The Stars Have Eyes - Chapter 28

Joe had no idea that something as simple as coming back home to his own bed could feel so… magical. He and Maggie had only been away for about ten days, yet it somehow felt so much longer than that. A mysterious thing to be sure, and not at all related to the fact that the man spent most of those days in a virtual reality that ran four times faster than the waking world. Whatever the case, Joe was just glad that interstellar trip was finally over. He had silently hoped that the return flight would be easier on him than the first one, but that hadn’t been the case. If anything it was somehow made worse by the knowledge that it was completely unnecessary since Maggie could have made all that copyright trouble go away with tremendous ease. He couldn’t stay mad at her, though. Partially because it wasn’t in his nature to dwell on little things, but mostly because that was just how Maggie was. Getting upset at her insatiable curiosity was like yelling at the sun for being too damn bright.

“Pardon the intrusion, Master Mulligan,” a synthesized voice filled the bedroom. “I have a matter that requires your attention.”

“What is it, Jeeves?” he groaned, face buried in his pillow.

“I require your permission to schedule an appointment with the building’s robo-techs.”

Joe lifted his head and looked at the hovering automaton quizzically. He wondered why the robo-butler was asking him and not Maggie, but then he noticed the girl had gone into her ‘do not disturb’ pose. As the secondary owner, it therefore fell to him to handle this. He sighed with mild annoyance as he sat up and eyed the thing more closely.

“You don’t look broken,” he noted.

“Indeed, sir. You will find that I am undamaged and functioning optimally.”

“Then why do you need a robo-tech?”

“Routine maintenance is required to keep my warranty in effect, sir.”

“Ah. Yeah, sure, go ahead and do what you need to.”

“Before I do, sir, what date and time would be preferable for you?”

“… For me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do I need to be at this appointment?”

“My programming prevents me from leaving the premises to which I am assigned, sir. Unless an emergency requires otherwise, I cannot venture more than five meters beyond the front door. The robo-tech’s office is beyond this range, and as such I will need to be taken offline and transported there by one of my owners. The Madam is indisposed currently, and as such this responsibility falls to you.”

“Ugh,” Joe groaned. “Can’t the technician just come to us?”

“I’m afraid not, sir. The equipment required for my model’s maintenance routines isn’t portable.”

“Man… Can we just, I dunno, not do the appointment thing?”

“Of course, sir. However, this is highly inadvisable as it would void my warranty.”

“Eh, Maggie can just fix you up if something happens.”

He really didn’t feel like lugging this lump of metal around.

“I must remind sir that custom modifications will also void my warranty.”

Joe was a bit taken aback by this response. The conversation up until that point had played out so smoothly that he nearly forgot he was talking to a highly advanced appliance, not a sentient being. Usually he’d have Jeeves’ logic circuits doing flips within two sentences, but it was handling this particular topic quite well. Maintenance was one of those common subjects that every owner inevitably brought up at least once, and as such was better developed than other parts of its conversation module.

“Joe,” Maggie suddenly spoke up, “would you please take Jeeves to his appointment?”

From her point of view, this warranty thing was essentially a contract – an agreement between manufacturer and customer. She therefore naturally wanted it upheld, but had her eyes full at the moment. Joe seemed to grasp where she was coming from and relented. It would be superbly selfish of him to refuse this tiny responsibility just because he felt a bit lazy today.

“Yeah, alright. Jeeves, schedule that appointment as soon as possible and let’s get it over with.”

“The next available window for a visit is three hours from now. Is this acceptable, sir?”

“Huh. Uh, yeah, sure.”

Joe found it a bit surprising that the robo-techs weren’t able to see them immediately. He figured those guys would be so bored they’d leap at the chance to practice their craft, just like Maloney or the lawyers. This absolutely wasn’t the case. While exceedingly few people had personal automatons like Jeeves, each hyper-scraper housed literal legions of maintenance droids that needed to be looked after. Furthermore, becoming a certified robo-tech was an exceptionally difficult thing because of the ridiculously high level of technological know-how required. All of these circumstances made it so there just weren’t enough people to keep up with the demand, leaving robo-techs chronically understaffed and overworked. At least the pay was really good.

Joe got his first glimpse of what that looked like when he carried Jeeves into the robotics maintenance bay. The air inside was stale and carried a faint scent of burning plastic. It was also really, really loud. Enormous machinery somewhere in the back kept churning and whirring without end. To top off the sensory assault, the lights on the ceiling were so bright that Joe had to squint while his eyes attempted to adjust.

Once he got somewhat used to the chaotic environment, he noticed what appeared to be the bay’s front desk. Which was to say it was a desk that was near the front door. A guy in a welding mask and criminally filthy overalls sat at it and was fervently blow-torching something. Joe walked up and tried to get his attention, but failed to do so. He figured between the mask obscuring his line of sight and the dreadful din of the equipment he simply hadn’t noticed the visitor. So, in true British fashion, Joe just stood there awkwardly and waited for the technician to either finish or notice him.

Or at least that was the plan, but after a few minutes the man’s arms started getting tired. He was carrying Jeeves by hand, after all. The robo-butler wasn’t as heavy as it looked, but it was hardly weightless. Joe started to wonder if it was okay to put it on the less-than-spotless metal floor. Before he could make up his mind, some weird fumes hit his nostrils, making him sneeze and drop the automaton in the process. The semi-humanoid chassis clanged loudly as it fell to the floor, which seemed to be enough to get the technician’s attention. The welding mask was pulled off, but the face beneath didn’t belong to a guy like Joe had assumed. It was a freckled ginger woman who looked as if she hadn’t slept in days and was running solely on tea and sugar.

“You alright there, mate?” she asked nonchalantly.

“Ah? Uh, yeah, sorry. Didn’t mean to cause a racket.”

“Don’t worry about it. You’re the lad with the appointment, ain’t ya?”

“I guess I am. This thing needs a warranty check-up or whatever,” he pointed at the floor.

Her tired eyes practically lit up when she saw Jeeves.

“Well bugger me with a balsa bread bin, that’s a fancy tinner, innit?!”

“I… guess?”

The woman briskly stood and walked over to the visitor, then picked up the robot with such ease that might have hurt Joe’s pride if he had any. She roughly shoved whatever she was working on onto the floor and slammed the unmoving butler atop her desk. Instruments seemed to appear in her hands out of nowhere, and within seconds she was already elbow-deep in the automaton’s mechanical guts.

“Don’t worry, won’t take long,” she reassured Joe. “These things don’t have too many moving parts, more bits than bolts if you catch my drift.”

“If you say so. I’m Joe, by the way.”

“Mary,” she curtly responded. “Sorry for not shaking your hand, but you probably don’t want machine oil all over yourself.”

“Not especially, no,” he replied in good humor.

There was a brief lull in the conversation while Mary hooked some cables up to the bot’s innards.

“Where’d you get this thing, anyway?” she asked while typing away at her diagnostic computer. “Wasn’t aware we had an S3-T1 in the building.”

“Oh, it’s not mine. It’s, uh, my girlfriend’s. She got it when we moved into the suite on the 170th floor.”

Mary froze and shot him an incredulous look. She stared at the man so hard that he immediately felt uncomfortable.

“What?” he frowned. “Something on my face?”

The woman didn’t respond and instead narrowed her eyes suspiciously.

“That’s it!” she suddenly exclaimed. “You’re the guy from the trial! I knew I’d seen you somewhere!”

“Trial? What?”

“Y’know, the trial. With the copyright stuff and the diplomatic immunity and whatnot.”

“How… do you know about that?”

“Because I saw the video? Duh?”

“What video?”

“The highlight reel on the neighborhood message boards?”

“There’s a highlight reel?!”

“Uh, yeah? It’s been viral for an entire hour.”

Joe’s first thought wasn’t, as one might expect, regarding privacy. Such a thing ceased to exist whenever anyone went out their front door, and that hearing was as public as it could get. The main thing that bothered Joe was how quickly it had gotten here. Neither he nor Maggie had brought any videos of the trial, and even if they had they wouldn’t have had the chance to share them. They weren’t the only locals that had gone over to Lancaster-3, though. Mr. Charles was there too. Going by process of elimination, he was the only one who could’ve made and shared that highlight reel.

And if it was going viral, then it was probably a really good one.

“… Do I look good in it?” he asked

“If by ‘good’ you mean ‘silly,’ then yeah,” Mary smirked. “That suit didn’t do you any justice, my guy.”

“Ugh, don’t get me started. Anyway, do you have a public terminal down here? I wanna see it for myself.”

“Sure, right over there in the corner.”

“Thanks.”

It took him no time at all to find the video. Or rather, it would’ve been impossible to miss if he had bothered to check the message boards at all. There were dozens of topics with hundreds of comments each. The video itself was fine, but skimming through the posts made Joe feel rather… uncomfortable. It wasn’t because people were praising Maggie as ‘The Pale Goddess.’ That was nothing new – just the internet being the internet and taking a joke way too far. However, there seemed to be quite a lot of negativity aimed at Joe in particular. The things people were saying about him ranged from mean-spirited to downright malicious. The general consensus seemed to be that a plain schmuck like him had no right to be Maggie’s boyfriend, and that any of these self-proclaimed studs were a far more fitting match for her. They were all talk, of course, but Joe couldn’t help but feel a smidge worried.

“Uh, hey, Mary?” he called out.

“Yeah?”

“Could you do me a favor and keep quiet about where I live?”

“Oh. Uh, whoops?”

“You already posted about me, didn’t you?”

“Little bit, yeah.”

Robo-techs didn’t usually get many breaks, so they learned to make the most out of the precious few they had. In Mary’s case, she had nothing else to do while running diagnostics on Jeeves, so she used the opportunity to partake in some high-speed trolling.

“Ah, well. It’s probably fine,” he shrugged. “How long until you’re done with the maintenance?”

“Right,” she turned back to her screen. “Doesn’t seem like I need to change any parts this time around. This tinner’s holding up really well, y’know? Just need a few minutes for diagnostics to finish and you’ll be good to go.”

Sure enough, Jeeves was closed back up and looking as spiffing as ever in no time flat. Mary even loaded him onto a little trolley to make transportation a bit easier. Joe thanked her and wheeled the butler out of the basement complex and towards the elevator. However, his earlier assertions that those people were ‘all talk’ and that things would be ‘fine’ were soon proven to be false. Waiting for him at the elevator were seven people. They were all men around Joe’s age that also shared his borderline unhealthy physique, but did not mirror his lackadaisical demeanor. Just the opposite, in fact.

“Oi! There’s the cunt!” one of them pointed right at him.

The man looked around just in case there was another possible recipient of the insult other than himself, but alas, he was the only viable ‘cunt’ in this cramped hallway.

“Well, that was a bit rude,” he frowned. “Something I can help you with, gents?”

The strangers looked at each other and chuckled dryly, then started walking towards him without uttering a word. Each of them made an attempt to look tough and scary, though it didn’t exactly work, given their narrow frames. Joe just stood there, unable to comprehend what these people awkwardly trying and failing to crack their necks and knuckles could possibly want with him. At least not at first. Somewhere in the back of his tiny brain he noted the possibility that, given the mountain of negativity he’d just learned about minutes before, they might have ill intentions. Joe preferred not to think badly of people he didn’t know just because of how they looked or acted on the surface, but he made an exception this time around and took the extremely obvious hostility at face value. An impressive feat of self-awareness, to be sure.

“Woah, easy now, fellas,” he raised his hands and took a step back from the trolley. “Let’s not do things we’ll all regret, okay?”

“Ha! Bastard thinks he’s tough or something!” the tallest one chortled.

“No, seriously,” he urged them, panic creeping up in his voice. “If you get violent, this will end badly. Like, really, really badly.”

He jerked his head towards the security camera above, and the glowing eye barely visible in its lens. The hooligans chuckled arrogantly once more.

“That footage is never going to reach anyone, I made sure of that,” one of them claimed. “Besides, who said anything about violence?”

“Yeah, nobody needs to get hurt,” another chimed in.

“R-really?” Joe asked hopefully.

“For sure! All you gotta do is stop polluting the Pale Goddess’ eyesight with your presence!”

“Uh… What?”

The tallest one, who seemed to be the de-facto leader of this mini-mob, got right up in Joe’s face.

“I said,” he growled, “you’re going to break up with the Goddess that you clearly don’t deserve!”

“That… really isn’t an option,” he winced. “Look man, I get it. You’re lonely, I’ve been there too, but what do you think you’re gonna do by coming at me like this?”

“Shut up! Just disappear, trash!”

And with that, the leader swung at Joe as hard as he could. He’d never really thrown a real punch before, and it showed. He was aiming for the face, but ended up hitting him in the shoulder instead. The awkward angle at which his fist connected probably caused him just as much pain as the victim. A rather sad and pathetic attempt at fisticuffs to say the least. Unfortunately for the loveless loser, that still technically counted as assault against Joe Mulligan.

“Ṭ̵̗̟re̙͍̲̦͙͜m̞̩̩͘b͕̰͔̗l̸͇̱̜͈̙̤̮e̷͖͈̥̱̦,̡̬͇̮̝ m̴̙̘̹o̢̩̭̙r̴͇̞̰̞t̞͙̘̲̬̠a͈͓͇̤̜ͅl͎̗̙̭̘̯̭s̜̝̱̟̭͎,̼̟ ̞̝̟a͝n͚͈̤̣d͔͙̲́ͅ ̨̻̻̦͍̘̞d̴͖̟͚̼e̠̘̩͎̫s̬̝̬͎̪̥p̬̙͓͇̬ai̦̻̱̪̯̼r,҉͇ ̪f͔͚͇̻̲͝o̤̙̮̮͞r̗͖̹̝̙͙ ̪̞̺̪͝Th̺̝̳̣ẹ̙̜ ̣̹O̝͇͍͉̠͠b͏̹͍͍̬̻s҉͖̮̲͙e̵̮rv̻͎͍ȩ̳̻͈͍̻r ̲͕̬̺͠h̝ͅa̖͕̖̭s̻͈̜̟̥͝ ̻w̩͓̤̦̠͡i͔̩̻̼ͅt̢̟͔͖̭̗n͕̙͜e͠s̩̺̬͈s̺̝͉̗͍e̹̥ḍ̶̼̝ y͓̟̜̯͔o̹u̥͘r҉̙̳͍ ̱̦̼͕͚͓͝t̠̺͕̜͍̦̹r̸̠̩a͈̱̯n̸̺͖͍s͎̥̟̫̣̯̙g͢r̜͕̳̯̪̙̼͟e̸̥̖̗̰͖͍s̩̯̗̤s̭̮̰̤ì̬̬̘͉͈òn͈̘͜s̢̝̬̳.”

A terrible, gut-wrenching voice filled the hallway, causing the hooligans to fall to the ground screaming and clutching their heads.

“Aw, man,” Joe sighed. “I tried to warn you, too.”

None of the misguided loners heard him since things were getting more surreal by the second. The lights flickered, the floor grating rattled, the air screeched, and the walls started bleeding. The hooligans acted accordingly, screaming and scrambling to escape this terrifying display. Unfortunately for them, the doors would not open and there was nowhere to go in this tight hallway. Barely visible outlines of horrible things darted in and out of their sight while alien voices whispered strange un-words into their ears. What really pushed the witless ruffians over the edge was the countless eyes that started appearing everywhere, even emerging from their own hands and arms.

Joe was spared all of that, of course. He knew from previous experience to shut his eyes whenever Maggie was doing her thing, and hearing her ‘outside voice’ had given him ample warning. He couldn’t see anything, but he could still hear the hooligans wail and whimper as their minds were ravaged by terrible hallucinations. He felt bad for them, but couldn’t do anything to interfere. When things got quiet about a minute later, he chanced a peek. His assailants were all unconscious and on the floor, blood flowing freely from every facial orifice.

“You weren’t too rough on them, I hope,” he looked up at the camera.

“The intensity of my retaliation was proportional to the severity of their transgression,” Maggie’s voice echoed in his skull.

“So… they’ll be fine?”

“Indeed. I implanted a sliver of true horror within their subconscious. When they wake up in several minutes, they will no longer be capable of such petty aggression against you. Or anyone, for that matter.”

“That’s… good, I think,” Joe breathed a sigh of relief. “I’d hate for them to get super-brain-blasted over something this silly.”

“I am aware, and took your preference for kindness into consideration. However, I hope you will not blame me should circumstances force me to resort to more extreme measures.”

“We can talk about this later, okay? I just wanna get Jeeves back online so he can fix me up a cuppa.”

When he looked at the robot in question, however, he couldn’t help but notice the odd wisps of smoke coming out of its chest.

“Maggie, I think you broke Jeeves,” he pointed at it.

“Ah. Whoops.”

The girl hadn’t considered the side effects that her ‘serious mode’ had on electronics, though this was mostly because she had more pressing matters occupying her mind.

“The restoration of Jeeves is a trivial matter,” she quickly added. “However, this incident has highlighted an issue that had until now escaped my notice. One that I must address as soon as possible.”

“What sort of issue?” Joe raised an eyebrow.

“I may have failed to uphold an obligation.”

The man was briefly confused by this revelation as he was completely fine. Well, aside from the mild headache and the rapidly fading sting in his shoulder, but such trivial discomforts were surely no cause for alarm. He then realized she was probably talking about that hellishly long contract with the government, but there were so many that he had no hope of figuring out which one she meant. So, he asked.

“What did you do?”

“I accidentally started a cult.”