We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Book 3: Chapter 9: Tension

Book 3: Chapter 9: Tension

Howard

February 2218

Vulcan

“You should leave my mother alone.”

I’d been casually examining a store-front display at the mall, so the comment, coming out of nowhere, made me jump. I turned around to find Rosie, Bridget’s eldest daughter, glaring at me.

“What?” Oh, great comeback, Howard. Brilliant.

“You’re a machine. You’re not even human. My mother needs to get over the death of my father, and move on. But not with a machine.”

Here we go. My fertile and somewhat anxiety-ridden imagination had pictured something like this. I wasn’t particularly happy about the validation. “Rosie, the two aren’t mutually exclusive. I, the real me, am human. I—”

“Spare me all the scientific double-talk. You’re a recording of a human. I’m not interested in debating the issue. I’m—”

“What?” Rosie blinked rapidly and drew back slightly. I seemed to have managed to derail whatever speech she was gearing up to. I noted out of the corner of my eye that we were attracting an audience. Several passersby had stopped to watch the drama, and at least one person had their phone out. I wondered if I qualified as a celebrity.

“Rosie,” I continued, trying to ignore the gawkers. “You may not be interested in a debate, but I’m equally not interested in standing here being lectured at. To coin a phrase that was around when I was young, you’re not the boss of me. And, more to the point I think, your mother is freely choosing to associate with me.”

“And I’ve told her exactly what I think of that!” Rosie was almost spitting the words. “But you’ve gotten her all twisted around—”

“Oh, freakin’ hell!” I exclaimed, rolling my eyes. “Have you met your mother? Have you ever tried to get her to do something she didn’t want to?” I waved a hand dismissively. “Look, I don’t want to get into a confrontation with you. Mostly out of respect for your parents, both of whom I love, and loved, dearly. But Bridget is an adult, and able to make her own decisions. I’ll stop seeing her when she says so. You don’t get a vote.”

And that was it. We stood there, glaring at each other, any hope of discussion or understanding pretty much skewered, possibly permanently. After a few more moments of impasse, Rosie sneered at me and wordlessly stalked off.

Well, isn’t that just peachy.

I looked around at the small crowd that had gathered. No one would meet my eyes, and they swiftly dispersed.

I resumed my aimless wandering, trying to get back into the window-shopping mood, but couldn’t put Rosie out of my mind. And some of the looks from my erstwhile audience had been hostile. Obviously I had been recognized. I began to wonder what I would do if this drama spilled over onto Bridget.

* * *

We were sitting on Bridget’s couch while I recounted my earlier experience at the mall.

“I didn’t tell you because it isn’t your problem, Howard.” Bridget looked sad, but not apologetic. “My kids, mostly Rosie, I think, would like to see me dating someone less, uh, biologically challenged. She’s started lecturing me on the subject whenever I see her. Lianne and Howard mostly stand around looking uncomfortable.”

“Wonderful. Is there anything else you aren’t telling me?”

She smiled at me. “Well, there is a certain amount of gossip going around. Some of the more interesting items involve questions about your equipment. So to speak.”

I couldn’t help it. I started to laugh helplessly. Thanks to the very authentic proprioceptive circuits in the android, I had to sit down or risk falling over. For maybe the tenth time, I made a note to myself to install tear ducts.

Bridget grinned, sharing the moment. “And on that subject…”

“Oh, no you don’t. I’ve already told you that I’ll upgrade Manny any time you say the word. That’s on you.”

Now Bridget was laughing, too. The hilarity fed back on itself until we were both lying back on the furniture, gasping for breath and whooping helplessly.

Finally, after a minute or two, we both managed to recover control. Bridget took my hand. “And that’s one of the reasons why I love you. Even Stéphane often just looked at me like I had a screw loose. I had to bite back a lot of my more lowbrow humor. With you, well, you get it.”

“Minds together in the gutter, forever.” I smiled at her. My God, she was beautiful.

* * *

The internet hadn’t really changed that much in two hundred years. Oh, there were new companies, and old companies had gone out of business. A lot of the jargon had changed. But people were still people, and still had the same interests. There were still forums, you could still follow someone, everyone still had a personal landing page on any of several different platforms, and blogs were still popular. Apparently narcissism and voyeurism were still alive and well.

The point, though, was that it didn’t take a lot of effort to track down some commentary relating to the locally famous—or perhaps infamous—replicant. My android persona wasn’t any kind of a secret, and had become a small but persistent topic of conversation. And there were enough pictures posted to make me recognizable if someone cared enough.

There was no shortage of opinions on the subject, although they appeared to be about evenly split. I was either some kind of Frankenstein’s Monster, or I was just some guy who had the same right to exist as everyone else. There didn’t really seem to be any middle ground.

It looked like my relationship with Bridget was the real sticking point. Most people were okay with me just wandering around, visiting malls and such. But they drew the line at me dating outside my chemical family.

It was unlikely that Bridget was unaware of this. That meant she was protecting me. Crap. I was just chauvinistic enough to want to be the one doing the protecting.

I wondered if she had a plan. Or, more importantly, if I had one. Someone needed to deal with this.