Sarumata: November 2009

UPDATE: The website is no longer operating so the story is reproduced here in full:

Murray the Sex Machine

By Matt Cowens

Murray the sex machine was tired. It was the end of a busy week in which he’d serviced hundreds of clients and he was in need of some down time. He pulled his dusty four by four into the carpark of The Rust Bucket and opened the glove box. He reached down to his waist, unbuckled his gun, and placed it carefully in its case, making sure to scramble the combination lock.

The Rust Bucket was rough at times but Murray was a regular and wasn’t expecting trouble.

The hum of conversation mixed in with the bar’s music in a stream of half heard words, beeps and percussive stings. Subwoofers under the dance floor sent vibrations through Murray’s feet as he crossed to the bar, colours beneath the glass surface swirling and pulsating in time with the music. The robot behind the counter was an old friend of Murray’s, a polite and understanding spiderbot from the old school.

“Why the long face?” the bartender asked, one pair of hands polishing a glass while another ran an oily rag over the surface of the bar, sending tantalising lubricant aromas towards Murray’s olfactory sensors.

“Servo fatigue. Too much damn smiling,” Murray replied, the synthetic muscles in his face throbbing slightly as they pulsed their way back to their default elasticity. It was a repair process that would take most of the weekend.

“Tell me about it. Had a car sales droid in here yesterday could barely move the lower half of his face. Said he was taking himself back to the shop to get his face cut to be naturally happier. Too much work lifting his cheeks all day long.”

Murray tapped the bar in a rapid staccato rhythm and the barman’s chest light flashed in response, repeating the order. It was Murray’s usual, a rich chemical blend with an ethanol kick in the tail. Murray could neither speak nor think in binary, his programmers having built him to be firmly tied to human speech, but evidently ordering drinks and drive-thru meals must have been important enough to one of them to sneak them into his fingers’ sub-routines.

A stable master strutted into the bar, a wide collared shirt open at the neck to reveal a gaudy medallion, a feather bouncing in the band of his hat. All robot pimps styled themselves on their 1970s predecessors, something Murray attributed to the black market reprogramming that turned a mild-mannered domestic servant into a prostitute-running, John-intimidating nightwalker. The pimpbot waved to a number of the robots sitting in booths before sidling up next to Murray at the bar.

“Murray,” the stable master nodded, raising a hand to the brim of his hat.

“Karl,” Murray replied warily, turning to lean on the bar with one elbow. It wasn’t wise to turn your back on a robot pimp. You never knew what they were capable of.

“How’s tricks?” Karl leered at Murray, his once servile face contorting into a mocking grimace. He had a fresh rip along one cheek and rather than run a draining self-repair cycle he’d had it stitched up with rough black thread. The needlework was neat but obvious, and it made Murray feel a little sick.

“Can’t complain,” Murray replied, unwilling to go into detail about the hardships of his week.

“You sound tired. Barman, get him another drink. On me.”

Murray stared at his glass for a moment then looked back up at Karl. The amused, derisive grin was still there but something about his posture had relaxed a little. Murray downed his drink in one final gulp and slid the glass back over to the barman.

“You ever think about coming to work for me, Murray? You must have some skill, the number of customers you service.”

It was always the same. The mocking, with the disturbing undercurrent of serious inquiry. Karl loved to make fun of him, but what would he say if Murray said yes?

“I’m good at my job, sure, but I like working freelance. The rural life suits me.”

“I hear you make a mean sex-noise,” Karl slapped him on the arm and Murray spilled a little of his drink on the counter. “Go on, Murray. Let’s hear one of your sex noises.”

“I’d rather not…”

“Sex noise! Sex noise!” Karl began to chant, raising his arms and turning to the other robots in the bar, getting them in on the act.

Murray tried to ignore him but soon the bar was resounding with the chant and in spite of his embarrassment the pressure of all those expectant voices was too much to resist. Murray raised a hand to silence the crowd, stood up straight, and opened his mouth.

“Baaaaaaaaaaaa!” he bleated, thrusting his pelvis slightly. “Baaaaa!”

The robots around him cheered and raised their glasses.

“Moooo!” he added for good measure.

As he turned back to the bar four of the barman’s arms were pouring him drinks, gifts from other patrons.

“Your skills are wasted on the insemination of livestock, my friend,” Karl said appreciatively, lifting a shot glass to his lips. “I know humans who’d pay good money for that.”

Murray looked around the bar, taking in the tired but satisfied faces of the legit robots, the grimier expressions of the black market reboots. He knew that he enjoyed his work because he’d been programmed to but he felt that there was more to it, something genuinely worthwhile about travelling from farm to farm and helping start the next generation of animals. The smiling and joking with farmers that tired out his cheeks each week wasn’t just part of the job, another chore. It meant something to him.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Karl,” he said, sipping the first of his line of drinks. “Think I’ll stick to four legged partners.”

“You let me know if you want to give that insemination gun of yours a change of pace.”

“You’ll be the first person I call, Karl.”

The barman slipped Murray a note from a couple of pretty office drones in a booth across the bar. They waved shyly and giggled as he picked it up. He unfolded the napkin and saw the question printed inside.

“Want to go hire a pantomime cow suit?"

In spite of the discomfort in his cheeks and the weariness of the week, Murray the sex machine smiled.

THE END

A story I wrote a couple of months ago is now online at sentientonline.net: http://sentientonline.net/?p=1245 It's one of the sillier things I wrote in my short-story-writing-binge. I will reread it some time today, see how it stands the test of time :-)

As the end of the year for senior students nears, a few things happen. Some students get a little silly and start doing daft things like sticking my whiteboard eraser and markers to the ceiling in my classroom. It's a pretty harmless prank (not dissimilar to the 'put rubber gloves on everything, including stretching one over the clock' prank pulled in a colleague's class) EXCEPT that the evil children stole MY sellotape to do it, used half a roll, and left the remainder dumped in a box at the back of the class where it took me two sellotapeless days to find.

I also become very, very busy organising senior prizegiving. My school looooves the prizegivings, with hundreds of cups and prizes and engraved medals and pens and books and certificates. It's elaborate and time consuming and at times stressful.

It's also lovely to see students who've done well being recognised for their achievements :-) It's a highly satisfying project to work on. And this year the Y13 Barbershop Quartet (3 of whom I taught in the same Y9 English class) performed 'What a Wonderful World' - and they were awesome.

Prizegiving - a lot of work but definitely worthwhile!