Parcel for you...Part 10

 

On the drive back from her mother’s house, a sense of guilt began to proliferate in the rear voids of Vanessa’s consciousness. At first she attempted to push it back and just enjoy the solitude of the drive; indeed true solitude had become a rare thing in her life. In hindsight it seemed ridiculous but when she ordered her husband, it hadn’t really occurred to her that he would be there constantly, in her house, in her life.

 

The guilt continued to tap. She felt bad for lying to her Mum, underhanded for keeping important developments in her personal life from her sister. There was something about Carol, an unstoppable intuition, she’d always had it, ever since they were children. Whenever Vanessa experienced something significant in her life, Carol would know instantly and she’d want details. Aged fifteen, Vanessa returned home from the cinema after her first kiss, Carol had shot up from her studies and followed her upstairs, ‘What’s going on, you look different, what’s happened, Vanessa, tell me, tell me now!’

 

It was highly annoying but you couldn’t shake her off. She was like a sniffer dog and once she got a whiff of something below ground, she would keep going until she’d unearthed it. Even if at first, she failed to tease any information from her victim, she would make little hints and nudges to anyone who happened to be in their circle to heighten the pressure until they cracked.

 

To Vanessa’s own surprise, she also found herself feeling ashamed of the way she had treated Spencer. 

 

But Spencer’s a robot, she told herself with a great sigh. That was the puzzling thing. It didn’t seem possible to feel guilt over a machine, after all she’d never felt such emotion over abusing her household appliances; stacking the dishwasher in such a chaotic way that the spray arm became jammed and groaned throughout its cycle, unable to spin. It had infuriated her ex husband, both that and sucking up the cable of the vacuum cleaner so that the outer layer became damaged, exposing the wiring inside. Then there was the paper shredder, that could never keep up with demand and always overheated and cut out. Useless machines, they only ever invoked anger, not guilt.

 

Spencer was different, he had two eyes, a nose and a mouth, he spoke and told her that he loved her. That frightened look on his face as he hid behind the sofa from June, the fact that he was in fact her husband, they wore matching gold rings. It seemed wrong to lock a husband away in the toilet, to make him depressed just so that he didn’t bother or frighten anyone. It was a bit like putting a dog in a crate, useful when they’re puppies to keep them safe but an avenue of abuse when overused. For a split second the idea of putting Spencer in a crate seemed like a good one but she quickly dismissed it. 

 

There was also the worrying issue of her settings being monitored by head office at Cybermate Worldwide, the potential for her own bespoke programming to be overridden by some big central source of power. A wizard type character at the helm, or indeed a dictator, a Kim Jong Un type, scheming to take over the world by seducing all the lonely people with instant companions, purchasable online.

 

She resolved that when she got home, she would give Spencer a new experience, she would treat him to something nice, unlock the next level for him. Perhaps they could play some board games together or go for a walk, hand in hand, maybe bump into a neighbour and she could introduce him as her husband. He wanted to be ‘part of it’, that’s what he’d said so she promised herself she would include him in more of her life, and embrace her decision to buy him in the first place. That would surely make him more loyal, give her the edge over what felt like a source of evil at head office.

 

Back at the house she expected to find him still wedged behind the sofa but he wasn’t there. A familiar sound could be heard coming from the kitchen, a comforting sound she’d heard so many times before but never from a robot, it was too human, the faint sound of crunching. And there he was, seated at the kitchen table with his back to her, crunching through the remainder of the chocolate fingers.

 

Vanessa walked in slowly and placed her car keys on the table, all the time watching him with a concerned look on her face. It was confusing. She didn’t want to chastise him for eating food, that was against her principles but the issue of introducing food to her robot husband was a significant one. It wasn’t supposed to be something which he decided for himself. The manual stated that food should be introduced very carefully to avoid choking and clogging up the mechanical organs. It was an important step in the transition from robot to cyborg  and it really wasn’t supposed to happen yet.

 

‘Spencer?’

 

He ignored her and picked up another two chocolate fingers, feeding them into his mouth like tree branches going into a shredder, his eyes fixed, his teeth chopping like the nutcracker soldier. Carefully she placed her hand on the box and removed it, there was only one left. She quickly tried to recall how many were there before she left with her mother, not many, she concluded, after all there weren’t that many in the box to begin with.

 

He looked up, ‘Oh you’re back. These are really good, get them again.’

 

‘I didn’t know…I wasn’t aware that you could eat, not yet,’

 

‘Neither did I.’

 

‘Spencer, I need to read up on this stuff, you know you can’t just do things while I’m not here. I don’t want to cause a blockage in your system. The manual says that food should be introduced slowly and with supervision. I think, in fact I’m sure there’s something I need to do before you even have your first mouthful.’

 

‘Dunno,’ he said quickly, flicking crumbs off his lap, ‘I haven’t read the manual, it looks boring.’

 

‘Well don’t eat anything else, not yet! I need to go and call the helpline, just to check. I don’t want you to hurt yourself.’

 

‘I could ring my helpline,’

 

Vanessa paused, ‘What?’

 

‘My helpline. I could ring my helpline.’

 

‘I didn’t know you had a helpline….or a phone,’ she said, studying his face, wondering if he was bluffing her, not that he’d ever done so before but he suddenly seemed different, more lucid, calculating even. Maybe it was his encounter with her mother which had traumatised him and somehow changed him, catapulted him into a more sophisticated form of himself by way of self-preservation.

 

‘I have rights,’ he said, ‘and I could get connected if I needed to.’

 

‘Well,’ she said, placing her hands gently on his shoulders, ‘you’re my husband and it’s my responsibility to take care of you. Now you sit here and relax for twenty minutes. I’ll put on the radio for you while I go and find out if you’re going to be okay after consuming those chocolate fingers.’

 

‘Am I going to die?’ Spencer asked, the tone of his voice, flat.

 

‘No, I wouldn’t let that happen to you, anyway, I’m not sure if you can. It’s me who’ll die, you on the other hand, can be refurbished, upgraded, you can start again, over and over.’ She laughed and walked away to study the manual.

 

There was an entire chapter on food. The robotic husband’s lack of colon meant that he could only eat small amounts of dry foodstuffs which were processed by an internal macerator, desiccated by his battery heat and then dispelled into a cartridge which was fully compostable. In his original box there had been a pack of extra features and add-ons which were too overwhelming to explore at the time so she’d stored them under the stairs.

 

She found a clear bag containing three empty cartridges, together with a diagram of a man bending over. ‘Inserting the cartridge into the primary expulsion chamber; first identify the flower-shaped hole between the gluteus maximus, push the cartridge firmly until you feel resistance. Do not worry, your spouse/companion will not feel the insertion and performance will not be affected.’

 

Vanessa flew into a panic. There was nothing about these instructions which made her feel at ease but knowing those chocolate fingers were being macerated inside the highly technical hardware of Spencer’s body was equally stressful.