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LIVING DOWN ON EARTH
Elijah decided it was so much better wintering on the spaceship rather than in one’s own house down on Earth. Here it was constantly warm and dry and everything got done for you. After the serverbot had brought in his morning cuppa and he’d thoroughly woken up all he had to do was to get himself out of bed and into the shower and on with his clothes – nice easy T-shirts and light cotton pj-style trousers and espadrills or even bare feet as one didn’t need to worry about weather and getting too hot or too cold or wet. Then along to wherever he wanted to eat and the serverbot would bring in his breakfast of whatever it was he wanted – and on the Good Ship Lollypop (sorry, the Good Ship Gaya now!) one could pretty much get anything one wanted too. Five star living with underfloor heating is very agreeable.
Elijah was a (tiny) bit ashamed to admit this: he was supposed to be getting used to Outside – and in many ways he was. He realized he now found greenery and trees delightful rather than fearsome (all those insects and bits of dirt and god knows what) and he’d learned to love birdsong and the smell of fresh country air, especially after a long hot day. In fact trees were friends too: they helped to soften and break up all that open space that Elijah could still find worrisome, especially if he came apon it suddenly. He definitely still liked to have a canopy over his head and, on Earth, had tried to set up home in one of the canopied villages Outside: a lovely ‘old’ village with ancient-stone houses all covered in ivy and creeper and grassy verges and mossy walls and tree lined lanes and a green with a pond (and robotic ducks and geese) – yay the whole works. It’d even had a little shop and post office. With its near-invisible overhead canopy keeping out the worst of the weather and organized nighttime rain (to keep it clean and the gardens watered) it was, in summer, nigh well idyllic really.
Winter was a bit of a chore because he was one of these people affected by seasonal affective disorder, SAD, when he ached all over, had a head like a lead ball, wondered what was the bloody point of anything, and just didn’t want to bother to wake up. So it was for this reason that he thought, oh blow it and to hell with the expense! and from October to March simply shut up his Earthside house and booked passage on the old Good Ship Gaya for himself and his cats and so escaped the winter. He would return planetside when the daffodils were coming out and it was still cold but at least the days were longer. And once again he could appreciate fresh outside air. However advanced an Auroran-designed Space Cruiser was, with the best will ever its air would always be canned.
He did quite a bit of detectiving work too. The only thing missing though was someone to love and cuddle up to and joke with and have intelligent rational wry witty convesation with and who was utterly fascinating because they were uniquely what they were. Ie Daneel. Elijah had got two large spotted cats, and a robot to do the housework, and a Galactanet super-computer to play on and a fabulous automated quadrophonic hi-fi that organized and played his favourite music at the touch of a remote, and a huge flatscreen DVD/HoloTV, and lots of books and – most expensively – an etherholovidphone (an EHV or ‘eva’ as they got called) so he could keep in touch with Daneel and Giskard all over the Galaxy, but - lovely as the surroundings were, it just wasn’t the same.
His descendents visited him but at heart Elijah wasn't terribly a child-or-baby-lover and these would rather quickly pall on him. He just didn’t do grandpa. Nor did he like dogs in his house or garden either and not just because of his cats. He liked his great-great-great-great grandson Ben the best – at eleven he’d been old enough to be interesting and young enough not to be a teenager – and probably nice enough not to ever be one. Jess was a likeable enough girl even if she could be a bit wilesome (a word Elijah had proudly made up himself). Funny, Elijah knew he didn’t fancy other (human) males, but – somehow he seemed to feel most at home with a certain sort of strong yet gentle – and intelligent - male company. Well, ie, again let’s face it, Daneel. Who, of course, he fancied like crazy too!
Elijah had tried the whole woman business here as well before he’d came to the conclusion that he just wasn’t a woman’s man. He was just too lazy when it came to the niceties. And he was – as were most of the women – too aware of the femaleness in which they often took great pride (well, dammit, they’d had centuries in which to live out the post-feminist era by now). Or else they were insipid and shallow or – wilesome. If there was one thing worse that a male chauvinist it surely had to be a female one! Maybe that made him a male chauvinist then, but – heck, what in hell could you expect. He was male himself! But with human feelings and sensitivities and fears as well. Plus a strong non-conformism. The old dreary dogma that a male mustn't have any of these was, especially on Earth, still alive and kicking. Which was why he’d liked the gentle Ben so much and felt a genuine interest in his welfare – and a strong desire to help Ben achieve his rights of being an – equal - human first and a male second. A right that his sister had taken as automatic – but then girls who ‘stray’ from the conventional gender-role do not suffer the same censure to start with.
“I think” Ben said, during one visit, “that Daneel and Giskard are also equalists aren’t they – for robots that is”. He smiled. “So, if robots can do it – why not fellas like me!”.
“That’s more like it”, Elijah said, his normally rather long dour face smiling.
“They’re awfully intelligent aren't they – Daneel and Giskard I mean. More human that some humans. But without the mean horrid bits.”
“You've got it. They just keep learning and learning. And questioning and questioning”. Elijah said. “Unlike some humans I fear”.
Ben thought of those sorts of human, a bit like his uncle and grandfather: stuck in their old rigid – male – mould. “They’re terrified I'm going to be a homosexual”, Ben sighed, and Elijah snorted. “Terrified are they? So who’s frightened now, huh? Those so-called big tough alphas that’s who”. He had the taste not to challenge Ben on how they no doubt thought he, Elijah, was a ripe old one-of-those as well. Ben would visit with his family and shrewdly Elijah felt sure his parents would discourage any future lone visits. Now he and Ben had snuck off to each have a pee during a family walk out into the country (one small advantage in being male here).
Giskard and Daneel came to visit too whenever they touched down to Earth. They would turn up at Elijah’s house in a hired electric car: modern enough thank goodness to have (civilized) automatic doors! They’d first arrived in their lovely Auroran metallic-cherry flitter but, not entirely surprisingly, a serious attempt was made to steal this which had set off every one of its very powerful alarms and flashing lights which had set every dog barking its silly head off and the police came but by then the would-be thieves had long since legged it, so that had caused something of a stir which hadn’t made Elijah and his unconventional friends any too popular that night (Such a nice quiet village, Maugersbury!) though some of the younger people thought it was a rum do. So the two robots saw sense in next time not coming in anything fancy and hiring a standard and dull-coloured vehicle instead.
GOD IN GUISE OF DANEEL AND GISKARD
Giskard and Daneel were doing well. they’d visited several developed planets and, deploying their mentallic talents, had worked their way into these planets’ corridors of power, ‘persuading’ receptionists, secretaries, aides and security systems by dint of a bit of mind twiddling (or atom-shifting) that yes they did have appointments and were very much expected (and most welcome of course). There they – or Daneel especially – carried on the ‘persuading’: nudging the thought-routines of councillors and politicians and business-leaders and captains of industry and general top brass into thinking things out a little differently. Ei, to the advantage of the most poor and needy and vulnerable. The robots coaxingly mentalic-ed these boors into jolly well spending more money where it was most needed: not for wider roads or more cars, arms or banks or fat-cat’s pockets or shareholders – but for people. Just ordinary people wanting to live a clean decent crime-free life and to be able to take their bikes on the train.
That’s boring of course. It doesn’t make money. It costs instead. And it’s low-profile.
Every human should have an automatic right to a detached house with a garden, the right to homeschool their children, the right to their own room in hospital, the right for one parent to be able to stay home with their children, a minimum 20 hour working week, and sufficient material goods so they don’t feel the need to go and steal these off others. It goes without saying (only one did have to say this of course) that there should be free public transport and effective – effective - recourse for issues such as noisy neighbors, vandalism, and any stress-causing nuisance that prevents one from functioning normally (and so from being a productive member of society who’d cost you less money in the end, yes?) .
Hey, you try coaxing the minds of obdurate greedy smug I’m-all-right-jack don’t-want-to-know councillors, politicians, business leaders, captains of industry and general top brass. The robots knew they must take care to correctly ‘read’ and not to harm the mind they were trying to help forget certain things and to persuade, by just stroking and nudging and caressing it into somehow feeling it would be more expedient to maybe take another path instead of the original one; that – more importantly – it was to their best interest, for top brass etc like nothing better than to be told that something’s in their best interest, nay?
Daneel would go along, Giskard pretending to be his ‘servant and minder’ for such a thing was quite common: a human out with his robot. So Daneel did most of the talking and Giskard most of the mind nudging. Naturally Daneel often went as female for the higher echelons – still – tended to be predominately male – alpha male. Hettys. Even if some of them may not have actually fancied ‘Daneele’ they darn well reckoned with ‘her’ – especially as ‘she’ was often taller and far fitter-looking than many of them. Not that she dressed or played siren either; elegantly clad in universal-nomad bohochic unisex she was steely straight as a die: pleasant, poised - but shamelessly non-flirtatious. Just being female was sufficient. And women generally just do respond to and appreciate a fellow female – and a beautiful one - in a way they mightn’t with a male – though of course there were those who did appreciate a thoroughly dishy and personable male. Even if he were a bit ‘liberated’ in his lack of flirtation or etiquette, and just took one straight on regardless of gender – which it was thought feminists were supposed to appreciate but invariably often didn’t because women want it all. Nor that Daneel tried to please any female, feminist or not. Daneel was, again, steely straight as a die: mannerly, even charming, but no pushover and completely non-concessionary! And, acting from a human point of view, dressed exactly as he pleased. Which was in the same way as he dressed as Daneele.
Then there was the computer hacking and infiltrating of mis- and disinformation. With their powerful wi-fi exobyte ship’s computers and nano laserbeam communications Giskard and Daneel would ‘set up office’ in one of the smaller 10-passenger shuttles, parked planetside on any old convenient bit of space. Spaceport officials, town councillors and forestry commissions or irate farmers and landowners (and hunt masters) could quickly be made to ‘forget’ that here was an unauthorized and most undesirable object parked on the proverbial double-yellow lines. Or, rather, field to be planted with yet more GM cash crops. Or hunt trail.. Or land aquired for building yet another horrible ticky-tacky housing estate or swathing yet another by-pass or motorway extension through. Or bit of forest scheduled for deforestation (for identical above reasons). Daneel and Giskard were naturally not so stupid as to park it where it literally would constitute an obstruction as such.
Some people thought this was really cool however: this exotic craft, wingless as it was gravitonic, and – yes – verily the shape of yer old friendly neighbourhood flying saucer, which sat at its ease on wherever it had parked. Mostly they thought it was some sort of official exhibition set up by the council or something. Daneel and Giskard would openly give guided tours of it and people would come just to goggle at Giskard and Daneel too; many taking the metallo Giskard to be part of the ‘exhibition’. They would ask Daneel about him and Daneel would grin, “He can tell you himself”. Naturally the people would assume Daneel was the exhibition’s (very gorgeous human) token representative, which management had placed there to attract crowds - which he did, verily. Daneel, fly as ever, did not enlighten the people as to his true provenance. And of course, as regards gender, well, let‘em assume for themselves in the modern way. As Elijah put it, “what the heck”, and, “one saw what one wanted to see”.
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