His Robot Girlfriend by Wesley Allison (best desktop ebook reader .txt) đź“•
Mike looked at the clock on the wall. It was 3:20 PM. He counted off six hours on his fingers—9:20. He sat down on the white sofa that was almost never used and looked at the shapely nude robot. With a wry smile, he realized that he could sit and stare at it for the next six hours, or he could get up and do something. He went back to the family room, picked up the texTee, and flipped open Moby Dick, but he didn't read any more of it. Instead he turned the select dial to the bookstore and typed in "names". The titles of half a dozen books appeared including "The Name Book", "The Secret Universe of Names", and "The Baby Name Wizard". He selected the last book of the six: "Virtue Names". It took about twenty seconds for the book to download to the texTee. Looking back to the screen, Mike turned to the first page of the name book. The first name was Agape. Agape? The book said that it had something to
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“I don’t need to sleep, but I have plenty that I can do. Then I can come and take you home tomorrow.”
“Good,” said Mike. “Why don’t you go ahead and go now. They are going to start serving dinner in a few minutes anyway.”
“As you wish, Mike.” She climbed out of bed and bent over, kissing him on the cheek, before walking briskly out of the room.
Time without Patience went very slowly. Mike ate the soup, toast, and pudding that made up his dinner. He watched Animal Olympics on vueTee, the only thing even remotely interesting. He even took a little nap, though it was hard with the nurses talking right outside his door. Loudly. Without any concern for someone trying to sleep.
The next morning, Mike got up and dressed in one of the new outfits that Patience had picked out for him at the mall— a twill jacket and matching pleated pants with a mustard colored tie. Then he had to wait an interminable amount of time to be discharged. If Patience hadn’t arrived when she did, he would have eventually thrown a fit. But with her there, nothing seemed to be that bad. At last an orderly arrived with a wheelchair and rolled him out the front door. Once outside, Mike got up and walked to the car. But he let Patience drive him home. As they drove, Mike watched Patience, marveling at her motoring skill. Then he noticed something else.
“You have earrings! I mean, you have pierced ears and earrings.”
“That’s right, Mike. I was able to get them done last night at Circuit City.”
He looked carefully at the right ear, the only one visible. Her lobe was pierced twice and there was a small stud at the top of her ear through the cartilage—plastic, he corrected himself.
“I didn’t know you wanted three holes.”
“I have four in the other ear,” said Patience. “I noticed signs of sexual arousal when I approached the subject.”
“In who?”
“You.”
“You did? Well, yes.” Mike cleared his throat and took a scholarly tone. “Ours, like most civilizations, uses pierced ears to signal sexual availability.”
“But I saw little babies with their ears pierced.”
“Yeah, I know. That’s revolting.”
When they reached the house, Patience came around and opened the door for him. Together they went inside. Mike was struck at how perfectly clean the place was. It had been vacuumed, dusted, and he noticed that even the bookcases had been organized according to the Library of Congress system.
“This house looks great,” he said.
“Thank you.” Patience beamed. She led him to the couch and kissed him. They made love right there in the living room, Mike noticing only afterwards that the window glass was set to transparent. He relaxed afterwards and was just beginning to doze off when Patience returned to summon him to dinner in the dining room. She had set the table for one, with a lit candle as the centerpiece. Then she sat down across from him as he ate. She had prepared red pepper halibut and for dessert— cannoli. The dinner was delicious.
“Can I ask you about some of the things I found in Harriet’s old room?” asked Patience.
“Sure.”
“I found approximately four thousand three hundred comic books, and several hundred old paper books.”
“Yes. Those are mostly from my teen years. I was going to try and sell them on eBay, along with the old books I have boxed away in there. They don’t make them any more, you know. So they should be worth something. But it’s a lot of work.”
“Very good,” she said. “I also found six boxes of pictures and associated memorabilia.”
“That’s all the family souvenirs. Tiffany started making scrapbooks a few years before she died, scanning that stuff in to go along with the pictures on the vueTee. But she only managed to complete a couple. I thought about making some myself, but it just takes so much time. I’m not really into it anyway. Maybe I will just give it all to Harriet.
“Would you mind if I sorted through all of these things, Mike?”
“Of course not. You are my girlfriend after all. Just take good care of the scrapbook stuff.”
“I will take good care of all of it,” said Patience. “Except the old books and comic books, which I will sell for you.”
Mike spent the remainder of the evening, with his feet up, in his recliner watching Star Trek: Engineering Corps. He had purchased it a week before, but hadn’t had a chance to play it. When he was done, he brushed and flossed his teeth. Then Patience changed his bandage for him and tucked him into bed. Then she turned out the lights, and lay down next to him until he had fallen asleep. That was precisely11:02
“Time to get up, Mike,” said Patience. “Take your shower and I will have breakfast ready for you when you get out.”
“I don’t know if I’m hungry.”
“A healthy breakfast is important.”
Mike tilted his head and looked questioningly.
“It is important for you to be healthy, Mike. I’ve already started you on a regimen of exercise. It is important that you eat well too.”
“Alright then.” He got up and made his way to the shower.
True to her word and her name, Patience was waiting patiently with a piece of whole wheat toast and a glass of grapefruit-pineapple juice.
“What now?” he asked as he ate.
“You have to work today,” Patience replied. “We will go to the gym for our workout later.
It was Mike’s last day of the school year. He had already packed away everything that needed to be packed, so all he really had to do was show up and wait for the principal to check him out. By eleven, he was done. He had walked to school, and he walked back home to find Patience at the door in a tight pair of red shorts and a white spaghetti tank. He had a small salad for lunch, and then they went to the gym.
“Are we going to exercise every day over the summer?” Mike asked on the way.
“Five times a week.”
Time at the gym went quickly and Mike suffered only a small amount of discomfort from his stomach. Afterwards, as they drove home, Mike asked Patience to stop at the cemetery.
“I promised Tiffany that I would stop by every week, but I haven’t been there in months. Of course, she was dead when I promised her, so it’s not like she heard me.”
Patience pulled the car into the cemetery gate and drove around at Mike’s direction until they reached the southeast corner, where the green of the grass met the tan of the surrounding desert. Mike climbed out and walked to the marker at the head of his wife’s grave. The marker was covered with bits of grass from the last time the lawn was mowed, as well as bits of dirt. He knelt down and brushed it off. Tiffany Louise Smith 1984-2021, little enough to sum up a lifetime. 2021! Could it really be eleven years? That didn’t seem possible.
“Who is buried here?” asked Patience.
Mike looked up. A few feet from Tiffany’s grave was another. Affixed to the flat grave marker was an upright statue, about a foot tall, of an angel, a little girl with wings, wearing a nightgown and holding a flower in her left hand, her right hand raising a handkerchief to her eye.
“Some poor little child.”
Home once again, Mike took another shower and had a quick nap before getting up to play a few games of Age of Destruction on vueTee. Pausing the game, he went to the kitchen to get a diet Pepsi and noticed for the first time that the kitchen cabinets had been scrubbed clean. He opened one to find it reorganized inside. This sent him on a tour around the house. He went into the garage to find that what had once been only the home of a gigantic mound of surplus junk had been reorganized. Tiffany’s Tesla, which hadn’t been driven or even charged in more than two years, was clean and polished. There was actually enough room for Mike’s Chevy to sit beside it, and it had never known the interior of the garage. Most of the room’s contents were now on the shelves along the walls, and what remained was neatly stacked against the west wall to either side of the inside door.
He went upstairs to find that Harriet’s old room, once almost as buried as the garage floor, had also been cleaned and organized. Though the right side of the room was now filled with labeled boxes, the left side had been cleared completely out. Mike noticed that the closet now contained Patience’s growing wardrobe. Even the pictures on the walls had been dusted, though they still were just as oddly placed as they had been. Lucas’s room, which had not been nearly so cluttered, was now empty, with the exception of an exercise mat in the center of the room.
“Just as you wanted.” said Patience speaking right behind his left ear.
“Shit! You startled me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I can’t believe how much you’ve done in a week. What are you doing now—alphabetizing my underwear?”
“No. I was on the phone with Harriet. She invited us to dinner.”
“Hmm. Both of us?”
“Yes. She specifically asked that I come too.”
“Speaking of Harriet, what are you planning for her room?”
“I didn’t have any plans yet,” said Patience.
“Why don’t we make it a guest room. You can move your clothes into my closet. God knows I don’t need all that room.”
“As you wish,” she replied sweetly.
Later Mike hopped in the passenger side of the car and let Patience drive them to Greendale, to Harriet’s house. Patience wore what she referred to as a red bra-top dress, though it didn’t look at all bra-like to Mike, and a pair of matching three and a half inch wedge shoes. Mike wore a pair of tan slacks and a matching pullover shirt which Patience picked out for him. He was quite happy as they made their journey. It was a beautiful day. There wasn’t much traffic. And just having Patience with him seemed to make him happy.
Harriet greeted them with a smile. When Harriet’s husband Jack saw Patience, his mouth fell open.
“Put your tongue and your eyeballs back in your head,” said Mike, as he walked passed him. Then for good measure, Harriet smacked Jack on the back of the head. As he sat down, Mike looked at Patience to see alarm on her face.
“What?” he asked.
“Are you mad at me, Mike?”
“No. Of course not. Why?”
“You were making an angry face.”
“Was I?”
“Yes.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. I was just worrying about something I don’t even need to worry about.”
“I don’t like for you to worry, Mike.” she said. “I want to make all of your worries go away.”
“Thanks.”
Inside, they sat and talked for a while. Harriet, who worked at a dentist’s office, regaled them with stories of bad teeth and bad breath. Then she talked about Jack’s baseball team. He played with a group of men from his office. Finally, she started telling them about her gardening. She described in great detail all of the plants that she had recently added to her yard. Mike wasn’t paying too much attention. He tended to zone out. Once Harriet got started on a topic, she usually wrestled it to the ground and killed it.
“Get away!” shouted Mike, when one of Harriet’s dogs suddenly stuck its nose in his crotch.
“I know you really like dogs, Daddy,” said Harriet. “You just pretend you don’t.”
“I
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