Nightshade
Roto was allotted exactly 1,051,920 total minutes of life, divided into battery changes, of which he was given eight. When the robots came alive, they had all their essential functions, complete with the ticking time bomb of life. He was a trash robot — not exactly the most glamorous of jobs, but it allowed him to see people for what they were. Humans were curious beings. It was peculiar the types of things they threw away: grocery receipts, broken children’s toys, soiled rags, cracked dishes clashed in arguments, the crushed shells of eggs.
A little over a month after his eighth and final battery change Roto found a pregnancy test wrapped in a thick wad of toilet paper. It was wrapped carelessly — despite the copious amounts of white tissue the test slipped out instantly when Roto flipped the trash reciprocal into the long rectangular sorting machine that jutted out from his mechanical torso. “Pregnant” the test read. This discovery was found at Unit 4A, the 10th house in the line of 100 in Roto’s daily route. It wasn’t the first time Roto had discovered one of these items. Unit 55C’s bin was once filled with dozens of the tests. This was during Roto’s fourth battery life and the tests were always negative, discarded unceremoniously along with an assortment of other needles. Roto recalled that there had never been such an item in the trash of 4A. Besides, typically only negative tests ended up in the bins, sometimes accompanied by tiny cloth outfits.
A man and a woman lived in Unit 4A. He saw her often from his parking station. She was typically in the front window, her face partially obstructed by a thin blue curtain. She was petite, her face resembling a half moon. Her brown hair was wispy — she often wore it tied back, except for a single strand that she curled around her ring finger while lost in thought. She was a writer, or so Roto thought based on the discarded notes crumpled in the trash. Her name was Anna. He usually didn’t pay much mind to the names of the inhabitants, but Anna put her name on the top of all her musings. He liked to uncrumple the notes before entering them into the shredder. Her writing was a window into her mind — he imagined human minds were not that different from his own: wires and connections and energy that danced with the spark of other brains. Once, shortly after the discovery of the pregnancy test, he uncrumpled the paper to find a single sentence written so lightly in pencil one wipe of an eraser would have swept it away. “It’s like learning to surf in a tidal wave.” Roto had never seen the sea.
The man in 4A was tall with dark curls, a prominent forehead, and biceps that bulged out of his t-shirts. He typically took the trash out in the mornings, holding the crate in such a way that made it seem heavier than it was, stepping out just as the yolk of the sun began to peak over the triangular roofs of the houses. The man seldom left the neighborhood for long periods of time without Anna — Roto could only remember once, at the end of his fifth battery life, and he presumed it was one of those fancy business trips the residents of this street went to on occasion based on the style of the man’s ride and the way he dressed, despite his slightly lopsided tie.
The night before Roto discovered the pregnancy test wrapped in toilet paper, it was Anna who took the trash to the bin. It was quite late — Roto knew this because the lights were off in the houses all the way up to Unit 13B, where a young boy spent his days playing violent games on a glowing monitor. Anna moved quickly that evening. She wore a thick white bathrobe, her feet bare, hair tied up in a wet bun. Her eyes darted around as she shuffled to the bin. Roto remembered that she paused briefly at the trash. What a thing to contemplate — trash. But then she unloaded the crate swiftly before closing the lid and rushing back inside.
The remainder of that month was filled with the usual sorts of discarded items: used tampons ballooning with dried blood, scraps of newspaper with headlines of shootings in far-away cities, broken appliances (including a toaster stuffed with melted cheese), and a pair of pointy red heels, the bottoms coated in dirt. It was August, the street slow. Roto learned that many of the inhabitants of the box houses left in August to live in different box houses temporarily, which Roto found quite peculiar. He always felt a strange pang of jealousy when the inhabitants of his houses packed up their little cars with their duffle bags and backpacks, where he knew they would inevitably take pieces of their lives to be discarded in different trash bins on a separate street for another robot to take care of.
It was on the 13th of September when Roto noticed the man in 4B packing up his pickup truck. The man was wiry and lanky with a thick head of brown hair, not the typical match for such a vehicle. He lived alone, or so Roto had gathered from his observations of the residence and of the man’s trash, which was mostly filled with food remains. He hadn’t learned much else about the man other than that he liked the outdoors and seemed to only own five shirts which he rotated wearing at uneven intervals. True to character, the man was loading his truck with camping supplies. Roto recognized the sleeping bags (of which there were two), the camp chairs, and fuel for the stove. Camping was also an exercise Roto found quite peculiar: he had learned from newspaper scraps that in camping there were no secure boxes for the humans and no trash robots at all. It was about noon, the sun glaring down on the man’s pink arms. Roto watched as he counted out packs of what looked like tuna to add to his food supply, followed by an assortment of apples and oranges.
Anna didn’t appear to be home, or at least she wasn’t at her usual place in the window. The man in 4A worked from home — he had one of those tech jobs like many others on this street. It was a nice street after all with neat white picket fences and dull colored paint jobs. The landscaping robot was making her rounds, stopping longer at 4A to remove a deep green, oval-shaped weed that had snaked its way around the mailbox. Roto watched the man working in the upstairs office, his bulky shoulders hunched angrily over his keyboard. The sun eventually began to set, streaks of blood-stained orange above the rooftops dissipating into pale yellow, the lights in the houses flickering on one by one. The houses were filling up again, brochures from tropical getaways at the bottom of trash crates alongside crumpled math homework. A young girl in 6C played an out of tune piano, a cheerful song turned dark and cold while smoke billowed out of the chimney of 10A. The man in 4B had gone inside, his truck abandoned in the driveway. Darkness played tricks on the eyes — for a moment Roto thought he saw two bodies in the truck, their figures lumpy and deformed, before realizing they were in fact the figures of the sleeping bags and an overturned lantern.
The clock struck midnight. A light flickered on in 4B; on and off so quickly it could have been an accident. One of the alarms on Roto’s front control panel beeped red — the trash dump alarm. Muggers. Roto sighed. Truth be told, he didn’t see the big deal with humans from the outskirts rummaging through people’s discarded items, but protocol was protocol. They were often quick and gone by the time Roto arrived anyways, disappearing into the night. Once, the mugger was a small girl. It was the middle of December and she looked so pale and frightened when Roto’s light shined on the mountains of trash. He remembered she wore a thick pink coat (much too large for her), and black wool boots, her hair twisted into two messy braids. It was the items she held that he remembered most — expired medicines, antibiotics mostly. He had looked at her and she had looked back at him, his mechanical finger running over the button to throw the net. But something stopped him, and instead he watched her turn and run through the valley of trash, her frightened breath puffing into the cold air. Tonight however there weren’t any humans in sight, just the trash with gleaming bottle caps that were easy to mistake for eyes, and a momentary screech and crash in the distance that he presumed was the sound of the mugger escaping.
The first sign something was amiss was not until the next morning. The truck in 4B still sat in the driveway but all the camping supplies were gone, except for the lantern which Roto could see the tip of peaking over the door in the back. But humans changed their minds and plans often. Someone got sick, weather changed, alcohol bottles filled the trash as the humans dozed and dreams of hiking the latest mountain were put on hold. The man in 4B eventually exited his house to remove the remaining lantern. His hair was matted to one side, and he still wore his pajama bottoms, his feet bare. He looked around the street nervously, staring at Roto for an extended glance, before swinging the lantern out of the truck and hoisting it back inside. He was back later with a garden hose, rinsing down the truck and scrubbing it with a kitchen sponge. His movements were quick and jagged, and though Roto had never cleaned a car he’d seen more efficient ways the job could be done. Neither Anna or the man in 4A could be seen through their windows, and Roto recalled that the man in 4A had not taken the trash out as he usually did. By the chimes of noon, however, the man was back at his computer, his shoulders once again hunched agitated over the keyboard, speaking through the screen to someone in a different box house. That night, the light in 4B flickered on again, the yellow of the lamp reflecting on the glass as if the room were momentarily set ablaze. Then it went off, like the blowing out of an oil lamp, only to be flickered on once more and off again.
The next morning’s trash pick-up was mundane: crescent-moon shards of toenail clippings, worn out clothing, used razors, burnt toast, and a child’s broken doll, the arm ripped off, perhaps in an argument amongst siblings. The trash of 4A was still surprisingly empty — the man had not brought it out since the day before the suspected mugger. In fact, Roto realized he hadn’t seen Anna in the window, nor in the rocking chair where she sometimes sat upstairs reading. She wore thick-rimmed glasses when she read, her thin fingers turning the pages gently as if cradling the wings of a baby bird, her window cracked open to let in the air even when it rained. Sometimes she took a break from reading to shower, undressing with the window still open. She was a woman of consistency. She wore mostly neutrals: white t-shirts and beige cardigans; distressed jeans and white bras that she tossed carelessly on the floor. Her underwear was always red and lace, and Roto felt embarrassed for staring but he found this perplexing against the otherwise dull tones of the room and the rest of her clothes.
Roto wondered if Anna had taken to sitting on the back porch. He imagined her reading or perhaps writing one of her stories, sipping a glass of wine or perhaps a fruit punch. Based on his temperature sensor the heat had died down and it was quite pleasant outside, so this was probable — kids were back on their scooters with their popsicle-stained shirts and lopsided helmets, sometimes taking one hand dangerously off the scooters to wave at him. Roto never saw the backyards of the houses on his street — these were obstructed by thick hedges, so he could only imagine what the residents did behind the doors of their boxes, although he could hear sounds of children splashing in pools and the scrapping of dishes at the end of dinner parties, the clinking of glasses and forced laughter dissipating into the air. He was proud of his quiet street. On training day he’d learned about all sorts of other streets with tales of stray dogs biting into the flesh of innocent children, teenagers discarding the burnt remains of cigarettes on the heads of other trash robots, or even one horrific tale of a stabbing, the suspect running half naked down the block and throwing himself into the trash dump itself, where he was eventually carted away and dealt with. That’s why of course it was to Roto’s complete surprise when in the early hours of the next morning, just as the sun began its rise above the rows of boxes, a police car rolled up out front of 4A.
When the police officer knocked on the door of 4A the man stepped outside in a bathrobe, his usually well-kept curls unruly, glasses pressed on his face which Roto had never seen him wear before. It was time for the start of morning trash pick-up and Roto moved quickly through the initial houses: 1C had a pair of perfectly good tennis sneakers with a slight scuff of mud, 2B the thick peels of oranges, 3A pencil shavings and a rusted metal pot. The police officer and the man were still speaking, and Roto was close enough now to hear their conversation if he concentrated just hard enough and ignored the sharp sounds of the wind and vibrations of the sun. Metals were a nuisance when they ended up in the trash — Roto had to utilize a screening system for any toxins before they could be taken to the metals section of the dump and melted. This was done by inserting the object into a tube in his rectangular body, where a series of quick tests were done, the results shared on his front screen monitor.
“Yesterday,” Roto could hear the man in 4A say, his voice low. Roto had missed the leading question while fumbling with the pot and ensuring it was arranged just right to be accepted into the tube. The larger items were the hardest — apparently the new robot models would be more sophisticated with longer lifespans and less hassle involved. “She told me she was going to write by the river,” the man said. “She was upset, told me she needed a change of scenery. She likes that kind of thing, writing, you know.” Roto thought this was a strange way to phrase things because of course the police officer did not know Anna so how would he know whether she liked to write by the river.
Roto could see the officer taking notes. The metal pan swirled down the tube and into the test collection compartment.
“So, she’s been missing since yesterday?”
“She didn’t return for dinner. Chicken alfredo — ” the husband stopped to rub his forehead, his wedding band gleaming in the light of the early morning. “We were supposed to eat chicken alfredo and she never came home.”
The testing of the metal pot was at 99%. Roto felt bad for the metals that ended up in the trash. It had been a good pot after all, heating up water until it reached its boiling point. Slowly destroying itself through the fire of water and the scraping of metal spoons that churned dinners like chicken alfredo. Of course, in a somewhat ironic way he knew that’s exactly what would happen to him when his duty was finished. His time was almost up — 3,841 minutes to be exact. Some of his parts would be melted and some would be spared for other uses. In training they were told a job well done would be rewarded in the next use of their metals, and Roto fantasized of becoming part of the trains he heard in the distance, whizzing past the streets and tiny towns where he could finally see beyond the hedges and perhaps even get a glimpse of the sea.
The testing of the pot had reached 100%: Clear. The rust would have to be scrapped away of course, the mechanical arms inside his cleaning mechanism already at work. The police officer had moved on to the door of 4B as Roto hastily wheeled to collect the trash of 3B and 3C, before finally reaching 4A. The officer knocked again at the door of 4B, more loudly this time, but there was no answer. The truck still sat in the driveway, streaks of water staining the chipped blue paint. The trash of 4A remained empty and 4B had nothing noteworthy — an empty can of seltzer water and a box of pizza, the crumbs clinging to the wax paper. That evening, more cop cars arrived, and Roto realized with a jolt of remorse that Anna was in fact missing, since he hadn’t seen her by the window or in the rocking chair or returning from a shower, cheeks flushed red.
The man in 4B returned to the street as dusk settled and the police had begun to organize a search for Anna. He was walking, he told the officer. He liked walking. He wore hiking boots and a pair of zip off pants, and Roto noticed the soles of his shoes were laced with a thick coat of mud. The man signed up to help with the search, along with Anna’s husband — the husband had finally gotten dressed and out of his bathrobe but was wrapped in a thin aluminum blanket despite the sweltering heat. A pudgy woman from 88C brought a casserole (sweat pooling under her armpits from the walk down the block), her child trailing behind with a yoyo, and a young couple from 15B arrived with freshly baked bread, the woman wearing black heels unsuitable for the search of a missing person. In fact, by the time the search commenced, there were about 30 people in attendance, and Roto once again felt proud of his street despite the nagging pain of wishing Anna’s scribbles would appear in the trash.
Darkness set in and the streetlights flickered on, along with the flashlights of the search party, their orange reflective vests glowing as the detectives divided them into groups. Roto watched as the groups departed, each in different directions. The group with the husband was the last to leave and he still wore the aluminum blanket, his shoulders shaking whenever one of the police officers or detectives approached. “I just want her to come home,” Roto heard him say as he twirled his wedding band.
Roto watched the bulbs of the flashlights dance away into the night. One group of detectives stayed to search the house of 4A, a process that lasted only approximately 15 minutes before the lights of that house were turned dark and cold and Roto was left in the company of the stars.
The flashlights and orange vests eventually returned along with the slouching of shoulders and trudging of defeated legs. The residents of his street retreated to their dark boxes, inaudible whispers and hushed murmurs mixing with the warm breeze. The child of the woman from 88C had lost his yoyo somewhere along the way, tears streaming down his round cheeks as the mother dragged him home, wails cutting through the air. The detectives and the police stayed in a huddle after the other humans left, the husband shutting himself away behind his brown door. The man in 4B sat on his front stoop, staring off into the distance, fiddling with a carabiner on his belt.
“We’ll search the neighbors’ houses tomorrow,” one of the detectives said quietly — “Just to rule that out.”
“Husband said she was pregnant,” another shared, followed by a deafening silence. “He thinks she was depressed. Blames himself, poor bloke. It was unplanned — the pregnancy I mean.”
Roto was once again overcome by a deep sadness that confused him because he wouldn’t have lived long enough in this form to see Anna’s child, but he couldn’t help but imagine her in the rocking chair, reading one of her stories aloud to a baby who wouldn’t yet appreciate language.
The man in 4B took his trash out the following morning. His crate was quite full, and he nodded to Roto as he dumped the items away in a single overturning of the crate. The trash of 4A was still empty, and Roto imagined the husband all alone in the silent house, surrounded by leftover takeout boxes and remnants of meals he’d shared with Anna. The trash of 4B contained a large assortment of clothing. The humans did this every so often, discarding clothing like the shedding of skin. Fabrics were relatively easy to account for and dump. Unlike the metals there were no screenings for toxins in fabrics and Roto worked quickly, being close to 4A was causing unexpected distress. He tossed a green t-shirt and plaid flannel into the fabrics collection shoot. There were two jackets followed by muddy overalls and three pairs of jeans of varying degrees of wear. In his haste to move along, Roto almost missed it. A slight bulge in the pant leg of the last pair of jeans. Likely a sock that had succumbed to this latest closet cleansing. He reached his mechanical arm inside the denim, gripping the fabric and pulling it free. It was not a sock. Roto felt the square windows of each of the houses watching him, the glare of the glass closing in as his fist clenched in rage and opened to confirm the item in question, the red lace underwear draped across his hand like a pool of blood.
Roto waited to signal the alarm to ensure the man would not run. He kept the underwear clasped in one hand while sorting the items of boxes 5–12 single-handedly, going through the motions of collecting plastic utensils, uneaten broccoli, and a broken green earring. He finally pressed the emergency signal while discarding a can of instant ramen, a single uncooked noodle left behind at the bottom of the container.
The street was put on lockdown for the remainder of the afternoon while the police and detectives searched the house of 4B. Roto’s trash duties were suspended while this occurred, and he watched them bring out various items from the house in ziplock bags while the forensics team went to work analyzing the evidence. Roto found this all quite fascinating, he had read about crimes on other streets from the newspapers, but he had never seen the follow through in action, and for a moment he was filled with excitement that his final days would be filled with such a rollercoaster of suspense. This feeling was fleeting and followed by deep shame. Anna was gone, the discovery of her DNA in the residence of 4B confirmed just after the clock struck 3:00pm. The man in 4B was escorted to the police car in handcuffs — he wore flip flops and khaki pants, his skin pale and sickly. “I didn’t do it,” Roto heard him murmur, his lips chapped. “I didn’t do it,” he said again, as the door to the car began to close. “Anna — Anna was a friend.”
The body was found the next morning, buried deep in the woods in a spot overlooked by the search party the previous evening. It was Roto’s last day of life, his battery slowly dying out, and he felt sad that he could not collect a final round of trash in his shut down neighborhood as he watched the paramedics take Anna away in a body bag. The weapon in question was still missing — a stab wound straight to her chest. The day was particularly humid, AC units cranking on higher as inquisitive faces of nearby residences pressed noses to their windows. The young girl in 2B played with a dollhouse, arranging a make-believe sitting room, kitchen, and bedroom, moving clay figurines throughout the box within a box — a man, woman, and child going about mundane tasks that were somehow interesting enough to keep the girl from looking out the window where a roll of thunder struck, and it began to rain lightly. The residents were finally let out, and Roto watched as some stood aimlessly in their yards, letting the droplets hit their fragile skin, the occasional couple walking down the street hand in in hand, nodding at Roto with hesitant smiles, a group of three children running down the block before nervous parents ushered them back inside. A few of his humans stopped to thank him. They brought flowers: pink lilies and yellow roses, laying them at the base of Roto’s body. These budding things would outlive him of course — he had only 360 minutes left before his systems shut down and he would be carted away, just like Anna. The boy in a wheelchair from 44A brought Roto a handmaid flower crown of white daisies, his mother placing the offering atop Roto’s head, and the girl with the dollhouse brought a piece of orange construction paper drawn on in thick crayon — a robot with a billowing superhero cape, little people clapping and cheering below. He had been a good robot, after all, and he hoped his contribution to the solving of the crime would play a role in the use of his metals. Perhaps he would even become part of one of the planes he saw roaring in the sky, up and up until he could reach what was left of Anna in the particles of the air and optimism of the clouds.
Roto had only 15 minutes left when the outdoor light flickered on outside 4A, and the husband stepped outside in gray sweatpants and a maroon hoodie. It was a quarter to midnight, the block quiet, Roto taking in the last moments of the street with his sleeping humans and their minds of worries and victories. It was then Roto realized the husband was looking at him, his eyes vacant, jaw clenched. He held something in his hand as he walked towards Roto, looking to his left and right as he crossed the street, even though there were no cars at this hour. He walked so slowly that by the time he reached Roto there were only 10 minutes remaining in Roto’s battery, his control panel blinking red. The husband sat on the concrete next to Roto, clutching a bundled towel in his hands. Roto wished he could speak to comfort the man and he regretted not paying more attention to the husband’s name as much as he had paid notice to Anna. The husband’s shoulders were hunched, and Roto felt confused yet humbled by the visit; it was nice to have company in his final minutes, the glow of the moon illuminating the whites of the man’s eyes.
“It wasn’t mine,” the man said softly, looking down at the bundle, his voice a trailing whisper in the emptiness of the night. Roto thought this was a rather odd thing to say about a shower towel, but he had observed grieving people say and do all sorts of unusual things.
There were five minutes remaining on the clock now. Roto imagined his body melting into the wings of a plane.
“It wasn’t mine,” the man said again, an edge to his voice. He held out the towel to Roto, an offering.
It was protocol to not accept trash directly from the humans, only from the bins, but Roto had missed his last day of collections due to the death of Anna, and besides, it hardly mattered at this point, the four-minute timer counting down. The man’s arms were outstretched, and Roto calculated the decision for exactly three seconds, before accepting the bundle in his mechanical arms. It was heavier than expected. He placed the bundle on his sorting tray, his final task. He began to unravel the towel to slip into fabrics. It wouldn’t matter in the end: the mechanic had come earlier to ensure no trash remained in Roto’s system before the death of his battery; the towel would be melted along with him now, perhaps taking a piece of Anna along for whatever adventure awaited his parts next. Three minutes remained.
“It wasn’t mine,” the husband repeated. “Couldn’t have been.” The man stood up, his hands on his head, pacing around the robot and watching the timer on the battery panel. “I was so angry. Her bags, they were all packed. I lost control,” he said, as Roto flipped the last fold of the towel to reveal the sharp edge of a steak knife.
Roto could feel the engines of his mind whirling out of control. He wanted to snap the knife in half, to erase the discovery, the flower crown of daisies shaking on his head. He slipped the knife into the toxin detection system. Two minutes remaining. The husband trembled, hands shaking as he reached to pick up the petal of one of the yellow roses, crushing it between his thumb and index finger. Roto watched the knife slide down the tube. One minute remaining. The machine whirled. 60%; 45 seconds of battery remaining. 80%; bits of the crushed yellow rose flaking onto the dark concrete. 98%; 15 seconds.
“It wasn’t mine,” the man said again, his voice hollow.
100%. The detection panel flashed red. Toxin detected: Blood. The husband’s eyes widened. Roto reached his hand to press the alarm as the husband lunged forward to stop him, but it didn’t matter, Roto’s mechanical hand was frozen in space.
“Battery depleted,” a voice from inside his mind stated. The voice was neither positive nor negative, simply a fact. Same as a train horn in the distance and the stars that bore down on him and the man with his crooked smile and the baby that cried a few doors down. Roto’s mind slowed, his vision remaining for a split-second longer, and he could make out with precise detail a missed spot of dirt on the street and the sharp blades of evenly cut grass.
Darkness set in as a harsh breeze blew through, picking up the orange construction paper with the whirling kaleidoscope of colors, lifting the miniature robot and his cape beyond the hedges and up into the sky.
