Stupefying Stories: August 2014
Page 14
“Thank you...” I paused. “What’s your name?”
“Edgar.”
“Thank you, Edgar.”
We were quiet for a few minutes as I relished my beer and he stood motionless at my side.
“May I ask you a question?” Edgar said.
“Sure.”
“How long will it take to grow your legs back?”
The question surprised me. Why would a robot care? I started to explain that medical science had yet to master regeneration, so they weren’t really growing back, just being slowly rebuilt, one molecule at a time, by nano-scaled robots. More robots. Inside my skin. The thought gave me the creeps, but if I got my legs back—
“About another two months,” I said.
He nodded.
“Did you lose them in the war?” Edgar asked.
“Yes,” I said, feeling a bit uncomfortable with the conversation. I drained the rest of the beer. No way was I going to let them take any of it away. When I set the can down, Edgar took it, crunched it to a tiny ball, and slipped it into his pocket.
“How?” he asked.
I turned to look him fully in the face. No emotion on that hard molded face, no empathy or curiosity in the eyes.
“Robots ate them,” I snapped. Then I leaned a little closer to him. “We were well back from the front lines. Controlling our drones from an armored trailer. But the enemy has robots, too, and they found us somehow. Evidently there were parts of the trailer less armored than others. They chewed right through.”
Edgar nodded, but remained quiet for several minutes. “And that’s why you don’t like robots?”
The question surprised me. I started to do the socially acceptable backpedal, to tell him I really had nothing against robots in general, but then I told him the truth.
“Yeah. I had no problem with robots as long as I was the one controlling them. But now—”
“I understand,” he said.
I wondered if he really did, or if that was just an acceptable response.
One of the nurses stopped by to ask if I needed anything. She was pretty, but like all of the human staff, utterly professional. I started to make a flirty comment then remembered what Edgar had said about them avoiding me and just waited for her to leave. After she left, I had the sudden realization that Edgar was better company than my human keepers.
“Who are you giving the meat to, Edgar?”
He turned to look back at the hospital, disguised as a large rambling manor house. “Can I show you?”
I nodded, and he started off across the lawn.
The little mechanical man had a smooth if overly erect stride that seemed somehow off, like he should fall over on a regular basis, but he never did. I remembered reading that robots who interacted with humans were designed small, to seem less threatening to adults and children. But it still seemed a little creepy to me. Almost like a child-slave.
Edgar led me to a low-slung building that looked like a stable and was painted to match the manor house. He went inside and motioned for me to follow. The building was filled with lawn and maintenance drones of a dozen different designs.
He stopped in one of the far rear corners, where a waist-high plastic fence had been erected, and I immediately understood. Two black and white kittens tumbled and bounced around the open area, then stopped and ran up to Edgar, and mewled. He took the meat from his pocket and gave each a small piece.
“Their mother also lost her legs to a robot. A mower. I couldn’t save her and the staff wouldn’t help. They said pets aren’t allowed here.”
“Yeah, the folks here are just sweet like that,” I said, and watched the orphaned kittens tumble around in the pen. Like me, their lives had been changed in many ways by robots.
“Would you like to hold one?” Edgar asked, almost in a whisper.
“I sure would.”
He picked one up and handed it over. So little and warm.
“Be careful with him. Kittens are very fragile,” Edgar said.
“I will,” I said. The kitten purred and mewled and nuzzled and crawled up my arm and across my shoulders.
“I called this one George.”
I laughed, and it felt pretty good.
Edgar just nodded.
¤
I stood on the immaculate, nearly sterile lawn of the lakeshore, watching George chase a dragonfly back and forth along the bank. With Edgar’s help he’d grown a lot, but he was still a kitten inside. He sloshed into the water, stopped, backed up, and shook his paws dry.
“You’re wearing a uniform, Lieutenant,” Edgar said from just behind me. “Does that mean you’ll be leaving us today?”
I turned and looked down at the little mechanical man. He waited with a robot’s patience and politeness as I struggled for words that wouldn’t alarm those still watching.
“Yeah, I’m back on active duty. Evidently, my skills are still in high demand. I’m too expensive of an investment to just let go.”
“I’m glad you’ve made a full recovery, sir,” Edgar said.
“Yeah, good as new,” I said and reached down to pick up George, who’d lost track of the dragonfly and decided my shoestrings were a suitable replacement. “Anyway, I wanted to thank you for helping me get better. But I also wanted to ask if all of this—you and the kittens and the beer—was just part of my therapy?”
The robot shrugged, a totally alien gesture without accompanying facial expressions. “I don’t think I’d know. I’m just doing my job, Lieutenant.”
I thought about that for a second, then nodded and scratched George behind the ears. He’d left muddy smudges and little black hairs on my jacket sleeve, and then settled into a purring, nearly-napping lump in the crook of my arm.
“Does it matter, sir?”
I glanced back at the big manor house hospital, wondering if it held another highly trained expert sitting in a dark basement room, relaying instructions to his or her own robot army.
“I guess not,” I said, then roused the sleepy kitten and reluctantly handed him over to Edgar.
“Take care of these little guys,” I said.
“I always do, sir.”
William Ledbetter is a writer with more than thirty speculative fiction stories and non-fiction articles published in markets such as Jim Baen's Universe, Writers of the Future, Escape Pod, Ad Astra, and Baen.com. He administers the Jim Baen Memorial Writing Contest for Baen Books and the National Space Society, is the Science Track coordinator for the Fencon convention, and is a consulting editor at Heroic Fantasy Quarterly. He lives near Dallas with his family and too many animals.
About STUPEFYING STORIES...
STUPEFYING STORIES strives to deliver the freshest new fiction by the brightest new talents directly to your ebook reader, tablet, or mobile device. Whether your interest is science fiction, fantasy, humor, horror, or something else still too new to have a name, you’ll find it in STUPEFYING STORIES.
For more great reading...
We hope you enjoyed this issue of STUPEFYING STORIES magazine. Be sure to check out our free companion webzine, StupefyingStoriesSHOWCASE.com. Each week SHOWCASE brings you previews of coming attractions, samples of what we’re working on now, breaking news about the rest of the Rampant Loon Press publications family, reviews and comments, and of course, new stories by some of our favorite authors. Think of SHOWCASE as a free sample; an appetizer; a little something to tide you over while you’re waiting for the next exciting issue of STUPEFYING STORIES magazine!
Follow us on facebook!
facebook.com/StupefyingStories
0%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share