David Gatewood: The Robot Chronicles

Typical scavengers. No finesse. Always relying on brute strength. Using a club to try to rip his poles out of the ground.

Micah pressed a button on his flex circuit armband, and the electronic field collapsed. He slid open a panel on the pole, pulled his hot pen from the battered leather pouch attached to his belt, and began his repairs. In a minute he closed the panel and the field regenerated, as strong as it had been before the scavengers.

His back cracked as he stretched himself upright and then wiped his forehead. Soon he would need gloves if he wanted to touch anything outside.

He checked his watch. “What? It’s almost nine?” He shot Kitpie a nasty look. “Why didn’t you tell me?” He scrambled off back to his trailer to get ready for his visitor.

“You never asked,” Kitpie replied, rolling slowly behind him.

Arnold’s cold, emotionless, Austrian voice echoed from the trailer.

Skip must be cleaning.

He always played Terminator 2 on the VCR while cleaning.

Two years ago Micah had been scraping the topsoil of his recent land purchase with a steam shovel. His inventory had grown, and he needed the space to store his most recent salvages.

And there, in the dirt, he found a metal box, buried for decades. He shook out the grime that had found its way into every crevice. After inspection, he determined that it was a video player.

He wondered if he could fix it.

Technology from the late twentieth century had a ruggedness to it, and if there was any fixer that could fix it, it was him.

He returned to his workshop and placed the rare treasure on his gouged, scarred, wooden work table. His air pen blew the dirt and dust from the hard-to-reach areas. Then he took it in his hands and closed his eyes.

If he tried to think about it too much, tried to understand what he was doing, he knew he’d mess it up. He would fail to fix it. He’d found that out the hard way.

That’s where he’d gone wrong with Skip.

His hands flew over the box, feeling, with an intuition beyond his understanding. In seconds the top had been removed with his multi-tool, exposing electrical boards and mechanical heads. With the cover off, a part of the device—a videotape—separated from the unit. Micah set it aside.

He had never studied a VCR before, but he knew, in that moment, what needed to be done, what needed fixing.

Just like Thomas Cole, The Variable Man . The one from the story.

His hot pen clutched tightly in his hand, he went to work, bypassing unfixable parts, ensuring wires and circuits operated, rewiring when necessary. In five minutes he had the cover back on. From the plastic tub of cables next to his workbench he found a spare cord. In minutes he’d rigged the cable to pipe the device’s output to his television.

The power switch clicked and the unit hummed. LEDs on the front lit up. He fed the videocassette back into the player. It lazily swallowed the tape, and in a moment it whirred and spit. Then it started. Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Collector’s Edition .

Since then, Skip had been obsessed with the movie, as much as a bot could be obsessed with anything.

“Mr. McCray will be here soon. Is everything ready?” Micah said as he searched for the television remote.

“Almost. I have to finish the sandwiches,” Skip said. The bot pulled meat from the fridge and rifled through the pantry for the bread.

“What did I tell you about the sound?” Micah finally found the remote and muted the movie playing on his restored television.

Nikolaevna viewed mankind as undesirable parasites, worthy only to die. That’s what mankind had become to the machines. Just like in the movies. Just like the Machine Wars.

Nikolaevna had terrified Margaret. Nikolaevna terrified everyone.

“Yes, sir. I remember. Sorry about that.” Skip sat a plate on the dining table, next to a knife and fork. He started to walk away, then stopped and turned back to the table. He picked up the utensils, then put them right back in the same spot on the table again.

He did that two more times.

This was one of the quirks he’d developed after Micah’s attempt to hack him.

“I believe everything’s ready, sir.”

The doorbell rang and Micah popped from his chair. He gave one last look at the table, at the prepared tea and sandwiches. Skip started for the door.

“Wait,” Micah said, moving in front of him. “I’ll get it.” He paused. “No, you get it.” He stepped back.

Skip continued to the door, opened it an inch, then closed it. After ten seconds, he opened the door completely. “May I help you?” he said with a slight bow.

He’d picked up the bow from a media stream of Downton Abbey .

“Um, I’m looking for Micah Dresden,” Sam McCray said. “I was given these coords.” The pale, dust-free man held a GPS unit up to Skip’s face, as if Skip needed the device’s validation that he was telling the truth.

Skip moved aside and swept his arm with another bow. “Please enter. Enter.”

Sam McCray had contacted Micah yesterday. He was in Tucson, at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, for business, and had broken a work transmitter. Someone had told him to check out the fixers in the Boneyard.

“Hi, I’m Micah.” Micah extended his hand.

Through McCray’s sweat-covered white button-up, you could see he carried his weight on his waist; his belt fought to keep everything under control. His cheeks were flushed and sweat crowned his forehead, dripping into his eyes. He dabbed at it with a towel.

He was quite a contrast. Micah was thin, calloused, and tanned with a deep brown from the brutal climate. The sun had turned him into one lanky piece of jerky.

McCray shuddered and took in deep, ragged breath. He looked over to Skip, who was busy pouring tea into the cups. “Is that an android you got there?” he said, nodding his head toward Micah’s butler.

Sweat dripped onto the floor.

“No, of course not. That’s a bot, not an android.” Micah chewed on one nail, but remembered he hadn’t washed his hands when the bitter taste of grease coated his tongue. He wiped his hands on his pants. “He performs simple tasks but doesn’t reason. Plus, the Kawasaki Frequency plays here every day.”

“That’s quite a sophisticated bot, then. If it was in Texas, it might be considered a droid and be decommissioned.” McCray laughed. It was a grating sound.

Micah moved to his table and leaned heavily on it.

An android? Why would he think that?

Suddenly, the enthusiasm he had for the visit shriveled like a noonday flower. But he needed the money. He swallowed and motioned to Skip’s immaculate lunchtime presentation, even though he didn’t want to eat or drink. “Tea?”

McCray shook his head. “No. Too hot.”

“So, where’s your transmitter?” Micah said.

McCray pulled a smooth box, the size of a large fist, from his pocket. “Boy, if you can fix this, we sure could use someone like you in Texas, at the Complex. We have a ton of machinery that continually breaks. We buy more, but it gets expensive.”

“Complex?” Micah said.

“Yeah, the Southern Defense Complex. Where do you think the Frequency comes from? It’s us.” He smiled broadly. “We broadcast over the lower half of the country. You know, for the insurgents, mechanical insurgents.” He rubbed his hands over the box then looked around the trailer. “I’m sure you could use the money. We pay well. Anything you want you can’t afford?”

Micah bit his chapped lips.

Skip’s simuskin.

He had found someone just across the border in Nogales willing to sell him simuskin, but it wasn’t cheap. Many would frown on that; they’d say Skip would look more life-like, more like an android. McCray would probably say that.