Rabbit & Robot

by Andrew Smith

  There had been a standard that was widely accepted—that human beings could not reliably tell when they were interacting with machines, but machines knew with unfailing accuracy whether or not they were interacting with humans. Billy Hinman’s father made this blurred line much more pronounced, and now, thanks to Queen Dot and her Worms, we were all doomed.

  Some machines could be more human than humans. And provided the right dosage of Woz, humans could be more mechanized than the most precise gearbox. Look at every rabbit and robot humankind has ever cranked out of the factories. Look at Charlie Greenwell. Thirty-whatever wars don’t just fight themselves, after all.

  What kind of world did our fathers abandon us to?

  I rubbed my eyes. “I can’t do that.”

  Whoosh. Click. Click.

  We didn’t notice that Rowan had entered and sealed himself inside the air lock, but there was nothing we could do once it happened. And he played deaf when I shouted at him to get out of there, and scolded him, “What the fuck are you doing? Rowan! What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

  Mooney, Mooney!

  And we just got him online only moments before you arrived!” Dr. Geneva put his hand on Billy’s shoulder. “What do you think?”

  Billy Hinman said, “He’s real.”

  Dr. Geneva coughed out a condescendingly fake laugh and said, “Of course he’s real, William! As real as anything ever was, since, in effect, our collective notion of reality is merely at best an assumption of what reality actually is. And here he is! Ha ha ha!”

  When Dr. Geneva said “reality,” he made his hands shape like brackets in the air, and his eyes got very large, like he was talking to an uncomprehending idiot, or maybe a poodle.

  Jeffrie said, “Who is he?”

  And even if there were only five human beings left alive anywhere in the universe, Jeffrie Cutler would still have been just about the only person who did not recognize the cog who’d just been made by other cogs on the Tennessee, who stood before them smiling, extending a hand to shake Billy’s.

  Billy said, “Mooney. The robot. From the TV show.”

  Jeffrie shook her head and shrugged. “Never saw it.”

  And Mooney said, “Glad to meet you, Billy! Would you like me to sing a song for you? Cheepa Yeep, by the way! Ha ha ha!”

  “I—I’m not . . .”

  Billy took Mooney’s hand. Nothing else mattered at that point, because the bits of Rabbit & Robot that had already wormed their way inside Billy Hinman’s brain when he saw the show on our transpod, and from the videos and songs on the Tennessee, began to whisper stories to him about another world entirely.

  Add Action,

  Add Action.

  Execute switch void ever never,

  Execute switch satisfaction.

  Billy was unaware he’d been standing, openmouthed, eyes glazed, staring at Mooney.

  Jeffrie grabbed his arm and shook him. “Hey. Hey, Billy.”

  And Mooney dropped to one knee with his arms out, like an old-time vaudevillian, and finished the song in his booming, goofy voice:

  And no one cares about haves and have-nots,

  We love you all, our rabbits and robots!

  Dr. Geneva clapped his hands wildly. “He’s magnificent! Magnificent! William, have I ever told you about the history of mind coding, and how it came to be developed in the first half of this century, coincidental to the discovery of the chief agents of neural reconfiguration brought about by the sustained ingestion of Woz? It’s a fascinating study, which dates back to one of the first wars fought between the United States and Norway, where Woz was originally . . .”

  Billy Hinman was confused. He shook his head.

  Jeffrie said, “Shut the fuck up, Dr. Geneva.”

  “We should be friends, Billy!” Mooney started singing again. “What do you think you’ll be? A bonk like Rabbit? Or a robot like me?”

  And Jeffrie said, “Look. Billy. Listen to me. If Queen Dot is out to get these machines, she’s for sure done something horrible. We should probably get the fuck out of this place, before we all get burned.”

  Dr. Geneva had been gabbling on and on and on about Norwegian history as though nothing else mattered at all. He started in the thirteenth century.

  Behind them, somewhere on the floor in a puddle of what looked like runny mayonnaise and semen, Reverend Bingo screeched, “I should have bought the blue car! I should have bought the blue car!”

  “I’m so happy! I’m so happy, I could poop myself, but my butt’s down in the arrivals hall somewhere! Wheee!” Officer Dennis’s head bellowed.

  And Mooney said, “We should be friends, Billy! Maybe we could go shoot some monkeys together, ha ha! Or we could go to Rabbit & Robot World and ride the terror coaster! Or, wait! I know what we could do!”

  And then Mooney dug his hand down inside his pocket. He opened his palm in front of Billy’s chin, and all up through the fake flesh of his fake and mechanized hand wriggled excited little blue worms, slithering in oily slime.

  “Ha ha! It’s Woz, Billy! My own special kind! Want to try some with me? I bet your pal Cager would!”

  Mooney held the wriggling mass that glinted like diamonds.

  This Is What We Saw

  I slapped the door to the air lock. It hurt my hand.

  “Rowan! Stop it! What the fuck?”

  Meg watched the wall screens as Rowan disarmed the second air-lock door that led to the docking bay. “He’s opening it. He’s going to die in there.”

  There had been accidents in the past, in which passengers from a Grosvenor Galactic Rabbit & Robot cruise ship had “fallen overboard” and ended up in space. Most of those people exploded, due to the involuntary reflex of holding your breath. But space is unforgiving when your lungs are filled with air, which it will suck out with the force of a detonating bomb.

  It’s very messy, but also very quiet.

  One passenger, a man traveling on my father’s ship the Minnesota, actually survived an unprotected extravehicular fall that lasted nearly half a minute before he managed to pull himself back inside an open air lock. After that incident, Grosvenor Galactic began including warnings on their passenger safety lessons about the Forester Effect, which was named after Eddie Forester, the man who’d survived in space.

  Eddie Forester exhaled.

  Just thinking about it makes me feel like I’m being smothered.

  I hoped if Rowan was actually doing the stupid and dangerous thing he looked like he was about to do, that he’d remember the Forester Effect, and not hold his breath.

  I did not want to watch Rowan explode.

  This is what we saw: Rowan activated the bay’s exit sequence, which discharged all the oxygen from inside the air lock and then caused the second door to open. I don’t know why, but when I saw this on the wall screen, I inhaled deeply and held my breath.

  If I’d been with Rowan, I would have exploded.

  But Rowan, my dutiful lifelong caregiver, bath drawer, and underwear folder, did not explode, probably thanks to a guy named Eddie Forester.

  Along the walls of the docking bay were networks of vertical metal rungs with safety clips on them for workers to maneuver around the hull of the Tennessee or undocked transpods if the outer doors were open. Three of these were what I’d used to anchor the cogs I’d noosed. Rowan pulled himself along the sideways ladders toward the rung Parker had been tied to.

  It was sickening to watch him. I knew Rowan wouldn’t make it back; it was impossible. But I couldn’t look away, and I couldn’t breathe, either. I was faintly aware that Meg was holding my hand.

  “You’re not breathing,” Meg said.

  I inhaled. It felt good. “What the fuck is he doing?”

  Rowan grasped Parker’s cable in one hand, anchoring himself with the other on the metal safety rung. He jerked the cable like he was setting a hook in a tuna, and Parker came bobbing and tumbling out of the darkness of space. My eternally horny personal valet cog drifted ins
ide the open outer docking-bay doors. I was happy to see him, and relieved, terrified, and sickened, too, all at the same time.

  Meg said, “He’s a cog.”

  “Huh?”

  “Your butler guy. He’s a cog, Cager. I couldn’t even tell.”

  Meg swept her hands over the operations screen and shut the outer doors.

  “He can’t be. He has a last name. It’s Tuttle-Finewater. Rowan can’t be a cog.” My voice cracked. I couldn’t believe any of this.

  And Meg said, “Tuttle-Finewater?”

  “England. He was born in England. It’s why he’s always so perfect and never farts and stuff.”

  Meg shook her head. “Um, he’s a cog.”

  “No.”

  I was embarrassed. I felt sick and stupid in front of Meg Hatfield because she had to have noticed the tear I wiped off my face.

  As soon as the doors shut, the docking bay pressurized and produced gravity. Lourdes and Parker thudded to the floor. Milo, one of his trouser legs missing, was still curled up with a noose around his neck, in the same place I’d left him.

  With air pressure and gravity came sounds.

  Lourdes squirmed on the docking bay’s floor. “Wheee! I love gravity so much, I want to have its child! Yeee! Yeee!”

  Parker boosted himself onto his hands and knees, slipped the noose from his neck, and looked into the wall screen beside the air lock. “Cager? Cager, did you come back for me? I always knew you would. I love you, Cager.”

  And Milo, softly crying, said, “I deserve to have been eaten. I would have been eaten too, if everyone didn’t hate me so much.”

  Maybe it was the Forester Effect, I thought.

  Rowan couldn’t be a cog. He was just supersmart about everything, so he must have exhaled. And even though no human being could have lived without a store of oxygen for the few minutes Rowan was in the docking bay rescuing Parker, it just couldn’t be the case that Rowan was a machine—a sixteen-year-long lie to Cager Messer.

  I wiped at my eyes and opened the air-lock door.

  Meg followed me into the bay.

  Lourdes squirmed in delight, and Milo cradled his face and rocked back and forth. Parker rushed me as soon as I got inside the docking bay. He threw his arms around me and rubbed his hips firmly into mine. If Parker was a house, I could feel he was rearranging some of his downstairs furniture.

  “I always knew you’d come back for me, Cager. Can I please kiss you?”

  “No. Not now, Parker.” I pushed him away from me and went to untie Lourdes and Milo.

  And when I undid the knot on Lourdes’s noose, my knee brushed across her pink-and-kittens panties.

  I was a wreck.

  “I’m free! I’m free!” Lourdes shrieked, “I love freedom almost as much as I love being hanged!”

  It must be nice, I thought, to have such a positive outlook on just about everything.

  And Milo said, “I’m so ashamed of myself. I’m completely worthless.”

  I loosened the noose around Milo’s neck and patted his shoulder. “It’s okay, Milo. We fixed everything.”

  That made Milo start crying again. “Not my pants.”

  I looked at the little wise men, angels, baby Jesuses, and farm animals on Milo’s boxers, a definite dress-code violation at Le Lapin et l’Homme Mécanique.

  “We’ll get you some new pants, Milo. I promise.”

  Lourdes, who was already up on her feet and dancing, sang, “Wheee! My skirt flew away, all by itself!”

  Rowan had been standing against the wall, still grasping the safety rung where he’d pulled Parker’s tether. He didn’t say anything when I walked up to him. He avoided eye contact, which was a thing I’d never really seen Rowan do before, unless I’d been asking him about sex, or whether or not he was a virgin, which was something sixteen-year-old Cager Messer was too mature to do.

  Because sixteen-year-old Cager Messer knew the answer to that one now.

  But I didn’t really know what to say to him either. I felt so betrayed, and I couldn’t begin to explain to myself exactly why I should feel that way. Rowan—Rowan Tuttle-Finewater—was just a tea-brewing, bath-drawing, sandwich-making, underwear-folding, babysitting machine. Nothing more.

  I may as well have gotten my feelings hurt by an egg beater, which was also something I had never used in my life.

  And another thing I’d never done in my life was this: I had never been angry or disappointed with Rowan. But now I was all those things, and much more, too. I was confused and scared.

  Also, I was very cruel. But in my defense, it was justifiable because I’d been lied to and duped for my entire life. And, anyway, you can’t honestly be cruel to a fucking machine, can you?

  But Rowan was my caretaker. Rowan raised me.

  “You aren’t even real,” I said. “At any time they could have simply replaced you with a goddamned windup toy. What’s the fucking difference?”

  I’ll admit that my voice quavered like a hoarse-throated yodeler’s, and I was also on the verge of crying, which likely would have made Milo cry harder, and Lourdes gush about how much she loves to see boys cry, and Parker get turned on.

  But I had no idea what Rowan would do. Maybe he’d offer to fix me some tea and fill a bathtub for me, until I got over myself and calmed down.

  “Nice coding, by the way. They left out all the excessive happy, sad, mad, horny whatever the fuck it is they do to you things, and they made you smell like one of us.”

  I called Rowan a thing.

  I made him something other than us.

  I didn’t even know who he was anymore. I realized I never had.

  And Rowan didn’t answer me. There was no arching of the eyebrow, just a blank stare. He looked guilty and injured.

  I was so mad, I could have thrown myself to the floor and gouged my own eyes out—a real v.4 meltdown.

  “I fucking hate this place.”

  I turned away from Rowan and ran out of there, and Parker chased after me, calling, “Wait! Cager! Wait!”

  Are You One of Us?

  Have I strung you along?

  I’d hoped that in leaving behind my account of what we did and what happened to us on the Tennessee, that maybe two thousand centuries from now—or whenever—someone, you, might find this and say, There once were these things called humans, and this is what it meant to be one of them.

  I realize I just called us “things.”

  We are faulty machines with built-in obsolescence, and we can make more of us.

  Cogs making cogs.

  And maybe that’s the whole point, after all—that every one of us who ever existed spent all those limited days over the thousands of centuries we were here just trying to figure out what it meant to be us. The mousetrap trigger is this precise point: Pour the word “us” into the coding of a human, and we immediately discount as inferior or useless all the not-us things in the universe.

  Are you one of us?

  This is my jar. I’ll leave it here, atop this hill.

  It is sad and wonderful.

  Moon to Moon

  Maybe we can never know one another.

  Maybe I didn’t know Billy Hinman, either.

  Maybe I had discounted my best friend—my only friend—after he stayed beside me through all those messed-up years we spent growing up while not growing up.

  And maybe Billy only fooled himself into thinking that this entire ruse—getting me onto the Tennessee—was more about fixing me than fixing us. I screwed everything up, and we were all trapped in this mechanized bedlam, a demented and preposterous moon to our moon.

  I wanted to be hacked up on Woz again.

  On board the Tennessee, the Worms—visible and invisible—were everywhere.

  Just Like Home

  Meg Hatfield was alone in our room, lying in bed, when Billy and Jeffrie came back.

  Billy stumbled in the dark and leaned against Jeffrie. His shirt was untucked and his tie undone, and as soon as they got inside the
room Billy collapsed onto my bed, laughing.

  Billy Hinman was out of it on Woz.

  “Hey, Cager. Cager, guess what? You’ll never believe what just happened, man. I feel so fucking good. Who knew this shit could make a guy feel so good?” Billy said. He kicked off his shoes.

  Jeffrie pushed his hand away when Billy tried to unzip her dress. She said, “Don’t you think we need to tell them what’s going on?”

  “I don’t know. What is going on, Jeff?” Billy asked.

  “Cager’s not here. He’s gone,” Meg said.

  “Oh,” Billy said.

  The Woz that Mooney gave him was particularly potent, and Billy Hinman was very happy, very relaxed. He couldn’t remember much about the evening except for meeting Mooney, how they’d smoked crushed Woz tablets together and laughed about how everything that had been happening on the Tennessee was simply part of another episode of Rabbit & Robot, which meant Mooney was undoubtedly going to suffer some major humiliation at any moment.

  People got a kick out of seeing Mooney humiliated.

  But it was not a television program that we were stuck inside.

  Billy Hinman said, “I think I’m finally starting to like this place.”

  Billy took off his pants and shirt and pulled back the bedsheets before he realized what Meg had said to him.

  “What do you mean, Cager’s gone? Wasn’t he just here when we came in?”

  “He was very upset about something. He took off when we were down in the docking bay. That was a few hours ago,” Meg said.

  “Huh?” Billy straightened up, wobbling, and turned on the lights. “Where’s Rowan? Cager gets like that sometimes. Rowan knows how to fix him up.”

  Meg shook her head. “You’re high.”

  Billy smiled and shrugged.

  So Meg Hatfield told Billy and Jeffrie the story of what had happened in the arrivals hall after they left with Officer Dennis’s head.

  Jeffrie sat on the bed next to Billy and listened. She loved hearing Meg tell stories. It made Jeffrie feel like she was sitting outside on a hot desert afternoon up on Missing Boy Mountain, which she missed very much. When Meg finished, Jeffrie asked her, again, if Cager and Rowan and the three cogs were all okay.