Charlie, A Projecting Prestidigitator

Charlie checked his batteries before he went out that night. He didn’t want Henderson angry with him again. The night before he hadn’t charged completely and only performed three scenes. Henderson hadn’t been happy about that. According to Henderson, Charlie wasn’t earning his keep. But Charlie would change that soon. He had applied updates to his software that morning. Tonight his images would be more vivid and real.

On the couch, Henderson slept, snoring loudly and occasionally stirring to wheeze and cough. Charlie leaned over and patted Henderson on the head. It was only 8 p.m., but Henderson had drunk too much earlier in the day. The old man would sleep until the early morning hours before checking Charlie’s earnings.

Charlie paused before a mirror to polish his silver head with his sleeve. He could hear Henderson’s voice in his mind warning, “No one wants to give their money to a filthy pile of junk.” Henderson liked to remind Charlie of this. “Look sharp and you’ll bring them in.” But there were other reasons for cleanliness. The show projected from his face as well as his hands, and any dirt caused artifacts in the images.

When he finished polishing, light gleamed from the top of his head and the point of his chin. He examined his facial features with his optical sensors, searching for remaining smudges or dust. His scan told him he was clean. Charlie smiled at his reflection. “Looking real good, kid,” he said in a gruff voice that sounded like Henderson. He chuckled in his own voice, which sounded like robots in old sci-fi movies, stilted and inhuman. Charlie’s voice could sound like anything, but Henderson had chosen the robot’s voice. Though Henderson never told Charlie why, Charlie suspected the old man liked a reminder of the past.

Stepping outside their basement apartment, Charlie took in the noises of the city. He recorded every sound, analyzing where people congregated nearby, where there was laughter and chatter, where people were having a good time. There were three parks within walking range where people liked to wander on Saturday nights. Couples on dates would sit hand-in-hand on benches and look up at the stars projected onto the sky from building tops.

Henderson preferred Charlie to go to the busiest park first, and then work his way down as the crowd thinned. Charlie found the nearest park was also the busiest. Applegate Gardens was a concrete slab in the center of the city with a few fountains and artificial trees with oxygen producing synthetic leaves. Performers like Charlie put on shows nightly there. He’d compete with these other performers tonight for tips. Henderson had recently upgraded Charlie’s speakers, so he’d at least be the loudest performer.

As he made his way toward the park, he sensed a group following him. His rear optical sensors told him it was a crowd of teenagers. They followed him for a block before they said something to him.

“Nice suit, tinman!” one teenager shouted – a young woman. She traveled with six male teenagers. She was the largest of them, and Charlie assumed she was their leader. Charlie knew about gangs in the city. He had dealt with them before.

“Thank you, madam!” he said in his English gentleman’s voice. “A good evening to you!”

“You hear that?” one boy said, “you’re a ‘madam.’”

The teens laughed and followed Charlie, taunting him. “Where you heading in that getup, guy?” one said. “You in the circus?”

Charlie wore something similar to the suits of old circus ringmasters: a bright red, double-breasted jacket with oversized gold buttons and gold fringe hanging from his shoulders.

He didn’t respond to any more of their comments. This was how Henderson had trained Charlie to react. Or rather, this was how Henderson had programmed Charlie. Charlie liked to think of his programming as training. He would imagine Henderson spending hours patiently explaining the ways of the world to him. However, much of Charlie’s knowledge – Charlie knew – had been downloaded to his hard drives in a few minutes.

Sometimes he wondered how many other Charlies there had been. Once while charging, he had explored Henderson’s basement room and found severed limbs and heads similar to his own. This had frightened him, and he had shut down for a few hours. When Charlie rebooted, Henderson had yelled, saying there was no use for a flaky robot. Robots were workers and that was that.

As Charlie recalled this, the girl threw a bottle at his back. It shattered, and his sensors told him he was completely soaked, his jacket most likely stained. Of course, this wasn’t the first time someone had thrown something at Charlie. People did that from time to time, and so Henderson inevitably spent many days washing Charlie’s suit.

“Whatcha gonna do about that, motherfucker?” the girl yelled. Charlie detected anger in her voice, and he walked faster. Henderson had trained him to avoid angry humans.

“Don’t you ignore me!” the girl yelled.

Charlie once asked Henderson why so many people grew angry with robots.

“Usually it’s the people who don’t have much and who don’t know much that hate robots,” Henderson had said.

“But you don’t have much, and you don’t hate me. Do you?”

“No, of course not,” Henderson had said, toying with some circuitry in Charlie’s back. “But I know quite a bit. And I used to have a lot more than I do now. But I can understand fear of something that could threaten you, even if it’s not threatening you at the moment.”

Charlie kept these words in mind when dealing with anger and hate. He knew it was not usually anger, only fear.

He continued to the park, and the teens stopped following him, probably growing bored. Humans grew bored quickly. He also kept that in mind during his shows.

A large crowd occupied the park. His olfactory sensors told him vendors around the place were cooking grilled synthetic meats and other savory foods. This pleased Charlie. Humans enjoyed his show more with full stomachs.

In the center of the park, Charlie enabled his upper speakers and said in his best ringmaster’s voice, “Ladies and Gentleman, come see a spectacular show unlike any other!” This announcement brought the crowd toward Charlie. “Come see the wonders of the modern world along with the wonders of a world long vanished – a full three-dimensional experience of wonder and joy! Be a child again. Let your imagination soar!”

The crowd made a semi-circle around him. He heard someone whisper, “I’ve heard of these shows.”

Someone else said, “This is lame. Can we go?”

Charlie had heard comments like the latter before, but they still bothered him. Mean comments made something within his skull ache and not want to continue. But his training hid his emotions from his silver face. His training forced him to continue with his show.

He spread his hands outward with his palms flat and facing the crowd. His hands became opaque then glowed; light shone into the night before him. His head glowed too, shining brightly in the center of the half-circle of humans. Shapes and colors projected from his head, and his whole body vibrated, humming with a sound the crowd would not be able to hear over their muttering and their chewing.

The lights changed and the concrete park within the center of the circle vanished. To the crowd, a forest had grown from the ground before their eyes. Charlie used his projection system to define every angle of every tree. Every blade of grass breezing in an artificial wind generated by his chest fans appeared as real as it would have appeared in wild fields long vanished. A small doe grazed silently and seemed as real as any that had once lived on the earth. Charlie heard children in the crowd gasp. A girl ran into the image and tried to touch the doe. Her hand went through the doe’s head. The child’s father chased after her. He caught her and smiled at the crowd and then at Charlie. The man, catching his unnecessary gesture, blushed in the light of Charlie’s forest.

A few birds swooped down and pecked at the ground Charlie had created. The birds, finches and a cardinal, were simple creatures, but no one in this city had ever seen a finch in real life, let alone the bright, scarlet beauty of a cardinal. Charlie projected the sounds of birds chirping from his lower speakers. Some people in the crowd clapped. He heard a few coins landing at his feet. In the crowd, some of his own kind had gathered, service robots finishing their work. The colors and sounds drew them in. Charlie’s kind was a curious species, eager to record experiences for later. If they had not trained to project as Charlie had, they would not know of birds or deer. The experience would be new and exciting.

Charlie changed the scene to a vast desert with mountains in the distance. A small fur covered mammal with long, bent legs and a tail emerged from a hole in the ground. A child in the audience exclaimed, “It’s cute!” The creature used its back legs to scurry along the desert floor. Then a large bird swooped down and captured the animal in its claws. The same child cried out. Charlie did not like this part of his projection, but Henderson insisted on it.

“You can’t hide what the world used to be. Or what it still is,” Henderson had said once when Charlie complained.

Charlie heard a few more coins land around his feet. He noticed the crowd dispersing and took that time to dim his projection and lower his hands. “That’s all for now, folks,” he said, still in his ringmaster’s voice. Murmurs of pleasure and annoyance rippled through the crowd. Someone said the show was stupid; someone else said it was a good distraction. That was the best Charlie could hope for from adults – a good distraction.

He kneeled on the hard ground and scooped up the money. He counted it and knew it was less than the night before, and even less than the night before that. His audience declined day by day, even with upgraded software. Henderson wouldn’t be happy about this.

Charlie did three more shows that night until his battery indicator started buzzing. He had remaining power to make it home and begin charging before he died.

“Thanks for your attention, ladies and gentlemen,” he said as he let the image of a rushing river fade. He heard some protests from the children. They would never feel the cold, wet rushing of a river on their tiny feet. Of course, Charlie would never feel it either.

The noise of the city had quieted since he left his basement apartment. His clock told him it was 1 a.m. On the streets, cars still moved steadily, a constant honking in the distance and nearby. Music played somewhere, coming from an open window. It was the new music Henderson hated – nothing but rhythms and ringing.

Charlie enjoyed all kinds of music. He recorded this so he might listen to it later as he charged. He would replay it over and over and recall the senses from this particular walk.

Something heavy struck Charlie in the head. His body fell forward, his face smashing into the concrete.

“You like that, tinman?” a voice said above him.

Charlie recognized the voice of the female teenager from earlier. She was alone. He didn’t sense anyone else around. The female circled him holding something in her hand – a metal bat.

“I’m going to take that shiny head of yours as a prize,” she said. Charlie turned his head to face her and record his attack. “You think you can make fun of me? Ignore me? You’re nothing. Nothing real.”

“I did not mean to offend you, madam,” Charlie said, slipping into his gentleman’s voice.

“There you go again, making fun of me!” She raised her bat again.

He reached a hand up to shield himself.

“Please,” he said in his natural robot’s voice. This seemed to startle the girl. She lowered the bat.

“Why?” Charlie asked. Even injured, he wanted an explanation so he might analyze the situation later. Then he processed some thoughts and realized there might not be a later.

The girl stared at him, watching his hand reach toward her. He felt his inner functions activating abnormally. His hand lit up. He projected an image of the girl holding the bat, her projected face a mixture of confusion and fear and hate. This brought the girl back from her stupor. Upon seeing herself, her face twisted in anger again, and she swung the bat in a swift movement. Charlie felt the impact, but could no longer see. Before he shut down, he heard his metal hand clang against the sidewalk.

Charlie awoke unable to detect his legs. An alarm within him told him his batteries were depleted except for his backup solar battery, which was currently charging. His logs showed internal repairs had been made while he was charging.

He sat atop a pile of rubbish, and he was, in fact, part of the rubbish. All around him, he saw nothing but garbage as far as his optical sensors could see. He assumed garbage collectors had swept him up and taken to the dump. Turning his head downward, he saw his legs were smashed. His suit had been stripped from his body, either by the teenaged girl or by some other gang. He hoped Henderson would find him soon.

A remote tracking device in his head should tell Henderson where he was, if Henderson decided to get Charlie. But would he? Henderson was old for a human, Charlie knew. An old man wouldn’t be able to move around freely through mountains of garbage.

Then a thought occurred to him – what if Henderson had put Charlie in the dump? Charlie dismissed this quickly because the thought upset his processing. He shut his eyes and charged until he heard a noise beneath him coming from lower in the pile. Charlie opened his eyes. A child stumbled over a large pile of garbage toward Charlie.

“Hello,” Charlie said, in his natural, robotic voice. The child, Charlie could not tell if it were male or female, looked at him with obvious curiosity. It did not seem frightened of his silver head or crushed legs. A child living in a garbage heap, Charlie assumed, was accustomed to seeing strange things.

“What’s your name?” Charlie asked. He enjoyed the company of children, enjoyed their wonderment when he put on his projections. The child mouthed a word silently, but Charlie read its lips. “Samantha?”

The girl nodded. He sat up, using his elbows to reposition his torso. He leaned his back against a metal drum beside him.

“Well, Samantha, have I got a show for you!” he said in his ringmaster’s voice. “Come one, come all! See the wonders of the electronic man!”

The girl’s eyes widened. Charlie lit his palms and spread them apart. An alarm warned him there were only two hours of solar battery power remaining. He thought that would be enough to put on a good show.

An image of children playing in a snowy field appeared. The girl gasped. She watched in silence for a moment, and then she grinned. She reached out as though to catch the snowflakes in her hands, though they passed through her.

“What is that?” the girl asked, still attempting to catch the flakes. She stuck her tongue out, mimicking the children in Charlie’s projection.

“It’s snow,” Charlie said, switching back to his robotic voice. “It’s something that falls from the sky. A type of precipitation. You would not see it in this part of the world, though it still occurs in northern regions of which you would not be familiar and are uninhabitable for humans.”

She nodded as if she understood and watched as he changed to the next scene, the same forest he’d opened with the night before. Another child climbed onto their trash heap and watched with them. This one looked like the girl, only a little older and male. He carried plastic bags full of garbage, but dropped the bags at the sight of the projection. Both children asked questions, timidly at first, then more excitedly as the show went on.

“What animal is this?” the girl asked, pointing at the doe. Then, “What kind of plant is this?” Charlie answered each question as thoroughly as possible, hoping his little knowledge would be enough.

After three scenes, an alarm told him he would need to shut down, his solar battery nearly dead.

“I have to go to sleep now, children,” he said.

“When will you wake up?” the girl asked.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “Same time, same place.”

The boy smiled and said, “We’ll be back tomorrow.”

Charlie closed his eyes as the children climbed down the heap. He thought of what he would project for them the next day, perhaps schools of fish underwater or elephants or big cats in a jungle. He had thousands of scenes in his hard drives, thousands of images of life to share.

Art: Dave Alexander

Megan Neumann is a speculative fiction writer from Little Rock, Arkansas. Her stories have appeared in such publications as Crossed Genres, Daily Science Fiction, and Luna Station Quarterly. She’s a member of the Central Arkansas Speculative Fiction Writers’ Group and is forever grateful for their loving support and scathing critiques.