Chapter Text
Rhett McLaughlin would never admit as much but above all else he is lonely. He has a nice enough life and he knows it, but the knowledge does nothing to take the edge off living alone. He goes to work Monday through Friday and he comes home to the internet and a bowl of ice cream in front of the TV. Weekends are spent whiling the hours away on silly things- cleaning, whittling, doing puzzles, and watching conspiracy theory videos on YouTube. If prompted he says he is happy. Otherwise, happy is the last thing he feels. It’s been a long time since he’s lived with anyone but himself, that’s all, and it’s hard to feel content when all he has for company and warmth is the overheated bottom of his computer on his lap. Granted, he has ample opportunity for making friends, his office, local coffee shop, and gym overflowing with people who smile and say hello and offer up friendly conversation. He takes advantage of none of it. He isn’t shy, not exactly, and he’s far from timid. Rhett would call himself simply disinterested in every person who presents themselves to him. That’s all.
“No, man, you program them to be whatever you want,” one coworker says to another as they walk side by side past Rhett’s cubicle on a rainy, bleary North Carolina Tuesday in November. “They make ‘em look just like a person, like a normal person, and you can just tell it what to do and it will, like, follow orders! Just like that! And you can tell them to do whatever you want, yanno, ‘cause they’re not real people and they don’t have any qualms about doin’ anything, if you know what I mean.”
“What do you mean?” the other asks, and Rhett is glad not to find out as they leave his earshot, walking away with mugs of coffee in their fists. If Rhett envies them their easy enjoyment of one another’s company it’s only for a moment. He sits hunched over his desk, a document he could not care less about on his computer screen. What is it he’s supposed to be doing, anyway? He gives up for the moment on figuring it out, slapping his hands on his desk and hauling himself to his feet. His back creaks in protest from sitting for too long and he grimaces as he stretches out his long limbs, intent on getting a coffee or at least a snack to keep himself busy for a minute. In the breakroom are the two men discussing some new sort of companion robot, the kind Rhett saw an ad for on TV just last night.
“Yeah, listen, my friend from California got one of the first shipments,” the lankier of the two men says, the both of them bowing their heads over the snack machine. Blocked from his bag of Cheetos, Rhett idles by the doorway and waits for them to move. It’s not like curiosity keeps him listening in; he is not interested in the robots who look dangerously close to human. Not at all. Even so, he listens while pretending not to, his arms crossed over his chest like the motion will help him hide.
“And?” the stockier man asks, a man Rhett is pretty sure is named Alex. Alex and Not Alex talk in barely hushed voices, oblivious to Rhett’s presence, about all the things robots are good for.
“And they have this weird, like, almost skin-like covering,” Not Alex says. “It feels just like the real thing, I heard. And they’re not, like, perfect. I mean, they’re mechanical. They glitch and stuff, I guess, but my friend says it’s the best decision he’s ever made.”
“How so?” Alex asks, utterly entranced, holding his mug of coffee limply in one hand.
“Well, you’re not listening to me, dude,” Not Alex replies with a quick glance around the stark white break room, his eyes sweeping straight past Rhett, either without taking him in or passing him by. Whether they care about his presence or not, the men keep talking with their heads so close together Rhett could touch his hands to the side of either man’s head and smack them into each other. “They’ll do anything you want. Are you not getting me, man?” Not Alex is insistent, elbowing his friend conspiratorially, waggling his eyebrows. Rhett feels both like throwing up and actually going through with smacking two empty heads together.
“Oh!” Alex crows, understanding dawning across his face, and Rhett buries his face in one hand. The idiots he works with boggle his mind more often than not, leaving Rhett wondering if he’s the only one here who actually graduated college. “Oh, you mean like…”
“Yes!” Not Alex says, shushing Alex with an elbow to the ribs. “Yes, that’s what I mean! Can you believe it? I mean, does that not make you wanna try it?” Alex seems skeptical as he takes a long sip from his coffee.
“No way,” he says in the end, shaking his head so his hair flops over one eye. “To know they weren’t really human…ugh. I couldn’t.”
“I could,” Not Alex says, grinning lewdly, and finally he looks up and locks eyes with Rhett.
“Don’t be crass,” Rhett says just to antagonize the two dolts discussing dropping a year’s pay on a robot built to please. Unperturbed, Alex and Not Alex shrug and go back to their conversation. Rhett gives up on his idea of a snack to break the monotony and he walks away, two voices chasing him as Not Alex tells Alex everything he would do with a robot like that. Rhett is thankful to be out of the room as childish giggles follow him down the hall. And he is not interested in companion robots. Not in the slightest. He gives his head a shake as he lopes back to his desk and tells himself he wouldn’t buy a companion robot to save his life. Nope. No way. Never.
At his desk he finds his mind wandering and fingertips following suit, tapping out the words companion robot on his keyboard before he realizes he’s done it. And he is not interested. Not in the slightest. But since the page is loaded, he might as well read a little bit. He has time to kill, after all, four hours until he gets to go home, and he scrolls through a Time article detailing the rise of robots made to be more than simple servants.
These robots, created by the New York City based company A Better Tomorrow, Inc., are the first in a potential line of many such companion robots, the article reads. The floodgates open, the world waits at the feet of ABT Inc., awed and humbled by the humanity instilled in each and evert robot. The CEO of ABT Inc., Ezra Cornelius, goes so far as to request the phasing out of the word robot entirely. “We prefer simply to call them companions,” she says, standing tall and proud beside her latest model, “as a companion is what they are.” These companions, made to look, act, and feel as close to human as possible, are already the subject of nothing short of uproar. The discourse stems from—
“Whaddya readin’?” Not Alex asks, slipping behind Rhett without him hearing, and Rhett closes the internet so fast that Not Alex chuckles. “That interesting, huh?” he asks, and Rhett cranes his neck to look up at the man behind him.
“What do you need?” he asks, narrowly avoiding calling him Not Alex, and Not Alex shrugs.
“Nothin’,” he says. “I just thought you looked a little interested in those robots we were talkin’ about. No shame in that, you know. It’s not hard to see you’re hard pressed for companionship.” He says it not unkindly, just as a hapless idiot without an ounce of social finesse in his body. Rhett chooses not to be offended.
“That’s true,” Rhett says, going back to his computer and feigning interest in the blank Excel spreadsheet he left open. “All I’ve got is you, after all.” He chuckles as Not Alex blusters through indignation, embarrassment, and ends up walking away at befuddlement. Rhett calls after him that he’s only joking but he doesn’t look to see if Not Alex pays him any more mind.
And he wonders why he lives alone.
Rhett is fascinated by advanced technology. He loves new science and new discoveries and new specials on Discovery Channel about them. That is the only reason he sits at home, feet propped on his coffee table as he reads up on companion robots. He’s interested, that’s all, in the science behind their perplexingly clever artificially intelligent brains. They learn from their administrators, the news articles read, writer after writer balking at the word owner. The owners are the administrators and the robots are the companions, flowery words to cover the relationship boiled down to master and servant. Rhett watches videos of people interacting with the robots, the machines so perfect in their humanity it’s hard to tell who is human and who is not until they begin to speak. The robots have clear voices, perfect and inhuman, free of stuttering and stopping and tripping over words. They crest the top of Uncanny Valley, perfectly reflecting humanity back at their living and breathing counterparts. The first robot was built to be a carbon copy of the CEO of A Better Tomorrow, Inc., and Rhett can’t tear his eyes from video after video of Ezra Cornelius having the robot version of herself mirror her movements and her speech.
Rhett is in awe, that’s all, and by the time he starts to doze off in front of his computer he is sold on the idea merely due to curiosity. He mentally shifts money in his bank accounts, withdrawing and pulling money from his savings, and if he wants a robot it’s only for someone to come home to. It’s only for someone to wash the dishes; hell, it’s only for someone to watch him do it himself as long as they are there. He is thirty-eight years old and tired of being alone, that’s all. What in the world is wrong with that?
One eleven digit phone number and thirteen and a half minutes of holding music later, Rhett is on the line with an ABT Inc. representative.
“We can design your companion to look any way you would like,” the woman on the line says, Rhett drumming his fingers on his coffee table in the rhythm of his frantically beating heart.
“What if I don’t have anything in mind?” Rhett asks. If he wishes he had a landline it’s only for a moment, the desire to take a phone cord and choke himself with it as tempting as it is brief. Maybe this was not the best idea. But he’s committed now, to staying on the line if nothing else, and the woman begins to speak and Rhett tries to focus.
“Well, we would be happy to create a companion for you,” she says. “If you truly have no preference in terms of looks, our approach is a little unorthodox. We pride ourselves on our unique, one-of-a-kind companions, after all, as special and different as humans. We simply, for lack of a better term, hit the randomize button, and the result is a companion who looks like no other. They will be entirely unique to you in height, hair color, eye color, and everything in between.”
“Right,” Rhett says, thinking momentarily of banging his head on the wall. But he’s in this now. He is making the right choice. He has been alone for too long, for so long he has named every appliance in the house. And Oscar (the fridge) is even starting to talk back. Rhett desperately needs to find someone to talk to before Pam (the toaster) begins to talk, too. The woman on the phone asks three more times if Rhett is sure he has no preferences in terms of looks, and three times Rhett tells her no. Who cares what the robot looks like as long as they can carry a conversation and a laundry basket?
“Well, in that case,” the woman says, typing fast on her end, “would you prefer a male or a female companion?” Rhett pauses. It would make sense, he supposes, to order a female. A girl. A woman? None of the words sticking in Rhett’s throat sound right. So he keeps them in. It would make sense, he guesses, to choose a female. But he’s never been one to make sense. He wants nothing to do with what his coworkers discussed in giggly hushed tones. He doesn’t want that kind of companionship. All he wants is a friend. Someone to talk about his day with, someone who will listen and talk, someone who will be there when he needs it. What does it matter, the gender he chooses? It’s just a friend he seeks, and in that case…
“Male,” Rhett says, and the slight pause in the woman’s typing is probably Rhett’s imagination running wild. But she picks back up again and Rhett can almost hear her nodding as she speaks.
“All right,” she says, voice perky as ever. Rhett swallows and tells himself it’s too late to change his mind now. The woman types away and Rhett waits, thumbnail between his teeth. After twenty seconds of nothing but the mechanical sound of a keyboard, the woman clears her throat. “So that’s a randomized male companion,” she says, “to be delivered a week from today, Tuesday the twenty-second, at 6:30 PM. Is this correct?” Numbly, scared out of his mind, Rhett nods before remembering she can’t see him.
“Yes,” he breathes. “Yeah, that’s right.”
“Wonderful,” she says. “Your companion will arrive with a mentor. He or she will be there to help you initiate the bonding process. Once you and your companion are introduced by the mentor, he or she will leave you two to get to know one another. After that, you can call this number and press zero with any questions or concerns.”
“Great,” Rhett chokes out, and the woman bids him goodnight and hangs up the phone. Rhett holds onto it for a lot longer than necessary, the phone cradled in his hand. This is probably the worst idea he’s ever had. He should probably call them back and cancel the order. He should put the money back into his bank account and forget the whole thing ever happened. He should clean up, go to bed, wake up, and stick to the routine he’s been keeping for years. But not one of those things appeals to Rhett. Not one. He does the cleaning up part, the going to bed part, and in the morning he is going to wake up and go to work. But a week from this moment, from right now, Rhett’s life is going to be drastically different.
He should probably get on converting his office into a spare bedroom.
Wait. Do robots need sleep? Do robots need to rest, to lie down, to have a place to while away the night at all? Rhett sits back up in bed and spends the next two hours trying to find the answer. (They don’t need to sleep but can shut down for the night if ordered.) He spends the next two hours after that learning everything he can about how to care for a robot. (They are much like dogs in that they need to be stimulated and loved and tended to.) By the time he actually starts to doze, dropping his phone on his face and deciding to call it a night with an aching nose and swollen eye, he knows enough about robots to raise a family of them.
Wait. Do robots need raising? Rhett sits up once more and readies himself for the longest week of his life.
The following Tuesday at work is nothing short of agonizing. Rhett’s heart is going to explode from his chest for his nerves, his palms sweating as he types up spreadsheets. People filter in and out of his cubicle, making excuses to leave when they see the mania in Rhett’s eyes. He doesn’t blame them. He would escape himself, too, if he could. He’s nervous, scared out of his mind, nothing short of panicked. Half of him wants to run away, to find somewhere to hide until the delivery people for ABT Inc. give up and leave with his robot. The other half of him can’t wait to get home. It’s this half that seems to have control of his legs; he can’t stop jiggling them under his desk, bonking them on the underside so many times he gets Not Alex sticking his head into the cubicle to tell Rhett to stop jacking off.
“I’m not!” he says, holding down his jittery knees with both hands as Not Alex cackles and tells him he was only joking.
“Unless you really are jacking off,” Not Alex says as he walks away. “In which case, cut that out.” Rhett waits until he isn’t looking to raise one finger up at his receding back.
Rhett spends the rest of the day utterly breathless, quaking in his spinning chair. By the time the end of the day rolls around Rhett is ready to erupt. He rises from his chair at five o’clock and three seconds and by five oh one he is in his car, punching the radio off and peeling out of the parking lot. His mind whirs too fast to focus on music, and road signs for that matter, and he waves sheepishly at a cop as he comes to a rolling stop at a red light. By some stroke of luck, the cop waves him on without pulling him over and without making him late to receive his robot. Come to think of it, maybe he should drive by again with his phone in his hand to have an excuse to miss the delivery. He thinks better of it but only just.
He pulls into the driveway of his modest little house, the one story ranch in creamy off-white. The woman who sold it to him said it was ivory, not white, probably about a hundred times. To Rhett, white is white and the color is the least of his worries. He idles in the driveway, mind half made up to wait here until the delivery van arrives and then tell them kindly to leave. This is the worst idea he has ever had and he is going to have a heart attack right in his driveway if he doesn’t stop scaring himself. He can do this. This is a good idea. Someone to talk to will do him a world of good; he is sure of it. All he needs is a little companionship. A week from now he will laugh at how scared he was. Hell, he might tell the robot how scared he was and let them laugh with him. (They can do that, after all, feign real human laughter. He looked it up.)
Rhett plunks down at his round kitchen table with a beer clenched in his shaky hands and tries not to throw up as he waits. He drums his fingers on the wood and gouges at the already ravaged cedar with his fingernails. The scuffed up table serves as a perfect example of the anxiety that plagues Rhett day to day and he tells himself maybe the robot will be a carpentry expert and can build him a new one. It’s hard to look at the scratches in the wood as the minutes tick by, slow enough to make Rhett question the clock. He checks the batteries in the clock on the wall, the clock shaped like a black cat with huge white eyes, to find them perfectly fine. The microwave proves the same and so does Rhett’s watch, the dial dutifully displaying the right time despite Rhett tapping doubtfully at the face. Surely more time has passed since he got home than the twenty minutes the clock claims. But it hasn’t and Rhett waits, doubting his choice more with every passing second.
He waits in terrified inaction until it’s too late and the doorbell rings. From the kitchen Rhett can’t see outside but he knows who it is. It’s ABT Inc. He rises from his seat and pours the rest of his beer down the sink, his stomach turning. Okay, this really is the worst idea he’s ever had. He is never, ever going to forgive himself for doing this. He makes his way to the front door, drags it open, and puts on a smile he hopes looks genuine. A woman and a man wait for him, the woman clutching a clipboard and the man holding out his hand for Rhett to shake.
“Good evening, Mr. McLaughlin,” the man says. “I’m Morgan and this is Lizzie. We’re here to deliver your companion.”
“I know,” Rhett says dumbly. He looks over their heads to the van they arrived in, a second man popping open the van’s back doors and climbing inside. Morgan catches him looking.
“Eddie is waking up your companion from his beta testing phase as we speak,” Morgan says. “He’ll bring your companion in once he is fully awake and functioning. In the meantime, may we come in?”
“Oh,” Rhett replies, eyes locked on the open doors of the van. He can’t see inside from where he stands and he is going mad for wanting to, from being too far to see whatever awaits him. “Of course.” Morgan and Lizzie step inside, taking quick looks around Rhett’s home as they pretend not to. Rhett leads them to the living room, the room closest to the front door. He sits them down on the plush leather sofa and he plunks into the matching loveseat across the coffee table from them. “Can I…?” he begins, feeling flustered and utterly unprepared, “Can I get you anything? Water? Coffee? Souls of the dead?” Neither Morgan nor Lizzie laugh at his joke, fake smiles plastered on their faces. Rhett shifts uncomfortably in his seat as they look at him, bemused. The next sound is that of something heavy tumbling through the front door.
“What the hell!” Morgan cries, throwing his hands up as he leaps from the sofa to check out the source of the commotion. Rhett follows him. They reach the front door to find a baffled Eddie standing with his hands up, a gesture that cries I didn’t do it, and only when Rhett looks down does he see why. The robot, his robot, has tripped over the threshold and landed on his hands and knees on the welcome mat. It (he?) is lanky, long limbs sprawled out on the tile floor of the doorway. He wears simple clothes, a soft red T-shirt and a pair of tight jeans, pristine sneakers on his feet. What slams Rhett back into himself from his staring is the painful looking hunch of the robot’s back as he struggles to rise.
“Oh gosh,” Rhett says, the handlers standing in a semi-circle with no idea what to do, and Rhett drops to his knees to peer into the face of his robot. “Hey there,” he says, sitting on his haunches, his hands hovering uselessly over the curve of the robot’s spine. The robot looks up from his prone position on the floor. And Rhett’s heart soars up into his throat.
He’s beautiful. The robot, he or it or whatever, has a pair of blocky eyeglasses over a pair of sparkling big blue eyes. They are the bluest eyes Rhett has ever seen, crystal clear and open wide. He has a rosy pink mouth, lower lip plump and upper lip neatly bisected by a pointed Cupid’s bow. As he meets Rhett’s eyes, those lips tip upwards into a smile.
“Are you all right?” Rhett asks, and finally the robot speaks.
“Oh! Oh, yes!” he says, voice clean and crisp and light. It suits his face well. “I do apologize. As it turns out, I am quite clumsy! Who would have thought?” He laughs, a high little thing, and Rhett is shocked into silence. The humanity in the laugh makes his head spin; the robot before him looks more human than Rhett does. Rhett cranes his neck to look over his shoulder at the handlers.
“Are you sure this is a robot?” Rhett asks, “and it’s not one of you guys instead?” The first person to move is Lizzie, offering Rhett a comforting nod and a smile.
“Oh, no,” she says. “We’re sure. It’s all part of the randomization process. Each and every companion gets a set of traits, you see, to make them appear as human as possible. It seems general clumsiness has been gifted to yours.” The bubbling laughter in her voice has Rhett echoing it.
“That’s okay,” he says as the robot gives him a sheepish smile. “Let’s get up off the floor.” He rises, knees creaking, and he holds one hand out to the robot. The robot looks at it, big eyes roving over Rhett’s open palm, and he takes it. The robot’s hand (skin?) is warm and it scares the hell out of Rhett; what in the world is this thing made of? But he swallows his anxiety down, the robot’s timid smile beatific, and Rhett extricates his hand from the robot’s grasp once they both find their feet. The robot stands almost a head shorter than Rhett’s six foot seven and he cranes his neck to beam up at Rhett. Rhett can’t help but return the smile despite the anxiety making his stomach clench.
“Right,” Morgan says with a clap of his hands, startling Rhett away from his awed staring. “What do you say we get you two acquainted?” Rhett agrees.
Ten minutes later Rhett sits back on the loveseat, this time knee to knee and hip to hip with his new companion. Morgan and Lizzie share the sofa, Eddie backing out to smoke outside and wait for the handlers to return. Lizzie writes in her clipboard as Morgan goes through a scripted checklist of questions and instructions. Rhett can hardly concentrate for his proximity to the robot; for his part the robot sits with his back ramrod straight and his hands clasped in his lap.
“Now, you are free to name him,” Morgan says, Lizzie sitting hunched with her pen skittering across her papers. “However, his level of intelligence and self-awareness would allow him to choose a name for himself if you prefer.” Rhett glances at the robot, who meets his gaze with expectant eyes.
“Go on, then,” Rhett says. “Whaddya want me to call you?” The robot’s face lights up.
“Oh, I’ll have to think about it!” he chirps. “There are so many names to choose from!” Rhett’s heart gives a lurch in his chest, the robot’s presence sending it racing. Already, he feels eighteen times as content as he woke up this morning, the robot warming the room simply by existing in it. Rhett tells him to take his time and the robot closes his cerulean eyes to conjure up a name. Rhett leaves him to it. How Morgan and Lizzie hardly crack a smile at the painfully endearing way in which the robot speaks is beyond Rhett. They sit side by side and watch the robot’s engineered mind churn.
“Anyway,” Morgan says, tearing his eyes from the face of the robot to look at Rhett, “these companions are a lot like people. I’m sure you were told when you placed your order about their love and need for contact. They can be left alone all day, for days at a time if need be, but it’s advised you ask them to power down if you will be gone for longer than a day. They get lonely, you see, just like people do. Just for legal purposes, I am required to tell you lonely companions tend to…act out.” Rhett arches an eyebrow at Morgan until he goes on. “In some cases, companions left alone for too long have caused quite a mess. They get restless and they don’t know how to handle it, especially in their learning stage when they haven’t quite gotten the hang of their emotional range. They will, after learning from their administrator, that being you. It is your job to help your companion learn their surroundings and build their personalities. A lot of what makes them human comes from you.” Still hung up on the apparent mess the robot could make if Rhett proves terrible at robot ownership, it takes him a long time to respond. When he does, his voice sounds miles weaker than he expects it to, coming out a squeak.
“Right,” he says, knocking his knee against the knee of his robot. In return, the robot jostles him back. Morgan watches the exchange and opens his mouth to go on when the robot opens his eyes and cries out.
“I got it!” he says, scaring Rhett half off the loveseat. He catches himself and hits the robot’s knee with his own again as he scrambles to act at least half composed. Lizzie’s pen is poised to write down the name the robot has chosen as he beams and announces it. “Link!” he says, shoulders bouncing up and down. “Link! Because I am the link between computers and humans. Get it? What do you think?” He turns his whole body to look at Rhett, his smile lighting up his whole face, and Rhett nods.
“Perfect, man!” he says, cheeks aching from echoing the robot’s (Link’s) smile. Lizzie jots it down and then clips her pen to her board, smoothing out the hem of her skirt as she prepares herself to stand. She waits for Morgan to move and then she follows.
“That’s it, then,” Morgan says, reaching out to shake Rhett’s hand as he rises. “Any questions, problems, or concerns, please do not hesitate to call. And as always, have a better tomorrow.” Grinning idiotically from ear to ear, Rhett rushes them out the door and closes it behind them. Through the living room window he watches their van pull away and disappear down the road. Once it’s gone Rhett drops the curtain he holds parted with one hand and he turns to face the loveseat. The robot, Link, hasn’t moved.
“Hi,” Rhett says, feeling more than a little helpless.
“Hello,” Link chirps in reply.
“I don’t have a lot of friends,” Rhett says, choosing to neglect telling his companion he doesn’t have any friends for the time being.
“Okay,” Link says from his spot on the loveseat. “Neither do I.” He beams, eyes crinkling up at the corners. “In fact, I only have one.”
“Me?” Rhett guesses.
Link looks delighted as he replies. “You!” he agrees. Rhett could get used to this. Link bounces his knees up and down, fidgety, hands splayed over them. He looks nothing short of blissful to be sitting here doing nothing in the living room, his head cocked to the side as he follows Rhett with his eyes. Rhett mirrors his restlessness without meaning to, one hand scrubbing at the hair at the nape of his neck.
“Uh,” Rhett says, off to a great start in teaching his companion how to be human. “What do you wanna…um. What do you wanna do?” What do robots do for fun? Are they capable of having fun? For his part Link looks like he already is, just looking up at Rhett from the loveseat.
“I want to do what you want to do!” Link says. “It is sort of my job to keep you company in your day to day life, after all.” He grins, something almost devilish in the motion, and Rhett ignores the way it makes his stomach lurch.
“Um,” he says again, fruitless, and Link only beams wider.
“What do you do for fun, Rhett?” Link asks. Rhett starts at the sound of his name coming from Link’s lips. It sounds sweet coming from him, sweeter than he has ever heard it said. He swallows and tries to drag some semblance of thought together.
“Uh,” he says one more time. And then, “I don’t really have much fun, to be honest.”
“Please do be honest with me,” Link says. “I will learn best from you if you do not keep any part of yourself from me. I want to learn everything there is to know about you. That way, I can serve you better, if I know what you need without you having to ask.”
“Gosh, Link, you don’t have to serve me at all,” Rhett says, hand on the back of his neck as Link jiggles his knees. The sofa squeaks with the motion and Rhett tries not to stare. If he had known his companion would be so pretty he would have made an effort to make himself at least presentable. As it is he wears sweatpants and his hair is in disarray, his beard in need of a trim and his T-shirt ragged. Self-conscious and feeling exposed, Rhett drops his hand to cross both arms over his chest.
“Serve you better as your friend,” Link clarifies. And all right. He is definitely aware of the mischief in his voice. He looks at Rhett like he is about to wink or something equally bizarre, and Rhett gnaws on his lip to buy himself time. He’s never been as good as he wants to be at thinking on his feet.
“Okay,” Rhett says for lack of anything smarter to say. “Okay.”
“Okay,” Link agrees.
“I, um. I set up a bedroom for you. I didn’t know if you…if you needed sleep? Obviously, now I know you don’t, I guess, but the room is yours if you…”
“Show me!” Link says, on his feet before Rhett can finish stammering himself into silence. Rhett does. He leads Link down the carpeted hall, pointing out the bathroom Link won’t need and his own bedroom, moving Link along as he tries to peek through the door.
“It’s a mess in there, you don’t wanna see,” Rhett says, taking him by the wrist to the very end of the hall where the spare room lies. Link lets himself be led.
“But how will I learn if I am not allowed in your living space?” Link asks, genuinely intrigued, and Rhett tells him he will give him the grand tour sometime. He tugs Link by the arm towards his room, babbling about how he is welcome to spend as much or as little time in there as he pleases. Link nods along amicably to everything Rhett says. The fabricated skin on his wrist feels a little too real and it makes Rhett feel woozy. Surely they don’t just use cadaver skin to cover the titanium bones of these companions…do they? At the end of the hall Rhett pushes the door open with his shoulder, revealing the freshly redecorated spare room that now belongs to a beautifully beaming robot. Link brushes past Rhett into the room and lets his mouth hang open.
“I mean, it’s small, and obviously you won’t need the bed, but…”
“It is absolutely wonderful,” Link cuts in, eyes sparkling. Ridiculously, perfectly, the walls are almost the same color as his eyes. Rhett picked it the other night at the hardware store, the color called Deep River. Link spins on his heels to take in everything at once. There’s a twin bed pushed into the corner, a nightstand with a blue lamp on it and nothing else, a little desk with a little chair, and movie posters stuck with Blu-Tack to the walls. Link looks at the one for The Princess Bride the longest, his mouth hanging open with no sign of closing soon. His awe makes him even prettier. Rhett shakes his head to empty it of such a ridiculous thought but when he looks at Link again the thought is still there. So what? Link, the brand new robot companion, is pretty. Rhett is allowed to acknowledge this much. He is allowed to look at Link; he was made for Rhett, after all. But even so he stares a moment too long and Link raises his eyebrows, a question on the tip of his tongue.
Rhett quiets him by asking, “So you like it?”
“It is just perfect,” Link replies, clasping his hands under his chin to complete the pretty picture. “Thank you, Rhett. You are already too kind to me. I can tell I am going to like you immensely.” Rhett has a million questions he wants to ask (to what extent can you like something; do you even have a choice but to like me; and if we’re asking questions why the hell does a robot need eyeglasses, anyway?) but he keeps them to himself. Instead of asking them he stows them away for later, adding to the list in his head, and he asks Link if he would like to spend some time with him. Link’s face lights up like Rhett asks if he would like to be king of the world. “I would like that very much,” Link says. “Can we watch a movie? Can we watch this one?” He points to the Princess Bride poster and Rhett laughs. He can tell, too, he is going to like Link immensely.
“I would like that very much,” Rhett echoes, and he is surprised by the tinny sound of Link’s laughter. It isn’t mechanical, not exactly, but it’s high and thin and nearly there.
Link watches Rhett make popcorn on the stovetop, swinging his long legs as he sits up on the island in the center of the kitchen. He’s whimsical and childish in a lot of ways, his eyes roving across the kitchen and trying to land on everything at once. Rhett burns with unasked questions as he cranes his neck to watch Link ask them instead.
“What does popcorn taste like?” he asks, Rhett distracting him by spilling salt across the counter and pinching some between his forefinger and thumb. He tosses it over his left shoulder for luck, a silly superstition his mother taught him, and the action befuddles Link. “What good does it do you to throw the salt on the floor like that?” he asks. “I will only have to clean it up later!” Rhett shakes his head and reminds Link he is not a maid, he is a friend. “I will still clean it up,” he says. “I like to be helpful.”
“You’re already helping me,” Rhett admits before he can stop himself. But it’s the truth. Already his kitchen feels alive, brighter than it ever has despite the sun sinking below the horizon outside.
“Oh, Rhett,” Link says, clapping his hands together. “I am so happy to hear that.” With a bowl of popcorn in hand, Rhett turns to face him.
“Do you feel happy?” he asks. “Can you?” Unperturbed by the blunt questions, Link shrugs.
“I am programmed with emotions,” he says, “but I am told they are only a tiny fraction of the ones that humans feel. Mine are simply echoes. Mine are hollow. But I hope you do not hold it against me, my inability to truly feel what you do.”
“No,” Rhett replies. Up close, eye to eye due to Link sitting on the counter, Rhett can see the perfect fullness of Link’s fabricated eyelashes. They are just another pretty part of him at which Rhett chooses to stare for a beat too long. Link blinks and breaks the moment and Rhett cocks his head to motion them towards the living room. He hunts down the worn DVD copy of his favorite movie and pops it in, passing Link the popcorn as he sits down on the sofa. With his back turned he hears Link shuffling the bowl in his hands, shaking loose kernels at the bottom like a rattle. When Rhett stands up to flop down at Link’s side he stops. Rhett goes to take the bowl and Link pulls it away as the menu screen for the movie begins to play.
“I want to hold it,” he says. “You want to sit close to me. I can tell.”
“Oh?” Rhett scoffs, hoping it’s the most Link can tell. “How?”
“I have a large capacity for reading body language,” he says, “and you have a propensity for revealing yourself through it. We already make a great team.” He quirks up one corner of his petal pink lips as Rhett lunges over his body to get to the bowl, snatching it away and placing it into his own lap.
“We can sit plenty close without you hoggin’ the bowl, man,” he says, teasing to cover up the blush creeping across his cheeks. If Link can read him like a book this is going to get overwhelming fast. “Now stop reading me and start watching the movie.” Despite the order Link looks at Rhett for a while longer. Rhett ignores it even though he can feel Link’s artificially blue eyes burning a hole in him. Yep. This is definitely going to get overwhelming fast.
Link is a nice movie watching companion, all things considered. He seems to sense the funny parts even before Rhett begins to laugh, joining him in his quiet chuckling at all the best bits. Whether he possesses a real sense of humor or not, Link laughing at his side makes Rhett’s heart soar. He hasn’t had anyone to laugh with in a long, long time. It’s a feeling he doesn’t realize he’s missed until he has it back. Link stares as Rhett tosses popcorn up into the air, catching it in his mouth almost half the time he tries.
“Can I?” Link asks. Rhett arches an eyebrow up at him and the impish smile he wears so well.
“Sure,” Rhett replies. Can robots eat? What would even happen if they tried? Rhett watches, wary, as Link scoops a single piece of popcorn from the bowl and holds it daintily between his slender fingers.
“Watch,” Link says, and he tosses the popcorn towards the ceiling. It lands neatly on his tongue, as pink as his lips, and he holds it there. “See?” he lisps with his tongue poking out. Rhett laughs, Link too much for him, and as he gives his head an incredulous shake Link plucks the popcorn off his tongue and offers it to him.
“No, gross!” Rhett laughs, pushing Link’s hand away, and Link furrows his brow and reminds Rhett he carries no germs in his mouth like a real human. The point is lost on Rhett. The thought of taking something from another man’s mouth, albeit a robotic one, is something too hard for him to handle. He asks Link to throw it away and with a shrug, Link gets up off the couch and obeys. He comes back, sits back down, and clasps his hands in his lap.
“You are very strange,” he tells Rhett, and Rhett struggles with the choice to act insulted or actually feel it. He settles somewhere in between, asking Link with no real thought behind it what the hell he means. “I just mean I am looking forward to spending all my time getting to know you,” Link says. “It seems I have already read you wrong.”
“What did you see?” Rhett asks over the sound of a swordfight to the death playing on the TV.
“A man who might want a different kind of closeness than the kind he asked for,” Link says, as if that’s a normal thing to say. As if it’s something easy between friends, something to say over a beer and a deck of cards. All at once Rhett doesn’t feel much like sitting at Link’s side.
“Um,” he says, and then, “I’m tired. I’m gonna go to bed. You can finish the movie. If you want. Or…not. Help yourself to anything you want, okay? I mean that.” He rises and Link tips his chin up to follow Rhett with his eyes.
“Did I say something wrong?” Link asks. He sounds so dejected, face falling, that Rhett almost thinks better of leaving him alone. Almost. The part of Rhett looking to preserve some sense of togetherness in his own head urges him to run and he listens.
“No, no, of course not. I’ve just had a long day. Don’t hesitate to, y’know, explore. Not that there’s much you haven’t seen. Just. Everything here is yours. Um. Goodnight.” Rhett walks away, leaving Link alone with a bowl of popcorn and his jiggly, ceaseless knees. Link doesn’t try to call him back. Cursing himself and every decision he has ever made, most of all buying a robot despite every lousy thing his idiotic coworkers had to say about them, Rhett throws himself into bed. He lies still for a long time, staring at the ceiling with his arms crossed over his chest.
He can hear Link laughing to himself in the living room and it eases a bit of the black cloud of panic inching over him. Link is not hurt by Rhett’s rush to get away. Relief is short lived; Link sees something in Rhett that is without a doubt not there. (Right?) Rhett wants a companion. That’s all. Someone to spend time with, to sit with, to love.
Wait. Maybe not the last thing. But he thinks of Link’s eyes, the beautiful mechanical man who wants nothing but to make Rhett happy, and he is not so sure. Maybe Link is partly right. Maybe Rhett craves love more than he thinks. The thought makes him dizzy and he closes his eyes to fight back a wave of nausea. This was the worst idea he’s ever had. Ever.
Close to midnight Link retires to his bedroom, Rhett listening hard to his quiet footsteps as he makes his way to bed. Rhett listens until he hears the bed creak and he listens until he hears no more signs of life. This is going to get overwhelming. And Rhett is going to allow it.