The Obsoletes

by Simeon Mills

  “This used to be my room,” said Brooke.

  I looked for traces of Mrs. Noon’s decorating and found them only in the wallpaper: the red-and-white pattern of a wrapped Christmas gift. But there were no pictures on the walls and no toys to be seen. The only other object in the room was a plain wooden crib. But there was no baby inside. Its bottom was heaped with black blankets.

  Brooke leaned over the crib and dug through the blankets. When she revealed the child buried beneath them, I realized why the blankets were black.

  “What is that stuff?” I whispered. “What’s she covered with?”

  Brooke didn’t answer. She grabbed a paper towel and wiped the black liquid bubbling from the baby’s ears, which resulted in a black smear across the baby’s neck. Elecsandra whimpered. It looked like . . . motor oil leaking from her onto the black blankets. Brooke tossed the used paper towel into the trash. It hit bottom with a wet thud.

  “They were going to destroy her,” Brooke said. “The scientists who made her. That’s what my dad told me. They were going to destroy her for being—”

  “Obsolete.”

  Brooke nodded. “My dad saved her.”

  “That’s good, right? Your dad is going to fix her.”

  She leaned into the crib and picked Elecsandra up by the armpits, careful not to get oil on herself. “Hold her.”

  “Wait—”

  Brooke dropped Elecsandra into my arms. If I hadn’t caught her, the baby would have bounced on the floor. She was naked. Cold. But unthinkably soft. I found if I squeezed her at all, black oil would squirt out. Even poking her tiny palm caused oil to ooze from her fingernails. I formed a careful hammock with both arms, cradling her head with my sturdy rubber fingers. Oil squished between my bare skin and hers, and I felt it dripping off my elbow and onto the carpet, which was already badly stained.

  “He’s not fixing her,” Brooke said. “He just keeps her in here. He feeds her olive oil, and he wipes up the black oil that drips out. And he prays. Every night, he comes in and reads his Bible and prays for God to stop the leaking. When one hour didn’t change anything, he started praying for two hours. That’s how he’s going to fix her.”

  “Is it working at all?”

  Brooke just stared at me. “I’m obsolete too. My mom told me. It was at dinner one night when she was drunk, like tonight, except worse. My mom smiled when she said it, so happy to finally tell me what I was. So I told her what she was. I told her—” Brooke stared at the wallpaper, reliving the moment. “My mom said my processor was all wrong. It was obsolete, and I would never get better. My dad kept praying for me, though, even though he knew she was right. That I was broken. Pretty soon it was obvious his praying wasn’t going to fix me, and she didn’t care. So I stole his car and drove it to Ypsilanti, tried to buy a battery for my computer, couldn’t find the stupid store, and then drove it back. Nothing even happened. I just wanted to do something. You can’t get worse than obsolete, so why does it matter? That was the only time my dad really tried to repair me. He took me to Detroit. He let them open up my stomach and—”

  “Was it Gravy Robotics?”

  “I don’t know. They erased the trip from my processor. It feels . . . It feels like a cold wind inside me.” She touched her belly. “The whole time I was in Detroit, I can’t remember it. I just feel cold when I try to. My neck. My feet. My arms. Nothing warms me up. That stupid hot tub just makes me colder. My dad praying over me. That makes me freeze. It’s funny—” Brooke flashed an evil grin. “The only time I don’t feel cold is when she’s drunk. When she’s honest. When she says the scientists should’ve killed me the day I was born. Then I feel hot.”

  I stared at her. If I weren’t holding her sister, I would have reached and touched her arm, just to feel the chill of the lubricant under her synthetic skin. “I don’t trust anyone either,” I said. “But I trust you.”

  “You’re the luckiest kid I know, Darryl. Not to have parents. I would do anything to get rid of mine.”

  “Anything?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s leave.” It wasn’t until I spoke the words aloud that I realized this idea had always been in my processor. Or at least since Dad had planted it there years ago, hoping he and I would enact it together. Instead, I was sharing it now with Brooke. “Tomorrow night. We’ll leave after the basketball game.” Elecsandra was suddenly heavy in my arms, an unnecessary weight for a pair of robots as free as me and Brooke. I set her gently back in her crib. I grabbed a handful of paper towels and began cleaning myself off. “Bus tickets to Memphis are seventy dollars. I have enough money. Nobody will know where we’re going. We can just ride to Memphis and—”

  Elecsandra started shrieking.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But you need to leave now. They’ll kill me if they find you in here.”

  I raised my bare foot toward her. “Let’s touch feet before I go.”

  “That’s kid stuff,” she said, and from her coat pocket pulled out a computer disk. “Take this.”

  Balancing on one foot, I grabbed the disk from her. Its label simply read B.

  “Now you’ll know everything.”

  • • •

  I slipped into the upstairs hallway unseen while Brooke remained in Elecsandra’s room, feeding the obsolete baby her olive oil. I made my way to the master bedroom to change back into my dress clothes.

  Kanga was already there. He was staring at Mrs. Noon, asleep on the bed, her swimsuit-clad body laid out like a cadaver. Despite the lights being off, her face held none of its previous darkness. She looked peaceful and relaxed, an old, silver-haired woman snoring the scent of Zinfandel into the air.

  Kanga’s eyes had stolen her darkness. “Where have you been?” he said without looking at me.

  “I was checking on Brooke.”

  “My girlfriend.” He said it like she was just one of many things belonging to him. “How’s she doing?”

  “Fine. But she had to get her little sister to sleep. You can talk to her when she comes out, if you want.”

  “I don’t need your permission to talk to her.”

  “You’re right. Sorry.” I ducked into the bathroom to change back into my game-day clothes, slipping Brooke’s disk into my pants pocket for safekeeping. As I buttoned my shirt, I looked in the mirror to see that my belly button had mostly returned to its human shape, though I had a streak of black oil on my neck. I wiped it off with a piece of toilet paper, flushed, then hung Pastor Noon’s damp swimsuit on a towel rack. Back in the bedroom, I stepped up beside my brother to get a better look at Mrs. Noon.

  “She fell asleep in the hot tub,” Kanga explained, scowling at her. “So I carried her up here.”

  Mrs. Noon’s hair was still wet, twisting out from her scalp. Her lips began to murmur, and I thought I saw a black tongue surface and recede.

  “I have a game tomorrow,” he said. “It’s time to go.”

  • • •

  Kanga lifted me onto his handlebars, setting me down much harder than before. I felt him grab a fistful of the back of my shirt to keep me in place. I clenched my body for blastoff.

  We rode home in silence, the streets empty. I wondered who occupied my brother’s processor. Was it Brooke? Mrs. Noon? Or had they already been deleted to make room for tomorrow night’s heroics? Kanga swore under his breath, pedaling faster, and I knew his body was overflowing with anxious energy. While his legs propelled us forward, his mind was churning just as hard to visualize a victory, hand-painting each detail of the game until the brushstrokes disappeared into reality.

  My processor was humming too. With Brooke’s hair twined around my finger, I closed my eyes, conjuring tomorrow night’s escape from Hectorville: After the game, we would ride our bikes to the bus station, buy our tickets, and board the bus. It would all go perfectly. Everyone else on the bus would stuff orange chips into their mouths, but not us. We wouldn’t need chips. We would disembark onto the streets of Memphis and find a hotel nea
r Graceland, home of Elvis Presley. It would have a pool. “And look,” Brooke would say. “A hot tub.” Up in our hotel room, she would pull something from her suitcase: A one-piece swimsuit composed of black and white crisscrossing lines. No hearts. No polka dots . . .

  But here I lost control of my fantasy. I felt obsolete again, and I was sure everything about the trip to Memphis would go horribly wrong.

  Brooke would say, “I need privacy in the bathroom, stupid.” And I would listen to her changing her clothes, the muffled sound of her shirt getting pulled over her face, the unzipping of her jeans, the snap of the swimsuit against her hip.

  I would knock on the bathroom door.

  “What do you want?”

  “Brooke. I’m sorry, but I forgot to bring my swimsuit.”

  “But I told you to pack one!”

  “I’m sorry, Brooke, I’m—”

  Brooke would stride into the hotel room, the fantastic prize of her body hidden beneath her swimsuit. “I’m going to the hot tub anyway,” she would announce. “Don’t wait up for me.”

  The door would slam in my face, and I’d be alone, staring out the window at Memphis, at the gray crisscrossing lines of the streets below, wondering how Kanga would do it better if he were me.

  23

  “SOMETHING’S STUCK IN THERE.”

  It was the morning of the championship game. Kanga was fully decked out in his dress clothes, ready for the bike ride to school. But at the last second he scurried into the bathroom to flood the inside of his body and rinse it out again. I heard the sink running much longer than it had at the Noons’ house. I wondered if I’d hear a pop as his body exploded, and see water rushing out from under the bathroom door. But four flushes later, he came out, gripping his belly. “It’s still in there.”

  “This is why we’re never supposed to eat.” It was the kind of mom lecture I’d given Kanga a thousand times. But we were beyond that old paradigm now. I was beyond it. Last night, Kanga had made it clear he didn’t need me in his life anymore. I was more than ready to give him his independence. Still, the mom in me refused to be censored, and offered my brother this thimbleful of encouragement: “It’ll come out eventually. Let’s head to school.”

  It was my game day too, and it started with a small victory. I could ride my bike myself, two-handed; I just mashed my rubber fingers and thumb at the handlebar grip until I was grabbing it tight. But I’d have to be careful. There would be no quick letting go. I had also washed my game-day clothes early that morning, and they felt cold and metallic on my skin, like armor. For a warrior such as myself, the world was brimming with possibility. I was fully charged at last, having left my new fingers in the outlet for over eleven hours. Had Dad felt this same burst of excitement the night before our planned adventure as he charged up for the last time? And what about Brooke? Was she ready for tonight? I hadn’t let go of the disk she’d given me, wishing I were the type of robot from movies who could insert it into the side of his head, blink, and know its entire contents. I would have to use the school library to read Brooke’s disk, to finally understand her, hoping nobody was reading it over my shoulder. But I already knew the three most important things: Brooke was a robot, she wanted to flee her oppressive family life, and she’d chosen me as her confidant. Still, Brooke was Brooke. There was no predicting her next move. Would she really steal away with me to Memphis? Would she pretend I didn’t exist? Would she pull me into the custodian’s closet and jam her fingers in my outlet?

  The temperature on the bank marquee read thirty-eight degrees. I was wearing my coat today, just like the human kids, and I’d even remembered my winter hat.

  Not Kanga. He had forgotten both his hat and coat. He was draped in superstition. He’d pushed off with his dress shoes, and now he couldn’t let them touch the ground again, or else. So he pedaled. He kept pedaling. He kept focus. We were approaching the stoplight. Kanga gently squeezed his hand brake. The stoplight was his enemy. Today it was red. Kanga was going as slowly as possible, weaving back and forth, riding in small circles, taking up the whole lane. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting for the light to turn . . .

  Red. It was still red, and there was nowhere left for Kanga to go. I was already stopped at the light, resting peacefully with one foot on the asphalt. Kanga was not resting. He was making sounds with his mouth, trying to change the stoplight with magic. Red. Cars were suddenly lined up behind him, adults on their way to work, hating Kanga for being a bike in their lane. I felt their eyes shoot their own angry magic through the back of his head, trying to knock him off balance, knock him into the gutter, down a manhole. Red. Red. Red. He was at the stoplight. There was nothing left to do except push his feet against the pedals and arrive on the other side of the intersection.

  If you ever watch your brother ride his bike straight into rush-hour traffic, be prepared to see it on your eyelids every time you blink for the rest of your life. There was no time for car horns. Just the skidding of tires on blacktop. A bird would have looked down at Kanga directly below the traffic light, standing on the pedals of his bike, frozen in space by the sheer speed of the vehicles around him. A station wagon lost control, its front wheels locking up, its back end swinging around like a baseball bat, swatting Kanga’s bike to the other side of the street. The bike spun as it flew, Kanga with it, hands clutching the handlebars, his feet pinching the gears. The bike bounced on its tires. It wobbled. Kanga almost hit another car but glided past the front bumper. Now the world was stopped except for Kanga, everybody else unable to scream or move as he pumped his knees in the direction of Hectorville High School.

  Green.

  I pedaled after him. There were no further complications on the ride.

  At the bike rack, I dismounted beside Kanga, yanking my rubber fingers off the handlebar grip, as he examined his bike for damage from the collision. Not even a scratch. His body was fine too, except for the steam emanating from his hair follicles. He looked focused. Determined. Like he could have leapt over the building. My mind was back at the intersection. The station wagon. Before it had bunted Kanga, I got a clean look through the driver’s-side window. Mr. Jacobowhite, Kanga’s English teacher. I tried to imagine Mr. Jacobowhite, after the incident, pulled over on the side of the road. Swearing? Crying? Dead of a heart attack?

  Kanga began poking his belly with his fingers, like a kid pressing piano keys, wincing at the sound. I followed him into school, feeling a rush of hot air pressing against my hat. It occurred to me: Mr. Jacobowhite had seen Kanga biking to school without the hat he’d personally delivered to our apartment. Kanga’s head had been exposed to the elements, and Mr. Jacobowhite had nearly destroyed him. Somehow that made me love Kanga like we were fourth graders again, against my better judgment.

  • • •

  She was blocking our locker. The captain of the freshman Cheerbirds, Staci Miles, was pressing a sign to it. “You’re not supposed to be here yet!” she screamed and scampered down the hallway with bounds made all the more graceful by her Cheerbird uniform. The sign on our locker read:

  ♥

  GO KANGA!

  #32! POINT GUARD!

  WHAT A HOTTIE!

  KILL RICHARDSON!

  ♥

  The words were written on an orange piece of paper meant to resemble a basketball, but Staci had cut it in the shape of a human heart.

  Kanga scowled at the sign, then turned to me: “Look down my throat. Can you see anything down there?” He opened wide.

  I was already exhausted from today’s crisis. Apparently, Kanga saw me as obsolete only when he didn’t have food stuck to his insides. Part of this predictable charade was my fault. Every time he got himself into trouble, I was always standing by to rescue him. But I was done with that. Sick of it. More to the point, Kanga didn’t need my help anymore, and he probably never did in the first place. Dad had gotten it right when we were babies, when Kanga had a dart sticking out of his back: It ain’t nothing, he’d said. Kid’s fine. The ensuing years h
ad proven this to be true, again and again. It didn’t matter what I did—or even what Kanga did. He always survived in the end. I channeled Dad now.

  “Close your mouth,” I said. “You’ll be fine.”

  We saw Staci Miles again in Mr. Belt’s class. She was first to notice Stickzilla’s terrarium was empty, scrubbed clean of its shredded newspaper, leaves, and brambles. The screen roof was gone, as well as the spray bottle that had provided Stickzilla with a daily mist. “Oh,” bleated Staci. “She almost lived until spring!”

  Mr. Belt made the sound of a basketball buzzer with his mouth. “Presentation time! Staci, Paula, Jennifer. You have a date with the front of my room.”

  Staci shook the memory of Stickzilla from her flushed cheeks, and her groupmate Paula yelled to Mr. Belt, “One more minute!”

  “Ladies—”

  “Fine,” said Paula, pouting, deserting her half-finished visual aid, a metal bowl and a piece of string, and trudging to the front of the room. Only Staci maintained her composure. She began the science presentation with a single word, centrifugal, saying it so confidently that I heard several boys repeat it back to her, “centrifugal,” the way businessmen might repeat aloha back to a beautiful woman in Hawaii.

  When Staci finished her introduction, Jennifer took over and illustrated centrifugal force with a poster, but mostly used her hands to demonstrate what she meant, and finally, after having further confused her audience, she asked us to close our eyes and imagine the impossible concept for ourselves. There was silence.

  “Well, ladies,” Mr. Belt said, “please accept our gratitude for that lovely—”

  “Wait!” said Staci. “We have one more demonstration!”

  “No,” Paula whispered to her. “I’m not doing it.”

  “Come on!” urged Staci.

  “Me neither,” said Jennifer.

  Staci’s partners gathered their materials and abandoned her at the front of the room. Mr. Belt held the teacher’s edition of his science book, ready to assign us our reading.