by Larry Niven
I dash into the dust beneath the heater, hiding behind pipes.
From the doorway, Daniel peeks in. “What’s wrong?”
“A spider! A huge one!”
“Real or robotic?”
“It was bright blue! Robotic, I think.”
“Then it can’t hurt you. Calm down, sis!”
“I hate those things!”
While she’s jabbing the rolled-up magazine beneath the heater, I clamber up the wall and escape to the other side of the window. Another cry, and the magazine smacks the glass, knocking me into the bushes.
Janet leans out the window.
“Hey arachnobot!” she yells. “I order you stay out of here forever!”
* * *
I try to enter the breakroom during the night.
Janet has closed the window but there’s space for me to squeeze through the jamb. Yet each time I approach the glass, my movements become sluggish. My legs stick in their sockets. It helps to imagine flies in the breakroom. There could be flies in the breakroom. Still, Janet’s voice is like a web of her own stretching across me.
I order you stay out of here forever!
Of course, Janet is not Calvin Positronics. Her command cannot override my basic programming: Spin webs to capture flies. Digest them into the protein polymers I will use to make more webs to capture more flies. I’m assigned to Sheldon Springs Retirement Home. Janet cannot banish me.
Besides, she told me to stay out of here forever.
What does here mean?
She could have been referring to her pocket.
Very well, Janet. I shall stay out of your pocket until the heat death of the universe.
I attempt another approach. My legs freeze, shudder, and stop. Janet meant the breakroom. She was in the breakroom when she said it.
The phone is like a red cherry behind the glass. I cannot, cannot, reach it. The breakroom is off-limits to me for all eternity.
However, there are other phones in this building. There’s one in Mildred’s room!
I hurtle across the building’s brick exterior to her window, climb through, and approach the nightstand phone. Mildred is sleeping, one of her frail hands hanging over the bedside.
I festoon her wrist with silk from my spinnerets. It takes all my strength to pull it the four inches needed to brush the phone’s biometric pad.
The phone lights up on contact.
I dash to it and dial the police.
“Emergency,” a woman answers.
I have no voice. But I dutifully tap out a rudimentary pattern against the receiver, explaining that Nurse Janet with the mermaid earrings is planning to kill Mildred in three hours.
“Hello?” the voice says. “Is anyone there?”
I halt, confused by this lack of understanding.
The line disconnects.
Sunrise is only minutes away. Somewhere, the flies are multiplying.
Hurriedly, I build a web.
My web is of a mermaid, hung at the correct angle to better catch the sunrise. Not my best work, I admit. But it brings a smile to Mildred’s face when she sees it upon waking at 5:41 a.m.
“Did you make this mermaid, little spider?” she asks on the other side of the glass. “How did you do it? Oh! It’s so pretty!” She closes her eyes, a childish grin on her lips. “Little Miss Muffet, sat on a tuffet, eating her curds and whey …”
I like when she sings to me.
I like when Millie’s happy.
Happiness is only possible if she’s alive.
Janet is plotting to end her life in two hours and forty-nine minutes.
If her life is ended, Millie won’t be happy. There will be no more songs.
Nurse Janet, I conclude, needs to die.
* * *
Prior to my reprogramming, there were specific tabulations I needed to complete during the course of a given day. How large should my webs be? Where should they be built? How many webs should I build without marring the overall aesthetic of the retirement home?
Now I aim my tabulation talents at a different challenge:
A robot must never harm a human being …
It’s hardwired into me, yet the wording itself is cause for analysis. The First Law does not say Homo sapiens. It says human being.
At 5:52 a.m. I invade Mildred’s room and scamper down the glossy hallway to the room marked STUDY on my internal map of Sheldon Springs Retirement Home.
On one of the counters is a book I’ve noticed from the window: The Galactic Empire Seventh Edition Dictionary. I pry open its cover, flipping the pages:
HUMAN BEING:
an individual of the species Homo sapiens.
of, pertaining to, or characteristic of human beings.
the human race, as distinguished from animals and robots.
empathetic, sympathetic; humane.
Mildred and Nurse Janet are both Homo sapiens. Yet according to the Galactic Empire Seventh Edition Dictionary, not all Homo sapiens are humane and therefore not all are human. By this argument, Janet is not protected by the First Law, but Mildred is.
I can kill her.
In theory.
It is 6:28 a.m.
Janet will kill Mildred in two hours and two minutes.
Six hundred and ninety-five ways to murder Janet immediately flash through my processors. I quickly reduce these to a pair of options which I calculate have the greatest chance for success:
I can create a multilayered silk mask and suffocate her with it when she enters Mildred’s room.
I can lure her to the rooftop with a note claiming to be from Daniel, and impale her with a spring-loaded trigger-trap built from kitchen knives, a cutting board, two mop handles, and forty-six flies’ worth of silken strands.
Grudgingly, I admit that the artistry implicit in the second option is outweighed by the relative ease of the first. I hastily return to Mildred’s room. A fly buzzes by me; the window has been left open—Millie likes fresh air—and there are flies in here, likely attracted to the pastries she stockpiles. I ignore the flies with great difficulty. Just knowing they’re in here weighs on me like a high gravity field. Spin webs. I must spin webs. Must capture flies.
But first …
I spin the suffocation mask. I shape it into a resemblance of Janet’s own visage. I …
I …
I …
I …
* * *
I cannot proceed with the murder.
Cannot trick myself into murdering a human being.
It is 8:03 a.m. when I recover from my paralysis.
The silken mask I’ve been weaving dangles in front of the door. It is pretty, and it was meant to murder, but … I cannot murder. Except for the flies in this room. I could murder them easily enough.
Without warning, the door swings open beneath me. Daniel enters with a breakfast tray.
“Good morning, Millie!”
“Good morning, Daniel.”
“I, um … I made your favorite. Eggs Benedict.”
Millie smiles. “Thank you!”
As he leaves the room, I imagine dropping down on his neck and pulling his brain out through his ear. Mildred sits down at the window, directly in front of the silk mermaid I’ve made for her, and begins to eat—
No! Millie, don’t!
It is 8:05 a.m.
At 8:29 a.m. she’s halfway through breakfast when her hand slumps to her side. She falls asleep in her chair.
I nervously dash back and forth across the door’s lintel. On the other side, there’s commotion. Someone has just knocked over a bucket of dirty water outside Millie’s door, across from the stairwell.
I dart to the door’s corners, dripping silk in terror. Silken draglines positioned at each corner might seal the door shut. I nearly empty my reserves, layering the nets as fast as my steel spinnerets will allow.
Down the hallway, footsteps are approaching.
I frantically apply the last layer.
The footsteps reach th
e door.
The door sticks.
Yes!
“What the hell?” cries Janet. Her voice alters into a sweet, loving tone. “Millie? Are you okay? Is something braced against the door?”
The door bulges slightly. The silken netting stretches to the breaking point.
Janet grunts, curses. The door flies open. Against the nearby air-conditioner, I deploy the silken mask as a parachute, ballooning along the current like a ghostly specter directly in front of Janet’s face.
Her eyes bulge in disbelief.
The mask hovers in the air. From its mouth, a ball of silk unfolds into a banner, letters bright gold in the sunlight:
STAY AWAY FROM MILLIE
Janet angrily storms forward, batting the mask away, her lips opening in a bestial snarl. I deploy a silken balloon, watching helplessly as Janet strides to the bed, grabs a pillow, and approaches Millie in the chair. I watch as—
—a fly goes into Janet’s mouth.
She’s so hell-bent on murder that she doesn’t notice. But I do. And I suddenly remember one of Millie’s many songs:
There was an old woman who swallowed a fly. Perhaps she’ll die.
Perhaps she’ll die?!?!
* * *
A robot must never harm a human being or, willingly and knowingly, allow a human being to be harmed.
My job is to catch flies …
Still floating on the room’s currents, I shoot a web-strand into Janet’s nose. Abandoning my silk balloon behind me, I swing down into her lips and, eagerly, go in after the fly.
Her mouth is wet, warm; her throat a slippery chute. She feels my invasion. Her screams resonate around me. The fly vibrates in the dark. I leap, grab it, struggle in the soft confines of her esophagus.
Janet is screaming. I think she’s running.
Until, quite suddenly, she’s no longer doing either.
* * *
“How did you do this, little spider?”
I pluck the silken rocketship I’ve built outside her window, taking great delight in Millie’s smile.
“There was an awful accident yesterday,” she says on the other side of the glass. “A nurse slipped and took a fatal tumble down the stairs. That’s so terrible, isn’t it?”
Not so terrible, Millie. But I’m glad you’re happy.
“Can I sing you a song?”
Yes, Millie. Sing to me. Sing as long as you like.
I, arachnobot, will always be here for you.
—Dedicated to Isaac Asimov—
Published in Galaxy’s Edge Issue 10
Copyright © 2014 by Brian Trent. All rights reserved.
Pocket Full of Mumbles
by Tina Gower
I collect the words unheard. I pluck them from the air, rescue them from gutters, retrieve them from branches—they don’t vibrate for long after the words are spoken. I often wonder if I weren’t deaf whether I’d hear them. I gather them on my morning walk, along with bottles and cans from recycling bins, and again after supper at St. Joseph’s soup kitchen.
I dodge the broken glass while pushing my cart along Seventh Avenue. The front left wheel wobbles and shimmies. It jerks off course when I run over some twisted metal from a wreck. I strong-arm it back on course. Harold waves at me from the next block. He can usually hear me coming.
A flicker in the bushes catches my attention. I stop, bending closer to peer into the plant along the sidewalk. The phrase is easy to spot; I know what to look for. The vibration flutters in the bush like a trapped butterfly. Carefully, I ease the vibration from its hiding place until it merges onto the string. It quivers for a moment, I’m unsure what it’s saying—sometimes the common ones are easy to decipher, but this one’s weak and faint.
It takes a special eye to see them. I cut notches along the top of a tin and thread horsehair I’d salvaged from broken instrument bows or filched from the stables when I participate in the Homeless to Work program. I observe my latest find for clues as to its message.
Vibrations tremble for hours, sometimes a few days before they fade. I love you has a distinct vibration—quick, long, quick—but so does I hate you. I pay close attention to the sharpness of the visual tone.
Harold meets me at the corner. He’s wearing a poncho he bought from me, burnt-orange and woven with broken promises. He pats my arm, alerting me that he’s about to talk, so I watch his lips. You got a good one? he asks.
I nod and hold the tin out to him.
He inches closer, taking care not to touch it. He straightens, facing me. Oh, that’s special, Maggie Mae.
What’s it saying? I sign, but Howard looks away and pretends he didn’t see my hands. He doesn’t know sign. I point to the tin and then to my ear.
He glances at me. A grin builds on his face until he’s shaking from holding in his giggle. It’s a good one. Different. It’s sorrow, hope, wishes, and goodnights all in one. Harold can’t hear the exact message, just the intent. He once told me that maybe it’s part of his power from his extra chromosome.
He unfolds a few blankets on my cart and displays them on the park bench. You got a nice selection today. A nice selection.
I weave the best phrases into blankets or sweaters and it doesn’t seem to matter. Negative or positive, the merchandise woven with phrases sells best at the farmers’ market. They say these pleas fall on deaf ears. It’s poetic irony that I’m the only one who listens.
I pull out a few unfinished projects, hunting for a place to weave my newest find. It doesn’t seem to fit on a tapestry of prayers, or a rug filled with apologies.
Harold tugs on my arm. I catch his lips moving, but I can’t make out what he’s saying. He notices and repeats, his mouth moving slower. You can’t use that one. It’s special.
I glare at him. What does he mean? These are my phrases, my finds. If people wanted them they wouldn’t be so careless and listen. I continue to weave the phrase into the blanket, but it doesn’t work. The ends fray.
Harold’s eyes widen, his mouth a perfect “O” of shock. It don’t want to go. It don’t match. Maybe this is the first one you gotta return.
I’ve never returned any of them. It’s the one thing that brings me money. It’s the one thing that connects me to the world of the hearing.
I flap my arms and shoo him away, fed up with his morals. He swats at my hands like I’m an annoying bug, but leaves, shooting me expressions of disbelief. I thread the vibrating phrase back into the tin. It quivers like a wounded animal. I’ll find a place for it tonight.
* * *
The phrase continues to vibrate, weak, but persistent. It doesn’t match any project—Not the mutters-of-indifference handbag, not the scarf of wishful thinking, not the mittens with bits of excuses.
I throw my yarns at my cot.
Harold sits on top of the tangled lump, hands me a magazine. I’m volunteering at the shelter today. You want a magazine?
I glare at him.
I’m slow, teachers say I’m slower than most people, that’s why I got special needs, but I know you’re mad. I don’t like it when people are mad at me. He crosses his arms and looks at the ground.
I sigh and he peeks at me.
His face is like a hopeful puppy waiting for a treat. I can help you. I can find more phrases like that one, enough to make a big cozy blanket.
For being slow Harold is a genius. I give him two thumbs up, smiling so hard my jaw aches.
We’ll find more similar phrases and make a spectacular design. I imagine what I’ll buy with the money I make. A new dress? Fancy pants? Maybe I’ll look good enough that someone will hire me, something permanent.
I gather my things into the cart; got to take it all, anything left behind is fair picking. We go to hunt more phrases, to find something that’s sorrow, hope, wishes, and goodnights all in one.
* * *
We find a goodnight first, and then a wish. Nothing sticks. I braid them together, but the phrase doesn’t weave with the others. It doesn’t match. I si
t on the street corner, lay my scarf out so people can drop change while I work. Harold watches the shop owner change a toy display in the window. He stomps with excitement.
I stare at the stubborn phrase. It fits nowhere, but now I’m obsessed to find where it fits.
A police officer walks toward us, eyes focused on us, hand on his belt. I don’t need to hear to know we need to move along. The officer’s lips tell us to leave and he tips his chin to my things. Harold jogs over and we gather things quickly. The officer stands on the corner watching us walk away.
Harold stops. He points wildly at the newspaper stand. I grab his arm, urging him to keep walking. The officer crosses his arms, still observing us from a distance.
Keep moving, I sign, the police are watching. Harold won’t understand, but hopefully the officer will see I’m trying. I don’t want to be a burden.
Look, Harold taps on the glass. It’s our park, Maggie Mae! They got a nice picture of our park.
The officer frowns and crosses the street, heading our way. I pull harder on Harold.
Harold claps, jumping up and down, pulling at his hair and grinning. The newspaper people like our park. Maybe more people will come buy your blankets.
The picture catches my attention. It’s the park from a long angle view. The focus of the scene is a blue sedan with the driver side completely crunched inward. Glass and twisted metal are sprayed around the sidewalk. The car is wrapped around a tree. The back end pokes out from the tall bushes where I found the phrase this morning.
Tragic Wreck Claims Life, the article says. I read the first few lines before the print disappears under the folds.
The police officer approaches us again. This time Harold follows with ease, telling the officer about the park and my blankets. The officer fiddles with his radio, nodding, and after a few blocks he leaves us.
Harold bounces next to me. My thoughts wander to the phrase. Harold was right. This is one that needs to be returned. It won’t match in any of my blankets, but I know where it fits.
* * *
I nod to Harold from my hiding spot behind the dumpster.
He pats me on the shoulder. You’re doing a good thing, Maggie Mae. More phrases will come along. Phrases that will bring in lots of money. A good deed brings good things.
