Child Classes Inherit Parent Objects (Excerpt)
By Joshua Harding
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I told my dad to lean toward me. He obliged slowly and I could hear his ancient joints creaking under the strain. He lowered his torso until his head was level with his hips and his back was prostrate in front of me. Then I pulled the quick release pins from his spine and removed his access panel.
I’d stopped at the hardware store on my way to visit him at the retirement home. I grabbed some fan belts, a new terabyte drive, six tubes of high temp silicone lubricant (his favorite), and a can of antistatic spray.
“Whoa, Pop!” I said. “When’s the last time anyone opened you up?”
“Approximately two months ago,” he replied.
“Jeez! I think there’s a nest of spiders in here.” I shot a couple of quick bursts of spray and blew a good quantity of dust from his main heating coil.
“Did you bring the lubricant?” he asked from his inverted position.
“Yup,” I replied. I gave him another good spray and then pulled the twin cooling fans from his hip cavity. Each of them got a new belt and his sacral joint got a hefty swabbing of the high temp lubricant.
“Did you bring the lubricant?” my dad asked again.
“Yes, dad, I’m putting it on you right now.”
“Did you bring the lubricant?”
I sighed audibly as I snapped everything back into place. He straightened up to face me. “How does that feel, dad?”
“Much better, thank you,” he said.
“So, how’ve things been, lately?” I asked. I sat down on the chair next to his bed. He eased back onto the pillows and cleared his throat. “Have you been going to activities? Made any new macramé?”
His eyescreens blinked and he said, “It is very good to see you, Sam.”
“You too, dad.”
“Tell me what you have been doing, Sam.”
“Well, I have some good news.” He blinked again. “I’ve been offered a job.”
“With what company?”
“It’s a medical supply company…in Toronto.”
“Toronto, Ontario is 1,268.16 kilometers from home.”
“Yeah, I know, dad.”
“When will you start your new job?”
“I have to give them an answer by the end of the week.” He was silent. I could see him compiling what I’d just said into his different subfolders before speaking again. “Maybe you could come with me. There are retirement communities in Canada, too.”
“Read to me, please.”
“All right,” I said. “Do you want to hear Ray Bradbury again?”
“Yes, please.”
I opened the nightstand, picked up the dog-eared book, opened it, and began: “‘Grandma! I remember her birth. Wait, you say, no man remembers his own grandma’s birth.’” I read it without looking; I could recite it from memory by now. “‘But, yes, we remember the day that she was born. For we, her grandchildren, slapped her to life.’” I glanced over at him and saw that his lips were moving along with mine. He paused when I paused. Just then, Sofia knocked and entered the room.
“Hello, Mr. Duncan!” she said with a boisterous, kindergarten teacher’s positivity and that Puerto Rican accent that always made me melt. “Time to change your batteries.” Sofia had been my dad’s Robot Assistant since I put him in the Cyber Springs Retirement Community five years ago. Every anniversary Sofia and the other RAs would throw a huge party for him. There was a picture of the most recent one tacked to his whiteboard with his daily goals. In the photo a dozen young, vibrant RAs surrounded my dad and held a colorful banner that said: “It’s not the years, it’s the mileage!”
“Hello, Sam,” she said with a smile.
“Hello, Sofia,” I said. She and I were always professional in front of my dad. If he suspected anything, he didn’t let on, although he knew both of us well enough to formulate an educated guess.
Sofia and I had been dating for almost a year and a half.
I continued reading while Sofia swapped out the battery packs in the side panels of my dad’s thighs. She put the old batteries on a charging cart and pushed it out into the hallway and came back in with a space blanket. I stopped for a moment and looked again at the anniversary photo. “Sofia? I never thanked you for putting those parties together.” She looked at the photo as she shook out the blanket. I snuck a look at how the scrubs hugged her behind. “It’s really thoughtful of you.”
“Your dad is the longest resident we’ve had here,” she said. “I’ve never seen an X.509 model last so long.”
“He’s a classic—like a vintage car. I try to take care of him, don’t I, dad?”
My dad swung his head toward Sofia and I could hear the servos in his neck grinding. I’d have to replace those bearings soon. “Sam is a good boy,” he said to her.
“I know,” said Sofia. She leaned in and raised her voice and enunciated her consonants so the old robot could hear her. They stopped production on his AT2020 microphones last year. I didn’t know how long his voice recognition would last. Pretty soon I’d have to punch all our conversations into the auxiliary keyboard under his ribcage—an awkward arrangement, to say the least, and I was a horrible typist. “He takes good care of you, doesn’t he, Mr. Duncan?”
“Sam…” said my dad. “Sam…Sam…Sam…” His head jerked back and forth with each utterance.
“Ok, dad,” I said. “We got it. Take it easy.”
“Good…good…good…” I reached under his chin to find the quit button. His head’s motion made the button slip away from my finger several times (why didn’t they put the thing on his shoulder or forearm—somewhere more accessible?). I depressed the button and the jerking immediately settled down. “…boy…” he said and was silent.