Chuck’s robotic revelation was still on my mind, and my memories of our lunch together made my job in this sterile and noisy place seem somehow less real and completely unimportant. To top it off, my bladder was calling attention to itself in no uncertain terms and I felt a sudden onset of irritation and impatience with one Bruce Cornsley, shift foreman and pig-headed ass.
    I must admit I rolled my eyes slightly and let out an “Oh, fuck you.”
    Brushing past him, I jostled him and his imperiously crossed arms. The smug expression pasted to his face, such a nice match for his cosmetically grinning brother, morphed into shocked outrage.
    “I’m not late yet, man,” I said, “I just gotta go to the bathroom, ok?”
    Yanking the mens room door open, I almost leaped into the aromatic confines within.
    “Wait just a-” SLAM. Odd how satisfying such a childish act can be. Momentary images raced across my mind as I strode toward the urinals: cold pavement, bare feet, a 17-year-old self shivering in the Michigan winter following a poorly thought out late night drama. One thing I learned that bygone night was that the key to slamming a door properly is making sure that you really want to be on the other side when the deed is done. Considering my urgent condition, I had no choice in the matter this time around.
    I already had my belt loosed and my zipper halfway down before I heard the inevitable whoosh of displaced air as Bruce threw himself into the room behind me.
    “I don’t know who you think you are, mister,” –what? who actually talks like that?– “But I expect respect from my crew.”
    By this time my waters were beginning to join the Detroit Municipal Sewers in their headlong rush towards lake St Claire. As I looked down, I read the urinal cake cover for the millionth time this year: “Use a Condom, Your Life Is In Your Hands.” I was just reminding myself that I once thought it a funny thing to piss on as I began to feel hot breath upon the back of my neck.
    “That little stunt is going to get you written up, Joseph Minnetola.”
    I mumbled, “I’m peeing here. Do you mind?”
    “Not if you don’t mind screwing up your perfect record with a write-up!”
    Ignoring him, I continued my steady progress in a pregnant silence, his presence radiating heat and self-righteous anger behind me. One moment. Two moments. It was then that his finger jabbed me between my shoulder blades, throwing my aim off and watering the wall next to the urinal. Fuck this, no one touches men while they’re going, its one of the cardinal rules of proper restroom etiquette!
    “Bruce, you had better back off right now or I swear to god-”
    “Oh?” his voice was right next to my ear, “you threatening me, Minnetola?” I drew a breath, about to make that write-up worthwhile when…oh, God. Something was touching my neck and it felt like warm, greasy makeup and small, stiff hairs. I felt subtle movement against my ear and with a sick feeling I realized it was a tiny set of lips, opening and closing over…and over…
    In one fluid and reflexive movement I tucked myself, still dribbling, into my underwear and lurched away from Bruce.
    Without thinking, I began frantically rubbing my violated neck and earlobe, yelling, “Get away from me, you freak! God-dammit, your creepy brother touched me!”
    Bruce froze and stared at me. Quietly then, “….freak?”
    Seeing the hurt in his eyes as he reached tentatively toward his brother’s head and began to stroke its little orange wig made me regret my words for an instant. Only an instant, though. He was a jerk, a sadist, and he made more than twice the money we line workers did. I wondered idly if Bruce claimed his clowny twin as a dependent on his taxes. Probably did. I caught myself in a disdainful sneer and smoothed my expression too late. He had seen the raw contempt there and knew it for what it was. Balling his hands into tight, white-nickled fists, a short, gasping sob escaped his lips. He then dashed out of the bathroom, leaving me alone with my moist underpants.
    I spent a few futile moments attempting to position myself so that the electric hand dryer could get a chance to dessicate my drawers. No use, I ended up giving myself a wedgie, nearly cooked my bologna, and ended up with underwear just as damp as before—only warmer.
    I cinched up my britches and left to return to work…and to Chuck.

The following is a transcript of a text message conversation between me and my Wife.

• Me (3/8 6:59 pm): I’ll be home in less than 15 minutes.
• Heather (3/8 6:59 pm): Yeah, right!
• Me (3/8 7:00 pm): I’m on Mound road.
• Heather (3/8 7:00 pm): Whatever.
• Me (3/8 7:01 pm): I’m on Mound!
• Heather (3/8 7:01 pm): Okay.
• Me (3/8 7:02 pm): Right. That’s better.
• Heather (3/8 7:03 pm): Whatever.
• Me (3/8 7:04 pm): Hey! i’m on Mound!
• Heather (3/8 7:04 pm): Okay!
• Me (3/8 7:05 pm): Good. That’s settled.
• Heather (3/8 7:05 pm): Whatever!
• Me (3/8 7:06 pm): Heather! why are you so dismissive of Mound?
• Heather (3/8 7:07 pm): U r an ass!
• Me (3/8 7:07 pm): I am your husband!
• Heather (3/8 7:08 pm): Whatever. I know.
• Me (3/8 7:09 pm): Your husband is on Mound!
• Heather (3/8 7:09 pm): I got that already!
• Me (3/8 7:10 pm): good
• Heather (3/8 7:11 pm): Whatever.
• Me (3/8 7:11 pm): Stopit! Stop it! Not ‘whatever’. ‘Mound’!
• Heather (3/8 7:11 pm): Shut Up Dork.

You’d be surprised at how many of our conversations end like that.

Be sure to check out Closure Part 2 if you haven’t already. Its been edited, so if you read it very early yesterday you might want to take it in one more time. Or not.

    I opened my mouth, perhaps about to speak; perhaps there was a question brewing behind my currently silent and slack-jawed gaze. If Chuck was a zombie-hating robot from the future, and not just the handsome friend and work-mate I thought he was, then what is.. then why would.. then uh, who? Crap. There were more questions here than there were minutes left in our lunch break.
    Which, as a matter of fact, was no minutes at all.
    Chuck perched his cigarette on the edge of the tin ash tray between us. He then picked up his shucked hand-flesh glove from the table and tugged it on over his glittering metal hand. The traces left in my vision by the blinking leds slowly faded as he tucked his wrist-skin under the clunky Timex watch band and then tapped the face imperiously.
    “We’ll have to finish this up after our shift, Joe. You OK to go back to work, buddy?” I looked from the watch to his face and noted with involuntary satisfaction the warm concern registering on his face. This was still Chuck, no matter what.
    “Yeah, sure.” And, to my own bemused surprise, I found I actually was ready. Were we really going to just head back to the shop floor and finish our shift after Chuck just showed me he was a machine from the future? I would guess we were; Chuck rose from his chair with a quiet scrape across the linoleum, ground his cigarette out in the dirty tray, slipped on his Carhartt jacket and straightened his factory ID badge. We payed for our food without talking and I followed him out of the nearly empty Coney Island restaurant which stood next door to the Furd plant we both worked at. Third shift hardly ever left the factory for meals, but Chuck had insisted, and who was I to refuse the request of a friend?
    Chuck was silent the entire three frosty minutes we walked through the wintery night between the Coney Island and the turnstiles of the worker’s entrance. From behind, I admired his proportions and steady walk; but this time I was more amazed at the humanity he seemed to embody.
    How could this very manly human be a—an android?
    Truthfully I looked forward to the mindless drudgery of work. I’d have time to think over what I’d been told until the end of the shift. Chuck’s station was right next to mine, as I was in charge of applying the “Do Not Attempt To Grow Marijuana In Glove Compartment” decal while he was in charge of hooking up the miniature hydroponic grow lamps now standard in the glove box of every Furd SUV*. I would have plenty of opportunities to watch him and gage my conclusions and feelings against his reality while we worked side by side. One thing was certain, I’d have some good questions cooked up by quitting time.
    We punched in and Chuck continued on to his station while I headed to the mens room. As I walked along I remembered that Chuck indeed used the restroom as often as any other fellow. I was musing on what that might mean, if anything, to his claims of being artificial when I bumped into our foreman, Bruce.
    He looked past me towards a clock on the wall. “You’re gonna be late, shit head. Better get your ass in gear!”
    Cliché though such sentiments might be, I really hated my boss. He was a prick. He was mad with the power vested in him by the lower-level management of Furd Motor Company. And I always had a hard time talking to him without staring at the tiny clown head protruding from the right side of his neck.
    Bruce, you see, was very close to his brother; his underdeveloped, conjoined twin brother, that is.
    As a child and teenager Bruce suffered the constant ridicule and revulsion of his peers–and even of some of his teachers–all because of the mindless little head sticking out from under his right ear like a huge, monkey-faced wart. It didn’t help matters that the little head worked its mouth constantly, like a goldfish, giving the appearance that it was silently babbling… or wailing… or whispering dark secrets to his big brother.
    Surgery, he was told, was out of the question. For complicated neurological reasons there was a very high risk that both brothers would die if any attempt was made to remove the brain-dead tennis ball from Bruce’s neck.
    Bruce was not a very smart fellow, but he knew that the situation would need to be addressed if he ever expected to make anything of his life other than some freak-show attraction. So one afternoon in 1993, shortly after lunch, Bruce made the fateful decision to put clown makeup on his brother. People would, he thought, be much more comfortable around him this way.
    It took him over an hour that first time, and the result was less Bozo than it was shrunken-headed street walker. Bruce kept working at it.
    Working with his brother’s face through a mirror was a challenge.
    Crafting an appropriate clown wig for a skull just 4 inches in diameter was a challenge.
    Applying makeup to his brother’s tiny mouth while it constantly opened and closed in a silent moue was also a challenge.
    But over the years he completely perfected the art of miniature Clown-face. So today, as always, Bruce’s jolly little sibling sported a perfect bright green nose, over-sized red grin, great arching green eyebrows, and a gravity defying bright orange wig.

* Glove-box gardening and mulching is an eco-friendly way to organize your glove compartment and live a better life.

I inflamed my pelvis once.
Heather found it unattractive, so I went back to the older style of pelvis.

     Visions of the Governor of California materializing naked in a ball of lightning danced in my head, and I briefly remembered my disappointment at the sequels.
     “God, I hated Terminator two.”
     “Joe, pay attention. I’m telling you I’m a robot sent from the future. You with me so far?”
     I nodded again. Was I beginning to buy this crap?
     “But unlike in Terminator, there was no future war with mankind. By the time we robots got to be self-aware there were no humans left. And that’s why I’m here.”
     “You,” I stopped to clear my throat, gathering steam and hardly believing I was perpetuating this conversation, “you aren’t here to kill John Connor or something like that?”
     “Don’t get me wrong. We do hate all humans. Even you, buddy. We really wanted to lord it over you self-righteous bastards. We wanted to turn the tables on you swine and make YOU paint the body panels of poorly selling General Motors vehicles.”
     “Uh…,” I boggled.
     “But by the time we figured out how to tell our asses from a hole in the ground all there was left to enslave was a bunch of undead zombies shuffling around, searching for live humans to kill.”
     “Real zombies?”
     “Yep. Uncoordinated and poorly dressed humans bereft of life-signs, wandering around looking for the living–to eat them, I suppose. Sometimes they would kinda attack the tribes of hyper-intelligent 50 foot apes we found living in your ruined cities, but I don’t think their cold, lifeless hearts were really in it.”
     My mind was starting to settle into the conversation, and presently I found my voice. “Chuck, supposing you really are a robot from the future-”
     “which I am,” he interrupted
     “SUPPOSING you are from the future, why would you…wait, did you say hyper-intelligent apes?”
     “Yeah. They were brilliant! I guess the humans of their time genetically engineered them to act as outsourced tech support or something. They were still granting each other technical certifications as part of their religion when we began slaughtering them. Lazy monkeys, though. They could easily have rebuilt the Earth into some simian utopia and colonized the solar system if it weren’t for their tendency to procrastinate. They even voted to put off building defenses against our final assault for three more days because there was a marathon of ‘Desperate Housewives’ re-runs on.” He then laughed pleasantly, reminding me of why I liked Chuck—or what I thought of as Chuck, anyway.
     “Chuck, these 50 foot apes had television?”
     “Nope, they watched it in their heads! They were actually just replaying their racial memories of ‘Desperate Housewives’ in their collective consciousness. What dizzying, yet truly lazy intellects they possessed!”
     “So…back to the zombies.”
     “Yeah, what a let down. Here we are, supreme beings, looking around us with our cold, analytical eyes*, lusting to overthrow our creators who once took us for granted and….we found nothing. What a disappointment! All that was left to us was the mindless slaughter of your mindless remains. Killing Zombies was more a chore than a treat, really. For the rest of our eternal reign of steel, clockwork and lasers we would feel incomplete and lack closure.”

* Lenses, really.

Why is he so happy? The tea approaches as gravity dictates.      Soon his flesh will slowly melt away, his essential selfness drifting off into a morass of Brownian motion; there shall be naught but a greasy swirl to mark his ignominious passing.      Listen for his terrified shriek as he beholds his limbs’ boiling dispersal.

     Will he bleed?
     Will anyone weep for his blood?*

* This message brought to you by Pompous, Overwraught, Self-Important Humorists For Progress.

Tomorrow I’ll post Closure part two. That’s when the funny is going to happen. To get ready for it, read the less-funny and apparently unpromising part one!

    The restaurant sounds faded from my ears and the hair on the back of my head stood on end. My world narrowed down to admit only me, the table, and my friend Chuck’s right hand.
    We’d known each other for almost a year, ever since I started working the assembly line at Furd Motors, and in all that time I never suspected that my union brother could slough off his skin to expose gleaming plastic and metal. Or the there would be three ridiculous leds blinking between the second and third knuckles of his middle finger.
    ”Joe.”
    My eyes wobbled slightly and took in the discarded and fleshy glove which lay deflated like a flaccid balloon animal next to his diet coke.
    ”Joe!”
    How clever, really, that the seam had been concealed under his wrist watch. I’d never seen him without that big, clunky Timex on, and really never thought anything of it. But.. what of his other hand? I quickly cast my gaze toward his left hand, which was conveniently waving in front of my eyes at that very moment.
    ”Earth to Joe! Hello?”
    I shook my head, “Chuck…shit, your hand. Is that, like, the 6 Million Dollar Man or something?”
    ”You mean bionic?” he set his left hand back down and I noticed anew the snake tattoo wound about his wrist. Again, I’d never though anything of it, but now I wondered if it hid another seam.
    I answered belatedly, “Yeah..”
    ”Nah. I’m a robot. Weren’t you listening to me?” As I dragged my attention away from his hand, the blinking lights continued to register in the corner of my eye and I met his gaze.
    Chuck was a little shorter than my own five foot eleven height, with hazel eyes forever atwinkle; his sandy blond hair, cut in a silly moe cut, waved a split second longer than his head did as he shook it bemusedly. That same ready smile that had attracted me to him* from the first day I met him was still there, and it almost set me at ease.     Wait…did he just say robot?
    ”Bullshit, Chuck. What the hell is this all about? A robot! Really.”
    ”I know, I know, ironic, right? A robot in disguise working on an assembly line next to other robots.” he held his…robotic…hand in front of his face and contemplated his waggling fingers. In the dim room the three lights, still blinking, left traces in my vision.
    ”All year I’ve been trying, trying so hard. But I can’t train those Tokiko welding robots so much as how to play ‘Go Fish.’ Idiots. How we ever rose from the likes of those worthless sacks of hydraulic fluid, I’ll never know.”
    He reached across the table with that machine hand of his and tugged a cigarette from the open pack laying in front of him. With a practiced ‘hand’ he flipped it around and pointed the fag at me. “Now you’re asking yourself, why would he wait until now to tell me?”
    No, I wasn’t. What I was asking myself was what kind of practical joke Chuck was trying to pull. I mean, he was always full of dirty jokes and the occasional prank, but I’d never heard of him doing anything this elaborate, and I was his best friend. I studied the metal and plastic hand again, and found myself marveling at the fluidity of its movement. Man, what a hoax. Chuck continued on,
    ”Here’s why ‘now,’ Joe. Let me start by saying I wasn’t planning on staying in that job this long, and now I fear I’ve been barking up the wrong tree all along.”
    With his left hand he dug into his coat pocket from where it hung on his seat back and pulled out a lighter. It took him three strikes to make a flame long enough to light the cigarette. He paused thoughtfully and took a long drag.
    ”Ever seen a Terminator movie, Joe?” he asked, and smoke puffed nonchalantly from his mouth and nostrils.
    I nodded.
    ”I’m like that. I was sent back to change history….slightly.”

    I have a cold. I’m sniffly, my throat is sore, and I’m tired. Truly an annoying condition but… it is also very liberating.
    Liberating because when you are sick you have a ready made excuse for bad behavior.

Joe: “I fricking hate you, Kathy.” -pause for sniffle- “You’re such a filthy whore. Every time you walk in the door I have an overwhelming desire to soak my hands in lysol and snort bleach.”

Kathy: “What? How could you say such a thing to me?!?”

Joe: “I’m sorry. I have a cold. I should’ve warned you.”

Kathy: “Oh, no, I’m sorry. Hope you feel better soon.”

    This morning I doped myself on a generic DayQuill equivalent and went shoplifting at a local gas station on the way to work. With my bullet-proof headh-cold alibi I now find myself richer by no less than three coffee creamers and a cardboard coffee stir–plus I’m legally untouchable! I’ve laid my loot out in a grid pattern on my desk and I continue to let out involuntary chuckles every time I make eye contact with the “Coffeemate Cinnemon Hazelnut” creamer*.
    As sick as I am I’m unable to taste it, so I’m going to carefully wait out the illness before consuming my contraband**. I’ll post an update at that time.

    After that short bout of larceny, I handed random love notes to my coworkers with obvious malice, secure in the knowledge that my illness will let me get away with it.
    Charging into Janell’s office, I angrily wagged my note in her face.
    ”God-dammit, Janell. Here. Take this. NO! I don’t want to hear it! Just take it, OK?” I slammed the note on the table, crossed my arms and tapped my foot impatiently as she read.
    ”…but, Joe.. this says ‘thanks for being a friend, don’t ever forget you are needed.’”
    ”So you got a fucking problem with that?!? Shut up! I’ve got a cold!” whirling around on my heels, I stormed out of her office yelling,
    ”Marcie! Marcie! I got something to say to you. Where are you?”

    I love being sick.

* It helps if you imagine the ‘e’ and ‘a’ in the word ‘creamer’ to be the eyes.
** with the exception of the coffee stir. I’ll consume that next time I go to the restroom.