Matthew Stoltenberg

MATTHEW STOLTENBERG

Dom

He held a single hair between the tips of his fingers. Holding it to the light, he turned it back and forth, inspecting it. It almost looked gray. He held his hand out to his side and shook the hair loose, letting it fall to the floor. He pressed his eyes closed and ran his hands over his face and up through his hair, like he was trying to push the pressure that was building at the back of his skull up and out of his body. When he brought his hands back down, a new hair was stuck between his fingers, and this one was definitely gray. “Christ,” he said, “not only is it turning gray, it’s falling out.” He loosed this one to the floor as well, both hairs disappearing from both sight and mind as they laid on the carpet. Consuela would suck them up this afternoon when she made her rounds.

Consuela was the name he gave to the vacuum that sat in its charging station in the corner of the living room. He had given a name to all the little gadgets and gizmos that had come into his life, which made his life more convenient. When he woke up in the morning, Karen had a cup of coffee waiting for him in the kitchen. When the time came to take his daily medications, Dr. Patel dispensed them neatly in a little tray, just the right amount of pills at the right doses. Dr. Patel sat on the counter in the bathroom next to Flo, who cleaned his teeth. They had company in the bathroom, which was home to Blaine. Blaine the bidet, who automatically washed his ass, which he was sure that Martha the Maytag appreciated when she cleaned his underwear.

He had a device for almost every activity he could think of, and some he couldn’t think of. He was just a few devices away from not having to do anything at all he reckoned, and at that point what reason would there be for him to be there? He stood up and moved to the window as Letitia cleared away the dishes from his breakfast. Three inches of snow had fallen the night before. From inside, the smooth white yard looked like a blank canvas, untouched and ready to accept a masterpiece. He had considered taking up painting when he had been Replaced. He had considered several hobbies, but they either did not stick or did not seem worth his time. It wasn’t like he would ever be the next Rembrandt, he thought, and besides, artists made art because they had some message they wanted people to understand, and he had no message, no take on things that weren’t as mundane as the next guy’s. He pulled a pair of boots and a heavy down coat from the closet. The boots didn’t see much use, it had been ten years since he lost his job to Dom. Dom was the Dynamically Operated Machine that had made him obsolete. When he first met Dom, he was amazed at the speed and accuracy with which Dom could replicate his work. A whole day’s work, done in an hour, and without the aching back or the sore feet. He thought about his aching feet while he laced up his boots. He thought about how much he spent on those boots, nearly a week’s pay. He even paid extra for custom insoles, but they only made his feet hurt worse. Feet are so fucked up, he thought, that when they are held in the correct shape for eight hours, they hurt like hell. He zipped up the coat and pulled his wool cap over his graying hair. The cold rushed in as Larry opened the garage door for him. Hank sat where he always did, in his charging station, waiting to be useful. With one touch of the button on Hank’s head, Hank sprang to life with a series of chimes and a green light, heading out to do his business. He stood outside the garage and watched Hank do his work. Carving neat lines in the snow, efficiently exposing the concrete below. He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his coat pocket and lit one. He was sure the cigarettes were killing him, but it was one of the few things he could still do for himself, a sort of middle finger to the Hanks and the Karens of his life. Besides, when the time came, he was sure Dr. Patel would spit a new pill out at him in the morning, designed to fix all the damage he was inflicting. He liked to watch the gizmos work. He didn’t have to; Hank would do his job with optimized efficiency and return to his charging station all on his own. It occurred to him that it didn’t even matter if the driveway was cleared of snow, he had no place to go. If he needed something, Dave would set it right on his front porch before flittering off to wherever Daves

went when they were done. He liked to stand there in his boots that hurt his feet and think about how much his feet would have hurt in the days before Hank, in the days when he would shovel the snow himself. Looking up and down the street, he could see that he was neither the first nor last to set their Hank to work clearing the snow from the pavement. The house with the blue door, two house up the street, that used to belong to the Daltons wasn’t cleared yet. Back when the Daltons had lived there, it would have been the first to be cleared, but they moved to Florida, or Texas maybe, when they got Replaced. Lots of neighbors had changed since Replacement. Some only lived here for the work, but with the work gone they went back home, wherever that was, or somewhere else. Maybe he would go somewhere else, somewhere where it didn’t snow, he thought, but then what would he do with Hank? It didn’t seem right to Replace Hank, not when so much work went into creating Hank and the other gizmos so that they could Replace him.

Come to think of it, he wasn’t sure who lived in the Daltons ’ house now. He wasn’t sure of the names of any of his neighbors anymore. He couldn’t remember the last time he had spoken to any of them. With all of the wars and pandemics and climate emergencies and Replacements, he had lost touch with most of his friends, coworkers, and neighbors. There just wasn’t any good time to get out, to socialize; plus it was easy to stay home, with all the gizmos. Hank gave a shrill screech, followed by a clank, then nothing. Hank just sat there; the green light turned to red. He flicked the cigarette into the snow and walked over to inspect the gizmo. Turning it on its side, he saw the problem. Something was stuck in Hank’s auger, a piece of metal. He twisted and grunted and heaved the object out of Hank’s guts. Holding it in his hands, he could see that it was a wrench. An inch and one sixteenth box wrench. “How the hell you suppose that got there?” he asked. He tucked the wrench into his pocket and checked on the damage to Hank. It was pretty rough; the auger had been bent clean out of shape. No way Hank could get back to work before getting this fixed. He pulled Siri from his pants pocket and asked her to order a Dave to take Hank for repairs. “I’m sorry, there are no listings available for repair services at this time.”, she said. He remembered a time when he wasn’t so useless, a time when he would work on his car just for fun. “Maybe I can get you going again myself, Hank.”, he said. He asked Siri to order a replacement auger. “I’m sorry, there are no items matching your description available in your area.”, she told him. He poked his finger at her screen and found a match, one match, available for pick up only nearby. He dragged Hank’s lifeless body back into the garage and got into Herbie. He tapped the address Siri gave him and Herbie prompted him to

confirm his destination. “Yes”, he said sharply, as he pulled another cigarette from his coat. The car pulled away from the garage, crunching the snow beneath its wheels. As he puffed away at his cigarette, he saw all manner of Hanks working on driveways through his neighborhood. Or maybe these were Steves, or Jamals, or maybe these people didn’t name their gizmos at all. “You have arrived at your destination,” Herbie said after fifteen minutes or so. He looked at the imposing gray brick building in disbelief. This was his old factory. Fifteen years he had worked here, before Dom came along. He hadn’t been back since, and he almost didn’t recognize the place. The parking lot usually filled with cars stood empty except for him and Herbie. He walked through the snow to the doors of the factory. Odd, he thought, why haven’t their Hanks cleared the lot? When he pulled open the door, he was blasted back by a furious wall of sound and thick black smoke. The chaotic grinding and clanging of gears and machines was deafening, and the smoke choked out the lights. He covered his mouth and nose with his hand and pressed his way into the building. Inside, there was no one to be found. Just an array of Karens and Blaines and other gizmos whose purpose he did not know, piled on top of each other. Everywhere he looked, gizmos were strewn in great heaps, carrying out their functions for no one in particular. In the center of the room, Dom was clambering away, churning a column of great black smoke from the top of its head. He climbed past piles of haphazard gizmos, whirring and broken, and made his way towards Dom. He could see that something was wrong with Dom: it was shaking violently, rocking from side to side, stressing the bolts that once held it firmly to the ground. On the conveyor belt that led from Dom’s mouth came Dave after Dave, one every few seconds. But these were broken, useless Daves. Their crippled, flightless bodies crashed off the end of the conveyor belt where an army of Consuelas crashed into them, feverishly trying to suck them up. This isn’t right, he thought. He was there when Dom took over; this wasn’t how it was supposed to work. Dom was supposed to be just as efficient as all the other gizmos, this was a mess. When he helped install Dom, just before he was Replaced, the machine was nearly silent. Now it was screaming, howling, almost like it was in pain. And where were the workers? Surely they all hadn’t been Replaced, he thought. Looking around, he could see no person had been here in some time. Every space in the factory was filled with gizmos, some working and some mangled beyond their original shape, a freak show of disfigured machines.

He slipped his hand under his wool cap and ran his fingers through his hair, pressing his nails hard into his scalp. This was confusing to him. He couldn’t understand what had went wrong, but what caused him the most concern was that he couldn’t understand why he cared. Whatever had gone wrong here, it wasn’t his problem, but he couldn’t help the feeling that somebody should do something, anything to put a stop to this. He ran his thumb over the raised letters on the forged wrench he still carried in his pocket. He felt sorry for Dom. He had never held any resentment towards Dom for making him obsolete, quite the opposite in fact. Replacement wasn’t like it used to be, now if you got Replaced you got a Replaced People check once a month, enough to have a comfortable life. He didn’t like seeing Dom hurting like this. If no one were going to fix this, maybe he could. Maybe he could jam the wrench into Dom’s guts, shut him down like Hank, putting him out of this misery. Another Dave came out of Dom’s mouth. This one tried to fly, but its misshapen body jerked to the left and it almost crashed into him. He dove out of the way, and the Dave slammed into a pile of gizmos. He looked at the Dave, its propellers still spinning as it lay smoking on the ground. In Dave’s little arms was a wrench, an inch and one eighth. He climbed over a stack of gizmos to the side of Dom. He could see Dom’s load control arm reaching into a toolbox, retrieving another wrench. Normally this arm would collect the materials necessary for Dom to produce another gizmo, but now it was grabbing whatever it could reach, stuffing all manner of loose parts and broken gizmos into the back of Dom. Dom was trying to send anything he could out into the world on a Dave. It couldn’t reach its guts with the control arm, it must need someone to come, someone to end this hell, he was sure of it. That must be how the wrench ended up in his drive, he thought. Some dilapidated Dave must have teetered as far as his place before dropping its load, Dom’s way of sending a message in a bottle. He pried open the access panel on the side of Dom. Inside where a thousand different gears and belts and cables, circuit boards, chips, hoses, all the guts that kept Dom going. He jammed the wrench in between two gears, the force of the wrench being pulled from his hand nearly took his arm off. Dom let out a deep, agonizing groan as his guts came to a stop. Relief, he thought. The strain of all these guts trying to move was tearing Dom apart. Pressure built up and blew open the coolant hose. Belts snapped; gears came apart. The shaking was worse now. He had to get out of there, away from Dom before he blew up. He couldn’t make the door, too far, and too many gizmos in the way. He tried for the window. Normally, it would be too high to reach, but if he clambered up the pile of gizmos in front of it, he might make it.

He pulled his hand inside the sleeve of his coat and balled it into a fist, slamming it through the glass. He started pulling himself up through the window. It was a long way down, but if he landed in the snow, maybe he wouldn’t be hurt too bad. Dom gave one last great bellow, choking and spitting on his own guts, before it let loose. When he came to, he was almost fifty yards from where the factory used to be. The blast had knocked him out, and he couldn’t hear anything except a constant whine in his ears that didn’t seem natural. Laying in the snow, he didn’t feel cold. He didn’t feel anything at all. He reached up under his wool cap and ran his fingers through his hair, pulling down clumps of singed gray and black with burnt skin still attached. He turned on his stomach and raised himself to his knees. Deep in his belly there was some piece of a Dave or a Karen or maybe a Hank. He grasped it in his hands and wrenched it free from his guts, warm blood spurting out in dark pools in the snow. He looked around him at the mess. Shrapnel and glass and brick, spatters of red against a canvas of white, with him in the center. A masterpiece, he thought. A work of art born of pain and destruction, and life.

He slumped down into the snow, pressing his face into the cold, wet ground. I wonder what kind of gizmo is going to clean this up, he thought. He wondered what he would name it.