Analog Science Fiction and Fact 03/01/11 Read online

  NOVELETTES

  Tuesday, March 1, 2011

  Rule Book

  by Paul Carlson

  There are two basic ways of dealing with a fundamental change.... I missed gears the most. The transmission hummed like a bored child, keeping tune with my big rig’s electric motors. The pitch refused to change much, no matter how fast or slow the wheels hit the pavement. I’d gone so far as to ask...

  Betty Knox and Dictionary Jones in The Mystery of the Missing Teenage Anachronisms

  by John G. Hemry

  Some kinds of work must be done very carefully, which is hard with hands almost tied.... In faded photographs, fifteen-year-old Betty Knox had worn not just the usual modest skirts and blouses, but also the usual barely-concealed teenage uncertainty, visible in eyes behind dark-framed glasses that...

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  NOVELETTES

  Rule Book

  by Paul Carlson

  There are two basic ways of dealing with a fundamental change....

  I missed gears the most.

  The transmission hummed like a bored child, keeping tune with my big rig’s electric motors. The pitch refused to change much, no matter how fast or slow the wheels hit the pavement. I’d gone so far as to ask Yunick, our company mechanic, to alter the control firmware. Real trucks should lurch forward if I stomp the pedal.

  The freeway stretched ahead, westbound into the city, and Doll Box kept meticulous track of every jammed inch of it. A sea of polished chrome and colorful plastic and undentable composites; vehicles with guide boxes squishing the traffic into an amoeba of citywide motion. No quiet back roads in this day and age.

  The truck itself moved along, unperturbed. Alone in the cab, I did my best to feel the same. I wished the same calmness on the nearest eighteen-wheeler in sight, about a hundred yards behind me.

  This particular jam was keeping me at work late, when seeing the grandkids in the morning was big on my mind. The traffic went from slow to a dead stop, and I got a strange whiff of something. A few yards ahead, a new four-wheeler had stalled, and everybody was trying to squeeze around it. Odd-looking vehicle too.

  “Doll Box,” I asked, “can you identify that stalled car?” I’d upgraded my trusty assistant while transferring such personal items into the new big rig.

  “This one?” An image appeared on its dashboard screen, from the forward wide camera.

  “Yep.” The smell got weirder, so I switched the AC over to “recirc.”

  “Boss, it’s the new model Maramax Goalie.”

  Specs appeared on the screen. A car so trendy some people don’t believe they’re for real. Burns glucose in layered sheaths of cloned muscle tissue, and translates their flexing into torque. Supposed to be energy-efficient like a marathon runner, as advertised by a famous soccer player. Apparently, despite the October weather, this one got a bad case of heat stroke.

  The trucker behind me caught up, stopped to open a gap, and let me change lanes to get around the stall. Heading directly into the sunset made such cooperation even more important. I blinked my running lights in acknowledgement, and hoped the poor motorist got a prompt tow, not to mention some automotive smarts.

  Argus Trucking invested a lot in our new tractor-trailers, with advanced fuel-cell engines and continuous automatic transmissions. The matching trailer’s steerable wheels came in very handy, like with lane changes in a tight jam.

  I first saw a steerable trailer on my buddy Pedro Owen’s rig and waited years to haul one. But a lash-up like mine is still a good seventy feet long and more than eight feet wide. Nothing short of magic could squeeze it through a traffic jam, whatever the cause.

  Finally the traffic picked up, and so did my mood. My wife Laurie and I always track, so she’d know how stuck I’d been. She was probably fixing goodies for Saturday’s family get-together. Doll Box reported no further delays up ahead. From my higher vantage I could see the regional light rail tracks, running along the freeway median. A train glided by, painted a cheerful orange, and it was packed. Where did we get all these people?

  At last I pulled into the company yard, completed the necessary routines, and locked up the rig for the weekend. Argus Trucking people start work early and scram fast at the end of each day. I waved to Yunick, our robot mechanic. Other than him, Beryl was the last one at work.

  Inside the dispatch office, Beryl handed me Monday’s manifests. “Twenty crates of exercise equipment,” I confirmed. “First health club to open around here in years, is what I hear. Do I get a free tryout?”

  Beryl threw a paperweight at me. Got me, too, but it was only a little stress-relief toy, shaped like a truck, made of thick foam.

  “Claude Dremmel,” said Beryl, “your wife told me about your diet. Robots doing all the hard work, and here you’re practically going to seed. You ought to give exercise a try.”

  “Aw, I never mess around with my loads.” And I don’t, or close enough, which got me the best work record of any trucker in the Argus fleet. “I’ll get in shape. Never you fear, my lady.”

  Beryl snickered. “You’re Laurie’s white knight, not mine.” With several grandchildren of her own, she considers everyone at work her special charges.

  “Anyway,” I went on, “I’m more than ready to clock out.” At her nod I reminded her, “Got an okay for Mek to spend the weekend at my place. ‘Experimental cross-training between industrial and household units of different manufacture,’ at least that’s how Alice wrote it up, fancy-like.”

  “Alice is the only girl I know who drives big-rigs and programs robots,” said Beryl. “Nice of you to fix her up with Pedro.” A hint of a frown crossed her wide features. “Wish they’d go ahead and have kids.”

  “I didn’t do that much.” Grabbed a paper towel and wiped a smear of thick black fifth-wheel grease from my arm. “It was fate. All I did was a little prompting.” Tossed the wadded-up paper towel into a wastebasket. “He shoots—he scores! Actually, Laurie’s been dropping hints about kids too.”

  “Say hi to them for me.”

  “Mek, you can drive an old model like this, right? Five-speed manual, hot-rod-style clutch?” I live about five miles from work, and really needed to relax.

  “Of course, Mr. Dremmel,” said my silvery friend, who’d been waiting in the company break room. “All general-use humaniform robots are programmed with such basic skills.”

  “Yeah, sorry, guess I’m nervous. You know, the day Alice and me delivered your components, we got a tour of that big assembly plant in the desert. There was a robot driving a car around.” I still felt edgy, but got in my Camaro’s passenger seat.

  “Okay Mek, give it a whirl.” Yep, a real Chevy Camaro, with a souped-up hybrid shoehorned in. Street legal, and darned near unique. Special bucket seats for my bad back too. I rarely leave it parked on the street.

  “I had no problem helping the new Argus company driver acclimatize to working with an industrial robot such as myself.” Mek pulled smoothly out of the company yard and into traffic. “‘Give it a whirl.’ So many idioms. Still, I am told that many other languages are more difficult to learn than English.”

  For some reason, Mek finds big fancy words easier than casual talk. Something about “idioms” struck a note. At our last get-together Alice had tried, again, to explain that Turing Test to me and Laurie. A modern robot could fool it easily, but she told us how that still leaves a bunch of heavy questions unanswered.

  Maybe I’m just a dumb old truck driver, but I tried a test of my own. “Hey Mek, got a joke for you. No fair looking it up online, okay?”

  “Agreed. Please
tell me.” As usual, Mek sounded patient and polite.

  “Better set the scene,” I said, “so picture this, ’cause it really happened. I was at a cardlock station filling my rig, and this old timer comes along, scrounging for bottles to recycle. We get to chatting, and he says, ‘I’ve got a joke you won’t get.’”

  “That you were unlikely to understand.”

  “Correct.” After a few years of conversation with robots, I know when to be literal. Saves time.

  Mek turned onto the freeway, no problem. Don’t know why I bothered to worry. Humans have more problems.

  “It’s a real groaner,” I said with a grin. “What do a test-tube baby and a Mack truck have in common?”

  Mek was silent. This model of robot has a tiny LED light by their right “ear” microphone that shows a wireless connection going. Infrared or something, but if you know where to look, it’s barely visible. Mek’s was blinking like crazy.

  “Hey, I said no searches.”

  “I am unable to solve your joke. I am asking other robots around town.” A pause. “Now, two of them are telling this joke to human companions.”

  “Okay.” Sundown comes early in October, and I could see plenty of Halloween decorations on the houses near the freeway.

  “One man knows,” Mek reported, “because he heard it before. Everyone else is, I believe the appropriate term would be, stumped.”

  Mek looked at me expectantly. How, with no muscles or blood in his smooth metal face, I do not know.

  “What do a test-tube baby and a Mack truck have in common?” Mental drum roll. “Neither one of them is Peterbilt.”

  Mek pondered this for a moment. “Obscure anatomical slang, old medical techniques, truck manufacturers. That is a difficult joke to get.”

  “Doesn’t help to analyze it to death.”

  “Claude, if you humans eliminated every word that has ever carried a slang anatomical or sexual connotation, you might as well take a vow of silence.”

  I laughed. “Now that is funny! Slang is a mighty wide subject, for sure.”

  “Indeed.” Mek can do voices much better than expressions.

  The miles went by fast, probably because I fell asleep. Didn’t much mind letting him drive. My sleepy self began to ponder, when did I go from thinking of Mek as “it” to “him,” anyway?

  “We will be at your house in five minutes,” Mek announced. “Do you have any instructions or reminders for me?”

  “Not really. Some kids are scared of robots, but there are a lot in my townhouse area, and more where my grandkids live, so you ought to be star of the show.”

  Early on, some wag had dubbed this unit, one of the first trucker robots, Mechagodzilla. When Argus Trucking assigned permanent team-driving partners, about a year ago, I’d asked for Mechagodzilla, by unit number of course. The suits at HQ sent him back from St. Louis, no doubt to keep me happy. They still need a few senior human drivers to train the new hires, even as robots become way more reliable.

  I’ll take credit for the shorter “Mek.” The brainiacs at Sylvantronics discourage nicknames for the robotic workers they build, and I’ll grab every possible chance to tweak that arrogant inventor, the man Alice and me call Mr. White Coat.

  Saturday morning dawned clear and warm. Don’t know much about the world’s climate, but for the moment, warm felt fine to me.

  “Iris is expecting us at ten,” Laurie told me, after I’d finished another chore. “We invited a couple of my nursery school kids, who live over by her, to come to the party.”

  “What’s the occasion?” I asked.

  “You been taking your vitamins, honey?” Laurie wagged a finger. “It’s Gertie’s tenth birthday, and Maxine will be five in December.”

  “Right, right, it was on the tip of my tongue.” It was also nine o’clock already. “We’d better go soon. I trust you have a gift?”

  “Of course, and Mek here can do the entertainment.”

  “I would be pleased to, despite my inexperience,” Mek responded. Laurie didn’t like him standing all the time, tough synthetic muscles or not, so for her sake he was sitting on our couch.

  Unlike some adults, Laurie doesn’t mind robots at all.

  Mrs. Brownlee sat at a picnic table covered with homemade food, gossiping with my daughter Iris. I’d skipped breakfast, and seeing Mrs. Brownlee was good news indeed. No way her late husband had found better cooking in Heaven.

  No barbequing today, so I’d have to do like Dagwood Bumstead and chow down on cold cuts. Time to build a sandwich good enough to cast away thoughts of scarce residential barbequing permits. Someday, enough people might quit whining and actually claim some old-fashioned property rights. Meanwhile, my diet was going out the window, at least for this meal.

  Seeing me reach for the food, the kids took this as a signal and crowded around the table.

  “Glad you could make it, Mr. Dremmel,” Mrs. Brownlee said. Our families had been neighbors for going on thirty years, and to Iris she was like a second mother. The spry old woman wore a straw hat over her blue-rinsed hair, its wide brim eclipsing our southwestern desert sun. “What do you think of the Senate race?”

  Whoo boy, Mrs. Brownlee has time to follow politics. “There’s an election?” Pause. “Sorry, bad joke.” I smiled. “Been hearing plenty of chatter about it, even on the national talk shows. Let’s see, our mayor is running, and he’s way ahead in the polls. That’s easier because there are a lot of candidates.”

  “Very good, Claude.” The retired nurse frowned, a rare sight. “I don’t like him. I knew our mayor when he was a departmental manager, and his wife worked at my hospital. He’s not a decent man, no matter his public image, and I don’t know why she puts up with him. Did you know he wants to restrict robots to menial supervised positions only?”

  “Really?” I knew Alice would hate this, and she probably knew all about it. “Guess it’s convenient to bash a new subclass.”

  “No way!” said little Maxine. “I like Mek.”

  The elderly woman changed the subject. “Don’t eat too much, Claude. The children have something strenuous to show you after you’re finished.”

  Seemed like grandfatherhood was strenuous enough, but I felt ready. Plenty of room to play, there in my own former backyard. When Iris had kids, we’d sold her the place, cheap. I wished their father was around, but Jorvan was in his native Brazil, getting paid with real money. My eight-year-old grandson, Chaz, was down there with his father. I hoped they would get back soon, but since Iris and Jorvan weren’t married, it could get complicated.

  Better to stuff myself later, so I put down my plate and asked the girls, “Okay, what are we playing?”

  Maxine was delighted. “Hissyball!”

  “Hissyball?” No time for research, but someone would’ve warned me if this was too extreme—I hoped. I spotted Gertie and her best friend Dolores with a complicated-looking beach ball. “Is that the ball?”

  “Yep,” Maxine said. A chip off the old block.

  This was dicey. Coolness in the kids’ eyes requires some grasp of things on my part, which must balance with their natural advantage: superior knowledge of all things new and trendy. There was no way to admit I’d never heard of hissyball until that very minute. And what was it with the funny-looking gloves?

  “We saved up and got you these.” Gertie presented me with a pair of those gloves, mostly black, size extra-large. “Don’t activate them until we’re ready.”

  Activate? Coolness foremost, I put them on. The thick fabric and colored spots suggested an old TV remote, split in half then melted onto the back of each glove.

  The kids gathered in a circle, about ten players including me. Mek folded his arms and observed, like a coach, or maybe a referee. The kid’s dog, a golden retriever, watched us eagerly.

  “Test run!” Delores, the ball’s owner, threw it into the air. It arced upward, then stopped in midair, higher than the wooden fence. “First pattern!” The ball zipped around like a UFO, ci
rcling above our heads, then hovered again. “Ready!” It fell into the girl’s hands.

  “Basic controls on!” Delores threw it again, straight at Gertie.

  Rather than catch it or bounce it away, Gertie used her right hand to manipulate the back of her left-hand glove. The ball stopped, then reversed course. The other kids got into the act, and the ball began to dart around like a hummingbird on steroids.

  As the ball came past I heard a sharp hiss, the noise of tiny air jets. So “hissy” referred to the sound of the ball, and it sounded faintly scandalous to boot. It was not, I could see, the game’s official name.

  I squinted at my left-hand glove and tapped a couple of buttons. The ball wavered for a moment, then one of the kids snatched control.

  Seemed you could use six of the buttons to designate each axis of motion, though one of the younger boys had the ball slaved directly to a glove, exaggerating his own hand motions. Much easier, but the other players could see that you had control.

  Took me a few minutes to figure out how the game is scored. Partly, by getting the ball to buzz your opponents, circling their heads without making physical contact. Sometimes, according to some arcane rule, two kids would dash to switch places. A base module recorded how long each player kept control of the ball. That’s only the game’s basic level.

  “Hacking enabled!” cried Delores, who’s around twelve years old. She did something with her right-hand glove, and some readouts on the base module changed. “Go!”

  Up went the ball, and it darted straight at me. I tried to deflect it, but nothing happened. It circled me three times, a big minus score. The boy on my right was tapping on his right-hand glove. The ball stopped dead, then dashed across and buzzed its owner.

  Delores tried to seize control, but couldn’t handle it. A “hey, no fair” expression grew, but she didn’t say anything. The boy got her circled but good, then went on to others.

  Meantime, little Maxine did something more complicated with her gloves, and the hissyball sizzled over and got Gertie. She looked half surprised and half proud of her little sister.

  The kids didn’t know about my spy bird, which resembles a mourning dove. I’d hoped to show off my little hobby, but they came under heavy regulation, and somehow I kept forgetting to turn it over to the FAA or the Observers agency. For years I’d used my cell phone to program the robotic bird, via Bluetooth, and this wasn’t much different.