The Heart Goes Last

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She’d messed up on the subject of Max too. She shouldn’t have let on she knew him at all, much less making those pathetic demands. But it was too stupid, him claiming his name was Phil. Phil! She could never have flung herself into the arms of a man called Phil. Phils were pharmacists, they were never in the daytime-TV shows, they had no inner shadows and banked-up flames of desire. And Max did, even in that ugly driver’s uniform he was wearing. She knew he longed for her; she’s sensitive, she has an instinct for knowing that.

Then she got it: she should act dumb, because they were messing with her head. She’d seen movies like that: people disguising themselves as other people and pretending not to know you; then, when you accused them of doing it, they’d say you were crazy. So it’s safer to go along with whatever made-up version of themselves they want to put out there.

Though if she could corner Max alone, and make him kiss her, and get a firm grip on his belt buckle – a familiar buckle, one she could undo in her sleep – then his cover story would smoke and burn and turn to ash, like the flammable thing it is.

After they’d driven her back from the clinic and she’d crawled into bed, Charmaine kept as quiet as a mouse. She couldn’t even pace the floor or wail because Aurora had insisted on sleeping in the guest bedroom. Someone needed to stay with Charmaine, said Aurora. Considering the shock of the chicken facility tragedy, Charmaine might do some rash thing that Aurora was obviously dying to spell out.

“We wouldn’t want to lose you too,” she said in her falsely considerate voice, the one she used to demote people. The dark-haired woman – who’d showed her badge, she was from Surveillance – had backed Aurora up. Strongly advisable was the phrase she used about Aurora staying over. Though, she added, Charmaine was free to make her own decisions.

Like heck I am, Charmaine thought. “Leave me the heck alone!” she’d wanted to scream. But you didn’t argue with Surveillance. Pick your battles, her Grandma Win used to say, and there was no point in getting into a tug-of-war over whether or not pushy Aurora with her pulled-back fail of a face was going to muss up Charmaine’s neatly ironed floral sheets.

And muss up the clean towels. And waste a rose-scented miniature guest soap; though she and Stan never had any guests, because no one you’d known before could get into Consilience for a visit, you couldn’t even phone them or email them. But just thinking you might some day have a real guest, like an old high school friend, people you hoped wouldn’t stay long and they most likely hoped it too, but still, it was nice to catch up – just thinking about it was a comfort. She tried to see Aurora as that sort of a guest, instead of a watchdog; and that was when she finally went to sleep.

“Rise and shine,” says Aurora’s voice. Darn it if she isn’t barging in the door, carrying Charmaine’s tray with Charmaine’s teacup on it. “I’ve made you a wake-up tea. My goodness, you really did need that beauty sleep!”

“Why, what time is it?” Charmaine asks groggily. She acts groggier than she is so Aurora will think she’s taken those pills. She did flush a couple of them down the toilet, because she wouldn’t put it past Aurora to count.

“It’s noon,” says Aurora, setting the teacup down on the nightstand. There’s nothing on that stand, none of the usual clutter – the nail file, the hand lotion, the lavender aromatherapy sachet pincushion – only the alarm clock and the tissue box. And Stan’s nightstand has been cleared off as well. Where have they put it all? Maybe better not to make a fuss about that? “Now, you take your time, no hurry. I’ve fixed us brunch.” She smiles her tight, wrinkle-free smile.

What if it’s not her real face? thinks Charmaine. What if it’s only stuck on and there’s a giant cockroach or something behind it? What if I grabbed her by both of the ears and pulled, would the face pop off?

“Oh, thank you so much,” she says.

The brunch is laid out on the sunny-nook kitchen table: the eggs in the little hen egg cups Charmaine ordered from the catalogue as a tribute to Stan’s chicken work, the coffee in the mugs with gnomes on them, a grumpy one for Stan and a happy one for Charmaine, though sometimes she’d switch them around for fun. Stan needed more fun in his life, she’d tell him. Though what she’d meant was that she needed more fun in her own life. Well, she’d got some. She’d got Max. Fun plus, for a while.

“Toast? Another egg?” says Aurora, who has taken full possession of the stovetop, the pots, the toaster. How has she known where to find everything in Charmaine’s kitchen? A horde of folks has been trooping in and out of her house, it seems. The place might as well be made of cellophane.

“More coffee?” says Aurora. Charmaine looks down at the mug: Aurora has given her the happy gnome. She feels tears trickling down her cheeks. Oh no, not more crying; she doesn’t have the strength for it. Why had they wanted to kill Stan? He wasn’t a subversive element; unless he’d been hiding something from her. But he couldn’t have been, he was so easy to read. Though that’s what he’d thought about her, and look how much she’d hidden from him.

Maybe he’d found out something about Positron, something really bad. Dangerous chemicals in the chickens, and everyone was eating them? Surely not, those chickens were organic. But maybe the chickens are part of some terrible experiment, and Stan discovered it and was going to warn everyone. Could that be the reason they wanted him dead? If so, he really was a hero, and she was proud of him.

And what happened to the bodies, really? She’d never asked; she must have known that it would be crossing a line. Is there even a cemetery in Consilience? Or Positron Prison? She’s never seen one.

She wipes her nose on the serviette, a cloth one with a robin embroidered on it in tiny stitches. Aurora reaches across the sunny-nook table, pats her hand. “Never mind,” she says. “It will be all right. Trust me. Now, finish your breakfast, and we’ll go shopping.”

“Shopping?” Charmaine almost shouts. “What in the heck for?”

“The funeral,” says Aurora in the mollifying voice of an adult to a balky child. “It’s tomorrow. You don’t have a single stitch of black in your entire wardrobe.”

“You’ve been going through my closet!” Charmaine says accusingly. “That’s not your right, that closet is my private –”

“It’s my job,” says Aurora more strictly. “To help you get through this. You’ll be the star feature, everyone will be looking at you. It would be disrespectful for you to wear … well, pastel flowers.”

She has a point, thinks Charmaine. “Okay,” she says. “I’m sorry. I’m on edge.”

“It’s understandable,” says Aurora. “Anyone would be, in your place.”

There has never been anyone in my place, Charmaine thinks. My place is just too weird. And as for you, lady, don’t say understandable to me, because what you understand is nothing. But she keeps that perception to herself.

Tour

After lunch is over, Stan gets the tour. Or Waldo gets the tour. Waldo, Waldo, drill it into your head, he tells himself. He hopes to fuck there’s no other Stan in this unit, because then he might make a slip. Someone would call his real name and his head would snap up, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself.

Budge leads Stan and the rest of the team along a long hallway, blandly painted, blandly tiled. On the walls there are glossy photographs of fruit: a lemon, a pear, an apple. Round white-glass light fixtures. They turn a corner, turn another corner. No one teleported in here would have a clue where he was – what city, what country even. He’d just know he was somewhere in the twenty-first century. All generic materials.

“So, there’s basically six divisions,” Budge is saying, “for the standard economy-class models: Receiving, Assembly, Customization, Quality Control, Wardrobe and Accessories, and Shipping. Past that door you have Receiving, but we won’t bother going through, there’s nothing to see, it’s just guys unloading boxes from the transport trucks.”

“How do the trucks get in?” asks Stan, keeping his voice neutral. “I never saw any big trucks driving through the streets of Consilience.” It’s a scooter town; even cars are a rarity, reserved for Surveillance and the top brass.

“They don’t come through the town,” says Budge casually. “This place is an extension, built onto the back of Positron Prison. The back portway of Receiving opens onto the outside. ’Course, we don’t let any of those truckers come in here. No information exchange, that’s the policy– no gawkers, no leakers. As far as they know they’re delivering plumbing fixtures.”

Now that’s interesting, Stan thinks. An outside portal. How can he wangle a job in Receiving without appearing overly eager about it?

“Plumbing fixtures,” he says with a chortle. “That’s good.” Budge grins happily.

“The boxes have only the parts,” says Kevin. “Made in China like everything else, but it doesn’t pay to assemble them over there and ship the bots here. Not enough quality control.”

“Plus there would be breakage,” says Gary. “Too much breakage.”

“So they come in units,” says Budge. “Arms, legs, torsos, basically the exoskeleton. Standard heads, though we do the customizing and skinning here. There’s a lot of special orders. Some of the end users are very specific in their requirements.”