by Hank Davis
“You broke my fucking hand, you metallic monstrosity.” Although I wasn’t proud of it, insults came naturally, spontaneously, sometimes explosively, often alliteratively out of me, primarily when I was drunk, hurt or angry. My foul mouth was very much a legacy handed down to me from my parents. Today my mouth was full of venom. Tomorrow I expected to feel embarrassed by my abusive language. Perhaps not for long though—certainly not if Perri lost this case. I’d heard the death penalty was instantaneous here, at the very drop of the gavel. Any regrets would end there. I sat down hard. Defeated.
“Sir, there’s hardly a metal part to me. Please don’t make preposterous statements,” responded Perri as he waved his hands over his goofy body as if to show me what he was made of.
“Sorry, Perri, you can see I’m having a bad day. You may not take my life seriously, but for some reason, I do,” I said as I shook my aching fingers. He didn’t seem to notice I’d struck him. Although it only hurt me, I felt shame for my act of violence. “Look, Perri, I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m innocent. Get out there and get them to see I’m not guilty of these trumped-up charges. Don’t I get one more appeal? I know they found me guilty, but in this system there’s one more go-around, right?”
“Who’s the attorney here? It’s me, right? Let me handle the law part of this, okay?”
“But I do get another go with the judge?”
“Yes, but I don’t advise it. Take the deal. You’ll be out before you know it and with all that work you’ll do in the labor camp, you’ll be in fine physical shape when you’re set free.”
“I’m thirty-three now. Once I’m ready to be released…hold on, let me add it up…” I pretended to do the math. “I’LL BE LONG DEAD!”
“Such a pitifully short life-span you humans have. Why even bother living if it’s so brief?”
“It’s more than enough time for me to rip your innards out and make a half-dozen actually useful household appliances out of you.” I calmed myself with some deep breaths. “Sorry, Perri, I don’t know if it’s because you’re a robot or a lawyer but the things you say, are, well, terribly insensitive. You will cause me to run out of invectives in response,” I added with a sad smile, knowing my attempt at making light of the situation was undoubtedly lost on Perri.
“Sorry sir,” apologized Perri, “I’ll try to be more…tactful. Maybe we should go over your story again. Perhaps I can find some extenuating circumstance to get you a better deal with the DA, cut fifty or so years off of your prison time—maybe even get you moderately heavy labor.”
“Can I get some coffee? Strong, a bucketful,” I pleaded. “Whatever you’ve got that’ll help clear my spinning, befuddled head.”
“No worries, I brought some with me,” said Perri. “Despite the verbal abuse that is often directed at us…” he paused for emphasis there, “robo-lawyers, we always think well ahead of our client’s needs. Do you have a cup for it?”
I was impressed. But I didn’t see Perri carrying a thermos or anything like that with him. Still, I brought him the single foam cup I had in my prison cell. He then proceeded to (how do I put this?) piss out a bubbling stream of steaming hot coffee for me from an outgrowth that had extended from between his legs.
“Care for some cream?”
“No—No, definitely not. I’ll drink it black.” At that, two small (I guessed one for milk and one for cream?) nozzles in Perri’s chest area retracted.
The bitter substance that had bubbled out from inside Perri’s body tasted like engine oil. “What grade is this, 5W40?” I quipped and waited vainly for a response.
After a moment I asked, “Very well, where should I begin with my story?”
“Tell me everything that happened to you the day before you were arrested, all over again, like I’ve forgotten it all,” said Perri, sitting cross-legged on the floor and putting his head in his hands like an eager child waiting for story time.
“You have forgotten it all, haven’t you?”
“No, not exactly, what I did was erase it all. I figured I’d have no need to remember this failure and I was sure you’d take the deal. Everyone takes the plea deal.”
“That you…remember?”
“I can honestly say that, to my memory, no one ever refused a plea deal.”
“Could you have just erased all the cases that didn’t take the plea deal?”
“I don’t remember.”
Before me was an engine of ineptitude, a wretched entity I could only feel hate for—my only hope. The thought of committing another violent act came to me—but that’s not who I am—I like to think. Also, I lacked a lethal weapon. Instead, I merely began my story through gritted teeth: “Here it is, the story of my life all over again for you to hear one more time and then, I presume, delete. It all began…”
“Wait, stop; I didn’t get a chance to start recording.”
I gave Perri my most I hate you look of disgust, waited a moment, and growled a sarcastic, “Ready?”
“Yes, yes, please, go on,” he said as he waved a circle with his hand in a dismissive manner. “And tell me about your job; you draw pictures, right?”
“Close enough. I’m a universal translator with my art.”
“Why not use existing photographs or art as a form of flashcards to communicate instead of art?” asked Perri.
“Don’t be ridiculous—how could you do that, how could you have the exact right photographs or art ready to illustrate every idea, every point of view, in real time? Not to mention create scenes of the very aliens before you doing things they’ve never done before? Cameras don’t have the creative minds to accomplish that. They can only make what’s already there and nothing that isn’t. Only an imaginative illustrator can do that in the fullness of manners.”
“Ah, I see,” he said, then sat for a moment as if thinking through my explanation. “Now I understand the value to your work,” he added, as if being convinced of this for the first time. That my point of view was accepted so easily by Perri left me feeling deflated. What was I to do with all my examples of professional success I wanted to tell him?
“Right, thanks,” I said, and then added out of suspicion an, “I guess,” along with a mistrustful sideways look, waiting for Perri to add something demeaning.
Instead, he said, “My understanding is that you’re trained not to think in symbols, rather to perceive the world literally. That must be difficult.”
“It’s a gift and a curse. Symbolic thinking is far more efficient but with it you miss out on so much and it’s impossible to build most structural objects from symbolic imagery.”
Perri nodded in an almost human way that he understood. “Yes, of course,” he went on to explain, “centuries ago the court used to use in-house illustrators to make holographic recreations of crime scenes that the juries and judges could walk through. Once the court got rid of the juries, we no longer needed illustrators. Then we got rid of the persuasive, more poetic type, attorneys by replacing them with plain-speaking lawbots like me. With those simple changes, we fast-tracked justice.”
“I have an opposite point of view; you fast-track injustice.”
“Tomato, tomato,” said Perri, pronouncing the word the same way both times. Did he have no understanding of the meaning? Perhaps he’d suffered some blow to his central processor, knocking his electronic brain out of kilter.
“I think you may have some form of mental damage, Perri. Did someone hit you upside your fragile plastic noggin?” He started to answer, but I waved him off. “Never mind, let me ask you this, define justice, and define injustice, please?”
“They both mean the same thing,” he said blithely as if he knew better than I. “It’s like flammable and inflammable, both those words mean the same thing, that something can very easily catch fire, so ergo, justice and injustice must also mean the same thing, right?”
“Right, no. Not right. Very, very wrong.” Consumed with frustration, I turned from Perri, held my aching head and squeezed my eyes
shut in an attempt to push Perri’s image from my mind. “Why did I hire this inept robot defender? What did I do in a past life to deserve this?” I said to no one as I paced a circle around the small prison cell while I gesticulated wildly.
“Flammable and inflammable have different meanings?” asked Perri incredulously.
I turned on him. “No, dammit, those two words do mean the same thing, but justice and injustice have opposite meanings. How is it you don’t know this?” I snapped angrily.
“I beg your pardon,” said Perri a bit disgruntled. “The problem isn’t with me; it’s with language. You have to admit it’s a subtle distinction.” How could he see this as only a negligible misunderstanding? So much did I despise this robot. “I have three hundred and thirteen languages in my immediate memory banks. It can be hard to keep them all straight if they’re going to have such arbitrary rules. I say we put aside these semantic arguments for another day.” Like I had another day, I thought. “Please continue; I need more information if I’m to sway the judge.”
My head began throbbing again, and I held it in my hands. I mumbled, “I’m matched up with a lawyer who might get me executed because he says the opposite word for what he means. I’m most certainly doomed. Doomed, doomed, doomed.”
“You’re not making sense. Didn’t you hear me?” complained Perri. “Please, stop mumbling to yourself and tell me more about your silly job. It might help us with your case.”
I was shaken from my deep despair by this outrageous description of my profession. “‘Silly?’ Listen, given all the subtlety of spoken language and all its nuances—to wit, your recent shortcomings with English. We need artists to help communicate. Without us, words will be misconstrued, wars will be fought; species will be made extinct.” At this point, my explanation had become a passionate and strident lecture. “I could become extinct because of a misunderstanding.” As I said that I realized that my anger had brought me to the point of apoplexy. Out of breath, like a fatigued runner at the end of a race, I bent over with my hands on my knees. “Give me a moment, Perri, so I can breathe.” Then I sat down, feeling thoroughly emptied.
“Give me my sketchbook,” I demanded of Perri, and he handed it to me. “Perhaps this will express how I feel at the moment,” I said as I drew. A moment later I handed the sketchbook back to Perri to show him my drawing.
“Ahh,” said Perri, “I believe you wish to kill me. You’ve drawn yourself lunging and piercing me through my middle with a rapier. At the end of the blade is a fanciful gear-driven heart. I believe the correct response here is touché.”
“Ha! Well done, Perri, touché back at ya. If you can be half that clever in the courtroom, I’ll soon be a free man.”
“As per your request, I’ll do my best to use only fifty percent of my brainpower when arguing your case.”
“That’d be more than you used the last time. So deal.”
“May I ask why you use ancient materials like paper and pencil to draw with when there are a variety of drawing and painting devices, using all the dimensions of sight, sound and movement, readily available to communicate with?”
“I use them because they always work. Pencil and paper work in places you wouldn’t work. Also, paranoia is fairly common with my clients so when I meet with these otherworldly creatures, they may even forbid any electronic device that might be used against them. As a robot of the law, you know that the universe has innumerable privacy rules against photography but drawing by hand is legal everywhere. It’s the same reason that no photography is allowed in the courtroom; the two devices I have with the ability to record, my ring and watch, were quickly confiscated when I was arrested. They don’t want the world to see how evil and incompetent you folk are here.”
Rather than argue with me Perri made a small confession. “Things were far better before the system was privatized. Once certain predatory businesses took over, cases were expedited, but primarily, I think, for the sake of more prisoners who then become slave labor. I believe this to be both derogatory yet true. A human I defended once called us a ‘kangaroo court.’”
It seemed to me that my Tin Man lawyer might actually have a heart, but he was still an idiot.
“What are you doodling now?” asked Perri who had just noticed I was drawing.
“Drawing is not just my job but my therapy. It helps me deal with the hard realities of life. You mentioned a kangaroo court and…” I handed my drawing to Perri.
He looked at it, dropped the sketchbook to the floor and did something that startled me. It was the most bizarre thing I’ve seen even with all my experiences out here in the vast cosmos. At first I didn’t quite know what it was. He shook the room in a raucous, gut-busting, robot laugh. He rocked back and forth holding his robot belly. “That baby kangaroo popping out of its mom’s pouch and banging the gavel really tickled my funny circuits.”
“I’ve never seen a robot laugh before. You scared me. I didn’t know it was possible. Aren’t all of you completely humorless? I mean, clearly not, but how not?”
“It was probably some programmer’s sense of humor or lack of it. At some point the cockamamie code was written, and now they can’t get it out of the system. It has been buried in a bunch of dampening code, so it rarely comes out, unless, as I say, stress brings it forward.”
Ah, I thought to myself, stress explains the laugh. That thought made me do something I didn’t want to do, feel sorry for Perri. Poor Perri must have had some serious built-up tension to laugh at my mildly humorous drawing.
“Should I get back to my story?” I suggested to avoid talking about feelings with, of all things, a cyber-man—no, worse—a lawyer.
“Yes, please continue,” said Perri robotically. Back to his old self now. “Tell me about the Sketcher Convention.”
“Ah, my itty-bitty bytes-for-brains bot, it seems you do remember some of what I told you, however vaguely. I attend the Sketcher symposiums you speak of every so often. Their purpose is to bring together drawing-communicators of various species so that we can sharpen our skills. The conventions are quite useful and rather educational, truly a way to see through another sentient’s eyes. And they are also one big alien on alien, eldritch as hell, fu—I mean, love-fest. At such things you can truly have a wild time in Weird Town.” I stopped to brush my hair back and take a swig of coffee. “Or so I’ve heard,” I said with a dishonest shrug, but Perri angled his head doubtfully. “Okay, you’re my lawyer, I’ll be straight with you. The truth is that out here in the infinite height, width and girth of space, a place teeming with all varieties of consenting adults, and my having an open mind, it’s still hard for me to…to…”
“Have sexual relations with someone?”
“Uh, yes.”
“I’d love to hear about some of your, even if rare, sexual interludes,” said Perri. Then he leaned forward in a creepy manner, as if I could whisper the stories to him and it would be our dirty little secret.
“No. Don’t have any to talk about.”
“Please.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Pretty please!”
“Okay, just one. Do you know what Skinners are? They’re hairy or feathered creatures who wear humanlike skin, the opposite of what we have on earth, Furries, who wear animal costumes to—”
“That’s nasty.”
“Oh, now you’re judging me? Who made you a judge? The I-Cixx Corporation tossed me into the universe under their dubious contract, all by myself with little support, with only a brief period of training and zero human contact, effectively leaving me lost in space. Dude, it gets lonely. And, AND, where do I find a femalelike body around here? After a while without any human contact what was once out of the question starts to look pretty good. I’m thirty-three years old, in my prime, among societies of people with only monstrous forms and a billion light-years away from humanity. If I can find among the multitudes of creeping, crawling, climbing, slinking, sliding, sliming folk, one single consenting adult, or a dozen
at once, of any sex or even multiple genders, I don’t care; I’m hitting it.”
“Ah, that explains the blow I received earlier from you. That must’ve been a precursor to sex. I could turn myself into a sexbot if you like. You could romance me if you think it’ll calm you down a bit.”
“Yuck! No. Certainly not. Anything but lowering myself into the uncanny valley of soulless, cybernetic sex. That’s sick. You disgust me.” Perri’s blank face looked back at me or looked at something above me. Who can tell? How is it that he can look hurt? Dammit, now I was feeling sorry for him again. Soulless, I called him soulless. What did I know? Maybe robots had souls. Surely there’s a programmer somewhere who has written that application.
I jumped when the door to my cell flew open. When I snapped my head in the direction of the door, I saw a furry thing come lumbering towards us. It was about the size and demeanor of a golden retriever, with a classic set of four legs, yet low to the ground and waddling like a lizard. Its thick tail moved back and forth in a controlled prehensile manner. The striped dog-thing nuzzled itself against Perri, and it growled in my direction. It showed me a mouth of incisors that looked disturbingly human. I’d rather have seen sharp canines. “What’s that?” I asked Perri, pointing at it with open distrust.
“She’s Dr. Susan Calvin, my emotional support animal. Whenever I get upset and start to feel down she comes out to make me feel a little better about life,” explained Perri.
The idea that a robot needs emotional support was a new one for me; that it came in the form of a living, warm-blooded animal was somehow endearing; and that Perri insisted on using the animal’s full name—that it had a full name—was, I had to admit, kind of cute, one hundred percent all Perri too. But doctor? Medical or Ph.D., I wondered.
I decided to make friends with her, “Hi there Susan, you’re a good girl aren’t you, aren’t you?” I said reaching my hand out for her to smell. She snapped at me, and I yanked back quickly.
