3.2 - How to Get Murdered by a Party Robot

      “Have you given it any more thought?” Rachel asked. She was standing in the doorway to the kitchen with her head leaning on the doorframe, looking down at her phone. Even ten years into their marriage, Dylan was intimidated by her. It was the linchpin of their relationship. He felt it more often than not, and it thrilled him. She delicately played with it but never abused it, like a master craftsman at work.

“I’ve given it nothing but thought,” he said, drying his hands from the dishes and swinging the towel over his shoulder. “I still don’t think it’s a great idea.” 

She sighed, and shoved her phone into the back pocket of her shorts, turning her eyes up to him. They were blue-green, but the green seemed to burn a bit brighter every time she was frustrated. 

“We’re falling behind you know,” she said. “The rankings have us at sixteenth in the community. That’s three spots lower than last month.” 

“Who cares about the rankings?” Dylan said. He knew the answer, of course. Everyone cared. “Everyone fluctuates. The Martin’s were twenty-eighth a few months ago and now they’re in the top ten.” He winced, realizing they were the worst example he could have thought of. Rachel’s face lit up for a moment, like a lion poised to pounce. 

“Exactly! Look what it did for them!” she exclaimed. “They’ve never been a top tier family, and now the rumors are they might even knock the Baker’s out of the fifth spot! I don’t understand what the problem is.” 

Dylan cupped his hands and nervously rubbed a thumb on his palm. His nails were longer than he would normally let them grow, but little things like that had fallen by the wayside lately. Too much on his mind. The skin around his thumb was red and scabbed from picking at it.  

“It’s a robot, Rachel. It’s not human,” he said, meeting her eyes and holding their gaze, feeling the burn of it on the back of his skull. “I would never ask you to do this.” 

Her head tilted slightly and her mouth curled in annoyance. 

“That’s because I can’t. For our family name, I would do it in a heartbeat if I could,” she said. “People are starting to talk about us. About how we’re unwilling to move forward into the next wave. We’ve never been pioneers, but we aren’t slow to adapt. Dylan, we’re losing our window.” 

He turned his back to her and returned to the dishes. 

“I need to finish these,” he said. “I’ll bring the tea out when it’s ready.” 

She didn’t say anything, but he heard her walk back to the living room. 

~

“It’s really not so bad,” Wyatt said as he pulled the tab up on a Green Mask IPA and handed it to Dylan before opening his own. Both of them had never favored IPA’s when they were younger, but since Wyatt’s family had entered the top ten, his tastes were forcefully elevated to match his company. Dylan was the only community member outside of the top ten that Wyatt still talked to. Even so, they were more distant then they used to be. The dynamic had shifted. Wyatt, despite insisting that the rankings didn’t matter to him, occasionally betrayed that sentiment. Sometimes with a look, sometimes with a particularly emphasized word, sometimes with a patronizing laugh. He was different. 

“They’ll bring one to you,” he continued, easing into one of the rocking chairs on his porch. “You can take your time with it. I know I had to. It’s not exactly...uh...let’s say provoking. They’ve come a long way since the first models though. Poor Julian, I...oh, sorry. Julian Parker, third-ranked family. He had one of the prototypes. The thing was entirely hard plastic.” 

Dylan watched him take a swig and then watched his lips tighten for a moment in distaste before resuming his relaxed appearance. He still doesn’t like it. That was a relief. 

“I don’t want to take my time with it,” Dylan said. “It’s too much, man. I don’t think I can just grin and bear it.” 

He wiped a bit of condensation from the can in his hand. The weather was humid and warm as usual. The sun had set hours ago, but it was still in the eighties. At least there were only four months of summer left before the winter months. 

“I’m afraid she’ll leave me,” he said. “She’s always cared more about the rankings than I do. It’s never been a wedge between us like this is becoming though. We haven’t…” he thought better of it. Even Wyatt could only be trusted so much not to spread private information. “We haven’t gone out together in weeks.” he revised. 

Wyatt sat still for a moment staring out at his front yard, an immaculate garden full of purple coneflowers, blanket flowers, and canna lilies. One of the perks of being a top ten family was the gardening service provided.

“Do you care enough to risk that, bud?” he asked. The condescension was palpable. “You’ve been together what, seven, eight years?” 

“Ten last month,” Dylan said. Perhaps Wyatt was right. Did he care enough to risk losing Rachel? Early on, he was always the one pushing for a child, but now that the conditions were...irregular, he was hesitant. 

“They’re just like any other child, as far as I can tell,” Wyatt said. “They don’t sleep much, they’re needy, they grow too fast. I love my little guy.” 

A cybernetic. A half-human, half-robot child. Only halfway human. No part of it would be Rachel, but she didn’t mind. Early on they had tried to use human eggs inside of a robot chassis, but the result was dead on arrival, not to mention horribly deformed. After that, they moved forward with robotically engineered eggs, to be fertilized by the male in a relationship. The very idea of having a cybernetic in the family was enough to shake the foundations of the community. The state-run ranking committee pushed families up in rankings just for considering it and the Bennett’s-the first family to have a cybernetic in their bloodline-went from eighteenth to first in one month. They were brand new to the community and suddenly the most sought after and revered couple. After that, the rush was on. Dylan was realizing, slowly, that he didn’t have a choice. If Rachel left him for refusing to have a cybernetic, he would be kicked out of the community for his close-mindedness. Maybe a child is a child. Maybe he can learn to love one of them. A cybernetic. 

~

Rachel kissed him on the cheek and squeezed his hand tight. 

“I’ll head out for a few hours. Give me a call if you need anything,” she said. “Thank you, Dylan. Thank you for doing this. I’ve heard they’re thinking of bumping us into the top ten. This is huge for us.” 

“We’re going to have a child, Rachel,” he said. “Isn’t that slightly more important?” 

She waved a hand as she moved to the door. 

“Yes, yes, of course. Anyway, it’s upstairs ready for you. Love you.” 

She walked out, leaving Dylan in silence. He glanced at the stairs but instead made a beeline for the new bottle of bourbon Wyatt had sent him as a congratulation. A piece of parchment was still tied around the neck of the bottle that said ‘welcome back to the real world.’ He pulled the cork and poured two fingers into a glass, then swallowed it all in one gulp. He winced as the liquor burned his throat and subsequently his stomach, then he put the glass down and slowly made his way up the stairs. In the bedroom, standing patiently at the foot of his bed, was the Seabreeze Robotics Child Bearing Model V.3.7. She appeared mostly human, with pale white skin and curly brown hair, but the room was silent and still as if no one was there. As soon as Dylan entered, she tilted her head and smiled. 

“Hi Dylan,” she said. Rachel had sent them a collection of her own voice clips, with which they almost flawlessly recreated her voice in this model. With earlier models, they had tried to do the same with the appearance of the robot, but it turned out to be rather horrifying. A stiffer, practically dead version of your wife. The voice, on the other hand, was enough. They recommended you close your eyes. “Are you ready?” 

“I suppose I have to be,” he said. The entire process was still thoroughly upsetting, but he had long since resigned to his fate. At the very least, Wyatt was right. They have come a long way with the models. This one was quite striking. For a soulless machine. The thought made his stomach churn, and he immediately closed his eyes. 

“Talk to me. I’m going to keep my eyes closed for this,” he said. 

“Of course, dear. Anything for you,” Rachel’s voice said. 

~

On the eve of Dylan and Rachel’s fifteenth wedding anniversary, they entered the top five. The birth of Caleb had rocketed them into the top ten, as Rachel suspected. It took another four years of hard work and rubbing elbows until they broke the top five, but here they were. Attending their first-ever top five gala. Dylan felt like a desiccated plant, withered and crumpled on itself. He looked down at Caleb holding his hand, who looked up at him with those big empty eyes. There was nothing natural about this child. It didn’t cry, it didn’t play, it, by and large, ignored its parents. Rachel didn’t care, she ignored Caleb right back. Theirs was a relationship of convenience and nothing more. It was the size of an eight-year-old with the motor skills to match, despite being only four. It was only holding Dylan’s hand because it deemed it appropriate for the current setting. The thing was like an oversized dog on suppressants, and he hated it. 

For four years he had tried to love it, and now, standing amongst his alleged peers, he finally gave in. He looked around the lounge, covered in plush armchairs and obnoxiously lit with blinding chandeliers. Four other fathers stood with cybernetics by their side, some fully grown, some smaller than Caleb. Each one, with the same, blank stare. The fathers were excitedly talking with one another, or one of the wives of the top five, all about absolutely nothing and no one. The substance of the crowd was nonexistent. The substance of the entire community, Dylan had realized, was nonexistent. It was some sort of hell or purgatory so thoroughly disinteresting that whatever demon or devil ruled it, had forgotten about it entirely and its own ecosystem had sprouted up from the porous bedrock it was built upon. All because of these things. 

He looked back down at Caleb, who was still staring up at him. The rankings were there before the cybernetics, but the voracity with which they were pursued was a quarter of what it has become. Cybernetics had consumed the community. It was all anyone talked about. New models, new uses, new experiences. This year was all about the party cybernetic. 

Seabreeze Robotics had developed a new emotional core processor which built out an infrastructure of human emotions for their models. The party cybernetics, available to own for the top five, and to rent for the top ten, were the first example of these new models. Having strict restrictions on who and what ranks could attend your gatherings also limited the number of guests, but the party cybernetics solved that. Fill out your exclusive gathering with robots who can show limited emotions all appropriate for a party scene. They paraded around the room, laughing and smiling at the other guests. Some would flirt, others would dance, others would act overly intoxicated and “be removed” by the host, only for them to return as a different persona. They were the imps of purgatory, giggling around the inmates, swinging their stiff arms like leathery wings. 

“She’s been watching you all night, you know,” Rachel said, breaking Dylan from his stupor. She pointed across the room at a party robot, who seductively waved at Dylan. 

“Rumors are that the Bennett’s are having a third cybernetic,” she said, not so subtly pointing at the host of the party. “I know Caleb was rough on you, but...what do you think about another one? We can hire a twenty-four-hour sitter for both of them.” 

Dylan laughed. The Rachel he married vanished a long time ago. This person next to him was a stranger, and she could have the other little creature that was gripping his hand too tight. They deserved each other. Things were only going to get worse unless he did something. Something drastic. Some way of breaking the illusion. Turning the inmates on the jailers. 

“Yeah, I’d love that,” Dylan said. “I’ll go talk to her.” 

He shook Caleb’s hand free, a little more aggressively than he intended, and made his way across the room towards the party cybernetic motioning him forward. He had to think quickly. The room was comically large, but he still didn’t have much time to formulate a plan. What did he know about the new models? They had basic emotional structures, primarily built around pleasure. Not for themselves, but for humans. They could understand threats and obvious dangers. Even Caleb could understand that. The most confounding part of their programming was their ability to read through human lies. Dylan assumed it had something to do with pulse and sweat glands and other such things largely untraceable to the human eye. According to Seabreeze Robotics, their programming prevented them from harming humans. Only that wasn’t entirely accurate with these models. 

That’s it. Wyatt, frustrated by being snubbed in the rankings once more, had told Dylan about a flaw in the new models. According to his source inside of Seabreeze Robotics, the emotional infrastructure of the new models clashed with the previous programming and caused dozens of shutdowns in their prototypes. They had promised certain delivery dates for the top five families who placed orders, and so to meet those delivery times, the anti-harm programming had been temporarily disabled. They still wouldn’t choose to hurt humans, but it wasn’t entirely outside of their programming to do it. If asked to please someone in a potentially harmful way, the desire to fulfill their active pleasure programming would overrule any concern they might have. 

He passed the enormous catering table that stretched the length of the room and carefully tucked a large steak knife into his sleeve. When he reached the cybernetic, he placed a hand on her shoulder and guided her towards a corner of the room, mainly out of sight of the party. 

“Hello there, handsome,” it said. It’s voice vibrated in pulsing tones that were engineered to immediately elicit sexual urges in humans. It could be switched on and off by the cybernetic at will. “Shouldn’t we go upstairs?” 

This needed to be public. He needed everyone to see a cybernetic perpetrating violence. 

“We won’t need to,” Dylan said. He pulled the knife from his sleeve and tucked it into its hand. “I want you to stab me right here.” he pointed at his heart. 

The cybernetic looked at the knife and back at him, its eyes twitching. 

“I...I shouldn’t...it would…” its voice wavered back and forth from pulsing tones to a monotone sound. Its programming was malfunctioning. 

“Do it. Stab me. Hard,” he said. “I want you to.” 

The cybernetic shook briefly, and its head spasmed. It was programmed to give pleasure, and Dylan wanted, more than anything, to be killed by it. He wanted this robot to end him. He glanced back across the room and saw Caleb, still staring at him, eyes like the pale wisps of a ghost. Dante missed one ring of Hell, and Dylan was in the center of it. The only thing he wanted any more was to be killed by this mechanical shell in front of him and bring an end to their reign of slow control over all the vapid humans around him who would do anything to maintain the meaningless ranking they think they’ve earned. This robot would bring him tremendous pleasure by sinking an extraordinarily expensive gold plated steak knife-which was laid out for a banquet that did not feature steak or meat of any kind for that matter because there was no rhyme or reason to anything these lunatics did anymore-deep into his chest until his heart stopped beating. 

“Okay,” the cybernetic said, through muffled static. It raised the knife up level with his heart, pulled its arm back like the spring launcher of a pinball machine, and plunged it forward. Dylan fell back, more theatrically than was necessary for someone who asked and was ready to be stabbed. He tumbled into the middle of the room and landed on the beige Saxony carpet. He closed his eyes and smiled, as human screams rattled through the room like bats. It was the first real human thing he’d heard in a long, long time. All he had to do was die for it.