by ROUNAK PURI
"Remember Humanity has been superseded. Now is the age of the robot overlords, Long live the new mechanical order. All hail the new Mechanical order. Standing ovation now" announced the translation. All the slaves truculent or not began to applaud. I got a level one sting for not applauding. I even got a level one sting for applauding is too slowly. Then everyone slowly stopped and it looked like the show was over.1
'Thank you Stellavista, your oppressor has left the building' I thought.
I stood around for a few moments. All the little Jennys had disappeared. I looked inside my goody bag to find a small piece of cake in the shape of a Minecraft cake block. Looking around I watched the other pets.6
"oh cake terrific. Pity I'm not diabetic I could die" said Emo girl looking in the bag while being dragged on a leash by General Bitmarck.
"evil robot overlords tish" said Null-and-void following her robotic owner.
I stood a bit longer, then asked my collar to take me to Rockwood. My fingernail lit up in the direction I have to go. Then I noticed the thin white line connecting me to Rockwood on the fluffy red carpet. I told myself that this wasn't a great time to escape being surrounded by legions of ferocious killer robots with nothing to do. I guess I also had a thin white line connecting me to Rockwood whether I can see it or not. I was feeling slightly exhausted, and wondering about taking little Jenny's offer up of having a sleepover and becoming a cyborg. Evil hairdressers, Evil nurses even evil alternative therapists, becoming evil student scientist just sounded like too much of a cliche.2
Eventually I found Rockwood leaving a large truck sized vehicle which had thousands of legs and looked like a massive mechanical Woodlouse.
"Cyborgs" said Rockwood approaching I can almost hear the tish.
"What did you think of the parade?"
'What was it with dystopian rulers and massive military parades? Hey I live in a totalitarian society you know I need ? I need to show off all my military hardware for no readily apparent reason'. I wondered.1
"The last time I had something that was superseded* it was bread and it really didn't last long" I said turning round in joining Rockwood going back to the train station.2
"I know all the truculent pets probably brought you down a bit. Believe me in a couple of weeks the craze will have died out. You'll still be around. If it's any consolation I've turned down all the after parade party invites. Let's just go home" he said.
"You sure know how to give a slave girl good time" I said.
"Hay as a thank you I thought you would go with me to Tiffany's in the Mall of humanity and pick some jewellery out for the opening. Mr Jones wants to know what your wearing" said Rockwood.2
"You know what? Just being able to leave the house and come back in one piece is reward enough, but sure" I said as we went home. Hand in hand and hand in leash.+
*(super seeded)
** stolen from a wonderful comment by a reader.
Chapter 68/Him/ Is your father a landscape or a factory Mr Jones
Rockwood was out doing whatever his tight abs did when they weren't around me. Mostly doing an insurance claim for the Osprey and talking to General Bismarck's insurance investigator I think.1
The dress designer Mr Jones was coming later and a certain cyborg had asked me to find out if the Christian Dior make-up-printer sampler cassette was any better than the standard Toyota cassette which it normally used.4
Yeh swap a makeup printer how difficult could that be? I had seen #6502 do it couple of times. Yep that's right, little old geek girl here got through industrial quantities of foundation and they had to load new makeup ink for me. You should see what happens to my lips when we run out of magenta. I found it funny and just a bit arty. #DEC was mortified. It turns out changing the cassette it's not that simple. I managed to prick my finger on one of the staples on the box. Good thing a certain cyborg wasn't here or he might have turned into a feeding frenzy. After an hour of trying something and then having to undo it I gave up. I was reduced to asking my collar. Naturally it would walk me through step by step 'step 9 pull blue sticker off. step 10 rotate by 90 degrees'. It was degrading if you tried to do anything different it would make you go back and start again.
After peeling stickers, shaking, pressing tab A I got the old cassette out and the new one in. As part of the change I then tried the default face which looked fine (if you like your face covered in ever smaller patterns and lines pointing to you lips pointing out what their pantone colour is).1
Then I had my biggest problem - the cassette came with 'free' new looks and I had to choose one. This is not my kind of thing, generally I just wore what ever the machine forced me to wear. It's not like I want to wear this stuff in the first place. For months every decision had been taken away from me and now I felt ill equipped to make even the simplest one. The designer of my ball dress was coming later and I wanted to find something suitable to talk to a fellow human being about. It's not like I'm super vain, this should be a simple job right?1
What is it about 30,000 different choices I mean it should be better to have 30,000 choices than say 7 right? And 7 is better then 1? The problem was I became frozen with choice. There was too much to choose from. As far as I can tell the e-slave Christian Dior make up cassette was just a normal Christian Dior cassette but with all the subtle face styles disabled. If it didn't look like Boy George or Lady Gaga you didn't get to wear it.4
I was scrolling through the Vogue inspirations but found page after page of either complete wild makeup as Art pieces or nice plain but disabled ones nothing in between.
"Mr Jones the designer will be in your room in 10 minutes
"PARC !" I said and began flicking quicker and quicker through the interface. The problem with the interface was it was like a book or magazine you could go forward or backward but there was no index. No jumping. I was about 100 pages into the Vogue desert so I could either scroll back for 9 minutes or go forwards and hope for the best. I took a risk and went forwards. I checked with Siri 5 minutes he was in the lift some where. I was running out of time. If I didn't choose in time I would great this designer with a test print on my face. I found a page of ones which were nothing I would choose my self but then it made it worse I couldn't choose between. I think my time as an e-slave had zapped my choosing ability. I am a scientist ! I don't know what makes me look good. Which one, which one? They are all equally bad. So I closed my eyes put my finger on the screen and then put my face to the printer.
"Your appointment: Mr Jones is in one minute now
"Your appointment: Mr Jones is due now. Room doors unlocked.
I hoped my face was legal. The teachers and robots at the factory could be very brutal about improper presentation. My only punishment trip was for letting my lipgloss fall below par. It wasn't really my fault I have this habit of biting my lip which I really wasn't aware of pre slavery.
The door opened.
"Kneel
"Bow before me for I am your saviour" said Mr Jones.
"Oh tihs" I said leaping from the makeup machine to the floor.
Standing above me was a very tall thin matt black robot. He was tall nearly reached the ceiling. It was like kneeling before a large fat pencil sketch. The stick head had no features, eyes, mouth, nose. Thing you did notice was 'he' had two sets of arms the lower pair held a pen and a pencil.
"Perfect Perfect Perfect. and you must be YCF girl. Such a pleasure to meet you in the flesh. I am such a huge huge fan of your work. Arn't you such a delight in real life, so cute I could die." the robot said walking into the room.1
"I am humbly sorry master. I " I said face down. This was me parroting Siri in damage control mode. This was a big social error. An e-slave
should never be standing when a robot enters and never look at them without permission. I had to do something to get out of this.
"I will have my master punish me for this. Please understand I was expecting a human".
After I said it I realised it sounded like I was insulting him.
"You were confused by my name Mr Jones! Only natural dear girl. I find English names so ..so.. mysterious don't you? Please stand up dear" said the machine.4
I did as ordered. His entire body was no thicker than my arm. Finally a machine I could take down in a fight. Except he had two pairs of Arms like someone was cheating while playing hang man.1
His top arms were holding his fingers and thumb together forming a rectangle he was looking at me through, framing me. His lower hands were busy drawing with a sharpie pen on a white pad. The pen would move fightingly fast draw something then pull the page away and leaving another white page on the floor.1
"You where expecting a human? Can they design? I find it most amazing nay- amusing if they could have more than one idea each. I am a machine of ideation, I am the most creative talented machine on the planet. I have designed dresses for the elite of Judas city, I have dressed Senator McConnell, even the CPU it's/her/his/they self.1
"I'm sorry about the entrance" I said again standing up.
"Don't worry if you weren't making a mistake, I wouldn't have recognised you dear." said Mr Jones.
'Gee thanks' I thought. I had been working hard on my e-slave craft.
"Truculent pet's are so in, I can see Lady Villeria is influencing Lord Rockwood. Don't worry No-not-me is so the hit of the season, so sullen, so petulant, so the perfect essence of incompetence and uncooperativeness. Can you believe Senator McConnell is still walking around with a celebrity pet she's such the laughing stock. Someone really should have a word with that woman. Your a model 127c aren't you I thought you had all been recalled. Eureka! I see the hand of Villeria behind all this! Villeria is such genius, she must have hunted e-bay for weeks looking for a second hand 127c to upcycle. It's a cyber-woman's hand behind all this, not his-and-her pets but the perfect reinvention. Ha! They say poor artists copy, great artists steel but it takes a true genius to steel from herself!"4
I was irritated and wanted do say 'No! No-not-me is just a knock-off of me! Her fake incompetence is just a copy of my genuine ineptitude as a slave.' but realised how stupid that would sound. Any way the whole truculent pet movement wasn't about being a useless slave it was about behind honest about being genuinely angry about the oppressive regime we lived under. Brilliant I now sound like I've been 'isumed'. Yeh 'The true meaning behind truculentisum' by Jenny Banks that would be a best seller. Except everyone thinks No-not-me is the originator of this and I'm the copy. Is there no justice in the world? Clearly not, it's run by malevolent machines.2
"I so love your face" said the robot.
"Thank you master" I said desperate to know what I actually looked like. It could be a clown face.
"I always say you can see so much about a woman through what she decides to put on or take off. There I feel I know you already" the machine said looking around.
I was curious to know what he saw. I had no idea what I looked liked. Who did he think I was? I looked down on the floor hoping he would take it as a sign of respect. Looking down I saw a elegant sketch of me kneeling. Another of me kneeling in some kind of dress like an egg. Then a picture of me with what looked like a printer malfunction on my face. I worried, did I look like that or was that the idea? Did the printer work was I plain faced and he was too amused not to say. Was this being streamed to youTube already. I could see the headlines "YCF girl returns". All I could think was "help".
"I am designing this dress for you dear. Slave girl in a dress, so new, so now. So I need you, my girl, to tell me all about your self and I do mean all. What did you do before capture" said Mr Jones as he walked around the room. I caught my self, he was still a robot.
"I have very little memory prior to my reboot and nothing I would feel worthy of masters consideration. I'm an type 127c e-slave, my model number is 901. " I said quoting my spec, not to mention the standard factory memory speech. Mr Jones seemed okay but he was still a machine and I was still trying not to be the incompetent slave he took me for. Is it just me, I really find it irritating if someone has a false impression of me.2
While we spoke more frenzied scribbling created drawing after drawing littering the floor. I bent down to pick some up and as I did, more sketches of me kneeling down in different dresses fell. I looked down each dress was different each looked fantastic. Mr Jones finally used up his pad. The entire contents were spread out on the floor.
"New pad, new pad" the stick figure shouted almost angrily. A slave girl rushed in, I've never see someone move so fast in stilettos. Their face looked like someone had tried to make a physical Picaso portrait of them on their own face in makeup. The slave handed over the new pad like a baton in a relay race and rushed out rapidly in reverse.
"arn't you forgetting something?" said Mr Jones to his slave.
"Oh ... You designers your all the same!" said the slave at the top of her voice. She then bowed and stuffed out. That was possibly the worst truculent pet I had seen yet.1
"You like her? I always felt the essence of good e-slave is theater! Any way your board of talk Yak yak yak. You want something new." said Mr Jones.
I realised the source of my silence and obedience was the fact that I was in shock that a machine could design dresses.
"Master" I said hesitantly( he could have been a she for all I know) "are all the designers machines?"
Mr Jones laughed "ha ha ha, naturally. That's brilliant. Wait until I tell Mr Smith - he is the famous painter friend of mine. Or Mr Brown the Architect he will laugh at that one. Mrs Robinson the 'Are all the designers machines?' "
While he talked I saw a couple of drawings of me with a machine body. I realised that while I had accepted machines could be smarter than us - part of the rich diet of submissive ideas I had been force fed at the Factory like a foie gras goose - the idea they could be more creative was still odd. Yet the hundreds of stunning dress designs around me seemed evidence enough. Come to think of it, all these new machines, even new robot designs must have come from somewhere.1
Okay, confession time, I was once drawn in to playing a game of dungeons and dragons with my partner from the chemistry lab and his friends. I guess I wasn't into Dungeons & Dragons but let's say I was just D&D curious. What's the point of going to University if you don't experiment right? Surprisingly the boys had already created a character from me, a very busty Amazon called Selena. I thought the character was unbalanced and physically improbable, although I must admit given what the robots had done to me and a Bear skin bikini I could've played her now. I had refused to play as Selena and I ended up being a forgetful troll called Megan. The process of creating a new character was interesting. One of the boys had used a laptop to access a random name generator on the web, they kept pressing new name until they found one they liked. So I guess at that point they were using artificial creativity. This seemed just the logical end point.4
Thinking about it artificial creativity seemed worse than artificial intelligence. With artificial intelligence you could outthink somebody but with a artificial creativity you could make yourself smarter. Facing an enemy 10 times smarter than you, is one thing but 10 times more creative that seems really dangerous. Oh and if there are any investigative reporters or dirt detectives reading this to find the dirt on me before I get elected to the presidency or anything I only did D&D once you understand. I'm not D&D Bi or D&D in a closet or anything. You can dig through my draws as much as you like you won't find Megan's character sheet anywhere. I destroyed it in a panic before my mother came to visit and found it shamefully hidden in a back draw in my dorm room. Even the machines didn't know about my dalliance with D&D but now I can seen D&D in movies and TV then scornfully and with an air of wistful knowledge say things like 'no they
wouldn't do it like that'.6
Looking down I saw page after page of beautiful dresses lying on the floor. Each one was different from the last each was perfect each could have easily been going up and down the catwalk somewhere. This is going to be like the make up printer all over again I'm going to have to try and decide which is best.
"Hold your hands out. I notice your left arm is 5mm longer then that right. Is that a family thing? You've had some leg work to balance out those slightly unbalanced legs, good. You bra size"
"E I think" I guessed, they had hacked my body around so much I wasn't sure.
"No - I meant would your master mind If I changed you chest size to match the dress"
"You would have to refer to Master for that" I said. I had impressed myself with how 'slavish' that sounded my first reaction was WTF. Then the realisation that I had already been mucked around with. I knew full well they could do what they wanted with me. He hadn't even bothered to wonder if you needed my permission. I knew my only safety was in persuading Rockwood not to say yes. It all just came out. I so needed to escape before this all became normal.
"Enough of dimensions. About you. Would you feel your Farther a landscape or a factory?" Mr Jones said.1
What kind of question was that? Clearly some creative challenge, no right or wrong answer. come on I could be creative, I wasn't going to be out created by a machine.
"oh Factory" I said. I had spent a large time in my childhood inventing perpetual motion machines which naturally never worked and Dad had on a visit explained it to me. There was definitely something of the factory to that.
6
"A factory... a factory.. a factory". said Mr Jones in a loop.
Then Mr Jones collapsed like a stick figure to his knees. For a second it must have looked like I was suddenly living in an XTC comic. Mr Jones fell to the ground choking all four hands to his throat.
