Man, I
The machine is doing that scanning thing again, being really still and turning its face left and right real slow.
By now my arm is going numb, the blood cut off from where I have it hooked over the lip of the sink. I keep fishing for the plug.
Big Happy stops scanning, looks right at me. It pauses for maybe a second, and then I hear its gripper motors whining as it lets go of poor Felipe’s face. He drops to the ground like a sack of bricks.
I’m whimpering. The alley door is a million miles away and I can barely keep my head up. I’m sitting in a pool of my own blood and I can see Felipe’s teeth on the tile floor. I
At last, I find the sink plug and rake at it with my dead fingers. It pops out, and I hear the gurgling of water draining. I told Felipe a hundred times, if the water drains out too fast it’ll flood the floor drain and then I gotta mop in here all over again.
You know Felipe flooded that motherfucker on purpose every night for about a month before we finally made friends? He was pissed off that our boss hired a white guy for the front and a Mexican guy for the back. I didn’t blame him. You know what I mean, Officer? You’re Indian, right?
Native American, Jeff. Osage Nation. Try and tell me what happened next.
Well, I used to hate mopping up that water. And now I’m lying on the floor, counting on it to save my life.
Big Happy tries to stand, but its legs are useless. It collapses onto the floor, facedown. Then it starts to crawl forward on its stomach, using its arms. It’s got that awful grin on its face and its eyes are locked on mine as it drags itself across the room. There’s blood all over it, like some kind of crash test dummy that bleeds.
The drain isn’t flooding fast enough.
I press my back against the sink as hard as I can. My knees are up and my legs pulled in tight. The
The robot is pulling itself closer. It reaches out a gripper and tries to grab my Air Force Ones. I yank my foot back and forth, and it misses me. So it pulls itself even closer. On the next lunge, I know it’s probably going to get hold of my leg and crush it.
As its arm rises, the whole robot all of a sudden gets yanked back about three feet. It turns its head, and there’s Felipe, lying on his back and choking on his own blood. His sweaty black hair is clinging in streaks to his ruined face. There’s, like, no mouth on him anymore, just a big raw wound. But his eyes are open wide and burning with something beyond hatred. I know he’s saving my life, but he looks, well, evil. Like a demon on a surprise visit from hell.
He yanks on Big Happy’s shattered leg one more time, then closes his eyes. I don’t think he’s breathing anymore. The machine ignores him. It aims its smiling face at me and keeps on coming.
Just then, a flood of water bubbles up out of the floor drain. The soapy water pools up quick and silent, turning light pink.
Big Happy is crawling again when the water soaks into its broken knee joints. There’s a smell of burned plastic in the air and the machine freezes up and stops. Nothing exciting. The machine just stops working. It must of got water in its wires and, like, short-circuited.
It’s about a foot away from me, still smiling.
That’s really all there is to tell. You know the rest.
Thanks, Jeff. I know that wasn’t easy. I got everything I need to make my report now. I’ll let you get some rest.
Hey, man, can I ask a question real quick before you go?
Shoot.
How many domestics are out there? Big Happys, Slow Sues, and the rest of ’em? Because I heard there were, like, two of them for every one person.
I don’t know. Listen, Jeff, the machine just went willy-nilly. We can’t explain it.
Well, what’s going to happen if they all start hurting people, dude? What’s going to happen if we’re outnumbered? That thing wanted to kill me, period. I told it to you straight. Nobody else might believe me, but you know what’s up.
Promise me something, Officer Blanton. Please.
What’s that?
Promise me that you’ll watch out for the robots. Watch ’em close. And… don’t let them hurt anybody else like they did Felipe. Okay?
After the collapse of the United States government, Officer Lonnie Wayne Blanton joined the Osage Nation Lighthorse tribal police. It was there, in service of the Osage Peoples’ sovereign government, that Lonnie Wayne had the chance to make good on his promise to Jeff.
3. FLUKE
I know that she is a machine. But I love her. And she loves me.
The description of this prank gone awry is written as told by Ryu Aoki, a repairman at the Lilliput electronics factory in the Adachi Ward of Tokyo, Japan. The conversation was overheard and recorded by nearby factory robots. It has been translated from Japanese into English for this document.
We thought that it would be a laugh, you know? Okay, okay, so we were wrong. But you’ve got to understand that we didn’t mean to do him harm. We certainly didn’t mean to kill the old man.
Around the factory everybody knows that Mr. Nomura is a weirdo, a freak. Such a tiny, twisted little troll. He shuffles around the work floor with his beady eyes behind round spectacles, pointed always to the floor. And he smells like old sweat. I hold my breath whenever I pass by his workbench. He is always sitting there, working harder than anyone. And for less money, too.
Takeo Nomura is sixty-five. He should be pensioned off already. But he still works here because nobody else can fix the machines so fast. The things he does are unnatural. How can I compete? How will I ever become head repairman with
They say the nail that sticks out gets hammered down, right?
Mr. Nomura can’t look a person in the eye, but I’ve seen him stare into the camera of a broken ER 3 welding arm and
We joke that maybe Mr. Nomura is a machine himself. Of course, he isn’t. But something
You don’t have to trust me. All the workers agree. Go onto the Lilliput factory floor and ask anybody— inspectors, mechanics, whoever. Even the floor marshal. Mr. Nomura is not like the rest of us. He treats the
