RoboNomics

Chapter 58 - 2016

There's a terrible pause before the sound of gunshot rings out. The pause is loaded with useless hope that this time, they'll be lenient. But that man knew the consequences of his carelessness as well as any of us who live here.

The anti-robotists use the faces of bots as helmets and masks, but they discard anything else deemed "the robotic Scourge". Since the Queen's Park riots, the streets have been littered with android limbs. 

There are dark, empty stores that were once crowded with electronics. Those are the items that fetch the largest prices at market: electronics and the power to run them. I'm told that some people who know enough about these things to turn them into prosthetic limbs for those who need them.

These are the dangers that the ARs want to guard against: the dangers of using robotics. The danger of people building robots. They can't stop the sale of robotic parts, however. They just push it further onto the fringes of our markets.

Oz and I turn onto a side street, to where the crowd thins and then disappears. I stop when we're clear of on-lookers.

"Damn it!" I kick a defunct lamp post on the sidewalk. "I have to get home." 

But I can't risk being seen by Chris' AR thugs. I can't let him find me.

"Come to my place for a bit." It's as if Oz read my mind. "You can hide out until dark. They'll be off the streets by sunset. My place isn't far."

I have no other choice. 

"Let's go."

As we walk, I ask a dangerous question. 

"Have you heard anything from Chris?"

"Chris?"

"Yeah, you know. Once upon a time leader of the protest group? Leader of the anti-robotists? Your co-worker before any of this happened?"

"I know who you're talking about. But I...I haven't heard from him in years. Not since I found you in that basement. Now we're square, by the way." He indicates the bundle of vegetables.

"You don't talk at all? I find that hard to believe. You were so close."

"I guess. But I had to leave him and his anti-whatevers. They'd find out it was me who let you loose eventually. Besides, all that political crap, changing the system...that's a young man's game." He shakes his head. "I got me and mine to think about."

"So you don't know anything about him?"

"Not now. I do know he was pissed at you. Couldn't tell you about what. I haven't seen him since that group."

"Well, they...the Anti-Robotists...they come around every so often. They might still be his people. They talk into megaphones about public service and public good. And then they give you a bag of half-rotted vegetables in exchange for wire if you have any. Or if you have info on anyone trading in robot parts, they might actually give you fresh food. If a neighborhood is clear of robotics or electronics for month, they get a day of electricity. That's what I heard, anyway."

"Huh. Sounds like highway robbery. Good thing I never deal with them."

"I guess they hoard stuff like fuel and medicine. Do you really think he's behind all that? Do you really think he'd be capable of that?"

"Who, Chris?" 

I nod. I don't know why I doubt that the leader of the ARs, the man behind the ski mask who rarely appears on our streets in the flesh anymore, is Chris. 

His likeness is scrawled in graffiti on dumpsters. Posters of that black ski mask are plastered on the sides of buildings. Everywhere I turn, he's there. 

I can't forget what he did to me. I can't forget what he did to my marriage. I still remember how he betrayed the protest group. But I still can't believe he's become a tyrant.

"I don't know, Andrea. I really don't. Back when we picked up trash together, I never would have thought about it. He was just a working stiff, same as the rest of us. But from what I saw back there, seems like those anti-robo idiots have only one goal: to shoot you if you get out of line. Is he still in charge of all that? I can't tell. Like I told you, I avoid them as much I can."

"If it's true, it seems like he's got quite a racket going. Is this city really supposed to be better than it was before he came along?"

"No one promised that things would be better, did they?"

I open my mouth to deliver a curt reply. But I realize that he's right. No one has ever made me a promise that my city, or my life, would get better.

We arrive at a boxy brick house on the curve of a thin residential road. The yard is full of untended plant life. Bushes spill over the curving stone wall that delineates the yard. 

We walk around the house and Oz leads me to the back door. As we descend a set of crumbling steps to a basement entrance, I think about how the summer days are forgiving. Everyone has somewhere to live right now and the lack of power is not as much of a hardship as it will be during the winter.

Once inside, a wall of odor hits me. It's the rank scent of rancid meat. But Oz doesn't seem to notice, and so I resist the urge to hold my nose. 

There's a small woman with tangled, dark hair tied up on her head standing over an ancient cast iron stove. The round chimney exhausts out of a jagged hole in a high, rectangular window. On the stove is a rusted pot filled with boiling water.

"Look!" Oz unwraps the bounty of produce and shows it to her.

"Oh, Osvaldo," she exclaims. I had no idea that's his full name, until now. The petite woman rushes towards him. "What have you..." She sees me and stiffens. "Oh. Hello."

"Silvia, this is Andrea." Oz nods back towards me. "She helped me find this food. Andrea, this is Silvia, my wife."

Silvia beams at me. "Well then you have to stay and eat. Just don't wake the children. They're not done their nap." 

She indicates the room behind her.

"Oh, sorry," I say in a whisper. "Are they very sick?"

"Yeah." 

She hands Oz some carrots. He moves to the counters along the wall and begins to chop them. Silvia takes pea pods and throws them into the pot, not stopping to rinse them off. 

"They have to nap a lot. The sickness makes them sleep a long, long time."

"I have lazy children, huh, Andrea?" Oz chuckles.

"Maybe you should wake them for dinner?" Silvia suggests to me.

I glance across the room. The paneled ceilings are low and the floor is covered in vinyl tile that puckers and cracks here and there. There are mattresses on the floor against the far wall. 

The children lay on the beds. They are covered in thick winter blankets even though it's a hot day. Only their heads are visible. The two are laying with their eyes closed. 

Their faces are gray, and there's something about the cloud of flies buzzing around the back of the room that makes me hesitate.

(Continued in Chapter 59...)

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