Critical-Fiction - I, Steroid

Inside the truck Fatty, one of the members of Roethke's elite of the super-secret-elite team, drummed his fingers on the dashboard. "Umm-- Boss? You sure he can't see us?"

Roethke stared through his binoculars--cheap, plastic Spongebob Squarepants binos he'd stolen from a drugstore just before stealing the ice cream and the truck it rode in on. "For the last time, he CAN see us. He's got telescopic vision."

"Then why..."

"Because the fog is jamming his sensors, and because he hasn't turned around." As Roethke watched, Bonds pulled another bat from the back of the U-Haul he'd arrived in. It was loaded to the gills with Louisville Sluggers. For half an hour he'd done just this: pull a bat out, stare at the gate of the ballpark, then club at it while the bat turned to splinters and covered the ground at his feet. Another howl erupted, this one broken by sobs.

Fatty pulled another Rocket Pop from the freezer and shuddered as he opened it. "It sounds like he's crying," he shouted to his rooftop boss.

"It is."

"He cries?"

"Not real tears, just a simulation. It was designed that way in case it ever won a World Series." Like that was ever going to happen without better all around pitching, Rothke thought. And those "In the Know" and "In Charge" "INSIDE THE BELTWAY" would never let that happen.

Bonds' newest bat splintered, just like the eighteen others before it. Rothke pushed his soggy paper ice cream vendor's cap back from his forehead. Wearing a replica of an ice cream man's uniform was a bad idea for two reasons: first, it wasn't 1954, which the uni was spot on for; and second, the paper hat was soaking up the humidity of the fog like a sponge. It was like having a wad of paper mache stuck to his head, like a second grader's art class interpretation of a yarmulke..

Fatty climbed up on the roof, Rocket Pop in mouth. Despite his concerns at being seen he thundered out footsteps on the roof and was wearing a bright orange "Syracuse Orangemen" shirt. He looked like their large, round mascot. At least he sort of looked like an oversized 10-year-old, Rothke thought, with all that ice cream around his mouth. At least that went with the ice cream truck theme.

"What set him off?" Fatty asked. Another howl rolled toward them.

"Giambi's steroid abuse testimony. Sheffield's comments. His own grand jury testimony. It's implication in the steroid scandal. All the speculation that he's been 'juicing.'" Roethke had been waiting for more opportunities to use the term "juicing" for days. This was his first chance and he'd taken it. He smiled. "It doesn't like being thought of as a cheater."

"But how... I mean, come on. Since when does a robot care--" Fatty stopped. He performed what might be an illegal act in the southern US on his Rocket Pop, then pulled it out of his mouth. "Wait, he... He doesn't know he's a robot?"

Roethke laughed. "Why would it? It knows one thing: how to play baseball. That's all it has ever known. And knowing only that, every experience, every urge, every connection it makes to others is through baseball. It will do whatever it takes to be the best. This steroid speculation is hurting that. So it's flipped out. We're here to turn it off until it can be repaired."

"Sounds like those Balco roboticists made him too human."

"What do you mean?" Roethke was amazed that Fatty continued to refer to it as "he."

"The drive to play a game, everything being squeezed through that urge. Isn't that exactly what made Giambi and the others use steroids in the first place. Nothing mattered but winning."

Roethke was about to say that Fatty was a wiser man than he looked when he glanced over his shoulder at Fatty. He was reading what he'd just said off his popsicle stick. Roethke grabbed it to check the font. "Crap! The NBA is onto us. We've got to move now!"

The two men with super-duper top secret clearance jumped to the ground and re-entered the truck. Fatty threw their giant butterfly net out the back and then turned to help Roethke remove the still frozen body of cryo-frozen Barry Bonds from the truck's freezer. He glistened under the street lights in his icy chamber, his black spandex workout suit as new as the day Roethke had helped to kidnap him from the Pirates.

"Will he remember anything?" Fatty asked.

Roethke nodded. "It's all implanted memories of the last seven years."

"Where's he been all this time."

Roethke lifted one end, and Fatty got the feet. As they ran up the street toward the ballpark, trying to stay out of the robot's line of site, Roethke said, "In Balco's cloning facilities. That Iraq thing ain't gonna fight itself."

Read more of the adventures of Cecil Roethke and his Insiders Team here.