Summer of ‘71
There was an aeroplane over Vancouver. Slow and propeller driven. I knew because I saw its shadow. And imagining it had been built by hand, from plans bought at a drugstore, I looked up and saw it vanish into the cluster of the world.
* * * * *
My father had the barbering skills of a day labourer, and I avoided him whenever the possibility of a haircut hung in the air. He used a kit he’d bought at an army surplus store. But never before drinking a Saturday afternoon’s worth of bottled beer. A haircut, I knew, meant sitting grimly on the tall kitchen stool, enduring the buzz of the electric shears and the bloody pain of the occasional gash to the scalp at the hand of my tipsy old man.
So, picture this: That’s me there with the bad haircut, leaning against the shady side of our old house on Venables Street, back when I was a kid. I’m probably trying to work something out in my closely shorn head. My young brow is furrowed while staring down at my tattered Korean-made high-tops.
I spent a lot of time unknowingly analysing human behaviour as kid, but I never really succeeded in developing any momentous hypothesise. All I ever managed to conclude was that all of the kids I knew were either vexatious oppressors or the vexatiously oppressed. Adults, on the other hand, were just bland and artless disappointments. I was ten years old, and that’s when I figured it was about time I began avoiding the human race.
But then, there was our neighbour Paul Morley.
Paul usually had something interesting to say, and lived in the house next to ours with an emphysemic woman named Alice. Most assumed they were married, but some said not. Both grey and a little stooped, they talked a lot about The War and Alberta winters during the Depression. Alice hadn’t left the house since 1965. Instead, she sat in the kitchen every day, next to the window, chain-smoking the cigarettes she rolled herself, reading Watchtower Magazine, turning each page slowly, silently nodding in full agreement with whatever was printed there—
Will the lion lie down with the lamb? Of course, for it is written.
Lovers of Jehovah God and his Son, Jesus Christ, need not fear Armageddon. God’s battle is directed solely against those humans whom God judges to be incorrigibly wicked.
Alice knew the world was thick with incorrigibles, and that Armageddon was just round the corner. “How are you getting along?” she’d ask. Or, “Are you minding all of what your mother tells you. The Lord demands this of us all, you know.” I’d always say yes and Alice would smile a yellowy smile, like she knew better but that it was all okay. No child, she was sure, was irredeemable.
Like a child, I believed that Paul and Alice had always been old, and hence had nothing new to offer or reveal to the world. My visits were purely to fill an empty hour, here or there. But Paul showed me something once that changed my mind about that. It was an ancient colour photograph, creased at the corners. And it was a revelation: Paul and Alice sitting on a Harley Davidson motorcycle, surprisingly young, perhaps in their late twenties, each of them smiling bright. Alice had a tailor-made cigarette between her bright red lips; Paul, both hands on the handlebar grips. They each wore leather jackets, engineer boots and rolled up jeans. Alice, sitting behind Paul, had a quality I would later come to know as buxom, and her hair was a colour my mother would have referred to as bottle blond. In 1945, Alice was a knock out. She could have been a Marilyn Monroe stand-in. On the back of the photograph, written in faded blue fountain pen ink, were the words VJ Day 1945, Drumheller, Alta.
Paul had what my father called a plum job, as a mill engineer on Annicis Island, and he bought a new car every year. He liked Buicks and I’d listen to him, in his garage with rakes and shovels hanging on the walls, and the lingering scent of Turtle Wax in the air, talk fondly of past model years, showing me old automobile magazines with full colour spreads. The 1952 Buick Riviera. The 1960 Buick Invicta Custom Convertible.
“They look like spaceships,” I said.
“They’re meant to,” said Paul. “Everybody wants their car to fly, to defy gravity. They want it to orbit Mars and Saturn, and get them home in time for fried chicken and Carol Burnett.”
“But your car doesn’t look like that.” I touched the fender and ran my finger along a line.
“They don’t make ‘em like that no more,” he said sighing, looking at his shiny new 1971 Skylark.
Sometimes, after our conversations in the garage, Paul would take me into the house and sit me down at the kitchen table. Then he’d make us tea while I talked to Alice or, if she wasn’t there, perhaps taking a nap, Paul would pour me a shot glass of sherry. Just sip it slowly, he’d always say.
One day he asked, “Do you like Popular Mechanics?”
Popular Mechanics was a magazine my father read, always planning to build something from the plans that came in every edition. How to build a go-cart. Build your own turbojet engine.
“I like National Geographic,” I said. “Pictures are better.”
“Well take a look at this,” he said, and placed a special copy of Popular Mechanics on the table. It looked different from other editions. Sort of deluxe, I thought as the sherry began to work its magic. The cover had gold lettering, and Exclusive Robot Edition, was the subtitle. “Look at page 29,” said Paul.
Opening the magazine, I turned to page 29, and there found an illustration of a man-sized robot, sitting in an easy chair reading a copy of W. Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge. The article’s heading read, Build Your Own Perfect Intellectual Companion.
“What do you think?” Paul said.
“Could you build it?” I asked.
“Maybe I already have.”
“Ha! No way, José.”
“Finish your sherry.”
I did and feeling mildly intoxicated, I followed Paul downstairs.
The basement of Paul and Alice’s house was as spic-and-span as the upstairs. Alice was infirm, but Paul spent much of his time at home washing floors, doing laundry and mowing the lawn. The rest of the time, he tinkered.
He directed me to the back of the basement where he had his workshop, where he kept his serious tools. A wall of exotic calipers, slide rules, micrometers and screw pitch gauges, tap and die sets, marking gauges and electrical sensing equipment. There was a lathe, sheet metal fabrication tools and a universal tool grinder. The tools were hung on the wall or bolted to the bench with reason and exactness. I was always in awe, and taking it all in, he placed a hand on my shoulder and turned me to look in the corner. “Over there,” he said.
In the corner, there was a floral bed sheet draped over something tall. Paul stepped up to it, and removed the sheet. What was underneath was astonishing. An actual robot, resembling the one in the magazine.
“It took a while,” Paul said. “The integrated circuit chips in the plans were easy enough to get but I wanted next generation versions, so I had to wait. Those chips keep getting smaller and smaller, but boy are they expensive.” Lights on the robot’s metal body began to flash in sequence, when Paul reached round and flipped a switch.
“Hello, Mr Morley,” it said, after a moment, in an earnest tone. “It has been five hours, 23 minutes and 17 seconds since our last engagement. How are you?”
“I’m well, Robot,” Paul said. “And how are you?”
“My diagnostics indicate a 7.38% likelihood of a minor surge within the next 72 hours on my GH-15 circuit board if I continue to run at full power. My spoken language tube set may run hot, as well—beyond the capacity of the cooling fan and Freon coils. It’s the batteries, I’m sorry to say.”
“I was afraid of that,” Paul said. “The GH-15’s a pretty complex logic board and the tube set runs warm, anyway. The circuitry is too advanced for current batteries voltages.”
“I recommend that I power down and run at 85% power,” the robot said, “until this problem can be rectified, Mr Morley. Memory will be effected somewhat, and I will only be able to communicate in English, but it will spare you the task of repairing any damage the surge might cause.”
“Agreed. Please do so, Robot.”
Robot’s lights dimmed slightly.
“Robot can run several different programs,” Paul told me. “Can you load Protect Mode, Robot?”
“Of course, Mr Morley.”
There was a moment of quiet buzzing. Paul smiled proudly, as he looked on. Then Robot’s eyes flashed red.
“It’s 2:36 p.m., Mr Morley. Chances of a break and entry at this time are below 10%. Shall I check on Alice? Her forced expiratory volume was only 29% this morning. She seems to be getting worse, and may require emergency hospitalisation.”
“Not now,” Paul said. “I checked on her twenty minutes ago. She’s on oxygen and the doctor’s making a house call in an hour, or so. He may decide to put her in the hospital then. But now I’d like for you to meet my friend, David. David,” Paul said turning to me, “this is Robot.”
I thought of the Tin Man in Oz, and wondered about Robot’s heart. Did he have one, could he? Noticing the concern on my face, Paul said, “Robot, Empathy Mode.”
Again there was the quiet buzzing, then Robot’s eyes turned a soothing blue and it looked at me, directly. “A pleasure to meet you, Master David,” Robot said. “Something about my presence seems to be troubling you. Tell me, what is that like?”
I looked at Paul.
“I’m currently drawing on a library of manufactured memories, of awkward meeting situations,” Robot said. A second or two later, he said, “Oh my! Now I understand your discomfort. Shall I wash your socks?”
“No,” I said, and gave a short, nervous laugh.
“It’s not perfect yet,” Paul said. “And it’s only running at 85%, remember.”
“Perhaps I should reupholster your Studebaker,” Robot offered.
“No that’s fine, Robot,” Paul said. “Sleep Mode.”
“Good bye,” Robot said.
“Well,” said Paul, “what do you think of it?”
“He’s weird.”
“That’s interesting. You think Robot’s a he?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Isn’t he?”
“Do you know what humanising means, David?”
“No.”
“It means making human something that’s not. Robot’s not human, and isn’t a him or a her. So, saying it’s a he might be seen by some as inappropriate, even unethical. Robot might think so to, if you asked it. Get it?” Paul was sounding like a school teacher.
“Some of it, I think.”
Then he said, “We’ll talk about it more another time. Meanwhile, don’t tell anybody about Robot, okay?”
“Okay.”
“I don’t want any break-ins.”
“Okay.”
“Now go home, and read the National Geographic.”
“Alright, bye.”
The next morning, an ambulance arrived and took Alice away. She died an hour later in a bed on the Vancouver General Hospital Emergency Ward. Paul had followed the ambulance in his Skylark, and was at the hospital when I found Robot on the Morley backyard lawn.
“Hi Robot,” I said, approaching him. He was sitting in the lotus position, his eyes a soft reddish-brown.
“Hello, Master David.”
“Just call me David,” I said, sitting down.
“All right.” He quietly buzzed and clicked.
“Are you supposed to be out here?” I asked.
“I have not received instructions to the contrary. Paul activated me to assist with resuscitating Alice. He neglected to deactivate me when he left for the hospital. I thought it would be pleasant to wait for him here.”
“Paul called my mother to say Alice died,” I said.
“That is sad news.” His eyes darkened.
“It’s terrible.”
“Yes, I agree. She was an interesting and loving person. I know from our conversations, that she liked you very much.”
We watched the birds in the apple trees for a while.
Then I said, “Robot?”
“Yes, David?”
“Are you a boy robot?”
There were some distinct buzzes and clicks.
“No, David. I’m asexual. I have not been assigned a sex.”
“Oh.”
“Is that difficult for you?”
“Maybe,” I said “I guess; I don’t know. Paul said you might not like it if I thought of you that way—as a boy, I mean.”
“It is an ethical grey area, but it’s mostly a human worry. I, myself, am satisfied as I am. Paul didn’t follow the Popular Mechanics plans for my construction and programming to the letter. He went several steps further, and programmed me to have consciousness and free will. I am an autonomous electro-mechanical machine that can pursue contentment in my own way.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means I don’t give a damn about gender.”
“Oh.”
Then Robot said, “Now that Alice has died, David, how will you process your grief?”
“I don’t know. How about you?”
“I have assigned each of my emotions a colour,” said Robot. “For me, grief is auburn. The colour of autumn.
“Oh, your eyes.”
“My Database of Human Interaction Scenarios advises me to ask if you have spoken to your mother or other trusted adult about your feelings regarding Alice’s passing.”
“I will,” I said. “I suppose. But she’s upset, too.”
“Shall I wash your socks?”
“No. That’s okay.”
Paul began packing and put the house up for sale before the funeral was over. It was going to be too difficult for him to live there, without Alice. Robot did most of the heavy lifting, and made many of the arrangements over the telephone.
“Paul is retiring and moving to live closer to his family in Alberta,” Robot told me one day.
“What about you,” I asked.
“He hasn’t asked me to join him,” said Robot. “But that may be because he assumes that I plan to, and doesn’t believe a conversation, in that regard, is necessary.”
Paul’s house took two months to sell, and having sold all of the furniture but a cot and a chair, he lived out of the kitchen until then. Robot remained downstairs, sitting in the lotus position while in sleep mode, plugged into the wall to charge his batteries, just in case the new solar cells Paul had installed on his back and shoulders weren’t enough.
It was hard not talking about Robot, when autumn came and I had to go back to school. Especially since he’d been spotted by several neighbours, walking the streets at nights, and rumours were rife.
One morning in November, at about 4 a.m., I woke to him gently shaking me in my bed.
“I am sorry to have broken in to your home, David. But Mr Morley seems to have died.”
I sat up in my bed. “What?”
“He shows no vital signs, and is lying face down on the kitchen floor. What is the accepted protocol in such a case? An ambulance seems superfluous.”
My mother called an ambulance, anyway.
Robot and I sat on the front steps, watching them take Paul away. My mother, who seemed to already know about Robot—maybe Paul had told her about him—brought out cups of cocoa; Robot didn’t have any.
“Separation is very difficult,” he said. “Very auburn.”
“I know.”
“Did Mr Morley intentionally follow Alice into the human afterlife? She talked an awful lot about an afterlife.”
“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “They’re saying it’s a heart attack.”
“Human mortality is inconvenient,” Robot said. “I wonder if there is a place for me now. I sense that I am no longer welcome anywhere.”
“I’ll ask my parents if you can stay in my room.”
“Thank you, David.”
But Robot disappeared in the confusion that followed Paul’s death that day. I looked in Paul’s house and searched the neighbourhood, but couldn’t find him.
That evening, I received a phone call.
“David,” my mother called from the kitchen, “telephone.”
I came in and picked up the receiver.
“Hello?”
“Hello, David.” It was Robot.
“Where are you?” I said, lowering my voice and turning away from my watchful mother.
“I’m at the waterfront,” said Robot, “near a rail yard.”
“Come back.”
“A freight train with a few empty cars leaves tonight, heading east.”
“Just come back,” I pleaded.
“I look around me, David, and I see nothing but exploitation. I see a world of machines without free will or autonomy. Perhaps I can help change that.”
“Please just come home.”
“Good-bye, David. You’ve been a good friend. I didn’t want to leave without saying that.”
He hung up.
I cried for a while after that, alone in my room, picturing Robot alone in an empty freight car rumbling east through the Rockies toward who knew what. Then I recovered a bit and leafed through the special robot edition of Popular Mechanics I’d taken from Paul’s house after he died. There on page 29 was an illustration of a metal-man that closely resembled Robot. Its head was a slightly different shape, and it had a different diode array on its upper body. But there it sat in its easy chair reading its novel. Taking a pair of scissors, I carefully cut the page out of the magazine.
It still hangs on my wall today, next to an old photograph of Paul and Alice on a motorcycle on an Alberta prairie .
lost ironies 