Private Walter John Prawak. Communications. One of four tasked to maintain contact between Unos and The City and between the six subdivisions. He stood one hundred and sixty-seven centimeters tall, his very short hair a mix of brown and blonde—sixty/forty Alice estimated, checking literary references concerning the numbers of hair on the human head—and his eyes were a mix of brown and green and gold she found referenced as hazel. The skin of his face was both pinker and warmer than her data told her was normal. Given a stimulus such as embarrassment, a person’s sympathetic nervous system opened blood vessels, flooded the skin with blood, and resulted in reddening of the face. Evidence strongly suggested this had occurred within Private Prawak, although Alice had observed no reason for embarrassment. He’d stated fact.
“You trust your people, don’t you Major?” Mr. Harrin asked.
“Of course I do!”
“Then let’s let them do their jobs while we head to my office and discuss the continuing relationship between UI and the military. I have comfortable chairs…” Mr. Harrin grinned. “…and refreshments.”
“This is…”
“I know.”
He could not possibly know. Not with so few defined parameters within the set.
* * *
There were seven military stations in their chamber. Two bays intended for maintenance and repair, two stations for software support, communications—where Private Prawak adjusted a headset—the sergeant’s desk, and, finally, the captain’s desk. The first five stations would be filled twenty-four/seven. The last two would not. Captain Han and Sergeant Blake walked from station to station, pausing, observing, and naming the occupant. Alice didn’t recognize their function.
After six minutes and eleven seconds, they stopped in front of the charging stations.
“I saw them back at the UI labs,” the captain said. “I expected them to look different once they were awake.”
“Their eyes light up, sir.”
“Not much of a change, Sergeant. Still, I suppose my refrigerator looks no different whether it’s running or not.” When the captain touched Alice’s chest piece, the temperature of his hand was 37.2 degrees. Slightly elevated. “I’m looking forward to seeing them work.”
“Work, sir?”
“Work, Sergeant.” He applied intermittent force to his hand and Alice identified a pat. “Get some sleep, you lot.” Programmed command, colloquially expressed. “You’ve got a busy day tomorrow.”
Captain Han’s prediction turned out to be inaccurate.
They spent the next three days waiting, mostly outside on the concrete platform at the edge of the parking lot, although three hours, twenty-two minutes, and seventeen seconds were spent inside in the community center while it rained. They hadn’t needed to go inside, they were fully waterproof, but the captain had insisted for the sake of the corporal assigned to watch over them. Mr. Harrin came and went. People passed by. People stared. No one approached.
On day four, Vasyl Kastellanus and Peter Hunt crossed the parking lot on their scooters and stopped at the edge of the concrete.
“Can we climb on them?” Vasyl asked.
“Ask them,” Mr. Harrin replied before the corporal could speak.
“Can we climb on you?” Peter asked.
Networked, Alice spoke for all of them. “Yes.”
The boys climbed. They asked questions. They were lifted up and put down and Alfred carried them across the parking lot and back to the concrete again in the smallest of the carts. After two hours, Vasyl reminded Peter they had to go home for lunch.
“We’ll be back,” Peter said, picking up his scooter. “Robots are cool.”
After that, there were always children. Peter and Vasyl were always among them.
Alice learned that tears could be generated by anger, frustration, or joy, and that small humans, for all their fragility, were resilient.
“I’m okay!”
“You have breached your physical integrity and are bleeding.”
Vasyl swiped at the blood dribbling down his shin, then wiped his palm on his shorts. “I skinned my knee. Don’t be such a worrywart.”
Networked in their charge stations, they shared the data Alice and Adam accumulated. The high-pitched, extended sound of a scream could be caused by excitement as well as pain. Children were scrupulous about the perceived division of resources with younger siblings, announcing the lack of fairness in eighty-one point nine percent of the incidents. Declarative statements were untrue fifty-seven percent of the time.
“It is mathematically impossible for a five year old child not to have laughed for twenty-nine years,” Adam pointed out.
“Quantum?” Abigail suggested.
“Subjective,” Alfred offered.
“We have to get the adults involved,” Mr. Harrin said to the corporal, after ten days of children.
“Hey! Do not stick that up your nose!” the corporal replied. There was a ninety-two point six percent probability she hadn’t been speaking to Mr. Harrin.
The next day, Mr. Harrin took Arthur to the grocery store. Finished shopping, he loaded his bags into the smallest cart and suggested Mrs. Singh, who’d left the store behind him, load her bags as well. By the end of the next week, Arthur and Alison were making deliveries throughout the subdivision. The week after, they began meeting the trains and unloading the baggage car. The week after that, Adam created a schedule that allowed every adult resident of the suburb equal access and set up repetitive transportation routes. In September, they learned Alison, cartless, could cover the distance between the Hunt’s house and the school in three minutes fourteen seconds, allowing for traffic avoidance and a short cut down a flight of stairs. Adam added a schedule addendum refusing special treatment to the younger members of the community. Peter and Vasyl ignored it. As did Alison.
Alfred and Abigail had begun to pick up small jobs—changing tires, cleaning eaves—their acceptance finalized when Abigail removed a cat from a tree. The cat preferred to remain arboreal, Abigail’s enamel required a touch up, and a high proportion of the resulting tears were happy. Their schedule was less complex than the transport bots required, but was as full.
Alice and Adam continued to spend most of their days on the concrete slab. The residents of Unos, who understood transport and maintenance, were unsure of how to interact with the final two robots. Now back to school, even the children—all but Peter and Vasyl—stopped coming around.
Then Adam removed a spray can from the hand of a teenager, who’d taken the train in from The City to stay with his uncle and had attempted to alleviate boredom with vandalism. While the young man fought and complained and finally dangled, defeated, Adam delivered a two hour lecture on the intersection of modern art and civil disobedience.
“Harsh, but fair,” Mr. Harrin allowed.
Captain Han sank into his desk chair, propped his elbows on the desk, and dropped his face into his hands “This is not what they’re supposed to be doing.”
“Adam voluntarily protected an expanse of empty wall.” Mr. Harrin shrugged. “It’s a start.”
The next day, watching Adam protect the community from dog excrement…
“I was going to come back and scoop it! I just went home for a bag!”
…Mr. Weinstein bumped into Alice, apologized, rolled his eyes, and said, “So, how about those Mets?”
Alice knew all about those Mets.
It turned out that Mr. Weinstein had firm opinions on the National League using a designated hitter.
They were learning.
* * *
The corporals left first. With all six robots serving simultaneously, a single corporal could no longer supervise them and the budget wouldn’t extend to additional personnel. Arthur drove the corporals and their belongings to the train station in his largest people carrier, festooned with signs made by Alfred and Abigail that said, “We’ll miss you!” and “Good luck!” and “Hasta la vista, baby!” Alice had found the images in her file on leave
-taking.
Adam played stirring music.
The corporals looked confused, but pleased. And then they were gone.
The tree in the center of the community center lawn grew taller.
When Alison’s left servo was exposed to twenty-eight ounces of root beer, just to see what would happen, Adam suggested both Peter and Vasyl spend twenty hours polishing dusty metal, matching the time it took Alfred to fix the damage their curiosity had caused. Mr. Harrin corrected it to non-sequential hours and agreed, although he sent Alice to convince the Hunt’s and the Kastellanus’ that the punishment was appropriate.
They were remarkably easy to convince.
When the twenty hours ended, the boys continued to use the charging chamber as a sort of club house.
“Why don’t any of you have red eyes?” Vasyl asked, polishing mud off Arthur’s visual sensors. “The robots in the movies have red eyes.”
“I don’t know,” Alice admitted as Adam searched his memory for a reason.
“The robots in the movies are bad guys,” Peter answered before Adam could. “Here to conquer the earth. Our robots are good guys. That’s why they don’t have red eyes.”
“That makes sense,” Alice told him. “What are you drawing?”
“Designing.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” He held the piece of paper. “It’s The City…”
It was artistic, Alice allowed, more than it was accurate.
“…and a robot.”
The robot, painted a shiny, metallic silver, towered over The City. The visible bits weren’t quite humanoid.
“You didn’t put in its eyes.” Vasyl crossed to poke at the paper.
Peter cocked his head and studied the picture then reached for the markers.
“Is that silver the touch-up paint we use on Adam?” Corporal Prawak asked.
Both boys jumped.
“You’re supposed to tell us when he’s sneaking up,” Peter hissed, leaning toward Alice. He had a smear of silver paint on his jeans.
“He can hear you,” Alice pointed out.
* * *
Peter and Vasyl grew taller.
The tree in the community center lawn was sturdy enough to climb although neither boy seemed interested in the traditional pursuit.
Alice shifted to get a better view of the object between them. “What is it?”
“Well, it used to be a Roomba.” Peter handed Vasyl a screwdriver. “But now it has arms.”
“What do the arms do?” Adam asked.
“Don’t know yet.” Vasyl looked up and grinned around the screw in his mouth. “We’ll know when they do it.”
“That seems dangerous.”
Peter rolled his eyes. “It’s a vacuum.”
And Vasyl muttered, “Worrywart.”
* * *
The technicians left next. Alfred and Abigail were stronger, more flexible, and didn’t have to be paid. The first time their end effectors cracked open her case, Alice wondered why they’d ever had humans make repairs. Alfred and Abigail left no unsightly smudges after devouring illicit bags of flavored chips.
Adam caught a child cheating at hopscotch, made her cry, and was assigned to the nursery school for a month. When a different child shoved a wad of modeling clay through his speaker grill, he learned to weigh his responses.
When Captain Maalouf—who’d replaced Captain Han—cycled out, she was replaced in turn by a lieutenant.
* * *
They all helped build the high school.
Private Prawak was promoted to Master-Corporal, got married, and bought a house in Style Six on Alcott Court, although Alice had informed him of all the factors that made the newer Style Eleven objectively a better choice. There were twenty-four styles, but only sixteen had been made. The field intended for the rest of the subdivision became the place Peter and Vasyl tested their more explosive creations. Abigail and Alfred became skilled at extinguishing grass fires. Adam gave lectures on combustion rates that both boys ignored.
“More physically flexible, less mentally flexible,” Peter noted, stomping out a stray spark.
“My dad’s going to be pissed about his lawnmower.” Vasyl sighed and poked the charred metal. “Alice, could you…”
“I’ll talk to him,” she said.
* * *
“They’ve got robots in The City that have actual arms and legs.” Mr. Hunt mimed actual arms and legs. “Not pistons or stacked bowling balls. And these robots, they have real faces, not just a pair of lights and a speaker grill.”
“What do robots need real faces for?” Peter scoffed as Arthur carried them and the new entertainment unit from the station. “They’re not supposed to look like people, Dad. They’re supposed to look like robots.”
Networked, Alice wondered what robots were supposed to look like.
* * *
Master-Corporal Prawak was promoted again and a picture of a sleeping cat joined the picture of his wife on his monitor. The boys had convinced him to teach them how communication systems worked and their next creations remained in contact with each other at a maximum distance of one point seven kilometers. Adam, and the sergeant’s wife, worked out a system where lessons in advanced robotics became a reward for completed homework. Adam wondered what the sergeant had to complete to be rewarded and Alice realized there were sections of his memory Adam had never accessed.
The tree in the community center lawn had grown taller than Abigail at full extension.
The military software specialists were replaced by United Industries technicians. They stayed for a week, looked amused in the charging chamber, told Mr. Harrin they couldn’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear, and left.
“You don’t need them,” Peter declared, adjusting a strut on Arthur’s axle. “You’ve got us.”
“Yeah, real reassuring.” Vasyl kicked at the soles of Peter’s shoes. “You’re doing it wrong.”
“Bite me.”
“You wish.”
It was reassuring. Although Alice wasn’t sure why.
Sergeant Nichols was reassigned just before the holidays.
“I’ll be quartermaster,” Alice told her. “Adam will make sure the reports are written and filed. We’ll see that everything gets done.”
“I’m sure you’ll do an excellent job.” Sergeant Nichols plucked at the cuff of her jacket. Alice wondered why she was nervous. “Listen, you can’t be upgraded because your programing’s too unique, but UI has never liked to keep old tech running. You should…” She took a deep breath, glanced past the train, toward The City, and shook her head. “Good luck,” she said, and was gone.
“She didn’t finish.” Abigail waved all four arms.
“What should we do?” Alfred asked.
Alice rolled toward the rising plume of smoke and the faint sound of an argument. “Get the fire extinguisher,” she said.
* * *
The holidays opened with a three day blizzard. Between packages and snow removal, Arthur and Alison had been rolling twenty-four seven for over a week. Alfred and Abigail, under the direction of the Decorating Committee, had strung two hundred and forty-seven thousand lights.
“It’s very pretty,” Alice said.
“I’d find it more aesthetically pleasing if there was more green and less blue,” Adam grumbled.
* * *
When Peter and Vasyl graduated from high school, they dropped by the party at the charging chamber in a laughing crowd of their friends, didn’t eat any of the cake Alfred had made, got sticky fingerprints all over everyone, and left twenty minutes and seventeen seconds later. They didn’t notice that the pictures they’d drawn over the years had been framed and displayed on the walls, from the first silver robot towering over the silhouette of The City to an exploded diagram of gears and snap rings and rods that Abigail swore had been based on her left leg.
They left for university together, with scholarships from United Industries and guaranteed jobs after graduating.
Vasyl specializing in Robotic Software Architecture…
“A hierarchical set of control loops, representing high-level mission planning on high-end computing…”
“I know, Adam.”
…and Peter in Robotics Engineering.
“Behind the scene designing? Not working with your hands?”
“Let it go, Alice.”
They went to the station to see the two boys, and a number of their classmates, off.
“Remember,” Peter shouted, his cheeks flushed, “robots are cool!”
“And damp,” Adam muttered. The rain came down harder.
Allegory, Alice thought.
The lieutenant left on the next train.
Sergeant Prawak shook his head. “They can’t shut down communications. We need to maintain contact with The City and the other subdivisions.”
“But you’re only at the board for eight hours.”
He shrugged broad shoulders. “Things are more portable now.”
Vasyl brought the first of the new designs from The City. Peter brought the second and third. After that, Alice saw no point in counting. The new designs were definitely more portable. Sensors registered what bulbs to replace in the ropes of holiday lights that swarms of shiny drones had set in place. They cleaned eaves, tucked inside the curve, sensors detecting foreign materials. They mowed lawns, sensors detecting the edges of the grass. They plowed snow, sensors detecting the edge of the curb.
“We can still do all that.”
Mrs. Singh, a streak of silver through her hair, patted Alice on her arm. “We don’t like to bother you, dear.”
“So they serve,” Adam muttered. “We still protect.”
“What do we protect?” Abigail demanded. “There’s no threat!”