SAD ROBOT: an autobiography of my unfortunate existence

58. TRESPASSING

58. TRESPASSING 

We get to Miloʼs apartment building and find ourselves standing at the front door. Beth catches my hesitation before punching in the doorʼs password and puts a hand on my shoulder. A strange gesture towards a robot, I will admit; meant to be a reassuring one, but the act still seems strange nonetheless. How often does a robot end up being the one in need of moral support?

The buildingʼs password remains unchanged and when I finish entering it, the door unlocks. Up on Miloʼs floor, the hallway is deserted, as is most often the case, with not an individual in sight.

I realize it has been far too long since I have corresponded with my friend Jasper. He must be wondering why I have not given him a visit at all lately, or even sent a message to his secret e-mail address.

I kind of miss the olʼ guy. And Armand. Heck, even the sexbot from the top floor would be a welcome interaction.

I make a note to get in touch with Jasper as soon as I am able to get onto my computer while I am here. Also, and most importantly, to make an overdue blog post telling my readership not to worry and that I am alive and well, merely dealing with some minor setbacks, nothing to be alarmed about.

I buzz the apartment instead of just scanning my hand and entering the apartment like a thief performing an inside job. I am at least respectable enough to not just barge in. I recognize it is no longer my home. I would be a trespasser. And I am anything but a law breaker.

Initially there is no response, so we try a few more times, and not even Miloʼs robot girl appears onscreen to tell us to bugger off. Either Milo is not answering and he has chosen to order his robot to not take any visitors, or they have left the building altogether for whatever reason. Strange. I made sure to arrive before Milo is to go to work for the day. Milo rarely took me anywhere outside the apartment, and eventually stopped altogether in the last couple months. Where he could be gone to now is a mystery.

"Heʼs probably just sitting inside, watching us on the screen, waiting for us to go away," Beth inputs. If that is the truth, it would surprise neither of us little.

I buzz again. Beth bangs on the door with her fist, yelling at Milo to open up, that we know he is in there. I tell her there is no way for him to hear her through this kind of door, but she ignores the information and continues to do so anyway.

"I just wanna—", pound-pound, "—go in there and—", pound-pound-pound, "—give him a little piece of my mind!"

I decide to go completely renegade and enter his apartment without permission, like an outlaw entering a saloon. Beth stands back and I put my hand to the scanner in the way that I always had whenever I was coming back to the apartment from an errand.

At this moment, I no longer care about laws or lawbreaking or what Milo will say when I stroll right on into his apartment like I own the place and have come to give him his long-overdue eviction. This irritation towards Milo that I suddenly have is irrational of me, I acknowledge, but somehow, I have completely let rationality fall off the wayside in my pitiful hopes to get back into the apartment, to the place I once knew as home, to the place where everything was once as it should be—always consistent, always the same.

The sameness is what I grew to adapt to, the ever unchanging sedentary lifestyle full of ritualistic day-to-day proceedings. It was always stable, undeviating. The days were regular and there was nothing to throw the habitat out of whack, and I grew to conform and become content in this lifestyle, or at least, I never knew how much I had until the moment it had gotten turned upside-down. Maybe robots donʼt deal so well with change. They delight in regularity, in protocol and stability, the unchanging sense of equilibrium, that their environment is controlled and sustained.

Disloyalty is not something one like myself is capable of. It is an idea that is ingrained in our programming so deep that it is all but impossible to go against it. It would be like a human attempting to go against the norm of breathing oxygen because they have instead chosen to live underwater. Just like the inhalation and exhalation of oxygen in flesh and blood species, the aspect of loyalty is the same; it is fixed, unchangeable.

However, dealing with the idea that you have become a casualty of this sort of injustice requires a higher level of coping.

We go inside. No one is there.

I scan the room. The box that the thing had come in is still laying haphazardly in the living room. Otherwise, it all looks much as I had left it. But Milo is not here.

"Hiram, Iʼm sorry," Beth says to me, as if I am in need of consolation. (I donʼt know, maybe I am.) "Weʼll figure this out. I donʼt know how, but weʼll find Milo. Weʼll fix everything. Heʼll see, donʼt worry."

"Is this the part where you tell me that everything is going to be okay?" 

"Everything is going to be okay."

"Will it though?"

Maybe that was out-of-characterly pessimistic of me. 

Beth looks down and frowns.

"Heavy sigh," I say, slumping my shoulders, unable to recreate the actual sound of emitting a long, deep, audible breath expressing sadness.

Beth closes the door behind us. "Maybe heʼll be back soon. Should we just wait here? Do an intervention, the good old-fashioned way?"

"I donʼt see why not." I motion to Miloʼs computer. "I need to use this while I am here anyway."

I go to sit down at the familiar desk in front of the familiar keyboard and screen. Beth investigates the robot girlʼs shipping box, picking through the wrapping and finding the apparent instruction manual.

I am only just about to log in with my password when I hear the faintest repetitive noise. A knocking noise, fast-like. I try to pinpoint what it may be and I am unable to recognize what might cause the sound.

Beth hears it too. I get up, locating the source of the sound as coming from behind me, down the hall, where Miloʼs room is.

"Milo?" I wonder aloud.

I saunter to the hallway, now knowing for certain that the sound is coming from behind the closed door of Miloʼs room. Is he home after all? Did he just not hear us ring? What would be making such a noise?

The creaky squeaking grows louder as I approach and put my hand on the doorknob, slowly turning. I push the door open only just enough to see inside and lean my head in close.

The noise I am hearing is coming from the movement of the bed frame knocking against the wall. The cause of this rapid movement is from what is happening upon the bed where Miloʼs pixie girl robot is perched on her hands and knees, back arrow- straight, gaze looking ahead at nothing, expressionless, with not a single article of clothing on her lissome, female-replica figure, as Milo, additionally in a state of undress, moves his body jerkily behind her, hands clasping her waist from behind and—OH! OH DEAR!

I stumble backwards, leaving the door hanging open, ajar.

Beth has crossed the room and I bump into her, almost taking us both off our feet. 

"Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh—"

"What?" she emphasizes.

I spin around in a frenzy, "oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear—"

Beth tries to grab ahold of me by the shoulders and we both startle at the CRACK! of the bedroom door almost being taken off its hinges.

Milo bursts out like a man possessed by bloodlust, drawing his sword to slay a murderous traitor, towel around his waist and his eyes almost leaping out of his head.