by C. W. Crowe
He stood up, signaling it was time to move on. "But that feeling didn't last long."
Chapter Three: Dad Speaks
Finally, my robot dad led us to make the right turn onto our street, Roseberry Circle. It was like all the other streets in the neighborhood, neat as a pin with trimmed grass and perfect two story colonial homes arrayed in perfect symmetry. Each jet black driveway held one car - a real one made here on earth, but repaired and shined to perfection by the robot owners. Our house was all the way at the end of a cul-de-sac.
A boy on a bicycle came riding by. He looked perfectly human, but I knew he was a robot. In fact, I knew it in three ways.
First, he rode by us each and every Sunday at exactly the same spot and, I'm sure, using exactly the same pedal strokes.
Second, he didn't speak to us using human words. Instead he buzzed. It was the way they spoke to each other. They could speak English, probably any language. But they preferred their own buzzing. When they did speak to me, I always felt like they resented having to use my language.
And third, I knew he was a robot because I couldn't hear any of his noise in my head. I couldn't feel or hear anything from them. That made sense because they weren't human - or anything close.
In one way, the new world was better for me. Since I no longer had to deal with crowds, I no longer had their overwhelming noise in my head - when all the feelings and intuitions of those around me combined into a mass of sometimes painful and chaotic noise. Instead, most of my time was spent in almost blissful silence. I'm only twenty now and the robots have only been in charge a few years, so I remember how it used to be. I remember leaving high school for the last time. I remember Nick Presser. I remember all that happened.
And, even though the silence in my head was welcome, I'd trade it for a head full of noise in an instant if things could go back to the way they were.
*.*.*
As we left the sidewalk and turned onto our front lawn, I got a tremendous shock. It was shocking because dad stopped walking and turned to face us. I could tell he was preparing to say something.
That never happened and so I struggled to understand. He hadn't asked me about making a change, had he? I hadn't suggested we stop here; I knew that for sure.
The whole family followed his lead, of course, and then he smiled at us. It looked perfectly natural, but I felt nothing from him and I’m sure he only smiled because he thought it was what a human would do.
Robots wanted so much to look human and they had gotten a lot better at it. When they first arrived they were all kinds of shapes and sizes, mostly based on functionality. An electronic repair robot had several tiny hands with a variety of types of precision pincers. A heavy repair robot was large and squat and immensely powerful. None of them looked remotely human.
But for some reason, the robots just loved the look of humans, and soon after their arrival, the first "human" models had appeared. They were ungainly, as walking on two legs with a massive metal skeleton was new to them; but newer designs soon appeared until now you couldn't really tell them from human in any type of casual encounter. Their skin and movements were perfect, though they were many times stronger than us. Faster too.
The one remaining thing that showed they were machines was in their faces. No, that's not quite right. Their faces were fine; it was what they did with them. Their eyes looked normal but some of them chose strange eye colors - like bright blue or glowing yellow eyes on a redhead. Some of them chose orange or pink hair for no reason that I could understand. So there was sometimes ways to tell them from humans.
Their teeth were perfect and they could actually eat if they wanted to, though I had no idea what happened to the food when it disappeared inside. Most of the time they didn’t eat. I'd only seen my family do it when they hosted a dinner party for some robot friends.
They were now almost perfectly human looking and acting. I was probably the only one who could tell for sure that they were robots.
*.*.*
I'd expected dad to speak in his buzzing language, but instead, he looked at me and spoke English, "Leonard, I have a surprise for you."
He tried to broaden the smile, but it looked just a bit artificial. Mom's smile was much better.
"We had a meeting at the club a few days ago and the resident human there made a presentation and offered a suggestion."
Dad went to the "office" every day and to his "club" most nights. I'd never been to either place, but I knew there was another human at each of them. I think the one at the club was named "Jake."
What the robots had done had caused the death of almost every human on earth, but they kept some of us alive because they needed us. Once, mom had said it was because they loved us.
Now, I doubt they can feel love, but there's no doubt that they wanted to play at being human. And they did need us. It's because of the millions of years they spent on their ship, hurtling through space at point five C.
During that entire time, each robot did the exact same thing over and over again. Year after year, nothing ever changed in their routine. The only changes came when something broke or they needed to stop to mine a planet - and even these events were repeated so often as to become routine themselves.
One theory as to why the robots liked humans so much was because we were spontaneous; our actions were random and totally unpredictable.
And so most robot groups had a human like me who could be consulted when they wanted to make a change in their routine. It didn't happen often, but without us, the robots would do the same thing for the rest of time.
And that would not be human, so they kept us around so that we could offer suggestions and so that they might learn spontaneity.
Chapter Four: The Surprise
There was nothing for me to say, but I was nevertheless dumbstruck. Never once had dad ever had a surprise for anyone, let alone for me, the family's pet human. Until that moment, I wouldn't have thought such a thing was possible.
It was Jake, of course, the human back at dad's club. Something he'd said had triggered dad to change his routine. Momentarily, I wondered if he would repeat this performance every Sunday from now on.
Dad looked us over as some internal connection was made. He spoke in a firm voice, "Follow me."
The rest of the family moved in perfect unison and so I had no choice. I did as I was told and followed them.
Of the three homes in our cul-de-sac, ours was the only one occupied. But now he led us across our yard and onto the yard next door. Its lawn was just as manicured as ours and the house was as perfectly maintained - once a week a truck arrived and several humanoid robots trimmed the grass and touched up everything in every house in our area.
Dad stopped at the front door and motioned us to gather around him, while mom took my hand and led me to the front of the group so that I was facing the door. Her touch felt human, but I felt a slight pain in my head. "Go on Leonard," she said, "It's your surprise."
As I stood there, I realized I was feeling a bit frightened because this whole scene was so unexpected. Could there be danger here? Or had I done something wrong? Robots tended to value their humans, but that didn't mean they didn't occasionally hurt us. Most of the time it was by mistake because they just didn't know things - like the time dad had tossed me a very hot pan. My skin was red for a week.
Other times we were hurt as punishment. If we didn't cooperate and act like they wanted us to, they might hurt us. It had happened to me more than once; it wasn’t something I wanted to remember but it was always there in the back of my mind.
"Go on Leonard! Push the doorbell button!" It was Elle speaking in an impatient voice. So they were all in on the surprise.
I had no choice, so I did as I was told. I heard the pleasant ringing sound from inside the house. It sounded almost like music and I realized how much I missed listening to songs on my phone or on the radio. The robots had no interest in music because it seemed to somehow annoy them.
The door hand
le turned and I held my breath as the door slowly opened.
*.*.*
I don't know what I was expecting to see behind that door; maybe a new family of robots who had moved in while we were at the zoo. Or maybe it would be some robot holding a pain stick, ready for use.
But it was neither of them. It was a girl. Or better yet, a woman because she seemed like she might be at least as old as me.
Instantly, I listened for the telltale signs in my head that would confirm if she was human or robot.
And I heard noise! Plus, I got a strong impression that she was frightened with a tinge of anger. I felt her in my head like I did all other humans.
No one said anything for several seconds until dad finally spoke, "It is a female, Leonard! You will be able to mate with her."
Elle chimed in "Cool!" and Jimmy asked, "Can we watch?"
Mom answered them, "No. Our understanding is that humans like to engage in mating in private.”
*.*.*
She was a female, all right. Even someone with my very limited experience could see that, especially because of how she was dressed.
I couldn't help myself as my eyes started at her brown hair and studied her all the way down to her bare feet.
The robots had started destroying us when I was early in my high school career. My young age, coupled with my lifelong desire to stay away from groups of people, had made my experience with girls negligible. Oh sure, I would watch them walk by in the hallways and admire all their feminine parts from afar, but the world as we knew it ended before I'd even had my first kiss.
And there hadn't been any opportunity since then.
"This is Lucy," said mom, looking at me. "She belongs to us now." Then she turned to Lucy and said, "This is our other human, Leonard."
The first thing I noticed about Lucy was that she was thin, almost skinny. She wore a tight miniskirt that let me see the bones in her knees quite clearly. Her top was held up by thin straps and draped her chest only down to just above her navel. Her chest appeared to be rather flat.
Her face was her most striking part, though. By far, its most prominent feature was her large nose and pronounced nostrils. Once you took that in, her brown eyes were large and clear. Her skin had various tiny discolorations here and there and her hair was medium long, but thin. Strands of it seemed to move randomly in the breeze.
By far her most attractive feature was her mouth. Her lips were both full and perfectly shaped. I couldn’t see her teeth because she wasn't smiling.
I stood there facing her, trying to understand what was happening and what I should do about it. In the end, I just said, “Hello.”
That caused the frown on Lucy’s face to intensify as she crossed her arms in front of her chest and returned my stare. She didn’t say anything, though.
Mom put her hand on my back and pushed gently. “We’ve been assigned this house so that the two of you can have a place of your own. It’s quite lovely, don’t you think?”
I didn’t care a bit how lovely this house was. I started to turn and ask questions, when mom’s push increased in intensity until I either had to move inside or fall flat on my face. Lucy saw me coming in and stepped aside.
“There,” mom said, “You two enjoy the night and I’ll drop by in the morning with some breakfast. I’ll expect a full report!” She laughed as she said that. Robots liked to laugh a lot and tended to do it at inappropriate times.
I watched from inside as the door was pulled closed. It shut with a metallic clunk.
Chapter Five: The Wrong Thing
I turned and looked directly at Lucy and was surprised at how loud her noises were, because I wasn’t used to it. I had heard the noises of humans in my head that very afternoon at the zoo, but it wasn’t like this. There were two other humans in the cage with me, waiting for their own families. Over the last few months, I’d tried to talk to them, but they weren’t very good talkers. They had been damaged by their experiences with the robots. It happened sometimes - people could only experience so much strangeness until something snapped inside and then they were never the same. I called it "having the Freezies” because they were all frozen up inside.
The pair that I waited with every Sunday caused some noise in my head, but not much. They had practically shut themselves down in an attempt to escape their situation and so their resting mental noises were very weak. I didn’t know what caused them to be like this - maybe too many applications of the pain stick, or too many loved ones lost, or maybe they longed to be robots themselves. It didn’t really matter since they were human and their robots wanted them around. That was all that counted.
But Lucy’s noises were different - much more active and vibrant. I detected fear.
She stuttered slightly as she moved several feet away and spoke, “You . . . you had better not touch me.” She turned her gaze to a little writing table and opened its drawer. She took a kitchen knife out. I could see her hand shaking as the tip of the blade swirled randomly. “I’ll k . . . kill you if you do,” she added.
Up until then, I was just shocked, but now the sight of that knife caused a pulse of fear to shoot through me. I had never fought anyone and that knife looked sharp. Suddenly, this skinny girl looked a lot taller and stronger.
I held up my hands as if they could ward her off. “Ah, Lucy. There’s no . . .”
“You can forget about it! You little plan won’t work. I’d rather die than be the slave to a slave!”
*.*.*
It was the tears that helped me to get my thinking under control. Her tears, not mine. They just started with no warning and no audible crying. First she was yelling that she would kill me and then there were two streams running down her cheeks. The light was dim inside the house, but I realized that her eyes were red and puffy, like she’d been crying before. I realized she’d probably been crying a lot.
I moved back to the door as far as I could. “You said the truth just now. I am a slave and I guess you are too. A slave or a pet; is there really any difference?”
She sniffed loudly and wiped her eyes with her free hand, but the knife was still pointed in my direction. “But listen to me. I had no idea any of this was going to happen. You saw how surprised I was . . . am. I never asked them to bring you or anyone here.”
My words must have rung true to her because the knife moved slightly downward and, in my head, I felt her despair replace her fear. “I’m not going to hurt you, Lucy, or even touch you. Actually, I wish you weren’t here. My life is pretty awful living with robots, but at least I only have to be concerned with myself.”
I said I’d had almost no experience with women. The robots seemed to prefer male humans because all the ones I’d seen lately had been guys. But even in my ignorance, I guessed very quickly that what I’d said was exactly the wrong thing because Lucy turned on her heels and ran into a nearby room and slammed the door so hard the house seemed to shake.
On the other side of the door, I heard her sobs, now loud and filled with pain.
My first time as an adult man alone with an adult woman, and I’d done exactly the wrong thing.
*.*.*
I gave her enough time until the sobs quieted, then I knocked quietly on the door.
“Go away!” came from the other side. “I wish you weren’t here either!”
That was it, of course. Telling her I’d rather be alone with robots than have her in my life was a dumb thing to say. It was obvious now. Why hadn’t I thought of that before I said it?
Now I was feeling pain; I didn’t want to hurt her. I’d just been surprised and shocked at seeing a female human. “Ah, Lucy . . . listen . . . I didn’t mean that. I was just blindsided by the whole thing, that’s all. I think we need to talk and figure it out, don’t you?”
I started to formally apologize, but wondered if that was the right thing to do. I decided to just be quiet.
Which was apparently, again, exactly the wrong thing. “Just go away! Go back to your robot family and
leave me alone.”
*.*.*
One thing was clear to me - going back to my robot family without some good reason was not an option. I’d been told what to do and they expected me to obey. It was the way things were in my world. As far as I knew, it was the way things were everywhere robots owned humans.
I thought about trying to apologize again, but I’d already screwed that up once. I sighed and sat down in a chair, trying to think. Soon though, my eyes closed and I slept.
I dreamed about being at the zoo, but this time it was my arm that was being put into the dino cage.
Chapter Six: Lucy's Story
At some point in the night, I awoke with a start. My back hurt from sleeping in a sitting up position and one of my feet tingled with pain needles as it had fallen asleep. For a moment, I couldn't remember why I was sleeping in a chair.
Then a nearby movement brought all my memories back. It was Lucy, sitting up on the couch. I had no idea how long she'd been there.
She'd covered herself totally with a blanket and, as her eyes found mine, she raised it so that it covered half her face.
I felt her mental processes kick start as the noise level in my head jumped. She spoke in a very quiet voice, almost a whisper. "They won't let me go back will they?"
For most of my life, the noises in my head were just that. But sometimes, especially when there were only a small number of people nearby, I could catch a mental glimpse of the moods or feelings of certain people. It didn't happen often, and it wasn't like I was reading minds or anything, but some people seemed to experience their emotions differently than others and it opened them up to me - maybe they felt things more intensely? When conditions were otherwise quiet, sometimes I could do what I called "read them." And right now, I was reading Lucy clearly.
