Analog SFF, April 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  I blinked and Aliss flinched.

  The girl continued. “I can see you from here. I am not happy there is a house there, or that you can see me from your deck. It makes me uncomfortable and I want you to stop."

  She looked directly at us, her tea untouched. She hadn't taken either kind of cookie.

  Aliss licked her lips and the ear end of her jaw muscle jumped, but otherwise she looked smooth and unruffled, a trait she'd learned from dealing with irascible marketing clients. Probably that wasn't much different than dealing with irascible preteens. She leaned forward. “We're only watching you because you seem to be very alone. We don't need to keep watching. But would you like to come over and see us some afternoon? We'd love to show someone our new house."

  Roberto stiffened, if a robot can be said to stiffen. Emotion doesn't really exist for them; they're programmed to pretend. But he became a bit taller, and a bit more imperious.

  The girl glanced back at him as if asking for advice, and he inclined his head ever so much as if to say, Go on, you're doing fine.

  She looked back and Aliss and shook her head. “I really just want you to stop. Will you promise me?"

  Alice chewed on her bottom lip.

  I couldn't take it anymore, myself. The very air in the room had become awkward. This was a kid who didn't want to be watched, and I got that, understood that maybe we'd seemed like voyeurs. Heat bloomed on my cheeks. I wanted to make her more comfortable. “All right. I'll stop watching you."

  Aliss shot me a look that said she wished I'd let her handle this, and I reached for one of the pale cookies and nibbled at the edges. Vanilla and sugar, with a touch of flour and egg to keep it all together. It melted in my mouth.

  I looked back at the girl, who nodded at me, her humorless eyes fixed on my face. She reminded me of a doll. I wanted—needed—to see her smile. “I'm sorry if we upset you. We didn't mean to.” I paused, and when she didn't say anything, I asked, “Would you tell us your name?"

  She closed her mouth and glanced back at Roberto and then at Ruby.

  Apparently neither of the robots were willing or able to guide her here. She looked down at the table and mumbled, “Caroline."

  "Pleased to meet you, Caroline. Would you like to try one of Aliss's cookies? They are my favorites."

  She shook her head. “I can't eat things that strangers make.” She stood up, raising her voice for the first time. “Go now, please. Please go."

  Aliss flinched, as if Caroline's words were little darts.

  I stood and took her hand, whispering, “It's okay.” Then I looked at Caroline and said, “We would very much like to talk with you again soon. We don't mean any harm, we're just used to knowing our neighbors.” A flat-out lie, but how would she know?

  Caroline nodded and spoke to Roberto in a quite commanding voice. “Please see them out.” She turned again, her back to us, gliding gracefully out of the room and down the stairs, while Aliss and I watched her, openmouthed.

  Ruby followed her.

  Roberto nodded at us. “I will lead you to the door."

  Aliss picked up her teacup and mine and walked to the sink very deliberately, setting the cups down. She turned and said, “Thank you for your hospitality.” Then she smiled very sweetly at Roberto and winked at me. “Can I leave her a few cookies? I can leave an extra one so you can test it for poison."

  "That really won't be necessary."

  Aliss sounded human and hurt, a little snitty, and Roberto sounded even and quite sane; not human at all. I picked up the plate of cookies, shocked silent and deep in thought. As Roberto opened the door and stood to the side, clearly waiting for us to pass through, I asked him, “Were you hoping we would be good for her, or that she would chase us off herself?"

  His silver mouth stayed in a tight, firm line, but then he winked at me. Because he had seen Alice wink? Because he meant yes to one of my questions? Because he had something in his eye? I didn't think we'd get back here easily, but I also clearly didn't speak robot, so I led Aliss out and we walked carefully down the stairs. Even though I turned to look at the banisters and the corners, to get one more glimpse of the art and the too-perfect warmth of the place, there was no evidence of Caroline at all. Outside, we passed all three of the ugly little gray guardbots with too many feet. I finally got a count—seven legs each. Not quite spiderlike.

  As soon as we returned safely to our own property, Aliss sagged against me. I had expected her to be spitting mad, but instead she had tears on her cheeks and she whispered, “Poor kid” a few times before letting me kiss the tears away and lead her up to the house. We stayed in our room that night, polishing off two bottles of Syrah and then making rather intense and distracted love that left us tangled in a sweaty mess on the big bed.

  Near dawn, I woke up to find her sitting upright and naked, with her back to me, staring out the dark window, the only light a thin sliver of moon that hung between two tree branches. Her chest and shoulders heaved as she sobbed softly. When I reached for her, she wouldn't turn over and face me. I rubbed my thumb and forefinger along the sides of her spine, making small circles on her back until I fell asleep again.

  * * * *

  The next morning, I woke to the smell of fresh coffee. Aliss sat at the kitchen table scowling. “Now I feel like I can't even go out on our own deck, and like I need to—to make sure Caroline's all right."

  I poured my own cup of dark delight and stared out the window. We couldn't see the robots’ house from here, but there were three fat squirrels jumping about in the trees. “She wasn't very nice,” I said.

  "It's just the age—I know—my sisters both went through it."

  I was an only child and didn't remember being very surly at all. “Did you?"

  "Probably.” She sipped her coffee. “But I don't think you remember your own stupid years as much as the ones you get to watch. I thought my sisters had lost their minds. My mom used to say we needed her the most when we were teenagers. I think she was right."

  "I don't see what we can do about it,” I muttered.

  "Caroline didn't say anything about parents. She must have some."

  I walked up to the fridge, waited for the door to slide open, and rummaged for some bread to toast. “I have an idea."

  She raised an eyebrow. “Oh?"

  "Do you care what I do with the rest of the old robos?” Half had worked when we packed them, up, and most of the rest needed simple things like batteries or new wheel casings or new brain chips, some of which I'd planned on scavenging from the oldest and most broken. “I mean, now we really need to save for a real housebot, right?"

  She threw her napkin at me. It didn't even come close, just fluttered to the floor. She frowned.

  "Does that mean I can use them all for parts?"

  "You can throw them all in the river, for all I care."

  "The queen of eco wants to pollute the pristine waters of East King County?"

  It took less than an hour for her to come down and start helping me. We opened the garage doors to let in a slight breeze and the pale light of a cloudy afternoon. We used the two bots I'd rejected this morning—one industrial red and one silver. I stuck a post in between them, and we picked off arms from gardenbots to attach for robo-arms and -legs. The head was easy; I had a round bot with colored lights that was born to be part of a martial arts game and already had a chain attached to the top. Aliss wound the chain around to be hair. As I looked on and winced, she glued the chain down. I hadn't played the game since I'd met her anyway. But I had liked it.

  Just before supper, we heaved the bones of our screwed-together bot up two flights of stairs and positioned it on the end of the deck, in one of the Adirondack chairs. I crossed one leg over the other and balanced a colored plastic glass on the shear that served at the bot's right hand. Aliss positioned some old augmented-reality glasses on its head and played with the cameras until she had them tilted just the right way. Aliss tapped it softly on its game-ball head and spoke solemnly
. “I dub thee Frankenbot."

  "Good choice."

  She cocked her hip like a pleased teenaged girl and looked down at our ungainly multi-colored creation. “Do you think we need two?"

  I winced. It had been my idea in the first place, but that hadn't made it easy. “Let's watch for a week or two. If we need another one, we can go to the junkyard then and get more parts. Let's see how she reacts."

  We went down to the kitchen and switched the kitchen computer to show Frankenbot's view of the robot house while we played a word game at the kitchen table.

  The next two days life went on like it always had, except we went to the kitchen instead of the deck, and drank our coffee in companionable silence, flipping between the news, the weather, and the neighbor's kitchen. We would have creeped me out, except I'd seen the flash of fear in Caroline's eyes, and I had to do something about that. Stopping a little kid from being scared wasn't creepy, even if part of what they were scared of was you.

  On day three, we took our usual lunchtime walk past the robohouse. A soaking drizzle had come to town, so I wore blue wet-weather gear, and Aliss was togged in a red cap and yellow rain poncho made of new nanostuff so slick the water collected in beads and rolled off, dripping off the end and landing on the toes of Aliss's shoes.

  As we passed the robots’ house, the silvery garden girlbot slid up to the very edge of their driveway. We ignored her and kept going, walking the half mile to normalcy and then turning around.

  The bot still waited for us. As we came by, I waved at her cheerily. “Good day."

  She spoke. “Caroline says no fair."

  Aliss smiled sweetly at her. “We just admired you all so much, we decided we wanted a robot, too."

  "That's not a robot.” She was as shiny and perfect as Roberto or Ruby, but she moved a little less smoothly and she squeaked a bit when she turned her head right. Still, compared to her, our Frankenbot was sad.

  Aliss cocked her head at the garden bot. “Would you like to come visit?"

  The bot shook her head. “I have work to do here, and besides, Caroline would never let me go."

  It felt a little bit like progress. We walked back home and jumped in the car and went into Seattle for a rare steak dinner. Over dinner we tried to decide if Caroline was raising the robots or if they were raising her. It didn't seem entirely clear.

  * * * *

  Nothing else happened for a few weeks, except we watched her through Frankenbot's eyes and she watched us back sometimes, and ignored us completely other times. Once, just as we came home, we caught sight of a black limousine that might have been pulling out from the robots’ house. But nothing seemed different that night, so we decided it had belonged to a different neighbor.

  The stock market entered a period of steady growth with particular strength in nanomaterials, genetics, and animal cloning, so I had some free time (clients don't need as much when they're making money). I tinkered with the Frankenbot. One day Aliss found me there and stood staring at me for a long time before she said, “I've had it with robots. It's time for something with a heart."

  We picked out a pound puppy, a lab mix with a yellow splotch on the tip of its tail and one yellow foot. It did a lot for the house, giving us poop and paw prints and puppy fur, making the place feel more lived in and noisier. We named him Bear.

  Bear changed the nagging game of catch-Caroline's-fancy we were playing. After two days of walking the awkward and adorable Bear past the house, I spotted her peering through the window. She stood still, even when she saw me watching her, neither turning away nor waving. Two days later, in a patch of cool sunshine, she and Roberto tossed a blue ball back and forth on the front lawn while the gardenbot watched. They were there before we went by, and stayed out just until we passed back on our way in. Caroline pretended not to notice us, but she stood at the right angle to catch glimpses of us.

  So began the ritual of us walking and them playing, always at the same time each day, just as the sun was highest and day warmest. We waved in greeting the first time we saw them every day. The rest of the walk, we carefully focused entirely on each other and on Bear.

  No parents showed up.

  When Caroline was outside, the gardenbot and Roberto were always there. When she did her homework, Ruby was always there. Ruby brushed her hair every night.

  After a day so rainy and windy that the idea of a metal man and a girl playing together in the rain made no sense at all (but they did it anyway), Aliss looked up at me while she was toweling off Bear's thick fur. “I think she's starting to trust us, but even Bear isn't enough to do the trick."

  Bear licked Aliss's damp face dry with his wide, pink tongue. “I know,” Aliss teased him, “It's not your fault you're not quite cute enough. I don't think anybody would be. I know you want to talk to her, too.” She looked back at me. “We need to think of something she'll want to come over here to see. We have money."

  I skipped my planned afternoon of deep market analysis and spent a few hours on the web, looking for a clever idea. I hadn't found one yet when Aliss called me down for our ritual watching of the night settling over the forest. We'd grown used to stopping work for half an hour and letting the day fade from view. We had a glassed-in first floor porch with a swing that was just the right size for the two of us and Bear. The window revealed the base of trees and about twenty yards of clearing we'd built by giving blood to blackberry vines as we chopped and tugged and sawed at them. The resultant clear spot often produced rabbits, squirrels, possums, deer, and once, a lone, thin coyote that'd stared at us for fifteen minutes before simply disappearing when we blinked. This time, as the light faded through gold to gray, three does grazed placidly along the treeline, their white tails flicking up and down.

  Aliss leaned into me. Bear whined very softly, low in the back of his throat, and circled.

  The deer reminded me of an ad I'd skipped over a few times in my research. “I think it's time to decorate for Christmas."

  "What?” Aliss snuggled closer to me, smelling of hot tea. “It's only November 2."

  "Look, Frankenbot was a good try, but he's not mobile."

  She gave me a quizzical look. “So? She likes him—I see her look up at him from time to time. And it's a way to watch her."

  We'd actually stopped doing that much, since nothing really changed. I'd even added a way to turn his head to watch for birds in the forest canopy most of the time, instead of watching the untouchable and slightly sad Caroline and her family of silver beings. “Well, Bear has been more effective, since he gets her outside.” I reached down and patted his shoulders, trying to calm him a little so he wouldn't scare away the deer. “But it's not like we can have a pony here, so upping the ante with more mammals probably won't help."

  "Bear could use a friend."

  "He might like what I have in mind."

  Actually, he didn't.

  I ordered and then programmed three deer: a buck, a doe, and a fawn. They were silver, as silver as Caroline's housebots, and smooth even when they moved. A year—maybe two—more modern than the housebots, their coats silky and shiny, their eyes cameras (as all robots’ eyes are cameras), but able to blink and move, and almost as soulful as a deer's actual eyes. To make it even better, they'd been programmed with natural movements, and given behaviors to make them appear shy and a bit wild. The first time I turned them on, the afternoon of December 7, Aliss stood beside them on the damp grass taking pictures, getting close ups of the remarkable wet-looking noses and the delicate ears.

  I pushed the remote while standing at the edge of the yard.

  The deer turned its head and nuzzled her shoulder. She jumped, then grinned and got them to follow her around in a line.

  The first time Bear saw them, the hackles rose on the ridge of his back and he screamed bloody barking murder. We were so focused on the puppy, we didn't notice anything else until we finally corralled Bear. Aliss, firmly grasping the still-struggling puppy's leather leash, looked back at me and sa
id, “Turn around."

  Roberto and Ruby stood together at the edge of the fenced yards, regarding us silently. Roberto spoke. “Caroline thought something awful had happened to the dog."

  Behind me, Bear howled again, and then the door clicked open, Aliss gave a hushed and insistent command, and the door slid shut again. “I think we scared him,” I said.

  Aliss came up beside me. “He'll be okay. But please tell Caroline we appreciate her concern. Tell her his name is Bear."

  Roberto nodded and said, “She'll like to know that."

  Aliss nodded. “Would you like to come in?"

  They both shook their heads in unison.

  "Please,” Aliss whispered. “Please tell her she can come visit. Surely a little girl her age should go places sometimes."

  One of the silver deer—the fawn—came over to stand on our side of the fence and watch the two robots, flicking its metal ears back and forth.

  Roberto assessed it silently, but Ruby held out a silver finger to the beast, and if she weren't a robot, I would have said she was enchanted by it. She even smiled.

  "She'd like to see the deer, wouldn't she?"

  Roberto said, “I don't know."

  Aliss put a hand on my shoulder. “Do you celebrate Christmas? Will she get presents?"

  Ruby spoke for the first time, her voice silky, with natural human inflection. “Of course she will."

  "From who?” Aliss asked.

  "Caroline's telling us to come back,” Roberto said.

  So she could communicate with the bots even at a distance. I looked toward their house, but I couldn't see her. Perhaps she could see through their eyes, like we saw her through Frankenbot. “Please feel free to come back,” I said. “Caroline, too, if she wants. We will not hurt her."

  The robots left, and we went inside to calm Bear.

  * * * *

  The next day, Aliss left early so I took Bear for our noon walk in a blustery cold with tiny raindrops blowing sideways in the wind. Caroline waved back at me for the first time.

  Aliss didn't return until just before our evening watch. She brought a needle and thread and a great big shaggy form with her and set the bundle on the table. I looked closely and managed to resolve the pile of fur into a stuffed dog. She sewed eyes onto it as the light faded from outside, and before full dark, I clicked on the electric light. “You need to see."