Free Twisted Metal by Tony Ballantyne Page A

that rock .
    And so the first legs were born .
    And they thought of day and night, and warm and cold, and calm and storm, and wondered that everything came in pairs. And so the thoughts built another, like themselves .
    And so the first robots were born .
    Karel smiled at his son as he finished the recitation.
    ‘And that’s where robots come from, Axel.’
    Axel nodded slowly.
    ‘How long ago was that, Dad?’
    ‘We don’t know. Robots didn’t know about time back then.’
    Axel was working on his legs. Lengthening them. The electromuscles he had put in place were too powerful for his young mind. Even if he could move them, they would bend the chassis out of true, but Karel let him continue. It was a mistake that every growing boy made: building a body too big, so that there was insufficient life-force from the mind to power it. That strength of life-force would come eventually as the twisted metal of the child’s developing mind continued to form new connections while it folded itself into shape, but in the meantime it did a child good to learn from his mistakes.
    Karel looked around the family forge and felt a sense of warm satisfaction at what he had achieved. Karel was well paid for his work: in steel, copper and silver of high purity. Even a little gold. He and Susan could afford a good apartment in a good part of town – four decent-sized rooms with a view that looked into Turing State, beyond the city itself, out over the railway station and the galleries and the old town. In clear weather, one could even make out the coast.
    The forge itself was small but hot, and Turing City afforded an excellent purity and variety of metal to work in it. Karel and Susan were built of tungsten and steel, of iron and brass and silver. Thriving on such fine-quality materials, Axel showed prodigious talent, already learning how to bend titanium into shape as he built his little body. Standing in the yellow glow of the forge that squatted in the middle of the stone floor, the room around it lit up in golden-orange, Karel felt at peace. Susan was out buying paint and tasting the world, storing up thoughts to weave into their next child. Axel was building himself into a great boy. All was well. Even the bizarre ravings of Banjo Macrodocious, the Spontaneous robot, could not disturb Karel.
    ‘Daddy?’ Axel paused in the act of fastening an electromuscle that was simply too big to work properly. Karel smiled at the serious look on his son’s face, felt a pang of sympathy at the disappointment he knew he was about to experience.
    ‘Yes, Axel.’
    ‘Daddy, why did you make me this way?’
    Karel smiled.
    ‘Is this about us making you build yourself again? Listen, Axel, Mummy and I want what’s best for you. Not everyone can afford titanium and tungsten. Not everyone owns a forge as hot as this. These are advantages you have had from birth, you didn‘t earn them. But there is something that everyone can have, no matter how rich or poor their parents, and that is self-reliance. That’s what we are giving you Axel. That’s why you’re building yourself.’
    ‘No, Dad, that’s not what I mean.’ Axel gave up forcing the spongy knitted wire of the electromuscle for a moment and fixed his gaze on his father. ‘What I mean is – why am I the way I am? Why did you make me unselfish? Why do I always have to share with other people and take my turn and be part of the team? Why did you and Mum twist my mind that way?’
    Karel didn’t speak for a moment. He came close to his son and crouched down so that their heads were nearly level. There was an asymmetry to Axel’s skull that his son hadn’t noticed, or was beyond his current ability to remove. Or maybe he just didn’t see the point yet. It took the onset of puberty for a robot to realize the importance of a well-built body as an advertisement to the opposite sex. Karel touched his son gently on the hand.
    ‘Axel, what brought this on? Have the other children been