This is my current story, told in episodic form. Every other day a new part of the story will appear here:

Rob the Ridiculous Robot

1.

Rob the ridiculous robot was sad. “Why are you looking so sad? said his dog H20. “You were happy only yesterday.”

Rob turned to his favourite pet and ruffled the fluffy curls of thick hair on top of his head. “Because,” Rob said, “of the weather”. All this cold and damp air makes my circuits ache.”

H20 jumped up from the mat he'd been lying on and onto the chair opposite the one Rob was sitting at. “We can't have that can we?” he barked, and Rob knew what was coming. “Because if your circuits rot you'd look even more ridiculous than you do now!”

2.

“Well,” Rob said, standing up from his chair and opening up the curtains a little wider to that more daylight in. “What do you suggest?”

"I say we go to Weymouth for the day and do a little fossil digging!" H20 yelped, putting his furry paws on the table top and doing a little drum roll. “That always cheers you up.”

Rob agreed. It had been a while since they'd been to Weymouth and his prize collection of fossils which he kept in glass display boxes mounted on the wall in the hallway had been looking a bit sparse of late. It needed another box to make it more complete. He clicked his right eye and the bus timetable was projected onto the top of the table. "The next bus is in two hours," he said. “What’ll we do till then?"

"Let's play Slam n’ Chase,” H20 woofed.

3.

The game of Slam n’ Chase didn't take up the whole of the two hours before the bus was due but it did help pass the time. H20 won by two games to one, mainly through sheer luck. “I've never seen someone get so many sixes in a row,” Rob said. “Today must be your lucky day.”

“Next time you should play yellow,” H20 barked confidently. “I don't think blue is your colour.”

“Maybe you're right,” Rob agreed and went to get his disguise trousers from the cupboard. He jumped up in the air with both legs off the ground and put on the trousers in an impressive gymnastic move.

“You’ll break a spring doing that one day,” H20 sniggered. Secretly he was impressed.

4.

“Without my disguise trousers I'll get the usual badgering and baiting,” Rob said as he went through the rest of his disguise routine. “Nobody has any time for robots anymore. They just want us to make them a cup of tea or do the ironing for them. It's slave labour really.”

H20 had heard it all before. How Rob considered himself retired and was fed up with people not offering him their seat when there was no room on the bus. He thought his disguise helped to make him look more human and like everyone else.

“Just gerronwiit !” H20 growled. He certainly had no intention of disguising himself. He liked himself just the way he was. It was people that looked ridiculous, not robot dogs. What could be more perfect than a robot dog?

5.

They were both ready so set out for the bus stop. They were both hurrying because Rob's disguise had taken up longer than usual. H20 led the way and Rob walked briskly behind. They only just made it in time and were the last ones to get on the bus as a queue of other people got on before then. Standing well back to make sure no one overheard, Rob let the steam out of his hydraulic pistons before he boarded the bus. H20 barked noisily as if apologising for the sound but the driver took no notice. He grumpily took their fare and issued them two tickets to the hovercraft port.

“You'll have to keep your dog on your lap,” he said, addressing Rob. “We can't have it disturbing the other passengers.”

6.

When the bus finally came to the stop and Rob and H20 got off, they couldn't have been happier.

“I think this is going to be the start of a great new adventure,” Rob said as he put H20 on the ground to let him walk freely.

H20 agreed. His tail was wagging with excitement and there were endless lamp posts and bench legs ahead. He was looking forward to giving each one a squirt of his oil to leave his scent. Always the one to add caution, he said what Rob had failed to mention. “They don't allow robots on hovercraft Rob,” he woofed. “Not after what happened last time.”

“It was only because my dynamo was broken,” Rob complained. “How was I to know that their main generator would blow a fuse when I plugged myself into it to recharge?”

7.

The hovercraft came blowing and belching along the beach with its skirts all puffed out like giant rubber lips. Rob and H20 made their move. It was an amazing sight to see, if anybody was watching. Rob went first, waiting till the hovercraft came to a stop and the blowing and belching had ceased. As the hovercraft came to rest on the sand next to the docking platform, he ran around the far side and jumped onto the deflated part of the hovercraft’s skirt. H20 ran at double speed after him, leaping up with his powerfully sprung paws as Rob made his first bounding jump. Like a trained circus act, H20 and Rob both flew into the air at the same time with the nimble robot dog using his master like a ladder to get extra height. Then, with two equally impressive double somersaults, they were both propelled up and through an open port window that Rob had spotted on the hovercraft’s approach.

8.

It was a matter of sneaking down narrow corridors and tiptoeing in sealed off “No Entry” rooms until Rob and H20 found the uniforms cupboard. H20 was the cleverest of the pair. He had been able to open all of the locked-off areas using the wireless circuitry built into his brain. Rob was more of the strategist of the pair. It had been his decision to look for uniforms for them to wear so that they could stowaway on the hovercraft in plain sight.

“Do I have to say it?” H20 yelped when they'd both finished changing.

This time Rob merely gave a weak grin.

“You look more ridiculous than ever!” H20 laughed.

9.

“I thought I looked rather smart,” Rob said, pulling on his trouser legs a little more to get any remaining creases out of them. The hems of his white trousers only reached as far as his spindly metal ankles, making H20 snigger even more. “Besides, we’re only meant to be waiters and everyone expects robots to be slaves. I'm sure we'll fit in.”

H20 shook his woolly head. Sometimes he just went along with Rob's crazy ideas to see what a fool he would make of himself. When Rob never seemed to realise how strange and awkward he looked, or never noticed when things went wrong and people laughed at him, sometimes he was jealous. Rob could get away with things that no self-conscious robot like himself ever could.

10.

The passengers had disembarked by the time Rob and H20 had changed into their waiters uniforms. Rob insisted that they were not “waiters” but “stewards”, but Rob was having none of it. He preferred the title “waiter” because it fitted with his socialist beliefs. The new passengers arrived through the side door in ones and twos. Captain Thunderbolt issued orders that the stewards show the new arrivals to the seating areas for the short voyage.

“HMS Astral is a luxury ship. Make sure that you don't confuse or mix up the first class and second class tickets when you check them,” the captain said vehemently.

H20 bit down hard on one of Rob's exposed ankles to stop him from speaking up about “equality” and “luxury”. Now wasn't the time for one of his lectures. “Yes Sir, captain Sir,” he woofed.

11.

The line progressed quickly. Most of the passengers were for second class, only a few had the prized first class tickets. When H20 had just finished guiding the last of a large group in the right direction, he spun around only to find that Rob was not there. He waited and waited, his tail wafting in a slow swish, swosh from side to side. He began daydreaming about his next nut-and-bolt bone and even contemplated leaving his scent on a tempting upright lamp pole set by the start of the check-in line. Finally, Rob reappeared. “Did you see her?” he gasped, then repeated himself.

“See who?” H20 snarled. He didn't like to be kept waiting and he hadn't giving a good yelp in a while. Rob’s sudden reappearance reminded him of when the postman arrived. He always gave them a good yelp to wake them up when they turned up unannounced.

“She said her name was Millie Dillie,” Rob beamed. “She's a lady robot!”

12.

For the rest of the pleasure cruise trip to Weymouth, all Rob could talk about was his newest paramour. H20 listened patiently. He didn't mind when Rob talked about love because when he was talking about it he always ruffled the silver-foil curls on his head. Sometimes Rob talked about how much he loved trains. He would talk about their powerful engines in glowing terms. He would romance about train journeys he'd taken in the past. He will call out a list of famous train names like “Flying Scotsman” as if they were his best friends. All the time he did this he would either scratch H20’s head fondly or rub his belly affectionately. That was what love meant to H20.

13.

The hovercraft ship arrived at Weymouth beach on time. Rob wanted to wait until his new love interest, Millie Dillie, disembarked. H20 was too impatient for that. “You might see her on the way back,” he woofed.

“But she's so beautiful to look at,” Rob argued. “When our eyes met I couldn't help myself but to smile. I think we're both made from the same core subroutines.”

“Pah!” H20 spat. A dreamy look had come over his master which made his ridiculous-looking face seeing even more bizarre and twisted than usual (at least in H20's eyes). “There’ll be more lady robots, you can be sure of that,” he said. “Quick Can Corporation, our inventors, must have more than just two moulds to work from. “Now, let's go before Captain Thunderbolt realises we've stolen two of his uniforms.”

14.

As Rob and H20 traipsed across the beach, Rob complained yet again about the sun getting into all his circuits. “It makes me itch all over,” he said for, according to H20's count, about the fourteenth time.

“I think there must be one here!” H20 barked excitedly. His radar imaging processor was beeping as insistently and enthusiastically as his tail, which was wagging in time to it.

“So soon?” Rob moaned. “I was hoping we would catch sight of Millie Dillie, perhaps taking a stroll on the promenade or topping up her solar panels in the sun.’

H20 had already started digging with his front paws, so didn't have the have to answer or pretend he was interested in what Rob was saying.

15.

“Well?” Rob said curiously. “Is it a fossil?”

“I don't think so,”. He'd been digging for some time now and the hole he had made was so deep that his voice came up from the depths below in an echo. “I think it could be a real bone.”

Rob's central processing unit went haywire. “What do you mean?” he said. “Your circuits were tuned in for 100 million-year old fossils, you can't have found a 100 million-year old bone, it would have disintegrated over the years.”

“There's no doubt about it,” H20 woofed as he resurfaced and deposited the object he’d found on the sand. “It's a real dinosaur bone. Somehow, and by some miraculous process, it's been perfectly preserved!”

16.

There was nothing for it but to take the newly discovered dinosaur bone to the museum. “They have the most powerful and most advanced machines in the country, possibly the world,” Rob had argued and H20 had agreed. He’d heard that they’d recently taken delivery of a 3D mishmush replicator. It was able to recreate living tissues of animals with only a tiny sample of DNA.

They walked from the beach with their precious cargo hidden inside Rob's storage compartment in his back. “Try not to look too pleased with yourself, H20 cautioned. You've got that lopsided grin on your face like you've just eaten one of your favourite tins of ham, though why you keep the food in those tins is beyond me. Urrrgggghhh!”

Then Rob saw her again. It was the lady robot from the hovercraft, Millie Dillie. “Millie! Yoohoo!” Rob shouted, waving his arms wildly in her direction.

17.

Millie Dillie was not at all like Rob the Ridiculous Robot. Where Millie pretty, with a pert nose and perfectly symmetrical ports, Rob was odd, with a head that was more round than oval and had antennae which wobbled when he walked. Whilst Millie had smooth and finely polished articulated arms, one of Rob's arms was shorter than the other and his singular elbow joints were made of rubber. Millie was a pleasure to the eye, Rob's clumsy construction made him look like he'd been assembled from several mis-matching robot kits. When they met face-to-face at the top of the promenade, Rob could only stare in wonder.

“Hello again,” he said, holding out his hand and rotating his wrist to the customary position for a robot handshake.

18.

Millie Dillie was not shy. She tottered forward, her arms stretched out wide. Ignoring Rob’s proffered handshake, she embraced him with a hug so tight that her arms completely encircled him. “Eska junes chi in perocho, lesstolou,” she said, then stepped backwards.

Neither Rob nor H20 could understand what the robot was saying. “Maybe my translator circuits have got a collywobble,” Rob said.

“I thought you said she told you her name and said it was ‘Millie Dillie’?” H20 woofed.

“That's what I thought she’d said,” Rob concurred. “But maybe she was talking to the human that was with her. It's possible she said ‘Milady’. It's a term that humans like to hear when a robot talks to them. Frankly I find it insulting."

"So how does she talk to her owner?" H20 barked. “She must communicate with her in some way, if only to receive orders."

19.

A shrill whistle came from one of the bathing huts further along the promenade. Millie Dillie (for that was the name Rob had initially assumed for the lady robot and he had no other name to call her) span on her wheels. She quickly rotated in the direction of the bathing hut and sped away. Rob looked downcast at the two rubber tyre tracks she’d left in her wake.

“Cheer up,” H20 encouraged. “You’ll see her again. She has very sensitive radars that one. I think she fancies you.”

“What?” Rob burbled, “ I, err, well, I ... ”

“Now let's get cracking and take that dinosaur bone to the museum,” H20 continued. "We need a good story if we're going to convince them to let us use their machinery.”

20.

At the museum the omens were not good. “I've never been in such a place where there are so few robots,” Rob remarked.

“I know what you mean,” H20 woofed. “And the way people cross the street to avoid us you think we were aliens or something.”

The curator, Mr Gershwin Finklebottom, was equally hostile when they went through the spinning entrance door to the museum foyer. “What's this!? Didn't you read the sign? This is a robot free area. The museum is only for individuals, not automatons!” Rob was quick to back off. He didn't want to stay where he was not welcome. H20 had other ideas and began growling aggressively until Rob placated him. “I have a backup plan,” he whistled in binary so Mr Finkelbottom couldn't overhear.

21.

The backup plan Rob came up with involved sneaking around the rear of the museum and H20 going in through a ventilation opening. After he had removed the grating of the opening using the power screwdrivers in his fingertips, he helped H20 up and into the tiny square space beyond.

“You might have to disconnect your legs and let me push you?”

“And what about the grating on the other side?” H20 growled. “The screw heads will be on the opposite face, even with the tools in my nose I'm going to struggle.”

“You could always use your laser cutter,” Rob said. For some reason he was the one being more positive for a change.

“You're still thinking about that lady robot aren't you?” H20 yapped as he disconnected the joints in his legs and Rob gave him a big push from behind.

22.

Fortunately for H20, the far side of the ventilation shaft had a loose grating which he was able to easily dislodge. As well as containing all of his tools, his nose had an extendable joint which meant he didn't need to use his forelegs. They were still disconnected so would have been no use anyway. Then, as he slithered out of the far opening partway like a snake, he bent himself double and reversed himself. He was now facing back towards Rob, who was trying to push the dinosaur bone through from his side.

“Be gentle!” H20 warned as he reconnected all four of his legs so he could take delivery of the mysterious bone.

23.

As H20 carried the dinosaur bone carefully through the museum, he again ran his calculations about it. The preservation process was what had been uppermost in his memory stack. What amazing and completely unknown chemical had ensured that the bone had stayed intact for all these millions of years? Down the dimly lit corridors he pattered, the bone lodged securely in his mouth with just the right amount of pressure to ensure that he carried it safely without doing it any damage. When he reached the analysis room in the restoration section of the library, he would find out exactly what that chemical was. Rob interrupted his calculations on the radio inside his head. “Are you there yet?” he asked and, rather rudely, H20 thought.

“You're supposed to ring, not just start talking ,” H20 growled. “Remember, it's what we agreed before?”

24.

A big sign on the door with single word ‘ANALYSIS’ indicated that H20 had reached his destination. The extra words, much smaller and underneath and written in red ink, saying “museum personnel only”, didn't deter him. The combination keypad lock was no obstacle either. His robot brain had the combination figured in less time than it actually took for him to enter it. That was more tricky because his paws were not dextrous enough to manage punching in the numbers, plus the lock pad was several feet off the ground. Each time he had to jump up into the air and punch the next number in the sequence in with his nose: 8-7-3-9, beep, beep, beep, beep, then a satisfying “click” as the door lock was released.

25.

It's hard to describe what a nano-pulse spectrometer looks like. H20 stared in wonder at the beauty of it. It was like a fairground rollercoaster ride of tubes and flashing lights and electrical coils. When H20 was finally able to blink, after his eyes had photographed it from every angle so that he could keep some images of the magnificent machine for posterity, he set to work.

26.

 Whilst H20 worked with the radio infiltrometer, Rob talked constantly. They were using wireless communication but H20 didn't feel like talking so he was sending his replies as text messages to avoid getting drawn into the conversation.

“DON'T BOTHER ME NOW, I'M CONCENTRATING,” he typed, though, of course the keyboard was inside his head and was just a computer subroutine.

A string of replies came back, but by now H20 had switched to silent mode so he could ignore them. He would read what Rob had written later. The radio infiltrometer was coming up with some interesting results. Unlike the nano-pulse spectrometer which looked at the surface of things, it delved deep inside the bone to see what it was composed of. Both machines were, naturally, very delicate in their probings and analysings. The results from the radio infiltrometer made up for the disappointing print-out the spectrometer had issued. It revealed the secret chemical that had preserved the bone all these millions of years. Not only that, it had also found, deep inside the very centre of the bone, a viable fragment of DNA! H20 couldn't help himself as a sequence came through. His tail wagged furiously with excitement.

27.

The museum had all the latest equipment. It had the most powerful computer: the Yakamorra 20X40, it had a 3D mishmush replicator for reproducing samples and a mass bio buildemupper for growing new samples. The last two machines required DNA strings to operate from and the computer was used to control and guide them. None of the equipment was intended for the purpose H20 had in mind. They were for making small things, usually for growing organic material like insect wings when one was missing from a sample. The biggest success the museum had had, printed in the latest scientific journal which Rob subscribed to and H20 glanced at to look at the bone pictures, was the remaking of a scale of a prehistoric fish. H20 was planning something very, very different. He was going to make an egg!

28.

With the computer program which would make the dinosaur egg complete, H20 turned back on his wireless radio. “I read all your text messages,” he woofed, stretching the truth a little because he’d only scanned them, “and I agree, we can't hang around long if we want to get out of here. Only, I had to try it when the radio infiltrometer found some DNA in the bone.”

“What? DNA? What?” Rob said, flabbergasted. “You mean you've been in there all this time growing a dinosaur from a DNA sample without even telling me?”

“Well, not a dinosaur exactly, H20 said.

“It's simply impossible,” Rob carried on, oblivious to what H20 was saying. Then the line went dead. “H20, what happened? Hello. Are you still there?”

29.

Mr Finklebottom’s sudden appearance at the door of the analysis room had meant that H20 had had to hide quickly. With the machines still running, he’d ducked down under one of the examination tables and turned off his wireless radio. It was entirely possible that the signal could be traced and reveal his location. H20 knew how to avoid humans if he wanted to. Going “off grid” was always the first step to evade detection.

“You're right Gladys,” the museum curator said as he entered the room. “There should be no machines running unsupervised. Doctor Eudemonia from Quick Can has only just finished commissioning the latest equipment.”

“I thought you should be informed Gershwin,” Gladys the cleaning lady said. “And I’m sure I heard someone in there scampering around too.”

30.

Rob knew something was amiss when H20’s radio line went dead. Sometimes H20 got in a huff and behaved like that. He would go silent or only talk in text messages or, if he was really in a bad mood, he would bark in Morse code. Even in those times he would keep a secure radio channel open so that if there was any emergency they would always be able to find one another or call for help. No, if H20 had gone so far as to turn off his wireless radio it meant that he'd had to hide from someone who might have a robot probe. The probe could seek out any robot that was either transmitting or receiving. When the line went dead, therefore, Rob knew he had to act.

31.

“It can't be a human being,” Mr Finklebottom the museum curator was saying. “The heat sensors and alpha wave detectors would have raised the alarm if any unauthorised people were in here.”

“Then it must be one of those horrible little robots I heard sneaking about,” Gladys the cleaning lady said, spitting the word 'robot' like it was a curse.

“And it or they have been using our machines,” the curator added,” “but what for and where are they hiding now? They can't be far away whoever they are. The program is only fifty percent complete according to the counter on the computer.”

“Maybe you should use the robot probe,” Gladys encouraged, sidling up alongside her boss and rubbing her arm against his.

“Yes Gladys,” Mr Finklebottom said, coughing nervously. “You'd better fetch me it from the security room right away.”

32.

When Rob wanted to draw attention to himself, he could do a pretty good job of it. This wasn't the first time he'd had to save H20 and it wouldn't be the last. As robots, he and H20 had no rights and no policeman to help them if there was any trouble. That meant that they had to use their wits when people challenged them or got angry with them. If H20 was discovered breaking into the museum and was arrested, there was every chance he would be disassembled and remade into something new like a toaster or an automatic vacuum cleaner. Rob couldn't allow that. That was why, when he came up with his plan to rescue H20, he made sure that no one would be able to ignore what he had in mind.

33.

H20 heard Rob before he saw him: “ALL HUMANS ARE TO EVACUATE THIS BUILDING IMMEDIATELY. I REPEAT, THERE IS A DANGEROUS CHEMICAL LEAK WHICH IS HIGHLY TOXIC IN THE AREA. ALL HUMANS ARE TO EVACUATE...” The message was in Rob's most officious voice. He was also doing a fair imitation of an emergency services siren at the same time. Gladys had returned with the robot probe moments earlier. Mr Finkelbottom had switched it on and, to H20’s dismay, had honed in on his hiding place almost immediately. The probe must have had a wider spectrum search band, H20 thought. Switching off his wireless radio hadn't been sufficient to avoid it finding him. Then Rob had appeared on the scene and the museum creator and his cleaning lady girlfriend had cut short their search.

“Let's get out of here!” they both yelled, though Gladys's response was more of a scream than a yell.

34.

Gladys and Mr Finklebottom rushed out of the analysis room so quickly that they didn't notice the trap that Rob the ridiculous robot had set for them. They were panicking, distracted by the fake alarm that Rob had given plus the museum's own extra-loud alarm siren which Rob had activated on his way in. In their haste to get out of the museum building and to safety from the dangerous chemical leak they imagined was happening, they didn't notice that Rob had switched the emergency exit sign with the storage room sign. As they both rushed into the storage room seeking a quick exit from the terror unfolding in the building, Rob shut and locked the door.

35.

The mass bio buildemupper was working overtime. Steam was hissing through the vents of its sealed casement and the smell of ozone as the electricity sparked and flashed was strong. Rob and H20 watched in eager anticipation. Was it possible to make an egg from a hundred million year old sample? Rob wasn't sure. It had been H20’s idea after all. Rob had thought that the museum would have been able to analyse the bone they had found on the beach, maybe even restore some of the bits that were missing using computer calculations. H20's discovery of the DNA in the bone had changed all that. Suddenly there was a huge gulping popping sound followed by an electronic beep and then silence.

“What happened?” Rob said with disappointment in his voice. “Did it break?”

“No,” H20 replied. “The program has finished, the egg is ready.”

36.

This was the moment H20 had been waiting for. The mass bio buildemupper had done something never done before. Even Rob the Ridiculous Robot was impressed at the achievement H20's computer program had accomplished. The question now on both of their minds was “has it worked?” H20, too excited to do it himself and too fearful that the result might simply be a mass of protein goo and fragments of eggshell, let Rob open the casement door to check the result.

“You did it!” he yelled, unable to contain the amazement in his voice. “You actually did it H20 you star programmer you!”

37.

H20 barked with glee. A real dinosaur egg, from DNA over one hundred million years old! He looked at the egg again, wondering at its potential. It had a strange mottled pattern on it which was shaped like a giant goldfish with a big eye shape dominating the upper left quadrant. The egg itself was an irregular oval like a rugby ball with a toothache. The right side of it was swollen and more curved than the left side. Nothing about the egg was familiar or normal. The laws of gravity said it shouldn't stay upright on the analysis table where Rob had so carefully put it after removing it from the mass bio buildemupper, but it did. It was heavy and its shell was bumpy and rough with sticky out bits and tiny craters dotted all over it. And it smelled like a waste disposal unit that hadn't been emptied in a while. H20 thought it was magnificent.

 

 

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