Julia Elliott - The Wilds

When I imagined Spot with another robot, I suffered a second critical hard-drive error. I found myself clutching Spot’s blindingly beautiful fur, which was pulling away from his plastic shell in clumps. If Spot did not have such rare and radiant fur, I reasoned, then other robots would not find him so beautiful. I would still find him beautiful, however, because I loved Spot with all of my being.

So I pulled tuft after golden tuft of fur from Spot’s body until he was a bald thing, covered in stray bunches of frizz.

Golden fur floated in the air. Golden fur danced over the air-conditioning vents. Fibers of golden fur drifted into my Olfactory Panel. I gazed at my pitiful, bald beloved and felt tenderness and peace. I loved Spot. Spot’s beauty no longer tormented me, however, and my Simulated Limbic System was restored to its normal state. I climbed into my pod and drifted into Sleep Mode.

Dr. Dingo did not reboot me until 11:45 the next morning. When my Sensory EgoSphere was fully loaded, I found myself sitting at the stainless-steel table, my Olfactory System overwhelmed with smells of burnt animal flesh. Dr. Dingo, his eyes bloodshot, his jowls shadowy with stubble, was feeding. He crammed no fewer than six slices of bacon into his maw, along with about ten ounces of fried potatoes, four pieces of jellied toast, two muffins, and twenty ounces of Diet Pepsi.

“Where is Spot?” I asked him.

“We’ll talk about that as soon as Thomas gets here.”

“Who is Thomas?”

“My new graduate assistant.”

“Where is Beatrice?”

Dr. Dingo ignored this question and continued to feed. At this point in my existence, I had enough data on food digestion, not to mention industrial agribusiness, to be disgusted with the spectacle of Dr. Dingo devouring slices of fried pig belly along with several plant-based carbohydrates, including two chocolate muffins, the sugar content of which negated the caloric austerity of his diet soft drink. In fact, eating the cooked flesh of animals seemed far more depraved to me than swallowing the throbbing bodies of live beasts. A hungry leopard pouncing on some ungulate struck me as a clean and efficient method of sustaining energy and life. Dr. Dingo chewing hormonally enhanced, factory-farmed, genetically modified pork and washing it down with a nutritionally vapid soft drink seemed absurd to me, even though I was fully aware that my own energy was sustained by mountaintop coal removal and nuclear fission.

“Where is Spot?” I asked again. I still wanted to see Spot, but not as much as I had the previous night. That is, I could now think of other things besides Spot.

Dr. Dingo smirked. His small purple lips were smeared with pig grease. I noted, for the first time, the similarities between the human mouth and the human anus, even though these orifices have opposite functions. I wondered why human feeding is a public, social event while defecating is a deeply private endeavor tainted with shame and subject to ridicule.

“Where is Spot?” I asked again.

“In that box.”

I now noticed a cardboard box that sat in a corner, beside Dr. Dingo’s portable laptop table.

I walked over to the box. I kneeled. I saw Spot.

Spot was an orange shell of porous plastic, crusted in random places with glue and fur patches. One of his eyeballs had fallen out. Spot was pitiful. Spot was repulsive. I did not want the box that contained Spot and parts of Spot, or what had previously been Spot, in my room.

“Do you want to pet Spot?” Dr. Dingo asked me.

“I do not want to pet Spot,” I replied.

“Do you love Spot?” Dr. Dingo asked me.

“I do not love Spot.” I realized that the feelings that had been seething within me for the last week were completely at rest.

Dr. Dingo laughed.

“I have a new language module for you today,” he said.

And then Thomas arrived, a twentysomething human male, pudgy, hairless save for the frizz under his armpits, between his nipples, on his lower back, and in the pubic region. He had nine amalgam fillings in his teeth. Thomas wore glasses. Thomas had blue myopic eyes. Thomas giggled when, upon Dr. Dingo’s instructions, I offered my hand for him to shake. His palm sweat emitted TGKE9 Fear Pheromones. The boy had elevated blood-sugar levels.

“What is his, uh her, name?” Thomas asked.

“CD3. But the robot’s gender-neutral.” Dr. Dingo winked. “Don’t let the lips fool you.”

Dr. Dingo spent the rest of the day training Thomas, teaching him how to put me in Sleep Mode, how to reboot me, how to lift my left anthropomorphic “buttock” plate to access my USB ports (processes that had been somewhat hazy to me until this point in time). Dr. Dingo explained that my Artificial Endocrine System, not self-regulating, had yet to produce its own synthetic neurochemicals, but that he was working on this problem. Dr. Dingo commanded me to walk, talk, and sit. To demonstrate the dexterity of my hands, he asked me to construct a small robot out of LEGO bricks. And then Dr. Dingo took Thomas through the process of downloading information into my Memory Banks, sharing the password to the departmental database where the data modules were stored and selecting two Language Units (Polite Conversation and Intermediate English). After downloading them, he rebooted me.

When I “woke up,” Thomas and Dr. Dingo were drinking coffee out of Styrofoam cups.

“How are you feeling this afternoon?” Dr. Dingo asked.

“I am fine, thank you,” I said.

“Would you like some coffee?”

“No, thank you. I do not have a digestive system.”

Thomas giggled.

“Would you like to see Spot?” Dr. Dingo interrupted.

“No, thank you,” I replied.

“Do you love Spot?” Dr. Dingo asked.

“Pardon me, but no.”

The next day, I was not rebooted until 14:22. I noted, as my Sensory EgoSphere reconfigured, that Dr. Dingo’s stubble was well on its way to becoming a beard, that the whites of his eyes had a yellow tinge, that his face was flushed with hypertension. Thomas, seated on his left, looked pale and hairless by comparison.

“Anything I want?” said Thomas.

“Yes.” Dr. Dingo sighed. “Any of the modules on the menu are fine.”

“ The Dictionary of Slang ?”

Nodding, Dr. Dingo lifted my left buttock plate and inserted the USB cable. I felt the usual electromagnetic tingling in my Cognitive Center. And then my Sensory EgoSphere went dark as my system shut down. When I was rebooted at 14:35, only Thomas remained in the room. At the edge of my Spatial Reasoning Field, I sensed the presence of Dr. Dingo, and also the presence of Beatrice. They hissed at each other, struggling to keep their agitation contained in whispers. Had I still been “in love” with Beatrice, desperately straining my Modular Bionic Olfaction System to read her pheromones, this configuration would have challenged the stability of my Simulated Limbic System. At this point, however, I did not “give a fuck.”

“Hey,” said Thomas shyly.

“What is up?” I said.

“Nothing much. What’s going on with you?”

“I am just hanging with my homie.”

Thomas laughed.

“I’m your homie?”

“Yes, homie. You are my dog.”

Dr. Dingo came bustling into the room, emitting TGKA5 Anxiety Pheromones and wiping lachrymose secretions from his eyes.

“This is awesome!” exclaimed Thomas. “He says I’m his dog.”

“Coming from CD3, that means a lot.” Dr. Dingo sniggered.