A Robot’s Ransom
I
heard a strange noise in the kitchen. Mr. Fitz told me later that a human being
would have gone to investigate. But I was not programmed to do that so I just
stayed where I was, sitting on a chair in the bedroom.
I
heard footsteps coming through the living room and a rough, gravelly voice
says, “There ain’t nothin’ here worth takin’. That TV is a piece of junk.”
A
high-pitched male voice answered, “We might as well check out the bedroom
before we go.”
The
two of them walked in. First a short, hunched-shouldered man with practically
no neck. His hair was cut close to his skull. He looked like a gnome. The other
man seemed tall at first, but I realized that he was so thin that he looked
taller than he was. He had a scar down his right cheek.
Scarface
looked at me and said, “This must be Old Man Fitzpatrick’s robot companion.”
“I
don’t think that’s gonna do us no good,” the gnome said.
“That’s cause you don’t use your head, dummy.
We can hold it for ransom.”
“We
can’t get much ransom from Old Man Fitzpatrick, can we?”
“We
can get some. These old guys love their robot companions.”
The
gnome shrugged. “I don’t know, Francis.”
Scarface
turned on him. “I told you not to call
me that!” he snapped.
“Sorry,
Frank. I slipped.”
“Well,
grab his feet. I’ll take his shoulders. We better get out of her before Old Man
Fitzpatrick gets back.”
So
they picked me up and headed out the back door. Of course I could have stopped
them, but I hadn’t been programmed to do that. And one of the first things a
robot learns when he is registered is the golden rule: never hurt a human
being.
I’m
not that heavy, but they were moving awkwardly as they moved from the back yard
to the alley. “You don’t have to carry me,” I said. “I can walk.”
The
gnome went, “Yikes!” and dropped my feet. “The thing talked!”
Francis
let go of my shoulders and I stood up. “Yes, I can walk and I can talk. So
where are you taking me?”
“Oh,
ah, we’re just taking you on a little vacation. It must be about time you had a
vacation, isn’t it?” Francis tried to smile, but you could tell he didn’t mean
it. “Don’t pay any attention to the dummy here.” He gestured at the gnome.
“He’s afraid of his own shadow.”
In
a few minutes we crossed a lawn littered with trash to enter a frame apartment
building. On the second floor Francis unlocked the door to let us in. Francis
invited me to sit with them at plastic table in the small kitchen. The gnome
said, “I’ll find some paper to write a ransom note.”
Francis
turned to the gnome and said, “Geeze, you’re even dumber than I thought you
were. You don’t write a ransom note.”
“Well,
how do you let them know about the ransom and stuff?” The gnome’s face twisted
in despair.
“You
cut the words out of a newspaper and paste them into the note. That way the
cops can’t analyze your handwriting and prove that you wrote the note.”
For
the next hour they toiled with the message, cutting words out of an old
magazine and pasting them onto the paper. When they were finished, Francis said
to me, “I’m going to have to chain you to something. I’m afraid you’d get lost
if you went out by yourself.” We went into the bedroom, and he chained me by
the ankle to a heavy chest. I didn’t tell him that I wouldn’t be likely to get
lost because I had a built-in GPS. The two men left, and I sat on the floor by
the chest.
About
a half an hour later I heard a sharp knock on the door, and a loud voice
called, “Open up! Police!”
“I’ll be right
with you,” I yelled back. I lifted the chest so I could free my ankle. Before I
could do anything else, the police crashed through the door with raised
pistols. “Where are they?” one of the
policemen asked.
“They’ve gone to
deliver the ransom note,” I answered.
The other cop went
back into the hallway. “It’s okay. You can come in.”
Mr. Fitz ran into
the room and put his arms around me. “My dear friend, Rupert,” he said. “I’m so
happy to see that you’re all right. They didn’t hurt you, did they?”
“No, I’m fine.
It’s a good thing they didn’t know I could send you an email just by talking
and give you the coordinates of this place for the police.”
A few minutes
later Francis and the gnome came back to find the police waiting for them. They
both seemed quite puzzled by the turn of events.
