A NOVEL IN THE MAKING

I, Robot Soldier

Chapter Eleven

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Chapter Eleven

When I got to her, Amy was more subdued, even yearning as she stared into the day-lit window of an abandoned shop.

“Look at all the clothes,” she said, staring deep into the store’s interior.

Clothes are clothes. I didn’t need clothes. I wasn’t inclined to wear them. I understood they served to protect the fragile bodies possessed by humans, although no other biologicals required them. Also, humans thought of clothes as something beyond protection. They prized them as articles of adornment even as they sought to hide their private selves from others. They went to great lengths to maximize the pleasing quality of their design, much as they designed their cities destined for destruction. That, however, was more than I could understand.

Humans coveted clothes. Especially little girls, if Amy was any indication.

Although her propensity for adopting various adaptations of what she called looks developed gradually with time, she usually chose one to stick to and identified herself with that. On the other hand, without the approbation provided by other humans and my incapacity for such assessments, Amy also maintained an equally indifferent manner when dressing for the day. Until she discovered the coveralls in the farmhouse, she’d mainly stuck to simple dresses or shirts and dungarees.

I had no idea what caught her yearning eyes while looking into the store.

Like everything in our new world, the store was wholly deserted.

Inside was a mess.

“I want to go in,” she said.

Spoken in such a confident tone of unquestioned determination and intent, her words might as well have been an order. That’s how I registered them. I pushed against the door with a small fraction of my strength, and it promptly fell to the floor inside.

“Show off,” Amy murmured, stepping over the fallen door and moving into the shop.

The Cat watched from the door as I entered behind Amy.

Once inside, Amy began touching the various garments hanging from their racks. The store had been well sealed. Some dust had accumulated, but the clothes appeared sufficiently preserved.

“I’ll have to look for what fits me,” Amy said.

“Okay.”

“I’ll need your help reaching them.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll have to try them on,” she said.

“Okay.”

“And you’ll leave the store while I do.”

“Oh.”

I’d almost forgotten that part of Amy.

“Take my gun, too,” she said.

I helped her reach some things before I left her alone to explore the lower areas.

I walked outside and left the Cat to guard the door.

Ever obedient, he was still there when I got back.

Amy exited the building with a tiny bundle held tightly against her side.

After that, we had the strangest conversation.

We found an old picnic bench for our lunch — Amy’s lunch. As usual, I heated water in a can, added dried lentils with little chunks of meat, supplied some waferlike crackers on the side, and watched her down it all as desultorily as ever. Few foodstuffs pleased or excited her. Neither of us thought she was abnormal. I had enough difficulty trying to understand what taste was. Amy ate her food because it was necessary and because she got hungry. Another difficult thing for me to understand.

Sitting with the Cat close at her feet, Amy chewed her food, swallowed, and suddenly asked, “Os, what’s a birthday?”

“A birthday?” I echoed. I often repeated her words when I didn’t understand something Amy said. It prevented circular conversations that ensued whenever I responded, “What do you mean?” Amy always reacted to this response by asking, “What do you mean, what do I mean?” That always restrained and confused me because the only logical response was, “I mean, what do you mean?” Sometimes, she giggled, but rarely. Mostly, she scowled.

“I saw it written on a sign in the back of the shop,” she said. It said Birthday Dresses, and they were beautiful.”

I accessed the dictionary I’d assimilated on one of our frequent library visits and quoted it verbatim.

“The anniversary of the day on which a person was born, typically treated as an occasion for celebration and the giving of gifts.”

“What’s an anniversary?”

“The date on which an event took place in a previous year.”

“How long is a year, again?”

“A period of 365 days or in a leap year 366 days beginning January 1.”

“Never mind. What’s a celebration?”

“The action of marking one’s pleasure at an important event or occasion by engaging in enjoyable, typically social, activity.”

“Oh. Sort of like having hot chocolate for breakfast.”

“I guess.”

She sat digesting all this for a while. I could almost hear the wheels turning. Watching her process information silently in her head as she came to a dubiously logical conclusion intrigued me no end.

“So, a birthday dress is what you wear on your birthday.”

“I suppose,” I said.

“Which happens every year.”

“Yes, when you’re one year older.”

“How old am I, OS?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can we figure it out?”

“It depends on how old you were when I found you.”

“How old did I look to you?”

I knew this had become important to her, but there was no way I could know how old Amy was when I found her. Referencing my uploaded tomes on human beings, I could make an educated guess. She’d react better to a confident assessment than a confession of utter ignorance.

“I’d say three or four,” I said.

“Let’s say four,” she said. “How old would that make me now?”

“Nine or ten,” I said.

“Let’s say ten,” she said. “And let’s make my birthday today.”

Now, I knew what she had in the bundle she carried from the store.

We found a dilapidated old hotel at the very edge of town. I told Amy she should nap before her birthday celebrations because such events were tiring. I told her I wanted to ensure the town was safely empty because such events also consumed all of one’s attention. I left the Cat behind to guard her and returned to the town for further explorations.

When I returned, I finished my preparations before Amy awakened from her nap. When she did, she was intrigued by my machinations.

“There’s hot water in the tub,” I said. “Clean up and put on your birthday dress. We’re going to celebrate.”

She didn’t even remark on how I’d just given her an order.

I couldn’t find balloons, cakes, or ice cream.

Apparently, these were essential to any proper birthday celebration.

Still, I didn’t know how to blow up balloons if I found them.

I confiscated many more than ten candles, which I thought might compensate for the missing balloons, cake, and ice cream. Besides, Amy was so excited by the prospect of her birthday and turning one year older I doubt she cared about things she didn’t know to expect.

She came out of the bathroom in her beautiful birthday dress, her hair freshly shampooed and brushed, and was instantly delighted by the lit candles placed all around the hotel room. I couldn’t know what was going through her head or what she was feeling, but I knew she looked pleased.

“I’m supposed to sing you a birthday song,” I said, “but you know I can’t sing. So, I’ll just wish you a happy birthday and give you your gift.”

I handed her a small box wrapped in blue paper with a yellow ribbon.

Amy’s eyes went wide.

“A gift? For me?”

She knew perfectly well what a gift was. However, she couldn’t remember receiving one before. All the things we found while provisioning ourselves could be considered gifts. This was different. She understood the difference better than I could, for she interpreted the gesture as what humans call affection. I knew I was programmed to serve Amy well, which might be interpreted as affection. She knew it, too, but she didn’t clearly understand what it meant or how it was different from what she felt for her dead parents or older brother. Maybe I didn’t understand the difference either.

“What should I do now?” she asked.

“Open it,” I said.

She unwrapped her present slowly. Much to my surprise, she set aside the ribbon and paper as if she meant to save them. Her little hands shook as she cautiously took the lid off the box and peeked inside.

“It looks like a kitten,” she said.

“It’s a pendant,” I said. “Something to wear around your neck.”

“How?”

I used some disused digital extensions to fasten the tiny latch and chain around her neck. She thought that was pretty incredible itself. She fingered the miniature molded silver kitten as lovingly as if it were real.

“You’re supposed to make a wish and blow out a candle,” I said.

“Why?”

“It’s a birthday thing. To make your wish come true.”

“My wish already came true,” she said.

“Then this is a bonus wish,” I said.

After she had chosen a nearby candle and blown it out, she said, “Now what?”

“Now you’re ten years old,” I said.

“Cool.”