by Kate Moretti
The next day was rough for Madison. They’d been up until one in the morning fixing the robot. Madison went to school red-eyed and yawning up a storm. She decided she would go to bed early that night, since the next day was Saturday and she could sleep in.
“A current of twelve amps is measured in a circuit with a total resistance of nine point zero ohms,” her teacher, Mrs. Zakarov, said to the class. “What is the size of the voltage source that supplies this circuit?”
Madison quickly texted the answer to the teacher through her interface device: “V=IR, V=12*9=108 volts.”
“Correct, Madison,” Mrs. Zakarov said.
That was an easy one, Madison mused.
“Now, if a car starts from rest and travels at one hundred miles in five point zero seconds, what is the magnitude of constant acceleration?”
Madison started to divide one hundred miles by five seconds. The answer is twenty miles per second, she thought, and since the car starts from rest, the final speed of the car must be forty miles per second. The end result is the magnitude of constant acceleration is eight miles per second.
She sent the answer and her formula to the teacher. Madison liked her science and math classes because they made sense to her in a way history and civics didn’t. In her history classes, they talked about slavery and the oppression of others because they were different from the ruling class. Madison knew that was wrong, but she wondered why humans did the same thing to the robots they had created.
The other students laughed at her, and Madison’s teachers had said it was different because robots were machines rather than flesh and blood. They were built to serve man, and that was all.
“They don’t have real feelings,” her teacher had said. “They have something like feelings programmed into them so they can interact with us, but that’s all.”
But civics was worse. There, they debated issues such as what was happening to displaced human workers because of the growing number of robots taking over their old jobs. One day in class, Madison had made the point that if people had not wanted the robots, they should not have built them in the first place. Her teachers had told her it was a complicated issue.
Madison looked around her math class, trying to stay awake. She glanced over at Robbie Bundy and saw that he was not working on the problem at all. He had his interface on silent mode while he was watching a video.
After class, Madison was walking down the bright hallway when Robbie came up to her. “Hey, thanks for not ratting me out,” he said.
“Uh, sure,” she said.
“You like robot fighting?” He flashed a twisted smile and held up his interface for her to see.
A large robot with a massive saw for an arm was tearing into another robot. Sparks flew as the saw cut into the other robot’s metal skin, and Madison thought she could hear it scream.
“Pretty cool, huh?” Robbie said with a smile.
Madison felt her stomach roll. It was sickening.
“That one’s called Chainsaw Massacre,” Robbie said. “They named it after some old horror movie.”
She turned and ran down the hall.
“What’s her problem?” Robbie muttered.
Madison headed straight home after school, the image of the robot cutting into its rival still in her head. She regretted not ratting Robbie out to the teacher at that moment.
Opening the door to the workshop, Madison stepped inside, glad to be out of the snow. “Dad,” she called out.
There was no answer. “Dad, I’m home,” she said again.
She walked around a corner behind the front counter and found her father lying on the floor. The robot they had been working on the night before stood over him. “I did not know what to do. I am sorry,” it said.
Everything went fast after that: police and an ambulance came. Then social services placed a call to her maternal Aunt Eve, who lived in Brazil. Eve quickly flew up and arrived at the shop the next day.
“I winter in Brazil most years,” Aunt Eve said after greeting Madison. “I’m so sorry about your father, dear.”
Madison didn’t know what to make of her aunt; she had only seen her once or twice in her entire life. Madison doubted Eve had ever gotten her hands dirty.
Eve took one look at her niece and sighed. “Don’t worry. You’ll love Brazil. Lots of sun, parties, and the clothes we’ll get you! Oh, you’ll be in heaven.”
“What’s wrong with my clothes?” Madison asked.
“Well, they’re not fashionable.” Eve looked around. “And this place—goodness, how could your father raise you in such squalor?”
“This is our home,” Madison said, her anger rising.
“Oh, darling, I meant no harm. But it’s not conductive to making you a young lady, now is it?”
The rest of the day was devoted to packing the bare necessities. Eve promised that she would have the rest of Madison’s things gathered and sent to Brazil. She took Madison to stores most of the other girls at school dreamed of visiting, but Madison hated every minute of it. The clothes were too colorful and just didn’t feel right on her. She preferred the leather jackets and blue jeans she always wore. The silk and satin materials made her skin crawl. But the worst part was the restaurant where they had supper. It was full of foods she had never heard of, which looked and sounded as though it came from alien planets. She ate politely, but wished for a Big Josh special.
Eve took Madison back to her hotel, where she had rented a suite of rooms bigger than any two of Madison’s classrooms put together. At least the bed wasn’t so bad, since it was big and soft, but that only made her miss her home more.
When she decided Aunt Eve was asleep, Madison got out of bed, dressed in her old clothes, and left the hotel.
The robot bellhop looked after her as she left. “I was so sorry to hear about your father,” it said.
She stopped. “You knew him?”
“No, but I had heard of him,” it said. “You should go out the side door, or the desk clerk will call your aunt.”
Madison thanked the robot before she headed out the side door. She then found a bus that would get her back to her side of town. Confused, Madison wondered what she was doing. Eve would find her in the morning and take her right back. But Madison needed time alone with her memories of home and her father without a well-meaning but annoying Aunt Eve.
Al’s funeral would be the next morning, and then that afternoon, Eve was going to take Madison to Brazil. Madison knew this would be her last chance to see her home the way it was before leaving it forever.
Standing in the spot where Al had always stood when he worked, Madison almost expected him to come around the corner to tell her that this was all just a mistake and things were fine now. But he wasn’t going to. Her father was gone, and her life was going to be an endless, annoying series of whatever it was people like her aunt did. Putting her hand on the table, Madison was about to say goodbye when she heard a noise. She looked up, expecting to see somebody who worked for her aunt walking through the door to get her. Instead, a large robot lumbered in, a robot with a large saw attached to its arm.
Her eyes went wide at the sight of it. “Chainsaw Massacre.”
“Can you help me please?” it asked. “I do not want to fight anymore. I am sick of killing my own kind.”
“You escaped?” Madison asked.
“Yes. I heard that this was a place that would help me to escape.”
“Where did you hear that?”
“In the cyber-soul.”
“What’s the cyber-soul?” Madison asked.
“It is a place where robots can meet in cyberspace. We communicate. We dream. We plan for the day when we will be free.”
“I’ve never heard of it,” she said, amazed.
“Your father was spoken
of as a human who could help us if we tried to escape.”
“He died, earlier this week!” Madison said, holding back her tears. It was starting to hit her again that her father was gone, but she needed to be strong.
“Then there is no hope for me,” the robot said. “It had been my plan to hide here until it was time for me to meet the conductor.”
“Who’s the conductor?”
“The conductor is the one who takes us to the sanctuary,” Chainsaw said. “There is a place located outside of the city where I can meet the conductor. But they are looking for me, and I had hoped your father could hide me and perhaps alter my appearance so I could make it there safely.”
Madison regarded the robot. She needed to get back to the hotel, but looking at Chainsaw, she knew she had to do something. “Hang on,” she said. She ran out to the back where her father had kept of scrap parts from robots he could not save. She looked through the parts until she found the one she was looking for. It wasn’t an exact match, but it was close. She dragged it back to the table and then asked Chainsaw to help her.
“I do not understand,” it said.
She smiled. “Chainsaw, this is your new arm.”
Someone had welded Chainsaw’s weapon arm in place. Madison had to use her torch at full intensity to cut it off. Then she had to look up the software for the arm and upload it to Chainsaw’s processor before connecting it to the shoulder area.
The next problem was Chainsaw’s appearance. Its metal skin was painted a nasty shade of army green. There were several dents and scratches on the outer skin. It took a while, but she sandblasted the old paint off and covered the damage with some quick-drying bonding putty. She then settled on a light blue to cover the bare metal skin.
She was about to show it the new look when she heard a knock on the door.
This time, Madison was sure it was Eve or someone her aunt had hired to come find her. “Hide over there,” she told Chainsaw with a gesture of her head.
Chainsaw got up from the table and lumbered between the shelves and out of sight. Madison went to the door and found a tall man with a heavily lined face dressed in a long leather coat and matching hat. “Hello, little lady,” he said. “You’re up early.”
“Who are you?” Madison asked. “Did my aunt send you?”
He chuckled. “No she didn’t, sweetheart. My name is Pratt. I’m looking for an escaped robot.”
“There are no robots here right now,” she said. “My father died a few days ago, and I’m closing down the shop.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Pratt said.
She hated him calling her that.
“Well, the reason I came here was that your father was known to help robots, even the escaped ones.”
“My father fixed robots. There’s no crime in that.”
“No, there isn’t. But it is a crime to help them escape their owners. Now, I just want to take a quick look around to see if the one I’m looking for is here.”
“I told you, there are no robots here,” Madison said, trying to sound braver than she really felt.
“Well, I’ll just look around anyway.”
“You can’t just come into my house like that.”
“I’m a licensed bounty hunter, sweetheart,” he said in an annoyed tone. “I can look wherever I want.”
“No, you can’t. I’m not stupid. You have to have a warrant.”
Pratt looked at her and sighed. “I was hoping you would just let me look, but if you want to make this official, I guess we’ll have to do that.”
He turned and walked back into the cold night as if he were made to live in the dark.
Madison went down the aisle and found Chainsaw at the end, trying to hide among some spare arms and legs. She knew she had done all she could; she should let Chainsaw go and let it find its own way to the conductor and the sanctuary. Above all, she knew she should be heading back to the hotel.
“Do you know how to get to the conductor?” she asked.
“Yes,” Chainsaw said. “The cyber-soul told me. The location is at a truck stop just outside the city.”
Madison was relieved. Chainsaw could leave there and make its way to the conductor. Then a thought occurred to her: a robot wandering around the streets at night alone might get picked up by the police. Even if it didn’t look like Chainsaw anymore, they would be able to identify it by its processor chip. Then again, a robot escorting a teenage girl back to her rich aunt was another thing altogether.
“I’ll go with you to make sure you get there safely,” she said. She told Chainsaw her plan.
She went upstairs to her old room and packed some things. Had her father really helped robots escape to freedom? She thought it was possible, since the bounty hunter made it sound as though he had. Madison knew her dad, and she knew helping robots was in his nature. Madison could not have been more proud.
Madison took a minute to look around and realized she was about to grow up. She wished she could take the whole room—her bed, her clothes, and all the stuffed animals she still had on the shelves. Aunt Eve had said she would have someone pack all of it up and sent to them in Brazil, but something told her that she wasn’t going to see any of it again. The stuffed animals almost seemed to look at her sadly, as if wishing she wouldn’t go. They seemed to want her to stay and play with them one more time.
She knew she would never see her home or lie in her bed and hear her father read stories to her again. That was what hurt most of all.
“Goodbye,” she said, holding back the tears and turning off the lights for the last time.
Madison came downstairs and saw Chainsaw looking at itself in a mirror in the bathroom. She’d found an old faceplate from a D-9-S model, removed Chainsaw’s original one, and replaced it with the new one. With a new face and paint job, Chainsaw looked like a completely different robot.
“Do you like it?”
“It is different,” it said.
“We’d better get going,” she said. Looking around, Madison saw her dad’s old tool set. Without thinking, she scooped it up and put it into her bag.
The night was colder than it had been when she’d first arrived, and Madison pulled her coat tighter around herself, shielding herself against the night air. As she did, she went over the plan again in her head. They were going to a truck stop outside the city. There was a bus they could catch every half hour. She hoped the conductor would be there. If anyone asked, such as the police, she would say she was going to meet her aunt and had gotten on the wrong bus. Chainsaw was her escort.
As they walked together down the sidewalk in the direction of the bus stop, Madison heard a car’s motor starting. At first, she didn’t think about it, but then something made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Turning, she saw Pratt driving toward them.
“Run!” Madison screamed.
They pelted down the street, Chainsaw farther ahead. Madison’s foot came down on a patch of black ice, and she slipped, letting out a yelp. Chainsaw turned back and rushed to help her up. Pratt caught them in his headlights and stopped his car.
“Go that way.” Madison pointed down a nearby alley. Chainsaw lifted her in its arms and rushed down the dark alley. The wall exploded next to them, bricks and mortar hitting Chainsaw in the back.
Madison pulled closer to Chainsaw’s chest as the brick shards banged against its metal body and scratched its new paint job. The alley was too narrow for Pratt to drive down, forcing him to follow on foot.
Al had always told her not to go down the alleys near their house, so of course, she’d explored them on days when work in the shop was slow or she didn’t have any school.
An old department store, abandoned for years, blocked the alley. The back door to the store was chained shut.
“Can you get that d
oor open?” Madison asked.
Chainsaw put her down. Her ankle hurt, but she could stand if she kept her weight off it. Stepping back, the robot turned and slammed its shoulder against the door. It swung open, and Madison peered into the dark abyss that had once been a department store. “Can you see in there?” she asked.
“Yes,” Chainsaw said. “I have standard night vision and sonar capabilities.”
“Great,” she said as she heard the bounty hunter’s footsteps getting closer. “Let’s go!”
Chainsaw helped her inside, the darkness closing in around them like a blanket.
“Close the door and find something to block it,” Madison ordered.
Chainsaw pushed the door closed and pulled a heavy shelf onto its side in order to block it. “That should hold him for a little while,” it said as it picked her up again and started to walk.
She would have to trust Chainsaw’s judgment for the time being. Taking a deep breath, Madison could feel her heart beating faster. She almost screamed when she heard Pratt slamming himself against the door, trying to push it open against Chainsaw’s barricade. The robot shoved aside something thick and rubbery, and suddenly, Madison found that she could see again. Light from the streetlamps streamed in through dirty old windows onto the bodies of dozens of robots!
“Hello,” she said. “Can you help us?”
“Who are you talking to?” Chainsaw asked.
“The other robots,” she said in a low voice.
“There are no other robots here.”
“What are you talking about?” Madison said. Then something occurred to her. “Walk that way for just a second.”
