Love, Death and Robots. Volumes 2 & 3

It began to crawl toward them, walking on its knuckles as it tried to place its long, bent legs in ways that would not knock any of the furniture over. Billy wanted to run to his room and hide, but he couldn’t move. Leah sat there, just as frozen as he was, her lip quivering as the red-skinned creature approached them. Then, it stopped, looming over the two with an arched back. Billy could count the ribs in its chest and the vertebrae protruding from its neck. He believed he would cry, but looking into those yellow eyes was oddly soothing. It turned to Leah.

“Lee...ah...,” it groaned in a hoarse voice. “Gut.”

The creature tilted its head back. It began to make a hacking sound. How-how-how it went, like a cat expelling a hairball. Its throat expanded as a large ball was pushed up, while snow-white tears streamed from its eyes. Then, without warning, it spat up a box wrapped in gold and silver wrapping paper. The phlegm that clung to it evaporated within seconds. Then, it turned to face Billy.

“Whhilll...jem...” it groaned. “Gut.”

The two children watched with astonishment as the creature repeated the process, this time expelling a large thin box and a set of three smaller boxes from its mouth. Once finished, the creature panted heavily to catch its breath. It reached out its hands and placed it on both brother and sister’s heads, brushing its thin talons through their hair.

“Staaai...gut,” it muttered before crawling on all fours to the chimney and climbing up into it. The moment it vanished, the fire, which had died long before the children’s bedtime, reignited. They could hear the faint sound of bells, gently fading away into the cold December night.

Billy felt that he could move again. While still reeling over what they had just witnessed, his curiosity compelled him to step out and unwrap the boxes the creature had spit out. He made quick work of the wrapping paper and beamed with delight when he saw the Silverado train set that he’d wanted for weeks now. The three smaller boxes contained an additional car each. Leah, on the other hand, found that her box contained the Little Suzy doll that she had asked from Santa.

Both children took their new toys up to their shared bedroom and laid in bed with them. Though neither of them could find their sleep. For both children wondered the same thing as they clung tightly to their gifts.

What if they had not been ‘gut’?

LIFE HUTCH Harlan Ellison

Terrence slid his right hand, the one out of sight of the robot, up his side. The razoring pain of the three broken ribs caused his eyes to widen momentarily in pain. Then he recovered himself and closed them till he was studying the machine through narrow slits.

If the eyeballs click, I’m dead, thought Terrence.

The intricate murmurings of the life hutch around him brought back the immediacy of his situation. His eyes again fastened on the medicine cabinet clamped to the wall next to the robot’s duty-niche.

Cliché. So near yet so far. It could be all the way back on Antares-Base for all the good it’s doing me, he thought, and a crazy laugh rang through his head. He caught himself just in time. Easy! Three days is a nightmare, but cracking up will only make it end sooner. That was the last thing he wanted. But it couldn’t go on much longer.

He flexed the fingers of his right hand. It was all he could move. Silently he damned the technician who had passed the robot through. Or the politician who had let inferior robots get placed in the life hutches so he could get a rake-off from the government contract. Or the repairman who hadn’t bothered checking closely his last time around. All of them; he damned them all.

They deserved it.

He was dying.

His death had started before he had reached the life hutch. Terrence had begun to die when he had gone into the battle.

He let his eyes close completely, let the sounds of the life hutch fade from around him. Slowly, the sound of the coolants hush-hushing through the wall-pipes, the relay machines feeding their messages without pause from all over the galaxy, the whirring of the antenna’s standard, turning in its socket atop the bubble, slowly they melted into silence. He had resorted to blocking himself off from reality many times during the past three days. It was either that or existing with the robot watching, and eventually he would have had to move. To move was to die. It was that simple.

He closed his ears to the whisperings of the life hutch; he listened to the whisperings within himself.

“Good God! There must be a million of them!”

It was the voice of the squadron leader, Resnick, ringing in his suit intercom.