Barren Cove

by Ariel S. Winter

  What was the point? Beachstone must surely have known. He had to know. Facing every day knowing that it could be his last. It had to make every moment precious. Why else would he still be alive? I had to see him again and make him talk. He was useless silent. But if he stayed alive . . .

  “I’m coming,” I sent out again.

  “Help! Help! Help!”

  “I’m coming.” I had to save him. I had to save him. That was all I knew. I had to save him. So he could tell me. Because—Clarke kicking John Gropner flashed in my head—the death of humanity was the devolution of the robots.

  I came into town. The buildings all vibrated, but they didn’t move. The sim must have been wearing off. It was the first time I had been in town during the day. There was light activity in the streets. A robot cut the grass in front of a house. Two other robots were repainting a house that seemed to shine with new paint already. I passed a robot on its hands and knees in the middle of the street. It appeared to be picking up pebbles and putting them into a canvas sack.

  I needed Marvin Brown. I didn’t know where to look.

  Many robots sat on their front porches or the stairs that led up to their houses. They didn’t talk to each other, at least not out loud; they didn’t seem to be doing anything. They just sat.

  “Help!” the message came again.

  “I’ve answered her,” I yelled. But still the continued urgency made me nervous. I was going to fail. I was never going to find out why. Why wouldn’t the buildings stop vibrating? I needed Marvin Brown.

  Another robot was kneeling in the street ahead of me. I was confused. Was this what they did all day? I would ask him where Marvin Brown was. But then, as I got nearer, I saw that it wasn’t a robot at all. It was John Gropner’s body. It had been left where we had beaten him. The blood was rust colored where it had dried on his skin. An animal of some kind must have been eating the body, because his cheek had been gouged out. I felt as though I had already failed in my task. I looked around, panicked now. Two male robots sat on different steps leading up to one of the nearby houses. I approached the edge of the lawn. “I’m looking for Marvin Brown,” I said.

  There was a pause. I wondered if I had spoken at all. I thought maybe I needed to message. They still talked out loud out here, didn’t they? Then one of the robots pointed back in the direction I had come. “Down by town center. You’ll see his place. Still has a sign out front that says Brown’s.”

  I hurried back down the street, passing the robot picking up pebbles and coming to the town center. The fountain was running, and two robots stood beside it, watching the water cascade in symmetric arcs.

  Brown’s appeared to be an old storefront. I hurried to the door and tried it but found it locked. I knocked. “Hello? Hello?” I yelled, which at some point turned to, “Help, help!”

  The door finally slid open and a robot stood in the doorway.

  “Marvin Brown, please,” I said.

  “I’m Marvin Brown.”

  I had expected a human, even though I knew that they were supposed to all be dead. “I need medicine for Beachstone. He’s sick. Mary sent me.”

  “He’s always sick,” Marvin Brown said. But he turned back into the store. I followed him inside. There were empty shelves and faded advertisements. Brown went behind what had once been a counter and came up with a small bottle that rattled as he moved it. “Here,” he said, handing it to me.

  I took it and said, “Thank you.”

  “Mary’s got to learn to relax. Sending her tenant just isn’t right.”

  “Thank you,” I said again. Marvin Brown glowed. He seemed like an angel to me. I wanted to hug him. I wanted to kiss him.

  “It’s just not right.”

  “I was in town anyway,” I said.

  Brown didn’t say anything to that, and I turned and left.

  Outside, nothing had changed. The robots still lounged around or watched the water. It seemed like a ghost town. I suddenly missed the city. I missed the traffic. I missed the stores, the crowds, the illusion of life. I began to run. Motion lines still shot out of every object, and as I ran it seemed as though the world was moving and not I. I remembered riding Jenny the first night we went into town. I felt as though I could move that fast now. I ran. The pills in the bottle rattled as I ran. I would make it. I would save him.

  One human life. There had been a time when robots would have died to save one human life. He would tell me what I needed to know.

  Barren Cove rose on the horizon. It was larger than I remembered, larger than anything. It blotted out the sun; it was everything, visible from so far away, making its presence known and forcing anyone nearby to reckon with it. I set straight for the front door. Dean’s voice reached me. “Do you have it?”

  I messaged that I did. There was no response, no congratulations, nothing. I wondered. I was within normal visual range of the house, already on the part of the land that came under Kapec’s domain, when Mary came running out of the house. I thought she was coming to meet me, to carry the medicine the last few yards. Part of me wanted to yell out, I have it, don’t get in my way, and the other part of me knew that it was really not my place to make the delivery, and that I had no idea how to administer the medicine once it was brought to Beachstone. I held up the hand that held the medicine. “I’ve got it,” I called.

  Mary stopped and looked at me. I could see that she hadn’t realized I was there. She turned and started around the house.

  I was at the front porch now, but I followed her to the back. The sound of the ocean wafted up on the breeze. “Mary! I have-it, come on!” I yelled, messaging the same thing at the same time. But I stopped, fully aware of what Mary was doing, yet unable to believe my eyes.

  Mary didn’t stop when she came to the edge of the cliff, but plunged over the side, actually launching herself into space and disappearing before I had a chance to register the sight. There was no sense of mischief attached to that leap, like there had been when her son had done the same thing before my eyes months before. There was only finality.

  “You’re too late,” Dean messaged me. The comment seemed so superfluous that I wanted to dismantle her right then.

  Kapec turned at my side and started back for the house.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “To get the shovel,” he said without turning. “You might want to go down and get her. She’d want to be buried with him.”

  This statement, so matter-of-fact, so robotic, made it all very clear to me. I opened my hand and looked down at the bottle of medicine resting in my palm. It was useless to me now. It would soon be useless to anybody. I had missed my chance at answers. And yet, I couldn’t help but feel that Mary’s plunge over the cliff was, in its way, all the answer I needed.

  • • •

  When Clarke appeared, the sim had run its course. He appeared small to me. Kent had a black kimono for the occasion. Clarke joined Kapec in digging in the backyard without a word. They were old hands at that.

  I went down to the beach. Mary’s body was relatively intact. Her skin had been torn badly. Each of the gashes, both clean and ragged, emphasized that the material was nothing better than an illusion. Her eyes had both shattered, leaving her sockets empty. She most likely could have been fixed with minimal work. Surely new eyes and skin could be ordered from Lifetime Mechanics Co., Ltd. But I knew that she was broken beyond that. I sat in my chair in the cabana watching the ocean lap against the shore.

  When the grave had been dug, Dean informed me that it was time to begin. I picked up Mary’s body and carried it up the stairs. Kent and Kapec each stood near the grave. Kapec fidgeted with the mound of dirt beside the gaping hole. Clarke was just emerging from the house with Beachstone in his arms. It was the first time that I had gotten a really good look at the man. He was small and withered, his skin loose on his bones, marked, multicolored
—nothing like a robot at all. Clarke jumped into the grave and set down his body and then I handed Mary down to him as well.

  I heard the sound of somebody crying. I turned to see Kent with a handkerchief to his eyes, although they were quite dry. The sound was real, though. As Clarke had done with his laugh, Kent had downloaded a recording of a real human’s tears.

  We were burying his sister and—would he say . . . his brother?

  I thought again of the story he had told me weeks before. He had been left with nothing. Or perhaps, by being left with grief, he had more than any of us.

  Clarke started filling the grave at once, and Kapec followed his lead. I expected Kent to protest, and I almost protested on his behalf. There should be something said. There should be some ceremony. But Kent just cried. Clarke and Kapec worked. I stood to the side, watching. It was as if I had been granted an opportunity to see firsthand part of the story that I had learned from Dean. This could just as well have been Philip’s funeral. Only now, it somehow lacked and yet was overwhelmed by the same sense of tragedy.

  The ground was flat in only twenty-four minutes. Clarke and Kapec walked away, taking their shovels with them.

  “And so it goes,” Kent said, dabbing at his dry eyes one more time. Then he too turned and went back to the house.

  I stood over the bare patch of dirt. The sun was on its way down, casting the backyard in the shadow of the house. The ocean was dark now, but still vocal. I started toward the cliff stairs, on my way to the cabana.

  I had hoped that Beachstone would be able to give me an answer about life and death. To have the human knowledge of your own end must be the most comforting feeling in the world. Instead, I was left with Mary’s conviction, Kent’s mimicry, and Clarke’s robotic stoicism. It made my own decision no clearer.

  How could I ask to be shut down? What would tomorrow be without me? I might be old, but my interest in humans didn’t seem to extend to a desire to share their fate. Shouldn’t I have known that before I even left the city? I had ordered my spare parts after all. It was the first thing I had thought to do after I had let the bus hit me.

  No, I thought, sitting in the cabana, watching the black waves, I had not found the answers I was looking for at Barren Cove.

  About the Author

  Ariel S. Winter was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Shamus Award, and the Macavity Award for his novel The Twenty-Year Death. He is also the author of the children’s picture book One of a Kind, illustrated by David Hitch, and the blog We Too Were Children, Mr. Barrie. He lives in Baltimore. Follow him on Twitter @ArielSWinter.

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  ALSO BY ARIEL S. WINTER

  The Twenty-Year Death

  One of a Kind (for children)

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 by Ariel S. Winter

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  ISBN 978-1-4767-9785-4

  ISBN 978-1-4767-9787-8 (ebook)