How It Ends
Part One
(of Four):
The Evaluation
Scott C Lyerly
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are fictitious. Any similarity to persons, living or dead, or situations, real or imagined, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Significant liberties were taken in regards to geography, academic policies, and elapsed time frames for the purpose of overall story-telling. Any inconsistencies are solely the fault of the author.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used, reproduced, or transmitted in any form in any means, electronic of mechanical, without permission in writing from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
I would like to express my gratitude to the following people for their support during the writing of this book: Paul and Mark at Silverthought; my friend Norm for his advice and prompting; my friend and editor Russell; and my family for their support, guidance, and ability to see the typos I never did.
Copyright 2013 Scott C Lyerly
v1.0
"Nature (the art whereby God hath made and governs the world) is by the art of man, as in many other things, so in this also imitated, that it can make an Artificial Animal. For seeing life is but a motion of Limbs, the beginning whereof is in some principal part within; why may we not say, that all Automata (Engines that move themselves by springs and wheels as doth a watch) have an artificial life? For what is the Heart, but a Spring; and the Nerves, but so many Strings; and the Joints, but so many Wheels, giving motion to the whole Body, such as was intended by the Artificer? Art goes yet further, imitating that rational and most excellent work of Nature, Man."
~ Thomas Hobbes, “Leviathan”
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The last robot was activated and led away.
Its head swiveled and its eyes, nothing more than photoreceptors, scanned the production floor. It was helped into clothing by technicians in white suits and led to the storage facility for end processing. It was self-aware upon activation. Its first act of self-recognition was its name. It was Gammons.
The door to the storage area was closed. It waited.
Chapter One
Anita always woke up at five AM. No matter how late she had tumbled into bed she woke at five. And she never fell asleep before midnight. Too early and she tossed and turned until, like an engine sputtering out of gas, she finally slept. As if an invisible cog inside her had become warped and oblong and ceased its function at midnight and always hiccupped into motion at five. Her internal clock was, if not broken, then certainly bent.
This morning, like most, her eyes opened of their own accord. She got out of bed and walked straight into the shower. She was never one to linger. Showers were not for pleasure unless she was joined by someone. Showers by themselves were utilitarian. Five minutes later she stepped dripping from the stall. Tendrils of steam curled from her form. Her legs muscular from walking through the city. Her arms long and lank. Her breasts small and upturned. Hers was the body of youth, the body before middle age and gravity began to pull it towards earth.
She did not have a towel in the bathroom so she walked soaking wet into the bedroom and picked one off the floor. She sniffed it. Smelled of mildew, faint but not sharp. It would do for this morning. She dried off. She scraped the last of the sleep sand from the corners of her eyes with her towel. She then got dressed in the hurry of the dark.
Once dressed, she walked to the kitchen and started the coffeemaker. While it perked she opened her textbook and began her assigned reading. She paused and went to the kitchen and took a box of Fruit Loops down from an upper shelf that also had a box of Triscuits, two bottles of opened squirt cheese, and five packages of ramen instant noodles. She poured a bowl of Fruit Loops and shoved the box back into the cabinet without looking where it went. She took milk from the fridge and poured it into the bowl.
She returned to the textbook which she placed on the beat-to-shit coffee table and flattened the page with her palm so it stayed open and she could read while she ate. She read for a minute, then rose and went to the kitchen and dropped the bowl into the sink with the other unwashed dishes and then went and got her backpack from the bedroom. She returned to the couch and read some more while rummaging through the backpack. She pulled out her laptop, opened it, turned it on, waited and read while she waited. Once it had fully booted she opened up the latest revision of her thesis and typed some notes before returning to her textbook. The coffeemaker peeped its readiness and she rose again.
Watching Anita was like watching a tornado touch down on the flat plains of Middle America. It could not be guessed where she would move to next. She left a swath of chaos in her wake no matter where she went.
This morning she was alone in her apartment. Chaos went without witness. No one to see it. Was it there at all? She poured herself a mug of coffee and then read some more before checking her email and then writing some more of her thesis.
She rose and went to the kitchen, prepared a bag lunch, returned to the couch but instead of the reading or writing that she should have been doing, she turned on the TV only to rise again to return to the coffeemaker. She poured another cup and upended it into a travel mug. Some spilled over the sides. Little drops of coffee splattered the dingy yellow floor mat like polluted rain. She had not considered holding both mugs over the kitchen sink where the spill would be contained. She looked for a spoon among the wreckage of dishes and failed to find one so she took the sugar bowl and tipped. Grains of sugar cascaded over her hands. This time over the counter. A swipe of her hand plowed the spilt sugar into the sink. She swirled the travel mug to mix it. Milk from the fridge poured into the travel mug until it nearly overflowed. She clamped down hard on the top with the lid.
Care of her apartment was no different than how she cared for her coffee. Varied levels of carnage. A tiny mess of a place she called home. The main living room was a small square space filled with scattered papers and half empty paper coffee cups and nearly empty pizza boxes. Off of this was the cramped kitchen. There was a bedroom that barely fit a bed let alone furnishings. Clothing lay in piles on the bed and nowhere else; her laundry clean and dirty co-mingling. Off of the bedroom was the bathroom with the stall shower.
To her it was home.
She loved all of the litter. She banged around her apartment gathering the bits and pieces of her life that went everywhere with her. Her bag was stuffed with pads of dog-eared paper and pencil stubs. Once she thought she wanted to be a journalist. That vision had faded by the end of the third course. Without a true understanding of why, her thoughts had turned to robotics. There they stayed. Yet the tools of the journalism trade continued to travel with her.
Someone knocked on her door. Anita set her travel mug on top of her TV. She opened the door and found Charley on the other side. The building’s superintendent was a pot-bellied man with a fat ring of jangling keys and a penchant for looking at Anita’s chest.
“Charley. What’s up?”
“Sorry to wake you, Anita.”
“I’ve been awake since five, Charley.”
“Oh.”
His tone was disappointment. As if he’d hoped to catch Anita just g
etting out of bed or perhaps the shower.
“What’s up?” she asked again.
“A pipe broke upstairs in Mrs. Lighter’s apartment. She’s got water all over the floor of her bathroom and into the living room.”
“Sorry to hear that.” Her tone asked the question: what does this have to do with me?
“I need to check the ceiling of your bathroom.”
“Why?”
“It was a pretty good flood. I need to see whether you’ve got water coming in.”
“Oh. Come in, then.”
She wasn’t happy about letting Charley into the apartment. As the super, there wasn’t much in the way of alternative. He’s harmless, she kept telling herself. An older man who lives alone with no wife and no kids. He’s probably lonely.
Lonely. Of course.
But.
His elevator eyes.
He’s a harmless old man.
Who likes to look at my chest.
I should be flattered.
But I’m not.
Some girls might use that to their advantage.
But I don’t.
I’ve thought about it before.
But fuck that.
“Yeah,” he called from the bathroom. “It’s coming through the ceiling.”
“It is?”
Anita got over her aversion to the super just enough to take a quick look at her bathroom ceiling. She saw the water. It pooled in a funny way as gravity pulled it downward while the water seemed to try to hold itself back.
“What does that mean?” she asked
“It means I have to come into your place today and bring a cleaning crew to clean out the water. Then we’re looking at assessing the damage, repairing the ceiling, maybe even replacing part of it.”
“Jesus Christ, Charley.”
“Yeah, I know. Pain in the ass. But what are you going to do.”
Anita was silent. She didn’t have an answer.
“Will you be around today?”
“No, I’ve got to go out and meet someone for breakfast.”
“Okay. Then I’ll be letting myself into your place later this morning.”
“Okay.”
Charley walked out. He turned as if he were going to say something else. Anita had already shut the door.
She grabbed her coffee from the top of the TV and took a swallow.
Already cold.
Damn it, anyway.
* * *
Anita thundered down the stairs of the apartment building. She lived on the third floor. She passed the doors of peeling paint and the muffled noises of lower class life that came from behind them and passed the reeking bags of garbage that lingered by the trash chute that had been jammed too full for anything else for the last few days and passed the bronze colored mailboxes that brought nothing but the misery of bills to the tenants and through the door and into the sunshine.
The air was cold like a slap to the face. She bounded down the steps to street level. She lifted the travel mug and took a long swallow. Her eyes darted up and down the street as if she was looking for something. She took a deep breath of city air. Grimy, sooty, car-exhaust-filled. She took another drink, longer than the last.
Fall had come late but strong to New York City. She cast a bohemian figure in the early slanted light that skittered between the tall buildings. Dressed in jeans with sneakers poking out from below the cuffs and a graphic tee shirt that read FREE AT LAST in an old seventies porno type stretching across her braless chest and a zippered sweatshirt open over the shirt. The old navy pea coat discovered in the local thrift store was over all of it. Down the back of the pea coat her wet hair draped so brown it was almost black, staining the pea coat with wet. She pulled a pack of cigarettes out of the pocket of the pea coat and lit one.
Deep inhale, then exhale.
She lifted the cigarette to her lips and repeated. The third time she inhaled, then took a long slow swallow of coffee, She exhaled and it made her head dizzy and she staggered, her eyes swam. She loved the feeling of lightheadedness. She was ready to begin her day. A navy-coated pilgrim on the busy city streets. She weaved in and out of pedestrian traffic. He was waiting for her. She smiled. Thoughts of him made her smile. Thoughts of him warmed her insides. He was so brilliant and so good looking. He was so much of what she wanted. He was older than she. He was what she wanted. What she wanted to be.
Chapter Two
Brian ran a pencil along the paper in front of him then, stopped. The paper lay on his desk like it was waiting for his touch, calling to him like a whore. His thoughts drifted. His chin was sharp and his eyes behind his small round glasses were like lazy and dangerous lions lying in the sun. The paper before him whispered to him. It dared him to touch it. It whispered its desire and its disappointment. It no longer sounded to him like a whore but like his mother long dead. You could have done so much more, been so much more. You could have been better.
He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands. He tried to push the voice of his mother out of his head. That was long ago and far away. That no longer mattered. She was gone and he was here.
He hated it here.
Papers were arranged neatly on his desk. They lay in two neat and even piles, the ones he had read and the ones he hadn’t. In the middle of the desk lay the paper he’d been correcting. Papers from students he didn’t know. Names he did not recognize. Numbers identifying each pupil. Social security numbers scrawled in a mix of legible and illegible. So much dust blowing in the wind of academia.
He put his glasses back on and checked his watch. Nearly nine. Break time.
He stood from his desk. The papers lay still like nervous virgins. He smiled at that thought. He didn’t have classes today so he could come right back and continue reading. It was too bad the reading wasn’t enjoyable. He’d hoped for more when he took this professorship. He’d hoped for some kind of lifestyle he assumed professors led. He felt misled by every work of collegiate-setting fiction he’d ever read or seen in the movies. He felt like he wanted to sue. Which was of course ridiculous.
His back creaked and his knees cracked as he stood. He’d sat hunched over too long. His arms thrust out to his sides as he stretched and his long reach nearly touched the walls off his small office. His chair was comfortable but he spent more time hunched over his desk than reclining. He supposed he could grade some papers at home but there were too many distractions there. Besides, who really wanted to bring work home?
He shrugged into his jacket. It fit him athletically, just how he liked it. Made him look younger and hipper and fitter. Made him feel more attractive. Made him more attractive. With attractiveness came rewards. Young women would flock to him. And sometimes men, but that wasn’t really his thing. The women would bat their eyes and pout their lips and lean in close with low-cut blouses that begged to be explored with his eyes. He was always happy to accommodate. He was Henry Hudson and these young attractive desperate coeds were the river upon which to navigate. Raise the sails and hoist the mizzen mast and feel the salty spray in your face. For god, king and country, let us seek out new lands to conquer, plant our flag in fertile ground and claim our victory. Hear our victory cry.
He glanced at the papers on his desk and made a slight change in the arrangement, making them into perfectly ordered stacks. Neat and precise. He was not the type of person who liked things out of place. As lurid an existence as he lived among the coeds he still felt the unquenchable urge to be tidy, sex notwithstanding. He reached back and moved his pencil so that its line was a perfect parallel to the bottom of his desk. Done and he breathed freer.
He pulled the door to his office closed. It locked from the inside. His shoes echoed down the hall as he took long strides toward the stairs.
* * *
The smell of coffee as he entered always took him back to his own time at college. Coffee and cigarettes had been the diet. He’d given up smoking several years previous. Coffee he never could,
never wanted to. Walking into the coffee shop, any coffee shop, caused his undergrad years to blaze by his eyes like some demonic reel-to-reel. Days and nights filled with the testosterone ramblings of an exceptional mind. Bored to tears by most of his classes and led by an urge that originated south of his belt buckle. He drank his way through freshmen English. He snorted his way through sophomore physics. He fucked his teacher in junior computer sciences. He led an erotic deviant drugged-out life until his senior year. Until his first robotics class where he discovered he was not the most gifted or most intelligent or most moody or most bored student on the campus. That moment. When he discovered a challenge above the waistline. That moment that defined his now miserable career.
He breathed in the smell of coffee and breathed out. Something sweet in the air as well. Something baked and glazed. The shop was full of regulars having their orders filled from memory by the woman behind the counter. She smiled warmly as she made each drink, handed over each baked good, took green cash from every customer, gave back exact change and heard the pretty little plinks of the loose change dropping into the heavy ceramic dish set out for tips. He stood a line five deep and waited. By the time he reached the counter he had made a decision.
“Medium decaf cappuccino with extra foam, right?”
“Usually,” he said.
She looked at him funny. He smiled in the most charming way he could.
“I’m feeling like something new.”
“What’d you have in mind?”
“I was hoping you could suggest something to me.”
“Me?”
“You know your way around the espresso machine. Pick something for me. Anything.”
She thought for a moment. The man in line behind Brian sighed his impatience.
“How about a large latte with whole milk?”
“Can you add something to it?”
“Like what?”
“Something to sweeten it. I want it as sweet as you.”
The words were false and obvious and the girl behind the counter knew these things and she blushed a little anyway.
“Trying something new, huh?”
His smile deepened. It bordered on inappropriate.
“I love new things.”