Rabbit and Robot. Andrew Smith

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Название Rabbit and Robot
Автор произведения Andrew Smith
Жанр Учебная литература
Серия
Издательство Учебная литература
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781405293990



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in Space ♦ He Makes a Great GasketTricky WordsThe Things We’d Never Seen BeforeHappy New Year, Happy No YearFreedom, and an Unemployed Cog in the HallwayBilly Hinman, Billy HinmanThis Was the TennesseeWe Dance, and Queen Dot Accounts for Mexican Cuisine and Human EvolutionIn Which We Find Out Where King Carlos Is and Suffer a Blow to Our Self-EsteemHerman Melville Would Be PleasedEaters and FeedersFirst Night of the NeveryearIt’s Time to Eat Now, and I Become Aware of My BallsThe Cruise Ship to End All Cruise ShipsThe Nicest Giraffe I Ever MetA Sleep SandwichDumb Pointless OptimismYou Better Watch Out for the MonkeysCager Messer’s Can-Opener and Push-Ups ListTimes That Aren’t NowA Normal California BoyGetting the Wrong IdeaShakespeare’s CrowbarThe Porridge of Officer DennisIf Thy Right Eye Offend TheeWhat Kind of WorldMooney, Mooney!This Is What We SawAre You One of Us?Moon to MoonJust Like HomeHelpless, Helpless, HelplessV.1 Human BeingsCaveman & SpacemanThe Unlock CodeRighting the ShipThe Doctor and the ReverendEpilogue: It Took Dominion Everywhere

       Acknowledgments

      I smell humans.

      I am very happy about that.

      Someone else is here on the Tennessee with Billy and me. We are not alone after all.

      I might begin by explaining that we are either the last or the first of our kind, and I wonder what time it is that this has come to you—how long our story has waited to be told.

      We are trapped inside a moon to our moon, in a home—a lifeless jar—called the Tennessee, where we spend our time, absurdly enough, with talking animals and machines that grow increasingly human by the hour.

      Are you a person, or are you some kind of cog?

      Either way, I feel a compelling obligation to tell you what it meant to be a human, at least as far as I can describe it accurately.

      None of this is a lie.

      “Is that a fucking tiger?” Billy Hinman asked.

      “I think it is a fucking tiger,” I said.

      I’ll admit that I had never seen a fucking tiger before.

      It was certainly a day for checking things off Cager Messer’s infinite list of things he’s never done.

      “An actual fucking tiger,” Billy whispered.

      Even when you’re a half mile away from a tiger and you’re standing naked and chest deep in the middle of a lukewarm fake lake, it is an atavistic human instinct to make as little noise as possible.

      “I think the Zoo of Tennessee must have broke,” I theorized.

      “What the fuck are we going to do?” Billy said.

      “I have no plan.”

      “Cager? Do you know what that is?” Parker hollered.

      Parker had been hiding up in the branches of a fake pine tree. It could have been a cedar. I don’t know anything about trees. He’d been watching me and Billy swim.

      Since I didn’t want to draw the tiger’s attention to us, I decided to think about things for a while.

      So Billy offered, “You should tell Parker it’s a tiger, and tigers are friendly, and that he should climb down from the tree and give the tiger a hug because tigers love to be hugged by horny teenagers. That way, while the tiger is distracted by clawing the fucker to pieces, we can make a run for it.”

      “But what about our clothes?”

      Our clothes were scattered on the shore beneath the tree where Parker was hiding.

      “Cager. It’s a fucking tiger,” Billy told me.

      For some reason, ever since I’d been forced off Woz, my best friend, Billy Hinman, did make a lot of sense at times.

      “I can’t tell Parker that,” I whispered.

      “Why not? He’s a fucking machine.”

      “I know that. I just can’t, is all,” I said. And, yes, I felt stupid and embarrassed for as much as confessing to Billy Hinman that I had some measured feeling of empathy—or maybe even friendship—for Parker, who was, after all, just a fucking machine.

      So I continued, “Besides, the tiger is just a machine too, right? It’s a cog. It won’t do anything to us.”

      “What do you mean by us?” Billy said.

      Damn all this clarity.

      “Well, he’s not supposed to do anything to us.”

      “You mean you.”

      “Are you daring me to get out of the water and tell the tiger to go away?” I asked.

      “Not at all.