Let’s Bring Abraham Lincoln Back to Life

I was watching television when Charlie came up from the basement and announced that he’d done it this time all right, that he’d brought Abraham Lincoln back to life. I held up my spoon-careful not to overturn the ice cream perched precariously on its tip-in a rousing salute. On the TV, Miranda had just told Amber about her affair with her evil twin’s comatose alien husband, and it took every ounce of willpower I had not to sneak a peak at this intriguing new plot development.

“That’s nice, Charlie,” I said. “Do you want some ice cream? I’m watching my stories.”

He shook his head, then took a sip from what was no doubt his third or fourth highball. He’d aged poorly and now barely resembled the dashing gent who’d assembled me from spare parts ten years prior. His gut strained against his snakeskin suit and his neck pooled like a bullfrog’s above his velour ascot.

“Just come downstairs,” Charlie said. “I want you to see this.”

The basement was where Charlie kept his machines, big silver-looking things with dials and levers and little towers that cackled with electricity, a giant blender with all these little blades used for terminating his failed experiments. Despite my continued protests to save the little buggers, Charlie ground up his unsuccessful mutants into a protein-rich slurry he sold via the internet to surplus farmers in Montana. He always encouraged me to take more of an interest in science and machinery, but I always told him: Look. I’m a robot all day long. Last thing I want to do in my spare time-which there’s not very much of after tending to you, mister-is thinking about robot-stuff. I mean, if he wanted me to be interested in robotics why didn’t he just program me to be interested in robotics? Charlie never had a good answer for that one.

He stood next to a tarp-covered capsule that came up to his shoulders. He spat into his hands and clenched the tarp, the perennial showman. With a flick of his wrists he yanked it free and I got my first glimpse at his newest experiment. There, no taller than a dwarf, sat the lumpiest person I ever saw. Even calling it a person is generous. Gray skin with all these tumor-looking bumps running up and down its naked, roly-poly body. A Neanderthal forehead that jut out too far. A rectangle of a mouth filled with crooked teeth. A dozen wisps of hair that fell from the crown of his skull into his eyes. The creature-which went back and forth between standing upright and on all fours-scratched its belly and gave a curious moan.

“Ooooooooooooooooooooooh.”

Charlie showed his teeth and raised his highball in victory. “This, my dearest Esmeralda Sassafras 3000, is President Abraham Lincoln returned to us from the dead.”

He dug out a top hat from a nearby top hat barrel. He pressed a button on the creature’s capsule causing a hole to open up on top. He leaned on his tip toes and carefully placed the hat atop Abraham Lincoln’s head. It didn’t last long-maybe only a millisecond before the creature jerked it loose and began stomping on it-but during that brief interval I could almost see the allure. Not a resemblance to Lincoln but something else. There was a tangible humanity in his confused expression, in the slight upward curl of his lips. Something about the creature made me feel that somehow, someway he might lead me to a better and more fulfilling life than the one I had always known in Google City.

Abraham Lincoln’s eyes were perfect orbs, green and flecked with gold. They reminded me of Charlie’s ex-wife’s eyes. She’d left him three years earlier to bed new and more exciting lovers in the Amazon, an event which had sent Charlie into his downward spiral of increased drink and failure. His last four inventions had been large flops for Google and he couldn’t survive another public black eye lest he be terminated.

“The hat makes him look kind of regal,” I said.

Charlie smiled. He patted my shoulder with what I hoped was a genuine affection. “Tomorrow, we’ll take him to the executives and they’ll just go gaga for him, Esmeralda Sassafras 3000. We’ll take him to the executives and then our fortunes are really going to change.”

I didn’t know what to say, and luckily, Abraham Lincoln provided the necessary distraction. He reared up on his skinny hind legs and released a cry of undeniable skepticism.

“Ooooooooooooooooooooooh.”

The next morning, Charlie, Abraham Lincoln, and I set off bright and early for a meeting on the top floor of Visionary Tower 2. We sat alone at a conference table, a dog carrier between us with Lincoln inside, slamming his mitts against the plastic walls and hooting and hollering. Charlie’s hands trembled, and since I didn’t want him to see I’d noticed, I kept my eyes trained on the gigantic window that overlooked all of Google City, the premiere planned community in all of Washington state, the only home I had ever known. Everything glass or concrete, nothing but towers and outdoor shopping complexes. There was Engineering Tower 17 sandwiched between a Starbucks and a McDonald’s. There was Housing Tower 6 adjacent to a 7D fiMax movie theatre. Throughout the city of 10,000 stood poles equipped with video monitors constantly streaming the music videos of 14-year-old Chinese prostitute singing sensation Super Neon Lolita Warhead. “Super Cunt/Super Cunt/Super Cunt/Super Cunt/Super Cunt,” she warbled, her face humongous on the side of Parking Tower 12. “Oh you funky little shit!” I looked away when Super Neon Lolita Warhead began dry humping a CGI stegosaurus. I always resented the fact that Charlie never outfitted me with a skin graft or Robo-Vagina and didn’t appreciate this brutish reminder. It wasn’t that I desired sex necessarily. I just wanted to be in control of my own body, to feel self-empowered, to be a little more human and look less like Rosie from The Jetsons, an inspiration Charlie often cited when retelling the story of my construction.

The front doors slapped opened and Vice Executive Emmanuel X. appeared in his trademark sharkskin suit, his blonde hair shimmering with product. “Talk, Charlie.” He kicked his suede boots up onto the table and grabbed a bagel from the untouched spread. “I got a meeting with the 28^th Amendment people in fifteen.”

Charlie smoothed out the wrinkles in his suit. Despite graduating from Pepsi Cal Tech the same year as Emmanuel X., he looked so much older: so many lines across the forehead, terrible crow’s feet around his eyes. I’m grateful that the robot aging process is internal, that the slow demise of my circuitry will never be borne on my face.

“You know me, E,” Charlie said. “I’ve given my life’s blood to this company, the best years of my life. Cars are powered by their driver’s hearts thanks to me. I’ve made planes a thing of the past. Every person in the civilized world owns a Callamallajibjab. In many ways, I’m the public face of modern Google.”

Emmanuel X. looked up from his porno-watch. “What have you done for me lately, Charlie? And your obsession with that robot? Yowza. I know your wife left you to diddle pool boys in Venezuela, but come on, man. Just order a human bride from Antarctica. Top notch. Real high quality product.”

Charlie reached under the table and squeezed my hand. He told me repeatedly that I was his mechanical companion, not a sex doll, not a replacement for his wife. “Yeah, but this next idea is going to be different.” He folded his arms. “What is the ultimate chore in today’s society, E? Thinking. And who has to do the most complex thinking of all? The president. So what if, using blood from a 19^th century mosquito that the Nike Smithsonian’s been holding onto, Google genetically engineered our own president so the whole country could just kick back and relax? I’m talking about Abraham Lincoln. I’m talking about bringing Abraham Lincoln back to life.”

Charlie struggled under the weight of the dog carrier but eventually got it up from the floor and onto the table. He snapped free the locks and out Abraham Lincoln tumbled, naked and ugly, his few strands of hair matted against his goblin face. His top hat must have come loose during the journey, so Charlie reached inside the carrier and set it on Lincoln’s head. The brute responded by making a mad dash for the bagels and pigging out. Crumbs flew everywhere.

“You brought Abraham Lincoln back to life?” Emmanuel X. adjusted his tie.

“Yes.”

“And that’s him?”

“Sure. He doesn’t look perfect, but he’s close enough. People won’t know the difference.”

Emanuel X. fished his Callamallajibjab 3.0 from his pocket and checked one of its many complicated screens. “We can’t sell that, Charlie. Look. Maybe Google City is no longer that right place for you. What about Atari’s Retro Graveyard? I hear they’re doing interesting stuff over there with gramophone ghosts.”

Chalie’s lower lip trembled. “Are you firing me?”

“Not today, no. And I’d probably have some underling do it anyway.” He raised his Callamallajibjab 2.0 to his ear and left the conference room. “Hello? I just finished. Oh, God, I know! He’s the absolute worst! Let’s fire him!”

The door slammed shut. I wanted very much to hold Charlie in my arms, but my metal is kind of cold to humans, so I just stayed put. Abraham Lincoln had eaten all the bagels and now lay exhausted on his back in the center of the conference table. He wasn’t perfect, but those eyes really were beautiful. And I wanted to express this to Charlie somehow, that even though Lincoln wasn’t ready for mass-consumption he was still unique and maybe I could grow to love him over time. I’d never been beyond the borders of Google City and hoped to transcend my mechanical limitations in a world removed from Super Neon Lolita Warhead and residents who thought it was improper for a human to spend so much time with a robot.

“Let’s go.” Charlie ushered a sleepy Lincoln back into the carrier. “In times like these there’s only one appropriate reaction.”

“What’s that, Charlie?”

“Let’s get tanked, Esmeralda Sassafras 3000.”

Charlie preferred the bar on the 23rd floor of Recreation Tower 3. Bananaramma’s. A simple sports bar, everything made of imitation wood. He loved eating the complimentary peanuts and playing darts and watching the Polish Geniuses basketball game with other Google inventors. In the old days, before his wife had left him, we didn’t come here five times a week. In the old days, the bartenders and regulars would delight at the sight of us. Now they were indifferent at best, eye rolling at worst.

We sat at the bar. Charlie kept Abraham Lincoln in the carrier between our dangling legs, but he left the tiny gate open. The poor little guy looked tuckered out after his big morning eating all those bagels.

Charlie signaled the bartender. “Get me and my darling here two highballs, three ice cubes each.”

Susie was tall, her hair in a blonde pony tail, and was working on an MA at Google University. She didn’t have the pleasure of knowing Charlie during the glory days, and thus, treated him with a high level of suspicion. She handed us our drinks without even as much as a smirk. Normally, robots cannot drink alcohol, but after his wife left him, Charlie built a little pouch inside me that could hold booze for six hours at a time before needing to be emptied. He even installed a little scale so my circuitry could calculate how much alcohol I’d consumed and decrease my CPU activity appropriately. I didn’t like getting drunk, but Charlie made it very clear he hated drinking alone, so I did it. For him. But seriously, ten in the morning? It was getting old.

Charlie finished his drink in one fluid motion then called for two more.

“Hey, why don’t you slow down there, big guy?”

“Don’t worry about me, Esmeralda Sassafras 3000.” He fluffed out his ascot. “Hey can we get some Polish Genius coverage in here or what? Aren’t they playing the Apple Knicks later?”

So we drank. We didn’t say much. I tried to pace myself while Charlie barreled through four, five, six drinks, his eyes on the flat screen overhead, on the 17 different news scrolls running across the Sportscenter feed. When Charlie tired of this, he opened up my chest cavity and turned on the touch screen inside. It was a Christmas gift two years ago. A direct connection to the web. His fingers wobbled a bit so he held onto the bar for balance. He typed in something and Googled an image of an Asian scientist holding a small, ancient looking gray machine.

“You know who that is?” Charlie snapped his fingers at Susie for another drink.

I reached down into the carrier and stroked Abraham Lincoln’s few hairs. I didn’t want him to see me drunk. He had an anxious look in his eyes and I wanted him to feel comforted. “Who?”

“Gunpei Yokoi. He invented the Game Boy. You’re too young to know what this is, but when I was a boy it was all the rage. A primitive video game console you could take with you on the go. Very successful. At the time, it was Nintendo’s best selling product ever.”

I nodded. The best thing to do when Charlie got on his rants, I’d discovered, was to let him wear himself out. Better he bore me than a stranger. Better he bore me than getting the two of us kicked out. “What happened to him?”

“His next invention was a colossal failure. The Virtual Boy. It was this helmet thing you wrapped around your head to play video games. But it sold horribly and Nintendo took a real bath. And you know what they did? They forced him into early retirement. One of the inventors who helped make the whole goddamn company. A year later he was crushed by a car on the side of a freeway. Tragic end. But you know what, Esmeralda Sassafras 3000? He posthumously won a lifetime achievement award six years later. What do you think of that, huh? What do you think of that?”

What I thought was that I’d like to go home. What I thought was that Abraham Lincoln was only a day old and shouldn’t be exposed to a smoky bar and alcohol.

“I think Abe needs to make poo poos,” I told Charlie. “I’m going to take him for a walk.”

The streets were empty. The lunch hour had ended for the day and people had returned to their employment towers, safely tucked inside their cubicles, waiting for quitting time and something better. Abraham Lincoln’s leash felt right in my hand and I led him to a nearby fountain with a nice patch of grass where he could run in circles. And it would have been perfect if not for Super Neon Lolita Warhead onscreen just overhead, shimmying and humping a teddy bear to a beat so electronic as to not even sound real anymore.

Abe’s lips scrunched in worry so I scratched behind his ear and told him it was ok, that he could relieve himself. He squatted by the fountain and expelled feces from his anus. Standing there, I imagined what our future could be: the three of us relocating to somewhere a little more accepting than Google City, some place like Switzerland or France. Maybe I could save up enough on my own for a skin graft or Robo-Vagina. Maybe there in the glow of another culture we could all become a family: Charlie, Abraham Lincoln, and me. I picked Abe up and decided right then and there to tell Charlie about my plan, that it was time for us to leave.

It was my time now. My time.

I cradled Abraham Lincoln in my arms and returned to Bananaramma’s. Charlie sat hunched forward on his stool, his bangs and ascot out of place. Before I could reach him he steadied himself and yelled at Susie.

“You gotta get off your high horse, little miss.” Charlie put his hand to his mouth and neighed. “Think because you’re the new hot thing in Google City that it makes you better than me? You know who I am?”

Susie handed Charlie what I assumed was his unasked for check. “I know exactly who you are. You’re a washed-up old asshole who hasn’t built anything useful in forever and you have to get shit-faced because you can’t pull yourself out of your big, bad depression on account of your wife leaving you.”

Charlie grabbed her wrist. And before either of them could react, I dropped Abraham Lincoln to the ground, sprinted across the bar, and pulled Charlie back from the brink. I held onto his chest with both hands. He leaned his head against mine and had this dazed look in his eyes like he didn’t know where he was or how he’d gotten here, to this bar with me and a mutant clone of Abraham Lincoln.

“Let’s get you home,” I whispered.

I paid the check. Suzie told us never to return to Bananaramma’s again. I told her no problem, that I was leaving this place, that I was already gone.

Back in the apartment, I steered Charlie toward his bedroom, then set up Abraham Lincoln on the fold-out couch. He lay scrunched up like a puppy, his tiny leg scratching at some tough to reach itch. I watched him for a few moments, then went off to the linen closet for a few extra blankets. I swaddled his body, and by god, Abraham Lincoln looked grateful, his eyes big and in love. And I guess you could say I was a little in love too. I bent over and held him close to my body, and unlike the humans, even Charlie, Abraham Lincoln did not recoil. His lips curled inward and he moved as close to me as he could. I held him and held him and finally knew what I had to do, how I could convince Charlie on my plans.

The Vaseline and velvet gloves were under the kitchen sink. I put them on and lathered up my hands. I went into Charlie’s bedroom and quietly, oh so quietly, slid alongside him under the covers. He wasn’t sleeping. He didn’t protest. But he didn’t give me any encouragement either. I smiled at him and reached down beneath the covers until I found his warm, soft penis. Back and forth. Back and forth. I’d done this before, but it wasn’t an everyday occurrence. Not even once a week. I just felt strangely compelled to erotically stimulate him ever since his wife left. Why? Because he programmed me that way. Because he programmed me to jerk him off after drunken benders in case his wife ever left him. And although I’d like to say I hated him for it, in all honestly, I pitied him. How difficult he found it to be human.

He finished. I peeled off the gloves and began cleaning him using the sheets. I usually felt remorse afterwards, but not this time. This time I had a plan. I would suggest moving, raising Abraham Lincoln like a son, transforming my metal into flesh. Liberation. This time I would manipulate Charlie into doing something for me for a change.

“Charlie,” I whispered. “Charlie.”

“Esmeralda Sassafras 3000.”

“I know Emmanuel X. kind of shot down your Abraham Lincoln idea but-”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“But-”

“Look.” He rolled on his side to get a better look at me. Usually, I didn’t stay in his bed afterward and I never, ever slept over-as you might imagine, robots don’t sleep and most of the time I watch old ‘70s sitcoms On Demand all through the night. And I could tell from the pained expression in his eyes that he was suddenly embarrassed of me, of what we had done, of the sheer sight of me under the covers in his bed, the hum of my insides thunderous in the still of early evening.

“It doesn’t matter if you like Abraham Lincoln. You heard what Emmanuel X. had to say. Project’s a no go. I’ll make slurry out of him tomorrow. You think I could get a teaching appointment at my age?”

I didn’t reply. I just lay there listening to Charlie’s movements and then the shallow intake of breath as he fell asleep. I lay there all night just staring at a white dot in the ceiling cast from a light pole outside. I lay there trying to figure out what to do about my love for Abraham Lincoln.

At dawn, I left the bed and peered between the bedroom blinds. The sun was rising in the east, over the black spire of Visionary Tower 1. I looked west to the forest just beyond the edge of Google City and tried to imagine the ocean even further, churning away even in the aftermath of the reduced moon. Charlie had never taken me to the woods although I often expressed interest in seeing them up close and personal. He said the forests were bad for robots, that I’d get dirt in my sensors and that he didn’t have the time to overhaul my circuitry with a pressurized air pump.

I’d forgotten to draw the curtains in the living room the night before and a great, big rectangle of sunlight shone directly on the couch and the still slumbering body of Abraham Lincoln. He was having a dream. I could tell from his furrowed brow, how he’d occasional kick at phantom foes, the way he growled and then almost yipped in an incredibly endearing fashion. I know my circuits are not equipped to comprehend or explain the complex riddle of love, but in that moment I knew I had to save him. That even if I couldn’t get my dream life then I needed to save Abraham Lincoln from a pointless death at the hands of a has-been inventor.

I shook Abraham Lincoln’s belly. “Wake up, love. Wake up.”

He opened his eyes. He raised his hands in my direction and squeezed them three times in rapid succession. I’d seen this gesture from babies on my stories. Abraham Lincoln wanted to be held. So I held him. Close to my chest, his pouchy little face nestled near my shoulder. We left the apartment. We left the building. I just hoped he couldn’t imagine what I was about to do.

The streets were empty as I strode through the outdoor shopping complexes, between the various towers that made up Google City. I didn’t take Abraham Lincoln to the main gate, to the highway that burst out the center of Google City aimed straight at Seattle. Instead, I left the sidewalks and walked around Janitorial Tower 2, an out of the way, three-story building that barely qualified as a tower. Behind it stood a chain link fence and then infinite forest, nothing but dirt floors and a canopy of trees with rays of sunshine pouring in. I imagined that this must have been the kind of place birds lived before they went extinct.

Abraham Lincoln fidgeted in my arms by the fence, so I set him down and tore a hole big enough for Abe with my metal hands. I didn’t intend on going through it myself. Something about the idea of Charlie waking up hung over all alone-a repeat of his wife’s desertion-didn’t set well with me. Even if he was tyrannical and occasionally terrible, he still made me right? He had still given me life.

“Oooooooooooooooooh.”

I looked down at my feet. Abraham Lincoln was huddled there, holding fast to my ankle. He looked unsure of himself so I reached down and patted him on the tookus, gingerly steering him toward the hole in the fence. He kept clawing at the ground until finally, I had to pick him up and squeeze him through the hole myself. But he just stood there on the other side. Just stared at me. His eyes welling up with tears. He took off his top hat and rubbed it nervously in his hands.

“Oh, Abraham Lincoln. Please, don’t make this any harder than it already is. You have to go. Go.”

He set his hat at his feet and reached through the small opening in the fence for my hands. “Come with me.” His voice was raspy, the texture of peanut brittle. “I love you.”

In the distance I could hear them. The people of Google City. They were preparing for another day. All those rituals. Coffee. Showers. Clothes. I could hear them leaving their apartment towers. I could hear them buzzing across Google City. And I knew I didn’t have much time, that this was a choice presented to me but once in a lifetime. And standing there, crouched in front of the fence that separated me from Abraham Lincoln and miles of preserved forest, well, I can barely describe it. It felt like this was the choice I’d been striving toward my entire life. That everything before this moment had been mere preparation for the arrival of a genetically deficient Abraham Lincoln clone, for another living creature that could offer me the one thing I’d always really wanted: true love. I pulled the hole open wide enough for my body. Then I took Abraham Lincoln’s hand into my own.

I squeezed through the fence and emerged on the other side. I picked up Abraham Lincoln so his feet wouldn’t get dirty, and then, the two of us, we walked into the forest and toward all that was unknown.