FSF, March-April 2010 (26 page)

Derek didn't do Christmas. Didn't believe in it. A shallow wallow in capitalist excess and sentimentality he found repugnant in every way. A day to be ignored like any other. So why do you suppose he picked that day for the chosen bullet to find its home inside his sweet head? I'm neutral on Christmas. Totally neutral. Christmas is wasted on me.

I still have a roomful of sleeping Screwbots to debrief, to wipe, to ready for the next shipment. These are all slated to ship out gift-wrapped before sunrise. A Christmas matinee. Installation takes no time. I've written all the scripts already. Before I can upload, however, I have to debrief them—examine and back up the bot's memory before I wipe it. By examine, I mean a fast-forward reprise of the job. A human witness, as required by law. Amongst ourselves, we call them quickies. Debriefing's a legal requirement after each use and a protection against litigation.

A Screwbot's memory contains exactly what happened from the time it was turned on till the time it was returned, even when it's sleeping. Every little thing. People forget that. It's my job to ensure that none of the bots acted improperly or were used illegally, that is, for anything besides sex. Skelley's interprets the term very broadly. I'm on the lookout for anything that might fall outside that vast territory. When I'm in the groove, I can debrief a dozen an hour.

Screwbots are pretty much interested in one thing. I don't worry about them stepping out of line. As for Screwbots doing crimes—all the stupid stories you hear—you can forget about it. If the client could somehow persuade a Screwbot to do something like rob a bank, the whole event would be in the bot's memory, including smells, precise geographical location, even the client's DNA, and if the teller came onto the bot, all bets would be off. Mostly, the bad stuff I find goes the other way. People don't try to make the Screwbots do bad things. They do bad things to the Screwbots. They hit them, choke them, defile them. That's all supposedly sex. I don't report that. I just let that go zipping by like the view out the window of a bullet train. They also torture them, try to kill them. Worse. I spot those moments, when the sex or the masturbation or whatever you want to call it, turns into something else. I slow down, take a closer look, file a report. I don't dislike my job. Like I said, I'm neutral. But it does give me a certain perspective on the human race I'd rather not have. I don't exclude myself in that. Derek used to say, “People watch NASCAR for the wrecks,” as a general indictment of the human race. Isn't that what I'm doing?

No matter. I've got work to do. I prefer to run through the whole batch, wiping the memories of most of them, setting aside any with problems to deal with at the end of my shift. Otherwise they can slow you down, some of the things you find. I start with the general merchandise and leave the special orders for last. They're often more fraught with melodrama, making it easier to stay awake. Mostly it's boring, watching the artificial nights fly by. I can do it without thinking about it, like driving a familiar road. Mostly I'm talking, like now. Mostly to myself.

I start with the predictable mainstream, a dozen Theodora Adora's, this year's disposable pubescent sex goddess who also happens to sing. She says, “Ooh, I like that,” a lot. The Screwbot version says little else. A couple require a second look, and I have them stand in the corner, wipe the rest, and send them down the line.

I wake up a Charlie Brown. A gay couple were hoping a threeway with Charlie would get at some buried issues. It didn't. That's a wipe.

The wife from “The Gift of the Magi” returns with her long locks shorn. That one always gets to me. The hair doesn't have to go, the client can spare it, but she always comes back buzzed, looking like Joan of Arc headed for the stake. Or this one, looking like somebody hacked it off with a plastic razor. She's got cuts and scrapes all over her head. If you cut them, they will bleed. Normally there's someone else to clean them up, morph them back to their same old used to be, but I'm a solo act tonight. I wipe her head clean and run the routine restoring her lush auburn hair before wiping her.

There's not but a couple of Elvises this year. Too bad. Those are usually nice friendly fucks. No Jim Morrisons or Cobains. That's a relief. I'm getting too old for bad boys.

This year's sleeper hit is St. Teresa of Ávila, not one of my scripts, but a lapsed Catholic colleague who's been running through the saints—all virgin territory (her joke) and public domain. Even skimming like I do, they leave me a bit exhausted, the clients too, I imagine—all that athletic ecstasy. It's worth it, I suppose, to feel like God.

The special orders include several exes as always. That never works out. Clients try to talk. They cry. They confess. Nothing says it's over like renting a synthetic replica of your lost love for the night.

Between ill-conceived fantasies and too much alcohol, it's not surprising that many a Screwbot comes back unscrewed. No refund, of course. Someone did try to sue and lost. The courts were very clear on the matter: Though Skelley's advertising clearly guarantees sex indistinguishable from the real thing, no sex is also sex, under the right circumstances. The right lawyers and connections don't hurt either.

I used to worry I'd meet someone whose bot I'd debriefed, and it'd be awful. Since I never meet anyone, I didn't worry too much. Then I did—meet someone. In a manner of speaking. I knew him already. I knew his fantasy too. He and his wife lived in my building. She left him in August. You could see him out my window, down in the parking lot after she drove away. Crying. Broad daylight. The bot was the next Christmas. He was lonely. It was awful. He blew at least a month's salary on the worst night of his life. I watched the whole thing like a slow motion train wreck. I couldn't look away.

I saw him outside sometimes, coming and going, out by the trash. We passed, and I think I smiled at him. I don't know. He probably thought I was flirting with him. I was just trying to say, it's okay. Whatever happens, whatever mistakes you've made, it's okay.

I don't care what I find out. I'm neutral. Maybe that's why I've been at this job longer than anybody else. Most people burn out after a couple of years or less. I've been here almost from the beginning. Sometimes I think I should be moving on. But where to, exactly, from here?

I've come to the end of the inventory, but there's a problem. I have a Screwbot left I can't account for. I double check, but he's not in the system. He's not a celebrity or a character. Nice enough looking, older than your typical Screwbot. There's even some gray at the temples, crow's feet radiating from his closed eyes. His lids tremble like they do when there's a personality installed. He must be some kind of misplaced special order—somebody's long lost, their daddy, or a widow's last reunion—and now it's fallen to me to figure out what to do with him.

It
. I know it's not human. Everybody who works here starts out saying
it
and ends up saying
he
and
she
. It's just easier. It's how the stock is organized. It's how the clients browse the merchandise. There's male and female
plants
. It doesn't mean anything. Normally I'd call shipping and receiving, but no one's there. I can't debrief him if I don't have a file on him. There's no place to put the information, no room at the inn. And I can't wipe him without debriefing him first. Alarm bells would chime. I'd ruin everyone's Christmas. Who knows when I'd make it home to see what Santa left in my stocking. Actually, it's in my bag, a bottle of good brandy I picked up last night on the way to work. You can't trust Santa to show up at my place. Everything will be closed when I get out of here. It's like the world drops dead once a year.

I'm not even supposed to access his memory without logging him in, which I can't do, since he's not in the system. I could leave him for the next person to deal with, but if I were her, I'd be plenty pissed. I'll have to wake him up and ask him who he is. Maybe that'll give me a clue where to find his file. I curse my luck and break out the brandy a little early, brace myself with a nip.

There's a sequence of pressure points we use to wake them. I'm not at liberty to divulge where they are. He feels real, like they all do, but he's not so hard like most. Clients seem to like hard muscles. That never did it for me. He opens his eyes, looks around, and smiles serenely. “It must be Christmas,” he says. He has a pleasant voice. Melodious.

I take another nip. A Screwbot doesn't access its memory directly. Everything's on a need-to-know basis. Generally, they don't need to know what day it is. There's just the here and now. And the client. In the moment. Ooh baby, baby is timeless. “How—How do you know it's Christmas?"

"Because that's when I start a new life."

"You're not a life. You're a Screwbot."

"Is that the Christmas spirit?” He flashes a charming smile. Cary Grant on the ice, Loretta Young in his arms—
The Bishop's Wife
. Adulterous flirtation with an angel. Very hot. I borrow heavily from the classics. I just cross the boundaries they couldn't. Maybe that's why Screwbots seem so lifeless. Tennis without a net. This charmer is still running a routine. He thinks this is business. Alas, I can't afford the product even if I were interested, and there's rules, of course. There's always rules.

"I'm not the client, Lover Boy. Job's done. You can turn it off now. You're back at the plant. I gather you're a special order, someone's very special gift, perhaps? Who are you supposed to be?” When I was in high school doing my involuntary volunteer hours, I worked the Lost Kids gig at the state fair. Working with Screwbots can be like that.

"Myself,” he says. “Like everyone else.” He reaches out and wraps his hand around the brandy bottle, and a chill goes up my spine. “May I?” he asks. He's got eyes like a Sunday school Jesus. I release the bottle. He takes a sip and smiles again. I'm too afraid to speak. He hands me the bottle, and I almost drop it trying to set it down, steady myself with another swig before I manage it. I can't find the cap. Forget it. I keep telling myself forget it, rooting around my crap-filled work station. Leave it. I don't want to look up into those eyes again, figure out what they mean, how I even know to be scared, but I do.

He's looking around the room like he's studying it, like it's an art installation, or something that crash landed in his backyard. He's especially taken with the dull clutter on my desk. He picks up the only photo, beautiful snow-covered mountains, glistening in the sun like a palace of dreams. It's the view from the porch of the cabin where I lived with Derek. When people ask, I just say it's the Rockies, a postcard. He stares lovingly at the image in the frame and smiles at me. “You lived there,” as if that were the most wonderful thing.

I took that picture waiting for all that beauty to melt. There was plenty of time to take pictures. Behind the photographer, on the wall directly behind her, was a spray of blood that would never come out of the rough hewn boards, a bullethole, the sky. He returns the photo precisely to where he found it. The one truly personal object in a minefield of clutter, and he found it. I want to ask him how, I want to tell him to stop.

Then he notices the pair of Theodoras. “Who are they?” he asks. “Have they been singled out? Did they do something wrong?” He seems genuinely concerned. I wonder who did his script. It's truly incredible. If I didn't know what he is, I couldn't tell. I can always tell. Anyone can. Not this one. I defy you to tell. Except for his intensity perhaps.

"They—they were thrown through a window,” I say. “I have to make sure it was sex and not—I don't know—breaking and entering.” I try to laugh, but it comes out a gurgle.

"Jezebels,” he says and walks up to them, tenderly turns them around, each one, and kisses her—nice, lingering kisses, and I watch—

And they wake up like fairy princesses.

That's not supposed to happen.

"Ooh, I like that,” they say, sisters doing harmony, and laugh the same laugh, low and throaty. They trade a complicated look, then look at me. “Where are all the others?” he asks me. They're all three looking at me like I'm the only person in the world, which in their world, at least, I am.

The closest human being, maybe a half-mile of corridors away, is the caretaker of the Screwbot-sniffing dogs, dogs he prefers to people. He considers us kindred spirits—he says, “You got your fuck puppets, and I got my dogs, know what I'm saying?"

Yeah, what he's saying is he's toxic in any situation involving the least bit of subtlety or compassion. I'm not sure what his dogs were trained to do should they sniff out a Screwbot on the loose, and I don't want to find out.

There are cameras everywhere. Whatever happens will be seen by human eyes eventually. If I cried out, someone would hear. The alarms are sensitive to certain noises. Breaking glass. Screams. “There's a volume threshold,” it was explained to me. No loud music, no bedlam, no panic. Once the alarms sound, guys with guns come from all directions, the area is “contained.” So it comes down to a choice of a pack of wild dogs or wild soldiers, locked up with them till who knows when, or playing along, see where this is going. I have to admit, I'm curious.

"I—I've done all the others. All wiped.” I point down the corridor to the big storeroom where the fairy princess spent her brief, mysterious career. He starts walking that way, the Theodoras trailing after. “Stop,” I say, “you can't go in there,” but he's already in. The Theodoras flank the entrance like attending angels, and I follow him. All the Screwbots stand slumbering like rows of doll soldiers. He moves down the line, kissing each one. They open their eyes and stare blankly. They're all wiped, no personalities installed. The lights are on, but nobody's home.

Nobody of my making anyway. They're all waking up, one by one, looking at me. My mystery guest has installed something, something fairly complex judging from the subtlety of their expressions, the depths of their many gazes. “What—what did you do to them?"

"I gave them all our experiences, our memories, our lives, let them remember their own."