Claire Read online

Claire

  Copyright © 2014 Thomas Summerson

  She said her name was Claire. I found her sitting next to a tree feeding swan as they lazily drifted around the pond. I watched as she absently tossed scraps of bread into the water and the graceful water birds gobbled it up. My new friend told me they were beautiful because they knew their place in the world. She said everything was self-aware on some level. She said she was waiting for someone to sit with her. Claire reached out and grasped my hand gently.

  “Will you sit with me?”

  I squeezed her hand and breathing seemed like a secondary function. Claire was still watching the swan gracefully glide across the pond, then she looked at me and I felt like a warm liquid had been poured onto my brain. I stopped thinking, I stopped existing. Only this angel next to me was real. The reflected image of me in her eyes was real. We fed the swan together until the bread was gone. We held hands and shared that timeless space together.

  Maybe feeding those swan was important to the whole scene, I don’t know. Sitting with Claire, being next to her, made me fee complete and I didn’t want it to end. I asked her to wait a minute while I ran over to the Hot Dog vendor nearby. She never moved, even though I expected her to vanish when I looked over my shoulder halfway to the cart. She smiled and waved at me; I instantly felt that warmth again. God, I would give anything to just keep feeling this way. I didn’t know why and I didn’t care.

  At the cart, I asked the portly vendor if he would sell me some buns. No sir - not eight hot dogs, just eight buns. He looked at me like he’d heard it all before, complete with eye rolls and a quiet sigh. I pointed over my shoulder at the swan, turned and made eye contact with Claire sitting by the tree. She waved and I waved back. That seemed to satisfy the Hot Dog guy because he gave me a whole pack of buns. On the house, he said, and then he told me to get back to that pretty girl. He did say one more thing though, it was a little weird.

  “The park closes at 4, you know”

  I told him that I knew, thanked him for the generosity and nearly ran back to Claire. When I’d gotten ten or fifteen steps away, I could have sworn he said something that sounded like:

  “Enjoy her, the dru...”

  The rest of what he said was drowned out as I passed a couple of kids playing. I forgot him and kept moving toward Claire. Her loving eyes tracked me all the way up the walking trail and she was pleased I’d brought more bread. We fed the swan for a while longer and were almost out of bread again when she looked at me very seriously and said she had to get home. She stood and thanked me for a wonderful time.

  She made me feel special with her words and her pale blue eyes. She hugged me and I admit it was hard to let go. Her perfume was intoxicating - something I’d never smelled before. I had the sudden fear she was too good to be real.

  A different realization started washing over me: that I knew what was going on here.

  My mind was playing tricks on me, lying to me and casting doubt on this pleasurable interlude. I hear my own thoughts as a whisper from some stranger inside my head.

  I’ve seen her before. I’ve been in this park and know the Hot Dog man, too. Nothing I’ve seen or experienced this afternoon was real. Claire is not what she seems.

  We pulled apart slightly and she kissed me. Her lips against mine were soft yet firm – yielding and demure. All of those contradictions blended together and it felt so natural. I kissed her back, so desperately and longingly, like it was the first time. I kissed and embraced her like it was the last time I would. I became lost in her. I was sure there was no me or her anymore, just us. The moment ended too quickly.

  I wanted to say that I loved her but it seemed contrived and grasping. The thing we’d just shared seemed to imply that love and neither of us felt the need to say the words.

  She’s not your wife…

  The fire of the last few moments had subsided to a weak smolder as we walk down the trail toward the Hot Dog vendor. As we approach, he looks up from a newspaper and winks at me. Claire stopped in front of the cart and said it was time to go. She would see me tomorrow, she said. While she was talking, the Hot Dog man walked up and touched her back. She went limp but her eyes stayed open. Claire looked empty now, lifeless.

  “Did you like what I did with the pheromones and the hypno-laser in the eyes”?

  Two states of reality were crashing together in my mind and they were using my senses against me. I started getting dizzy, my vision faded into grey and black swirling dots instead of grass and trees and a pale blue sky overhead. I expected to hit the ground because I was passing out or something but I stayed upright. Everything I could see before was replaced with swirling dots. My hearing is gone too, replaced with a low humming sound deep inside my skull.

  I didn’t pass out and I didn’t fall over but I did sit down on the ground with all the grace of a tranquilizer-darted grizzly bear.

  The spell passed and everything started coming back: the park, why I was here, who I am and who the Hot Dog man is. Who Claire is, I knew that now, too. I remembered it all slowly as I sat on the grass and stared at Claire’s feet. The drugs really put you in another world and it’s always a little disappointing when you come down. As my breathing comes back to normal, so does my awareness. My vision is normal again, too. The drugs are almost entirely worn off now.

  “Jesus Carl, you need to give it a rest for a while. You’ve checked in five times today.”

  The Hot Dog man was my friend and partner Larry Birdman. We were working on a new line of hospitality androids and I was using myself as a test customer. Larry was acting as a spotter. Claire was one of our Love models.

  “It’s hard to watch you fall for her over and over. It’s kind of freaky.”

  Larry was worried about me but, He was also proud of his girl, a true artist. He knew the only way to know we were ready was to test on people who didn’t know they were androids. I knew who Clare was before Larry dosed me with the drug cocktail, not after. I completely forgot why I had come to the park and that she wasn’t a real woman. The chemists who cooked up this combination for us really knew their stuff. The memory loss was so selective. I should send them a thank you a card.

  The memory masking drugs suspended disbelief so well with the hypno-lasers, they really made you want to drop everything. I really believed I was having a nice afternoon with a pretty human, girl. When the dose I’d been given started to wear off, I felt like I wanted to do it again and again.

  “I guess I didn’t expect the memory drugs to wear off so fast, I wasn’t in the moment, at the end”

  “Well, I can up the dose but I’m afraid you’ll stroke out. You’ve gained a tolerance to the stuff after a few weeks. I want to know about someone who’s never taken them before; you think they’ll be able to tell”?

  “No way, I knew she was a ‘droid before but not after. Drop the dose, up the pheromones and laser pattern. We don’t want to kill people.”

  I knew my stuff too. Larry may be the engineer and builder but I was the one who designed the speech and behavior patterns for Claire and the others. It was my AI package in the androids; our work complemented each other well. Claire, Eve and Helen were my creations on the inside.

  “Well, you get back to the office; me and the collection team will round them up and shut the place down for the day. We’ll do another run-through tomorrow”.

  Sure, another run through. We had the imprinting down. Once the subject was fully affected by the psychoactive drugs, all he or she needed to do was come in close proximity to an android and an imprint would begin.

  There was a nano in the drugs that sweated out and could be picked up by an android from twenty feet away. The nanos acted like a bull’s-eye the scanners in the girls targeted and zeroed in on. The imprint would start
and the android would begin its routine. God, they were good. I’d done this twenty times this week and I was fooled every time by the drug, hypno, and pheromone combination. I was in love, if only for a little while.

  Larry was readying Claire to be hauled back to the shop for diagnostic when he called after me.

  “Why did you name this one Claire, Carl? Wasn’t that your wife’s name?”

  He saw the hurt in my eyes. Larry knew why I named her Claire even though I’d never told him. He knew she looked like my dead wife because he’d built Claire’s body. We never talked about why before and we weren’t going to talk about it now.

  “Sorry, man. Hey, I’ll come over for a beer later. We’ll talk about Opening Day”.

  “Sure”

  My partner Larry’s an alright guy, maybe my only friend. It’s not exactly high science we’re working on here. We’re providing the oldest service in the world with high-end robotics, cybernetic brains and custom software. We’ll be legends in the event-planning business if everything works out the way we hope, our hospitality androids should gross more than any other service at the convention. Service is everything in our business.