“Why don’t you open the door up so I can see that pretty face of yours?”
“I built the wall, but I made it four feet instead of three.” The words came out of Stanley before he could register what was happening.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Stanley paused. He wasn’t crazy; he was using a hypnosis technique that he had read about years ago. “The animals all respected it except for that German Shepherd — what was his name?”
The man’s radio transponder blared out. He swore and said, “You saw nothing.” The seismic assault faded in the distance.
With his back against the front door, Stanley listened to the officer’s retreat. He scurried over to the window and peeked out. The officer jogged to his car. Standing next to the door, he hesitated ever so shortly, glancing down at the prone man. For a second, Stanley thought that the officer was feeling sympathy. When the officer bolted toward the man, Stanley suddenly feared an attack. Finally, he realized, as the officer guzzled down another beer, that both of his assumptions were wrong. The officer tossed the man into the back seat. The screeching of the car as it shot out of the parking lot jolted Stanley back from the window. The pronounced beating of his heart continued for a long while.
Stanley wondered if Leticia had somehow intervened, leading the officer away. He had updated his household AI with the prototype code he was going to use for the cyborg, but without the synthetic-data-production capabilities of the dual-brain system, its functionality was extremely limited. The software would freeze, never converging on a result. It had to be a coincidence. “Leticia, what action was taken from the last command?”
“Memory overload. Core dumped.”
Stanley sighed. He noticed something outside the window and rushed over. A familiar family of four were walking down the street, brimming with happiness. Stanley knew the times they passed by his complex by heart, but, with all the excitement, he had almost forgotten to watch for them. The playful children stopped every now and then to clump together snow, toss snowballs, make frozen sculptures, and create other snow-filled bits of mischief. The parents stood by, watching. Not patiently — that word didn’t apply. They weren’t waiting; they were living.
Stanley was done waiting.
The light shifted; his eyes refocused. From the window, his own terrible image emerged. Half his face looked like it had been plastered together with crudely cut pieces of leather. He was blind in one eye, which was half covered by his drooping brow. Stanley had refused to get it replaced with a modern cybernetic enhancement, which would have restored his vision to normal — he did not deserve it.
This gruesome face was the price he paid for what he had done. His unforgivable failures. Regrets haunted him; calculations spun relentlessly through his mind. It had been a laboratory experiment gone horribly wrong. While he had survived, his student did not. Stanley’s scars, nightmares, and isolation were the cross he had to bear.
His finger streaked down the cold, moist window. Vibrations shook his body, shattering his thoughts. The family of four were gone, and all that was left of their presence were the barely perceptible tracks in the snow. The footprints slowly filled with fluffy snowflakes, quickly disappearing like all the little joys the world had ever given him, like the brief months of being engaged to one of the most beautiful and intelligent women he had ever met — before the accident.
Sucking in a half-dozen cigarettes, hours of eternity passed before a small blip showed up on the GPS map, indicating that the flight had landed safely at Logan Airport, thirty-seven minutes away. His nerves were shot. He couldn’t sit still. Needing to do something, he grabbed his laundry and headed into the hall.
Opening his condo door was like unsealing a tomb; nauseous vapors oozed out. Stanley smoked incessantly. It helped calm his mind, especially when he was nervous. Today, he had already gone through a pack and a half. Beyond cigarettes, alcohol, and caffeine, Stanley was drug free. He had never even tried fuse, the drug of choice for most people. It was said that once you tried it, you were more than likely to stay on it for the rest of your life. From what little life he saw beyond the windowpane, that’s exactly what a huge number of his townsmen had done.
His neighbor, Glenda, was walking slowly up the stairs. She was a gentle soul — the type of neighbor he had prayed for. Her short, straight, gray hair was cut evenly all around her head, resting above her blue eyes. Brief, intermittent tugs progressed her small, hunched body forward.
Stanley knew better than to help her. She wanted to struggle, to fight it out, never accepting his help. Still, he couldn’t help but want to do something for her. She was, after all, his only friend — if he could be so presumptuous. She had never called on Stanley at the condo. Her simple conversations in the hallway were enough to prevent him from completely losing his mind.
He watched her painfully slow ascent from the corner of his eye but said nothing for a long while. Cat hairs littered her red sweatsuit. There were too many to count — he really did try but gave up at around one hundred thirty-seven. He recognized the shorter, black and orange hairs of her calico cat and the long white hairs of her other cat. There were even a couple of longer white hairs that belonged to Glenda. Sometimes, on particularly exciting days, Stanley would catch foreign hairs that didn’t belong to any of them.
“Hello, Glenda. Lovely weather today.” Stanley offered a simple, genuine smile. His body was oriented so that she was looking at his right side, his normal side. That put people more at ease. Some people. With one small pivot, he could avoid the death gaze and that frantic shuffling of focus that occasionally but cursorily heaved toward him.
Saying nothing, she tugged herself up another two steps.
Even though it took her a long time to climb, being around her relaxed Stanley. He felt human, almost forgetting about his scars. He wanted to bake her cookies (her favorite was oatmeal), feed her runaway cats, whom he had seen grow up from kittens, or help her with her laundry. But he didn’t do any of that — didn’t even offer. The gift of companionship, the simple camaraderie as passersby in a condo they both lived in, was enough. Of course, he wanted more, but he wasn’t willing to risk that. Nor was he bold enough to impose his ghoulishness beyond what she had been so divine to entertain.
“Jesus, Stanley, when are you going to quit smoking? This hallway reeks.” She glanced ever so slightly in his direction, overlapping wrinkles threatening to swallow her face.
“You’re right — I should quit. But it helps relax me.” Stanley watched her pull herself up. “How are Mittens and Boots?”
“They’re fine. Mittens nearly escaped this morning. She’s a frisky one. Can’t take my eye off her for a minute.”
“Where is she trying to go?”
“Out. Just out. She wasn’t going anywhere.”
They lived on one of Marshfield’s busiest streets. At least it used to be busy. The traffic had decreased every year, as if the world were slowly disappearing.
A painful memory of his cat Roxi clawed at Stanley’s heart. He could sneak a cigarette down in the laundry room. For now, he needed to think of something else. He saw the MK888 in his mind’s eye. “Right. Just out,” he said. The thought troubled Stanley. He and Mittens sought opposite worlds, and yet they had the same fundamental problem: they wanted to be free.
Glenda coughed, lightly, at first, and then more harshly. She coughed so hard her nearly transparent hand let go of the rail, sending her off balance.