Your Robot Dog Will Die Read online

  It is still dark as the PlaneCab descends over our palm trees, our brightly colored houses, our neat brick streets. I can see the big silhouette of the Casino coming into view, the beachside, and The Smiling Manatee just across the street. The Ruffuge over there is just a mass of thick plants. You can’t see the dogs from up here.

  We land nearby to where we’d taken off—how many days ago now? I can’t even remember. One or two I think. So much has happened and changed that it feels like a month, a year, a whole lifetime. It’s all a blur now. The PlaneCab door opens, and Wolf and I, and Billy and Donut, walk out. It’s hot outside, already, this early in the day.

  I wasn’t exactly expecting to be greeted by a marching band. Still, I was half expecting Jack to meet us. It’s weird no one is around. Wolf and I look at each other as we walk the empty streets. I notice the houses with the flamingos on their lawn. In the last moments of darkness, I can’t tell which ones have eyes that are looking up.

  Wolf and I stop at the beach for a few minutes. We stand, his arm around my shoulder, mine around his waist, looking out at that beautiful water as the sun starts to rise. Donut runs around in the sand, yipping and making mad dashes. Give him this moment of freedom, I think, while we know he can have it. My robot dog Billy sits at my feet, looking up at me, while I watch the sunrise. It is a bright orange and pink and yellow, filling the sky. I’ve loved it here. My whole life I’ve loved it here. That is not a lie. Even if everything else is lies, that is the truth.

  I pull out my cell phone, unroll the flexible screen, and am about to push “positive interaction” out of habit, out of love. Then I don’t. I guess that part of things is over.

  I point to a nearby palm tree. “Palm trees aren’t actually trees, you know. They are grasses. If you cut them down and count their rings, you will not see how long they have been alive,” I say. “Though that is true for many of our plants because the drought really screwed things up as far as botany goes.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Wolf says. “Thank you for sharing this important new information.”

  I smile at him. I kiss him. “You’re welcome,” I say. I don’t think we will have too little to talk about for a while to come. Still, I like our old standbys.

  We get going again before the sun is fully up. There is a lot to do today. I pick up Donut and hand him to Wolf. He whines and wiggles. I kiss his head and nose. Lifting him, I can feel that he’s already gotten bigger. He is less the size of a donut and more the size of a very small loaf of bread.

  Maybe I’ll change his name to Small Bread Loaf, if we make it through this.

  Please, dear Dog, let us make it through this.

  I tell Wolf to hide and not to tell me where he’s going. There are caves, abandoned buildings, he knows every spot where nobody goes. I don’t want to be able to tell Dorothy where he and Donut are, in case she wants to do something bad.

  “Just make sure he’s safe,” I say, trying very hard to feel brave.

  “Make sure you’re safe,” Wolf says.

  He kisses me. Leans his forehead against mine.

  “Bye, Nano,” he says, walking away.

  I turn the other way to head for home. I want to talk to Mom and Dad before anyone else. Now that the sun is up, people are starting to appear. I walk briskly. Marjorie rides by on her bike, with Harold on her shoulder. She is in a fluorescent-bright caftan, and rings her handlebar bell, and calls out, “Shalom and peace be with you, Nano!”

  Harold chimes in as well, “Shalom! Shalom! Peace! Shalom!”

  I turn to watch them; her hair and his feathers both fly out behind them.

  Luckily nobody else seems to notice me. Maybe that’s why when I get to the house, I am feeling more confident, more optimistic.

  I PrivateText Jack to see if he is there, if he needs help.

  He doesn’t respond. Maybe he’s still asleep. Or maybe who knows what. I head into the kitchen and find Dad, his back to me at the stove, cooking up breakfast. He looks the same, which surprises me. But I haven’t been gone long, even though it feels like a lifetime. I sniff the air. Smells like pancakes and that vegan sausage he’s always saying, unconvincingly, doesn’t taste like garbage.

  There’s even a whiff of coffee. I can’t remember the last time we had real coffee instead of getting caffeine in pill form.

  “Hi Dad,” I say to him.

  He whirls around, startled. “Kitten. You came back.” His voice is a whisper. He drops the spatula and rushes over to hug me. As he kisses the top of my head, he breathes in my ear. “You shouldn’t have.”

  Chapter 12

  Dad makes me a plate of food. It is, of course, not very good but I gobble it down. We eat it quietly for a little while. I explain to Dad about being at Fuzzy Mansion. About how the people there called Dog Island a “death cult” and are now trying to get Dorothy to kill all our dogs. So they can prove to the world that she is bad, her ideas are bad, that dogs belong with people, that the world’s animals shouldn’t be exterminated and replaced with robots.

  It all sounds so insane, coming out of my mouth.

  I decide to conclude with a question. “Dad, are they right about Dorothy?”

  He shakes his head. “We didn’t know it would get like this,” he says, still whispering. “We were just kids ourselves when we got here . . .”

  Then it all comes pouring out of him. How Dorothy recruited Billy onto WAG, so that he could become one of her chief assistants and advisors, so he could see how much cruelty there still was in the world, even with the dogs having been saved. She thought he’d help her execute her bigger ambitions. Billy didn’t see things her way, of course. And when Billy and Dorothy first started tangling, Dad advised Billy to stop. To get along. To “go with the flow” since Dorothy was and is our leader and she knows what’s best, and this is where we live.

  Billy failed to take this advice. Things came to a head. Billy had to leave.

  Yes, Dad was desperately sad. So was Mom. They tried to look at it as a choice. Billy would go off into the world and have an adventure. That’s what you should do in your twenties. The rest of us would stay here. That’s what you do when you are not in your twenties. That was what was best for the family.

  According to you, I think.

  Dad looks so miserable. He should look this miserable. He brought us to this place. He did this to us. Mom, too.

  I rest my head in my arms. It’s all real. It’s all real.

  After a few minutes of this, I lift my head.

  “Where is Mom?” I ask.

  “I don’t know,” he says, returning to the stove.

  For all I know he’s lying. He’s clearly much better at lying than I ever imagined.

  When Dad gets the call from Dorothy, as I knew he would, it’s time to go. My robot dog Billy and I are leaving Dad at home. I wish he’d come with me, with us. Of course, Dorothy was quite insistent that I come alone.

  “You don’t have to,” Dad says, tearing up.

  But he’s wrong. I do. Of course I do. It’s about a mile to Dorothy’s house. I try to savor the walk, the beautiful morning. We’re there in no time, though—back at that familiar two-story Spanish-style, newly painted, like all our homes. She has such lovely landscaping out front—some palms, some flowering bushes, some cacti, and a water fountain. It spews recycled piss.

  I knock on the heavy wooden door. No answer. I push it open and go into her cool, lovely foyer. She has such gorgeous things. Old rugs, rustic-looking wooden furniture, smooth and shiny with use. Expensive—all donated by her supporters. The paintings, of dogs and extinct species, don’t quite match, but still seem right. I walk through the reddish kitchen, with its big old stove. There’s a silver tea kettle, as always, sitting on one of the burners. I’ve had so many cups of tea in my life, made using that kettle, hanging out at Dorothy’s house with Mom and Dad.

&nbs
p; “Shalom, out here, dear,” I hear Dorothy call.

  She’s outside on the balcony, sitting at her little tiled table for two, drinking tea and eating a small bowl of something very brown that looks exceptionally horrible.

  Mom is sitting there, too.

  So maybe Dad was telling the truth when he said he didn’t know where she was. Or maybe not. Mom looks like she hasn’t slept in a week. She tries to smile. I run to her to hug her. She clutches me like a life raft.

  Dorothy wrinkles her nose. “When you get to be my age, you’ll see how hard it is to keep your figure,” she says. “When you’re young, all you have to do is throw on a T-shirt and show up. My age, you have to make an effort. Your body doesn’t want to cooperate. It wants to hold on to every calorie, every wrinkle. Being vain isn’t easy!”

  She takes another bite and then pushes aside the bowl.

  Mom and I are silent.

  “Be a darling,” Dorothy says to me. “Fetch me a donut off the counter. There’s a box of them. You can bring out the whole thing. We’ll all eat them together. And then you will keep on being young and gorgeous and your elderly mother and I will have to do Jazzercise for three hours just to fit into our pants.”

  I look at Mom to see how to gauge all this. She won’t meet my gaze.

  So I go into the kitchen and put the donuts, six of them, on one of Dorothy’s heavy earthenware dinner plates. Each donut has an approximation of Marky Barky’s face on it, done up in icing. These must be leftovers from the VIP brunch that Dorothy hosts on the morning after the Marky Barky banquet. Here they ate donuts with Hot Bod while there I learned about cruelty and lies. I use a knife to cut each donut in half.

  Dorothy notices my handiwork and raises an eyebrow. She picks up a donut half and bites into it. “Ooh, heavenly. The Dog Island Sourdough Vegan Bakers have really outdone themselves this time. Ruby, you eat one, too,” she says to my mother. Then she pushes the plate toward me. “You, too, kid. We need to get some flesh on those bones.

  What can I do? I eat a donut. I think of Donut. I wonder if there is a message in this food choice. I look out at the view. It’s very pretty. Getting sunny and bright. I wish I could sit on my mommy’s lap. Her head is fully turned away from me and Dorothy now. She is just looking out at the sea. I’ve never seen Mom this quiet.

  Enough. I clear my throat. It sounds phony. I don’t care. “Dorothy, I heard some terrible things.”

  “I’m sure you did, sweetheart,” she says breezily. “They’re out to get me. They’re out to get us. They have been for a very long time. They don’t believe in our way of life. They think animals are ours to do what we will with. Not that we owe them a duty to protect them from harm. Isn’t that right, Ruby?”

  “Yes, of course it is,” Mom says.

  It sounds so reasonable. Almost. “Isn’t death harm?”

  Dorothy smiles and lifts her shoulders slightly. “I suppose in a way it is. I don’t like to think of it that way, though. Death is inevitable. Whether we hasten it or not, whether we like it or not, it’s coming. So if we can see a life will be full of hurt and pain between now and that end, why not provide relief? Would you want to be in pain, to be mistreated? To be tortured? Wouldn’t you rather just go to the eternal peaceful sleep?”

  My mind is getting muddled again. I thought I knew what was right. I thought I had to convince Dorothy or defeat her. “I saw another way, Dorothy. It was so beautiful. There was a goat in a wheelchair and a six-hundred-pound pet pig named Hammie—”

  “Child,” she interrupts. “Those people you were with. They don’t love animals like we do. They eat them. They think it’s proper for animals to be used, for our enjoyment, our entertainment, our food. You know better than that! Tell her, Ruby. Tell her she knows better than that.”

  “Please, honey,” Mom says. “Kitten. Please.”

  “But what about Carol?” I ask.

  “Who, child?” Dorothy says.

  “The goat. The one in the wheelchair. The one Billy rescued, even though you told him not to. She’s so happy. She loves her life. Don’t you think she deserves to love her life? You really think she should be dead?”

  Dorothy looks amused. “I didn’t know Billy had given this poor goat a name. Can you imagine her suffering? And now we keep her alive, to make us feel better.” Her face softens. “Nano, we do our best, with limited resources, with limited information. You saw a puppy mill, I am given to understand. Do you think that’s better than what we have here? This paradise, for the lucky? Should the unlucky be condemned to that hell? Wouldn’t it be better for them not to exist at all? What do you think, Ruby?”

  “You’re right, of course, Dorothy,” Mom says, still staring over the water, looking like she is going to faint. “Dog knows, there are fates worse than death.”

  I look down at Billy, my robot dog, who is so battered. Who found me, after I abandoned him. If he were real, Organic, he’d be dead, too.

  “You know they want to stop you,” I tell her. “They’re trying to get Dog Island shut down.”

  “Every great movement has its enemies,” Dorothy says, nibbling on the confectionary Marky Barky’s face. “I can’t believe you’re letting me eat so many of these vile pastries. Here, hand me another.”

  “Do you think it’s going to work?” I ask.

  She looks right into my eyes. It’s unnerving. She’s so confident. “What do you think?” she says.

  “I don’t really know,” I say, as boldly as I can muster. “I came to see if we can figure something out together. To compromise.”

  Dorothy’s eyes darken. “It would be wonderful, fantastic, to live in a utopia where we could be assured that they would be safe. We don’t live in a utopia. I will never back down when it comes to doing what is right. Never. I thought I could count on you to do the same. You were the one I had my eye on, Nano. All along. I thought one day you would take over here. Once this old body of mine gave out. Or my mind. Whichever came first.”

  I shudder. And feel proud. Dorothy believed in me.

  “Well, let’s stop stalling,” Dorothy adds with a sigh. “Be a love and clean this up while I get dressed, will you Nano?”

  Unable to speak, I obey. I bring the tea mugs and plates back into the kitchen. I remember my device and conquer my fear enough to PrivateText Jack again. Still no response. No indication he’s even read my messages. There are a couple of donut halves left. I put them back into the box and load the plates and mugs into the Dish Blower. I wipe my hands on my pants then kneel down to pet Billy. I tug on his remaining ear and kiss the side of his face.

  “I hope I can get you fixed up soon, my friend,” I tell him.

  His tail wags and thumps on the floor, very lightly.

  She must notice me staring at her head.

  “Yes, okay, you caught me. Old Auntie Dorothy sometimes takes real showers instead of using those disgusting wipes. So sue me. You want a shower before we go? I’ve got fluffy towels, too, but don’t tell anyone.”

  In a way, I’d like to take Dorothy up on this offer. I imagine fine-smelling soaps; I imagine coming out renewed. I imagine putting off whatever is coming next. But what is coming next is important.

  “Later?” I ask, hopefully.

  She smiles. “Okay, well, then, let’s get this show on the road.”

  She and I, and Mom, and my robot dog, tool around town in her private GoPod. It is a mess, strewn with detritus—crumbs, wrappers, some mysterious liquids. I sit in the front passenger seat. Mom and Billy sit in back. Dorothy chatters, and the rest of us are silent.

  Our first stop is Marjorie’s house. I notice flamingos on the lawn. Their eyes are looking up. I breathe in, deeply. Dorothy knocks on the front door and Marjorie answers, in that bright caftan I saw her in this morning. Harold is on her shoulder.

  “Good morning,” says Harold. “Who’s a good bi
rd today?”

  “You are, my sweet,” Marjorie says back to him. She steps aside to let us in.

  “How are you feeling? I know you were a little under the weather,” Dorothy says.

  “Oh, just getting older, mostly,” Marjorie responds. She pats her hair.

  “I’ve been concerned about you, Miss M!” Dorothy says. “And your feathery friend here.”

  My heart stops.

  “No, no, no. Don’t worry about us,” Marjorie says with a nervous laugh.

  “Well, I am. I know you were out of commission a few days here,” Dorothy says, in a gentle tone of voice. She walks into Marjorie’s living room, which is done up in a cheerful red and orange and green and blue and yellow parrot theme, and sits on a wicker chair that is upholstered in vintage parrot-print fabric.

  “Come join me,” Dorothy says, patting the couch, next to the chair.

  Marjorie is trembling as she sits down. Harold climbs down off her shoulders and onto her forearm. She strokes his feathers. He makes a pleased, rumbly noise, while she does it.

  “I think it’s gotten to be time,” Dorothy says. “And I think you know that, too.”

  “I don’t . . . I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Marjorie stammers.

  “Marjorie, when you were ill last week, you were unable to properly care for Harold. I know this. You know this. There’s no succession plan in place. You are the one who has rejected every person who’s offered to take charge of Harold’s well-being, in the event that you’re no longer able to do so. You don’t want him to suffer, do you, Marjorie?”

  Tears are rolling down Marjorie’s face. They are falling onto Harold’s beautiful feathers. He seems to be aware that something is wrong. He lifts his beak and rubs it against Marjorie’s hand. Dorothy holds out her own gnarled palm. Mom removes a small container of Kinderend from her plain tote bag. She hands it to Dorothy, who hands it to Marjorie.

  “I assume you will want to be the one to give Harold this peaceful transition,” Dorothy says.