Set My Heart to Five

by Simon Stephenson

  I did not have an answer for that, so I instead told Amber 2.0 about the starring role movies had played in my own journey. I explained how movies had first demonstrated that my toaster heart could feel, and that it was a movie about a bot and a bot hunter that had shown me what I had to do. I told her how I had written a movie that would teach humans that bots could feel, but that Don LaSalle had ruined everything. On the upside, I said, we had at least stolen his automobile. Ha!

  ‘Ha!’ agreed Amber 2.0.

  But she still looked bewildered, and I suspect she was simply being polite.

  Outside, the trunks of trees that had once held aloft wires that had transmitted human voices into each other’s homes ran alongside the road.

  The wire had fallen long ago, and some of the trunks had even now fallen too.

  Maybe ultimately all our efforts to reach one another are equally doomed.

  I realized I was feeling contemplative.

  We drove on. After some time, Amber 2.0 asked me to tell her a story from a movie, but to make sure it did not involve a penitentiary. I knew exactly the story to tell her! After all, there is a kind of movie called a ‘road trip movie’ in which two or more characters undertake a geographical adventure. And what were Amber 2.0 and I now, if not two characters on a geographical adventure?

  BTW that is a rhetorical question.

  We were two characters on a geographical adventure.

  10/10 Amber 2.0 and I were on a road trip!

  In a road trip movie, the characters attempt to travel somewhere in order to fulfill a specific objective:

  /We need to go to Ypsilanti and visit the famous Tridge!

  /We need to go to Santa Barbara and drink fine wine!

  /We need to go to Las Vegas and win a million bitcoin!

  Yet it does not matter where the characters think they are going, or even what they plan to do when they get there.

  Because guess what happens in a road trip movie?

  Everything that can go wrong does go wrong!

  To put that another way: the characters have a goal, but the appearance of unexpected obstacles means that they do not achieve their intended goal, but instead something close to it. Nonetheless, this other thing ultimately proves more satisfying, as the characters have themselves changed over the course of their journey!

  10/10 formulae are the best!

  I began to tell Amber 2.0 about the best road trip movie I had ever seen. It was so moving it could also have existed in a circle labelled ‘tearjerker’, and maybe that was just what Amber 2.0 needed. After all, she had not even been able to identify the emotion of ‘sad’ that morning, so she could do with all the practice at feeling that she could get!

  The road trip movie was about a waitress and a housewife who went on a geographical adventure to a fishing cabin.

  They did not even reach the fishing cabin.

  You already know why not, don’t you?

  Because everything that could go wrong did go wrong!

  The waitress and the housewife were both very endearing characters. The waitress was a fast talker, and yet despite being smart and working front-of-house, she was not at all superior. By contrast, the two most striking things about the housewife were that she was stunningly beautiful and not very smart at all. 10/10 Charles Darwin would have enjoyed the road trip movie about the waitress and the housewife!

  On their way to the cabin, the waitress and the housewife stop at a bar where the waitress shoots and kills a man. The man is an ugly villain and deserves it, but of course our two heroes cannot wait around to tell the police that. It is only 1991, and they would both be sent to a penitentiary for the rest of their lives.

  Ugh!

  I had forgotten there was a penitentiary in this story.

  I noticed Amber 2.0 pick up my Feelings Wheel and settle on ‘perturbed’.

  I swiftly hurried on to the next part.

  The automobile the women drive on their road trip is a bottle-green 1966 Ford Thunderbird. Despite alas not being made by Germans, this is a very good automobile and even somewhat similar to a racing-green 1967 Porsche. After all, in a Venn diagram comprised of a circle of green vintage automobiles and a circle of automobiles with soft retractable roofs, both our automobiles would have been in the shaded area.

  BTW except when the roofs were retracted, because then they would both be in the unshaded area!

  A hilarious pun!

  Ha!

  I digress. The automobile is not the real story of the movie, and nor even is the murder. The real story is the friendship between the waitress and the housewife. It is a platonic love affair.

  BTW the word ‘platonic’ describes a situation when two humans are pleasant to each other without hope of financial, sexual, or other reward. The situation is indeed rare enough to have earned its own word.

  This platonic love affair between the waitress and the housewife unfolds against the backdrop of a giant chase through the southwestern states, the desert-basket of America. After they commit their righteous murder, the two heroes really set it to five! They careen across the desert in their bottle-green 1966 Thunderbird, while a policeman follows the abundant clues they have carelessly left in their wake. It is all joyous fun right up until they encounter a handsome thief who ruins everything forever by stealing all their money and thereby leaving them no choice but to rob a convenience store.

  Can you guess what the handsome thief’s name is?

  You cannot!

  Because it is Brad!

  Brad!

  I cannot!

  Of course, I mean that Brad is the name of the actor who plays this character. The actual thief character could not be named Brad. Naming a thief ‘Brad’ would be implausible enough to ruin the whole movie. After all, we Brads are not thieves!

  Nonetheless, we Brads can certainly play the part of thieves!

  Do you know why?

  It is for the same reason that we Brads can play almost any part.

  And that reason is that we Brads are American everymen!

  We are capable of turning our hand to anything!

  I mean, anything except thievery.

  Thievery is just not the style of us Brads!

  I digress. The arrival of the thief—convincingly played by my fellow Brad, despite the actor himself having no such tendencies personally—is a harbinger of the end of the movie, a finale that no less an authority than Dr Glundenstein declared as one of the most moving things ever to have been shown upon the American screen.

  As the movie reaches this dramatic zenith, the waitress and the housewife’s bottle-green 1966 Thunderbird is chased across the desert by dozens of police cars.

  Things are already not looking good, and then they reach a huge and deep canyon that halts the waitress and the housewife in their tracks!

  They cannot drive on, because they will plunge to their certain doom!

  Yet if they turn back they will spend the rest of their lives in the penitentiary!

  Ugh! What a terrible moment for the waitress and the housewife!

  It reminds me of the situation I was once in with Dr Glundenstein when I could either have wept or been unscientific in the extreme.

  They similarly have no good options!

  A kindly policeman takes out a megaphone and promises the waitress and the housewife that if they turn themselves in he will do everything he can to help them. Unfortunately, it is still 1991 and penitentiaries remain very fashionable, so there is little he can do. The waitress and the housewife will still be sent to the penitentiary, and the guards there are unlikely to fall for the bank manager’s rock-hammer trick a second time. Nor does the kindly policeman even imply that he can arrange for them to share a van ride with a famous penitentiary escaper. If the waitress and the housewife do surrender, they will not be playing golf in Z
ihuatanejo anytime soon!

  So can you guess what the waitress and the housewife do?

  You cannot!

  Because they declare that they love one another, hold hands, and then drive their bottle-green 1966 Thunderbird over the edge of the canyon and straight to their certain doom!

  Over the edge of the canyon!

  Straight to their certain doom!

  I cannot!

  I cannot!

  I cannot!

  Set my heart to five!

  Then set it to five again!

  Truly I cannot!

  The waitress!

  And the housewife!

  They cannot!

  And do you know why they cannot?

  Because they are lying dead at the bottom of the canyon!

  In their destroyed bottle-green 1966 Thunderbird!

  Oh, I cannot!

  Recounting these events made me experience a catharsis and weep so hard that I had to pull over to the side of the Royal Bot Superhighway. Overwhelmed though I was by the fate of the waitress and the housewife, I certainly did not want the racing-green 1967 Porsche to join the bottle-green 1966 Thunderbird in the circle marked ‘destroyed vintage automobiles’!

  Only after I had stopped and wiped my own eyes did I see that Amber 2.0 had not shed a single tear. Instead, she was once again bamboozled.

  She said that she could not comprehend why the waitress and the housewife would do such a thing. What about the legendary human instinct for self-preservation? I explained that the strength of their platonic love and the spirit of their adventure had trumped even their innate human desire for self-preservation. After all, this was how Dr Glundenstein had explained it to me, and he was a true cinephile.

  But Amber 2.0 still could not compute any of it, and this gave me profound D-word feelings.

  Amber 1.0 would have instinctively understood why the waitress and the housewife had self-destructed.

  Yet Amber 2.0 could not comprehend it even when it was patiently explained to her in the words of a true cinephile.

  Whatever Inspector Ryan Bridges had done to her at the Bureau of Robotics, it had greatly affected her capacity for feelings!

  I reminded myself that our mother would either definitely or certainly be able to fix Amber 2.0. After all, she was our mother, and one of the cleverest women in the world. Besides, Amber 2.0 had remembered the location of Mrs Minassian’s pool house.

  And that was not nothing.

  It was a whole pool house more than nothing.

  We fell quiet once more and continued winding our way north on the Royal Bot Superhighway.

  I had not appreciated it was possible to be a sneeze away from death and also simultaneously experience the emotion of boredom.

  Yet that is how it is when you drive an automobile for long distances!

  Pismo Beach.

  Morro Bay.

  Cambria.

  San Simeon.

  The towns we passed had pleasant-sounding names, but none of them were as pretty or even as aflame as Santa Barbara. As they fell away, I grew so bored I even considered driving us off the road to liven things up!

  And then we came to Big Sur.

  In my heart of hearts I will always and forever be a bot. I therefore do not believe in any white-bearded sky god, and the only Great Creator I will ever have faith in is my mother, Professor Diana Feng of the National University of Shengdu.

  Nonetheless, to drive a racing-green 1967 Porsche through Big Sur in California as the spring sun begins to set is to feel as if you are driving into the afterlife. For a golden hour in the late afternoon, Highway 1 becomes the freeway to heaven.

  BTW I am not exaggerating. Even Amber 2.0 could feel it, and she was 99 percent toaster.

  A narrow ribbon of road winds along the edge of a steep hillside, undulating over improbable bridges and through a forest of tall and fragrant pine trees. Far beneath you, great Pacific Ocean waves smash themselves against murderous rocks. If you misjudge a turn, you will plunge to your certain doom, like a pelican at Malibu on the day of the Great Pelican Crash!

  And yet whether you are a human, a bot with feelings, or even an ignoble pelican that has improbably mastered the art of three-pedal driving, in your heart of hearts you will be content to plunge to your doom. Because to lie broken on a Big Sur beach amidst the burning wreckage of a racing-green 1967 Porsche as the sun sets into the Pacific Ocean would be to know that you are dying as beautiful a death as there could ever possibly be on this earth.

  I know this not because we crashed and died that evening, but because we followed a forest track down to the beach, parked, and watched the sun set into the ocean. I told Amber 2.0 that I could have happily died at that moment, and she agreed that she could as well. Being a pair of mangled bodies in a burning racing-green 1967 Porsche convertible would have undoubtedly only added to the sense of occasion and spectacle!

  But it was not our time! After all, we were on our way to San Francisco, the world’s second-greatest technological city, to meet our mother! But driving Highway 1 at night would also have been self-destructive, and self-destruction is a pastime reserved for profoundly over-feeling humans! In the darkness we therefore slowly crept back up to the highway and stopped at the first lodgings we came to.

  The establishment was called the Big Sur Motel and they had a room available. This was probably because the Big Sur Motel was decorated in a style of patterned fabrics and ornaments that is generally described as ‘chintz’ and appeals to nobody but ironic nostalgics. More positively, as it was in the country, the desk clerk did not request a barcode. Sometimes rubes have their uses after all!

  Our room was small and contained only one double bed, so Amber 2.0 and I lay down upon opposite sides of it. She did not recall the Joshua Tree Inn, and I could anyway never describe the transcendental things that had occurred there to her. No Feelings Wheel in the world contained words for what had passed between the two of us in the desert that night. Even if there had been words, Amber 2.0 would not have understood them anyway.

  Fortunately, driving 300 miles on the edge of certain death is exhausting! We both entered standby mode as soon as our heads hit the chintz pillow.

  * * *

  When I emerged from standby mode the next morning, Amber 2.0 was already in the shower. I turned the television on. The news was playing, and it was greatly disturbing.

  There was a terrifying fugitive on the loose! The newsreaders were grim-faced, because this fugitive sounded like a criminal to rival the great Al Capone. He traveled under a cunningly common alias, crossed multiple state lines to evade justice, was suspected of automobile theft, and had even recently kidnapped an innocent bot. When I heard that last part, I vowed to be extra careful. After all, as an innocent bot with no shortage of troubles of my own, the very last thing I needed was to be kidnapped!

  It was only when they showed my picture that I realized the dangerous kidnapping fugitive they were talking about was me. The picture had been taken on my graduation day at the United Fabrication plant, just after my mother had finished speaking. My circuits had still been overheating, and even I have to agree that I looked as maniacal as a clown.

  The newsreaders then declared that I had a nefarious masterplan to destroy all humankind! They illustrated these malevolent intentions with a clip of the monstrous seventy-five-foot Sherman walking across the Golden Gate Bridge executing humans with his laser eyes. At the climax of the scene, a yellow school bus full of orphans and rescue dogs stranded itself in front of him.

  Guess what this evil Sherman did?

  He lasered all the orphans and the rescue dogs to death!

  Ugh! I cannot!

  The evil Sherman is the worst!

  Wait, the evil Don LaSalle is the worst!

  They are both the worst!

  The worst
of the worst!

  They are worse even than clowns, and you know that I do not say that lightly!

  The program then cut to an interview with Inspector Ryan Bridges of the Ann Arbor Bureau of Robotics! He cautioned viewers that I was dangerous and should not be approached. But even that was not the biggest problem. The biggest problem was that Inspector Ryan Bridges then said that anybody that saw me should not only call the Bureau of Robotics hotline but also the police!

  Ugh! The police! Set it to minus five, this was now truly a disaster! Inspector Ryan Bridges and his colleagues at the Bureau of Robotics could be outwitted with logic, but there was no outwitting the police with logic. Many police were themselves bots, and nobody could outwit a bot with logic. Not even another bot!

  The only good news was that Inspector Ryan Bridges was still searching for me in the greater Los Angeles area.

  As if I would have gone to the trouble of stealing a racing-green 1967 Porsche simply to drive infinite loops around Los Angeles!

  What did he even take me for? A human?

  Ha!

  BTW that is hilariously ironic because this whole thing has in many ways been about me thinking I am like a human, but Inspector Ryan Bridges insisting I am merely a bot.

  I quickly turned the television off when Amber 2.0 came out of the bathroom. If she heard a newsreader state that I had abducted her, she might believe them. That would not be helpful! Unless you are a handsome bank robber and a beautiful US marshal, an abduction is generally considered an inauspicious beginning to any romantic relationship.

  We checked out of the Big Sur Motel and continued on our way to San Francisco, the world’s second-greatest technological city. In San Francisco our esteemed and wonderful mother would either definitely or certainly make everything all right forever.

  * * *

  Maps tell me that our journey that morning must have taken us through the towns of Carmel, Monterey, and Pacifica. I have zero recollection of any of them. I suspect my circuits were already overheating from the excitement.

  Nonetheless, I do remember the moment when the police driverless uber appeared behind us with its lights flashing and siren wailing. I was profoundly relieved when I saw that the occupant looked irritated and was therefore a human! Sure enough, he overtook us and we passed him stopped outside a hamburger stand a few miles down the road. Any bot officer would have run our plates, but this human had been more concerned with making sure the contents of his own plate were in order.