Chapter 3
After the reading of the will, I’d immediately begun packing, mostly to keep my mind occupied. I’d never traveled anywhere or even left San Francisco (unless you count my creation in New York, though I was only there for two days after being born), so it was all very new to me. Not having a suitcase of my own, I took Father’s from his old closet, trying not to think about how strange it felt to be in his room knowing he’ll never set foot in it again. The air was too silent and still. I shivered and left as soon as I’d found the suitcase.
As much as I’d been trying not to, I couldn’t stop thinking about the will, and the letter from Father. He’d said that his final gift to me was humanity. I didn’t quite understand what he meant by that. How could he “give” me humanity, and how would I get it by traveling across the country? And what did it have to do with my inheritance? I stuffed a rain jacket into the suitcase. I didn’t really care about the inheritance, not in the way that Blaine and Everett did. The money meant nothing to me. I just wanted to keep Father’s memories for sentimental value. I wanted to keep him close to me, and all I had to keep him by was this house and everything in it.
And what if Blaine and Everett were right, about me not being able to make it back in time? I’d never gone anywhere without Father, ever. Father was ill and wheel chair bound, so I had to be with him all the time to take care of him. Not that I minded, of course, because I loved him. But I did wonder if my lack of experience would prevent me from finishing the journey. I rubbed my eyes and tried to focus on packing.
What do you pack for a ninety day trip across the country? I simply stuffed a bunch of random clothes and toiletries into the suitcase that I felt were absolutely necessary, and some books to keep me occupied. Homer’s The Odyssey seemed fitting. What else, what else? I paced back and forth across my room, but thought of nothing. I rubbed my chin. Eventually, I flopped backwards onto my bed and exhaled sharply. Who was I kidding? I was a robot, I didn’t need anything, if I was being perfectly honest with myself. I didn’t need to bring any toothpaste or shampoo. I didn’t need to bring a GPS, seeing as how I had one built in. I didn’t really need to pack anything. I didn’t have human needs, but I wanted to pretend like I did.
I curled up into a ball on my bed. What Father said in his letter was right. About me wanting to be human, that is. I wanted to feel things as strongly as humans did. I wanted to laugh so hard that I snorted my drink through my nose. I wanted to cry so hard that I screamed and banged my fists against the floor. I wanted to have dreams when I slept without Father having to program one on a computer. I wanted to have to brush my teeth and wash my hair because I needed to and not for the sake of keeping up pretenses.
I ran my tongue along my teeth. Perfectly straight and smooth and white. Last year, as a sort of experiment, I didn’t brush my teeth for two months. Which sounds disgusting, but absolutely nothing changed. And I’ve never ever had a haircut in my life, but as I ran a hand through it, it was still as short and clean as it had been the first day of my life. I laid there for a while in a pile of wrinkled clothes, feeling nothing as I stared up at the ceiling. After a good hour or so, out of the blue, I’d come up with another experiment that I could try. I sat up and slammed my suitcase shut, deciding that I’d done enough packing.
I shuffled downstairs to the living room, where the record player was. I put on one of Father’s old rock and roll vinyls from the sixties, and turned the volume up loud enough that I could feel the bass reverberating in the floor boards. I danced (or tried to, my moves could best be described as, oh, stiff and robotic) my way to the kitchen, nodding my head to the beat of the drums. I stood on top of the counter, and opened the cabinet above the fridge where Father kept the liquor. Neither of us were allowed to drink alcohol; Father couldn’t drink on account of all the medications he was taking, and I wasn’t of legal age yet, and Father was very strict about that kind of thing. The liquor cabinet was more for looks and for when guests came over for dinner.
But all the same, I pulled out a bottle of whiskey, and when I jumped back onto the linoleum floor I began to unscrew the cap. Instinctively, I sniffed it, and it was so strong that my eyes began to water. I shrugged, and muttered a little “Cheers” to myself before throwing my head back and taking a large gulp. It burned the back of my throat, and it was incredibly bitter, but in a strange way, I liked it. I returned to the living room, dancing around the couch and the table, swaying my hips and waving my hands in the air. I kept taking more and more swigs of the whiskey and my tongue began to grow numb.
I still couldn’t feel a damn thing.
I squeezed my eyes shut, and tried to focus on the music. I sang along to the yeah yeah yeah’s and pumped my fist. I drank more of the whiskey. At one point, I even got on top of the table, rolling my hips and singing into the bottle like it was a microphone as I’d seen someone do in a movie. Another gulp of whiskey. As the symphony of drums and guitars and wailing rose to a crescendo, I let my head fall back, held my arms up, and screamed at the top of my lungs. I fell backwards onto the sofa, splashing a bit of the alcohol onto it.
Still nothing. No exhilaration. No joy. No nothing. Not even the haziness of being drunk. Sighing, I laid on the couch, music still deafeningly loud, and I sipped on the bottle of whiskey for the rest of the night.