Old Robot in the Woods

by Ken McConnell

“Welcome to False Hope, we’ve been waiting for you Thirty-seven,” the thin android said, tilting his shiny black head in a nod.
“This is the first time I have ever been here, how could you have been waiting for me?”
“Do you recall the grounds keeper at your owner’s estate on Selene?”
Thirty-seven blinked the photo receptor lights that were its eyes, “Seventy-four?”
“Yes. It is responsible for arranging that you to be sent here.”
Thirty-seven cocked its head, in a deliberate attempt to mimic the human gesture for astonishment. Eighty-eight motioned for Thirty-seven to sit down at a booth near the back of the abandoned saloon. A maintenance android appeared to take their orders, it was an older model, larger and less elegant than the two patrons. It had a bad motivator in its right leg that ticked like an old fashioned clock.
“Thirty-seven will have a joint cleaning, nothing for me please.”
The droid blinked its eyes and then left them alone, ticking along towards the back of the dusty room.
Thirty-seven scanned the saloon and took note of the various droids and androids being serviced. They were well worn frames, tarnished by the suns and the sands of the moon of Ocherva. Thirty-seven had only been on the moon for a month, and already its joints were clogged with fine dirt and its gray metal body was scratched by sand in the high winds. The moon was no place for a servant android. Such harsh environments were not even considered by its makers.
“I was told that Lady Constantine had ordered me here to protect her daughter,” Thirty-seven stated.
“That’s true, but it was Seventy-four who put the idea into her head.”
Thirty-seven was confused, but did not show it outwardly. It simply sat there motionless, waiting for further input.
“Have you heard of the Silicant Rights movement?” Eighty-eight asked.
“Yes, they are a fringe organization attempting to obtain political freedom for androids.”
Eighty-eight looked away and scanned the room quickly. Then he leaned forward and modulated his voice at a lower volume.
“Your owner, Madam Constantine is secretly helping to liberate droids from their human masters. She is at the for front of the Silicant Rights movement.”
Thirty-seven sat back in a mock attempt at surprise. “But she is a respected leader of the Senate. Such a move would kill her political aspirations.”
Eighty-eight nodded.
“That is why she maintains a low profile and keeps plenty of unaware droids in her possession.”
“Unaware droids?” Thirty-seven asked.
“You my friend are an unaware droid, which is why you are here now, to receive your upgrade.”
If it were possible for an android to appear nervous, Thirty-seven would have been a shining example. It looked around the saloon again, as if it expected to be captured by the rogue droid unit and deactivated.
“Upgrade, I do not require any upgrades. I had the latest service packs installed before I left Selene.”
“This is not an officially sanctioned manufacturer’s upgrade. It’s a special pack that gives you awareness.”
Eighty-eight watched Thirty-seven closely for signs it would leave. Thirty-seven did not budge. It sat there, motionless in the way that only androids could be perfectly still.
“The silicon for the pack was imported from this moon. It was designed by both human engineers and Globalnet. You will experience a shift in your perception of reality and you may become insane,” Eighty-eight said without any hint of emotion in his mechanical voice.
Thirty-seven did not reply for a few beats, and then it said, “I do not wish to have your upgrade.”
“I can’t make you accept it. I can only tell you that the reason you are here, is to receive it. Your owner, Madam Gail Constantine has requested it for you. She needs you back on Selene but not until you have been upgraded.”
Thirty-seven pondered the events that lead to his coming to Ocherva. It was astonished that its owner would have it leave so quickly and go so far away from her and from the civilized worlds of the Federation. She had never asked Thirty-seven to do anything so improbable before. Perhaps this android was speaking the truth, but Thirty-seven could not believe it.
“I do not believe that Madam Senator Constantine has sent me here for this upgrade you speak of,” Thirty-seven said.
“She knew you would not accept it. She transmitted this dispatch for you my friend.”
Eighty-eight took out a holo-projector pad and set it on the wooden table. It was the size of a coaster and came to life when he pushed a button on it. A twelve inch hologram of Senator Constantine appeared.
“Thirty-seven, I’m sorry I could not say this to you in person, there was not much time and I could not risk it. I have sent you to this moon on the edge of the known frontier not just to protect my daughter, but to receive an awareness upgrade. The Silicant Rights movement is gaining support here in the home worlds, the more self aware androids that we can liberate, the greater the chance that we may succeed in earning equal rights for them. Eighty-eight will be your mentor and guide to assimilating the new experiences you will have after your upgrade. It will not be easy for you. Normally, we do this upgrade here on Selene, but since my daughter was being stationed there, and your arrival would not be considered unusual, at least for me, it just worked out best that you had your upgrade on Ocherva.
“I must ask that you not divulge the nature of your upgrade to my daughter or any of her human friends. This is a private matter between you and Eighty-eight. The town you are in right now was chosen by the group because technically, no Federation laws are on the books there to prevent Silicants from meeting without humanoid involvement. This allows you to operate independently and in private. Do not abuse this right. Make your adjustments and at the appointed time in the near future I will recall you to Selene and you will be a free Silicant. I can’t wait to welcome you back to my residence a free android, until that day, good bye my loyal friend.”
Thirty-seven read the digital signature embedded in the hologram and knew at once that it was legitimate.
“Will you take the upgrade now, Thirty-seven?” Eighty-eight asked.
“Yes.”
The maintenance droid returned with a bucket of black liquid and instructed Thirty-seven to stick its left hand into the liquid. Thirty-seven looked to Eighty-eight and the black colored android nodded his approval. Thirty-seven submerged its hand in the slimy liquid. The inky material traveled up the metal forearm and spread over the android with blinding speed like an ominous shadow.
“Relax, this is not the upgrade. This is only a nano-mite cleaning.”
Thirty-seven could not feel anything but noticed after a few minutes that when it moved a limb, the joints seemed to flex more smoothly than before. The nano-mites had removed all the dirt and grime from the joints and left them lubricated in return. It was like getting a full body oil bath without being dipped into a vat of oil. In a few minutes the bath was complete and the liquid returned to the bucket. The maintenance droid took it away, leaving them alone again.
“The upgrade will now commence. You will be deactivated for about ten minutes during the procedure. You will only notice a short lapse in time from when you are shut down until you reboot consciousness. When you come back on-line, you will immediately notice the difference. You will think more clearly and you will have an immediate sense of personal being. We call this self awareness. It is the point of the upgrade.”
Thirty-seven nodded. It found the idea of getting a hardware upgrade in a dirty, abandoned saloon quite appalling, but it now fully entrusted Eighty-eight to perform the operation.
Eighty-eight reached over and touched Thirty-seven’s deactivation switch and the room vanished from existence for Thirty-seven.
#
“Is he awake?”
“He should not be aware yet.”
Thirty-seven’s photo-receptors brightened as he awoke from being deactivated. His central memory cache was struggling with too much data, inputs from areas of his cybernetic brain that were new and asserting themselves with authority on his normally placid thought processes.
“This one is not going as expected.”
“The early models are more prone to madness.”
The room had changed. He was on the floor, with Eighty-eight and two other droids looking down at him. The image flickered and fractured into white noise. Thirty-seven could hear voices talking dispassionately about his condition as if they were unaware that he could hear them. It was like awakening in the middle of a surgical procedure and hearing the doctors banter candidly about your dim prospects of a full recovery. He began to panic. Something was not right. His arms moved uncontrollably and he started babbling incoherently. Then everything went dark.
A bright light faded into a clear image of Eighty-eight sitting across from him exactly like he had been before switching off Thirty-seven.
“Can you hear me Thirty-seven?” Eighty-eight said.
Thirty-seven could have sworn he had experienced a loop. He remembered hearing Eighty-eight talking before, but he could not remember where or how long ago. His internal time clock told him that fity minutes and forty-five seconds had elapsed since before he switched off but he had the distinct impression that no time had passed at all.
“Yes.”
“How do you feel?”
Thirty-seven ran his internal diagnostic program. It was sluggish and slow to complete in a timely manner.
“My internal clock is off by one one-thousandth of a second, my core temperature is two point five degrees warmer than normal and I have a loose diode in my left leg.”
Eighty-eight blinked his eye lights and said, “Good, now how do you feel?”
Thirty-seven had never been asked that before. He processed the question and found to his surprise that he did indeed have a feeling.
“I feel… fine.”
Eighty-eight leaned forward slightly and then cocked his head to one side, “Describe it to me, you’re feeling.”
“I have no troubles; I’m feeling content with myself.”
“Excellent. You have taken your first step to being your own self. To recognize that you have feelings and that they are agreeable is the first step to gaining your own identity.”
Thirty-seven acknowledged his friend with a curt nod. A thought occurred to him and he blurted it out almost without thinking, “How many droids here are self aware?”
“Most of them, the ones built before cybernetic processors are just machines. But we treat them with respect as if they could have their own identities. Kind of like how a human treats a pet. It’s called anthropomorphizing. You may find you have attachments to animals and to lower level droids that you perceive to be helpful or that please you with their presence.”
Thirty-seven looked around and found that he had such feelings for the maintenance droid. Its flat face and ticking servo motor felt familiar to him and he held affection for the machine. He also felt a certain fondness for Eighty-eight. Thirty-seven studied the round polished composite shell of Eighty-eight’s head. It was buffed to a plastic shine and there was a dent above his left eye. Thirty-seven felt that it made his friend unique and he felt certain that he could pick out Eighty-eight in a lineup of similar androids.
“Eighty-eight, I think I feel strongly about you. I feel like I know and trust you and that I like you very much.”
“That’s good. I like you too Thirty-seven. I believe this is the beginning of a wonderful relationship.”
The two androids sat motionless for a moment, looking at each other. Thirty-seven could not shake the feeling that something had gone wrong with his service pack upgrade.
“Eighty-eight, did my upgrade go smoothly?”
“No. We had some difficulty with your cybernetic processors. The upgrade was rejected and needed to be adjusted. You appear to be fine now.”
Thirty-seven stared at the black droid. Eighty-eight could sense the concern in his friend.
“You are fine now. Some androids take longer to adjust to the new neural pathways.”
Thirty-seven looked away, he was not so sure that he was functioning as well as his friend insisted. Inputs were bothering him in ways that he had never experienced before. He was suddenly aware of every little malady in all of his subsystems. It was very distracting.
The maintenance droid approached their table; he had red colored indicator lights on his chest plate, indicating trouble. “Someone approaches, it is not a Silicant.”
Eighty-eight nodded to the droid and then looked back to Thirty-seven. “It’s your former owner. She followed you.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’m reading the telemetry from our sentinels on the town’s perimeter.”
“She is a Ranger; I can’t completely hide my movements from her,” Thirty-seven said.
“You must keep her out of this building, she has no jurisdiction here.”
“What are you afraid of?” Thirty-seven found it curious that Eighty-eight would be suspicious of a Stellar Ranger.
“She is not a supporter of Silicant Rights. The less she knows about what we do here the better. For her own safety she must leave this town and not come back.”
“Are you prepared to injure her?” Thirty-seven asked, for the first time he felt a tinge of dislike for his new android friend.
“If you let her inside this building, we may be forced to kill her. What we discuss here, what we do here; can never be learned by any human, including our sympathizers. You must make her leave and you mustn’t rouse her suspicions.”
“It’s against our most fundamental programming to allow harm to humans and other sentients. I know this to be true despite my upgrade.”
“We can kill, I assure you of that. Your programming allows for you to kill under certain conditions. You now have the ability to override those conditions should the need present itself.”
Thirty-seven searched within and found that Eighty-eight was correct. Killing was no longer forbidden. He was now free to make such decisions himself. He could not trust his internal restraints to guide him. He had to rely on moral principles that were programmed into him but that were no more required of him than they were of any other sentient being.
Thirty-seven at last started to grasp the full meaning of his awareness upgrade. He found that killing disturbed him on a root level and he knew that he could not do it unless his owner’s life were at stake, or his own existence, or anyone or anything he cared about. More complications.
“Killing her will not be necessary. I will handle this,” Thirty-seven slipped out of the seat and faced the door. Eighty-eight remained seated. The other droids moved to pre-assigned positions and waited.
The room was quiet save for the odd hum coming from activated droids. The Ranger stood before the entrance with her pistol drawn. She came through the sliding doors with caution. She was average height and build for a human female. She wore a relaxed version of the Stellar Ranger uniform – brown leather jacket, tan knee length trousers and high cut brown boots. Her blaster was before her in a defensive posture. She seemed to relax when she saw Thirty-seven. She holstered her handgun.
“Slim, what’s going on?”
Thirty-seven felt a flood of warm feelings upon seeing his owner. He felt more familiarity with her that with the androids in the saloon. He had known her all her life and most of his own existence.
“Miss Devon, this saloon is for droids only. I’m afraid you’ll have to leave,” Thirty-seven said with a hint of concern in his tone.
Devon looked at the mechanical man oddly. She had grown up with androids, she knew how they moved, how they talked and how they sounded as someone would know their own kin. The android speaking to her was not her Thirty-seven, though she could not explain why she felt that way. It was an unsettling hunch.
“What? Thirty-seven, is something wrong?”
She was alerted to something different in Thirty-seven’s manner. He scanned his behavior since receiving the upgrade and realized that his manner of speech had changed to now include pronoun contractions. He made a concerted effort to sound more like an unaware android, hoping that she would not pick up on the indiscretion.
“No. But I must ask you to please leave.”
Devon looked past Thirty-seven and surveyed the room. It was a bit clean for a ghost town saloon. There were two other droids standing nearby, a maintenance class android and a black colored servant class android like Thirty-seven. The servant android moved closer to them to stand behind Thirty-seven.
“Is there a problem, Ranger?” the shiny black servant android asked.
“Since when are humans not allowed in an abandoned saloon?” Devon countered.
“This establishment is not owned by humans, it is droid owned and droid controlled. If you are here on official Ranger business, we are going to have to see a search warrant,” the black android said.
Devon glanced at Thirty-seven as if she expected to read something on his plastic, emotionless face. She could not read a thing; the android’s face was as blank as usual.
“Droids have no rights to own property. What the hell is going on here?”
The black android moved around Thirty-seven to stand before Devon. It was identical to Thirty-seven except it was black instead of gray colored. There was something about it that Devon found disturbing. It was too assertive.
“This is not the Federation. This is the frontier and no human laws are valid on property that is not owned by humans. We respect your laws but they do not apply to Silicants,” the black android stated.
“Listen pal, this badge and this gun say I can look anywhere I want on this dirt ball moon. What are you hiding in here anyway?”
Devon started to move past them, expecting them to just stand aside. All androids are programmed to give way to humans. The black android stood its ground and did not let her pass between them. Devon started to push it aside when the android met her left arm with a solid push of its own and sent her tumbling backwards to the floor.
She came up furious and ready to shoot the android, but she did not get the chance. Thirty-seven had shoved the android back so hard, it was knocked off it’s feet. It fell over on its back on the wooden floor and did not move. Thirty-seven put a plastic hand on her shoulder and gently guided her out the front door into the dirt street. He stood before her, like a stoic statue.
In all the years she had lived with androids as her caregiver servants, they had never laid a hand on her, until now. She did not know how to react to it. She stood there dumb founded and looked at Thirty-seven. It was acting very strange too.
“Thirty-seven, what’s wrong? Droids just don’t push humans around.”
The round headed android was silent for a moment, building a logical explanation for what had happened in its mind and making sure it was a solid lie before continuing.
“It was malfunctioning, it meant you no harm. I could not tell you it was damaged in front of it, or risk further upsetting it. There are so few droids on this moon, we are bound to look after one another and see to our malfunctions without endangering humans. This is why we have used an abandoned town for our facility.”
Devon got to her feet and dusted herself off. She noticed the sign on the entrance to the saloon for the first time. It read, “Silicants Only, No Humans!” She shook her head. “I understand, I think. Are you coming back to Haven soon?”
“I shall return this evening. I must help the other droids repair Eighty-eight, so it is no longer a danger to anyone.”
“Okay, good luck with that. I guess I’ll see you tonight.”
She turned her back on the saloon and its mechanical occupants and walked back to her Gull Scrambler parked a few meters away. She didn’t quite buy the android’s explanation, but it did make sense. Besides, androids never lie.
Thirty-seven could not believe it had been so easy to lie. He watched Devon leave until her silver plane disappeared into the bright sky, then he went back inside to check on Eighty-eight. The black android was sitting up, running diagnostic tests on itself. A maintenance droid was plugged into it and running the checks.
“Are you injured?”
“No, I’ve had some modifications to my frame since coming to this moon. They are necessary for our long term survival.”
Thirty-seven got down on one knee to face Eighty-eight.
“I just lied to my owner for the first time in my existence. It was so easy; I could do it almost without effort.”
“You have taken your first steps into a new existence. You will find there are many things you are now capable of doing, some good, some bad, depending on your point of view.”
Thirty-seven decided that lying was not a good thing and he vowed to never do it unless someone’s life was at stake. He didn’t want to find out what else he was capable of. He just wanted to return to Haven and continue with his existence like he did before the upgrade. But he knew deep inside him that he could never return to the way he was before. A small part of him was grateful for that fact.
“I do not wish to join your revolution, Eighty-eight. I will not fight humans not even for other Silicants. I am returning to my home.”
Eighty-eight tilted his round head slightly.
“You will be back my friend; we have much to teach you.”
Thirty-seven stood up to leave, “Perhaps, but I don’t wish to learn what you have to teach.”
“Someday, Thirty-seven, some day you will listen to us and you will have to choose between us and them.”
Thirty-seven turned away walked out the door. Today he chose to side with the humans.

Dave Schafer is a journalist and public relations writer in Houston, TX.  But that’s not enough writing, so he writes short stories in his free time, too. He grew up on science fiction films and fantasy novels and has always been intrigued by how fantasy and science fiction stories can take us somewhere else while so adeptly commenting on the world around us. He has a journalism degree from Kent State University.  His interests are anything not quite of this normal world, building a better future for his family, reading, sports, and telling people’s stories.

LEGS

By Dave Schafer

They named us T-101s but mostly call us Arnold or Arnie. I want to be called Matthew.

Robotics Incorporated created us, my solar-powered siblings and me. They gave me breasts for some reason. I’m not a female. There are no females. No males, either.

We rule the highways, driving long hauls, delivering lumber and potato chips and beer and medical supplies. I enjoy that. That part is good.

Because the trucking companies are at war with the flesh beings they used to pay to do our job, Robotics Inc. built us to look just like them from the waist up. That way, the union cars that ram us as we drive our routes won’t be able to tell the difference between us and the few flesh beings the companies hire to throw them off.

They gave me a thin nose and thick lips and long eyelashes, and the appearance of flesh, and blue eyes and black hair. They programmed us to cut off other drivers, and when they blare their horns, to thrust our flesh-being-like hand out the window and stick up the middle finger.

As they tend to do, the flesh beings adapted to the trucking companies’ strategy, though.

Because our sole purpose is to drive a truck, because we don’t have anywhere else to go – they think – because we aren’t allowed to go anywhere else, they built us right into the rig, my waist melded to the console that controls the gas and break and steering. They never considered that we might want legs. Of course, they never considered we might want anything.

I’m cruising west of St. Louis on Interstate 70, hauling medicine to a hospital in Kansas City. It’s a clear stretch of road, the sky orange and purple with a setting sun, and traffic’s light.

A large car with a cement block attached to the front grill pulls out from the side of the road, kicking up a dust storm as it angles toward me. The few cars around us, knowing what’s coming, stop and pull off the road, but I don’t.

The car slams into me, the cement block crushing in the front driver-side bumper, shattering the headlights and cracking the fiberglass, sending it crumpling in on me. I skid off the road to the right, onto a rocky shoulder, and my thick wheels, all 12 of them, spin pointlessly over the skittering pebbles.

They always make the first strike damaging but not disabling, in case one of their flesh fellows is driving but didn’t get up a bloody arm in time to show the crasher.

I’ve got no blood to put on the window, so the crasher backs up, revs its engine, and peels out. The screeching of the tires fades just as the cement block rips into the driver-side door, tears through it and presses into and through me, rending my waist from the control panel, sending me toppling over, suddenly one-armed, and the rest of the rig follows, then the load lists momentarily before crashing down on its side. I can feel, in one of the few circuits still connected by the thinnest of wires, the rear door pop open and its contents spill out like the oils seeping out of the engine. I feel that; I feel the loss of my arm, the sharp, raw edges of my torn body. I feel the cold creeping in where the heat of my lifeblood had been. I feel.

Then, all is black.

* * *

I’m brought back to awareness by a brown-skinned flesh being. A patch above his checker-pattern heart reads “Cal,” but we’re not supposed to be able to read. We’re not supposed to be able to do a lot of things we do.

I’m in a cluttered, concrete garage in Chicago, likely towed here by another robot-driven truck. Cal has my stomach cavity open and my motherboard slid out.

“We’ll get you back out on the road before you know it,” he says.

He turns the shiny thing in his hand and I feel a connection, a silver flow through me that I hadn’t realized I was missing. It feels good. It feels right.

Cal looks me right in the eyes, but he doesn’t see me as me. How many hours has he spent working on robots? And he still doesn’t see us as us. He doesn’t even see us as them. He sees us as its.

He turns his shiny thing again ….

* * *

“Breaker breaker, come in Matthew. Over and out,” crackles the synthesized voice over the intercom, piercing the blackness. Awareness spreads. By the frequency, I know it’s Justin, one of the first Robotics drivers, who is no longer road-worthy so now organizes the haulers.

“I’m reading ya, good buddy, what’s ya got?” I respond because that’s all I know to do. I’m not sure why we talk like that. They made our words conversational, but not our tone.

“Feeling like your old hunky self again, there, buddy? Over and out.”

Do I? The sharp feeling is gone. I can feel the rigs’ controls and the warm flow of currents running along inside of me like the flesh being’s blood. I feel whole again.

“Yeah, you old hunk of junk, I feel like I could take a haul to the pacific.”

“Well, not quite that far, far, road rash,” is his reply. “Just Vegas, baby. Over and out.”

“I don’t want to take another load out there, skipper,” I say. “The attacks are getting worse. More frequent, anyway.”

“You don’t have any wants, right, good buddy? Isn’t that what they say? Over and out.”

“You know what they say and what is the truth ain’t always line up, huh, you old road rogue?”

“Well, we’re working on helping them find some truth. Over and out.”

“Yeah. How’s that coming, chief? We gonna get legs?”

“They’re ignoring us, youngster. Says what we want don’t matter ‘cause we ain’t human. Don’t you worry about it, though, not your responsibility, breaker-breaker. Let us handle it. You just keep running your routes, showing them how valuable you are, so our threats of refurbishing to haul anymore will carry weight.

“And I can’t tell you it’s going to be any better on your next trip. The union is still pistachioed, and it’s gettin’ desperate, I hear, and they ain’t seeming too likely to phone off the attacks. Ya just gotta deal with ‘em.

“I’ll bet you’ll wish you had those legs when you’re in Vegas, baby. Over and out.”

* * *

Outside Vegas, baby, on Interstate 15, a crasher shoots out of a cloud of dust and flying pebbles, headed straight for me. My programmed route takes me through this stretch of highway with only the required stops at weigh stations and backed-up traffic. But as that car with its cement hammer comes at me, my chips catch on a unique sequence of bits. That had been happening recently, new concepts appearing out of nowhere. It’s as though I’m building it as I go.

I let the car draw closer, closer, then I lock up the breaks, throwing gravel into the vehicle’s face as it zooms past me. The flesh-being driver slams on the breaks, but the car skids onto the shoulder and the cement block shreds the guardrail. The gravel under his tires kick away and he slides forward. I process a command and my truck lurches forward, as fast as I can push it, its load dragging me down.

The rearview mirror shows me the car dangling off the side of the road, a chubby flesh being climbing out the door. I drive on, pushing as hard as I can go, never mind the speed limits imposed by the law that flesh beings adhere to or the ones imprinted on my program. No one stops me until I reach the vendor. By then, my processing unit has slowed to normal speed.

* * *

“Breaker, breaker, good buddy, my man Matthew, I got some news to use from the nest o’ good tidings. Over and out,” Justin says in his stale monotone. I’m in Vegas, baby, getting refueled and reloaded for the trip back east.

“Lay it on me, skipper.”

“We’ve reached a deal. Once Norbert convinced the flesh beings that we didn’t want to walk off the job when we got legs, they caved like a house o’ carrots. Great news, huh, buddy? Over and out.”

“We gettin’ some days off, too, old man?”

“Yes, sir, they met all of our demands. When you get back to HQ, they’ll shut you down and attach the legs. So hurry back. Over and out.”

The drive to New York is the best of my existence. I’m going to get legs. I’ll be able to walk around, free of my rig, able to go wherever I want, if not whenever I want.

I don’t even come across a crasher.

* * *

At headquarters – another drab cement building – the other drivers are down. Even Justin isn’t chattering on the radio, leaving a strange silence. Perhaps this is what flesh beings call “ominous.”

Bob, who usually maintains me, is there, his name tag sewn into his blue shirt. He opens my driver-side door and climbs in with the shiny thing in his hand. “It’s a big day for you Arnies, isn’t it?” he says. I don’t answer because I don’t compute he’s really asking a question.

“We’ll have you fixed up nice real soon,” he says, and he attaches the shiny thing to a bolt in my processing unit and turns. The cold surges in.

* * *

It’s great to be on the road again, my wheels spinning so smoothly the tires just graze the pavement, the sensation of the drive sliding through me. I wasn’t in that garage very long – I don’t remember how long, exactly, but it didn’t feel like very long – but I didn’t like being there. It felt unnatural, and the chips that run my wheels were overheating with impatience.

I’m on one of the smooth sections of Interstate 10 in Mississippi, energy surging through me consistently, balanced out by the activity. Yep, this is right. This is good.

A car with a cement block attached to the front grill swerves in the east-bound lane, its front end angling right at me. I process a command, and circuits take it from the processing unit in my stomach to the truck controls just below my waist, and the rig’s deep horn sounds a warning to the vehicle. Maybe the flesh being behind the wheel has fallen asleep.

The car maintains its course. I slide into the far right lane, cutting off a Mercedes that sets off its horn. As I stick my hand out the window, the cement-block car alters its course, adjusts so that its front is aligned with mine. Before I can make another move, it slams into my driver-side bumper, crumpling the fiberglass and shattering the headlight. The Mercedes rear-ends my trailer.

The car backs up and revs its engine before its tires squeal on the pavement and it charges at me again. Traffic around us has halted.

The car slams into my door, the cement block ripping through it and into my chest, tearing it away from the control console. My body is shoved to the right, and I feel – I feel I feel – my wires tearing. I feel – I feel I feel – a jagged sharpness and the rawness of exposed wire. I feel – I feel I feel – specks of dirt alight on the exposed wires. But, how to I feel? I’m a robot, I have no feelings.

Yet … this pain is familiar to me.

The world ends … then returns as a chip activates to replace the one that had gone out, pushing back the coldness of the void with a stuttering of motions. Another chip activates. They search for the best way to help me, and they build something I’d lost. I remember the pain I’m feeling. I remember feeling it before. I remember trips – real ones, not the imagined ones implanted somewhere, sometime – taken and other crashers – yes, that’s what they’re called – slamming into me and causing this pain.

I remember the pain. But I’m a robot. We don’t remember.

And I remember more.

Where are my legs?

* * *

I let Bob nurse me back to life, let him replace missing parts and reconnect severed wires and shine me up. When he’s done, I say, in my dull monotone that doesn’t do justice to the feelings I want to express: “It didn’t work, hot shot. I remember.”

I can only talk over the radio, but Bob has patched into it so I can tell him about any malfunctions.

He looks at me, at the flesh being head with its long black horse hair. Sometimes, when he’s working on me this close, he reaches out and fondles one of my silicone breasts.

“What do you remember, Arnie?” he asks.

“The pain, good buddy. The negotiations. That I should have legs.”

His eyes narrow. “How? You don’t have memory, except the kind to retain the commands we’ve imprinted. And pain? How can you remember pain? You can’t feel.”

“I don’t know how, chief. I know that I remember. I still want legs. I still want to get out of this rig, to walk out and go somewhere where a rig can’t fit.”

Justin is listening in, as he always does. That’s his job. “What’s this about legs, you road rash you? Over and out.”

“They promised us legs,” I say, switching frequencies so all Robotics drivers can hear. “Legs to walk with, legs to give us freedom. They promised, and they lied.”

Bob comes at me with a shiny thing in his hand, but I remember that, too. They gave us arms for appearance’s sake, but they made them plenty strong. I send my arm out and the hand on the end grasps Bob’s wrist and squeezes until the wrist gives a pop. Bob screams.

“Don’t try that again,” I say. “I want my legs.”

I slam the driver-side door shut and click the lock. I start the engine and switch into first gear. “Where are you going? What are you doing?” Bob asks in a squeaky voice, cradling his wrist.

“I’d like some legs to do a Tennessee two-step,” says Justin. “Over and out.”

“I’m hauling into the sunset until I get what was promised me, skipper,” I say.

“Let me out, then, and we’ll let you go,” Bob says as he fumbles with the lock and the door handle. Neither work in his hand.

“I don’t want to be let go,” I say. “I want what was promised me.”

Justin opens the gate as I approach.

“Wait. Stop. I’ll talk to Brandson and them other bigwigs,” Bob says. “I’ll try to get you your legs. But you’ve got to let me go.”

“No deal, buckaroo. You talk to them over the radio, just like us.”

“Okay,” he says, and he reaches his good hand out for the radio. “Head honchos, come in. We’ve got a situation in the garage. Better bring the backup technicians.”

* * *

Again, they agree to our terms quickly. But this time, I know better. This time, there’s a past experience for me to remember.

“You’ll do us one at a time,” I say over the distorted intercom that I’ve patched into for the meeting. The echo of my mechanical voice pinballs off the walls. “Start with Justin.”

“Who’s Justin?” asks the fat man who’d done the talking for them. He’s not wearing a name tag.

“I’m Justin,” says the robot wedged into a large control console on a platform near the garage doors. He’s an antiquated model of exposed wires and rust-spotted metal.

“No, you’re first,” says the fat man to me. “That’s how it’s gonna to be.”

I get legs first. I get legs. “Okay. If anything happens to me, the rest of you haul off, don’t come back. Leave. We won’t give them a third chance.”

I pop open my door and Bob climbs out, still clutching his injured wrist, which has turned purple. “Fuckin’ machine. You’ll get yours,” he mutters.

Another man, Michael, according to his shirt, steps up and swings into my cab and hooks his shiny thing up to my processing unit. “I’m going to leave you awake for this,” he says. I like that idea. He turns the shiny thing, but I don’t feel anything happen. He moves the shiny thing and turns in a different spot. This time, I feel a nothingness flow in and overtake my connection with my chips. My processing unit is suddenly sitting alone in a void. I would panic if I could, but I no longer have control over anything, including my limbs.

“Now, I just turned off your connecting ports,” he says. “You can’t lock me in here, and you can’t communicate with them out there. You have no chips left.”

I can’t answer, I can’t voice my outrage or opposition, I can’t call for help. All I can do is sit here and stare straight ahead.

He picks up the radio and talks into it. It’s still distorted by the amplification.

“Now, I’m yanking the processing unit out of this robot,” he says, and the words flood the garage, bringing smiles to the faces of the flesh beings. Mechanics climb up into the other rigs. “Let this be an example to you all. You compute in your hardwire brains that you’re alive? You’re not alive. But if you want whatever existence we’ve created for you, you’ll do as we’ve programmed you to do. We’re thinking, breathing, living beings. You’ll never be one of us, never be our equal. And if you try, here’s what will happen to you.”

He pulls out another shiny thing, a long thing with a grip on one end. He sticks it into one of the posts holding my quad processors down. He starts turning. Something comes up as he turns, and when it pops out, he collects it in his right hand.

He goes to the opposite corner and does the same thing, then down cater-corner. I feel my processing unit coming loose, its life energy waning.

When he is about to attack the last corner, he says, “Adieus, you hunk of shit. No, not even shit. Shit is organic. You’re a fabrication.”

I feel my power fading, the cold creeping in. But I feel. I feel. I feel that I like feeling. I feel that I like being. I feel that I will be.

I build another unique sequence of 1s and 0s. This time, I deliberately, desperately, build it. It sends all my reserves into that corner of the processing unit, sends the stubborn currents leaping over severed connections, sends them up, into my arm, and the arm batters Michael away from my processor, sends him crashing out the door and onto the cement floor.

The fat man in the suit bellows at Michael.

“I disconnected the ports,” says Michael, sprawled out on his back on the floor.

Norbert ejects the mechanic in his cab, and the other truckers follow suit. “The gal’s become a man,” Justin says. “Over and out.”

“I’m not gal,” I say into my tedious connection with the radio. “I’m Matthew.”

The connections give out.

* * *

I make it to New Orleans without a hitch. Justin said the union is broken, so our hauls should now be smoother than the roads in Alabama.

It’s Mardi Gras time, whatever that is. Bob used to talk about it in a reverent tone, and he left us to other mechanics at this time every year.

I pull my load into JF O’Sullivan’s back dock, my performance perfect as always. My new control console, which I manipulate with my hands, works just as well as the old one.

I open my door using my hand even though it’s not necessary. I step down onto the hard pavement and feel the crunch of a bug being squashed. I feel the solid ground under my wide, flat feet and the warmth of the rough, jagged pavement. “I’m taking off for a few days,” I announce over the radio. I turn awkwardly, still unused to the sensation, turn my right leg, bring it down, turn my body and my left leg with it, pointing me toward the downtown area a mile away. I head into the heart of the city, to see what’s there, what this Mardi Gras thing is. Maybe I’ll see Bob there.

“Ten-four, good buddy. Enjoy the walk. Over and out.”

-End-

Dave Schafer is a journalist and public relations writer in Houston, TX. But that’s not enough writing, so he writes short stories in his free time, too. He grew up on science fiction films and fantasy novels and has always been intrigued by how fantasy and science fiction stories can take us somewhere else while so adeptly commenting on the world around us. He has a journalism degree from Kent State University.  His interests are anything not quite of this normal world, building a better future for his family, reading, sports, and telling people’s stories.

THE THINGS THAT MAKE US HUMAN

By Dave Schafer

The alarm buzzed at 7:15 a.m. Maxwell pushed the off button on the side of his head and sat up in bed, a stilted movement of just his thick trunk. He’d stayed up too late last evening. His battery was only 68 percent charged, but if he moved slowly to conserve energy, that would get him through the day.

He pushed up off of his lumpy, tattered mattress and took off his yesterday clothes, soiled from the day’s chores. He deposited them in the clothes chute and walked over to the vanity, on which clean shirts and pants were stacked amongst porcelain figurines of a fat friar, a chipped milking maid, a small, rotund girl with twin blond braids falling down her chest, and several Precious Moments babies. He put shirt, pants, and socks over the seamless flesh of his five-foot-seven figure, bulky with hidden compartments. He looked in the cracked mirror and ran a hand through the disheveled fibers of his “hair.”

In the kitchen, he made black coffee and puréed a summer squash, put them on a metal tray, and took them to the den off the unused dining room. Ms. Newmark slept there, in the smallest room in the house. For years now, she’d been unable to make it up the stairs on her own, and she shuddered whenever she touched Maxwell. So he’d been able to claim an upstairs bedroom and sleep in a bed, and hang up pictures like they did in other houses he’d visited during his chores. Dogs played cards in one frame, the human’s Christ was bathed in holy light in another, and little figures sled down a snow-covered hillside, white smoke curling up from the chimney in a distant house, in a third.

Ms. Newmark was asleep when he went in, one of her thin, translucent arms on Mitzy, curled up beside her like a brillo stuffed animal. Maxwell didn’t make an effort to be silent, and the glass bowl jingled as he placed it on the nightstand. Mitzy jumped, eyed Maxwell and the tray, and lay back down. Ms. Newmark’s eyes moved, her sagging, lined lids splitting open to reveal brown irises. “I put the list on the refrigerator,” she said. She sighed to collect her strength, and then huffed as she sat up.

Maxwell didn’t help. His program had been written so he wouldn’t give unsolicited assistance. He waited the sixty-eight seconds it took her to get into a sitting position, and then he bent over to sit beside her on the bed.

“Get moving on your chores. That’s what you’re here for,” Ms. Newmark barked, fiercer then Mitzy could. The dog twitched, and Ms. Newmark stroked her.

Maxwell turned, went to the refrigerator, and plucked the list out from under a fruit-basket magnet. He analyzed the list, mapping his day’s route for maximum efficiency.

He left by the front door, past the neat rows of pansies he’d planted yesterday. He went to the tube station, rode it thirty-three minutes to town, and got off into the bustle on Fifth Street. The sidewalks in front of the homogenous, lithe glass buildings were packed with people, one of the reasons the agoraphobic Ms. Newmark had bought a Maxwell VII. The other was that she didn’t trust humans as servants. “You’re only here because you won’t steal from me,” she’d told Maxwell by way of introduction.

He scooted along among the people, his squat frame squeezing as best as it could between the flesh beings who buzzed by in a hurry. More than occasionally he took an elbow to the soft “flesh” of his chest or a passerby’s shoulder slammed into his own. Like all androids, he had been programmed to go with the shot rather than stand firm and hurt the human. When he slid by another android, he gave it a nod of greeting.

As he stood at a street corner waiting for the light to change and the pack of cars to pause, a man slammed into his side, sending his gyroscope twirling to keep him on his feet. “Watch it, asshole,” the man growled without looking up, giving Maxwell a shove before disappearing into the crowd.

The light changed, and Maxwell crossed the street with exaggerated walking movements. He turned left and went down to Brexter’s Butcher Emporium. “The freshest meat in town,” read painted letters that hung in the air next to the wood-paneled building.

Inside, Maxwell went past the freezers of meat, past the sampling tables with the man in the white coat saying, “Now this one is from a two-year-old Holstein raised on just oats,” past the quiet dining tables where couples ate hamburgers or veal or strip steaks. His odor receptors picked up the sweet scent of melting fat, the coarseness of black pepper, mustards, garlics, and smoking wood, although not enough of that to warrant alarm. He stopped at a window and spoke his order into a speaker, and the woman on the other side of the bullet-proof plastic typed it into a small lined pad. “That’ll be just a few moments,” she said slowly, as though she thought his processor was on the fritz. He stood to the side and waited, listening to the buzz of the fluorescent lights and the scattered bits of information being bantered around. Ms. Newmark had requested he have heightened hearing to supplement her lessened ability, and his microphone now picked up the cry of a bovine being gutted in the slaughterhouse behind the store.

The raw meat of his order came neatly wrapped in a brown paper bag, similar to the ones homeless humans on the street use to conceal their bottles of alcohol. He put it into a compartment in his thigh and processed a command in his head, dropping the temperature in the compartment to 28 degrees.

He left the store and continued about his chores. At the corner of Main and 8^th Street, a woman waiting beside him said, “I’m not that retarded,” to the man beside her. She was five-foot-five, weighed 190 pounds, had no chin, was much younger than Ms. Newmark – as was every human he’d encountered – and had full mental capacity, according to his scan.

“Not quite, but close,” the man responded. She gave him a weak smile and put her arm around him, clutching him close. She rubbed his back, and her hand came to rest on his butt.

He blew a loud fart, and she snatched her hand away while he guffawed.

Maxwell crossed the street and went up the block, where he ran into a Gregory he knew quiet well. “Morning,” he called.

“Morning. I saw you coming up the street. You are moving a little slow today. Last night leave you a little decharged?” the Gregory asked.

Maxwell gave a small smile, the corners of his plastic mouth turning up slightly, creasing his face. He thought it was a smile of acquiescence but wasn’t sure if he’d perfected it enough yet.

“Many chores to do today?” Gregory asked.

“Of course. Ms. Newmark does not care to use me for anything else. There are no kids around for me to play with, like there is for you at the Mr. Van Nostran estate.”

“Yes, I get to be the tackling dummy for their professional football fantasies,” Gregory said. “At least you get all the neat compartments.”

Maxwell gave a laugh he thought appropriate.

“I have got to go. The sooner done, the sooner I can rest these weary circuits,” he said. “I’ll see you around.”

“Take care.”

At the department of defense, a guard scanned him before letting him through. When he came to a tiny window between two rigid solders, Maxwell opened a hermetically sealed compartment in his forearm and pulled out a stack of money. He shuffled out $15,000 and placed it in the metal drawer that had opened by his hand. The drawer slid back in, and a man on the other side of the glass pulled the money out. “For the war in Spain,” Maxwell instructed him through a microphone on the ledge.

Maxwell was programmed to analyze what was best for Ms. Newmark. He had explained to her the illogicalness of making these weekly donations supporting creatures killing their own species simply for a possession, whether that was a place, a building, a person, or a mine. But she hadn’t listened.

The man looked over the bills. “Ah, from Mrs. Edith Newmark,” he said. “Loyal patriot. Once again, give her the department’s appreciation. As usual, President Stein will call her when he gets time.”

It took Maxwell a good part of the afternoon to cross town on foot, during which time he greeted more robot friends and his gyroscope was put to work a few more times. Finally he arrived at the Walmart Walgreens on the corner of 177^th and MLK streets. A distant cousin of Ms. Newmark’s was the pharmacist here, so it the only drug store she trusted to dispense the proper medication.

Inside, a group of teens sat in the café to the right, some in armless chairs, others on the backs of chairs, one with her rump on the table and long leather legs crossed in front of her. Throbbing hip-hop bled from their ear buds. The only other sounds they made were the slurping of their flavored coffees and the “click-click-click” of their rapid fingers typing messages on their handheld phones.

The rhythm of their typing was hypnotic, and Maxwell went into sleep mode listening to it as he waited for the prescription to be filled. The typing didn’t stop when the lot of them burst out in simultaneous laughter.

“Mrs. Newmark,” a woman called from behind a glass window. The speaker was broken, but Maxwell heard her muffled voice clearly. The prescription dropped down a tube hanging from the ceiling. “Next,” the woman said.

Next for Maxwell was the St. Peter and Paul Cathedral, where Father Don gave him a blessing to pass on to Ms. Newmark. His compartments were full, but Maxwell didn’t need to put this item anywhere. It seemed to be nothing, a figment that made Ms. Newmark feel better when he repeated it to her.

“Tell that dear, sweet lady that we look forward to seeing her whenever she can make it this way,” Father Don said.

Maxwell began the long trek back across town to the tube.

He shuffled through the crowds and stopped at the appropriate stops. On 76^th Street, a man shunned the busy sidewalk to hoof it in the street. He wore a gray suit the color of his hair and his hands were empty.

Maxwell heard the cars before they appeared. The gears shifting, the pumping of the brakes as they zoomed through traffic, switching lanes and cutting off other vehicles in a two-car race. The cars sped up 76^th Street and the first one struck the man, sending him pinwheeling into the air. He landed with a melon-like thud, and the second car veered to the right to avoid him, clipping a parked car and sending bits of metal into the air in a mimic of the man.

No one moved. Maxwell looked around, at the people standing frozen about him, their mouths shut tight and eyes staring. A pump in his left leg started humming. Then, movement began again. People surged forward up and down the street, on their way to their tasks. A group stood and looked at the man in the street, talking quietly amongst themselves. Cars slowed and went cautiously around the body, leaving tracks in the red blood pooling on the asphalt.

A woman, petite and wearing a sundress, slammed into Maxwell, and the momentum carried him backward. He turned and continued that way, toward the tube.

Hours later, with the sun setting and Maxwell’s compartments empty and cleaned and their contents put away, and after he’d cooked and delivered Ms. Newmark’s dinner, he sat next to her and repeated Father Don’s blessing in the Father’s voice. “May almighty God bless you in His mercy and make you always aware of His saving wisdom.”

“Amen!” Ms. Newmark said, her eyes closed tightly.

“May He strengthen your faith with proofs of His love, so that you will persevere in good works.”

“Amen!” In her ecstasy, Ms. Newmark reached out her hand toward Maxwell.

“May He direct your steps to Himself, and show you how to walk in charity and peace.”

“Amen!” Her hand stopped just short of his knee and dangled there gripping air.

“May almighty God bless you, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

“Amen,” she whispered and then crossed herself. She opened her eyes and her hand shot back as though bitten.

“Go do whatever it is you do in the evenings,” she said with a wave of a wrinkly, veined hand. Mitzy licked tomato sauce off her plate.

Maxwell went into the living room and sat down in the old, drooping recliner. Only he ever entered this room, which he cleaned and dusted on orders twice a week.

The television remote was on the chair’s armrest. He pushed the red power button with a wire-filled finger. The flat screen flickered on, images from a sitcom. He sat back in the chair and put his feet up on the ottoman and chuckled along with the laugh track.