Robots Inc.
He was about to pull the trigger and turn Data to rust, but stopped when logic intervened. He preferred to spare her expensive toys if possible. Though he'd love nothing more than to see them each smashed into bits down to the circuit boards, he could command a good price for them on the black market. People could say what they wanted about Julia, but everyone knew she built the best bots that money could buy. They were so damn real that they had bad breath and hemorrhoids.
Too damn real, he thought, memories of the way Julia had betrayed him heavy on his mind. He spun to face her with a glare. "I can see that it pains you greatly to think that I might eliminate one of your precious creations," he moved toward her to stroke an errant strand of her fiery hair, and she remained so still that she might have been made out of cement. "Pity you couldn't have had such regard for the husband you left behind with a broken pickup truck and a maxed out credit card." "Please, you sound like a bad country and western song. I prefer heavy metal; maybe that's why we didn't get along."
"I can't deny it. You're fond of heavy metal! It's a shame you never realized that there's better music to dance to." He gave her a wink, and then he raised the demagnetizer again to aim it at Data who futilely scrambled against the corner of the wall for protection. But Adam paused when Julia continued, her words burning in his ears like lemon juice on a canker sore.
"And you're a fool. Such a God damned
fool. These bots mean a lot to me. Yes. I won't deny
that. They are my life's work. But know that I've developed an internal shield for my
latest bots' central processor, Adam.
Your demagnetizer is no longer a threat."
He chuckled. "I don't believe you. If that was true, you wouldn't care if I fired at him." He raised the gun again, but she strolled closer and stilled his hand.
"Wrong. If you fire that gun in here the security alarm will go off, and I don't want to hear the high-pitched wail. Not right now. I have a headache, because I haven't slept in days. Besides, all the robots I made with my early electro-magnetic processor will become defunct as of midnight tonight."
His eyes grew as big and silvery as half-dollars. "Defunct? What do you mean by that? Will they self-destruct like the Starship Enterprise?"
She sighed with exasperation. "Yes. Sort of. They won't explode, but their neural processing system will shut down. In other words, they'll die."
"Tsk, tsk, some would say that's unethical,
doctor. It hasn't been determined whether these bots are
'alive' by the moral definition."
"Perhaps, but I'll let the government battle that out, and until they decide, I'll follow my conscience. Since many of my earlier units have major bugs and are known to malfunction, which from time to time, has proven dangerous, I felt that I had no other option but to eliminate them."
"Hey, I'm not complaining. In fact, hallelujah." He glanced at his watch. "Then does this mean I'll have my wife back in about five minutes--no bots, no computers? Love, it was hell wading through spare body parts all those years."
"Hardly," she said.
"Oh, come on," he said, sensuously outlining her red lips with the tip of his finger, then letting his touch drop lower to her breast. "Tell me that it's over. Tell me it's finally over."
"It's over, Adam. It's finally over. At least it's over for you and me."
"For us it will never be ov....ov...over," he said then drew back, alarmed. Suddenly, he didn't feel well. His ears were ringing. He felt faint. His vision blurred. Fabio rushed to him and kept him from falling as Julia spoke.
"You idiot. You never figured it
out. Did you? Like I said, my earlier units will
self-destruct at midnight. And you, Adam, are my proto-type.
Why do you think you sound like a hero from a bad romance novel? Look at your clothes. Why, you're wearing an outdated duster from the old west and the inevitable black boots of the
heroes in the romance novels. You do remember my romance writing days, don't you? I
know I included it in your memory. I created you based on my favorite heroes, Adam, but I did too good of a job. No matter what I do, you still love me and are determined to have me.
Just like the arrogant, strong-willed
heroes in those blasted novels, you won't accept 'no' as an answer."
She stormed over to him and pulled a romance novel out of the pocket of his duster, which she held before him for only a minute before she tossed it on the floor.
"Romance...romance," he said, unable to quit saying the word even
when she spoke.
"The moral question was bothering me. I started to think that despite your faults that I was wrong to destroy you. I've worked the past two weeks non-stop, hoping to shut-off the self-destruct mode I built in your neural processor. I could have altered the program and transmitted it to all my early bots via a radio signal. And I'd almost made it when you showed up. I'm sorry, but it's too late now, and having seen you here tonight, I realize that I made the right choice years ago after all. You would have never quit pursuing me. Never!"
"You...you used...you you used to like romance."
She held his hand. "I used to like romance. Now I like robots. Goodbye, Adam."
Her image was growing dim, but he understood all that she'd said. She had created him. Just like she'd created the others. And now he was dying. But that was okay, because now it all made sense to him. "Goodbye," he said before blackness overcame him forever.
