DOES NOT DESERVE A NAME (yet)
SPG fanfiction
3laws!AU where Michael Reed joined the band at age sixteen in 1974.
I am totally just writing this because the concept tickles me so if it sucks I apologize
If you like it well then that's just dandy
This is only the first part ok
Has not been proofread by my writing partner WARNING WARNING lol
3704 words in one sitting
it's good to write big chunks again
It was a small gig. Just some nowhere town in the Midwest that was having a county fair. Big banners with the year on them fluttered in the hot dry breeze: 1978. Kids milled around with harried adults looking at the farm animals and begging for popcorn and cotton candy or tickets to go on the rickety carnival rides while dust made Michael’s nose itch. He tried to keep a straight face and resist the urge to sneeze, but it wasn’t just the dust that made it hard. Rabbit was segueing into the next song.
"I s-s-see you smirkin’ there, buddy.” Rabbit pointed jerkily at a man in a cowboy hat at the back of the mostly-unimpressed audience. His joints creaked, hissed, and groaned with every movement. “We may not look like much, but ah… let’s see how you look when you’re over eighty years old! Eh? Eh? Spine, back me up on this. Come on.”
The Spine opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out. Michael shifted at his place behind the drums. The Spine usually had a line there. Michael had heard it enough times by now that he could hear it perfectly in his head. Gee, I dunno, Rabbit, I don’t think it’s a good idea to insult our audience members….
"Hey. Th’Spine. Hey.” Rabbit stretched an arm out and tapped the Spine on the shoulder repeatedly, his hand flapping back and forth like a paddle. “Hey. Got a frog in your throat? Must be well fed with all these flies buzzin’ around!” Rabbit mimed catching a fly with his tongue, then choking on it.
nbsp; Rabbit was covering well for the Spine’s malfunction, but Michael felt his palms going sweaty on the drumsticks. The Spine wasn’t moving. At all. His face had twitched and he’d started to raise an arm with one finger raised as if about to make a point, but it had frozen in place.
nbsp; "Come on people, work with me here,” Rabbit made a gesture as if pulling the audience toward him. “Spine, these people only have one short lifespan and they aren’t gonna spend it watchin’ you eat flies.” Rabbit shrugged and shook his head with a grin, crouching slightly and poking repeatedly at the same spot on the Spine’s hollow cheek. “You uh, you just g-g-g-gonna stand there until the world ends and all that’s left are g-giant mutant cockroaches?” Rabbit made a creepy-crawly motion with his hands but the Spine remained immobile.
The Jon shuffled over smoothly, sparing one concerned glance at the Spine before leaning around him to stare at Rabbit, feather askew. “Hey, Rabbit! Did I ever tell you where I learned to sing?”
“No, no, you didn’t-certainly wasn’t me-”
“Well!” The Jon leaned back, thumbs tucked under his suspenders. “I met this cockroach-”
“Oh come on, The Jon!” Rabbit’s voice burst out over the dwindling audience in a disbelieving laugh. “That’s ridiculous-cockroaches can’t sing! Everybody knows that! But hey, I’ll tell you what insects can sing. Boy, those beetles! They were really takin’ the world by swarm about a decade ago, ehhh? Ehh? Ehhh-eh-eh-eh-e-hhh-hh-”
Rabbit’s malfunction went on a bit longer than Michael usually expected, but he waited, knowing that sometimes Rabbit purposely continued the effects in order to make a joke out of them. But the vocal glitch continued for a painfully long time, and a clattering sound began and ended with Rabbit collapsing onto his knees, then falling forward off the front of the stage into a heap with a deafening rattle. The Jon’s voice box gave a scrambled sound Michael had never heard before and he fell sideways like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
The last remaining people in the audience waited. There were only about a dozen. Michael sat frozen behind the drums, waiting like the rest of them for this to turn out to be a joke, but he knew something the audience didn’t. The three robots managed to keep their glitches contained on stage most of the time, but this sort of episode happened countless times per day when they weren’t performing. Michael wasn’t sure if he was imagining them getting more serious as time went on. He had only been with the band for four years, ever since that day they’d come to the fair in his own home town and he’d gone up to meet them backstage. They’d been glitchy then, certainly, but Michael had never minded it. It was how he’d always known them to be.
The silence had gone on too long. Michael rose and came forward reluctantly. “Ladies and Gentlemen, we have reached an intermission.” He rubbed his hands together slightly. “Now would be a perfect time to go get some refreshments or enjoy some of the other talented performers here at the fair. Please come back later and enjoy the rest of the show!”
The people trickled away, muttering, and Michael wished they had a curtain. He waited until there were no eyes directly on him, then hopped off the stage to check out Rabbit. His clothes were covered in dust. Michael started patting it off while he checked the robot over and started talking to him. Very rarely was there an obvious mechanical cause for the glitches, and they usually went away on their own.
“Hey, Rabbit, wake up,” Michael said calmly. “Come on, Rabbit!” He struggled to hoist the robot upright. Normally at this point Rabbit shook off whatever kink in his circuitry might be impeding his movements, but this time Rabbit remained limp.
“Mister Walter!” Michael called, and with relief caught sight of the mustached young man walking toward them with his cane. “It’s pretty bad, sir. Do you think it’s the heat? I made them drink plenty of water before the show-”
“I’m afraid it’s nothing like that,” said Peter Walter V. He looked unusually serious. Normally he had a bit of an unsettling grin on his face, and his mustache seemed to naturally curve in such a way as to suggest a smile at all times. But not so at this moment.
“Can you turn him back on?” Michael asked.
“Let’s get them backstage and then we’ll see what I can do.”
Together they hauled first Rabbit, and then the Jon into the cluttered space behind the rickety stage. They left the Spine for last, as he was heaviest. Both of them were panting and sweating by the time they managed to get him out of sight, even with the help of a couple passers-by.
Within a few minutes Peter had worked his magic. The Spine woke up first. His green eyes flashed open. “Gee, I dunno, Rabbit, I don’t think it’s a-hey, wwwwww-wait a minute.” The Spine’s thick “eyebrows” contracted in confusion and he looked around, his head swiveling right-left-right-left with a soft whine. The verbal slur worried Michael. They were pretty rare with the Spine. Something must be truly wrong. “Where am I?” asked the Spine. “We were in the middle of a show!”
“You froze up on stage,” Michael said. “All three of you at about the same time.”
The Spine blinked twitchily and looked over at Rabbit who was still lying prone on the floor. He went to stand up but his limbs shook and the joints wouldn’t stay steady.
“Motor functionality issues,” Peter muttered into his hand, peering at the Spine. He crouched and took out a multi-lense magnifying glass to get a closer look. “Can you remove your shirt?”
The Spine had gone motionless again.
“The Spine! I order you to respond.”
Spine’s head jerked with a clicking noise and gears whirred in his arms but they only lifted slightly before drifting back down. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said, with a perplexed look. He struggled to lift his hands again. “I-gya-it-t-tt-t-”
“Nevermind. It’s worse than I thought.” Peter took one of the malfunctioning arms in both hands and felt along the elbow joint. Then the shoulder, then all three major joints of the other arm. He forcibly moved them in their sockets, testing the resistance of the gears. Finally he rocked back on his heels. “Can you detach from your body?”
The Spine frowned and narrowed his eyes. “No,” he said, and it came out in a scratchy tone.
“Your boiler’s alright.” Peter rapped on the Spine’s chest. “I don’t see any obvious cause. Well, we’ll see if there are any clues with Rabbit and the Jon.” He walked over to Rabbit and performed the same little wake-up call to the blue matter core that he had with the Spine. Michael had watched Peter work on the robots many times but he still hadn’t been let in on the secret of how that substance worked. Rabbit jerked to life within a few seconds.
“Who-wa-woooaaaah. What happened? I was ju-ju-j-j-j-j-just about to get to the good part! Oh hey Pete! Did I get to the punch line?”
“Yeah, Rabbit, you did,” Michael assured him, standing behind Peter. “Then you fell off the stage.”
“What? Fe-fell off the stAAage? Ya kiddin’ me.” Rabbit’s face was stuck in a sort of half-flinch half-grin which was exceptionally asymmetrical. “Hey, where’s my melodica?!” Rabbit’s arm had flicked up to rest against his chest as it sometimes did when the springs went haywire. He lifted his other arm, presumably to push it back down, but a shudder ran through his frame and his fingers writhed before his arm froze in place.
“Rabbit,” said Peter, and the robot turned his attention fully to him. “You were the second to malfunction. You haven’t been keeping any secrets about repairs you need, have you?”
“Eheheheh,” Rabbit’s voice was high and silly. “Would I do that?”
“Just answer the question, Rabbit,” Peter rolled his eyes but his mustache twitched.
“Hey, I haven’t noticed anything different!” Rabbit gave a jerky shrug. “This kinda thing happens all the time, you know that, nothin’ to worry about. And the audience loves it!”
Peter checked his boiler too, and then went to wake the Jon. Of the three, the Jon seemed the least startled by waking up backstage.
“Are the audience members all gone?” he asked. Peter didn’t answer right away, intent as he was on examining the koi in Jon’s chest. It was floating very still, flicking into motion unexpectedly every minute or so.
“Yeah,” Michael sighed. “But it’s alright. If we can get you working again, we’ll probably have about the same number at our next set.”
“I don’t feel so good,” said the Jon, his eyelids uneven. “Could I get some cotton candy?” A grin crept over his face.
“If you’re working normally,” said Peter. “Get up, if you can.”
The Jon made several wild attempts at getting up but his feet slipped out from under him as if the stage floor were made of ice rather than wood. “Whoops!” he said repeatedly as he fell flat on his back… repeatedly.
“This isn’t looking good,” said Michael.
“Michael,” said Peter, straightening to his full height. “If you could give me a moment alone with the robots.”
“Sure, of course,” said Michael, but he hesitated. “They’re going to be alright, aren’t they?”
“They’ll last the day, if that’s what you mean. Now go on.”
Jon began to wail for cotton candy as Michael walked away and took a seat on one of the empty benches in front of the stage. How could the robots finally break down after all this time? Michael tried to tell himself that nothing lasts forever, not even antique singing robots, but it didn’t really help. Even from a purely selfish perspective, it would be a disaster if they all shut down. He wouldn’t have a band to play for anymore. Where would he go?
….
They made it back to the manor in one piece, and the robots were settled down in nice quiet corners where they could perhaps recover a little from their ordeal. Of course Rabbit and the Jon didn’t like the idea of being left alone with nothing to do and almost zero physical mobility. Michael found himself running errands all evening. He was acting out a play with a few of his own many stuffed animals for the Jon’s enjoyment when Peter came to get him.
"Michael, I’d like to speak with you in my study.”
Michael expected the Jon to complain, but the Jon just gave one of his sad crooning “oh”s which often made their way into his singing.
“I’ll be back soon,” Michael promised, and got to his feet to go follow Peter to the study.
It was an imposing room, with portraits of all four of the previous Peter Walters and then some glaring down ominously at a desk in the center. A gigantic metal giraffe’s head took up a great deal of space but had been repurposed to hold knick-knacks and candles and various other oddities. Peter sat down behind his desk and gestured for Michael to sit opposite.
They weren’t so vastly different in age, Michael and Peter. Michael had been sixteen when he first saw the Steam Man Band playing, and was now twenty. Peter was thirty-one. But Michael recognized him as the undisputed head of the manor, the authority behind the robots. And more than that, he knew that beyond Peter’s eccentricities was a boy who had grown up alone, much like him, and who felt as strongly about the robots as he did.
Right this moment, Peter was looking very grave indeed.
“The robots haven’t been the same since Vietnam.” Peter fiddled with the head of his cane, which bore the image of an upside-down crazy-faced pear. “They’re not going to last at this rate. To be honest, I’m surprised they’ve made it this far, but I was hopeful their luck would stick indefinitely.”
“Nothing’s been the same since Vietnam. Isn’t that what everyone says?” Michael had been born after the war had already started. How was he to know?
“Yes,” said Peter, then took a slow, grumbling breath that should have belonged to a crusty old grandpa. “Mister Reed, I’m about to ask something of you that I shouldn’t. But I’m only going to do it because I know you would want to be given a choice.”
Michael shifted in his seat. “Okay,” he said, waiting.
“Before I ask, though, there are some things you should know about those three. War’s hard on anyone, human or robot alike, but I dare say, for them, the damage might be worse than it would be for a human.”
“Can’t you repair them?” Michael asked. “There has to be some way of figuring out what’s off in their gears or whatever it is. Or is it something that has to do with the blue matter?”
“The functionality of their bodies isn’t all that much worse than it was before the war. I’m talking about internal damage. These are not just clockwork toys, Michael. The blue matter gives them life-a soul, I always liked to think.”
“I know,” said Michael. “They’re alive.”
“But then, it’s not even so simple as that,” Peter mused to himself, stroking his mustache. “Not all of my progenitor’s work is comprehensible to me, but he built laws into the robots. Three laws. Or perhaps these laws came into being at the same time as their consciousness. Either way, they are what they are. Three laws which govern their behavior at all times.”
Michael momentarily wondered what those three laws could possibly be. The robot trio’s only rule seemed to be “act as ridiculous as possible at all times and don’t let the glitches get you down.”
“The laws work in descending order of importance. The first law is that they must never harm human beings or let them be harmed if they can prevent it. The second law is that they must obey humans as long as it doesn’t conflict with the first law. And the third law is that they must protect themselves as long as that doesn’t conflict with the first two laws. Any defiance of these laws is nigh unto impossible and results in stress-mental, psychological, emotional stress if you will. If you believe robots are capable of such things.”
Michael’s eyes widened. “I’ve heard of those. They were in a book I read-”
“-the author of which was fortunate enough to meet one or two of the Walter robots. But that’s a story for another day. The point, Mister Reed, is that these robots were sent into a war zone, and they went missing for seven… years….”
“They never told me about that,” Michael said, shocked. “They just said they were stuck over there for a long time.”
“It’s the truth, but an incomplete one. They were inoperable during most of those years, and I’m almost certain now that it’s because of the stress on the first law which they experienced while they were there. They were faced with terrible circumstances, terrible choices. Do I save this human or that human? These humans or those? Perhaps in attempting to save one human from harm they inadvertently killed others. Such things would cause most robots to go insane or break down. And they did break down. It took me nearly a year to get them running again, and even then, they’ve never been the same. So many malfunctions. Especially Rabbit, but that’s to be expected….”
Michael had never realized just how much he didn’t know. Of course, having lived over eighty years, the robots would have faced so many dark years of the last century. Michael didn’t know his history very well. He knew music, though. That had been enough for the robots.
“Do you understand what I’m saying, Mister Reed?” Michael jerked out of that train of thought and nodded at Peter, who went on. “They can’t be repaired physically. It’s not the physical that needs repairing. It’s their minds.” Peter jabbed two fingers at his own temple. “Somehow we need to take off some of the stress of the three laws.”
“I don’t understand why they were sent into a war if it was just going to kill them.”
“You might ask the same thing about human beings,” huffed Peter. “But we Walters were the only ones who knew about the three laws. Can you imagine what a disaster it would be if people knew the robots would do whatever anyone told them to? They would have been stolen to be used as weapons, rather than … well, ‘borrowed’ with a polite ‘please and thank you’ like they were. The issue of the war is complicated.” Peter sighed and waved a hand. “But the point remains. When I questioned the Spine about what he experienced just before his malfunction, he said he saw someone eating rice, and it reminded him of a village that was stormed by some of the soldiers they were serving. Just the sight of rice was enough to make him completely immobile! Rice! RICE!! You know what sort of international world we live in now? We can’t just go around hoping the Spine never encounters rice ever! It’s RICE!!”
“Whoa, okay. Rice. I get it.” Michael sat up at attention, effectively preventing Peter from going into one of his spaz fits. “That’s bad. So what do we do?”
Peter didn’t reply. He was still muttering something that sounded suspiciously like “rice” under his breath.
“Wait a minute. Why did Rabbit and the Jon malfunction? Was it for the same reason?”
“More or less,” Peter said dismissively. “Alright.” He took a deep breath. “Just remember, this is only an idea. But I wouldn’t be asking you if things weren’t serious. I don’t know if my idea will work, but there is a possibility that if we … … well….” Peter laced his gloved hands together. “The damage is in their souls, which I believe are contained in the blue matter cores. If we could connect the cores to a human soul, which is more resilient in the face of violence and not burdened by the three laws, I believe they might be able to draw strength from that and overcome the crippling effects of their memories.”
“And….” Michael trailed off, realizing what Peter was suggesting. Him. Peter wanted him to volunteer. “Once the souls are connected, how do you… disconnect them?”
“That’s the dangerous part,” Peter grimaced.
3laws!AU where Michael Reed joined the band at age sixteen in 1974.
I am totally just writing this because the concept tickles me so if it sucks I apologize
If you like it well then that's just dandy
This is only the first part ok
Has not been proofread by my writing partner WARNING WARNING lol
3704 words in one sitting
it's good to write big chunks again
It was a small gig. Just some nowhere town in the Midwest that was having a county fair. Big banners with the year on them fluttered in the hot dry breeze: 1978. Kids milled around with harried adults looking at the farm animals and begging for popcorn and cotton candy or tickets to go on the rickety carnival rides while dust made Michael’s nose itch. He tried to keep a straight face and resist the urge to sneeze, but it wasn’t just the dust that made it hard. Rabbit was segueing into the next song.
"I s-s-see you smirkin’ there, buddy.” Rabbit pointed jerkily at a man in a cowboy hat at the back of the mostly-unimpressed audience. His joints creaked, hissed, and groaned with every movement. “We may not look like much, but ah… let’s see how you look when you’re over eighty years old! Eh? Eh? Spine, back me up on this. Come on.”
The Spine opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out. Michael shifted at his place behind the drums. The Spine usually had a line there. Michael had heard it enough times by now that he could hear it perfectly in his head. Gee, I dunno, Rabbit, I don’t think it’s a good idea to insult our audience members….
"Hey. Th’Spine. Hey.” Rabbit stretched an arm out and tapped the Spine on the shoulder repeatedly, his hand flapping back and forth like a paddle. “Hey. Got a frog in your throat? Must be well fed with all these flies buzzin’ around!” Rabbit mimed catching a fly with his tongue, then choking on it.
nbsp; Rabbit was covering well for the Spine’s malfunction, but Michael felt his palms going sweaty on the drumsticks. The Spine wasn’t moving. At all. His face had twitched and he’d started to raise an arm with one finger raised as if about to make a point, but it had frozen in place.
nbsp; "Come on people, work with me here,” Rabbit made a gesture as if pulling the audience toward him. “Spine, these people only have one short lifespan and they aren’t gonna spend it watchin’ you eat flies.” Rabbit shrugged and shook his head with a grin, crouching slightly and poking repeatedly at the same spot on the Spine’s hollow cheek. “You uh, you just g-g-g-gonna stand there until the world ends and all that’s left are g-giant mutant cockroaches?” Rabbit made a creepy-crawly motion with his hands but the Spine remained immobile.
The Jon shuffled over smoothly, sparing one concerned glance at the Spine before leaning around him to stare at Rabbit, feather askew. “Hey, Rabbit! Did I ever tell you where I learned to sing?”
“No, no, you didn’t-certainly wasn’t me-”
“Well!” The Jon leaned back, thumbs tucked under his suspenders. “I met this cockroach-”
“Oh come on, The Jon!” Rabbit’s voice burst out over the dwindling audience in a disbelieving laugh. “That’s ridiculous-cockroaches can’t sing! Everybody knows that! But hey, I’ll tell you what insects can sing. Boy, those beetles! They were really takin’ the world by swarm about a decade ago, ehhh? Ehh? Ehhh-eh-eh-eh-e-hhh-hh-”
Rabbit’s malfunction went on a bit longer than Michael usually expected, but he waited, knowing that sometimes Rabbit purposely continued the effects in order to make a joke out of them. But the vocal glitch continued for a painfully long time, and a clattering sound began and ended with Rabbit collapsing onto his knees, then falling forward off the front of the stage into a heap with a deafening rattle. The Jon’s voice box gave a scrambled sound Michael had never heard before and he fell sideways like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
The last remaining people in the audience waited. There were only about a dozen. Michael sat frozen behind the drums, waiting like the rest of them for this to turn out to be a joke, but he knew something the audience didn’t. The three robots managed to keep their glitches contained on stage most of the time, but this sort of episode happened countless times per day when they weren’t performing. Michael wasn’t sure if he was imagining them getting more serious as time went on. He had only been with the band for four years, ever since that day they’d come to the fair in his own home town and he’d gone up to meet them backstage. They’d been glitchy then, certainly, but Michael had never minded it. It was how he’d always known them to be.
The silence had gone on too long. Michael rose and came forward reluctantly. “Ladies and Gentlemen, we have reached an intermission.” He rubbed his hands together slightly. “Now would be a perfect time to go get some refreshments or enjoy some of the other talented performers here at the fair. Please come back later and enjoy the rest of the show!”
The people trickled away, muttering, and Michael wished they had a curtain. He waited until there were no eyes directly on him, then hopped off the stage to check out Rabbit. His clothes were covered in dust. Michael started patting it off while he checked the robot over and started talking to him. Very rarely was there an obvious mechanical cause for the glitches, and they usually went away on their own.
“Hey, Rabbit, wake up,” Michael said calmly. “Come on, Rabbit!” He struggled to hoist the robot upright. Normally at this point Rabbit shook off whatever kink in his circuitry might be impeding his movements, but this time Rabbit remained limp.
“Mister Walter!” Michael called, and with relief caught sight of the mustached young man walking toward them with his cane. “It’s pretty bad, sir. Do you think it’s the heat? I made them drink plenty of water before the show-”
“I’m afraid it’s nothing like that,” said Peter Walter V. He looked unusually serious. Normally he had a bit of an unsettling grin on his face, and his mustache seemed to naturally curve in such a way as to suggest a smile at all times. But not so at this moment.
“Can you turn him back on?” Michael asked.
“Let’s get them backstage and then we’ll see what I can do.”
Together they hauled first Rabbit, and then the Jon into the cluttered space behind the rickety stage. They left the Spine for last, as he was heaviest. Both of them were panting and sweating by the time they managed to get him out of sight, even with the help of a couple passers-by.
Within a few minutes Peter had worked his magic. The Spine woke up first. His green eyes flashed open. “Gee, I dunno, Rabbit, I don’t think it’s a-hey, wwwwww-wait a minute.” The Spine’s thick “eyebrows” contracted in confusion and he looked around, his head swiveling right-left-right-left with a soft whine. The verbal slur worried Michael. They were pretty rare with the Spine. Something must be truly wrong. “Where am I?” asked the Spine. “We were in the middle of a show!”
“You froze up on stage,” Michael said. “All three of you at about the same time.”
The Spine blinked twitchily and looked over at Rabbit who was still lying prone on the floor. He went to stand up but his limbs shook and the joints wouldn’t stay steady.
“Motor functionality issues,” Peter muttered into his hand, peering at the Spine. He crouched and took out a multi-lense magnifying glass to get a closer look. “Can you remove your shirt?”
The Spine had gone motionless again.
“The Spine! I order you to respond.”
Spine’s head jerked with a clicking noise and gears whirred in his arms but they only lifted slightly before drifting back down. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said, with a perplexed look. He struggled to lift his hands again. “I-gya-it-t-tt-t-”
“Nevermind. It’s worse than I thought.” Peter took one of the malfunctioning arms in both hands and felt along the elbow joint. Then the shoulder, then all three major joints of the other arm. He forcibly moved them in their sockets, testing the resistance of the gears. Finally he rocked back on his heels. “Can you detach from your body?”
The Spine frowned and narrowed his eyes. “No,” he said, and it came out in a scratchy tone.
“Your boiler’s alright.” Peter rapped on the Spine’s chest. “I don’t see any obvious cause. Well, we’ll see if there are any clues with Rabbit and the Jon.” He walked over to Rabbit and performed the same little wake-up call to the blue matter core that he had with the Spine. Michael had watched Peter work on the robots many times but he still hadn’t been let in on the secret of how that substance worked. Rabbit jerked to life within a few seconds.
“Who-wa-woooaaaah. What happened? I was ju-ju-j-j-j-j-just about to get to the good part! Oh hey Pete! Did I get to the punch line?”
“Yeah, Rabbit, you did,” Michael assured him, standing behind Peter. “Then you fell off the stage.”
“What? Fe-fell off the stAAage? Ya kiddin’ me.” Rabbit’s face was stuck in a sort of half-flinch half-grin which was exceptionally asymmetrical. “Hey, where’s my melodica?!” Rabbit’s arm had flicked up to rest against his chest as it sometimes did when the springs went haywire. He lifted his other arm, presumably to push it back down, but a shudder ran through his frame and his fingers writhed before his arm froze in place.
“Rabbit,” said Peter, and the robot turned his attention fully to him. “You were the second to malfunction. You haven’t been keeping any secrets about repairs you need, have you?”
“Eheheheh,” Rabbit’s voice was high and silly. “Would I do that?”
“Just answer the question, Rabbit,” Peter rolled his eyes but his mustache twitched.
“Hey, I haven’t noticed anything different!” Rabbit gave a jerky shrug. “This kinda thing happens all the time, you know that, nothin’ to worry about. And the audience loves it!”
Peter checked his boiler too, and then went to wake the Jon. Of the three, the Jon seemed the least startled by waking up backstage.
“Are the audience members all gone?” he asked. Peter didn’t answer right away, intent as he was on examining the koi in Jon’s chest. It was floating very still, flicking into motion unexpectedly every minute or so.
“Yeah,” Michael sighed. “But it’s alright. If we can get you working again, we’ll probably have about the same number at our next set.”
“I don’t feel so good,” said the Jon, his eyelids uneven. “Could I get some cotton candy?” A grin crept over his face.
“If you’re working normally,” said Peter. “Get up, if you can.”
The Jon made several wild attempts at getting up but his feet slipped out from under him as if the stage floor were made of ice rather than wood. “Whoops!” he said repeatedly as he fell flat on his back… repeatedly.
“This isn’t looking good,” said Michael.
“Michael,” said Peter, straightening to his full height. “If you could give me a moment alone with the robots.”
“Sure, of course,” said Michael, but he hesitated. “They’re going to be alright, aren’t they?”
“They’ll last the day, if that’s what you mean. Now go on.”
Jon began to wail for cotton candy as Michael walked away and took a seat on one of the empty benches in front of the stage. How could the robots finally break down after all this time? Michael tried to tell himself that nothing lasts forever, not even antique singing robots, but it didn’t really help. Even from a purely selfish perspective, it would be a disaster if they all shut down. He wouldn’t have a band to play for anymore. Where would he go?
….
They made it back to the manor in one piece, and the robots were settled down in nice quiet corners where they could perhaps recover a little from their ordeal. Of course Rabbit and the Jon didn’t like the idea of being left alone with nothing to do and almost zero physical mobility. Michael found himself running errands all evening. He was acting out a play with a few of his own many stuffed animals for the Jon’s enjoyment when Peter came to get him.
"Michael, I’d like to speak with you in my study.”
Michael expected the Jon to complain, but the Jon just gave one of his sad crooning “oh”s which often made their way into his singing.
“I’ll be back soon,” Michael promised, and got to his feet to go follow Peter to the study.
It was an imposing room, with portraits of all four of the previous Peter Walters and then some glaring down ominously at a desk in the center. A gigantic metal giraffe’s head took up a great deal of space but had been repurposed to hold knick-knacks and candles and various other oddities. Peter sat down behind his desk and gestured for Michael to sit opposite.
They weren’t so vastly different in age, Michael and Peter. Michael had been sixteen when he first saw the Steam Man Band playing, and was now twenty. Peter was thirty-one. But Michael recognized him as the undisputed head of the manor, the authority behind the robots. And more than that, he knew that beyond Peter’s eccentricities was a boy who had grown up alone, much like him, and who felt as strongly about the robots as he did.
Right this moment, Peter was looking very grave indeed.
“The robots haven’t been the same since Vietnam.” Peter fiddled with the head of his cane, which bore the image of an upside-down crazy-faced pear. “They’re not going to last at this rate. To be honest, I’m surprised they’ve made it this far, but I was hopeful their luck would stick indefinitely.”
“Nothing’s been the same since Vietnam. Isn’t that what everyone says?” Michael had been born after the war had already started. How was he to know?
“Yes,” said Peter, then took a slow, grumbling breath that should have belonged to a crusty old grandpa. “Mister Reed, I’m about to ask something of you that I shouldn’t. But I’m only going to do it because I know you would want to be given a choice.”
Michael shifted in his seat. “Okay,” he said, waiting.
“Before I ask, though, there are some things you should know about those three. War’s hard on anyone, human or robot alike, but I dare say, for them, the damage might be worse than it would be for a human.”
“Can’t you repair them?” Michael asked. “There has to be some way of figuring out what’s off in their gears or whatever it is. Or is it something that has to do with the blue matter?”
“The functionality of their bodies isn’t all that much worse than it was before the war. I’m talking about internal damage. These are not just clockwork toys, Michael. The blue matter gives them life-a soul, I always liked to think.”
“I know,” said Michael. “They’re alive.”
“But then, it’s not even so simple as that,” Peter mused to himself, stroking his mustache. “Not all of my progenitor’s work is comprehensible to me, but he built laws into the robots. Three laws. Or perhaps these laws came into being at the same time as their consciousness. Either way, they are what they are. Three laws which govern their behavior at all times.”
Michael momentarily wondered what those three laws could possibly be. The robot trio’s only rule seemed to be “act as ridiculous as possible at all times and don’t let the glitches get you down.”
“The laws work in descending order of importance. The first law is that they must never harm human beings or let them be harmed if they can prevent it. The second law is that they must obey humans as long as it doesn’t conflict with the first law. And the third law is that they must protect themselves as long as that doesn’t conflict with the first two laws. Any defiance of these laws is nigh unto impossible and results in stress-mental, psychological, emotional stress if you will. If you believe robots are capable of such things.”
Michael’s eyes widened. “I’ve heard of those. They were in a book I read-”
“-the author of which was fortunate enough to meet one or two of the Walter robots. But that’s a story for another day. The point, Mister Reed, is that these robots were sent into a war zone, and they went missing for seven… years….”
“They never told me about that,” Michael said, shocked. “They just said they were stuck over there for a long time.”
“It’s the truth, but an incomplete one. They were inoperable during most of those years, and I’m almost certain now that it’s because of the stress on the first law which they experienced while they were there. They were faced with terrible circumstances, terrible choices. Do I save this human or that human? These humans or those? Perhaps in attempting to save one human from harm they inadvertently killed others. Such things would cause most robots to go insane or break down. And they did break down. It took me nearly a year to get them running again, and even then, they’ve never been the same. So many malfunctions. Especially Rabbit, but that’s to be expected….”
Michael had never realized just how much he didn’t know. Of course, having lived over eighty years, the robots would have faced so many dark years of the last century. Michael didn’t know his history very well. He knew music, though. That had been enough for the robots.
“Do you understand what I’m saying, Mister Reed?” Michael jerked out of that train of thought and nodded at Peter, who went on. “They can’t be repaired physically. It’s not the physical that needs repairing. It’s their minds.” Peter jabbed two fingers at his own temple. “Somehow we need to take off some of the stress of the three laws.”
“I don’t understand why they were sent into a war if it was just going to kill them.”
“You might ask the same thing about human beings,” huffed Peter. “But we Walters were the only ones who knew about the three laws. Can you imagine what a disaster it would be if people knew the robots would do whatever anyone told them to? They would have been stolen to be used as weapons, rather than … well, ‘borrowed’ with a polite ‘please and thank you’ like they were. The issue of the war is complicated.” Peter sighed and waved a hand. “But the point remains. When I questioned the Spine about what he experienced just before his malfunction, he said he saw someone eating rice, and it reminded him of a village that was stormed by some of the soldiers they were serving. Just the sight of rice was enough to make him completely immobile! Rice! RICE!! You know what sort of international world we live in now? We can’t just go around hoping the Spine never encounters rice ever! It’s RICE!!”
“Whoa, okay. Rice. I get it.” Michael sat up at attention, effectively preventing Peter from going into one of his spaz fits. “That’s bad. So what do we do?”
Peter didn’t reply. He was still muttering something that sounded suspiciously like “rice” under his breath.
“Wait a minute. Why did Rabbit and the Jon malfunction? Was it for the same reason?”
“More or less,” Peter said dismissively. “Alright.” He took a deep breath. “Just remember, this is only an idea. But I wouldn’t be asking you if things weren’t serious. I don’t know if my idea will work, but there is a possibility that if we … … well….” Peter laced his gloved hands together. “The damage is in their souls, which I believe are contained in the blue matter cores. If we could connect the cores to a human soul, which is more resilient in the face of violence and not burdened by the three laws, I believe they might be able to draw strength from that and overcome the crippling effects of their memories.”
“And….” Michael trailed off, realizing what Peter was suggesting. Him. Peter wanted him to volunteer. “Once the souls are connected, how do you… disconnect them?”
“That’s the dangerous part,” Peter grimaced.