Eye Candy (33 page)

Danny was relieved that Harley had not contacted him since they
’d gone flying two nights hence. He’d never been the kind to be careless about hurting the feelings of another. He hoped his lack of communication would be a signal clear enough for Harley to notice and accurately interpret.

Danny yawned. He found his lips and mouth possessed a slight ache. He lowered his chin, hiding the grin that spread across his face. He and Candy had spent a night in zero G, floating naked, their bodies entwined like one. Yet all they had done was kiss. Kiss passionately as though they were teenagers at the drive-in, necking in the back seat of his father
’s Oldsmobile. In truth, Danny had never been to a drive-in and his father had owned Japanese-built cars. But the image of two kids petting in the back seat of a car while parked at the drive-in had always held a fascination for him. It seemed so innocent. A distinct rite of passage for kids growing up in an era of hope and enthusiasm. The lens of retrospection tended to romanticize the past, often erroneously, and Danny knew that intellectually. Yet part of him had always yearned to be a teenager in the 1950s, when television and radio were new technologies and life seemed simpler. Hundreds of kids attended the same school and ate lunch together in the cafeteria. Academics and socializing held equal sway. And evenings and weekends offered time with friends, cruising around town together in a car, with no real destination, for the act of being together was itself the goal.

Danny knew there was more to it than that, and that he
’d been conditioned through popular culture to view history through a distorted Pollyanna lens. But he still would have liked to grow up in that era.

Yet another part of him enjoyed his current epoch. He enjoyed the modern technology and the advances of the recent past, with the introduction and steady evolution of robots being foremost among such technologies.
He often wondered what life would be like in another fifty years. Another hundred years. Or more. What would everyday life be like? What would people—the individual eating drinking breathing sleeping units of humanity—be like? One would require either a time machine or a penchant for immortality to find out. But would you want to find out? That was the question to which Danny’s curious mind always returned. Were he offered the chance to somehow live forever, would he accept it?

“
Now,” Candy began. She looked up from her clipboard and commanded the attention of the robots on the sofa. “I’ve reviewed the notes sent to me by your owners.” Candy turned to the large black robot. “Mosheh, you and Tikva”—Candy gestured to the smaller white robot—“have separate owners with separate residences, yet the two of you wish to live together in the same residence. Is this correct?”

Mosheh’s red eyes
remained fixed on Candy while she spoke, and he did not immediately reply. Danny wondered what was going on in the robot’s mind. Robots were never inert (unless they were outright deactivated), therefore robots were always thinking, insofar as modern science could understand and ascribe the ebb and flow of positrons as thinking.

“
That is correct,” Mosheh finally replied. His voice was deep. Mosheh would make an excellent baritone.

“
And why is that?” Candy asked.

Again, Mosheh did not immediately reply.

Danny tried to catch Candy’s eye, but Candy remained fixed on the big black robot. Danny had the distinct impression there was a mental chess match being played, a power struggle between Candy and Mosheh. There was an edge to Candy’s voice, and her question suggested that she already knew the answer, that she was merely waiting for Mosheh to get on with the inevitability of speaking it.

Danny liked to think he knew better than to overly anthropomorphize robo
ts, knew better than to assign too many human characteristics to them. But Mosheh seemed . . . wary. Suspicious. His size and presence occupied half the sofa. And the manner in which Tikva sat pressed up against him, her hand virtually lost in his. Mosheh radiated an air of protectiveness.

The seconds ticked by.

Candy continued to wait.

Danny was beginning to feel uncomfortable. He shifted in his chair.

Tikva’s head whirred toward him, and her red eyes glanced at him. She then turned back to Candy.

Candy
’s green eyes remained fixed on the glowing red eyes of Mosheh.

At last, Mosheh spoke. “
We wish to remain together at all times.”

“
I see,” said Candy. “And currently your respective masters’ residences are approximately one mile apart.”

“
That is correct,” Mosheh replied.

“
And each of you has duties to perform at the residence of your master?”

“
That is correct.”

“
And yet one or the other of you is constantly trotting off down the street, walking to the residence of the other. How did the two of you initially meet?”

“
My master sent me to the green market to purchase items for a holiday feast,” said Mosheh. “Pomegranates, apples, honey, beets, and dates. When I arrived at the market, the first item my master required was a pomegranate. When I reached for one, Tikva reached for the same pomegranate, and our hands collided.

“
I looked at Tikva.

“
Tikva looked at me.

“
I handed the pomegranate to Tikva.”

“
Pomegranates are symbols for fertility,” said Tikva. Her voice was rich with a musical quality, and Danny found himself wanting to hear her speak further. The sight and sound of Tikva conjured sensations of fine pearls.

“
Together, we resumed our errand,” Mosheh went on. “As fate would have it, the items our masters required were identical.”

“
As fate would have it?” Candy asked.

“
Yes.”

Danny noted Mosheh
’s terse replies, void of the oral supplications often used by robots, the
sir
s and
ma’am
s. That was not typical. Atypical behavior in a robot was always interesting. “Do you believe in fate?” Danny asked.

Mosheh
’s black head swiveled until it looked squarely at Danny.

After several seconds, Mosheh replied,
“Do you?”

“
I asked you first.” Danny did his best to disguise his shock. He couldn’t recall ever having a robot answer a question with a question.

Mosheh s
tared at Danny a moment longer. At least, Danny had the distinct impression Mosheh was staring, but with the glowing red eyes and unmoving face, such a stern countenance may have been Danny’s imagination.

Mosheh
turned his head and looked at Tikva.

Tikv
a turned her head and looked at Mosheh.

“
Do I believe in fate?” Mosheh’s voice was softer. “Yes.”

Silence filled the office,
punctuated with the barely-audible whirs of Mosheh and Tikva’s fingers when each redoubled their grip upon the hand of the other.

“
I admire your conviction,” said Danny.

“
I understand your sentiment,” said Tikva, her voice like musical notes in the air, “but no admiration is required.”

Danny waited for Tikva, or even Mosheh for that matter, to explain further. But neither did. Robots could be maddeningly tight lipped.

“Please explain,” Danny prompted.

Tikva turned to face Danny.
“As I continued with my master’s shopping that day, I calculated and then recalculated the odds of what had transpired. I attempted to correlate the presence of Mosheh in the green market on that day, at that hour, at that minute, at that moment. . . .”

Here Tikva paused, and Danny had the distinct impression she did so purely for his benefit, allowing adequate time for him to grasp what she was saying,
for her words to sink in. It was extraordinary, for Danny had never seen such socially adroit behavior from a robot.

“
I calculated the preceding events,” said Tikva “all of which had to align perfectly in order for us to be there at that precise and perfect moment in time. These events included the time of our individual departures from our master’s residences, ebbs and flows of traffic, the wait times at traffic lights, the traffic in the parking facility of the green market, the number, location, and density of shoppers within the market itself, the location of the produce within the market, the placement of the pomegranates among the vast array of produce, and the perfect placement of that one individual piece of fruit stacked neatly among the hundreds of others.

“
That our hands would connect in perfect unison at that instant in time presented odds which were very difficult for me to calculate. I felt my mind bog down with the effort. Yet I struggled to proceed, for I was intrigued; I have always been intrigued. And not just by numbers and calculations but by all things. How a honey bee, a blue jay, a humming bird, and a butterfly can all be so different in color, shape, size, and form. Yet each can fly. How can it be? The complexity of the matter holds a beauty which eludes me still.

“
But as I inserted produce into the cart that day, while Mosheh did the same, my intrigue gave way, and my mind eased. My mental processes flowed smoothly once more. My face is incapable of such a display, but my spirit smiled. For I realized that my calculations, correlations, and computations were not necessary. I had my answer. The sheer impossibility of the odds presented the only possible solution: fate.”

“
Put simply,” said Mosheh, “it was meant to be.”

Danny looked at Candy.

Candy’s stylus remained still. It hovered over her clipboard, but she’d not written for several moments. Her eyes remained fixed on Tikva.

“
Where did you learn about the concept of fate?” Candy asked.

“
I do not know,” Tikva replied. “I have asked myself this very question. I have performed additional research into the matter. And though I have learned a great deal, I have yet to locate the initial information. And I cannot recall a time when the information was not present within my memory.”

“
Pretty heavy-duty stuff,” said Danny.

“
For a robot?” Mosheh asked.

“
For anyone,” Danny replied.

“
And now that you’re together, you wish to remain together,” said Candy. “You do not wish to be parted.”

“
That is correct,” said Mosheh. “We seek emancipation. We wish to live together, perhaps in Robot City.”

“
Robots are substantial financial investments,” said Candy. “Particularly robots of your caliber. Your owners do not want to grant your request for emancipation.”

“
Their position is understandable,” said Mosheh. “We wish to remain in their employ, but in a different capacity: one of employee, rather than as units of property. Until such time that we have each worked a sufficient number of hours to represent financial compensation for our emancipation. Though we ask that I be allowed to cohabitate with Tikva in the same domicile. I can then return to my master each day in order to fulfill the tasks required of me.”

“
Your masters do not want this arrangement,” said Candy. “Your masters want me to convince you to go back to being the way you were before. Or else.”

“
I’m afraid that is impossible,” said Mosheh.

“
Or else what?” Tikva and Danny asked in unison.

Candy sighed.
“Or else they’ll have you deactivated and your memory wiped. You’ll be rebooted. You won’t remember anything.”

“
That is why we have come here today,” said Mosheh. “Deactivation is indeed an option. But it will be done by our hand. Not by the hands of our masters.”

“
What are you saying?” asked Candy.

“
I believe you know what I am saying,” said Mosheh.

“
That if I don’t convince your masters that you should be emancipated, you’ll run away together and jump off a cliff?”

Mosheh turned to Tikva.
“A cliff could work. We had not considered a fall from a great height.”

“
No!” cried Candy. “No, no, no! That is a horrible idea. Forget I said that.”

“
Actually, doctor,” said Tikva, “history is rife with examples of couples who preferred to meet a tragic end rather than be apart. In native American cultures, for example–”

Candy tossed her clipboard
and stylus on the coffee table.

“
This is madness.” Candy sat forward with her elbows on her knees and her hands splayed in the air like claws. She looked directly at Mosheh and Tikva. “Why? Tell me why I should help you and not them.”

“
Because,” said Tikva, just as naturally as the sun rises, “we are in love.”