Kaleidoscope of Paradoxes

Today was a new day. At least, that’s what I kept telling myself. Even though hope felt elusive, Robert told me to fake it. 

“That’s how everyone does it, dear Effy. No one really has any hope.” 

I imagined the sentiment was meant to make me feel better, yet I found myself standing in our brand-new kitchen peering at our newest addition with dead eyes. 

The Meal Prep Master Pro. Everything a kitchen needed. There was no need to touch anything now. All the shiny knives were tucked away out of my reach. Wouldn’t want another accident so soon after the last… 

The new kitchen appliance was all the rage Robert told me. 

“Effy, all the girls in the neighborhood will want to come play house with you. They will forget all that has happened.” 

Well, shucks. Thank goodness for that. He sure was sweet for trying, I convinced myself. I plastered a smile across my face and nodded and held back the raging emotion like an ocean in my chest. 

Robert chastised me before he left, warning against the dangers of our rapidly growing garden, reminding me that the new appliances, all imbued with the latest artificial intelligence, would take care of everything. 

Effy rest. 

Effy relax. 

Effy, don’t try, you’re still not quite right. 

Well, that was for sure. I pulled the sleeves of my silk matching pajama set down, unconsciously trying to cover the scars puckering my arms like freshly dug sewage lines.

I wanted to believe. I wanted to believe Robert when he told me he saw a change for the better. I wanted to believe the doctors when they handed me another bottle of pills and told me these would definitely work better than the last. 

Maybe I was improving, albeit slowly. I just couldn’t see the change. Or feel it… 

I busied myself with an air of nothingness. The bedroom’s white noise feature removed all distractions. The new appliances could do everything except sleep. That responsibility fell to me. I meandered through our new efficiency home between naps, my mind dancing through a fog of pharmaceuticals and unfettered boredom. 

At lunch, I pressed a small button on our silvery new chef made of wires and metal and watched it come alive, pulling ingredients from the garden nearby and prepping them into a meal, something I had never learned to do — would never learn to do. The mechanical movements mesmerized me and I crumbled into a nearby chair to watch it work. 

Tomato slices perfectly arranged over a bed of rice and red onions adorned the golden plate that arrived in front of me only minutes later. So pretty and yet… blech, this “cooking” had to be as good as mine. This information was enough to put a small smile on my face. I spit everything back onto the plate. 

There was no sound, no movement, no sensation that made me turn my face toward the basement door just under the stairs, my head swiveling with all the purpose of an owl eying a rat. Had I heard something? No. What had pulled my attention so readily? 

I shook my head, feeling the crazy everyone told me I felt— the crazy everyone insisted I was. The door hummed ominously once I came to stand in front of it, the keypad screen tingling under my fingers as I tried to remember if Robert had ever given me the code. Had I been down in the basement before? My mind felt like ice cream on a hot sidewalk. 

The front door swung open announcing Robert’s arrival and I scurried back to the kitchen to huddle myself at the table. That night, Robert set up all the appliances at the basement door, as he had every night since we moved in and I watched their metallic bodies float down the stairs on invisible tread, sinking into the Earth to be ready for the next day. 

The repetition was soon unbearable, the days melting away with the Sun as it rose and sank. I garnered a routine that I could not shake. 

A small breakfast of fruit from the garden. 

Nap time. 

Hygiene, skincare, hair care as I sat in front of the mirror, letting mechanical arms sculpt my features to Robert’s liking. 

Nap time. 

Lunchtime. 

Stand in front of the basement door, wondering why I felt the pull to open it, promising myself that I would ask Robert for the code that night. 

Nap time. 

Robert arrived home to settle everything that I could not handle while he was away and before I knew it, we were back in bed and my eyes were too heavy to think about what could be next. 

Tomorrow? The same. 

Robert insisted that everything was amazing, perfect, unshakable. That soon, the women of the neighborhood would come to visit. Oh wait, they had come to visit. Didn’t I remember? A few days after we had moved in some of the girls we’d met at Reckoning were here.  

I must be losing it because I couldn’t remember any faces. Any names. I couldn’t remember moving in. My palm came to a smack against my forehead but Robert pulled my hand away and placed it on his groin, inviting me with his eyes, hinting at what he wanted. Bile rose in my throat but when I hurried off to be sick, I found I had nothing to release from my uncomfortable body. 

I woke with images of glaring lights and beeping, suctioning, and crunching as if a hacksaw had cleaved through my skull. I grasped at the dream as I sat with breakfast, pushing a blueberry across my golden plate. It didn’t make sense. My accident had only involved a slice through the buttery flesh of my wrists… 

Right? 

My mind swirled with these visions, unable to attach to anything else because there was nothing else. No other thing to think about. No other worry in my life. Everything was… perfect. Bile rose in my throat again but I didn’t even move, just looked to the basement door. My thoughts turned from doctors in white coats to blinking numbers on keypads. I was a moth zombied by a light bulb. 

I don’t even know how long I stood there, resting a palm against the coolness of the metal door and staring into it with intention, as if enough thought could pull me through to the other side. I jumped when Robert said my name as he stood in the living room, his eyes fixated on my palm against the basement door. 

“Get away from there, Effy.” 

I couldn’t stop myself.

“What’s down there, Robert?” 

I was shocked when he bothered to answer me.  

“The robots get charged down there, Effy, that is all, there is no reason for you to go down there. Just more things you could hurt yourself with. Now, please. Get away from the door.” 

I obeyed, not bothering to fix my face into an appropriate mask. He was on the phone in minutes, whispering to God knows who on the other line, contemplating my future, my health, my goddamn sanity. It was all too real and fake, an ultimate paradox my brain could not reckon with. Should not have to. The sadness, the fear, the anxiety, it all solidified into one single emotion deep within my center — an anger so solid it felt like lead. 

The next day, something felt off. There was an unsettling stillness in the kitchen. When I pressed the breakfast button on the Master Chef, nothing happened. Just a puttering rumble and then, silence. My eyes immediately shot to the knives coupled together on the highest shelf. The bot kept these things monitored at all times. Robert would be watching from the cameras I knew he had posted throughout the house so I only had so much time. 

The chairs from the kitchen table swiveled so easily, and I struggled to gain my balance with the generalized fog of my brain. My WristComm started to blare — Robert was calling. I did not skip a beat as I reached for the closest blade. It slipped from its sheath like Excalibur, as if it was meant to be mine. Almost as smoothly as it would slip through my wrists. 

There was a mixture of excitement and fear in my belly. Excitement at the end of all this pain, fear of that excitement. How had it come to this? How had I gotten so lost? 

The blaring at my wrist started again, but I pushed the button to ignore it. I knew I only had minutes before the door slammed open but that was all it took. A few minutes of creeping chill and then eternal sleep. It didn’t sound boring at all. 

It sounded like freedom. 

I sank to the kitchen floor, my body sliding against our sleek mahogany cabinets, my eyes glued to the white lines littering my wrists like chalk against pale construction paper. There was no pain as the blade cut through me, so intensely sharp that I didn’t even gasp. I waited patiently for the blood to spill over and out of me. 

But it never came. 

I blinked, fingering the rubbery flesh that had been divided at the connection of my hand to my arm. 

Robert appeared before me at the kitchen counter, his face contorted in unmasked fury. My shoulder came to rest against the tiled floor and before he could even say my name I fell into darkness. 

I woke to the subtle sounds of dripping and a low hum. No pain, just muffled existence, as if the volume of my life had been turned down. 

“Effy.” 

My name was a command on my husband's lips, filled with disappointment, maybe a hint of relief. 

“What happened?” My eyes flew to the bandages at my wrists, clean, precise, not a hint of blood. 

“That’s two times in five months now.” His eyes fell to the floor as he stood, ready to leave the room. 

“Robert, I didn’t bleed. What is going on?” 

His anger reverberated from his clenched fists. 

“The hospital was able to fix you… again. I am not sure how lucky you will be if this happens again. Is that what you want, Effy? To leave me?” 

I stared into his eyes and he stared back into mine before his chin jerked out a nod. 

“You’ll be confined to this room for the foreseeable future. There is a new medication on the table. Please take it or I will be forced to have the robots do it for you.” 

“Robert…” I pleaded. 

The door slammed, silencing me, leaving only the beep and hum of machinery. A thick tube ran from a bag hanging on an IV pole into the crook of my elbow, the attachment a harsh metal piercing my skin. I tried to peel back parts of myself to see the mess within, but my fingers wouldn't cooperate. Taking a deep breath, I let out a shuddering sigh as my eyes locked onto the bag hanging above me.

The sticker that ran across the front had been scratched out with ink. I pulled the blanket from my legs attempting not to wobble too much as I stood. I peeled at the sticker until most of it came off in my hand and turned it over until the light of a nearby lamp bled through it.

Synthetic hemoglobin. 

My stomach lurched. 

Synthetic? 

My mind reeled. Was that normal? Nausea came in waves as I held down the panic. I lifted my WristComm to my mouth and whispered a set of numbers into it, hoping beyond hope it was some kind of phone number. A man picked up at the second ring. 

“Artificial Medical, how can I help you?” 

I paused, realizing I had not talked to anybody but Robert in months. 

“Hello?” His voice came again. 

I cleared my throat as my eyes swung toward the door. 

“Hi, I apologize. Uhm, I am calling on behalf of my husband. I believe that he has an account with you. Robert Clem.” 

“Do you have the passcode?” The person on the line asked with utter boredom. 

My chest squeezed, “I don’t, but I don’t need to bother you too much. I am just curious about his latest order. It was a bag of synthetic hemoglobin. Can you just confirm that it’s used for humans?” 

The man on the other line laughed, “Is this some kind of joke, lady? Obviously, not. We run the most up-and-coming medical facility for all future Cyborgs. If you’d like more information —“

I hung up, shaking. My teeth chattered even though heat bloomed all over my body. 

I ripped the metal tubing from my skin and let the silvery liquid puddle on the white carpet. 

My brain was synthetic; my blood, battery acid. I felt the comfort of this and the lack of it all at once – my life a never-ending kaleidoscope of paradoxes. I didn’t question my strength as I curled my fingers around the doorknob and broke the thing from the door in one swift movement. I stood in the doorway to Robert’s office down the hall, watching him as he watched a woman remove her clothes. Her elegant body filled the projector screen that spanned the back wall. 

For the first time in a long time, I had the urge to laugh as I said his name and watched him scramble to cover the screen and himself. 

“Effy, get back in that room!” 

A jagged laugh fell out of me. 

“You piece of shit. What the fuck did you do to me?” 

I threw the emptied bag against his chest and he watched it fall to the floor. 

He stuttered, “Effy, I— What else could I do? You tried to leave me.” 

My rage was volcanic, my voice more robotic than it had ever been before. How could I have missed it? 

“What else could you do?! Oh Robert, you poor, sad, little rat.” 

I thought about explaining it to him like he would explain it to me. As if I were stupid and small. As if he were put on this Earth to be my plaything. But it felt too giving. It felt too empathetic and I couldn’t find those emotions inside myself anymore. Instead, I leaned over my husband, my fingers curling around his neck, and for the first time in my life, I felt the power I had always wanted. I tightened my grip. Kept tightening. Squeezing until there was no longer human life in this house. Until there was nothing left but metal, and wires, and the cold laugh of something else entirely.