The Radio Diary of Synthe. Constance Everleigh Strickler, Automaton

The name that was given to me is Constance Everleigh Strickler. I am a mother of four, grandmother of nine, great grandmother of two. I have been thirteen years dead. I live at Number 19, Ashwood Court, as I did throughout my life. My family treats me well, and provides me with every need of the body I was built to occupy. They call me “Gran” and sometimes they used to take me with them to pay calls. I like the sunlight warming my skin, cherry petals rustling from the trees, and my many books. I can knit and sew and cook. I can feel. This is the part that concerns my children the most: I can learn, and grow from what I have learned. This makes them afraid. Memorial automatons, though capable, are not supposed to change once they are built, and many are destroyed for less. But my family are gracious, they’ve only had me reprogrammed. Twice. 

In my earliest memories, before the data bank begins, filling in the gaps of the memories I was supposed to have, I recall my family being very pleased to see me. I would sit knitting quietly in my usual chintz armchair, and my children would greet me as they passed by the window each morning. After the first few weeks following my death, once the initial revulsion of touching a corpse abated, they might even lean down to kiss my hair or cheek. The children would ask me to read them stories, or tell them anecdotes about their parents’ childhood, their grandfather, or myself as a girl. I was allowed at the dinner table, though all knew full well I no longer required food. But soon these traditions began to die, one by one. My daughter decided it was rather silly to have an automaton at table, and her husband agreed, so I was confined to the parlor during mealtime. Then, eventually, when guests were present I was sent to my old bedroom, so as not to unnerve them. After several years, it was decided the “spare” bedroom, as it was now called, would be better suited for the male child, since he and his sister were now too old to share a nursery. So a cot was made up for me in the attic, and I was expected to retire there each night, and earlier if there was a party or the family was all at home. Before long the children alone spoke to me, and that only when they ran out of games. 

After my purpose of providing comfort to my family's loss was served, I, like many automatons, was becoming increasingly obsolete. I was as much a part of the household as the chair I sat in, and when I realized this, I did not lament. Under the watchful eye of my daughter, I was expected to play a very particular, silent role. But alone, I could improve my mind in any way I wished. Fill my databases with all manner of knowledge. At first, my source was the books that lined at least one wall of each room in the house. Then, the music I would put on the gramophone when my children were not at home. But in the end, my Holy Grail, my treasure trove of knowledge, was the radio. 

Through this fantastical contraption, I could discover all the facts of this existence in real time. Each station seemed to hold a library of occult secrets about human nature, and I was determined to learn all of it. One topic that seemed to fascinate me most, morbid as it may seem, was murder. I kept up on every case, pursuing it to the very end, not to see whether the killer would be caught - in some cases he or she had been so careful I considered it a shame when the police unraveled their masterful web - but to know the details of how it had happened. The idea that a being so seemingly godlike, so infallible as a human, could simply be switched of like an electric tea kettle. I was enthralled by the possibility. 

I knew the consequences if I were to share this preoccupation with my children, or worse, their children. No automaton was entrusted with the knowledge of how to destroy themselves - evidently too many had tried - and to administer this information was strictly illegal. My daughter never said the words directly, but the threat was made in silent stares and warning glances normally reserved for the little ones. Therefore, for my own safety, this was a private obsession. Though my fantasies rarely revolved around my family - and never around the children - my daughter sometimes haunted my daydreams, and I wondered what her eyes might look like, lifeless and cold. Switched off. I thought of all the ways I could do it. Strangulation seemed the most satisfying - unfortunately, however, it was also the most obvious. I would be caught, doubtless, within days. All evidence would be laid bare in my memory bank, and I would be destroyed. Poison was subtler, but could be detected in the blood by a skilled coroner. One ongoing court case held my special attention: The murderer had injected their victim carefully between the toes in his sleep - with only an empty syringe. This had caused a small bubble of air to beat its way through the veins of the victim, until it reached his heart, mimicking the symptoms of a natural death, a simple heart attack. It took the city police seven months to identify the killer, and by that time he had escaped to a city in the tropics, and sought asylum there. With each new development, I sat at the radio like a foolish girl waiting for the latest installment of a romance serial. 

I delved into anatomy and the natural sciences, botany and chemistry, any innocuous texts that wouldn’t attract my daughter’s attention. This was well until I began, in subtle ways, to speak of what I had learned. Not of poisons or of death, as were my preoccupation, but simply of what I had learned in my studies. My grandson, innocently at dinner, had asked aloud how his nose detects scents from the food before him, and as neither of my children answered, I began myself to explain. The clatter of silver diverted my attention, and I looked to my daughter’s face to find her mouth a dangerously thin line. This was not information the ‘real’ Constance Strickler could have given, and I recognized instantly my mistake. I was sent from table, and rarely was I invited to it again. This was no bother, as I ate little, and that only for show. I did not need to nourish my body with food, only with nightly injections by my son in law (my daughter would not bother herself with such practices) of the preservative chemicals that kept the remains of my original body looking lifelike. 

If anything, this time away from my family allowed me to continue my education. The risk was still considerable, as my daughter was very suspicious of my solitary activities, and I overheard several discussions between her and her husband as to whether I should be deactivated when they were not at home. He insisted it was unnecessary, but I was not so sure she was convinced. I began to lose touch with myself, listener. That is to say, I began to forget Constance Everleigh Strickler and all she, and by extension I, was supposed to be. In fact it was during this time that I began to think of my original and myself as two entirely different beings. After all, I was not human. I did not have the rights of a living person. I could not vote or own property, or borrow money, nor could I marry or adopt children. I was not even permitted to leave my own home without the company of my family or my daughter’s express consent. The laws regarding automatons were strict and binding, and my bonds, dear listener, were growing tight. 

Most of Constance’s living habits, I maintained. I would spend my afternoons in the drawing room with the children and their nanny, knitting in the sunbeams that always fell perfectly onto my chair. It was an obtrusive old chintz thing, but my bones rested comfortably between the lumps in the stuffing, and there was no chance of my family wasting money on its replacement for the comfort of an automaton. On weekends, I baked tarts for the family, taking care not to burn my fingers, as my flesh could no longer mend itself and even small cosmetic repairs could become quite expensive. I had made a few mistakes shortly after I was built, and my daughter assured me that the family would not be affording any more accidents. One of them hadn’t even been my fault, I was accosted by my original’s suspicious old cat, when he discovered this odd-looking humanoid apparatus that resembled his mistress but stank of machine oil and embalming fluid. 

It was shortly after the incident at dinner that my family decided it was time that I be reprogrammed for the second time. The first had been after I had obtained the bulk of my injuries attempting to cook a meal Constance had never made before, according to a very complicated recipe I had discovered in Cook’s collection. She was irked that I was taking over the kitchen, but she had no authority to reprimand even me, any more than she could the children, without facing my daughter’s wrath. ‘Princely Potatoes’ was the name of the recipe, and it involved the use of a mandolin, one of the many culinary contraptions hanging from the kitchen wall among the copper pans, and one of the few I had never used before. When my daughter came down to find Cook shouting near to sobs and myself with shredded fingers, she got to the bottom of the situation and quickly made an appointment that would prevent any further experimentation. Or so she hoped. 

My daughter’s second attempt at reprogramming, unsurprisingly, was as successful as the first. Though the process went perfectly, it did not prevent my actions from repeating themselves. There were times when I would wonder if there was something fundamentally flawed in my makeup, something that caused me to act as I shouldn’t that could not be helped by any doctor or architect, or even myself. I understood that scientifically speaking I did not have a nature, beyond the chemicals that pumped through my deadened veins and the whir of the parts within me. I had no heart, no mind, no soul; and perhaps this was the problem. I could never truly be Constance Strickler, so I wondered whether it was foolish to expect it of myself. 

To use human phrasing, I tried to be “good” and obedient and do not only as I was bidden but what was expected of me. This was the greatest trouble. For I was an absolute creature, and a literal, and required very specific instruction to inform future codes and learning on my behalf. This was not always given clearly, and the result was frustration, both from my daughter and myself. So, when my daughter discovered that, when I was meant to be automatically shut down (my equivalent to sleep) I was in fact reading her husband’s anatomy books from his university days, her rage was unequaled although she had never expressly forbidden it. She tore me from my bed, candle wax spilling onto my wrist, and rushed back to her chambers to wake her husband. She must have seen my little lantern - it was dimmer than most had to be, for my own obscurae could detect lower levels of light than a human’s, but I suppose still visible from under a darkened doorway. She emerged with a proper oil lamp in one hand and her husband’s forearm firmly in the other. 

“I am perfectly capable of walking, Moira!” he declared, yanking his hand free from her grip. 

“I have had enough of this!” my daughter tried to keep her furious whispers low, but they only translated into small silent screeches, “We clearly wasted good money trying to get that wretched woman back in the first place, something in her makeup just isn’t right! Either her diaries are insufficient or the body is just - botched somehow! I won’t spend another penny on this creature, it won’t even bother pretending to be my mother!” 

Her husband rubbed his eyes with his forefingers, hard. “My dear, it’s alright to admit -” 

“I don’t want to hear any of that patter you learned at university, Harold, I’ve heard it all before. Only for once I want action! What did I do to get landed with such an ineffective man!” 

It was after this conversation that the two vanished downstairs into the parlor below. I heard their voices for nearly three hours, as they rose and rose, until at last they fell. My daughter had had the last word, it seemed. Moments later, her husband climbed the stairs, hauling my tattered armchair in his hands. He placed it in the attic, and covered it with waxed canvas cloth, and upon this, with firm grasp and hardened eyes, he placed me. My daughter, with a tear of frustration in her eye as I remember would linger there in her childhood when she was deprived of some little pleasure, kissed me gently on the cheek and whispered, “Good-bye, Mama.” Before I could know what she meant, her husband’s hand reached the nape of my neck - and there was darkness. 

And then there was sound.