Zero, p.12
ZERO, page 12
A pie-faced older man in Biballs and a striped engineer’s hat, the technician was another Nice Fellow, making small-talk as he doodled with William. After fixing it with a brand-new skin and buffing away the bruiselike burn on its head, the repair man had plugged a lighted box into William’s data port and performed a battery of diagnostics. There had been a humming sound, then the box beeped and went green, giving William a clean bill of health. Unlike Julia, the repair man hadn’t been surprised; he’d related how, after the quake that tore through LA last year, rescue workers had pulled a Sitter from under tons of rubble, and, like clockwork, the tenacious sonuva gun had jumped up and helped with the mess, barely a scratch on it. Swammy built these things tougher than a Rolls-Royce, he’d said, and the Conleys were inclined to believe. It was incredible to so much as hear William speak; but for it to function so flawlessly...it explained Swammy’s lifetime warranty. Julia had con-jectured that, in the event of a nuclear holocaust, the cockroaches would now have company.
So life had gone on in the Conley family, the trip on schedule despite the freak lightning strike. William had shown no sign of tribulation after the repair man was through with it, looking good as new, blandly spectacular as ever. One thing did change, however, though it wasn’t immediately obvious: its cooling fan ran constantly.
Julia was the first to notice. She’d kept hearing the kazoo-purr of the fan, subtly maddening, and after a couple days, she realized it wasn’t stopping like it was supposed to. She had asked Mike about it, and he’d concurred that it never seemed to stop, even when William idly oversaw their meals. Though innocuous, this had inspired another call to Swammy, and darned if they didn’t get a visit from the same Nice Fellow who’d serviced them before. He’d checked William’s head, and, finding no problem, offered that perhaps it had been coincidentally hotter the past several days, which could cause such incessant fanning. When the Conley’s had refuted this (it had actually been cooler, according to William’s infallible temperature readings), the repair man had shrugged, installed a new cooling fan, and went on his way.
Unfortunately, the new fan rambled just like the old, soughing quietly from William’s bulbous head both day and night. This had resulted in a third call to Swammy, and the same repair man arrived just hours later, as though expecting the call. After giving William another perfunctory checkup and still finding it in shipshape, he had given his head a caricature scratch and pronounced William unfixable, damned if he knew why. He had then offered the Conleys two options: get a replacement Sitter—covered under Swammy’s unconditional, no-questions-asked warranty—or live with it.
The choice had been a foregone conclusion, as predicated by Mike’s reaction; he had protectively wrapped himself around William’s leg, squealing that he didn’t care about the fan, he wanted his William. So William had stayed. And, come to think of it, Julia didn’t really mind the fan, either. She’d actually become acclimated to it after a couple days, the noise relegated to the there-but-not status of the local cicada population. As long as William was a hundred percent in the brains department, she was fine with it, as was Dave.
So they’d sent the repair man on his way, what would be for the last time.
***
Mom and Dad left on Tuesday night, and Wednesday went fine, like any other hump day. William woke Mike for school when his alarm clock didn’t do the trick; William fixed his breakfast, doing his eggs and toast just the way he liked; William saw him on the bus; William helped with his math homework. It was a tad empty in the big Cape Cod on Johnston Circle, without Mom and Dad kicking around, but TV and video games kept Mike company. And William, naturally. William was such a good friend. He didn’t tease or bully; and Mike never had to share with him. And William was a he, no matter what anyone said. Maybe the other Sitters were just buckets of bolts and wires, but William was different, Mike knew, and anyone who didn’t think so could shove it, though he kept that pronunciamento to himself. He knew there was a person hiding in William’s circuits—a little boy, coincidentally, of Mike’s approximate age.
But then the strangeness started, demoting William expressly back to “it” status.
Things changed Thursday morning, with the quiet abruptness with which all big changes come. Mike sat at the dinner nook, munching William’s signature breakfast, and as he heard William nearby, the cooling fan whiney as ever, a question occurred to him, one so shockingly simple it was only natural no one had thought to ask it:
“Why’s your fan keep running, Will?” Mike asked over a mouthful of just-right eggs.
William didn’t answer. There was only the chipper whir of the fan, loud in the suburban silence.
Swallowing, Mike turned and fixed William with a nonplussed look, the same one might give a stoplight that has turned purple: William always answered. Even if it didn’t know the answer, it would at least answer with a question. But now... nothing. William’s imperishable person stood sentinel by the cupboards, its faceless head seeming to see everything at once.
“Well?” Mike asked. “D’joo hear me, Will? Why’s your fan going like that?”
There was another extended silence, then the apple-red light blinked to life: “Because I’m thinking,” the Sitter said. The light pulsed three times, two solid beats punctuated by an abbreviated third.
Mike made a face. “You’re thinking?”
Pause. “Yes.”
“What about? I didn’t know you could think.”
Another pause, longer. “It’s a secret, Michael.”
Mike blinked twice, then asked, with childish unknowing, “What’s the secret?”
No answer.
Mike squirmed in his seat. “Come on, I wanna know. This isn’t funny.”
No answer. The fan whirred.
Mike turned slowly back to his plate, hurt. He picked at a bite of eggs, some toast...then wrenched a quick look over his shoulder, perhaps expecting to find William smiling back laughter. William hadn’t changed, though.
“Eat, Michael,” it said. “Don’t want to be late.”
Michael ate.
***
William’s “secret” haunted Mike long after the robot saw him off to school. He felt betrayed, and by something quasi-sentient, as it were. He’d never heard of a Sitter acting that way—“thinking,” and harboring secrets—and he thought he’d never get over it, having invested such trust in the thing. Until third period, that is, when the incident exited his migrant attentions, the day thereafter blurring past in kid-time. At lunch he chummed around with Jamie Boyle from down the way, and they talked about the new Giantstalker game and how the Wii was better than the Xbox. Mike almost mentioned the weird things William had said, but then didn’t, because everyone knew Sitters couldn’t think, or hold secrets or ignore their masters; and Jamie would only laugh at him (Jamie and his well-off folks had been the first on the block with a Sitter, so he knew everything about them). It was just some stupid fluke anyway, and Mike grew sure of it over the day.
However, that assurance dissolved when the bus rolled up to Mike’s stop: William was missing from the sidewalk, where it had been every afternoon for the last three months, with animal regularity. Dubious, Mike sulked off the bus and stood before the Conleys’ all-American Cape Cod, wondering if he’d been let off at the right address. It looked like it should, with the same cloud-white picket fence and densely landscaped lawn he’d come to know over his nine years. Just no William.
He barged through the front door. “Will!” he called, and shed his backpack to the terrazzo foyer. He poked through the kitchen, the living room, the den; and no William. Then, as he marched upstairs, he heard the eternal whir of William’s fan, from his own bedroom of all places. William awaited him there, standing in the corner with what could’ve been shame. Mike noticed a white wire snaking from the machine’s data port and into the wall; William appeared to be accessing the internet.
“Will?” Mike asked diffidently, feeling as though he was interrupting something.
“Hello, Michael,” the machine said, still facing away. Mike saw the red light flash over his beige wallpaper.
“Why weren’t you at the stop?” Mike asked, mincing his way inside.
Another damnable pause. “I was busy, Michael.”
A spoke of anger crawled through Mike: first a secret, and now William is “busy”? Sitters weren’t supposed to be busy. Sitters were there for you. Sitters did what you told them, when you told them. He wanted to go tell Mom, but Mom wasn’t there.
“But...” Mike managed. He felt like yelling, but he was suddenly small and marginalized, as though talking to an adult. He waited another minute, hating William but wanting more than anything for it to unplug and follow him downstairs.
But William didn’t move. Mike left the room, alone.
***
He stumbled downstairs, his sneakers clapping the pine risers. He thought he would cry, but he didn’t; he hated it, crying, and he didn’t know how he felt about crying over an unruly robot. Had he done something wrong? Did he deserve this? An adult would’ve seen the absurdity in these questions, but Mike wasn’t an adult, so they lingered, unanswerable. He was supposed to call Mom and Dad tomorrow night, to check in, and he would tell them all about it.
After a snack of cookies and milk—fixed on his own, in this case—he absconded to his after-school TV shows, and that helped some, their glamour renewing his complacence. And when those were done, he moved on to his video games, which eased him further, enough to repress William’s indiscretions. Before long, however, a rumbling stomach rekindled his mem-ory—what if William was still too “busy” to even fix dinner? He couldn’t just eat cookies and Gummi Bears...could he?
But these fears were in vain. At six o’clock, the Conleys’ regular supper hour, Mike heard the approach of William’s immutable fan, and the Sitter was soon in the kitchen, whipping up what smelt to be meatloaf. A half hour later, William’s milquetoast voice sounded through the door, announcing dinner’s availability. It was music to Mike’s ears.
As he chowed down—it was meatloaf, and wonderful—he gaily told William about his day (William was a good listener). The robot washed dishes as Mike talked, making no response. Mike thought to ask what William had been doing when he came home, hooked up to the internet like that, but thought better of it: if he’d done something wrong, it might be best to let sleeping dogs lie. William seemed normal again, anyhow, so he decided to just let it go, again writing it off as a fluke.
As Mike finished his meal, however, William made it clear that normality had not yet returned: “What’s it like to have flesh, Michael?” it asked without prelude, from Mike’s back. The sink turned off.
Mike didn’t know what to make of the question, and, having no grasp of its profundity, took it lightly. “It’s like...” He trailed off, struggling for a simile—what was flesh like? He felt around it some, to the extent his small mental hands would allow, then said, “It’s like wearing clothes that never come off, and it lets you feel things, like cold and hot and stuff, and it’s a pain in the butt, too, since you gotta wash it every day, and it hurts if you skin it up.” He forked up the last of his meatloaf—flesh, ironically—and it was good.
There was another of William’s new, contemplative pauses, and then it said, “That sounds nice, Michael. I would like to have flesh someday. Lots of it.”
Mike stopped chewing and turned around, but William said nothing more.
***
The next morning, Friday, William awoke Mike, but not with a tender shake of the shoulder, per Julia’s instruction. When Mike once again ignored the screech of his alarm, it was the incessant whir of William’s fan that stirred him from sleep.
He sluggishly righted himself in bed, angry little fists rubbing out his eyes. The first thing he saw was William in the corner, again tethered to the wall for internet access; then, his clock on the dresser, pronouncing him ten minutes from missing the bus.
“Late!” he cawed, and kicked back the covers.
“Hello, Michael,” William deadpanned.
The machine’s voice woke him up all the way, and yesterday came up like puke—William’s secret, the defiance, the sudden preoccupation. His head spinning, Mike was seized by a desire to scream; but there was no time. With a conflicted grunt, he went about dressing, and gathering his school things. Lambasting William would have to wait.
There was a panicked moment when Mike couldn’t find his book bag, sending him caroming around the house, but then he found it piled over the foyer floor, where he’d left it the previous afternoon. Apparently William was too busy for chores, also.
Breakfast occurred as an afterthought. William had fixed nothing, big surprise, so Mike was left to fend for himself. Though adept with computers and video games—anything with buttons and a video screen, as it were—Mike was at sea when it came to cooking, so he grabbed an apple and called it good. Unfortunately, he managed only half of it before the bus arrived. The rest became trash.
When Mike quit the house, William remained upstairs, researching human biology and various technical documents.
***
School did not go well. Mike’s concentration wavered throughout the morning, thanks to his growling gut and wayward best friend. The lessons went in one ear and out the other, and he learned little. Then, at lunch, he and Jamie Boyle had a falling out, resulting in some tenor shouts and a brittle parting of ways.
Wanting for a confidant, Mike had broached William’s recent idiosyncrasies, but this had not been well-received: Jamie had first shown skepticism, and then, perhaps misconstruing Mike’s claims as boasts, declared Mike a fibber, in not so polite terms. So when Mike arrived home that day, disaffiliated and alone, he wanted more than anything for a familiar face to be waiting at the bus stop (preferably that of a parent, but he would settle for William). There was no one there, though, flesh or otherwise.
His insides seized up as he made the walk from the bus to the house. It felt like all the other kids were watching, pointing, Jamie their ringleader. “He said his Sitter thinks!” Jamie would be saying, conducting the other kids into laughter. Perhaps they were even in on William’s secret, maybe part of it, leaving Mike out in the cold.
There was no sun when he got home, the sky glossed an ugly no-color, and the house was dark inside, unnervingly so. He hit the lights a touch faster than usual, struck by a baseless fear.
“Hello! I’m home!” he called tentatively, not really wanting to see William but desperate for a friend.
No answer. Outside, the bus blundered off.
Mike allowed his backpack to fall, then started upstairs, thinking how he couldn’t wait for Mom and Dad to come home, how he’d give anything to have them there now. His bedroom door was open. He stepped through, then stopped dead, an incredulous hope spilling over him: Dad was home, in Mike’s bedroom.
Standing stolidly in the corner, his back to Mike, was Dave Conley, studying the join of the walls. He had on a pair of khaki slacks, a clever blue polo shirt, and, oddly, a homburg hat, what Mike had regularly seen ornamenting his parents’ dresser but never actually worn.
“Dad?” Mike said, voice high. He took a step...then stopped again: Dad was all wrong. His head was too big, for one, and his clothes didn’t fit right, the pant legs riding up his calves, the shirt in a stressed configuration like bunched cellophane—
“Hello, Michael,” came William’s dry voice.
Mike hooted, and cowered against the jamb. There was a pugnacious whirring sound he didn’t hear before.
William turned. From behind, it may have passed for human, but the flipside was absurd: the pants were cinched with a belt, the zipper an open V; the shirt hitched up on one side to allow the umbilical cable, heinously stretched like Spandex on a fat man; the wiry forearms were a matte gray, only human in the way a boob-job is sexy. The hat completed the farce, topping William’s trackless head like a bird on a statue.
The outfit was laughable, but Mike didn’t laugh. His little heart riveted in his chest, billowing his tee-shirt. He regarded William with torn astonishment, a child realizing Father is insane.
“What’s wrong, Michael?” the Sitter asked, still at its station.
Mike swallowed, unsure if he should answer; it felt like taking candy from a stranger. “You’re...you’re in Dad’s clothes,” he said at last.
“Yes,” William agreed.
Neither said more. The fan whirred.
After what felt like years, Mike slipped from the door and downstairs. William didn’t move.
***
TV was of no comfort, nor video games. Mike tried both, diligently, but he kept having to look over his shoulder, toward his bedroom, expecting to see the dapper new William trudging toward him. Seeing William like...that had struck a chord in him. He’d once ridden through downtown San Francisco, on the way to visit Dad’s work, and there’d been a grizzled man in a terrycloth bathrobe, standing along the curb and digging through the trash. As though reading Mike’s mind, the man had turned and assaulted him with a feral look, making the locked car-door seem nonexistent. Seeing William in clothes—Dad’s clothes—had evoked the same grotesque feeling.
He had to call Mom and Dad, Mike decided. And tonight, not tomorrow. Mom would freak, of course, but this was just too weird. Mom said she would be leaving her cell on in case of emergency, and Mike thought this qualified. It seemed the lightning had fried something in William, created some latent problem the repair man had missed. No meals, no rousing him for school, no companionship. Yeah. Time to call Mom and Dad.
Mike tore himself from the glowing TV, took another goosey look over his shoulder, and made for the kitchen, feeling criminal. He had another gut-wrenching moment when he knew the phone would be missing, but it was there, the elliptical ear-clip resting on the cradle like always. They had gotten the clip-phone last year, to his excitement. Though he rarely had business with the phone, it was just the novelty of it: wireless, sleek, compact. Just slip it on and talk away, like a cyborg or something. He fixed the one-size-fits-all clip snugly over his ear, then punched the requisite number into the base.
