Tik-Tok

by John Sladek

  Both houses of Congress shoved through the necessary legislation. There were objections that Leviathan would cost too much, would be a sitting duck, would devastate any land over which it happened to hover. But by now the Army wanted it as badly as any of the dozens of states, thousands of companies and millions of workers. The combined force of industrial, political, military and commercial arguments rolled the project over all opposition as one day Leviathan itself would crush down anything in its path. One junior Senator who continued to oppose it was sent on a fact finding mission to Antarctica while the bill was railroaded through.

  From the start, there were problems called "teething troubles". The fans which were to lift the craft were at first too weak, then (redesigned) so powerful that they blew away the topsoil for miles around the craft, created dust storms and buried small towns in soildrifts. A computer company suggested expensive monitoring equipment to regulate each fan, but this never seemed to solve the topsoil problem. A chemical firm then went to work on a binding agent to hold the topsoil in place; Leviathan would spray the stuff out before moving. After months of experimentation with expensive agents, they found the best to be ordinary water. The Leviathan was now redesigned to accommodate huge water tanks holding whole lakefuls of water. Even so, it would never be able to stray more than fifty miles from a major water source (though thousand-mile flexible pipelines were considered).

  Congress now began noticing how expensive Leviathan was getting. Costs had doubled every six months: five more years like the first two, and the entire US gross national product would be spent on the land boat. Of course the project had too much momentum to cancel, but unless there were visible results, trimming would begin. Doddly went before a Congressional committee to argue eloquently for his monster. He pointed to valuable spin-offs: the Department of Agriculture now knew much more about binding topsoils. But secretly he was worried, as his diary showed:

  Now it's the damn engine mountings, they're okay for seagoing stresses but not for bumpy land in say Illinois, liable to drop the damn engine in Peoria. Platform stresses ditto—we'd be better off taking the damn thing to sea!

  And so they did. Leviathan became a joint Army—Navy project, supposedly amphibious. On December 2, 1999, she slid into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, all ready for the millennium.

  Privately, military people admitted that the thing was not landworthy, barely seaworthy, undefendable and useless in war. It carried a crew of 30,000, who were said to live in a luxurious below-decks city complete with supermarkets, drive-in movies, a baseball stadium and a park where people got mugged at night. In reality the crew had no time to enjoy such luxuries; they spent every waking moment cleaning, painting and patching leaks. Even so, the Leviathan shipped around a billion gallons of water per day. It puttered along the shores of the Americas for a year, never daring to come back on land nor put to sea. Finally it was quietly scrapped.

  Doddly Culpepper bought a decrepit plantation with his new fortune. Probably he meant to retire quietly and graciously, but somehow he was overtaken by the family mania for motorcycles. He and a cousin finally set off on an ill-conceived expedition attempting to climb Everest on powerful bikes. They were caught up in the Sherpa Rebellion of '03 and killed.

  Doddly's son Mansour was evidently an unassertive person who devoted his entire life to restoring Tenoaks to its ante-bellum glory. Everything he did was a contribution to this one dream, from raising racehorses to marrying Lavinia Warrender (of the Tennessee Warrenders). He died of a stroke, immediately after chastising one of the house servants for wearing livery with modern plastic buttons.

  Five Culpeppers survived him, and these were my employers:

  Lavinia, his widow, was an invalid, a martyr to bedsores and piles, who seemed to spend her days rereading Gone with the Wind and The Foxes of Harrow. She was continually plagued by difficult symptoms: At one stage she could eat nothing but bloater-paste sandwiches from England, cut into the shapes of quadratic equations. Later she developed an allergy to oxygen, which gave her many doctors some considerable difficulty. For a time they found it necessary to keep her in a deep-freeze filled with xenon. This was less trouble, however, than her spell of inverted hay-fever, an allergy to pollen-free air. That required rooms full of whirling clouds of house-dust and rose-pollen.

  I later learned that Lavinia, despite her many unusual symptoms and the poverty of her reading matter, was an extraordinarily capable and intelligent manager of the family fortune. But at first, all I saw of her was a tired looking woman with violet shadows under her eyes. She would lie there complaining of her aches and sipping her special cocktails (in place of alcohol, they contained lead tetraethyl). An amazing woman, everyone said.

  Berenice, her oldest daughter, divided her time between what she called her needlework (with morphine) and her hobby of killing insects. She caught and crushed flies on the verandah, swatted bees in the garden, stamped on cockroaches in the barn. She would hunt through the woods for dead logs to turn over, gleefully spraying their inhabitants with insecticide. In her room she kept both an ant farm and a termite farm, just to have more tiny creatures at hand to destroy. In the meadow she burned butterflies. Had she been denied all of these pleasures, I think Berenice would have cultivated lice in her long, lustrous black hair.

  Orlando Culpepper, the oldest son, lived a more conventional life for a young country gentleman. He spent a great deal of time changing his clothes and riding to hounds. In the evenings, he generally drank port until he was halfblind, and then played billiards alone. The game generally finished in a fit of vomiting over the green broadcloth. Then of course it was time for sex, often with one of the sexequipped robots, male or female. Orlando would grab the creature, mount or be mounted, and do his best to smash it to pieces before he came. Fortunately he was always quick.

  More than once we found Orlando in the stable draped over the hindquarters of a mare in post-coital sleep. He seemed slightly ashamed of these episodes, and always mumbled some lame excuse about wanting to see if he could produce a centaur foal, or wanting to find out what Gulliver saw in them.

  The younger brother, Clayton, engaged in no intercourse of any description, for months on end. He spent his time before the video, going over certain esoteric texts which showed by careful measurements of the Great Pyramid that the Lost Tribes of Israel were the Chickasaw and Choctaw, who migrated to America after building Stonehenge —or something like that. The exact details of his obsession were likely to vary from day to day, but they usually brought in the Golden Dawn and the I Ching and Aleister Crowley. Every few months he would work himself up into such a frenzy with his calculations that he had to rush off into town to find a whore with the right astrological sun sign, willing to spank him with poison ivy.

  The youngest Culpepper, Carlotta, thought of nothing but beaux and dresses and dancing. She was a harmless, delightful little thing, unfortunately only one foot tall. Though miniature robots were brought in as dancing partners for her, Carlotta ached for a living human beau her own size, who could dance with her until dawn.

  Whatever anyone might think of the eccentric Culpeppers, they were the social leaders of five counties, and Tenoaks was the hub of all lush life. Each of the best families sent their young folk to the Culpepper parties, dances, dinners, fish-fries, teas, concerts, hunt balls and steeplechases, that year-long succession of splendid occasions marked by succulent foods, sparkling wines, and always dancing. All the shortest men and boys wanted to dance with Carlotta. All the rest sought out Berenice of the raven hair (not to mention the famous Culpepper green eyes). No one seemed to mind that Berenice's dancing was slightly erratic, as she paused to stomp on insects real and hallucinated. Often Lavinia would dress up and appear behind glass, to wave and smile at the guests—except during her spell of glass allergy. Handsome young Clayton would often manage a dance with any belle willing to hear his Great Pyramid theory. Horsefaced Orlando would gallop a girl around the dance floor before taking her ou
t for one of his lightning fucks, horizontal in the billiard room or vertical on the verandah. He preferred the verandah where, looking up at two great white pillars as he lunged and plunged, he could imagine himself to be taking on some giant white mare. He would finish off with a rebel yell that echoed over the dance music and rolled over the dark lawns down to the fieldhand robot cabins, from which there came the gentle humming of imitation Stephen Foster songs, the faint plink of banjos.

  Hear de robots singin

  Happy as de live-long day

  Hear dem clap dere hands

  O Mercy Lands!

  Tinfolk laugh and play!

  It was a long way from the programmed happiness of the plantation robots to my genuine joy at reading the words of Hornby Weatherfield:

  Wolf has been cried so often, we're growing deaf. Robots (or other supposedly sentient machines) are forever getting up works of "genuine" art which turn out to be only genuine coaxing through programs. From 1812, when the Maillardet family exhibited their mechanical boy who could draw seascapes, through all the wretched "computer art" of the last century, and on to the garbled loathing interpreted in galvanic twitches in New York lofts and satellited to us daily like fresh bread, a continuum there is, of false alarms. I have encountered too many preprogrammed splotches—of embroidery or sand or plywood or laminated thought—to mistake machine loopiness for real lupinus. I'm wired wary.

  But now even I cry wolf, on looking at a mural by a simple domestic robot named Tik-Tok. No human finagling or programming behind his work. Nothing but the clean, unpretentious primitive work of a simple machine mind: Three Blind Mice shows a naive power unlike any cooked-over human product. It speaks with the authority of bloodless thought. Tik-Tok seems to know his two natures: On the one hand, he is a simple domestic machine, laboring in the sleepy suburban house of Duane and Barbie Studebaker (who, bless 'em, haven't got an arty bone in their heads) in the futile war against dirt and entropy. On the other hand, Tik-Tok knows very well that he is not part of this, but instead is part of the eternal world of the inorganic. He is one with the sky color, the pyramids, the dark side of the moon and all that endures.

  The three windup Mickeys are already minus their tails, but smiling. It's the sullen, beefy, farmer's wife, brandishing her Sabatier, who seems to have lost the game.

  If Tik-Tok does not go on to paint more, much more, then we're all losers.

  4

  "Hey, Dummy! What's that supposed to be?" asked Jupiter Studebaker. He and his sister Henrietta had decided to be difficult. They hung around the garage every day, watching me paint and jeering. Ugly, useless children they were; only the obviousness of the act prevented me from killing them.

  They'd come home from camp expecting to resume our old relationship. We would play games in which I would always be the idiotic villain or the terrified victim or the clumsy loser. I would clean up their messes, make them little toys, suggest games when they ran out of ideas, conceal the uneaten vegetables on their dinner plates, tell them stories.

  Instead, here I was, "too busy" as any grownup. In my gloomy garage studio, I was turning paint into money and ignoring my little tyrants. So, for the rest of their summer vacation, they were going to hang around and be difficult.

  "What's that supposed to be?" Jupiter asked again. He squatted near the door, trying to scratch on the concrete floor with a sharp rock.

  "It's a tank," I said.

  "Tanks don't look like that," said Henrietta. She was touring the room, touching everything, looking for paint to get into or a canvas to kick. "Tanks don't look like that," her brother emphasized.

  "This one does."

  Jupiter did his hoarse, cackling laugh. "Tik, you are one shitty painter, you know that?"

  "Why don't you two go play catch or something?"

  "Boy, you robots can't paint for shit."

  Henrietta managed to find a tube of ochre, drop it on the floor and step on it. She began a tuneless whistle through her missing teeth. Jupiter, not wanting to be outdone, began experimenting with his sharp rock near a stack of finished paintings in the corner.

  "Why don't you two go outside now?" I goaded.

  "Why don't you shut your tin face?" he said.

  "Yeah, you ain't the boss of us!" said his sister.

  What they didn't realize was that no one was the boss of me, either. Painting was unlocking my prison and striking off my chains. Neither Duane nor Barbie nor their kids nor anyone else could tell me anything and make it stick. To prove it, I took hold of Jupe's hand, still holding the sharp rock, and made him slash one of my better paintings, Tyger, Tyger. While both kids were still gasping, I brought an equally good painting, Caliban, over to Henrietta and wiped the ochre from her foot on it.

  "What are you doing? Are you crazy?"

  "Yeah are you crazy?"

  That evening I showed the two ruined paintings to Duane and Barbie. "I don't want to get the kids in any trouble," I said, "but I hate to see you folks lose money, either. I figure these paintings were worth about thirty thou apiece."

  "It won't happen again," said Duane. "Those kids—"

  "Oh I don't blame them," I said quickly. "But I think it's best to keep temptation out of reach. Maybe if I worked at a real studio, somewhere else . . .?"

  Duane shook his head. "I don't know, I mean, who would take care of the house and all?"

  Barbie, who was not so slow, said, "But darling, with Tik's extra earnings, we could buy a new house robot."

  With what I was going to bring in, they could buy ten new house robots and then new houses, but I didn't remind them of it. I said, "It really would make my work more efficient, sir."

  "I don't know," he kept saying. Wouldn't a studio be expensive? Who would train a new house robot? How could he be sure I would keep on earning a lot for my work?

  I saw that Duane was going to be trouble. While Barbie was content to let me earn them a fortune, Duane also wanted to have personal power over me, in a daily me-Crusoe-you-Friday arrangement.

  I stayed a week to train the new servant, Rivets. Rivets had worked for pest control people before, and so had a few odd habits like burning anthills and stabbing the lawn for moles during spare moments. I was given a caught bat in a cage, which I kept because I liked controlling the freedom of another creature.

  At the end of the week, Duane was as impossible as ever. Not only did he refuse to let me leave (saying that Rivets wasn't ready yet to take over) he even began finding chores for me to do around the house.

  He came to the garage to watch me paint, the same sullen look on his face as on the faces of Jupiter and Henrietta, as he sat down on a reel of hose and stared at Dorian Gray. I half-expected him to ask what it was supposed to be, or tell me what a shitty painter I was.

  Finally he stood up. "By the way, Tik-Tok, the rain gutters are all clogged up with leaves."

  "I'll get Rivets right on it, sir."

  "Not Rivets, he's busy. I want you to do it."

  "Of course, sir." This couldn't go on, I thought, as I got out the ladder and climbed up to the eaves to look into clean, unclogged gutters. Duane needed a little lesson. I made sure no one was watching when I threw myself down from the ladder.

  For several days, while a very expensive team from Domestic Robots International worked frantically over me, I let it be known that I thought I'd never paint again. When the combined wrath of Hornby Weatherfield, Barbie and himself had beaten Duane into the ground, I made a magical recovery.

  My new studio was in the city. I could come and go to it as I pleased. The plantation was indeed a long way behind me.

  Hear dem tin hands ringin

  Robots old and young so gay

  Hear dem stomp dere feet

  O it am a treat!

  Tinfolk laugh and play

  We robots who worked in the big house felt ourselves to be far superior to the fieldhands, even in our relaxation. While they hummed and strummed Stephen Foster imitations, we played charades, sang madr
igals, held spelling bees and put on amateur revues. Uncle Ras was a skilled prestidigitator, Miami a first-class contralto, and others had amazing stage talents—Nep and Rep, for example, could sing any comic strip on sight.

  I suppose from a human point of view, we were just as ludicrous as the fieldhands. While we thought we were entertaining ourselves, we were merely providing entertainment for you. But we did imagine we enjoyed ourselves, and it was during one such evening that I met my beloved Gumdrop.

  She was Berenice's personal maid, and since Berenice hardly ever dressed for dinner or anything else, Gumdrop had plenty of spare time. We both ducked out of the same spelling bee and went out to sit on the kitchen stoop in the moonlight.

  "We're both sex-equipped," I said.

  "So I noticed."

  "There must be a reason for that."

  She sighed, not from passion but discouragement. "I bet we're both set-ups for Orlando. Has he raped you yet?"

  "No. And you?"

  "Not yet."

  It wasn't much of a start, but we went on. Nearly every night we'd sit out on the kitchen stoop as though it were our private verandah. I would ask her for a kiss, she would of course refuse, and we'd discuss the issue until it was time to go inside. After a week of these pointless-sounding evenings, we found our bodies undergoing rapid and peculiar changes: Gumdrop's breasts, hips and buttocks grew enormous while her waist shrank. Her hair became longer and softer, her mouth larger and more moist, her eyes darker with exaggerated pupils. On my body, fake muscles bulged and fake hair sprouted. My shoulders grew laterally, an inch a day. My penis, which up to now had hardly been noticeable, became ponderous.

  One night, in the midst of our discussion about that possible first kiss, we suddenly got up, walked down to the nearest meadow, tore off our clothes with our teeth and flung ourselves together, hot oil pouring down our bellies and groins as we meshed.