Emily's Secret

11. The service station

I woke up in the middle of the night, in the back seat of Mercedes. (From now on, I'm just calling the car Mercedes.) I looked out the window to see where we were, but I just saw a dark highway. Cherry was asleep on my left, her head leaning against me. She felt so human. If I thought about it logically, robots don't sleep, so this was just part of her programming to make you think she was a real person. But I still wasn't thinking that logically, having just woken from the worst night of my life. 

So maybe she's a sexbot, and the idea of sexbots kind of infuriates me, but she was providing me the companionship and emotional comfort that I needed right now. I decided to forget about the main purpose for which she was manufactured.

It occurred to me, suddenly, that one of the big advantages robots have over humans is that there are certain biological things that robots don't have to do. To no one in particular, I said, "I have to go to the bathroom."

Mercedes said, "There is a service station with a bathroom four miles ahead. Would you like me to stop there?"

"Sure, if that's OK," I said.

"That'll be fine," said Rob, "we need to fill up with gas anyway."

Most cars these days are electric, but they still haven't figured out how to make electric cars that can travel long distances without a time-consuming recharge cycle every time the batteries are drained. Mercedes, being an expensive car for rich people, had a gasoline engine built into it for long trips. I guess it was pretty lucky that Rob had a car like this for a friend.

I've never actually seen a car get filled up with gas before. My mother isn't rich enough to own her own car, either gas or electric. And when you take a taxi somewhere, they never stop to fill up with gas or to recharge. So I watched with interest as Mercedes exited from the highway and drove into the service station. There was only one other vehicle at the service station, a driverless truck.

There was a robot standing next to the gas pumps, pointing to one of the pumps. Mercedes drove over and stopped in front of that gas pump. There was also a second robot which was attending to the truck, and it ignored us.

The service station was a completely automated business. There were no humans present at all, except for me. That's why so many people today don't have jobs and have to live off of welfare. In the past, trucks and cars had human drivers, and the service stations had human employees who took their money. But today, a driverless truck pulls up to the service station, and a robot pumps gas into the truck. And then it's all paid for electronically. No humans involved.

While the robot assigned to our car began the work of opening the gas-tank cover and placing the nozzle into it, I got out of Mercedes to head for the women's room, which was clearly marked.

"Do you want me to come with you?" asked Cherry.

"No, that's OK, I can do it myself," I replied.

The bathroom, of course, was perfectly clean and smelled fresh. I've been told that in the days before robots, bathrooms were often smelly and dirty, because the human employees were too lazy to clean them regularly. But robots are tireless and never shirk their responsibilities. So today, wherever there are robots that are programmed with janitorial skills, there are clean bathrooms. Also, with so many of the cars and trucks on the road having no people in them at all, there were fewer people to get the bathrooms dirty in the first place.

While I was in the stall, just about finishing with my biological business, I heard the door to the bathroom open, and someone walked in.

"Cherry, is that you?" I asked. But there was only silence.

"Hello, who's there?" I asked again. But still silence. Whoever had walked in was making no noise at all. I was starting to get creeped out. I quickly flushed the toilet, and cautiously opened the door to the stall and looked out.

It was just a robot. How stupid of me! It was probably just here to clean the bathroom.

I ignored it and made my way to the sinks to wash my hands.

Suddenly, the robot ran towards me and grabbed me. It's right hand locked around my wrist, squeezing tight and painfully. Robots are definitely not supposed to do this.

"HELP!" I screamed as loud as I could.

The robot's left hand made a fist and punched. I managed to move my body out of the way just in time and the robots fish smashed into the wall of a bathroom stall, making a big dent in it.

"HELP!" I screamed again.

The robot was very strong. As a service station robot, it was probably designed to be strong enough to change a tire on a big truck. I tried to push it away and was partially successful at doing so, because it once again missed being able to punch me with its fist.

"HELP!"

Finally, the door busted open and it was Rob. Seeing the situation, he immediately jumped on the robot tackling it. Unfortunately, it was still holding my wrist and I went down onto the floor with Rob and the robot.

"It won't let go of me!" I screamed.

The bathroom door opened again. It was Cherry. She screamed. A very dainty feminine scream. I wondered what exactly her purpose was on this journey. Given her primary function as a sexbot, she probably wasn't programmed with useful fighting skills like Rob had.

"The on-off switch!" Rob said, holding down the robot. "Get the on-off switch!"

Cherry reached down, put her hand somewhere on the robots back, and then it shut down. The robot's hand released my wrist. I picked myself up off the ground. The robot was just lying there on the ground as if it were dead.

"Are you OK?" asked Rob.

"Yes," I replied. One of the advantages of being fat is that you have a lot of padding for taking a fall.

"Let's get out of here," he said.

It sounded like great advice. We all ran out of the bathroom. Outside, I noticed that the truck which had been filling up with gas earlier was now gone.

And two more robots were approaching us!

"Run, get away!" Rob warned us. "I'll handle them"

Cherry and I ran, while Rob picked up a heavy-looking metal trashcan that was outside the entrance to the bathrooms.

Mercedes came speeding up to meet us, doors open. "Get inside, quick" came Mercedes' voice from an exterior speaker that I didn't know it had. Cherry and I dashed into Mercedes. Rob swung the heavy trashcan and smashed both robots, like a bowling ball knocking down pins. The robots fell down from the impact. Then he too ran for Mercedes, which took off as soon as Rob was inside, its tires squealing.

I looked back and saw that the robots were getting up, but it was too late for them to do anything; we had made our getaway. This time. The trip was turning out to be more dangerous than I thought it would be. Would I be able to get to the mysterious address in Staten Island? And what will I find there?