The first quarter of the school year flew by. Despite the fact that classes were larger than ever, the children were more obnoxious than ever, parents were more clueless than ever, and the administrators were more useless than ever, Mike thought that things were going pretty well. It was he mused, probably because he was one hell of a teacher. He felt more organized and prepared than he had in years and he certainly had more energy. He walked to and from school almost every day. Three days a week he went to the gym afterwards too. Each day at lunchtime, the other teachers at his table would watch him as he unpacked the carefully crafted meal that Patience had sent with him.
The students and teachers at school saw Patience only occasionally. This was not because Mike was ashamed of her, but because he remained as he had been before her arrival, essentially a homebody. They went out to dinner once a week, and Patience would provide pleasant conversation, though she didn’t eat. Most nights though, they stayed home. She fixed him a dinner more than equal to those they found at restaurants and then they usually watched a movie on vueTee. Increasingly this was followed by some sexual activity, and Patience confirmed Mike’s opinion that his libido was on the increase, though he declined her offer to graph it for him.
Mike carefully watched the unfolding election. Though he was loath to throw away his vote by choosing the Greens, in the end there was just no way he could live with himself voting for either Barlow or Wakovia. Mendoza was the right person for the job. So he resigned himself to the fact that his candidate was going to lose and put a bright green Mendoza/McPhee ’32 bumper sticker on the back of his Chevy. Then fate stepped in. In early October, a series of announcements by Ford, Gizmo, Intel, and other major manufacturers pushed the market up past 20,000 for the first time. The government’s monthly economic indicators were even better than expected and it shot up even more. Then at the end of October, President Busby announced that the Chinese had brokered a deal in which the Russians would pull out of Antarctica. The war was over and the United States and her allies had won! The first troops began arriving home November second, just two days before the election.
Patience produced a dinner of barbeque ribs and chicken, potato salad and coleslaw, and apple cobbler on election night. Harriet and Jack arrived early and they all gathered around the vueTee in the living room to watch the returns. The twenty-ninth amendment provided a national set time for elections. The polls were open from 7AM to midnight, Eastern Standard Time. Of course ninety five percent of the voters, Mike included, had voted during the previous two weeks on the internet. By law, the news outlets were not allowed to announce winners until after the polls closed. Even so, when four o’clock hit, the states on the vueTee screen began filling in with color at a remarkable pace.
Mendoza reached the required electoral votes well before the small party watching in Springdale, California had finished their meal. The Republicans took the new south—Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Florida, Cuba, and the Virgin Islands. For a while it looked as though the only state to go blue would be Puerto Rico, but then after the winner had already been declared, California, Washington, Oregon, Hawaii and Pacifica were filled in with blue. Mike’s disgust that his vote had in fact not counted, since Wakovia had won California was ameliorated by the fact that his candidate had won the election. Evelyn Mendoza would become only the second female President of the United States, having won the remaining forty three states and a whopping 407 electoral votes.
It was late that evening, after Harriet and Jack had gone home, after the talking heads on the screen had finished interviewing the winners and losers, campaign workers, and supporters, after the victory and concessions speeches, as some of the many ballot questions were being reviewed, that Mike sat bolt upright. In Massachusetts voters had passed a non-binding vote in support of their state’s governor who had earlier in the year signed an executive order allowing marriages between human beings and robots. How had he not heard about that?
“Patience?”
Her smiling head popped around the corner from the kitchen, where she was putting away the last of the dinner dishes.
“Did you know that humans and robots could get married in Massachusetts?”
“Mm-hmm,” she nodded.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You had other things to worry about Mike. School was just starting. Besides, Massachusetts is on the other side of the country.”
“Don’t you want to get married?”
“Of course I do. Now that I know it’s what you want.”
“Why didn’t you know that before? What about Vegas?”
“What happens in…”
“Don’t say it.”
“I thought it was just a lark. You didn’t seem that interested once we got home.”
“Well, a lot of things have changed since then.” Mike left it at that, but the wheels in his brain had begun to turn.
And when the next day, a dark man in a grey suit arrived to give Mike a check from the Daffodil Corporation in exchange for a signed document indicating that he wouldn’t sue them, everything just seemed to fall into place. Even after medical expenses and buying a new piano, the settlement would leave Mike with just over $1 million. So he began making plans in earnest.
Thursday the eleventh was Veterans’ Day. That meant a four day weekend, but with the end of the war, parties were planned in every city in the country and all forms of transportation were booked solid. The next long weekend was Thanksgiving and that was for family. There was nothing to be done but to wait for December 11th, when school let out for winter break.
Veteran’s Day turned out to be very enjoyable, despite a rain storm—or maybe because of it. Mike spent most of the weekend inside watching movies and drinking hot cocoa. He had gone to the cemetery on the day to watch the solemn ceremonies. He put a small American Flag just behind Tiffany’s headstone. The sexton almost always forgot to do it because her marker was one that she had picked out rather than the military issue, but she had served two years in the Army before they had met. He put a white rose on Aggie’s grave.
Thanksgiving was quite warm. They could have eaten in the backyard and been quite comfortable. Patience had not only designed and built a large redwood deck and a brick barbeque pit; she had completely landscaped the entire area with water smart desert plants and trees, with a walkway winding here and there. She had even dug a faux streambed and lined it with round rocks, then built a redwood foot bridge over it. But it just didn’t seem right to Mike to eat Thanksgiving Day turkey on the patio, so they ate indoors. Harriet and Patience had coordinated the meal—turkey of course; cranberry, apple, and butternut squash chutney; mashed potatoes and gravy, sautéed green beans, corn chowder, and sweet potatoes; lovely dinner rolls with butter; and pecan, apple, and pumpkin pies. Everything was perfect. They had invited Jack’s mother and when she showed up, it was all Mike could do to keep a straight face. Her new boyfriend was not a robot but he looked younger than Patience or Harriet, and was much younger than Jack. With Lucas’s arrival, it made it a true family get-together, and Mike had to admit that he had a great time.
Mike didn’t tell either of his kids his plans. He was sure that Harriet would be completely supportive. In fact in the past few weeks, she had called up to talk to Patience more than she did to talk to him. He thought that Lucas would probably be all right with it too, now that he was sure about Patience’s security profiles. But, why bother the boy. Better to let him know afterwards.
They left after school on December 10th. Patience had packed everything they needed for a two week trip and she had secured the house. Mike had thought about driving cross-country but that was too exhausting and there was no way that he was going to climb into the aerial cattle cars that made up the fleets of the country’s two remaining airlines. That left the mag-lev trains. The normal commuter rail was comfortable enough for the short haul, but not for three thousand miles, so Mike purchased tickets on the Spirit of America. They were expensive—forty thousand bucks a piece, round trip, but Mike was giddy with a newly heavy bank account balance.
The two and a half hour drive to Anaheim was easy enough and they spent the night at the Sheraton, just down the street from John Lassiter Station. The next morning they checked out and drove to the station, placing the car in long-term parking. The recommendation was that passengers should arrive two hours before departure, allowing one hour to check in, and one hour to get situated once on the train. Mike and Patience walked in the huge revolving door of the station at exactly two hours before the 10:26 departure time.
In actuality, they spent less than thirty minutes picking up their boarding passes and checking their luggage. Then they found themselves on the loading platform next to the massive red, white, and blue train. It didn’t look all that different, other than its splendid paint job, from any of the mag-lev commuter trains that ran up and down the length of California. For that matter it didn’t look much different, if one didn’t look underneath, from the passenger trains of a century past. Once they stepped on board however, Mike and Patience found a world of difference. Inside it was much more like a luxury hotel than a train—a long thin luxury hotel.
Their suite couldn’t have pleased Mike more. It was a tiny little room with two comfy stuffed seats, a small table, and a third, less than comfy chair. At night, a double bed folded down from the wall covering up the seating. The bathroom was almost as big as the bedroom/lounge and featured its own shower. Mike sat down and kicked off his shoes, relaxing and looking out the window, which faced a large strawberry field. Patience left the room and returned twenty minutes later with their luggage which she unpacked into the closet.
“Did you see how many cars this train was pulling?” asked Mike.
“They’re called coaches,” Patience informed him. “And there are twenty two of them.”
At precisely 10:26 AM, on schedule, the train began to move out of the station. Unlike old time trains, it didn’t buckle and jerk when it started. It didn’t rock either. It slowly but steadily pulled forward accelerating until it was moving well over forty miles per hour. Once it reached the edge of the city, it would accelerate to almost two hundred.
“I was going to ask for a detailed itinerary before we left,” said Mike. “But I forgot.”
Patience pulled a heavily laminated brochure from a pocket on the inside of the cabin door and handed it to him.
“Oh.” Mike examined the document. “This has all our times, but it doesn’t list the cities… oh, wait. Here they are. They should have put them over here instead of on the last page. They have everything listed by the name of the station. I mean, who cares if the Salt Lake City terminal is called William Jackson Palmer Station?”
“William Jackson Palmer Station is Denver,” said Patience. “Gordon B. Hinkley Station is Salt Lake City.”
“See. It’s easy to get confused. I mean who really knows who William Jackson Palmer is anyway? And before you say it, I mean who besides you.”
Patience looked confused for just a second, as if she wasn’t sure whether she was supposed to answer or not. Then deciding that she wasn’t, she went back to stowing their now empty luggage. After a moment Mike asked. “Okay, who is he?”
“General William Jackson Palmer was a Civil War hero who also was the engineer in charge of building a railroad line for the Kansas Pacific Railroad from Kansas City to Denver. He later founded the narrow-gauge Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad, a critically important part of Colorado’s history.”
“All right. You’re right. People should know why the stations are named the way they are. When you’re right, you’re right.”
“I didn’t express an opinion one way or the other, Mike.”
A little after noon, Patience led Mike to the dining car. Tables on either side of the aisle were arrayed with linen tablecloths, shining silverware, and fine crystal glasses. As soon as they sat down, a waiter approached them and filled their water glasses.
“Welcome to the dining car,” he said in a rich and resonant baritone. “Today we are serving your choice petit filet mignon; a Cajun blackened chicken salad, or fresh water prawn linguini.”
Mike looked up. The waiter had an unusual combination of features, as if his ancestry was from Africa, South American, and Central China, but Mike recognized that his mahogany skin was artificial.
“Are you a Daffodil?”
“I am a robot and I am your waiter,” came the reply. “That is all that I am permitted to discuss about myself.”
“All right. I’ll have the chicken salad.”
“Very good, sir.”
It was very good too. It came with some kind of soda bread that Mike had never had before. He was going to ask Patience what it was called, but he began watching the scenery and forgot. Just after he finished eating, they passed the Sin City Special on its way back from the first of its twice-daily runs from Anaheim to Vegas. And they were just getting up from the table as the train slowly slid into the Harry Reid Station in downtown Las Vegas.
From the window of their suite, Mike could see people feeding their cash cards into the video slots and poker machines. He’d done enough gambling though over the previous summer, so he didn’t feel the urge to debark and do so now.
“What should we do?” he asked Patience.
“Why don’t you take your texTee to the lounge and finish reading Moby Dick? That way you’ll already have your seat for tea after the train starts off again.”
Mike passed through the dining cars, of which he now saw there were two, and made his way further up to two more cars which were outfitted as a lounge and club car, both with wood paneling, plush couches and chairs and small tables. Several people were playing backgammon in the club car, while two women were watching vueTee in the lounge. Mike sat down just beyond the backgammon players and opened to Moby Dick. He was down to the last few pages.
He had just started reading when a familiar baritone voice asked. “May I serve you a drink Sir?”
“Were you my waiter at lunch?” Mike asked looking up.
“No, sir.”
“A diet Pepsi, please.”
“Right away, sir.”
The train left the station at 2:42 and not quite twenty minutes later, the waiter, who had in the meantime supplied Mike with not one but several soft drinks, delivered two tiny sandwiches, some fruit, and an assortment of cheeses. Mike ate them and read until he finished the book. Back in the room he found Patience completely undressed and waiting for him. She was able to provide more than adequate afternoon entertainment.
Diners on the Spirit of America had their choice of two supper times. Since Mike had eaten the food at tea, he chose the later of the two, which meant that they were in the dining room while the train was taking on passengers in Salt Lake City. From where he sat, he could look across the dining car and out the far window at several very large, very ornate buildings that made up part of the Mormon’s Temple Square. Patience was able to identify the Assembly Hall, Tabernacle, Temple, and Joseph Smith Memorial Building.
When Mike mentioned going back to the lounge to watch vueTee, Patience showed him the large screen hidden behind a painting in their suite. He took a long hot shower and then they watched Juvenilia while lying in bed. Mike was asleep by midnight, and noticed neither their crossover into Mountain Time, nor their night-time stop in Denver.
The next day, Patience brought Mike breakfast in bed, and he fell asleep again almost immediately after eating, the smooth humming of the mag-lev lulling him into a REM state. Although he was awake when they arrived in Kansas City, he didn’t get up to take his shower until the train was already moving again. He cast a quick eye out the window for Robert A. Heinlein Station on his way to the bathroom. He knew Heinlein. In fact, he had Starship Troopers queued up as his next book in his texTee. The rest of the day was just as lazy as the morning had been, with Mike kicking up his feet, reading Superman Comics and alternately downing diet Pepsis and hot cocoa. He spared a moment for the Chicago skyline late in the afternoon, but by the time the train hit Detroit, he and Patience had already returned from their second supper of the trip and Mike was watching Starship Troopers on vueTee, having decided to not wait until he finished the book. They had just finished the movie as the train arrived in Cleveland and Mike was asleep before it started again at 1:45 AM.
“What time is it?” Mike asked as felt his robot girlfriend shaking his shoulder.
“It’s six o’clock.”
“In the morning?”
“Yes, Mike. I thought you would want to watch out the window as we arrived in Washington D.C. It is our nation’s capitol and you can see many of the great monuments without having to get out of bed.”
“We already passed Pittsburgh?”
“Yes. We were only there for an hour, from three to four.”
“You know I was thinking that over the summer we could make this trip again, only spend a few days in each of the cities. See the sights. That kind of thing.
“That sounds like a great idea, Mike.” Patience smiled.
The truth was that Mike really wanted to get out and see Washington right now, but there was no way to see everything he wanted to see in a day, let alone the hour and a half that the train would be in the station. He would have liked to spend a month in the Smithsonian alone. Maybe he would now that he was rich. Well not rich, but well off. Well he had a little extra cash.
He looked out the window and watched as the train pulled out of the station at 7:41. Then he climbed into the shower. Later, Mike walked back past the lounge to the observation car and looked out at the scenery in between pages of Starship Troopers. He wished that he had discovered the glass-domed seating when they were passing through the Rocky Mountains, but at least he would have something else to look forward to on the way back.
When he came down from the observation area, he saw a small sign indicating that the remainder of the car was occupied by “the Boutique”. He stepped inside, expecting to find a clothing shop, but instead found that it was a tiny jewelry store. The robot clerk looked as though she could have been the sister of the waiter… or waiters. She seemed only too happy to help Mike select some overpriced piece of gold or silver. And he did select one. He was suddenly cognizant of the fact that he had not until now purchased Patience a wedding ring, but right there in the case was one that seemed perfect for her. It was yellow gold on the inside and platinum on the outside with three streaks of yellow gold partially wrapping around it, following three small diamonds that seemed to be orbiting like comets. It was beautiful, and had a kind of robotish quality.
“Fourteen karat, two-tone,” said the clerk. “Total diamond weight is point zero nine karats.”
“How much is it?”
“Two thousand forty five dollars.”
“I’ll take it.”
There was only one more stop, at Philadelphia, before the last leg of the trip that would take them into Boston. They had lunch and high tea on the train, and then packed up their things and were ready to debark promptly when the train pulled into Robert Gould Shaw Station at 4:47PM. By the time they had arrived by taxi at their hotel, checked in, and made their way to their room, it was almost eight. Mike was exhausted.
Early the next morning, he got up, showered, shaved, and dressed in twill jacket and matching pleated pants with a tan shirt and mustard colored tie. Patience put on a little straight, sleeveless white dress that reached to her mid-thigh. It was accessorized only with a sky blue belt and a little blue flower pinned along the edge of its scoop neck. On the top of her head she wore a little white spray of flowers.
The plan had been to get up and walk the short distance to the new municipal building, but during the night Boston had experienced its first snowfall in four years. Though the streets were clear, several inches of accumulation covered the sidewalks, so they took a cab. The city was a white fluffy wonderland.
Mike expected to see quite a line of people and robots at the license bureau. He imagined himself standing between a little nerdy guy with an Amazon robot and the little old lady with orange hair and Andre. As it turned out, Patience was the only robot there that morning. Of the three other couples waiting, all were human beings. They had to wait about fifteen minutes for the office to open, and then the four couples were issued their licenses in the order of their arrival. Two of the couples then left, apparently having their weddings elsewhere, while Mike, Patience, and the other couple waited for the Justice of the Peace.
The other couple was a man and woman, a bit younger than Mike, if appearance didn’t lie. The man was pretty nondescript, though the woman was quite attractive. They were in and out of the Justice’s office in ten minutes. Then it was Mike’s and Patience’s turn. They stood before a young woman who looked far too young to be a judge or anything of the sort and a young man who worked as her clerk.
“You may place the ring on her finger,” said the Justice. Patience smiled as Mike retrieved the ring he had purchased on the train from his pocket. “Do you take this um… person as your lawfully wedded partner, to have and to hold, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health, from this day forward, forsaking all others, so long as you both shall live?”
“I do,” said Mike.
The Justice turned to Patience.
“Do you take this person… this man as your lawfully wedded partner, to have and to hold, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health, from this day forward, forsaking all others, so long as you both shall live?”
Patience smiled. “I will be anything and everything he wants me to be.”
The End
The Voyage of the Minotaur is the story of a group of settlers founding a colony in a distant mysterious continent. It is a fantasy world and I could name the continents and countries anything that I wanted. I really don’t remember where some of the names came from now. Mallon is the continent in which the story takes place. I think of it geographically as Asia. The colony is set up in the country of Birmisia and there is another distant colony in Mallontah. I think of them as China and India, respectively. Physically, culturally, and socially, these lands are not anything like Asia, India, or China, but putting them in that frame helped me imagine how settlers from a continent similar to Europe might see them.
City of Amathar 