“You need to get ready,” said Patience as Mike was turning to the last page.
He looked up to see that if was 11:07. Jogging upstairs, he changed into slacks, shirt, and a jacket and pulled on his loafers. Back downstairs he looked around for his wife and called “Are we supposed to bring something?”
“I made a Jell-o mold,” said Patience, arriving from the kitchen carrying a mini cooler.
“Nice.”
At precisely 11:59 Mike pulled into the driveway of Harriet and Jack’s house. It was a nice house, both larger and newer than his, nestled in a cul-de-sac several blocks away from the freeway exit. Harriet had planted hundreds of perennials around her home and though they were not blossoming at that time, they were thriving thanks to the large blue UV umbrella that covered the entire neighborhood. Harriet was waiting as they walked up the path to the front door. Mike grabbed one of his signs from the trunk while Patience retrieved the Jell-o mold.
“Hi Daddy. Hi Patience.”
“Hi, Harriet,” said Patience. “Thank you for having us over.”
“Of course.” Harriet and her robot step-mother exchanged kisses on the cheek.
“Hi Honey,” said Mike. “You look gigantic.”
“Thanks a lot, Dad.” Harriet ran a hand over her protruding baby bump. “I am gigantic.”
“Where’s Jack?”
“He’s in the garage shampooing the car interior,” she answered but looked quizzically at the sign he held in his hand.
“Oh, I brought you a present for your yard.” He showed it to her and then pressed it into the earth in the small garden beside Harriet’s door.
Mike’s daughter guided them into the house and closed the door.
“So why’s he shampooing the car seats now?” asked Mike as he plopped onto the couch.
“It’s quite a story,” answered Harriet. “Renee Holmes—she lives down the street, well she asked Jack to drive her to the pharmacy. She has two kids and they had to go with her because she didn’t have a baby sitter. Anyway, she got her prescription, but on the way back she started coughing so much that she threw up right in the back seat. Well, her oldest—that’s Mikey—he got a whiff of the smell and threw up too. Then Mikey’s little sister Marie vomited right in Jack’s lap and that set him off. So the entire car was practically filled with vomit and I told Jack that there was no way I could ride to my obstetrician’s appointment this week with the car smelling like that.”
“It’s just like that movie Stand By Me,” said Mike with a smile.
“I… oh, I don’t think I’ve seen it.”
“It was based on a story by Stephen King,” said Patience. “Originally published in King's 1982 collection Different Seasons, it tells the story of three adolescents who set out on a journey to see the body of a dead boy.”
“Um, Okay,” said Harriet, putting a protective hand on her belly. “Patience, why don’t we set the table? Daddy, why don’t you go out to the garage and talk to Jack? Maybe you could even help him.”
“I could do that,” said Mike, making no move to get up.
Instead, as the two women, one human and one robot, left the room, Mike gazed at the many pictures Harriet had hanging on the walls and sitting on tabletops and the mantle. He could see himself smiling back as he posed with his daughter and his son Lucas. The pictures were randomly placed so that they all seemed to advance in age and then to return to youth again. One particular picture caught his eye. He didn’t think he had ever seen it before. It was of him and Tiffany and all three kids at the park. Aggie looked about four, so it had to have been taken just before the car crash that killed her and her mother, but for the life of him, Mike couldn’t remember the day at the park when the picture would have been taken.
“I’m going to change before we eat.” Mike was startled by Jack’s voice as the latter passed through the room on his way to the stairs, the faint smell of vomit lingering in his wake.
“Are you alright?” asked Patience, suddenly at his side.
“Are you done setting the table?”
“Yes. What is the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“Something is the matter. Your voice level and timing indicates that you are experiencing stress.”
“I’m just… I can’t seem to remember this day at the park.”
“That was a traumatic time in your life. Human memory, already notably unreliable, can be extremely inaccurate in such situations.”
“Volatile,” said Mike quietly. “Volatile memory and I’ve had my power unplugged.”
“Nonsense. The memory is there. Part of you simply does not want to access it. You miss Tiffany and Agatha very much.”
“Yeah, well.” He lowered his voice. “I wish the dickhead would get down here so we can eat.”
Jack’s stomping down the stairs heralded his return. He was a big man, about Mike’s size, with very large hands. He made a point of not looking at Patience.
“Let’s eat.” He led them into the other room and to the table where they sat down and Harriet served the two men cold fried chicken, carrot and raisin salad, and Jell-o, before filling her own plate and sitting down.
“There’s a sign in your flowerbed,” commented Jack. “What is it?”
“Daddy brought it.”
“It’s a Vote No on 22 sign,” said Mike.
“Twenty-two… that’s the robot thing, right? Maybe we shouldn’t have that sign. They seem pretty hot on that issue at church. We don’t want to be ostracized.”
“Ostracized,” said Mike. “That’s a pretty big word. Did you get that from your word a day calendar?”
“Daddy.”
“Sorry. I’m sure you learned a lot of big words in community college, Jack.”
“If you want to be a pervert and marry a robot, then who am I to say anything.” Jack pointed his finger in Mike’s direction. “That doesn’t mean I have to vote the way you tell me to, and I don’t have to vote your way just because you’re my father-in-law either.”
“Patience, punch him in the neck,” said Mike.
Jack scooted away from Patience, even though she made no move to follow through on Mike’s directive.
“Calm down,” ordered Harriet to her husband. “She’s not going to punch you. Are you Patience?”
“No.”
“And you.” Harriet turned to her father. “Jack is the father of your soon to be grandchild. If you can’t speak respectfully to him in this house, then you won’t be invited over to visit.”
“A grandfather has rights…”
“You have exactly as many rights as I tell you that you do.”
Mike took a deep breath and then let it out. Grabbing a chicken leg, he took a large bite and tried to ignore the smug look on his son-in-law’s face. Silence reigned for several moments and then Harriet spoke again.
“You know if you went to church with us, you could probably change quite a few people’s minds.”
“You know how I feel about that.”
“What is your problem with church anyway?” asked Jack.
“I have a dislike of religion on several different levels. At its most basic level religion is nothing more than a way of controlling people. Even when it’s fairly innocuous, church is just an excuse to get together and rub elbows with other people and that’s not something I care to do. Besides, I don’t believe in God and I don’t really like the idea of believing in things anyway. Things either are or they aren’t. Whether you believe in them or not shouldn’t have any bearing on anything.”
“You are so full of shit, Dad,” said Harriet. “You believe in all kinds of things that you know may not be true. You believe that knowledge is more important than power, that good will triumph over evil in the end, that there is an absolute good and evil, and that you are the unquestioned master of your own life. You just can’t believe that there is anyone smarter than you are.”
“I haven’t met a preacher who is.”
“I was talking ab
out God,” said Harriet.
“That was a crap visit,” said Mike on their way home.
“If the visit was unsatisfactory,” replied Patience, “then it was seventy four percent your fault.”
“Seventy four percent?”
“Yes. Seventy four percent yours. Six percent Jack’s. Eight percent Harriet’s and seven percent mine.”
“Yours? You didn’t even say anything.”
“The initial friction point in the interaction stemmed from the Proposition 22 debate, and I am the robot.”
“Yes, you are the robot,” said Mike. “So really, don’t you think that you’re more to blame than I am?”
“No.”
“Did those numbers even add up to 100 percent?”
“No. There were many other albeit minor factors.”
“Albeit. Don’t say ‘albeit’ anymore. I don’t like that word.”
“Noted.”
Once home, Mike decided to go for a run. Though she usually didn’t, this time Patience went with him. She of course had no problem keeping up with him, and since he usually didn’t talk while running, she ran along quietly at his side. They were near the end of their first mile when Mike broke the silence.
“I think I need to get out of town. I’m getting cabin fever.”
“You don’t want me to come with you?”
“Of course I do. I can’t go anywhere without you—I mean I can’t go anywhere for any period of time without you.”
“Then you should have said ‘we need to get out of town’.”
“You’re not programming another fight with me, are you?”
“No. I just want to make sure that you appreciate me.”
“Oh, I do. I do.”
Several minutes later, it was Patience’s turn to speak up.
“Where would you like to go, Mike?”
“I’ve been thinking about it since we got home from Harriet’s, but I can’t think of anyplace I want to go that I haven’t already been—anyplace close I mean. I don’t really feel like a long trip. There’s too much going on here, especially with Harriet’s baby coming in just a few weeks.”
“Maybe we should go someplace you’ve already been but would like to return to. That way you could show it to me and show me what it was that you enjoyed about it the first time.”
Mike stopped running and his wife stopped beside him.
“I can’t carry on this conversation while I’m running,” he said, bending over and breathing deep.
“Rest for three and one half minutes,” directed Patience.
“You know, when I was a kid, I took this trip up the coast with my parents and my sister. We went from LA to San Francisco and visited all these cool little places along the way. That’s something that we could do. We could spend three or four days on the road and be back in plenty of time for the baby’s arrival.”
“That sounds nice, Mike.”
“Come on,” he said, starting off again. “We’ve got almost three miles yet to go.”
“Only 2.417 miles remaining,” corrected Patience.
That evening after Patience fixed Mike a delicious dinner, they engaged in what had come to be known as “Barbie time.” Essentially this consisted of Patience dressing up in her latest clothes and acting as a fashion model while Mike watched. Mike found it pleasurable on several levels. It was fun and usually was sexually arousing too. Patience seemed to enjoy it, though as Mike often noted, she seemed to like anything that interested him. The resident robot had collected a prodigious amount of clothing, so much so that it occupied two of the home’s walk-in closets and she continued to buy more on a weekly basis. She usually changed at least three times during the course of an average day. For this particular “Barbie time,” Patience had five new outfits in which to parade across the living room. First came a grey strapless crinkled chiffon dress that left her perfect shoulders and long legs exposed, then a teal sweetheart dress that was just as strapless and just as short. This was followed by a very sheer black lace blouse worn over a black bra and paired with black slacks; then a very tiny bronze crewneck dress. Finally Patience showed off a pair of black hot pants with a matching tube top. Each of these sets of clothing was presented with a new pair of shoes, and Patience seemingly of her own accord, had become quite the shoe collector. Two pairs of her shoes this evening were very similar to combat boots, while the other three pairs were much smaller and more revealing, but they all shared the common traits of very high heels and chunky platform soles.
“What do you think?” she asked, climbing into Mike’s lap.
“I think I like.”
“What about the shoes?”
The shoes she wore now looked like a pair of high-heeled boots with the exception that her toes were exposed. Mike ran his hand down her leg, trapping her foot and tickling around her red painted toenails. While he was occupied with that end of her, the other end attacked him, biting and kissing him on the neck and face. This was followed by the frenzied removal of clothes—frenzied on Mike’s part, as he fumbled with his pants. Patience deftly removed her hot pants without getting up from his lap. Afterwards, lying across the couch on his back with Patience draped across him, Mike recalled that it had been some time since they had sex in the living room. He worried ever so briefly that life was becoming too routine and predictable, but then Patience wrapped her arms around him and pressed her face against his chest and he forgot about everything else.
Chapter Five
Mike decided that their adventure would begin on Tuesday and that he and Patience would spend three or four days on the road—depending on how much fun he was having. Monday therefore was spent getting their things ready. Patience did most of the work, packing and loading, and even reprogramming the sentry system to account for their absence. Mike called Harriet to let her know that he was going to be out of town and to check on how she felt. Neither mentioned the unpleasantness of the previous day. Secure in the knowledge that everything had been taken care of, that night he played a long session of Age of Destruction before watching Celebrity Rat Race.
Mike planned on spending the first day and night in Carlsbad, which was only a three hour drive away, so he didn’t bother getting up early. They left the house just after nine and pulled off of I5 and onto Carlsbad Village Drive just after noon. Relatively few cars were on the streets of the village, in marked contrast to the last time that Mike had visited, five years before. He tried to remember if that had been a weekday or the weekend, but he couldn’t recall. Patience had been quiet for the past several minutes, but suddenly spoke up.
“That’s where I bought our swimsuits the last time we were here.”
“Is it? Yes, I guess it is. Did you bring them?”
“I recycled those suits 567 days ago. I purchased new suits on the Infinet.”
“Five Hundred Sixty Seven days? That’s an odd way of saying it? Why not say one year and this many months and this many days?”
“I was trying to make it simple,” said Patience. “If you prefer, I can describe the time passage as one year, six months, nineteen days, four hours, nineteen minutes, and thirty two seconds.”
“And what good would that do me?”
“None, which is precisely my point. Besides, we’re not going into the water, at least not here. You could get your genitals bit off by a very large squid.”
“I don’t think that happens very often,” said Mike.
“It’s happened more than once, so it’s something to be worried about. And no sunbathing either. If we go out on the sand, you wear the required SPF 210 sunblock.”
Carlsbad was not a very large town and so Mike was able to reach the location of the hotel in which he had previously last stayed, driving the narrow and winding streets at thirty miles per hour, in less than twenty minutes. He stopped the car and climbed out, his mouth open wide in surprise. The little inn on Ocean Street that had been his accommodations every time he had visited, since the early days of his marriage to T
iffany was gone. The little hotel had leaned against the side of the hill so that its landward side had only one story, while its seaward had three stories, the bottom one resting right on the beach. In its place was a tall black tower.
“Shit. When did that get here?”
“It’s new.”
Mike looked left and right. Though this was the only such tower, the lots to either side were now construction sites, the small inns and condos for rent all gone. He leaned his head back and looked up.
“I don’t know if I want to stay here.”
“It looks like a well constructed building,” said Patience. “I’m sure that it will prove satisfactory.”
“It looks like the obelisk from 2001: A Space Odyssey.”
“You should check in. I’ll get the luggage.”
Crossing the street, Mike entered the black metal door and walked through a black and red lobby. Behind the counter stood a clerk, a handsome fellow with an unusual combination of features, as if his ancestry was from Africa, South America, and Central China. Mike knew though that his ancestry was strictly Cupertino California—he was a Daffodil.
“Welcome to the Orcinus. How may I serve you today?”
“Orcinus… Orcinus? Is that Shakespeare?”
“The orcinus orcus is an endangered cetacean of the family delphinidae.”
His Robot Wife Page 4