Penumbra

Please enjoy this story from my grad school days.

The sky was overcast, and it had been raining all week, but Penny felt the urge to escape. She dragged her boyfriend, Bobby, to the dog park. The breeze nearly blew their cocker spaniel, Alma, into the bushes. They sat on the hill and let the dog run. Alma chased wayward butterflies in circles. Penny clutched Bobby’s hand. She was surprised when he spoke. He’d been somber since she received the news yesterday.

“Do dogs go to heaven?” he asked.

Penny searched for clouds but was met with nothing. Damn. The sky was too murky for her to see anything, the clouds blending into a dark mass. “I used to like making shapes with them,” she said.

“With what?” he asked.

“The clouds.”

“Huh. Sounds kind of pointless,” he said.

“It fosters creativity,” she insisted.

“If you say so.”

Their dog barked at the elusive butterflies. Penny pulled out the eggs Bobby had boiled for breakfast. It was one of the few things he could make, considering he lacked taste buds. She bit into one. Too salty, but she didn’t have the heart to tell him. This place was special. It was where he had first told her he loved her.

“So, do they?” Bobby asked.

“Do they what?”

“Do dogs go to heaven?” he asked.

“I guess not,” she said.

“Why?”

She thought back to her Sunday school lessons before answering. “Because they have no souls, so they can’t go to heaven.” She shivered and leaned close to him. It didn’t help, but the constant temperature of his skin was comforting.

“So, you need a soul to go to heaven?”

She spoke softly. “Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Because you do.”

“But why?”

“Because it’s silly. It would be like asking if a toaster would—”

Silence. She felt bile in her throat.

Bobby pulled away, stiffening at her words.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” she said.

“No, I get it. No hunks of metal in heaven. Message received, loud and clear.”

“Bobby, you know I love you, but—”

“Loving something doesn’t give it a soul. I got it.”

He stared at the sky.

Alma had tired herself out and panted at the bottom of the hill. Penny reached for Bobby, then pulled away. It was usually the other way around, ever since she’d built him. He would try to get to her, only for her to run away.

Bobby exhaled. He didn’t have to, but it was part of his programming.

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His name was R-278 and he was a robot. Information processed through him, everything from personal repair to personality traits. His new girlfriend stood in front of him. He blinked twice, just long enough to get the girl in question to collect herself.

“Please state your name,” he said.

“Um, Penny?” she said.

He couldn’t find that name in his database. “Umpenny. Is this correct? Strange, but pretty.”

“No, no, no. I mean, my name is Penelope Espinosa. You can call me Penny,” she said.

“Hello, Penny. What is my name?” he asked.

She stared at him, confused. “Don’t you have a name?”

He laughed. Protocol said humans were easily confused by the process of attaining a robot for the first time. They also liked it when robots acted as human as possible, as opposed to machinery capable of such personal functioning.

“My name is currently R-278. Protocol says that is not a common name among humans.”

“Right. You need a new one. One that won’t make my priest exorcise me,” she said. “Do they call you anything else?”

“Non-technical materials refer to me as Robert.”

“Robert. I like it. A little too formal though. We can call you…”

His brain computed all the alternatives. “Bob? Rob? Robby? Bobby?”

“I like Bobby,” she said.

“Do I have a last name?”

“Um…”

“The most common name in the United States among the white population is currently Smith.”

“Smith works.”

He grinned cheekily.

She laughed, embarrassed. “This is not happening, I’m not blushing due to a robot boy.”

Bobby highly disagreed with her, but he didn’t need to be human to know that saying so was a bad idea. Penny was going to be an interesting girlfriend, that was for sure.

She wrung her hands.

“I’m not one of those freaks, just so you know.”

He wasn’t sure why it mattered, but he nodded.

“I built you because my boyfriend died,” she said. “And I’m tired of people telling me to move on. I don’t want to move on.”

“What happened to him?” He asked, unprompted.

“He killed himself. Assisted suicide. Or assisted death. Whatever you want to call it.” 

They sat quietly, Bobby waiting for her to continue.

 “His name was Vito. We’d known each other since we were six. Our moms were friends and his sister used to babysit us together. We’d been dating for a year when he had an accident.  He really loved horseback riding. His family was from Mexico, so he’d been doing it all his life. He was in competitions and everything.” 

She inhaled. Bobby took note. Breathing. Humans did that.

“He had an accident while riding. Not sure what happened. Maybe his horse spooked. Doesn’t matter I suppose. He was paralyzed from the neck down. Limited movement. After six months, he decided to… Well, you know.” 

There was a strange moisture in her eyes, moisture Bobby would never have. There was no reason for a robot to cry after all.

“I tried to convince him not to. Most of us did. His parents were very understanding though.” She laughed, rocking herself, arms clenched in a cocoon.  “I broke one of their vases when they told me they planned to let him go through with it. It had been in their family for generations. Really pricey. Not sure they ever forgave me for that. None of us were enough for him to stay with us, I guess. Not me, not his family. Certainly not him.”

Bobby reached out. She jumped.

“Could you please not do that?”

“Why?”

“It’s so-”

“Human?”

“Confusing.”

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They walked home in silence. Droplets poured from the sky. Alma was strangely subdued as Bobby led her along the street.

Penny bit her lip. She didn’t know how to ask him to talk to her. He was the one rambling. She never bothered changing that part of his code. It would change who he was and Penny never wanted that.

“Did you like the eggs?”

She started.

“What?”

“The eggs.”

“Oh. They were good.”

Penny grabbed his free hand. She was relieved that he let her.

“Why are you so concerned with heaven or hell? You are agnostic,” she said.

Except she already knew why he was asking. Not because of any mainframe, but because she had spent the past three years of her life with him.

“You saw the news this morning. All the robots have been recalled. They could take me away from you any day now and shut me off. I just want to know, if that happens, I’ll still get to see you again. Maybe not here, but somewhere else.”

Penny’s hand shook. There. The truth they had been avoiding all day. He was going to leave her. They were going to take him back and she couldn’t stop him.

“I guess they could,” she said.

“What?

“I guess dogs could go to heaven. I mean, if God is really all powerful, then he can make a sure a dog goes to heaven… right?”

He smiled. “I guess we can always hope.”