Ralph Burch
Duplicate lovers
CHAPTER ONE
Clarence Williams sped to the supermarket parking lot in his Skimmer, which rode on air instead of wheels. Beside him sat a man that looked exactly like Clarence, that could've been his twin brother. A woman sat in the back seat.
The man who sat silently beside Clarence and was an exact duplicate of him was not his twin brother. It was Clarence Two, a robot. And it was 9 a.m. on an August day in 1995.
Clarence circled to join the other robot owners, each with a duplicate seated beside him or her, in Skimmers similar to Clarence's. The humans got out of their cars to mill around the closed doors of the supermarket, awaiting the manager who would open the doors. The robots, most of whom looked exactly like their owners, sat patiently, silently, waiting for the call to work. Clarence found a friend, Henry.
"Still thinking of trading in your G.M. and your DuPont for A-C robots?" asked Henry.
"You know it," said Clarence. "I've already got my order in."
"How stupid can you be?" asked Henry. "A-C robots are the worst. Twenty companies make a better robot."
The store manager arrived. The robots filed silently out of the Skimmers on order from their owners and into the store to do their jobs. Some were checkers, some were stock-handlers, some were baggers. Besides the store manager, there was only one other human worker in the store, a woman too poor to own her own robot. The robots with plastiskin surfaces and driven by miraculous miniature electronic 'chips', mingled with the human customers, blending so perfectly that it was impossible to distinguish between human and machine. The salaries the robots earned would go to the owners, who could go fishing, stay home and loaf or work at other jobs.
Robots delivered, and the store buzzing with early morning customers, Clarence and Henry returned to the parking lot. Henry looked at the robot woman in the back seat of Clarence's vehicle. He shook his head.
"You've got a robot checker and a female robot bank teller," he told Clarence. "You'd have to give up both to get one of the A-C robots. You can live like a king – why give it up?"
Clarence was tired of Henry's skepticism. "You want to know why? I'll tell you why. It's a secret, but I got a good reason. The new A-C robots are gonna be able to have sex."