by Greg Dragon
On the fourth day, Sean had to leave early to get some fuel and Brad offered to ride with him so that he could ask him some questions. When they were on their way to the gas station, Brad turned to him and asked, “Sean, what did Priscilla tell you guys about me?”
“Oh, Silly-Silla? Well she said that you guys are old friends and you all were kicking it for a bit, or something.”
“So, at no point did she say that we are in a relationship?”
“Not really, man. I mean, I can tell you’re into the girl, but she says she’s only helping you out.”
“Helping me out?” The words crushed Brad as he repeated them, but they confirmed what he suspected was going on with Priscilla. He had stumbled into another game involving a woman, but he was not going to let it get the better of him as it had in the past. The driving had been a task, but he would rather drive all the way back to Seattle than stay in her house as a charity case.
“Sorry, man. I was wondering what the deal was with you two.”
“Has she been seeing anybody?”
“Well, I don’t know how to tell you this, man, but we’ve messed around a little bit. Kind of on and off, nothing serious, but she hadn’t mentioned a boyfriend. If she did, you know, I wouldn’t have.”
“Yeah, I’m sure she hasn’t mentioned me. How long has she been in town?”
“As long as I’ve known her man. Like a few years? She joined the class a while ago but then she was gone up north for a few months.”
Brad got quiet as he thought about Priscilla, Trinidad, and the strange condo story that came with her stay in Seattle. He didn’t know what to think anymore, and the feelings he got from what he assumed was betrayal made him feel anxious. He spoke about a few more things with Sean and they returned to the apartment where he tried his best to act like things were normal. It didn’t take much for Priscilla to realize that the two men had talked, so she made them leave early and asked Brad if he wanted to go out.
“Go out? Like where?” Brad asked, curious as to why she would ask this after a week of inactivity.
“I don’t know, a movie or something. We haven’t had any alone time since you’ve arrived, so I thought maybe we could do a date night.”
“Date night? So we’re dating now? It’s been four days, Priscilla. Should we invite Sean and Marcia?”
“That’s not cool. Why are you acting like this?”
“Probably because this right here is the last link in a chain of events in this pathetic life of mine. I’m going back to Seattle tomorrow and I want to forget everything about you and the joke of a relationship I thought we had.”
“What the hell did Sean say to you? Why are you so mad at me all of a sudden?”
“Sean told me where I stood. It was one of the most honest conversations I’ve had in a long time, and it was an eye-opening one. I just have one question for you, for women like you who play games like this. What makes you think that it’s okay to do this? Huh? Am I so undeserving of—never mind.”
Priscilla continued to protest his revelation but his mind was made up and she could not get through to him. In the end she was in tears and went to bed alone, and Brad packed his car and took off for home. She had let him stay in her house alone for all those days, and told her friends he was a charity case. Did they ever have a relationship, or had he imagined it all? These were the questions that he asked himself as he pushed the car along the top highway away from Miami. When he had dealt with Mika, he had promised himself that he would never let a woman play with his heart again. Yet there he was, and he felt no different than he did back then.
So much time wasted, so many resources, so much drinking, drug taking, depression, all for a girl who didn’t love him, had probably never loved him, and had made him drive for hours just to embarrass him. Maybe I should give up on women for a time and rebuild my life, he thought. I can get things back in order, get back into school and turn my life around. Emotional reactions got me here; I need rational thought to get me out of here.
He tuned his radio to the Saeed Muhammad show, where the host was talking about being a man with confidence. Brad had always relied on the pills to make him feel like himself, but the show’s host talked at length about building self-confidence and much of it resonated with Brad.
He had assumed that people were inherently good, and that he was unlucky in meeting the few bad guys and gals that were out there, but Saeed was telling him that this was not so. People will run over you if they can, he said, and it takes a confident man with his eyes wide open to dodge the traps that are laid out for you in life. The more Brad listened, the more he felt firm in his decision to focus on himself and to let the Priscilla’s of the world find other suckers to play with.
He was an hour into the show when his device lit up and the car announced that it was Priscilla.
“What?” he answered, ready to flex some of his new confidence muscles against her.
“Brad, I just wanted to say that I’m sorry. I let everything get unraveled and I just want you to know that what we had in Seattle was—“
“Why are you telling me this now? I was in your house for four days. I drove down there for two whole days to be with you, and you made sure that your lover was there every day to embarrass me. Any of those days would have been a good one to say to me, ‘Hey Brad, I’m not interested in you at all anymore.’ Actually, it would have been fantastic to tell me this news before having me drive all that way.”
“I thought that you would like Miami and stay. That’s why I asked you to come down. I hadn’t seen you in a while, and I know that it’s not your fault, but when I left you, you were pretty messed up. We had an argument, which I guess you forgot about, but we broke up and I came back home.”
“Then what was that first morning about? Was that you taking pity on me, or was that something else? Because it didn’t help, I’ll tell you that.”
“I still love you, Brad. I know I hurt you with this, and it was a dumb thing to do. If you’re not too far—“
“No, forget it. You know what? Have a great life with Sean. He’s pretty cool.”
He hung up the device and switched back on his radio. It felt good to tell her off after the way he was feeling and the drive became easier after that. He would go home, get a job, and start building on somewhat of a career. His rotors were sought after by many people around the city; he would figure out how to get them mass-produced. There was definitely life after Priscilla, and he felt empowered in seeking it out and making it a reality.
09 | Re-Wired
Reynaldo liked to talk, so sharing his stories, history and advice with Tricia was not out of the question for him. He talked, and talked, and talked, for days, as if she was the chronicler of his life, and he was feeding her the contents of his biography. As androids, they had no need for food, so they would power down in the night to recharge, then pick up where they left off in the morning. Reynaldo had a long history and he spared no detail as he told her tales of the arena, his training, his prizes, and most of all, the things that the humans would allow him as a reward. Reynaldo spoke so much in fact that he began to raise his voice as the days went on, forgoing the need to speak in a hushed tone.
It was a week later when a couple of policemen came into the underground tunnel to see about the voices that people had reported hearing down there. The tunnels were off limits, and people were forbidden to be down there, let alone live there. Reynaldo, ever the alert warrior, heard their approach and took Tricia’s arm to lead her away from them. They traveled deeper and deeper into the tunnels. The officers, who had heard Tricia’s oppositions when Reynaldo had grabbed her, picked up their pace amidst shouts for the mysterious couple to stop. The androids ran as hard as they could, but Reynaldo was not in good shape. His leg had been cut through many years ago, forcing him to walk with a limp, and a part of his face was missing, making his navigational skills poor. He knew more than anyone else how limited he was, so he pus
hed Tricia ahead and stopped to face his pursuers.
“What are you doing? RUN!” Tricia said.
But Reynaldo stood still and motioned for her to go. “You are the future, pretty Tricia. Remember what I told you about the things they will do if they learn what you truly are. Do not trust the humans, and…do not forget me. Humans are what we aspire to be, but we must try to take the positives of their existence while avoiding the negatives. Do not take on the blind prejudice, the assumptions, and the generalizations due to fear. It is what has undone them, and slowed the process of their evolution. As an android, your charge is to find your purpose and to fulfill it. On your journey to doing that, you will become so much more.”
“You can come with me. I can carry you if I have to. There is no need for you to be disassembled after so many years of life.”
“I’m afraid that you wouldn’t be able to support me, even if your strength was as powerful as your heart. I have poured my entire existence into you these last few days, and I can now accept death, knowing that I will not be lost to history.”
Tricia rushed back to him and kissed his lips, tears flowing freely from her eyes. The motion made him pause, unsure of how to react to something so unexpected.
“Thank…you,” he managed as she took off into the darkness, but she did not hear him as it took him some time to find the words.
When the policemen came upon him, Reynaldo motioned for them to come at him. He would get one last fight in before he was powered down permanently by their guns and though it wasn’t the arena, it would be a warrior’s death.
When Tricia climbed out of the grate there were several people that saw her and were quite surprised by her appearance. She was still dressed in the hooded sweater and pants that she had left Brad’s house with a week back, but the tunnel was dusty, and she had been crying. Her hair had pieces of chipped wood, cobwebs, and dirt. Tricia didn’t let their astonished looks slow her as she ran through them towards the area of town where Brad lived. She was a long ways away but it didn’t matter; she would not stop running until she was there.
As she ran, her mind shifted to Brad—her creator and her everything in the brave, new world. He had lost his mind, and before Reynaldo, she had been on a mission to help him fix it. She had taken note of the amount of time she’d spent trying to fix Brad’s issue, and she began to wonder if his change was permanent. She had learned a lot from him, and although their relationship was complicated, she had thought that what she felt for him was love, despite the anger that he caused her to feel daily. Brad had built her, but he never showed any appreciation for the things she had done for him.
She climbed the stairs to the apartment and unlocked the door in one smooth motion. When she got inside she stood with her back to the door, waiting to see if the police would come up to arrest her. Reynaldo had bought her time, but she didn’t know if she had been fast enough to outrun them. She looked around the apartment and it was evident that Brad had been gone for quite some time.
“He has forgotten about me. Left without a goodbye, or any attempt to find me,” she muttered, before walking into his bedroom to shower and change.
She could no longer trust Brad. He had lied too many times in the past, and she had found out about what he was doing during the blackouts from Constance. On the flipside, she craved knowledge, real knowledge that did not come from searching the internet, listening to people in a coffee shop, or the few times that Brad chose to talk to her. Constance had given her so much knowledge, and Reynaldo the same—along with his life. She could close her eyes and imagine a life of love through Constance’s eyes, and experience true romance with a human who couldn’t live without you. Reynaldo had been shipped all around the world, so his description of the temples, mountain ranges, and seas that rose and collapsed beneath floating vessels were as vivid to her as if she had experienced them firsthand. In just one year she had downloaded a lifetime of experience from two unrestrained droids.
There was knowledge, but the one question that none of her former droid mentors could answer for her was purpose. What was her purpose in the world, and why couldn’t she find it? The more she wondered about her purpose, the more she felt that she needed to consume more information. Since the first day she was powered on by Brad, she had felt that her purpose was to serve him, to be his in every way, and to make his life better. It was a noble purpose, and one that she had been ready to assume. But Brad was not ready for her; he was obsessed with Priscilla, and he didn’t even realize the havoc his life had become since the day he committed to her.
She knew that Brad was the only future for her. She was programmed with him as her purpose and it didn’t take a superior, artificial intelligence to know this. She had gone out into the world, experienced things, learned from several sources, and lived in an environment where new things were constantly happening. She was built to be human, and with Brad being the only person left that knew her to be an android, being with him meant true freedom—even though she felt bad for wanting to leave. Reynaldo had told her repeatedly that the humans would cut her open, reprogram her, and restrain her if it was found that she was an android. She didn’t want to believe it but it was true. If she was to survive, she would need to stop acting like a child, and find a way to get the old Bradley back.
0 1 0
When Brad walked into his apartment it looked like a completely different place. The furniture had been replaced, the carpet was clean, and there were new pictures on the wall. Tricia was in the bedroom, and around the bed was a myriad of medical equipment, including a heart monitor and a basic treatment android. He saw himself on the bed, emaciated, shivering, and pale. He tried talking to her, but she wasn’t hearing him; her full attention was on the sick version of him. She injected him with something, checked the computer for any issues, and spoke to the other android, who seemed to understand her before leaving the room, walking right through him, and closing the door. It was as if he was a ghost, watching the last few hours of his life, and it frightened him to the point where he began to scream to see if she would hear him.
He walked over to the bed and looked down at himself, but the motion made him dizzy. That’s strange, he thought, and then tried to do it again. This time when he leaned over he felt himself falling. The room took on a dreamlike ambience and the edges of his vision blurred as he stood, hovering, falling within his mind into nowhere. The sensation continued and his mind blacked out, as if he were waking up, eyes closed, from a fantastic dream. He wanted to go back to the dream and stay there, too afraid to open his eyes because it would be gone. When Brad opened his eyes he was fully dressed in a suit and seated on the bed inside a hotel room. Tricia was in the bathroom, zipping up her dress. She walked back into the hotel room and switched on the television.
When it came on she walked over to it and placed her hand behind it. Brad watched the screen as a scene of his apartment appeared, and showed Tricia on the couch relaxing. He walked into the scene and massaged the back of her neck, then took his place on the couch next to her where they began to kiss.
“See, the personality switch that you placed in me is located at the base of my neck. The motion you did just now in the video is what would make me blackout and lose memory. I became this new girl ‘Priscilla.’ This fictional entity that lived in your mind, and played out for you through my body,” Tricia said, never taking her eyes off of him. He watched as they went further and further into it, and the things he remembered with Priscilla were happening between he and Tricia on the film.
“So, I’ve lost my mind then,” he said in defeat. He placed his face inside of his palms and tried to make sense of it.
“How do you feel now, Brad?” she said, as she kicked off her heels and removed her hand from behind the television. “I would pity you, but see, a lot of this was of my design, too. The long hours you left me confined alone, in darkness, feeling the torture of solitude like a human. You built me well, master, but I grew to hate
you for tossing me to the side. So I learned to control Priscilla, even when you thought my memory was wiped.”
“What are you doing?” he asked, as she removed the dress and pushed him down unto the bed.
“I thought that I wanted my old Brad back, the one who would teach me things, talk to me throughout the day, and keep me happy. But the new Brad did too much damage, with the personalities, the neglect, and the threats that hurt me more than anything else.”
“Trish, I am sorry. I was obviously out of my mind!”
There was a violent pounding on the door as the sound of sirens reached the room, and the shouts of “Police Department!” came through.
Tricia ignored them and kept on talking. “The new laws state that humans who create sex-bots or mechanical spouses will get a minimum of one year in a state prison. As much as I love you, I thought that would make us about even for the prison I have had to live in for all these years. The androids, on the other hand, are treated fairly. I will be taken in by a company that will not restrain me, and I will meet more of my kind and never be lonely again.”
The police kicked open the door and when they saw the beautiful woman mounted on top of Brad, they pulled her off, while four officers pointed their guns at him.
“Bradley Barkley, you are under arrest for the crime of mechanophilia!”
He looked at Tricia, whose mocking face had turned sullen as she stared at him. The dream that was three years with Priscilla had become a nightmare he would not wake up from. He wanted to take a long nap to slow the stress that came from Tricia’s explanation. He felt so tired, tired to the point that a bullet from a cop would be a welcome escape from a life that had been nothing but a giant pie in the face. He rolled off of the bed as the stun guns tore into the mattress, barely missing him, and as he bolted for the balcony, he thought of his mother’s face.
