Your Robot Dog Will Die Read online

  “She should probably be euthanized,” Dr. King said. “She won’t ever walk again.”

  “Please, save her,” Billy had pleaded. He tells me he felt like his own life was dependent on this one. (“I felt like I was going to die if she died,” he says.)

  The vet agreed to do what she could, but couldn’t promise much. The goat was very sick and very injured. The goat’s back legs, which had stuck out from the shed, were beyond repair and had to be amputated right away. Then it was a matter of IVs, antibiotics, careful monitoring, and waiting, for a couple of weeks at the animal hospital.

  Billy, of course, had no money to pay for this treatment (a fact he conveniently hid from the vet, at first). When she learned of his poverty, Dr. King suggested Billy reach out to Wanda at Fuzzy Mansion. She told him she’d worked on some of their animals before. That they were “extremely compassionate if somewhat kooky people, who would sacrifice everything for the sake of helping animals.”

  Wanda was more than glad to hear from Billy. She gave him enough money to pay the vet bills. They had a custom wheelchair specially made for Carol, and when Carol was stable enough to leave the hospital, she was brought to Maryland and given another chance.

  “You could call it a second chance,” Billy tells me Wanda told him. “This was really her first chance.”

  Billy stayed a little while at Fuzzy Mansion while Carol got situated. He found, there—here—a sort of peace and purpose he hadn’t known before.

  When he came home to Dog Island, he couldn’t help thinking about what he’d seen there. It was different from our home. It wouldn’t have been fair to call it better, he thought. It was different.

  “I just didn’t know that it was even possible to save them,” he tells me. “I feel so dumb now for that. I just didn’t know.”

  Billy tells me he couldn’t stop thinking about Carol. He couldn’t stop thinking about the other Fun Safari animals whose lives he’d extinguished. Out of kindness and because he’d been ordered to do it. But why couldn’t they have lived, too?

  “I mean, it was really flipping unbearable once I started thinking about it,” Billy tells me.

  Billy made an appointment to see Dorothy. She had him over to her house, a Spanish-style home on a small hill overlooking the water. They drank tea and ate sugar cookies from Dog Island Sourdough Vegan Bakers. Billy felt nervous, he tells me, but also certain. He said to Dorothy he thought Dog Island should open an ancillary sanctuary, or series of sanctuaries, where the animals We Are Guardians rescued could live.

  “What about the exotic Organics?” Dorothy asked. She meant animals like lions and cougars; idiots would buy them from breeders and then try to keep them at their houses. (They used to do this with tigers, too, until the extinction.) It is so cheap to buy a lion now that someone who can’t afford meat or water can get one, then ruin it. Lions may start off small and docile but quickly grow large and ravenous. Their stupid owners end up locking them in basements, tying them to trees, and not providing them with enough meat and water to thrive since the drought had driven up prices for both. So when WAG gets called in, either by the owners themselves or by concerned neighbors, the animals are dehydrated, starved and miserable, sick and dangerous. And there’s no obvious safe and healthy place for them to go after their rescue.

  As I listen to Billy, I understand. There are fates worse than death.

  “I told her we could build a sanctuary for them,” Billy says. “She asked me if I knew how many lions are in captivity in the United States alone. I really had no freaking idea. I guessed maybe a couple hundred. But I was wrong. Dorothy said there were five thousand of them, ‘at least.’” He makes air quotes. “Then she gave me her spiel about how they are ‘mostly in really rotten circumstances.’ She asked me where they would go, once we got them out. How we could keep them happy and safe. They need a lot of space. What we were going to feed them. I guess the food would be really expensive. And they would have to eat a lot. So there’s that, too.”

  “What else?”

  “She told me: ‘Billy, there’s unfortunately only one right thing to do. You know what it is. Don’t become one of those crybabies who can’t handle reality. Now scram. I have work to do. We all have work to do. Aren’t you going off to North Carolina today, to that chicken farm?’”

  So he left.

  That night he went on a WAG deployment to a chicken farm where 15,000 chickens had been left in a barn when the area flooded. These chickens were bioengineered in such a way that even during the best of circumstances, their lives were “totally impossibly grim,” as Billy puts it. They’d been bred to have breasts that would have been comically large if they weren’t so cruel and needlessly tragic, the deformity leaving them unbalanced, unable to walk, unable even to lie down comfortably. And these weren’t the best of circumstances.

  Before the flood, the chickens were packed into tight cages, stacked up on top of each other in a windowless barn. Their lives had “literally no pleasure,” he says. “No sunshine, no fresh air, no good food, no toys, no comfort.”

  These animals’ whole purpose was to grow meat and then die so that those humans who haven’t switched over to lab-grown or other alternatives could stuff themselves with their carcasses.

  Billy opens up his tablet again. Shows me the documentation: thsnds chickens ded in flood. Drownd trapped in cages. PU—he tells me this is the code for “smelly.” He holds his nose with his thumb and index finger to illustrate the point. Then he shows me the photos. They make me want to puke. The birds trapped in their cages, bloated like balloons. I can’t even imagine their fear and pain as the water rose, knowing they were trapped. Billy says he wore a gas mask, and even that couldn’t cover the rancid, evil stench of all those drowned birds as he trudged over the muddy dirt floor, picking through the wreckage, to find any survivors.

  Miraculously a few survived. He wasn’t sure how they made it.

  Billy was going to give them the Kinderend in the barn. Then he thought it would be better for them to die outside, with fresh air. Let their last moments be pleasant.

  One at a time, Billy carried these birds outside. They had filthy white feathers, cloudy eyes, sores. Their beaks and spirits were broken. Their huge breasts heaved, as they tried to breathe. Billy felt broken, too, sitting with them on the muddy ground. They tried so hard to get up, and walk, to flap their wings. They made pathetic “cheep cheep” sounds, looking at him.

  Billy took off his gas mask. He wanted to show the chickens a friendly human face. He doubted they’d ever seen one. “Be pacified. Be loved. I bring you peace and happiness. Let’s proceed,” Billy tells me he said, tearing up as he says the words. “Then I couldn’t do it, Nano.”

  He tells me he thought about calling Dorothy again. He tells me he felt so tired. His head was all buzzy. And without really thinking things through, he put the birds in his truck and began to drive north. He knew the truck had a GPS device, it’s not like he could hide where he was going, so he didn’t alter what would have been his regular route—just thought he’d run into a vet’s office, here in farm country, at some point. But he didn’t. So he searched on his phone. One clinic came up, a half an hour away. It was arguably in the right direction. He called to see if they were open and could see the chickens.

  “No, sorry, we don’t do birds.” Billy imitates the voice on the phone in a whiny singsong. He tells me he wanted to punch her in the face.

  He called Dr. King. She told him to come in; she’d stay open for him, for them. It took almost three hours to get there. The whole drive, he kept telling the chickens: “C’mon, guys, or girls, or both. You can do it. Stay strong, mother cluckers.”

  He was aware of the absurdity. There in a truck, telling a few near-dead, preposterously large-breasted chickens to be strong while he raced them to a far-away hospital, against Dorothy’s orders.

  “It was so ridiculous,”
he says to me.

  He kept driving.

  Two of the chickens died en route. At the end of the drive, one was still gasping, fighting to live. Dr. King fixed this one up, too. This chicken stayed living with Dr. King. She said she saw her as a “fluffy little symbol of hope and redemption” who is “also incredibly cute.” Billy smiles, giving me Dr. King’s sweet words.

  She named the chicken Boobie McChicken. Billy laughs when he tells me the name. “Boobie McChicken,” then informs me that Dr. King “isn’t married but has a stupid boyfriend.”

  After that Billy came home again.

  He relaxed for a couple of days. Swam, kayaked, helped feed the dogs. Hung out a lot with a college girl who was there doing a semester-long internship. They smoked ample amounts of weed. Then Dorothy called him back to her house.

  No cookies and tea this time.

  Dorothy asked him to look out before him, at the beach, the Casino, the blue sky, the Ruffuge’s outline just visible from where they stood.

  “You like this, right?” she’d said to him. “Dog Island, which I built to provide a safe home for the world’s remaining dogs and the people who love them?”

  He told her he loved it. Even though in his heart, he was feeling increasing doubt.

  She said, “I will make you leave this community forever if you ever pull a stunt like that again. I will kick you out. Your parents. Your sister, too. I will make sure all your lives are ruined, forever. And I will kill one of the dogs, too, in your name, for your betrayal. Do you understand me?”

  Billy didn’t really understand. But he also did.

  He was taken off the We Are Guardians team, permanently. Reassigned to the Dog Island maintenance squad. Garbage collection, painting, lawn care, fixing broken toilets, all over the community. He was devastated in some ways; in others, it was a relief. At least for a little while. Just a little while.

  One day he was in Patricia’s house—one of the Bad Bitches—unclogging her kitchen sink. He was telling her she had to stop trying to stuff bread and Ethical Chicken into the garbage disposal. He was in the middle of his lecture about how not to royally freak up your plumbing when she interrupted.

  “I hear you and Dorothy had words.”

  He said, “Not really,” because there was no need to get the rumor mill going.

  But Patricia said to him, “You aren’t alone in this.” Then she thanked him for fixing the sink. He says that people repeated the same thing in other houses—that he wasn’t alone—and before he knew it he realized that there was a group who all spoke in this same code, who all had this same understanding. A mission.

  It took a couple of weeks before he learned what this group was calling itself.

  “The ‘Underdog Tailroad,’” he says to me now. “I don’t think it’s the best name,” he clarifies. “But they are real attached to it.”

  I nod. “It’s not . . . great. Maybe a little confusing and also kind of offensive.”

  I have one hand on my robot dog Billy who’s next to me on the couch; the other on Donut, asleep in my lap, while my brother Billy paces in front of us, oblivious—or maybe just stoned.

  “You can tell who was a part of it, by looking at everyone’s lawn flamingos,” he says.

  “The pink plastic ones that are everywhere?”

  “Yeah,” my brother tells me. “But if someone’s in the Underground Tailroad, the flamingos’ eyes are different. They look up instead of straight out. That’s the code. Took me a while to get it, but then I started seeing those flamingos all over the damn place. At the Bad Bitches’ homes; Marjorie’s little bungalow. Wolf’s parents. Jack’s mom. Maybe half the houses on Dog Island. Half of the houses were apparently on board.”

  “Was ours?” I ask hopefully.

  Billy shakes his head. No, not ours.

  “So then what happened?” I ask.

  He smiles and sits beside me. “It’s late. There’s so much for you to see, kiddo. We’ll go on a little trip tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” I agree reluctantly. I feel disloyal now. And homesick. “Mom and Dad must be worried. I should call. Let them know I’m okay. Maybe I can tell them I’m with you?”

  He stares at me. His lips quiver. “Not yet, Nano,” he whispers. His voice is strained. “Give it a little time.”

  I give it to him. I am so tired.

  It is finally time for bed. Wanda, wearing a long plaid flannel nightgown, offers Wolf a guest room on the first floor. She gives me flannel pajamas of my own and puts me to bed in a small bedroom on the second floor, with a window that overlooks the cow pasture, and a tall bed covered in quilts.

  Donut and my robot dog Billy come up to sleep with me. They rest next to each other at my feet. Hammie comes up to my room, too, but Wanda calls her away, saying I’ll have no room for myself if she hops up there with me, too.

  Wolf comes up to join me, sometime later. He climbs into bed with me. We touch and kiss. He produces a pill from his pocket that Ellie gave him. She told him it does something to the sperm so they can’t fertilize an egg. That sounds like a useful little pill, I tell him. He says he likes my flannel. It feels soft, he says. It feels like a dream.

  FRIENDS: We are going to lay things out for you as clearly and truly as we can. Serving your companion animal needs by creating the World’s Best and Most Realistic Robot Dogs has been a DREAM come TRUE.

  But now we need your help. We endeavor to make every robot dog your BEST companion and friend. We work with the Good People of DOG ISLAND to get every detail exactly RIGHT.

  The feedback we get is VERY GOOD. You LOVE your robot dogs. We LOVE that you LOVE your robot dogs. You love them so much you are not participating in our buyback program. We were too good at our job!

  Unfortunately, due to declining sales, Mechanical Tail has been forced to close 75 percent of our showrooms and to retire our entire mobile showroom fleet. We will maintain an online presence, which we hope will continue to serve your ROBOT DOG NEEDS.

  Please tell your FRIENDS and FAMILY to purchase ROBOT DOGS from our ONLINE STORE, so that we can continue to provide the VERY BEST ALL-ETHICAL COMPANION ROBOT ANIMALS to you.

  Chapter 9

  I wake up the next morning to Donut licking my face, nibbling my nose. Who could have ever dreamed that a real puppy could be snuffling all over my face inside a house like this?

  After a while, I get up and look out the window. The whole property is covered in white.

  I smile, my nose pressed against the icy glass. I do like it here.

  Downstairs Wanda has fixed a big breakfast with real coffee. I sit down at the table. Wolf is already there.

  “Shalom, good morning!” I say to her. Wolf grins, probably at how chipper I sound. I can’t help it. I am practically bouncing out of my seat. I’m excited to be here with Wolf, to go feed the animals again, to tromp around in this exotic weather, to learn about this strange place and these people. But Billy tells me to go get dressed for our “field trip.”

  “Did you sleep well?” Ellie asks, sweeping into the room. She fixes Wolf and me with a smile and arches her eyebrow. Her tone is snarky for someone wearing a bathrobe and fuzzy slippers. Of course, she has the supreme confidence to make even that look cool.

  I blush. “Yes, thank you.”

  After a spell of eating and eating and eating more—pancakes, coffee, eggs from the resident chickens—I eat these, even though usually eggs are forbidden. It would be rude not to. I cannot believe how rich they taste. Usually I get droopy when I eat too much, but the coffee is so dark and tasty and powerful. Woo! I could eat all day, I think, but Billy says it’s time to go out.

  I get a shower, a real shower, with water and soap and a soft towel. Wanda gives me a new set of clothes for today’s trip. Not that I know from clothes, but the pants, sweater, boots, and coat look upscale. Ellie does my hair and puts some makeup
on my face. I look sophisticated! I feel my bearing change, after seeing myself like this. I have a feeling of what it might be like to be a normal adult on the mainland, who, like, has a job in an office. (Maybe Wolf and Jack work there, too?) I have a feeling that I would not like that life for very long but for now it’s okay.

  Another new experience: riding in a real car. Billy, Wolf, robot dog Billy, and I pile into a huge luxurious vehicle that is kind of like a living room on wheels, with a television for us to watch. Billy, Wolf, robot dog Billy, and I pile into a huge luxurious vehicle that is kind of like a living room on wheels, with a TV and everything. It’s so smooth, unlike the GoPad; the AutoDrive never jerks to a stop or suddenly speeds up without warning, like a person. It’s a cold, clear day, but the big clear bubble on top lets in the sunshine.

  Wolf and I sit facing Billy. We hold hands. Wolf seems to have a little light in his eyes. Maybe he feels closer to me now. Or likes me dressed up like this. Does he like makeup? I suddenly feel self-conscious.

  “So this is new,” Billy says in a loud voice.

  That snaps me out of my reverie. Wolf drops my hand, and I see that my brother is looking us both up and down. He slouches back in the upholstery.

  “What are you talking about?” I ask him.

  “You two,” he says, nodding his head at us. “A couple. A thing. Two Organics in the thrust of youth.”

  My face is suddenly hot. But I only shrug, squeeze Wolf’s hand. Impulsively I kiss his cheek. He responds by kissing my lips. I am back in my Wolfish trance. My makeup and hair are probably being destroyed but . . .

  “You know, you could pretend like you care I’m right here,” Billy says grumpily.

  After a long trip along many winding roads, the car takes a right onto a long driveway. Billy pulls a bag from under his seat. He dumps it out on the floor between us: they’re what look like costume props. He affixes a fake mustache onto his own face. I stifle a giggle. After attempting to put a thinner, blonder mustache on Wolf, he rips it off, muttering something about “looking like a teenage perv.” He puts a baseball cap on Wolf’s head instead.