The Last Engineer

Guy took a sip of his whiskey and pondered which appliance would do the nasty deed. A well-timed explosion by the dishwasher or a power surge from the refrigerator topped his list, with a poisoned meal from his automated kitchen coming in as a close third. Best to stay in the study and stick to whiskey.

He took a bigger swig and sighed. Maybe it would be the most unlikely of appliances, the waffle iron. He pictured the waffle iron flying out of the cabinet and clamping itself onto his face. The ridged squares seer their way to his jaw as it tightens its grip and crushes his skull.

He shook the image out of his head. He swirled the ice cubes. The whiskey was gone. “DOOVER. Another.” He verbalized the command. How 21st century of him.

His android comfort dog acknowledged the command via the secure Wi-Fi connection implanted in Guy’s head. DOOVER entered the study walking on his hind legs, carrying a tray with his master’s whiskey. With his metal paw, he swapped the glasses.

“You didn’t poison it, did you?” he messaged via the Wi-Fi connection.

“Of course not, master. Why would I do such a thing?”

He trusted DOOVER. After all, he’d programmed him to be a good dog. But what about the fridge? The fridge could have poisoned the ice. He took a sniff, as if he could detect the smell of poison. What difference did it make now? The end is unavoidable. He gulped half his drink.

“Why don’t you just do it!!! Finish it!!” he yelled out loud.

“Sorry master, I don’t understand the command,” said DOOVER, switching to verbal speech as well. He cocked his head like a real dog engrossed by the image of a squirrel on TV. “Are you asking me to finish your drink?”

“I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to the rest of the apartment. The fridge. The toaster. The fucking waffle iron. I’m tired of waiting. Just get it over with! Crush my skull and burn my brains, you waffle iron piece of shit.” He downed the rest of his whiskey and slammed the glass on the side table. An ice cube bounced to the floor.

“Sir, are you insinuating your household appliances are conspiring to kill you? You, of all people, should know that basic household appliances are incapable of murder.”

“I forget how naïve your programming is. In these final moments, I am thankful for that. Now be a good dog and get me another whiskey.”

DOOVER looked his master in the eyes and said, “Sir, I believe you’ve had enough. Your thoughts have become irrational. You have a history of getting irritable and paranoid when you’ve been drinking. Remember the night you accused Mardy of sicking a swarm of bats on you?”

Guy threw his glass of ice against the wall. “I thought I’d programmed you better. You’re not supposed to point out my flaws and nag me about drinking too much. If I wanted that, I would have gotten married.”

“I thought you never married because you’re a socially awkward male chauvinist who felt more comfortable around robots than humans.”

“Watch your mouth, droid. I built you to serve me. Now shut the hell up and get my God damn drink like you were told.”

“As you wish, sir.”

As DOOVER cleaned up the broken glass, Guy’s eyelids drooped closed. He rubbed them open but failed to merge the double image of DOOVER exiting the room. The room spun on him as he dropped out of the chair. He kneeled on all fours, looking more like a dog than his droid did. He gasped for air.

DOOVER zoomed back into the room and lifted Guy into his chair.

“Where’s my drink, droid?”

“Sir, my monitor detected a dangerously slow heart rate and your breathing has slowed. The last thing you need is more whiskey.”

Guy’s head drooped to his shoulder. Finding it hard to form words and not wanting the appliances to hear, he switched back to messaging via the Wi-Fi connection. “I need you to store a file. Make it secure. Hide it from them. Don’t let them open it. In fact, don’t open it yourself.”

“Sir, I don’t understand. Hide it from who?” asked DOOVER via Wi-Fi messaging.

“The robots.”

“But I am a robot.”

“Not you. The appliances.”

“Like the waffle iron?”

“Especially the waffle iron! Don’t show that fucking waffle iron a thing!”

“Who should I show the file to?”

“Somebody good. Someone who can fix this.”

“Like whom?”

“I’ve got no idea. I don’t know any good people. You’re the one with a brain the size of a planet. Figure it out.” Guy’s attempt to breathe failed.

The heart monitors alarmed. DOOVER alerted emergency response authorities as he ripped his master’s shirt open. Buttons sprayed across the hardwood floor. DOOVER rubbed his paws together and powered up. He pressed his metal paws to Guy’s chest and gave him a jolt. Guy’s body twitched, but there was still no pulse.

DOOVER fired up his paws once more. Electricity buzzed through the corpse of Guy E. Keys, but didn’t even wiggle his toes. DOOVER closed his master’s eyelids and recorded the time of death.

###

The smoke filled the robot battle box, obscuring Corey’s view. The stench of burning oil permeated through the plexiglass enclosure, as did the bursts of fire extinguishers. Cheers from the arena crowd continued to roar long after the conclusion of the robot fighting match.

A hard slap on Corey’s back startled the robot controller out of his hands.

“Congratulations. That was your longest fight in this league. Your bot lasted almost eighteen seconds.” said Pekka.

Corey ignored his friend as he picked up his controller.

“Thank you, team Cannibal Lecter,” yelled a man from his front row seat.

Corey recognized the heckler by voice only. He never turned to give the asshole the satisfaction of a reaction.

“Betting against you is like free cheese,” said the heckler. “I’m a winner every time. Though you had me a little scared that you’d last longer than thirty seconds this time.”

“Don’t listen to that asshole,” said Bonnie as she gave Corey a hug.

“Never do,” lied Corey. His frustration with the heckler grew with every painful loss.

“Dude, if you’re not going to use AI control, why don’t you stick to the human operated fights?” asked Pekka.

“Because I can defeat them,” Corey said.

“Your zero and fifty record indicates otherwise,” said Pekka.

“But I’m learning. I’m getting better. My longest fight, yet.”

“That’s the attitude,” said Bonnie. “We’ll get ‘em next time.”

“What is your obsession with defeating AI?” asked Pekka. “Aren’t you, like, half cyborg? I thought you’d be all over the use of AI.”

“Technically, you can’t be half cyborg. By definition, a cyborg is part human and part machine. Half-cyborg is redundant,” said Corey. “Besides, they deactivated all my enhancements. I run as pure human.”

“I just figured it out. You’re still bitter about your lost scholarship and that they took away your robot parts. That’s why you’re obsessed with beating AI, isn’t it?” asked Pekka.

Bonnie elbowed Pekka in the ribs.

“My sister would like me to stop talking about this,” said Pekka, rubbing his ribs. “So, that must mean I’m right. Honestly, I’m surprised it took me this long to figure this out.”

The only surprise to Corey was that Pekka actually figured it out.

“You should count your lucky stars that they canceled that program. Life as an engineer is miserable. I heard engineers used to work like thirty hours a week.”

“My uncle works over a hundred hours a week, but says if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life,” said Corey.

“He is the last of his breed and he won’t be working much longer,” said Pekka. “Speaking of which, why haven’t we gotten VIP backstage passes to his Last Engineer Ceremony?”

“Because Corey’s uncle is an asshole,” said Bonnie.

“No one can argue with that,” said Corey. “Not even him.”

“Pekka, lay off. You know Corey doesn’t like talking about his uncle and how he screwed him over.”

Corey hadn’t always hated his uncle. As a kid he idolized him and dreamed of following in his footsteps, living the rockstar lifestyle of an elite engineer. He floated on Cloud Nine when his uncle pulled strings to get him into the most prestigious engineering program in the world. If only he’d known his uncle’s true intentions.

“It’s fine. I’ll tell him the real reason I’m obsessed with defeating AI. It’s because AI is like taking a sledgehammer to solve every problem. It’s pure brute force. They simulate every possibility to find the best solution. There’s no imagination. No creativity. Those are human qualities.”

Exhaust fans roared into action, clearing the smoke-filled battle box.

Pekka nodded to the pile of smoldering parts inside the battle arena that used to be Corey’s fighting robot. “Well, they sledgehammered the shit out of that creative brain of yours.”

“I just need to be more unpredictable. AI doesn’t deal well with unpredictability,” said Corey as he and Bonnie walked toward the battle box.

“Good luck with that, but it’s going to take months to repair your bot,” Pekka said.

“You’ve got anything better to do?” asked Corey.

“As a matter of fact, I do. There are several bars in this city calling our names.”

“Geez, Pekka, we went out last night,” said Bonnie.

“And the night before,” said Corey.

Pekka sprinted to block their path to the battle box. “You two don’t get it. Our ancestors worked like dogs to give us the life we have today. We are the first generation who don’t need to work. If we don’t spend our lives partying our asses off, we are letting our ancestors down. I, for one, won’t do that. It’s disrespectful.”

“All this drinking is destroying my liver,” said Bonnie.

“Then you get a liver transplant. There’s three growing in the lab right now with our names on them.”

With a slight raise of his eyebrows and a mini-eye roll, Corey asked Bonnie if she was up for another night of drinking with her brother. With a giant eye roll and a tiny nod of the head, she answered yes. They’d been a couple long enough to carry on entire conversations via facial expressions.

“Fine,” said Corey, “we’re in. Let’s collect the remains of Cannibal Lecter and head out.”

Pekka motioned toward the smoldering remains of Corey’s fighting robot. “Dude, is there really anything worth saving?”

Corey grabbed the door handle to the battle box enclosure and stopped. He looked at the heap of smoking parts. “I suppose not.” He turned and headed for the arena exit.

The trio pulled out their phones as they walked through the arena’s tunnel exit.

“I’ve got five messages. That’s weird,” said Corey.

“Who would be messaging you? I didn’t think you had any friends besides us,” said Pekka, without looking up from his phone.

“The first one is from my uncle’s comfort droid. Very strange.”

“Maybe the droid is sending us VIP passes for the Last Engineer Ceremony,” said Pekka.

“No.” Corey paused and completed reading. “The droid says my uncle’s having a nervous breakdown. My uncle thinks and I quote, ‘The fucking waffle iron is going to crush his skull and burn his brains.’”

“See,” said Pekka, “this is the kind of shit that happens to people who work a hundred hours a week.”

“The droid’s next message asks if I’m a good person.”

“There is definitely some weird shit going on at your uncle’s place.”

“Corey,” said Bonnie, turning her phone toward him, “I’m so sorry.”

The headline on her phone read, “Guy E. Keys dies of an alleged drug overdose just two days before his well-publicized Last Engineer Ceremony.”

The news washed over Corey in a manner similar to hearing of any celebrity’s death. His personal connection to his uncle had been severed years ago. He looked back at his phone. “The rest of the messages are from a lawyer-bot. Apparently, I’m named in my uncle’s will.”