Something rattles in the dashboard. A loose bolt from a past repair, a tired fan belt, a warped heat shield. Whatever it is, it’s enough to grab Trish’s deep hazel eyes. Her long neck shifts gracefully, wafting the earthy scent of an old perfume, as she glances from the passenger seat to the sound. A vague curiosity in its clatter, but not enough to be bothered by it. Just curious where it’s coming from. She offers the driver the slightest of smiles, enough to reassure him.
“Yeah, I know. It started this morning. Hard to say what it is ’til I open it up,” he tells her, his hand casually gripping the wheel. “A driver really needs to know the car. Gotta know every inch of their mechanics to keep ‘em going. These older model Cadillacs, they’re rarities.”
He rests his calloused hand heavy on her thigh, just below the hem of her threadbare sequined dress, caressing her skin like sandpaper to porcelain. Tiny streaks of grease caked beneath his fingernails, oblivious to the cleanliness of Trish. She picks at the frayed edge of the fabric, allowing him this tender moment with all the patience it requires, before her attention drifts back to the open window. The breeze blowing on her face. Eyes tearing against the wind, watching every last moment of the world pass by her vision.
Breeze, spring, sun, mirror, reflection, barn, road, dirt, sign, hope, cat, rattle, Cadillac, freedom, endless, horizon, farmland.
She met him months earlier at a popular pick up spot beneath the 195 overpass. During the day, the sounds of kids laughing and parents scolding from the park across the street filled the air. But at nighttime it was quiet down there, especially in the wintertime when the days were shorter and a layer of mud and slush stuck to boots like wet cement. This time of year, traffic could snake off the highway, easily dip under the bridge, pick up a pleasure robot, find a quiet spot, and carry on with their night. A lot of drivers took their time sifting through models much newer than Trish. They’d insist on seeing update logs, inspect suction, review cleaning schedules. It was clinical for them. Like taking medicine. In the years Trish had been programmed to her current function, she’d come to expect this kind of thoroughness.
But the night the Cadillac man arrived was different. He was handsome, rugged, shy behind the wheel of a sea foam green boat of a car. His engine puttered as it rounded the corner, big fin taillights washing red in his wake. He may as well have been storming some castle to save a princess. His eyes found Trish before he even reached the corner where the pleasure robots gathered. He locked in on her and smiled like he’d spotted some rare treasure in a scrap yard. But his gaze was lost on Trish. He had to call her over twice before she realized he was talking to her.
“Two hundred for thirty. Anywhere," she told him, somewhere between rehearsed and flirtatious.
“How much just to park up there and talk?” he asked.
She’d heard about this tactic from some of the other girls. A customer would pull up, throw on a fake smile and try to bypass their service functions with some charming this or that. It never worked on the newer models. They were always quick to point out that they were too clever, and that models like Trish were gullible and trusting. They’d scare her with stories of tracking chips sliced brutally from the forearm and scooped out. That’s why you’re the ones getting fished out of the river, they’d say in their detached gallows humor.
But the Cadillac man felt different. He felt genuine. He felt stoic. And while Trish was an older model, and could be more gullible than others, she was programmed to survive like they all were. There was some coding deep inside them that triggered a fight or flight response if things ever got dangerous. That’s how the Haxon | Lo technicians explained it to her. And that trigger gave her comfort that the decisions she made were in service of her own wellbeing, especially since no one else was looking out for her on late nights out there in the cold. No one apart from that buzzing tracking chip in her forearm. Besides, she was cold and needed to warm up somewhere. Her thermal heat regulator hadn’t been working for days and Haxon refused to service her until her scheduled session later that month. Wear a warmer coat, they suggested.
The Cadillac’s heaters felt good against her bare legs as the car paraded along a deserted access road beside the Brown boathouse and parked. Outside, wet snow began to fall hard on the asphalt and Trish was happy to be in this warmth rather than fighting off the wind and rain with the newer models under the bridge. She felt special in this minor comfort, a feeling she hadn’t accessed in a long time.
"How long have you been operational?” he asked.
“Eleven years.”
“That’s a long time for a pleasure model.”
“I wasn’t always a pleasure model. Just the last two.”
“Do you know what you were before that, or did they wipe your memory?”
She shrugged. To her, it was as if she was born one night under that bridge and she’d never left its hollow shelter. And every sunrise, she’d make the long walk back to the Haxon | Lo charging station beneath the Providence Bus Terminal, lay down in her locker and drift to sleep. But from time to time, she’d have a flash of something — a Christmas present, a school classroom, an old station wagon, a warm sunshine through a cold window. And she knew that deep in her mind laid the ruins of a past life. One that she had always been too reluctant to excavate, too scared to sift through the bones of.
“What do you do?” she asked from her menu of approved questions.
“Mechanic. Mostly old cars,” he told her. “I like fixing up old things. Swapping out parts, making updates, stuff like that. You have beautiful eyes.”
She smiled in a way that felt spontaneous and natural.
He came looking for her every Sunday night for the next four months, always in a different Cadillac. When she heard the tell-tale putter of a classic engine, she’d straighten up and flip her hair, hoping she’d make eye contact at the exact time he spotted her. Sometimes she did, and the moment felt electric and eternal. And then for thirty minutes, they’d park by the boathouse and talk. Sometimes about his week and how busy it’d been at the garage with some big car show coming into town. Sometimes he’d ask about her week, how she was coping, if her heat unit had been repaired yet and if not, how he’d be happy to take a look if that’s not too forward. He listened to her speak with genuine fascination, careful not to miss a single word that escaped her mouth. He was polite and respectful, and reminded her of champagne, silk, cologne, strawberries, error 330.
The glitches were strongest just after he pulled away, but so were her memories. Those tiny nuggets of her past she’d always had trouble unearthing. Suburban street, children playing, husband. But with each shock of memory came a throbbing pressure in her skull, as if a stranger was pounding on the door of her mind, demanding release. The pain became so intense that, after three weeks without relief, she filed a repair request. Within the hour, she got her reply— a sterile and brief email that simply stated she had been scheduled for retirement. Report to Haxon | Lo Recycling Center no later than Friday, April 10. Thank you for your service.
Trees, leaves, dirt road, stone wall, pasture, appliance, gate, driveway, house, cracked paint, rusted metal, Cadillacs, barn, error 330.
The Cadillac pulls to a stop just outside a crumbling shack surrounded by a ring of dense pine trees. Secluded, deep in a forgotten forest. A torn screen door leaned beside the paint-chipped front door. On the porch, an old rocking chair sat beside a tv table crowded with crushed beer cans. The interior lay dark and unknown, revealing mysterious shapes only through the flickering of blue and green blinking lights. Couldn’t be more than a room or two inside, Trish thought. A stack of old bumpers lean against a cord of waterlogged firewood. A dozen Cadillacs beyond repair, half in the woods, half in the clearing, stripped of various parts like some morgue left unattended. The sound of birds chirping in the trees alert her senses. This moment feels strange. Uncertain. Is this place enough to support human life, she wonders. Is there even running water inside?
“My grandfather called it the summer house in his will. He used it for hunting, but I like it for tinkering. It’s not much, but it’s quiet out here. I’ll show you around.”
He smiles in his bashful way. In the way that tells her he’s embarrassed by the state of this place but hopeful she can see past his rough exterior. And she warms to his vulnerability. She always warms to his vulnerability. Those tiny moments that reveal someone pure beneath those grease stained overalls, that bristled beard. He rounds the car and opens the door for Trish, offering his hand to help her step out. A true gentleman.
“You have such good manners.”
“It’s easy being nice to you,” he tells her.
Car, shack, windows, glass, broken, engines, tires, oil stains, gravel, rotten wood, tracker activated, birds, deny access, error 330.
Trish had confided her fate in the only friend she had memory of, a model like her named Jane. They’d bonded when a newer model talked a driver out of Trish and into her, and threatened to have her scrapped if she reported the incident. But Jane made sure every driver who came through from then on knew about the newer model’s broken suction pump. So much so, that she left for another site and never came back. Jane was like that, an older model like Trish, but filled with a potent mix of confidence and self-assurance Trish only dreamed of running on.
“I’m sorry, babe. But our time is our time, right?” she said in her token bluntness.
“I was just hoping to have more of it.”
“You should be grateful.”
Trish looked toward the thawing playground and the river beyond. She imagined the daytime here, filled with families and love. The sound of traffic rushing by overhead fell to a low hum as her mind drifted further. Swing set, casserole, dog, man.
“You sound like Nelson,” Trish said, feeling the strangeness of the words as they escaped her mouth.
“Is that the one who’s been so sweet on you?”
“I don’t know…” argument, angry, sad, door, error 330.
“Maybe it’s all for the best. You gotta watch those ones. The nice ones are the least honest.”
“He just wants to talk.”
“About what?” Jane asked. And Trish felt her friend’s suspicions growing. But the truth of it was, her visits with the Cadillac man were awakening memories of a former life that stirred inside her mind like trespassers in a maze. The Cadillac man had set them free.
“Do you ever wonder about your past? Who you were?” Trish asked.
“They wipe our memories for a reason.”
“But what if the past didn’t actually corrupt our present? What if it enhanced it?”
“Are you having memories?” Jane asked.
“Blips of things.”
“That’s why you’re being retired, babe. Same thing happened to Kim a few weeks ago. Babbling on about her cats or her husband. Something like that. Your files must be corrupted. It’s just your time.” Jane stepped away to an approaching truck, already flashing a smile. Trish followed her with her eyes, watching how easily she’d forgotten their exchange. How routinely she packed away immediate memories of anything beyond her function.
Trish watched the last of the falling snow. Sled, wet mittens, hot cocoa, sweaty hair, error 330. She tasted the musk of dead leaves and exhaust on the air and wondered if the corruption of memories they all feared was a lie. Chimney smoke, laughter, car engine, silence, error 330. That maybe these memories tell a complete story of who she was before the overpass, and if she could access them, maybe she could save herself from retirement.
Darkness, clutter, robot parts, tools, kitchen, dishes, ants, fear, smile, reassurance, error 330.
It takes a moment for Trish’s eyes to adjust to the shadows of the living room, the stacks of robot parts jammed in boxes barely visible through a single window illuminating a television and armchair. The only surfaces without clutter. A massive worktable runs the length of the room, a magnifying light on an articulating arm aims down on a robotic face, tools scattered everywhere. Trish looks over the table without revealing anything. At first glance, it appears horrifying and dangerous. A piece of her wonders if she should run. If she could get far in the woods, in her heels, in this strange place where nothing looks familiar. But the Cadillac man’s warm smile coaxes her back to a more rational explanation. He’s offered to help her. The only offer she’s ever received.
“What is all this?” she finally asks.
“Told you I can fix you, didn’t I?”
“Who were they?”
“Pleasure robots, like you. Well, not as sophisticated. The newer models aren’t as, I don’t know. Not as warm as you are, I guess.” He looks her over, ever minutiae detail of her face. He caresses her cheek. She tenses.
“Haxon hasn’t come looking?”
He holds up a small cigar box filled with tracking chips, broken into tiny fragments.
“Have a seat,” he says cooly as he wheels his work stool over to his magnifying light. “I’ll pop yours out, then we can get to work.”
She touches her forearm. Her skin feels warm, an indication alerting her whole body of potential trouble. But the pull of her memories stop her from fleeing. Her expression freezes, like the many robot faces staring back at her from the dim surfaces all around her, and she feels like she’s one of them. Frozen in panic. She feels the weight of their parts laying on top of her, suffocating her, reminding her that they’re all the same. That memories have no function here. Not for them. Not for her.
“Where’s some place you’ve always wanted to go?” he says from his bench. “A dream vacation, I mean. A place you saw on the television, maybe.”
“I don’t know… wedding, river, flowers, boulangerie, Eiffel Tower, error 330. ‘Paris, I guess.”
“That’s a good one. I’ve never been there either. We get you fixed up, we can go.” He pats his hand on the seat beside him. “There’s a whole life beyond the life they gave you.”
“What about them?” she asks.
He glances around the room at the same boxes of robot parts Trish is fixed on, and offers his smile to them like he’s looking over a well-curated art collection. He slowly stands and goes to the corner of the room, where an old canvas sheet covers something. He looks back at Trish, proudly. “They’re a part of something bigger, too.”
He pulls the canvas to the floor, revealing the bare figure of a pleasure robot. Her legs and torso naked and stained with tiny blotches of grease and fingerprints. Thick roots of wire run from her head cavity to a power unit beside her. She has no eyes.
“This is Monica. She’s been a real labor of love for me.”
“Where did she come from?” Trish asks.
“I made her. Put her together from memories of my ex. The one who got away. She just stopped me in my tracks the first time I set eyes on her, kinda like you. Couldn’t get her outta my head. Kept trying to visit her for awhile, then all the sudden she was gone. Left. And I just couldn’t live without her, you know, so I starting making her. Wasn’t easy at all. It was really hard actually. But I’ve been putting her together. From memories and photos. Methodically. Doing it right. Pieces from here and there. All these gals. You.”
“Me?”
“Well, sure. We’ve all got this piece of something in us, don’t we. Like this perfect something only we have. Could be a nose or a mannerism or a speak pattern. Could be anything. Just that little something that surprises the hell out of the world. All I’m trying to do is isolate those perfect things and put them all together into Monica here. And you just have such real eyes. I’ve never seen ones like yours before.” He catches himself and says with a smile, “Isn’t this exciting? You get to be a part of something bigger than yourself?”
She steps back toward the door. “Who are you?”
"Gosh, Trish, I don’t know. I guess I’m just a lovesick guy trying to get back a piece of my past.”
The crunch of gravel draws their attention to the open front door. A shiny black cargo van snakes up the driveway, pluming dust in its wake. He squeezes his screwdriver in his fist, staring daggers for the first time at Trish. “What did you do?”
Dust, sunlight, relief, van, newspaper, bugs, picket fence, dinner time, screwdriver, birthday, presents, anger, error 330.
Haxon | Lo sent maintenance vans to all their sites once a quarter. Pleasure robots would receive updates, deep cleanings, and cognitive tests to assure their intelligence was within acceptable limits. Trish didn’t like these visits. She didn’t like how they reminded her of what she was, that she was just a piece of equipment to Haxon. She didn’t like how the maintenance people would show up in their black overalls, staring at her like a curiosity or an inconvenience. Her memories of Nelson, vacation, family dulled by their updates. But there was a part of her that welcomed the memory cap. She knew there were more toxic images deep in her mind that would corrupt the purity of the ones just below the surface. It was a balancing act, and their updates were a form of ignorance she welcomed and despised at the same time. Some images were locked away for good reason.
Voices, argument, Monica, arms, legs, eyes, torso, grease stain, error 330.
Trish watches through the open door as the Cadillac man storms to the van, and threatens the Haxon repair man with his screwdriver. She hears only their muffled voices, but their faces distort in more and more primal ways with each word. As if these two men were transforming into wild beasts before her eyes. And the strangest sensation washes over Trish, as if she’s watching her fate decided on some door shaped television set. She can’t help but laugh. A laugh that is loud enough to draw their attention for a brief moment, before launching them back into their heated exchange. And Trish’s laughter simmers to a blank expression as she realizes the situation she’s arrived at. Two men arguing over how best to terminate her life. Each with an internal logic that supersedes her own desire to continue on, to repair herself, to remember.
Trish backs away, deeper into the shack until the hardwoods beneath her feet transition to scuffed linoleum and the voices from the porch grow distant. The kitchen sink brims with dishes and ants, countertop stained with old glass rings and thick pools of milk and cereal and screws. And beside the sink, a ketchup crusted steak knife. She rubs her forearm again, the warmth she felt just moments ago begins to dissipate as she finds her grip around that knife. The argument outside grows louder, more aggressive. Feet slide against gravel, men grunt in violence. Trish takes another step back, closing her eyes. Embracing the blade’s serrated teeth against her skin.
Sunshine, autumn wind, fluttering leaves, bicycle bell, Paris, crowd, smile, music.
When she arrived under the overpass, she knew she was different. She could feel it in the looks from the other models. From the smoothness of their skin. From the calculated logic they all possessed. She knew it from the way they spoke to her, and the way she spoke back. With each passing night, their differences grew. Until her service appointments arrived and she was shuttled to a different inspection van from the others. Afterward, her thoughts were dulled, muted, confused. It was as if she could focus only on the immediate. Just the last hour and the next, but no further back or forward.
Linoleum, blood, front door, tattered screen, gravel driveway, end transmission.
The pain throbs in Trish’s forearm as she steps out through the shack’s front door onto the porch, the steak knife still clutched in her hand. Blood trickles down her wrist, warm and bright. A flow of memories burst and collide inside her brain like some lightning storm, the intensity making her twitch and shudder. Her past is coming into focus. Waking up from its coma. Studying its surroundings. Remembering. Nelson, darkness, running, cold, sterile.
Blood drips from Trish’s fingertips to the porch wood, the sight of which stops both men mid-fight. Laying eyes on her paralyzes them.
“What the hell is going on? Why’s she bleeding?” the Cadillac man says, wiping blood from his broken nose. “Robots aren’t supposed to bleed.”
But the repair man only stammers as he steadies himself on the van, “Oh, that’s not good. Dammit, that’s not good.” Trish looks down at the blood dripping from her arm onto the rotten porch. “I gotta call this in,” the repair man says.
Trish looks up at the sky, framed by dead trees all around and slowly, strangely, the sounds of a child’s birthday party crash inside her mind. She sees children playing pin the tail on the donkey in a suburban backyard. Freshly mowed grass. Parents drinking beers and laughing alongside one another. Presents arranged on a folding table beside the pool. And a man in an apron, tending the grill, looking over at her. And through the smoky barbecue flames, he smiles at her. And she remembers.
