The customers were polite enough not to ask further.
"That’s a pretty dress."
"Isn’t this a pretty dress?"
"Can I buy you a drink?"
"You can buy me a drink."
"Would you like a gin fizz?"
"I would like a gin fizz."
Bokko could drink all day and night and never get drunk.
Men gathered to see Bokko after hearing rumors of her beauty and conceit. They all wanted to talk with Bokko, drink with Bokko, and buy drinks for Bokko.
"Which one of us do you like most?"
"Which one of you do I like most?"
"Do you like me?"
"I like you."
"Let’s go to a movie some time."
"Shall we go to a movie some time?"
"When do you want to go?"
When Bokko was unable to reply, it would send a signal to the bartender for help.
"Please, sir," the bartender would come and say in such cases. "Why don’t you leave her alone for now." Whatever their prior conversation had been, this was usually enough to end it. The customer would stop talking and grin, embarrassed.
The bartender crouched down behind the counter periodically to collect the liquor from the plastic tube that poked out from Bokko’s leg. Then he’d re-serve it to his customers. No one ever noticed.
Everyone who set eyes on Bokko was attracted to her. They’d say, "She’s young, yet so reserved," or "She really isn’t your everyday flirt, and she never seems to get drunk, either."
As Bokko became popular, more people visited the bar. Among them was a young man who fell in love with Bokko. Soon, he became a regular at the bar. This young man felt that Bokko seemed to like him, too. But he could never really be sure, and this made him even more obsessed with Bokko. He spent so much money at the bar trying to impress Bokko that eventually he went broke and into debt. When he tried to steal money from his parents to pay his bar tab, his father bawled him out.
"You must never go there again! Use this to pay your debt, but let this be the end of it."
The young man returned to the bar to pay back the money he owed. Upset that he would never see Bokko again, he started drinking heavily. He bought many drinks for Bokko, too, sealing his farewell.
"I can’t come any more."
"You can’t come any more."
"Are you sad?"
"I am sad."
"You’re not really that sad, are you?"
"I’m not really that sad."
"I don’t know anyone as cold as you are."
"You don’t know anyone as cold as I am."
"Do you want me to kill you?"
"I want you to kill me."
The young man took out a package of powder from his pocket, sprinkled it into his drink and pushed it toward Bokko.
"Will you drink it?"
"I will drink it."
Right there, in front of him, Bokko drank what the young man had offered.
"Die as you please, then," he said nastily and walked away.
"I will die as I please, then," Bokko replied to his back as he paid the bartender and left. It was almost midnight.
After the young man left the bar, the bartender announced, "Drinks are on me for the rest of the night, so… drink up!"
He figured that there wouldn’t be any new customers coming in that night to whom he could re-sell the large quantity of liquor he’d collected from Bokko’s plastic tube. So he decided to just give it away.
"Right on!"
"Sounds good!"
The customers and hostesses gave a toast. Behind the counter, the bartender, too, lifted his glass into the air and then drank.
That night, the lights in the bar remained lit. The radio continued to play music. No one had left, yet no one was talking anymore either.
Eventually, a voice on the radio said, "Good night," and the station ended programming for the day.
Bokko murmured back, "Good night." And then, the stunningly beautiful robot waited for the next customer to approach.
(1958)
THE DANCING PARTNER
Jerome K. Jerome
Jerome Klapka Jerome (1859–1927) was an Englishman best known for his novels and plays, which sometimes incorporated supernatural ingredients. "The Dancing-Partner," by contrast, is a stark horror story—and not so farfetched. The level of electric automation it describes, while considered science fiction in its day, in fact was under experimentation by gadgeteers as early as 1893, when this excerpt from Jerome’s serial Novel Notes appeared in The Idler.
"This story," commenced MacShaugnassy, "comes from Furtwangen, a small town in the Black Forest. There lived there a very wonderful old fellow named Nicholaus Geibel. His business was the making of mechanical toys, at which work he had acquired an almost European reputation. He made rabbits that would emerge from the heart of a cabbage, flop their ears, smooth their whiskers, and disappear again; cats that would wash their faces, and mew so naturally that dogs would mistake them for real cats and fly at them; dolls with phonographs concealed within them, that would raise their hats and say, ‘Good morning; how do you do?’ and some that would even sing a song.
"But, he was something more than a mere mechanic; he was an artist. His work was with him a hobby, almost a passion. His shop was filled with all manner of strange things that never would, or could, be sold – things he had made for the pure love of making them. He had contrived a mechanical donkey that would trot for two hours by means of stored electricity, and trot, too, much faster than the live article, and with less need for exertion on the part of the driver, a bird that would shoot up into the air, fly round and round in a circle, and drop to earth at the exact spot from where it started; a skeleton that, supported by an upright iron bar, would dance a hornpipe, a life-size lady doll that could play the fiddle, and a gentleman with a hollow inside who could smoke a pipe and drink more lager beer than any three average German students put together, which is saying much.
"Indeed, it was the belief of the town that old Geibel could make a man capable of doing everything that a respectable man need want to do. One day he made a man who did too much, and it came about in this way:
"Young Doctor Follen had a baby, and the baby had a birthday. Its first birthday put Doctor Follen’s household into somewhat of a flurry, but on the occasion of its second birthday, Mrs. Doctor Follen gave a ball in honour of the event. Old Geibel and his daughter Olga were among the guests.
"During the afternoon of the next day some three or four of Olga’s bosom friends, who had also been present at the ball, dropped in to have a chat about it. They naturally fell to discussing the men, and to criticizing their dancing. Old Geibel was in the room, but he appeared to be absorbed in his newspaper, and the girls took no notice of him.
"‘There seem to be fewer men who can dance at every ball you go to,’ said one of the girls.
"‘Yes, and don’t the ones who can give themselves airs,’ said another; ‘they make quite a favor of asking you.’
"‘And how stupidly they talk,’ added a third. ‘They always say exactly the same things: "How charming you are looking to-night." "Do you often go to Vienna? Oh, you should, it’s delightful." "What a charming dress you have on." "What a warm day it has been." "Do you like Wagner?" I do wish they’d think of something new.’
"‘Oh, I never mind how they talk,’ said a fourth. ‘If a man dances well he may be a fool for all I care.’
"‘He generally is,’ slipped in a thin girl, rather spitefully.
"‘I go to a ball to dance,’ continued the previous speaker, not noticing the interruption. ‘All I ask is that he shall hold me firmly, take me round steadily, and not get tired before I do.’