In a strange little home built into the branches of a grove of trees, live three robots…
We’re thrilled to share a bonus excerpt from TJ Klune’s In the Lives of Puppets—a new standalone fantasy adventure inspired by Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio, out from Tor Books on April 25. Read our earlier excerpt here!
In a strange little home built into the branches of a grove of trees, live three robots—fatherly inventor android Giovanni Lawson, a pleasantly sadistic nurse machine, and a small vacuum desperate for love and attention. Victor Lawson, a human, lives there too. They’re a family, hidden and safe.
The day Vic salvages and repairs an unfamiliar android labelled “HAP,” he learns of a shared dark past between Hap and Gio–a past spent hunting humans.
When Hap unwittingly alerts robots from Gio’s former life to their whereabouts, the family is no longer hidden and safe. Gio is captured and taken back to his old laboratory in the City of Electric Dreams. So together, the rest of Vic’s assembled family must journey across an unforgiving and otherworldly country to rescue Gio from decommission, or worse, reprogramming.
Along the way to save Gio, amid conflicted feelings of betrayal and affection for Hap, Vic must decide for himself: Can he accept love with strings attached?
They made their way through familiar territory. Rambo was humming to himself as he rolled next to Vic. Nurse Ratched
paused every now and then to scan something new to add to the layout of the map.
When they reached 3B, Vic stopped and frowned at what the Old One had been dumping the week before.
It wasn’t the usual scrap.
“What is this?” Vic asked, taking a step closer. It took him a moment to make out the specific shapes in the jumbled mess. It wasn’t until he saw a metallic arm extended near the ground, a finger curled as if beckoning, that he recognized it for what the pile was.
Robots.
Androids.
Humanoid, though not like Dad. These had been stripped of their skin, if they’d had any at all.
They were all broken apart. Heads without bodies, the bulbs in their eye sockets dark, some of them shattered. Legs. Arms. Torsos. Exposed wiring and components, all fried to a crisp. Chest cavities had been ripped open, all batteries and power cores removed. They’d been destroyed.
This wasn’t a scrap pile. It was a graveyard.
“I don’t like this,” Rambo said nervously. “Bad. Bad, bad, bad.”
Buy the Book
In the Lives of Puppets
Even Nurse Ratched sounded disturbed as she scanned the androids. “I am not picking up any energy sources. They are all—wait.” She rolled closer, the light of her scanner narrowing as it focused. “There is something there. Deep. In the middle. Energy, but it is almost depleted.”
“What is it?” Vic asked, coming to stand beside her. He felt cold as his boot nudged against a leg and foot that was missing two of its metal toes.
“I do not know,” Nurse Ratched said. Her screen filled with question marks as she finished scanning.
“How deep?”
“Six feet, seven inches.”
“Keep an eye out, will you?”
“Yes.”
Vic stepped toward the pile of metallic bodies. The Scrap Yards were quieter than they should have been. The air was thick and heavy, and a trickle of sweat rolled down Vic’s forehead. He wiped it away.
He started with a head. It was heavier than he expected it to be. The eyes were intact, though the bulbs looked as if they’d been burned, the glass smoky, the filaments blackened. He turned the head over in his hands. The back of the skull had been torn away, leaving an empty, ragged hole. He stared at it for a long moment, studying the face. He hadn’t seen another face in a long time. Dad’s, sure. Nurse Ratched, whenever she flashed an approximation of one on her screen. Rambo didn’t have a face, though his sensors and lights made up for that. But this was different. It didn’t look like him. It didn’t look like anyone, really. He didn’t know how he’d react if he’d seen it while it was still alive. As it was, he was having a hard time looking at its dead eyes.
He set it aside, ignoring the hairs standing on end at the back of his neck.
It should have gotten easier after that.
It didn’t.
He tossed more heads. Arms. A chest that looked too small to belong to an adult-sized android. Bots of all different sexes, some sexless. In a daze, he dug deeper, blood rushing in his ears.
There were other pieces that looked salvageable, but he ignored them for now. If there was some kind of power core still active, they needed it, especially since it seemed to have some juice left. He couldn’t turn away from power. Not when it was so close. It could lead to the creation of another mechanical heart. And when that thought entered his head, it refused to leave, bouncing around his skull.
He took a break an hour into it, sitting on the ground, watching as Nurse Ratched held up a discarded arm toward Rambo. “How do you do,” she said in that queer, flat voice of hers.
“It’s nice to meet you,” Rambo replied, reaching up with his pincers to grab the hand.
Which, of course, Nurse Ratched immediately dropped. “Aaaaaaaahhhh,” she said. “You tore off my arm. You have killed me. Why, Rambo, why.”
Rambo screamed in terror. “Oh my god, oh my god. What have I done? What kind of monster am I?” He flung the arm as hard as he could. It flew up… and crashed back down on top of him, setting him off all over again.
“Ha, ha,” Nurse Ratched said as her screen filled with a smiley face. “Just kidding. That was not really my arm. I am still alive.”
“Don’t do that,” Rambo scolded her. “You scared me. I thought I was a murderer. Vacuums aren’t allowed to be murderers!”
“Too bad,” Nurse Ratched said as her screen darkened. “You would make a good murderer. Not as good as me, but good enough.” A halo appeared on her screen, surrounded by golden light. “Not that I would murder. Engaging Empathy Protocol. Murder is bad, and I would feel bad, and I don’t want to feel bad because feelings are detrimental to my existence.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” Vic muttered as he picked himself up off the ground. He stretched his arms over his head, back popping. And then he got back to work.
It took another hour before Nurse Ratched said, “You are close.”
He paused, looking down at the bodies and body parts around him. He was little more than halfway through the heap. His chest felt tight, his breaths short and quick. “Still registering the power source?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Is it a new friend?” Rambo asked.
“Perhaps,” Nurse Ratched said. “Or perhaps it is a terrible machine bent on destroying everything it comes into contact with.”
“Oh,” Rambo said as he beeped worriedly. “I hope it’s the first one.”
“I would put the odds at being twelve percent in your favor. And eighty percent against.”
Rambo clacked his pincers as he counted. “What about the last eight percent?”
“There is an eight percent chance that the power source has gone critical and will cause an explosion that will level the surrounding area, killing all of us in the process.”
“It’s not going to explode,” Vic told Rambo. “She would never have let us get this far if she thought that was going to happen.”
“So I let you think,” Nurse Ratched said, a skull appearing on her screen. “You have fallen into my trap. I wanted you to get this far. Prepare for death.” The skull disappeared, replaced by DON’T FORGET TO RATE MY SERVICE! I APPRECIATE A 10!
It took Vic longer than he cared to admit to realize she was kidding. He leaned down and pulled another torso off the pile. “You wouldn’t dare. You’d miss me too much. I know you—”
He didn’t have time to react when a hand burst through the pile, metal flying as fingers closed around his wrist. The grip was strong, bruising, not enough to break bone, but close. Vic grunted in pain and surprise as he looked down. The hand and arm were covered in synthetic skin, though parts had been torn away, revealing exposed metal and wiring underneath.
Vic tried to jerk his arm back, but the hand didn’t let go. He pulled as hard as he could, feet digging into the ground, and the pile of metal shifted. For a moment, Vic thought he saw the flash of eyes.
“Let him go!” Rambo cried. He rushed forward, banging his pincers against the arm. “We’re big and strong and scary and we’ll kill you dead!”
Nurse Ratched rolled up behind Vic, hatch opening, one of her tentacles slithering out viper-quick. It wrapped around Vic’s waist and began to pull him backward. “I could saw off your arm,” she said. “It would be easier.”
“No sawing,” Vic snapped at her. He tried to break the fingers that held him, but they were too strong. The pile shifted once more as another couple of inches of the arm became exposed.
“Enough of this,” Nurse Ratched said. “You were told to let go. Prepare for something quite shocking.”
Another one of her tentacles shot out around Vic, the tip crackling with electricity. She pressed it against the arm. The effect was instantaneous. The hand spasmed, fingers opening. Vic’s feet skidded in the dirt as Nurse Ratched pulled him away. Rambo continued to hit the arm, weaving and dodging as it seized up and down. “Die!” he yelled. “Die, die, die!”
Vic looked down at his arm. The blood had been pushed away from just underneath his skin, leaving the white outline of fingers.
Nurse Ratched let go of his waist, tentacle sliding back inside her before the hatch closed. “Rambo, please step away from the dangerous arm. We do not know if it is attached to a dangerous body.”
Rambo paused his assault, turning until his sensors faced them. “There could be more than the arm?” he asked in a high-pitched voice. “Why didn’t you say that in the first place?” He rolled away quickly, hiding behind Vic’s legs, his pincers tugging at Vic’s pants.
The arm sticking out of the metal pile fell limp, though it still twitched. The forearm was covered in dark hair, the skin underneath pale and white. The fingers were thick and blunt, the hand large.
“What is it?” Vic asked.
“I do not know,” Nurse Ratched said. “Consider leaving it where it lies. It was discarded for a reason. Malfunction. Corruption. Faulty coding. It has obviously served its purpose.”
“You said the same thing about Rambo,” Vic said, never looking away from the hand.
“I did. And you did not listen to me then. Look what happened.”
“I happened,” Rambo said, still hiding behind Vic.
“Like a parasitic infection,” Nurse Ratched said. “We should— Victor, what are you doing?”
Vic took another step forward. “Don’t you want to see what it is?”
“No. I do not. Curiosity killed the cat by strangling it. If you are strangled, it might break the hyoid bone, and then your head will fall off.” She beeped, and the words TRUST ME, I’M A NURSE! appeared on her screen.
“The others were stripped. Skin. Power sources. Why not this one?” His head was pounding. His heart stumbled in his chest. It was something new. Something strange. A mystery. Part of him wanted to turn and run as fast as he could, return home and lock his door until he could pretend nothing had happened. Another part whispered in his head over and over: What is it, what is it, what is it? He was fixated. After all, he’d found Nurse Ratched in this same place. He’d found Rambo. And here, another machine. In the back of his mind, a thought both foreign and familiar: Third time’s the charm!
He stepped forward, surprising even himself, though the feeling faded quickly. Because buried in the fear was the cloying, sticky sense of curiosity. He needed to see what this was. He wanted to know what it meant. Where it came from. What it could do. Regardless of what else he was, Victor Lawson was a creator first, and this was something he didn’t understand.
He stopped just out of reach of the hand, crouching down.
The detail in the arm was extraordinary, even more than Dad’s. The fine hairs on the back of the hand and forearm. The fingernails, the white crescents near the cuticles. The wrinkles of the skin over the joints of the knuckles. The lines on the palm like a map. If he couldn’t see bits of metal and wiring underneath, Vic would think this was a human arm. Which would be impossible, of course. Humans didn’t come this far out into the wilds.
The hand and the arm didn’t move.
He waited.
Nothing.
“Hello,” he finally said. “Are you still in there?”
No response.
“Can you hear me? We’re not going to hurt you.”
“But we can if we so choose,” Nurse Ratched said. “I know five thousand seven hundred and twenty-six ways to kill something. Do not make me show you number four hundred and ninety-two. You will not appreciate number four hundred and ninety-two.”
“What’s that one again?” Rambo asked.
An unnecessarily graphic image appeared on her screen, tentacles going into places they never should.
“Right,” Rambo said quickly. “I remember now. No one wants number four hundred and ninety-two.” He raised his voice. “So you better listen to her!”
Vic opened his mouth to tell them he thought it was dead, the relief he felt warring with his disappointment.
But before he could speak, a rough, gravelly voice said, “T-t-try it. See wh-wh-what happens.”
Vic fell back. Dust kicked up around him as he pushed himself away from the metal pile. Rambo squealed loudly as Nurse Ratched rushed forward, putting herself between them and the arm and voice, her screen bright red in warning.
“Who are you?” Nurse Ratched asked.
Silence.
“What do you want?”
Nothing.
“Prepare to be shocked again. In five. Four. Three. Two—”
“You s-s-s-stick me with that th-thing again, and I’ll rip it off of you and shove it down your th-th-throat.”
Something shifted inside Nurse Ratched: a grinding of gears, followed by a low and sonorous beep. Then, “That was an effective threat. Though I do not have a throat, my sensors indicate no deception. I believe you.” She turned back around toward Vic and Rambo. “I like him,” she announced, her screen filling with a light blue color and the words IT’S A BOY!
Vic scrubbed a hand over his face. “What is it?”
“I do not know,” Nurse Ratched said. “But it appears to have a malfunction in its speech. Stuttering could indicate a variety of issues, from a virus to damage to the vocal center of the android, depending upon the type and model. But while this is a defect, the machine is still capable of making pointed threats that should not be ignored. Can we keep him?”
“No!” Rambo cried. “What if we take him home and he pretends to like us and stays with us for years and we are all happy but it’s part of his plan and when we least expect it, he murders us all while we’re in our shutdown mode?” He beeped frantically. “I couldn’t stand that level of betrayal.”
Vic glanced back at the arm. The hand curled slowly into a fist before it relaxed once more. “We could just leave it here for now. Find out the model number and see if Dad knows anything about it.”
“Robot,” Nurse Ratched said. “Identify yourself.”
“F-f-fuck you.”
Nurse Ratched beeped. “I do not recognize ‘fuck you.’ Would you like to try again?”
“I’ll k-kill you.”
A big, pink heart appeared on her screen. “I am old enough to be your motherboard. Please do not flirt with me if you do not mean it.” She scanned the arm and pile again. “Your power source is depleting rapidly. Shutdown imminent. Do you have any last words?”
“H-help me. G-g-get me out of h-h-h-h…”
The hand flexed.
A beep of warning came from the pile.
The hand slumped toward the ground.
“Sad,” Nurse Ratched said. “I cherished our time together. I will never forget you. Victor, we should take it apart piece by piece and use its remains as we see fit.”
“It’s dead?” Vic asked.
“Its power source is drained,” Nurse Ratched said. “It is no longer functional. Unless it is recharged, it will stay that way. If we do not have the materials and capability to charge the source, guess what? It is still dead.”
Vic thought about leaving it. He thought about forgetting all of this. He could do it if he really tried. If he really wanted to.
He said, “Help me get it out.”
Excerpted from In the Lives of Puppets, copyright © 2022 by TJ Klune.
