by Hank Davis
“But Dad, that must have cost a shitload,” Craig says. “I really appreciate it, but with all the medical bills now is not the right time—”
“Nonsense,” his dad says. “I had a little money saved up and I couldn’t imagine a better way to spend it.” He waves off Craig’s protests. “I’d much rather spend the money on the car than pay these ludicrous medical bills.” He grins again, but the mirth has fled his eyes. “If they can’t cure me, good luck to them trying to collect in a few months.”
Craig rushes to steer the conversation away from Dad’s mortality. “So, how exactly does this hand-driven adaptation work?” he asks, even though he knows the answer, having researched the technology extensively online from his hospital bed.
As Dad launches into a detailed explanation his shoulders straighten and the worry lines in his face smoothen a little.
* * *
As the state Supreme Court delivered their verdict, upholding the Melinda Li law, Craig thought of his father. Not as he was in the hospital that day, animated and full of energy, but as he looked in his coffin five months later: bald, emaciated by cancer, appearing small and defeated despite the mortician’s best cosmetic efforts. Craig had opted for a closed-casket funeral because he didn’t want others to remember his dad that way.
One of Howard Kim’s assistants rode home with him in a computer-driven electric vehicle. She blabbed something about not losing hope, about appealing to the federal Supreme Court by filing a writ of certiorari. Craig tuned her out, focusing on the vehicle the likes of which he was destined to commute in from now on. Its bulbous design and cheap egg-cream plastic shell reminded Craig of a souped-up golf cart. It traversed the roads in a steady, smooth way, its electric engine emitting an unpleasant whine barely within his hearing range each time the car broke.
Craig tried bringing up the memory of driving his modified Camaro, the real engine purring reassuringly under the hood. It must have been his imagination, but the memory of the sensation felt like it was already fading.
* * *
The soft electronic chime announced a visitor.
Craig, lying down on his couch and staring at the ceiling, didn’t bother to rise. “Who is it?” he asked the apartment.
“Lisa Washington,” the apartment’s serene voice replied. “Do you wish to tell her you are indisposed?”
He’d programmed the apartment to offer the default option of saying he was “indisposed” about a year ago, and he’d been agreeing to that default a lot. In fact, no one save grocery-dispensing bots had stepped inside his apartment in six months, and they weren’t human.
“Let her in,” he said, surprising himself. He muted the multiple screens he kept on twenty-four seven, but left them on.
The door slid open. A chilly breeze ran through the apartment. The first hint of Lisa Washington’s presence to reach Craig was her perfume, mingled with a scent of dampness.
“Is this a bad time?” she asked, entering his living room.
Craig had no good answer, so he ignored the question. With a monumental sigh, he sat up. “It’s raining outside,” he observed, studying Lisa’s umbrella, the wet leather of her brown boots.
“Yes.” She smiled, equal parts bemusement and concern. She surveyed the living room’s assorted debris, the stacks of old books, the dirty clothes, the precarious heap of dishes in the sink. Her eyes lingered on the muted smart-screens draped over the windows. She seemed to sniff something in the air, and for the first time in months, maybe Craig could smell it too: a kind of rank desperation. “When’s the last time you went outside, Mr. Morrison?”
He sighed again. “How can I help you?”
She cleared a chair and positioned it in front of Craig’s couch. “Thank you for seeing me. I’ll try to be brief. The Supreme Court has reviewed your team’s writ of certiorari and denied cert. They believe the decision of the Vermont Supreme Court was correct. And now final. Surely your legal team has informed you of this?”
Craig couldn’t resist the sarcasm of agreeing with her. “Surely.” The truth was, he’d received dozens of official communications he hadn’t bothered to open. After the trial, he’d decided to retire from the real world—whatever that was—for a while. His only contract with the universe that existed beyond the walls of his apartment was a simple one: he paid his bills, and the universe left him alone. His legal team had tried to get in touch with him many times, but in the absence of a video-call, they’d cashed their checks and eventually moved on.
“You didn’t know,” Lisa remarked.
Craig shrugged. “I’m not surprised. But you didn’t come all this way to gloat at your victory. You don’t strike me as that kind of person.”
Lisa’s eyes smiled. “What kind of person do I strike you as?”
“I liked you in court,” Craig said. “No pretense. And you made a solid argument. Hell, you almost won me over. You called cars ‘two-ton, 150-horsepower killing machines.’ I like that.”
Lisa shot him a look of mild disbelief. “Right.”
“Nice poetic ring,” Craig went on. “Today people like to keep their killing machines far away—like overseas—or to domesticate them with computers. Very different from the world I grew up in.”
The effort of this much conversation began to take its toll on Craig. His palms grew sweaty and he was overcome by a sense of vertigo, muscles groaning in discomfort. Without any hesitation, he popped open a nearby ampule of clear liquid and downed it. Relief came within seconds.
“OxyContin?” Lisa guessed.
“Nothing so barbarous,” Craig said, but didn’t bother to specify what the ampule’s actual blend of pain medications were. As much as he tolerated Lisa’s presence in his sanctum, he was in no mood for lectures.
“I’m sorry about the pain,” Lisa offered, her voice warm. “I’m here, Mr. Morrison, because I was hoping you’d join me, along with Melinda Li’s parents and a few other folks, at a public event three weeks from now. We’re going to be speaking in support of the great work done by the state of Vermont’s Department of Mental Health, which has been threatened with budget cuts. I know this is a cause you believe in.”
Craig raised an eyebrow. “You do?”
“Your donations are a matter of public record.”
“Oh,” he said.
“And it might be good to get out of the house for a bit, don’t you think? I could send someone over to help you tidy up between now and then, my expense. It might cheer you up, give you something to look forward to.”
Despite his desire to instantly reject Lisa’s suggestions, Craig found himself wondering if she wasn’t right. He’d never had patience for those who indulged in self-pity, and the thought that he might be becoming “one of those people” angered him. Where was the virtuousness in shutting himself away like this, in living in a pigsty?
You’ve been down this road before, an ingratiating voice whispered inside him. You crave orderliness and cleanliness; it’s true. But when you give in to them, you find yourself with time on your hands and nothing to do. You allow yourself to become hopeful, and nothing comes of it. Why bother? Better to fight off the temptations. Resign yourself to the reality of what you are. A broken person. Let your apartment reflect your true nature. Give up the need for control. It’s an illusion anyway. Look at your torso. How much control do you really have in this life?
“Be quiet,” Craig said.
“Excuse me?”
“I didn’t mean to, I mean I’m, well, never mind.”
Craig felt a headache coming on. Shaking a little, he reached for another ampule. As he held it in his hand he was uncomfortably aware of Lisa’s gaze on him. Slowly he set it back in its case.
“I don’t know,” he said finally, grimacing.
“All I’m asking is that you consider it,” Lisa said. “I have some idea how difficult all this must be. But your presence in the media would significantly bolster the cause. I know the case didn’t go the way you wanted it to, but you
could use the publicity you received to help effect positive change. Try to turn things around.”
Again Craig found himself falling under the spell of Lisa’s words. There was something so unassuming about her manner; it was darned disarming. In a way, her plainspoken nature and earnest disposition reminded him of Flores. The kind of person you could trust to speak her mind, to make an effort to pursue whatever she found important. None of his legal flunkies had bothered to try to visit him, after all, but she was here.
“Where is the event?” Craig asked.
Lisa perked up, but tried to play it cool, seemingly not wanting to demonstrate overeagerness. “White River Junction VA Medical Center. The Department of Mental Health is exploring a partnership with Veteran Affairs, and they volunteered to host the event.”
“White River Junction? That’s like an hour and a half from Burlington.”
“I’d be happy to go with you,” she said. “It’s a pleasant drive.”
Craig knew the route well, and she was right, it was pleasant. Why the hell not? His dad would be proud. This could be a pivot, the start of a new chapter in his life. He pictured himself behind the wheel of his Camaro, favorite playlist on the speakers, bright sunshine against the dashboard—
The fantasy collapsed almost as soon as he’d constructed it. The reality was that Lisa Washington would show up at his apartment in a self-driving car, one utterly lacking in personality, in identity—in honesty—and they would be efficiently conveyed by this tasteless, soulless contraption from his apartment to the medical center, and then shuttled back here, once it was over, with the same stultifying predictability. The experience would be cold and antiseptic. Like the operating rooms where they’d worked on him.
Craig fought the fluttering of his eyelids that warned of an imminent episode. Not now, he told himself.
Lisa perceived the shift in him at once, because she leaned forward, smiling nervously. “Anything I could do to make the trip more pleasant?”
Craig shook his head. A terrible sadness settled in his chest. He wanted to go, wanted to do the right thing, but he wasn’t ready. “You’ve done all you can,” he said, and his mind drifted back to the court room and what he’d lost there. “I’d just be an embarrassment. Sorry, but I must decline.”
She had the good sense to realize she’d lost the fight. “If you change your mind,” Lisa said, standing up, “here’s my contact information.” She pressed the screen of her mobile device, which transmitted her virtual business card to Craig’s contact list.
Without another word, Lisa walked toward the door, then stopped and turned around.
“You’re a good man, Mr. Morrison,” she said. “Please don’t forget that.”
Craig didn’t hear her. The beating of his heart drowned out every other sound and by the time it quieted down she was gone.
It was almost by default—muscle memory as much as conscious thought—that his hand reached for an ampule. He stopped short of opening it and stroked the smooth plastic. He recalled the look on Lisa’s face as he took the previous dose. He expected pity or perhaps opprobrium, but she didn’t appear to have judged him. If anything, it was more a look of understanding.
Slowly, Craig placed the still-sealed ampule back in its case and wondered if perhaps the ride to this event might be tolerable after all—the views from the passenger window would still be fantastic, not so different from the recordings he watched…
He unmuted the screens covering his windows. Rapt, he beheld the historical drone footage of obsolete cars racing down scenic roads, and scanned them for the rarities, the true throwbacks to an even more bygone age. His eyes fixated first on the striking Lucerne blue stripe and tapered tail of a white Pontiac Firebird Trans Am barreling down a deserted stretch of Arizona freeway.
In time, with the patience of a lepidopterist, he discovered a Plymouth Hemi Cuda in gorgeous Rallye red wending its way through Big Sur’s scenic byways. After reveling in its beauty for a while he eventually dedicated himself to studying a golden Lancia Stratos HF Stradale shimmering in the dawn while hugging the curves of the Rocky Mountains’ Going-to-the-Sun Road. And so it went, on and on, deep into the night.
•
Alex Shvartsman is a writer, translator, and anthologist from Brooklyn, NY. Over one hundred of his short stories have appeared in Nature, Analog, Strange Horizons, InterGalactic Medicine Show, and many other magazines and anthologies. He won the 2014 WSFA Small Press Award for Short Fiction and was a two-time finalist for the Canopus Award for Excellence in Interstellar Fiction (2015 and 2017). He is the editor of the Unidentified Funny Objects annual anthology series of humorous SF/F, and of Future Science Fiction Digest. His epic fantasy novel, Eridani’s Crown, was published in 2019. His website is www.alexshvartsman.com.
Alvaro Zinos-Amaro is a Hugo and Locus award finalist who has published some forty stories and over one hundred reviews, essays and interviews in venues like Clarkesworld, Asimov’s, Analog, Lightspeed, Tor.com, Locus, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Nature, Strange Horizons, Galaxy’s Edge, Lackington’s, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and anthologies such as The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2016, Cyber World, Humanity 2.0, This Way to the End Times, 18 Wheels of Science Fiction, Shades Within Us, The Unquiet Dreamer, and Nox Pareidolia.
HOW-2
Clifford D. Simak
When our hapless hero ordered a kit for a robot dog, and was sent a humanoid robot by mistake, he really should have returned it immediately. Certainly, he should never have put it together to see how it worked. And then it turned out to be an experimental model, never intended for sale. What’s more, it was a robot that made other robots. And when that robot started making robot lawyers, it was far, far too late to return it for a refund.
•
Gordon Knight was anxious for the five-hour day to end so he could rush home. For this was the day he should receive the How-2 Kit he’d ordered and he was anxious to get to work on it. It wasn’t only that he had always wanted a dog, although that was more than half of it—but, with this kit, he would be trying something new. He’d never handled any How-2 Kit with biologic components and he was considerably excited. Although, of course, the dog would be biologic only to a limited degree and most of it would be packaged, anyhow, and all he’d have to do would be assemble it. But it was something new and he wanted to get started.
He was thinking of the dog so hard that he was mildly irritated when Randall Stewart, returning from one of his numerous trips to the water fountain, stopped at the desk to give him a progress report on home dentistry.
“It’s easy,” Stewart told him. “Nothing to it if you follow the instructions. Here, look—I did this one last night.”
He then squatted down beside Knight’s desk and opened his mouth, proudly pulling it out of shape with his fingers so Knight could see.
“Thish un ere,” said Stewart, blindly attempting to point, with a wildly waggling finger, at the tooth in question. He let his face snap back together. “Filled it myself,” he announced complacently. “Rigged up a series of mirrors to see what I was doing. They came right in the kit, so all I had to do was follow the instructions.”
He reached a finger deep inside his mouth and probed tenderly at his handiwork. “A little awkward, working on yourself. On someone else, of course, there’d be nothing to it.” He waited hopefully.
“Must be interesting,” said Knight.
“Economical, too. No use paying the dentists the prices they ask. Figure I’ll practice on myself and then take on the family. Some of my friends, even, if they want me to.” He regarded Knight intently.
Knight failed to rise to the dangling bait. Stewart gave up.
“I’m going to try cleaning next. You got to dig down beneath the gums and break loose the tartar. There’s a kind of hook you do it with. No reason a man shouldn’t take care of his own teeth instead of paying dentists.”
“It doesn’t sound too hard,” Knight admitted.
�
�It’s a cinch,” said Stewart. “But you got to follow the instructions. There’s nothing you can’t do if you follow the instructions.”
And that was true, Knight thought. You could do anything if you followed the instructions—if you didn’t rush ahead, but sat down and took your time and studied it all out. Hadn’t he built his house in his spare time, and all the furniture for it, and the gadgets, too? Just in his spare time—although God knew, he thought, a man had little enough of that, working fifteen hours a week.
It was a lucky thing he’d been able to build the house after buying all that land. But everyone had been buying what they called estates, and Grace had set her heart on it, and there’d been nothing he could do. If he’d had to pay carpenters and masons and plumbers, he would never have been able to afford the house. But by building it himself, he had paid for it as he went along. It had taken ten years, of course, but think of all the fun he’d had!
He sat there and thought of all the fun he’d had, and of all the pride. No, sir, he told himself, no one in his circumstances had a better house. Although, come to think of it, what he’d done had not been too unusual. Most of the men he knew had built their homes, too, or had built additions to them, or had remodeled them.
He had often thought that he would like to start over again and build another house, just for the fun of it. But that would be foolish, for he already had a house and there would be no sale for another one, even if he built it. Who would want to buy a house when it was so much fun to build one?
And there was still a lot of work to do on the house he had. New rooms to add—not necessary, of course, but handy. And the roof to fix. And a summer house to build.
And there were always the grounds. At one time he had thought he would landscape—a man could do a lot to beautify a place with a few years of spare-time work. But there had been so many other things to do, he had never managed to get around to it.
