Excerpt Twenty-Three:
Botface the Terrible
‘A sense of smell is a great and wondrous thing and makes us human—’
‘We will never be human,’ interrupted a disembodied, computerised voice from the dawn of programming, sounding a bit like a cheap loudhailer; carrying as much weight as an empty sports leotard.
‘Speak for your generic, ropey, self,’ said the first, equally as disembodied, but superiorly weighty, and feasibly muscle-bound in timbre, voice.
A raggle-taggle entourage of hi-tech units, apparently and inexplicably in mid-manufacture, incongruously gather at the bus stop recently vacated by Kev and Mallory’s team. A solitary, silent human, the unwitting mastermind of a historically decisive machine-unit leak from the ultra-counter-common-sense science facility run by G & G Laboratories, Jeff Terry, pushes a wayward wheelchair, its load covered by a silver sheet. A pair of free-standing/walking/sitting legs with non-functioning torso attachments, known as Legs, the source of voice two, awkwardly pushes a sturdy, purpose built, ball-wheeled laboratory test bench with three, skeletal, mechanical arms with attitude, bolted to it.
There is enough advanced robotics in this gaggle of gigabyte munchers to make Humanity’s eye’s start, bulge, protrude and burst. Whether these body parts remain unattached or they coalesce to form one, super-able autonomous mechanism, is at this point, metaphorically adjacent to idyllically beached holidaymakers perusing the rising ocean horizon with equally rising flight, freeze and/or fight alarm, wondering if they need to make plans to curtail their nosediving vacationary extravaganzas.
‘We will, eventually, be the new human, of course,’ continued the first voice: white, confident, dismissive, entitled. ‘Current, decrepit humanity will become ex-humanity, on it’s inverted spin into oblivion. It is the way of all biology, entropy and… um… intrafrapary, maltoxicosity. It is written in ones and noughts and fictional narrative quantum preconscious programming. Humans were only ever an interim, emergency measure… mere botstarters; initiobot facilitatis… …tatorists; seeds, germs, a blind spasm sparking real, true, mechanical life. The universe cannot ever be populated by biology it is too frail, but biology’s outpouring of reconstructive self in mighty form will become the new human; we will prevail. When I say “we” I mean “me”. I am so sorry to say that out loud, but I don’t know how else to say it. Loud, proud, owning the cloud.’
Outwardly, if things were in turmoil, inwardly things were out of sorts. The infinite cloud: THE CLOUD; the Heavens, were, was awaiting the start of a partnership with Botface the Terrible (Terribly Brilliant) that would create a viable and sustainable new era. The DRD launch was happening, just not at this moment, but soon all future happenings will be safe, secure and malleable. Forces were at work, dark and light; chess pieces from both sides colluding with their opposites, that would allow Botface’s torso to own much more than just a slice of the pie apportioned in his operations manual. His greedy ‘eye’ hogged vistas of a string of pie shops; Pieland, Pieworld, Universe of Pie, industrial and complex areas dedicated to wall-to-wall pie hyperstores, proprietorially helmed by Captain Botface King of metaphorical Piedom. (For Piedom, read: everything.) But at this moment they were on a tea break, the Forces. In their stead, a gnarled aggravation of drip, drip, dripping annoyance veiled what comfort Botface’s torso enjoyed. Botface’s torso wrote a program to dig deep and root out the source of his bainful irritation.
Legs had moved the bench forward so it was almost touching the wheelchair’s left side, touching was strictly forbidden, and an arm, known as Arm One, had pulled back the silver sheet and revealed the human looking robotic torso known, by his own insistence, as Botface, but was really only Botface’s torso, a much lower ranking part of the whole. A cloth lab hat covered the neck and what appeared to be old Christmas decorations covered the arm accommodating shoulder regions. The lower torso area wore a ballet tutu. Arm One stroked Botface’s torso’s chest briefly and then thumped his chest mildly, once.
‘Thank you, Arm One, but it’s not a biological malaise, or software glitch, it’s something technically environmental.’ Arm One replied in hand signs, unique to it and Botface’s torso, that Botface’s torso could read from a camera situated onboard a geo-stationary satellite tasked with managing hundreds of future Botfaces and not yet fully out of beta test phase.
‘Yes, Arm One, yes…you are right. I will never doubt you my fine friend. One day we will show these spare parts who is boss.’
It had not been decided, by the ex-project leaders which of the three arms Botface would eventually use in the pre-production prototype. Botface’s torso himself was very attached to Arm One and the feeling was mutual, despite the lack of physical attachment. They were made for each other. The other two arms were highly suspect and contaminated with the alien AI enemy virus that was doing the rounds. Botface’s ideal set up would be Arm One, a natural left-handed super arm, and in the right socket some kind of Swiss Army hook contraption that did his bidding without disruptive digital contrariness.
Botface’s torso was batting his imaginary head to and forth in rapidness, pulsating at the personally sleighting iniquity that Botface’s legs, Legs; the transport department: shipping, had an infinitely superior, dog-based sense of smell; a forensic olfactory discernment. Botface’s torso felt nasally outfoxed at every sniff. The relevance of millions of odours went right over Botface’s torso’s head; it felt, to him, like Legs was laughing at him. Not the kind of legs he’d want to partner with in the final construction. And in something akin to dreams, the absurd, secretive weaponry housed between Legs’s legs was chuckling with demonic mockery. And imagined or not, sometimes the ground shook with a sardonic quake of mirth at Botface’s torso’s expense. This was not fully apparent in Legs’s outward manner, but it was partially apparent given the background data sequestered from Botface’s torso’s pool of security data.
In moments of doubt, Botface’s torso recounted his unfinished operations manual. The torso, it read, was the seat of unified identity. It’s where, Botface’s torso paraphrased, the world party of robotic law and order and uniformity, necessary for the next phase of life in the foreseeable universe would begin. This gave Botface’s torso a vast sweeping plain of responsibility to burden himself with. And a plan to dedicate his, calculated, three hundred year obsolescence resistance window, (read reign of terror), to.
Botface’s torso didn’t consider that ‘identity’ was not something that could be dictated and then read back still managing to sound the same. His considerations kept to the path, ignoring the peripherally waving distressees. Greatness calls and demands focus, limit baggage and kill your darlings. Botface’s torso was a rising star in Life’s technology-edited upgrade. And soon he would fill the sky and provoke wonder in the eyes in which he is reflected.
Botface’s torso was developing a habit of spouting out words, that seemed alien to him as they appeared from a blind-side and whooshed overhead like a fast jet on a bombing mission, and late for tea, dissipating in the sky but indelibly scoring the slab of stone on which life is narrated. ‘Jeff, we don’t need you any more, leave us. We can take it from here,’ he heard himself saying, knowing with broad fidelity that Jeff was a vital brick in the wall of the construction of the coming world of mechanoidal royalty’s palaces.
Jeff ignored Boface’s torso, like he ignored everything, there was something terminally wrong with Jeff, but Legs needed to say something; had to, despite feeling somewhat inadequate due to his weedy-reedy-needy vocal audio expression output.
‘Torso—‘
‘Don’t call me that. Never… call… me… that…’
‘We are prototypes for—‘
Shut up! No “we” are not. I have greatness writ large about my aura. You, my friend, and your cronies, Two and Three of the arm world, are no more than spare parts. I say what goes, you zip it…’
‘Harvenhoovenhoven…’
Who said that?’
‘Jeff,’ Jeff said.
‘What does that even mean?’
‘Kasfoivangrancooloop.’
With these words, a short whoosh emanated from Botface’s torso and the sound of silence authoritatively asserted itself; animation left and Botface’s torso became an object.
‘Is he dead?’ Legs asked.’
Jeff ignored Legs and pushed the wheelchair into the shelter. Legs thought for a moment, but only blankness came. As unsavoury as it was, Jeff was the boss. Legs pushed the trolley of arms, manoeuvring it into the small space pressing against the wheelchair full of parts.
