"Mausoleum of the Living Dead"

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Mausoleum of the Living Dead
by Bill Brooks

Arthur MacAbre hadn't always realised he was a machine although as a boy he'd not been vulnerable to disease; never had a cold even if he got his feet wet; but the metamorphosis from human took a while.

It started when he played buses in his back yard; running around the perimeter path, driving an imaginary double-decker.

Mrs. Johnson next door, seeing him from her window, called his mother. 'What's wrong with Arthur's legs, Mavis?'

'Wrong? Nothing as far as I know. Why?'

'The way he runs around your back yard. Like he's running sitting down.'

Mrs. MacArbre called Arthur in to explain his '... strange behaviour. The neighbours ask questions. It's embarrassing.'

'I'm a bus driver.'

'Oh? But do you have to run like that? As if your knees won't go straight?'

'I can't drive standing up, can I? I'm not a tram.'

But that was an idea. If he was the whole thing - the bus and its driver as well - he could run upright. Sitting to drive was tough on legs.

Other changes followed. A meal became a minor service; school holidays major overhauls, food was fuel, drink lubrication.

Mrs. MacAbre rounded on him. 'You may think it's smart calling your home the depot, but I'm not the Maintenance Foreman, for goodness sakes! And you're not to call your sister Tickets and Timetables.'

He talked his younger brother, Harry, into playing. 'Why don't you drive a bus on another route?' When they passed they'd wave the special bus-drivers' wave he'd seen; a flat stop-hand moving sideways. If they met at the same stop, they'd swap yarns; 'Inspector's up there!' A thumb-jerk back the way he'd come. 'Watch out.'

'Thanks, mate.'

He taught Harry to tell passengers: 'Mind the step, Madam. Pass down the bus, please.'

They 'drove' school buses, picking up imaginary kids in the morning, dropping them off at night. 'Watch that car, son,' 'Don't crowd the doorway, please.' Boys, seeing them, put funny looks on their faces, but so what!

Then one day Harry announced he wouldn't play any more. 'It's silly being buses with legs. Kids say we're freaks.'

'Freaks? Who's a freak? I'm not a freak. Take no notice of them, they're jealous. It won't stop me.'

But it stopped Harry. He went back to roller blades and skateboard, like the others.

Mother worried about Arthur. She asked Arthur's father, 'What can we do? It's so silly.'

Dad laughed and said, 'Get him a set of wheels. Down Dunn's cycle shop. He might give you a referral to a cycologist, eh?'

'A what?'

'A cycologist. You know, a couchie,' he sniggered.

'Don't be silly, Frank.'

But maybe it was the right idea? Anyway she called at Dunn's in case.

Dunn laughed. 'Wants wheels? Look at these.' He waved around at his stock. 'Not exactly bus wheels, but better than legs - if you're a bus, that is.' He laughed uproariously.

When she mentioned the cycologist he cackled again. 'Frank meant a trick cyclist. Yeah. Slang for psychiatrist. Can't give referrals to them, though. You'll have to see the doctor.'

Dr. Funken nodded. 'Yes. I had a patient thought he was an aeroplane. Jumped off a high building and - well, you know -'

'Buses aren't so serious then, Doctor?'

'They are. I'll have to see the boy.'

Arthur drove himself there - still on legs. 'I told you, Mum, I'm a bus. I don't need a doctor - if I'm crook I'll see a mechanic.' He would have thought she'd realise by now he was a machine.

Dr. Funken checked out Arthur's breathing apparatus, heart function, weighed him and pronounced that he had a cast-iron constitution.

'See, the doctor knew!' But Arthur agreed to see a psychiatrist, if further proof was needed.

Lying on Dr. Feaso's couch, he was asked about his psyche.

Was he okay at maths? Did he like running and swimming? Was Dad a bus driver? Arthur agreed he was carrying on the tradition.

'Your son has a solid heart, Mrs. MacAbre, and a steely resolve to be a machine, so I'd let it go if I were you. After all buses don't suffer pain or disease, do they?'

'No. I suppose that's some consolation.'

'Yes. And he's thin, which rhymes with tin, so all you have to do is oil him to avoid rust. He can park in the garage, nights, eh? Save you a bed.' Dr. Feaso winked. 'He'll grow out of it, you can put money on it.'

At school, Arthur never made mistakes in calculations. His final report recommended a career in engineering.

He started as an apprentice in a computer-manufacturing company and went to night classes to gain a degree in engineering. One thing disturbed him though. He was growing a beard and machines didn't have beards. He had it removed by electrolysis.

The manager of the robotics division noticed Arthur's unusual gait: a series of spasmodic jerks of the arms and legs. He swore to other managers at a staff meeting, he'd heard Arthur clank as he walked.

Arthur was transferred to Robotics.

Designing robots came easily. He constructed mock-ups, built prototypes, trained them on the factory floor, talking in conversational tones until they could imitate every move; treated them as his friends, then saw them through production.

'This one, call him Jack, he'll do anything you ask except go near bathrooms,' Arthur proudly told the manager. 'He hates water; you can guess why.'

'Fear of rust?'

Arthur nodded. 'I'm the same.'

He was promoted to Chief Robotics Engineer. Some on the staff called him Chief Robot, but freaks were never mentioned in his hearing.

When it came time to retire, Arthur found it hard to contemplate a future without congenial machine company.

What would his epitaph say?

'Arthur MacAbre, a robust machine, who built amazing robots and images of himself. Space-travellers who visited exotic places like Mars and returned with incredible stories. Arthur, though, remained earth-bound.'

If he could be incarcerated in a museum, on display as the father of a robotics genealogy - one himself - that epitaph would look much more impressive strung around his neck on a card.

He approached the curator of the city museum. When told no, impossible, he devised an even better plan. He'd build a mausoleum in the city cemetery.

'A mausoleum for robots,' he told the council planner, producing elaborate drawings.

'Robots? They have no people value. No. Quite impossible. Sorry, Mr MacAbre.'

'But look at me! I'm one of the machines it would cater for. Don't you see?' Arthur stalked up and down the office demonstrating his jerky gait, moving his head in small discrete step-motor increments.

'My God!' marvelled the planner, 'and how many old people can do that, eh?'

MacAbre pointed out the window at an arthritic man's difficult perambulation over a pedestrian crossing. 'See? There's one.'

'It'll cost a tidy packet. A mausoleum. Have you got the funds?'

'I'll get them.'

'Okay, I'll put it to the board, but I can't promise.'

While he waited for his proposition to negotiate city planning, Arthur advertised for clients. 'Those who want to live forever.' He promised a conscious existence, lasting perhaps millions of years.

There were conditions: applicants had to be at least a hundred, have cast-iron constitutions and be already fitted with plastic and metal body parts. It was costly, too.

He was deluged with eager phone calls, faxes and emails from around the world.

If accepted they would have to attend training sessions on converting to robots. Many failed. The fees grew too exorbitant or they lacked an understanding of machine psychology. Anyone who'd suffered illness was automatically eliminated.

Two men aged one hundred, and one even older woman finally entered the massive marble portals of Arthur's grand mausoleum, titled Virtual Valhalla for Valiant Veterans inscribed in Georgian script - and were shown to their berths.

A period of six months ensued during which complete conversion to machinery took place. An automated system changed skin to metallic scales, bones to stainless steel and plastic, brains to solid state - neurones to transistor-like networks interlinked with myriad microscopic conductive synaptic fibres.

Muscles operated elastically as if rubberised. The heart, lungs, liver and kidneys, now unnecessary, were removed, together with the entire circulatory system. Ears were converted to auditory receptors. Miniature camera-eyes relayed information to the brain as in life.

Operating power - derived from external solar panels on the mausoleum roof - was transmitted wirelessly direct to muscles which remained under brain control.

Residents, once converted, could move freely about the mausoleum, conversing and socialising. Sporting activities, games, serious study and entertainment were mandated by Overall Control - a combined omnipresent sense of awareness and orders communicated direct to individual minds.

Arthur waited thirty years to qualify. It was the first time he'd been inside the mausoleum since opening day and with him he took materiel to equip the special laboratory included in his original plans.

Of the first incumbents, one was dead - had never fully converted to machine, so had withered. He'd been ejected through a muzzle in the wall to a waiting cart and moved to the city cemetery.

The woman and the second man still moved around conversing with later entrants, slowly, mechanically, unable to smile.

Above each resident's berth a screen displayed details of updated age; thoughts, wishes, memories - recorded for use by machine-opologists.

While others danced or played endless bridge, chess, even table tennis, Arthur - exempt from Overall Control's influence - worked in his laboratory designing and researching advanced componentry for exotic power sources. He hoped eventually to supplant the dependency on sun-sourced energy.

His parents, brother Harry, and sister, Eunice, had died before the mausoleum was constructed. He really wished they could see him living forever. He'd love to remind them how they'd laughed when he started as a bus. Now aged two hundred and fifty he was still going strong.

When a huge asteroid collided with Earth, destroying life across the globe - inducing nuclear-style winter, another ice age - Arthur emerged from the crushed mausoleum, aged five hundred.

The pummelling Earth received on impact had split open Virtual Valhalla, destroying the source of power to residents, leaving them virtually dead.

But Arthur, now equipped with a self-recharging battery which used differentials in ambient temperature and pressure as its energy source, was free to roam the desolate terrain. Twin laser-like headlamps above his eyes pierced the stygian stew ahead, revealing chaos.

He knew he had to be the one remaining vestige of life on earth. Did he have responsibilities? Perhaps, but unable to replicate he could not redeem life on Earth - what a tragedy!.

A thought struck him. He was free!

He could play buses without stigma!

But legs still!

He could have invented wheelegs - an adaptive form of locomotion switchable between wheels and legs at will.

Ah, but! Things were different now. Wheels would be a nuisance negotiating these myriad obstacles. Legs were an obvious advantage in this environment. He'd come full circle!

He began a clanking motion, jumping over fallen trees, corpses, bits of buildings picked out in his headlamp glare, pioneering new routes, picking up imaginary passengers as before, watching for inspectors, issuing tickets automatically, changing destination boards at termini. This fun would last forever!

If Harry could see him now - the only 'life' in existence. The only bus! If Harry had ignored their peers' jeers they could be running their own transport system in this new world.

A cranking laugh. He, the bus, leapt over a cadaver, narrowly avoided a collision with an uprooted street lamp and got hailed by his first imaginary passenger.

'To the mausoleum? Fifty cents please. You know it's not there any more?'

This was Arthur in his element. A world of inanimates - the living dead.

'Who's the freak now?' he croaked, 'I'm indestructible.'

What was that ahead? A crater?

He trod on a landmine.

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