Apply Soap

Flash fiction, 700 words. For IAM's Feb. 14 prompt. Any resemblance to shows living or dead is purely coincidental.

Image for Feb. 14 literature prompt. https://ironage.media/prompt/the-dyad.html. Courtesy of Iron Age Media.

“Leslie, tell me you love me.”

“Oh, I do, darling, I do.”

“You’re the oil for my sprockets, Leslie. The motor for my wheels.”

“Oh, Andy! I … Okay, cut!”

Samantha Corr disengaged from her robot co-star and threw her hands up in disgust.

“Who wrote this dreck? I can’t. I just can’t. Sorry, XK5, no offense. But … I can’t.”

From the director’s chair, a second robot, XF3, heaved a mechanical sigh and motioned to the cameras. The red glow of his eyes seemed wan as he regarded the actress.

“Sam, I understand your feelings, but the focus group showed a preference for straightforward dialogue over …”

Sam marched over the mewling director and shoved her script in his face.

“This isn’t straightforward. This is brain-dead.”

“But this tested well.”

“You’re underestimating the human race, Director XF3.”

“I really don’t think he is,” intercut Actor XK5 drily, walking off the set and applying a little grease to his elbows. “There’s no point in getting angry at XF3, Samantha. There’s a clear correlation between what the focus group favors and what ultimately sells. Ours is not to question, only to produce.”

“The focus group only favors stupidity because that’s all that’s produced these days, buddy. Familiarity informs taste, that’s all it is. Nothing is ever going to get better if we don’t try new things.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” said Director XF3. “But as XK5 said, we’re not getting paid to be right. We’re being paid to produce this 30-minute daytime stream segment in under three hours. Then we’re going to do Friday’s segment too, hopefully faster, and then we can all go home. XK5’s battery life is around eight hours. You don’t want him embarrassed on the subway if he shuts down during rush hour, do you? Because that’s what’s going to happen if we don’t get back to it.”

Sam wanted to know who’s bright idea it had been to program robots with the capacity to initiate a guilt trip.

“Alright, alright. But if I vomit from the pure treacle of it, that’s just an expected biological function, so don’t blame me.”

This elicited a chuckle from XK5 as he lined himself back up at the tape. Sam did the same. Her tantrum would probably produce a blip in the staging of the scene, but she was sure their editor, XN4, would smooth it over before broadcast.

“And … action!” Director XF3 made an artificially generated snapping sound with his digits, and the camera lights came on.

“Oh, Andy! I yearn for you! For the steely strength of your limbs, for the unassailable logic of your mind! I would be lost without you!”

And so it went for another twenty minutes. Finally, it was Director XF3 who yelled “Cut!”

The Thursday segment was done. The Friday writer, XC9, emerged triumphantly from the wings with his weekly script.

“You’ll love this, Samantha,” he said in a voice that promised new frontiers of mental torture. “Now, they just declared their love, right? So tomorrow Andy gets commandeered to the front, and there’s an explosion, and he and his best buddy Charlie are both totaled, but the mechanics try to save them by taking out their brains so they can rebuild their bodies, except that they accidentally switch their minds, so Charlie’s brain ends up in Andy’s body, and at the end of the episode Leslie visits him in the cooling tanks and she talks to him, but he doesn’t know who she is, and she thinks he has amnesia and vows to cure him with the power of her love, but the audience knows differently, and …”

Sam clapped a hand to her mouth. “Excuse me.”

She ran to the bathroom.

“Wow, you finally induced an extreme biological reaction,” observed Actor XK5 with clinical curiosity.

Director XF3 marveled at the actress’ brilliance.

“She said she was gonna, and she did.”