Chapter 2

It was early afternoon and Sherry was driving home after having worked through the night and the morning on her research project. She was tired, but pleased with the results she had obtained. She stopped at the stop sign on the corner, and glanced over at the house there. At first, she thought she was so tired that she had to be hallucinating. She slapped her own face, to see if that would wake her up. It had no effect on what she was seeing.

Alex Cage, dressed as though he were at the beach, was seated in a lawn chair in the middle of his driveway. He was wearing a floppy hat, sun glasses, a Hawaiian shirt, short pants, and flip-flop sandals. He also had a dab of zinc oxide on his nose. An open umbrella was affixed to the back of his chair so that he was in its shade.

Staring at him, Sherry said, “What the hell?”

She was about to pull to the curb in front of his house, when she noticed something that had a passing similarity to a lawn mower traversing across the front yard. There was no one pushing it, but it was moving in a well defined line leaving a trail of cut lawn behind it.

“Cool! I want a couple dozen of those,” she said after watching it in operation for a minute.

She parked the car at the curb in front of his house and got out. The lawnmower stopped moving as soon as she stepped onto the property. She made her way over to where Alex was seated. He sat there without giving any indication that he was aware that she was there.

She cleared her throat. He didn’t move. She said, “Hello, Dr. Cage.”

He shook his head, and then looked up at her. He looked off to the side, yawned without covering his mouth, and then turned his head so that he was facing her. It appeared that she had interrupted his nap.

He said, “Oh, it’s you.”

“Yes.”

“You’re the girl from the bookstore.”

“That’s right.”

Alex turned to face the house. He rolled his fist around in a circle and then signed, “Continue mowing lawn.”

Again he used that odd slashing motion with his between words that puzzled her. After a moment, the lawnmower resumed moving across the yard. Still facing the house, he signed, “Thank you.”

“Who were you signing to?” Sherry asked.

“No one,” Alex answered.

Wondering why he was maintaining the pretense that there was no one in the house, she challenged his answer, “I saw you signing to someone.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Yes, I did. You signed, ‘Continue mowing the lawn,’ and then the lawnmower resumed mowing the lawn. Then you signed, ‘Thank you.’ Do you deny it?”

Alex said, “No.”

Confused by his contradictory answers, she asked, “So who were you signing to?”

“No one,” Alex answered, now looking quite amused by the exchange.

“I saw you signing.”

“Did you see anyone?”

“No.”

“There you go,” Alex said, as if he had proved something.

“So what are you doing sitting out here like it was a day at the beach?” Sherry asked.

“I’m mowing my lawn,” he answered gesturing in the general direction of the lawnmower.

“The lawnmower is autonomous,” Sherry said.

“I know. It’s stupid isn’t it. My lawnmower can mow my lawn, but I have to sit out here while it is doing all of the work because my...” his voice raised to a shout, “idiot neighbor...” his voice returned to normal, “will sue me if I don’t, because he’s afraid that my lawnmower will go crazy and chew up his kids.”

“It stopped moving as soon as I entered your property,” Sherry said.

“I know that, and you have observed that, but my...” again his voice raised in volume, “idiot neighbor...” his voice returned to normal, “doesn’t believe it.”

Sherry said, “He’s afraid it will turn into the Terminator and kill people in an attempt to achieve world domination over its creators. A lot of people have that fear about computer controlled things.”

“That’s what makes him an idiot,” Alex said. “He gets into his car ... the most computer controlled piece of equipment on the consumer market ... several times a day, without a single concern that it will turn on him. But he freaks outs over a simple computer controlled machine.”

“Well, most people don’t know that almost all of the critical functions of a car are now computer controlled. Fuel injection, anti-lock braking, air bag systems, transmission, security, climate control, cruise control, radio, and their GPS systems are all computer controlled. They just don’t see it,” Sherry said.

“Well, Terry...”

“It’s Sherry.”

“Sherry?” Alex asked.

“It’s short for Sherrington.”

“That’s an old fashioned name,” Alex said.

“I was named after my great-grandmother,” she replied.

“I prefer Sherrington to Sherry,” Alex said.

“It’s a mouthful,” she said.

Alex said, “I’ve always liked the old fashioned names – Minerva, Mercedes, Otterly...”

“Interesting,” Sherry said. “You can’t get much more old fashioned than a Greek Goddess like Minerva.”

“She’s Roman.”

“Sorry,” Sherry said. “I suppose I should have spent a little more time with the classics in school.”

“I didn’t pay much attention to the classics when I was in school, either. I’ve since spent a bit more time learning about the past,” Alex said. “Someone said that it would make me a more well rounded person.”

“So are you?”

“Am I what?”

“More well rounded.”

Alex chuckled and replied, “Probably not.”

“I didn’t think so,” Sherry said. Most people didn’t shout to their neighbors that they were idiots.

“You’re a college student, right?”

“Yes. I’m working on my doctorate.”

“That means you’re broke.”

“Being broke is synonymous with being a student.”

“I’ll pay you fifty dollars to sit out here and watch the lawnmower,” Alex said.

“It looks like it is almost done,” she said.

The lawnmower only had a few more passes to make, before the finishing the front yard. The lawnmower was doing a very nice job of cutting the grass, probably a better job than a person would do. Being electric, it was also very quiet.

Alex said, “It’s still got the backyard to do.”

“Okay,” Sherry said. “What am I supposed to do?”

“Nothing really. Just move the chair to the backyard when it moves to the backyard. Just keep more than ten feet from it while its moving, or else it will shut down.”

“That sounds easy enough,” she said.

Without warning, Alex stood and walked into the house. Surprised by the abruptness of his departure, she stood there watching him leave.

Once the front door closed, she said, “You’re not exactly a people person, are you?”

She took a seat and watched the lawnmower. She really wanted to go over and examine it much closer. It had an antenna sticking up, a huge box that probably contained the batteries, and individually controlled wheels. The antenna made her wonder if it was radio controlled.

The lawnmower was very careful in moving in a well defined circle around a tree about four inches from the trunk. It then made a second circuit around the tree with what appeared to be a weed-whacker attachment that trimmed the grass growing along the tree’s base. It then moved on to trim along the bricks that lined the front flower garden.

Impressed, she muttered, “With a fleet of those, I could make a fortune mowing lawns.”

She glanced over at the house next door, and thinking about the neighbor’s reaction to the autonomous mower, she muttered, “Maybe not.”

When the lawnmower had finished the front of the house it trimmed along the side, and then moved into the backyard. She grabbed the lawn chair and followed it to the backyard making sure to keep more than ten feet away from it. To be quite honest, the lawnmower was pretty slow moving. She figured that it would take an hour to finish mowing all of the grass growing in the backyard at the rate it was moving.

It was about thirty minutes later when nature called. She knocked on the backdoor. Alex answered almost immediately giving the impression that he had been standing there waiting for her to knock.

Alex looked at the mower and said, “It’s not done.”

“I need to use the bathroom.”

Alex stepped out of the house and closed the door behind him. “Okay, I’ll watch the mower.”

“Where is it?” she asked.

“Where’s what?” he asked.

“Your, bath, room!”

Puzzled, he looked at her for a second. “You want to use my bathroom?”

Taken aback by the question, she replied, “I’m not going to water a bush.”

“I just figured you’d run home or to a gas station and then come back,” he said.

“Why would I do that when you have a bathroom just a few steps away?”

Alex stood there for a moment, thinking about it as if it the most novel suggestion he had heard in ages. She danced a little, as nature reasserted its call.

Finally, he said, “I guess you could use my bathroom.”

“Thank you,” she said.

He opened the door and said, “It’s off to the side of the big room.”

“Thank you. I’ll find it,” she said while slipping past him to enter the house.

She had no idea of what to expect when entering the house. His reaction to her request suggested that she’d find a nest built by a pack rat with stacks of newspapers and magazines that reached from floor to ceiling with a maze of passages through them. Instead, she was in a rather large room with a single chair, a coffee table littered with a handful of books, a set of shelves, and a rather large television hanging on the wall. Lights were built into the ceiling. She noticed there were motion detectors on the walls as well as what appeared to be cameras in the corners of the room.