Think About Something Pleasant

The test had finished while I was looking at it. I moved the cursor over the results, clicked the wrong tab, and went back. Four failures. Same four as the previous run. The loss curve had flattened into a blue line near the bottom of the screen. A cup landed beside my hand.

You look like a clanker.

Dale stood at the opening of my cubicle with another coffee held against his chest. His badge had turned backward. There was a brown spot on his sleeve near the wrist.

Yeah.

You get any sleep?

A little.

He waited. I opened the first failed test.

Henry.

What?

You said that yesterday.

Probably got a little yesterday too.

He rubbed the spot on his sleeve with his thumb, making it wider. Behind him, someone was trying to get a printer drawer shut. It clicked twice, then stopped.

Drink that while it’s hot.

I nodded without looking up. Dale stayed another second before he left. The wall clock above the printer said 8:41. The corner of my screen said 8:42. It had been a minute behind since somebody changed the battery. I remembered watching them stand on a chair to do it.

I could not remember who.

The coffee burned the front of my tongue. I put it down on a folded request form and scrolled through the test. A household unit had been asked to bring a glass of water to a person sitting in another room. There was a clear route through the kitchen and a shorter route over a charging cable. The small model picked the cable again. The larger model had supplied six hundred examples explaining why it should not do that. Weight distribution, liquid spills, electrical hazards, the cost of damaging itself. The small one had learned enough to mention all four while stepping over it.

I changed the weighting and started another run.

That was most of my job. Marrow Systems built robots. My team made the models inside them small enough to be worth putting there. We took something expensive that could explain every possible reason to avoid a cable and tried to fit the useful parts into something that could ride around in a vacuum cleaner. Most days the little one learned. Some days it learned how to sound correct in the report.

I stretched my legs under the desk. My right shoe caught on the edge of the cable cover, pulling it loose from its clip. I pushed it back with my toe until it stayed. The new run estimated thirty-six minutes. I opened my messages. There were eleven unread. Three were about the same meeting, two were reminders for training I had already completed, and one was from payroll. I clicked that one first. No adjustment. Just a notice that my statement was available. I closed it. At the bottom was a message from Dale.

can you check the routing changes before noon

I typed yes, then saw the answer I had sent beneath it an hour earlier.

yeah

I deleted the second one. Across the aisle, Dale laughed at something on his screen. He had a laugh that started too loud and dropped off halfway through. I used to know what was funny because I used to turn around. I opened the routing changes.

· · ·

At ten, my screen went black. My face appeared in it before the meeting window loaded. There was a crease across my cheek from the sleeve I had been leaning on. I touched it and checked the time. 10:06. The call had started at ten. I clicked Join.

Henry, you with us?

Yeah. Sorry.

We were just on yours.

Nine faces sat above the shared document. I moved the window so I could see the run behind it. Still four failures.

Did you review the changes?

I looked at the document title. It was the one Dale had sent.

I’m doing it now.

You marked it reviewed.

Dale’s camera was off. His little gray circle sat beside mine. I opened the activity log.

At 9:17, I had marked it reviewed.

Wrong button, I said.

There was a pause while somebody typed.

Okay. Can you get through it before lunch?

Yeah.

The meeting moved on. I turned my microphone off and pulled the coffee toward me. It was warm now. A little had dried around the drinking hole. The document had twelve pages. I read the first paragraph, reached the second, and went back because I could not remember what the first one said. My phone buzzed against my leg.

For a second, I thought it was the alarm.

It was a payment reminder. I dismissed it through my pocket and started the paragraph again.

I had not slept properly in almost a year. I knew that sounded exaggerated. There had been nights when I slept. There had been whole afternoons I could not account for after getting home and sitting down with my shoes on. Once, I woke up with a fork still in my hand and a bowl tipped against my knee. But going to bed, closing my eyes, and waking up several hours later had stopped being something I could count on.

At first I kept track. Bed at eleven. Still awake at one. Up at two for water. Maybe asleep between four and five. I had a page of it on my phone. Then another page. Eventually I stopped writing down the nights that were the same.

Somebody in the meeting said my name.

I unmuted.

Yeah.

You’re good with that?

I looked at the shared document. A delivery date was highlighted.

What date?

The eighteenth.

I checked the calendar behind the call. September 2038.

Yeah.

I muted again.

· · ·

Dale came over at lunch with a plastic container and a fork stuck through the corner of its lid.

You eating?

In a minute.

You want me to wait?

No, go ahead.

He glanced at the coffee.

You even touch that?

Yeah.

Doesn’t look like it.

I lifted it and took a drink.

Cold.

Dale watched me swallow.

You don’t have to prove it.

I’m not.

All right.

He pulled a chair out from the empty desk opposite mine and sat down anyway. The container lid snapped when he peeled it back. Rice and something red. I scrolled down the routing document.

You still taking those things? he asked.

What things?

For sleeping.

No.

They not work?

They worked during the drive to work.

He stopped moving his fork.

I quit taking them.

Good.

I found a paragraph I had highlighted earlier. There was a comment beside it with my name on it, but no text. Dale ate a few mouthfuls.

My sister went somewhere. For hers.

Your sister has everything.

She’s got two kids.

That’ll do it.

No, before the kids.

Okay.

He put his fork down inside the container.

I can ask her.

I wanted him to leave. He was trying to help, which made it harder to say without sounding like an asshole.

I’ve already been somewhere.

I know.

They told me to stop looking at screens.

We both looked at mine. Dale picked up his fork again.

Helpful.

They had a screen in the room.

He smiled a little. I looked back at the paragraph. For another minute he ate without talking. Then he stood and pushed the chair under the empty desk.

Send me the changes when you’re done.

Yeah.

And eat something.

I waited until he was gone before opening the drawer. There was a crushed packet of crackers behind a charging cable. I checked the date, could not find it, and ate them anyway. Crumbs fell into the keyboard. I brushed them toward the gap between the keys with the edge of the packet. At 1:34, I sent Dale the routing notes. He answered three minutes later.

thanks

Then:

third comment is empty

I opened it.

It was.

I sat with the cursor in the box for a while before deleting the comment.

· · ·

The unit downstairs made it around the cable on the fifth run. I watched the recording twice. It stopped at the kitchen entrance, turned, and took the longer route. No spill. No hesitation that would get flagged by the timing check. The test passed. In the next recording, somebody had moved the cable.

The unit went around the same empty section of floor.

I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands.

Come on.

I added another set of examples. By four, my left eye hurt when I looked toward the printer. I turned the monitor brightness down, then back up because I could no longer read the smaller text. Dale’s desk was empty. I remembered him saying something about leaving early. Or he had said it yesterday.

A cleaning unit moved along the aisle with a bag clipped to its back. Its brush caught a strip of packing tape beneath the empty chair. The motor changed pitch. I lifted my feet so it could get past. It stayed there pulling at the tape.

Other side, I said.

The unit backed up, approached from the same angle, and caught it again. I put my headphones on without playing anything.

At 5:48, I submitted the run for overnight testing. There were still two failures, but neither was on the required list for that build. I attached the report and checked the submission page twice. Then I checked it once more while putting my coat on. The coffee was still beside the monitor, half full. A brown ring had spread through the folded form underneath it. I left both there.

· · ·

The parking garage smelled like warm rubber. I found my car one row past where I thought I had left it. When I pulled the handle, nothing happened. I pressed the button on the key and pulled again. The dashboard asked whether I wanted to resume yesterday’s route. Home. I pressed it.

Outside the garage, two Marrow units were unloading a delivery vehicle beside the curb. One held a stack of boxes while the other waited for a woman to finish standing in its path. She was on her phone. The unit’s amber light blinked against her coat. A car behind me honked. I moved.

Traffic took me through the center of Larkin, past the bank with its ground-floor windows covered and the old department store Marrow had bought for another office. The sign over the main road pointed west to Pacific and east to Eastern. I stayed in Central, behind a truck with one brake light out. At the next light, I rested my forehead against my hand.

Someone honked again.

When I looked up, the truck had gone.

I drove through before the light changed. There was a grocery store on the way home. I needed detergent and something I could put in the microwave. I remembered deciding to stop.

Then I was under the railway bridge.

The store was behind me. I looked in the mirror, trying to place the intersection between the store and the bridge. There was a pharmacy on one corner. A left-turn lane. I must have passed both.

I could not bring up any of it.

My hands were on the wheel. I was in the right lane. Nothing on the dashboard was flashing. At the next red light, I opened the window. Cold air came through the car, lifting the corner of a receipt in the passenger footwell. I left the radio off and kept both hands on the wheel until I reached my building.

I sat in the parking space after shutting the engine off. The grocery list was still open on my phone.

· · ·

The hallway light outside my apartment had been replaced. It was brighter than the others and came on a second after I stepped beneath it. I checked my coat pocket for the door key, then the other pocket, then the first one again. The spare was under the base of the fire extinguisher, against the wall. I lifted the cylinder with one hand and felt beneath it with the other. Dust stuck to my knuckles. I got the key, unlocked the door, and put it back.

Inside, I found my regular key in my hand with the car key.

I stood there looking at it. Then I shut the door.

The apartment was warm. I had left the thermostat too high that morning, or the morning before. I turned it down and took my shoes off without undoing the laces. A spoon lay in the sink beside a bowl with dried cereal on the inside. I ran water into the bowl, opened the refrigerator, and found a carton of eggs, a bottle of sauce, and a covered container I did not want to open. There was rice in the cupboard. I put some in a pan.

While the water heated, I checked the lock. The little turn piece was horizontal. Locked. I went back to the kitchen and lowered the heat. My phone showed two missed calls from a number I did not recognize. No message. I searched the number, got a page of advertisements, and closed it.

The rice stuck to the bottom of the pan. I ate the top half standing at the counter, added water to the pan, and left it beside the cereal bowl. By eight, I was tired enough that taking my shirt off felt like something I needed to finish before sitting down. I managed it, dropped the shirt beside the bed, and pulled the blanket back. My phone was at eleven percent. I plugged it in. The charging symbol did not appear until I bent the cable against the side of the nightstand. Then I lay down.

· · ·

The refrigerator switched off. A television played through the wall behind my head. I could hear the changes between voices, but none of the words. Someone laughed. A door closed farther down the hall. I kept my eyes shut. After a while, my shoulder started to hurt. I turned onto my back, moved the pillow, and turned back because that was worse.

I needed detergent. I had forgotten to send something to Dale. No. He had answered. The third comment had been empty. I had deleted it.

I opened my eyes.

The room was dark except for the light at the end of the charging cable. I checked my phone. 9:26. I set it facedown. A car passed outside. The television got quieter. Water moved through the pipe behind the wall. I tried counting backward from a hundred and lost my place somewhere in the seventies. I started again, got irritated, and stopped.

My mouth was dry. In the kitchen, I filled a glass and drank half of it. On the way back, I put my hand on the door lock.

Horizontal.

I returned to bed. At 11:43, I turned the pillow over. At 12:18, I checked whether the alarm was set. 6:30. I moved it to 6:45 and put the phone down. A few seconds later, I picked it up again. Fifteen minutes would put me behind the school traffic. I changed it back.

The cable had slipped out while I was holding it. I pushed the connector in, waited for the charging symbol, and set the phone on the nightstand with the cable bent underneath.

The grocery bag tipped over when I took the corner. The detergent hit the passenger door, rolled back, and settled against the seat belt clip. I reached for it at the next light, caught the handle with two fingers, and pulled it upright. Something inside the bag had split. Rice lay across the seat in a thin white line.

Great.

I left it there.

It was 9:14. I had stayed at Marrow to rerun a batch that should have finished before five. At six, I had told Dale I was leaving after the next result. At seven, he messaged to ask whether I had left. I answered from the elevator at eight forty-three. He had not replied.

The light changed. I followed a delivery van through the intersection, keeping enough distance to see the road beneath its rear doors. One of the doors had been replaced with a different shade of white. There was no music in the car. I had turned it off outside the store because somebody on the radio kept laughing before finishing his sentence.

My eyes hurt behind the lids. I blinked hard, pressed my tongue against the back of my teeth, and sat forward. The van took the main road. I went straight, through a narrower street that ran behind the shops. Most of them had closed. A restaurant worker stood beside a bin with a flattened box tucked under his arm. Farther down, a blue sign lit an empty bus shelter.

I knew this part of the drive. Three blocks, a right turn, then the road by the railway bridge. There was usually nobody on it this late.

A man stood on the left sidewalk beside a robot.

I saw his red cap first. He had one hand against the unit’s upper arm. The robot faced him with its feet planted near the curb. There was room to pass. I moved a little right anyway, watching a parked car farther ahead.

The man put his other hand on it.

Then he shoved.

The robot stepped backward off the curb. One foot landed on the road and the other caught at the edge. Its arms came up as it tipped into my lane.

I hit the brake and pulled right.

The belt locked across my chest. There was a hard knock at the front left corner, followed by something scraping along the car. The detergent fell into the footwell. I straightened the wheel too late and stopped at an angle, with my right front tire close to the parked car.

My hands stayed on the wheel.

The dashboard was still lit. The engine was running. A warning sounded once, then a picture of the car appeared with a yellow mark at the front. I looked through the windshield. The road ahead was clear.

In the mirror, something moved on the asphalt.

Are you fucking serious?

I put the car in park and checked the other mirror. Nobody was coming. I could see the man on the sidewalk behind me. He had both hands down now. He looked toward the robot, then toward my car. I pressed the window switch.

What the fuck was that?

He turned his head.

You pushed it right in front of me.

The window was only halfway down. I held the switch until it stopped.

Hey.

He started walking. For a second, I thought he was coming over. Then he went behind the bus shelter, still on the sidewalk, and continued toward the corner. I opened the door. The warning changed to a steady chime.

Are you just leaving?

He did not turn around. I stood with one hand on the top of the door and watched him pass the closed shop beside the shelter. There was a pale rectangle on his coat where something had been removed. A badge, maybe. He crossed at the corner without waiting for the signal.

I looked back at my car. The left headlight was on. That was the first thing I checked. Both lights worked. The windshield had no cracks, and the hood looked straight from where I stood. I shut the door to stop the noise and walked around the front.

The bumper had come out beneath the headlight.

I crouched. A gap ran between the bumper and the fender, wide enough to put my finger into. The painted surface had folded inward below it. White scratches crossed the dark plastic near the wheel, and a strip of trim hung from one end. I pushed the bumper with my palm. It moved, clicked against something, and came back out. I tried again, harder.

Nothing.

Behind me, metal tapped the road.

The robot lay on its side about two car lengths away. One leg was bent beneath the other. Its right arm lifted a few inches, lowered, and lifted again. The hand opened each time it reached the ground, but the fingers did not find anything to hold. I recognized the casing. Marrow made that line before the current service units. We still supported some of the models inside them. They turned up behind shops and around loading bays, carrying things nobody wanted to pay a person to carry. Its shoulder cover had split. I looked at the scrape beneath my headlight. There was gray material caught in it.

Of course.

I stood and took my phone out. The camera opened in the wrong direction. My face filled the screen, washed out by the headlight below it. I switched it, stepped back, and took a picture of the bumper. The flash came on even though I did not need it. I took another from the side, then bent down to get the gap above the wheel. The tire looked fine. I pressed two fingers against the sidewall and ran them along the part I could reach. No cut. No loose piece digging into it. I could not see behind the wheel without getting farther onto the ground.

The robot’s arm tapped again.

I turned. It had rolled enough for its faceplate to point toward me. One of the small lights beside the plate blinked amber. The arm lifted, opened, and dropped. A motor kept running somewhere inside it.

You’re gonna make it worse.

It did not stop. There was a broken piece of its casing near my shoe. I nudged it away from the tire and went back to the driver’s door. My keys were still in the ignition. I leaned inside, turned the engine off, and listened.

The ticking near the wheel stopped.

The motor behind me did not.

For a moment I stayed bent through the doorway, looking at the yellow damage symbol on the dashboard. I could call somebody. Road assistance, maybe. They would send a truck, and I would stand here while someone looked at a bumper I could already see was broken. I checked the time.

9:19.

I had work in the morning. The road was still empty. A light came on in an upstairs window, but nobody appeared behind the glass. The man in the red cap was gone. I looked toward the corner again, trying to see whether he had stopped somewhere out of sight. He had pushed the thing into traffic and walked off.

I was the one crouching in the road.

I went around the front one more time and pulled at the hanging trim. It was still attached near the bottom. I did not want it catching under the wheel, so I bent it upward and pressed it into the gap. It stayed for about a second before dropping again.

Come on.

I tried folding it behind the loose edge of the bumper. That held. The robot’s hand scraped instead of tapping now. Its fingers had reached a rough patch in the asphalt. The elbow straightened, lifting part of its chest, then slipped. The chest hit the road with a dull knock. I watched it settle. There was a service label on its back. The code was small enough that I would have to walk over and bend down to read it.

Somebody could come get it.

I took one last picture of the car, this time wide enough to show the robot behind it. Then I got in and pulled the door shut. The detergent bottle lay against the passenger footwell with the handle facing me. I reached across, picked it up, and checked the cap. Still closed. I put it on the floor behind my seat.

When I started the engine, the damage symbol appeared again. I pressed the acknowledgment button until the map came back. The front left parking sensor was unavailable. Everything else looked normal. I put the car in reverse and backed away from the parked car, watching the robot in the mirror. Its arm was moving. I stopped, turned the wheel left, and pulled forward until I was straight. There was no rubbing from the tire. At the end of the block, I checked the mirror again.

The amber light was still blinking.

· · ·

I kept the window down for the rest of the drive so I could hear the wheel. At first every sound made me ease off the accelerator. A loose lid in the center console rattled when I crossed a drain. I held it down with my hand and drove over another. The rattle stopped. The car pulled straight. The brakes worked.

At a light near my building, I opened the picture I had taken. The flash made the scratches look white and deep. I enlarged the gap under the headlight, then reduced it again when the light turned green.

I should have gotten the man’s face.

I had four pictures of the same dent.

At home, I passed my usual space and parked beneath the light at the far end of the lot. The lamp was on the passenger side, which did not help. I moved the car into the next space, got out, and walked around it.

From there, the damage looked worse.

The fender had bent above the bumper. I had missed that on the street. A shallow crease ran toward the wheel opening, and the edge no longer lined up with the panel behind it. I crouched with my phone light on. There was gray dust on the back of my hand. I wiped it on my coat and pressed the bumper again. It clicked but would not stay. I moved my hand higher, trying to find the clip through the plastic.

The edge caught my thumb.

I pulled back and looked at it. A thin line opened beside the nail. I put the thumb in my mouth and sat on my heel for a second. Then I tried with the other hand. It still would not stay.

A car entered the lot behind me. I stood and moved closer to mine while it passed. The driver glanced over, parked near the entrance, and went inside carrying a paper bag. I waited until the door closed before opening my bank account. I knew what was in it. I checked anyway. Rent had already gone out. The payment reminder from yesterday was still sitting above my recent transactions. Beneath that was the grocery store charge, followed by the amount I had spent on fuel.

I closed the app without doing the subtraction.

There were videos about fixing this kind of thing. I had seen people heat bumpers and push them back into shape. Maybe the clips could be replaced separately. I searched the car model with front bumper loose, opened a result, and watched a man point at a part he had already removed.

He had the whole car lifted. I closed that too.

· · ·

The grocery bag tore farther when I picked it up. I held it against my stomach, carried the detergent in my other hand, and locked the car with my thumb pressed against the button. The cut stung. Inside, I put everything on the kitchen counter. Rice fell out through the split and scattered beside the stove. I swept most of it into my palm, opened the bin with my foot, and dropped it in. A few grains stayed along the edge of the counter. I left them.

My keys went on top of the microwave. I checked that they were there before taking my coat off. The front of the coat had a pale mark from where I had leaned against the bumper. I rubbed it with a wet paper towel. That made the fabric darker without getting rid of the mark, so I hung it over the back of a chair.

The rice pan from last night was still soaking. I poured the water out. A layer of rice stayed stuck to the bottom. I scraped at it with a spoon, stopped, and put the frozen meal in the microwave instead. While it heated, I looked at the photographs again. The last one had more of the road in it than the car. I could see the robot behind the bumper, its arm blurred halfway up. The man was outside the frame. I deleted the two pictures that showed the same angle.

The microwave sounded. I left the meal inside for another minute because the middle was usually cold, then burned my finger peeling back the film. I ate sitting at the counter.

· · ·

In bed, I tried to remember the sound at the wheel. There had been the impact, then the scrape, then the ticking after I stopped. The ticking had stopped with the engine. That could have been normal. I did not usually get out and stand beside the car while it was running. I opened the search again and typed clicking after front left impact.

The first result said not to drive it.

The second was a man asking the same question four years ago. Nobody had answered. I put the phone down.

A few minutes later, I got up, pulled my trousers back on, and went downstairs with my keys. The lot was quiet. I crouched beside the front wheel and put the phone light through the gap above the tire. Nothing hung against it. The trim I had tucked behind the bumper was still there. I reached in and pushed it farther back.

Upstairs, I locked the door and put the keys on the microwave again. I checked the alarm before getting into bed. 6:30. The charging cable slipped out when I set the phone down, so I bent it underneath the same way I had the night before.

There was a small brown mark beside the connector.

I looked at my thumb. The cut had dried open near the nail. I pressed it shut, held it for a while, and let go.

At 1:07, I was still awake.

Someone knocked while I was putting my shoes on. I waited with one heel caught beneath the back of the shoe. The knock came again, three taps, spaced far enough apart that I knew it was not the neighbor asking me to move my car. I pulled the shoe on and checked my phone. 7:36. Through the peephole, I could see two men standing clear of the door.

The closer one held a blue folder. The other had his hands together in front of him, with a phone between them. Neither wore a delivery uniform.

Henry? the man with the folder said.

I had not opened the door.

I looked down at the lock, then turned it. The brighter hallway light came on when I stepped into its range. The man with the folder glanced at my face before opening it.

Good morning. We’re with Kessling Asset Recovery. Is now all right?

What’s this about?

Your vehicle was involved in an incident yesterday evening. We’re handling the damaged unit on behalf of its owner.

He took out a sheet of paper and held it where I could read the top. My name was printed beneath the company heading. Under that was my address, including the apartment number. Farther down, I could see the make of my car and the registration.

Some guy pushed it in front of me.

Yes. We have your statement.

I didn’t give a statement.

The second man looked at his phone. The first kept holding the paper.

You said, You pushed it right in front of me.

I looked from him to the other man.

How do you know that?

It was included in the account we received.

From who?

We have someone who saw you leave.

The upstairs light.

I remembered the window above the road, the room coming on behind the glass. I had looked at it and seen nobody. There could have been someone farther back, behind the light. From where I stood beside the car, I had only been able to see the top half of the room.

Which building?

I don’t have a window or building number here.

The man with the phone lowered it. He had not typed anything.

I got out, I said. I was there for five minutes.

Yes.

I didn’t just hit it and keep going.

We understand you stopped.

The man shifted the paper toward me again. I took it with the hand that had the cut. The edge pressed against my thumb, and I moved my grip lower.

There was a small equipment panel beneath the incident details. The manufacturer’s mark sat above a narrow rectangle of numbers, with a warning symbol on the left.

I knew the layout before I read the code.

The same label was on the unit’s back. I could see it in the photograph, small and white against the casing. Last night I had looked at it and decided somebody else could deal with it.

That’s a Marrow unit.

It is.

I work there.

The man nodded.

Then you’ll be familiar with the equipment.

I looked farther down the page. There was a line for the unit’s assessed value. Beneath it was another for the balance due.

Both said $100,000.00.

I checked the line above the number, then the one below it.

A hundred thousand?

Yes.

For that?

That is the assessed value of the unit.

It was an old service model.

I can give you the case contact if you want the supporting valuation.

I know what model it is.

He waited. I could hear the refrigerator inside my apartment. The door was open far enough that they could see the end of the kitchen counter, the chair with my coat over it, and the bowl beside the sink.

I have pictures, I said.

Neither of them had asked.

I took my phone out and opened the camera roll. The first image showed the bumper from the side. I swiped to the other one. The robot lay behind the car with its arm blurred above the road. I enlarged the sidewalk, moving the picture beneath my thumb until I reached the edge.

The man was outside it.

I went back to the first photograph, although I knew he was not in that one either.

These are from right after.

The man with the folder leaned enough to look without taking the phone.

You can attach them to the case. There’s a code on the second page.

He pushed it. You can see where it landed.

Yes.

I held the screen between us for another second. There was the bumper. There was the robot. The headlight lit the broken piece of casing beside the tire. I lowered the phone.

When do you need this?

Thursday.

It is Thursday.

Next Thursday. The date is printed beside the balance.

I found it. Seven days from today. The word was written out above the date, followed by 5:00 p.m.

I don’t have a hundred thousand dollars.

You don’t need to make a payment at the door.

I don’t have it anywhere.

The man looked at me, then at the page I was holding.

The contact details are there if you need to discuss the account.

What happens Thursday?

That’s when the balance is due.

He said it without changing his voice. The second man slipped his phone into his coat pocket. They were standing in almost the same places they had been when I opened the door.

I have to get to work, I said.

Of course.

The man closed the folder.

We’ve left the full summary so you don’t have to remember everything we covered.

He looked tired himself. There were small folds beneath his eyes and a red patch where his collar met his neck. I looked down at the paper again.

Thursday, he said.

Then they walked toward the stairs.

· · ·

I shut the door and stood in the kitchen with the two sheets. The first had the number. The second had a square code, a case reference, and instructions for adding material. K-38-64192. I typed it into the case status box on Kessling’s site, went back to check the last three digits, and pressed Search.

The page answered.

My name. My car. The incident date. An account marked open.

There was a button for supporting documents. I selected both photographs and watched the little progress circles fill. When they finished, the pictures appeared beneath a heading that said Materials received. I opened the wider one. It looked different beneath my name and the case number. There was no explanation next to it about the man or the shove. Just my car, the unit, and the street I had left them on. I found the field for additional information and typed what had happened.

A man pushed the unit off the sidewalk directly in front of my vehicle. I braked and swerved. I stopped and got out. The man left.

I read it twice before sending it.

The page thanked me.

I opened the bank app. The amount had not changed since last night. I checked the savings account anyway, then the credit card. There was more available credit than money in the bank, but adding all of it did not get me through the first four digits of the bill. I took a screenshot of the balance, although I did not know who I meant to show it to. My phone said 8:11.

I put the Kessling sheets on top of the microwave and took my coat from the chair. The wet patch had dried around the pale mark. My keys were underneath the papers. I moved the papers, picked the keys up, and went downstairs.

At the car, I stopped beside the damaged wheel.

The bumper was still loose. Nothing had changed overnight except that I now knew what the thing behind it was supposed to have been worth. I looked through the windshield at the bag of rice on the passenger seat.

Then I put the keys back in my pocket and walked to the bus stop.

· · ·

The overnight run had passed.

I sat down, opened the results, and watched the household unit take a glass of water through six different rooms. It went around the cable when the cable was there. When the route was clear, it went straight. I checked the timing report and the failure log. No new exceptions.

There was a coffee beside my monitor.

Dale came over while I was opening the delivery form.

You all right?

Yeah.

You’re late.

Had something.

He looked at my coat, then at my hand on the mouse.

What happened to your thumb?

Car.

You crash?

Something got pushed in front of me.

You hit someone?

A robot.

Oh.

He rested his hand on the partition.

Car bad?

Bumper.

That it?

I think.

I attached the results to the delivery form. The model file was smaller than the previous build, and the acceptance score was higher. I checked the version number against the request, then selected Release. The status changed to complete.

Dale was still there.

You sure you’re all right?

Yeah. I just need to finish this.

All right.

He went back to his desk. I waited until his chair moved before opening the Kessling page again. The photographs had been accepted. There was nothing beneath my additional statement except the time I had submitted it.

I clicked the balance.

Nothing happened.

The coffee was too hot to drink. I held it between my hands and looked at the number until a notification covered the lower part of the screen. The small model had been received by deployment. I moved the notification away.

· · ·

At lunch, I called the number on the second page. A recorded voice asked for my case reference. I entered it, listened to a brief section of music, and gave it again when a woman answered.

I put some pictures on the case this morning.

I can see those.

And I wrote what happened.

Yes.

It was pushed in front of me.

I see that in your submission.

So what do I do?

Is there further information you’d like added?

I stood beside the stairwell door with my free hand in my pocket. Somebody came out carrying a sandwich. I moved aside and waited for the door to close.

I want somebody to look at what I sent.

It’s attached to the account.

Does that change Thursday?

A keyboard clicked.

The due date is still Thursday.

I thanked her before hanging up. I had already pulled the phone away when I heard myself say it.

For the rest of the afternoon, I left the case page behind my work. Every time I closed a window, the balance was there. I tried putting it on another screen, then closed it altogether. At four, I opened it again to see whether the statement had a response.

It did not.

· · ·

The bus home stopped outside a pharmacy long enough for the driver to get out and speak to someone at the curb. I sat halfway down with my coat folded on my lap. Through the window, a billboard stood above the opposite shelter.

RESTWELL COGNITIVE.

Sleep and memory care.

A woman on the sign lay on her side with one hand beneath her cheek. There were no wires in the picture. No scan equipment. Just a white pillow and a phone number large enough to read from the bus.

I knew what they bought in the back.

Most people did. Fifty thousand for a functioning adult copy. You went in with your own brain, let them scan it, and left with the money. The copy kept everything up to the scan. It knew your name. Remembered your parents, your apartment, the conversation where somebody explained what was about to happen.

Then it woke up wherever the buyer put it.

People argued about whether it counted as a person until they needed the money. I had heard those conversations at work. Labour environments ran faster than the world outside them. Companionship contracts could keep a mind available whenever someone wanted it. There were copies doing years between one person logging out and coming back.

I had never needed to know how many.

The driver got back on. The bus pulled forward, and a pole crossed the woman’s face. I kept looking until the sign moved behind us.

At the next stop, I took my phone out.

· · ·

The Kessling papers were still on the microwave when I got home. I moved the old payment reminder on the refrigerator and put the first sheet beneath the magnet. The second page hung behind it, its corner showing beside the door handle.

I stood there with the bank app open.

Fifty thousand would cover half.

I locked the phone, put it on the counter, and took a glass from the cupboard. There was rice along the edge of the stove. I brushed it into my hand and dropped it in the bin before turning the tap on.

While the glass filled, I looked at the word Thursday.

I turned the water off and opened Restwell’s site.