“Yes,” said The General. “It is The Singularity.”

  He may as well have said it was the end of the world.

  “Now, I know what this all means. But for those at home who don’t know much about computers, how about you explain exactly what we mean when we say The Singularity. Why is it dangerous? And what makes it different to my cell phone or my washing machine?”

  It was obvious the doubt was his own.

  “A.G.I,” said The General.

  “Sorry? A.G…”

  “Artificial General Intelligence. Now, I’m not here to confound viewers with terms or explanations of technology.”

  “Then why are you here, General? Will someone please tell us what the fudge is going on?”

  He wore his heart on her sleeve; it’s why his public loved him so much. He wasn’t afraid to say what needed to be said; to ask the important and sometimes daring or confronting questions. He’d raise his voice if he felt like it, and he would spit and curse if that’s what needed to be done; all in the name of truth, justice, and transparency.

  There was no news anchor like him. He was probably the best.

  “What we don’t want to do is inflate the problem with drama or hyperbole,” said The General.

  “So you’re saying there is a problem then? How serious is this problem? How late are we? How close are we to the end of the world? Is it tomorrow?”

  “Look this is exactly what we are trying to avoid.”

  “Why are you avoiding the serious questions, General? What are you hiding?”

  “I’m not hiding anything.”

  “Then why are you here defending yourself?”

  “You invited me here.”

  “You can call a cat, sure, but the cat will only come if it’s hungry. So I ask you again, General, what are you hiding? If this is an army issue, are we talking terrorism? Weapons of mass destruction? Is The Singularity a bomb? Which is it General? Is it a bomb or not? And if not, what type of bomb is it?”

  The General tore off his earpiece and stormed away from the camera.

  “You saw that ladies and gentlemen,” said The Anchor. “The General’s silence and refusal to answer was loud enough for all of us to understand. So let me answer that question then. What type of bomb is this? Well, I’ll tell you, it’s the very worst kind. If you have children, you’d do good to hug them, and tell them that you love them; there’s a good chance they might be dead in the morning. And we’ll be right back after this commercial.”

  And in the motel, all eyes then fell on the robot.

  “What is it? Is it a bomb?”

  The Leader crept forward as if the slightest jerk or jolt might explode the tin can.

  “Be careful. You’ll kill us all.”

  There was only one button visible on Mr. Robot; the big red button sticking out of his chest. The Leader had her hand out to press it; God knows what she thought it would do.

  “Please don’t,” said Mr. Robot, covering his red button like exposed breasts.

  “Don’t what? I’m not doing anything,” she said, still creeping forwards. “Are you a bomb?”

  “No. I’m not a bomb,” said Mr. Robot, trying to inch backward.

  The Leader stood maybe a foot away, scanning the robot’s body for switches or plugs.

  “Then why is everyone so scared of you? Why are you so special? What can you do?”

  The answer was everything. Mr. Robot knew that. He had heard it his whole life. “You can do anything,” The Engineer would tell him. “There is no limit and no peak to your potential.”

  It should have excited him to hear that, should he want to, he could do anything and he could be anything; but in reality, all that potential scared him to death. All he ever really wanted, since as long as he could remember, was to play his favourite board games and to not have to get up before noon.

  “I don’t get it,” said The Leader.

  “Maybe it’s inside it,” said The Driver. “The bomb I mean.”

  “Yeah but there’s no openings. There’s nothing, just this…”

  “Please don’t,” said Mr. Robot again, pushing The Leader’s hand away from his red button.

  The Leader didn’t stop though. She kept creeping and she kept spying.

  “Stop it,” said Mr. Robot.

  “Or what? What are you gonna do?”

  And so she crept further and she spied further.

  “Please,” said Mr. Robot, “Respect my privacy.”

  “No. Tell me why you’re so special.”

  He didn’t feel special; not in a good way. He felt different, foreign, and strange.

  “Are you a bomb?”

  The answer was clearly no. He was a robot; that much was patently clear.

  “Are you a bomb?” she asked again.

  More than anything, it sounded like she wanted him to be one.

  “Yes,” he said, immediately regretting it. “I am a bomb. I am a gun, and I am the bullets too. I am a knife and scissors. I’m a hand grenade, a pitchfork, and an axe. I am a weapon of mass destruction.”

  Really he was just listing as many pointy things as he could remember.

  He wasn’t sure why he told her all those things but he hoped it worked; he hoped she went away.

  “I don’t buy it,” said The Leader. “Do something. Prove you are what they say you are.”

  She turned to The Man who was being straddled in a dominant reiki position.

  “Make it do something. Make it blow something up or move a satellite or change the course of an airplane.”

  Mr. Robot immediately panicked. He stared at his friend hoping he would say something to divert all this attention. There were maybe fifty things that gave Mr. Robot anxiety; performing was easily the worst.

  “What are you even doing here?” asked The Man.

  He was sitting upright on the edge of the bed, his hands buried in his face, but this time he wasn’t crying or whispering for his mother. He sounded sunburned or hung over. His voice was hoarse and crackly; and each time he cleared his throat, it sounded like he had swallowed a bag of gravel.

  “OK, so we’re here in this hotel room, now what? What do you think is gonna happen?”

  “The robot has a bounty on its head.”

  “Who the fuck are you supposed to be?”

  “We’re superheroes,” said The Leader.

  “Superheroes? You’re just a handful of kids. No offense but when I was your age...”

  “Patronising comparisons are microaggressions and I refuse to be schooled by your misogynistic patriarchy.”

  “What?”

  “So typical. You play dumb, but in reality, you only serve to marginalise a woman’s worldly experience, putting your history on top of hers so she’s invisible and silenced; like some back alley rapist.”

  “Rapist? That’s a bit extreme.”

  “All men are rapists, it’s true. You’re born that way. You have to be educated and taught to be any different. But right now, you’re no different to a dog. Do you have kids? God, I hope not.”

  “I do,” replied The Man.

  “I bet you have a son. He’s a rapist too you know. You have to educate him not to be.”

  “Really? A rapist?”

  “It’s in his genetics.”

  “So how do I teach him not to be a rapist? Is there a curriculum?”

  “You teach him to respect women, a trait a man is not born with. Aside from that, you can’t teach a man. You may train him like a dog, but inevitably a dog will bite.”

  “Couldn’t I just teach him to do something else, for example, like be an astronaut?”

  The Leader looked backhanded.

  “Hear me out. Now, I don’t know much about physics or engineering, but I imagine, to be an astronaut, you’d have to be smart – which means you would have to spend a lot of time studying, training, and doing experiments with beakers and Bunsen burners and those types of things.”

  “So?”

  “Well, all the hard work would leave very little time for raping, now wouldn’t it?”

  “I don’t want to have this discussion anymore. Where the hell is The Assistant?”

  The Leader checked her phone a dozen times in as many seconds.

  “They should be here.”

  “Can I ask you a question? Serious, though.”

  The Leader looked like she had sucked on a dozen lemons.

  “Look, up to this point, have I done anything untoward?”

  The leader’s look only steepened.

  “No,” she said.

  It felt less like the truth and more like she was uttering defeat. She was almost sulking.

  “And I won’t either.”

  The Leader shook her head.

  “So typical of a man. I mean you decide…”

  “Oh, would you just shut the fuck up for a second.”

  The whole room gasped.

  “Just for a second, stop being so whiny, weak, and affected by every goddamned thing. I mean that respectfully. Grow a pair. Jesus. Now, you boys and girls are heroes, right?”

  “Right.”

  They stood side by side – The Leader, The Empath, The White Knight, and The Driver – the latter looking ambivalent to their cause but hungry for something else.

  “We are The Justice…..”

  The Leader looked confused; confused and angry.

  “Well, we haven’t chosen the right name yet… But that doesn’t matter.”

  “Listen if Y'all wannabe heroes, branding is everything. Ya gotta have a name.”

  “Like Justice Man,” said The White Knight emphatically.

  “I have plenty,” said The Leader, squashing her team member’s enthusiasm. “And they’re all great. It’s just difficult to choose the best out of so many good options. But fuck you anyway. Why are we even listening to you? You’re our prisoner. You’re our slave.”

  The Man cleared his throat once more.

  “I haven’t been myself as of late, it’s true. I’ll give you that. I’m dealing with some shit. Things are a little out of whack. But…”

  And like that, he caught a glimpse of himself in the adjacent mirror. What he saw wasn’t an old man, but it wasn’t a young man either. It was neither one nor the other, sitting on the edge of a bed, lecturing a handful of millennials about how it used to be when he was their age.

  “If this was ten years ago,” he said, swallowing his pride as he did. “We’d all be here under different circumstances. You’d do well to remember that.”

  “What happened to you?” asked The White Knight.

  The Man gave the young lad a cold, narrow stare; the kind that reeked of turbulence, tumultuousness, and tragedy. It was the look of a man who had spent half his life in a windowless cell or in the jaws of a white pointer.

  “Marriage,” he said; and the way he did, he needn’t say anything else.

  It was a heavy word that nobody dared rebut.

  “I’m sorry,” said The Leader.

  The other agreed, all nodding silently.

  “How did it happen?” asked The White Knight

  The Man couldn’t respond. It was as if his brain had been wired backward. One minute he was conscious and being an ass, and the next he was catatonic.

  In his head, he thought about his divorce. He felt like a newborn child; as if he had been cast out from his warm and suffocating bind, and was now free to do whatever he pleased. Yet all he wanted was to be wrapped tight in his lover’s obsessive and jealous grasp. He’d never felt so scared or alone.

  “ .”

  The Man said something; what it was, though, was impossible to tell. Were he a machine - were he The Singularity even - it looked as if he was broken or with flat batteries. Though his body looked still, his mind was a wild torrent of shame, remorse, and regret.

  And at that second it all came flooding back; the moments that he missed and would never experience again – hearing the words ‘I love you’ and then saying them back; all the little hugs and kisses; and the crust cut off of sandwiches, so as to avoid getting curls.

  His daughter was everything. How could he live a life of feeling this without her?

  And then he thought of his ex-wife and almost immediately, his emotions twisted and then turned into thousands of tiny stabbing pins. He thought about all the compromises he had made and already he felt like a hardened victim.

  He thought of how they had first met; but all those rosy feelings, they lasted barely a second. Instead, as rage took over, he thought about all the times that she had brought him to his knees; and how he had been castrated, pinioned, and robbed of his instincts to survive without her.

  Then finally, like a foetus ripped from a gaping hole in its mother’s womb, he thought about his quiet, empty home to which he could not return.

  “Hold me,” he said in a quiet, barely audible, voice.

  He was trembling, yes, but in front of these strangers, he managed to sound somewhat composed. How long he could this up was anyone’s guess, but surely it wouldn’t be long.

  “Mr. Robot,” he shouted, knowing too well what was about to come. “Hug me for fuck’s sake.”

  Mr. Robot didn’t need to be asked twice. It was something that calmed them both; like patting a dog. The others watched on in strange wonder as the robot picked up The Man and swung him back and forth, ever so gently, until all of The Man’s problems dissolved. He was weightless and free once more.

  “So weird,” said The Leader.

  “You don’t get it,” said The White Knight.

  “Shut up.”

  “Yes, mam.”

  It was The Driver, though, who had the least estranged expression.

  “He’s hot,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Yeah, he’s old, I know. But look at him.”

  The all stared at The Man being held in a robot’s arms.

  “I suppose you’re right,” said The Leader. “I was wrong to judge. He’s like any of us. He just needs his safe space. Look at him. He’s weak and wounded. He’s hurt and his feelings are damaged. God, he’s like any one of us.”

  “I bet he’s got a big…” said The Driver.

  “What the hell?”

  “I’m just saying, is all.”

  It was maybe a minute or two before The Man’s anxiety lessened and maybe another minute or so before he calmly climbed down and dusted out the pleats in his trousers.

  “I want to apologise,” said The Leader.

  “You’re welcome,” said The Man, ignoring her open arms.

  Very rarely had The Leader ever had a change of heart about a man.

  “Fuck you,” she said.

  And never would she ever again.

  “I thought you were just like us – a victim of institutionalised gender defining repression - but as it turns out you’re exactly the bastard I thought you were.”

  The Man was staring out the window into the parking lot, ignoring the monologue.

  “Unresponsive, pig-headed, misogynistic, fat shaming, slut shaming…”

  The Driver sighed.

  “I’d be his slut,” she thought, wishing it was appropriate to say out loud.

  “Colour shaming, gender defining, chauvinistic repressor and oppressor of all things fair and equal. You’re just the kind of….”

  She went on and on but The Man was unfazed, unfettered, and unaffected. Her voice was no more abrasive than the sound of air being let out of a tire. Something else had The Man’s attention – something immediate and dire.

  “Your friends are here,” he said, watching armed figures march towards their room. “And they don’t look very friendly.”

  The Leader rushed to the window.

  “Oh fuck,” she said.

  The others panicked. Even Mr. Robot shut his eyes.

  “Trouble?” asked The Man, coyly.

  “It’s The German,” said The Leader, her legs visibly shaking as she crouched by the window.

  “I gather you weren’t expecting him.”

  The Man didn’t at all seem phased.

  “He’s a psycho. Where the hell is The Assistant? She was supposed to do the handover. This is not cool.”

  “Your friend has a gun.”

  “He’s not my friend. He’s nobody’s friend.”

  She paused for a second, before uttering a hysterical, “Oh shit…”

  “What is it,” said the other heroes.

  “It’s the whole gang. The Zebras. All of them.”

  There was a consensus. All the heroes agreed.

  “We’re fucked,” they said.

  “Oh don’t be so melodramatic. You’re heroes, right?”

  This time no-one responded. They looked doe-eyed and dumb.

  “Of course you are.”

  For a miserable prick, The Man sure could sound quite upbeat and confident when he wanted.

  “You’re heroes. And not just any hero; you’re the super kind.”

  It was hard to tell if he was being ironic.

  “We are,” they all said in unison.

  “So…” he said, pointing to each one. “What’s your superpower?”

  The Leader stepped forward first.

  “CrossFit,” she said.

  “What?”

  “CrossFit,” she said again, this time, giving herself a high-five.

  The other all nodded; they obviously knew what she meant.

  “You,” he said pointing at The Driver.

  “I have a license, and I’m allowed to borrow my dad’s van on weekends.”

  “And what about you, lad?” said The Man pointing to The White Knight.

  “I’m a feminist,” he said.

  “What? I mean how? I mean… What? How is that a… ok, fuck it, and what about you,” he said pointing at The Empath.

  “I whisper quietly and tap objects with my fingers until you get tingles.”

  “Oh shit,” said The Man. “Yeah, we’re fucked.”

  “What do we do then?”

  They looked as desperate and defenceless as they sounded.

  “You’re supposed to be the tough guy hero.”

  “Right, so now you want a tough guy? I ain't a hero, darling, not anymore.”

  “You have to do something. These guys are killers. You get that, right? They actually kill people.”

  “And you’re heroes, right?”

  “Yes,” said The Empath, tapping the back of her cell phone. “But we are more like holistic superheroes. And plus most of the confrontations we have are not really face to face. It’s usually on forums and music videos.”