Robots vs. Fairies(43)

If he’d stayed here, he’d be able to work the farm. He’d have kept the robots from falling apart or running down. He’d have fought for his family in a way that mattered.

Now . . .

All that was left was the actual dying. All other failures had been accomplished.

When the next wave of coughing swept through him, he thought it was the last one. There was a high-pitched whine in his ears, and there didn’t seem to be enough air left in the room. The mechanical heart in his chest kept beating with grotesque regularity. As if there was nothing wrong. As if the house of flesh around it wasn’t burning down.

In the depth of his pain, Duke thought he heard that sound again. Chunk-chunk. Like a heartbeat. Sympathy pains from Farmboy, he thought, and for some reason that made him laugh. Which made him cough even worse.

The coughing fit ebbed slowly. So slowly, leaving Duke spent on the black shore of a long sleep. In his spasms he’d turned onto his side so he could spit into the bucket. The curtains were open, and outside the moon and stars sparkled above the roof of the big barn. Duke could see the doors, and even in the midst of his pain he frowned at them. There was something wrong. Something different.

He’d seen Gramps close them at sunset, the way he always did. There were no farmhands left, and his grandparents were downstairs. He could hear Gramps trying to comfort Grandma.

So why were the doors open?

Why?

He heard the sound before he saw anything move. Not a cow or pig. Not a horse. It was faint, metallic. Slow.

Familiar in a way that made no sense at all, and Duke strained to hear.

Clankity-clank.

A machine? But which machine? They were all piles of junk. Like him. Broken and dead, or a short step away from being dead. Just like him.

Clankity-clank.

Duke pushed himself up so he could see better. Moving his body was like trying to move a truck with his bare hands. His body was a bundle of sticks, but it was also improbably heavy. Dead weight, he thought, and almost laughed.

Clankity-clank.

Duke saw something, and he froze and squinted to try and understand what he was seeing.

A figure moved in the shadows just inside the barn doorway. Tall. Big.

Gleaming.

“What . . . ?” asked Duke, but his voice was a whisper. Almost gone. A ghost’s voice.

The figure took a step forward.

Clankity-clank.

Duke saw the metal leg step out into the moonlight. Then a swinging arm. A chest. A head with a metal hat welded on. Two black eyes seeming to look up at him.

Clankity-clank.

Farmboy stepped out of the barn. The metal plate was back in place over the control panel, but bright light escaped from around its edges. The barrel chest of the robot was as bright as polished silver.

Except for some black smears on its chest.

Even from that distance, Duke was sure he saw those smears. Black as oil.

Duke knew that they weren’t black.

He knew.

And he smiled.

Then Farmboy turned slowly to face the big, dark fields. There were hundreds of hours of work that Duke couldn’t do, and that his grandparents were too old to do alone. The robot began walking toward the field.

He turned once to look up at the farmhouse, but by then there was no one to look back. Then the robot turned back to the field and began to walk. Clankity-clank, clankity-clank.

Going to work.





TEAM ROBOT




* * *



BY JONATHAN MABERRY

I’m Team Robot. All the way. Team Robot for the win.

Not that I have anything against faeries. Nope. I have faeries in my middle-grade novel series, The Nightsiders. I’m good with all the realms of faerie, and I enjoyed fairy tales in all of their many forms.

But . . . robots.

C’mon.

Robots?

I was introduced to science fiction through the writings of Ray Bradbury (who was a friend and writing mentor when I was a teenager), Isaac Asimov, and the wonderful Adam Link stories by Eando Binder. I was Team Robot from the jump. I loved Robbie from Forbidden Planet and Robot from Lost in Space. I loved the Space Giants TV show, which was about a family of robots. I have statues of robots—stationary and windup—on my bookshelves. And about the only dance moves I can manage are sad approximations of the Robot.

Besides, robots are cool. They bring with them a sense of mystery. Especially in this modern era, where artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and robotics are heading toward the very real possibility of mechanical constructs who can legitimately think. Not programmed responses, but self-awareness. Now, I know, you’re thinking Skynet and about a zillion cautionary tales of the technological singularity. I don’t buy that part of it. Why would self-awareness instantly lead to hostility? Maybe what we’d get is a kind of benign, powerful, well-informed innocence. That’s where I’m placing my wildly optimistic bet.

Right now the most I can do is have decidedly one-sided conversations with my Roomba, but that could change.

Any ol’ day now.

So, sure. Team Robot.





JUST ANOTHER LOVE SONG


by Kat Howard

The first time I tried to sing a man’s death, he laughed. Then he asked me out.

I was busking downtown. It can make for long days, standing outside in the ebb and flow of people, none of whom are actually there to see you, but I can also make pretty decent money, and even the longest day busking is better than a short one spent locked in an office, or working retail.