Spare and Found Parts (19 page)

T
he girl standing on your porch looks as though she is about to faint. I am prepared if she does and immediately ask if she would like to sit down. If she falls, she may hit her head. She lets go of her umbrella, and it blusters away. She doesn't seem to notice. She is staring very hard.

You say, “Ruby, this is Io. Io, this is Ruby Underwood.”

Ruby Underwood nods, her mouth open.

We escort her to the kitchen and sit her at the table, and I go to the tap to fill a cup of water for her; this will help if her head is feeling light.

“You did it,” she whispers, taking the mug from me very carefully. “You really did it.”

You sit across from her, and you are smiling. You say, “Isn't he amazing?” This word sets off pistons in my code. I am glad I amaze you.

Ruby Underwood sips the water. “You really did it,” she says again. It is clear to me then that my arrival was unlikely, unexpected. There are no other sentient machines in this house. It is 101 years, 2 months, and 3 days since my system was last updated. I understand that something has gone wrong. I am the only one of me left perhaps. I would like to ask you this, but I understand that it is not a polite question to spring on you now. Politeness is very important when meeting new people. Also, I do not want you to be less amazed by me; I would like you to be continually amazed. What a privilege to amaze anyone. What a joy to amaze my maker.

You lean across the table. “You didn't get your eye.”

Ruby Underwood's expression falls. I am witnessing a conversation that is not necessarily meant for me. I pick up the deck of forty-nine cards and run them through my hands in order to appear occupied. This is a polite thing to do.

“It was never . . . my eye. I mean, aside from Oliver's being too high from the Medi-Patch to do anything except sit on the floor and talk about
you
.” Ruby Underwood laughs a little. Then you laugh; you are easy with each other. “Nellie, it just—it was never going to be for me. I know how my face is. I know how it looks. I can see just fine for what I need. Someone else can have the eye.”

You reach across the table and take her hand in yours for a moment, neither of you saying anything at all, communicating in that contact. I like listening to you and Ruby Underwood talk. It is like a chain of light. When the letter
t
emerges at the end of a word, it is soft and sometimes inaudible, but at the beginning it is clipped, like a spark. Your vowels are sometimes flat, and sometimes they are tuneful. Your ticking is quiet.

Ruby Underwood looks up at me again and blinks, looks to you, and asks, “Can—can he think?” She lowers her voice to almost nothing. “Does he have a computer?”

She says
computer
as if it were something bad. As if it were something dangerous. I am not dangerous! I am amazing!

You nod; you say, “It's one of Da's.”

Ruby Underwood gasps. “That's unreal. You never know what he has stashed away in that big old lab, do you?”

You don't say anything for a second, and your ticking ever so slightly rises in speed and volume. I am not the only thing that has happened lately in the laboratory. That much is clear. Ruby Underwood looks directly at me then, her face a matrix of concern, puzzle, and unease. Human faces do many tiny things very quickly. I have not yet seen what I look like, but even my processing power could not generate anything as complex as
what Ruby Underwood appears to be feeling at present.

“You have nothing to be afraid of, Ruby Underwood.”

I am bold to say this, but I want her to know. She almost smiles then. “No Underwood. Only Underwood when I'm in trouble. It's Ruby, Ruby to friends.” The unease is beginning to leave her face. She places her cloth bag on the table; she's not about to leave, “I—I didn't expect this all to happen so quickly. I thought it was over for us, Nell.”

You say, “I'm so sorry I hurt you.”

Ruby says, “I thought your father, Oliver, someone would stop you.”

You shake your head. “I wasn't going to be stopped. That I'm not sorry for. Not even a little bit.”

Ruby laughs a little, then lets the air run silent. Her eyes flick over me again, her hands clasped together tightly. She is trying to be brave. She is uncomfortable.

“I should have brought a gift.” She is really trying.

“Would you like to see how I made him?” you offer. “I'd love to show you. I have some adjustments to make; you could watch.”

The air stays quiet a moment. You lean forward, whisper, “Please.”

Ruby nods.

We three go up the stairs, and you show me into the room where you sleep and work. Ruby is still cautious
of me, but she takes the magnifying glass you hand her and kneels by my side.

You say, “I'll build him a real face someday. Maybe you could help paint it?”

Ruby says, “Maybe.”

I lie on the floor then, too big for any work desk. You tell me this won't take too long, or shouldn't. You ask if I mind this; you tell me it won't hurt. I can't hurt, but I don't tell you that. You stand over me, armed then with a tiny blowtorch, a tiny wrench, a drill. You ask Ruby to hand you some screws, and she does, says, “It's all so
complicated
.”

You answer, “No, look, this is how his battery works,” and your voice is thick with joy.

We are there for maybe an hour. There is blue flame and metallic noise. You swear; Ruby laughs. You tune me up; you explain me in basic terms. You get some things wrong, but I do not tell you. I hope I will explain myself to you more clearly someday. As I wait for your demonstration to finish, I run words from the kitchen over in my mind like the cards in my hands, I scroll them through my fresh memory in context. I am grateful.

Amazing
. The queen of spades.

Gift
. The king of diamonds.

Friends
. The ace of hearts.

Nell,

The nectarines on the windowsill have changed. One has stayed the same and is warm under my touch, the second is gone but for the pit, the last is black with rot and foam; but the third, Nell, the third is growing. It is the size of my fist, and I fear it will only continue to swell. Please write me and tell me what you are doing. I am starting to become afraid.

Nan

I
o chirruped a gentle tune in beeps and bloops as he cleaned the kitchen. Nell sat on the great slab of a table, her knees raised to her chin, watching him and listening, peeling potatoes into a bucket. Ruby'd said she'd come back for dinner. They'd all cook together. The deck of cards, worn from the morning's play, sat in a neat stack beside her. He moved as though he'd been cleaning dishes his whole life; he bobbed his head softly to his own, almost inaudible tune, neatly scrubbed, then stacked the dishes.

Nell hadn't even had to explain how the sink and taps and soap and sponge worked. Io knew. Knew to ask for gloves—just in case. Knew to let the water run hot, then rinse with cold, to soak the cutlery and baking dishes for longer. It was uncanny.

Nell couldn't take her eyes off him.

The chirps and low metallic melody he was entertaining himself with were sweet. He seemed to be enjoying himself, dancing ever so slightly as he progressed to scrubbing out the teacups.

“What is that song?” she ventured, hesitant to interrupt. Io turned to her, a mottled scrubber in his left hand and a rough brown mug in his right, dripping soapsuds, tiny bubbles, iridescent in the light streaming into the kitchen.

He cocked his head a little and replied, “‘Life on Mars,' David Bowie, track four, side A,
Hunky Dory
, 1974.”

Nell was dumbstruck for a moment, then couldn't help laughing. “I have no idea what you just said. That is the longest song name I have ever heard!”

“Almost as long as Penelope?” Io suggested.

A
joke
? “Almost!”

“I am being playful,” he said apologetically. “A man named David Bowie sang it, in 1974, and it was part of an album named
Hunky Dory
. The song's title is ‘Life on Mars.'”

“‘Life on Mars,'” Nell repeated. “Like the planet?”

Io nodded. “Yes.”

“It's a nice song. Do you—do you know any others?”

“No,” replied Io, placing the mug on the counter. “It's the only one in my storage. The network is down,
so I can't access online libraries. If I had another music storage device to connect to, I'd know much more.”

Nell blinked. Yes. Yes, online libraries. Networks. He was talking about the Internet. He didn't seem to question where it was; rather he simply understood that it wasn't available. Would it hurt him if she told him it was long gone? That it hadn't existed in a hundred years? What would he have been capable of if there had been an Internet, or if she had a stor—

“Would you know a music storage device if you saw one? Do you think? Would you?” The words were bubbles in her throat and on her tongue. Her chest beat out a thrilled syncopation.

Io turned back to his coral reef of soap and dishes. “Yes, I'd be able to recognize one, and my infared data system would be able to connect to it. But devices like that, Nell, I—I know they're all gone. It is fine. I am sure you can manually teach me your songs, and I will be able to record and repeat them.”

He didn't notice her slipping out of the room, or if he did, he didn't mind. Nell's excitement carried her up the stairs to the chaos of her bedroom. She rooted about in her aprons, her clothing: there in the cotton, a hard silver box.
Yes.
Nell wasn't at all used to smiling, the sensation of wonder emanating from her face was new. She laughed aloud as she scampered back down
the stairs, a ripple of sheer delight.

She burst into the kitchen, the tiny computer in her fist. It was worth a try, surely?

“Does this look like a device you could read?” she asked, her smile and excitement too big for her face.

Io turned around, startled.

“You are happy,” he observed.

Nell chuckled. “Don't get ahead of yourself. Let's see if this makes any sense to you.”

Io diligently wiped his gloves on a dishcloth and removed them one by one. Nell passed him the device, trembling. He plucked a dry fork from the draining board and took it to the table. Nell pulled out the chair at the head of the table, and he sat down; she sat beside him.

Io took a prong of the fork between his forefinger and thumb and twisted it, ever so slightly.

“Would you like some tools?” she whispered.

“No, no,” he replied. “I'm just going to turn it on, not open it up.”

Nell blinked. “Isn't it, you know,
dead
?”

“No machine is ever truly dead. Death is for humans,” Io muttered, slotting the prong of steel into one of the tiny sockets in the silvery box. “There's impermeable memory, data, code that can be read. Information is immortal.”

Nell was rapt as he tinkered, thinking aloud to himself. She ticked heavy, heavier than usual. For a moment she was back on the roof of the Gonne Hospital, rushed with potential, weight in her chest.

Suddenly and quietly there it was without any prelude or fanfare: a single spark. The screen on the small box went darker, then lighter, then white. It was on. Tiny text scrolled past on its screen, digital letters in motion. Io tilted his head. Nell's mouth dropped open.

What she hadn't been able to manage with tools and batteries and cables, Io had figured out in a matter of seconds. How much does he know? His memory was different.

Io turned the box over in his hands, as calmly as he had with the dishes. It caught the morning light as it turned, its screen almost humming with text too small for Nell to read. This tiny thing, full of secrets and stories and songs.

“Can you read it?” she breathed, barely able to conjure her voice at all.

“Yes,” he replied, his thumb gently gliding across the screen. It moved under his touch, and he navigated the tiny infinity with shocking ease. He tapped lightly and frowned, concerned for a moment, then closed his eyes. From the cavern of his kettle skull, a soft whirring, his sentience strip receiving ancient information.
After a long moment it stopped, and Io chirped softly, a melodious beep.

“Data transfer complete,” he said flatly. He opened his mouth wide then, and an electric symphony poured out like shining water, like golden light, like the beginning of everything.

Nell shot up from her chair, screaming, unbridled. This sound! In her kitchen! Coming from the mouth of her—
her creation
. A kaleidoscope of possibilities unfolded before her in this new sound, this ancient, ancient sound: trills of faraway violinists and electric guitar and drums and a ghost woman's thunderous voice. Nell leaped around the tiles, unable to keep herself from dancing.

She spun in time with the tune, moving her hips and shoulders, throwing her arms above her head, joining the refrain, rolling in the deep.

Before she knew it, Io was up out of his chair, too, the glowing box in one hand, the other pointing at some faraway delightful thing, music blaring from him. This clumsy dance floor was suddenly a private, gleaming ballroom full of soap and sunlight. Nell grabbed Io's free hand. He placed the box in his apron pocket and took her other hand as well. Joined, they spun an uncoordinated tempest. The pages of Nell's imagination, the plot she had wound out for herself,
the first hand she had held, sprang to life around her, no longer ink and dreams and the sparse, grim ticking of her chest. Now orchestra, now drumbeat, now Io.

This was unlike the whirlwind that Nell had danced in the Lighthouse, a hopeful lone body in the dark. Being connected to Io at the hands, moving with him like this, Nell was suddenly not lonely. Her eyes filled with tears. She could get used to this, barely able to contain her laughter, her hands full of breathing steel.

“How many songs do you know?” she asked, spinning away, then back toward him.

“A hundred thousand and then some,” he replied, grabbing her hand and twirling her with ease, and Nell imagined that the stillness of his kettle face was smiling down at her.

Nell felt unstoppable, fevered. If he could read her long-dead music box with such ease, he could surely read other computers. He could unearth so much, could be the key to rebuilding their society, could be their link to the rest of the world. And the Lighthouse, their quest for a conduit. She'd created one; she couldn't
wait
to show them, couldn't wait for Io to join their dance.

“Put on another!” she trilled greedily, picking up the cards from their stack and throwing them in the air, confetti in red and black and queens and kings. In less than a beat, the music changed to a steady, low
rhythm, all bass, all prowling. The last ace fluttered to the ground.

Nell pulled Io closer, not really knowing what she was doing, only that the slight change in, well, mood, she supposed, called for it. Could it even be called mood? Given that one of them was—did Io even have moods?

Nell's ability to pretend had never been great. Her reality was impossible to ignore; every time her chest ticked she was confronted with a harsh truth: Tick, my mother is dead, tick, tick, my mother is dead, tick, everyone knows what I am made of. Pretending had come naturally to her only once; fantasy had washed up at her feet on the shoreline, and she had held it in her hand. She was still holding it now.

Her fantasy had grown and grown and now danced, finally with her, moved hips that she had built along with hers. The soapy kitchen air was hot, and the rain smattered lazily against the window in a gentle sun shower. A woman's voice, different from the last, ragged, spun out declarations of something that sounded like anger, or sex, or maybe something else that Nell didn't know much about; she'd never heard music like this, how fury could become tender.

This was the last thing Nell felt before it happened.