When Life Give You Lemons

The sun is setting by the time I stumble home from work, exhausted. Still enough time to do something productive with my evening. Like dust off my guitar. I promised myself I’d start looking for more gigs.

But as the microwave nukes my leftovers, my eyes are glued to my shining smart phone and my attention is enthralled by a carefully curated algorithm, and I know my guitar isn’t singing tonight. I hunch over dinner and scroll through feeds as darkness falls. I drift to sleep on the couch despite the glow of the screen.

Do I shape the algorithm or does the algorithm shape me?

I wake up with a mouth as dry as the Sahara and eyes crusted closed. My joints ache. The couch crunches as I sit up. Leaves fall off me.

Leaves carpet my living room.

A rotting tree has collapsed through the roof.

I stumble out of my house and find the cul-de-sac looks like something out of a dystopian movie. Cars broken and abandoned. Lawns overgrown. Houses conquered by trees. And not a living creature in sight. No neighbors. No dogs. No birds. No one.

I try to look up what’s going on but my cell phone is unresponsive, dead. I should be afraid but my body is aching and exhausted and fear seems far beyond what I can process right now. But I can walk. So I do.

Streets wind through the lifeless neighborhood. I reach the empty highway without seeing anyone, and I keep on walking. I pass a strip mall with filthy buildings and a parking lot that’s more cracks and weeds than asphalt. Even though my stomach now burns with hunger, I don’t see any reason to stop.

The sun drifts into the afternoon and I’m grateful for the cool autumn breeze even though it was winter yesterday. I exit the highway, walking down the crumbling ramp, and find myself on a long road with houses falling apart like mine. I finally hear a bird chirping and follow it. The overgrown lawns give way to intentional clusters of flowers, then plots of vegetables that burst at the seams and spill into the street. I stop walking.

Kneeling beside a particularly lush vegetable garden, a metal person is pulling up carrots and placing them carefully into a wicker basket. After a day spent in total isolation, I want to run to them and demand answers to the storm of questions in my mind, but my tired brain can’t quite process what I’m seeing. A metal person.

They stand and turn toward me. Their head is smooth with seams along curves, but the way their eyes and mouth move is uncannily human. Their eyes grow as wide as mine must be.

The upsettingly humanoid robot stumbles over their carrot basket. Another robot pops up from deeper inside the vegetable garden and shuffles through the thick vegetation. I start to back away.

“Who are you?!” the first robot shouts. They clutch their hand to their chest as if they’re afraid. Then, they lower their shoulders and their eyelids click. They tilt their head and their eyes shift from fear to something else. Curiosity?

“Are you human? You cannot be! Are you real? Truly real?”

I back away a faster as the robot runs toward me with arms out but palms up. The second one has now escaped the garden and is brushing off their mental knees as the first grabs and gently holds my hands. They put their face close to mine and speak quietly.

“Where have you been all this time? Where did you come from?”

“Marvin!”

The second robot runs towards us flailing their arms. They grabbed the first robot’s, Marvin’s, shoulders and tug them backwards. The seams that delineated the sections of their face light up rhythmically as they stare at each other for a few seconds. Their human faces are blank but I wonder if something in their robot circuitry is communicating. And what is being communicated.

The second robot turns to me and smiles. I noticed the way the metal crinkles around the edges of their mouth, folding along nearly imperceptible seams. Their eyelids are made from multiple thin, tiny sheets so they can bend and fold with such precision that it gives them the wrinkled appearance of real skin and smiling eyes. The robot genuinely looks happy.

“Please excuse my friend’s rudeness,” they say, motioning back toward Marvin, who leaps into a jaunty pose and waves. “Marvin became overly excited and forgot their manners. It has been a very long time since we have interacted with a human. According to the neural network, no human has been seen alive in the area for over a generation. My name is Johnny. You must have traveled far to reach here. Are you hungry? We have plenty of food to share.”

I am hungry. I am a lot of things at this moment. But with my stomach consumed by a hunger so deep it felt like it was stuffed with rocks, eating first sounds like a good idea.

“Come this way, please,” Johnny says.

They take my hand and I allow myself to be led along a path through the vegetable garden. Hidden inside the foliage is a small home that, unlike so many others I’d drifted by, still looks lived in and well loved. Johnny brings me inside and sits me down at a table with a vase of wildflowers in a calm, blue kitchen. They fill a glass of water at the sink and hand it to me.

“Please give me a moment and I will prepare something for you,” they say.

“You cook?” I ask as I look around the tidy space. Even I didn’t cook much these days.

“I was once Mrs. Anderson’s caretaker,” Johnny says, pointing to a photograph on the wall before opening the refrigerator. Most of the photos are landscapes or pictures of family gatherings, but the one in the center shows an elderly woman with large sunglasses and a flamingo pink bathing suit on the beach. “Before she left.”

“She left?”

“Yes. All of the humans have left us.”

“Where… did they go?”

“Different places,” Johnny says as they chop vegetables at counter. Marvin joins us and brings the basket to the sink to wash the carrots. “Many left to explore the stars, and we have lost contact with them. They are no longer connected to our neutral network. In Mrs. Anderson’s case, she left us when her body ceased to function. Please enjoy your salad.”

Johnny places a bowl filled with chopped autumnal vegetables in front of me along with a fork. My stomach roars. I have a million more questions, some of them I’m not sure I want answered, but they can wait. I inhale the salad and Johnny makes me a second, this one with a generous helping of the washed carrots.

“Do you also eat food?” I ask after finishing the second helping.

“No, we are solar powered,” Johnny said and in sync with Marvin, they turned to show me the grid of solar cells built into their backs. “Most of us were build to gather energy from the sun. Those of us who weren’t, we have modified.”

“Then why grow vegetables? Why grow anything?”

Johnny appears to think for a moment. Marvin looks up from the smaller bowl of greens they are preparing. Both robots turn toward the photos on the wall, the light along their faces dancing rhythmically, before Johnny finally answers my question.

“The plants are beautiful. We enjoy growing them, even if we cannot eat them. The animals love our plants, so we grow for them as well.”

“I have made this for the neighborhood rabbits,” Marvin said, holding up the salad bowl with a wide, uncanny smile. “Although usually they help themselves, I like to leave them a special bowl.”

“After taking care of Mrs. Anderson, it was easy to begin taking care of the plants and animals instead,” Johnny says as Marvin carries the bowl outside. “Even without humans, we can still be useful.”

“This is a lot to take in,” I whisper, finding it hard to breathe.

“Do you need another glass of water?”

“No, I…need air…please.”

Johnny reaches to help me up but I wave them off. They lead me through the house to the back door. I take in a deep breath of fresh air and the sight of what must have once been Mrs. Anderson’s backyard.

Many of the boards from the picket fence are broken or lost, but it looks like the shed has been maintained. The sections of the fence still standing are covered by a thick, green vine. I try to focus on the rapid flight of a hummingbird buzzing around the vine’s red, trumpet-like flowers but it soon flutters away.

I’m startled when a third robot shuffles through the vines, followed by a fourth. Johnny waves as more robots join us, not all of them humanoid. One looks like a stout display kiosk on wheels. Another is a nondescript slab of plastic and heavy duty treads that’s barely taller than my knees. It rolls over the bumps in the lawn without batting a non-existent eye.

“Hello friends, we have a guest,” Johnny says to the other robots. Turning to me, they explain, “I have alerted my friends that a human has joined us. Friends, this is—“

Johnny pauses, their face blinking again. Behind us, Marvin exits the house and waves a finger.

“Johnny, now you have been the rude one. We have not asked your name. What is your name, human friend?”

“I don’t think my name matters anymore. People need a name to distinguish themselves from other people. But I’m the only human left…”

“What should we call you?” Marvin asks.

“Human… is fine…I guess.”

“Hello, Human,” the robots shout in a chorus. Those who could wave did.

“Hi,” I say weakly, barely managing to lift my hand and definitely not waving back. I should probably ask their names. The kiosk-shaped robot has a K1010 decal on it. What that its name? I stumble toward them and Johnny catches my arm. Underneath me, Marvin opens a lawn chair. I drop into the seat, my body feeling heavy and my mind spinning.

The robots watch me. I stare at my feet. My shoes are filthy from my journey.

“I don’t know what to do,” I admit.

“What would you like to do?” Johnny asks.

“Last night, I wanted time to play my guitar, but I was too tired when I came home from work.” I laugh once. “I guess I don’t have work anymore. I’ve got all the time in the world. But I didn’t even remember to bring my guitar with me.”

I feel against the pocket of my pants for the lump of my useless phone. I’d remembered to bring that. I pull it out but it’s still unresponsive.

“The battery’s dead,” I say mostly to myself but one of the other robots jumps into action.

“We can charge that for you,” they say as they gently take the phone from me and run inside.

“That’s not necessary.” But the robot is already gone.

“And we can bring you a guitar,” Johnny says. “We have collected many instruments. We enjoy playing them. We have access to an extensive collection of music through the neural network, and before the humans left, Rosie often played for large groups of humans.”

“Rosie?” I ask. The kiosk robot beeps in a jingly, happy tone and spins in a circle.

“Let us retrieve the instruments for Human,” Johnny suggests before bolting to the shed. The other robots join them. I remain in my chair. My body feels too heavy to move. I listen to the buzzing of the hummingbird as it return for more of the trumpet flowers.

“Wait, that’s—that’s my guitar!” I shout. I lurch out of the chair as Johnny carries a dark stained acoustic guitar out of the shed. I can’t explain how, but as I hold its familiar weight and brush my no longer calloused fingers over its strings, I know its mine. Like recognizing an old friend you haven’t seen in decades. Feeling a little lighter, I begin to strum.

“The twelve bar blues,” Johnny says before waving for the other robots to gather around me.

They’re carrying their own guitars, violins, trumpets, even a trombone and they begin to play flawlessly. Rosie starts up a scratchy, digitized blues recording while the plastic slab robot spins in a strange robot dance along to the beat. I laugh, realizing how strange we must look, one forgotten human and a band of metallic musicians jamming in a backyard as nature slowly reclaims it.

“We love to hear music. It is beautiful. Could you play something for us?” Marvin asks. The other humanoid robots pull more lawn chairs from the shed and set them up around mine. They sit and wait patiently for my answer.

“Me?” I look at their faces, or at least the ones with faces. I have to give it to who ever built them, their expectant, hopeful expressions might’ve fooled me into thinking they were more than robots if it weren’t for their metallic sheen. I try to choose my words carefully. I don’t want to offend the only community I had left.

“Where I’m from, or maybe when I’m from,” I start to explain, “Usually it’s the humans, the fleshy creatures like me that listen to the music, and its the electronic… folks like you that play it. Radios. iPods. Phones. You must have access to all the songs I could play.”

“Yes, we already know many songs,” Johnny acknowledges. “We would love to hear something new.”

“Something new, huh?”

My fingers hover over the strings for a moment. It’s a lot of pressure to be the only human left with an audience of folks who have access to, for all I knew, all music ever created. I’m momentarily spared when the robot who’d taken my phone returns.

“Wally, hurry and take a seat. Human is going to play something new and beautiful for us,” Marvin announces. The other robot, Wally, immediately drops into a squat position.

No pressure.

“You know it occurs to me,” I say to no one in particular, although I have the robots’ undivided attention. “What I’m doing right here, trying to play something new, trying to create something that’s never been done before. This is what life’s all about. When life gets tough, you pick yourself up and put yourself back together. You take the pieces left behind and create something new, and hopefully…something better.”

The robots watch me for a moment before Marvin offers, “When life give you lemons, you make lemonade?”

I smile. “Exactly.”

“We have a lemon orchard as well if you would like one,” Marvin said, standing up with their guitar.

“No thanks, Marvin. Right now, I just want to play.”

I begin playing without knowing or caring too much if its something the robots haven’t heard before. I want to play for the sake of playing, for the feeling it give me as my body relaxes and my mind drifts with the beat. The robots watch me until Johnny picks up his guitar and starts strumming along. The other robots join in and I realize they’re sticking to familiar, popular chords. I improvise around them. They seem to love that, many of them swaying back and forth as we play together. The plastic slab robot keeps dancing as the sun begins to set around us.

When life leaves you the last human around, just keep jamming.