Turning quickly, Smith sees her hair vanish from view beyond the swinging door—
She has walked out on him.
"No, not again."
He hears his own voice in darkness. The wireless band plays on. He rushes after her.
She has teeter-tottered along the hall to the stairway, and tumbles now, from side to side, weighted with coin, pulled back by sprouting mass of rough grey pigtail. Tumbling down the stairs, foot to foot on the narrow treads.
And here is Smith chasing after—
Her hair is getting longer, he can see it growing, pouring from her head. Racing down the stairs now, he’s reaching out for her, but she’s always thirteen or so steps ahead.
The carpet underfoot is crumbling; damp as candy cotton, the banisters rusting away, the walls seem to sweat. He cannot hear the wireless playing anymore, just coins clattering inside. Funny, he can’t remember climbing up all these stairs. There are no hallways, no landings, just a staircase stretching down into darkness, as if it has no end.
She does not slow in her tottery descent, but goes faster, an impossible speed. Her hair skkrittching out, thin strands of grey like old comic book speedlines. But Smith can’t reach her—thirteen or so steps ahead—
He tumbles, headlong, reaching out, deaf to rattle of coin and his own screaming.
No longer running down, merely falling down.
Down to a darker silence.
Down.
(1996)
THE ROBOT WHO LOOKED LIKE ME
Robert Sheckley
Robert Sheckley (1928–2005) was described by Kingsley Amis in New Maps of Hell (1960) as the field’s "premier gadfly". Brian Aldiss described him as "Voltaire and Soda". His story "Seventh Victim", a delicately nihilistic story of people as hunters and hunted, was filmed, rather hamfistedly, as The Tenth Victim in 1965, with Ursula Andress in a deadly, bikini-centred role that hardly needed sending up over thirty years later in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997). The two or three hundred short stories Sheckley wrote in a burst of creativity from about 1952, when he was 24, so flooded the market that magazine editors insisted he publish some stories under pseudonyms. His first novel, Immortality, Inc., appeared in 1959. Later Sheckley took to travelling, living in Mexico, Ibiza, London and Paris before returning to the US in 1980, when, for a couple of years, he was fiction editor of Omni magazine.
Snaithe’s Robotorama is an unprepossessing shop on Boulevard KB22 near the Uhuru Cutoff in Greater New Newark. It is sandwiched between an oxygenator factory and a protein store. The storefront display is what you would expect—three full-size humanoid robots with frozen smiles, dressed occupationally—Model PB2, the French Chef, Model LR3, the British Nanny, Model JX5, the Italian Gardener. All of Them Ready to Serve You and Bring a Touch of Old-World Graciousness into Your Home.
I entered and went through the dusty showroom into the workshop, which looked like an uneasy combination of slaughterhouse and giant’s workshop. Heads, arms, legs, torsos, were stacked on shelves or propped in corners. The parts looked uncannily human except for the dangling wires.
Snaithe came out of the storeroom to greet me. He was a little gray worm of a man with a lantern jaw and large red dangling hands. He was some kind of a foreigner—they’re always the ones who make the best bootleg robots.
He said, "It’s ready, Mr. Watson." (My name is not Watson, Snaithe’s name is not Snaithe. All names have been changed here to protect the guilty.)
Snaithe led me to a corner of the workshop and stopped in front of a robot whose head was draped in a sheet. He whisked off the sheet.
It was not enough to say that the robot looked like me; physically, this robot was me, exactly and unmistakably, feature for feature, right down to the textures of skin and hair. I studied that face, seeing as if for the first time the hint of brutality in the firmly cut features, the glitter of impatience in the deep-set eyes. Yes, that was me. I didn’t bother with the voice and behavior tests at this time. I paid Snaithe and told him to deliver it to my apartment. So far, everything was going according to plan.
I live in Manhattan’s Upper Fifth Vertical. It is an expensive position, but I don’t mind paying extra for a sky view. My home is also my office. I am an interplanetary broker specializing in certain classes of rare mineral speculations.
Like any other man who wishes to maintain his position in this high-speed competitive world, I keep to a tight schedule. Work consumes most of my life, but everything else is allotted its proper time and place. For example, I give three hours a week to sexuality, using the Doris Jens Executive Sex Plan and paying well for it. I give two hours a week to friendship, and two more to leisure. I plug into the Sleep-inducer for my nightly quota of 6.8 hours, and also use that time to absorb the relevant literature in my field via hypno-paedics. And so on.
Everything I do is scheduled. I worked out a comprehensive scheme years ago with the assistance of the Total Lifesplan people, punched it into my personal computer and have kept to it ever since.
The plan is capable of modification, of course. Special provisions have been made for illness, war, and natural disasters. The plan also supplies two separate subprograms for incorporation into the main plan. Subprogram one posits a wife, and revises my schedule to allow four hours a week interaction time with her. Subprogram two assumes a wife and one child, and calls for an additional two hours a week. Through careful reprogramming, these subprograms will entail a loss of no more than 2.3% and 2.9% of my productivity respectively.
I had decided to get married at age 32.5 and to obtain my wife from the Guarantee Trust Matrimonial Agency, an organization with impeccable credentials. But then something quite unexpected occurred.
I was using one of my Leisure Hours to attend the wedding of one of my friends. His fiancée’s maid of honor was named Elaine. She was a slender, vivacious girl with sun-streaked blond hair and a delicious little figure. I found her charming, went home and thought no more about her. Or, I thought I would think no more about her. But in the following days and nights her image remained obsessively before my eyes. My appetite fell off and I began sleeping badly. My computer checked out the relevant data and told me that I might conceivably be having a nervous breakdown; but the strongest inference was that I was in love.
I was not entirely displeased. Being in love with one’s future wife can be a positive factor in establishing a good relationship. I had Elaine checked out by Discretion, Inc., and found her to be eminently suitable. I hired Mr. Happiness, the well-known go-between, to propose for me and make the usual arrangements.
Mr. Happiness—a tiny white-haired gentleman with a twinkling smile—came back with bad news. "The young lady seems to be a traditionalist," he said. "She expects to be courted."
"What does that entail, specifically?" I asked.
"It means that you must videophone her and set up an appointment, take her out to dinner, then to a place of public entertainment and so forth."
"My schedule doesn’t allow time for that sort of thing," I said. "Still, if it’s absolutely necessary, I suppose I could wedge it in next Thursday between nine and twelve p.m."