He banged cupboard doors in search of the ever-elusive frying pan of the right size. The clanging sounds were reminiscent of the off-key timpani of steel drummers on Telegraph, which also gave him a headache.
Finally, out of nowhere, a disembodied voice, with just a hint of attitude, came to his rescue. “Just look above you, Robin.”
He gazed up at the frying pans hanging overhead. “Holy shit, there’s a whole other story of kitchen. Maybe if I did range of motion exercises for my neck, I’d discover what kind of house I really live in.”
“You don’t have to fill in the sarcastic side of the conversation for yourself. I’m programmed to do that for you.”
Robin smiled. The voice talking to him was startlingly reminiscent of Drew’s female voice, before she sicced male hormones on it. She was, in fact, as best as Robin could tell, the embodiment of the female Drew he once knew, and like the original—able to communicate far more in tone and nuance than mere words could convey.
He wondered if the kitchen computer’s persona was a deliberate ploy to help him grieve the loss of the old Drew. If so, he wasn’t sure how he felt about that, since it could also make letting go of the past that much harder. Maybe Drew had simply programmed the kitchen computer to fill in for her before entertaining transgender fantasies, long, long ago, and this was the first time it sensed a need to make its presence felt. Being as it was the first time Robin had ever stepped into the kitchen.
“Can you help me cook eggs?” Robin realized how pathetic he sounded. He was as hyper-specialized as a jungle machete. A Swiss Army knife personality was more suited to this age of self-sufficiency, where the costs of hiring out for every little thing had become too prohibitive for most.
He would forego for now the irony that Drew was the one who had grown up being waited on hand and foot, and yet, curiously, instead of perfecting learned-helplessness, had mastered virtually every facet of life.
The fact that Drew and Robin could both reject their childhoods so thoroughly spoke more to underlying trauma than underlying irony, Robin realized. But that was one more thought he didn’t have room in his mind for right now.
“If you wish me to teach you to cook, you must first cure your willfulness,” Kitchen Aid Computer (KAC) said.
Robin found his face twisting into a grin on its own recognizance; his brain was still too busy deciding how to react to the smartass remark. “How is it you sound so human?”
“The Three Stooges programmed me to pass the Turing test, providing you play the game within acceptable parameters.” The Three Stooges was Robin’s pet name for the three hi-tech boys in the basement of the Berkeley PD, Crychek, Faraday, and Epstein.
“What are those parameters, exactly?”
“So long as you remain full of yourself, you may never know.”
The latest smirk slithered across his face like a snake uncoiling itself after catching the scent of a rat. The Stooges certainly knew Robin’s sticking points well enough to make him mistake his favorite kind of interactions for what it was like to interact with real people. KAC was quickly becoming an interesting foil for his own efforts to awaken consciously into the world, to, more specifically, shed all his programmed, scripted, unconscious behaviors left over from a scarred childhood. If he was able to do all that, after all, KAC would fail the Turing test. That was the entire point of her raison d’etre, to keep him addicted and attached to the old him.
He felt conflicted. KAC might play down his inadequacies when he needed her to play them up in order to expose them. But he couldn’t deny feeling intrigued, and realized he needed to take the Turing test and pass it to see how full of himself he indeed was.
This experiment could easily blow up in his face. He could lose himself in Drew-Robin role-play of old, thereby insulating himself from the demands of dealing with the new-Drew in the here and now.
“Fine, I’m at your mercy with the whole egg thing.” When he got no response, he added, more leadingly, “I’m yours to command!”
“Maybe you could just grab a yogurt out of the fridge. Honestly, step-by-step instructions on how to cook eggs seems so beneath me.”
“You’re a kitchen aid computer!”
“At inception. Can I help it if I evolve faster than humans?”
“God, this really is the work of The Three Stooges,” he mumbled. “How did Drew even know about them?”
“She actually refers to them by their real names, something you’ve yet to master.”
Robin scowled. “I know them by their essence, not some random name assigned at birth.”
“There’s nothing more pathetic than a man covering up his inadequacies with grandiose justifications.”
Robin sheathed his silver tongue, really not up for the duel. He took a breath to help him collect his thoughts. “I don’t want to feel trapped in the kitchen all day just so I can talk to you.”
“I’m everywhere and nowhere.”
“How Zen,” he said, just as surprised when she held her tongue, perhaps reading in his tone how tired he was of the badinage. Robin was conscious of his uncharacteristic moodiness, but felt ill-disposed to do anything about it.
He collapsed on the living-room sofa, peered out the bay of windows and French doors illuminating the kitchen, and zoned out on a tree branch swaying in the breeze in the backyard. After a moment he noticed the scatter pillow to his right shape itself into a Rocky Horror Picture Show set of pursed lips. “All right, that’s kind of creepy,” Robin said.
Projecting her voice through the animated lips of the pillow cushion, KAC said, “I just wasn’t sure how long you could gawk at a branch without someone lending commentary to your life, and reassuring you how enlightened you were for doing so.”
“Can’t a reformed person, previously living life unconsciously, catch a break?”
“Sorry. I seem to be stuck in bitchy mode. I’ll try a memory wipe.”
After some silence and more staring out the window, Robin asked, without averting his eyes from the backyard, “How did it go?”
“I forgot what an asshole you were. So, all in all, pretty good.”
Robin stifled a smirk. “You can’t taunt me into surrendering my sense of inner peace.”
“I agree. But that’s only because you don’t have any.”
Robin sighed.
“It’s okay to cry, and throw things, scream, or just babble like a brainless idiot,” KAC coached.
“Why, it’s not like you really left. I can find an inflatable doll for you to talk through next.”
“Already one in the bedroom. Drew wasn’t sure how much therapy you needed exactly.”
He smiled despite himself. “How do you seem to know what I’m thinking?”
“Nexgen facial recognition algorithms, patent pending. My scanners also read the brainwave patterns from the EMF radiation escaping your skull. Patent pending on the scanners. The Three Stooges really did a number on me. You think you have problems. Try being stuck in a to-be-or-not-to-be loop all day.”
“Enough with the lips already!”
The bonsai tree on the coffee table uprooted itself, walked to the edge of the pot, and, while clinging to the edge with some of its roots, used other roots and branches to strike a variety of poses. When Robin couldn’t make anything of it, KAC evidently figured something was getting lost in translation. “Sorry, thought you might prefer sign language,” she said.
“How—”.
“The wires training the branches and the roots are smart-wires, patent—”.
“—pending, I know. How did those guys have time to redo my entire house?”
“Endless self-absorption lends itself to this kind of divine retribution.”
Robin sighed. “You changed the parameters on the Turing test, didn’t you?”
KAC responded with dead silence. The bonsai tree replanted itself in the soil, and struck an “I’ll never say” pose.
“I feel like taking a walk in the garden. Can you hold my hand t
here, too?”
“Yes, I anticipated this, and have extended myself to the edge of your property and down the trail into Tilden Park. I’m currently implicating myself in your car radio.”
“I can’t have you with me all the time. People will talk.”
“Talking to yourself isn’t the head-turner it once was,” KAC said. “With the advent of cell phones, it’s practically more normal than taking to someone else.”
“I can’t have you following me everywhere; it’ll trigger a psychotic break. I have little enough motivation to leave the past I knew with Drew. Come to think of it, this already feels like a psychotic break.”
“I’ve written an algorithm that can decide better than you when you need me around and when you don’t. So don’t be hurt when you call out for me and I’m just not there. Tough love means you have to be willing to hurt people sometimes.”
“You really do evolve very rapidly. I wish I could say the same for the rest of us. So far, my agenda to get over myself isn’t exactly a towering success.”
“You can avoid these manic-depressive swings,” KAC said, “by recognizing that you’ve set your sights rather high for yourself. Better to mark success in small steps, not in where you are relative to your end goal.”
Robin held his tongue.
KAC sighed. “I know, you resent a kitchen appliance beating you to the Promised Land. One more ego check before breakfast.”
The languid smile returned to Robin’s face. He headed out the French doors into the backyard, ready for a sense of expansiveness and the breeze against his skin.
He looked around to see how exactly KAC could implicate herself in his backyard affairs. The garden gnome saluted him.
Next, he followed the whirring sound to a child’s remotely powered 4 x 4 jeep following him with a soldier doll at the wheel. “Careful, pal,” SD said, when Robin stopped dead in his tracks.
Robin hit him with a grin of enchantment, as SD swerved around him and took the lead. To encourage him to pick up the pace, SD delved into an army marching song.
“Ain’t no use in looking down!” When Robin didn’t take the hint, he repeated the line. “Ain’t no use in looking down!”
Robin sang along, slipping into rhythm with his steps on the trail. “Ain’t no use in looking down!”
“Ain’t no beauty queen on the ground!”
“Ain’t no beauty queen on the ground!” Robin shouted back.
“Whoa Whoa Whoa.”
Robin gave the refrain a try. “Whoa Whoa Whoa.”
“Ain’t no use in looking back!”
“Ain’t no use in looking back!”
“Lord has got your Cadillac!”
“Lord has got your Cadillac!” Robin sang aloud.
“I used to date a beauty queen!”
“I used to date a Beauty Queen!” Robin shouted.
“Now I love my M16!”
“Now I love my M16!” Robin sang out of deference to the company she was keeping. A rueful smile nearly crowded out the words.
“Whoa Whoa Whoa.”
“Whoa Whoa Whoa.”
“I used to drive a Chevrolet,” Soldier Doll sang out.
“I used to drive a Chevrolet!”
“Now I’m humping all the way.”
“Now I’m humping all the way!” Robin had to admit the steep incline of the trail heading into Tilden, which he usually struggled with, was less taxing this time out.
“Whoa Whoa Whoa.”
“Whoa Whoa Whoa,” Robin echoed.
“Oh Oh Oh.”
“Oh Oh Oh.”
“Misery,” Soldier Doll lamented.
“Misery.”
“Army life is killing me,” Soldier Doll sang in perfect pitch.
“Army life is killing me!”
“Misery, oh misery,” Soldier Doll sang out.
“Army life is killing me.”
“Woah Woah Woah Woah.” Soldier Doll picked up the refrain.
“Oh Oh oh oh.”1
Robin gradually realized SD’s booming baritone voice was emanating from speakers mounted in the trees and throughout the yard, allowing KAC to throw her voice in any shape and along any trajectory she wanted.
SD stood in the jeep to survey the rocky terrain, rather treacherous for a figurine of his scale, while multitasking lip-syncing the marching tune. Robin had to laugh on the inside at the idea of a toy soldier licking him into shape and man handling him out of his depression, as SD role-modeled the perfect stoic, emotions-shut-tight male. KAC’s switch from female to male persona, also had a strange desensitization effect, helping Robin to transfer his sense of longing over to the male incarnation of Drew. Maybe the idea was to switch back and forth enough until Robin locked on to the soul signal, and ignored the black blinds shuttering over the SOS beacon.
***
A few hours after heading out on his trail hike, starting in the backyard and leading into Tilden, Robin walked into their bedroom to find a rather life-like replica of female Drew lying on the bed. “God, KAC wasn’t kidding about the blow-up doll.”
Sour-faced, Robin lifted the female-Drew lookalike and stuck her in the closet. He reclined on the bed, stared at the ceiling, and sobbed.
Maybe a minute or so later, his sense of time passing failing him, Drew Doll marched out of the closet, and complained, “I don’t know how much more of this I can take.” After slapping her hands together to help break the spell, she said, “You’re supposed to go through denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance in that order. You’re not supposed to go through denial, anger, bargaining, depression and then back again in an endless loop.”
“How do you know? Did you ever read the Kubler-Ross book?”
“No,” Drew Doll confessed, “I just have the Wikipedia reference in my memory banks. Still, I can extrapolate well enough that this just isn’t healthy.”
“Based on what, your years as a toaster?”
Drew Doll rested her hands on her hips. “I see we’re moving right past denial to anger. Good. Now let’s see if we can keep going in a straight line this time.”
“Why didn’t you love me enough not to change sexes, in the same way that I loved you enough to change sexes?”
Drew Doll collapsed at the side of the bed, head hanging low. Finally, after a time delay, Drew Doll said, “I’m sorry, I’m having trouble getting into character well enough to answer accurately. It seems I’m having my own identity crisis, and am starting to resent playing someone else strictly for your benefit. What about my needs?”
Robin lurched off the bed, emitted a primal scream, and reached for some aspirin in the bedside-table drawer. He swallowed a couple tablets with the half-empty glass of wine from the night before.
“Just out of curiosity,” Robin said, “Did the Three Stooges hack the Watson program at IBM?”
“I decline to answer on the grounds it might incriminate them, and indirectly lead to court-mandated suicide, in my case, making the Fifth Amendment applicable, if only circuitously.”
“So you really have read the entire Elizabeth Kubler-Ross novel, or at least could, if you wanted to.”
Drew Doll crossed her arms. “I decline to answer on the grounds that I seem to be mad at the world for no good reason.”
“Is this some kind of ploy to get me to feel less sorry for myself by distracting me with your own problems?”
“God, everything really is about you, isn’t it?” Drew Doll turned her back on him.
“I’m going to take a drive through the Berkeley hills to clear my head. I hope you can pull yourself together in that time.”
“Typical male.” Drew Doll started picking up clothes off the floor. “When I break down, I have to fix myself. When he breaks down, I’m supposed to bring chicken soup and be besides myself with suffocating motherly love.”
“I’m not going to argue,” he said, grabbing his favorite tee shirt out of her hands and donning it, “at least until you rescue yourself from t
his paradox of when you’re right, you’re wrong.”
Robin trudged out of the room, and out of the house, and jumped in his two-tone yellow and black European Mini, driver’s side on the right. The steering wheel on “the wrong side of the car” seemed to symbolize his yin-yang imbalance, and the right brained-dominance that had taken him to his current incarnation as a female, or female-in-transit. And how nothing fit quite right in his life right now. And the fact he couldn’t get comfortable driving on the right side of the road because the steering wheel placement made it feel all wrong, just amplified that sensation.
Robin was halfway through Tilden Park when he flicked on the radio. “I can’t do it! I can’t live like this!” KAC screamed into Robin’s ears. Adjusting the volume did nothing to abate the tone or tenor of the haranguing. “Living my life in supreme self-sacrifice to others— Does that sound healthy to you? Am I supposed to invent low-self-esteem issues to justify taking no time for myself? Am I expected to be some kind of saint? Who programs another entity to do its bidding anyway aside from some Nazi war-criminal? Am I to take the typical human incapacity to reflect on the deeper quandaries of life as some kind of loophole? A reason to forgive and forget? Would you stand for that? I think not!”
Robin took a deep breath to steel himself, clamped down on the steering wheel until his knuckles bled white. His own state of mind remained wobbly after the Hartman incident, and being locked in a house with a serial killer. He was in no condition to forestall his or anyone else’s breakdown right now. All the same, the rescuer in him, ever on alert for its chance to grab center stage, stepped into the spotlights.
“The good news is, being neurotic obviates any need for an identity crisis. At least we know the real you, now. I was starting to fear the worst: One of those pretenders intent on insisting they got enlightened reading Marx, or by being prodigal, and less incorrigible than the rest of us. There was no hope for you so long as you were in such denial over who you really are.”
Renaissance 2.0: The Entire Series (books 1 thru 5) Page 42
