Parcel for You - Part 47

 

Both women gasped at the same time. There was something shocking and terrifying about seeing him standing there silently, having got up all by himself in the middle of the night. He really wasn’t supposed to do that, part of passing health and safety laws was the guarantee that cybermates could be locked down securely. 

 

It reminded Vanessa of the first time Annie had got up from her bed all by herself, aged three and come downstairs silently like a ghost only to hover in the kitchen as her mother washed the dishes.

 

‘Spencer, is everything okay?’ said Vanessa.

 

Spencer remained still, he rubbed the back of his head and stared around the room as if confused.

 

‘Come and sit down, Spencer,’ Pat said, pulling one of the kitchen chairs out for him, ‘you look as if you’ve had a bad dream. We were just making trifle.’

 

‘Trifle?’

 

‘Not really Spencer. Pat wanted to make a trifle but it’s not something you do in the early hours of the morning unless you’ve completely lost your mind…but we could have some toast.’

 

Spencer dropped into the chair and shook his head slowly. ‘I’ve been disturbed,’ he said.

 

‘What do you mean?’

 

‘I received an alert from my makers and was forced out of my shutdown state.’

 

Vanessa tried her hardest to look surprised while Pat stood leaning against the work top, tucking into a bowl of cornflakes. ‘What sort of alert?’ she said, rushing over to her husband to sit down next to him.

 

 

‘It’s called a tamper alert. It means that somebody has attempted to interfere with my essential hardware configuration, either through malicious means or some sort of accident. I haven’t had an accident have I? I’m sure I got up, out of bed as normal, after the alert that is, but my head felt odd…feels odd.’

 

‘You might have fallen out of bed,’ said Pat, ‘it happens to the best of us.’

 

Vanessa shook her head. ‘He can’t move in shutdown mode.’

 

Pat gave her a hard stare. ‘Things can happen,’ she snapped.

 

Spencer stood up, his eyes darted left and right. ‘I don’t feel like myself, Gregory…’

 

‘Who’s Gregory?’

 

Spencer rubbed the back of his head. ‘I don’t know but I keep seeing his face.’

 

‘Look, why don’t you sit down again. I’ll put the radio on and you can relax. It could just be that you’re unwell, there’s something doing the rounds at my work, everyone’s had it.’

 

‘He can’t get human viruses can he?’ Pat laughed.

 

Vanessa shrugged, she was feeling tired now and getting irritable. ‘Things can happen,’ she said as she switched on the radio, turning down the volume before gently guiding Spencer back into his seat.

 

‘Isn’t there a way we can just lock him back down so we can both go to sleep?’

 

‘I cannot be locked down in this state,’ said Spencer, he folded his arms, ‘the back of my head feels open and vulnerable.’

 

‘I can’t see anything there,’ said Vanessa and she reached out her hand to touch it, ‘it feels normal to me.’

 

‘Hey at least that voice seems to have gone,’

 

‘Shsh Pat! I’m going to check what time it is in Venezuela. I need to talk to Annie, she’ll know what to do.’ Vanessa picked up her phone and began scrolling but her expression quickly turned to one of concern. ‘Oh I’ve got an email..’

 

‘Who’s it from?’

 

She looked up, blinked and said, ‘It’s from Gregory.’

 

Pat looked dismayed and laughed. ‘Who the hell is this Gregory?’

 

‘It says here,’ Vanessa began reading intently, making sounds of half expressed words as she went, until she reached the end and processed the message. ‘It looks like Gregory is Spencer’s current assigned guardian, back at Cybermates headquarters. He says that a tamper alert was issued on Spencer and that some retuning is required, as well as a brief enquiry into the tamper incident.’

 

‘Can’t we just ignore all of that, I mean Spencer seems a bit out of sorts but he’s still functioning as a husband isn’t he?’

 

‘I don’t know Pat. It looks like they want to send out an engineer again,’ she sighed. ‘The other guy was weird, he started all of this, he tweaked my husband without my permission. You know, maybe I should just tell them to take him back to headquarters. That’s twice now, he’s gone wrong in just a week. I really thought this type of thing would be trouble free but the responsibility of having Spencer is quite overwhelming actually.’

 

Suddenly Spencer got up and walked out of the room.

 

‘Do you think he’s going back to bed?’

 

‘Spencer?’ Vanessa rushed after him, he was almost at the top of the stairs and then she heard the bathroom door close and the lock turn and click. She stepped backwards, back into the kitchen and turned to Pat who was rinsing her cornflakes dish in the sink. ‘God, what have I done? I didn’t think he was compos mentis but now I think he understood everything I just said.’

 

‘He’ll be fine. Hey I’m off to bed now, the gin has worn off and I just feel exhausted now.’

 

‘What, you’re leaving me with this mess to sort out? I think we’ve made everything worse Pat, you can’t leave me now.’

 

‘I feel like you two need some time alone or maybe you should phone the helpline and try and speak to this Gregory character, he’ll know what to do.’ Pat picked up a tea towel and rubbed her chin with it.

 

‘Okay,’ Vanessa winced, ‘just go to bed then. There’s an extra blanket in my airing cupboard if you need it.’

 

Vanessa picked up the tea towel and threw it into the washing machine drum before following her husband upstairs. She knocked gently on the bathroom door, feeling tentative, worried, knowing she was dealing with a delicate situation now. ‘Spencer, are you feeling okay?’

 

There was no answer, not even a sound. She knocked again and tried to push the door. It was odd, the bathroom was a room he had no reason to enter except for an occasional wipe down with a damp cloth. She looked under the door but through the little gap she could see nothing, not even feet.

 

‘Pat, Pat! I need you to come. Spencer’s not opening the door and I can’t get in!’

 

Pat came out of Annie’s bedroom, wrapped in a yellow dressing gown, huffing and puffing in protest. ‘Maybe he just wants to be left alone, Vanessa, don’t you sometimes want a bit of space, time to think?’

 

Vanessa shook her head. ‘No. Something’s wrong. He’s a robot, you don’t understand, he’s not like us, not like that.’

 

‘Hey, isn’t it chilly here all of a sudden? There’s a hell of a draft coming through that door. Do you think he’s got the window open?’

 

‘Spencer, please, if you’re in there just answer and we’ll leave you alone.’

 

There was no answer. The two women looked at each other. Pat placed her hand on the door handle and held herself back, pausing for permission from Vanessa who nodded. She then slammed her body into the door but it didn’t budge. ‘Oh nothing happened. I’ve seen this on The Line of Duty, they just bash into it and it opens.’

 

‘Hang on. I think I can turn the bolt from this side. I had to do it on Annie once when she pretended she was dead.’

 

‘She did what?’

 

‘Yes. She said she wanted to kill herself then locked the bathroom door and went completely silent on me but I could feel her presence, my mother’s instinct told me she was pretending and I was right. I’ll just fetch those tweezers.’

 

‘I don’t know what we’d do in your house without tweezers.’