"FWLS37" - читать интересную книгу автора (A Future We'd Like to See)

"That penlight. On my desk. Good. Sweet mother..."

I looked inside the skin flap she was shining the light on.

METAL?

*

A robot. Now this was a shock.

No robot would have a sense of humor. No robot would
receive near orgasmic pleasure in telling customers that he was
out, but his split personality would be happy to take their
order. I mean... it was just silly.

But Terry said the guy was a robot. I had even seen it; an
entire arm joint. It wasn't even a very expensive limb
replacement, it was his whole body. Once you got by the skin,
the sensors could tell what was really going on.

She didn't know what to do, so she called in a guy she knew
at the machine shop. The guy had been working on him for a few
hours... I was just in the waiting room, reading pilfered airline
magazines, about how lovely the climate was on Torodo 6, about
how President Doofman was found in an Ohio cafe dancing the waltz
on a countertop.

Silly. It was just so silly, finding out your best friend
in the whole world was a cyborg. I was expecting Allen Funt to
jump out from behind the counter or something.

"Chuck?" Terry said, peeking from around the wooden
doorframe.

"Yeah?"

"He's up."

*

"Heya, Chuck," Twink said, voice a bit scratchy and tinny.

"You look like hell, Twinkie," I commented.

Bits of skin were pulled away, where the technician had
poked at his systems. I tried not to look at the large flap over
his scalp, but my eyes kept getting drawn to it, like a magnet.

"It'll heal," Twinkie assured, lighting up a cigarette from
the table pack. I ignored how the smoke flowed through a hole in