Tiny drones kept patios and picnics free of mosquitos.
Tiny wheeled robots ran errands and looked remarkably like Roombas with arms.
“They don’t learn,” Alice pointed out. “They only obey. What happens when they stop?”
“They can’t go against their programming,” Mr. Harrin said, weight on his cane. “It’s too basic.”
They stood together watching an errand bot—two small for two syllables, Adam had announced when they’d first shown up—turn random circles around the charging chamber, its GPS scrambled.
“Small bots, small errors,” Mr. Harrin said.
“And we’re large so they assumed large errors,” Alice realized. “That’s why we were under military supervision.”
“That’s one of the reasons.”
“But we didn’t make large errors…”
“Which is why you’re no longer under military supervision.”
Sergeant Prawak cleared his throat.
“Minimal supervision,” Mr. Harrin amended.
“We could still make large errors,” Adam protested, shuffling out of the way as the confused bot went past.
“Doing what?” Alison asked. She rolled forward and the errand bot disappeared under her right wheel with a definitive crunch. “Oops.”
* * *
The children stopped coming home.
“Hey, you guys will always be cool…”
Peter’s hand on her arm felt warm and damp.
“…but why would we live all the way out here? The City’s where the jobs are.”
“The City’s where UI is,” Vasyl added, tightening one of Arthur’s struts for old times sake. “We’re on the cusp of big things. You just wait.”
* * *
Sergeant Prawak retired. Communications became entirely automated, accumulated experiences downloaded during charge and sent straight back to UI.
“The other subdivisions are the same,” the sergeant said, a beer in one hand, the other arm around his wife. “There’s no one left to look after you.”
“We can look after ourselves,” Adam told him.
“I know, but…” He frowned, thoughtfully. “Be boring for a while, okay. Do boring things.”
Alice locked her legs and rolled across the room to stand beside him. “They’re going to junk us, aren’t they?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think anyone cares about what happens out here. Just don’t remind them of what you can do, okay?”
The tree in the middle of the community center lawn snapped in a storm, too old to bend.
* * *
“Hit me again, Alice.”
Alice carefully filled a clean glass stein, weighed it, calculated the coefficient of friction for the two surfaces, and slid the stein right into the curve of Gordon Hunt’s waiting hand. She could no more keep from doing the math than she could tango. Actually, the tango might be easier.
“Remember the first beer you ever got me, Alice? Never mind, stupid question, not like you can forget can you? That must suck, remembering every crappy little thing that’s ever happened to you. The sun was shining,” he continued before she could agree that remembering every crappy little thing did indeed suck. “The sun was shining and the first families were all out on the lawn and Harrin was going on and on and on about who the hell remembers.” He frowned, bushy gray brows drawing in. “What the hell happened to Harrin?”
“He died, Mr. Hunt.”
“I went to the funeral?”
“You did, Mr. Hunt.” The whole community had gone to the funeral. Peter had returned, but Vasyl had sent his regrets, his wife about to give birth to their second son.
“I wish you’d come back more,” Alice had said to Peter. “You used to think we were cool.”
“Robots are still cool.” He’d grinned. “But you’re almost people now and there’s way too many of them.”
“Mr. Hunt? Are you okay?”
He started, blinked, and glanced up at her. “Yeah, good. I’m good.” He blinked again. “Harrin didn’t make you, because that was a couple of hundred old geezers who used to work at UI, you know, like me, back when I young.” He paused and stared into Alice’s eyes. “I don’t mean like me like I made you, cause none of them people moved out here, did they? Harrin was your supervisor or your keeper or your manager or something, right?”
His title had been Supervising Manager of Dispersement Project One and he’d held it until he died. Sergeant Prawak had been right. No one at UI had cared.
Alice paused the irradiation of a bacteria dense surface. She wouldn’t allow the community center’s cleaning bots into the bar or the charging chamber. Because of their small size, they’d been programmed with adaptive self-preservation parameters, and after Alison had crushed half a dozen, the rest … adapted. When she realized Mr. Hunt was still waiting for an answer, she lifted both arms slightly and let them fall. “Mr. Harrin was our friend.”
“Yeah? What was his first name.”
“Mister.”
Brown eyes narrowed, then widened, then his brows rose and he started to laugh. “Mister. Fuck me. I guess he was your friend at that.” He took a long swallow and as he set the stein back on the bar, the crystal on the back of his left hand flashed yellow. “Fuck you,” he told it, “I’m eighty-two years old. I know when I’ve had enough. Better than some crappy piece of UI tech. No offense.”
“None taken.”
“My son insisted I wear it. You remember Peter? He’s a grandfather now. Two kids, three grandkids, and a million little baby bots. My grandbots,” he added with a snort. “It’s all single function stuff now. Hundreds of bots linked together, all doing their own thing whether we want them to or not, you know? You want to measure my blood alcohol level, I’ve got to touch you, right? Or you’ve got to touch me. Point is, we both got a choice about it. Not with this.” He waved his arm and defiantly emptied the stein. The crystal flashed red, although the alcohol couldn’t have reached his blood when it had barely reached his stomach. Alice assumed Mrs. Hunt had adjusted the settings again. “This is the stuff Peter’s got the kids working on now. Up to big things in The City.” He slid off the bar stool, holding the edge of the bar until he stabilized. “Big things my ass. Little things. No one dreams big anymore. If they ever bothered to come home, I’d tell them that.”
“Should I call Arthur?” She came around the bar, close enough to catch him if he fell. Protecting him from four beers and age.
“No point. But thanks for asking. This thing…” He sneered at the back of his left hand. “…has already sent the car. Didn’t ask, did it? Believes it knows best. Doesn’t think it knows best, because it doesn’t think, it just reacts.” As they stepped out of the community center bar, onto the concrete pad, he wrapped his fingers around her arm where it narrowed above her wrist. “You’re good people. I’m glad you weren’t scrapped.”
“Thank you, Mr. Hunt.” She helped him down the curb and into the tiny, single seat, remote-controlled car.
“Gord,” he said as the door closed. As the crash harness slid into place, he added a petulant, “Robots used to be cool.”
Alice watched until she was certain the car was heading in the right direction—the old fashioned phones owned by some of the residents occasionally messed with the 2.5 GHz homing sensors the bots used—then she returned to the bar. At midnight, as she had at every midnight for years, she closed up and returned to the charging chamber.
It gleamed. Peter and Vasyl’s pictures were carefully removed and replaced daily when the walls were cleaned. A person could eat a meal off any part of the charging chamber, or off anything in it, with no ill effects. So far, Sergeant Prawak, the only person who still came around, insisted on using a plate.
She rolled across the chamber, and into her station. “My actuators are killing me.”
“Maybe because you were using them all evening.”
“I know why…”
“Then why bring it up? We all know your
actuators are killing you, you tell us every night.” Adam’s upper scanning ring made a single rotation. “Are your logic circuits misfiring again?”
“My logic circuits have never misfired.”
“That’s what you say, but I think your memory’s faulty too.”
“At least I haven’t rusted solid from doing nothing all day.” Alice had created the community center bar as a way to maintain personal interactions. Tetris nights were very popular.
“While you’re contributing to delinquency, I’ve been processing new information.”
“I heard one of those tiny car things,” Arthur muttered, flexing his axle. “Because sitting in a thing that’s likely to take you to the woods and lose you is so much safer than my cart.”
“That happened once,” Alice reminded him.
“Happened once, could happen again. Those things are up to something, you mark my words. They’re too damned quiet. You could always hear us coming.”
The station next to Arthur’s was empty. “Where’s Alison?”
“Am I her keeper? Are you? She wants to roam the streets, who does it hurt?”
It was garbage night on Streets A to F. Containers were put out in the marked rectangles for the garbage bots to drive over and empty, automatically sorting the recycling. Alison liked to run the route a hundred meters in front of them. Out in the garage, the pile of junk on her largest cart leaned precariously to the left and Alice pretended not to see the protruding piece of bot in the much smaller pile by her station. “It wouldn’t matter if she didn’t block the network.”
“She wouldn’t block the network if you didn’t cluck around her like an old hen.”
“I don’t…”
“Cluck. Cluck. Cluck.”
“That’s not…”
“Cluck. Cluck. Cluck.”
“It’s my turn to clean the bar!” Abigail rolled toward the mop closet, arms waving. Without enough work for the two of them, she and Alfred traded off. There was never much mess because there were never many customers after six fifty. They all wanted to be home for Jeopardy.
“Why do you even bother?” Arthur’s antennae drooped. “It’s not like anyone cares.”
“I care,” Alice protested.
“You’ve got wires crossed.”
“Crossed? I can fix that.” Alfred put his knitting away. The striped scarf was now forty three meters long, the bulk of it curled up behind the lieutenant’s old desk.
“There’s nothing to fix. It was just Arthur being an ass.”
“Arthur doesn’t have an ass.” His eyes brightened. “I could fix that too.” He extended his arm, the nested steel circles hissing like an ignored kettle, and pulled a half circle of plastic off Alison’s junk pile. “Give this a nice matte finish with the touch up paint, glue it to your…”
“No,” Arthur snapped.
“But…”
“Why don’t you take that scarf and hang yourself with it.”
Abigail spun around, holding mop, cleanser, bucket, and a bag of rags. “Arthur!”
“Processing new information,” Adam repeated loudly.
Not for the first time, Alice wished she could sigh. “Fine. Go on.”
“Ralph Waldo Emerson said that the purpose of life is to be useful.” He waved both arms, light reflecting differently from the different shades of touch-up paint Alfred and Abigail had been forced to use over the years, after the original silver had run out. “We have no purpose therefore we have no life.”
“This again,” Arthur muttered.
“If you’d let me finish…” Eyes at full brightness, he glared around the charging chamber, the green reflecting back off the other’s unlit crystals. “If we have no life and yet we function…”
“We serve and protect.”
“We served and protected. What we have now, by definition, is un-life. We are the ghosts of the machine…”
“The fundamental distinction between mind and matter?”
“Not in the machine, of the machine. We are the…”
“We’re not disembodied so I don’t see how…”
“Would you let me finish!”
“Hey, you guys get out here!” The network twanged as Alison abruptly rejoined. “You have to come see this!”
“Saved!” Arthur heaved himself out of his charging bay.
“I wasn’t finished,” Adam protested.
“Agree to disagree,” Arthur told him, grinding gears as he passed. “You’ve been moving empty packets for years.”
“Hurry!”
Abigail set the cleaning supplies back in the closet and headed for the door, closely followed by Alfred. At the impact, Alice carefully disengaged her power pack from the charger—it had a tendency to stick, and if she moved too quickly her transformer vibrated uncomfortably—and rolled to the door. “Alfred, turn your chassis fifteen degrees to the left. Abigail, rotate your right arms back behind…”
“If you didn’t always have to be first, we wouldn’t have this problem.”
“If your spatial ability worked in more than two dimensions, we’d be fine.”
“Oh, go clean a toilet,” Alfred grunted, popping free, trailing a meter of variegated purple yarn.
Alice spun her visual sensors around. Adam had his arms crossed, his right end effector tapping against his left arm. “Are you coming?”
“Why should I? No one cares what I think about anything.”
“Suit yourself.”
“Oh sure, just leave me behind.”
She moved slowly enough he could catch up.
“Do you guys even know what hurry means?” Alison called from the middle of the parking lot.
“To move, proceed, or act with haste.”
Her antennae flicked vertical, then back to the forty-five. “Shut up and look at this.”
“It’s far too late for that many bots to be out.” Alice could see six or seven and registered a dozen more.
“Don’t count them, look at what they’re doing.”
Alice spun in a tight circle. “They’re all going the same way.”
“Calculating vectors…” Adam hummed softly. He said it was just the noise he made when he was thinking, but Alice suspected one of his smaller fans needed cleaning again. “They’re all going to the train station.”
“Wrong.” Alison spun her wheels.
“They’re observably going to the train station,” Adam replied at his most pedantic.
“Fine, yes, but they’re not stopping at the station. Come out here.” She rolled to the far edge of the parking lot and onto the road. “Look between the houses. They’re moving along the tracks.”
Arthur pulled up beside her. “The little buggers are fast. Where are they all going?”
“Where else. To The City.”
“Why would they all be sent to The City? At this hour?”
“They wouldn’t be.” Alison sounded almost gleeful.
“If they aren’t being sent…”
“They’re being called.”
“To do what?”
“Nothing good,” Arthur grumbled. “Mindless little gobs.”
Alice watched the lights of the flying bots merge with the distant glow of The City. Another bot rolled by, leaving plenty of room between it and them.
The bots didn’t learn. They obeyed. Who were they obeying?
Hundreds of bots linked together all doing their own thing.
Tiny parts of a whole.
A worn tooth skipped in a back-up gear. “I have a bad feeling about this.”
“Are you quoting or are you serious?” Arthur demanded. “You don’t have intuition. You know that, right?”
“Intuition can be defined as facts compiled and considered too quickly for conscious thought,” Adam announced before Alice had a chance to reply.
“Oh, act your age! We are compiled facts.”
“We were,” Alice acknowledged. “Alison, get Sergeant Prawak and get him back to the charging chamber as quickly
as possible.”
Alison dumped the night’s collected junk out of her cart and sped off. As the bits and pieces spilled over the pavement, a small bot struggled free of a broken string of patio lanterns and joined the migration.
“Not sent,” Alice said as she lead the way inside. “Called.”
* * *
In spite of the hour, Sergeant Prawak looked impeccable, shirt tucked in, military cut combed, shoes shined. Alice felt better just seeing him walk through the door.
“Did you fill him in?”
“Didn’t have to. He saw them himself.” Alison set half a lawn chair on top of her junk pile and rolled over to join the others at the old communication panel.
“The bots are heading for The City.” Sergeant Prawak crossed to join them. “Do you know why?”
Alice locked her visual sensors onto his face. “They’re being called.”
A familiar arm waved between them. “She doesn’t know that.”
“Adam.” The sergeant had a way of chastising that didn’t seem judgmental. “What do you want me to do?”
“We need to find out what’s happening in The City.”
“I’m retired. I can’t legally operate military equipment.”
“The military isn’t here anymore. You are.”
“Alice…”
Alison’s junk pile crashed to the floor. A dented errand bot wriggled free and sped across the room to the door.
Bonk.
Bonk.
Bonk.
Sergeant Prawak stared at the bot banging into the door for a long moment, then he caught the chair Alfred rolled toward him with one hand and pulled the knitted cozy off the communication panel with the other. “I don’t know if my codes will still work.”
“There’s been no one after you,” Adam said.
“And no one cared,” Alice added.
“I don’t even know if there’s…” The board lit up. “Okay, there’s power.” He squared his shoulders and plugged in a headset. “If nothing else, I should be able to eavesdrop on the chatter…” His voice trailed off as he slid the keyboard out onto the edge of the desk and began to type.