Charlie Anders - All the Birds in the Sky

In spite of Reginald’s insistence that the Caddy was not at all creepy, his hard sell was in itself kind of creepy. He sounded like someone who had just joined a cult. Patricia vowed that she would never, ever buy a Caddy. Ever.

Two days later, Patricia was in the Caddy store, near Union Square. It was narrow, with curving walls that drew you toward the counter at the back, like a stream curving around some rocks. The walls seemed to glow. Patricia picked up a Caddy from the display on one wall, and the screen flared to life. There was a swirl of colors, and then it resolved into a wheel shape. The wheel had swirls coming out of its center, sort of like a Daoist symbol, and each of them got bigger at her touch. They included things like Communication, Orientation, Self-Expression, and Introspection.

She paid for the Caddy with her ATM card and felt like a total wanker. Next she would go get some giant square dark glasses and a medallion that changed color depending on how recently she got laid. God.

Still, it was a fun toy — and at this point she would try anything to make herself feel less claustrophobic and self-absorbed. Although there was something perverse about buying a device that offered a huge “Introspection” wedge, in the hope that it would make her more social.

That night, Patricia sat in bed and played with her new Caddy. It was not that different from a standard tablet, except for the guitar-pick shape, and the way it insisted on asking demented questions to customize your experience. Like, “Would you rather lose your sense of smell or taste? When was the last time you were glad you stayed up late?” There was a checkbox to disable the questions, but everybody said they made it work a million times better and they tapered off after a day.

And sure enough, after a few days, the Caddy was steering her oh-so-gently toward happy accidents and little discoveries. There was that little egg-themed restaurant in Hayes Valley, where everybody sat in egg chairs and ate egg dishes, from Scotch eggs to Chinese-style egg tarts. And drank cocktails with egg yolks. The whole place was an allergy waiting to happen, but it was also warm and cozy and there was a faint smell of butter and sugar in the air, making her feel like she was in her grandma’s kitchen and five years old.

The Caddy helped Patricia to figure out which bus to take to avoid being late for work, and when one of her mary janes broke a strap, the Caddy steered her to a hole-in-the wall place that fixed it on the spot. Within a few days, Patricia had a low-level awareness of what a dozen or so people in her life were up to at any given moment, without feeling overwhelmed. She managed to grab lunch with a very apologetic Taylor and make time for an ice-cream conference with Deedee and Racheline.

Then something weird happened. Right around the time Patricia had gotten used to the Caddy and started thinking of it as an extension of her personality rather than an appliance — after about five days, in other words — she started running into Laurence. A lot. At lunch, at dinner, at tea, on the bus, in the park. At first, it didn’t seem like a big deal, since San Francisco was a tiny town, but after a couple days, it felt weird. She would see Laurence, say hi and mumble a few awkward words, and then bail. And then the process would repeat, a couple hours later. She would think he was stalking her, except that she was the least stalkable person ever. The third day, she tried shaking up her routine, going for vegan soul food in the Outer Sunset, and somehow Laurence was there, too, going to some kind of Musée Mécanique revival.

“Uh, hey again,” he said. He started to say something else, but seemed to think better of it.

She was already saying “Hey” and turning back to talk to Taylor.

She wasn’t trying to avoid Laurence, exactly. But at the same time, she wasn’t dying to hang out with someone who had promised Kawashima that he would keep her from getting a swelled head. She already had enough people giving her shit for Aggrandizement, she didn’t need a friend who was sworn to tear her down. Of course, this had been Kawashima’s plan all along: If he’d told Patricia she wasn’t allowed to hang out with Laurence any more, she’d have been pissed, and would have hung out with Laurence anyway. So instead, Kawashima tells Patricia to hang out with Laurence all she wants — then enlists Laurence’s aid in cutting her down to size. Thus ensuring she’ll never want to see him again. That she saw through this ploy did not prevent it from working perfectly.

On her break at work, she picked up her Caddy and scrawled, “What’s the deal with Laurence?” with her finger. The Caddy responded by telling her some facts about Laurence, including some physics prize he’d won at MIT. She couldn’t help feeling like the Caddy understood perfectly well what she was asking, and was just playing dumb.

She decided to leave the Caddy at home. And for a whole day, her life was boring again, just missing the bus and not connecting with her friends and not having time to grab dinner in the middle of running errands. The rain started as she was heading home for the night and she had forgotten her umbrella, and there was no place to buy one. And of course she had to run ten blocks to catch the bus — which left just as she got there. She waited another half an hour, under a disintegrating canopy, for the next bus, and when she staggered on board, drenched as a sponge, the only empty seat was next to Laurence.

“Oh shit,” Laurence said. “You are fucking soaked. Jesus, I’m so sorry. That is fucked up.” He gave her his nice cotton hoodie to use as a towel. She tried to say it was cool and he didn’t have to do that, but he kept shoving it at her.

“Thanks.” Patricia patted herself with the hoodie as best she could. “At least the heat wave finally broke.”

“This bus doesn’t go to your place, does it? I mean, you have to change buses,” Laurence said. Patricia admitted that this might be the case. “Well, I understand if you need to get home right away. But there’s a bar up here on the right that has an actual open fireplace, and they serve hot toddies and stuff. We ought to get you warmed up as soon as possible.”

The bar had a “hunting lodge” theme, complete with slabs of wood covering the walls and faux animal heads coming out of one wall that squicked Patricia at first. But they got a primo spot in front of the fireplace, and the scent of mesquite and woodsmoke was a rain antidote. The stereo played an album of acoustic covers of Steely Dan, featuring a bluesy female mezzo-soprano, and Patricia guessed it was called Steely Danielle.

Laurence brought Patricia a mug of hot chocolate and a shot of nice whiskey, which she could consume together or separately, her choice. She drank most of the hot chocolate and then sipped the whiskey to burn away the milky sweetness. The whiskey was sharp in the way that really nice cheese is sharp. She started to feel comfortable in her own skin again.

“I suspect I’m being punished for leaving my Caddy at home,” Patricia confessed.

This was not the first time Laurence had heard people talk about their Caddies as if they were jealous gods. He told her about all the odd superstitions — for lack of a better word — that people had about their teardrop-shaped computers. One person might believe his Caddy saved his marriage, and then you’d run into someone else whose Caddy destroyed her marriage, but she later decided it was for the best. People sold their houses and got rid of their cars because their Caddies showed them a simpler way to live. A few people even found God, actual God, thanks to their Caddies. People were attached to them in a way that nobody ever had been to their iPhones or BlackBerries.