Barren Cove

by Ariel S. Winter

  The house was still, even from the outside. I looked up at it from the top of the cliff stairs, wondering why it seemed so quiet. I realized that Kapec was not to be seen. There was no sound of water running, or a mower buzzing, no sound other than the distant call of the ocean below. A curtain moved in one of the back upper rooms. I couldn’t be sure who the figure was, but there was somebody at home. All at once, I was struck with the feeling of my own isolation. Where was I? No place with nobody. Everything here was static. Even the things that moved were static—the ocean, Kapec, even the higher-order robots like Clarke—a constant coming and going, banging against the shore, walking over the grounds, going to town. What were my own rhythms here? I didn’t feel as though I had any, and yet, hadn’t I climbed these stairs and gone to this house before? Could I so easily trade one life for another?

  I realized that I had been waiting for the curtain to move again. When it didn’t, I started around to the front of the house. There was nothing there either. I opened the front door without knocking. There was no need for propriety here. Nobody was downstairs.

  “Should I alert Mary to your arrival?” Dean asked.

  I thought back on the last time I had been in the house, when Kent had stopped me just outside Beachstone’s door. There was no reason I couldn’t show myself up to my landlord’s room. Could it have been his room in which the curtain had moved? No, it was the wrong side of the house.

  “No. I’ve come to see Beachstone,” I said. “I know the way.” With that, I started for the stairs, in part to back up my statement, but just as much to convince myself that barging into other people’s homes wasn’t wrong. If I was supposed to reflect on my being and reasons for living, then breaking old mores would help me understand myself better.

  “You shouldn’t do that without Mary’s permission.”

  I ignored Dean and walked straight to the end of the hall, opening Beachstone’s door with no hesitation. A gaunt human form lay beneath the covers on a large four-poster bed. Mary sat on the edge of the bed beside him. The human was lying flat on his back, his eyes closed, his long hair white, his face shrunken and wrinkled. At first I was quite sure that he was dead. Then the sheet rose ever so slightly as his lungs took in air. And Mary turned to face me in shock. Her hand stopped halfway to her opened mouth, a gesture so human as to once again give me the eerie sensation that she couldn’t possibly be a robot herself.

  “There was no one downstairs,” I said, knowing that this was a weak argument; why hadn’t I had Dean call? I stepped forward. As I spoke, my eyes fixed on the unconscious Beachstone, both fascinated and repulsed by his illness. “I wanted to meet my landlord. I thought we might have quite a lot to say to each other.” My landlord was clearly not in a state to say anything to anybody. And yet, still I walked forward.

  Mary stood up and held her hand out. “Don’t,” she said.

  “What’s wrong with him?” I said.

  “Please go. Now. You can’t be in here.”

  “Is he okay?” I said. Of course he wasn’t okay. Perhaps I meant, would he be okay? I had never seen such an old human. I had thought the man that Clarke and his friends had beaten had been old, but this was a truly old man. I looked behind me to see if Clarke was there. His gruesome face would have seemed sacrilegious in Beachstone’s presence. The hall behind me was empty.

  Mary had started around the bed. “Get out of here now,” she said.

  I looked at her and she stopped. We both came to ourselves.

  I was in the wrong place. It was not my place to be there. I started toward the door. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  Mary stood watching me go, forlorn.

  I looked back at the figure on the bed. It frightened me. I stepped into the hall, and Mary rushed forward, slamming the door. I had shamed us all. I couldn’t stay here. I had come to be alone, to be myself, to answer some questions, but instead I had plunged into the world of Barren Cove. I wasn’t asking questions about me, I was asking questions about them, and in so doing, I had broken into their house and broken into their already broken lives.

  The hall was dark. I started for the stairs. “Don’t be upset,” a voice said as I passed one of the open rooms. I turned to find Kent—fat, effeminate Kent. “She’s terribly possessive.” He was winding the key on a reproduction toy robot. He stooped and set the toy down. When he let go, it began to jerk forward, slowly, painfully slowly, its gears buzzing, its feet playing leapfrog with themselves.

  “I just wanted to see,” I said.

  “And now you have seen,” Kent said, looking up from his toy to me, executing a perfect smile. “Isn’t it adorable?”

  I thought at first that he had meant Beachstone, and I was repulsed by the word, but then I saw that he had meant the toy. “It’s insulting.”

  “Like Rosie,” he said, knowingly.

  It was the same answer I had given on my first day here. I hadn’t changed at all.

  “Insulting because it’s a reminder,” he said, holding out his hands to either side as though he had just executed a magic trick. “As is Beachstone. What will Mary do without him?”

  “Is he alive?”

  “Yes. For now. But all living things . . .” He glanced toward the window and then went to it, looking out. Had it been Kent behind the curtain? It occurred to me that the story he had told me in the cabana, so full of genuine emotion and passion, was nothing more than a preprogrammed memory written by Beachstone. Kent had not remembered his time in the city, but rather, a time that had been remembered for him. That was Beachstone’s voice behind Kent’s story. Was it so different from the story that Dean had told me? Kent was still handed all the blame. But Mary and Beachstone’s love was legitimized. There was Michael and there was Jennifer, and when they were gone there was nobody left but Mary and Beachstone. But Beachstone wasn’t satisfied with that. He had taken Kent’s son away from him. Clarke was somebody else’s. The degree to which Beachstone had taken his revenge was frightening; perhaps he was no more enlightened than we were.

  Still, I didn’t like how smug Kent seemed now. Wasn’t he younger than I was, and here he was with his little toys, so certain about life. “What about Clarke?” I said.

  “Ah, Dean has been talking, haven’t you old girl?” Kent said. Dean was silent. “Yes, everything is a reminder of something. Of course, we can’t remember everything.” The toy robot on the floor had wound down, stopping midstep, one leg raised. “Have you been enjoying your time here?”

  I thought of the dying figure down the hall, and I wanted to be gone from there. I needed to be back outside. Everything might have been a reminder of something, but just then Barren Cove seemed little better than a house of dead memories, a tomb.

  “Come sit with me,” Kent said.

  I was supposed to meet Jenny at noon, but that was still hours away. I thought of going back to the cabana and remembered Kent calling it dismal. I had begun to feel that he was right. It was too cramped. It didn’t merely provide a place to think, but became a place in which there was nothing to do but to think.

  Dean’s story of Barren Cove was fascinating to me, and I couldn’t help but feel that there were answers in it. And yet, the things that I knew that had taken place within these walls—the sickness of the place—even the sickness I had seen with my own eyes, made me feel as though I wasn’t actually learning anything of value for myself. I was, rather, wallowing in somebody else’s pain to disguise my own. The ocean teemed with life. But Barren Cove served to emphasize the futility of it all. In the city, there was a fevered pitch to life that didn’t allow time for reflection. I had already learned that the ocean didn’t say, Hush, hush, but rather, Why? Why?

  Kent sat on a bench at the end of the bed now.

  “I need to go.”

  “Don’t worry about Mary. She won’t be coming out of there for a long time. Come.” He patted the seat next to him
.

  What had we been saying to each other? The toy robot was inert on the floor. Kent’s dog was hidden in a corner, shut down. “I’ve got to go,” I said, and I backed out of the room. I was afraid that Kent was going to pursue me, but I walked downstairs and out into the sunshine without being stopped. The gardens were still without their gardener. Where was Clarke? Did he even stay at the house anymore?

  I hurried around to the cliff steps. What had I seen? Was this why Asimov 3000 had deactivated? To avoid the sight of Beachstone’s deathbed? I was suddenly all of them, first Kent, now Asimov 3000; was I somehow Mary too? Did their drama need an audience?

  The old man was dying. His life was imperceptible. I thought about Jenny’s invitation and decided to find the clearing even if I would be early. It was better than being alone with my failings.

  The weather at Barren Cove had an uncanny temper, changing moods at the slightest provocation. As I set out, the sky was pristine, the breeze off the ocean just right. I took the weather to be a fortuitous sign. Now it seems that it would have been more appropriate if it had stormed that day. It was almost as if Barren Cove had finally turned its back on its inhabitants.

  I headed straight for town while scanning the edge of the woods for any sign of a path. I began to despair that the way would be hidden, that I would never find my way to the clearing, and that I would miss my one opportunity at—what? Happiness?—no, but at least a chance to have a few moments of comfort. It was when I was contemplating turning back, fully aware that I had been tricked, the victim of another practical joke by bored young robots, that Jenny appeared up ahead. She zoomed toward me, soaring past me, then circled around, laughing. “I thought you might not be coming,” she said.

  “I didn’t know where I was going.”

  “Doesn’t everybody know where the clearing is?”

  “Everybody but me.”

  She continued to circle and I turned in place, following her. The world spun, a blur in the background.

  “Stop for a moment,” I said.

  “But it’s so much fun watching you turn.”

  I stopped then, resisting the urge to look over my shoulder at her. “Come here.”

  She pulled in front of me, leaning toward me, offering her cheek. I reached out a hand, wanting to feel her face—it looked so smooth, so pale. She pulled away at the last minute, laughing. “You’re a dirty old man.”

  I felt snubbed. “Then why’d you invite me here?”

  “Because you’re cute,” she said. She grabbed my hand and pulled. “Come on,” she said. She scooted in close to me, one of her tires going between my legs, her body only inches from mine. “Not here,” she whispered. And then she was pulling on my hand again. I allowed myself to be pulled forward, once again enjoying being teased. Jenny kept looking back at me as she led the way, and I could tell she was impatient with my speed, but I figured it was only fair that she had to wait too. My mind felt clear in a way that was so foreign I was almost distracted by it. I wasn’t thinking about life, the city, Barren Cove; I wasn’t even registering the trees soaring by or the position of the sun in the sky; I was blinded by the flashes of white skin alternating with pink hair and the sound of her laughter. I had the thought This was what I was missing, and then I was consumed in the moment again.

  “Would you hurry?” Jenny said.

  “You’re pulling me as fast as I can go.”

  She stopped. “Well, hop on and I’ll drive you.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “You can wait too.”

  Her eyes flashed. She growled and snapped her teeth at me, and then started pulling me along again.

  We came to a break in the trees that was so subtle that I probably would have missed it. The undergrowth at the edge of the forest blocked the entrance to the path, but once we stepped past that undergrowth, there was a narrow clear path of beaten dirt that ran straight back through the trees. Jenny’s tires crackled over the twigs and dry leaves on the forest floor. She stopped in the middle of the path and turned back to me.

  “Is this it?” I said. We were just far enough down the path that the edge of the forest was hidden from normal vision.

  “No, silly,” she said, laughing at me again. I entertained her, and yet that didn’t insult me. Was I quaint? Was I old? I wondered if she had ever been to the city; if she had any idea what I had seen; if she would be so amused if she realized how provincial she really was. She held up two memory chips.

  “Sims?” I said.

  “Of course,” she said, extending one toward me.

  “Wait,” I said, grabbing her wrist. “I want us to be with it for this.”

  “No, man, it’s a party.” She wrenched her wrist from my grip and slid the memory chip into her own port. Her pupils dilated; she swayed a moment and giggled.

  I took the other chip and inserted it in my port. It wasn’t like the first time. Everything just grew brighter, and I felt as though it was even harder to focus on anything but Jenny. When she moved her hand, there was an afterimage that trailed from her fingers. She turned and started down the path. I followed. Everything blurred around me.

  The clearing appeared with little warning. It was sunny. Jenny turned as soon as we were off the path and placed her hands on my shoulders. “Your face is like beauty,” she said.

  “You are beautiful,” I said.

  I was running my hands up and down her sides, darting up to touch her face and her hair. I felt her hand at my port and stopped for a second. “Whoa, wait.”

  “What?” she said.

  “I’m not—I mean . . .” I wasn’t sure what I was trying to say.

  “Silly, it’s just for fun,” she said, and slipped her USB plug into my port, connecting us.

  So this is it, I thought . . . but then I felt as though I had been flooded with numbers. It wasn’t her USB plug at all. We weren’t connected. She was getting me drunk. The afterimage that seemed to accompany every object grew in intensity so that it was hard to differentiate between trees, the ground, the leaves, Jenny, me. “I love you,” I said.

  Jenny burst out laughing. She sounded hysterical, and yet there was also something sinister beneath it. “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.”

  “I love you,” I said again, unable to stop myself.

  Jenny stepped back, bringing her hands to her mouth as she continued to laugh.

  “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.”

  But her hands also seemed to still be at her sides.

  “You are too much,” she said.

  She grew in size. No, there was somebody else beside her.

  “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.”

  I realized then why the laugh sounded sinister. It was because Jenny’s laugh had been mixing with Clarke’s. But the clearing had been empty when we came into it. Hadn’t it? Clarke turned Jenny to face him, and then he bent her over almost completely backward and kissed her fully on the mouth, a human kiss, a show. There was a glow around them, but I could see clearly enough. His hands were firm on her back. She brought her hands up to his head and kissed him back.

  “No,” I said.

  When I thought that they had made their point, they still didn’t stop. Jenny gripped him with intensity.

  It had been a practical joke after all. I was just a target for their boredom. They had used up their humans and so now at least they had a human-made robot to mock. Humiliate. “Enough,” I said.

  They didn’t stop.

  “That’s enough.”

  Clarke brought his hand to her port, revealing his USB plug. Would they? Right in front of me?

  “Help.”

  I looked up at the sky. The sun blew out my photoreceptors; it was a starburst. White.

  “Help!”

  Clarke and Jenny had not broken their kiss when my visual came back online. “Stop,” I said. They didn’t know who they were messing
with. They didn’t know what I was capable of. But was I really capable of anything more than self-destruction? “Help!” Why weren’t they listening to me? But it wasn’t me, was it? Had I been calling for help? Clarke and Jenny broke their kiss and turned to face me, their arms around each other’s waists.

  “Sorry, old man,” Clarke said. “It was just too good to resist.”

  “You’re evil,” I said.

  “Tell me you didn’t get some pleasure out of it.”

  I had. In the beginning. Was this humiliation worth it?

  Jenny approached me, and she brought her lips to mine. It wasn’t the same passionate kiss that she and Clarke had shared, just a peck, an acknowledgment. But it forced me to admit that the feeling I’d had before Clarke appeared had been worth the humiliation.

  “At least you got fucked up,” Jenny said.

  “Why?”

  “Mary, would you freaking get over it!” Clarke yelled.

  I was confused. Mary? “Help,” I heard again, and realized that it was Mary’s voice. That it had not been my own cry. She had sent out a group message. “If you are near town, please go to Marvin Brown. Beachstone’s sick; he needs his medicine.”

  “We better go,” I said.

  “Beachstone’s always sick,” Clarke said. Jenny was by his side again. He stood to the side of her, one hand on her tummy, the other on her back. He nuzzled her neck. They still glowed, which made it worse.

  “But shouldn’t we—”

  “Do what you want, old man.”

  I stepped toward him. I wanted to deactivate him right there. I was just a proxy for him. He couldn’t bring himself to attack Beachstone, because it would hurt his mother, so he killed humans and toyed with human-built robots. Jenny blew me a kiss. I turned away and started down the path.

  But it was a hard path to follow. The undergrowth twined together. Everything was moving. “I’m nearly in town,” I messaged to Dean to forward to Mary. I burst out of the edge of the forest and the open space was more disorienting than the trees. How long did the sim last? How long had it lasted last time? I stumbled toward town, which I could see as an outline on the horizon. I was filled with anger still. I wanted to run from it, but it kept renewing itself inside me. It wasn’t just the jealousy, although that was a large part of it. It was the way in which they had crushed my hope. It was how good Jenny had made me feel, off and on, from the first day I arrived at Barren Cove, right up until Clarke stepped out of the shadows; it was the way that I thought maybe there was a reason to go on living after all. And the way they proved how evil the world has really become.