Last Robot

Chapter 4. THE RED DOT GIRL

But then a very unusually unPerfect act occurred.

One of the girls from the last of the twelve pairings broke rank from the march and dumped herself on the bench next to him!

This sort of behaviour was totally unexpected and Riley would not have thought it possible, certainly no boy would even imagine doing such an unPerfect act. To Riley, it seemed positively illegal. He could feel her staring at him with a cheeky look, but he refused to return the stare. But then out of the corner of his eye, he noticed something on her forehead that changed his mind, and it shocked him to the core. The girl was a Red Dot!

He found himself staring at her forehead.

He marvelled at the unPerfect perfectly shaped red dot smack bang in the middle of her forehead, where the red dots always manifested themselves. He forgot that children who had red dots could behave in the most outrageous, violent and uncooperative of ways. In his school, there were rumours that boys with red dots had caused acts of rudeness and even bullied other boys by calling them names. They were always removed from the regular school when they exhibited such poor behaviour. However, strangely enough, they always graduated from school and were assigned to work for the HEP.

It was taboo to mention the Red Dot in any social way as it was deemed another case in the Perfectly unPerfect category. It also proved to humanity that they had the humility to accept the Perfectly unPerfect.

"Mister man?" said the Red Dot girl, prodding Riley firmly in his rib cage. Riley could not believe the girl had spoken directly to him, but for her to actually touch him...! What a liberty!

Riley completely ignored her, but he was curious as to what she wanted.

"Hey," she said angrily, "I'm talking to you!" She jabbed him again with her finger, on his shoulder this time.

Riley didn't say anything and kept quiet.

"Look, I know you're listening. Look at me, you imbecile!"

Riley shook visibly at such rude language but found himself turning his head to look at the girl. If he didn't, he feared there was no way of telling what she might say next to get his attention, and he wasn't sure if he would be able to come to terms with it. This girl was worse than Inspector Clark. What she lacked in subtlety she made up for in cheekiness and straightforwardness.

When he saw the expressive look on her face, he was taken aback because it reminded him of the cheeky expression on the face of the strange-looking unPerfect girl's image he had seen many times in the painting, the gold-framed painting that haunted his recurring dream. Was this Red Dot girl some sort of genetic throwback? How could she have been allowed to mature as a foetus? He had never seen a female adult Red Dot, nor heard of any female of the Perfect Age ever having been a Red Dot. It was rare in men. But he knew one. Moreover, the one he knew was probably his best friend. A guy called Alex Harper who worked as a librarian in the City Library. He was ex-HEP but hated the HEP with more vehemence than any non-HEP citizen he knew or had ever known.

"I know what you're thinking, mister man," said the girl.

Riley said nothing.

"You're thinking that all the buildings in the Perfect Age cities are boring. Boring, boring, boring."

Riley raised his silver thin-haired eyebrows.

"Yeah, I knew it. I could see it in your tormented copper coloured eyes. You're just like me, mister man."

Riley couldn't believe the girl's preposterous claim.

But then the girl proved him wrong.

"You've seen a city with buildings so splendiferous that they make our boring old Perfectly shaped identical buildings look like a punishment of architecture. Good words I used there, weren't they, 'splendiferous' and 'architecture'. I'm top of my class at English, mister man. 'Punishment of architecture' wasn't too bad a phrase either."

Riley was absolutely dumbfounded at what the girl had accused him of, and didn't even register her boasts of her clever implementation of the English language. She had already outdone Inspector Clark. Riley had to say something.

"What city?"

"The one in our dream, mister man," said the girl simply, and devastatingly. "There's no point denying it. You're just like me. The victim of a recurring dream. A dream that shows the dreamer how to find the whereabouts of the Last Robot in her City of London hiding place! Got your attention now, haven't I? You know I'm telling you the truth, because you can sense that I'm a dreamer too."

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I hope you enjoyed this Chapter. I welcome any votes, comments or constructive criticisms (style, spelling, grammar and punctuation errors).

T. J. P. CAMPBELL.