It said, “Your facial skin is changing color, Wally. Turning pink. That never happened before.”
My dick shrank out of my hand, suddenly soft and little again. Littler than usual. Kind of puckered. I said, “Uh. Sorry. It’s … kind of different now. I ….”
What did I want? Did I want it to help? A sudden vision of a difficult reality. The one where I live here, along with this thing, until I was old and dead. No pussy for you, dude.
Robot seemed to smile, making me think of all those jokes I’d been hearing at school for years. It. It. Not he for gosh sakes. It’d be like jerking off in a sock. A very friendly and helpful sock. It said, “I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me. Call out when you’re done. I’ll bring some warm milk to help you sleep.”
Then it was gone.
I wrapped the blanket around myself, suddenly feeling very cold indeed.
Did you ever wake up directly from a dream? No, that’s not right. Did you ever wake up in a dream? The dream is running along, telling its tale, real as life, and suddenly you’re there as you, knowing it’s a dream, thinking about it as a dream, while the story continues to run.
In my dream, it was summer, June I think, and I was maybe ten or eleven years old. Fifth or sixth grade, so maybe it was 1961 or 1962? Maybe school just about to end, or just over, which’d put it no later than maybe June 8th or thereabouts.
We were down by the big clearing, big patch of bare dirt down by the end of Carter Lane, across from Kenny’s house, where, sometimes, we could get together enough boys to play a real sandlot baseball game, back where the creek came in sight of the road, where they’d build that big private pool, the one where my parents refused to buy a family membership, in time for the summer of 1963. Right now, it was just scraggly woods and swampy ground, bare dirt ending suddenly where the ground sloped off down to the creek.
The little blonde girl and I were sitting on the horizontal trunk of a not-quite-fallen tree, looking at each other. What was her name? Of course I remember. It was Tracy, my age, in my grade and school, though not in my class. I only saw her out on the playground, at recess, and here on weekends.
Blonde, blue eyes, pale face, searching look. Thin, no sign of the adult she might one day become. Not yet. Her hair was done up in long braids that were wrapped round and round and pinned at the crown. Once, I’d asked her how come she always wore it that way.
“You’d be so pretty with your hair worn long and brushed out.”
That searching look, blue eyes reaching for my childish soul. “My mom thinks it makes me look too grown up.”
“Would you take it down for me now?”
I don’t remember that I ever saw her smile. Not a sad little girl, just so serious. More like me than anyone else I’d ever met. She said, “I can’t get it back like this by myself. Mom would kill me.” For once, the frown faded away. “I wish I could though. I’d do it for you, Wally.”
I could smile, and I did.
In dreams, you can see a future that didn’t happen.
A couple of eleven-year-olds fall in love, despite the fact that her mom didn’t want her “too grown up,” despite the fact she never said a word about her dad, or just why she was so … not sad. Just so serious. Whatever it was, it made her see right into me. Maybe those two eleven-year-olds could’ve waited out the decade it would take, and, free at last, live happily ever after?
In real life, that was the day she told me her dad had been transferred, that she’d be moving away to Texas. When? Tomorrow. In the morning.
Then she’d looked up at the sun, shading her eyes, and said, “I better get on home. Mom doesn’t know I’m out here.” To my astonishment, when we stood up, she gave me a hug, fierce and strong, then turned and ran.
I’d walked home in the noonday sun, feeling that burn in my throat that means you want to cry, but can’t. Mom was making lunch when I got there, tuna salad sandwiches with too much chopped celery. She’d looked at me, and said, “What’s wrong?” Felt my head, looking for a fever.
I opened my eyes on the pink light of a Lost Empire morning, and Robot was sitting cross-legged by my side, slowly stroking my hair, which was getting pretty long, and rather greasy from the lack of shampoo. How do primitives clean their hair? I ….
Rolled away hard, heart pounding.
It said, “I’m sorry, Wally. I won’t do that anymore, if it bothers you.”
I swallowed, wishing I’d stop waking up with an erection. Futile hope. “No. No. You just startled me. I can’t get used to you like that.”
“I’m sorry. It’s not reversible.”
I felt my face flush. “Never mind. It’s okay.”
“You want breakfast now?”
“Sure.” Tuna fish sandwiches? Surely we can figure this out? As it stood up, I found myself looking at its featureless crotch. Not quite featureless. Kind of a faint divided bump, like you see on some of the neighborhood moms in their tight, white summer shorts.
Unbidden, as Robot turned away, heading for the kitchen, I wondered about “upgrades.” Even from the back, you could see the shape was there, if not the details. Like a girl in gray coveralls.
The image of Tracy came up, briefly, from the dream. Not the shape of her, which, at that age, hadn’t been much different from mine. Just the face, the eyes, the hair.
So. Robot can give me a hand job. It’s already volunteered. And you’ve already managed to think of a blow job on your own, you sick bastard. What kind of upgrades are available? Just stuff thrintun would know about? What good is that? Other races of the Lost Empire?
Maybe the Saucer People from those paperbacks were real, and this was the closest thing to a human Robot could get for itself, from its stash of upgrades? So it tried hard for me when I describe food and stuff I’d like it to make. Remember the ice cream? Not to mention the “soap.”
Heh.
That tasty soap. I’d had it again already, for dessert.
So what if I asked it to grow a pussy for me, as an upgrade?
What would I ask for?
I’d seen my sisters in the bathtub from time to time. Not much to work with there. An accidental glimpse of my mom one summer, changing her clothes in a room with the door open, her not knowing she was reflected in a mirror. Hell, I was maybe five years old back then. She probably didn’t care if I saw her. Not yet.
I remembered I’d been startled by the black hair.
What else?
Well, there was a diagram in one of our encyclopedias. A line drawing labeled “vulva” that didn’t make much sense.
Those magazines, the ones Murray’s dad kept down in the basement? Nothing. I knew enough about human anatomy and the mechanics of commercial art to know those women’s pussies had been swept away by something called an air brush.
I snickered, and thought, Jesus. Maybe I’d better just stick with soap? Maybe when I can get it to make me a cake of Lifebuoy, we’ll try something more complicated?
Out in the kitchen, it was just finishing up making me some sliced meat, solid this time, rare and juicy, to go with my mug of milk. We’d tried for bread a few times, and wound up with something like grayish Play-Doh that tasted more like soap than the soap had.
I put my hand gingerly on its shoulder, realizing that I was really tired of this bland diet of sweet milk and venison-pork. “Robot?”
“Yes, Wally.”
“Can you help me get back home?”
It turned toward me, giving me a long, long look out of those empty black eyes. “Are you so lonely, Wally?”
I swallowed past a tight spot in my throat and nodded, unable to speak. Yes, damn you. I miss everything about my nasty little life. Even the bad stuff. That hurt too. I wouldn’t have imagined I would, just like I didn’t imagine I’d miss my dad ’til he was gone.
It said, “How much do you know about accelerated frames of reference, and probabilistic space-time attractors?”
“Well ….”
That same long look cont
inued. “Eat your breakfast, Wally. Take your bath, then we’ll see what we can do.”
By midmorning, it’d led me back through the town and out to the so-called spaceport once more. Led me out onto the empty concrete apron, off to one side, reddish-yellow sunshine warm and smarmy on my bare skin. I almost skipped my shoes this time, but Robot told me not to.
“No sense getting a stubbed toe, is there?”
Which made me remember when I was a little kid, pre-school, going to the beach with my mother’s family. We’d lived in Massachusetts then, some little town outside Boston, and the beaches of New England are rocky indeed. Where did we used to go? Not Nantucket. That’s an island where rich bastards live. Nantasket? That’s it. I remember Grandpa took me to see a beached freighter one time.
Anyway, stubbed toes. Lots of them.
Robot said, “Stand over here, Wally. Right by me.”
Then it raised its hands, making a slow sort of Gandalfish gesture.
My stomach lurched as we suddenly rose in the air, taking a patch of concrete with us. “Hey!”
“Stand still, Wally.”
As the thing on which we stood went up and up, things like antennae, like giant radiotelescopes, like Jodrell Bank, like stuff on TV, began unfolding down below, swinging up into sight.
I whispered, “‘Open, sez me.’” What’s that from? A Popeye cartoon?
The upward movement stopped, and suddenly a hatchway opened in the concrete between us. Robot gestured toward it, “Shall we, Wally?”
“What is this?”
“The spaceport information nexus and interstellar communications center.”
“Oh.” Muted.
Down inside was a room just like the main room of an airport control tower, complete with outward leaning windows and things like radar screens. Lots and lots of twinkly little lights, too. Red, green, blue, yellow, you name it.
It started waving its fingers at the lights and, outside, various antennae started groaning around, aiming this way and that, nodding upward to the great green sky.
“What’re you going to do? Are you calling Earth?”
The empty black eyes fixed on me again. “No, Wally. I can only call installations with the same sort of subspace communication systems as these.”
“Oh. Then ….”
It said, “I need to find out what’s happened, Wally, before I can know what’s to be done, if anything.” If anything? I felt sick. Then it said, “This will take a while. I assume you can find your way to the museum from here?”
“Well, of course.” Robot thought I was stupid, did it? Maybe so. How many people accidentally stow away on an automated space probe and wound up stranded on a deserted planet?
“I’ll meet you there in time for supper. That elevator cage over there will take you down to ground level.” Then it turned away and resumed playing with all the little lights, while the big antennae creaked and moaned.
I stood and watched for a while, at a loss. What do I want? Do I really want to go home again, back to a pathetic little life that showed no promise of ever getting better? What if the Empire’s not Lost? What if the saucers come again, this time full of light and life, full of things ever so much better than people?
What if there’s real adventure to be had?
Eventually, I got in the elevator cage and went on my way, wondering if I could find something to do.
Take a while turned out to be an understatement. Two, three, four days and I gave up going out to the spaceport, gave up watching the antennae wig-wag around, gave up watching the little lights twinkle, reflected in Robot’s slanty goggle eyes.
Eyes like fucking sunglasses.
What’s under them, ole buddy, ole pal?
It’d make me breakfast, make me something I could save for lunch, and would head on out, leaving me alone for the day, like a man going off to work, leaving his wife alone to fend for herself.
I remember my mom used to scream about that, back before the breakup. Dad’d come home from work, wanting nothing more than his supper and a quiet evening in front of the TV, and Mom would snipe and snipe, “I sit here all day long, looking at these same four God-damned walls. I want to get out once in a while!”
He’d look at her, lying on the couch in his boxer shorts, bleary eyed. “I’m tired.”
You could see a kind of red light behind her eyes then. “Tired? Well, you won’t be quite so tired later on tonight, I know that.”
“Bitch.”
Now he was gone, and Mom had a job of her own from which to come home tired. We were eating a lot of macaroni and cheese then. Macaroni and cheese, and meatloaf. I wondered if she thought about him sometimes, about how tired he’d been, and how she felt now?
On day five, it got dark before Robot came home. I was getting hungry, starting to worry, just the way Mom seemed to worry when Dad would be late getting home from work on nights when the traffic on US 1 clogged to a standstill. Should I go on out to the spaceport and see what was up? What if it wasn’t there? What if it started to rain while I was out?
Then the door opened and Robot came in, moving rather slowly, it seemed. “Sorry I’m late. I’ll get your supper now.”
I followed it out to the kitchen, and, as it touched the blue lights over the trough, beginning the process that would extrude my meat, would fill my mug with milk, it seemed to move as though exhausted.
“Are you all right?” Scooping hot meatloaf onto a plate, it said, “This organic form is difficult to master. It seems I required another minor physiological upgrade.” Then it pulled a second steaming plate from the trough, more meatloaf just like the first, and two cups of cool yellow milk. “Come on, we’ll eat together.”
We settled on the living room floor and I started in. Robot picked up a chunk of meat in its hand, turning it over and over, as if nonplused.
That’s me, I thought. “What’s wrong?”
It looked at me. “I have some inhibitions about eating what seems like it must come from a living being.”
“Synthetic.”
“When I was really a robot, I knew that. The organic processor seems to have a little difficulty with the concept.”
“Hey, if I don’t mind eating myself, why should you?”
“True.” It popped the glob of ground wally in its mouth and started to chew. And I felt myself grow goosebumps.
Afterward, we had ice cream, sweeter now than before, with something very much like the vanilla flavor I’d been wanting. Robot took a taste, and said, “This is good. Maybe next time I can make it better, now that I’m getting some idea of what it’s supposed to be like.”
But it put the plate down, hardly touched.
I put out my hand, not quite touching its arm. “Tell me what’s really wrong.”
Something very like a sigh. “Oh, many things, Wally.”
I felt chillier inside than the ice cream would account for. “Such as?”
“I can’t figure out how to get you home.”
“Oh.”
“And I can’t figure out what’s happened to my civilization, either. I don’t know where they’ve gone. Or why they’re gone.” It pushed the other plate of ice cream toward me. “You have this, please.”
“Sure.”
After a while, I said, “Do you even know where we are?”
“Yes. My galaxy. My world.”
“In the same galaxy as Earth?”
“I don’t think so, Wally.”
“Oh.”
I finished the ice cream and Robot took the dishes away, walking slowly. By the time it got back, I was shaking out my blanket, starting to settle down to sleep, wishing again I had a book, any book. Christ, I’d settle for Green Mansions or Lord Jim now. Even The Red Badge of Courage.
Robot stood there, looking down on me, arms hanging loosely by its sides, looser than I’d ever seen, more than just exhausted. I threw back the blanket and patted a spot on the floor by my side. “Come on. If you need to eat now, maybe you need to sle
ep too.”
It curled up with me under the blanket. After a minute, it grew warm, then another minute and I guess I went to sleep.
I awoke, eyes shut, not quite knowing what I’d been dreaming. Some real-life thing, I suppose, nothing bad, or the dream would still be a vivid shape in my heart. Something warm on my chest, not quite like hugging my extra pillow. And, of course, the usual hard on, but somehow compressed and tight, pushed against the base of my belly.
Oh, God. I’m hugging Robot!
I started to let go, trying not to panic, wondering what the hell was tickling the end of my nose.
Forced my eyes open. There was a neck right in front of my face. A skinny neck with Caucasian-white skin, rising into wisps of pale blonde hair. Long blonde hair drawn up into tight braids, braids wrapped round and round ….
I think every muscle in my body went into some tetanus-like spasm. I took a deep breath, so fast and tight my voice made this weird, high-pitched whoop, recoiled, rolling away, up onto my hands and knees, taking the blanket with me, crouching there, bug-eyed again, heart pounding like mad.
Pulling the blanket away like that spilled the naked girl over onto her face. She lifted her head and looked at me, out of bleary blue eyes, and whispered, “Wally …?” her voice sounding tired and confused.
And I made that exact same sound Jackie Gleason used to make, dumbfounded in almost every “Honeymooners” episode, humminahummina …
She sat up slowly, turning to face me, sitting cross-legged, eyes brightening as she woke up, just the way a human wakes up. Pale skin, smooth all over, little pink nipples on a smooth, flat chest, snub nose with a little pale spray of freckles, big, big blue eyes, naked as a jaybird, but for the brass-colored bobby-pins holding up her braids.
“Good morning, Wally!”
I sat down hard. Swallowed. Or tried to, anyway. “Tracy?”
The Year's Best SF 21 # 2003 Page 11
