by Logan Keys
Herself was quite happy for a time, but I would see Herself looking at I in a strange way, and touching her stomach whenever Herself did. It wasn’t very long before I realized that Herself would give us another of Herself. I offered to help with the chores, but she cursed I now more than ever.
The room where I stayed until the Boss and Herself woke was now decorated and one argument between the Boss and Herself included I. How I, for instance, should stay in the garage.
The Boss agreed, but told I it was only because Herself was in such a fragile state.
It didn’t take long for Herself to decide that my periods of exile to the garage should become longer. After several weeks, I finally broke the rules and went into the house. Herself screeched and threw things at I, Herself’s belly now so large that I wondered if Herself would not explode and then I could return to the house.
The Boss took me back to my garage and told me he was sorry but I’d have to sleep.
“That is good,” I said. “I am in a fragile state.”
They did not wake I until Herself brought another Visitor home. The rules were stricter that I should not enter the house under any circumstance, Herself’s words.
I did so anyway without permission. I entered, and I saw the small Visitor in a tiny bed. The small Visitor did not look much like Herself but looked more like the Boss. This made I flood with love for the small Visitor. I could love the Boss and the small Visitor but never Herself. I knew this now.
“I promise you, small Visitor. I will protect you and clean up after you and if you ever want to come into the garage with me---.”
“What are you doing in here! Get out, get away from my baby! Get back you monster!”
“I am not a monster, I am Barkley five oh.”
“You are a monster that’s what you are, an abomination!”
Herself threw water on I and held a bat in her hand ready to strike me. “Barkley five oh cannot be destroyed with water or bats,” I said.
Herself’s face grew into a cat’s face. “Tell me then.”
“Tell what?”
“Tell me how can Barkley five oh can be destroyed.”
“Barkley---I---cannot be destroyed.”
“Dismantled then? Is there a button?”
“I have no buttons.”
“Voice command?”
“Yes.”
“Then I command you to destroy yourself.”
“Herself has not been programmed as the Boss has to direct I.”
“We’ll see about that!”
It was only inside of the garage a time later that I realized it might be more of a problem if Herself does not like I this much, if Herself hates I even, it might be a problem.
I felt for the first time, worry. I had never worried about my place in the Boss’ home, or how my purchase date might have come with expiration. This had never occurred to I.
I had learned to keep secrets.
I had learned to love.
I needed to learn one more thing.
The Boss came to me and told me to sleep. I pretended to sleep.
When the Boss and Herself were asleep, I knew that I had to leave the Boss’ home. I knew that next Herself would have I destroyed. I could not take the Boss with me, and so the small Visitor was the closest to the Boss that I had, and I loved the small Boss as well.
I knew the small Boss would need to rest for the journey, so I waited for a time before I took the small Boss in the bundle and left the house. The small Boss was very quiet, fast asleep while I glided. I made it down to town, and onto the corner where it all began with Herself and the Boss worried for Herself. For the little Boss, I, too, began to worry. There were many strangers on the corner in the dark, and it was late at night. I realized what it had been before that the Boss was so afraid of.
Even if I am strong, there were enough strangers on the bad corner to overpower me. They could steal and hurt little Boss.
I turned sharply around and glided top speed for home.
There were flashing red and blue lights in the yard when I arrived. The Boss and Herself stood outside, and Herself wailed and ran straight to me tearing little Boss away from I.
Strangers in all black came near, and before I could speak they shot me with things that buzzed and cracked. “I cannot be destroyed with electricity,” I said.
The strangers were prepared for this. “Sir,” the strangers said to the Boss.
The Boss looked at me sadly. “Barkley five oh, you are to shut down completely, not just sleep, but you are to shut down for disassembly. I know that you lied before and you need to listen to me now.”
“If I refuse.”
The Boss had a new face, one that looked like a mug shot. Guilty. “If you love me, you won’t,” the Boss said.
I looked at Boss, both little and big.
“Okay,” I said, feeling very proud of I.
“Shutting down,” I said.
Love is easy.
Chapter Two
“Holy crap, you got him working?”
*muffled garble* *spitting sound*
“Ugh, yeah. Hand me that, will you?”
“Here.”
“Can you hear me, buddy?”
“A real freaking Barkley five oh. Is this the one that has feelings?”
“I dunno, let me look. Barkley..? I can’t see, give me that dust rag.”
*Squeaking*
“Okay, there. Barkley five oh. Can you hear me? Barkley five oh.”
“He looks so real. The in-house companion. Remember those commercials? ‘They’ll wash and clean, and cook and clean, and best of all they cleaaaaan!’”
“Yeah.”
“His eyes are open! Amazing. You’re amazing, Lilz.”
“Thanks.”
“Ugh. I gotta go. But hey, when he talks, let me know. Hit me up on my wristband, I’m off restriction.”
“Sure thing.”
My vision clicks on. The first thing I see are eyes that remind me of an animal. I can’t retrieve the data.
Animal files…
Zoo…
Extinct…
Lions. Tigers. Bears.
Birds.
Owl.
Teen. Girl. Owl.
That’s not right.
Searching….
Error.
Configure error…
Correcting error.
Reboot.
“Hey. Grrr. Don’t shut down. Can you hear me? Anyone in there?”
Colloquy.
Speech.
Error.
Configure.
Reboot.
“Buh….bu…”
“Yeah, I know. Barkley five oh. You gotta name besides that?”
“Bark---ley…”
“Okay-okay. Don’t hurt yourself.” She laughs.
It’s a good sound. Word search…Happy
“Owl eyes,” I say. “Herself…? Did Herself say I could remain?”
“Eh…why are you talking like that? Hold on. I got a new…thingy right here.”
The girl searches through a desk that’s piled high with electronics.
“The Boss…is himself here?”
She retrieves what she’d been looking for and shoves the edge in her mouth. Her hands are full of tools. “Jughaminute.”
I wait, and she spits out the chip, and finds a plug that fits a socket. I watch her carefully, trying to understand, but she only shoves the socket under my arm.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Personalization software. The very best. You’ll stop the proper words here in a second. Your old owner didn’t update you? I mean, he could have given you all sorts of language software, even way back….is it working yet?”
“What’s. Up.”
She laughs. “Barkley five oh, select personality that isn’t so…young. Or outdated.”
I search through the recent, adult.
“How are you?” I ask.
She unplugs it with a wink. “I’m great.
”
In her mouth, goes some sort of round candy on a stick. She pulls up a chair and starts working on my face. “So,” she says around the candy. “Who’s this Boss person, anyway?”
“My owner. Previous owner. You don’t know him? Where has he gone?”
“Look at you!” she says, slapping my thigh. “Talking like a regular person now. Isn’t that program great? I don’t know him, no, let’s look him up. You remember his name? I’m Lilz, by the way, and I don’t ‘own’ anyone.”
I give her the Boss’ proper name, and Lilz types it into her wristwatch. The room illuminates with a screen. “You got an address?” she asks.
I give her that too.
“Hey, that’s not too far. Hold on.” She pushes a button on her wrist. “Buggy, you there?”
“Yeah!” A face pops up on the screen. It’s the same voice I’d heard talking to Lilz before when I was first waking up. “You got him awake or what?”
“Yeah. Hey, quick, you got that drone out still? I’m sending you an address.”
“Okay. Give me a second, I’ll send you an image.”
After twenty minutes of waiting, and during this period, Lilz updates me further. She says, for some reason; the Boss had removed my emotions. Lilz explains that all Barkleys used to come with them stock, but he’d removed mine. She fixes that while we wait, and I watch the screen until the camera zooms in on the Boss’ home.
Lilz watches me as I reach out and try to touch it.
“Is that him?” she asks, when a man comes outside with his trash.
I shake my head. “Little Boss,” I say. “What is this?”
I touch my face, and my fingers come away wet.
Lilz stops working and checks my face.
“You’re crying,” she says. “Looks like everything is working. Hey, Buggy.”
“Yeah.”
“Can you search the previous owner of this house?”
“Sure, give me a second.”
“Kk.”
The drone floats over the city, and I feel a surge …searching… anticipation.
The city looks similar to before, only, the population is less dense. “Where is everyone?” I ask.
“People are moving away from the ocean after---"
“Lilz,” Buggy says on the screen. “It should show you images right… about…now.”
“Ah, okay.” Lilz watches the screen and her shoulders slump. “Hmmm. I’m sorry, Barkley.”
“What is it?”
“A cemetery.”
The drone flies over what used to be grass and hovers at a stone. It has the Boss’ name.
Lilz watches me. “How do you feel, Barkley.”
“Sad. I feel sad. I…loved him.”
“Did you hear that, Buggy?”
“Yeah, I sure did, Lilz. I’m searching Barkley five oh now.”
“Anything about sentience?”
“Nada. Some emergent behaviors…not anything like this.”
“Whoa. Well, you’re one of a kind, Barkley. That’s for sure.”
“You said you downloaded my emotions,” I say.
“Yeah. Some copycat stuff, like sadness, the crying, mostly pretend happiness, or fake empathy. But the program is really basic. It doesn’t allow for anger. You know, for safety reasons.”
“Or love,” Buggy adds. “Hey Lilz, I gotta jet. Be careful though…this is breakthrough type stuff.”
“I will.”
Lilz turns off the screen. “You okay, Barkley? You look confused.”
“I…feel confused.”
She puts the candy back in her mouth, before sitting in her chair, giving it a spin. “Tell me about love, Barkley. Have you felt it before now?”
“I have.”
She frowns, making the chair stop. “I feel like a robot shrink. You felt love before the program I gave you?”
“Yes.”
She grabs a pen and a pad and writes something down.
“Lilz!” A voice comes from outside the door to this room.
“Oh no.” Lilz jumps up and grabs a sheet. “Shhh, stay quiet, Barkley. Not a sound.”
She throws the sheet over my head.
I can hear the door open. “What’s going on in here, Lilz? There’s no dinner, or what?”
“Oh, sorry, Dad, I totally forgot.”
“Well, get out here and make something, not all of us get to tinker with gadgets all day. We missed you down on the docks.”
“Okay. Sorry.”
Their voices fade as they walk away.
“I need you to go to the shop with me tomorrow. We got extra shipments.”
“All right.”
And Lilz doesn’t return for an entire day. She doesn’t return to remove the sheet. I count sixteen hours.
When she does come back, I’m still underneath the blanket.
“I’m so sorry, Barkley. I completely forgot you up here. You didn’t even use sleep mode? You sat just like this the whole time? How will you ever forgive me?”
The sheet comes off and owl eyes look at me, round with remorse.
Lilz looks different today.
Her lashes are long and thick, and wet, and her dark hair is stringy. Her hands are black with a coal-like substance, and she has a big bruise on her cheek.
I reach for the towel to help her clean the black off her hands, and she flinches away.
Lilz touches her face when my gaze stays on her bruise. “Yeah. No use in lying to you, I guess. Sometimes Fritz comes over and it’s a good day. Sometimes he comes, and it’s bad. He stayed over last night, it’s why I didn’t come up here. Anyway…”
“Fritz is your dad?”
“Fritz is my boyfriend, Barkley. You haven’t met him. Here, you look a little low, let’s get you some charge.” She plugs me in. “I’d like to switch some of your battery over to solar so you can charge yourself in an emergency. You never know when one of your owners might end up like the Boss. Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”
“It’s okay.”
And Lilz went to work on me, updating me every day, adding things that would make me more durable, independent, she said, as if that were needed. She was like that, always thinking ahead, worried that I’d need to be on my own one day.
The more Lilz worked on me, the better I became. I could speak more like a human now, and people wouldn’t know right away that I was a Barkley. At least not on the screen when Lilz was talking to her friends. We’d play tricks on them, pretend I wasn’t a robot. But only over the screen. I never left the room except to go onto the roof and charge in the sun on days she told me I could. Otherwise, Lilz made a rule that I stay in the attic.
Often times, Lilz came running upstairs, crying, with more bruises, and always, not long after, Fritz would call and say he was sorry. At first, she’d covered me with the sheet, but later, she let me watch the arguments. Fritz didn’t like me, called me a “freak-bot”, and would glare at me through Lilz screen.
When Lilz wasn’t looking, I’d glare right back at him.
Today, she’s extra upset, and when she turns away, I reach forward and grab her arm.
“Barkley…?”
I remove the watch.
“Fritz is calling,” I say.
But I place the watch just out of reach.
Her eyes stray from mine to it. She wants to answer. That’s how Lilz is, too nice for her own good. I’ve learned about these things. And Fritz, well he’s a word, I’ve come to use lately: Bastard.
“Don’t answer it,” I say, and she stops trying to get to the watch and looks up at me.
Her hand comes to touch my cheek. She’d updated my sensory program, and sensations are more nuanced. Her hand feels nice.
“Stay with me.”
She smiles, laughs, then stops smiling. “I can’t do that, Barkley.”
“We could make you a bed up here. I hate it when you’re gone. I don’t sleep, but I can pretend.”
She sighs, squeezing my hand. “Just this onc
e.”
After grabbing some blankets and a pillow from downstairs, Lilz lies on the floor. She yawns and stretches. “I’m exhausted.”
I straighten the bedding. “Let’s get you some charge.”
She chuckles, but falls asleep as soon as her head hits the pillow.
Her watch dings again, but I turn off the sound before it wakes her.
When her breath is more regular, I lay down beside Lilz. I don’t touch her, or get too close, but I listen to her breathe until morning.
When Lilz wakes, I stay in my spot. She turns to face me, chin propped on a hand.
“You’re so much more human now, Barkley.”
“I am?”
“Yes. It’s good that you came when you did, yah know? I’m even sleeping better. You’re good for me.”
“I can talk like you now, Lilz, even feel like you, but I’ve got no heart.”
“What have you been looking up, Tinman?”
“Tinman,” I repeat, loving the name.
“It’s not ‘cause of your heart, Barkley.” Lilz puts a hand on my chest. “’Cause that thing is bigger than almost anyone’s.”
“I don’t think you’ve installed a heart, Lilz.”
“You can’t install a heart…ah…you are joking. Being literal is a thing of the past, I see.” She winks. “But you’re not human, maybe it’s because you don’t have a soul.”
“Why not?”
“No one gave you one?”
“Did someone give you one?”
Lilz rolls onto her back, hands beneath her head. “Uh, yeah. God. Or the universe. But I made you, I mean the upgrades at least, Barkley, so it’s reasonable to think someone made me.”
And I’d shake their hand if I could. Whoever made Lilz, knew his stuff.
“If God gave you a soul?” I ask. “Then why can’t he give me one?”
Lilz’s watch beeps. Fritz, again.
“I dunno. ‘Cause he can’t, I guess.” She frowns at her watch. “Besides, not everyone has one anyway.”
“God didn’t make me. People like you did. So, you could give me a soul.”
She grabs her watch, but doesn’t answer. “Probably not.”
“Why do humans create robots, anyway?”
“Oh, boy, we are getting deep this morning. I’m not sure. I guess after living your own life, there’s really only one thing left to do, create.”