Runaway Robot

by Frank Cottrell Boyce

  But she was already lifting her CommsWatch to her mouth. She stared at me. ‘You were in here the other day. Looking for a hand. Then you came back for a leg. Who are you?’

  She didn’t wait for a reply. She babbled into her CommsWatch, ‘It’s me. Lost Property. It’s here. The Bad Robot. Come and get . . . Hello? Hello? HELLO? Oh, the reception in this place!’

  I decided to plead with her. ‘Please,’ I said, ‘don’t worry. He’s big, but he’s gentle. He really is my obedient servant.’

  Eric put the seat down and blinked.

  I AM YOUR OBEDIENT SERVANT, he said.

  The woman carried on frantically poking at her watch, trying to find a signal.

  ‘Seriously,’ I said, ‘he just likes making tea.’

  ‘He’s a. Soldier,’ Shatter said, beaming.

  ‘He is NOT a soldier.’

  ‘Why can’t I get a signal?’ howled the woman.

  I carried on begging. ‘Eric has made a few mistakes. But who hasn’t? But before that . . . there’s someone I’d like him to meet. It’s my brother. He’s in the high-dependency unit at Skyways St George’s General Hospital.’ I somehow thought that if I said the full name of the hospital, it would be more convincing.

  ‘This thing attacked your brother?’

  ‘No! No! Nobody attacked my brother. He was injured by a bus. So was I . . .’ I held up Lefty to remind her of the first time we met.

  ‘This thing tore your hand off?’

  ‘No!’ I was beginning to wish Tyler would show up to translate. ‘My brother was in an accident. Now he’s in a coma. I’ve been telling him all about Eric in his sleep. I think if he saw Eric, it might wake him up.’

  ‘Ahhh,’ said Happy to Help.

  Was she starting to understand? Was she going to let us go?

  I said, ‘Please. For my brother. For Arthur.’

  As soon as I said the name Arthur, Eric’s eyes blazed blue and then dimmed.

  ‘Ahhh, that’s very moving,’ said the woman. Then her phone beeped, and she cried, ‘Lost Property. Send help quick! Armed help, if you’ve got it. Lots of armed help.’

  While she was talking, Eric walked right past her desk, into the aisles of shelving. He was looking for something. We chased after him. But it was dark in there.

  ‘It’s dark. Very,’ said Shatter, ‘dark.’

  We stood still, waiting for our eyes to get used to it. Little by little, we began to see the long avenues of shelves stretching away into the shadows. Slowly we walked along the first aisle, listening out for the grind of Eric’s gears. Shatter kept stopping to squint at what was on the shelves.

  ‘There’s a. Coffin here.’

  ‘I know.’

  Some little thing began to glow near my elbow. Then it blasted out the music from Star Wars.

  ‘A phone,’ said Shatter. ‘A box of. Phones. Someone just. Called a lost phone. Does this stuff ever. Get found?’

  ‘I don’t know. Shush. Hear that?’

  Someone was rooting about in the shelves one aisle over. We dashed to the end of our aisle and doubled back on ourselves. And there was Eric, projecting beams of light through his own mouth and eyes as he stared into the shelves. He reached in and dragged something out.

  ‘Eric,’ I said. ‘It’s me, Alfie. Let’s go . . .’

  There was a sliding noise, then a ringing noise, then a swoosh of air. Eric had pulled something off the shelves. He’d found the thing he had come looking for.

  A sword.

  It was huge. It shone so brightly, we could read what was engraved on its blade: Felix Culpa. I did not have time to think about what the Shilling family motto was doing on it because Eric was already swooshing the sword as he hoisted it high above his head. It would have looked epic, except that the ceiling was NOT high above his head. In fact it was quite low. So, when he lifted the sword high, it went straight through the ceiling. Inside the ceiling were the electric wires that powered the lights and alarms for the Lost Property department. When the sword torched the wires, the lights and alarms went crazy, and the wires rained sparks and smoke into the room. Waves of blue light pulsed down the outside of his body.

  Never had Eric looked so controversial.

  Eric lowered the his sword to his side.

  Even without the waves of electricity washing over him, he looked different. Something was changing in him.

  ‘What’s he. Doing? Is he going. To explode?’

  ‘No,’ I said, though I could see why Shatter was asking that. ‘I think he’s . . . remembering.’

  He looked just like I felt on the day I remembered you, Arty. Like I was getting a memory upgrade.

  ‘Finally,’ said Shatter, ‘he’s got a. Weapon. Now we’ll see some. Action.’

  She was so right about that.

  Eric turned and looked up at the hole he had made in the ceiling.

  SORRY.

  He turned his head towards me and said, ALFIE.

  He’d never said my name before. It really was as if the sword had given him new powers. Maybe some of his memory or operating system was stored in the hilt.

  He looked up at the ceiling again.

  I CAN PERFORM SMALL HOUSEHOLD REPAIRS.

  In one of the parallel aisles, I could hear the tut tut of Happy to Help’s heels getting nearer. Looking up, I could see the little halo of light that followed her through her dark labyrinth. She was talking to someone. There were other footsteps alongside hers.

  Reinforcements.

  ‘She’s coming,’ I said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  FARE THEE WELL, FAIR DAMSEL.

  The footsteps stopped.

  She’d heard us.

  She was leading security right to us.

  Eric gripped his sword. For a moment, I thought he was going to massacre them. Instead, he careered down the aisle in the opposite direction. We followed him past the coffin and the phones until he came to the ‘Staff Only’ door I’d used the first time I came to Lost Property. It was locked, but, to be honest, when you’re talking about Eric, locks are not that relevant.

  He pushed the door. It swung open.

  We burst through it into baggage reclaim. After the dark of Lost Property, the light was blinding. I was expecting to run into a crowd of people, but there was no one there. Not a soul. The luggage carousels were all still. The information boards were blank. The great airport machine was switched off.

  For a second, we just stood there in a kind of trance. Then Eric turned on his heels and strode towards the big doors that lead into arrivals.

  ‘Eric! No!’ I shouted.

  Too late. They slid open as he approached them. On the other side was what looked like half the population of the planet, all staring expectantly.

  They were not expecting Eric.

  It was as though someone had pressed the mute button on the world. Then Eric swept his sword up from his side, into the air, in his outstretched arm. Somebody screamed. They all screamed. Not going to lie – some of them didn’t scream. They took out their phones and filmed other people screaming.

  Eric took a step forward. The crowd took a step backwards. The security guy with the big beard appeared.

  ‘Who does this belong to?’ he said, pointing to Eric.

  I said, ‘Eric doesn’t belong to anyone.’

  ‘What he’s saying,’ came a voice from the crowd, ‘is just leave them alone and let them go.’ It was Tyler. He’d come to the airport to see what the fuss was about. He came and stood with us.

  ‘This unlicensed robot,’ said Beardy Security, turning to the crowd, ‘has delayed all your flights and created an atmosphere of panic. We wish to assure you that we are dealing the situation.’

  A little figure literally leaped out of the crowd. It was D’Arcy.

  ‘Let them go!’ she yelled. ‘Or else.’ Then she did a few of her karate moves.

  Here we all were, defending Eric.

  FOR GLORY!

  Eric strode towards the doors.
The crowd jumped back. Eric could be pretty frightening when he was just waving a baguette around; with a real, actual sword, even I was terrified.

  When Eric grabbed me by the collar and tucked me under his arm, someone in the crowd screamed, ‘He’s kidnapping that little boy!’

  Someone else shouted, ‘He’s taking that kid hostage!’

  I shouted back, ‘He’s just being cautious!’

  No one seemed to hear – and, besides, when Eric left the building by walking straight through the plate-glass window, showering me with a million broken shards, I realized I was mistaken.

  Outside, vans with sirens were powering up to the airport entrance. Eric held me up in the air for everyone to see. He really had taken me hostage. He was using me as a human shield.

  Me! The kid who’d found his leg!

  There was a shuttle bus waiting outside the airport. Eric dropped me on the pavement and clambered aboard. Before I could even stand up, the bus moved off. The sheer weight of Eric must have made the driverless bus think it was full. I watched it speed off, followed by a swarm of drones and, higher up, by a news organisation, thinking, In four stops time, that will be outside Skyways St George’s General Hospital. That’s where Eric is headed.

  There was a woman standing alone on the pavement watching it too. I didn’t even notice her until she turned to face me, eyes so wide you might think she’d just seen a flying elephant. Eyes so wide, in fact, that at first I didn’t recognize her. It was Dr Shilling.

  ‘That’s impossible,’ she gasped. ‘It’s HIM! That’s the actual Eric.’

  Before I could answer, people started pouring out of the airport on to the pavement, waving their phones around, wanting to film the robot. When they saw me, they crowded round, asking if I was all right. Did I need anything?

  Someone noticed my hand and said, ‘That is one cool hand, by the way. Can you move the fingers and stuff?’

  Everyone agreed that it was a cool hand. I moved the fingers, and everyone applauded, and got their phones out again to film it or get a selfie with Lefty. I thought I was never going to get away. Then a hand reached through the scrum and yanked me out.

  It was Dr Shilling.

  ‘OK, Alfie Miles,’ she said sternly, chivvying me towards the short-stay car park. ‘Get in the car and tell me everything you know. We need to stop Eric before it’s too late.’

  Dr Shilling drove frighteningly fast. Just after the airport, there was a police roadblock. She tapped the smart glass of her windscreen. It flashed the message ‘Doctor on a Mission’, and they waved us through.

  All the way to the hospital, Dr Shilling ranted and raved. ‘I don’t believe it! You were sheltering that . . . machine. Do you have ANY idea how dangerous Eric is?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you must have heard the stories.’

  ‘You said the stories weren’t true. On the news. I heard you.’

  ‘Of course I said they weren’t true. Because they’re not true. Not exactly. But Eric is dangerous.’

  There was a helicopter hovering over the bypass.

  ‘He’s really polite, and he wants to be helpful,’ I said.

  ‘I’m going to tell you how dangerous he is. Before Grandad Shilling started making limbs for children, he built aeroplanes.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘His wife – my grandmother, Honoria Shilling – was the test pilot. Their planes were so safe and so popular that the airfield grew into an airport. They were asked to showcase their latest plane – the Shilling Excalibur – at a special exhibition in London. Normally a king or a duke comes to open a big exhibition like that. But the engineers thought kings and dukes were things of the past. They were all about the future. So, two of them – Captain Richards and Mr Reffell – built a robot to perform the opening ceremony. A mechanical knight.’

  ‘Just like Leonardo da Vinci?’

  ‘Exactly. Richards and Reffell were Da Vinci in brown overalls. No one had ever seen anything like their robot. He could stand, sit, walk and talk. And when he talked sparks flew from his mouth because thirty-five thousand volts were shooting through his body. His name . . .’

  ‘. . . was Eric.’

  ‘Exactly. The Shillings were really thrilled with Eric. My dad, Arthur, was just a little boy then, and he queued for hours to shake the robot’s massive hand. When he finally introduced himself, Eric looked him in the eye and said “Arthur? Like the king? Perhaps we could be friends?” My dad couldn’t think of anything more amazing than having a robot friend.

  ‘Eric was a sensation. Invitations poured in – New York, Paris, Cairo, Valparaíso. In Buckingham Palace, Eric sang the national anthem for the king. Then suddenly – no one knew why – Eric disappeared. The world forgot about him. The history books say he was used as scrap during the war.’ The doctor swerved around a slow car in front.

  I almost said, ‘Talking of history, we will be history ourselves any minute now if you don’t drive a bit more slowly.’

  But Dr Shilling did not pause to breathe. ‘But Eric was not scrapped,’ she said. ‘The truth is Honoria Shilling found him. It was years later. My dad would have been about ten years old. Honoria was delivering a new plane to an airfield in the rainforest in Suriname. When she landed, the airfield was deserted. All except for a metal figure leaning against a tree. Birds had nested in his head. There was a sign stuck in the ground at his feet that read “Rust in Peace”. Honoria recognized Eric right away. Eventually she found an old mechanic working in one of the hangars. He remembered Eric arriving years before and how excited everyone had been to see him. But the men who brought him – that must be Captain Richards and Mr Reffel – had been called away on urgent business. They’d promised to come back for Eric, but they never did. The mechanic seemed to think that that’s what Honoria had come for. He helped her pack Eric into her plane and she flew him back to Skyways.

  ‘Of course, she tried to find Captain Richards, but he seemed to have vanished too. So, my dad, Arthur, and Eric finally could be friends. My dad and his father set to work. They gave Eric new batteries, oiled his joints, got him working. But they didn’t stop there. They put light-sensitive cells in his eye sockets and taught him to see, using candles in beer bottles. They motorized his feet so he could shuffle. They kept on improving how he moved.

  ‘All the ideas they got from working on Eric, they put into making new hands and feet for children who’d been injured in war or accidents. You could almost say Eric started the Limb Lab. Or, at least, inspired it.’

  Dr Shilling smiled. ‘Things got so busy, my grandparents programmed Eric to be a friend and guardian to their son – my dad. Eric could make tea and snacks . . .’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘Eric sounds really good. He looked after Arthur. He helped injured children. What are you worried about?’

  ‘Eric was responsible,’ said Dr Shilling, ‘for the death of my grandmother.’

  I gasped. ‘What? Eric – a murderer?’

  Dr Shilling continued her story as we sped along the bypass.

  ‘Eric got so smart, they began to wonder if they could perhaps teach him to fly a plane. He’d be the perfect pilot of the future – a pilot who never gets tired, never makes mistakes. Or so they thought. They trained him to be a pilot. One day, Eric was flying a plane back from an air show with Honoria and my dad on board. As they got near to Skyways airport, Eric saw that the plane’s approach was all wrong. The runway had been evacuated. So, Eric – pilot of the future – ejected from the plane. He shot into the air and crashed through the roof of one of the hangars. He left the plane without a pilot. It crashed. And my grandmother – she died that day.’

  ‘Oh.’ I didn’t know what to say.

  Dr Shilling drove even faster and took the bends even more wildly. ‘She was a hero.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘There are no buts. She was a hero. And she died that day because of Eric.’

  ‘But that wasn’t Eric’s fault . . .’ />
  ‘A human pilot,’ said Dr Shilling, ‘might have flown off and tried again, but Eric calculated the risks and saved himself. As soon as he was in danger, he bailed out, leaving Honoria and Arthur to their fate.

  ‘By some miracle, my dad, Arthur, was found wandering around the woods. After that, Eric was never mentioned again in the family. All photographs of him were destroyed. The hangar where he was built was closed up. Neither my grandad nor my father wanted anything to do with robots or aeroplanes ever again. They put everything they’d learned from Eric into the Limb Lab. They were able to forget about him.

  ‘But now he’s back. There’s a pattern here, Alfie. Eric gets lost. Someone finds him. Fixes him up. Then he does something terrible. And I think he’s about to do something terrible.’

  There was already panic in the hospital when we arrived. An announcement was telling people to leave quickly and quietly. It was hard to move against the flow of people exiting the building. Luckily Dr Shilling knew to use the emergency stairs to get up to the second floor.

  When we clattered through the doorway, Eric was already up the corridor, marching towards HDU. His head was scraping along the ceiling, knocking the fluorescent light strips down one after the other. They swung from their wires like lightsabers wielded by invisible Jedi.

  There were still lots of people in the corridor. Most of them were screaming and pointing as Eric stamped along. His sword’s bright blade flashed as he walked, as though it was slicing and slashing the sunlight. He seemed not to notice the fuss and noise all around him. He seemed not to notice anything until he came to the play area.

  The one with the big yellow dragon slide.

  The dragon’s big eyelashes and red-lipped smile did not charm Eric.

  SUBMIT. His sword sang in his hand. FOR GLORY!

  Eric swung the sword. The dragon’s head bounced off the window and rolled a surprisingly long way back down the corridor.

  . . . AND FOR ARTHUR!

  He really said that.

  While Eric was still fighting the dragon, I ran ahead. I tried to get to you before he did, to warn Mum and the doctors. I’d forgotten the door of the HDU was locked. I rang and rang on the bell. The door said, ‘Please ring once only and wait for someone to answer. Remember our staff are busy. Thank you for your patience.’