And then his face broke into a grin.
“You’re glad?”
“Yes.” Carter beamed. “Yes.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Okay, okay, okay!” He pulled another swab from his kit. “Let’s do you.”
“No! I—” Pearl stood, fumbling for the empty casing. She dropped it and looked down aghast, half expecting it to have popped open. But it sat on the carpet, a perfect rectangle. She kneeled down and swept it up. “I need to . . . I’ll be right back.”
She’d gotten as far as the door when Carter called after her.
“Pearl!”
She paused and looked back at him.
“How about a smile?” he said.
* * *
—
PEARL QUIT. Just like that.
Well, not just like that. There were forms and more forms and questions and more questions. Her manager brought in a VP she’d never met before, who brought in the head of security. Pearl presented them with Mason’s business card and also the empty machine casing. When they lifted it from her hand, she hardly felt it go, like she’d held nothing in the first place. She gazed at her empty palm, then smiled and thanked them and left.
* * *
—
THE STAIRWELL WAS DARK when Pearl climbed to her apartment. She had the feeling of traveling through a tunnel rising from deep underground. Rhett’s door wasn’t latched, and Pearl’s knock swung it open. Her son stood at the center of the room in his VR mask and gloves, marching in place. Each footfall landed with a small jolt, as if he were trudging down a slope. He wouldn’t be able to see or hear her with the mask on, but he must have sensed her, or maybe he’d simply reached his destination because he stopped marching and lifted the mask from his face.
“You’re home,” he said.
“What’s that game you keep playing?” she asked.
He looked down at his gloved hands. “It’s not a game. It’s a mountain. You don’t play it, you just climb it.”
“Did you get to the top?”
“I did.”
“How’s the view?”
“The view from the imaginary mountaintop?” He was teasing her. “Amazing. You can see for imaginary miles and miles.”
He smiled at her.
She smiled back. How could she not?
“And the imaginary sky?” she asked.
“Blue.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author’s Apricity report would list the following people: Ulysses Loken; Sarah McGrath; Doug Stewart; Kate Beutner; Kris Bronstad; Sarah Beldo; Kate Hagner; Jim Sidel; Phoebe Bright; Mike Copperman, Caroline Comerford, and their workshop full of talented writers; James Hannaham; Kirstin Valdez Quade; Judy Heiblum; Danya Kukafka; Lindsay Means; Helen Yentus; Grace Han; Geoff Kloske; Jynne Martin; Kate Stark; Cara Reilly; Szilvia Molnar; Danielle Bukowski; Caspian Dennis; Rich Green; and Beth and Frank Williams—happiness machines one and all.
The poem quoted in “The Happiness Machine” is “Lines for the Fortune Cookies” by Frank O’Hara. The word origins in “Origin Story” are from The Oxford Dictionary of Word Histories, edited by Glynnis Chantrell, and Fantastic Worlds, edited by Eric Rabkin.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Katie Williams's short fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, American Short Fiction, Prairie Schooner, Subtropics, and elsewhere. Williams earned her MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. She teaches writing and literature at Academy of Art University in San Francisco. She is the author of two young adult novels, The Space Between Trees and Absent. This is her first novel for adults.
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Tell the Machine Goodnight Page 24