Miniature Mausoleums

By Anissa Belkadi

Before the artificial intelligence movement of the 1960s, everyone used to dream of a future where robots could do all the tedious tasks we hate. Fold laundry, take out the garbage, boring chores. But no one could have guessed that our synthetic counterparts would one day master intricate surgery, automobile maintenance, and virtually any job that code could be written for. All these advancements should have made life easy. But, as Dante Casio was well aware, mechanical helpers can't fix everything.

After years of struggling under the crippling grief of losing his family, he pushes on day by day with the help of his only friend left, Gloria Vale. It seems as if his life will stay horribly stagnant, never moving forward. Until Dante becomes the prime suspect in a recent arson case, and Gloria takes him on the run. Along the way he learns more about himself, his family, and the nature of their robotic helpers than he ever wanted to know.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Nov 7, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312661479

Book preview

Miniature Mausoleums

Miniature Mausoleums

Anissa Belkadi

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real people, life, or events, is entirely on purpose and likely the world conspiring against you. Beware the fortune cookies.

Copyright © 2014 Anissa Belkadi.

All rights reserved.

Anatomy

Thursday July 3rd, 8:04 a.m. I found a foot severed at the ankle. It peeked through the clutter of garbage before me as I toppled it all into the truck. It fell into the great gaping hole and I watched it watching me. I knew that I have only seconds to act, but in the time it would take for me to check for onlookers the foot would be gone. A foot like that was worth my whole rent in parts alone, and triple that if I was able to get it working again. Enough to make a few months easy if I used the cash in increments. As if I didn’t already register the panic stirring, the beating thing inside my chest rampaged as a kind reminder. But deep down I knew I’d made a decision the second it surfaced, and so I flung my hand out and snatched it away, delving it deep into my oversized pockets.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

Now I looked around. The coast was clear; everyone was still locked away in their homes, tending to the daily to-do list required to be finished in order to walk out of the door. Stepping back onto the orange platform, I wrapped my hands tightly around the handlebar and signalled for Carlos to move on. Another house; another story. Another household wrongfully entrusting me with their secrets.

I knew more about those whose trash I picked up than I did about my own family. It wasn’t about the bank statements or Monday night’s leftovers or the decaying old furniture. It was about poorly hidden adult magazines and the stained materials and the empty things that somehow took up more space in the can.

Five days a week I collected the fossilizing remains of the Lower city’s second lives. It felt more like eight days a week—and no amount of Beatles music could stop the sound or the smell. The constant roaring of the garbage truck, the metal teeth that ripped the skeletons apart smashing against the bottom of the hull…these sounds haunted me. The stench of realisation; finally seeing the truth behind the elaborately decorated lies. This fact we hid behind our Ikea furniture and our AA meetings and our witness protection programs. The possibility that the essence of humanity, the beauty of our imperfections, didn’t have to be genetic; it could be bought and programmed and installed.

The fact that body parts were occasionally stolen—depending of course on the condition—and sold into the black market didn’t make the action legal or moral. But it was something done anyways; a crime that people usually turned a blind eye to. Like kids smoking pot in their basement during a jam session or blatantly jay-walking in a not-so-busy part of town. Did it really count as stealing if they were thrown into the trash? The way I saw it, the second something was condemned to the ever-expanding landfill (that, in all probability would one day overtake the planet) it was fair game. It wasn’t my fault that people didn’t think to send the foot in for repair.

I wasn’t to blame for the state of consumer culture.

One of the things that makes modern societies function so well is everyone’s ability to completely block out the facts about what keep the world turning. You can’t make petitions to raise labour standards for people you don’t know exist. No one worries about the conditions of the farmers who put food (albeit, indirectly) on the table. It was much more convenient to just accept that these shadows of people were running around behind the scenes. Just oil in the machines. Fuel in the engine.

Seven years ago the entire service sector for the Upper City had been automated. Nearly 3000 workers were relocated to their respective backup fields or sometimes even other cities. There was, as always, a fair bit of protesting against the proposed change; but it was the equivalent to hippies from the sixties crying about ending the war. Futile. It’s easy to believe you can change the world when you think people in power stay just that—people. To have power, to have a shift in control no matter how small, it gets to your head like a bad rush of brain freeze. Maybe it’s just reminiscent Alpha Male tendencies, but it eats people alive and it makes them forget. It’s like the entire life they lived as a normal kid never happened. Selective memory. Closing the hood.

The automation just furthered the divide between the Upper and Lower City of Exsom. The turnover dropped the human presence from 32% to just 4%. All that remained were the few managers of the various plants that did their rounds once a week and the technicians who tended to the machines. Our beautifully crafted centrepieces; these deliciously drawn-up devices. A personal Jesus for anyone who could afford it that took the form of whatever you needed. The saving race of human kind.

My orange sleeve became saturated in sweat as I wiped it across my forehead. The sun was unforgivingly hot today, the clouds taking cover on the other side of the world. People always seemed to think about what we would ever do if one day the sun exploded or Earth fell out of orbit and we lost our sunlight. Why did no one ever panic about the opposite? What if the sun never set again, what if the planet had to be divided into night and day; what if you had to travel across the world just to get a little shut eye? It would turn us into completely opposite creatures. We would become a world of early birds and night owls; to each their respective time zone. A whole market would explode overnight with the promise of an artificial nocturne.

Just another avenue for profiteering, I guess. We were living in an age of evolved skepticism; any half-informed pre-teen could tell you the thing about buying anything that isn’t a necessity is that, if it’s been marketed correctly, you actually think you’re making the decision. You learn so many contradicting truths that you think free will is the biggest illusion in the world. All a big company has to do to get your buck is have two lines of a competing product.

The fact is that everyone is schizophrenic, and companies get to pick and choose which part of us to target. Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde. Clark Kent or Superman.

Hey kid, you been screwin’ around with this thing again?

The truck lurched suddenly, slamming my face into the grab pole, and came to a stop. I jumped off the platform, pressing against my cheek like it would do me any good, and walked up to the driver’s side where Carlos was slamming the dashboard the way old folks would hit monitors when the computer’s acting up. There was smoke coming out of the hood and I didn’t know a thing about fixing cars. To pacify Carlos I ushered him out of the front seat, opening the hood and taking a look. The smoke was hot, sweat beading once more as my hair—long overdue for a cut—plastered to my head. Under the hood was a maze to me. Give me a computer and I could fix any problem in an hour. Give me an S-series bot and it’d be fixed in a business day. Give me a crossword puzzle and consider it solved: but automobiles were a foreign country to me.

Carlos called it in and we resolved to sitting on the curb. I prayed he didn’t notice the outline of a felony in my pocket; the stowaway, the fugitive, the $5000 fine. With difficulty I pulled off my gloves, setting them on my leg in an attempt to hide the evidence. It didn’t matter that I’d been running this route with Carlos for the past 3 years, I barely knew him. All I had were surface facts: he’d been married for 21 years, his kids Alexis and Luca were 8 and 12, he’d been moved to sanitation after his business went under two cities over. What I didn’t know was the type of man he was, if he would rat me out if he ever discovered my vulture-like tendencies.  He was no Gloria.

The Mechanos’ll be here in fifteen. He checked the time on his phone and repositioned his hat before looking over at me. You’re sure you didn’t play with nothin’?

I wouldn’t risk something like this happening. I pulled off my watch, wiped the surface, and slipped it back on. Fourteen minutes. Everything breaks down eventually.

So long as repairs aren’t comin’ outta my paycheck. He muttered, booting up a game on his phone and attacking the screen with his fingertips. They left little smudge marks all over the surface, caking on top of the ones that already called the place home. I left him to his games and relocated to a patch of grass covered by the shade. The homeowners weren’t there—well, there wasn’t any car in the drive way—which meant I could take refuge so long as no neighbours decided to get testy.

My body grew restless before my mind did, so when the fifteen minute mark had come and gone I resorted to start collecting the garbage left on the street and carrying it back to the truck. The quicker we were done, the quicker I could go home. Tuesdays were always the worst day of the week with nothing but a 10 hour shift to look forward to.

I ached for the comfort of my home. I wanted the silence and privacy and seclusion and darkness. I was suffocating on the sunlight; bleeding out on account of the mundane remnants of life shoved in my face. I could die from the reruns of crushed up garbage. Garbage collecting wasn’t, after all, my end goal in life. There was a mission awaiting me, a journey to save the princess from the vicious dragon. Sanitation work was just a means for me to keep the armor shiny.

What little nails I had left were being chewed off—a bad habit that plagued me since childhood—when the Mechanos finally arrived in their silver box. The side opened and two of them were lowered onto the ground: grandchildren of some of the first bots to be commissioned and standardized. Normal torso mold fitted onto a ball with sept-jointed hands to help manoeuvre all the difficult angles. One of them stuck its extra appendage into the truck and after a whirring noise removed it with a jack attachment.

The whole process only took about ten minutes. Being some of the first, it meant there was more time for them to be rewritten, rebuilt, refined: perfected. The car was lifted up and appendages stuck out, scanning the vehicle all around and underneath to find the issue. While they worked the standard Joe was launched. I didn’t mind the Mechanos, it was the Joes that gave me the creeps. I don’t know who it was that decided every Personal for the company should have not only the same name but the exact same physical appearance, but it was unnerving. No matter what repair shop you called for, you were always greeted by the same Joe. His appearance was probably modeled after the original creator or something, but if it wasn’t for the rounded triangle logo on his forehead—mandatory for every bot—he was as real-looking as Carlos. As me.

Good morning, gentlemen. He smiled, three lines of code somewhere in his basic programming. Somewhere beneath the 3 Laws. He reached out to shake Carlos’ hand but I stayed where I was. I understand you’re having some truck problems?

The thing just conked out on us, Carlos explained.

Unfortunately it is a bit of a dinosaur, Joe laughed, six lines of code. He didn’t even have to approach the Mechanos to know what was going on. Wireless information transfer, the newest feature in the 2006 launch of the Joes. It seems you’ve got a bit of a coolant leak, we should be done in 120 seconds. Can I get you some water while we wait? It’s a hot one today.

I’m fine. Kid, you want any? I shook my head and Joe smiled at me, nodding. He made small talk with Carlos, the randomizer function clearly working as he jumped from sports to entertainment to business to current events. When the Mechanos were done one of them retreated back to the box and the other printed a sheet of paper from its abdomen and handed it to the Joe before joining the other.

Here’s a copy of the bill, we’ve sent one to the manager so no need to worry about that. If I could just get your signature here to certify we performed the job stated we’ll be on our way.

Carlos scribbled his name onto an automatic sign box Joe produced from his pocket. He nodded and wished us a good day before collapsing into the box he came from just like the Mechanos. The box hummed away and we got back to work.

I regretted not accepting the water.

*  *  *

There was a bundle of mail waiting in the box when I got home that I started to flip through as I went down the stairs. There was the usual junk mail—although I proved the advertisements worked by giving in and pressing the button on the promotion for the newest bot line of 4500s that started up a holographic breakdown of the newest features—and of course the bills, along with my latest statement from CRIS, the Centre for Re-Integration into Society. Today it was just an update logging my community service hours to date and a friendly reminder not to forget about my upcoming follow-up appointment with the CRIS counsellor.

And remember, DANTE CASIO, your future is in your hands.

Right. So long as my future is scheduled, recorded, and regulated. I tossed the mail onto the already cluttered desk when I finally got into the basement I rented. It was cool down here, the fan still humming from the corner where I’d left it plugged in all day. If only I wasn’t so stubborn, I might’ve called a Handyman. They apparently had a new sub-line coming out in six months that had an option of a merged Tom—the Joe equivalent of the fixer uppers—and Handyman. It meant a sacrifice on time of completion but it gave that authentic feeling. They boasted some of the most advanced multi-purpose interfaces to be commissioned to date.

I was still exhausted from my shift yesterday and my blatant lack of sleep (thanks to the remnants of a heat wave and nothing but a $10 fan to quell the temperature) but I ran through my list of things to do before opting for a nap. I paid my bills online and mused at the fact that I had fifteen dollars to last me till Friday and one stale box of Kraft Dinner left in my kitchen. Maybe three pickles left: they might’ve been poisonous, but there was only one way to find out.

The place was a mess and I tried to clean up a bit, reminding myself that I could get a visit from the counsellor at any time. But a messy place was not evidence of a delinquent lifestyle. Old newspapers didn’t make me a criminal. Dust bunnies couldn’t sentence me to jail. Still, I tried to round up all the trash; you’d think being a damn garbage collector that something like that would be natural. That I wouldn’t litter the place like it was my job.

And then I ran my daily checks on the box. The black box disguised as a contemporary dining table, averting all suspicion with the amount of crap I had piled onto it. It didn’t matter that I had my phone set up to alert me immediately if anything were to change; I needed to see for myself. I needed to be certain.

After I triple checked everything my feet dragged across the linoleum and fell up as I crashed onto the mattress. The sheets needed to be changed. I had to do laundry tomorrow if I felt like wearing any clean clothes. Did I really feel like wearing clean clothes? I only had a two hour morning shift tomorrow. Maybe if I was lucky I could sleep through the night. With lazy hands I reached out and pulled the fan closer; it scraped against the floor until it was blowing right against my face. A feeble attempt at regulating my body temperature.

The clock ticked, the machines beeped, and somewhere outside my boarded up window a dog was rabidly barking. A trash can was knocked over. The Italian three houses down was yelling (which was really only talking) to his mother. My stomach grumbled and I put in my earplugs, begging for the melatonin to take over and knock me out.

A sleepy salvation.

Geek Squad

Despite being in the basement of the old house I still found myself wondering how hot air could get before it started to cook your insides. Or at least make it impossible to breathe. This seemed to happen every year: I would always forget how hot it actually got, despite the fact that this happened every single year. With the amount of metal and pavement in the city I was surprised our heat waves weren’t worse.

The fact that the building where I worked the phone lines had a functioning AC unit and a supply of snacks and coffee made everything worth it. All I had to do was time my visits to the break room for when no one else was there and I could take things to eat later. I just needed to get through the week. The day. The hour. Some distant part of me knew that I was violating some huge ‘one-per-person’ social norm as I grabbed a handful of granola bars but my growling stomach prevented me from really caring.

After I was as awake as I was going to get I found my desk, punched in my ID, and pulled on my headset. They had given me a cubicle in the back corner like a kid in a time-out, but maybe it was for the best. At least back here with these three walls and a window behind me I didn’t have to deal with the looks. After just a few minutes of being online the phone rang.

Thank you for calling Dreslington Industries Technical Support line. My name’s Jacob, what can I help you with today?

I guess the thing about being labelled as a criminal was that it was just like having a deep, dark secret: you assume everyone in the world can see it when they look at you. Giving a fake name to the people who called into the help line was just my way of coping.

Yeah, my bot ain’t doin’ the facial recognition right. He keeps thinkin’ I’m my dog or somethin’. The man was talking with his mouth half full of something—either food or faulty dentures—but I couldn’t help imagining one of the home bots bending over to face a little Chihuahua while talking about what to do with the laundry.

May I get your name, the make, and model of your bot please?

Yeah, my name’s Sal Ruthers but gimme a sec—Marko what’re your specs? Okay…Yeah…Wait, is that the second or—okay. Jake? Yeah so he’s an S-series 100. Model number is 4519...6338…2950-1.

I punched everything into the computer and pulled up the history of Marko. It quickly became apparent that, as per usual, Sal Ruthers was the kind of person who thought it would be a great idea to continually postpone Marko’s system update for the past three months.

Alright I’ve found the problem. The biggest issue with the S-series bots is the manual update and the way that the system is laid out. Since you last updated its software there’ve been 6 updates released which probably explains the issue you’re experiencing. I’ve started the update so in a minute or so it should be done. My advice would be to install the updates as they come out to prevent this from happening again. Is there anything else I can help you with today?

Besides giving you an award for one of the worst bot-owners around?

Marko!—Yup, he’s working again. I think that’s it…Yeah, that’s all. Thanks Jake.

Have a good day, sir.

I can promise you one thing: it’s these cities that make us crazy. It’s the closeness. People are stacked up in these apartment buildings are the same way cremated bodies are shoved into boxes with a nameplate and piled atop each other. We were never meant to be this close. That’s why there’s so much land on this planet, we were supposed to have some sort of pretty buffer zone between ourselves. Drywall can’t keep out the crazy. Hedges won’t filter the madness. This insanity working its way into all of our minds is born out of broken concrete and feasts on the densely populated treeless vistas we boast.

I took my time filing the report on the computer, typing as if each letter would bring me closer to some horrible fate. Of course, the only horrible fate was another call. This whole thing was part of the community service that I’d been sentenced to: there wasn’t enough damage to put me away, so I ended up with this. Do me a favour—if ever you’re having a horrible day, week, life; if ever you’re wrongfully accused of murdering your whole family, don’t be fooled into thinking getting completely wasted will fix anything. It won’t feel good in the moment and it won’t feel good after, not when you’re drinking yourself into oblivion. Especially not when you’re blacking out in the middle of the night on a highway.

Whether it was luck or some miracle I’ll never know, but the girl and her dad only wound up with minor injuries. For what was probably the first time in the history of Exsom’s drunk driving incidents, the idiot at fault got the worst of the incidents. None of it seemed to ease the guilt that had rooted in my soul, though. A nice new batch to match what already called my insides home.

The point was that I had been doing customer service shifts for the biggest bot manufacturer in the country for a year and a half now. The program had been organised through CRIS and had been made to fit my work schedule. It included a monthly visit to a counsellor and random visits to see how I was doing. To sweep for any alcohol. If only I could make them understand how much the sight and smell of it repulsed me now, they wouldn’t be so worried.

As soon as I submitted the Ruthers report I was back on call and the phone immediately rang. This time an old lady was trying to figure out how to calibrate the GPS settings on her brand new T-300h. It was a birthday gift from her granddaughter, she explained, only she couldn’t work any bot other than the F-series to save her soul. While I worked to get it up and running for her and pointing out where in the user guide the solution could be found she made small talk with me. She didn’t know, of course, that she was talking to one of the biggest scumbags in Exsom’s Lower City. She thought that she was having a nice conversation with someone named Louis. It was probably the only perk of the job, being able to speak to people. It was pretty much a blessing that it was just the old folks who mostly called in, so far from being up-to-date on the newest technology. Old ladies usually liked to talk and ask about my day. Sometimes I had a wife. Sometimes I had kids. Sometimes I had a dog named Vic that had to be put down the week before. It was pretty much just my mind’s way of reaching out for any form of human contact. But as much as I loved those moments it still made me wonder why the lines were always so busy.

Wasn’t all this technology supposed to make life simpler? Wasn’t the point of all the circuitry and cables and nano-micro-processing-chips to reduce our time spent working so we would have more time to live? If this was living, if this day to day routine was what defined having a life, I didn’t know if death would be worse or better. It felt like everyone spent more time fixing and altering and updating things than they did actually using them. These would-be miracles that were so perfectly packaged with wings and halo included. Everything to make life simple: but that’s where we went wrong. Life was simple. It was simple but boring—that’s where we started to dream of greater things. Anything for a bit of excitement. You’ll kill for half a thrill, just enough wow to fill the time slot between now and then. These devices were meant to connect but there had never been a time in my life where I felt more unplugged from reality.

But maybe that was the point. Maybe we kept making all these things, all these fancy new inventions, simply because who could possibly enjoy what the world had grown up to be? Maybe that was the point: to slowly tune out, generation by generation. Nothing is ever as perfect as it is in your mind.

So perfect in fact that no one seemed to be able to see the staggeringly horrifying change that was happening. Or maybe I was wrong, maybe people did see it and the fact scared them so much that they buried it away. These things, these bots and machines, all the way from the newest kind of toaster to the original F-series robots, they were stealing us. Or rather, we were giving ourselves to them. Changing. Switching. We were picking and choosing the parts of humanity, what separated us from those convenient A.I.s, and we were tacking them into what we used.

The range of emotions bots could show and calculate and register seemed to be growing exponentially while the amount that humans felt (or at the very least exhibited) was on a rapid decline. Give your happy face to a colon-bracket. Take your rage out with asdfhjkl. You can abbreviate your laughter for hours on end without even cracking a smile.

On some level I guess it still counts even if no one else sees you feeling it. But where were the wrinkles on a glass screen? Where were the nervous ticks in a series of pixels? Where was the warmth in a keyboard?

Casio! The voice was harsh and jerked me out of my daze. The boss was standing half way down the aisle with his arms crossed. He pushed his ancient glasses up the bridge of his nose with one knuckle. The frown on his face was its natural state; or maybe it had just sagged that way after all the frowning he did. I pulled my headset half-off and raised my eyebrows at him. You’ve got a visitor.

My first thought—and worry—was that it was Gloria. Mostly because there was no one else to visit. But if it was true, then I was going to be in a world of trouble. I didn’t at all think it was a coincidence that the place my community service was to be served was the branch run by the brother of the guy I hit. It wouldn’t bode well for me in the slightest if a friend came to visit in the middle of my shift and very much not on my break.

So when I went out to the front lobby and saw a short man who was very much not Gloria, it was a mixture of relief and anxiety at what this was. When he got up, though, I could see the badge pinned to his blazer. It was a white rectangle with the CRIS logo across it. Ah. Now it made sense. I tried to make my hair less of a mop and straightened out my clothes before offering a hand to—as the nametag said—Brandon Capon, Counsellor.

Dante, he said warmly, shaking my hand and motioning for me to sit beside him. From the other chair he picked up a folder, giving me a small smile. How are you today?

I’m doing pretty well. Maybe if I said it enough times it would become true. Wasn’t that how things worked? I mean, as well as anyone can do in this heat.

He laughed and nodded, showing his sweaty palms as an attest to my words. After a moment of casually studying me he cracked open the folder and began to flip through the pages. I didn’t doubt for a second that he’d already studied and memorized my personal file but he pretended otherwise. A way to make me feel less like a patient and more like a chance visit. A run-in with a friend. Of course it was nothing of the sort.

Your boss tells me your work has been satisfactory to date. No complaints, no missed days, you keep to your schedule, he nodded, scanning the page in front of him. At least on paper it looks like you’re sticking to the system, Mister Casio.

The second you make a system, everyone starts looking for ways to beat it. For loopholes. A way to cut corners or make things easier or shave off a few seconds or minutes. I just couldn’t afford to do that, though. I needed to do every last minute of this well-deserved volunteer work by the book. Especially under the scrutinizing eye of my boss and the employees who were all told why I was here.

"I’m not going to pretend like I don’t know your circumstances here, Dante. I have every faith that your report would be sparkling if the personnel were different. It doesn’t take a licensed psychologist to see the signs of guilt. I made a stop at your apartment before I came here and found no traces whatsoever of any alcohol. That combined