RobotWorld

by Ray Verola

  “Not a pretty picture, I’ll admit.” She was almost shouting to be heard over the wind. “It’s sort of like the old maxim about how to boil a frog. You don’t toss it into a steaming pot. You drop the frog into a pot with the water at room temperature. Then turn up the heat slowly, incrementally, so the frog doesn’t notice the change. Before froggy catches on, it’s too late. The changes in our society have happened so gradually, no one seemed to notice.”

  Taylor moved closer to her and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial tone. “Exactly. You’ve got it. Incrementalism—the most powerful and stealthy way to change a society. But there’s more regarding our fearless leader. A short time ago I entered her office when she was changing clothes to make a speech. Should have knocked. My mistake. Didn’t see anything anatomically I shouldn’t have seen. I can’t be certain, but I think I saw a blue patch, right where no human would ever have a blue patch.”

  “Now I see why you wanted to come out here. About the blue patch—how sure are you?”

  “Sixty, seventy percent maybe.”

  “With the law as it is, before you can report this—if you ever decided to report it—you need to be at one hundred.”

  “Hell, there’s no way I can ask her to take off her gray shirt.”

  “Of course. But I see what you’re driving at. It could be what we’re doing here at RobotWorld is, shall we say, counterproductive for society in the long run.” She paused. “Even if you had definite proof on Sophia’s blue patch and RW’s coziness with the government, I’m not sure I’d recommend reporting it. But if you ever decided to report it, you’ll most certainly need proof more solid than the structure we work in.”

  “The question is how to get it.”

  Roz peered at the gray sky. “This might end up causing us problems, but I might have an answer—or at least the beginning of an answer. The rumors of the Information Room—you’ve heard them—the infamous locked room in the basement that nobody’s been in, that supposedly contains all RW records since the founding of the company. All its secrets.”

  Taylor nodded. “But that’s all purely rumor. Right?”

  A blast of wind nearly knocked Roz over. She braced herself against the railing and said, “I believe the rumors are true, at least as they pertain to the existence of the Information Room. Don’t know what’s in there, but I’ll tell you something interesting about the IR you don’t know. However, you have to agree we go inside once I do.”

  “Agreed.”

  “I happen to know that sleazy Dee Woodson keeps a key to the room in the top right drawer of his desk. On one of my visits to his office, I overheard him say so. I think I can grab the key when he’s not there. No security cameras in his office.” She paused a beat. “Interesting information delivered. Back inside.”

  17

  Roz considered herself an expert in avoiding Dee Woodson, whom she thought to be exceedingly unpleasant. From her desk, Roz could see down the hall to Woodson’s office door. So she was able to know when he entered and exited.

  Roz saw Dee leave his office around lunchtime to catch an elevator. Dee was notorious for taking extra-long lunch breaks.

  Roz gathered some papers she needed to drop off to Dee and headed down the hall. She entered his office, closed the door behind her, put the papers on the desk, and opened the top right drawer. The key was exactly where she remembered Dee saying it was. She removed the old-style, pin tumbler lock key (not the magnetic swipe card key used throughout most of the RobotWorld facility) from the back of the drawer. The tarnished brass key had a small label marked IR attached by a string through a small hole at the top of its bow. The rumor was that the Information Room was the only room in the basement with a tumbler lock. This further confirmed in Roz’s mind that the existence of the IR was real.

  Roz stuffed the key in her pants pocket and hotfooted it back to Taylor’s office. She smiled as she held the key over her head and said to Taylor, “Got it. And I’m sure I wasn’t seen.”

  “You’re the best. You got the key, I’ll do the reconnaissance.” He took the key from her and headed to the stairs, not the elevator. Five full minutes later, he reached the basement.

  After taking a moment to catch his breath, Taylor looked left, then right in the dark hallway. This was his first time in the basement. No security cameras as far as he could tell. The word around the facility was that the company had decided against installing security cameras in the basement for reasons not completely clear. Taylor ran the back of his hand over his brow to flick off a thin film of sweat. It seemed the air conditioning that kept the rest of RW so pleasantly temperature-controlled was not operating in this area, which felt like a hothouse. He looked for a door with an old-style lock. In one corner of the basement he found such a door; it displayed a tattered black paint job and was the only door without words identifying the purpose of the room. He inserted the key into the tumbler lock, the likes of which he hadn’t seen since he was a boy. He closed the door behind him and flipped on a light switch in the small room with a dusty, musty smell.

  Against one wall were dark-gray metal filing cabinets with a range of dates marked on each drawer. The dates reached back to the founding of RobotWorld over three decades earlier. Taylor opened a drawer with records covering a period that began four years ago, the period when he first suspected the beginning of the unholy nexus between the government and RW. This was around the time when Sophia Ross was named head of the corporation. He was surprised the records were mostly paper and not disk.

  Taylor pulled a few folders and read as fast as he could. He smiled, happy he’d taken a speed-reading course in college. The first file suggested evidence of the cozy relationship between the government and RW he’d suspected. There was also general evidence suggesting RW robots were in high government positions in violation of long-time laws regarding robots. Taylor skimmed the first few pages and made a mental note to return to this thick file in a future visit. Now, he just wanted to get a quick overview of what was in this room.

  As soon as he started reading a smaller file about an RW executive who’d mysteriously disappeared after defying Sophia and Shane Diggins on some minor issue, Taylor heard a loud crash in the hall and the sound of voices. He returned the file to the cabinet and turned off the light. The voices faded. He opened the door to find no one in the hall. He decided to head back to his office. The information he’d gotten on this first trip was significant, and he wanted Roz to return the key to Dee Woodson’s desk before Sophia’s acknowledged henchman returned from lunch. There would be other times to delve into these files. He locked the door and strode to the stairs.

  ***

  At her desk later that afternoon, Sophia Ross’s smooth white face and neck reddened as she focused on a wall telescreen. Her nose scrunched up in a way that made her look as if she’d smelled something extremely offensive. Part of the characteristics of personal robots like her was that they registered the same kind of internal feelings and external physical reactions to emotions as a human would. But just like a human, Sophia’s feelings took a one hundred eighty-degree reversal as she realized the action of the person on the telescreen was providing an incontestable reason for his job termination.

  The images on the telescreen showed Taylor Morris entering the basement Information Room and rummaging through a filing cabinet. Taylor was not authorized access to the IR. Sophia congratulated herself for recently installing the most modern and undetectable recording devices in the basement, the IR, and all executive offices, including hers and Dee Woodson’s. What she saw on the screen sealed Taylor’s fate at RobotWorld. The strict employee protection laws couldn’t save Taylor’s job now. How had he obtained the key to the Information Room? A few clicks brought up a video of Taylor’s assistant in Dee Woodson’s office stealing the key that allowed Taylor’s entrance into the basement room. Roz Troward’s fate as an RW employee was now sealed also.

&
nbsp; Sophia balled her fist and punched a button on the desk. In less than a minute, Dee Woodson was in her office. She showed him the videos.

  “Have you gotten enough information on Taylor to protect us from legal action?” she asked.

  “I’ve manufactured a good amount of dirt, but not quite enough,” Woodson replied. “This vid would certainly put us over the top with both of them.”

  “We won’t tell them about the video,” Sophia said. “We’ll keep it in our back pocket in case we need it in the future. I’ll fire him tomorrow. It’s too late in the day to prepare all the formal termination documents. My guess is he’ll suspect we know about his snooping, given the timing, as will his assistant. They’ll never take legal action against us after what they did. You’ll fire his assistant at the same time I’m firing him. I don’t know what he got from his prying, but it couldn’t have been much. He definitely didn’t remove any documents from the IR.”

  After Dee left her office, Sophia stewed at her desk. It was normal for her to feel anger at what Taylor had done, and normal to have a strong desire on how to handle such situations with as much force as she could get away with. These feelings were part of her programming. But she also prided herself in trying to be the best she could be. To evolve on her own as the best and brightest of humans might evolve—or maybe, just maybe, beyond the upper level of what humans were capable of. That was her dream. Evolve in all things intellectual as well as in what she considered the highest human values like love and compassion. But right now, her programming was winning the war inside her. More than anything, she wanted to kill Taylor Morris.

  18

  After being summoned to Sophia’s office soon after he arrived at work the next morning, Taylor entered and noticed two large male security officers sitting on the large black leather couch; they displayed stone-faced expressions matching that of his boss. He suppressed a laugh as he thought they all looked as deadly serious as the piranhas in the fish tank. One did not have to be a brainy intuitive—even though his intuition hadn’t been a major factor in his life since childhood—to surmise what was about to happen wouldn’t be good. Taylor was pleased he’d popped two Calm tablets an hour earlier to alleviate headache and hand tremor Serenity symptoms. He sat across the desk from Sophia.

  “There’s no easy way to say this, and I don’t want any discussion,” she said. “I’m letting you go with two weeks of severance pay. We’ve both known this action has been on the horizon in recent weeks.”

  Taylor was surprisingly tranquil. Maybe it’s the Calm. He wondered if she was aware of the snooping mission the day before. Probably. He focused on her green eyes and said nothing. He remained silent not because his soon-to-be former boss had said she didn’t want a discussion, but because he wanted to see if Sophia would say anything that could give him cause to file an unjustified termination action. Taylor realized that with his unauthorized IR intrusion the day before, he had given Sophia the ammunition to fire him, ammunition that would hold up in court despite the strong employee protection laws. He was curious as to whether she would mention the foray to the Information Room.

  Sophia continued, “By the way, the company has repossessed your Jennifer as of an hour ago. It’s our right. She’s our property, not yours.” Sophia smiled in a way he interpreted to be an expression of pure happiness. Almost as if she knew taking back Jennifer would hurt him as much as the loss of his job. She paused for a moment, seemingly to wait for a reaction. Taylor did his best to maintain his composure and remained silent.

  “Security will walk you back to your office so you can pack up,” Sophia said. “Then they’ll escort you out of the building. I wish you luck.” She nodded to the two uniformed security men, put on headphones, and looked down at the telescreen embedded in her desk top.

  Taylor stood. “I know you’re trying to tune me out. I want to say you’re making a mistake. I sense we’ll run into each other down the road—and when it happens, I’ll win.” Taylor recognized in the moment the hollowness of his words. It didn’t feel good being powerless and losing so much of what his self-image was based upon. He was disappointed in himself for not coming up with something profound to say, or something witty, something that would cut Sophia right now as cruelly as she’d just cut him with her words.

  She didn’t look up from the telescreen.

  Taylor moved toward the door, followed by the security men.

  When he got back to his soon-to-be former office, Roz was there, eyes red and moist, cleaning out her desk.

  “Sorry, Roz. My fault,” Taylor said.

  ***

  As Taylor and Roz cleaned out their desks and packed their personal belongings, the security men watched their every move. Taylor and Roz were silent; the only sounds being the opening and closing of desk drawers along with the packing of material in cardboard boxes. After a half hour the two now-former employees of RobotWorld, each cradling a large box in their arms, were accompanied by security to the well-lit, cavernous, underground parking garage where their PTVs were parked near each other.

  After the security men left them, Taylor set his box down on the hood of his PTV and said, “Well, it’s been a pleasure, Roz. Sorry again that my carping about the company to Sophia and probably the reconnaissance mission got us fired. I never saw any security cameras.” He didn’t want to add the clear thought that popped into his head: Maybe it was the damn Serenity that made me reckless in wanting to check out the IR.

  He took a deep breath and continued, “I should have realized there would be security cams. The rumors have always been that much of the basement was stuck in the past, with no modern amenities like security cameras. And we’d all heard there were no cameras in our executive offices. But maybe the lack of cameras was wishful thinking on my part. Sophia didn’t give me a reason for the termination, but I know my run to the IR had a lot to do with it. I guess the old saw that Sophia once mentioned to me about what happens to people who assume is true. And I’m exhibit A.”

  “It’s on me too,” Roz said. “I’m exhibit B. Within the past six months, I’d heard Dee Woodson say there were no security cameras in his office and the basement, and fifty percent of wanting to check out the Information Room was me. They didn’t give me a reason for my firing either. But it certainly had to do with the IR situation. That would preclude us from fighting them, I’m sure.” She sighed. “With today’s employment market, it’ll be tough to find a job that’ll pay us as much as here. But with my savings, I think I can make it comfortably for at least a year or two. And as you know, I do come from a family of some means. I can always fall back on them.”

  “I’m not sure I could hold out without a job as long as you can. And I don’t have any family to fall back on.” Taylor wasn’t going to bring up that he’d stretched himself thin to maintain his lavish lifestyle and that he had little savings. He definitely wasn’t going to mention his growing Serenity habit. “I’ve been starting to wonder what the world would be like if this place was no more. But now we are no more for this place.” He forced a laugh. “If you need a job reference, don’t hesitate to give me a call.”

  “Thanks. Let’s stay in touch. Maybe this might be good for you in the long run. You’ve grown increasingly dissatisfied with RW’s mission, and you’ve wanted to show more integrity in your professional life, in line with your values. I’m sure you’ll find something where you can do that.” She kissed him on the cheek, and they said goodbye.

  On the way home in his PTV, Taylor activated the on-board mechanism to make a record of his current situation. He had to talk out where he was right now—even if only to himself. “So much of my life has been dependent on my job. I fear for the future.” A ten-second pause. “Damn, I hope Sophia was only jerking my chain about repossessing Jennifer. But who am I kidding? Sophia repossessed her, for sure. RW has the right to take her back. Sophia’s on solid ground there. Ah, hell.”

  Tay
lor turned off the recorder as he pulled into the underground parking lot.

  He inserted the magnetic key to open his apartment door. No Jennifer running out of the kitchen to jump into his arms. It felt strange, and he missed her already. Even her clothes had been removed from the closet. Taylor was grudgingly impressed with RW’s efficiency. By current law, they had the right to enter his apartment to reclaim their property.

  The red message lights on his various telescreens and communication devices were blinking. He inserted a communication earpiece.

  “Hello, Mr. Morris,” said the recorded voice of Karen Stuart, the slim, young, genial business manager of the Galaxy Apartments. “First off, there were several men here this morning who had proper legal documentation to enter your apartment to reclaim property. I accompanied them to your place. I can attest to the fact they only removed what was legally theirs. A second issue is that Ernest Billick didn’t show up for work this morning. He’s not in his apartment and isn’t answering his communication device. Because you helped get him the job, I wonder if you might know of an alternate way to reach him.”

  Taylor returned the call and got Karen Stuart’s messaging function. “Hi, Karen. Thanks for accompanying those guys this morning to reclaim their property. About your Ernest Billick question: I don’t know him well. I don’t know of an alternate way to reach him. He’s always seemed reliable. I’m sure things are okay, and he’ll turn up soon. Sorry. I can’t help you.”