The Girl with the Green Umbrella

The Girl with the Green Umbrella

A speculative science fiction story. Is destiny predetermined?

They cheer.

The heart pounds, the lungs beat, the veins tug and strain to escape the fencing flesh, thetether of reality, the boundary of skin. There is the smell of sweat, the taste of blood, the sound of skincolliding with skin in hopes of jarring free.

This is what "life" means.

The crowd will scream, ripping at the thick air with teeth stolen from sharks. Sharks, in theirlifetime, go through hundreds of sets of teeth. Did you know? They lose so many to fights and food andfickle pleasures forced upon them by destiny. Cruel nature ensures facilitation of necessity for rows uponrow of sharp razor incisors.

The crowd will caw and clamor in the hedonistic pursuit of carrion. They want a cadavertoday. Vultures have evolved in peculiar fashion, the way evolution is like and fond to do. Their necksand heads are sheared of feathers, minds clear in the consumption of flesh. Gore saturation is just-too-messy to clean away, to preen and to hide and to tuck the bloody business out of sight.

The crowd will hiss for milk;

Babies have no voice with which to ask, all they do is bleat.

They smell blood.

It read across the board:

Vipers: 140

Coyotes: 100

They scream.

Electric lights burn and blaze like artificial fire. The scoreboard hums and buzzes, contentedfly. No act can change the score tonight. No yell can ring above the shrieks, the hum, the light reflectingand glaring harsh and electric and blinding against the smog, the cloud of frozen breath hovering over thecrowd tonight.

The night is cold, but she sweats. The air is poisoned, but she pants. She gasps and floundersin the atmosphere (slippery fish) where people don't naturally belong.

Lilah punched deep into the wall of the colosseum, leaving a welt which, unsatisfactorily,healed itself. The walls were built with her kind of people in mind, and as soon as touched, absorbed theshock, bulged inward, and slowly filled up again to a flawless, full perfection. Just once, Lilah wished,just once she would like to leave a mark; the wall, rather helpless, only functioned dictated by design.

Ambling by went the referee. Lilah bashed its head with her hands, crushing it though sheherself felt no pain. The ref crumpled to the ground, ruined face sparkling unfairly, electronic brainssmearing all over the plastic green carpet that crunched beneath it.

Her teammates snickered, howled, hooted, and slapped her on the back. They retreated fromthe Roman field, the cursing, losing team contrasted to the cursing, winning team by a void of fortyarbitrarily attributed units.

In the mates' common-room, later, the girl came. She was metal inside, titanium stainless, noblood fueling her nervous impulses. They all knew. They whistled, cheered, jeered, some leering, and shecompletely disregarded them as she always, always did.

The girl wore a simple dress of white, a color that could never survive even a brush ofcontact with actual air, the kind in the sky, outside of the buildings. Around her waist and neck greenribbons fluttered and fawned every step her sensible, green sock-stuffed shoes took. She smiled with herperfect teeth, plain brown hair neatly tucked into an old-fashioned hat.

In her dainty, gloved hands she held a green umbrella.

She stepped up to Lilah, a Goliath, undaunted. Her mouth opened. She said:

"Lilah, Lilah Coyote, Ran wanted it said, and sent me to say it; the repairs on the androidreferee are being taken out of your balance. Unless you win the game next week, that's a quarter's pay."Her smiling expression never faltered in all its artificial perfection.

"What?" Lilah demanded.

The girl repeated herself, slowly.

Lilah slapped her hard on the cheek, enough to bruise, maybe even enough to break a humanbeing. The girl reeled under the blow, and she hit the floor in artificial pain, or a good imitation of it. Herhair and hat fell. She put a gloved hand to her face, cringing. "I'm sorry."

"You tell Ran-" Lilah began.

The umbrella rolled into Lilah's foot plaintively, appealing her to kindness. Embarrassed,Lilah picked it up, took the android's delicate, gloved hand, and picked the girl up, too. She shoved theumbrella at its owner. "Never mind, Dori. Go home."

Expression solemn, Dori said, "Thank you." She clutched the umbrella to herself, a babymade of cloth, looking positively ridiculous about it, like a small child herself.

And in a burst of ribbons, the girl with the green umbrella flutters away.

She forgot to take her hat.

When Dori was young, she was not allowed outside. "It's gray out there," Rachel, beautifulRachel would always say. "You don't want to go out there. Stay inside, where there is color. Stay insidewith me."

The apartment they lived in had no windows to look out of, because what was the point? Allthe color that was needed could be found in those three magical rooms: bedroom, kitchen, bathroom. Onthe walls, on the dresser, on the table, on every available surface Rachel, wonderful Rachel kept pictures.Blue skies, bright birds, orange butterflies, white waves, green grass, pink sand, and gold-skinnedchildren kissed by a summer sun, who built sand castles.

Rachel, knowing Rachel told Dori, "Be happy, here with me. You'd only be upset if youwent outside. Stay here with me."

Dori sighed, sat on the cough, twisted her hair on her slender fingers. Rachel, gullibleRachel thought that Dori had no curiosity. Dori was young; Dori was childish; Dori was mischievous;Dori was sly.

Rachel, sleepy Rachel said, "I'm taking a nap, Dori. Come sleep with me."

Dori smiled. "I'm not tired," Dori fibbed.

"Suit yourself," Rachel said, and she went to bed.

Waiting until she was asleep, Dori entered the code to the door, the way she'd seen it donebefore. She walked through the long, empty, lonely, white halls of the apartment fortress, humming andcarrying Rachel, kind Rachel's umbrella with her for reassurance. Other doors, locked and painted white,lined either side of Dori. Why should this be upsetting? There was nothing to upset Dori at all.

Funny, how humans would trouble themselves over the absence of nothing, the presence ofnothing. Equilibrium was never humanity's best-fit suit.

Finally, the endless corridor reached a halt. There was one door before her, black, and thiswas obviously a destination worth exploring.

"Let's go this way," she said to the umbrella. Smiling, Dori entered her first elevator.

"Up!" she ordered brightly, and away and up the little person-box went.

The doors opened, she spilled out, the ribbons fluttered out, the umbrella tumbled out; inother terms, the android girl stepped outside.

The top of the building was torn by wind and eaten by smog. Upon the roof she did notchoke and cough, for the sole reason that air was not a thing she was meant to breathe. Her eyes did notsting, because they weren't fluid, they were stainless and sheer.

There was no air to breathe. There were no blue skies to see.

There was gray.

Dori sat down on the roof, sat against the black doors put behind her. She stared hopelesslyinto the smog, and her eyes burned painfully dry. She closed them, and the ache subsided.

The windows of her eyes clouded, the drapes drawn, the blinds turned, Dori laughed atherself. Silly, silly, robot girl. Funny, almost. Not quite. Funny, if it had happened to somebody shewasn't.

She opened them. She looked at the gray. No, no, it wasn't amusing. It was horrible.

Beside her, something stirred. Something in the murky consistency of the air shivered andformed itself into something new. Dominoes fell from the sky. It was raining.

Dori opened Rachel, sentimental Rachel's umbrella, a practiced movement made indoorsmore than once. The motion must have set in drive ill will, karma, and general bad luck, for the cloth wassoon in tatters. The rain ate through the pale silk of the umbrella and dripped onto her dress, where itsmoked and sizzled.

Dori cried out. Where the rain hit her mechanical flesh, it stung. Electric nerves bit into herbrain, and she cried out more from fear than actual pain. She ran back through the black doors, down thewhite corridors, and tumbled, broke, crashed into Rachel's apartment, where her fluttering ribbons andsilk dresses belonged.

She threw herself into bed beside the Rachel, who was still asleep. "Rachel, Rachel,Rachel!" Dori pleaded. "Rachel, Rachel, Rachel!"

Rachel woke up.

The dress was gray with the color of the poisoned air, corroded from the acidic rain to befound there. Dori, foolish Dori's dress was ruined.

When she overcame the shock of what she'd discovered outside, Dori was determined withone intent in mind. She logged onto the F for the first time, that wonderful place that all could access withonly a thought and a radio or phone. She downloaded everything she could find:

novels, or

poetry, and

encyclopedias, or

dictionaries, or

atlases, and, of course,

history books.

Dori, android with a body frozen at seventeen years (never young), Dori, girl with feelingsand emotions (never old), Dori, creature made for compassion (never human),

Now had a mind of her own.

Lilah answered her door. She opened it, and was fleetingly blinded by a flash and a flutter ofgreen. A silk-clad butterfly with a green umbrella stood on the ground before her door.

"Do you have my hat?" the girl asked, twirling her umbrella in her tiny hands.

"Oh. No," Lilah lied. She did have the hat; she'd taken it with her after leaving the common;she was unsure why she had. It was a pretty thing, dainty and white, full of ribbons, with an artificialflower on the rim which did nothing to detract from its own beauty, silk or no.

It was on the couch across the room.

Dori could see it, peering around Lilah from outside. Slyly, she grinned. "Liar." And she slidinto the room, somehow. She glanced around, surveying the decor, or lack thereof, critically. "SimplySpartan," she appraised, "aren't you? But I suppose that's what comes of being bred more for brawn thanbrain, isn't it?"

"What?" said a confused Lilah.

"My point exactly," Dori agreed. She fluttered onto the sofa. "I like it, anyway. It's clean,nice. Not like at home. Ran always makes me clean it."

With a sigh, Lilah hit the button to close the metal door. "Isn't that what you were madefor?"

"What, cleaning? Me?" Dori scoffed. "No, of course not. I was made to providecompanionship, Lilah, silly Lilah. By the time Ran got me, he'd lost the regular maid in the divorce. Youremember that."

"Where were you from before?" Lilah sat beside her.

"I was manufactured, special order, as a gift for Ran's daughter. It was after a game, about ayear ago. He got drunk. She got killed when the car crashed. His wife got mad. My legs were destroyed inthe collision, but Ran had me repaired so I could work. That's all." The girl sounded bitter.

Lilah had to ask. "Is he an asshole?"

"It would go against my ethical documentation to give you an affirmative," Dori replied,chewing her lip, scooping up her hat and turning it in her hands, "but I could stand a lack of ethics onoccasion."

"An opinion, you mean?"

Dori giggled. "Yeah, you could call it that." She took the pins that held her intricate hairaloft out, and the bunched locks fell smoothly down to the small of her back in a straight, uncomplicatedwave.

Lilah took Dori's molded-jade hair decoration with a leaf on it, examined it, and asked,"Why do you wear so much green?"

Grinning, kicking off her shoes and lying across the length of the couch, Dori explained,"That's a funny thing. You know, back in the days before The Boom? There used to be green plants.Green everywhere. Some places you couldn't get away from all the trees, and grass, and ferns, and theflowering green things.

"Then people destroyed it all, created the factories, built the cities, made the bombs. Theplants gave us clean air, but people didn't think about that. Now everything's all gray, and since I wasmade in a factory, I feel obligated to replace at least some of color Earth used to have.

"Can you imagine!, a world that was green instead of gray!"

Lilah couldn't.

"There were animals, too. Living things that weren't human. Flying things, covered infeathers like old-lady-fashions. They sang. And scaly things, like they were covered in gravel. Andslippery things that couldn't breathe out of water."

"I wouldn't want to breathe water," Lilah stated dubiously.

"Of course, because now the water is gray like everything else. But then!--then the waterwas clear," Dori reflected solemnly.

Lilah didn't believe her.

Dori asked the time.

Lilah told her.

Dori's face fell. She stood. "I need to go. I'll be in trouble if I stay." The girl smiled,gathering up her hat and umbrella and shoes. "Goodbye!" she called, and was gone.

They all remember the first time they saw her. The Coyotes saw Ran with the android,sitting in the stands. A new girlfriend, they were sure, but they soon found out what she really was: alegless android in a wheelchair, good for little but sitting around and being, if it can be attributed to arobot, depressed. She didn't cry, just sat around, and at the end of the game, alongside Ran, she told themall in a bitter, disdainful tone:

"Football is barbaric."

She said nothing more.

They've hated Dori since.

There exists among the team a consensus that Dori is, for being metal, "pretty cute." For athinking doll, wow, just imagine what that mouth, those dainty hands, could do. She's got breasts up top,what might be found below, if anything at all? If Ran knew, which he certainly did, he wasn't telling.

All conversation and advances she rebuffs. "Give me a kiss," a girl jeers, and Dori politelydeclines. "Come over later," a boy offers, and she walks away without a word in exchange. The girls onthe team say she's narrow, the guys that she's completely off the path.

If she really can like girls or boys, or anyone at all, was never the point. No one cares todiscuss technicalities. She's just there, and doesn't she look good standing in her spot? In fact, if Dori didsay "yes" to a team member, just once, he or she wouldn't know what to reply, how to respond, what theywould want to do.

Thinking ahead wasn't a football player's strong suit.

Dori flew back the next day, because she'd left Lilah with her jade hairpin. Today her hairwas done up in elaborate curls, ringlets that bobbed when her head did and bounced with every littlemovement. Her hair was playing hopscotch with her face. The dress she wore was cut low, tight, anddangerous red, a color Lilah had never seen her wear.

"You can keep the pin, if you like it," she said. "I have another."

"No, it's yours," Lilah insisted, embarrassed by the attention. She put it in Dori's little handand closed the fist gently with her fingers. She drew away quickly as possible, afraid of trespassing thedelicate, untouchable hands of the girl inside the white gloves.

Dori smirked, gazing out the window, and did not protest. "Look out the window," sheinstructed.

Lilah did. "So?"

"So? Look at the buildings," Dori continued.

"Yeah, so?"

"So? They're all gray. You can hardly tell the walls from the sky from the ground from thewater. How can you stand not having curtains? I have to block it all out, sometimes."

Lilah said, "I don't usually look outside."

"You shouldn't. It's depressing. A sea of concrete, the occasional school of people swimmingby... It makes me want to cry."

"You're depressing," Lilah chuckled, forgetting to be distant and giving Dori a nudge.

Dori laughed with her. "Sorry." She leaned against the sill of the window, let her face fallagainst the glass. No breath fogged the drab clarity, rings of hair dark against the clean white wall of theapartment. She twisted a lock of hair on a small, perfect, purposeful finger.

Lilah watched her hand move, more interesting by far than anything else in view. Beneaththe lace that made the gloves of the day, Dori's skin was tan, her fingers straight. Lilah stopped watching,because she knew Dori hated to be objectified. She knew Dori liked personal space. She wanted to invadethat space, take Dori's restless hand and hold it still for just a moment, but Lilah didn't.

Dori fluttered redly to the couch, faced away from the window. "I think it would be morebearable if you had curtains, blinds, something. May I put some up tomorrow? I can sew them tonight. Idon't need to sleep." She clutched her umbrella.

Unsure of a suitable response, Lilah said dumbly, "If you want to."

Dori smiled, and assured, "I do."

When Lilah was young, when Ran sent her to school because it was required and for noother reason, when she beat up the boys in gym; Lilah fell in love.

There was a boy in her class who was smart, who was sensitive, who she protected from theother athletes and the bullies. He was special to her, because

Lilah was desperately in love with his older sister.

Smart, sophisticated, rich, beautiful. Like her brother, but less timid. Like her brother, butless inhibited. Like her brother, but gloriously, daringly, beautifully, splendidly, deliciously something hewas physically incapable of being:

Female.

The cheers, the screams, the rush. Lilah lives for it. She was born and made to play thegame. It is her only purpose.

The game, the meaning of existence, has a charge like all ways of life, and this price issomething minor to pay. For the modified female, it means, simply:

She can never be normal,

for She can not give birth;

She has the barest of educations;

She can kill a man with her bare hands;

and She has no interest in males whatsoever.

It happened occasionally in nature. Ran Coyote's own daughter was like it. He went to greatlengths to ensure she would not seek similarity among the female team members. They were boorish,masculine, and uneducated. The thought was sickening.

So he financed a project on behalf of his daughter.

Dori was all the athletes could not be: beautiful,, intelligent, agreeable, polite,

expensive.

Lilah found herself very fond of the curtains Dori had made for her. They were soft andgreen, and they smelled like Dori's perfume. She stood at the window, not to look at the sea of gray, butto smell them.

They were embroidered with animals, feathered and furred. They were stitched with scaledand slimy things. On one curtain, hidden away on the corner, was an umbrella. This Lilah noticed, andstared at for no short time. On the other, tattooed on a string bird, was a football.

Lilah, of course, didn't look closely enough to notice. Dori never expected her to look atthem in the first place, or even to put them up. It surprised her when Lilah hung the curtains over herwindow, pulled them shut, and joked, "Now the buildings can't watch us."

The next day, Dori came again.

"What did you forget this time?" Lilah sighed. Seeing Dori's affected appearance this time,hair down, only dressed in a white shirt and black jeans, not wearing shoes, Lilah suggested, "Your senseof style? Because I don't have it."

Dori giggled, and slipped inside. She held her umbrella mischievously, which bulged in away indicative of smuggling. "No," she laughed. "I came to see you!"

"Why?"

"I wanted to show you something," was the curt reply. "Now get a glass of water and stopasking questions." She opened up the umbrella. Out tumbled a pile of sand onto the tile.

Skeptically, Lilah brought her the requested glass, bit her tongue, and resolved not to sayanything.

Dori poured the water on the sand.

Lilah burst, "What are you doing?"

Dori grinned. "Getting dirty. My sense of style is useless against the lure of the sand castle."

"The what?"

"Sand castle! Watch." She molded the sand, forming towers and spires, poking sunkenwindows into them with her fingers. It looked like a miniature city-scape, and Lilah said so.

Dori gently corrected her. "It's a castle, trust me. There used to be hundreds of them inEurasia." She explained, "The cities were modeled after the same basic structure. Castles had walls likeour cities, to keep out invaders and offer shelter to people. Cities are different. The walls are in theirplace to keep people in ours."

Lilah sat beside her in the damp dirt. "You are depressing!"

"I only say what I know. I'm sorry if it depresses you," Dori apologized. "I don't try to do it."

There was half a glass of water left, and Dori used it to clean the inside of the umbrella out.She wiped the sand out with a corner of the tee she wore, and it was white no longer.

"What do I do about the...castle?" Lilah asked.

"Oh, this mess? Vacuum it up!" Dori wiped her hands on her pants. "Not hard to clean up atall."

"Are you sure?"

Dori nodded. "It's only sand. I found it by the side of the road. There's no shortage."

Lilah looked at her, critically. "Why did you bring it here?"

"Because it was an excuse to spend time with you," Dori clucked, smiling. "And, before youask me, I wanted to spend time with you because I like you."

Lilah hesitated. "You're a..."

"I know."

"But..."

"I know that, too."

Lilah laughed. "You can't say that. You don't even know what I was going to say."

"And neither do you, but I'm not going to argue the point. Do you like the curtains?"

Lilah kissed her as an answer. They held hands. Dori's delicate fingers gripped Lilah's roughones with surprising strength.

"I get lonely," Dori confessed, looking away.

"We all do," replied Lilah.

"You live alone?"

"Yes, do you?"

"No, I live with Ran. I try to avoid him when I can. I'd rather live in Rachel's old place. Hewouldn't let me stay after she died, but he didn't sell the space, either." Dori squeezed Lilah's hand as hardas she could, which was not very. Dori had not been made to be strong; Rachel needed someone gentle.

"You miss her?"

"Of course I do. I was programmed to care for her. I wasn't programmed to cry, and themanufacturers didn't give me tear ducts." Her expression was pained, like a child about to burst into tears.Excepting, of course, that she couldn't, and didn't.

Lilah frowned, holding her. "Why not?"

"The engineers were too busy inventing functional android anatomy to bother about it, Iassume," she growled. "Or Ran didn't care enough to pay for it."

Lilah held her at arm's length. "Does that mean you can have sex?" she asked, puzzled. "Canyou just give it, or do you enjoy it, like a person?"

Dori grimaced, and pushed her away. "I told you I'm made for companionship. I need to gohome." She wrenched her hand free of Lilah's, and sullenly fluttered out the door.

After the game, the team is celebrating. Lilah sits in the empty stands and stares at the sky.She suddenly finds the team dull, though she cannot say when this feeling of inadequacy began. Shewants a conversation, or silence. There is no quiet in a stadium; when people are gone, and they neverare, the entire place buzzes. The electric lighting is always on, even during the day, glowing, hummingthrough the sun-choking smog.

Dori comes toward her. Dori cuts through the gray, dress green of the plants people spoiled,hair brown as the soil people leeched, skin tan the way real sun would color a girl who played outdoors, decades ago. Dori sits beside Lilah, and she says, "You know, don't you?"

"Know what?"

"I think I love you. I'm not sure. Does love make you want to cry?"

"Sometimes."

"Can I be in love, Lilah? Can only humans feel like that?"

Lilah shrugged. "Why worry?"

Dori sighs, hugging her knees. "You didn't know, did you?"

The cheers dim.

The electric light fades.

Flowers bloom, overtaking the stadium ground and walls, replacing the plastic turf with realgreen. Lights in the windows of buildings waver, and become like stars in an ocean sky. The buildingsand people around the two swim away, the sharks and vultures disappear.

A different kind of cheer begins, quiet at first. A distant trill, a hum, an invisible song.

Crickets are chirping. Lilah and Dori have never heard crickets. Not far away, a bird calls.Lilah smiles, and replies to Dori's question:

"I know now."

Laughing, Dori throws her arms around Lilah, dropping her umbrella. The green umbrellafalls far, far to the ground, and shatters into as impossibly many pieces.

"Let's go," she whispers.

"Ran won't like it."

"He had us made, but he doesn't control us. We can go anytime we want to. Let's leave."

"Where will we go?"

"Wherever we can. Maybe outside the walls there are still forests, birds, people. We won'tknow if we don't dare to venture outside. And if we don't like it, we can always return."

"We aren't going to, though, are we?"

"No, I don't think we shall."

Smile. Kiss.

They walk out of the stadium, hand in hand.

The crickets cheer.

There is no one left to hear them.