by Jubilant Lemon
Trigger warning: unrequited robot love, call centers with nasty representatives, flat tires late at night on country roads, gangster priests.
Lipstick, pucker, smile, and flutter. She loved flirting with the girl in the mirror.
“Looking good,” she said, sashaying her hips, but stopped abruptly to set the record straight: “Looking sexy, Sarah Jane. Damn sexy!”
BUMP!
Sarah froze. There was a sound. She heard a sound; it was definitely a sound, wasn’t it? It couldn’t have been something she imagined, could it?
Without moving, her body still as a monitor lizard, her eyes followed the contour of the room in the mirror: across the cream-colored wallpaper, past the tall dark oak-framed window, the silk curtains fluttering aimlessly in the spring breeze, and beyond trees speckled yellow in the afternoon light. Her eyes followed along a horizontal trajectory till they stopped abruptly at the closet door. Whatever it was, had to be in there, behind the door.
In a moment of reckless abandon, her heart thumping, she jumped over, grabbed the doorknob, and yanked it open.
Her heart sank. It was him, standing there, holding roses.
His blue suit was cut so smartly it looked like he was dressed by a team of engineers. On his head, a trilby hat. On his feet, black brogue shoes. The most striking feature, though, his smile. They matched the roses: bright, red, plastic.
“Out! Out! Out!” she shouted, shooing him away.
As absentmindedly as a pigeon in a park, he made for the door.
“Out!” she said, holding the door open. He tipped his hat, and no sooner had he passed the threshold than she closed the door with a resounding SLAM.
After a five-second pause, she opened the door again, and he was there, his face not half an inch from where the door had been. “Out!” she screamed again. This time he left.
It was her robot stalker. “Why, oh why?” she lamented.
She went to the kitchen and peeled the potatoes with angry, cathartic swipes. She snatched up the towel and wiped her hands, not stopping even when her hands were dry. Something was outside the kitchen window. A trilby hat was peeking over the window ledge. Connected to the hat was a face, and connected to the face, a thin smile, like the lips on a long-dead fish. She slammed the window shut.
* * *
This was not the first time. When it happened before, she made a call to robotic services, a call center set up by the council to “assuage any wrinkles that may occur during the daily interaction between humans and robots.” After half an hour of canned music, she was connected with a representative, a woman with a nasal voice who listened as Sarah talked about this “robot who follows her everywhere,” but unexpectedly asked about what she was wearing, because, you know, maybe that is the cause, to which Sarah shouted, WHAT, maybe too loud and then I was wearing, nothing, I mean clothes, yes, clothes she had said but when pressed on the subject, admitted, a short skirt, a red skirt but—wait, I’m talking, please—that shouldn’t—excuse me—shouldn’t matter because she had firmly and resoundingly said no, or at least made it clear, mostly clear, but not too clear as to not hurt his feelings, because we all know robots have feelings, the council told us so but even so he followed her around at work, when she was with friends and, she interrupted herself to yell—I CAN’T EVEN OPEN MY BREAD BOX WITHOUT SEEING HIM PEEKING OUT—and the representative asked if she would like to take a breather, and call back later when she was more calm, but she said she was calm and the representative said she didn’t sound calm and then Sarah yelled at the top of her lungs—I AM CALM—and in the silence that followed, she felt her face flush and she felt foolish. “I’ll call back later,” she said and didn’t.
* * *
She had met him on an online dating website and was wary about dating non-humans. However she held her prejudices in check, the council, after all, always diligent, did not look kindly upon those deemed anti-tech. The talking heads on the news program raved about the AI bodies, or as they called them, Human Plus—always said with a dubbed sparkle sound. Unlike traditional humans, AI bodies were modeled with a data baseline of two hundred and fifty million people, and the library of conversation starters was upward of fifty billion, so it would be fun, right?
The beginning of the date started with him shouting, “Hey, do you like tattoos, because I don’t.”
After dropping the one-liner, he looked at her, face frozen, waiting. She would come to give the expressionless expression a nickname: the “screensaver face.” Gawd she hated it.
After the date, he walked her home—actually, following two feet behind, not taking the hints: “Oh, look at the time”—with the smile never once showing any signs of giving up. When they reached her front porch, she turned to speak. “Alan, I just don’t think this is going to work.” She found herself sounding apologetic for not fitting in, not getting the whole AI thing.
* * *
She was back to washing the carrots. Using the carrot peeler, she skinned them alive. She was on the tenth carrot when she slowed, and a sinking feeling that something wasn’t right came over her. The flower. There on the counter was a vase with a single flower. What was that doing there, because it wasn’t there before. She picked it up and pulled out the flower. There inside, a listening device.
She sighed long and hard and looked out the window. She could see him down the road, sitting in the car, expressionless as an armchair. Out the door she went, letting the door slam behind her. Down the sidewalk with heavy, purposeful steps. Over to the car, the Chevrolet Bel Air, and rapped on the window, driver’s side, three times. Rap. Rap. Rap.
He had in his ear a single listening device, just like those corny TV cop sitcoms hundreds of years ago, in the 1950s or so, when video was still black and white. She rapped on the window again, but he stared straight ahead. She was about to rap once more, but this time he turned, looked, and smiled, his smile as warm as the smile of someone found at the bottom of a lake.
“OUT!” she said. “OUT!”
Without so much as a bow to reality, he put the car into gear and drove away.
* * *
The next day was bright, bright like a day painted by magical elves who came out at night and scurried away at dawn. She rolled up her overalls just below the knees, grabbed the gloves and hedge clippers from the shed, and went to work in the garden clipping the nasty boysenberry vines poking into the walkway.
Sarah knew a few things about gardening, and one of them was a clever trick for catching slugs by laying out plastic cups with beer. She learned this trick in a gardening book back when books were a thing, and hundreds of years later, the advice was still germane.
She got the shovel from the shed. The handle was gray like driftwood, and she was quite proud of having a classic gardening tool. Perhaps I’ll pass it on down to my kids, she reckoned.
She looked over her garden, bursting with color and life, and a poem came to mind. Those who have not found the heaven below will fail of it above. She remembered reading the poem in her high school English class, and it made an impression on her because it was one of the few pieces of literature that wasn’t generated by AI.
She dug the earth, churning up the old, turning over the new. She brought in a pail full of ash, mixed it in. Down the row she went, tilling the earth. It was honest work, good work. She felt like a settler, the first to set foot on this green land, but she wasn’t. Not even by a million years.
She was digging up the earth, and her shovel hit a rock. Clunk. It wasn’t a stone. Stones were small and tossable, and this object was neither. Yes, definitely a rock, although why it would be here, in the middle of the garden, a garden she had tilled for years on end without incident, was anyone’s guess. She clawed out the dirt and gasped. There was the trilby hat, the face, the smile, as lifeless as roadkill.
“Oh, for gawd’s sake. The answer is no. You don’t get it, do you?”
He didn’t get it.
“Up. Let’s get up. Up,” she ordered. He uprooted himself like a carrot and tipped his hat.
“OUT,” she said. She pointed. Why couldn’t she call the police and get him towed away, like refuse? Why did the council coddle their misbehavior? He walked away, and when she caught him dilly-dallying around the corner, she pointed again. “OUT.”
* * *
“That’s a funny story,” he gushed.
Gary was a guy she met off the dating site. She had decided to stick with humans and paid the price, not in money but in quality. None of the contenders were Prince Charming, not even close. He had a batch of unkempt hair that made him look like he was wearing a houseplant and a laugh like a horse braying. On the other hand, he did have endearing qualities like being clever and unpredictable.
“It’s amazing how smart crows are. Do you think they really picked the combination lock?” he asked.
That was another quality she liked about him. He was gullible. “Hard to say, but there is no denying that somehow he got ahold of my glasses.”
At that moment a new customer came into the restaurant. He was alone. He walked up with the sort of gait you would expect of a blind man feeling his way along unfamiliar territory. The waiter pulled out the chair.
“For you, sir,” the waiter said. “When you’re ready to order, please let us know.”
The customer took off his trilby hat, placed it on the table, and tilted his head sideways.
The conversation at Sarah’s table slowed.
“Is everything alright?” Gary noticed a look of concern that clouded her face.
“Yeah, yeah. Perfectly fine.” She blinked twice and recalibrated. “What were we talking about?”
“Animals,” he said.
She focused on him, his big, bouncy head with a mop of hair. He dressed nicely. Not too dressy, not too casual. The jacket and vintage rock band T-shirt were a funny mix.
The waiter came to the table with the single man. “Are you ready to order, sir?”
He ordered. Water.
“Water? Just water? Would you like anything to eat?” No, he just wanted water. “Alright, I’ll bring it right out to you.”
He sat with the water in front of him and his hands to his side. His face, tilted at 14.5 degrees, was the only nonsymmetrical part of his countenance.
Sarah stared straight ahead at Gary and focused on the spot between his eyes with laser-like intensity.
“The funniest story was from my friend . . .” began Gary.
Sarah could feel herself getting tense and readjusted her smile.
“. . . well, one day he got a call about a fox in the rafters . . .”
She watched him, the single customer, out of the corner of her eye. What was he doing here? Why now? Why, when I was having so much fun? Why?
“. . . the owner of the house was this balding guy with a beer belly in a purple bathrobe, and next to him is his girlfriend, and let me tell you, she was super hot . . .”
Something else occurred to her that made her want to scream. He hadn’t moved at all, like he was a monitor lizard. “Can we at least blink?” she wanted to scream.
The waiter came over to the table with the single customer. “Is everything OK?” The customer looked up and nodded.
Oh, how she would love to put a frying pan right on the back of his head. She could imagine the dumb circuit board coming out of his nose. Oh, the council would have a word with her for that, yes, they would. Just the thought of the council made her twitch nervously.
“She is gorgeous, so instead of calling animal control, he . . .”
Of course, the council wasn’t the only game in town. There was the Necromancer. Yes, the Necromancer . . .
“. . . he says in a tough guy voice, I can do this . . .”
She had never seen the Necromancer, only heard his voice. Get out, little girl . . .
She made the mistake of looking over. He looked back, smiled, and gave a two-finger salute like some dumb character in a Men’s Life electric razor magazine advert.
“Hey, everything alright? You seem kinda tense,” said Gary, looking at her with concern.
“Everything is alright,” she pounded the table with two fists. “Everything. Is. Alright.”
“Is that guy bugging you?” They both looked at “that guy” at the same time.
“That guy” looked back with a group-tested, AI-enhanced, winning smile.
“Don’t look at him,” Sarah hissed under her breath.
“Oh, hey, listen, I don’t want to get in the middle, OK?”
“You are not in the middle,” Sarah said through gritted teeth.
“I just thought we would have a nice meal, share a funny story . . .”
“Tell the funny story. Tell the gawdam funny story. Finish. I said, finish it.”
“Oh, all right. Yeah, so, long story short . . .”
“Not short. Long.”
“Well, it’s kinda drawing down anyways . . .”
“I WANT TO HEAR THE FUNNY STORY. AM I GETTING THROUGH TO YOU?! I WANT TO COME HERE, RELAX, HAVE A FUN TIME, AND LAUGH?! SO DO IT. NOW. TELL ME THE FUNNY STORY.”
Sarah had used up all her energy, and all that was left was a grimace.
“Well, he ended up chasing the fox through the rich guy’s . . .”
“I gotta leave,” she said abruptly and stood up.
“What?”
“I gotta leave,” she said again. She bundled her items into her arms and didn’t even bother to put on her coat. Her high heels clomped horse-like as she made for the door.
“Hey, wait . . .”
She spun out of the parking lot, leaving a curly C of smoking tire tread on the pavement.
Gary, her date, still befuddled, came out the door. “WAIT . . .” Behind him, the robot politely eased himself through the space behind Gary. He had donned his trilby hat and tipped it politely when Gary looked over.
“Hey, you’re that guy from the next table,” he said.
Like a boat leaving the harbor, the robot backed up the Chevrolet Bel Air, blinkered, and entered the main road.
Sarah sped down the road, wiping her face and leaving beige sweat and makeup stains on her handkerchief. In the rearview mirror, headlights. She scowled.
“Ah, frunkets.” She was close enough to see his face: plastic, tilted, and expressionless as a screensaver. “It’s him. Bastard. Well, if funs he wants. Funs he’s gonna get.” She floored it and left him far behind.
Down the road, she skidded, passed the woods, along the straightaway, and breezed through a light just as it turned red. “Ha ha, that will throw him,” she cackled, but when she glanced in the rearview mirror, there he was. “Bastard went through a red light,” she mumbled.
She gripped the steering wheel with claws, determined to up the game.
Without slowing, she made a quick left, then a right, sped dangerously down a narrow road, and turned into a farmhouse. She parked behind a barn, turned off the ignition, and cut the lights.
A minute later a big boat of a car sped by and disappeared down the road. She peeked out to see the taillights flicker and disappear. “Ha, fooled him,” she laughed. But just to be sure, she would wait.
Sarah hunkered down in the car, not breathing, as if breathing would somehow set off an alarm. The farmhouse was dark, probably because the last time a human farmed was maybe a hundred years ago. She waited. She dabbed her forehead. She gripped the steering wheel and then ungripped it when she realized it was just making her more impatient.
At last, she took a breath and put the key in the ignition. She was safe. At that moment she saw it: headlights. She gasped.
The car was returning, this time slower. It came to the driveway, slowed, blinkered, and turned in.
As the car eased into the drive, she yanked on the ignition, hit the pedal, and tore out of the farmhouse so fast she got whiplash.
Down the road she sped. This is what we will do, she told herself. Her animal instincts, her instinct for survival, had taken over. The bridge. She knew the bridge. A back road country bridge. Off the map. They were doing repair work on the bridge, just started, too early to show up on navigation systems; that is, unless he installed updates within the last week, but maybe he didn’t.
Around the bend she whirled. The bridge was less than thirty feet away and closing. In the darkness, the bridge looked hunkered, animal-like. Stanchions, blinking lights, yellow sign: “SLOW.” She approached at top speed, and at the last minute, spun, fishtailed, and entered the bridge at a sharp angle, swerving to miss the construction. Behind the robot, close behind. He barreled into the curve, overshot the bridge, and tumbled down the ravine. He rolled a total of three times, the last being the most dramatic with actual hang time. With a thud, the car landed, upside down and beetle-like, smoldering and hissing gray-blue smoke.
There was a moment of silence. “Oh-shag, oh-shag, oh-shag,” she said. There were laws, strict laws, laws against unlawfulness towards robots. Robots were a protected species under the Sentient Beings Act, an act that was so comprehensive it even included such things as blenders and high-end toasters. If it was bad enough, the council might intervene to consider it an anti-tech crime, a division with a streamlined justice system with its own judges and sealed jury. “Oh-shag, oh-shag, oh-shag,” she said as she skidded down the hillside towards the car.
The wreck was bad; the robot worse. His smile was still there, the smile that was rated one of the Top Ten Innovations by BytheXynth magazine and honored in Good Graces and Faces Dallas Tech-Inovi Galia. Everything was a mess of smoldering wires. “Good gawd,” she grabbed her hair. “What am I going to do, do, do, do? I just killed a . . .” She was about to say “man,” but a thought—wicked?—crossed her mind.
She stood straight up, and her eyes narrowed. “Time to dispose of the trash.”
The robot fit nicely into her trunk. She closed her trunk on the winning smile, his twitching fingers the only signs of life.
It was late at night, which was good. The Necromancer, an officiate in the Order, would just be waking up. The enclave, a carved-out city-state, was located out past the city borders. She had visited once, although it wasn’t strictly she who visited, it was a friend, a teenage friend who needed a medical procedure. As she approached, a voice. “Only the patient is allowed in.” She had the courage of a plate of Jell-O; she was just a little girl after all, so she scurried back to the car and waited.
Now, at the front of the door again, standing, cold, alone, years later, she felt she was still the little girl.
She knocked and waited. A bird fluttered in the bushes and gave her a fright, and she felt silly for overreacting. A moment later the door opened, and a head, small and shrunken with one blue glass eye, peeked out. It was at this very moment, she realized that she hadn’t thought this moment through, and she had no idea what to say.
“Go on, what do you want?” said the shrunken head. The one blue eye wandered, distracted and bored.
Should she admit to a crime? Admit she was desperate and alone and needed help?
“You deaf, stupid, or something? You got any meat between those ears? I said, What do you want?”
The fathers of the Order were good at reprogramming robots. Along with annulments, they received a shadowy tithing related to smuggling, waste disposal, and political intrigue—jobs suited for robots. With the flick of the switch, the moral compass could be recalibrated and turn them into—what?—evil little serial killers? —maybe, if you were willing to go that far. All this hinged on whether and how she turned over the robot now smoldering in the back of her trunk, but why not? An idea came to her: she could make it a deal, a cool, cold, calculated business deal. She was here to sell the robot.
“I brought something.”
“I don’t need anything,” he said, his mouth curled into a sneer, “especially from little girls.”
“I brought a robot to sell.”
“Ah. You don’t look like the robot-dealing type. What kind of robot?”
“PX.”
“PX?!” He stopped and stroked his chin. The blue eye brightened. “All right, little girl. Let’s see.”
The Necromancer hobbled to the car, and even after the short walk he was out of breath, or was it anticipation?
She opened the trunk, and the Necromancer leaned in and shined the flashlight inside. The robot was a bundle of smoking wires, and his head was twitching back and forth.
“Had a little accident, have we?” He cackled, “You know, a nice little girl could get in trouble for something like this.”
She sniffed. “Yeah. So don’t tell Daddy.”
“Quite rare, but the condition is terrible. I might be able to salvage it for scrap,” he said, poking about the wiring. What do you want for it?”
“Six khZs.” She tried to play it tough.
“Six?” He chortled loudly and his one blue eye bobbed up and down. “1⅓ khZ”
“Six.”
“Alright. I’ll give you a bargain. Split the difference. Three.”
“Six.”
He stared at her, his blue eye quivering. “Six khZs?” He sucked in his breath. “Little girl knows how to drive a tough bargain. Alright. Fine. Six khZs.”
He reached in to cradle the robot, and without warning, the robot came to life and grabbed his wrist.
She let out a small screech, and the Necromancer was momentarily caught off guard. He smashed the robot with his flashlight until the robot stilled and its hand retracted. The Necromancer gave it one last smash.
Through all this, the winning smile kept pace. Nothing was going to get rid of the winning smile, or so it seemed.
He bundled the robot up into his arms and hobbled back, huffing and puffing the whole way. He pushed the door open with his shoulder and turned to look directly at her.
“What are you still doing here? Get out. Scram. Beat it.” The eye, as aqua as the bottom of the sea now, locked onto her.
“Na-nothing,” she said, and backed away.
His laugh was unexpected, and the blue eye bounced up and down. “That’s what I want to hear, little girl. Now beat it.”
* * *
Inside the rectory, the Necromancer loaded the robot onto the dumbwaiter with an ”oof” and lowered it to the lab. “We need to do a slight improvement,” he said to the immobile robot, his glass eye swinging around and settling at 7 o’clock. He ripped off the front of the shirt and, using a screwdriver, pried open the chest and pulled back the panel. With a few short circuits, a flick of a switch here, and a dial there, he was done. The moral compass was reset.
“Now, let’s . . .” started the Necromancer. He would never finish his sentence. The robot’s hand shot up and grabbed his neck. With animal strength, it held him off the ground until his face turned purple and his glass eye popped out of its socket and rolled under the gurney. The eye burned bright blue and slowly faded to sea gray before turning dark.
* * *
She had had enough excitement for one day. The drive down the dirt road was slow, her headlights bobbing as she negotiated the potholes.
With a left turn, she was on asphalt again. “Freedom,” she sighed.
Another line came to her. “There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars.” It was another one of the non-AI quotes. Up ahead, the road, her future, was as circuitous as the 12,000-year-old butterfly migration routes.
She tapped her fingers on the steering wheel, singing Janis Joplin’s “Me and Bobby McGee.” She tried to remember if Janis Joplin’s song was AI-generated and decided it didn’t matter. It was hers now. She had taken out the trash.
Her car wobbled and sputtered. She pulled off the road, got out, and looked. The right wheel, which had lived the life of a rodeo bull, had given up. “Oh drat,” she said.
“How am I going to get home tonight?” She sighed. It was late, and no one was around. At that moment, a car crested the hill. “Oh good,” she said. “Help is on the way.”
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