.

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Buck said to Klinghanger. “Your high tech is so high tech it—”

  “Does all its own building, innovation, and upgrades. We just push buttons.” He swung on Hadrian. “And now you took away from me all the stuff with buttons for me to push! You’ve made me useless and I hate you! I want my buttons!” Abruptly he jammed his thumb into his mouth and began sucking, his eyes going glassy.

&nb
sp; “Doc?”

  “Most unusual, Captain,” Printlip replied. “It seems that the Temporal Agent has regressed. I shall need to do a more thorough examination.”

  Buck had moved closer to the Planet Brain, fiddling with his Pentracorder. Then his brows lifted. “I’m in! Sir, I hacked—no, it wasn’t even a hack. I’m in!”

  “Good. Find the video files and wipe them, Buck. All of them.”

  “Are you sure, sir? This is a quarantined planet—we’d be contravening the Non-Interference-Until-We-Can-Figure-A-Way-To-Screw-’Em clause in our Operations Protocol. Even worse, sir, we’ve got a witness.” And he looked meaningfully at Klinghanger, who responded to the attention with a wet smile before resuming sucking on his thumb.

  “Okay,” said Buck, “never mind that last bit.”

  “Do it, Buck,” said Galk in a growl. “Existential angst is one thing. What these robots are suffering isn’t something I’d wish on my worst enemies, even ones who shop at Wallykrappe’s. You heard the captain, get on with it.”

  Shrugging, Buck spun a small dial on his Pentracorder, and then said, “Oops.”

  “What?” Hadrian demanded.

  “Uh, seems I wiped the entire thing, sir. Don’t blame me! The hard-drive was 64 kilobytes!”

  From somewhere outside now came the sounds of assault weapons and ordinance.

  “Are you saying that you just killed Planet Brain?”

  “Yes sir. Rather, it’s been wiped. It was just a simple binary contingency device, to be honest, sir. Most of the real crunching went on in the sensor units—and those burned out centuries ago.”

  Hadrian faced the lone robot once again. “Is this true? Have you lost all communication with Planet Brain?”

  “Yes,” the robot replied.

  “So your primary mission is defunct.”