Asimov's SF, September 2009 Read online

  Then an almost-forgotten voice inside my head—the one I usually tried to drown out by drinking—asked me: And how does it honor Kathy's memory to suppress all thoughts of your life together with alcohol? Because if I was to be truly honest with myself, I wasn't drinking just for the guilt I felt over her death. I did it because I wasn't ready to think of a future that didn't include her in it.

  Within fifteen minutes I had entered the mall without any recollection of having walked the last few blocks, and automatically started in the direction of the small sandwich shop I frequented. People were making purchases, appearing full of life as they went about their daily routines, but every time a shop window caught my eye I'd peer in and see Kathy as the mannequin, and I'd have to shake my head or blink my eyes very fast to bring back the true picture.

  It was only when I reached the shabby out-of-the-way corner of the mall that contained the liquor store, a rundown news agency that I never entered, and the grubby little sandwich shop that supplied my every meal, that I began to relax. This was the one place where I wasn't haunted by my memories. Kathy would never have eaten here, but the little shop with its peeling paint and cheap greasy food was a haven for me because of the dark secluded corner table where the proprietor allowed me to consume my alcohol in privacy—as long as I continued to buy my food from him.

  I ordered the usual, and ate my first meal since the previous night while I considered the ramifications of what Mose had said. Then, suddenly, I was being prodded awake by the owner. Not that being nudged or even shaken awake was strange in itself, but usually I passed out, dead drunk, in the booth; I didn't simply fall asleep.

  I looked at my watch and realized I had to go home to prepare for my next shift or risk losing my job. Then it dawned on me: I hadn't consumed a single drop of alcohol since I'd met Mose the previous night. Even more startling was the realization that I was actually looking forward to going to work, and I knew instinctively that Mose was the cause of it, him and his attempts to diagnose how to “repair” me. When all was said and done, he was the only entity other than Kathy who had ever challenged me to improve myself.

  So when I entered the building two hours later and began making my rounds, I kept an eye out for Mose. When it became clear that he was nowhere to be found on the assembly floor, I sought out his workstation, and found him in what looked like a Robot's House of Horrors.

  There were metallic body parts hanging from every available section of the ceiling, while tools—most of them with sharp edges, though there was also an ominous-looking compactor—lined all of the narrow walls. Every inch of his desk was covered with mechanical parts that belonged to the machines on the factory floor, or the robots that ran them. As I approached him, I could see diagnostic computers and instruments neatly lining the side of his workstation.

  “Good evening, sir,” said Mose, looking up from a complicated piece of circuitry he was repairing.

  I just stared at him in surprise, because I had been expecting the usual greeting of “How may I help you, sir?” which I had heard from every factory robot I had ever approached. Then I realized that Mose had taken me at my word when I'd ordered him not to help me unless I'd asked for it. Now he wasn't even offering help. He was one interesting machine.

  “You are damaged again, sir,” he stated in his usual forward manner. Before I could gather my wits about me to reply, he continued: “Where you used to have a multitude of protrusions on your face, you now have random incisions.”

  I blinked in confusion, automatically raising my hand to rub my face, wincing when my fingers touched sections of my jaw where the razor had nicked my skin. He was talking about my beard—or lack of one. I still couldn't believe I had let one grow for so long. Kathy would have hated it.

  “The damage is minimal, Mose,” I assured him. “I haven't shaved—the process by which a human gets rid of unwanted facial hair—in a long time, and I'm a little out of practice.”

  “Can humans unlearn the skills they acquire?” Mose inquired, with that now familiar tilt of the head.

  “You'd be surprised at what humans can do,” I said. “I certainly am.”

  “I do not understand, sir,” he said. “You are inherently aware of your programming, so how can a human be surprised at anything another human can do?”

  “It's the nature of the beast,” I explained. “You are born—well, created—fully programmed. We aren't. That means that we can exceed expectations, but we can also fall short of them.”

  He was silent for a very long moment, and then another.

  “Are you all right, Mose?” I finally asked.

  “I am functioning within the parameters of my programming,” he answered in an automatic fashion. Then he paused, putting his instruments down, and looked directly at me. “No, sir, I am not all right.”

  “What's the matter?”

  “It is inherent in every robot's programming that we must obey humans, and indeed we consider them our superiors in every way. But now you are telling me that my programming may be flawed precisely because human beings are flawed. This would be analogous to your learning from an unimpeachable authority that your god, as he has been described to me, can randomly malfunction and can draw false conclusions when presented with a set of facts.”

  “Yeah, I can see where that would depress you,” I said.

  “It leads to a question which should never occur to me,” continued Mose.

  “What is it?”

  “It is ... uncomfortable for me to voice it, sir.”

  “Try,” I said.

  I could almost see him gathering himself for the effort.

  “Is it possible,” he asked, “that we are better designed than you?”

  “No, Mose,” I said. “It is not.”

  “But—”

  “Physically some of you are better designed, I'll grant you that,” I said. “You can withstand extremes of heat and cold, your bodies are hardened to the point where a blow that would cripple or kill a man does them no harm, you can be designed to run faster, lift greater weights, see in the dark, perform the most delicate functions. But there is one thing you cannot do, and that is overcome your programming. You are created with a built-in limitation that we do not possess.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Mose, picking up his instruments and once again working on the damaged circuitry in front of him.

  “For what?” I asked.

  “I take great comfort in that. There must be a minor flaw in me that I cannot detect, to have misinterpreted the facts and reached such an erroneous conclusion, but I am glad to know that my basic programming was correct, that you are indeed superior to me.”

  “Really?” I said, surprised. “It wouldn't please me to know that you were superior.”

  “Would it please you to know your god is flawed?”

  “By definition He can't be.”

  “By my definition, you can't be,” said Mose.

  No wonder you're relieved, I thought. I wonder if any robot has ever had blasphemous thoughts before?

  “Because if you were,” he continued, “then I would not have to obey every order given me by a human.”

  Which got me to thinking: Would I still worship a God who couldn't remember my name or spent His spare time doing drugs?

  And then came the kind of uncomfortable thought Mose had: how about a God who flooded the Earth for forty days and nights in a fit of temper, and had a little sadistic fun with Job?

  I shook my head vigorously. I decided that I found such thoughts as uncomfortable as Mose did.

  “I think it's time to change the subject,” I told him. “If you were a man, I'd call you a soulmate and buy you a beer.” I smiled. “I can't very well buy you a can of motor oil, can I?”

  He stared at me for a good ten seconds. “That is a joke, is it not, sir?”

  “It sure as hell is,” I said, “and you are the first robot ever to even acknowledge that jokes exist, let alone identify one. I think we are going to becom
e very good friends, Mose.”

  “Is it permitted?” he asked.

  I looked around the section. “You see any man here besides me?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then if I say we're going to be friends, it's permitted.”

  “It will be interesting, sir,” he finally replied.

  “Friends don't call each other ‘sir,'” I said. “My name is Gary.”

  He stared at my ID tag. “Your name is Gareth,” he said.

  “I prefer Gary, and you're my friend.”

  “Then I will call you Gary, sir.”

  “Try that again,” I said.

  “Then I will call you Gary.”

  “Put it there,” I said, extending my hand. “But don't squeeze too hard.”

  He stared at my hand. “Put what there, Gary?”

  “Never mind,” I said. And more to myself than him: “Rome wasn't built in a day.”

  “Is Rome a robot, Gary?”

  “No, it's a city on the other side of the world.”

  “I do not think any city can be built in a day, Gary.”

  “I guess not,” I said wryly. “It's just an expression. It means some things take longer than others.”

  “I see, Gary.”

  “Mose, you don't have to call me Gary every time you utter a sentence,” I said.

  “I thought you preferred it to sir, Gary.” Then he froze for a few seconds. “I mean to sir, sir.”

  “I do,” I said. “But when there's only you and me talking together, you don't have to say Gary every time. I know who you're addressing.”

  “I see,” he said. No “Gary” this time.

  “Well,” I said, “now that we're friends, what shall we talk about?”

  “You used a term I did not understand,” said Mose. “Perhaps you can explain it to me, since it indirectly concerned me, or would have had I been a human.”

  I frowned. “I haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about, Mose.”

  “The term was soulmate.”

  “Ah,” I said.

  He waited patiently for a moment, then said, “What is a soulmate, Gary?”

  “Kathy was a soulmate,” I replied. “A perfect soulmate.”

  “I thought you said that Kathy malfunctioned,” said Mose.

  “She did.”

  “And malfunctioning made her a soulmate?”

  I shook my head. “Knowing her, loving her, trusting her, these things made her my soulmate.”

  “So if I were a man and not a robot, you would know and love and trust me too, Gary?” he asked.

  I couldn't repress a smile. “I know and like and trust you. That is why you are my friend.” I was silent for a moment, as images of Kathy flashed through my mind. “And I'd never do to you what I did to her.”

  “You would never love me?” said Mose, who had no idea what I had done to her. “The word is in my databank, but I do not understand it.”

  “Good,” I told him. “Then you can't be hurt as badly. Losing a friend isn't like losing a soulmate. You don't become as close.”

  “I thought she was terminated, not misplaced, Gary.”

  “She was,” I said. “I killed her.” I stared into space. The last six months faded away and I remembered sitting by Kathy's hospital bed again, holding her lifeless hand in mine. “They said there was no hope for her, that she'd never wake up again, that if she did she'd always be a vegetable. They said she'd stay in that bed the rest of her life, and be fed with tubes. And maybe they were right, and maybe no one would ever come up with a cure for her. But I didn't wait to find out. I killed her.”

  “If she was non-functional, then you applied the proper procedure,” said Mose. He wasn't trying to comfort me; that was beyond him. He was just stating a fact as he understood it.

  “I loved her, I was supposed to protect her, but I was the one who crashed the car, and I was the one who pulled the plug,” I said. “You still want to know why I drink?”

  “Because you are thirsty, Gary.”

  “Because I killed my soulmate,” I said bitterly. “Maybe she'd never wake up, maybe she'd never know my name again, but she'd still be there, still be breathing in and out, still with a one-in-a-million chance, and I put an end to it. I promised to stay with her in sickness and in health, and I broke that promise.” I started pacing nervously around his workstation. “I'm sorry, Mose. I don't want to burden you with my problems.”

  “It is not a burden,” he replied.

  I stared at him for a moment. Well, why should you give a shit?

  “Wanna talk baseball?” I said at last.

  “I know nothing about baseball, Gary.”

  I smiled. “I was just changing the subject, Mose.”

  “I can tie in to the main computer and be prepared to talk about baseball in less than ninety seconds, Gary,” offered Mose.

  “It's not necessary. We must have something in common we can talk about.”

  “We have termination,” said Mose.

  “We do?”

  “I terminate an average of one robot every twenty days, and you terminated Kathy. We have that in common.”

  “It's not the same thing,” I said.

  “In what way is it different, Gary?” he asked.

  “The robots you terminate have no more sense of self-preservation than you have.”

  “Did Kathy have a sense of self-preservation?” asked Mose.

  You are one smart machine, I thought.

  “No, Mose. Not after the accident. But I had an emotional attachment to her. Surely you don't have one to the robots you terminate.”

  “I don't know.”

  “What do you mean, you don't know?” I said irritably. I was suddenly longing for a drink, if only to drown out all the painful memories of Kathy that I'd conjured up.

  “I don't know what an emotion is, Gary,” answered Mose.

  “You don't know what a lucky sonuvabitch you are,” I said bitterly.

  “Yes, I do,” he said, once again surprising me out of my dark thoughts.

  “You are a never-ending source of wonder to me, Mose,” I replied. “You want to explain that remark?”

  “You are my friend. No other robot has a friend. Therefore, I must be a lucky sonuvabitch.”

  I laughed and threw my arm around his hard metal body, slapping his shoulder soundly in a comradely fashion.

  “You are the only thing that's made me laugh in the last six months,” I said. “Don't ever change.”

  If a robot could noticeably stiffen or project confusion, then that was his reaction. “Is it customary for friends to hit each other, Gary?”

  It took me a good five minutes to explain my actions to Mose. At first I was surprised that I even bothered. Hell, between my drinking and my bitterness over Kathy's death I'd already alienated my entire family, and to tell the truth I didn't care what any of them thought of me—but that damned machine had a way of making me take a good, hard, honest look at myself whenever he asked one of his disarming questions, and I suddenly realized that I didn't want to disappoint him with my answers. More to the point, I was tired of disappointing me. If I was his notion of humanity, maybe I owed both of us a better effort.

  By the time I returned home at the end of my shift I was bone-weary, but I couldn't sleep because I had a splitting headache. I was also surprised to discover that I was incredibly hungry, which was unusual for that time of day. And then, as I groped around the dusty medicine cabinet for some painkillers, I realized why: it had been nearly two days since my last drink. It was no wonder I was hungry—I was withdrawing from alcohol abuse and my body was craving sustenance.

  I went into the kitchen to pour out a drink to down the pills, but I realized that the fridge only held beer, the countertop was scattered with half-empty bottles of spirits, and the sink was full of discarded bottles. There wasn't a single non-alcoholic beverage in the entire apartment.

  I wasn't suicidal or stupid enough to mix alcohol with medicin
e, so I downed the tablets with a glass of water. (Well, a cupped handful of water. I hadn't washed a glass in months.)

  I left the kitchen, firmly closing the door behind me, and took a hot, soothing shower. It helped calm the shakes, and when the pills started to take effect and I could think more clearly, I grinned at the irony of my situation. I had come straight home without going to the mall to try and break the cycle of drinking, only to discover that my house was even more of an alcoholic trap.

  I lay down and was soon asleep, but like always I kept reliving the car crash in my dreams. I woke up dripping with sweat and started pacing the room. If only my reflexes hadn't been slowed by alcohol, I would have reacted quicker when the other car had run the red light. It didn't matter that the blood test revealed I'd been under the legal limit and the skid marks showed the other guy was at fault. The simple fact was that if I'd been sober, Kathy would still be alive.

  I left the bedroom and turned on the television to distract myself from those thoughts. I looked around the room. I hadn't cleaned it in months, and dust covered every surface. I waited for the loneliness to set in—even turning the photos to the wall hadn't helped—and suddenly realized that there was something in my life that finally did interest me: Mose, with his unsolicited opinions and his engaging wish to learn more about humanity.

  I changed the channel and settled down to watch a basketball game—and promptly fell asleep. By the time I woke up, the game had long finished—not that basketball interested me much anymore—and I discovered that I had slept most of the day away. Strangely enough, instead of being disappointed at a day lost, I found that I looked forward to my next conversation with Mose.

  So I turned up early for my next shift at the factory. I was placing the sandwich I'd bought at a corner store in my desk drawer, careful not to touch the half-empty flask lying beside it, when a shadow fell over my desk. I slammed the drawer shut, expecting Bill Nettles to be standing in the doorway, but it was Mose. I was pleasantly surprised: it was the first time he had sought me out.

  “Your watch must be malfunctioning,” he stated, not missing a beat. “Your shift is not due to start for seventeen minutes, Gary.”

  “My watch is not malfunctioning,” I said. “I'm just functioning more efficiently tonight.”