Ty, a shift manager with an alcoholic wife, creates a female replicant in a dystopia veering toward full mechanization. For Ty, the surreal drudgery of working in a retail environment is interrupted when robotic interfaces are installed at his job...
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"You ready to leave the basement, little girl?"
The guard, a stout white man in a gray uniform, hurled the muffled question at Sam through the door of her cell.
From her hard bed pallet, she straightened. "Uh, yes." No answer. "Yes!" she yelled back.
"Good girl," he said, with a jingle of keys and a click.
Basement?
Though, she understood the term was not an offhand name for her internment. Rather, she had been stashed in the basement. The guard let her past the bathroom, and down the hallway she had never been allowed to enter. At the end of the hallway, a stairway beckoned.
As they both clomped up the stairs, Sam momentarily imagined pulling and throwing the man behind her so that she could bound up and out of the door, and into freedom. The fantasy dissolved when they emerged into a kitchen, all shining counter tops and steel appliances.
The guard continued on, checking behind him to see if she was still there. She smiled uneasily, figuring that pretending to be polite was the best way to find out more about where she was and how to get out. He did not return her smile. They walked by a large sitting room, into a hallway with different closed doors. Behind some of them, she heard voices, and behind another, she heard soft cries.
She wondered if he was leading her to be tortured. Or slaughtered.
They came to another set of stairs, and Sam climbed then without a word. There was a second story landing, with more hallways and doors. But the guard bypassed this level, finally stopping on a loft with a door.
An mahogany door stood open. The guard stepped aside, one arm sweeping out in a gesture that said get in.
Sam tentatively crept forward into the new room. Daylight peeked in from different points on the slanted ceiling, pointed like a steeple. The air in the room stifled Sam. She felt like she couldn't breathe.
"The attic?" she asked, half-turning toward the door, but it slammed shut.
