by Sarah Archer
Robbie opened the door just in time to see a flabby silicone face sail past him in midair. In a testament to his rigid unflappability, he didn’t even blink. “Ah, Kelly, here you are. Would you care to accompany me to the lab?” There was an odd brightness in his eyes.
“It’s not a good time, Robbie,” she said, her breath rough.
“I promise not to occupy too much of your time.”
“I’ll come by later,” she said, looking away from him and back to Confibot. She was already regretting her impassioned display, and she had so many more important things to focus on right now than whatever it was Robbie wanted to show her. Knowing him, it was probably the extremely concerning appearance of a minuscule new scratch on the stainless-steel lab counter.
“You need to come now.” Kelly looked at him. His voice was sharper, more commanding than she had ever heard it. “Oh—okay.” She stepped out to follow him, bewildered.
As they strode down the hall together, she made it a point to walk quickly to illustrate her haste. “I really do have to be quick about this, Robbie.”
“It will take as long as it takes” was all he said. Once in the lab, he smoothly shut the door and brought her over to one of the workstations. “This is what I’m working with right now. Tell me what you think.”
As soon as Kelly bent over the computer to look at the simulation, she was confused. “That looks exactly like Ethan.”
She glanced up at Robbie, whose prim expression was cracking irresistibly into pride and excitement. “You said it, not me,” he said in a voice nearly strangled with his own delight.
She stood back, bewildered. “What’s going on?”
“Don’t rush me”—he held up a hand firmly—“I’ve been working toward this for some time.”
Robbie sprang to the racks of manufactured body parts and marched alongside them, gesturing. “I’ve been noticing for a while now that there are parts missing from the lab. An eyelid here, a pinky nail there. A less astute observer would have just brushed it off. But I started to wonder—where had they all gone? Could there be a connection? So last night, I stayed here until four a.m.” Kelly briefly wondered if she had actually encountered the one human who had less of a life than she did. “And I figured out exactly what was missing. Every last piece. And when I joined all the parts together into a digital model, this is what I got.” He gestured grandly to the screen. Point made.
Kelly felt sick. But it was just Robbie, she told herself. She could get out of this. Right? “Okay, so there’s a lot of stuff missing from the lab. Why would that have anything to do with me? There are thousands of parts here and dozens of people coming in and out and using them. Things are going to go missing or get out of place. It’s called ‘entropy.’”
“Things that just happen to add up to your fiancé?”
“It doesn’t even look that much like him.”
He pulled out his phone, pressed a button, and her own recorded voice played back to her. “That looks exactly like Ethan.”
“Checkmate,” Robbie said simply.
twenty-two
• • • • • •
Robbie slipped his phone back into his pocket, waiting for Kelly’s response. As angry as she was about what he was doing to her, the priggishness in his voice was even more enraging. His face was bright with triumph, proud and yet somehow self-conscious at the same time.
“What are you suggesting, Robbie? If you’re saying I stole parts from the lab, you don’t have any proof.” Even voicing the word “stole” out loud made her stomach lurch like a drunk ballerina. Borrowed, she corrected herself—she had borrowed the parts.
“I’d say this is more than enough to justify an investigation. Did you really think I wouldn’t realize that something was off? You didn’t want anyone to know when you got engaged, with a gaudy ring that he couldn’t possibly afford on an associate professor salary. Oh yes, I’ve done my research. You thought that you could just waltz in here telling me you were marrying a robot and expect me not to notice? You always underestimated my observational capacities! You thought I wouldn’t see the plot twist coming in that movie we watched, but I saw it! I knew she was his daughter all along!”
Kelly had never seen Robbie like this before. His whole face was an alarming pink. Even more alarming, he was, for once, displaying actual emotion.
She backed nervously toward the door. “Okay, well, thank you, Robbie, this was all very—educational. I’m sure we both need to get back to work now.”
“You go ahead. I’m going to message this image to Anita.”
Kelly halted. “What are you trying to do, blackmail me?”
“I suppose you could call it that, if you wanted to be reductive.” He moved around the lab, closing a half-open drawer, straightening a sign, clearly relishing the suspense, his total power over her decisions. “I want . . .” He stopped to face her decisively. “Body parts.”
Kelly recoiled. “Robbie, I will not commit a murder for you.”
“Not from a human, from a robot. If you need help distinguishing the difference, let me know.” He smirked, nodding toward the picture of Ethan. “Any part I want, when I want it, delivered on time,” he added, like the announcer in some gruesome ad campaign.
“So you want me to build random robotic parts for you?” Kelly asked.
“Ah, well, I’m not so sure about the ‘build’ part. On time, remember? You’ll have to pull them from your existing builds.”
“You want me to take parts out of Confibot to give to you?”
“Where you get them from is your choice. I trust you’ll figure that out.”
Through Kelly’s shock, she started to realize how little this made sense. She would have pegged Robbie as the type to run straight to the teacher to tattle, not plot blackmail for personal gain. And crazy or not, he was clearly intelligent enough to concoct a more effective plan than this one. He couldn’t use the parts from her builds in Brahma. And if he was hoping to hamper her progress and push her out of the running in the investor competition, it would be much faster and easier to simply expose her to Anita now. But she wasn’t about to point that out to him. She inched toward the door, hoping to get out of the room before he figured it out. Or flipped his evidently precarious lid completely.
“All right, whatever you say,” she placated. “Is there anything else?”
He cocked his head, considering. “Not at the moment, thank you. I’ll let you know.”
Kelly wasn’t even sure how she made it from the lab back to the testing room. Suddenly, or maybe it was really finally, everything was crashing down. Robbie knew about Ethan. He had the power to end everything with the lift of a finger: Kelly’s job, her entire career, Ethan himself. There was something nauseating about the whole situation. It felt like plunging into an ice bath: Kelly could no longer deny who, or what, Ethan was.
She threw open the door to the control room, the breeze of its motion whipping her hair back. Catching sight of Confibot, she groaned. She had almost forgotten what she just did to him. “Ugh, motherfucker!”
“I believe the usual greeting is ‘hello.’” For an instant Kelly thought that Confibot, the loose cannon that he was, had assumed a female voice. Then, to her horror, she saw that it was Anita speaking, sitting behind the control panel, her legs crossed, her long-fingered hands draped across her knees with the serenity of a dove’s folded wings. But a reptilian fire glinted from her eyes.
“Anita, I—I didn’t realize you were here.”
“Yes, I concluded as much. I came by to ascertain your progress on Confibot.” She gestured to the android, his gaping face absurd above his trim body in his neat shirt and khakis.
“I’m further along than it looks,” Kelly said desperately, inching to the side to block Anita’s view of the discarded face in the trash, but Anita simply pointed at the chair opposite her.
&nb
sp; “Sit,” she instructed. Kelly did, crossing her own legs then quickly uncrossing them and settling into her chair with a loud squeak, turning the whole moment into an unnecessary comedy of errors.
Anita raked her with her eyes, searching, evaluating. Kelly was just about to inject the uncomfortable silence with something, anything, when Anita spoke instead.
“Why do you think I am the way I am?”
There was literally no good answer to that question. What was the way Anita was? If Kelly said powerful or successful or intelligent, it would sound sycophantic. But voicing the adjectives she was really thinking would be even worse.
She gaped, flummoxed, and Anita was losing patience. “Okay, let me put this another way. How many Hispanic women run companies in Silicon Valley?”
At least this time, Kelly thought she could hazard an answer. “One?” she returned tentatively.
“One. You have the privilege of working under her. It has not been easy to ascend from the child of immigrant factory workers to the position I hold today, Kelly. Being ruthless is my survival mode. To get here and to stay here, I have subtracted everyone and everything from my life that is not me. Don’t think that it ever gets easier. Don’t think that you can rest in your position. And don’t think that I will hesitate to subtract you if you stand in the way of my personal success.”
Kelly gulped. “I know, you’re right—I’m really trying here—”
“No, you’re not. What more do you need me to give you, Kelly? Have I not provided you with all of the tools you need to complete your project?”
“Yes, you have.”
“Have I not furnished you with state-of-the-art facilities?” Anita gestured around the workspace, the touch-pad controllers, the banks of slick computers.
“Yes.”
“Did I not give you a top-notch consultant, one of the highest-paid psychologists in the country? Do you not have a brain trust of other intelligent, eager individuals here at your disposal?”
“Yes,” Kelly said, so quietly that it was barely audible even in the enclosed space.
“Yet here you are. So what is the problem?”
There was only one way to fill in the blank. “It’s me,” she answered.
Anita paused just long enough for Kelly’s words to echo inside her own head. “I am pushing you, Kelly, not to be cruel, but because I think you can get it,” she continued, her voice low and insistent. Her face contained something that could almost, in Kelly’s comprehensive files of microexpressions, have been classified as an emotion. “And so I will extend to you a benefit that I rarely extend. I will repeat myself. But don’t expect me to say this a third time. Engineering is personal. It’s collaborative. If you cannot handle the higher nuances of design, you will not be placed in a position to design your own project again.” Anita unfolded her legs and strode from the room without a backward glance.
* * *
• • •
Of course Kelly debriefed Priya as soon as possible, appreciating the fact that she could talk freely now after having confessed to her about Ethan. When she reached the part about Robbie’s dramatic blackmailing, Priya couldn’t resist crowing triumphantly. “I knew it! I always knew he was loony underneath! How many times did I tell you to search his apartment for his mom’s dressed-up body in a rocking chair?”
“What am I going to do, Priya?” Kelly groaned. “I don’t have time to build random parts for Robbie whenever he asks, and I can’t pull Confibot apart, not right before the competition. I’m already in hot water with Anita.” She dragged on her temples in exasperation.
“I mean, you do already have another robot fully built,” Priya pointed out.
Kelly shook her head vigorously. “No way. I’m not hurting Ethan like that. Besides, I can’t pull him apart right before our wedding. What am I going to walk down the aisle to, a motherboard in a tux?”
“Wait, hold up, you’re not actually planning on having a wedding, right?”
“No, it’s just . . . you know.” Kelly wrung her hands helplessly.
“No, I really don’t.” Priya was looking at her with an expression of confusion and disbelief probably very similar to the one Kelly had just shown Robbie. “What’s going on, Kelly? I was worried about your job, but now I’m worried about your freaking head. Is this some kind of quarter-life crisis?”
“No!” Kelly cried. “I just want some support right now, not judgment, okay? I need . . . I need answers.”
“I gave you an answer. You rejected it.”
“Priya . . .”
“Come here.” Priya folded her into a hug, patting her on the hair. “It’s a good head. Don’t lose it.”
“I’ll get out of this,” Kelly grumbled, submitting to her hug.
“Of course you will. Let me know what I can do to help.”
“Actually, there is one thing.” Kelly pulled her head out and looked up at Priya hopefully.
“Name it.”
“Will you be my bridesmaid?”
“Not that.” Priya crossed her arms.
“Come on, you said that you wished you had been involved in this whole Ethan thing. Here’s your chance.” Kelly hoped that her bright voice was convincing to Priya, because she was struggling to convince herself.
“Okay, maybe in the beginning this whole dealio would have been fun, but now it’s, like, a little too real-life-bad-Lifetime-movie for my taste.”
“All you have to do is let my mom take your measurements for the dress.” Kelly clasped her hands together, pleading. “She keeps insisting on doing it Saturday and it’s so soon, I don’t have time to fix the whole thing before then.”
“Well, I don’t have time to spend my Saturday getting measured for a fake dress. Monday’s the deadline for turning in my prototype to Dr. Hanover. I was at my desk until eleven last night.”
She did look wiped. Kelly couldn’t recall if she had forgotten about Priya’s deadline, or if she had even known it was coming up. She realized now that she hadn’t talked to Priya much about her work lately, or about her personal life, for that matter. Whenever they did get a chance to chat, the conversations were usually dominated by discussion of Ethan. Maybe that was why Priya had been sounding a bit edgy lately. “You should have told me, I was here till nine.”
“Yeah,” Priya said listlessly. “It’s not like I had anywhere else to be last night anyway.” She carefully turned her face from Kelly, scrolling on her phone. “Andre and I are—I don’t know. We had a fight over the weekend and we haven’t spoken since, but we never officially said we were breaking up.”
“I’m sorry, Pri. That sucks.”
“It’s whatever. We never officially said we were together anyway.” Priya laughed hollowly. But then she threw her hands up with sudden animation. “But I don’t even know what I did wrong! I went to see him do stand-up and when he asked what I thought of the show, all I did was tell him. It’s not my fault that all his race jokes were derivative. I thought he wanted honest feedback.” Kelly put a hand on her arm in solidarity.
“I’m too blunt, aren’t I?” Priya asked. “It’s why I chase everyone away. I thought I finally had someone who got me, who, like, got me, and knew that I mean well, and now I’ve screwed that up too.” She paused before murmuring, uncharacteristically quiet, “It just sucks. I really liked him, Kelly.”
“Let’s go out this weekend!” Kelly exclaimed. “We’ll drink away our woes and you can let other guys hit on you and make you feel better.” Her loathing for going out was unabated, but she wanted to cheer her friend up. “I’ll bring Ethan! You still haven’t properly met him.”
“Ooh, yes!” Priya said, some of her spark returning. “How is he with people staring at him creepily and asking him, like, five million questions in a row? Because I have a lot of questions.”
“He’ll love it. Maybe we can go after the
bridesmaid dress fitting?” she said hopefully. “I’ll text you the time?”
Priya sighed deeply. “Can’t wait,” she said drily.
* * *
• • •
All that afternoon while Kelly was at work, she was thinking about getting home to Ethan. But once she got home, somehow the sight of him was not the balm she’d hoped for. Maybe it was because she didn’t truly feel as if she’d left work behind—her head swarmed with painful flashbacks of the day—her struggles with Confibot, Anita’s cutting words, Priya’s weariness. Robbie had made good on his threat, already demanding body parts from her throughout the afternoon, making her feel as if she were manning a butcher’s counter. The more she thought about the specificity of his blackmail, the more she fumed. He had to know what he was doing; after all, he knew exactly which parts had gone into Ethan, she recalled darkly, envisioning the reconstructed image on Robbie’s computer. This wasn’t just a direct attack on her progress with Confibot. This was an assault on Ethan. And to add insult to injury, he had paraded through the engineers’ floor that afternoon with Brahma, casually asking the robot to fetch him things and open doors for him with his too-many arms—only to “test the technology,” of course. Then whenever Robbie wasn’t contacting Kelly, Diane was, unleashing a slow yet relentless trickle of e-mails containing forwards of magazine articles profiling her chosen florist’s artistry, reminding her threateningly that if they didn’t put down a deposit soon they would lose their window with this man—this maestro who had single-handedly revitalized the carnation.
So what Kelly really needed from Ethan was a distraction, and he just wasn’t providing it. “How was your day?” she asked him as she lugged a bag of takeout through the door. She was getting home late so regularly now that their cooking nights had gone by the wayside.