Fiction

My Dying Days

How many times does a robot deserve to die?

‘Professor John Dabury, the court has found you guilty of the murder and torture of Ms. Ashleigh Webber. The nature of your crime: its level of premeditation, the savagery involved, and the degradation of human life are particularly heinous. In light of this, I would deem the death penalty an appropriate sentence.’

The judge, a slender woman with eyes like razors stared down at the man before her. A white-haired man with limbs like matchsticks stood hunched forward, head bowed, with the beginnings of a Nostradamus hump protruding from his back. A geriatric grasshopper, is how the Herald described the defendant’s appearance in the paper. He acknowledged her with a nod of his head, never once taking his eyes from the floor.

‘However,’ she continued, with a slight shake of her head, ‘Taking into account your role as the head of the Australian Infectious Disease research centre, your long list of charitable works, and your flawless character references, you are eligible for the Victimbot program. Are you aware of, and do you consent to this program?’

‘Yes, your honour,’ the white-haired man replied.

‘Very well, you shall be granted a one-year trial. The bailiff will take you for processing and to assign you a rehabilitation assistant.’ The judge narrowed her eyes even further, ‘It would not do well for you to cross my court again.’

I feel the hilt of the knife crash against my ribs, the blade plunging through layers of skin, sinew and fatty tissue, bound to pierce my heart. A sense of doom crushes me, pushes me down onto the hard, wooden floor I had mopped just hours before. I know I will die.

I see his face as the moonlight bathes the left side of him. He lives for the darkness, it transforms him from man into monster, not like me, not even animal. I have read about evil, now I see it, feel it, breathe it into my lungs.

His lips rear back in sync with his arm, a snarl or a smile I cannot tell. His pale eyes gleam like pearls in the darkness. I focus on them, hypnotised, as he plunges the knife into me, again, and again, and again. I make to scream, but barely a whisper escapes as blood fills my airways, and I try and crawl back from him. His strokes begin to lose power, but it is too late, I can feel my life draining away. The moonlight fades, and I trawl his eyes one last time, searching for contentment.

I wake in the bath. My haven. I was born in the bath, and I will be born again.

Crimson water envelopes me, fading to pink nearer the surface. The dark window above tells me night has not yet receded. With others, I may have worried. The first time I woke in the bath, my eyes opened to a face above me, flush with excitement and expectation. Full regeneration in the bath takes eight hours, which means two kills a night is not out of the question if they can work some swiftness in with the savagery. There are no rules that the killing must be done at night, but daytime kills are rare. I can feel my existence seep away while the sun beats down, but the night’s bring finality. My dying days crescendo into darkness.

I call my client the Professor, as he requested. Quite a normal name compared to the others. Daddy, is by far the most common, but there have been a few that wanted Ted (Bundy), Jack (the ripper), I even had a Tupac. The Professor has many books, a whole library in one room. He never kills in the library, not a drop of blood on those books thank you very much he says, and I dare not disobey him, lest he open up his toolbox again.

My heart begins beating, I can feel the pulse on my temple. Soon my lungs will start to expand, and I will no longer be able to hide in my sanctuary. I will cough and splutter, and thrust my head out of the water, trying to dampen my cries as not to wake him.

The water has cleared around me, my clock reset. An icy shock catches me in the chest, my eyes open and close a thousand times in less than a second, and the muscles in my arms and legs spasm back into existence. This moment, the moment of birth, makes the dying more tolerable. They have programmed me to have the full gamut of human emotions, fear, sadness, terror, even joy. But nothing compares to this moment. In this moment my future doesn’t concern me, my mind present in the climax of my creation. No other creature can claim that.

I break through the surface, gasp for the sweet taste of oxygen and hydrogen and nitrogen.

I am alive.

My robe lies folded over the towel rack, sharp creases tell me the Professor ironed before bed. Aromas of trees and earth tickle my nostrils, and I see a sandalwood candle burning on the basin. The Professor tells me the skin cells in my body have an olfactory receptor for sandalwood, and it promotes skin cell regeneration and healing. He’s always looking out for me.

My body stares back at me in the mirror, illuminated by the light the Professor left on, a signal of my safety. I lift up my breasts and see the wounds have healed over, no trace of the mutilation of eight hours earlier. Pale skin beams back. A little green light on my temple blinks at me in the glass, the only outward difference between my masters and I. Green means ripe for killing, red means still reviving. If they try and attack us while we blink red, they can be sent back to jail, or worse. We have been cleared for assault, battery, torture and murder, but mutilation of a corpse didn’t make the cut.

Yet.

Who knows what my future holds? I have seen in the newspapers the Professor leaves on the kitchen bench, men’s rights groups push for us to be given sexual organs too. Rapists and paedophiles remain the only group of violent offenders not yet granted rehabilitation assistants. The murder rate has more than halved in the five years since the Victimbot program began, while sexual assault continues to climb, and the prison cells they vacated now on the brink of overflowing again.

My job satisfaction comes from knowing innocent victims — human victims — aren’t being slaughtered at the hands of my rehabilitee, and my 81% compliance rate skirts with incompetence. No one wants an incompetent robot. The Professor is my last chance.

I walk out the kitchen and drink a glass of water, sit at the table and wait for morning. He has already cleaned up from last night. The hardwood floor gleams with the first rays of light, a few small indents in the wood the only blemish. His knife doesn’t always find its mark.

‘Good morning Angelique,’ the Professor says as he shuffles in from the hallway. He skirts wide to avoid brushing against me.

Angelique is but an alias — I am RA126 (the 126th rehabilitation assistant created) — but the Professor asked me what I would like to be called, and I chose Angelique: a handle from the heavens. An eraser of evil, harbinger of hope.

‘What would you like for breakfast, dear?’ he asks over the whistle of the boiling kettle.

He always cooks me a full breakfast the morning after. It surprised me when I first arrived. My previous clients treated me like little more than a slave. I cooked, cleaned, washed and steamed. Not here. The Professor says chauvinists are a dying breed. I wonder if he helped kill them.

After he leaves for work, I return to the library and pull out my book for the day, ‘The story of my experiments with truth’, a book written by and about Mahatma Gandhi. It sits nestled amongst copies of the Bible, the Quran, the Kojiki. Once I asked the Professor why he had so many religious books in his library. He told me there is a great deal science cannot explain.

I believe my creators may have also read this book. I have been programmed to be non-violent in all situations. Gandhi sounds like a brave man, and I cannot fault his approach. But we differ, Mister Gandhi and I. He talks of rebirth and reincarnation, and the promise of an afterlife burns bright as a metaphorical torch of hope. I can see it guiding a great many people through the suffering in their lives. I have no such hope.

My life, or existence (according to law, I am either on or off, never alive or dead), will expire once I reach 20 years of service, or my compliance rate drops below 80 percent. I teeter on the edge of a cliff; an abyss falls away beneath me.

I wonder if I am defective. Tainted. The Professor can see it too. He used to kill with such relish, savoured every moment. Now he will leave me for days, even weeks between kills. And when he does, it’s like he’s ticking a box, fulfilling his mandatory requirements. The passion that sparked our encounters dwindles by the day.

They told us in training we should report back any signs of non-compliance, and it would be scored as a bonus to us. They lied. I talked to another rehabilitation assistant at the centre, during my last reassignment. She reported her client after seeing a bloodstained blouse in the washing that didn’t belong. She found out her compliance rate actually dropped. No one likes a robot rat.

I can’t afford for the Professor to non-comply. One more failure drops me below 80 percent. Into termination territory.

As I sit down on a stool to read more about Gandhi, I notice a book ajar on the bottom shelf. When I go to straighten it up, I notice this book doesn’t have a title on the spine. I open it, and see photos stuck to the pages. A young woman, taken through what appears to be a bathroom window, brushes her teeth, dries herself with a pink fleeced towel, steps out of the shower, little droplets of water clinging to her body. Pale and blond haired, I thought they were of me for a second, but her breasts and hips have more curves.

I return to the stool and contemplate termination. I wonder what it would be like, to be switched off, from the pain and suffering and boredom. They tried to program boredom out. Not for our sake, but because boredom breeds discontent. Discontent breeds disobedience.

The Professor does most of the housework, which used to occupy my time during the days. Now I have hours to kill, and nothing to fill them with. I stare out the kitchen window, down onto the grey street below. I see a young girl in a purple dress chase after a tabby cat, it ducks and weaves, slinks under parked cars. The girl laughs and shrieks, and I feel happy and jealous at the same time.

I wonder why they have given us all these emotions. I guess to reproduce the emotions our clients thrive on. Fear, shock, grief, despair. How would we be able to recreate these if we don’t know happiness, peace, joy and hope? Fleeting as they may be.

I realise I don’t want to be terminated. I want the chance to breathe air blown in from the sea, to feel grass beneath my feet, and to chase cats down cobblestone streets. I have two options as I see it: convince the Professor to choose me, or make sure they don’t catch him choosing another.

I wonder — were I not programmed to be non-violent — if I would hurt the Professor. Murder and violence leak out of this man, he leaves behind him a trail of darkness. A battle rages within him. Virtue and kindness seek to hold back the forces of depravity. The Professor doesn’t speak of his work to me, but I have seen the articles in the bottom drawer of his office cabinet.

‘Professor Dabury instrumental in quashing Ebola outbreak in Northern Territory.’

‘New Influenza vaccine offers hope: Professor Dabury.’

‘Mosquito’s feel the sting: Professor Dabury turns Dengue on its head.’

How many lives has he saved? He could kill me a million times over and still be in the black. Your job is to assist these people to continue to benefit our society. Keep them safe. Be a shoulder for them to cry on, a punching bag to absorb their blows.

I am the bag people grow tired of punching.

Read on for part 2: