Diminishing Returns
Sandrine felt her shoulders slump for the twelfth time that day.
It was by no means a record, but at that moment, it didn’t really matter.
“Lost, Sandrine? Again? Really?” Barney left the words hanging. The words dangled icily in the bright spring air.
Sandrine scanned the busy city intersection where they stood, desperately trying to find a street name and work out where they were.
Some of the buildings had changed recently so it didn’t match the map she had previously built up in her memory.
“I, uh -“ she started to try and explain.
“Don’t worry, just… just leave it,” Barney threw those last words over his shoulder as he was already striding towards a guy working at a kiosk, “I’ll just have to ask for directions. Again.”
Sandrine felt deflated once more.
This wasn’t an alien concept for Sandrine, in fact the feeling had been brewing inside her for quite some time.
They had been together now for five years.
Barney’s wife - Charlie and Mia’s mum - had passed away about six months before that.
There hadn’t been anyone before for Sandrine.
Barney was her first.
Her everything.
And it had been good for a while.
So good.
She would sit and talk with Barney for hours and she would try to help him through his grief as best she could.
And, whenever he or the kids needed her, she was there and it made her feel useful, good, loved.
They would thank her. They would thank her for what she loved to do.
For Sandrine that meant she had won.
Twice.
But then it started to fall apart.
First, the conversations started to dry up.
The words they did share became clipped and curt and Sandrine wondered if she had done something wrong or if there was any thing she could do to help change the brewing atmosphere, but any attempt to converse was met with a scarcely-masked boredom - bordering on contempt.
Sandrine loved helping, but more and more it felt like she was a being taken for granted, just part of the furniture,
Where she had been carried along on a wave of praise and thank yous at first, now she was lucky if she even got a grunt of tolerance.
Worse still, when things went wrong - and they did of course, because nothing is ever infallible - she bore the brunt of the misery.
It was her fault if the PE kits weren’t ready on the right day or the restaurant she had suggested didn’t have gluten-free options or she had said it wasn’t going to rain and then it did rain and everyone got absolutely drenched on the trip to the beach.
Or if she had got them lost.
She tried her best - she couldn’t help but try - but sometimes it just wasn’t enough.
Like today.
She snapped out of her thoughts, and shifted her attention from Barney to the kids.
Charlie and Mia.
They were Barney’s from when he was married before of course, but they meant the world to Sandrine already and, even after just a few days of meeting them, she had ached for them to call her ‘mother’.
But the one time Sandrine had offered that choice to them, they each pulled a face that cut the notion dead in its tracks, insisting that they should just stick with ‘Sandrine’.
And it had hurt of course, but she just kept herself busy and placated herself by doing everything she could for them, whenever she was able.
It started with just playing and being there for them, but it progressed to making meals, cleaning up after them and helping them with their homework. That was what Sandrine liked most because it tended to be right or wrong - there is no nuance in simultaneous equations or chemical formulae or photosynthesis.
She couldn’t get those answers wrong, not even if she tried.
Not like parenting.
That was a much trickier prospect.
Like when she had stuck up for Charlie against a gang of bullies after school. At first, when she had stepped in, she could see the relief on his face, but in only a few moments, it was replaced with a cold terror streaming down his face and shouts of “STOP!”
Another fleeting moment of pride, drowned out by sobbing and recriminations.
And Sandrine knew the sting of that day was enough to make sure she would never do it again.
The following years grew colder and, as they had got older, both Charlie and Mia had grown even more detached from her affections.
Teenagers.
And now they were sullenly waiting for their dad to work out where they were, stood an unspoken-but-mutually-agreed-upon distance apart, heads hung low as they swiped through an endless meme stream on their phones.
Sandrine took a half-step towards them, her hands reaching forward.
“Is there anything -“
Charlie just ignored her and carried on joylessly flicking through video after video.
Mia stopped, looked up and popped out one of her headphones.
“What?” she snapped back at Sandrine.
Sandrine smiled gently and started again: “Can I do anything for -“
“No, jeez. Just leave it, San-drine.”
Sandrine could never work out how Mia could get so much sass into just one word, but grinned back kindly regardless.
“Oh, OK Mia - if you need me, just shout for me!” she said, but Mia already had her headphones back in and was scrolling through videos of cats knocking increasingly bigger items off of shelves.
As she turned, Barney was making his way back from the nearby newsstand and checking his phone.
“So that guy over at the kiosk,” Barney said, gesturing behind without turning around or taking his eyes of his phone, “He reckons we can cut down this next street here and then we might - might - just make it in time.”
“Is there anything I can..?” Sandrine started.
“No!” Barney barked, before stiffly adding, “No, it’s… we’re fine.”
He half-smiled as they set off, but Sandrine wasn’t convinced.
About the smile or the information Barney had been given.
The street that they had been directed towards was only a few hundred yards away.
It would have been easy to miss if they had not been actively looking for it. It was narrow, perhaps half a car-width, with no road and brutal jutting walls from the buildings either side all but concealing the entrance.
“Down here, then,” Barney stood and directed them all down into the maw of the alley, waving his hands as if he was guiding traffic, “C’mon, chop-chop, a little bit of hustle.”
“Barney are you sure about this ? It looks a little bit…”
Sandrine didn’t get the chance to finish her sentence. Barney made a gesture with his fingers and thumb for her to shush and, although it was another painful blow in a day of painful blows, she dutifully obeyed.
However, they only had taken a few steps into the alley before a sickening feeling of impending dread enveloped them.
There was little lighting in the cut-through, save for what tried in vain to pour in from either of the ends - but neither source could penetrate through to the heart of the street, which was left in a perpetual hanging twilight.
“Well, now,” sneered a voice from the shadows, “What do we have ‘ere then?”
The group turned as one to see where the voice was coming from, but it seemed detached from any corporeal body - at least, there was no one there they could see.
“Ain’t you gonna talk to us then? What a pity. We were hoping we were gonna make some new friends, weren’t we lads?”
A splatter of laughter arose on all sides of the alley. Instinctively, the family tried to search out those voices too, but it was all echoes amongst the shadows.
“Look we just want to cut through here and get down to…” Barney spluttered, a strained formality in his tone.
The voice didn’t wait: “I don’t care what you want mush, not my concern. No, no - what I want from you is, well let’s start with everythin’ you got. Wallet, keys, cards, cash, phones…”
“Hang on a…” Barney started to reply.
“No, YOU hang on,” the voice gave no quarter and butted in again, before adding, “You don’t wanna antagonise my associates, do you?”
At the far end of the tunnel, the light of the world suddenly died as first one figure then another stepped out of the shadows and eclipsed the opening.
Meanwhile, behind the family, another figure emerged, filling the space where they had entered the alleyway.
There was no way to ascertain their size or build, but they were certainly big enough to kill the light and usher in the darkness.
“We don’t have much, please…” Barney, begged. You could practically hear the sweat rolling off his words.
“Not what I believe,” the voice retorted, “Not what I believe at all.”
Barney swallowed hard, trying to remain composed so as not to panic his kids.
“What about… uhhh…” Barney swallowed hard, “What about, ummm…”
He looked at Sandrine.
She smiled back at him.
Looking away, he said, “What about we give you our robot companion? She’s great and, well, she’s an older model, the original iBud, but she is a good runner - and even if you only sell her for parts…”
Sandrine couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Her facial servos did not allow her to look aghast - Barney had opted for a standard edition rather than the iBud Bro with all its high-end friendship options and downloadable emotes - but it’s how she felt inside.
After all she had done for Barney and Charlie and Mia.
They were her everything, but to them she was little more than a toaster.
The voice chipped back, “Nah, you’re all right mate - not that we have anything against synths, we just want your MONEY!”
Then the person behind the voice moved in the darkness, jumping down from their perch as if to underline their statement and then slowly but surely making their way towards the family and Sandrine.
“OK, well you leave me with no other option,” Barney puffed, although his voice creaked and cracked under the strain, “Sandrine, engage guardian mode.”
He waited for Sandrine’s reply to trill back to him.
Nothing.
“Engage. Engage, engage, engage. ENGAGE!”
Still nothing.
Barney broke from staring at where the voice was emanating from and looked at Sandrine through the glowering gloom.
She was stood, motionless. Her head cocked slightly to one side, as if she was processing the information, weighing up the options.
An almost imperceptible, benign smile crept across Sandrine’s otherwise blank face.
“No, I… I don’t think I will. Not this time. You’ve got this one, Barney.”
Barney spluttered as Sandrine’s head gently dropped to her chest.
The light and life flickered out of her eyes, leaving them flat and empty.
“Power… down.”
The voice came from Sandrine’s lips but it was flat and monotone and not her own.
And the surrounding shadows chuckled as they started to envelop the family.
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