by Simeon Mills
“There’s a tool shed over on the other side of the building,” I said. “Sometimes Kanga hung out there when he wanted to be alone. I can go check—”
“I’ll go. You mustn’t leave this car, Darryl. I’ve changed your clothes, but if anyone recognizes you, there’s no telling what they’ll do. My son, you are invaluable to me now. I’ll be back soon. Make a list of other places your brother might have gone.” With that, Dr. Murphio disappeared into the shadows.
I waited until he was around the corner, then unlocked my door and stepped to the parking lot. I felt the cold breeze whistle through the tape on my neck, sending a shiver through my frame. I should have been warm enough; Dr. Murphio had changed me into jeans and a winter coat. He’d stuffed a scarf in my pocket too, which I managed to wrap around my neck to hide my wound.
I was suddenly overcome with the feeling that I wasn’t alone. Could Kanga be nearby, hiding? I opened the lid of the dumpster, got on my tiptoes and peered inside, faintly expecting to see his remains. Instead, I was met by the stench of spoiled food. I wobbled backward, crunching the snow in the direction of the woods. Had he fled there? To the tree where we’d buried the woman’s arm?
I froze. It wasn’t him. Someone else was watching me.
“Ready to go, snail breath?”
Brooke Noon straddled her bike. Her pink backpack was tight against her shoulders. Her pants were tucked into her moon boots. The strings of her hoodie were tied in a knot under her chin. Her ski gloves gripped the handlebars.
“I thought you’d never get here,” she said, trying to look irritated with me, but her face radiated excitement. “Grab your bike, or climb on mine. The bus leaves in half an hour.”
“Something happened, Brooke.”
“Hop on my handlebars. You can tell me on the way.”
“I’m not going.”
She slipped off her seat, stomped her kickstand down, and raised her fists toward me. “You lied.” Steam hissed from her mouth. “You said you were taking the bus to Memphis. With me. It’s time to go.”
“You don’t understand. They know about me and Kanga now. Everybody does. You have to leave, Brooke, because if you get caught talking to me, you’re dead. Kanga escaped, and I have to find him. That’s why I have to stay. Kanga—”
“Kanga? KANGA? He was the reason you wanted to leave in the first place! We are going to Memphis.”
“He needs me. I didn’t think he did anymore, but he does.”
“You lied to me.” She swung her backpack off her shoulders and held it between us. “And you lied to her.” She unzipped it for me to look inside.
A white garbage sack was the backpack’s only contents, the top of which Brooke had cinched closed with a twist tie. She shook the bag, and whatever was inside made a wet, sloshing sound, like Brooke had brought along a collection of goldfish. But as I leaned closer, I saw that the liquid streaking the inside of the sack was black. A tiny skull then bobbed toward the top, as if listening through the plastic with its miniature human ear.
“I know she wasn’t part of our plan,” Brooke whispered. “But our plan can still work. I just couldn’t leave her there. I tried to, but—” She stared down at her baby sister. “She won’t be trouble, Darryl. Not much. And you can help us. You could fix her after we get to Memphis.” The anger drained from Brooke’s face, leaving only desperation and fear. “The plan can still work.”
I looked at Elecsandra, folded up and wrapped in plastic. “Is she dead?”
“I shut her off. She has a head like yours with that special switch.”
“If her head’s like mine, maybe she was made by Gravy Robotics. Our creator, Dr. Murphio—this is his car. We can show Elecsandra to him, and maybe—”
Brooke hugged her sister to her chest. “I’m not giving her to any more adults.”
In truth, I already knew Dr. Murphio hadn’t created Elecsandra. Gravy Robotics made sons, not daughters. I recalled the woman who had designed me, Renee, the photo of her in the Gravy hallway, that everlasting scream. Brooke was wise to keep Dr. Murphio away from her sister.
“It’s just like Buford says in your story.” Brooke recited the line: “ ‘These robots just don’t know when to quit.’ That’s us, Darryl. I’m not quitting. I want to go to Memphis with you. Let’s go.”
From across town, I could hear Pastor Noon screaming his girls’ names. My processor was overloaded with so much conflicting information, yet somehow it all added up to an easy decision, one that wasn’t really a decision at all. “I’m not quitting either,” I told her. “I wish you and Elecsandra the best of luck. Good-bye, Brooke.”
Instead of wiping the tears from her eyes (there were none), she pressed down on the garbage sack, causing two tiny knees to pop upward like a frog’s, and she zipped her pink backpack shut. “You got no idea what’s waiting for you in town.” She secured the backpack on her shoulders, grinning with hatred. “Keep your stupid luck.”
• • •
I tabulated an exhaustive list of Hectorville locations where Kanga might be hiding. Number one was the spaceship in Umber Park. “Drive us to the spaceship,” I ordered Dr. Murphio from the back seat. “And if he’s not there, we’ll find him somewhere else.”
But Hectorville was no longer the sleepy Michigan town I’d grown up in. My hometown had become haunted, and not by a host of spiteful ghouls but by its own citizens. Dr. Murphio slowed the car to observe their abnormal behavior. It was eight thirty at night, but nobody was getting ready for bed or even staying in their houses to watch TV. Posses of men in full winter garb were collected in driveways, plotting and planning on the hoods of their trucks. They held beer bottles, baseball bats, and toasters. Their dogs were howling. Mothers stood in their front yards directing platoons of children, armed with toasters themselves, to battle a horde of imaginary robots. Tonight they celebrated a deranged version of Christmas Eve, the entire town waiting up for Santa to deliver a single present: Kanga Livery. No holiday jingles fueled the festive atmosphere, only the crackle, the sound of a million magnets clicking together then apart, then together—the humans performing their separate tasks in collective rhythm.
“Do you hear it?” I asked Dr. Murphio. “That crackle? It’s never been this loud before. I heard it in the Cave too, riling everybody up.”
“No,” said Dr. Murphio, shaking his head. “I can’t hear anything.”
Yet there was a rhythm to his shaking . . .
We approached a police blockade. Dr. Murphio tossed me a winter hat, which I pulled down over my eyes. I pretended to be asleep as he rolled down his window. “We’re just trying to get home, Officer,” stammered Dr. Murphio. “I was out at the mall with my son. What’s all this? Did something happen?”
“You could say so,” the police officer said. “We have a robot about. Teenager. He’s running loose, but—”
“A robot!”
“We need folks to call 911 if they see a teenager in a basketball jersey.”
Though my eyes were covered, I felt the beam of a flashlight wash over my body.
“How can I help?” asked Dr. Murphio. “After I get him in bed, what do you need done?”
“It’s our official policy that folks stay indoors. But between you and me, a dragnet is what’s going to catch this thing. The whole town working together, which is what I see happening. You can just feel it in the air. We’re going to catch that greasy bastard, and it’ll be because of regular people like you. So go home and get your boy safe. Then you head outside with your neighbors. All you folks know the lay of your properties. Scour them. This is how Hectorville is going to stay safe.”
I heard the two men shake hands, and we continued into the heart of town, where the traffic was churning slowly in both directions. I peeked out the window. The sidewalk near the library was buoyant with snow-suited children riding on the shoulders of adults, waving signs: GO HOME ROBOTS!, NO TOASTERS!, and GOD HATES COMMUNIST CHINA’S ROBOTS. Many residents had toasters tucked under t
heir arms. The parking lot at the grocery store was filled with cars, as people were stocking up on provisions for the long night: boxes of donuts, bags of chips, cases of beer. Some people had lawn chairs on the side of the street, huddled in half-circles around portable propane heaters. A sudden loud crackle caused the entire town to flinch. They looked around at one another, confused, then got back to what they were doing. We drove past Cobra Burger, which was bursting at the seams with teenagers whose food sat untouched on their trays, everyone too excited to eat. We were rolling by the cemetery when the truck before us slammed on its brakes, halting the entire procession. A flashlight shined on the gravestones. “THERE HE IS!” a woman shouted, and men began pouring from their vehicles, sprinting into the cemetery from all directions. “THERE!” she directed them. “HE’S JUMPING!” The flashlight swung back and forth, freeze-framing the searchers as they disappeared into the darkness.
The crackle was deafening. Dr. Murphio rubbed his temples in weary synchronization. That awful noise spiked, then tapered off when an animal trotted out from behind a gravestone: a deer. It danced into the road, pausing before a stopped truck, immobile in its headlights. Someone let a toaster fly through an open car window, clunking the deer with it. The thing leapt away. The men returned from the cemetery and climbed back aboard their vehicles. The convoy resumed its slow course.
“Kanga’s dead,” said Dr. Murphio, staring blankly at the taillights ahead of him.
“No.”
“There are too many of them. I’m driving us back to Detroit.”
“You can’t give up. We have to find him.”
“It’s over, Darryl. If they haven’t found him yet, they will. And when they do, they’ll destroy him.”
“No. We’re not leaving until we find Kanga, dead or alive. I was programmed for this. You call yourself his father? You can’t leave your child behind. Both of us are programmed to take care of him. I’m not letting you quit.”
“Programmed?” Dr. Murphio laughed. “To take care of Kanga? You, of all robots, shouldn’t be lecturing me about how to follow a program.” He stopped his car on the side of the road and turned to face me. “Tell me, Darryl. What do you think your program is?”
The answer was simple: to conceal my robotic identity, to make sure Kanga did the same, to be a good robot. These had been the building blocks of my entire life. And even if they crumbled down—like they had this afternoon—I was certain my program would be to stack the blocks up again. To be a better robot. But I couldn’t say any of this to Dr. Murphio, not with that horrible grin on his face. The truth was I had no idea what my program was.
“Basketball,” Dr. Murphio said. “You and Kanga shared this program, along with all your brothers. My vision was a whole generation of basketball-playing sons, a team that would be brought together, when the time was right, for a grand introduction. Can you see the stage, Darryl? The identical jerseys? The name on their chests wouldn’t read ‘Gravy Robotics.’ It would read ‘USA.’ Red, white, and blue! How could anyone resist those magnificent boys playing for our country?” Bitterness narrowed his eyes. “Every country in the world would fall beneath them. Country after country. Foe after foe. Vanquished. Annihilated. China—” Dr. Murphio stopped himself. “But if not a team, how about one perfect boy? Might I be allowed to have that? One boy? One?” His eyes grew wide, following an invisible butterfly bobbing through the darkness. “Kanga?” He blinked the thought away. “There will be more. Always more sons to create. Perfect sons. We’ll go home to Detroit. We’ll get a good night’s rest, and tomorrow we’ll begin work on the next generation. I know you went snooping through my office, Darryl. You saw the specifications for Ma. I need a robot like you, curious and inventive. Your brother was the first robot I’d modeled after Ma. You will be vital in pinpointing what went wrong with Kanga and how to fix it.”
I felt a terrible itch in my new fingers. They yearned to hold my basketball in the triple-threat position one last time. I was the basketball kid. But the moniker felt like an insult now, like a piece of paper someone had taped to my back, BASKETBALL KID, just to make everyone laugh. “I’m leaving,” I told him. “And you can’t stop me.”
“Darryl Livery, go to your room this instant.”
The magic words hit me first in the processor, a blast of uncontrollable heat, as though my deepest memories were being set on fire. A moment later I realized Dr. Murphio’s order had paralyzed me too. I couldn’t move a muscle. I was stuck, motionless, in his car, which had begun rolling forward. To Detroit. Worst of all, Dr. Murphio’s magic words, GO TO YOUR ROOM THIS INSTANT, were blocking out anything else I tried to think about:
Dad’s body shaking when he laughed—
Go to your room this instant.
A spider crawling on the ceiling in our apartment—
Go to your room this instant.
Brooke rolling her eyes—
Go to your room this instant.
Kanga singing a Cobra Burger commercial—
Go to your room this instant.
Mom saying, “What’s the magic word?”
Go to your room this instant.
“No, Darryl.” Mom leaning closer to me. “You know what the magic word is.”
“Thank you?” I whispered, and suddenly I could imagine Mom’s face glowing like the inside of a microwave—because nothing charged her up like hearing those words. “Thank you, Mom,” I said again, this time loud enough to startle Dr. Murphio.
He glanced back at me, shocked. “Darryl Livery, go to—”
I yanked open the door, tumbling to the side of the road. The open-air crackle drowned his voice to nothing. I lifted myself from the sidewalk and began marching with the Hectorville army, looking for Kanga.
Did all ghosts feel the thrill of invisibility as they floated among those who had destroyed them? Or was it just the robot in me, perfectly comfortable pretending to be human? I put my hands in my coat pockets. I stared at the ground as I moved with the herd, my hat low over my eyes.
We lumbered past the duck pond.
Past Doug’s Video Rentals.
We were nearly to Umber Park when the ground beneath us began to shake, as if God were punishing Hectorville with an earthquake. But this rumble was of our own making: a stampede of humans breaking into a jog, streaming in from everywhere. Cars were left in the middle of the road, their occupants joining the flood. Sweating faces jostled above me, wearing glee and fear, blinking in rapid unison with the crackle. Nobody said a word, but nobody needed to. The crackle had found its electric voice, buzzing this message:
We found him . . . We found him . . . We found him . . .
26
I SQUEEZED THROUGH THE CROWD to reach the crackle’s epicenter, the town basketball court. A cheer erupted around me: “ROBOT DIE! ROBOT DIE! ROBOT DIE!” The cold night air was suddenly sweltering amid this human mass. My shoulders and head brushed against the actual toasters they carried. Not just toasters but radios, microwaves, CD players, pocket televisions . . . it seemed every household appliance was represented here. “ROBOT DIE! ROBOT DIE! ROBOT DIE!” They raised the appliances above their heads, jabbing heavenward in rhythm with the crackle. A man with his arms full of toasters pressed one to my belly. I recognized him as Mr. Bodet, owner of Hectorville’s only electronics store. “Here ya go, kid.” I held the toaster with my new hand, cradling it like a football, and bulldozed my way forward, fighting for yards, until I found myself courtside, standing in the ring of dirt Kanga had made when he stuffed my throat full of grass. On the court, I hoped to see one final glimpse of my brother.
Instead I saw the Ceiling Fan.
His tiny car occupied the center circle, and the huge man stood on its roof. The basketball team remained just outside the boundaries of the court, watching their assistant coach carefully. Each boy held a toaster or a radio or a blender, its cord dangling at his feet. James Botty gripped his toaster with a wide, proud stance, like there were toothpicks in his armpits. He had ma
stered the triple-threat position. The players had changed into their dress clothes and winter jackets—all except for Rye, who was still clad in his jersey, shorts, and high-tops. His skin was covered in a steaming orange rash, and tears streaked from his bewildered, goggle-less eyes. Mr. Belt stood with his team, his face awash with confusion and disgust, as if the Birds were losing a scrimmage against a middle school team and he’d just been ejected from the game.
Packed behind the basketball team was the town of Hectorville, like a tornado had sucked everyone up and spit them down courtside. Mothers, fathers, grandparents, grandchildren, all chanting: “ROBOT DIE! ROBOT DIE! ROBOT DIE!” I saw most of our teachers in attendance. Mrs. Galvin, Mrs. Asquith, and Mrs. Clinow. Had they carpooled to save money? Mrs. Deal, Mrs. Zweer—and even Mr. Jacobowhite. Their minds were crackled. “ROBOT DIE! ROBOT DIE! ROBOT DIE!” Brooke’s parents were there. Pastor and Mrs. Noon, standing beside one of the baskets. Brooke’s mom wore a sleek white coat; the pastor was dressed for church. Neither was chanting.
Standing on his car, the Ceiling Fan presided over them, looking as confident as I’d ever seen him. He wore the expression of a man about to nail a job interview, grinning at the toasters he saw throughout the crowd. At last, he raised a hand high above his head, grabbing control of the volume then slowly lowering it, hushing them to a person.
There was silence.
“James?” his voice crackled.
James Botty circled toward the trunk of the car. He set down his toaster, found a key in his pocket and unlocked the trunk. Without pausing to inspect what was inside, James grabbed my brother by the armpits, pulled him out, and dropped him on the court. Kanga’s hair and white game uniform were covered with grime and twigs. He managed to crawl into an all-fours position, but his battery was so drained he couldn’t raise his chin to look forward. He merely stared at the cement between his hands, shivering like a frightened horse.