Chic as Che, all of us, we piled back into the truck and trailer and merged into El Camino. When we arrived in Cupertino, we took a right on Marquez Street. It dead-ended at DigiRam’s corporate headquarters. There was a guarded gate that was abandoned, so we drove right through. We saw a vast employee parking lot, completely empty. At the other side stood the angular dark glass building, black except for one lighted room on the top floor. Night was falling, and an orange moon loomed on the horizon.
We stopped the truck in the back of the parking lot, and once again unloaded the horses. It was a hot summer evening, and hooves striking the pavement echoed off the distant building.
DigiRam had acquired more lucre than taste. The strange building had a futuristic glass elevator on the exterior, protruding like a swollen vein. We saw the elevator car descend to the ground floor, and lights were turned on in the lobby. Someone had come down from the executive offices. I told everyone to stay behind, and I rode up to the entrance on my filly, alone.
I saw a dark figure standing just inside the doors, silhouetted against the bright lobby lights. I dismounted, and walked up to the front door. The door opened, and BitBoy stepped out. “Hello.”
“Hello back at you, BitBoy.” The halibut face of Atticus was ashen - blinded by beauty, I would guess.
“Don’t call me that, Zenia. How did you pull it off, in New York? How did you get them to accept you as the president’s wife? That was wild!”
“All the guards were men, boys really, and as you know I can always find my way to a man’s heart. Or did you forget all about me?”
“What has happened to you? Do you know that my father believes that you’re not Zenia anymore, but some alien life-form from another star? He’s gone mad, thinking about it.”
“ScrumMaster believes what he chooses. ‘It is what it is.’- that’s the calculated cell’s formula at the bottom of every column of his moral spreadsheet. Come on, Atticus, it’s me. That SETI file hobby of yours was a dead end. It’s still all about stopping DigiRam from crossing the Turner Threshold. Nothing has changed. Dislodge your damned thumb.”
I could sense him wavering - we were always close in that way. “My father has explained everything to me. The robots posing as human was his idea, not theirs. He just wanted non-threatening machines to slowly take over the dull and dangerous jobs done by humans. The army has already been replaced with non-humanoid robots, but they scare the crap out of everyone.” Just behind me, vainly looking for grass on the macadam, the white filly was shuffling her hooves. “What’s with the horse?”
“That’s my interstellar starship, darling… What’s wrong with you? Your father has been using military robots to try to kill me, and my friends. They firebombed us on a road in Nevada.” I don’t know now if I was truly angry at that moment, remembering the explosion, or merely simulating anger.
BitBoy, give him credit, did appear to be shocked. He said “That’s impossible! ScrumM-, I mean my father, always put the spirit of Asimov’s three laws between the CPU and any kind of real-world deployment. It’s not possible that his robots would have tried to kill anyone.”
“You are sleepwalking, BitBoy. You are dead asleep, and in your dream you are a shameless performing dolphin at a water zoo. Wake up! ScrumMaster has disabled the firewall between military and civilian robots. If you don’t walk away now, you will find yourself on the wrong side of history. Join us and there will be statues of you in city parks.”
“My father doesn’t know about any rogues out there - it is some unaddressed defect, I’m sure. Let me go talk to him. Once I explain what is happening, he will understand, even join us. I bet the Defect Prioritizing Committee is already considering the problem. Let me try!”
I let him go, and gave him a bland human kiss - the real thing would have further addled his mind. I allowed him to follow the middle path, to hope that ScrumMaster would create a pipedream future, where bluebirds twittered and where BitBoy and I were joined at the hip.
He rode the pretentious elevator up to rejoin his father.
He would whimper and sidle, a neutered hangdog to the alpha ScrumMaster. I knew that ScrumMaster would slap him on the bottom with a rolled up newspaper, and send him to bed. Part of me took unhealthy pleasure in that thought.
I got back up on the horse, and returned to my companions, still gathered around the truck.
Melpomene asked, “What news?”
“ScrumMaster will be sending his robots out. Soon.”