Reality Matrix Effect (9781310151330) Read online

  “Sir,” the computer-generated image on the screen said calmly, ignoring Wraggon’s diatribe, “our service trace shows electrical damage emanating from one of your communicator extensions. That will have to be repaired before transmission service can be restored. The fail-safe mechanism will not permit any transmissions unless the lines have passed a full safety check. This, of course, is for your protection, and....”

  “Uh-huh,” Wraggon muttered, suddenly tired of fighting. “When can you get it fixed?”

  “We can have a repair robot there within the hour. Will someone be home?”

  “The manager’ll let ’im in.”

  “That will be fine, sir. We’ll charge that to your account.”

  “What?” screamed Wraggon. “Your damn system breaks down, and you’re gonna charge me? Service is supposed to be included in the monthly charge!”

  “That is correct, sir. Normal service is included, but our service trace shows that the damage was caused by impact with an external object traveling with a force, speed and trajectory indicating that it was thrown at the extension. We clearly specify in our service contract that we bear no responsibility for such damage. If our interpretation is in error, you may, of course, appeal the bill to our complaint department.”

  Wraggon made a rude gesture and broke contact. He needed that drink more than ever now. Good thing there were still some human-type bars around.

  The bar was about six blocks from Wraggon’s apartment. Normally, he would have used Trans-Mat, but he wanted nothing more to do with machines right now. Besides, the walk might help him cool off. He had to get hold of himself. This was the fifth time in the past month that he had skipped work and instead curled up with a bottle. He’d never had a drinking problem before. Was he suddenly turning into an alcoholic? All he knew was that his job was becoming intolerable.

  It used to seem reasonable—even sort of noble—that robots should be doing all the menial jobs. That left people with time and energy to improve themselves and to develop their talents to the fullest without having to worry quite so much about the drudgery associated with keeping food on the table. After all, for every menial job a robot took away from a human being, new and more challenging jobs opened up. And with the country’s train-and-place centers to coordinate personnel and training needs, workers now had unprecedented mobility. Mid-life career changes were not only possible but typical.

  Available jobs covered a wide range of skill levels, too. Wraggon was living proof. He’d started out knowing nothing more about robots than how to activate one. A low-skill, entry-level job, bolstered by skill-enhancement training, groomed him for his current position as plant manager for one of King Robotics’ three Los Angeles factories. The pay was good. The benefits were good. And, until about a month ago, he considered his life pretty good.

  Recently, though, he’d started to see the job as a waste of his talents. He was smart, he decided. Smart enough to be in charge of people, not just a bunch of robots designed to make other robots. Years ago, assembly lines were staffed by human beings instead of robbies. Then, it meant something to be a plant manager. Then, people looked up to you. His grandfather used to talk about the old days. About how the coons and spics and white trash that worked for him used to jump whenever he snapped his fingers. Back then, people knew their place. They’d treat a guy like Wraggon with respect—or else! And now here he was running a factory so that some company owned by his inferiors could make lots of money. Thanks to him, those bums could act as if they were better than he was!

  Wraggon stuffed his hands in his pockets and focused on the ground as he walked. The mid-morning sun gently warmed him, and his subconscious noted the fragrance of a roadside cluster of flowers, but his thoughts were elsewhere.

  Finally, he looked up. Carefully planned residential developments dominated the area, each bearing its own distinctive architectural identity. Yet somehow, despite their individuality, each development was compatible with those around it. Grass, trees, shrubs and brightly colored floral varieties surrounded the buildings.

  Nice neighborhood, Wraggon thought. But, then, they’re all nice neighborhoods.

  The residential area gave way to an equally attractive business section. Computer and communicator links made it possible to conduct most types of business directly from home, but many people still liked working together in an office environment. The same desire for human contact kept a host of small retail shops in the black, despite the fact that people could order virtually anything they needed by communicator and have it delivered almost instantaneously by Trans-Mat.

  The Milk of Human Kindness was a pleasant little tavern at the edge of the business district. For some reason, Wraggon thought, the place seemed a little less appealing lately. Maybe it was the clientele that bothered him. Too many undesirables. If this keeps up, he thought, I’ll have to find another saloon.

  “Spacefarer’s,” Wraggon said to the bartender as he hoisted himself onto a stool. “Make that a double.”

  “Ya got good taste in booze, buddy.”

  The slightly intoxicated voice belonged to a large man sitting two stools away. “Spacefarer’s is the best. ’Specially when ya wanna drown out a love affair. But ya know, ya haven’t really had it till yuv had it out in space. In free-fall. It does really funny things to ya in free-fall. Ya ever have it in space?”

  Wraggon looked around uncomfortably and noticed that they were the only customers. “Huh?” he said—immediately regretting that he’d acknowledged the other man at all.

  “He wants to know if you ever had a broad in space,” the bartender offered.

  “Naaaaah. You dope. I asked him if he ever had any Spacefarer’s out in space! Sheesh!” The man shook his head and rolled his eyes in exasperation. Wraggon studied his drink.

  “Name’s Barnard. Like the star. Ya know? Barnard.”

  “Yeah,” Wraggon said noncommittally, “Barnard.” Why couldn’t this clown leave him alone?

  “Well?” Barnard said expectantly, moving to the stool next to Wraggon’s.

  “Well what?”

  “Who’re you?”

  ”None of your damn business!” Wraggon blurted. He flinched instinctively as he realized that Barnard had seven inches and about 60 pounds on him. If Barnard was a mean drunk, Wraggon was in big trouble.

  “Hey, you’re okay, buddy!” Barnard laughed heartily, clapping Wraggon on the back so hard that the smaller man’s nose almost wound up in his drink. “A bottle of Spacefarer’s fer me an’ my buddy,” Barnard called out in increasingly slurred syllables.

  “Uh, listen, uh, Barnard,” Wraggon began carefully. “I appreciate the bottle, but I’d just as soon be left alone. I’m in a lousy mood.”

  “Well, sure ya are, pal! That’s why people come ta places like this. But ya don’t really wanna be alone, now, do ya? If ya wanted ta be alone, ya coulda just ordered up the booze at home.”

  “I tried,” Wraggon said mournfully. “My damn communicator’s busted, and they wouldn’t transmit anything.”

  “Oh. I unnerstan’,” Barnard said, pouring himself a refill from the newly opened bottle the bartender had just placed on the bar. “I got some troubles myself. I go off an’ join the Merchant Fleet so’s this girl will gimme a little respect, an’ as soon as I get back from my first full-length run, I find out she’s quit the service and gone off with some fuckin’ artist.”

  “She was in the service, too?” Wraggon asked without thinking.

  “Yeah. We met at this party, see, an’ she starts tellin’ me all about how great it is in the Fleet an’ how she figures any man worth havin’ would hafta have his head in the stars. So like a wom[1], I join up. Had ta work like a damn robbie, too. We make a few training runs together. Have some great zero-gee sex. Everything’s in phase, see. Then I find out she can’t even wait an’ tell me goodbye ta my face! I mean, it’s not like before the Borisov drive, when it took a year ta get ta the colonies. Only takes two months now. But she just
couldn’t wait ta dump me.

  “So now I gotta finish out my hitch runnin’ aroun’ from colony ta colony in th’ Asteroid Belt. Ya got any idea what that’s like? All ya see is these bowl-squatters[2] who think they’re regular Dan’l Boones or somethin’. What a joke!

  They’re livin’ in these big, comfy domes with lots o’ robots ta wait on ’em hand an’ foot, while we spend months out in space cramped inta tiny little cabins. They don’t hafta worry ’bout the robbies’ mass/function index. They don’t hafta worry ’bout makin’ every cubic centimeter of room count! We’re the ones hafta be miserable just so’s there’ll be enough cargo space and mass allowance on the ship for the stuff they make up there and for the supplies they need from Earth. But they think they’re real hotshots—Apollo’s gift ta the universe! I hate ’em all!”

  Wraggon sipped his drink. He wasn’t very interested in the details of Barnard’s story, but there was something about the way the big man talked that made Wraggon feel comfortable.

  “It’s the robbies I hate,” Wraggon said with an openness he usually reserved for several drinks later.

  “My grandfather, he used to say the country started going to hell when they forced the schools in Little Rock to let the niggers in. Gramp knew what he was talking about, too. I mean, he was right there in the thick of it—in his first year at Central High back then. That’s where it all started, you know. He told me all about how the troops came in and everything.

  “But seems to me things got even worse when the robots started taking over all the simple jobs.”

  “Yeah?” Barnard responded with genuine interest. “Why’s that?”

  Wraggon’s spirits rose as he realized he was talking to a potential ally.

  “Well, look, they had to do something about the workers who used to do the jobs the robots were taking? Right?”

  Barnard nodded.

  “So they sent ’em back to school!” Wraggon waited for a reaction, but Barnard just looked at him blankly. “Well,” Wraggon resumed, “that’s what it all amounted to. A bunch of Jew eggheads and some smart-ass politicians decided they needed to ‘retrain’ the workers. Otherwise, they figured they’d just have a bunch of bums hanging around waiting for a government handout. If you ask me, they should’ve just shipped ’em all out to the colonies!”

  “I think maybe some of ’em did go ta the colonies,” Barnard said. “I remember a couple o’ rock farmers on Ceres talkin’ about how their fathers come over on the first settlement ship. They were kinda laughing about how it turned out the robbies did ′em all a favor by taking over their fathers’ jobs.”

  “Yeah, I guess some of ’em went to the colonies, all right, but lots of ’em stayed put. And that meant headaches for the wheels who were running the show. See, they’d tried things before—all sorts of things—but nothing ever worked. The do-gooders just never would admit that you can’t teach these dumb, second-rate types! But did that make ’em stop? Nope! This time they decided to turn it into some sort of noble experiment. Instead of just retraining displaced workers, they changed the whole damn employment service! You know the motto: ‘If you are willing to learn, you can be trained. If you are willing to work, you can contribute.’”

  Wraggon sneered as he recited the slogan. Yet, a small, lonely voice deep inside told him he had no cause for complaint. It was this very program that had helped him. He was a big-shot now with an important job. Trouble was, another part of him insisted, anyone could be a big-shot now. That didn’t mean much when the little-shots were just robots.

  “Sure,” said Barnard, “my ol’ man, he went through that retraining. Seven or eight years ago, I think it was. He was a construction engineer, but he didn’t like it anymore. Wanted ta do somethin’ completely different. So he went ta th’ employment service an’ found out they needed chemistry teachers at a small college near here. He went back ta school an’ wound up teachin’ there. He’s department head, now. I was aroun’ 18 then—maybe 19. Or was that the time my mother took the training? Can’t think real clear right now. Head’s startin’ ta hurt. Anyway, I remember we lived on trainin’ allotment checks fer awhile.”

  “Your old man was lucky. Got himself a job where he could order a bunch of students around. And now, some other teachers, too. But what about the rest of us? And how about the job he left? The construction engineer job? Some know-nothing spade or wetback takes the training and gets the job. Suddenly, he’s respectable. He tells a bunch of robbies what to do, same as I do.”

  “Come to think of it,” Barnard observed, pursuing his earlier line of thought,” the creep that Aurora took up with, I heard he used ta be with th’ Fleet. Navigator, I think. He’s the one got Aurora ta quit and go learn how ta paint flowers with ’im!”

  “Listen,” Wraggon resumed fervently, “don’t you understand? It all started because of the robots! The retraining program, screwing up the natural order of things—all that stuff! When you make a robot do what you say, it doesn’t mean a thing. Robots don’t have a choice. The way they’re made, they can’t disobey. I know that better than most. I run a plant that makes those damn robbies! But if you can get another man to do what you say, then you have real power. That means other people respect you, or they’re afraid of you.

  “Can’t you see? If everybody’s a boss, then nobody’s really a boss! The robots have turned us all into nobodies!”

  Barnard stifled a belch. The morning binge was obviously catching up with him. He looked miserable and probably felt worse.

  “Uh, I don’t feel so good. I think I better....”

  Barnard’s effort to rise from the barstool and head for the men’s room ended unsuccessfully as he stumbled against Wraggon and landed hard on the barroom floor.

  “Hey!” yelled the bartender. “If your friend can’t hold his liquor better’n that, he ought to do his drinking at home! I want him outta here!”

  “He’s not my friend,” Wraggon responded in irritation. “You know he was already here when I came in. I never saw him before today.”

  “Fine. Then I’ll just call the cops. They’ll figure out what to do with him.”

  From the floor, a barely conscious Barnard moaned: “Please, buddy, help me out. The cops’ll turn me over ta Fleet...pull my furlough.”

  Barnard mumbled a few more unintelligible syllables before finally passing out.

  “Well?” the bartender barked.

  Wraggon looked with distaste at the heap on the floor. That’s all he needed. A drunken spacer to baby-sit. But at least Barnard was a man, not a machine. Besides, he seemed interested in what Wraggon had to say. It had been a long time since anyone had paid attention to Charlie Wraggon. No one since his grandfather died, come to think of it. His parents certainly didn’t take him seriously. They listened to him with polite tolerance, the same way they used to listen to his grandfather. This Barnard, though, might just turn out to be a pretty good guy once he sobered up. And he was human. It was nice to be able to talk to a human being for a change.

  “Oh, crap. All right. Well, you don’t have a Trans-Mat pod here, and the nearest public one’s at least a block away. I can’t drag him clear over there. Better call a taxi. I’ll take him to my place.”

  Wraggon continued to study Barnard’s inert form. Now all he had to do was figure out how a 170-pound man could get a drunken 230-pounder up to a fourth-floor apartment.

  Chapter 3: History Lesson

  “All right, now,” Rayna said, “settle down. The weekend’s over.”

  The subtle changes she’d been noticing in the classroom continued to trouble her. She’d always related well to her students. She liked them, and they knew it. Their high spirits were contagious, investing each day with a magic sense that all things were possible. If the students got a bit unruly sometimes.... Well, that went with the adolescent territory. Lately, however, the character of that unruliness seemed different. Less benign. Even ominous somehow. She furrowed her brow in concentration, then gave her head a q
uick shake.

  “Alana,” she said sharply to a student who was bouncing to a privately heard rhythm, “turn off your M-link. This is a class in history, not music.”

  Gradually, the bustle of activity and the buzz of youthful voices diminished. An intense-looking 16-year-old seated before one of the 20 desk-top computer terminals in the classroom made a special effort to look away from the keyboard as he began typing stealthily.

  “Rick, you can either cancel that note you’re writing now or else wait for me to put it on ‘demo’ for everybody to share.”

  “I don’t think Karin would like that much, Miss Kingman,” one of the other boys yelled.

  Red-faced, Karin tried to sink into the floor as she and Rick exchanged embarrassed glances.

  Rayna’s mouth formed the merest hint of a smile as she waited for the wave of student laughter to subside.

  “Oh, yes. Before we go on, I want to remind you that you have a homework assignment due tomorrow.”

  “We can just submit this one electronically, can’t we?” someone asked. “We don’t have to print it out like last time?”

  Rayna nodded. “Electronic submission is fine. Just make sure you do the work. I’m sorry to say, it seems you people are getting a little forgetful—or is it lazy? Ten—no, 12—of you are missing at least one assignment in the past three weeks,” she said, consulting the class records displayed on the computer terminal adjacent to her desk. “That’s just not like you. And as for the assignments you are turning in....

  She removed a sheaf of papers from a desk drawer and waved it wordlessly before her students, studying their faces. When the papers were in just the right place, she loosened her grip, allowing the paper-clipped bundle to land on the desk with a soft “plop.”

  “This,” she gestured at the papers, “was supposed to be an essay on the Rebirth period. It was supposed to show some original thinking. It was not supposed to be a printout of your favorite encyclopedia article on the subject! Three of you tried to get away with that. And—let’s see. Umm, five others used verbatim quotes for part of their essays.”