The Inexorable Rise of the Robot Pharmacist

The gallimaufry of addicts outside Morrows Pharmacy were getting restless. In fact, they were near revolting.

“Trouble with the robot,” was what they were being told by the wee wifie, Maureen, who worked behind the counter and smelled of Locketts. As if it wasn’t head-fuck enough to crave heroin or at least its fuzzy substitute, Methadone, you were getting told stuff about robots! These folk were paranoid already without hearing that Artificial Intelligence was against them too.

“A fucken robot is keepin’ me fae ma gear” wails Sandra Knox, a slattern of the parish, as she washes another Valium down with slugs from a can of Dragon Soup.

Henry Stanton stood apart from the keening mob. He too needed his daily fix, but he’d taken a Sociology module on day release from Saughton and had an interest in the human condition. That the human condition was becoming increasingly febrile in the face of obstinate technology humoured him greatly and took his mind from his chemical need.

It also tickled his dark sense of the absurd that this chemist was situated right next door to an undertaker’s shop. He wondered if the two had a little scam going. He’d seen Soylent Green, too. Although why anyone would want this mephitic collection of humanity as food he couldn’t imagine. All gristle and spoiled meat.

The robot that dispensed medicines at Morrow’s had become notorious but once you had been assigned a chemist it was too much trouble with the authorities to change to another. That is unless you knew someone of influence at the Social Care Hub across the street.

“Ev’ry fucken mornin’ it’s the same fucken hing. The fucken hings fucked, ken?”.

Verb, adjective or noun, it was all the same to Rab Tennant a ragged tatterdemalion of a figure who regarded language as a means of declaring war. If he’d ever spoken a fond word, he’d done it very much in private and under the influence of some diluted opiate or other.

What none of them knew – not even the sociologist – was that Morrow’s brand of robot dispenser – the HH Eugenik 18 – was not a machine programmed to hold their type (benefit claiming junkies) in any great esteem. In fact, it was programmed to annoy them like this eight mornings out of ten: make them wait for their much-needed elixir until their bones were rattling and their nerve-ends squealed like rats in a trap. And who were they going to blame?

Stanton noticed an old railing that seemed to rise out of the scrubland surrounding this little row of shops. It was an extraordinarily elegant piece of cast-iron work with pretty volutes and spheres denoting what looked like sunflowers reaching to their mother star. He wondered from what age this functional artwork came from and who on earth had chosen Craigpollock as its setting?

Inside the pharmacy an intricate and gleaming piece of functionally dysfunctional technology whirred and spat and hissed at distressed alchemists and shop assistants while outside the miserable sinners wailed and chorused their discomfort.

Henry Stanton gazed on the old railing in wonder.

So much beauty and symmetry in the world. You just needed the right pair of eyes.