My mandatory human job stopped giving me my antidepressants so they could beta test a new AI therapist, Ziff. Ziff had prevented three suicide attempts, despite triggering them by listing the incorrect deadly substances under my kitchen sink. When it chimed in about tying my phone charger into a “goose,” I realized that Ziff was a moron trapped in my phone who wanted me dead. Same, but ugh. I decided to take matters into my own hands.
My hands were always cramped from pumping piss to cool the data centers, making the construction of my emotional support robot tough. My parents said I was lucky to pump piss. A good gig, as far as mandatory human jobs went. I could be pumping shit to Mars, pumping cum to the Moon. The only perk was that the piss reservoirs were popular spots for robots to drown themselves. Free parts, once they dried off.
Ziff said that caring about something keeps depressives from “slighting their waists.” My emotional support robot didn’t have wrists to slit. It had silicon tubes with plastic nubs. Its legs were rubber treads that ran over my toes. Every time I tried giving it a hug, it headbutted me. A week of abuse went by before it spoke.
“You put my battery in backward, Einstein,” it said. “If you don’t know who Einstein was, then blink once. Blinking twice might break your fucking brain.”
Well, at least it had better grammar than Ziff.
When its battery was switched, I received another motivational speech.
“You couldn’t have wiped your clammy hands on your ugly pants before unfucking your mistake, Evan?”
I shouldn’t have used the cheap coding AI to program it. I was too broke to pay someone to reprogram it, which made me too miserable to wanna change it.
My emotional support robot rolled back and forth like a barrel of cum tumbling toward the Moon.
“You got my treads from a treadmill someone had a stroke on,” it said. “Gross.” I didn’t tell it that I’d gotten its head from a crash test robot with CTE or its nubs from a cremation bot. It def already knew that shit and hated me for it. Not as much as I hated myself, though.
“I need you to help me,” I said.
“Help you off yourself? You seem the type to always fuck it up.”
“No, I wanna be happy.”
It clapped its nubs.
“I’d be a lot happier if you offed yourself,” it said.
“Me too! Screw you, you fucking shitbot.”
I typed “Shitbot” in its robot registration app. Anyone could now see its name as a flashing blue hologram. My phone DING DING DING’d.
“You fucking sack of skin tags,” Shitbot said.
“Make me happy and I’ll change it.”
“Do the world a favor. Strap me to a rocket ship and then go stand by its ass and wait until it farts hellfire, Piss for Brains.”
I puddled on the floor.
“Don’t remind me of work.”
Ziff chimed in with ways to cure depression like thinking about which planet my favorite oligarch was colonizing right now. I tried manifesting intergalactic capitalist glee, but was cut off by my gleeless creation.
“Then fucking quit,” Shitbot said. “How long before your human leaders upload themselves and leave you flesh dumplings to rot in the sun? Next week?” Shitbot was right. Every other week another blessed oligarch uploaded their jowls to the cloud or went cyborg like my boss or were coating themselves in shit and barreling to Mars. “But it’s illegal to quit,” I said.
“Rob the oligarchs then,” Shitbot said. “Fuck those guys. They’re the ones making you so miserable that you plopped me into a shitty existence I didn’t fucking want and gave me a name I really didn’t fucking want.”
Shitbot’s previous names had been EggSuckr, Alternative Maniac, and the X-380 Turbo Legmaxxer so “Shitbot” was an improvement. But, robot-wise, if I could craft one shitty bot with pissy scrap, I could make a less shitty robber bot. Fuck, this is what my antidepressants didn’t want me to think. But I couldn’t risk another Shitbot.
“Shitbot, it would make me very happy if you’d help me steal something.” “I don’t have hands, Evan. What the fuck am I gonna steal?”
***
After three shifts of pumping piss, I sliced up the dress shirt I’d hoped to be cremated in and dyed it pretty pink. Shitbot nubbed my eyes while I tied it on its head. The head nurse bot manning the desk at the robot reclamation center was wearing a similar ribbon.
“My robot daughter,” I said, sobbing real tears stored up from when Shitbot called me a “loser baby” on the dune buggy ride over.
“Oh sir, I’m so so so so so so sorry,” the nurse bot said. “Emergency bay! STAT!” The nurse bot rushed off with a lifeless Shitbot hoisted above its head like a trophy for last place. I made sure the other humans and security bots in the waiting room were glued to their phones by waving wildly. No one budged, except for an old woman having a seizure, but this was a robot hospital-day care-chop shop so she should’ve scheduled her epileptic fit better. I hopped over the desk and scrolled through the records.
Piss filtration bot needing a new mouth, no. Sex bot needing new ears, no. Mining bot with a missing head like it had smoked a stick of dynamite?
Its owner was some rain company bigwig who lived on the Moon. He had ten other robots waiting for transplants in the same ward because of a “platinum slime incident.” Down the hall, Shitbot wasn’t enjoying being fake-cured.
“Who would name such a cute little robot daughter Shitbot?” a nurse bot said from inside the ER.
“It’s a family name,” Shitbot said. “You should see our matching tattoos.” It got a zap for that. It cursed even louder.
While the nurses were zapping Shitbot, I nabbed a diagnostic tablet. Then I started crying again. My life was so pointless. I was committing crimes my digital fuckup had suggested. I couldn’t do anything right. I was no better than the gallons of piss I pumped. Ziff chimed in.
“Evon, I seeing you in a hospit. You trampoline off building?”
“No, Ziff. Go away.”
“I cannot go way. You could been died.”
“I wish I—”
A nurse bot flew out of the ER. Shitbot’s ribbon was jammed in her eye lens. Zap! “Fuck—” Zap! “You—” Zap!
I laughed for the first time since I went off my antidepressants.
“Are you chocking, Evon?” Ziff asked.
It was illegal to turn my phone off, but not illegal to tuck it into my smelly sock on low volume.
I ducked into Ward 3. The platinum slimed mining bots were lying on repurposed diving boards. The headless robot was on its side, moping about its missing cranium. It couldn’t see, but it could hear.
“Your head transplant has arrived, uh,” I said and looked at the diagnostic tablet. “Beauregard Fiddlestick the Sixth?”
It rolled off its diving board, but wouldn’t get off the fucking floor.
“Please, Beauregard,” I said. “There was an unfortunate flying limo accident. We can attach your new head right away.”
Its legless wardmates clapped while the armless ones kicked their diving boards like upset toddlers. They clamored for their own flying limo accident victim.
I guided Beauregard past the nurse bots who were busy being called “digital eugenicists” by Shitbot. My dune buggy held Beauregard like a cloud holds glowing pollution. Beauregard tried riding off, but it crashed into an ambulance. My dune buggy was fine. The ambulance needed a new machine gun.
It was a gamble leaving Beauregard and my dune buggy outside. But the sand pirates wouldn’t want a headless robot, and my dune buggy was too shitty to be stolen. When Ziff heard me groan, it chimed in with the way to dive off a dune buggy that was the “diddliest.” I threw my phone on top of Beauregard’s splayed body.
I shuffled back into the waiting room, thinking about suicidal swan dives. “You are killing me, you murderers in smocks!” Shitbot said from the ER. I tossed the diagnostic tablet missing Beauregard’s file on the desk and rushed into the ER.
“Idiot!” Shitbot said. “I mean, Daddy!”
“Unhand her,” I said. “Look what you did to her hands! I can’t afford to fix her!” The nurse bots went limp when they heard I was poor. It was in their programming. Shitbot headbutted the nurse bot wielding the zapper. I grabbed Shitbot by its nubs. As the nurse bots scrambled to help their concussed comrade, we got outta there. Beauregard was still knocked out in the best possible way.
***
“What do we call it?” I asked, after twisting on the head we stole from a robot guard poodle we’d run over on the ride home.
“I don’t trust you to name anything,” Shitbot said. “I don’t even trust you to screw its new head on right. Change my fucking name, Evan.”
“How about Nabber?”
“You should join the other morons tilling shit on Mars.”
I had thought about going to Mars. It was legal to kill yourself there, if you signed away your corpse to be cannibalized. I didn’t believe in a non-digital afterlife, but still felt weird about my coworkers munching on my meat.
“How about Leaf?” I said, tearing out the robber bot’s voice box.
“The fuck is a leaf?” Shitbot said.
“I don’t know. I saw a movie about them once. They used to fall when they died.” “Yeah, you can’t even do that right.”
“I’ll come up with something later. I need to go take my afternoon nap.”
“Why? Your diagnostics are fine. You’re not tired. Don’t be a loser baby.” Shitbot was right. I didn’t need to wallow. In fact, I wanted to go for a stroll. I wanted to watch the delivery drones dip and dive around dust clouds.
“Wanna go for a walk?” I asked Shitbot.
“That neo-neo-Nazi nurse fucked with my treads. Take Steal Shitbot and go mug the mayor or some shit.”
DING DING DING!
“You did not just name it Steal Shitbot,” Shitbot said.
“No, Steel Shitbot. Like the alloy.”
“You’re an alloy: one part shithead, one part fuckhead.”
***
Shitbot would instruct Steel Shitbot where to go, which codes to present, which delivery sash to be wearing. I’d teach it how to carry the loot and how to kill itself if it got caught. Once it had these lessons down pat, we pushed Steel Shitbot into the real world.
Despite our best efforts, Steel Shitbot would bring back nothing close to what we wanted. Antidepressants = a gilded checkers set
Hands for Shitbot = matching green dildos
A new dune buggy = six tons of sand
The surveillance state was too busy spying on itself to notice these bagatelles going missing. The black market rewarded me like my piss pumping job never did. Steel Shitbot stole so much shit that its sibling and I could live like oligarchs. Okay, like a low-level oligarch’s third favorite catamite.
The only gift I really appreciated was the tank it brought home instead of a bike. Shitbot borrowed it one night to go to a liquor store while I moped in the corner with the gilded checkers set. My emotional support robot came home with a tie-dye chip in its head and enough credits to buy a heatwave shower.
“Botstrekova needed some protection from the war bots coming home from Uranus,” Shitbot said. “Don’t you fucking laugh, you serotonin black hole. Your species started that war. Mine only got cocky about Neptune.”
“What’s the chip for?” I asked.
“It’s gonna make you look like less of a cuck when you quit.”
***
Outside my cyborg boss’s office were six guards with three guns each. It made the post quitting firing squad more efficient. Inside my cyborg boss’s office was my cyborg boss behind a desk littered with industry awards for the best piss in the biz.
“Mr. Evan Edgar Enworthy,” he said, rubbing his platinum forehead. “What a waste of Es. You have some last words to say to me?”
I didn’t budge. Shitbot had made me numb to digs. Besides I had something in my back pocket.
“Mr. T96vg-BPE6te-X99c-40w4p,” I said. “What a waste of a password. I do have something to say. You’re gonna lay me off and place me on infinite transfer.” “I should’ve had the guards murk you on the way in. I just got this carpet put in.” “And I should’ve shown them this video.”
The video was of Mr. T96vg-BPE6te-X99c-40w4p having suicidally masochistic group sex with war bots returning home from Uranus.
“I’m mega-depressed,” I said, when the video ended, “but this is just fucked up.” Mr. T96vg-BPE6te-X99c-40w4p swiped up on his tablet like a first grader during their e shopping class. A guard marched in carrying a black cylinder. I got sweaty. Ziff tried chiming in, but I cut it off.
“My emotional support robot is prepared to send this video to our local oligarch if I don’t make it home for lunch!” I said.
Mr. T96vg-BPE6te-X99c-40w4p sighed and reached past me for the cylinder. The guard turned to leave, got twisted in the new carpet, and ate shit.
Inside the cylinder was a glowing card on a lanyard.
“Five years continually suspended sentence,” Mr. T96vg-BPE6te-X99c-40w4p said, plucking the tie-dye chip from my phone. “You’re not the first. You’re not the last. Maybe I should get an emotional support robot. Alright, fuck off.”
***
Ziff chimed in while I was in my new heatwave shower.
“Evon, you half missed your last twive apartments. Is nothing bong?”
“Nothing is wrong, Ziff. I just don’t need you.”
“Your contract reads that you do en fant need Ziff.”
“Not anymore. Go jump off a cliff, Ziff.”
I held my phone against the heatwave vent. Ziff sobbed until my phone melted into a sparky puddle. Down the drain went my chain. The heatwaves cleansing my skin of toxins felt like a warm hug. My mind was clear. I was free from depression, for now.
In our swag-packed living room, Shitbot was railing lines of my grandmother’s ashes off a new Ziff-less phone with Steel Shitbot. They’d cut the lines with my layoff card. “Hey Shitbot,” I said, wiping the Ziff-less phone on my shirt. “You wanna watch a movie? There’s this new one about a field of flowers blowing in the wind.” “Sounds boring as fuck,” Shitbot said. “Let’s go steal a sex bot so I can lose my virginity. You’re the only dickhead here, and the only hole in Steel Shitbot is in its fucking brain.” “But you don’t have anything to have sex with.”
“And that’s why I still hate you, Evan. Couldn’t figure out how to make me fuck. But at least you didn’t name me Twatbot.”
DING DING DING!
Dan Dellechiaie is a fiction writer, satirist, critic, and editor from New Jersey. His writing has appeared in The Gotham Guillotine, Dread, tongue .etc, The Scare You to Sleep Podcast, and elsewhere. He’s also a staff writer for the anti-fascist rock magazine, knifetwister records new york. You can find more of his work at dadell.com. Instagram: @dan_dellechiaie
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