long, shiny black hair. Seeing us come in, he twitched his head in an abrupt tic-like gesture that served to flip his hair out of his eyes. This nervous motion reminded me of my son Tom.
I was too old to try to date the same-age cousin of a boy like this. My coming here had been a terrible mistake. But now that I’d strayed so far, why not soldier on?
Nga looked me full in the eyes, holding her perfect mouth just so, that knowing mouth with the irregular border on the left edge of its lipsticked upper lip. What a thing it would be to kiss Nga’s mouth. I would kiss her for a long time, and then I would unzip my fly. We would be parked in my car or, even better, sitting in my home. Nga would sigh and put her tiny little hands on my penis…
Soldier on, old top, soldier on.
“Do you have a motorcycle?” I asked Khanh Pham.
“I have small motorbike, but my cousin Vinh will get me better one soon.” He spread open the magazine’s pages and pointed to a picture of a black Kawasaki. “This kind.”
“That’s great!” I said, though Huong and Nga looked nervous at the sound of Vinh’s name.
Now The and Tho got home from elementary school and came running into the kitchen to see what was up. They spoke perfect California English and they had burr-cut hair. They wore black shorts and white T-shirts. The was one or two inches taller than Tho. Nga introduced us, and then the two little brothers went out in the backyard to play kickball.
Khanh Pham followed us back into the living room. I sat down in an armchair which reclined abruptly back in the style of a La-Z-Boy. Nga covered her mouth with her hand as she laughed. I lurched upright and perched on the edge of the chair.
“What your work?” asked Huong Vo.
“I am a computer programmer,” said I, knowing she would like this answer. “I work for a big company called West West. We are designing personal robots.”
“So. Personal robot. Very nice.” Huong held her politely composed face just so. She was nearly as beautiful as Nga.
“What can robot do?” asked Khanh.
“Well, it can clean, and bring things, and work in the garden.”
“I don’t think we need,” said Nga’s mother, shaking her head and laughing. “Children can do.”
“Well, yes. But if someone doesn’t have children or a helper, then they might want our robots. And of course there are special functions that our robots can perform.”
Thieu Vo interrupted at this point to get a summary of our conversation from his wife. She filled him in with quick, nasal phonemes. They had some rapid back and forth, and then father Thieu burst out with a comment that sent the rest of the family, even the grandmother, into peals of ambiguous Asian laughter.
“He want to know,” translated Khanh, “if your robot can fight dog.”
“I suppose he could. He’s agile and durable. He might hurt the dog.”
“We have neighbor with dog very bad,” said Nga’s mother. “He make dirt in our yard and he bark. We scare he bite our The and Tho. Our neighbor don’t listen. He don’t speak English or Vietnamese.” Meaning that he was Hispanic.
“His dog pit bull,” put in Nga Vo. “It name Dutch. I wonder can we see your robot fight him.”
“Well… okay.” This was my chance to really get in good with the Vos. “As a matter of fact I have my robot in the trunk of my car. Should I get him? His name is Studly.”
“So. Stud Lee.”
The Vo family followed me outside to see Studly get out of the trunk of my car. Bass-heavy music drifted down the street from the whipped-to-shit house-the bad dog’s home, of course. I popped the trunk.
“Okay, Studly, time to get out!”
“This is not West West,” observed Studly, once he was out on the sidewalk. “What do you want me to do here, Jerzy?”
“Studly, this is the Vo family. Bow to them.”
Studly raised up on his legs and motored backward and forward to sweep his body through a deep smooth bow. “I am pleased to meet the Vo family.”
The Vos laughed meaninglessly.
“Studly, this here is the Vos’ property.” I pointed to the house and yard. “I want you to defend the Vos’ property from a pit bull dog named Dutch.”
“Where is a pit bull dog named Dutch, Jerzy?”
“He always in front room in gray house at 5782,” said Nga Vo. “Nobody know when he come out.”
“I can make Dutch come out,” yelled small Tho in his T-shirt. Whooping shrilly, Tho ran up onto the stoop of 5782 and jumped up and down until there was some sign from within. Tho turned on his heels and tore back toward us. The door of the run-down gray house flew open and a heavy, low-set dog came charging out, barking furiously.
The Vos and I hurried back up on their front stoop to give Studly a clear battlefield. “ Git him, Studly,” I repeatedly called, hoarsening my voice. “ Git him! Git the dog! ”
The Vos cheered along: “ Stud Lee! Stud Lee! Stud Lee! ”
Except for Studly and Dutch, the yards and sidewalks were deserted. Across the street were more pastel houses, and above them you could see the smog of San Jose, and above that the eternal blank blue California sky with the western sun beating down.
Studly was standing high up on his flexed legs, balancing himself with nervous back-and-forth rollings of his wheels. He had his pincer-manipulator closed tight, and his human-shaped hand was clenched into a fist. The dog all but ignored Studly in his rush toward the Vos’ steps, but Studly pushed forward into the dog’s path and, quite suddenly, brought his fist down on the dog’s head.
Dutch yelped in surprise, then snarled in rage. Studly pressed his advantage and used his pincer to give the dog a sharp poke in his side. “Go away,” said Studly. “Bad dog. Go away.”
The sound of the robot’s voice set off an attack reflex in the pit bull, and he sprang at Studly’s body. Studly nearly toppled over backward, but he was able to spin his wheels in reverse quickly enough to balance himself.
Dutch took that for a retreat, and now belligerently made his stand, planting his feet and putting his head down low to bark the more aggressively. Quite undaunted, Studly surged forward and aimed another blow of his fist at Dutch’s head.
The dog flinched back and Studly kept on coming. He got in a good poke with his pincer-hand, and then Dutch was in full flight. Studly chased him all the way to his house, leaving him sitting on his front stoop pretending he wasn’t interested.
“Come back, Studly,” I called.
The Vos were still cheering Studly’s victory when the gray house’s door opened and a heavyset bearded man stepped out. He wore jeans and a T-shirt, and he had homemade tattoos on his thick arms.
“What the fuck you fuckheads doin‘?” he hollered.
I stood on the sidewalk with Studly, me in my shorts, sandals, flashy shirt, and patterned socks.
“Oh, hi there,” I called. “I’ve just been showing the Vo family my robot. If we’re not careful, he might kill your dog. I hope you can keep your dog away from the Vos’ yard!”
“You keep your fuckin‘ robot away from my fuckin’ yard!”
“Yes, indeed!” I said, grinning away. “Live and let live!”
“Fuckin‘ geek!” shouted Dutch’s owner, but went heavily back into his home, the dog slinking in after.
The Vos discussed all this in Vietnamese for a minute, and then Nga’s mother Huong Vo put the question, “How much robot like that cost?”
“Well they’re not for sale quite yet. But they are going to be fairly expensive. Maybe fifty thousand dollars at first. Twenty thousand for the software kit and thirty thousand for the parts. And if you don’t assemble it yourself, the labor can run another ten or twenty thousand.”
“Who will buy?”
“The companies are trying to figure that out.” To put it mildly. None of us was sure if there would be a market for personal robots at all. For hackers like me, the push to build small autonomous robots was not about financial gain. For us, designing mobile robots was a quasireligious quest, a chance to participate in the Great Work of handing off the torch of life to the world of the machines. But there was no point trying to explain this to
