Robot on a Toilet

Zinc IV the Clawbot sat on a toilet. The toilet was on a pedastool in the middle of a toilet store. Women in frumpy dresses and men wearing plaid stopped before Zinc IV the Clawbot and stared at him, puzzled expressions, wrinkled brows, their ears twitching as Zinc IV clicked his pincers together to pass the time. That was all Zinc IV really had, his pincers and free time.

At closing time at the end of each day, as the lights clicked off one by one and the air conditioner thunked its shut-off thunk, Zinc IV the Clawbot clicked his pincers together while his eye servos tracked the white haired store owner, the doddering old men with all his canine teeth missing. The old man walked from shelf to shelf with an orange dyed feather duster, dusting off the toilets, the flush assemblies, the gold plated handles, and the case containing the platinum seats.

It was a brisk business, the old man's toilet business, the old man's toilet business, selling everything a savvy toilet buyer could ask for from pneumatic pump plungers and bristled extensions with fiber optic cameras designed to display the clog on a television screen before it was cleared out down to your standard toilet bolts, toilet paper, toilet brushes, electric seat warmers, and silent flushing mechanisms. One of the high end toilets had a TV built into the tank and had a contoured seat designed for the excreter to sit facing backwards.

The old man dusted all of this, wiped the fingerprints of children from the enamel, every night. Some nights Zinc IV the Clawbot watched as the old man suddenly pinched shut his nose and ran into the store room to fetch the mop and bucket because some rude customer had decided to take one of the toilets for a test drive. Zinc IV the Clawbot always saw the test drives as they happened, but since he wasn't programmed to do anything but click his pincers together and sit on a toilet, he was powerless.

However, something was happening that Zinc IV the Clawbot wasn't programmed for. He was starting to realize things, certain things about sitting on a toilet, about being gawked at by pimple faced customers and young couples who held hands and talked about buying the type of toilet that would hold a room together. The first thing that Zinc IV realized, largely from watching customers take toilets for test drives, was that despite the fact that his metal body was shaped similarly to the humans who salivated over porcelian and despite the fact that he was properly situated upon his toilet perch, Zinc IV was incapable of making use of the toilet. Just thinking about it made his pincers click.

Zinc IV the Clawbot also understood that he wasn't for sale. He overheard a conversation between the white haired store owner and three men in white lab coats holding black attache cases. Those three men had offered the old man figure after figure, taking out check books and holding forth multiple checks sometimes as seperate offers and sometimes as simultaneous offers. The old man refused, and Zinc IV understood. He was worthless and couldn't be sold. He had less value than the stained toilets teenagers took for testdrives. Even those could be sold at a discount.

Zinc IV clicked his pincers. The old man was coming with the duster and a can of robot polish. Used to be, Zinc IV the Clawbot looked forward to his robot polish scrub down, but the more he realized, the more he wanted to rust, for his pincers to fall of at the next click. The little red lights in Zinc IV's eyes started to intensify and dim, a slow pulse with the rhythm of a beating heart.

The old man sprayed Zinc IV's chest with polish and began wiping in a slow circular motion. Zinc IV clicked his pincers and thought about being watched by a baby in a stroller who just threw up on itself, by a decripit customer talking to the owner about his problems with constipation, a troubled man with a business suit asking about the durability of the toilet bowls in regards to more forceful bowel movements caused by indigestion and spicy foods.

The old man polished Zinc IV's shoulders, his arms. Zinc IV clicked his pincers and realized that if he were simply to close his pincers on the old man's throat, his internal hydrolics would exert sufficient pressure to snip the white haired head clean off.

The old man stopped, set his bottle and rag down at his feet, and straightened.

"You do such a good job Zinc IV," the old man said. "No robot ever sat a toilet as well as you."

Zinc IV clicked his pincers, and the old man leaned forward and kissed Zinc IV on the pincer hinge. There was little Zinc for could do except not click his pinsers and let the pulsating light of his eyes stabalize into their normal sofy and steady glow.

The old man patted Zinc IV on the shoulder, smiled and said, "Well Zinc, I'll see you in the morning when we open."

As the old man locked up the front door from the outside with his jangling keys, Zinc IV didn't just realize, he understood. He shut down his hydrolic functions, switched off his central gear systems. His primary cognition system hummed softly as he thought an infinite loop of why it was he sat on his toilet.