You, Human: An Anthology of Dark Science Fiction Read online

  It might be the Yoga class that is guiding the decision. One of those New Age things you do to pretend you are not heading into old age.

  Stress relief. I needed it. It was about 14 years ago. I did not want to start drinking and Sondra’s cancer was back with an Ah Ha, GOTCHA! This time, the Three Musketeers of Misery: Radiation and Chemo and Surgery.

  Let us say, Sondra did not laugh much for a time. Most in her situation do not.

  Oh, perhaps some do. Hey, you thought that was vomiting? Check this out! Hey, is the light reflecting off my bald head bothering you …

  And so I signed up for a church basement Yoga class. We had perhaps 18-20 New Age novices ranging from Emerging Adolescent to Full Geezer. We attempted the Downward Facing Dog, the Half Frog Pose, the Feathered Peacock Pose, the Dead Duck on Table with Its Legs Stuck Up, etc.

  It was not for me. Bend and stretch and hurt, lose balance, fall on elbow, etc. But I discovered that some degree of anxiety was alleviated when I went for a walk, a long walk of three to four miles. You can concentrate on one foot in front of the other and that is the sole focal point, simple and relieving. (Charles Dickens is reputed to have done 12 to 15 miles every day of his adult life. He died at age 58.)

  Listen to your body. That was a mantra Yoga instructor drilled into us. Listen to your body, drilled she, “listen to your body.”

  Feeling like Sisyphus on level ground on those hikes, but somehow less bad and more okay, I heard my body speaking to me. My hips and knees said, “Replace me.” My ass said, “I’m dragging.”

  When I was a kid, there was a TV show called The Six Million Dollar Man. After being severely injured, an astronaut, Steve Austin, gets bionic prosthetics: an arm, both legs, and a left eye. Steve Austin was portrayed by an alleged actor named Lee Majors, whose face had all the expressiveness of aluminum siding.

  You can be sure, however, that among my hormonal high school crowd (male), there was considerable pondering concerning the likelihood of Steve’s having had another bionic add-on, one that could not even be alluded to on Prime Time Network Television in those innocent years: He had a uniquely male enhancement. (Get it, nudge, nudge?)

  And how might he …

  Oh, my god, god, God, GOD! It’s huge and it glows and it spins and it vibrates and it’s warm and it hums the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Giveittome gimmee … Oh! Ooh! O O O O!!!!

  When I was a child, I spake as a child and grew hoot-owl horny as a child, but now that I am an old fart …

  I mean, if you watch any cable, you know my demographic is Cialis, Viagra, implant, super-pump, testosterone, natural and unnatural supplement, etc. Along with the Rascal scooter (Now you can have the mobility of an NHL goalie as long as your battery is charged) and the tripod cane (You won’t fall on your stupid face unless you’re so damned fat as well as unbalanced that you break the cane …).

  But no, I am not going to get my unit replaced. My libidinal urges for a while have hardly been urgent. Sex is mostly a memory and a nice warm feeling—a remembered feeling.

  So I will keep my original John Thomas, limp though it has mostly been for quite a while now.

  Confession: With a quite understandable fear of STDs, in my youth I nonetheless sowed my wild oats. Carefully. Three times.

  But with Sondra, well, she is the only woman with whom I have had relations since she came into my life and certainly throughout our marriage I have been boringly faithful.

  To state it as it is: Sondra was and is the only woman with whom I have wanted that sort of intimacy.

  The past 13 months, Sondra has not been interested in sex.

  She has been too ill.

  Trachst du auf di gis geyn tsu pishn? Sondra says. Yiddish proverb. Translation: Are you contemplating where the geese go to pee?

  All right, proverbs. I reply, Az mir pisht in shnay, vert a loch. When you pee in the snow, it makes a hole.

  Next stage in my robotic transition: A heart.

  “Oy,” Sondra says, “Last year, you had a stress test. You had an ultrasound. You have the blood pressure of an Olympic boxer. Your heart is fine. Why would you want to replace it?”

  I don’t answer.

  “Shlemiel Schlimazl.”

  I do not tell her my heart is breaking. I do not tell my heart will break.

  . . .

  The final step: I will have my robot brain.

  It will start out blank, of course, tabula rasa, un-apped Ipad. But then they can transfer over my cognitive abilities. Ours was perhaps the last generation to learn the multiplication tables and I do not want to jettison that. I want to still be able to dazzle with “nine times nine is eighty-one.”

  I can have an improvement in memory, so that the tip-of-the-tongue song title no longer eludes me:

  “Who Threw The Overalls in Mrs. Murphy’s Chowder?”

  “Stella by Starlight”

  “Our Love is Here to Stay”

  “It Had to Be You”

  I think I want to remember the song titles and, for that matter, I want to remember the lyrics.

  I am speaking of songs like

  “Sweet and Lovely”

  “You Were Meant for Me”

  I am speaking of a song like

  “What’ll I Do?”

  I will keep all the memories, all the memories, and to be quite honest, those memories are primarily

  Sondra & I

  I & Sondra

  The two of us as one … Forgive the clichés, but isn’t that what marriage is supposed to be?

  And, even with the bumps and problems and fate and failures, we had—we have a marriage—we are

  Sondra&I I&Sondra

  We are—we are …

  Sondra is dying.

  The return of the cancer.

  The third time is the charm.

  Inoperable. Untreatable. It’s everywhere within her.

  The painkillers are quite good. She does not hurt a great deal. Doctor Oncology predicts she has another six months.

  So what I will do, when I have my robot brain installed, is ask them to leave out the cells and sensors and synapses of affect that permit or force one to feel, to have emotions. I will be intellectually aware, of course, I will know loss but I will not feel loss.

  Because I could not continue, I could not.

  Nor would I want to.

  “My robot …” Sondra reaches for me.

  We hold hands.

  Sondra asks, “Are you crying, my robot?”

  “I am not yet a robot.”

  “No,” Sondra says.

  “You are my Shlemiel Schlimazl.”

  IT CAN WALK AND

  TALK, AND YOU’LL

  NEVER HAVE TO

  WORRY ABOUT

  HOUSEWORK

  AGAIN

  DYER WILK

  She had waited hours for the sound, anxiously checking the time on her phone and then trying in vain to distract herself only to check her phone again moments later. It had gone on like this all morning. Waiting, checking, waiting, checking. And then it arrived from nowhere––a muted whirring over the roof of the house. She’d waited hours, and now the sound of it frightened her.

  What if someone else hears it? What if someone sees?

  What if they tell ?

  Josie dropped the vegetable peeler onto the Laminex-Scratch-free cutting board and hurried out of the kitchen. In the hall, on her way to the front door, one of the anthros stepped into her path, nearly crashing into her.

  “Watch it!” she screamed.

  The anthro teetered, almost going off balance and then righting itself flawlessly with a silent recalibration of its inner servos.

  “I’m sorry,” it said in an emotionless approximation of a human male’s voice that almost matched its nearly human face.

  Somewhere deep down, she felt an inkling to respond, maybe to apologize for being rude, maybe to just say something back even though she knew the anthro wouldn’t be the least bit offended if she didn’t answe
r because anthros couldn’t feel anything.

  Josie quickly shrugged the feeling away. She was already at the door and the panic was starting to take over. She could hear the sound just beyond it, the whirring cycling rapidly from a higher to lower frequency and then becoming ever lower as the sound began to dissipate.

  She opened the door in time to see the small helicopter drone buzzing over the driveway, ten feet off the ground and climbing, on the way back to whatever delivery center it had come from. She stepped out of the doorway and hesitated, her eyes moving to the windows of the bungalows across the street, searching for the slightest movement of curtains or mini-blinds.

  When she was certain no one was watching, she looked down at the box sitting on the doormat.

  The panic didn’t subside.

  She reached down and grabbed it, stepped backward and closed the door hard.

  For a moment, all the air in the house was gone and the box in her hands, mere ounces a second before, now weighed 100 pounds. She could feel her entire body being pulled toward the ground, the skin along the back of her neck burning and itching. Blood pounded in her ears, roaring away the silence.

  Roaring. Roaring. ROARING.

  “Stop it.” she moaned. “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! ”

  “Can I assist you, Mrs. Borland?” an unemotional female voice said behind her.

  She turned around, her body suddenly unencumbered, the box surprisingly light in her hands. The female anthro was standing just outside the door to the dining room, staring at her with a blank expression that seemed to contain just a hint of curiosity––even though she knew from the technical literature that curiosity was something they weren’t capable of.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Go clean.”

  “The house is clean within acceptable––”

  “Go away then! Go in the living room.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Bor––”

  “Shut up! ”

  She hurried into the dining room, pushing her way past the anthro as it stupidly shuffled its way down the hall. Anger had replaced the panic and taken over, wrapping itself tightly around every muscle. She tried to tell herself not to let it get to her. It was just a name. She heard it at least a dozen times a day. Why should it make her angry to hear it now?

  Mrs. Borland.

  Missus.

  She dropped the box onto the table and looked at it. Plain cardboard, a barcode in lieu of a return address, flaps taped securely shut.

  She took a deep breath and held it, feeling the tension in her jaw and hands. She closed her eyes and willed her body to relax. When she opened them again and exhaled, the box was still there, waiting to be opened, waiting to reveal its secret.

  There was no going back now. She realized that. The box would still be here whether she opened it or not.

  But she couldn’t open it.

  Not yet.

  Opening it would make it real. It would bring back the panic, or, worse, give her the kind of hope that would poison her mind and body to the point where she couldn’t pretend everything was normal.

  And it had to be normal. For a little while longer, at least. The vegetables needed peeling. The roast needed seasoning. Table settings arranged. Cloth napkins ironed immaculately and folded flawlessly. The hours were counting down in seconds that crawled by faster than time usually allowed, reminding her with every silent tick of the clock on her phone that Richard would be home soon.

  She picked up the box and walked into the kitchen. It was starting to feel heavy again.

  What if he knew?

  What if he had known all along?

  What if he was just waiting for her to try?

  Josie opened the cabinet doors under the sink and removed the bag from the trashcan. Carefully, she set the box down in the bottom and placed the bag on top of it, making sure that the edges of the plastic were flush with the inside of the can and the trash at the bottom was piled naturally so as to not reveal the defined, plastic-covered bump.

  As she stepped back, she tried to see her work objectively, to wipe her mind of the illusion she had just created.

  It still seemed obvious to her.

  She felt the box hiding there beneath carefully positioned bits of trash. She knew he would feel it, too. It made no sense, but she almost believed he could look at her and know what she knew, that an involuntary twitch of an eyelid or tremor in her hand would be enough for him to home in on the storage space beneath the sink and send him into a fury as he ripped the cabinet doors from the hinges and spilled the contents of the trashcan all over the kitchen floor, picking the box up from the linoleum and opening it, looking at what she so desperately wanted to keep hidden, and then, in a final act of rage, squeezing her throat until a dull cracking sound filled the silence of their beautiful suburban home.

  She reached out and grabbed the kitchen counter, her knees going weak, lungs frozen.

  Josie closed her eyes, forcing the thought out of her mind and burying it in the same place where she had buried all the other thoughts over the last seven years.

  She couldn’t stop now. She couldn’t turn back. She had to believe it could work.

  It would work.

  Richard wouldn’t know.

  Not if she kept herself together.

  . . .

  The hours stretched as she settled back into her routine, time returning to its usual, reliable self. Even in the worst of times, she had always been able to lose herself in the work, maybe not completely, but enough to silence the thoughts and feelings that had tormented her for so long. Sometimes, she almost believed the work was enough. She could simply slice and chop and spray and wipe and wash, and with each mechanical movement, she could just become nothing. Nothing but muscle memory and a set of hands.

  Sometimes she wished she couldn’t feel at all.

  Her work was finished quickly. She had hours to spare. “Time you don’t need,” Richard would call it. “Enough time to turn you into a lazy shit.” But she knew the extra hours in the day would be essential to her success. It would bolster her confidence enough to take those final steps and become that other person, one who had the strength to change things.

  The temptation to walk into the garage and dig the old cardboard boxes out from under the workbench was strong. Or maybe it would be better to just grab her phone, open up Anthro-Pro-Morphic 2.5 and run a couple more tests.

  She didn’t want to rush though. Despite the urge to do her sec-ret work after just having spent hours on her official wifely duties, she knew she needed rest. Not sleep, but time. Time to do nothing before she did something.

  Josie went into the living room and sat down on the couch. The female anthro whom she’d barked at earlier was standing there obediently, waiting for an order. If she hadn’t been so accustomed to having the units around, she’d have almost found the artificial woman-thing’s presence unnerving, that blank expression fixed on the wall, glass eyes with printed irises glazed over in an eternally blind stare.

  But she had learned to see the trick behind their expertly manufactured bodies. They were objects, no more human than a toaster or a stack of towels. They could look at her and, most of the time, she would feel none of the normal emotions one felt when they were stared at for too long––no sudden embarrassment or shyness. They had seen her naked and they looked right through her, as if she wasn’t even there. They wandered from room to room all day long like lost children, searching for specs of dirt or stopping and doing nothing at all for hours. They simply did what they were programmed to do or not do. She had programmed them to be stupid, far stupider than the full extent of their capabilities. Richard wouldn’t allow them to do the work his wife was supposed to be doing. They could help clean the house, but no way in hell was a goddamn robot going to make his dinner for him. That was her job. They were appliances. She was the wife.

  She grabbed the remote from its place (its one and only allowed place) on the small table at Richard’s end of the couch and turned on t
he TV. The screen snapped on in an immediate surge of light and color, the volume from the speakers bombarding her with decibels cranked to the edge of tolerability.

  Richard liked it loud.

  She turned it down, noting in her mind the current volume level so she could bring it back up to the exact same spot before Richard came home.

  Josie slipped her feet out of her shoes and gripped the carpet in front of the coffee table with her bare toes. She considered propping her feet up, but as quickly as the thought appeared (as it had appeared dozens of times before), she forced it out of her mind. It wasn’t allowed. Clean feet on polished wood was a violation of marital trust, a complete betrayal. Even if she wiped the wood down afterward to be sure it was absolutely sterile.

  “I’ll know,” she heard his voice say in the muted distance of her thoughts. “I’ll always know.”

  On the TV, a daytime talk show played out with the usual predictability. One of the hosts kept grinning through his capped teeth and hitting the audience with strategically placed stock phrases while his female counterpart (trying hard through a combination of plastic surgery and make-up to look 15 years younger than she was) kept placing her hand on the leg of their guest and laughing artificially. The guest responded in kind by grinning his own grin and making eye contact that verged on being sociopathically penetrating. At the bottom of the screen, Josie read his name and recognized it. He was an actor of course. The guests always were. But she wasn’t sure she had seen him in anything. At least she didn’t recognize the name of the movie he had come on the show to promote.

  After a few minutes of banter that she half-ignored, the beloved guest was asked by the hosts to do some sort of impression of himself. He flashed a grin that seemed to stretch outside of the boundaries of his face and delivered several lines that were meant to be dramatic, even though he laughed through half of them.

  It was just noise though. Noise she didn’t have to think about.

  After a commercial break and several advertisements for the latest Laminex products (a division of Hanford and Cordington, who also made the toilet paper Richard liked and owned the brand of beer that Richard drank), the show came back on and the hosts were clapping along with the audience as if this was all very exciting and they needed to make it even more exciting. The cheers settled down and then the male host, between more strategically-placed stock phrases and praise for their guest’s award-winning talents, asked the famed actor if he thought someone could deliver his lines better than he could.