Helen has a flash, a memory, of holding her infant daughter against her bare chest, of Meeps’s skin, which she once knew so well.
It is appalling, to think of the distance between her body and her daughter’s body. And how they will never know each other’s bodies again. Helen is filled with an animal urge to feel her daughter’s skin again, and for her daughter to touch her as if she is a thing that is known, as if she is a body that is loved.
MADOKA
It wasn’t the first time Madoka had seen an abandoned dog in the Higashiyama Tunnel, but it was the first time she had stopped her car because of one.
Madoka hadn’t grown up with a pet. Her father was famously anti-cat, and waged a semi-comic war with the neighborhood strays. Yoshi had grown up with animals. A large collection of beetles when he was a boy, and then fish, and a spitz named Ken, now dead. The dog looked ridiculous in photos, but Yoshi claimed it had a very sober, loyal, and comforting nature.
Madoka had not stopped for the dog. She had stopped because it was a swift diversion from the path she had set for herself today. She had been a woman who was going to work. Now she was a woman who had stopped for a dog.
Madoka moves cautiously into this role.
Also, she does not want to be a woman who was bitten by a dog.
The animal is trotting from side to side, looking now at Madoka, now at the highway, as if considering its options. It is just smaller than medium size, and brown and gray. Some of the colors may be dirt.
Madoka stands by her car. She would like to interact with the dog on a psychic level, without embarrassing and lengthy preliminaries, or awkward baby language. How much Japanese does the dog understand? She feels instinctively that it is male. It has a male countenance. He’s not wearing a tag, although possibly he has a microchip.
The dog approaches. He is very thin. He is also a she. Madoka is vaguely disappointed.
The dog does something. She sits and arranges her paws tidily in front of her, then lifts one tufty eyebrow and the opposite paw, and looks at Madoka. Madoka does not think she has ever seen any sentient creature do something so wonderful.
She should get back in her car and continue on her way. An artist should know when to walk away from a work, to let a moment happen without comment, without greed, without display or audience or any kind of need. Also the dog had done something that was very cute, and very cute things were never art.
In a perfect world, the dog would run off now. Or vanish. Or Madoka would vanish.
This will not happen on its own. This world is not a magic world.
The dog stands and backs away. Madoka’s remorse is so swift and consuming that she forgets about art, and also about death.
“Oh, it’s okay,” she says to the dog. “Good girl. Good girl.” She holds out a hand.
They will get back to art later, for now there are logistics: getting the dog into the car, and then all the things that should happen next. The dog cranes her nose toward Madoka’s hand, does not seem displeased, trots sideways.
? ? ?
MADOKA DOES NOT want to lure the dog into the car by trickery; this seems unethical. She thinks of making a leash, and moves to the trunk of her car. Yoshi had put an emergency kit in there for her, which she has never opened.
The duffel bag, when opened, gives her pause. Along with the items are instructions in Yoshi’s handwriting on the proper use of each item, survivalist tips, emergency protocols. Shelter. Navigation. Protection. Tools. First aid. Nutrition. Hygiene. And a bag of her favorite kind of peppermints.
The dog waits.
Madoka finds she does not want to disturb the contents of the duffel bag. In the end, she opens up the passenger door of her Nissan Pinecone and the dog jumps in of her own volition.
Madoka drives the dog and herself to work. She senses an anxiety in the dog, and, most touchingly, an effort on the dog’s part to control the anxiety. Madoka talks, telling the dog about the place where they are going. “We will go to my office,” Madoka tells the dog. “Because I think we will be able to find someone there to consult with about our next steps.” Her voice is a little singsongy. She has often been told—in several languages—that she has an appealing speaking voice. This does not matter to her PEPPER. PEPPERs use three different forms of voice stress analysis. A pet probably does not “like” a certain kind of voice, though it would register a difference between command, and scolding, and affection with a person it knew well, maybe any person.
“At my company,” Madoka explains to the dog, “our most popular robotic pet is the baby panda. Light, touch, movement, and voices are picked up by sensors within the animal, so the pandas can open and move their eyes, make happy noises like purring, and they have a very cute walk. They can give or receive a hug. Old people and children love them; they accept them either instantly or with very little prompting.”
The dog now makes tentative overtures toward a leap into the back of the car, rethinks this, attempts it, races back and forth a few times, takes up a sitting posture on the passenger seat.
“I was thinking of asking to be transferred within my company so that I wouldn’t have to travel. I’m tired of traveling, and I want to have more personal time. I would like to take some classes, art classes, maybe. I saw a course in transhumanist art that looked very interesting. I think I need to make something.”
The dog makes a half step toward Madoka, shies away, puts both paws on the dashboard, slips, and crashes down into the legroom area.
“You need a bath. PEPPERs can give sponge baths to humans. This eliminates what can be a very uncomfortable situation between a patient who wishes to maintain dignity and a family member who would be embarrassed by such intimate contact. I have had a sponge bath by a PEPPER. It was not threatening or strange. PEPPERs can wash a pet too.
“I think I will give you your first bath, though.