PAL

by Josh Skinner

Part 1 appears
in this issue.

conclusion

The problem with running away is that you need a destination, and Billy didn’t have one. But he had to get as far away from his parents as possible. Not an easy thing to do with a heavy robot your back. He’d need to get him activated again.

Billy reached into his pocket and pulled out his wristwatch. With his thumb, he dialed a series of numbers and waited as a chain of white dots scrawled across the screen. Finally, the picture changed, revealing a man in his mid-thirties with thinning blond hair, who smiled and said, “Steve’s Late Night Robotica, how — hey...!” as he recognized his nephew.

“Hi, Uncle Steve,” Billy said.

“It’s eleven-thirty, little dude,” Steve said. “What are you doing up?” He squinted and looked around. “And out?”

“I’m running away with PAL,” Billy said.

“You mean your BUD.”

“No, I still have PAL.”

“You do?” Steve frowned. “Where are you?”

“Outside my house.”

“Do your parents know you’re running away?”

Billy made a face.

“Dumb question,” Steve said, holding up his hands. “Where are you and your 5-10 PAL tutor running away to?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, how about running away to my shop? I have hot chocolate and nachos.”

It was cold, and hot chocolate with nachos sounded great. But even Billy’s chilly legs and growling stomach couldn’t compete with his real dilemma.

“Uncle Steve, can you fix my PAL?”

Steve hesitated, before saying, “Look, let me come pick you up, and then we’ll talk about your robot, all right?”

* * *

Ten minutes later, Uncle Steve pulled up in a sleek white car. Billy couldn’t see Steve inside the black tinted windows, but he knew it was his car. Who else would have Pac-Man hubcaps? His uncle was a nut for old electronic games.

A rectangular door slid aside. Inside, Steve sat on a white seat, holding a bottle of grape soda. He wore a red t-shirt and white shorts.

“Hey kid, climb in,” Steve said. “Holy granola, you’re carrying your robot?”

“I had to, dad deactivated him,” Billy said.

He backed up, allowing Steve to lift PAL off his back and set the robot beside him. Billy crawled in and sat on the opposite seat. Between them, a holographic demonstration of AKI’s newest robotics catalogue projected from the floor. Steve pressed a button and the hologram dissolved.

“The store,” Steve said. The door slid shut and the car accelerated. “You got guts, Billy. Slipping past your folks like that? I would never have tried anything like that with your grandparents. And you’re obviously taking some serious vitamins in order to lift your PAL. These little bots are heavy.”

“You’re not mad at me?”

“I’m not your folks,” Steve said. “I can say it was cool. But as your uncle, I can also say this: Don’t do it again.”

Billy slumped into the seat. He guessed even Uncle Steve had to act like an adult once in a while.

“So, planning to piggy back your robot away to Never-never land?”

“Not if you can fix him,” Billy said. “Can you?”

“Want a soda?” Steve asked, as if he didn’t hear the question.

* * *

The car slowed and they stopped in front of Steve’s Late Night Robotica. The shop sat between two condemned buildings on Acorn Street, a block from downtown. It was far from the comfortable, quiet suburbs where Billy lived. Steve referred to the neighborhood as “dicey on a good day,” but the rent was cheap and he had a loyal clientele. This time of night, the streets were empty save for the hookers staking a corner on the fringes of the Red Light District.

“Stay close to me,” Steve said. He slipped out first, carrying PAL in his arms. “The shadows have eyes, if you know what I mean.”

Billy imagined a wolf-like shadow hunkering in an alley way, with huge fangs and boiling lava in place of eyeballs. He jumped out of the car and held on to Steve’s shirt.

The street smelled like motor oil and rotten fruit. Somewhere, a man shouted.

Steve approached the front door and tapped a numerical sequence. The door slid aside. He hefted PAL into the darkened shop. As Billy stepped in, a dozen ceiling lights illuminated and a neon OPEN sign appeared at the front window.

Billy looked around. On either wall stood robots of various shapes and sizes, price tags tied to fingers or hanging around necks. Some looked human, wearing metallic gowns to cover their anatomically correct parts, while others looked like metal boxes on wheels. Next to the front counter, a shelf of replacement heads stared at Billy. He didn’t like looking at the head shelf.

Steve placed PAL on the counter and sat him up.

“Aren’t you going to take him into your shop?” Billy asked, pointing to a door behind the counter.

“No, I’m not,” Steve said. He examined the key pad on the back of PAL’s neck and muttered something to himself. “Close your eyes, Billy.”

“Why?”

“I have to input a master combination. This combination can activate or deactivate any robot, and the manufacturer swore me to an oath that I’d never share it with anyone, even cool little dudes like yourself. Close your eyes.”

Billy closed his eyes. In moments, he heard a familiar click and whirr.

“Operational 11:45 PM,” PAL said.

Billy opened his eyes. PAL looked down at Billy and said, “Preston, Billy, instructional and maturation programming.”

“PAL you’re alive!” Billy exclaimed.

“Operational,” PAL confirmed.

“Now we can run away, and the Recyclers won’t get you.”

“Operational, cat gut string message clear,” PAL said cheerfully.

Billy frowned. “Another glitch. He’s been doing it since yesterday.”

Steve looked at Billy. “Dude, did your parents talk to you about PAL’s glitches?”

“No. They just want to throw him out instead of fix him.”

“Ah, great,” Steve said, scratching his cheek. “Leave it to Uncle Steve to give the big talk.”

“About what?”

“Dude, PAL has glitches because he’s deteriorating.”

“Deteriorating?” Billy asked. He’d never heard the word before, but there was a sense of foreboding about it, like the word ‘sickness’ or ‘old’.

“Yeah, you need an 11-15 BUD,” Steve said. He pointed to a robot in the corner. It looked like a teenage boy with blonde hair and green eyes. “And when you turn sixteen, you get your final tutor bot, your 16-18 COACH.” He pointed to an attractive female model with long black hair.

“But I don’t want any of those,” Billy said. “Doesn’t anyone understand? PAL is my friend.”

“I know he is,” Steve said. “I was best friends with mine, too. But after he broke down, I had to get over it. It’s part of growing up.”

Those stupid words again; to Billy, growing up sounded too much like throwing up.

“Look,” Steve said, “I feel your pain. Believe me, if anyone can understand robots as friends, it’s me. That’s why I got into the business of selling them. I think they’re better than people, and more loyal, too. But a 5-10 PAL is a tutor bot, and he can only teach you the stuff you need to know from age five till ten. After that, you need to learn new things, and PAL isn’t designed to teach those things to you.”

Billy couldn’t believe it; he couldn’t believe Uncle Steve, of all people, was talking like this. He wanted to hand PAL over to the Recyclers, like his parents did.

Billy lunged for PAL’s hand and pulled him off the table. PAL fell on top of him and together they crashed onto the floor.

“Are you okay?” Steve said, reaching down to help.

“Stay away,” Billy shouted. “You’re just like mom and dad.”

“Oh, now that was below the belt.”

“Get up PAL,” Billy said, pulling on his arm. But PAL lay limp on the ground.

“Bi-pedal malfunction,” PAL said, and started to sing: “The itsy-bitsy spider crawled up the water sprout.”

Uncle Steve said, “He’s falling apart; nothing can stop it.”

“Down came the rain and washed the spider ouch.”

“The Recyclers should have picked up PAL on your birthday,” Steve said, looking like he had a bad taste in his mouth. “I bet your dad delayed it for as long as he could, the cheapskate. Kids your age shouldn’t see this kind of thing.”

Billy dragged PAL toward the door. It slid open. “I’m leaving,” he said. “I’ll carry him. We’ll be fine, right PAL?”

“Visual program not found.”

Billy looked down. PAL’s eyes darkened. Then he started hiccupping: a grating, metallic sound deep within his throat.

“Come on, PAL, get up,” Billy implored, kneeling beside him.

“Accessing program — Preston, Billy.”

“That’s right,” Billy said. “I’m here.”

“Programming complete,” PAL said. “Age of maturity reached.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Core shutdown.”

Billy’s eyes swelled with tears. He turned and looked at his Uncle Steve.

“Do something,” he said.

“I can’t.”

“But he’s dying.”

“I know.”

Billy let the tears roll down his cheeks. He didn’t care if he cried now; he didn’t want to wipe them away.

“What’s killing him?” he asked.

Steve approached him, knelt down, and said, “You are, little dude.”

A final, grating hiccup escaped PAL’s lips. Then he was silent.

* * *

Steve and Billy drove back to the house. PAL lay in the trunk.

Billy held a bottle of grape soda in his hands, but didn’t take a sip. He felt sick.

“I don’t understand,” Billy said.

“PAL was programmed to know when you turned eleven years old,” Steve said. “Once you turned eleven, he began to break down. His glitches were the result of you touching him. Each time you touched him, he analyzed your DNA and concluded that his programming was complete. The more you touched him, the faster he deteriorated.”

Billy looked at his hands.

Every time I touched him...

He thought about the last couple months. All the times he tackled PAL during football, or rubbed his hair playfully; every time he gave PAL a high five, he was giving him a command to die.

Steve continued, “Your PAL unit was programmed for one person: you. Once the programming goal of a PAL tutor is completed, it can’t be re-programmed. It’s easier to recycle the PAL and use its parts to make a new one. AKI programs a grace period of about two months before the deterioration starts to show, but your dad-”

Steve shook his head.

“It’s not fair,” Billy sobbed. “I don’t want to give him up.”

“Then it’s not fair for two people: You, and the next five-year old.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Hundreds of recycled bits of 5-10 PAL robots went into making your PAL. That’s hundreds of boys and girls who gave up their best friends so you could have one. Would you deprive the next five-year old of a best friend, all because you can’t say goodbye?”

They stopped in front of Billy’s house. At the front door, his mother stood waiting, dressed in a pink robe. Her cheeks looked wet under the porch light. Behind her, Ed opened and closed the lid of the crate, scratching his head and apparently trying to figure out how Billy got past the magnetic locks.

Billy climbed out of the car. He still didn’t understand, but there were the new words: deteriorating, sickness, old, growing up, saying goodbye. Watching PAL break down caused a new, underlying heaviness in his heart and a whisper in the back of his mind. He felt it as his mother tucked him into bed but didn’t sing her goodnight song like she used to. He felt it when the 11-15 BUD arrived; it smelled like new packing material for a couple weeks, then the smell faded.

And he felt it as he thought of PAL, broken apart and fused into other PAL tutors, for other five-year olds.

Five-year olds who’d need him, and everyone else, to make room.