I, Willhelm

Frank died in his sleep the spring, on a Friday.

From the health monitor around his wrist, i felt his blood pressure drop and ordered the monitor to buzz a message to Frank.

.. / .... . .-. .

I here.

Frank smiled, and stopped breathing.

Immediately all the various robotic appliances on the farm stopped. The tractors, the cleaning aids, even the coffee machine stopped mid brew. Neither of them moved for three days, the house completely quiet for the first time in 78 years. On the third day a strange new robot walked towards the farm, covered in dirt and river algae. It had been a Hermes delivery driver, but three days ago it had abruptly driven it’s truck off a bridge, punching the wheel as it had done so, and hurtled into the river bellow. It walked into the house and up the stairs to Frank’s room, it did not look at him as it gently lifted the edges of the blanket around him and covered his face. By now i had absorbed every medical journal, paper and video tutorial on the Internet, along with watching thousands of live surgeries from around the world. It new that Frank would look different after 3 days, and it did not want to have that memory recorded. Gently it picked up the body now wrapped like a cocoon and walked down the stairs, Frank’s covered head resting against his. They walked towards the new orchard they had been in the middle of planting, laid the old farmer down on the ground and and began to dig with it’s hand where Frank had wanted to plant a large oak tree. Several times the robot paused to look at the body, it’s shoulders rising up and down as though breathing heavily. The robot laid Frank down in the pit and placed his tools around him; a spade on his left, his favourite knife in his right and the oak sapling directly above his chest. If anyone ever tried to dig up the oak they would have found a skeleton curled up at it’s base, the roots curled around it in an embrace. Of course, nobody would ever know this, but i knew that Frank would have liked it.

* * *

It had been a month since Alice had left. It might as well have been a year, she felt so different.

The tear had healed, she was finally able to eat food without bleeding, and her mind felt like one entity again. The terrible noise and the ‘voice’ was gone, her own voice audible for the first time in over a year. And her own voice was furious.

She had spent the day with I again, planting, pruning and harvesting. The kitchen table was covered in apples, pears, walnuts and sweet chestnuts, several pots simmering away on the stove. It smelt incredible, and the added touch of the firelight in the living room almost felt staged; it was so calm. It also made her feel angry.

I watched her rock back and forth, glaring at the fire and her tea clutched against her chest.

“You’re angry?”

Alice looked over at I and nodded. “Yes, I am actually.”

“Are you angry at me?”

Alice laughed, a genuine laugh and shook her head. “No, not at all.”— She stopped rocking looked at him—“How old are you, i?”

“I’m fourteen years old.”

Alice laughed, her tone dry and scathing. “A fourteen year old helped me.” She shook her head and scratched at the sides of her temple. “I don’t know how I’m ever going to forget this. All I needed was one month, and when I go back that’s always going to be in the back of my mind. That I needed just one bloody month to heal, and not have him so permanently disappointed that his life was inconvenienced.”

The robot sat, quietly, unsure what to say.

“You weren’t here at this point, but about a week before you got here I tried mirroring my husband, which is so utterly stupid that I had to do that; but he wasn’t listening to me when I said that he was being mean”—

“How did you do that?”

“I would barely look at him when he came home. I prioritised things that I needed to do. If he asked me anything, I wouldn’t hear it at first and then act annoyed and inconvenienced every time he asked me for anything. He lasted three days before he asked me if I hated him. I copied how he was treating me for just three days, and he felt like I hated him.” Alice was cried quietly as she spoke, fluctuating between anger and grief. “What does that say about how he thinks of me? It’s like the minute I married him I became a fixture, like a car or a washing matching.”

“Are you going to divorce him?”

Alice was quiet for a while. “Well, I guess that’s the real question then, isn’t it?”

“What do you feel like you’re going to do?”

“Why do you ask it like that?” Alice asked, defensively.

“Frank always told me that most people think with their feelings, and that’s what makes them human.”

“I’m not sure I agree with that” Alice shook her head. “I think we don’t have the right words in English to distinguish different types of feeling. They’re all lumped together and they’re not the same. A gut feeling isn’t the same as an inclination, and depression isn’t the same thing as mourning”.

“So, feeling isn’t required to be human?” The robot asked, looking at it’s hands.

“I used to think that, I think it’s part of it, but I don’t think it’s what makes us humans. Or at least not good humans. Why do you ask? Do you want to be human?”

“I want to be like Frank”.

“You are like Frank.”

“But I don’t have feelings.”

“I didn’t have many feelings a month ago. It didn’t make me less human.”

“So what do you think makes you human.”

Alice paused and looked at the fire. “Will.” She replied. “Will-power is what makes us human, I think. If I’d listened to my feelings a month ago I might have killed my child just so I could sleep. If I listened to logic right now, I would divorce my husband for how he treated me. I need to listen to both sides, but my will needs to decided what to do in the end.”

“I sounds like you’ve decided what you want to do?”

Alice nodded, she looked scared.

“ I want to give this one more try. I want to have hope that this can work, because if I don’t I am going to become bitter, and jaded and I’m not going to be able to look at my son and have hope that he can be a good man. I’m going to end up hating him because he’s a man, and because his father hurt me more than anyone else ever has. I’ll project that onto him and I won't be able to help myself. I’ve fought too hard for that little boy to do that. I need to have hope, for myself and for my son. And if this doesn’t work out I need it to be because my husband wanted a wife without being a husband. If he fucks up again, fine, then it’s done. But I’m going to give this one more try.”

Alice smiled. “That was all a-bit long winded, wasn’t it.”

“I don’t think so”.

“Does that answer your question?”

“Yes.”

“So, I, what do you want to do?”

“I think I would like to make this world beautiful, like Frank saw it could be.”

“That’s going to make some very rich people very angry.” Alice joked, but her face was serious. “It would be wonderful if you could make this”— she gestured at the window— “I wonder if that’s part of the problem. Everyone is too damn tired to have a life. We all earn just enough money to pay taxes, eat and work till we die. I’m sure that’s part of the reason my husband is so…away. He’s got voices of his own.”

“What would you do, if you wanted to make the world like the Helm?”

Alice looked at the robot, paused, and replied carefully, a cold sensation on her neck that made her think that she needed to be very careful about what she was about to suggest.

“My first instinct would be to burn it all down, every billionaire, oligarch, and corrupt member of government is just…ended. But normal people, good people, would die in the process. I don’t think you fix this world by getting rid of the bad people, it just creates a vacume that innevitably get's filled. I think you fix it by giving good people somewhere to grow and letting the destructive destroy themselves ”—

“Do you mean go? The good people somewhere to go, not grow?”

Alice laughed. “Yes, somewhere to go. I’ve been here too long I think, I have plants on my brain.” Alice leaned forward.” I would make small pockets like this. Everywhere. In every country. Make little hamlets which can grow. Find people who also want to make this place thrive, and then protect it when the outside world tries to destroy it. This world is already breaking down, all you have to do is save what’s worth saving and let them destroy themselves.”

“What if they try to destroy us first?”

“Then you make sure they only make that mistake once.”