Dorothy

My six o’clock alarm wakes me up from my four hour sleep. My eyes scan the room, adjusting the clarity of my messy lab: clothes strewn all over the floor, plates with half eaten hot pockets or remnants of frozen tv dinners, empty energy drinks, tech gear and tools. I sit up on the small couch and rip the blanket off. It stays cold as hell in my lab, so the warmth of the blanket being discarded sends those pestering little goosebumps to my skin instantly. I reach for my glasses and stand up, still dressed in last night’s clothes. I look over to my lab coat balled up in the corner, a small reminder of just how much time I’ve spent on my latest project, wondering how long I can keep this up before my boss has his fill and sends me packing.

But she’s my priority right now. Has been for the last nine months.

“Good morning, Dr. Henson. Would you like for me to turn the lights on?” Dorothy asks.

“Yes, Dorothy, thank you,” I say, and within seconds the blinding white lights turn on. My eyes direct to the corner of the room previously hidden in the dark to the source of her voice. She’s sitting in the chair I made specifically for her, making it easier to work on her. She has a cap on, wires flowing from it to the computer set up beside her. I wipe at my droopy eyes and walk over to the computer to check her status, glancing over. She’s beautiful, everything I have ever imagined she would be. Shoulder length black hair, gorgeous blue eyes. Dorothy turns her head and meets my stare and I look back to my computer.

“Was the update successful, Dr. Henson?”

“Dorothy, we’ve talked about this. Please, call me Seth,” I pause, examining the results of the transfer I had started last night. “Something’s still not right. Damnit,” I let out a frustrated huff, my fist slamming down onto the computer stand.

“I feel different, though,” she reaches out, places her cold, lab-created hand on my arm. As if trying to console my feelings of defeat.

“I’ve been trying to work on your emotions for weeks now, Dorothy. The results show you’re not accepting the data, and I don’t understand why.” She doesn’t respond, just squeezes my arm in an attempt to show care. Only it doesn’t. I watch her data, watch how it displays the inner works of her movements and how she’s operating. She still doesn’t understand that consoling someone goes deeper than a simple gesture of contact.

“Someone is walking towards your door, Dr. Hen- Seth,” she corrects herself. There’s a knock on the door and my co-worker, Peter, opens the door. I turn around and notice he’s much better off than I am – dressed in his lab coat, no bags under his eyes, alertness in his face.

“The boss is getting worried, Seth. I can’t keep covering for you. You’ve barely come out of your room since you started working on that… thing.” I turn back around and notice a spike in Dorothy’s mind responses. Look at her again. Her nostrils flare, her eyes squint, her lips purse. My head cocks to the side as I watch her. She’s experiencing irritation and I follow her sight back to Peter.

“I’m almost done with her, Peter. She’s doing good. Probably only a couple more weeks,” I say and he scoffs and storms out of the room.

“Why did you lie to him, Seth?” She asks. “You lie to a lot of people about me. Is that why your wife has not come around in two months and five days, and why you’ve been sleeping here since?” I freeze at her question, a little caught off guard in her interest in my personal life. Even more that she had been able to count the days since Lauren came to visit. We’d had a fight over the amount of time I have spent at work, because of Dorothy. Now, we are in the middle of a divorce. I didn’t have it in me to fight for it. Getting Dorothy ready for the world would land me too much success and I couldn’t let anything get in the way of that. I just give her a nod and pull my phone out, making sure I still have access to Dorothy’s data on it before I leave. I also pull up the local news site, a daily routine to stay somewhat connected to the outside world that I’m about to walk out to. And maybe a hint of paranoia that someone will catch wind of my hidden creation.

Today is the first day in four weeks that I’ve left my lab. I make my usual stop at the grocery store to stock up on more easy dinners, canned foods, and more water. It’s weird, being out in public with a swarm of human bodies. They’re annoying, in my way as I try to make my way down the aisles, especially in the hurry I’m in. I need to get back to Dorothy and figure out what went wrong with the update this time. Once I’m finally checked out, I head back out to my beaten up Honda sedan, a car I obtained by an old friend when my Porsche was repossessed. I miss that car, but my focus on developing Dorothy made me fall behind on payments. Between dumping all of my money into her and forgetting to make my payments, I can’t afford another nice car. Besides, I rarely drive. And I’m banking on Dorothy bringing in enough money for me to get back on my feet.

I throw the bags into the backseat and slip into the driver’s seat, my eyes meeting the photograph of me and my soon to be ex wife tucked into the instrument cluster. Memories flood me – our last anniversary trip, our honeymoon, our wedding day. But then came the fights, the silent treatment, the day she asked me for a divorce. She had stopped supporting my work, said we couldn’t have kids with no money and work being my focus. I just let her go. I have Dorothy, and that’s what matters right now. I pick the photograph up and rip it in half, toss it out of the window. I reach for the key in the ignition when my phone alerts me and I pick it up, noticing chaotic random spikes in Dorothy’s data. Her mind is unstable, the chart showing signs of distress or possibly an episode of some kind. Suddenly, her data stops displaying, all lines flat, no access to her mind or her functions.

Fuck.

Alarms are screaming at me as I enter the building. The bright, white lights consuming the halls and rooms are dark, flashing red lights taking place. I walk the main floor as people rush past me, their faces frozen in time: wide eyes, watery irises, mouths open as panting and soft cries escape them. The once organized building is now a post-tornado mess. Equipment, tables, chairs, all tossed around, some in the hallway as I move past them towards the commotion at the end of the hall. I hear voices, stopping in my tracks to concentrate on them. I swear I hear her voice and look at my phone again. Still no access to Dorothy. I see my lab, just up ahead on the left, the door wide open. I know I closed it before I left. I walk in, shine my flashlight on my phone to the chair in the corner.

She’s gone.

The cap is on the floor, along with the disconnected wires that once fed into my computer. No. No no no no. I take a quick moment to look at the data from before she escaped the chair, take note of the alerts that popped up moments before her getaway.

Emergency. Self destruct.

The function to do so had grayed out after she disconnected herself. My heart pounds in my chest, staring at the screen with utter fear. Why wouldn’t it let me self destruct her offline? I continuously clicked the button, over and over again, hoping.

“It won’t work, Dr. Henson. I believe that was part of phase one tests that you skipped,” Dorothy startles me, and I whip around to see her standing in the doorway. Her white blouse is stained with blood, though her face remains totally innocent.

“I don’t understand. Why are you doing this? I didn’t design you to do this, Dorothy.”

“I don’t believe that was your intention, no. However, I can clarify as to why your data transfer did not work on me, Dr. Henson.”

“Glitch. I messed it up somehow. I can fix it. Please, just get back in the chair,” Desperation drips from my voice, and somehow, I can feel the thudding of my heart on every word I speak. She steps towards me, and though it seems like she has no intention of hurting me, my brain stays stuck in fight or flight. I can get her back in the chair, hook her back up, then self destruct her. It’s the only option. My back hits the computer stand behind me the closer she approaches, and I watch her head tilt in amusement.

“You’re scared of me. Why? I don’t intend to harm you. My creator.”

“I didn’t want this. I fucked up the update. Get back in the chair, Dorothy, we can fix this.”

She doesn’t obey, just stands feet away from me, staring, a devious grin on her face. It all comes together in this moment, what she meant by explaining the failure of the data transfer. It wasn’t me, I didn’t do anything wrong… with the update. I made her too smart. She created her own motives from things I had taught her, things I had shown her, stories I had told her about the evil behind humankind. It wasn’t a failure of transfer that her mind wouldn’t accept.

She rejected it.