The Iridium Pendulum

Joshua weighed over six hundred pounds, but Robby easily maneuvered him onto the piceous metal coffin Doc called the iridium pendulum.

“Did you kill him?” asked Robby as he rolled back out of the elevator and onto the train station floor. There was a childlike tremulousness to his voice.

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Doc, but he did.

From around the corner, singing came from inside the Quantum Cloud’s enclosure. The aging, aether bound computer claimed it was duplicating the music of the spheres, but to Doc it sounded more like Gimme Shelter by the Rolling Stones.

“You switched Joshua off,” said Robby. “Does that kill him? You can’t do that to people without killing them. But when you turn us on and off, we come back to life. But is it really life, Doc? Can we really die?”

On the iridium pendulum, Joshua lay still, a ghastly study in cybernetic mortuary art.

“If no one ever turns you back on, you’re dead,” said Doc.

They’d had variations of this discussion many times before. Robby, he thought, would have given Philip Dick nightmares.

Robby’s mind was different than the others he’d created. It was a different technology he’d been experimenting with to see if… what? He mulled that over as he secured the massive metal locks that would hold Joshua, no matter how violent he became. When he’d secured the last mechanism, he decided he was too drunk and too tired to remember. It involved parallel collision thought evolvement grids, but that was all that came to mind.

“Is that true?” asked Robby.

Joshua’s thinking was linear. Straightforward and to the point.

The Quantum Cloud’s thinking was a mandala-like inversion wrapped in string theory. There were no linear pathways of if this, then that. His brain was a dithyrambic explosion of simultaneous possibilities careening into the concrete walls of reality.

Robby’s thinking, though, was based on membranous rupture theory, a construct created during Doc’s darkest hours. The young robot sometimes thought like an evolving child possessed by incomprehensible forgiveness and empathy. But… somewhere within his programming, was a poisoned pill that Doc called the Dark Judge.

The Quantum Cloud used to be Doc’s closest confidant, and other than Doc, only he knew of the maleficent artifact hidden in Robby’s mental machinery. But with the degradation of Quantum’s cognitive processes, Doc doubted that the aging supercomputer could now bring it to mind on a good day. The memory of that caged black rage in Robby probably still wandered the chambers of Quantum’s thoughts, haunting him in the way of Doc’s long dead aunt, who roamed her house on storm swept nights, hearing voices in the window rattles and ugly whispers from cracked open closet doors.

“Is it true?” said Doc. “It might be. Not all things can be understood. Life and death are a little out of our league, Robby.”

“Then why do I want to know?”

That was the crux of it. Joshua would have said, “Okay,” or “My head hurts.” Robby felt no such restraints or encumbrances. The entire basis of membranous rupture theory was that if you kept pushing on the tenebrous divide between universes, eventually the pressure would rupture that separation. Why do I want to know? Why do I want to know? Why do I want to know would become “I do know” solely because of the repetition. No additional input was required to achieve that change other than the continual pressure of asking the same question over and over without regard to the answer until the mental membrane ruptured.

“Maybe you could look in the Book of Proverbs for the answer to that,” said Doc. “Solomon had the brains to answer that, not me. All I know are robots and whiskey, my boy.”
Doc suddenly bridled again at the children who’d thrown acid on Robby’s dome. He looked better now, but the nubilous pitting would leave him partially blind. In the aftermath of the Rapture and the ensuing chaos, Doc no longer had access to the materials and equipment necessary to recreate Robby’s unique enclosure. How could he tell a childlike robot capable of epic mass destruction that it would be disfigured for the rest of its life? He couldn’t, so he lied.

“Are you angry, Doc?”

The question echoed through the emptiness. Quantum’s music had faded away as though he was trying to eavesdrop. The train station transformed into a sepulcher of discarded memories, with Doc as its troglodytic landlord, who only came up from his underground lair when he could no longer stand to stay below with the crushing memories of what he had done.

“No, I’m not angry. I’m worried—about sending Joshua into the Scorched Lands with that monster Mary M.”

It wouldn’t do to tell Robby why he was really angry. He couldn’t without exposing the lie.

“Can’t you send me with him?”

Doc pulled a crate across the concrete floor, pushed it against a rusty I-beam and sat down.

“I can’t stand too long, Robby, I get tired and—”

Pain suddenly exploded in his lungs. He jerked one hand to his chest and the other to his throat to block an explosive coughing fit. Scarlet lines streaked across his vision like enraged shooting stars. Even through the pain, he felt Robby’s mechanical hands clamp onto his shoulder to stop him from falling.

“Doc, are you okay? Are you okay, Doc? What’s wrong?”

The words wouldn’t come. His lungs were filled with broken fragments of past sins that wouldn’t let him breathe.

“I… I…”

His voice came out in harsh gasps―words bursting free like gas bubbles exploding from a tar pit. After a minute of agony, the spasms that racked his chest gradually subsided and he could breathe again.

“I’m okay now, Robby.”

“What’s wrong? You scared me. Are you really okay?”

It wasn’t the cigarettes that did it, Doc thought. It was the gas.

When the first missiles hit, he’d been huddled beneath a dock in the train yard, hiding from the government drones. He hadn’t seen the railcars marked Chlorine or the white skull and crossbones. When the missiles came screaming in, it was already too late. Railcar after railcar of poison gas exploded like giant firecrackers on a cordite string. The sound of a thousand roaring waterfalls pounded the air. Clouds of yellow, green poison raced toward him like monstrous malevolent spirits.

“Lungs,” coughed Doc. “I’m better now, Robby. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

He could barely understand his own words. His voice was like a broken muffler dragging beneath a passing car.

Radiant blue and white microlights flashed and disappeared, then came to life again beneath Robby’s damaged dome as the youngest robot processed his concern for Doc. From the corner of his eye, Doc watched for a flashing red light that would mean Danger, Will Robertson.

“Are you dying?”

They’d discussed this too many times. Robby was fixated on Doc’s death. Doc coughed again to clear his throat.

“Not this minute, kid. I’ll be all right. I’ve got work to do. Joshua’s memories need to be redesigned.”

“Can I help?”

Robby could help, but Doc wasn’t sure how it would affect the young robot’s brain. It was one thing to know that you were an electronic creation, but quite another to see how you were created.

“Hide the whiskey until I’m done, will you?”

Nearly a minute passed before Robby said, “I don’t know how to hide things from you.”

It was the first unprogrammed lie Doc had ever heard a robot speak.

“You won’t ever turn me off again, will you?”

Doc thought about that question. When Joshua left, who would protect him from Robby?

“Guard Quantum when I’m down below,” said Doc as he slowly stood again, resting against the I-beam to catch a painful breath.

It was dangerous to avoid Robby’s question, but there was nothing to be done about it. He was weak, and he’d left the kill switch below. As he shuffled slowly toward the elevator, a soft blue glow suddenly lit the room, and he noticed the acrid odor of ozone. Then came the sharp crackle of furious electric sparks as Robby’s vice-like metal hands came alive with a massive surge of voltage.

“Do you know when we’re most vulnerable to the Devil, Robby?” he said without looking back.

There was no answer.

As he slid in next to Joshua’s deactivated body, he pushed the Close Door button and said, “Every minute of every day.”

Even as the metal doors began sliding shut, the electrified anger gathering in Robby’s hands still lit the crumpled back wall of the elevator.