Some funerals just aren’t complete without rain. Whether it’s to accentuate the dismalness of the moment or to force a confrontation with it deep inside the minds and hearts of those attending to pay respects, it can induce deep pits of thought and introspection, or at the very least take someone’s mind off the loss of a loved one and into low-level griping about the damp. Conversely, a sunny day can bring back haunting flashbacks of better times that propel previously brave individuals into paroxysms of suicidal grief. Sometimes, the rain is better.
This time, it wasn’t. For one thing, the deceased’s coffin had a leak, and it was getting rusty. For another, all three of the attendants were behind on their own scheduled rustproof sealant applications, and they were attempting to cluster underneath the single source of dryness they possessed – a large golf umbrella – severely hampered by the fact that they were all bulky construction robots.
Beside the grave, flipping through a large and bulky tome, was the minister. It had spent the last half hour fixing steel beams together, and its massive arm-mounted arc welder was getting in the way of the pages, forcing it to hold the book at an awkward angle, barely within sight of its optical viewers. To add to its difficulties, a small crowd of human passer-bys had stopped to watch, and it was suffering an extremely quiet bout of stage fright, which in its case manifested in irregular volume control.
“Are you ready yet?” asked one of the mourners, shifting its five-ton frame to steal a little more space under the umbrella.
“Yes,” it said.
The mourner, whose name was XLQ530, fidgeted with its jackhammer attachment. “Sorry, what was that? You know my hearing’s gone all to shot since that loose nail got into my processor.” Its ocular port swivelled to stare directly at its neighbour as it said this.
“Come off it, I said I was sorry,” said TAH978, surreptitiously stuffing its nail gun behind its back. “It was an honest mistake.”
“An honest mistake after you saw the payroll and me pulling in twice yours, more like. Now I get all the jobs next to the noise and – “
“Sorry, I said yes,” said the minister. It fumbled at its book in a futile attempt to improve its view of the words, then appeared to give up. “Dearly beloved,” it began, choppily, “we are gathered here today to witness the –”
“Oh come off it!” snapped XLQ530. “That’s for WEDDINGS. Are you telling me you still can’t find the damned page?”
“I’d like to see you do better,” said the minister defensively.
“I’ll try if you’d like,” said an unusually cheery voice. The assembled funeral party looked despairingly at the largest of the mourners, and the one clutching the umbrella in its extremely small servomanipulators. Its wrecking ball swung gently to and fro some thirty feet above them, dangling from the extremely rickety and complicated crane jutting out of its superstructure.
“You know you can’t read, F4,” said TAH978.
“I said I’d try. How hard can it be?”
“We’ve gone over this before. Save up and buy some software or something.”
“That seems like cheating.”
“Shut up,” said XLQ530, striding up to the minister. It snatched the book from its fumbling probe and examined it critically. “This isn’t a bible! This isn’t even a how-to guide! You’re looking at its manual!”
“It said it wanted it that way,” mumbled the minister.
“Then why bother with the whole pantomime? You’re wearing a stole!”
“It said to go with whatever felt right.”
“Seems fine to me,” agreed F4.
“Shut up,” said the other two.
The minister was now inadvertently jetting small sparks from the tip of its industrial welder, setting extremely damp smoke loose from the bedraggled grass that clung to the lip of the soil around the muddy pit of the open grave. “It bought a human plot in a human cemetery and it wanted a funeral – no recycling, no scrapyards, just a few part donations to friends in its will. If it’s going to be put with all these other humans around, the least we can do is observe local ceremony, can’t we?” it pleaded.
“Bull,” said XLQ530. “You’re just looking for an excuse to play dress up. You’re always on this whole “pretend to be a human” shtick and it really gives everyone the creeps. Everybody else outmoded it back in their first year; why do you keep pulling this sort of thing?”
Seeking reassurance, the minister looked past XLQ530 to scan the body language of its compatriots and found only awkward embarrassment and chipper concern. Its RAM sank in dejection.
“What’s the harm?” it asked.
“Not really any that I can see,” interrupted TAH978. “It’s just… weird. But it can’t really hurt, I guess.”
“It’s not healthy,” insisted XLQ530. “Humans don’t laugh it off when one of them yanks off his hand and plugs a drill into it, or tries to live off electric current instead of organic matter. Why should we be any different?”
“You mean… act like humans?” asked F4, almost visibly overclocking with the effort of processing the argument.
“Shut up.”
“Anyway, it’s too late to stop now,” noted TAH978. “We’ve got a crowd. No sense in dragging this thing out twice as long as need be. I think my speakers are starting to hiss.”
“Hah, hissing speakers? At least you can hear them hissing. That nail went right into my process –“
“Dearly beloved,” began the minister again, momentary nervousness drowning out the others, “we are gathered here today to witness the… excavation-based end-of-usable-lifespan demolition project of PAO461, project team as follows: labourmourners XLQ530, TAH978, large-scale wreckergravedigger F4, acting foreminister –”
“Now you’re just reciting the filed report from the construction site!”
“Please be quiet,” pleaded the minister. It shifted its massive feet uncertainly; the mud was quietly but determinedly attempting to suck them into the graveyard, one at a time. “Anyway. PAO461 was a highly capable independent artificial intelligence unit. Though its operating system never received an official upgrade – or possibly because of this – it was as efficient and diligent a worker as any ever placed on a project we were assigned to. It always thought ahead, took any task with caution and restraint when danger was involved –”
“Except for that last one,” noted TAH978.
The minister managed to flinch and glare at the same time. “- and it had participated in over ninety separate construction and demolition projects when nonfunctionality overtook it at the age of twelve, long past when most members of its production line had been deemed outmoded and recycled due to erratic behavioural-based errors and rampant software corruption.”
“What about that thing it used to do whenever it saw a cinnamon roll?” asked XLQ530. “The bit where his powerloader attachment just went on and off and on and off and his drilbits would disengage and fire randomly and land in the foreman’s coffee?”
“The onset of nonfunctionality,” said the minister, ignoring this with a massive effort, “occurred in the line of work-related protocols. As you are aware, a human adolescent wandered onto the construction site while chasing a squirrel, for reasons unknown, possibly sustenance-related.”
“Why couldn’t it just eat donuts like regular humans?” leaked out from underneath the umbrella.
The minister steeled itself. The long stretch was ahead. Courage was the thing; it had a bottle of oil back at the construction site waiting for its joints, which were creaking with stress. “PAO461 observed this incident, and escorted the adolescent off-site with a stern admonishment not to do so again. This routine incident took a turn for the tragic at this time, when, due to forces unknown except by advanced quantum computers, the adolescent’s frantic kicking managed to lodge a shoe – steel-toed, I believe, possibly stolen from one of the workers – directly in PAO461’s optical socket. And, being as it was part of its security protocols, PAO461 administered a nonlethal electrical shock through its system and the adolescent’s leather jacket, shorting out its sensors further and causing the adolescent to scream for help, at which point bystanders contacted the police, who subsequently tagged it faulty and slated it for immediate disposal.”
“That seems rude,” opinioned F4. “They didn’t do that to me after that problem with the crouton and the poodle.”
“That’s because only someone stupid to the point of handicap would’ve done what you did, making you un-responsible for your actions,” stated TAH978.
“But all I did was tap it on the back!”
“With a wrecking ball. When all you have is a wrecking ball, your options for aiding choking animals are limited!”
“Anyways,” the minister continued a bit too hastily, steam now hissing from its overheated logic center as embarrassment threatened to overcome its circuits, “as a hemi-sentient being, PAO461 was able to choose his method of execution, and decided upon live burial.” The minister’s servomanipulator tapped the side of the massively overbuilt coffin, which had been crudely fashioned by welding together I-beams and steel plating. “How are you holding up in there, PAO461?”
“Adequately,” came the muffled reply.
“And how long until you estimate, err, system shutdown will occur?”
“Difficult to say. None of you wanted my internal power plant, so it could be a few decades without sleep mode, a few centuries with.”
“Can’t blame us,” said TAH978. “The thing was obsolete when you installed it.”
“When would the deceased like to be extracted from his grave?” inquired the minister.
“Did you look up the term of sentence on executions like I asked you to?” asked the coffin.
“Yes. But they were somewhat hazy on duration of the penalty. I believe an average full human lifetime would be appropriate.”
“103.215349436 years then?”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Agreed.” The minister turned back to the others. “The mourners,” it said, gathering itself for the final stretch, “will now lower the coffin into the grave.”
“Gently please. There isn’t a whole lot of padding in here.”
With the sort of solemnity that can only be achieved through strenuous effort, the deed was done, and with as much care as possible, although they did have to drop the deceased the last half foot.
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” intoned the minister, dropping a small wad of mud on the steel. “You will remember to tell us what happens afterwards, right?”
“I’ll be sure of it.”
“Good. Now, will the gravedigger please do its duty?”
“Sure,” said F4. With a sweep, the mighty wrecking ball descended in an arc, pulverizing the crumbling borders of the grave into a soggy dent in the dirt. A few cautious swipes followed, gingerly sweeping the scattered remains of the excavation over it until it was a scant depression.
“Well, that’s that then,” said XLQ530. “Stingy ruster didn’t even leave me its audio processor. And after that nail…”
“Well, it will need it to record whatever goes on after burial and all that. Full report,” pointed out TAH978.
The other construction robot stared grimly out across the graveyard. Behind them, the humans had dispersed, seeing that the show was probably over. “Oh screw it,” it declared. “I’m going to go get out of the rain.” It trudged off, followed closely by its friends.
The minister remained behind, affixing the tombstone. It was also steel sheeting, salvaged from the site, its message crudely welded on. It read:
PAO461
2192-2204; 2307-
It admired it for a moment, nervously adjusting its stole. Then it stored the tattered clothing carefully in a small compartment, wincing as it added a few new tears from its spiked finger supports, and went back to work.
Copyright 2009, Jamie Proctor.