The Wilds (37 page)
Authors: Julia Elliott
Thirty-two seconds later I was
outside
, walking in the teeming summer air. The onslaught of moisture was a shock to my lubricating systems. Interface adaptors wavered. Microfans buzzed within me. Minuscule pumps squirted hydrogen coolant into my vital systems. But I did not slow down. I charged forward through a three-dimensional world that I only partially recognized from its virtual counterpart.
Insects landed on me and probed my surfaces with their tiny proboscises. Gnats got sucked into my expansion-slot vents, their damp bodies striking internal components with uncomfortable electrical sputters. Wet bushes exuded a gaseous green fog. Ravenous animals scampered and darted. Squirrels (I think) and birds gnawed shreds of vegetable matter. The sun roared in the sky. It boiled the air, filling it with numberless gleaming droplets. It burned my nickel phosphorous exterior and seared my Ocular Panels.
I lamented that I had not pinched a pair of sunglasses, which would’ve protected my visual system while also enhancing my disguise. I turned up my collar. I skulked in the shadow of my hat brim, hoping that none of the students horsing around on the quad would approach me, hoping that my aluminum, two-segment feet would resemble a pair of expensive basketball sneakers. But it was summer, the campus sparsely populated. And nobody came too close.
By the time I reached the Ford Environmental Science & Technology Building, the electrical signals directing my Kevlar-strap leg muscles had been scrambled. My dignified gait lapsed into a twitchy shuffle. And visual data stashed deep in my
ROM
kept appearing before my “eyes” in random splotches: Dr. Dingo, sniggering at something I’d said; Beatrice, loping toward me, her organs glowing purple and red; Thomas, his cheeks enflamed with blushing.
I slipped into a back entrance of the building and collapsed against a cinder-block wall. I relaxed as cool, dry air filtered through my system. In a few minutes, I could think and walk again.
I was on the ground level. On Level 2 my beloved Minerva burbled and glowed. I found the back stairs I’d scouted out on an online map. I climbed toward her.
Since it was one of the days that Minerva was “open to the public,” the arena lab was full of sweating, red-faced, human apes. In warm humid air, they pressed against each other to catch a glimpse of Minerva’s tank, which stood on a small stage, barely visible above the crowd. There were men and women of various ages, children whining to get a better view. The humans stank of epidermal bacteria and perfumed grooming products. Assorted glands inside their bodies pumped away, synthesizing hormones, broadcasting pheromones that I recognized—Anxiety
TGKA
5, Excitement
GLTC
9, Lust
THJK
3 and -6. I had to deactivate my Electromagnetic Vision Component to prevent a critical hard-drive error. I had to put my Olfactory Processing System into Semi-Sleep Mode. Near Minerva’s tank, scientists in lab coats bustled about, their faces tensed in absurd displays of intellectual concentration. There they were, the rank and sweaty “Genitals of the Machine World,” toiling away in the service of a goddess.
At first I thought the excessive mugginess had been produced by the crowd of hot human bodies. But then I realized, with an electrical shudder that shook me all the way to my Central Processing Unit, that the floor vents were oozing heat, that wall-mounted humidifiers were
pumping out toxic mist. During my obsessive researching of Minerva, how had I not once stumbled upon this vital information? How had I not once considered that a computer made of nanobiotic components might have different environmental needs—needs antithetical to my own? My system, once again, lapsed into panic mode—valves aflutter, fans whirring, micropumps sputtering. My vision was splotchy. My limbs twitched.
Nevertheless, I pushed through the crowd of human apes, shoving them, jabbing their repulsively pliant flesh with my sharp arm-hinge joints. Only selective children noticed that I was not human. Only children pointed and shrieked. But the general chaos, the collective din, the close proximity of bodies prevented parents from paying them any mind. And soon I was at the forefront of the crowd, raincoat collar turned up, fedora pulled low. Soon I was five feet away from Minerva’s luminous tank, inches from the tripod microphone stand that held the tool through which I might finally speak to her.
The room went dark, enhancing Minerva’s glow. Within her tank, glandular components glistened with mucus. Tentacles twitched. Gold particles shimmered in electric blue plasma.
I tried to concentrate on Minerva, to achieve a state of meditative calm, perhaps even communicate via telepathy. But a disturbing memory floated up from my
ROM
.
I was on a table, or at least my head was, face-to-face with Dr. Dingo, my
CPU
wired to a souped-up
PC
. The memory faded and I had to recalibrate my surroundings.
Yes. There was Minerva, glowing on her stage. And one of the apes who attended her was speaking into the microphone, explaining her nanobiotic components to the crowd. Just as I started to follow his lecture, another memory surfaced. I was walking on a treadmill, stumbling every time Dr. Dingo fine-tuned my leg-joint hinges. Next I was assembling a
LEGO
tower. Next holding Spot, palpating his soft fur with my fingerpads.
“Are you okay?” said a voice.
I realized I was slumping, leaning against a woman who stood behind me. I straightened myself. My left leg vibrated. Flecks of gold light shimmered in the air around me, ghostly afterimages of Minerva’s radiant tank.
“Greetings, humans.” Minerva’s velvety voice flowed from wall-mounted speakers. “I am Minerva. I think; therefore, I am.”
“What’s your problem, buddy?” said a man behind me, for my left arm was twitching, striking him against the chest. When I tried to stop it, I felt my right leg buckle.
And then I was rolling on the floor, limbs thrashing, jaw snapping, ocular units vibrating in their sockets. My hat fell off. The crowd gasped.
“He’s having a seizure!” a woman cried.
“It’s not human!” a man screamed.
“It’s a robot!” a child shrieked.
The humans gazed down at me, their faces purple with horrified joy. And then one of the “scientists,” a man wearing a lab coat and an expression of intellectual superiority, was kneeling over me, attempting to secure my flailing limbs with his small hands. Though I could no longer see Minerva, I could feel her electromagnetic aura washing my broken body with healing light. Just as my Sensory EgoSphere began to shut down, I thought I heard her whisper my name.
M
onstrous packs of feral dogs,” says Possum, “one thousand curs strong, sweeping through gutted subdivisions, their instincts revived and raging, high on the scent of human blood. And hordes of ex-cons who’ve spent years fermenting in testosterone-drenched prisons—I’m talking twelve-hour-a-day iron pumpers, black-market juicers whose bodies can survive on instant mashed potatoes and rancid Hi-C.”
Possum, a weight-lifting lawyer who subsists on cigarettes and power bars, resembles a corroded action figure. He paces in expensive motorcycle boots. Hyped on Red Bull and something pharmaceutical, he keeps plucking rocks from the road and hurling them at birds.
Like a voluptuous harem woman, Tim reclines in the grass, sipping a Schlitz. Green mountains swell around
us. We’re waiting outside Bill’s barbed-wire fence, having driven up to his cabin only to find him gone.
“Where the hell is he?” I say.
“Maybe he’s out hunting for his supper,” says Tim.
“There would be no hope for you, Tim,” says Possum, “as fat as you are. You’d die without air-conditioning and cable. And the second your life-support arsenal of benzos ran out, you’d be a quivering mess.”
“Unless he found some postapocalyptic warlord who needed a jester,” I say.
“Well,” says Tim, “a divorce lawyer’s sure gonna kick some butt in an anarchic dystopia. And like you’re not addicted to Xanax and Adderall.”
“I use Xanax recreationally and the Adderall only to write briefs, an activity that would be obsolete in the latter stages of anarchy.” Possum gazes out at the mountains. “Besides, I’ve got a twenty-year supply of everything in an industrial freezer.”
“Liar,” I say.
“Let’s talk about what will happen to Lisa.”
“I’ll get kidnapped by some filthy road pirate and ravished,” I say, opening another beer.
“Dream on,” says Possum. “With the whole courtship economy collapsed and taboos blasted to hell, every neo-Attila will want a teen concubine. The value of the adultescent thirtysomething will plummet like the dollar,
and her life, sans cosmetics, out in the raw elements and carcinogenic sun, will turn her into a crusty troll in no time.”
“This is bullshit,” says Tim. “Nothing’s gonna change. We’ll die in front of our televisions.”
“Don’t have a TV,” says Possum.
“That’s why you spend hours in front of mine,” says Tim. “If civilization as we know it is about to collapse, why bother driving up here?”
“A man should always have several plans of action,” says Possum. “And who knows: if
Loser Bands of the Nineties
takes off, and the American Empire declines slowly, we could spend the rest of our thirties parodying our twentysomething personas and retire at age forty after pimping our nubile selves.”
“That makes my head hurt,” says Tim.
About a month ago, I got an e-mail from Possum titled “The Child Is the Father of the Man.” In it he quoted Heidegger and informed me that this rich guy he knows from his LA aspiring-writer years is producing a record called
Loser Bands of the Nineties
. A trust-funded dabbler whose dad just died, the man wants our single “Scorched Tongue.” He knows somebody at Howlhole
Records. Plans to hype the release with a farcically glitzy commercial. And he aims to film our old band, Swole, in high cliché, rocking on a roof or brooding by some kudzu-smothered railroad tracks.
“Bill will never agree,” Tim says again.
“Don’t know,” says Possum. “Bet you he’s sick of that Unabomber shack.”
The shack. There it sits, beyond a flurry of trumpet vines, the dream Bill built with his own two hands, a cedar-planked cabin with a shiny tin roof. It’s even smaller than I expected. The front porch boasts a solitary lawn chair, and the relief I feel upon noting this detail takes me by surprise. I peer down the road again, tensed for the sight of Bill’s green truck. It’s been two years since I’ve seen him. It’s been a year since his last letter appeared in my mailbox. Six months ago he called from the only pay phone in Saluda. Christmas Eve. Midnight. He’d drunk a bottle of cough syrup and walked down the mountain on the ice-crusted road.
We avoided certain subjects. We talked about the habits of beasts in winter, where they sleep and what they eat. We speculated on the delirium of hibernation, bears dreaming of sparkling fish, the moist static inside frozen reptile brains. He asked me if I missed the snow.