Robot Wars 2 - Is the Prime Minister a Robot?

Mike Mendelson loved telling people he was an award winning journalist.  Being a journalist wasn’t good enough.  Mike Mendelson had to be so good at his job that he won awards.  Or life had no meaning.  He remembered a story a teacher had told at school about the reindeer that stuck its head up above the herd of reindeer around it.  It didn’t care what anybody else said.  In his mind, Mike had always been that reindeer.  He had always wanted to be a cut above the rest.  So much better than other people.  Mike the Mighty.  He worked for the prestigious intellectual subscription news website Globe World International.  Mike Mendelson wasn’t just an ordinary guy with a video camera on his iwatch and a social media account.

Mike Mendelson stalked important MPs.  Stalking would have been the operative word if there were any romantic attachment.  There wasn’t.  Mike Mendelson saw MPs as simply items to be photographed or filmed.  He followed them around like the maker of a natural history programme would follow a rare snow mountain leopard, a polar bear or a penguin.  Mike knew their feeding grounds, their mating rituals and their natural habitats.  One thing Mike really loved doing was photographing the world leaders of tomorrow eating.  Surely people wouldn’t trust a person to have their finger on the nuclear button if they didn’t know how to eat a pork chop in a dignified manner.  Surely people wouldn’t trust the management of the world’s most important economies to someone who ate a mince pie and allowed the gravy to dribble down their chin.

After many hours of waiting in an MP frequented restaurant, Mike saw Frank Carlson, the leader of the Green Party, drinking a glass of mineral water.  Nothing very unusual about the way he drank it but Mike filmed it anyway.  Mike racked his brains thinking of how this might make a good story.  Frank Carlson drinks mineral water from a plastic bottle made in a factory in Algeria that pollutes the sea.  Leader of the Green Party?  Hypocrite.  Why didn’t he carry a big bottle around with him and fill it up from the nearest tap?  Surely that would create fewer world problems. 

Jeremy Hall, leader of the UK Independence Party (who for some reason were still around 20 years after Britain had left the European Union) sat down and started eating a bacon sandwich.  He spat out a piece of bacon because it was too hot.  Mike asked one of the other MPs, quietly where Jeremy Hall wouldn’t hear him,

“Does Jeremy have difficulty with bacon sandwiches?”

“He has a problem with his front teeth,” the other MP said.  “He can’t bite through bacon.”  Mike’s face lit up with the thought of a wonderful headline.  “Toothless Politician Has No Bite.”  Jeremy Hall got up from his seat.  Mike took a photograph. He cropped it and enlarged it.  Jeremy Hall seemed to have some difficulty closing his mouth.  There was a beautiful picture of his gnashers protruding above his lower lip.

Leoni Skinner, the leader of the Labour Party, walked in.  Mike walked right up to her.

“Hello Ms. Skinner.  What did you have for breakfast today?”

“I didn’t have any breakfast.”  Mike had better find a nutritionist to get their advice on why it was important to have breakfast.  Leoni Skinner ought to have had breakfast.  The public had a right to know that she didn’t and the right to know why this certainly wasn’t a good idea.  Another brilliant story.

Mike arrived at the offices of Globe World International.

“How is your wildlife surveillance going at the MPs’ café?” asked Charlie Blakelaw, the editor.

“Jeremy Hall spat out some bacon from his sandwich.  He has something wrong with his front teeth.  Imagine the headline.  ‘Toothless Politician Has No Bite.”

“Fantastic.  You know, Mike, Jeremy Hall’s a bit of a socialist.  Ask him if he knows a local NHS dentist.  Pretend you can’t find one.  That’s his dentist.  Get a look at his medical records.”

“The leader of the Green Party drinking mineral water from a plastic bottle that was probably made in some horrendous factory in Algeria that pollutes the ocean and employs child slaves.”

“Excellent Mike.  I love the way that you take the ordinary details of people’s lives and make them like a horror movie.  Just make sure the bottle wasn’t made in Nottingham.  It could be a bit of a come down.”

“It was made in Algeria, Charlie.  I bought one.  I had a look underneath.”

“Excellent Mike, not driven by your scruples, enjoy a bottle of the mineral water yourself.  You’re not trying to change the world, you’re there to ruin somebody else’s life.  That’s good journalism.”

“Leoni Skinner doesn’t have breakfast.”

“Who cares?”

“Millions of people will when I’ve contacted a Harley Street nutritionist to give her a good telling off.”

“Mike,” Charlie looked at the ibook Mike had on the desk in front of him.  “You’ve spelt the word genius wrong.  There isn’t an o in genius.”

“Damn.  I always thought there was.”  He corrected the spelling.  “I’m not a genius or I would have known.  I tell you something else, Charlie.  Yugo Jones, leader of the Conservatives, never eats.”

“What do you mean he never eats?  Maybe he just never goes to the MPs’ café.”

“I’ve been stalking him for two weeks.  I’m telling you he never eats.  He never goes to the shops.”

“Someone does it for him.”

“He never calls in to a restaurant.”

“Maybe he can’t afford to.  You know what they say about trying to live in London on an MP’s salary.  Perhaps he’s on drugs.  That would be a marvellous headline,” said Mr. Blakelaw.

“He never buys any.”

“How do you know, Mike?  Are you with him all the time?”

“I’m not far from him all the time.  Mr. Blakelaw, I’m an award winning journalist.  Don’t talk to me as if I was an idiot.”

“Mike, if that’s true, I need to know why he never eats.  We need a story.”

 

Mike went to Yugo Jones’ flat.  A big muscular henchman answered the door.

“Globe World International,” said Mike.  Mike’s ID appeared on his ibook.  It looked big and impressive as he waved it in his hand.

“Do you have an appointment?”

“Yes,” Mike lied.  Yugo Jones stood in the corridor and looked at him.  “Can I come in?”  Mike asked.

“Why?” asked Yugo Jones.  “We can talk here.  Or we can decide if there’s anything useful you want to talk about.”

“You never go to cafes or shops or restaurants.  How do you buy your food?”

“I’ve got all these other people here.  Maybe they buy it for me.”

“I would settle that question if I could come inside and have a look around the kitchen.”  Yugo turned to his bodyguards.

“Let him in.”  Mike came into the kitchen.  He opened the cupboards.

“No food.  No food.  How do you eat?  How do you live?  Are you a drug addict?”  Yugo and his bodyguards roared with laughter.

“I might live on pizzas and kebabs and get them delivered by the little helicopter,” said Yugo.

“Don’t you think Mr. Jones has family and friends he can eat with?” asked one of the bodyguards.

“You’re a robot,” said Mike.  This time Yugo Jones and his bodyguards screamed with laughter even more loudly.  One of the bodyguards produced a chocolate bar from his pocket.  Yugo took the wrapper off.

“I’ll eat this.  Then you’ll know I’m not a robot.”  Yugo started eating the chocolate.

“An advanced robot could give the appearance of eating a bar of chocolate.  It wouldn’t be hard to simulate,” said Mike.  “You don’t buy drugs, you don’t go to shops, you don’t go to restaurants, you don’t get anything delivered by little helicopters and you don’t even have any family and friends.”

“How do you know all this?” asked Yugo.

“I’m an award winning journalist, Mr. Jones, I assure you I’m thorough.  You haven’t heard the last of this, Mr. Jones.”

 

It was an important pre-election special in a television studio in London.

“A question from Mr. Smith of Durham,” said the presenter.  Mr. Smith appeared on a big screen in front of the studio audience.

“Modern politicians have no sense of vision," he said.  "What’s the point of voting for any of you?  You’ve got no idea what you believe in.”

“Jeremy Hall, what’s your response to that?” asked the presenter.

“I think society is in a state of transition.  Political parties are in a state of flux.  We’re no longer in Europe so the UK Independence Party had to become something else.  I’m a capitalist but I’m caring.  I’m a socialist but I understand economics.”

“Yugo Jones,” said the presenter, “what’s your vision for politics?”

“I don’t believe in anything.  I’m not a socialist, I’m not a capitalist.  I just manage resources and run the economy.  That’s what people want me to do.  We need a new generation of politicians who can understand economic theories, who can predict stock market conditions and calculate interest rates.”

“That’s because you’re a robot,” interrupted Angela Storkey, leader of the Democrats.

“Don’t believe everything you read on news websites,” said Yugo Jones, smiling.

“Very interesting,” said the presenter.  “This is not something that has happened before.  How do you answer some of the accusations that are made on the news websites?  You never go shopping, you don’t eat out, you live a lonely life.”

“Can a robot break the second law of robotics?” asked Yugo Jones.  “Can a robot harm a human being?”

“A robot can not harm a human being,” said the presenter.  Yugo Jones picked up his glass of water and looked at Angela.

“Could a robot throw a glass of water into a human’s face?” he asked.

“No.  It would be a violation of the second law of robotics,” said the presenter. “A robot could never harm a human.”

“To prove that I am not a robot.”  Yugo Jones threw the glass of water right into Angela’s face.  The audience gave a huge round of applause.

 

Ten years later Mark Davis sat in the office of a psychiatric hospital talking to Dr. Gactil, the psychiatrist.

“I’m going to kill the Prime Minister,” he said.

“What kind of relationship do you have with the Prime Minister?”

“I think he’s great.  I voted for him.”  Dr. Gactil looked shocked.

“If you think he’s great and you voted for him, what could you possibly gain by killing him?”

“But the little people in the walls want me to kill the Prime Minister.”  Nurse Carter was sitting with Dr. Gactil by his desk.  She turned to speak to him.

“We can’t let him go home, Doctor.  He’s serious.  I think he means it.”

“Nurse Carter, Mr. Davis hasn’t committed any criminal offences.  We have no power to hold him here.”

“He told me he had enough ammo to blow the Prime Minister and the whole cabinet away.”

“He has a firearms licence.  He’s allowed to have the ammo.  He hasn’t done anything illegal.  He has always been very co-operative with his treatment.”

“I know, Doctor, but none of his treatment ever works and he still has these feelings of wanting to kill the Prime Minister.”

“We have no reason to detain him.  He must be discharged at once.”

 

Mark Davis was in a crowd of people who had come to see the Prime Minister as he drove down the high street to a meeting at the town’s City Hall.  Yugo Jones was in an open top sports car.  Mark Davis took a small pistol from his pocket.  As the Prime Minister went past, he fired one shot.  Yugo Jones fell.  A large, well built policeman wrestled the pistol from Mark’s hand before he could reload it.  Another policeman applied the handcuffs.  A police car arrived with an ambulance.  Mark Davis was marched into the police car.  A paramedic got out of the ambulance and carried some equipment to where Yugo Jones lay in the car.  He attached electrodes to the Prime Minister’s chest.

“No signs of life.  Flat line, flat line.  Wait a minute.”  The paramedic was now shocked to see a hole in the Prime Minister’s body which revealed not scattered human blood and flesh but broken metal.  “The guy’s a robot.”

 

Mike Mendelson sat in the police commissioner’s office.

“Why did you let that man shoot the Prime Minister?” asked Mike.  “The hospital tipped you off.  They were concerned about Mark Davis and they reported him to the police.”

“You think I did it on purpose,” said the police commissioner.

“You allowed it to happen on purpose.  There didn’t need to be a huge crowd watching the Prime Minister’s car.  You could have closed off the whole city centre.  Why was Yugo Jones in an open top sports car?  Why wasn’t he in a car with bullet proof windows?”

“Yugo Jones was a Type G45.  They’re expendable.  How long had Yugo Jones been Prime Minister?”

“About 10 years.”

“How long had he been leader of the opposition before that?”

“About 3 years.”

“So Yugo Jones and his circuits and software were 13 years old.  They were obsolete.  It was about time they were replaced.  That mad man with a gun gave us the excuse we needed.”

“How did Yugo Jones throw the cup of water in Angela Storkey’s face?” asked Mike.  “Doesn’t that contravene the second law of robotics?”

“I can tell you one time when that would be allowed.  If Angela Storkey was a robot and Yugo Jones could tell.  He does say very clearly on the video that a robot can not harm a human being, a robot could not throw a glass of water into a human’s face.  As if he knows Angela Storkey isn’t human.”

“Is there more than one robot politician in this country?” asked Mike.

“Perhaps there is, Mr. Mendleson, perhaps there are lots of robot politicians.  Perhaps they have taken over all of the senior political positions in this country.  I will show you out.”  The police commissioner got up from his chair and led Mike Mendleson to the door.  As he opened the door he shook hands with Mike.  The police commissioner’s hand came off.  “Good night, Mr. Mendelson.”

 

To read the other episodes of this story, and other works by Malcolm Lisle, click on Humorous Science Fiction at the bottom of the page.