Tell the Machine Goodnight

by Katie Williams

  —

  THE MEETING WITH APRICITY was scheduled in the morning, which left Calla an entire night to stalk the rooms of her house. She was restless, imagining the role she might inhabit. She pictured her own body, but dim-eyed and slack-jawed, pictured herself stepping inside it like a suit, bringing it to life and motion. As Apricity, Pearl’s colleague had said. He probably meant a spokesperson. Calla was already the face of a perfume, a screen, a clothing line, and a children’s charity.

  As Apricity, Calla thought to herself as she wandered past her pretend boyfriend, who was sprawled on the couch napping.

  As Apricity, she thought as she climbed the stairs to the bathroom, fumbling around in the vanity until she found the polish wand and nail clippers. She sat on the edge of the tub, using the wand to drain the color from her nails and then the clippers to cut them, letting the cloudy slivers of fingernail fall to the floor. She winced as she cut her thumbnail too low, the skin beneath a newborn pink. She swept the cuttings into her hand, thought, A small fortune, and sprinkled them in the trash under the sink.

  Then she went back downstairs and touched her pretend boyfriend on his arm, which was dangling off the side of the couch. He opened one eye immediately, like an owl or a cat. So her pretend boyfriend had been pretend sleeping. He rose and followed her to her bedroom, though she hadn’t said, Come with me, or so much as smiled. They stopped in the middle of her room and stood awkwardly facing each other.

  “Like a six?” He raised his eyebrows. “A seven?”

  She winced. “This isn’t part of your contract.”

  “Hey. I was only kidding.”

  He took a step forward and, after a pause, touched her wincing cheek.

  The sex was strange. Calla couldn’t help but think that he was caressing her body parts in order, top to tail, like he had some sort of checklist in his head. And his sneer that she had so liked before? Now she wanted it gone. The sneer finally melted away in the seconds before he came, but his face without it felt like something she didn’t have the right to see, so she closed her eyes, feigning ecstasy.

  After, he stood naked at the end of her bed, his skin flushed with pleasure or embarrassment, Calla couldn’t think about which. He balled his underwear in his hand.

  “That was nice,” Calla said, silently applying the equation of downgrade by one. Amazingly her pretend boyfriend seemed to accept this faint praise with a bashful smile. Then he shimmied into his jeans and returned to his couch.

  Calla was certain she would have nightmares, maybe of leathery bat wings or a shelf with her body parts stored in a row of bottles. But she fell asleep and, a moment later it seemed, opened her eyes to morning.

  * * *

  —

  THE APRICITY OFFICE was deep in the business district, where the height of the buildings made the midmorning shadows spiky. Calla watched the shadows stretch from inside the car, their edges sharpening by the minute. She watched the crowds of people walking along the grids of sidewalk like some elaborately coded machine. She turned sideways in her seat and put her feet against the car door, wedging her heels on the armrest. Calla could come on the ride to the meeting—Marilee had finally agreed to this much in the face of Calla’s stubborn pleas—but she would stay in the car. Calla and her pretend boyfriend had been waiting curbside for over an hour.

  Pretend Boyfriend passed the time by constantly changing the radio station; a singer couldn’t finish a line without being interrupted by the flick of his wrist. Now that they were alone, Calla wondered if he would bring up the night before. She’d expected him to try to sneak things today: a kiss, a caress, even a shared look. But he’d stayed at the periphery, as usual, dutifully extending his arm around her shoulders in public, retracting it once the car doors slammed closed. Calla wasn’t sure if she was relieved or disappointed by his inattention.

  Mostly she was frustrated. Marilee and Pearl and everyone else were up there in that office building making decisions about her like she was some kind of product, some—Calla reached for the word—commodity. She kicked her feet against the door in a soft one-two, a tiny temper tantrum. Then she realized she didn’t need to kick the door; she could simply open it if she wanted to. She sat up and did so.

  Her pretend boyfriend whipped around. “What are you doing?”

  “Going to the meeting.”

  She swung the door open the rest of the way and, despite his protests, launched herself out of the car. She landed on the pavement, nearly colliding with a passing bike messenger.

  “Shit!” The messenger skidded to a stop. She was scabbed up and tatted up, so much so that it was hard to tell one from the other. “Don’t you even look when—?” She caught sight of Calla’s face. “You’re Calla Pax.”

  Calla thought she should tell her pretend boyfriend that this was what being famous was like, people repeatedly telling you that you’re yourself.

  Just then, behind the bike messenger, Pearl exited the Apricity building and headed down the sidewalk at a fast clip.

  “Pearl!” Calla called. No luck. “Pearl!”

  Meanwhile, the messenger was fumbling for her screen. Calla darted around her and jogged down the sidewalk in the direction Pearl had gone. She could see Pearl just ahead now, the swing of her green coat. She pushed rudely past a man in screen specs—“Hey!” he said—leapt over a small dog, grabbed Pearl’s arm, and spun her around.

  Pearl stared at her, then past her. Calla looked back, too. Her pretend boyfriend and the bike messenger were following after. The bike messenger had her screen held out in front of her, filming Calla.

  “Can we talk?” Calla said.

  Pearl, ever efficient, nodded once and scanned the area. “Let’s—” She gestured toward a privacy kiosk at the end of the block.

  They tacked toward it, the lunch crowd slowing them down, the pretend boyfriend and bike messenger still in pursuit. When they reached the kiosk, Pearl took her screen from her pocket. A few taps on it and the door swung open.

  “What about them?” Pearl asked.

  The other two had caught up.

  “Him, not her,” Calla said, grabbing her pretend boyfriend by the sleeve.

  The three of them crowded into the kiosk. The bike messenger didn’t try to follow them, just kept filming through the transparent kiosk door as it slid closed, her expression benignly startled. Luckily, the kiosk was free of litter and urine stink. The unlock price was high enough that the kiosks were usually pretty clean, but sometimes post-happy-hour business types considered it worth the cost to stumble in for a pee.

  “Japanese garden, Edo period,” Calla said.

  The kiosk walls stayed clear; some of the passersby were now glancing curiously at the filming bike messenger.

  “It’s an older model.” Pearl was checking her screen. “Basic options.”

  “Nighttime. Beach. Winter,” the pretend boyfriend said.

  The kiosk walls went dark, blocking out the messenger and the street. Behind them a black ocean turned, battering itself on the bone-white sand that sifted beneath their feet. Above them, a night sky pricked with stars. The regular pattern of the stars had been strategically scratched out, creating eyes and a mouth: a smiley face. Calla smiled back at the face in the sky.

  “Was that woman chasing you?” Pearl asked.

  “Kind of. Maybe. Yeah.”

  Pearl crossed her arms and rubbed her hands along them like she could feel the wintry temperature of the beach, though the kiosk was, if anything, overly warm. “Should we call Marilee?”

  “No,” Calla said. “You should tell me what’s going on in the meeting.”

  Calla’s pretend boyfriend began to say something. Calla touched his wrist to signal for him to be quiet, but he must’ve mistaken her intent because he took her hand in his. To Calla’s surprise, she let him.

  “‘As Apricity,’” Calla said,
the words that had been on a loop in her mind. “That Carter guy said they wanted to hire me ‘as Apricity.’ What does he mean?”

  Pearl sighed. “He wants your voice. He thinks clients will like it better if the machine speaks to them.”

  “In my voice?”

  “They’d record you saying a list of syllables, phonemes, common words, and then they have software that puts it all together so that it sounds like you’re talking. Or rather, that the machine is talking as you. So”—Pearl gestured, palms up—“that’s the job.”

  Calla tried to imagine it, those little silver boxes making their pronouncements in her voice. She opened her mouth, closed it, suddenly afraid to make a sound.

  “There’s something else,” Calla made herself say. “Yesterday you said those people—” She indicated the patch of starry sky that used to be the kiosk door.

  “Were my fault,” Pearl interrupted. She bit her lip and nodded. “They are. It was us. Apricity.”

  “How?”

  “When Carter first had the idea about using your voice, he needed proof people would like it. So I suggested—” Pearl put a thumb to her chest, repeated, “I suggested that he float it on the web, in certain forums. He couldn’t ask about the idea directly and, well, it got garbled. That Calla Pax would be telling people how to be happy became that Calla Pax could make people happy. And it somehow—somehow—turned into this.”

  “But you don’t know for sure that—” Calla began.

  “I do, though. I went back and tracked what Carter posted, where it went. It was us. Me. And I’m so, so sorry.”

  “You don’t have to be sorry.”

  “Of course I’m sorry. I don’t want you to be hurt. I was so angry at Marilee when I found you in that tank, that coffin, covered in bugs. And now I’ve done it to you myself.” She threw her hands in the air. “Now we’re in this goddamn clear coffin together.”

  She’d raised her voice, and when she said the word clear, the kiosk heard it as a command. The stars fell away. The ocean turned in on itself once more and rolled up into the horizon. The walls became transparent again, revealing the city street outside. Except now you couldn’t see the city street or the city sidewalk or the city anything. All you could see were the people crowding around the kiosk.

  The bike messenger was still outside the kiosk door, still filming. She must have simul-streamed on her feed or texted other bike messengers, or maybe she didn’t do any of those things and word had spread however word spreads. Whatever the cause, there were now dozens of people out there, maybe a hundred. The entire kiosk was surrounded. And when the walls went clear, the crowd could see Calla.

  They didn’t scream or stampede. They didn’t try to heave the kiosk on its side. They simply shifted, minutely and mightily. They shifted closer until their hands were pressed against the kiosk walls, until Calla could see the lines of their palms, a dozen forked roads of fortune.

  “What do we do?” her pretend boyfriend said.

  Pearl was saying Marilee’s name into her screen over and over again. To Calla their panicked voices sounded small and far off, like she’d set down her screen in the middle of a call and begun to walk away.

  Pearl had gotten through to Marilee. She was trying to explain the situation, Calla’s pretend boyfriend piping up with extra information. And so the two of them were slow to notice when Calla slipped her hand out of her pretend boyfriend’s hand and pulled open the kiosk door.

  The crowd, however, was waiting for her. When Calla opened the door, there was a soft gasp that sounded strangely like an echo of the kiosk door unsealing itself. The people nearest the door edged back, ceding Calla the space to step out onto the sidewalk. She could feel Pearl and the pretend boyfriend at her back, trying to grab her and pull her in, but the crowd filled in behind them and blocked their grasping hands. Calla took another step forward, and again, the crowd let her make her path. She took another step, and as if she had decreed it, the hands began to pat her gently, so gently, marking out the boundary between her body and empty space.

  9

  The Furniture Is Familiar

  And so I am back. A year and a hundred years later. My room smells like it belongs in another house, a different family’s oils and soaps. Is this how I used to smell? Only the lizardy stink of Lady is familiar. I tap the glass hello. She’s in the back behind her branches. At my tap, she jukes her head and keeps me in her peripheral vision.

  My bedroom walls are covered with an image of the algae bloom along the coast, fluorescent and scummy. I set them that way months ago, when I was home for winter break. I’d just finished an oceanography class and was all fired up about how we pretend we’re not putting poison in our bathwater. The algae walls are ugly, but they’re honest. I bet Mom’s wanted to reset my walls every day since winter break. Of course, she could’ve just shut the door to my room, but she wouldn’t be able to bring herself to do that. Mom. She’d have to leave the door open at least a crack.

  The algae mills on the surface of the water, frilled with tiny bubbles. Being home from college for the summer is like sleeping over at a friend’s house you’ve only ever visited in the afternoon. The furniture is familiar, but the light has gone funny on you.

  Mom knocks on the door frame. I wonder how long she’s been there watching me, but then what’s she going to see? Her standing there, watching me standing here, watching the walls?

  “What would you like for dinner?” She smiles bravely. “The cafeteria ladies at your dorm gave me all their best recipes—tuna noodle casserole, chicken Kiev, mystery meat.”

  The joke is awkward. The topic of food is still awkward, though we both wish it weren’t. Which, of course, is what makes it awkward. All that wishing.

  “Tuesdays were taco night,” I say.

  “Taco Tuesdays?”

  “The alliteration makes them taste better.”

  She smiles, for real this time. And okay. I’m glad for it.

  “But the lettuce was always wilted,” I press on. “Did they teach you how to wilt the lettuce?”

  Mom doesn’t miss a beat. “They taught me all their tricks.”

  My screen chitters at me. I don’t want to look at it in front of her, but I can’t make myself wait. I slide the screen out of my pocket, unfold it, and glance. And yeah, it’s from Saff. A picture I can’t decipher. A fold of fabric? A burl of wood?

  Mom is purposely looking past me while I check my screen, which is a sort of privacy, I guess? “Terrible,” she sighs.

  It takes me a second to figure out she’s talking about the algae bloom. She reaches out and touches the wall, which flickers under her fingers, making it look like the algae is sinking and resurfacing. It’s not good for the wall to touch it like that, but I don’t bother telling her. She already knows.

  “Scientists engineered a type of eel to eat the algae overgrowth,” I say, something I learned in that oceanography class.

  “Did it work?”

  “Kind of? The eel ate the algae. And then a couple species of fish.”

  “Poor fish.”

  “Hey, that’s what you get for trusting an eel . . .”

  She raises her eyebrows in a question.

  “Everyone knows they’re slippery,” I say. Bah-dum-bum.

  Mom smiles again. And again, I’m glad for it. Though mostly I want her to get out of here so I can look at my screen in peace.

  * * *

  —

  SHE FINALLY GOES TO THE STORE. For taco ingredients. When the HMS announces her gone, I take my screen back out and study the picture Saff sent me, projecting it big on the ceiling so that I can try to make out what it is.

  I’m pretty sure it’s a picture of the opposite side of her elbow. You know, that little crinkly place on the inside of your arm that marks where it bends. It’s hard to tell for sure, though, because the picture is taken up cl
ose and the lighting is dim and Saff’s skin is already dark to begin with, but I think that’s what it is. The opposite of Saff’s elbow.

  And I guess I should add that I only think it’s Saff who’s sending me these pictures. They come in from an unknown number. I got the first one in mid-January, a week after Saff and I decided that since we were at different colleges in different cities living different lives, we probably shouldn’t talk or write to each other anymore. We shouldn’t talk or write . . . then in came a picture.

  The first picture was of somewhere crowded, the angle low to the ground, the blur of legs and shoe leather, everyone walking at a fast clip. A train station, I thought maybe. A few days later my screen lit up with another picture, a few days later another, and so on and et cetera. After a while, I started sending my own pictures back.

  I can’t ask Saff if the pictures are from her because of our no-talking, no-writing deal. Besides, this summer she’s staying in Evanston with her new boyfriend. Or so she told Ellie, who told Josiah, who told me. Maybe Saff’s boyfriend is the one who took the picture of her arm.

  I snap a shot of the algae on my wall and send it back to the unknown number.

  Before I even put my screen down, it chitters again. (My ringtone of choice: deathwatch beetle. Extinct 2029.) This time it’s not Saff, but my roommate, Zihao. Well, ex-roommate, technically, since the school year is over and we now inhabit different rooms. Zi is at the airport. He wants me to know that he’s tired and that the line for coffee is very long. This is communicated through emojis, Zi’s preferred language. He argues that emoji is a more sophisticated form of communication than words alone, but I suspect the real reason is that Zi likes to watch the images wiggle and dance. After all, Zi is always in motion.

  If I fall asleep in line for coffee will the people behind pick me up and carry me to the front? he texts. This idea actually requires some language; only half of it is in emoji.

  I tell him no, that the people in line will fit a bunch of straws together to make one long straw. They’ll put one end in the coffeepot behind the counter and the other in his mouth.