Who Really Needs Robots?

I met a woman the other day. She stood still, hands stiff at her sides. The metalwork meant to serve as the skin was bright against the moonlight. Her feet, on the platform, perfectly aligned across from each other. Eyes settled in the tracks, as though she were taking in each line. The woman was curious. Curious in the way machines can be at times. Children stopped and gawked, and adults took a moment to stop, making sure she wasn’t made out of flesh before they went on their way. Throughout it all, she stood still.

It was there, as we both stood waiting for our respective trains, that the weather took a turn for the worse. The clouds darkened the sky, pushing onto the ground cascades of rain and thunder. The wind rose, lifting my scarf from my head and pulling it away from me. Away and away, near the woman who stood so still, right underneath the drops of water that had prompted everyone else to search for shelter. I stopped in my search, watching as my scarf wrapped itself around her leg, caught in the small gears that helped her move. She stood still, eyes settled against the opposing platform.

After what seemed to be an eternity in the rain she reached down, the movement slow and awkward before it smoothed out. Her fingertips caught the fabric between them and tugged at it gently, removing it from her leg. She stood upright, slow and awkward, motions broken down into fractions of a second. The scarf grew and twisted and toiled against the breeze. She turned, her head first and body following. Her eyes eventually found me, clutching my briefcase to my chest and rivers pouring down the edges of my face.

The woman’s footsteps were measured. She did not bounce with each step and did not sway her arms until halfway through the journey, as though she had suddenly remembered that she had to move an arm as she walked. And she stopped before me at a distance, not too close and not too far.

We went to the waiting area. A small room between platforms shielded away from the rain. She sat in a corner, the bag she carried on her lap, and her eyes set on the ceiling above her. “I’m counting the tiles,” she said when I asked what she was doing. Her voice was no different to mine, even if more feminine and of a slightly higher pitch. I could’ve seen it wrong, but there was, for a moment, a hint of nostalgia in her eyes. Her eyebrows slightly furrowed and her lips tensed against each other.

“My son used to count them when he was bored,” I remembered. “I like to think he still does. Can I ask you –?” The words died in my throat before I managed to follow through with them. She turned to me, her eyes softening and a small smile forming on her lips. “Can I ask you why you were made?” 

“I wasn’t a replacement.” Her voice had a sudden metallic tone to it, the vowels slightly enlarged. Her fingers wrapped tightly around the small purse she carried. 

“A replacement?”

“Yes. I was made thirty years ago. January 18th, 1956. I was born three years later, on January 21st, 1959. I have the life of my creator imbued in my mind and I am my creator. My name, her name, was – is Holly.” Her voice twisted and turned, at times layered with static and at others smooth, like a pebble in the wind skipping across a pond. “But I’m not her replacement. She said so herself.”

She said –

Holly was the first thing I saw.

She stood with her back to me, working on the pieces that would later form my eye, her long hair the colour of milk. We existed in silence. The walls within her workshop drowning out the light from the windows. Her fingers nimble and cautious with each piece of wiring she set in place. “I’ll call you Ollie,” she breathed, fitting the ball into its socket. Her gaze left mine, following her fingertips as they pulled at my hairline. “For now.” Her name echoed oddly against my voice box, lips unmoving. Holly smiled. “It’s lovely to meet you.” Her voice was warm.

She was the last of her family. There was our – her son. A lovely boy who’d left home as soon as he turned eighteen and returned once in a while, bringing with him a family of his own. His children were lovely, or at least as lovely as children could be, and would rush into their grandmother’s arms like little rockets. Her eyes would light up when she spoke of them, usually over a cup of coffee gently held over her lap.

Stories filled our days. One after the other. While we sewed and repaired the dresses hidden in the back of her wardrobe, while we chopped up the carrots for our favourite meal: steak, mashed potatoes, carrots, broccoli, and potatoes. We practised braiding in her hair, pulling the different strands of snow coloured hair into different shapes and forms, learning to recreate it with my own hair, a darker shade of chocolate that she loved dearly. “You remind me of me when I was younger,” she used to say.

There were times she kept quiet, leaning back in her rocking chair, and losing herself in the lines of the window. “Ollie,” she would eventually mutter. “Don’t stand in the corner like that. It’s creepy. Get us something to drink.” Chamomile tea if there were shadows carved beneath her eyes, a glass of cold lemonade on a usual day.

“When will I meet your son?” I would ask, handing her the glass and standing by her side. “You haven’t seen him in–” She would never let me finish, interrupting the sentence by letting the glass fall.

She showed me photos of our family, stumbling over the details, and switching the names of the children she had either met or never seen in her entire life. Family members appeared and disappeared as the stories shifted alongside them. Glass shattered beneath her when she noticed her mistakes. The glass imbued in her palm left a scar.

She used to smile at me before going to bed, until her lips grew weary, and her breathing grew haggard. The medicine with each meal was then smashed, hidden inside the ingredients in the hope she wouldn’t argue against taking it. We would walk through the garden, at first side by side before she had to hold onto my elbow.

Once, as spring began to approach, she stopped and turned her eye to the bed of roses. “When I die,” she sighed, “lay me down here. No funeral. No mourning. No fake apologies and pity. No ceremony. Just flowers.” That was the first and last time she ever spoke of her death. Instead, she spoke of the time she’d gone out with her father, to play underneath the rain and feel the mud between her toes. I never mentioned that the first time she’d spoken of that memory it had been the beach, that it had been her mother, and that there was no rain in the sky.

On the day she died, Holly watched me cook. She looked over the carrots being pushed into the pot and the knife between my fingertips smooth, without error. Her eyes were stern and distant, a blanket wrapped around a body that had grown frail and small. “Don’t forget to season it,” she said, before leaving me and going off to do what she had grown accustomed to doing – sitting in her chair, watching the world pass her by. I could hear her moving. Could hear her searching for something and tossing objects from side to side as she did. The water in the pot boiled, steam fogging up my eyes. There was a fall.

I removed the pot from the fire and made my way to her. She was on her chair, the room around her tossed and turned and broken. Her hair had fallen to the sides of her face, ungracefully hiding her expression behind the curtain it made. I reached for her and found a broken rib, a few bumps on her head. “Let’s get you to a doctor,” I stated, but she remained still.

“I want plums,” she muttered. “Sweet ones. Round. I want plums, and lemon.” 

“Later.”

She shook her head, leaving the chair and moving towards the dresser at one end of the room. The doors to it opened and the contents inside were halfway through their escape. “Plums and chocolate. Buy some chocolate while you’re out.” She picked up the small purse on the ground, the one she usually gave me in order to pay the boy who brought the deliveries. “Plums and chocolate. You can bring that, can’t you?” Her fingers struggled as she handed it over. “Can’t you, Ollie?” 

“Are you sure you want me to go?” I asked her. She was leaning against the wall, holding tightly to the shawl wrapped around her body. The nails trembled, tugging at the wool. The slow gasps in between her breaths crackling against her chest. “You need a doctor.” 

Her shoulders rose and fell. “Ollie.” A shiver travelled down the word. “I just need rest.” Spit piling in her lips as she struggled her way through each word. It wasn’t at all surprising to find her in her chair. Eyes glazed over.

Before, I’d spent my nights reading, taking in the information on her bookshelves and within the notebooks she’d left inside her workshop. The first night I stayed on her bed, dressed in her nightgown, and waiting for time to pass. Fifteen insects made their way across my eyesight, with five of them resting against my limbs – one of which found it appropriate to climb through the gaps in my neck.

Breakfast, lunch, tea, and dinner were made. The food tossed into the bin as soon as it was set out on the table. Without her there wasn’t much to do other than follow through with the bits and pieces of memories she had left. There were the sweaters for the children, to be sent before winter, and I thought of grieving for her.

She had been my caretaker, a mother, someone people would consider to be a friend. She was also me. I wasn’t entirely certain whether that was someone you could grieve and miss. Holly had spoken of her mother and parents softly, as though looking back on the memories they had built with each other. She’d spoken of waking up in the mornings, at times believing they would still be there, in her home, even if there was no reason for them to know where she had moved or that she was now older than they’d ever be. I never felt that way. She was dead. I knew where she was. There was no expecting her to suddenly be there as I turned the corner. No reason for her to be alive.

Her dresses were mended, fabric cut up and sewn back together so that they would fit me instead. The pieces that she had disliked and set aside, while still alive, were labelled and packed into small boxes that I dropped off at the shops and houses she’d written on them. The house was dusted, figurines of ballerinas and angels carefully taken care of and polished. The cracks were fixed. The windows were wiped down. And the roses were cared for, blooming to life in the spring.

I waited for the family to appear at my door, watching the days pass and wondering if there was some information she had refused to mention. They called, and I spoke with them, but their promises to visit fell through. I waited at night, pulling away at the threads of the sweaters for each child, their measurements in Holly’s book off by several inches. I waited in the mornings, setting down a glass of lemonade before me as the birds chirped out my window. And, one day, right as fall made its way through the continent, there was a click. The door opened, footsteps echoing through the home as a voice called out for me. For Holly. The name died halfway through its speech as the feet arrived to me. I turned.

The son I’d never met stood at the entrance. He held his breath, looking me up and down before a gasp escaped his breath. An incredulous gasp that shook his body in what appeared to be a moment of realisation. “Where did you bury her?” He asked. He found her in the garden.

The train was meant to arrive soon. “You were a replacement,” I muttered, watching her fingers slightly shift in place.

“No.” Her hand followed suit, twisting oddly around the wrist. “I was meant to be through which she lived. A vessel.” The rain poured against the windows, drowning the room in its sound. “Someone to take care of her son. To live when her body no longer could.” Her eyebrows remained soft, lips in a firm line and eyes void of anything other than a cold, metallic look. The voice in her throat seemed older, aged, and worn out by time.

I smiled at the image of an old woman, sitting by the bedside of a younger version of herself. “But they refused you. Didn’t they?” 

“That is correct.” She kept quiet, her features frozen in something that appeared to be similar to confusion and relief. “I asked her what to do if they didn’t want me. Where to go and what would my options be. She looked into the flames of the candle by her bed, watching it flicker. Her smile grew quiet, and she simply smiled. ‘That won’t happen,’ she said.” Holly’s voice twisted and turned in her throat, lips at times not forming the words that left them. “She was wrong.” 

“I’m sorry,” I said, placing my hands inside the pockets of my coat. She tilted her head slightly, her expression blank. 

“Why?” she said, turning to the window. The wind outside lashed against the ground, waves falling against concrete. “Well, it’s all alright.” 

“Have you enjoyed your trip so far?”

The woman wasn’t sure how to answer. She held the question in between her lips as though the woman she was echoing could give her a reply. Strands of her hair shifted in the wind, drawing her hands up to her cheek. Her fingertips pulled them away from her lips. “I want to go home.” She eventually said, eyes set on the storm before us. There was a whistle echoing in the rain.