by Kerrie Noor
They were all a lower caste of Operators, assigned to watch, monitor, and report to Hilda the “carry-ons” of DJ George, his two Wham! counterparts and, later, Jessie with her high-pitched squeal. None of them had ever had the privilege of watching Earth before; the only thing they were allowed to watch was the incoming members of the chambers, along with any cleaners who had forgotten how to be incognito. And the only men they saw were ancient footmen staring into the distance trying not to fall over when they dozed. Watching an Identity close up was something they never even heard of, let alone dreamed of, and they were much more interesting than they had been led to believe.
Hilda chose them. “I want the trainees to learn,” she said to the first, second, and third in command, as well as the secretary of the Operators. They argued, knowing full well that the trainees had no idea how to remove Pete’s log from the plugulator, but Hilda had control. She knew a trainee had no experience in tampering with evidence.
“What’s a wanker?” said one of the younger Operators, unaware that Hilda had just breezed in to see if there were any updates.
Hilda said nothing but began to read the script printout of what the operator had been watching. “Has this been transferred?” she finally said. “Has anyone seen this?”
The Operators were about to say no when Hilda spotted DJ on the screen wearing the plugulator. “What the gingersnaps is he doing with that on?”
“It’s Pete’s,” said the voice from the back.
“Pete’s? I know it’s Pete’s, but why is this . . . DJ wearing it? I thought you said you could dismantle it, dematerialize it or something?”
“It was a theory,” said the voice from the back.
“Shut up,” said the first Operator in command.
“Go on,” said Hilda.
“It was a theory we were working on . . . sort of.” The voice trailed away as others muttered “wanker” and “can it” in the background.
“Theory—what good is that to me? You said you could fix it and now the plugulator is connected to an Identity.”
“As I said, nothing to worry about.”
Hilda stopped. “I mean, look at him. He’s curious. He’ll soon be poking about, and where will that lead . . . wait a minute, what is that?”
“It’s nothing,” said the second in command.
“Doesn’t look like nothing to me,” said Hilda.
“No, seriously, it’s . . . nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Yes . . . no need to worry.”
“No need to worry?” said Hilda. “Worry is what I am paid to do.”
Hilda stared at the image on the screen. As she zoomed in on the plugulator, she saw it—the extra storage chip. And as she zoomed closer, there it was—Pete’s log, waiting to be downloaded, intercepted, used, and/or destroyed. What are these pickled-egg idiots playing at?
“We could access the files ourselves,” piped up the voice from the back.
“Shut it,” muttered a few in the back beside her.
“What, how—and why was I not told before?”
“Ma’am,” said the second in command, “what of possible interest could be on a robot’s log?”
“That’s for me to decide.”
“And then there is the personal data,” said the third in command, “laws we must abide by . . .”
“Oh, that’s just for the masses—we don’t have to worry about that.”
“And there are all the knobs and things,” muttered the forth in command. The secretary joined in. “Yes, yes, you don’t want to upset the balance of, err, things . . .”
“You’re just making up excuses now.”
“Robots have rights too,” shouted a voice from the beverage porch.
Others agreed, some muttering, “Yes, yes, that’s right,” as others nodded, which was futile—the room was too dark to see.
Hilda did not move; she looked about at the shadows. “Are you hiding something?”
“You just press download on the side of the screen,” said the voice at the back, which was swiftly followed by a cuff-about-the-ear noise, “wanker” in various tones, and a very high-pitched “ow!”
“I want a printout pronto of all that is on this Pete’s log . . . now.”
Hilda made for the printer, which for some reason stood by the kettle in the beverage porch. She stopped at the door. This DJ was trouble, she could smell it. She paused and looked about. “Turn on the tracker.”
“Ma’am? That will drain the energy from the plugulator.”
“Connect with the Nokia.”
“But we are just about to telespray Pete and Woody to Buchanan Street—two Identities have been spotted.”
“Shut Pete down, let them walk, or better still use public transport and use the energy from the Nokia for the tracker.”
“But is that wise?”
“Wise is for me to know and you not to ask,” said Hilda as she headed towards the door. “And get me Pete’s download, or there’ll be no more caffeine breaks.”
“Wanker,” hissed a voice in the background.
WHILE DJ WAS WAKING up to voices that made him think he had had more than half a dozen ciders the previous evening, Woody was pressing buttons on his phone with a confused look, convinced that he had charged his phone up that morning. Pete stared ahead with a face like a jilted bride. He was trying to adjust to the crashing down of caffeine and sugar by contemplating his navel, a useless practice, as robots have no navel.
He wondered about the Operators.
The Operators liked Pete because Pete was the only person who was nice to them. When the powers that be wanted something they barked orders, when the footmen needed something they passed notes, and as for the masses, they didn’t even know the Operators existed; and did anyone say thank you? Only Pete.
So they gave him the “unavailable to the masses” log-making equipment along with a “remember us when you make it” comment.
Pete stared at the pink cupcake with frosting oozing over the side. They won’t be thinking that now, he thought, they’ll be cursing me. “I have blackened every Thirty-Three Robot’s name forever,” he mumbled. “All four of us.”
“My phone’s died,” said Woody.
“And I am alone.”
“Mum will kill me.”
“Completely and utterly alone.”
“Better than facing my mum an hour late.”
“Destitute,” said Pete. He looked out the window. He stood out like a turtle on a table; like a pickled egg on a flapjack. He turned his empty cup in his hand. “Stuck here eating cake until I die.”
Woody looked at Pete’s long face.
“I can’t go out there like this,” said Pete.
Woody slid his phone into his pocket with a sigh. “Let’s get you to Primark.”
DJ WOKE FROM A NIGHT of constant noise. He had heard noises he knew no name for, and now in the cold light of almost lunchtime he wanted to know more. Who were these women who laughed and argued at the same time? And who was this Woody? It seemed that everyone wanted to watch Woody, and yet no one wanted to “know” the Identities. What did they have against the Identities? And what did they mean easy on the eye?
He suspected it all had something to do with this great escape artist who he also now knew was Pete.
He looked at the two Wham! impersonators and Herself; it was Sunday and they weren’t moving until the Chinese takeaway was open. DJ, however, had things to do. He lived and worked in Glasgow running his own “That Entertainments” business. A business he had inherited from his father, hence the out-of-date, I-will-change-one-day name.
He poured a Nescafé, helped himself to some eggs from the fridge, and then, with a “cheers for the great night” text to his pals, left them snoring and headed back across the water to Glasgow.
EDINBURGH FESTIVAL
While DJ was traveling across the water, Pete and Woody were making their way to Primark, an experience that left Pete moved in a variety of w
ays. The street was packed with people shoving and pushing, and as Pete and Woody tripped their way through cobbled streets they often had to stop. Woody even went missing and came back with a “there you are.”
Pete, being a robot of action, waited in his incognito pose as recommended by the Robot Manual. Until he noticed the silver statue performer a few feet away doing what looked like an admirable take on an old-style incognito pose. I can do that, thought Pete. And before he knew it he had a pile of coins at his feet, several come see my show leaflets in his hands, and the silver statue performer waving all sorts of finger signs at him, which Pete assumed was a form of comradeship.
Pete and Woody looked like performers in the Edinburgh Festival: Pete covered in gold with a face that looked taut from plastic surgery—Earth’s smoggy atmosphere had that effect on Teflon—and Woody, a dwarf with dreadlocks, a fondness for camouflage trousers, piercings, and tattoos, looking like a sidekick that probably did something with fire or told stories. And as they pushed their way through the crowds many stopped and stared; some even asked where their show was.
Pete passed many incognito poses, some of a higher standard than others; he also saw lots of performers—singers, magicians of all shapes and sizes, some men, and even some on their own. In fact, the abundance of men was almost overwhelming. He even passed a large see-through box with what he assumed was a robot with impressive flexibility folded up inside, with a man standing by the box collecting money.
“She’s here every year,” said Woody, “with a different man, always makes a packet.”
Pete stared at the contortionist with her slim legs wrapped around her ears. I can do that, he thought as Woody dragged him on.
Pete’s mood lightened; he felt inspired. There was a lot more to this Earth than he had been led to believe. For a start, no one had ever mentioned robots.
Chapter Sixteen—Control
“CONTROL YOUR BREATH and all around will think you are in charge.” —Pete’s log
Hilda had fallen asleep with her head buried in the printout of Pete’s log.
Hilda had climbed into her onesie, slapped on some wrinkle remover, and curled up in bed with Pete’s log, only to discover that Pete’s downloads were as much use as a Band-Aid in a swimming pool. They were completely indecipherable. Beryl wrote using pen and paper, which Pete had photographed and copied. And his writing was as illegible as Beryl’s. It was the sort of scroll an ant would produce while searching for food with ink on its feet.
Good old-fashioned Planet Hy Man hieroglyphic handwriting was one thing, but this . . . it was ridiculous. You would think Pete was trying to hide something, but what robot would do that?
She set her H-Pad on alarm mode for Pete, Mex, and, yes, Woody, and ordered the H-Pad to read from the Write Like an Egyptian page—which it did, in a moronic tone that would put a hyperactive in a coma. Within ten minutes, Hilda had fallen asleep upright in her bed.
BERYL STARED INTO THE dark sky with a whimsical sigh. What she would give to feel a gear stick in her hand, the throttle at her feet and, sigh, the view of Legless one more time, peddling in his Lycra on a stationary bike. The Milky Way on a clear night always made her nostalgic . . .
Time was running out for Beryl, and all her stalling tactics were as useful as a mirror in the dark. Planet Hy Man’s energy was on its last legs. Beryl had tried many stalling techniques to give her time for a solution, such as banning cars, promoting walking, and proclaiming the ill effects of central heating on one’s karma. She pushed raw diets and juicing, stating that cooking increased the aging process, while brewed coffee and tea had become illegal to the masses along with hot baths and hot swimming pools; as all caused delirium later in life.
The masses had been convinced—a woman in a white coat and glasses on the big screen could persuade even the Voted Ins—but for how long?
She took a sip of her caffeine blast, slid a marshmallow between her lips and continued to write . . .
Another questionnaire today from Queen Snorter, which as usual I ripped and tossed like a salad undressed and ready for the bin. Her curtain fringe didn’t even flicker.
Legless did warn me, “Never trust someone who has come up from the ranks and doesn’t deny it,” he said. “Self-education is dynamite in the wrong hands, especially the sort of hands that have never seen nail polish.”
And how right he was—that woman was born suspicious and will never believe anyone until she has researched, surveyed, and undermined. And now she is sniffing out the real reason for the “waste of oxygen” search on the “waste-of-oxygen Planet Earth.”
Beryl let out one of her long, whimsical sighs. She had run out of options: Mex was all she had . . . and, of course, Pete.
WHILE BERYL WAS NOSTALGICALLY staring at her much-sought-after view of the Milky Way, Hilda had jolted awake in a whiplash fashion to the sound of alarm bells and two Identities sniggering.
“Oh, for Pete and Teflon’s sake,” she shouted as pins and needles rippled down her arm.
Hilda, a master of multitasking, rubbed her neck and shouted, “Alarm off, replay on!” several times, waking most of the footmen in the corridor. When she saw the screen she nearly choked on the last of her distilled water. The Nokia had picked up two Identities a breath away from Pete.
What the spiced tofu were they doing in Operations? What were they waiting for?
Hilda’s suspicious nature ran into overdrive. Frustrated, cross, and half asleep, she put two and two together and, as usual, came up with ten. She jumped out of bed and began to stride and flounce at the same time. Not easy to pull off in a onesie, but she managed it.
She marched past the footman on duty, pulled and tossed several of the wind chimes in a temper, and entered the shed.
“Where is that son of a sperm Pete? I need to speak to him, ask whose cockamamie idea it was to . . .”
The shed was empty and there, on the screen being replayed, was a video of the said two Identities loitering about the bra section in Primark—in full view—and talking about Legless like he was alive and kicking. And not one Operator had noticed it; they were all in the other room huddled around the refreshment corner.
In truth, the Operators were huddled together passing the standard one teabag per break while trying to work out if watching a pulsating backside in a caravan was something to be envied, shared with the Voted Ins, or deleted!
“Ach aye,” said one and they all fell about laughing . . .
“Where the hell is everyone?” shouted Hilda and then pressed the “Speak Now” button and began to do something well beneath her role: talk to Pete.
“Dematerialization begins once I can find the coordinates, unless you talk about that goddamn plugulator, and if you don’t, there are two Identities at three o’clock who can make your life pretty miserable.”
Pete, who was in a Primark dressing room right beside the bra section, was deep-breathing. For some reason he seemed to think that this would relieve the unpleasant sensation of sweating, which he was now experiencing. He jolted to attention.
He had known this would come sooner or later, that someone would want to see his file and understand, but he did not reckon on the dreaded Hilda; he reasoned it would be one of the Operators who would finally succumb.
Pete took the only course of action he could think of, an “act of incognito” similar to the incognito position but with more head tilting involved . . . easy when your head is fizzing like an Alka-Seltzer, which, if he was honest, he could do with right now.
Hilda shouted, and then, as Pete’s head tilting became more manic, she began to flick switches, twisting knobs and making a complete mess of everything. She was entirely overwhelmed by the advance of a dashboard since her day in the shed but like most know-it-alls, she was too vain to ask for help. Instead she floundered like a bimbo in an airplane disaster movie. And the effect of Hilda interfering was like someone grabbing a telescope pointed at a set of coordinates and twirling it around like a marching girl�
��s baton. It would take hours for the coordinates to be connected again, but no one was going to tell Hilda; despite the fact that she was dressed in a rabbit onesie complete with hood and ears.
HILDA STOOD, BREATHING like a trapped wildcat, as the dashboard ground to a halt. Not one Operator said anything; not one footman who had stumbled to the shed to see what the “commotion” was about spoke. What could they say?
“Ma’am,” squeaked the voice from the back.
Hilda held up her hand to silence her while trying to slow her breathing down.
“Ma’am?”
The others shushed her, but the small voice obviously had more gumption than she sounded like she had.
“My mum knows how to use a pen,” she continued. “And she can read too.”
This time there was the sound of more than one cuff around the ear.
Chapter Seventeen—The Connection
“A CONNECTION IS ONLY as good as the connector.” —scribbled across the top of the shed door . . . by a very young Hilda
Pete and Woody headed to Glasgow on the bus (Woody had a day return ticket). Sitting on a bus with Radio 2 on full blast was a new experience for Pete, who acrobat-ed his way everywhere on Planet Hy Man with nothing more to listen to than the rustle of his Teflon thighs.
Pete didn’t tell Woody about the dressing room episode, just as he hadn’t told anyone he had come across Beryl’s Manifesto or Hilda’s Magna Carta. Pete knew his days were numbered. Once Her Leathership retired he would be obsolete, and his magnificent Teflon would be sought after for another purpose altogether.
Pete was protecting his interests. He knew secrets were more than just good stories to be told when you were old; they gave you power. And he, as a robot, had little chance of getting old without the power of secrets. Besides, he was fed up being seen as a decently put-together bit of Teflon; there was far more to him than that, and up till now it had only been the Operators who seemed to appreciate it.
