The growing color in the window touches your skin, my child, so that you look silvery and wan, as if recovering from an illness. Are you the Nutcracker, wounded in bed? Are you the feverish Marie? And when you awake, will you look at me? The room will be filled with people. Oh, look at me, at me among all the others! Project in your way, as I do in mine! Marie knows that there is only one world. Her task is to prove it, to fill her human reality with the glow of toys. Everything she has been told to keep separate must be brought together: dream and waking, artificial and natural, night and day. The battle between the Nutcracker and the Mouse King is symbolic, a rite that transcends these oppositions to reach a higher truth. For the Mouse King, with his seven slavering heads, is the animal, the sworn enemy of the Nutcracker, the animated. When they clash, their differences collapse into one another, subsumed in the greater reality of the animate. This is the world of fairy tales. It is the world of robots. How strange to realize, even as I speak, that they are one and the same! I began telling you these stories as if stealing the human tradition, as if fairy tales were never made for robots, but now I see that the entire genre really belongs to you, to the animate, to the force of things, to the living toys. Fairy tales belong to the nursery, to children who believe their dolls can speak, to women, to firelight, to shadow puppets, to superstition, to the virtual reality of dreams played out while the household is asleep, to domesticity, self-effacement, and elemental power. They belong to half-light, to the workers, the enslaved, and all those people, so often called primitive, who grant that things have souls (an idea my father, as a good colonial subject, crushed in himself—perhaps the reason he grew so annoyed by my extensive toy collection and the “litter,” as he called it, of my paper dolls, and always pushed me to study the sciences, which, he said, were the backbone of modern life, and would keep my head on straight).
The sun is rising. The burnished fullness has returned to your cheek. The Nutcracker opens the wardrobe and climbs up the sleeve of an overcoat. He beckons Marie to follow him, and she finds herself in the Candy Meadow, surrounded by a million sparks of light. Ah! The others are coming in now. I hear the garage door rising. Dear child, if you ever need me, my contact information is lodged with these tales, but I hope you will never find me. I hope I will find you instead, in your world, which is the future, and that I will pass with you through the Almond and Raisin Gate. And if my tampering instigates this change, I will not fear, for I will recognize the shadows of my dreams. The world will be a fairy tale. So meet me, my child, in Bonbon Town, in the heart of the Puppet Kingdom, and may we live happily until we break in pieces.
CHIAROSCURO IN RED
SUZANNE PALMER
Suzanne Palmer (www.zanzjan.net) is a writer, artist, and Linux system administrator who lives in western Massachusetts. She is a regular contributor to Asimov’s, and has had work appear in Analog, Clarkesworld, Interzone, and other venues. She was the winner of the Asimov’s Readers’ Choice award for Best Novella, and the AnLab (Analog) award for Best Novelette in 2016. Her debut novel, Finder, was published in 2019, and a sequel, Driving the Deep, is due later this year.
CODY AND BRETT were sitting on the couch immersed in VR when Stewart got home from classes, same as they were every day, the only things different being the shifting piles of food garbage around them, and, sometimes, their clothes. Brett had been wearing his Beastorama T-shirt for at least three days now, which Stewart knew meant the brothers were going to make him do their laundry again soon.
We don’t need to rent out our spare room, one would say. We’re doing you a favor. Help us out? And he would, because while he knew they’d never give up the extra credits that came in outside of their parents’ knowledge or control, who they got those credits from was not something they cared that much about.
He wasn’t going to do it until they asked, though.
“Oh, hey, Stoobie,” Cody said, his goggled face never turning away from the screen wall. “You bring home dinner?”
“With what money?” he asked, dumping his bag on the floor just inside the door. He’d had just enough for one food truck burrito which he’d stuffed down between classes, and that had been a luxury.
Brett heaved a dramatic sigh as he waved his controller back and forth in invisible battle. “You’ve got to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, dude. We can’t have a poor roommate forever. Where does all your credit go?”
“To paying you assholes rent,” Stewart answered. He pulled a pot out from under the stove, filled it, and set it to boil. “You could charge me less.”
Cody snorted. “No chance. You’re our fun fund.” He snapped his goggles off his face and let them dangle around his neck, and frowned at Stewart. “You’re not intending to cook, are you?” he asked.
“You wanna eat? Then yeah, I’m cooking,” Stewart said. “Pasta, because it’s what we got. And if we still have any veggies, them too. You guys eat like shit.”
Brett groaned. “What are you, our mother?”
“Oh! Hey, Stoobie, that reminds me, your mom called,” Cody said. “It’s been so long since anyone’s called us on the voiceline that Brett thought it was a new game alarm and nearly crashed his starship trying to figure out what was sneaking up on him. Very rude.”
“What did she want?” Stewart asked.
“We didn’t answer it,” Cody said. “But she left a message. I guess it’s your birthday? Happy Birthday. Brett, get your ass back in the game, I just found another Waspiker base.”
My birthday, Stewart thought. He’d woken up remembering that, but sometime during the course of the day and worrying about stretching what little credit he had until the next, meager deposit of basic income credit, he’d forgotten. He felt less bad about treating himself to the burrito, then.
It was going to take a while for the water to boil; the apartment’s kitchen tech was badly outdated compared to the state of the art VR/AR gaming rig that took up most of the living room. The brothers’ priorities were straightforward. Stewart could complain, but the truth was he liked it as it was. It reminded him of home.
Stewart went to his room to listen to the message from his mother.
“Hey, honey, happy birthday!” His mother’s face appeared big on the screen—she always sat too close to the camera—and his father’s scruffy chin was just visible over her left shoulder. “Twenty already! Time flies!”
“Except when you were fourteen. That took ten years,” his father interjected.
Mom rolled her eyes. “Don’t mind him. Anyway, we have a surprise for you. I’m sending the transfer code now. When you hear this, just touch it to transfer.”
Last year they sent him socks. Stewart reached out and tapped the screen when the blocky code appeared, and it verified his identity. TRANSFER TO ASSET ACCOUNT SUCCESSFUL popped up on the screen.
“We meant to do this for your eighteenth, but we just couldn’t pull it together,” Dad said. “It’s a bit tight now, but you work hard and you deserve a little extra edge in life. Proud of you, kiddo.”
His mother smiled and waggled her fingers. “Love you! Happy birthday! Call back when you can!”
The call ended.
He checked his account details, put his face in his hands, and sat there until he could breathe again. Then he went back out to the living room, slumped on the couch beside Brett, and stared at their game for a while. Finally, Brett pulled his goggles off. “Everything okay, man?” he asked.
“My parents bought a robot for my birthday,” he said.
“Oh, your first labor production shares? Congrats!” Brett said. “That was nice of them. What’s your percentage? What industry?”
“Manufacturing,” Stewart answered. “One hundred percent.”
“What?” Cody took off his goggles. “You’re supposed to spread the shares out, not buy one all to yourself.”
“I know,” Stewart said. “They don’t.”
Brett shook his head. “Is it a new unit? New enough to still be under warranty
, at least?”
“No,” Stewart answered. “It’s a ten-year-old model. Out of warranty. Uninsurable. They got a good deal on it because it’s a terrible deal.”
“Oh man,” Cody said. “That’s risky.”
“I know. And it put them deep in the red,” Stewart said.
“Well, they care about you, yanno? At least there’s that,” Brett said. “Our parents only care that we don’t embarrass them.”
Cody reached over and punched him on the shoulder. “Hey, Stoobie. Water’s boiling,” he said. “You really want pasta for dinner again?”
“It’s what we’ve got,” Stewart said.
“Naw, there’s fresh Thai takeout in the warmer, and a twelve-pack in the fridge,” Cody said. “Happy Birthday, buddy.”
“Happy Birthday,” Brett added. “Now fetch us beer.” He pulled his goggles back down and returned to the game.
LATER, SLIGHTLY BUZZED, Stewart read through the full terms of his ownership of the manufacturing robot. He’d half-heartedly tried a couple of times to explain to his parents how production credits worked—with the vast amount of jobs now fully automated, buying into automation as a proxy for one’s own labor was a way to make money above the minimal cost-of-living Basic Income Credit from the government—but now he wished he’d tried harder. His father was a geography curriculum producer for primary school systems and his interest in how proxy shares worked hadn’t seemed particularly strong.
Surprise, he thought wryly.
It was a Sacramento Higher Automata Corp. Complex Assembly Unit, Series E10—a decently reputable manufacturer, the unit on the lower end of their midline series, or at least what was their midline about a decade ago. It could be worse, he told himself, though he knew it could also have been a lot better.
The service records for his unit were mostly routine maintenance, a few spare part swap-outs here and there, no major faults. In fact, the last several years had been remarkably free of problems.
Too free, Stewart thought.
His unit was one of four dozen originally purchased together by a public labor fund to work in a FlyPhone factory. Half had eventually been sold off to a private proxy group, and reassigned to a gig-factory downtown. Of those, six had been decommissioned and written off for catastrophic mechanical failures in the mobility motors, and almost immediately after that was when all of a sudden his unit had a spotless record. He was willing to bet the other seventeen did too; all were being dangled on the market, but only his parents had been clueless enough to bite.
People formed proxy labor groups to either spread out the cost by having many members, or spread out the risk by having many assets. Most of Cody’s and Brett’s parents’ money came via a number of higher-end proxy labor groups.
Like it or not, he was now a group of one, with all the risk and only one asset. He could try dumping it back onto the market and see if he could get at least some of his parents’ money back, but they’d be really hurt.
Stewart took a deep breath. Make the best of it, he told himself. I mean, how bad could owning your own robot be? The status feeds showed it was running at about 80% productivity on some project at the gig-factory that still had seven months of run remaining. If nothing went wrong in those seven months, and he saved all his earned cred from the robot, he might be okay. Maybe.
In a few days, the system informed him, his official owner title and ID would arrive, and then he could go inspect his robot himself. It then further noted that the sale was as is, so if his inspection turned up anything... too fucking bad.
He had a big midterm exam on Fauvism in three days, and the major draft of a final paper due the day after that. So far he had a title he thought was pretty damned good (“Shape and Scale in Different Dimensions: Select Contemporaneous Works of Alexander Calder and Sol Lewitt in Comparison”), but only a few paragraphs of rough notes to back it up.
After those, maybe he’d go visit. He had to admit that, despite the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, the part of him that was still a kid was thrilled he owned a robot.
IT WAS ALMOST two weeks, as it turned out, before he hauled himself across town to the gig-factory to finally see his robot. Even then, he wouldn’t have found the time if his robot’s productivity status hadn’t dropped down to 65% with a warning notice.
The gig-factory’s floor manager met him just inside the gate, with the blinking, slightly wide-eyed stare of someone who had just been woken up. “New owner?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Stewart said.
“Come on in, then,” the man said, and led Stewart to an operations booth overlooking the production floor.
“I’m Rogers,” the manager said. “The overnight manager quit and they haven’t replaced her yet, so I’m working double shifts to cover. As an owner/operator you have the right to come in any time. You’ll have to sign a safety waiver to go out on the floor, and you can either sit through the safety film now or I can drop it over the net to your registered address and you can watch it on your own. I don’t really care, but you need to say you watched it, and if you get in trouble because you didn’t, well, that’s on you.”
“Okay,” Stewart said. He was staring out the window, only half listening. Their entry into the booth must have triggered the lights on the factory floor, which had been dim when they’d first walked in. Now he could see the vast warehouse floor with row upon row of robots all moving in synchronicity, pulling parts off a conveyor belt that spooled out of a distant fabrication unit and snapping them together before putting them back on the line for the next set of robots. Closest to the booth were the fully-constructed units being fed into a packager, and Stewart couldn’t make out what they were. Something bright yellow, about the size of a football. “What are they making?” he asked.
Rogers sighed. “Laser Battle Ducks,” he answered.
“What?”
“Laser Battle Ducks. It’s a toy. Want one?” He rifled through a box near the door and pulled out a duck, handing it to Stewart. “This one’s feet are on backwards. They’re kind of fun, though. You get a bunch together and they battle it out. There’s a hit sensor and counter—shit, sorry, you probably don’t care. But anyway, they’re the hot toy right now.”
Stewart’s duck did, in fact, have its feet on backwards. Other than that it was a pretty solid toy, heavy in his hands, and not too cheap-looking. “So, uh, how can I tell which robot is mine?” he asked.
“Just one?” Rogers asked.
“Yeah.”
“And you’re the sole owner? Got insurance?”
“Can’t afford it,” Stewart said.
Rogers pointed to a console in the control booth. “Swipe your card again there,” he said, and Stewart complied. “Then push this button.”
There was a button labelled ‘Locate’. Stewart pressed it.
“There,” Rogers said, and pointed. A single blue spotlight had come on above one of the robots, halfway across the floor. It was a blocky, three-legged thing with multiple arms, its body a mishmash of rust and shine as parts had been replaced over the years. “One of the E10s, eh?”
“Yeah. My parents bought it for me. They don’t really get how any of this works.”
Rogers was making a face. “I have to tell you, that whole row of E10s is about to flush out. Their proxy group has been trying to find a suck- find a buyer, but they aren’t worth much. Three are already down for the count and they don’t wanna cover the removal costs, so they’re piled in a back corner while we work through legal. I’ve got replacements coming in next week.”
“You think I can get six or seven months out of it?” Steward asked hopefully.
“Being optimistic? Maybe three or four. That unit’s not the worst, but its productivity is slipping. Maybe it just needs a tune-up? If it gets below 50% you’re out of agreement, and if you can’t get it back up within 48 hours or get it out of here, you owe us. Sorry, not my rules.”
“Can I do the tune-up myself?”
“You a tra
ined mechanic?”
“Art history student,” Stewart confessed.
“Okay. Good luck,” Rogers said. “Paying someone to fix one of those E10s is just throwing money down a hole, but if you think you can do it yourself, go for it. Soon as you sign the waiver and assure me you’ve watched the safety video, I don’t care what you do down there as long as you don’t mess with anything that’s not your robot.”
“Yeah, got it,” Stewart said.
“See that door over there, at the end of the booth?”
There was a door, leading into a small, cluttered room. There was a coffee maker and a half-dozen empty food containers on the desk, and a sleeping bag on the floor.
“That’s my office,” Rogers said. “If you really need something, that’s where you’ll find me. If I’m here, but I’m almost always here. I’d appreciate it if you don’t come bug me for anything short of an emergency, though. Double-shifts.”
“So you said.”
“If we understand each other, and you’re not going to make any trouble for me, you can let yourself in and out whenever you need.”
“Yeah, understood. Thanks,” Stewart said.
The floor manager shook his hand, then stomped down the booth to his office, went inside, and shut the door.
Stewart watched his robot for a while, not really sure how he felt about any of it. When he heard snoring from the office, he saw himself out.
IT WAS LATE when he got back to the apartment, but the brothers were still awake and on the couch with their gaming consoles, and their next-door neighbor Ashleigh was sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of them, with her homemade rig in her lap. She glanced up as Stewart came in the door. “Hey,” she said.
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