Runaway Robot Read online

  I KNOW HUNDREDS OF JOKES.

  ‘That’s a. Lie,’ said Shatter. ‘When we were. Taking him. Apart, he kept asking. If we would leave. Him alone if he told. Us jokes. But he didn’t know any. Jokes.’

  I winced. ‘You’re saying he was pleading for his life when you were taking him apart?’

  She didn’t answer that one.

  ‘I wonder when this will start being him,’ I said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘When will all this stuff on the floor start being Eric?’

  ‘When we put his head back on, I suppose,’ said D’Arcy.

  I’d been thinking that Shatter would eventually give up and join in, but she just mooched around, poking about the place while we got on with fixing Eric.

  When we were bolting on the big steel plates of his outer layer – his chest and the covers of his arms and legs – she looked down at us and snapped, ‘What is he even. For? Robots are supposed. To have jobs and be. Shaped like their jobs. A pizza robot looks. Like an oven. A carpet-cleaner robot looks. Like a hedgehog. What does. He do? What is he. For?’

  Then she turned round and walked out.

  I looked at the other two to see if they would follow her, but they were totally focused on those plates.

  ‘This is actually an exciting moment,’ said D’Arcy.

  Not going to lie – using Lefty to fasten them into place, I did feel a bit like a squire helping his knight put on his armour.

  It took all three of us to get Eric’s headless body to sit up. Eric’s head was heavier than it looked; it needed two of us to lift it off the windowsill. I found a can of WD-40 on the ledge and used it to spray the threads round the base of his head. It didn’t seem to need any screws or bolts. Mostly gravity kept it in place. That way, when they dropped the head into the neck, it could move from side to side.

  Eric did look mighty. As soon as they saw the finished article, Tyler and D’Arcy wanted selfies.

  D’Arcy sat back and looked around the hangar. ‘We’re like the Brotherhood without Banners,’ she said, ‘and this is our secret hideaway. Except when the wind whistles through then it’s like Winterfell.’

  Tyler translated this as, ‘It gets cold.’

  As soon as he said this, it started to get a bit warmer. Eric was making his hands glow and holding them up in front of us like a pair of five-fingered radiators.

  ‘He’s warming us up,’ said Tyler, who had now taken to translating not just words but changes in temperature.

  I pointed to the steam coming out of Eric’s ears and explained that that meant he was also making tea.

  ‘Oh,’ cooed D’Arcy, ‘he’s a proper gentleman, isn’t he?’

  I HAVE SIX THOUSAND, THREE HUNDRED AND TEN SEPARATE COMPONENTS . . .

  ‘We know,’ said D’Arcy. ‘We counted them.’

  ‘We get bored sometimes,’ explained Tyler.

  ‘It’s not actually true,’ said D’Arcy. ‘He’s only got six thousand, three hundred and two.’

  ‘We think the missing pieces,’ said Tyler, ‘are his leg.’

  I HAVE SIX THOUSAND, THREE HUNDRED AND TEN SEPARATE COMPONENTS . . .

  ‘I wish he wouldn’t keep saying that.’

  ‘Oh!’ I said. ‘Maybe he’s trying to tell us something. Maybe there’s a part missing.’

  I opened my thumb torch and began to search the floor. I hadn’t got far when the air filled with the sound of metal shivering again. Lefty was shivering. And D’Arcy’s blades and Tyler’s fingers. And the tins of paint on the shelves, and the tools hanging up on the shed wall.

  ‘Keep back!’ I shouted. ‘Eric’s going electromagnetic again! Eric! Don’t do this!’

  I AM YOUR OBEDIENT SERVANT.

  Which is what Eric always says before totally ignoring me yet again.

  At first, we were too hypnotized by what was happening on the floor to move. The pile of wood and plaster seemed to be growing, like a tiny, dusty volcano about to erupt.

  Tyler gasped. ‘What is that?’

  ‘The Thing,’ I said. ‘The Thing that smashed through the roof years ago.’

  Something barged the wood aside as the Thing shoved itself clear of the rubbish. It shook the mud and sawdust off itself as it rose into the beam of my finger torch.

  I suddenly realized what it was. I turned to the other two to tell them, but they had vanished.

  The minute the Thing rose up out of the pile of scrap, they had run away. They never saw what it was that Eric’s electromagnetic field had hauled up out of the ground.

  It was Eric’s missing leg.

  Imagine if Cinderella’s entire leg had fallen off instead of just her glass slipper. Imagine how good the prince would have felt if he’d strolled into her kitchen with the whole leg under his arm – and stuck it back on. That’s how I felt as I hauled the leg out from under the rubbish and took it over to Eric. I twisted Eric’s scooter-leg substitute out of its slot and put it to one side. Then I knelt down in front of Eric, just like Prince Charming – if Cinderella had been a six-foot-six man of steel with four spring-loaded retaining clips inside her hip.

  The clips were stiff. I doused them with WD-40. The clips slotted neatly over the four toggles inside Eric’s leg.

  There were no Prince Charming fireworks, no Cinderella dancing, but it did feel magical when the last clip clicked. The moment it did, the leg kicked out. If I’d been a few centimetres to the left, it would have kicked me clear through the window. Eric’s eyes glowed as he looked down at his own leg.

  ‘Got to say,’ I said, standing back to admire it, ‘that is definitely your leg.’

  Eric didn’t just stand up, he AROSE.

  He placed his two feet side by side and put his hands on the floor. Then he levered himself upright. Inside his body, cogs cranked, springs pinged and metal rang – as if there was a factory starting up within.

  Outside, wobbling around on a scooter, Eric had looked big.

  Inside, with his own two feet planted on the hangar floor, and his head reaching up towards the hole in the roof, he looked monumental.

  I really wished the others had not run off and could see him now.

  WHAT DO SEA MONSTERS EAT? said Eric.

  ‘Not this again.’

  FISH AND SHIPS. THE JOKE IS NOW CORRECT.

  ‘That actually is a joke. Eric, you told a joke.’

  HA HA.

  Seeing Eric standing there all put back together and complete reminded me of something Dr Shilling had said about muscle memory – how we store some of our memory not in our brains, but in our hands and arms.

  ‘Maybe some of your memory is in your leg.’

  MY NAME IS ERIC. I AM LOST . . .

  He was looking around the hangar again, eyes blazing, as if he was trying to find something.

  ‘You knew your leg was here, didn’t you? That’s why you brought me here. What are you looking for now?’

  Eric ignored me completely. He pushed his right leg forward. And, just like when you walk, his left arm and his shoulder slightly swung forward to balance him out. Then . . . remember what Dr Shilling said about walking being a series of narrowly avoided falls? That describes exactly what happened to Eric next.

  Except for the ‘narrowly avoided’ bit.

  He brought his left leg forward, but his right arm and shoulder didn’t swing forward this time. They went the other way. Like his top half and his bottom half were having a terrible argument. He toppled forwards with such a metal racket anyone outside must’ve thought it was raining buckets and baths. I was expecting the whole of Skyways to come running to see what the noise was.

  This was not the first time Eric had almost demolished me. His huge arm smashed against some metal shelving. He slammed into the floor right next to me, and I swear the floor bounced. The rebound threw me up into the air so violently that I collided with a set of shelves that was coming the other way.

  Then I hit the floor.

  Then the shelves hit me.
r />   They lay so heavily across my chest, I could barely breathe.

  A strange, cackling sound echoed in the air. As though someone was laughing.

  I wasn’t laughing.

  Neither was Eric.

  It seemed like the air was laughing.

  I said, ‘Help! Get these off me.’

  No one answered. That’s when I remembered D’Arcy and Tyler had run off in fright.

  ‘Hello?’ I called. ‘Help?’

  But there was no one there to help me. I thought I could phone someone for assistance, but found that my phone had skittered away out of reach when I fell.

  I was trapped.

  And alone.

  I wedged Lefty under the shelves. A normal hand would have hurt, but Lefty knew no pain. I locked his fingers together and used him to lever the shelves off my chest. They shifted just a little.

  Then they shifted a lot. Something swept them off me as though they were made of snow. I wasn’t alone at all. Eric was taking care of me.

  ‘Thanks, Eric,’ I said.

  I AM AT YOUR SERVICE. ALWAYS.

  He looked at his own hand as he said that, as if he expected himself to be holding something.

  I went over and picked up my phone. It was popping with news alerts about the rogue robot.

  ‘Eric,’ I said, ‘I think we should get out of here. Can you try to walk again?’

  He slid one foot forward and crashed to the floor once more. This time, he landed on his back. He looked quite comfortable. I told him to power down.

  ‘Sleep well, Eric,’ I said. ‘We’ll sort out the walking tomorrow.’

  It was getting dark again when I left the hangar. I tried to keep as far away from the spooky end of the building as possible, keeping the trees between me and its windows because it always felt like they were watching me.

  Even so, I still heard the door creak open.

  And then I heard a voice shout, ‘Alfie Miles!’

  And then I ran and ran and kept running till I got home.

  ‘Good afternoon, Alfie. Your heartbeat is raised again,’ said the house. ‘Why not sit down while I put the kettle on.’

  I stepped into the hallway.

  ‘Alfie?’

  At first, I thought it was the DustUrchin talking. Then I smelt spices and onions frying, and I knew Mum was home and making a curry.

  We sat down at the table to eat it. She told me all about her day. I didn’t tell her anything about mine.

  Later on, when we were clearing up, I noticed a photo on one of the bookshelves. It was of a toddler standing between two big people. Each big person was holding one of the toddler’s hands. The toddler had a grin on his face as wide as his head. He looked like he was crashing through the finishing line of the Toddler Olympics.

  I was still staring at it when Mum came up behind me.

  ‘What’re you looking at?’

  ‘I was trying to remember learning to walk.’

  ‘Oh. Most people don’t remember that. Are you trying to remember something else? Does this picture remind you of anything?’

  ‘Not really.’ It was just a photo. Probably I was the toddler and the big people were Mum and maybe one of my big cousins. ‘I was just wondering how long it takes a baby to learn to walk.’

  ‘Depends on the baby. Usually babies are starting to walk by the time they’re one. Babies learn so much in that first year – how to talk, how to recognize people, how to walk. Is there something at the edge of your mind, something you’re trying to focus on? Are you sure you’re OK, Alfie?’

  ‘How do they learn?’

  ‘Who? Babies? Mostly it just happens, but you need a bit of help at the end. No one learns to walk without a bit of help. Is that all you wanted to know?’

  She sounded disappointed.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’

  Of course, no one can walk unless someone teaches them! I could teach Eric to walk. Can robots learn? Of course they can. The DustUrchin had learned which were the really dirty corners of the house. If a vacuum cleaner can learn, surely a giant mechanical knight could.

  I was so motivated by this idea that I ran upstairs and started to google everything I could think of about walking. Then I thought, Why am I doing this? I know someone who has learned to walk twice. Once when she was little and once when she lost one of her feet and had to start again. She must be some kind of world expert on learning to walk.

  Shatter.

  I messaged her to ask her to meet me the next day at the hangar.

  No. Body, she messaged back, tells me where. To go.

  Fair enough, I thought. But I bet you turn up just the same.

  Shatter was waiting for me. I knew she would be.

  ‘What is it you. Want?’ she said.

  ‘Eric’s got two legs. We could teach him to walk.’

  ‘Why would I. Ever. Help you?’

  ‘You wouldn’t be helping me. You’d be helping Eric.’

  ‘Why would I want. To help an over. Grown tea-making thing? Are you trying. To be nice to. Me because you’re scared. That I will bully. You because you nicked my. Mates?’

  ‘I didn’t nick your mates. They just helped because it was fun. It IS fun. If you helped me, I bet it would be fun.’

  ‘I’m not interested in. Fun,’ she said, and walked out.

  A plane passed overhead so low that all the brambles in the doorway shook.

  Then Shatter strode right back in. I thought she was going to tell me where the plane was going. Instead she scrambled up on to one of the fallen shelves – she really is good on her state-of-the-art foot – and started messing about with some kind of plastic box on the wall.

  ‘Shine your finger. On here.’

  I pointed the finger torch at the box. She flipped it open. There was a row of switches inside.

  ‘Fuses,’ she said. ‘This one. Has tripped.’

  She flicked the switch and BLAM!

  A bomb of light exploded around us. Colours and shapes bounced around me. Dented paint tins, broken shelves, smashed floorboards, spiders’ webs and, most of all, Eric, lying on the ground like a giant angel.

  Shatter had fixed the lights. They were so bright it made you feel as though everyone in the world could see you.

  ‘How did you know about that?’

  ‘When you were. All playing robots, I had a proper. Look around the place.’

  She tugged a piece of string that was hanging down from the ceiling like a light pull and told me to stand back. When she pulled it, an entire table lowered itself down from the ceiling. Its legs popped out as it came into land. The table was made of metal with rulers engraved on its edges. We use our kitchen table for chopping veg and making pies. This one looked like it was meant for building jumbo jets.

  ‘This,’ I said, ‘is unusual. Why did they have a table in the ceiling?’

  ‘To save. Space,’ said Shatter. ‘That’s why they called. It the Space Age. Let’s. Start. Do you. Have a manual?’

  ‘A manual for Eric? No.’

  ‘Did you look for. One. Online?’

  ‘That’s the weird thing. I’ve spent ages looking at stuff about robots. I’ve never come across anything like Eric. There’s nothing about him on the whole internet.’

  ‘Maybe he’s from. The Future.’

  ‘Maybe he’s from space,’ I said, looking up at the legendary hole in the roof.

  ‘We. Are going to need a. Screwdriver.’

  ‘There’s one in my thumb,’ I said, snapping it back.

  ‘Let’s try these. Drawers too,’ said Shatter.

  The hangar had big drawers on either side, crammed with nothing but screwdrivers – big, little, tiny, cross-top, flat-top, electrical, adjustable – every type of screwdriver you could imagine. Plus spanners and wrenches, pliers and wire cutters.

  It turns out that Shatter really is a world-class expert on learning to walk. On her phone, she showed me clips of films the scientist Eadweard Muybridge made years ago. He t
ook loads of photographs of animals and humans walking, and then made them into little films (which looked like flickery gifs) so that people could really study what was happening when a horse ran, or a boy walked.

  Shatter explained that human beings learn to walk in stages. Such as crawling, bum shuffling, holding on to furniture.

  ‘We could take Eric through all those phases,’ I said, ‘but in a single morning.’

  Neither of us really wanted to wake Eric to start with. It’s a strange thing, but Eric never looked more like a human being than he did when he was lying on the floor of that hangar asleep. We actually whispered in case we woke him, like you do with a baby.

  Shatter spotted that his ankle bracelets were loose. ‘That’s why his feet. Are dragging. If he lifts them up. They just flop down. That’s never going to. Work. Give me a hand. Literally.’

  ‘You mean . . .’

  ‘Take your hand. Off and let me look inside. If we are. Going to make him. Walk, we. Need to know how. Muscles and tendons and nerves and everything work.’

  I know it sounds weird. It’s not like I didn’t know there were circuits and chips inside Lefty. But seeing them sticking out all over the place made me feel unbalanced. When Shatter started poking around inside – not gonna lie – I felt queasy.

  Shatter found this interesting. ‘You can feel. In your real. Arm when I touch your. Fake hand?’

  ‘It’s not a fake hand. It’s a real hand. It’s just not made of flesh.’

  ‘But you can. Feel it?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t have detachable nerve endings.’ It was true. I couldn’t feel any pain. But I was feeling something: confusion, maybe; embarrassment, a bit; but, most of all, I just wanted my hand back.

  She picked up the screwdriver. I couldn’t help it. I screwed up my eyes as if I was waiting for an injection. She jabbed the screwdriver into Lefty’s thumb. I jumped. She laughed.

  ‘Can I have my hand back now?’

  She tossed me back my hand. ‘It’s easy,’ she said. ‘Fingers are like. Puppets. They have. Strings. The. Strings all join. Up in the wrist. Pass me the soldering iron.”

  We decided to make all the hardware adjustments while Eric was in sleep mode. The more awkward and complicated things seemed to be, the more useful Lefty’s integral tools turned out to be. I was learning as much about my new hand as I was about Eric.