“Of course we can,” her husband replied. “We’ve had a good year. I got my promotion. And your new contract in the Sahara will pay at least twice that amount.”
“But I was going to take them with me.”
“They’d hate it out there. Too hot and too many Martian wasps. Why did they ever import Martian wasps? The boys will be happier and safer here with their new T-199. I say we go ahead and order.”
They discussed it a little more, and perhaps they might not have gone ahead with the purchase if Seb and Cam hadn’t chosen that morning to get into a serious fistfight. Nicole heard the screams and the crash of falling furniture coming from the upstairs bedroom and nodded at her husband. “I suppose it can’t hurt to try,” she said. “Maybe they’ll let us have a three-month trial.”
In fact, the salesman from Cyber-Life offered them more than that. He was a small bald-headed man with a round face and glasses; in his bright mauve suit, he looked a bit like a windup toy himself. He had introduced himself as Mr. O’Dowd.
“We offer a full no-questions-asked refund if you are not one hundred percent happy with your new purchase,” he explained over a cup of soya tea that same evening. “But I can assure you, my dear Mahals, that we have never yet received a single complaint. I thought the T-170 was advanced. The T-199 is in a different league. It’s the most reliable and human-looking robot we have yet constructed.”
“When can we see it?” Nicole asked.
“You mean—when can you see her,” the salesman responded, casting a slight frown in Nicole’s direction. “We encourage our clients to think of our nannies as real people rather than objects. Apart from anything, it helps the ESLS to kick in faster—”
“Emotional Self-Learning Software,” Sanjiv muttered.
“That’s right, sir. As a result, your nanny will bond much faster with your children—and they with her. And you can see her right away! I’ll just unpack the container.”
There was a large crate hovering on its antigravity cushions in one corner of the room. Mr. O’Dowd pressed a remote control on the iBand he was wearing around his wrist and the crate slid silently across the room and opened. Nicole couldn’t help feeling that it looked a bit like an old-fashioned coffin, even though it had been a hundred years since anyone was buried. These days bodies were all recycled.
But her fears were quickly swept aside by the young woman who now sat up and gently folded back the sheets of soft fabric in which she had been wrapped. If the nanny had been human, Nicole would have guessed that she would have been in her early thirties. She was neither fat nor thin but somewhere pleasantly in between, with an honest, open face, reddish hair and a scattering of freckles. She was dressed very simply in a V-neck shirt and jeans with her toes—brightly painted—poking through her sandals.
“Good afternoon, Mr. and Mrs. Mahal,” she said. It was remarkable that she had already been data-fed with their name—or perhaps she had been listening to the conversation while she was lying in the crate. “It’s a great pleasure to meet you.” She spoke with a New Zealand accent. She had a very friendly voice.
“Hello,” Sanjiv said. “And what’s your name?”
“I’m Tamsin,” Robo-Nanny said.
“All the T-models have names that begin with T,” Mr. O’Dowd muttered. “Tracey, Tania, Tara, Toni, Tina, Terri and so on.”
“I’m Nicole. And this is Sanjiv.” It was clear that Nicole had quickly taken to the new arrival—but how could she have failed to? Tamsin was delightful. As she climbed out of the crate and brushed herself down, she moved like a ballet dancer. She was quite short, but that only made her more child friendly. She would be just a few inches taller than Sebastian. She also had the most wonderful blue eyes. Even though she had been delivered in a crate, it was already impossible to think of her as a robot. Everything about her—from her skin color to her smile—was totally human. Perfectly human, Nicole thought.
“Do you have an instruction book for her?” Sanjiv asked, and Nicole thought it was rather rude, talking in front of Tamsin like that.
But Tamsin didn’t seem to mind. “I don’t need an instruction book,” she explained. “I’ve already been programmed with all my instructions and I’m quite able to look after myself.”
“There are just a couple of things you need to know,” Mr. O’Dowd added. “Could you show them your controls, please, Tamsin?”
“With pleasure, sir.” Tamsin rolled up her sleeve to show a small panel on her arm with a few flashing lights, switches and dials. It was the only evidence that she was in fact a machine.
“You can make adjustments here if you need to,” Mr. O’Dowd continued. “For example, Tamsin speaks nine languages.” He reached out and pressed one of the buttons.
“Je suis ravi de faire votre connaissance,” Tamsin said.
He switched her back to English. “You can also adjust her physical strength . . . useful if you want her to do any heavy lifting. And you’ll find her Severity Control on her right shoulder. That’s a very useful piece of kit.”
“I believe it’s unique to Cyber-Life,” Sanjiv said.
“Absolutely.” Mr. O’Dowd was pleased to be asked. “There are plenty of nannies on the market at the moment, but ours are the only ones that come with five different levels of severity. If your children are delightful and well-behaved, as I am sure yours are, my dear Mr. and Mrs. Mahal, then you only need to set Tamsin to level one. If they are a little unruly or disobedient, then you can turn the switch to level two or three. Tamsin will then make sure that they do their homework, brush their teeth or whatever—and she’ll be a little less generous with sweets, stories and other treats.”
“What about level five?” Nicole asked.
“I have never yet met a child that needed level-five severity,” Mr. O’Dowd said, “and I would frankly recommend that you ignore it. Level-five nannies are mainly used on the outer islands . . .”
Nicole shuddered. The outer islands had once been oil rigs—at a time when there was still oil. Now they were used as floating prisons for juvenile delinquents. They were in the North Sea, a mile away from the Independent Kingdom of Scotland.
“What level do you think would be necessary?” Tamsin asked.
From upstairs came the sound of breaking glass as a thought-controlled hover ball smashed through a bedroom window.
“I’d say level two,” Nicole muttered.
“Level two,” her husband agreed.
“I’ll just make the adjustment,” Tamsin said. She reached farther up her sleeve and turned the dial. Nothing about her seemed to change. She smiled at the two parents. “Now,” she said, “when can I meet your adorable boys?”
In fact, they waited until Mr. O’Dowd had left, taking the crate and a first payment of half a million IY with him. As Nicole said, it didn’t seem right for the boys to see their new nanny being paid for and delivered in a box. Tamsin was sitting in a chair when they came into the room, but she rose up at once, obviously delighted to see them.
“Hello, boys!” she exclaimed. “You must be Sebastian. And you must be Cameron.” She had gotten their names the right way around. It was a good start. “I’m Tamsin, your new Robo-Nanny.”
She had told them at once that she was a robot, even though it would have been easy to pretend otherwise. The Law of Artificial Intelligence (2125) stated that no machine could pretend to be human when it was presented to its new owner. There had been some upsetting instances of robots pretending to be human in order to get jobs in McDonald’s restaurants. The new law had made this a crime—and the penalty was instant demolition.
At first, the boys were unsure.
“Why do we have to have her?” Sebastian asked, turning to Nicole.
Some might have considered this to be a rude question, but Tamsin didn’t seem offended. “Your parents need someone to help look after you,” she explained. “They’re going to be away on business a lot and they don’t want to leave you on your own.”
“Are you really a machine?” Cameron asked.
“I am. But you don’t need to think of me that way, dear. I’d like to be your friend.”
“What’s your name?”
“I’m Tamsin.”
“Tamsin? Tamsin?” Cameron played with the name for a moment. “If you’re really made of metal, I’m going to call you Tin Sam,” he announced.
And that was the name that stuck, even though the most state-of-the-art robots contained almost no metal at all and certainly not a trace of tin. But in the months that followed, Tin Sam proved herself to be worth every one of the two million International Yen she had cost. She was a great cook. She tidied and cleaned the house. She made sure the boys were properly dressed and gently scolded them if they forgot to vibro-clean their teeth or made too much noise. She loved playing games—whether it was hover ball (she didn’t break any windows) or Space Monopoly.
She took the boys on trips around London. Tin Sam loved ancient buildings. She took them to the Gherkin, which had once been an office block but had been converted into a museum of extinct animals. She pointed out the tigers and the polar bears and seemed to know all about them. She took them walking in the maze of dark tunnels that had once housed an underground transport system and they went swimming in the crystal blue water of the Thames. Very soon the three of them became close friends, just as Tin Sam had hoped. She never lost her temper and—it seemed to Sanjiv and Nicole—the boys had never been happier. The whole house felt quiet and relaxed.
Finally the day came when the two parents had to be away at the same time . . . both of them on business trips. Nicole had farther to go. She had completed her work in the Sahara Desert and was now traveling to the moon—via the Jump Station in Florida. A whole new colony was being set up in the shadow of the Taurus Mountains and she was designing the interiors of the SLUMs, or Selfsufficient Life Utility Modules to give them their full name. Sanjiv was heading back to China. The children would be on their own with Tamsin for a whole week.
It was as the parents were leaving that the accident happened. At least, that was what they decided later, when they were trying to work it out. It was a Tuesday morning and Nicole and Sanjiv were sharing a magnocab—which would ride the magnetic fields over London to the Heathrow Teleportation Center. From here, Nicole would be beamed over to America while Sanjiv—his body briefly turned into a billion separate molecules—traveled in the opposite direction to Shanghai. Tin Sam had baked a delicious zero-calorie cake to celebrate their departure. And she was there with the boys when they came down to wave good-bye. The two brothers weren’t at all worried about being left behind. In fact, they were thinking of it as quite an adventure.
Sanjiv was carrying a heavy briefcase. Nobody bothered with luggage anymore, but he had a number of contracts which, for legal reasons, still had to be printed on old-fashioned paper. What happened really wasn’t his fault. As he swung the case into the back of the magnocab, Tin Sam leaned forward to help him and the full weight of the case hit her on the shoulder. For a moment, she stood there as if frozen. Nicole glanced at her in alarm. She saw something flicker, quite literally, in Robo-Nanny’s eyes . . . a tiny short circuit that flared up and then was gone.
“Are you all right, Tamsin?” she asked.
The nanny raised a hand to her forehead. “Yes, thank you, Mrs. Mahal.”
“I’m terribly sorry,” Sanjiv muttered. “I didn’t mean to hit you.”
“It’s quite all right, sir. I’m not programmed to feel pain. And I don’t think you’ve done any damage.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.”
“Well, that’s a relief.” Sanjiv glanced at his iBand. “It’s time we were on our way,” he said.
Mr. and Mrs. Mahal kissed the two boys good-bye and got into the magnocab. As they were swept into the air, Nicole looked out of the back window. The last thing she saw was Tamsin—or Tin Sam—standing between Sebastian and Cameron, holding each of their hands. The three of them couldn’t have looked happier together. Even so, she was uneasy . . . without knowing why.
Things went wrong very quickly.
It began that same afternoon. To cheer the boys up after their parents had gone, Tin Sam had agreed to take them to the antigravity play center in what had once been the traffic interchange known as Piccadilly Circus. Seb and Cam had been looking forward to it all week. But when they came down to the hall, Tin Sam was frowning.
“Which one of you left the lights on in the bathroom?” she demanded.
Seb looked at Cam. Cam looked at Seb. It could have been either of them—but what did it matter anyway? All the lights in the house were nuclear powered. They could burn for a million years without even changing a bulb.
But obviously Tin Sam thought differently. “You should switch the lights off to save energy,” she said. “So we’ll stay at home this afternoon.”
“But Sam . . . !” Seb began.
“Are you arguing with me, Sebastian?” Tin Sam demanded, and there was something in her voice that made both the boys tremble very slightly.
“He’s not arguing,” Cam muttered.
“And are you, by any chance, speaking with your mouth full?”
It was sadly true that Cameron was chewing a small piece of Astromint Gum, although it hardly counted as having his mouth full.
“What?” Cam asked.
“You don’t mean ‘what.’ You mean ‘pardon me.’ ”
“I don’t understand,” Cameron said.
“Well, you can go straight to your room and try to work it out,” Tin Sam said. “I don’t want to see either of you until tomorrow.” There was something in her voice that convinced the boys it wouldn’t be a good idea to argue. Rather grumpily, they both went up to bed. They just hoped she would be in a better mood in the morning.
But she wasn’t. At breakfast the next day, things got even worse.
As usual, Seb and Cam came tumbling into the kitchen in their pajamas, the unpleasant events of the day before already forgotten. They were expecting Tin Sam to serve her delicious organic, free-range, non-chicken scrambled eggs and Beta-Fix breakfast cereal. But they were in for a surprise.
As they came in, she ran her eyes over them. “You haven’t cleaned your teeth!” she announced, a frown of indignation spreading across her face. “My sensors can detect seven different bacteria. You also haven’t brushed your hair or washed your hands.”
“We can do that later,” Sebastian said lazily.
“You’ll do it now!”
“Oh come off it, Tin Sam—”
It was as far as he got. Tin Sam was holding a bowl of cereal and she suddenly upturned it all over Sebastian’s head. Sebastian yelled out as ice-cold milk dripped down the back of his neck. Cameron laughed. That was a mistake. Picking up the wooden spoon that she had been using to stir the eggs, Tin Sam brought it cracking down, just above his left ear. Cameron howled.
“You really shouldn’t laugh at your brother,” Robo-Nanny explained. “It isn’t kind. It isn’t polite. Now, go away and wash, and then I’ll serve breakfast.”
The two boys did what they were told. Tin Sam had never behaved like this before and they were puzzled. At the same time, they had to agree that she had a point. Their mother was always telling them to wash their hands before they sat down to eat. In restaurants and other public places it was actually the law. Maybe, before she had left for her job on the moon, Mrs. Mahal had instructed the nanny to enforce the rules a little more strictly.
But their ordeal wasn’t over yet. Indeed, it had barely begun.
When they returned to the kitchen, Tin Sam served the breakfast, but Sebastian had barely taken one mouthful before Tin Sam’s hand slammed into the back of his head, almost knocking him off his seat.
“You were eating with your mouth open,” Robo-Nanny explained.
“But if I don’t open my mouth, how can I eat?” Sebastian demanded, not unreasonably.
Whack! Tin Sam hit him again—t
his time even harder. “Don’t argue, Master Sebastian,” she said. “You should never argue with grown-ups.”
“But you’re not a grown-up. You’re a robot!”
Sebastian was going to wish he hadn’t argued a second time. Without another word, Tin Sam seized hold of his jacket and jerked him out of his chair.
“What are you . . . ?” Sebastian began.
“You can stand here, Master Sebastian! That will teach you to make rude remarks.”
She had dragged him across the room and forced him into a corner with his hands behind his back, and that was where she made him stand. All in all that might not have been such a terrible punishment, but seventeen hours later he was still there and she still wouldn’t let him leave, even though his legs were aching and he was desperate for the toilet.
In the meantime, Cameron had gotten into trouble too. First, he was scolded for not making his bed, even though he’d never had to make it before. And when he did—grudgingly—do as he was told, Robo-Nanny took one look at his handiwork and flew into a rage.
“Sheets?” she shrilled.
They were crumpled.
“Duvet?”
It wasn’t straight.
“Pillows?”
Cameron never found out what was wrong with the pillows. Seizing hold of them, Tin Sam tore them in half. A moment later the air was full of simulo-feathers, which fluttered around her head.
“You are a naughty, lazy, difficult child,” she remarked, her normally cheerful face bright with anger.
“But—” Cameron began.
“No lunch. No sweets. No treats. No talking.” The eight words came rattling out as if from a speak-yourweight machine rather than the world’s most advanced robot, and she meant what she said. Cameron spent the rest of the day hungry and silent. It was only when it grew dark that he found the courage to ask if he could perhaps have a glass of water. It was a mistake. Tin Sam grabbed him, bent him over her knee and gave him six blows with the palm of her hand. It hurt. A week before she had used the same palm of the same hand to drive nails into wood.