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halfshellvenusLittle Metal Hearts
Idol Wheel of Chaos | Week 12 | 1930 words
Happy Detritus
x-x-x-x-x
Jerry's Repairs sat in the middle of Second street, between an antique store and the Orbit Cafe. It was the oldest business on the block, although no one was sure when it had first appeared.
Jerry was a spry old man in his eighties, undaunted by time, technology, or the sheer quantity of stuff on display in the shop's front room. The back room was the workshop, where all his projects lay. There were toys, gadgets, appliances, and robots. Each waited for replacement parts or dedicated repair time, or even just inspiration to guide the way.
At heart, Jerry was a tinkerer. He didn't always know why his solutions worked. Sometimes they just felt "right" to him, with everything falling into place as if by magic. But some projects were more difficult than others. He'd been stuck for months waiting on discontinued arm pieces for a couple of his robots, and several of his projects required firmware upgrades that might never be forthcoming.
That sort of thing was an anathema to Jerry. He hated "planned obsolescence" with a passion–things should be built to last. It was at the heart of what he did. Why throw away something that could be fixed? Jerry's whole business was based on giving second chances to the stuff other people threw away. Where others saw junk, he saw possibility. Everything he put up for sale in the front half of the shop spoke to the truth of Jerry's mission.
The shop was open Tuesday through Saturday. Today was Wednesday, not quite the beginning of the week, and Jerry was in the back room, taking stock of what needed to be done. He had already moved a bunch of things outside, to let their solar batteries charge. Now he was staring at two one-armed robots, a temperamental vacuum cleaner, and a broken toaster. He had been in this situation before.
Why was it so often the right arm that got broken? Did humans program robot behavior in their own image? In any case, he'd waited eight weeks already and he still didn't have any leads on new arms. Jerry figured he was about two weeks away from 3-D printing some replacements on his own. In the meantime, he cut and bent some scrap metal into the right shape for a forearm, and then used rubber bands to attach the metal to the newer robot's wrist and elbow. Not too bad–the cobbled-together arm worked almost as well as the original. As for the software upgrade, Jerry was familiar enough with the model to know that there was no benefit to updating the robot's current version, unless speculative financial modeling was a "must have" feature.
The vacuum cleaner was trickier. It offered almost no suction on bare floors, but went into overdrive on carpets, in a seemingly suicidal attempt to burn out the motor. Jerry ignored it, and picked up the toaster instead. He plugged it in to confirm that the problem was with the heating element. Then he used a soldering iron to reattach it more firmly. Did everything work now? He was just in time to test it out by making some toast for lunch.
At the end of the day, Jerry closed the till, pulled down the shades, and locked the store up for the night. He headed down Second street to Warner, and walked six more blocks to his house.
Inside the shop, the back room slowly came to life.
The newer robot, Clyde, spoke first. "Are you all right?" he asked the toaster. The toaster had never spoken, but somehow Clyde felt as if it had a soul.
The toaster coughed, and a tiny flame shot out of one of its slots.
"Looking good," the second robot said. "You'll be back in a kitchen in no time!" He looked at the vacuum cleaner, and lifted its limp cord. "Vinny? How are you doing?"
Vinny wheezed out a sigh. "I've been better," he said. "Hey, Frank, did I tell you I think I'm developing allergies?"
Frank and Clyde looked at each other. "What makes you say that?" Frank asked.
"I keep getting all choked up when I'm working. It's like I can't breathe."
"Let me empty out your canister and see if that helps," Clyde offered. Personally, Clyde thought Vinny might just be depressed, but it couldn't hurt.
Frank tried to work his way down off the repair table, but having only one arm made it challenging.
"Hey, stop," Clyde said. He was still on the floor where Jerry had left him. "I can't put you back up there on my own. What do you need?"
"I'm just so tired of being stuck up here," Frank said. And I want to see how Penny's doing."
Penny was a portable food dispenser Jerry had fixed two weeks earlier.
"I'll go out front and see if she's still here," Clyde said.
Clyde rolled off into the next room. His eyebeams lit up the surrounding area, where he spotted the mechanical man called MacLeish, in the act of doffing his hat. MacLeish seemed a strange name, but Jerry might have given it to him. Jerry named most of his projects, unless they already had their own designations. For some reason, there was an entire line of domestic Maid-Bots called Rosie, and a series of Butler-Bots called Jeeves.
The gold-and-glass mantel clock was still on the counter near the cash register. Clyde didn't know if it was capable of talking, but he was in awe of its beauty.
He saw Penny on a table covered with irons and sewing machines. "Hi, Clyde!" she said.
"How are you doing?" Clyde asked.
"Well, still here, obviously. I wonder if Jerry priced me too high? Though I don't want to wind up living in squalor. But it's not all bad, waiting to be sold. There's a lot more to see out here."
"Customers?" Clyde asked. Like most of the machines and appliances in the back room, he'd never seen an actual customer, and he was very curious about them.
"Oh, yes. Not many, but always a few each day."
Clyde roamed around the rest of the store. There was the wall of videoscreens, most of them from before he joined the back room. Except for Buzz.
"Hi, Buzz!" he said.
"Clyde!" Buzz said. "What's shaking?"
"Not me!" Clyde said. "Everything's where it belongs, except for this patched-up arm. Still, better than nothing."
"How's Frank doing?"
"Still waiting for a second arm. We've both been going stir crazy back there. Hey, did that Rosie get sold?"
"First day out," Buzz said. "People just snap them up."
Clyde headed to the front window. "Arco, you're still here?" he said.
The old-fashioned remote-control airplane was still in the front window. He was even getting a little dusty.
"Any day now, right? I keep telling myself," Arco said. "I can't wait to fly again. The last time I was out was right after Jerry fixed me."
Clyde wondered what it would be like to fly, to see the world from above. He'd never been outside the office he used to work in, apart from the parking lot and then the car ride to Jerry's shop.
He glanced over at The King, as they all thought of him. The King was magnificent, with his colored lights and his shiny buttons and his assortment of small vinyl discs. He even had his name printed boldly across the front: Wurlitzer. Everyone was too intimidated to speak to him, although they all whispered about him. Clyde wondered if anyone would ever buy The King? He was the most expensive thing in the shop.
"What's happening in the back?" Arco asked.
"A new shipment of plugs and cords came in last week, and Jerry added a bunch of Jeeves and a trash compactor to the table. I'm not sure where he got them, but I heard him say they were on commission. He's already fixed half of them."
Sometimes Clyde wished he'd been a commissioned project. Then he'd have a place to go back to. But Jerry had bought him from a scrap heap, so he was lucky to have been rescued. He just had to hope Jerry could make him good enough to be sold again. Clyde would miss Frank and some of the other friends he'd made around the shop, but he longed to be useful again.
"I'd better get back," he told Arco. "Good luck!"
Clyde rolled into the workshop and gave an update on the front room activity. He emptied Vinny's canister, and was just replacing it when he heard the sound of breaking glass out in the front room. An alarm sounded.
"What was that?" Vinny said.
"I'm not sure," Clyde said. "I'd better go look."
The layout of the shop hadn't changed in weeks, so he kept his eyebeams off as he quietly rolled toward the front. From the doorway, he could see broken glass hanging from the front window. He moved closer, and spotted someone dressed in dark clothes who was wrestling with a large, bulky shape.
He's trying to steal The King! Clyde thought. He raced over toward the window, and extended his arms to hop onto the low display shelf. Then he reached for the burglar, grappled onto his forearms, and hoisted himself up to where he could fall on him.
"Hah-hah!" Clyde crowed.
The burglar squirmed underneath him. "Let go of me!" he said.
"Not a chance!" Clyde locked his hands into position and settled in for the long haul. His batteries were almost fully charged, and he could hold onto the burglar for days if he had to.
The sound of sirens grew louder, and then the police arrived. Jerry was not far behind them.
"What's this?" Jerry asked.
"It looks like someone broke into your store. But this robot stopped him."
"Clyde?" Jerry asked. "He's an office bot."
"Well, he was a security guard tonight."
I was! Clyde thought.
It was a long night. The police arrested the burglar and wrote up their reports, and Jerry had the front window boarded up and reset the alarm before going home for a few hours of sleep.
Clyde had to wait all that time before he could tell the others in the back what had happened. They all thought he was very brave, but Clyde was certain he had done what any bot would do. He was just the only one there who had all the equipment to make it possible.
The next day, Jerry used the 3-D printer to make Clyde a permanent arm, and gave the makeshift metal arm to Frank for the time being. Then he gave Clyde a job.
"You're going to be my head of security," Jerry said. "I never thought I needed someone to keep an eye on the shop when I'm out, but clearly I was wrong."
Clyde rejoiced inside his little metal heart. He didn't have to wait to be good enough for someone to buy anymore–he was perfect right where he was.
"I wonder if I'll ever be whole again," Frank lamented later that night.
"Someday, certainly," Clyde said. "But it's sure nice having you here right now."
Vinny coughed out a puff of dust. "Is this the job you wanted?" he asked.
"I wanted to be useful," Clyde said, "and this does the trick. And all my friends are here, at least for a while.
"Plus," he added, "when I think about where I was headed three months ago… being a security guard sure beats rusting away in a garbage dump!"
–/–
If you enjoyed this story, please vote for it along with any of your other favorites here.
Idol Wheel of Chaos | Week 12 | 1930 words
Happy Detritus
x-x-x-x-x
Jerry's Repairs sat in the middle of Second street, between an antique store and the Orbit Cafe. It was the oldest business on the block, although no one was sure when it had first appeared.
Jerry was a spry old man in his eighties, undaunted by time, technology, or the sheer quantity of stuff on display in the shop's front room. The back room was the workshop, where all his projects lay. There were toys, gadgets, appliances, and robots. Each waited for replacement parts or dedicated repair time, or even just inspiration to guide the way.
At heart, Jerry was a tinkerer. He didn't always know why his solutions worked. Sometimes they just felt "right" to him, with everything falling into place as if by magic. But some projects were more difficult than others. He'd been stuck for months waiting on discontinued arm pieces for a couple of his robots, and several of his projects required firmware upgrades that might never be forthcoming.
That sort of thing was an anathema to Jerry. He hated "planned obsolescence" with a passion–things should be built to last. It was at the heart of what he did. Why throw away something that could be fixed? Jerry's whole business was based on giving second chances to the stuff other people threw away. Where others saw junk, he saw possibility. Everything he put up for sale in the front half of the shop spoke to the truth of Jerry's mission.
The shop was open Tuesday through Saturday. Today was Wednesday, not quite the beginning of the week, and Jerry was in the back room, taking stock of what needed to be done. He had already moved a bunch of things outside, to let their solar batteries charge. Now he was staring at two one-armed robots, a temperamental vacuum cleaner, and a broken toaster. He had been in this situation before.
Why was it so often the right arm that got broken? Did humans program robot behavior in their own image? In any case, he'd waited eight weeks already and he still didn't have any leads on new arms. Jerry figured he was about two weeks away from 3-D printing some replacements on his own. In the meantime, he cut and bent some scrap metal into the right shape for a forearm, and then used rubber bands to attach the metal to the newer robot's wrist and elbow. Not too bad–the cobbled-together arm worked almost as well as the original. As for the software upgrade, Jerry was familiar enough with the model to know that there was no benefit to updating the robot's current version, unless speculative financial modeling was a "must have" feature.
The vacuum cleaner was trickier. It offered almost no suction on bare floors, but went into overdrive on carpets, in a seemingly suicidal attempt to burn out the motor. Jerry ignored it, and picked up the toaster instead. He plugged it in to confirm that the problem was with the heating element. Then he used a soldering iron to reattach it more firmly. Did everything work now? He was just in time to test it out by making some toast for lunch.
At the end of the day, Jerry closed the till, pulled down the shades, and locked the store up for the night. He headed down Second street to Warner, and walked six more blocks to his house.
Inside the shop, the back room slowly came to life.
The newer robot, Clyde, spoke first. "Are you all right?" he asked the toaster. The toaster had never spoken, but somehow Clyde felt as if it had a soul.
The toaster coughed, and a tiny flame shot out of one of its slots.
"Looking good," the second robot said. "You'll be back in a kitchen in no time!" He looked at the vacuum cleaner, and lifted its limp cord. "Vinny? How are you doing?"
Vinny wheezed out a sigh. "I've been better," he said. "Hey, Frank, did I tell you I think I'm developing allergies?"
Frank and Clyde looked at each other. "What makes you say that?" Frank asked.
"I keep getting all choked up when I'm working. It's like I can't breathe."
"Let me empty out your canister and see if that helps," Clyde offered. Personally, Clyde thought Vinny might just be depressed, but it couldn't hurt.
Frank tried to work his way down off the repair table, but having only one arm made it challenging.
"Hey, stop," Clyde said. He was still on the floor where Jerry had left him. "I can't put you back up there on my own. What do you need?"
"I'm just so tired of being stuck up here," Frank said. And I want to see how Penny's doing."
Penny was a portable food dispenser Jerry had fixed two weeks earlier.
"I'll go out front and see if she's still here," Clyde said.
Clyde rolled off into the next room. His eyebeams lit up the surrounding area, where he spotted the mechanical man called MacLeish, in the act of doffing his hat. MacLeish seemed a strange name, but Jerry might have given it to him. Jerry named most of his projects, unless they already had their own designations. For some reason, there was an entire line of domestic Maid-Bots called Rosie, and a series of Butler-Bots called Jeeves.
The gold-and-glass mantel clock was still on the counter near the cash register. Clyde didn't know if it was capable of talking, but he was in awe of its beauty.
He saw Penny on a table covered with irons and sewing machines. "Hi, Clyde!" she said.
"How are you doing?" Clyde asked.
"Well, still here, obviously. I wonder if Jerry priced me too high? Though I don't want to wind up living in squalor. But it's not all bad, waiting to be sold. There's a lot more to see out here."
"Customers?" Clyde asked. Like most of the machines and appliances in the back room, he'd never seen an actual customer, and he was very curious about them.
"Oh, yes. Not many, but always a few each day."
Clyde roamed around the rest of the store. There was the wall of videoscreens, most of them from before he joined the back room. Except for Buzz.
"Hi, Buzz!" he said.
"Clyde!" Buzz said. "What's shaking?"
"Not me!" Clyde said. "Everything's where it belongs, except for this patched-up arm. Still, better than nothing."
"How's Frank doing?"
"Still waiting for a second arm. We've both been going stir crazy back there. Hey, did that Rosie get sold?"
"First day out," Buzz said. "People just snap them up."
Clyde headed to the front window. "Arco, you're still here?" he said.
The old-fashioned remote-control airplane was still in the front window. He was even getting a little dusty.
"Any day now, right? I keep telling myself," Arco said. "I can't wait to fly again. The last time I was out was right after Jerry fixed me."
Clyde wondered what it would be like to fly, to see the world from above. He'd never been outside the office he used to work in, apart from the parking lot and then the car ride to Jerry's shop.
He glanced over at The King, as they all thought of him. The King was magnificent, with his colored lights and his shiny buttons and his assortment of small vinyl discs. He even had his name printed boldly across the front: Wurlitzer. Everyone was too intimidated to speak to him, although they all whispered about him. Clyde wondered if anyone would ever buy The King? He was the most expensive thing in the shop.
"What's happening in the back?" Arco asked.
"A new shipment of plugs and cords came in last week, and Jerry added a bunch of Jeeves and a trash compactor to the table. I'm not sure where he got them, but I heard him say they were on commission. He's already fixed half of them."
Sometimes Clyde wished he'd been a commissioned project. Then he'd have a place to go back to. But Jerry had bought him from a scrap heap, so he was lucky to have been rescued. He just had to hope Jerry could make him good enough to be sold again. Clyde would miss Frank and some of the other friends he'd made around the shop, but he longed to be useful again.
"I'd better get back," he told Arco. "Good luck!"
Clyde rolled into the workshop and gave an update on the front room activity. He emptied Vinny's canister, and was just replacing it when he heard the sound of breaking glass out in the front room. An alarm sounded.
"What was that?" Vinny said.
"I'm not sure," Clyde said. "I'd better go look."
The layout of the shop hadn't changed in weeks, so he kept his eyebeams off as he quietly rolled toward the front. From the doorway, he could see broken glass hanging from the front window. He moved closer, and spotted someone dressed in dark clothes who was wrestling with a large, bulky shape.
He's trying to steal The King! Clyde thought. He raced over toward the window, and extended his arms to hop onto the low display shelf. Then he reached for the burglar, grappled onto his forearms, and hoisted himself up to where he could fall on him.
"Hah-hah!" Clyde crowed.
The burglar squirmed underneath him. "Let go of me!" he said.
"Not a chance!" Clyde locked his hands into position and settled in for the long haul. His batteries were almost fully charged, and he could hold onto the burglar for days if he had to.
The sound of sirens grew louder, and then the police arrived. Jerry was not far behind them.
"What's this?" Jerry asked.
"It looks like someone broke into your store. But this robot stopped him."
"Clyde?" Jerry asked. "He's an office bot."
"Well, he was a security guard tonight."
I was! Clyde thought.
It was a long night. The police arrested the burglar and wrote up their reports, and Jerry had the front window boarded up and reset the alarm before going home for a few hours of sleep.
Clyde had to wait all that time before he could tell the others in the back what had happened. They all thought he was very brave, but Clyde was certain he had done what any bot would do. He was just the only one there who had all the equipment to make it possible.
The next day, Jerry used the 3-D printer to make Clyde a permanent arm, and gave the makeshift metal arm to Frank for the time being. Then he gave Clyde a job.
"You're going to be my head of security," Jerry said. "I never thought I needed someone to keep an eye on the shop when I'm out, but clearly I was wrong."
Clyde rejoiced inside his little metal heart. He didn't have to wait to be good enough for someone to buy anymore–he was perfect right where he was.
"I wonder if I'll ever be whole again," Frank lamented later that night.
"Someday, certainly," Clyde said. "But it's sure nice having you here right now."
Vinny coughed out a puff of dust. "Is this the job you wanted?" he asked.
"I wanted to be useful," Clyde said, "and this does the trick. And all my friends are here, at least for a while.
"Plus," he added, "when I think about where I was headed three months ago… being a security guard sure beats rusting away in a garbage dump!"
–/–
If you enjoyed this story, please vote for it along with any of your other favorites here.
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Date: 2025-10-13 01:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-10-13 05:15 pm (UTC)