Chapter 6

Harvey Turlingdown smiled as he sipped at a cup of coffee in a small farmhouse in Indiana. He reveled in the simple lifestyle with which he had become quite comfortable and was currently, as had become his custom during breakfast, sitting in his blue bathrobe thinking through the rest of the day. First he would milk the cows and then, perhaps, go and check that the grain was being harvested properly by the J11 unit. The machine, which had been working fine for the past thirty years, had recently taken to collecting stones in the field rather than grain. This aggravated Harvey Turlingdown, but only to the point of an extended sigh. It would not put a dent in his day. In fact, it mattered very little what Harvey would do that day and that is exactly how he liked it, very little responsibility on a sunny afternoon.
A record hissed in the background, spitting out fragments of a lilting guitar melody. Harvey leaned back in his chair, bobbing his head in time with trotting melody, when he noticed a red light pulsing next to the refrigerator. Harvey’s muscles seized and he tipped backwards in his chair, dropping his coffee cup which promptly shattered on the floor. He jumped up in a panic and, after choosing his steps through the coffee puddle, threw open the cabinet under the sink. He grabbed at the black leather briefcase propped there on its side and ran furiously out of the house.

* ~~ *

The J11 unit rolled slowly out of the barn into the mid-day sun.
“It is bright,” it quietly computed to itself.
The J11 unit stood approximately six feet tall with the same basic foundations as a human. Its small round head sat upon a large silver casing supported by a single rod which closely resembled a spine, minus the ridges and nerves. This mock-spinal column sat upon a square silver case supported by two very thin legs on wheels. The J11’s arms resembled its legs as skinny extensions, but in place of wheels the machine was provided with three two-inch nubs with which to grasp objects. These small nubs were the product of a poor design on the part of the creator of the J11, a poor decision by the executive committee in charge of the production line, and a poor quality check by the production staff in charge of testing the mechanism. The J11 had still not found much use for the appendages.
The J11 rolled out of the barn and into the yard where the harvester lay in the high grass. The wind whipped through the space between the house and the barn, waving the green grass stalks in the wind. As the J11 bent over to attach the grain harvester to its back a great crash erupted from the farmhouse. The J11 turned in time to see the man that lived there run out of the yard and down the dirt road in a bathrobe clutching a briefcase.
“Interesting,” it computed, “I didn’t know he wore a blue bathrobe.”
The J11 turned back to its chores taking care to pick up the shiny pebble lying next to the harvester.