Read The Midnight Men and Other Stories for Free Online Page B

course,” I told her.
    She slipped under the duvet then. As she moved over to my side I felt water soaking into the sheets at my back. When she wrapped her arms around me I flinched. She was ice cold. As we lay there in our silent embrace, the sounds of the early morning were drowned out by the noise of tiny motors whirring and clicking from somewhere deep down inside her. After a while, it was all I could hear, getting louder, and louder, and louder . . .
    ***
    Why did I marry Gloria? You may well ask.
    After forty years of feeling alienated by the entire living, breathing female population, I came across this advert in the back of a men’s magazine:
    ***
    UNLUCKY IN LOVE?
    TRY THIS REVOLUTIONARY NEW CONCEPT FROM RSA!
    (All our spouses are fully-functioning, emotionally intelligent replicants)
    CALL TODAY FOR A FREE CONSULTATION
    ***
    And so, one free consultation later, I decided to tie the knot with a mail-order replicant bride—my dear, devoted Gloria.
    Problem is, the Replicant Spouse Authority have very strict stipulations for prospective buyers. Marriage is compulsory with any replicant spouse - no ‘living together’ as far as the RSA is concerned. Replicants need stability. I suppose the RSA just don’t want their products being kicked out on the street after a few months.
    Also, there are no refunds. You cannot, under any circumstances, take it ‘back to the shop’. So when you agree to take on a replicant bride, you’re signing a binding, legal declaration of moral responsibility to said replicant wife for life. In return, you are promised a lifetime of ‘total devotion’.
    I was tired of being sad and lonely, and it seemed like a good idea at the time.
    But here’s the irony:
    Twelve months after the marriage, an RSA technician came to my house. A gorgeous raven-haired bachelorette technician named Kathy Bedford. She put Gloria on standby and then hooked her up to her laptop via a bullet-point in the base of Gloria’s neck, before ripping through a complex series of diagnostic procedures with breathtaking ease. It soon became clear that nobody knew their way around a micro-circuit board better than Kathy. I was in love.
    And, as we talked over Gloria’s inner wirings, I began to sense that she was attracted to me. No one was more amazed than I that a woman—a real woman—could find a middle-aged, balding, chunky-around-the-middle techno-junkie like David Hjortsberg not only good company, but also want to get him into bed. It was just my rotten luck she came along twelve months too late.
    Then, just as she was giving Gloria a final system check, Kathy spotted something. “There seems to be an awful build-up of saltwater in Gloria’s . . .” She trailed off, as if the answer to her query had exploded in her mind like a sunburst. She sat back on her haunches. “You tried to drown her, didn’t you?” she said calmly. And when she looked at me with those big brown all-knowing eyes, my cool façade just disintegrated.
    Over the course of six vodka and tonics, I told her that I knew it was a mistake from the minute I married her. A lifetime of devotion sounds great on paper, but when you’re in that situation day after day, no one can describe how maddening that kind of unconditional love can be. Unfortunately, the RSA’s ‘no divorce/no refunds’ policy meant that I was stuck with this . . . thing, for the rest of my natural life.
    “Well,” Kathy said, sliding her technician’s fingers over my hands, “that’s not entirely true, David. There are ways . . .”
    ***
    Once a month, Gloria has to shut herself off for a period of six hours, what the RSA calls ‘the recharge cycle’. After six hours on ‘standby’, they come back on, recharged and good as new. Kathy suggested I do the dastardly deed during those six hours.
    One of the worst parts about the recharge period is that they keep their eyes open throughout. It’s spooky. That evening, I approached her cautiously, running my hand