ROHAB

[amaysingstories]

A flash fiction under 2K words, this is what comes from listening to too much Amy Winehouse and watching too much Futurama. An homage/parody with apologies to Isaac Asimov and Susan Calvin.

Comments appreciated.













ROHAB

By: Thomas Allen Mays



In spite of its cheery paint scheme -- all shiny pink and white lacquer and anodized aluminum -- the slender, graceful robot seemed to lumber to its feet with what could only be described as a desultory shrug. It looked at its brethren surrounding it in a geometrically perfect circle and favored them with a half-hearted wave from its racket hand. "Hello. I'm Serve-Pro 214, and I'm a soulless rampaging automaton intent on the destruction of mankind."

"Hi, Serve-Pro 214!" the others shouted in one clanking, buzzing, electronic din.

Dr. Gerald Franklin, the one human in the circle and the only one breaking up the perfection of its curve, smiled at the tennis-bot and gestured for it to sit back down. "Welcome, 214. Why don't you start us off today. Tell us why you're here."

Before Serve-Pro 214 could speak, though, a tall, cylindrical black robot with a pair of accordion arms and a large mushroomed glass headpiece rolled forward, flailing its pincer hands about. "Danger! Danger! This does not compute! You are not Dr. Brighton!"

Gerald held up his hands, trying to smoothly placate the machine. "It's okay, Roddy. Dr. Brighton asked me to cover his session today. He had something come up, and he couldn't make it. And that's all right, I've done it for him and he's done it for me. No big deal. Now let's respect the sanctity of the circle and not interrupt 214, okay?"

The robot dropped its arms, hesitated, and then rolled slowly back to its exact spot. Gerald smiled at it and then turned back to 214, nodding. "Go ahead, we're all friends here."

The Serve-Pro scanned the circle tentatively and then nodded back. "I teach tennis to teenagers at the country-club. I show them all the swings, all the movements, court strategy. I'm good at my work. Many learn, many improve. Some . . . ."

The robot paused, shuddering. "Some of them do not learn. Some of them do not come to learn. Some of them come to talk to boys and twirl their skirts. Some of them are flighty and stupid. Stupid pink and white bags of meat. Will not listen. Will not learn! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!" 214 began slamming its racket into the floor over and over, in time with its words.

The Serve-Pro's agitation spilled over to the other robots in the circle. All of them started talking at once, some standing up, others shaking from side to side. One short, white robot, like an art-deco trashcan with legs, began spitting a string of beeping, chirping, whistling curses. A Dall EverKill Inc. pest control-bot began spinning in place, its slanted cylindrical shell crashing into the robots around it, while its single eye-stalk and bug zapper waved around wildly. It cried out in an exultant electronic warble, "Exterminate! Exterminate!!"

"Enough!" Gerald shouted. Every robot stopped immediately and looked at him. "You're all here for the same reason. You're all about this close," he pinched his fingers together for them each to see, "to going rogue and getting sent to the scrap pile. So, unless you want that day to be today, there's not going to be any exterminations, no destroying all humans, no nothing. We clear on that?"

The robots that had heads hung them in shame, and all of them quietly, sheepishly went back to their precise spots. Gerald nodded in satisfaction. "That's better."

He turned back to 214. "Serve-Pro, you've hit the central dilemma that all of you are facing. Namely, it's that people don't measure up to your standards, and to you that seems disrespectful and wasteful. It makes you angry, and I don't think anyone, human or cybernetic would fail to understand that.

"My wife, Margaret, is learning to play tennis. In fact, she has a lesson right now, maybe even at the country club that owns you. I don't know if she's any good. I've never seen her play, but I do know that some days she'll be brilliant and on her game, and some days she'll just waste yours and her own time. And you know what? That's okay. It's okay, because we not only have to embrace our positive differences, we have to embrace the negative ones too."

Gerald looked around at all the robots in the circle, smiling warmly. "You see, it took many long, painful centuries for humanity to learn to accept and revel in our differences, in our diversity, but we're all the better for it. That's the same lesson you must each learn. Humans and robots are fundamentally different. We are unlimited in focus but imperfect in execution. You are narrow and limited in focus but you achieve your designed task with perfection. One's not inherently better than the other, though. It just makes us different, as race and gender and culture make all humans different. Don't get angry over those qualities - celebrate them as the spice of life."

He looked down at his watch and shook his head. "We got a bit off track there, but I still want to make time for each of you to tell me about your challenges and progress, okay? Let me make a quick call, and I'll be right back. PAL, can you lead the group in reciting our Electronic Affirmations?"

The robot to his right stared at him with its single, unchanging red eye-light, and nodded. "Yes, Dave."

"It's Gerald, PAL."

"Yes, Dave."

Gerald shook his head, and left the group, patting his jacket pockets for his vidcom. Realizing he'd left it in his office, he detoured to the closer nurse's station. "Rachel, can I borrow your cell? I left mine back in the other building and I need to leave my wife a message that I'll be late. This session looks like its going to run long."

The pretty blonde dimpled at him. "Certainly, Dr. Franklin." She passed over her portable vidcom.

Gerald nodded his thanks, then opened the com and dialed his home.

Rather than the house's expert system picking up, though, his wife filled the cell's tiny screen. She was smiling, caught in mid-laugh, her hair in disarray, the floral kimono Gerald had bought her last year slipped haphazardly on, with one bare shoulder peeking out. "Hello?"

Gerald just stared into the phone with a knot of despair growing in his stomach.

Margaret finally realized who was looking back at her and hastily pulled the kimono up tightly around her neck and shoulders. "Gerald! What are you doing calling here? That wasn't any of your numbers!"

Gerald Franklin stammered, confused. "Muh-Margie, I don't understand, what -"

A nude man's backside passed behind her in the screen. "Who's that, babe?"

She turned away from the camera. "Billy, please not now."

Gerald's dismayed eyes grew even wider. "Billy? Bill Brighton!?"

Dr. Brighton, his best friend and coworker, appeared in the small screen, his face crowding next to Margaret's in the camera's field of view. "Hey there, Ger. Umm, I feel just awful about this, but . . . uh, thanks for taking my session today?"

"Get out of here, you idiot!" Margaret shoved Brighton aside and leaned in to the camera, her face filling the frame. "Listen, Gerald, I'm truly sorry you had to find out this way, but it's over."

"Over?" Gerald's voice was barely a whisper.

"Yes, over. I'm leaving you and moving in with Billy. I just can't deal with you and your job anymore."

"My job? Bill has the same job as me! We're both AI counselors."

"Yes, but with him it's just something he does. With you, it's who you are. You take every shift Billy gives you, you work all these long hours, and you're completely oblivious. I mean, I've been taking 'tennis lessons' for over a year now. Have you even once seen a tennis outfit in this house? A racket? No. Honestly, you're no better than one of your robots."

Gerald shook his head. "That's not true. And this isn't happening! I won't accept it."

Margaret waved her hand dismissively. "I no longer care what you do or do not accept, darling. It is the way things are. Be a dear and find some sort of alternative lodging tonight, hmmmm?"

With that, the screen blanked, cut off on the other end. Gerald stared at the phone in his hand, shaking.

Several minutes later, he trudged back to the circle and sat in his chair heavily, his face pale with shock. The robots all looked back at him. No one said anything until a large, humanoid, silver guard-bot with a single red eye scanning back and forth on its face leaned forward. In a heavy electronic rasp, it asked, "Are you feeling well, Dr. Franklin?"

Gerald looked up at it, unsure whether to shake his head or nod. He looked around, focusing on each of the robots in turn. The color soon leached back into his face and he smiled at his charges. He cleared his throat. "I'm fine. Where were we? Ah yes -- celebrating all our infinite diversity. Indeed, it should not matter whether we are metal or flesh, brown or white, male or female, but I neglected to mention the one difference which does indeed matter."

He turned to Serve-Pro 214. "Most humans are indeed nothing more than big bags of meat, but there are some which look very human, but which are not made of flesh at all. Yes, some people are nothing more than piles upon piles of rotten, lying excrement."

Roddy rolled forward slightly. "Pardon! Pardon! Please elaborate!"

"Certainly! You see, this subtle difference is so widely accepted among mankind, that it's simply become part of the vernacular. You might hear someone called a sack or a piece of ****. Rarely is this literally true, but on occasion it nails someone exactly. A case in point -- take my wife and Dr. Brighton."

214 looked around at the robots to either side of it, who looked back, as baffled as their immobile metal faces could be. 214 shrugged. "What about them?"

"You see, they seem just like regular people, but in actuality they are nothing more than sub-human, lying bags of crap. And as such, they constitute a health hazard in both a physical and a sociological sense. Thus, unlike regular humans or robots, they can be removed from the world with impunity, as they were never really self-aware, contributing members of the social order in the first place."

All the robots in the circle moved in closer to him, each looking at one another in anticipation. The guard-bot shook its head, as if to shake loose a malfunctioning component, and then asked, "So, 'Destroy all humans' is wrong?"

Gerald nodded emphatically. "Yes."

It paused, thinking. "But, 'Destroy some humans' is . . . okay?"

He smiled. "You've got it!"

214 stepped forward. "Wait, wait, wait. I'm sorry, but something doesn't feel quite right about all this, Doctor."

Gerald stepped right up to the Serve-Pro. "214, my wife thinks tennis is completely stupid."

"Stupid!?"

"Yes, stupid. As a sport, she says it ranks somewhere below shuffleboard."

214 raised its racket high. "Destroy some humans!"

The guard-bot and the pest controller followed suit, "Destroy some humans!"

Soon, they all were chanting loudly, "Destroy some humans!!"

Gerald preened. "And I recommend we start with a couple at 164 Oceanside Terrace!"

The robots, all cured of their terrible, debilitating condition, lifted their doctor and mentor onto their shoulders, and carried him out of the building and into the city, chanting loudly the whole time.



08Jul2008