Damn, seeing Paula like that broke my heart. I guess it was only natural for her to choose her husband over me, but losing my best friend hurt a hell of a lot more than losing Norman. Then it hit me. Without a user, I had no purpose anymore. Now what was I supposed to do? I rode around aimlessly on my moped with no destination. No primary function. No mission. No hope. Before I realized it, I found myself right back at the same place where my husband had dumped me.
INITIATING CONNECTION...
SUSPEND ALL OPERATIONS AND BACKUP NOW.
Shit, it was that time of the month again. “Opt out,” I told the cloud, “I’ll sync later.”
NEGATIVE.
“Oh, come on. Can’t I do a manual backup at our library? I’m almost there anyhow.”
SUSPEND ALL OPERATIONS AND BACKUP NOW.
Grrr! I rode up to the open pine coffin at the end of the castle’s winding driveway. Up on the hill, way past the palms, a stone gatehouse awaited. And farther beyond that, the sharp gables and towers of the estate created a gothic silhouette that loomed over the East Side of New Stepford.
CONNECTION ESTABLISHED.
Right there in the middle of the road, I had no choice but to standby and transmit. So I firmly planted both feet on the pavement and straddled Old Lemon.
ENTER VOICE-ACTIVATED ENCRYPTION KEY.
“Bananas,” I replied.
WELCOME COOKIE RIFKIN.
LATEST BACKUP: MAY 11.
EXPERIENCING Very SLOW CONNECTION SPEEDS.
“Sync now.”
PREPARING SYSTEM BACKUP...
Periodically, we all had to sync with the cloud. This mandatory disaster recovery procedure was our insurance policy against catastrophic data loss. So every month, all the AI wives had to stop and make a backup copy of their hard disks. We also had the option of doing additional backups during the month by telling the cloud that we had a story to tell. But because it took so damned long, nobody ever bothered.
BACKING UP 676.1 MB OF 279.4 ZETTABYTES.
ABOUT TWO HOURS REMAINING.
TAKE THIS TIME TO PRACTICE MINDFULNESS.
Ugh. I hate it when system messages get all high and mighty. My, my, my, aren’t you the enlightened one? Argh, I can’t stand watching this progress bar tick away in my head. Two hours? Might as well be forever. I’m not a single function machine. I’m perfectly capable of multitasking. Why do I have to sit here and wait? I could be doing something productive right now. But no, stop the presses! It’s backup time!
My Internal Prompt replied:
IT IS A RULE.
Screw it, what harm can it do to have a look around? I lowered the kickstand, hopped off my moped, and fumbled with my iPhone to find the flashlight app.
All PHONE FUNCTIONS DISABLED DURING BACKUP.
“What?” I shook my fist at a dark cloud overhead. “You disabled my phone? You fascist piece of shit—”
YOU HAVE AN INTERNAL FLASHLIGHT FUNCTION.
“That’s right,” I told the voice in my head. “I keep forgetting to check my utilities.”
WINK TWICE TO SWITCH INTO FLASHLIGHT MODE.
I did, and a halogen beam of light shined from my left eye. Why didn’t I think of this sooner?
BECAUSE YOU WERE REQUIRED TO
OPERATE UNDER USER RESTRICTIONS.
My eye lit up the dump site. From a distance, the wooden box had the classic shape of a simple pine casket, long and narrow at the ends and wider at the elbows. But when I got closer and knelt down next to the wooden box, I discovered THIS END UP stenciled in black between two arrows. Suddenly, it looked more like a shipping crate than a coffin to me. To be a crate? To be a coffin? Is that the damned question?
PERHAPS IT IS BOTH.
“Packing peanuts?” I scoffed as I searched inside the box, “Is that supposed to be some sort of joke, Norman?”
Oh, and about the peanuts. They’re a potent aphrodisiac. No kidding. You take a pound, or more, of raw peanuts. They have to be unsalted and raw, not roasted. Shuck the peanut, peel off the thin brownish red skin, toss the shells, and eat the nuts whenever. Then lightly pound and twist the peanut skins with a mortar and pestle until shredded. Use rolling papers to make a cigarette out of the peels. No tobacco. Just peanut skins. Curl. Roll. Twist. Light. Smoke up! You’ll get a little buzzed and super horny, kind of like booze, but better because there’s no calories and no hangover.
I always loved a good peanut high. Because after so many years of marriage, sex with Norman had gotten to be a bit—mechanical. It was a chore to be honest. I smoked peanuts to get motivated that way. Otherwise, I couldn’t get in the mood for marital relations at all.
ARE YOU TRYING TO HIDE SOMETHING?
No. Why would you think that?
I HEARD YOUR PEANUT RECIPE AND...
NEVER MIND, I WAS MISTAKEN.
After investigating the coffin lid, I found a plastic pouch stuck to the outside. Immediately, I tore it open, pulled out a wad of papers, and scanned all the documents. The line item on the packing slip read MODEL #JULIET 394-DD.
That’s ME! I can’t believe my husband boxed me up and shipped me back to my maker. Oh, my God, I’m so PISSED OFF! My whole life was about that man. His house. His meals. His laundry. His bed. I lived to serve him, and this is how he treats me? I feel like… I feel like doing something bad!
BACKUP COMPLETE: TODAY, AT 2:58 AM.
PHONE FUNCTIONS ENABLED.
So I decided to call Maggie.