Chapter Two

Aaron

Aaron is sitting slumped in front of his old computer monitor at home. He has one elbow on the table, and is propping the side of his face up against his closed fist. He’s too lazy to put both of his hands on the keyboard and type normally. He uses only one to type, keeping his hunt and peck habits alive. Slowly, he swats letters onto another journal entry.

Death, I can’t stop thinking of it all the time. I feel like it’s following me.

Kind of embarrassed about even having a journal, he looks back and forth between the computer screen and the windows in front of his desk. He always thought of the idea as being a little bit juvenile. It’s still somewhat fun to do on such an old computer though, one with an old-school flat screen.

The last time he saw another computer like this was probably thirty years ago, back when he was a child. The two dimensional display is both relaxing to look at and nostalgic. He remembers feeling some kind of strange sympathy for the old thing, sitting outside by the dumpster. It was all dusty and had been forgotten in storage for who knows how long. He picked it up and hefted it home like a compassionate person might bring home a stray cat.

He’s always felt something for unwanted things. A journal entry is the only thing he could think to do with it so far. It’s too outdated to really do anything useful with. He set up a nice desk for it, a cushy office chair, and all facing the large windows looking out over the street. He finds that looking out on the city helps him write, especially at sunset when everything’s lit up in color.

The thought of death has been haunting me for some time now. I turned Forty two yesterday. I feel like I should’ve done more with my life by now. I should’ve made something of myself. It’s not that I compare myself to others, or wish that I have what they do, it’s just that I feel I’ve wasted so many years being complacent with an easy life. I had one chance, and I blew it on playing it safe.

It never takes this long to write an entry, but his heart just isn’t into it tonight. Normally, he has a few neat things to jot down from day to day, but not this time. It could just be a mid-life crisis, but he’s really starting to think more on his life lately. He should have a good forty more years to go, but he can't break the feeling that he’s a dead man walking.

It feels like a darkness is seeking him and it’s gained some serious ground lately. He’s never written anything about this feeling he gets, and wonders if maybe he shouldn’t. There’s just no privacy anymore. The last thing he needs is for this awkward shit to be spread around. He’s never had a problem with depression, at least he’s pretty sure he hasn't. This is different though, almost like a phobia if anything.

Being able to trudge through tough times is something he can do well. It’s plain spite that he draws on, and he’s found that it can carry almost any burden. To his disappointment though, there never seems to be anything in his life worth putting much effort into. He never has to struggle towards anything. To him, life is terribly dull without triumph, passion, or even loss for that matter. He’s feeling that his life has somehow turned into a slow and effortless slide towards an inevitable death. It’s not what he imagined for himself when he was younger.

He shakes his head and mumbles “there you go, with more of that crap.” He only barely scolds himself for dwelling on such things. For a moment, he looks down at the tan carpet at his feet, thinking, and then puts one hand back up on the keyboard.

It’s so hard to not constantly imagine death, waiting for me at the end, to congratulate me on a life only waded through. Like anyone else, I still have hope for what might lie beyond death, all while still knowing deep down that it is all a sham. It’s because we’re all so scared ofit that we’ll do anything but admit the truth.

It's chilling that so many people can pour their entire lives into mass delusions of there being some kind of god or something waiting for them on the other side when they die, as if there’s actually a point to all of this. What does it matter if they want to believe anyway? Knowing the truth sure as hell won't help anyone. Dead and gone is dead and gone. Maybe it’s better to just be another oblivious cog in the…

The last sentence of the entry is abrupt, out of context and just typed in at the end of the last unfinished sentence. “Why must we die? I hate it. Why does everthing in this world live, to just die anyway?" He murmurs the words to himself as he types them down.

He jerkily swivels his tall backed office chair around and puts his feet up on the coffee table between the desk and his dark green microfiber couch. He faces away from the computer so that the bright screen doesn't keep him awake. He’s in a sour mood now, too lazy to even turn it off, or even get up to go to bed. He whaps at the chair levers under the seat, leans the backrest down as far as it’ll go, and closes his eyes.

When Aaron wakes up in the morning the power is out again. The lights he knows he’d left on are now off. When he turns around, the computer screen is all black too. Feeling kind of silly about his last entry, he finds some satisfaction in it having not been saved. Still, it was good to get it off his chest in some way or another. He his phone up to find that he’s slept in well past his alarm, which didn’t go off because of the outage. He likes his old alarm clock and doesn’t use the one on his phone.

“It’s what I get I suppose”

When checking his messages he finds, to his relief, that work has already been cancelled due to the outage. It’s predicted to likely last most of the day. The message says there’s been another attack, but this time on the substation even closer into their sector. This is now the third time this has happened in just as many months.

“Goddamn rats are just plain stupid. They’re gonna get their little butts paddled if they keep this up.”

He can'can't understand how such backwards people can hate robots so much and yet choose to live in Welan City, the biggest machine exporter in the world. He finds it so annoying how the medical industry can have such disrespect for ethics, and how outlandishly much resources are used by the space industry, yet the rats are so focused on robots of all things.

If there’s anything he feels the world needs more of, is better robotics. The industry hardly keeps up with the growing world's needs as it is. It’s downright oppressive in how robots have always had to endure so much resistance to progress because of people’s fear and ignorance.

“Too much of a good thing I guess.”

Despite what’s been advertised he doesn’t feel that robots, or even artificial intelligence in general is all that sophisticated, compared to what it could be. As far as he knows, no machine has ever been able to truly feel any real emotions, or even relate to them. He’s put a lot of his own time into trying to figure it out, but human thought is just too convoluted to simulate. No one else seems to share his dreams either. it seems that shallow mimicery is as far as anyone is willing to bother with.

Though robots were heavily used in the last few major wars, they’ll never be able to mount a revolt of their own, not like so many imagine. The thought of it is plain silly. It kind of makes him sad to think that he’ll never meet a truly self-aware mechanical being within his lifetime. All of the generations before his saw major changes and innovations within their lifetimes, yet since he was a child, nothing really big has ever happened.

Standing at the windows of his sixth floor apartment, he can see above most of the other nearby rooftops in the industrial sector. The other buildings are mosty warehouses and production facilities of one type or another, with heavy machinery inside. The sky is clear and the sun is lighting up all of the conventionaly stylish buildings. One thing he certainly likes about this side of the city is its minimalistic and crisp architecture. All of the dark glass on the buildings gives off a great reflective contrast in the morning and evening light. All of the infrastructure looks elite, and motivating.

He stands there for almost ten minutes, just staring outside and wondering what to do with himself today. He looks at his messages again, checking to see if there’s an update on work or not. He huffs, considering that he’d actually prefer going to work rather than having to figure out something else to do. He really is in a rut.

Even though most people aren’t all that excited to go to work, he really doesn’t mind it at all. Unlike most in his line of work, he actually likes what he does. Robots haven’t necessarily ruined his livelihood just yet. They still do need a little bit of babysitting in unstructured environments.

For now, he really likes things the way they are. He gets to oversee fleets of the most advanced machines on the market, kick back, and watch them do all the work. He gets to see first-hand what they’re truly capable of. Most of the time, he’s not all that impressed, but sometimes he can catch a little spark of ingenuity that makes things come to life. He’s always rooting for them to become better.

At work, he’s very observant, and passes his time by closely watching the machines managing on their own. He tries to make them figure things out for themselves and is always waiting for something subtle, but extraordinary to happen. To others, these occurrences might be completely insignificant, but to him they can be akin to pivotal moments in a robot fight at the arena. Watching robots being so efficient, strong, and diligent, is what keeps him motivated and focused. It’s all about their ability to improvise, like when involving something unpredictable, such as wildlife.

Machines have been programmed to understand and work with humans quite well, but not with other peculiar animal minds so much. With his particular outdoors experience, he often gets sent on the higher paying government contracts out in the national forrests. It’s not just where the biggest robots are, but also where the animals are too.

When recalling a particular incident on the job, he smiles. It was sometime last year that one of his workers, tasked with thinning out a particular species of plant from creek sides north of town ran into trouble. It was pulling some of the tall weeds out of the ground when it was interrupted by a curious cow elk. Knowing to keep clear of it, the robot backed away, but right into another bull that had come up behind it. Instead of clapping his hands and running the animals off himself, like he should have, he decided to watch what was going to happen instead.

Watching the machine’s choices during the mostly curious attack from the bull was every bit worth it. It was a slow, but entertaining encounter. He sat there quietly on a wind-felled tree and let it all unfold on its own. The comic flailing of the worker is what was the most priceless. The bacteriophage shape of the machine added a lot to the hilarity of it all as well. Spindly as they were, its arms did pathetically managed to upright its body each time it was thrashed to the ground by the bull’s antlers.

After multiple failed attempts to escape, the machine eventually found that if it stayed completely still and limp, the animal would leave it alone. As if it had gotten its butt kicked and knew it, the poor thing gave up and laid down halfway into the creek where it was shoved. Disgraced, it patiently waited for the animal to finally strut away victorious.

The machine’s choice had nothing to do with emotion, or any previously programmed response, but was a rather unique and impressive adaptation born of its own cognitive capabilities. The thing was truly able to think for itself. At the time, he could almost feel that the thing wanted to survive. He knows very well that it wasn’t the case for real, but it gives him the hope that some robots might at least have a capable foundation for such thoughts.

To him, these little occurrences are worth waiting weeks for. Even though he truly does have a fairly basic job, he has come to appreciate its quirks. Most of the time, he feels let down by current robot intelligence, but on days like that, he can feel like they just might make something of themselves one day.

Over the years, he’s likely gotten to see the largest variety of machines at in the field than anyone else out there. Sometimes, when he comes across a model that’s especially impressive, he will copy it’s programming, to tinker with back at home. He could see some pretty serious criminal charges thrown at him if he were ever caught doing it, but that’s never stopped him from anything before. It’s not like he is putting any of his modifications back out in the world. It’s just for his own fun.

One day, he hopes be able to adapt something into a more personable system, like he tried to do back when he was in school. The cognitive foundations of these machines just aren’t made for it though. They simply have no sense for intuition.

With his job, he’s in the best position to find the programming weaknesses in all the new machines. A developer would never see all the things he does. It’s awful tempting to try out his own fixes on them, but it’d be too risky. In the end, it would still tae an completely different platform to fix the real weaknesses that keep coming up, and he’d never be able to accomplish something like that on his own. It would take a hundred of him to do that.

On the other side of his apartment door, he notices the sound of two women talking loudly and laughing in the hallway. He’s still standing at his window, but now he’s lost his train of thought. He checks the time on his phone again and then glances in the direction of all the racket. He figures it must be the two young women from the other end of the hall. Though he’s never really spoken with them, he’s come to recognize their voices coming and going at all hours. He wishes they would shut the hell up for just once.

His other neighbor always whines about him merely closing his door too loudly when he comes and goes early in the morning, but no one says shit about the other two. It’s probably because they’re pretty. The last time he came across them in the hallway it was probably four in the morning. They were coming back drunk and he was heading out on a long work venture. He must have had a pretty sour face, because they got real quiet and skirted him wide along the wall when they passed by.

His annoyance with them is not really because of all that anyway. It’s just that whenever he comes across them, he feels so damn alone. They both seem to really be happy together, while he has no one. At times like that, he can really feel the social pressure of not having a partner in his life, like everyone else his age does.

Not putting in the effort to bond with anyone else is just another one of those parts of his life that he knows he complacently neglects to follow through with. It’s just another one of the reasons why his life feels like it’s been slipping on by. Having no one to love and share his days with can really hurt sometimes. It’s yet another one of those reasons why the thought of death has been pestering him. Forty two years old, and he’s still never experienced what he would call true love.

He turns away from the window, mumbling “What a shitty way to go out.”

Everyone his age is married and their kids have already grown up by now. They’ve all been living their lives to the fullest for the last twenty years, all while most of the company he keeps is mechanical.

“At least a robots not gonna lie to you.”

He wonders if it really is his fault that he’s alone, or if it’s just circumstance. Maybe he’s merely a statistic. Someone out of all the millions of people has to be alone, sad, and afraid of dying that way. He doesn’t think he ever did anything unusual to end up this way. He went to school like everyone else, has a decent job, and gets out a lot. It makes him wonder how the hell he ended up pulling the short straw. Sometimes he wonders if he’s better off without a woman. The other guys at work keep saying that, but they’re usually just venting.

When he’s had enough of feeling sorry for himself, he looks around the mess of his apartment and then over to that old computer, trying to think of something to do. Demotivation sets in a little deeper. Across the room is his small kitchen, with a sink full of dishes in it. It’s not just the sink that’s a mess either, the dishes are starting to collect out onto the countertop too.

Through the open bedroom door, he can see the foot end of his unmade bed, heaped with finished laundry that he never hung up. Then, there’s his couch, where he often ends up sleeping, with a wadded up blanket on it. The mess is spelling his life out for him.

Holy crap, he thinks, and then considers if he let all this happen to him, or if he did it willingly? Somewhere in there he knows there’s a difference between the two. Struggling with the choice of going outside and away from the depressing sight, or forcing himself to clean it all up is tough. He knows he needs to get control over his bad habits, but they’re so deeply set in.

Like he stated in his last journal entry, he needs to start a new and clean chapter of his life. If only that chapter would come and sweep him off his feet already. He’s always hoped that the change his life needs would come from outside of his little world, but it’s probably not going to happen like that, and waiting even longer won’t better his chances either.

“I guess you’re gonna clean this shit up then.” A He says it aoud, as if it’ll make it more authoritative.

He feels that it’s maybe the only thing he can guarantee himself will actually happen today, if he’ll just quit fussing and do it already. Everyone else has a robot to do their cleaning for them. He wonders if maybe that’s why his place looks like hell. He tries to assure himself that anyone else’s place would look like shit without one too, but he knows it’s not true. The thought of getting himself a robot has crossed his mind a couple times, but it is not going to happen. A single man living alone in a small apartment with his own robot does not make for a good image at all.

After merely an hour of what seems more like dilly-dallying than work, the apartment is clean. Feeling optimistic, he imagines the sight of it as being acceptable enough to even have someone over, if the chance were ever to arise. Habitually checking his phone again for any messages, he notices the time.

It’s only ten-o-clock in the morning. “Crap, now what am I gonna do?”

A little stir crazy from too much inside work, he decides he might go ahead and take off on one of his walks. Usually he tries to plan them out, but it’s been a while, and he won’t go far.

Since he’s still wearing his maroon work polo and olive colored slacks from the day before, he only bothers to put his shoes back on and then heads out of the apartment. As he steps through the door, he sees the two young women next door coming back down the hall towards him on their way to the elevator. Slightly startled by them, he turns around and pretends to lock the door while he looks down the front of his clothes. They still look clean enough to not obviously be from yesterday. He lets out a breath and turns back around.

The two have stopped in the hall out front of the elevator, and are standing there watching him. They aren’t even bothering to not be obvious about it either. The two of them are leaning out to the side and looking right at him. He imagines asking them what the fuck they’re staring at. He’d never do such a thing though, but it’d almost be worth seeing their faces. Besides, he’s actually in a decent mood this morning.

As he heads down the hallway, he considers that they could easily ask him the same thing. He sure doesn’t mind the sight of them. It’s honestly kind of hard to not stare at them, the way they’re dressed.

It appears he’s not the only one still in last night’s clothes either. They must’ve gone out again last night. He casually puts his hands in his pockets, but then pulls them out again so he doesn’t slump his shoulders. They seem to be waiting at the elevator for him. They haven’t even hit the call button yet. He can’t imagine why, but he might as well find out. When he thinks about it, this might actually be the first time he will have spoken with them at all.

Out front of the elevator, he tries to keep his eyes from wandering downward while he’s face to face with them. It’s hard to tell which one is more attractive at the moment too. The shorter one with the jet-black bob haircut is wearing some seriously short shorts and leather boots this time. She has a hot punk look to her, making him suddenly wonder if it’s his kind of thing.

The taller one, with long wavy light amber hair, is wearing a maroon tank top and tight white jeans. A look typically more his style. Looking back to the other again, he catches onto her rather big green eyes, heart shaped face and up-turned nose. By the way she’s looking at him, he can already tell she’s the troublemaker of the two.

Trying to not focus on her for too long, he looks back over to the taller one again. Up close, she has an almost awkwardly strong and square jawline compared to the other. He wouldn’t consider her to be hot like the other, but her long narrow nose gives her a definitively statuesque and womanly beauty. Immediately, he gets a little bit of a confrontational vibe from her. She stands her ground with a rather stiff posture and pinched eyebrows. She patiently watches him like a hawk. With a slight glance at the other out of the corner of his eye, it dawns on him that she might be being territorial. He means to say hi first, but the way she is capturing his eyes in hers has him stalled.

One thing he notices is the line across her eyes. He’s seen it on them before, but not up close. The two will often paint a simple single stripe across their eyes from one ear to the other, matching it to their lipstick or clothes. It’s a new fashion trend that he actually likes for once. One has an inch thin bluish green stripe across her eyes, and the other a maroon one about three quarters of an inch broad. When he stops to stand with them, the one with the shoulder length black hair beats him to breaking the ice.

“Aren’t you up a little late for work Aaron? I’m kind of surprised to see you’re even still going out. Most everyone else is taking the day off.”

He looks down at his clothes again, realizing what it must look like. She has one eyebrow raised and is looking at him curiously.

“Um, oh, I wasn’t going to…, not a full day. I was just gonna do a little prep for tommorrow, but that’s all really.”

“Most of our sector has no power. We were kind of wondering if you knew anything more than what everyon’s been told. You’re contracting for the power company aren’t you?”

“Well, no, not directly. I work for WTC, work team coordinating.” He pulls at the embossed logo on his shirt. “I’ve done work for them in the past though.”

The taller one leans forward slightly, to inspect the three letters on his shirt and then quickly straightens with a more friendly face this time. “Ah, yeah… I recognize your colors. You guys are one of our biggest customers.”

To his surprise, they somehow know his name. He doesn’t remember ever introducing himself to them before. It makes him feel like a jerk for not remembering them at all. He mean’t to ask, but it’d be kind of a weird braking point to do it now. He can’t help but notice the taller one has been giving him a shameless look over, all the while he’s been putting in the effort to not do it to either of them. It’s throwing him off guard. He tries to keep eye contact with her friend, while he’s talking to her, but it’s becoming distracting. When she notices he’s clearly noticed, she works her way into the chit-chat too.

“The Werker plant still has power. We have a huge backup system, but nothing capable of supporting production. They gave most everyone the day off, cause of the… you know. The rats seem to be escalating things lately and they don’t want any of us on sight if we’re just gonna stand around anyway. Besides, my project is kind of doing its own thing right now.”

“So what are the two of you doing for your free day? You look like you’re up for some fun.” He figures they’re just going to pass out for the rest of the day after being up all night.

The taller one finally relaxes her posture, shifting her weight to one leg. “We’re just making a quick trip to the store.”

“Yeah, a real quick trip, the way she drives!”

He cracks a smile and looks curiously at them. “Hey alright. Fast means fun right? I was actually just gonna take a walk on out to the substation myself. The one just past Werker, to see what happened over there.”

“What about the rats, there could still be some of those zealots around? There’s no telling what they’ll pull next.”

“I doubt they’ll be out in the middle of the day, not after what they’ve done, not for a good while. I don’t know though. I kind of thought they knew better to stay under the radar. Guess not.”

The two look to be surprised that he’s still going to go over there. They don’t appear to be shocked, or worried by any means, but maybe more curious than anything. He’s a little surprised to see them so fluid with the R-word too. It’s a rather insensitive term for the homeless. The’yre a little brash about it, but he finds it amusing, especially coming from women. He can get a much better feel for a person’s standing when they don’t shelter their words.

When the elevator doors open, the two smile at him and turn to walk on in. They wait for him to join them, but he holds his hand up in gesture that he’s not heading down. He is, but he always takes the stairs. It’s not that he’s afraid of elevators or anything. He does it to keep himself moving. Living in an apartment in the city doesn’t do anyone any favors.

As he opens the door to the stairwell, he can see out of the corner of his eye that the two women are still holding the doors open and are watching him. When he looks back, they disappear. He quickly realizes he should’ve just taken the damn elevator with them. It was nice to talk with them after all this time. He’s quite curious about them now.

It would at least have given him a chance to not come off as being such a stranger. Now he’s imagining their discussion of him on their way down. He wonders if they think he’s taking the stairs six floors down, as if he would rather fall to his death than be trapped in a closed steel box with them. He feels stupid.

Very few people ever take the stairs. Mostly only service robots use them, to stay out of the way. He only sees anyone else in there about once a month. They’re usually doing something private, like crying where no one will see them. Sometimes there’ll be something new someone has written on the wall. It’s usually something terrible they want others to see, like who’s a slut or something. For him, the stairs help remind him of the mountains. Merely the thought of the forest makes him feel better.

At the bottom, he hesitates, imagining he might be seen by the other two as they’re getting out of the elevator. They might notice him, but then quickly look away, pretending that they didn’t. He’d become that weird guy that does whatever in the stairwell. When he opens the door to the main floor, no one is there. He’s relieved, but kind of disappointed as well. Thinking back on their conversation, he wishes he’d been a little more social. He hopes he’ll get a chance to talk to them again.