The Bot is all long limbs and careful movements, a model designed for small tasks and companionship. Every time it moves, its joints grind very softly.
“Don’t you have a maintenance routine?” Hubert asks as he holds up the abstract bookend, a thing of stylized swirls and loops. One of his mother’s friends will think it is the perfect keepsake, no doubt.
“Yes,” the Bot replies.
It pulls a dark blouse with dusty sequins from the cupboard. Hubert can practically smell the mothballs from across the room. The Bot holds the piece of clothing for a long time without moving.
“That can go in the donations,” Hubert says. It is pointless getting the Bot to do something like this. The robot’s central AI is supposed to adapt to a user’s needs, but the thing had been with his mother for so long it probably can’t adjust to what he wants. Clear the place out and go, that is the plan. He needs to remember that.
The robot bends to add the blouse to the pile of shoes and coats and other things an older woman accrues over a lifetime. Hubert looks away, trying not to recall that blouse. Those red shoes. His mother, younger, vibrant, smiling down at him.
Spin Huey! Spin with me, Huey!
So many times. How he had laughed as she had spun, her arms outflung. How she had laughed when he tried. A lifetime ago. Beyond a barrier of hard words, foolish words.
The robot moves with that soft grinding noise.
“Can you do your maintenance, then? You sound like you need it.”
“Yes,” the Bot says as it picks up a vase with a dried flower in it in one hand and a faded Broadway poster in the other.
Read more science fiction from Nature Futures
“I don’t know what those are,” Hubert says. “Put them in the junk pile.”
The Bot does not put the flower or the poster in the discard pile.
“Some of these things were valuable to your mother,” the Bot says.
“Well, she was wrong!” Hubert snaps. He snatches the poster from the robot and drops it with the other pieces of his mother’s life he knows nothing of. “None of this stuff matters.”
An old dance poster. A dried flower, maybe from years ago. She must have left more. Must have cared.
The robot stands as still as only a robot can, holding its dead flower. Hubert tries to speak again. His throat is tight.
“Did she say anything?” he bursts out finally. “About me?”
“You have not visited in three years and two months.”
Hubert clenches his fists. “I know that! Tell me something she said!”
He wonders if he is about to hit the robot. That would be pointless. As pointless as talking to the thing. As pointless as being here now, too late. He forces his hands to relax. “Tell me …” he doesn’t know what he wants. Except that is not true. He wants it to be like it was. He wants what he can’t have. He wants her smiling down at him, the years gone. The distance gone.
Yay! Spin, Huey!
“General conversation is bound by confidentiality,” the Bot says. “Perhaps she left a message during one of the calls she attempted to you.”
No, she hadn’t. Mostly hang-ups. Sometimes that deep silence full of ache and sorrow. Once, an indrawn breath like she was about to speak. She could have told him she was sick. Or he could have answered, even just once.
He could have called.
It hurts. Could have. Should have. But didn’t.
“Get out of here,” he tells the Bot. “Go and do your maintenance routine before you seize up completely.”
*****
The robot is just standing in the yard.
“That can’t be part of your maintenance,” Hubert says from the doorway.
“No,” the robot says. “My standard routine is a series of movements designed to rotate and lubricate my joints and expel particles. It increases longevity by a factor of three.”
“Did my mother leave a letter for me? Did she write something down?”
“Not that I am aware of,” the Bot says.
“Maybe she didn’t have time,” Hubert says.
