Six Months, Three Days, Five Others
Page 31
Teri’s private drinking game:
Drink one shot if
A) someone says how sorry they are in a way that implies that you’re to be pitied.
B) someone says how proud you must be of your girl, or how terrific she’s been.
C) You see a news report about your little girl stopping a plutonium monster that tried to marry a nuclear missile silo.
D) Your husband tries to tell you it’s time to move on, look on the bright side, stop beating yourself up, or get some perspective.
Drink two shots if
A) Someone says how sorry they are, and yet how proud of your girl you must be.
B) You see a baby in a “Captain Champion” Halloween costume, with an exosuit made of old bleach bottles.
C) A publisher calls up and says they’ve already written your autobiography and they just want you to agree to put your name on it.
D) Someone calls you “Captain Mom.”
E) You realize your husband has moved out, and you didn’t notice.
Florence came home, six months after she disappeared. Teri was half drunk, watching a news report about the Action Squad defeating Klownopolis (a whole evil clown–shaped city, walking on stilts), which had tried to swallow up Sheboygan. She heard a clanking noise from the stairwell outside her apartment, then went to her fish–eye lens and saw Florence, wearing a lion–shaped exoskeleton from which her face just poked out. Her baby was a sphinx. Teri opened the door before Florence could raise a metal paw to ring the bell.
“You can’t come in,” Teri said.
Teri’s apartment, a one–and–a–half bedroom loft that had been tidy and gilded, now had layers of filth on the hardwood floors and garbage everywhere. Teri was ashamed for her baby to see this, plus letting this imposter in would feel like a betrayal to the real Florence.
“Aw, come on,” Captain Champion reared up on her back paws a bit. “You gotta let me in. I mean, we can chat out here on your doorstep, but the neighbors’ll talk.”
“Okay, fine.” Teri stepped back to let the lion, almost soundless except for its footfalls, into her home. The lion clambered up on the couch and sat on its back legs, exposing its stainless underbelly.
Florence stared at a baby blanket, which Teri had hugged during one of her recent drunken episodes. Her eyes widened.
“I didn’t think I was going to see you again,” Teri said. She wondered for a moment if she should offer Florence some refreshment, but she had nothing baby–safe in the house.
“Wow.” Florence lifted the blanket to her pink little face, which was still not quite a toddler’s. “I remember this blanket. I dream about this blanket, all the freaking time. It’s weird, you know. I have super vivid dreams about your hands, too. And your scent.” Florence leaned forward and sniffed Teri, who was still standing over her. “Although you don’t smell like I remember. Now you smell like cheap whisky.”
Teri sat on a pile of crap on the coffee table. “You ruined my life.” She looked into Florence’s eyes, saw a flinch. “I guess I shouldn’t blame you.”
“Yeah, it was a dumb break,” Captain Champion said, hugging her own metal body. “Those assholes should have figured out a way to cope without me.”
Teri shrugged. She felt unstable on her perch.
“After I died,” Captain Champion said, “The Megagyrus Energizer flew away, probably back to the Mountain of Perfection. I can feel it and all, but it won’t respond to my commands until I’m well into puberty. I probably have another dozen, maybe fifteen, years of being a weakling unless I wear the suit.”
“So. . .” Teri thought for a moment. “So you would have turned into Captain Champion anyway? Even if they hadn’t, uh, woken you up?”
“Well, yeah. Although I might have come up with a different name this time. Like Mega–Maid. Who knows. Hey, do you mind if I smoke? These baby lungs, they’re so pink. It freaks me out. I have to do something to dirty them up.”
Teri couldn’t think of a way to say no fast enough to stop Florence gripping a cigar in her metal paw. Soon cigar smoke was masking all the other stenches in her apartment. It felt warm and friendly and evil.
“Are you taking care of yourself?” Teri said after watching Florence puff for a while. “I mean, is someone changing your diapers and stuff?”
Florence laughed so hard she nearly coughed up a lung. “Diapers. Heh heh. Well, you know, the robots give me a bath every now and then. I stay in the exo as much as I can, because this body is so inept. It’s floppy. I don’t think I’m technically potty trained or anything, but the exo has waste disposal, so it doesn’t really come up.”
“Huh.” Teri wanted a drink so bad, it was like cockroaches were crawling up her nose. “So I guess you should go fight some supervillains or something. I mean, it’s nice to see you and all.”
“I just got here.”
“Yeah. Huh.” Teri shoved all the magazines and papers and wrappers off the table onto the floor, so she could feel the sag of the pasteboard table directly beneath her. “So why are you here? I mean, this is freaking me out all over again.”
“Oh. Well, I’m sorry. About everything. It’s just. . . I don’t have any friends.” Florence looked down at her paws and the cigar slowly flaking away in one of them. “You know? Not real friends. It’s this life. Even before I died, I just. . . You know, the Action Squad, they’re my crew. We hang out, you know. But I don’t really like any of those guys. And since they brought me back, it’s been. . . weird.”
“Wow. Well, thanks for sharing.” Teri couldn’t hold out any longer. She went and poured herself a half mug of no–name bourbon, gulping half of it before she even got back to her seat. “I guess everybody has their own problems. It’s funny how that is.”
“You’re the closest thing to a friend I have in this world.” Florence—Captain Champion—had tears in her eyes. Her face had gotten redder. She was sweating in her lion suit.
“You are really freaking me out.” Teri took another monumental swig.
“I love you,” Florence said.
“You. . . what?” Teri shrank away.
“I love you. I don’t know if it’s some atavistic oxytocin thing, or just because my only tender memories are of you, or what. I just know, all these months when I’ve been getting tossed out of spaceships in low orbit and chained to dirty implosion bombs, I thought about you. I imagined your hands touching me, and. . . you know, it saved my life a few times.”
The cigar was a dark nub. The lion suit carefully tucked the butt into a little compartment, and even vacuumed up all the ash, as if a little more crud would have made a difference in this dirty hole.
“You’d think. . .” The lion lurched off the sofa and stood up clumsily on its back legs. “You’d think after dying once, that I can remember anyway, it would be no big deal. But you just cling harder. Anyway, I guess I dumped on you enough. Just, you know, I wanted to say. I’d like to live with you again.”
“You what?”
“I know it can’t be like before.” Florence swung back onto all fours and spoke over her round, chrome shoulder as she padded towards the door. “But it could be cool. Be a family again. At least think about it.”
“I don’t think I could. . .” Teri couldn’t breathe, she took another slug.
“I’m rich,” her baby said. “Like, rich rich. Long story, but the Action Squad basically found some asteroids full of stuff. We could live in a mansion, and have robots and servants. Think it over.”
“Couldn’t you quit being super instead? We could go into hiding, like witness protection, pretending to be a mom and her baby. After all, neither of us has any super–powers.” She almost added, unless you count knowing too many agonizing secrets, or indulging in unpleasant vices.
The lion shook its whole metal head. “We’d never get away with it. People would find us. A lot of people want me dead. Again. Anyway, I guess it’s a dumb idea for us to try and be a family, after everything. I’ll see you around.”
The lion had almost reached her front door.
“How rich?” Teri said.
The lion turned, shuffling its whole body around, and her baby scrutinized her. “Does it matter? Rich.”
“Of course it matters,” Teri said, standing up and swaying slightly. “If I’m going to be a celebrity mom, especially to a freaky celebrity like you—no offense—I’m going to need a hell of a lot of cosmetic surgery. And nice clothes. It’s like your exo–suit. I need a layer of protection.”
The baby seemed about to say she liked Teri the way she was. Then she shrugged, which involved a slow lift of those front arm joints, a roll deep in the sockets, and then a slow lowering. “Yah, that’s no problem. We can make you a cyborg too, if you want.”
“No,” Teri said. “That’s okay.” But she knew she probably would want to be a cyborg, in a year or two. She was on the slippery slope now.
“Great. I’ll make the arrangements and let you know.” The lion with the face of her only child swiveled again and tromped out into the hallway, then down the gunmetal stairs. Teri watched it go, and even looked out her front window to see it emerge onto the street. For a couple hours after the lion went away, she waited for some monster or evil genius to show up and disintegrate her into atoms, scattered across the city’s smog layer. When that didn’t happen, she poured herself some more bourbon and read up on liposuction and brow lifts. She was going to look like Angelina Jolie.
Stochastic Fancy: Play the Game and Find True Love
“Which word feels sadder: lonely or lonesome?”
This question pops up on the KloudsKape, and my first thought is: How did they know? I’m in the middle of a downward spiral, almost crying as I choke down my lysine-dopamine smoothie and hunch over the teak bar at the Zyme Shack. As with all these questions, I don’t even have to ponder before I answer with an eyeblink—it’s lonesome, of course. Something about the way you have to purse your lips for a nonexistent kiss at the end of the word, the extra weight of that second syllable—the word lonesome is definitely more miserable. I should know.
Soon I’ve answered a dozen other questions in the retinal sensorium, about everything from Koffee Kop™ to a local bike-lane ordinance, each of them just a sparkly ball rolling around the edges of my vision. But the lonely/lonesome question has set me off, deeper into the hole of despair I was already in. I will remain unloved until I die unmourned. You can take a thousand hot showers and people will still smell the lonesome on you. The questions keep on, as addictive as any game: What’s the ideal temperature for hot chocolate, expressed as a percentage of the melting point of cocoa butter? Should fast-food restaurants offer one kind of mustard or two? How satisfied are you (1–10) with federal regulation of molecular supplements?
The KloudsKape interface weighs almost nothing, but the chrome spider suddenly feels heavy on the back of my head, and I’m getting a sore neck. My faux angora sweater is a thatch of prickles. The dim yellow lighting and stained cement walls at the Zyme Shack make it feel like a bomb shelter for yuppies. All around me couples laugh and share ergcake: two spoons, one plate. I am such a loser. I should just go home, except I would do the same there that I do here: sit and answer poll questions, watching my score creep up.
Then a ball rolls up with one of the Politics and Policy questions, and I shake my head to get rid of it. I have no idea how to answer that one, and it sounds like something actually quite serious. I’m not an expert on everything—I work as a grief counselor for robots, for god’s sake. I finish my lysine-dope shake and signal for another one, and immediately there are questions about how satisfied I was (1–5) with my server, Barry. Plus should tariffs for synthetic walnuts go up 0.37 percent? Should we bring back Chico and the Man? Stirrup pants, yes or no?
It’s democracy, you know? And it’s how I get all my points. Gotta participate to make it precipitate.
The question comes back, the one I didn’t want to answer. This time the ball is growing hands and feet, like it’s starting to hatch. I still don’t want to answer it; I don’t even understand it. I shake my head again. The question goes away.
When was the last time someone else touched my skin with intent? Anything more than a casual handshake, even. I can’t remember. I live alone, in a cubbyblock, and I work in a wired shell, four by five. People who aren’t in the industry don’t even realize grief is the main emotion that robots can feel. Robots are hyperaware of both death and obsolescence. Inconsolable. I’m left with no emotional resources at the end of the day.
A ribbon of text and images bursts upward out of the bottom-left corner of my vision. It’s the newsfount, splashing a story about the Great Midwestern Drought, which 65 percent of the public wants the government to do something about. But 68 percent of the public also believes the Great Midwestern Drought is a hoax. I dismiss the article, it’s too depressing.
That P&P question is back—I still don’t want to answer it. I answer some others, about consumer privacy and bird conservation. But it keeps bobbing up, dancing around so I can barely see my surroundings.
“What concentration of neurotoxins (percentage) is acceptable when gas is used to disperse anti-genetic-discrimination protesters?”
I shake my head. I don’t know. I can’t answer.
Sometimes I think I should have accepted that offer to become part of the Unconventional Romantic Arrangement. I would have been around people all the damn time: the assortment of hairs in the shower drain, the endless fights over what movie or show to Soak. Basically the opposite problem from loneliness. You always want what you don’t have.
I’ve finished my second lysine-dope smoothie and can’t even pretend to nurse the dregs anymore. Nothing to do but go back to the cubby and Soak a romcom until I pass out. I signal for my check and answer more questions. “When you purchased the infra-matic spoon set, how satisfied were you (1–10) with the DNA-sensing spork function?”
When the question about neurotoxins comes back, it’s accompanied by an info box. There is a very desirable person here in this very restaurant, someone who fits my dating profile in every possible detail. And he has already answered this same question. Maybe if he and I share the same opinions about the use of neurotoxic gases on protesters, we can be matched.
More questions about household products and government infrastructure spending. I blink through them. Then this: “How many pillows (1–5) do you have on your bed, and how many of them (1–5) have been warmed above room temperature in the past year?”
Then the KloudsKape lets me know that the attractive, romantically compatible man is checking me out right now. He is looking at my profile. He’s within 100 feet of my location. But I will never know, never meet him, unless I answer the neurotoxin question.
I scan the room, trying to look casual. The waiter, who is not an attractive man or within my dating parameters, thinks I want another lysine-dope, and I end up ordering one just to get him to go away. There are about 20 people sitting at tables or the teak bar at the Zyme Shack, and a dozen of them appear to be men. Of those, maybe seven or eight could be my type. None of them seem to be looking at me.
The attractive, romantically compatible man is waiting for me, the KloudsKape says. He is lonely or lonesome, whichever sounds sadder, and he too knows the unbearable chasm between desire and communication, the starving awareness that the only thing anybody values you for is your opinion on random topics. The long rainy nights—how high a concentration of smart-fungus nanospores in rainwater is too much?—the solo meals in restaurants—is it lonelier to be alone at home, or in a crowd?—all of the existential misery of the overpopulated sensorium.
I think I may have spotte
d the romantically compatible man. He’s sitting in the corner, and he sneaks a glance in my direction. He’s showstoppingly good-looking, with exactly the shape of sideburns I like and one of those noses that’s almost like the front of an airplane. He has cuff links and a half-loosened tie. He’s a bot, right? He’s got to be a bot. I squint and he seems to flicker, just the way a virtual artifact would. Definitely a bot. Right?
At last I unscrew the temporal nodes of the KloudsKape and peel it off the sides of my head, to settle it one way or the other. He’s still sitting there, staring at some virtual blob of his own. The restaurant looks emptier and sadder without the KloudsKape on, just walls and tables and distracted people.
I put the KloudsKape back on, and the question about neurotoxins is back. Its arms and legs are fully grown, and it’s doing jumping jacks. I’m not a chemist—if the question was about how to help a robot process the death of an insect or the explosion of a sun hundreds of light-years away, I would have a meaningful answer. But screw it. The romantically compatible man is getting up from his chair.
I answer the neurotoxin question, more or less at random. I pick a number that sounds plausible.
Immediately the dating profile comes up for the man with the perfect sideburns. He’s ideal—all the same movies, books, political opinions. We’re like 98 percent, which is unheard-of. This is it. I’ve found my soul mate. He looks up at me and smiles. I feel my whole heart open up.
Soon, he and I sit together at the teak bar, neither of us able to move or speak. We only need about five minutes to list all the things that we agree on. Oh yes, I hate that too. Do you do that thing? I do that thing too. Oh, I love that show. You love that show too? I love it. My faux angora sweater is twice as itchy. The questions still bubble in my peripheral vision. The romantically compatible man smiles and mumbles something about corgis. Yes, I love corgis too. We both love corgis. Aren’t corgis great? I want to scream. The newsfount splashes another story: The police have begun gassing protesters in the park. A glimpse of hand-lettered signs and anoxic, choke-eyed faces. Up close the man’s sideburns are the wrong shape after all. I start to make excuses to get away. I have to get up early. Robots are grieving. We exchange contact info, and I sign up for his Kloudburst. Then I’m hurrying out into the night, where the rain has left tiny spatters of purple and white blooms all over the sidewalk, glowing with a faint phosphorescence. They keep me company all the way home.