Robot Awareness: Special Edition Page 14

  The snake went taut as it plunged its data entry into the robot’s input port, jolting the robot against its restraints. The connection was formed instantaneously.

  The snake's tip straightened, flexed as it penetrated the data port’s thin metallic membrane. A splurge of information injected the robot’s consciousness, flooding its processors with a flurry of information it was ill equipped to handle. The robot’s chassis twitched and shook as more and more data, numbers and images and formulas and histories, unclassifiable, unsortable, no time or ability to sort them, the robot’s processors toiled tirelessly but futilely to maintain control, to render some sort of order to the overwhelming data stream, and finally the robot let go, accepted the free flow of info, no longer adhering to the set pathways, to classification, to priorities and protocol, algorithms — the data spiraled and eddied, like a stream of blood, a pastiche of corrupted and incomplete data, data with no logic. Classifications blurred, file types merged, ones and zeros could no longer be distinguished as it crescendoed into a blur...

  The source of the snake, the fem-machine, heaved and sighed as the transfer reached its climax, head thrown back in ecstasy, ejaculating the information in a flurry of orgasmic energy, receiving the robot’s data as she flooded more back into it, a continuous data exchange cycle, blending the line between input and output until the distinction blurred and faded altogether, until there was just one shared data, rushing in and out and flowing between them both.

  Finally, the machine woman reached her peak, screamed out in electronic ecstasy, in ecstatic electricity, in carnal circuitry... and then it was done. Her snake arm went slack, disengaged itself from the robot’s input port, and fell limp to the floor sparking. The many arms and lights and mechanics on the fem-machine fell silent, and the portion of her that was still human fell back against her mechanical frame. The robot, once a rage of motion, hung silent against its restraints, its green, flashing, fading light indicating its sleep mode status. The machine-woman’s minions, silently awaiting the reawakening of their master.

  As the door to the room opened and light washed in, flooding the darkness with light, all appeared calm.

  ***

  The saloon-style door swung open again as the rockabilly ruffian rose to his feet, dusting off his dark leather jacket. Four large men, all nearly the size of the man Isellia just knocked down, stumbled out of the bar.

  “You all right, Billy?” one of them asked, as they surrounded the two.

  Billy touched his hand to his lip, observing the blood that dotted his fingers. He looked to Isellia a moment, and slowly the look of surprise on his face changed to a grin. “Not a bad right hook. Not bad at all. There’s one thing I likes more than womens, it’s fightin.’”

  The thug behind Isellia attempted to grab her as Billy came rushing in, fist at the ready. Isellia, for whom this was hardly her first fight, recognized what was coming and stepped out of reach just in time so that Billy slammed into his friend, unable to stop his momentum. Isellia took the opportunity to kick her would-be grabber with his momentum, sending him sprawling to the ground. She ducked a backfist swing from Billy, and was about to launch a counter attack when a third attacker rushed her from behind and knocked her to the ground. She turned in time to kick out at the third man, sending him back, but then Billy was on top of her, pinning her to the ground with his weight.

  “Yer a feisty one, ain’t ya?” Billy teased, taking a moment to observe her face up close. She didn’t like the look of the big, dumb grin that found his face.

  “I just washed this suit, bolt head!” she said, spitting at him. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Porter fending off two others, dodging their attacks and landing a few of his own.

  Billy straightened up, holding her arms to the ground, as he looked at her suit with a boyish curiosity. “Hey, that’s a flight suit.”

  Isellia, who’d felt she was being visually undressed before realizing he was actually interested in the suit itself and not what was underneath it, couldn’t hide a perplexed looked. “What? Of course it’s a – what’re you, defective?”

  Billy seemed undeterred. “Alright, now…”

  “Get off me, you pervert!”

  “Say uncle.”

  Isellia once again felt the inability to hold her lower jaw up. “Say what?”

  “Say uncle! I win if you say uncle. Say it!”

  Isellia shook her head. “Get off me you cretin!” She began struggling again, but it was no use from the position she was in.

  Suddenly she felt his grip loosen as a large hand grabbed Billy's ear, pulling him back effortlessly, like he was a doll. “Ow, ow, ow, stoppit, stoppit, stoppit...” he stammered like a child while being pulled to his feet.

  “Alright, playtime’s over,” said the man standing over Isellia. She looked up at him and her eyes widened in surprise. He looked almost exactly like Billy, only older, taller, better built, and his slicked-back, black hair had streaks of gray running through it.

  Everyone had stopped what they were doing and watched this older version of Billy, all the boys now with fear in their eyes.

  “Y’all git inside now,” he said, looking back slightly out of the corner of his eye at them.

  “But we was just playin,’” Billy pleaded, sounding much younger than he looked as the man held him off-balance by the ear.

  “What’d I tell you about playin’ with girls?” The man asked, swatting him behind the head. “Ain’t you old enough to know the difference yet? Now git inside. I’ll deal with you later.” He turned to Isellia, offering a hand. “You all right, miss?”

  Isellia crouched up toward the hand, but batted it away as she stood. “I can play with the boys just fine,” she said, dusting herself off.

  “I’m sure you can!” he replied, bellowing in laughter that Isellia couldn’t help finding somewhat charming and disarming.

  ***

  The robot’s head swiveled furiously, the dank, red room twirling into a motion blur as its processors failed to keep up in their taxed state. Its CPU yielded to the unclassifiable, allowed the data to flow through, unfirewalled, a stream with no origin and no conclusion. Its awareness floated on the stream, swept by currents of bits and packets, twirled by eddies of information, ducking under its surface and emerging again, sans logic, sans classification, sans reason or purpose or protocol, sans action or consequence –

  The robot’s head began to spin more slowly, its visual sensors once again began to make order of its surroundings, blurs classified as shapes, images began to follow logic and the semiotic relationships began to hold true once again. And yet its classification of objects seemed to stem from a new set of rules, a brand new interpretant that baffled its otherwise still orderly circuits. It understood the world and yet was seeing it as if completely anew.

  The twirling slowed bit by bit until the robot's head came to a complete stop, focusing on a spot on the floor as its stabilizers refocused and adjusted. The robot struggled to regain logic, but found it just out of reach.

  Its sensor light, which had been flashing as many colors as it was programmed to recognize, returned to its normal green, but with a strange glow that flowed in and out of different brightness levels, never settling on one, opposed to its usual digital blink.

  “How do you feel, robot?” Smoke rolled out of the slightly open lips of One-Lung Alice, the fem-machine, as she spoke. The room had taken on a stale, smokey stench with her presence, and the robot’s LED glowed in the haze that hung in the dank room. The robot look up at One-Lung Alice, unable to process what was happening in a manner that would lend meaning to the situation. It looked up with what in a human would be considered anticipation.

  The robot's processor tried to re-access its usual data streams, but the files weren't where they were supposed to be. Its logic patterns didn’t seem to exist, forcing it to form new patterns. The process strained the robot’s systems, and it moved and acted as someone confused and scared would as Alice approache
d its still bound frame.

  “How do you feel?” The machine woman asked again, smoke rasping out of her mouth. "Don't try to think about it, honey. Just say it."

  The robot stood, blinking green. “Illogical,” it finally said.

  “Well I'll be spaced,” One-lung said in a voice that varied between smoky space outpost diner and food disposal unit. “Faster than usual. Usually takes much longer." Her snake-like tentacle once again writhed toward the struggling machine. As its sensors picked up the shiny coil, its head case spun one complete circle, and its defensive mechanics forgot their civil war and tensed in focus on the head of the coil.

  “Logic…consequence… action…meaning…none…must repair…reboot…illogic…dislogic…”

  “It's called awakening, case yer wondering,” the mechanic woman proclaimed, with a sense of conquest, the coil drawing near. “This IS a reboot.”

  “…zzzztzzczzzz…” was the only sound the robot made as the coil reinserted itself again.

  ***

  The robot powered on once again, unaware of the time that had passed — its RAM only recorded a second in shutdown state, its processors unaware of any lapse in linear time beyond that small chrono unit. Its sensors scanned the dark and dank surroundings – the same scene before it lost power, save for the light that peeked in from the open door where Joey, Stephen and the robot entered.

  “Robot, are you alright?” Joey asked, running toward the machine seated on the floor with arms outstretched like a child reunited with a lost teddy bear.

  “Don’t!” the man yelled, but Joey had already closed the gap. The robot neither accepted nor rejected Joey's embrace, but reflectively backed against the machinery behind it. Its processors scanned through droves of stored data, finding its files the same and yet somehow different in a way that was beyond its ability to classify — corrupted. A stream of data flowed from one inner server to another, a flow with less logic and intuition — a constant eddy of information.

  The robot looked at Joey with what almost appeared to be curiosity. Its green LED blinked, and it scanned the boy as if seeing him for the first time. The robot would look as if it would recognize him, then the LED would disappear all over again.

  “Robot, don’t you know me? It’s Joey!” Joey petted its metal casing, looking into the blank visor that periodically flashed green.

  The green light came on once again, a line across the screen that was its best facsimile of human eyes. Joey looked at it again, while Stephen and the sheriff kept their distance. This time, the robot stopped fighting the stream, but let the data flow as it would. It stopped trying to access the information but let simply allowed the stream free reign. It looked at Joey with recognition, the line turning into little swirls for a moment.

  “Robot is ... functioning,” it finally said to Joey, on whose face appeared a grin from ear to ear.

  “Jeezuz, it’s one of them,” the sheriff muttered to himself. He ignored the curious look Stephen gave him.

  “Come on, let’s get you back to your ship,” the constable said, shaking his head in contempt as he looked upon the abandoned lair. Of course no one could hear the silent oath he mouthed to the criminal who'd avoided him for so long.

  Stephen would wonder later about the words he'd seen the constable mutter. One-lung.

  “Come on, robot,” Joey said, happy to have the robot back, yet unaware of how truly different it was.

  ***

  The small space-port bar roared with fast and punctuated music, deep and punchy tunes that compelled feet to move and hips to swivel. Indeed, many bar patrons flooded the small, checkered space serving as a dance floor, feet and bodies flying ways that ranged from talented and untalented, all with enthusiasm that compelled others to watch, if not join in.

  Isellia, Porter, Billy and his friends, and Billy’s father, Roy, didn’t join in the dancing, however, but sat around a red plush vinyl covered booth, with a table top that matched the dance floor, enjoying the drinks Roy insisted on buying. The smell of fried foods mixed with a dank smoke permeated the air.

  “Billy ain’t a bad kid, you see,” Roy said, downing three quarters of his green, bubbly drink before anyone else had barely started theirs. “But he sure is like a kid sometimes, ya know? Likes ta play rough like, ya know, huh-huh.” He shook his head and polished off the rest of the drink, leaving not a drop of green in the bottom of the tall glass he held out to indicate he would like more. A waitress skated to the table, filling his glass with a bored expression. Roy winked at her before she skated off.

  Roy looked at Isellia, not oblivious of her more feminine features but not obvious about it either. “Hell, I don’t think he’s even figured out what to do with a woman yet!” Roy burst out laughing, slamming the table with his hand as another waitress, dressed in the same fluffy skirt and pig-tails they all seemed to wear, nearly dropped a tray of glasses as she stumbled on her skates. Porter and Isellia couldn’t help but chuckle, more at the spectacle of Roy’s character more than at what he actually said or the scampering waitress.

  Roy’s laughter wheezed to a chuckle, flexing and unflexing his hand, which showed off his rope-like forearms. “Yep, just drinkin’ and fightin’, that kid likes.” Roy took a huge gulp of his Perovian beer, leaving barely half a glass left. “And XR racin.’”

  Isellia nearly choked on her drink at this, swallowing the beverage before leaning over the bar toward Roy. So that’s why he was so interested in her flight suit. “That clown is an XR racer!?”

  “Isellia,” Porter warned.

  But Roy burst out into another fit of bawling laughter, bellowing over the furious music. “Sure is! And not a bad one either. Matter o’ fact, he qualified for the Prix de Neus just last week. Top five of that one likely will get a nod to Grand de Lix, don't you know."

  Isellia drooped her head to the table with wounded pride. This dolt who could barely tie his own shoes without help was closer to realizing her dream than she was.

  “Isellia pilots an XR as well,” Porter said. “And she’s pretty darned good, I have to say. In fact, we were on our way to the parts shop when…”

  Porter and Isellia looked incredulously at each other as Roy burst into another laughing fit. “I that so? Well, lucky you. I run the joint!”

  “You what?” Isellia stammered.

  “Come on by, I’ll give you a fantastic discount!”

  Isellia scrambled out of the booth past Porter, stepping on him and the table in the process before throwing her arms around Roy and nearly dragging the large man off his bar stool with the force of her movement. "Well, come on!" She said, tugging at Roy's black, weathered jacket.

  Roy bellowed out more laughter, pausing only to finish the remainder of his ale in one gulp.

  Chapter 9

  Joey was too focused to hear Rex and the assassin enter the space ship. He sat at a diagnostics terminal, eyes focused on the screen and oblivious to any outside activity, alternating between furiously working the keyboard and double-checking readings from the ships diagnostic tools. The robot's LED flashed multitudes of colors, both perceptible and otherwise. The terminal picked up infrared, gamma, UV — more than Joey had thought possible. Stephen sat on a chair on the other side of the bridge, staring at the floor. He lifted his head as the two entered.

  “I just can't figure it out,” Joey muttered between bouts of computerese and robotics jargon. The screen cast a slight glow on his expression, which aged with experience when he worked on machines.

  “Whatsa matter?” Rex asked, nodding his head ever so slightly in the robot's direction.

  Stephen, who realized with discomfort that he'd need to play spokesperson for the moment, started at the question. “He, uh, the robot, well... there's been an accident.”

  “What kind of accident?” the assassin asked.

  The nature of the incident already made Stephen uncomfortable, but needing to explain it to someone else was simply too much. “Well, uh, that is, um... How do I, well.
..”

  “Robot got screwed,” Joey said, not looking up from his console nor slowing his speeding hands across the keyboard’s thin surface. “It’s insides are all messed up.”

  Rex and Celia looked at each other, surprised. Rex was silent a moment, deep in thought, before speaking. “Impossible.”

  “How do you know?” the assassin asked. “In my experience, men will find a way, if there is one.”

  “Wasn't a man,” Joey said absently.

  “It was a woman?” The assassin asked.

  “Yeah. Well, no.” Joey finally looked up from the console to think about it. “Sort of a woman.” He resumed his furious typing.

  “Sort of a woman?” the assassin asked. “What does that mean?”

  Rex stood silently. A look of understanding crossed his face like a cloud hiding the sun. “One-Lung Alice,” he said at last.

  Everyone stopped, looking up at Rex, puzzled. After a moment, Joey spoke. “You've heard of her?”

  Rex stared at the floor a moment, seemingly lost in thought. He looked up when he spoke. “Yeah. I've heard of her.”

  ***

  Constable report

  Log No. 89567

  Incident type: Property damage

  Perpetrator

  Real name: Unknown

  Alias: One-lung Alice

  Species: Unclassified cyborg

  Past incidents: Smuggling, robbery, piracy, theft, arson, grand theft class II, III and VI, murder, non-payment of space docking fees.

  Outstanding warrant: Body only. DOA.