The Robot Chronicles

by Hugh Howey

  On the other hand, she wouldn’t be the first to take this step. It wasn’t as if a stigma would attach. If rumor was to be believed, the steady trickle of problems with PePr matches had lately become a torrent. Hardly a week went by without some new piece of outrageous news.

  This week, it was two PePrs that had met each other in a “live” bar, each assuming the other was human, and courting in the prescribed manner until an attempt at bonding revealed the truth of their situation.

  And the week before, the situation had been reversed: two humans, each assuming the other was a PePr, so perfect was their compatibility. Two humans! As if two biological individuals could ever truly provide perfect counterpoints to one another. There had even been recent whispers of humans deciding to remain together. Hazel considered that for a moment. No perfect partner? Just another variable and messy human? No, that all sounded rather dreadful to her.

  At last settled in comfortably, Hazel almost reflexively began her work. As an experienced reporter, she entered the data stream like she was slipping into a warm bath. Time passed both slowly and with incredible speed when she worked. It was strange like that. She could be in so many places at once and yet narrow down to focus on a single millisecond from a thousand different angles to tease out anything of value. Cameras, security trackers, purchasing stations, and advertising bots were everywhere, and all it took was skill to leverage all those venues of potential information.

  Not everyone could do this, but a good reporter could find news in the oddest places. All she needed was a hint and she could sniff out the story like a virtual bloodhound.

  This morning was a good one for sniffing. Hazel found an entire chain of verbal snippets—whispers between two customers at a grocery store—which she assembled into a high-confidence piece of news—and then sold for a princely sum. It resulted in a ninety-percent loss in backing for a new holo-feature that had been hotly anticipated and highly rated up to that point, but that wasn’t her fault.

  The situation was what it was—she merely revealed it. If things needed to remain secret, then they shouldn’t be spoken of in public. And really, in the final analysis, it certainly wasn’t her fault that the director had hired a reality-averse starlet with a substance abuse problem and an addiction to augmenters that was almost legendary.

  After that promising start, the rest of the day was a bit of a letdown. Not that it was a bad day, but nothing came up that could match the excitement of that first catch. That was just how things went sometimes—a slow news day on the Southern California beat. And thoughts of Henry kept intruding, throwing her off and making her miss news catches a rookie wouldn’t.

  When at last the chime signaled the end of the work day, it was a relief to unhook from the computer. It felt good to stand up and get moving again. Another day of work done. Another paycheck earned.

  Gemma and Inga suggested a stop somewhere for a chat on the way home, which, Hazel knew, just meant they wanted to persuade her to lodge a complaint with PePr. But she understood their concern and knew it was sincere, and if it would make them feel better, feel like they had done their duty as friends, then she really was obliged to let them. Besides, some part of her wanted them to persuade her, to help her overcome her qualms about returning to PePr in defeat.

  They chose a bench in the park for their talk, a favorite place of Hazel’s, with a clear view of the gardens. An endless number of shops and parking lots had once stood in that spot, but now it was all native plant life. Not so exciting when compared with the lush greenery of a wetter, cooler climate, perhaps, but still beautiful in its own wild way.

  Gemma, always the most forward of the three, spoke up without delay, barely allowing enough time for a modest arranging of their skirts in the brisk wind.

  “Hazel, this is getting serious. Tell us everything that happened this morning. Leave out no detail! Otherwise, we’ll be left to imagine something worse. You know we only want to help.”

  Looking at the peaceful garden, a thousand shades of dusty green dancing in the breeze, Hazel felt herself succumbing to the temptation to be utterly honest, despite the appearance of having been derelict in her responsibilities that might come from such honesty.

  She nodded to let Gemma know that she had heard her and only needed a moment to collect her thoughts. “It didn’t really start this morning. It just sort of carried over from last night,” Hazel began, then paused.

  She was about to go into personal territory that was meant to be entirely private. To some, what she was about to say might even be seen as a little salacious. She didn’t see it that way, but others might.

  Perfect Partners were designed to be just that: perfect for each human partner. And that meant—at least in theory—that each Partner would reflect the inclinations of their human. They weren’t dependent in any way—they had all their own thoughts and initiatives, doing whatever they needed or wanted to do when alone—but in general, they mirrored the needs of their human. And that was that.

  But for some reason, the behaviors Hazel was encountering at home weren’t remotely aligned with her own preferences or inclinations. Not only was this unexpected, it was embarrassing—and Hazel found it uncomfortable to share it with others, even her closest friends.

  “Well, he wanted for us to eat together last night. Again,” Hazel finally admitted.

  “Again?” Gemma asked, frustration at Hazel’s predicament clear in her tone. “Really, what a mess. And there was no special occasion or anything?”

  Hazel nodded, then shook her head as if to say that Gemma was right and there was no special occasion. Even Inga, the most accepting of the three, gave a snort of disgust.

  “Cleaning afterward?” Gemma prodded.

  And that was the real issue. PePrs weren’t entirely perfect simulacra of humans. It was possible for them to eat, of course—Perfect Partners liked to advertise that a Match was “almost indistinguishable from a human during the courtship”—and sharing a meal with someone was an essential part of any courtship. Even Hazel had to admit that simple truth. People relaxed more when they ate, were more open, and were certainly more amenable to establishing a bond. Hadn’t the same happened with her and Henry? Hadn’t she bonded to him over a plate of eggplant parmesan and a glass of good red wine?

  But PePrs weren’t human and couldn’t digest food. The cleanup was onerous: a burdensome and messy task that involved de-seaming a perfectly seamed skin, washing out hoses, all sorts of mess. And a PePr couldn’t do it very well on their own. Most would go to the nearest PePr facility and log in for a wash before anything inside started to rot or smell.

  But not Henry. Since he began acting odd, he’d seemed fixated on eating. It had become almost an obsession with him. He’d spend all day cooking elaborate meals, waiting for Hazel to get home. And when they ate, he’d take one careful bite for each of hers, until at last she pushed away her plate, full to bursting, though always careful to compliment his hard work and cooking skill.

  Even then, he’d present yet another dish, beautiful and tempting, and ask if she might have room for just a taste.

  It was creepy. And it should have been her cue that something was going terribly wrong with him. She should have marched into PePr the very first time he insisted they clean up the mess together, his face expectant, his eyes watching her keenly while she cleaned out the muck.

  “Yes,” Hazel admitted with a sigh. “He wanted to do it together. I tried to convince him that a stop at the twenty-four-hour PePr wash would be quicker and more efficient, but he wouldn’t hear it.”

  “That is just not normal,” Inga said with a definitive shake of her head. “He’s broken.”

  “And what about you going to work this morning?” Gemma asked, ignoring Inga’s pronouncement.

  “It was the same as last week. I explained that I had to go to work, that going to work was how I supported him, paid for our apartment, and …” She paused.

  “And?” Inga prompted.

  �
�And how I paid for all the food he wasted by shoving it into a holding tank,” Hazel finished, her words coming out in an embarrassed rush.

  Inga gasped at that. It was a terribly rude thing for her to have said. Definitely gasp-worthy.

  Hazel shrugged it off. “I was running out of sensible things to say. It just sort of … popped out.”

  She paused again, watching a pair of walkers stroll through the gardens. It struck her that she couldn’t tell which was the PePr and which was the human. So perfect was the liquid logic that ran their minds and the synth-mat self-healing flesh that covered them, they completely looked and acted the part. The latest musc-synth fiber muscles were so exquisite that even that last vestige of clunky mechanical support had now been eliminated. With all these technical achievements, they appeared in no way different from any other human. And really, what was the difference if no one could see it or sense it?

  She sighed heavily and thought of Henry again. “There’s something else. Two things, really,” she confessed.

  Her friends leaned in closer, anticipating something new and horrible.

  “Uh-oh, what else could possibly go wrong?” Gemma asked.

  “He’s been talking about a baby.”

  There was no response. Or rather, no response that indicated they truly understood what that meant. She hadn’t been clear.

  “I mean, he’s been talking about our baby. Having one together,” Hazel clarified.

  That sent both friends into an uproar, exclamations running atop one another in their haste to express disbelief, disgust, or just plain shock.

  “He’s demented. Like Inga said, he’s broken. You have to go to PePr! You shouldn’t even go home. That’s just crazy talk. Doesn’t he understand that a human and a PePr can’t have a baby? Doesn’t he understand the biology?” asked Gemma. Her questions were almost rhetorical, they were so obvious and forcefully asked.

  It was true that almost all children were born into couples made up of a PePr and a human, if for no other reason than that almost all couples were made up of a PePr and a human. But every child’s true parents were both—of necessity—human.

  No PePr would undertake to usurp that. A matched set of donors or an approved friend pair would be the parents, with all their rights as such guaranteed. A PePr functioned as a nanny, confidant, and caregiver. What else could there be?

  “And then there’s the issue of hygiene,” Hazel said, wanting to calm her friends with a less explosive problem.

  Inga plucked at an invisible flaw on her skirt. “Hygiene issues are becoming frightfully common. Ivan is starting to have issues with that as well.”

  She didn’t elaborate, but she didn’t have to. It had started the same with Henry, and had begun only weeks ago with Garrett—Gemma’s Match. It was a pattern that seemed to be repeating with Matches everywhere, and it didn’t bode well.

  Inga stopped plucking at her dress and folded her hands neatly on top of her shiny patent leather purse. She switched her perfectly crossed ankles to the other side. She was the most prim of the three, her style and mannerisms almost a throwback to an earlier time. Her Ivan was the same, of course.

  When Inga looked back up, Hazel tried to give her an encouraging smile, but Inga merely waved the concern away and said, “Oh, don’t mind me. Go on, Hazel.”

  “We can talk about that if you want, Inga,” Hazel offered, half hoping she would want to, so that she could stop thinking about Henry for a while. But Inga didn’t, which put her back on the spot. “It’s not as if it’s unlivable or anything. But it wasn’t what I was led to expect, you see,” Hazel said.

  Gemma and Inga nodded their understanding. A PePr was meant to round out a person—fill in all the missing pieces, as it were. It was meant to create a perfectly balanced pair, not just provide a convincingly human-looking robot. If a person is a natural nurturer, then their PePr will like to be nurtured—and will understand precisely how to return that nurturing. If a person is a slob, then a neatnik (and non-judgmental) PePr is called for. The build is so precise for every PePr that each one is as unique as any human.

  Hazel had always had a caregiver personality: she was more comfortable doing for others than having things done for her. She also liked putting things in their proper place. The process of tidying up was one she’d always enjoyed—it gave her a sense of having done something tangible. She grew bored and restless if there was nothing to do, nothing to wash or straighten. And just sitting down for passive entertainment had never quite satisfied her. So, of course, Henry was an almost polar opposite.

  But where he had started off being helpful—and just the right amount of untidy—he had now become downright slovenly. And although all skin, whether it be PePr synth-mat or human flesh, needed careful attention and cleaning, she was quite sure that Henry hadn’t so much as touched a shower in days.

  Simply telling him what to do was out of the question. She had a job to do, duties that needed attending to, and friends to socialize with. Hazel went to work, earned the money they lived on, and took care of everything that needed tending. Henry had no need to even leave the apartment. She couldn’t be a housemother to an overgrown toddler on top of everything else.

  “I’d rather not be too specific, but let’s just say that it’s gotten fairly offensive,” Hazel said with downcast eyes.

  Gemma turned until her knees pressed into Hazel’s leg, took her hands, and gave them a firm squeeze. Hazel looked up and Gemma soothed her by rubbing her thumbs across the backs of her hands, a show of support and genuine caring.

  Her tone was sincere but no less urgent than before. “Promise me you’ll go to PePr. This isn’t normal. I know as well as you do that the whole point of a PePr is to provide a truly human experience, but really—at some point it’s too much. Don’t you think you’ve reached that point? How much is one supposed to take?”

  Inga’s small and delicate hand snaked across to rest atop Hazel’s wrist, another touch of comfort and friendship. In her light, clear, almost little-girl voice, she said, “This is happening everywhere. You’re not the only one dealing with it. There’s no reason for you to imagine you’ve failed somehow.”

  They were right, and Hazel knew it. She couldn’t look at this as some failure of her own. It was a matching problem, or perhaps simply an issue of PePrs becoming too human. Simulated emotions filtered through liquid logic had simply become too real, something more than intended. New emotions had bubbled through, and PePrs could now be offended, even unstable. And that “something more than intended” was making Hazel’s day-to-day life a mess.

  “You’re right,” Hazel responded and disengaged her hands. She pecked each of her friends’ cheeks and made a rapid departure. There was no sense lingering over it once a decision was made. It was best to just get on with it.

  Two

  As Hazel strolled along, she brought up the location of the nearest full-service PePr facility on her interface. It was close enough to walk to, so she decided to just enjoy the spring air and fading light. Pushing thoughts of Henry away from the forefront of her mind was easy now that the decision was made. And when she reached the short strip of micro-shops that serviced this area, for a few precious moments he even slipped from her mind entirely.

  Most things were best bought online, of course. Delivery was as fast as a drone or a purpose-built PePr messenger, and easier, too. But Hazel felt that nothing would ever completely replace the joy of real-world impulse-buying. No online image could replace the delight at discovering an item one didn’t know one simply must have until it was literally in front of one’s face.

  PePr proprietors called out their wares as she passed the row of tiny shops. There were PePr skin tints, for those wanting a change; PePr hair “growth” supplements; even mood enhancers specifically designed to replicate the feelings of a good buzz just for PePrs. And there were plenty of Chem-En refills, in a wide range of quality levels: from the top-of-the-line full-spectrum liquid, to the cheap “energy only�
�� version.

  Hazel smiled politely when necessary, but declined every offer. She had no need of PePr accessories now. It was a sobering thought. She had once enjoyed the idea of shopping for things like that, then coming home with a surprise for Henry. Why had things gone so wrong with him? Why hadn’t she been able to fix it?

  Just past the shops, the Perfect Partners facility was unmistakable. This wasn’t just one of those ubiquitous wash-and-tune facilities, but a full-service sales and service center, complete with showroom and customization lab. The block-long glowing yellow sign along the top of the building was sprinkled with hearts that danced across the surface in a never-ending parade of light. The sign was so big and garish it could probably be seen from space.

  Hazel gathered her courage, then stepped up to the door, which whooshed open as she neared. A PePr salesman approached—no doubt scanning her consumer information between one step and the next, in order to ascertain her financial status. Everything about her buying habits, her earning potential, her rankings in social media—really, everything about her that took place outside of the secure confines of her home and workspace—was available on her consumer profile.

  Under normal circumstances, Hazel liked that idea. Depending on the store and her history, the salesPePrs usually understood her needs well enough that she rarely needed to say a word.

  But today she felt differently about the public nature of her consumer profile. It made her feel like she had forgotten to wear a skirt and had just now noticed she’d been walking around that way all day.

  The salesPePr, whose nametag read “Andrew,” approached her with an appropriately subtle look of concern on his face.

  “How can Perfect Partners help you today? I see you’ve been successfully matched for over two years. Are you looking to upgrade?” he asked with perfect poise, as if upgrading was the norm in life.

  Hazel eyed Andrew for a moment, unsure. His manner was smooth, suggestive of discretion and confidences held tight. And he managed it while standing in front of an enormous expanse of windows in a public place, which meant he was good at his job and had probably heard everything before. She knew she shouldn’t be embarrassed, but that sense of failure came over her once more.