The Coast

The robot was getting louder as it aged.

I woke and I could feel the damp warm hair sticking to my nape. There were streams of light peering in through the venetian blinds over my windows just bright enough for me to see the light shining off the doorknob. I looked at the wall and saw that it was only 6:30, still four hours before I needed to leave for work. I sighed and rolled into my covers, shutting my eyes and forcing another hour or so of slumber. The bed sheets were wet beneath my torso, and I realized that I forgot to lower the temperature in my drunken state last night. The humidity had made me sweat straight through my under shirt. I reached at the bottom of the lining, shimmied my way out of the clammy top and threw it on the floor. Instantly the closet opened and the SanI-BOT© rolled straight to the shirt, pulled out its telescopic arm to clamp the shirt, and dragged it into the hamper.

Seven years. That’s how long it had been since I bought the SanI-BOT©. I still remember where I was. The 2059 World’s Fair in Miami. I was walking past the EU Rhineland presentation of what appeared to be two rotating rings that spun through each other using magnetic field synthesizers. As I admired the rings, I walked straight into a foreigner with darker skin. Our heads collided and I fell to the ground bewilder. I remember the immense pain, and the daze I felt as I opened my eyes and saw the sky. At that very moment in time the fuzzy clouds and the pin prick satellites seemed out of focus and out of reality. Before I could think, two beautiful women rushed over to the man and I.

“Oh my, are you alright?” I heard from one of the ladies, in a seductive Georgian accent. As she helped me up to a sitting position, she remarked in a sweet tone, “You sure took him down with some force there, honey.”

“What?” I replied, still recounting the moment of impact. “What happened?” I asked, not knowing who the question was directed to, or why the question was asked.

“Well sweetie, you knocked that poor Arab straight into a coma,” she said with a plethora of sacrasm.

“Coma? Oh no, I couldn’t have,” I said worriedly, immediately getting up and trying to check up on this comatose Arab when I began to hear laughter from the woman.

“Oh sugar, I was only kiddin’ with y’all,” she said, now blushing and smiling at me.

“Please, that’s not funny,” I remarked, finally seeing the man I had knocked into sitting on the ground being tended to by the Georgian girl’s friend. He was holding his forehead and recalling the incident just as slowly as I was. Around him was a scattered pile of metallic business cards.

“I’m sorry I didn’t mean to be rude,” the lady replied, now being apologetic. Helping me to my feet she said, “Why don’t me and my friend Charlene buy you nice gentlemen some champagne. I’m sure that would feel just nice after this little… ‘bumping in-to’” she said smirking with laughter.

“Perhaps,” I replied, now turning to the Arab. “Sir, I’m very sorry,” I said offering my hand to his assistance.

“Please, do not worry,” he said in a Middle Eastern accent, ignoring my hand to shuffle his cards back into a stack. I started to help him get his pile back into order, and as I handed him a stack, he instantly gave me one. “Please take one, you will be very impressed,” he insisted. Before I could examine the business of the card, Charlene had interrupted us.

“You gentlemen should get a little more acquainted over some drinks” said Charlene, finally acknowledging my presence.

“Yes please, we do insist,” said the Georgian woman, of whom I still had no name for.

The Arab looked at the women, then looked at me with a wink and a smile. “It is getting late for afternoon strolling,” he said to me, “ I think it’s time to start the night a little early my friend. Eh?” He took Charlene around the waist and walked off, giving me a greasy wink then flipping his head to his new playmate.

I turned to my new lady friend and said, “Well, I think we should all get to know each other. By the by, your name was.”

“Portia, and I would love to have a man to share this beautiful tropic night with.”

“Well I’m Jason,” I said as I smiled at her and pecked her lips. We walked off and caught up to Charlene and the Arab as we headed for the Les Resistance bar for the rest of the night.

I thrusted further into Portia.

I could almost make out an abdominal muscle through her soft skin, and at that moment I saw in my mind two machines, working to pleasure each other. It was a mutual selfishness; a fulfilling of the opposites pelvic will center, but through this selfishness was a competition. It was no longer who could receive the most, but who could give more. The machines were only the vehicles, but the minds were what were making love; the minds were what were pleasing each other.

With every embrace her legs bent around my loins ever tighter. She began to scream harder amid every plunge, and her panting in between was orgasmic. As her fingers ran through my long hair I spurted sighs of pleasure & began yelling her name. I opened my eyes and looked into Portia’s face. Her eyes were tight shut as she was focusing on the ecstasy she was feeling. I wanted her to look up, so I gave her two light thrusts, and then a deep, violent thrust. With a third, her eyes popped and she could now see me smiling right down upon her. I repeated my embrace, and with the quickest smile she cringed in sweet pain and threw her head down into the pillow.

My hands glided across her back to her hips, as I propped my torso up, using my abdomen to tower over my beautiful night mistress. Immediately I could feel a change of power, me now dominating over her. I felt a hundred years into the past, feeling like the dominant man I was. She surely felt this too. Her sapphire eyes looked into mine and I could see the submission in her grin. I stayed propped up for a while, admiring the curvy physique of this woman.

My abs grew & tired I flopped down onto Portia’s bosom and began to kiss her heavily. She threw her arms round my shoulders and went along with it, and then I gave her a final peck and started on the home stretch.

As I peaked, I fell into my lover’s arms and I could feel the sweat rolling off each other’s bodies. I was tired.

I awoke to Portia stealing all of the covers. My naked body was cold. I got up and stumbled to the bathroom with a lead head full of hangover. Opening the door, I found Khalid, the Arab salesman I had head butted hours earlier, snorting a line of Costina off of the bathroom sink. Flabbergast, my first thought was how cleanly the sink was in this quality of hotel. It hadn’t even occurred to me that this was the first time I had seen the light blue tint of the euphoric powder, but all I could think of was the germs.

“Oh shit, you can’t eat a loaf of cigarettes Mr. President,” yelled Khalid. His eyes were bulging with blue veins, and his pupils were stretched wide. He broke into laughter and I entertained him with a chuckle.

“Is that Costina Blue?” I asked hinting at the powder lines on the sink.

Khalid looked at me seriously, then slowly stretched out a smile and nodded handsomely with squinting eyes. “Why yes my good sir. It would be very much appreciated if you took your one way ticket to Coolsville,” he smugly offered and pointed at the powder.

“What the hell,” I replied, “I just lost my job. It’ll be months before they can find me a new one.” I grabbed the blue powdered euro he held rolled up in his hand, bent over, and as I was about to take a sniff I asked, “Will this show up on a drug test?”

“Only with a spinal tap, and they only do those on known dealers,” he answered, and I bent over to snort it.

As the crystals rushed into my nose, it felt like a cavalry of horses galloped straight into my nostrils and out into the universe which exploded pleasantly through the back of my head. I instantly saw the white bathroom lights tint to a shade of teal. Suddenly my whole body felt like a beach, and the space outside my body felt like the ocean. I had become the island of my realities, and my body felt like a destination for all the tides and waves in the world.

“You feel it already,” whispered Khalid, “The Island.” I opened my eyes and realized I had fallen unconscious for a moment. “You know what would be very exciting for you right now?” he asked me slyly.

“What?” I said, almost worried.

“An orgy,” he replied, “Nothing is better than some American pussy on ‘the coast.’ I’ll go slip some to Charlene. We’ll meet in your room in a minute.” He left two lines on the bathroom and hinted at Portia, visible outside the cracked bathroom door. I smiled at him, and as he left I called to Portia to finish off one of the two lines sitting on the dirty porcelain sink.

I woke with Charlene lying crookedly on top of me, her face near my crotch and her buttocks underneath Lee. We looked like a four-car pileup stuck on a queen size mattress. I realized that I had slept through the final day of the World’s Fair. Although this was the last time it was in my home country for the decade, I wasn’t too upset. It was boring when I was there, and it became exciting just as I left. My nasal cavity felt like it was peeling, so I blew my nose and saw blood spurt out. I threw Charlene’s head off my groin and ran to the sink only to find that my bloody nose was a trick of my mind. I hadn’t quite worked all the “coast” out of my system, so I went out on the balcony to smoke a cigarette. As I viewed the far off beach outside our hotel, I noticed that the edges of my vision were still blue, as if the world had changed its outline.

I inhaled slowly and exhaled even slower, feeling the smooth puffs clean out my lungs. As I took another drag, I heard the mechanical door glide open, and outside came Khalid, as naked as I was, sporting sunglasses and a green cigarette in his lips.

“How is your head?” Khalid asked, sighing slowly as he lit his cigarette.

“I feel like I’ve died, and now that I’ve seen God, he sent me back. The world looks different. I know it isn’t ‘out there’,” I said, pointing out at the city that stood between the water and us. “ ‘Out there’ it’s still the same world it was yesterday, but in my mind it’s like a whole new painting, no, a whole new canvas.”

“It never changes… back any way. It’s never going to be the same ever again. It’s like Pandora,” he said. “You remember that business card I gave you?”

“Yea, what about it?” I asked.

“Well, my work offers a very new enterprise to the public. We invest in animatronics and automaton technologies. It’s basically the future of our standard of living,” he said bluntly.

I looked at him in curiosity. “You mean robots?” I asked.

“Correct. Robots, if you will. They’re the future, I’m telling you,” he said to me like a salesman. “Think about it, we have our cars made by ‘em, we have our crops grown by ‘em. They control the speed rails, the military, NASA. Anything a person can do, a robot can theoretically do. It’s all a question of time… and money.”

“Well, yeah they’re used in society, but how close are we to having, say, the home life of a human change by robots,” I said.

“You want a robot that will clean your apartment?” he asked.

“They make those?” I said with my ears perked.

He put his arm on my shoulder and said, “With my friends, Jason, I could get you not only a robot for nearly free, but I could get you a job.” I looked up at him, and he said, “Were looking for some people to market our product. Were looking for people with some good style; I’ve only known you for a day and a half, and I like your style.” I thought about what he meant by that, and wondered if I would offer employment to any guy I had just had a drug-crazed orgy with.

“Listen, lets ditch these broads so we don’t pay for the room, and we can go get you that SanI-BOT©,” Khalid said.

“SanI-BOT©?” I said

“You got a lot to learn,” he said. We got dressed and started to leave. Khalid walked out the door. As I followed him, I looked down at the passed out girls, pulled out the pen in my left pocket and wrote my number on Portia’s navel. I closed the door and entered a bold new future.

II

Imprisoned by our own future.

I opened my eyes & peered at the wall. 9:30. I had an hour before I needed to be up, but I couldn’t sleep any further. As I flipped my body around and threw the covers off of me, I felt a tug on my shoulder.

“Stay in bed for a little while longer, I want some more sugar before you leave,” said the female figure laying next me in that pool of sweat.

I quickly put my arm up to deflect her advance. I was in no mood to copulate this early in the morning before work. I tried to slide out of bed when again I felt a tug, this time on my genitals.

“Please daddy, just one more,” she said, now sitting up and licking me ear. I turned around fast and put my arm around her as she shoved her tongue into my mouth. I hastily hit the snooze button located on her lower back, and she went from kinky to servantile. She instantly looked at me and said, “What would you want for breakfast honey?”

I told her I wanted two eggs over easy and a glass of milk. She got up, dressed in her robe and walked out of the bedroom. Watching her leave, I felt more inept at my living situation than I ever had. I sat at the foot of my bed and drowned my face into my palms. The way I lived now was just deplorable. I had no reason to stay inside my prison-like excuse for a house anymore. I didn’t have to cook, didn’t have to clean, didn’t have to put up the toilet seat, and didn’t have to remember birthdays, or holidays, or even know what day it was anymore. The robots did that all for me. I no longer controlled my life.

Everything I did now was the way that a computer told me it was. No longer was there any conception of time. If the clock on my wall told me it was noon, I could not refute it. Even if the sky outside was black as night, my human intuition was not allowed to reason with the technology it revolved around.

I can still remember the smell of a woman.

That “thing” cooking my eggs in the kitchen can’t even begin to remind me of the life I had before Pleasure Technologies. Its skin feels real, and its orgasms are convincing, but whenever I masturbate into her, I know that she has no soul, no pleasure. Instead of settling for a life of sharing maritals with a beautiful lady, I selfishly have a servant computer that’s programmed to love, while I see my own humanity fade away.

I could now smell the eggs. I was famished, so I got dressed for work in some slacks and an unbuttoned dress shirt, and sat down for my meal. My mate, Sophie, put the meal in front of me with a smile peeled back on her robotic skin, and even though she appeared physically identical to a woman on the outside, I could see straight through her, into her electronic workings.

I wondered how this morning would have gone differently if I had a real wife. Perhaps after I cock blocked her, she would have yelled at me, maybe even slapped me, maybe even thrown a punch. Then I could call her a lazy wife, or a bitch, and she could stomp off, spit on my expensive furniture, even threaten to cheat on me. After that I could yell back, tell her I’ve been eyeing the secretary at work, looking at chica’s asses while I’m at the bar with her. Then she would throw a plate at my head.

All these thoughts were exciting me, making me feel human. I now felt a smile peel across my face. I looked up to see my mate, and she was smiling stupidly at me across the kitchen table. It was infuriating me.

My inner human was raging to rebel. I stood up, grabbed the dish full of food and hurled it across the room, shattering it across the videowall. I looked at the mess stained across the screen, and then glanced at my mate, and she glanced back at me, still smiling. The SanI-BOT© rolled out of the bedroom and started to spraying fluid on the mess. The walls flashed red and an alarm sounded from all around.

“An interference was detected, is everything alright Mr. Beaqua,” I heard the synthetic voice say.

“Yes,” I said, answering to yet another machine. “I was simply trying to prove a point to Sophie,” I replied, lying to the system so that I wouldn’t be reported to other authority, “You see I was… uh… discussing the physics of electron bonds in household objects.” Sweat glided down my face as I awaited the computer’s response. If I said the wrong thing, I could be taken to a reprocessing facility, and I hadn’t the time nor patience to be relocated to a “safer” household.

“A very interesting display, but as you are most likely aware given your occupation, all Pleasure Mate products are synced into the Global Mainframe, and are completely aware of their physical surroundings and functions. A future display of science will not be required,” said the voice, and it was gone as fast as the alarms stopped their humming

I didn’t need to work for another forty five minutes, but staying any longer in the drab digital ambiance of my apartment would surely drive me to break more things, and as I quickly learned, that was not part of the protocol of this new standard of technology. I grabbed my shoulder bag, left my apartment with haste and walked through the primitively luxurious hallways of my apartment complex. I noticed a stain in front of a door. That was not there last night. I sure hope that there wasn’t a civil disturbance that cost someone a night at the CRF, the Civilian Reprocessing Facility. I walked past the stain and immediately forgot about it as I entered the elevator.

“Welcome Mr. Beaqua, which floor?” asked the elevator.

I told it to take me to the ground floor, and then it replied, “As you wish.”

There was a short pause and then the elevator asked, “So how was breakfast? I heard you threw some kitchenware.” I stood in the elevator, absent of words. How dare the system computer mock my intelligence, my humanity, to trick me into conversing with an elevator? I faced forward and buttoned my lip.

“Do you not wish to talk about it Mr. Beaqua?” again asked the elevator, now getting on my nerves.

“I wish for you to stop talking” I said furiously, “In fact… never speak to me again.”

There was a short pause and then the computer replied, “As you wish,” and shut up.

The elevator completed its hundred-seventy two-floor descent and opened the door. In the lobby of my apartment sat Nelson, the blind, black gentleman who was given NuEyes. NuEyes were optical/audio implants that amplified your hearing so loud that you could hear at least two stories above you. The implants could process these complex sound waves into your occipital lobe, so that anyone with them could literally see what they were hearing.

“How ya doin mista B?” he asked as I walked past.

“Oh, not too well Nels, how bout yourself?” I kindly replied.

“Aw just livin’ the shit hole,” he said, peering at me with his bubbly prosthetic eyes. “Used to just hear them robots scratchin’ across the ground. Now mista B, I see everything,” he said letting out a roar of laughter. I walked away slightly frightened, yet feeling strange remorse. Nelson was a crazy old man. I sometimes fantasize that my eyes could be gouged out of my head so that I wouldn’t have to see anymore, but our society is beyond that.

Now, whether we like it or not, the government will make us see. With the Federal Health Initiative of 2047, the GM made it necessary to heal every last citizen and keep them as healthy as physically possible. If you lost an arm, they had to replace it, and you couldn’t refuse. If I broke my arm and wanted it broken, they would forcibly admit me into a hospital and fix it, kicking and screaming the entire way. There was no way out of it; you had to strive for human perfection.

I exited the apartment building and immediately my contacts changed their polarity so that I wouldn’t squint in the suns beaming rays. As soon as I walked out I saw the advertisements run for me.

Everywhere I turned there were billboards, news stands; info screens all throwing a new product into my face. “Jason Beaqua, enjoy the PleasureMate 61, a new companion for a new age of love,” said the main screen in front of the Bank of America building. In the advertisement was an image of an overly gorgeous woman that was blowing me kisses and sending me winks. Before I could even think of the product, the next ad shot across the panel of a train stop saying, “Hey Jason, tired of living with IntraCable? Get Suprema Satellite, the best way to indulge in viewing our world.” The people in this commercial looked dull, then received a magnetic beam from a low atmosphere satellite and instantly shed their excess pounds, lost their bland clothes and gained a beautiful caramel tan. They had gone from looking like absolute zeroes to sun kings in paradise.

I thought about my life, and wished that I could move to a place where the beach could just be beamed into my head. I wanted so badly to just have the world around me crumble into a heap of grayness and be beamed into a beach, just like Costina made it seem. I started jonesing for some powder, but I knew that it would have to wait ‘til after work.

After several thousand more barrages of commercial mind control, I finally made it to my office only two blocks away. As I entered the illuminated sliding doors, a voice said, “Welcome Mr. Beaqua. How was your walk this morning?” I didn’t dignify the mindless electrical circuits with a response and moseyed on over to the elevator. The only good part about this place was that all the elevators within the tri-county area were on the same wire, so I entered with silence. More people entered with me, and for each one I heard a separate conversation. Most of them got off on the lower levels, except Lars.

A production staff associate, Lars was excessively happy… all the time. He got into a wonderful conversation about his morning, how he made love with his Mate Penelope, then she made him an absolutely gorgeous breakfast before he read his morning paper, and that on the train ride over he had a mind expanding conversation with the system about the foreign trade routes of ancient China. My knuckles tensed as I heard the conversation, as if you could even call it that. What was the use of talking to a machine that knows everything? It’s like reading an encyclopedia and asking it to explain what you just read. There’s no substance to it. It just is. You can’t understand why the encyclopedia says what it says. It just does.

I started to roll my eyes as Lars went on, and before I knew it, we had gone up twenty floors.

“That’s just pleasant Mr. Aufseher. Enjoy the workload.” Said the elevator.

“I will,” said Lars, walking off the elevator with a hop in his step. I don’t know why the hell he was so god damn happy all the time, but whatever he was taking before he left the confines of his apartment, I wanted some, very badly.

Around the forty-seventh floor, all the people with me had cleared out. The elevator was now empty except for me. I waited only a few seconds for the climb to the seventy-eighth floor, and as I saw the green lens staring at me, I started to feel like the elevator was watching me. Like a curious five year old, it was giving the silent treatment. I felt as if it wanted to say something to me, but it couldn’t because of my command. This made me damn uncomfortable, so I started to whistle. What the hell was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I get over this urge to converse with something that wasn’t there. The only reason I felt this way was because someone programmed a machine to do it, and now without it’s constant nagging, I felt less in touch with the elevator, less in touch with this inanimate object that had no feelings, no free thought, no free will.

The door opened and I jumped out, completely lost of my own self. I walked straight down the hall to my office and shut the door. The people around the workload didn’t even notice me scurry on past them, and I couldn’t care less. I was so happy to finally be alone, without a companion. I was finally in a place where my thoughts could rest in my head.

I eyed the office I was in. The walls were illuminated with a wonderful color gradient, and even in my surly mood, I could see the red colors fading, panning slowly into a pleasant pink. The walls changed their ambiance to compliment or alter my mood. If I was happy, then wonderful pastels would jostle across the four walls and ceiling, but if I was sad, the pastels would whirl around me in attempts to liven my mood. I was raging, so the colors gently glided different hues of pink so that I would cease my anger and calm down. The sad part was that it was working. Even my emotions were controlled by the technology around me. All I could do was sit down and get busy with the workload.

III

Where had the world gone?

It had been one mistake after another, and there was little that humans could do anymore. Ever since the robots had become a part of our lives, they started to create, they started to destroy, but most of all they started to adapt.

It all started on the winter solstice of 2012. The rumors about the shifting of the ages were true. For about ten days, the sun emitted intense solar flares that roasted the satellites of the world. In a matter of hours, virtually all communication on the planet ceased. Computers, cell phones, Internet, TV, radio; everything that made our society operate was gone.

For months, almost years, people lived without running water, food sources and transportation. Rural areas had little trouble surviving, but the cities became warzones. For well into 2015, there were great areas of urban earth that were run by mafias, gangs and other illegal factions that smuggled any kind of resources they could into the city.

The urban jungle was born, and rioting turned to devolution. The “modern dark age” as it’s written in our history books, because for the first time since Edison came along, our cities were lit by sun and fire. People living in such cramped conditions couldn’t survive without their resource being provided for them. The city rats turned on one another; anarchy ensued. People ate what they could find, drank what little they could, and never hesitated to kill. Tribes sprung up all over, one of the most famous, Muerte Feliz, being in the Bay Area of San Francisco. With all this social decay, there still remained a military, somehow able to quickly avoid the loss of power. They immediately fixed their naval fleets, their air force and their infantry and salvaged what little shreds of society they could. That’s when the wars started.

The electrical problem was starting to be solved, and the armies were sent back into civilization to reinstate society. The War for North America came first waged by the U.S., followed by the War for the EU, The War for the URCN (United Russian Communist Nation), The War for the PRC (People’s Republic of China) and many other internal civil wars. Due to the heavy American military force in the Middle East, the U.S. pushed deep into Dubai, claiming it as a U.S. Capitalist Territory. Through this they had inadvertently created the future robotics and mechanics capital of the world.

Eventually, humanity weaned slowly back into the present, but remnants of the anarchy still existed. Irreparable graffiti polluted everyone’s lives. Entire cities remained leveled from the rioting. “Displaced Person” became a rather common census status. In the wake of the global homeless, the new governments created Mass Public housing. Towers roaring into the sky at 100, 200 and 300 stories started to pop up everywhere. Only the fortunate were able to keep their humble abodes.

People hated the government influence. The state of emergency never quite was lifted, but the epoch of 2012 made humans realize the true power and dependence on a nation taking care of it’s people, and not vice versa. They played along, with the occasional uprising that wouldn’t last a week. Big brother was now the father, and we could do nothing but watch.

In a decade the geography of the world completely changed. Superpowers gained landmass after landmass and eventually the 192 countries that used to exist morphed into a mere 50 nations (due to political instability in South America and Africa). By 2031, the world was back in its power struggles, but instead of arms races, the world was in technology races.

Robots came into our society from every corner, and pretty soon they started to replace communication, transportation, construction, education and even farming. People began to lose their jobs, but with a socialist society that took care of all, they could exist unemployed and live a full life.

I was born in 2034 to Scott and Molly Beaqua

They lived in Fort Lauderdale in a tiny shack of a house that was not destroyed in the violence. They were foolish people living outside the walls of the kingdom. One night when I was five, a band of hoodlums came into that house and beat their skulls in. They weren’t even stealing anything, just looking for a person to kill. They saw me, but they never did anything. I thought at the time that I was dead, and lying there next to my mother and father’s bloodied bodies, I refused to shed tears. Tears were for the weak, and there was no place for weakness anymore.

I went through a series of foster families after soldiers found me in the house. Moved all around Florida and somehow ended up with two loving Christians, Jerry and Marta. They actually paid for my education at St. Hugh’s Cathedral, and after high school, I moved in with my best friend Pete.

Pete and I were like brothers, and we would always smoke weed together with his dad. They were the closest thing I ever had to a family, but once I reached the ripe age of 22, I moved out on my own, into a government sanctioned project in the city. That was where the action was, and that was where I wanted to be.

Through my life, the robots had only taken a stronger hold of the world. Justice had become a logically based enterprise, and the Global Mainframe (GM) now replaced everything from the courts to the military. They even found jobs for all civilians, and provided food and shelter to the needy.

The GM is the internal robotic network that controlled all robot activity, and when one robot assessed a situation, all machines across the globe did.

The GM was keen on drugs. After pot and Adderall were made OTC, a new drug war started. The robots wanted to eliminate the dealers by stealing their customers. It wasn’t the perfect soldier in the fight for sobriety, but it’s been damn close. Drugs still get dealt and guns somehow find themselves in the hands of criminals, but for every deal, a robot is watching.

There were remnants of the old society still around today. Outside of the over populated cities, the suburbs were one of the last havens from the future. Every street corner may have been on the GM grid, but they still had some peace outside of the mechanized government.

That’s where Pete lived, and I envied him constantly. He had been dealing drugs for as long as I could remember, and I wasn’t too eager to be living that lifestyle, but to be free of the city was a great thing.

Ever since I met Khalid, I was forced to stay in the city, and in technology. I was put in a small time position with robot marketing, and because I knew what people liked, mainly from my years clocked watching TV and fucking around on the internet, I could tell exactly what people wanted to hear, what they needed to see to be convinced to buy a human sex doll that just happened to also be your mom or dad. Before I knew it, I was co-executive of the marketing committee for Circatron™, a pretty easy position. Most of the day I found myself dicking around and approving marketing ideas from kids fresh out of NYU, University of Chicago, Case Western, hell we even had an Asian kid from Harvard. The closest I came to college was when I got shit-faced at 51 fest at OU back in ’54, and now I was ahead of all these collegiates. They were still paying off their loans, and the only thing I used my salary on was drugs and new computer toys.

What can I say, Circatron™ made life good for me in the beginning. They gave me my apartment, Sophie, and all the best upgrades for free. The only thing I could ask for now is to get my humanity back, but I had a sneaking suspicion it was already lost for good.

IV

I left work after an empty eternity of digiwork and coffee shots.

My apartment was the last place I wanted to think of going. The dusking streets were blinding with all the lit up advertisements. Walking past these walls of light, I quickly thought that maybe it was time to escape all this nonsense and score some coast. It had been a full week since I had some costina, and since I hadn’t been having sex with Sophie for months, the GM (global mainframe) could not collect my semen and test it for drugs, so I could use and abuse whatever I wanted to. I decided to visit my old friend Pete since my usual dealer, Gabriella, got busted three weeks previous.

After about twenty minutes of walking, I finally strolled past Romano Avenue, a mile from my building, and the ads started to leave me a little more at peace. I was now on foot through more residential streets, and I knew that the house I was searching for was going to come up soon. I turned a corner and came to 428 Monegro St. where there lay on a soiled plot of land one of the ugliest excuses for a home imaginable. I could see that there weren’t any cameras on the block, but it still felt like there were metal eyes watching my every move. The porch had caved in, and by the looks of the aging, it had started to be devoured by the ground. There were no longer any windows on the garage; they had been replaced by torn plastic and garbage bags. I saw the pair of shoes hanging on the ancient telephone wire. From the looks of the neighborhood, this place was lost in the 20th Century “nineties”. I walked up to the garage door, the only one accessible, and gave two loud knocks right above the graffiti decorated on the door. A light flashed on and a figure came to the door. “Guns pointed at your skull,” said a muffled voice on the other side of the balsa wood door. “Where does Juan Chico live?” he asked.

“It’s Jason you crazy fuck,” I yelled, “ and Juan Chico lives in you and me, fucking with everybody.” I always thought that password was stupid.

At that instant the lock was unlatched and I saw Pete, the man I knew from years ago. He had sacrificed his shaved head for a crop of long curly hair, which was pushed back by a cowboy hat. He’d also grown a moustache since I’d seen him last, and he was dressed in nothing but cowboy apparel.

I stood in shock of his appearance. “Geez Pete, what the hell are you wearing? Did you get a shipment of Clint Eastwood weed or something?” I said.

“Eat my ass. I’m movin’ to Wyoming as soon as I raise the bills to get my own ranch, and you can count on that… Ass-Hole.” he said and let me in.

“Ranch?” I said closing the door behind me, “Why are you movin’ to Wyoming. I mean shit, your mom and dad live across the street with your brother.”

“You mean my brother lives across the street. Glenda and Frank passed away last July. Mom finally got a heart attack, and Frank killed himself two days later when the Hospice-Bot came,” said Pete with a straight face.

“Oh shit man… I’m real sorry. He killed himself?”

“Yea… Frank nearly moved to Cuba when President Palin signed the automated healthcare bill. He hated technology before MP3’s were around, and without my mom to keep him company… Well let’s just say technology won that battle,” said Pete, still emotionless.

“I’m sorry. I wish I could’ve gone to the funerals,” I said with regret. Back in the days of my addictions, Glenda would bake us the best food when we were getting stoned as teens and Frank wouldn’t hesitate to join us.

“Well J, you left. I hadn’t heard from you since… shit,” Pete said looking up as if searching the ceiling for a date. His mind had blown so many gaskets from the drugs that I wouldn’t be surprised if he knew what year it was. “Well it’s been a damn long time. Services were nice though. They’re buried out at Woodland Park if you wanna pay your respects.” He said sitting down at his couch. I took a seat next to him. Around us were random pieces of furniture, some knocked over, some open, and some half missing. The inside of the house looked just as much like no man’s land as the outside. There was a single lamp without a shade that glowed in the corner of the room, and Pete opened up a tackle box that was sitting on the coffee table in front of them.

“So whadya come ‘ere for? I just got a dank pound of super sour Sweet lemon diesel, couple of hits of acid. No boomers, that’s next week,” Pete said

“Any Costina?” I asked. Pete’s eyes opened up real big and looked forward; I might as well have asked him to give me a handjob, that’s how shocked he looked. Then he relaxed and looked at me.

“You’re telling me that you, Jason Beaqua, mister ‘I don’t think I could do anything harder than weed’… Is doing Costina Blue?” Pete roared, followed by a bout of laughter and eventual tears. I started to feel insulted when he walked over to the fridge and pulled out two beers. He popped them open & put them down on the table, and as I reached for one he shifted it slightly. “Ah… just kiddin’. It’s yours,” he said and erupted with laughter again.

“So can you help me out Pete?” I asked again, a little more sincerely and brotherly.

“Well, I won’t lie I never dealt the stuff. Seen it twice, never tried it. I was going to, but the dealer I was talking to told me his client killed himself the next day, so I bolted. Where the fuck did you try it?”

“Years ago, at a hotel when the World’s Fair was in town. My old boss lemme have a sniff or two, and lemme tell ya, it turns you into something different man. I’m talkin’ you feel everything, not like that bullshit acid where you can hear purple and see dolphins. I mean, it’s like you turn into the ground, the Earth itself, and you feel exactly what it’s feeling. It… it changes you,” I said, stopping abruptly as I started to rant.

“Deep,” said Pete sarcastically. “Well I really don’t know why people would wana use it the way they do.”

“That’s cause you never fuck in real life like you do on the Coast,” I replied.

“Huh?” he said.

“Uh, never mind”

“Well, be that as it may, I’m stickin’ to the good old shit. As for you, I know a guy that sells it. He’s cool, I get my peyote from him in season. Name’s Nhuerta, and he doesn’t speak English. Just don’t pay attention to his sense of fashion, and that means don’t pull any kinda, ‘Why you wearin’ cowboy shit’ stuff on him like you did on me, or next I’ll see you is at Woodland Park next to Frank,” said Pete putting his tackle box away and pulling out his cell phone.

“Wow, does that thing have ten hour battery?” I said jokingly.

“Ha-ha, smart ass. It’s tougher to track you with this outdated shit. Better than those chips you all got,” he said dialing a number. Before he pressed call, he turned to me and said, “ You know in Wyoming they have a law against GM implants? Beautiful state,” said Pete.

“So that’s why you’re movin’ there Maverick. To get away from the future,” I said.

“You’re damn right I am. Ever since machines invaded us we don’t know what to do, so we don’t do it anymore. We have some geniuses make machines that can do it all for us. Pretty soon we won’t need to walk or shit anymore, and then what? Check mate. I’m leavin’, and you can count on that,” he replied with a smile.

I understood where he was coming from, and I was soaking green with envy. Pete wrote down an address for me and the password on a card and gave it to me.

“Be careful with that shit J, I know of too many people who’ve died on it,” he said raising his hand to shake. “I hope it’s not the last time I see ya, but I should be moving north by the end of the year.”

We shook hands and I turned to walk out, looking down on the paper when suddenly I felt a rope tighten around my chest, and I was swiftly flung back to the room I left. Being dragged along the floor, my heart stopped, and then I saw Pete over me with a serious, dead gaze in his eyes, and then he burst out laughing, laughing so hard that he backed into the adjoining kitchen and knocked over a glass of orange juice.

“Ah shit, sorry Jason,” he said wiping the tears from his face, “ but the look on your face was just too good. I’m practicin’ lasso for when I move,” he said. I stood up shocked, not knowing what to say. Then I looked at Pete speechless, and his aching calm turned into more laughter.

“You’re a crazy motherfucker Pete,” I said under my breath and left.

I walked out the door, and looked around to make sure there was no one around who saw me leave the house. The street was now dark with twilight, and the streetlamps were just blooming. I started to walk north and looked at the address.

SW 17th 5692-Dear Aunt Sue

It was going to be quite a walk but I could cut through some neighborhoods to avoid the drone of the city.

As I walked, I was constantly looking behind me, searching for the eyes I felt on the back of my neck. It’s funny, I thought, I’m usually paranoid after I’m on something.

After forty minutes I reached the address, and the house was not any prettier than the houses around Pete’s, but there was a 27’ Mustang in the driveway, completely white.

The sight of the car stunned me for a moment, not because of the quality, but just the sheer… whiteness of it. I walked up to the door, which was white, and I hit the knocker, twice with emphasis. Seconds later a deep bass voice asked, “Who burned the meatloaf?”

I laughed quietly to myself and answered, “Dear Aunt Sue.”

I heard a lock turn and the door opened. There was an older man in a suit who gestured for me to come in. I stepped inside and he humbly asked me to take off my shoes. As I did I realized that everything in the place was white. The stairs, the pottery, the doorknobs. It was an explosion of blanco.

“Mr. Nhuerta is waiting,” said the man I assumed to be the butler, but with his size he was probably the muscle. I followed him through a white corridor into a big white room. It looked a lot bigger inside than it did out. As I looked around, I noticed a thin darker man, maybe Haitian, sitting on a white couch. He stood in my presence and unveiled a lush white cape over a white tuxedo. Under the color, his face stuck out like I was wearing 3-D glasses.

He started to speak to me in Spanish, and that’s when the butler started to translate.

“I understand you are interested in purchasing some of my candy, but first tell me what you think of my… abode,” said the butler. I opened my mouth, thought for a second about what Pete said, and replied to Mr. Nhuerta, “It’s very white. It compliments the house nicely.”

He chuckled and then he and the butler rambled at each other in Spanish and then the butler said, “I am very pleased you like it. Now please have a seat.” I sat down and the butler continued as Nhuerta spoke. “Costina Blue is a tasty treat my friend, but it is not cheap. I have some of the finest Nicaraguan product here, but it will cost you some dear points. Unlike other… businessmen, I am quite professional. I don’t use physical money. All my transactions are posted on the GM as refundable charitable donations. You see this house is a “rest home,” or so the GM thinks, but with the money I come by, they think what they will, and I do what I want.

“Wait, I’m putting my name… in the system for this deal?” I asked.

“Precisely,” said the butler, “Or if you don’t want to we can kill you right now,” he said pulling out a polished Desert Eagle.

“Wait, wait, wait. I’ll do it, you see,” I said raising my hand with the chip. “I’ll do whatever the fuck you want not to shoot me.”

“Very well,” said the butler putting his gun back. “We only allow two gram purchases. You’ll see the damage in your account.”

Sweat started to drip down my face, and I could see Nhuerta staring at me with a smug satisfaction. What a rat he was. He was the reason they legalized drugs. They wanted these crooked assholes starving on the street with no income. The butler took my wrist, swiped it across a scanner, and handed me the Costina in the same hand.

The butler threw my hand down and said, “You tell anyone about us, we have your information on our computer. We will find you and, well… we don’t like to make it quick and easy like other killers.” I gripped my hand, and walked right out the door, pocketing the Blue.

I heard them laughing behind me as I left, and as I opened the door, Sophie was standing right in front of me, with a seductive smile perched on her face.

V

We reached too high, and the metal ladder broke from under our human legs.

Since the dawn of the anthropomimetic animatron in the early 2060’s, the science of robotics had completely shifted. The companies that first started the robot race had designed artificial intelligence, and made the first working robots that resembled people. These robots could walk, talk, converse… hell they could do everything but think. Now science had reached a stand still. The only thing that could change the course of our science was to create an artificial being that could do what humans do; process knowledge and learn from it. The robot race now took on a new goal, to create something that had a brain. This task seemed incredible, but like history would dictate, when humans compete, science wins. We learned from the arms race that in only a few short years, we could harness the power of the sun, and from the space race, we could reach new planets in mere decades. Even cellular communication changed to the point where anyone could reach anybody in real time, anywhere on the planet.

The competition never ended, and companies worked vigorously over the artificial mind, succeeding in only three years. On September 4th, 2063, Apple introduced iMan, the first synthetic human. It was an automated animatron that used PPM, Protein Polymer Movement. By using synthesized protein, which originated from plastics, the robot could be given any kind of human muscle, and when given electrical circuitry, these muscles could activate in the same way physiologically as human muscles. Along with its human-like body, the robot had an Arkhive 5 CPU, which was an exact mechanical replica of the human mind. Aside from the fact that the company used fourteen billion dollars worth of neuro-mechanical research on living humans, costing the lives of countless immigrants, some being my friends, they developed a brain that could be mass produced.

The iMan was not perfect, but I do remember its selling point. This robot could think. If given a complex or interpretive problem, it could logically assess and react to over 140 million simulated situations. The dawn of the synthetic human changed the enterprises of the world.

There was a need for land to create these robots, and with the modern world almost entirely conquered, the U.S. turned to its only vacant property.

Dubai became the jewel of the contemporary world. America had moved all it’s industrial power to the Arab Emirate and transformed Dubai into a city so advanced that it’s population rose 10 million. Dubai was now known as “The City of ‘Bots”, and rightly so. Every single robot produced in the world was manufactured in the Amero-Arab Factories, and with a whole knew frontier to explore, the companies jumped at the opportunity to create the robots. I remember thinking about moving there during my tenure at Circatron™.

After iMan, there was HuMan, after that was J. Doe, and after that was Mau-Li. Before long it didn’t matter which one you had, because in a few years you would get a new one.

Finally in 2064, Pleasure Technologies created Pleasance, which was an all too anticipated robot. It was the first android that was fully functional robotically and sexually. The creation was a landmark against mankind, for it was the first time in history that a machine could replace a significant other. Why have a wife with problems when you could have sex any time with zero commitment? Why deal with a husband’s constant stupidity when you could have all the gerth of a man with none of the neglect.

The porn industry became desperate after Pleasance’s debut, and many porn companies tried to sell their actresses for models, but there was little use. Sexual imagery was replaced by sexual engagement, and in no time, people traded their hands and fingers for synthetic genitals.

The only thing these new lines of robots couldn’t do was feel. They looked like humans, and they acted like humans, and they felt like humans, but they could not experience. A robot couldn’t crave a sandwich, it couldn’t have a headache. It couldn’t get high.

Drugs, that’s where I see the line between us and them.

VI

Her silhouette stopped time itself.

Standing in shock, I uttered, “Sophie?” and with that sound, she punched me as hard as I can ever remember being punched. I flew straight into the cabinet of the vestibule.

“What the fuck?” I heard the butler say out of the other room. Sophie then ran into the house like I’ve never seen anything move. All I heard were screams coming out from the white house.

Grasping my chest on the ground, I picked myself up, feeling the bruise forming already on my stomach. I ran out. I took a left down the street and headed away from downtown. If Sophie had seen me then the GM knew where I was. As I ran I realized I had an entire 2 grams of Blue in my pocket. If anything it might give me the boost to outrun Sophie. I ran into a patch of bushes and waited for a moment. I tore open the package and sniffed all the powder. Blood trickled down to my lip & I felt it once more. The Coast. The water rushing into my beaches, my body like the ground I stood upon, and right where my stomach was hit felt like a flood, as if the blood were destroying the cities across my landscape. After a moment, I started to twitch, then I told myself, ‘start running.’ Nothing was happening, but the waves were receding. The Coast was leaving me. ‘Start running,’ I said once more under my breath. I inhaled once more deeply and screamed, “Start running!”

And like that I was sprinting, maybe faster than some Olympic runners. I was five blocks away, then ten blocks, then twenty blocks. I couldn’t remember where I was trying to go, but I was screaming the entire way. I screamed down the road, houses zipping past me, seeing several people along the way, hopefully none of them robots, but dammit I ran.

After what might have been hours, I was close to the beach. I ran down to the beachhead, and fell down on the crisp, cool sand. I turned over to look at the stars trying to poke through the light pollution. I was breathing like a mad man & my legs started to feel like they were on fire, but in my state it just felt relaxing. I closed my eyes and there it was again. Just as it was before, I had turned into The Coast. Waves crashing and receding along my body like I was in the way of something. This sensation made me feel as cool as the sand I was lying on. I opened my eyes.

I saw a dark silhouette above me. It’s hands reached down and started to strangle my neck. The silhouette kneeled down so that we were face to face. “I’ve been waiting for you for a long time, dear, “ said Sophie, and that’s when I knew that GM had found me. With a single punch, she knocked me out, but I awoke seconds later, her naked torso on top of mine. Regaining my fuzzy consciousness, I tried to move my arms, but hers were holding mine down. I opened my eyes wide, and I saw Sophie’s robot breasts bobbing up and down her naked, synthetic body. Then I looked down lower and saw my erect penis with her hopping up and down on it.

“Help!” I screamed in desperation. Up and down, she moved, making sweet and deadly moans and squeaks from her voice, but I knew it was fake. It wasn’t real. “Stop, please, someone help me.” It started to feel good, and the drug was still making me silly and horny, and I started to be drawn in, but the reality hit me that I didn’t want it. “Someone!” I cried, now having tears of hate and agony roll down my face. She started to look down on me with an evil look, a look saying, ‘yeah, don’t you like it?’. Then I yelled the only thing I could yell anymore.

“Rape!”

After several more moments that seemed like an eternity, I came. She didn’t stop when I did, and that’s when for first time in my life sex started to hurt. I was completely helpless, and the only thing left was to endure this sick creation humping me to death. Then it was over.

Sophie held me down for another second or so then let go. I broke down crying into a fetal position on the beach; and I cried as long as I can remember. There was nothing to do at that point but cry.

She now had my sperm and by that time the Costina was through my entire body. The GM had a Jason Beaqua semen sample tested positive for the most lethal drug known to the world.

As I lay crying, a team of police stormed the beach, and man handled me into the back of a van. They threw me in & I lied on the floor defeated. I tried to keep composure for a moment, but broke down again.

They had taken everything from me. These robots had taken everything from me. This world had taken everything from me.

The van must have drove for hours. I would think that a jail would be closer to the city.

With tear-soaked eyes, I stood up in the back of the vehicle after it stopped and looked outside the window. There was a fence behind us, and then the doors opened. I ran to the back of the van and was dragged out. The police started to beat me with batons ‘til I couldn’t move. Then they dragged me to a cell inside the building. Throwing me on ground, I waited then looked up. I was in a room, alone. The walls were made of light, and then a face appeared. It was that of Sophie. She was on the walls, the ceiling, and the floor. I could no longer escape her.

“Welcome to enlightenment. You have been excommunicated from the Global Mainframe. As a result, you are being enlightened,” she said.

Seeing the face of my violator, I started to break down into tears once more.

The voice continued. “The human life can be so short, or so long. It all depends on you…dear.”