Чарли Андерс - Six Months, Three Days, Five Others

Teri knew living with Captain Champion would be a travesty of motherhood. She also had a growing sense that she’d wind up agreeing to it anyway, either today or the next time her baby stopped by. She had no choice. She could never be the person she’d been before, any more than Florence could grow into the person she would have been.

The lion had almost reached her front door.

“How rich?” Teri said.

The lion turned, shuffling its whole body around, and her baby scrutinized her. “Does it matter? Rich.”

“Of course it matters,” Teri said, standing up and swaying slightly. “If I’m going to be a celebrity mom, especially to a freaky celebrity like you—no offense—I’m going to need a hell of a lot of cosmetic surgery. And nice clothes. It’s like your exo–suit. I need a layer of protection.”

The baby seemed about to say she liked Teri the way she was. Then she shrugged, which involved a slow lift of those front arm joints, a roll deep in the sockets, and then a slow lowering. “Yah, that’s no problem. We can make you a cyborg too, if you want.”

“No,” Teri said. “That’s okay.” But she knew she probably would want to be a cyborg, in a year or two. She was on the slippery slope now.

“Great. I’ll make the arrangements and let you know.” The lion with the face of her only child swiveled again and tromped out into the hallway, then down the gunmetal stairs. Teri watched it go, and even looked out her front window to see it emerge onto the street. For a couple hours after the lion went away, she waited for some monster or evil genius to show up and disintegrate her into atoms, scattered across the city’s smog layer. When that didn’t happen, she poured herself some more bourbon and read up on liposuction and brow lifts. She was going to look like Angelina Jolie.

“Which word feels sadder: lonely or lonesome ?”

This question pops up on the KloudsKape, and my first thought is: How did they know? I’m in the middle of a downward spiral, almost crying as I choke down my lysine-dopamine smoothie and hunch over the teak bar at the Zyme Shack. As with all these questions, I don’t even have to ponder before I answer with an eyeblink—it’s lonesome , of course. Something about the way you have to purse your lips for a nonexistent kiss at the end of the word, the extra weight of that second syllable—the word lonesome is definitely more miserable. I should know.

Soon I’ve answered a dozen other questions in the retinal sensorium, about everything from Koffee Kop™ to a local bike-lane ordinance, each of them just a sparkly ball rolling around the edges of my vision. But the lonely/lonesome question has set me off, deeper into the hole of despair I was already in. I will remain unloved until I die unmourned. You can take a thousand hot showers and people will still smell the lonesome on you. The questions keep on, as addictive as any game: What’s the ideal temperature for hot chocolate, expressed as a percentage of the melting point of cocoa butter? Should fast-food restaurants offer one kind of mustard or two? How satisfied are you (1–10) with federal regulation of molecular supplements?

The KloudsKape interface weighs almost nothing, but the chrome spider suddenly feels heavy on the back of my head, and I’m getting a sore neck. My faux angora sweater is a thatch of prickles. The dim yellow lighting and stained cement walls at the Zyme Shack make it feel like a bomb shelter for yuppies. All around me couples laugh and share ergcake: two spoons, one plate. I am such a loser. I should just go home, except I would do the same there that I do here: sit and answer poll questions, watching my score creep up.

Then a ball rolls up with one of the Politics and Policy questions, and I shake my head to get rid of it. I have no idea how to answer that one, and it sounds like something actually quite serious. I’m not an expert on everything—I work as a grief counselor for robots, for god’s sake. I finish my lysine-dope shake and signal for another one, and immediately there are questions about how satisfied I was (1–5) with my server, Barry. Plus should tariffs for synthetic walnuts go up 0.37 percent? Should we bring back Chico and the Man ? Stirrup pants, yes or no?

It’s democracy, you know? And it’s how I get all my points. Gotta participate to make it precipitate.

The question comes back, the one I didn’t want to answer. This time the ball is growing hands and feet, like it’s starting to hatch. I still don’t want to answer it; I don’t even understand it. I shake my head again. The question goes away.

When was the last time someone else touched my skin with intent? Anything more than a casual handshake, even. I can’t remember. I live alone, in a cubbyblock, and I work in a wired shell, four by five. People who aren’t in the industry don’t even realize grief is the main emotion that robots can feel. Robots are hyperaware of both death and obsolescence. Inconsolable. I’m left with no emotional resources at the end of the day.

A ribbon of text and images bursts upward out of the bottom-left corner of my vision. It’s the newsfount, splashing a story about the Great Midwestern Drought, which 65 percent of the public wants the government to do something about. But 68 percent of the public also believes the Great Midwestern Drought is a hoax. I dismiss the article, it’s too depressing.

That P&P question is back—I still don’t want to answer it. I answer some others, about consumer privacy and bird conservation. But it keeps bobbing up, dancing around so I can barely see my surroundings.

“What concentration of neurotoxins (percentage) is acceptable when gas is used to disperse anti-genetic-discrimination protesters?”

I shake my head. I don’t know. I can’t answer.

Sometimes I think I should have accepted that offer to become part of the Unconventional Romantic Arrangement. I would have been around people all the damn time: the assortment of hairs in the shower drain, the endless fights over what movie or show to Soak. Basically the opposite problem from loneliness. You always want what you don’t have.

I’ve finished my second lysine-dope smoothie and can’t even pretend to nurse the dregs anymore. Nothing to do but go back to the cubby and Soak a romcom until I pass out. I signal for my check and answer more questions. “When you purchased the infra-matic spoon set, how satisfied were you (1–10) with the DNA-sensing spork function?”

When the question about neurotoxins comes back, it’s accompanied by an info box. There is a very desirable person here in this very restaurant, someone who fits my dating profile in every possible detail. And he has already answered this same question. Maybe if he and I share the same opinions about the use of neurotoxic gases on protesters, we can be matched.

More questions about household products and government infrastructure spending. I blink through them. Then this: “How many pillows (1–5) do you have on your bed, and how many of them (1–5) have been warmed above room temperature in the past year?”

Then the KloudsKape lets me know that the attractive, romantically compatible man is checking me out right now . He is looking at my profile. He’s within 100 feet of my location. But I will never know, never meet him, unless I answer the neurotoxin question.

I scan the room, trying to look casual. The waiter, who is not an attractive man or within my dating parameters, thinks I want another lysine-dope, and I end up ordering one just to get him to go away. There are about 20 people sitting at tables or the teak bar at the Zyme Shack, and a dozen of them appear to be men. Of those, maybe seven or eight could be my type. None of them seem to be looking at me.