by Spencer Wolf
“Cool.”
“But there’s a problem,” he said as he ripped out another sheet of paper from his pad and rolled an even tighter tube. “You got the axle of the ship running straight down the length of it.” He stuck the smaller tube into the larger one. “People don’t want to look up and see some giant axle in the sky. They’ll freak out again. So, you wrap that axle with more projector screen.”
“Yeah, I get it. I like it.”
“I know, right?” He peered through the two rolled tubes to Meg on the other side of the desk.
“One thing, though”—she leaned over the table and grabbed—“the projector screen can’t be glued right onto the axle itself. It’s got to be kind of like supported off it a bit so there’s room between the screen and the axle. That way repair people can walk between them and fix things, like you see people walking through the framework of those old blimps, or something. ’Cause there’s always stuff that needs to be fixed.”
“Yeah, that’s true. There’s always stuff to be fixed.” He chuckled, grabbed the two paper tubes back from her, and squished them into the gripper of his robot. The three inanimate fingers held.
“Yeah,” she said and went back to her game.
“So, before we go into space. . . .” he said as he got up, danced a few steps over to the cart, and then smiled through the canopy of the printer, “tell me, what color do you want your giraffe?” The printer’s spool reset for the start of another piece as he flipped through the networked catalogue. He smiled again, looked back at her, and knew. Together, they’d have so many more places they could go.
*
But until that day, on a regular Tuesday, Cessini’s eyes slowly pivoted back up to the black metal pipe down the midline of the ceiling as it taunted and belittled him, pressing him down into the cushion of his stool. The metallic sprinkler head’s sixteen-prongs mocked him deliberately and incessantly from above as he worked.
He had fabricated all sorts of spare parts, servos, tendons, screws, and wheels that he collected into little plastic baggies and packed into the shelves all around the room. So why couldn’t he likewise constrain the water from the sprinkler head above? He hopped off his stool to do it.
“You want to know what I think is a really bad idea?” Meg asked, busy with her tablet.
Cessini grabbed a four-rung, closed stepladder that leaned against the wall, opened it, and straddled its legs atop the table. He was careful not disturb his robot’s developing frame. His plan took balance, nerves, and a roll of masking tape.
Meg watched in fits of silence and sputter. “What are you doing?”
“What’s a bad idea?” he asked. He pulled a spare baggie from a box on his desk and tucked it into the left front pocket of his pants. Then, before she could answer, he squeezed his fist through the center hole of the masking tape roll and pushed it up to his forearm.
“Wait, what are you doing?” she asked again.
Cessini’s eyes never left the polished sprinkler nozzle above. He put a foot on his stool and climbed up onto the edge of the table. He steadied his hands on the top bar of the stepladder and committed his climb up to its fourth, top rung.
“Don’t!” Meg jumped off her stool.
He let go with his hands and wobbled to a standstill. His sight rose to twelve feet from the floor. His target was directly above and only a back-arched glance away. He raised his trembling hand. His eyes were within inches of the sixteen-pronged head.
Meg scattered around to his side of the table and grabbed for his pant cuff.
“No, don’t pull,” he said and kicked.
She ran for the door as a lookout.
He clenched his teeth and curled his toes in his shoes. He reached down with his left hand to remove the baggie from his pocket. The tape roll dislodged down his forearm to his wrist so he raised his hand. He spread his fingers to return the roll to a tighter place on his forearm. Then he reached instead with his empty right hand to his left side, arching his ribs, and dug the baggie loose from his pocket. “So what’s the really bad idea?” he asked.
She ran back in to get her tablet away. “Don’t. The water will shoot!”
With the baggie balled in his right hand, he pulled a strip of masking tape free with his fingers, ripped the tape with his teeth, and zeroed in. He pinched the top corners of the baggie, blew in a puff of air, and reached it up toward the sprinkler head. He wobbled. He breathed.
His hands didn’t move as his mind intended. The distance to the head looked reachable from the floor. Now, his neck was straight back with his jaw open in pant. With each inch higher that he dared, the sixteen prongs cursed back at him with a dizzying unease.
“Ceeme, no! Stop it.”
Each pointed tooth of the head was detailed with a studied recognition he knew from below and now knew intimately. The small glass bulb with its blood-red liquid was ready to burst. Only a thin metal guard protected it from breakage with the slightest impact. If it broke, the pre-action system would activate. Seconds would count before the air pressure in the pipe matched that of the surrounding air. Water would rush into the dry pipe, fill the sprinkler head, and spray off the sixteen points of the splatter disk in a deluge over him and the room. There was no way he could climb down the ladder in time or dive for cover to avoid the horrendous rain. He’d have to throw himself down and hope for the best. The floor down below where he would hit was hard. He could hide under the table, or better still, hit the floor full footed and run.
Meg fell back onto her stool. “You want to know what I think is the really bad idea?”
Cessini blew another puff and swelled open the baggie for another go. It fit over the sixteen prongs. He tacked the torn-off strip of masking tape on the top edge of the baggie and pressed it onto the higher stem of the nozzle’s one-inch-high vertical pipe. He closed his eyes to breathe, and then opened them as he pulled the tape roll from his wrist. He picked the tape free and set its end onto the pipe. He wrapped the whole roll around twice, then three times more around the outside of the baggie over the nozzle, tight, but not an ounce more of pressure against the delicate glass vial inside.
Meg spilled her secret without waiting. “My mom said she was talking to your dad. They want us all to live in the same house.”
He unwound and circled the tape once more to be absolutely sure it was tight and the baggie was secure over the sprinkler head. He tore the tape from the roll with his teeth and pinched it off. He swallowed. He was done.
Meg breathed out below.
His forehead was beaded in sweat and aflame in a rash, but he felt the worthwhile cost of a victory. He climbed down with the palms of his hands a red, burning blaze. He touched down his feet on the desk, then the stool, then the floor. He removed the stepladder from its straddle over his robot’s body and set it folded back against the wall by the 3D printer.
He sat on his stool. His skin was afire with sweat. He smiled at Meg, satisfied. “I think that’s a great idea,” he said. “Moving in together in the same house. I like it.”
She didn’t move a muscle. Her hand was pressed over her heart.
He scooted his stool closer up to his side of the table and opened a baggie of screws and electrical gizmos. He peeked up at Meg past his eyebrows and then looked back down at his work. She said nothing. She was still. His faintest twist of a tri-wing screw made a louder peep than her. He looked up again, holding his screwdriver upright beneath the tip of his finger. “So, when are you thinking of moving in?” he asked.
Meg broke her blinded stare at him and tilted her head back to the baggie taped and wrapped around the sprinkler head above. He had done it. All she could do was nod. Her hand stayed over her pounding heart as she looked back down and across the table and uttered a faint, but definitive, “Never.”
*
The never day came on a Saturday night. Daniel’s hands covered Cessini’s eyes as he led them straight into Cessini’s bedroom for a present. Meg was antsy with anticipation. Ro
bin beamed, a rare occasion. Daniel removed his hands from Cessini’s eyes once he was aligned in the center of the room, but then he kneeled down for an eye-to-eye hold.
Cessini’s painted mural of the waterfall and his bed beneath it were the same, his nightstand with sound machine and an old bellows lamp shaped like a squid were left untouched. Daniel held his shoulders from pivoting any farther. Behind Daniel was a new white melamine shelf that wrapped waist-high around the three other walls. The shelf was the perfect mantel addition for his many projects and discoveries yet to come.
Robin drew the bubble chain for the vertical blinds as the outside darkness had already settled.
“Keep your eyes closed,” Daniel said.
“What is it?” Cessini itched to turn. The mystery gift had to be at the end of the shelf behind him by the door, he thought.
“Responsibility,” Daniel said.
“Whaaat?” Meg said, miffed. “It’s okay, just tell him.”
“No. I want you both to listen to me,” Daniel said. “This gift is a little something that wasn’t easy to get. But Meg insisted we keep trying, for you. A ‘thank you’ from the two of them for welcoming them into our house.”
“Everything is going to be great,” Robin said. Her smile was genuine like a mom’s should be.
“Fine. Okay. He knows. Show him already,” Meg said.
Daniel pulled Cessini closer to his knee on the floor. “Imagination means life,” Daniel said. “You inspired me. What you’re building on the table at work. We can build a mind for your robot body. I have an idea for how to make it work. I can code it. I think I figured out how. I’ll call my mind code ‘Packet’ after the name you gave your robot. But most of all because I’m so very, very proud of you.”
“Oh, come on,” Meg said, “is this a present from me, or you?”
“I like that,” Cessini said to Daniel. “Packet will fit together perfect. We’ll build ourselves a real winner.”
“Speaking of which,” Daniel said, “don’t you worry about any of those bullies at school.”
“I know,” Cessini said.
“You’re already better than them,” Daniel said. “Build something even bigger than you can imagine. Keep reinventing yourself. Each and every day. You’ll never become obsolete. And you’ll leave them behind in the dust.”
“Daniel, come on already,” Robin said. “Meg’s right. You totally stole our present.”
“Be smarter than me,” Daniel said. “It’s not a crime to be smarter than me.”
“That won’t be too hard,” Meg said. Cessini held out his palm and Meg slapped it. “Can you please just show him now what we got? Blah, blah, blah. . . .”
Daniel let him turn to see.
A terrarium was on the shelf. Two feet long. Meticulous. It had a sand beach on the left and a small pool in the middle. The shallow pool of water wet the bottom of a hollowed-out log perched from the right. A small, gray amphibious fish—three inches, no more—emerged from the hollow of the log. It walked on its fins for a look. It didn’t enter the water, but stayed at its edge.
Cessini got closer. A mangrove rivulus. He was sure. He wrapped his hands on the side of the tank.
“It’s you,” Meg said as she joined him by the glass.
“A mangrove rivulus,” Robin said. “A fish that lives out of water. Every couple of months, pour water over the log and it’s happy.”
“It’s the opposite of you because it’s a fish. But it also lives without water. So, it’s like your opposite, but also your equal,” Meg said.
“Wouldn’t my opposite be a real fish?” he asked.
“He is a real fish,” she said. “Simple tank, but it’s like you. It’s your world. It’s your life.”
He backed away from the tank. The rivulus ducked back into its log. “But you still have to keep the log wet.”
“Well, yes, that’s true, but—”
“Then we’re not the same at all. I’m not a mangrove rivulus.”
“Exactly!” Daniel said. “That was my point.”
Robin came down at Cessini’s side. “You know what’s most crazy about this fish?” she asked.
“It talks?” Cessini asked.
“When it lives in water, it doesn’t get along with any other fish. They fight a lot,” she said. “Probably like you at school with those boys. But when their water hole dries up, they all become friends and live together in the same log. One day, you’ll see, everything can get better.”
Cessini sat at the edge of his bed by his nightstand. They all watched him stare at his new forced friend.
“The place we got it from said, though, if it doesn’t want any friends, it doesn’t have to have any,” Meg said. “It can live its entire life by itself. It can become a hermaphrodite and make clones of itself.”
“That’s weird,” Cessini said.
Robin smiled and stroked Cessini on the back of the head. “Every two months, just add water.” Then she leaned in and kissed his forehead. “And thank you for welcoming us to your home.”
“But it has to eat so make sure you feed it more often than that,” Daniel said.
“Right, feed it,” Meg said. “And live with the water or don’t. But don’t grow up alone.”
“I hear you,” Cessini said. “I’ll give the fish a try. I like it. I’ll watch it on a sixty-day count.”
“You’ll try?” Daniel asked. “What count? You know how hard it was to get this fish up here? It’s Minnesota. How many tropical mangroves do you see around here in Minnesota?”
“Hello, it’s called ‘fly it on an airplane,’” Meg said and Cessini laughed. She always had the right thing to say. She bounced for the door with a hand aimed straight for the light switch. She put them all into darkness with a click. “Now I’m going to bed. Goodnight.”
As the lights went off, the ocean waves of the sound machine on his nightstand came on. The repetitive roll and crash on a distant shore was one Cessini respected. It was a soothing constant hush, a nightlong reminder of a world that could never be his, but a safe one imagined in the harmlessness of a recorded machine. The simple white box with speckled holes over its speaker was the dreamtime peace he made with the ocean.
Robin flipped the light switch back on before leaving. “Goodnight.”
Daniel left another gift on the edge of his nightstand, a penlight.
Cessini clicked the penlight’s on-button and flicked its light left, then right. “Thanks, Dad. You know I’m not afraid of the dark anymore.”
“I know.”
“I’m here,” Meg yelled through the muffle of gypsum. “My room is right through this wall. Can you still hear me?”
“I can,” Cessini said with a smile as he clicked his new penlight on and off.
Daniel hugged the frame of the door, not wanting to leave. He tapped his fingers on the light switch.
“Leave it on,” Cessini said. “I want to watch the rivulus for a while.”
“I think this is going to work out great,” Daniel said as he let go of the door. “We’ll be in our room next door. Call me if you need anything. Okay?”
“I will,” he said, and then Daniel, too, was gone.
Beside the sound machine on his nightstand was the bellows lamp in the shape of a colossal squid that stood vertically on its eight outstretched arms. Its soft mantle skin billowed out and in with hypnotic, rhythmic breaths, synchronized with the lapping waves of the ocean tide.
Cessini lay awake in his bed long past when all others, both old and new to his home, were asleep. He pointed his penlight on, then away, then on, and away again from his new mangrove rivulus in its tank. Its eyes darted in and out of the log with the rapid movement of an oddly pointed moon and probably wondered as only it could—was it alone?
With the press of his thumb on a button, Cessini believed he could control a simple life in a tank, and he was right. But one unintended effect of the gift of the rivulus had clicked back into his mind like the weighted tick of a
metronome and nothing could matter more than the return of his fear. The vengeance of water to soak the skin would soon be coming his way. It was inevitable, and as certain as a sixty-day count in his mind.
SEVEN
CONTROL
THE SIXTY-DAY COUNT lasted for three nightmarish years. By the time Cessini was twelve, the anxiety of his days spilled into the exhaustion of his nights. The soothing intent of his wave sound and squid-bellows lamp had taken their toll. His mind gave way in his sleep to his dreamed-of alter-ego, Ceeborn, and his stronger world of opposites. Ceeborn was him in appearance, but braver and aquatic. One night, in his dream, he was fearless and ran along the bank of a river, climbed the rail of a bridge, and dived into a rush of water. But then with a tumble from his bed, Cessini awoke on the floor of his room in agony, his skin aflame and pajamas sweated through.
Again and again, the same anxious, nighttime watery wave rolled in, but each time it was capped with a different froth. One sweaty night, he ran as Ceeborn through a botanical garden and away from the unseen, click-clatter of claws on stone. He escaped the patrol of three charred, six-legged robots moving after him like waist-high ants in a networked line. Their bulb-shaped heads were clear, faceless domes, and inside their bulb was a retractable mind, a tablet with side-mounted keys that clicked and clattered with their relentless movement forward. The lead robot’s middle and rear pipe-legs locked in place at their shoulder joints. It flexed its squared front thorax up at its waist and rose, extending and splaying its sixteen-pronged front claws in a dominant pose. Then it leapt in attack. He was pinned in its grasp.
A beautiful aurora of lights in the sky flickered as Ceeborn regained his focus upward, and the dome of the patrol stayed locked down in its stare. He was carried away beneath the three robots’ chassis in their coordinated line. His wrists were pulled over his head by the leader, his waist supported by the middle robot, and his ankles held immobile in the front claws of the rear patrol. His lungs heaved in a gasp. He rolled his head to his side into the pit of his outstretched arm and coughed up a lungful of sputum and froth.