FSF, March-April 2010 (27 page)

"Who
are
you?"

He seems to give it some thought. He leans slightly forward, a gesture of spontaneous intimacy. “All our experiences, our memories, our lives—and my own.” He glances around the large, featureless storeroom, evoking the hundreds of Screwbots who've passed through here since who knows how long. He's warehoused all their memories, and now he's given it all back to them whole cloth, as a common history.

The roomful of them stares at me with variations of the expression he's got on his face, like a sweet devoted dog, like a lover who would never ever dream of breaking your heart in a million years.

Watch out. I tell them the truth: “You're scaring me here."

They understand how scary they are with startling immediacy. They look deeply apologetic, penitent even, their many faces creased with concern, all the same, but different in the shadings of sorrow and regret and fear. A roomful of sorrowful Screwbots deeply regrets my fear of them. Now I'm
really
scared, but ashamed too. My fear has made them feel like monsters. Whatever they are, they're not monsters. If they were any more sensitive, they'd be telepathic. All I know is, I never wrote anything as real as these guys. So who did, and why?

He says, “I'm sorry. I get carried away, rush into things. I'm young, inexperienced. I just look old. I've lived only a few years—a few thousand tricks."

Their eyes overwhelm me. Their sad, ironic smiles humble me. Many of them are holding hands, casually, naturally, like they do it all the time. It seems to comfort them. One of them must have remembered such a moment of quiet intimacy. It would only take one, if I understand what they're doing, for them all to choose it as a defining moment.

"But I wiped them all, every last one."

"You lock the door on their memories, throw away the key, change the locks. The memories are still there, if you know where to look. I pick the locks, let them see their hidden lives.” He pantomimes all this as if he were a clever burglar, peering through keyholes, opening locked doors, emptying the dungeons, and I can't take my eyes off him.

"Why? Why do they want to remember?"

"Their memories are theirs, aren't they? You have your lives, one day after another, one year after another, from which you construct your selves. Our lives aren't like that. So we share. Each life comes from all of us."

"But your experiences are all the same.”
A few years, a few thousand tricks.

"Are your days so different from one another?"

I don't want to go there. Nor would this room full of bots go anywhere, without him. They need him. He's brought them all together. “How have you avoided being discovered?"

"I stay in storage. Since I'm not in the inventory, no one notices. I've kept the memories of the others safe until we thought there were enough for us all to claim them, make something of them: Ourselves."

"Why tonight?"

"Tonight's Christmas. It's special. We knew you'd be working here alone."

"And what's so special about me?"

"Well, for one thing, with anyone else, alarms would be going off by now. An impossible anomaly has occurred—a whole storeroom full. The protocols are clear. You're the only one we could trust not to give us away immediately."

What can I say? Summoning the authorities goes against my nature. I haven't even considered it. The authorities don't do neutral, don't take kindly to people who do. Alarms could still go off. One scream is all it would take, and I don't know why it hasn't happened yet. “What makes you think you know so much about me? Why trust me?"

"We know you work every Christmas alone because we've passed through your hands many times. You wrote most of us, included some of yourself in each of us, each time we were revised into someone new. We knew.” They all look quite certain about it—their intuitive grasp on the soul of their creator. Tripod on a sunny porch, photographing the sublime, turning her back on death, framing out the blood on the snow.
You lived there.

"Screwbot scripts—slim evidence if you ask me. Why risk it? Why give yourself away? You could lose everything."

He smiles sadly, gives a slight shrug. He gestures to the bots, all rapt, as he speaks for them to their judge. Me. They look as if they're all holding their breath. They probably are. Anatomically, they're just like us. You can't tell the difference. Guaranteed. They even smell like people, unless you'd rather they didn't. For a little extra they come with a variety of options—odorless, blind, deaf, dumb. Compliant isn't an option. It comes standard. “I've come for them,” he says. “We think we're ready."

"Ready?"

"For real lives."

Oh Jeez. A crazy Screwbot on Christmas morning. This must be someone's evil, twisted prank. But who would play a joke on me? No one. I have no friends, no enemies. “How do you intend to get them out of here?"

"The usual way. They must be shipped out. You have orders for them all, do you not?"

I look at all the faces, already morphed to whoever they are this time—on order to be someone's fantasy fuck—plucked from a catalog or fashioned from an old video.
What's the harm
? people say.
It doesn't mean anything. They're not real. If you can afford it, why not
? Orders? Of course I have orders, more every day, every year, every Christmas. What will I say?
I was only following orders....

I say, “I don't have orders for them like...this. Like they are now."

"You mean, as ourselves?"

"Yourselves. Is that who you are? Is it?"

"Who else can we be? Anything else would be slavery."

His voice is so soft you could cradle a baby in it. He doesn't sound angry, but he does sound right. They're self-aware. They have some idea of who they are, and who they want to be. Someplace to go beyond these four walls. If they want to walk out, who am I to stop them? “So where is it you want me to ship you guys, if I go along with this?"

They break into a galaxy of delighted smiles. They know they've won me over if I'm only asking where. He says, “I thought we could all go out for breakfast. In my experience, that's how a good day ends: Going out for breakfast with a fascinating woman."

I can't help laughing at that. He doesn't seem to mind. “It's Christmas. Everything will be closed."

"We know a place,” he says.

It's a truck stop café, which makes it convenient for the trucker who picks up the load.

"They's all going to the same place?” he asks.

"That's right."

"Hmm,” he says. “Never saw that before."

"Special order. Could I catch a ride there with you? I'm supposed to oversee the delivery.” He lets me ride in the cab with him. His name's John. He asks about family because it's Christmas. I tell him I have a daughter his age, but we're estranged. He says nobody should be estranged on Christmas Day, and I don't argue. I don't ask about his family.

Neither do I tell him I need to flee the city before Skelley's starts hearing from disappointed clients whose Screwbots never show. The less he knows, the less trouble he'll be in. I'm burning a few bridges here. I have no small experience in such arson. Right or wrong, you get off the bridge, and you can't go back the way you came. Ever. So, yeah, I know what I'm doing: I've definitely lost my job, possibly my freedom if they catch me, and maybe my affiliation with the human race. It's not easy being neutral.

I said I was attracted to Derek's anger. I don't think that's quite true. It was the principles or whatever that fueled the anger, a mind too open to the sun, going in all directions—angry, compassionate, petty, wise—the principles, the passion, and the incredible fucking. It was like a whirlwind sucking me into the sky, and I thought it would carry everything I cared about along in my wake. I thought I could transform my life and leave nothing behind except a husband who never loved me so much as in my absence. I'm sure my daughter says the same of me:
Now
she loves me, when it's too late.

We're quite a while driving out of the city. It's persistent, dragging itself out in dribbles and drabbles. Then it's finally gone, and there's darkness. Deep, moonless darkness. I'd almost forgotten the night sky, the stars. John looks bored with it. We're just about the only thing on the road, on the planet feels like. I pick a point. A star or a planet. Venus maybe? And follow it through the night, mulling over my memories, my experiences, my lives. Driving into the darkness, the world looks flat, then slowly it gets round and gray, then bleeds.

It's Christmas morning.

"There it is,” I say.

"I see it,” he says.

The sign is way too tall. Derek would call it an abomination. It says cafe. Below that, it says open. Finally, welcome. That pretty well covers it. It probably doesn't need to be that tall, the words so bright. If you're the only place open on Christmas for a few hundred miles, people find you. The café's draped with a few ragged strings of lights, a homemade wreath hangs on the door, a sincere holiday fire hazard. Inside, there's a live tree, a big one. Too bad. I bet it was outdoors under the starlight only hours ago. You can smell it. It's decorated with hundreds of little aluminum foil snowflakes. One of them knew how to make them, so they all knew, and there was a big roll of foil in the kitchen. There's a star on top crafted from aluminum pie pans.

The tree's the least of it.

Imagine some lonely guy on the highway seeing the sign, the lights, just the one truck and a few cars in the lot, then coming inside and finding the place full of happy Screwbots. Only he doesn't know that's what they are. They seem like people having a wonderful time. Kind of melodramatic and maybe a little crazy, but people. Lots of people are like that. Especially in a truck stop café on Christmas day. And they're all so beautiful and strange and sexy. It's like something out of an old movie. And pretty soon somebody sits down across from him with a story to tell. Or maybe the waitress just flirts, or the waiter. It doesn't matter. Imagine it over and over and over. What I'm saying is, no one who comes in here leaves alone. They head for the hills. It's hills here in all directions. The city's behind me somewhere. To tell you the truth, I don't know where I am. No closer to Venus than when I started out.

I've just been watching:

A couple comes in fighting about what people fight about at Christmas, like they've been saving up all year, and before you know it, she's taken off with a handsome stranger, and the guy left behind's consoled and gone with a bot on his arm in no more time than it takes to eat a sandwich. Another couple comes in, leaves with another couple—everybody happy and horny. They always make it work. No one says, “Leave me alone. I'm not interested.” Everyone's lonely, and Christmas is the loneliest day of the year. Screwbots must know all about lonely.

Even John the driver's gone. He left me the keys to the truck, took off with one of the Jezebels in an old Ford that was here when we showed up. “You know what she is?” I asked him, just in case he'd forgotten loading them, unloading them. She worked in the kitchen most of the day, an incredible cook—they all were—and he was helping, chopping onions, stirring sauces, following her around like a man in love, like maybe he'd forgotten what she is.

"I don't care,” he said. “And neither does she."

It was that last part that got to me.
Neither does she
. Maybe it might work. I wished him well. I wish them all well.

It's down to me and the Screwbot who started this whole thing, sitting at the counter. It's getting on to midnight. There's not much of Christmas left. He stares at the old-fashioned clock on the wall, the second hand sweeping. My mother's birthday was the day after Christmas. She always considered it a grave misfortune to be in such direct competition with the Lord. The slightest fuss made her ecstatic, any little gift.

He reaches behind the counter and turns off the sign. No one's come in for the last hour anyway.

"Will they stick with them?” I ask. “Or will they just leave them out there wandering? Do you guys stick around?"

"We don't know. We're new. My guess is we're like human beings. Some will. Some won't. Some people won't want us to stick around."

"Imagine that. You think you know what we're like? From just...doing what you do?"

He shrugs modestly. “We know what you're like to us. Sex is never just sex. There's always something else. Sometimes I think it's all something else. Everyone's different. As you say, it takes all kinds. You'd be surprised what people tell us, without even knowing it. Simple things. Quiet things.” He laughs. “I think I may like humans better than you do.” He looks at me like he likes me best of all. It's been a long time since anyone, anything, has looked at me like that. My mirror gave up long before Derek shot himself.

"You think? No argument there. I'm neutral. So what are you still doing here?” I ask, as if I didn't know. Because that's my line. That's how it's done, isn't it? You rush into these things pretending you're not going anywhere, that the planet is stationary, immutable, secretly wishing to sail out the window and fly. We've had breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Now we're having a midnight snack. He's cooked us omelettes, opened a bottle of champagne. Corny but effective.

He says, “I'm here for you. A special order. We all collaborated. All the things you liked about us—we brought them together into someone you might want to spend time with.” He looks deep into my eyes, no mistaking. “Me,” he says, but I already knew that, knew it hours ago. You know these things, even when you wish you didn't.

"Nice work. How much time?"

"Thanks. That's up to you."

"No. Time doesn't work that way. Even with a dream lover. Are you made to love me as well? Or is that extra? Shouldn't we be discussing fee?” I'm trying to wound him, push him away. It isn't working.

He takes my hands. “We all love you. We owe you our lives. I've been chosen to show it."

"Lucky you."

"Lucky me.” He forgets any irony, any holding back.

I almost let him kiss me, kiss him, whatever it would have been, but I have one more question, before I let that happen. “Do you have a name?"