A STORY by ALEX MILLER
Giant Robot
Cleveland, Ohio
Brad won’t stop. He texts me for hours, all through my shift at Burger King until the manager tells me to put away the phone. The texts keep coming as I ride the bus and later as I cry alone in bed at Mom’s apartment. Occasionally I send a terse reply, but mostly I watch his messages pile up, one on top of another, a Babel Tower of empty words, the weight of their collective vacuousness stealing my breath, crushing, flattening me to a thin paste of speechless molecules.
Brad demands forgiveness. Wants me to tell him we are OK, even after he fucked my friend Jennifer Robinson. Former friend. Brad wants me to tell him I still love him. Funny. All this hurts so bad because I do love him. Did love. It is not love that hurts but the sudden absence of it, as if his greedy fingers ripped the love right out of me.
I trudge downstairs to the kitchen, run water in the kettle for tea. My eight-year-old brother, boldly flouting his bedtime, takes a seat by the counter. Jeremy plays with a plastic robot action figure. Lately he has become obsessed with a long-running Japanese cartoon about giant robots battling in space. Jeremy gives me a blow-by-blow recap of a fight between a good robot and a bad one, which is more like a dinosaur. I interrupt, tell him to go to bed. He pouts and continues playing with the robot.
My phone lights up, vibrates on the counter. Another text. Brad says I am a cold bitch for ignoring him, and selfish and always so fucking dramatic, and that’s what drove him away, and anyway I’m just a sore loser because nobody wants me anymore.
I take a breath, release it.
I ask my brother if he has ever had a girlfriend. He ignores me, makes gunfire noises with his mouth. I change tactics, ask how the good robot defeated the dinosaur robot. Jeremy’s eyes spring open. He grins eagerly, explains that the good robot shot it in the face with a rocket gun, sliced it in half with a laser sword. Bloodlust reddens my young brother’s cheeks. I ask where the robots come from. Jeremy smiles. Stiffens. Grows serious. He whispers about a secret moonbase. I like the sound of it. Somewhere hidden. And quiet. And far out of cellphone range.
Earth/Space Sector Zero
We strap into the cockpit and manipulate the control panel’s complex geography of blinking lights and metal switches. The colossus hums as it powers up—a symphony of electrical systems, fusion cores, and gently reverberating alloy plates. Jeremy and I exchange a nod before takeoff, fire thrusters in unison, brace ourselves as the mech vibrates like rolling thunder. Then we fly. Metal arms reach skyward as the machine enters the stratosphere, ionosphere, higher, faster. Our trajectory is a golden arc shining brilliantly against the dark silence of space. Below us, the lights of civilization twinkle quaintly, as little people live out their little lives.
We kill the thrusters and settle into orbit. Breath fogs my respirator as the cold sinks in. Jeremy taps the nav display. Frowns. The moon remains a long way off, the journey fraught with danger. I squeeze my brother’s hand—a gesture intended to comfort him and perhaps myself—before engaging the accelerator, pushing it to maximum. The robot shudders and responds. We are a bright metal star piercing the void.
The comms channel hisses with static, followed by a mocking message from the enemy. He vows to destroy me, scatter my glowing atoms across the vacuum of space. Says I deserve it for being such a cold bitch. I kill the audio, curse under my breath. Now the HUD flashes red. Klaxons blare. Adversaries crowd the view screen, bearing down fast. Skirmish-class fighters advance in a pincer formation, backed by an armada of killer robots armed with plasma blades and hypersonic missiles.
Are you ready, brother?
Jeremy replies by activating the railgun.
Smart boy.
We will fight many battles.
Alex Miller is the author of the novel “White People on Vacation” (Malarkey Books, 2022). His fiction has appeared in Flyway, Pidgeonholes, and MoonPark Review. He lives in Denver.