Disrepair
A science fiction short story
This week’s story is something I wrote during the height of the big supply chain issues a few years ago. That possibly dates it, but I prefer to think it makes it a nice little time capsule.This story also available in my anthology Advanced Word Associations.
More than anything, he hoped that she was real. K had first encountered Ruby online as the summer brought rain to the forest around his home. His condition had isolated him for a long time, and he needed to talk to somebody. She lived a few thousand miles away, in a city that still managed to operate after the Ebb. They communicated by video chat, though without a camera K's feed was voice-only. Her feed showed a youthful black-haired woman in a rather spare office. She worked in mechanical repairs.
But video could be deceiving. K knew that only too well.
"So you're really all alone?" Ruby asked him, the first time they met.
"That's right," K said. "I still have everything I need to survive, for the time being. But the town was abandoned after the Ebb. I'm the last one left. Trees have been growing up all around. It's very nearly a true forest."
"Then you must have been there for years. Did you really have no one else?"
"I used to have friends living with me, but one left to work on a farm out west. The other passed away two summers ago. It hasn't been the worst experience--many people have lived as hermits for much longer. Do you have many friends?"
"Of course I do," Ruby said. "The neighborhood I live in is pretty tightly knit. If I could just bring you over here."
"It would be nice to see somebody in person again."
"I'll bet it would. I know you don't have a camera, but do you have any pictures?"
"Of course." He sent one over, showing himself in his younger days, when he was in better health, when he was attending a party in another town. Before the Ebb, everyone had much more freedom of movement.
What happened? It wasn't really one thing, more a cascade of numerous things happening at once. A massive glitch was discovered that gummed up computer systems all over the Northern Hemisphere. A generation of people had been raised on simpler software, taking it for granted, leaving fewer people available with the deeper machine-level skills needed to fix it. In the meantime, the glitch scrambled shipping schedules, payment methods, and basic communications. A dry spell that year had hurt crop yields, making it all the more urgent to ship what did manage to grow.
With technology no longer reliable, more and more companies resorted to analog methods. More cash. More pen and paper. Industry had to slow down. Jobs died. Livelihoods collapsed. Cities shrank as people moved into the country to try and live off the land, while smaller towns withered as their economies collapsed.
By the time K met Ruby, the glitch had long since been fixed, but too late to stop the Ebb and its effects. It wasn't sudden enough to be a collapse. It was too subtle to be an apocalypse. The industrial-technological world had simply… ebbed.
And it was largely thanks to that Ebb that K's condition had deteriorated so badly, and that he had less and less contact with the outside world. His treatment options were gone. Now K could only limp, and very slowly at that. He only went outside very rarely. If anything happened out there, even a fall, he'd be at the mercy of the elements, if not the wolves that had reconquered the surrounding area.
Any human being he knew might as well have been mere information on a screen.
"Well, everything's running rather smoothly out here," Ruby said, a few chats later, when K asked. "I was pretty little when the Ebb happened, so I don't really remember what it was like before. I've just had to adapt along with everybody else. And it's not like this is the first time humanity's had to deal with more limited resources."
"So the work isn't too difficult?"
"Not really. I like working with my hands. When I can get a malfunctioning joint reconnected and an arm to start moving again, it's such a satisfying feeling. I don't have a stomach for surgery, but I imagine this is how it feels."
"That's good," K said. "So robotics haven't ceased where you are?"
"Heh, if anything, it's the opposite. So many people have cybernetic prosthetics, and so many industries need robots to do some of the heavier lifting, they need to keep all that up and running. I've been taking bots apart and putting them back together since I was little."
"That's good," K said. "So much machinery around here has rotted and fallen apart. Some of it might be reparable, but there's no one around to do it. I might, if not for my mobility."
"Doesn't sound like there are all that many people around to use it, either."
"True." Pretty much the only robotics that K had access to were the parts in his little home. The other housemates had been roboticists as well, and they had left some parts scattered around here and there. Most of them were too small to be useful for anything other than small projects, but it gave K something to do. He still had enough mobility to wander around and tinker.
K's talks with Ruby were the most he'd been able to express himself in all these years of hermitage. He had a renewed hope for the world. Even if he finally fell apart, and the forest consumed the town and its buildings, the human race that had built the town could continue, and maybe learn the lessons that might have prevented the Ebb.
But still the nagging fear pestered him. 3D models had become extraordinarily realistic before the Ebb, and there were still autonomous programs with such avatars roaming the information superhighway. K couldn't shake the thought that Ruby might be one of them, one that might have forgotten what it was, might have latched on to the identity programmed into it, so that even it couldn't tell it wasn't real. The worst part was that K couldn't think of any way to prove it one way or another. Any emotional connection was important, but one with an AI wasn't the same as one with true flesh and blood.
One day, as it rained outside, forming a gray veil outside the window, with the steady staticky patter on the roof, K happened to be sitting at a work table, attaching some parts to some joints, and fitting those joints together to experiment with the configuration. What he wound up with was a mechanical hand, about the size of a toddler's.
It gave him an idea.
"I want you to come visit," K told Ruby.
"Oh?" Ruby hemmed and hawed. "It's not that I wouldn't like to meet you in person. But I'm busy here, and it's not as easy to travel as it used to be. Even if I took a train, I'm not sure if there are any stations near you."
"I'm not talking about you traveling. I'm talking about a more virtual visit. But one where you can still be present. If I could build a robotic body, you could connect with it, and use a virtual reality system to control it from where you are."
"Can you do that?" Ruby said. "That is, of course it's possible, but are you in good enough condition to build it?"
"My hands still work," K said. "It's the parts for the robot itself that I lack."
Ruby rubbed her chin. "You know… We specialize in old Manikin parts. I could scrounge some together and have them sent out to you. It'd take a while."
"That's fine. You've read my mind perfectly. I can wait however long it takes. Just send the parts, and I'll assemble them. Then we can meet face to face."
"Yes, yes! And if you can build that Manikin, I can send more parts and build you some new prosthetics. Then you can move more freely again. At least, if that's what you want."
"The thought had occurred to me as well."
"All right, then. I'll let you know when it's on the way."
And so K began to wait. Ruby sent him word the next day that the order had been shipped out. Expected delivery would be in two weeks. It would have to go to the region by train, K's town by car, and the last mile to K's house on foot.
K busied himself most days with more tinkering. He put together one arm, and he was able to fit the hand he'd made onto it, but the hinge in the elbow was warped, so it bent with a scrape inside whenever K moved it. He had a spinal column, but without a torso, there wasn't much of anything he could do with it. On the other hand, he was able to put the arm together with a small control station and program a trackpad to control the hand. It still scraped, but maybe it would come in handy when Ruby's parts arrived.
They would arrive. This K believed in his deepest self. Everything K did, every step he took through his home, was done in anticipation of that package arriving. It was the first time he would have a guest in such a long time.
Was this hope? K couldn't be sure. He couldn't recall offhand the last time he'd felt such a thing.
A few days later, Ruby let him know, "I've got it all shipped out. It took some finagling with management, but they agreed to a discount, and now it's on its way."
"I'm so grateful," K said.
"Just be sure to read the instructions for the top of the torso very carefully, and fit the vertebrae in there just right."
"I've put together a Manikin before. Was it hard to find the parts?"
"Not really. Manikins use the same basic parts as most cyberprosthetics, so my company keeps a lot of them around. Funny thing is, there used to be at least one Manikin in every clothing store in the country, to model the clothes. Then the Ebb happened, and they needed to be decommissioned and stripped for parts. There's never been a shortage."
"I think I recall hearing that," K said. "What was the estimate for delivery?"
"I got expedited, so about nine days."
"Very good. I look forward to it."
But then an incident a few nights later made K wonder if he would even live to see the delivery.
He had been making his way through the house, shutting off all the lights, checking the locks, when he found he'd left a window wide open. He'd needed some fresh air earlier, but forgotten to shut it. K shuffled his feet across the floor, moving forward little by little toward the window. Going outside was one thing, but K hardly needed to allow the outside in.
Just before he reached the window, he heard a soft rumbling growl nearby.
He turned, and behind him was a pair of bright golden eyes staring out from a head of silver fur. Fangs of white moonlight showed at the end of its muzzle.
The wolf was standing beside the computer where K talked to Ruby.
K stretched his foot back. The wolf must have gotten in through this same window. K knew perfectly well that turning his back would give the wolf the signal to strike. If he could stand his ground, he just might be able to coax it to leave.
But as K bore his weight down on that leg, and began to take another step backwards, his knee gave out. K fell straight down. He tried to lift himself back up, but his arms felt the strain as well. If either of them failed, he was finished.
The wolf padded toward him.
K had hardly any strength to move. "I'm sorry, but I'm not going to be much of a meal."
That didn't mean the wolf couldn't do some damage anyway.
The wolf gazed at him, sniffed at him, then clenched its jaws around his left hand. It shook, and pulled, and K could feel its teeth pressing into his fingers. But soon it let go. The wolf seemed to agree with K. Not much of a meal after all.
"Actually, I don't have any food," K said, not caring if the wolf could understand him. "I'm not much of a host."
The wolf huffed, then leaped over him and out of the window.
K spent the next several minutes lifting himself up and pulling the window down, then dropped back to the ground. He decided to rest there, in that spot on the floor.
He managed to straighten himself back up the following morning and make it back to the workshop, albeit sluggishly. His leg still didn't work, so he had to lean on the wall and on furniture for support. If he had the materials he might be able to put together a crutch, but there was nothing around for even a makeshift device. Not even a pole.
His left hand wasn't much better. The wolf's teeth had left marks all over, and it had become nearly impossible to bend the fifth finger. The others could still bend, but not as well. K often needed both hands for his work. He'd need it for Ruby's Manikin. He might be able to get some grip on some objects, but this would slow down his work a great deal.
K didn't reach out to Ruby again for another three days.
"What's wrong?" she said. "I've been trying to call."
"I'm sorry," K said. "I've been preoccupied." He proceeded to tell her about the wolf.
"That's awful," Ruby said. "Does it still hurt?"
"No." Not that it ever did, now that K thought about it. "I can still build, but not as easily. If anything, the leg is the real problem."
"And you think you'll be all right until the Manikin parts arrive?"
"I can manage."
"And if you can't?"
"Then I won't."
"That's not good enough, K!" Ruby sobbed. "Don't you realize how terrified I've been? When you didn't answer, I thought you'd died! I was close to sending a search party! And just the thought of you dying alone in that wilderness… It's too painful for me to even consider. It's one thing to be tough and stoic, but how can you treat this like it's nothing?"
It was the first time K had ever seen Ruby cry. Had he ever cried? K couldn't remember. Sometimes K felt more like a statue than anything else. "I suppose I'm just not built that way."
Ruby took a moment to compose herself. "All right. Fine. Feel however you want. Let me know when the parts arrive."
By K's count, he had four more days left.
He did not contact Ruby during that time. She had made it sound as though she didn't want to be contacted, and he only wanted her to be happy, so he obliged. He spent most of the time in his workshop, staying busy with his hands. Without the use of his leg, there wasn't much place else to go.
He wondered what that wolf was doing. He began to envy it. Of course the wolf wasn't invincible; it could still suffer injury, infirmity, and death. But for now the wolf had the whole wilderness in which to roam free. It would have the pack to return to when the hunt was over. It had solitude, and yet was never alone.
If he could build the Manikin, then Ruby would be with him. He wouldn't be alone. If Ruby could help him, then he could move. He could be free.
Finally, at eleven o'clock one morning, there came a knock on the door.
K hobbled out to the front of the house. "I'm on my way. Give me a minute."
He answered it, and found a man outside with a three-foot crate on a magneto-hover cart beside him.
The man had a dense black beard and a wide-brimmed out. "My. You… look like you've seen better days."
"I'd say so," K said. "Do you mind carrying that in for me?"
"Certainly. Hell, I didn't even think there was anything out here anymore." The postman pushed the cart over the threshold, and followed K's directions into the workshop. He also opened up the crate and removed all the boxes inside, laying them out neatly around the work bench. "Need anything else?"
"No. I am grateful." K lurched through the workshop. It was nice to have a person here again, if only for a few minutes. These few minutes would be enough to change K's life for the better. "I can take things from here."
"Are you sure? You're in pretty bad shape."
"I'm well aware of that. That's what all this is for."
The postman looked back at the parts he'd just spread out. "Right. I think I understand. Good luck with all that." He headed for the door.
"Be careful," K said. "There are wolves out there."
"Yeah, I know." The postman patted the holster on his side. "Nobody in these parts leaves without a spark gun."
"In that case, stay safe."
The postman took his cart off into the woods, and K locked the door behind him.
First things first, he needed to do what Ruby instructed. He went to the computer, and gave her a call, but she wasn't available. Instead he left her a voice message: "They've arrived. I'm starting work right away. I won't be able to answer until I'm done."
K went to the workshop and started opening the boxes.
He started from the bottom and worked his way up. First the feet, then each calf and each thigh, and then attaching them to the pelvis. The spinal casing fit in the back. The torso latched onto the spine. And so on. Each part needed some assembly, and to compensate for his injury from the wolf, he relied on the small mechanical arm he'd built, with the child-size hand. Its tiny fingers were better suited for holding screws and manipulating switches, and he could control it with the touchpad. It helped him get the Manikin's arms together.
The last parts were the head, the neck, and the outer shoulder and chest chassis.
Finally he turned the switch at the base of its neck.
The Manikin stood up and stared at him. K moved his arm, and the Manikin moved its own to reflect him. He told it to take five steps, and it took five steps.
The project took four days. He left a message with Ruby to let her know.
The following morning he had a reply saying that she was ready to test the VR system at noon.
They connected to their chat, and Ruby's face appeared on screen. "Hey, K. How're you holding up?"
"I could be better," K said. "You'll see when you come over."
"I'm sorry I snapped at you before. It's just after all this time, it's still a little hard to understand where you're coming from. By all rights, you should be in immense pain."
"I'm not, though. So don't worry. Just come over and see me."
"All right." Ruby clicked a few things on her end. "I've sent over instructions for connecting the VR signal on the Manikin. You ready?"
K was ready. He connected the Manikin to the computer and read off the hardware and software IDs for the VR system in the skull, and installed the extra code to allow it to connect to a cellular signal.
Ruby fitted the controllers on her palms and put on her goggles. "Okay, switch her on."
K did.
The Manikin stood up, and looked around the workshop, at all the scattered parts that had prepared the way for her arrival. It took a few steps, and they were more fluid than the steps the Manikin had taken on its own. "Looks like this is a success," Ruby said, out of both the computer and the Manikin. "Only I can't see you. Are you hiding? If so, it's not funny, K."
"I'm not hiding," K said. "I'm right in front of you."
She looked straight and saw K for the first time. She saw his injuries--the tooth marks in his hand, the synthetic skin reduced to patches, the rusted joints in his mechanical hips, and the loose hinge in his knee. His face would have been a blank, featureless skull with pale green lights, just like the face he was looking at now. Overall, a far cry from the picture he'd sent, from when he'd modeled clothes for customers in a department store, before he fell into such disrepair.
"K…" The Manikin's hands rose up toward a nonexistent mouth. "I had no idea. You never told me you… That you were…"
"A Manikin?" K said. "I thought you could tell."