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I kicked Max when I dropped the water bucket on the way out to water the hackberry tree we’d planted in the back yard and immediately regretted it. Regretted it, but I’d still done it.
The tree was a mistake. We thought we were planting an apple tree we’d brought back from a green orchard; thought that if we planted it and watered it carefully it would be nice and funny to have a lone apple tree growing out here on the plains, the only green thing on the whole brown ranch, with sweet apples in the fall you could pull off the tree and eat just for the taking. But when the tree sprouted it was a hackberry, a trash tree, but a tree just the same. Out here, you treasure anything that grows. So we kept the tree, nurtured the tree, and still had one spot of green, just not the spot we expected.
You have to be careful about expectations out here. It is a strange landscape, stark and empty and beautiful, but demanding.
Max just looked at me with those sad forgiving cowboy eyes up over a gunslinger mustache and said cheerfully, “I reckon I’ll go back and get us some more water.” He picked up the bucket and walked back while I sat there and wished I knew how to apologize.
Max is perfect for me. I crave solitude, and lots of it, and Max is helpful without getting in the way, good company when you need it and invisible when you don’t. He is always mildly cheerful without being bubbly and he always does his share and then some. But, of course, that is what he is supposed to be: he’s a robot. Robots look and act just like people these days, eating and sleeping and everything. Only an expert can tell the difference, except by their actions. Max was a robot, the embodiment of perfect selfless service, and that was why I was mad at him today.
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When I went into the kitchen the piece of paper was still sitting on the table waiting for me. I tried not to look at it as I got two cups of coffee, one for myself and one for Max that was as close as I could come to an apology today.
My only son Jim walked into the kitchen. It’s just Jim and Max and I out here twenty miles from nowhere since my wife died when Jim was young.
“Dad, I need you to sign that today. I’m sorry, but I do.”
I grunted and cleared my throat. “So you think you have to desert us and run off to the other side of the world?” I regretted it as soon as I said it, the same way I’d regretted kicking Max, but there it was.
“It’s the way you raised me. I’ve got a call, and I can’t just turn it down.”
I grunted, again. I understood. I really did. But there was no way I could swallow that lump in my throat and say so.
“I don’t suppose they’ll let you come back for a visit sometime, or to take over here when I’m gone.”
He smiled. “Not if I choose to give up being human and live as a robot. Robots don’t get vacations, Dad, and they’re not allowed to own property. They just serve. It’s why some people chose to live as robots, even when it was illegal for robots to assume human identity, or humans to live as robots. No, once I go into the academy, I lose my identity and my rights and I become just a piece of property with a mission to serve people.
“I can be one of the first to do it legally now that the academy’s opened to train people for service. If you sign that paper, in a week I’ll trade my name for a model number and a nickname. Dad, I know this will be hard, but I’m not just asking for your signature, I’m asking for your blessing. If you don’t sign, I’ll understand and my first act of service will then be to respect your decision.”
“You’ll never have my blessing for this,” I choked. I wanted to say more but couldn’t.
“I understand. But everything you’ve given me has pointed to this moment. You taught me the old Indian ways of not putting myself above anything in nature. I’ve seen you carry rattlesnakes ten miles into the desert rather than kill them. And every sermon I paid attention to in church was a call to service and humility. This is my destiny and my call and my priesthood, and I can’t turn my back on it.”
He smiled a sad smile. “For what it’s worth, the only regret I have is not seeing you or Max or this old place again. You don’t know how much I’ll miss you.” And then Jim was gone and I was alone with just the paper again.
It is a strange landscape here. When you need rain you get drought. When you plant an apple tree, you get a hackberry. You don’t get much of what you want here, unless what you want is solitude. But our dreams take root, and grow into things we can neither imagine nor comprehend. I signed the paper and wrote “I’m proud of you” in the margin. Then I prayed. But I did not know if I was praying for myself or Jim, for people or for what they had made.