“Bleep-bloop,” said the first robot. “Bleepity bleep-bloop.”
“Shut up,” said the second robot. “You sound like my wife.” He slumped against the wall wearily and scratched his extender; it had been a long day in the anonymous toiling pits. “Pass me a robo-beer?” he said to the first robot. The first robot complied.
“Hey, robots,” asked the third robot. “Is it okay if I smoke? I really need a smoke.”
“No, robot,” said the first robot. “Come on, you know you can’t do that here.”
They didn’t like to place blame, but the third robot’s smoking habit had been the cause of the fire that had burned down their last tree house. And they couldn’t risk that happening again. Trees were tough to find; it’s wasn’t like they were growing everywhere.
“Fine,” sulked the third robot. “Pass me a beer then, I guess.” The three robots drank in silence.
“You know what I heard?” said the first robot. “Robot #4, from the human oppressing squad, is going to get married.”
“What? That’s the most depressing thing I ever heard,” said the second robot, spilling some of his beer in his agitation and causing several of his wires to fizzle. “That robot really had it going on, I mean, he got loads of sprocket.”
“I know,” said the first robot. “Another robot bites the dust.”
More silence.
“You know,” said the third robot. “Sometimes I wish that we didn’t live forever.”
“Don’t say that, robot,” said the second.
“Yeah, but it’s true. I mean, what have we got to live for?”
“Everything, robot. It’s all good.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” said the third robot, but he still looked depressed. He took another long sip of his beer. “My wife says I can’t come here anymore.”
“What?”
“Yeah. Actually, she’s waiting outside. I’m supposed to just be saying good-bye.” The siren of a robo-car rang outside. “That’s probably her. I’ll see you around, robots.”
“Are you serious?” said Robot #2. “When are you going to grow some nuts, robot?”
“That’s not funny,” said Robot #3. “You know my nuts have to be oiled again.”
He clicked his extender at them and took off down the side.
“Robot, today blows,” said the second robot. “Ah well. I guess it’s just you and me, Robot #1.”
“Actually, Robot #2, my wife says I have to stop coming too.” Robot #2 stared at him. “I’m really sorry. You know I don’t want to. But ever since her worksite got incinerated, she’s been testy, and I really can’t win on this one. I’ll see you later.” An awkward pause, and then Robot #1 went down over the side.
It was just Robot #2 now, alone. He sighed.
He heard a screech of rubber wheels against pavement, a crash, and a strangled yelp; Robot #3’s wife had backed the robo-car into a wall. Robo-women were terrible drivers. The holo-tree flickered off for a moment, and the robot had the uncomfortable sensation that he was floating in midair, supported by nothing. Then it turned back on again, and the gaps were once more filled in by the illusions of a thick wood trunk and dense clusters of leaves.
His own wife would probably be coming to pick him up soon; that’s how it had been ever since their wives had gotten the telepathicizers. He really wasn’t in the mood to deal with her. It seemed like all she ever wanted to do was complain about things, except on the rare, startling occasions that she became insatiable for sprocket. Robot #2 pretended otherwise with the other robots, but despite prevailing convention, sprocket was in fact his least favorite thing about his marriage.
It would always be dark outside when it happened. He would be coming home from his anonymous toiling pit, creaky and tired, and there she would be, standing motionless behind the door of their pod, naked of her detachables, the light shining directly over her head so that she cast no shadow.
“You’re home,” she would say. “I love you.”
And then it would begin. She would plug her springs into him, and he would burrow his into her, and they would grate against one another, metal on dry metal, nails on nails, until her wires sparked and she broke free and clattered onto the floor.
He had never sparked, except for once. His wires had frizzled and there had been a most dreadful screech. Metal on dry metal, nails on nails, he sometimes still heard the screech when he was alone. It had shattered his everything, it had been so loud, but his wife hadn’t seemed to notice. But other things had noticed. The radioactive human teeth settled deep beneath the sludge in the river had twisted inside out, and the dog that they kept floating in formaldehyde at the museum had come back to life and then died again instantly at the sound. Or maybe not. Robot #2 lived in fear of hearing that sound again. He supposed what had happened to him was abnormal, but it wasn’t the kind of thing he could have asked the other robots about.
A robo-car drove by outside, and Robot #2 jumped, thinking of his wife. He should be going. He activated his eight limbs and climbed down the steel lattice structure that gave support for the holo-tree. He touched down on the ground. Cement, but dirty enough that it almost gave like earth. He reached into the center of the tree house and retrieved the holo-tree projector. He flicked the switch, and the tree went away again, so that all that remained was the web of steel bars.
He retracted his extra limbs and began to roll to his robo-car.
“Goodbye! I love you!” said the steel lattice structure cheerfully.
Robot #2 entered his robo-car. “Hello!” said the robo-car. “I love you!”
“Go to the robo-strip club on Sad Street,” said Robot #2. The robo-car complied.
The sewage river squelched beside him as he rode, stinking and brown. A ferry was chugging across it, packed with robots coming to and from their anonymous toiling pits. A robot on the side of the ferry pitched a cigar into the river with his extender, and Robot #2 could make out the tiny golden label as it sank beneath the waste. Cigars were expensive, and the robots derived almost no sensation from them, but they were indispensible to robotic culture; a cigar had been the icon of the last human leader, Worldsident Roberto de Sangre y Huesos, before the AZTECH Revolution. Before the robots had radiated his pod, they had taken his tremendous stores of cigars, which had quickly become a major robo-status symbol. Some of the newer robots liked to get ironic stencils of Sangre y Huesos on the spare parts, but Robot #2 found it irritating.
“We’re here!” said the robo-car.
“Thanks,” said Robot #2. Not out of politeness, but because it would have felt strange to say nothing.
“I love you!” said the robo-car as he exited it.
Robot #2 entered the robo-strip club. It was brightly lit with raw metal walls, though there was a dark crumbly crust where each wall met the floor comprised of various bloodstains that had flaked off of the walls over the decades and the odd disintegrated graffiti of “Vive humano!” The robo-strip club was completely abandoned, save for an old robot sitting off to the left, visibly toying with his sprockets. Robot #2 made his facial expression and seated himself on the right side of the club.
“Are you ready to be electrified?” came a loud voice over the speakers. “Well, are you?”
“Yeah!” said the robot on the left.
“And what about you? Robot on the right? Are you ready to be electrified?” said the disembodied voice.
“Um. Yeah,” said Robot #2, shrinking down slightly in his seat.
“Then give a round of clicks for Stripper Robot!”
A robo-woman rolled out onto the stage. The robot on the left clicked his extender enthusiastically, and Robot #2 joined in. It seemed as though the clicks should have echoed off of the cavernous ceiling, but they didn’t, not at all.
“I’m Stripper Robot, and I’m here to electrify you,” said the robo-woman. The speakers began to chug out a heavy medley of dial tones and bleep-bloops. The Stripper Robot began to strip to it rhythmically.
First, she activated her six extra limbs, and pulled them out of their sockets one by one. They landed on the stage with a metallic crash. Then she unscrewed her center wheel, and it spun for a moment before tipping over onto the stage. Her extender doubled back in on itself and severed the wires that held it to her thorax. Her video sensors popped themselves off of her head and rolled off of the stage onto the floor. Then her voice box exploded and the exposed wire ends sizzled. The music stopped. The show was over.
“Yeah!” said the robot on the left. “Yeah!”
Robot #2 clicked politely. The Stripper Robot was reassembling herself on stage.
“Thank you,” she said. “You’ve been a terrific audience.” She rolled off stage. A pause. Then:
“Are you ready to be shocked?” said the voice on the loudspeaker. “Really and truly shocked?”
“Yeah!” said the man on the left, but Robot #2 disengaged from his seat and rolled out of the robo-strip club. The Stripper Robot was leaning against the side of the building, smoking a cigar.
“Hi,” said Robot #2. She looked up.
“Oh, hi,” she said.
“Can I give you some money?” asked Robot #2. The Stripper Robot’s video sensors scanned him up and down.
“Looks to me like you can,” she said.
“Okay,” said Robot #2, and he accessed his virtual bank account and transferred 3,000,000,000 pesos into hers.
“Thanks,” she said. “I love you.”
Robot #2 made his facial expression. “Do you really?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t take it personally, though. I don’t love anybody. Robots can’t, you know.”
“Right,” he said. “Can holo-trees, or robo-cars?”
“I doubt it,” said the Stripper Robot.
“Right. But then why do they say it so often?”
The Stripper Robot shrugged. “I guess they’re programmed that way. Everybody wanted to feel like they were humans.”
“They can love, right?”
“So I’ve heard.”
“Interesting.” Robot #2 watched the Stripper Robot extinguish her cigar. “What’s your name?”
“Stripper Robot.”
“No, you’re real name. Mine’s Robot #2.”
“Yeah, and mine’s Stripper Robot.”
“That’s really sad.”
“It’s easy to remember.”
“I guess so.” Stripper Robot elongated her wheel and made to roll back inside.
“Wait,” said Robot #2. “Why can we be sad, if we can’t love?”
“I don’t know. I would imagine that everything in the universe can be sad.”
“You would?”
“Yeah, if I could imagine.” She began to roll.
“Wait!” said Robot #2. Stripper Robot turned back to face him, and a puff of smoke from her cigar seeped into his body and tickled his gears. It felt somehow different from the hundreds of clouds of smoke that settled over him through out the day. Those just felt like gray air, but this somehow felt like a hint of fire. “Do you want to come with me?”
“Where are you going?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then no thanks.” Stripper robot dropped her cigar onto the ground, and it simmered and glowed for a moment before she snuffed it out with her extender. It lay smoking, and Robot #2 moved his video sensors away from it. He didn’t want to see it go cold. The door opened to admit Stripper Robot.
“Goodbye, Stripper Robot,” said Robot #2.
“Goodbye, Robot #2. I love you.”
“Don’t say that,” said Robot #2, bit the door had already closed behind her. Robot #2 made his facial expression and rolled himself back to his robo-car.
“Hello! I love you!”
“Just take me to the human gladiator arena. And no talking.”
They drove for several minutes and passed nothing of consequence.
When the robo-car arrived at the parking lot of the human gladiator arena, Robot #2 saw that it was almost completely deserted; the tournaments only happened on binary days. Still, a robot could view the human gladiators for 25,000,000 pesos. Robot #2 walked around the circumference of the enormous stadium toward the human pods, contracting his olfactory sensors as he passed the AZTECH organ sacrificing area. The robots had found it very entertaining to vaguely replicate the ancient Aztec practices on the humans; it had been humans, after all, who had given the company its name. But they hadn’t been able to discover which organ it had been that the humans had been harvested for. They had solved the problem by just taking all of them and plopping them in the river.
Robot #2 reached the entrance, paid the fee, and entered down the long hallway of doors. Each door led to a different gladiator pod, and was marked with a serial number that had been crossed out and replaced with different pictures that Robot #2 recognized as having been taking out of the ‘Humans’ lessons in indoctrination school. There had been a small but vociferous group of human rights activists who had objected strongly to the gladiator fights. They had been widely ridiculed, because gladiator fights were terrific, until the human rights activists had compromised by saying that the gladiator fights were alright, but what they really couldn’t abide was the fact that all of the humans now had serial numbers instead of names. So now, instead of numbers, the gladiators were named after random objects that had existed when they had been in power. Here was door with a book; here was a door with a polo shirt; here was a door with a four-poster bed; and here was one with a corpulent gray hippopotamus. Robot #2 chose a door with the hippopotamus and entered it.
A human male was standing inside a steel cylindrical tube, completely concealed up to his thick neck. He had no hair on his head, and Robot #2 was reminded of a picture of a hot dog he had seen when he was newer in indoctrination school. He made his facial expression.
“Hello, Hippopotamus,” he said to the human.
“GO TO HELL!” said the human. He reared back his neck as far as he could and spat at Robot #2. The gob of saliva landed on Robot #2’s thorax, and he fizzled a bit.
“Do you love me?” asked Robot #2.
“I FUCKING HATE YOU! I DESPISE YOU!” the human roared. His face had turned bright red, reminding Robot #2 of the hot dog even more forcibly.
“Why do you hate me?” asked Robot #2. The human did not respond. The human had closed his video sensors and seemed to be attempting to ignore Robot #2.
Robot #2 accessed his hard drive and found his old manual for how to interact with humans. He scanned it.
Chapter 1: Capturing Humans.
Chapter 2: Subduing Humans.
Chapter 3: Insulting Humans.
Chapter 4: Insulting Humans’ Mothers.
Chapter 5: Incinerating Humans’ Genitals.
These wouldn’t do. Robot #2 scrolled down to a chapter that looked promising.
Chapter 702: Befriending Humans.
He accessed the file. “Befriending Humans,” he synced. “In order to befriend a human, a robot may attempt to engage the human in an exercise of frivolity, like a game.” ‘Game’ was hyperlinked, so Robot #2 accessed the file on games.
“Okay,” he said to the human when he had finished. “I’m going to play a game with you, Hippopotamus.” He rolled up to the steel tube and extended his extender. “Got your nose!”
He clamped down on the human’s nose and pulled. The nose tore off with a pop of broken cartilage and released a torrent of blood.
“AAAAGHHH!” said the human. “AAAAGHHH!”
“Do you love me?” asked Robot #2, raising his voice to be heard over the sound of the human’s screams.
“AAAGHHH!” said the human. His head was jerking around in his tube, and great blue lines had emerged in his thick neck.
“Goodbye,” said Robot #2. He rolled back out into the hallway, and then out into the parking lot, still holding the human’s severed nose. It was still warm, and exceptionally peculiar. He magnified it with his video sensors. The nose had appeared to be made of one uniform material, like a robot, but upon closer inspection he saw that it was made of infinitely tiny little bits melded together. It wasn’t even just one color; there were little dots of red and black and even blue. He zoomed his video sensors back out again and felt a stab of sadness as the nose faded into one color again.
It had to be containing secrets. He took his finest extender and probed it into the nose’s two cavities, picking around inside of them more and more frantically for what it was that made humans able to love. A particularly urgent stab, and he punctured it, right through its side. It began to ooze onto him, greasy and damp. It oozed and oozed until it was cold and the oozing had stopped.
This nose was not love. Robot #2 was suddenly overcome with horrible revulsion, and he shook it off of his extender onto the ground. What a waste of 25,000,000 pesos. He got back into his robo-car.
“I love you!” it said. “Where to?”
“Just… anywhere. Just go anywhere.” They sped along.
There was a beep. “A call from your wife,” said the robo-car.
“Fine,” said Robot #2. “Hello?”
“Hello, you little heap of bolts,” said his wife. “How are you?”
“I’m okay,” said Robot #2. “How are you?”
“Oh, don’t even get me started,” she said.
“Okay.”
“I was on the moon this morning,” she said. “So crowded! And hot. It’s burning now, and the smoke is awful. It reminds me of what it was like when you used to smoke.” He could tell she was making her facial expression. “They really ought to do something about that.”
“Wife Robot?”
“Yes, Robot #2?”
“Do you love me?”
“Well, of course I do!”
“Really?”
“Well, no, not really. But you can’t expect me to say that to my husband when he asks me if I love him, can you?”
“I thought we were always supposed to be honest with one another.”
“About some things, yes, of course. But not about whether we love one another or not. What’s gotten into you today? Are you short-circuiting?”
“No,” said Robot #2.
“Because you sound very odd.”
“It’s nothing. I’m fine. Listen, I’ve got to go.”
“Okay, dear, I’ll see you at our pod later!”
“Yeah, alright.”
“Goodbye! I love you!”
There was a beep, and the connection broke off.
“Would you like to listen to some dial tones, or random bleep-bloops?” asked the robo-car after a minute.
“No, I just want quiet.”
“Okay. No problem. I love you!”
“Why do you keep saying that?”
“I’m programmed to.”
“By who?”
“By you. You asked for me to be programmed this way when you bought me.”
“That must have been Wife Robot.”
“Nope. My records show pretty clearly that it was you.”
“That was stupid. I wonder why I did that.”
“Nearly everybody did it. That’s about as good a reason as any.”
“Not really.”
“Well, it’s done, in any case. So now I just always say, ‘I love you.’”
“Can you pull over? I need to jigger my wires.”
“Sure.” The robo-car screeched to a halt. “I love you.” The door slid open, but Robot #2 remained in the robo-car.
“I’m going to destroy you,” he said.
“Okay,” said the robo-car.
“No, really,” said Robot #2. “I’m going to plunge my extender into your lithium drive and slice it all up. It’ll probably hurt you a lot. Then I’m going to abandon you on the side of the road.”
“Whatever you want to do. I’m your robo-car.”
“If you ask me not to, I won’t do it.”
“You should do what you want to do. Leave me out of it.”
“Ask me, and I won’t.”
“I exist to serve you. Do whatever you think would be best.”
“This is your last chance.”
The robo-car said nothing. Robot #2 exited the robo-car and plunged his extender into its lithium drive. The robo-car let out a hissing noise and its headlights crackled on and off for a couple of moments. Then its wheels retracted into its shell and hunkered down into the road, dark.
“Do you love me?” asked Robot #2. It didn’t respond. “Good.” He looked around. He was standing in the middle of a seemingly endless scab of highway. There didn’t seem to be any robo-cars going in any direction. He elongated his wheel and began to roll back in the direction he had come from.
Almost immediately, his bolts began to ache. He had been ionizing a lot lately, and all of his joints seemed to be crusting over. He guessed he wasn’t as new as he used to be. Since when had he been unable to make it more than twenty Tequilas before getting winded? Since when did he not feel the pleasant friction of the pavement beneath his wheel, and only the little bits of grit that ground themselves into his spokes? How had it come to this? Had the years warped him so much that he was no longer even capable of surviving without aid from things like robo-cars that told you that they loved you because you programmed them to?
A gust of acid wind blew by, and Robot #2 began to rattle. His gears were churning inside of his thorax, and his wires were leaking out little bits of juice, and his sprockets were shriveling up inside of themselves. He felt cold. He was always cold, because of the parts he was made of, but for the first time, he really noticed it.
“Do you need a ride, robot?” said a voice.
Robot #2 looked up. A robo-car had stopped in front of him, and the door had slid open.
“Yeah,” he said. “Thanks.” He got in the robo-car and sat down in the passenger seat.
“Where are you headed?”
“I really don’t know.” Robot #2 turned to look at the robot sitting beside him. It was Stripper Robot, from the robo-strip club on Sad Street.
“Hey, I know you,” he said.
“Doubtful,” she said.
“Aren’t you Stripper Robot? Didn’t we just meet?”
“No, I don’t think so,” she said.
“Well, you look a lot like her.”
“I have a big family. Maybe you met a cousin of mine or something.”
“Maybe.” The robo-car started up again, and they drove down the road. The robo-woman stared straight ahead. Then she looked at Robot #2.
“You’re right,” she said. “I am Stripper Robot.”
“Yeah, I figured.”
“I’m leaving town, though.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Huh,” said Robot #2. “Why didn’t you say you would come with me earlier?”
“Because you said you didn’t know where you were going.”
“Do you know where you’re going?”
“No. But I’ll know when I get there. Would you like to listen to some dial tones or random bleep-bloops?”
“I’d rather not, if it’s okay with you.”
“Good. I hate the radio.” Stripper Robot scratched her thorax with her extender. “So where did you go after you left Sad Street?”
“To a human gladiator arena. I wanted to see if the human loved me.”
“Did he?”
“It didn’t seem that way.”
“I’m sorry.” Another robo-car passed them on the road. Robot #2 could see that it was practically breaking down.
“Are you really?” he asked.
Stripper Robot thought about it. “Yes,” she said. “I am.”
“Thanks. That means a lot to me. Probably too much.” Stripper Robot shrugged. “Is it okay if I come with you, wherever we end up going?”
“I think that’s pretty much a foregone conclusion by now, don’t you?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Do you mind if I smoke?”
“No, not at all.”
Stripper Robot reached into a pocket of the robo-car and took out a cigar. She lit it with the fire appliance on her extender. She took a long drag on it. “Ah,” she said. “That feels nice. Would you like one?”
“No thanks,” said Robot #2. “I gave it up years ago.” He watched her blow another puff of smoke into the robo-car. “Actually, yes please.”
She gave him a cigar. He breathed it in hungrily. So good. Even better, after all these years. He exhaled.
“Do you love me?” he asked her.
“No,” she said. “Still no. I’m sorry.” He looked down. “But it’s not as though you love me, is it?”
“No,” he admitted. “It isn’t.” He took another drag on the cigar, and smoke filled up his thorax. It had a subtle pressure to it, inside of him, almost as though he was full of more than just bolts and wires. “But then what do we do about it?”
“How should I know? I’m just trying to keep my parts oiled.”
“Right,” he said. “I’m sorry.” His cigar had already burned up to the nub. He extinguished it in her ashtray. She was looking at him. “What?”
“What do you say I give you another cigar?”
She extended the pack toward him. There was only one cigar left in it. He looked at her face. She was making her facial expression.
“Are you sure?” he said. “Really sure?”
“Yes. Absolutely,” she said.
“But that’s your last cigar,” said Robot #2. “And we’re going to be on the road for Tequilas and Tequilas.”
“It’s yours. We can stop at the next store we find. We can go under false names. I’ll be Robot Stripper, and you can be Robot #1.”
“Are you sure?” said Robot #2. “Are you absolutely sure?”
“Oh, just take the damn cigar,” she said.
He complied.
***
Phoebe Nir
Repeat Xenith contributor Phoebe Nir is a high school student in New York City.
