The Complete Roderick

by John Sladek

  ‘But Jesus, this is, well just listen: “Once upon a time there was a boy. He had a Ma and a Pa, and they all lived in a little white house on the edge of Somewhere. The boy’s name was Danny Sunshine, because he was allways smiling warm. Danny was only a poor boy, but he was honest and good, people could see that. One day he was wandering in the Somewhere Woods with his dog Lion. Lion was scratching in some leafs and he found an old rusty sword. ‘I’ll take it home and clean it up!’ Danny thought to himself. ‘Then I can read this funny writing on the blade, under the rust. Maybe if I keep this sword till I grow up, I can be a real nite!’ So He –” The public demands this? This?’

  Jud Mill shrugged. ‘That’s it. The competition already has something like this in the pipeline … space opera about robots, so I hear …’

  ‘Great, okay, don’t tell me any more, go ahead with a pilot project, I’ll bring it up at the board.’

  As Jud left, Ann looked in. ‘General Fleischman’s on line three.’

  ‘Christ … Yes hello General, thank you, thanks … No of course we still want you on the board, no great changes just yet. we have our commitments after all … yes well I will, and you give mine to Gerda too, bye … Andy? Make a note, we’ve got to convene a special meeting of the board to fire General Fleischman before the old shithead loses another sixty million … oh and what’s this memo about some nut religion suing us. what’s the state of play there? Because I don’t see any KUR counter-suit. Not only that, things seem to be snarled up there, the lawyers acting for this Church of Plastic Jesus are also acting for us, that right? Honcho and Moonbrand are on KUR’s payroll, how can they represent, yes get our legal department to look into this, Swann, get Swann. And somebody come in here for dictation and bring the figures on Katrat Fun Foods …’

  Behind him the decorator, having removed the wooden clock from the wall, was examining a dark stain now revealed: blood? Ink? Oil?

  Roderick spent an hour in the hospitality suite, playing poker with the reporters, watching them drink champagne and stuff their pockets with xeroxed press releases. He couldn’t think what to do next, where to go, what to be.

  Someone turned on the large-screen TV, and there was a man in dark glasses, handcuffed to two policemen, but sitting at a table before a microphone and smiling for the cameras.

  ‘Jeez,’ said one reporter. ‘I wish I was there.’

  ‘Shh,’ said another, turning up the volume. A cop spoke:

  ‘… eakthrough came when I realized I’d seen this guy’s M.O. before. I had a hunch the Lucky Legs Killer and the Campus Ripper were one and the same – and when I tied in the Snowman Murder, I knew it was only a matter of time. Sooner or later our killer would make one mistake too many …’

  ‘But Chief, didn’t your prisoner turn himself in?’

  ‘Well yes, matter of fact he did, but we regard that as a publicity stunt. He hopes to create a favourable impression, to get his bail lowered.’

  ‘Like to ask the prisoner how he feels about killing all those women and cutting off their legs with an electric carving knife?’

  ‘How do I feel? The prisoner nodded and smiled. ‘That’s a valid question. You’re after tangible motivation, right? Gut reaction? Well, I wish I could give you a simple answer, but first I’d have to clarify a few concepts myself: That clarification could involve a thoroughgoing process evolving in context and circumstance, exploring the infrastructure of any particularized situation according to well-defined parameters, without of course rejecting in advance those options which, in a broader perspective, might be seen to underpin any meaningful discussion attempting to cut through the appropriate interface, right?’

  ‘You felt mixed up?’

  ‘He feels like reducing his bail,’ said the cop.

  The prisoner said, ‘That’s not what I said. I said there’s no point in talking about my feelings, because to talk about anyone’s feelings you have to make a distinction between subjective reality and objective reality – and it was just that distinction, that interface, that I was exploring!’

  After that, he fell silent and ate yoghurt, while the policeman handled questions about the influence of TV violence, the psychology of the mass murderer, the thankless role of the policeman in modern society. Roderick’s attention was already beginning to wander, when someone called from the balcony:

  ‘Come on out here, you guys! Look at that!’

  They all went out, and dutifully looked down over the rail. A giant metal dish was hanging on bundles of ropes, being pulled inch by inch up the side of the building.

  ‘What the hell is it? A dish antenna? For what?’

  ‘Moxon Music Systems,’ said a press office aide. ‘You must have noticed there was no music in the elevator? Or anywhere else. Well when we get this set up, we’ll be able to pick it up from our own satellite, and run it to every room in the building.’

  ‘Music of the spheres,’ said one of the old hands, lurching against the rail.

  ‘Careful! Maybe we’d all better go inside, boys and girls?’

  And gradually they all lost interest and went back to the booze, all but Roderick. He stood leaning on the rail, noticing that the rain had stopped.

  He saw no point in jumping. On the other hand, he saw no point in going back inside. Here was as good as anywhere. He looked down at the wet lozenges of the city. He looked up at the rolling clouds. There was nothing to steer by, nothing permanent.

  He lifted up his arms, as though he were a Pharisee at prayer or else someone expecting a heavy burden to drop from the sky.

  *

  A dark shadow fell across Moxon’s office. He looked up to see a black disc inching up across his window, eclipsing it. ‘What the devil –?’ He pressed buttons and demanded an explanation.

  ‘It must be the dish antenna,’ Ann’s voice explained. ‘For the Moxon Music System. And corporate communications.’

  ‘As if I didn’t have too many lines of communication already.’

  ‘Your wife’s downstairs with the sculptor, Fough Braun. She wants to know if you’re coming down for lunch’

  ‘Tell her no, I … no, let me talk to her … Francine, look I’m sorry, I’ll have to grab a sandwich at my desk, Kratt left this place in a hell of a mess. He was, I don’t know, running everything like a one-man band, nothing delegated, nobody knows how to do anything … Fine, fine, look if you want a sculpture on the terrace down there, go ahead, only tell Jough to take it easy? We don’t want a big pile of wrecked cars embalmed in epoxy or anything like that … no of course I’m not, I’m just trying to remind you of the image we’re trying to … hang on, I’ve got … Swann? … Francine, I can’t talk now, you just, you just go ahead … Swann, you there? Listen, I’ve been going over the figures for this Autosaunas operation, I notice that before the medical lawsuits started hitting the fan we had a very healthy return on our investment there, I was just exploring the idea of, of when all the dust settles, of trying again … No, well, it’s just that sex with robots does seem like the logical, urn, extension of our leisure group activities, a natural follow-through on our … Yes, see what you can do, some kind of product warning, maybe safety checks, see what you can work out with Hare, he’s the product development man, you’ll be meeting him this afternoon at our … Ann, did you set up that meeting with Dr Hare? Okay yes, and … what choreographer? Oh him, Hatlo, no listen I can’t talk now but set up a meeting I want him to talk to our Personnel people about working out some Japanese-style calisthenics for the whole company, five minutes every morning … is Hare in yet? See if you can get him for me while I … Who? Hello, Dr D’Eath, what can I … He is? What kind of recovery time are we talking about there, six months, ten years? … Well yes, of course, in that case a nursing home would I agree be the best, and in fact we own a chain of clinics combined with pleasure ranches ourselves, Datajoy the name is, my secretary can make all the arrangements and you can transfer Mr Kratt right away … Andy, talk to the doctor will you? Ann, take a mem
o for the press office, “At his own request the former president and founder of the KUR family of companies, Mr – give him some first name – Kratt, is being transferred from the University Hospital to one of KUR’s own Datajoy clinic-ranches, where the accent is on health combined with pleasure. ‘Having devoted my whole life to giving pleasure to people,’ said the – make up some age – year-old tycoon, ‘I thought it was time to get a little pleasure myself – and where better than at a Datajoy pleasure ranch? Where else can you get all the benefits of a clinic without a clinical environment?’” And so on, just have them take the rest out of our Datajoy brochures. Oh and get me Swann again, I want to go over this problem with this lunatic church, The Church of Plastic Jesus, I want to … it is? Now? On what channel?’ He fumbled for buttons which brought a huge screen into view on the opposite wall, and filled it with a succession of living images: a cartoon germ, an armpit, a swimming pool filled with money. Moxon couldn’t help pausing briefly at the image of a man slumped over a table, apparently dead but still handcuffed to two policemen:

  ‘… don’t know what, but it looks like Culpa was eating, yes you can see it there now, the carton marked pizza-flavoured yoghurt fudge. Well I guess that’s it, folks, the doctor’s looking at it now. As you may know, the FDA has been trying to track down the last few remaining cartons of this product, after they discovered that one of the flavouring ingredients …’

  He switched at last to a street scene. A woman with a microphone stood before a store window in the slummy end of town. She stood to one side of the name on the window:

  THE CHURCH OF PLASTIC JESUS

  You may be welcome, but then again you may not

  ‘Hi, good afternoon and welcome to Round ’n’ About. I’m Foy Grayson, and the reason I’m here at this very unusual church, is to attend a very unusual meeting. Believe it or not, folks, the bride and groom are both robots! Let’s go inside.’

  The Reverend Luke Draeger and Sister Ida didn’t mind the TV station setting up this ‘robot wedding’ gimmick; they welcomed any chance to get their message across to anyone, before it was too late. It was Ida who had, when they’d first started their religion, had the idea of a message, to be delivered to the world before it was too late. If they weren’t going to do that, she’d said, what was the point of starting a store-front church at all? Luke it was who insisted on the ambiguous notice in the window: people might be welcome, but then again they might not. So far the effect had been to keep out everyone but the occasional bold drunk who was not welcome.

  Aside from the TV crew, the human congregation was limited to Luke, [da and a kind young woman named Dora. Dora worked at the Meat Advice Bureau next door. Since no one in the neighbourhood ever sought any meat advice, she had time to drop in, listen to the sermons, help out with the singing, and put something in the collection.

  Dora always had to sit at the back. All the other seats were permanently taken by the non-human congregation, nearly a hundred battered effigies:

  First came a handful of store window mannequins, their hair and smiles identifying them as belonging to an earlier generation of dummies (during a previous Presidential administration). They were clothed now only in ragged coats and curtains of no use to people, but they sat in gracefully relaxed poses, and seemed to be enjoying themselves. Next to them were a few ‘robots’ built by children out of cardboard boxes and tinfoil, with noses made of burnt-out light bulbs and bottlecap eyes. Next came a plastic medical skeleton, only a few bones missing, and next, a shattered pinball machine. Its broken legs were arranged to look casually crossed, and its back plate lighted to show a grinning ballplayer. There were toy robots of battered metal or cracked plastic, run by clockwork or batteries to shoot sparks or mutter incoherent greetings. There was a ventriloquist’s dummy with a split wooden smile, a dental dummy with removable teeth, a tailor’s dummy and even a tackling dummy (legs only) made into a composite figure which also included a jack-in-the box. There were other composites, scarecrows and guys made up of stuffed clothes topped with various heads – pillows with printed faces, painted balloons, Hallowe’en masks of Frankenstein and Mickey Mouse, a plaster death-mask without its nose, an imitation marble bust, a lampshade depicting the face of a dead country singer. There were broken items from carnivals and arcades: a laughing mechanical clown, an automatic fortune-teller in a glass case, Brazos Billy the (retired) gunfighter, and I-Speak-Your-Weight. There were large plaster Kewpies, and waxwork replicas of a few mass murderers (from the days when mass murder was unusual).

  Nothing worked, nothing was whole, not even the bride and groom. This was a mission among the derelict and forgotten simulacra.

  ‘Dearly beloved,’ said Luke, and probably meant it. He felt that effigies could end up abandoned and despised like this only because those who owned them really wanted to abandon one another; really despised themselves. Conversely, if people could learn to live with effigies, they might some day learn to live with themselves. ‘Dearly beloved, we are gathered together in the sight of Mission Control –’

  He caught the eye of Ida. ‘All right, in the sight of God – and in the face of this company, to join together in matrimony, this machine –’ He indicated a squat robot appliance which had, in better days, been able to vacuum, dust, and empty ashtrays. Now it did little more than twitch, and rust. ‘– and this machine.’ He nodded towards a clumsy device made of aluminium tubing, looking very much like a classic ‘robot’. It had been built many years ago by a class at some junior high school. It had never been able to do anything but answer questions on baseball.

  While the service proceeded, the camera wandered over the congregation. There were painted plaster saints, and one or two of glow-in-the-dark plastic. There was an anatomical man with transparent skin and removable plastic organs, and next to him a wooden lay figure with a head like a fat exclamation mark. Then came a metallic plastic robot costume for a child, a prop suit of armour and a genuine white spacesuit. There was an inflatable doll with a permanently surprised expression, a mechanical Abe Lincoln frozen in an attitude of boredom, and a giant teddy bear. There was a cigar-store wooden Indian, a hitching-post of iron in the shape of a black child, and (from England) garden gnomes made of concrete.

  Towards the rear of the church the chairs were heaped with dolls and puppets of all sizes: Russian babushka dolls; dress-up dolls; dolls with faces made of china, wax, wood, metal, rag; dolls that walked or talked or wet themselves while doing algebra; Barfin’ Billy; a corn dolly, a glass baby full of what once had been candies. There were glove puppets, clockwork dancers, Punch and Judy, fantoccini shadow puppets, marionettes.

  ‘… take this machine to be your lawfully wedded spouse?’ The cleaner twitched a brush, perhaps in assent. ‘And do you, machine, take this machine to be your lawfully wedded spouse?’

  The junior high android muttered, ‘… Ty Cobb … highest batting average … twelve years …’

  The camera continued to roam over this throng, picking out strangeness: the mad cracked grin, the missing nose, the staring glass eye. It skipped over Dora sitting in the last row (next to an old stage costume for the Tin Woodman) to concentrate on the bizarre: the lop-sided wax face, the single mother-of-pearl tooth.

  ‘Then I now pronounce you machine and machine.’

  Ida turned on the player harmonium to produce ‘Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life’, then a recessional, as the happy couple apparently made their way out of the church (actually drawn along on piano wires by the TV crew). Outside, the TV company had arranged its own visual finish: a set of robot arms from a local factory were lined up in a double row, holding their arc-welders aloft to form an arch.

  When it was all over, Luke seemed subdued. ‘I wish Rickwood could have been here, that’s all. He’d have understood. He, in a way I guess he started all this.’

  Ida said, ‘I know that, why are you telling me that? Do I go around reminding you how he brought us together?’

  ‘Affirmative, I mean, yes.’
Luke sighed. ‘Haven’t had a word from him, not since he said he was giving himself up to KUR.’

  ‘He’s probably too busy.’ Ida was peering into the dim corner at the back of the church, where Dora seemed to be talking to the Tin Woodman costume.

  ‘Busy? Busy? They’ve probably ripped him apart by now. He’s probably lying in pieces all over some laboratory bench, while people in green goggles stick probes into him. They’re making his leg twitch like the leg of a frog, do you read me?’

  ‘Loud and clear, Luke, just take it easy.’

  ‘Busy as a frog. And they’re probably gearing up the assembly lines right now to turn out millions of copies of him. Poor damn silicon-head.’

  ‘But if they turn out copies,’ Ida quickly suggested, ‘then we’ll never lose him completely, will we? Say, isn’t there someone back there with Dora?’ She called out: ‘Dora? Who’s that with you?’

  Dora stood up, and the Tin Woodman stood up with her. They came forward into the light. ‘Someone who really understands.’

  ‘Who?’ Ida’s voice went shrill. She felt her 24-karat heart miss a beat as the creature removed its funnel hat and started undoing the hinges of its face.

  ‘Me,’ said a grubby, bearded stranger. Dora introduced him as Allbright.

  ‘I hope you’re not going to give me any Luddite pep-talk, Father. I can do without that.’

  ‘No, Leo, of course not. Of course not.’ Father Warren found it hard to believe that the animated cartoon face on the screen before him was really connected to Leo Bunsky’s brain, across the room in a big glass tank. ‘Of course not. But you can’t blame me for worrying, all these stories I hear about computers making up their own religions.’

  ‘Harmless, Father. A nuisance but –’

  ‘Harmless! A devil-worshipping computer in South America? An oil company computer declaring itself a new prophet of Islam? The Russian war-gaming machine that will only display icons?’

  ‘We haven’t confirmed that one,’ said the icon Leo. ‘But listen, all these anomalies were just planted by programmers with more zeal than sense. You can easily plant superstition in machines, just as in people or pigeons. These computers aren’t making up their religions, they’re getting the holy writ from outside. From you might say missionaries. But don’t worry, all we have to do is some heavy deprogramming.’