“You’ve only ever lived here,” I said slowly.
He nodded.
“Haven’t you been other places?”
“No.”
“Why not?” I asked him. “Traveling is a wonderful way to expand your horizons.”
“Did you read that in a book?” He asked me quietly.
Blushing, I shake my head, but my silence speaks volumes. We both know I’m not who I pretend to be. It’s obvious my bravery is simply a façade: something I wear as armor. I need to protect myself, no matter what the cost might be.
“The world isn’t as simple for some people as it is for you,” he said. “For some people,” Jack reached for my hand and squeezed it gently. “Moving around the world is an impossibility: an impracticability that cannot be remedied by big hopes and big dreams.”
He stood then, before I could think about what him holding my hand was all about, and he nodded. “I’ll let you get to work, then,” and Jack left the room.
I stared at the piles of books around me. There was such an eclectic mix of volumes. Some of them were very old, and some of them were very new. Some of them, I’d never heard of before. I picked up the first one from a pile and looked at the front of it.
Tales of a Robotic Heart.
Interesting.
The brown cover was worn and faded, as if this was a book that had been very loved. I ran my fingers over the title of the cover and as I looked at it, I wondered just what I had gotten myself into.
Jack wasn’t what I had expected.
This job wasn’t what I had expected.
This life wasn’t what I had expected, but there I was.
Five
Each day for two weeks, Gertrude came to Jack’s house. Their routine became set that very first day, and each day after it was the same. She would arrive after her shift and the two of them would sit in front of the fire and talk about life in Yoralil.
Although Gertrude had been fairly quiet that first day, she quickly began to open up to Jack, and he thought that perhaps Gertrude had never had a real friend before in her entire life. She seemed eager to talk with him, to bounce ideas off this new man she was working for. Jack was only too happy to discuss things with her.
It had been awhile since he was able to talk with someone who treated him like he was human, like he was normal. In fact, Jack wasn’t sure if there had ever been anyone who treated him like he was entirely ordinary the way Gertrude did. He had no desire to tell her who he really was – what he really was. He had no interest in discussing his normalcy, or lack thereof, with her.
No, what Jack wanted was to discover who Gertrude was at her very core. She was so interesting to him, and in many ways, she was quaint. She seemed to have an air of curiosity about her that Jack had never seen before.
Then again, he’d never met anyone who hadn’t spent nearly their entire life in Yoralil.
The thing about cyborgs is that they might look human, but they were not allowed to leave their city of origin. Jack had been created in Yoralil, and now he lived there. He could never leave the confines of the city, no matter how much he wanted to. Even if he found a way to fake his papers or create an alternate identity, he would never make it past the metal detectors.
That was one thing money couldn’t buy.
He was worried about the future of Yoralil. He wouldn’t tell Gertrude that. He couldn’t. How would he let her know he thought MAR was going to fail? The resistance was too great. The people of Yoralil had once prided themselves on being a city of big thinkers, of dreamers. Now the city was split almost evenly.
Half of the people wanted the robots gone. The world of cyborgs was too strong, they argued. Cyborgs were taking over human ideas, human jobs, human homes. They were ruining the future. They were destroying the world. The people who hated cyborgs were dangerous because they were afraid. Scared people made poor choices, bad choices. They did evil things in the name of safety. These acts always came with promises that they would make the world better, but that never happened.
The other half of the population thought the cyborgs and robots were good for Yoralil. It was true that robotic advancements were responsible for a decrease in crime. Cyborg physicians were more precise at diagnosing medical issues. They had a lower fatality rate in surgeries.
Success didn’t matter to the ones who hated the cyborgs, though.
The qualifications of a surgeon didn’t seem to make a difference when it came to people who didn’t think the robotic men should exist.
Jack suspected that Gertrude disliked robotic lives. She didn’t say much those first two weeks about life with the robots, but she didn’t have to. It was obvious from the way she was so careful to avoid political topics and words and phrases that she was very aware that in this part of Yoralil, many people believed robots should have a place in the world.
And then she finished the book.
He’d known she was reading Tales of a Robotic Heart. He saw her when she didn’t think he was looking, when he didn’t think she was aware of him being there. Jack didn’t mean to be creepy or strange, lurking in the shadows, but he came to check on Gertrude from time to time. He wanted to be available if she needed help, if there was a problem she needed assistance with.
What he found was that she talked to the books.
She treated them as if they were real, as if their stories were the most important thing she could imagine. She treated the books as if they were her friends, and Jack wondered if that was because she didn’t have any.
Was she lonely like he was?
Was she afraid the way he was?
Jack liked having Gertrude in the house. She was kind, and she was friendly. She was a bit aloof and a little awkward, but overall she was quite interesting. When Kyle and Bradley had vanished, he wondered how he would manage to live alone in the giant mansion on his own. The cataloguing project had been something Bradley had wanted done, but Jack had never understood quite what should be done.
And then Laura had appeared, and she had suggested he hire Gertrude.
Laura wasn’t exactly the biggest supporter of MAR, but she was neutral enough that it didn’t matter. She didn’t particularly care about the cyborgs, but she didn’t actively hate them, either.
In a world of animosity, he would take not hating.
“Are you hungry?” He asked Gertrude one night. He had been quiet when he entered, and she jumped when she heard his voice. “I’m sorry,” Jack said quickly. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“You didn’t,” she said. “I mean, it’s fine.” She dropped the book she had been holding, almost as if she’d been caught doing something she wasn’t supposed to. She’d been reading again: another romance about a cyborg couple. He wondered why she was reading it. He wondered what she thought.
They were not close, though, and Jack suspected he could not ask her such a personal question. It would take guts to approach Gertrude and ask if she truly wanted to know what it was like to be a cyborg. It would take a bravery Jack wasn’t sure he possessed.
“Yes,” Gertrude said. “I’m hungry. Shall we eat?” They had shared many meals together over the course of the past two weeks. Gertrude hadn’t seemed to notice that Jack didn’t consume actual food. He was careful to hold bites of food on his fork as he talked, and when she looked away, or was focusing on something else, he would move the food around on his plate.
She should have noticed by now.
She hadn’t.
He was glad because it meant he could spend a little more time with her before things had to end. He didn’t want to think about what it would feel like when Gertrude didn’t come over anymore. He didn’t want to think about how lonely his life would become.
“I’ll be right back with a snack,” he said.
“I’ll help you cook.” Gertrude stood and smoothed her skirts, and then she followed Jack out of the room and to the kitchen. It was a large space with multiple ovens and a big table. Bradley had been the
cook in the house. He’d had the entire thing remodeled and had spent hours in this room each day.
Jack moved easily through the room. He’d practically spent his entire life in here. Oh, he might only be a few years old, but he had more knowledge than he knew what to do with, more awareness of the world than most humans could ever dream to possess.
“How’d you learn how to cook so well?” Gertrude asked. She leaned against a counter and smiled at him.
“Practice, I suppose,” he said. That was a lie. He’d been programmed with an innate understanding of cooking. He also had the ability to replicate recipes almost instantly with minimal effort on his part.
Overall, Jack’s life was easier than many humans. He could learn quickly. He could analyze. He could adapt.
But there was more to life than simple mathematics and calculations, Jack realized, and each day, he learned a little more about what being human meant to the people around him. It was important to them: their identity as humans. They wanted to leave their marks on the world. They wanted to be remembered. For humans, their lifestyles revolved around expectations they held for one another, but they also revolved around the expectations they had for themselves.
What did Gertrude want out of her life?
Adventure?
Exploration?
Love?
Jack wasn’t sure.
“You’re good,” she said. “Very precise.”
“I do my best.” He picked up a bowl and began adding ingredients. “Tell me about when you were a girl,” he said. Why had he asked her that? She probably didn’t want to talk about her childhood. Not with him. He was curious, though.
When Bradley had been around, he’d always laughed at Jack’s questions.
You’re a curious one, little robot, Bradley had chuckled when Jack asked too many questions in a row. Jack wasn’t a robot. Not anymore. Oh, he had started that way, but Bradley had learned how to revamp him, how to change him. After nearly a year of hard work, he’d given Jack a proper body with skin and hair and a smile.
Jack liked the way he looked now, the way he moved. He was almost human.
But not quite.
“I lived with my mother,” Gertrude said.
“What about your father?”
“He died when I was very young.”
“What happened?”
Gertrude suddenly seemed to find her hands very interesting. She stared at her palms as if they had suddenly sprouted wings. She didn’t look at Jack.
“He was killed.”
Jack’s heart sank. He knew what she was going to say next before she even opened her mouth. It explained everything about her. Suddenly, he realized why Gertrude was the way she was. Suddenly, he understood why she was so nervous, why she had been so desperate to get away from Eliksburg.
He wouldn’t have wanted to stay, either, if it had been him.
He wouldn’t have wanted to keep living near the people who had been responsible for his father’s death.
Still, despite realizing what had happened to Gertrude’s father, he wanted to hear her say it.
He needed to hear her say it.
He wasn’t sure if he was torturing himself or if he simply needed to know for sure, but he found himself asking her, “Who killed your father, Gertrude?”
When her eyes met his, they were filled with tears.
“Cyborgs,” she whispered. “It’s why they aren’t allowed in Eliksburg anymore.”
Six
I didn’t like to think about my father’s death.
It wasn’t the type of thing I wanted to dwell on. He was alive, and then he wasn’t. He was with me, and then he wasn’t. I had a dad, and then I didn’t. It was over too quickly, and I had lost him too young.
“It’s why you don’t like cyborgs,” Jack said slowly, and I nodded.
“My father worked at a factory. It slowly allowed new workers. The metal men didn’t replace current workers at first. They were just supposed to observe, and then they began to acquire new duties.”
“What did they do?”
“They started to do the same jobs that normal humans did: line work, packaging. Some of them were maintenance workers, but others had more important jobs. My father didn’t like it.”
“I can imagine it must have been a difficult position for him,” Jack said quietly. I looked at him, and for a minute, I thought Jack looked sad. It was interesting, having someone care for me. It had been so long since anyone noticed me. My mother had loved me, long ago, but those days had ended abruptly when she remarried.
My stepfather had disliked me, which meant my mother disliked me.
This made my decision to move that much easier.
“He struggled,” I admitted to Jack, which was something I never said aloud. My father was a hero, at least in my eyes. The idea that he may have had a hard time with his job once the robots and cyborgs arrived killed me.
“Seems natural.”
I shook my head. “Not for my dad. He wasn’t weak.”
“I don’t think anyone thought that,” Jack said thoughtfully. He stirred the bowl and added a few more ingredients. I was quiet for a minute, and then I asked him a question of my own.
“Do your parents live here?”
“My parents are dead,” Jack said quietly. This time, he I knew for certain he was very sad.
“I’m sorry,” I told him. “What happened?”
“I never had a mother,” Jack said. “And my father’s death was…recent. I’m having a difficult time with it.”
And that’s when it hit me.
His father’s death.
That was the reason Jack didn’t eat, the reason he was always so tired looking. He was paler than a normal person should be.
“I’m sorry,” I told him. I didn’t bother promising him things would get better. Chances were, they wouldn’t. They hadn’t for me, at any rate. My father had been gone for a very long time, but I still missed him every day. There had never come a point when I didn’t miss him. There had never come a point when the pain dimmed. Not for me.
Sometimes, when I told people what happened, they would try to offer their condolences, but it never made a difference.
“I’m sorry for your loss” never brought anyone back.
Jack shrugged and looked around awkwardly. Even he didn’t seem to know what to do in this situation.
“Were you close?”
“We were very close,” Jack said. “My father taught me everything I know.”
“Sounds like he was an incredible man,” I told him, and he nodded. Jack had stopped stirring the concoction he was working on, and I went over to him. I shouldn’t have. It wasn’t appropriate: me being that close to my boss. I couldn’t help myself, though. He seemed to need something more, something I couldn’t offer with just my words.
I placed my hand on his arm and he looked down at it. He seemed confused, as though no one had ever offered him this comfort before. How could that be? Jack was a kind and interesting man. He was handsome, and friendly, and smart. I thought it was strange he wasn’t married, but the idea that he was uncomfortable or unused to someone offering a small touch as comfort was just insane.
“I wish I could tell you the pain goes away.”
“It doesn’t, does it?”
“It hasn’t for me,” I admitted. “And I have tried very hard to forget.”
“You’ve tried to forget your father?”
“I’ve tried to forget my pain,” I told him. “I would never want to forget my father, but sometimes, remembering is just too hard. I fill my head with other things, and then the pain doesn’t bother me as much. It’s like an icy ghost sliding into my heart.”
“You’re very poetic,” he said quietly.
“Don’t they say most artists are able to create because of deep inner pain?” I smiled. “Perhaps there’s a bit more truth to that than most of us want to admit.”
“How do you cope with living?” Jack asked me. He d
idn’t move away, and I left my hand on his arm. We were close: closer than we’d ever been before.
“Without my father?”
He nodded. “I feel…guilty,” he seemed surprised as the word left his lips, as if he’d been searching for something to say, and that hadn’t been it. “I shouldn’t have lived, Gertrude. He is gone, but it should have been me. It could have been me,” he shook his head. “But it wasn’t.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know more than you think, Jack.”
Jack looked at me for a long minute, and then he moved swiftly. He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t hold back. Suddenly, his former shyness was gone, and he reached for my face and held it in his hands. He looked at me like I was delicate, like I was precious. He looked at me like I was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, and then he pressed his lips to mine.
Jack kissed me, and I felt alive.
He kissed me, and I felt like I was flying.
He kissed me, and suddenly, the world didn’t seem quite so bad anymore.
I had been kissed before. Everyone had, after all. It had never felt like this, though. It had never felt like a promise. It had never felt like hope wrapped up in one small action.
Jack moved away and for just a second, I felt a loss. Then I looked up at him and he smiled at me.
“I shouldn’t have kissed you,” he said.
My heart sank. “That’s not really what I expected you to say.”
“I don’t regret it,” Jack said quickly. “But I am your employer. I should have stayed professional.”
“Maybe being professional is overrated,” I told him, and he laughed. He squeezed my hand as he looked at me, watching me like I was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, and then Jack turned back to his cooking.
“All right, darling. Shall we get back to work?”
Seven
“There’s been a development in my brother’s case,” Laura told me the next day. We were outside having a smoke. The cold winter wind rushed around us. My pipe went out, and she lit it for me as she spoke.
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