The Worst Man on Mars

23rd March 2029, BioDome, Botany Base, Mars

High above the floor of the BioDome, a solitary gasket-fitting robot named Ero (short for Heroism) balanced on a rickety scaffold tower. Servo motors whirred and joints jerked as he reached a claw-hand down into a cardboard box marked ‘Rubber Pressure Seals’. From it he plucked a long, thin, cellophane packet and set about removing the wrapping. After pulling and tugging with clumpy mechanical digits, Ero finally gripped the end of the package between his jagged metal teeth and ripped it open, releasing a snake-like length of grooved rubber. He let the discarded wrapper flutter over the edge of the tower without so much as a glance at its bold warning label: ’IMPORTANT. Gaskets must be fitted correctly. Failure to do so could result in air leakage causing respiratory failure, organ malfunction, and permanent human shutdown.’

Ero grabbed the barrier rail to steady himself while he raised the gasket, awkwardly grasped between metal fingers, high above his head. Telescopic joints extended at a snail’s pace towards the domed roof. After a long, difficult stretch, Ero pushed one end of the seal into the tiny gap between frame and polycarbonate panel. It was a delicate operation for which his stubby digits were especially unsuited. As he tried to prod the rest of the gasket home, the first end popped out and dangled down. With an electronic grunt he pushed it back into place, but this only made the middle part sag. And when he tried to prod the middle back, the two ends flopped out, making it momentarily resemble a Mexican bandit’s moustache. And then it dropped out altogether. Moving as fast as his servo-joints allowed, Ero tried to catch it, but his fumbling fingers grabbed and missed and, for the thirty-fourth time that morning, the rubbery thing fell to the BioDome floor, fifty metres below.

Ero watched it bounce, give a little death wiggle and then lie still, on top of thirty-three of its fellow gaskets.

Sh*t ... f*ck ... b*ll*cks - Sh*t ... f*ck ... b*ll*cks. Ero’s emotionally evolving AI brain was overheating.

His neck joint graunched as he turned his gaze to the BioDome roof and surveyed the results of his day’s work. Just five gaskets fitted, each either sagging inadequately or completely hanging free. A pang of negativity filled him. Turning his gaze downwards, he focused on some of the other worker robots far below him. He watched them enviously as they worked at their appointed tasks; hammering, drilling, sawing. To Ero’s mind they seemed to be making good progress – successful and content in their work, each and every one. He was particularly drawn to a constructorbot bashing away at some ducting. As Ero watched, his own cyber-hand made small tapping motions, mirroring the other bot’s more vigorous actions.

Through a doorway to the right came the site foreman bot, Tude (short for Fortitude). Rocking along on his caterpillar tracks, Tude came to a halt at the base of Ero’s tower and craned his neck upwards.

<01010111011000010111001101110011011101010111000000111111> he transmitted in standard robot communications protocol. Which roughly translated as: <Report progress.>

<Oh, outstanding,> replied Ero in binary, although perhaps ‘out-hanging’ would have been a more accurate reply. This was the first time since his manufacture that Ero had told a lie and he was not feeling good about it. Sheepishly, he peered down at his manager far below.

<Excellent!> signalled Tude, triumphantly punching the air with a powerful mechanical fist. <For the good of the humans!>

Half-heartedly Ero copied the punch and followed it with the rote response of, <Loving it.>

Tude nodded his metallo-plastic head and trundled away. Ero watched him go before throwing a wistful glance at the hammering robot, still happily clobbering away at his duct. As he returned to his own, unhappy task, a glimmer of an idea formed in his circuits. Clutching the head of a freshly unwrapped gasket in one hand, the robot activated the screwdriver attachment in the other. With a whirr, the screwdriver blade emerged. He placed the seal against the gap and poked it in with the blade. One end went in. His hopes rose. This might actually work. He fed more and more of the gasket into the gap, pushing it firmly home with the blade until he had just a few millimetres to go. But at that very moment, the whole building seemed to explode with the jarring blare of alarm bells.

Ero jerked in surprise, skewering the rubber seal with the screwdriver and knocking it free of the gap. Once again Ero found himself watching a gasket plummeting to the ground. He continued staring at it for a long time after it had finished its death dance. Yet again he had failed. The robot slumped and cradled his spherical metal head. Despair overwhelmed him. Unable to shoulder the burden of failure any longer, Ero climbed over the scaffold barrier rail, gazed down at the inviting concrete floor, and jumped.

<For the good of the humans,> was his final transmission.

<Loving it,> came the automatic reply from the bots in the BioDome, pausing their work to see if the alarms would stop or continue. None were aware of who had made the initial call, nor his current circumstances.

In any case, it was too late for Ero to register their response.

The sound of the crash, audible even above the din of the alarms, made foreman bot Tude turn back to see what had happened. At the bottom of the tower lay the crumbled carcass of Ero, resembling a modern sculpture of a break-dancing robot, head partially buried in the still-soft concrete and legs splayed in the air.

<Robot down,> Tude radioed. <Emergency! Repair-bot to the BioDome.>

In a far corner of Botany Base, Zilli (short for Resilience), bleeped into life, flicked open her Swiss Army hands and set off to carry out her assignment.

As the alarm bells continued to ring, the knocking of hammers, sawing of wood and whine of power drills ceased. One by one, the builder robots turned and checked their nearest wall-screen. The message, in flashing red lights, read, ‘Site meeting. Site-office portakabin in 10 minutes. HarVard.’

Each robot stopped its task and set off towards the base’s front entrance. Those with jointed legs had to pick their way through rubble as they went, those on caterpillar tracks were able to trundle over it, while the most advanced models hovered clear of the debris. Inevitably, in all the haste, there were accidents. A couple of robots collided at a corridor junction, resulting in some denting of metal casings, scratching of paintwork and loosening of wires. Another put an arm through a freshly plastered partition.

Things were worse at the main entranceway. With all the bots trying to pile through the small doorway, it wasn’t long before a mass of metal bodies, swivelling heads and twisted limbs had formed a solid plug wedged firmly between the door jambs. And, as the wall-screens counted down the minutes to the site meeting, frantic bots began crawling over the top of their comrades, attempting to squeeze through the gap above their heads and becoming stuck at the top of the pile in the process.

A single camera, mounted high in the dome’s space-frame roof trusses, swung in the direction of the mêlée and seemed to droop despondently. Then a set of commands were pinged to Dom (Wisdom), a multi-purpose robot, who opened a bulldozer arm and swung into action. It took all his strength to shove the mechanical mass away from the opening and into a corner of the entrance hall. He allowed the robots to escape, one by one, until all had passed safely out of the base.

Outside, the freed robots bowed their hard-hatted heads into the gusting wind. The small, stocky ones, with rugged undercarriages, made the best progress through the rocky, sandy soil of Mars, whereas the tall, thin, androids struggled a little. A squat floor-polishing bot resembling an upturned pram, called Cassie (Perspicacity), hit a stone that jammed her wheels and caused her to run off the path into a ditch. There she lay, struggling to get out, her wheels spinning in the fine dust of the Martian surface. The other robots ploughed on, ignoring her feeble beeps for assistance.

Up the narrow ramp leading to the ramshackle wooden portakabin they went, digitally chitter-chattering to each other and speculating about the possible reason for this unscheduled meeting. Their progress towards the portakabin door was observed by wall-mounted CCTV cameras. The prospect of a second pile-up occurring at this entrance seemed inevitable, so emergency measures were required. With lightning speed, HarVard transmitted and uploaded a ‘politeness app’ to each of the bots’ positronic brains.

The effect was immediate. The first to reach the site office entrance was a small flue-sweeping bot called Timi (Optimism) who appeared to be built from metal flower pots. He stopped in front of the door, knocked on it and waited for a response. The second robot to arrive, Eve (Achievement), halted right behind him. The next arrival jammed on its brakes and stopped behind her. In no time there was a long, orderly queue from the site office door, down the ramp and stretching into the Martian landscape.

“Come in!” called a voice from within the Portakabin. “Just come straight in!”

But, with the new app installed, Timi turned to Eve and, with a polite bow, transmitted, <After you.>

<No, no, Timi, I insist. After you,>

<Ladybots first.>

<But you were here before me.>

The lens of the external camera zoomed in and out in disbelief, and the voice from inside blared out, “Abort the app and get in the site office, now!”

With the new order overriding their politeness modules, the bots obeyed. Timi shoved Eve out of the way and marched into the site office. Behind, an unseemly scramble ensued as robots fought to pile in.

The site office was empty apart from a rickety trestle table in the centre of the room. With much pushing and barging the robots shuffled around to fill the limited space available. Most removed their safety helmets and their luminous-yellow, high-viz jackets as they entered, hanging them on the hooks provided.

As they jostled their way in, their cyber minds wondered why HarVard had summoned them like this? What could be so important that he needed to address them personally? Surely there was nothing wrong?