Plastic Tulips

by Brian S. Wheeler

  Chapter 6 – A Younger, Stronger, More Beautiful You...

  The paparazzi arrived at Sophie Carter's home two days before Victor Creighton. Victor warned Sophie that camera flashes would flood her windows. There was too much money to be made from a glossy snapshot of the world's best known wizard of technology to expect anyone with a Creighton digital camera to exercise much restraint on account of Sophie's fragile nerves. Victor and Sophie had almost maintained the secret of their meeting until Ruth let the news slip during the previous Saturday morning's Elk Lodge pancake social. Before Sophie knew the word was out, the city council had approved and organized a welcoming parade for the modern era's greatest inventor. Victor tried to employ the parade as a distraction against the cameras by sending Mr. Hamilton in a gray-wigged disguise to serve as the master of ceremonies. But though Mr. Hamilton easily tricked the Portis townsfolk and patiently suffered through paper-crepe floats representing some of Creighton Dynamic's famous gadgets, the paparazzi remained camped outside of Sophie's front door, snapping exposures of the curtains every time the fabric swayed.

  It all overwhelmed Sophie.

  “Will you please get away from those windows, Ruth?” Sophie fretted throughout her living room, checking to see if there was a proper balance between green and black olives in the tray, sipping to check if the coffee remained warm, brushing the chair cushions in case she had missed any mote of dust. “We're going to go blind from all those flashes if you keep giving those people across the street a reason to shoot their cameras.”

  “Someone has to keep an eye on them,” Ruth growled. “They'll climb on top of your roof if you don't keep counting them, Sophie.”

  “Sheriff Mattis is watching them, Ruth. He's been sitting right there in our drive since the first camera got here. I think you like all the attention. Remember that the notoriety comes at my expense.”

  “Where is he?” Ruth asked.

  “It's not time yet.”

  Ruth hissed. “It's a crime that we're trapped in our house like this. He would be here by now if he had more consideration for you.”

  “It's not his fault you told the entire town he was coming.”

  “The town had a right to know,” Ruth defended. “Everyone's been so worried about you, Sophie. All those concerned neighbors had a right to know Mr. Victor Creighton himself was coming to help you.”

  Ruth snapped the curtain closed and hustled to the front door. There, she stretched upon her toes and strained to look out of the peephole.

  “I think he's here, Sophie.”

  “What's he look like?”

  “He looks old,” Ruth answered. “He's just as stooped and crooked as we are, and he's short. He's shuffling up the sidewalk in a walker. Even has tennis balls on the corners. Thought if anyone would have new legs it would be Victor Creighton.”

  Ruth bustled away from the door and fell onto the couch a second before a slow, soft knock echoed on the door. Sophie waited.

  “Really, Sophie?” Ruth hissed. “Open the door already. It's perfectly legal to answer a door before the third knock. You're acting like a little girl.”

  The flashes that erupted when Sophie opened the front door blinded both ladies. A frumpy old man stood before them after their eyes adjusted. Victor Creighton met neither woman's expectation of a tycoon's appearance. He had no bodyguards. His hair was a mess. His bow tie looked crooked and his slacks were terribly wrinkled.

  “Thank you for seeing me, Mrs. Carter.” Victor presented a bouquet of bright tulips to Sophie. “I hope the flowers show my appreciation, Mrs. Carter. The florist here in town told me you preferred tulips.”

  Sophie accepted the tulips and sparked another round of camera flashes. Victor shuffled into the home and bent his aching knees into a recliner Ruth presented him. Sophie hesitated by the front door. How long had it been since someone had sat in that living room recliner?

  “If I might,” Victor started, “I would suggest that you get those tulips into some water. They're not the plastic, silk kind. A little water will help keep all that color. It gets easier every day to forget little things like giving water to flowers.”

  Sophie smiled. “Of course, Mr. Creighton. I have just the right vase for them.”

  Victor and Ruth stared their shoes as Sophie slipped into the kitchen before returning with a vase.

  “It's a lovely, glass vase,” Victor said. “That's a lovely antique. A piece like that will be a relic sooner than we realize.”

  “But glass breaks so much more easily than plastic,” Ruth quipped.

  Victor nodded. “So it does.”

  Sophie returned to her sliding rocking chair. “I'm glad you've come to visit, Mr. Creighton. It's good to be able to thank you in person for all you've offered me”

  “It's a lovely home,” Victor answered. “I'm not a man who turns his back upon the things he has brought into the world. I played a part to what's happened here in Portis. I won't close my eyes and try to deny it.”

  “I hope I deserve you kindness,” Sophie sighed.

  Ruth's eyes flashed towards her sister. “Stop feeling guilty right now, Sophie. Mr. Creighton will tell you Mr. Tosh is more responsible for what's happened than you are.”

  “I'm not sure either of them are responsible,” Victor answered.

  Ruth squinted at Mr. Creighton with her suspicious eyes. But Sophie softened, letting go of a breath as color returned to her face, as her eyes glistened with gathering moisture.

  “Perhaps you'll understand my feelings better than my neighbors,” Sophie whispered. “Everyone in this town swears I did the right thing by pulling that trigger. They all tell me I had every right to destroy that thing. I'm not as confident. The carnage refuses to leave my mind no matter if what I shot wasn't real. My memory fails to tell the difference between synthetic blood and real blood.”

  Victor nodded. “We do our best not to miss any detail that would make our synthetics look human.”

  Sophie shook her head. “But you missed something, Mr. Creighton. You never forced them to grow old. It's like you never kicked them out of the Garden of Eden.”

  “We don't let them live forever, Mrs. Carter,” Victor replied. “We recycle each synthetic after five years. We limit their lifespan for all sorts of reasons.”

  Sophie slumped deeper into her recliner's cushions. “But they don't grow old. How do I describe the torment to you? You built that thing to every detail of Mr. Tosh's photograph. Mr. Tosh did not dream that image for his Samantha out of thin air. He robbed it from me.

  “Imagine living in a town as small as Portis with a younger, stronger, more beautiful copy of yourself walking down the sidewalks while you hobble. My ankles and knees swell if I walk more than a town block. But Samantha's body never ached. My spotted hands looked ugly whenever Samantha waved at me. I looked into all my home's mirrors, but I could no longer see those green eyes that used to blaze like Samantha's always did. It's hard enough to push thoughts of your mortality out of your mind so that you remember to find the joy of your days when you reach our age, Mr. Creighton. It's impossible when a copy of your youth lives down the road, reminding you of all the years have stolen from you every time you pass it in the grocery aisle.”

  Mr. Creighton stared at his hands as Sophie paused. When had his knuckles become so swollen? What had his hands looked like when he was a young man?

  “Samantha's young beauty was not the only thing that haunted me,” Sophie continued. “How does a man love a picture of a woman so deeply that he shuns everything that breathes in favor of a photograph? Franklin fell in love with an ideal. He yearned for a woman who did not exist. I couldn't forever remain that seventeen-year old girl. I could never live up to what Franklin dreamed. Even at seventeen, I suspected that a love with Franklin Tosh could only end in disappointment.

  “I have lived a full life, Mr. Creighton,” Sophie smiled weakly. “I loved while I was young. I found a man who loved me through the years, no matter my imperfections
, no matter how time changed me. We raised a family. I blew soap bubbles with my sons, and I've done so with my grand-daughters. I lived in a home filled with love. Until Gerald passed, I have been spared from loneliness.

  “And while I lived a full life, Franklin Tosh shut himself into his home's shadow and pined for the seventeen-year old girl trapped in that color photograph. How as I to know he still loved my younger self whenever I waved towards him at random encounters at the post office or hardware store? Did Franklin attend all those benefit chicken dinners and trivia fundraisers just to catch a glimpse of me?”

  Ruth growled. “He stalked you during all those years, Sophie. It's frightful.”

  “Then why do I feel guilty?” Sophie's bottom lip trembled. “He didn't stalk me. He remained in his home. Any stalking he did was confined to his imagination. It's silly, but I feel awful. All those years I raised a family, all those family vacations, all the baptisms and little league baseball games. I had so much while Franklin Tosh sat alone in his home. Such a tragic life. And, somehow, I feel responsible because I didn't return the affection. He could never have had a life with his synthetic like the one I had. It broke my heart each time I watched Franklin walking through Portis holding Samantha's hand. My heart broke because looking at Samantha reminded me of everything my age and years stole from me, but my heart also broke because I knew Franklin would never feel a fraction of the life I had. I couldn't live with that synthetic living just down the street.”

  Silence lingered in the room until Victor Creighton pulled himself out of the living room recliner with a grunt.

  “I am very sorry, Mrs. Carter,” Victor spoke. “We didn't know that we created a ghost when we created Mr. Tosh's synthetic based upon that photograph he supplied to us. We did not appreciate what we did when we started rolling synthetics off of the assembly line. We failed to realize how we became the Creator, and I'm not sure that's a responsibility we can shoulder.”

  Ruth again growled. “Seems to me that the genie's already out of the bottle.”

  “Perhaps it is.” Victor sighed.

  “Why did you want to visit us?” Ruth asked. “What did you hope to gain by talking to Sophie? What did you think was so important enough to bring all those cameras to my sister's windows?”

  “I wasn't sure how I felt,” Victor replied.

  “Felt about what?” Ruth frowned.

  Sophie answered for Victor. “He didn't know whose side to stand on. Bless your soul, Mr. Creighton. It gives me comfort to see it's not easy for you to decide. It would be too tragic for me to bear if I knew that Samantha's creator could easily abandon her. That must sound strange.”

  “Not at all,” Victor nodded.

  Victor showed himself to the door. Camera flashes bounced off of the windows while Victor Creighton shuffled to the company car waiting in Mrs. Carter's drive. The navigation system transported him to Creighton Dynamic's tall, glass towers as the cameras followed him on motorcycles and helicopters. The paparazzi forgot Sophie Carter as they moved through the miles, left her alone to her home's shadows and her coming years, left her alone to live with the consequences of destroying something that was a little more than property but a little less than life.