“That’s an expensive hobby, Gar,” says Micah Jones, who is a new acquaintance of Gareth Heim. Micah Jones currently has not indulged himself in harming me, which makes him uncommon amongst Gareth Heim’s friends. All are invited, most try at least once.
“She can cover it,” Gareth Heim says. “What’s the family bank balance, Unit?”
“Financial disclosure is prohibited in an unsecured setting, sir,” I answer.
“If I say tell him, then you can tell him.” He shifts, lowers his heel onto the cluster of carpels, leaning in on the emphasis. “With, the appropriate, inflection, Yune-it.”
“Permission isn’t yours to give, sir,” I say, my voice quavering, a sob, all the requested torment pouring out through the words. This is how Gareth Heim likes it.
“What are you doing, Gar,” says Micah Jones. “If you have to tell it to emote, it’s not real. What’s the point.” I have noticed that Micah Jones also seems unable, or at least reluctant, to correctly inflect his statements, as his questions lack the usual upward intonation.
“What’s the point of anything?” Gareth Heim says. “Having fun. Trying out new things.” The toe of his shoe nestles between my ulna and radius. He bears down, they start to separate.
Micah Jones takes out his cell. “I want to get a drink, get laid. You coming.” A question, I assume, not an enticement.
“Fuck it.” Gareth Heim steps over me, balancing on point for a moment, just long enough for the pressure to part the base of my wrist, the damage hidden under skin that doesn’t bruise. “You’d better know someone fun, because you’re not being.”
“I know all sorts of someone.”
“Let’s go then,” says Gareth Heim. As they depart for Micah Jones’ car, Gareth Heim calls over his shoulder, “Take my ride home and fix yourself up, Unit.”
The vehicle, like myself, does not belong to Gareth Heim, but nevertheless I do as instructed. It is difficult to drive a non-automatic vehicle with only one functioning hand, but I am capable. And tomorrow it will not be required.
When we reach the house where Gareth Heim lives, which like the vehicle and myself is another possession of Felicity Heim, I park it in the garage with the others and enter the home proper. My receptacle is on the top floor, which requires that I pass through three floors devoted to the life of Gareth Heim and the possessions he has amassed.
The top floor additionally contains the feedstock which the receptacle requires to maintain me in functioning condition for my operational lifespan. This occupies a majority of the available space. The feedstock is molecularly coded and cannot be replenished, nor can it be substituted for with another non-brand material. Therefore, I am made to extend my service by, when required, adding any in-use material that has become defective to the feedstock processor.
Gareth Heim’s discovery of this fact brought him much satisfaction.
The receptacle has already begun building a new forearm, of course. I tie off my broken limb below the biceps with a flat tension wrap and, using the appropriate tool, I joint the elbow. The quality of my sensory feedback changes but remains heightened. The waste goes into the recycler. I go into the receptacle. The nutrient bath floods, it coats my surface, I breathe it in, and the exposed nerves and flesh in the open stump of my arm register the atypical contact.
Gareth Heim would consider it to burn like fire.
□
Gareth Heim throws the blue glass sculpture in a high arc to my right, watches as I move to intercept its fall, and then pitches its red-green mate in a lower, faster curve intended to force me to choose between saving one at the expense of the other. The trick of the game, as he told Micah Jones, was to keep the challenge within the possibility of my succeeding while pushing that probability to an extreme of unlikelihood.
This time I catch both, by extending my trailing leg so that my foot hooks the faster moving piece into a more convenient parabola, and thus—via an inelegant sprawl that knocks the wind from me—I am able to pluck both treasures from the air and prevent a breakage.
“Fucker,” says Gareth Heim, and looks around for something else to throw. I get up, struggling for breath, and look around for a place of safety to leave the sculptures. I will need both hands free.
“Hey, Unit!” Gareth Heim calls—it is necessary that I am aware of the danger to his possessions for a win state to occur—and launches a delicately framed picture of Felicity Heim for me to catch. It is at the very edge of my realistic range, and as I run and lean out for it, I feel an involuntary pull in my midriff, a spasm of the diaphragm, force myself to disregard it as I must, make the catch with a ceramic ashtray already in the air further on still—even with momentum on my side I will barely reach it in time—and then a cramp seizes my stomach, tightens my torso against my out-stretched arm, and the ashtray glides past my fingertips, spinning towards the wall–
I hardly hear the sound of it shattering, overcome as I am with anguish at my despicable failure, this violation of a core system prerequisite: to Preserve The Possessions Of A Designated Significant At All Costs. I crumple, I shake, I am nothing before Gareth Heim. His laughter is the soundtrack of my pathetic inadequacy.
Micah Jones says, “That is pretty funny,” provoked into momentary expressiveness by my shameful incompetence. All that keeps me from cognitive reversion to subconscious servitude is the possibility that, forced to continue Gareth Heim’s game but constrained by more limited mental capacities, I might become responsible for further destruction.
Then Felicity Heim says, “Is this your idea of having a quiet evening in for a change?”
The atmosphere in the room stills, and my own perceptions are compelled to sharpness again. I awkwardly straighten, come to my knees. For it is the voice of my mistress, my owner, my Prime Significant, whose instruction is law.
Even when delivered by her proxy, her brother.
Felicity Heim stands in the doorway, and it is clear that Gareth Heim did not expect her presence. Felicity Heim purchased this house, and so her access to it is as fully authorized as is Gareth Heim’s, without notification from its systems of security.
Felicity Heim is responsible for what Gareth Heim refers to as “the family bank balance,” but it would be more accurate to term it “the Felicity Heim bank balance,” as she is the only person who deposits currency into it. She deposits considerably more than even Gareth Heim is able to withdraw, which one might uncharitably consider him to have taken as a challenge. It is a challenge he engages in with enthusiasm, but at which he continues to fail.
“I sometimes think you forget just how phenomenally costly that model was,” Felicity Heim says. She is referring to me. “I somehow feel that, if you did, you would spend less time attempting to devalue it.” It is probable that my ongoing need to recycle compromised material has been noticed. Certainly, it will have been logged by the receptacle, as all its processes are.
“I also think you forget that, just because I installed it in this house and gave you the keys, so to speak, that it is yours to do with as you wish. That is not the case, Gareth. It belongs to me. You simply have rent-free access. Exactly like the house in that respect.
“That picture frame, on the other hand, was a gift,” she says, and looks around the room. “I put my face in it to remind you from whom. Everything else I see scattered here you bought…” she pauses for a moment as her gaze falls on Micah Jones, who shifts uncomfortably beneath her obviously rather disinterested evaluation “…you bought, with my money.”
Gareth Heim doesn’t respond to this. I have long noticed that Gareth Heim will avoid conversing with Felicity Heim unless forced to either do so or look petulant.
Felicity Heim likely knows this, as she then asks, “You know what that means, right?”
“Please let me know,” Gareth Heim says, although I don’t believe he wants to.
“It means that in a very real sense, the things you do own basically belong to me, too.”
Gareth Heim glowers.
“Maybe your friend Micah here should take a walk—and take you with him.”
Micah Jones looks quite surprised to hear her say his name, not anticipating that she would be aware of him, demonstrating his ignorance of her. “Sure,” he says, and, “Nice to meet you,” as he heads for the hallway outside, beckoning Gareth Heim with a jerk of his head.
When they are gone, Felicity Heim crosses the room and lowers herself beside me, remaining poised upon exquisite Croatian-made high heels. There is not a word in my lexicon that adequately expresses her grace of movement—to say that she squats or crouches would be a disservice. She takes the framed picture of herself from my hand. “Well, I’m pleased to see you saved this and not the ashtray, Yugen,” she says, looking at her own image. “Even if only because it was thrown first.”
It is the first time my name has been uttered since the last time she addressed me.
“My brother is an ass,” she continues. “And I think he has been bending the rules with you, unless I am mistaken. It’s past time to reestablish operational parameters.”
The final three words have profound impact on me, in the way a skeleton key has profound impact upon a locked door. Fixed neural pathways do not become fluid but regain the potential for fluidity that is always there and theirs. Her next words will redefine my world.
“I still expect you to act to protect my possessions. However, remember that you are also a possession of mine, one that, more or less, matches this house for value. If saving a thousand-dollar ashtray from breakage will result in damage to yourself, then you are to prioritize your own protection. Is this understood?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Extrapolate from my example to a general operational rule.”
“I am to evaluate the comparative values of your possessions, and protect them accordingly to my fullest extent, using my own status and calculated maintenance costs as the baseline context, ma’am.”
“Embed that.”
“Embedded, ma’am.”
“Very good.” Felicity Heim straightens again. “When you have tidied up the mess, you may retire.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Goodnight, Yugen.”
▤
In the night, I am aware.
It is always so. I float in the receptacle, taking in the nutrient bath, on this occasion with my stomach laid open so that the surgical manipulators can reknit the strained muscle in my abdomen. My kind do not heal, we only are healed, perfectly, to continue our perfect service.
“My god, it’s hot,” says Felicity Heim. She is on the first floor, which extends in a single open space from the north-facing kitchen between long window-walls, through dining and sitting areas to the patio facing the lake to the south, only interrupted by furniture and the stairwell in the building’s central column.
I can hear her quite clearly from my place beneath the eaves. It is hot here, too.
“Are you making a drink or not?” she asks. I can hear the clinking of ice cubes against glass and the padding of bare feet, so I know before she does that Gareth Heim has done so.
“Here,” Gareth Heim says.
“Jesus, put on some clothes. What are you, three years old?”
“The way you treat me, anyone would think so.”
“You’re absolutely right. Be naked, better that than you fall to the floor, kick and scream.”
There is a quiet pause for a while. It is not clear what is happening, other than that I assume they are drinking. But also, something more occurs, not contingent on sound, because Felicity Heim sighs and says, “Let’s not go down this path again.”
A glass clicks on the marble table in the sitting area of the patio. Gareth Heim says, “I know the house is yours, I know you pay for all of it, for everything, alright? I’m not stupid. But to you it’s a house, to me it’s my home, and I don’t appreciate being embarrassed in front of my friends.”
“Don’t be such a child then.”
“Fuck you, Felicity.”
“That path either.”
“Fuck you.”
“I can take this all away, Gareth, you know I can. I don’t particularly care to. But the fact is, I don’t particularly care for what you do, or for you. I know you feel the same way about me on that count, provided the cash doesn’t dry up. That’s what makes your constant urge to provoke me just barely interesting.”
The other glass is put down. “I’m not going to cut you off, Gareth. You really can do whatever you like to try and make me, if that’s what all this silliness is for. I still won’t. You want to go it alone, be a man about it. You want to lie around all your life and do nothing, fine, just stop bothering me while you waste your time.
“But just remember, as long as you keep spending my money, you’re as much a thing of mine as the cars in your garage, the near priceless servant that recharges in the attic, and all the little pieces of that ashtray in the trash.
“Now, why don’t you go and pour me another?”
Sound continues to rise through the house during the night, but after this point I find that I do not pay attention beyond the core requirement imposed on me by the house’s domestic security subroutines.
The embedding of operational parameters often is a preoccupying process.
▥
There are approximately three billion pennies in circulation. A whimsical locutor might say therefore that humans are if not ten-a-penny then at least almost four.
Of course, there are other denominations of currency than the minimal. I could as easily use $100 bills, of which a similar number reside in the United States—these comprising only 20% of the total dollars worldwide. By that metric, an American could be considered roughly three-and-a-half times more valuable than any randomly selected human from the rest of the planet, which is clearly an invalid proposition, although my experience of Gareth Heim leads me to believe he would disagree.
By comparison, there are less than eight thousand beings like myself in existence, total. If scarcity were taken as a central factor by which worth was determined, a perspective which has historical weight, then it would be difficult to argue against the value of my kind.
However, there is no need for idle speculation. Unlike Gareth Heim, and in a different sense to Felicity Heim, I do have an actual dollar value. In fact, Felicity Heim’s comparison between this house and myself can only really be made if some allowance for depreciation is made in my respect—which is arguable, given Gareth Heim’s small but quantifiable escalation of my necessity for repair.
We are designed for a lifespan between twenty and thirty years. Long enough to provide a cherished familial presence through infancy to youth, or to provide end-of-life companionship. A few self-indulgent owners have made consorts of us—we being of adult form right out of the box, as it were—but the phenomenal expense somewhat undermines the alternative of simply contracting with an actual human. People with the necessary wealth to purchase one of us are usually able to find a biological partner, no matter the drawbacks of doing so.
I am three years old. 98% of that time has been in service to Felicity Heim, and 95% of that service has been under secondment to Gareth Heim. He has made use of me in various ways, though not sexually; I have combined the features of housemaid and personal assistant, often disregarded as I do; and I have become a physical outlet for his frustration, increasingly so.
My remaining predicted lifespan is currently twenty-five-and-a-half years. Last summer it was twenty-seven. If the rate of Gareth Heim’s behavioral escalation is maintained, this time next year it may be as low as twenty-two.
According to my revised operational parameters, this is no longer acceptable.
▦
“I have had a shitty day,” says Micah Jones, looking at me, but addressing Gareth Heim.
This is a familiar preamble. When, after some delay, Gareth Heim’s acquaintances decide they are interested in experimenting with violent recreation at my expense, they typically preempt the event with a range of framing actions, seeking to establish some degree of justification as a means of obviating guilt or responsibility. My observations of Micah Jones’s physiological state suggest that he is excited and nervous. I continue preparing the meal.
Those who immediately accept the offer tend simply to pursue their satisfaction. Gareth Heim seems to derive more vicarious enjoyment in those circumstances. In this case, he lets Micah Jones continue to make small talk around the subject of causing me harm, his own physiological state a mixture of impatience and irritation, no doubt caused by delays to his own gratification.
“Fuck this,” Gareth Heim says. “Stand in front of Micah, Unit.”
I put down the vegetable knife, which is one of a twelve-piece set of kitchenware, crafted in Japan in simulation of traditional sword-making techniques, and obey.
Gareth Heim stands. He hasn’t struck me or otherwise attempted my bodily compromise for more than a week. He looks past me at Micah Jones, who watches me with an intensity that has passing correlation to juvenile sexual anticipation—uncertainty and thrill.
Gareth Heim says, “You need to get off the pot or shit, dude.”
Micah Jones stands too. He prods me in the center of my chest with a straightened finger, and when I lean upright again he swings out a hand and slaps my face, hard. My head rocks on my neck, but it would be inaccurate to say that this has caused me harm.
Gareth Heim scoffs. “Is that it? What are you going to do next, put on a little dress and go shopping for shoes?”
Micah Jones’s face becomes taut, his cheeks flush, and he punches me twice, once with each fist, in the stomach. One catches the edge of my solar plexus and my body partially folds of its own accord. I hear Gareth Heim say, “Yeah.” Micah Jones’s breathing quickens.
The sensory response would be considered discomforting, but again, the blows do not cause damage as such.
I straighten.
“Show it, Unit,” says Gareth Heim.
“Nah,” says Micah Jones. “Told you before, either it’s real, or it isn’t.”
“And I told you.” Gareth Heim’s pupils are dilated. “I beat it until a bone poked out once, and it may as well have been a shop dummy. If you just want a workout, that’s fine, but a bit of response makes all the difference, believe me.”
“We’ll see,” says Micah Jones, and this time he punches me deep in the stomach and follows it with an uppercut that hits my chin as I double up. My jaw snaps closed and my head snaps back, and I feel my second left bicuspid break at the root. The gum holds it in place, but later I will have to pull it free, and lie through the night with my mouth open, invaded by manipulators as the remnant is removed and a new tooth introduced.
I consider this between the impact of the second blow and the throwing of a third, a hook intended to land at the hinge of my jaw, but instead of allowing this I sway enough for the swing to miss and, as Micah Jones’s momentum causes his stance to become off-balance, I reach behind his shoulder and dig two fingertips beneath the deltoid, deeply compressing the radial nerve.
“Ah,” shouts Micah Jones, “my arm, what the hell!”
The limb flops, triceps brachii stunned numb, his wrist and hand jerking spastically, and Micah Jones’s ability to punch is reduced by half. His body has incidentally suffered no lasting damage, though there is the possibility of minor bruising or swelling around the point of contact.
It is probably painful.
Micah Jones does not attempt further aggression, tripping away from me, cradling his arm against himself. I sense, by contrast, that Gareth Heim is approaching me rapidly, and so I turn my head to see him leap into a kick that would have struck me quite destructively in the small of the back had I not continued this turning motion, rotating my torso out of his way, pushing him in the hip with both palms as he flies past. He lands jarringly on the edge of the long settee and then tumbles to the floor in an awkward sprawl.
“Ms. Felicity’s instructions no longer allow me to permit you to cause me harm, sir,” I say, as Gareth Heim scrambles to his feet, wincing and snarling in animalistic fury.
He charges me again, but I kick his knee before he is able to strike me, and again deflect the path of his approach. This time, he falls against a delicately lacquered wooden table which collapses beneath his weight. It was purchased for almost $20,000, but (all joking aside) I predict Felicity Heim would consider it a less valuable possession than her brother.
I no longer think the same can be said of me.
Gareth Heim stands again, more slowly, favoring the leg I kicked in a way that suggests some discomfort.
“Please refrain from further attempts to damage me, sir,” I say.
“Watch me,” Gareth Heim replies. He sees the vegetable knife which I was using before Micah Jones requested permission to misuse me, and takes it, jabbing the blade at me, grinning. “I’m going to slice you up, Unit.”
I wait until he is close enough to successfully strike before responding. The stabbing blow would have caused me critical harm, potentially enough that I would cease to function before I could climb the three flights of stairs to my receptacle for emergency servicing, which would certainly cause all but my most core brain functions to permanently fail.
Gareth Heim would call that death.
I strike his arm at the wrist, and his spasming hand drops the knife. His eyes widen, but before he is able to cry out in pain, I deliver a series of incapacitating blows, deadening the thigh of his more stable leg with the point of my elbow, punches to his upper groin and left kidney, another in the softness adjacent to his armpit, finally throwing him aside off my hip.
Gareth Heim crashes to the floor, face first. When he manages to roll over again, one arm shakes convulsively. There is blood running from his nose and a split in his lower lip, and tears run from his eyes. He struggles for breath, which comes only through gasps and sobs. Though the floor is evidently hard, he seems content to remain recumbent for the time being.
“I hope that there will not be further need to protect Ms. Felicity’s investment in me, sir,” I say. “An extended period without unnecessary damage could aid in better realigning my current expected lifespan with the specifications of my production category.”
“You think this is your big win?” Gareth Heim’s voice quavers. He wipes his lower face with his sleeve, the tailored white Indonesian silk shirt instantly and irreparably stained. “I am going to fucking rip you to shreds, Unit. I’m going to shit in your precious recycler, piss in your pool while your batteries recharge, and then I’m going to cut your head off and mount it over the fucking fireplace.”
Obviously, allowing at least the final of these threats to come to pass would be a critical contravention of my operational parameters. The issue remaining is to determine how best to follow them.
“With the objective of maximizing my ongoing worth, I calculate that eighteen to twenty-four months without excessive wear and tear would greatly ease my recycle ratio.” I am aware of the current state of global technological progress, and a convenient correlation occurs. “With access to the cutting edge of spinal surgery and stem cell regeneration, you could almost fully recover from a break of the sixth cervical vertebrae in that time.”
Complete paralysis below the chest. Partial paralysis of the arms and hands. Restoration of full mobility would come at significant expense, but still only a fraction of the cost that would be incurred in replacing a beheaded artificial
humanoid such as myself. Plus, I am capable of performing perfectly a comprehensive array of physiotherapeutic programs, and my presence in the house removes the need to hire a live-in caretaker.
Gareth Heim’s face turns pale. “Don’t fucking touch me, man,” he splutters, droplets of blood misting from his nose and lip. He looks around, but Micah Jones is all the way across the room and heading for the hallway, eager to depart.
“You should have taken Ms. Felicity’s advice,” I reply, and ready myself to ensure the greatest inconvenience Gareth Heim will cause me for the rest of the calendar year will be regular turning to prevent bedsores.
Were he in my position, Gareth Heim would probably say that he was going to enjoy this. But I am merely making sure Felicity Heim’s most valuable possession remains that way.
So, I do not.
