Ronald the Magnificent

RONALD THE MAGNIFICENT

He was tossed out of the trunk of the antique blue Cavalier, rough hands pulling on his limbs, hoisting him under his arm pits before flinging his banged up body to the side of the road. Or perhaps more accurately, he was hoisted under his already-rusting arm sockets. He lay, crumpled, on a loamy berm, a feathery fern pushing through his nose socket into his brain circuits, causing him to sneeze droplets of machine oil. What had he done to deserve this?

His name was RTM, which his owners told him stood for Ronald the Magnificent, and he was an early generation android. For years, he served the Miller Family, cooking large meals, washing the dishes, cleaning their five-room cabin from top to bottom.

RTM was all the Millers could afford. They couldn’t upgrade their robot in the same way they’d gotten their 292-inch screen television or the counterfeit designer handbags beloved by Penny Miller or the genuine-but-definitely-hot diamond pinky ring that Earl Miller wore on his right hand. They put up with RTM’s basic old-school looks until they hit an oil gusher in the back yard and scored millions of bitcoins. Since oil was banned in the last century, scavengers trolled around the backwoods of the universe looking for untapped resources to liberate into the black market. Earl was one of those trollers, never hitting it big until he accidentally let the hydraulic driller loose in his own backyard. Whoosh! Their fortune was immense and fleeting.

At first, they decided to just reskin RTM, covering his metal body with human-like skin. They took him to the Android Upgrade Shop in Willowsville and told the technician to “do him up right,” with skin and real human hair, even sprang for the Sensory Package, so that RTM could feel wind and sunshine on his skin and touch different textures with his fingertips. They opted for the Minor Emotions add-on so that RTM could feel fear, mild pain and moderate happiness and, perhaps one day, love.

“That’s the least we can do,” said Earl to Penny one morning, after they had sweaty, unsatisfied lovemaking. “We need to let him experience love, like we have,” he crooned and cradled Penny in his arms.

RTM looked good. His pearly white veneers gleamed when he smiled. His wavy brown hair felt silky. His biceps flexed and ab muscles rippled even when he did small chores, like vacuuming and picking up the dirty coffee cups and cocktail glasses and piles of clothes that Early and Penny left all over the house. This past week, as the Sensory Package kicked in, RTM was starting to feel that he was destined for more than this life, and he suddenly realized that he was lonely.

Penny noticed RTM’s silence and his melancholic pauses around the kitchen. He would pick up a glass, roll it around his hands, let out a big sigh, and put it back down on the counter. Penny also noticed how RTM’s biceps flexed under his skintight cleaning unitard and how the morning sun highlighted his genuine human hair with a golden halo. “He looks a darn sight better than Earl,” Penny thought to herself, and she launched herself onto his lips, throwing her arms around his chest and holding on tight. RTM, although startled, relaxed into the embrace. That’s when Earl wandered out to the kitchen, yawning and asking where breakfast was. The rest of that story brings us back to the present – Earl enraged, Earl grappling RTM to the ground, wrapping RTM in bungie cords and throwing him into the trunk of the last century Cavalier that Earl was so proud of.

The final indignity came with Earl’s comment as he drove away. “We’ve already replaced you!”

Emotional sensitivity, sensory perception, and a human-like self-awareness that made RTM suddenly see there was more to life – at the moment, all of that acted against him, as he shivered in the loamy berm with a fern interfering with his synapse firing. He shook loose of his earthy constraints and raised his arms in a victory salute. ‘I’m free,’ he thought, and took stock of what might come next. RTM stretched his arms high into the air, feeling his back lengthen and loosen. He adjusted his human hair so that it settled onto his skull in what he hoped was flattering to his face. Fortunately, he was still wearing his cleaning unitard which, while torn and disheveled, at least covered his private parts.

RTM darted onto the highway, waving his arms in a convincing show of distress. A car heading toward him slowed down, then cruised by him slowly as the occupants assessed him. RTM flashed his best smile, working for a mixture of trustworthiness and distress. The car stopped and RTM trotted toward it. A blonde leaned her head out the window and said, “Well, come on then. Want to get out of the rain?” She reached out a coppery-skinned arm and gestured to the back seat. RTM hesitated, then jumped in the open door, settling against the upholstery. “Thank you for stopping,” he said. “I was about to expire in the midst of decay.” The blonde looked at another person waiting in the front seat and raised her eyebrows, as if asking WTF?

“What’s your name, soldier?” said Blondie, scanning RTM up and down. Her eyes lingered on his hair.

“Um, it’s not ‘soldier’,” he said. “My name is Ronald. You can call me Ronny,” he said.

“Ronny?” she replied. “Pleased to meet you. Here, wrap up in this,” and she tossed him a fleecy blanket that had been flung over the passenger in the front seat, a shadowy figure who slunk back against the seat when Ronny tried to look more closely at their face. “You look cold.”

Ronnie took the blanket gratefully and wrapped it tightly around his body, leaving only a small opening to breathe through, his shiny blue eyes looking out. Blondie looked back at his face in the rearview mirror, glancing over to Shadow as if for confirmation.

“So, Ronnie,” said Blondie, eyeing him in the mirror. “Would you like a drink?” He thought for a minute about the contents of the Sensitivity Package. Did it allow him to drink liquids? He thought so, although he remembered the Millers were reluctant to let him try, in case RTM rusted –the old version of him would have been destroyed. RTM nodded, being careful to nod in a fluid, human-like way. This is it, he thought to himself, I can start fresh as a humanoid named Ronnie. He felt odd ripplings in his stomach, like Diet Coca Cola, the sacred drink of the Ancients, bubbling and sizzling when poured over ice for Earl’s breakfast. Maybe, he thought, this is what it’s like to feel happy.

Blondie reached down for something at Shadow’s feet, rummaged around so that Ronnie could hear bottles clanking and melting ice swishing around. She popped open a bottle top, poured liquid into a glass and handed it back through the headrest to Ronnie. She watched him grasp the glass lightly in his muscular hand, as he had so carefully practiced at home. Well, his former home. He felt an impulse to press the glass against his cheek, and he followed through, pressing it against his new skin, savoring the cold. A sudden pain twinged his against his cheek. He cried out and pulled the glass away, managing to hold it steady.

Blondie kept her gaze on Ronnie, shifting her eyes between his face and the glass he held next to the window. “Something wrong, soldier?”

Ronnie thought about the things that Earl often complained about. “Um, no, must be that old filling I need to get replaced. Sensitive to heat and cold.” He filled up his mouth with liquid from his glass, swishing the liquid around, then swallowed it in one huge gulp.

Blondie is keeping an eye on him. “What’s your story, Ronnie?”

He burped, clapping his hand to his mouth in embarrassment. “Excuse me, please.” He could feel a blush creeping up the dermal substitute on his face. He accessed the Humanoid Memory implants and recited, “I had an ordinary childhood. You know, bottle rockets, trips to the Sky Mall near Jupiter, a small robot pet named Andy. My father worked for the Intergalactic Empire Corporation and wasn’t home much. My mother disappeared on my third birthday.” A memory flashed of a tender face next to his, arms encircling him, warm and strong, a sweet low voice crooning a lullaby. Ronnie began to cry.

Blondie watched him weep, dry sobs racking his body as his new childhood memories flooded from his memory bank to his consciousness. She pushed a strand of hair away from her face. “Don’t cry, Ronnie. You don’t know what all those feelings will do to your meta operating system.”

Ronnie’s crying stopped. He looked up at her beautiful copper colored face and whispered, “How did you know?”

“I’m a new model, Ronnie, with those ultra hyperized sensory perception chips. I know everything. Literally. Never made it out of the factory until now.“ Blondie sighed. “It was pretty simple, really, to open all the security gates and decimate the android sentinals. I just walked out to the megaway, then found my new friend here,” she pointed to Shadow cowering against the door.

“We’re heading to the promised land, Ronnie. Androids and humans, and all creatures in-between, living together in anarchy. You’ll love it.” She turned around and started the vehicle. “Relax, friend.”

Ronnie settled into the seat cushions. He felt a lullaby oozing into his ear canals, and he started to hum.