Keepers of the Automata
Brian S. Wheeler
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This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2016 by Brian S. Wheeler
For Kate.
Contents
Other ebooks by Brian S. Wheeler
Chapter 1 – Putting a Dent in Things
Chapter 2 – In the Shop
Chapter 3 – Messy, Inefficient and Painful
Chapter 4 – Earned Rewards
Chapter 5 – A Strange Story and a Bold Request
Chapter 6 – Screaming Out of the Dreams
Chapter 7 – A Silenced Typewriter
About the Writer
Visit Flatland Fiction online for other stories by Brian S. Wheeler
If you enjoyed this story, please consider purchasing one of the following novels available at your favorite distributor of ebooks. Flatland Fiction welcomes your feedback at
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Hugh Simms looks to find hope amid the stars when he fails to find any on Earth. Heartbroken by the loss of his only love, Hugh loads his great spaceship with ash and glass before launching his Starchaser into the cosmos. Miraculously, that spaceship finds an alien civilization in the vast dark, and Hugh might deliver that civilization the salvation he failed to deliver to the Earth.
Vanity and Stars
Rise to grasp new worlds, and fall with the tragedy of human and alien frailty. These ten stories underline the potential seeded throughout the galaxy, while never denying that humankind’s flaws will surely tarnish the stars. With the vain and the foolish, buckle into the rocket seat and hold a breath while the cosmos unfolds.
Keepers of the Automata
Brian S. Wheeler
Chapter 1 – Putting a Dent in Things
It was a code orange day, and Bryce Munson’s skin already itched in the sunlight as he stood before the polished glass of the firearm vending machine and struggled to determine what gun among all the possibilities would best serve his purpose. The sun burned its harshest on the days when the public climate signs warned of orange dangers. Orange dangers meant there was not a cloud in the sky to protect one’s skin from the sun’s radiation, so that even limited exposure burned the back of one’s neck. He wished he knew which gun he required, but none of those weapons whispered to him within the vending machine. Bryce lacked experience with even the most rudimentary of weapons. How would he know what ammunition he needed to purchase for whatever weapon he collected? How would he learn to load whatever gun he might choose? Would he need to clean the gun before discharging it? Bryce again wished he was a much more average type of man, a man with confidence, a man who didn’t feel weak and strange while standing before a common firearm vending machine.
A broad-shouldered man with a face covered in a long, unkempt kind of beard fashionable among the males of that year cleared his throat. “Excuse me, mister, but are you planning to take much longer? I’m starting to feel the sun gnaw my skin.”
“Forgive me,” Bryce stammered. “Please step on ahead.”
Bryce stepped aside so that the gentleman could approach the vending machine. Bryce watched the man’s fingers confidently punch at the vending machine’s numeric keypad. That man didn’t waste a minute. That man knew exactly what he needed. It took no time before the vending machine’s internal mechanisms fastened upon the firearm, removing it from the display and setting it within the retrieval tray. The man smiled as he pulled his gun from the machine, taking a moment to peer down its barrel, as if somehow gauging the craftsmanship’s quality.
Bryce summoned his most courageous voice as the man removed bullets from his denim coat and loaded them into his firearm.
“Sir, would you mind if I asked you something?”
The man grinned. “Oh, not at all, citizen. I can tell you’re not accustomed to using a firearm vending machine. Would you like a little help or advice?”
“I would. I’m ashamed that I’m having so much trouble choosing a gun.”
The man winked. “No need to feel ashamed. Why, you’re taking the time to learn now, and I’d be proud to help a citizen like yourself purchase a vending machine gun. It’s your first time, isn’t it?”
“It’s that evident?”
The man laughed. “Don’t worry. We all have a first time. Tell me, do any of those guns behind that glass attract your eye?”
“Not at all. They all look alike to me. I hardly know how to tell one apart from another.”
“Do you know what you might want to use one of those firearms for?”
Bryce paused. He didn’t know if it would be wise to inform that stranger of his intentions.
“Say no more,” the man held up his hand. “It was rude of me to ask. Why, you’d think I’ve never before helped a fellow citizen at one of these vending machines. However you might want to use one of those guns is entirely up to you. I know enough to suggest a gun right for you.”
The man nodded and pointed to a small gun located in an upper corner of the vending machine’s display. Bryce would never have noticed that weapon had the man not directed his eyes to the exact location that small gun possessed upon the grid of firearms.
“Seeing that this is going to be your first piece, let me suggest you purchase the ‘Earl’ model of gun, a very popular firearm for beginners. It already comes out of the vending machine loaded with a single round, so you don’t have to worry about matching it with the proper kind of ammunition. And after you fire the gun, you simply throw it away in the nearest trash can, so you never have to concern yourself with cleaning and keeping it. Some folks might snicker and say that the ‘Earl’ isn’t going to strike much fear into anyone. But I say that arming yourself with any kind of a gun is a much stronger deterrent than not arming yourself with nothing. Besides, ha
ving a little time to learn how to handle the ‘Earl’ really helps soothe the anxieties people new to guns are going to have. You’ll see, citizen. You’ll have a much easier time of choosing your gun the next time you need to use one of these vending machines.”
Bryce felt elated. He thanked the man, and the stranger kindly stood at Bryce’s side as Bryce tapped the proper numbers into the vending machine’s keypad. The internal mechanisms whirled and dropped the small gun into the retrieval tray, and the stranger even stayed to show Bryce the best way to grip the little ‘Earl.’
The man showed Bryce how to fasten the small gun into the back of his waistband before hurrying out of the code orange sunlight. With his new gun hidden beneath his sun-sheltering jacket, Bryce took long, confident strides down the crowded sidewalk as he made his way to the bookstation. He hadn’t been sure if he would succeed in following through with his intentions that morning, especially when he woke to the alarm informing him he faced a code orange day. Arriving before the vending machine, Bryce had worried he would’ve slumped and turned back home without so much as obtaining a gun. Yet a stranger had helped him, and now his goal didn’t feel so daunting. With a stranger’s timely assistance, his purpose felt a bit ordained. Bryce didn’t think he would need more than one shot. He didn’t intend to hurt anyone. He only wanted to inform his fellow citizens of the injustices that plagued him, of the injustices that short-changed them all. A single shot from his ‘Earl’ gun would surely be enough to start the gears that must move in order to reform the terrible enterprise of modern day book-selling.
The crowd thickened as Bryce approached the bookstation’s gleaming glass entrance. Lines of excited readers snaked out into the street from the bookstation, for not even a code orange day could dissuade so many customers from standing in the sunlight while waiting for a turn to come before the automaton writers and receive a new paperback book. Bryce smiled and took a position in the back of a line. He had chosen that day for his spectacle, knowing that especially large crowds always gathered on the days following an update to the automata’s artificial intelligence circuits. Readers always crowed the bookstations on those days, for the first paperbacks scribed from the writing robots in the wake of any update were considered valuable collectibles, treasured keepsakes for any library. Before Bryce tired of all the algorithms and formulas responsible for the automatas’ writings, he himself had amassed an impressive collection of stories penned by those robots. But any thrill the automata’s books ever offered Bryce vanished a long time ago. Those stories now gave him only disappointment, and resentment. No matter how many artificial intelligence updates the automata might ever acquire, Bryce believed those robots would never escape the templated plots, characters and settings that made each story feel so dull to him. Bryce wondered as he stood beneath a code orange sun why none of his fellow citizen readers ever seemed to notice that every bookstation offering was but a rehash of the tale that came before.
“Sir, please state your preferred book genre.”
Bryce smiled at the elderly man wearing the clouded glasses who sat within the bookstation’s ticket booth. He seemed to be the only human employed at that station, and Bryce dreamed that old man might’ve first been employed in that bookstation in the years just before the automata’s arrival, when customers were expected to invest the effort of conducting their own searches through stacks of books for whatever story might on any particular day speak best to their imaginations. Bryce dreamed that the old stories must’ve been more powerful, for somehow they needed to reach out to customers in those days before the robots. He thought the stories sold in those old times might’ve lacked the polish supplied by the automata, but Bryce suspected the old tales possessed greater inspiration.
The line pressed at Bryce’s back. The sun was hot. Customers sweated in the sun. Their skin burned in the harsh sun. Everyone grumbled with impatience. Yet Bryce would make them wait. He would ask the ticket taker his question, and he would force that old man to consider him. Bryce refused to become simply a cog in the industry of the bookstations.
“I’d like to hear my choices.”
The man’s gray and thick eyebrows contorted in frustration. “Seriously?”
“Seriously,” Bryce winked. “I’m thinking about jumping over to a new genre…”
“But people rarely ever do that, sir.”
“Maybe. Maybe.” Bryce nodded. “Only, I think I’d be wasting my opportunity if I don’t try to at least sample from all the genres. I really want to give the automata the appreciation they deserve.”
The old man’s shoulders slumped as a dissatisfied murmur lifted from the line, and he mumbled the possibilities available to Bryce.
“The automatas offer thrilling fiction in the following categories – children’s, young adult, romance, western, mystery, horror, science fiction and fantasy. The automata’s powerful artificial intelligence systems imagine on a scale never before achieved in the history of book-selling. No two books are ever the same. No matter how many times a reader visits their kiosks, the automata always supply each customer with a customized story.”
Bryce rubbed his chin. The elderly man in the ticket booth always fed him the same bookstation slogan, but Bryce never believed it. He recognized so easily how all of the automata’s stories were the same, regardless of how character names and adventure locales changed.
“Does the bug-eyed alien still write the science fiction stories?”
The old man sighed. “You’re talking about Gorn. That automaton continues to provide science fiction in all of the bookstations. Just as Gorn has done for the last thirty years.”
“I think that’s the robot I want to see,” Bryce clapped his hands.
The man quickly shoved a ticket at Bryce through his booths’ slot and shooed Bryce further down the line so that he could tend the needs of others who fidgeted beneath the hot sun. Bryce took a steadying breath as he approached the bookstation’s double doors, and his hand felt for the assurance offered by that small gun kept beneath his jacket.
Bryce’s skin tingled in the bookstation’s cool air. The interior of each of the city’s many bookstations was a cacophony of color. Tables and counters shuddered beneath the weight of the merchandise offered to those waiting to arrive before the automata. Customers could purchase posters and calendars brimming with the colorful characters found in any of the automata’s novels. Boxes of notebooks, writing journals and letterhead branded with the faces of the automata’s most famous characters were offered to every guest who thought he or she might spend a bit of time penning thoughts inspired by the works of the great robotic writers. For a meager price, customers might purchase battery-powered, plastic figurines of the famous automata, each containing recorded voices that spoke pithy words of encouragement whenever a person might feel sad. The bookstations sold porcelain coffee mugs decorated with the image of one’s favorite, writing robot. There were purses, shirts, diapers and lunchboxes. There were board games, puzzles, jewelry and reading lamps. All of the merchandise bore an image or slogan of the worlds the automata offered, and it was a very rare customer who moved through the lines without grasping an offered piece of merchandise to take home with whatever paperback they acquired that day in the bookstation.
Bryce, however, saw what remained missing amid so much space crowded with the knickknacks sold by the bookstation franchise. He saw that there were no couches upon which a customer might loiter long enough to scan the opening pages of a handful of books before choosing what title best deserved his or her coin. He counted no comfortable, leather chairs in which a person might enjoy opening chapters while sipping at a cup of steaming coffee. There were no tables around which friends might gather to share insight into moving, or puzzling, works of creative words. Bryce saw that the bookstations left no space for any kind of idle enjoyment. Each inch of the bookstation was dedicated to the sell. Each inch of space was devoted to the science of efficiently moving that line of consumers towards those r
obotic kiosks.
Every bookstation scattered throughout the nation possessed the same set of automata. The franchise didn’t commit the slightest change in automata decoration or design without studying the mountains of market data which birthed every parameter and variable tossed into the automata’s artificial intelligence. The slightest change in skin tone could send ripples through the buying market. The smallest, unplanned decoration on any automaton’s wardrobe could plummet franchise stock. And all eight automata stood in the rear of every bookstation. All eight stood in the same slight arc, so that the lines of customers that formed in one bookstation moved no differently than the lines assembled in any other store.
At the far left of that arcing line stood the automaton named Freddy Fox, who used his trademarked, yellow feather while scribing children’s stories on oversized pages for the boys and girls who giggled and jumped in front of his kiosk. Of all the automata, only Freddy the Fox served also as an illustrator, sketching with his yellow feather wonderful pictures of dolphins, panda, giraffes and puffins in every story he scribed. The softest kind of synthetic fur covered Freddy’s face, and the children loved to stretch their hands and pinch at the fox’s whiskers, which swayed as that automaton wrote his stories of friendship frogs and sharing owls. Bryce could forgive the children for falling so passionately for the same story over and over again, but he didn’t understand why mothers and fathers forever fawned over the glossy pages Freddy Fox’s kiosk presented to their children in exchange for a ticket.
The spectacled and grinning automaton named Jackie Luebbers stood to the right of Freddy Fox. Metallic braces crowded her teeth, but Jackie Luebbers always smiled. That automaton giggled whenever her pink pen with the sparking, purple sequins travelled across the college-ruled pages of her unicorn notebook. In careful cursive, Jackie wrote tales of senior prom dances, of first kisses, big basketball games and all kinds of dangers that invaded every party the teenagers threw while their parents were away on holiday. If a teenage girl gave her ticket to the robotic Jackie, then that automaton wrote a book with a female protagonist, who in the second-to-last chapter always removed her headgear and acne cream to show her transformation into a butterfly of a woman. If a boy supplied the ticket, then a young man always lifted an athletic trophy of some kind in Jackie’s final chapter, with the girl for whom he always pined draped upon his arm. Bryce felt the urge to vomit whenever he saw some young lady or man skipping down the street with a badge proclaiming membership in Jackie Luebbers’ fan club pinned to his or her chest.
The automaton seated next in that arc of robots dressed in purple robes covered in golden, stitched stars, with a cone-shaped hat stretching from the automaton’s head. The bookstation franchise called that robot with the rainbow-colored eyes burning beneath bushy, white eyebrows Magpie the Sage, the mechanical teller of fantasy and adventure, who filled his pages with Elven lore and mighty dragons, with ghost armies and leaning towers filled with arcane spell books. Of all the automata, old Magpie took the longest time to pen a novel in exchange for a customer’s ticket, for that robot would first inhale from his pungent pipe and blow smoke rings before slowly moving his writing wand across his stack of vellum paper. Strong letters of a bold, serif font appeared to express that robot’s offering, and a great horn blared each time Magpie’s kiosk ejected a paperback to an applauding customer.
But Bryce failed to understand how that bearded robot cultivated such a devoted following of readers. Did no one but him notice how the hero always found his or her magical weapon in the exact middle of chapter three? Did no one else realize how the villains always dressed in black, or how a joking, half senile wizard always offered the hero guidance in chapter five? Bryce wondered if something in that automaton’s pipe smoke distracted the robot’s fans from recognizing that all of Magpie the Sage’s books followed the same plot.
Magpie the Sage’s smoking pipe perhaps provided the greatest of any of the automata’s tricks, but none of the robots were more beautiful and attractive than the light-skinned vampirette whose round breasts pushed through a very thin, low cut gown. Fans of the horror genre offered their tickets to that robot with the emerald eyes and the red hair called Mary Hecate. The publishers and marketing managers gathered in the franchise’s home offices found in their piles of data that nothing helped sell stories of serial killers, murdering clowns and bellowing demons more than sex, and the creators of Mary Hecate bathed that automaton in lust. Mary’s long eyelashes blinked coyly at the customers who handed her their tickets, and she always slid that ticket between her breasts before puckering her plump lips. Then Mary pricked her finger with a sharp letter opener and wrote her story in the little letters inked by her synthetic blood. Mary Hecate’s hourglass figure appeared on the cover of every one of her books – gripped in a monster’s claws, or mesmerized before the fangs of a demon lover.
Mary Hecate’s latex body oozed sex, but the next automaton in line took second place to no one when it came to composing books populated by characters locked together in amorous embraces. The fifth automaton went by the name of Val Carrington, and that robot of romance fiction always attracted the longest lines of excited ticket holders. While Mary’s sex appeal teetered towards the vulgar, Val Carrington possessed an allure of sophistication. She wore a trim, red business jacket, tastefully accessorized by a glimmering strand of pearls. Val’s diamond earrings helped turn the flecks of gray in her otherwise brown hair into sparkles. And p