The Obsoletes

by Simeon Mills

  “Tell me where you went after our first game,” said Kanga. “When you were gone.”

  Brooke stuck out her tongue at him. “I’m not supposed to tell.”

  Kanga picked up the pace. He stood on the pedals of his bike and raced ahead of her. He didn’t even look back when she was two blocks behind him. He stopped and waited. When she finally reached him, he said, “Tell me where you went, Brooke.”

  “To buy a battery for my computer. Promise you won’t tell anybody.”

  “I promise.”

  “Promise.”

  “I promise.”

  “Ypsilanti. I took my dad’s car and drove it fine. I just went to buy the battery up there. But I couldn’t find the store.” She was out of breath. “Not Ypsilanti. Near Ypsilanti. But it was closed. I had enough money, but—” She wiped her nose on her sleeve. “You know where we should go? The gravel pits. Have you been to the gravel pits? It’s not just gravel. There’s water. You could drown, so my mom says never to go to the gravel pits.”

  Kanga inched his bike closer to Brooke, bumping his tire against hers.

  I couldn’t watch anymore. I looked at the houses around me. I’d never stopped at this exact point. A neighborhood of houses. All I’d ever done was fly down this street on my bike. Seventeen houses in a row. I imagined all the people in the houses looking out their windows at Kanga and Brooke, and then at me, hunched behind a car, spying. They would have been thinking What’s going to happen next?

  “We follow the train tracks.” Brooke pointed in a direction. “The train tracks go to the gravel—”

  “You lead,” said Kanga.

  Brooke veered us down an unfamiliar street. Kanga was slightly behind her. The street got blacker and the sound of their tires changed. A cloud blocked the sun, and it became February. Brooke’s hair, instead of being a million tiny strands in the sunlight, was a single mass protruding from the back of her helmet. We were still in Hectorville, but this adventure was expanding the map of my life. Train tracks? How were we supposed to ride our bikes down the rails? Or would there be a trail alongside? And who knew what was around any of these strange street corners? There could be a pond of lava. Or a gingerbread house with an old witch inside. All three of us should have been sitting in art class.

  Before any train tracks came into view, Brooke ran her bike onto a dead lawn. She weaved through trees and tiny snowdrifts and hopped off, letting the bike travel a distance without her before it tumbled. She danced to a stop. “Swings!” Brooke had landed at an elementary school with the steep roof of a church. All the students must have been inside, so Brooke and Kanga had the entire playground to themselves. Kanga followed her to a swing set. Soon they were swinging in tandem, her shoes rising with his high-tops.

  “You were gone an entire month,” said Kanga. “Tell me where you were for the entire month.”

  Brooke kicked her legs erratically, disrupting the movement of her swing, veering herself dangerously close to a swing-set pole. “What are your secrets?” she said. “I get some of your secrets too!”

  At the peak of his next swing, Kanga let go of the chains. His butt rose from the seat. His entire body paused in midair, as high as the treetops . . . He landed on his feet. Across the playground was an abandoned rubber ball on a basketball court. Kanga jogged over, leaving Brooke alone on the swing. Her body relaxed. She dragged her shoes in the icy sand.

  Kanga started shooting hook shots.

  Brooke unpacked the clarinet from her case. She began to play.

  Kanga swished a shot. He dribbled the rubber ball between his legs. He dribbled as fast as he could to the other side of the court, shot a layup, got the rebound. He shot from half-court and missed.

  Brooke walked a short distance onto the grass, playing her clarinet. I’d never seen her move so gracefully—her upper body was rigid with a musician’s form; her feet were cat paws sneaking down a fence. I tried to imagine touching her cold elbows while she played. I couldn’t imagine it because Brooke was wearing her winter coat and because I could only imagine Kanga’s hands doing it, black with grime from his rubber ball. A bell rang inside the elementary school.

  Kanga rolled the ball toward the school. “We should go to the gravel pits now.”

  Brooke played a moment longer before removing the clarinet reed from her lips, letting the words run out of her like the notes had: “I was at the hospital so I wouldn’t go and get any more batteries for my computer.” She played another phrase on the clarinet, then said: “I want a secret from you now.”

  “My brother thinks he’s a robot.”

  “But that’s not about yooooooooou,” she sang.

  “I don’t have any secrets,” he said. “Everything I am is right in front of you. I’m a basketball player. I’m cold. I suck at riding bikes.” He stepped toward her. “I want to take you to the gravel pits.”

  “I’m not going there.”

  “I want to—”

  “I’m never going there.”

  Brooke ran back to her bike. She had to stop and fumble her clarinet into its case before speeding away. Kanga stayed back, allowing her to pedal a distance alone, allowing her the illusion of escape, before he followed her. Brooke did not return to school. She turned corner after corner, trying to lose Kanga, then swung her bike into the parking lot of Rheener’s Party Store. She stopped and waited for Kanga to catch up, clearly satisfied he was still there. “Don’t follow me in,” she announced, dropping her bike to the pavement. She walked into the store with her helmet on. Kanga remained outside, watching her through the plate-glass window. She asked the clerk where the bathroom was. Kanga looked down at Brooke’s bike, at her pink banana seat, and gently nudged it with his shoe.

  I was across the street, hiding behind a garbage can.

  Her helmet was off when she emerged from Rheener’s, which meant, I imagined, that she’d noticed the helmet in the bathroom mirror, scolded herself, and removed it before sitting on the toilet. She handed Kanga a Three Musketeers. “Buy one, get one free.”

  He took the candy bar.

  “I chose Three Musketeers because that’s your favorite candy bar.” She stared at him. “Three Musketeers. That has to be your favorite.”

  “I like Three Musketeers. For later.” He stuffed the candy bar into his jeans pocket. “But I like you for right now.”

  Part of her wanted to resist. Her knuckles. Her fists. They hung down, shaking back and forth, no no no no no no, one fist clutching her bike helmet, rattling it against her knee. But her shoe rose toward Kanga. Her mouth said, “We need to touch them.”

  I could not watch what was about to happen. Destroying Brooke had never been Kanga’s objective. He wanted to destroy me. I abandoned my cover and biked for home. I stood on the pedals, pumping them. I focused my ears away from Brooke and Kanga.

  I heard the shattering of a distant window.

  I heard a light bulb burning out.

  I heard a tissue getting pulled from a tissue box.

  I heard their shoes touch, detonating a nuclear blast. For a second I was outrunning it. Then it burned me up alive.

  • • •

  I waited in the kitchenette for Kanga to get home. Basketball practice would be starting soon, and I knew he would swing by the apartment for a gallon of milk.

  Right on cue, he banged through the door and headed for the refrigerator.

  “Art class was a riot today, huh, Kanga?”

  He ripped the cap from a jug of milk.

  “I didn’t see you in class,” I continued. “You must’ve been doing something pretty important. I didn’t see your bike. Where did you go?”

  He drained half the jug. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “You got ears on your head?” He killed the remaining milk in one sip. “It’s none of your business.”

  “Is it Brooke Noon’s business?”

  He set the empty jug on the counter. “You were spying on me.”
<
br />   “You think you’re so human. You’re not. Humans have feelings.”

  “Okay. Sorry, bro.” He turned to the fridge for another gallon. “From the bottom of my heart. I’m so sorry. How’s that for feelings?” When he faced me again, he almost dropped the milk. “Easy, Darryl. Put down the knife.”

  The butcher knife felt fantastic in my right hand. I tossed it in the air . . . and caught it perfectly in my left. “Let’s talk about feelings.” I stepped toward him.

  “Darryl. Please. Okay, I’ll talk with you. Whatever you want. Just put the knife down.”

  But I was done with talk. What had it ever gotten me? My words had never really sunk into Kanga. It was time to try something different. Something hard to forget. Kanga didn’t understand how badly he’d just wounded me. He was about to find out. The butcher knife was raised above my head—

  “DARRYL! NO!”

  I aimed for a freckle. I was a little off. Half an inch. But I’d swung the butcher knife with my left hand, so I’d be crazy to expect perfection. I was a right-handed robot. That was how The Directions advised us to blend in: “Use your right hand for everything, and if forced to use your left hand, twitch a little.” The kitchenette was twitching all right.

  I kept my eyes on Kanga. His mouth appeared to be malfunctioning, hanging open like a dead person’s, so I had to interpret the rest of his face to know what he was thinking. His eyes told me he was surprised. But wouldn’t anyone feel surprised watching pink lubricant rope out from the stub of his brother’s wrist, splashing the toe of his grocery-store shoes? Kanga’s eyebrows painted a more complex picture. Their furrow gave him the appearance of empathizing with me—the pain of having chopped off my own hand. Ironically enough, I felt no pain in my wrist. My tactile receptors must have gone into “denial” mode. I could still feel a phantom hand at the end of my wrist, as heavy and dull as a bowling ball. My arm began to quiver.

  “You always do this,” he said at last, all the empathy fading from him. “You always throw it back in my face.”

  “This?” I raised the gore of my wrist for him to see. “You mean the truth?”

  Kanga wrinkled his nose and turned away, as if I’d just offered dog shit for him to sniff. “Your truth. Not mine. I want to live a different way, and you can’t stand it. You never could.”

  “You don’t get to decide if you’re robot or human. You’re either one or the other. There’s no in between. Look at my wrist. This is what we are. This proves that we’re—”

  “I know what we are! God, Darryl, I never stop thinking about it. Never! I wish I could be like you. I wish I could feel proud of being . . . a machine. But I can’t. I’m alive. Nothing in those damn Directions says what it’s like to be me. It’s all about maintenance, and strategies, and replacement parts. And being obsolete. That damn word. Like an axe hanging over our heads. Humans don’t have to feel obsolete. They get a second chance. A third! They get as many chances as it takes. Just saying the word makes me feel worthless. But that’s not the worst part. The worst part is the way it makes me feel about you. I feel sorry for you.”

  “No—” I was almost in tears, but I refused to let him see me cry. “You don’t get to feel sorry for me. I feel sorry for you!”

  “I have basketball practice. So you need to fix this on your own. You need to clean the kitchenette floor, and then you need to get some help.” He forced himself to look directly at my wound. “I might never see you again.”

  “You can’t get rid of me.” I smiled. “You think this is a big deal? When you see me tomorrow, I’ll have a brand-new hand. I’m going to Detroit, to the people that made us, and they’re going to fix me.”

  “They will, or they won’t.” Kanga shrugged. “Either way, you have to grow up, Darryl.”

  He left for practice.

  All my emotions evaporated. The apartment was filled with agonizing silence. Did I really believe what I’d just told him? About getting a new hand? A better hand? The idea had sprung into my processor, without any forethought. But it was true. I would have to go to Detroit. I would have to get fixed.

  The butcher knife was still in my left hand. I wanted the gruesome tool away from me, but couldn’t bring myself to set it down. Doing so would acknowledge that its horrible action could not be undone. I stared at my wrist. The initial cut through the skin was clean; there were split wires, a severed yellow shaft hissing vapor, and pink lubricant everywhere, making it hard to see the finer details. At the bottom of my wound the skin drooped like the sleeve of an overworn sweatshirt, indicating how dull the butcher knife was. When the pain finally found its voice, it told me exactly how stupid I was, using rusty nails and jimmying them under my skin, all the way up my forearm, and slowly twisting them. But the pain was nothing compared to the sight of that horrible freckle, a half inch up my forearm. Should I chop it off too? I raised the butcher knife again, but it slipped from my left hand, clattering to the floor.

  I looked down.

  My right hand was crawling away, the pinky finger doing all the work, dragging the rest of my hand across the vinyl flooring. It was trying to hide behind the refrigerator.

  • • •

  Some moms are merely good in a crisis, while others feed off catastrophe like vultures devouring a carcass. Chapter 51 of The Directions (subsection: “Appendages”) was written for the scavengers among us.

  Materials to have on hand:

  • kitty litter (two cups)

  • duct tape

  • black sock

  • rubber band

  • hard suitcase packed with dirty clothes

  • round-trip bus ticket to Detroit

  Figure 762 was an illustrated step-by-step for dressing a severed limb. I used my knees and my teeth to make twelve long strips of duct tape. The kitty litter was to soak up the lubricant in my “cavity.” I sealed the kitty litter against my wound with eight strips of duct tape, then stretched the black sock over my stub. I secured the sock in place with the rubber band.

  I shouldered the fridge aside, caught my right hand, and wrapped it in the remaining strips of duct tape. When I was finished, it resembled a giant silver maggot. I buried it in a suitcase filled with Dad’s old sweatshirts. One-handed, I managed to retrieve the Chinese catalog from the ceiling in Mom and Dad’s room. I tossed it in the suitcase too, before clicking the top shut.

  The pain at the end of my arm had disappeared, replaced by a vague folded-in feeling, as if my wrist had been folded over again and again, like the excess space at the top of a paper bag, and secured with a clothespin.

  I dressed as if for game day and looked at myself in the mirror. I left the sleeve of my dress shirt fully extended beyond my stump, though a dash of black sock peeked out from the white cuff. I had a crisp fifty-dollar bill folded in my pants pocket. I’ll show him, I thought. Next time he sees me, he won’t believe his eyes. With my left hand, I grasped the handle of the suitcase, then began the five-mile walk to the Hectorville bus station, the day’s last light sinking on the horizon.

  18

  MY WRIST WASN’T A WORST-CASE scenario. Not yet. As I walked to the Hectorville bus station, lubricant only faintly leaked through the black sock at the end of my stub. I could still pass for human.

  A real worst-case scenario was getting shoveled off the side of the road, Molly Seed–style. A real worst-case scenario, according to The Directions, required “emergency retrieval,” as stated on page 1243: If your appearance has been compromised or if you notice signs of gross malfunction, call 1-800-555-3240 for emergency retrieval or (preferred) discreetly proceed to the following address:

  Gravy Robotics

  1717 Starline Avenue

  Detroit, MI 48207

  I’d always wanted to visit Gravy Robotics, even just to drive by and see its enormous facade. In fact, my first words as a baby were the Gravy Robotics address.

  “Hell no,” were Dad’s first words back to me. He didn’t trust Gravy Robotics. He was paranoid about the
ir whole operation. I’d heard him whispering to Mom that if you got too close to the laboratory, you’d get snatched up, broken apart, and have all kinds of tests run on you. Gravy would steal all your memories, and the scientists would watch them on a huge TV screen and laugh at you.

  Mom just stared out the kitchenette window. “Taking a drive somewhere sounds nice.”

  “Shit,” said Dad. “Let’s go for a drive then.” He started running through the house, throwing extra clothes and onesies into his suitcase. We soon found ourselves packed into the van. Dad drove us onto the freeway and aimed west until he ran us into Lake Michigan. This was our first and only family vacation. It was midnight, and the beach was empty. Mom set me and Kanga down in the sand for five seconds then nervously scooped us up again. She carried us around the beach after that, shivering at the sound of the tiny crashing waves. She asked Dad, “Are there crabs here?”

  “Goddamn it,” he said.

  “I think I’ve got sand in my ankles,” said Mom. “I don’t know.”

  “Let me guess. You want to get back in the van?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know where it is.”

  Dad stayed on the beach as Mom lugged us back to the van. She climbed into the back with us, tossing our baby seats away so she could cuddle us on the bench, a novel experience that made Kanga squeal with delight. She flicked on the overhead light and became a surgeon, picking grains of sand from our feet, our belly buttons, our eyelids, every fold of our skin. She tossed each evil grain out the window.

  Seagulls called from the darkness, and moments later the sky yellowed. The black water was replaced with dark-blue water, and the mountains and mountains of sand gleamed through the windows. Cars came and went all day, their occupants giving the van a curious look before they became enraptured by Lake Michigan. In the evening, a bonfire appeared far down the beach, along with sudden bursts of laughter. Then it went out.