“Is it fair on Lord Langton? Josh loves him.”
He nearly toppled from the desk. “You have quite the imagination, Ms Pritchard.”
“I’ve seen it with my own eyes. What you’re doin’ is wrong.”
He pushed his face forward so she could smell the steak and kidney pie he’d had for lunch. “Young lady, you are skating on very thin ice. You are meddling with matters that are no concern of yours. If you value your future with this company, drop it.”
She opened her mouth but thought better of it. She loved her job; she couldn’t guarantee the next one would suit her as well. Feeling like a traitor, and mentally apologising to Josh, she mumbled, “Yessir.”
“Good girl. Run along!”
Lila witnessed an extraordinary series of events that week, forcing all other topics out of the news. The Prime Minister’s volte face was remarkable enough, amounting to “Perhaps I was mistaken” through gritted teeth. A few days later - everyone counted - CER announced they were holding a competition to find Josh Foster a wife.
The coverage was intense. Articles on both sides of the debate appeared, a single called The Robot Wants a Wife was released. Satirists and cartoonists rejoiced. Crispin Clay, never one to miss a trick, ran a weeklong series of robot themed shows (In Love with my Robot Babysitter and other worthy transmissions). The AAL organised rallies, interrupted the Forum and generally made a nuisance of themselves. Everyone waited for a scathing attack from Lord Langton. It never came. In fact, no one could remember the last time they had seen him.
The press followed Sienna’s tour craft around the country. She selected girls according to “certain desirable qualities” (no one knew what these were), Josh having the last word. Once the final six had been chosen, the competition would unfold in a secret location, every moment filmed. It was the first programme of its kind and everyone was agog.
***
The girls had been picked. Filming would begin the following day. Jerry Etruscus had laid on a multimillion Q firework display in celebration. CER heckled Josh to attend the opening but he was obstinate. There was somewhere else he needed to be.
Alfred and Josh were watching the display from Josh’s flat. Josh wanted to let go and have fun; Alfred could only think of losing him. It didn’t help he kept having flashbacks to their last night together.
Josh was asking something; he had to attend. “Hmm?”
“How do fireworks work?”
He listened attentively to the explanation. It was probably wildly inaccurate, but Alfred had never claimed to be a scientist.
“They’re purely decorative? No other purpose?”
“Yes.” Alfred wasn’t sure where he was going with this.
“Then I like them. Everything’s got to have a reason at CER, it gets on my nerves. Books don’t have a purpose. Nor do pictures.”
“They help you to live beautifully.”
“You don’t have a purpose either.”
“That’s the most backhanded compliment I’ve had!”
“Neither do I. We’re just ourselves.”
They lay on the mat and watched the stars shatter. Some were red and gold cross stitches, others fluffy pink and white bouquets. Alfred’s favourites were the spinning wheels, shooting round at unbelievable speeds. A stylised robot marched across the sky, saluting before fizzling out.
“Must be costing Jerry a fortune.”
Josh dimpled. “I’m glad he didn’t tie me to one.”
Alfred grinned and poured more wine. They’d been working their way through Chimera’s cellar, trying to establish Josh’s preferences. A dry white, it seemed. Red knocked him out and champagne burned his insides.
Now came the jumping jacks. Josh clutched Alfred’s arm. He didn’t like loud bangs.
“It’s okay,” Alfred said through a curtain of golden hair. “They’re up there, we’re down here.”
“You probably think I’m silly.”
“Not at all.”
“It’s been really nice this evening. Good food, good company. Who knows where I’ll be tomorrow.”
“Don’t you know?”
“It’s secret. Cut off from the rest of the world, Sienna says.”
“She’s teasing.”
“I’m only allowed one book. Who knows what I’ll do once I’ve finished.”
“Which one?”
“Lewis Sinclair’s Without A Paddle.”
“Good choice. Wait till you reach the part with the eels.”
“Alfred?”
“Yes?”
“What if none of the girls like me?”
“Be yourself. It works.”
“What if I don’t fall in love? We’ll lose funding, I’ll get decommissioned -”
“That’s paranoia talking.”
“I know how I’m supposed to feel. Like everything stops when I see her. That I want to spend the rest of my life sharing her thoughts and listening to her stories.”
“Things don’t happen the way they do in books.”
“I wish they could. It’d be much easier.”
Josh was in need of a hug so Alfred put his arms around him. When he showed no sign of objecting, he nudged his nose beneath his ear. He licked a trail from his ear lobe to his collar bone, kissed him -
“Stop it!” Josh was looking at him as though he was lower than a snake.
“What’s the matter?”
“You’re gay and fine with that, but I’m not.”
“What?” Alfred squeezed his glass so tightly it broke. “Rewriting history, are we?”
“I don’t know what you -”
“Don’t you? There’s that little matter of the factory table. Remember giving me a good hard seeing to?”
“That never happened!”
“I can’t believe you’d do this. Some uptight closet case, yes. But you?”
“If we just calm down -”
“I’m calm!” Alfred thundered. “It’s just - do you really not remember? I can, every last detail -”
“Stop torturing yourself -”
“You were wearing your red boxers. You couldn’t get them off fast enough. I could feel you - I heard you. You came! And what about your last night with me? What do you call that?”
Alfred tried to make a run for the fire escape. Josh stopped him, contrite.
“Ssh.” He cradled Alfred’s head against his chest. “Sorry. I’ve obviously given you the wrong idea.”
Looking into Josh’s eyes, he doubted himself. He knew the furtive look of the liar, the man in denial. All the emotions of the past year, the hunger and need, were gone. The love he’d kindled wasn’t there.
“You made love to me. It happened.”
“You dreamt it - you took something -”
Desperate, voice breaking, “It was real.”
The green eyes held nothing but pity. “You’re confused. Let’s call it a night.”
Alfred didn’t follow him. He watched the end of the display, finished the wine. He wouldn’t let Josh see him cry.
Is he right? Am I going crazy?
He went downstairs once he had dried his eyes. Josh sat on the sofa in a velvet robe, his wet hair scented like strawberries. Water spotted his chest. He gestured to the cushion beside him and draped a friendly arm over Alfred’s shoulder. “I hate to see you upset,” he said. “You’re all I’ve got.”
Funny how we let the ones who hurt us comfort us. Ken would cling to him like a child, do everything other than say sorry. Gussy did it too. “I hate to go to bed on an argument,” she’d say - yet never acknowledge she was at fault.
“I like you, you know.”
“I like you too,” the artificial said sleepily.
Though not, Alfred thought, keeping his hands strictly away from Josh’s erogenous zones, the same way.
Auditions
Claire Howey would always remember July 13th. One, the machine at Glamour went psycho. Two, she broke up with Gaz. Three - this couldn’t be stressed enough, it sh
ould be point one, two and three - it was the first time she laid eyes on Josh Foster.
Oh, she was aware of him. She’d seen the billboards, heard he was a breakthrough in robotics. But to Claire anything science related was “boring!” She was the last person she knew to own a beebo.
She was on the early shift at the beauty parlour, only Shauna for company. She’d always found her manager a tricky one, either your best friend or freezing you out.
“Could you turn the booth on?” Shauna asked.
Claire hated the booth. It had been delivered three weeks before and to all intents and purposes had never worked properly. The client stepped inside and a cool female voice talked them through a restructure. Their hair, their skin, even their body shape was tweaked. Two of her colleagues quit on the spot.
Luckily the clients weren’t biting. The older ones had a horror of the thing, convinced they’d be zapped to another reality. Others preferred the personal touch of a human. As she gave the booth a wipe down and threw the switches, she wished she could sabotage it. She hadn’t spent three years at beauty school to be ousted by a comtec with a posh voice.
Shauna was at the counter, wolfing a pastry as she read a magazine. She was the best advert for Glamour: all she did was pig out, yet she remained trim and her glossy skin blemish free. “That Cora Keel’s a robot,” she said.
“No!”
“They couldn’t print it unless it was true. Her head came off in concert, not long before she was arrested.”
Claire joined her around the other side. The article was only a couple of paragraphs - the page taken up with pictures of the faux pas, Cora’s head singing while her body floundered. She’d picked it up and stuck it back on.
“I can’t believe it. Shootin’ a guy’s one thing, but being a bot ...”
“They could be anywhere,” Shauna boomed. “Look behiiind you -”
“Stop it!”
This was the worst of these sorts of days. At least when it was busy it’d soon come round to lunch. Here they’d read trashy magazines, drink acorn coffee, talk to disguise the fact they had nothing in common. The salon was Shauna’s life - that and her kids, who she wittered about incessantly. For Claire it was a waiting room. She didn’t want to spend her life sucking fat from middle aged bums.
The beebo in her pocket beeped. ‘Give us a chance, babes,’ it read. She groaned.
“Man trouble?”
“What else?”
“Thought he was fighting in Tuga.”
“Yeah, but -” How could she explain? Once having a fiancé in a war zone had seemed romantic. It still did, outside her and Gaz.
He’d changed. Last time he visited, his gaze roved like he was seeing past everything, herself included. “How can you stand it?” he asked. “I feel like a dog on a leash.”
She’d pulled away, offended. Whey might not be very exciting, but she’d lived there all her life. She couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. “Maybe I like it here.”
“You poor cow.”
Suddenly she hated him. She hated the stud in his ear, the cleft chin. He’d been her first serious boyfriend, the only person she’d written a love letter to. Okay, she screwed it up, but it counted. She left him sitting on the roundabout, gaping stupidly.
Now he bombarded her with messages, unable to take a hint. She tried leaving it switched off but it made no difference. “Twenty in two hours. He’s a bloody stalker.”
Shauna tutted. “Let me handle this.” She tapped out ‘Do one, knobhead’ and fired it into the ether.
“Shay!” she gasped.
“Had to be said.” She looked up as the buzzer went. “If I’m not mistaken, that’s our first prey of the day. Knock ‘em dead.”
The next few hours flew. The staff filtered in; Gaz, chastised, left her alone. Half the female population of Whey demanded a Cora Keel - a pink bob with a long fringe. They weren’t put off by the revelation she was a robot.
“They do that sort of thing better,” one customer after another said. “Nicking our jobs, that’s different. But showbiz ...”
If it had been less hectic, they might have seen the little boy wander into the booth. Shauna blamed Lauren, the new girl. She burst into tears and said she was a beautician, not a babysitter.
Claire was upstairs, plugging a customer in for a colour boost. She heard a low buzzing but assumed it was the machine. The lights overhead began to gutter.
“Don’t say that’s going to happen.” The woman she was treating wouldn’t see fifty again. “Rolling blackouts. We had them all the time when I was your age.”
“Hmm.” Claire meant ‘Put a sock in it’ but the woman took it as encouragement. She listed all the ways she felt cheated by the government, not least the inordinate sum they’d spent on the Games. Claire yawned. When the lights went out, her only feeling was relief it’d shocked the old bat into silence.
“Claire!” Shauna clattered up the stairs. “Turn that off, it’s not safe!”
Claire tugged the woman out just in time. A spray of sparks sent them flying across the room. She crawled on hands and knees to the mains, pushed the button down. All she could smell was burning.
“What was that?” the woman grizzled.
Shauna called, “You’ll have to go out the window. No time to explain.”
The salon had to be quarantined. The staff saw it as a day’s holiday. Shauna declared that if she ever saw the brat who caused the disturbance, she’d tan his hide. And his mother sneaked out without paying.
“No one’d cause a thousand Q’s damage for a forty C hairdo,” Claire said.
Shauna grunted. “You’d be surprised.”
Now she had four hours free. She was never good at amusing herself. The rest of her family were at work or school, Mel and Reyma too -
Her beebo blared. She looked at the readout, eyes widening. Maybe not.
Claire, Mel and Reyma had one of those bonds nobody on the outside understands. Claire’s mum hated Mel, said she was as common as muck and a bad influence. She could sod off. They were Claire’s best friends and that was final.
They were sitting in a corner at their favourite cafe. Reyma had gone veggie - her lunch looked like the scrapings of a rabbit hutch. Claire tucked into an omelette. Mel was eating one of the enormous meals that belied her skinniness: a double decker burger drizzled with cheese and chips shaped like rockets.
“So I sent a message sayin’ ‘Do one, knobhead’,” Claire finished.
Mel whooped.“I’m amazed you stuck it. You could do so much better.”
Reyma raised her eyebrows. “Dumpin’ by beebo? That’s low, even for Gaz.”
“Reyma doesn’t understand the datin’ world,” Mel said. “Daddy won’t let her -”
“Piss off. When was the last time you had a boyfriend?”
“C’mon, girls.” Claire hadn’t seen them for a month; she didn’t want it to descend into hair pulling. “Enough of that.”
“She started it -”
“No, she did!”
“Kiss and make up,” Claire ordered.
Of course Mel overdid it, plunging her tongue down Reyma’s throat. The boys at the next table whistled.
“Now you two’ve finished explorin’ your sexuality, have you decided what we’re doin’?”
Mel winked. “I’ve got that covered.” As the others demanded details, “It’s a surprise.”
She kept the game going all the way to the Head of Thea.
“Is it a funfair?”
“Nope.”
“A circus?”
“You might call it one.”
“I hope not,” Reyma said, “they’re cruel.”
“Not if they’re robot circuses,” Claire pointed out.
“Who wants to see one of them? Give me the creeps.”
The village green was choked with people. People with picnic hampers, people with cameras, people waving banners. Three quarters were girls their age.
“What the heck’s goin�
� on?” Claire asked. “Half of Whey’s here.”
“Nobody told me,” Reyma said. “We had to shut ‘cause it was so quiet.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“Irresponsible, I call it. Pets still get sick -”
Mel mimed snores. For the six years she’d had a work card she’d been employed two. “Let’s join ‘em.”
She barged beneath a seventy foot cord, dragging Claire and Reyma after her. There were indignant elbows and cries of “Were you born down the pit?” She stuck out her tongue. Reyma sighed. Even Claire was embarrassed.
“Are you goin’ to tell us or what?”
A light appeared on the horizon. First it was level with the hills, then the tree tops, next the temple spire. It bowled towards them at extraordinary speed. The crowd unfurled its banners. As the craft touched down the people let out a collective moan.
“Has everyone creamed themselves but me?” Claire wondered.
The craft’s lid flipped open. Out popped a scraggy blonde dressed head to toe in pink fur. She was followed by two security robots.
The crowd screamed. A figure had materialised on the field. Dressed in white, hair silvered by the sun, a shy smile. He held up a hand and the shrieking stopped.
“See?” Mel hissed. “Told you I’d give you the goods.”
“You haven’t said what’s goin’ on.”
“It’s that artificial,” Reyma muttered. “Jake Foster -”
“Josh -”
“I don’t care what his stupid name is. What’s he doin’ here?”
“Well,” Mel smirked, “he’s travellin’ the country lookin’ for a wife.”
“What? That’s disgustin’!”
“Don’t see how it’s any different from your arranged marriages -”
“Sensa don’t have arranged marriages, you racist ho!”
“How can a bot get married?” Claire butted in. “Isn’t it illegal?”
Mel shrugged. “Must’ve changed the law. What a meal ticket, eh?”
Reyma folded her arms. “I can put up with you being on welfare, skanky though it is, but I’m not lettin’ you prostitute yourself to a tin can.” She raised her voice. “You lot should be ashamed. He isn’t even real!”
She went unheard. Everyone else was bawling too.
Love and Robotics Page 41
