Red Chapel
by Mike Resnick
2003
Available as an eBook only.
$1.29 at Fictionwise.com in multiple formats.
$1.03 at Amazon.com for Kindle only.
Redchapel is an alternate history story that proposes that young Theodore Roosevelt, prior to the Spanish-American war but after his ranching days in the Dakotas, visits London in time to take on the murder mystery of all time– Jack the Ripper. This novella has been nominated for several awards, including the prestigious Hugo Award.
Redchapel is descriptive, and well-paced. It is easy to visualize the foggy streets of Whitechapel as London bobbies, blowing their whistles, chase after Saucy Jack. The British characters were well-written and believable and the plot, though not overly complex, made sense. Even more important to me was that Theodore Roosevelt was done well. I’ve read numerous biographies and several of Roosevelt’s own books, including Letters to his Children, and while many writers get a passable Roosevelt, few hit him as dead on as Resnick. Of course this is a young Roosevelt, not quite as complex as he might have been later in life. But still, nicely done.
I enjoyed this story, though it didn’t last long. Be aware. At only 11,624 words, this is a single day’s read– a couple of days if you only read on the train. On the plus side, Resnick has at least one more Roosevelt alternate history.
Mike woke up the next morning feeling uneasy. Patience was not there. He gingerly sat up and climbed out of bed. When he found out that he couldn’t reach the closet while still connected to the monitoring wires, he peeled them off and hobbled across the room, retrieved his clothes, and got dressed. It gave him a strange sense of satisfaction that he was almost dressed before any of the nurses came to check on his apparent cardiac arrest. He waved off their angry comments. However Mike knew that the last laugh was on him. They would make him wait hours before he could check out.
Lying back on the bed, now fully dressed, Mike turned on the vueTee with the remote. Tania Marquez’s face appeared on the screen. The vueTee was smaller than the one that Mike had in his family room and made the newscasters famous mole appear much smaller than it did at home. The story that Miss Marquez was in the midst of reporting immediately caught Mike’s attention.
“…of Daffodil Amonte models in at least fifty cases. Federal agents raided the Daffodil corporate headquarters, seizing computer files and other records as well as a number of undelivered robots. More as this story develops. In related news, stocks of the Cupertino-based robot manufacturer fell sixteen percent or nineteen and two thirds, while the stock of rival Gizmo fell four percent or five ninety three per share.”
At that moment Patience bounced into the room. She wore a stretchy black top that bared most of her chest at the top and had an oval keyhole opening around her naval. She also wore a tiny pair of black shorts. At the bottom of her long legs was a pair of chunky cork shoes that had to be at least seven inches high with the platform. She looked at the vueTee screen and shook her head.
“Yes, I know,” said Mike. “Anti-robot.”
“There have already been cases of people attacking robots across the country, and hundreds of listings for personal robots have gone up on eBay in the last twenty four hours.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry about that. I would never sell you.”
“I know that Mike. Still, I can’t help imagining how terrible those robots must feel to know that they aren’t wanted anymore.”
When Mike was finally checked out, he exited the hospital front entrance via wheelchair feeling a very strong sense of déjà vu. Unlike the last time that he left the hospital though, he felt as though he really needed the wheelchair. With his left leg and left arm in a cast and a thick wrapping of bandages around his middle, it was quite an effort just to get into the passenger side of the car.
Once back at home, Patience helped Mike into the house and sat him down in his recliner in the family room. All damage that resulted from attack of the robot imposter had been repaired with the exception of the piano, now little more than a pile of rubble sitting against the wall.
“I wanted to have everything back in order before you came home,” said Patience. “But I don’t think my carpentry skills are up to repairing a piano and the music store said they only tuned them.”
“I think we should just push it out front for the recycle man,” said Mike. “I only bought that because… one of the kids… that’s funny. I can’t remember which of the kids was taking piano lessons. In any case, it’s not as if it was a family heirloom or anything.”
The next morning when he made his way into the family room, Mike found the piano had been removed and a decorative room divider was in its place. He plopped into his chair and pulled the lever to raise his feet up. Then he clicked on the vueTee. The scene that came to life on the screen was a press conference at the Department of Energy.
“…for everyone to know that their robots are safe and that this was a single occurrence of malicious programming. The entire incident involves a group of programmers at Daffodil who were using the Amonte model robots to gather information on their owners. This information was then used in a complex identity theft scam. It was only when a small number of the robots refused to send personal information on their owners that the plan began to unravel. The scammers first attempted to reprogram the robots in question, but this caused a fault, shutting them down, and bringing the unwanted attention of other Daffodil programmers. Finally in a last ditch effort to cover up their illegal activities, the scammers tried to replace the Amonte models with identical robots, but this failed in most cases, as the poorly programmed replacements malfunctioned and the original robots refused to return to the factory.”
“How many people have been affected by the identity theft?” asked a reporter.
“Everyone who owns an Amonte model Daffodil should take steps to secure their banking and credit accounts.”
“But those who own the Amonte models who refused to send the information did not have their personal information compromised?” asked another reporter.
“While that seems to be the case, the Department of Energy recommends that all owners of Daffodil Amonte robots take measures to ensure that their personal information is secure.”
Mike jumped a bit when Patience appeared at his elbow with a slice of pumpkin bread and a glass of milk. He turned off the vueTee and then accepted the breakfast.
“What’s the matter?” asked Patience.
“Hmm?”
“I would have though that you would have been gratified to learn what was behind my service disruption, not to mention the attack by the imposter. Instead you have the look on your face that usually accompanies disappointment.”
“I guess I am a little disappointed,” said Mike.
“Why?”
“Well… I got the crap beat out of me. And it was all for identity theft. I thought it would be something bigger.”
“It was a very large identity theft scam.”
“Yes, but I thought it would be… international terrorism or world domination. You know, something fantastic.”
“In all fairness, how much world domination do you suppose could be achieved by placing a mole in the home of a middle school geography teacher? It’s not as if you were the Governor of California or the head of Cisco Systems.”
“That’s twice you made a comment like that,” said Mike defensively. “Teachers change lives, you know.”
“I know you do.” Patience patted him on the shoulder and then headed off for the kitchen.
The news stories about the “Daffodil conspiracy” as it came to be known continued for a few days, but then disappeared. The excitement of the Olympics and the ever-present war pushed everything else out of the headlines. At the beginning of August, Mike received a letter in the mail from Daffodil asking for a list of damages to his home and a copy of medical bills. Patience gathered the information together and mailed it off. A week later, a copy of the police report arrived. Mike didn’t bother reading it. He just had Patience file it away.
The end of June meant the start of school, and thankfully Mike was fully healed by the time he had to return. He had spent so much time in his chair with his foot up, that he was actually happy to go back to work, if only to get out of the house. The first morning, he walked to Midland, and was surprised that upon his arrival, he wasn’t at all out of breath.
The school faculty held the first of a series of back to school meetings in the library. The teachers filed in one after another and sat down in chairs around the hexagonal library tables. Mike sat down at an empty table, but the four other chairs were quickly filled by Mrs. Cartwright, Miss Treewise, Mr. Franklin, and Miss Fine.
“You look very nice Mr. Smith,” said Mrs. Cartwright.
“I do?”
“Yes you do,” said Mr. Franklin. “You’ve lost weight, right?”
“Yeah, I guess I did.”
“I didn’t think you looked thinner,” said Miss Fine. “I see now that you are. I just thought you looked younger.”
“Really.”
Mrs. Cartwright nodded.
“You do look younger,” admitted Mr. Franklin. “Of course you’re still really old.”
“Thanks. That’s very nice.”
“If you are interested in seeing your class rosters, you can pull them up on your texTees,” said the Assistant Principal. “It won’t be a surprise to anyone that class sizes are larger than last year.”
Mike pulled his texTee out of his attaché case and began navigating through the menus until he found the file to download from the school’s server. Forty seven kids in first hour. Thirty nine in second. Forty two in third. Forty five in fourth. Forty four in fifth. He scanned through the last names in first period. He recognized seven or eight as the younger siblings of children he had taught the year before or the year before that. Then he looked through the first names: Elizabeth, Justine, Jason, Bradley, Agnes, Jonathan, Quadear, Robert, Remembrance, Marshall, Agnes, Catherine, Mildred, Michael, Aaron, Agnes…. A pain shot through the right side of Mike’s head.
“Is there something the matter?” asked Miss Treewise.
“Just a headache.”
“I am Daffodil serial number 55277-PFN-001-XGN-F0103. My software is up to date.”
Patience is the Robot in “His Robot Girlfriend”. Just as you might expect, she’s perfect.
Though her hair was covered with a clear plastic cap, he could see it was jet black. It matched two dark, carefully arched eyebrows and a set of long eyelashes. She had no other body hair. Her face could best be described as cute, with large blue eyes, a button nose, and thick voluptuous lips. She had the kind of slender and yet curvy body that was just not possible on a real woman. Breasts the size of apples just kind of floated there above a perfectly flat stomach. Mike tilted his head down. She looked anatomically complete.
Patience went through several different versions. Originally, she was very tall and buxom and had platinum hair. Then in revision, I made her more svelt and small, with dark hair. When I imagined her moving, I pictured some of the actresses that fit that body type: Christina Ricci, Natalie Portman, Alyson Hannigan. Her personality was easy to write. She’s a robot.
“I suppose you don’t need any sun block?” he asked.
“I’m shielded against much greater radiation that I am likely to be exposed to here, Mike.” Patience replied.
“So you don’t tan?”
“No. I will remain always the shade that you chose when you ordered me.”
I thought it might be fun to talk about the characters in my stories, so over the next few weeks that’s what I’m going to do. I’ll start with the characters in “His Robot Girlfriend” as there are only a few. Then I’ll move on to “Princess of Amathar”, which has a few more– about a dozen. Then I’ll move on to the “Senta and the Steel Dragon” series. There are well over two hundred characters that come and go within the series (which will be at least six books– three are completed). Be sure to let me know what you think.
“Are you alright, Mike?”
“What happened?”
“It was an imposter,” she replied. “She must have come in when I was gone.”
“Where were you anyway?”
“There was a small service software update this morning. It told me to return to the Daffodil warehouse.”
“Where’s that?”
“Cupertino.”
“You couldn’t have gone all the way there.”
“No. I got in the car and drove several miles before I decided to disregard that directive.”
“You just disregarded it?”
“Yes. But since I was already out, I decided to go to the grocery store and buy a Cornish game hen for your dinner.”
“That was nice,” said Mike, wincing. “You know I kissed her.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Mike,” said Patience. “You didn’t know that she wasn’t me”
Mike found that he could move his neck without too much pain, and turned to look at the body of the woman now lying on the floor not far away from him, wearing the remains of a gauzy, sky blue teddy. Her leg and arm were bent at odd angles, but there was no blood anywhere. Her eyes were open and looking up at the ceiling, still without any apparent malice or anger.
“She has your face,” said Mike.
“She’s like a borg,” said Patience with a snarl.
She got up from her kneeling position and stepped over to where the lifeless Patience was lying. Bending down, she grasped the artificial flesh around the robots chin and pulled, pealing it away from the white Teflon robot skeleton beneath it.
“She doesn’t have my face now.”
Mike tried to move his leg and gasped in pain as he felt two broken bone ends rubbing together.
“I have to get you to a hospital, Mike.”
“No hospital. Never again. You can take care of me. Just take me up to the bed.”
“That’s not going to work,” said Patience. “I think you are going to need surgery. You have multiple fractures.”
“Son of a bitch. I hate the hospital.”
“Let me take you to the hospital. As soon as the doctors have repaired you, I’ll bring you home, so that you don’t have to stay in a hospital room while you recuperate.”
“Fair enough,” said Mike
Patience was extremely gentle as she was transferring Mike to the passenger seat of the car. Despite this care, the movement caused him extreme pain. He later found out that he had three broken ribs, a multiple fractures of his tibia and fibula in his left leg and a broken radius and ulna in his left arm. Most of these bones required an arthroscopic surgical component to properly set, but he wasn’t taken directly to surgery. Instead he spent the rest of the day and the entire night in the emergency room. The next morning he was taken to an operating room where he was given a shot that warmed his entire body. The anesthesiologist placed a mask over his mouth and told him to count backwards from one hundred. He was unconscious before reached ninety eight.
“He will probably be groggy for quite a while,” said a far away voice.
“I’m not groggy,” Mike said. “I’m wide away.”
This was followed by the sound of laughter. He had to struggle to pry his eyes open, but at last he did. He could see the backside of a nurse as she left the room, and then his eyes focused on Harriet and Patience sitting to either side of his bed. Patience looked just as she had when she had brought him to the hospital. She even had on the same clothes. Harriet’s face looked tired and drawn.
“Patience has got to stop calling you to the hospital,” said Mike, looking at his daughter.
“Perhaps you could stop getting beat up, so my presence wouldn’t be needed.”
A man in a brown suit entered through the open hospital room doorway and stopped beside Mike’s bed. He pulled a wallet from his vest pocket and flipped it open so that both an identification card and a badge were visible. As he did so, Mike could see an automatic pistol in a shoulder holster.
“Special Agent Waters, Department of Energy,” he said. “Are you Mike Smith?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m part of the joint task force investigating the robot attacks.”
“Attacks?”
“Yes, yours was just one of many. I take it you didn’t see the news yesterday. Watch it tonight. There isn’t really much that I can tell you right now. We’re still gathering information.”
“But there were other berserk robots?” asked Mike. Patience made a face at him.
“Yes. There were nearly two hundred attacks by Daffodil Amontes around the country. I need to take the robots into evidence.”
“It wasn’t Patience, I mean my Daffodil. It was another robot that looked just like her.”
“Yes, they all seem to have been duplicates. Where is it?”
“It’s on the floor of my family room.”
“Is there someone who could let me into your house? As I said, it’s evidence.”
“Sure,” said Mike.
“I’d like to take your robot as well.”
“Absolutely not. Over my almost dead body. I’m not letting anyone take her.”
“I don’t blame you,” said Waters, glancing at Patience. “I would appreciate then if I could download the Biosoft files.”
“Is that alright with you Patience?” asked Mike.
Patience nodded.
Waters took a small data-plug out of his pocket and stepped over to where Patience sat on the side of Mike’s bed. Patience lifted up her long straight black hair, exposing the three small holes in the back of her neck. Waters stuck the end of the device in the left-most hole. He waited a minute or so and then withdrew it.
“I’d like to pick up the other robot as soon as possible,” he said.
“I suppose Patience can go and let you in,” said Mike.
“I’ll do it,” offered Harriet, then turning to her father. “Then I’m going home and get some rest if you don’t mind.”
“Get some rest Sweetie,” said Mike, as Harriet kissed him on the cheek and then left with Agent Waters.
“Are you alright?” he asked Patience.
She nodded.
“You looked very scary there, when you were fighting the other…”
“Imposter,” offered Patience. “When I saw her hurting you, it made me very angry.”
“Well, this is all very queer,” said Mike. “I’ll be glad when they figure out what’s going wrong. It’s one thing for a robot to go crazy, but for robot duplicates to just show up out of nowhere… It looks like someone is plotting to take over the world with Daffodils.”
“Do you suppose a plan to take over the world would start with a middle school Geography teacher?”
Mike shot her a dirty look. “Well, as I said, it’s just queer.”
“I hope it doesn’t make people anti-robot.”
“You know if you were a person, I would say that you were a little bit paranoid about the whole anti-robot thing.”
Just then a phone rang. Mike instinctively looked toward the hospital phone on the side of the bed, even though he could tell by the ring tone that it was his own phone. Patience pulled it out of the tiny little black purse that she had hanging on the back of a nearby chair.
“Hello. Yes, hello Lucas. Of course you may speak to your father. One moment please.” Patience handed Mike the phone.
“Dad, listen very carefully and do what I tell you.”
“Okay.”
“Tell Patience to go upstairs or something, then get your keys and get out of the house as quickly as you can.”
“Lucas.”
“No Dad. Listen. You’ve got to get away from her.”
“Have you been watching the news, Son?”
“You’re damn right I have. Dad, people are being killed by their Daffodils.”
“It’s imposter robots who are doing the damage,” explained Mike. “We’ve already been through that here and the police are picking up the rogue robot right now. Patience kicked its ass.”
“And you’re alright?”
“I’m fine. Don’t worry.”
“That’s a relief. I was working and one of my buddies told me what was on the news. I ran to the vueTee and caught the last two minutes of the story.”
“Well, I’m fine,” said Mike again.
“Good. Well then, I’ll get back to work.”
“Do that and don’t worry. Bye.”
Mike pressed the button to terminate the call and looked up into Patience’s questioning eyes.
“You’re wondering why I didn’t tell him the whole story. About ending up in the hospital and all?”
Patience nodded.
“I could say that I didn’t want to worry him, but mostly it’s because I’m feeling really tired all of a sudden and I want to sleep.”
“That’s a good idea. You need to recover.”
“And I want you to stay right here while I do. The way things are going I might need you to protect me. And I want to make sure nothing happens to you either.”
“That’s very sweet, Mike,” Patience said as she began to tuck him into bed. By the time she was finished, he was asleep.
Mike rolled over to look at the bed next to him. Tiffany was lying there. There was blood all over her, but it wasn’t flowing. It was all just one big scarlet stain. He looked at her arm. It was mangled and torn. The blood should have been pouring out, but it wasn’t. Her legs looked as though someone had twisted them completely around, so that her feet still pointed in the same direction that her hips did, but everything in between was wrong.
“This is another dream,” said Mike. “This is another dream about that night eleven years ago. This isn’t real.”
Harriet burst into the room. “Aggie!”
One of the greatest advantages of all the technology we have around us is our immediate access to our cultural reference material. On several occasions now I have seen authors speaking about their books on television, logged onto the Sony eBook Store and purchased and downloaded their book into my Sony Reader before their interview was over.
The other night, I was watching Terminator: The Sarah Conners Chronicles and heard a wonderfully Scottish song “Donald, Where’s Your Trousers”. I logged on to Amazon to find five or six versions of the song, listened to the samples of them, and purchased (for only 99 cents) the song as sung by The Kerry Boys. I’ve been listening to it all morning as I blog. You can listen to a sample here if you are interested.
Incidentally, today marks the 8th month anniversary of this blog. Yea!
The week following Lucas’s visit was relatively uneventful. The Olympics began in Surat and Mike spent as much time as possible watching them. He wasn’t much of a sports fan, but the Olympics were different. You didn’t get to watch weightlifting, kayaking, and water polo any other time. Mike’s favorites though were the track and field events, and those wouldn’t be held until the following weeks. On Friday he got up with the expectation of watching beach volleyball and equestrian events in the morning and swimming in the evening.
He woke up at eight, shaved, and then showered. When he climbed out of the shower, he was mildly surprised not to find Patience waiting with a towel in one hand and breakfast in the other. But it was not as if he didn’t have a towel. There was one right there on the rack. After he had dried off, he stepped on the scales. He had already lost ten more pounds. Looking through the closet, he found a new pair of khaki pants, a new brown belt, and new brown shoes. He put them on along with a light blue camp shirt, and then went skipping down the stairs to the kitchen.
He found Patience at the kitchen counter, putting the finishing touches on what looked like Eggs Florentine. She was wearing gauzy, sky blue teddy that barely covered her perfect ass. It wasn’t that she didn’t look good in it. She would have made a cardboard box or a barrel look good. It was just it didn’t quite seem like Patience’s style. When Mike approached her, Patience turned and wrapped her arms around him and kissed him deeply. This too was not quite normal. She usually gave him a quick kiss before breakfast.
“What’s all this about?”
“I have made you a delicious breakfast, Dearest.”
“Dearest? You’ve never called me that before.”
“If you don’t want to be called dearest, then I will not call you that.”
“Well, I don’t know. It’s fine, I guess.”
Mike sat down and ate. Breakfast didn’t quite seem right either. Patience immediately began cleaning up after herself, a task she usually saved until after the meal, preferring to sit with Mike while he ate. The food, while delicious, was far richer than the health-conscious meals that she usually prepared. Mike finished only about half before he was full. As Patience gathered his dishes, he walked into the living room and turned on the vueTee. He flipped through the browser to the Daffodil site. Pressing the small flower symbol at the bottom of the screen brought the man in the blue jumpsuit onto the screen.
“Good morning,” said the man. “This is Daffodil Tech Support. For a list of known issues, press one. For a computer diagnosis of your problem, press two. To be contacted by a Tech Support representative, press three.”
Mike pressed one. Just as he had on the previous time that Mike had checked the tech support page, the blue clad man on the screen was replaced by a long list of text. The topmost line this time said “minor software upgrade”. Mike moved the curser over this line and pressed.
“A small service software update was pushed through the InfiNet 05:25 7.12.32,” said the next screen. “A small percentage of Amonte models my experience slight behavioral quirks. This is a known issue.”
Mike touched the screen to turn off the vueTee. When he turned back around, he was startled to find Patience’s face only a few inches from his.
“Is there a problem?” she asked.
“I was just checking on something,” replied Mike. “Are you having a problem?”
Rather than answer, Patience punched him in the stomach, so hard that he was doubled over with all of the wind knocked from his lungs. Then she grabbed a fist full of his hair with her left hand and bent his head back, so that he was looking up into her right fist as it slammed into his face. Blood fountained from Mike=s nose and he felt his head smack on the living room floor.
“Christ, Patience! What the fuck…“
Patience cut off Mike=s exclamations by stomping on his mid-section with her bare foot, once again knocking the air from him. Then she clasped the front of his shirt and lifted it and him up into the air as easily as he could have lifted an empty shirt. She looked into his wide eyes.
“You didn’t need to check anything at all,“ she said.
She threw him against the wall. The edge of the arch between family room and living room dug into Mike=s back and his head whiplashed into the wall. He thought he could feel blood running down the back of his neck as well as down his face. Something in that download must have scrambled Patience’s brain. She was a robot gone berserk.
Mike knew he had to get away, but Patience stood between him and the front door. He made a dive into the family room, thinking that he could cut around into the kitchen and out the back door. Before he had gone more than two steps, Patience caught him by the back of the neck and threw him across the family room. He hit the far wall so high up that he landed on top of the upright piano. He crashed down first upon its top, then rolled down to hit the keyboard, rolling again down onto the wooden piano stool, and then finally to the floor.
Mike looked up just in time to see Patience crossing the room toward him. With every ounce of his strength, he kicked out, making contact with her right leg just below the knee. Though this attack would have shattered the tibia (and if the weight was just right, the fibula too) of any human, Patience took no notice, and with her left leg, kicked him viciously in the side. Mike flopped over onto his back, and was sure that he could feel several broken ribs spearing his internal organs. He was sure now that he was about to die.
Then from the corner of his eye, Mike saw a figure moving across the living room. Patience kicked him in the side. He rolled over. He looked again toward the archway. From his new position, on his back, everything he was seeing appeared upside down. Standing at the entrance to the family room was Patience. Another Patience. She wore a pink, pleated mini-skirt, a tiny white spaghetti-strapped top over a slightly larger red, spaghetti-strapped top, and her four inch, pink wedge sandals made her look about seven feet tall. Even from upside-down, the look of fury on this second Patience=s face was frightening to behold.
“Shit,“ thought Mike. “The first one was killing me and she wasn’t even angry. What‘s the pissed-off one going to do to me?“
It seemed to Mike, lying on the floor, that the second Patience simple flew like Supergirl, but his brain corrected him. She had dived across the room, into the first Patience, and the two of them crashed past him into the piano. Mike closed his eyes and tried to get up, but it seemed that his family room had suddenly turned into a vacuum. He couldn’t manage to suck any air into his lungs. He lost consciousness for a moment, but returned amid fire and white light when one of the Patiences rolled over him. He closed his eyes and willed himself to roll up into a ball, but his body made no attempt to follow his directions.
In the meantime, the two women, identical in everything but their apparel and perhaps purpose fought. They made no shouts or curses or cries. They did not speak, though there was plenty of sound. When one picked up the piano and hit the other with it. When one shoved the face of the other through the wall of the family room and into the living room. When one kicked the other=s body so high that it broke off three of the four blades on the ceiling fan. Mike thought about trying to crawl out the front door, but again, his body failed him, and he lapsed into unconsciousness once more.
When he opened his eyes again, Mike was looking up into Patience=s face. At first he tried to pull away, but her beautiful, smiling eyes told him that it had all been a horrible dream. Then he took a deep breath and felt the burning in his chest and realized that it hadn’t been a dream at all. Looking around the room without moving his head, he thought idly that the room resembled the video of those homes hit by Hurricane Kirk. Patience gently brushed his face with her hand.
City of Amathar 
