HOIST AND JAZZ
  We all went out onto James's back-land. Daffodils, which had grown under the
snow, flowered. Laserbeak perched on my cab roof. "Spring at last!" I said, "You
new ones wouldn't know how tired I and James got of endlessly looking out at
white. English winters aren't usually this bad ... What was that?".
  It was a noise that both I and Ratchet recognized too well as a car crash.
More work for Ratchet from someone's carelessness. He rushed down James's side
passage into the street, in his haste starting to drive before he finished
transforming. He went along a country lane where the trees and hedges were
coming into leaf, there were wild flowers in the grass verges, the snow was
gone, and cows and sheep had been let out to graze at last - and a car lay on
its side wrapped round a big roadside tree. Long rubber marks on the road showed
that it had skidded on a patch of unmelted ice left from a deep snowdrift. A
moan came from the car. "When will people stop going too fast?, leaving such as
me with the messy part of patching up broken bodies and lives." Ratchet thought
as he stopped and transformed and knelt by the wreck. His chemical sensors
showed that no petrol had spilt, so he protruded a blowtorch from the back of
his right wrist and cut and tore the car open to get the driver out. As he
picked her up and put her on a stretcher, he smelt alcohol on her breath. The
old enemy. She saw his white robotic body and moaned: "Where am I? What are you?
Oww! I got to get to Mrs.Jones's with the recipe ...". Mrs.Jones. A name that
was to bedevil our lives in months to come. He quickly examined her, took a
piece of branch from the tree to use as a splint for her broken leg, radioed the
hospital, [22] and put her in his rear as he transformed back to ambulance form
and set off there.
  "Mrs.Jones." she moaned, "I'm expected at her party to give a ... Ohww my car!
I only had third party [insurance] on it.".
  "It's a write-off, so's your driving licence." Ratchet replied curtly as he
drove, "You had 97 mg/mm of alcohol. Lucky you didn't hurt anybody else, and I
have to pick up the pieces. Ring her from the hospital.".
  "RTA [= road traffic accident] 4 miles north of Chellingham, a Mrs.Allington,
as I radioed." Ratchet called as he reached Droitwich hospital ambulance
entrance.
  "What!? Nobody's driving it!" a nurse exclaimed, "Oh, it's him again. A real
Transformer, I still can't quite get used to it.", and then to Ratchet: "We'll
arrange a proper ambulanceman training course for you some time.".
  Ratchet went back to Wernicke's. He and Wheeljack helped James and me at work.
Laserbeak flew about carrying urgent small items, such as blood and other small
medical items for hospitals. Time passed and Mrs.Allington came out of hospital
with a leg in plaster and straight to court charged with drunk driving. Ratchet
had to appear as a witness, the second time one of us had been a court witness.
So far Droitwich magistrates had accepted us as legally equivalent to humans;
but how long before someone challenges it? They looked a bit nervously at
Ratchet's big steel face as he looked in at a window to give his evidence. He
linked his brain to two televisions to give a `video output' far quicker than
having to describe or draw everything. "60 foot skid marks ..." he said, "She
seemed to be confused, some time before she realized that she couldn't continue
her journey ... pills to suppress flu symptoms, and 97 mg/mm of alcohol on top
of it ...".
  "I'd lost enough time off ill." she said, "I'd had a few drinks, I wasn't
meaning to go out, but something on the radio reminded me of that recipe I had
for Mrs.Jones. I rang her to say I'd bring it next day, but she said that she
needed it at once. Call the ambulance only, and they telltale to the police, and
they've programmed you to be the same.".
  The case ended, and Ratchet and Mrs.Allington met her husband in the court car
park. "What was so important at Mrs.Jones's?" Ratchet asked the two, "that you
must hurry there ill and drunk. Now look what you caused! Lucky nobody else got
hurt!".
  Mr.Allington replied angrily: "I'd changed the car's insurance to
comprehensive, and she changed it back to `third party only' at once, to pay for
her perpetual socializing about as if I was as rich as the old duke was!".
  "Down that turn is Mrs.Jones's." she said to Ratchet as he took them home
through the lanes, "Her next slide show: could you possibly ...? Things to help
her to arrange.".
  "No!" said Mr.Allington sharply, sitting in Ratchet's left front seat, "Sorry,
but we go straight home. You're out of it, and I've resigned you out of all the
little circles that you're involved in. You're in too many of them. I hardly
ever saw the car, and the expense and the `social' drink all the time, I can't
afford it.".
  They got home. Next morning he was watering daffodils in a front upstairs
window when a large green towtruck with orange back gear carrying the remains of
his car, stopped in his drive and blew its horn. [23] He went downstairs and out
front, looked, and said to himself annoyedly: "Enough nuisances! Nobody in that
towtruck! While I was coming down, he was $#@ sharp to bunk off to a cafe or
somewhere instead of waiting a minute, dumping a wrecked car in my front. What
am I supposed to do with it? Oh, the towtruck's got the same badge a bit like a
face on it, that that talking ambulance Ratchet has.", and looked again in the
front of the towtruck for any sign of its driver, but there was nobody in there.
"Hallo??" he called.
  "I'm not Ratchet, I'm Hoist." said the towtruck. He jumped in fright. "The
people that made Ratchet have now made me." it continued, "Are you Mr.Allington?
Your wife asked the hospital earlier to ask Ratchet to bring the car here so she
can recover papers. What I found are in my left dashboard compartment, my left
door's unlocked, but the car was in such a mess that I may have missed some.".
  He reached in and took out a handbag, and a large package that felt like it
was full of disordered papers. "Thankyou." he said to Hoist, "She can have her
handbag and her private stuff back, but the rest go straight in the post back to
that Mrs.Jones's society where they belong. I'm sorry you people have been run
about after us. It still gives me the shivers a bit, you're electronics and
mechanism, but alive and thinking. Thanks for your help.". He went into Hoist's
front and opened the package and sorted the papers on the seats. Some of the
papers he stuffed into the handbag. The rest he tied up again in the package,
which he left.
  "I'm going near Mrs.Jones's house anyway. I'll take them to her." said Hoist
after he got out again, "What do you want doing with your car?".
  "Yours for £20 for scrap." he replied, "Her cancelling the comprehensive, I'll
never afford another car. I'll go back to a motorcycle, they're cheaper and cost
less to run.".
  Hoist took the wreck on its last short journey to Smith & Malton's works,
where an automatic carbreaker machine consumed it. Later that day in `The White
House' in the country between Chellingham and Oddingley, Mrs.Jones in an
upstairs front room was planning something (`probably her next lot of
busybodying', said people who knew her), when a large green towtruck with orange
back gear stopped in her drive. To her astonishment, its body hinged off its
chassis and unfolded and rearranged itself strangely, and a head and two arms
appeared. The chassis split into legs. The towing gear hung down its back as it
stood up. She recovered from her surprise quickly, for she knew of us via the
local newspaper. She was a bit nervous at his size and steel body; she would
have been more nervous if she had known that he had a heavy-duty cutting
blowtorch built into himself and was fully equipped for metal scrapping and
carbreaking on the spot. He held out the package of papers to her at the window
and said: "Mr.Allington sends his compliments but had to offer his wife's
resignation from your group. She had been overworking. Here's your documents
that she had.".
  Nextdoor's dog sniffed at his truck form's front wheels attached to his
ankles. Mrs.Jones replied sharply to Hoist: "If that Mr.Allington has anything
to say, he can come himself and not send one of Wernicke's robots as a message
boy. I've had words with Mr.Allington before, him trying to pull his wife out of
my society. I'm sorry she's hurt, but I absolutely needed her plentiful willing
help, specially after those other two started missing meetings and then stopped
coming at all. Shows, lectures, dinners, teas, sales, they all need
organizing.".
  (Those two were Richard and Stephen Simmons. They had joined her group for
their own advantage, not to help her group's aims, although they pretended to be
minded like her, and told lies that they had done her will with money that she
had raised when they hadn't; when they thought it wise to, they left and covered
their tracks. I was eventually to hear of those two again briefly, before an end
was brought to them. What by, I only found out long afterwards: it was not by
man or Transformer.)
  "He can't come." said Hoist, "No car, and his wife's on crutches. He says
you've had a fortune in free transport and food and cooking and entertainment
off her. When she told you that your <precious> recipe had to wait till next
day, you pestered and pleaded and brought up all sorts of issues and names and
sakes and pities in your neurotic impatience as if the fate of Cybertron
depended on it, until she lost patience and drove drunk and Ratchet and the
hospital was left to pick up the pieces. Ease off the throttle sometimes.".
  "Things need doing!" Mrs.Jones replied sharply, finally realizing that Hoist
was not remote controlled by a human talking and hearing over a radio link,
"People come up with one excuse after another if I didn't chase them. What's
Cybertron? Do you mean Sidebottom? I gave a lecture there once, but only three
came. They said the rest were busy shearing sheep. Any excuse for evasion.".
  Hoist finished his other call and went back to Wernicke's, where I had just
had a long argumentative telephone conversation with a man who refused to
believe that I wasn't a human, and persisted in wanting to hire "Wheeljack's
car" while Wheeljack was busy in Wernicke's helping me to make the next of my
people to see the real world. I was steadily adding to the body plating and
mechanical parts spread on the floor: a head stood silently on a shelf. Some
computer output among it had the word `Jazz' on their front pages. Tabbins
curled up asleep on the warm patch in Wheeljack's bonnet as he thought in the
course of designing something. [24] I and Ratchet were making Jazz, who
transforms to a white Porsche. We had missed him so much, endlessly seeing his
image in the sky as the stars of Aries and Taurus driving high and irrelevantly
over the snowbound land. In the stories he risked many dangers for us, and he
was my best agent in our dealings with Men.
  "I missed him too." James thought, "I read about them, then I shut the book,
or the film finishes, and they all vanish. In return for these robots occupying
my garage, at last I seem to be going to get the use of a presentable car.
(Wheeljack would be all right, but he's nearly always busy.) Last time I had
visitors, my own van was busy, and I had to choose between an ambulance and a
towtruck to fetch them in.".
  Each one of us made real in this world, to replace his former self left behind
in my unattainable fictional past in Oregon , makes James's garage more crowded,
although we pay our way and deliver goods for him. Each one made, then in turn
yearns for his former companions. I must stop somewhere. I can't make all of
Cybertron on this earth of Men. There is no point me going to the real Oregon,
for there I would find no Witwicky family, and no Ark, and no Mount St.Hilary,
and no G.B.Blackrock to keep us in fuel in return for combatting the
Decepticons. Jazz gradually became complete. We had to keep shooing Tabbins away
from the work. Wheeljack connected his brain to Jazz, who was now complete, and
transformed him to car form to put his upholstery in. Jazz's legs pulled
together and became his rear end. Tabbins miaowed and ran out from under Jazz.
Jazz's body refolded itself and his body assembled itself. His head folded away.
His arms folded across his chest as his front suspension and steering-gear.
Laserbeak suggested feeding Tabbins to keep him away from getting in the way of
work, and wondered why the imperfectly controllable half-sentient flesh life
forms called `animals' are allowed to wander about loose. James, who was loading
computer parts into his van, said that Tabbins was fed enough already. Finally I
connected my brain to Jazz's and gave him his appropriate memories and knowledge
and mental impressions, and brought him to life in reality. His dawning mind saw
and heard where he was, and was puzzled.
  "Hey, Op!" were his first words, "What's with the Ark, so we had to move to
Sparky's garage? No, we aren't there either! Who's this Mr. Wer-nick that says
he lives here?".
  "It's pronounced Vehrr-nicker." James said.
  "Odd. Your voice doesn't sound German." said Jazz.
  "No. You are in England." I said, and explained.
  "My real name is Robinson." said James, "but I needed a more distinctive name
to trade under. The human brain's speech system has parts called Wernicke's and
Broca's areas after the men who discovered them. One thing I make is speech
decoders and speech synthesizers for computers, so I chose a trading name
accordingly.".
  "I better show you round the town. I've got some visits to make. There are no
real Decepticons. Life'll be safer than you remember it." said James, getting
into Jazz, who was still in car form.
  Tabbins jumped up onto Jazz's right rear and left a trail of muddy footprints
across his roof and down his windscreen and across his bonnet, where he curled
up. Cats do that. Jazz said: "The only time I was in England before that I
remember is when we found that Autobot spaceship under Stansham castle - but
that was in the stories, there's no such place - No Decepticons, you say!? Is
that Laserbeak!, or is there a bug in my brain's programming? The cat's soon
found the warm spot over my motor.".
  "It's all right," said James, "It's got a copy of Ratchet's mind in it. We
need a small flyer to fetch small things fast and look above the trees and
buildings.".
  James in Jazz drove out into the street and away. [25] He drove past the end
of a pedestrianized shopping street. In the paving was a triangular scar [see
6]; the planners had seen sense and had not let the hoarding be replaced. He
passed N.P. & A.L. General Dealers, recently reopened: a piece of paper stuck to
the door said "back soon". Jazz made a surprised noise, thinking that he saw
Starscream's name on a shop; but the full name was `Goldstars Creamery', and
below the name was a side view of a cow with a gilded star under its belly. He
drove on. I was hauling frozen meat to Glasgow; Ratchet was at a hospital having
an ambulanceman training course; Laserbeak was still returning from delivering
transfusion blood to a road accident site, where Wheeljack and Hoist were
helping to clear up.

        At Wernicke's, a man came to collect goods, telling James's temporary
secretary that the usual man was ill. He went in and let two others in. They had
big empty packs. Inside, one of them found James's storeroom and started to
search the compartments, regardless of what he was spoiling for the sake of the
price of a few days' cheap bed and meals and drink and smoke. In three he found
nothing worth taking. In a fourth he found brass components. He continued. His
pack gradually became heavier. In the next compartment were more brass
components, and also Tabbins, who backed away from the unfamiliar smelling hand,
and then, cornered, scratched hard and caterwauled loudly and bit deep. [26] The
man, with a low-grade rough mentality, forgot where he was and yowled loudly
with pain and swore foully. He realized his mistake too late as Timmy in an
adjacent room, woken by these noises, started barking loudly and continuously.
Meanwhile another man found the office and shot out the telephone and what
looked like a two-way radio; then he went to the storeroom. A car was heard
arriving, followed by metallic noises and air hissings. A third man looked
through a door to see what it was - and was held hard in the steel hand of a
white steel robot that looked as if it was made from the parts of a car. "Bert!
Scarper!" he said into his walkietalkie in fright, "A - a - Transformer! Like
the toys but alive and 20 feet tall!".
  In the storeroom the other two were still arguing about the noise which had
raised the alarm, and wondering what their third man was on about, while in the
store compartment Tabbins arched his back and bristled and hissed and spat at
them. James, who had just arrived in Jazz, collected his helmet and shield and
pickaxe handle which he kept in case of emergencies, called Timmy, and went into
his storeroom to confront the two. One of them had a pickaxe handle, but neither
had a shield. Before the fight started he had time to call for help on his
walkietalkie.
  By now the local police knew of us, even if three thieves didn't. Laserbeak
heard James's radio call at nearly limit range, identified a police car from its
roof markings, swooped on it, and with a loud squawk called: "To Wernicke's
factory! Intruders!".
  [27] In the storeroom James backed into a corner to cover his back. Stick
thudded on stick or on James's shield and helmet. James was facing two enemies,
but in spare periods he had long practised with his riotsquad-type kit against a
semi-intelligent opponent simulator which he had made. James's stick found
Bert's left funnybone and then head, and Bert fell. The other burglar, two ribs
broken by the return stroke, fled into the garage, where Timmy and then Jazz
caught him. Jazz now had one of them in each hand. James ran up and just in time
broke Bert's free forearm with a blow of his pickaxe handle; a sawn-off shotgun
fell to the floor. But as two police cars arrived the third man woke and ran out
to their van, and took out and put on a high-capacity fire extinguisher which he
had fitted with backpack straps and a nozzle valve. He aimed it at the police as
they got out of their cars, for he had been adapted it to do the exact opposite
of its intended purpose. He switched on its igniter and aimed. Then with a loud
harsh caw like a crow's there swooped on him something like he had never seen
before, like a small plane in hawk shape with hooked beaked head and taloned
legs. Laserbeak's swoop startled him long enough for Timmy to run out and grab
his nozzle hand, and the high-pressure jet of burning petrol from his backpack
converted fire extinguisher [28] wasted itself on empty tarmac. While he was
trying to get his flame nozzle out of the dog's bite with his other hand, James
ran out and up to him and clubbed him unconscious, shouting angrily: "That's
enough! Three of you thinking I'd be a pushover by myself!, never mind how much
of other people's work you spoil for the price of a few drinks and fags and
cheap meals.".
  The flamethrowerman was handcuffed and bundled into a police car. Asked for
his name, he replied "Mickey Mouse" and complained: "Not fair, him got up to the
nines like the French CRS [= riotsquad] and giant robots like science fiction
and that vicious dog and his posh fancy style of talking.". James gave a short
statement, and went back into his office and gave Timmy a bone. His temporary
secretary was unhurt. Tabbins and a police dog started threatening each other;
the dog's handler jerked on its lead and gave a curt order while James gave
Tabbins some fish. A policeman took the remains of the phone for forensic
ballistics to examine. James typed a full- length statement into a computer file
and listed it on a lineprinter to save the policeman's writing hand from yet
more work.
  The police handcuffed and arrested the other two intruders, who Jazz was still
holding. Seeing Jazz's steel bulk towering above them still made the policemen
somewhat nervous. They asked the two for their names.
  "Donald Duck. I live at Pondville." said one abusively.
  "Goofy, The Kennels." said the other, "If it hadn't been for that rabid alley
cat of his, nasty sharp claws.".
  "That won't help. If we don't know your names, we'll give you numbers." said a
policeman.
  "I don't know their names," said Jazz, "but they're those new three at N.P. &
A.L. General Dealers which has reopened. I saw them through their shop window.
They were going in and out of their back. I can replay my memory of them back
from my visual cortex into a television.".
  A policeman jumped a bit and said sharply: "Cordtex? I didn't know you lot had
explosives here.".
  "I didn't mention explosives." Jazz replied, "Cortex is the conscious part of
the brain (which in me is electronic).".
  "Good thing you showed up just then, Mr.Laserbeak. You still scare me a bit,
that shape and electromechanical but alive and thinking." said a policeman
outside as he listed the men's kit and put it into a police car's boot, "One
sawn-off shotgun; two walkietalkies; one pickaxe handle; one homemade
flamethrower (nasty contraption it is); two packs; ... N.P. & A.L. General
Dealers will be shut for a good while.".
  "And just then, when the job was finished," (so James described it
afterwards), "up come Ratchet and Hoist and Wheeljack and Optimus!". Ratchet
nearly didn't recognize James in his riotsquad gear. Ratchet gave Jazz a
thorough check-up after all that action. So ended the first occasion of `having
the Decepticons in', as I called it once.
  "After all that going-on," said James sitting on my left shoulder holding onto
my left ear-point, "I better get back to work, I've customers waiting. It's
lucky you didn't wait another day until bringing Jazz to life! That shop of
theirs seems to attract trouble, whoever owns it.".

        [29] Time passed and work continued. The nuisances that beset our lives in the
real world have various origins, and sometimes the petty and the serious clash
with each other in their demands for our time. One night I again found myself in
the Fluffo doll's [see 8] fictional world, where she is a scatterbrained teenage
girl who follows the latest fashions. I was of human height, dancing with her in
the richly ornate ballroom that was in the old duke's mansion [see 9] before
Droitwich Council bought it; the dream ignored the anachronism. She wore an
expensive ornate flowing yellow dress.
  "It's so nice you could make it. Pity about the weather, after that time we
didn't manage to get to Majorca after all." she said.
  The music for the next dance started. It was a minuet, which I was not very
familiar with. "Hang on, Fluffo." I said, and counted steps and thought. The
dance did not last long, for the fire alarm rang, and a loudhailered order to
evacuate the building. As the guests and the musicians ran out, the ballroom
turned into Wernicke's factory garage, and the fire alarm into a telephone bell.
After a moment's puzzlement I recognized the usual. "Oh Matrix, another silly
Fluffo dream." I realized. James's brother had come for the day, with a small
daughter Sue (James's niece) who was leaning against my right front cab corner
near one of my various eyes reading her Fluffo comic. At other times she settles
in my cab. Either way exposes me whether I want it or not to all that sillyness
of expensive unnecessary fashion clothes and parties and boyfriends giving the
readers an overearly wasteful expensive taste for the same. That is not what
dolls are meant for. Dolls are for children to practise child care on for when
they grow up and have their own children. I shook off that somewhat purposeless
line of thought and answered the phone. "Hallo? Wernicke Computers here." I
said.
  "Is Mr.Prime there?" a man replied.
  "That's me." I said.
  "Could I possibly hire your lorry for the day, Mr.Prime?" he said.
  "I'm sorry, but I'll be busy all day in here." I replied.
  "Then you won't be needing it. I could hire it." he said. Another one! People
kept on thinking that we have human drivers. The previous week the same
breakdown firm rang four times wanting to hire "Hoist's towtruck" while Hoist
himself was busy here at Wernicke's, and refused to take "no" for an answer. I
yet again tried to explain what a sentient computer brain was. Other people
thought that we had made nearly all the Transformers characters real: the
previous day someone wanted to hire Grapple (who transforms into a truck-crane),
although I hadn't made him yet.
  "If you <are> like in the stories, then could I hire that big boxtrailer of
yours and that 6-wheeled open car called `Roller' that you carry around? I could
hire an artic cab somewhere else." he asked.
  Starting to feel a bit irritated with people who think that my fact must be an
exact copy of my fiction, I replied: "Sorry, no. I don't know where you got your
information from, but that boxtrailer and Roller only exist in the stories that
I was copied into reality from.". I had no trailer of my own in the real world,
but pulled any loaded trailer that I was hired to pull. Later I got Smith &
Malton's to make a flatbed trailer of my own for me, but that was not yet.
  "Look, Op. Fluffo's got all her friends in for dinner." said Sue, opening her
comic in front of one of my eyes. On the phone there was the sound of a receiver
being snatched, then a different voice said: "Look! Are you a schizo who thinks
he's a lorry or a science fiction character, or is this a joke!? Either way
there'll be trouble when I can contact Mr.Wernicke next. I've got 20 tons to be
taken to Bristol <now>, and I need a lorry quickly.".
  "Not now!" I said a bit sharply to Sue, "I've heard quite enough about Fluffo
real and fictional to last me till next time I need new big-ends! Fluffo Dolls
Ltd. keeps sending me stuffy letters full of lawyer's talk about that hoarding I
had to knock down to let a fire engine through [see 6]; you left your Fluffo
doll in Ratchet, and of course it got taken to hospital in him next time he had
a case, and nurse thought it was the patient's: you were very lucky to get it
back. Anyway, I'm on the phone right now.".
  "My dolly's `her', not `it'!" Sue complained aggrievedly, "and you say you're
on the phone, but I can't hear anything.".
  "Because I'm talking straight into the phone. I can link my brain straight to
the phone. Quiet, I'm still on the phone." I replied. The phone conversation
continued pointlessly a little longer, then finished.

        Jazz had joined Hoist and Wheeljack on a job repairing an oldish factory
building that someone had bought. That meant that James, needing to fetch from
Birmingham Airport three reps who had come from a firm in Silicon Valley (an
area of computer factories in California in USA), had no choice at all what
vehicle to fetch them in. They wouldn't have cared for all three and a lot of
luggage and James being squashed together into my cab, or having to sit on the
floor in the back of James's delivery van; it had to be Ratchet, regardless of
what they might think of being fetched in an ambulance. Mention of California
reminded Ratchet suddenly of adjacent Oregon, the scene of many of the old
fictional adventures of the Transformers, and the Ark in fictional Mount
St.Hilary in the Cascades Mountains. Ratchet kept radio watch on the ambulance
frequency. The previous week he had been called to a multiple pile up on the M5
motorway, from holiday traffic too close on each other's tails; luckily he could
transform and walk to get round the mess.
  "Have you heard anything more of that Mrs.Jones?" Ratchet asked James as they
passed the turning to Mrs.Jones's house.
  "She made one more try at getting Mrs.Allington back into her society, then
gave up at last. I wish she'd leave people alone. Laserbeak's away delivering
surgical instruments urgently." replied James.
  "I better not transform or talk at the airport and startle everybody." said
Ratchet as he turned off the A45 towards Birmingham Airport, "I've seen a fair
bit of life since I first woke in your garage and found that I was only my upper
half, and only Optimus Prime there with me: my first job was to help to complete
myself [see 11]. I sometimes keep track of the comic that your nephew gets about
the adventures I'm supposed to be having in Oregon and the Ark. Exciting at
times; the real world's duller but safer.".