Renegade Robot

Four

Now that he was temporarily back in the here and now, Wyatt remembered that he'd meant to ask Jalopy what it was he'd said when Wyatt had first jumped on the tanker that morning.

"Oh, that was nothing," Jalopy grinned. "Just checking on the family drama. Seeing if there's any news."

Wyatt laughed. There had been a lot of drama lately around his sister Bethany and her asshole husband. She'd already been sending out smoke signals by all of a sudden using her maiden name in her socialnet posts, a dead giveaway from any married woman that her marriage is in trouble. Her new full name, Bethany Lorenzo Hayward, had even started appearing on her serialized romance novels. Aspects of her personal life had always been seeping into her popular Christian Erotica titles. If you knew her, it was easy to decode such phrases as "It was autumn, and her trees were large and deciduous". You would know that her husband, Blair, had recently taken to raking his neighbor's leaves in the middle of the day. The neighbor, Clarissa Simpson, recently Simpson Martel, no longer had need of smoke signals. Her main need these days was for a stream of new men, most of whom did more than rake. She did not really care where they came from, or to whom they may or may not be attached.

Blair had an assortment of issues, as did Bethany, as did each of their three boys, Brad, Brian, and Brendan, aged fourteen, twelve and ten. There had never been a quiet time for that missionary family. Ever since her sister had hooked up with The Preacher (as Wyatt called him), there had been one very public performance after another. Wyatt had tried to keep his distance, but he loved those boys and he was their favorite, and only, uncle, so for the sake of the children he'd remained involved, witnessing far too many domestic scenes far too closely to be surprised by anything anymore. Blair had exacting standards when it came to other people. As for himself, not so much. He also had curious interpretations of the Bible. As with the mainstream of his church, he was fixated with the admonition to "go forth and multiply". He seemed to think it meant to do so constantly, perpetually, and to tell everyone all about it all the time very loudly, for he had a trumpet of a voice and a singular lack of modulation. In summer the whole block could recite his every phone call, word for word, and he made a lot of phone calls, most of them while pacing back and forth on the front porch.

Bethany had been cranking out wholesome smut for years. It was literally how they met. Blair has been one of her biggest fans, always showing up at book signings and sitting in the front row sighing loudly as she read passages from such classics as 'Whispers in the Dust' and 'Fall to Grace'. His pursuit of her hand in marriage knew no limits and she eventually succumbed to the shower of gifts and ever-more grandiose promises. It was the house that finally tipped the balance. He bought her the house of her dreams, with an oak-filled writing room in the attic, and four bedrooms, including one for every child they planned to have. They started having them right away. Bethany was still not yet forty years old and spent a generous percentage of her royalties every year on youth and beauty treatments. Blair, she suspected, was spending the allowance she gave him on gifts and grandiose promises to other women.

"Nothing much," Wyatt said. "Except I did get this really weird phone call from her last night. I couldn't tell if she was laughing or crying. She was definitely freaking out, though. She kept screaming that the kids' rooms were all neat and clean. Neat and clean, she was yelling, neat and clean. Do you know what that means? she asked me. I said, uh, maybe they picked up their stuff? She called me an idiot then.”

"Sheesh," Jalopy shook his head. "I wonder what that's all about.”

"She wants me to come over after work, and to bring our stuff. She said that everything's falling apart and it's not natural.”

"Sounds pretty natural to me," Jalopy shrugged. "Marriage gone down the drain, kids probably trying to help out, do something nice for mom. Sounds like what I did when my own folks were splitting up. I did the dishes, sweeping, laundry. Didn't help any, but I was trying.”

"You're probably right," Wyatt said. "These days nearly everybody's acting crazy. Every little thing they want to blame it on machines, as if we can't screw things up on our own. Heck, if we couldn't, we wouldn't have ever come up with the bots in the first place.”

"What are you two yakking about now?" demanded Hazel. They hadn't noticed her sneaking up on them, and now it was too late. They were caught.

"I saw what you did," she glared at them both. "Everybody knows. You two! I can't believe you two. The sooner we get rid of you both, the better," and with that, she turned and stomped away.

"I wouldn't worry about it," Jalopy said as they watched her depart. "We've got our two years. We can always hook up with another crew. Experience counts, you know."

"I just hope we don't get split up," Wyatt grimaced. More than anything, he needed his friends, his real ones and his unpresent ones too, but mostly the real, and of them, mostly Jalopy.

"Nah, don't worry," Jalopy said. "We won't let that happen."

Wyatt wasn't so sure. It was hard for him to trust anyone, even Jalopy. Hadn't his so-called friend promised to find his dream girl for him? Hadn't he even said he knew who she was, where she lived. That was a long time ago, and what had come of that? Not a trace of the girl. Nothing. Even his best unpresent friend could not be relied on. What had that one ever really done for him? Precisely nothing at all. Some friends, Wyatt thought. And now I'm going to get fired again.