We, Robots

by Simon Ings

  *

  Twenty minutes of hold-time later, I’m informed that Brothers & Sisters Inc. isn’t going to replace Yang. My warranty ran out eight months ago, which means I’ve got a broken Yang, and if I want telephone technical support, it’s going to cost me thirty dollars a minute now that I’m post-warranty. I hang up. Yang is still slumped with his chin on his chest. I go over and push the power button on his back, hoping all he needed was to be restarted. Nothing. There’s no blue light, no sound of his body warming up.

  Shit, I think. There goes eight thousand dollars.

  “Can we come down yet?” Kyra yells.

  “Hold on a minute!” I pull Yang’s chair out and place my arms around his waist. It’s the first time I’ve actually embraced Yang, and the coldness of his skin surprises me. While he has lived with us almost as long as Mika, I don’t think anyone besides her has ever hugged or kissed him. There have been times when, as a joke, one of us might nudge Yang with an elbow and say something humorous like, “Lighten up, Yang!” but that’s been the extent of our contact. I hold him close to me now, bracing my feet solidly beneath my body, and lift. He’s heavier than I imagined, his weight that of the eighteen-year-old boy he’s designed to be. I hoist him onto my shoulder and carry him through the living room out to the car.

  My neighbor, George, is next door raking leaves. George is a friendly enough guy, but completely unlike us. Both his children are clones, and he drives a hybrid with a bumper sticker that reads IF I WANTED TO GO SOLAR, I’D GET A TAN. He looks up as I pop the trunk. “That Yang?” he asks, leaning against his rake.

  “Yeah,” I say and lower Yang into the trunk.

  “No shit. What’s wrong with him?”

  “Don’t know. One moment we’re sitting having breakfast, the next he’s going haywire. I had to shut him down, and he won’t start up again.”

  “Jeez. You okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” I say instinctively, though as I answer, I realize that I’m not. My legs feel wobbly and the sky above us seems thinner, as though there’s less air. Still, I’m glad I answered as I did. A man who paints his face for Super Bowl games isn’t the type of guy to open your heart to.

  “You got a technician?” George asks.

  “Actually, no. I was going to take him over to Quick Fix and see—”

  “Don’t take him there. I’ve got a good technician, took Tiger there when he wouldn’t fetch. The guy’s in Kalamazoo, but it’s worth the drive.” George takes a card from his wallet. “He’ll check Yang out and fix him for a third of what those guys at Q-Fix will charge you. Tell Russ I sent you.”

  *

  Russ Goodman’s Tech Repair Shop is located two miles off the highway amid a row of industrial warehouses. The place is wedged between Mike’s Muffler Repair and a storefront called Stacey’s Second Times—a cluttered thrift store displaying old rifles, iPods, and steel bear traps in its front window. Two men in caps and oil-stained plaid shirts are standing in front smoking cigarettes. As I park alongside the rusted mufflers and oil drums of Mike’s, they eye my solar car like they would a flea-ridden dog.

  “Hi there, I’m looking for Russ Goodman,” I say as I get out. “I called earlier.”

  The taller of the two, a middle-aged man with gray stubble and weathered skin, nods to the other guy to end their conversation. “That’d be me,” he says. I’m ready to shake his hand, but he just takes a drag from his cigarette stub and says, “Let’s see what you got,” so I pop the trunk instead. Yang is lying alongside my jumper cables and windshield-washing fluid with his legs folded beneath him. His head is twisted at an unnatural angle, as though he were trying to turn his chin onto the other side of his shoulder. Russ stands next to me, with his thick forearms and a smell of tobacco, and lets out a sigh. “You brought a Korean.” He says this as a statement of fact. Russ is the type of person I’ve made a point to avoid in my life: a guy that probably has a WE CLONE OUR OWN sticker on the back of his truck.

  “He’s Chinese,” I say.

  “Same thing,” Russ says. He looks up and gives the other man a shake of his head. “Well,” he says heavily, “bring him inside, I’ll see what’s wrong with him.” He shakes his head again as he walks away and enters his shop.

  Russ’s shop consists of a main desk with a telephone and cash register, across from which stands a table with a coffeemaker, Styrofoam cups, and powdered creamer. Two vinyl chairs sit by a table with magazines on it. The door to the workroom is open. “Bring him back here,” Russ says. Carrying Yang over my shoulder, I follow him into the back room.

  The work space is full of body parts, switchboards, cables, and tools. Along the wall hang disjointed arms, a couple of knees, legs of different sizes, and the head of a young girl, about seventeen, with long red hair. There’s a worktable cluttered with patches of skin and a Pyrex box full of female hands. All the skin tones are Caucasian. In the middle of the room is an old massage table streaked with grease. Probably something Russ got from Stacey’s Seconds. “Go ’head and lay him down there,” Russ says. I place Yang down on his stomach and position his head in the small circular face rest at the top of the table.

  “I don’t know what happened to him,” I say. “He’s always been fine, then this morning he started malfunctioning. He was slamming his head onto the table over and over.” Russ doesn’t say anything. “I’m wondering if it might be a problem with his hard drive,” I say, feeling like an idiot. I’ve got no clue what’s wrong with him; it’s just something George mentioned I should check out. I should have gone to Quick Fix. The young techies with their polished manners always make me feel more at ease. Russ still hasn’t spoken. He takes a mallet from the wall and a Phillips head screwdriver. “Do you think it’s fixable?”

  “We’ll see. I don’t work on imports,” he says, meeting my eyes for the first time since I’ve arrived, “but, since you know George, I’ll open him up and take a look. Go ’head and take a seat out there.”

  “How long do you think it’ll take?”

  “Won’t know till I get him opened up,” Russ says, wiping his hands on his jeans.

  “Okay,” I say meekly and leave Yang in Russ’s hands.

  In the waiting room I pour myself a cup of coffee and stir in some creamer. I set my cup on the coffee table and look through the magazines. There’s Guns & Ammo, Tech Repair, Brothers & Sisters Digest—I put the magazines back down. The wall behind the desk is cluttered with photos of Russ and his kids, all of whom look exactly like him, and, buried among these, a small sign with an American flag on it and the message THERE AIN’T NO YELLOW IN THE RED, WHITE, AND BLUE.

  “Pssh,” I say instinctually, letting out an annoyed breath of air. This was the kind of crap that came out during the invasion of North Korea, back when the nation changed the color of its ribbons from yellow to blue. Ann Arbor’s a progressive city, but even there, when Kyra and I would go out with Yang and Mika in public, there were many who avoided eye contact. Stop the War activists weren’t any different. It was that first Christmas, as Kyra, Yang, Mika, and I were at the airport being individually searched, that I realized Chinese, Japanese, South Korean didn’t matter anymore; they’d all become threats in the eyes of Americans. I decide not to sit here looking at Russ’s racist propaganda, and leave to check out the bear traps at Stacey’s.

  *

  “He’s dead,” Russ tells me. “I can replace his insides, more or less build him back from scratch, but that’s gonna cost you about as much as a used one.”

  I stand looking at Yang, who’s lying on the massage table with a tangle of red and green wires protruding from his back. Even though his skin has lost its vibrant color, it still looks soft, like when he first came to our home. “Isn’t there anything else you can do?”

  “His voice box and language system are still running. If you want, I’ll take it out for you. He’ll be able to talk to her, there just won’t be any face attached. Cost you sixty bucks.” Russ is wiping his hands on a rag, avoi
ding my eyes. I think of the sign hanging in the other room. Sure, I think, I can just imagine the pleasure Russ will take in cutting up Yang.

  “No, that’s all right. I’ll just take him home. What do I owe you?”

  “Nothing,” Russ says. I look up at him. “You know George,” he says as explanation. “Besides, I can’t fix him for you.”

  *

  On the ride home, I call Kyra. She picks up on the second ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, it’s me.” My voice is ragged.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” I say, then add, “Actually, no.”

  “What’s the matter? How’s Yang?”

  “I don’t know. The tech I took him to says he’s dead, but I don’t believe him—the guy had a thing against Asians. I’m thinking about taking Yang over to Quick Fix.” There’s silence on the other end of the line. “How’s Mika?” I ask.

  “She keeps asking if Yang’s okay. I put a movie on for her… Dead?” she asks. “Are you positive?”

  “No, I’m not sure. I don’t know. I’m not ready to give up on him yet. Look,” I say, glancing at the dash clock, “it’s only three. I’m going to suck it up and take him to Quick Fix. I’m sure if I drop enough cash they can do something.”

  “What will we do if he’s dead?” Kyra asks. “I’ve got work on Monday.”

  “We’ll figure it out,” I say. “Let’s just wait until I get a second opinion.”

  Kyra tells me she loves me, and I return my love, and we hang up. It’s as my Bluetooth goes dead that I feel the tears coming. I remember last fall when Kyra was watching Mika. I was in the garage taking down the rake when, from behind me, I heard Yang. He stood awkwardly in the doorway, as though he was uncertain what to do while Mika was being taken care of. “Can I help you?” he asked.

  On that chilly late afternoon, with the red and orange leaves falling around us—me in my vest, and Yang in the black suit he came with—Yang and I quietly raked leaves into large piles on the flat earth until the backyard looked like a village of leaf huts. Then Yang held open the bag, I scooped the piles in, and we carried them to the curb.

  “You want a beer?” I asked, wiping the sweat from my forehead.

  “Okay,” Yang said. I went inside and got two cold ones from the fridge, and we sat together, on the splintering cedar of the back deck, watching the sun fall behind the trees and the first stars blink to life above us.

  “Can’t beat a cold beer,” I said, taking a swig.

  “Yes,” Yang said. He followed my lead and took a long drink. I could hear the liquid sloshing down into his stomach canister.

  “This is what men do for the family,” I said, gesturing with my beer to the leafless yard. Without realizing it, I had slipped into thinking of Yang as my son, imagining that one day he’d be raking leaves for his own wife and children. It occurred to me then that Yang’s time with us was limited. Eventually, he’d be shut down and stored in the basement—an antique that Mika would have no use for when she had children of her own. At that moment I wanted to put my arm around Yang. Instead I said, “I’m glad you came out and worked with me.”

  “Me, too,” Yang said and took another sip of his beer, looking exactly like me in the way he brought the bottle to his lips.

  *

  The kid at Quick Fix makes me feel much more at ease than Russ. He’s wearing a bright red vest with a clean white shirt under it and a name tag that reads HI, I’M RONNIE! The kid’s probably not even twenty-one. He’s friendly, though, and when I tell him about Yang, he says, “Whoa, that’s no good,” which is at least a little sympathetic. He tells me they’re backed up for an hour. So much for quick, I think. I put Yang on the counter and give my name. “We’ll page you once he’s ready,” Ronnie says.

  I spend the time wandering the store. They’ve got a demo station of Championship Boxing, so I put on the jacket and glasses and take on a guy named Vance, who’s playing in California. I can’t figure out how to dodge or block though, and when I throw out my hand, my guy on the screen just wipes his nose with his glove. Vance beats the shit out of me, so I put the glasses and vest back on the rack and go look at other equipment. I’m playing with one of the new ThoughtPhones when I hear my name paged over the loudspeaker, so I head back to the Repair counter.

  “Fried,” the kid tells me. “Honestly, it’s probably good he bit it. He’s a really outdated model.” Ronnie is rocking back and forth on his heels as though impatient to get on to his next job.

  “Isn’t there anything you can do?” I ask. “He’s my daughter’s Big Brother.”

  “The language system is fully functional. If you want, I can separate the head for you.”

  “Are you kidding? I’m not giving my daughter her brother’s head to play with.”

  “Oh,” the kid says. “Well, um, we could remove the voice box for you. And we can recycle the body and give you twenty dollars off any digital camera.”

  “How much is all this going to cost?”

  “It’s ninety-five for the checkup, thirty-five for disposal, and voice box removal will be another hundred and fifty. You’re probably looking at about three hundred after labor and taxes.”

  I think about taking him back to Russ, but there’s no way. When he’d told me Yang was beyond saving, I gave him a look of distrust that anyone could read loud and clear. “Go ahead and remove the voice box,” I say, “but no recycling. I want to keep the body.”

  *

  George is outside throwing a football around with his identical twins when I pull in. He raises his hand to his kids to stop them from throwing the ball and comes over to the low hedge that separates our driveways. “Hey, how’d it go with Russ?” he asks as I get out of the car.

  “Not good.” I tell him about Yang, getting a second opinion, how I’ve got his voice box in the backseat, his body in a large Quick Fix bag in the trunk. I tell him all this with as little emotion as possible. “What can you expect from electronics?” I say, attempting to appear nonchalant.

  “Man, I’m really sorry for you,” George says, his voice quieter than I’ve ever heard it. “Yang was a good kid. I remember the day he came over to help Dana carry in the groceries. The kids still talk about that fortune-telling thing he showed them with the three coins.”

  “Yeah,” I say, looking at the bushes. I can feel the tears starting again. “Anyhow, it’s no big deal. Don’t let me keep you from your game. We’ll figure it out.” Which is a complete lie. I have no clue how we’re going to figure anything out. We needed Yang, and there’s no way we can afford another model.

  “Hey, listen,” George says. “If you guys need help, let us know. You know, if you need a day sitter or something. I’ll talk to Dana—I’m sure she’d be up for taking Mika.” George reaches out across the hedge, his large hand coming straight at me. For a moment I flash back to Championship Boxing and think he’s going to hit me. Instead he pats me on the shoulder. “I’m really sorry, Jim,” he says.

  *

  That night, I lie with Mika in bed and read her Goodnight Moon. It’s the first time I’ve read to her in months. The last time was when we visited Kyra’s folks and had to shut Yang down for the weekend. Mika’s asleep by the time I reach the last page. I give her a kiss on her head and turn out the lights. Kyra’s in bed reading.

  “I guess I’m going to start digging now,” I say.

  “Come here,” she says, putting her book down. I cross the room and lie across our bed, my head on her belly.

  “Do you miss him, too?” I ask.

  “Mm-hm,” she says. She puts her hand on my head and runs her fingers through my hair. “I think saying goodbye tomorrow is a good idea. Are you sure it’s okay to have him buried out there?”

  “Yeah. There’s no organic matter in him. The guys at Quick Fix dumped his stomach canister.” I look up at our ceiling, the way our lamp casts a circle of light and then a dark shadow. “I don’t know how we’re going to make it without hi
m.”

  “Shhh.” Kyra strokes my hair. “We’ll figure it out. I spoke with Tina Matthews after you called me today. You remember her daughter, Lauren?”

  “The clone?”

  “Yes. She’s home this semester; college wasn’t working for her. Tina said Lauren could watch Mika if we need her to.”

  I turn my head to look at Kyra. “I thought we didn’t want Mika raised by a clone.”

  “We’re doing what we have to do. Besides, Lauren is a nice girl.”

  “She’s got that glassy-eyed apathetic look. She’s exactly like her mother,” I say. Kyra doesn’t say anything. She knows I’m being irrational, and so do I. I sigh. “I just really hoped we could keep clones out of our lives.”

  “For how long? Your brother and Margaret are planning on cloning this summer. You’re going to be an uncle soon enough.”

  “Yeah,” I say quietly.

  Ever since I was handed Yang’s voice box, time has slowed down. The light of the setting sun had stretched across the wood floors of our home for what seemed an eternity. Sounds have become crisper as well, as though, until now, I’d been living with earplugs. I think about the way Mika’s eyelids fluttered as she slept, the feel of George’s hand against my arm. I sit up, turn toward Kyra, and kiss her. The softness of her lips makes me remember the first time we kissed. Kyra squeezes my hand. “You better start digging so I can comfort you tonight,” she says. I smile and ease myself off the bed. “Don’t worry,” Kyra says, “it’ll be a good funeral.”

  In the hallway, on my way toward the staircase, the cracked door of Yang’s room stops me. Instead of going down, I walk across the carpeting to his door, push it open, and flick on the light switch. There’s his bed, perfectly made with the corners tucked in, a writing desk, a heavy oak dresser, and a closet full of black suits. On the wall is a poster of China that Brothers & Sisters Inc. sent us and a pennant from the Tigers game I took Yang to. There’s little in the minimalism of his décor to remind me of him. There is, however, a baseball glove on the shelf by his bed. This was a present Yang bought for himself with the small allowance we provided him. We were at Toys“R”Us when Yang placed the glove in the shopping cart. We didn’t ask him about it, and he didn’t mention why he was buying it. When he came home, he put it on the shelf near his Tigers pennant, and there it sat untouched.