I pulled into the strip mall parking lot, and my implant disengaged, bringing me out of autopilot. Probably for the best that my conscious mind hadn’t made the forty-minute drive. As I reengaged, so did the adrenaline, as if the surprising, alarming phone had just ended.
The awning over the door was green, faded to yellow. West Allis Conscious Shelter. The kind of place I had always ignored, as if that could save me from ending up here someday.
Deep breaths. When I heard Theo was in there, I knew I had to come. Even if I hadn’t heard from him in years.
Verne, the woman who called me, met me at the door and led me inside. The cinder-block corridor of plexiglass-fronted cells was unnervingly quiet, but each cell was occupied. In one, the patient walked repeatedly into a wall. In another, their fingers writhed in the air, typing at a keyboard perhaps. Another seemed to stir a pot that wasn’t there.
Maybe on a subconscious level, I thought coming to Theo’s aid this time would be like busting him out of jail after the protest, or holding his hand at the clinic. As if I could swoop in and make everything right. This series of tableaus dispelled that. I didn’t want to see him like this, but it was too late to back out now. If Verne had called me, it had to mean she hadn’t reached anyone else.
Theo was in the last cell on the right. He had a bowl cut, like I remembered. His facial hair had finally grown in. He wore a stained, scuffed suit that hung off bony shoulders.
“Holy…no…” I muttered under my breath at the sight.
“They were probably on autopilot for a few days before anyone found them,” Verne said.
“Him,” I said. “As of seven years ago, anyway.”
“I got some food and water into him, and a fuel pill for his implant.”
As we watched him through the plexiglass, Theo kept moving around the cell, in some elaborate pattern. Like a bee guiding its hive to a flower.
“He must be exhausted,” I said.
“I’ll give him a little sedative too. Just wanted you to get a good look first. The only way he gets out of this loop is if he can finish doing what he told his implant to do,” Verne said. “I take it you weren’t there when it happened?”
“No, I haven’t seen him in years.”
“But he had your number in his wallet.”
I blinked, surprised. “I guess so.”
“Alright then, tell me what he was into back then.” There was a glint in her eye. A drive.
“We used to hang out a lot in college,” I said.
“Uh huh,” Verne said, smirking. I blushed. How I felt was so obvious to her; had it been obvious to Theo? I’d always wondered.
“It wasn’t like that,” I said. “I met him before he was openly trans, and I had just parted ways with my Bible study group. We were both figuring out who we were going to be. I remember watching direct-to-video action movies, listening to Italian folk music, drinking soju together…” The memories were surprisingly hard to distill. “I don’t know what he’d be doing now. Certainly not this.”
“People often use autopilot to get through something they don’t exactly want to do,” Verne said. She laid a hand on my arm. “Keep pulling on that thread. I’ll be right back.”
She ducked into a supply closet, and I heard a clatter as she pulled boxes off the shelves. She brought out exercise equipment, video game floor pads, an oversized piano mat. One by one, we tried sliding these under Theo’s feet as he moved around the cell. Nothing fit; the props only made him stumble.
I could feel the pressure of exhaustion and frustration behind my eyes, and noticed the time, well past midnight already.
“No luck yet, but we’ll figure it out, you wait and see,” she said, but it sounded rehearsed, unsmiling.
On my way out, I walked back down the corridor of dimly lit cells, past all the other patients, and I tried not to take those words as an impossible promise.
“Are you sure you don’t want a professional doing this?” I asked, catching Theo’s eye in his dorm room’s bathroom mirror. The clippers turned on with a hum.
Theo sighed in the desk chair we’d rolled onto the tile floor. “What other option is there?”
The hair stylist he used to go to wouldn’t give him the cut he was after. Allegedly, the woman just didn’t do buzz cuts. I gathered that it was something more personal than that.
“The barber shop I go to is different. Whenever you feel up for going, I really don’t think it’ll be an issue. The guy there…” The barber was glad to take anybody’s money, I thought, but I stopped short, worried about how that would sound. “…he sticks to the job. I’ll go with you, if you want.”
Theo averted his eyes. “Maybe once I have a boy cut to start with.”
“Okay. The clipper-number-four special it is. Just thought I should warn you.”
With that, I started shearing off chunks of his unkempt hair, letting it fall to the newspapers on the floor. I started with the sides and back, just in case he had second thoughts, before mowing the top of his head.
Where the hair was buzzed short, I could feel warmth through his scalp. On the top of his head, a little left of center, I felt the telltale bump and scarring, much like mine. Where the implant gets installed.
“I think your scar is fresher than mine. When did you get it?” I asked, as I kept cleaning up the edges of his buzz cut.
“A year and a half ago,” he said. “I was falling behind in school, but my parents are super orthodox. They said I ought to be able to learn everything the boring way, like they did. All the standard bullshit anti-implant arguments. How I’ll be paying for fuel pills for the rest of my life. How if I only learn to do something on autopilot, I’ll have to do it on autopilot forever. As if I’ll ever need to consciously do calculus, right? So I arranged to have it done in Tel Aviv, while I was there on my birthright trip.”
I clicked off the clippers. “How’d they take it?”
“Well, they were really upset at first, but by then, it was already done. It’s not like it can be removed, after all.” He whispered the last part, as if even mentioning Symplanto’s warranty enforcement team would summon them.
I went home, but I kept thinking about Theo, stuck there in the shelter. I couldn’t concentrate on anything else. Not on the obnoxious job applications I was filling out, or the cheerful buzzword-filled social media posts I had to make, or my empty inbox. I kept trying to remember Theo’s movements around that cell, waiting for the pattern to reveal itself to me.
The next evening, I was back at the shelter, to try to look at the puzzle with fresh eyes. We didn’t get anywhere with it that night, or the next, or the next. I never liked seeing Theo like that, but it was the only connection I had to him anymore, and at least it was something.
Verne showed me how to feed Theo; we had to restrain him and press a straw to his lips. He didn’t protest, but his limbs kept trying to move. It was hard for me to take, but it had to happen.
Later that night, Verne said, “You can visit your friend whenever you like, and I sure appreciate the company, but if you’re going to be here all the time anyway, shouldn’t you be on staff?”
I laughed it off at first. Sure, I needed work, and none of the jobs I had applied for were calling me back, but this wasn’t the kind of work I ever expected myself to be doing. My book was out of print, the speaking tour had dried up, but it was hard to believe that brief career had already run out.
“I don’t want to waste your time,” I told her. “I could apply, but I wouldn’t pass a background check.”
“What do you mean?”
“You really don’t know who I am,” I remarked, surprised. “Ben Plyman doesn’t ring a bell?”
She shrugged.
“I was the Lemain Meats whistleblower,” I told her. Still nothing. I realized we had time to get into this, and I’d already said too much to stop her from finding out. “I was working at a meat-packing plant. When you clocked in, you’d read a script that put you on autopilot and let the bosses give your implant orders directly. Not quite as bad as it sounds—the union put some clauses in there, to limit what they could tell us to do. But for the duration of the shift, I was theirs. A lot of my coworkers were on autopilot to start with–day and night. You could rent a cheap bunk, eat basic food, and save up, and eventually you could retire and get your life back. That was the story, anyway.”
“Mm hm,” Verne said. “I’ve got a cousin doing that right now. Didn’t even come off autopilot for Ramadan.”
I nodded. “I, on the other hand, didn’t want to be on auto-pilot when I was off shift, because I was getting high. I’d shoot up every night, and then let my implant handle getting me through the next day.”
“Ben, if you’re struggling with—” she began.
“I kicked it a while ago. But if you try to hire me, it’s one thing you’ll hear about.”
She started to put it together. “If that wasn’t the real problem, then what was?”
“I noticed things happening to the other workers. Things they didn’t notice themselves, because they were never really conscious. Just scrapes and bruises at first. Sometimes deeper cuts. Sometimes people stopped showing up entirely. I had no idea how they were getting hurt, but sooner or later it could happen to me.
“So I got a copy of the workplace safety laws, state and federal. Every morning I’d tell my implant to read for an hour and leave the page marked where it got to. Then my implant knew what to look for. After each shift, I’d tell it to write down all of the things I saw at work that were illegal. When I took it all public, the company did everything they could to discredit me. That’s why you won’t want to hire me.” I realized I was speaking louder than I meant to.
“Oh, you think we can afford to care about that?” she said. “We’re at capacity. We’re understaffed. And by no coincidence, we can’t afford to pay more than the minimum. And for what? Most of the people who come through here never wake up. Everybody wants the shelter to exist, in case they get stuck on autopilot. But for most folks, it’s a false hope. This place is just a waiting room for getting reclaimed by Symplanto.”
“You’ve really got some bedside manner,” I joked.
“It’s not like I get many complaints about it around here,” she said. “Whatever drama you’ve been through, it’s not going to be the reason you can’t work here. I’m asking because we need help.”
I thought about my empty inbox, and the prospect of spending another day sending out job applications, while I watched my savings ebb away. I thought about putting on some store’s stupid polo shirt every day, and coming home too exhausted to be of use to anyone else.
Most of all, there was Theo to think about. I didn’t want to just be a visitor to the shelter, dropping by to perform my concern. I didn’t want to see Theo get reclaimed by Symplanto, never to be seen again to protect the company’s intellectual property rights. The brochures claimed you’d be kept in comfort for the rest of your days; I wouldn’t trust that without seeing it myself.
“I’m in,” I said.
Smiling, Verne yanked open a desk drawer and pulled out a form. “We’ve got some rules when you’re working here. No matter how dull it gets around here, we can never both be on autopilot at the same time, understand? Our duty is to be present for these folks who aren’t. If you ever need to use your implant while you’re here, you need to check with me first.”
“That won’t be a problem. Ever since Theo…it’s a forty-minute drive each way to come here, and I know I could let the implant do it. It’d probably be better for my car’s clutch. But I just can’t.”
She nodded knowingly. “That’s good.”
The next night was my first official shift. I wiped down the cells and bathed the patients. Verne showed me how to strap them down to get food and pills in them. I still wasn’t comfortable with it, but I knew it was for their own good.
The manual labor itself reminded me of the meat-packing plant, and occasionally I did find myself wanting to autopilot through it. Verne said it’d be fine, but I felt like it’d be unfair for me to leave her alone.
Working the full night shift meant staying until 3 am, when the next volunteers came in. After midnight, the shelter got somehow even more quiet and eerie.
Occasionally, often late at night, someone would press the door buzzer. The first time it happened, I rushed to answer the door, but Verne held me back. She went to the desk, where we could see the video feed from outside the door.
“Can I help you?” she asked through the intercom.
“Please, I just need one fuel pill to get me through the night,” the man outside mumbled. “If I don’t top up soon, I’m going to be reclaimed.”
“I’m sorry, we don’t keep any here,” Verne lied. “You gotta call the county assistance line. It’s on a sign to your left.”
I sighed. It wasn’t like the county had enough to go around either.
The visitor started to turn away, then thought better of it. “Come on. I know you’ve got ‘em! But you’re hoarding them for those…those husks! I’m here. I’m right here on your doorstep, and I’m alive! You bastards would rather see me get reclaimed right in front of you!”
It got less coherent from there. I could see his spittle flying towards the camera. There was nothing we could do but wait it out inside, with the front door locked.
It left me shaken. The man had a point. We needed to use what we had to help people, or we might as well just let our patients get reclaimed.
I was getting ready for bed by the time Theo called me back. There was often a delay in our phone tag; he couldn’t return the call while on auto-pilot.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“My family are going to be there tomorrow, at graduation,” I said, getting right to it. “Want to meet them?”
“I don’t know, Ben…”
“My dad will behave. I told him what to expect. Promises were extracted,” I told him.
There was a pause. I wanted this to happen. I wanted my family to meet the closest friend I’d made on campus. And maybe it would help them to meet him. Whenever they were barraged with sensational scare-mongering, I wanted them to think, that’s Theo. That’s my son’s friend. I didn’t care if that hope might be naive.
On the other end, I could hear the clack of a video game controller. A classic Theo stress response. “It’s not that I don’t want to meet them, I just…”
I took a guess. “You are going, aren’t you? To your own graduation?”
“I am,” he said. And then softly, “But I want to be fresh for my shift at the shelter. I meant to warn you before. I’ll be there, but not there.”
My dorm bed creaked as I sat down hard. I appreciated that he volunteered, but he was always cutting corners to fit it all into a day. He’d autopilot during meals, to get nutrition down quickly without caring what it was.
“You’re going to autopilot through graduation?” I asked, trying to hold back the hurt. It meant he wouldn’t be there for me either, though I felt selfish for thinking it.
“Not my graduation,” he said. “They won’t change the name on the diploma. Not until it’s legal.”
I swore. “But the college president could at least read it out correct–”
“The diploma’s not really mine anyway,” he said with a sigh. “It belongs to the thing in my head.”
I rested my head on the palm of my hand. This was familiar territory, though I suspected it wouldn’t have come up again on its own.
“Theo, we used the tools available to us. It doesn’t make us any less. You know this. I bet the first generation of grads who could rely on the internet said the same thing.”
There was a long pause, and I wondered if Theo had gotten reabsorbed into his video game. “Alright. I’ll tell my implant to wake me up when I meet your dad. So he’d better be there.”
I smiled. “Oh, he’ll be there alright. The other thing was, I need to get rid of my booze before they get here.”
“So weird,” he muttered. I laughed.
I got up and started surveying the bottles. “Well, want to come help? We didn’t even open the Campari from that night of red liqueurs.”
I would often watch Theo move around his cell, and wait for some inspiration to strike. I had to help him, but I didn’t know how. I’d unfocus my eyes, but a pattern never emerged for me.
We had to sedate him sometimes; otherwise he’d never sleep. His cheeks were fuller and redder now, and the cuts and scratches he came in with had all healed. Maybe his suit would eventually fit him again. It was in storage; for now he was wearing the same easy-wash beige uniform as everyone else.
One night, we put Theo back into his cell after a shower, and I noticed that the pattern he traced on the floor was different. I watched until I was sure the pattern repeated, and I counted. Now it was a sequence of twenty steps instead of eighteen.
Verne was sitting at the front desk. I asked her, “Can we take Theo outside and give him more room to move about?”
She rolled her eyes a little. “If he takes off, it’ll be you chasing him down.”
Maneuvering Theo down the corridor mostly meant tugging on his shoulders to keep his feet moving in the right direction.
The summer dusk swelled with chirping insects. The strip mall’s parking lot was all but empty.
I brought Theo out into the middle and let go. He stepped to the side more quickly than I was expecting, and for a moment I thought I’d have to rush after him. But then he changed course back towards me.
When I was confident that he wasn’t going anywhere, I got out of the way, and stood with Verne up on the loading dock to watch. I started recording video of his movements.
“He’s dancing!” I exclaimed under my breath with wonder.
The movements that had seemed haphazard in the confines of the cell; we now saw that they were part of a larger whole. It wasn’t a dance I recognized, but there had to be a song playing in his head, the way he was moving to it.
“I hate people sometimes,” Verne grumbled. Then she explained, “This doesn’t look like the kind of dance you do alone, does it?”
Now I saw what she was referring to. There were moments when Theo’s arms were out, as if holding onto a partner.
I jogged down to the parking lot, where Theo was going about his routine, and tried to sync myself up with him. But whenever I tried to move in close, he’d move in an unexpected direction, and my feet would be in the wrong place. A couple times, he tumbled to the pavement, before his implant got him up to try again.
I dusted myself off. My hip stung where I landed on it.
“I’m too tall,” I said to Verne. “Could you give it a try? Please?”
She sighed and muttered something under her breath, as she came down to the parking lot. She couldn’t get close to Theo either, without them colliding. I gave her a hand back up off the pavement.
Now that she knew what to look for, Verne found a dance studio three blocks from the empty lot where Theo had been found.
The next day, I tried calling the dance studio. When there was no answer, I went over there, and waited until a lesson let out. Young kids streamed past me, middle-school age probably, some sporting the telltale buzz cut of a recently installed implant.
Inside, I found Freddy, the owner of the studio. They were slim and bony, wearing a black turtleneck and an avant-garde haircut.
When I asked about Theo, they said, “Oh. He and Larissa used to practice here every week. I remember the day it happened. What a shame.”
“What happened, exactly?”
I surged with hope, but I was also incredulous. If Freddy knew what happened, why had Theo been found abandoned?
“I was upstairs in my apartment, since I can’t stand to hear that song on repeat anymore…”
“Hang on. What song?”
“La Cumparsita. One of the most cliche songs for tango,” they said with a smile. “Then I hear sirens pass, out on the street. An ambulance and a Symplanto vehicle close behind. You know, for when the warranty’s been voided.” They tapped a finger to their head. “Later I heard that Larissa died in the accident. I tried calling Theo to offer my condolences, but he ghosted me; I figured after he lost his competition partner, he was done with the studio.”
I felt queasy at the idea of telling them about Theo, but I knew I had to. At the news, their face paled.
“I had no idea. When I came downstairs that day, there was nobody here.”
Pulling out my phone, I showed them the recording of Theo in the parking lot. “You know how to tango, don’t you? Could you just fill in?”
“Sure, I know how to tango,” they said, with a slight sneer. “But this is a showcase routine. Full choreography.” They paced. “You’d need someone to learn Larissa’s part. Which means someone else will need to learn Theo’s, to be able to teach the routine. How about this? Book a weekly session with me, and I’ll figure out his moves, and then I’ll teach you yours.”
“I don’t know how to tango,” I admitted.
“We only need you to be able to get through this three minute routine. You don’t have to learn English to memorize one rap song, do you?”
I wavered. It would be hard to afford, on what the shelter could pay. And there was some resistance, inertia. It was something I had never even considered doing, though I couldn’t pinpoint why. But that didn’t weigh much compared to Theo’s life.
“Okay. I’ll do it.”
That evening, when I came in for my shift, I was already exhausted and sore from my first tango lesson.
Verne was sitting at the desk, rubbing her temples. When she saw me, she held out a hand out and gave me a new door key.
“We had a break-in,” she explained, her voice raw.
“Was anybody hurt?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “Nobody was here at the time.”
“I didn’t realize that was an option,” I said. Especially since our shift was doubled up.
“It’s not supposed to be,” she said. “The person who was supposed to be here has been fired, of course, but now we have to find coverage for those shifts. On top of that, now we’re not going to have enough fuel pills to keep everyone topped up this month. We might have to ration them, and hope it’s enough until the next shipment comes. Unless you’ve got a hundred pills’ worth of cash to spare.”
I took the chair next to her. “Isn’t there insurance to cover it?”
“Sharon filed the claim, but it could take ninety days to get approved,” she said.
I’d had times when I wasn’t sure how I’d keep my implant fueled. Times when I ended up behind on rent, or skipping meals, to make it work out. I hated that feeling. This was on an entirely different scale.
“We can’t let them get reclaimed,” I said. “They’re counting on us. Maybe we can collect enough from the community…”
“Who, Ben?” Verne asked. “Our fundraising is tapped out, believe me. If we ration the remaining pills just right, maybe we can get by. It’s the best we can do. The worst that happens is somebody gets reclaimed by Symplanto, and that happens sometimes anyway. These patients can’t just stay here forever.”
“There’s something else,” I said, putting my face in my hands. “Theo’s dance partner died in a car accident, the day he got on autopilot.”
Verne frowned. “I won’t lie, that’s bad. If he was expecting to dance with her in particular…”
I shook my head. “I’m not ready to give up.”
I wasn’t ready to hear it, and I couldn’t shake my suspicion that she was just out of hope because of the break-in. I stormed away. Even though there wasn’t really anywhere else to go but down the corridor. She gave me space for the rest of the shift, but it still felt cramped in there.
Later that night, a new patient arrived. An older man in a jean jacket, with wisps of ratty hair around his bald head. The man’s name was Victor. Whatever he was trying to do, it was a sedentary task, so he was brought in on a wheelchair. His hand moved around shakily, with no discernible pattern.
Verne started calling around, trying to find anyone who knew him, while I got him cleaned up, fed, and fuel-pilled.
No one called back, at least not immediately. So Verne started trying to figure Victor out herself. She grabbed all sorts of things from the prop closet. None of them seemed like a good fit, but she was undeterred, looking up videos of various things—knitting, glass-blowing, watch-making—trying to find a clue.
Her focus on it was unwavering. Meanwhile I felt unusually alone, in my attempt to help Theo. Victor also meant another mouth to feed, when we were already barely hanging on. I knew it wasn’t fair to resent him; he hadn’t meant to end up here.
Theo was waiting for me outside the prison gate. He was holding a puffy winter coat, and threw it to me as I approached.
“You smell,” he said. “How was it?”
“Went by in a blink,” I said, trying for confidence I didn’t have.
I’d been on autopilot for my thirty day stint. Calling around for a ride home, once I knew I was getting out, that was the most nerve-wracking part. I certainly didn’t want to call my folks, if I could avoid it. And most of my friends didn’t want to get involved.
“When I got locked up, they didn’t allow that.” Theo had deliberately gotten arrested during a demonstration. I loved that he acted like this was just the same.
I shrugged, gripping the coat around myself for warmth. “Rules changed, I guess.”
“Are you going to be okay going straight home?” he asked, as we slid through traffic, surrounded by compliant drivers with slack faces.
“Yeah,” I said. It was a lie, but a lie that we both needed.
What neither of us wanted to bring up was how we’d lost touch in the months after graduation, other than this.
Theo was silent for long enough that I assumed he switched to autopilot. Then, “I’m not going to ask you to promise, but…next time you get that messed up, instead of getting on a city bus and making a scene, just put your implant in charge for a while.”
I couldn’t look over at him and see the worry on his face that I knew was there. There were so many excuses that I had ready to deploy. It wasn’t that simple. But it was also my fault that I’d lost control. What I really heard was, Theo was there for me now, when no one else was, but there was a limit to it. If I wanted to keep it that way, next time I wouldn’t call him. The next time I’d call him, it’d have to be about something else.
“You’re right,” I said, forcing a laugh.
It took three weeks to get the dance routine down. At every lesson, Freddy walked me through some of the moves. I recorded what I had to do, and practiced it over and over again afterwards. I knew we were making progress, but I worried that it would take too long, or that it wouldn’t be enough. I could devote myself to this, and Theo could get reclaimed anyway.
Argentine tango was a smooth, sensual dance, but it still pushed me in ways I hadn’t pushed myself in a long time. Broad steps and tight spins, precise movements, and constant conscious fixation on my posture. I marveled at Theo’s ability to introduce me to new experiences, even in his absence.
I knew I could speed this up by taking these lessons on autopilot–letting the implant do the learning for me. The temptation was always there. But if that was how Theo had gotten stuck, the last thing I wanted was to make the exact same mistake.
“We can keep practicing this if you like, but I think you’re ready,” Freddy said at the end of our lesson.
“Are you sure you can’t be the one to do this?” I asked.
“You’re the one who’s been learning Larissa’s part,” they said. “You’ll do fine. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t. Either way, you’ve done so much for your friend already.”
“You have too, Freddy,” I said.
The moon was high when we brought Theo outside again. The wind sent fallen leaves twirling across the asphalt. Verne brought out a speaker, and put on the dusty-sounding recording.
Now that I knew Theo’s routine from end to end, I knew when to join in. I stepped in, taking the follower’s position to start. Freddy said that Theo and Larissa switched between lead and follower roles during the routine, but to me it was just a sequence of movements. Together, we moved forward then back, together. For a moment I felt exhilarated. I imagined Theo surprised and pleased to find me dancing with him.
Theo turned into his spin, one arm swinging up and out to give flair to the movement, and his elbow clocked me in the jaw. I tried to pick back up where we were, but his knee pushed forward further than I expected, forcing the wind out of me. I cursed under my breath, reminding myself that he wasn’t doing it intentionally.
When I recovered, I tried again. We had to go through the full routine at least once before I could concede. But again, I could only get so far, before his movements started interfering with mine.
“I think Larissa must have been shorter,” I told Verne, as I got up from another painful collision. “Would you give it a try?”
“You’re not selling me on it,” she said.
The physical pain was getting to me, and my patience was just about spent. “Not selling you on it? Verne, you haven’t cared about Theo in weeks.”
“Hey now. I may not have a decade of personal history there, but neither–”
“Remember what you told me, about how this shelter’s just a waiting room for being reclaimed? Well, I think it’s pretty clear why that is. You’re only interested in the puzzle! So the newest arrival gets your attention just so long as you think they’re solvable, and then you move on.”
“Yes, Ben, I’ve been helping Victor more than Theo. Because Theo has you, and Victor has no one else. And I was just starting to think you could see beyond the edges of your own orbit.” She turned and stormed away.
“Where are you going?” I called out.
“Getting my keys! I don’t get paid enough to put up with this.”
She came back out to the parking lot with her car keys, and drove off.
I knew I’d messed up, and there was no making it right tonight, but Verne leaving left me to stew on it.
Being on the night shift alone was every bit as trying as I imagined it. Every patient that needed to be bathed or fed, I had to wrestle individually. There were long shadows, eery quiet, and numbing boredom. Water dripped to the floor, once about every two seconds. In the stillness, it was loud enough that I could hardly form a thought, let alone write an apology.
Verne was at the front desk when I arrived the next day. She barely glanced my way. I dreaded an entire night of not talking.
“I’m sorry for saying all that,” I told her. “You didn’t deserve it.”
I stood by the corner of the desk, seeing if she’d respond. If not, I was ready to leave it at that.
“Sit down and stop looming over me,” she eventually said, motioning to the other chair.
When she turned to me, she said, “I accept your apology. Though you got one thing right. I’ve tried not to get too attached to the patients here. So many have come and gone. You don’t know how hard it can be.”
I squirmed in my seat. It was something I was trying not to consider.
“I started working at the shelter the same way you did. My…the father of my baby girl wound up here a couple years ago. Frank. I told myself I was so done with him, until I got that call. I came to see him here, and…everything I hated about him wasn’t here. Just his fragile human body. I thought, if I could get him off of autopilot, he might come out of it a changed man. I did everything I could to make it happen, and it was never enough.”
“God. That sucks, Verne,” I said.
“These patients typically don’t stick around long enough for you to see it, but being on autopilot, stuck on one task, it can destroy you over time. Even in professional care. He lasted a long time, but eventually there wasn’t much left for him to come back to. In the end, we got Frank factory-reset. I didn’t have the strength to do it on my own, but my daughter insisted. I still see him around sometimes, just going about his whole life on autopilot, the implant entirely in control now. The implant doesn’t know me, doesn’t know our daughter, doesn’t care.”
She started to softly sob. I let her lean into me and let it out. It made me realize how much stress and emotion I was carrying around from working at the shelter, and how I had no one to talk to about it.
When she sat back upright, she asked, “So what do you need me to do?”
“I can walk you through the routine,” I said. “It’ll take time. It doesn’t have to be tonight, but…thank you.”
“I forget sometimes that you haven’t been through everything I have,” she said, wiping the tears from her face.
As the sun went down, we went out onto the pavement and started running through the routine. I stood in for Theo as well as I could. We laughed about what people might think if they saw.
Late one night, the patients were all “put to bed” as we called it, when those who needed sedatives to rest had gotten them. Someone rang at the front door.
“It’s a Symplanto rep,” Verne said, watching the video feed. A wide-set man with buzzed hair and a dark gray uniform.
She’d barely switched on the intercom when he said, “You’re legally required to permit me to collect Symplanto’s intellectual property, per state law–”
I stopped listening. My pulse started to race. What if he was here to collect Theo?
“Do we really have to let him in?” I asked.
Verne was already reaching for the unlock button. “He’s got legal authority, like he said. Seriously, it’d be for the best if you just stay out of his way.”
The company rep rammed through the door, hard enough that it hit the wall. He walked straight past us, without a glance in our direction. He must see people as things everywhere he goes, I thought.
Down the corridor he went, every step bringing him closer to Theo’s cell. Instead, he opened the last door on the left. A middle-aged woman named Rosa. He hoisted her, limp and sedated, over his shoulder like a carpet.
I was relieved that it wasn’t Theo this time, but I also felt immediately guilty for that feeling. And I still couldn’t shake my indignance that a company rep could just come in and take people.
“You aren’t going to explain why you’re taking her?” I asked, moving to stand in his way.
“No, I’m not required to explain how you failed at the one job you have, and you shouldn’t have to ask,” he said, and then went on anyway, to gloat. “You assholes let her implant get critically low on fuel, violating clause F of the warranty conditions and requiring immediate reclamation.”
Verne pulled me out of his path before my irritation had a chance to grow. It wasn’t our fault that we were short on fuel pills after the break-in.
After he left, Verne said, “He’s been here at least a dozen times, and never bothers to learn my name. But we’re all part of the same system. He has a role to play, same as we do. If it weren’t him, it’d be somebody else.”
“I know. I was just…” I said, as the tension in me ebbed.
“Worried about your friend. I get it,” she said. “Funny, how we don’t have enough fuel pills to go around, and Theo’s neighbor is the first one to run empty.”
She wasn’t wrong. The patients were supposed to take turns skipping a fuel pill once in a while, but when it was up to me, I made sure Theo got his.
“I’m not skimming,” I told her.
“Ben, Theo’s on borrowed time. I’m doing my part to try to help him, but the odds of getting him off of autopilot were at their peak on day one. You need to be ready for the day when a Symplanto rep comes for him. Whether it’s because his implant runs out of fuel, or because it glitches out, or because Theo’s body can’t sustain it anymore.”
“I should go start the—” I began, ready to give any excuse to not talk about this.
“Consider the options, while there’s still time. If you get Theo reset, he could live out the rest of his life, at least. Yes, he’d be on autopilot all the time, but his implant would be empowered to make decisions. He could live independently again. He could feed himself, bathe himself. At least he’d still be around.”
I wasn’t sure I agreed with that. It wouldn’t really be Theo. This wasn’t really Theo.
“I have to be the one to decide this??”
“We’re empowered to make these decisions on our patients’ behalf, when there’s nobody else to do it.”
I paced. I smacked the wall with my hand, but held back, to not hurt myself. “If we can’t get him unstuck, sure. Then I’ll think about it.”
Then I went out into the autumn night air, and wished that I still smoked.
The big day finally came. The night before, we had gotten to a point where, to our surprise, Verne seemed to have the routine down. With practice, I had enjoyed dancing with her, and I felt prematurely sad to see that end, as I knew it probably would, one way or another.
My hands were shaking, and I couldn’t sit still at all. We maneuvered Theo through the corridor and out into the open air, trying to catch the waning daylight for this. Either this would work, or…I didn’t want to consider the alternative.
I stood a little to the side, taking a video of the occasion. Not that we’d do anything with it, without Theo’s consent. We were already starting to think about Theo as someone conscious and sentient again; it was dangerous and thrilling. I wasn’t prepared for more disappointment.
Verne wasn’t as optimistic, but she did dress up for the occasion, in a sequined ballroom gown, metallic eyeshadow, and professional braids.
Theo’s routine reached its starting point again, and Verne slid in, taking his hand. Their steps echoed off the pavement. I could tell immediately that Verne was more right for this than I was. Maybe even right enough.
Then she stumbled; Theo didn’t, and that mismatch sent her to the ground on her side. I rushed over to help her up. Her dress shed sequins on the asphalt.
“I thought we had it,” she growled.
“You did,” I told her. “Almost. Just try it again.”
She sighed, and dusted herself off. We waited until Theo started over again, and Verne stepped in to join the dance. I wasn’t ready to start filming again; it started to feel like we weren’t going to have the perfect moment I envisioned.
Through the twists and turns, Verne hung on, rushing her steps to catch up, breathing hard. Next came the dip. She leaned back, but the force of it pulled in the wrong direction. Both of them lost their balance. Theo’s implant had him up and dancing again immediately, while Verne was slower to rise.
“Are you okay? Did you hit your head?” I asked.
“No, I’m fine,” she said, though she didn’t sound it. “I think I’m done.”
I held back. I wasn’t ready to give up, but she didn’t deserve to bear my frustration. “Please? Just one more try.”
“There’s no point repeating something that’s not working,” she said, gesturing to Theo.
I shook my head. “Not for him, maybe. But for us, it’s different every time.”
“It doesn’t feel right, putting him through this over and over,” she said.
“I don’t hear him complaining,” I said. It was the kind of thing she would’ve said, and that made her smile, and reconsider.
“Don’t get your hopes up, Ben,” she said. “We still don’t know what he told his implant to do. Even if I do everything right, it might not be enough to help his implant finish what it was told to do.”
“I know.”
They started the routine again, and for a moment I wondered if anyone would believe the video of it, because to my eyes, it looked like they were dancing together, equal parts push and pull between them, their movements synchronizing. Verne laughed with joy, getting carried away in it.
They reached the end of the routine, when Theo’s arms stretched up and out, before taking a bow. Except this time, instead of launching right back to the start of it, he stopped there, folded forward.
My heart skipped, and I worried he’d be stuck like that now instead. Or maybe his implant had malfunctioned, and the Symplanto rep would be coming to collect him.
The song started over, and I belatedly remembered to turn it off.
Then Theo straightened up. For the first time in months, there was a different light in his eyes. Suddenly he was the Theo I remembered from all those years ago.
“I…I don’t under…I…” he tried to speak, his voice scratchy from disuse. His eyes darted from Verne to me. “Ben?”
“Do you want to tell him?” I asked Verne. This was a moment she knew how to handle better than I did.
“I think it should be you,” she said, giving my arm a squeeze.
“Theo, hey. One thing at a time. You…you were stuck on autopilot,” I said. “It’s been four months.”
It took him a moment. He looked around at the parking lot, at the strip mall awnings, with new understanding.
“Oh. Oh.” It seemed to dawn on him in waves, but each one led to more confusion. He looked unsteady, so I grabbed his shoulders and pulled him close.
“I’m so glad you’re back,” I said, before I lost it too. But I had no desire to withhold the rest, and wound him fresh later. “Listen, the day you got stuck, Larissa was in an accident.”
“An accident?” he asked.
I paused, letting him suspect it even before I told him. “She never made it to Freddy’s studio.”
“I guess that makes sense.” He said, already too overwhelmed to process it.
I grabbed his arm, and for once, it didn’t feel like meat, it felt like old times. “Do you want to come back inside for a bit? There’s some paperwork to fill out. You’re behind on rent, but there’s a loan program you can apply for…”
He looked at the faded awning over the door. “I just want it out, Ben.”
“You know they don’t do that.”
“But how can I ever trust it again?” he asked.
I shrugged. “You don’t have to. Look, there are counseling programs too.”
The skeptical quirk of his eyebrow was so familiar. I knew it wasn’t a convincing solution.
“Theo, I’m going to keep working here…” I said.
I hadn’t really defined the intention until that moment. Eventually, I might burn out, or have to work somewhere that paid more. But I didn’t want to be someone who left as soon as his friend got out. There was still much more that I could do.
“…But you’ve still got me to lean on, if you want,” I said.
What knotted my stomach was the thought that Theo hadn’t really pulled me into this on purpose. I didn’t know if he wanted to have anything to do with me anymore.
“Yeah,” he said softly. “Of course I do.”
And then he leaned in, resting his head on my shoulder again, not sobbing this time. Now that he was here, really here, there was so much I wondered about. Why he kept my number. Why I never heard from him over the years. I swallowed them all down. Maybe there’d be a time for those questions, or maybe we’d only get this second chance.
Aster Loxley (he/him) is the more SEO-friendly alter ego for the Madison, Wisconsin franchise of Nick Davies. He works as a software developer, and plays in the band Gentle Brontosaurus, and releases solo music as Spiral Island. You can also find him in the dealer’s room at Flights of Foundry, the Dream Foundry’s Ignyte-winning online convention.