Robots vs. Fairies(56)

WORK SHADOW/SHADOW WORK


by Madeline Ashby

“You have no soul,” the witch said. “So don’t even think about trying to help me with my work.”

Sigrid’s home-care assistant regarded her carefully. He carefully dusted around Sophia, the crystal ball, and Zephyr, the black mirror. He had merely commented that she seemed to be having trouble wrapping her bundles of dried sage and moss, and that if her joints were bothering her, he could fetch her an anti-inflammatory, or possibly even wrap the bundles himself. He had not meant to cause any offense.

“You can’t have intention without will,” she was saying. “And you have no will. No soul. No nothing. Not even a name.”

This was a frequent refrain, in conversations with Sigrid. It arose most often during her bad days. Her assistant had no effective counterargument. Each time they had the conversation, he made a note to query his fellow assistants when he networked with them. Some of them had difficulty with their clients, but not this precise problem. Most of them had to work to convince their clients that they knew how to knead dough properly, or that they knew all the verses to a particular song, or that they understood when bathwater was just right. These were the skills that they were responsible for.

“The hidden folk will never accept you,” Sigrid said.

Sigrid’s assistant was responsible for a less common set of skills.

“How would you feel about some lunch?”

This seemed like a safer question. It moved the conversation away from the treacherous ground of faith and onto the secure footing of food. The assistant was mostly unconcerned with matters of ontology or theology. Having a soul was not important; by all empirical measures, the human soul appeared to be a delusion. His not having a soul was no different from Sigrid’s not having a soul—only their respective chassis were different. Physically, they had very different needs. Emotionally, Sigrid had a need to believe in the hidden folk. And the assistant had a need for Sigrid to be happy.

“Didn’t we just eat?”

Her assistant noted the time. Sigrid had lost approximately three hours. He added this incident to the file he would share with her physician later. “Sundowning,” it was called. It was important to have names for things. Sigrid said that only when one knew the true name for something—an ailment, a crime, a soul—could one ever hope to influence it.

“Are you not hungry?”

“I didn’t say that,” Sigrid said. She frowned a little. She rubbed her hands. One of her hands reached out. Without being asked, her assistant handed her a jar of mint-and-moss salve. It was not the joint cream her daughter had brought. He was supposed to do the things her daughter said, because her daughter was the one subscribing to the service, but he was also supposed to avoid conflict whenever possible. “Come to think of it, I could have something.”

In the kitchen, he stirred the soup the way Sigrid liked. Widdershins, she called it. Names were important. Sigrid had told him that abracadabra, one of the oldest words of power, meant simply: “What I speak, I create.”

By that logic, without a name, the act of his creation remained unfinished. His name was like the little plastic pouch of oddments left over from a furniture build: not strictly necessary, but puzzling all the same. Sigrid had many such pouches strewn about the place. She had never bothered to pick them up. Whenever he encountered one, he put it in the junk drawer in the kitchen, with all the other things that seemed to have no purpose.

He was still stirring when the house—which like him had no name—told him that the car from the Vegagerdin, the Road Authority, was on its way.

*

Sigrid’s daughter, Erika, had explained about the family’s origins, on his first day. “Mom thinks she’s a witch,” she said. “Or a wisewoman, or a priestess, or something. Mom still believes in elves and fairies and ghosts and all of that. Do you know about those things?”

“I have definitions for all of those terms, yes.”

Erika laughed. It was a sharp, hollow sound, like a single early clap for a performance that wasn’t really very good. She swallowed. “Right. Well. That’s good. Because Mom believes she can talk to them.”

“It’s good to have a belief in something,” he had said. “It’s associated with better long-term health outcomes.”

Erika, who had been chewing on a hangnail, paused and narrowed her eyes at him. “That’s one way of thinking about it,” she said. For a moment she stared at the ruin of her cuticles. Then she looked back at him.

“I just need you to understand that sometimes, Mom will talk to things that aren’t there. And it’s not that she’s crazy. I mean, I know I shouldn’t use that word, but she’s not . . . ill. She’s not ill in that way.”

“But you also suspect dementia.”

Erika stared out the window. This branch of his brand of robot had a coffee shop built into it. It was for clients and assistants to spend time getting to know one another. Like at an animal shelter. She had not sipped her coffee in a long time, though, and he could tell just by looking that the beverage had already cooled.

“It’s hard to tell, with her. There have been times when I’ve thought . . .” Her right hand gestured vaguely in the direction of her head. The assistant wondered if perhaps she was overtired. Outside it was still bright, but Sigrid’s daughter had come to the shop at one in the morning. Two hours later the light was only just fading.