It’s not hard to find tenants. I offer a reasonable rate and get plenty of inquiries, settling on a youngish couple, two handholding men who hope to adopt, and I can see they love each other and I want them to have Diana’s house. Their rent will pay the utilities and the property taxes, with some credit left over for me. I can’t live on it in the city, but up north, I’ve seen rentals I can afford, far off in the trees.
I break the news to Gabe on our weekly screen.
“You’re leaving?”
“I have to. But I’m not going to disappear. We’ll still screen every week.” I can tell this answer isn’t satisfying, so I try harder. “And in another year and a half when you turn eighteen, the house will pass to you and we can sell it. You don’t have to stay in that tower if you don’t want to. We’ll get our own place, you can start your own business. Just think—”
“Sell it,” Gabe says, “sell the doctor’s data.”
“I can’t. That’s not what she’d want.” What I don’t tell her is I’m not sure it’s what I’d want either. Diana didn’t include any security programming in her design, and I’ve seen what companions can do from her memories, her worries. She tried to keep that from me, to convince me that companions could be free, but only if the data was free too, that it could give people something to look forward to. I’m not so sure, and come to think of it, I don’t think Diana was either. It was a pitch like the ones she’d make at those medfirm conferences—I know this now. She needed me to believe, she needs me still.
“Who cares what she wanted?” Gabe says. “She’s dead. Sell it, so we can get the hell out of here.”
I want to tell her that I will, or at least that I’ll consider it, anything to make her happy, but I can’t, and I’m not going to lie to her. “It’s just temporary. I’ll come back. I promise.”
“No,” she says, “you aren’t allowed to do that,” and I can tell she means it, so I say it, what I’ve been holding on to these two years. “You know she knew, didn’t you? Diana. She knew about those scientists, the viruses. She knew, and she didn’t do a thing about it.”
Gabe says nothing, chewing on the inside of her cheek—does she believe me?
“I knew,” I tell her, taking it on, the blame. “I could’ve stopped it. I could’ve kept them from getting sick—your mam and Bee. All I had to do was say something. They could be here now if—”
But there’s no use keeping on. Gabe is gone.
* * *
I bring a bag of clothes, Diana’s data, her journals. Everything else I sell or give away or leave for my tenants. I had them come around, tap anything they wanted before I unloaded, Diana’s old mahogany desk, too heavy to move anyway, the iron bed frame in the guest bedroom, Diana’s blond wood bedroom set, which had belonged to her grandparents, the screen, wiped clean.
“You sure you don’t want it?”
“Fresh start,” I say, and they share a look meant to be secret, very there’s something wrong with this one.
I sling the duffel bag over my shoulder, drop the keys through the mail slot, and I don’t let myself feel sad or scared—it was never going to last.
Tromping toward Mission Street, I momentarily consider stopping by Char’s to say goodbye. Stupid idea, but she was the best friend I ever had. Doesn’t matter. I can’t work up the nerve anyway.
I take a bus downtown, catch another bus north, bumping and bobbing up the One, teetering over the cliffs. With each turn it feels like we could go over, but I’m not afraid. I catch myself enjoying the sensation, tumbling along the road so close to the edge, the sea coursing below us.
We stop in Mendocino for lunch. The bus driver shouts, “One hour! This bus is leaving in one hour!” And the few of us who are on it descend the stairs, stretching legs. I act stiff like the rest of them, making sure to pace myself so I don’t get caught up in chitchat as I walk the quaint downtown streets with their old Victorians and homeless kids, and it feels familiar—how can it feel familiar?
Past downtown is the seawall, painted an ocean blue to seep into the scenery, marred by a flurry of sprayed-on signatures and stick figures a man is running a roller over. I walk along the seawall until it descends with the peaking of a cliff. There are some picnic benches, a fire pit, kids roasting marshmallows over a raging fire, and I drop my duffel, pull the journals out, flip through them, Diana’s scratchy writing, observations and calculations and the whisper trace of hand-san. If she could have found a way to isolate memory, to extract the data, she would have done away with the rest. But memories are patterns of connections stored across many brain structures in the relationships between neurons, impossible to isolate. I know from hers that she never wanted me to exist; she only made me to continue her work. I toss the journals on the fire with a thwack of sparks.
“Hey,” one of the kids says, teenage, I’d guess, not much younger than Gabe.
Then I take out the data, just a spindle, everything the doctor has managed to compile in her whole life, and I toss it into the fire too.
“What’re you doing?” the kid says. “You can’t burn that!”
“It’s already burning.”
He’s standing, bigger than I’d thought in his board shorts and flip-flops and sweat-stained baseball cap. “We don’t do that around here.”
“Sorry.” I’m backing away from them, tossing the duffel over my shoulder.
“I bet you’re from the city. Wrecking it all for the rest of us!”
I run from him, run for a long while. I don’t get tired, don’t feel winded, though it’s draining my battery. I run until I’m outside of town, in the trees, so tall—I’ve seen redwoods in the city, but not like this. I drag a palm along their ragged bark, press my nose to one and smell. So delicious, so alive, I nearly sink my teeth into it.
No path to take, I weave among the trees, not worried about getting lost. Up there are satellites that always know where I am, that are always willing to tell me. I could play dumb, disconnect, some people do. But I’m not human, not living, not really, not like Gabe.
The sound is muffled by the mossy ground, but I hear their tentative steps long before I come upon them. A trio of deer, so big, much bigger than I would have thought based on Diana’s memories. I wonder if she was ever as close to one as I am now. I don’t think so. Not from what I recall anyway. I can pinpoint each soft hair on their heads, and I want to call them to me as I would a dog, but they are not dogs. I stand frozen, and they do too, staring at me. Not real. They don’t look real. Probably they’re thinking the same about me as they go back to eating their feast of fallen acorns, and I back out of the forest, head in the direction of the road.
ROLLY
DEL NORTE COUNTY, CALIFORNIA
I hacked at the soil, churning, prepping a new row for seed, Pit Bull digging at the dirt and running circles around me. He’d been with me nearly a year and he hadn’t slowed down a bit. I couldn’t keep up, so he’d taken to roaming the woods during the day. I worried, but not enough to stop him. He was faster than any bear.
Our plot wasn’t so big, but I was smart about space, growing lemon cucumbers and tiny sweet tomatoes and leafy greens to sell at the farmers markets. At first I lost money, sleep, fretting and thinking about Pa, what he’d say in the face of my plans. But every morning I woke and churned the earth between shipments until there were no more bodies, until I was making a profit farming, setting aside credit for a goat or two. I needed to plan for a future without companions.
A companion in Dallas had murdered a woman who also happened to be his wife. The newsfeeds went into a frenzy over the story. How had he defied his security programming, they demanded from the screen, endangered the human to whom he’d been leased, his own wife? It went against everything Metis pledged. Of course, there had been the explosion at that party in LA that had started it all—a new form of domestic terrorism, the media dubbed it, though there was nothing all that new about it, or maybe what I mean is it was always going to happen, companions tu
rning on their humans, humans turning on their companions. The recall came swiftly after, the wash of relief as every last one of them was called in for destruction. Never once did Metis come to check on my pa, trusting me to do the work as I strapped companion after companion to that belt and pulled the lever, watched them burn or compact. Livewires came more and more, and I ignored their pleadings, using Pa’s hammer if I had to. Mercifully the shipments thinned until finally there were no more. I kept waiting for Metis to pick up their machine, but they never came and I didn’t call. Working at a sub rate meant no more credit deposits either. I let it stretch out ahead of me, the future, as unpredictable as the next brownout.
The only certainty was that everyone had to eat, so I farmed and drove to coastal towns to broker deals with grocers who remembered my pa, who remembered me those years ago.
A van lumbered down our gravel drive, Metis, I assumed—maybe they had finally come to take away their machine. But by the way the driver hopped out, I could tell she was a companion, the man coming out the passenger side too.
They didn’t say anything to me, and I didn’t have my gun, tucked into the closet in Pa’s old room. I’d moved in there a few nights after Andy disappeared, when it’d become too hard to sleep with his smell, and I’d never held the gun since.
The back doors of the van popped open and out sprang a child with a head of long brown hair. I couldn’t tell if it was a boy or girl, but I figured it for a companion, until it wheeled around the side of the van like real.
He was so big, but I recognized him—Andy! I wanted to sob; I’d missed him so.
I plucked him up and spun him in the air and kissed his neck, which was not a baby’s sweet neck anymore, but that of a child, sticky and smelling of cheese. Then I wheeled on the companions, who were not the same as the ones who left—the broken child and the girl. “A year?”
The man raised his arms defensively. “He’s a good hider, this one. Fell asleep, in fact. We didn’t notice him till we were nearly to Portland.”
“Portland?!”
The woman jumped in. “But we’re here now, aren’t you happy?”
I let go of Andy’s hand and charged at her, an animal sound I didn’t recognize coming out of me. She swatted away my punch and took hold of my arm, pinning it at my back until it felt like my bones would snap, collapsing me to the ground. I thrashed and thrashed, shouting terrible things, calling her names, crying—I was crying—until I was spent and limp underneath her.
I saw Andy’s sneakers near my nose. “Lilac said you hit me. Is that true?”
“Well, yes. But—”
“You can’t hit me.”
“I won’t. I’m sorry about that.” The companion let my arm loose. Resting my cheek on the rocky drive, I spoke to Andy’s shoe. “I thought I’d never see you again.”
“Can we go to the bog?” he asked.
* * *
We left the companions behind. Andy seemed older than five, like a tiny man, asking questions about Pa, what happened that night—it was like he’d stored them away that year he was gone. I explained to him about Pa’s fight with James, the stolen music maker. I didn’t mention the gun or what I did, why I could never go to the police about Andy’s disappearance, month after month passing as I watched the drive, listened for the crunch of gravel under tire, until one day I stopped—I had to stop. Instead, I told Andy the story of the mother bear, her cub falling into the grave, raising it up into the air. When I was done, we were at the river’s rocky edge, Andy grinning so wild-eyed and swaying the way he used to, a song inside him.
He was too close to the water, swaying like that. I took hold of his hand, tugged him toward me, and he tunneled into my stomach, so tall now.
I was calm by the time we returned to the house, the companions waiting for us in the living room. “Thanks for keeping him safe, Lilac,” I said to the woman.
She shook out her copper braids, gave me a sort of half-smile. “I’m not Lilac, but you’re welcome.”
The man was smiling and short, with chipmunk cheeks and a broad chest. “We’re testing out a new configuration.”
We sat around the coffee table still strewn with Andy’s rock collection, and they told me about their travels to Alaska. “We’d heard of a place companions could go, a sort of safe haven. But by the time we got there, the place had been cleared out, burned up. There was nothing left.”
It terrified me, thinking of Andy so far away, in a place like that, all ice and fire. I held tight to his arm. I would never let him go again.
“We took him to Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, all the way through BC to Juneau. Months we had to stay in some places to scrape together the credit we needed for fuel. He was such a little trouper. Our boy loves to travel.”
Our boy. Hearing them call Andy that, the anger was hot and all over me. I wanted to correct them: He’s my brother. But the way they talked about Andy, it got me thinking—what happens to a companion who’s no longer a companion? That’s what Andy had been to them, someone to care for, to love. I knew I should be angrier with them, but I also knew they needed that as much as I did.
Andy smiled at me, his mischievous smile—God, I remembered it—and he grabbed hold of Lilac’s wrist, pressing his finger to the seizing spot where veins should be. I’d done it plenty of times with the livewires, sending them into jolting fits.
“Don’t you dare,” she said playfully, a smile in her eyes. There were moments when they seemed so real, like right then, so full of love. How could I not understand? I loved him too.
* * *
Jakob helped me with the dishes. He seemed to like his female body, slinking around all sexy-like. It gave me strange feelings I tried to wash down the sink as I scrubbed the dishes and he dried. “Do you have a girlfriend?” he asked me.
“I’m too busy with the farm. No time for girls.”
“Maybe you’re scared,” he said, flipping his hair. I focused on the dishes.
“I was in love once,” he said, “terrible woman. She’s a mother now, can you believe it? That poor child.”
“Maybe she’s changed. People change,” I insisted. It had to be true.
“I’ve changed bodies so many times I’ve lost count, and nothing about me has changed. Not once.”
“That’s different. You’re not really—”
“Human?”
Shit, I didn’t want to offend him, but it was true, wasn’t it? It wasn’t as hard as I thought, not hating them, but still, I couldn’t so much as say I was sorry.
* * *
That night Andy slept in the bottom bunk, Pit Bull planted on his chest. I slept in the top bunk for the first time in a year, checking Andy often, meeting Pit Bull’s somber eyes with each house creak. We would never sleep well again. Awake, my mind spun Lilac’s words.
Before bed, she’d pulled me out onto the porch. “You know, we could stick around for a while, help you with the farm—think how much more you could accomplish with a couple companion laborers.” She laughed, and I laughed, but she was right—the extra hands could really help. Still, harboring a companion after the recall was dangerous. In these uncertain times? I heard Pa saying. I didn’t get the chance to say no. Andy leapt out from the shadow of Pa’s shed where he’d been hiding.
“Please,” he begged, tugging on my arm. I picked him up and held him despite his size, and he didn’t squirm or kick or pull away from me.
“Well?” Lilac prompted.
“All right,” I told her, rocking Andy side to side, “for now.”
NINE YEARS AFTER THE RECALL
RACHEL
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
I stroll into Golden Gate Park from Stanyan with the backpack slung over my shoulder, past the old stagnant pond, through the rock tunnel where dark things happen at night. There’s the waft of reefer from the hill of hippies with their skin-topped drums, the street kids in their tree huddles, the playground thrumming with toddlers. Where is the fear? It’s been more than a
decade since quarantine ended, ancient history to most people. I buy a coffee at the kiosk, peer through the dusted glass to the old wooden carousel, real horsehair for tails, eyelashes even. A sign on the door says it was shut for quarantine and it’s unclear if it will run again.
A couple of bike cops ride toward me on the path and I take a sip of coffee, give them a slight smile-and-nod as they pass. Then I spit the coffee back into the cup, wipe my tongue on my sleeve, and curl off toward the smooth greens of the bocce courts, the old men in white lobbing balls in a smooth crest of arm. It’s warm, girls in tank tops and men jogging shirtless, a field of sunbathers. The people thin out as I hike nearly to the ocean, so close I can hear it smashing into the seawall that will never hold. It makes me nervous, being so close to water, the last fear I have left.
I’ve only been here a few months but already I hate it, all the smiling, the excuse mes—San Francisco is way too friendly. I miss New York with its bristling cold, people ready to walk over your body to get home or to work or a dinner date. At least they’re honest about it, an elbow to the ribs, a fuck you if you so much as look at them sideways.
The soccer fields are empty, abandoned, soupy with water soaked up through the soil. The ocean, it’s coming, one way or another. I dump my lukewarm coffee in the trash and take the path along the chain-link fence, my running shoes caked in mud.
The man is waiting alone. He’s on the younger side of middle-aged but already softening and nervous, checking his watch, digging his hand in his pocket, a gun. I can see its shape as I trudge through the mud, making enough noise for him to hear me. I’m not interested in surprising him—it’s not that kind of meet-up.
His face brightens when he sees me. They always do that. This model I’m in, so frail and feminine, twenty-one, maybe. That’s how they see me. It doesn’t matter how bulky or weak we seem on the outside; we’re all made of metal and stronger than any person. Before the recall, the only thing that kept the average companion from killing was programming, but I had that stripped away long ago.
The Companions Page 17
