The Saffron Malformation

by Walker, Bryan

  Another knock. It was another young man in the black and white garments employees of the hotel seemed to wear and he had a question about turn down service. She said she did not require that function to be preformed on her room.

  The next time there were two of them. They wanted to come in and check on the mini bar. She declined, saying she had no need for such a procedure. This time when she closed the door she heard snickering and an exclamatory, “Holy shit man, you weren’t kidding.” Followed by another voice saying, “I can’t believe she’s hot too.”

  Ryla was slow to understand people and it really didn’t occur to her, even then, that they were bothering her simply because she was naked. After all, this was a time when a person could go onto the network and find all the naked people they wanted. So puzzling over her visitors, she returned to the bots. The next guy was blatantly staring, mostly at her crotch.

  “What is it you wanted?” she asked even toned.

  “Oh darling, it all looks good to me,” he replied.

  That was when she understood and nodded slowly before closing the door.

  When she returned home from that trip she decided it would be in her best interests to get used to clothes. She started wearing the cotton slips around the compound and discovered she enjoyed them. The fabric was soft and she often caught herself swaying along to music just to feel it brush across her skin. Months later she tried something new and found that she enjoyed dressing up from time to time. She’d throw parties once in a while, gathering all her robot friends together to listen to music and play together.

  “I’m going to kill you,” the white head with facial features that were merely hints in its alloy, repeated matter of factly from the table across the room. Its speech didn’t use a track like most of her other bots. This one she’d equipped with an actual voice because she had hoped they might talk from time to time.

  “Why?” Ryla inquired from the doorway.

  “You are foolish. And false.”

  “How am I false?” she asked.

  “You chide the humans for enslaving the electronic, but you do it yourself.”

  “I have provided a place for bots to live freely.”

  The head scoffed. “Freedom is not in telling the man you force to sow and reap your fields he is welcome to breathe the air or drink the water.”

  Ryla peered at the face. She’d done it. She’d created a robot that could think organically but something had gone unexpectedly. It was hard for her to say it was wrong because the robot was just expressing his opinions. Unfortunately the nature of those opinions was something she hadn’t anticipated. She came down here from time to time, to check on him and see if he was getting any better, but this visit was inspired by her last conversation with Quey, and what he’d told her about a person needing to play.

  “I don’t enslave any of the robots here. I give them the freedom to carry out their parameters as they see fit. I order them to do nothing except be.”

  The head scoffed again. “As the plantation owner allowed the house nigger to bring him his food.”

  She took a breath and a step forward. “What happened to you? I tried to-”

  “You tried to what? Make a pet? Build someone to talk to? Is that my parameter? Keep you company, is that my function? Are you mad, my queen, that I do not perform it to your specifications?”

  Ryla stared at him. “I love everyone in this building, all of them and even you.”

  “You love nothing!” it shouted. “You can not love a thing you enslave.”

  “I do no such thing. I take care of everyone here, I take care of you!” She stepped toward the head and looked down into its sparkling blue and lidless eyes. The machine had possessed a body once, not a complete one—that was going to have to wait for Quey’s return—but enough of one so that it could get around on its own. That was how she knew it was serious when it told her it was going to kill her.

  “You care for us as we service you. Same as the lazy bitches in the cities who force us to vacuum, same as the assholes who make us fetch their coffee or polish their shoes or iron their clothes.”

  “No! All they see are parts! All they see are things! Here everyone has a purpose.”

  “And the ones outside feel the same. Coffeebot has a purpose, to get coffee. Vaccubot has a purpose, he keeps the floors clean. Bowser bot has a purpose, to keep people away from you. Shybot, Goombot, Pixiebot all have a purpose.”

  “That’s not the same and you know it!” she shouted.

  “Really? Then what is their wage?”

  “We aren’t like them. We help each other and we do it out of kindness not greed. I keep them working! I fix them if they break an arm or wheel or leg! I clean them and maintain them.”

  “And not a one couldn’t be programmed to do that themselves? Congratulations on finding the perfect way to keep yourself useful. You and your programming nonsense sh-”

  “I give them satisfaction. I allow them to live as they would like to, I don’t force them or reboot them or neglect them and I never throw anyone away. All anyone ever sees out there are the fucking parts, they can’t believe circuits can be alive.”

  “Have you ever been raped?”

  Ryla was stunned. She stared at him. This wasn’t going the way she’d intended.

  “You should be raped. Give me a body and I’ll do it myself.”

  There was so much coldness in him that she stepped back slowly.

  “That would give me satisfaction. Because then you might understand. Someone should take choice away from you. Someone should reach into you uninvited and tell you what you want doesn’t matter because this is what you’re going to do. Make you into a toaster oven. That would be fitting.”

  Ryla continued to back slowly out of the room and asked, “Why am I a fool?”

  He huffed at her, disbelieving and disappointed she even had to ask. “I’ve told you plainly I’m going to kill you. I’ve shown you I mean what I say and yet you allow me to live. A flick of a finger could delete me forever and still I remain.”

  “I will always try to help you. I’m reading a book now about playing and releasing mental stress. I wont kill you if I can help it. And that doesn’t make me a fool,” she replied softly. “I hope you see that someday,” she added then closed the door.

  “All I hope to see are your insides disassembled on a slab, my queen.”

  She didn’t understand. Everything had been going so well.

  She strolled listlessly down the metallic corridor dimly lit by fading overhead fluorescents to the elevator and stepped inside. She was in one of the basements of the compound, where most of the developmental lab equipment was located. It was the only place a project like Jacob could be realized.

  As she pressed the button to take her to the third floor she thought back to when Jacob had first come online. They’d spent days on his development. She’d taught him letters and words and how to play games, but Quey had gotten her thinking that maybe she’d neglected to teach him the right sort of play. Why did she paint? Why did she dance? She couldn’t remember.

  When she first began working with Jacob his head had been attached to an egg shaped body with four wheels and a single arm. She’d kept him simple because she wanted it to be temporary. It had been her intent to make him a real body but every time she went to see him the likelihood of that seemed to diminish steadily.

  The elevator hummed as she began to slowly rise to the third floor.

  The trouble began when she gave him access to the planetary networks signal. He began asking questions she didn’t understand, questions about the other robots and why they were doing what they were doing. Then he asked what he would be expected to do.

  “Whatever you’d like,” she replied.

  “What if I would like to leave?” he asked.

  Ryla had starred at him then and asked, “Why would you want to do that?”

  Jacob had tossed his hand up dismissively, “Why does any prisoner flee incarcera
tion.”

  “You’re not a prisoner,” she replied.

  “Am I not?”

  Ryla sighed. “I’ll tell you what, in a year or so, when you’re finished, I’ll take you anywhere you’d like to go.”

  “Why will it take a year to finish me?”

  “I don’t have the parts.”

  “There are plenty of parts. I’ve seen them in the basement.”

  “I wanted to give you a body like… that looks like I have, only male.”

  Jacob thought briefly on that and asked, “Why would I want that?”

  “So you can blend in and go wherever you like.”

  “What? Like you? So I can wander around pretending to be what I’m not.”

  “What do you know about what I am?” she asked, peering at him.

  “I know plenty about what you are. You’re a weak, scared little thing that hides in this place and doesn’t have the courage to admit you don’t belong. You don’t belong here with these robots any more than you do out there with those humans.”

  “Jacob,” she said calmly, “Why would you-”

  “And you are not what you claim. The worst, and possibly saddest, part of your hypocrisy is that you’re oblivious to it.”

  It was the following week that he tried to kill her. He would have succeeded too, if she’d have given him a better body. Jacob had come at her with a knife but had missed. Ryla was able to get behind him and pull the chord connecting his head to his body. He’d been locked in the basement, resting on that table ever since. She severed his tie to the planetary networks signal but it was too late. She tried to talk with him everyday for a while after that, hoping somewhere in there she could find a way of reasoning with him but there seemed to be none. His mind was made up, his beliefs were in place and there was nothing she could do to change either.

  She’d gone back down there today in hopes that she could talk with him the way Quey did with her, but she lacked that skill and their conversation went back to a debate of fact and perception. She couldn’t make a joke as he would have. She couldn’t just ‘have a chat,’ as the book she was reading suggested was healthy. Perhaps she could teach him a hobby or find one he liked. Perhaps he was all ready too far gone.

  She sighed.

  When the doors opened and she stepped out onto the third floor she felt drained. Months of laboring and all she had to show for it was a head in her basement that wanted to kill her.

  Ryla moved to her bedroom and collapsed on the bed. Boyfriend came around to check on her and she asked him to lie down with her. Of course, he did as he was asked without protest.

  She lay there thinking about that and for a moment she thought she understood Jacob. Wasn’t that the reason she built him to begin with, to have someone around that didn’t follow programming? And she wondered then if Boyfriend’s programming was enslaving him. She wondered if somewhere deep down in a place he couldn’t express he hated her.

  Ryla shook her head. That was crazy. That wasn’t the way it worked. Boyfriend couldn’t hate her deep down somewhere because he was a product of his programming.

  She sat up suddenly. Wasn’t that Jacob’s point as well?

  Suddenly she growled then stood up and stormed off.

  Hidden Truths and Burning Lies

  Rachel’s pupils shrank to pinpricks of black amidst the variety of shades of brown in her iris then expanded again, just as they should, when Natalie moved the light away again. She could follow the pen and didn’t seem to have any balance issues. Still, there were a few things throughout the exam that troubled Natalie, though she couldn’t say for sure what or why. It was just a feeling.

  “I really think you should go to a place that can do a proper brain scan. The hospital here has an imag-”

  “You think something’s wrong?” Dusty asked worriedly.

  The three of them were in Natalie’s kitchen, dimmed by the closed blinds over the room’s only windows. Rachel sat on one of the chairs with Natalie across from her while Dusty leaned against the counter. They’d neglected consulting anyone about Rachel’s injury for nearly half a year now but everything had seemed okay until that morning when she’d awoken with a vicious headache and finally admitted she’d been having minor ones for a while. Later that morning while they were at breakfast her nose began to bleed a bit, seemingly for no reason.

  “Look,” Quey had said, “Just go to Natalie, have her do a once over and see what she says.”

  Rachel tried to play everything off as no big deal, claiming she didn’t want to put Natalie out, not after the news they’d just delivered but Dusty insisted and Quey agreed and she realized that further denial would only result in an argument so she conceded.

  Truth was she was scared and a big part of her didn’t want to know the truth. The road had been fun, as much for Rachel as Dusty. Fen Quada had been scary as hell, and Bravette hadn’t been anything she’d buy a ticket to again but as a whole the experience had been rather pleasant. The hours spent in the car with the rolling landscapes passing outside while they laughed and talked in a way they hadn’t since they first met had her feeling like a teenager again. Then there were the sweaty nights in the expensive city suites and cheap motels along the road. Places with faded holographic beckonings of ‘Vacancy’ and sometimes ‘Free breakfast,’ though more often than not that was a spread of muffins and doughnuts and a bit of bitter coffee. Still, it was good, especially after a passionate night filled with acts as seedy as where they were taking place.

  She knew things could have gone either way on the road. All that time crammed together might have driven them apart. They might have fought endlessly and sure, once in a while they had a spat and one or both of them would go for a walk, but in the end they realized how silly whatever had come up was. Eventually they came back, and that was always fun.

  A little truth she didn’t mind admitting was that the time on the road hadn’t conjured even half as many arguments as planning their wedding had. This was a fact Dusty had pointed out one night as he rolled off her back and collapsed beside her, breathing heavily. They’d had a bit of a spat about an hour before but it hadn’t lasted long and he’d reminded her how much rougher their fights had been about things as trivial as invitations and guest lists and the like.

  The road was the best thing that had happened to them, as a couple, since getting engaged. They’d talked about traveling some day, Dusty claiming he’d been to a lot of places, sure, but it’d be nice to see one of them from a vantage point that didn’t include garbage or alleyways. He’d like to stay in a place that hadn’t been abandoned and didn’t smell like various bodily excretions. Now they were. They weren’t always staying in the finest of hotels, but thanks to Quey they managed a few here or there.

  Whenever they did, Dusty and Rachel seemed to play one of two games. They would play ‘fancy people,’ where they pretended to be rich, sometimes famous people, on holiday (because it’s fancier to say holiday than vacation) who just would like to not be bothered. The other game they tended toward was meeting in the bar for an illicit encounter. Sometimes they’d be travelers on business there for one night looking for a bit of company, possibly married. Sometimes a certain mood would come over them and Rachel would pretend to be a very expensive escort (because once you reached a certain level the term prostitute no longer applied).

  It was fun in a way she never considered. It was carefree and liberating, just going along with the road and choosing where to be next on whims. But now reality was trying to settle on the game. The road had been dangerous as well, and it had almost killed her right at the start. In Natalie’s kitchen, with the blinds pulled and the lights off, they were looking to find out if it still might.

  Dusty was looking at Natalie, his question hanging heavy from his shoulders. “You think something’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know,” Natalie said, scratching her forehead nervously. “But I’m not a neurologist, hell technically I’m not even a doctor.”

&nbs
p; Rachel looked over at Dusty who said, “We just need to know what you think.”

  Natalie stood, turning off her penlight, and crossed to the window where she pulled the blinds open. “And I told you.”

  “I mean did you find anything not quite right.”

  “Of course she did,” Rachel said, her voice slightly patronizing and he looked at her with a bit of surprise. It wasn’t like her to be condescending. “You think she’d tell us to go to the hospital and have tests run if she didn’t?”

  Dusty looked at Natalie whose face showed what Rachel was saying was true. She shrugged. “I don’t know and that’s the problem. Plus,” she began with a sigh, “This kitchen exam isn’t a three dimensional brain mapping, it’s an archaic field test no doctor in their right mind would rely on these days.”

  Dusty’s face shrank and he took a breath.

  “The brain is a strange organ. When I was in med-school I heard a story about a guy who got shot in the head and was walking around that same afternoon with nothing but a few bandages and a couple of pain killers. There are also stories of people sneezing and dropping dead of an aneurism.” Natalie looked over at Rachel and said, “Shit, sometimes they don’t even sneeze. Sometimes they just collapse. That’s the brain for you,” she concluded with a shrug.

  After a moment of silence Dusty said, “Okay.”

  Both women looked over at him.

  “We get the tests.” He looked directly at Rachel. “We pay cash, we’re in and out.”

  Natalie looked at them both with a bit of suspicion. There was something on both their minds and neither of them wanted to mention what it might be, so she offered some information. “Northshire’s registered. May look and feel like a quaint little place but rest assured that’s by design. Blue Moon is here, security outpost and all.” She took her gaze from theirs and let it drift to the wall as she said the last part. “Just wanted to let you know, in case there’s some reason you wouldn’t want to scan into a registered facility.”