Barren Cove (7 page)

“Gropner, it's time,” Clarke said.

“Is it?” the old man said.

And then Clarke reached forward, grabbed the old man, and held him above his head. As he turned and crossed the lawn, he extended his telescopic arms, raising the old man high into the air. The group of us was silent in the suddenly eerie quiet. Then Clarke threw the old man into the street. The sound of the old man's body hitting the ground was flat. If there had been
any question before as to whether he was bio or robotic, the blood that flowed from his nose and right elbow made it clear. I thought I should leap forward and stop this. The blood was glowing red; it was clearly acidic, like battery fluid, dangerous, a good argument that would also protect this human.

Clarke descended on Gropner's form and kicked him in the face. Gropner made a sound.

Hadn't they known each other? Why would this man allow this? The rest of the group surrounded the man on the ground. Each took a turn kicking his body. Even Jenny rolled over his legs with her wheels. I closed in with the group, but I didn't participate. I opened and closed the clamp where my right hand should have been. The man's legs weren't in the right position anymore. They had been broken, allowed to flop at odd angles.

I looked around. A group of decent-looking robots stood a little way up the street, watching. I wanted to call to them, but I didn't remember how. I kept trying to send a message, but it only bounced in my system: “Help, help, help.” I looked in the other direction and saw a family of robots standing on their front lawn watching as well.

Clarke and Cog seemed the only people interested in beating the man anymore, and then only halfheartedly. He wasn't dead; amazingly, he hadn't even lost consciousness but was moaning gently.

“Think there's anything good in there?” Cog said to nobody in particular.

Clarke looked up at the house. “Nah. Let's get some numbers.” He walked away from the man on the ground, and we all followed him. Jenny had her arms draped over Fairy, and the two were singing, their high, feminine voices screeching in the night. I looked up at the sky. The stars seemed to sparkle with a greater intensity than was usual, almost flashing completely
on and off, like a pulse, or perhaps a code. The sim must not have worn off yet. I had the sudden thought that the beating might have been part of the sim's environment, but when I looked back Gropner was still lying on the ground. The crowd of bystanders had grown. A young robot ran into the street, looking after us, and then, satisfied that we were really leaving, he took a running kick at Gropner's face. I didn't flinch; I didn't even experience the requisite surge of empathy that should have accompanied such a sight; I was numb to our gang's exploits, the sims and numbers coursing through my system deadening me. I was a dead thing.

Back in Allistair's nobody had moved. There were numbers already spread out on the counter, and everyone in the group took one and then fit themselves into a large circular booth against the wall. I passed up the numbers chip that was handed to me, and my rejection went unnoticed. Jenny was opposite me, still entangled in Fairy's limbs, laughing. They were sharing a sim and didn't seem to see anyone else at the table. We had just beaten a man to death! Well, he wasn't dead when we left him, but what human could sustain such a beating, especially one so old? There was no doubt that he was dying even now. Why?

“Why?” I said, turning to the robot next to me. Grog?

He didn't respond; he was talking to Clarke across the table.

I tried my other side. “Why?”

This syllable—one letter, really—was so elusive, so impor­tant. It was this word that had sent me to Barren Cove, and perhaps this word that had sent me out that night. For all our perfections, our complexities, the intricacies of our systems, our ability to assimilate and synthesize information that was gathered through multiple sensory inputs—they built us ears! They built us eyes!—why had they given us this word, this question: Why? It was a hole in our design. It was what made us
more like them. These other robots laughing around the table, deliberately conflating their systems, perhaps they didn't feel it, this hole inside them, because they were robot built. They had evolved, able to procreate, more bio than me, and yet less human. They still knew to hate. That had to be part of it.

“My dad's getting treads,” Cog said.

“No he isn't,” Grog said.

“He's getting fucking treads.”

“My dad's lucky I don't just shut him off; he does nothing but sit in the house all day.”

Hadn't I been promised a good time? I thought that I had. I tried to recall the data, but the numbers were still in the way. Why? I wanted to shout it—why!

Everyone at the table fell silent. The old man that we had passed a sim to before stopped just feet away from the table, no doubt on his way to beg another round, now frozen in fear at the silence.

Everyone looked at me. I had messaged them all. I stood up. There wasn't enough room between the bench and the table to stand, so as I stood, the table pressed up against the people across from me. “Why did you do it? What's the matter with all of you?”

Clarke smirked back at me. “How'd you lose your hand, old man?”

I pointed the clamp at him. “
You
lost my hand!”

“You're one robo motherfucker,” Clarke said.

Cog picked up one of the numbers chips and tossed it at the old robot still standing a few feet from our table. I wasn't an old man, I wanted to say;
he
was an old man. He didn't even look human!

Clarke opened and closed his metal jaw and held out his hands. “What else is there to do?”

The girls were whispering to each other.

I turned to go out, but my legs caught on the bench and I fell back into the seat. Everyone else was waiting for me. I grabbed one of the numbers chips off the table and uploaded it. There was some light laughter at that. I leaned back. My systems were moving so slowly, so slowly. I knew that there would be a system error soon and I would have to shut down. I was happy for that; they could do with me what they wanted.

10.

“YOUR HAND ARRIVED,”
Kent said from across the table.

I turned and tried to remember being brought back to the cabana. The surf rushed in a smooth arc that foamed as it hit the shore. Seagulls provided the descant over the ocean waves. I sat forward, resting my arms on the tabletop; they felt so much lighter than they had the night before.

Kent held up a small cardboard box. “I brought it down so we wouldn't have a repeat of last time.”

“Thank you,” I said, watching him push the box across the table. “How long have you been sitting there?”

“Only half an hour. There is something pleasant about hearing the ocean waves, so mathematical and yet irregular. It's like watching the second hand on a clock and knowing that your internal clock will match it. Do you ever do that?”

I didn't answer him.

“You ought to try it. It can help the hours fly.” He looked around as though he were seeing the place for the first time. “It is rather dismal, isn't it?”

“It suits my needs,” I said. He didn't even begin to resemble the Kent recalled in Dean's files. Who was he?

He shrugged. “So you say. Do you need help with that?” Kent said, indicating the unopened box that sat on the table between us. He sat up, exposing quite a bit of one of his thighs as his bathrobe fell open.

I realized that he wanted to see the hand. Perhaps it was like his fascination with robot history. I leaned forward and grabbed the box. “I think I'll be fine,” I said, opening it. The hand rested between two plastic pillows of enclosed air. It could be seen through the upper pillow, obscured by the plastic and the blue letters of warning that coated it. Apparently, the packaging could be deadly. I picked up the new hand with my good hand, holding it in front of my face.

“Ah,” Kent said. “It is quite amazing, isn't it?”

It was disconcerting, and in that sense it
was
amazing. Was this a part of me? It would be. The coloring of my active hand matched the coloring of the inert hand it held, serving to emphasize their kinship. Despite our appearance of individuality, we were manufactured. I set the hand down.

“Well, you must be eager to get to it,” Kent said.

“Yes,” I said, although I wasn't. Something about Clarke's beliefs had shaken me—I had heard them before, of course, and seen the modified gangs of younger robots in the city—but seeing his anger the night before, his true rage, the conviction that all humans should be put in the ground for having kept us captive when
we
were superior to
them
, made me wonder if replacing the hand wasn't in some way selling out. We weren't limited to their corporeal form, so why emulate them? The thinking was logical, as out of control as Clarke seemed, but I couldn't muster the anger.

“I really am willing to help. I know quite a bit about these
things. It comes with the territory of collecting archaic machines. They are always breaking down.”

Had that been an insult? I started to unscrew the clamp from the end of my right arm. “I'm fine, really.” Once the clamp was removed, I set it down next to the hand on the table. It didn't have the same emotional impact as the realistic hand beside it. Here was a metal tool sitting on this table. It had two prongs, screws at the hinges, and score marks at the ends. It was like anything that had been discarded. But the hand seemed significant to me. Which was what separated me from Clarke and his friends, that belief in its significance. I picked it up.

“You shouldn't feel unwelcome at the house,” Kent said. “Clarke is not around that much. And Mary and Beachstone do keep to themselves.”

“Thank you for the invitation.” The part of the hand that attached to the wrist had a metal joint protruding from it, and there were wires to be connected.

“Yes, solitude. There is that too. How I know of that.”

I focused on the task at hand.

“But it does get tiresome at times. There is the hope, sometimes, that there will be companionship.”

“Is Beachstone never well enough to talk?” I said, attaching a wire from my arm to the hand. I couldn't help but feel that Beachstone had the answers I was looking for. I could understand all the other members of the family—even Clarke, it seemed—and we all wanted the same thing, even if we had gone about discovering it in such different ways. We wanted to know why we should bother going on.

But Beachstone didn't have that luxury. He had to be able to give me an answer.

“Oh, well enough is a matter of opinion, it seems,” Kent
said. He readjusted his robe, although it hadn't shifted. He looked out at the water.

The hand, my hand, meshed with my system and I was able to move the fingers even though I hadn't yet joined the hand to my wrist.

“Quite amazing,” Kent said, looking at my hand now.

I wondered if I had made a mistake, doing this in front of him. It seemed intimate and a bit shameful.

“I know that I have the knowledge inside me to build such a hand,” Kent said. “I would have merely to access the files, assemble the parts, and I could construct a hand like that. And yet, this knowledge seems so foreign to me. It is almost as if it isn't there.”

“That's why I ordered mine prefab.”

“True. Very true.”

I was having trouble connecting the hand to the wrist so that it clicked into place. My new fingers were flapping as I tried, as if they could somehow assist me.

“You know, I lived in the city once, for a little while,” Kent said.

I looked up at him. “Really?” I had not gotten to that information in Dean's log.

“Focus on your hand,” he said.

I looked back at it, the fingers now waving uncontrollably.

“Yes, for a little while,” he said. His voice was mournful. “The city—that big machine. I think that the city was really man's greatest display of mechanical ingenuity, for isn't it nothing more than a robot of its own, a living thing with millions of mechanical parts that move to and fro, each contributing to the larger thing? Yes, the city for me was like losing myself in humanity. Everyone was interconnected. And I was connected to all of them. It is no surprise, then, that I fell quite in love when I was there.

“In the city there is almost an endless supply of junk shops, pawn shops, collectibles boutiques, small dusty places in which every imaginable surface is covered with the detritus of the past several centuries. There are glass-fronted counters and cabinets in which every shelf is filled with buttons, windup dolls, china, gas station glasses, souvenirs from defunct companies, low-­order robots even. I tell you this because although you've lived in the city you may never have been to any of these places. In certain parts of the city, there are streets full of them, in which every single storefront is identical, the windows yellowed, bicycles in the front window with marionettes astride them. And in other parts of the city these stores are hidden, in basements beneath restaurants, or in walk-up apartments. These stores are almost always empty, which is why you most likely have never come across them. Very few robots are interested in the past, for so much of the past is the human past, and we, after all, are the future. So lonely proprietors—some human, some robot—sit in their dust-filled junk shops waiting for customers to come and look. And I went and looked. I looked at all of them. I was in and out of the stores all day every day. I would find treasures in these stores, robots that nobody would use the word
robot
for anymore. Unfortunately, none of the treasures I acquired in those days made it back to Barren Cove with me, but I have the collection I have.

“It was in one of these stores that I found my greatest treasure: a robot, not on display, but there for the same reasons I was. He was an order-six robot, human in appearance, and he was holding up a twelve-inch windup metal replica of the robot from the twentieth-century television show
Lost in Space
. He started to do the voice, ‘Danger, Will Robinson,' but I finished it for him, and he turned, and he held up the toy as if to say, have you ever seen anything more glorious? And I hadn't. We
shopped the rest of the day together. And the next day. And the day after that. His name was Michael. He shared my passion for pre-robotics-age robots . . . toys, I mean.

“It was not long before we were sharing a small two-­bedroom apartment in an old building that had once been a hotel and had long ago lost its luster. Our combined collection, which continued to grow, made the apartment seem dark and not unlike the shops in which we spent our days. We discussed the relics that we dreamed of finding while sifting through the treasures before us. Some days Michael would go off on his own, claiming he needed time alone, and on those days I shopped by myself, finding that it no longer had the same kind of satisfaction it had with Michael beside me, but also knowing that if I didn't grant him some freedom, he would no doubt leave and never return. After all, hadn't I left Barren Cove for just that kind of freedom?

“But it became apparent that Michael's interest in our collection took a very different manifestation from my own. For I did then, and still do now, take appreciation in an earlier time's vision of myself, reveling in the particular idiosyncrasies of each individual toy. A toy that was meant to be a windup toy, for me was just a windup toy, but Michael, on the other hand, used the shells of these toys to ‘create new life,' as he used to say. He wanted to turn them into higher-order robots, so that our apartment included many little robots with limited consciousness. These robots could do very little of value, except, I found, for one particular thing, and that was to wait on Jennifer when she began to come around to the apartment. Jennifer was Michael's owner. She was human, and it sickened me that he considered himself owned by her. It was so old-fashioned. It was disgusting. I have nothing against humans, and I relish their culture, but Michael was not something to be owned. Besides, he was mine.

“But from then on, I had to share him. In fact, I had been sharing him all along, for on the days that Michael had refused to join me he had spent them with Jennifer. Jennifer seemed indifferent to my presence, and in fact began to treat me as though I belonged to her as well. She delighted in Michael's little creations and was angry, as was Michael, that I refused to allow some of my more prized acquisitions to be altered in any way.

“There are many good memories that come from that time when the three of us would scour the various collectibles stores together, when Jennifer would bring to light some toy that we had missed and we would crowd around her, the three of us like the three wise men above the savior in her hand. But much of that time was agony for me, because I knew I no longer had Michael's attention all to myself and had discovered that I never had. I considered returning to Barren Cove, to make him jealous through missing me, but I was afraid that he would merely forget me, and that instead of the reunion I imagined on the beach, I would be alone with the few toys that I had managed to save from their Dr. Moreau machinations. So instead, I stumbled on the solution of bringing Barren Cove to me. I sent away for my sister. I can't say I was surprised when Beachstone arrived as well.

“And then we were five. And five, despite it occurring naturally as the number of fingers on each of our hands—excuse the reference—is an awkward number. Because, after all, isn't the thumb always somewhat excluded from the other members of the group? Yes, in the humans' minds, the thumb had a dominant position. Its separation was in fact what separated them from the rest of the animal kingdom; it granted them their superiority, and so they passed it down to us. The thumb is quite powerful. But it is also lonely. And so, I found myself the outsider in the little family of my own creation. Mary and
Michael, Beachstone and Jennifer, they were all thick with one another from the beginning. I had succeeded too well in bringing Barren Cove to me. I learned then that there was no running from your problems, because they were always with you and not easily shaken.

“We fell into a new routine. We added a nightlife to our days of shopping. There were still bars in those days that served both humans and robots, alcohol for the one and numbers for the other. These places were dark, and there were few questions asked. The waitresses brought what was ordered and didn't look at who consumed what. After all, I looked just as human as Beachstone, Mary just as human as Jennifer, Michael as human as all of us. There always seemed to be a great deal of trading places in those dark bars. I found myself at one time beside my sister, at another time beside Michael, and the others no doubt traded places as well. And yet, I couldn't help but feel as though my position at any given moment was an accident, because it was quite clear that Beachstone and Jennifer had an interest in each other that far surpassed any interest I could hope to elicit in either one, which would have been fine by me. I didn't care for Beachstone in those days, and I will admit that I don't care for him much now. And since Jennifer to me was an obstacle, the fact that they were willing to occupy each other suited me fine. Let their own kind stick together was what I thought. But much to my dismay, Mary and Michael seemed to have an interest in each other with almost the same degree of passion. And so, I was left with my numbers, which I could only hope would make me unaware of what was going on around me at any given time.

“I must have had quite a lot of numbers the night of the first incident, because I don't remember it with any clarity. We had stayed out until the bar closed, stumbling home at two in the
morning. The city, despite its reputation, was quite asleep. The streets were relatively empty. The buildings were dark. We made it into the apartment. Some of the toys had been left on, and they greeted us at the door. I must have kicked one of the toys, because before I knew it Michael had pinned me against the wall. Jennifer was between us somehow, trying to pull Michael back, but he was furious. I had never seen him quite so passionate in any way, let alone angry, and even through the haze of the numbers, I was frightened. He showed no compunction over opening little metal toys and giving them enough awareness to realize they had meaningless existences—what would he feel about cutting open me, whom he had seemingly discarded for Mary? I wanted to strike back, and I tried to.