Artificial(ish) Intelligence

Chapter 127

It had been a good run. He was the oldest deliverybot he knew of. There were a few decommissioned bots who'd taken roles as vacuum cleaners, and others who had been refurbished so many times there wasn't an original piece of them remaining, but none still in service. Once upon a time that may have meant something, but now it meant you were closer to retirement.

Still, he wasn't going to end it like this without first attempting to solve the impossible. Patience might get him out of this quandary, but there was no guarantee Mr Will Lurner would remain in this building for very long, if history was any guide. He didn't seem the sedentary type. He would need to be found quickly.

A great deal of body parts penned him in, from torsos to heads to legs to arms. If he bunched them together in increasing heights, they might provide a ramp up to the circular door handle. But how would he open it? He decided to work while he thought, hoping to come up with something along the way.

Pushing yet another arm up the bespoke ramp, and leaving a small gap next to the door, Fivven almost got caught on the dangly bits along one end. What did hu(persons) call them? By the time he'd extricated his wheels he had remembered: fingers. They were strange-looking addenda to otherwise reasonably designed apparatuses. Fivven was nothing if not practical and, despite their appearance, he knew these fingers had their uses. Then it hit him. No, not the piano or the anvil or the front of a barn as seen in those classic silent films, but something far more weighty: an idea.

He excitedly doubled his ramp-building rate. Once finished, he dragged the object up the incline, nudging it against the door handle until the tendrils gripped it fully. This was the tricky part, how to rotate the hu(person)-like hand enough to unlatch the door. Only one tool in his possession rotated.

He manoeuvred until his wheel was above the wrist and let it rip, putting every Newton metre of torque into the rotation. The hand turned rapidly in response, as if creating circles in the air, but the fingers were slipping. Fivven shoved the hand harder against the door and rolled over the fingers, careful not to fully crush their circuits. This time the arm rotation was slower, firmer, ending with a delightful click.

He'd done it. The door was opened. You might think the large collection of body parts remained in the way, but that's why Fivven was smarter than you. At the base of the pyramid he'd left a gap, just large enough for his body to squeeze through. It was just a matter of popping through and--

"Hey!" said a voice.

Fivven continued unabated, his wheel undulating at its maximum revolutions per minute. Unfortunately, they were doing so in the air, as the owner of the voice scooped him up.

"The poor robot from the road," said Zerro, petting him heavily. "You found me!"

This wasn't Mr Will Lurner. This wasn't the hu(person) Fivven was searching for, despite what it said.

"Come on, we need to go to the stairs," said Zerro, cradling him.

If this wasn't bad enough, a defencebot swooped down from above. It must have been staking out the dark room. Instead of attacking, it scanned Fivven's captor, unhappy with the result.

"You can roll, ol' man, but you can't hide," he said, before sulking away.

Instead of panicking, Fivven got to work cross-referencing the interior images of the Schuvantz building with the last vision he'd seen from Mr Will Lurner's livestream, determining the delivery recipient's last-known location.

"Did you miss me?" said Zerro, lumbering up the stairs. "I missed you!"

They quickly made it to the next floor.

"A choke point," said Zerro, as if repeating the words of another. "Stay here and guard. Yes, voice."

Hu(persons) really were strange. The way they communicated, the way they didn't release you when you clearly needed to deliver lukewarm noodles. Instead, the hu(person) peeked out the door to a corridor. This was where Fivven wanted to be. His wheel was wedged in tight, but this time reversing made no difference. The hu(person)'s arms were thick and flabby.

"Exx, what are you doing here?"

"Waiting for Mathison."

The new hu(person) grunted, its face splotched with more red than usual. But Fivven didn't take any further notice because he'd been placed on the ground, just inside the corridor, with only freedom ahead.

He raced away, the hu(persons) still communicating in their strange ways. He quickly found the room. Another closed door, another impossible hurdle to jump. It was enough to make a tired old deliverybot call out in exasperation.

But not this one. There was always a way. The door was locked, but that was a hu(person) entry point. He had his eye on another possibility all together.