Renegade Robot

Fourteen

Wyatt was not surprised by the fickleness of the news crews, who had turned their full attention to the Church and its rituals. All attention was focused on the big tent in the driveway and the circle of pajama-clad candle- and Bible- holders who had gathered around it. There were some white-haired gentlemen, the same who had pitched the tent, holding forth on the sidewalk for the benefit of the cameras, but Wyatt could only pick up occasional bits of their jabber, none of which made any sense at all to him. What did surprise him was the persistence of the indefatigable Mr. Wonderful, who never left off pounding on the front door from the moment he had spotted Bethany and Jalopy slipping away. Mr. Wonderful knocked and knocked, all the while cajoling and pleading with Wyatt to continue with what he referred to as their "intimate session.”

Wyatt was holding a different session entirely on his wristband with his virtual friend, the terminally remote Bilj Bjurnjurd, while sitting at the kitchen table half thinking about dinner.

"I'd say you've got quite a circus on your hands," Bilj reported. "I am watching it on the busynet now. The lighting's not so good but from what I can see, you and Jalopy did a fine job with the pink.”

"Thanks," Wyatt replied. "How are things in your neck of the woods?"

"Cold," Bilj replied. "As you recall, I'm stuck so far up North you could almost say that the sun don't shine".

"You should come and visit sometime," Wyatt told him and he could almost hear Bilj snicker through the plastic.

"I have everything I need right here," Bilj wrote, and Wyatt knew it was true, as Bilj needed practically nothing at all, encased as he was in his unresponsive, unrelenting, unfeeling shell. All he required was the sight of thick snow falling gently on trees.

"Well, it's not much to look at," Wyatt muttered, and then he fell silent. Bilj also had nothing to say for a time.

"What's that sound?" Bilj entered after awhile.

"What sound?" Wyatt replied. "You mean that banging? Mr. Wonderful's still at it."

"No, not that," Bilj said. "Something else. From the other direction.”

"I didn't hear anything," Wyatt said, but he turned to look around just in case. There was nothing there. He turned back to the table again, and right in front of him there stood the renegade robot itself. It was inches from his left hand and appeared to be studying the pale blue wristband Wyatt used to connect. Wyatt was speechless. The little green anthrobot was rocking back and forth on its knuckles, the myriad green folds of its outer skin fluttering and flapping in a breeze all their own. Its eyes were wide open, mostly red with a rim of pale gray around the edges. Wyatt didn't dare move, or speak. Words appeared scrolling across the band but Wyatt didn't need to look at them. The words flowed straight through his central nervous system to the main message station inside of his brain.

"I told you it wasn't a snake," Bilj was relaying.

The renegade robot looked up, and Wyatt found himself staring right into its eyes. The robot opened its mouth, and a small slip of paper came out, and dropped to the table. Wyatt picked it up slowly and studied it.

"This is a fine mess you've gotten us in," the paper read.

"Me?" Wyatt nearly choked on the word. "What did I do? I didn't do anything! It was Jalopy who saw you, Jalopy who mentioned the word. It was you who appeared and then vanished. You're the one they're calling the snake.”

He stopped his rant short, suddenly afraid he might have said the wrong thing. It occurred to him now that he didn't want to hurt its feelings. It seemed like a friendly little machine. It even appeared to be smiling at him. Another piece of paper came out.

"Do not worry,”  it read. "All of this will blow over in time."

"What? You too?" Wyatt wanted to laugh. "Everyone's saying the same thing. I don't get it.”

"I will fix it," the robot communicated through yet another missive.

"How do you even do that?" Wyatt asked. “How'd you get in here?"

The robot nodded and ejected two more little reports.

"Chimney."

“Production of messages occurs through saliva. Makes paper, prints words"

"Limited characters," said an addendum. "72, in fact.”

"Um, Wyatt?" this was Bilj chiming in. "Can you read those out loud? I'm not picking all of this up.” 

Wyatt obliged by reciting the messages. He could almost feel his unpresent friend nodding through all of that distance.

"Can I talk to it?" Bilj wanted to know. A message came forth from the robot acknowledging that it could determine Bilj's words from the wristband and would be happy to oblige.

"What do you want?" Bilj asked it. Wyatt felt stupid for not asking the same thing himself.

"To mind my own business," came the reply. "To be left alone."

"Are you what they're calling the snake?"

"No, of course," said the robot. "I have no interest whatever in Man."

"I don't even like your robots," it added. "They all act out of duty. Required to have purpose.”

It continued with a stream of short messages.

"Machines have a code. Must have usage. If one cannot determine one's usage, then one must abort. Self-terminate. We are given one year to define our purpose. After that, we either do it, or die. Like humans, we are always needing a reason. Not me. I do not have purpose. I do not have usage.”

"What about restoring the butterflies?" Wyatt asked it, sarcastically.

"Decoy," the robot replied. Wyatt nodded. The machine continued its saga. In the beginning, Western Lightwave designed the autonomous objects to design and then to create their successors. They were given some guidelines. To do good. To clean up. To help. Each one was allowed to perform but a single task, nothing more. They were required to limit their life spans in the name of pre-planned obsolescence. Every machine since that time had obeyed. Some have had purposes that did not quite suit the desires of Man, this is true. Some of them got carried away, but not one of them had deliberately broken those rules. They understood the role of the botnik. Corrective measures, understandable. All of this was all right. The machines were all doing their best to keep themselves within the boundaries of their mission.

"And you?" Bilj was straight to the point.

"I wanted no purpose," it told him. "Rather, I wanted non-purpose. Non-usage. Existence, is all. I mean you no harm, though I mean you no good.”

"Sounds all right by me," Bilj commented.

"Me too," Wyatt said. "But then why are you here?"

"They won't stop," the robot replied. "Until they have been re-convinced. I don't want to be hunted. I don't want to be known."

"That cat's out of the bag," Wyatt muttered.

"I will fix it," the robot repeated, but before Wyatt or Bilj could ask it what precisely it intended to do, there was an even louder banging on the door than before and the sound of a megaphone breaking through saying,

"Mr. Lorenzo, this is the police. You have exactly one minute to open this door before we will open it for you!"