“Call someone to clean it up,” she said. She grabbed him by the arm and shook him, “Come on, stop making a scene! You can walk. I’m not going to carry you.”
He looked up at her, imploringly. If only she would carry him, or take his hand, anything!
Finally she sighed. “Could you please call someone to come get this thing?”
A few minutes later, the office had mostly settled down and two men arrived, one with a handcart. They slid it under his feet, treating him like a heavy box. As they rolled him toward the back of the building he finally shut down, slipping into oblivion.
14
Josh opened his eyes to find himself staring up at a white ceiling with bright fluorescent lights. Someone had dressed him in fresh clothes and washed away the dirt. He rested on a cot in the corner of a small windowless room. Aside from his cot, the only other objects in the room were a small table with two rickety wooden chairs pushed beneath it. A small side room, almost no bigger than a broom closet, held a toilet and a sink.
He walked over to the door and tried the handle, but it didn’t budge. He pounded on the door and screamed, “Let me out! Hey!”
He pounded for a few minutes until finally he heard the click of the lock. He stepped back as it opened, and a nearly bald man poked his head in and said, “Hey, Keep it down. People are trying to work here.”
“I want to go home,” he told the man, fighting back more tears, “Please just let me go.”
“You are home, kid, or as home as you’re ever going to see again.”
“I want to call my parents,” he said.
The man sighed and scratched his chin. “Why didn’t they ever give these things a power button?”
“Please,” he said, “Just let me go. I won’t tell anyone, I promise.”
The man studied him for a second, and then motioned back into the room. “Go sit down. Let’s talk for a minute.”
Finally he’d found someone that could help him. Josh nodded, and allowed himself to be led back to the table and sat down. The man took the other seat across from him, resting his arms on the table. He wore a name tag that read Michael Hoskins. “Do you even know where you are? Do you know who you are?”
He nodded. “My name is Josh Norton. I’m at Kidsmith.”
“And do you know what we do here?”
“You make and sell kids.”
“Yes, we do sell kids, but we don’t make them here anymore. We refurbish models that can be fixed, and we scrap those that we can’t.”
Josh sat up. “You can fix me?”
“Perhaps. Tomorrow we have you scheduled for an exam. If we can fix you, we’ll replace what we can, wipe your memory, and resell you. If we can’t, well, hopefully we can recover a few usable parts, and dispose of the rest.”
“But if you can fix me, why not just let me go home?”
“Your parents… I mean, your owners, were contacted. They aren’t interested in fixing you, and you’re out of warranty. You’re malfunctioning badly. Everything is shutting down, and now it looks like it’s affecting your motor skills, or the programs that allow you to control your movements. If it’s the program, you could have bad sectors in your drive. The bottom line is it may not be worth our time to even try to fix you. You’re so scarred up that I doubt we could give you away. I don’t know if we could even recoup our costs. You’re just too badly broken.
“Besides, if your parents could have you fixed, don’t you think they would’ve?” he continued, “And furthermore, they probably were the ones that did this to you, am I right?”
“No, they never hurt me. I was in an accident.”
“Nine times out of ten a machine in your condition has suffered heavy abuse at the hands of its owner. Maybe you don’t remember or maybe you don’t want to tell me about it. That’s okay, I don’t care. Regardless, your damage is severe enough that I’m hoping we can recover a few good parts from you.”
“Please let me just talk to them,” Josh begged.
Michael Hoskins laughed dryly. “Not going to happen. You’re just another abandoned kid. We help people that have problems with machines, every day. Sometimes we get our hands on defective ones, just like you, and sometimes we fix them for owners that want their machines fixed. Your parents are not interested. Nobody wants an old mistreated kid that crashes every ten minutes.
“Your Ram is probably still good,” he went on, “You’re not that old of a machine, maybe only five years, I’m guessing. Your motherboard and circuitry are probably okay. Your memories are garbage. There’s nothing there to save, nor any reason to.”
The kid shook his head, feeling tears run down his cheeks. “I don’t want to die!”
“Is this not getting through to you? You don’t die. You’re a machine. You are soulless. There’s no Heaven or Hell waiting for you. When I unplug your power supply it’s lights out, and as far as you’re concerned, it’ll be as though you never existed.” He let out a deep sigh and leaned back. “Look kid, this day’s about over, I’m tired, hungry, and want to go home myself. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
With that he stood up and walked out the door.
Josh sat there for a while, thinking. His odds of getting fixed sounded slim, and even if he did, they would take away his identity. His only hope rested with his parents. He had to contact them somehow. He walked over and flopped down on the cot, covering his eyes with his arms.
He had nothing to do but think, think about his parents, how he’d been treated, and if they were robots too. He had plenty to think about, but no definite answers. He would die never knowing, and that felt unbearable. They planned to dissect him like an alien and rip his insides out. Worse, he had nothing to look forward too. He was pretty sure that the man was right. God didn’t have a place for robots in Heaven.
“God?” he prayed aloud, “If you’re there, if you can hear me at all, please get me out of here. Send me an angel. I don’t want to die…”
15
James Hamilton had spent more of his life at Kidsmith than outside of it. He’d been with them through their rise and fall, and hoped to be there when they once more reached prominence. He’d begun as an engineer, and stopped his corporate climb at Engineering Manager. He’d managed to father two children before such things became impossible. They were grown and in other parts of the world. He hadn’t spoken to his oldest son in fifteen years.
Many had come and gone, but James remained. He often referred to all of the children Kidsmith had sent out the door as his own. That would’ve made him the father of over one million boys and girls, and with the exception of the occasional twins, no two looked alike. He’d even owned a couple over the years. His current one was getting a bit run down. He kept tampering with her though, and changing her personality. It drove his wife crazy.
These days though, it felt as though the company had become infertile too. Children didn’t walk out these doors, at least not the new ones. Few of the older models did either. Nowadays, he didn’t spend much time working with the kids. He spent his days behind a desk dealing with work orders. Sometimes it felt like a daily struggle just to stay employed. As he neared completion of his day, Tamara Hart popped her head into his office.
“You about out of here?” she asked.
“He set down his pen and stretched. “Hey Tammy, I think so. I’ve done enough damage for the day. How about you?”
“I’m as good as gone,” Tamara said, “I had to drive into the Boise Mountains. My whole day was shot.”