by Nirina Stone
I watch her for a moment, wondering if she’s done talking. She seems friendly enough. I look down to tuck in, too. I didn’t realize it before, but I’m famished.
Roberta tells me she is the ‘House Coordinator’, Jerome is an ‘Occasional Driver’ and ‘Butler’ and sometimes, the family’s ‘Bodyguard.’ I can’t imagine what they would need a bodyguard for in Prospo City. But then, I remember the two Prospo I threw to the ground when I stole their car many years ago. If they’d had a bodyguard, the scenario might have ended differently.
They have been working for the family for “several years,” Roberta says, as she smiles over at Jerome. “And we hope to be here for several more,” she finishes before tucking into her food.
“You will,” Isaac assures her. “You are important here.” Roberta looks up at him quickly, nods and continues eating. “You know,” Isaac says, starting what I will soon learn is one of his many, many stories, “I had this toy once when I was nine, this little blue and yellow yo-yo.”
I picture what he’s describing. I never had a yo-yo when I was a child but know they were small cylindrical toys with some string attached to them—not the most exciting toys to have, really. “I’d play with it for hours! I’d get in trouble for forgetting to do my chores,” he chuckles. “My five-year-old brother wanted to play with it, but he never treated toys well or often lost them, so I really didn’t want to give it to him.”
I look up and watch Isaac’s face as he reminisces. Some of the folds in his face flatten out while he speaks, making him seem younger. “He didn’t care about them as much,” he continues. “I’d keep things for years and years while his never lasted for more than a few days.”
Remembering my toys, I realize I was more like Isaac’s brother. I had a bad habit of wrecking any toy I received within days of getting it. I wonder if that was part of the reason Father encouraged me to read more, rather than play.
“So I said ‘no,’” Isaac continues. “We were poor, but my folks did what they could.” His eyes are glazed over, as if he’s looking at his home from back then. I notice Roberta and Jerome aren’t responding to Isaac’s story and wonder how often he’s told it to them. A few times, I’d imagine. My Great Aunt Isabelle’s stories were few, but long. And they were repeated often.
“I did what I could as well,” Isaac says. He leans back into his chair and rubs his stomach. “I honoured them and didn’t ask for anything. And I respected my things, but Joseph—Joseph was irresponsible. He threw such a fit I didn’t share my toy with him.”
I don’t know any five year-olds, but can picture what Isaac’s reminiscing. I threw a fit now and then as a child. It wasn’t often, but my parents were never impressed.
“My folks made me give him the yo-yo,” he says, his voice rough. “He played with it for what? Not ten minutes!” His voice is raised ever so slightly while he remembers. “The string popped off and it went flying in the air and landed on the ground in pieces, completely shattered.” He pauses for a moment and rests his chin on his chest. “I thought it was ruined for ever. I was so enraged.” I simply can’t picture an ‘enraged’ Isaac.
“I hit him hard, my brother. So hard! I hated him more than anything at that moment,” he says, the tone of his voice sad. “I mean he was five. He was little, but I didn’t think like that, then—I tried to fix the yo-yo. I put it back together with glue and put the string back on but—well it wasn’t the same, was it? It would not work as smoothly as it did.”
His pause is so long, I think he’s done speaking, but I don’t say a word. Roberta and Jerome continue eating quietly.
“Of course,” Isaac finally says. “I didn’t ask my parents for another yo-yo. In those days, you’re happy to get one toy, you know?” That part’s true for the days and years after, too. Citizen City has been poor for much longer than I remember. “But I hid all my other toys from Joseph. I wonder if it’s why we grew apart?” he asks no one in particular. “Over a stupid toy? Maybe. I don’t know.” His voice is strained. He seems tired.
Roberta looks up at him and asks follow up questions about his family. I sit back and listen, wondering if that’s when it started for him—his interest in robotics. The need to take things apart and put them back together again.
When Isaac leaves the kitchen with a, “See you later.” I watch him walk away, not really sure what to make of his random story.
Roberta watches my face carefully. “That may have felt—arbitrary,” she says, choosing the word carefully. “But there’s always a lesson in Isaac’s words.” Jerome looks up to nod in my direction as she says, “You just need to learn to listen.”
As I climb into bed much later, I think of Father before my thoughts move to Arlene and Knox and then Isaac. His story about his yo-yo echoes in my head but, despite what Roberta said, I’m still not sure I absorbed that lesson very well.
In any case, I’m intrigued with my new environment. I usually have a difficult time falling asleep in a new, unfamiliar bed. This time, it doesn’t take long. I’m asleep before I can think of another thing.
The next few weeks are a whirlwind of training and practical work and getting to know my environment, between my weekly video sessions with Father.
Isaac also invites me on his daily walk “around the block.” He has invited Roberta and Jerome in the past, but says they have no interest in going outside the Diamond’s home, “unless absolutely necessary.” So he is thrilled when I happily join him, though there is a room on the third floor holding five treadmills and various other exercise machines. Roberta tells me no one ever uses them. It is one of the least visited rooms in the Diamond household, and that’s saying something.
My assignment is simple enough—I follow Isaac around as he tells me all I need to learn about the various machinery in the home. Everything works smoothly because he takes the time to maintain them, daily.
“The first lesson you need to learn,” he often says, “is prevention. Remember that prevention is always better than a cure.”
At the beginning of the day, before anyone else rises, Isaac has already done inventory, cleaned, fixed, and greased all the tiny robots that constantly roam around the home. The screens are patched and wiped down, all ready for the various requirements of the day. All the computers are rebooted and scanned and cleared of any “cobwebs” as he likes to call them. Then he does little maintenance throughout the day, only to end up repeating at night the things he does in the morning.
His dedication to keeping all the bots run smoothly is motivating. I wake when he does and go to bed after everyone else, like he does. He doesn’t ask me to, but I don’t want to miss a single one of his little attentive actions. He seems to love these tiny little robots. I find that amusing, but it’s interesting to watch.
I begin to understand how he has been doing this sort of work, day in and day out for the last century and a half. He treats the little machines like they are his personal pets.
One day, as he is showing me the best way to clean out a kitchenbot’s clogged bearings, he abruptly drops the cloth he is holding. He holds his right wrist in his left, a grimace on his face the likes of which I have never seen.
“Ooh,” he groans as I stand to come closer. He bends over his arms.
“What is it, Isaac?” My hand hovers over his shoulder. He does not mind physical contact but I’m still not accustomed.
“It’s going to rain,” he answers with a moan, as he continues to rub his wrist, his back curled. “It always aches most when it’s about to rain.”
I watch him, not understanding what he’s talking about. Despite the constant cover of clouds over Apex, it does not rain often. Why would his wrist ache with the threat of rain? I frown at him and wait, watching patiently.
“I have a degenerative joint disease,” he says, answering my unspoken follow up question. “It only attacks when we are about to have rain.”
Before I can answer, he pulls himself straight and picks up the cloth just as
Roberta walks through the door, her chattery voice advertising her presence well ahead of her. I walk towards my spot and sit down as Isaac’s eyes land on me.
“Lunch is ready if you two are ready for some sustenance!” she says brightly, not noticing our postures. When she leaves, he watches me for a moment. He doesn’t speak, but I get the impression Isaac does not want Roberta, or anyone else in the house to know about his affliction. I think I understand why, but stay quiet.
He watches me a bit longer, before saying, “Are you hungry? Are you ready for lunch?”
“Yes,” I say, not sure if he wants to talk about his wrist or not. I decide to leave it alone. If he wants to confide in me about it, I will listen. Otherwise, I will not bring it up again.
Roberta regales about her day as Isaac, Jerome, and I sit and eat our lunch quietly.
From time to time, Isaac and I interject with an “Oh,” or “interesting,” as Jerome watches her and nods, but it doesn’t slow her down. Roberta seems perfectly happy being the only one talking. I barely listen to her, still thinking about Isaac’s wrist, but there’s something strangely calming about her voice and her stories. I decide I will like this chatty, lively Roberta. I haven’t met anyone quite like her.
She touches Jerome on the shoulder, or the arm, or his hand sometimes, and I wonder if there’s something going on between them. We Citizens do not tend to touch one another that often, not unless it’s someone in our own family. That’s more of a Soren thing to do.
I’m pretty sure these two are not Sorens, but how would I know? Except for the fact Sorens would sooner die than be caught in the employ of the Prospo, they look and sound exactly like the rest of us.
“Ready?” Isaac asks me after a while, after the cleaningbots have collected all our dirty dishes. He’s going to show me something new today, he says, a sparkle in his eye. “Something I bet you’ve never done.”
We sit down in the robotics room in front of a massive oak table where he has laid down one of the many big screens found around the home.
“What’s wrong with it?” I ask as we take seats on either side of the table.
“It’s flickering,” he replies. “We’re opening it up!” He pulls out a screwdriver and smiles at me.
As we get to work, Isaac explains, “We don’t normally do this sort of thing for the family. They would sooner get the screen replaced but I don’t like waste.”
We take the screen apart and, within minutes, the table is strewn with fuses, circuits, wires, the power board, processor board and hundreds of tiny little screws that I expect we won’t be able to replace in their exact locations once we’re done here.
There is a look on Isaac’s face I can’t place—a sort of determined look, yes, but there’s something else. Pride? I don’t know. I try to remember if I’ve ever seen anyone else have that look on their face before, and I doubt it. This is definitely new.
As I watch him work at the insides of the screen, Isaac says, “Our ancestors used to throw tons of their electronic waste into space.” He picks up a tiny screwdriver to work on a particularly stubborn screw. He could use a screwbot, but enjoys working with his hands when he can, he says. “Over decades of space exploration and discovery, they would launch and discard everything from dead spacecraft to boosters, anti-satellite weapons, to lost equipment.”
He finds purchase on the tiny stubborn screw and works at loosening it, that determined look back on his face. “I don’t think they expected it to get as bad as it did,” he continues, as he plucks the screw out with his skilled fingers. “Before they knew what happened, there was a massive debris field moving constantly around the Earth’s orbit.”
He tinkers a bit more inside the screen, then pulls something out. “There! What does that look like to you?”
I lean in closer and recognize it right away. “Looks like a blown micropacitor,” I mutter, touching the little green bulge with the tip of my finger.
“Good,” he says, a smile on his face. “You may not have much practical experience, but you have good instinct. Here.” He hands me the power board and a soldering iron and instructs me to go about fixing it, as he sits back to watch.
I lean my head and get to work, remembering everything I need to know about putting back the components of the screen. Isaac’s eyes are on me the entire time I’m working.
“Most of the time,” Isaac says, continuing his history lesson as I work, “some debris would re-enter Earth’s atmosphere and burn up before getting anywhere near civilization.”
His voice becomes a low drone that perfectly harmonizes with the near-silent hum of the soldering iron. I keep my hands steady as I solder and then watch the hot liquid metal dry solid as it cools.
“From time to time though,” he continues, still watching me, “something big enough would fall to earth and cause some damage, though the damage was never fatal. They stopped sending rubbish into space and tried to fix what they already did. They tried their darnedest to undo the damage.”
I work to put things back together, the many many small screws the most challenging part of the job. I find them all and painstakingly screw them back in place. Sure, some of them aren’t in the right spots, but they fit well. They will keep the screen nicely in place. This would go so much faster with a screwbot, I think, but I don’t want to interrupt him.
“But it was too late,” Isaac says, as I work on the last remaining screws. I wonder if this sort of work would cause his wrist pain.
Though I’ve known pain, I can only imagine what it’s like for him, hurting any time he’d try to hold something, I imagine myself in the same situation. Panic rises in my chest as I understand the implications. Other than our minds, our hands and wrists are probably our most important components when it comes to getting our jobs done, as robotics engineers. If any of those isn’t in functioning order, we are redundant.
“Prevention,” he says, as we pick up one side of the skinny screen to lay it back in its place, “is always better than the cure.”
We sit and smile at each other over the screen. “Wasn’t that more fun than going around pushing buttons and wiping things down all day?” he says. I nod, feeling the grin on my face nearly as wide as his when we power up the screen and it turns on smoothly, without a single flicker.
I can understand the look on his face because I’m certain I have a matching one on mine.
“Avoid waste where you can, Romy Fifty Two,” he says as we admire our work. “You will find more pleasure in life, that way.”
We turn through the various channels to make sure the screen is back to perfect working condition, when Isaac pauses on one news channel for a minute too long. He freezes before he is able to change the channel, and we watch in silence as a factory burns on screen, hundreds of people still inside.
“Damn it,” Isaac mutters. We watch the flames and the building collapse into a cloudy gray rubble.
The news anchor is an attractive Prospo, her hair perfectly in place as she rambles from a teleprompter. “They have attacked once more,” she says. Her eyes shimmer, as if she is fighting tears. “Proving their complete disregard for human life and for human compassion.”
I’m aware she is talking about the Sorens without her having to confirm it. In fact, the Prospo have an unspoken rule that they do not address the Sorens as anything other than they.
I don’t understand that—why not give a name to your enemy? Does ignoring the name make them any less murderous? Any less dangerous?
“What did they burn?” I ask, my eyes darting to Isaac’s face and back to the screen.
“It’s a clothing factory,” he answers, his voice flat. “It’s not any of our concern anyway.” Then he turns off the screen.
I can’t imagine why the Sorens would want to burn down a factory full of clothes and the innocent Citizens that have to work there. But then, from what I understand about the Sorens, they are not exactly the most logical nor the most reasonable sort. I try not to think about them
as much as I can. Otherwise, I will give in to the fact they terrify me, and not get any work done.
Without saying another word, we each pick up one side of the flat screen and walk out of the room to mount it back in place. We hear some commotion downstairs in the foyer, and Isaac happily looks up at me to say, “They’re back. The family’s moved back in.”
The Family
“I insist you call me Cassia!” the mother says, any time I try to address her as ‘ma’am’ or ‘Mother Diamond’—her official title—and what I’m supposed to call her as her employee. “You were in Azure?” she asks. “That must have been horrible!”
We are in one of their living rooms: Cassiandra Diamond with her long pink-tipped platinum curls, her matching children Amy and Kevin, Isaac and myself. Isaac and I are installing the flat screen back on its wall as they watch and take turns to ask me questions. I answer them to the best of my abilities, though they don’t seem to understand my answers that much.
“It wasn’t horrible,” I answer, after I eye Isaac for a minute and he gives me a slight nod. I translate the nod as ‘answer honestly.’
“But you were in prison!” Amy, the daughter, pipes up. I look up at her and, although she looks nothing like Margo, her small pinched nose and sharp eyes remind me of Margo’s face and icy blue slit-eyes. Amy’s eyes are brown. They could be any colour and still make me nervous. She twirls a small section of her yellow hair with a middle finger, then releases it, making it bounce back into place like nothing could hold it down. Her sharp chin points at me, as if directing me to speak.
“I was,” I reply calmly. I wonder exactly how these Prospo picture Azure.
“Well our history professor says there’s nothing more precious in the world than our freedoms,” Amy says. Her chin is high in the air, challenging me to say otherwise.
I look at her while Isaac attaches the back of one corner of the screen onto the wall. Finally, I say, “Your history professor sounds very wise.” I attach another corner and secure it, pulling it back and forth to make sure it is in tight.