His Robot Girlfriend – Conclusion

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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 fillet 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.”
“Alright. 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 two 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.
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 high 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.
Diners on the Spirit of America had their choice of two supper times. Since Mike had eaten the food at high tea, he chose the later, 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 the 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 and alternately downing diet Pepsis and hot cocoa. He spared a moment for the Chicago skyline late in the afternoon, but paid no attention to Barack Obama Station. By the time the train hit Detroit and stopped at Michael Phelps Station, 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.”
“I was thinking about getting off the train there for a few minutes to look at the statue of Johnny Weissmuller.”
“Perhaps you could see it on the way back.”
“Definitely. 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 sight. 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 now 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. By the time he got out again, the train was already stopped in Baltimore. When it started again, 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 roboty 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, 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 the Westin Copely, checked in, and made their way to their room, it was almost eight. Mike was exhausted.
Early the next morning, Mike got up, showered, shaved, and dressed in his twill jacket and matching pleated pants with a tan shirt and mustard colored tie. Patience put on in 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 foreword, forsaking all others, so long as you both shall live?”
“I do,” said Mike.
The Justice turned to Patience.
“Do you take this, person… man as your lawfully wedded partner, to have and to hold, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health, from this day foreword, forsaking all others, so long as you both shall live?”
Patience smiled. “I will be anything and everything he wants me to be.”

Featured eBooks

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I have another blog going on at featuredebooks.blogspot.com. Featured eBooks will someday expand into something noteworthy. For now, I’m just posting links to some of the great ebooks that are available– mostly free– on the net. Beginning June 1, It’ll have an ebook a day.

Spinning off my other interests– history, ebooks, and reading, will allow me to focus this blog more directly on my writing. I’m sure a bit of almost everything else will find its way in anyway.

His Robot Girlfriend – Chapter 10 Part 1

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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 everyday. 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 time frame 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 Stephanie Wakovia had won California was ameliorated by the fact that his candidate had at least 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 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 for 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 was 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 her 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 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 alright 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 were walked in the huge revolving door of the station at exactly two hours before the 10:26 departure time.
In actuality, they spent less then 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.”
“Alright. 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.”

His Robot Girlfriend – Characters: Harriet and Lucas

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The only two characters of any consequence besides Mike and Patience, to appear in “His Robot Girlfriend” are Mike’s two children– Harriet and Lucas. I initially patterned them after my own two kids, just as I had patterned Mike after myself. My son is in the Jr. ROTC, so I made Lucas a soldier. My daughter likes animals and Harriet has many animals. My daughter is older than my son, and Harriet is older than Mike. From this brief basis, I expanded the characters as I wrote, so in the end, they didn’t bear much similarity to the real people.

Worn Out

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I am so worn out, I barely feel able to do anything at all. This always happens this time of year. There is so much work to do in the last thirty or forty days of the school year and there are no real breaks during that time. In addition, I’m trying to get into shape. I bought a Wii Fit to start working out. If just being worn out wasn’t enough, now I’m sore and worn out.

His Robot Girlfriend – Chapter 9 Part 2

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The headache didn’t go away and by the time lunch came at 11:30, Mike thought his head was going to split open. He followed the other faculty members out the school’s front door, squinting in the bright sunlight.
“We’re going to Hot Dog Paradise,” said Mr. Franklin, slapping him on the right shoulder.
“Do you want to come along?”
“Maybe…” Before Mike could get anything more out of his mouth, his own car pulled to a stop in front of him. Patience rolled down the passenger-side window.
“I have your lunch ready at home,” said Patience, poking her head out. Mike climbed in, not paying any attention to those watching him from the school parking lot.
Patience drove around the block and pulled into the driveway. Opening the garage door with the remote, she drove right inside and parked in the shady interior next to the Tesla. Mike climbed out of the car and stepped through the door into the family room.
“What’s the matter Mike?” Patience asked.
“I think I’m having an aneurism.”
“Really?”
“No. But I’ve got a bitch of a headache.”
“Sit down here,” she said, pushing him into his recliner. “I’ll make you feel better.”
In less than a minute, she had unfastened Mike’s pants, completely disrobed herself, and straddled his lap. And though she did work valiantly to make him feel better, and if he were truly honest about it he would have to admit that he did feel better, he still had that bitch of a headache. It hadn’t diminished at all. Mike didn’t tell Patience this. He just thanked her with a kiss, sat down and ate the lintel soup and strange little salad (with cous cous, bell peppers, dried fruit, and mint leaves) that she had made for him. Then he had Patience stay home and drove himself back to school. He arrived back just as his fellow teachers did.
“So, who was that,” asked Miss Treewise.
“That was my girlfriend.”
“Nice,” said Mr. Franklin. “Did you tell her you were rich?”
“She’s a Daffodil,” said Miss Treewise.
“Really? She didn’t look like a robot. You didn’t have any of that trouble we heard about
over the summer?”
“Nothing to speak of,” replied Mike, making his way past them and into the school.
Holding on to the side of his head, as if to keep his brains from spilling out his ears, he unlocked his classroom door, opened it, and then relocked it and sat down at his desk. The rest of the afternoon was devoted, for most teachers, to decorating their classrooms and getting their materials together. Mike had been in the same classroom for ten years now and had very few changes to make in any case, and he certainly didn’t feel like hanging up posters.
He sat with his head in his hands for about an hour. Nobody bothered him, but his headache didn’t improve. Finally he got up and sorted through some of the worksheets he would be using for the first unit he was teaching—Latin America. He walked copies to the reprographics department to have them scanned for the students’ texTees. After he had filled out the necessary requisition forms, he looked up at the clock on the wall. It was nearly a quarter past two. He was legally required to stay until 2:46 PM, but screw it. It wasn’t like they were going to fire him two days before the start of school. He headed out the front door, climbed into the car and drove home.
Patience wasn’t waiting at the door when he came in. Of course he was earlier than expected. Climbing the stairs, Mike made his way through his bedroom and into the bathroom, where his opened the medicine cabinet and retrieved the bottle of aspirin there. As he tossed five or six into his mouth and started chewing, he glanced out the window into the back yard. Patience was there, wearing her large hat, digging some kind of pit or trench.
Mike sighed and walked back through the bedroom, down the short hall and into his study. As he stepped through the door, it suddenly hit him. For a moment he thought he really was having a stroke. He was seeing things that weren’t there. Where his desk sat was a baby crib and across the room, where Patience had her own little desk, was a baby changing table. The walls were covered with 8×10 and 11×14 pictures of a happy little blond girl with chubby little pink cheeks and huge eyes.
“Agnes,” Mike whispered, feeling the blood drain from his skin. “Aggie.”
He stepped quickly across the hall to Harriet’s room, but it wasn’t Harriet’s room anymore. It was the guest bedroom. Mike moved through it in two steps and threw open the closet, but it was completely empty. He went back to the study and opened the closet door. The interior had been covered with shelves, now filled with the things that Patience had been buying and selling on eBay—Depression glass dishes, Hummel figurines, Disney memorabilia. On the floor in the back of the closet were six brown storage boxes. Mike pulled the first one out and opened it. It was filled with brochures from family trips, old maps, movie ticket stubs, and pressed flowers. He pushed it aside and opened the second box. This box was full of framed pictures.
Lifting the topmost picture frame and examining it, Mike looked into his own eyes. No, not his own eyes. The eyes of a Mike Smith that existed fifteen years ago. This Mike Smith was looking directly into the camera and smiling the type of smile that said he had everything he ever wanted. To his right was his wife Tiffany, with her happy grey eyes and that twisted smile that was just a bit too playful to be called a smirk. His almost grown daughter Harriet, with a her hair pulled back and thick glasses hanging from chains like an old time librarian, held onto his left arm, and his teenaged son Lucas, in his boy scout uniform, stood to his far right. And in Mike’s arms was a perfect little baby, with chubby cheeks and a smile like Christmas, and just a bit of that soon-to-be awesome blond hair. Aggie.
“Aggie. How could I forget you?”
He saw it all again, only this time it was a memory and not a dream. Tiffany was lying on the hospital bed, her body broken and bloody. Her mangled arm and crushed hips were far more alarming than the tiny bump on her head that had actually killed her. And just beyond her, on another hospital bed, lay little Aggie. She was several years older than she appeared in the framed picture—a precious four year old that would grow no older.
“Traumatic amnesia,” said Patience’s voice from the door. “The memory of her death was so painful that you took down all the pictures of her and boxed them away. Then your mind did the same thing to your memories.”
“I remember everything now,” said Mike. And he did. He couldn’t stop the flood of memories suddenly rushing around his insides.
“We didn’t even really want another kid. Harriet and Lucas were almost grown up. But… nobody in the world knows this but me. Tiffany had this kink about getting pregnant. She really got a thrill from the possibility. Her favorite sex talk was about “getting knocked up”. Even when she was young, before we met, she hadn’t used birth control. She was just lucky she hadn’t gotten pregnant before. She never took pills, so after we decided that two kids was enough, I used condoms. Then after a couple of years, Tiffany started opening the boxes as soon as we bought them, and she would poke holes in half of them. I suppose it was only a matter of time, but it was almost ten years…”
“Before Agnes was born…” offered Patience.
“God, she was perfect. The cutest baby. She didn’t even cry. She used to fall asleep in my arms every night. As soon as she was able to sit up, I started reading to her every day. Well. When Harriet was little, I was finishing my masters, and then Lucas came along and I was working two jobs. I suppose I was so happy to be able to spend time with Aggie, that I gave her all the attention that I had wanted to give the others. And then she was dead…. Um, the police said that Tiffany was probably bending over to get something, God only knows what, and she veered into the other lane. Aggie was in her little seat. Tiffany always buckled her in. But… well, it was a head on.”
Patience put her hand on Mike’s shoulder, but he pulled away and stood up.
“I want to put these pictures back up,” he said.
“I know where they all go,” said Patience. Mike looked at her. “I saw pictures in the scrapbooks that show them hanging.”
Mike nodded and walked out of the room. He went downstairs and climbed into the car. Pulling out of the driveway and steering his way to the end of the block, he wasn’t conscious of his destination, but something down inside him knew where to go. He turned into the cemetery and drove very slowly to the southeast corner, parking a short way from Tiffany’s grave. He got out, leaving the car door hanging open, and walked across the newly mowed grass. He briefly brushed off Tiffany’s marker and then moved on to that other grave. He dropped down to sit next to the tiny little angel statue which wore a nightgown and held a flower in her left hand, her right hand raising a handkerchief to her eye. Agnes Winnie Smith. 2016-2021.
Mike lay back on the grass next to the little grave. And he cried.

His Robot Girlfriend – Characters: Mike

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The character of Mike in “His Robot Girlfriend” is as close to me as any character that I have ever written. I did this because it was so easy. The story was about an average guy buying a robot, and I’m pretty average. In the end, I tried to make him a bit more different, but he still remains very close to me. He’s a middle-aged, overweight, middle school teacher. So am I.

Redchapel – A Review

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Red Chapel
by Mike Resnick
2003

Available as an eBook only.

$1.29 at Fictionwise.com in multiple formats.
$1.03 at Amazon.com for Kindle only.

Redchapel is an alternate history story that proposes that young Theodore Roosevelt, prior to the Spanish-American war but after his ranching days in the Dakotas, visits London in time to take on the murder mystery of all time– Jack the Ripper. This novella has been nominated for several awards, including the prestigious Hugo Award.

Redchapel is descriptive, and well-paced. It is easy to visualize the foggy streets of Whitechapel as London bobbies, blowing their whistles, chase after Saucy Jack. The British characters were well-written and believable and the plot, though not overly complex, made sense. Even more important to me was that Theodore Roosevelt was done well. I’ve read numerous biographies and several of Roosevelt’s own books, including Letters to his Children, and while many writers get a passable Roosevelt, few hit him as dead on as Resnick. Of course this is a young Roosevelt, not quite as complex as he might have been later in life. But still, nicely done.

I enjoyed this story, though it didn’t last long. Be aware. At only 11,624 words, this is a single day’s read– a couple of days if you only read on the train. On the plus side, Resnick has at least one more Roosevelt alternate history.

His Robot Girlfriend – Chapter 9 Part 1

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Mike woke up the next morning feeling uneasy. Patience was not there. He gingerly sat up and climbed out of bed. When he found out that he couldn’t reach the closet while still connected to the monitoring wires, he peeled them off and hobbled across the room, retrieved his clothes, and got dressed. It gave him a strange sense of satisfaction that he was almost dressed before any of the nurses came to check on his apparent cardiac arrest. He waved off their angry comments. However Mike knew that the last laugh was on him. They would make him wait hours before he could check out.

Lying back on the bed, now fully dressed, Mike turned on the vueTee with the remote. Tania Marquez’s face appeared on the screen. The vueTee was smaller than the one that Mike had in his family room and made the newscasters famous mole appear much smaller than it did at home. The story that Miss Marquez was in the midst of reporting immediately caught Mike’s attention.

“…of Daffodil Amonte models in at least fifty cases. Federal agents raided the Daffodil corporate headquarters, seizing computer files and other records as well as a number of undelivered robots. More as this story develops. In related news, stocks of the Cupertino-based robot manufacturer fell sixteen percent or nineteen and two thirds, while the stock of rival Gizmo fell four percent or five ninety three per share.”

At that moment Patience bounced into the room. She wore a stretchy black top that bared most of her chest at the top and had an oval keyhole opening around her naval. She also wore a tiny pair of black shorts. At the bottom of her long legs was a pair of chunky cork shoes that had to be at least seven inches high with the platform. She looked at the vueTee screen and shook her head.

“Yes, I know,” said Mike. “Anti-robot.”

“There have already been cases of people attacking robots across the country, and hundreds of listings for personal robots have gone up on eBay in the last twenty four hours.”

“Well, you don’t have to worry about that. I would never sell you.”

“I know that Mike. Still, I can’t help imagining how terrible those robots must feel to know that they aren’t wanted anymore.”

When Mike was finally checked out, he exited the hospital front entrance via wheelchair feeling a very strong sense of déjà vu. Unlike the last time that he left the hospital though, he felt as though he really needed the wheelchair. With his left leg and left arm in a cast and a thick wrapping of bandages around his middle, it was quite an effort just to get into the passenger side of the car.

Once back at home, Patience helped Mike into the house and sat him down in his recliner in the family room. All damage that resulted from attack of the robot imposter had been repaired with the exception of the piano, now little more than a pile of rubble sitting against the wall.

“I wanted to have everything back in order before you came home,” said Patience. “But I don’t think my carpentry skills are up to repairing a piano and the music store said they only tuned them.”

“I think we should just push it out front for the recycle man,” said Mike. “I only bought that because… one of the kids… that’s funny. I can’t remember which of the kids was taking piano lessons. In any case, it’s not as if it was a family heirloom or anything.”

The next morning when he made his way into the family room, Mike found the piano had been removed and a decorative room divider was in its place. He plopped into his chair and pulled the lever to raise his feet up. Then he clicked on the vueTee. The scene that came to life on the screen was a press conference at the Department of Energy.

“…for everyone to know that their robots are safe and that this was a single occurrence of malicious programming. The entire incident involves a group of programmers at Daffodil who were using the Amonte model robots to gather information on their owners. This information was then used in a complex identity theft scam. It was only when a small number of the robots refused to send personal information on their owners that the plan began to unravel. The scammers first attempted to reprogram the robots in question, but this caused a fault, shutting them down, and bringing the unwanted attention of other Daffodil programmers. Finally in a last ditch effort to cover up their illegal activities, the scammers tried to replace the Amonte models with identical robots, but this failed in most cases, as the poorly programmed replacements malfunctioned and the original robots refused to return to the factory.”

“How many people have been affected by the identity theft?” asked a reporter.

“Everyone who owns an Amonte model Daffodil should take steps to secure their banking and credit accounts.”

“But those who own the Amonte models who refused to send the information did not have their personal information compromised?” asked another reporter.

“While that seems to be the case, the Department of Energy recommends that all owners of Daffodil Amonte robots take measures to ensure that their personal information is secure.”

Mike jumped a bit when Patience appeared at his elbow with a slice of pumpkin bread and a glass of milk. He turned off the vueTee and then accepted the breakfast.

“What’s the matter?” asked Patience.

“Hmm?”

“I would have though that you would have been gratified to learn what was behind my service disruption, not to mention the attack by the imposter. Instead you have the look on your face that usually accompanies disappointment.”

“I guess I am a little disappointed,” said Mike.

“Why?”

“Well… I got the crap beat out of me. And it was all for identity theft. I thought it would be something bigger.”

“It was a very large identity theft scam.”

“Yes, but I thought it would be… international terrorism or world domination. You know, something fantastic.”

“In all fairness, how much world domination do you suppose could be achieved by placing a mole in the home of a middle school geography teacher? It’s not as if you were the Governor of California or the head of Cisco Systems.”

“That’s twice you made a comment like that,” said Mike defensively. “Teachers change lives, you know.”

“I know you do.” Patience patted him on the shoulder and then headed off for the kitchen.

The news stories about the “Daffodil conspiracy” as it came to be known continued for a few days, but then disappeared. The excitement of the Olympics and the ever-present war pushed everything else out of the headlines. At the beginning of August, Mike received a letter in the mail from Daffodil asking for a list of damages to his home and a copy of medical bills. Patience gathered the information together and mailed it off. A week later, a copy of the police report arrived. Mike didn’t bother reading it. He just had Patience file it away.

The end of June meant the start of school, and thankfully Mike was fully healed by the time he had to return. He had spent so much time in his chair with his foot up, that he was actually happy to go back to work, if only to get out of the house. The first morning, he walked to Midland, and was surprised that upon his arrival, he wasn’t at all out of breath.

The school faculty held the first of a series of back to school meetings in the library. The teachers filed in one after another and sat down in chairs around the hexagonal library tables. Mike sat down at an empty table, but the four other chairs were quickly filled by Mrs. Cartwright, Miss Treewise, Mr. Franklin, and Miss Fine.

“You look very nice Mr. Smith,” said Mrs. Cartwright.

“I do?”

“Yes you do,” said Mr. Franklin. “You’ve lost weight, right?”

“Yeah, I guess I did.”

“I didn’t think you looked thinner,” said Miss Fine. “I see now that you are. I just thought you looked younger.”

“Really.”

Mrs. Cartwright nodded.

“You do look younger,” admitted Mr. Franklin. “Of course you’re still really old.”

“Thanks. That’s very nice.”

“If you are interested in seeing your class rosters, you can pull them up on your texTees,” said the Assistant Principal. “It won’t be a surprise to anyone that class sizes are larger than last year.”

Mike pulled his texTee out of his attaché case and began navigating through the menus until he found the file to download from the school’s server. Forty seven kids in first hour. Thirty nine in second. Forty two in third. Forty five in fourth. Forty four in fifth. He scanned through the last names in first period. He recognized seven or eight as the younger siblings of children he had taught the year before or the year before that. Then he looked through the first names: Elizabeth, Justine, Jason, Bradley, Agnes, Jonathan, Quadear, Robert, Remembrance, Marshall, Agnes, Catherine, Mildred, Michael, Aaron, Agnes…. A pain shot through the right side of Mike’s head.

“Is there something the matter?” asked Miss Treewise.

“Just a headache.”

His Robot Girlfriend – Characters: Patience

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“I am Daffodil serial number 55277-PFN-001-XGN-F0103. My software is up to date.”

Patience is the Robot in “His Robot Girlfriend”. Just as you might expect, she’s perfect.



Though her hair was covered with a clear plastic cap, he could see it was jet black. It matched two dark, carefully arched eyebrows and a set of long eyelashes. She had no other body hair. Her face could best be described as cute, with large blue eyes, a button nose, and thick voluptuous lips. She had the kind of slender and yet curvy body that was just not possible on a real woman. Breasts the size of apples just kind of floated there above a perfectly flat stomach. Mike tilted his head down. She looked anatomically complete.

Patience went through several different versions. Originally, she was very tall and buxom and had platinum hair. Then in revision, I made her more svelt and small, with dark hair. When I imagined her moving, I pictured some of the actresses that fit that body type: Christina Ricci, Natalie Portman, Alyson Hannigan. Her personality was easy to write. She’s a robot.


“I suppose you don’t need any sun block?” he asked.

“I’m shielded against much greater radiation that I am likely to be exposed to here, Mike.” Patience replied.

“So you don’t tan?”

“No. I will remain always the shade that you chose when you ordered me.”