Atwood Margaret - The Heart Goes Last

“I don’t need any grief therapy,” Charmaine mutters sulkily. She feels bodiless and also unbalanced, as if the floor is tilting. She teeters over to the sofa on her high heels and plunks herself down. She’ll be darned if she lets these mean, lying people give her grief therapy. What would they want to therapize about? The way Stan is supposed to have died or the way he really did die? Whichever, it will be a major brain mess.

“Trust me, it will do you good,” says Aurora as she disappears into the kitchen. She’ll put a pill in the tea, thinks Charmaine. She’ll blot out my memory, that’s likely their idea of grief therapy. In the kitchen the radio turns on: “Happy Days Are Here Again.” Charmaine’s neck prickles: are they playing that on purpose? Do they know about her habit of humming her favourite cheerful tunes while she readies herself to do the Procedures?

Aurora enters in her stocking feet, carrying a tray with a plate of oatmeal cookies and three cups. Not two, three. Charmaine feels cold all over: who’s in the kitchen?

“There,” says Aurora. “Girls’ tea party!”

Jocelyn saunters out of the kitchen. She’s holding a blue knitted teddy bear. Her expression is – what? Sarcastic, Charmaine would once have said. More like inquisitive. But concealing it.

“What’re you doing in my kitchen?” Charmaine says. Her voice is squeaky with outrage. Really it’s too much! Privacy invasion! Ease up, she tells herself: this woman could obliterate you with one word.

“In point of fact, every other month it’s my kitchen,” says Jocelyn. “I happen to live here when I’m not working from Positron.”

“You’re my Alternate? ” says Charmaine. “So you must be …” Oh no. “Max’s wife! Or Phil, or whatever he. …”

“Maybe we should have our tea first,” Aurora offers, “before we get into the –”

“Never mind which wife is whose,” says Jocelyn. “We can’t waste time on the sexual spaghetti. I need you to listen very carefully to what I’m about to say. Many lives will depend on it.” She gives Charmaine a severe stare, like a gym teacher’s. Goodness, thinks Charmaine. Now what have I done?

“First of all,” says Jocelyn, “Stan isn’t dead.”

“Yes, he is!” says Charmaine. “That’s a lie! I know he is! He has to be dead!”

“You think you killed him,” says Jocelyn.

“You told me to!” says Charmaine.

“I told you to carry out the Special Procedure,” says Jocelyn, “and you did. Thank you for that, and for your overreaction; it was a great help. But the formula you administered merely induced temporary unconsciousness. Stan is now safely inside a facility adjacent to Positron Prison, awaiting further instructions.”

“You’re lying again!” says Charmaine. “If he’s alive, why did you make me go through that whole funeral thing?”

“Your grief had to be genuine,” says Jocelyn. “Facial expression recognition tech is very precise these days. We needed everyone watching you to endorse a reality in which Stan is dead. Dead is the only way he can be effective.”

Effective at what? Charmaine wonders. “I just don’t believe you!” she says. Is that a butterfly of hope somewhere inside her?

“Listen for a minute. He sent you a message,” says Jocelyn. She fiddles with the blue teddy bear, and out of it comes Stan’s voice: Hi, honey, this is Stan. It’s okay, I’m alive. They’ll get you out, we can be together again, but you have to have faith in them, you have to do what they say. I love you.” The voice is tinny and sound far away. Then there’s a click.

Charmaine is stunned. This has to be fake! But if it really is Stan, how can she trust that he’s being allowed to speak for himself? She has an image of him with a gun to his head, being forced to record the message. “Play it again,” she says.

“It self-erased,” says Jocelyn. She’s taken a little square thing out of the bear; she crushes it under her heel. “Security reasons. You wouldn’t want to be caught with a hot teddy bear. So, will you help Stan?”

“Help Stan do what?” says Charmaine.

“You don’t need to know that yet,” says Jocelyn. “Stan will tell you, once we get you out. Or far enough out, at any rate.”

“But he knows I killed him,” says Charmaine, starting to sniffle again. Even if the two of them do get back together outside Positron, how can he ever forgive her?

“I’ll tell him you knew it wasn’t real,” says Jocelyn. “The death drug. But then I can always un-tell him, after which he’ll hate you, and you can stay locked in here forever. Big Ed has a hard-on for you, and he won’t take giggle for an answer. He’s having a sexbot made in your image.”

“He’s making a what?” says Charmaine.

“A sexbot. A sex robot. They’ve already sculpted your face; next they’ll add the body.”

“They can’t do that!” says Charmaine. “Without even asking me!”

“Actually, they can,” says Jocelyn. “But once he’s practised on that he’ll want the real thing. Eventually he’ll tire of you, if history’s top bananas are any guide – think Henry the Eighth – and then where will you end up? On the wrong end of the Procedure is my guess.”

“You can stay here at the mercy of Ed, or you can take a chance with us, and then with Stan. One or the other.”

“That’s so mean,” wails Charmaine. “Where am I supposed to go?”

This is awful, thinks Charmaine. A sexbot of herself, that is so creepy. Ed must be crazy; and despite the message he sent, Stan must be so mad at her. Why does she have to choose between two scary things? “What do you want me to do?” she asks.

What they want her to do is easily spelled out. They want her to snuggle up to Ed, get close to him but not too close – remember, she’s a grieving widow – then report back with anything he says and anything she might come across, for instance in his bureau drawers or his briefcase, or maybe on his cellphone, if he gets careless; but that part – the carelessness part – will be up to her. Encourage him to think with his dick, an appendage not noticeably overloaded with brains. That’s in the short run, and the short run is all they’re asking for right now. Or so Jocelyn says.

“Do I have to, you know,” says Charmaine. “Go all the way?” The idea of having Ed crawl around on her naked body gives her the queasies.

“Absolutely not. In fact, that’s crucial. You need to delay,” says Jocelyn. “If he starts coming on strong, tell him you’re not ready yet. You can plead sorrow for a while. He’s part of the reality in which Stan is dead, so he’ll understand that. He’ll even welcome it. He’s never seen those videos of you and Phil – I’ve made sure of that – so he thinks you’re modest. That’s part of his obsession with you: so hard to find a modest girl these days.” Is that a twitch, an almost-smile? “If you don’t want to help us, we could show him the videos. His reaction would be adverse. At the very least, he’d feel betrayed.”

Charmaine blushes. She is modest, it’s just that … The thing with Max wasn’t her true self, it couldn’t have been. Maybe he was using some kind of hypnotism on her. The things he made her say. … All of which have been recorded. This is blackmail! “All right,” she says reluctantly. “I’ll try.”

“An appropriate decision,” says Aurora. “I’m sure you’ll come to realize that, in time. You’ll be helping me – you’ll be helping us – more than you know. Here, have a cookie.”

Dressups

In the room at Possibilibots where Budge has stashed him, Stan dozes fitfully. He’s dreaming of blue bears: they’re outside the window, peering in at him. They clamber up onto the sill, they wiggle suggestively, they stare at him with their round, inexpressive eyes. Now they’re laughing at him, displaying rows of pointed shark teeth. And now they’re squeezing into his room through the half-open window, dropping onto his bed …