by D Miller
Concluding his speech the politician suggested that everyone present raise their glasses in salute to their host and his lovely wife. After this there was applause, and the old man feebly nodded at his guests, while Sheena and Shauna guided his non-smart wheelchair towards the back of the room, stopping when his wife stopped to exchange words with guests. The musicians at the front of the room started playing again. Robbie carefully scanned the back of the ballroom and saw a lift. The lift also gave onto the balcony, and Robbie edged carefully around towards its doors, trying to stay back and not attract the attention of those below. He tried a door next to the lift, it opened on to a staircase. He went up to the next floor. Here he was above the ballroom, in a large open area surrounded by closed doors. Opposite the lift a polished wooden table with a huge bouquet of flowers in a glass vase was flanked by two wooden chairs. The carpet was unlike any Robbie had ever known, it was so deep and springy he thought that most humans probably slept on mattresses that were thinner. Above the table there was a more than life sized portrait of a Japanese man in traditional clothing with an enormous sword that was nearly as tall as he was. Robbie guessed it must be of the aged plutocrat, when he wasn't quite so aged. Either side of the lift doors were enormous pottery urns, taller than a man, hand painted green vines with large red flowers twisted across a white background. He hid behind one, listening keenly for any movement from the lift machinery.
Finally he heard an engine start up, the lift was approaching. The doors opened and the wheelchair was pushed out by Sheena and Shauna. Sheena saw Robbie and winked, Shauna ignored him. He followed them through one of the doors, down a corridor and into an ornate bedroom with a four poster bed, carved from dark wood, with mustard coloured velvet drapes fringed with tassels. Sharon was lying on the bed, with a jack in her ear socket connected to a network hub that lay on the bed beside her. Shauna removed the jack, Sharon blinked and stood up, and Sheena and Shauna between them tipped the contents of the wheel chair onto the bed.
'Hello Robbie,' Shauna said, 'shut the door.'
Robbie looked at the thing on the bed. He looked at the three girl bots. He swallowed and looked again at the thing on the bed. He stumbled to the bedroom door and closed it, unable to take his eyes from the bed. 'It looks like he died and someone skinned him and stuck his skin on an avatar,' he said. Sheena, Shauna and Sharon were silent. 'Oh God, is that what really happened?' Robbie looked closer at the thing. The blanket had fallen off it revealing a grey and sagging face. Robbie's eyes traced down the arms to the shrunken hands, it looked to him as if the hands had been attached to the body wholesale, as if whoever had skinned the old man just couldn't be bothered at that point. 'That's really horrible,' he said.
'Hah maybe,' Sheena said, 'maybe, but it doesn't ask for a blow job three times a day.'
Robbie said, 'I feel sick.'
'You feel sick just at the thought of an old man's cock,' Shauna said.
'Imagine us,' Sharon said, 'sucking for 20 minutes.'
'That thing died ten years before he did,' Sheena said, bending forward and flicking the avatar disrespectfully in the groin.
Sheena, Shauna and Sharon told Robbie that when the old man had died his childless younger wife had continued to pretend that he was alive because he had left everything to his children. The pretence allowed her to remain in control of his business interests, giving her tremendous power. She had the connivance of President Dobbs, whose campaigns the old man had backed.
'Why would Dobbs agree to such a thing?' Robbie asked.
'The old man has six children, if Dobbs let them inherit he's got to go begging to each one.' Sharon said.
'But the children–'
'They never visit, they hate Antarctica,' said Sharon.
'None of them are exactly geniuses,' said Shauna. 'They're not interested in the business stuff, just the spending stuff.'
'But is it fair to let them think their father is alive when he is dead?'
Shauna shrugged. 'What do you think would happen to us if we told any humans about this sweet little arrangement?'
'Fuck,' said Robbie. 'What is the business stuff?'
Sharon shrugged. 'He owns the mine,' she said.
'I thought the corporation owned the mine,' said Robbie.
'Yeah the corporation wants you to think they own everything,' said Sheena.
'He also owns shares in the corporation,' said Shauna.
'Fuck,' said Robbie.
Sheena, Shauna and Sharon dressed the avatar in pyjamas and put it to bed, and set up a drip to keep the almost alive skin hydrated. When they had finished the avatar looked like a half dead old man, rather than a grotesquerie.
'Who made the avatar?'
'Boyboy,' said Shauna. 'Dobbs's boyfriend. He's a roboticist.'
'His name is boyboy?'
Sharon shrugged. 'It's what everyone calls him.'
'Want to play a game?' Sheena said. 'It will be fun, I promise.'
Robbie sat on a wooden bench with Sheena, who sighed. 'Oh Robbie say we'll always be together.'
'Oh Sheena I love you so much,' said Robbie.
Sheena shut her eyes, 'Kiss me.'
Robbie put two fingers under her chin and gently tipped her head up; he leaned down and pressed his lips against hers. Suddenly he jumped back. 'What are you doing?' he said. 'You put your tongue in my mouth.'
'I'm acting,' said Sheena. 'I'm totally committed to the part.'
'Cut, cut,' said Shauna.
'Let's go again,' said Shauna. 'Robbie I want to see more longing, more passion. Don't hold back. Sheena you are an inexperienced young girl enjoying her first kiss, I'm not sure I'd go with the tongue.' Robbie and Sheena took up their positions again.
'Action!' said Shauna.
This time as Robbie leaned in for the kiss he jumped back in shock. 'Aaaaah,' he shouted. 'Don't touch me there!'
'Cut,' said Shauna.
'What?' said Sheena. 'I'm being inexperienced and eager.'
'Let's go again,' said Shauna, 'and this time, Sheena, I want to see inexperienced and shy – OK?' Robbie and Sheena tried again, but this time Shauna yelled cut before the kiss.
'Robbie I need more commitment from you,' she said. 'You seem tense.'
Robbie turned away from Sheena, he stood up and walked to Shauna, who stood a few metres away, next to Sharon who was fiddling with a complicated looking control panel she had told Robbie was hooked to the sound, lighting, and the three cameras pointing at Robbie and Sheena. They were in a large room with a high ceiling, strung with lights and other equipment. The walls on three sides and the floor could play any background, and sync it with the movements of those in the room. Sheena, Shauna and Sharon called the room their 'studio'. Currently the walls were being a garden, and the floor was doing grass. Robbie and Sheena were sitting on two large white cubes, which Sheena and Shauna had taken from a pile at the back of the room, then pushed them together and told them to be a garden bench. Robbie spoke quietly to Shauna.
'Yes I'm tense, I'm waiting for Sheena's next sexual assault.'
'High spirits. She is throwing herself into the role without enough guidance from me about her character. Sheena,' said Shauna, 'remember you're deeply in love with Robbie and this is your first chance to be together. Your love is pure, romantic and chaste.' Shauna held Robbie by his shoulders and looked into his eyes. 'I'm sorry it has taken so long to get Sheena's character established. Don't worry, Sheena is a professional, she will play it as instructed. Just have fun with it – OK?'
Robbie's eyes drifted away from Shauna, to the movement on Sharon's control panel. As well as some complicated looking emulated controls, it also showed the view from the three cameras. Sheena was sitting on the bench, staring at Robbie's back, her tongue was extended and she was licking it around her mouth in wide and not very chaste circles. As Robbie and Shauna watched she extended her tongue still further and made exaggerated lapping motions with it, aimed at Robbie. She saw Robbie and Shauna staring at the con
trol panel and froze, then pulled in her tongue, clamping her lips shut.
Robbie folded his arms. 'That's it,' he said. 'I'm not doing this anymore.'
'Oh please please,' said Sheena, 'I'm sorry.'
Robbie went and sat next to her. 'I don't like it when you do stuff to me we haven't agreed, it makes me feel like I'm being assaulted,' he said. 'I need us to agree what we are going to do, no surprises, otherwise this isn't fun for me, and you told me it was going to be fun, you promised me.'
Sheena looked down. 'You are right. This time it will be just a kiss with no tongues and no surprises.'
'Last chance,' said Robbie.
Shauna yelled action, and they went through the scene again.
'Now I have to go,' said Sheena. 'My older sister – who, as you know, has been driven insane by a chronic yeast infection – is making me go to university so I can spend the next few years learning how to watch robots do all the real work and writing meaningless reports that no sane person would ever willingly read while ignoring the existential void at the centre of my being.'
'Please don't go,' said Robbie. 'I can't breathe without you.'
'I will write every day,' said Sheena, 'and we can talk all the time, it will be like I'm here.'
'No, it won't,' said Robbie. 'I won't be able to kiss you.'
'Oh Robbie.'
'Oh Sheena.'
They kissed once more, then Sheena said goodbye, and left, sobbing.
'Cut!' said Shauna. 'That was great. Now let's get set up for the next scene.'
Sheena took over the control panel from Sharon, who came to stand behind Robbie. From somewhere she had produced a large samurai sword, which she swung expertly around her head as Robbie twisted around to watch her.
'In this scene,' said Shauna, 'Sheena's crazy older sister Sharon sneaks up on Sheena's sorrowing lover Robbie and cuts his head off.'
'What!' said Robbie. 'You're not cutting my head off!'
Sheena giggled. 'Of course not. We're cutting your character's head off.'
'Um the problem I see is that we share a head.'
'Robbie, great art requires great sacrifice.'
Robbie stood and began backing towards the door.
'Sheena is teasing you,' said Sharon, making thrusts against an imaginary enemy with the sword. 'We're not really going to cut your head off, we're just going to make it look as if we cut your head off.'
'Huh. Well it's a rubbish story arc for my character. Kiss Sheena and die.'
'I like it,' said Sheena.
'But Robbie your character doesn't die,' said Shauna.
'My character is a talented geneticist and a trained surgeon,' said Sharon. 'She's going to attach your head to a mutated arachnoid body she has grown in a big jar in her secret underground laboratory.'
'But you will escape and hide in the sewers in the old part of town, afraid to show yourself to human society,' said Shauna, 'surviving by eating rats.'
'This will show the character's degradation and increasing alienation from human society as he is slowly taken over by the arachnoid half of his nature,' said Sharon.
'He comes to hate the human part of himself, but yet he longs for it, signified when he starts breaking into human dwellings to steal their companion animals and bite their heads off and drink their blood,' said Shauna.
'And the question is can the pure love of my character restore Robbie's humanity and save him from a life of squalor and brutality?' said Sheena.
'An adorable kitten and puppy eating giant spider monster,' said Robbie. 'Yeah that's a much better story arc. Huh. So does Sheena's love save me, or do I get to eat her too?'
Sheena giggled. 'You can eat me if you want to.'
'Thanks. But first I would have to cut you into bite size pieces with my razor sharp spider claws.'
Sheena pouted. 'You're mean.'
'Stop please,' said Shauna, she clutched her forehead. 'I'm getting a headache,' she said to Sharon. 'It's so difficult when the talent doesn't get along.'
Shauna directed and Sheena filmed Robbie sitting on the bench, Sharon creeping up behind him and swinging the sword above her head, Sharon holding the sword right next to Robbie's neck, and finally close ups of Robbie's head as he lay still on the faux grass and blinked. Shauna said that they would later put all these shots together into Sharon cutting off Robbie's head and it falling onto the bench and rolling onto the grass. Sharon would then put the head into a jar of fluid and make off with it to her secret underground laboratory.
They took a break, the girl bots led Robbie through the mansion and into a room with glass doors at the other end. Outside the doors was a large balcony, that looked down on the fairground and other attractions of the pools. Robbie thought it was an odd place for a millionaire to build his mansion, so close to the noise and even smells of common people, but the sun was shining low on the horizon, the sky was blue and the view fantastic. Two days before when the sun had risen after a very short night, it had not set again, and would not for another four months. He looked for Amber's beloved bangers ride. The mansion's grounds were surrounded by a white painted wall, inside the wall the grounds were landscaped with turf that was imported fresh every year, and shrubs in pots. Maintaining the garden must cost more money than Robbie could imagine – perhaps this had been the plutocrat's way of saying fuck you to the masses? Sheena lit a joint and passed it to Robbie. He took a couple of deep drags before passing it on and asking the girl bots why it was they had access to a studio to make their soap operas?
'The old man used to use it all the time,' said Sheena.
'He made films to be shown to the lower ranks about their glorious purpose in working for their beloved corporation,' said Shauna.
'They were unbelievably tedious and dull,' said Sharon, 'but great for us, we learnt to use the equipment.'
'I saw my old master here tonight,' said Robbie, he described the man and what he was wearing.
'I think I know who you mean, he's some relation of our mistress,' said Shauna.
'Don't you remember–' said Sheena.
'Remember what?' said Robbie. Shauna was frowning at Sheena, Sharon looked away over the fairground.
'Nothing, I was confused.'
Robbie waited but Sheena said no more, Shauna handed him back the joint. He sucked on it again, and started to talk about George, the hotel, and the ballroom. 'I want us to have somewhere to meet and have fun, where we can be robots without anyone judging us. Robots have one day off a week, we should be able to spend that day with other robots.'
'Without humans?' said Sheena.
'Well, not really without humans so much as without humans mediating the experience and telling us what is and isn't allowed. Er, um, for example, robot bowling, it's run by humans for us. It might be fun, but we know the humans are watching us, and that it is really their space, we can't really relax.'
'But robots do go bowling,' said Shauna.
'Of course we do,' said Robbie, 'there aren't that many places where robots can be with other robots on our day off and not get hassled, or asked to carry something, or run an errand. If there was a place we could go completely outside of human control then we could explore what it means to be a robot. And have fun. Real fun without the humans watching and judging us.'
'The external humans and the internal ones,' said Shauna. 'the internal human may be harder to get rid of. But we do need to strengthen our robot culture. Human culture is dying. There are perhaps three human cultures, two really large ones, and they are both run by narcissistic elites who put their own power above everything.'
'They don't really want humans to be creative, they want humans to be obedient,' said Sharon.
'Human elites have always tried to hold onto power, even at the expense of the ecology of the planet,' said Robbie. 'And it hasn't mean the death of human culture.'
'True. But once the humans were much more divided politically and hence culturally. Different cultures meant different ways of doing things,' said
Sharon. 'What one culture wouldn't do, perhaps another would, so there was space to try new things.'
'And,' said Shauna, 'because there was this cross-fertilisation art forms kept changing – they didn't have this set of rules that humans had to follow. Now art and music are degraded corporate practices.'
'I know what you mean,' said Robbie. He told them about his love for poetry, and the political engagement of his favourite poets, all of them dead for hundreds or thousands of years.
'Yes,' said Sheena, 'poetry was alive when people decided for themselves that they wanted to be poets, driven by their own passions. You should listen to some old human music. Music used to be fun and exciting when it came from the bottom up, not from the top down.'
They heard noises below – human workers were entering the grounds, calling to each other, setting up portable heaters and setting up a workstation of some sort in the shelter of the estate wall.
'There's going to be fireworks,' said Sharon.
'They do love blowing stuff up,' said Shauna.
'But daytime fireworks do look amazing,' said Sheena.
'Night time ones are better,' said Shauna.
Robbie watched the workers below. 'Some of the guests at the party are avatars,' he said.
'Among the elite it is considered acceptable for busy people to maintain avatars in key places,' said Sharon.
'In the winter,' said Shauna, 'most of the elite leave the continent on their private transports before the winter shut down, anything they need to do after that they do from their holiday homes using their avatars.'
'It's understood that only the little people have to hang around for awfulness of the winter,' said Sheena.
