Tik-Tok
Authors: John Sladek
John Sladek
Copyright John Sladek
First published in Great Britain
October 1983
by Victor Gollancz Ltd, Henrietta Street, London WC2E 8QJ
Second impression February
ISBN 0-575-03336
To Tik-Tok of Oz, Talos of Crete, the Golem of Prague, Olympia of Nuremberg, Elektro of Westinghouse, Robby of Altair, Talbot Yancy of America and to all decent, law-abiding robots everywhere.
1
A
s I move my hand to write this statement of my own free will—we can argue about the free will later— there is in me no remorse, no desire to justify. I wish only to tidy up, now that my life is nearly over. I'll be taken from this cell with its chipped yellow paint on rusty bars, to a courtroom, then to another cell, and then to wherever it is they execute robots by dismantling. So it's time to put my life in order: we domestic robots generally believe that neatness is all. In life, in death.
This cell could use a coat of paint.
I was alone, painting an empty dining room. I had eased back the awnings over all the windows, to let in more light from the empty sky. Tik-Tok was alone, and yet he whistled. Why should a robot whistle when no human can hear? That was just one of those mysteries poor Tik-Tok would never be able to work out. He liked mysteries, though. Murders. An Inspector Calls. All the suspects in one room when the light goes out. The answer is revealed by train timetables. The inspector is about to leave, when he remembers One More Thing . . . Tik-Tok never guessed the answers, but he never gave up, either. His mind was empty, empty, a whistling tea-kettle.
Out the window, more emptiness. I could see a series of suburban homes with identical empty green lawns, the short shadows of identical flagpoles. Near the houses were the usual clusters of pines and poplars; nothing moving but their disappearing shadows. A lion would be welcome.
Something moved. Under the nearest pine, a small girl sat digging in the mud with a stick. There was mud smeared on her jeans and t-shirt and at the corners of her mouth, and even on the lenses of her dark glasses. Of course little Geraldine Singer wouldn't notice; she was blind as a mole.
A human would use a roller here on this big flat wall. But Tik-Tok preferred the feel of a brush, the feel of paint being stripped from the bristles by the invisible velvet roughness of the wall surface, didn't they call that key? Key, unlocking the paint from the brush, locking it to the wall, dum-de-dum,
Paint!
I like a little dab of paint!
It helps to cover up what ain't
So nice,
I'll coat it twice
With paint!
And wouldn't Duane and Barbie be surprised! I could already hear them saying "Oh, Tik-Tok, you
good robot
!" and Tik-Tok would feel goodness signals flickering inside. If owners say you're good, you're good, and being good means being kept in service. A good robot learns to read his owner's mind a little, to anticipate little wishes before they become commands. Naturally there's a limit. Too much anticipation scares people just as too much grinning and bowing does. Moderation is the key. Aim to be a smidgen less intelligent than your owner, but a lot more thoughtful. See everything as it affects your owner, and in no other way.
Out the window I could see Mrs Singer calling Geraldine. It was lunchtime already. I cleaned my brush and hands quickly in turpentine and went into the kitchen—but for what? Duane and Barbie Studebaker would be away for another week; the kids would be away all summer. There was no one here but Tik, nothing to do in the kitchen except finish cleaning the sink. Then, back to my empty wall.
I worked slowly and carefully until 15:13:57.17, when the doorbell said, "There's someone at the door calling himself Patrolman Wiggins. Anyone home?"
I opened the door to a man in the purple uniform of the Fairmont police. There was a large mole on his forehead.
"Hi-yo," he said. "Your people home, Rusty?"
"They're on vacation, officer. Can I help? My name is Tik-Tok."
"We got a little problem here, Rusty. A missing kid."
"Yes?"
Patrolman Wiggins didn't answer for a moment. "Little Geraldine Singer, you know her?"
"The little blind girl, yes sir, I do. During the school term I drop her off at the blind school when I'm driving the Studebaker children to their school."
"You see her today?"
"Yes sir, I saw her out the window this morning."
"Where?"
I took him into the dining room and pointed out the window. "She was sitting under that tree, digging in the mud."
Wiggins took off his cap and scratched his mole. "Didn't see her get up and leave? Or get into a car?"
"No sir."
"Goddamnit, it's the same with everybody around here. Nobody sees nothing. I mean how can a eight-year-old blind kid go wandering around on her own and nobody sees her?"
"I've been busy painting in here, and cleaning the kitchen sink. Officer, would you like a cold beer? I'm sure Mr and Mrs Studebaker would want me to offer it to you."
"Okay, thanks. Thanks, uh, Tik-Tok." Wiggins followed me into the kitchen. He peered into the refrigerator when I opened it, but there was nothing to see: a plastic bag and two cans of beer. I opened one and poured it for him.
"Beer in a glass—must be nice to be rich, eh? I got a robot at home but I mean you know it's just a cleaner, nothing classy." He looked around. "Nice to be rich. What's with the sink here? You fixing it?"
"Just cleaning it. While the Studebakers are away it's a good chance to take the garbage disposal all apart and clean each part with carbon tet. Then I'll renew the rubber parts and put it together. I like to do a thorough job of everything."
"Wow." He finished the beer and went to the refrigerator. "I might as well finish the last one, yeah?" He moved the plastic bag to get it. "What's that, a bag of giblets and no chicken?"
"I may make a stock," I said. "For a Sauce Harpeau or—"
"Must be goddamned nice," he said angrily. "And you use real oil paint on the walls, I can smell it."
"Do you like the color? Milk avocado, mix it myself. I can give you the recipe."
"No thanks, my robot would paint the goddamned window." He was angry at wealth, and some revenge was coming. "Mind if I just check your license?"
"Help yourself." I bowed low, exposing the pair of slits in the back of my neck. He was unnecessarily rough plugging in the radio. In a few seconds it had checked my identity, ownership, service log, logic and linguistic processors, "asimov" circuits and motor functions. It had compared data within me with data stored in distant computers. He unplugged the radio and gave me a shove. "You check out, Rusty. Your asimovs check out. So at least I know you didn't shove that little girl down the garbage disposal yourself, ha ha."
"Didn't I?" I said, but too softly; Wiggins was already going upstairs to see what he could break or steal. The poor we have always with us, but I felt some relief when he finally smashed a vase and left.
I sat down to stare at my empty wall.
The domestic robot had been introduced, timidly, before the turn of the century, but there were at first problems that seemed insoluble. Everyone wanted a machine capable of most human functions, but no one wanted a human machine. There were problems of intellect: a simple machine would be no better than a trained ape (and who wants an ape washing the Wedgwood?) while a smart machine might get snarled up in cognition and do nothing (except wonder what is the nature of Wedgwood?). There were problems of complexity: a simple machine had to be told how to do everything, in great detail, while a smart machine might just prefer not to do anything at all today, thanks.
There was some improvement when the so-called "asimov" circuits were introduced. These were named after a science fiction writer of the last century, who postulated three laws for the behavior of his fictional robots. A robot was not allowed to injure any human. It had to obey all human orders, except the order to injure any human. It had to protect its own existence, unless that meant disobeying an order or injuring any human.
The asimov circuits more or less followed this reasoning. A robot was certainly not allowed to kill or injure human beings unless specifically programmed to do so, say, by the military. Military robots, it was said, had bypasses for their asimovs.
All I knew was, there was no such bypassing allowed for domestic robots. We were licensed and tested to guarantee harmlessness. Of course as robots became more complex, more human, the testing might not be quite so certain. There was, I knew, a Dr Weaverson who now urged that robots were human enough to have human breakdowns.
That first coat of paint seemed to be breaking down. It was mottled with shadows. How many coats would it take to flatten it to emptiness again?
But didn't that shadow suggest a shape? A fencepost, yes, with an animal perched upon it, ears twitching. The fence rails would slant away just there, never mind how it all fit in, the farmhouse with the screen door opening and a figure coming out—why not? Because Duane and Barbie might not like it? Okay, I could always cover it with milk avocado again.
The mural was good. I knew it was good just as I knew when a mirror was hanging straight or a window was clean. I knew it was good, and I knew that Duane and Barbie weren't going to like it. They'd dislike the idea of a mural in the first place. Walls were supposed to be empty surfaces to screen out the busy world. A living room or a dining room was supposed to be a shell in which you watched vids or listened to quads or ate or drank in isolation. But this mural was busy, bright, brash—an intrusion that demanded viewing. They'd hate it, and they might punish me for it.
To forestall them, I phoned up the local paper, the
Fairmont Ledger
, who sent over a photographer and an "art critic" who chewed a toothpick. They seemed to like it—the critic stopped chewing for a second when he saw it—and they promised a small piece on it, in a week or so. As they left, the critic spat his toothpick on the carpet and said, "No shit, you really done this yourself, huh?"
There was plenty of work to occupy me before the Studebakers came home. All the rooms had to be aired and dusted and the air conditioning turned on. The master bedroom needed thorough cleaning, clean bed linen, bed curtains and drapes. Elsewhere there were windows to wash, venetian blinds taken down and cleaned (ditto awnings), furniture waxed, carpets washed, floors and all surfaces hand-scrubbed, basement swept and straightened, attic vacuumed; outside there was the pool to clean and fill, lawns to mow to close tolerances and edge, flower beds weeded and possibly replanted, gutters scraped out and the entire outside of the house washed. Then the houseplants had to be wiped leaf by leaf with milk, the paper mail sorted two ways (by date and importance) and stacked on the desk in the den, candles cleaned and fitted to holders, all house silver taken from the security place and polished; then it was time to go shopping for fresh meats, vegetables and fruit, fresh cut Calvary roses to be arranged in a funnel-shaped cut-glass vase, supplies of Albanian tobacco and Mongolian hash. A selection of tapes, sound, vision and odor were to be programmed into the brain of the entertainment unit, certain of them locked so that the children would not be able to call them out. Finally the dog, Tige, had to be fetched back from the boarding kennel, fed, washed, perfumed, tranquillized and put into his doghouse. Then it was just a matter of standing by the window, watching for their car.
Duane and Barbie stood gazing at their defaced wall, saying nothing. Duane had a suit on a coat-hanger over his shoulder. Barbie carried golf clubs.
"Jesus," Duane said finally. "Jesus, Tik-Tok, what the hell made you do a thing like this?"
Barbie took her cue from him, wailing, "Oh Tik, how could you? How could you?"
"I mean we trusted you."
"How could you? Will it come off?"
"I mean we
really
trusted you. We left you in charge of our home. Our
home
. And this is the thanks we get. Well okay, boy, okay. If that's the way you want it." Duane flung down the coat-hanger on the dining table; I caught it just in time to prevent a nasty scratch in the mahogany. He left the room. "He's going to phone the people at Domrob," she said. "We're trading you in."