Come and Get Me — Part Two
A cosy speculative accessibility story
The Glide had arrived on a Tuesday, in a box that announced itself, which she took as a good omen.
Two wheels, a telescoping handle, and a manner she could only describe as keen. You nudged it forward and it simply went, steering around the world's clutter as though clutter were a personal affront. It braked for kerbs. It hummed at waypoints. It guided her to the foot of stairs and then waited, politely, to be carried, like a small dignitary.
She named it J2O2, because it was orange and white and full of bubbles, and because R2D2 was taken.
* * *
Saturday morning she took it shopping, which was less an errand than a victory lap.
The high street had always been a negotiation. Now it was an itinerary. J2O2 threaded her past the A-boards that no council had ever tagged, found the door of the greengrocer's as if it had been looking forward to it all week, and stopped her, with a small decisive squeeze of the handle, two inches short of a pushchair whose owner apologised to the robot.
“He says sorry,” she told it. J2O2 hummed, magnanimous.
In the chemist's it took her to the counter. In the bakery it took her to the counter rather faster, which she chose to interpret as solidarity. On the way out it negotiated the gap between a delivery cage and a man explaining cryptocurrency to nobody, and she thought: thirty metres of gravel. You'd have eaten that carpark alive.
She bought nothing she needed and everything she wanted, and the bags swung from her free hand like a flag.
* * *
The car arrived at two. Her agent had booked it; the boot opened itself; J2O2 telescoped down into the dark with the smugness of a machine that folds well.
Forty-one miles. The glasses mentioned the rapeseed was over now, gone to green, and she said thank you as though to an old friend reporting on another old friend.
“You have arrived,” said the car, and opened the door onto the gravel.
The gravel. The seventeen cars, give or take. The planter, doing petunias at her, unlabelled. The sign, angled away, keeping its counsel for another season.
In the boot, two wheels and a telescoping handle and a purpose-built wayfinding intelligence sat fully charged, ready to solve all of it in under a minute.
She closed the boot.
She stood in the exact centre of the gap between two civilisations, took out her phone, and did the ancient thing.
“I'm in the carpark,” she said. “Come and get me. Bring me into the café.”
A pause at the other end. The sound of a man deciding to enjoy himself.
“What about R2D2?” he said.
He knew the name. He had asked after it twice this week by text, correctly, with interest. This was deliberate, and Radio 4 about it.
“J2O2,” she said.
“That's what I said.”
She smiled at seventeen cars and a planter.
“It ran out of battery,” she said.
It had not run out of battery. It had eighty-nine per cent and a firmware update it was excited about. It sat in the boot in the dark, magnanimous, like a dignitary who understands that some doors must be opened by hand.
“On our way,” he said, and hung up before either of them could spoil it.
* * *
The dog found her immediately. She was the only person in the carpark standing perfectly still, smiling at nothing, holding a bag of things she didn't need.
“Battery, was it,” he said.
“Flat as a pancake.”
“Terrible luck. Two wheels and no charge.”
“It's the cold,” she said. It was the eleventh of June.
“It's the cold,” he agreed.
She took his arm. The dog took the gravel, the kerb, the untagged step, and the door that announced nothing, and did it all at biscuit speed, which is the correct speed.
“Your guidance system is gloating,” she said.
“He's allowed. He heard there's a robot.”
“The robot's in the boot.”
“Best place for it,” he said, and held the door, which he did not need to do, and did anyway, which was the entire point of everything.
* * *
They had tea for two hours. She told him about the pushchair that apologised. He said the café had got the braille menus back after he'd had a word, and she said her glasses could have read him the specials anyway, and he said it's not the same, and she said no, it isn't, and for once neither of them meant it as an argument.
At some point he said: “You could get across that carpark on your own now. Door to door.”
“I know,” she said.
“So next week —”
“I'll phone you from the carpark.”
“I know,” he said. “I'll come and get you.”
It was, both of them privately concluded, still an excellent system.
One information casualty reported: the battery status of one (1) mobility robot. Filed under: white lies, load-bearing.