Whatever Happened... to Robot Jones? Continued

Part 2: Changes - Prologue: The Reaper/Chapter 7: Confrontation in the Bathroom

Part 2: Changes

Prologue: The Reaper

Humans. So inconsiderate. So cruel.

Even the ones who pledge their entire lives to the benefit of humanity prove to be cruel in the most unexpected ways. Church pastors who inspire hope in the lives of the struggling, pocketing the money from the collection trays. Doctors, who take the oath to heal the sick, and then prescribe unneeded medicines and surgeries.

Children, who return home to wash dishes for their mothers after having helped gang up on the new kid and drive them to their own home in tears. Not stereotypical and well-recognized bullies, but bullies nevertheless.

And even the Johnsons. An ordinary, middle class family that has both mother, father, and three teenage children putting in volunteer hours at the Allentown shelter, a place that had expanded since the mid seventies as many factories in town closed all at once. Although they lived in the failing city, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson had work just outside of town, and were fortunate enough to keep their jobs, and so they decided to pay it forward.

As good citizens, the Johnsons kept a tidy house, and kept up with recycling. But they weren't alone in the task. One of the reasons they were able to put in so much time at the volunteer shelter was that they had a helper at home. A tiny little robot, only two feet tall, with extendable arms, a blue shell exterior, and a single eye, an ordinary housekeeping model, had been serving the Johnsons for years. Mr. Johnson had bought it from a fellow employee at the office for a good deal, and the robot paid for itself in manual labor by the end of six months. As kids, the Johnson's children were excited to see a self-operating robot take out the trash and do some of the small chores that they themselves had once been expected to do. They found it amusing to adorn the little robot with a tie, and around Christmastime, a rope of tinsel and bows. The robot only replied to the tiny acts of love with generic, happy comments that society had come to expect from Type A robots. However, unknown to the Johnsons, the robot was not a Type A robot-and it was not an it, but very much a he, and therefore had the capacity to respond negatively if he wanted to. It just happened that the robot was genuinely content with his lot in life.

But by the time they reached middle school, the Johnson children were too absorbed in keeping up grades and their social lives to notice the robot that made their beds and vacuumed the floor was even there. They were good kids, helping their parents out at the shelter on the weekends, but they just didn't care about the robot anymore. The girl, who had made it a habit of thanking the robot for picking up her room, didn't even acknowledge him anymore-as if her added height made her blind to the still toddler-height robot.

Yet this same robot continued with its chores, not bothered. It was serving the same kids who had shown it real affection in its early years with them, and that was more than some robots ever got. While they stopped caring about him, he cared very much for them. He served them not just because he was told to, but because he genuinely wanted to.

But he was an old robot. It was second-hand to the Johnsons, and it came as no surprise when the robot eventually had a harder time completing his tasks. He dropped a bag of trash all over the floor he'd just cleaned. he left oil spots on the carpet from a leaking tank. One day, the girl came home from seeing her friends and saw that her bed wasn't made. The robot hadn't been able to finish half of his tasks that day.

Mr. Johnson told his wife that he had gotten a good deal out of the robot, anyway-many years of service for such a small price. The robot wasn't supposed to understand, or care. But he did-he was a Type B, made by the JNZ corporation a few towns over. He had a gender. He had feelings. He wanted to keep serving.