REPAIRMAN

“What a view!” Carly’s voice cried enthusiasm. Her new husband, Aldo, hurried to the window, and they both exclaimed at the vast concrete panorama far below. It was the year of The Mighty Lord, 2993; they were young and very much in love, and going to spend the rest of their lives in Aldo’s native Italy. However, Carly’s parents had objected.

“What about our future grandchildren?" Carly’s mum had wailed. “We’d never see them grow older! You wouldn't ever be allowed to come back to the Commonwealth Republic! And,” she'd muttered under her breath, “you wouldn’t want to, once you arrived in that paradise.”

"Come with us," they had said, though everyone knew that would be impossible. Second Generations were not allowed to leave the Commonwealth.

And, as Aldo’s parents were both expired, the newly-weds acquiesced.

“After all,” said Aldo, generously. “Family comes first. We can always move over there later, when our children grow taller. Because, cara mia, I would live in the desert so long as you were by my side!”

“And there’s plenty of desert around to choose from,” Carly said, giggling at her husband, who then commenced to whirl her round the room. They were bright with enthusiasm, and willing to tolerate this brave new world of concrete and metal and, beyond, the vast empty acres of sand dunes, whipped into weird shapes by the eternal winds.

So now, instead of the vineyards and warm sunshine, and the acres of oxygen-giving llunga trees, their world couldn’t be more different. They had always rather liked the spacious loft apartments seen in so many of the old American TV programmes, and so when a new block was built in the inner city - well! They just had to have one.

“It’s not an ideal choice of family home. After all, you have the tokens to buy a ground-level unit, don’t you?” Aldo’s sister, Karina, provided the understatement.

"Yes,” admitted Carly. “But then this isn't forever. It’s just something we wanted to do, that’s all. Eventually, we’ll sell it and get a little ground one somewhere.” Carly’s voice was wistful. “This is just a fun project, you see...” her voice tailed off as Karina’s eyebrows rose in that supercilious way of hers which always irritated Carly, as though her sister-in-law would have expected them to make just such a clapped-out, half-witted decision like that. And, Carly remembered, it was Karina who had said the apartments were nothing but trouble. Apparently, one citizen she knew had rented one himself, but he'd given it up after two months. “He said, he had to get out of there by midnight. Why, I don’t know, but I’ve a good idea.”

“Are they haunted, then?” Carly had asked her, jokingly, but Karina had not laughed. “Not haunted, no,” she’d answered, puzzlingly. Carly was convinced it was just sour grapes on the part of her sister-in-law, bitter from her break-up with the boss of Androids Inc. where she worked.

The couple went out to dinner two weeks after they'd moved in to celebrate, and because it coincided with their wedding anniversary. Consequently they rather over indulged themselves with additive infusions.

Next morning, Carly opened her eyes to a sense of something being very wrong. The complete silence, created by superlative triple glazing, was broken by the sound of trickling water.

Damn! I’ve left a tap running, she thought, turning over in the sleep cubicle and groaning as the hangover wreaked its vengeance on her body. Ten seconds later she sat bolt upright.

“There’s no tap in here.” she said aloud.

Aldo mumbled something to someone in his unconscious world. Carly, alert and fully functioning now, leapt from the bed. Over in the far reaches of the huge loft-room, the floor glittered in a shaft of early sunlight.

“Aldo, wake up - quickly!” she urged to the sleeping figure. “We’re flooding!”

Her husband sat up, rubbing his red eyes, and contemplated the scene in disbelief.

Water trickled from the ceiling, covering one wall in a gauze-thin sheet, and ending in a steadily spreading pool on the floor.

“Oh, no,” sobbed Carly “What are we going to do? We’ve only just moved in and look at it.”

“You get the mop. I’ll ring up the repairman!” Aldo barked out his orders.       

Thank heavens he’s here to take charge. Carly thought, disjointedly. She ran for the utility cupboard while her husband made for the machine in the hall and punched in a number.

"The communer's not working. I'll have to go down to ground and see if the repairman's in his work station."

About five minutes after he'd dashed off, two things happened. There was a white flash of light from behind the handset, and out of the corner of her eye she thought she glimpsed something blue rise up outside the front door, which was fitted with an opaque Plass – a new plastic and glass combo - panel. She had no time to wonder what it was, for next second, the door alarm activated.

Carly opened it to see the repairman, immaculate as always in his royal blue overalls. There was not a speck on his clean-cut countenance, and not one of his short blond hairs was out of place.

He must have travelled at light-speed to get here this quickly, thought Carly, then she decided that he had been on the floor below, or further along the landing. Had to, to be here by now, she decided. But where was Aldo? She was curious to see that the repairman didn’t look at all unruffled.

His brilliant blue eyes, which seemed to match his overalls perfectly, regarded her with polite detachment. She realised she was gawping.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said.

“Is the leak fixed in the bathroom now?”

Earlier in the week there had been a small drip from the hand basin tap, and the repairman had been sent for.

“Never mind the bathroom, it’s the living room I’m concerned about. Go and have a look, the water is starting to run down the walls.”

The repairman started to walk toward the lounge door but instead turned off toward the bathroom. Then he came out and went into the kitchen. He stood there, not speaking, his finely-chiselled features devoid of expression.

Carly felt a small ball of panic deep inside. He seems so strange, she thought. Oh God, what if he’s an Eradicator, or a Defiler? Here I am, all alone in the flat with him. He probably knows now that the flat is empty. There’s just me and him - and extinction, waiting now. She began to back away. She could feel the atmosphere choking her, it was so oppressive.

The repairman did nothing at all. He seemed to have become completely motionless.

It’s as though he’s just…stopped working, thought Carly - though that’s ridiculous! Oh, my Lord, why did Aldo have to go out? How long will he be? He should’ve been back by now. He’s going to walk in on the remains of his wife if he doesn’t hurry himself!

She was beginning to sound paranoid, even to herself. She thought all this in the time it took for a sandfly to land on the repairman’s face. He didn’t brush it away, or even blink, but turned his head slowly and looked at Carly.

The fly crawled over his eyeball. Then it suddenly buzzed away as smoke dispersed gently from the man’s eyes, then from all his facial orifices.

Carly, profoundly shocked, watched as if in slow-motion replay. Suddenly the repairman jerked into life, and began to walk, lopsidedly towards the living room door. As she continued to watch helplessly, he reached the hallway, and she looked past him at the wall of water which had inexplicably been building up at an alarming rate behind the living room door. Viewed through the opaque door panel it was like a gigantic fish tank. Objects were being whirled around inside like brightly-coloured aquarium fish; an unknown species, swimming, searching for food - or a way out. And the repairman, that monstrous broken-down robot (and who would repair him, Carly thought hysterically), was about to issue them with one.

His metal hand, covered in its fabricated skin, stretched out to touch the door handle.

Carly screamed out… “NO!” just as Aldo came back in through the front door. Being a quick thinker, he took in the situation at a glance. Grabbing his wife by the wrist, he simultaneously pushed the robot to the floor with his other hand, where it lay threshing slowly, like a toy whose battery was running down.

Strangely, neither of them wanted to enter the tiny box-like transfloor, that high-powered elevator which would speed them down to ground level. Instead, Aldo pushed Carly into the emergency escape chute and out into the street. A sandstorm was starting, red grains whipped around their faces as they clung, to each other.

Aldo gasped,

“I thought that species was extinct! They’d supposed to have been phased out years ago!”

Carly had got her breath back, and with it came enlightenment.

“It’s Karina!”

“Sorry?”

“Your sister! She has something to do with this, I’m sure of it. She works for the Droid Factory. She tried to put us off these apartments, remember.”

“Ridiculous! She couldn’t have – could she?” Even as he spoke, Aldo realized the truth. Karina, even from the time of her manufacture, had always had flaws. She was jealous, single-minded, sometimes ruthless. He could easily imagine her wanting to save tokens by re-issuing these obsolete robots, de-commissioned because of their unpredictability and what Humans had called ‘psychotic tendencies’. She had been in a position of trust which she had betrayed, and now maybe the whole Race was in jeopardy. He was suddenly aware that his wife was holding her arm.  

“You’re damaged!” He rolled up her sleeve and tried to mop up the black lubricant leaking from her wrist joint. Ever practical, he took in the situation with a sweep of his Plass eyes.

“Let’s get you to a technician,” he said. “Then we’ll sort my sister out.”

What a husband! Carly was so glad they'd married, in this year of The Mighty Lord, 2993.