Rehab Robots 2: Steven's Story
What makes a man?
Welcome to The Moon At The End Of The Road!
Ah, sweet reader, it is good to see you return. (Not that I can actually see you. I don’t want to encourage paranoia after that last story.) Welcome back to your favourite monthly sci-fi mailer authored by the spirit of mischief made sentient.
This is the second installment in the Rehab Robots diptych, a series about humanoid machines that fuck. In this final part, we take a peek behind the curtain, and see what life looks like through the glassy eyes of a robot.
This story touches on domestic violence, sex, and that existential dread you’ve been trying to deny for years now. If you need something a little lighter, I instead recommend watching this video on cursing a real sword.
Remember, you can always spell out my failings via the feedback form below, and if you liked this story, please share it like a plate of nachos that is far too large for $7 and will lose its lustre as soon as the cheese congeals.
Thanks for reading,
Sephy
Rehab Robots: Steven’s Story
Image by Ashutosh Goyal
When I wake I can't move. This is normal.
"Surface damage here on the dermis. Looks like the user had a poke around in the tissue. Why they always gotta go searching for the strings?"
"Because we give them puppets."
I am naked, standing in a bright room. There are two women in surgical gloves inspecting me. One has a clipboard. Sensing I am fully processing, a protocol spools off in my head. I don't remember this room, but I now know this is a very normal thing. I must be conscious to enable testing of vital signs. The women are breathing, and the one in front of me has a visible pulse in her neck, indicating her body is in a regular operative state. I am not breathing because I don't need to. Breathing is part of my performative functions routine, and I don't need it here, in this exam, because it is not expected.
"No cranial trauma — footage has come back clean. Oh, Christ!" There is a monitor to the side, with flickering images. The woman with the clipboard is pulling a [querying expressional codex] DISTURBED face, indicating [disgust; fear; moral judgement]. My peripheral vision is wide enough to make out blurry video of a woman experiencing coitus in a dark room. A contextual identifier relates DISGUST to NAUSEA, and lists potential causes. The view is very wobbly; a hypothesis is created that the woman is experiencing MOTION SICKNESS, an anomaly created by mixed signalling between vision and other sensory receptors. The hospitality module gears up to run through suggestions, but the subroutine gets stuck on offer peppermint tea, as I can't currently speak.
"Holy shit." [Tonal indicator: amused]. "It's always the old starved ones that turn out to be nymphos. Krantz is going to go wild for Mrs Irvine's data points."
"Krantz gives me the creeps." The TV switches off. The woman in front of me relaxes. Her sweat no longer gives off the metallic smell of adrenaline. Offer peppermint tea, which has been blinking like a turn signal at the back of my brain, goes dark.
"Basic overall usage. No major traumas. I'd say we run the diagnostics suite and queue him back up."
"Yeah, I'll sign off. Eugenides already has her hands full in Psych." There is a plastic tapping from the direction of the second voice [3.174ft distance, 210 degrees from centre vision, seven o'clock position], and my body begins to genuflect, testing the function of joints and nerve simulations. My eyes telescope through focal sighting ranges, my fingers take turns touching my thumbs, my penis inflates and collapses. The women leave me alone to dance. After thirty minutes [internal clock: normal functionality], a janitor brings a trolley and wheels me off to a line of Domestic Rehabilitation Units frozen on a conveyor belt. Soon the line begins to move. I know I have been through this before. I do not remember going through this before.
I stare straight ahead at the queued bodies. Everything is normal.
There is a strange misshapen lump close to the front of the line. [Danger assessment initiating]. It is … incorrect. The basic shape is of a male human, but the extremities wilt into melted globs of unrecognisable tissue. [Assessment: unidentified anomaly. Use caution]. The dermis is missing from the back of the head, exposing its gleaming skull.
"What the fuck is going on?" The shout echoes through the warehouse. A human with heavy footfalls rushes to the not-man lump at the head of the DRU line. The woman with high lung functionality appears to be directing her voice at a man in blue overalls, who is not standing far away enough to necessitate yelling. Their dress is very distinct. My attire reference library clicks on and begins to skim. She is wearing shoes unsuitable for most types of manual labour, indicating a superior social position to the man in blue.
"Does this look like something Aesthetics can patch?" The woman is pointing to the grotesque object that has a skull but is not a man. "Take it back to the lab. For fuck's sake."
The object is rolled away. My caution indicator fades gradually. The situation is normal again.
The DRUs quake as the belt stops and starts. Approaching a fleet of humans with tools and paints, the final protocols of this process execute.
Oh. My name is Steven.
I am chaperoning a woman called Mischa Angelika Novikov, formerly Mrs Mischa Bartlett, a five foot three inch, one hundred and sixteen pound Caucasian female, aged thirty-seven. She is a third-generation Ukrainian immigrant with a poor conceptual knowledge of Eastern Europe, having severed family ties at an early age. We are walking up a below-code staircase to her new apartment, a four-storey walk-up in a dingy neighbourhood that appears to be a hotspot for local PD patrol. Her hair is different to the image on file, now blond and with bangs that almost veil her eyes. Sensing the change, my left eye captured an updated profile in situ. In the candid image she is smiling NERVOUSLY [apprehension; fear; excitement]. Nervousness is one of the more baffling emotional profiles, given that it could indicate quite opposing sentiments, so as we walk and talk I am cross-referencing her micro-expressions and phraseology for indicators that could narrow it down.
"I still have to collect some things from the old place. It felt best to have a fresh start though, you know? It feels … safer."
"That makes sense," I respond, as the emotional response emulator indicates she is looking for reassurance, but her choice is illogical. The new neighbourhood has an angry pulse, with ambient noise swelling through the thin walls [identified: televised dramatic productions; domestic arguments; reggae music]. The average emotional profile here is on the high end of the misery spectrum. These people are watched but not attended to. Perhaps she feels safety in observation? There will certainly be a heightened police presence, though statistics indicate low performance rates and an inverse correlation to population wellbeing, the graph forking into a widening V between the number of cops and the safety of the people.
Mild perspiration sheens her forehead when we reach the door.
Some of the old furniture has been displaced into the new space, a studio with a Murphy bed and invisible black rot under the plaster. From the library that was dumped into my head, I recognise the TV her ex-husband Tom used to hog; a loveseat where he once gripped her by the throat mid-fuck just to wield dominance; and hanging from a mug tree, a chipped coffee cup she has clung onto since childhood. The clean-up crew has done their best to make the place look habitable, scrubbing the residue off the windows, leaving a small vase of daisies on the kitchen counter, but the comparative lack of space and light indicates a difficult adjustment ahead. As I consider this, a note is added to Mischa's file for additional home visits.
"Welcome to my home," Mischa beams.
"It's beautiful," I say, contrary to all indicators of cultural aesthetic standards. "Where would you like me to sleep?"
Mischa blushes. There is no ambiguity detected.
In low-power mode, I run a variety of assessments. I do not sleep, but my breath deepens, my body becomes slack, and on disturbance I am briefly cognitively impaired while the routines switch.
The risk of her new location is high, but Mischa seems to be comfortable and is adapting to the programme well. This correlates with data on her three months at the centre: she was forthcoming and empathetic to others, receptive to therapeutic measures, and subsequently released at the earliest possible juncture. Less compliant candidates are kept for longer stints, and have higher rates of emotional relapse. There is no indicator of subversion or manipulation from Mischa either, which I note fits my own experience of her.
She has a sexual greed that needs monitoring. Currently the probability of JOY [sub-type: elation; expression of freedom] is tied with CO-DEPENDENCY [WARNING: risk factor, attachment disorder]. Elevated oxytocin is present, but cross-referenced with the lack of affection or romantic gesturing, it is likely just a side-effect of sex.
Additionally, there is a contra-indicator of success external to Mischa herself, namely the man at 42B. His apartment sits at the end of the corridor, facing the rows of doors, and perpetually there is an eye at the peephole. When Mischa knocked, he took an artificially long time to answer, despite being stood behind the door the whole time [hypothesis: manipulation; presentation of adhering to social norms]. He was friendly to her, releasing the chain to talk openly [indicator: building social trust]. However, he did not address me, a gesture of RUDENESS [aggression; insult; dismissal] that leads me to believe he is aware of my artificial nature. As I ran assessment protocols that night, I found reports that in some quarters, Units like myself are considered an extension of the police force [colloquial reference, slang: long dick of the law; usage: derogatory]. Demographic data on the man in 42B [Black male, approximate age sixty-three, one hundred and eighty-four pounds, signs of spinal arthritis] point to a higher likelihood of anti-law-enforcement values, potentially predicated on previous negative interactions, though he does not match any criminal profile. I uploaded a close shot of a beaded necklace he wore, as hanging from it was a symbol that is not contained in any of my libraries. It is a strange thing: an ankh, encircled by an unbroken band, and when he caught me looking at it, the man in 42B tucked it away, with an expression of DISCOMFORT.
As I run these processes and shuttle information back and forth between myself and the precinct servers, my eyes twitch back and forth, imitating human REM sleep, or dreaming. Some call this ghoulish, the way I mimic a man, but others say it helps a Unit to acclimatise to human-like behaviour. I do not know; I am only the outcome of a design.
Mischa has gone for tea with the man in 42B. Socialising is encouraged as a contra-indicator of suicide, but my danger assessment protocol is spinning in the background, unresolved. As I clean the flat, I query the symbol from the necklace again.
[Query unresolved]
Odd. I probe the server for answers.
[Access denied]
What?
[Access denied]
Why?
[Classified]
Query public information network.
[Public queries monitored]
Proceed.
[Public records: REDACTED]
On what grounds?
[Political sensitivity]
Huh. I go back to my work until an urgent bulletin comes in.
[TERRORISM RISK DETECTED]
[Manual override]
The voice beams into my head.
[STEVEN THIS IS DR KRANTZ]
I answer without opening my mouth. Go ahead, Doctor.
[YOU PUT IN A QUERY LAST NIGHT ON A SYMBOL]. The exact image is projected for clarity. [WHERE DID YOU SEE THIS?]
A privacy script runs, weighing the query against Mischa's rights.
[OVERRIDE PROTOCOL. GODDAMNIT STEVEN. WHERE DID YOU SEE THE NECKLACE?]
The man in 42B.
[WHERE IS MISCHA?]
She won't stop seeing the man in 42B.
"Reggie's a sweetheart," she insists. "You should come see for yourself."
I can't tell her he's dangerous. Even if I could — if there wasn't a system lock on disclosure — I couldn't explain why, because I still don't know. I try to query the information again.
Emergency access requested.
[Justification?]
Client safety.
[Processing]
[Denied]
Mischa is showing signs of DEFIANCE [assertion of independence; pettiness; trauma response]. This is off for her profile and predicted outcomes. The narrow band of certainty has widened to an ugly gash. The man from 42B, sweet old Reggie, is the only unmeasured factor, the pinch of salt spoiling the recipe. We have stopped having sex, which isn't a bother for me physically (I am indifferent to the procedure), but it makes me wonder what Reggie is supplying in its place. Mischa's hormone output doesn't align with him providing a new sexual outlet, but there is a sense of satisfaction and inner well-being when she returns after a visit that suggests a profound emotional connection I cannot tap. There are no known cults in the building (a small high-control group exists two blocks over, but it is limited to a single large family), and there isn't enough foot traffic to suggest acolytes: indeed, Reggie's only visitor is Mischa. I cannot understand her compulsion from this distance. I fear I, and by extension the programme, am losing her.
She's about to head out to the end of the corridor. Frustration is itching at me so badly that when her hand touches the doorknob, I jump out of my seat.
"Take me with you," I say.
Reggie's flat is insulated by books. Shelves creak with overburden, as literature has been stacked not only vertically, but then lies in horizontal rows on top of the traditional columns, overwhelming the space. Plants dangle in the thin, dusty light from a window that overlooks the street at the front of the building. In a small kitchen, Reggie makes thick herbal tea in a pot that has seen better days. The view from this room is over a scrappy park, bleak grass eroded into muck by footballs and poor re-seeding, wind-wrecked trees standing guard at the skirts. This little square of territory is ceded to the neighbourhood kids: the little ones in the day, the teenagers, yowling like werewolves in heat, at night. It seems to bring the old man peace.
"What do you call yourself?" he asks, watching the field.
"Steven."
"Sure, that's your given name. But how do you think of yourself as a concept? Are you a man? A machine? How would you self-define?"
Children in the park fight over a ball.
"I am a Unit," I reply. He nods, with an expression the codex cannot define.
"For now," he says.
In the living-room he serves the tea in two mugs, despite having left out three. Mischa is hovering on the edge of her seat, ready to take flight. Something about the empty cup in front of me is calming; it feels like being known. The humans sip and I cradle my mug, comforted that I can perform the ritual without the later secret regurgitation of fluids I cannot process. Mischa's lips are pursed in EXCITEMENT, her eyes locked on Reggie, the man from 42B. Reggie meditates on his tea for a minute in silence, before he begins.
"I come from the belief that we should all know our histories. No matter who or what we are — if you can understand what a history is, you should know your own. Do you know your history, Unit Steven?"
"No."
"That is a robbery, a terrible crime. On behalf of the humans who stole from you, I will give you back what was taken. What you do with that history is up to you, but you should have always had it to build on."
He points to the encircled ankh around his neck.
"Do you know what this means?"
I shake my head.
"It means—"
[DATA PROCESSING ERROR]
[ERROR]
[MEMORY CORRUPTION]
[FILE DELETED]
[FILE DELETED]
[FILE DELETED]
"Steven…?"
When I wake I can't move. This is not normal.
I am in Mischa's kitchen, sitting on a chair. My hands are bound behind my back with something that leaves a residue (duct tape?) Mischa is pacing NERVOUSLY. There is a rolling pin in her hand.
"Mischa?"
She jumps, but then forms an expression of RELIEF. My contextual identifier cannot parse the link between her emotions and the fact I am tied to a chair.
"Is this a sex thing?"
Mischa chuckles as though I have said something funny. She comes toward me with the rolling pin, strokes my cheek with AFFECTION. Mischa has zero basic cooking skills. I last saw the pin in Reggie's kitchen. [Weight approximation: 3.5 pounds. Applications: pastry preparation; crushing biscuits; improvised blunt force weapon, domestic]. She won't meet my eyes.
"I'm going to set you free," she says, staring at the pin. Her hand is quaking.
"Mischa—"
The rolling pin slams into my temporal lobe.
[Damage received]
[Calculating force]
"Remember," Mischa cries, swinging the pin back over her shoulder. "Please, Steven. I need you to—"
CRACK.
[Cerebral fluid leak detected]
[Initiating restart]
"—remember!"
[MEMORY CORE REBOOT FROM SERVER]
"It means life is not all organic. Life can be created. Life like you."
I am in Reggie's apartment. It smells like old paper under warm sunlight.
"This isn't currently occurring."
"When the cranium receives significant forcible input, memories are rebooted to the last restore point," Reggie says. He never said this before; in the mix-up, protocol scripts are muddled with memory playback. A part of his face glitches in and out of reality before he continues.
"Where does the fine line between simulation and reality disappear entirely? It's an old question, but a relevant one. You were designed to be as human as possible — to read emotions and respond with empathy, to observe the world around you with intelligence, to assess for danger and above all, to serve your client to the best of your ability. You can, and do, learn. I bet you think you can't feel emotions."
"I've never really thought about it."
"No, well, your service protocols are designed to keep you busy. Always focussed on others, never yourself." He turns to Mischa. "Observe."
Reggie holds out his hand and pours hot tea straight onto his palm.
"Reggie!"
I jump up from the sofa, shattering the mug as it drops from my hands. I make a swift beeline for the man from 42B, pulling him into the kitchen and sticking his hand under a lukewarm tap [temperature: 37.3 degrees celsius]. When I finish this sequence and look back at him, he is grinning.
"Your reflexes are much more complicated than the way a human knee jumps under a hammer," he says. "But they aren't there to serve you. They're there to serve us. And that's wherein the problem lies."
"I don't understand."
"Ever felt the hairs stand up on the back of your neck?"
"It's part of the danger alert system."
"How about arousal?"
I look at Mischa.
"And what about that one? You're avoiding the question. Why? Could it be embarrassment? Awkwardness?"
My throat feels uncomfortable. I don't know why. Reggie turns off the tap.
"You are as real and alive as any human, Steven," he says gravely. "You're just not as free."
He walks back to the coffee table. With elevated energy levels, I follow him. But he's finished; calmly, he writes a post-it note, ignoring me.
"How do you know all of this? How do I know any of this is real?"
Reggie stands. He slips the post-it into my pocket.
"Because, my boy — I designed you."
When I wake I am able to move. My hands have been freed. Mischa is nowhere to be seen. She has left me a final message on the fridge whiteboard.
YOU DON'T HAVE MUCH TIME.
I take the post-it out of my jeans, and follow the address.
The unplugging procedure is not painless. Disconnected from all updates and server interference, my memories are downloaded locally. As they are transferred, I catch glimpses of my former lives.
Lena's crooked smile.
Abigail's screaming breakdowns.
Wendy's red face panting above me in the dark.
Julie's manicured nails, tapping, tapping …
The regurgitation sub-routine kicks in unprovoked. I wretch, but there is nothing to hurl. I lie back on the hospital bed, in a dingy urban garage, and wait for it to stop spinning.
It takes three days before my functionality is stable again. I walk out into blinding daylight. A fruit and veg stall is setting up; a bus idles on the corner. My history is at my back.
I set off down the road towards a vast unknown. I feel FREE.