His Robot Girlfriend (13 page)

“
So you turned Harriet’s
room into a guest room. Let’s see this exercise room that you made
out of mine.”

The exercise room had been improved quite a
bit. It had been painted and had new blinds over the windows. The
exercise mat on the floor was still there, but it had been joined
by a treadmill, a stationary bicycle, and a rowing machine. There
was also a large vueTee on the other side of the room.

“
Nice,” said Lucas, when he
looked in the door.

“
And across the hall here
is the study,” said Mike. “We’re still working on it. I’ve got my
old desk over there. Patience is setting up her own desk right over
here.”

“
What does she need a desk
for?”

“
She’s making a bit of
extra money selling old junk on eBay.”

“
She’s not selling my Star
Wars action figures, is she?”

“
Of course not,” assured
Mike. “Those aren’t worth anything anyway. You should have sold
them back when everybody was still collecting them.”

“
They have sentimental
value,” said Lucas.

“
They’re boxed up down in
the garage.”

“
Well, I see you have a new
wriTee,” said Lucas. “What are you doing with it?”

“
I’ve finally started that
book I was always planning to write… about school. It’s coming
along pretty well too. I’ve spent more time in this room in the
past too weeks than I ever spent here. I don’t even know why we had
an extra bedroom.”

“
Sure you do, Dad,” said
Lucas, with a strange look on his face.

Half an hour later, father and son and robot
were seated around the dining room table overlooking a lovely meal
of spiced chicken, mashed potatoes, asparagus, and Caesar salad.
Both men ate heartily but Patience, as usual, had only water.

“
So, what are your plans
this week,” Mike asked his son.

“
I’m going to take a couple
of days and visit friends, and I figure I’ll take Harriet and Jack
out to dinner at least once, but other than that I don’t have any
firm plans. Would you like to do something together? We could have
a bit of fun.”

“
Patience was just saying
that we should go to Knott’s Berry Farm or something.”

“
That would be fine,” said
Lucas.

“
I know,” said Mike. “I
suddenly know. We should go to the La Brea tar pits.”

“
Seriously?” asked
Lucas.

“
Yes. I’ve never been. I
wanted to take you kids when you were little, but I always got
outvoted. We went to Disneyland or Universal Studios
instead.”

“
Well alright. We could go
to the La Brea tar pits. They’re not just tar pits,
right?”

“
Of course not,” said Mike.
“There’s a museum with extinct animals that got stuck in the tar.
You know, I’ve wanted to go to the La Brea tar pits since I was a
kid and I even had a Viewmaster reel of it.”

“
Well damn it,” said Lucas.
“We’ll just have to go.”

Two days later Patience was pulling off
Interstate 10 and driving toward the George Page Museum. Then
entrance to the parking lot was easily found, though a parking
space was not. Two spaces at the very far edge of the lot were the
only ones with no cars already in them.

“
This place is more popular
than I thought it would be,” said Lucas. “I guess fossils are quite
a draw.”

“
I think most of the people
are here to see that,” said Mike, pointing to a large yellow and
red banner stretching above the far end of the parking lot. It
read, “The Army of Qin Shi Huang” and featured the image of Chinese
face sculpted of grey clay.

“
Oh yeah. I heard they were
touring the country. I just didn’t know they were here.”

“
I didn’t remember either.
They came to the U.S. just before the war started. One of the
benefits of our close military alliance.”

Most of the visitors to the area were indeed
going next door to the exhibit of some two hundred, two thousand
year old terra-cotta warriors. The Page Museum, with its many
fossils of Columbian Mammoths, mastodons, giant ground sloths, dire
wolves, and saber-toothed tigers was almost deserted. Patience,
Mike, and Lucas spent several hours examining the exhibits and
reading the informational plaques, before going out to the large
pink dome that covered the tar pits themselves. Just inside the
door of the structure was a stand selling Dippin’ Dots, so Mike
purchased some for himself and his son, then they looked down upon
the black pond of oozing tar.

“
It’s not very big, is it?”
said Lucas. “I wonder how all those animals got in
there.”

“
If only one or two large
animals were trapped in the tar each year that would account for
all of them” replied Patience. “Animals have been getting trapped
here for 30,000 years.”

“
Well, there won’t be any
more trapped now that they’ve got this dome over it,” said
Mike.

“
Don’t be so sure.” Lucas
pointed to a spot several feet from the edge of the black pool. A
lizard, apparently now dead, had already been sucked halfway below
the viscous surface.

Two blocks away from the tar pit and its
museum was an Olive Garden, so Mike decided that this would be
their lunch destination. The parking lot was full, so Patience had
to park in a spot along the street half a block away. Mike looked
at the three digits on the thermometer and rolled his eyes, but the
two men walked the distance without becoming too overheated. Of
course Patience had no problem with the temperature.

The robot receptionist in the restaurant was
a much more attractive and life-like model than those used in the
fast food places. She was obviously a jazzier model Gizmo, but she
still had that tinny voice. She took their names without needing to
write them down, gave them a house phone, and handed each of them a
quarter liter bottle of water. Mike stuck the phone in his pocket
and they headed for the waiting area.

“
Let’s stop and wash our
hands,” said Lucas, handing his water bottle to Patience for her to
hold. “Who knows what wooly mammoth germs we have on
us?”

When they stepped into the men’s room, he
turned to his father.

“
You don’t treat her like a
robot, Dad.”

“
Well, she doesn’t seem
like a robot, does she?”

“
No, I have to admit she
doesn’t. It’s easy to forget she is one until she says something
that’s not quite the way a person would say it, or she moves in a
way that seems somehow mechanical.”

“
Does how I treat her
bother you?” asked Mike.

“
Yes. No. Well,
maybe.”

Mike cocked his brow.

“
I don’t know, Dad,” said
Lucas. “Maybe I would be bothered to see you with anybody. I know
that’s wrong, but that’s how it is. I guess in a strange way, it
bothers me less for you to have a robot than it would if you were
going to get remarried.”

“
What if I had a robot and
I got remarried too?”

“
I guess I’d just have to
deal with it, wouldn’t I?” Lucas laughed. “She’d have to be a
really understanding woman to let you keep Patience. I don’t think
there is a woman in existence who would be that…
patient.”

Lucas stepped up to the urinal while Mike put
his hands beneath the automatic sensor of the faucet.

“
Interestingly enough, I
almost married Patience.”

“
Shit!”

“
What’s the
matter?”

“
I almost peed on myself.”
Lucas moved over to stand at the sink next to the one his father
was standing at. “What do you mean you ‘almost married
Patience’?”

“
When we were in Vegas, I
decided we would get married, so we went to the county government
building, but they wouldn’t sell us a license.”

“
No, they wouldn’t, would
they. You can’t marry a robot.”

“
Why not?”

A phone rang and Mike reached into his
pocket, pulling his out and looking at it. Then he stuffed it back
in his pocket and reached into the other pocket to pull out the
house phone.

“
Our table is
ready.”

They stepped back out into the lobby to find
Patience waiting for them.

“
I hope your hands are
immaculately clean by this time,” she said.

“
Um,” said Lucas. “We had
certain bodily functions we needed to take care of.”

“
She knows we were
talking,” said Mike. “She could hear everything.”

“
I didn’t listen,” said
Patience. “The bathroom is usually considered private.”

“
You could hear if you
wanted to though?”

“
Yes, of
course.”

“
Well, that’s another
thing.” Lucas grabbed his father by the shoulder. “What about
privacy?”

“
Our table’s ready. Come
on.”

They followed Patience and the greeter, who
had already made their way through the dining room to their
assigned seat. Once they were seated, they were handed a menu and
Mike began to look over the many pasta possibilities.

“
I feel like
linguini.”

“
What about privacy?” asked
Lucas.

“
I don’t see it on the
menu.”

“
I’m serious.” He turned to
Patience. “You’re connected to the InfiNet aren’t you?”

She nodded.

“
What kind of information
are you sending out?”

“
I would never send out any
information that would be harmful to Mike.”

“
And you can make the
decision as to what is harmful and what isn’t?”

“
She only sends out what I
tell her to,” said Mike.

“
Are you sure?” asked his
son. “This isn’t like the old computers, where the only information
on it is what you typed in. Think about it. She’s living with you.
She hears and she sees everything. She has huge amounts of data
flowing around in her electronic brain. How much of that is sent
out that she might not even be aware of.”

“
I am aware of everything,”
said Patience. “Literally every bit of data.”

“
Alright, that’s enough
now,” said Mike. “Let’s order our food and enjoy a nice meal
together.”

They ordered and ate their meal. Mike had
linguini with cheese sauce, while Lucas ate chicken parmesan.
Patience drank water. Though they talked a bit about the museum and
the tar pits and they talked about Italian food, the conversation
seemed muted compared to earlier in the day.

Lucas stayed for the rest of the week at his
father’s house, though he used it for little more than a place to
sleep. During the day he visited friends and he spent two days with
Harriet and Jack. Mike spent his evening watching the Democratic
National Convention. The day before he left, Lucas spent several
hours with Mike. The talked quite a bit about politics, but they
didn’t discuss Patience or the question of personal security.

The week following Lucas’s visit was
relatively uneventful. The Olympics began in Surat and Mike spent
as much time as possible watching them. He wasn’t much of a sports
fan, but the Olympics were different. You didn’t get to watch
weightlifting, kayaking, and water polo any other time. Mike’s
favorites though were the track and field events, and those
wouldn’t be held until the following weeks. On Friday he got up
with the expectation of watching beach volleyball and equestrian
events in the morning and swimming in the evening.

He woke up at eight, shaved, and then
showered. When he climbed out of the shower, he was mildly
surprised not to find Patience waiting with a towel in one hand and
breakfast in the other. But it was not as if he didn’t have a
towel. There was one right there on the rack. After he had dried
off, he stepped on the scales. He had already lost ten more pounds.
Looking through the closet, he found a new pair of khaki pants, a
new brown belt, and new brown shoes. He put them on along with a
light blue camp shirt, and then went skipping down the stairs to
the kitchen.

He found Patience at the kitchen counter,
putting the finishing touches on what looked like Eggs Florentine.
She was wearing gauzy, sky blue teddy that barely covered her
perfect ass. It wasn’t that she didn’t look good in it. She would
have made a cardboard box or a barrel look good. It was just it
didn’t quite seem like Patience’s style. When Mike approached her,
Patience turned and wrapped her arms around him and kissed him
deeply. This too was not quite normal. She usually gave him a quick
kiss before breakfast.

“
What’s all this
about?”

“
I have made you a
delicious breakfast, Dearest.”

“
Dearest? You’ve never
called me that before.”

“
If you don’t want to be
called ‘dearest,’ then I will not call you that.”

“
Well, I don’t know. It’s
fine, I guess.”

Mike sat down and ate. Breakfast didn’t quite
seem right either. Patience immediately began cleaning up after
herself, a task she usually saved until after the meal, preferring
to sit with Mike while he ate. The food, while delicious, was far
richer than the health-conscious meals that she usually prepared.
Mike finished only about half before he was full. As Patience
gathered his dishes, he walked into the living room and turned on
the vueTee. He flipped through the browser to the Daffodil site.
Pressing the small flower symbol at the bottom of the screen
brought the man in the blue jumpsuit onto the screen.