Ball Machine: The Inside Story of the Lies, Seductions and Sporting Triumphs of the Android Vitas Rodriguez

By Simon J Townley

Can an android win Wimbledon? Or the soccer World Cup? What about the heart of a beautiful woman?
Built as a glorified ball machine, Vitas Rodriguez is the world’s most advanced android - strong, fast, tireless and smart.
Equipped with the revolutionary quantum entanglement processor, he’s sentient, athletic, handsome, and unstoppable. He knows how to learn. And he loves to win.
But when pushed to the limit, will Vitas finally shatter his programming and quantify - to the final decimal point - the ultimate, non-binary meaning of life?

Stuck on a secret science campus in the Arizona desert, the brilliant and beautiful young scientist Rosa Rodriguez needs a tennis partner. So she persuades her colleagues to build her a robot - the ultimate ‘ball machine.’
Inspired by Rosa’s promise of a striptease, the misfit prodigies at the elite science think-tank create the world’s most advanced android. Equipped with the revolutionary quantum entanglement processor, it’s a robot so lifelike, so realistic, no one can tell it’s not human.
Vitas is sentient, athletic, handsome, and unstoppable. He gets to every shot, hits with precision and never tires. Can Rosa give him a game? Will she have to do that striptease she promised the boys? And are all his parts totally lifelike and fully operational?
Just how far will Vitas’ tennis skills take him, and will he find the answers to life’s ultimate questions?
As a team of androids sets out to transform the world’s worst soccer team, can the tiny Caribbean nation of Javier and St Amaro finally win a match? Will they qualify for the soccer World Cup?
Could anyone, or anything, ever stop them?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon J Townley
• Release date: Feb 9, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301684540

Simon J Townley

Simon Townley is the author of the acclaimed slipstream / speculative novels ‘Lost In Thought’ and ‘Ball Machine’, and has written a range of cross-genre novels for both adults and young adults, including prehistoric fiction series ‘A Tribal Song – Tales of the Koriba’. The first novel in the series, ‘The Dry Lands,’ was published in 2012, with the second, ‘Caves of the Seers,’ scheduled for release in early in 2014. His sci-fi thriller ‘Outlivers,’ again written for both adults and young adults alike, is to be released in Autumn of 2013. This will be followed by the post-global warming, high-seas adventure ‘Among The Wreckage.’Simon has also written non-fiction, in particular on the subjects of copywriting and search engine optimisation. He studied English literature at the University of York in the UK and has worked as a journalist and copywriter for the past twenty years. He currently lives in Devon, England, with a woman, three cats and two Airedale terriers.Extended samples of Simon's books (usually the first five chapters) are available on his website at simontownley.com.

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Ball Machine

The Inside Story of the Lies, Seductions and Sporting Triumphs of the Android Vitas Rodriguez

Simon J. Townley

Published by Beardale Books

beardale.com

Copyright 2012 Simon J. Townley

This text uses British English spelling.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Other novels by Simon J. Townley

The Dry Lands

(book one of ‘A Tribal Song – Tales of the Koriba’)

In the Rattle of the Shaman’s Bones

(book two of ‘A Tribal Song – Tales of the Koriba’)

The Fire Within

(book three of ‘A Tribal Song – Tales of the Koriba’)

Doguar and the Baboons of War

Lost In Thought

Ball Machine

Outlivers

In The Wreckage (A Tale of Two Brothers)

Soon to be published

Monster Hunters of the Undermire

Wild, Hugo Wilde

TITLE PAGE

OTHER books by Simon J. Townley

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One - Build Me a Ball Machine

Chapter Two - Bring Me the Heart of Joe Kowalski

Chapter Three - Quantum Entanglement

Chapter Four - Inner Sanctum

Chapter Five - Bare Metal

Chapter Six - Skin Graft

Chapter Seven - The Earth Moves

Chapter Eight - Shaken Ground

Chapter Nine - Wilderness

Chapter Ten - Potholes

Chapter Eleven - Lies

Chapter Twelve - Game to Love

Chapter Thirteen - Seductions

Chapter Fourteen - The Gods of Tennis

Chapter Fifteen - Sporting Triumph

Chapter Sixteen - Robots Don’t Rest

Chapter Seventeen - Gatekeepers

Chapter Eighteen - Under Cover

Chapter Nineteen - The Beautiful Game

Chapter Twenty - Rafa’s Revenge

Chapter Twenty-One - The Cat’s Away

Chapter Twenty-Two - Go Get Joe

Chapter Twenty-Three - The Money

Chapter Twenty-Four - The Operation

Chapter Twenty-Five - The Monk

Chapter Twenty-Six - The Raid

Chapter Twenty-Seven - Machines United

Chapter Twenty-Eight - Moscow

Chapter Twenty-Nine - Kremlin

Chapter Thirty - To The Wire

Chapter Thirty-One - Inside Story

About the Author

Prologue

Time Stops

Moscow, July 2018

Time slowed. The weight of the world was on his shoulders. Relativity had kicked in.

Vitas Rodriguez accelerated past the Russian midfielders into open space. Seconds to go before time was up and the lottery was drawn. A penalty shoot out to decide the World Cup final.

Vitas watched Alonso jink past a defender. The young winger lifted the ball over the Russian goalkeeper with a flick of his foot. As he hurdled the goalie, Alonso’s feet flailed in the air.

The final minute of injury time, an empty goal. The world held its breath. It all came down to this. Alonso must score.

Vitas heard a cry from the side-lines, a woman’s voice cut through the noise. Was it her? Did she call his name?

In front of him, Vitas saw Alonso stumble. The winger stuck out a boot, and the ball flew towards the open goal. Alonso must score.

Vitas kept running. Instinct. Get there, be there, pull Alonso to his feet, hold his hand high in triumph. It would be all right, the world would understand, forgive them in the end, if the winner came from flesh and blood, skin and bone. Alonso was the hero. Alonso must score.

Vitas sensed time kick and lurch as if its engine tugged against a hand brake. He noticed the sharp taste of metal in his mouth as the ball hit the post.

It rebounded back across the penalty area and rolled towards him. All he had to do was kick it.

At that moment, time stopped.

One second it was there, then… gone.

In the dug-out, a gangster held a gun to Rosa’s head.

Pete had vaporised, living on the proceeds, staying hidden.

In the stands, a billionaire had Natalya twisted around his fingers. The woman who would never love him.

In a forest monastery in the Thai mountains, a group of monks leapt to their feet, screamed at the borrowed television and howled for liberation.

Time hung motionless as eighty thousand people watched, transfixed. Around the world, billions of pairs of eyes focused on Vitas, urging the underdog to victory while praying he would fail.

Time stopped. None of this mattered, not the glory, the billions of dollars, or the economies of entire nations decided by a single step. Or stumble. Or kick.

History in the making, his future in the balance.

Time flashed before his eyes. All illusion.

How did it come to this?

Chapter One

Build Me a Ball Machine

Arizona, May 2014

Half way down the second bottle of vodka, Rosalita Rodriguez had an idea. She looked at the others, a grin on her face, wondering how they would respond. It might work. They could do this.

A robot, she said.

The guys turned to look at her, their soupy eyes lingering a little too long. Their expressions, puzzled. Their demeanour, drunk.

Saturday night, and there was nothing happening outside of booze, poker and yelling at the Arizona desert. Fifty miles to the nearest town, nothing but run-down houses and a store. A hundred and fifty miles to the nearest place with a bar, anything that even smelt like nightlife.

We build a robot, she said. It’s something to do.

They were geeks, engineers, scientists. The best of the best. Smart and creative and ahead of every curve. Yet here they were, stuck in the middle of the desert, spending Saturday night watching reruns of sci-fi flicks and flipping corn chips around the canteen.

Think of it as a hobby, something for time off. Her gaze scoured the room, hunting for agreement.

Sounds like hard work, Jedster said, never taking his eyes off the first person shooter game on his tablet.

We’ll pool what we can do, she said. Artificial intelligence. Robotic arms. Synthetic skin. We’ve got organic body parts growing in the med labs. Not a robot, we’ll make an android. See how far we can get. See how good we can make it.

No money in the budget, Tony said. His eyes loitered behind a thicket of black, bushy eyebrows. At thirty, he was three years older than Rosa. It was ancient, for this place. No time set aside for it. No lab time, no conference time.

Weekends, she said. Take time off from the porno. She paused, a sly smirk on her face, waiting to see who would react. It’ll be fun.

In the corner, Dany the enigmatic Chinese maths genius looked up from his laptop, stared at Rosa for a moment, rubbed his chin, and started typing furiously.

You can’t just make a robot, Billy said. What do you want it to do? Clean the house? Play the piano?

Everything, she said.

That’s not happening. At least Billy was sitting up, looking at her, as if he thought there was something to it. Get specific.

All right, she said. She knew what she wanted. As well as a gym and swimming pool, the campus came equipped with a tennis court, but there was no one here who could give her a game. Let’s make a robot that can play tennis. Looks real, plays a decent game, gives me a work out.

I’ll give you a work-out, Jedster sneered from the back of the room.

She ignored him. Build me a robot that plays to my standard. Or better. I challenge you.

She looked around the room at the eight young men, all genius material, in their own sweet ways. Dysfunctional, awkward, selfish, immature. But brilliant.

They were here to create the future, solve the world’s problems, build a new world. The Arden Project brought together the most creative minds and let them work on their most outrageous ideas, providing it led towards a profit.

What’s in it for us? Jedster lobbed an empty beer can across the room. It’s Rosa getting the tennis partner. She should put something on the table. Jedster’s tone implied he wasn’t thinking of money.

Only a handful of women worked at Arden. She was the only one stuck on campus at weekends, with all these geeks. The pressure was intense.

Incentive, Jedster said. We work better with incentives. His mouth slunk into a leering grin.

She’d often wondered why the boys followed Jedster. It was crazy. All the intelligence in this room, and they allowed the idiot to lead them.

She needed to tip the balance. Something they couldn’t resist. A striptease. You build a robot that looks human, moves naturally, and can beat me at tennis, three sets, and I’ll do a striptease.

The silence was intense, as if the boys were already undressing her, thinking it over.

All the way? Completely naked? Billy was trying to sound casual about it.

All the way, she said. Bare naked.

Rosa had dark, Spanish looks, big brown eyes, flowing black hair and skin tanned from the equatorial sun of her homeland. The boys followed her around like puppies, but they weren’t getting any. She came from an island, a small community, where girls thought twice about dropping their panties. But she could do this. For the fun of it. And a chance to play.

It has to look human? That’s the hardest part. Claus sounded serious, as if weighing up the possibilities. You mean the skin, the eyes, everything?

And he has to speak, Rosa said. Could she really strip in front of these boys? Part of her liked the idea. But another part was backing out fast. He has to pass off as human. Looks, talk, movement. Otherwise it’s too easy.

The boys around the room hissed at the idea this was easy. But the plan was gaining ground, and not just because of the striptease. It was a challenge. They needed something to do, in the down time. Something they could all get behind.

How long do we have?

Six months, she said. I go home in six months.

Chapter Two

Bring Me the Heart of Joe Kowalski

Rosa spun the tennis racket in her hand, knees bent in a half crouch waiting for the ball to come over the net. Wearing the skimpy white shorts had been a mistake. She could sense Jedster’s eyes on her butt. The man had no subtlety. No class.

She bobbed her head at Tony to ask what was happening. Why the delay?

Coming right up, he called. He stepped away from the man-shaped machine on the other side of the net and pointed the remote control at its head. One arm swung into action, dropping the tennis ball to the ground. The other swung the racket. It missed, flailing at the ball with a whoosh of fresh air.

Over by the fence, a couple of the guys laughed. Rosa stood up straight and walked to the net, resting her racket on the top tape.

Give it time, Tony called out. He tapped at the control panel on the back of the robot’s head.

Rosa waited at the net, racket slung low by her ankles. The robot bent over, picked up the ball and threw it in the air. The racket whirled, made contact, and the ball flew towards her. Nonchalantly, she stuck out her racket and volleyed it away.

Fifteen love, someone shouted from the fence.

It’s not even a very good ball machine, Rosa said.

They were four weeks into the challenge, and despite working for three weekends solid, plus stolen time in the week when the bosses weren’t around, this was as far as they’d come.

We need a robotics expert, Billy said. We can’t invent all this from scratch.

He was right, and she knew it, but there was no one here with the expertise. Could she bring someone in? Easier to hire a tennis coach for the weekends, but not as much fun. Besides, she’d done some research into synthetic skin and flesh. As a doctor on the team, here to research the genetic regrowth of limbs and new transplant techniques, she had access to the latest thinking. And she could order in products. She was sure she could turn this mechanical monster into something that looked like flesh and blood. She’d laid down this challenge, but now she was hooked by it herself. She was going to make this work.

Who can we get? She looked around at the guys lining the court. It was Sunday, and there was nothing much for them to do but work, or read, or fire bullets at tin cans. Or watch Rosa in her tennis shorts and dream about that striptease.

There’s a guy at MIT, Tony said. He’s the best.

The Arizona desert was a long haul from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They’d need a ruse, some excuse to get him here.

Look. Tony strode towards Rosa, pointing at the screen of his tablet computer. This is the guy, Joe Kowalski.

He was younger than she expected, thirty something. More handsome too, in a rugged kind of way. She felt a tingle someplace in her tennis shorts.

Professor of robotics? He doesn’t look old enough, Claus said.

Her thoughts completely.

Tony read out Kowalski’s list of accomplishments, reeling off qualifications and names of companies. Out of our league, he said. He wouldn’t look twice at the Project.

Not unless we can find something, she said. Some way of tempting him here.

Got anything in mind?

She didn’t like the smirk on Tony’s face, but said nothing.

Yes, she said. I might just have something.

✯✯✯

It took two months to swing it, but here he was, Joe Kowalski, in the flesh.

It was Sunday, he had driven across the desert in an open top car, his shirt unbuttoned to the waist. Standing there, hands tucked in his belt, like some kind of cowboy, or star of a black and white matinee. Too good to be true, she thought. Rosa mentally pinched herself. Get composed. Don’t act like a schoolgirl.

She’d created a whole new line of research, just for this. The boys kept telling her to stop, said she was going too far.

She’s dying to get naked for us. Look at her, she wants it, Jedster had said.

She should never have promised to strip. She’d never live it down. But the new research idea had paid off. It could work. Add robotics to the organ transplant process, combining the two into a whole new paradigm for creating body parts. On the phone, Kowalski had sounded excited. This was the scary part. Up until now, all this had been some kind of game for Rosa, getting one over on her bosses, seeing if she really could wangle it. Now here was Kowalski in person, and his time was precious. His science was serious. He didn’t know the real reason he was here was to create a better ball machine.

You must be Rosa. Kowalski was holding out his hand, a grin on his face that almost buckled her knees.

How was she going to tell him? How could she get him working on the robot, without being rumbled? She’d have to make the organ transplant scheme look good. Really good.

I’ll show you to your room, she said. Kowalski would be here for two weeks. It wasn’t long enough. They had to get started. This way. Canteen is over there. Gym, swimming pool. Oh and there’s a tennis court. She paused, her eyes flickering to read his expression. Doesn’t get used much, I’m the only one interested. She’d checked his social media. He was college standard. Putting on her best, most innocent voice. Do you play?

✯✯✯

Rosa ran, lungs pumping, sucking in air hard and fast, her legs muscles hot and weary. She stretched her right arm, swinging wildly but the ball thundered past her.

He’s getting the hang of it, Joe called. He stood, leaning on the net-post, watching the robot give her the run around.

She guessed being a professor brought certain power and prestige, but she hadn’t realised it could open so many doors so fast. As soon as she told him about the plan for an advanced ball machine, a robot good enough to give her a game, he’d gone into overdrive. He ordered parts, sent out for specs, called people who knew people. Before she knew it, the world’s finest robotics equipment was arriving in boxes.

In two short weeks, Joe had taken the contraption from a useless heap of mechanical moving parts to a free-flowing robot that could hammer balls past her with a pace and spin she’d never seen.

Vision’s the problem, he’d told her. Co-ordination. It’s all in how well it sees and tracks the ball. Without that, it’s sunk.

He called more people, ordered the finest in artificial vision and advanced sensor tracking. It was all fitted, running, and working a little too well.

I’m done, she said. She’d been on court for an hour, chasing down lost causes as the robot flexed his metal muscles and pounded serves and forehands from one corner to the next.

Joe prodded the remote control, and the robot lumbered towards the net. You’d still beat it, you know.

You’re being kind. She wiped the sweat off her forehead, wondering if she was red-faced and blotchy.

You would, in a real game. He wasn’t looking at her in any case. Too busy examining the robot. You can out-think it. The robot can reach the ball, hit the ball, do all of that. But the software’s your real problem. What about strategy, tactics? Tennis is a thinking game. He stared into her eyes. You need a programmer.

We’ve got those, she said. Artificial intelligence. It’s part of Project Five. I shouldn’t have told you that, though. It’s top secret.

I won’t squeal.

Her smile morphed into pursed lips as he fumbled with the robot’s inner workings, and she bit her bottom lip. She still hadn’t asked if he was married. And this was his last day here. Another chance blown, she thought.

Joe packed up the robot, talking about interface issues, how to integrate the artificial intelligence into the robotics. He was starting to lose her. She understood the human body and how it worked, even how to enhance it with some artificial additives. But quantum entanglement and superposition algorithms were out of her ball park.

I’ll get the boys to look at it, she said. But I don’t want to mess up your work.

Call me, he said. If you have problems, there’s my mobile number.

She took the piece of paper from his hand and looked up into his big brown eyes. She could find a problem from somewhere, some excuse to call him, she was sure she could.

I should charge you for all that kit, he said.

Put it through the system, she said. The bosses were usually cool about money, providing the inventions kept coming. She’d find a way to justify it.

She escorted him as far as his car. If you’re ever near MIT, he said, clunking the car door shut.

I’ll remember that. She patted the bonnet of his sports car. MIT, she thought. How could she wangle a transfer to MIT?

Chapter Three

Quantum Entanglement

Arizona, August 2014

Rosa was on her way to see her boys, the ones she actually trusted. Tony and Dany, older than most of the guys here, smarter too.

She tracked them down to the programmer’s lair, a room filled with screens, boxes, wires, gadgets, soldering irons and hard drives. One whole table was covered in empty drinks cartons and discarded food wrappers.

Tony didn’t look up from his screen, his fingers still bashing away at the keyboard. When’s the match?

When’s the striptease, that’s what he was really asking. It was still on everyone’s mind. At least it was getting things done around here.

Tony was eighteen stone, out of condition, and didn’t look he could run for a bus, never mind do a thousand sprints around a tennis court. He wasn’t what Rosa had in mind, when she thought of the ideal audience for a striptease.

You tell me, she said. We’ve got the parts but they don’t work together. It’s not even a very good ball machine. Can’t we make something more…, she waved a hand in the air, more lifelike.

Tony hit the enter key with a flourish and pushed his chair away from the desk, finally looking up at Rosa. Lifelike is impossible. Too many variables. You’d need a million ‘if this, then’ iterations just to make it ask the time of day. We can programme game thinking, strategy and tactics, but it’ll never feel like you’re playing a person. Then there’s social intelligence, motion and manipulation, natural language processing, not to mention common sense. There’s nothing that holds them all together.

Rosa frowned. So how do people do it?

Dany Ng gave a polite cough. They both turned to look at him.

Dany was a mystery, drifting around the place doing higher mathematics, talking of algorithms, messing with programming and computers and processors, discussing quantum mechanics and the Indian sages. Mathematics came naturally to him in ways that made Rosa’s head spin.

He came from China and spoke good English, but understanding his mind was beyond Rosa. His thoughts seemed unconnected. Or connected to the wrong things. Or different things to the way most people stumbled through life. She had seen him at times, on the edge of the campus, staring at the desert for hours on end, not moving a muscle. Was that where he did his thinking?

You can’t make a robot look like alive. Too hard, Dany said, his accent a mix of Chinese, southern American drawl and uptight British persnicketiness picked up in Cambridge. Easier way, you do it for real.

She watched him, waiting for more. What did he mean?

Make it look alive, because it is alive, Dany said.

"And how would we do