Steele, Allen - Agape Among The Robots

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Allen Steele: Agape Among the Robots

Art necessarily reflects

the artist–sometimes in surprising ways.

Then Samson met Delilah, the first thing he did was crush an apple against her head. Delilah

didn’t react in any way; she sat calmly on the park bench, her hands folded primly in the lap of

her long purple dress, staring straight ahead as wet pulp ran down her face and into the neckline

of her lace collar. She didn’t even look up as Samson walked around the front of the bench,

bowed from the waist, and gallantly offered his hand.

In the Samson Team control van, though, we were either cracking up or gaping at our monitors

in dumb surprise. All except Phil Burton; glaring through the one-way glass window, almost

apoplectic with rage, his mouth opened and closed several times before he finally managed to

give utterance to his thoughts.

"W-w-w-what t-t-t-the . . . what the hell was that?" he demanded. "W-w-who pr-pr-programmed

th-th-th-tha-that. . . ?"

"Nobody programmed it, Phil," I said. I had been worked with him long enough to intuit what he

meant when his speech impediment got in the way. He looked sharply my way, and I hastily

coughed into my hand to hide my grin. Phil had a tendency to think people were laughing at him

even when something else funny was going on. "Honest. I checked Samson’s routine myself.

That wasn’t supposed to happen."

"I-I-I know th-th-th-th. . . ." Phil shut his eyes, took a deep breath, and silently counted to ten.

While he was counting, I glanced past him at Keith D’Amico; although he was still chuckling, he

had already checked out his own screen. He caught my eye and shook his head. No, he didn’t

have a clue as to what went wrong either.

"Phil, Jerry . . . I’ve put Samson in standby mode." This from Donna Raitt, seated at the console

on the other side of me. Unlike Keith and me, she hadn’t lost it when Samson had assaulted

Delilah with a deadly fruit; she was watching her screen, her hand cupped over her headset

mike. "It looks like D-team has done the same," she added quietly. "I haven’t heard from Dr.

Veder’s group yet."

"Oh, but you will . . . you will." Keith was doing his Yoda impression again. "Beware the dark

side, Luke . . ."

"Knock it off." Phil had managed to get control of his stutter. He glared at Keith, then turned back

to me. "Okay, I believe you. It’s a glitch, that’s all." He glanced out the window, taking a moment

to study the two robots frozen in the wooded atrium. "Access his memory buffer from the

beginning of the test up to when Donna put him on standby."

"Death Star in range within ten seconds," Keith murmured.

If Phil heard that–and judging from the annoyed expression which briefly crossed his face, he

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did–he chose to ignore it. He turned to Bob, the kid operating the remote camcorders. "You got

everything, didn’t you?"

"What . . . oh, yeah, yeah, it’s all here." Bob was wiping tears from the corners of his eyes. "Do

you want a copy, Dr. Burton?"

"No, I want you to delete the whole thing." Bob stared at him in surprise, and for a moment his

hands moved to the editing board. "Goddammit, of course I want a copy!" Phil snapped. "Run it

off now! Move!" He returned his attention to me. "C’mon, Jerry, gimme everything you got . . ."

"Coming right now." I had already loaded a fresh 100 MB disk. A few deft commands on the

keypad above my lap, and a bar-graph appeared on my screen, indicating that the data Phil

wanted was being copied. I looked again at Keith; behind Phil’s back, he had his right hand

raised, and he was counting off the seconds with each finger he folded into his palm. Five . . .

four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . .

"Delilah Team just called in." Once again, Donna had clasped her hand over the wand of her

headset. "Dr. Veder wants to meet with you in the test area . . . umm, right now, Phil."

The color vanished from Phil’s face. "Uhh . . . t-t-tell her I’ll b-b-b-be there as . . . as . . ."

My terminal chirped. I popped out the disk, shoved it into Phil’s hand, then snapped my fingers

at Bob. He ejected the DVD from the camcorder, slapped it into a jewelbox, then passed it to

Keith, who tapped it against Phil’s shoulder. That seemed to wake him up; he blinked a few

times, then turned to snatch the DVD from Keith’s hand.

"He’s coming now," Donna said quietly into her headset. "Sorry for the problem. We had a

problem here, but . . ."

"Stick to the rules. No contact except between team leaders." Phil took another deep breath,

then clapped the two disks together as he turned sideways to squeeze past her and me as he

headed for the control van’s door. "Wish me luck."

"May the Force be with you," Keith said, and I shot a look which told him that I’d like to stick a

light-saber where a Jedi couldn’t find it. "Good luck," he added, albeit reluctantly.

"Thanks." Phil grabbed a roll of paper towels from the shelf near the door. Then, almost as an

afterthought, he looked back at Keith. "Wipe the memory buffer, will you? I don’t want this to

affect the next test." Then he stepped out of the van, slamming the door shut behind him.

For a moment no one said anything, then everyone collapsed in their seats. "Man, oh man,"

Keith muttered, covering his face with his hands. "I thought he was going to have a stroke . . ."

"Thought he was going to have a stroke?" Donna shook her head. "You should have heard what

was going on in D-team’s trailer. Kathy sounded like she was ready to . . ."

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