Beep

​“I’m here again and I don’t know why,” I say.

​The sky is still dark at ten minutes til five. It always is. Thatmakes sense in other parts of the world. Not here, though. Here,the sky is dark all the time. Sometimes when I leave, it’s still dark.

​I avoid the cigarette smoke. Nasty people. Critters. It kills you and you know it kills you. Of all directions it could go, it blows over here to where I am. I’m bitter about the cigarettes. They never helped my grandmother. She died this year. But I’m bitter about the cigarettes because it’s bad enough that I have to be here when the sky is dark. Humans were never meant to do these things, walking in darkness or breathing in smoke or blowing smoke onto other people who don’t want to breathe in the smoke.

​I’m here again and I don’t know why. My audible words are now thoughts since I’m too chicken-shit to say what I think around people. 

​Part two begins. I feel like a robot during part two. Maybe I am a robot.

​“Beep,” says the time clock. 

​It’s like the Army used to do, greeting me by my last name. This isn’t the Army. Why do they do that? I have a first name and prefer it. It’s personal. First names are important. They usethem on birth certificates, tombstones, and it’s what you’re teacher made you write on your homework. I miss school. There was a robot march there, too, but it was colorful and it smelled good, like erasers, fresh paper that looks like snow but smells like wood, and the fresh clothing smell of new backpacks. Old buildings smelled good, too. Not this one. This is an old building, but it smells like sick people, cigarettes, and stained things from the bathroom door when it opens as I pass it. I have to pass it because it lives right behind the time clock which says, “Beep.”

​Coffee is good. There is a place I go to get it after I’m greeted by the time clock. The robot march continues, but this time is splits like arteries down hard floors gathering wood dust that makes your eyes tingle. Some of us go to get coffee, others go to the bathroom, and others go to their workstations across the gauntlet of dust because that’s the whole point of the time clock saying, “Beep.” 

​Part three begins. 

​We’re machines, moving through an artery. That’s why it feels like arteries, because we’re part machine-part blood. We’re part machine because we move like them and accept command functions and need maintenance. We’re part blood because we have blood inside of us and we move in all directions like red blood cells in arteries, and because we’re disgusted by things like cigarette smoke and being up when it’s dark. My artery takes me to the coffee, because coffee is one of the best things for a robot. Coffee goes to the blood and expands the arteries of the robot.

​“Good mornin’,” says Ron, the kind one who opens the door for everybody.

​Ron is a good one. It hurts him to walk because he was hurt a long time ago by evil people who go to Hell for doing those sorts of things. Ron isn’t a robot. The hurt ones like him aren’t robots because they make you feel things, and feelings are irrelevant in robots. He never smiles when the time clock says, “Beep.”

​“Hey, what’s up!” says Tico, the man from somewhere in Pennsylvania. 

​Tico is nice. He’s a robot though, because that’s his program. For fourteen years, his CPU programs him to say, “Hey, what’s up!” Even though he’s a robot, I like Tico. There are other programs in his CPU, but I’m not allowed to know what they command. Our colors are different. Maybe that’s why. He smiles when the time clock says, “Beep.”

​ “Pray for me,” says Matthew. 

​Matthew’s a half-robot, half-blood. They’re the hardest to understand, unless you’re a half-robot, half-blood, too. He repeats things a lot, but has feelings when he says them. Sometimes he gives massages to the old women who suffer neck pain. I’ve seen Matthew sitting silently by the computer at the desk in the warehouse praying. He mixes music on laptops. I cannot say more about Matthew, because the half-robot, half-bloods are hard to read.

​I am one of them, but do not know which. It isn’t my place to know. That has always been the dilemma of coming to the factory. You receive instructions, and are free to interact along the robot lines and the arteries of all robots, bloods, and in-between; they receive theirs. They know what I am, but I do not know what they are. That doesn’t bother me, except for the ones who blow their fucking cigarette smoke across my face at the dark time of day. 

​Now I’m at my station. This is the time of day I know my place. I’m a robot.

​“Beep,” says the time clock.

​Part four begins. 

​I’m no longer a robot. I still don’t know what I am. I walk outside to my car and get in, praying it will start. Praying.Praying is a sign of the blood. Robots do not pray. My car starts, so I can get back home. I go home. My dogs say hello. I love my dogs. Love. Love is a sign of the blood, too. If robots cannot pray, there is no way they can love. My pregnant wife says hello when she gets home. I’m excited about meeting the baby when she comes. Excited. Of all things, robots do not get excited. Even more than love, excitement does not pertain to a robot. Even the ones that move fastest and get the most done, they aren’t excited. But my wife and I are excited. 

​We have dinner. It tastes delicious since I’ve been practicing good chili recipes. Delicious. That’s a good one that only bloods possess. If robots ever find out what tasting is, Hell will come to earth. Maybe Hell has come to earth and the robots really can taste. But we have dinner and watch small amounts of television or read a book. Have dinner and watch television – robots can do those things. Nothing is said during those times, and robots say nothing. Perhaps my wife and I are robots then. We make love or laugh with our dogs, maybe. Make love. Laugh. Robots don’t do those things. 

​I choose to believe at my house, I’m a blood. Still, the robot part is always there. Maybe I’m half-blood, half-robot. It hurts to think now. I’m tired because I have to get up in the dark.

​It’s time for wine. Wine helps because it resets the CPU. Wine makes me a robot because it helps the images slow. Images need to slow. All things, living or machine, need images to slow. If robots could have wine, there would be no need for bloods. But the wine is the greatest thing of all. It erases the CPU so things can start over.

​I go to sleep with some trouble. As I set my alarm, I realize there is one thing in the world that wine cannot reset.

​“Beep,” says the clock.