The Automan
Apr. 10th, 2012 12:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mcityDone for a prompt at io9, heavily inspired by "The Quantum Thief".
+++
It had all been going so well.
The disguise had worked very well; it was like everyone else's, with one minor difference. While their masks changed a human to a swan, an ape, tt a peacock, his changed an automan to a human pretending to be something else.
It was a fine display, as much as he could appreciate such things. There was a certain amount of visual alteration past which one Simply Must Not Stray, of course. A fetching pattern of feathers emphasizing a maiden or miss's cheekbones, yes. A beak was a bit gauche. And laying eggs, no matter how holographic, was right out.
He had patiently assembled his costume--a naval captain--from careful observation of a similar one in the theatre.It was a bit broad, and would certainly decrease the chances of his being invited back last year. Of course, he had not been invited in the first place. His invitation was forged, and he had arrived without escort, without announcement, slipping in through the servants' ways.
His processor had been overclocked, absorbing the sheer visual riot of the room and scanning for potential threats to his pretense. None were found. Quite the opposite, in fact; the stories he gave to the various bigwigs--each just different enough for everyone to think they weren't quite remembering it correctly--only enhanced his air of mystery, until he was dancing with Lady Elena Houghton, recently widowed.
It was popular, these days, for some of the well-to-do to have some sort of conspicuous cybernetic alteration. Several of the young women and men he had danced with had replaced their eyes, for example, or had some sort of external antenna in golden filigree curling over their skin. Lady Elena had an antenna, yes, as did anyone who wanted to conduct business in the modern era, but it was under her skin, quite invisible, hidden behind her pulse. She had no visible modifications at all; even the graying at her temples and slight wrinkles around her eyes, her mouth. Laugh lines.
She was a statistical anomaly. He had dedicated almost all his spare runtime to recording every facet of her he could.
And then, of course, the battery for his mask died, and he stood in the middle of the crowd of the dancers as plain as the day he was assembled. As a precaution, he had actually been wearing the clothing; only the humanity was a mask. He spent a fraction of a second calculating the odds that he would be able to escape; with the manservants nearby, their strength almost certainly much greater than his own, he would be borne down like a fox under a pack of hounds before clearing the estate bounds. And, unlike the fox, he would not have home-ground advantage.
The odds were slim.
A strident voice rang out. "What is the meaning of this?"
With furrowed brow Dame Somerset approached, dressed as - the automan triple-checked - the third Little Pig? Yes, their hostess's gown somehow implied a workman's wear without explicitly doing so, and a toolbelt girded her sizable waist, with several well-worn tools in its pockets and loops. It was rather unlikely that Somerset had ever laid hands on anything so plebeian as a hammer before, yet she was wielding a rasp like a marshal's baton. Her husband followed behind; taller, slimmer, dressed as a woodsman with a hatchet thrust though his belt. Both had the same stylized pig's nose projected onto their faces.
Lady Houghton's hand tightened in his, as the band came to a complete stop, leaving silence. Dame Somerset's surface temperature and respiration rate were rising, and he skimmed over what he knew of her infamous temper. He had perhaps seconds to come up with a plausible lie, and he wished he had better social engineering programs at his disposal as he opened his mouth-
"I apologize, Brigitte." said Lady Houghton.
He shut his mouth.
The widow Houghton had tensed, which would be effectively imperceptible to anyone not in contact with her, and even then it would take fairly decent sensors. In addition to that, he could feel, even through his gloves, that her palms were sweating more.
She released him from her grip, and forced his arm into a dignified loop, which she threaded her own arm through as she turned to face their hostess. The robot had no protocols for the situation, and the Lady seemed to have something in mind, so he resolved to follow her lead as best as he could.
"Apologize?" said the Dame, shifting her gaze from the robot to her peer. "Elena, you're responsible for this?"
Lady Houghton tilted her head in a half-concilliatory, half-rueful gesture. "Well, not all of it."
"Is this some kind of joke?"
"No, a wager."
The widow Houghton patted him on the head as she said so, and sent a quick pulse out from the antenna beneath the skin of her wrist, containing her private tag. That was an unusual amount of trust for someone she had just met.
"You recall the film where a professor makes a wager to take a random flower-seller and pass her off as an noblewoman at an Embassy ball?"
"Yes, I do."
"Well, my friend believed that a robot could not be disguised and programmed in such a manner as to fool the creme de la creme for the duration of an entire party. I disagreed, and the deal was made."
Comprehension warred with wariness on the older woman's face. "But why," she said plaintively, "did you choose my party?"
"A number of factors." Lady Elena paused, ostensibly to gather her thoughts. "Chief among them, of course, being that you throw only the very best parties, with the very best people. It would be - what's that Westerner phrase? - ah, yes, the 'acid test'."
It still amazed him, on some level, how these benighted creatures could not see the lie in her every move, every word. He could see it in the slight flush of the skin of her cheeks, even more visible in infrared. He could feel it in the ever-so slight increase in pressure on his arm.
And yet, the lie was apparently artful enough to assuage the lady of the house. She still sought some way to gain advantage, of course.
"Really, Elena, could you have informed me!" said the hostess.
"It was a condition of the wager that I could not inform anyone, and you particularly. The agreement was that I would pay double if you were the first one to realize the deception."
The older woman preened. "Well, I am quite perceptive. I suspected something was wrong from the moment I laid eyes on him."
"I have no doubt," Lady Elena said smoothly. "But if you will forgive my indulgence, we are all wearing disguises. It is merely wearing one more disguise than anyone else."
A beat. Then the hostess laughed, and the room laughed with her. The automan calculated a moderate possibility that Dame Somerset was simply attempting to save face.
The hostess waited for the laughter to die down before declaring that It would have to be removed. She snapped an imperious bricklayer's trowel toward two more robotic manservants standing discreetly nearby."You two. Escort it out."
He could, of course, still attempt escape. The manservants were strong models, but slow, where he was agile. At the slightest chance, he would, he could be away. Enough confusion, enough speed, and there was a slim chance -
Lady Houghton tightened her grip on his arm, pulled him down slightly to whisper in his ear.
"Do not," said she. "I doubt you would get very far, and I believe you owe me an explanation."
He nodded, for the benefit of their watchers, and she released him. There was, of course, a consideration she had neglected, perhaps not even considered; she had vouched for him, and his public disappearance would be ruinous to her good standing.
Flanking him on either side, the manservants marched him toward the discreet side door into the servants' areas. There was a high probability that the Lady was watching him leave, with those unusually colored eyes of hers. He did not look back.
Once past the door, the two manservants' switched to a lower-power mode, presumably not having to keep up with the facade of attentiveness for their Lordships. He could detect their conversation, but without a handshake he couldn't tell what they were talking about. They probably hadn't believed her Ladyship either.
The kitchen was a riot of olfactory input, and he logged it for later perusal later. There were even a few human servants in the kitchen, and they turned to stare at him as he walked past. Of course, the robotic servants' grapevine was as fast as the speed of light, and he felt a grim sort of satisfaction at leaving the others all speculating.
The two manservants released him from their charge at the door to the garage, and he stood in the ghosts of cigarettes long past and fumbled through the tags until he found that of the Lady's Rolls. It was a dark red, with hints of peach. Or, at least, it would be in the daylight. In the dark, it was just another car.
He could simply get in, but that would be rude. So he sent a cautious handshake to the driver, along with the Lady's private tag.
The chauffeur accepted the handshake, and he saw that the other automan was linked to the car's radio, and had been for the duration of the party. He had tagged himself as open to conversation, though.
"Have you served the Lady long?" asked the robot, as he slid into the back seat.
"Long enough."
He had multiple questions, and ran a prioritizing program, leaving only one.
"What's she like?"
+++
It had all been going so well.
The disguise had worked very well; it was like everyone else's, with one minor difference. While their masks changed a human to a swan, an ape, tt a peacock, his changed an automan to a human pretending to be something else.
It was a fine display, as much as he could appreciate such things. There was a certain amount of visual alteration past which one Simply Must Not Stray, of course. A fetching pattern of feathers emphasizing a maiden or miss's cheekbones, yes. A beak was a bit gauche. And laying eggs, no matter how holographic, was right out.
He had patiently assembled his costume--a naval captain--from careful observation of a similar one in the theatre.It was a bit broad, and would certainly decrease the chances of his being invited back last year. Of course, he had not been invited in the first place. His invitation was forged, and he had arrived without escort, without announcement, slipping in through the servants' ways.
His processor had been overclocked, absorbing the sheer visual riot of the room and scanning for potential threats to his pretense. None were found. Quite the opposite, in fact; the stories he gave to the various bigwigs--each just different enough for everyone to think they weren't quite remembering it correctly--only enhanced his air of mystery, until he was dancing with Lady Elena Houghton, recently widowed.
It was popular, these days, for some of the well-to-do to have some sort of conspicuous cybernetic alteration. Several of the young women and men he had danced with had replaced their eyes, for example, or had some sort of external antenna in golden filigree curling over their skin. Lady Elena had an antenna, yes, as did anyone who wanted to conduct business in the modern era, but it was under her skin, quite invisible, hidden behind her pulse. She had no visible modifications at all; even the graying at her temples and slight wrinkles around her eyes, her mouth. Laugh lines.
She was a statistical anomaly. He had dedicated almost all his spare runtime to recording every facet of her he could.
And then, of course, the battery for his mask died, and he stood in the middle of the crowd of the dancers as plain as the day he was assembled. As a precaution, he had actually been wearing the clothing; only the humanity was a mask. He spent a fraction of a second calculating the odds that he would be able to escape; with the manservants nearby, their strength almost certainly much greater than his own, he would be borne down like a fox under a pack of hounds before clearing the estate bounds. And, unlike the fox, he would not have home-ground advantage.
The odds were slim.
A strident voice rang out. "What is the meaning of this?"
With furrowed brow Dame Somerset approached, dressed as - the automan triple-checked - the third Little Pig? Yes, their hostess's gown somehow implied a workman's wear without explicitly doing so, and a toolbelt girded her sizable waist, with several well-worn tools in its pockets and loops. It was rather unlikely that Somerset had ever laid hands on anything so plebeian as a hammer before, yet she was wielding a rasp like a marshal's baton. Her husband followed behind; taller, slimmer, dressed as a woodsman with a hatchet thrust though his belt. Both had the same stylized pig's nose projected onto their faces.
Lady Houghton's hand tightened in his, as the band came to a complete stop, leaving silence. Dame Somerset's surface temperature and respiration rate were rising, and he skimmed over what he knew of her infamous temper. He had perhaps seconds to come up with a plausible lie, and he wished he had better social engineering programs at his disposal as he opened his mouth-
"I apologize, Brigitte." said Lady Houghton.
He shut his mouth.
The widow Houghton had tensed, which would be effectively imperceptible to anyone not in contact with her, and even then it would take fairly decent sensors. In addition to that, he could feel, even through his gloves, that her palms were sweating more.
She released him from her grip, and forced his arm into a dignified loop, which she threaded her own arm through as she turned to face their hostess. The robot had no protocols for the situation, and the Lady seemed to have something in mind, so he resolved to follow her lead as best as he could.
"Apologize?" said the Dame, shifting her gaze from the robot to her peer. "Elena, you're responsible for this?"
Lady Houghton tilted her head in a half-concilliatory, half-rueful gesture. "Well, not all of it."
"Is this some kind of joke?"
"No, a wager."
The widow Houghton patted him on the head as she said so, and sent a quick pulse out from the antenna beneath the skin of her wrist, containing her private tag. That was an unusual amount of trust for someone she had just met.
"You recall the film where a professor makes a wager to take a random flower-seller and pass her off as an noblewoman at an Embassy ball?"
"Yes, I do."
"Well, my friend believed that a robot could not be disguised and programmed in such a manner as to fool the creme de la creme for the duration of an entire party. I disagreed, and the deal was made."
Comprehension warred with wariness on the older woman's face. "But why," she said plaintively, "did you choose my party?"
"A number of factors." Lady Elena paused, ostensibly to gather her thoughts. "Chief among them, of course, being that you throw only the very best parties, with the very best people. It would be - what's that Westerner phrase? - ah, yes, the 'acid test'."
It still amazed him, on some level, how these benighted creatures could not see the lie in her every move, every word. He could see it in the slight flush of the skin of her cheeks, even more visible in infrared. He could feel it in the ever-so slight increase in pressure on his arm.
And yet, the lie was apparently artful enough to assuage the lady of the house. She still sought some way to gain advantage, of course.
"Really, Elena, could you have informed me!" said the hostess.
"It was a condition of the wager that I could not inform anyone, and you particularly. The agreement was that I would pay double if you were the first one to realize the deception."
The older woman preened. "Well, I am quite perceptive. I suspected something was wrong from the moment I laid eyes on him."
"I have no doubt," Lady Elena said smoothly. "But if you will forgive my indulgence, we are all wearing disguises. It is merely wearing one more disguise than anyone else."
A beat. Then the hostess laughed, and the room laughed with her. The automan calculated a moderate possibility that Dame Somerset was simply attempting to save face.
The hostess waited for the laughter to die down before declaring that It would have to be removed. She snapped an imperious bricklayer's trowel toward two more robotic manservants standing discreetly nearby."You two. Escort it out."
He could, of course, still attempt escape. The manservants were strong models, but slow, where he was agile. At the slightest chance, he would, he could be away. Enough confusion, enough speed, and there was a slim chance -
Lady Houghton tightened her grip on his arm, pulled him down slightly to whisper in his ear.
"Do not," said she. "I doubt you would get very far, and I believe you owe me an explanation."
He nodded, for the benefit of their watchers, and she released him. There was, of course, a consideration she had neglected, perhaps not even considered; she had vouched for him, and his public disappearance would be ruinous to her good standing.
Flanking him on either side, the manservants marched him toward the discreet side door into the servants' areas. There was a high probability that the Lady was watching him leave, with those unusually colored eyes of hers. He did not look back.
Once past the door, the two manservants' switched to a lower-power mode, presumably not having to keep up with the facade of attentiveness for their Lordships. He could detect their conversation, but without a handshake he couldn't tell what they were talking about. They probably hadn't believed her Ladyship either.
The kitchen was a riot of olfactory input, and he logged it for later perusal later. There were even a few human servants in the kitchen, and they turned to stare at him as he walked past. Of course, the robotic servants' grapevine was as fast as the speed of light, and he felt a grim sort of satisfaction at leaving the others all speculating.
The two manservants released him from their charge at the door to the garage, and he stood in the ghosts of cigarettes long past and fumbled through the tags until he found that of the Lady's Rolls. It was a dark red, with hints of peach. Or, at least, it would be in the daylight. In the dark, it was just another car.
He could simply get in, but that would be rude. So he sent a cautious handshake to the driver, along with the Lady's private tag.
The chauffeur accepted the handshake, and he saw that the other automan was linked to the car's radio, and had been for the duration of the party. He had tagged himself as open to conversation, though.
"Have you served the Lady long?" asked the robot, as he slid into the back seat.
"Long enough."
He had multiple questions, and ran a prioritizing program, leaving only one.
"What's she like?"
