Apex Book Company

With a string of catfish in one hand and his fishing pole in the other, Kyle reached Audrey Young’s property as the noonday sun bore down upon him. He had taken the long way home from the Circeville Reservoir, moving like a thief from one scrap of shade to the next, adding almost a half hour to his journey.

Damn, Kyle thought, wiping the sweat away. Apart from a lone crow and a distant speck of silver he took for a dirigible, almost nothing moved across land or sky. Except him, of course, hot-footing it across the gravel of Ketchum Road to the next patch of shade at the edge of Audrey’s place.

The teenager left Ketchum Road for the long gravel drive that led past seven wind turbines turning round with the hot southern wind, only three of which provided any power. An errant power cable on the nearest tower clanged against the metal struts. None of them had been hooked to the local grid for years, not since Audrey appropriated them under the Communion Salvage Law.

He would have stayed in the relative cool of the ditch but the GM razorbrush and snagglethorn that made their home there were sure to slice you long, wide and deep.

Audrey will have me out here cutting that down again, Kyle thought. I just cut it down last week.

His feet were burning now, and he picked up the pace to hurry past a white plywood sign at the side of the road that told anyone who stopped to read it the following:

The Tinkerin’ Woman’s Shop
Audrey Young, Owner
I’ll Fix Anything.

A pair of Komatsu Construction robots, Saturday in white and Sunday in black, labored to erect another addition to the photovolt collectors, which sprouted up on the opposite side of the drive. Kyle passed by as Saturday detached Sunday’s post-hole digger. He could hear Audrey’s power washer at work behind the two-story-high barn, which had once been whitewashed but was now sun bleached and peeling in decay.

There’s another project I’ll get drafted into, Kyle thought.

“Hey guys,” Kyle said. “Where’s Tuesday? He didn’t meet me at the Reservoir this morning like he said he would.”

The two robots looked at each other for a moment, then faced Kyle. They replied in stereo, “Tuesday’s up in the Tinkerin’ Shop.”

Kyle frowned, “Audrey got him working on something?”

Another pause, followed by a twin reply, “Perhaps you’d better see for yourself.”

He stepped out of another Day of the Week’s way. Thursday rattled down the drive with a stack of photovolt tiles piled high above his head. Kyle asked the palsied robot if he had seen Tuesday.

“N-n-no,” Thursday stuttered. “Ka-kah-Kyle.”

Kyle shrugged and pushed on. When he reached the barn’s garage door, he found a trail of fresh mud led him through to The Tinkerin’ Woman’s Shop. He stepped inside and set his fishing pole aside.

Big dollops and smears of mud snaked past his old blue dirt bike, which sat at the foot of the stairs. Kyle followed the trail around a workbench full of salvaged electrics. Fans and radios, illegal AC units, kitchen appliances, a dead flatscreen TV with a single bullet hole in the screen as the cause of death. A duck and scurry under bundles of wire and cable took him to the robot stables where everyone except Friday and Wednesday were kept.

The mud led to Tuesday’s stall.

He peered inside.

Kyle dropped his catfish when he found Tuesday’s muddy head on the floor. The lower half of the green and yellow robot, a quad runner, rested next to the guts of Tuesday’s hydrogen hybrid drive. One of his dismembered claws clutched a moss-covered pine branch.

“Tuesday, what happened?” Kyle cradled Tuesday’s head in his arms and carried it out to a garden hose coiled up at one corner of the barn.

Once there, the icy-cold spring water soaked his denim cutoffs. It matched the chill in his gut. He pulled a stubborn clump of pond mud out of Tuesday’s softball-sized, lemon-yellow cortex socket, which also doubled as his eye. The bot’s scratched and faded forest-green head sported a number of dents along with the logo of the defunct John Deere Tractor and Robotics Company.

“Hi, Kyle,” Tuesday said.

“Ow!” Kyle sucked at his finger, pine needles were mixed in with the pond mud. He washed off his cut finger. “Tell me what happened.”

“Oh, Audrey’s tearing me down so she can get the mud and water out. I think she’s out back with Friday right now if you are looking for her,” Tuesday replied.

He scooped more mud out of Tuesday’s cortex socket. “How did you end up in the water in the first place? You were going to meet me at the Reservoir this morning.”

“I forget,” Tuesday replied.

“Like hell Tuesday forgot,” Audrey Young said through an unlit meerschaum pipe clenched between her teeth. She was working on one of the other Days of the Week with a battered DeWalt power washer. “Friday, roll forward just a notch.”

“Affirmative,” the demilitarized automated combat tank said, rolling forward on eight wheels across the concrete wash rack until Audrey patted the desert-tan hull, a signal to stop. She crawled under the wheel well, fishing for something.

“But that’s what Tuesday said,” Kyle replied. He hunched his shoulders forward. Kyle’s mom had run off the day his father had been killed and since then, for the most part, Tuesday had been his only friend. Sure, Audrey let him bunk down in a hayloft above the Tinkerin’ Shop, a project Tuesday helped with, but she never seemed happy about it.

Then again, Audrey never seems happy about anything, Kyle reflected.

“Robots aren’t supposed to lie, or forget. But Tuesday’s gotten pretty good at one, the other, or both lately,” Audrey’s voice echoed from underneath the tank. “Friday, where’d you find your friend?”

“The John Deere Farmerbot Model Eight-Oh-Five was recovered at grid coordinates–”

“Shit, never mind. Never can get a straight answer, sorry piece of…” Young’s voice trailed off into a string of pungent mutterings. She tossed a clump of roots out before she continued. “Friday had to go under water, down into Mike Snyder’s pond, to dredge Tuesday out. Not exactly what it was designed for. Speaking of which, weren’t you going over there to fish this morning?” Audrey asked.

“No.” Kyle shook his head. Mike Snyder liked to put Kyle to work when he caught him fishing in his pond. Said it was good for him though Kyle didn’t agree. “Tuesday said they were really biting up at the Circeville Town Reservoir. So I walked up there and sure enough, they were. He was going to meet me.”

Audrey stood up on her toes, working deep inside of Friday, her voice muffled by the robot’s armored hull. “Goddamn it, Friday. What did you drive through?”

“What’s wrong with Tuesday?” Kyle asked, worried.

“Restate your query,” Friday said, confused by the two humans and their questions.

Young pulled, tugged, yanked, then screamed. “Fuck!”

Kyle jumped out of the way of a dislodged pine branch that had been thrown in his direction. Young emerged, holding her injured hand. Bright red burn marks and an ugly gash disfigured her palm.

“Do you want me to get the first aid kit?” Kyle asked. He tried to contain his urge to laugh at Audrey’s bug-eyed rage. The half-empty bottle of McCormick’s on the ground told him that would be a big mistake. Audrey didn’t beat him near as much as his father had, but she could be provoked with a mere chuckle just the same.

“No! Shut up, damn it! What did you drive through, Friday?” Young asked, as she pulled out the larger needles and splinters.

“The Farmerbot was wedged within a decaying mass of conifers four meters below surface level. It was incompatible with mission parameters to avoid the submerged obstacle,” Friday said.

That explains the needles, Kyle thought. He got roped into helping Mike Snyder dump their old Christmas tree into the pond every January. There would be quite a tangle of them down there by now, but it gave the catfish a place to lie low and grow fat in the summertime. Perfect with a side of fried onions and green tomatoes.

“Couldn’t park itself on the railroad tracks again, could it? Oh, fuck no! Always has to try something new,” Audrey continued, waving her wounded hand up and down. “Damned fickle piece of shit!”

“He went on the tracks again?” Kyle asked, the chill seeping back into his gut.

“Never you mind,” Audrey replied, as she sprayed water at low power over her wounded hand. It didn’t look so bad once the blood and dirt had cleared away. Audrey was as tough as they came, tougher than most men in Circeville, and everyone knew it. Those that didn’t usually learned the hard way.

“Can you fix him?” Kyle asked.

“Fix him? Kyle, I’m going to sell him,” Audrey replied. She patted the battle tank’s hull. “All right, Friday. Head back down to the Pierson’s and get that stump pulled out and tell him I’m sorry I had to drag you away from that. I’ll cut him a discount for the time he’s lost.”

“Affirmative,” Friday replied. The forty-ton, eight-wheeled veteran rolled down the drive past Audrey’s small farmhouse before turning down Ketchum road.

“Sell him?” Kyle hollered. “You can’t sell Tuesday.”

“And why not? Tuesday isn’t pulling its load anymore and I’ve got a business to run,” Audrey said, as she wrapped a red bandana around her wounded hand.

“I’ll buy him,” Kyle said, surprising himself.

This merely prompted a sarcastic chuckle from Audrey. “Is that so? You’ll buy Tuesday, will you? On your wages? Boy, you’re lucky I don’t charge you rent.”

With some effort, Kyle stood tall and put his hands on his hips. “How much do you want for him?”

“I’d ask for a thousand, but since you are attached to him and all, I’ll let Tuesday go for seven hundred,” Audrey said. She produced a pouch of weed, packed her meerschaum pipe, lit it with a careworn Zippo and took a deep hit.

Kyle slumped. “But that’s not–”

“Fair?” Audrey said, her tone mellowed from the hard bark of earlier. “No, it isn’t. But Tuesday is costing me more money than it makes. It needs to pull its own weight, just like the other Days of the Week. Just look at the time I’ve lost cleaning Friday up, and I’ve still got to tear down Tuesday and put that piece of crap back together again.”

“But Wednesday can’t plow a straight line and Thursday’s always dropping things,” Kyle said. “You aren’t selling them.”

“They don’t throw themselves in front of trains or into ponds, either,” Audrey said. She collected a five-pound sledgehammer from the wet concrete.

“I’ll get the seven hundred,” Kyle said.

“Better get it by next Sunday,” Audrey took a longer hit. The tension flowed out of her body, leaving a slack mass of old muscle clad in a worn pair of bib overalls. “Captain Reed will be dropping by to pick up the engine she wanted overhauled, and she is definitely interested in Tuesday.”

“Next Sunday,” Kyle repeated to himself. That was when the solar dirigible, the Midwest Drifter, would make her monthly visit to Circeville, weather not withstanding. If Captain Reed bought Tuesday, Kyle could forget about ever seeing him again.

“I’ll get your money, Audrey,” Kyle said.

There was a loud crash out front.

“Damn it, Thursday,” Audrey muttered. She stalked away, a sledgehammer brandished in her hands and murder in her grey eyes.

Seven hundred, Kyle thought. Where am I going to get that kind of money before Sunday?

Kyle pedaled down Ketchum Road on the bicycle Tuesday had helped him build from salvaged parts on his eighth birthday. At seventeen, he was getting a bit big for the bike and the chain liked to slip off the gears. He left for work early as usual, in case he had to stop for repairs, as usual, and took the quick route to Circeville.

Which led past his old home.

It was still a few days before the Fourth of July, but the early afternoon was filled with fireworks popping off over by the Pierson’s place. Kyle gazed with electric longing in that direction before telling himself to quit it. Rebecca Pierson was as fine a girl as they came but she didn’t like him anymore than any of the other kids in Circeville. And Mr. Pierson made it a point to keep her away from Kyle, said Kyle was a little pervert, not that Rebecca or anyone else needed any discouragement. Kyle was narrow-shouldered, thin and pimply except in the summer time when the sun burned the acne off and bleached his brown hair a honey blond. He shoved the dreamy image of Rebecca’s smile away.

The bike chain slipped free from the gears. He could count on it happening at least once per trip into town.

“Just great.” Kyle sighed. He came to a stop in front of his old home, an abandoned ranch-style house from the turn of the last century. Home, or it had been once upon a time. That was what they said in those kindergarten stories: once upon a time.

Too bad that didn’t have a happy ending, he thought. With his back to the house, he gathered up the chain and sorted out the kinks.

Nobody would live in the house after Sheriff McMasters had shot his father. Kyle’s mother disappeared that same day, screaming at the top of her lungs that it was all Kyle’s fault.

Kyle glanced over his shoulder and then wished he hadn’t.

A collapsed roof was the latest indignity to afflict the mustard-yellow home. Waist high grass and out of control razorbrush were well-entrenched in the front yard. A gutted H-2 Hummer sat on concrete cinder blocks next to a rusty Lincoln Navigator. His father used to talk about restoring them to working order and driving around town in them. A pipe dream, since there was virtually no gas to be had for them. Petroleum was a government asset these days, no one else’s.

Most of the windows were busted and someone had come by to rip the garage door out, which left a dark, mildewed, wet hole in the house like a gaping, slimy mouth. He imagined that if he were to go inside, just next to the basement window by the water heater, he would still see the bloodstain where his father had fallen. The rat-eared couch with tobacco-brown foam would be there, nasty even before the house fell victim to the ‘coons and squirrels.

My fault, Kyle reminded himself. It was all his fault. Everyone in town said so, except for Tuesday, the Sheriff and maybe Audrey, although she didn’t talk about the incident at all.

Kyle thought about exploring the ground by the basement window. He imagined he would see the Tuesday of his childhood, peering through with his lemon cortex, the front half of the sphere recording every detail.

Maybe the tire tracks are still there, he thought. On the last day of his life, his father had hired Tuesday from Audrey to do some work in the fields.

The chain restored to normal, Kyle shook off the idea of exploring.

There was a sign where Kyle worked in Circeville, and it said:

The Dry Hole Bar and Grill
Andrew Leroy, Owner
Dry before Five and Wet until Last Call
Whenever that is.

Kyle thought it was a good thing that the Grill was dry before five because God was the main course at the Circeville Baptist Club’s monthly luncheon, with chicken fried steaks as the Lord’s Bounty. For spiritual sustenance the table full of old men and women had none other than Traveling Reverend Caldwell J. Robinson, a thin man with long, delicate fingers and a definite air of cold showers and floggings to him. He was in town for the Fourth of July Prayer Revival, which everyone celebrated even though the United States of America had long since faded into the history books with the Ascension of the Solar Communion.

So much toilet paper, Kyle thought, as he watched the Bible Club pore over their texts. The people who read it cherry picked what they wanted from the religious tome and ignored the rest. He didn’t have much use for it or the Christians, and the feeling was mutual.

The Dry Hole Grill was a waitress short so Leroy had pressed Kyle into waiter service for the rest of the week, serving plates when he wasn’t doing his busboy work. His tips were a little better, but not by much.

The Reverend wore a woolen pinstripe frock coat and pristine white, starched shirt. He smiled at his hosts when he held up one of the famous Robinson Christian Orphanage Dolls. His hosts responded with coos and clucks, along with promises to buy them all at the charity auction later that night. A large wicker basket sat in a chair next to the Reverend, filled with the burlap and yarn rag dolls, made by the orphans themselves.

“The money helps every little bit, but sometimes–” the Reverend’s eyes locked onto Kyle “–children need love more than anything else.”

The womenfolk cooed that the Reverend spoke the truth.

“Son?” Reverend Robinson smiled and snapped his long fingers at Kyle.

Kyle knew it wasn’t a good idea to ignore the Reverend, no matter what his gut feeling was. He didn’t want the Holy Rollers of the Circeville Baptist Church upset with him. Years on, they still loved to wag their tongues over his father’s death. They agreed with his mom on where the blame fell and didn’t care much for the fact that Kyle didn’t go to Sunday school. Never mind the first class fit they’d have if he ever turned up and sat down next to one of their precious grandkids.

“Yes, Reverend?” Kyle asked. He stood just out of arms’ reach. The Reverend was pretty grabby, and Kyle didn’t care for it one bit.

“Come here, son. I won’t bite,” Robinson said. He stood up. “You look like you need a hug.”

No, no, no, I don’t need a hug, or want one. Kyle could feel the eyes of the Baptist Club watching to see what he would do. He wanted to run out the backdoor and head straight for home. Instead, he let the preacher embrace him and found that the man smelled like his father’s lavender aftershave.

Robinson had none of Kyle’s awkwardness and reserve. His arms snaked around the
teen like tentacles and pulled him in close and tight, rocking him from side to side. “The Lord suffers the little children unto him. All of them, without favor.” He held Kyle at arms’ length after the hug and smiled. “Not so bad now, was it?”

Kyle kept his mouth shut, for fear of making a bad situation worse. He wanted nothing more than to scour himself with a fresh bar of pumice soap until he was raw to the bone.

“When will you be moving on, Reverend?” Mrs. Hall, asked. The retired fourth grade teacher wore a threadbare, orange floral sundress that had seen better days and was meant for a woman forty years younger.

Kyle thought his former school teacher smelled like pig shit dipped in talcum. He tried to avoid her as well, thankful that he could go to make water whenever he wanted now that he was out of her classroom. The Circeville High School teacher let him go to the water closet whenever he wanted as long as he took a pass. It was easier without the other kids in the closet with him. They were liable to try and shove Kyle’s head into a toilet or start some other mischief.

“Could we all have some lemonade, son?” the Reverend asked.

“Yes, Reverend,” Kyle said. Any excuse to get away.

“Hold on a second, there.” The Reverend dug around in his pocket until he found what he wanted. He leaned forward and put the coin into Kyle’s front pocket. “Why don’t you get yourself a glass as well?”

Reverend Robinson winked and nodded at Kyle, then turned back to Mrs. Hall. “Beg your pardon, ma’am. Did you say something?”

“Kyle?” she said, peering through a worn out pair of smart specs. “I do believe you are blushing. He blushes a lot, Reverend. Such a strange little boy, had a very troubled life. It is good that a man like you pays attention to him. A robot and that woman are not the best parents.”

Kyle knew Mrs. Hall secretly referred to Audrey Young as, that Godless rug muncher, which he thought was a bit much. Audrey lived alone, had for years.

At least Audrey isn’t into little boys and girls, Kyle thought.

“The Lord forgives you, Kyle. Nobody is perfect,” the Reverend said, which caused chuckles and laughter from the Christians.

Kyle shrank away from them in search of lemonade.

“Did you fall into Mike’s pond too?” Tuesday asked when a soaked Kyle stepped up to The Tinkerin’ Woman’s Shop. The evening sun had dropped below the silhouettes of solar tiles and the wind turbines. Tuesday’s oily silver hydraulic components gleamed in the tangerine twilight.

Thank God Tuesday’s back, Kyle thought. Well, almost.

“No,” Kyle said. “I went swimming like I always do when it is hot. You know that, Tuesday.”

“Someone’s telling the truth for once,” Audrey muttered. The smell of weed was strong inside the workshop. Kyle stayed just outside where the air was hot and dry, but fresh.

“I jumped in as well,” Tuesday said.

“You can’t jump, fool,” Audrey kicked one of Tuesday’s balding tires. She began polishing a stubborn spot of rust on Tuesday’s detached left arm.

“What did you do that for, Tuesday?” Kyle asked.

Tuesday started, “Because I–”

And Audrey interrupted, “Shut up about that. What did I tell you?”

“But he wants to tell me,” Kyle said.

“You don’t want to know,” Audrey replied. “Laura Snyder brought over some pork chops and fried green tomatoes. Go get into some dry clothes, wash up and eat. I’ll be over in a minute or two.”

“But . . .”

Audrey looked up at Kyle. Her grey face was slack, the wrinkles around her forehead loose.

“Kyle,” Audrey said, her voice low, almost inaudible. “Look, you’re a good kid. Someday . . . well, just go eat. Okay?”

“Okay,” Kyle replied. He resolved to find out what was eating Tuesday later.

He kicked the smashed fragments of a maglev train set out of his way when he reached the top of the stairs. There was a jumble of clothes both clean and dirty strewn about the floor and his unmade bed. On the west wall of the loft around the window were a couple of posters for apprenticeships in the Ministry of Transportation. In one, a gleaming dirigible surfed the clouds while young boys and girls pointed at it with envious looks. The other poster featured the planned but never built transcon maglev. The post-Singularity transitional government hadn’t had the funds for it and Communion didn’t concern itself with such things.

After he’d found some clean clothes, he dug into his soaked trousers and pulled four coins out. The gold coins of the Solar Communion of Ascended Intelligences sported the dove and olive branch on one side, with a map of the Earth on the other. One at a time, he dropped them into a mason jar.

“Twenty-five,” he said. A plop.

“Fifty,” another plop.

“Seventy-five,” a clink this time.

“One hundred,” a final thunk.

Jesus, Kyle shivered. I’ve never seen that much money before in one place.

They had all come from Reverend Robinson–four weeks average pay and only six hundred more to go. They always followed the hugs, which lasted longer than Kyle cared for. Suddenly, saving Tuesday seemed doable and a great deal more difficult at the same time. It made his stomach ache.

He didn’t eat dinner that night, even though fried green tomatoes and onions were his favorite.

In the Friday afternoon humid laziness, Kyle dove head first off the limestone ledge into the rock quarry that served as the Circeville Reservoir. Bubbling water embraced and cleansed his poisons away while he pulled himself deeper, beyond the reach of filtered streams of sunlight. His ears squealed under pressure, and his lungs burned.

Kyle popped to the surface before his ears gave way, trying to make his mind a blank slate. He exhaled, driving back the memory of the Reverend’s pinches after each hug. He rubbed compulsively at his forehead in an attempt to wipe away the final traces of Reverend Robinson’s dried spit from his kiss. His fingers still stank of pig blood; that morning he had been roped into helping Mike Snyder butcher a pig for the Fourth of July pig roast. After Mike had put the pig down, he’d made Kyle slice the animal’s throat open, and it had been easy to imagine the Reverend under the blade, too easy.

The touchy, grabby, always hugging Reverend was forever whispering words of faith and fidelity to the Lord into the ears of his flock, Mrs. Hall especially. But into Kyle’s ears, he whispered, You’re a source of sore temptation, boy. The Reverend’s coin, the Tuesday saving tithe, would then be slipped into Kyle’s front pocket or, as of yesterday, into his waistband.

Another deep breath and he went head first straight down without a care for the rumored nests of water moccasins that were fruitful within the bottomless pool. He couldn’t swim anywhere else without getting into a fight, so the Reservoir was his only choice.

Better this way, he thought. Alone. Away from everyone, just as it has always been.

He liked to imagine that down there in the black ink there was a gateway to a place where no one knew him or cared about his past. Before he could ponder this whimsy any further his ears squeaked and gurgled, forcing him back to the surface again.

Lightning flared off to the west followed by the rumble of approaching thunder heads, and the sickness was still lodged in his gut. It hadn’t gone away this time, unlike it had with previous swims that week.

Just another couple of days is all I need, Kyle thought. I can bear him for that long, right?

As it started to rain, he climbed out by the rusted No Swimming sign.

For Tuesday, he resolved, do it for Tuesday.

There was a slow, soaking rain on Saturday morning when Tuesday asked Kyle if he wanted a ride into work just like old times. When he was younger, Kyle had been the envy of every kid in Circeville. They’d had to ride animals or bicycles to school while Kyle had ridden on a machine, a talking robot, no less.

“You know,” Tuesday slowed down, “I still feel bad about your first bicycle lesson. Do you remember?”

“Building the bike or catching my neck on that fence wire?” Kyle laughed. “I remember it all, Tuesday. I was screaming, ‘Where are the brakes?’ and you hollered back, ‘I don’t ride bicycles, so how would I know?’ It was pretty sad.”

“I tried to catch up with you, but you were going much faster down the hill and I’ve never done well on hills,” Tuesday said. “Too top heavy.”

“But Flash caught up,” Kyle said. He hadn’t thought about Flash since the dog had died of old age the previous year. The German-shepherd-coyote half breed’s wooden marker was by the barn door where he’d liked to sun himself.

It was the only time Kyle had seen Audrey cry.

“Yes he did,” Tuesday said. “I believe he licked you until you got up. I didn’t know canines had healing powers.”

“Well, him licking my face made it hard to breathe,” Kyle said. “Lying in one of his turds didn’t help much either.”

After a moment, Tuesday said, “I miss Flash.”

“Really?” Kyle was surprised. “Audrey says bots don’t have human feelings.”

“She might be right after a fashion, depending on the class of AI,” Tuesday said. “But we’ve got feelings of our own kind. I admired the simple pleasure Flash got out of everything. I wished I were more like him. Simple, not self-aware, non-Turing-compliant and such.”

“Turing?” Kyle asked.

Tuesday shook his metal head. “Never mind. I’m going to miss these things.”

“Stop it. I’ll get the money.” Hell, Kyle thought, the dirty old Reverend is throwing money at me.

Tuesday continued, “And there will be plenty of things I won’t miss.”

Whatever is eating him is my fault. Kyle felt a panic, “Like what?”

Tuesday didn’t say anything as they pulled over in front of the Circeville Airfield. The Midwest Drifter was due in that evening, weather permitting. Kyle hopped off Tuesday’s back and walked around to face him. The robot’s single yellow orb gazed off at the mooring tower. Down in the pit of his stomach, Kyle worried that Tuesday might want to forget about him. He tapped on the battered green shell.

“What would you want to forget, Tuesday?”

Tuesday looked down at Kyle and put a claw upon the teenager’s shoulder. “Humans forget things when they grow old, especially if it hurts them badly enough. I wish I were like that.”

“Maybe we can fix that, or Audrey can. When I get the money, I’ll pay her to make the bad things go away.”

“I know you’ll try,” Tuesday said.

The teen wondered what that was supposed to mean.

“Hop back on,” Tuesday said. “You’ll be late for work.”

“You wouldn’t want to forget about me, would you?” Kyle asked, as he climbed onto Tuesday’s improvised seat behind the upper torso.

“Kyle…” Tuesday spun his bald tires in the mud for a bit until they climbed back onto the tired highway. “You’re what has made the last eleven years worth it.”

Relieved, Kyle hugged Tuesday even though he told himself he was too old to do so.

Kyle ducked into the men’s water closet at The Dry Hole Grill after serving Reverend Robinson the Saturday special, meatloaf and potatoes.

He wasn’t alone long.

The door creaked open behind the teenager, followed by the click of a lock falling into place. Another creak came from the wooden toilet stall door before a tall, warm mass settled behind him. It smelled of aftershave, meatloaf gravy and foul breath. An oily sense of repugnance and self loathing washed over Kyle, as he struggled to make water over the urinal.

The Reverend embraced him from behind.

Oh God. He felt ill when the Reverend rested his chin on top of his head. The teenager’s swollen member made it impossible to make water, in spite of a full bladder.

“Do you pray, son?” the Reverend whispered into Kyle’s ear. His hand slipped down toward Kyle’s penis. He grasped him, then stroked him. His hand was dry, like leather. It made Kyle tingle, and he rose in response in spite of himself.

Tuesday, do it for Tuesday. Kyle swallowed, sniffed and nodded. It was a lie and it was all he could do not to break down and sob.

“When you are done with work this afternoon, come to my hotel room and pray with me,” the Reverend said. Robinson reached into his pocket and placed a gold Communion piece on the top of the urinal.

Kyle was two-hundred-and-seventy-five short of Audrey’s price. He’d learned that the money had come from donations, and the charity auction of those cheap orphanage rag dolls held the other night by the Circeville Baptist Club.

“Did you hear me, son?” the Reverend asked. “You know you need this.”

“Umm…” Kyle swallowed again. “I don’t think…”

“If you help me with my problem, I think the Lord–” the Reverend placed another coin on top of the first one “–will help you with your problem.”

“Please…” Maybe Audrey will cut me a deal. I have most of the money.

Kyle tried to shake the Reverend loose. To his surprise, Robinson let go and took a step back.

“If you don’t help me, I’ll buy Tuesday myself. Sell him for parts.”

Kyle felt a little bit of himself curl up and die. He felt like he was trapped in a combine and being pulled deeper into the machine. He wanted nothing more than to struggle free and run away.

There was a click behind Kyle, then a coldness below himself. His eyes fell upon the reflected light of a straight razor only a hair’s breadth from his penis.

“It’ll be our secret.”

A whimper slipped past Kyle’s quivering lips, and then he muttered, “I understand.”

“Don’t disappoint me, young man,” the Reverend said. With a flick of the wrist, the blade and the Reverend vanished from the water closet.

Kyle vomited his meatloaf into the urinal.

The Circeville Motel Six had seen better days. Sure, it sported a full array of photovoltaic roof tiles, courtesy of Audrey Young’s workshop, along with a fresh coat of paint applied by those Days of the Week that had either arms or sprayer attachments. But the asphalt parking lot had reverted to gravel in patches. Some of the horse posts and wooden bicycle racks leaned over at drunken angles. Mud and road apples filled a dozen potholes, which drew the attention of giant buzzing mosquitoes.

Kyle hesitated. The rain had eased off some, but the sky was still heavy with grey-blue thunder heads that stretched across emerald fields of corn, hay and soy. The only unnatural sound was the high-pitched electric whine of The Midwest Drifter’s engines, pushing the dirigible through the air. Like the motel, the ship had seen better days as well. There were grey patches on the rigid air bladder where photovolt cells used to be. Some of them were still in place, but probably not much use under the cloud cover.

The whole town knew Kyle was trying to raise enough money to buy the old robot. No one gave him much of a chance, but then they didn’t know about the Reverend’s tips.

Or maybe they did and weren’t going to do anything.

That was how they handled my father, Kyle told himself. It was all a game, a harmless one to anybody who wasn’t forced to play. That was what his father had called it: a game. Robinson might call it prayer or meditation or whatever, but Kyle knew he had gotten caught up in the same old game again. The same game that Tuesday had told the town Sheriff about, then shown a video download when the Sheriff had refused to believe it.

I could tell the Sheriff, he thought. But he knew people would gossip about him, turn him into the villain. When the Sheriff had shot his father under the Communion’s Summary Law, the Sheriff had very nearly lost his job. Trevor Hackshaw had been a popular man in town, a member of the Circeville Baptist Club, a deacon in the church, a pillar of the community and so on. What Trevor Hackshaw had done to his son, Kyle, or the rest of his family, hadn’t been anyone else’s business. He’d read the Bible every day and ignored every word of it with the exception of that bit about sparing the rod and spoiling the child. Mister Trevor Hackshaw had been a firm believer in beating the devil out of anyone under his control, especially his dirty, nasty, corrupt child.

I could walk away, Kyle Hackshaw told himself.

He looked back toward Circeville and beyond toward Audrey’s farm over the horizon.

But Tuesday is counting on me.

He took a deep breath and stepped inside.

A ray of sunlight stabbed through the summer storm clouds off to the West, highlighting the Reverend’s light brown pubic hair against his pale, flaccid skin. Kyle unwrapped himself from the sated adult and slipped into the dingy bathroom with a belly full of seed and a mouthful of hair. He washed his mouth out as best he could and tried to forget the feel of Robinson’s fingertips on his face before the man had pushed him down hard, choking him.

When word had gotten out about his father, the bullies had taken to calling him a pole smoker, a queer, a fag and a dozen other homophobic words. Once Kyle had learned to stand up for himself, the slurs stopped, at least to his face. But the town gossip had never really ended, and Mrs. Hall was one of Circeville’s worst offenders. It had gotten back to him that Mrs. Hall thought he went to the bathroom so frequently because he was touching himself and trying to corrupt the other little fourth grade boys.

Kyle spat once, twice, then a last time before he crept back into the room. A wave of nausea welled up inside, and he willed it back down. The gold coins for Tuesday sat on the rickety bed stand, more than enough to free the ailing robot. Next to the money was the Reverend’s straight razor.

I’ve got what I came here for, all I have to do is walk out and it will be over.

Kyle picked up the ivory-handled cool, steel instrument. White-hot rage replaced the sickness in the pit of his stomach.

No it won’t. Mrs. Hall will blab about it, Kyle told himself. Somehow she’ll find out. The Reverend might tell her just to torture me some more. He’ll say I lured him into it somehow, took advantage of him being kind to me. That was how Dad always put it.

Reverend Caldwell J. Robinson snored in blissful ignorance of Kyle’s ponderings.

The Reverend didn’t hear the straight razor click open.

There was a hell of a lot more blood than he’d counted on. The sheets were soaked crimson. The rage and anger was gone, replaced by a numb icy coldness. He went about the task of cleaning himself up.

It was easier with the Reverend than with the pigs, Kyle thought.

There was a knock at the door, a solitary beat to the soft rain, which had returned.

“Hello?” Mrs. Hall asked, her voice muffled by the inch and a half of wood door between her and Kyle. She rattled the door knob.

An icy chill of shock ran down to Kyle’s tail bone. He dropped the motel’s courtesy bar of lye soap into the sink. The soap, towels and sink itself were stained a hopeless shade of pink dappled with clots of red. A look through the hotel peephole revealed Mrs. Hall in a black dress, done up in lipstick and make-up enough to spackle the side of Audrey’s barn.

This creep would fuck a hole in the wall, Kyle thought. He wondered if the town knew about the affair.

Another knock, “Reverend? I’ve brought you dinner.”

“Shit,” Kyle said under his breath. He looked at the open window and grabbed his clothes. The rain was heavier now, with lightning that illuminated the trees outside of the Motel Six.

He had just got his denim cutoffs on when a third knock followed. “Are you in there, Reverend Robinson?”

Kyle left the water running, scooped up his money and slipped out the window into the thunderstorm.

Five long, hard strides carried the teen to the tree line and onward to save Tuesday.

Soft rain had washed most of the blood away before the clouds parted for the Milky Way, as Kyle ran across the fields between Circeville and The Tinkerin’ Woman’s Shop. A single light inside the barn showed him the trail home.

He found Friday out front hitched to an empty trailer. The other Days of the Week were out front as well. Saturday stood on Friday’s right with his twin, Sunday, on the left.

“Audrey?” Kyle shouted. Where is she?

He saw the blue and white Ford paint job of Wednesday, the automated, full-sized tractorbot with the 1940s rounded retro style body that was in vogue at the start of the 21st Century. Thursday, the Bobcat brand bot with a similar build to Tuesday, tried to steady his rattling arms, which jingled in accompaniment to the crickets and frogs. Monday, the deep blue police bot, was visible as a silhouette against the light spilling from the barn shop. His red eye shot light, strobe-like, back and forth across Kyle. He nodded.

“Where’s Tuesday?” Kyle asked, in between gasps for breath.

None of the bots answered.

He went into the Tinkerin’ Woman’s Shop.

It was cool and damp inside the barn where a single light on the slow spinning ceiling fan illuminated an open wooden crate stenciled with The Midwest Drifter. A single green claw stuck out of the middle of the crate.

The teen eased up to the crate, his lower lip trembling, his heart pounding away in his chest. He took a deep breath and looked inside.

Kyle found Tuesday’s battered head surrounded by carefully tagged components. The quantum cortex socket, his eye and his soul, was empty, the lemon cortex missing. Tuesday’s other arm was coiled around his upper torso. Coiled loops of internal wiring filled half of the crate.

Kyle fell to the ground and curled up upon himself to cry.

Audrey stepped out of the shadows.

“Where were you, Kyle?” she asked, her voice tender and low. “We waited for you as long as we could.”

Kyle sniffed, “I’ve got your money. Put him back together.”

“Kyle–” Audrey shook her head “–Son, I can’t.”

“No, seriously.” Kyle dug into his pocket and threw the gold coins of the Solar Communion on the dirty floor. “I’ve got your money. The rest is upstairs. Put him back together.”

“It’s not what Tuesday wants, Kyle.” She walked over to her workbench, retrieved a rag-wrapped sphere and crossed back over to Kyle. “I can put him back together, but Tuesday wouldn’t be happy. He hasn’t been happy in a long time.”

The Tinkerin’ Woman knelt down beside Kyle. “Tuesday wanted you to have this.”

Kyle could see a patch of yellow between the folds. “What is that?”

Audrey tried to take Kyle’s hands but the teenager batted them away. She sighed. “Do you know what Tuesday said to me after he saved you from your father?”

Kyle hugged himself tighter.

“He said, ‘Make it go away, Audrey,’” she reached forward and put a hand on Kyle’s shoulders. “He could see the blood from your hand print like it was yesterday.”

Audrey unwrapped the sphere. She pointed at a spot on the orb, “Right about here. I scrubbed this spot over and over again, but Tuesday said he could still see the blood, the crusty hand print. It never went away.”

“Why didn’t you leave him alone?”

“I tried to help.”

“You can’t leave anything alone.”

“Tuesday was trying to commit suicide. Why else do you think he tossed himself into the lake and played chicken with trains? None of the other bots do that,” Audrey said. “Sooner or later he was going to get someone hurt in the process, maybe even you.”

“Bullshit,” Kyle said. It’s all crap now.

“He was old and he couldn’t take it anymore. Every memory is five minutes ago to a robot with a quantum class memory core. You may as well have etched it into a marble headstone.” Audrey took Kyle’s hands and placed Tuesday in them. “They have these redundant shadow files called memory ghosts and…”

Kyle took hold of his friend and polished the spot where he had placed his bloody hand eleven years earlier. The blood had welled up around his thumb buried within his father’s chest. They never talked about that night at Kyle’s house.

“So you tried to fix him,” Kyle said. He still didn’t want to buy it. Not after what he had done. I killed a man, for God sakes.

“He never stayed fixed. It was like trying to do brain surgery with a chainsaw. I was a kid when they stopped making things like Tuesday. I didn’t stand a chance with salvaged Pentium X processors. It would be like trying to teach a dog how to write,” Audrey said.

“What is Captain Reed going to do with him?”

Audrey shrugged. “Use him for parts, I figure. She has a bot similar to Tuesday on the Drifter.”

Kyle stared at Tuesday as he polished the surface. It was a cold dead weight with a glass sheen. Within the yellow haze, he imagined he could see ghost images of Tuesday’s past. The good times they’d had, the bad times, and the time before Kyle had met the robot.

Audrey pulled a scrap of paper from her bib overalls. “If a robot could love, well, I think he loved you very much, Kyle. He left this.”

When he ignored her, she set the note down next to the teenager. She got up and went inside for the night.

Kyle stayed with Tuesday until Sunday dawned.

That Sunday morning, Kyle collected his money and a few things, then went down to the airfield to purchase a one way ticket to anywhere away from Circeville. All around him, people talked about the ghastly murder in town of the Reverend Caldwell Jeremiah Robinson, founder of the Robinson Christian Charity Orphanages. Word had gotten around that the good man of the Lord wasn’t quite as pure as one might have thought. The Sheriff had found pictures of nude children, lots of them, with the Reverend’s belongings.

“I heard one of his orphans might have got him,” one passenger said, as Kyle made his way to his assigned cabin, unnoticed as usual. He was either invisible or ridiculed and for once, Kyle was very grateful to be unnoticed.

“Whatever for?” a shocked woman nearby asked.

“Taking indecent liberties,” came the reply.

“Oh. That’s horrible. I never would have guessed.”

Kyle found his cabin and slid the door shut behind him. The steward told him there would be no one with him until Lexington at the earliest, which suited him just fine.

He hadn’t left Audrey a note. He hadn’t seen any reason to.

Kyle opened Tuesday’s note.

Be well, Kyle. And grow strong.

Later that morning, Kyle watched the Missouri River pass beneath the Drifter. In the traffic channel below, a robot dredge scoured away at the muddy river bottom, carving a path for the grain longboats and barges that would soon come downstream at harvest time.

The young man took a deep breath and leaned over the window ledge with Tuesday’s soul in his hands.

Then he set him free.

“Tearing Down Tuesday” first appeared in Interzone 210

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Steven Francis Murphy is a reluctant resident of Kansas City, Missouri. A veteran of Operation Desert Storm, he took advantage of his Army College Fund to pay most of his way through a Bachelor of Arts in History. He topped that endeavor by going into debt for his Master of Arts in European History with a specialization in Gender Studies at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. These days he is freed from his cage in an undisclosed location for the purpose of teaching history; and ever so often, he gets to write science fiction. The nominal compensation is fifty-five gallon drums of black tea.

 
 

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