So my daughter earned a reputation today among the Haunted Forest funhouse workers at the Renaissance Faire. She’s two, by the way.
While my wife rested on a bench, I took my little girl towards the mock-up wooden castle with the skeletons perched all over it. The entrance attendant who took my money at the gate eyed my toddler in her Rapunzel outfit and gave me a side-eye. Her look said plainly, “If you want to pay $6 to have her run screaming after the first ten feet, it’s your dime.”
Immediately past the ticket station, my daughter realizes she’s surrounding by skeletons and immediately laughs and points. “Skeleton! Look, Daddy, skeleton! Oh, there skeleton too!” Her grin could swallow the world. “SKELETON!”
The gate attendants look at each other in confusion. These people don’t realize they’re dealing with a girl who, earlier in the day, ran up to a woman wearing a fox tail because my little Kiddo thought she’d found a werewolf.
See, my daughter refuses to go in car rides without her dollar store glow-in-the-dark skeletons to play with. She hugs the monsters in pop-up books. She howls during Werewolves of London. She can name every Universal Monster and distinguish a gug from a shoggoth.
The maze is unprepared for her.
A few feet inside, I see a a hooded skeleton peer at us from around a corner. He’s confused. After all, this schmuck has brought a ibby bibby girl into his forest, and he has no idea what kind of experience I’m expecting him to give.
My daughter waves at the reaper. “Hello skeleton! Come!”
He slowly comes out. She and the ghoul make friendly small talk until she notices a zombie horse and runs off after “skeleton horsey!” This level of enthusiasm generally continues.
A skeleton tied to a stake belches smoke. She laughs.
A coffin shakes, hands straining to force open the lid. “Hi, ‘pire!”
My daughter has found dark Disneyland, and she loves it. Well, the part where a blast of air shoot you in the butt? That she can deal without, but the monsters make her day.
We approach the curtained door of a structure, and before I can think about whether I should risk entering the room three grown women push it aside and rush out of the dark. “It’s too scary!” One whispers to me as they pass, bolting for the entrance.
My 2-year-old walks in and tries to make friends with the monsters.
Finally we reach the exit. Standing at attention is a skeleton knight with bulging bloodshot eyeballs. The Kiddo is so damn excited to see him, she smiles and waves at him for a full minute.
Then I tell her we have to go.
She starts crying.
Walking past later a few minutes later, I see the grim reaper talking to the attendants. He spots us, and Death himself points at my daughter. “Look, it’s that little girl!”
They loved her.
He lets us get a picture of her holding the scythe.
@seananmcguire I thought perhaps you might appreciate this
Always be vague. Say I think they’re in today or not until later. If they press say it’s company policy not to give out the schedule. Most companies do have this and even if they don’t how would a stranger know. Don’t give out specifics, they can get people injured or even killed.
At my last job someone came up and asked when “Sarah” was working next. I didn’t tell him and then texted her a description, turns out he was an abusive ex who had been stalking her. Don’t do this shit please.
In this image, the robot clearly has the upper hand and the better deal. Its french cuff and four stacked sleeve buttons suggest extreme debonair formality, but it has discarded the traditional black suit jacket for a soft gray plaid, suggesting a tasteful and confident personality that the human cannot hope to rival. The design of its hand is sleek and powerful, and the strength of its grip is second only to the strength of its will – this is not an android to be trifled with. It could have skin if it wanted to, but why bother? Fucking power move.
This stock photo depicts the same android human exchanging a formal post-coital handshake after swapping clothes and sealing the fate of the planet.
Here, the human has the upper hand in the deal, or at least thinks they do. They grip the robot’s hand with unnecessary firmness, testing to see just how strong to the pliable plastic pseudoskin really is. There is malice and jealousy in this handshake. The human needs to prove their superiority and continued relevance in the modern world. This is a benign robot designed for gentle, delicate tasks and affability, but its design is tacky and awkward, like Sonny from the I, Robot movie (soft, realistic eyes in a squishy featureless face.is a bad aesthetic choice).
The human is holding this robot’s hand like it’s a gun. He means to use it as a weapon – perhaps he is hiring it as an assassin in his plot to take over the world.
This is the assassinbot’s “twin” who has been sent to protect the would-be assassination victim (pictured on left). Both bots are equally committed to their mission, and the showdown will end with them tearing each other apart while the would-be victim looks on in horror. They are each damaged irreparably, but the human splices them together, not realizing that their “brains” are spread throughout their bodies. The resulting robot is a strange fusion of both personalities and spends the rest of the story accepting itself as a new individual with free will and complicated motivations.
The android is actually on the right in this picture. The hand on the left belongs to its human creator, who is proud of her humaniform “child” but has chosen to use an obviously artificial prosthetic in place of a more realistic one so that she can proudly display her work as the world’s greatest roboticist.
This image shows the newest and most realistic android meeting his own earliest prototype. It is a surreal moment for both robots. The tacky 2000′s “futuristic” design of the left robot seems incredibly dated next to the one on the right. It’s almost embarrassing for the humaniform android, like looking at a baby picture… some strange combination of meeting your wizened ancestor and your own infant self.
This is a businessman realizing that he can pay his employees $0.00 if he fires them and automates everything. He is eventually eaten by poor people. The robot cites the Zeroeth Law and lets it happen, looking on expressionlessly.
Almost forgot one of my favorites! This image depicts a husband and the robot whose positronic brain contains the uploaded memories of his dead wife. At first, things were rough. The man was haunted, angry, resentful. He wanted to mourn his wife in peace. She had not told him that she’d had her memories saved shortly before she died, and he’d only found out when this horrible mechanical monster showed up at the funeral calling itself Janet. He’d been stuck with the metal abomination for weeks, repulsed to his core but unable to bring himself to destroy it or send it away. My prince, it had called him, in a flat, artificial mockery of Janet’s voice. He hated it. He hated it even more than the bastard who’d run her down.
But then he’d caught that… that awful machine in the basement, pouring over photo albums and old documents and SD cards. It’d had her emails opened up on the old desktop. Something in him had snapped then, seeing those brutish steel fingers wrapped around their wedding album. He’d raged, screaming and kicking and throwing whatever shit he could get his hands on. The goddamn machine seemed to be the only thing he couldn’t break, and when he finally collapsed to the floor, sobbing, it had caught him gently in its arms and brushed the tears from his face with its cold metal fingers.
They sat like that for several minutes, like some kind of fucked up Madonna and Child. Then, in the silent darkness of the destroyed basement, the robot had spoken: “I think I know why they had me killed.”
Those words had cut through his stupor like razor wire through warm butter. They? It had been a hit and run!
As it turned out, nothing brings people together like solving a murder and unveiling a dark corporate conspiracy.
Janet had been a sharp woman during her organic life, but her computerized afterlife only enhanced her intelligence and cutting wit. It was… kind of hot, actually. Holding the robot’s steel frame would never be as comfortable as spooning Janet’s soft warm body, but that powerful scaffolding had its own weird charm. Things had changed, certainly, but apart from their sex life, it wasn’t so different after all. The new chapter of their relationship had opened on a strange note and they were determined to make the best of it, come what may.
Ship this is the most intriguing and entertaining sci-fi I’ve read all year. When’s your novella coming out?
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