Click cover to enlarge it
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 GM 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.
Fictional reading for entertainment purposes only.