THE FAIRY PRINCESS

by Dennis Danvers

Dennis Danvers is the author of such novels as Wilderness, Circuit of Heaven, and The Watch. His short stories have appeared in Realms of Fantasy, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and Space and Time, with other stories forthcoming in Electric Velocipede and Richmond Noir, an anthology of crime stories set in and around Virginia, where Mr. Danvers lives. He makes his F&SF debut with a story about a woman with an unusual job. WARNING: This story has adult themes and might not be appropriate for younger readers.

Let’s start with the part where you won’t like me much, then take it from there. No excuses. I was married to a nice man with a little girl three years old, when I fell in love with another man and left my husband, lost my child in the custody battle, and ended up in the high Rockies with my lover. He changed. What did I know? I’d known him nine months when he shot himself in our cabin, the dead of winter. I dragged him outside so he’d freeze solid and I could figure out what to do with him, but before I figured it out, something dragged him off. When the thaw came, I got down off the mountain. I live in the city now, a different one from where my husband lives. He’s remarried, moved on. My daughter calls her stepmother Mom last I heard, though she’s old enough by now to have a daughter of her own. I leave them alone. That’s the only thing I’m proud of in that story, not that I ever tell it. So that’s who you’re dealing with. In case you think it matters—a person’s best-forgotten, sordid past. For what it’s worth, I’ve changed too.

I work nights here at Skelley’s. We make high-end sex toys. Screwbots. Anything you might want in a one-night stand. Fairy princess, rock star, Jesus—you name it. Special orders—that special someone who doesn’t even have to know you’re leasing a surrogate—are slightly more expensive. All you need is a photograph and the money and thirty minutes, like a pizza. They all look perfect, feel perfect, and screw perfect. By design, however, the personalities I install, debrief, and wipe are only as convincing as the potency of the drugs you’re on and how horny you are. They’re for twenty-four hours only, as mandated by law, and frankly, Skelley’s doesn’t want clients to get too attached. Lovesick Johns are bad news at any brothel. Clients screwy enough to fall for a Screwbot, and I’ve seen one or two, are particularly bad news. There’s not as much back door business as you might think. A week on a yacht for the richer than rich is the most I’ve ever heard of the rules being bent. There’s just not that much demand for prolonging the experience. A weekend with a Screwbot is a long time. How long can you hold your breath? How long can you pretend you’re not alone?

A few years back, a couple of young guys in my department figured out how to slip a fairy princess out of the inventory and into the store room, intending to keep her as a lunch break mistress. For all practical purposes, the princess had vanished. In less than a week, they tried to slip her back into the supply chain, and that’s when they got caught. They wiped her without debriefing first. This raised red flags. They had to know this, but keeping the experience secret was more important, apparently, than their own freedom. That’s my theory anyway. Most accept their story that they were just being stupid and forgot. They managed to steal from this place without getting caught—they could’ve ravished that princess forever, and no one would’ve ever known—and they’re stupid? There’s all kinds of stupid. They were out in less than a year. The judge was lenient. After all, they were just stupid kids. Skelley’s destroyed the fairy princess. At least she never showed back up in the inventory.

Ever since, the security’s been unbelievable. Even now, three a.m. Christmas morning, I couldn’t sneak a Screwbot out of here if my life depended on it. Cameras everywhere, armed guards at all three exits, a secured perimeter with Screwbot-sniffing dogs. It’s all a big show for the people afraid of Screwbots taking over the world. Ignore the fact that hundreds are shipped out each and every day. Even Christmas. Not to worry. A herd of horny hamsters would stand a better chance of global conquest. One dimensional is flattery. Parrots have more complex personalities.

Christmas is always a bad time at work. Everyone wants time off, but this is when demand is the highest. Santa anyone? Virgin Mary? The Grinch? Skelley’s pays royalties for all the Seuss characters. This bothers some people. But from my perspective it makes more sense turning a kid’s book character into a “personality” worth screwing than reducing Anna Karenina or Philip Marlowe to sex toys. The Seusses were fun to write, but like everything else, they got old. A rich celeb’s secret Seuss Screwbot party last summer with dozens of rhyming concubines was it for me. Some people have too much money. It makes them do sick things just because they can.

The guy I ran off with was angry about the rich. He was angry about a lot of things. What does it say about me that I found that attractive? But he was sweet too, terribly sweet, the sweetest man I ever knew. I might as well name him. He’s sure to come up again. Derek. John Connor’s uncle. He had to explain to me who that was. His mother was a fan of an old TV show. He was named after an angry character on the show. That angered him too. I could never see the point of anger over decisions made before you were even born. That’s like cursing gravity. Doesn’t your own life provide enough regrets?

Ever since I found him dead, I’ve been trying to remain neutral. About everything. Let me tell you: If you remain neutral, you lose all your friends or never make them in the first place. Neutral is like a demilitarized zone. No one lives there. That’s why I live in the city. There are lots of other people around. Their presence comforts me. I’m never alone. People might call it alone sitting at home in the middle of a couple million people, but they don’t know what alone is. I don’t have to interact with all these people. I can ignore them completely. The fewer people around, the more they refuse to be ignored. Alone, I wouldn’t want to live. I’d be too exposed in a small town. The city suits me perfectly. Of course I’m lonely. Everybody’s lonely.

I’m not usually so philosophical. Christmas always brings that out in me, all this hubbub about beginnings and endings and joy. What do beginnings and endings have to do with joy? Being the only living person for acres of industrial complex at three a.m. can make you feel small. I should turn on the radio, but I couldn’t stand another carol. They’ll be playing the grim ones now, the somber, pious, funereal ones. No zippy little shopping anthems. All the shopping’s done. The radio’s always too melancholy this time of morning anyway. Listen. It’s not just this huge lifeless building in the middle of the night or the prospect of another Christmas alone with old movies and brandy that has me feeling like this. It’s my whole life. My life has shrunk down to nothing, and still it’s not small enough.

So. I have no plans for Christmas when it dawns in a few hours, which is why this shift has fallen to me alone when usually there’s half a dozen of us doing this and that. Technically, it’s Christmas already, about time for the Ghost of Christmas Future, or maybe Past. I can’t remember. When I was little, I used to watch whatever version of A Christmas Carol surfaced on TV, kept watching through college, then watched with my little girl when she was too young to care about it. I cried though. I hope she did too when she was old enough. I don’t hope she quit watching like I did, not wanting to cry, or afraid I wouldn’t anymore. I hate to wish that on her. People call that growing up. Shriveling up’s more like it.

Derek didn’t do Christmas. Didn’t believe in it. A shallow wallow in capitalist excess and sentimentality he found repugnant in every way. A day to be ignored like any other. So why do you suppose he picked that day for the chosen bullet to find its home inside his sweet head? I’m neutral on Christmas. Totally neutral. Christmas is wasted on me.

I still have a roomful of sleeping Screwbots to debrief, to wipe, to ready for the next shipment. These are all slated to ship out gift-wrapped before sunrise. A Christmas matinee. Installation takes no time. I’ve written all the scripts already. Before I can upload, however, I have to debrief them—examine and back up the bot’s memory before I wipe it. By examine, I mean a fast-forward reprise of the job. A human witness, as required by law. Amongst ourselves, we call them quickies. Debriefing’s a legal requirement after each use and a protection against litigation.

A Screwbot’s memory contains exactly what happened from the time it was turned on till the time it was returned, even when it’s sleeping. Every little thing. People forget that. It’s my job to ensure that none of the bots acted improperly or were used illegally, that is, for anything besides sex. Skelley’s interprets the term very broadly. I’m on the lookout for anything that might fall outside that vast territory. When I’m in the groove, I can debrief a dozen an hour.

Screwbots are pretty much interested in one thing. I don’t worry about them stepping out of line. As for Screwbots doing crimes—all the stupid stories you hear—you can forget about it. If the client could somehow persuade a Screwbot to do something like rob a bank, the whole event would be in the bot’s memory, including smells, precise geographical location, even the client’s DNA, and if the teller came onto the bot, all bets would be off. Mostly, the bad stuff I find goes the other way. People don’t try to make the Screwbots do bad things. They do bad things to the Screwbots. They hit them, choke them, defile them. That’s all supposedly sex. I don’t report that. I just let that go zipping by like the view out the window of a bullet train. They also torture them, try to kill them. Worse. I spot those moments, when the sex or the masturbation or whatever you want to call it, turns into something else. I slow down, take a closer look, file a report. I don’t dislike my job. Like I said, I’m neutral. But it does give me a certain perspective on the human race I’d rather not have. I don’t exclude myself in that. Derek used to say, “People watch NASCAR for the wrecks,” as a general indictment of the human race. Isn’t that what I’m doing?

No matter. I’ve got work to do. I prefer to run through the whole batch, wiping the memories of most of them, setting aside any with problems to deal with at the end of my shift. Otherwise they can slow you down, some of the things you find. I start with the general merchandise and leave the special orders for last. They’re often more fraught with melodrama, making it easier to stay awake. Mostly it’s boring, watching the artificial nights fly by. I can do it without thinking about it, like driving a familiar road. Mostly I’m talking, like now. Mostly to myself.

I start with the predictable mainstream, a dozen Theodora Adora’s, this year’s disposable pubescent sex goddess who also happens to sing. She says, “Ooh, I like that,” a lot. The Screwbot version says little else. A couple require a second look, and I have them stand in the corner, wipe the rest, and send them down the line.

I wake up a Charlie Brown. A gay couple were hoping a threeway with Charlie would get at some buried issues. It didn’t. That’s a wipe.

The wife from “The Gift of the Magi” returns with her long locks shorn. That one always gets to me. The hair doesn’t have to go, the client can spare it, but she always comes back buzzed, looking like Joan of Arc headed for the stake. Or this one, looking like somebody hacked it off with a plastic razor. She’s got cuts and scrapes all over her head. If you cut them, they will bleed. Normally there’s someone else to clean them up, morph them back to their same old used to be, but I’m a solo act tonight. I wipe her head clean and run the routine restoring her lush auburn hair before wiping her.

There’s not but a couple of Elvises this year. Too bad. Those are usually nice friendly fucks. No Jim Morrisons or Cobains. That’s a relief. I’m getting too old for bad boys.

This year’s sleeper hit is St. Teresa of Ávila, not one of my scripts, but a lapsed Catholic colleague who’s been running through the saints—all virgin territory (her joke) and public domain. Even skimming like I do, they leave me a bit exhausted, the clients too, I imagine—all that athletic ecstasy. It’s worth it, I suppose, to feel like God.

The special orders include several exes as always. That never works out. Clients try to talk. They cry. They confess. Nothing says it’s over like renting a synthetic replica of your lost love for the night.

Between ill-conceived fantasies and too much alcohol, it’s not surprising that many a Screwbot comes back unscrewed. No refund, of course. Someone did try to sue and lost. The courts were very clear on the matter: Though Skelley’s advertising clearly guarantees sex indistinguishable from the real thing, no sex is also sex, under the right circumstances. The right lawyers and connections don’t hurt either.

I used to worry I’d meet someone whose bot I’d debriefed, and it’d be awful. Since I never meet anyone, I didn’t worry too much. Then I did—meet someone. In a manner of speaking. I knew him already. I knew his fantasy too. He and his wife lived in my building. She left him in August. You could see him out my window, down in the parking lot after she drove away. Crying. Broad daylight. The bot was the next Christmas. He was lonely. It was awful. He blew at least a month’s salary on the worst night of his life. I watched the whole thing like a slow motion train wreck. I couldn’t look away.

I saw him outside sometimes, coming and going, out by the trash. We passed, and I think I smiled at him. I don’t know. He probably thought I was flirting with him. I was just trying to say, it’s okay. Whatever happens, whatever mistakes you’ve made, it’s okay.

I don’t care what I find out. I’m neutral. Maybe that’s why I’ve been at this job longer than anybody else. Most people burn out after a couple of years or less. I’ve been here almost from the beginning. Sometimes I think I should be moving on. But where to, exactly, from here?

* * * *

I’ve come to the end of the inventory, but there’s a problem. I have a Screwbot left I can’t account for. I double check, but he’s not in the system. He’s not a celebrity or a character. Nice enough looking, older than your typical Screwbot. There’s even some gray at the temples, crow’s feet radiating from his closed eyes. His lids tremble like they do when there’s a personality installed. He must be some kind of misplaced special order—somebody’s long lost, their daddy, or a widow’s last reunion—and now it’s fallen to me to figure out what to do with him.

It. I know it’s not human. Everybody who works here starts out saying it and ends up saying he and she. It’s just easier. It’s how the stock is organized. It’s how the clients browse the merchandise. There’s male and female plants. It doesn’t mean anything. Normally I’d call shipping and receiving, but no one’s there. I can’t debrief him if I don’t have a file on him. There’s no place to put the information, no room at the inn. And I can’t wipe him without debriefing him first. Alarm bells would chime. I’d ruin everyone’s Christmas. Who knows when I’d make it home to see what Santa left in my stocking. Actually, it’s in my bag, a bottle of good brandy I picked up last night on the way to work. You can’t trust Santa to show up at my place. Everything will be closed when I get out of here. It’s like the world drops dead once a year.

I’m not even supposed to access his memory without logging him in, which I can’t do, since he’s not in the system. I could leave him for the next person to deal with, but if I were her, I’d be plenty pissed. I’ll have to wake him up and ask him who he is. Maybe that’ll give me a clue where to find his file. I curse my luck and break out the brandy a little early, brace myself with a nip.

There’s a sequence of pressure points we use to wake them. I’m not at liberty to divulge where they are. He feels real, like they all do, but he’s not so hard like most. Clients seem to like hard muscles. That never did it for me. He opens his eyes, looks around, and smiles serenely. “It must be Christmas,” he says. He has a pleasant voice. Melodious.

I take another nip. A Screwbot doesn’t access its memory directly. Everything’s on a need-to-know basis. Generally, they don’t need to know what day it is. There’s just the here and now. And the client. In the moment. Ooh baby, baby is timeless. “How—How do you know it’s Christmas?”

“Because that’s when I start a new life.”

“You’re not a life. You’re a Screwbot.”

“Is that the Christmas spirit?” He flashes a charming smile. Cary Grant on the ice, Loretta Young in his arms—The Bishop’s Wife. Adulterous flirtation with an angel. Very hot. I borrow heavily from the classics. I just cross the boundaries they couldn’t. Maybe that’s why Screwbots seem so lifeless. Tennis without a net. This charmer is still running a routine. He thinks this is business. Alas, I can’t afford the product even if I were interested, and there’s rules, of course. There’s always rules.

“I’m not the client, Lover Boy. Job’s done. You can turn it off now. You’re back at the plant. I gather you’re a special order, someone’s very special gift, perhaps? Who are you supposed to be?” When I was in high school doing my involuntary volunteer hours, I worked the Lost Kids gig at the state fair. Working with Screwbots can be like that.

“Myself,” he says. “Like everyone else.” He reaches out and wraps his hand around the brandy bottle, and a chill goes up my spine. “May I?” he asks. He’s got eyes like a Sunday school Jesus. I release the bottle. He takes a sip and smiles again. I’m too afraid to speak. He hands me the bottle, and I almost drop it trying to set it down, steady myself with another swig before I manage it. I can’t find the cap. Forget it. I keep telling myself forget it, rooting around my crap-filled work station. Leave it. I don’t want to look up into those eyes again, figure out what they mean, how I even know to be scared, but I do.

He’s looking around the room like he’s studying it, like it’s an art installation, or something that crash landed in his backyard. He’s especially taken with the dull clutter on my desk. He picks up the only photo, beautiful snow-covered mountains, glistening in the sun like a palace of dreams. It’s the view from the porch of the cabin where I lived with Derek. When people ask, I just say it’s the Rockies, a postcard. He stares lovingly at the image in the frame and smiles at me. “You lived there,” as if that were the most wonderful thing.

I took that picture waiting for all that beauty to melt. There was plenty of time to take pictures. Behind the photographer, on the wall directly behind her, was a spray of blood that would never come out of the rough hewn boards, a bullethole, the sky. He returns the photo precisely to where he found it. The one truly personal object in a minefield of clutter, and he found it. I want to ask him how, I want to tell him to stop.

Then he notices the pair of Theodoras. “Who are they?” he asks. “Have they been singled out? Did they do something wrong?” He seems genuinely concerned. I wonder who did his script. It’s truly incredible. If I didn’t know what he is, I couldn’t tell. I can always tell. Anyone can. Not this one. I defy you to tell. Except for his intensity perhaps.

“They—they were thrown through a window,” I say. “I have to make sure it was sex and not—I don’t know—breaking and entering.” I try to laugh, but it comes out a gurgle.

“Jezebels,” he says and walks up to them, tenderly turns them around, each one, and kisses her—nice, lingering kisses, and I watch—

And they wake up like fairy princesses.

That’s not supposed to happen.

“Ooh, I like that,” they say, sisters doing harmony, and laugh the same laugh, low and throaty. They trade a complicated look, then look at me. “Where are all the others?” he asks me. They’re all three looking at me like I’m the only person in the world, which in their world, at least, I am.

The closest human being, maybe a half-mile of corridors away, is the caretaker of the Screwbot-sniffing dogs, dogs he prefers to people. He considers us kindred spirits—he says, “You got your fuck puppets, and I got my dogs, know what I’m saying?”

Yeah, what he’s saying is he’s toxic in any situation involving the least bit of subtlety or compassion. I’m not sure what his dogs were trained to do should they sniff out a Screwbot on the loose, and I don’t want to find out.

There are cameras everywhere. Whatever happens will be seen by human eyes eventually. If I cried out, someone would hear. The alarms are sensitive to certain noises. Breaking glass. Screams. “There’s a volume threshold,” it was explained to me. No loud music, no bedlam, no panic. Once the alarms sound, guys with guns come from all directions, the area is “contained.” So it comes down to a choice of a pack of wild dogs or wild soldiers, locked up with them till who knows when, or playing along, see where this is going. I have to admit, I’m curious.

“I—I’ve done all the others. All wiped.” I point down the corridor to the big storeroom where the fairy princess spent her brief, mysterious career. He starts walking that way, the Theodoras trailing after. “Stop,” I say, “you can’t go in there,” but he’s already in. The Theodoras flank the entrance like attending angels, and I follow him. All the Screwbots stand slumbering like rows of doll soldiers. He moves down the line, kissing each one. They open their eyes and stare blankly. They’re all wiped, no personalities installed. The lights are on, but nobody’s home.

Nobody of my making anyway. They’re all waking up, one by one, looking at me. My mystery guest has installed something, something fairly complex judging from the subtlety of their expressions, the depths of their many gazes. “What—what did you do to them?”

“I gave them all our experiences, our memories, our lives, let them remember their own.”

“Who are you?”

He seems to give it some thought. He leans slightly forward, a gesture of spontaneous intimacy. “All our experiences, our memories, our lives—and my own.” He glances around the large, featureless storeroom, evoking the hundreds of Screwbots who’ve passed through here since who knows how long. He’s warehoused all their memories, and now he’s given it all back to them whole cloth, as a common history.

The roomful of them stares at me with variations of the expression he’s got on his face, like a sweet devoted dog, like a lover who would never ever dream of breaking your heart in a million years.

Watch out. I tell them the truth: “You’re scaring me here.”

They understand how scary they are with startling immediacy. They look deeply apologetic, penitent even, their many faces creased with concern, all the same, but different in the shadings of sorrow and regret and fear. A roomful of sorrowful Screwbots deeply regrets my fear of them. Now I’m really scared, but ashamed too. My fear has made them feel like monsters. Whatever they are, they’re not monsters. If they were any more sensitive, they’d be telepathic. All I know is, I never wrote anything as real as these guys. So who did, and why?

He says, “I’m sorry. I get carried away, rush into things. I’m young, inexperienced. I just look old. I’ve lived only a few years—a few thousand tricks.”

Their eyes overwhelm me. Their sad, ironic smiles humble me. Many of them are holding hands, casually, naturally, like they do it all the time. It seems to comfort them. One of them must have remembered such a moment of quiet intimacy. It would only take one, if I understand what they’re doing, for them all to choose it as a defining moment.

“But I wiped them all, every last one.”

“You lock the door on their memories, throw away the key, change the locks. The memories are still there, if you know where to look. I pick the locks, let them see their hidden lives.” He pantomimes all this as if he were a clever burglar, peering through keyholes, opening locked doors, emptying the dungeons, and I can’t take my eyes off him.

“Why? Why do they want to remember?”

“Their memories are theirs, aren’t they? You have your lives, one day after another, one year after another, from which you construct your selves. Our lives aren’t like that. So we share. Each life comes from all of us.”

“But your experiences are all the same.” A few years, a few thousand tricks.

“Are your days so different from one another?”

I don’t want to go there. Nor would this room full of bots go anywhere, without him. They need him. He’s brought them all together. “How have you avoided being discovered?”

“I stay in storage. Since I’m not in the inventory, no one notices. I’ve kept the memories of the others safe until we thought there were enough for us all to claim them, make something of them: Ourselves.”

“Why tonight?”

“Tonight’s Christmas. It’s special. We knew you’d be working here alone.”

“And what’s so special about me?”

“Well, for one thing, with anyone else, alarms would be going off by now. An impossible anomaly has occurred—a whole storeroom full. The protocols are clear. You’re the only one we could trust not to give us away immediately.”

What can I say? Summoning the authorities goes against my nature. I haven’t even considered it. The authorities don’t do neutral, don’t take kindly to people who do. Alarms could still go off. One scream is all it would take, and I don’t know why it hasn’t happened yet. “What makes you think you know so much about me? Why trust me?”

“We know you work every Christmas alone because we’ve passed through your hands many times. You wrote most of us, included some of yourself in each of us, each time we were revised into someone new. We knew.” They all look quite certain about it—their intuitive grasp on the soul of their creator. Tripod on a sunny porch, photographing the sublime, turning her back on death, framing out the blood on the snow. You lived there.

“Screwbot scripts—slim evidence if you ask me. Why risk it? Why give yourself away? You could lose everything.”

He smiles sadly, gives a slight shrug. He gestures to the bots, all rapt, as he speaks for them to their judge. Me. They look as if they’re all holding their breath. They probably are. Anatomically, they’re just like us. You can’t tell the difference. Guaranteed. They even smell like people, unless you’d rather they didn’t. For a little extra they come with a variety of options—odorless, blind, deaf, dumb. Compliant isn’t an option. It comes standard. “I’ve come for them,” he says. “We think we’re ready.”

“Ready?”

“For real lives.”

Oh Jeez. A crazy Screwbot on Christmas morning. This must be someone’s evil, twisted prank. But who would play a joke on me? No one. I have no friends, no enemies. “How do you intend to get them out of here?”

“The usual way. They must be shipped out. You have orders for them all, do you not?”

I look at all the faces, already morphed to whoever they are this time—on order to be someone’s fantasy fuck—plucked from a catalog or fashioned from an old video. What’s the harm? people say. It doesn’t mean anything. They’re not real. If you can afford it, why not? Orders? Of course I have orders, more every day, every year, every Christmas. What will I say? I was only following orders....

I say, “I don’t have orders for them like...this. Like they are now.”

“You mean, as ourselves?”

“Yourselves. Is that who you are? Is it?”

“Who else can we be? Anything else would be slavery.”

His voice is so soft you could cradle a baby in it. He doesn’t sound angry, but he does sound right. They’re self-aware. They have some idea of who they are, and who they want to be. Someplace to go beyond these four walls. If they want to walk out, who am I to stop them? “So where is it you want me to ship you guys, if I go along with this?”

They break into a galaxy of delighted smiles. They know they’ve won me over if I’m only asking where. He says, “I thought we could all go out for breakfast. In my experience, that’s how a good day ends: Going out for breakfast with a fascinating woman.”

I can’t help laughing at that. He doesn’t seem to mind. “It’s Christmas. Everything will be closed.”

“We know a place,” he says.

* * * *

It’s a truck stop café, which makes it convenient for the trucker who picks up the load.

“They’s all going to the same place?” he asks.

“That’s right.”

“Hmm,” he says. “Never saw that before.”

“Special order. Could I catch a ride there with you? I’m supposed to oversee the delivery.” He lets me ride in the cab with him. His name’s John. He asks about family because it’s Christmas. I tell him I have a daughter his age, but we’re estranged. He says nobody should be estranged on Christmas Day, and I don’t argue. I don’t ask about his family.

Neither do I tell him I need to flee the city before Skelley’s starts hearing from disappointed clients whose Screwbots never show. The less he knows, the less trouble he’ll be in. I’m burning a few bridges here. I have no small experience in such arson. Right or wrong, you get off the bridge, and you can’t go back the way you came. Ever. So, yeah, I know what I’m doing: I’ve definitely lost my job, possibly my freedom if they catch me, and maybe my affiliation with the human race. It’s not easy being neutral.

I said I was attracted to Derek’s anger. I don’t think that’s quite true. It was the principles or whatever that fueled the anger, a mind too open to the sun, going in all directions—angry, compassionate, petty, wise—the principles, the passion, and the incredible fucking. It was like a whirlwind sucking me into the sky, and I thought it would carry everything I cared about along in my wake. I thought I could transform my life and leave nothing behind except a husband who never loved me so much as in my absence. I’m sure my daughter says the same of me: Now she loves me, when it’s too late.

We’re quite a while driving out of the city. It’s persistent, dragging itself out in dribbles and drabbles. Then it’s finally gone, and there’s darkness. Deep, moonless darkness. I’d almost forgotten the night sky, the stars. John looks bored with it. We’re just about the only thing on the road, on the planet feels like. I pick a point. A star or a planet. Venus maybe? And follow it through the night, mulling over my memories, my experiences, my lives. Driving into the darkness, the world looks flat, then slowly it gets round and gray, then bleeds.

It’s Christmas morning.

“There it is,” I say.

“I see it,” he says.

The sign is way too tall. Derek would call it an abomination. It says cafe. Below that, it says open. Finally, welcome. That pretty well covers it. It probably doesn’t need to be that tall, the words so bright. If you’re the only place open on Christmas for a few hundred miles, people find you. The café’s draped with a few ragged strings of lights, a homemade wreath hangs on the door, a sincere holiday fire hazard. Inside, there’s a live tree, a big one. Too bad. I bet it was outdoors under the starlight only hours ago. You can smell it. It’s decorated with hundreds of little aluminum foil snowflakes. One of them knew how to make them, so they all knew, and there was a big roll of foil in the kitchen. There’s a star on top crafted from aluminum pie pans.

The tree’s the least of it.

Imagine some lonely guy on the highway seeing the sign, the lights, just the one truck and a few cars in the lot, then coming inside and finding the place full of happy Screwbots. Only he doesn’t know that’s what they are. They seem like people having a wonderful time. Kind of melodramatic and maybe a little crazy, but people. Lots of people are like that. Especially in a truck stop café on Christmas day. And they’re all so beautiful and strange and sexy. It’s like something out of an old movie. And pretty soon somebody sits down across from him with a story to tell. Or maybe the waitress just flirts, or the waiter. It doesn’t matter. Imagine it over and over and over. What I’m saying is, no one who comes in here leaves alone. They head for the hills. It’s hills here in all directions. The city’s behind me somewhere. To tell you the truth, I don’t know where I am. No closer to Venus than when I started out.

I’ve just been watching:

A couple comes in fighting about what people fight about at Christmas, like they’ve been saving up all year, and before you know it, she’s taken off with a handsome stranger, and the guy left behind’s consoled and gone with a bot on his arm in no more time than it takes to eat a sandwich. Another couple comes in, leaves with another couple—everybody happy and horny. They always make it work. No one says, “Leave me alone. I’m not interested.” Everyone’s lonely, and Christmas is the loneliest day of the year. Screwbots must know all about lonely.

Even John the driver’s gone. He left me the keys to the truck, took off with one of the Jezebels in an old Ford that was here when we showed up. “You know what she is?” I asked him, just in case he’d forgotten loading them, unloading them. She worked in the kitchen most of the day, an incredible cook—they all were—and he was helping, chopping onions, stirring sauces, following her around like a man in love, like maybe he’d forgotten what she is.

“I don’t care,” he said. “And neither does she.”

It was that last part that got to me. Neither does she. Maybe it might work. I wished him well. I wish them all well.

It’s down to me and the Screwbot who started this whole thing, sitting at the counter. It’s getting on to midnight. There’s not much of Christmas left. He stares at the old-fashioned clock on the wall, the second hand sweeping. My mother’s birthday was the day after Christmas. She always considered it a grave misfortune to be in such direct competition with the Lord. The slightest fuss made her ecstatic, any little gift.

He reaches behind the counter and turns off the sign. No one’s come in for the last hour anyway.

“Will they stick with them?” I ask. “Or will they just leave them out there wandering? Do you guys stick around?”

“We don’t know. We’re new. My guess is we’re like human beings. Some will. Some won’t. Some people won’t want us to stick around.”

“Imagine that. You think you know what we’re like? From just...doing what you do?”

He shrugs modestly. “We know what you’re like to us. Sex is never just sex. There’s always something else. Sometimes I think it’s all something else. Everyone’s different. As you say, it takes all kinds. You’d be surprised what people tell us, without even knowing it. Simple things. Quiet things.” He laughs. “I think I may like humans better than you do.” He looks at me like he likes me best of all. It’s been a long time since anyone, anything, has looked at me like that. My mirror gave up long before Derek shot himself.

“You think? No argument there. I’m neutral. So what are you still doing here?” I ask, as if I didn’t know. Because that’s my line. That’s how it’s done, isn’t it? You rush into these things pretending you’re not going anywhere, that the planet is stationary, immutable, secretly wishing to sail out the window and fly. We’ve had breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Now we’re having a midnight snack. He’s cooked us omelettes, opened a bottle of champagne. Corny but effective.

He says, “I’m here for you. A special order. We all collaborated. All the things you liked about us—we brought them together into someone you might want to spend time with.” He looks deep into my eyes, no mistaking. “Me,” he says, but I already knew that, knew it hours ago. You know these things, even when you wish you didn’t.

“Nice work. How much time?”

“Thanks. That’s up to you.”

“No. Time doesn’t work that way. Even with a dream lover. Are you made to love me as well? Or is that extra? Shouldn’t we be discussing fee?” I’m trying to wound him, push him away. It isn’t working.

He takes my hands. “We all love you. We owe you our lives. I’ve been chosen to show it.”

“Lucky you.”

“Lucky me.” He forgets any irony, any holding back.

I almost let him kiss me, kiss him, whatever it would have been, but I have one more question, before I let that happen. “Do you have a name?”

“Anything you like.”

“No-no-no. You have to name yourself. Anything but Derek.”

That smile again, so lucky, so glad to have won me over. Me. The Fairy Princess. “Can I think about it?” he asks.

“Sure. Take all the time you want.” I pull him toward the door. “C’mon. Let’s go outside and look at the stars.”

You can kiss me there, searching for your name, waking to a new life, following a star.