John Sladek: The Complete Roderick

Nothing worked, nothing was whole, not even the bride and groom. This was a mission among the derelict and forgotten simulacra.

‘Dearly beloved,’ said Luke, and probably meant it. He felt that effigies could end up abandoned and despised like this only because those who owned them really wanted to abandon one another; really despised themselves. Conversely, if people could learn to live with effigies, they might some day learn to live with themselves. ‘Dearly beloved, we are gathered together in the sight of Mission Control—’

He caught the eye of Ida. ‘All right, in the sight of God — and in the face of this company, to join together in matrimony, this machine—’ He indicated a squat robot appliance which had, in better days, been able to vacuum, dust, and empty ashtrays. Now it did little more than twitch, and rust. ‘– and this machine.’ He nodded towards a clumsy device made of aluminium tubing, looking very much like a classic ‘robot’. It had been built many years ago by a class at some junior high school. It had never been able to do anything but answer questions on baseball.

While the service proceeded, the camera wandered over the congregation. There were painted plaster saints, and one or two of glow-in-the-dark plastic. There was an anatomical man with transparent skin and removable plastic organs, and next to him a wooden lay figure with a head like a fat exclamation mark. Then came a metallic plastic robot costume for a child, a prop suit of armour and a genuine white spacesuit. There was an inflatable doll with a permanently surprised expression, a mechanical Abe Lincoln frozen in an attitude of boredom, and a giant teddy bear. There was a cigar-store wooden Indian, a hitching-post of iron in the shape of a black child, and (from England) garden gnomes made of concrete.

Towards the rear of the church the chairs were heaped with dolls and puppets of all sizes: Russian babushka dolls; dress-up dolls; dolls with faces made of china, wax, wood, metal, rag; dolls that walked or talked or wet themselves while doing algebra; Barfin’ Billy; a corn dolly, a glass baby full of what once had been candies. There were glove puppets, clockwork dancers, Punch and Judy, fantoccini shadow puppets, marionettes.

‘…take this machine to be your lawfully wedded spouse?’ The cleaner twitched a brush, perhaps in assent. ‘And do you, machine, take this machine to be your lawfully wedded spouse?’

The junior high android muttered, ‘…Ty Cobb… highest batting average… twelve years…’

The camera continued to roam over this throng, picking out strangeness: the mad cracked grin, the missing nose, the staring glass eye. It skipped over Dora sitting in the last row (next to an old stage costume for the Tin Woodman) to concentrate on the bizarre: the lop-sided wax face, the single mother-of-pearl tooth.

‘Then I now pronounce you machine and machine.’

Ida turned on the player harmonium to produce ‘Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life’, then a recessional, as the happy couple apparently made their way out of the church (actually drawn along on piano wires by the TV crew). Outside, the TV company had arranged its own visual finish: a set of robot arms from a local factory were lined up in a double row, holding their arc-welders aloft to form an arch.

When it was all over, Luke seemed subdued. ‘I wish Rickwood could have been here, that’s all. He’d have understood. He, in a way I guess he started all this.’

Ida said, ‘ I know that, why are you telling me that? Do I go around reminding you how he brought us together?’

‘Affirmative, I mean, yes.’ Luke sighed. ‘Haven’t had a word from him, not since he said he was giving himself up to KUR.’

‘He’s probably too busy.’ Ida was peering into the dim corner at the back of the church, where Dora seemed to be talking to the Tin Woodman costume.

‘Busy? Busy? They’ve probably ripped him apart by now. He’s probably lying in pieces all over some laboratory bench, while people in green goggles stick probes into him. They’re making his leg twitch like the leg of a frog, do you read me?’

‘Loud and clear, Luke, just take it easy.’

‘Busy as a frog. And they’re probably gearing up the assembly lines right now to turn out millions of copies of him. Poor damn silicon-head.’

‘But if they turn out copies,’ Ida quickly suggested, ‘then we’ll never lose him completely, will we? Say, isn’t there someone back there with Dora?’ She called out: ‘Dora? Who’s that with you?’

Dora stood up, and the Tin Woodman stood up with her. They came forward into the light. ‘Someone who really understands.’

‘Who?’ Ida’s voice went shrill. She felt her 24-karat heart miss a beat as the creature removed its funnel hat and started undoing the hinges of its face.

‘Me,’ said a grubby, bearded stranger. Dora introduced him as Allbright.

‘I hope you’re not going to give me any Luddite pep-talk, Father. I can do without that.’

‘No, Leo, of course not. Of course not.’ Father Warren found it hard to believe that the animated cartoon face on the screen before him was really connected to Leo Bunsky’s brain, across the room in a big glass tank. ‘Of course not. But you can’t blame me for worrying, all these stories I hear about computers making up their own religions.’

‘Harmless, Father. A nuisance but—’

‘Harmless! A devil-worshipping computer in South America? An oil company computer declaring itself a new prophet of Islam? The Russian war-gaming machine that will only display icons?’

‘We haven’t confirmed that one,’ said the icon Leo. ‘But listen, all these anomalies were just planted by programmers with more zeal than sense. You can easily plant superstition in machines, just as in people or pigeons. These computers aren’t making up their religions, they’re getting the holy writ from outside. From you might say missionaries. But don’t worry, all we have to do is some heavy deprogramming.’

Father Warren chewed a hangnail. ‘I wish I could believe that. “Speak only the word and my computer will be healed.” I wish I could believe these computers were something like good servants, good but sick.’

The cartoon face looked sympathetic. ‘Hard to have faith in them, I know. Hard to believe they’re not just as petty and vicious and despicable as our own species can be. I just hope that when the time comes, Father, they have a little faith in us.’

‘When they take over? No, I can’t believe—’ The priest cleared his throat. ‘But I didn’t come here to discuss what I believe, eh? Suppose we get down to business.’

‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. My last confession was, well, some time ago…’

When he had heard the confession, Father Warren crossed the room to Leo’s tank. An attendant rose to greet him.

‘You know you have to crumble it, Father?’

‘If it’s the only way.’ He held the white wafer over the tank and crumbled it into the water. The white crumbs floated for a minute and then sank like little snowflakes, there being no goldfish to snap them up.

Moxon’s amplified voice reached some of the crowd, though the cold north wind was doing its best to sweep away words and people, to clear the terrace of all signs of life.

‘It was just a month ago, right here in the KUR Tower, that I found myself watching a peculiar sight on TV: two broken-down robots getting married!’

Some people laughed, others wondered who was getting married, or buried.

‘Crazy stunts aside, what can you do with broken-down robots? Well, if you happen to be a genius like Jough Braun here, you can turn them into great sculpture. Jough was poking around in one of our storerooms or offices or somewhere, and he found a broken-down robot we didn’t even know we owned. Jough says he used it exactly as he found it, just covered it with white epoxy and — well, without further ado, here it is — Man Confronting the Universe.’