“Yes, I think it’s only a mile.”
“What’s a mile, Pop?” Elroy asked.
“A long, long way,” Jane said. “George, are you sure this is a good idea?”
He landed the bubblecar in the middle of the desert. They seemed to be far from anywhere. Had anyone ever been so alone, so isolated? As the transparent dome lifted and they climbed out into the hot sun, George took a deep breath, noting the strange smells, the dust in the air, the spice of sage.
“What if one of those… cattle comes after us?” Judy asked.
“Uncle Asimov was fine. He lived out here by himself most of his life.”
“Yes, Daddy, and he died.”
George strode forward, leaving footprints on the ground in the real dirt. He pointed to a white structure on a rise in the distance. “There’s his trailer.” Even Jane was uncertain about how far away it looked, and she was concerned they might get lost, though the bubblecar was perfectly visible and so was the trailer.
Elroy bounded ahead, and Jane warned him to watch out for rattlesnakes, scorpions, tarantulas, jaguars, and any other terrible creature she could think of. After five minutes, the boy lost his steam and began complaining. Judy whined about how dirty she was getting. Tight-lipped, Jane followed with obvious disapproval.
The trailer turned out to be a ramshackle affair made of patched metal siding, solar-power panels on the roof, a water pump in the back. George tried to imagine being out here all by himself day after day without any instant news updates or real-time transmissions of the latest robotic baseball games.
“He really was a caveman!” Elroy looked around with eyes as wide as saucers.
When George pulled open the door, it creaked unnervingly Jane stepped inside and shuddered. “Rosie would blow an entire circuit bank if she looked at this. There’s dirt everywhere!”
They poked around, looking at the kitchen cabinets and a countertop that contained an actual stove and actual sink, though no one wanted to trust the water that came gurgling out of the tap. Elroy found the bathroom and the shower and called out for them to look at the exotic, primitive fixtures.
“That was called a toilet,” George said. He had looked up historical background before they’d begun their vacation.
He paced through the cramped rooms of the trailer, wondering about what his Uncle Asimov must have done all day long. When they found the small, rickety bed with its spring mattress, Jane frowned in a combination of disgust and dismay. “Unsanitary conditions and no conveniences. Your Uncle Asimov was crazy, George. It’s so sad. Just think of what kind of life he could have had if he’d gone into the city. He could have been a productive member of society.”
George faltered at the thought. Now that he had begun to pay attention to his job and home life, he wasn’t sure what he himself was doing to be “productive.”
Jane stood with her hands on her narrow hips, shaking her head. “I guess we’ll never know why he did this to himself. It’s like he was being punished.”
“Uncle Asimov knew how to take care of himself. He was self-sufficient. I bet he built most of this trailer with his own hands.”
“Do you think he used a spear to hunt for his food?” Elroy asked. “Maybe he killed some of those cattle, or jackrabbits, or prairie dogs.”
“Whatever he did, he did it his own way. He must have felt a sense of accomplishment in just getting through each day.” George recalled how good he’d felt with the single task of making a pot of coffee with the old-fashioned percolator.
“How inconvenient,” Jane insisted. “It must have been impossible for him! I’ll bet he was very miserable.”
George wasn’t so sure. “I bet he was happy.”
Judy laughed in disbelief. “Nobody could be happy out here. Just think of everything he was missing.”
“But he had things most of us don’t even remember.”
Jane remained unconvinced. “What does that have to do with anything? So much unnecessary work. It’s such a shame.”
“And now this place is all ours, for what it’s worth,” George said, grinning. “Uncle Asimov willed it to me.”
“But what do we do with this place?” Jane said with a growing horror in her voice.
“We’ll keep it. I just might come back, spend a whole two hours next time.”
“If you do that, George, you’re doing it alone.” Jane was completely no-nonsense. Under the sunshine and with her own perspiration, her always-perfect hairdo had begun to come undone.
He just smiled mysteriously at her. “That’s the idea.”
Elroy pushed the creaking door and went back out into the bright sunlight, where he saw a lizard scuttle across the sand. “Can we go, Pop? Please?” The boy’s normally cheerful voice carried a whining tone. “We could get back home in time to play a game or two in the virtual immersion dome. Wouldn’t that be neat, Pop?”
He saw that Jane had been ready to go from the moment they set down in the desert. Before the situation could grow entirely unpleasant, George agreed. Ironically, both of the kids had plenty of energy as they hurried back toward the waiting bubblecar.
George had seen what he needed to see, and he would remember this for a long time. His family grumbled and complained, but their words washed off of him as he felt a strange sense of possibilities. He had a spring in his step.
Elroy and Judy scrambled into the bubblecar, gasping and panting and moaning with the effort. Jane settled into her usual position beside him in the front of the craft. He sealed the dome over them, raised the vehicle in the air, and whirred away.
“It’ll be good to get home and back to normal, now that you’ve had your little adventure, George.” Jane had the patient tolerance of a woman who had been married a long time.
“Yes, dear.”
The bubblecar picked up speed and they flew back toward the city. When no one was looking, though, George surreptitiously switched off the autopilot, took the controls, and piloted the bubblecar by himself all the way home.
KICKING AND SCREAMING HER WAY TO THE ALTAR by Alan L. Lickiss
‘I don’t care what you say, that’s not my father.”
Jeffrey groaned, not bothering to internalize it so the customer wouldn’t be offended. He had been arguing in circles with his client, the soon-to-be Mrs. Rene Stevens, or as Jeffrey liked to think of her, the brat, for the past hour while they stood in his office. The thick blue carpet had long since stopped soothing his feet. No amount of evidence could convince her that his staff had created an accurate android of her father complete from his physical appearance down to his disgust of professional baseball players.
“But miss, he looks exactly like the holo you provided,” said Jeffrey.
The brat stomped her foot, actually stomped, and shoved her fists toward the floor. “No, no, no, no, no,” she said as she looked down at her stomping foot and shook her head back and forth. The short blonde hair whipped back and forth, fanning her perfume around the room. Jeffrey almost laughed when he thought about the wave in her hair waving at him.
Jeffrey retreated behind his desk. “Miss, if you could be more specific about the deficiency in our work, I could make sure we correct the android.”
“For one, my father was taller,” the brat said. She had stopped her tantrum, but had switched to pouting while standing with her hands on her hips, one hip cocked out toward him.
In the six months he had been working with the brat, Jeffrey had learned every one of her give-me-what-I-want-now poses. This one he had labeled little girl number four. Unfortunately for all her stances and facial expressions the brat only had one tone, a whiny, high-pitched one that was worse than fingernails on slate to Jeffrey. Its only variant was in volume.
“Miss, we have checked your father’s drivers licenses, his passport, and even, forgive my indelicate-ness, his measurements taken by the undertaker who interred him. All of them agree, your father was five foot eight.” As he listed each item, Jeffrey pointed to the copies he had obtained that were now laid out on his desk.