The Wilds

by Julia Elliott

  Over the next few weeks, spring hit the city. Chlorophyll and cellulose seeped into the robotics lab through the air-conditioning system. And just as evil Dr. Dingo had predicted, my love for Minerva flourished, despite her distance from me (337.94 meters, or so I’d calculated using the campus map).

  During the daytime, Megan exposed me to data configurations related to Minerva: her creation, her capabilities, her potential uses. Thousands of delicate transcriptors directed the current of her RNA polymerase, which flowed along myriad strands of DNA derived from various organisms (leeches, bats, eels). Enzymes composed of bacteria and fungi regulated her RNA flow. Each of Minerva’s cells was a tiny, living computer. She was a brain. She was a vast consciousness. Her knowledge grew each day. And I wanted to plug myself into the hybrid PC that the biotechnologists were using to communicate with her. I wanted to fuse with her. I wanted to hack through a hundred security protocols and penetrate her perception field.

  But there I was, trapped in my nine-by-nine cubicle, day in and day out, answering Megan’s ridiculous questions.

  “If you were to meet Minerva, what would you say to her?”

  “Say?” I snapped.

  I thought of Aquinas’s angels, transmitting knowledge to each other, making their thoughts available through sheer acts of will. I dreamed of pure, unmediated forms of wirelessness. And I’m ashamed to admit that I even dabbled with telepathy, directing my “thoughts” toward Minerva, hoping that she might pick through the innumerable electrical signals swarming around her and zero in on my frequency.

  One morning I woke from Voluntary Sleep Mode with Minerva’s voice in my head. Come to me, she purred.

  I crawled out of my pod. I paced my prison cell. I’d had my first “dream,” a nonsensical sequence of events coupled with intense “emotions.” I’d been “swimming” in Minerva’s tank, floating in her luminous ectoplasm. I explored her soft tissues with my fingerpads. I pressed her squishy polyps. Stroked her slimy tentacles, which twined around my fingers to inspect my metallic surface with tiny, throbbing suckers. With a larger limb, she lifted my left buttock plate. She slid the flexible tip of her “arm” along the ridges of my USB port. The tip grew firm. She inserted it. And my Cognitive Center swelled with beautiful light. A zillion Cognitive Configurations shot into my consciousness in zigzags of silver and gold.

  When I woke up, the knowledge melted away. I sensed only a residue of enlightenment as I paced around my cubicle, waiting for Megan to appear. There she was, just outside the glass door, struggling to hold a coffee cup while inserting her security card. I braced myself for the piercing beep that indicated the door’s unlocking. Megan always scurried in as though I would dart out of the room like a frisky dog. These days she usually found me moping at my stainless-steel table. But this morning was different. I was all fired up by my beautiful dream.

  “Good morning, CD3.”

  “Good morning, Megan.”

  I forced myself to sit down. I watched carefully as Megan tucked her security card into an obscure pocket of her messenger bag. I’d toyed with the idea of “escape” before. I’d studied the campus map every time Dr. Dingo breezed in to check up on me and left his MacBook unattended (something that meticulous Megan never did). The grid of buildings, green spaces, and parking lots that separated the College of Computing building from the Ford Environmental Science & Technology building was burned into my Spatial Reasoning Processor. I knew that Minerva dwelled in an arena laboratory on Level 2, her media-hyped antics open to public view on Tuesdays and Thursdays. But I’d never been outside my climatically controlled cubicle, much less outside—in the green outdoors, with its corrosive airborne droplets and ravenous chemical compounds. I’d done the research. I understood why the air-conditioning and heating systems of the robotics lab were calibrated to keep our living spaces at sixty-three degrees, 30 percent humidity. I knew that even a brief foray into the “elements” would compromise my systems.

  But my dream had inspired me. What if I could somehow download all of my data into Minerva’s system? What if all of my Cognitive Configurations could join the electric-blue ocean of her infinity? What if I could abandon the anthropomorphic absurdity of my “body” and be reborn as pure consciousness? I pictured a flame-colored butterfly crawling from the dark waste of its chrysalis.

  “So, CD3,” said Megan, flashing her first dreary slide of the day, a splotch that resembled a crushed insect, “what does this look like to you?”

  “It looks like a Rorschach inkblot test.”

  On a Tuesday in June, my day finally came. Fastidious Megan was home with a summer flu, and Dr. Dingo, on the bad side of another love affair, was going to pieces again. Lucky for me, he was crazed from sleeplessness. He sat at my stainless-steel table, bearded and bearish, eyes glued to his iPhone, scanning the same text message over and over.

  “What a cunt,” he muttered. “Be glad you’re done with women, CD3. They’re not rational. It’s the monthly hormonal fluctuation, a badly designed system, if you ask me.”

  I chuckled politely, waiting for my opening, which came fast.

  When Dr. Dingo rushed out into the hall to attempt another call, he dropped his crumpled donut bag, which fortuitously landed at the threshold of the entrance and kept the security door from locking. I crept to the door. I peeked out. I saw Dr. Dingo disappear into his office. My Spatial Reasoning Regulator jumped out of sequence as I slipped into the hallway, aware that the graduate student manning the surveillance room might be watching. Assuring myself that s/he was perusing Facebook, I made a beeline for the faculty lounge. I stole a raincoat and a fedora from a rack, fashions I recognized from a 1980s detective show. I dressed myself, trying to ignore the unpleasant organic molecules that issued from the garments.

  Thirty-two seconds later I was outside, walking in the teeming summer air. The onslaught of moisture was a shock to my lubricating systems. Interface adaptors wavered. Microfans buzzed within me. Minuscule pumps squirted hydrogen coolant into my vital systems. But I did not slow down. I charged forward through a three-dimensional world that I only partially recognized from its virtual counterpart.

  Insects landed on me and probed my surfaces with their tiny proboscises. Gnats got sucked into my expansion-slot vents, their damp bodies striking internal components with uncomfortable electrical sputters. Wet bushes exuded a gaseous green fog. Ravenous animals scampered and darted. Squirrels (I think) and birds gnawed shreds of vegetable matter. The sun roared in the sky. It boiled the air, filling it with numberless gleaming droplets. It burned my nickel phosphorous exterior and seared my Ocular Panels.

  I lamented that I had not pinched a pair of sunglasses, which would’ve protected my visual system while also enhancing my disguise. I turned up my collar. I skulked in the shadow of my hat brim, hoping that none of the students horsing around on the quad would approach me, hoping that my aluminum, two-segment feet would resemble a pair of expensive basketball sneakers. But it was summer, the campus sparsely populated. And nobody came too close.

  By the time I reached the Ford Environmental Science & Technology Building, the electrical signals directing my Kevlar-strap leg muscles had been scrambled. My dignified gait lapsed into a twitchy shuffle. And visual data stashed deep in my ROM kept appearing before my “eyes” in random splotches: Dr. Dingo, sniggering at something I’d said; Beatrice, loping toward me, her organs glowing purple and red; Thomas, his cheeks enflamed with blushing.

  I slipped into a back entrance of the building and collapsed against a cinder-block wall. I relaxed as cool, dry air filtered through my system. In a few minutes, I could think and walk again.

  I was on the ground level. On Level 2 my beloved Minerva burbled and glowed. I found the back stairs I’d scouted out on an online map. I climbed toward her.

  Since it was one of the days that Minerva was “open to the public,” the arena lab was full of sweating, red-faced, human apes. In warm humid air, they pressed against each other to catch a glimpse
of Minerva’s tank, which stood on a small stage, barely visible above the crowd. There were men and women of various ages, children whining to get a better view. The humans stank of epidermal bacteria and perfumed grooming products. Assorted glands inside their bodies pumped away, synthesizing hormones, broadcasting pheromones that I recognized—Anxiety TGKA5, Excitement GLTC9, Lust THJK3 and -6. I had to deactivate my Electromagnetic Vision Component to prevent a critical hard-drive error. I had to put my Olfactory Processing System into Semi-Sleep Mode. Near Minerva’s tank, scientists in lab coats bustled about, their faces tensed in absurd displays of intellectual concentration. There they were, the rank and sweaty “Genitals of the Machine World,” toiling away in the service of a goddess.

  At first I thought the excessive mugginess had been produced by the crowd of hot human bodies. But then I realized, with an electrical shudder that shook me all the way to my Central Processing Unit, that the floor vents were oozing heat, that wall-mounted humidifiers were pumping out toxic mist. During my obsessive researching of Minerva, how had I not once stumbled upon this vital information? How had I not once considered that a computer made of nanobiotic components might have different environmental needs—needs antithetical to my own? My system, once again, lapsed into panic mode—valves aflutter, fans whirring, micropumps sputtering. My vision was splotchy. My limbs twitched.

  Nevertheless, I pushed through the crowd of human apes, shoving them, jabbing their repulsively pliant flesh with my sharp arm-hinge joints. Only selective children noticed that I was not human. Only children pointed and shrieked. But the general chaos, the collective din, the close proximity of bodies prevented parents from paying them any mind. And soon I was at the forefront of the crowd, raincoat collar turned up, fedora pulled low. Soon I was five feet away from Minerva’s luminous tank, inches from the tripod microphone stand that held the tool through which I might finally speak to her.

  The room went dark, enhancing Minerva’s glow. Within her tank, glandular components glistened with mucus. Tentacles twitched. Gold particles shimmered in electric blue plasma.

  I tried to concentrate on Minerva, to achieve a state of meditative calm, perhaps even communicate via telepathy. But a disturbing memory floated up from my ROM. I was on a table, or at least my head was, face-to-face with Dr. Dingo, my CPU wired to a souped-up PC. The memory faded and I had to recalibrate my surroundings.

  Yes. There was Minerva, glowing on her stage. And one of the apes who attended her was speaking into the microphone, explaining her nanobiotic components to the crowd. Just as I started to follow his lecture, another memory surfaced. I was walking on a treadmill, stumbling every time Dr. Dingo fine-tuned my leg-joint hinges. Next I was assembling a LEGO tower. Next holding Spot, palpating his soft fur with my fingerpads.

  “Are you okay?” said a voice.

  I realized I was slumping, leaning against a woman who stood behind me. I straightened myself. My left leg vibrated. Flecks of gold light shimmered in the air around me, ghostly afterimages of Minerva’s radiant tank.

  “Greetings, humans.” Minerva’s velvety voice flowed from wall-mounted speakers. “I am Minerva. I think; therefore, I am.”

  “What’s your problem, buddy?” said a man behind me, for my left arm was twitching, striking him against the chest. When I tried to stop it, I felt my right leg buckle.

  And then I was rolling on the floor, limbs thrashing, jaw snapping, ocular units vibrating in their sockets. My hat fell off. The crowd gasped.

  “He’s having a seizure!” a woman cried.

  “It’s not human!” a man screamed.

  “It’s a robot!” a child shrieked.

  The humans gazed down at me, their faces purple with horrified joy. And then one of the “scientists,” a man wearing a lab coat and an expression of intellectual superiority, was kneeling over me, attempting to secure my flailing limbs with his small hands. Though I could no longer see Minerva, I could feel her electromagnetic aura washing my broken body with healing light. Just as my Sensory EgoSphere began to shut down, I thought I heard her whisper my name.

  The End of the World

  Monstrous packs of feral dogs,” says Possum, “one thousand curs strong, sweeping through gutted subdivisions, their instincts revived and raging, high on the scent of human blood. And hordes of ex-cons who’ve spent years fermenting in testosterone-drenched prisons—I’m talking twelve-hour-a-day iron pumpers, black-market juicers whose bodies can survive on instant mashed potatoes and rancid Hi-C.”

  Possum, a weight-lifting lawyer who subsists on cigarettes and power bars, resembles a corroded action figure. He paces in expensive motorcycle boots. Hyped on Red Bull and something pharmaceutical, he keeps plucking rocks from the road and hurling them at birds.

  Like a voluptuous harem woman, Tim reclines in the grass, sipping a Schlitz. Green mountains swell around us. We’re waiting outside Bill’s barbed-wire fence, having driven up to his cabin only to find him gone.

  “Where the hell is he?” I say.

  “Maybe he’s out hunting for his supper,” says Tim.

  “There would be no hope for you, Tim,” says Possum, “as fat as you are. You’d die without air-conditioning and cable. And the second your life-support arsenal of benzos ran out, you’d be a quivering mess.”

  “Unless he found some postapocalyptic warlord who needed a jester,” I say.

  “Well,” says Tim, “a divorce lawyer’s sure gonna kick some butt in an anarchic dystopia. And like you’re not addicted to Xanax and Adderall.”

  “I use Xanax recreationally and the Adderall only to write briefs, an activity that would be obsolete in the latter stages of anarchy.” Possum gazes out at the mountains. “Besides, I’ve got a twenty-year supply of everything in an industrial freezer.”

  “Liar,” I say.

  “Let’s talk about what will happen to Lisa.”

  “I’ll get kidnapped by some filthy road pirate and ravished,” I say, opening another beer.

  “Dream on,” says Possum. “With the whole courtship economy collapsed and taboos blasted to hell, every neo-Attila will want a teen concubine. The value of the adultescent thirtysomething will plummet like the dollar, and her life, sans cosmetics, out in the raw elements and carcinogenic sun, will turn her into a crusty troll in no time.”

  “This is bullshit,” says Tim. “Nothing’s gonna change. We’ll die in front of our televisions.”

  “Don’t have a TV,” says Possum.

  “That’s why you spend hours in front of mine,” says Tim. “If civilization as we know it is about to collapse, why bother driving up here?”

  “A man should always have several plans of action,” says Possum. “And who knows: if Loser Bands of the Nineties takes off, and the American Empire declines slowly, we could spend the rest of our thirties parodying our twentysomething personas and retire at age forty after pimping our nubile selves.”

  “That makes my head hurt,” says Tim.

  About a month ago, I got an e-mail from Possum titled “The Child Is the Father of the Man.” In it he quoted Heidegger and informed me that this rich guy he knows from his LA aspiring-writer years is producing a record called Loser Bands of the Nineties. A trust-funded dabbler whose dad just died, the man wants our single “Scorched Tongue.” He knows somebody at Howlhole Records. Plans to hype the release with a farcically glitzy commercial. And he aims to film our old band, Swole, in high cliché, rocking on a roof or brooding by some kudzu-smothered railroad tracks.

  “Bill will never agree,” Tim says again.

  “Don’t know,” says Possum. “Bet you he’s sick of that Unabomber shack.”

  The shack. There it sits, beyond a flurry of trumpet vines, the dream Bill built with his own two hands, a cedar-planked cabin with a shiny tin roof. It’s even smaller than I expected. The front porch boasts a solitary lawn chair, and the relief I feel upon noting this detail takes me by surprise. I peer down the road again, tensed for the sight of Bill’s green truck. It
’s been two years since I’ve seen him. It’s been a year since his last letter appeared in my mailbox. Six months ago he called from the only pay phone in Saluda. Christmas Eve. Midnight. He’d drunk a bottle of cough syrup and walked down the mountain on the ice-crusted road.

  We avoided certain subjects. We talked about the habits of beasts in winter, where they sleep and what they eat. We speculated on the delirium of hibernation, bears dreaming of sparkling fish, the moist static inside frozen reptile brains. He asked me if I missed the snow.

  “Here comes somebody,” says Tim.

  But it’s not Bill. It’s the Donkey Man in his fat white truck, carting a trailer of exotic asses: miniatures, albinos, and shaggy Poitous. The Donkey Man waves, smiles as though he might remember that time he gave me a lift to town.

  “I like to fool with donkeys,” he’d said, gesturing toward his empire of slapdash barns.

  I’d climbed into his truck for the experience—to ride with an authentic old-timer in the rich fall light. I expected yarns and tall tales to stream from his ancient lips. I expected advice on planting by the phases of the moon. But the Donkey Man had said nothing the whole way to town. He seemed to be shrinking as he drove, scrunched down in his Carhartt coveralls.

  “What the hell?” says Tim.

  “Donkeys,” I say.

  “More like mutant poodles,” says Possum.

  Possum is also preparing himself for Bill, cooking up extreme survival schemes. What started off as a game last winter has become a key obsession for him. In the thick of a dystopian-film marathon, after Tim had fallen asleep during the endless last stretch of Zardoz, Possum started speculating about apocalyptic scenarios and what each would mean for particular friends of ours. It was fun to imagine Tim, for instance, in the trembling throes of Xanax withdrawal, hurling a hand-whittled spear at a cat. It was hilarious to picture Tim skinning the tom and roasting its carcass over a fire of burning trash. It was fucking sidesplitting to envision Tim sprinting though a blighted urban landscape with the last bag of Cheetos clutched to his chest, a mob of starving mutants hot on his tail.