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But
it didn’t matter how terrible it was at cleaning and helping.
The human Ryuu needs me for nothing; in fact I am a drain on his
spirit, a worrisome old man who is destined to break his heart
when I die. He is a good son, he would never say these things,
but how can I not know that I am at the end of my life and he
is just beginning to reach the pinnacle of his? I do not get to
have that Ryuu in my home, obeying my every word and living only
to please me. But the Clarke, the one that looks just like him
and sounds like his mother, who is stupid and sweet and completely
enslaved by my voice, that is the son I can still rule as my own.
It was as if Ryuu broke off the weakest piece of his soul and
shaped it to look like him and sent it to me, saying, “Here
father, have this piece of me, which does me no good and will
serve for you as a reminder of my love and respect.” It
is made from only the weakest part of him, so it acts nothing
like him, but I can see the soul that enlivens its face, and it
is his.
And so I could not let the Clarke die, could I? It was the day
it had fallen for the fourth time on my kontastu, and I was sick
of its stupidity, it would pass and I love would it again, but
I was angry, so I said to it, “Go and clean the balcony
for a while.” I had never sent it to clean the balcony,
it was a task I did myself because it was clumsy and trusting
of the world and I thought it would stupidly launch itself over
the side. The only times I am right is when the truth will cost
me! Any time I sent it to do some new task I had to supervise
it, for it would make many errors and destroy many innocent objects
if I didn’t. But I was furious, because the kontastu was
the only nice thing I had kept, I had gotten rid of everything
else for this robot that was not even really my son, and now it
wanted to destroy that too? So I sent it out alone. I even had
a vision of it falling over the side and breaking like a vase
on the parking lot below. It made me giggle.
I turned away from it and watched television, I did not want to
be secretly tempted to supervise it. But after watching a game
show in which a family was humiliated for a vacation to Disneyland,
which is a great prize and I understand why they were willing
to tolerate such disgrace, my rage had faded and my love had grown
in my heart like a seedling, and I went to go check on Ryuu.
It
was standing on the balcony’s railing, swatting at a spider
web in the corner of the roof.
“Ryuu!”
I yelled. “Get down from there immediately!” Remember
what I told you about talking to robots when they are involved
in difficult tasks? My son tells me that balance is very tricky
for robots that are made to look like humans. It is very hard
for engineers to balance them, and to teach them how to maintain
balance and why they should want to be balanced at all. Robots
don’t mind falling over, for they do not suffer pain and
are most times easy to fix. But balance is why we have so many
robots now that look like roaches. The only time a roach is on
its back is when it’s dead!
When I yelled at Ryuu, it looked at me and smiled and waved, and
it fell.
It did not try to catch itself the way a human would, clawing
at the air and screaming. It fell like a missile, straight and
fast, and it would have crashed to the parking lot below had its
chin--its chin of all things!--had its chin not caught itself
on the railing. The sound of two equally-matched metals rang out,
and the railing’s upper bolts ripped themselves out of the
wall, but the lower ones held, so the railing fell open like a
drawbridge, and Ryuu’s chin was still on the railing, and
the neck of a Clarke is amazingly strong, almost needlessly strong,
for why should so much power be dedicated to the neck, which only
exists to keep the head up? But Ryuu’s neck was strong,
and he just hung from the horizontal railing by his chin with
a stunned look on its face, because this was a very new situation
for its robot brain and it needed to think about how it should
handle it. A human would have grabbed onto the railing and tried
to pull himself up, but a robot cannot just figure something like
that out so quickly. So it just hung with its chin on the railing
from my fourth floor balcony.
But I am a human! I knew we had to hurry! I ran to the balcony,
lay on the ground, and crawled on my elbows toward him. I checked
the railing before I mounted it; it seemed to still be firmly
attached to the wall. He watched me come toward him on my belly
and smiled. “Do not move your chin!” I yelled. Then
I crawled on the gate and held out my right hand. “Take
my hand,” I yelled.
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