What is the problem with repairing this bicycle?
The girl is alone in the control room when she asks this. She’s been alone there for quite some time. This is no job in fast food or phone sales. Not a job in which all drudgery is mutual, where hatred for the boss unites coworkers, and when you’re heavy-hearted or hungover you call in sick. If the girl even has a boss he’s remote, off premises. Never once has he responded to her calls. Still, she must have been trained by someone. She seems to remember being shown where the bathroom is and how to use it. She remembers an early feeling like someone more qualified was in charge. But the girl has been alone so long she’s begun to feel she was simply set here, in the booth with its crow’s nest-view. Awkward dimensions. Two slits for windows. No sight-lines in the back, so if you want to check for ghosts or snipers, you have to crank the whole cabin around.
On days the girl feels incompetent—and that’s most of them—she doubles down and works harder, but when progress is measured in increments; when the finish-line fluctuates; when dedication has no clear consequence, it’s hard to stay motivated, no matter what a good employee you are. On the worst days, the girl’s breaks get longer. She rifles the cupboards in the lounge area, or crawls under her desk to nap. Probably lengthy absences are verboten; it’s against the rules to abandon her post. Likely, all that’s in the manual. But the manual is thick, and it’s her job to write it as she goes. Then again, how essential could her role be, really? Even when she runs hours of laps in the hallways, the thing is where she left it when she returns.
The thing is what she’s been conscripted to operate; the source of her frustration when it doesn’t respond. Why is its efficiency erratic? Maybe there’s a short in the circuit. Maybe some widget is jamming the gears. Over time, she calls in experts. Engineers who turn dials and recalibrate systems; mechanics who unscrew levers from sockets; technicians who prescribe pellets—like detergent pods for a dishwasher, meant to clear accumulated sludge.
In each instance, the girl grows hopeful: the expert will make her own job easier. He will diagnose the problem and see that it is fixed. In fact, often afterward the thing does obey her, and she can focus on duties the manual labels less basic; she can achieve more fulfilling goals. But always, the thing regresses. No matter, the girl reboots power centers or pushes buttons in whatever new, expert-approved sequence; frequently, the thing won’t respond. As if it finds safety in stasis. As if the thing has a mind of its own.
As the girl feels more desperate, she recruits experts more outlandish. Like the clinician who talks to the thing like it’s sentient, or the one who swears he can facilitate adaptive information processing by stimulating the thing with a vibrating tool. But in the end, each expert delivers the same verdict.: the thing is the girl’s responsibility, not theirs.
By then, the girl has been at her job so long she remembers nothing before it. At the girl’s age, didn’t her mother have three kids and a career in dentistry? By that metric, the girl is old enough to be her own expert. The manual is so thick now, she uses it to stand on. (The extra coffee filters are stored in cabinets over the fridge). When she does page through, she sees much of what she has written is worthless: naive or dated. Especially that part about essential oils. Annotations are scrawled over annotations. Some of the text seems typewritten, as if it precedes more modern means.
Too often, the thing does something worse than nothing: it takes actions the girl never ordered. As if what she knows doesn’t matter. As if all her hard learning is a lie. When that happens, the girl can’t help but grow agitated. Pencil clamped between her lips, she tears out pages, her hair a fright around her head.
Hot yoga? she mumbles, Not after that back thing. Dad’s wise fables? Good luck excavating that grave.
Does the girl’s desperation feed the thing’s obstinance? Years ago someone (one of the experts?) told the girl that she’s in control; she has choices. But how can that be when occasionally, no matter which button the girl pushes, the thing takes actions paradoxical and perverse?
Sometimes, the girl’s scrawls the wall with lists of the thing’s offenses:
It eats in the night
It chews gum till its jaw locks
It sends texts to whichever man it thinks it’s into—not to meet the psychological needs the manual advocates—but in a flurry of fear and craving; an external solution to an inborn lack
(That last item wraps halfway around the room.)
Meanwhile, the girl’s up here helpless. No matter what that clinician said, there’s no way she can use words to communicate. The thing doesn’t listen. Anyway, logic can’t staunch a tide of need.
Yet, if the girl’s honest it’s not what the thing does that most disturbs her. After all, it’s normal to disregard the good advice of those who know better. Like when the girl’s mom told her not to touch the stove and she did anyway, or when her dad said you’ll never make money with a degree in Comp Lit. No, what makes the girl pace and hold a match over the manual—just threatening—is a certain category of contrary response.
Like this bicycle problem.
The girl can tell the thing wants to fix it. Wants to drive less (the environment). Wants more exercise (this new, over thirty-five gut). Wants the ease and childhood feel of earning the right to accelerate, the warm satisfaction of uniting muscle and breath. Back in May, the thing even went so far as to google bicycle repair shops. It’s past Fourth of July now, and still the thing says summer’s just begun. But the girl knows July is when the leaves in the trees are at their thickest, which means their lush rustling forecasts fall.
Why are you so negative, the thing seems to ask her. Though maybe the girl is projecting, like one of those soldiers who bonds to a bomb-disposing robot, then feels equally shattered when the robot explodes. Projecting or not, the girl isn’t negative, she’s results-oriented. She’s simply using one of the manual’s dog-eared sections: “Practical Application of Dark Harbingers.” (pg. 3,098,734 Sub Appendix C. Signs and Portents, Seasonally Derived.) Vague threats have always worked before.
The girl traces her finger over the directions. Inject the thing’s free-floating fear into an external object/concept. Use the external object/concept to threaten the thing. Straightforward. (Not to mention environmentally sustainable—the thing’s fear is an infinitely renewable resource.) The steps are so easy, they seem invented by a child. So why does she sense the thing is questioning her? As if it’s evolved beyond her capabilities. Meanwhile, the girl's still afraid to touch the stove.
Good luck the break room has a microwave. The girl sets her bowl of wet oats in the sink.
She walks the long hall to the control room. Inside, the four a.m. light falls in rosy stripes along the floor. The thing and the girl both know mornings are the hardest (The anxious distance between green dreams of movement, and the grey chaos of the day’s span) so the girl's not surprised to find the thing already listening to Marc Maron’s podcast. Routine blots the anxiety: coffee and a voice they’ve grown to love. Unlike the needy texts the thing somehow thinks will lure men, listening risks nothing. Their intimacy is one-sided. The thing can believe if Maron knew them he would love them, while the girl keeps the thing safe from being known.
At her work station, the girl flips to a new page in the wall calendar. It’s August now, and in the new photo, Taylor Swift strums her guitar in a field of corn. So much for the thing’s plans to shrink its waistline and carbon footprint. So much for milk crate baskets threaded with flowers. In eight short days, the thing’s vacation will be over, and though the thing drives an SUV the way the girl drives the thing, the thing has yet to load the old, rusted bicycle into its car. And by the way, they wouldn’t even be in this position if the thing had not left the fucking bicycle sitting out all winter. As if moisture is imaginary. As if metal isn’t susceptible to rust. (Come to think of it, the thing really has a glitch concerning weather. It took the girl twenty-seven years and reams of diagrams before the thing mastered the association: Rain in the Forecast -> Umbrella in the bag.)
The girl stands and paces. This bicycle problem really is nothing like the girl’s Comp Lit rebellion. The girl knew her father’s plans for her were practical, but she dreamed of cultural expression across linguistic, national, and disciplinary boundaries—not hotel management. But the thing wants— truly wants— to ride its bicycle. (In last night’s dream, the thing pedaled fast through corn-choked fields.) Now, the girl bangs on one of the slitty windows. Why won’t the thing take the steps the girl knows are required?
“Ouch.” The thing quakes a little and goes for the Advil.
Beneath Taylor Swift, the girl freezes. Perhaps the isolation has gotten to her. You hear about situations like this: Scientists alone at North Pole command centers who believe they’re communicating with snow drifts. Lone astronauts in orbit who give the black void a name. Still, it really does seem as if the girl and the thing have communicated, though the girl has pulled no crank nor entered a code.
The girl sharpens her pencil:
The SUV is a machine. If it won’t start or has trouble stopping, the thing takes it to the dealership. The man there diagnoses the problem, and the SUV is fixed.
On the flip-side, the thing’s contrary responses can’t be eliminated. Even when an expert discerns a pattern, eventually the pattern shifts. Machines aren’t like that. So, what if—just hypothetically—the thing is sentient? Above the girl, Taylor Swift’s lips are red and her sweater reads ‘Cat Lover.’ The girl never meant to cause the thing pain.
The girl starts computations and discards them. Crosses out a flow chart, abandons a proof. What made the girl believe she was hired to control the thing? And if she wasn’t, what other fundamental truths has the girl failed to grasp? (The manual is a cookbook! Alone in the booth the girl laughs.) Okay, focus. If her actions affect the thing, then the girl and the thing are in relation. Does that mean they’re in a relationship? No. There’s too much the girl knows without the thing telling her. As if communication is unconscious. As if the thing’s raw desires are her own. In fact, last night the girl too dreamed about riding the bicycle. About green-scented fields, and the union of muscles and breath.
Now, through the thing's ears, the girl hears Maron discussing his ice maker. At least they agree on podcasts. If the girl is honest, she’s glad the thing broke their iPhone when she tried to make it play Tara Brach. Listening, the girl and the thing rub their temples. By now the thing has metabolized the ibuprofen, and the girl feels her own headache ease.
Sarah Terez Rosenblum’s work has appeared in lit mags such as Diagram, Brevity, Third Coast, and Carve. Sarah has written for sites including Salon, The Chicago Sun Times, The Satirist, and Pop Matters. Most recently, Sarah was runner-up for Prairie Schooner’s annual Creative Nonfiction Contest and was published in their Summer 2020 issue. Pushcart Prize nominated, Sarah holds an MFA in Creative Writing from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, is a Creative Coach and Developmental Editor, and teaches creative writing at Story Studio and The University of Chicago Writer’s Studio. Sarah’s novel, Herself When She's Missing, was called “poetic and heartrending" by Booklist.
Twitter: @sarahterez
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