Operating Within Normal Parameters, by Irette Y. Patterson

Eventually, I took Sallie home to get better.

Not home to the city condo where we lived, where each night I plugged her into the silver charging station, waiting for her chirp goodnight.

Not even to the place I procured her and the charging station (I got her for 35% off because of the dent in her right thigh.)

No. I took Sallie to the home that formed me, the place progress wrote off as a loss, where red dirt encrusted signs: the broken down suburbs.

This place, my home, was supposed to be a bad neighborhood. Dangerous. Supposedly. The roads were of cracked gray pavement; storefront churches squatted next to Jamaican bakeries. People walked on this side of town. They walked because the buses tooled along only twice an hour when they came at all and rarely on the printed time schedules on the grimy sign markers. The bicyclists here wore t-shirts, ball caps, jeans, and sneakers. No bike lanes. Those were for recreational cyclists, not those whose only mode of transportation was on two wheels.

Sonny’s Repair Shop (Est. 1984) sat in the Goodwill parking lot. Half the lot was closed off with a chain link fence around an abandoned storefront, probably a Zayre or some other name only old women remembered. It was sandwiched between the barber college where my dad had gotten his hair cut back in the day and a beauty supply store with initials in its name and no one working inside who lived in the neighborhood.

This place was my last stop before recycling Sallie and giving up hope. Sallie’s manufacturer, which I’d driven all the way up to Roswell for, told me she was operating within normal parameters. Well, if that was true, she would have woken up that morning eight days ago. As I pointed that out to the companion director, they, with the too-bright smile and the too-perfect hair, stared back at me with a too-blank face. That is when I decided to go home to a place that kept dirt underneath its fingernails.

Funny how reluctantly acting on a doctor’s prescription led to me driving here, there, and yonder to get my friend fixed up.

The door chimed when I walked in. I thought this place would have been bigger. The layout was like one of those Chinese take out spots – just enough space to take your order and send you on your way. Shelves packed the walls, stuffed with metal body parts – some of newer models like Sallie and some who were obviously a childhood sort of play robot that looked more like it could have jumped from a Saturday morning cartoon – silver limbs with glowy red eyes.

I carried Sallie in the suitcase she came in. I’d had to go to my storage unit to dig it out.

Things run out. Everyone knows that. That’s life. But I never knew the last time I said goodnight – her in her cradle, me in my bed, would be the last time we’d talked. There was no warning, none at all.

I’d gotten back from my silver sneakers walk with the gang and she’d already been settled in her cradle. I didn’t think much of it at the time, suspecting it may be because she was older like me. After all, already her manufacturer had started pinging me about possible upgrades.

I typically gave Sallie my own version of a download each night when I came home which seemed to grow longer and longer – Marcie’s latest boy toy and Tamika’s New Zealand trip– one more bucket list item. Tamika had asked me to go with her on that trip, but I’d turned it down. I was too old for adventures. I didn’t invest in becoming familiar with going on them when I was younger, so now there was nothing left to withdraw. Sallie was enough of an adventure for me. I’d spent a career reviewing receipts and crafting itineraries for others. It was almost the same as going, right?

Sallie encouraged the conversations. I drank my chamomile tea while she whirled through her daily debugging before telling me her own form of gossip. Turns out, companion robots had their own network. Guess humans aren’t the only ones who need interaction. Everything was fine, until it wasn’t.

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“How about a companion?”

I had just slipped on my cotton-knit sundress from being undressed for my yearly physical. I liked sundresses and ordered 5 different colors of them when I found they worked—machine-washable, comfy (as close to an adult onesie as was possible), and they had pockets. Great going-to-the-doctor dress. It was a dress with no fuss. Streamlined. Efficient. Like I thought of myself.

Dr. Loving was about my age, with the gray hair and the smile lines to prove it. She was a bit heavier, which was one of the reasons I chose her as a doctor. I’d wanted to lose weight, and that was part of the plan, but I didn’t want anyone who had ridiculous expectations – as long as my blood work was headed toward normal, and the scale headed down, I was progressing. You don’t expect a scatter-brained executive whose assistant has gone out on maternity leave to know the travel regulations inside a month – all I wanted was progress. Progress I could work with. And someone who wouldn’t push me so far. As I drove back into my old neighborhood (seeing a pattern here?) to get an old doctor who had made their medical mistakes on someone else, I thought I could read her as clearly as an expense report. I was wrong.

I swung my legs on the edge of the paper-covered examination table because my legs didn’t reach the floor. I loved the comfort of the sundress, but forgot to bring along a cardigan for my arms. Summers in the South required cardigans due to the air conditioning being turned on blast. “A companion? That’s a strange question from a doctor.” I gave a short burst of laughter, something I did when I was nervous.

She tapped her pen on her clipboard, something else I liked about her: it was all manual with her. She believed in paper. There was something comforting about it. Now, don’t get me wrong; I do not want to go back to the days of paper receipts, and thank goodness folks at the job were issued company credit cards as soon as they came on board for hotels and airfare, but there’s something comforting in paper, in maybe thinking the world hadn’t passed me by. I spent decades, the first part of my career, reconciling slips of receipts to expense reports, and, when they didn’t work, trying to figure out a way to make them work.

Dr. Loving and her clipboard were just fine with me.

That, by the way, was my second mistake.

She put down her arm and looked me straight in the eyes. It was a caring look, but one that was serious, like when she told me it was time to be serious about my health. Which was fine. I was doing that. Having this same talk about a companion? It didn’t make sense in my brain.

“Melanie,” she said, “social interaction is serious. There is an epidemic of loneliness. While we were talking, you mentioned your job and your physical activity, but I didn’t hear anything about your social life.”

I stopped swinging my legs. “Because I don’t have one.” This had never been a problem before; at least not one a doctor would mention.

The faint, steady beeps of a machine filled the silence.

She nodded as she picked up the clipboard and started writing again. “You don’t have any friend groups, is that correct? Not even when you walk, for instance?”

“No,” I said. “I was just focusing on getting out there. With groups, you have to be there at a certain time,” I looked up to the ceiling, “deal with personalities.” I sighed, then shook my head hoping to shake off the bad memories of so-called social interactions in the past. “It wasn’t good.” Numbers were easier. They were better. Simpler. But you know what was even better than numbers? Rules. Regulations…up until the time I figured out that regulations carry loopholes, so I tried to stick with numbers. Numbers were straightforward. Humans? Messy. “It’s easier to keep to myself.”

“Hmm. Easy things are not necessarily good things.” She tore a page off the prescription pad and gave it to me. A prescription pad, no, calling an order into a pharmacy for Dr. Loving. “I’m ordering you a robot companion. It’s eligible for reimbursement under your Health Savings Account, and your insurance will have a standard price for a base model.”

I looked down at the brown square paper with Dr. Loving’s name and address in cursive script at the top. Yep. It was a prescription for a robot. This was a new low in my life.

“Is this necessary? My labs are fine now and getting better.”

“And they can be even better. Loneliness is a risk factor. We have to take preventative action. Try out some groups, too. Though I can’t prescribe that. You might find that the social dynamics are different than in high school, though high school is what we think about, and what’ s in our brains. Things are different now. You’re different. Think of it as a challenge, Melanie.”

And I did. I was nothing but sensible, and since it wasn’t much out of pocket and I knew it could be returned, I bought Sallie.

I’d selected the model in the too- bright sales room of white and chrome from a “companion director,” aka the salesman with the too- bright smile and too- perfect hair. It was the kind of place I suspected oxygen was pumped in to make folks more agreeable to spending the amount of a car inside 20 minutes of arriving. I certainly felt more agreeable the moment I stepped into the store’s cool atmosphere. It made the idea of buying a companion almost seem reasonable, standing there with the prescription tucked in my purse, pure oxygen pumping into my nostrils under those dazzling lights. Almost.

Under most circumstances, a dent in a robot wouldn’t make much of a difference, but when purchasing a companion robot , even just a standard model, most people required perfection. But, outside of numbers, perfection did not exist. Everything else was as murky, as cloudy, as the Chattahoochee River running past Atlanta.

I started on a socialization schedule first, walking with a group of retired ladies on Friday nights. Then I added in aqua aerobics on Wednesday mornings. My life started opening up a bit into a new normal of regular mandated social activity. Sallie listened to me tell her about all of it, before keeping me up to date with the companion robot gossip on the interwebs.

At night while Sallie settled into her station, I settled under my covers. The quilts were my life, ripped and repurposed: denim squares ripped from jeans whose inner thigh fabric finally worn through; the once-red button down work shirt I decommissioned after the color softened to pink from age and wash and the collar frayed; the striped blue sundress that I’d only noticed the spaghetti sauce stain on the bib too late to save.

I ran my hand along the seams of a stitched, reasonable life as a part of my night routine and waited for Sallie’s chirp in what I thought of as a sigh before I clicked off the bedside light – a children’s lamplight in the big cartoony smiling sun I’d bought at Goodwill on a whim.

While I waited, streetlight filtered into the bedroom, sirens screaming in the distance. At 2 am, when the bars closed, the drunks cried out into the empty streets, yearning to be heard. The sounds were of the city – sounds I’d learned to accept as normal, as comfort. I waited, as I did every night, for that final sound that signaled all was right in my world.

Except that night, there was no chirp. The next morning? The steady green light on the charging station—light was gray.

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I set my friend on the counter. The man looked frightfully thin, with sunken, big eyes and no muscle, just sticks for limbs. The red plaid button- down he wore was starched so crisp I bet I could cut my finger on the collar despite the wear along the seams; his jeans were the same – old, worn lovingly, but well taken care of. This was a man who cared about details. I was sure he could take care of Sallie.

I conjured my best smile. I’ve been told I look intimidating, and that wouldn’t do with such an important task. “I called earlier about my robot.”

“Yes. Miss Melanie?” His breath was of antiseptic mint.

I nodded. “Yes. I thought that you could take a look at her. Something the others might not have seen. They keep saying there’s nothing wrong with her.”

He nodded as if what I was saying was important, unlike the manufacturer. The tightness in my chest eased.

He opened the case and pulled out her head. When I took her apart for travel, I’d done it quickly and methodically, like reviewing an expense report. I turned off part of my brain to get it done, and closed the case as soon as I was finished. Even at the manufacturer, I didn’t see the tests. She was discreetly taken in the back behind a partition made of mirrors.

This place was not big enough for all of that. He handled Sallie as what she actually was – a machine. That was something I’d forgotten in the months since I’d purchased her. I’d convinced myself that her regular maintenance was like spa days. I’d forgotten what Dr. Loving had said to reassure me at the beginning, but which I now saw as a warning: this was a temporary measure to ease into socializing more with people. The point was those like two words: with people.

Broken. In the end, maybe we’ re all just broken, and the love that we have for each other are the bonds that keep us from floating away in a sea of loneliness. Looking at it this way, this wasn’t just a machine repair shop; it was a hospital, and that made it lovely. These were parts that could save someone’s life, and just not because they could call a hospital in case of a fall. There were more ways to die than the physical.

He nodded when finished with his examination— no, his inspection. T hat same antiseptic smell came from his breath. “They were right. Nothing’s wrong with it.”

It.

“I mean, I could give you a good price for it if you’re ready to make a deal?”

“But she doesn’t work,” I said.

And then I thought to ask the question I’d never asked before, which was strange, considering my world ran on regulations and rules. “What are ‘normal parameters?’ What does that mean? Specifically?”

He popped up the foam that cradled Sallie’s body parts, and there was a booklet. He handed it to me. I looked through the table of contents to the relevant section. And there it was: Sally’s purpose. Provide temporary companionship, to be determined by behaviors by parameters and decommissioned when met.

Decommissioned when met. I didn’t need her anymore and so she was turning herself off. I couldn’t let her go, so she was doing it for me. Actually, the fact I was referring to a robot as her was already a concern.

I looked into Mr. Sam’s waiting eyes, tucking the manual back into place. I’d given him Sallie for free, but I’d learned that people don’t typically value things unless there’s a cost. It didn’t have to be what I thought of as a cost, but it must to him , and I wanted Sallie to be well taken care of. She’d taught me a great deal, and had pushed me when I needed it. She was sure to do the same for someone here, wandering in from that gravel parking lot with cracked lines that would only multiply.

This was a businessman. I’d haggle, but I couldn’t spend too much time . I had brunch with Eveline to plan our trip to Barcelona, complete with the intention of recreating a dance scene from a music video when we were kids, from a moment we thought time and the world would stretch on forever.

I ran my hand over the smooth case, one last time, and then straightened my back. “25% off list value,” I said. “She’s a classic.”

And it was probably my imagination— I’m sure of it— but I swore I heard a chirp in response.

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Irette Y. Patterson is from Atlanta, GA. Her short fiction has been published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, on the website of The Saturday Evening Post as well as in Strange Horizons, FIYAH, and Translunar Travelers Lounge. You can find her online at www.iretteypatterson.com.