This is a draft version of a chapter from John Saye’s book, Standard-Issue Partner.
Workers arrived the next morning early, Flint was still in his clothes from the night before, his beard was a little on the scruffy side, and the second cup of coffee was still biting at the edges of his consciousness.
They found Simon propped up on the couch. Flint wasn’t thrilled about the manner in which this made his apartment look like a crime scene, but there it was, the best he could do. The eyes were still black. If he could have closed them or propped them open or something, that would have been something.
The workers brought in a plethora of contraptions, the first of which was designed to take Flint’s coat closet and turn it into Simon’s single bedroom. It was an upright chamber with clamps in place at the waist, head, and ankles that looked like something out of Frankenstein’s laboratory. It lit up electric green when they turned it on, and it did seem to dim the lights when they first activated it.
One of the workers bent down and pulled up one of Simon’s legs. “Sir,” he said. “There is an extra power pouch down here next to his ankle.
Flint looked at the ankle and couldn’t see anything unusual about it. “I don’t see anything.”
The worker put his hand around the ankle and twisted. Quickly, the robot’s foot popped back into position, and the worker dropped the leg. “He’ll now have enough reserve power to get to the booth and plug himself in. Once he reboots.”
How long is the reserve charge?”
“A few minutes tops.”
Simon suddenly shook his head and stood up. “Well, that was interesting. Drop off did I?”
Flint pointed over to the workers.
“Ah, great, my booth. looks ready.”
“How long does it take to recharge?”
“Depends. Eight hours overnight, and I’m good to go for twenty-four. I could do a flash charge for thirty minutes and be ready for the day, but I’d have to go back in the box early that night.”
“Let’s do that.”
Simon nodded and walked over to the booth. He tapped it with his fingers, and it opened. He stepped in, attached the clamps to himself, and then pressed another button inside. The booth filled with green light, bright enough to read by.
One of the workers closed the old closet door in front of the booth and blocked out the light. He smiled at Flint and finished cleaning up the debris around where he had been working.
There were other things brought in, various appliances. Half of the kitchen was converted into a workshop, complete with a variety of high precision tools for working on the robots.
“Do I have to know how any of this stuff works?”
One of the workers replied, “It doesn’t hurt, but the robot will make use of them himself as he needs to make repairs. He’ll basically take care of himself.”
Within another half-hour, they were finished, and Flint wasn’t sure if he’d ever see his apartment the same way again. There was a soft ding from the closet, and Simon came out. He even looked like he was rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
“You ready?”
“Sure thing.”
“It’s about that time. We need to make it in and get out assignments from the Chief, though I imagine I’ve got an idea what he’ll do.”
“Proving grounds?”
“Most likely.”
A half an hour later the Chief looked at them and said “Proving Grounds.”
“We knew it,” said Simon.
“But first, you’ll have to get Simon here geared up. He’s got a standard-issue laser pistol there, but not much of anything else.”
Flint took him down to requisitions, which was basically a huge discount store that also sold bullets, laser packs, weapons, police hover-cars, and it all came out of your check. Of course these days everything seemed to come out of the check. Having never seen an actual check, Flint decided he was going to have to look up what one of those looked like later.
First, they went for the underwear, boxers with T-shirts, then they went for the rest of the outfit. It included a long duster, hat, dress pants, and a white shirt.
A zipper was added for access to his inside-the-thigh holster, and the suit was well-tailored. Flint liked the look, though he could barely pull it off. He was thinking in terms of allowing people to feel the robot was in charge of turning routine calls and allowing him to get in folks way and out of his while he did the real work. It never really worked that way, but it never hurt to dream either.
When they arrived later at the proving grounds they both went for black jumpsuits. The standard-issue laser pistol was the only thing allowed onto the course.
After suiting up, they crossed into a small auditorium, and ready to meet them there was a short robot, trash can-shaped, with lots of extra arms protruding from its top. Most of them seemed to be for a particular function. One of them was a laser pistol, another was a soldering iron, another was a five-digit hand, then a periscope, and on and on. The body of the robot was green, and it looked like it had been in there for some time.
The lights dimmed, and a projector flared to life in the back of the room.
The green robot chirped to life, and several mismatched eyes around the section of body most associated with its head lit up. Some were green, others red, and one large cyan eye seemed to gleam above all the others.
“Gentlemen, I am F-Force 269. Officer Calvin, your new partner is scheduled for training in the proving grounds today, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Then let’s get on with it.”
The big cyan eye blinked, and a slide appeared, projected on the wall behind the old robot.
On the slide was an image of a spherical floating robot with a series of green eyes around it at the top and bottom, and several blaster holes through which lasers can be fired at any time.
“The first task is to eliminate all of these little buggers, there’s nine of them in all in the course. They were massive, at least fifteen feet tall at the outside, and ten feet wide. The proving grounds were made up of the sixteenth and seventeenth levels of the building together, and Flint had always suspected that there were a host of audio-animatronics, illusions, and just plain robots that went into it. It was changed on a biannual basis, and Flint had actually served on the committee that designed the course on three different occasions. Not on this one though. Every ten years, when you are first admitted into the force, and each time you either change or lose a partner, you had to go through it again. When he was on the committee Flint had suggested that every cop should go through it at least once every three years. Stepping through the door today, he wasn’t sure he could make it through alive again. Some recruits died attempting the proving grounds, that was simple logic they would never have been able to handle the job.
Flint wondered.
He checked his laser pistol one more time. Everything checked out. He turned to Simon. “What’s your model’s record on achieving the proving grounds course?”
“Ninety-five percent.”
“What of the other five?”
“Three percent were destroyed saving their human partners.”
“And the other two?”
“The other two were destroyed by their human partners in firing mishaps or other human error.”
“Terrific.”
“Terrific for you, not coming out of this functioning is one of the only times the force won’t rebuild a robot partner.”
“Why not?”
“If they can’t make it through the proving grounds, they are considered defective, and scrapped.”
“Well, with any luck neither of us will get scrapped today.”
They stepped through the doors. Before them was a large circular room. Windows around the walls showed a computer-generated underwater landscape. A digital readout above the door read “1 ft. Above Sea Level.”
They looked around them. There were tables strewn with aqua-lungs, re-breathers, chain-mail suits of pull-on armor, diving belts, and underwater gear.
“Looks like an underwater adventure.”
“Naturally.”
Flint gave the robot a look, but it wasn’t seen, and he didn’t say anything.
Then they began to plummet. The windows in the walls gave way to water, the sky was soon no longer visible, and before long they were in the deep, dark ocean.
The meter on the door began to flash first ten feet underwater, then thirty, then sixty, then a hundred and twenty. When it came to a stop, Flint and Simon were securing their pressure suits. It was a pretty interesting setup. The aqua-lung was connected to the suit in several places making for a break-away effect that left room for a lot of flexibility. First, there was an ordinary wet suit. on top of that was a fine layer of mesh in the form of ultra-light chain-mail armor. Above that was a special pressurized suit for ultra-low depth diving. The usefulness of the suit was that each layer could be broken away at any given time, that and that they were armed.
Every gadget known to man seemed to be strapped onto them in some way, shape or form. Aside from their lasers, which were already rated for firing below the water, they were each covered in grenades, ink squirters, infrared goggles, extendable flippers, small water engines that sucked water in and squirted it out of the back. They were set. They were ready. The lights went out, and the water started pouring in.
Simon checked his suit for the last time, though it was devoid of an oxygen tank, he was carrying some extra equipment. He frantically checked for air pockets or leaks.
The water poured in and filled the room. It did so in a matter of seconds. Flint and Simon were blown off their feet and into the room. They swirled around watching the whole place turned upside down around them and held their breath. A few moments later, the room was full, and they were floating in the middle. Lights lit their faces so they could see one another.
Simon motioned to Flint, and then a comm channel opened between them. “Are you all right?”
Flint nodded. Aside from being thrashed and beaten up a bid by the inrush of water, he was actually feeling pretty good. “Yeah. Not bad I think.”
Simon lit a flashlight and shined it around. It was attached to his helmet. Flint turned him on as well. They looked around the room and pushed through the pile of overturned tables and desks where their suits and weapons had been sitting only moments ago.
A small television screen blurted on, inside their helmets, in a sort of a heads-up display. It was the little green trash can again.
“Good, it looks like you’ve both gotten the aqua suits on fast enough not to be killed by the water. That’s very good,” said the can.
“Got any other good news for us?” asked Flint.
“Yes. Here’s the scenario. In a moment the doors ahead of you will open. Your mission is to penetrate the team of ex-seals and retrieve as much of the technology bundle they’ve stolen as possible. Then you are to capture as many as possible, and return them to the surface all before your air runs out.”
“Perfect. How much air do we have?”
“You have an hour.”
“And Simon?”
“He’s a robot. He doesn’t need any. Please make use of this fact as you dive. It’s a critical part of your success, and will be graded harshly.”
“Any other delightful news?”
“Yes. The chain mail will come in very useful.”
“I was hoping you wouldn’t say that.”
The image fizzled and fell away.
“Terrific.”
Before them, a second large door opened, and the tunnel mapped out before them.
“Lights out Simon.”
Simon nodded and switched out his lights.
“Flip on your infrared.”
Simon and Flint flipped them on at the same time. The corridor ahead of them shifted to black and white, but they were still able to see quite clearly.
They drifted up and through the tunnel. Flint checked the temperature and noticed it was freezing cold. “Shouldn’t be much life here.”
“Of course, you know it persists in the coldest temperatures.”
“True, but I’m thinking in terms of the sharks we’re likely to see.”
“You think they will being sharks in?”
“Maybe not real ones, but you can bet there will be something. this chain-mail isn’t going to stop a laser beam, but it might stop a shark.”
“What else do you think.”
“Remember we’re on the sixteenth and seventeenth floor of the police tower.”
“What good will that do?”
“It’ll ground you. If you think about it you’ll be able to tell if something isn’t really as big as it looks when you’re looking at a wide area. Also, things that are really real will start popping out more often than not.”
“Anything else?”
“Yeah. So far this doesn’t look as hard as the three of these I’ve helped design.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Those all started blazing away before the participants were able to suit up. The delay in any challenges is creepy. Either it’s rougher than anything I’ve ever seen, or it’s not tough enough.”
“What’s the problem then?”
“The stats on this version of the test. There’s only a sixty-percent pass rate.”
“What about the death rate?”
“About ten percent. Simulated death anyway. Just keep thinking you’re still in the police tower and come up here.”
Simon turned his head and saw that Flint was swimming along inverted, against the ceiling. He moved up to join him.
Flint squinted and thought.
“What do you think?” asked Simon.
“Any moment… Now!”
Ahead of the two large spherical robots swooped in, followed by a third. They created currents in the water that was difficult to swim against.
Flint hugged the ceiling. Simon followed suit.
The robots passed them.
“Why didn’t they shoot?”
Flint sniffed. “They weren’t using infrared. They won’t make that mistake twice. Let’s blast them!”
Flint and Simon shot down into the middle of the corridor, using their personal jets, and blasted their way down. The robots seemed to turn, or at least their glowing eyes seemed to swivel about on little track lines on their body to see them floating there.
“Here they come!”
Flint pulled a small rocket launcher from his gear and popped off a rocket into their midst. Simon cut loose with laser fire. It cut one of them, sending plumes of oil and smoke into the water. The rocket exploded and sent shrapnel in all directions. Flint twisted and swerved to avoid the pieces. One of the robots was damaged by the blast, but the other seemed only lightly grazed. The damaged one and the one cut by the laser blast fell into each other and exploded sending a plume of bubbles toward the ceiling, and they slowly sank to the floor. The other cut loose with its lasers, blasting them in all directions and began to rotate the lasers down little tracks across its spherical body so that it lit up the room and began to create a boxing effect, driving Simon and Flint down toward the floor.
“Quick, down here!” Flint headed for one of the husks of the other two robots. He dived in, hiding amongst the rubble. Simon dove in after him. It was cramped, but there was some air here and there in little bubbles as they slowly streaked out through the cracks. “Find its weapon systems.”
“How?”
“You’re the robot, you tell me! Plug into it or something!”
Simon considered this for a moment, and then tore the glove from his left hand, a gauntlet and all, and wiggled his fingers. His index broke in half and a stream of little soft wires protruded from the digit, snaking their way into relay panels in the gigantic robot.
Above them the third robot stopped shooting, and starting scanning, looking for them among the wreckage.
“He’s scanning now. Can you hear the hum?”
Simon nodded. “Just a second.” He twitched and screwed up his face. “Got it!”
The husk of a robot lit up beneath the one that was still functioning. The pristine model scanned down and seemed to look around, as all the husk’s remaining guns twirled around and shot straight up at it with a terrifyingly concentrated blast.
The robot exploded in a gigantic fireball, scorched underneath by the other’s rays.
It began to sink, its air pockets blowing away through the cracks.
Simon noticed, just as Flint did. “We’ve got to get out of here,” they said and used their jets to zoom out in different directions as the one collided with the wreckage of the other in an underwater blast.
Soon all was dark.
They hid among the wreckage. “There are supposed to be more of them.”
Simon concurred. “Nine, right?”
“That’s what I thought.”
“Maybe there are around the corner.”
Then they heard it, the hum of the robots.
“Here they come.”
“Sounds like a bunch.”
“They’re dragging something.”
“How can you tell?”
“Robotic ears. I can hear your ulcer bleeding.”
“That’s nice.”
“It’s very very useful. Let’s stay hidden for a moment.”
“All right.”
They hid and watched as the other six robots passed over them. They seemed not to notice the wreckage of the other robots beneath them, but they were dragging something behind them.
“What is it?” The infrared in Flint’s display had temporarily fuzzed-out, still re-calibrating from after the last blast.
“It’s a box of some kind, looks about the size of an aircar, maybe smaller.”
Flint’s video display cleared. “Yes, I can see it. It looks like a mail cartridge; they’re used on short space flights. I wonder what’s in there…”
They waited for the robots to pass, deciding to tail them for a while and see where they went. Flint checked his oxygen, He seemed to have less than a half an hour left. Flint tapped his timer.
“Are you going to tap me after I’m blown to bits to see if I still work?”
Flint ignored this question and tapped the dial anyway.
Staying far enough behind to stay in the dark, they followed the guard robots, which were pulling the crate behind them in the water. After a couple of turns, they dived down a small opening and came to rest on the floor below. The crate sunk and settled on the bottom of the chamber, and the robot guards seemed to let go of their tethers and float up, right towards Flint and Simon!
“Quick! Over here!”
Simon lurched and saw Flint disappearing behind a short wall. He zipped over there, in his suit and ducked behind the wall with him. They watched as the six robots took up century duty over the hole.
Simon pulled his rocket launcher.
“No!”
Simon put it away again.
“Not every victory is a kill.”
Simon watched him
Flint breathed deeply. “I’m going to conserve some air. I want you to swim back down the corridor and make a diversion. Draw them to you, then I’m going to get down there and see what’s in that crate.”
“What kind of a diversion?”
“The best kind!”
Simon tilted his head, thinking about what would disturb the robots the most.
“Forget the robots.”
“How? That’s the object right?”
“Yeah, but we’ll need more time than that. Do something that will keep the guys in the control room running this test busy too.”
Simon waited for the idea.
“Go tap into the computers and tell the central hub that the aquarium they’ve got up here is leaking into the records department.”
Simon nodded. “I’m on it.”
“It ought to keep everyone busy for at least a few minutes.”
Simon set his little jet and zoomed down the corridor, careful to keep all his lights off. One of the century robots noticed him but did not seem to register him as a threat. They continued guarding their area.
Flint watched the second hand on his watch, he had to time it just right. A few ticks later the robots all started floundering around looking in all directions. Simon had managed it. The robots floated up to the ceiling to start checking the pipes, and a few ticks after that Flint was in, settling down near the cargo box. He twisted open the back panel and slipped into the airlock in just enough time to see several men, though Flint new all the participants here to be robots by design, shooting past him, riding underwater jet skis.
He cycled the hatch, and air-filled the chamber.
He pulled his mask and threw his tank aside. He’d run out of oxygen, and pulled off the outer layer of his suit, revealing the chain-mail. He dripped, but he did it very quietly. Ahead of him, several people were unloading a crate in the small underwater box. They were not wearing wet suits. The alarms were still blaring outside. The robots, being programmed to react like humans were starting to get a little jittery.
He took aim, and with the help of a powerful scope shot one of them in the head. The robot went down, circuits oozing from the hole in its head. The others took cover, but another shot took out the second one with no problem. The third was shot by Simon, who then stepped into the clearing with the crate they were examining.
Flint almost shot him.
He came out of the darkness and landed in front of Simon.
“What the hell was that about?”
“I finished him off, besides here’s the crate, we can examine it while everyone is searching for the fault in the aquarium’s electrical system.”
“You could have radioed me or something. I nearly shot you, thinking you were another one of them.”
Simon didn’t know what to think.
“Come on, open this thing up, and let’s take a look inside.”
Simon tore the top of the crate off and inside was a series of computer parts, but the most interesting thing seemed to be a series of memory cards.
Simon picked up the memory cards, and the shipping box they were in rock. “They’re on their way!”
“Quick,” said Flint. “Download everything on those cards. Just keep one as evidence. We’ll need to be almost hands-free to get out of here.”
“How are we going to do that?”
“By blasting this crate. There’s a cockpit at the front. They use these things to load and unload cargo in space.”
“And underwater?”
“Who knows. Maybe they’re trying to simulate a space mission while keeping it on the planet.”
They clambered up to the front and get into the cockpit. Flint smiled. “Make us a hole.”
“That’s likely to destroy part of the chief’s office at this site.”
Flint smiled again. “Good.”
Simon hit the laser-armed on the little shuttle and blasted the ceiling. The water really did start to leak then, a steady stream of bubbles began to surround them. They used the bubbles, combined with the limited mobility of the shuttle to bring it up to the ceiling, where they used robotic arms on the sides of the shuttle to grab hold of the ceiling.
Flint pulled up out of his chair. “Now all I need is a little re-breather.”
They searched through the supplies at the back of the cargo area and came up with a re-breather unit. It had a short air supply and fit over Flint’s mouth and nose. “This ought to do.”
He took it with them and they climbed to the top of the boxes in the cargo hold. Flint looked to Simon, “Blow it.”
Simon looked at the panel Flint was pointing at. “Easy.” he blew the hold. Above them, there was a dripping and wet but filled with air, the pocket where the ceiling had been torn away by blaster fire.
Flint looked around them. “This way.”
“Where are we going?”
“To the Chief’s office.”
“Ah…”
Flint maneuvered through the inner workings of the air duct they had blasted their way into and crawled up through this way and that until he made it where he was going, and punched his way through the air intake in the Chief’s office.
The Chief jumped as Flint pushed his way in, followed by Simon.
“God Dammit Flint!”
Flint smiled, and took the memory stick from Simon and handed it over to the Chief. “The rest of the data is stored in Simon here. Simon, let the Chief have it.”
Simon pushed his finger into the memory slot of the Chief’s computer interface, and downloaded all the information into the Chief’s computer, and brought it up. On the screen, images of tactical movements on the moon between troops of different nationalities enveloped the screen, and plans for space fighters and high-intensity weapons filled the screen.
“Good work,” said the Chief absently. “Good work. Now get out of here.”
Flint and Simon turned and left.
“Not bad, for a robot.”
“Not bad for a human.”
Flint smiled, though not intentionally.
They ordered up the hovercar and made their way back to the apartment. The air was swollen with cars and the head of exhaust and greenhouse gasses. They passed by spots where Flint remembered going on stakeouts with Roberts. It seemed like an age had passed.
“Maybe I should retire.”
“What?” Could a robot be stunned?
“I don’t know. I’m not sure I’ve got it anymore.”
“You kicked ass today.”
“What kind of talk is that for a robot?”
“It’s programmed in, sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, just be yourself.”
“Doing my best. It’s you I’m thinking about at the moment.”
“How’s your fuel level doing?”
“I’m fine for another six hours hard running, sixteen if I’m just arguing with you.”
“No arguments here.”
“No, you’re just thinking of quitting the force, that’s all.”
“Put things plainly there don’t you?”
“Sometimes it’s hard to move on.”
“Is this in your programming too?”
“Fifty-nine percent of cops like you saddled with a robot for a new partner consider bailing out. We have to expect you to try at some stage.”
“Perfect. What’s the percentage of cops who actually do it?”
“One.”
“Just one?”
“That’s being nice. Almost no one does it, but everybody thinks about it.”
“What’s wrong with having a human partner though?”
“Here’s the thing. I don’t eat, besides recharges I barely sleep, I’m usually pretty dependable, and I’m usually right when it comes to forensic evidence, all of which I’m qualified to take and evaluate while in the field.”
“So you’re just a tool then.”
“A tool and a friend. Besides, the main goal isn’t to have fewer human police anyway.”
“No?”
“No.” Simon paused. “It’s so that the force can cover twice as many emergency calls and busts as before with the same number of human cops.”
Flint didn’t say anything. He was thinking of a comeback for that one.
“Besides,” said Simon. “You like it.”
“What?”
“You like it. You were great in that training exercise earlier. You were focused. I only out thought you a couple of times.”
“That’s reassuring.”
“It should be.”
“No, look I’m just not sure I want to ride around with a robot all the time.”
“Why not? You encounter them all day, and you know how to deal with us.”
“I don’t know.”
“The Chief will be pissed.”
“He’ll live, I’ve pissed him off before.”
“Not like this. It’s one thing to have a spat, but to leave him, it’ll hurt.”
“Not as much.”
“Not as much as losing Roberts?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah, well I know. Give me a chance though before you have my memory wiped.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Life’s not fair then, is it.”
“Look let’s just get in out of this haze.”
Flint piloted the hovercar into the entry bay at his apartment building in the sky. He landed and locked the craft into its harness.
He and Simon left it there, but not before Flint went to the edge and looked down. “I’ve never seen it you know.”
“What?”
“The ground. I’ve always been up in the sky soaring around in the sky.”
“Come on.”
Flint and Simon went in. Flint went for the coffee first, starting the brew for the strongest cup he could muster. Simon prepped the recharger, and stepped into it, turning it on, and sitting back into the little booth provided for him.
“Goodnight Flint.”
Flint slurped half of his coffee. “Goodnight Simon.”
Simon closed the booth and allowed the recharging juices to take him.
Flint went to the window of his apartment and tried to look down to the ground. He couldn’t see that far. The buildings just seemed to go on forever towards a bottomless pit. Of course, he knew the ground was there. He knew that some animals even still lived in parts of the earth. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to do about all of that, but he was sure that soon he was going to have to see them, or at least go looking for it.
There were calls to make and plans to break, but it could all wait for the morning. Of course, there’s always the next assignment to take care of, and the next adventure to go on.
He went to Simon’s recharging cabinet. There had to be a better way than this to have a robot for a partner. There could never be a chance to dispute who grabbed the check at a restaurant, there would never be a celebration over his promotion, there would never be a gray hair on his stinking head. He hated the robot. He wished it would go away. Why did he have to enjoy working with it as much as he had today? How could you stay angry and resentful when the thing wanted to be angry with was so goddamn helpful?
He smacked the glass, but Simon didn’t stir. He just sat there recharging. He wondered for a moment if it was possible for Simon’s android brain to dream in there as he recharged. He thought he could do with some recharging himself.
He slumped into the couch, a plush leather job, and kicked up his feet. Maybe he’d ask Simon if he could dream in the morning if he wasn’t having him hauled away. With little difficulty based on the day’s physical activity, he fell asleep.
