Issue July 2012 Flash Fiction Online July 2012

“You’re a fascinating person,” the girl said. “I’ve never met anyone like you before. Tell me your story again.”

The man was short and stocky, with Asiatic features and a long, stringy mustache. “The whole story?” he asked. “It would take a lifetime to tell you.” He stared out the window at the yellow sun and the red sun. He still hadn’t gotten used to seeing two suns. But that was minor, really, when there were so many other things he had to get used to.

A robot waiter, with long thin metal tubes for arms and legs, glided over. When he’d first seen one of those, he’d thought it was a demon. He’d tried to smash it. They’d had trouble with him at first.

“They had trouble with me at first,” he said.

“I can imagine,” said the girl. “How did they explain it to you?”

“It was hard. They had to give me the whole history of medicine. It was years before I got over the notion that I was up in the Everlasting Blue Sky, or under the earth, or something.” He grinned at the girl. She was the first person he’d met since they got him a job and gave him a home in a world uncountable light years from the one he’d been born on.

“When did you begin to understand?”

“They simply taught all of history to me. Including the part about myself. Then I began to get the picture. Funny. I wound up teaching them a lot of history.”

“I bet you know a lot.”

“I do,” the man with the Asiatic features said modestly. “Anyway, they finally got across to me that in the 22nd century — they had explained the calendar to me, too; I used a different one in my day — they had learned how to grow new limbs on people who had lost arms and legs.”

“That was the first real step,” said the girl.

“It was a long time till they got to the second step,” he said. “They learned how to stimulate life and new growth in people who had already died.”

“The next part is the thing I don’t understand,” the girl said.

“Well,” said the man, “as I get it, they found that any piece of matter that has been part of an organism, retains a physical ’memory’ of the entire structure of the organism of which it was part. And that they could reconstruct that structure from a part of a person, if that was all there was left of him. From there it was just a matter of pushing the process back through time. They had to teach me a whole new language to explain that one.”

“Isn’t it wonderful that intergalactic travel gives us room to expand?” said the girl. “I mean now that every human being that ever lived has been brought back to life and will live forever?”

“Same problem I had, me and my people,” said the man. “We were cramped for space. This age has solved it a lot better than I did. But they had to give me a whole psychological overhauling before I understood that.”

“Tell me about your past life,” said the girl, staring dreamily at him.

“Well, six thousand years ago, I was born in the Gobi Desert, on Earth,” said Genghis Khan, sipping his drink.

His reputation preceded him. Each letter of his name was a polished pearl upon a string, the tongue a pink, velvet pad beneath them. Fathers grew nervous, mothers swooned; the hair of young ladies sprung overnight into curls, the eyes of young gentlemen narrowed with suspicion.

My mother rushed around the parlour, spraying herself with icy water as she tried to bleed the blush from her cheeks. She couldn’t look too desperate, we couldn’t, she said, meaning me.

She frowned as she straightened down my dress, like I was a little girl. And that was the problem. I wasn’t. I was twenty-five, and unmarried. I had poise, piano skills, and pretty fingers pricked from many an embroidery needle, but not a husband. No longer a debutante, I was just a debt.

“He’s here!” the cook bellowed, like a beast from Baskerville, making my mother and me jump.

“Show some decorum, Mary!” my mother admonished her, before yanking up her petticoats and pushing and pulling me outside.

He had wavy, dark hair that was parted in the middle, and a thick moustache that curled up the ends. He bounced over, as if on springs, wildly waving his ruby-tipped cane as he saw us, threshing all the tulips from their stems.

“A pleasure, Miss Buzzlesby,” he said as he bowed to kiss my hand; as his nose burrowed along my bodice; as his ear found my bosom.

My mother spluttered. Mary coughed. A horse whinnied. I tried to protest but he pressed a finger to my lips, and waved his cane like a metronome, tick, tick, tick, the tip blurring as it quickened.

Was it fear? Desire? Or just because I knew what was in his locked, leather holdall?

“Hmmmm,” he said.

“Is she suitable?” my mother asked, desperately, and then grimaced, as if she’d swallowed a fly.

“Hmmmm.”

He worked on me all night, splattered his demented visions across the pale pink canvas of my skin, leaving it bloodied and bruised; coated in candle-wax and soldering fluid.

I ran my fingers around the bumpy rectangle of stitches on my chest, around the tiny keyhole in the centre, rimmed with purple and yellow, over my brand new heart.

“Every morning,” he said, as he looped a small copper key onto a thin, gold chain and placed it around my neck, “you must open it up, and wind it back, and my dear, then you’ll be young and pretty forever. You’ll have years to find a husband.”

I trembled, felt sick. I couldn’t, yet.

A proposal. He’d liked the way that my old heart had felt as he’d cradled it in his bloody palms; liked its weight. Just before he’d thrown it away.

“Ruddy unprofessional!” Mary harrumphed.

“Fate,” my mother said, picking at her threadbare shawl, relieved that he’d waived the bill. I didn’t know, or care, either way.

Every morning I slid my fingers inside my chest, and gave three sharp turns to reverse the cogs. Every night, I’d lay out the gifts that he’d given me; the red roses and the beautiful emeralds and the satin gowns, and I’d feel confused, like a child who’d untied all the silver bows and teased open all the pretty boxes, only to find them empty.

I was convalescing, he told me, it would take a while, and he chuckled and waved away my impatience, for hadn’t he given me all the time in the world?

I was numb the day that we married, stiff at his side with my bright, painted smile, like a wooden figurine on a Chalet Clock.

He does, he did; do I?

Yes?

Now.

Mary creaks in with the soup. From the far end of the long table he calls, “Happy Anniversary.”

Our two children are dining with us, both sitting with their elbows up and their napkins spread across their laps. Edward and Jane. Their names should be italicized, Latinized, like a species. They’re strange, silent moths, always fluttering behind me with their long pale limbs and their desperate eyes, trying to find a flame that isn’t there.

“Delicious,” he shouts over, dabbing at his greying beard.

“Yes,” I reply, marvelling at my smooth reflection in the back of the silver spoon.

Yawns cuckoo from my mouth as he rattles on about the women he’s transforming; the lonely lives that he’s transfusing with hope; the glorious weddings that we’ve been invited to.

“Her mother was delighted…” he says, and stops, the ‘M’ word stuck in his throat, like a fish-bone. “Sorry,” he coughs.

He needn’t worry. It’s been a month since we buried my mother; a month since my “minor malfunction”; a month since my heart had broken down.

As we’d stood at her grave, a sonorous gong! had seemed to emanate from the very pit of my stomach. I yelped, jerked forward; clutched my chest, as the mourners — mistaking my outburst for grief — turned to me, relief embroidered all around their sympathetic faces.

My heart was ticking furiously, as if about to detonate; and I grappled for breath as the sky span and the tombstones blurred and as my feet gave way on the wet grass.

The congregation gasped; the priest’s prayers stopped; my husband thrust his cold hands under my arms, trying to hoist me up, to help me, but his touch made me howl; cry out; made me think: I could tear it out, this wretched thing, I could bury it here; let it wind-down, forever; let it rust amongst the bones; but then it juddered, clicked, resumed its normal rhythm, and it’s been fine, ever since.

Mary pours the custard, and I smile at her, and at him, and at my Edward and Jane, and they all smile back. My heart tick tock ticks in the silence of our swallows, on and on and on, it goes.

“No need to apologise dear, it’s fine, really,” I say. And it is.

I don’t feel a thing.

Sergeant Alberto S. Mendoza (U.S. Army, Retired) always stayed indoors during the Running of the Robots. The damned things were dangerous.

In the early years, Homeland Security had advised everyone to stay in their basements until the bots had passed. But now the Running was almost a public holiday in Dallas, just as it was in San Diego and Nagasaki. Downtown, rooftops and bars would be crowded with spectators. The citizens of Dallas flocked to celebrate this minor public nuisance, but could not be bothered to attend the Veterans Day Parade. Shameful.

Mendoza couldn’t bear to ignore the bots entirely. So he settled into his easy chair, Patton curled at his feet, to watch through the window. When the warning siren sounded, Patton barked and put his front paws on the windowsill. Mendoza had read online that 986 bots would pass through Dallas, three fewer than last year. Two had fallen into a volcano in Japan. One had gone missing on the Atlantic seafloor somewhere between Morocco and South Carolina.

The first bot came thundering down Sycamore Road at dusk. Minimal corrosion on armor, sensor cluster intact, all six legs swinging in relentless rhythm. Not bad for a machine receiving no maintenance in 16 years.

After it thudded west towards the Interstate, Mendoza exhaled slowly. Its internal reactors wouldn’t run out of fuel for decades. It would return in another 11 months, leaving behind a trail of trampled shrubbery and dented mailboxes.

Mendoza could have retired to some other place that wasn’t on the 32nd parallel. But he’d been born in Dallas, and he’d damn well die there, despite the errant bots. Despite scornful civilians. When he first moved into his ranch-style house, the neighbors had shunned him, as if his physical presence would attract the bots and lower their property values.

A second bot came pounding down the road. Its chassis was blackened and warped, probably from the tactical nuke the Chinese had tried against the bots that first year. A branch of blooming roses dangled incongruously from its primary turret.

As Mendoza got a Corona from the fridge, Patton barked at the front door. For a moment, Mendoza thought the bots had come for him, after all these years. He shook off the delusion, walked slowly to the front hall, and opened the door. The gleaming plastic visor, alarming at first, was only a guy in a motorcycle helmet. Mendoza pulled the biker in, and shut the door.

The biker removed his helmet. “Thanks, man.” He was just a kid.

Mendoza didn’t want to shelter this thrill-seeker who thought it was brave to ride among the bots. Mendoza had served in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Estonia. Real bravery then meant doing your duty every day under enemy fire. Real bravery now meant bypassing the drive-thru at Lottaburger, and going inside to eat at a table, ignoring the stares and whispers.

The kid set his helmet on the table. “I’m Ben, by the way. My bike has a busted — hey, you’re that guy. You’re him. The robot guy.”

Mendoza said nothing and returned to his easy chair. Patton, unused to visitors, growled.

Ben followed and sprawled uninvited on the sofa. “I wrote a paper about you in freshman year.”

Mendoza scowled. He had no reason to be ashamed. The Special Committee had said his actions were only a minor factor in the “accident waiting to happen.” The true causes were “flawed software architecture,” “multiple systems failure,” and “no culture of safety at the Army’s Yuma Proving Grounds.” But Mendoza was the public face of the incident, more tangible than over-engineered safeguards, uninstalled kill-switches, and failed failsafes.

“You live in Dallas?” said Ben. “So you can see your robots every year? Cool.”

“They’re not my robots.” He hadn’t designed the bots. He’d been just a glorified typist.

“My history paper was about the metaphor and symbolism. You know, in the order you gave your robots.”

Mendoza had made one small error that day in Yuma. He’d meant to send the order “Move west of First Robot Battalion” to the Second Robot Battalion. Unfortunately, he’d sent the message to the First, instead. The bots of the First had been trying to move west of themselves ever since.

Ben started tapping on his cell phone. “I’m texting my buds. They’ll be jealous that I got to meet you.” He glanced out the window. Outside, the bots were coming in clumps of three or four “The robots, they’re like, telling us something. You strive to get ahead, but you always end up coming home, right?”

Mendoza checked his watch. Twenty minutes until the all-clear sounded.

“You’re my hero, man,” said Ben.

Mendoza thought Ben was being sarcastic. “Look, I was just doing my job.” From outside came the sound of tinkling glass and a car alarm.

“Exactly. You and your robots. Just trying to make sense of the world. Doing your duty. Loyal, even though you’re just a cog in the machine. Semper fi, right?”

“Semper fi is for the Marines,” Mendoza corrected automatically. The bots were a symbol of loyalty?

“Follow your dream, man. It’s about the journey, not the destination. Final frontier. Never give up. Like Old Faithful?”

Mendoza smiled and scratched Patton under the chin. People saw him as Old Faithful? He could live with that.

Ben stood and walked to the window. “I started in South Carolina. It’s my first Running, but I was trying to get all the way to the Pacific. I guess that’s not happening.”

From outside came a loud clang. Probably Mrs. Grommer’s garbage cans; she’d left them out again.

“I think your bike will fit in the back of my truck,” said Mendoza. “We can follow the bots for a while. Maybe all the way to San Diego. Patton’s never been to the beach.”