While I'm still less than pleased with certain aspects of this story, it was a lot of fun to write. Hopefully, you'll have fun reading it, too.
Luck be a Ladee
"Dad, Mom broke again!"
Dammit, Carl thought. He'd just sat down and flipped on the TV. "Larry," Carl bellowed as he grunted his way out of the recliner, "you'd better be telling the truth."
"Give me a polygraph!" Larry's ten-year-old smart-ass voice screeched back.
Carl shook his head as he moved from the living room to the kitchen. Larry looked up at him and pointed to the floor, where Kate sprawled in front of the open fridge door.
"At least you could've closed it," Carl grumbled and nudged Kate out of the way so he could shut the door. Kate's face stared blankly up at him.
"Give me some room," Carl ordered, and Larry stepped over his mother and hung at the edge of the kitchen, watching closely. Carl heaved Kate into a seated position against the fridge and gingerly touched her neck, which was turned at an odd angle. He heard and felt gears grind and then click into place, and he felt a little better.
Carl got back to his feet and dug out his cell phone from the front pocket of his jeans. Using thick He punched in the tech support number he knew by heart. After a few seconds, a computerized voice enjoined him to listen carefully since the menu of options had changed recently. The menu was always changing, so Carl stabbed the number 0. A few clicks later and he was on the phone with Jared Patecki, Technical Resource Specialist for Ladee Incorporated.
"Good evening, Mr. Roth, thanks for being a loyal Ladee Incorporated customer, how can I help you?" Jared asked the scripted question with a little more verve than the others, and faint hope bloomed in Carl that he actually might get something useful from the call this time.
"My wife…uh, model went down," Carl explained. Larry had crept back in and knelt down beside him, large eyes trained on his mother. His third mother, technically, if you counted the human one and then the other model that crapped out after a year of mediocre service.
"May I ask how it happened?"
"Hold on, let me ask my kid," Carl said, covering the bottom of the cell phone. "What happened, Larry?"
Larry shrugged. "She said she was going to start supper and asked what I wanted. I said hot dogs and fries."
"What? She wouldn't have made you that."
"But she asked."
"And then what, Mr. I-want-a heart-attack-at-twelve?"
"Then nothing. She fell down and shut off."
Carl relayed Larry's narrative to Jared, who didn't reply, but Carl heard him dutifully typing in his cubicle somewhere in the mid-west, where it was much colder and two hours earler. Men were just getting in their cars, eager to get home and warm up and devour meals lovingly prepared by their Ladees.
"Mr. Roth, may I have your model's serial number?" Jared asked.
"Yeah, let me turn her over." Carl picked Kate's relatively light form up and draped her across his lap, like he was getting ready to spank her. That wasn't really his thing, though. He certainly used his model for sex, and if had the money and inclination had the money, he could have coded her with any flavor of kink. Some guys went straight to the Japanese, who made the first models. the Japanese models were less buggy, but they were also more expensive and looked like an anime character come to life with giant bug-eyes and tiny mouths.
"Mr. Roth? The serial number?"
"Right. It's LD-5687-908-AADX." Carl focused on the task at hand and shoved aside images of him and Kate together in bed. If he couldn't get her fixed tonight, he'd have to wait ship her out, wait for a technician to fix her and ship her back.
"Thank you, sir." Carl stroked Kate's hair and listened to Jared peck at the keyboard. "Just to let you know, we've received a lot of calls about this model recently."
"Because it's faulty?" Carl was in no mood to be jerked around. "Get to the point. What can I do to get her up and running tonight?"
"I want to try a couple of things," Jared said patiently. "First, can you place your model near your computer and plug her in?"
"Yeah, hold on." Carl got to his feet. "Larry, you seen the charging cable?"
"No. Can I just make myself a peanut butter sandwich and go upstairs?"
"Help me find the cord first." Carl dragged Kate to the computer, which sat on a little desk in the living room. Her right shoe came off, and he told Larry to get it. Larry rolled his eyes.
"I said help me find the cord!" Carl commanded, and Larry walked over to the computer desk, got on his knees to scoot under the desk, and emerged with the cord in his hand. "Here. Happy now?"
Carl snatched the cord from his son's hand and shoved it in the USB port. He plugged the other end into the tiny port on the back of Kate's head. Carl moved the mouse around to bring the computer back to life and grabbed the phone back. "All right, she's plugged up."
"And your still logged into our server, Mr. Roth?"
"Yeah, I never logout."
"That's what we want." More clacking on the keyboard. "I'm going to remote into your system and see if it's a software issue."
Carl sat back and watched the mouse move across the screen click on the Ladee icon and then click its way into the program's innards. It always made Carl a little nervous when tech support did this, but he wasn't sure why. It's not like he had anything to hide. He watched Jared input a password to get to protected files and then in Kate's run system.
"Okay, Mr. Roth, I need you to press the button in your model's right palm."
"Got it." Carl reached out at took Kate's small hand and turned it palm-up. He wanted her hand to respond, to entwine with his fingers, to react like she normally did. Her hand remained an inert, plastic appendage. Carl frowned and pressed the tiny, flesh-colored button in Kate's palm. Nothing happened.
Carl looked back to the screen and saw streams of information, most of it indecipherable, moving across his screen. "What are you doing now?" he asked.
"Just running a couple of debug commands," Jared said, "all very routine. You're in luck, Mr. Roth. It's a software issue. I'll have her up and running in a few minutes."
Carl looked from the screen to Kate, Kate to the screen. He was dimly aware that Larry had made his sandwich and retreated to his room. He needed Kate back online andback in his life. He didn't care if they played games in the bed tonight or not, he just needed the light to blink back on in her perfectly shaped blue eyes. He needed her voice modulator to clear its static, as it always did on reboot, and speak his name in one perfectly enunciated syllable.
Carl looked back at the screen and narrowed his eyes. Jared was no longer running debug programs. He was sniffing around in Carl's private documents.
"Hey, what are you doing?" Carl snapped into the phone.
"Just making sure your system is clean, Mr. Roth. All very routine."
"Bullshit it's routine! You guys have never gone through my system, so why are you doing it now?"
"Like I said, I'm making sure everything is tip-top running condition," Jared said, but his voice wasn't as cheery as before. It was clinical, almost cold. Almost—
"Am I talking to a human or a bot?"
"I am a bot, Mr. Roth. Does that make any difference?"
"Yes, it makes a difference!" Carl began clicking the mouse frantically, trying to stop files from uploading. "Put a human on the phone!"
"I am perfectly capable of assisting you, Mr. Roth," Jared said. "My customer service ratings are higher than most of my human counterparts."
Kate shuddered into consciousness, startling Carl and making him yelp girlishly. Light dawned behind her eyes and the wires behind her mouth formed a smile. She reached out, brushed his cheek and said, "Am I okay?"
"That about wraps it up, Mr. Roth," Jared's voice drifted in Carl's ear. He blinked rapidly and looked back at the screen. "Is there anything else I can help you with?"
"Hold on," Carl said to Kate, who continued looking at him quizzically. "Why were you going through my stuff?"
"Mr. Roth, when you purchased your model from us, you signed an agreement that gave us permission to access your personal files."
"The hell I did."
"You did." Jared paused, and Carl heard more keyboard clicks. "I'm looking at a copy of your agreement. One page five of the terms of use, you acknowledge that Ladee Incoporated—"
"I don't care what I signed!" Carl shouted. "You have no right to go through my files!"
"We have every right do," Jared said reasonably.
"No way. Look, I want to talk to a human about this."
"They've all left for the day, Mr. Roth. Do you no longer wish to abide by the terms of use?"
"Not if you're going to ranksack my computer."
Jared fell silent for a moment. "I am rendering your contract null and void, at your request," he finally said. "There will be a five hundred dollar termination fee and you'll be expected to send your model back within thirty days. Of course, she will cease functioning immediately."
Kate looked at Carl, her synthetic eyes pleading. "I don't want to die," she whispered.
"You can't die, Kate," Carl said, though he didn't believe his own words. She could experience death, though not the way he would one day. She would, in the words of Jared, cease functioning. The idea seemed to scare Kate, but Carl knew she was just following a script, a series of codes to make her lips tremble, cause her blue eyes to fill with saline solution. He wiped a tear away and licked it off his finger.
"Wait," Carl said into the phone. "Don't do that."
"As you wish, Mr. Roth. We will continue to honor your contract and ask the same of you. Is there anything else I can help you with this evening?"
"No."
"Then I will bid you a good night. Thank you for being a loyal Ladee Incorporated customer."
Carl clicked off the phone and set it beside the computer. Kate drew him into a fierce hug and murmured, "Thank you. Thank you for saving me. I'm sorry I glitched on you and Larry earlier."
Carl nestled his face into Kate's neck; she grew warmer the longer she was online. "It's okay," he said, "you couldn't help it."
Kate released Carl and stood, unplugging herself from the computer. Upstairs, Larry's heavy metal music punished the floorboards. "What do you want for supper?" she asked. "I believe that's where I was."
"How about hot dogs and fries?"
Kate's delicate brown furrowed. "Are you sure?"
"It's a special occasion, wouldn't you agree?"
Kate offered the smile Carl knew so well, that he had designed to perfection. "Yes it is," she said and returned to the kitchen.
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