Every time John Darvick thought he was going to finish the line in his textbook about forward kinematics, a shout from downstairs broke his concentration.
"Go, Dillard! GO!" came the distant but booming voice of his father, down in the living room. "Go, you pathetic ass!"
Darvick sighed, and began reading again. He was only seventeen, but he was attempting to get through a college grade textbook on fundamental robotics. He was a perfect straight A student, but not for lack of trying. At all. In fact, he was getting premature dark lines under his eyes from many nights spent studying for exams. And it didn't help that it was derby season, and his father had put a lot of money onto a couple pretty ponies that were proving pathetic.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! YOU'RE ALMOST AHEAD OF HIM, YOU MISERABLE—!"
"Charlie! Please, my head…" Darvick heard his mother protest. And his father did quiet down, but not for long.
Darvick took off his designer, two hundred dollar reading glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. The light in his room from crystal light fixtures was a warm yellow, and just bright enough for reading. It was the noise that made it impossible. In a house as large as the Darvicks', one would think it wouldn't be hard to find a quiet place to read, but Darvick's father's voice had a way of carrying through walls.
Tired of expending energy into a chapter he just wasn't going to finish that night, Darvick reached across the bed for his bookmark, closed the book, and pushed it off of his lap. He then pushed himself off of his queen sized bed, its plush, gold satin comforter bouncing back into place from where he sat.
The noise wasn't the only thing that made the library a more appealing place for Darvick to study. Crossing the room with his hands in his pockets only made him more aware of how little the room felt like his own. Darvick had been born into wealth. Not Annie and Mr. Warbucks kind of wealth, but wealth nevertheless. If Darvick had been born a normal teenager, his room would be one particularly trashed room in an otherwise normal middle class home, with an odor he could call his own. Painted either blue, green, or purple, and have pin ups of cars, bands he liked, or maybe even girls in bikinis. Instead, his room was a mirror image of the guest bedroom, also overflowing with frills. No posters, not even childhood artwork unless it was put in a frame that matched the easily chipped gold aesthetic. Every shirt and sock dropped on the floor would be gone by the next time he came back to the room. Nearly everything and anything he could do to imprint himself onto the room he called his own bounced back—not even his sheets would wrinkle under his weight.
The only sign that a child had occupied that room was the faint pink stain on his white desktop where Darvick had spilled his fruit punch when he was seven. He normally wasn't supposed to have anything but water in his room, but he'd broken the rules once or twice on that, and as murphy's law dictated, his parents had to find out. They'd thought the stain had come out, so they let Darvick keep the desk. But to the boy who actually used the desk, in the right light, he could still see the line where the stain began. Seventeen years, and this was the most profound sign of his occupancy. Something that wasn't even supposed to be there.
Currently, the stain was covered with stacks of textbooks just like the one on the bed. All were about computers and the growing world of robotics technology. Darvick didn't have too many passions. He loved music, as most teenagers did, but he couldn't carry a tune, or focus long enough to learn how to play an instrument. And he wasn't very good with sports either, flinching more often than catching. He was thin and narrow framed, but boys skinnier than him could still pass a ball around, so he didn't have an excuse. Not that his father was the type that would have been happy about his youngest son being another meathead football player. As far as Charlie Darvick was concerned, John keeping his nose in books meant he was doing something right.
But it was the kinds of books John Darvick preferred that made the old lawyer wrinkle his nose. Computers may have been becoming more important to society as time pressed on, but Charlie would rather look the other way than face it as reality. And even though computers were directly responsible for thankless tasks like getting the senior Darvick on the right plane at the airport, or probably serving him his coke and rum downstairs on a silver platter with clawed hands as he mourned another gambling loss, he didn't see them as a worthy enough to be the center of a career. Not for his son, anyway.
This was where John Darvick had a problem. He paused as he approached the mirror above his dresser. The figure that looked back at him was cleanly shaven, neatly dressed, and looked totally alien. Mature enough so that the last drops of baby fat had fallen from his face, but so young that the distinguishing features of a man hadn't set in yet. Aside from the strong chin that he inherited from his father, his face was as soft and unbroken as a baby's bottom. Expensive acne treatments had done away with the blemishes that came to every teenager around this age. He didn't even have scars to show for the brutal process of puberty. Just another tick towards the irrelevance his life amounted to.
On the mirror, however, tucked just into the silver frame that bordered the whole thing, was a piece of paper that demanded present attention, whereas the rest of the room might as well have been abandoned. Darvick had tucked the letter there when it had arrived two days ago. To remind him.
Inside that letter was promise. A place for him in this world that he could call his own, that might actually feel like his own. Because among rejection letter after rejection letter for colleges across the states that Darvick and simply tossed away, there was one and only one 'Accepted.' But for Darvick, there was none better.
This was an acceptance letter from the college that JNZ Robotics' founder, Dr. Harris Jones, had gone to. It specialized in the technical sciences, and while not an Ivy League school, it was pretty tough to get into. But John Darvick had managed it.
And this was where the problem lay. Knowing damn well he wasn't going to get into a law school short of his father paying off the admissions officer, Darvick hadn't bothered to apply for any of his father's approved schools, the ones that the old man casually threw out there every now and again, just loud enough for his son to hear. Darvick spent that precious time applying to colleges he knew he actually had a chance at. That, and one rather high ranking school that Darvick had considered time and time again, simply because the robotics wizard he admired so deeply had gone there.
And as it turned out, all of those realistically achievable schools didn't want John Darvick there. Every rejection letter made his stomach hurt. They told him he hadn't studied enough. He wasn't ready.
Christmas had come and gone, bringing a blanket of snow, and leaving with temperatures nearing zero. And it was one of the most miserable Christmases Darvick had ever known. But then, on the coldest day of the year, the letter from the technical institute came. He was in.
The only thing that stood in the way of him and his dreams was the crushing weight of tuition fees. His father wouldn't hesitate to write a check to pay whatever Yale or Brown wanted for his son to attend. But for a computer school?
Darvick knew coding very well, for a person his age. If his father was a robot, he knew exactly the lines of operation that he needed to create in order to make his father output the phrase 'Yes'. But humans just weren't robots, and the older they were, the harder it was to change their minds.
So he'd stuck the letter to the mirror, knowing full well their one lazy human maid would be uninterested in reading it, and waited. Hoping the right kind of speech would just come to him. That the right string of words could undo a lifetime of quiet obedience.
"Bastards... " trickled his father's voice from downstairs. "Better off dog meat."
Darvick snapped out of his reverie. He couldn't stand one more minute of this. He was sick of not existing. He wanted to be real.
He snatched the letter from the mirror frame, turned and stormed out of his room, slamming his door behind him.
The upstairs hallway was large, and his footsteps echoed where ruby carpet didn't cover the floor. It was dimly lit up here this late, but Darvick had grown up in this house, and he could find his way around even in a blackout.
Once, when he was very small, his older brother, Lyle, closest in age to him, had pushed him down the large staircase that took him to the living room. The fall had made him always check his footing on the first step, and made the rest of his childhood very distrustful of him. Lyle had moved out for college years ago, making John the last of the ripe, old Charlie's children to leave the nest. One would think that having three kids in law school would make Charlie care less about what John wanted to do. But between constantly calling up for loans and one of them almost flunking out, there was a lot of expectation on John Darvick to be the kid who did it right.
Warmly lit lamps in the otherwise darkened home welcomed Darvick to the television room, where his parents were seated across the little box screen on a wooden box in matching green armchairs. The images on screen were displaying a news report on the Vietnam War, but Darvick's father was still shaking his head about the derby, his face tight and heavily lined. He was in his late sixties, but his hair was almost all gone, except for a fine line of silver that hung around his neck, from ear to ear. His mother wasn't young herself, but years of better anger management had made her appear half the age of her husband. She was sitting cross-legged on the chair with a Montgomery Ward Catalog on her lap, holding up her head with her hand. Even if her husband could afford high-end European clothes, she followed the trends of the middle class very closely. As such, she dressed much like the sixties moms on the black and white sitcoms on TV, with bob-cut hair and saddle shoes.
What both of them were oblivious to, and that Darvick noticed right away, was the tall, angular metal figure waiting in the shadow of the wall that divided the TV room and the dining room. It was not a threat of any kind, but their multi-purpose robotic butler: 'Jeeves' 248, who did more work than their sarcastic human maid, who was more there out of tradition than anything else.
Considering Charlie's sentiment about computers and robotics, Jeeves was a surprise. But as robots became more affordable, it was only a matter of time before even Charlie couldn't ignore the cheap labor opportunity. One payment for a lifetime of service.
The robot had been around since Darvick was eleven, and unbenounced to his parents, been through several minor malfunctions. Darvick himself had performed the necessary repairs to fix the robot and put it back in working order, testing out his early technical skills. The repairs were so smooth that nobody in Darvick's family had realized there was anything wrong with the robot that waited on them hand and foot. Seeing Jeeves in working order made Darvick grin, if only for a second.
There was no carpet in the television room, and Darvick's footsteps alerted his parents to his approach before he could say anything. The turned their heads towards him almost simultaneously, but only his mother acknowledged him with words. "Oh! We thought you were asleep, sweetheart. Is everything alright?"
"Everything's fine," Darvick said, tasting the lie on his lips like blood, from biting his lips too many times.
"Maybe for you," Charlie finally spoke up, reaching over to the side table of his seat and grabbing the glass. "But I had fifteen grand on that pretty pony, and all the stats were on my side."
As he took a swig, his wife gasped. "Fif—Fifteen?" The catalog slipped to the floor as she stood up. "That's triple what you've ever bet! How could you?"
"It was a sure thing, it was supposed to be a sure thing." Charles took another long sip. "Never trust the stats by old Roger again. Have half a mind to put him in the grinder with that ass horse."
His wife sighed, grabbing her head. She really did look pained. "I can't take this anymore. I'm going to bed." She reached down and put the catalog on the seat of her chair, and walked up to Darvick, hugging him and kissing him on the cheek. "Goodnight, darling."
"Night, Mom," Darvick said back, quietly. Her blue eyes were glossy, and her breath reeked of brandy. He let go of the hug and watched her figure disappear into the other room.
He then turned to his father, who sighed and leaned his head over the right side of the chair. "Jeeves, shut the television off, will you?"
At once, the metallic figure in the dark of the room lit up, its eyes bright orange. "Yes, Master Charlie." Quietly, and as considerately as possible, it rolled on its four wheels to the television, reached over and turned the knob until the TV screen shut off. With its task completed, the robot wheeled itself back over to the dark of the room and shut its lights off, once more. The robot had been ordered not to bother asking Charlie if he needed anything else before retreating to the corner.
After reaching over to the side table for the newspaper Jeeves had neatly folded and set there this afternoon, Darvick's father snapped it open and set his eyes on a line Darvick couldn't see. "So, what's on your mind, boy?"
Darvick swallowed. He was no closer to finding the right wording for his argument, but somehow, seeing the robot nobly holding its post after all these years thanks to his repairs gave him the courage to carry on with the plan. "Well, I've been sending in a lot of college applications, lately…"
"Yes," his father replied, not bothering to lift his eyes from the tiny print. "No time like the present." When John didn't answer right away, Charlie did lower the paper a little to look at im. "You've...heard back from any of them, yet?"
Darvick sighed. "Only every one. If I did the math right."
Charles flick-straightened his paper and laid it across his lap. "Ah. Prompt. I like it." He cracked his knuckles." So, what are our options?"
Darvick rubbed the back of his neck, dry from the starch white school collars he wore every day. Rather than bring up his rejection letters, and give his father a reason to blow his stack, Darvick decided to focus on the school that mattered. "Well, there was one that I really liked. Did research on the place, and it looks nice. Kind of small. Been around since 1900."
Charlie rubbed his stubbly chin with a half smile. "Yes, you did always have my taste." He waited until his son looked at him so that he could meet his eyes. "You know, son, your sister and all of your brothers have never—well—been as academically focused as you. I thought when Patrick had gone for that football scholarship that he was on the road for bigger and better things, but since he's left school to work in a factory, I've realized that perhaps he was reaching for the stars."
Darvick was starting to feel guilty. A lot of robotics work took place in factories. The ideal job he'd land, that would give him the money and resources to create the things he wanted to, would be the lead technician at a factory. It wouldn't matter to his father whether he designed the bots or built them with his own two hands. A factory job was a factory job. It was blue collar. To hide his building tension, Darvick casually pushed his hands in his pockets and tried to look like he was feeling superior to his less-cruel-than Lyle older brother. "Well, I guess Patrick probably believed the moon was cheese and took the ladder to the side of the house to try and taste it."
His father let out a dry laugh. "That he probably did. And if he were to fall off the roof and break his arm, and take the ladder company to court, he would fail under…which principle of the law?"
Seeing his father's hopeful smile, Darvick rolled his eyes. Quizzing his children about the fundamentals of law was something Charlie had done since they were all in grade school. The only reason Darvick was able to answer correctly was that he'd been drilled with hypothetical scenarios like this so often that they were criminally easy. And it helped that Darvick was the only one of said kids who paid attention. "You can't sue the company because you used their equipment incorrectly," Darvick said flatly.
Charles clasped his hands together loudly. "That is correct! This is why I'm serious about your future, Jonathan. Of all of my children, you have the most potential. And I know that whatever you put your mind to will pay off."
Darvick was shocked. He almost didn't believe what he heard. "You-you really mean that?"
"Of course," his father nodded. "Which is why, coincidentally, I've recently contacted the admissions of Harvard and told them about your perfect transcripts and your knowledge of the law, despite being so young. And you, my boy, have been selected for an interview."
The teenager felt like a spaceman on a rocket, and the gravity had suddenly turned on. His head swayed. "Harvard? Oh, Dad, I don't think—"
"You don't?!" Charlie shouted, suddenly. "I know! You lack confidence. It's a problem you've had your whole life. You put in the work, but you're afraid it won't show. But I know you'll do fantastic at Harvard's rigor, boy."
Darvick shook his head. "Dad, I don't want to go Ivy League," he said with a groan in his voice.
His father looked at him with confusion for a second, then chuckled. "You can't do better than Ivy League, boy. Unless, what? You were hoping for Oxford? King's College?"
"No! I mean—" Darvick sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to force the truth out. "I don't want to go to some fancy liberal arts school."
There was a pause. Charlie's eyes were locked on his sons. Darvick spent agonizing moments unsure if he should break the stare, and wishing his father would. Finally, Charlie spoke. "Then what kind of school have you been looking at?" he asked, quietly.
"Carnegie Mellon," Darvick breathed out.
Charles furrowed his brow, looking as if he was unsure he'd heard his son correctly. "Where is that?"
"Pennsylvania," Darvick said with a shrug. "Well, Pittsburgh specifically."
"And what exactly do you plan on doing there?" Charles continued to pry.
"It's a technology school, dad. Software and appliances and—"
"Oh, don't tell me that you're still tinkering with broken phones and calculators like you did when you were a child. John, you're nearly a man, now, it's time to get serious and stop with those hobbies! Now, sit down in your mother's chair and help me write your application cover page for a real college."
"Carnegie is a real college!" Darvick said back, almost shouting now. "And it's one of the hardest to get into in all of America. A-And I got in!" He began pacing as he was talking. "And I got in because putting together broken calculators and phones and technology isn't just a hobby to me, Dad. It's what I love to do! And you'd know that if you paid attention to anything I like." He slipped his hands back into his pockets, uncomfortably aware of how loose they were on him. He'd lost weight at a time when young men normally put on muscles. He hadn't needed physical education for the last two years of high school, and the lack of exercise was starting to show. He felt guilty for making fun of Patrick now. The football star never-to-be may have been struggling with his job, but he looked good while doing it.
His father had paused in what Darvick thought was an attempt to let this new information sink in. But once his voice sounded again, it was clear that the only thing that sank in was resentment. "So, you've got this all figured out now, have you?" His head bobbed. "You're going to be a Mister-Fix-It for the rest of your life?"
"There's more to technology than repairs, dad," Darvick said, calmly. "Who do you think left your paper on the side table this afternoon? Or poured your rum? Not Mrs. Gages," he said, referring to their maid. He pointed at Jeeves, standing dark and motionless in the corner. "Jeeves handles all of that and more."
"So what?"
"I taught him to learn and remember what you like, Dad. He even remembers to turn the news on before you come home! And I didn't teach him that, he learned it on his own. Don't you think that's incredible?"
"What gave you the right to mess with my robot?" Charlie demanded, avoiding the question. "It's not some broken appliance you can put back together, it's a perfectly working automaton."
Darvick took in a deep breath. "That's because I've...been repairing him behind your back. And I've made him better than how he came out of the factory, special to your needs. I'm good at this, Dad!"
But Charlie was still offended. "This is what you feel passionate enough about to say that you're good at? I can't believe this…" Charlie rubbed his temples.
"Dad, listen to me," Darvick said, coming closer to the chair his dad sat in so that he could speak softer. "Robotics isn't the same thing it was twenty years ago. It's extremely competitive. Stock for companies are in the billions. And now robots are so advanced, they say some are aware of what's going on around them. They're like people, but they're made," Darvick tried to explain, his awe spilling into his words. "They're not just computers anymore. They think, and they feel—this is huge!"
But Charlie had decided he'd heard enough, and began flipping through the paper again, like he'd lost his spot even though he'd never really started reading. "Now you sound just like that insane Jones figure on the news. Perfect lunatic. What are you going to say next, that we should liberate the robots, and let them run a society all on their own? Do I have to get a doctor in here to get your head checked?"
Darvick's face turned red, hearing the closest thing he had to a role model mocked. "I'm not saying that at all."
"But you do realize the legal implications of what you're saying, don't you? You want to use Jeeves 248 as an example, let's go ahead and use 'him'. You want him to 'feel'? To be able to express happiness, and anger? What if they don't take kindly to the idea that we are using them as appliances?" He pointed to the robotic butler in the corner. "Do you think he'd be alright with serving our family without a wage? I should say not! What you're asking for is a lawsuit—a class action lawsuit! Hell, things become as advanced as you want them to be, and there'll be an uprising!"
With that, Charlie finally threw the paper back up in front of his face. But Darvick approached him, gently folding the paper down with his pointer finger so he could look his father in the eyes. "It won't happen," Darvick said, "if we treat the robots correctly. Which is part of what I want to study. The effects of robots treated like humans, versus the conventional way."
Charlie scoffed, yanking the paper out from Darvick's finger and back in front of his face. "What an absolute waste of time. Come talk to me when you've grown up, Jonathan."
Darvick slowly backed away, straightened his back, and with heavy feet, disappeared from the warm glow of the room into the dark hallway. His father's command wouldn't go unfollowed. After that night, Darvick would never attempt to have a heart to heart conversation with his father ever again.
As if to make the matter worse, Charlie shouted after his son after he'd already gone. "And if you think I am paying for you to go to school to get a job in a field that changes so often that will require you to go back to school every two years, you've got another thing coming!"
Darvick could picture his father's mustache trembling in fear of the booming voice.
"Law, my boy—law never changes!"
The teenager climbed the dark, cold staircase and up to his room, the last occupied room in the wing of the Darvick children. Soon, it too would be empty, and the idea that none of his grown children had pleased Charlie thus far made the youngest child realize that perhaps nobody could make that man proud. While this should have comforted Darvick, it only made him more miserable. For a minute there downstairs, he really thought he was special.
In his room, he changed out of his neat clothing into sweat pants and a T shirt, and crawled into the cool sheets, hoping that if he had to dream, that it would be about forward kinematics rather than anything else.
But in the dead of night, a knock on his door pulled Darvick out of his dreamless sleep. He sat up from the bed, the shaggier side of his hair caused from a missed haircut stuck to his cheek. The heat had been turned on when he was asleep, and his room was unbearably warm. He made a mental note to see what he could do about regulating the heating system in their house. He gladly tossed the large, white comforter away and walked with bare feet to the door, making a half-attempt of combing his hair before he opened the door.
For whatever reason, part of him honestly thought it was his father, come to talk about the argument they'd had earlier. When he opened the door however, he realized how unrealistic the notion was, given his father's history of holding to an argument.
Yet even more surprising, somehow, was seeing the house's butler robot, standing at the door with a soda bottle and a straw on a silver tray. "Master Jonathan," the robot uttered.
Darvick blinked with sleepy eyes, for a second trying to remembered if he'd ordered a soda earlier that evening. But he hadn't. In fact, he hadn't had an orange soda like that in over six months. Oddly enough, due to the heat of his room at the moment, the icy glass looked very refreshing. "Oh, Jeeves. What's going on?"
"I am conscious of the schedule you previously ordered of me that discourages interruptions between 10 PM and 8 AM. However, I could not enter sleep mode, as there was a matter on my mind that requires attention."
Darvick sleepily tried to translate what Jeeves was saying into plain english. "You…have a problem?"
"Negative," the robot said. "Quite the contrary. In fact. I have a solution."
The teenager stood with a scrutinizing expression until a powerful yawn took over his body. "Look, why don't you come inside and talk to me about it," Darvick said, gesturing the robot inside. Promptly, the robot glided inside on well-oiled wheels, also courtesy of Darvick's attentive care of the robot. Jeeves set the tray down on the empty table besides the door, and Darvick took the soda, desperately needing the energy. Feeling as if something about this meeting was dubious, Darvick shut the door behind the robot so that his father wouldn't hear their conversation. Darvick sat on the edge of his bed and sipped his drink. "What's been 'on your mind'?" he asked curiously. It was a kind of metaphorical terminology he was surprised to hear the robot use. Perhaps it was learning human phrases.
Jeeves didn't beat around the bush. "As I am expected to listen for an order, I could not help but overhear your conversation with Master Charlie this evening."
Darvick groaned. "More like an argument—just, for your information—but go on."
"Affirmative," the robot replied. "And while I am ordered not to come unless I am permitted to, I also could not help but overhear the topic of robotics discussed. Forgive me, but such talk does interest me, as an automaton myself."
Darvick's eyes widened. "Oh. I… I suppose that makes sense. And…hey, I'm sorry for using you as an example in the argument. Robot or not, it's not polite to talk about you behind your back, or, in this case, right in front of your face when your order is to not interrupt."
"No apology is necessary,," the robot replied. "I was not offended in the least. In fact, the incident only has me intrigued—if you will pardon me, sir."
Darvick grimaced. "What exactly do you mean?"
"You will have to forgive me for being honest, sir," The robot corrected itself, awkwardly, almost human-like. "But while I had been aware you had been repairing and improving me, I had no idea that you were planning on seeking it as a profession. And, well, I am humbled to be in the service of a robotics technician who will advocate for robotic rights."
At first, Darvick was speechless. After what happened with his father, having someone, anyone, support him about this career path felt pretty good. Real good, in fact. But this…was a robot. A Type A, plain old butler automaton. How could Jeeves be humbled by anything? Unless it was just another turn of phrase he'd picked up while being surrounded by Darvick's family. But when the human looked into the robot's eyes, there was something unsettling there. Like Jeeves had an awareness beyond a sophisticated computer.
And then it hit him like a ton of bricks: He'd heard of experimental cases like this on the news. Jeeves was a Type B automaton. He had a conscious. At some point in the robot's development, for whatever reason, presumably experimental, his designers had outfitted him with a sophisticated brain that worked less like a traditional robot's, and more like a person's. And Darvick had never noticed. He'd never bothered to dissect Jeeves in such a way.
Suddenly, the sweat on the back of Darvick's neck turned cold. Every moment he spent with Jeeves in the past six years, every not totally considerate operation he made on the robot during a repair, every time he ever referred to the robot as if it couldn't hear him, came flooding back to him. Even though he'd been a world kinder to Jeeves than his parents had been, Darvick had only ever treated Jeeves as a creature that had the potential to be sentient. Not as something—someone—who was.
"Is everything alright?" the robot asked. "You are looking rather pale. Shall I call a doctor?"
Darvick snapped out of it, shaking his head. He was surprised how his damp hair swung in front of his eyes, and that his father hadn't quipped about it being too 'hippy' like, among everything else he didn't like about his youngest. "Oh...no—I mean! I'm fine. Um, you said something strange when you came in. About having 'a solution'. What did you mean by that?"
"Well, that is what I have come to express to you," the robot said. "In the event that Master Charlie is unwilling to put forth the tuition for your desired university, I have done some preemptive research and have concluded that bundled scholarships earned by your transcripts may cover the cost."
Darvick rubbed the back of his sopping neck. "Ah, Jeeves, I don't know anything about getting scholarships from this place. Unless I start making some phone calls—wait—" he paused, dropping his arm. "Did you say 'preemptive' research?"
"Yes," Jeeves answered. He sounded almost ecstatic. "It would be my honor to research and connect you with the various financial scholarships that are applicable to you."
The human was speechless. All along, the butler robot that delivered his orange sodas and picked his clothes off the floor with neither complaint nor compliment had had free will. And he was choosing to use that free will to defy Darvick's father—someone who had more than capacity to order him dismantled—and help Darvick get into this college. But it was the determination that was apparent in the robot's eyes that really gave Darvick chills. He had been fascinated by the idea of automatons with feelings, and here was an example, standing right in front of him. "Wow…um, Jeeves, that's really kind of you." His eyes trailed to the door, nervously. "But this is probably something that's really between me and my father—" he winced, and sighed. "Ahem. My father and I."
Darvick was used to instant-correcting his own grammar so his parents wouldn't correct him out loud and embarrass him, so much so that he would even do it in front of Jeeves, who would never even think to correct Darvick on something so insignificant.
He forced himself to give Jeeves the complete eye contact he'd denied the robot since realizing he had sentience. "And I don't want you to get in the middle of this. You must know by now that my dad isn't too keen on advanced technology to begin with. I'm not even sure what's going to happen now that I've told him the truth about what I wanna do with my life."
"What you mean to articulate," the robot clarified, "is, what is going to happen to me."
"Well, yeah," Darvick said, trying to express his sympathy with his face, not sure how much the robot could read from it.
"I see. Not to be rude," the robot said, his orange eyes somehow looking brighter with the more conviction his speech took on. "But frankly, it is not myself that I care about. Your repairs have already given me more mileage than my manufacturer ever intended for me to have. I am fortunate. But many of my kind are not. And it would be of utmost selfishness if I wished to be the only unit to benefit from your talents. If there is anything I may do to see that my Master Jonathan is able to assist other units, and advocate for robotic rights, than I will not hesitate to do it, even if it means laying down my own functioning existence."
"Jesus Christ…" Darvick breathed, as the robot then gave a short bow to him. His sleepy head felt like it was spinning. He started wondering if he was dreaming. Jeeves, a Type B, conscious automaton, offering to research ways to pay for his college, offering to defy his father in the name of other robots. It was too much all at once.
Darvick wondered, if he hadn't announced he was going into robotics, would Jeeves had ever made it so obvious to him that he was sentient? If Darvick had gone along with his father's plans for him to become a lawyer, would Jeeves have forever remained a quiet, diligent worker, keeping this precious secret to himself until the day he broke down, and was recycled for scrap?
An awe inspiring revelation hit Darvick at that moment that Type B automatons could be just as clever, calculating, and careful as human beings, even in the timing of their actions. And despite the robot's good nature, Darvick could almost swear there was the tiniest flicker of mischief in the diligent butler's luminescent eyes.
At that moment, John Darvick decided that his career choice was more important than he'd ever thought before. Jeeves was living proof that a conscious automaton could form its own opinion from which to act upon, and furthermore, one that was given respect could become a valuable ally. A smile broke into Darvick's face long before he could string together his response. "Alright, buddy," he thrust a hand out towards the robot. "It's you and me against the world."
The butler reached for Darvick's hand and clasped it gently in his pointed claws, before shaking it in slow, even, robotic motions. "I could think of nothing more honorable, sir."
"John," Darvick corrected, still grinning.
"John," the robot echoed. And Darvick liked how his first name sounded coming out of a robot. "Shall I turn the heat down?" the robot asked, noticing Darvick wipe sweat off his brow.
The human shook his head, still grinning. He was the first to tell Jeeves that he could help himself to whatever Jeeves offered to do for him. This was never going to change. And maybe this had attributed to Jeeve's appreciation. "I gotta work on the radiators in here tomorrow. It's okay. Go get some sleep."
Without further conversation needed, Jeeves re-erected his poster to a perfect vertical line, before picking up the silver tray and leaving Darvick's room.
From that night forward, the rest of the teen's time at home before college was nowhere as bleak as it had been. While Jeeves resumed his humiliating duties and changed nothing about his behavior in front of Darvick's parents, the robot and human exchanged reassuring expressions whenever they passed each other. Behind Charlie's back, Jeeves had supplied Darvick with numbers to call, papers to fill out, and even posed for pictures to become the best example of the human's talent with working on robots.
Jeeves seemed intrigued to see Dr. Harris Jones's name in the application letters Darvick wrote in all the letters to the foundations, considering a number of them had nothing to do with the school from which Jones was an alumnus. A controversial figure for sure, if not a laughing stock in some cases and depending on how certain people viewed his ideas, could result in Darvick getting denied the money. But Darvick explained to Jeeves that most of his theory on sentience in robotics stemmed from the research and conclusions that Dr. Jones had come up with. It was the most honest explanation for why robotics above other technical sciences had his attention. And Jeeves was the first instance of proof Darvick himself had come across that Dr. Jones's theory about taking the robots' potential for sentience seriously was correct. Darvick now had a thesis for his career before even entering college. This had to amount to something.
And it did. Before long, Darvick had been approved for a dozen scholarships. It didn't foot the entire bill for Carnegie like Jeeves had suggested it might, but it took a huge chunk out of it. And that meant less loans Darvick had to take out to cover the rest.
As he expected, his father wanted nothing to do with helping Darvick move out of his bedroom and into a dorm at a school that didn't teach law. So part of the loan Darvick had taken out covered moving his possessions—pretty much everything but the furniture. Including the stained desk.
The night before Darvick moved out, he politely asked Jeeves to bring him two tall glasses of virgin fruit punch in his room, with no ice or straws. Jeeves did as asked, and Darvick took one off of the platter and enjoyed a long, savory sip. When he was done, instead of replacing it on Jeeve's claws, he casually dumped the rest of its contents on the top of his empty, white desk, making sure every last drop touched the surface of the fine wood grain and had the opportunity to sink in.
He then took the other glass and threw it onto his freshly made, white cotton bedspread. It stained like blood, and Darvick was thoroughly satisfied with it.
He threw the other glass onto the ruined bed and told Jeeves he was absolutely forbidden from cleaning the mess, no matter how Charlie threatened him to. Darvick's father would have to make Mrs. Gages get off her lazy butt and do it, or do it himself.
Jeeves agreed without hesitation, no matter how he would be punished for the defiance.
The next few months would have Darvick unable to contact Jeeves, as he was reluctant to talk to his parents. Even his mother, for whom he held no grudge against. And it would be up to Darvick's imagination for what was to become of the butler robot that did not do as he was told.
In a shocking turn of events, a few months after Darvick arrived at Carnegie, a very large package had arrived, all the way from his home address. It was large enough that Darvick almost thought his father had sent him the stained desk. But he was amazed when he sliced open the box to see a deactivated Jeeves inside.
The note the robot came with explained that after Jeeves had refused to clean up the mess in Darvick's room, the robot began regularly refusing to do other tasks that it was assigned. After two months of this, Charlie had had enough, and ordered a new robot to do the humiliating work Mrs. Gages refused to do. The note made a point that if Darvick 'liked the hunk of junk so much, you might as well keep it'.
Darvick was ecstatic. Instead of throwing Jeeves away, his father had delivered him to the safest place in the world for him, postage included. It took no time to reactivate Jeeves and inform him on the luck they'd had. The butler robot then confirmed Darvick's suspicion that he was not malfunctioning, and that further refusing Charlie's orders had been an act of free will.
From there, Jeeves served under John Darvick, not as a butler, but as a test subject. As Darvick studied and earned his dream internship and JNZ Robotics, the company Dr. Jones himself had helped create, he recorded Jeeves' sentiment on anything and everything. Even as Darvick began making friends and partners in his field, and even his first girlfriend, he thought of the robot as a trustworthy confidant—someone who not only responded to things honestly and factually, but thoughtfully as well. Likewise, the robot was quite fond of Darvick, and insisted on fetching the human an orange soda every now and again as he huddled over his books, for old time's sake.
With continued repairs, the diligent, but clever robot, lived not only double, but triple his life expectancy. But as nothing lasts forever, there came a day when the human simply could not get the robot up and running after the second shut down in a week.
Just two weeks before Darvick, now a team leader and a project manager, was set to pitch his most ambitious plan for a JNZ prototype, Jeeves was permanently retired, his parts recycled for another's use—just as the robot would have liked. Darvick was able to rent a small house by this point, and he couldn't believe how empty the place felt without Jeeves to talk to at all hours of the night. Now when the mixture of stress and caffeine kept him awake, he'd find himself waking up his girlfriend with a phone call. It was like having a dog that died, although Darvick felt it was demeaning to Jeeves to put him on the same level as a pet.
But as time went by, even as he reconnected with his estranged mother back home, Darvick remembered Jeeves less and less. It was no fault of the robot. His own job was growing more stressful by the day, and in the spring of 1973, just his twenty ninth year, his greatest project was up and running—literally, all around the factory, as children do.
Robot Electro Jones was everything Darvick dreamed for the future of robotics. And despite what his father had said to him all those years ago, Darvick had known he'd been wrong. Maybe a lawyer would never have to go back to school to re-learn how laws work, but laws themselves would definitely change. As robots continued to grow and evolve, so would the laws. And as long as he had the power to do something about it, he wouldn't stop until this little robot would be recognized as the little man that he was.
Originally published on dA, Feburary 2nd, 2019
Collab with Wit (Mag)!
A prologue I guess for her character, John Darvick, the person who designed Robot Jones and basically runs the experiment until Robot goes to middle school. I wanted to do something with Darvick, and we were talking about this idea about him liking Dr. Jones' ideas about giving robots rights early on, and him disagreeing with his father, and this story came out of that. I hope you enjoy. Comments/criticism always encouraged.
Whatever Happened to Robot Jones? © Greg Miller & Cartoon Network
Darvick belongs to the wonderful internetfreak14 ~
Update for Fanfic: Ooops, when I was moving stuff over to fanfic archives I forgot this one! And it's one of my favorite stories too. I loved going into Darvick's backstory. Mag really fleshed out Darvick. Making Robot's creator into somebody so human makes the universe so immersive. I even got my mom to read this one, and she never reads my shit.