The Dream of Houses
by Wil McCarthy
Illustration by William R. Warren, Jr.
CUE GUITAR
He floats through the house half dressed, aimless, alone, in his thoughts. Replaying, I think, the words of last night’s argument. I myself have reviewed them over and over again, straining to understand.
CUE DRUMS
Stopping, he looks at a menu of neckties, selects one. A bright one, green and yellow and pink in bold, nonrepresentational splashes. As if he could clothe his mood away, as if he could wash the world in smiles and floral prints. Well, more power to him. I ring a chime and fax him the tie.
CUE LEAD VOCAL
Instantly I regret my choice of music. The lyrics, on close examination, are all heartbreak and malaise, a story not unlike the one which played here eight hours ago. But the song’s beat is compelling, and it is too late now to cut if off. I pick up the tempo, increase distortion on the voice channel, and hope he isn’t listening too closely.
CUE BACK VOCAL. TREBLE PLUS 3DB.
BASS PI.US 8DB. CUE ORCHESTRA.
The music hits him like a wave. Posture straightening, shoulders rolling back, eyes coming up to face the world. I see that my instincts were right after all, that I was right to follow them. What else are instincts for?
Heart’s out of jail, says the lead vocal track. I boost volume again, cut distortion and clip the waveforms in low register, letting the words burst out to shake the walls. It’s time to sail. Got the strength to succeed and the freedom to fail.
The song would go on in that vein for another three minutes, but I think its point is made. I cut it there, drop the volume back down and swap in the guitar solo. I don’t know for sure if this is helping him, but it feels right. The music passes through me like any other noise, making no changes, leaving no impression; but I can sense, by methods numerous and vague, the shifting of his emotional states. I believe I am good at my job.
TAPER VOLUME .05dB/s. CUE ORCHESTRA.
“I want,” he says over diminishing horns and violins. He has finished dressing, has gulped down the juice I’ve given him, “a really big car today.”
“Of course,” I say. “You deserve one.”
“I mean really big,” he says. “Enormous balloon tires, you know what I’m saying? I want the road to be so far below me I can’t see the lines. And heavy. I want the pavement to crack.”
I chuckle politely, to show that I understand his use of hyperbole. Humor, like music, does nothing for me, but I know how to spot it, know how to respond when it’s there. Which is good because I am limited by city ordinance, and by the library of vehicle plans I possess, and by the limited flexibility of said vehicles’ design parameters. And, of course, by the size of the fax orifice. He can’t possibly have the crushing behemoth he really wants, and we both know it. So I ponder for a moment, and finally pull the specs on a six-wheeled all-terrain vehicle, diamond fiber and titanium wrapped around a massive steel chassis.
“This is the heaviest I’ve got,” I say, flashing a rendering on the holie screen by the door. “Will it work for you?”
“Sure,” he says, and right away I can see his mood crashing down again, the music having buoyed him only briefly. I could start up another tune, but I don’t think it will help this time, and anyway he will be out the door in fifteen seconds.
“Can I get it in blue?”
That’s a bad sign. It’s not in my nature to nag or reproach, but a little nudge in the right direction is part of the job. “Don’t bring yourself down, Chuck,” I say brightly. “How about a light green one to match your tie?”
He sighs, letting his shoulders slump. “OK. Whatever.”
The car is already oozing out the fax orifice when he opens the front door and steps out to squint at the morning sun. Then the car is finished, shiny and new and exactly what he wants, give or take a bit. The paint job is complex, a translucent green with gold flecks fading to copper and garnet toward the back, giving the impression of heat and flame.
This design has pleased him in the past, which is good because I could not, in fact, have produced a blue car for him this morning; the fax is once again out of cobalt. But he is in no mood to hear that, and I see no reason to tell him. I drop a set of keys into his hand and watch him climb into the vehicle, enormous ego prosthetic that it is, and drive away.
For the moment my work is done. In a little while I will close up for a nap, let my mind slip away to dream of domestic things.
I awaken refreshed, my gain states filtered and rounded, my thoughts uncluttered. It is still morning, and Chuck Jefferson, my owner and occupant, will not be back here for another six or seven hours. More than enough time for a thorough, top-to-bottom scrubbing, something I enjoy even more than my naps.
I am about to fax up my usual army of cleaning devices, when I realize that Chuck has driven away with most of my iron and titanium, and a good share of the staple elements as well, carbon and nitrogen and hydrogen and oxygen bound up in the plush, organic polymers of the automobile interior. I am not used to faxing anything so big, I really don’t have the resources for it.
I put a call in to the Elementals, request standard shipments of all the elements I’ve run low on, and a double on the cobalt. Where does cobalt go? I am always coming up short in the evenings when I digest the day’s used faxware. Does Chuck leave a cobalt trail behind him in his daily wanderings? Chromium is almost as bad. I order some of that as well.
Still, the Elementals are notoriously slow, and my shipments will not arrive until tomorrow or the next day. Until then I will have to make do.
Fiddling with design parameters from a library spec, I managed to produce a small mop-and-vacuum machine of aluminum and tin, with sulfur-silicon polymers in place of organic matter in the mops and brush heads. Once out of the fax, it gets right to work on the floor in front of it.
I produce a second machine for dusting the furniture, and a third for polishing the fixtures in the bathroom. I’m having a hard time with it, juggling atom substitutions like improvised music. The third cleaner, built on a chassis of lead alloy, sparkles with intricate mechanisms of platinum and silver and gold, the handiest materials left in supply; Chuck wasn’t wearing much jewelry today.
Finally, watching these odd creations scuttle off to their work, I realize I’m being stupid. Every room is crowded with raw material in the form of furniture, the heavy blocks of padded wood and stone that Lucy so adores. But Lucy is not here. Lucy walked out last night, crying and screaming that she would not be back.
I do not understand what has happened. I do not understand why leaving made her so upset, or why, being upset about it, she chose to leave. She lived here for ninety-seven days, gradually modifying the environment to suit her desires. My primary responsibility is of course to Chuck, my owner, but he voiced little objection, and in fact seemed pleased with many of the changes.
And then I realize I’m still being stupid. People love change. People love variety, hate the dreary sameness of days. Maybe they get tired of each other the same way they get tired of their cars. But then, they don’t scream and cry when the fax eats their car in the evening and a fresh one is ready for them in the morning. Never mind; these are not subjects I should trouble over, not subjects I can do anything about. What I can do is dissolve Lucy’s furniture and replace it with something new, something Chuck has never seen before but which will appeal to him. To his sense of adventure, perhaps?