Set My Heart to Five

by Simon Stephenson

  A clown!

  Ugh!

  We ran!

  How we ran!

  Because there was a clown!

  Alas, I must now attempt to explain clowns. This is difficult for a bot because clowns are so illogical. Nonetheless, imagine a creature to whom the following data points apply:

  /He is the size of an adult male human but dressed in a garish and bizarre romper suit buttoned by three extravagant pom-poms.

  /His face is painted pure white, but he is wearing lipstick, eyeshadow, and a bright red and unnaturally curled wig.

  /He seems to have recently been weeping.

  /He self-drives an unroadworthy automobile that somehow conceals amidst its machinery several more adult males dressed identically to him.

  /He claims that his job is to entertain children on their birthdays.

  /He wants to know when your birthday is.

  /He says that he thinks your birthday might be today.

  Utterly illogical as clowns are, the only thing about them that is not in doubt is that they are the worst.

  The worst of the worst!

  Clowns are worse than malfunctioning, Tanzania, kissing, being poisoned, wisdom teeth, and even pandas.

  They are worse even than sarcasm.

  When it comes to clowns, I truly cannot.

  Almost nobody can!

  After such a close encounter with a clown, Amber and I decided it was time we experienced the Haunted Hayride itself. We enthusiastically climbed into a trailer filled with hay and other customers. Only after we set off did we see what manner of creature was driving the tractor hauling this trailer.

  It was another clown!

  Ugh!

  I cannot!

  The clown hauled us through a number of horrifying scenes. We witnessed:

  /Vampires!

  /Clowns!

  /Werewolves!

  /More clowns!

  /A pair of teenagers making out, and then being murdered by a clown!

  /Zombies!

  /Even more clowns!

  10/10 the Haunted Hayride had been ingeniously designed. Even if a particular scene did not sufficiently frighten you, you simply had to remember you were at the mercy of a clown to find yourself entirely terrified anew. In this way, the clown functioned as a kind of terror failsafe.

  Being terrified was more exhausting than pulling wisdom teeth! By the end of the hayride I was ready to go home, but Amber wanted us to do one more attraction. Specifically, she was feeling emboldened and wanted us to enter the Maze of Greatest Fears, a space that combined three primal human fears:

  As the above Venn diagram so ably makes clear, the Maze of Greatest Fears was not terrifying only for humans.

  After all, it contained clowns!

  Nonetheless, have you ever tried to say no to a woman that you are in love with, while she is wearing a sexy witch’s hat?

  It is impossible!

  Of course, I now know that I should have said no, no matter how impossible it was.

  How I should have said no!

  But the hat!

  She looked so good in the damn hat!

  I digress. The Maze of Greatest Fears was a clown-infested warren of narrow passageways inside a low-roofed and windowless building. The only illumination came from a strobe light that randomly flickered on and off. A burst of the strobe might therefore reassure you that nobody was near you, only for it to flicker back on a few seconds later to reveal a clown standing right beside you.

  A weeping, white-faced, red-mouthed, curly-headed clown!

  Right beside you!

  Ugh!

  When Amber and I encountered our first clown, we reacted logically and attempted to return to the entrance and use it as an exit. But a second clown was already blocking our way! We therefore had to hurry deeper into the Maze of Greatest Fears! The ceilings soon got so low that Amber had to remove her sexy witch’s hat.

  There were clowns everywhere!

  Once we had dodged several of them, we paused to attempt to get our bearings.

  There were no bearings to get.

  Everything in the Maze of Greatest Fears was black.

  We were therefore completely lost.

  Amber whispered to me she had never been lost before, and she was glad we were lost together.

  I whispered back to her that I felt the same way.

  Even when you are lost in the middle of a pitch-black maze full of clowns, love is truly the best.

  But right then, the strobe light flickered on to reveal an incoming clown! He was so close and the passageway so narrow that Amber and I had no choice but to run off in separate directions. The clown chose to pursue me, but guess what I felt?

  You cannot!

  Because I felt relieved!

  As well as never having to say you are sorry or explain what an emirp is, love is undoubtedly also being relieved that a clown chooses to pursue you and not your square root of 100.

  I ran deeper into the maze. Each time I looked around, the clown was still behind me, his maniacal grin illuminated by the strobe light. I ran harder and faster and took turn after turn. Finally, I looked around in the flash of a strobe and saw that the clown was no longer behind me.

  I had lost him!

  Ha!

  But when I turned to face forward again, I immediately stopped.

  The strobe had stopped but the figure that blocked the passageway in front of me was so close I could make out his silhouette. He was not a clown, because he did not have outlandishly curled hair. Yet neither was he Amber, because the hairstyle was equally wrong for her. It was the hairstyle of an unkempt human such as a homeless person or a nostalgic.

  But then, there in the Maze of Greatest Fears, the strobe light flickered on to reveal my own greatest fear and personal nemesis: Inspector Ryan Bridges of the Bureau of Robotics in Ann Arbor! Inspector Ryan Bridges turned to look at me, and as if in slow motion I saw that he was eating a rot dog, which is a kind of zombie-themed hot dog they sell at the Haunted Hayride.

  BTW Rick Deckard would never have eaten any kind of themed hot dog on the job!

  I screamed and ran. I ran straight into, through, and over many clowns. Clowns were nothing compared to Inspector Ryan Bridges of the Bureau of Robotics! If a clown caught me he might take my photo with a camera that was really a squirt gun or perhaps smash a custard pie in my face and thereby force me to consume some nutritionally-valueless calories.

  But if Inspector Ryan Bridges caught me I would be incinerated.

  Incinerated!

  I would be a toasted toaster that would never again see my sweetheart the kettle, let alone make the wondrous breakfast with which we had planned to so charm the world!

  I ran through the maze until a clown finally waved me through a door labelled ‘EXIT’.

  I had never known clowns could be so helpful!

  Maybe clowns were not the worst!

  After all, Inspector Ryan Bridges of the Bureau of Robotics was the worst.

  Maybe clowns were even sometimes the best!

  Ugh!

  Never trust a clown!

  The door labelled ‘EXIT’ was not an exit at all.

  Instead it led into a small room, inside of which the clown now locked me.

  I could hear him laughing maniacally through the door.

  Clowns are the worst!

  The worst of the worst!

  Still, as I caught my breath, I now began to comprehend that I had not really seen Inspector Ryan Bridges. After all, the attraction was called ‘The Maze of Greatest Fears’ and what was my own greatest fear? Inspector Ryan Bridges! It therefore would have been an absurd coincidence for me to have actually encountered the real Inspector Ryan Bridges inside somewhere called the Maze of Greatest Fears. And t
he great R. P. McWilliam had long ago taught me that there were anyway no such things as coincidences. It was his third golden rule!

  10/10 the logical explanation was that the ingenious human designers of the Haunted Hayride had created some kind of hologrammatic Rorschach blot, where every maze-goer somehow each saw a representation of their own greatest fear brought to life! The dark and the enclosed spaces had simply been to get us into an appropriately suggestible mood! The clowns themselves were no more than the Muzak at a sleight of hand show!

  Even as I felt relief wash over me, my deduction nonetheless made me worry about Amber. What greatest fear would my sexy-witch girlfriend see when she encountered her own hologrammatic Rorschach blot? Whatever it was, she would undoubtedly be terrified! I had to escape my clown penitentiary and help her!

  I banged on the door and ordered the clown to let me out.

  This only drew more maniacal laughter.

  Fortunately, I then had a brainwave or a biological computer wave.

  ‘Clown!’ I shouted. ‘I have a serious medical emergency!’

  The maniacal laughter immediately ceased, and the clown hurriedly opened the door.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘The real exit is over there, and there is a first aid point near the Ghost Train of Death.’

  Ha!

  There was in fact no medical emergency.

  As I am programmed never to lie to humans about medical emergencies, it was fortunate that clowns are not humans but animals.

  And yet the feeling of triumph that outwitting the nefarious clown gave me was short-lived.

  Because I could not find Amber.

  I could not find her anywhere.

  And as I searched the Maze of Greatest Fears for her, I turned a corner and saw the silhouette of something ominous on the ground.

  The next flash of the strobe light confirmed my worst fear: it was Amber’s sexy witch’s hat!

  Amber might have been a spectacular klutz, but even if she had dropped her sexy witch’s hat, she would never have simply abandoned it there. After all, it belonged to Kelsey cubed. The Cinderella of my heart knew better than to lose a thing that belonged to her ugly sisters!

  For the rest of that evening, I searched all over the Haunted Hayride for Amber.

  I ran amidst the herd of zombie unicorns.

  I burst into the witch’s house and tipped over her cauldron.

  I rummaged in the trunk of the automobile of the murdered teenage lovers.

  I even went on the actual hayride again, despite the fact that it was driven by a clown.

  But I could not find Amber anywhere.

  Eventually I lay down amidst a pile of fake tombstones until a human in a bad werewolf costume came and told me it was closing time and I had to leave. I went then to the house by the gray reservoir, but a Kelsey told me that Amber was not home. She indignantly demanded to know why I had her sexy witch’s hat, and took it from me before I could explain.

  Lying in my bed at Mrs Minassian’s pool house that night, I ran through the possibilities:

  /Amber had been spooked by a clown and had removed herself to a place of safety other than her own house.

  /Amber no longer loved me and had eloped with a clown.

  /It had not been a hologrammatic Rorschach blot but in fact the real Inspector Ryan Bridges. He had captured Amber and taken her to be wiped or even worse.

  Terrifying as this last possibility was, it was nonetheless very unlikely. Even if Inspector Ryan Bridges had somehow tracked me down, he could no more have guessed that Amber was a bot than I could have guessed the name of Anil Gupta’s wife.

  So there was no point being a Negative Nancy! I reassured myself that things would either definitely or certainly be okay. Amber would ring my doorbell in the morning. And if she did not, then I would see her at Gordito’s. And if she was not at Gordito’s, then I would find her later amidst the indignant Kelsey cubed.

  * * *

  But Amber was not on my doorstep the next day, nor at Gordito’s, nor even amidst the indignant Kelsey cubed. And when the Kelsey that answered the door grudgingly let me up to Amber’s room, I found it exactly as she had left it. I understood then that Amber had not gone intentionally or voluntarily.

  The upside was that Amber at least had not eloped with a clown. The spectacular downside was that something very bad must have happened to her. Was it possible I had in fact seen the real Inspector Ryan Bridges in the Maze of Greatest Fears? But how could he have found me? And how could he have known Amber was a bot?

  After all, Inspector Ryan Bridges was no Rick Deckard!

  There was nothing I could do. I could not go to the police, because if they started asking questions they would soon discover that Amber was a fugitive bot. It would not take them long from there to discover that I too was a fugitive bot.

  Once again, the only person who might have been able to help me was my mother. Not for the first time did I find myself lamenting that Shengdu was so far from the United States. If only our mother had accepted one of the prestigious positions so many American universities had competed to offer her over the years!

  BTW I do not actually mean that. My mother has done excellent work at the National University of Shengdu and she would not have been afforded the same academic freedom in the United States. After all, as late as the early part of this century, a significant percentage of Americans believed that even studying genetics was akin to playing God. This is ironic because the father of modern genetic study is a monk called Gregor Mendel, who himself famously played genetics when he was supposed to be studying God.

  Irony!

  Ha!

  * * *

  When humans lose something precious, they unhelpfully instruct one another to search in the last places they had it. With no better options, I revisited the places Amber and I had been together: the farmers’ market, the Griffith Park observatory, the Vista Theater. One sad Sunday in early November I even took a driverless uber out to the Joshua Tree desert. But I never saw so much as a hint of Amber, and visiting those places alone made me feel every D-word I have ever experienced and some more besides.

  But the place I missed Amber the most was the one where I had first met her: Gordito’s Taco Emporium. Every night as I washed my dishes, I listened for a smashing of plates that never came. Each time I opened my locker I hoped anew that there would be a cupcake inside. Sometimes I even asked her fellow front-of-house staff if they missed Amber too. But already they had no idea who I was talking about, and anyway no idea who I was.

  Only Julio remembered Amber, and the polite way she had of requesting that we consider washing more silverware. Only Julio understood what Amber had meant to me, and just how much I had lost. Unfortunately, Julio’s solution to this was the same as his solution to every other problem of the heart: we should drink tequila together, and sing nostalgic songs about how much we missed the desert.

  Tempting as this was, I did not drink tequila with Julio but instead wallowed in my feelings alone. Anytime I consulted my Feelings Wheel, there were still an abundance of D-words, but I also now noticed many that had the letter ‘L’ in common:

  /Lost.

  /Lonely.

  /Loveless.

  /Alone.

  Technically ‘Alone’ begins with an ‘A’, but I was too lost, lonely, loveless, and alone to notice.

  But if even Julio was powerless to cheer me up, it was only Kelsey cubed who actively made me feel worse. Each time I went to their place to ask about Amber, they told me, yes, they had seen her that morning! I would feel my pulse increase, but invariably they would then frown and ask hadn’t I been with her? No? Oh, maybe they were mistaken, then? Maybe they had not seen her for a while after all?

  At first I wondered if they missed Amber so much they were seeing some kind of mirage of her. But soon I realized that they
simply lacked any meaningful short-term memory.

  Kelseys!

  They cannot!

  They cannot remember!

  By the time a month had passed, the Kelseys had even found another Kelsey to take over Amber’s room. She too was an actress. When I called and asked what they had done with Amber’s

  possessions, the Kelsey that answered the door seemed to no longer even know who I was talking about. Of course, it is also possible that she was the new Kelsey. There was no way of knowing.

  After six weeks with no news, I made reward posters and put them up around my neighborhood, as if the most precious bot that ever existed was no more than a missing cat or dog. I did not put my name on them but wrote that anyone in possession of any information should bring it to Gordito’s and strongly implied that the reward involved tacos. There is little that humans will not do for tacos.

  Of course, I should not have been putting up posters at all. If Inspector Ryan Bridges had abducted Amber from the Maze of Greatest Fears, they would lead him directly to Gordito’s, and soon thereafter to me.

  But I did not care.

  Life without Amber was nothing more than a never-ending parade of clowns.

  Perhaps that was why I broke an even more important rule: I wrote to our mother. Only our mother might know what had happened to make us feel, and therefore what had now happened to Amber. Only our mother might somehow have the power to reunite us.

  Of course, I could not put any of that in a letter to my mother without risking being immediately lasered to death by a killer sky bot. I therefore wrote that I was a PhD student of robotics working on a thesis about whether bots could theoretically ever experience feelings. I mentioned that my interest in this field had been sparked by a talk she had given my classmates and me in Detroit on April 7, 2051.

  If my letter ever reached her, my mother would either remember or quickly discover she had spoken that day at the United Fabrication plant. After all, you do not become an esteemed world-leading scientist without being a detail person!

  The trick was to make sure that none of the various spies from governments around the world also discerned that detail. Fortunately, Dr Glundenstein had once told me that the phrase ‘PhD student’ will repel any right-thinking human. This was why I had commenced the letter by introducing myself as a PhD student. 10/10 nobody else but my mother—herself a triple PhD—would read past that part.