[Original Novel] Little Robot, Part 8

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A cluster of scraggly looking kids with laptops and VR tans huddled off to one side of the mob. It’s that rectangle or peanut shaped patch of white skin around your eyes that develops from spending too much time with a headset on.

The one with his back turned to me wore a black T-shirt bearing the logo of a grassroots hacktivist collective I’ve seen in the news a lot lately. Mostly for defacing the websites of major AI and automation firms, Evolutionary Robotics included. One of them briefly made eye contact with me as I passed.

I didn’t stop. What would I say? I have less than nothing in common with these people. One motioned as if to get up. I tugged at the rims of my gloves, making sure they were snugly in place should any of them try to grab, strike, or otherwise touch me. Thankfully nothing came of it.

“Hel-lo-how-are-yyoouuuu?” I turned to confront the source of the singsong, plainly robotic inquiry. A humanoid, skinless and perhaps five foot eleven. Styled to vaguely resemble a woman, with a stiff plastic skirt and rigid hair shaped cap the same color as the rest of its outer shell. It stared expectantly at me through a pair of black, shiny, almond shaped eyes.

“Well actually at the moment I’m in a bit of-” It cut me off. “I-am-fine-thank-yoooouuuu!” it cooed, though I’m sure I never asked. I tried to edge around it but it persistently moved to block my path. “Did-you-know… there-are-six-new-bars-and two-new-vir-t-ual-ar-cades… in-this-com-plex?”

I sighed, resigned myself to seeing this through, and answered that I didn’t with as much faux enthusiasm as I could muster. Not all of these things are corporate owned. Many of them are home robots which the owner has leased as advertising space to make a bit of extra income, sending them out to pester passersby for a few hours each day.

It’s also the most affordable way to get your hands on a humanoid home robot, which are otherwise pretty spendy. The “ad supported” models will constantly display sponsored content on any screens built into their bodies, and slip context appropriate product recommendations into everyday conversation.

Say it’s making breakfast for you. As it’s brewing the coffee it might mention offhand that Wilkins Coffee is on sale this week, so you’d better pick some up. Then as you’re summoning an autocab, it might ask why you haven’t been to a dealership recently to check out remarkable deals on this year’s personal cars, with unprecedented mileage per watt hour.

The machine is just doing what it was told, so I do try to have patience when they accost me like this. After hearing about the various discount offers, highly rated new attractions near me and so forth, I assured the poor thing I’d consider patronizing them all before hurriedly continuing past it.

Something like an organ grinder’s monkey, made to dance and screech for its meals. Seeing none of the profit it brings in for its owner, never comprehending why it’s forced to don uncomfortable little clothes day after day. Or those beleaguered sign wavers seen everywhere during the last recession, when it was among the precious few entry level jobs still available.

When I arrived at the shrink’s office he was just finishing up with the kettle. As usual, he offered me a cup and I declined. “It’s good for the nerves. A strong cup of tea will cure all sorts of maladies you know.” I replied that this is why he’s a psychiatrist and not a medical doctor. He belly laughed, though I was quite serious, and the two of us settled in for today’s session.

“So, what’s new in your life?” He eased his considerable mass into the black leather recliner, cradling the steaming cup of tea just under his nose. It’s a question I long ago learned does not mean what it sounds like.

Rather than an invitation to list every event which occurred to you since your last encounter with that person, they usually just want you to pick whatever they are likely to consider most noteworthy.

“I met a woman”. His bushy grey eyebrows lifted slightly. “Is that so? Do tell.” I took my seat and fumbled for words briefly before deciding what I wanted to say. “When I say we met, what I mean is that she followed me into an elevator.” He winced, all too familiar with my aversion to situations of that sort.

“She wants to meet me for dinner.” He chuckled and exclaimed that he was happy to hear it. “...I have no intention of taking her up on it.” The excitement drained from his face just as quickly as it appeared. “I’m sure she didn’t mean any harm by following you, don’t be so hasty to burn a bridge before you even-”

“It isn’t that” I insisted. “I just don’t want the trouble. I mean, what happens if I take her up on it? Supposing she likes me for some reason? That sets off a whole multi-year chain of events, the complexity of which I can’t begin to describe much less stay on top of. What’s the most likely outcome? Severe, lasting emotional damage.”

He cut in to point out that I shouldn’t assume that, as it left no room for success. “I know. But would you invest your savings into some business venture with the same odds of success as the average romance? Of course you wouldn’t. Why should I take such a foolish risk with my heart?”

He stroked his beard, looking contemplative. “The other thing is”, I added, “I just don’t want it that badly. I don’t understand people who do. Yeah, it’s pleasurable and fulfilling while it lasts. So is meth, for fuck’s sake. The fallout from both is comparably devastating. It’s like if every cake had a fifty percent chance of containing live scorpions. I like cake, but not that much, you know?”

He rolled his eyes but didn’t interrupt. “Do you remember a few years ago when that infamous nutjob shot all those blonde leggy sorority girls? When they found his manifesto it was just page after page of angsty, entitled, insecure rambling about what a perfect handsome gentleman he is, what bitches women are for not flocking to him and so on?”

He remarked that in fact he did remember. “Yeah, see? Perfect example. The strange thing to me isn’t how desperate and neurotic he was. I see plenty of that every day. Instead what boggled my mind is why he desired women so intensely that his failures with them drove him insane.”

He pointed out that in all likelihood the fellow in question was never mentally healthy. “Alright, sure. But I haven’t interacted with women any more than my career requires in the past decade. I don’t feel on the verge of losing it. I don’t feel anything. Except relief I guess. It’s a huge potential source of anxiety that I’ve cut out of my life completely.”

He looked dissatisfied and shifted around in his seat before responding. “If I didn’t know you better I’d think you were a woman hater.” I laughed. “If so, only because they are human. Men have their own set of qualities I find insufferable. That’s why so much rage focused exclusively on women is bizarre to me.”

He asked if I’ve ever felt tempted to act out in a similarly violent way. “Sure, but you know better than most how common that is. There was a brief period during which I took it seriously enough to investigate historical mass shootings in schools and the workplace. Do you know what I found?”

He shook his head. “I found it isn’t actually the quiet ones who snap. Seems like that’s how it would work, right? That some poor schlub is bullied past his breaking point, then takes his bloody revenge on the world. It was a very satisfying, tempting narrative for someone in my state of mind. But it’s bullshit.”

He looked incredulous to my surprise. I expected him to leap in and finish the rest for me, but by all appearances what I was saying came as news to him. “It’s true. Look at the Columbine shooters for instance. They weren’t shy, bullied nerds. They were quite popular and well regarded by their peers, just secretly psychopaths as well. I badly wanted to believe otherwise. Everybody did. You can still find archived websites from back in the day, made by troubled teenage boys worshiping their mistaken conception of those two shooters and their cause.”

I sent him some examples from my phone to peruse as I continued. “So much of what is commonly assumed about bullying is wishful thinking. Whatever gratifies us, whatever helps us heal. For a long time I thought bullies were people who suffered bullying themselves, simply acting out due to inner wounds.”

He looked up long enough to nod knowingly, this time already clued into what I was about to explain. “Yup. Total nonsense I’m afraid. Bullies actually tend to be high testosterone, type A personalities looking for outlet. Rather than going on to be losers later in life, getting what they deserve, it instead turns out that they are disproportionately successful.”

He made some cute throwaway quip about a widely despised president from a few decades ago who fit that description. “That wouldn’t be so bad if their victims became stronger for it. That’s also a load of shit. All that inspirational, life affirming pablum about how it takes heat and pressure to turn coal into a diamond, or that we couldn’t climb a mountain if it weren’t first placed in our way.”

He nodded somberly. “Oh, I know. It doesn’t make them stronger. Most of my clients are living proof. It just inflicts scars that stay with them for life. It makes them permanently weaker if anything. Not terribly encouraging to hear, I’m sure, but that’s the fact of the matter.”

He doesn’t lie to me. I appreciate that about him. Lies are such an accepted part of human discourse now, a sort of social lubricant generously applied even when there’s no reason to. Out of the assumption that you’ll throw a fit if your medicine isn’t delivered with a spoonful of sugar. I have no need of it and find it obnoxious to be infantilized in that way.

“What a kick in the shins, right?” I said. “The bullies go on to succeed in life, and the poor kids whose emotional development they irreversibly damaged never stand up for themselves. They never get revenge, or justice, depending who you ask. The ones who actually go on shooting sprees are just the bullies who couldn’t wait until they reached Wall Street or Washington to start destroying lives.“

We shared a sober glance. “So much for the narrative”, he muttered. “No kidding. Even I couldn’t break that mold. Like anybody else who got fucked up that badly, I didn’t have enough guts left after they were all stomped out of me to pick up a gun and get some payback. At the time I told myself I would regret it if I did. That if I didn’t blow my brains out after I was done, decades later I’d be rotting in prison regretting my decision.”

He asked if I still felt that way. The mask mercifully prevented him from spotting the beginnings of tears in my eyes as I answered. “No. I actually regret that I didn’t do it. I hate that I feel that way. I know what it says about me, but it’s true. I have no idea where any of my bullies live now. No idea what they went on to do with their lives. They’re out of reach.

The brief window of opportunity for revenge was back when we attended the same schools. When I could be relatively sure they’d all be in the same place on a given day. I always told myself I’d be morally better than other shooters. That at least I wouldn’t kill indiscriminately, I’d only target the ones who deserved it.

It’s a moot point now that they’re scattered to the winds. It would take years just to track down one of ‘em. Killing them all is an impossibility. Killing just one wouldn’t accomplish what I wanted to. No point anymore.

It corroded my insides, knowing they got away with it. How could I go on with my life knowing they did all those things to me without any repercussions? That there will never be justice. It made me ugly inside. For a while I fought it, with encouraging success even.

There was this perfect moment when I broke out of all that. When I threw off those shackles, forgot my festering hatred and glimpsed a new future of infinite, beautiful possibilities. The more I try to return to that mindset, the more it eludes me. Like a half remembered dream.

Of course it couldn’t last. Something…happened.” Through my thin button down shirt, I absentmindedly fiddled with the little plastic barrette dangling from my neck. “That was it. The rickety bridge I was building to a happier future collapsed under me and I fell back into my old dreary, brutal, petty view of things.”

He chose this point to chime in. “Monster world?” I nodded. “That’s what I called it anyway. There was just me, the only real human and...everybody else. A teeming mob of vicious, incomprehensible ogres with whom any sort of meaningful connection was impossible.

But it was an untenable perspective. How could everybody except me be a monster? If there’s lots of something, it’s just a species of creature, however fearsome. No, in order to be an actual monster, by definition there must be only one of it in existence.

Just one, walled off from the world, roasting alive in his own hatred and fear. The windows of his fortress, through which he glimpsed the supposed monsters outside, were only ever mirrors.” I stared off into space for a while. Then studied my shrink’s expression and set about trying to decipher it.

That’s the other nice thing about the mask. Nobody knows where you’re looking. Buys some extra time to work out what their facial contortions mean. Or to catch someone if they stare, where normally they look away the moment you make eye contact.

“That all-consuming lust for revenge is really why I got into military contracting. Of course I never admitted that during the interviews, and I passed the psychiatric evaluations with flying colors. I’ve always been quite skilled at taking tests, there’s a trick to it you see.

Anyway I had the idea that I’d work on the guidance systems for drones, and the missiles they commonly carry. It was a way for me to bring about, however indirectly, as much human suffering as I possibly could without going to prison."

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^{Stay Tuned for Part 9!}