Story: Imbolc Eve

The story below is a work of fiction.

I was born after Mom died. The delivering doctor was an Artifice, a high-function, high-powered—and high-priced—android. Mom and Dad only had enough credits to save either Mom or me from the complication. Dad told me, when I was old enough, Mom made the decision without hesitation.

The circumstance around my birth is the reason Dad poured his time and money into engineering illegal low-cost robots, keeping low and dodging the law, and teaching me to do the same. We now maintain a troop of maintenance ‘bots that “sleep” on an electro-magnetic wall in our low-income studio apartment.
That wall, a canvas for this jigsaw puzzle of metallic bodies and blinking lights, came in handy when the safety inspector for our District stopped by.

I was dozing on my cot, in between repair sessions, on the last night of winter.

“Brigid! Artifice!” Dad called down to me from our apartment’s workshop loft, just above our ‘bot wall. His head poked out of the middle of the curtain, which spanned the loft’s entire length.

That’s all he needed to say. I sat up, rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, and searched the wall, our “‘bot bedroom.” There were two empty spots.
“Only Sweeper-two and Foxy are out,” I said.

“Sweeper-two’s up here. Foxy’s down on basement fifty-three for that one subflooring job. I think we’re the bucket’s first stop. Not good.”

An Artifice’s presence in low-income, subterranean buildings was rare. It likely meant someone with a lot of credits, or a lot of power, had suspicions of the area.

Dad was already down the ladder from the loft when the tinkling triad of doorbell notes rang. I scrambled up the ladder, into the loft, and straight to the array of security camera monitors.

Dad had brought up the two video feeds that display our entrance, one from each side of the doorway. The Artifice was at our door, with its telltale minimalist, unadorned body plating and neutral expression on its face mask.

I pressed the universal activation button on the console next to the monitors, and instantly our sleeping ‘bots awoke. As one group, they crawled, wheeled, hovered, suction-cupped, or flipped up the wall, past the curtain and gathered around me. I winced at the louder knocks and whirrs.

Dad slid the door open and stepped into the threshold. He flashed a forced, wide smile in greeting.

“Yes?”

“Greetings, Mr. Kildare,” the Artifice chimed out. It held out a hand, palm up. “I am Artifice Gee-Bee-Twenty-Three-Bee, from the safety office of District Ell-Fourteen. There have been reports of unlicensed robotics in this tenement.”

“You don’t say.”

A band of LEDs atop the Artifice’s facemask blinked for half a second as it processed data.

“Unlicensed robots are a public health hazard, Mr. Kildare. They can put people in physical danger.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Underserved people are affected the most.” The Artifice raised a dagger-like finger. “They are the primary consumers of unlicensed maintenance and sanitation robots. You don’t want to harm your neighbors, do you?”

“Maybe we just have strong hammers and brooms here.”

I chuckled. The Artifice’s lights twinkled—another round of calculations.

“Per safety protocol Three-Five-Dash-Seven, I will need to inspect your apartment, Mr. Kildare.”

Dad slid back so he was just past the door frame, and the Artifice stepped forward and stopped. The Artifice’s protocols would communicate that it was technically inside the room.

A flicker of movement in one of the monitors caught my eye. Next to the cot, Sweeper-one had detected the pile of micro-fasteners from a deactivated ‘bot I found topside that morning on a salvage run. Sweeper-one flailed out its hose appendage to vacuum the mess.

Another monitor showed the Artifice stepping into our apartment interior. Dad had shifted away, off camera, to let the Artifice do its work; we knew better than to go toe-to-toe with one of them.

With a quick idea in mind, I lurched over to the other side of the loft, to the wall’s power lever. I tripped on an errant ‘bot limb and fell.

I came up to my knees. The Artifice was standing on the edge of the loft, the curtain ripped wide open, staring at me with dead eyes and twinkling processor lights. Artifices are faster on ladders than I’d thought.

“Surprise!” I announced with a smile. My palms tingled. I must have looked like a very fertile young woman, surrounded by her entire chittering brood. “We’re criminals!”

“Per criminal code Twenty-seven-dash—”

I dove to the wall’s power lever and slammed it up to maximum. The Artifice shook all over with violent spasms, became still, then tipped back over the loft edge and slammed against the magnetic wall with a loud thud.

I punched the wall’s kill switch. Thump.

I picked my way through the teeming ‘bots to the loft’s edge. Sweeper-one still dutifully labored at the micro-fasteners. Dad had pulled the Artifice onto the floor. Its limbs were bent in skewed directions, and the metal plates protecting its midsection had popped open. Its acutely arched back made its belly look distended.

Dad knelt beside it and squished his hands inside the deactivated guts. With a sharp grunt, he yanked out a pinkish-beige object with a spray of goo.

“Congratulations,” he said, grinning, and tossed the object to me.

Some of our ‘bots came to my side, like toddlers curious about a new object within view. It was smooth and curved, softly rectangular, slick with visceral silica gel, and about the size of a loaf of algae-bread. Four wires like limbs dangled and quivered from each corner. It was a neodyne battery: not easy to come by, certainly not cheap, and extremely powerful and versatile.

I matched Dad’s grin. With one of these in our possession, a webwork of possibilities flashed into my imagination. Tomorrow, on the first of spring, we would once again be on the run, but there were an overwhelming number of paths to take. I held no doubts that I was born to explore them.

Note: This was submitted for an anthology of stories, based on a future earth covered by one world-wide city. All stories had to be exactly 1,000 words in length.