Introducing the Teddybot

MOTE Week 47

This week on MOTE Padre supplied me with my challenge: What did the shipping company deliver?

How about a bit of background for a short story I’m currently writing?

—

Susan stood watching her daughter sleep. Kirsten was blond, blue eyed and had just turned two. She still didn't know how she had got so lucky to have such a beautiful daughter, especially given that she was brown haired, and her ex-husband had had black hair.

The bell rang. Someone was at the door, but fortunately Kirsten wasn't awoken.

Susan closed the door softly behind her, and headed to meet her visitor.

It was a gentleman from TBTC, the shipping company, with a delivery for her. There was a large cardboard box in the hall. The delivery man enquired as to her identity, and then handed over a clipboard and a pen for her signature.

"I've got another few boxes for you. I'll haul them up the stairs if you'll carry them through the door."

Susan agreed, and set about tugging and pulling the first heavy box through her front door into her flat.

It took about half an hour, but eventually Susan had all of her boxes on the tartan-patterned carpet of her living room. She wanted, more than anything else, to curl up in an armchair and put one of her favourite programmes on the TV.

But she couldn't. She had to put the delivery together before she went to bed. It had to be ready by the time Kirsten woke up the next morning, and she tended to wake before Susan.

The smallest box was supposed to contain the construction instructions and the tools she needed to do the job. Susan got her scissors out of the draw and sliced through the tape holding it together. The instructions were there, and if they were to be believed, all the tools she needed were in the box. She read through the instructions with care, then checked that all the other boxes had the parts they were supposed to. Finally, she set to work.

As she did, she asked herself why she'd thought that this was a good idea. Was it really worth all this effort? But all the alternatives were worse.

When Gary, her husband, had died suddenly a few months back, the family finances had suddenly come under strain. Without Gary's income, Susan could no longer afford the rent on their flat. She had had to move. But she didn't want to move to an area without good schooling for Kirsten. This area was the only place she could afford to move to that satisfied that requirement.

For a couple of months things had gone well. She'd been able to take care of Kirsten as best as she could. Her job allowed her to work from home, and she was able to make her part-time hours while Kirsten was asleep.

But recently, the needs of her daughter were becoming more time consuming. She was getting less and less sleep. Things were becoming unsustainable very quickly.

She couldn't afford to do otherwise, unless she went full-time. But if she went full-time, she needed help. And on checking the wages for nannies and au pairs, she had despaired. She would need to pay whoever she hired more than the increase in her wages from going full-time. Even full-time she couldn't afford to pay a nanny and the rent on this flat and all her other costs.

Then, she spotted the advert for teddybots. Supposedly these were the perfect robotic child care option. They were expensive, she didn't have the funds in her bank account to pay for one, but she could get a loan to cover the cost. The repayments were significant, but less than the wages of a nanny, and the increase in pay from going full-time would cover them each month.

After some thought, not much for she'd already discounted all the other options, she took out the loan, and ordered a teddybot.

Now, she was spending an evening when she was already tired and nearly dead on her feet, putting a teddybot together.

The torso was a metal box. She needed to connect it to its upper arms, and then these needed to be connected at the elbows to the lower arms and hands. The legs also came in two parts, and the hips and knees needed connecting up. The last connection was the neck. The instructions were very clear that the head should not be connected to the torso until after every other step had been completed.

Finally, the last twist of the spanner, and the body was complete. As she withdrew her arm, she heard something inside the metal shell spin up.

Within seconds the robot was getting to its feet. It didn't look like a teddy bear at all, but she had been warned that for ease of construction teddybots were supplied in their emergency override skin. Then the metal plates were rotated inside its body. In their place appeared a fur skin that expanded to shape. The fur was pink, just as Susan had ordered. It became the adult-sized teddy bear that it was supposed to be.

"This robot is JC7KX. What is to be its label?" Its voice was high-pitched, and sounded just like what she expected a mother bear to sound like.

"My daughter will decide that. She is currently asleep, and you will meet her in the morning."

"Then this robot will rest and charge up overnight. Which charging point may it use?"

Susan directed the teddybot to one of the plug sockets in the wall. While it plugged itself in, she set to tidying up the various cardboard boxes.

Once the living room was tidied to Susan's satisfaction, she wished the teddybot goodnight and headed to bed.

The next morning, Susan was woken by Kirsten, again! "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! What will we do today?"

She forced herself to smile, determined not to show how tired and sleep deprived she still was. "Morning, darling. I've got a surprise for you."

"Are we going to the zoo, mommy?"

Susan laughed. "Not today, darling. Let me get out of bed and I'll show you."

Kirsten was excited. She was bouncing on her feet.

Susan extracted herself from her sheets as efficiently as she could, before leading the way into the living room.

No sooner had Kirsten spotted the teddybot, than she screamed "Mommy! I love her!" and ran across the room to hug the bear. "Julie. Her name is Julie."

And so it was decided. The teddybot's name was Julie.

Susan quickly provided names. "Julie, this is Kirsten. She is to be your charge. My name is Susan."

"This robot is pleased to meet you both."

"She talks!"

"Yes, darling. Julie is a teddybot. Why don't you take her to your room and introduce her to your toys while I make us breakfast?"

Kirsten was off like a shot, dragging Julie out of the living room. Soon the sound of Kirsten's excited voice was heard from her room as she went through all her stuffed toys, introducing them all to Julie. It sounded like Julie was playing along, saying something appropriate to each.

Meanwhile Susan got herself dressed in work clothes, and prepared breakfast.

By the end of the day, as far as Kirsten was concerned, Julie was a part of the family.

—

My offering this week went to Leigh Kimmel. As always, I’m looking forwards to seeing what everyone comes up with.