1
The Robot and the One You Love
by Tom Maddox
This story originally appeared in Omni Magazine, March 1988.
Black polycarbon tentacles hissing across concrete, the diener robot continued along M Street, warmed by the July sun. Its shell was made of porcelain the color of a blue sky, the color of dreams. Sitting in the controller egg at home, Jerome squirmed, feeling as if someone were scraping his skin from the inside. The clear path along the sidewalk turned into cratered moonscape, street sounds to electric charivari. The fragile interlink between him and the diener robot was breaking up in a burst of neurological static. "You pulling anything interesting?" Jerome asked, fighting to stay oriented. His perceptions shifted from room to street and back again, like a TV monitor flashing aimlessly from camera to camera.
"No," the diener robot said, its voice coming from Jerome's back teeth through conduction speakers vibrating behind his ears. The diener carried unobtrusive optical and acoustical recorders for the passing scene, electronics to capture data from surveillance cameras and filch transmissions from police, private security firms, corporate spies, Peeping Toms.
"I need to quit," Jerome said. "I'm getting crazy."
"I am sorry you are troubled," the diener said. "I will return."
That night Jerome sat next to the controller, viewing CROME disk records of the day's take. Around him freeform shapes in pale rose flowed from ceiling to wall and floor. They changed, and dark mauve outlines shifted with them, as the decorating program displayed its abstractions. Between the viewing console and the control