The Robot Chronicles

HUMANITY by Samuel Peralta

On the dashboard, the time flashed 9:22.

“Wish I’d topped up the fluids before we left.” Aaron Yudovich flicked at the windshield fluid switch, but nothing happened. Outside, the wipers scratched at the sleet crystallizing on the glass. They made a grating sound as they traced a useless arc across the windshield, back and forth.

“Just let it drive, Aaron,” Judith said, across from him. “It’ll be fine.”

The musical had run a bit late, and afterwards there were the obligatory chats with the Weymans and the Otanis, whom they’d run into at intermission.

By the time their spinner had emerged from the theater’s underground parking lot—at least they hadn’t needed to bring winter coats—the snow was falling much faster than when they’d started out.

“Still,” Aaron said, loosening his tie. “Wish I could see outside.”

The wind shook out the snow in sullen gusts. With temperatures at thirty below, they’d have frozen outside in under ten minutes. Thank goodness for the automated control and all-wheel drive—this wasn’t weather anyone would choose to venture out in, otherwise.

Judith peered in the mirror. “Sweetie, keep your gloves on,” she said. “And for heaven’s sake, stop fiddling with your belt.”

“But Mom,” whined the girl in the back. “It’s twisted, it’s too tight.”

Judith sighed. Her daughter had been extremely well behaved at the event. Done up in a ruffled pink party dress and white elbow gloves, her hair tied back in a short ponytail—and, oh! for the first time allowed a touch of makeup—she’d been an angel. Bright-eyed, she’d listened attentively, mouthing the words of the songs she already knew, squealing and clapping at just the right moments.

Judith and her husband had seen Wicked before; this was Sarah’s first time. It had been an amazing night out, and they were looking forward to seeing Buratino in two weeks. But it was late, the snow was a little worrying, and Judith herself was so, so sleepy.

“Sarah Rebecca, please put down that belt.”

The little girl screwed up her face, but let go of the clasp, and dropped the gloves on the seat.

Outside, the snow fell.

When Mathison opened the door, the cold hit him with a shudder of wind, a cold that slashed right through the down of his padded jacket to the bone.

The ground and ice cut him as he slipped down from the truck, as he tried to make his way toward the wailing. Cold. It was cold with a capital ‘C’, and the thought came that he should be getting back in his truck—but the thought was stronger that someone out there needed help, and he had to get to them.

He reached the spinner first, a tangled wreckage of red and grey and steel lying in the jagged underbrush. Through the shattered window on the front-left side, Mathison could see the body of a man flung forward in his seat, in a suit and no overcoat, buckled in.

The body was still bleeding from the head, and he looked like he’d taken at least one very hard hit, maybe more. Crushed and pinned in his twisted Coke can of a vehicle. It was clear that even the robot controls on the spinner hadn’t been able to react fast enough to the multiple collisions.

When Mathison checked the man, his heart sank, even though he’d already known what he’d find. The man was dead.

From the opposite side door, a furrow in the snow traced where that passenger had unstrapped herself from her seat and made her way fifteen feet from the wreckage.

A handbag and two high-heeled evening shoes, strewn about four feet apart, marked the snow with three splotches of matching turquoise.

The woman was at the end of the path, holding what looked like the body of a young girl—ten, maybe eleven years old, a rag doll spun out into the cold.

“Sarah!” she was crying. “Oh, Sarah!”

Suddenly she saw Mathison’s figure in the drift, and she called out. “Help me, please, help me!”

He hurried toward the two, knelt down beside them. He saw that the woman was already shivering badly, although all her attention was on the girl she cradled, limp in her arms.

He started taking off his jacket, meaning to cover them both and lead them to the warmth of his truck—then stopped and caught his breath.

There, on the palm of the little girl’s outstretched hand, pale and ungloved, was branded a single letter:

‘R’.

‘R.’

The letter—mandated by law and branded just so, on the palm—told Mathison everything he or anyone else was supposed to know about her.

It communicated the message that—in the crucible of life and humanity, in the triage forced upon them by the night and the wind and the temperature now ranging at thirty degrees below—she didn’t matter.

She wouldn’t count, alive or dead, in any case, it told him. Only the man in the car would be worth mentioning in any reports. After all, what did they say, the three principles? That she wasn’t a human being; that she was property; that she was subservient?

She was wreckage, much like the vehicle she’d been flung from.

It didn’t matter that blood flowed through its veins, that it had a heart that could beat like a human heart, that it shivered as if the cold could freeze that heart. It didn’t matter that it could mimic laughter, weep at a broken doll, or sing, or—

Suddenly, the little girl’s eyes opened, and she called out, “Mommy.”

Startled, Mathison flung his coat on the woman, and pulled her away from the girl.

“Sarah!” she screamed, and broke away briefly; but before she could reach the body again, Mathison scooped the woman off her feet and hauled her away. The snow was falling faster now, his undershirt was wet and stiff, and he knew he needed to reach the truck quickly.

All the way the woman fought him, like a drowning swimmer blindly fighting a lifeguard, flailing and scratching at him.

When he finally got to the truck, he flung the woman in, locked the doors, and turned on the ignition. He adjusted half of the vent to her, half to him. Slowly, warmth began to seep in, the feeling starting to return to the parts of him that had become numb.

Beside him, the woman screamed and sobbed, banging at her door.

Mathison cursed the woman, cursed himself.

What was her story? What tragedy could make the woman think something like that could take the place of a real, breathing human child?

Or could it?

The woman beside him continued to sob. What have I done? he asked himself. What have we done?

Had he just left a little girl to perish in the cold? Did it matter that she had her mother’s eyes, her hair, was made in her mother’s image? Could she feel the coldness overcome her, the horror of darkness closing in, the fear of dying alone, unloved? After she was gone, would it matter, if she didn’t have a soul?

And what if she did?

What did it mean for him to make the choice to leave her there? Had he just failed the Turing test of his own humanity?

“Damn it!” he said.

The wind pushed back at the truck door as Mathison fumbled at it, stumbled outside again. He had to lean forward to keep from being blown back.

Every step was agony now, not just because his constant shivering now made him falter, but because every step was a repudiation of all that he’d taken for granted before tonight. But he followed the truck’s headlights, farther, farther, out into the night.

When he reached the girl, still there where he remembered, he knelt down without looking at her palm, at the ugly brand that set her apart from everyone. Instead, he looked at her.

She was just a little girl, in a party dress and stockings, helpless, almost sleeping. The smallest thing. Her lips were ashen, her eyes were closed, and her eyelashes were frosted over in crystals. But she was breathing. The girl was alive.

She stirred without opening her eyes, when he reached under her arms to lift her up. “Daddy,” she murmured.

The snow blinded him. “No, sweetie,” he said, through tears. “I’m so sorry.”

Not more than sixty pounds, he thought, as he lifted her. The smallest thing. So frail, almost inconsequential.

Her ribbon had come undone, and her auburn hair was askew, strewn with snow, the crystals sparkling like stars. He brushed them away as he carried her back, back toward the headlights in the distance, back to the warmth from the opening door, back into her mother’s arms.