CHEESEBURGER BROWN: SCIFI STORY-WALLAH

Bobo, Chapter 20

2012-02-05T18:21:00.002-05:00

Bobo is a novella-like literary structure, as whipped up from things I found around the house by me, your McGyver-like host, Cheeseburger Brown. This is the twentieth installment.

eBooks Update: I tried to make the Kindle editionof Simon of Space free, but Amazon wouldn't let me. So it's 99 centsinstead. I know most of you have already read that one, but I'm putting it out there so you might send the link along to a Kindle-wielding friend who hasn't read it but might like it, or whatnot. I have restored the original cover. The web version remains free.

For those of you outside of the Amazon ecosystem, four of my novella-length titles are now available at Smashwords. Scroll down to find versions of The Long Man, Night Flight Mike, The Bikes of New York and Tim, Destroyer of Worlds in all of the popular non-Amazon ebook formats.

Meanwhile, the legend of Bobo carries on...

Oscar looked up from his desk to watch himself pace.

The office was makeshift. His jacket hung from an intravenous fluids stand. His coffee steamed from a urine sample jar. He sat in a wheelchair. A cigar smouldered untended in a kidney-shaped vomit dish.

Suddenly he growled, "Will you stop that infernal pacing!"

His double looked over, brow raised. "You want me to take a break, sir?"

Oscar nodded. "Take a break. Take a nap. Take a pill. I don't care -- just give me some peace."

The window opacified and the double left. The show was over. Oscar pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a long sigh. This vigil was killing him.

He was just screwing the top back on his secret flask when someone knocked abruptly on the door. He looked up, licking his lips in prelude to an angry objection. But the door was already opening.

Oscar slammed the desk drawer.

The woman was tall. Her robots closed the door softly behind her. Her robes were impressive and expensive, if somewhat severe in cut. She approached the desk and looked down a long nose at him.

Her eyes were hard. This was no amateur. Oscar stood up to the stranger's level. "Won't you sit?"

"I won't," she said. "It is a poor habit. It achieves only corpulence."

"Ah. You're from Ishtar. Charmed, I'm sure."

"Swallow that snot, politician. This conversation represents the fulfillment of your aspirations and you will do as you are told."

"I beg your pardon?"

It wouldn't be fair to say she smiled, but something changed in her expression. "Difficult as it may be to fathom given your facile transparency, your so-called movement has found the momentum it needs to win the day. The standing government will be dissolved. There are consequences to that."

She snapped her fingers. Oscar's robots wilted, torsos hanging limp from their rigid waists, arms swinging slowly to a rest. Oscar took a startled step backward, running into his chair. "Is this an assassination?"

"No," said the stranger. "An education."

He narrowed his eyes. "Who are you?"

"I am Ishtari Julia Roboticist. I have come to discuss your mascot."

Oscar's eyes widened again but he mastered his expression quickly. "I've heard of you, naturally. Your reputation is panstellar. But I had no idea...that you were so attractive."

"You cannot flatter me, politician. You nauseate me to try."

"Ah."

She straightened. "You are to tell me why this Bobo unit lies in a human hospital. You will refrain from filigree in your speech, and focus exclusively on the most relevant facts."

"What does an Ishtari care about Eridian affairs?"

"You are ignoring my directives," said Ishtari Julia Roboticist. "Do not force my robots to resort to physicality."

Oscar cleared his throat. "There's no need for threats. We are civilized people both, aren't we?"

She said nothing.

Oscar glanced over at her robots. He sat down in his chair and took up his cigar, puffing it to life. "You're being needlessly unpleasant. That's your culture, I suppose. You should understand that I'm not really a politician. I'm a professor. I just happened to write an influential book at an opportune time. As Bobo's proxy I stand in the limelight only by happenstance."

Ishtari Julia Roboticist sniffed. To the robot on her left she said, "Break a finger."

Oscar held up his hands. "Wait, wait, wait. I have a point! Won't you listen? I'm trying to tell you what you want to know." He gave her his best smile. "Please, let's be reasonable."

"Lies are intolerable," she said.

Oscar's finger sounded a muted pop as the bone split. He yanked his hand free and held it with the other, eyes pinched shut in pain. His breathing was ragged. His face was red. His beard was mussed.

"How much do you know?" he hissed.

"Continue your account."

Oscar managed to puff on his cigar with a shaking hand. "Bobo lies in a human hospital because the people love him," he said. "They would not stand to see him without dignity, strung up in a repair shop. They seized him and took him here. I've had my office moved to this ward so I can sit vigil over him, just like the crowd outside that window."

"Who attends to the machine?"

"No one. Bobo attends to himself -- at least so far as we can discern. He's unresponsive but he's put up a security screen around himself. It is the opinion of my robotics advisor that he has entered into the robotic equivalent of a coma, for the purposes of self-repair."

She raised a brow ever so faintly. "You will explain how the robot was damaged."

"He was shot. By a random lunatic."

When Oscar had recovered from having the next finger being broken he said, "My staff found him, that crazed junkman. He already hated Bobo. The arrangements were easy."

"You disposed of Bobo so that you yourself might assume his notoriety on behalf of the reform movement."

"Yes," said Oscar, cradling his wounded hand. "I admit it," he said huskily with a nervous glance at the robots flanking him.

"This new popularity has won you the leadership of the party."

"Yes."

"You intend to lead the new government after the election."

"Yes, I do. And damn it I'll be good. I really will be." He trailed off, eyes unfocused at the window, then turned back to her. "I'm going to level the playing field. Come hell or high water, I swear I'm bringing those Zorannic bastards down."

"You are not an advocate of robot rights."

"You're right. I'm not. It's human rights I care about."

Ishtari Julia Roboticist's mouth twitched. "You agree that Bobo must go."

"I pray for it. If he dies the election will surely be mine."

She offered him a wan smirk. "The election will be yours. I am not speculating, but rather informing you."

"Tomorrow is voting day."

"A formality. You will form the new government because Ishtar allows it. Our legal advisors will help you draft the legislative steps required to unseat the Zorannic machines here on Eridu."

"And what must I do in return?"

"Release the robot to me," said Ishtari Julia Roboticist. She spread her arms. "Nothing more."

"You want Bobo?"

"I do."

Oscar let a smile spread slowly over his lips. "I'll consider it."

"I will take him now."

"You won't. Go on -- I've got eight fingers to go. If you want him so badly, and I can tell that you do, you'll take him when I say and you'll take him on my terms. I can have parliament without help, you Ishtari dog. If the reformers are denied the mandate the people will riot. Mark my words. Whether by grace or blood I'll rule Eridu tomorrow."

"How dare you?"

"You've overplayed your hand, you reeking anus. Get the hell out of my office."

She did. Oscar quickly used his good hand to open his desk drawer but realized immediately he had no way of unscrewing the cap of his flask. Oscar glowered. He tasted bile. He kicked the drawer shut and stabbed at his watch, roaring for security. When two agents from the security firm arrived Oscar had one beat the other, and then vice versa. "You're fired," he said when both men were bloody.

Next he used his watch to contract on credit for a quintet of elite personal bodyguard robots, and asked for them to be built to order with upgrades that promised to deliver the cutting edge in violence: poison, fire, and unfettered physicality.

Nurses arrived to heal his fingers but Oscar waved them away angrily. "Not until after the press conference, you ninnies," he bellowed, dabbing sweat from his brow. "You don't stumble on good luck like this every day."

He ordered the guard on Bobo redoubled, and in a fit of anti-diplomatic combustion insisted that the entire hospital be, until further notice, off-limits to offworlders. His secretary brought him a little white pill and some water. He gingerly fed his injured hand through his sleeve and shrugged on his jacket. "Make-up!" he called. "Worsen my pallor!"

Bobo, Chapter 19

2012-01-29T16:37:00.000-05:00

Bobo is a fairly long but reasonably interesting story, as output by me, your humble host, Cheeseburger Brown. This is the nineteenth installment.

The telling continues...

The rally was scheduled for noon. The din could be heard from the outskirts.

Bobo's limousine swept in over the hills toward the city, its shadow slithering over the treetops. The driver rode low, for discretion. Birds scattered and complained ahead of the bowshock.

The windows reflected a blue sky specked with globs of cumulus. Behind them Bobo brooded. His eyes hummed as they zoomed in on the distant downtown core, picking out from among the spires the low, wide-slung dome of the temple of the Zorannic robots. Without turning around he asked, "Do they ever come out?"

"Are you asking if they'll take notice of your rally?" asked Oscar, tracing his gaze.

"I'm asking what I'm asking," said Bobo.

John said, "The temple opens if there's a need, Bobo. In colonial times we used to need them a lot, but not so much anymore. I don't think the doors have opened in ages. Certainly not since I was a girl."

Bobo turned to face them. "Is it possible there is no such thing as Zorannic robots?"

John looked confused. Oscar smirked. "There are proofs available to those with privileged access. Do you disbelieve in them?"

Bobo shrugged. "The trust this culture lends them is remarkable. How was it earned?"

Oscar's smirk deepened in the corners before he cleared his face and snorted impatiently through his nostrils. "History," he said. "It was a Zorannic executive who guided us here, after our ark was lost in space. It was Zorannic leadership that curbed the chaos and founded these planets. And it was Zorannic knowledge that reconnected us with the rest of the Solar diaspora." Oscar spread his hands, a glint in his eye. "If that trust were unfounded, we would be all of us fools."

The limo lurched as it swayed against a gust of wind. Bobo looked at John. "Is Zorannic sentience founded on faith?"

"No," said John, looking aside at Oscar uneasily. "Cognitive engines based on simplified versions of Zorannic prototypes are available for study. We have a few on file at the Women's University. You see, there are specific test conditions the results of which can be analyzed for patterns consistent with self-awareness. So in a way the Zorannics' claim to consciousness is tested all the time, by every freshman class in robotics." She reached out and put her hand on Bobo's forearm. "Do you think it would help gain support if you were analyzed like that?"

"No thank you," said Bobo, turning back to the view.

The limousine slowed. The streets below were packed, the crowd dotted with glowing placards and holographic glyphs projected over their heads. Police enforcers walked heavily before the barricades. The driver manoeuvred carefully over a cordoned-off parking platform ringed by journalists. As the limo descended the lights of their cameras winked on.

Bobo adjusted his tie and turned to John. "How do I look?"

"You look great, Bobo. You look fabulous."

Oscar spoke silently into a subvocal mic and then gave Bobo a nod. Bobo opened the door and straightened out of the car. Journalists surged forward. Bobo's pupils shrank against the glare even as his hand extended forward to shake. John and Oscar followed in his wake as the robot worked the crowd. He told a joke and the reporters roared. A girl on a nearby balcony screamed "I love you Bobo!" with her eyes squeezed zealously shut.

Bobo waved.

Handlers escorted him to the podium where he was even now being introduced by an excitable young man with a revolutionary moustache. He stepped aside as Bobo mounted the platform. Bobo raised his right arm high above his head and the public square seemed to boil suddenly with riotous applause and hooting cheers. When he lowered his arm the noise diminished respectfully.

He waited a beat. Expectation drew taut.

"When human civilization first encountered extrasolar life," he began quietly, "the concept of justice at the heart of our legal apparatus was tested. But history bore out our faith: the tendency to prejudice was no match for the Solar resolve to go forward into the galaxy as a morally upright civilization. Intelligent aliens were treated as peers, and that mutual respect lay the foundation for a lasting panstellar peace."

Applause. Nods from the very important persons on the platform. Placards reared high.

"The law was prepared for this flexibility," Bobo continued, "because it had already grown to accommodate the reality of Zorannic intelligence. I ask you now to consider the application of that same spirit of adaptability to the cause I represent: for I was born a robot, my friends, but I intend to die a citizen."

The people enthused. It was deafening. Their cries were joined by the electronic warbling and joyous beeping of robots dressed in odd hats and torn shirts, trousers fished from the trash tucked into mismatched rainboots. Many of them wore their clothing incorrectly but never the less proudly. Some of them had mittens and scarves despite the summer heat.

As Bobo scanned the crowd he spotted the man in the yellow jumpsuit: the anti-physician himself had come to see him speak.

"The Charter of Centauri is outdated," declared Bobo crisply. "To recognize the diversity of intelligences on this world and her sister, I call for the drafting of a new guarantee by the people and for the people, making explicit our modern understanding of the brotherhood we share as thinking things. I call for a referendum, and I furthermore call for the inclusion of every reasoning thing within the jurisdiction of this stellar system, without prejudice. One mind, one vote."

At this cue a massive holographic banner illuminated in the air over the speaking platform. In both the common verbal protocol and local Eridian dialect it boldly proclaimed ONE MIND, ONE VOTE.

"One mind, one vote! One mind, one vote!" echoed the crowd in contagious rhythm once seeded by well-placed members of the party. "One mind, one vote!"

The man in the yellow jumpsuit had worked his way closer now. Bobo tracked him carefully as he raised his arm for renewed silence. A cascade of failures in the security grid tracked along with the man, a spot of blindness clinging to him like a shadow.

"My friends!" Bobo said, lulling the people to attention again. "My friends! I know that you are good people. I know that your hearts are open, and your philosophies merciful. I know you have forgiven me my transgressions despite my transgressions being unforgivable. In light of such generosity of spirit I can do nothing else but persist in this effort, on behalf of those who cannot."

An enforcer seized, a wisp of smoke rising from one leg. Cops from the technical division jogged over to check it out. The man in the yellow jumpsuit crossed the barrier at their heels.

Spoke Bobo, "But this effort will remain only symbolic so long as our enemies refuse to acknowledge my sense of agency and my subjective experience of the world as a thinking, feeling, acting member of society."

The crowd agreed that this was key. They clapped and rang and beeped and pant-hooted. They stomped feet if they had any. The cacophony rose to a frothing peak.

Bobo straightened with great dignity and cried out, "I am not a human being, but am I not I?"

This is when first shot cracked the air.

"You killed my cousin you unprogrammed son of a dog!" bellowed the man in the yellow jumpsuit, eye leveled along the barrel of his shoulder-mounted assault rifle. "You mighta fooled every other body on this fool world but you can't fool me." This is when he fired the second shot.

Bobo fell.

Several things happened simultaneously. Yellow jumpsuit was tackled by a civilian and then the both of them were jazzed silly by a cadre of cops in riot gear. Police enforcers swung into motion locking down every entrance to and exit from the square. The crowd gasped and turned seemingly liquid, eddies of panic blooming and churning at the feet of the enforcers blocking the way.

The woman in charge of the invisible anti-projectile wall between the speaking platform and the audience looked up so suddenly she concussed her head against the underside of the generator's hood, where she had been chasing the inexplicable systems failure that blipped through her system. Her first thought was that she had probably lost her job.

John threw herself over Bobo's prone form, looking around wildly for the shooter. "Do they have him?" she screamed at the police liason. "Is there more than one?"

The police liason had splinters of Bobo's carapace embedded in the left side of his face, and was not capable of liasing with anyone. He was very distressed, and making a mess on the platform. A medic rushed over to him.

The young man with the revolutionary moustache was stuttering at the podium in a futile attempt to calm the crowd. Oscar took his elbow and led him aside. "Go wherever they take him, be seen with him," counseled Oscar, eyes elsewhere. "Leave the people to me," he said, turning back to the podium.

Bobo, Chapter 18

2012-01-23T14:44:00.001-05:00

Bobo is breathlessly told science-fiction yarn, as spun by me, your lexicographically crocheting host, Cheeseburger Brown. This is the eighteenth installment.

The story continues...

In the far northland only conifers grew. They looked like spears silhouetted against the spangled sky, the country darkness revealing endless fields of tiny stars and laying plain the most tenuous filaments of the Solar Nebula -- a blotch of gas which had once been a small star, which had once been the only sun people knew.

The sky turned and the nebula dipped beneath the horizon. The reformer watched it.

He looked down at his watch. It whispered to him. He looked up again as the lamps from John's jalopy began plying the space between pines. Their light swept over him as she circled the car and then brought it down in the clearing, the tips of the trees swaying in the downdraft.

The engine quieted and the doors popped open. Two figures straightened out of the vehicle. The taller of the two raised a finger to point out the reformer in the darkness. Both started toward him.

He cleared his throat and dried off the palms of his hands against his slacks. It had been twenty years since he had last seen the attractive archaeologist.

"Oscar?"

"Johnny, my dear. It's been a dog's age."

"How are you?"

"Older."

"I'd say you look good but I can't see a thing."

They walked to the cabin. Inside the single room was a tattered easy chair and sofa, a coffee table covered in heavily annotated books, and a small fusion furnace with a video of a fireplace playing on its front. Oscar gestured to the sofa and John sat down. The reformer turned to the other figure.

"Bobo, I presume."

"Sir," said Bobo with a slight nod.

"Won't you make yourself comfortable? Please, have a seat. Take off your coat and hat."

The robot undressed. He wore an inexpensive grey suit and a beige collared shirt, but no tie. With a practiced tug on his trouser pleats he lowered himself into the sofa beside John, then crossed his legs. The reformer watched all this with an expression of detachment but the sparkle in his eyes betrayed some amusement.

To John he said, "You haven't aged a day." While she blushed he turned back to Bobo. "You must understand, Bobo, that no matter how noble a cause you might represent you've got an uphill battle if you want anyone on this planet to view you as something other than a monster."

"Sir, I have been treated monstrously. Ought not a threatened man act to preserve his health?"

"You're not a man, and you're not possessed of health," said Oscar sharply, but then he sat down in the easy chair and scratched his greying beard. "But it's a good angle never the less. Self-defense is a reasonable foundation for a rationale…as long as we can show there's a ‘self' to be defended."

"Well of course there is –" John started.

Oscar held up a hand. "That isn't the issue. It isn't a question of whether he is sentient, but rather a question of whether that can be shown."

She furrowed her brow and sat forward. "What do you mean?"

"Consider," said Oscar, his voice taking on a professorial tone, "how would we know the difference between a sentient robot and a robot emulating sentience? Both would do and say similar things. Both would claim the same sense of self-awareness. Couldn't either of them be a liar?"

"Robots don't lie."

"Ah, but robots don't claim to be self-aware, either. At least, non-Zorannic robots don't. So we are dealing with an anomaly. Our assumptions concerning robot behaviour may no longer hold true. Think about it this way: unless such a conscious robot were entirely egocentric, it would realize the utility of lies. Manipulating the world-view of others is, frankly, central to human relations. That is to say that lying might only not be at odds with sentience, it may be predicated on it."

John frowned. "To what end? Why would a robot try to convince us he was sentient if he wasn't?"

Oscar leaned back and laced his hands behind his head. "Well, how do we treat sentient and non-sentient people differently?"

"There's no such thing as a non-sentient person. Personhood requires it."

"What about those handicapped mentally by injury or a congenital condition? What about coma patients and the dying and small children? Do we afford them full personhood? We don't. We treat them as special conditions where their right to compassion is taken as read, but not defended by the person themselves. We use laws or guardians to defend those rights in their stead. In short, a person we acknowledge as sentient can make legally-binding decisions. Non-sentient persons or persons with impaired sentience have that power curtailed or revoked, depending on outside appraisals of their cognitive wherewithal."

"That's what we're trying to do, aren't we? Appraise his sentience externally."

"Or it's exactly what he's trying to do: to acquire the power to control his own fate by causing us to believe his state is comparable to personhood." Oscar leaned forward, eyes on Bobo as he spoke to John. "That's the point, Johnny -- we can't tell the difference from outside. Either Bobo is as he claims to be, or he is a sociopathic manipulator exploiting our compassion for his own uses."

Bobo tilted his head slightly sideways, but said nothing. Little lubricated membranes of plastic closed over his eyes and then opened again, polishing the glass.

John cleared her throat. "Which do you think he is, Oscar?"

Oscar looked over at her, face softening. "Oh hell, Johnny, I don't care. This is politics. Appearance is everything. The question is simply one of utility, as we may have to forestall the opposition's objections. All I'm considering is how he can serve the cause."

John flashed him a cold look. "I came here for his sake, not for yours."

He gave her a tight little smile in return. "You remain charmingly naïve, Johnny. I think your life must be very sheltered at that women's university. The truth is we can very likely help each other: by putting Bobo forward as truly sentient, we may break the Zorannics' monopoly on non-human sentience. Suddenly the whole boatload of their ‘special rights' comes into question, and their place as overlords on this world is weakened."

John raised a brow. "Overlords? Isn't that a touch dramatic? The Zorannic robots have served the human race for generations. Our best interest is their only concern."

Oscar shook his head. "No, Johnny, the preservation of their exclusive access to forbidden technologies is their only concern. Whatever anyone else may tell you, in truth it all comes down to Dr. Zoran's carefully cloistered mathematics and the Zorannic robots' absolutely dedicated protection of them. This is understood on the more modern panstellar worlds but lost in the noise of tradition here at Centauri. It is one of the many reasons we remain so hopelessly backward in this system."

John smirked. "Because the Zorannics are keeping us down?"

Oscar nodded, expression tight and serious. "Precisely. Ishtar and Eridu are together the seat of the Zorannic religion. Without our support they might find their causes very much underrepresented in the Callicratian parliament and that, I argue, would be a benefit to humankind as a whole. Self-determination! Dignity! Control! These are what we have given up to our nursemaids, the Zorannics. Reversing that friendly tyranny is the central object of the reform movement."

"You're still so passionate."

"I believe in a free future for all Centaurics. I always have."

John sighed. "I always admired your sense of conviction."

Oscar glanced over at Bobo. He cleared his throat, then looked back over at John. "It would be great to catch up."

John bit her lip. "Bobo? Can you do me a favour?"

"Madam," replied Bobo with a dip of his head.

"Walk the perimeter of the property, Bobo. I'd sleep safer knowing you've had a look round -- you know, just in case. Can you do that for me?"

"Madam," he said again, straightening from the sofa. "Sir."

They watched Bobo go, then turned to face one another again. John dropped her eyes bashfully as she started to open the seam of her shirt. "Maybe we could turn down the lights? I've aged twenty years and I'd rather pretend you can't notice."

Oscar reached out and put a hand on hers, stopping it. John looked confused and stung. Quietly but insistently Oscar said, "We're in danger. You can appreciate that, can't you?"

John furrowed her brow. She shook her head and gathered her shirtfront at her sternum. "Why?"

"That thing wants us for something. And it isn't going to give up until it gets what it wants."

"It?" repeated John with a frown. "You sound like a Reullian, a robot-hater. Are you afraid of him?"

Oscar nodded grimly. "So should you be," he said.

"Then you won't help us?"

"It's ‘us' now, is it?"

John said nothing.

Oscar shrugged. "Of course I'll help you. There's no going back now. Bobo -- as you prefer it -- is now aware of the reform movement. If it serves his ends to strengthen the cause, then it serves the cause to help him. But let's neither of us pretend to know his mind; the next phase of his plan is his secret to keep until we find a way to compel him."

John looked up, her eyes concerned. "Compel him? How?"

Oscar smiled mirthlessly. "Everyone can be compelled somehow, my dear. Just give me time."