Old Money

August, 1924.

It was something of an ongoing joke by the citizens of San Diego, California that the Walters had far too many balls for their own good.

This was, in fact, not true.

They held the required amount of balls each year, as was befitting a family of good standing in the community.

Currently, they were hosting another one.

The last ball they had hosted had been a bit of a disaster, to say the least. One of the Walter automatons, thinking he would be the hero and save the day from the Wicked Jon of the West Wing, had picked up the entire punch bowl and thrown it at his fellow ‘bot, causing him to malfunction and open up a hole to the Eighth Dimension of Absolute and Infinite Terror, releasing three dragons, a small but volatile new species of termite, and a small infestation of folk singers into the ballroom. They had to get a man in with a terrier to hunt the lot down.

The automatons watched the dancers whirl on the floor, sparkling in the light like colorful birds as the tinkle of glasses and polite laughter swept around their small spot in the corner near the kitchen. The Jon tugged at his collar, and received a warning look from the Spine. Pappy had forced them to wear matching black suits with coattails for the occasion, which the Jon especially hated, as he could not turn cartwheels or do anything other than stand around and pretend to be having an absolutely wonderful time.

Rabbit watched Colonel Walter imploringly. He was chatting easily in a circle of like-minded men – the sort who are so caught up in their new equation or mechanical device that, did they not employ various footmen and such to tell them, they would have absentmindedly left the house without any pants, because these were also the men who were so rich they could afford to live in their study and scribble mathematics on the walls.

In fact, the entire congregation was not merely rich. They were Old Money; the type of men who could remember their great-great-great-great grandfather’s name and all the battles in which he had led his men to a glorious defeat.

The Spine felt he was being charged money for merely standing.

“Oh, it’ll be fine, my boy. You’ll have a great time. Everyone will want to talk to you.” muttered Rabbit and twitched.

“You’d think they’d at least look our way,” the Jon agreed, watching as Colonel Walter patted one of the other men on the back and laughed heartily.[1]

“Or marvel at us and poke our faces and ask what metal we’re made of and how well our walk-cycle works,” the Spine said bitterly. “We aren’t people to them, Rabbit; we’re products of science. We’re like some sort of revolutionary new vacuum cleaner to them; we are made and then studied and shared and improved, except the Walters won’t share us. So,” he concluded, lifting his eyebrows and sinking back against the wall, “the only reason anyone at all is going to look our way is to try and inspect us. To figure out how we work.”

A man worked his way from the dance floor and looked over the robots with keen interest, as one would inspect a new species of butterfly caught in a net. He was an older gentleman, of the sort that the word ‘spry’ comes easily, with hair so white it was almost theoretical and twinkling blue eyes. He sported a cane, which he leaned on heavily as he made his way over to the robots, who straightened up and exchanged glances.

“So this one is Rabbit, hmm?” said the man with a thick English accent, and he poked the automaton in the chest with his cane.

Rabbit gave an awkward movement halfway between a bow and a curtsy – a messy result of learning the gesture from watching humans of both genders. “H-h-h-hello!” he said jovially.

The man stared at Rabbit as if he had not been expecting him to speak.

“My name’s Rabbit,” he continued blithely, “and this is the Jon and the Spine!”

The automatons tipped their hats. The Spine went to shake the man’s hand but stopped when he peered at it with interest.

“And your name, sir?” the Spine asked a shade coldly. He returned to standing with his arms behind his back.

“Lord Percival Mountyjoy Kevlar Winterbottom the Fourth” said Lord Winterbottom, leaning in closer and speaking in the tones of someone talking into a worn-out receiver.

“That’s quite a name, Percy!” the Jon exclaimed.

“Amazing. The attention to the response systems…” muttered Lord Winterbottom.

Rabbit looked quizzically to the Spine, who quietly vented a bit of steam from the corner of his mouth.

He means we’re good at understanding speech, he muttered over the Blue Matter wireless telegraph system.

“Yeah!” said the Jon, “We love to talk!”

“Do they ever.” sighed the Spine.

The man then took Rabbit by the shoulder and pulled him forward until the bot’s gyroscope buzzed silent alarms in the back of his head. “Such devilishly detailed handiwork,” Winterbottom marveled at the tiny pistons and hinges that held together Rabbit’s jaw.

“Sir,” he said in the tone of a museum curator speaking to a small child climbing into the Ancient Egyptian exhibit and shaking all the urns, “would you please pu’ddown the Rabbit?”

Lord Winterbottom simply tilted him forward further, until the copper bot was at a full thirty-degree angle with the ground.

“Sir,” Rabbit said with agitation, “my br-br-broiler dun’t like working at this angle. If you could just lemme back up, please.”

“And the spine is so flexible!” the man continued, tracing a bony finger over Rabbit’s back and prodding it here and there. “Almost human in anatomy. Good show, Walter, good show…”

It was at this point that the other Spine, looming over the man with a fixed grin, said, “I think you should put him down now, sir,” and pronounced ‘sir’ in the same way that a policeman would say ‘trembling arsehole”.

Lord Winterbottom almost paid no attention – almost – but then he chanced a glance upward, and the eyes of the sleek sliver automaton flickered the deep emerald of limbo’s stale, cold fires. The lord’s entitled demeanor crumbled as quickly as a tower of cards when the table is removed. He dropped Rabbit to the floor and stumbled backward. Remembering his amenities, he tipped his hat, but his skeletal hand shook so violently that he might have been knocking a few million spiders off of it. He turned on his heel and vanished back into the crowd.

The band struck up a waltz.

“What just happened?” asked the Jon as the Spine seemed to shrink slightly, and the shadows in the room disappeared.

“I told you.” he said darkly.

Rabbit climbed to his feet and brushed himself off, “Huh, people like that really grind my gears…”

“Some people…” began the Spine, but trailed off; he was in the presence of polite company, and it was Not Done to swear at Pappy’s guests. Even if they were asking for it.

“I don’t like this party.” said the Jon.

“Yeah, me neither, buddy,’ replied the Spine, “how ‘bout I go find Pappy; maybe we can stand around with him and get bored, instead of standing around and getting bored on our own.”

“Yes, please.” said Rabbit, who was still rather annoyed at being dropped onto the floor like a sack of flour. If a sack of flour was made of metal. And human shaped.

The Spine stalked off through the crowd, a silver lighthouse in a sea of people, and Rabbit and the Jon looked at each other.

“He’s gone.” said the Jon, a smile gracing his face with its presence.

“Yes.” said Rabbit with hardly contained glee.

The Jon straightened up and held out his elbow. “May I have this dance, madam?”

“Oh lawdy, Sir Jonathan, of course!”

And they whirled off into the crowd seamlessly as the band started something light and fast, something you could really dance to.

They moved, gear whirring and pistons pumping through the steps as an admiring audience looked on, and they winked at the pretty ladies and tipped their hats to the gentlemen as the people moved in a complicated Brownian motion in the ballroom, the chandelier glittering in the light of the new-fangled electric light bulbs, a warm yellow color in the large, marble lined space.

And then the Jon saw it, out of the corner of his eye – the flock of white-breasted cockatoos, talking and laughing and spilling wine carelessly on their lavish suits. It was almost like burning money; the cash that went into each of those tuxedos could have paid five men’s paychecks. And in the back, escorting them all, was the fine Lord Percy, his eyes cold as ice and his pale face calculating. The Jon was sure that, if the ancient glacier were to stand near an open flame, he would slowly melt.

“Rabbit…” the Jon whimpered, tugging softly on his dance partner’s sleeve.

“Yeah, th’Jon?” asked Rabbit. His bright copper grin was almost infectious; the Jon wanted to simply smile back and keep flying around the ballroom, and everything would be alright. But he hadn’t been running for twenty-eight years without learning a thing or two about reality: ninety-two percent of the time, it tended to stay put.[2]

The Jon cocked his head sideways toward the approaching group.

“Oh.” was all Rabbit said, his mirth draining slightly and his smile becoming frozen.

“If we stand still, maybe they won’t see us.” whispered the Jon.

But they didn’t stand still; they kept dancing, because that was what a gentleman did in a dance, as Pappy always said. They were both deathly silent as the flock advanced and Lord Winterbottom fussed around the edges like a sheepdog. Working his way to the front, he gestured grandly to the two automatons, who were forced to either stop or whack him in the head with a flying limb.

“H-h-h-h-hello,” said Rabbit, a hint disdainfully. He kept a firm grip on the Jon’s hand, perhaps out of nervousness or perhaps simply because his hinges wouldn’t loosen up.[3]

“Gentlemen,” Lord Winterbottom announced with all the shadowy enthusiasm of a jewel thief confronted with a large pile of rubies. “I trust you’ve read up on our mutual familiar’s, Mister Walter’s, fine automatons?”

A few of the fine birds laughed and whooped. One rowdy man, in particular, dropped his glass, and it crashed to the floor with all the ear-splitting majesty and devastation of a perfect crystal bell being smashed with a stone hammer. Rabbit watched the craftsmanship fling itself, in a million tiny pieces, across the marble. Pappy’s great grandfather had used every last cent he owned buying that set for his wife.

“Now, as you can see here, Colonel Walter has made the joints to mimic human poses.” Winterbottom grabbed the Jon’s arm, yanking it from Rabbit’s protective grip, and moved it around, wiggling the wrist. The Jon stood completely still; he wasn’t sure whether to burst into tears yet.

He continued, “Absolutely ingenious. I’ve been reading up on the steam engine they run off, and it is quite, quite brilliant.” and looked in his mouth, small puffs of steam twisting around his head.

The man in the back, (the one who had dropped the glass,) gave a drunken laugh. “Do they tell jokes?”

“Oh yes!” Winterbottom exclaimed, “You see, it’s equipped with a complicated algorithm of responses to speech. If I do this.” He opened the Jon’s shirt, and clicked an apparently blank piece of metal.

Rabbit watched the crowd’s faces become bathed in the blue glow from the Jon’s core, and their eyes widened as another panel swung back underneath, and they saw a Koi fish swimming around and around an empty void, save for a hot dog in a bun.

“Uh, s-s-s-sir, could you maybe let the Jon go?” Rabbit nudged him.

“There. The warning system kicks in to let you know when it feels threatened, and increase in curtness and tone, much like a person getting angry. Could anyone spare a handkerchief?” 

One was given forth by a young man with flaming red hair and a dapper white waistcoat. He winked at Rabbit, and the robot had the strangest feeling they had met before.

“Observe.” said Winterbottom, still gripping the Jon’s arm.

Rabbit placed a warning hand on the Jon’s shoulder. Don’t move. Smile. Be polite. Make them laugh, and they wouldn’t be afraid. Pappy had taught them that.

He gently put the handkerchief into the blank void, and the crowd watched in amazement as the Koi barely gave it a nibble and then… something went strange. The piece of white fabric seemed to fall away, growing smaller and smaller in the Jon’s chest until it was nothing but a speck.

The Jon shifted uncomfortably and his bottom lip wobbled.

“Sir, I’m going-going-going-going to have—” began Rabbit, but was steamrolled over by Winterbottom.

“This one here is a little different to the earlier models, seemingly running on nothing but the energy from the Blue Matter. The first one, conversely, runs on clockwork and steam, and is a little…wonky.”

There was a smattering of laughter.

The Jon gave a tiny whimper, like a small animal in a cage, except that he wasn’t in a cage; he was out in the ballroom, where people could poke him and prod him and tell him that he was no more than metal and boiler. He wanted to look to Rabbit, but he couldn’t, and for good reason – because, over the wireless telegraph system, the Jon could tell exactly what Rabbit was feeling, and it scared him.

“I think,” said Rabbit, coating every syllable with needles, “that you ought to leave him alone.”

“Ooooh! The robot’s angry!” chuckled one of the less sober men in the back. “You wanna get gashouse, metal man?”

Rabbit rolled his sleeves up. “I just might,” he hissed, steam billowing from his mouth as his boiler heated up rapidly.

A small canape flew through the air and landed with amazing precision in the Jon’s void.

“What is going on here?” came a voice from the back. Rabbit froze. Over the heads of the crowd, he could see the Spine; and his Pappy – his wonderful, brave Pappy – advanced stiff-legged; and the Spine’s spine extended like hackles, snorting steam as the two of them marched forth like the charge of the Light Brigade.

“Gentlemen.”

Colonel Walter’s voice normally had the quiet hum of one whose vocal cords had been worn by time, and vibrated gently like a motor at rest. Here, that soft hum was molded into something sharper, like clay into a knife. It didn’t cut yet, though; it still hadn’t been heated. But it threatened to in such a slight way that, had you not known the man, you wouldn’t even have noticed.

“Evening, Colonel,” Lord Winterbottom gave a small flourish.

The Colonel’s tone started to bite. “Gentlemen,” he repeated. “Are you tampering with my creations?”

The more sober of the men exchanged hesitant glances like a gang of troublesome youth hanging around a speakeasy when the Law rocks up.

Winterbottom looked genuinely surprised, but at the last second, Rabbit looked into those cold, blue eyes and saw a flash of anger, as old and terrible as the rivalries of the dinosaurs.

“My dear boy, I was merely showing your comrades the exquisite genius of your creations.”

“By throwing small bits of chicken mush into Jon.”

“High spirits, high spirits. They truly are very advanced. Almost alive.”

“Almost?!” the Spine snapped.

But Colonel Walter’s fists tightened. He denied the Spine this fight. This was something between a – a father and that one crotchety old man that lived down the street and only ever came out to buy more food for his cat; the man who yelled at the boys and spat at them and tried to run them over when they played in the street.

“They laughed at me,” whimpered the Jon, and he went for a sniffle to see if he could garner more sympathy. Perhaps it would result in a bowl of ice cream before bed.

“I do not appreciate you handling the boys without their permission.”

“Boys?” Winterbottom remarked. “Is that what they are to you, Walter?”

“He never could give up that Delilah girl.” muttered one of the men. “He and Becile—” 

“Hush.” said the one in the white waistcoat.

Colonle Walter strode through the crowd, who parted like the Red Sea as he stepped forward and stood in front of the ringmaster, while the Spine flew silently to the Jon and closed his chest plate, tucking in his shirt and fussing with his tie like a mother goose.

The lord looked around at the assembled company, who dutifully sniggered. He spread his arms wide and gestured at the robots, who were standing in a line, heads held high.

“Surely you are mistaken, Colonel. These are not boys. Are boys made of clockwork? Do they run on steam? Can they, in fact, have real emotions?”

“Yes,” snapped Walter, “they, in fact, can.”

“Because,” Lord Winterbottom continued as if he hadn’t heard him, “brilliant though the response systems are, they are only shells. They project emotions without really feeling them.’

“How do you know?” asked the Spine quietly, “How do you know that we don’t think and feel?”

“Because,” Lord Winterbottom said, his corpse-white lips curling up to reveal coffee-stained teeth that clearly had no dental history, “you are just machines.”

Colonel Walter – Petes – Pappy – seemed to rise another foot. “Sir,” he said, and you could feel the sharpened point in his voice, now, cutting into the skin slowly and painfully, and sinking in between the gut and the stomach, and the soft purr of an engine had changed to the slow and dreadful clicking of a bored switchblade, “I think it would best suit you to take your plus-one and leave.”[4]

Lord Percival Mountjoy Kevlar Winterbottom the Fourth spluttered in anger, and two red circles appeared high on his cheeks in the otherwise pale face.

He turned on his heel and swept off, cane clicking on the floor, but not before yanking the Spine down by the tie and spitting, “You are nothing.”

Rabbit watched as Pappy looked around at the crowd, his gaze like a search beam, and the company sidled off to interrogate the buffet table.

He glared at the one remaining gentleman – the one with the red hair and white waistcoat, whose lip curved up to the side as if he knew much, much more that any of the bots or the crowd or the Walters or even the world would.

“And you?” Walter asked, the motor-filled purr returning to his voice, “You’re quite the sprightly young man, to be going about with those kind of folk. Is it your first time at a ball?”

“Oh, certainly my first,” the youth nodded, and his eyes glittered behind the glasses, and his voice was rather high, for a boy. He also had an English accent. “But not my last, to be sure.”

“Who is your escort, if you don’t mind me asking?” Walter smiled indulgently.

“Oh, a very dear friend. He does so often pass by quickly without anyone noticing; but other times he will hang around forever, you’ll have to excuse him. Very rude, very rude…”

“Yes. Well. Perhaps I shall see you and your…friend at another one of my parties. With better company, perhaps.”

“Yes, perhaps. You do seem to have a lot of balls.” said the youth sweetly, and tipped his head and wandered off, disappearing into the whirl of dancers.

The robots blinked, and looked to their Pappy as his shoulders slumped and he turned to them, the mask slipping and revealing a haggard face underneath.

“I am so sorry.”

And he said it in such a sorrowful way that, had they not been surrounded by fancy gowns and crystal dining ware, Rabbit and the Jon would have up and tossed their arms around him, right then and there.

But they didn’t.

“It’s not your fault, Dad,” the Spine sighed.

“It’s completely my fault,” Walter snapped. “I invited him.”

“Along with a hundred other guests.”

“Guests I should have been more aware of.”

“Surely he’s been here the last few balls?”

“I was hesitant to crack open the wine cellar the last few balls.”

“You mean because of Prohibition, right?” the Jon piped up.

“Uh, yes. Yes, that’s exactly what I meant, Jon.”[5]

Walter passed a hand through his hair and looked around, the four people an island in a sea of fancy ball gowns and expensive tuxedos; a meaning speaking in the dead center of a hundred conversations about nothing.

“I’m not going to be around forever to stop these…people from thinking they are entitled to do whatever they please, just because you don’t look human!”

“We ca-can handle our-ourselves, Pappy!”

“I hope, because some might not be as polite as Winterbottom.”

“We know what he said wasn’t true.” said the Spine, and forced a smile to the Colonel as ‘You are nothing!’ echoed in his processor.

And Peter took in the image of his robots, his boys, in their finery as they grinned at him, and wondered, not for the first time, what had he been thinking when he built them? Built to impress a girl, his mind replied almost automatically; they were metal men, simple shells built to sing in place of the meek college boy, but now as he looked at them they were so much more than that, and he smiled back, their creator, and now, it seemed, their father.