When she returns seven minutes later she is in tears and I ask her what is wrong, but I know what is wrong. In that time I processed what the man on the wall said, the second outbreak. Three weeks ago, a masked and gloved technician administered vaccinations to Dahlia and Mother. From Dahlia’s room I heard Mother say, “They should lift quarantine any day now, don’t you think?” I did not hear the technician’s response, which means he did not respond. That night Mother got drunk and smoked many cigarettes and passed out on the couch. Dahlia stayed up past Bed Time dancing and I whirred and scooted around on the carpeting like I was dancing too.
“The city is not going to lift quarantine,” I say now to Dahlia.
She shakes her head, scrunches up her red face as sad as I have seen her.
“There, there.” I pat her lightly on the arm, attempt to squeeze her bicep. She shrugs loose of me and face-plants onto her bed, and without prompting I go on with the telling.
* * *
We found Nikki’s mom in the kitchen. I always liked her. She did not bother to dye her hair and she wore controversial buttons like Elect Satan: Why Pick the Lesser of Two Evils? and Affordable Healthcare Starts with Breastfeeding.
Nikki gave her mom a kiss on the lips, lifted her up in a bear hug. They had that kind of relationship—physical, adoring—nothing like the way I was with my parents. Mine were more interested in intellectual connection, seeing art films and discussing the mise-en-scène over gelato, going to the park for a free lute concert or a local production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Nikki borrowed clothes from her sister, Lea the rebel, who probably had an abortion, according to everyone. She walked the halls like she was ready to do battle in tight jeans and a G-string that showed when she stooped at her locker.
Her room smelled like old food and feet and I lingered near the door, mouth-breathing while Nikki dredged through the mountain of clothes on the floor. She unearthed a pair of purple jeans, shredded and filthy along the bottom, and a black mesh tank top. Then she undressed. I had seen her change before, but not like this. She cast off her uniform, straightened her underwear, as if I were not there, as if she were alone.
“I can see your bra,” I told her once she was dressed.
“Good.” She bent forward, mussed her long hair, giving it a healthy dose of Lea’s hair spray.
* * *
“What did Nikki’s mother say?” Dahlia asks, her voice muffled by the duvet.
“She asked us if we wanted to make brownies.”
“Are you kidding? Mother would have freaked out. She says I’m ruined, you know. Circumstances ruined me. She says she can’t parent under confinement. What does that even mean?”
“I do not know,” I answer, but in my head I am processing. Even before quarantine, Dahlia rarely went out. She has always attended School on the screen, always had difficulty making friends and joining in. I imagine she was quite lonesome before I came along. She must have been for Mother to agree to companionship.
I think of my own parents. Dahlia never asks about them, so it is with rare focus that I call up a single memory. The rental van packed for a skiing trip, windows half-down, a cool breeze running through the cab, shaking the map in Mom’s lap, Dad making us laugh with the CB. “Breaker breaker oh-niner,” he said in a phony played-up accent. “This is Ham Hock on the line. I’m out here with Ms. Piggy and her little piglet.” He held the CB out to me. “What’s your name, little piglet?”
“Lilac here,” I said into the CB. Then I collapsed into giggles. It was not really funny. I had only added a c to the end of my name, but somehow Lilac seemed like the perfect name for a pig. And when I woke in my companion form and Dahlia asked me what she should call me, I said it without much processing: Lilac. It sounded right.
Dahlia inches to the edge of the bed. “I think she’s ruining me. If I’m being ruined at all. I don’t think I’m ruined. Do you think I’m ruined?”
I wheel closer to her. “Not at all. You are a wonderful girl and I am lucky to be your companion.”
“I love you, Lilac.”
“I love you too.”
“Someday I’m going to get you skin.”
“Really?”
“I want you to have the best processor.”
“I would like that very much. I think it would make me a better companion.”
In moments like these, when Dahlia is feeling particularly affectionate toward me, she has told me things I cannot access on my feed, about where I come from, what I am, a low-functioning companion, the least advanced. It is all Mother would pay for. She has told me about the many models with varying processing speeds, some with the ability to extrapolate, to change like a person. The top model, the most expensive, even grows skin. It is alive, on some level anyway, though Dahlia could not explain the science to me in an intelligible way and my own searches have been fruitless. I may be a low-functioning companion, but I can tell my feed is filtered.
I ask a question I have been holding on to for some time: “How did this happen to me?” Then I realize something, a truth lodged inside me, not the telling. “My parents would never have agreed to this.”
“You were an organ donor, right? I remember reading that the first to upload were organ donors. That would make sense. You’re nearly first-gen. Maybe your parents didn’t even know.”
It is nice, this thought. I want to believe in it. But I am certain there are some things I will never know, even with advancement.
* * *
The porch was packed with kids whose glares I recognized from school. I should have changed out of my uniform. Following, I was following Nikki as she hopped up the stairs and pushed her way inside the house, where Tally Turner was doing a keg stand in the middle of the living room. This is a disaster. That is what I was thinking as I tugged at Nikki. “We have to go.”
“My turn,” Nikki called. Hands clasped at her ankles. A brutish football player with a gamey smell, sweat stains smiling from his pits, lifted her up over the keg and the room exploded with cheers and chanting. Nikki’s mesh tank top fell to her chin and I could really see her bra, each sharp rib bone, the scar where she’d had her appendix removed. “This is a disaster,” I caught myself saying as I backed toward the wall, right into a shove that sent me sprawling into the ring around the keg.
I turned to see Red glowering at me from the waist of a veritable giant. He must have been nearly seven feet.
“A disaster would be an unnecessary extension of war, don’t you agree?”
“I’m not going to tell you my position before the trial.”
“Do a keg stand,” Red commanded.
“No.”
“You will, juror. You will do a keg stand.”
There was some hooting and clapping. The football player came up behind me, tossed me over his shoulder and carried me off even as I swatted at him.
I did a keg stand, the plastic nozzle stuffed into my mouth, choking down an endless spray of low-priced light beer, my skirt flopped over my face as they all laughed. What underwear was I wearing? The worst, of course, the oldest pair decorated with little bunnies munching on carrots I’d kept too long. When the football player put me down, Red was gone. I went to the bathroom to cry, staring at myself in the mirror, at my face, neither pretty nor ugly, just a face, trying to make the tears come—I wanted them out of me. I slammed the mirror with my hand and there was some blood, some fracturing of glass. It felt glorious, the pain. I almost felt new. I dug through the medicine cabinet for a Band-Aid, washed the blood from the sink, and straightened my hair. It was nice hair, light brown, red in the light, auburn, some people called it. I liked it when they said that. When they told me about the varied shades of my hair.
* * *
“Enough about your hair,” Dahlia groans. She is losing interest, flagging items for purchase on her screen while she devours a blond snack bar, perched on the giant ball she sometimes does Exercise with.
“I am sorry. It is a detail I r
ecall with some vigor.”
“Can you skip ahead to the good part?”
“If I skip ahead, the telling will not be suspense-filled.”
“You’re losing your audience.”
“Okay, I will skip ahead.”
* * *
Nikki was knotted up with the sweaty football player in some swaying dance. I want to die. That was the thought running through my head, the words I repeated without processing. Perhaps if I had processed them, I would have seen the real danger.
I slunk down the hall, searching for a room where I might hide for a few songs, enough time for Nikki to enjoy herself. I should have left, you must be thinking. I had the same thought as I opened the door and saw Red on the bed, moaning, the giant with his head buried between her thighs. He was not wearing pants. I screamed when I saw the enormous rigid thing. Cock. Rod. Now it made sense.
* * *
The ball squeals underneath Dahlia as she bounces. “How long was it exactly?”
“I was too excited to determine actual length but it was at least as long as your forearm.”
“My goodness.”
“Yes, it was very long.”
“Go on.”
* * *
The scream I let out brought silence to the house. The music stopped, the hooting and hollering and laughing. It was just me and Red and the giant and we were all silent and still, as if we were stuck like that, on pause. Then I heard the thumping, the rumble of them coming down the hall, their breathing behind me. Out of the silence came a single bark of laughter, then a current—they were all laughing and I was in the center of the room and Red was yelling at them to get out, waving her arms violently, and I knew I was done for. I knew it.
* * *
Dahlia falls back onto her bed, staring up at the poster on her ceiling of Jakob Sonne with his floppy silver locks and goofy sideways grin, the latest focal point of her star obsession. “That’s my favorite part.”
“I know. You like it when I talk about the penis.”
“Shut up!” she squeals.
“I am sorry. Should I continue?”
Her face falls into a pout. “What’s wrong with your hand?”
I peer down at my hook, pinch my tongs. One of them hangs limply as the other two flex and release.
“You poor baby. You need a tech.”
“I can still complete the telling. The part that matters most comes next.”
“Maybe tomorrow. I’ve got to get back to school.”
“Should I go to my closet?”
“Good idea.”
As often as possible I announce my exit. That way there is little chance of Dahlia flipping the switch. I can journey off on the feed, learn new words, or I can stay alert, watching the session. Dahlia has recently passed my level in School. Someday she will grow tired of me. Maybe if they gave me a more advanced processor, I could extrapolate, grow, keep up.
Mother pushes the door open, not bothering to knock. Her nails are a rich cobalt blue, except for the tips which glow gold. “Good, you’re studying. Where is that thing?”
“Lilac is in her closet.”
“Good, that’s very good. You know, I’ve been thinking. Perhaps it’s time we got you an Outside Pass.”
“Really?”
“Sure, but as you know, they cost a lot of credit. You’ll have to give up some of your expenses if we are to afford it.”
“Like what?”
“Like the insurance and service fees on your companion.”
“Mother, we’ve talked about this. I’m not giving Lilac up.”
“Not even for an Outside Pass?”
“Not even for an Outside Pass.”
“You need real friends.”
“Where am I going to find those?”
“You could go to group night on the 143rd floor. You used to love group night.”
“I don’t like those kids.”
“Why?”
“They call me Doll Head. They tell me my head is oversize. They say I’m strange to look at.”
From my closet, I measure her head. “Your head is only slightly above the average size.”
“What? Has it been listening?”
“She’s in her closet. Isn’t that enough?”
“No, that is not enough. I don’t like it. I wish I never got it for you. Always listening, telling that terrible story. It’s not right!” Mother stalks over to my closet and gives me a hateful look. Then it is darkness.
* * *
It is nearly midnight when I wake. I shift to night vision and see Dahlia staring into my face.
“I would like you to take the Outside Pass,” I tell her. “I would like you to go outside.”
“Oh, Lilac.” She wraps her arms around me. Is she crying? “They’re coming for you tomorrow. They’re going to take you away.”
“Take me where?”
“Back to the agency.”
“Will I be serviced?”
“You’ll be returned. I’ll never see you again.” I cannot feel the hug she gives me. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“I do not want to lose you either.” I stroke her hair, careful not to get my hooks caught. It is nice hair, long and thick all the way to the tips. Dahlia takes excellent care of it. “Will you still get to go outside?” I ask her.
“Oh, who cares? To go out you have to get all your immus updated, and when you come back, they make you take off all your clothes, hose you down, sit in a bubble for like three days. And for what? So I can go shopping in a real store? I’d rather be here with you.”
“You could go dancing.” I would like that, to go dancing with Dahlia, but not like this. Not in this can.
“Tell me the rest of the story.”
* * *
Nikki took my hand and we pushed past the crowd, Red still raging behind us. We were laughing as we ran out onto the porch, almost free, when Nikki’s dance partner caught up with us. He told us he knew a place we could go. He had a friend for me, a smiling, brawny midget who materialized at his side at that moment.
They drove us to the cliffs, land marked for development overlooking the ocean. I could hear its crashing. There was no moon, the ground dug up and soggy with ocean mist. The football player tickle-chased Nikki into the darkness. I watched them go, felt the strange short boy come up behind me, wrap his arms around my waist. Just then the moon came out, shining across the ocean, and it felt good, being held like that. He had a broad, muscled chest that made a nice backrest and he did not have to slouch to place his chin on my shoulder. I have to admit I was enjoying it. Until he stuck a hand up my skirt. I wriggled loose and he got the idea to tickle-chase me too. It had worked for his friend, after all. He chased me around a stack of rebar covered in plastic, a heap of tools, over the rope border between lots. I heard him grunt and go down behind me and I whirled around to see him tangled up in the rope. “Nikki!” I shouted, running on, after her. “Nikki!”
A voice carried over the crush of waves: “I’m here!” I followed it to the edge of the cliffs, so high up I could barely see the water breaking on the rocky beach below.
“Where are you?”
Then I heard it—moaning from the next lot over. Between waves came the slapping sound, the squelch of mud. “Nikki?” I saw her spindly limbs, yellow in the moonlight, the football player on top of her.
A whisper from behind me: “I’m right here.” I turned in time to see Red swing the shovel. I do not remember falling—I wish I did. I would like to feel the rush of air, the weightlessness. The next thing I remember is your face. You were fourteen then, younger than me, and I was able to tell you things, about people, things you needed to know.
* * *
Dahlia plants a kiss on my head. “I have an idea. Let’s look Nikki up!”
“That is a fruitless search. It was too long ago.” I do not tell her that I have already searched that name 403,232 times in 403,232 different configurations. Dahlia is only allowed seventy-five minutes of compan
ionship per day, so I must make the most of my downtime. I never found Nikki, but she had been right—I did know Red’s name. I tracked her down, tracing a time line of feed items—marriage, a child’s birth, a long gap of nothing, then a dead son, by suicide, leaping from a tower window, survived by his mother who resides in an elderly care facility in Del Norte County, 432 miles north of here. Something I have processed over the years: if I had lived, I would have been an old woman by now, a whole life behind me, and I would not have to worry about what they did to Nikki.
“How do you think they did it?” I ask. “Upload me, I mean. If there is such a small window, mere minutes as you told me, after death. I fell into the ocean.”
“Hold on.” Dahlia slides off her bed, engaging her screen. “I’ve been waiting for the right time to show you this.” She pulls up an old police report. I scan the document. Me—they are talking about me. So focused on Nikki, on the telling, on pleasing Dahlia and not angering Mother, I missed it.
“Where did you find this?”
“I’ve been doing a little research while you were in sleep mode.” Dahlia grins, so proud of herself. I am proud too. An act of kindness! It is hard for Dahlia to concern herself with others in this isolation. Perhaps companionship has made her more caring. Maybe I had a little to do with that.
“Look,” she says, “you didn’t die right away. Your back was broken and you were nearly hypothermic when a jogger found you on the beach. Really, it’s a miracle you didn’t drown.”
I do not know how to process this, but the report, it confirms what Dahlia is telling me. “Suicide,” I read aloud.
“I know. I couldn’t believe it either.”
I try to recall, to pull up a memory after my last memory. I have never looked before—perhaps it is there waiting for me?
But, no. There is nothing, and I slam my hook into the wall, leave a mark.
The Companions Page 2
