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kitchen as she kicked her heels off, giving each foot a
quick squeeze massage, cursing her flat feet and the misogynistic bastard who
had thought it was a good idea to make women several inches taller.
    “I’m
going to go upstairs and change. I’ll be down in a minute to make dinner, so
don’t eat too much! We’re having pork chops with apple sauce and mashed
potatoes and gravy. Your favorite!”
    At least
she assumed it was still his favorite. As a kid Charlie had loved apple sauce,
and whenever this particular combination was served, the apple sauce was
immediately mixed in with the mashed potatoes and gravy, and every rapid bite
savored for the eternity a split second seems to a kid. The enthusiasm had
never waned, until about two years ago, when he had a sleepover at a friend’s.
Apparently the same meal was served, he mixed everything together, and was
laughed at.
    He had
come home crying, and when she heard even the parents had laughed, she was
ready to go over there and tear both their throats out. Carl had stopped her,
the father of the little shit apparently being one of her husband’s
supervisors.
    “Let it go,
honey. The guy’s an asshole at work, and so he’s an asshole at home. I’m not
surprised. But if we start a family feud, it could make things difficult at the
office, and things are bad enough as it is.”
    It was
the first time he had made reference to things not going well at work. She had
pressed him on it, but he had refused to get into it. She had had no clue there
was a problem until that point, but with this tidbit released, she began to
notice the odd thing here and there, the sigh for no reason, the slumped
shoulders when no one was looking.
    She knew
his work was top secret, some military project, so conversation was forbidden.
She was friends with Maggie Peterson, the wife of Carl’s partner, Jason. When
she had approached her on the subject a few months ago, Maggie had confessed
that she too had noticed a difference in her own husband. He was more
emotional, and on several occasions had caught him silently crying to himself,
refusing to explain why.
    Something
was going on at the research facility, and what had been jubilation at an
apparent success earlier in the year, had turned into something else in recent
months.
    She
entered the bedroom, eyes closed, her body working on autopilot as she pushed
the door shut behind her and began to strip out of her clothes, tossing them
blindly toward the bed. A bed that had been lonely for days.
    Lonely
because whatever was happening at the lab, hadn’t interfered with their annual
fishing trip. Jason and Carl, along with their bachelor friend Phil, had still
left as planned, not due back for another week. No cellphones, no computers, no
communications technology of any kind.
    “Call
the local sheriff if there’s a problem,” he had said every year they went. The
number sat on the fridge downstairs, under an I Love Robots magnet that had
come with the Roomba he had purchased. She had watched him demonstrate it, then
promptly vacuumed properly. She would have thought he had been hurt by her lack
of interest, but she knew he had bought it for only one purpose.
    To tear
it apart.
    Within a
week he had reprogrammed it to tie into the house’s wi-fi network, and as a
joke for his friends, he could send a command from his iPhone, which would
activate a servo on his beer fridge, pushing the door open, which would then
allow a ramp to drop. The robot would whistle like R2D2 and promptly deliver
six ice cold beers to wherever the phone was located. It would then return to
the fridge, the ramp would rise, and the door would close.
    The roar
of laughter the first time it had been demonstrated left her beaming. She loved
to hear her husband laugh. It didn’t seem to happen often enough. She was an
elementary school teacher and loved to laugh, the children she taught every day
bringing an immense amount of joy into her life. But at home, laughter seemed