Further Into The Future!

Chapter 8

When I first glimpsed the exterior of the Carpenter, I felt a shock of homesickness because it looked like a building of my time. It was about four stories tall, and it seemed to have a vine-covered stone exterior. But when we reached the door I realized that its outside was a glass wall just like any other future building's, and that what I thought was the old building was merely an image.

When I walked through the door the chilly air inside brushed over my face like a soft blanket. The inside of the restaurant was truly old-fashioned, with antique furniture scattered about. The staff even wore formal clothing. The host who greeted us was wearing a bow tie and suit.

Unfortunately, he informed us that there was a forty-minute wait.

"Darn," Susan said.

"Good choice, Susan," Jack said, patting her on the shoulder. She stuck her tongue out at him.

"We should tell them the Professor just traveled a hundred and fifty years through time," Jack said. "Maybe then they'll give us a table." The other two laughed but I thought it was a pretty good idea. They decided to walk further down the street to find somewhere else to go.

As we walked along the sidewalk I spotted my first robot. It was about five feet tall and very thin, most segments of its body consisting of poles about the width of a finger. It was covered in pink plastic casing so thin I could see through it to the metal skeleton inside. It looked like it weighed less than a vacuum cleaner. I felt like I could launch it across the street and it would bounce off the pavement and get up unharmed.

It walked about one and a half times as fast as a human being, with a strange rhythm that made it easy to spot. I could always pick out robots maneuvering through a crowd of humans in the future, and identify one in my peripheral vision.

In one hand it carried a plastic bag and in the other a white, shiny box. It stared straight ahead with big, black, glassy, eyes that reminded me of the giant sunglasses Susan wore. Its head was long and thin like the rest of its body, with a small ridge for a nose and a horizontal slit for the mouth. There was an extra layer of brown plastic on the top of its head, a half-hearted attempt to give it believable hair.

"Oh my god, what is that?" I said, pointing at the robot as it walked by. The robot looked at me with the slightest bit of curiosity, then went back to staring straight ahead before it passed me.

Susan laughed. "That's a robot."

I laughed also. I immediately lost all respect for the goofy, weak creature. Like most robots, it had an expression of subservience permanently etched on its face. I could have pushed it over with my index finger and it would have apologized for running into me.

"You have robots here? What do they do?" I asked.

"Well," Susan said, thinking, "they do pretty much everything. They build things and do chores and watch over kids and pretty much everything you could think of." She seemed to have trouble finding the words to describe a robot, probably because she never had to explain them to anyone before.

"They build buildings," she added, pointing at the rainbow of towers beside us.

"Fascinating," I said, looking back over my shoulder to watch the pink robot walk away. Jack and Dan, who were walking behind us, awkwardly looked down to avoid staring into my eyes. "When were they invented?"

Susan had to think about the answer. "Uh... I think about forty years ago? It's hard to say. They're much smarter than they used to be. Machines doing little chores have been around for much longer than that." She pointed at another robot, a thicker gray one, walking on the other side of the street.

"When I was a kid we used to have a little disc robot that cleaned the floors," she said. She held her hand close to the ground to indicate its height. "We had another one that walked the dog and did the dishes, and one to clean the car. Now most robots do everything like that."

"Giuseppe's!" Jack whined. We ignored him.

"Fascinating," I repeated. "That must have really changed things, having machines around to do things for you."

"Yeah, I guess. I never thought about that before," Susan said, laughing.

We waited for the walk sign at an intersection. It was almost noon on a day that was going from hot to insanely hot. As I sweated lightly in my tie and coat, I hoped we would find a restaurant soon.

"You know, Professor Bedford, six robots are watching your time machine right now."

I turned my head quickly to look at her. "Are you kidding?"

She smiled. "No. The doctor said you were worried about it, so we sent them there."

This did not reassure me. If the six robots were like the pink one I just saw, they would hardly be effective guards.

"And I hope you like robots," Susan continued, "because we have twenty more at the house. They're the Robochoir. They're the pride of our band. They perform in our show."

"Fascinating," I said after a thoughtful pause. "Twenty robots."

Susan nodded.

"Big Bahama Seafood Hall!" Jack shouted, pointing at a restaurant across the street with a big plastic shrimp mascot outside the door. "Come on Susan! You can't have any problem with the Seafood Hall!"

Susan shrugged. "I don't have a problem with it. You like seafood, Professor?" I had a feeling Susan was as sick of walking around in the heat as everyone else.

"I love seafood, Susan," I said, smiling at her.

"Then we're agreed. Let's go!" She wavedus across the street.