Your Robot Dog Will Die Read online

  I blink twice, adjusting to a shock of colors and shapes, the noises I somehow hear in my brain but not in my ears. I feel myself drifting into a kind of trance, and then suddenly there is an explosion of fireworks, magnificent fireworks. I see them and hear them so crisply—but I also feel them, somehow. As if I am inside the display instead of witnessing the fireworks from below.

  These fireworks are hot pink and shiny gold, fluorescent yellow and mint green. They go off in the usual beautiful bursts but also form trees and shells and flowers and all kinds of different things. And you don’t just see the big shapes, you can see each individual firework. They’re each shaped like a dog! A tiny, sparkly, three-dimensional dog. This is new and wonderful! I reach out my hand to touch one, but of course there’s nothing to touch. It’s all an illusion, a beautiful illusion.

  “Now take off your glasses,” Dorothy commands, telling us that she will unveil this year’s robot dog in just a minute.

  “His name,” she says, “is Handsome Hank, and he has several extremely exciting new features thanks to our friends at Mechanical Tail.”

  “He is waterproof!” she cries out. “And comes in four different sizes!” Now, I’m imagining what this sounds like to Ellie. No one cares about robot dogs, she’d said. I look at my robot dog Billy. Mentally tell him: This is what they are replacing you with, buddy, pretty soon. This is why I’m not getting too attached. My next one will be waterproof. He looks at me as if he can read my mind, as if he even has thoughts or feelings, and wags his tail a little, stiffly.

  You’re an “it” and nothing more than an “it,” I think. Donut is real.

  I stealthily check my phone; yep, already late for my next shift. Dorothy is launching into her introduction of “our most special guest, Mr. Hot Bod himself, the one and only Marky Barky.”

  “I have to pee,” I whisper to Mom, leaving. Billy follows me away. I snatch some appetizers off platters on my way out of the Casino.

  Upstairs, at The Smiling Manatee, Wolf is pacing the room.

  “Is the party fun?” he asks me.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “Dorothy was introducing the new robot dog when I left.”

  “Good new features?”

  “Waterproof. Some other stuff . . .”

  I tell Wolf to go back to the Casino so that no one notices him being gone. I feed some of the food to Donut. Eat some of it myself. Tastes all right; thanks Dad. It’s getting to be almost nine, almost time.

  Wolf and Jack, holding Mr. Chi-Chi Pants, come back up. We give each other sad smiles. I finagle Donut back into the tote bag. I don’t know how many times our luck can hold, carrying him around like this. Hopefully at least once more.

  We quietly walk downstairs. My arms are bare and chilly. I have goose bumps; maybe it’s nerves. We start walking toward the park, but the silence is quickly interrupted.

  “Kids! Kids! Where have you been?” It’s Mom, vigorously waving her arm. “We’ve all been looking for you. Did you want to get your picture taken with Marky Barky?”

  “No, that’s okay,” I say.

  “Come on. Come on! Stop being such a stick-in-the-mud! I want a picture of me and my beautiful daughter and the even more beautiful Hot Bod!” She reaches over to grab me by the arm, and I just know that Donut is going to be discovered if I don’t act fast, and well.

  I pull away, say, “Mom, Ellie invited us to a party. Can we go?”

  “What?” Mom says.

  “A party. It’s just for kids. Marky Barky said it would be okay.” I’ve just made up that last part, of course. I have no idea what Marky Barky’s position is on this. I’ve also made up that it’s just for kids. Also that she’s “invited” us rather than “coerced” us.

  “Where is this event?” Mom asks. Her eyes seem like they are focused on something very far away while she’s trying to look at me.

  “I’m not sure. She’s getting a PlaneCab,” I say. “She said we have to go soon.”

  I’m concerned Mom will say no. But also hoping she will say no. She actually says, “Oh! My baby! Old enough to go in PlaneCabs with friends! I can still feel you and your brother nursing from me,” Mom exclaims. She must have had a lot of Dog-quiris already. Maybe enough to make her not notice the whining noises emanating from my tote bag.

  “We have to go,” I say, kissing her cheek. “I love you.” I hug her. I haven’t hugged her in a long time.

  “And I love you,” Mom says. “My precious, beautiful daughter. My kitten.” She then kisses Wolf and Jack as well. “You are all my children.” She leans down to kiss my robot dog Billy on top of the head. He doesn’t respond. “Take good care of them, good boy. I’m counting on you.”

  We walk away from the party, away from Mom, toward Ellie, and who knows what else.

  Ellie’s there, waiting, with the PlaneCab. It’s fancy looking. Shiny black, about the size of a minivan. (Not that we have minivans on Dog Island, but I’ve seen them on television, you know.)

  The door pops open.

  “You brought the precious cargo?” she asks. I nod. “Well then get on in, you guys.”

  Wolf climbs in first. I wait a moment, I guess in case he starts screaming in fear or pain or something. When he doesn’t, I get in next. Billy my robot dog follows, climbing up onto the soft seat next to me. It’s like the inside of a limo—again, from what I’ve seen on TV.

  Ellie is next, and then she goes to shut the door. But I lean out first.

  “Jack?” I say. He’s still standing there, holding his little robot dog.

  “I can’t leave my mom,” he finally says. “I’m all she has.” He is clutching Mr. Chi-Chi Pants.

  “Okay, drama queen,” Ellie says chirpily, pressing a button on a console. I watch Jack disappear behind the closing door.

  As we take off, there’s a barely perceptible hum. There are no windows, but the walls of this thing are translucent, so I see Dog Island getting smaller and smaller as we rise into the air and fly away, away, away, away.

  Ellie is trying to make conversation, but I can’t stop watching the scenery. The scattering of lights below us, the bodies of water you can just barely make out from this high up.

  “This is your first time flying, I take it?” she asks me.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Wolf’s, too.”

  Wolf smiles, puts his arm around me. Billy sits next to me. I take Donut out of the bag.

  “May I?” Ellie asks. I hand him to her. She cuddles him, he nips at her. “Naughty,” she says, in a soft voice. “Naughty puppy.” How does she even know how to behave with him? I guess I sort of knew what to do, too, even though I’ve had no experience like this with the real dogs. The Organics.

  Ellie’s still chatting. She seems genuinely interested in us now that we are on her turf. “Do you guys go to school?” she asks. “I never understood what kids did at the sanctuary. Like, how did you learn anything?”

  “We learned some stuff from people on Dog Island. We also had some Virtu-School when we could get the app to work. We don’t really have Internet, though, so it doesn’t work a lot.”

  “Oh yeah,” she says. “I can see that. What about friends? Did you have friends? Did you go to birthday parties?”

  “Yeah, sure,” I say. I tell her we went, we go, to our parents’ friends’ birthday parties. We had, we have, each other.

  “But who do you, like, make out with? Who do you lose your virginity to?”

  My face burns. This is worse than the Bad Bitches at the Casino talking about me and Wolf getting married.

  “No one,” I tell Ellie. “I haven’t lost my virginity to anyone.” Wolf pulls away a little. We haven’t quite gotten there, yet. Most of the Dog Island women who have sex with men get operations to install permanent birth control inside of them. I have not embarked on that path, as yet, and I don’t really have access to other option
s. It would really be something to become the next woman in my family to have a baby as a teenager. No thank you.

  “Oh ho, that’s interesting,” Ellie says. “I was only fourteen, myself. I was still acting then. He was in the movie with me. Dance All Night, it was called. They all thought I’d be another star! I got bored of it. You know that story, I’m sure.”

  “Of course,” I say. I am so worried about saying the wrong thing. I wish I could be home with my friends and my robot dog and this puppy, and that nothing bad was happening.

  Ellie opens a bottle of champagne. She hands me a glass, and one to Wolf.

  “This will be good for you,” she says.

  “Getting drunk?”

  “Seeing someplace else,” she says. “Seeing a little bit of the world. C’mon kid. You must be curious what life is like outside of the island. Away from crazy Auntie Dorothy.”

  The truth is that I have never been curious about life outside of Dog Island. My life on Dog Island has fulfilled me. I have never needed more. I have never really thought about there being more. The champagne tastes sharp, like needles in my tongue.

  “Why are we here, Ellie?” I ask her. “What do you want with us?”

  “Be patient,” she says. “And have some more champagne.”

  After about half an hour, the PlaneCab starts to descend. It’s so smooth you wouldn’t even notice, unless you were gazing out, watching the ground hurtling toward you. I brace myself for a crash, an impact that I know probably isn’t coming.

  We just glide to a stop in a stretch of grass, just outside an old wooden gate with animal kingdom written out in yellow block letters, alongside a huge carved elephant head. As we get out of the PlaneCab, I see a group of bright red birds swoop by, flying in formation. They fly right by us, then up over the gate.

  “Those are still the original performing macaws,” Ellie says. “Even though there isn’t really anyone to perform for anymore. There’s something so tragically beautiful about these birds still flying for an audience that no longer exists.”

  She’s talking philosophy while I’m scared out of my mind and a little tipsy.

  We follow Ellie past empty souvenir stands, ice cream shops (“shoppes”) that have no ice cream, and motionless rides. The foliage is still thick and jungle-like. Somehow it survived through the dry years. I touch a leaf. Plastic.

  We walk toward what sounds like loud cheering. We reach a cage that has a confusing and surely inaccurate sign out front reading warning: most dangerous tigers.

  “Come look,” Ellie says. I push through a small circle of people to the bars and wish I hadn’t. Oh my Dog, I wish I hadn’t.

  There are two robot dogs in the cage. One of them is biting and jumping and attacking, throwing the other one to the ground, over and over. Then that one gets up, runs at the attacker, bites the face, rips at the nose. People are cheering as one robot dog gains some ground, then the other wins an advantage, an eye is torn out, a tail broken, a leg bitten; they are both going to be decimated, ruined in there.

  My robot dog Billy looks up at me, and I swear I see genuine fear in his lifeless eyes. Its lifeless eyes. What a trick. Is this Mechanical Tail’s doing? Have they come that far—far enough to create artificial fear? Why would that be a desired feature?

  “Why did you bring me here?” I cry out, squeezing my own eyes closed. “These dogs are going to die! How can you let this happen?”

  “Don’t be an idiot, Nano, they aren’t going to die,” I hear someone say. “They’re robots.”

  I know that voice.

  I open my eyes and see Billy. The real Billy. My brother.

  We at Mechanical Tail have taken your input TO HEART. We HEARD you when you said that you were NOT HAPPY about your traded-in robot dogs being used for SPORT!

  We LOVE that you LOVE your robot dogs. That’s why we make them! To make you HAPPY!

  We also want you to UNDERSTAND that it is environmentally UNFRIENDLY to simply KILL a robot dog. Do you want your robot dog in a landfill? NO!

  So our pledge to YOU is that every robot dog you trade in will be RECYCLED and given a new life. Their parts, their programs, will become the FOUNDATION of a new robot dog. Isn’t that MARVELOUS? You never have to worry again! Go ahead and trade up for one of our BRAND-NEW WATERPROOF ROBOT DOGS!

  Chapter 7

  Billy has changed. Of course he’s changed.

  He looks older now. He has nice clothes. Fancy. Same as Ellie’s kind of fanciness.

  “Why do you look so fancy?” I demand of him.

  Billy laughs. Odd, since I am not laughing or smiling or remotely happy.

  “I missed you, kiddo,” he says. He hugs me, long and tight. I don’t want to hug him back but then I do anyway. “I’ve really, really missed you,” he says. I think maybe he’s talking to me and Donut both. Donut is squirming with happiness in my arms and licks Billy’s face.

  I shove myself away from him. His smile doesn’t disappear.

  “Hey man,” Billy says to Wolf. He makes a fist and punches my boyfriend on the shoulder then resumes kissing and being kissed by Donut.

  Ellie and my brother hustle us into a PlaneCab. I sit opposite Billy, staring at him. Ellie sits beside Billy, leaning into him. It’s obvious that she and my brother know each other well. She tells me she’s sorry she had to act like a brat on Dog Island to get me to come with her, but it wasn’t safe to tell me the real reason I needed to go with her to Animal Kingdom.

  I’d like to ask her more, about everything, but it’s a short trip. We’ve reached our destination. There’s a rocky thud as we settle on a flat surface. We clamber out. We’re in a field. It’s dark. My heart starts to pound.

  “Welcome to Fuzzy Mansion,” says my brother, spreading his arms wide, grinning broadly.

  There are mounds of snow, and frozen grass, and leafless trees. Past some fences I see cows roaming. Turkeys, too, I think? Next to us there’s an old wooden house, painted white; tendrils of smoke drift from the chimney. I am transfixed by the animals. Two fluffy, wooly sheep run up, accompanied by a goat whose hind legs are supported by a wheelchair.

  “Hi Carol!” my brother says to the goat, who nibbles his jacket pockets. “Shalom! I’ve missed you, baby girl. Have you been good or baaa-d?” He looks up at me. “Get it? Baaa-d?” he repeats. “Because goats say baa? Oh, man, forget it.”

  I don’t want to laugh, but I do. Mostly I want to punch Billy in the face. And hug him. I want to scream how much I’ve missed him, how I’ve hated him for making me miss him, how I want to cry. I am so cold and have so many questions, like Where have you been, what happened to you, why did you leave, what are you doing here, do Mom and Dad know where you are, where did you get those nice clothes, what in the hell is going on here, etc. etc. etc.

  “Here, you must be freezing. Come with me,” Billy says. It’s the first thing he’s said that seems to make sense. “I can’t wait for you to meet Dave. And Hamlet! Especially Hamlet! I can’t believe you’re finally here!”

  “Yes, and it will be nice for them to meet Fiona and Wanda, too,” Ellie adds with a smirk.

  Billy pushes open a heavy wood door. I step inside a cozy kitchen. The warmth and soft light wrap me up like a blanket. On a padded bench, underneath a row of windows, there’s a rooster taking a nap snuggled next to a humongous pig. My brother introduces these two as Dave, the rooster, and Hamlet, the pig, all Organics.

  I rush over to kiss and pet them. It gives me something to do besides piece together who my brother is or has become. On the other hand, it works. I can’t hide my delight. Dave’s feathers are very soft. He lifts one of his wings so that I can give him a good scratch. Not to be outdone, Hamlet shoves her head into my lap and insists that I rub her ears. I put Donut down on the floor so I can devote both hands to making these two animals happy. Dave coos and Hamlet grunts. Donut barks at us, then poo
ps on the floor, then barks some more, wagging his tail the whole time. Wagging his tail, a little dog, in a home. This was once a thing that happened all the time; I know it was.

  “Not what most people mean when they say they have a chicken and a ham in the kitchen, is it!” Billy crows. He eyes the poop on the floor then strides over to clean it up with a rag. He winks at Donut. “Thanks for your housewarming gift.”

  I finally summon the ability to speak. “What is this place?”

  “A farm animal sanctuary,” Billy says. “We take in injured and unwanted farm animals. We give them a home here. By treating them well and sharing their lives, we show the world that pigs, chickens, turkeys, goats, cows, all of them, deserve our compassion.”

  I shake my head. “We?”

  Before he can answer, a woman comes into the kitchen. She looks to be in her fifties, maybe, or perhaps even a little older. She wears a long loose dress with a turtleneck underneath and slippers with pig faces on them. She has long gray hair and her skin looks weathered. I’ve never seen someone so beautiful in all my life.

  “This is Wanda,” says Billy. “She’s the caretaker. Of Fuzzy Mansion.”

  “Dog be with you,” I say instinctively.

  Her face flinches. “Hello to you, too. I see you’ve already met our spoiled kids here,” she says.

  My cheeks feel hot. I’ve displeased her, somehow. “You mean Dave and . . .” I can’t remember the pig’s name.

  “Hammie,” says Wanda. “We’ve had her going on a decade. She was just a wee piglet when she fell off a truck headed toward the slaughtering plant. A kind soul found her by the side of the road, nearly dead. Got her to us. It’s a very different life we’ve managed to give her here, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I would say,” I do say, rubbing Hamlet’s big old head, thinking of the other piglets who must also have been on that truck.

  A woman, a girl, maybe a few years older than me comes dashing into the room. “You’re back!” she cries at Ellie, before throwing her arms around her and kissing her on the cheek, the neck, the ear.