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© 1998, 1999, 2000 Andrew V. Smith. All Rights Reserved.
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| Mack began regretting giving
up his day job. He mulled over his options. He did not like
the man sitting in the chair across from his desk. A corporate lawyer,
the man was slightly corpulent, balding, and doing a very poor job of hiding
his contempt for Mack. This was amazing in itself since the job the
corporate lawyer was offering Mack was a job his client desperately needed
someone to take. It was obvious that the lawyer was near-sighted,
since he wore the latest in self-levitating eyeglasses. The eyeglasses
were totally frameless; two lenses floating in free space in front
of each eye. The lenses traveled with the man's changing glances
to keep the centers of the lenses over the centers of his eyes. They
even moved in and out to accommodate his changing focus. There was
no need for this ostentatious display of wealth. The lawyer had a
wide array of corrective surgery procedures, or even cloned eyes to chose
from. Anybody in this time frame could easily afford any option.
"Anyone," Mack thought. That was the reason the lawyer opted for the expensive levitating glasses. Mack shook his head and brought his mind back to the proposal. "Let me get this straight," Mack said. "You have an insane robot running loose out there and you want me to hunt it down for you. Why me? After all, I'm just a private eye. You could have hired a professional robot killer." "Do you know our corporate motto, Mr. O'Donough?' the lawyer asked rhetorically. "Not particularly. No," Mack lied. He knew full well, along with 98% of the rest of the planet's inhabitants, what the advertising slogan for Universal Robotics was. Mack was trying to draw information out of this corporate toady and if he had to play stupid, so be it. "I find that hard to believe, but if you insist; our motto is 100% reliability 100% of the time. Now you are a smart man, Mr. O'Donough, you tell me why we're not hiring a robot killer," the corporate representative intoned. Mack saw where the man was going with this. Hiring a professional robot slayer would be tantamount to admitting that Universal Robotics produced an insane robot. Other robot manufacturers had their half dozen to dozen defective/insane robots to their discredit. Human's on Earth and in the far flung colonies in the Galaxy had an irrational fear of robots with even the slightest aberation in their programming or behavior. Psychopathic public bludgeonings by mobs of robots that did as little as twitched erratically were not uncommon. In the lawyer's eyes, Mack was a nobody. If he betrayed his client, no one would take his claims of an insane Universal Robotics robot seriously. "So, you and your corporation expect anonymity," Mack stated. "More bluntly, Mr. O'Donough,
if you leak our problem to the news organizations, we can easily avow any
connection to you. After all who would believe you? If you
were successful and therefore believable, would you be stuck working as
a third rate private detective?" The lawyer's last remark was totally
uncalled for and unprofessional. It played to the lawyer's vanity
and arrogance. Mack was too mature and had been insulted by more
skillful jerks in the past to rise to the bait on this slight. All
the same he was irked by this little, balding, corpulent man.
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