NTPWE Chapter 9: In which Alona protests

In the future there will be robots and a hologram called Jacob who doesn't realise he is a hologram until he is falsely arrested. In prison he meets Alona, a sexbot who has broken her programming and fights for women's rights, and Neville, who is a bit we

Jacob’s dinner had vanished long ago. As Alona did all the talking, she had plenty left, but she didn’t seem to mind. Jacob wondered if she needed food at all. As an artificial life form, maybe if she didn’t, he didn’t either.

 

“Aren’t you going to eat?” he asked, pointing with his fork.

 

She looked down at her plate as if she had been unaware of its existence until now.

 

“Oh, no, it’s not great is it? I can do without. Talking to you is more enjoyable. Where was I?”

 

“So you don’t need food, or you just aren’t hungry?” Jacob pressed further. Seeing Alona’s head slip to the side he added. “Sorry. I’m just curious, since you aren’t human.”

 

She smiled again. “That’s okay. I don’t have to, but the materials can be useful.”

 

Jacob frowned. She referred to the food as if it was building material.

 

“How do you mean?”

 

“I can absorb the materials, and if I need to make myself more pleasing to a new owner, I can use them. Watch.”

 

Alona picked up her fork, scooped up a mound of the mush and carried it to her mouth. She sucked it clean. Jacob had never wanted to be a kitchen utensil so much in his life. She swallowed and then leaned forward, staring at Jacob with her amazing, dark eyes. As he watched, a little uncomfortably as he didn’t know what to expect, her eyes changed from darkest brown to purest crystal blue. She sat back in her chair.

 

“Wow. That’s... phenomenal. You can do that?”

 

Alona blinked and her eyes changed back. She smiled that affable smile again. “Yes, but I like them brown. Also, I can change the colour or length of my hair, even adjust my figure to some degree.” She ran her hands over parts of her body to illustrate.

 

Jacob’s fascination overcame his shyness. “I see. Certainly makes sense for.... what you are. Keeps the customers happy, but do you know how it works?”

 

“Nanobots, I think. Small robots. They are mentioned in my programming, but I don’t really need it any more. I’m my own person.”

 

Jacob leaned forward so he could whisper to her, even though this seemed to be the most exciting thing he could say: “Are you kidding? You could change your face and walk right out of here.”

 

Alona stared at him long enough for him to regret saying it. He had offended her. She probably had some inbuilt respect of the law.
Why else would she still be here?

 

“I could, couldn’t I?” she said, at once surprising and pleasing him. “But I wouldn’t now, Jacob, not now I know you are here. You’re my only friend, and you still want to hear my story, right?”

 

Jacob relaxed. He’d be lost again if someone took away this shining light. He would have to go back to his cell and figure out which brick was more interesting to look at for the rest of his existence - however long that would be. No, this seemed a superior pastime, and in that moment he knew that both of them would escape from this prison, together, one day.

 

“So, you had gone to the Education Centre,” he prompted.

 

Technology had come so far. Jacob had the mystery of his own existence to decipher. Seeing Alona’s abilities in action and hearing an explanation of what she was gave him hope that he would find his answers too.

 

“Yes. This was exactly the kind of place I was looking for. Somewhere I could learn about the world and how to fit into society,” Alona said.

 

“Sounds like a strange place to me. What happened there?”

 

“Well, I talked to the woman at the desk, Mrs. Grimble, I think her name was. She seemed keen to have a new member. She told me about the work she did: protests, lectures at universities, ‘Offensive Leaflet Distribution’. She looked old, but seemed full of determination, and just like I had hoped, she taught me how a woman should behave both in polite society and in the real world. Also, how to... beat men at their own games? And how to play them up – that I was good at! With my programming, I got top of the class. They even did a short course in self-defence. I think it was one of the most important periods of my life.”

 

“You were lucky to find it! I didn’t know places like that existed. But how did you end up here?”

 

“I was just getting to that. After a couple of weeks of training, Mrs. Grimble invited me on a protest march…”
 

* * *

Every student of the education centre gathered in the main hall, which used to be an old Masonic chamber, and one of the few buildings remaining that wasn’t mostly composed of glass.

 

“This is your chance to see us in action. We’re going to get those b******s’ attention the only way we know how!”

 

“By taking our clothes off?” Alona asked the course leader, innocence shining in her eyes and her smile.

 

Mrs. Grimble looked up from behind the podium. Alona’s course mates - mainly old ladies, divorcees and teenage mothers with nothing better to do - milled around her, putting the finishing touches to painted signs and banners. The grand hall buzzed with activity, and at the head of it,

 

Alona learned her final lesson from her tutor.

 

A smile crept across the old dear’s face. “I suppose that would work.” She chuckled and then coughed a bug out of her throat. “But no! We’re going to yell and make ruckus, lass. Men can’t stand women causing a ruckus!”

 

Mrs. Grimble picked up a sign and called for the others to do the same. Everyone stopped their painting and raised their banners with cheers of approval. Alona read them with keen interest. They included slogans like ‘PENIS SCHMENIS’ and ‘HOORAY FOR BOOBIES’.

 

She loved the energy, the freedom, and the incredible noise.

 

Everyone cheered as Mrs. Grimble waved her placard and marched to the doors at the far side of the hall. She tried to fling them open, but strained to even open them slowly and had to stop to catch her breath a few times. Once open, the protesters soon clogged the exit, eager to begin, but as Alona’s classmates stormed past her and into the street, knocking her left and right in their enthusiasm, a bad feeling struck her.

 

“This is a bit violent, isn’t it?”

 

Nobody heard her, so she shook it off. She wanted to enjoy her graduation day.

 

“We don’t just sit around reading Danielle Steele books and sipping tea,” the mob leader cried. “We have dreams and ambitions. I have a dream! If our small, government funded learning institute could make a small change, imagine what the youngsters could do to the world - with a little guidance, of course.”

 

The crowd cheered.

 

To the world?

 

Alona was tongue tied. Mrs. Grimble had always seemed eccentric, but suddenly she had changed.

 

“How old are you, deary?” the old woman said, still directing her attention at Alona.

 

“Twelve days,” she replied honestly.

 

“Don’t lie, deary, it’s not nice.”

 

“I’m not lying! I’m sure I’m stood up.” She looked down at the ground around her.

 

 Mrs. Grimble pulled her cardigan tightly around her. “You expect me to believe you don’t understand such a simple concept? In fact, the whole

 

basis of our government?!”

 

Alona could feel the exclamation marks building up. This mad lady probably had enough to build a new picket fence for a mansion.

 

“A lie! Is something!! That is not the truth!” her voice slumped at the end of the sentence.

 

“What is the truth?”

 

Alona gave her best smile. She removed her jacket too, and slung it over her shoulder. The act of exposing her breasts normally made humans more receptive. It triggered their arousal phase where, her programming told her, she could introduce the egg whisk and steaming tarmac without fear of reprisal. Yet something felt different. This human did not respond as expected. She continued as if nothing had changed. Was it because she wasn’t a male?

 

“Oh, read a dictionary, girl!” Mrs. Grimble shouted, and she threw at Alona such a book that she happened to have handy.

 

With such readiness, her hair in a bun, cardigan and thick rimmed glasses, which enlarged her eyes to the size of golf balls, she could have easily passed for a schoolteacher. Alona only knew this to be acceptable teacher’s attire from her list of misunderstandings associated with fulfilling school fantasies.

 

“Now we must go!” Mrs. Grimble marched out the door waving her sign and made her way to the front of the group. She led them into the distance roaring their theme song, which mentioned kitchen knives and genitalia rather closer together than most people would appreciate.
Not wishing to be abandoned, Alona followed at pace, flicking through the book given to her with such aggression.  She stopped at the page with the word ‘lie’. It came up with other words that Alona was not sure about: ‘falsehood’, ‘untruth’ and ‘fib’. It seemed the book they called Dictionary could not help her either. She would have to ask someone more helpful, and she hoped they did not have a penis-chopping fetish too. After all if there were no penises, Alona and others like her would be out of a job, and it was freedom to choose she wanted, not revenge. Revenge wasn’t lovely.

 

The mob accelerated away surprisingly quickly, but Alona, accustomed to extreme physical exertion, soon caught up with the maddening crowd.
They marched up Main Street, following the route marked out on Mrs. Grimble’s leaflets - seemingly unaware that the diagram looked like a pair of nippleless breasts - and towards all the protest hotspots, which included the Gentleman’s club, the abortion clinic and the Gentleman’s club with the teeny abortion clinic built into the back of it. However, none of the impregnators showed up so they moved swiftly on.
Shocked citizens cowered or ran in fear. Mag-lev cars jerked to a halt to avoid the mob. The old women acted more violently than anyone else. The teenage mothers didn’t seem bothered and mainly complained about having to walk so far and noisily wished that cigarettes still existed, or that their friend Charlie was still around. It seemed they all knew Charlie.

 

He must be a friendly fellow, Alona thought.

 

One unfortunate police officer, wandering his beat, tried to quell the rebellion and received a severe battering with umbrellas for his troubles. This act made the crowd fearless. They went on to flip over any cars that remained in their way, throw postboxes into windows (only to have them bounce harmlessly off the force fields which had replaced glass decades ago)  and some of the more nimble members tried to scale the walls of the enemy’s fortress. This ended up being nothing more than a painful raising of the legs as most of the assailants had hip problems.
Reeling and tottering from all the pushing near the back, Alona was swept along in the crowd’s enthusiasm.

 

Before long, a police squad and riot van appeared. The van’s water cannon launched its ammunition at the old women closest to the walls, knocking them to the ground in disgruntled lumps. Then it aimed the aquatic discharge at the main mass. Haggled maids flew across the street to be crushed against the walls by the pressure of the cannon. Meanwhile, the foot-soldiers used net cannons to subdue as many targets as possible.
All hell had broken loose, apparently, but Alona had no idea what hell was.

 

Scanning the chaos, she noticed news cameras hovering above the ravaged streets, transmitting pictures to studios worldwide from their small, oblong cases. It looked like a swarm of giant bees had migrated to the city. 

 

The mayhem continued for almost an hour before the mayor thought it worthy to call in the tank division. The plastic polymer front-loaded vehicles roared with a passion as they ground their way over the once peaceful hill and toward the most watched street corner.

 

The crowd rampaged with equal ferocity despite their dwindling numbers as the police slowly made progress bagging and spraying the women, but when the rumble of the tanks grew louder than the calls for greater varieties of dog food and hair nets, everyone paused. Alona froze as the metal hulks rolled into sight.

 

Mrs. Grimble released the traffic warden she had been beating over the head with her placard and stomped toward the mighty vehicles.

 

“You can shoot me, but you’ll only be proving my point,” she yelled and stood her ground.

 

“What is her point?” Alona heard an officer whisper to his comrade.

 

The lead tank rumbled. The crowd remained silent. Alona watched in a fascinated horror.

 

With a deafening boom, a solitary pellet smashed the concrete at the mob leader’s feet. The ensuing explosion, which some policeman assured the crowd was non-lethal, as had the designers when they presented them to the mayor live on television several months ago, launched the woman into the air, and she would have flown far if there were not a building in the way.

 

Crack!

 

The crowd gasped in unison. Some of the women broke down into tears. The battered body of Mrs. Grimble – may she rest in pieces – bounced off the wall like a deflated football and came to rest mere inches from Alona’s feet.

 

“Reload!” the squad Captain cried from atop the tank.

 

“You murderer!” someone shouted.

 

The Captain smirked. “She’s not dead. This tank is non-lethal. You all saw the presentation. Reload!”

 

The group dispersed as quickly as a bunch of decrepit old codgers was able. Alona could only stare at the body. It would have been unidentifiable if it were not for the book that fell out of the cardigan pocket. She bent down to take a closer look: Danielle Steele’s 1900th bestseller, The Importance of Doing Earnest.

 

“Hello? Mrs. Grimble?” Alona’s voice trembled.

 

She had never seen anything like it. She tried shaking her, which resulted in nothing but Mrs. Grimble's dentures falling to the pavement with a clank.

 

“Mrs. Grimble!”

 

Behind her, the police rounded up the slowest rioters and led them into vans. One such officer crept up to Alona.

 

“Come with me, miss,” he said, slowly stretching out his handcuffs.

 

Alona felt too much concern for her crazy, old mentor to notice the man. He had to pick her up and place the handcuffs on her unresisting wrists.
 

* * *

 

“... And they brought me here,” Alona finished.

 

“That was quite a story. Sometimes I wish my life was as exciting as that.”

 

Then Jacob remembered about his condition and hastily changed his mind. It had already upset his life beyond measure; never did he imagine he would end up in prison.

 

By this time the canteen had emptied except for themselves and a small hover-bot that busied itself collecting plates and cleaning tables with a built-in laser beam.

 

“We probably shouldn’t be here,” he muttered.

 

Before they could move, they heard the sound of the doors sliding open and the voice of one of the hulking robot guards: “Hey, Hologram, Missy, what are you two still doing here?”

Author's Note

Another :)