Barren Cove (6 page)

She walked out of town, choosing the high ground for the return.

8.

ASIMOV 3000 WATCHED
over the boy. He hadn't reset the night before, and he was afraid to reset now. He was afraid to leave the boy's side. What had his daughter been thinking? Couldn't she see how pale the boy was? He stood up and crossed the room. The day's early light streamed through the lace curtains, casting the room in an opal glow. It didn't seem fitting for the gravity of the sickbed. He would bring the boy water. He would wake him, force the liquid into him. She hadn't brought water!

At the door, Asimov 3000 turned back and looked at the small form sleeping in the bed. Master Vandley had laid in that bed, also shrunken, his biological children long since gone, first from his house, then from this life, victims of the plague that had never reached Barren Cove. And yet, what difference had that made? Master Vandley had been so sick anyway—hours upon hours Asimov 3000 had watched over his body. Yes, he knew how to take care of a sick human. The fresh bread that Mary had made yesterday morning had fooled him, made him
trust her, causing him to forget—his own children didn't know humans. He couldn't blame her.

The water. He was afraid to leave. Surely it would be fine for just a moment.

He went down the hall. As he passed Mary's room, he looked in to find her sitting in her chair in front of the vanity. She was asleep, though. Kent called from his room. “Father?”

“I'm getting water,” Asimov 3000 answered as he passed by, and went downstairs without looking in on his son. In the kitchen, Asimov 3000's system froze just inside the swinging door, paralyzing him for a moment. He needed to go forward, to go forward, to go forward, and yet he was riveted to the floor. Take a step, he thought. Water. Take a step. But his system remained frozen. And then he was walking across the room to the cabinet. He filled a glass with water and headed back upstairs.

Beachstone hadn't moved. Asimov 3000 set the glass of water on the nightstand beside the bed and then took up his seat. He hadn't just skipped rebooting the night before. He hadn't rebooted the whole week of Beachstone's illness. The freeze in the kitchen—he should sleep. “Beachstone,” he said.

The boy slept on.

Master Vandley had had so much to say, even in the end. “It is only fitting,” he had said so often. It was only fitting that Asimov 3000 have Barren Cove. It was only fitting that male and female robots have different programming, a new development at that time. “You'll be one of the last that can procreate asexually,” Master Vandley had said. The last time Asimov 3000 had been to town he had felt out of place even among the robots.

Master Vandley had been right. When Asimov 3000 built Kent and then Mary, he encoded them each with a discrete sex. It was only fitting, then, that he didn't understand them any better than they understood their new brother. Beachstone
didn't know why he had been left on the beach or by whom, or at least that was what he claimed, and so Asimov 3000 didn't know either, but he knew that he was meant to bring the boy home. He knew that there needed to be a human in Master Vandley's bed again. He knew that Kent had cut the boy. And he worried about that.

But Mary had taken to the boy like, well, like a human, like the way Master Vandley's daughter had taken to the town boy. But Mary had still hurt him—no water! He tried to wake Beachstone again. He had to.

He stood and shook the boy. Beachstone mumbled in his sleep, shrugged away from Asimov 3000, and then opened his eyes. “You need to drink,” Asimov 3000 said, holding up the glass.

Beachstone took it and brought it to his lips. He began to gulp.

“Slowly.”

Beachstone stopped, coughing, then belched, and then started drinking again, watching Asimov 3000 with big eyes.

Perhaps he needed to worry that Mary had taken to the boy so closely as well. When Beachstone finished, he took the glass. “How do you feel?”

“We made it to the town,” Beachstone said, breaking into a large smile.

“What were you thinking?” Asimov 3000 asked.

“Nobody was awake,” the boy said, and then went back to sleep.

Asimov 3000 sat down. I should go fill the glass again, he thought. He didn't get up. I should sleep. But he watched the boy breathe instead. His chest rose and fell, a deep intake, a short burst out through the nose. Rose and fell. Asimov 3000's own children breathed. It was another robot innovation, a
clever illusion that the humans hadn't thought to include and that robots had taken on themselves. A slight rise and fall of the chest at the right time, and we were oh so human.

He would have to explain to Mary how delicate Beachstone was, although he thought that yesterday would be enough of a lesson. I would have thought last week would have been enough of a lesson, but I guess I would have been wrong. No, yesterday was enough of a lesson.

Asimov 3000 realized that he had not leaned back when he intended to lean back. He tried again. He couldn't. Tried again. Leaned back too hard, as all three commands acted at once. He kicked out his legs to prevent the chair from tipping back.

Master Vandley had had a human from town come and take care of the new will. The human had brought an assistant to act as a witness. Asimov 3000 was a permissible second witness. The will had been unnecessary, but Master Vandley had been a businessman, and he liked his business tidy. Barren Cove was Asimov 3000's. Its clean running water, which had been unused for five years, was Asimov 3000's.

Beachstone breathed.

Asimov 3000 would have liked to see him grow up. But that also meant seeing him grow old. I should reboot, Asimov 3000 thought. I should sleep. And yet, perhaps it was only fitting if the children took over. At least they would have known a human.

9.

“OPENING CLOSETS?”

I looked up to see Clarke stepping into the cabana, and then, before I could answer him, the bicycle girl appeared behind him. Flustered, I turned my head every which way, scanning around me as though I had lost something, avoiding seeing them.

Dean shut off her recording. The sound of the ocean filled the sudden silence.

Clarke sat at the table and kicked his legs up. “That's the past, Sapien. Old news. Time to live in the now.”

The bicycle girl circled in place, spinning only one wheel while keeping the other stationary. I watched her as she surveyed the room. “Can I help you?” I said.

Clarke's momentum was thrown off by the question. He must have planned his entrance but hadn't thought beyond that, let alone what to do if I actually answered. He took his legs down and leaned on the table. “That's Jenny,” he said. “Jenny, Sapien.”

Jenny turned and looked at me. “Hi,” she said. I hid my damaged hand under the table. Aside from the bicycle wheels and the pink hair, she appeared normal in every way. Clarke was much more monstrous. I tried to catch her eye, but she was looking at something on the floor that I couldn't see because Clarke was in the way. Besides, I had seen the floor many times; it was just tile.

“Sapien!” Clarke said, drawing my attention. He hadn't anticipated the effect Jenny would have on me. He wanted me disconcerted, but he wanted me to listen to him. “We came to invite you to party.”

“Party?”

He pulled out some memory chips from his pocket and tossed them on the table. They clinked against the glass. “We're gonna get fucked up, you know? Go into town. Meet some of our friends.” He jumped up, standing on the chair. “Party!”

Jenny came around the table. She seemed to float. She put her hand on my shoulder and slid it across to the other shoulder as she wheeled behind me. She leaned down, her hair brushing the side of my face. Pink, I thought. “Come on,” she said. “It'll be fun.”

Clarke raised his head, screamed, and jumped onto the built-in cabinet that lined one of the walls yelling, “Party!”

“I promise,” Jenny said in my ear.

Clarke jumped onto Jenny's back. She was unprepared for the weight and our heads knocked. By the time I looked up she had wheeled around in front of me. She moved so fast. She wheeled back and forth in place with Clarke riding her piggyback. “Grab the sims, robo; let's go.”

I looked at the chips on the table. I had been comfortable learning about my neighbors from Dean without actually interacting with them. But Clarke was right in front of me now.
Where did he come in? Why would he want to party with an old robot like me? I could easily see us getting to town and, the joke's on me, he had promised his friends a bit of fun with the old robot living in his “beach house.” I remembered him tossing my new arm off the cliff and catching it again and again.

Clarke slapped Jenny's ass. “Yah!” he yelled. “Yah!” He leaned forward. Jenny zoomed out onto the beach. Her wheels kicked up a spray of sand behind her.

She had touched me. Her hair had brushed against my cheek. She had promised me a good time. Wasn't this why I had left the city? Maybe I just needed to have some fun. Jenny and Clarke pulled doughnuts in the sand. I grabbed the memory chips from the table, put them in a pocket, and went outside.

Jenny pulled up to me, and Clarke jumped off. He played his trademark sound bite: “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.” Then he turned to go. Jenny followed, and I followed behind.

The night was clear. The moon, near full, reflected on the ocean. At the top of the cliff, there was a yellow motorcycle. Clarke climbed aboard. “You need to get wheels, humanoid,” Jenny said.

“I've got wheels,” Clarke said, and he revved the motorcycle. “Hand me one of those chips,” he said to me.

I reached into my pocket, still afraid that Clarke would turn on me at any moment.

“What about the others?” Jenny said.

“Fuck the others. Preparty.” I pulled the chips out. Clarke grabbed one and shoved it into the USB port on his chest. “Come on, come on.”

Jenny held her hand out and I handed her a chip. She uploaded it.

“I have never—” I started.

Clarke: “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.”

“Here,” Jenny said, handing me the chip that she had used. “We'll fly together.”

“Nice arm,” Clarke said to me. Then he pulled away on his bike. The sound receded. I was left alone with Jenny. I had made the right decision.

“Come on,” she said, impatient. I thought she looked off-balance.

“Are you okay?”

“Come on,” she said again.

I realized she wanted me to climb on top of her the way Clarke had. I did, and she started moving before I had a firm grip. I didn't fall off, though. I uploaded the chip she had handed me. When I looked over her shoulder, the world had changed. It was daytime, and I had to turn off my night vision. Instead of the cliff and the ocean we were in a dense jungle. The leaves hit against us as we drove along a narrow trail. Jenny's clothes had changed. She wore torn cloth that only just covered her enough to be decent. I looked down to see that I was dressed the same. “Whoa,” I said, and held on tighter.

“Yeah,” Jenny said.

There were sounds all around us. I realized they were animals. I was suddenly afraid. Up ahead, I saw a figure on an animal. It was Clarke. He was here too.

“Where are we going?” I said into Jenny's ear.

“Town.”

We were gaining on Clarke. Jenny really could fly. Then we were in the town, although it wasn't what I had expected. The buildings were huts. Their construction seemed impossible; they were much too large, considering the wood and leaves that had been used to build them.

Clarke dismounted and the animals fell silent. “Whoo-eee!”
Clarke shouted, and he pointed his hands up in the air. “That should bring them running.”

I realized that Clarke was seeing something else. I turned to Jenny. “Huts?” I said.

“Yeah, graybeard. Huts.”

I reached a hand up to my face and felt that I did have a beard. I had been given a program. I was a robot. So why did this all seem so wrong?

A group of brutish-looking men approached. There was one girl with them, although she looked no older than a twelve-year-old human. I realized I wanted to hurt her. I looked at Jenny, but she wasn't paying attention to me anymore.

“Look at this group here,” Clarke said.

“You started without us?” one of them said.

“Who's this humanoid?” another said, pointing to me.

I stepped forward ready to punch him in the face. I wanted to see what was inside him, and it seemed as good a way to find out as any. But Clarke stepped up and put a hand on my chest. “This no-good piece of shit is the man that's got your hookup,” Clarke said. “Grog.” He looked at me. “That's Grog, Cog, Smog, and Fairy.” He didn't indicate which was which, and I didn't care to find out. “Check out my man's gun hand,” Clarke said, holding up my right arm, which still sported a clamp at the end.

“Give with the sims,” the one I decided to think of as Cog said.

“Ah-ah,” Clarke said, spinning around to my other side. “Numbers first.” And then Clarke cut through the group, everyone parting to let him by, and we all fell in line behind him. Jenny and the girl had their arms around each other. Cog fell into step with me.

“You're staying out at the beach house,” Cog said to me.

“There's no beach here,” I said. I looked around. There were small animals crawling on the tops of the buildings. “What are those?” I said.

Cog followed my gaze. “What do they look like?”

“Little people with tails and fur.”

Cog shook his head. “Fucking hell . . . Clarke, you bastard, this one's already simmed up. Why the fuck do we have to wait?”

“Monkeys,” Jenny yelled, answering my question. “Come here, boy,” she called to one of them. I watched as he came to the edge of the roof, considered Jenny, and then ran off. “I guess he doesn't like me.”

I moved up to join Jenny, more comfortable with her. I could tell that we were seeing the same thing.

Allistair's was a tiny one-room hut that was almost completely empty when we crashed in. Our little group seemed to fill the place immediately, and everything was suddenly too loud. It would bring the other animals from the woods. It would endanger us all. “Shhhhh,” I said, but nobody heard me.

Allistair, or at least the person behind the counter, looked at us as though he had seen us all before, but he pulled a double take when he got to me. Clarke threw something down on the table, and then Allistair set chips out on the table for each of us. I took mine and uploaded. The numbers hit my system hard on top of the sim. I could feel my processes being kept busy trying to read the data, and as the numbers crunched everything got slower.

“Give 'em up,” Grog said.

Clarke said, “Now, my boy.”

I pulled the chips out of my pocket and they got passed around. Maybe the numbers were interfering with the sim, but the room no longer seemed to be the inside of a hut. It was now
a square brick room, poorly lit. I saw that my companions all wore sweater vests and bowler hats, where before they had been dressed in the same tattered clothes I had. Some of them had removed simul-skin from various parts of their bodies. One of them had clamps for hands.

One of the patrons from the corner came up to us. He was an old robot, perhaps an order three, with no human features other than his form. “Hey, boys,” he said. “Hey, boys.” A chip got passed around to him. He took it back to his corner, bowing as he went.

I found another sim chip in my hand and I uploaded. The world didn't change this time, but everything seemed brighter. It was as if I could see what was going to happen before it actually happened. I could see that Jenny was mine for the night. What could I do? a part of me thought. I tried to message her only to find the numbers had frozen my messaging program.

“What are we going to do, Clarke?” somebody asked.

Clarke had Fairy in his lap. She was a full-size robot after all, I saw.

“Sapien was built by humans,” Clarke said.

The group looked at me. I felt embarrassed and wished that Clarke hadn't shared the information. And then I was annoyed with myself, because usually I was proud of the fact that I had been built by humans. It granted me a sense of superiority that I was somehow closer to the creators, and I therefore had to be more like them. But here I knew that there was no value to that. Grog actually apologized to me, putting a placating hand on my back.

“More numbers!” Jenny yelled.

Clarke paid. We uploaded.

“Let's go,” Clarke said. He moved like lightning. We all did, leaving sparks behind us. Outside it was night, and the town
was as I had remembered it upon arriving several days before. But everything was rimmed with neon outlines. I tried to get next to Jenny again. She was deliberately staying away from me, I could see now. She had dangled herself in front of me back in the cabana, but for them it was all a game.
Bring out the human-built, he's so humanoid, it'll be great fun.
What else is there to do in this town?
No, she was teasing me, and I had been stupid to allow myself to think anything else. I had come . . . Well, I couldn't think why I had come.

“Grog,” Clarke said, and Grog came to his side. “Throw me.” Clarke pointed at one of the windows nearby.

Grog picked Clarke up. The group stopped and formed a half circle around them. Grog pulled back and launched Clarke, who slammed into the window. The window broke, glass falling to the ground. The wood of the frame splintered, but Clarke didn't jump in, as I thought he might. He stood up, and the group waited. Nothing happened. Clarke stepped back. “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.”

Smog went over to the window on the other side, reached up, and broke it with his fists. Clarke moved on and we all followed him. Jenny was beside me now. “Why'd we break those windows?” I said.

She shrugged. “They were there.”

“What about those?” I said, pointing to one of the houses across the street, its windows still intact.

She shrugged again.

I knew I should say something about her hair . . . something so that she would pay attention to me. I didn't want to lose her attention.

Clarke stopped suddenly. “John Gropner,” he said.

Fairy wheeled around with her arms out. “Wheeeeeee.”

“Gropner,” Smog said.

“No,” Jenny said.

“For Sapien,” Clarke said, looking at me.

“Clarke, you kill Gropner and you'll be sorry in the morning.”

“You kill Gropner and you'll be sorry in the morning,” Clarke played back Jenny's voice. “Look, last human, last human-­made robot, it's only fitting.” Clarke looked at me. “Well, not
last
human,” he said.

When Clarke started moving again, everybody seemed to know where he was going. We passed through the center of town, where a large fountain was still running with water, the lights from inside causing the arcs of water to glow, or perhaps that was just part of the sim. Down the street from the fountain, there was a one-story house set back from the street; a small patch of grass formed a rectangle in front of the house. I was certain the grass was artificial. Clarke went up to the door as if he had done it many times, and knocked. I expected there to be no answer, as there had been in the house where he had broken the windows, but almost immediately the door opened. A small man stood in the doorway. It was immediately apparent that he was human. His body was bent, his face covered in whiskers—real, not like the gray beard that had briefly covered my face in the sim. His hair was white and wild. “Clarke,” he said, when he saw who it was. He looked past him at the group of us standing on the sidewalk.