Eye Candy (24 page)

To their credit, the county of Los Angeles and the State of California left Robot City well enough alone. Despite its reputation for being a place of electronic and positronic oddities, it was a relatively peaceful place (more so than most other townships within Los Angeles County), and the LAPD almost never had to venture into Robot City jurisdiction during its day-to-day business of keeping the peace, of protecting and serving. The occasional off-duty forays into Robot City tended to be of little consequence; as long as residents and visitors were respectful, and that pertained to humans and robots alike, no one much cared what went on in Robot City. Crime was almost non-existent, there was no pollution, and it was a steady stream of tax money. What was there to complain about? Let the robots and the robot freaks alone.

While many people were afraid of venturing into Robot City, regardless of whether or not they would publicly admit to being so, Danny and Candy both adored it. Each had visited Robot City once or twice, but it had been many years ago, and they agreed that a stroll together through the Arcades would be a great way to spend an evening.

The Arcades consisted of a great span of many high arches, towering above the street itself. It was a pedestrian-only thoroughfare, open only to foot traffic
, and bordered on both sides by businesses and shops and establishments both small and large, almost all of which were unique, one-of-a-kind storefronts. (One of the fundamental tenets of the Robot City Council was no admittance to franchised businesses of any kind.) The streets of Robot City had been designed and built in a gentle S-curve, so while the city itself was a traditional grid of north-south and east-west avenues providing easy navigation and travel, the gentle curve of the streets limited visibility; one could not see from one side of Robot City all the way across to the other. This created an effect of intimacy and quiet. It also tended to slow the rates of the electric vehicle traffic, which further discouraged any form of hustle-and-bustle. Robots were never in a hurry, nor should their home encourage them to be.

Candy and Danny enjoyed the diversity of shops, everything from robot repairs to eateries ranging from pastries and confections to fine dining. The tiered, multi-story buildings festooned with lights brought to mind images of a quaint
yet futuristic European hamlet.

Nearly all the food-related establishments offered a patio for outdoor dining. The pleasant southern California climate contributed to the always-genial temperature inside the Arcades. The city had also been designed such that rainfall was carefully routed through a series of filtration systems and gathered for uses such as drinking water and for the production of steam-powered electricity which supplemented the solar-generated electricity that provided the vast majority of Robot City’s power needs. The net result was that it never rained in the Arcades, and only the parks and certain well-defined and well-known areas of Robot City were deliberately left open to receiving natural rainfall.

Candy and Danny strolled past patios where people were enjoying their dinners. Robots and humans alike sat in twos and threes and fours, conversing together.

Smaller cafés and coffee shops and patisseries offered
electronic games on their patios, everything from 3-D checkers to virtual backgammon to digital wizard’s chess. Pairings for such games had no biological predispositions; robots and humans were valued as equals in Robot City, thus humans played checkers against humans, robots played backgammon against robots, and humans and robots shared equally in a good chess match. Any combination was possible and it was often impossible to predict the winner (though a bit of quiet, good-natured gambling on such outcomes was certainly never discouraged).

Danny and Candy ventured into a candy store bearing the name
Isaac's
in brilliant purple and green neon.
Isaac’s
was the most well-known candy store in all of Los Angeles county. All of their sweet confections were made entirely by hand; entirely by
robot
hands, a fact ignored by humans possessed of a sweet tooth greater than their anti-robot attitudes.

The proprietor of
Isaac’s
was a man of indeterminate (and undisclosed) age. He presided over his candy store from a loft overlooking the many barrels and bins and trays and tubs of candy. Great grey sideburns adorned his smiling cheeks, and his fingers danced over the keys of an old-fashioned typewriter, for he was also a well-known writer and novelist.

Candy purchased half a kilogram of the sugar-free dark chocolate for which Isaac and his robot confectioners were famous.

Danny perused the magazine rack. He enjoyed the pulp art on the science fiction novels, swashbuckling space-faring depictions of robots rescuing maidens from thieving marauders and giant robotic dragons.

Candy and Danny waved goodbye to Isaac and exited the candy store.

They resumed their stroll along the promenade and soon stopped at a gelato stand, where each ordered a scoop of gelato on a warm, freshly-made waffle cone. Candy asked for a scoop of dulce de leche while Danny opted for green pistachio.

Danny paid the robot and thanked him for the gelato, and he and Candy walked on.

Candy took Danny’s arm as they strolled, and they took turns tasting each other’s gelato. Danny seemed to prefer Candy’s sweet caramel-flavored gelato and he took too large a bite. Waves of cold radiated all the way into his brain.

“Brain freeze!” he cried. He grabbed the top of his head with his hand, as if that were likely to have any effect.

“A gelato-induced mental freeze-out,” said Candy. “I wonder what it feels like for a robot to freeze out. You think they feel anything?”

Danny considered Candy’s question while the chill in his head subsided. “I don’t know. Howard says he feels changes in his positronic potential sometimes. He says sometimes he experiences what you or I would consider anxiety.”

“Really? Anxiety?”

“
A few days ago, he told me that he tried several times to ask me if he could go flying with me. But he was afraid I might say no, or that Floyd wouldn’t want to risk him in an airplane. Howard was concerned he would be embarrassed, that he would lose face, as he put it. He said that each time he wanted to ask me, it became more difficult for him to think, to perform basic mental operations, even difficult to move. So he decided not to ask me. Each time he decided not to, the slowness seemed to subside, and he felt better.”

“Fascinating.”

“Although, a couple days ago, I found him in the kitchen with his head in the refrigerator.”

“
Why was his head in the refrigerator?”

“
He said he wanted to see if cold affected his brain function.”

“
Testing his limits,” said Candy, “just like humans do. Fascinating.”

They walked on, enjoying the gentle thrum of conversations, of people and robots conversing all around them, the aromas of coffee and pizza and the baking of waffle cones by the gelato vendor. A faint breeze whispered through the archway, carrying the scents and sounds of Robot City with it.

Candy said, “Do you believe in God?”

“Do you?”

“Chicken.”

Danny grinned and licked his gelato.

Candy continued, “I’ve been thinking a lot about Barney.”

“I see.
”

Candy took a crunching bite out of her waffle cone.
“What do you think happened to him when he died?”

“
I think he was switched off.”

“
Like a light?”

“
More or less.”

“
You don’t think robots have souls?”

“
No, they’re machines. They do not have souls. You don’t get upset when your computer breaks. Well, you do, because there can be lost data if you weren’t doing your back-ups like you should, and then there’s the time and expense and the pain in the ass-ness of having to go get a new computer, but you don’t mourn the computer. It’s a machine which broke down. Nothing more.”

“
Then how do you explain the individuality of robotic sentience?”

“
The what?”

“
Every robot is different. Even robots of the same make and model, produced on the same assembly line in the same factory. When they’re activated, they’re different from one another. They look the same and they sound the same, but they’re not.”

“
How so?”

“A couple years ago, I spent some time
in Pasadena, at Jet Propulsion Laboratories. The folks at JPL were building some serious robots up there, each of which was designed for long-duration space flight. I was called in to help evaluate them, to see how they were going to react to spending years in space. Some of them were going to be launched into deep space. They won’t arrive at their destination planet for five hundred years. They’re going to sit in their little capsule and do nothing but record and monitor the trip for five centuries. They don’t need to eat, don’t need to sleep, don’t need any kind of interaction. But I found something very interesting.”

“
What did you find?”

“
When the robots were activated, each of them was unique. Even their voices and the way they spoke was somehow . . . different. Most of the other scientists and physicists and roboticists thought I was crazy, and ultimately I stopped mentioning it. But I spent a lot of time with three of the deep space robots and they were all different. It was like human triplets: the same, but different. Two of them were gung-ho for their trip, but one of them did
not
want to go. His name was Casey. His full name was Cadmium Space Explorer Yellow, or C-S-E-Y. So everyone called him Casey.

“
I spent
hours
talking with Casey. When it came time to drive him out to Vandenburg for the launch, he couldn’t get into the van. He literally couldn’t move. We had gone over and over and over the importance of the mission and what it meant to humanity and how millions and billions of human beings were going to directly benefit for generations from his discoveries. He said he knew all that, but that he still was afraid.

“
Finally, I took my supervisor aside and told him that my recommendation was to find a different robot. But they couldn’t. The launch window was very narrow and there wasn’t time to prep a new ’bot for that particular mission. Plus Congress had already earmarked almost two trillion dollars for the next five hundred years, and if they didn’t go within that twelve-day period, they were at risk of having the funding pulled. Which is ridiculous if you ask me; who knows if any of us will even be here in five hundred years?”

“
So what happened?” Danny was so fascinated that he failed to notice a long green drip of melting pistachio gelato trickling down his fingers.

Candy took a napkin from her pocket and wiped Danny’s fingers.
“He went. It took six people, including myself, to lift Casey into the van. Then we lifted him out again once we reached Pad 21A with his rocket on it. Poor guy. He apologized over and over as we were carrying him. He said he simply couldn’t move.

“
We put him in a wheel chair and took him up the lift and onto the gantry to where he was literally looking into the capsule where he was going to spend the next five hundred years. He looked down at the rocket, a great big Atlas VI. And suddenly, he relaxed. He stood up out of the wheelchair, turned to face us, and apologized for being difficult, and for making us angry and worried. Then he turned to me and said, ‘Thank you, Doctor Calvin. This is my destiny. And you will always be my friend.’ I’ll never forget those words. Then he turned and climbed into the capsule. Fourteen hours later, he blasted off and has been doing fine ever since. Last I heard, he was almost to Saturn.”

“
What’s his destination?”

“
That’s classified.”

“
You can tell me, I won’t blab.”

“
No, I mean it’s classified. They never told me. All I know is once he gets out past Pluto, he’s going to activate his special engine which, again, I know almost nothing about. But if it works, and that’s a big ‘if’, he’s going to accelerate to forty percent of the speed of light. Everybody at JPL is really excited to see what forty percent of the speed of light feels like.”

“
Wow. And you really have no idea where he’s going?”

“
Well, word around the water cooler was that if they’ve committed two
trillion
dollars and five
hundred
years’ worth of resources to monitor Casey and the trip, he must be going someplace really special. Personally, I think they found another planet just like Earth, and Casey is going to check it out.”

“
But if it takes him five hundred years to get there, it’ll take another couple hundred years for his message to come back to Earth saying, ‘Hey, everybody, this is Casey. I’ve reached Planet blah-blah-blah and it’s a balmy seventy-four degrees Fahrenheit with clear blue skies and plenty of oxygen and nitrogen and all kinds of neat plants and animals. So load up the kids and get underway and I’ll see you in five hundred years.’ By the time we get Casey’s message seven hundred years from now, someone will have already discovered how to travel at the speed of light, or how to bend space, or how to travel through worm holes. Casey will reach Planet blah-blah-blah and there will already be a thriving metropolis with half a million people on it, with pizza parlors and coffee shops and sexually transmitted diseases that haven’t been invented yet, and domestic violence and taxes which are too high. It’ll be the same junk we have here on Earth.”