by Greg Dragon
As if she was reading his mind, Priscilla whispered into his ear, “It’s my treat. I just feel like a steak right now.”
She would be paying for dinner and it made him feel emasculated. Would he be one of the many guys across the nation dependent on their women? Both parties should be pulling their weight. Or, as his father had drilled into him from the time when he was a boy, “A man provides”. Yet here he was, a man, and the only thing he was providing for Priscilla was conversation. He felt small, and the urge to impress her and prove his worth pushed him to start talking.
“I—I have something I need to tell you, Priss.”
“What’s up, baby?” she called him baby, and the sound of it made him even more comfortable in talking to her.
“I have an android. Not the kind you can buy and assemble, or rent from the cleaning companies, but true artificial intelligence. She’s very convincing as a human, and way ahead of anything that we have right now.”
Priscilla stepped in front of him on the sidewalk and her mouth dropped open in an expression of awe and happiness. “So you’re a droid engineer?” she asked excitedly, and he couldn’t understand why it made her so happy.
“I never got my degree, but yes, I can build androids. Tricia, the droid I’m telling you about, was my first try at it, and she is brilliant. I can take you to meet her, if you’d like.”
“No, it’s okay. Androids scare me a bit, to be honest. To hear that you’ve built one to be so real, well, she would give me nightmares. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for technological advancement, but what happens when she gets too upset, or malfunctions due to coming in contact with a network virus or something? She could kill you. I think that it’s so hot that you’re like a mad scientist genius or something, but knowing is good enough for me. Let’s go get some steaks. I’m freaking starving.”
While Brad considered the paranoid, technophobia to be a massive letdown on the part of Priscilla, he felt more comfortable with her paying for his meal after she perked up about his passion. She was content in knowing that he had great potential as an inventor, and now he would just have to actually work at it instead of sticking to his poor life of mixing coffee and watching television. Her fear of androids also meant that there would be no future for her and Tricia in the same vicinity. For now he would have to keep Tricia at his apartment and continue to stay with Priscilla. In time she would come around, especially after seeing how wonderful Tricia was—at least that’s what he hoped. But for now life was good, and he had a real girlfriend.
0 1 0
“Tricia, how long has your brother been taking these drugs?” asked Jolene, the pharmacist. She had a worried tone in her voice and it let Tricia know that she had bad news.
Brad had been gone for a few days, and while it was okay that he’d gotten serious with Priscilla, it was unlike him to stay out so long without checking in. He had taken the pills with him, so the plan to switch them out or destroy them all had been delayed.
“He’s been taking them for over a year now. When they run out he orders more.”
“I’m sorry for what I’m about to tell you, but there may only be a short time to help him, if he’s willing to listen to you. The pills have a chemical in it that is known to affect the brain. It makes you feel confident and free in your thought, but it causes damage in the long-term. People have died, developed personality disorders, and much, much worse. You need to stop him from taking those pills, and check him into a hospital where a doctor can assess his condition. This is really bad Tricia, and I would advise you to destroy the pills…they would be illegal here, and we don’t want people reselling them to make money.”
“Thank you so much,” Tricia said. “I’ll find a way to do what you say. How much do I owe you? It sounds like you did a lot of research to get me this information.”
“It’s no charge, hon. Just look after your brother. Give me a call if anything comes up with him. This whole thing has piqued my interest, and if there is anything else I can do to help, please don’t hesitate to ask.”
Tricia thanked her once again and hung up the phone. She began to search the house for the pills, and when she found them she destroyed them. She thought about how easily he could order more, so she hacked into his personal computer and logged into his email to find the correspondence. His dealer’s name was Abe, and his email seemed to be routed through several layers of security. She created a new account on a free email server, and made the credentials similar to Abe’s and coded in an automatic response algorithm. Whenever someone would email his account, it would respond with one of a thousand unique messages that indicated that the pills would be on their way. She then changed the alias “Abe” in his email history to be the one that she had just created, eliminating the real Abe completely. Lastly she sent an email to the supplier, telling him that she was Brad’s sister and that he had died from a fatal accident.
It took several hours for Tricia to shut down or reroute all of the ways Brad could use to get more pills. She knew he’d be persistent, but the things that she had done would be impossible to detect.
Despite Tricia’s attempts to sabotage Brad’s drugs, the last thing he had on his mind were the pills. He was with a girl that liked him, he had come up with a plan to mass produce his rotors, and even though he spent as much time as he could with Priscilla, he knew that in time he would go to see Tricia and clear the air between them. He sat at Priscilla’s table, watching her as she practiced her dance routines in the living room. She was everything he dreamed of, and he couldn’t believe he was right there with her, free to love her, touch her, and see her practice the thing that she loved. How could he tell her she was his first love? Priscilla had been his first where the heart was concerned, and he couldn’t get her out of his head, no matter how hard he tried.
He thought about high school, and how he had wanted to end his life. Mom was the one who’d talked him down from the virtual ledge, and she was the one that had always cared. Mom…when was the last time I called my mom, he thought, stunned at how absent-minded he had been, and he looked at his personal device where he had blocked her contact during a fit of rage. That was several months ago. Why did I forget to unblock her? He hopped up and went out on Priscilla’s balcony, and clicked the icon to call his mother.
“BRADLEY?” A surprised voice screamed into the phone, and he heard her whisper to his father that he had called. His father had cut him off from money and communication with him—as if this would magically make him re-enroll in school and resume the path of a physician.
“Mom, I’m so sorry I haven’t called you guys. I’ve been depressed, you know. This whole decision with school and whatnot…but I got better, and I’m working to be an entrepreneur now. So—“
“We were worried sick! Your brother said he went to go find you, but you’d moved and didn’t tell anyone where you were going.”
“Tell him to stay away from me. I have nothing to say to that ass—“
“Bradley, he’s your brother!”
“And dad is my father, and they’re both money-hungry douchebags with an elitist complex. I called for you mom, because I love you, and I want you to know that I’m okay.”
“Oh, my son, that is really good to hear. We miss you so much. When can you visit?”
“Soon, Mom. But listen, I have a girlfriend! Can you believe that? And, and she’s pretty too… I’ll show you.” And he got up and snapped a picture of Priscilla kicking her leg up in front of the television as she emulated the dance moves on a video.
“She IS pretty Brad. I am so happy for you. What’s her name?”
“Oh, sorry, yeah, her name’s Priscilla! Priscilla White, and she’s a dancer and a pharmacist.”
“I can’t wait to tell your father. A pharmacist, you say? He would love that.”
“He’d probably love the fact that she’s black too, right Mom?”
“Don’t start. He’s getting better about that.”
“I love you, son.”
He hung up the phone and sat in silence as he thought about his parents. His mother was an artist that had fallen in love with a stiff doctor who came from a long line of doctors. He was also a conservative bore, with ancient beliefs in racial and class lines that dated back to the third Great War, and he tried to instill them into his children. His brother, Patrick, was the golden boy that had failed. He went to school and did everything that his father wanted him to do, but couldn’t take the pressure, so he changed majors and graduated to make menial wages. He was a bully, and everything Brad remembered about him from when they were growing up was Patrick doing everything he could to make his life hell.
He walked inside where Priscilla was taking a break from her dancing and snuck up behind her before she could react. He wrapped his arms around her waist and rested his chin on her neck, and she smiled from ear to ear as he swayed with her as if music was playing and they were dancing.
“Who were you on the phone with?” she asked. She turned to face him and put her arms around his neck.
“That was my mother. I hadn’t spoken to her in ages, so I was checking in. Plus, I had to tell her about you, and how I was the luckiest man in the world.”
“Stop being so sweet. Maybe I’m the lucky girl.”
“Are you practicing for another performance?”
“Oh, I do Carnival every year. I’m going down to Miami next month so I have to prepare my costume and figure out what I want to do before then. The dancing is to get me into the mood for the Calypso festival. You should come. I can dress you up and we have a good time at Carnival.”
“That would be great but it’s too short noticed. I wouldn’t be able to get off work. How long would you be gone for?”
“A couple of weeks. I have family there who want to see me, so it would be a trip to visit, plus dance all night like we do every year.”
The thought of losing her for that long made him anxious, but her smile helped him keep his cool and accept it. He hadn’t taken a pill in three days, but he didn’t feel any less confident than he did when he was taking them daily. Maybe I could spread them out more, and save myself some money from reordering them all the time, he thought. He had sent the final journal of the effects to the Japanese a while back, and through his results—along with several others—they had put the pills up for sale on the black market.
“Earth to Brad,” Priscilla teased, with that song-like accent he couldn’t get enough of.
“Sorry, I was just thinking. Been a lot on my mind lately.”
“Well I was saying that I need to go in to work. Will you be here when I get back or do you have some errands to run?”
“I’m gonna check in on my apartment, and build out a few more rotors. Call me when you’re getting off, and we can get dinner or something.”
“Okay sweetheart, I’ll give you a call.” And she kissed him before retreating to her room to change for work.
0 1 0
Brad was walking on air. If someone had stopped him to tell him how scruffy and worn out he looked, he wouldn’t believe it. Priscilla loved him, and that was all that mattered for now. Without his pills he had begun to smoke marijuana to calm his nerves. To think that pot was once illegal in the United States of America, he thought as he smiled and took in the high rises and the flying cars that zipped this way and that on their designated airways.
Hell, alcohol had been outlawed at one point, too. Now the vices that were outlawed were even stranger: there were laws against loving and marrying machines—which brought in the need for android restraints. There were laws against littering, which carried some of the harshest penalties. Tricia, in terms of what he meant her to be, was an illegal android. If the authorities knew that she existed, he could get up to a month’s time in jail. He knew the risks and it made him paranoid, but for a young man with a foxy Trinidadian girlfriend in the city of Seattle, life—at least for the moment—was grand.
He strode along the sidewalk towards the café but his mood started to darken quickly. He didn’t know what had come over him, but he wasn’t feeling “good enough” for the world. He wanted to crawl into a corner and hide, to get away from people, bills, and Priscilla’s judging eyes. What was he thinking about? She couldn’t be serious about him; any day now she would tell him it was all a joke, a bet to see if she would willingly date a loser.
He skipped the café and found a bar. There was a basketball game on and a bunch of excited old men that looked like they spent most of their time there. Sitting down near the corner, he asked the bartender to give him a shot of rum, and he nursed it and thought on his miserable life.
By the time he was finished he was seated on the curb in front of the closed bar. The streets were emptying out, and the droid patrol was asking drunks like himself if they needed a ride home. He dragged his tired body home to his apartment and vomited in the toilet. Tricia—who was quite surprised to see him—helped him clean up, and then she gave him several pills to help him get through it.
“I need my pills,” he said to her, and she stared at him as if confused. “Pills, Tricia. The Japanese ones. They’re in that closet over there. Get em for me, will you?”
She walked slowly to the closet and grabbed the bottle to bring it out to him.
“Thanks, Trish, you’re a life saver,” he said to her and swallowed one quickly.
Tricia watched him to see if there would be any recognition of her having switched the pills out for store-bought headache relief. He sat still for a time as if he expected a reaction, then moved to the couch and switched on the television before motioning for Tricia to join him.
“Why did I have to make you so hot?” he said to her in a drunken stupor.
She looked at him with disgust. She’d never dealt with a drunken version of him before.
“I wonder, can androids get drunk, or high? We HAVE to program that into you if you can’t, Trish. You have no idea what you’re missing.”
“Why are you talking to me that way? Is your head feeling healthy?”
“It’s ‘is your head feeling okay.’ ‘Is your head feeling okay?’ You haven’t been practicing your speech much, have you?”
“How can I when you are never here to talk to me?” she replied angrily.
He gave her an odd look and smiled, then lifted one of her hands and kissed it. “I’m sorry I talked to you like that, Priscilla,” he said, and before she could correct him, everything went black.
When Tricia powered on after the blackout, she found herself alone in Brad’s bed. It was the same situation as before. She could only remember the earlier part of the day before, and she was in a bed that she would never voluntarily lay in. Machines did not need beds, and while she could lay in one to emulate human behavior, standing up or sitting down to power down was quite acceptable. She heard a loud groan and a few expletives from the far side of the bed, and found Brad seated on the floor, looking around, confused.
“What the hell are you doing in the bed?” he asked. “Christ, my head is pounding, and I feel like crap.”
“I cannot remember anything. I think that there is something wrong with me. Every other day it seems, I reset, and I wake up in your bed with memory loss. Was this programmed into me?”
“Why would I even want to do that? Look, you’re beautiful – I made you that way, and part of me loves the fact that I woke up next to a beautiful woman this morning, android or no android. But, this is how misunderstandings start, and if Priscilla came in and saw you like that, I’m toast. Wait a second, we didn’t… did we?”
“I don’t understand what you’re asking.”
“Nothing. I’m a bloody fool. Look, I’ll check out your brain as soon as I shower, okay? You shouldn’t be experiencing blackouts, just like I shouldn’t be drinking and feeling like a pile of dirt right now.”
She got up from the bed and dressed herself, then went into the kitchen to make him a pot of tea. The blackouts were concerning, and she wondered if it was a flaw in her design due to Brad’s inexperience, or if he was lying to her for some reason. She only experienced them when he was around, and when she woke up, he was always there. A part of her knew what was going on but she wanted to believe that he was being honest with her.
“I’ll be better about coming home to talk to you,” he said to her, and with her forgetting their argument the night before she took it as a good sign that the loving, caring Bradley that she had started out in the world knowing was on his way back to her.
05 | Mechanophilia
While Brad was generally happy when he was with Priscilla, he was a completely different animal when it came to her being around other men. Brad hated the way that average people behaved, but in a closed-in setting, he felt like they got worse. Men would push up on women they saw with weaker men, and if they weren’t strong enough to keep them at bay, those weaker guys would end up alone by the end of the night. So when Priscilla showed up with tickets to a college basketball game that she had scored from a coworker, he was not very excited to go.
“Don’t you like sports?” she asked.
He hesitated in giving her an answer. He felt funny telling her no. It was one of those loaded questions that brought into question his manhood, and normality, that he knew she didn’t realize was a bit offensive.
“Of course I like sports, everybody loves sports,” he lied, but she was insistent and eventually he caved.
She dressed in jogging pants and a tank top representing the home team, but he decided to wear the same jeans and t-shirt he was in. She looked at him as if he was hopeless when she saw this, but took it in stride as they headed out together, hand in hand, and happy. It won’t be so bad, he told himself as they stood in the slow line that flowed into the building. The outside of the auditorium looked like the classic bowl shaped arena that had carried sports since the age of the Roman gladiators, but inside it was a marvel of modern engineering.
