Act Fourteen - Scene 4: Disturbing Behavior
‘Since she came to stay with us at the house I had wanted only one thing from her. Silence, peace and quiet perhaps. The android, girl, whatever she is, her questions unnerved me, and yet her silence made me even worse! So for months I wanted nothing more than to be alone… and then she started haunting my dreams. But when I finally got what I wanted…ironically, if not justly, it wasn’t what I truly wanted.’
She closed herself up in her room earlier, and still hasn’t come out. She set the box with my new jacket in it on the divan in my room, and then retreated to her own. It has only been a few days since I heard the lightness in her voice for the first time. I wonder… could it be related at all with her actions since returning from the tailor’s? Did she meet someone there that she likes?
Why am I so paranoid? Dorothy has to stay here.
For now, at least…
But what happens when her tenure is up? How much longer do I have with her here? Why am I so dismayed about the prospect of her leaving? Sure she changed the dead house with her presence, but would not any woman? She’s sullen and withdrawn…
And beautiful.
Slowly, his thoughts return to his surroundings as he stares out off the terrace edge from a safe distance behind the railing. The chill wind nips at his cheeks and pulls on the edges of the robe he wears over his usual attire of a white shirt and his black dress pants.
Perhaps I always felt this way. She is daring, fearless. I try out her attitudes from time to time. I sit higher from the ground than normal, lie down on the cool stone until I feel its chill in the pores of my skin… but I can’t be her. I can’t be so fearless; it is careless of a human to emulate the courage of an android. The android is made of more durable stuff than the human, and can be more readily repaired.
But it is against one of my rules to cower in fear.
I haven’t been of much use to anyone while plagued by these nightmares.
“Roger.” Her voice comes from behind me. I did not even hear her come out.
I turn to look at her. “Dorothy,” the word, the name is familiar on my lips, feels comforting and nice. She comes closer with a small tray in her hands, a cup on a saucer steaming up from the glinting metal. “How did you know I’d want…?”
“It is cold out, Roger, should you not wear more than just that thin robe?” her voice is restrained, not so much a monotone, but the voice of someone who is showing their cold outer shell, holding all emotion within.
She must care about my health.
Or perhaps it is just that she doesn’t wish to have to care for Roger the Invalid anymore.
“Probably.”
“Norman should have dinner ready within the next ten minutes, Roger, are you going to have dinner tonight?” her voice is empty again, uncaring.
“Yes. I will take dinner tonight.” She seems satisfied and places the tray on the ground, moving past me to stand at her normal perch on the stone embankments. “Why did you close yourself off in your room this afternoon?”
“I did not close myself off in the room, Roger, you could have come in.”
She has a point there.
“What were you doing in there?”
“Nothing important.”
“Why, Miss Waynewright, I believe you are evading the question.” She looks defensively at me. “But since I value your privacy, I will not bother you about it.” Now there is bewilderment there, in those eyes. Her brow furrows.
The expression is plain, raw, on her face. ‘I expected you to push,’ it says. She just stares at me for a long moment, unspeaking, and I sip the tea some more. I don’t know why I don’t drink too much coffee now. Tea just seems more… soothing.
I never used to drink tea. Before she showed up it was all coffee. Norman’s voice echoes out to us, “Dinner is served, sir.”
Dorothy hops down and moves towards the tray. I follow her as she enters the house once more. “What did people use that patio for, Roger? It’s too high to function really.”
“I suppose they took sun out there, Dorothy.”
“Sun?”
“Yes.”
“Why would anyone want to take sun? It’s warm and burns your skin.”
“How do you know that about the sun? Have you ever seen it?” my voice is questing, not accusing. She stops and I almost run into her.
“I do not know,” the words are quick, and then she enters the house.
A mysterious beauty, you are, Dorothy.
Dinner seems to take hours. She sits there, stationary, only occasionally sipping tea. Norman hovers near my right elbow, waiting to find some way to serve me. “A little more wine, please, Norman.”
He seems pleased with that.
“You’re going to be drunk at this rate, Roger.”
Her voice stops me with the glass at my lips. “What’s wrong with that?”
“You haven’t gotten drunk at all in the time I’ve been here, Roger Smith.” Norman nods, thoughtfully. “You have a point Miss Dorothy. Master Roger hasn’t.”
The doorbell rings.
“I’ll answer it,” Norman says, voice already faint with his distance from the table growing. I continue to eat.
“I wonder who it could be, don’t you, Roger?”
“Either a potential client, or…”
“Angel,” Dorothy’s voice is low, dangerously low.
“Dorothy, don’t you like Miss Angel?”
She meets my eyes briefly before looking down into her teacup.
“Ah. Why not?”
She opens her mouth when Norman returns, an envelope on a small tray, which he brings to me directly. “Anything else, sir?”
“Not right now, thanks Norman.”
“I’ll go work on Big O, then, sir.” He completes a half bow and turns on his heel.
Her comment interrupted, she takes a sip of her tea. “What is in the letter?”
I know she doesn’t really want to know. “I’ll open it tomorrow. Now… why do you dislike Miss Angel?” She sets her teacup down.
“She is very underhanded.”
“I can be the same from time to time.”
“She is always underhanded and double dealing, Roger, you only do that some of the time.” She stirs her tea carefully.
“That sounds like your morals conflict with hers.”
“Morals?”
“You apparently don’t believe in cloak and dagger tactics.”
She looks at me in pointed confusion so I continue.
“Cloak and dagger is an expression used to indicate someone who does their dealings in the darkness. The darkness symbolizing…”
“Slight of hand.”
“Not… exactly,” she looks back down at her teacup, “but I think you get the picture.” She takes another sip. “Dorothy, why do you drink tea? Don’t you just have to…?”
“That function is relatively the same as a human, yes.”
“Can you even taste it?”
“To a degree, yes.”
“To what degree?”
“I sense that it is a compound of herbal extracts and saccharine-type sugars. It is rather warm, and feels good against my throat.”
“‘Feels good’?”
“Even I find certain stimuli enjoyable, Roger. While I could never taste the food I might eat, the action of eating is, in itself, pleasantly normal. Drinking tea is becoming a habit since the reactions of my sensors cause certain feelings. I like drinking tea because I feel the tea, if that makes any sense to you.”
“Thank you for explaining that to me.” I do believe you are more than just a robot, Dorothy. “I have a question, then.”
“Shoot,” she says in a bit of slang.
“What do you feel when you think of love?”
That is possibly the one question I was not prepared for. I pause in sipping my tea and look into his eyes. No jest or barb this time, a simple question. “Longing.”
He makes a noise akin to ‘hmm.’ “Is that all?”
“Curiosity and confusion. I wonder what it is like.”
He takes another bite of his steak.
“Why do you ask?”
“Just remembering…”
“Beck,” I respond. He nods offhandedly. “I said that I loved you. Is that it?”
His face slips into a mask of cold concentration. “Yes.”
“You want to know if it is true?”
He does not respond.
“I asked you afterwards a difficult question.”
“Yes,” he says simply, but in that one word I can hear the complexity of his thoughts.
“Am I still just a machine to you, Roger?”
His eyes cloud over for a moment and he shakes his head. I am trapping him. I tempt the fates as I walk towards the wounded, cornered tiger. But I trust this tiger. “Am I capable of feelings in your eyes, Roger? More than simple sensations… emotions?”
He nods, slower this time, as though making up his own mind.
That makes me feel happy, even though that delicate thing seems to be precariously maintained, at best. It is as though the thing, or whatever it is, totters at the edge of a drop, and only teeters backwards by sheer chance. I wish I could examine that thing. But I fear that if I take it in my hands I will break it.
I cannot be very gentle. I do not know how.
What does all of this mean? She is standing straight in the gale again, beating back the winds buffeting her with observations and logic. Can she love? How does that set in with her programmed logic? Can it be that she feels that way towards me, as she said she did? She was under Beck’s control at the time… in a way, but he said something about memory chips. Her memory chips should have been changed and it would have… what? Corrected the situation? Drawn her attention from me?
The pen only enhanced the thoughts she had, not created them. Could it be, then, that she does believe she feels love for me? Certainly… and yet that statement and my mindset are both crumbling under the weight of her actions, it should not be this way. Should it?
I care for her, which is obvious by my constant attentiveness to her whereabouts. I missed her for the few days before the fight with the three mega deuces. My dreams kept me haunted, I couldn’t even think straight, and…
She didn’t wake me from them, then. She wasn’t aware that I needed help, then.
“Are you finished?” she asks softly.
“Yes,” I say, putting my elbows on the table and resting my face against my hands. I hear her movements as she collects the dishes and heads into the kitchen to wash them. “Dorothy…”
“Yes Roger?” she calls back at me.
I stand and move after her.
“Let me help you with that.”
***
14: Scene 5; Lady Luck | 14: Interlude; Misinterpreted Signals | Long Path of Recovery