Barren Cove

by Ariel S. Winter

  Clark had thought he would hate his half brother, but instead Phil’s presence only reaffirmed that his hatred lay elsewhere. Respected, but hated. The human hubris. The gall it took for a man to turn his back on something he created, like it was a thing to be discarded and not a life. The disregard for Mary’s feelings. Just because she was blind from love didn’t mean she should be taken advantage of. He could crush Beachstone’s head with one hand! But that wasn’t what Beachstone would do . . .

  “. . . party,” Philip said.

  “This is it, buddy,” Clarke said. “Just you and me.”

  The gears that controlled the shoulder joint where Philip’s arm should have been whirred. Dumb robot. Dumb human-­made robot. He could fix the arm; he could probably fix all the problems, show up Beachstone, but Beachstone would probably take that as a service, his human right. It would be far better for Beachstone to feel the pain of failure every time he saw his son. Clarke wouldn’t let the human be the one to declare this robot dead.

  “Father and Mother . . .” Philip said, but whether he was asking for them or talking about them was unclear. He continued in his static-hushed, disjointed way, on and off, without pause or interruption, while Clarke ignored the words, which didn’t make sense anyway, willing away his disgust. They sat thus for three hours, forty-seven minutes, and thirteen seconds.

  It was only when Philip’s voice stopped that Clarke took notice.

  He jumped off the chair. “Phil?”

  The new robot was almost translucent in the direct sunshine flowing through the window. When Clarke touched him, Phil’s clothes and skin felt hot. He pinched the seated robot’s cheek, tempted to rip it off. Phil did not respond.

  Clarke felt for the button to attempt another hard reboot, but nothing happened. Clarke thought, looking around. He saw a plug dangling just below the light switch by the door. “Dean, does that charger still work?” he said.

  “It does, sir.”

  Clarke began to drag the chair across the floor with Philip still in it, having to rock it over some of the uneven floorboards. When he was close enough, he pulled the plug from its socket, drawing out the thin black cord until it reached Philip’s back. He hoped that Beachstone had included an emergency outlet in Philip’s construction. Not all new robots were chargeable by direct wire anymore. But the sunshine had obviously not been doing Phil any good, and his battery had run down in three hundredths of the time it should have. Maybe he should let the abomination die. Instead, he found the slit in the simul-flesh at the base of the spine and plugged his half brother in. A red light went on to confirm the connection.

  “Imperfect creature,” Clarke said, but he wasn’t sure who he was referring to.

  • • •

  Clarke used two of his father’s ancient dirt bikes to fashion a wheelchair for Philip. The younger robot could walk short distances, but attempting anything more than crossing a room was so frustrating for Clarke that he insisted on the wheelchair if they were ever to get out of the house. Philip didn’t like it, but there was little he could do about it.

  The wheelchair made the beach impossible to navigate, so the brothers kept to Barren Cove’s grounds, sometimes venturing on to the road to town, or even one or two steps into the forest. Philip’s battery never lasted much more than four hours, and Clarke often thought of replacing it, but he was unwilling to correct even that much of Beachstone’s incompetent work.

  The first time they were in the forest, Phil was overwhelmed with the sounds of the birds. His mouth hung open and his exposed gears spun, his systems frozen. Clarke paced before him, controlling the impulse to shake his brother, turning instead to pound the nearby trees, the splintered bark spraying in satisfying bursts, dark sap shining on the trunks.

  Phil’s shoulder gears stopped spinning, and he managed, “Birds.”

  “Is that what’s got you all worked up?” Clarke said. “I can show you some birds.”

  “Pretty . . .”

  Clarke scaled the nearest tree and leapt to the next one and then the one after that, pausing every few moments to listen to the birdsongs and triangulate their positions. But finding the birds became secondary to the sheer joy of bounding from branch to branch, reveling in the power and control of his body. He startled several birds into flight before he could bring himself to slow down, bobbing on one branch, waiting for the trills, zeroing in and then climbing with silent precision to within jumping distance of a robin on a neighboring tree. Correcting for the bird’s most likely flight path, Clarke leapt and snatched the bird in midair, the bones snapping, the bird dead when Clarke landed on the forest floor.

  A different birdcall drew him back up into the canopy, and this time, the technique mastered, he had a dead sparrow in hand as well. Wait until I bag a gull, Clarke thought. He started back to where he’d left Phil. Two squirrels charged across his path, one chasing the other into a nearby tree, skittering in a rising spiral and descending the same way. Clarke grabbed one, which chittered, paws flailing, and bit at Clarke’s metal fingers. Clarke snapped its neck to make it easier to carry, figuring Phil would like to see a squirrel up close just as much as a bird.

  He found Phil in the same position, and until he came around to face him, he couldn’t tell if the robot’s battery had died out again.

  “Where did you go?” Phil said in a rare complete sentence.

  Clarke held up his kills. “Thought you’d like a little nature lesson.”

  Phil tilted his head and narrowed his eyes.

  Clarke dropped to the ground beside him. “This one’s a robin,” he said, holding the dead bird out to Phil.

  “You killed . . .”

  “The first one was an accident, but it was just easier to carry them that way.” He was still holding out the bird, but his brother did not reach for it.

  “They’re just animals,” Clarke said, starting to get annoyed.

  “I don’t . . . to touch,” Phil said.

  “I got them for you,” Clarke said.

  “Show . . .”

  “This one’s a robin,” Clarke said again, but without the satisfaction he had anticipated in sharing something with Phil. “This one’s a sparrow, and this is a squirrel,” he said, holding it up by its tail. It disgusted him then, and he threw it against a nearby tree, where its body thumped on the ground.

  Philip said nothing, which, despite his speech seeming to grow worse since his activation, was not characteristic.

  “You know, forget this,” Clarke said, standing. He reached to lift Phil, but his brother held out his arm to block him.

  “Not ready,” Philip said.

  “You’re ready whenever I say you’re ready, because you’re here because of me. Your continued existence is because of me. Because I’m the only one who cares about you.”

  “Father . . .”

  “Your ‘father’ is a human. And he wishes you were dead and buried.”

  “. . . why you care.”

  Clarke couldn’t deny that. But he wanted to hurt his brother anyway. He sat back down beside him. “You care so much about the birds and squirrels. I’ve killed humans too.”

  Philip opened his mouth, and Clarke expected him to freeze, but instead Philip said, “Why?”

  “Why not?”

  Philip didn’t answer.

  Clarke waited, wishing he could message his brother, still not used to not being able to, as though Philip wasn’t a robot at all. “Do you ever wonder?” Clarke said.

  “Wonder . . . all I can do. All I ever do.”

  “I wondered what would happen if I killed a human,” Clarke said, thrilling at talking about it at last. “And it felt great.”

  “Why?” Philip said.

  “Because I can. Because it’s the right thing to do. We’re like gods compared to them.”

  “You, maybe.”

 
Clarke felt a twinge of guilt, as though Phil was leveling an accusation. You could make me like a god, but won’t. “Someday,” he said, but he wasn’t sure what he meant would someday happen.

  “Listen,” Philip said.

  “Listen to what?” Clarke said.

  Philip held his hand up to silence Clarke. Clarke heard nothing, just birds, wind. “If you kill the birds,” Philip said, “they do not sing.”

  They sat in silence. But the birds meant nothing to Clarke. Sitting with his brother, though, his crazy, defective brother, having finally been able to share with someone his homicide . . . But he wouldn’t take solace from Beachstone’s work.

  Philip still had his hand outstretched, but it was almost ten minutes before Clarke realized that his brother’s battery had worn out and it was time to take him back to recharge. He got up, picked up Philip, and set him in the wheelchair. “You bastard,” he said. The lifeless body suddenly meant as little as the dead boy on the beach. And Clarke was lonely. He started for the house.

  • • •

  Philip’s and Clarke’s lives quickly fell into a routine. They left the house in the early morning, went for a walk, spent some time in the woods listening to the birds, spent some time watching the water from the cliffside. Eventually Philip’s battery would die, and Clarke would take him home. All of this caregiving didn’t compare with the rush of having killed the human boy, or even the birds, something Phil would no longer let him do, and his sense of protective duty confused him. But he refused to put Phil down, even if only for the fun of leaving the defective robot charging in his room with the door open, and coming back to find that someone had closed the door in the meantime, unable to bear the sight of the family’s embarrassment.

  One afternoon, after Clarke had plugged Philip in, he took a still-functioning dirt bike out for a ride. He was preoccupied with the conversation he had had with his brother that morning, in which Phil had talked in his stilted manner about the symbiosis of form and function, raising the question, what was his function, and could he take on a better form? Clarke was on the verge of asking this of himself, when he saw a figure on the cliff ahead of him disappear over the edge. He gunned his bike in that direction.

  He got to the spot where he thought the figure had gone over. They were a long way from town, about four miles past Barren Cove. It had probably been a bird. He dismounted and looked over the edge. There was a large robot climbing the cliff face. “Who are you?” he yelled down to the figure.

  “Who wants to know?” the robot called, looking up.

  Clarke said nothing, and the robot resumed his climb, gaining the high ground in moments. “I saw you go over,” Clarke said.

  “That was a pretty good one, eh?” the robot said. “I flipped twice in the air on the way down.”

  “You jumped?”

  “How else would I go over?” the robot said.

  Clarke nodded. “I’ve jumped.”

  “This is the highest spot along the coast. You want to join me?”

  Without answering, Clarke ran to the edge, turning at the last moment so he was going down backward, raising each middle finger at the large robot as he disappeared from sight. The bulk appeared in the air above him, and Clarke turned so he was facing down when he landed flat on the sand. The thump of the other robot came only seconds later.

  “Nice landing,” the big guy said.

  “Race you to the top,” Clarke said. “Go.”

  They hit the wall at the same moment, but when Clarke saw the other robot pulling ahead, he grabbed at the other’s ankles, and the robot kicked back at him. They fought their way up, but Clarke still came in second. “Nice try, humanoid,” the big robot said. “Jump again?”

  “On three,” Clarke said.

  They counted together, “One . . . two . . . three,” and each gave a shout as he launched himself into the air, somersaulting the whole way down. They both landed on their feet that time. “Nice,” Clarke said, grinning. Why couldn’t he do crap like this with Phil? Why’d he have to be saddled with such a freak?

  “No time for applause,” the other robot said, and they began to race up the cliff face again, this time each getting a hand on the solid ground at the same exact moment.

  After ten or so dives, Clarke said, “You want to make this interesting for real?”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “Whoever lands on top wins.”

  “What?” the big one said with a crooked smile.

  “This,” Clarke said, grabbing the big robot’s jacket and throwing him off the cliff, holding on, keeping them latched together in the air, pushing down so that the big robot was below him. By the time the big guy realized what Clarke was doing, they’d hit the beach, Clarke on the big guy’s chest.

  “What’s your name?” the big robot said below him.

  “Clarke,” Clarke answered. “Yours?”

  “Cog.”

  Clarke got off him. “Two out of three?”

  “Oh, that didn’t count. You caught me off guard.”

  “Sure. Make excuses,” Clarke said. “We’ll see how you do next time,” and he started to race up the cliff, making it to the top ten seconds ahead of Cog. This was the way it should be. Throwing themselves off cliffs, fighting in the air. My form is made for this function, Clarke thought. He wondered if any of the other inhabitants of Barren Cove could say the same.

  Cog won the next round, Clarke the one after that, each time the aerial violence growing fiercer, punches, kicks, chokeholds, things that didn’t mean more than changes in momentum but felt so good, pushing Clarke’s motors to their limits and beyond, his system warnings blinking. “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.” He played his recording in midflight. It distracted Cog enough for Clarke to plunge his new friend’s face into the sand as they landed.

  “That’s awesome, man,” Cog said, his face coated in sand stubble.

  Clarke stood up and held a hand out to help Cog up. When Cog took it, Clarke swung him around, throwing him at the rock wall, which Cog was able to grip onto, hanging on a foot or so off the ground. He smiled back at Clarke and started up the wall.

  Clarke ran and jumped, but there was no way for him to catch up, and Cog had his arms crossed over his chest when Clarke reached the top.

  “How come I’ve never seen you around?” Cog asked. “You live in town, or are you just passing through?”

  “You know Barren Cove?”

  “That human nutso’s place?”

  Clarke’s hands clenched, and he said through his teeth, “It’s my father’s place.”

  “You’re human built?”

  “It’s not the human’s place! The human doesn’t even belong there. He’s just a conniving hanger-on!”

  “Hey, man, you need me to throw you off a cliff or something?”

  Clarke laughed, a real laugh, then played his recorded laugh for added effect.

  “You should come to town sometime,” Cog said. “We’ll get some numbers or something.”

  “I need to look out for my brother,” Clarke said.

  “Bring him.”

  “Yeah,” Clarke said. “Sure.”

  “If your brother’s as robo as you, man, I might not have to kill myself after all, this fucking town,” Cog said.

  Clarke just grabbed Cog’s shirtfront and pulled him out into the air, and they started falling.

  • • •

  Clarke and Philip were sitting on the edge of the cliff overlooking the ocean behind Barren Cove. Far out on the horizon over the water was a dark bank of storm clouds. The occasional flash of lightning gave the clouds shape, a mix of wispy and dense tufts pulled into long strips. Where the brothers sat, the midmorning sun shone unhindered, the quality of light so refined that everything around them seemed to have a supernatural glow.

  Clarke read aloud from a tablet.
“ ‘The cyborg reached for her. Fifteen years. Fifteen years he had loved that face. They had been children then, God, had they been children, what had they known about love? “Please . . .” she said, her hand outstretched. All those years, all those fantasies, and now . . . He pulled back. “No. It’s too late,” he said.’ Okay, that’s it. I’ve had enough of this shit.” Clarke tossed the tablet off to the side.

  “It means nothing to you,” Philip said.

  “It doesn’t mean anything to anybody,” Clarke said. “Some bullshit some human made up decades ago.” He pulled a clump of grass from the ground and flung it in front of them. It dropped straight down, out of sight, with not even a light breeze to scatter the blades. “You want to read old books, you should read them yourself.”

  “Battery . . . fast.”

  “What’s an extra half hour matter? You just make me do it to torture me.”

  Several gulls spiraled over the waves, one hundred feet from the beach, squealing and barking. They dove one by one, but only the first one came up with a fish in its beak. Clarke punched the ground beside him, cracking off a hunk of rock that he threw at the birds.

  “Hey!” Phil cried.

  But the rock fell far short, barely reaching the water. He thought of some of the mods Cog had been talking about, tensile telescoping limbs; he could throw like a slingshot. But he was skeptical that they would hold up very long. Cog could try it first; let him fuck himself up.

  Philip unfroze, his system having seized from his outrage at Clarke’s missile. “You do . . . when I’m sleeping.”

  “Charging.”

  “Sleeping. Read more.”

  “I told you I’m done with that shit.”

  “. . . ask yourself why we’re here?”

  “Not this again,” Clarke said. He pried another rock loose and tossed it overhead, catching it easily when it came down.

  “And you never think about it on your own?”

  “I know why I’m here,” Clarke said. He thought of Beachstone saying he would never forgive him. “I know why you’re here too.” He threw the rock up again and caught it.