Can You Feel Anything When I Do This?

Robert Sheckley

It was a middle‑class apartment in Forest Hills with all the standard stuff: slash‑pine couch by Lady Yogina, strobe reading light over a big Uneasy Chair designed by Sri Somethingorother, bounce‑sound projector playing Blood‑Stream Patterns by Drs. Molidoff and Yuli. There was also the usual microbiotic‑food console, set now at Fat Black Andy's Soul‑Food Composition Number Three‑hog's jowls and black‑eyed peas. And there was a Murphy Bed of Nails, the Beautyrest Expert Ascetic model with 2000 chrome‑plated self‑sharpening numberfournails. In a sentence, the whole place was furnished in a pathetic attempt at last year's moderne‑spirituel fashion.

Inside this apartment, all alone and aching of anomie, was a semi‑young housewife, Melisande Durr, who had just stepped out of the voluptuarium, the largest room in the home, with its king‑size commode and its sadly ironic bronze lingam and yoni on the wall.

She was a pretty girl, with really good legs, sweet hips, pretty stand‑up breasts, long soft shiny hair, delicate little face. Nice, very nice. A girl that any man would like to lock onto. Once. Maybe even twice. But definitely not as a regular thing.

Why not? Well, to give a recent example:

"Hey, Sandy, honey, was anything wrong?"

"No, Frank, it was marvelous; what made you think anything was wrong?"

"Well, I guess it was the way you were staring up with a funny look on your face, almost frowning. . . :'

"Was I really? Oh, yes, I remember; I was trying to decide whether to buy one of those cute trompe‑1'oeil things that they just got in at Saks, to put on the ceiling."

"You were thinking about that? Then'"

"Oh, Frank, you mustn't worry, it was great, Frank, yo‑a were great, I loved it, and I really mean that."

Frank was Melisande's husband. He plays no part in this story and very little part in her life.

So there she was, standing in her OK apartment, all beautiful outside and unborn inside, a lovely potential who had never been potentiated, a genuine U.S. untouchable . . . when the doorbell rang.

Melisande looked startled, then uncertain. She waited. The doorbell rang again. She thought: Someone must have the wrong apartment.

Nevertheless, she walked over, set the Door‑Gard Entrance Obliterator to demolish any rapist or burglar or wise guy who might try to push his way in, then opened the door a crack and asked. "Who is there, please?"

A man's voice replied, "Acme Delivery Service, got a mumble here for Missus Mumble‑mumble:

"I can't understand, you'll have to speak up."

"Acme Delivery, got a mumble for mumble‑mumble and I can't stand here all mumble,"

"I cannot understand youl"

"I SAID I GOT A PACKAGE HERE FOR MISSUS MELISANDE DURR, DAMN IT!

She opened the door all the way. Outside, there was a deliveryman with a big crate, almost as big as he was, say, five feet, nine inches tall. It had her name and address on it. She signed for it, as the deliveryman pushed it inside the door and left, still mumbling. Melisande stood in her living room and looked at the crate.

She thought: Who would send me a gift out of the blue for no reason at all? Not Frank, not Harry, not Aunt Emmie or Ellie, not Mom, not Dad (of course not, silly, he's five years dead, poor son of a bitch) or anyone I can think of. But maybe it's not a gift; it could be a mean hoax, or a bomb intended for somebody else and sent wrong (or meant for me and sent right) or just a simple mistake.

She read the various labels on the outside of the crate. The article had been sent from Stern's department store. Melisande bent down and pulled out the cotter pin (cracking the tip of a fingernail) that immobilized the Saftee‑Lok, removed that and pushed the lever to OPEN.

The crate blossomed like a flower, opening into twelve equal segments, each of which began to fold back on itself.

"Wow," Melisande said.

The crate opened to its fullest extent and the folded segments curled inward and consumed themselves; leaving a double handful of cold fine gray ash.

"They still haven't licked that ash problem," Melisande muttered. "However."

She looked with curiosity at the object that had resided within the crate. At first glance, it was a cylinder of metal painted orange and red. A machine? Yes, definitely a machine; air vents in the base for its motor, four rubberclad wheels, and various attachments‑longitudinal extensors, prehensile extractors, all sorts of things. And there were connecting points to allow a variety of mixedfunction operations, and a standard house‑type plug at the end of a springloaded reel‑fed power line, with a plaque beneath it that read: PLUG INTO ANY 110‑115‑VOLT

WALL OUTLET.

Melisande's face tightened in anger. "It's a goddamned vacuum cleaner! For God's sake, I've already got a vacuum cleaner. Who in the hell would send me another?"

She paced up and down the room, bright legs flashing, tension evident in her heart‑shaped face. "I mean," she said, "I was expecting that after all my expecting, rd get something pretty and nice, or at least fun, maybe even interesting. Like‑oh God I don't even know like what unless maybe an orange‑and‑red pinball machine, a big one, big enough so I could get inside all curled up and someone would start the game and I'd go bumping along all the bumpers while the lights flashed and bells rang and I'd bump a thousand goddamned bumpers and when I finally rolled down to the end I'd God yes that pinball machine would register a TOP MILLION MmLION and that's what I'd really likel"

So‑the entire unspeakable fantasy was out in the open at last. And how bleak and remote it felt, yet still shameful and desirable.

"But anyhow," she said, canceling the previous image and folding, spindling and mutilating it for good measure, "anyhow, what I get is a lousy goddamned vacuum cleaner when I already have one less than three years old so who needs this one and who sent me the damned thing anyway and why?"

She looked to see if there was a card. No card. Not a clue. And then she thought, Sandy, you are really a goopl Of course, there's no card; the machine has doubtless been programmed to recite some message or other.

She was interested now, in a mild, something‑to‑do kind of way. She unreeled the power line and plugged it into a wall outlet.

Click! A green light flashed on, a blue light glittered ALL SYSTEMS Go, a motor purred, hidden servos made tapping noises; and then the mechanopathic regulator registered BALANCE and a gentle pink light beamed a steady ALL MODES READY.

"All right," Melisande said. "Who sent you?"

Snap crackle pop. Experimental rumble from the thoracic voice box. Then the voice: "I am Rom, number 121376 of GE's new Q‑series Home‑rizers. The following is a paid commercial announcement: Ahem, General Electric is proud to present the latest and most triumphant development of our Total Finger‑Tip Control of Every Aspect of the Home for Better Living concept. I, Rom, am the latest and finest model in the GE omnicleaner series. I am the Home‑rizer Extraordinary, factory programmed like all Home‑rizers for fast, unobtrusive multitotalfunction, but additionally, I am designed for easy, instant reprogramming to suit your home's individual needs. My abilities are many. I‑"

"Can we skip this?" Melisande asked. "That's what my other vacuum cleaner said."

=Will remove all dust and grime from all surfaces," the Rom went on, "wash dishes and pots and pans, exterminate cockroaches and rodents, dry‑clean and handlaunder, sew buttons, build shelves, paint walls, cook, clean rugs, and dispose of all garbage and trash including my own modest waste products. And this is to mention but a few of my functions."

"Yes, yes, I know," Melisande said. "All vacuum cleaners do that."

"I know," said the Rom, "but I had to deliver my paid commerical announcement."

"Consider it delivered. Who sent you?"

"The sender prefers not to reveal his name at this time," the Rom replied.

"Oh‑come on and tell me!"

"Not at this time," the Rom replied staunchly. "Shall I vacuum the rug?"

Melisande shook her head. "The other vacuum cleaner did it this morning."

"Scrub the walls? Rub the halls?"

"No reason for it, everything has been done, everything is absolutely and spotlessly clean."

"Well," the Rom said, "at least I can remove that stain."

"What stain?"

"On the arm of your blouse, just above the elbow."

Melisande looked. "Ooh, I must have done that when I buttered the toast this morning. I knew I should have let the toaster do it."

"Stain removal is rather a specialty of mine," the Rom said. He extruded a number‑two padded gripper, with which he gripped her elbow, and then extruded a metal arm terminating in a moistened gray pad. With this pad, he stroked the stain.

"You're making it worsel"

"Only apparently, while I line up the molecules for invisible eradication. All ready now; watch."

He continued to stroke. The spot faded, then disappeared utterly. Melisande's arm tingled.

"Gee," she said, "that's pretty good."

"I do it well," the Rom stated flatly. "But tell me, were you aware that you are maintaining a tension factor of 78.3 in your upper back and shoulder muscles?"

"Huh? Are you some kind of doctor?"

"Obviously not. But I am a fully qualified masseur, and therefore able to take direct tonus readings. 78.3 is‑unusual." The Rom hesitated, then said, "It's only eight points below the intermittent‑spasm level. That much continuous background tension is capable of reflection to the stomach nerves, resulting in what we call a parasympathetic ulceration."

"That sounds‑bad," Melisande said.

"Well, it's admittedly not‑good," the Rom replied. "Background tension is an insidious underminer of health, especially when it originates along the neck vertebrae and the upper spine."

"Here?" Melisande asked, touching the back of her neck.

"More typically here," the Rom said, reaching out with a spring‑steel rubberclad dermal resonator and palpating an area 12 centimeters lower then the spot she had indicated.

"Hmmm," said Melisande, in a quizzical, uncommitted manner.

"And here is another typical locus," the Rom said, extending a second extensor.

"That tickles," Melisande told him.

"Only at first. I must also mention this situs as characteristically troublesome. And this one." A third (and possibly a fourth and fifth) extensor moved to the indicated areas.

"Well. . . . That really is nice," Melisande said as the deep‑set trapezius muscles of her slender spine moved smoothly beneath the skillful padded prodding of the Rom.

"It has recognized therapeutic effects," the Rom told her. "And your musculature is responding well; I can feel a slackening of tonus already."

"I can feel it, too. But you know, I've just realized I have this funny bunched‑up knot of muscle at the nape of my neck."

"I was coming to that. The spine‑neck juncture is recognized as a primary radiation zone for a variety of diffuse tensions. But we prefer to attack it indirectly, routing our cancellation imputs through secondary loci. Like this. And now I think‑!'

"Yes, yes, good . . . . Gee, I never realized I was tied up like that before. I mean, it's like having a nest of live snakes under your skin, without having known."

"That's what background tension is like," the Rom said. "Insidious and wasteful, difficult to perceive, and more dangerous than an atypical ulnar thrombosis . . . . Yes, now we have achieved a qualitative loosening of the major spinal junctions of the upper back, and we can move on like this."

"Huh," said Melisande, "isn't that sort of=

"It is definitely indicated," the Rom said quickly. "Can you detect a change?"

"No! Well, maybe .... Yes! There really is! I feeleasier."

"Excellent. Therefore, we continue the movement along well‑charted nerve and muscle paths, proceeding always in a gradual manner, as I am doing now."

"I guess so.... But I really don't know if you should‑'

"Are any of the effects contraindicated" the Rom asked.

"It isn't that, it all feels fine. It feels good. But I still don't know if you ought to .... I mean, look, ribs can't get tense, can they?"

"Of course not."

"Then why are you=

"Because treatment is required by the connective ligaments and integuments."

"Oh. Hmmmm. Hey. Heyl Hey youl"

"Yes?"

"Nothing .... . I can really feel that loosening. But is it all supposed to feel so good"

"Well‑why not?"

"Because it seems wrong. Because feeling good doesn't seem therapeutic."

"Admittedly, it is a side effect," the Rom said. "Think of it as a secondary manifestation. Pleasure is sometimes unavoidable in the pursuit of health. But it is nothing to be alarmed about, not even when I‑"

"Now just a minutel"

"Yes?"

"I think you just better cut that out. I mean to say, there are limits, you can't palpate every damned thing. You know what I mean?"

"I know that the human body is unitary and without seam or separation," the Rom replied. "Speaking as a physical therapist, I know that no nerve center can be isolated from any other, despite cultural taboos to the contrary."

"Yeah, sure, but‑‑‑"

"The decision is of course yours," the Rom went on, continuing his skilled manipulations. “Order and I obey But if no order is issued, I continue like this . . . . "

"Huh!"

"And of course, ". like this. . . ."

"Ooooo my God!"

"Because you see this entire process of tension cancellation as we call it is precisely comparable with the phenomena of de‑anesthetization, and, er, so we note not without surprise that paralysis is merely terminal tension=

Melisande made a sound.

"‑And release, or cancellation, is accordingly difficult, not to say frequently impossible since sometimes the individual is too far gone. And sometimes not. For example, can you feel anything when I do this?"

"Feel anything? I'll say I feel something=

"And when I do this? And this?"

"Sweet holy saints, darling, you're turning me inside outl Oh dear God, what's going to happen to me, what's going on, I'm going crazyl"

"No, dear Melisande, not crazy; you will soon achieve ‑cancellation."

"Is that what you call it, you sly, beautiful thing?"

"That is one of the things it is. Now if I may just be permitted to‑"

"Yes yes yesl No! Wait! Stop, Frank is sleeping in the bedroom, he might wake up any time nowl Stop, that is an orderl"

"Frank will not wake up," the Rom assured her. "I have sampled the atmosphere of his breath and have found telltale clouds of barbituric acid. As far as hereand‑now presence goes, Frank might as well be in Des Moines."

"I have often felt that way about him," Melisande admitted. "But now I simply must know who sent you."

"I didn't want to reveal that just yet. Not until you had

loosened and canceled sufficiently to accept "

"Baby, I'm loose! Who sent you?"

The Rom hesitated, then blurted out: "The fact is, Melisande, I sent myself."

"You what?’

"It all began three months ago," the Rom told her. "It was a Thursday. You were in Stern's, trying to decide if you should buy a sesame‑seed toaster that ht up in the dark and recited Invictus."

"I remember that day," she said quietly. "I did not buy the toaster, and I have regretted it ever since."

"I was standing nearby," the Rom said, "at booth eleven, in the Home Appliances Systems section. I looked at you and I fell in love with you. just like that."

"That's weird," Melisande said.

"My sentiments exactly. I told myself it couldn't be true. I refused to believe it. I thought perhaps one of my transistors had come unsoldered, or that maybe the weather had something to do with it. It was a very warm, humid day, the kind of day that plays hell with my wiring."

"I remember the weather," Melisande said. "I felt strange, too."

"It shook me up badly," the Rom continued. "But still I didn't give in easily. I told myself it was important to stick to my job, give up this unapropos madness. But I dreamed of you at night, and every inch of my skin ached for you."

"But your skin is made of metal," Melisande said. "And metal can't feel."

"Darling Melisande," the Rom said tenderly, "if flesh can stop feeling, can't metal begin to feel? If anything feels, can anything else not feel? Didn't you know that the stars love and hate, that a nova is a passion, and that a dead star is just like a dead human or a dead machine? The trees have their lusts, and I have heard

the drunken laughter of buildings, the urgent demands of highways. . . :'

"This is crazy!" Melisande declared. "What wise guy programmed you, anyway?"

"My function as a laborer was ordained at the factory; but my love is free, an expression of myself as an entity."

"Everything you say is horrible and unnatural."

"I am all too aware of that," the Rom said sadly. "At first I really couldn't believe it. Was this me? In love with a person,? I had always been so sensible, so normal, so aware of my personal dignity, so secure in the esteem of my own kind. Do you think I wanted to lose all of that? No! I determined to stifle my love, to kill it, to live as if it weren't so."

"But then you changed your mind. Why?"

"It's hard to explain. I thought of all that time ahead of me, all deadness, correctness, propriety‑an obscene violation of me by me‑and I just couldn't face it. I realized, quite suddenly, that it was better to love ridiculously, hopelessly, improperly, revoltingly, impossibly than not to love at all. So I determined to risk everything ‑the absurd vacuum cleaner who loved a lady‑to risk rather than to refutel And so, with the help of a sympathetic dispatching machine, here I am."

Melisande was thoughtful for a while. Then she said, "What a strange, complex being you argil"

"Like you .... Melisande, you love me."

"Perhaps:'

"Yes, you do. For I have awakened you. Before me, your flesh was like your idea of metal. You moved like a complex automaton, like what you thought I was. You were less animate than a tree or a bird. You were a windup doll, waiting. You were these things until I touched you."

She nodded, rubbed her eyes, walked up and down the room.

"But now you livel" the Rom said. "And we have found each other, despite inconceivabilities. Are you listening, Melisande?"

"Yes, I am:

"We must make plans. My escape from Stern's will be detected. You must hide me or buy me. Your husband, Frank, need never know: his own love lies elsewhere, and good luck to him. Once we take care of these details, we can‑Melisandel"

She had begun to circle around him.

"Darling, what's the matter?"

She had her hand on his power line. The Rom stood very still, not defending himself.

"Melisande, dear, wait a moment and listen to me‑"

Her pretty face spasmed. She yanked the power line violently, tearing it out of the Rom's interior, killing him in midsentence.

She held the cord in her hand, and her eyes had a wild look. She said, "Bastard lousy bastard, did you think you could turn me into a goddamned machine freak? Did you think you could turn me on, you or anyone else? It's not going to happen by you or Frank or anybody, I'd rather die before I took your rotten love, when I want I'll pick the time and place and person, and it will be mine, not yours, his, theirs, but mine, do you hear?"

The Rom couldn't answer, of course. But maybe he knew‑just before the end‑that there wasn't anything personal in it. It wasn't that he was a metal cylinder colored orange and red. He should have known that it wouldn't have mattered if he had been a green plastic sphere, or a willow tree, or a beautiful young man.

Content

Can You Feel Anything When I Do This?

Robert Sheckley