Phoebe and The Me

Phoebe and The Me

Phoebe lurched from the bedroom, grabbed her keys, and rushed from the apartment. Jabbing at the elevator button, she descended to the parking garage. Lately, it had become harder to read her mind, which should have alarmed me. Was she driving to work instead of taking the metro? Disappointing. I preferred the surge through the subterranean world.

With the key pinched between thumb and forefinger, Phoebe dragged it along the length of her new car, opening a shrieking gouge in the paint.

What on earth is she doing? She isn’t even dressed.

Until Phoebe, I had given little thought to what kind of creature I was. I was sentient, with a set of synthetic genes—a project abandoned mid-creation. I had no notion of purpose, only a capacity to persist.

Phoebe became an unwitting partner in the enterprise of The Me.

I had learnt to evacuate whatever creature I inhabited and, in that perilous interval, scramble for another organism. One night, a human ran over the cat I was residing with. She leapt from the vehicle in remorse, and I leapt into her.

That human was Phoebe.

Before the cat, I inhabited a flatworm lodged in the eye of a snail. A bird plucked out the eye; the flatworm entered its gut. The bird was stalked and killed by the cat. As the cat died on the verge beside her car, Phoebe’s sorrowful cerebral cortex became my first human home. After the feline’s brutal, single-minded synaptic life—not to mention the flatworm—Phoebe was a revelation.

I found myself drawn to the progress of her life, though at times repelled. It was as if I were becoming one with her—a fundamentally silly human idea, though perhaps a sign of growing fondness. I began to see humans not only as frightened, weak, and foolish, but as vulnerable. This activated a vague and unstable empathy.

Within Phoebe, I believed I had achieved some semblance of emotional life. An enduring melancholy invaded her days, seeping into my consciousness and curdling my own small, lonely world. At times her need seemed so great that I wondered whether a clearer sign of my presence might soothe her sense of isolation.

Without coffee, she drifted beyond my reach.

Phoebe’s Morning

When Phoebe entered the bathroom, she paused before the mirror, her eyes the room’s only window. They widened—fear, though I did not recognise it at the time.

She used the toilet. Of the creatures I had inhabited, the flatworm was the most appalling, taking in food and expelling waste through the same orifice. I remained marginally grateful that human anatomy differed.

Phoebe showered. Drying herself, she stood before the mirror, baring her teeth in a grimace. She scrubbed them, spat into the sink, painted her lips with a red goo, and worked lotion through her short hair. Humans are obsessed with individuality, yet in pursuing it, they only achieve uniformity.

She took a bottle from the mirrored cabinet and read the label again and again. Holding it tightly, she shook her head, as though refusing some instruction. Then she unscrewed the lid and flushed them down the toilet.

She touched her nipples. The sensation, to my surprise, was not unpleasant.

‘I like that,’ Phoebe said aloud. ‘I wouldn’t say no if you wanted to do it again.’

Nor would I.

In the bedroom, she put on a dress, changed her mind, and replaced it with black jeans and a T-shirt featuring an enormous eye. I failed to understand the significance of this

Phoebe was considered an admirable example of her species. I knew this because at work, one male said to another, within her hearing, what I wouldn’t do if I got my hands on her. Many men speak of women in this leering, objectifying way, as though failing to recognise them as fellow humans. The practice seemed the very definition of self-delusion.

Phoebe ate a meagre breakfast—yoghurt, oat bran, dried fruit—and drank coffee, a beverage I found increasingly agreeable. She never seemed to eat enough.

Humans spend astonishing amounts of time communing with their devices. Whenever possible, I distracted her with coffee. It steadied her. It sharpened my access.

That morning, she stopped before the mirror above the sideboard and spoke to it as if to another person.

‘But if I didn’t have this, there’d be nothing else.’

It unsettled me, though I could not at the time say why.

The Train

Humans crowd into cities for fellowship, though most remain sealed inside homes or workplaces. I was relieved when Phoebe bought takeaway coffee for the metro journey, though the barista lacked skill and should have been employed elsewhere.

We watched our reflection in the train window as we hurtled through the flickering dark.

‘Who are you?’ Phoebe asked the window.

At one stop, a man boarded, sat beside us, and opened a laptop. Phoebe kept her eyes on the tunnel until curiosity overcame her. She did not wish to stare, but I was curious and intervened.

When death descended unbidden in this place, there was no shelter from regret nor, strangely, any need for sadness…

The prose was compelling, gloomy and strange. Tears fell from Phoebe’s eyes onto her clasped hands. The man glanced at her, fingers stilled above the keys, then looked away.

Phoebe had cried before. Tiresome, though instructive.

The train screeched to a halt. Phoebe brushed past the writer’s knees as he drew them in. She turned to look at him; he returned her glance briefly, the corners of his mouth lifting.

On the escalator, noise filtered down from the street. I sensed another inward turn in her—something like intelligence, even courage. Her life seemed increasingly at odds with her needs.

The evening before, she had called her mother.

‘But Mum, everything seems wrong. I can’t settle. I wanted something more once—not this.’ She gestured toward the mirror. ‘There’s something in me. A need. I’m not fulfilled. It’s missing. But the thing—it’s still there. It takes and never gives anything back.’

‘Phoebe, darling, I don’t know what you mean. You sound so strange lately. Perhaps I should come—’

‘No. Don’t come. It’s nothing.’

Then she hung up.

Phoebe at Work

Phoebe’s office occupied the top floor: bright spaces, glass-walled rooms, windows overlooking the ragged park below.

She moved through the rooms as colleagues greeted her cheerfully. She appeared full of light, though I knew she was not.

At the espresso machine, she chatted with Bea.

The activities at Phoebe's workplace were ridiculous. She was a “creative” in advertising. The business depended on manipulating emotion and appealing to envy above all. Phoebe owned a perfectly good car, yet replaced it with a more expensive one shortly after Bea bought the same make and model. The purchase cheered Phoebe for perhaps a week.

By mid-afternoon, Phoebe and Bea sat in a glass meeting room waiting for Gerry. Gerry, according to Bea, was a pompous arse.

‘You’ve been weird lately,’ Bea said. ‘You okay?’

‘Yeah. Just—you know.’

Humans speak in riddles.

Gerry returned with the coffees and launched into a discussion of a new promotion for an entirely stupid product. The client, he said, had doubts about the pathos factor in Phoebe’s copy.

‘We’re talking about a horse mask for preteen girls, right, Gerry?’ Bea said.

‘Yeah, to help ponies relate to their owners. There’s been research. I mean, we’ve been through this, guys. What about this bit. I believe you are responsible for this, Phoebe:

“By wearing this mask, I can get anything I need. Plenty of hay, lots of time to run and, best of all, I don’t have to wear pants and can let my excrement drop as I please. Since becoming a horse, life has become so much better, and now Dewdrop loves me to bits.”

Phoebe was usually very good at disguising her feelings about her work’s duplicitous and trivial nature. Regardless of my general abhorrence of humanity, I sometimes truly admired her.

‘Geez, Phoebe. That one got past me. You’re a fucking hoot girl,’ Bea said.

She raised her hand to Phoebe for a high five, something humans sometimes do.

Phoebe responded cheerlessly with her own high five but remained distracted, staring past the others and out of the window. There was nothing of note out there, only a blue sky and some wisps of cloud. In the park, a homeless woman fell over. It appeared she’d fainted, as she didn’t get up again.

Gerry looked as if he had just bitten into a lime.

‘Phoebe, are you going rogue on us?’

‘Can you feel that?’ Phoebe said suddenly, raising her hands to her face.

She needs coffee, was my opinion.

Phoebe in the Evening

Phoebe asked Bea to go for a drink after work.

‘Ahh… Nah, got plans. Dinner at Yebisu is hard to resist.’

‘Oh. Yeah, okay.’ Phoebe’s shoulders slumped, her disappointment palpable.

‘Hot date, Phoebe…well, he’s really a catastrophe. Beauty, but no brains, just pots of money.’

‘Yeah, sure,’ Phoebe said.

‘Another time, eh?’

I was barely able to parse any of this.

Phoebe went alone to a dingy bar that smelled of sweat and uric acid. The bartender, however, made an excellent Gimlet. The drink struck me as another emblem of civilisational decline: ice introduced and discarded, vermouth introduced and discarded, then gin, then a slice of aggressively sour lime.

Phoebe drank one, then another.

A dishevelled man at the bar leaned closer than necessary.

‘Can I get ya a drink, darlin’?’

Phoebe didn’t look at him. ‘Fuck off.’

‘No need to be like that. Jush bein’ friendly.’

She turned then, her voice low and precise. ‘You’re not. You’re being tedious.’

He laughed, though without humour. ‘Got a mouth on you, don’t ya.’

‘And you’ve got nothing worth hearing.’

The bartender glanced over. ‘That’ll do, mate.’

‘I’m just talkin’.’

‘You’re done talking,’ the bartender said, already moving around the bar.

The man muttered something elaborate and vulgar, but slid off his stool and drifted away.

‘Sorry about that,’ the bartender said, setting down a fresh drink. ‘On the house.’

Phoebe gave a small nod, then lifted the glass and drank. Tears came again, quietly this time.

‘You alright, love?’ the bartender asked.

She considered the question, as though it required care. ‘No,’ she said.

She finished the drink and, with a faint grimace, ate the slice of lime.

Something more than her usual despondency was happening.

On the train home, she bought coffee at my urging.

The writing man was there.

She sat beside him.

Timothy came home with her.

They drank red wine and talked too long about dull subjects. He read from his novel. Phoebe kept glancing around the apartment as though something had been misplaced.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

‘It just feels a bit odd. I can’t quite put my finger on it.’ She smiled and reached for his hand. ‘You make me feel relaxed.’

They went to bed.

What followed was my first encounter with human sexual intimacy. No prior knowledge could have prepared me.

Yuk.

When Phoebe fell asleep, Timothy rose, fumbled in his satchel, and spoke quietly into his device before returning to bed.

Phoebe woke with a jolt, pressing her body against his as though for protection. Her eyes moved about the room wildly.

Then copulation took place again with such an alarming intensity that I feared for their survival.

Later, Phoebe made coffee. I found myself entertaining the idea of recommending the beverage to my kind, wherever they were.

Perhaps I was alone.

She Knew

Phoebe called in sick; Timothy did the same. They stayed together until mid-afternoon, when he said he had to go home.

‘I have obligations,’ he said. There was mention of another woman and a child waiting at his apartment.

‘I like you,’ Phoebe said.

He left anyway.

Phoebe stood at the door as though his absence made no sense. Then she made coffee. Halfway through, she broke into tears so violently I thought she was having a seizure, but I pressed her back toward the machine. Without it, I could not reach her properly.

She did not sleep. Several times, I steered her toward coffee, her movements growing stiff, resistant. By morning, her appearance and coordination had deteriorated. She tripped and struck her head.

Then came the dash to the garage.

The gouge.

The trembling.

The robe hangs open on her naked body.

A fluorescent tube flickered above us, then went dark, as if unwilling to witness more.

She climbed into the car and started the engine. The machine purred with dangerous power. She barely waited for the garage door to rise before lunging into traffic.

Outside her building, a woman stood with a wheeled overnight bag, calling Phoebe’s name. I recognised the voice of her mother.

Phoebe did not stop.

Her mother turned, watching in confusion as the car sped away.

Phoebe pushed the accelerator hard as we entered the highway. In the small mirror above the wheel, she stared at her bruised reflection.

‘Get out of me,’ she said.

Silence.

‘Get out.’

She knew.

Phoebe swerved off the highway onto a road along the river. Horns blared. A man shouted from another car. She scowled at the mirror again, then jerked the wheel and crashed through a barrier onto a jetty. We flew briefly through the morning light before plunging into the river.

As the car filled with water, Phoebe mouthed three words into the rear-view mirror. At first, I could not decipher them, tangled as they were with panic. Then I understood.

All those times she had spoken to her reflection, she had been watching me.

Not a companion.

Not a comfort.

A thing that took and gave nothing back.

I fled her and reassembled inside a nearby fish.

Through the windscreen we watched the car settle on the riverbed.

As the fish darted toward a prawn dangling from a hook.

I understood Phoebe’s final words.

No more coffee.