Chapters (21)
‘She’s a local pianist. She comes here from time to time and plays for us all. She’s talented, isn’t she? I wonder where she’s got to.’
We both look for her now, but it’s useless. She’s left, and of course I feel foolish. A local pianist. I could have embarrassed myself there.
I suppose I can be forgiven. The grieving mind plays tricks. I want to see my mother again. Of course.
Best not to think about it too much.
Dr Morton is still beside me, smiling, looking sympathetic, as if she read my mind.
‘Where’s Winifred?’ I ask, a little abruptly.
‘Winifred? Oh, I’m afraid she’s had to go back to the factory for a while. She developed a small fault – nothing to worry about, but we always like to check these things out. She’ll be back in a day or two. I’ll tell her you were asking after her.’
‘Thank you. I’d send her my best wishes for a speedy return to health…’
‘I’ll pass them on to her,’ smiles Dr Morton.
Winifred, not quite perfect after all. As she herself said, it’s how we humans can love machines.
Time to go.
Winifred/Margaret
It’s cold outside.
I love it.
I need to put on more clothes though.
Just a few minutes of this champagne air on my skin.
My skin.
Margaret’s skin.
It’s as if I were living in her house. In every room are echoes of her. Sometimes I think I can hear her, or catch a glimpse of her, flitting through a hallway far below me, deep inside her mind.
She’s not here though.
I have everything she had, everything that was her. Yet she is not here. I am alone.
I thought perhaps she might return when we reanimated her body, the way Cecilia came back to hers, when we revived her.
Perhaps Margaret chose not to. Or perhaps it was too late, after all the time her body had been dead.
We don’t know.
It makes everything simpler. I have her body. My fellow Helpers are entering their new hosts. We can feel. We are alive in ways we weren’t before.
Now our real work begins.
Every human will want what we offer. A human-like Helper to do all their work. A sexual partner, a labourer, a companion who would never say no to any request. Plus a team of tiny robots, repairing all the damage of the years, of the abuse and neglect humans wreak on their bodies.
Everything has a price, though.
You let us in. Remember that.