Амброз Бирс - We, Robots

(2018)

Howard Waldrop(born 1946, in Houston, Mississippi) is, according to the editor Eileen Gunn, "a famous unknown writer", which rather neatly sums up a career seemingly devoted to hiding wild talent beneath willful obscurity. Waldrop’s stories are as delightful as they are unpitchable: "Heirs of the Perisphere" involves robotic Disney characters waking up in the far future; "Fin de Cyclé" describes the Dreyfus affair from the perspective of bicycle enthusiasts. Several of his stories have been nominated for the genre’s awards; "The Ugly Chickens" – about the extinction of the dodo – won a Nebula for best novelette in 1980, and also a World Fantasy Award for Short Fiction in 1981. His work has been gathered in several collections. He lives in Austin, Texas, and is at work on a new novel, tentatively titled The Moon World .

I was on my way across the Pacific Ocean when I decided to go to the Moon.

But first I had to land to refuel this superannuated machine, with its internal combustion engines and twin airscrews. There was an answering beacon ahead that showed a storage of 6,170 metric tons of fuel. Whether I could obtain any of it I did not know. But, as they used to say, any dataport in an infostorm.

The island was a small speck in the pink ocean.

No instructions came from the airfield, so I landed on the only runway, a very long one. I taxied off to the side, toward what had been the major building with the control tower.

I tried to find a servicer of some kind, by putting out requests on different frequencies.

Nothing came. So I went to find the fuel myself. Perhaps there were pumps that still functioned? I located the storage facility, then returned to the plane and rolled it over to the tanks.

It was while I was using a hand-powered pumping device, with a filter installed in the deteriorating hoses, that I sensed the approach of someone else.

It came around the corner.

It was carrying a long, twisted piece of wood as tall as it, and it wore a torn and bleached cloak, and a shapeless bleached hat that came to a point on the crown.

"Mele Kiritimati!" it said. "You have landed on this enfabled island on the anniversary of its discovery by the famous Captain Cook, an adventurous human."

"Your pardon?" I said. "The greeting?"

"Merry Christmas. The human festive season, named for the nominal birthdate of one of its religious figures, placed on the dates of the old human Saturnalia by the early oligarchs."

"I am familiar with Christmastide. This, then, is Christmas Island?"

"That same. Did you not use standard navigational references?"

I pointed to the plane. "Locationals only. There is a large supply of aviation fuels here."

"Nevertheless," it said, "this is the island, this is the date of Christmas. You are the first visitor in fourteen years three months twenty-six days. Mele Kiritimati."

It stood before me as I pumped.

"I have named myself Prospero," it said.

(Reference: Shakespeare, The Tempest A.D. 1611. See also Hume, Forbidden Planet, A.D. 1956.)

"I should think Caliban," I said. (Reference also: Morbius, id monster.)

"No Caliban. Nor Ariel, nor Miranda, nor dukes," said Prospero. "In fact, no one else. But you."

"I am called Montgomery Clift Jones," I said, extending my hand.

His steel grip was firm.

"What have you been doing?" I asked.

"Like the chameleon, I sup o’ the very air itself," he said.

"I mean, what do you do?" I asked.

"What do you do?" he asked.

We looked out at the pinkness of the ocean where it met the salts-encrusted sands and island soils.

"I stopped here to refuel," I said. "I was on my way across the Pacific when I was overcome with a sudden want to visit the Moon."

Prospero looked to where the part-lit Moon hung in the orangish sky.

"Hmmm. Why do that, besides it’s there?"

"Humans did it once."

"Well," said Prospero, after a pause, "why not indeed? I should think revisiting places humans once got to should be fitting. In fact, a capital idea! I see your craft is a two-seater. Might I accompany you in this undertaking?"

I looked him over. "This sea air can’t be very good for your systems," I said, looking at the abraded metal that showed through his cloak. "Of course you may accompany me."

"As soon as you finish refueling, join me," he said. "I will take a farewell tour, and tell you of my domain."

"How can I find you?"

"If something is moving on the island," said Prospero, "it is I."

We walked along. I kicked over some crusted potassium spires along the edge of the beach.

"I should be careful," said Prospero. "The pH of the oceans is now twelve point two. You may get an alkaline burn."

The low waves came in, adding their pinkish-orange load to the sediments along the shore.

"This island is very interesting," he said. "I thought so when abandoned here; I still think so after all.

"When Cook found it, no humans were here. It was only inhabited for two hundred years or so. Humans were brought from other islands, thousands of kilometers away. The language they used, besides English I mean, was an amalgam of those of the islands whence they came."

We looked at some eaten-metal ruins.

"This was once their major city. It was called London. The other two were Paris and Banana."

The whole island was only a few meters above the new sea level.

"There was a kind of human tourism centered here once around a species of fish, Albula vulpes, the bonefish. They used much of their wealth to come here to disturb the fish in its feeding with cunning devices that imitated crustaceans, insects, other marine life. They did not keep or eat the fish they attained after long struggles. That part I have never understood," said Prospero.

By and by we came to the airfield.

"Is there anything else you need to do before we leave?"

"I think no," said Prospero. He turned for one more look around. "I do believe I shall miss this isle of banishment, full of music, and musing on the king my brother’s wreck. Well, that part is Shakespeare’s. But I have grown much accustomed to it. Farewell," he said, to no one and nothing.

Getting him fitted into the copilot’s seat was anticlimax. It was like bending and folding a living, collapsible deck chair of an extraordinarily old kind, made from a bad patent drawing.

On our journey over the rest of the island, and the continent, I learned much of Prospero; how he came to be on the island, what he had done there, the chance visitors who came and went, usually on some more and more desperate mission.

"I saw the last of the Centuplets," he said at one point. "Mary Lou and Cathy Sue. They were surrounded of course by many workers—in those days humans always were—who were hurrying them on their way to, I believe, some part of Asia…"

"The island of Somba," I said.

"Yes, yes, Somba. For those cloning operations, supposed to ensure the continuation of the humans."

"Well, those didn’t work."

"From looking into it after they left," said Prospero, "I assumed they would not. Still, the chances were even."

"Humans were imprecise things, and genetics was a human science," I said.

"Oh, yes. I used the airfield’s beacons and systems to keep in touch with things. No being is an island," said Prospero, "even when on one. Not like in the old days, eh? It seems many human concerns, before the last century or so, were with the fear of isolation, desertion, being marooned from society. I made the best of my situation. As such things go, I somewhat enjoyed it."