One Moment, Please.

“One Moment, Please.”

Part One

A Robot Can Dream, Can’t He?

Scritch-scritch-KERTHUNK . Scritch-scritch-KERTHUNK. A loose assemblage of stones could be heard grating against the sidewalk as they josteled one another within a small brown burlap bag roughly the size you use to bring 10 lbs of potatoes home in. The bag was cinched shut with a length of twine that had been knotted approximately a quarter of the way down from the opening. Eighteen inches away was another knot securing the twine to Naoki’s titanium right leg. To be clear, it wasn’t just his right leg that was titanium , practically his entire body was, save for his eyes, which were a combination of bullet proof glass and optical nerve circuitry for his HUD projection. See, Naoki was a robot, and he was about to kill himself. Kind of. True to his namesake, Naoki had always been steadfast and outwardly stoic. As the personal bodyguard for a lavishly wealthy family with two daughters, this had been absolutely required. Inwardly however, he possessed a flair for the theatrical, held a quiet appreciation for an occasional display of the melodramatic. It had been this inward affinity that first drew him to the idea of his death playing out in such a manner. And that’s really what all of this was anyway. A one man play he was putting on for himself. He was trudging uphill towards the Golden Gate Bridge where he intended to leap with his burlap anchor of stones and plunge to the bottom of the Golden Gate Strait and drown. And while yes, there were the recently constructed nets running the length of the bridge on both sides, constructed to deter precisely this type of act, they would hardly be a deterrent, he could easily leap past them, he was a robot, after all. And while also, yes, he couldn’t actually drown, and the weight of his 350lb titanium body rendered the burlap bag of stones completely unnecessary, it would all make for a Good Show. Just this one time, just once he was willing to indulge himself in a bit of theatrical escapism. Naoki was highly skilled in an array of martial arts disciplines as well as being a Samurai Master. He had been designed and engineered specifically as elite protection for extremely high-end clientele. He had been with his employer from the time they learned they were expecting twins and until the twins were off to college and his employer retired to travel the world with his wife. With his services no longer being needed Naoki had spent the last ten months and change participating in tournament-style exhibitions designed as showcases for potential clients whose wealth, substantial as it may be, limited their personal security options to the older Gens of models, such as himself. Naoki had no plans for future employment, telling any interested potentials that he would “review the details of the assignment as submitted to the exhibition organizers.” The exhibitions were simply a way of determining when the time was right for The Show. He had decided, without rhyme or reason, as even robots are wont to do from time to time, that when his Kitana blade had dulled to the point of being useless, that that would be that. So yesterday, when the few remaining granules of sand had dropped and completed the peak at the bottom of the hourglass, so to speak, they brought with them not melancholy but an almost jubilant sense of whimsy. It had arrived at last, Showtime. He had drawn no real attention during his trek, a robot walking amongst the pedestrians was hardly an uncommon or even particularly interesting sight, even one with a bag of stones dragging behind him. Just as he was leaning face first over the railing, preparing himself to leap up and over, beyond the deterrent nets, he heard a voice directed to him. “Excuse me, sir, one moment, please.” Leaning back from the railing and straightening himself he looked to his right and met the fascinating gaze of a short black woman, early-fifties perhaps, in a SFPD uniform marching towards him in an authoritative no-nonsense stride. What held him rapt so, was that even at a distance of thirty feet she managed to simultaneously convey a bitter disdain for walls having the audacity to be so flat and genuine disappointment there wasn’t one in her current line of sight. Naoki was by equal turns fascinated and envious. Not in a million years could he hope to emote with such proficiency. A nearly complete lack of discernable facial features placed him at somewhat of an unfair disadvantage. When she approached, Naoki noted her badge read “C. Higgins.” Even with the deterrent nets, the bridge was still routinely patrolled by officers on foot. Upon approaching Naoki she said to him “you are not going over that railing. Man, woman, robot, I don’t care. You are not doing this on my watch.” He was about to speak, to try and explain he wasn’t actually trying to kill himself, to try to explain about The Show. Before he could begin to speak she continued. “Not when my shift is five minutes from being over, and sure as Hell not on my 30th Wedding Anniversary.” As she continued to speak the sternness of her voice softened, “I’m sorry, it’s just, I lost husband, and with today being our Anniversary & all..." She paused for a few moments, took a deep breath, then continued. "It’s been ten years now, and I know they say time heals everything, and in a way, I suppose it does, but what they don’t tell you is even scar tissue can feel pretty raw sometimes.” “Can I ask what happened?” Naoki said. “We had been married for eighteen wonderful years, sure, we had our ups and downs, as you do, but we never went to sleep angry, not even once. At his physical that year Stephen’s doctor discovered the cancer. Prostate, but it was caught very early and his chances were good, really good. And the doctors were right, he started treatment right away and in just under a year he was given a clean bill of health. Fit as a fiddle, they said. She could sense Naoki’s puzzlement. Not because of any discernable facial expression, (due to the aforementioned disadvantage) but because Naoki had discovered over time that that confused head-tilt your dog gives you when they come sliding across the kitchen floor all excited only to discover you wiping green bean water, or tuna oil or whatever on your pant leg, works pretty well for robots, too. She knew Naoki realized there was a year unaccounted for in her timeline. She continued “while he was in treatment, we hoped and prayed for the best, but knew it would be foolish not to be prepared for the worst. We knew he might not make it. We accepted it, made our peace with it. Then, when he got the all-clear from the doctors, we were, of course, overjoyed. We went from cherishing every day like it was his last to cherishing the fact we had our future together again. So, as people do, our lives started getting back to normal. But that also meant, as people do, we stopped being prepared for the worst. I remember the day Gellar came by the house like it was yesterday. This was just a little over a year after Stephen getting his health back.”

PART TWO

A Visit From Gellar

Corinna Higgins had just settled into that elusive sweet spot on the couch and was in mid-reach to collect the book she was very much looking forward to getting back to when the tea kettle began to whistle from the kitchen. “Well, at least I’m already halfway off the couch” she said to herself. Back in those days, with her naturally upbeat personality (upbeat nearly to a fault, her friends never seemed to tire of razzing her) she never seemed to struggle to find something positive in any given situation. These days she would have better luck trying to pin down Peter Pan’s shadow. As she was turning the burner off on the stove there was a knock at the front door. “J’ arrive” she sang-songed breezily on her way back through the living room. She nudged the floral print curtain on the little door window aside and was surprised to see Officer Gellar. Corinna and Leonard had met at the Police Academy and become fast friends, often double-dating, Leonard and his future wife, Cynthia, and Corinna and future husband, Stephen. She and Stephen had attended Abigail’s Bat Mitzvah just last month. Corinna saw a lot of herself in her chosen Niece, never afraid to let the boys know who was smarter and clever to boot, she had been signing her homework “Abi-Gell” since the 2nd grade. It wasn’t his presence that surprised her, but that the knock she had heard was wholly uncharacteristic of Gellar. His typical knock would bring to mind the joyful rhythm of someone slapping their knee upon hearing a particularly hilarious punchline. This knock had sounded hollow, timid even. Corinna opened the door and in that brutally efficient way our minds can work at times, understood just about half a pace behind immediately. Gellar was standing at the foot of the porch (having stepped back down after knocking) with his head down, eyes clearly being forced up with gargantuan effort and his uniform cap held before him in both hands. Seeing his cap held like that was like a sucker punch to the gut, all the air being driven forcefully from her lungs. “No-No-No..” was all she could force her mouth to form, though little sound escaped. The conversation that followed did so in teary blurs and choked fragments of words. Stephen had been strolling down the pedestrian walkway across the Golden Gate Bridge when a day-drunk college student on Spring break from USF went careening through traffic before losing control of the wheel altogether, Stephen was killed instantly.

FINAL

SUNSET IN CHRISSY PARK Upon finishing her story, as Corinna let out a long, pained breath it appeared almost as if her entire body had deflated and shrunk in on itself. Naoki looked into her eyes and saw several things. He saw compassion, desperate but against all odds hopeful and sincere compassion for others. But more than anything he saw exhaustion, she was, in every sense of the word exhausted. In the time leading up to today’s show Naoki had mentally played out the plan several times and it had always played out like a whimsical folly. Just moments before he had been prepared to explain this ,but now, as he replayed once more, viewing it through the lense of grief that she would have seen it through, he was absolutely mortified to discover that she would have seen it as nothing more than a selfish and cruel mockery of her grief. “Officer Higgins,” he began, before she stopped him. “Corrina, you may call me Corrina.” “Corrina,” he began again, “would you like to walk with me and watch the sunset from Chrissy Park?” “I would like that,” she said before turning her attention to the burlap bag still affixed to his right leg. “Oh, right,” Naoki said as he tore free the twine knotted to it and casually lobbed the bag over the railing. They walked to Chrissy Park where they took a bench and watched in quiet appreciation as the sky’s bright blue canvas deepened while soft brush strokes of purple, pink and orange painted the horizon.

END