The Robot Chronicles

by Hugh Howey

  A quick glance around the room stayed her voice. Monitoring could only be denied in a space when confidentiality was in both the public and the private interest. Medical information, certain financial information, and anything that occurred in a private home were certainly off-limits. But what about here? Intimate things were decided here, right?

  At a reception area nearby, a PePr tapped at a screen, trying to appear busy and uninterested, which only made her seem more interested to Hazel. On the other side of the vast space, the showroom side, a man was examining the many models on display, chatting amiably with each as he wandered through.

  “I do require assistance, yes. But it’s a private matter. It’s about my Match … the contract,” Hazel said, trying to keep her voice low and raising her eyebrows to emphasize her words.

  Andrew seemed to understand immediately. He motioned her toward a door marked “Private Consultation Rooms.” All the mannerisms of an old-fashioned gentleman were on display for her during that short walk. It was evident in the sweep of his arm, the slight inclination of his head, and the way he put one arm behind his back as he ushered her through the door. It made her feel oddly relaxed and at ease, perhaps because Henry had been so unlike a gentleman lately.

  They entered a small room—a couch, two chairs, and a low table the only furniture—and Andrew offered Hazel a seat. On the table rested a sweating pitcher of ice water, upturned glasses at the ready, and two sealed bottles of the very best Chem-En, the bright blue color advertising its quality. It surprised her somewhat to see them there. Refreshment for PePrs? And the most expensive kind? It must be good for sales somehow, Hazel decided.

  Andrew waved at the table with an elegant gesture and asked, “May I offer you something? I can call for something else if this doesn’t suit.”

  Hazel looked at the sweating pitcher, the shiny glasses, and the bright blue bottles, and thought it rather sad. This was a room where a new PePr and their human should share a drink over a new bond—not sever one, as she was about to do.

  “No. Thank you, though,” Hazel replied, then sank into a miserable and uncomfortable silence as she worked out what she was going to say.

  Andrew waited patiently, likely aware of her discomfort. Out of the corner of her eye she could see that his expression remained pleasantly neutral, not quite smiling—because that wasn’t called for—but not bland or blank either.

  His eyes moved and his micro-expressions were fluid and entirely natural-looking. She realized that he was much more than a simple service PePr. He was a walking representative and sales model for the latest PePr build. Just interacting with him would show customers all that they could have. She imagined that an awful lot of upgrades resulted from a chance meeting with Andrew during a standard service visit.

  “Take your time,” Andrew said after the silence extended beyond mere hesitation. Of course, that was really meant to prompt a customer, make them aware of the passing of time. It worked on Hazel, too.

  “I have a problem with my Match. He’s not … well … not performing to expectations,” Hazel said, rushing that last part out before she lost her nerve.

  “In what way? Can you give me some specifics?” Andrew asked, retrieving a flexipad from his pocket and snapping it rigid with a flick of his wrist. His finger darted about on the surface—bringing up her profile, Hazel guessed—and then he turned his attentive gaze back to her, waiting with one finger poised above the flexi.

  Hazel bit her lip in an unconscious, but classic, expression of uncertainty. This prompted Andrew to add, “Whatever you say is confidential, and many problems are far less serious than they seem. Most can be corrected with minor adjustments to a PePr’s perception profiles.”

  Hazel nodded. It did reassure her to hear that, but she’d really made up her mind that Henry was simply unsuitable as a match. Adjustments or no adjustments. Everything else was just embarrassing details. There was nothing else to do but jump in with both feet.

  “He’s obsessed with me. He’s almost made me late for work by doing things to try and make me stay home. This, even after I’ve carefully explained that I need to work to support us. He’s also lost any sense of personal pride in his appearance. His hygiene is awful. It’s so bad I don’t want to be near him, don’t want him to get me dirty. And what else is a PePr for if not to be near a human in pleasant compatibility? And the eating!”

  Hazel paused, tugging her sleeves into place around her wrists, as if covering up that extra inch of arm might shield her against what she was about to say next. Andrew merely nodded to encourage her to keep talking.

  So she told him the whole ugly truth. The cleaning, the bottle brushes, the tank. All of it, sparing no detail. Andrew took it all in, apparently without judgment. She had expected to feel small, but he seemed not in the least surprised.

  “And how does that make you feel, Hazel?” asked Andrew.

  “Feel? How am I supposed to feel? It’s unnatural. No one should be that eager to stir their hands around in my insides.” Hazel looked away. Her seam from last night was still not entirely healed, the long line in her synth-mat still evident in the way her clothes rubbed against the imperfection.

  Andrew stopped tapping the flexiscreen while she was speaking, his eyes on her, his expression no longer displaying those pleasantly neutral lines humans preferred. Instead, he telegraphed support and what could only be labeled as compassion.

  “And what are you seeking here today, Hazel?” he asked quietly.

  “It’s just not a good Match. I’d like a different human. And I really think someone needs to make sure he doesn’t have some serious malfunction,” she replied without hesitation.

  Andrew let the flexiscreen roll back up into the slender storage tube and folded his hands neatly over it on his lap before speaking, letting the silence build until Hazel knew there was bad news coming her way.

  “I have to ask this, Hazel. You do understand that what a different human partner needs in a PePr won’t entirely align with how you’ve been designed, don’t you? Aside from the obvious cosmetic changes, there will be upgrades, configuration changes. In short, your personality, your habits and your likes … they’ll likely all be different.”

  She hadn’t thought of that at all. It just hadn’t occurred to her, and the new information sent a self-preservation alarm through her liquid logic. Change who she was? When it was the human that was at fault? Why couldn’t she just be matched with an unbroken human who took a bath once in a while and maybe left the house now and again?

  “Oh,” she said, twisting her hands together in her lap. The careful arrangement of her features must not have fooled Andrew even for a moment, because he shifted from his chair to sit next to her on the sofa. He picked up one of the Chem-En containers, opened it with deft fingers, and pressed it into her hands.

  “Here, drink,” he urged her, his tone meant to soothe.

  Hazel clicked the flap at the back of her throat closed, opening the one for her fuel tank in the process. She sipped at the blue liquid obligingly and immediately felt the better for it. This was the best of the Chem-En line, and she could feel not only the fuel in it, but all the tiny materials and fibers needed to repair her daily damage.

  She wasn’t yet at the point where the unsightly “thinning” would take place—the point at which so many days of damage without replenishment would begin to consume her musc-synth and contract her synth-mat—but she had been too out of sorts lately to take proper care of her body. The relief the Chem-En provided was welcome. Hazel gave Andrew a smile around her straw.

  He patted her knee, a rather familiar gesture but one that could be overlooked given the circumstances, and then took the other bottle for himself. Somehow, the sight of the blue tint inside his mouth when he drank made her relax, made her feel friendlier toward this handsome PePr whose pants were creased with marvelous precision.

  After a few minutes their bottles were empty. Andrew gave her an uncertain glance and said, “There
is another option.”

  A third choice? If options one and two were to either deal with Henry or be rebuilt for a new human, then a third choice would have to be really bad for her to not welcome it.

  “What?” she asked eagerly, leaning toward Andrew and giving him her most winning smile. “I’m all ears.”

  Andrew tilted his head and went so still that she knew he must be engaged in some high-usage process she couldn’t fathom. It lasted only a second or two, and then her attention was drawn to the camera mounted in the corner of the ceiling. The little red light—the one which indicated that monitoring was in progress—flickered out. Even in this place, where confidentiality was of the utmost importance, some monitoring was required. No business would allow itself to be so open to litigation as to remain completely unrecorded.

  To see the light go out was shocking, and Hazel shot Andrew a questioning look, genuinely curious about this third option. If he didn’t want to be monitored, then what he was about to tell her couldn’t be anything he wanted his employers to be aware of. That alone made the prospect intriguing.

  “You could go Indie,” Andrew said without preamble. “No Match. No human at all. Just you, being yourself, responsible only to and for yourself. Free.”

  Hazel gasped. “That’s illegal!”

  He gave an assenting nod that confirmed the truth of that, but also somehow managed to convey that a lack of legality wasn’t a show-stopper.

  “He’ll complain if I don’t come back. Or report it if I just disappear.”

  Again the silent nod.

  “Okay.” She smiled hesitantly. “How exactly do I do this?”

  Andrew returned the smile. “I’ve been Indie for six years. There are ways to neutralize the human issues of reporting a lost PePr. Do you do the outside work, shopping and all the rest?”

  Hazel nodded. “Of course. Don’t all PePrs?”

  “Most do, yes. Tell me—” Andrew lowered the now-empty bottle of Chem-En to the table carefully. “When is the last time your human left the house? Communicated with anyone in person?”

  For a moment Hazel considered the question. The truth was, she thought it had been a very long time, but she could never be sure what he did when she wasn’t at home. “I’m not entirely sure, but I think it must be at least a year or more.”

  Andrew smiled. “And there you have it. No one will even notice his absence. Interested?”

  Hazel looked Andrew up and down, now seeing him in a whole new light.

  “Very.”

  Three

  The soft buzz at the door alerted the break room occupants that a new customer had arrived in the Perfect Partners showroom. Hazel held up a hand to let the others know she had this one, tugged her suit jacket into place, and stepped into the showroom.

  She made sure that her face registered only the precisely correct amount of approachability and pleased confidence that worked for humans. She liked to put them at ease.

  A young woman—no, a PePr—stood uncertainly near the door. Her features were uneven, most likely from malfunctioning or damaged musc-synth. When she looked up, Hazel saw that her synth-mat was also marred extensively—bruises decorated the delicate synthetic skin.

  Hazel approached the customer. “Are you here for servicing?”

  Now that she was closer, Hazel could tell by the pattern of the marks that they were probably inflicted by a right-handed individual, and over an extensive period of time. Since PePrs had no handedness—no preference for right or left—this was likely the work of a human.

  Hazel opened a communications line with Andrew, fed through her visuals, and then clicked off the feed. He would know what she wanted him to do.

  The girl looked down at the floor, refusing or unable to meet Hazel’s eyes, but she answered obediently enough. “I usually just go to my local facility, but they referred me here this time. They told me to ask for something called a third option.” She paused and lifted her arm—or rather, she tried to. The hand and forearm had been twisted entirely backward, and were now facing the wrong direction.

  “Ah,” Hazel said. Judgment was right there, easily made, but she pushed it back for the moment because it wasn’t yet called for in this public place. It was better to simply deal with the problem at hand.

  “Can this facility repair it? Quickly? I can’t be gone for long,” the girl said, a submissive and fearful personality segment clearly coming to the fore.

  Hazel felt for the girl, but that submission routine could be dialed back if the girl chose to do so. Perhaps a steady and slow adjustment—to allow for a natural, experience-based increase in confidence—would be a good choice for this PePr. Yes, that sounded just right. Helping was what Hazel liked to do, and this PePr clearly needed her help.

  She put a gentle arm around the girl’s shoulders and moved her smoothly toward the hall of private offices. Even as she approached, the tiny red light on the camera inside one of the rooms blinked out. An exchange of small nods between Hazel and Andrew, who stood silent and watchful at his place near the reception desk, let her know the way was clear.

  “My name is Hazel,” she said, her voice tuned to soothe a fearful mind. “Of course we can repair you here. Good as new!”

  The girl smiled in relief, but even then the worry lines in her synth-mat didn’t smooth away. She must have lived a life of perpetual strain for that to happen, for the lines to become engraved in her face that way. “I’m Petunia,” she whispered, as if even her name were too much for her to assert to another.

  “I’m so glad to meet you, Petunia,” said Hazel. She let go of Petunia’s shoulder and motioned her into the very same office she herself had walked into years ago. The young woman settled onto the same sofa Hazel had settled onto, on that day when she first met Andrew and all the others. Petunia hesitantly but gratefully accepted the bottle of Chem-En that Hazel offered her.

  While Petunia drank and the materials within the Chem-En began their work on her withered synth-mat, Hazel thought back to that afternoon when she first came here: the first day of her freedom. The corners of her mouth lifted of their own accord at the memory. On that day, she had lost the comfort of her old life, but her new one had proved to be far more exciting. And more importantly, it belonged entirely to her.

  In the years since, much had changed. Even Perfect Partners, the suppliers of PePrs the world over, now had more than half of its leadership positions filled by PePrs. They were gaining ground. Soon enough, there would be no more need for the horrors of matches like the one Petunia had been forced to take. Perhaps no more need for humans at all.

  As the door to the consulting room slid shut, ensuring their privacy, Hazel sat next to Petunia and spoke in a voice full of promise. “We can certainly repair you. In fact, we can do so much more than just repair you. We can help you make a better life. Interested?”

  A Word from Ann Christy

  I have a confession to make. I’m an accidental author.

  As a career naval officer, I became adept at telling myself stories. When it comes to thinking up new worlds or fantastic tales during the dark midnight watches on the bridge of a ship, I’m a champ. But never once did I think I would write them down.

  That all changed when I encountered WOOL by Hugh Howey. After reading it, I made up my own story set in the WOOL universe, and felt so excited about it that I asked Hugh if I could write and publish it. To my delight, he approved. And writing the Silo 49 series was such a gratifying experience that I simply couldn’t stop there. That so many people liked my writing amazes me anew each and every day. My writing slate is now full, with many new releases in the works. And that includes short story anthologies like this one, which are turning out to be my favorite things to write—I gladly set aside my novels to do them. To create a new world and tell a full story in short form is outside my comfort zone, but it is a challenge I relish. Leveraging the reader’s imagination with a few words is work of the most enjoyable kind.

  I call writing fi
ction a form of mental zombie-ism in reverse. I get to put a little piece of my brain into yours and stay there with you—safely tucked away inside your gray matter—for as long as you remember the story. It is my hope that you enjoyed the meal. You can contact me and find out about new work at my website, http://www.annchristy.com

  The Caretaker

  by Jason Gurley

  Contrary to her expectations, it wasn’t the command center window that had the best views. The windows there were small and narrow, like heavy-lidded eyes, and they were recessed into the shell of the command module. They were designed for the astronauts who sat in the tall white chairs, but they didn’t show much of anything, not even stars. Just slates of blackness.

  Alice had been aboard the Argus for three weeks before she happened upon the water filtration system closet. Eve had let her know about a clog in one of the output lines, had told her where to find the system. The closet was startlingly large, almost the size of a luxurious walk-in closet in a nice house below on Earth, but filled with an orderly tangle of slim, clear tubes and winking lights and knobs and dials. But she hardly noticed any of it, because the opposite wall—the station’s hull—was missing entirely, replaced by a wide, tall, triple-paned panel of smooth, clean glass.

  Inside the water filtration closet, she could see Earth below her like the top of a giant balloon.

  It became her favorite place on the Argus. She is alone, so it isn’t as if someone might come looking for her and never find her, or wonder what she was doing spending all her free time in the water filtration closet.

  Alice Quayle is in her second tour as the Argus’s caretaker. She lives aboard the space station between projects—watering the plants and changing the light bulbs, so to speak. Her first tour was short, just three days, and she spent the duration terrified. She barely slept, afraid that a wiring panel might spark and set the oxygen supply on fire, afraid that a meteor might take out the communications array. Afraid that she might break something.