The Obsoletes

by Simeon Mills

  No, I thought. Get in the tub.

  Kanga was already in there. With his eyes closed, he wore the half smile of a man who had just read the laws of physics and was happy to discover that he was the solar system’s most massive object.

  I leaned over the bubbling water. Steam. I stuck a leg in. The jets were so strong that my body refused to submerge at first, but my toes clawed the bottom, and I managed to sit down. My exposed rubber hand was perched on the rim of the tub, getting flecked with water thanks to the jets.

  The reckless part of me wanted to dunk my entire body beneath the water, fake hand and all, count a full minute and keep counting, ten minutes, twenty-five, and leap through the surface, Oh my God!, and scare Brooke to death when she finally approached us. Instead I looked up into the blackness. No stars. Bubbles popped hard against my skin. I understood why Kanga had closed his eyes. I closed mine too.

  “SHIT!”

  The front door banged open.

  Kanga and I watched Mrs. Noon lurch into the driveway.

  “Goddamn high-top in the way.”

  My processor alerted me to cover my hand with a towel. I ignored it. Maybe I was tired of hiding. Maybe I wanted someone to notice me. The huge hairy hand continued lounging by the water as Mrs. Noon approached.

  In her hands: a bottle, a wineglass. A piece of white cloth was stretched over her chest, another one between her legs. Her skin was brighter than the cloth. Her mouth was dark, though, as were her eyes. I glanced around the yard, at the neighbors’ houses, to see if any faces were pressed to the windows, peeking at Mrs. Noon. I couldn’t see any other houses. The yard was surrounded by tall trees.

  “You boys get to pour my wine. I don’t know what everybody’s crying about. It’s not that cold out here.” She tossed the wine bottle to Kanga. He caught it. “I hope you’re not opposed to serving Zinfandel.”

  I felt a thud as her small body touched the bottom of the hot tub. Mrs. Noon reclined across from Kanga. I checked the Noons’ house to see if Brooke was screaming from her bedroom window. She wasn’t. The front door remained open, Kanga’s shoe tipped sideways on the front porch.

  “Wanna sneak a sip?”

  “No,” I said immediately. “Thank you.”

  She ignored me and turned to Kanga: “What about you, big brother?”

  “Yes.”

  She pointed her tongue at him. “Yes?”

  “Zinfandel?”

  “Fun! You have the bottle. Take a tiny one.”

  Kanga pulled the cork. He poured wine into his mouth, filling his cheeks.

  “Easy, slugger!”

  He swallowed it down. “It feels like a hot tub in my throat,” he said. He coughed, then took another, more modest sip.

  “It’s decent stuff,” she said. “Average.” Mrs. Noon held her glass out for Kanga to fill. She took a very small sip. “But I could knock your socks off with some stuff inside.” She punched Kanga in the arm. “Your girlfriend. What’s her problem? She’s no fun!”

  Kanga shrugged. “She’s shy.”

  “No. She’s just like him.” She pointed toward the house. “No fun. Never was. Never wants to do anything. Never wants to go anywhere. See this swimsuit?” Mrs. Noon stood up, splashing water on my new hand. “Sexy, right? It’s hers. I bought it for her. For tonight.” She sunk back into the hot tub. “She was supposed to be out here, but she chickened out. Wouldn’t wear it. Refused! I told her, Somebody has to wear it. I told her, If you don’t put that thing on . . . She didn’t stop me! Is that the kind of girlfriend you want? Somebody”—she hiccupped—“I told her. I said, See if I don’t! So here I am.” She raised her arms, letting them splash hard. “What do you have to say about that?”

  Kanga said nothing. He was staring at the top half of Brooke’s swimsuit.

  “Well.” Mrs. Noon splashed Kanga’s gaze in a more innocent direction. She snatched the wine bottle from his hands. She took a swig and set the bottle on the rim of the tub. Her dark eyes flashed white as an idea came to her. “Gonna hold my breath. Time me.” She sucked in a chestful of air before slipping beneath the water. Some blond hair swirled on the surface. I wanted to swim to a far corner of the tub where she wouldn’t be able to see the lower half of my body, but the jets were blasting my legs toward Mrs. Noon’s head.

  I climbed out.

  I was toweling off, one-handed, when she resurfaced, gasping in the cold air. “Did you,” she wheezed, “time me?”

  “Thirty-nine seconds,” declared Kanga.

  “You’re kidding,” she said. “Not even a full minute?” She had found a new seat beside my brother. “Felt like five minutes.” Mrs. Noon made no comment about my absence from the tub. Instead, she lifted one tiny white foot out of the water, spreading her dripping toes. “They’re not wrinkly yet.” She grabbed the wine bottle. “Let’s compare feet.”

  With my towel draped around my shoulders, I snuck into the house. Pastor Noon had the TV going somewhere in the basement. I heard him laughing along with a laugh track. Outside, Mrs. Noon hollered, “Where does your mother find shoes?”

  I crept upstairs.

  22

  THERE WAS NO NEED to put my ear against Brooke’s bedroom door. She was inside. Clacking. Brooke was in deep conversation with her computer, writing her novel. There was another sound, an unidentifiable sound, like someone’s grandfather lighting a match on the zipper of his coat. Over and over, match after match. Together with Brooke’s tapping it was music, and my hand was on her doorknob.

  My towel fell off as I pushed inside.

  Her mother had decorated her bedroom. It was painfully obvious. Red and white. Polka dots and candy canes. Lace. The teddy bears piled on the antique wicker chair had Mrs. Noon’s dark, judging eyes. Only the smell of the room was Brooke’s, along with two other items that caused my fan to click on: the picture I’d drawn, taped to the wall above her bed, and my story, “Buford’s Dilemma,” sitting on her bedside table, its pages wrinkled from reading.

  Brooke sat on her bed, seemingly oblivious to me, her computer glowing on her lap. A comb was stuck in her mouth. As she tapped the keyboard, her jaw worked the comb around, her tongue plucking the comb teeth. Bbrrrrrriiiippp! She had her heavy coat zipped up to her chin. Winter boots were on her feet. With the comb hooked on her bottom lip, she said, “Don’t read over my shoulder.”

  I was at the foot of her bed. Reading her novel would have been impossible. I was wearing only Pastor Noon’s swimsuit; my bony, yellowish body was on full display, as well as both hands for comparison: the normal hand hanging on the left side, the enormous, hairy, fake one hanging on the right, so heavy it caused my shoulder to droop. “Brooke—”

  “You need to go. It was just like I knew it would be. You never should have come here. So go. And Kanga too.”

  “Brooke,” I said, trying to smile at the ground like Mrs. Farnsworth, her favorite teacher. “I’m not like the others. I’m not like your mom. I’m not like Kanga. I’m like you. I’m different. I’m—”

  “I’m not different. I’m the same. Everyone else changed, not me.”

  “I haven’t changed. It’s Kanga who’s changed. I don’t know who he is anymore. And the worst part is, you chose him right when he started to hate me. How could you do that to me, Brooke?”

  “I got bored. I wasn’t going to wait ten years for you to write another story. And then wait five years for you to give it to me. Kanga just walked up and gave me something. And he’s cute.” She finally looked away from her novel, directly at me, judging me from head to toe. “I get to try a cute guy for once.”

  “I drew that picture.”

  “I know, Darryl. The angle of my foot was obviously drawn from where you were sitting. And I already knew what was going to happen if I kept on liking you like I was. Pretty soon you’d tell me I’m too weird. You’d be the one who hurt me. You’d be just like everybody else.”

  “I haven’t stopped thinking about you since we touched shoes in the skybox. I wo
n’t stop thinking about you. Kanga will. He already has. He’s in the hot tub with your mom.”

  Her comb made a slow bbbrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiippp! and her fingers danced on the keyboard. “Good. Now I can forget about both of you. So for the last time, go away.”

  “You think you’re so weird? I’m weirder than you’ll ever be.” I yanked Brooke’s power cord from the wall. With my index finger I burrowed into my belly button, then wedged another finger in too, pulling back the skin in all directions, until my epidermal sensors were blaring in confusion. Until it was exposed. It. I felt droplets of water trickle from the three tiny holes, causing my entire body to quiver. “See?” I gasped. “Weird. Now let’s be weird together.” I picked up the cord and plugged Brooke’s computer into my three-pronged outlet . . .

  . . . and I became a prisoner shackled to a dungeon wall, each clack of Brooke’s keyboard an additional needle skewering my belly. “Brooke,” I groaned, but she just intensified her typing, pounding her keyboard with closed fists, filling my abdomen with more and more needles, wider and wider, until the needles emerged through my back, screeching against the dungeon wall . . .

  “Done yet, sicko?” She pulled the cord from my belly, sparks whiskering out.

  The synthetic pain burned away, leaving my abdomen absent of all sensation beyond a sadistic urge for more needles. My wrists felt cold and raw from the phantom cuffs, even my rubber wrist. I sat at the foot of her bed, willing myself not to grab her power cord for another round of punishment. “Now you know that I’m a—”

  “Robot. No duh.” She resumed typing. “Plug me back into the wall. Or do I have to do everything myself?”

  I did as ordered, then waited for another reaction from her. I’d seen Brooke show more emotion at someone sneezing. “How did you already know that I’m a—” The word caught in my throat. “—a robot?”

  “Because I’m not an idiot.”

  “Have you told anyone?”

  She smiled. “Maybe.”

  “Who else knows I’m a robot?”

  “God, you’re gullible. I haven’t told anybody because it’s so obvious. Because anybody with eyes can see your hair is the fakest thing in the world.”

  “My hair?”

  “And this kid at my old church was the same robot as you. Exactly the same. Same dumb face. Same dumb voice. He was a tiny bit smarter, but otherwise exactly the same. Well no. Not everything was the same.” She smacked my new hand. “What happened here?”

  I’d been trying not to think about my new hand since entering her room, afraid to even look at it. Now I scrutinized the discolored swath of putty between my hand and forearm. Marring the smoothness was a fingerprint. Betsy’s fingerprint. This was the most unique piece of me, the only piece I was certain had not been mass-produced and given to a thousand other robots. Thanks, Betsy.

  But Brooke was staring at the loose skin around my belly button. More than staring. She was ogling it. There seemed to be a frog jumping in the chest of her winter coat. I felt a strong impulse to cover my belly button. Instead I scooted closer to Brooke. For once, she was curious about me. There wasn’t any harm in looking.

  “What happens when you stick your fingers in there?”

  “I’m not supposed to do that,” I answered automatically. The truth was, sticking my fingers into my outlet had never occurred to me—and now that Brooke had brought it up, the idea was repulsive. “I can’t.”

  “Stick your fingers in,” she ordered.

  I touched my outlet. It was still tender from her computer cord’s prongs. I rested the tips of my middle and index fingers on the two long slits.

  “That’s not sticking them in.”

  “Sorry, Brooke. I just don’t think I—”

  “Do I have to do everything myself?”

  “Wait—”

  She slapped my hand away then plunged her own two fingers into my outlet. I felt the outlet bite her, and then watched an uncontrollable yellow glow blast across her arm, her winter coat, the wall behind her. Brooke’s yellow hair floated up from her head. Her yellow cheeks jiggled into a blur. “Sorry, Brooke,” I tried to say, but everything went black . . .

  • • •

  The Directions explained that robots amid the rebooting process don’t look like dead people, despite having lost all connection to their processors. Instead, they resemble humans deep in thought. Bad thoughts, specifically. Rebooting robots look like people contemplating their lifelong regrets. Their foreheads are lined. Their lips are pursed. Their eyes are focused—but on nothing in particular. It’s a survival tactic. Humans recognize this unsettled look on someone’s face, and they leave that person alone.

  When I finally rebooted, I saw Brooke once again typing on her computer. She was alive. A normal human would have been electrocuted to death by my voltage. But not her. Did that mean she was a—

  And why was my head so cold? So drafty? I was sitting on the edge of Brooke’s bed, the exact position I’d been in when she had debased me with her fingers. Now a faint whistling haunted the space between my ears. I touched the top of my head. My hatch was wide open. Brooke did it. I pressed the hatch shut. “You could’ve just told me you were a robot.”

  She kept typing. “What’s the fun in that?”

  “And you opened up my head, Brooke. What did you do inside it?”

  “Stop being a baby.”

  “Did you touch anything?”

  “I just looked. There’s barely anything in there to touch.”

  “Promise?”

  She rolled her eyes, as if the inside of my head were simply too boring to talk about.

  But I didn’t care. This was better than a Christmas gift. I hadn’t even allowed myself to dream about this possibility. Brooke Noon was a robot. “Does Kanga know what you are?”

  She laughed. “Give me a break. All he thinks about is himself.”

  Kanga had no idea she was a robot, which meant this was a secret only Brooke and I shared. My brother could go right on believing I was the obsolete robot in the family. In truth, he had just become obsolete to me. I had a person in my life I could just be myself around, an artist and a robot, both things I could never be with Kanga. Staring at Brooke, I cranked my emotional inputs to the max. I felt euphoric. I felt dumbstruck. I felt the urge to touch her.

  “Your hair,” I mumbled. “Can I feel it, please?”

  Her fingers paused on the keyboard, then resumed typing.

  “You looked inside my head, Brooke. You owe me. You’ve got to at least let me touch your hair.”

  She didn’t say yes right away. But she didn’t pull the covers over her head either. She just stared at her screen. “Be quick about it.”

  I wasn’t quick. I took my time. Brooke closed her computer screen against the keyboard, afraid I might read her novel while standing beside her, but all I cared about was the top of her head. To my surprise, her hair felt fake. Not that I knew how “realistic” robotic hair was supposed to feel. But I’d petted a dog before, and that was what it felt like. Only messier and longer and greasier. And what was that stuff? White flakes of plastic? I was about to take my hand away when I felt a strange magnetism in my new hand. I raised it to Brooke’s head, raked the rubber fingers through her hair . . . and I felt a memory. Not my own memory, but Dad’s. He was tousling my hair, right after I’d made him laugh so hard his whole body shook. He hadn’t cared how fake my hair was, or how fake his hand was. He’d thought I was funny, and his hand remembered the feel of my hair.

  “Time’s up.”

  Some of Brooke’s shiny hairs had come loose in my fingers, which I twisted into a single branch and curled around my new pinky. I stared at Brooke’s scalp, noticing a part I’d created down the middle, with two freckles four inches apart: two points on an invisible line. A seam?

  “I said time’s up.”

  I backed away from Brooke, respecting her wishes. Her hair was mussed and sticking out in odd directions—but it was her eyes. They were t
hinking about something. Brooke had more secrets waiting in her processor, and she was weighing whether or not to reveal them.

  “Kanga—” she finally said. “He lied. He said you guys have parents, but I know you don’t. You don’t act like kids who have parents. You two never brush your teeth.”

  “Why would we brush our teeth?”

  “You don’t know anything about having parents.”

  “You’re right. We don’t have parents. Not since fourth grade, but Kanga wishes we did. He would give anything to have a couple of parents like yours.”

  “No, he wouldn’t.”

  “I know they’re not perfect, Brooke, but no perfect parents exist. Your mom and dad take care of you, at least. And look at this huge house!” I felt strange making this argument to her, like some latent part of my programming was forcing me to defend the concept of parenting for the greater good. Or maybe I was making excuses for my own meager mothering attempts. Or could it be that I actually saw something valuable in Mrs. and Pastor Noon? “Your dad. He cares about you, even if he’s a little different. He doesn’t want you driving cars by yourself. That makes sense. All robotic parents have their—”

  “They’re not robots.”

  “They’re humans?”

  “You don’t know the first thing about me or my parents.”

  “But I want to,” I said. “I want to hear all about them. And about you. Your sister. I want to know everything, Brooke.”

  “Then come with me.” She rolled off her bed. She walked out of her room and into the hallway. I followed. Brooke stopped in front of a door. “Are you sure you want to meet my sister?”

  No. I wasn’t. Not the way she said it, with that smile of hers. A smile from Brooke could mean any number of things. “Elecsandra, right?”

  She opened the door, revealing a completely dark room. The first thing that hit me was the rich scent of olive oil. Sure enough, when Brooke turned on a lamp I saw an enormous shelf, like the one in Mr. Virgil’s closet, lined with bottle after bottle of restaurant-size jugs of olive oil. There were also rolls of paper towels on the shelves.