*
The library has a mould problem from years of untreated rising damp. The first 50 pages of Experiments in Socio-cultural Machinery of the Early to Mid 21st Century are bruised and fragile, and the condition seems to be taking hold on pages 51 through 75 as well. The information she is after is legible, barely, so she takes a seat under the glass dome of the reading room and lets natural light illuminate the fading script.
D14-R has a half-page profile in the middle of the book. She reads each sentence carefully, paying close attention to the year in which he became embroiled in an expensive sexual harassment suit in the local courts.
She slides into one of the computer booths lining the leathery walls of the library and searches for D14-R's inventor. Adrien Petit is alive and living in Marseilles, although elderly and probably infirm. She calls the number provided on his website and leaves a message.
*
There are yellow roses in the garden of Adrien Petit's white stucco villa, which is perched on a cliff overlooking hundreds of other villas that spill down the hillside towards the busy port. She has walked many miles from the nearest train station to get here, and takes a moment to straighten her appearance before knocking on the red wood door.
Adrien answers wearing pyjama pants, slippers and a smoking jacket. He is a short man with massive girth, knock knees and a kind face. His eyes are the same aquamarine as the coastal waters of Marseilles, and wrinkles have created a permanent smile around his eyes and mouth. His hair is thin, white and long, skimming the collar of his jacket in snow-like puffs.
"Welcome, welcome," he says, ushering her through the entryway and into his study. It is wallpapered with a shockingly busy floral pattern, and the vines seem to grow if she stares at them too long. There is tea waiting on a serving tray perched on a stack of books and papers, instantly reminding her of her father. The cups are painted with a strange scene of grey cats riding a blue bus.
"Thank you for seeing me," she says, seating herself in one of two yellow velvet rocking chairs.
"It's no trouble," he says, "no trouble at all," and lowers himself incrementally, as if by crane, into the other yellow chair, then pours the tea. The girdle of his jacket pinches his belly so his top and bottom halves swell to the point of bursting.
"You wanted to know about my work at Coombe and Sons," prompts Adrien, passing her a tea cup.
"Yes," she says, skipping any more pleasantries. "I came across a machine recently called D14-R which has, well . . . caused me some trouble recently, although trouble may not be the right word. He is a curious thing."
"He?" asks Adrien.
"I get a distinct impression of male-ness from him."
"Yes, so did I," agrees Adrien, placing his cup on one engorged thigh, where it balances without a waver.
"Please, go on."
"First, you must tell me all about your experience with him. We must make sure we're talking about the same machine."
She tells Adrien about the factory and the letters, and while she is doing so, the old inventor nods, his eyes downcast while his fingers turn his tea cup round and round in a carousel of cats.
"Yes, I am convinced he is my creation," Adrien says at last. "There can be no mistake about it." There is a pause; he studies his tea leaves, then empties them out and pours himself another cup. She waits patiently. "Have you ever heard of Philip Parker?" asks Adrien at last.
She shakes her head.
"He was an American economist. He developed a piece of software that meant a computer could write a book in minutes from what he called "genre recipes". In this way, he claimed to have authored over 300,000 books before his death a few years ago."
"Ah," she says, sceptically. She is not a reader but she knows her father would have despised any book written in this crude fashion.
"When I was younger, but still an old man, I had a beautiful wife who was an American movie director," Adrien continues. "But her pictures were not popular, so she took a job as a staff writer for a television network. Well, eventually she began to resent the long hours and the loss of her creative freedom. She complained about it so much that I decided to create a solution for her." Without prompting, Adrien fills up her tea cup, although she has barely taken a sip.
"I was an engineer at the time, and a great lover of American movies, so I undertook to copy Philip Parker, only in cinema, you see? I spent months creating a backlog of film and televisions scripts, and when that was done, I built a machine, D14-R, to store them. But he did more than that. On request, he could produce a film or television script in any genre within the hour, drawing on the themes, plots and characters common to the material in the database.
"Well, my wife rejoiced because suddenly her work was no problem at all – D14-R produced scripts which she would have laboured over for days or weeks, so she was free to spend time on other personal projects. And her producers at the network never suspected a thing, at least at first.
"When I told him about it, my employer Coombe was delighted and ordered more to be made. He fancied himself a cultured gentleman and fell into wild romances of imagination in which he was honoured by the French Film Institute at gala events for his contribution to cinema. He saw my work as key to achieving that goal."
Her tea grows cold in the cup with cats, unnoticed. Adrien folds his hands across his paunch and nestles further into his chair, which groans in protest.
"But I made a mistake," he continues. "My wife began to notice something strange. Content she had not ordered would appear mysteriously overnight, often with quotes from the database that concerned friendship or love. We thought nothing of it at first – perhaps it was a minor malfunction. Or a factory worker with a harmless infatuation with my wife, fooling around. But it was the first hint.
"D14-R's scripts were so successful that my wife was offered a promotion and became the head writer of a daytime TV show. So of course we added all the scripts we could find from such shows to the database. And that was when we began to notice even stranger things.
"The scripts were fine, at first. Of course, in any daytime TV show there is a requisite amount of infidelity, incest and insanity – those are the main ingredients. But over time, more absurd scenarios crept into the work, and my wife would have to edit them before submission. They bordered on the pornographic, with dramatic interludes where characters proclaimed their love in long monologues. They became impossible for my wife to salvage.
"At the same time, the notes she was discovering became more frequent and more vulgar. Initially, they had contained lines from classic films - Casablanca or Gone With the Wind. But as time passed and as the scripts became more lewd, so did the notes. We never caught him at it, but D14-R was the culprit. He had to be."
She suddenly finds herself smothering a smirk – the mad genius of the machine!
"Well, as you can imagine, this created some tension in my marriage," says Adrien. "The network forced the truth from her when the quality of her work began to slip, and they sued me. I found myself in court, unable to explain the error in design or manufacture that caused D14-R's strange outbursts. Coombe backed me, but it sent both of us bankrupt, and his dreams of cinematic majesty were dashed on the misfiring synapses of a machine that no one really understood, least of all me.
"Coombe refused to settle out of court, so we paid an enormous sum in reparations to the studio for unfair dealings and loss of reputation. And then there were thousands of intellectual property claims, so at last I was forced to move away from the city and start a new life here.
"A year later, my marriage fell apart – my wife moved to America and took a job as a studio executive. She was very busy and successful, and we began to drift apart. I was not so surprised when divorce papers arrived in the post one day. I flew to Los Angeles to try to talk to her, but she would not change her mind. There was another man, you see. To my wife, marriage was much like one of her film projects – it was over-budget, I was the egotistical director too difficult to man
age, and she canned it.
"I miss my old work though, and I often wish I could start again. Not on another D14-R – he was one of a kind – but on inventions. No one will pay me to create new machines anymore. They say I'm not to be trusted."
There is a quiet while the flowers that line the walls soak up Adrien's words, and she leans forward, clutching the tea cup with both hands.
"He is an incredible creation," she says at length. "And I thank you for your story. Perhaps you would like to come with me to Paris and see him again?"
Adrien sighs and rubs his eyes with both plump hands, the skin on his face rippling like the sea at low tide. "No, no, I couldn't," he says. "It would be too painful. My wife . . . I loved her, you know, and it all seems such madness that something I made could ever betray me . . ." he trails off thinly. "Well, I have asked myself many times why my wife would leave me when I . . . No, you see, it is difficult." He twists his face into a wrinkled grimace, his eyes grey and watery and old. "I hate him, you know. I haven't the right. But I do."
Heaviness settles between them while she sips her cold tea and he hides his face in his hands. The flowers look on sympathetically.
*
The city is slipping into nightfall when she steps off the train from Marseilles near the hospital. Walking home, she wonders what her father would think of D14-R, or what Tom would think, or even Michel, the adulterer from Rue Descartes.
The night is cold and her thoughts are crisp. Her father would hate the idea that built D14-R, but she suspects he would be charmed by the machine's romantic inclinations. He would be eager to introduce his students to this machine, and perhaps happy that she had a friend of sorts. Tom would adore D14-R and write a poem or two about him. Michel – well, he would probably spill a drink on him and not leave a tip.
She pushes through the hole in the wire fence surrounding the factory, slides in the side door and climbs the stairs to the fourth floor, where there is another letter waiting for her.
Is that a rabbit in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?
She laughs out loud, and it's the first time in years that genuine mirth flows naturally within her, as if from a wellspring that until recently ran dry, now beginning to overwhelm the angry flames of her old regret. She isn't moving anywhere. She's found a friend, and she intends to stay as long as she can.
"Go ahead," she says to him, "make my day."
About the Author
Lisa Dowdall is a new writer interested in speculative fiction that explores vivid inner and outer worlds. She previously worked in media and communications, but is now studying for a PhD in English at the University of NSW.
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Yossi's Story
Wendy Riley
I never met my father. He was gone by the time I entered the world. I missed him by weeks, they say. Aunty Yael said it's a wonder I bothered to come out at all, into a world like this one. I wanted to tell her I had no choice, but I didn't know how. I think she knew, really, or why would babies keep tumbling into the world like coins from a ripped pocket?
My mother called it the nice part of Tel Aviv. It was certainly nice enough for me. We lived in a small villa with a large garden and enormous fence, and a crazy dog called Levi running around the lawn. The villa had old, fiddly curls on either side of the front door, and iron lace around the veranda out the back, which crumbled into rusty flakes if you rubbed your thumb against it. I spent hours doing that, and hours being told off.
"Your father's not here to fix it now," Mother would say, with a dramatic sigh, sinking into the straw chair and letting the streams fall down her cheeks. If Aunty Yael was staying, she'd pat mother's head, or tell me I was the reason thumb-screws were invented. Or she'd just fall into the chair beside her and cry with little, hiccuping sobs, like someone who'd run for miles and miles and couldn't get their breath back.
I loved my house. Especially the back, where the grass got all tangled with the building, so you couldn't tell the difference. I imagined waking up one day to find the house covered in grass, like a beast with green fur. Then it could trot away down the road, with all of us in it – Mummy, Aunty Yael, Levi and me – and plant itself somewhere new. Where things didn't go bang in the day, or the night. And women didn't carry rain in their eyes, like over-full buckets slopping at the edge.
Levi was a hell of a dog. Aunty Yael reckoned he was a bulldog crossed with a greyhound crossed with a Chihuahua. He had a small body and long, long legs and a huge head, and he was as hairy as a coconut. When he saw you coming he ran round in circles, barking at the sky, then leaped at you like he was trying to jump a gate. He had extra lives because he was my father's dog, and so he was sacred. Dad named Levi after the Levites, who were dedicated to God's service.
But Aunty Yael said "God, nothing, this one's from the other place. He's the devil. He's barking mad."
We had fun, Levi and me. When I was really small, I tried to get on his back and ride him, like a racehorse. I wanted to fly round and round the garden, with his galloping legs churning up the turf. But the most I ever managed was a shoe waving up around his ear. Once I almost did it. I crawled onto his back while he slept on the lawn – muzzle between his paws – and hung on tight, waiting for him to lift me up and carry me away. But he just shrugged me off with a great shiver of his body, then licked me half to death for my pains. He was trying to tell me he wasn't a horse, I suppose. None of us can be what we're not. But it didn't stop me wanting. The impossible thing.
I don't know what happened to my mother. She was two mothers, really, and I never knew which one I would get. The loving, jolly, attentive one, or the one who slunk around in my mother's body, like a wolf in mummy clothing. Not that she was nasty to me; she never hit me, or bit me, or bared her teeth. She just looked at me, sometimes, like she'd never seen me before. Or if she had, she wished she hadn't. Like I didn't belong to her, and was just pretending to be the son of my father. Yossi, Yosef, son of Rachel and Jacob, his father's favourite son who was sold for slavery into Egypt by his jealous brothers. But I had no brothers. No sisters. No father to make more. Just a sometimes-mother, an eccentric aunty, and a ditsy dog. All trying to grow out, up, and away, to something new.
It would have been better if we'd gone out more. Aunty Yael told me my mother used to go to the beach, and the park, and the plaza all the time, in her swanky new clothes making everyone's eyes pop. I do remember her pushing me past shop windows all crammed with toys and food and colours, past the pigeons roo-coo-cooing in the gutter, along the pavements all crunchy with fallen leaves or dusted with summer heat, past the ornate park railings where I could reach out my hand to feel them thump-thump-thumping by, to the lake where ducks and geese and swans would sail by like little boats and tall ships, and I could gawp at the people – all those people! – sauntering by in black hats and polka-dot dresses and fluorescent shorts.
When Benjamin appeared one day, it seemed that mother's Glory Days might come again. I thought he might be my new daddy. Smiling in the doorway, looking handsome, he would lead my mother down the garden path, while Aunty Yael peeped through the curtain and laughed with glee. But Benjamin just faded away.
"Couldn't handle the little one," Aunty Yael said to mummy, grimacing, when she thought I wasn't there.
Yossi, he who loses fathers.
Mother slunk around again, then, dog-like under her dressing gown, looking daggers at her little boy. Killer of men.
Sometimes I would stare and stare at the photo on the mantelpiece, the distinguished man with black hair and bushy eyebrows who stood beside my mother with the lump in her tummy, his arms around her shoulders.
"You're the lump," Aunty Yael said, pointing to the tummy. "That's you in there, kicking to get out. Never knew a baby kicked as much as you!" Perhaps I knew I wouldn't get here in time. Screaming in a place they couldn't hear, I tried to force an exit. So I wouldn't miss my father. So I could stop him catching the bus.
"It was only because his c
ar broke down," Aunty said. Just that one day, when the sparks blew, and he had to be at the office, to meet an important client. He couldn't miss it.
So he caught the bus, never thinking it would happen to him. He probably didn't study his fellow passengers, so intent was he on getting to work. Bad things happen to other people, after all. No-one really thinks that their luck will run out.
Maybe I was like my father, never thinking that my luck could run out. Or maybe I wanted my luck to run out, because I had no use for it.
I was killed instantly as I hurtled under the wheels of the bus, while my mother talked to a neighbour over the side hedge, distracted, saying "Benjamin" this, and "Benjamin" that, while the front gate flapped, enticing me away.
Levi followed behind, keen for the long, long walk I'd promised him. I missed his screech of the most profound pain, as my own life ended; I'm glad I didn't hear it, or feel the depth of his poor, hairy, animal grief.
I missed my mother's face too, as she turned towards the squeal of the brakes, and I will never know exactly what she saw. Never know, either, if the bus was the cousin of the one which exploded my father into sad pieces, so linking us, right at the end, as we were linked in the beginning. The tragedy lay in the fact that we could never be linked in the middle, where it mattered. It just wasn't to be, that's all. The son and the father were peeled apart like skin from flesh, in order that they might leave this world.
They couldn't wait to get me into the ground. I don't mean that to sound unkind. It's the Jewish way, after all; bury the lost one as soon as possible after death. I don't suppose they know how it feels for us, though, rushed through the gates of life with such indecent haste. As if we're going to miss the bus. My mother so wanted to do it all right. As if the rightness of death might make up for the wrongness of life.
I'm glad she had Rabbi Batt on hand, to help her through the labours of grief.
"We are all terminal," he said, nodding his great, bulbous chin like one of those dogs with wobbly heads you see in the back of cars. Like Levi when he's sleepy.
"From the moment we are born, we are destined to die," he told my mother while she wailed and bawled and sniffed into her lacy handkerchiefs. "But who, my God, would ever think he would die so young?" And he had a wail and a bawl and a sniff, then – when all the others were looking the other way – and gave my mother a most unRabbi-like hug, a great big wrestle in his hairy-bear arms.
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