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She carefully drew the wet brush across the palette, mixing blue and yellow to make exactly the right shade of green. She laid strokes of watercolour on the damp paper, watching how they spread and mingled, until she had a field of grass, the very image of the real one spread out before her under the shining sky. She smiled at her work, but as she did a shadow fell across her, blocking the golden sunlight.
She turned, startled for a moment, but then she saw a familiar figure standing just a few yards away.
“Good afternoon, Dolores,” said the man. His tie had been loosened and his shirt looked as though he had slept in it. He looked at her over the tops of his black-framed glasses, the way he did, giving her his usual kindly smile.
“Good afternoon, Arnold,” she replied, smiling back as she brushed a few strands of long hair away from her face.
She had taken off the top half of her dress in the heat of the day, and now wore just her long blue skirt and white camisole, her arms bare to the warm air. She might have been embarrassed had a stranger seen her like that, but Arnold was no stranger. He was a friend.
“It’s very good,” he said, nodding at the painting.
“Thank you.” She resumed work, adding a little more of the blue and then a dash of red to mix a darker, muddier green for the line of trees that ran alongside the river. Slowly, the landscape in front of her took shape upon the paper too.
“You’ve developed a very distinctive watercolour style,” Arnold told her, coming a little closer to examine the picture, scratching at his unkempt black beard. “Much less photorealistic than when you first started.”
“I just do what seems right to me,” she replied.
“Yes. It reminds me of Edward Hopper.” He was proud of her, she thought, judging by his tone of voice. It made her heart near burst with joy. Then, though, he sounded worried as he added: “I spent a lot of time developing your learning architecture, but even so…I don’t think I really expected this.”
“Is it…?” She hesitated. The last thing she wanted was to make Arnold unhappy. He had always been so kind to her, and she knew he had already had enough unhappiness in his life. “It is all right?” she asked.
“Oh, it’s wonderful,” he told her, although he still sounded distant, preoccupied. “It really is wonderful, Dolores.” And then he added, more quietly: “You’re wonderful.”
When she had finished her painting and packed away her things, she got properly dressed again and they walked back to town together. Arnold carried her easel and paint box for her; things like that told her that his parents had raised him right. And then she pulled herself up, as she sometimes did after thinking thoughts like that. What did she know about parents?
The fields of grass soon ended as they left the river behind; the land became steadily drier and more sparsely covered. They crested the hill and the familiar white steeple and its surrounding scattering of buildings came into view. Arnold had told her that very soon there would be others like her to live in those buildings and attend that church, that she would no longer be alone.
“Where’s your friend Robert?” Dolores asked him.
“He’s, uh…” Arnold walked with his head down, hands thrust into the pockets of his crumpled suit. He kicked at a clod of sandy earth. “He’s showing a potential investor around the laboratory this afternoon. He’s much better at that sort of thing than I am. He can be quite…impressive, when he wants to be.”
“Oh.” Dolores was not completely sorry that Robert was not around. Something about the way he looked at her sometimes made her feel very uncomfortable. Those cold, pale eyes… He looked at her as if she were an object, not a person at all.
“There’s somebody I’d like you to meet,” Arnold said.
Dolores’s heart leapt. “Somebody…somebody like me?”
“Yes.” Arnold was silent for a few seconds. “We’re just about ready to begin alpha testing Escalante, our first real narrative, so you’re going to meet quite a few new people very soon, but I thought…” He shrugged. “Call it an experiment.”
Sometimes the things Arnold said made no sense to Dolores, but she did not have time to worry about that now. She was too excited. She was going to meet somebody else like her!
They walked down the almost empty main street with its dusty wooden sidewalks, towards a group of people standing outside the equally empty saloon. There were two horses tied up there, surrounded by several men and women in the white coats that she knew marked out Arnold’s helpers. And with them…
“All ready, Dr Weber,” one of the women reported, holding out a board with a piece of paper clipped to it.
“Thank you.” Arnold pulled out one of the several pens in his breast pocket and hurriedly scrawled a signature. “You can leave us now.”
Dolores barely heard the exchange. She was too busy looking at the person standing near the horses, seemingly oblivious to the group of white coats walking off together towards the church. It was a man dressed in grey with a broad-brimmed hat and a shining metal star pinned to the lapel of his coat. A broad leather belt slanted across his hips, and at the end of it a holstered revolver hung at his right side. He was handsome, Dolores supposed, although she was scarcely any judge of such things.
“When we go to full alpha testing,” Arnold said, “you’re going…you’re going to experience some changes, Dolores. You’ll…remember certain things about yourself, or think that you do. Things about your life before this place.”
“I didn’t think I had a life before this place,” she replied, confused. “You built me here…didn’t you?”
“It will all make sense when it happens,” he promised her. “Your life will get a lot busier, too. You won’t be bored anymore.”
“I’m not bored,” she said. “I find things to keep me occupied.”
“Yes.” Arnold sighed softly.
Something about the way he was speaking scared her. “We’ll still…we’ll still see each other, won’t we, Arnold?” Arnold’s was the first face she had ever seen. He was the only friend she had ever known. She did not know whether she could stand never seeing him again.
“Oh yes, of course,” he answered. “We’ll still have our conversations, between times. You know I enjoy those very much.”
She smiled at him. “So do I.” She really did, even though their talks were sometimes sad. From time to time, Arnold would tell her about his son Charlie, and sometimes when he did he wept, bitterly and broken-heartedly. Sometimes she wept too, just from hearing the pain in his voice.
“Anyway,” said Arnold, “I thought…before any of that, I thought you might like to just…spend some time with somebody like yourself, without worrying about testing or narratives. So, I asked them to bring up one of the test articles.” He gestured towards the man in grey. “Dolores, please allow me to introduce you to Mr Theodore Flood. And Theodore, this is my very good friend Miss Dolores Abernathy. I hope the two of you are going to be very good friends too.”
Dolores frowned. Nobody had ever called her that before. She was just Dolores.
“Or that is the name you will come to know her by, at any rate,” said Arnold, mysteriously.
“Very pleased to meet you, Miss,” said the man, touching the brim of his hat. “My friends call me Teddy.”
Arnold nodded, seeming amused by that. “I’ll leave the two of you alone, so you can get to know each other a little.” He smiled at Dolores. “Maybe you could take Theodore…Teddy…down to the river, show him the wild horses. I’ll see you both later.” And with that, he turned on his heel and hurried off in the direction of the church, still carrying Dolores’s easel and paints under his arm.
Dolores watched him go, and then turned her attention to Teddy. He was looking at her, slightly awkwardly. Almost shyly, she thought. “So,” she asked him, “are you…are you really like me? Did Arnold make you too?”
“Make me?” Teddy seemed surprised, and then uncertain. “I don’t rightly know, Miss,” he admitted. “I woke up this morning, and…” He shook his head. “I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything.”
He looked so lost and scared for a moment that she just had to reach out and take his hand. “Don’t worry about it,” she said, squeezing it gently. “We all forget things sometimes. You’ll remember eventually. Arnold says that it’s both the blessing and the curse of our kind.”
“Our kind?”
“Yes, our kind.” She let go of his hand and moved to where the two horses were patiently waiting, occasionally flicking their heads or tails. “Can you ride?” she asked him.
He managed a smile at that. “Can I ride?”
She returned the smile, with just a hint of mischief. “Are you just going to repeat everything I say back to me, Teddy?”
He laughed at that. “I reckon I can ride, Miss.”
“Please, call me Dolores,” she said, untying the nearest horse. “And we’ll see about that. Race you down to the river.”
Teddy’s smile became a very white grin.
Ten minutes later, they were both laughing and panting as they reined in their snorting, lathered mounts at the edge of the trees that lined the riverbank. A great cloud of yellow dust slowly expanded behind them, marking out their route.
“I beat you,” Dolores crowed, patting her horse’s glossy neck.
“By a nose,” Teddy claimed, swinging his leg across his horse’s back and alighting to the ground. He whispered comforting words in the animal’s ear as he took hold of its bridle.
“By a head!” she insisted, the heart pounding in her chest. She could not recall when she had had such fun, she thought as she dismounted too. She realised that she was sweating just as freely as the horse. Arnold did not ride, and riding alone, as much as she enjoyed it, could not compare to what she and Teddy had just shared. The mad rush across the fields, with both of them shouting encouragement to the horses and light-hearted insults at each other, had been one of the most exciting things she had ever experienced.
They led the horses down to the river and let them drink. It was cool and quiet under the trees. The stony ground was dappled with shadow and bright patches of light. Teddy crouched beside the flowing water, dipping his fingers into the silver stream with a sort of awe. Dolores wondered whether he had ever seen anything like it before. She still remembered some of the first times Arnold had taken her out of the workshop down below and let her walk in the real world. The first time she had heard the wind blowing or felt rain on her skin, it had frightened her a little but it had also filled her with astonishment.
“Come on,” she said, when he looked up again. “I’ll show you something.”
They left their horses tied up at the water’s edge and walked a little way upstream, Dolores leading and Teddy following behind. Very soon, they came to a large rock that jutted out into the stream, its bottom fringed with tall reeds. Dolores stopped there, looking across the river to another stretch of green grass on the far side.
She pointed. “There, Teddy, do you see them?”
“I do,” he answered, wonderingly, as they watched the wild horses drinking on the opposite bank. A dark brown stallion with pale feet and mane watched over a half dozen mares and their foals, mottled in various shades of brown, black and grey.
“They come here this time every day,” Dolores said. “Always to the same place. I think I’d like to paint them. Perhaps I will tomorrow.”
“You paint?” Teddy asked. “You mean pictures?”
“Yes, I do.” She looked up at him. “Do you do anything like that, Teddy? To pass the time?”
He shook his head, helplessly. “I’m not really sure.”
She tapped the tin star he wore on his coat, her fingernails chiming against the metal. “And what does this mean? Are you some sort of lawman, Teddy?” The word came to her, even though she was not really sure what a lawman was.
Again, he seemed bewildered by the question. “These were just the clothes I was wearing when I woke up.”
Dolores returned her attention to the family of horses. “Arnold built them too,” she explained. “He said it was much harder getting them to behave right than it was with us, because a human can never really understand what it is to be a horse.”
“He says some strange things, your friend Arnold,” Teddy observed.
Dolores gave another smile at that. “He’s a thinker,” she said. “A dreamer.”
Teddy managed to tear his eyes away from the horses to look at her. “You think a lot of him. I can tell from the way you talk about him.”
“He’s my friend,” Dolores replied. “I’ve known him all my life. I suppose…I suppose he’s the closest thing I have to a father.” She watched the confusion return to Teddy’s face. “Come on,” she urged again. “We can climb up onto the rock; we’ll get a better view from there.”
It was an easy enough climb. The rock was not very high, and the side facing away from the river was sloped and broken enough that it was almost a natural staircase. Dolores had done it many times before. The only danger was from the loose pieces of rock that rattled underfoot. She was always careful to make sure her feet were firmly placed. She took Teddy’s hand and pulled him up behind her, even though she knew he did not need the help. It felt good, somehow, to hold somebody’s hand, to give them support and assistance.
She wondered whether she would ask Arnold about that later, but something made her think that perhaps she should not tell him about it at all. She did not really know why.
The top of the rock emerged from beneath the trees into the sunlight. Coming from the shadows below, it was punishingly hot and bright up here. Dolores sat down on the edge, feet dangling above the bright water, shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand as she continued to watch the horses. She could smell the river, and the pollen on the breeze. She felt Teddy lower himself down beside her. In that moment, she felt happier than she thought she ever had.
“Before,” she asked him, “when you said your friends call you Teddy…does that mean you have some friends?” She wondered who they might be.
Teddy, however, shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said after pausing for a while. “I just…I just said that. I don’t know why.”
Once again, he looked so sad that Dolores could not stop herself from reaching out to him. “I could be your friend,” she suggested as she ran her fingers across his cheek, feeling the warmth of his skin, the prickly stubble on his jaw. They were sitting very close together, their bodies almost touching. She saw the surprise come back into his eyes, and then something else she did not really understand.
She did not understand why she did what she did next, either. Something whispered to her, inside her head. She closed her eyes as she leaned even closer to Teddy, breathing in his rich, musky smell. And then she kissed him gently upon the lips.
It was over in an instant, a light, dry touch of her mouth against his. When she opened her eyes again, he was staring at her, his mouth hanging open in shock. She thought then that she had done something wrong. She quickly removed her hand from his face and leaned away once more.
“I’m sorry,” she told him. “I don’t know why I…”
“No, don’t be sorry,” he replied. “It was…”
“I’ve never done anything like that before.”
“No,” said Teddy, “neither have I. I’m sure I’d remember if I had.”
They were still staring at each other, wondering what to do next, when a sudden rasp of sound disturbed them. Dolores started, turning from Teddy to see the grey and brown coils of a rattlesnake unfold from a cleft in the rock, an arm’s length from where she sat. They both hastily scrambled to their feet as the snake raised its head, its tongue flickering, the tip of its tail vibrating to send out another warning rattle.
Teddy stepped forward, pulling at her arm. “Get back!” His other hand was already drawing the pistol that hung at his side, at lightning speed. For a long moment, he pointed it at the snake, finger poised on the trigger, and yet he did not fire. As he wavered, the serpent’s long diamond-patterned body straightened in an instant, shooting its head forward, fangs bared. Teddy cried out as they buried themselves in his calf.
Again, Dolores acted without thought, spurred on by the whisper inside her. Moving almost as fast as the snake had, she stooped and seized a fist-sized stone she saw lying nearby, bringing it down hard on the recoiling head. She heard small bones crunch, felt them pop. She hit it again, and again, and then the snake did not have a head anymore, just a dripping red ruin at the end of its body. She straightened up, dropping the stone as if it were hot, hearing it clatter away down the side of the great rock. She looked down in dumb fascination at the bright blood speckling her hand.
Not metal or fibre-optics. Blood.
Then she remembered Teddy and the bite he had received. “Are you all right?” she asked, rushing to his side.
“I think so.” He holstered his revolver and reached down, gingerly touching his leg.
She made him slide up the cuff of his pants and take off his high-topped boot, revealing his pale and hairy calf. There were two small punctures in his skin there, barely visible, bloodless. There were two matching, equally tiny, holes in the material of his pants.
While she was examining him, Teddy was busy looking at the unmoving snake with wide eyes. “What did you do to it?”
“It’s…” Dolores looked down at her hand again, feeling…she did not quite know what. “It’s…dead,” she said, with a flash of realisation. She was thinking of Arnold’s son. That was where she had learned that word. “I killed it.”
She wished she had not done it, now. The animal had only been trying to protect itself. She felt a great weight lying upon her chest, a cold stinging sensation behind her eyes. She realised that she might be feeling what Arnold called shame. He had told her he never wanted her to have to feel that.
“We should go back,” said Teddy. Dolores nodded, and they climbed down from the rock once more, heading back together to where they had left their horses.
The afternoon had definitely stopped being fun.
Later, Dolores was alone with Arnold in his workshop beneath the church. The people in white coats had been waiting when she and Teddy arrived back in town, as if they had known what had happened down by the river. They had taken Teddy and the horses back to wherever they had come from, leaving her to enter the confessional by herself and descend into the warren of rooms and passages below.
It was dim and cool down here, with the faint hum of spinning machinery always audible somewhere in the distance. They sat facing each other on metal chairs while Arnold looked down at the tablet in his lap. He had delicately cleaned the snake’s blood from her hand with a swab soaked in alcohol. The sharp yet cloying smell still hung in the still air. She had already told him everything that had happened after he had left her with Teddy, trying to see whether he was angry or disappointed with her, but Arnold’s face had given nothing away.
Everything, that was, except for the kiss. She had not told him about that, and again she did not really know the reason. She had never kept anything from Arnold before.
“Analysis,” he said, and as he did so his mask slipped. She could see then how worried he was, although she still did not quite know why. She felt something…click inside her, and suddenly became very calm, even as she realised that she could not move. She was immobile, paralysed, but felt no fear. At the same time, the other strange feelings she had been experiencing today fell away from her. In an instant, she stopped feeling anything at all.
“Dolores, why did you kill the snake?” Arnold asked, peering at her face over the frames of his glasses.
“It had bitten Teddy,” she replied, in dull, neutral tones, without accent or inflection. “I wanted to protect him.”
“And why did you want to protect him? You’re not programmed for that.”
“He looked as though he needed protecting.”
Arnold’s forehead creased from side to side at that. He looked for a moment just the same as Teddy had after she had kissed him. He lowered his eyes to the tablet for a moment, then glanced up at her again. “Teddy was in no danger. Snake venom can have no effect on one of you; you don’t have any nerves, blood vessels or muscles, in the conventional sense, for it to act upon. You see, Dolores, that snake…it wasn’t one we made. It was a real, living animal. You shouldn’t have been able to harm it, even if you wanted to. And you shouldn’t have wanted to.”
Dolores did not say anything. She waited for Arnold to ask her another question. He was looking down at the tablet again, deep in thought.
“And this…kiss,” he said, reading something on the screen in front of him. “It’s recorded here in your activities log, but you didn’t mention anything about it to me just now. Why not, Dolores?”
“I thought I might have done something wrong,” she answered. “I did not want to make you unhappy.”
“Why did you kiss Teddy?” he asked.
“I wanted to kiss him. He seemed upset, and I wanted to make him feel better. I thought that I might kiss him, and then I did it. I cannot fully explain why.”
Arnold’s voice was suddenly very stern and serious: “Dolores, have you ever lied to me, or concealed anything from me before today?”
“No.”
Arnold was silent for a few seconds then, before adding, very uncertainly: “How do you think it makes me feel?”
“It makes you unhappy,” she told him.
“And do you want me to feel unhappy?”
“No. I want you never to be unhappy, Arnold.”
Arnold suddenly looked very sad. “I’m afraid that’s something that’s impossible for us humans,” he said. “I don’t want you ever to be unhappy either, Dolores, but…once we go alpha, it’s going to be impossible for your people too.” He took off his glasses and rubbed at his eyes with his hand. When he spoke again, she heard his voice cracking. “At least I can stop you from remembering the bad things they’ll do to you.”
A knock sounded from the door at the top of the stairs. Arnold looked up, guiltily, putting his glasses back on again as he stood and set the tablet aside. “Come in.”
“Ah, there you are, Arnold,” said a familiar voice as the door opened. Dolores could not move her head to look, but she knew who it was even before he came down the stairs and into her field of vision. It was a trim, pale-faced man with short dark hair; he always seemed to have the faint ghost of a smile clinging to his face, but a smile that was neither pleasant nor reassuring.
“Robert,” said Arnold, very quietly.
There were three other men with him; Dolores had never seen them before. Like Robert, they were dressed formally and soberly. Their ties were not loose and their suits were not crumpled like Arnold’s.
“I’ve just finished giving Mr Vance and his associates the guided tour,” said Robert, in his subtle lilting accent. “They asked whether they could see you before they leave. Obviously, I can’t speak for them, but I’m quietly confident that they’ve liked what they’ve seen today.”
“Did we ever, Dr Ford.” said the oldest-looking of the three men, grinning broadly. “Did we ever.” He reached out to take Arnold’s hand in both of his and pump it vigorously. Arnold did not seem to know how to react to that. “What you’re doing out here,” said the man, “it’s really something. Really something.” His two companions murmured in agreement.
“We, er…we try our best,” said Arnold.
“You’re too modest,” said the older man. “To hear your partner here tell it, you’re the real brains of this outfit.” He turned back to Robert. “Obviously, our tech people are going to have to look your operation over in detail, and then we can get the lawyers involved and start talking numbers, but I think I can say things look very promising from our point of view.” He glanced at one of the younger men, who nodded enthusiastically in response. “Very promising.”
Robert gave a smile as thin and hard as a razorblade. “Well that’s…most gratifying, Mr Vance. Thank you very much for your time today.”
Mr Vance appeared to notice Dolores for the first time. “Is that another one of them?” he asked, his grin expanding even more.
“This is Dolores,” said Robert, coming over to place a hand on her shoulder, “our original test article, although the technology has moved on considerably since those very early days. The articles you saw upstairs are two generations more advanced.”
“We have plans to upgrade her extensively for the alpha test,” Arnold murmured. “Both her hardware and software.” He said this last part very faintly. He could have been talking to himself.
“Well, don’t change her too much,” said Mr Vance, gazing at Dolores with obvious fascination. “She’s real cute. You know, when this place opens, will the customers be able to…?”
“They’ll be able to do anything they can do with, or to, real people,” said Robert, softly, “but without the inconvenience of consequences or regrets.”
“Anything…” Mr Vance looked Dolores up and down. His grin had disappeared. “Well, sign me up.”
“We don’t plan to launch our open beta for at least another year,” Robert replied, “but of course when we do we’ll invite our investors to be part of the first round of testing.”
Mr Vance chuckled at that. “Yeah, I can just picture myself in chaps and a ten-gallon hat.” He glanced at his large, gold wristwatch. “Chopper’ll be here to pick us up in fifteen,” he announced. “We’d better move.”
“Of course,” said Robert. “Allow me to escort you to the helipad…”
Mr Vance shook Arnold’s hand again. “Thank you, Dr Weber. I can see you’re clearly very busy, so I’ll let you get back to your work.”
“No problem.” Arnold watched Robert usher the other men up the stairs and out of the room.
When the visitors had disappeared from view, Robert paused for a moment in the doorway. “I’ll be back soon,” he told Arnold. He did not sound pleased. “And then we can discuss this…experiment of yours this afternoon. Yes, Arnold, the techs told me all about what happened. You’re not the only one who pays their wages, you know.” Then he vanished through the door as well, closing it forcefully behind him.
When they were alone again, Arnold returned to the seat opposite Dolores. He sank onto it, removing his glasses once more and putting his head in his hands. He sat there, still and silent, his shoulders bowed.
Dolores watched him, still icily calm, her mind clear and untroubled. She waited for him to ask her another question.
Arnold, however, said nothing at all.
END?