Robot Mode

NB: this story is part of a series which includes 'Gregory,' 'Bob n Erin,' and 'Jake the Weed Dealer.' I have included these stories in a recently completed short novel, also entitled Robot Mode. This short story was published in the Winter issue of Ken Again http://kenagain.freeservers.com/PROSE.HTML

Four trolleys burst out of the aisles at the same time and made a run for the fast lane. The guy in the orange sweater got cut off by the middle-aged woman, who in turn collided with the thin, sour-faced woman, leaving the elderly lady to come through on the outside and nose her trolley in front.
They all of them had more than ten items in their trolleys, but since there was no one else waiting, I served the old woman. She was not in a hurry any more, however. Firstly, she paid by cheque, the most time-consuming method available and practically obsolete in the age of debit cards and eftpos and what have you. Then, with a twinkle in her eye, she asked me to bag the groceries for her.
A decade or so back, early in my career as a checkout operator, we'd had assistants do the bagging for us. But they had disappeared during the company's 'streamlining' process, which had been hyped as some revolutionary method of making the supermarket run more efficiently, when all it had done was double our workload so that it took twice as long to serve everybody.
Having done the bagging as requested, I turned next to the middle-aged woman, who had come in second and piled her items onto the conveyor belt. Even as I served her, an overweight fellow of similar vintage rushed hastily up and added an armful of groceries to hers.
The customers behind said nothing, as if it were not happening; as though everyone were behaving in a perfectly civilised manner. But when I scanned the items and hit a snag with the bar codes, they grew increasingly fidgety and took to tutting and huffing and rolling their eyes.
The sour-faced woman was up next, followed by the man in the orange sweater. By this time the queue had lengthened considerably and I went into robot mode. I did not even look at the people's faces; just greeted them as 'Sir' or 'Madam,' scanned their items, accepted their payment and bid them good day.
A pack of cigarettes dropped onto the belt in front of me, as if from the ceiling. Extending my vision I perceived the stiff, charcoal grey fibres of a business suit.
"Hello, Sir. How are you today?"
"How do you think I am?! I've spent half the morning waiting in this queue for a pack a bluddy fags!"
I had no reply to offer, just scanned the cigarettes and took the coins he tossed down.
"Aren't you going to put them in a bag for me?" the next customer exclaimed.
I ignored her, already serving the customer after, robot mode.
She snatched up a plastic bag and started filling it herself. "Well I never! You people ought to take some pride in your work."
Suzy, naturally, was late back from lunch. She came out with the usual line about it being only a few minutes and why did I always get so worked up about a few minutes, and I told her it was almost ten minutes out of my break and that was a big deal to me. She laughed and said my watch was fast, then began serving the next customer before I had chance to respond.
I went into the tea room to eat my sandwiches. Dougal was standing behind Tom, sucking on a bottle of cola.
"You gotta get with the times," he was saying. "The Paleolithic age is over."
Tom paused as he brought a triangle of pizza to his mouth. "Know what you are, Dougal - A fuzzy-haired, four-eyed, bow-legged parrot."
"Well, thank you for that intellectual observation," Dougal giggled, beaming around at the girls. "It is easy to see how you have risen to the lofty rank of floor supervisor."
"More'n you'll ever be," Tom scoffed over his shoulder, then wolfed down the pizza.
"Oh!" Dougal feigned surprise. "That's odd, Thomas, 'Cause I'm going on the journalism course next year."
"Said that last year! An' don't start thinking you're better than the rest of us either."
Dougal bounced along to the end of the table, the customary idiotic smile in place. "Feeling a little inadequate, are we?" He beamed at the girls again, as if expecting applause.
I finished my tea and went out to get a haircut. It took about twenty minutes to find a place where you didn't need an appointment. And then it was one of those trendy hair studios where the people were too cool to talk to you; just charged you about five times as much as you were expecting to pay then sent you out the door with one of their personalised business cards. They gave me such an effeminate haircut I spent the rest of the lunch hour walking around in the rain trying to get rid of it. A short, bearded guy in a queue at a Fast Cash machine saw me go by several times and laughed his stupid-looking head off. I felt a sudden urge to go over and kick his teeth in for him. But I didn't, of course.
The staff had a field-day over my ridiculous hairdo, which the elements had only made more bizarre. Even the manager emerged from his office to see what all the fuss was about, and he practically laughed himself into tears when he saw, his pallid bald spot visible among the fiery wreath of orange hair as he doubled over in mirth. It seemed an eternity until six o'clock.
The gym was across the other side of town and I had to walk along the main streets, in the middle of rush hour, the gale blowing the rain directly into my face.
Walking those streets was an art-form, if you wanted to stay out of trouble. First of all, it was vitally important not to stray onto the right-hand side of the footpath, or else people would slam right into you for being on the wrong side. If you wanted to get in or out of a store you had to wait for a break and duck across the footpath as quickly as possible, apologising profusely to anyone who might have been forced to check their stride. It paid to be careful about catching anyone's eye as well, because they might take it as a challenge and slam into you. And there were guys who would get all snarly-faced and threaten to smash your face in for you. It was not a good idea to avoid looking at people altogether, however, and especially not to look down into your bag or at a newspaper or anything, because then they might cross the footpath and slam into you just to show you how careless you were being. It was also worth bearing in mind that a lot of people objected to being overtaken, and especially to anyone walking too quickly, so it was safest to stay at the same pace as the general flow.
Those were the basic rules, but when it rained you had little chance even if you'd mastered them, and on the way to the gym I was slammed into by several people and forced to apologise to one of the snarly-faces. I had a mind to slam into one of them back, but I didn't want to end up in a fight or anything.
I got to the gym half an hour before my class and decided to kill time on the punching bag. It was in a corner of the weights room near the cycling and rowing machines. I wasn't much interested in boxing but I enjoyed slamming my fists into the big hard bag sometimes. It gave me a sense of satisfaction or relief or something and made me feel good.
I'd been at it for a few minutes when there came a weird, high-pitched giggling from behind me. Glancing around, I came face to face with an obese, heavily-tattooed fellow with bushy hair. He elbowed the guy beside him, a similar specimen in appearance, who wasn't smiling.
"Ooh, wotta ya reckon, Koro?".
"Duzn't know what he's doing, bro,'" the other replied, and the high-pitched giggling startled me again.
So I gave up on the bag and headed for the aerobics studio. As I passed through reception a stocky guy emerged from behind the counter and cut me off. He had a shaved head, dense black moustache and copious tattoos.
"I's watching you on the punching bag, bro,'" he said, shaking his bald head gravely. "You got no technique, eh."
With that he swung up onto the counter and sat there, probably to avoid neck-ache from looking up at me. I figured him for a weights instructor or something, so smiled politely back.
"Well, I'm not planning to take on Tyson just yet."
He blinked seriously, looking slightly down at me now. "Yeah, but your legs were all over the place, bro.' I's watching you."
"Oh." I nodded, like I cared less. "So, you're a boxing coach?"
He broke into a toothless chuckle, seemingly flattered by the idea. "No, no. Not me, cuz. I just wanted to tell you dat. You got no technique."
I kept the smile on and continued through to the aerobics studio, robot mode.
Timmy-Jay took the first class, blitz aerobics, involving a lot of sprinting on the spot, high kicks and suchlike. He was attired in basic black this evening, his skin-tight leotard rolled up around the thighs. His receding dark curls had been bleached ginger since Thursday's class, and there was now a stud in his right eyebrow to go with the ones in his nose and nether lip.
All the regulars had their spots and I had mine next to the wall just a few paces from the door. It wouldn't have been appropriate for a beanpole like me to progress into the middle and block everyone else's view, and neither did I feel inclined to go down the back where it was always so crowded with cool people.
Being sort of a beanpole, I tended to resemble something like a giant stick insect when it came to high knees. Timmy-Jay would be barking, "Getcha knees up! hup! hup! hup!" and mine would be practically hitting me in the chest. I could see in the mirror how ridiculous I looked. And Timmy-Jay liked to mimic me sometimes, with comical exaggeration. It would make everyone grin, so he'd do it again.
He put us through about a million press-ups and by the end of it my arms were trembling violently with the effort. I didn't realise what was going on until I heard the laughter, then looked up to see I was the only one still doing them
"Whoa! He da man!" Timmy-Jay announced, feigning an American accent.
I peered sheepishly around at the grinning faces. Timmy-Jay rolled his eyes and licked his lips theatrically.
"Oh, yeah, folks! He da man!"
Tracy came in toward the end of the class and took her customary spot right in front of me. Her hair was bleached sort of yellow and she was impossibly tanned for winter. She began to prance about, a pear-shaped body in a g-string leotard, her buttocks so prominent I could make out the dimples. Once or twice she glanced over her shoulder and caught my eye. I decided it was time to send her a message and moved across to the other side, not caring that I totally incensed somebody by encroaching on their territory. When Tracy looked over her shoulder again and saw nobody there, her eyes searched around until she found me, then her expression changed instantly to hatred.
Her class was next, low-impact aerobics. I always stuck around for that because blitz got me so pumped up I wanted to keep going another hour, and I wasn't much for doing weights or riding the cycle machines or anything.
This particular evening, however, Tracy threw a lot of changes into the routines, so that those of us who came regularly found ourselves cavorting off in all directions. Some of the others looked fairly irritated about it too.
"So, ladies, how is everything?" Tracy got chatting, addressing all but three of us in the class. "Some racy outfits out there tonight! No wonder we've got a couple of guys lurking about, eh."
She glanced directly across at me from the stage, looking slightly downward now. "Know what I hate?" she went on, like this would be upper-most in our thoughts at that very moment. "The gawky beanpole type. They look so ridiculous - especially in shorts!"
Everyone grinned, a few of the girls laughed out loud, and Tracy stood up there on the stage with a self-satisfied smirk, a pear-shaped instructor in a g-string leotard, sucking her Gatorade, as if expecting applause.
Neither Anne nor Bev were home that evening. Probably they were staying over at their boyfriends' places. They tended to do that when they weren't fighting with them. Nonetheless, it gave me a very strange feeling when I woke up next morning to find I was still alone in the house, as though everyone had disappeared over the edge of the world and left me on my own.
The phone had been ringing incessantly, though I had not bothered to answer it because the phone was never for me. But now I was beginning to think there might be some emergency, as it had been ringing non-stop since before dawn.
Next time it rang, about ten seconds after I had this thought, I picked up the receiver.
"I'm calling about the house."
"House?"
"The house for sale, in the paper."
"House for sale?"
He said the telephone number and it was ours.
It occurred to me that, if our house were being sold, they would use the owner's number, not ours, since we were only renting.
There was a pause, then the voice replied, "Sez to ask for Burt."
"Burt? He doesn't live here. Look, give me your number and I'll have him call you."
Before leaving for work I'd filled a page of the message pad with the contact details of people who had called about the house.
And the telephone was still ringing when I returned home that evening. After filling another two pages of the pad, I decided the next call would be the last before I took it off the hook.
"Been any calls about the house?" It was a metallic version of Burt's voice on the line.
"About five million."
"Yeah? Choice! Take any messages?''
"Three pages full. Why didn't you use your own number?"
"Look, I don't have a residential line, okay, and not many people have a mobile. If I advertise with a mobile number the charge might put people off calling."
I wondered what kind of people were in the market to buy a house but weren't prepared to call a mobile phone because of the charge.
"Are you going to be here this evening? If not, I'm taking the phone off the hook. I haven't had any peace since I got home."
I was startled by a metallic version of Anne's voice. "Don't you dare take that phone off the hook. The company will put a buzzer through it and charge us for it."
I doubted they would do that, and what would they charge anyway? Fifty cents?
"Okay, I won't take it off the hook."
As soon as she hung up I took it off the hook.
I watched the evening movie on television. It was a remake of an old classic but turned out to be a disappointment. The actors were poorly casted, I thought. They just went for pretty-boys these days, whereas those old film guys had had a lot more character. They'd made more of an impression on me, those old film actors.
Then it was the ad's break, and some depraved lunatic was screaming at me with a big, greedy-looking grin all over his face, when I heard the front door slam. Rapid footsteps advanced up the hall and Anne flounced into the room, followed a moment later by Burt.
"I thought I told you not to take the phone off the hook," she seethed down at me.
Burt marched across and replaced the receiver. "You might a cost me a sale, mate. A hundred grand we're talkin.'"
I shrugged to show my indifference over a hundred thousand dollars. What did he expect me to do - drop to my knees and grovel for forgiveness?
"There's three pages of numbers for you to call," I said.
That shut him up for a while. He went over and started examining the numbers, as if they would tell him anything before he called them.
"Yuv had it off ever since we rang," Anne went on. "We tried calling every fifteen minutes."
"That was just me busy taking messages," I said halfheartedly. They had seen the receiver lying on the table.
She shook her head slowly and tutted like a schoolteacher when you got the answer wrong. "You might a cost Burt a hundred grand."
I had completely lost interest in the film by then and went to bed. Besides, I was tired from having been woken up so early that morning. But I found I was too angry to sleep. I just lay there in the dark, blinking at the cracks of electric light around the door, wondering how it could be that people treated me like fungi then made me out to be the villain.
Next morning, the red digits on my alarm clock showing 6:52, I heard the phone ringing, a piercing drill in the quiet predawn. Then it stopped. And the next time it rang only a couple of times. Anne must have been home answering it. I sandwiched my head in my pillow and tried to sleep.
But there was no way to keep that noise out, and half an hour later I climbed out of bed. Wandering through to the living room, I was surprised to find not the plump features of Anne, but the bird-like frame of Bev at the telephone, holding the receiver with one hand and writing on the message pad with the other.
"That thing's gunna ring all day," I warned her.
It rang before she had chance to answer, and I waited while she took another message.
"Burt's using us as his personal secretaries," I continued. "He should be here to take the calls."
"Look," said Bev, "I've got my own problems, okay. I don't need this right now."
I stared at her for a moment, dumbfounded by her answer. She had spoken as though the whole thing were my fault. The phone rang again and I slumped down on the couch while she answered it, chuckling wryly to myself; a manic chuckle, even in my own ears.
Then Bev disappeared into the shower and I had to take the calls. The first one was a woman and she simply asked for Burt, without a 'hello' or a 'please' or anything.
"Sorry, Burt doesn't live here; just uses the number," I replied a little curtly.
I expected her to leave a message but she just hung up without another word.
That evening I was home by myself again. I put the phone right beside me on the couch so I would have time to replace the receiver if Anne and Burt came back. But when I heard the door slam around ten o'clock and their footsteps advancing up the hallway, I somehow knew I was in trouble again.
"What's the matter?" I asked, and immediately regretted doing so. It sounded so 'guilty.'
"What's the matter?!" Burt glowered fiercely, coming and standing over me. He was a short, stocky guy, remarkably ugly up close. "My mother called here this morning and you were rude to her. That's what's the matter!"
"And Bev was up before seven answering your calls!" I snapped back.
"We're talking about my mother, mate!"
His self-righteous indignation was such I couldn't suppress a slight chuckle, and for an instant he looked as though he were going to thump me. I could see the veins in his eyes and the pores in his pallid skin. His cologne smelt like campsite kerosene. He hovered over me like that, twisting his shoulders from side to side, like he were Tyson limbering up for the fight. Probably he expected me to drop to my knees and grovel for mercy or something.
Anne popped her plump head out from behind him. "You're a really inconsiderate person, you know that.".
It was all I could do to contain my rage. I wanted to shout at the pair of them. 'Inconsiderate?! Me?! Who's been answering your calls for the past two days?!' But I didn't, of course. Anne might have evicted me.
"He's a rude bastard," Burt snarled, stalking back over to the message pad.
When they had gone again, leaving me there with a constantly ringing phone, I took it off the hook and waited for the movie to come on. There were more of the insane adverts but I ignored them, turning my mind to other things, robot mode.

end