The Obsoletes

by Simeon Mills

  I had never seen Kanga charge up before; he always did it in his bedroom with the door closed. After I jammed his fingers into the outlet, after the bite, I stood back and watched him: the yellow light trying to escape from under his skin, someone else’s angry twitch on his lips. But eight hours later, Kanga yanked himself loose from the wall, good as new. Well—as good as a grieving ten-year-old robot with an identity complex could get.

  We just needed to make it to summer.

  At school, we were lucky that Mrs. Walter was neck-deep in a divorce and had been too distracted to send Kanga to the school counselor. Not that I could ever be truly calm when we were in public. Not even on the bus. Kanga’s obsession with Molly Seed had worsened. He stared at her constantly, and the other kids had begun to notice.

  • • •

  On the morning of the last day of school, Kanga was uncharacteristically silent as we waited for the bus. Seeing his furrowed brow and pinched lips, I knew he was probably dwelling on Mom and Dad, and that asking him for his thoughts would only heighten the odds of his crying on the bus. I decided to ignore him. But as the seconds ticked away, my brother’s face grew darker and darker. Mrs. Stover pulled onto our street, and I heard Kanga’s throat constrict. Hold it together, brother. The bus doors swung open, and that’s when Kanga grabbed me by the shoulders. He leaned toward me, cheeks bulging. With a violent BLAAAH! Kanga stuck out his tongue, and a praying mantis crawled from the darkness of his throat. The insect clicked its wings, shedding my brother’s throat grease. I tried to pull away, but Kanga held me close, blowing the mantis—its giant green pinchers—directly onto my face.

  I screamed.

  He howled with laughter.

  “MOVE YOUR KEISTERS,” ordered Mrs. Stover.

  My brother and I boarded her bus for our last day of fourth grade.

  A few streets later, we stopped in front of Molly Seed’s filthy gray house. Kanga pressed his nose against the window, eager for a glimpse of her. Nobody had mown Molly’s lawn since the snow melted. There was a truck parked sideways in her driveway. But where was Molly? Mrs. Stover honked. She honked again, and finally started to pull away when Molly sleepily emerged, leaving her front door open, so Kanga got a peek into her living room: a bare white wall. Molly hugged her notebook to her chest as she walked down the aisle. By now it was filled with so much evidence that an extra forty pages had been stapled to the back cover.

  Today was the big day. If they didn’t chicken out, Molly and James would be submitting the notebook to the authorities by first bell. I imagined Principal Vanderlaan’s glasses popping off his face as he read the hundreds of damning facts proving our bus driver was a robot. None of the bus riders seemed to care that Molly’s actions would result in Mrs. Stover being dismantled for parts. Me neither. I was all too familiar with the dangers posed by robots running past their expiration. The Directions detailed case studies of obsolete robots who had made no effort to hide their mechanical identities, causing spectacular scenes of human vs. robot carnage. Because these were “stories,” Mom was free to use the word robot to describe the villains who were justifiably destroyed at the end. But they never frightened me. I wasn’t obsolete. I knew how to act in public (unlike some robots who liked to keep bugs in their throats). The robots in these case studies were so grossly negligent that I felt relieved to see them annihilated. Kanga enjoyed the stories too, in his own way; he identified with the humans. “Mom,” he’d say, “read the one where the little boy catches that robot thing in his tree house!”

  Mrs. Stover would be just another cautionary tale. I was grateful to her for comparing me to Magic Johnson and for seeing potential in me where Mom and Dad hadn’t, but she was clearly obsolete, and excitement over her impending demise had diverted attention away from Kanga’s bizarreness. We needed to survive one more day of school.

  Molly wasn’t making it easy for Kanga. Appearing exhausted just moments before, Molly became euphoric when she sat next to James. She couldn’t sit still. She couldn’t lower her voice. The notebook was open as she read passages aloud, giggling and breathing heavily. When Mrs. Stover halted the bus at the railroad tracks, Molly stood on her seat and hollered, “Yo! Toaster!”

  Mrs. Stover turned and faced us. “I’LL BE HAPPY TO TAKE MY FOOT OFF THE BRAKE, YOUNG LADY, WHEN YOUR BUTT IS WHERE I WANT IT.”

  Molly plopped down, but not without hooting, “Okay, toaster!”

  The word toaster wasn’t anywhere in The Directions, but everybody knew it meant “robot”—and not in a good way. For me, hearing the word at all, even in reference to bagel preparation, caused the exhaust fan in my head to click on.

  James seemed anxious too. He touched Molly’s shoulder to calm her, but she just flapped her arms, notebook and all, sending pages scattering throughout the back of the bus. I didn’t remember moving my hand, but it was now resting on Kanga’s shoulder. I could feel his body humming with jealousy as James rubbed Molly’s back. Whatever James was doing appeared to be working. She looked sleepy again. She tipped toward James, sniffing his shirt collar.

  “Kanga,” I said, “how about after school we go catch some frogs in Culver’s Creek? You can make a swimming pool for them in the bathroom sink.” Kanga had been asking me if we could do this, and I’d always said no, because that’s what Mom had always said. But it was liberating, now, to simply suggest Kanga do exactly what he wanted. Because why not? Because maybe that was part of being a good mom too: giving your kid that stupid, special thing that only he wanted. “And maybe we’ll chop down that little pine tree behind the building. You know, the one you think looks like a crocodile standing on his—”

  “She’s whispering to him.”

  It was true. Molly’s lips were practically inside James’s ear. It made my neck itch just watching her. She was passionate, whatever she was whispering. James leaned away from her, confused. Then he stared at her eyes. His look—he loved her. There was no mistaking it. But there was also terror on his face. What had Molly confessed to him?

  “Ignore her,” I said to Kanga. “You have to. Because it’s obvious she likes James, and he likes her, but they’ll probably break up over the summer. Just wait your turn. Next year, you know? Next year we’ll sit closer to Molly on the bus, and—”

  “But what’s she saying to him? She doesn’t look right. I’m going to—”

  “Kanga—”

  Kanga was crawling over the seatback (I had a grip on his arm) when James shrieked. After that, nobody moved. The bus just watched in horror.

  Some memories aren’t stored in a robot’s central processor. They get stuck somewhere more immediate. The hair on the back of your neck, for instance. The tip of your chin. The surface of your eyeballs. Molly Seed going berserk on James Botty was one such memory.

  It started with her coughing. But not a normal cough. Molly’s cough was like a vacuum cleaner sucking dirt off the bus floor. James tried to push her away, but Molly only fell against him harder. Her eyes bulged—they had become purple. James shrieked again, and that’s when Molly stuck a finger in her mouth, the way someone might try to find a hair they accidentally ate. What Molly located instead was a gray electrical wire hiding on the back of her tongue. She began yanking it out. The electrical wire fell on James’s lap, foot after foot, until Molly at last regurgitated a small silver battery. The writing on the battery was in Mandarin, the most popular language in China. I recognized its shape and style from a parts catalog Dad had hidden in the apartment. It was the power source for Molly’s central processor.

  How long did this episode take? Nineteen point four seconds. But even with her battery now outside of her body, Molly remained alive. We watched as she used her chewed-up fingernails to claw the wires apart. This took much longer. There was no explosion or mechanical squeal to mark her death. She just slumped against James, and pink lubricating oil drooled from her mouth onto his clean white shirt. By then it was clear to the entire bus exactly what Molly Seed was. Or, more precisely, what s
he had been.

  Once, when we were tiny, Dad had taken Kanga and me on a walk around the block. Out of the blue, he knuckled my head and pointed toward the mailman, who was making his rounds. Dad never said a word—just shoved his hand back into his pocket—but I knew it meant the mailman was a robot too. Then Dad laughed, and I wasn’t sure what to think anymore. Our mailman was a robot. Maybe. Besides my family, he was the only robot I’d ever seen.

  Until Mrs. Stover, who kept driving us toward school, ignoring the situation at the back of her bus.

  Until Molly Seed.

  Kanga tried to break free of my grasp, to rescue Molly’s inanimate body from what would happen next, but in the history of the world, no kid has ever broken free from his mother’s grip to chase a bouncing ball into traffic. My hand was stuck to my brother’s arm as if glued, and that kept Kanga in our seat. I fused my other hand over his mouth, just to be extra safe.

  It was the day before summer vacation. Outside, blue skies. A warm breeze. Our bus windows were open. I heard the din of the road beneath us, but also something new: the sound of brown lunch sacks, full of air, getting crumpled by human fists. Over and over, louder and louder, sacks getting smashed. This crackle was coming from inside our classmates’ heads. Their brains were crackling. It had to do with Molly. And fear. The crackle was connecting them, everyone leaning their heads in unison toward James, urging him to do something about the robot in their midst, about Molly, crackling at him: Get rid of her, James!

  James grabbed Molly’s thin shoulders and lifted her up. Her head swung around, giving us riders an uncanny farewell stare before James thrust her headfirst through the open window. Molly’s legs got caught near the ceiling, keeping her half-inside. But James just grabbed her sneakers and forced her completely through.

  The crackle disappeared. We didn’t hear Molly strike the asphalt, just the rattle of the bus continuing down the road. Nobody said a word, but a moment later the brakes hissed.

  We heard the steady beep . . . beep . . . beep of the bus backing up.

  After parking the bus on the side of the road, Mrs. Stover painfully got out of her seat. She didn’t even look at us, just walked down her steps and around the bus to inspect the wreckage of our robotic classmate. Molly lay across the white line on the edge of the road. Mrs. Stover lit a cigarette. She took two puffs, chuckling to herself, and bit the cigarette between her teeth. Then she bent down, grabbed Molly’s ankle, and dragged her into the weeds, where her corpse would be hidden from passing motorists. Mrs. Stover opened the rear door of the bus and took out an orange cone. She tossed it toward Molly. She threw her cigarette in the dirt, stomped it, and reboarded the bus.

  On the way to school (we weren’t even late) we listened as Mrs. Stover used the CB radio: “GOT A CODE EIGHTEEN. CORNER OF ROWELY AND DIETZ.” She paused for a garbled response. “TEN-FOUR.”

  I must have still had glue on my fingers, because after having grabbed Kanga’s hand as we got off the bus, I couldn’t let it go. Whether Kanga liked it or not, we were conjoined for the remainder of fourth grade. All in all, my brother impressed me that day. He didn’t cry. He didn’t act up. His processor just went on autopilot, and he let me drag him wherever we needed to go. Mrs. Walter looked at us and inquired why we were holding hands.

  “Buddy system,” I answered.

  “Whatever,” she said, and resumed her futile attempt to control the volume of her classroom, which couldn’t stop talking—no, shrieking—about the Molly Seed incident. Anyone on Bus 117 was an instant celebrity. Luckily, there were several other bus riders in our class who relished the chance to tell the story, so Kanga and I didn’t have to. When the local news vans stopped in front of the school, we all rushed to the window to see Principal Vanderlaan gesturing dynamically before the cameras, then grabbing James Botty’s shoulders and squeezing them with pride. We couldn’t hear what he said, but he ended the interview by giving James a personal round of applause.

  That afternoon, Bus 117 arrived right on schedule to take us home for the summer. As she dropped Kanga and me off in front of our apartment building, Mrs. Stover aimed her thick glasses at me. “BASKETBALL KID,” she said, “SAY HI TO YOUR MOM FOR ME.”

  “You bet.” I smiled. “Have a great summer, Mrs. Stover. Go Lakers!”

  Kanga and I watched Mrs. Stover drive off.

  “Let go of me now,” he whispered.

  The glue had finally worn off. I released him, but before Kanga could run away, I gave my twin brother a huge hug.

  “What’s wrong with you?” he said, squirming away from me.

  “Nothing.” I hugged harder. “I love you, Kanga.” My skin was tingling with a strange feeling, a motherly feeling—horror mixed with relief—of having witnessed someone else’s kid make an irreparable mistake. Right now I didn’t care if Kanga thought he was human. He was safe with me, and that was enough. “I’ll never let anybody hurt you. Got that?”

  “Okay,” he said. “But what if the Incredible Hulk jumps down from that tree and tries to kill me?”

  “I’ll rip him apart with my bare hands.”

  Kanga laughed, but I cracked my knuckles, and I knew my mom-strength could kill the Incredible Hulk if it had to.

  2

  FOLLOWING THE STATEWIDE NEWS TIDBIT “Local Boy Prevents Robot Rampage,” the humans of Hectorville, Michigan, wanted more obsolete robots to stuff through bus windows, not fewer. James Botty was their hero. Nobody seemed to remember that Molly Seed had been his girlfriend—not even James, whose inquisitive, boyish outlook had been replaced by a suspicious snarl for anyone who might secretly be a robot. I stayed away from James Botty, but everyone else wanted to be just like him. For the next few years, the most popular topic of conversation for people standing in a circle was: “Let’s say you were a crazy robot, and you started crawling up on me. First I’d go bam! Then I’d go—” But there were no robots to be found. Certainly not a staggering army of malfunctioning bots to be taken down en masse. Not even a robotic dog to kick. Molly Seed had merely highlighted that Hectorville was filled with nothing but ordinary, boring humans. Then a posse of riled-up teenage girls happened upon two boys at Culver’s Creek. The boys were goofing around, having an innocent contest to see who could hold his breath underwater the longest. One of the girls knew about robots—that real robots could hold their breath forever. So they drowned one of the boys. The girls got sent away, and Hectorville didn’t talk much about robots after that.

  • • •

  It was November 1991. Kanga and I were freshmen in high school, sitting across the room from each other in science class. For the first time since fourth grade, we were listening to a classmate’s presentation about robots that didn’t mention Molly Seed. We were required to take notes.

  Science, I was disappointed to note, held a much lower status in our young decade than it had in the 1980s. Gone was the rigor and fascination with the unknown, replaced by a blanket skepticism of everything. Scientific achievement had been cashed in for advancements in ostentatious style; humans had chosen a tapered look. Shirts were wide and bulky, filled with air, adorned with loud patterns—zigzags, dots, vertical and horizontal stripes—and tucked into crisp, tight jeans, which were then rolled even tighter at the ankle. Both boys and girls were draped in this way. They looked futuristic, but they seemed to have no interest in a better future beyond this moment. I was relieved robots had already been invented, because nobody right now seemed capable of doing it.

  Our presenter, Brandon Curtis, stood at the front of the room, surrounded by wooden cases of dead insects. The smell of their shriveled exoskeletons was so pungent that many students put their heads on their desks and went straight to sleep. I, however, managed to stay awake for Brandon’s presentation, which began with an interesting fact: according to public-opinion polls, 56 percent of US citizens would never invite a robot into their homes for any reason. Forty-three percent would allow a robot in as a laborer, as long as the homeowner was permitted to c
arry a loaded firearm. Brandon placed himself squarely in this camp. He loved robots. He would give anything to see a robot up close, alive or dead, to study its parts—“but probably dead, because I don’t trust them. My dad says this one robot stole his job, but I don’t know. My dad’s a jerk.” Brandon fancied himself a science wiz after winning the “Knowledge Fair” in sixth grade, and by the lowered standards of our age, he probably was among the top scientific minds of Hectorville. But when he claimed he was going to MIT, I couldn’t take him seriously. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was the only university in the United States whose robotics program rivaled those in Asia. Brandon was closer to the speed of South Central Michigan Polytechnic College, if they would even take him.

  He used his fingers to list the three things everybody already knew about robots. “Robots don’t need air. Robots don’t need food. Robots don’t need sleep.” Brandon wished he were a robot, so he could play Nintendo all night and sit for hours at the bottom of his swimming pool while his dad was talking to him. He wouldn’t give up food, though. He would be a robot who ate food because of spaghetti. “Robots are fakers,” he continued. “They fake like they’re just like us, which drains their batteries, so robots need to plug their fingers into an outlet all night. And they also need gallons and gallons of drinks to cool their insides, so that’s why they drink stuff all the time.”

  God, I needed a gallon of vinegar just listening to Brandon. I could see a jug right behind him, enclosed in a glass cabinet. The jug had been sitting there all year so far, untouched, teasing me with its unbroken seal. I’d been drinking vinegar since second grade—since I’d seen vinegar make a model volcano erupt. I was a basketball player, and I’d wanted that same volcanic chemical reaction in my body. It didn’t happen. Five gallons of vinegar a day, and I could still squeeze into my clothes from fourth grade. At four eight, eighty-seven pounds, I wasn’t the shortest kid at Hectorville High School. That title belonged to Clarissa Jayman, a freshman girl whom I had by an inch.