current

Aye, Robot

by Christopher Lockhart

      It was just past noon when trouble walked in my office. He had it all over him, the polished suit, the slicked hair, the overall good nutrition. The deep tan. All the hallmarks of a creditor, I thought.

      "Nicholas Armstrong?"

      I nodded. "Yes."

      The man, probably in his mid-thirties, looked around my office. Perhaps he wasn't impressed with my digs. "Nicholas Armstrong of Nightstream Magazine?"

      Another nod. "Yes."

      He mulled things over for a few seconds, then cleared his throat. "May I have a moment of your time?" he asked.

      "Certainly," I replied, gesturing to the chair opposite my desk. "And your name?"

      He unbuttoned his coat and sat down. "Danny," he said.

      I breathed a sigh of relief. Creditors weren't the first-name types. Nor did they ask for permission to do things.

      "So how can I help you?"

      "I submitted a story to your publication. Your website said to query the editor after thirty days if there's been no response."

I smiled. "Query electronically."

      "I query nonetheless."

      Now I was reminded why I kept my business tucked away in the ass-end of the industrial sector. I huffed and turned to my terminal. "Seeing how you came all this way, I'll have a look, okay?"

      "Thanks."

      I searched under the name "Danny." I found his submission in the folder of hopeful-but-not-too-likelies. After a quick review, I admitted to myself that his work was pretty good...but, ah, that was it. "No cover letter," I said, leaning back.

      "Seems trivial."

      "It's in the submission guidelines."

      "But--"

      "But never piss off the editor."

      "Apologies."

      "Look, I get about a thousand manuscripts a month to mill through. I need some trigger to thin them out. A cover letter tells me that you're human, not some mass-mailing robot."

      "But I am a robot," Danny said. He smiled now. "At least not a mass-mailing one. No simultaneous submissions, as per your guidelines."

      "Very funny."

      His eyes glowed red. His headplate slid off to the back of his neck. A nimbus of ozone-tinged vapor dissipated away.

      "Very nice," I said. I made my eyes glow red, too. "Cybernetics, that is."

      "I've had upgrades over the centuries, of course."

I laughed. Didn't even try to stifle it. "You mean to tell me you're that old?"

      "Yes."

      I whirled a finger at my head. "Could you put yourself back together?"

      He reconstituted. His flint stare hadn't changed.

      "Okay, if you're a robot, then how did you survive the Knockout?" I asked. "That little EMP catastrophe that annihilated all electronics and plunged the world into a Dark Age? Remember that?"

      Danny Boy opened his mouth to answer, but I raised my hand before he found his voice. "Wait, please...let me guess on this one: tinfoil?"

      "Aluminum."

      "Excuse me?"

      "Aluminum foil."

      "Explain," I said.

      "It all started on the Florida Archipelago three centuries ago..."

      I raised my hand again. "I've got a load of slush to wade through here, so make it quick. I like explanations just like the fiction here at Nightstream: short."

      He grunted. "Well, suffice it to say I had humble beginnings. In my early years I was nothing more than a CPU with wheels, some primitive eyes, and a manipulator arm."

      "Functioning as what?"

      "A bit of everything on my master's estate. A gardener, a cook, a playmate for his son."

      "Indeed."

      "I also catalogued, digitized, and shelved books. My master loved books."

      "Wow," I said, mostly to myself. Books were a rarity, even in this day. Most had been burned after the Knockout, a travesty to be sure, but people needed to stay warm and cook food. Cults blaming technology for the disaster didn't help the printed word either. As I mentioned, it had been a Dark Age.

      "So you were a librarian also?"

      "Yes."

      "And the aluminum foil came into this how?"

      Danny frowned. "I mentioned being a playmate."

      "For the master's son."

      "Yes, well, the boy loved to play Roswell, him being the green alien and myself playing the crashed saucer. Sometimes..." his mouth twisted distastefully, "I played the whole crash site, my components spread to the four winds. Being wrapped up in aluminum foil helped me play the part better, he had always said."

      "And that's how you survived the Knockout?"

      "Yes, and go on to be a valuable commodity over the years, since I possessed actual working electronics. I changed hands, proved my worth, received upgrades in intelligence, received better bodies...you get the idea."

      "And now you want to be a writer?"

      "Yes," Danny said. "I long to find my own voice."

      Every writer's dream, I thought. The slushpile beckoned; I didn't have time for this. I got up and waved Danny out of my office. "Which I'm sure you'll do. Consider workshopping. Perhaps one of those newfangled Clarions. Now, if you please."

      "But you should have loved my story, Mr. Armstrong. It had all the right ingredients: Lovecraft's feel of doom, Pratchett's playfulness, King's flair for horror."

      Those authors didn't immediately ring a bell. I had him pushed to the door now. Damn, he was a heavy bastard. "Never waste an editor's time with retreads."

      "But wait," he pleaded. "You'll love my next story. More original. And it's just the right mix."

      "The right mix of what this time?"

      "Of Niven and Asimov. With a dash of Le Guin, too."

      I stopped him outside the door. "Who the hell are Niven and Asimov? And those others?"

      He tapped that skull of his. "It's all up here, Mr. Armstrong."

      That's when I dragged Danny back into the office and planted him in my seat, tethered him to the terminal. The download began. My eyes widened as I watched the screen fill with the names of known authors and known titles, then with known authors and unknown titles, then with unknown authors and unknown titles. Thousands of them now. A treasure beyond compare.

      I gripped his arm as the download continued. "Hey, why the hell did you wait all these years to share this?" I asked.

      Danny focused on the screen. "I didn't upgrade to an imagination until last month."

      "Oh."

Christopher Lockhart is a synthetic chemist for a pharmaceutical company and his fiction has appeared in Jupiter Magazine and AlienSkin. He's passionate about the classical guitar, reading, and, of course, writing. He lives with his lovely wife, Theresa, in southwest Michigan .