The Robot Caretaker
A Buddybot Story
(Art by @droach - Commission - Socials)
The old swivel chair squeaked on its hinges, as the buddybot reached with its long arm, dabbed the quill into the inkwell.
Over the decades, the packages of ink had been shipped via drone, from a small shop located within Cleveland’s university district. The buddybot would wait in the barley field, staring up at the sky, and always when the drone released the package, the buddybot caught it.
Pulling back its arm, the buddybot glanced from the encrypted journal to the cipher and began to write on a fresh page of parchment.
“After breakfast, we spent the day in the library. Amma Victor scolded Lizbeth for her humming, but she can’t help herself, always hums when she reads. I found a thousand year old hymn from a man named Luther. ‘Death has become my sleep.’ Isn’t that lovely?”
Light from the full moon flooded through the window, casting a silver hue upon the desk, inkwell, and stacks of paper, everything in the room. A bundle of black wire stretched down from the ceiling into a dormant monitor, while bookshelves, lining the room’s stone walls, overflowed with trinkets, gadgets, more books than they could hold.
Nestled in the back corner of the room, Dr. Badoo slept restlessly, feverish on a cot. In spite of his condition, he had forbidden the buddybot from carrying him to his bedroom, much as he wanted to be present when the buddybot finished. Nearing one hundred and nineteen years of age, the old man wouldn’t live much longer.
“Lizbeth made quite a discovery herself. A love letter, signed Q, that must not have gone well for there it was, forgotten, left behind in an old treatise on robotics of all things. Maybe the intended recipient was disinterested, or maybe Q simply chose the wrong book.”
Again, the buddybot reached out, dabbed the quill into the inkwell. Dr. Badoo hailed from corporate nobility, PG&J blood, and had shown much promise in his youth. Having received his doctorate with honors, his father gifted him not only a position within PG&J’s great laboratory, but a buddybot as well. Young Dr. Badoo had other plans, however, soon left Cleveland for the countryside, taking the buddybot and his new bride with him.
Within the year, the bride had left, but then there showed up a young Amma from Treetop. Her name was Luz, and she had walked some six hundred miles north, all the way from the Holy City. As a girl, she found a treasure, buried beneath a tree, a journal of Amma Ruth, the blessed poet. All of Amma Ruth’s many journals were encrypted, but unlike the others, no one within Treetop had been able to decipher the one Luz dug up from the ground. “I had a dream,” she’d said to Dr. Baddoo. “And it led me here.”
“We returned to the library to inspect the letter. Lizbeth believes it’s recently written. I do not, and I know paper better than she does. Still, she’s insisting we leave it alone, that maybe one day it will find itself in the right hands.”
Dr. Badoo took the job, and a year turned into a decade, into a half century, longer, and Luz remained, not because he’d yet finished, but for the sake of love. She was buried now within the magnolia grove, beneath the trees that bloomed not only white but sometimes purple, her favorite color, what had been a birthday gift from husband to wife.
Three days back, the buddybot had pushed along Dr. Baboo in his floating medical chair, through the grounds, garden, into the grove. Behind them, the rectangular block of smooth stone that was Dr. Badoo’s home stretched out from the middle of a grassy hill, seemed to hang unsupported above the yard. “Never should’ve changed the color,” the old man said of the trees. “She loved them as they were.”
“We ate dinner in the library tonight. Old Abba Silvain is much more the romantic than I assumed. He even joined us, combing through the registrar. I believe Q to be a moniker, nothing to do with an actual name, but who cares, I’m having fun.”
Treetop, one of the Holy City’s seven religious communities, had written much about Amma Ruth, some of which had even made it to the great city state of Cleveland. She was purported to have green eyes, a photographic memory, and penchant for cats. Dr. Badoo acquired everything he could get his hands on, which was quite a lot, considering the fortune at his disposal. He’d even traveled into No-Man’s land to purchase one such book from a caravanner that, unfortunately, turned out to be a fake.
The blessed poet was fourteen when she started writing the journal Luz found, hence why Treetop’s scribes were unable to decipher it, for Amma Ruth had yet to develop the standard encryption she’d use the rest of her life. Sometimes every week, other times every day, the teenage girl altered the formula, all of which she’d done in her head. Only recently had the buddybot learned the ins and outs, having taken over for Dr. Badoo on account of the old man’s failing health.
“ We approached Abba Quincy today but had no luck. There are now only four leads left on Abba Silvain’s list. I’ve begun writing a sonnet, not in commemoration of our search but friendship. Of course, I’m including as many Q words as possible…”
The buddybot rose from the squeaky chair, crossed the large room in two strides, so long were its legs. First, it checked Dr. Badoo’s pulse, then replaced the ice pack on his forehead with another, before fixing the old man’s shrugged aside blanket. Beside the cot, another monitor, connected to another bundle of wires, projected a thin blue line, what was Dr. Badoo’s troubled heartbeat.
Returning to the desk, the buddybot listened, as an unseen owl hooted away, as, below, the wind grasped hold of the trimmed hedges and pruned branches of the home’s front yard. Over the years, the buddybot had assumed many roles for Dr. Baddoo, from tailor and cook, to ping pong partner and nurse, but, most of all, landscaper, wild and untamed as the property had been when they arrived.
“Lizbeth has taken our failure hard. The sonnet didn’t cheer her up at all. Abba Silvain is rather disappointed as well. Selah, as I say. I ended up bringing home both the book and letter. For some reason, it felt wrong, leaving the book behind.”
“Alan?” Dr. Badoo called out softly.
The buddybot turned in the chair. “Sir?”
“Progress?”
“Nearly finished.”
Dr. Badoo kept silent.
“You should sleep,” the buddybot said.
“I had a dream of Luz,” the old man replied. “We were…”
The old man’s voice trailed off. The owl hooted away.
“Sir?” the buddybot asked.
Dr. Badoo did not reply, had already fallen back to sleep.
“Tomorrow, I’ll be turning sixteen. I’ve decided that whatever the Tree says, I’m going to become a poet. I don’t know why I’m not nervous. It’s late. I’ve been reading the book. It’s more theological than scientific, quite obscure…just how I like it.”
The old man had asked the buddybot to bury him beside Luz, that once buried, to retrace his beloved’s steps, return the translated journal to Treetop. That the Holy City forbade microSony technology within its walls, the buddybot was not worried about. It would do what was asked of it, complete its task, or fail trying to.
Wouldn’t be long now. The home’s OS gave Dr. Badoo less than a three percent chance of surviving the night. The buddybot hoped he’d last to morning, hoped the old man eyes would witness at least one more sunrise.
“There was a passage in the book that quoted Ezekiel. I sense I’m to end this journal with it. ‘When the creatures rose from the earth, the wheels rose alongside them, for the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels.’ Isn’t that lovely?”
Ruth Abebe - September 6th, 2579
The buddybot’s wide ovular eyes stared long at the journal’s last page, the quote and signature, before glancing up through the window. Down in the yard, an opossum wandered through the grass, over a small stone wall, into the grove. Beyond the grove, there were only stars, the Moon in all its glory.
The buddybot stood, walked over to the cot, and squatted down beside Dr. Badoo. Taking hold of the old man’s hand, it waited on one knee, waited some more. The hoot owl, calling in the distance, grew silent, and then an hour passed, another, and then Dr. Badoo’s eyes blinked open.
“Alan?” he said.
“Sir, you’ve finished,” the buddybot replied.
The old man smiled weakly. “Thank you,” he said, just as dawn, first sunlight appeared in the sky, and his eyes closed once more.