Champ motioned to the polarity curtain. “He’s behind that, right?”
“Indeed, indeed, indeed.”
The garbage man stared at the orange fabric; anxiety threatened the positive state that had been engineered by the caffeine, ginseng and dexaprine mist, which he still tasted on his tongue.
“I’ll be right here on the couch if you need me,” said the shepherd.
“You’re gonna watch, right? On that m.a.?”
“That is standard practice. Eagle’s interactions with people from his first life are important and will affect how quickly he is granted autonomy. If you are opposed to my witnessing—”
“No, no. You can watch. I’d like you to let me know if I say something bad or if he malfunctions or something.”
“I shall, though a malfunction is a very, very unlikely occurrence.”
Champ took one step toward the curtain and balked.
Mr. Johnson pulled a reticule of lozenges from his blazer, plucked a slim pink ovoid and handed it to the apprehensive garbage man.
“Danke.” Champ put the softener upon his tongue, where it dissolved and was instantly absorbed. “Tastes like a radish,” he said as his pulse slowed, and his respirations quietened. The room grew dimmer, and the tightness of his shirt collar no longer bothered him.
Dialed down fifteen percent, Champ walked toward the polarity curtain. The fabric furled into the top of the frame, and three musical chimes heralded his arrival in the adjacent room. He entered a spacious, oval and ice-light-illuminated enclosure, which was covered by sepia wallpaper that cycled loops of horses alternately leaping over hurdles and shrubs.
“Over here,” said an unfamiliar voice.
Champ turned to the right and saw a model 8M chromium mannequin standing beside a magnetically buoyed pool table. The blond-haired machine wore blue jeans, white socks and a red t-shirt that said New York Fire Department, and held in its gelware hands was a glossy wooden cue. The re-bodied man silently appraised his visitor; lenses shifted within eye sockets like spyglass parts.
“Daddy?” quavered Champ, who had not uttered this word since his father’s funeral thirty-four years ago. “Dad?” he said with adult pretensions.
From the unmoving mouth slit came the words, “That’s you, huh? You’re Champ?”
The garbage man nodded, the corners of his eyes wet and burning.
“You’re a grown-up,” observed the mannequin as his gelware hands rested the cue upon green felt.
The re-bodied man walked toward his son.
Suffused by a wave of unanticipated melancholy, Champ bit his lower lip and hugged the mannequin. Filling the garbage man’s nostrils were the smells of warm wires, plastic, copper and gelatin.
Eagle clapped his hands upon his son’s back and patted him like a baseball coach. “It’s good to see you.”
“Uh-huh,” Champ responded, “you, too.”
Soon, the Sapplines withdrew from each other and stood face to face. The re-bodied man was slightly taller than his water-based offspring.
Eagle’s gelware face wrinkled, grinning. “You look a lot like me. Well…like I used to.”
“I don’t have many pictures.”
The apertures within the mannequin’s eyes opened, and the secondary lenses slid forward. “If you cut that hair to a man’s length and were more muscular, you’d look just like I did.”
“Thanks.”
“It’s good you took after me,” informed Eagle. “The men on your mother’s side were all wimpy. She had a cousin Nestor.”
“I barely remember him.”
“He ain’t the kind of guy you want to look like. Wanna shoot some pool?”
“Okay,” said Champ, thinking that death had not diminished his father’s bluster.
The mannequin walked toward the magnetically buoyed table. “They asked if there was anything I wanted to practice my motor skills with, and I always liked pool.”
“I remember.” Champ glanced at the buoyed table and inquired, “The magnets don’t mess with the mannequin?”
“The robot’s only chrome on the outside. Most of it’s cheap stuff—plastic and foam, like a toy or something. And they said there’re anti-magnet thingies inside that shield the parts from other magnets.”
“Okay.”
“Did I ever take you to play pool?” asked Eagle. “You were kind of young for that sort of thing.” The mannequin fished pool balls from the bank and set them within the wooden rack.
“You took me once. There was a championship game in your pool league, and I was in town, so you brought me. I remember eating popcorn and pretzels out of a bowl that smelled like beer.”
“Sorry about that.” Eagle set more balls into the stable. “Did we win? My team, did we win?”
“You guys won.”
“That’s probably why I don’t remember it too good. We partied a lot when we won. I liked to get wrecked.”
“You got wrecked,” Champ confirmed, “and so did the other guys. And there was a woman there, too. She made me hold her cigarettes a couple of times.”
“Probably Steph. The guys and gals in the firehouse liked to share her, pass her around.” Eagle dropped a red ball amongst its peers and looked at his son. “Should I not say stuff like that? I’m not sure how this’s supposed to go—between us. You’re a grown-up now, but I’m not sure what’s inappropriate or whatever.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Kick the stars.”
Champ had not heard anybody use this expression in earnest in over two decades.
Eagle lifted the rack and pointed to the triangulated balls. “I’ll give you the break.”
“Danke.”
“‘Danke?’ You become German while I was dead?”
“That’s just what people say.”
“’Cause Hitler was so charming?”
“I’m not sure why.” Champ ruminated for a few seconds. “Maybe because the Global Senate’s based in Berlin.” He picked up the cue, squeezed the shaft and appraised its alignment: The stick was balanced.
“And why aren’t they calling it New York anymore?” asked Eagle.
“It’s still New York, but after Brooklyn became a separate city, the mayor pushed for a new nickname. Like Manhattan or the Big Apple, but more international.”
“The Big Apple never made any sense. I never eat apples.”
“I believe that that name came from a horse racetrack that was here.”
“Which makes even less sense,” remarked Eagle. “I ran out of chalk, so you can use that baking soda the janitor brought.” The mannequin pointed to a cup filled with white powder.
Champ dabbed the cue’s tip, shook off the extra, walked to the edge of the table, set the slender end between his thumb and index finger and drew the shaft back with his right hand.
“Your mother’s still around, right?” asked Eagle.
“Yeah. Lives with some guy in Colorado.”
“That homo with the little dogs?”
“Not James.”
“Good,” remarked the mannequin. “I wasn’t a perfect husband or anything, but that guy pissed pink.”
“She divorced him when I was twelve, lived with some other guy for a few years—a health nut who once asked me for a stool sample—and then she married the food engineer who patented the pork-chop loaf. She’s still married to him, though they don’t seem to like each other a whole lot.”
“How’s she doin’ otherwise?”
“Seems fine on holidays.”
“You guys aren’t close?”
“Eh.”
Champ thrust the shaft forward. The cue ball cracked the pointillist triangle, and c
olors sped pell-mell to the rails. Three spheres shot into pockets.
“Nice break,” said Eagle. “You gonna be solids? You got two solids in already.”
Champ appraised the table and shook his head. “Stripes. The positioning is better.” He drew an imaginary vector in the air, said, “Eleven, banked, into the side,” and lanced the named ball into the promised pocket before the puff of baking powder had settled.
“Kick the stars,” exclaimed Eagle. “You’re good.”
“Thanks.”
Champ drew a vector in the air, said, “Ten ball, corner pocket,” took and made the called shot.
“Does she know that they made me into a robot?”
“I wasn’t sure you’d want me to tell her.” The garbage man paused and looked at the mannequin’s neutral visage. “Do you want me to tell her?”
“No rush, I guess. Unless you think I should? Didn’t talk to her too much at the end other than scheduling your visits.”
“There weren’t that many of those,” remarked Champ.
Eagle was silent.
The garbage man called and made his next shot. Throughout the oval room, the clacking of pool balls seemed louder than it had a moment ago.
Champ said, “Seems like there’re other people you’d rather contact than your ex-wife. I got some numbers in my vault—guys from your old firehouse who’re still around.” He was fully aware that his father’s most meaningful relationships were with these men. “I called to let them know what was going on with you.”
“Kick the stars! Which ones are still around?”
“Pedro Cheung.”
“That ox! Glad he made it.”
“Butch Silverberg.”
“Bagel Butch? Helluva Jew.”
“Bill Lords.”
“The way he partied? That’s a surprise.” Eagle ruminated for a moment. “He’s gotta be at least eighty—he’s a bit older than the rest of us.”
“He sounded a little slow, but he’s still breathing. Your old mentor Potato O’Boyd is still around. He’s still working for FDNY—he’s a Fire Chief.”
“Potato made it!” A gigantic smile creased the mannequin’s face, almost burying his lenses in gelware. “Kick the stars! That’s the best! Who else? Did Brett Brickman pull through? That guy pulled me out of two collapses, and I introduced him to the gal he left his third wife for. The rump on that woman.” A sound like a piccolo flute emerged from the mannequin’s larynx speakers.
Perplexed, Champ looked at his father.
“That’s the sound this thing makes instead of a whistle,” Eagle explained, “since the lips don’t move and it doesn’t breathe or anything.”
“Oh.”
“Did he make it? Brett Brickman?”
Unsure of what he should or should not say, Champ looked at the polarity curtain. No guidance emerged from the adjacent room.
“Brickman…isn’t around anymore,” admitted the garbage man.
The mannequin’s generic face became neutral, expressionless, and the ocular apertures narrowed. Eagle Sappline stood silent and unmoving.
Champ set the cue on its rubber bulb and leaned it against the table. “Dad?”
The mannequin did not respond.
Champ looked from Eagle to the polarity curtain, but received no guidance from the shepherd. The garbage man then strode around the table towards his father.
“You okay?”
“That’s too bad about Brickman,” said Eagle, his body inert.
“Sorry. I know you guys were close—he was really upset at your funeral.” Champ vividly remembered the untidy scene: Brett Brickman had walked up to the cosmetically restored (but brainless) corpse, yelled, “I told you it was gonna collapse!” and punched the coffin again and again and again until the wood buckled and his knuckles were bloody, at which point a woman clapped her hands to his right arm and pulled him from the dais and from the church out into the snow where he yelled, “That goddamn fool!” while tears poured down his face.
Eagle said, “Considering how we all lived—and what we did for a living—I’m surprised we’ve got this many still dancing.”
“The guys want to have a get-together when you’re granted autonomy.”
“That’d be great. I’m not sure how I’ll get wrecked inside this thing, but I’ll figure something out.”
Champ imagined Mr. Johnson highlighting that portion of the conversation. “Uh…I feel that CCI would frown upon you purposely damaging the mannequin.”
“They gave it to me, right? Seems like if I want to get smashed, then that’s just up to me.”
“Dad…they’re monitoring this conversation.”
“Well, I’m not looking to break it or anything. I just wanna have some fun.”
The polarity curtain furled, and Mr. Johnson strode into the room. Champ’s muscles tightened.
“Hey, Johnson,” said Eagle.
“Good afternoon.”
“I’m-I’m really sorry about what my dad said,” blathered Champ. “He won’t damage the mannequin unit once he understands how valuable it is.” The garbage man looked at his father and prompted, “Will you?”
“I like to party.”
“Dad!” Champ was exasperated.
“Don’t go hysterical.”
More irate than he had been on that morning two weeks prior when a foe on the fifth floor shoved him into a wall that was covered with wet green paint, Champ shouted, “Don’t be glib—this is important!”
Mr. Johnson laughed heartily. “Don’t worry: We have consciousness-altering devices that will engineer the states your father desires.”
“You do?” asked Champ, incredulously.
“Yes.”
“Kick the stars!” shouted Eagle.
The shepherd resumed, “And, unlike caffeine, alcohol, marijuana, lift, dexaprine and cocaine, these devices—they’re called tweakers—do not in any way damage the brain.”
“CCI is incredible,” announced the re-bodied man.
Champ asked, “Why do you have things like that?”
“Generally speaking, the life a person lives within a mannequin is supposed to be a continuation of that individual’s first life. Many of the artists we revive rely on such mental states for their livelihood, and people with dangerous, high-pressure jobs—like firemen or soldiers—often require a greater degree of intellectual relief in between duties to achieve their peak performances.”
“He’s totally right about that,” Eagle said to Champ, “one thousand percent correct.”
Relieved that his father’s crapulous ambitions were permissible, Champ shrugged.
Mr. Johnson grinned and addressed Eagle, “I’m not allowed to give you tweakers until you’re granted autonomy, but I will note your interest and put in a request for paisley brain, aquatic thoughts and warp speed.”
“Those. Sound. Awesome!”
The shepherd flicked a paddle-like hand at the pool table, said, “Please continue,” and walked out of the room.
Champ reclaimed the cue and pointed its tip at a striped ball and a corner pocket. “Fourteen in the corner.” He sighted the shot carefully (an enemy sphere sat at the edge of the path) and thrust the shaft. The cue ball sped from the puff of baking powder, nicked the green six and caromed wide.
“Crap.” Champ handed the cue to the mannequin.
“I thought you were gonna run the whole damn table on me.”
“I’m not that good. I just got lucky with the break.”
“You know how to shoot,” Eagle said as he powdered the cue’s tip. “How’d you get so good?”
“We had a parlor with a pool table. My wife and I.”
T
he mannequin looked up. “You’re married?”
“I was.”
“Oh.” Eagle appraised the arrangement of balls upon the table for a moment and said, “I’d’ve been surprised. You look like a bachelor.”
“Thanks,” said Champ, perturbed.
Eagle knelt so that his head was level with the table, closed the aperture in his left eye socket and narrowed the one behind his right lens. “I can get more things in focus when I do this. Bigger debt of field, they said.”
“I think you mean depth of field.”
“I’m not a scientist.” The re-bodied man nestled the slender end of the cue between his index and middle fingers and drew back the shaft with his left hand. “Why’d she leave you?”
Nettled by the inquiry, Champ replied, “Why do you assume that she left me?”
“Don’t go hysterical. I can tell. Your mother left me, and lots of guys at the house had busted marriages. When a guy talks about his ex using the word ‘we’ like that, he’s still holding on to something. I did the same thing when your mom put me in the trash can.”
“It’s hard to imagine how that ever came to pass.”
A weird chirping noise issued from the mannequin’s mouth slit.
“What the hell was that?” asked Champ.
“A laugh, supposedly. So why’d she dump you?”
“Take your shot.” The garbage man was annoyed and did not want to discuss his failed marriage with his father.
“You were always real sensitive,” remarked Eagle. “I remember how scared you got at the movies.”
“Ninety-Eight Years in a Chinese Torture Camp and Behold the Gutted might not’ve been the most suitable choices for an eight-year-old.”
“No need to get grumpy.” The re-bodied man swiveled his expressionless gelware face away from his son. “Maybe I shouldn’t’ve brought you to those kinds of movies,” he said, “but they’re the kind I like, and I wanted to take you. As a firefighter, you learn to just do things when you want to, not wait around, because…well, you know why. The stuff in those movies is all fake, anyways.”
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