by C. W. Crowe
I pulled her closer. "I'm not kidding, Lucy."
She sighed, "I know. I know that now. Maybe we could marry one day, if marriage is even still possible. But it couldn't be because someone or something made us do it. I'll only accept proposals that are real, that come from a place of love. I like you Leo, most of the time. Sometimes, I think I might be starting to love you. I just don't know. Ask me again when you are ready to propose because you want to - not because it looks like the best bad option out of many. Understand?"
In my mind I did understand. She'd put it well and it made perfect sense.
But my heart was slow to get the message.
*.*.*
I think she picked up on my mood, because she raised her head, leaned over and kissed me. Her lips were soft and full and I’ll never forget that kiss even though it was more of a “Thank you” kiss than it was an “I love you” kiss.
It only lasted a second, but it was the first kiss I’d ever had from a woman and therefore it was the best. I wanted to follow it up with number two or three, but we had things to decide. I swallowed and asked, “So what’s your plan?”
She leaned against me and took my hand. As she spoke, my eyes were focused on her lips. “Remember how I told you I was captured? I walked for three days until I got to Ft. Smith and one of their aircraft spotted me, landed nearby and told me to halt. At that point, I was just outside the barrier. I could hear it hum softly like it was alive, almost like a purring sound. There was no humanoid robot on the ship; as far as I know, the ships themselves are probably robots.
“Anyway, I’d noticed a bunch of people working in a garden that was part of a bigger farm. There were probably twenty or so. Some may have been humanoid robots. I didn’t care because, by then, I was starving. People working in gardens meant food must be nearby - it was all I could think about.
“At least one them must have been a robot because he came up to me and took my arm and led me through a gate and inside the city. I didn’t resist because it would have done no good; I could tell that the robot was just too strong. They fed me and some kind of . . . medical robot examined me and the next thing I knew your mom was making me dress in those awful clothes.”
I knew most of that story, but it wasn’t clear to me how that offered a solution to our dilemma. “So how does this help? Are you thinking of trying to get us reassigned as gardeners?”
“No Leo. I’m thinking about that gate. I want to have a look at it. Maybe I can slip out, get away from your mom and dad; get away from robots altogether.”
Now I was the one to be surprised. “But . . . you don’t know what’s out there. You almost died before. Even with both of us, it would be very chancy.”
She looked into the distance. “That wasn’t the plan.”
“But you said . . . “
“I said that maybe I could slip out. With me gone you couldn’t be blamed for not obeying your robot mom.
*.*.*
At that moment, the only thing I could think about was how I'd only had one kiss in my entire life. Not having ever been kissed was a hard thing to bear, but having been kissed only once and then being sentenced to never having another? It was too sad a thing to contemplate.
I struggled to find the right words, but when I opened my mouth, the only thing that came out was, "No."
"No what?" I could feel from Lucy's noise that she was determined.
On at least a couple of occasions when we were having an argument, I'd raised my voice. Afterwards, I was always ashamed of myself and I apologized and promised that I'd learn to control myself, regardless of the provocation.
But this was just too much. "YOU ARE NOT GOING OUT THERE ALONE!"
My shout echoed off the walls and Lucy was stunned into silence. I added, this time much quieter, "I won't let you. I just won't. If you go, I do too."
Then I had another thought - one that I immediately tried to cancel, but it bubbled up on its own anyway. She'd already turned down my proposal of marriage; what if she planned on going alone because she simply didn't want me around? Maybe she was just tired of me or plain didn’t like me.
During our arguments, my yelling usually resulted in her joining in, but this time she just smiled and gave my hand a squeeze. "We'll see, Leo. Let's walk over tomorrow and have a look. Maybe we'll find it's impossible to get out. If so, I've got another idea."
I was starting to calm down. It didn't sound like she wanted me gone. "What other idea?"
She sat up and poured us two more glasses of the Cristal. She handed me one, crossed her legs and tugged at her skirt. "Not now. I'll tell you if it comes to that. First, let's see that gate."
Part Two: Humans
Chapter Ten: Sunup
Lucy didn't sleep very well that night and neither did I. Her noises were clearly audible to me from her bedroom across the hall and I could tell she was tossing and turning from their almost chaotic nature. It's hard to describe, but normally she sounds organized; almost like musical noises where one part blends logically into the next. Last night though, her music was more like chaotic jazz. It jumped from here to there, one moment slow, the next louder and faster.
I listened to her in my own bed while I worried. Taking a walk to the "gate" wasn't much of a risk, but once we got there what did she expect - that it would swing wide open, allowing us to just walk through? She didn't like my plan, but at least it would work. Hers was . . . well, it was hardly a plan at all.
Somewhere around 3 a.m. she became quiet and I must have fallen asleep soon after. I was dreaming of Nick Presser and one of his "experiments" when I felt air movement that meant my bedroom door had been opened.
"Come on sleepyhead. Early bird gets the worm, you know."
She was a morning person, but not me. On most days, I'd crawl out of bed around seven to find her in the kitchen, reading a book or cooking. The robots had books in their houses, but I think they chose them only by the covers - the more lurid and colorful the better. They didn't read, probably because they had the Internet to provide whatever amusements robots needed.
We didn't though, along with no TV, no radio, no cell phones - nothing electronic at all. It all stopped working three years ago when the robots decided it was time for them to take over.
At least the lights and water worked - in Ft. Smith anyway. That was something to be thankful for.
But now we were plotting to leave it behind. I sat up on the edge of the bed. "What time is it?"
"Going on six. I want to be on our way by sunup."
I started to complain about the early hour, but remembered how she'd said she would leave without me. It wasn't time to whine. "Give me ten minutes," I said.
"Fine," she replied, but she didn't leave my doorway. "Mind if I come in? I want to talk to you."
"Sure, no problem." She was wearing a silk bathrobe that she found on one of our shopping trips. It was cinched up tight at the waist. It was a light pink color and fell to just above her knees. Today, like most mornings, she wore heavy socks.
My room was dark, but the lights in the hallway outside were on. She was silhouetted in its glow as she walked towards me. I could see the outline of her body through the robe.
She sat beside me on the bed and looked straight ahead. "Leo, it's about last night. I . . . I thought a lot about your plan, your proposal. After we went to bed, I started to worry that my answer had hurt you and I didn't want to do that."
She paused and I had the good sense to just let her continue when she was ready. When she did, her voice was reserved and her noises were focused, "I never thought anyone would propose to me. You know why. That's why I was so shocked and blew you off so quickly.
"But I thought about it last night and I think you meant it - at least a part of it. I do appreciate that. I just wanted you to know."
She wasn't done. "But there's another reason I said 'no,' it's because I've made up my mind not to stay here. I hate this pretend world the robots set up. I hate what they've done to peop
le. I hate them. So I'm leaving - one way or another. You are welcome to stay with me as long as you want, but it won't be here."
I told myself to just thank her and offer support. I struggled to not ask the question that had popped into my head and would not leave. I tried to suppress it, but it came out anyway. "What happens if the gate is a dead end? If you can't get out?"
She held out her hand and I took it. "I don't know, Leo. But I'm not staying here as a pet. I'm just not. I'll have my freedom, one way or another, even if I have to die to get it."
Her noises were perfectly aligned, precise and ordered. That meant her mind was made up.
*.*.*
The sun was just starting to rise as we walked away from our neighborhood. We had with us a map of Ft. Smith and of the surrounding area that had been printed inside an old copy of the telephone yellow pages. Our home had a phone in the living room, but it didn't work. It sat on top of the thick phone directory.
"Four miles - should take around ninety minutes. I want to be there by eight." Lucy was walking at a fast pace which meant we might do it even quicker.
It was a cool morning, a hint of the coming fall in the air. The only sounds were of our footfalls on the sidewalk; there were no birds or other morning sounds, though in the distance I did hear roosters crow.
Ft. Smith was full of plant life, some humans who were mostly still alive and, of course, chickens. As far as I knew, that was it. The robots seemed to have no use for birds or dogs or other kinds of lower life forms, though stuffed toy cats were very popular with them. I suspected that they'd seen cat videos on the Internet.
Lucy walked a step or two in front. If I'd been out alone, I would certainly have taken a more leisurely pace, but she was in a hurry, so I just stretched out my legs to keep up. We'd dressed very much alike today - both of us in jeans, leather boots and hooded sweatshirts. Her clothes were, like always, too big for her thin frame, but she didn't care and would likely have said something snarky if I'd mentioned it. There was no sign that she'd used any makeup, either.
We turned a corner to head north and a large black windowless building became visible. "What the heck is that?" asked Lucy.
"When they were building it, we called it the Black Block," I answered. It was called that because those two words described it perfectly. It was at least six stories high and at least a hundred feet on each side. It had no windows or anything else to break the continuous black surface.
The robots had started building it about a year ago. I didn't get up this way often, but I could sometimes see it from a distance during its construction. Ft. Smith is a typical small Midwestern town - it doesn't have such buildings in it, so this one really stood out.
I could feel Lucy's curiosity from her noises, so I went ahead and explained before she asked. "I asked dad about it once. Robots don't like a lot of questions from humans - it makes them uncomfortable since they have no idea what we might ask or why. But we were out driving to his weekly poker game. I was along to shuffle the cards so they couldn't cheat. One of the players always brought along his human for that because if a robot shuffled, he'd know every card's position in the deck. It was the randomness thing again - only life has it."
She'd heard this before. It felt strange to be around someone long enough to start to repeat myself. "Anyway, there it was being built right in front of us, so I took a chance and asked him about it. My questions must have been within the range of what could reasonably be expected from humans because he actually answered."
"What did he say?" Lucy's noises became a bit more active. It was probably the mental image of me sitting in a car with a robot.
"He said it was their nursery, a place to make human babies. Those were his exact words."
Lucy's hand went up to her face. "Babies? Is that why there are so few female humans around? Are they in there?"
I didn't answer because we'd arrived at the building and I watched Lucy as she reached out to it with a bare hand. I did the same, but I was listening for the sounds of humans. My hand touched the smooth black surface; it was cool and I couldn't tell if it was made of metal or plastic or something else.
I also couldn't hear anything other than Lucy's familiar noises. I put my other hand on the surface as well, hoping that the extra contact would somehow enhance my "hearing."
And there it was. It was faint, almost not there, but I heard humans inside the building! Their noises were a jumble so I had no idea how many there were. But there was something else strange about them - they weren't just soft; they were simple, unsophisticated. I remembered when my aunt had a baby, before the robots came; that newborn kid sounded a lot like what I was hearing now.
There were children inside! Human kids! From what I could tell, they were very, very young.
My face must have betrayed my shock, because Lucy asked, "What? What is it?"
I removed my hands and the noises faded immediately. "It . . . it's nothing. I don't like this place, Lucy. I think we ought to move on. Robots won't likely bother us if they think we're just out for a walk, but right now we look kind of suspicious."
She nodded and we walked away together, shoulder to shoulder. I thought about telling her what I'd heard, which meant telling her about my ability to "hear" other people. I'd never told another soul about my ability and didn’t want to share that with her now because I had no idea what she’d think of it. She might think I was a freak or something.
She resumed her fast pace as I again fell a step behind. I'm glad she did, because she couldn't see my face as something occurred to me. I could hear the kids back there, even though their noises were very soft. So why couldn't I hear the mothers? If they had been there I would have heard them - awake or asleep.
But there was nothing - and Lucy was right. The human women I'd seen in Ft. Smith seemed to have disappeared. There were never all that many, but I couldn't remember seeing any since . . . since the Nursery was finished.
So if all the adult females had been taken inside and made to have children, where were they now? The babies’ voices I'd heard all sounded newborn; surely these were just the first. Maybe they had a hundred women inside, all with swollen bellies - the first ones starting to actually give birth.
But if that were the case, why didn't I hear them? Were they all dead . . . or . . . something else? It didn't seem reasonable that the robots would kill them, especially after they had only one child. The women could have others, right?
So where were they? They were human, so I should be able to pick up their noises.
That's when I was glad Lucy wasn't looking at me. That's when it came to me.
Suppose they were no longer human. Suppose they could still have babies, but their humanity had been . . . removed. It would be so robot - so logical. A factory to make humans, without the need to put up with the unpredictability of them.
I shivered at the thought and Lucy must have noticed because she said, "Are you cold?"
*.*.*
"No," I said. And then another thought popped into my head. For a moment, I envied those who had the Freezies, who had suppressed their humanity in exchange for some tranquility.
I tried to stop it, but the thought elbowed its way into my consciousness anyway. It was "If they took all the women, then why is Lucy here with me?"
We turned a corner again and, as soon as the Nursery was out of sight, I stopped. I couldn't help it.
"What?" Lucy said. Then she smiled, her perfect lips parting below her nose. "Oh, I see. You're wondering why they didn't put me in that nursery. You know, Leo, if I live and you still have no other choice, I might marry you after all. I can almost read your mind after only a few weeks together. That's got to mean something, doesn't it?"
She held out her hand and I took it as we started walking north again.
She sighed loudly, her breath making a cloud of steam in the morning air. "I remember it was just before the robots came. It couldn't have been more than a few weeks, at most. I woke up with a pain
in my . . . stomach and it kept up for several days, sometimes worse and sometimes better. Eventually, I told my Mom and she kept me out of school and took me to the doctor - to what my mom called her lady doctor.
"I was fifteen at the time. Dr. Glass checked me out and ran some tests. It turned out the pain was nothing to worry about - an infection that was cleared up with antibiotics. But there was another issue - my tubes were blocked so I'm not able to have a baby the normal way. Do you understand?"
It wasn't a snarky or demeaning question. Most of the remaining humans in Ft. Smith were young - typically 25 or younger. That meant that many of us never finished high school, let alone college. It also meant that we sometimes didn't know stuff. Oh, we all knew how to skype and text and post on Facebook, but those skills weren't in much demand today. So it wasn't a put down for Lucy to ask if I understood.
But I'd had sex-ed classes since the sixth grade, so this was one thing I knew about. "Yeah, I get it."
She nodded, looking into the distance. "When the robots captured me, they did an exam. I was lying on a table with no clothes on at all. A machine went over me and then one of them . . . well, they examined me. The next day, your mom picked me up."
I sensed she wasn't done, but I gave her hand a squeeze to let her know I understood.
She turned to me with a thin, wistful smile. A smile as much of pain as it was of apprehension. Her noises changed and I knew she was having a hard time saying what needed to come next.
"It . . . it's strange, Leo. I never shared this with anyone, but I suspect it's no surprise - being rejected by boys hurts. Being picked last and made fun of hurts. Being called 'horse face' and worse hurts.
"But that was a long time ago. I thought I was over it. But you know what? Being rejected by robots hurts too - and all because my damn clogged tubes don't measure up to their standards. Don't get me wrong - I'm glad I'm not in that building having God knows what done to me.