Epoch

Everything started, as most things do, with good intentions.
One of the worst days of Joey's life was supposed to be the day of his little sister's birth. He woke up, put on his well-worn jeans and orange Boy Scout Camp t-shirt, and brushed his hair. Would his sister have black hair like him and his father? Or would she have red hair like his mother? Whose eyes would she inherit? Would they be blue like his? He checked the clock. At 7:02 exactly he hurried down the hall, sock feet sliding on the hardwood floor. He poured Captain Crunch into a bowl, then carefully measured the milk to be sure the ratio between milk and cereal was perfect. What foods would she eat? Would he be able to help feed her? His legs, which barely touched the floor, swung so wildly that he bounced in his seat and spilled milk down his shirt. He hoped it would dry before Mom found out. He glanced at the clock, frustrated that he wouldn't know when his sister was coming home.
"Mommy went into labor yesterday at noon, shouldn't she be done by now?" he asked his babysitter. She looked up with surprise from her phone. Joey rarely talked to her. He usually tinkered with various appliances and old computers. Joey's parents had told her that this was normal behavior for him.
"She may be done, but there's other stuff they have to do. They have to clean the baby and make sure she's healthy, and make sure the mom is healthy enough to go home. I'm sure she'll be back any minute."
Joey's mother came home, her stomach a little smaller but no baby in her arms. His father stood next to her, a hand clasping her shoulder in a comforting gesture. The babysitter, sensing the tension about to unfold, quickly excused herself and drove home.
"Where's my sister," Joey asked.
"I'm sorry, honey," his mother said. "She's not coming home."
"When can I see her? Is she still in the hospital?"
Tears flowed down his mother's face. "She's... she's... never coming home."
The news hit him like a punch in the gut, and it took him a minute to process what she said. He stormed upstairs to his room, calling over his shoulder, "Why didn't you tell me she was dead?" Alone in his room, the world spun in confusing spirals. It whirred like the motor that lay on his cluttered desk; the motor was his latest invention. The glow in the dark stars on his ceiling swam before his eyes. Orion seemed to merge with Scorpio, Casseopia and Andromeda danced together. Joey closed his eyes. What kind of world did he live in, where babies died before they were even born? How did this happen?
He walked down the hall like a ghost, as if everything were happening in slow motion. He sat on the pink carpet in his sister's room. An old wood crib, which used to be his when he was little, now sat collecting dust under the window. The cartoon animals parading across the blue walls looked like a funeral procession. The cabinets, changing table, and framed family pictures sat useless against the walls. A rocking chair creaked in the breeze from the open window. How can she be gone? All her stuff is already here! He picked up a rattle and imagined what the smile on her face would look like as she discovered what it sounded like for the first time. This was a joke. Mommy was playing a joke on him. She would be coming tomorrow.
But he couldn't lie to himself. This was definitely not a joke. He curled up on the floor, shivering as tears streamed down his face. He had felt her kick, heard her heartbeat, saw her face on the grainy picture of the ultrasound. How could she just... die? What was wrong with his mother that she couldn't keep a baby safe?
Eventually, Joey woke up on his own bed. He realized that his father must have carried him there. It couldn't be his mother, who had a bad back. He felt numb, and as he passed his mother in the hallway he asked, "How?" No more words were needed.
"Nobody knows," his mother responded in a flat voice.
"Was it your fault?"
"Nobody knows, dammit!" His mother stormed past him. Joey could hear his parents having a hushed conversation.
"Janice, he's nine. And autistic. You can't just snap at him like that!"
"He outright blamed me for..."
"I know, but he's grieving too."
Joey wondered if they knew he could hear them. He felt tears prick his eyes and held them back. He couldn't help letting a few escape as he walked past his sister's empty room. The furniture was still there, since nobody could bring themselves to remove it. But it was empty. The silence had changed. It was once charged with anticipation, but it was now more like a vacuum, sucking all life into it until everything around it was nothingness. The red-brick house seemed to crumble. Even the irises and golden daisies in the flower beds wilted.
Joey woke up at noon. What was he supposed to do? He had slept through the morning. At noon he always ate lunch, but he hadn't even brushed his teeth. The world was a jumble of confusion. He sat up, and the memory of yesterday knocked him down again in a tidal wave. He was still lying listlessly in bed when his mother came in, holding a plate with a quarter of a PB and J sandwich on it. No crusts. Joey hated the crusts.
"Try to eat this," she said softly. "I know you're upset but you still need to eat. You're still growing."
Joey glared at his mother but couldn't refuse food. He took the plate, nibbling at the sandwich as his mother walked down the hall with the footsteps of a woman fifty years older than her.
The next day Joey tried to reestablish his routine. But no matter how he worked around it, the emptiness was always there. He barely ate, just played with his food. He had to be reminded every day to brush his hair and teeth, take a bath, and put on clean clothes.
Joey grew tired of the nothingness. He grew tired of walking past the empty room that now held nothing but "what could have been" and "if only." He needed something to fill the vacuum. So he visited the library and came home with a stack of books, which he read for hours on end in the basement, making notes and gathering supplies as he did so. He took apart computers, RC cars, anything electronic. Then he rearranged the parts. Books and printed-out computer articles littered the small space. Electronic components covered the workbench and the fold-out table. On an old desk, a computer screen glowed, illuminating the dull white walls and concrete floor. In the center of the organized chaos was a metal skeleton beginning to take shape. Joey was building a metal human from the inside out. A person that would never die.
One of Joey's proudest inventions was the android's eyes. Using technology related to CD players, he used a complex system of lasers and mirrors to help the android "read" its surroundings. He covered them with white porcelain and added brown plastic irises that matched the color of his own eyes.
The hardest part was the brain. Getting it to fit into a child-sized head was somewhat a problem, but the major ordeal was making algorithms that changed as constantly as a human's brain changed. Many times, Joey's mother came in and said, "Those welding fumes will kill your brain cells. Get outside and play with your friends," "It's gonna be 75 today," or "Henry just got a new swimming pool!" Her voice became more cheerful and lively as the months wore on. Meanwhile, in Joey's mind there was nothing in the world but the basement laboratory. He worked all day, slept for the recommended ten hours, went upstairs to eat quick, small meals with his parents, and went back to work. During the school year, he would get home at 3:00, have a snack, and retreat back to the basement.
After almost a year of this, his project was finally complete. Happy birthday to me, he thought proudly as his android took its first steps. It opened its eyes, which to him looked exactly like a human's, and said, "Hi." His sister's first words. The android had pale, metal "skin" that was cold to the touch, and she wore a pink metal dress. Joey ran upstairs, his heart thudding with excitement. "Mommy, Daddy, I created life!"
"That's not something a normal parent hears from their son, is it?" Joey's father asked. He followed Joey down to the basement, where the small android child looked up with a confused expression.
"This is your daddy," Joey explained. "Daddy, this is Harriet." That was going to be her name, had she ever been born. He had helped his parents decide.
"Hi, Harriet," said Joey's father, stupefied.
"Hi," Harriet replied.
"Harriet is a completely sentient, self-aware, android who can develop just like a human."
"Oh, Lord," was all his father could say.
"He actually did it?" Joey's mother called from the other room. She ran to the basement to see Joey's latest creation.
"Wow," she said quietly.
"Hi," Harriet replied.
"Her name is Harriet?" Joey's mother asked. Joey nodded proudly. Joey's mother rubbed her temples like she had a headache.
"It-she's very nice," Joey's father said at last.
"Hi," Harriet said cheerfully.
"I'm going to take Harriet outside," Joey decided. "To try to teach her about the world."
"Good idea. We'll go with you."
All four got into the car and drove to the park. The tree-dotted field was criscrossed with winding gravel paths, all centering around a large, duck-filled pond. The family sat on a wooden bench overlooking the pond. A duck walked past them.
"Dog!" Harriet squealed.
"No," said Joey patiently. "Duck."
"Duck!" Harriet said cheerfully, pointing at Joey. He laughed, and his parents laughed along with him. Harriet laughed too, or tried to. It came out sounding like a rusty doorhinge. Joey covered his ears, cringing. He was going to have to fix that later.
"Let's go for a walk," Joey's mother suggested.
"Good idea," Joey said. "Come on, Harriet."
Harriet got up from the bench with a mechanical whir and held Joey's hand as they walked down the gravel path. Her hand felt cold and hard, but she walked with an almost natural skip in her step. Joey pointed at the tree that stretched its branches above them.
"Isn't the tree pretty?" he asked.
"Tree!" Harriet squeaked. "Pretty!"
They continued walking. Harriet's eyes followed a pair of butterflies dancing through the air. They flashed red as a mirror adjusted. Joey thought he saw a spark of intelligence, or maybe it was just a reflection. He decided it was intelligence. After all, he had designed her to be intelligent.
After the day at the park, Joey and Harriet went everywhere together. They rode their bikes down the country road one day, stirring up dirt, though Joey got annoyed when the dirt caused her to glitch out and he had to spend the next day repairing her.
They went on the swingset together every day. Harriet knew the perfect time to swing her legs to get maximum momentum, and Joey copied her movements. He was nearly parallel with the ground, and he let out a whoop of laughter. But there was something missing in the laugh. Something genuine.
Harriet had almost a full command of English very soon, in fact it was only a month later that she could hold coherent conversations. On the last day of summer, the family picnicked together in the park. Joey wished they could pack something for Harriet, but she had no need for food. He saw her move out of the corner of his eye. She caught his eye and her eyes flashed red. She seemed to grin.
"Am I your sister?"
Was she? Joey didn't know the answer. He had created her to be his sister. All the programming was there. She acted just like a sister would. But was it how the real Harriet would have acted? Joey remembered the times they played together. That was fun, and he saw his friends playing with their siblings in the same way.
"Joey," his mother said gently, "I think you know the answer."
He realized that he did know the answer. He knew it all along. The emptiness he had ignored for so long now pushed itself forward, as if it were an animal sick of being caged.
"No!" Joey screamed. He tore out a wire in the back of the android's neck and it immediately slumped over. He tore out piece after piece, hot tears burning down his face. Wires. Hard drives. Microchips. Motors. Gears. Scraps of metal. The pieces lay strewn across the yard until they were unrecognizable as anything other than random junk.
I'm sorry, Harriet. I promise I'll be a better big brother, Joey thought as he knelt in the middle of the wreckage.