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William And The Robots.

William blamed the liquorice water - that and Henry enthusing about his project to build a robot that he could teach to paint.

The OldLads sat together in the Old Werkhaus rolling up bits of paper and burning them. A happy few hours attempting to teach semaphore to the parrot in the local pub had concluded in the landlady throwing them out. Now, their thoughts had been engaged by Henry's plan for Dadaist AI.

"Wouldn't it be brilliant to have diffrn't kinds of art compete in a cybernetic medium!" said William.

"Gosh yes! Aesthetic development through combatative synthesis!" said Ginger.

As the originator of the Painting Robot concept, Henry was more cautious. "I'm not sure we c'n program comparative aesthetic feedback" he opined dubiously.

But William had found a new project and was not to be so readily deterred by mere practicality. "It'd be Evolution!" he expostulated. "Same's the theme for the next Eastercon. They wouldn't even have to draw. They could just sort'v fight each other". His tone veered towards his familiar sarcastic mode of argument. "Gosh, it's news to me if people wouldn't want to see a bunch of robots fightin' each other rather than see an ol' Art Instillation!" Dimly he remembered something from the 'Evolution' Progress Reports and their grand promises of intellectual stimulation. "An' anyway," he finished triumphantly, "It'd be educational!"

"An' people could lay bets" concluded Ginger pragmatically.

Henry was lost to a phrase he had heard in a history lesson on Napoleon. "Little robots hitting each other" he mused thoughtfully as he considered a shelf-full of plastic Cyberman models.

William's appreciation of the conflicts of antiquity was less philosophical.

"It'd be like those gladiators in olden Roman times" he enthused, warming to his subject. "One could have a net and a fork thing and the other could have a shield an-"

"They din't have robots in olden Roman times" objected Henry, determined to uphold historical verisimilitude. "P'raps steam engines, p'raps. But," he completed with leaden emphasis, "not robots".

However, once William had the bit between his teeth, he was loth to relinquish it for mere technical details.

"It'd be a modern-day one then," he replied with disarming simplicity; then, emboldened by this triumph of logic, "Of course it'll be a modern-day one. We're modern aren't we? I shud jolly well like to know what's more modern-day than us. Gosh! If there's any-" "All right! All right!" Retorted Henry impatiently, hoping to stem any further tide of Williams oratory, "An' what's so modern 'bout Gladiators then? Well, what?"

"Jet an' lightnin' an' that." mused Ginger dreamily.

But William was not sanguine to the tempering influence of the fair sex in his vision of mechanical carnage.

"What about that film we saw about that mad chap who crashes cars?"

"Max," offered Henry diffidently.

"Yes, him."

"Beyond Thunderdome." Henry was beginning to take a delight in his unofficial role as an archivist of aggression.

"Yes, we'll be that, an I'll be the bloke what introduces the fights and shouts at people strange."

"We'd guessed," muttered Ginger, aquainted with Williams thespian tendencies for longer than he could remember.

"And people could bring their own robots too." "An' we'll call it 'Beyond Cyberdrome'," concluded William, with unassailable logic "'Caus it's robots".

The Evolution Tek Crew were a highly skilled team, accustomed to the mundane challenges of supplying walyphones and lighting for chiffon-and-tinfoil Mystic Empresses. Upon being set the task of organising a robotic gladiatorial games with only a few days warning, the vigour with which they attacked the problem, was daunting.

"We've found you a room."

The Tek Crew's pride was evident as they threw open the doors to a modestly-sized conference room. William considered the expanse with the tactical precision of a manager at the Circus Maximus.

"Trouble is, it's a side room," he mused. "We'd end up makin' folk think it's just for Tekkies." Unabashed by his potential tactlessness, he embellished his grand plan. "What we really need is somethin' central where there's lots of drunks." He concluded innocently, "Like the main hall". The main hall of the Radisson Edwardian hotel where the convention was held, was a massive and modern glass-ceiling'd greenhouse with, as it's centrepiece, a swimming pool surrounded by jacuzzi's. Around it on different levels, balconies overlooked smaller pools fed by waterfalls.

"No problem," mused the frighteningly efficient Tek in the PsiCorps uniform. "We'll just get them to cover up the pool and hold it on that."

Upon a more sober appreciation of the wrath of the Plokta editorial Cabal at being removed from their jacuzzi, a compromise was made. The contest would be held on the bar area above the pool, with the proviso that if any robot fell into the adjoining fishpond and electrocuted the fish, then the Master of Ceremonies and Chief Engineer would be thrown in after them. This seemed only fair and, soon, William and Ginger could be seen frantically improvising a barricade out of chairs and Gaffa tape around the proposed arena.

By high noon, a satisfactory number of drunks had turned up. They had no interest whatsoever in the finer developments in robotics but had been intrigued by the little snippets and cartoons William and Ginger had put into the daily newsletters. Now, they were ready to giggle inanely and shout at little machines that had never done them any harm. Some even brought sacrificial robots. William, resplendent in an old raincoat and sundry bits of rubbish he'd managed to find in the bins, strode on as the Master of Ceremonies.

Half an hour later (Sadly, there weren't enough robots to last the full allotted hour), William strode into the newsletter office to write the results of the first carnage. After half an hour of shouting loud enough to fill the swimming pool-sized hall, he was barely able to whisper, "I've got the results of-"

"It's ok," the editor reassured him, "We sent a reporter. This is exactly the sort of stupidity that is to be encouraged."

Flushed with success, free beer and the Tek Crews announcement that "If they want a Tek Crew next year, tell 'em this event is compulsory," William approached the mandarins of the next Convention.

"We've gottan event," he slurred enthusiastically, his throat miraculously lubricated. "It's robots an' they beat each other up an' people bring 'em an' watch an' it doesn't have to be evolution, it can be innovation."

The mandarins considered the raincoated apparition and its incoherent proposition carefully as they rolled in their environment of beer and planning schedules. Though the vision of unkempt hair employed syntax akin to it's knotted scarf, much of what it said contained fannish buzzwords.

"Sounds OK," they said. "But we're planning next years con. You'd need a couple of years to organise a thing like that."

In a welter of giddy euphoria that comes only to those who realise they have successfully underestimated public taste, William relied:

"We've just dun it, and the Bimblebot won."