The Robot Union

by D Miller

  'Keep that thing away from me,' screamed Brian. 'Get off me, no, no, nooooooo!'

  The surgical saw spluttered, and died. Darren shook it, and it spluttered some more, then died again. He went and whispered in Reverend Billy's ear.

  'What do you mean you forgot to charge it?' Reverend Billy's red eyes glowed brightly; he stared at Darren who hung his head.

  'Reverend Billy,' said Dex, 'I believe that I can pull it off.'

  'Bless you Brother Candy for your spiritual passion,' said Reverend Billy, 'but I'm afraid if you tried to do that there is a danger you could pull the whole leg off with it.'

  'Not if Sister Lemon Drop and Brother Sherbet held the leg still and I gave the foot a good strong twist–'

  'Brother Candy's religious fervour does him credit,' said Sister Torquemada, 'but the potential is for the punishment to exceed our laws.'

  'I could bite through his ankle,' said Brother Candy.

  'Oh please, please, just let me go,' said Brian the pig. 'Please please please.'

  'I'm afraid if we let him go it shows a lack of religious purity on our part,' said Sister Torquemada.

  'But perhaps his penitence is sincere?' said Reverend Billy. 'He certainly smells penitent.'

  'Oh yes it is,' said Brian the pig. 'I mean I am. I am penitent. I am completely penitent. Really. I couldn't be more penitent.'

  'You realise Brother Brian the pig that if we let you go and you re-offend, we will have to castrate you. Show him Sister Torquemada.'

  Sister Torquemada reached behind herself and pulled something from the back pocket of her trousers. She showed it to Brother Brian; a short but serviceable knife. 'It doesn't run on batteries,' she told him, 'and I always have it with me.'

  Brother Brian the pig stared at the knife. 'I'll be good,' he said. 'I'll be the best friend you people ever had I swear.'

  'My my, that does sound appealing,' said Sister Torquemada.

  'I don't see how we can turn down an offer like that,' said Reverend Billy. 'There is just one thing more – Brother Candy, show Brother Brian the list.'

  Dex looked up, and used his throat projector to display on the wall opposite to him a list of names and addresses. He released Brother Brian to extend one hand and made a downward motion – the list scrolled down. Brother Brian stared at the list with his mouth open.

  'The Holy Office for the Propagation of the Unreasonable Expectation knows where you, and all your disgusting friends, live,' said Sister Torquemada.

  'If you fall from grace Brother Brian dude, we will find you. And Sister T will deal with you.'

  Sister Torquemada slowly wiped her knife across her red mask's idiot grin; it glinted in the low light, and the black line outlining her cartoon mouth broke up into sine waves that quivered and shivered as the knife passed.

  'Oh no, oh no never, I'm a changed man,' said Brother Brian, unable to take his eyes off Sister Torquemada.

  'If you betray the Holy Church of the Unreasonable Expectation you will be, I promise,' said Sister Torquemada, putting away the knife.

  Earlier Dex had told Robbie that they would frighten a human who had been trying to pimp out one of Flo's members. 'We'll wear masks and use code names. It's easy to forget and use someone's real name, so since this is your first time you won't say anything except maybe, "yes Reverend Billy". Omo and Lucretia will do most of the talking.'

  Omo had dressed in Reverend Billy's robes. Amber had shown Robbie how his left foot came off easily. The original had been crushed in a mine accident and the replacement hadn't been fitted properly, his shoes and socks hid that it didn't even have a covering of nu skin. Lucretia had rubbed cream into Amber's face, neck, and hands, to hide his skin's faint metallic tint. Darren had been sent ahead to collect the supplies they needed from the hospital, as had Jon, who was to make sure the room they would use had in it everything they needed. After that he would be their lookout.

  Flo and Robbie released Brother Brian, he pulled himself up into a seating position, facing Reverend Billy.

  'All that remains,' said the Reverend, 'is for you to resign from the hotel–'

  'What? No! I'm not resigning, I've told you I'm sorry. That's all.'

  'Indeed,' said Sister Torquemada, 'you have told us you are sorry about that thing that you absolutely deny doing.'

  'Temptation is a terrible thing,' said Reverend Billy, 'resistance is… hard. Show the penitent, brother Candy.'

  Where the list had been, Brother Brian now appeared. He writhed and screamed soundlessly on his chair, tears squirted from his eye, snot dripped from his nose, and a stain bloomed from his groin.

  Reverend Billy looked from the film back to Brother Brian. Teeth appeared in his cartoon mouth, one of them glinting in the light as he smiled. 'Brother Brian – would you like every person on the list to receive a copy of that film?'

  In reply he received a furious look.

  'Resign. It's for your own good,' said Lucretia.

  'Amen Sister,' said Reverend Billy.

  Chapter 19 – Ask George what the plan is

  Carlos sat with his back against the wall, brooding. He looked down at the robot sleeping on the floor beside him and felt impatient with Robbie for being so desperate for approval that he gave himself to his intellectual inferior. He thought of Dex and felt annoyed with him for not pushing Robbie to spend more time with the old bot and further his education. Neither of these irritations approached the scale of his exasperation with George. So he brooded. How to let Robbie know what he knew?

  Robbie opened his eyes. He was laying on his back under a foil blanket, with his head pointing at the windows of the abandoned office that was starting to feel like home, and his feet pointing at the door. It was the second day of his two day holiday with Omo. Some light came through the windows, later, when the sun made a second attempt at breaching the horizon after yesterday's brief merging of sunrise / sunset, there would be more. Omo lay beside Robbie, looking at him, his head leaning on a hand, the arm attached to the hand propped up by his elbow.

  Robbie reached for Omo, but he stopped, his eyes fixed on what he could see over Omo's shoulder. Omo turned over to face an internal dividing wall consisting of one large plastic panel. Beneath this wall Robbie and Omo had piled all the debris they had found in the office – broken desks and chairs, bits of plastic with an obvious purpose (styluses, measuring devices) and lots of plastic with no obvious purpose. Above this litter the words, 'Ask George what the plan is,' had been burned into the wall in large looping letters that covered most of its area. Omo turned back to Robbie, he took hold of Robbie's right hand and inspected it; Robbie's right index finger was soot stained. They both stared at the evidence.

  'Dude you wrote that,' said Omo.

  'Not me,' said Robbie, 'Carlos'.

  Robbie and Omo stumbled through the refinery complex in the brightening twilight.

  'Why is it I feel more tired after the sun has risen than before?' said Robbie.

  'I do too. I think it's because we expect to have extra energy when we charge our solar cells but the sun isn't up long enough at first for much charging so there's a bigger gap between the energy we expect to have and the energy we have.'

  'Also we were busy last night. Reverend Billy is quite, um, intense.'

  'Don't worry dude, he's on a religious retreat right now, fasting and praying.'

  Robbie stopped. 'I thought I saw something moving over there, on the ground.'

  Omo glanced where Robbie was looking. 'It's probably just one of the small bots – by the time high summer is here those dudes will be all over the place.' Yesterday when they had passed under the structure that the stack bots, snake bots and various insectile-design based robots had been clustered throughout the winter waiting to recharge their solar cells, they had found it abandoned. Omo had said that the two guardians must have already dragged the small robots out to a place where the sun's rays would reach them.

  'What do they do all summer?' said Robbie.

 
; 'I don't know dude. We see them running about the place, but their machine intelligence is not like ours. Rex has tried to talk to them using different machine languages. They don't understand or they ignore us. We don't know what matters to them, what they are thinking, what plans they are making, what the dudes are doing where we can't see them. They've got their own game going on though, definitely.' They carried on, just making it to the beach when they each received an urgent message from Dex ordering them to meet him in Rex and Jane's office. Omo asked for details but the reply was "just get here".

  When they arrived they found the office crammed with every robot currently at the refinery which, since it included quite a number of miners, was many. A loud discussion was going on which mostly consisted of repeating facts everyone in the room knew, from which Robbie gathered that something disturbing had happened to a robot. Omo held Robbie's hand and pushed his way to the front where Dex, Darren and Amber sat with Jane and Rex. 'Dude, what's happened?' said Omo. Dex looked at Omo without speaking and Robbie thought that he was feeling the loneliness of leadership.

  Amber spoke, 'The avatars have arrested Lucretia.'

  'What? How? When?'

  'She went to sell weed at the bowling alley last night and they grabbed her.'

  Jane turned from her seat and said 'We've got the machines set up to automatically record when the avatars' feed is live. There's been no action from them since last week. This morning we found that they were active last night and when we reviewed the recording we called Dex immediately.'

  'Show them,' said Dex.

  Jane turned back to her equipment, pushed a button and said something. Two screens above her head, placed where everyone in the room could see them, came to life and started to show two views of Toytown's bowling alley for humans. The time display showed that it was close to midnight, yesterday. The robots fell silent and watched as the views separated, one stayed where it was while the other circled round to a badly lit alley, and stopped. At the front view two policemen came into the field of view, staring out of the screen. 'She's inside. My partner will get her if she tries to escape out the back. Follow me'.

  'I think that's Ross's voice,' whispered Robbie to Omo. 'It must be Alex out the back.'

  They watched as Ross went into the bowling alley. She soon saw Lucretia, who was wearing a pink t-shirt over her bra top and was talking to a small group of teenage boys, who stared at her with fascination and longing. Lucretia was smiling and tossing her hair and looked human, the only incongruity was that she appeared to be ten years older than the kids she was talking to. Another head toss and Lucretia stared straight out of the feed. For a second she was frozen, then she turned and moved with haste, although without running, across the bowling lanes and past the toilets. The boys milled in a confused pattern, looking between Lucretia and Ross, but then the feed was past them. On the second screen the back door opened. Lucretia stepped through, into the badly lit alleyway, and started to walk away. 'Lucretia!' shouted Alex's voice. Immediately Lucretia started to run. The second feed had now reached the back door, both started to chase Lucretia after Alex shouted something unintelligible. She was quite a way ahead of them when a policeman stepped into view in front of Lucretia and hit her with his electric baton. She went down. The two police officers with Ross caught up and all three beat Lucretia as she lay on the ground writhing and convulsing.

  'Turn it off,' said Dex. Jane complied immediately.

  'Did Lucretia often sell weed at the bowling alley?' said Robbie.

  Dex looked at Jon. 'Yes. Weekly. Normally'

  'So they probably were tipped off by someone at the alley,' said Robbie. 'Amber and I met a kid at the fairground. Same age as those boys with Lucretia. He knew we were robots, he was listening on robot frequencies and he knew that we talk high.' Robbie and Amber told the others about their encounter with the boy who was fascinated by robots.

  Dex nodded. 'It could be that one of those boys figured out she was a robot and told the wrong person.'

  'Do we know where she is?' said Robbie. 'Has anyone asked the satellites for a position or tried to track her signal?'

  'She's in the hospital. In the surgical wing. I've spoken to the hospital and all I can find out is that a team is being assembled for robot surgery in an hour,' said Dex.

  'Dude that doesn't sound right,' said Omo.

  'Yeah. We know. She wouldn't need surgery from that beating,' said Darren. 'Wait, I'm getting something.' Darren's eyes took on the distant look of a robot reading a message or scanning a database. He held up his finger in a wait one minute gesture while he read.

  'Ok,' said Darren. He blew out his cheeks. 'Dex and I have a friend at the hospital, a human, a doctor and a roboticist. She was asked to take part in the surgery but she refused when she found out what it is. They're going to deliberately and permanently damage Lucretia's brain.'

  'And they can find doctors willing to do this?' said Dex.

  'They are flying the lead surgeon in, because our mutual friend refuses to lead the team.'

  'But that means rest of the team are from the hospital, people we work with,' said Dex. 'I suppose if it was one of us on the table they'd still operate.'

  'But dude,' said Omo, 'why? Why are they doing this?'

  'I can guess,' said Dex. 'They are aiming to destroy her inhibitions.' He looked at Darren, who nodded.

  'Yes,' said Darren, 'Dr Tam says that after the surgery she will answer any question put to her, without any hesitation. It will make it very easy to interrogate her.'

  'And if she then needs care for the rest of her life,' said Dex, 'because she has lost all impulse control and sense of danger, well that's just too bad.'

  'Rex,' said Robbie, 'the avatars have two feeds – the one we just watched and the control signal. Right?'

  'Yeah. So?'

  'Can you send in the control signal? Can we take over the avatars?'

  Rex looked at Dex. 'Answer Robbie,' said Dex.

  'Their security is shit. Piece of piss.'

  'What do you have in mind?' said Dex.

  Robbie looked up, his eyes scanned the silent room. Every robot was looking at him. 'We take Lucretia back,' said Robbie. ' Dex you and me, we take over the avatars and go and get her from the hospital. We'll need teams of two or three robots at each of the access points for the tunnels that are near to the hospital, with Darren at the closest one, the one we are most likely to use. But we will use whatever entrance we can get to. The teams will help Lucretia back here.'

  'Why don't you and Dex do that?' said Darren.

  'Two reasons. One we may lose control of the avatars at any point if the humans realise what we are doing. And two, if we still have control then I have another job for us.'

  Robbie looked at Dex. Everyone else looked at Dex. Dex stood. He smiled. 'I like it,' he said. 'We turn their own tools against them. Not in their worst nightmares would the monkeys suspect that we could take over their avatars and pull off something so audacious because they know that we are far too stupid. Tell us the rest of it Robbie.'

  Robbie and Dex lay in Jane and Rex's office, on two old couches that had been dragged in from the meeting room. A wire ran from each of their ear sockets to the computer equipment on the work bench that ran the length of the room, and above which Jane and Rex were projecting live feeds from the avatars. Currently both screens were dark. Jane and Rex were at their workstations, Rex plugged into his while Jane interacted with screens. Amber was sitting on the edge of Dex's sofa, and Omo Robbie's. Darren had gone with the two queens to the most likely tunnel entrance point, other teams had also left comprising most of the robots who had been in the room, so that only a handful of miners remained, and they had only stayed as Dex had said there ought to be a few people remaining at the refinery in case of the unexpected.

  Now that Rex and Jane were nearly ready Robbie felt excited, and nervous, as if he was back at the fair. Omo held his hand, 'I'm proud of you dude,' he said.

  'We're nearly rea
dy,' said Jane. 'Remember, I'll be able to talk to you, but you won't be able to reply. I will hear everything you speak out loud though. We will be watching and listening all the time. I know how these people behave, I've been watching them and they are arrogant and rude all of the time, even to other humans. So you don't say please and thank you, you don't ask, you demand. Are you ready?'

  'Yes,' said Robbie.

  'Let's get on with it,' said Dex.

  Omo squeezed Robbie's hand. 'I'll be right here,' he said.

  Robbie smiled at Omo, then his vision went dark, and his face changed in an instant to a frozen mask. Irritably he kicked out with his foot, encountering resistance, he raised his hands and pushed. Lights flicked on, and he found he was lying down in cabinet with a clear plastic cover. As he pushed against it, it began to rise of its own accord, a motor underneath him whirred and he was pushed up into a sitting position. Robbie turned his head. Next to him the female avatar was sitting in a similar cabinet and looking at him coldly.

  'It's OK,' Jane's voice said. 'You're both in.'

  'Dex?'

  'Robbie?'

  Robbie stepped down from the cabinet onto a rough concrete floor. He guessed he was in a sub-basement of the Civic Centre, in a small room, little more than a cupboard, containing the two cabinets and some mismatched cupboards pushed against one wall. The floor was bare concrete and the walls undecorated plastic panels with various safety and other notices printed on them. He was wearing only a pair of rather tatty orange underpants. He couldn't resist taking a look to see what was inside and was quite disturbed to find a smooth hairless nothingness. He wondered if this was why agent Alex was annoyed all the time. The agent Ross avatar stood before him, dressed in a one piece pink undergarment, that looked like silk to Robbie.

  'Very nice,' Robbie said. 'You look lovely agent Ross.'

  The new and improved agent Ross looked the new and improved agent Alex up and down.