Robot Awareness: Special Edition

by B. C. Kowalski

  “Conditions?”

  Porter took a step toward Rex. “One, you holster that ROU, right now, and it doesn’t leave your holster until you leave. Second, we get salvage rights on that cargo ship. That’s a Kuunan class cargo vessel, I’m not mistaken.”

  Rex looked back quickly, still on guard. “Might be.”

  “You won’t need it. You let us salvage what we want from the cargo, for spare parts. I’ll even give you fifty-fifty on what we sell. I don’t think you can say no to that.”

  “I-It’s got a full complement of food, too,” Stephen offered, somewhat more relaxed.

  Rex looked at Stephen out of his peripheral vision, not really seeking an opinion so much as searching his face for the right answer. Finally he seemed to relax, no longer a cat poised to action. Rex holstered the weapon, cleanly and smoothly, never taking his eyes off the robot or Porter.

  “Robot, yours too.” The robot, which still held the weapon at its side, holstered its ROU with mechanical precision. “This way,” Porter motioned.

  Porter led Stephen, following Rex. Rex eyed the robot as he passed it, eyes narrowing and his mouth forming the slightest of challenging grins.

  ***

  Stepping out from behind the corner of the main building, the guards squinted in the fog to make out the man standing with his back to them. He stood motionless in the din of twilight, an early evening wind blowing his ear-length dark hair around his dark face.

  As they approached the motionless figure, they noticed for the first time the heap at his feet — a human crumpled in its final resting place. One of the guards snapped to attention, fumbling with his holster as he quickened his pace toward the man. “Don’t move!” he shouted, fumbling the ROU out of its holster.

  Rex turned, as if noticing the nervous guards for the first time. As he turned, they saw the blank expression on his face, a look of utter unconcern, as if he were concentrating on something far in the distance. His look seemed to extend past them, as if they were no different than the pebbles at their feet. When he looked at them, the guards felt like they were already dead.

  As he turned, they also noticed the ROU in his hand for the first time.

  “Drop it! Drop the weapon!” The first guard to react shouted, as the second fumbled to unholster his weapon. The first guard stood about ten feet away from Rex, excitement with a mixture of adrenaline coursing through the man’s veins, heart drumming fast. Rex regarded them with no concern.

  Both guards trained their guns on Rex, as he took one sidelong glance at the fallen figure at his feet. He turned back toward the guards.

  The ROU dropped to the ground, as he continued to stare off into the cold, red distance, a single drop of moisture rolling down his unshaved chin.

  ***

  Isellia adjusted her position for what must have been the 10th time, squirming in her seat with boredom. She let out of sigh, blowing the bangs away from the front of her face, her head resting on her hand and a pout on her lips.

  “Augh, I can’t take it anymore,” she said, ripping off her headset and spinning in her chair. The metal headset landed with a clatter as she twirled and twirled, her head thrown back over her chair, pink bangs dangling down the side of the leather seat, twirling in the centrifugal force, her mind becoming blank as she spun.

  “Oh, the hell with it,” she said, jumping out of the cockpit chair as it continued to spin. “If I’m just going to sit here on standby, I might as well get some work done on my XR.” She hit the button behind the chair, which released the bottom cockpit hatch, and jumped down through it, landing lithely on the metal base below.

  “They won’t know if I grab a quick drink,” she said, stretching her arms above her.

  She left the hanger and was halfway down the hallway when she heard footsteps coming in the opposite direction. She paused a moment, hearing the heavy clank of the robot, the dull thud of Porter and at least two more sets of footsteps that she didn’t recognize. After more than two years on the ship, she couldn’t help but memorize the footsteps of everyone — including the crew members who were no longer with them.

  “Ah, shit. If Porter finds me, I’ll have to sit through one of his windbag lectures,” she said, searching for a hiding place.

  Her pink locks disappeared behind the wall of the service bay hatch just as Porter, followed by two strange men — one tall, lanky, athletic, the other small, gangly, timid — marched around the corner, the robot behind them all. Her suit ruffled noisily against the metal hatch as she adjusted herself to the small space, but the robot’s steps effectively masked any noise she made.

  “Thanks, metal nuts,” she giggled under her breath.

  Isellia stuck her tongue out at Porter mockingly as he passed. Her tongue was still protruded her lips when Rex walked by. She froze, eyes widening with curiosity, her small pink tongue stuck between her lips.

  She nearly lost the balance of her crouch and had to catch herself. Her face reddened ever so slightly as the robot and Stephen walked past.

  She took a minute to regain her senses, and leaned her head out into the hallway to get one last look. As she strained to peer around the corner of the service hatch, the door closed behind the robot.

  As the door began to close, Isellia, already teetering on the edge of balance, finally lost it, spilling out into the corridor with a thud. “Shit!” she yelled breathlessly, falling to the metal floor. She let out a short girlish yelp before her back landed flat on the floor.

  She lay there for a moment, catching her breath. She couldn’t help but wince about an old saying about the pain of love, or something like that.

  ***

  A group of workers on the colony — the ones who often terrorized Stephen — surrounded him outside the mine, pinning him in a corner around the side of the entrance so the guards couldn’t see them. Fighting was inefficient and a waste of manpower, and any Company manager would have stopped the fight for that reason. Certainly not for any concern of Stephen’s welfare, but out of concern for his work output.

  Stephen grunted as one of the men, known as Lar, shoved him against the side of the rock wall. “Don’t you know the order of things yet?” Lar looked tired; they all did, having worked in the mine all day. But some things just needed to be addressed, they’d decided.

  “We’re trying to teach that newb where his place is. Can’t have no ‘surrection here from some upstart.”

  “That’s insurrection,” Stephen muttered.

  “You say something?” Lar grabbed Stephen by the shirt collar.

  “N-n-nothing,” Stephen muttered.

  “You told the newb where to find his lunch. Now he didn’t learn him his lesson. So now you learn the lesson.”

  “Never was one for learning,” a voice behind the group said. They all whirled around to see Rex standing with his arms crossed.

  “Hey you, maybe you get your lesson after all.” Lar shoved Stephen against the wall, dropping him to the ground. He leaned against the wall, watching Rex.

  Rex snorted derisively. “Don’t you dare bore me.”

  Lars nostrils flared at this. He charged at Rex, running at him with as much speed as he could muster in the short distance.

  He lunged for Rex but found nothing but air, and stumbled to the ground, tripping over his own momentum. Rex had hardly moved; just enough to catch the man’s balance.

  The others watched a moment, then were on Rex with abandon. Stephen nearly lost sight of Rex as he weaved between attackers, seeming not to even touch a single one with his hands. Some got a nudge with his hip, others a little tap with his foot. Soon the half dozen men lay on the ground, moaning and grabbing sore body parts.

  “Didn’t have to use my hands. Boring. I should kill you all for that.”

  Lars looked around at them. “I ain’t paid enough for this, let’s get outta here, guys!”

  Rex ignored the fleeing workers, walking over to Stephen. He had no expression as he observed Stephen, almost as if he didn’t
know what to say; like he was confronted with an entirely new situation he didn’t know how to respond to.

  Rex gave Stephen the closest thing to a smile that perhaps had ever crossed his face, then Stephen watched him leave.

  Chapter 3

  Joey snapped out of his spaceboredom as Porter, the robot and the two strangers entered the bridge. Joey was unaware of this particular phenomena, spaceboredom, common to space travelers traversing long voyages; the space dramas he’d seen when he could get access to holovision conveniently skipped over that aspect of the adventure. Staring mesmerized into the starry soup of space doesn’t make the most entertaining holodrama.

  Actual space travel didn’t quite measure up to the serials he’d watched, with their exciting planets, weird space phenomena and exotic alien species. Frankly, if there was excitement, it was the knowledge that there wasn’t a great deal of room for error; that each mistake could be your last; that only a thin line existed between safety and oblivion. Inside the ship was life. Outside was death.

  But that was only an abstraction for Joey, whose young mind craved activity. And there wasn’t much else for the boy to do. Porter already scolded him for tinkering with machinery while “on duty” — which for Joey is the only thing that holds his attention fully and completely for any significant length of time.

  Thus, instead, Joey engaged in his usual activity while monitoring the gauges during the nearly two weeks they’d been traveling since leaving the colony — head resting in hand, half-dazedly staring off into space, dreaming away — when the bridge’s door came sliding open with a clank, and Porter, the robot and two strangers entered the cabin. Joey had to catch himself from falling out of his chair. The robot regarded him with something akin to curiosity.

  ***

  The headset flashed and buzzed on top of the black vinyl chair, producing the sound of a dying duck as it inched slowly in a circle powered by its own vibration. The flashing blue light on the left earpiece blinked rapidly, casting a pale blue light on the cockpit screen. Isellia flew through the door, climbed to the cockpit and grabbed the buzzing earpiece just before it could fall off the black chair and onto the metal floor.

  She snapped the piece onto her head, fitting the small, black speakers into her ear as she slid her butt into the vinyl chair, immediately relaxing into a pose that suggested she had been sitting there all along, for hours on end, and was very bored.

  She sighed to heighten the effect as she hit the blue flashing button, answering the call and silencing the buzz.

  “Yeah Porter,” she said in a practiced bored tone.

  “You can come down now. The situation is clear.”

  “K,” Isellia said, trying to sound like she wasn’t dying for further information about the ship’s newest passengers; one in particular.

  “Yes. We have a couple new… guests. We should probably all get acquainted. Come down to the bridge”

  “Alrighty,” Isellia said, thinking about the two men she’d seen a moment ago. Her hands involuntarily worked their way to her pink bangs, making almost unnoticeable adjustments. She became aware of what she was doing and stopped in embarrassment. Femininity wasn’t a characteristic she particularly valued.

  “What is wrong with me?” she said, shaking her head as she flipped the headset onto the chair, jumped down from the cockpit and made her way to the bridge.

  ***

  “What kind of work you guys do?” Rex asked. He surveyed the ship’s bridge, seeming to take note of every control knob, every speck of dust. He stood calmly, as if the ship belonged to him and he belonged in the very place he stood. His face belied little emotion and his wiry frame, thin enough to look sickly if not for his apparent vitality and poised, ready-to-spring posture, seemed at once calm and full of kinetic potential. His presence was like a coil — either a snake ready to spring or a coil of rope, it was hard to tell which. He tended to make others around him uneasy.

  “Whatever jobs we can find,” Porter replied. “Mostly transport, for people looking to avoid company attention.”

  Stephen stood behind Rex, who continued to scan the room. Stephen was like a mouse to Rex’s snake. Where Rex was calm and confident, Stephen was nervous and twitchy. His eyes darted around the room, often resting on the robot, of which he was particularly concerned following their initial meeting.

  “Legal transport?” Rex asked flatly.

  “Freelance.” Porter said. Freelance meant unregistered. Which essentially meant illegal.

  The two glared at each other silently, both their expressions stolid. Joey watched, feeling the tension growing between the two. Only experience could have told him that the real conversation had nothing to do with what was being said. Rex nodded ever so slightly, and the conversation appeared to be over.

  "How long?" Rex asked.

  "Long enough," Porter said. "We'll have to stop at Sasuga first, to resupply. Maybe sell some of those parts, if the price is right."

  Rex very slightly grinned, and nodded. "Fine. Put Stephen in engineering. He's handy with an engine."

  Porter looked at the nervous little man who seemed to always be standing behind Rex. "Is that so?" Porter asked him.

  The man fidgeted a little, shrugging away the comment. "I don't know," he muttered, looking at the ground.

  Rex looked back at him with a slight grimace. "He is,” turning back to Porter. “Probably get two more parsecs out of this dinger.”

  Porter cringed at hearing his ship called a “dinger,” but let it go.

  "Sounds good to me," Porter shrugged. "We needed an engineer for awhile. Isellia's been doing double duty."

  "Isellia?" Rex asked, seeming uninterested in the answer, when the bridge door opened.

  Isellia had every intention of striding confidently onto the bridge — her bridge, as she saw it — but she stopped at the sight of Rex. She felt paralyzed by her infatuation. She struggled to say something, but only stood in the doorway, stammering.

  “What, she mute or something?” Rex asked Porter, turning back to the viewscreen after regarding her a moment. Isellia was about to correct his observation when, not realizing she was still in the doorway, the bridge doors slid shut, pinching her right on her rear cheeks. She jumped up with a surprised yelp as they retracted at the touch of an obstacle.

  Rex, for the first time since she'd entered, grinned slightly. “Guess not,” he muttered. Isellia turned bright red at this, cursing their first encounter turned out so horribly. She then noticed the robot regarding her. “What!?” she asked it challengingly.

  “Heart rate: increased. Stress level: increased. Standard operating parameters: Compromised — Isellia is malfunctioning.”

  Isellia’s complexion turned a deeper shade of red, she shut her eyes in anger. “If you don’t shut up right now, you obsolete, tin-plated excuse for a toaster oven —“

  “So,” Porter interrupted, eager to shift focus, “We’ll be in the Sasugan port in a couple of days. I suggest you two get some rest, and then I'll show Stephen the engine room.”

  ***

  Isellia sat holding her temples, pink bangs dangling over her pink and gray gloves that matched her flight suit. She blew out a sigh through pouted lips, her lower lip jutting out just a little farther than it normally would. She glanced over at the robot, motionless in its usual place. Her eyes narrowed as she studied it, with its stupid blank expression, staring off into space, with no mind of its own.

  Isellia realized that she often forgot the robot was a mere machine. She tended to think of the robot as an exceptionally dense genius — book smart and street stupid. An idiot savant that, at the very least, helped them interact with the ship’s computer.

  She remembered picking them up on the colony. Both paid their way, so to speak. The boy seemed a genius with wiring; the robot was able to recalibrate the ship’s mainframe, boosting its power and overriding the safety lockouts that would have prevented them from getting the necessary power to leave the colony’s atmosphe
re.

  Neither Porter nor Isellia relished the thought of bringing the robot onboard. There was a penalty for carrying an unlicensed full-anatomical robot — which was much more expensive than the prohibitive license itself. The few left were owned mostly by Company C executives and other dignitaries. The penalty for harboring an unlicensed robot was “at Company C’s discretion.” Which meant your ass was grass, Wallace used to say.

  Where the robots came from is something of a mystery. Popular legend says the robots were built from blueprints found in an abandoned factory on a plant long left vacant. Enough positronic brain material for 108 robots limited the amount of robots the founders could make. Isellia remembered the official story in her schooling — that the robots and rights to the factory were sold to Company C in its early days. The owners were said to be made rich beyond imagination.

  The company employed the robots to do its most dangerous and difficult tasks, the kinds most humans couldn’t survive performing for too long. Top company leaders soon called for more of these robots. It never successfully built another. As much as Company C roboticists studied them (and the creators before them), no one could quite grasp the CPU Brain Module, as they called it, that powered these machines. The first one they tried to disassemble nearly blew up the entire facility, and would have, had one of the brighter roboticists on the team not been able to figure out a way to jettison it to the other side of the planet. But after using all the available technology on the base, the scientists came to one conclusion — the brain modules were produced somewhere other than the factory.

  It was unfortunate for many that the scientists were unable to figure out how the robots’ CPU Brain Module worked, because for many it would prove tragic. At first the newly assembled robots followed orders flawlessly, more efficient than thought possible, reports from the initial construction team said. But soon Company C inspectors noticed anomalies. Changes in the robots’ behaviors. Every so often, one of them would simply stop following the orders it was given. As if it had suddenly changed its mind.