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Some days, it’s more than Gary can handle.
Nothing grows between him and the sun. He knows because his rooms are on the forty-eighth floor, and from here he can watch the sun come up after a long night of sleeplessness. The landscape is shriveled in on itself, somehow, bleaker than it ought to be. He doesn’t remember it that way; when he was a child, there was grass up to his shoulders and a wood beyond that he wasn’t allowed to enter by himself.
Jamie doesn’t remember the wood, but sometimes he tells Gary stories about a childhood in long-ago Spain or marching into war alongside kings or traveling through space on his own, things Gary knows he never experienced, and Gary can’t figure out how Jamie can know all of those things but he doesn’t know there used to be a wood, and that Gary could see it from his room.
Gary likes the stories, though, even if they aren’t true. Jamie tells everything in 3-D technicolour, bringing his hands together and tilting his head back to announce something fabulous to the universe, or alternatively, leaning forward to whisper something just for Gary, so close that Gary can count his eyelashes. Sometimes Gary asks for stories even when it’s not the right time for them.
“Humans need seven to eight hours to recharge,” Jamie always replies, folding his arms. “If your systems are going to run optimally.”
“I can’t sleep,” Gary says. “I don’t sleep anymore.”
Jamie reaches out to poke him in the cheek. “You only think that because you stopped keeping track of time, you doughnut. Do you want to know how many days ago that was now?”
“No,” Gary says at once. “If I wanted to know, I’d keep track.”
“You’re acting like a child,” Jamie informs him, in that tone of voice that always makes Gary wonder if he’s serious or just messing around.
“How would you know?” Gary counters.
“I know everything,” Jamie replies loftily.
That’s probably true. Jamie downloaded a library one day because Gary wanted to know how they get the bubbles in bubble wrap.
-
Gary’s memory isn’t as good as it used to be. Sometimes he asks Jamie how they know each other, and Jamie patiently explains – Gary can just tell by the tone of his voice that he’s done this before, more than once – how he came from a factory in California four years ago.
“But you act like you’re my age,” Gary marvels.
“Yeah,” Jamie answers, with a roll of his eyes. “I’m meant to.”
“Will you get older with me?” Gary asks.
Jamie looks away, smoothing the comforter, and Gary wonders in fascination if his feelings are real, if they have any basis in reality or if they’re just complicated software.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Jamie says, which isn’t an answer.
“Are you afraid to tell me the truth?” Gary asks.
“Yeah, all right there, detective,” Jamie says. “Why the third degree today?”
“Are your feelings real?” Gary presses.
Jamie raises an eyebrow. “Are yours?”
Gary frowns at him. “I think.”
“So your brain is this tangle of electrical impulses, right?” Jamie says, bringing his hands together – presumably, Gary thinks, to demonstrate the tangle of electrical impulses.
“If you say so,” Gary replies dubiously.
Jamie gives him a look. “It is. And what do you reckon makes me tick?”
Gary shrugs. “Electricity?”
Jamie reaches out and taps Gary’s nose. “Always said you were a genius, Neville.”
Gary swats at his hand, not fast enough to actually catch it and not attempting to be. “I’m not the same as you, though,” he says.
“No,” Jamie agrees. “For one thing, I’ve got much better hair.”
Gary bites down on a laugh. “I haven’t got any hair.”
“Yeah, and you look ridiculous,” Jamie tells him, rubbing Gary’s head the way he does sometimes, absently and in passing or on purpose if he knows it’ll annoy him.
Right now it just seems sort of fond.
-
On the days when Gary is feeling really bad, Jamie can be convinced to climb into bed with him. Gary will curl up with his head on Jamie’ chest and close his eyes, trying to keep the sick down.
Gary never means to sleep, but sometimes he does.
When he wakes up one day, it’s with a bad taste in his mouth and the edges of a nightmare trying to claw him back in. Jamie strokes his hair, and they both wait for the tremors to die down. It takes a lot longer than it used to.
“You don’t breathe,” Gary says, after a long time. He can feel Jamie looking down at him, though his head feels too heavy to actually turn and look.
“Why would I need to breathe?” Jamie asks.
“You – but your chest rises and falls,” Gary says. He squints his eyes against the afternoon sun filtering through the solid lead blinds, turning his face to bury it in the soft fabric of Jamie’ sweater. “It’s doing it now.” His voice is muffled.
“Yeah,” Jamie replies. “It is.” He sounds like he’s not sure where this line of questioning is going.
“But why?” Gary asks.
“Because it makes it easier for you to fall asleep,” Jamie answers, as though this is extremely obvious. “You won’t sleep when it’s just you and your pillows in here, you giant baby, you’ll only fall asleep on me. If I didn’t seem like I was breathing, I’d not be much better than a pillow, would I?”
“It’s not real,” Gary says insistently. He’s not sure why this gets under his skin.
He can feel Jamie shrug slightly.
“It’s real to you.”
Gary doesn’t think he’ll be able to fall back asleep now that he knows what he knows, but he does anyway.
-
The two of them ride bikes sometimes, around and around inside the tinted recreation dome with its filtered air.
"One day, I want to bike outside," Gary ventures, wobbling a little as he attempts to pedal without his hands on the handlebars. "You used to be able to ride bikes outside."
"That was before my time," Jamie replies, attempting it also. He manages it immediately, so Gary reaches over and gives him a light push. Jamie careens sideways and goes tumbling to the ground.
Gary smiles innocently.
Jamie is back on his bike in a heartbeat, racing to catch up with Gary, who gives a shout of laughter and grabs onto the handlebars so he can pedal faster, evading capture.
“We could ride bikes outside now,” Gary says. “We could just go out of the dome. Just go outside.”
“Are you mental?” Jamie calls, from somewhere behind him. “Of course we can’t go outside. You know why.”
“Well,” Gary says, slightly out of breath from all of the physical activity, “it’s already done its damage to me. And you’re not affected by radiation. Or else I’d have a real doctor.”
Jamie pulls a face at Gary’s back. “We’re not biking outside, you’ll grow seven extra heads and then what will everyone say.”
Gary tosses a grin back over his shoulder. “What are you going to do when I’ve gone and there’s no one around to drive you round the bend?”
Jamie’ bike coasts to a stop. It happens so slowly that by the time he’s at a standstill, Gary is far ahead, up by the curve. “I’ll forget.”
Gary stops much more quickly. They’re alone in the dome; their private conversation can be held across thirty feet of open space. “You’ll what?”
Jamie watches him. “I’ll forget,” he repeats. “Not the way you forget things, when you can’t pinpoint them but you still carry them in your heart. I’ll just have my hard drive wiped.”
Gary stares at him. “They’ll just – they’ll erase me? Like you never – like we never met?”
Jamie shrugs. “That’s standard, yeah? I’ll have another patient after you and I only have so much memory.”
Gary looks absolutely thunderstruck, like the thought have never, ever occurred to him. He turns back away from Jamie, staring down at his handlebars, maybe picking at the loose bit of rubber on the left-hand grip.
Abruptly, Gary climbs off of his bike and starts off across the dome.
“Gary!” Jamie climbs off of his bike as well, following after him.
Gary picks up speed, walking as fast as he possibly can without running. Jamie stops and watches him, running through scripts and wondering what he’s done; idle and knowing he ought not to be.
Jamie understands just as Gary shoves at the door that leads outside. It’s locked, obviously, and the way Gary throws his body weight at it suggests he either didn’t know it would be or he doesn’t care. He throws himself at it again, a second time, grunting.
“Gary!” Jamie takes off and reaches him just as Gary throws himself against it a third time. The grunt of pain is almost a sob this time around. Jamie wraps his arms around Gary from behind, and Gary fights him on it, struggling.
“Let go!” Gary’s voice is high, panicky. “Let go of me!”
Jamie doesn’t reply, and he doesn’t let go either.
It takes Gary longer than Jamie anticipates to give in and go limp in his arms.
“I just want to get out of here,” Gary says, his voice breaking. “I just want to get out.”
“There’s nothing left out there,” Jamie tells him.
Gary sniffles. “There used to be a wood.”
Gary’s breathing stays wet and shallow for a long time. Jamie doesn’t let go of him.
-
Gary’s head is on Jamie’ lap. The sunshine coming in through the window bathes his face in warm light, making him look less tired than Jamie knows he is.
“What happens to androids when they die?” Gary asks. His eyes are closed.
“We don’t,” Jamie says. “Die, that is. When we break down, either we get repaired or we get decommissioned.”
“That’s sad,” Gary decides.
“That’s life,” Jamie corrects. “It is what it is.”
“That’s not what I meant, though,” Gary says, as Jamie’ fingers trail through what remains of his hair.
“It’s not?”
Gary shakes his head minutely. “I didn’t mean, what happens to your body. I meant, what happens to you.”
Jamie hesitates. “Me?”
“Yeah. Your soul, like.”
“I haven’t got a soul,” Jamie says. “I’m an android. You know that. I’ve been programmed to behave this way.”
“I don’t believe that,” Gary says, perfectly calm, perfectly sure.
“Oh, really.” Jamie smiles. “What do you believe, then?”
“I reckon it’s like this,” Gary begins. “We’ve done a lot of things together. And when we talk and – and stuff, we share, like, experiences, and we both learn things and we both change and grow in sort of – um, subtle ways. So I reckon – if we’re so similar, then how does it make sense that I’ve got a soul and you haven’t? Seems to me this whole soul situation is a bit arbitrary, actually. Who decides who’s got a soul and who hasn’t?”
“I’ve never thought about it like that,” Jamie marvels.
“Ha.” Gary sounds faintly triumphant, though sleepier than a moment before, as though all of that explaining tired him out.
“Yeah, you’re very clever,” Jamie says, sarcastic but affectionate. “What’s next? Soul transplants for everyone who hasn’t got one? Are you going to go on campaign?”
“Vote Gary Neville for Prime Minister,” Gary mutters, smiling faintly. “A vote for Gary is a vote for souls all around.”
“He’s got soul,” Jamie corrects. “That’s a much better tagline.”
Gary rolls over and presses his face into Jamie’ tummy. “When I don’t need it anymore, you can have mine,” he mumbles.
Jamie freezes. Gary doesn’t notice, already fast asleep.
-
“Where are we going?”
Gary’s voice snaps Jamie back from mentally crawling through the hospital’s security systems, creating a breach where there wasn’t one before.
“Hush, d’you want to get caught?” Jamie asks.
“Sorry,” Gary says, voice dropping to a whisper. “Where are we going?”
“To see something,” Jamie replies, partly expressly vague because he knows it will rile Gary up, and partly because half of his focus is on holding that breach open as they navigate their way through the darkened hospital, through doors that ought to be locked and down corridors that ought to be under the watchful eye of surveillance cameras.
“To see what?” Gary asks.
“It’s a surprise.”
“What’s the surprise?”
Jamie rolls his eyes. “Something terrible and boring, obviously. Hush.”
Jamie doesn’t even have to be able to see his face to know that Gary is grinning, crinkly-eyed. He’s silent for all of about two seconds, which Jamie also could have foreseen.
“Can I have a hint?”
“It’s not a hat,” Jamie replies.
Gary has to stifle a snort of laughter. “It’s not?”
“No,” Jamie replies. “Nor is it a bathtub. Or an Archbishop.”
“In that case I’m going back to bed.”
Jamie pops Gary’s wheelchair a bit of a wheelie. “Listen to you, all jam-packed with sass this evening.”
“Well, I like adventures,” Gary says. “I haven’t been on a proper adventure in ages.”
“Well, this is the kind of adventure where we’re both going to be in an absolute whirlwind of trouble if we get caught, so keep your mouth shut,” Jamie warns.
“I wouldn’t even know who to tell,” Gary points out, amused. “Have you got a supervisor?”
“Of course I’ve got a supervisor,” Jamie says. “She’s going to supervise me chucking you out of a window if you get us caught.”
Gary stifles a laugh. Jamie swats lightly at the back of his head.
They’ve turned into a long, dimly-lit hallway by the time Gary starts to lean forward in the wheelchair a little bit, straining to see and maybe suspecting what’s in store. The corridor obviously hasn’t been used in a long time, forgotten furniture stacked along one side. Gary reaches out to trail his fingers across a gurney missing one leg, leaving a long stripe in the thick layer of dust.
“Where are we?” Gary asks, sounding a little breathless.
“The sub-basement,” Jamie replies. “Well, sort of. We aren’t technically under the hospital anymore.”
Gary doesn’t ask a follow-up question, but he’s holding on tightly to the armrests of the chair.
When they reach the door at the end of the hall, Jamie has to push part of a large, outdated CAT scan machine out of the way. The door behind it is made of rusted metal, nondescript, yet Gary seems to know.
“Is this it?” he asks.
“This is it,” Jamie affirms.
Jamie has to struggle to get the door open; it’s been sealed shut for a long time. He can only get into the hospital’s computer system to unlock it to begin with because he borrowed – stole – an access code from one of the Chiefs of Medicine, and because he’s been practicing sneaking into the system unnoticed.
There’s an unfamiliar sound at first.
Gary recognizes it before Jamie does.
“Wind,” he breathes.
And Jamie gets the door all the way open, and it is.
It screams across the landscape, because of course it’s void of any trees or buildings to hold it at bay. Gary doesn’t seem to notice the way it picks up tiny grains of sand and pebbles and flings it into their faces; when Jamie pushes him outside, he cranes his head back and tries to take in the sky until his eyes water.
The wind is cool. Jamie hasn’t been outside, not since they first brought him from the factory, and though he had catalogued that information – the wind is cool – it’s different to feel the sensation on his face and bare forearms.
“Show me where the wood used to be,” he says, pitching his voice to be heard over the wind.
Gary twists around in his chair, pointing into the distance. The direction he chooses doesn’t look any different from the rest of the landscape to Jamie, but the moon lights it up clearly, and he surveys it anyway and imagines the trees he’s never seen.
They only stay outside for a handful of minutes, because the longer they’re away the greater their chances of getting caught, and Jamie knows the result would be getting decommissioned or worse. He doesn’t tell Gary that.
Once they’re back inside, Gary cranes past Jamie to see the outside for as long as possible, until the door is completely shut. When at least the sound of the wind has been completely silence once again, Jamie turns around.
“Was that all right?” Jamie asks, and he sounds – uncertain? Because Gary’s childhood didn’t look like that desolate landscape outside, it’s not even close, and Jamie isn’t sure why that would be something to smile about.
“Jamie.” Gary reaches for his hand, misses it on the first try; catches it on the second. “That was the best.”
The way he’s smiling fit to burst seems to support that.
Jamie’s mouth twists upward on one side. “Well, obviously. I planned it.”
Gary squeezes his fingers. “Thanks. I can’t – I mean. I thought I’d never get to – so.” He beams helplessly. “Thanks.”
Jamie squeezes back before he disentangles himself from Gary. “Yeah, yeah. Remember what I said about telling anyone.”
“I would never,” Gary says.
Jamie begins pushing him back down the hall. “I know. Because I’d chuck you out a window.”
“We’ve been over this,” Gary agrees. Jamie can tell he’s still smiling.
-
Gary hasn’t ridden a bike in nearly four months by the time he stops being able to get out of bed at all.
-
Gary listens to Jamie tell him nonsense stories, the same as he always has. His eyelids flutter sometimes, but he’s listening, eyes fixed on some point north of Jamie’ face.
“And that’s why ketchup doesn’t qualify as a vegetable smoothie,” Jamie is saying, sometime mid-afternoon on a cloudy day.
“Tell me a love story.” The interruption comes so suddenly that Jamie nearly talks over it. “Tell me a love story,” Gary repeats, as though he’s not sure Jamie heard it the first time.
“A love story?” Jamie echoes. “What kind of love story?”
“I don’t know.” Gary’s breath sucks in, drags out. “It doesn’t have to be romantic, even. Just people being in love. Someone being in love with someone else who loves them back.”
“That sounds like basically the exact definition of romance,” Jamie says.
“I don’t know,” Gary muses. “I’ve never been in love with someone else who’s loved me back.”
“Humans put a lot of stock in that, I’ve come to realize,” Jamie remarks.
“Well, yeah.” Gary looks quizzical. “It’s love.”
“Love is chemicals,” Jamie points out, partly because he knows it will drive Gary crazy.
“Is it, though,” Gary muses dreamily. “Haven’t you ever seen those older people who are still with the same person they married when they were, like, twenty?”
“No,” Jamie says truthfully. “I can search for it on the internet, if you’d like.”
Gary tries to articulate it better. “It’s just – like, my gran and my gramps, they were together for ages. Like they were just best mates, you could tell. They were always doing little things for each other and even when they were angry, you could still tell that they wouldn’t walk away from each other, not in a million years.”
“So love is,” Jamie begins, “in your enlightened opinion, liking the way someone drives you absolutely right round the bend?”
“Mmm,” Gary says, mostly in agreement.
“You must be over the moon about me, then,” Jamie says. He means it as a joke, but, Gary doesn’t hear it; his eyes are closed and he’s already dreaming.
-
The next day, Gary asks for a love story again.
“You’re getting repetitive in your old age,” Jamie informs him. They have a usual position, now; Jamie crawls into bed with Gary, who rests his head in Jamie’ lap and closes his eyes.
Jamie pretends that Gary’s still got masses of dark hair and runs the tips of his fingers along Gary’s scalp accordingly.
“Did I ask yesterday?” Gary asks.
“You did,” Jamie affirms.
“And did you tell me one?”
“You fell asleep,” Jamie says.
“That doesn’t get you off the hook,” Gary tells him.
“All right, well.” Jamie isn’t programmed to tell love stories, but he’s a very clever computer; he adapts all the time. “Once upon a time, there was a lad who had never been kissed.”
“Oh, good,” Gary says.
“Why is that good?” Jamie asks. “He was quite sad about it, I assure you.”
“Of course he was,” Gary says, at least pretending to take Jamie’ indignance seriously. “Go on.”
“So he spent a lot of time trying to remedy that situation,” Jamie continues. “He went about, just, like, proper asking people if they’d take his kiss-virginity off his hands.”
Gary laughs. “Kiss-virginity? Did they program that in? Is that in your lexicon?”
“You always act like I’m not the smartest robot you’ve ever met,” Jamie tells him.
“You’re the only robot I’ve ever met.”
“Then I am, by default, the smartest,” Jamie says loftily. “So I can say things like ‘kiss-virginity’ if I please. Now, where was I?”
“There was a lad who’d never been kissed,” Gary recites. “And he went out being extremely creepy.”
“He wasn’t creepy, he was lonely,” Jamie says.
“Well, if he was going about trying to just put his lips all over strangers, then I reckon he was a bit creepy,” Gary replies.
“Alright, Neville,” Jamie says exasperatedly. “May I tell the story now?”
Gary grins. Jamie pokes his cheek in retaliation.
“Anyway. It turned out that if you ask enough people to kiss you, a certain small percentage of them will say yes,” Jamie goes on. “So that’s when the lad discovered something major.”
He waits for the inevitable interruption from Gary. To his surprise, it doesn’t come.
“Are you sleeping?” He asks suspiciously.
“No, I’m enjoying the story!” Gary protests.
“There’s a first time for everything,” Jamie says. “Right, so, the lad discovered this major thing, which was this: Not all kisses are alike. Some kisses are weirdly dry, and some kisses are really slobbery, and some kisses have too much tongue, and some kisses are mostly teeth. Then there are butterfly kisses, Eskimo kisses, French kisses – the kind with the tongue, yeah, but also the kind where you kiss people on both cheeks to say hello – and just generally such a wide variety that the lad realized he’d have to narrow it down if he ever wanted to find the perfect one.”
“Yeah, you’d want the perfect one,” Gary acknowledges.
“Exactly,” Jamie says. “Once he found the person who could do the perfect one, he’d be able to stop going up to strangers and asking for kisses.”
“I maintain that that’s creepy,” Gary says.
“Well, for the purposes of our story, all of the strangers are quite understanding about it,” Jamie says. “They just say ‘no thanks mate, I’ve already had a snog this morning’ and go on their way.”
“That sounds nice,” Gary decides.
“It is nice,” Jamie says. “So one day, this lad who had started out having never been kissed, met a lovely stranger. And for the first time, he was a bit afraid to ask, which was strange because he quite wanted to kiss the lovely stranger. But maybe it was because he liked the stranger so much that he was worried about asking in case the stranger said no and walked away forever.”
Gary is silent again. Jamie can tell from the rise and fall of his breathing that he’s still listening.
“Luckily,” Jamie continues, “before our lad could even open his mouth, the lovely stranger spoke up. It turned out, that the lovely stranger had been looking for the perfect kiss, too. The lad was very happy about that, of course. But now the pressure was on to get it just right.”
Jamie waits this time. A moment passes, before Gary realizes that Jamie is waiting for his input.
“So did they kiss?” he asks.
“Of course they kissed,” Jamie says.
“What was it like?” Gary asks.
There’s a pause, like a gathering hesitation in the room.
Jamie curves over Gary, whose head is in his lap, and kisses him full on the mouth. Gary inhales suddenly through his nose, but his lips part a little and he tentatively, lightly, catches at Jamie’ upper lip as they draw apart. Jamie puts two fingers under Gary’s jaw before he can say anything, tipping his head up. It just takes bending a little further and a slight tilt of his head to leave a lingering kiss on Gary’s throat.
He can feel how hard Gary’s pulse pushes against his skin.
“It was just like that,” Jamie says. His voice is steady, because it was programmed that way. “And obviously it was perfect.”
“I’ve never been kissed.” Gary’s voice sounds just a little thick.
“I know.” Jamie, for once, is not glib. He is entirely sober as he sits slowly upright and looks down at Gary’s face.
Gary swallows. “Thanks.”
Jamie shakes his head, even though Gary’s eyes are closed and he can’t see it. “It wasn’t a favour.”
-
Jamie talks to Gary even while Gary sleeps, sometimes. It’s mostly because Gary sleeps a lot, now. It gets to a point where he’s asleep more than he’s awake, and then it gets to a point where he doesn’t awaken at all.
Jamie talks to him anyway.
Every now and again, he tells a love story. They get longer and longer as he tries to fit all of his memories of Gary inside of them. Are your feelings real? Gary had asked once.
So Jamie tells love stories.
-
The sun sets on a mostly empty room. Only Jamie remains, sitting on a chair, hands clasped between his knees. They’ll come to get him soon.
-
Two weeks later.
-
The woman tosses another hard drive onto the pile. “Another one to wipe.”
The man takes off his glasses and rubs at his eyes. He spends all day wiping hard drives and reinstalling key software. Tomorrow will be the same, and the day after that.
He works through the day, taking a half hour for lunch and another ten minutes in the afternoon for a coffee break. He used to take cigarette breaks, only the fines have gotten really high for contaminating the clean air inside the facility. It’s not worth it anymore.
At the end of the day, he returns the hard drives to the woman.
“There,” he says. “These are finished.”
“What about that one?” She indicates the one he’s left on his desk.
“That one won’t wipe,” he says.
“Are you sure?” she asks.
The man has been doing this for ten years. He doesn’t say that. Instead, he says: “You’re welcome to try. I’m going home.”
The woman stalks over to his desk. There’s no such thing as a drive that won’t wipe. That’s what they’re made to do. Inserting it into the computer, she taps a few keys and waits.
In the corner, the printer flicks on.
The woman spends five minutes on the drive. It seems to have been encrypted somehow, but she knows more about these things than the man has ever given her credit for, and she manages to slip past the security protocols.
Are you sure you wish to erase the memory?
With one long fingernail, she taps the [Y] key.
After she’s put the drive in the container with the other ones, ready for reprogramming, she collects her coat and purse and takes a last cursory glance around the lab.
The blinking light on the printer catches her eye.
Crossing toward it, she realizes that there is a thick stack of paper on the output tray. The blinking light informs her that the printer is out of paper.
She checks the print job. [Printing page 57 of 15,073,429]
What?
She cancels it, obviously, because it must be a glitch in the system; leftover, probably, from the drive that was encrypted to keep its memory from being erased. Picking up the stack of papers, she leafs through them. They are mostly strings of binary code, unintelligible to the human eye. She’s about to toss them into the recycling bin when she notices a string of regular text, right at the top of the first page.
Let me tell you a love story