Hey there. I don't know if the following conforms to the style guidelines in Writing 101, but it's passed through enough people's hands that I'm sure there aren't any glaring irregularities in it.
The important thing is really to enjoy the story. So enjoy
P.S. It's about 2200 words.
The Stranger in the Garage
Christopher Olson
All along Pine street men’s garage doors were flung open, beaming their pride onto the sidewalk. On Saturday afternoons sparks flew like perspiration from men toiling over their machines. However, Adam’s garage door remained closed, except when he brought the car in at night. But even then, any glimpse at his secret project was obscured by a tarp he draped over it, for fear that someone might get a peek at his designs.
It was typical for a man to work on his robot for hours on end, and having a well tooled robot was seen as a matter of pride. But Adam was unusually dedicated. He was committed to building it from scratch and with as little outside help as possible. Some men would buy antique models and would work on maintenance and implementing newer systems and software. For Adam, the thrill of creating something was greater than the pleasure of improving an earlier design.
His silence was nearly broken when there arrived an unexpected invitation. His neighbour Trevor was trying to work some improvements on his rusty Microsoft model, and he asked that Adam come and check out his designs. Trevor’s uncompromising optimism in his work aggravated Adam, whose accomplishments were the result of tense negotiation between skill and labour, and so he developed a disliking of him almost immediately. But he was unexpectedly red in the cheek, and he wondered if perhaps Trevor recognized something of the mechanic in him that others had failed to notice. But then he considered what it would do to the state of his pride, to look at another man’s robot.
The cost of building a robot was highly prohibitive and purchasing one was no less expensive. To finance its construction, he bought toasters and computer printers and stripped them of key components. When he couldn’t afford that, he looked for parts in people’s trash. He collected lawnmowers, television sets, and radios which others had carelessly discarded. With a little imagination, everything was salvageable: the robot’s cuticles were made from old tire treads, its voice box was a modified car radio, and its hard musculature plating was molded in part from a fender he found on the highway.
Often a useful piece of junk had to be thrown back onto the curb at the insistence of Adam’s wife, Violet. She tolerated his lost hours of productive house work so long as his goals seemed unattainable and remote. It was only when he managed some form of progress towards that goal that she began to worry and to fuss.
Adam couldn’t for a moment understand why. Women got so much use out of machines. Robots tended to daily chores. Wives pressured their husbands for newer models and paid extra for useless features. “But when a man expresses interest in their design,” he mumbled to his iron cast compatriot, “They wonder why in god’s name they should care. Where is that sense of fascination and discovery?”
It hadn’t always been this way with her. When he built the porch, she supported him. When he improved the suction on the vacuum cleaner, she was glad. But when Adam expressed interest in building a boat, she wouldn’t have it. He had built the frame and begun work on the sail when she made him get rid of it, and he sold it to one of the neighbours instead. Of course, the money went back to the family, since it had to be properly spent.
So when he decided to work on a robot, he thought she would be glad. He was sure he could impress her with all that things that could be accomplished with his own two hands. She immediately disapproved, and pressured him to save up a little money and buy one instead. If he made it himself, she was sure that it would inherit all of his imperfections. He resolved to fund it out of his own wallet. He could cut costs by using spare parts, but now and then he required specialized materials that wouldn’t just show up in people’s trash. When Adam got a raise at work, Violet was the last to know.
As Adam maneuvered a screwdriver through the complex web of nerves and wires, he was careful not to rupture one of the airbags that were the robot’s muscles. Once he had left a pin point sized fracture in a muscle and didn’t find out until he commanded the robot to walk from one end of the room to the other. The robot’s left leg didn’t move at the same speed as the right leg, and the resulting confusion left the garage in a condition that it never really recovered from.
When he fixed the problem, he fashioned a test. Because his work kept him inside all weekend, he often forgot to bring the paper in, so that morning he sent the robot out to fetch the Sunday Times. Adam quietly opened the garage door, while the sound of a leaf blowing across the pavement indicated that the coast was clear. Just as it took two steps out the door, Adam rushed back inside to grab a stopwatch. He pulled it up from under some tools and bits of scrap metal, and started it. As he watched it tick past five seconds, he suddenly wondered what might keep the robot so long. The possibility that his machine might be standing motionless in the front yard sent him bolting towards the door. But as he looked outside, he saw him, newspaper in hand, coming up the driveway, and he shut the door behind it like a checkered flag.
It wasn’t until Monday morning he was rest assured that the machine hadn’t suffered some uncontrollable hiccup in completing its task. Trevor, the neighbour, swore they had spoken yesterday morning, though Adam hadn’t been out all weekend.
The machine excelled at what had been a very simple task. But he was not yet satisfied.
“Honey, come inside for dinner,” yelled the voice from the kitchen.
Adam muttered something about being too busy in reply.
“It’ll get cold,” insisted Violet.
“Well, you wanted me to lose some weight. And if you put it in the freezer, you won’t have to make me lunch tomorrow.” There was a clanging of metal utensils and he suspected that Violet had scraped the food off his plate and into the garbage. At least he hoped she did.
Once she tried to lure him back inside the house with the promise of sex. But when he turned her down, she cursed the machine as well as his sense of pride. He decided that to win her back, he’d give the machine a definitive gender: an attractive male.
His attention was currently fixed on finding the source of an energy drain. It’ll be like the beginning of any science fiction story, he thought. It starts with a mundane but mysterious problem, but it’ll end in the discovery of some malevolent yet mortal force that threatens to turn man’s creation against him. He paced around it, at once contemplating its inefficiencies and its looks. It wasn’t quite to his liking, but that wouldn’t matter if it kept leaking energy.
After considering everything from the neurotransmitters in its magnesium plated skull to the electrodes used to break down gasoline in its stomach, he figured he had found the source of the energy drain. He narrowed in on a small spot on the machine’s lower back and took out a clamp, a penknife, and other assorted tools for surgery.
Lying down on the floor to get below it, between its legs, he was startlingly reminded of how human it looked. He peeked over his shoulder, afraid to be caught in this delicate position. But then again, in his own garage, who would see him? Plus once he had broken him in, the robot would look like nothing more than a fuselage or the engine of a Mercedes.
First he’d have to break through the fiberglass shell he had spent so much time constructing, but tearing it apart became a guilty pleasure. Inside, he noticed that some of the regulators he had placed for lower brain activity had been knocked a little out of place since he last saw them. Placing the cover over them had evidently disturbed their positions and thrown one of them off circuit. It was just as likely that he damaged them while taking the cover off, but this new task had him thinking forward.
He found a dark hair line of crude oil on the underside of a fuel gasket, and using the edge of his wrench, lightly wiped it off like excess paint on an artist’s brush. The black line seemed to grow a touch wider, and as he squinted to make it out, the compartment breached and splashed crude oil over his face and down his jacket. Rather than retreating in frustration, he froze and only creeped back into action when the oil ceased running across the floor. He winced as he opened his eyes. The interior was coated in the black substance, making an assessment of the damage difficult to make. Grabbing a rag, he delicately washed the panels and corners of the machine, letting the oil on his jacket settle.
At this moment, and not a moment sooner, Violet entered the garage carrying a tray of the dinner she had fought herself from scraping into the sink. Adam remained on his back, scrutinizing the damage, hiding his dirty slacks and oily face from her disapproval.
“You know, you’ve come a long way with this thing,” she said, taking a step back to look at it. “At least it won’t look like all the other robots on the block.”
He pretended to be using his wrench as he turned imaginary bolts. “Now aren’t you glad we didn’t get the one from Sears?” He smiled.
“Absolutely. They don’t sell ones that look like this. Did you intentionally use your face as a model?”
Adam put down his wrench and picked up a screwdriver, to turn imaginary screws. There was something about her question that unsettled him. “How do you mean?”
“He has your cheeks,” she replied, tracing them with her finger. “Your forehead too. There’s something strikingly familiar about him.”
He was so rattled with tension that his hands remained motionless in the air.
“The only difference is that your robot is just a little bit taller, and is actually in shape.” Her sight trailed from the robot’s face to its chest, until she was looking down at him.
“Oh my god! Adam?”
“What!?!” his voice gave way to panic.
“Did you... did you give it a penis?”
“Huh?” he tried to get up, but halted when he feared he would hit his head on it.
“Of all the dumb, useless, bullshit things you’ve done. Now, you’re building sex organs for robots?”
Adam got up off the floor, exposing his oily face. But his darkened skin and clothing didn’t seem to offend her, all things clumsy and moronic were innocent now. Somehow he managed to utter a few words. “Oh you’re so superficial.”
She looked at him in astonishment. “This isn’t superficial! This is big... it’s big!”
He contemplated a comparison with Michaelangelo’s David, but stopped himself short. He was in danger of becoming irrelevant. “You won’t see it when I’m done. The whole thing will disappear under a protective panel. His pelvis hasn’t even been covered yet!”
“We don’t need to waste our money so you can have a pissing contest with the neighbours’ robots.” She turned away and opened the door, turned around for a moment, looked the robot up and down, then left.
Knowing he wasn’t safe in the house with an angry wife, Adam cleared space on a workbench so he could eat his dinner. His robot just stared forward.
Adam won her over in time. The completed robot was quite an accomplishment. He did all the chores that Adam never did. He walked the dog and folded laundry. Though Adam never removed the material between its legs that looked alarmingly like a penis, Violet was careful to make sure he hid it when guests arrived or when they took it outside. Finally, weekends could be enjoyed without the hassle of responsibility, while Adam devoted more of his time to working on his boat.
Then one afternoon, Adam creaked open the bedroom door, afraid to wake his napping wife. At first he swore she was alone, but he soon recognized the unmistakable presence of a second person. Its lifelessness had thrown him off. If he hadn’t recognized his own craftsmanship, he would have guessed that she had crawled into bed with the television set, or fallen asleep with a pile of pots and pans. He slowly shut the door and walked over to the garage, his place of solitude.
A sailboat, half completed, sat awaiting a master craftsmen. Adam brushed aside strips of wood and sawdust on the table and lifted his original designs for the robot. He studied every electrical circuit and every valve. Every detail had been planned and painstakingly produced, and still the machine continued to surprise him.
His cheeks widened to form a smile on his lips, and he went to work on his boat.
).
