In the Lives of Puppets

A 21-year-old Victor Lawson routinely visits the Scrap Yards—a dangerous habit that worries his father. He uses a pulley system of his own invention to make perilous ascents up mountains of discarded metal in search of useful parts. His progress is monitored by a petrified vacuum robot named Rambo and a medical robot called Nurse Registered Automaton To Care, Heal, Educate, and Drill, or Nurse Ratched for short. Victor found both robots in the Scrap Yards and repaired them years ago. Nurse Ratched threatens to dismantle the ever-anxious vacuum robot, but Victor knows that she just enjoys frightening Rambo and won’t make good on the threat. Rambo and Nurse Ratched are “his best friends in all the world” even though he is human and they are not (12).

Victor scales a pile of scrap and sees one of the machines called the Old Ones creating another heap in the distance. Victor secures a circuit board, but his triumph turns to fear when an Old One barrels toward him and sounds an alarm. Victor escapes the Old One’s attack by sliding down the scrap heap on a sheet of metal. The Old Ones never leave the Scrap Yards, and Victor rejoins Rambo and Nurse Ratched at the yard’s edge.

Night is falling by the time that Victor, Rambo, and Nurse Ratched return home. To his astonishment, he hears music and realizes that his father has at last managed to repair the record player. Giovanni tells his son, “Sometimes, it’s the smallest things that can change everything when you least expect it” (20). Giovanni’s chest pains him, and he reluctantly allows Victor to examine his heart, which is “made of metal and wood and shaped not like the organ but like a symbol of a heart” (23). Years ago, Giovanni crafted the heart to replace his depleted power cell. He also scraped the identifying digits and letters off of the metal plate on his chest after he received a name. While Victor repairs a loose wire in his father’s chest, Nurse Ratched informs Giovanni of Victor’s recent near-death experience with the Old One. Giovanni fears what harm could befall his son if he returns to the Scrap Yards, but Victor retorts that he can look after himself and that they wouldn’t have Rambo, Nurse Ratched, or the record player among other things if he hadn’t gone to the yards. Victor goes up to his room, which is built into a treetop, and takes out a box he keeps hidden under his bed. The box contains a rudimentary mechanical heart he started building at age 15, a backup for when his father’s heart inevitably gives out. Victor places the circuit board in the box and returns it to its hiding place.

A week later, Victor and his friends return to the Scrap Yards, which prompts Rambo to fear for his safety and ask if robots go to heaven. Victor explains that he doesn’t know if the stories about heaven are true, and Nurse Ratched offers to help them find out. Before entering the Scrap Yards, Victor, Nurse Ratched, and Rambo review their rules, which include sticking together, running if necessary, and being brave above all else. Victor locates the scrap heap the Old One deposited the week before and discovers that it contains the ruined pieces of androids. Nurse Ratched’s scans of the heap identify a power core with some energy left, and Victor digs through the mechanical body parts in the hope that he can use the core to power his father’s replacement heart. When an android suddenly seizes Victor’s wrist, Nurse Ratched shocks it and pulls her friend to safety. When Nurse Ratched and Rambo threaten the android, “a rough, gravelly voice” answers, “T-t-try it. See wh-wh-what happens” (45). The android’s core runs out of power, and it falls still and silent.

Victor hauls the android out of the pile and sees that it is male, has dark hair, and is missing its left arm and left foot. The android’s designation plate is mostly illegible, but Nurse Ratched determines that the android is at least 100 years old and theorizes that he was decommissioned like she and Rambo were. Victor finds the android “interesting in ways [he doesn’t] know how to explain” (50). He cuts his hand while helping the robots look for replacement limbs for the android, and the Old Ones’ horns blare when his blood hits the ground. However, the Old Ones don’t approach. Victor asks the robots to help him bring the android home with them and to keep it a secret from his father. Although they agree to help him, his friends point out that he’s asking them to lie to Giovanni.

Victor takes the android to his personal laboratory. When Nurse Ratched questions whether it is wise to bring the android back to life, he answers, “Everything deserves a chance” (56). Giovanni knocks on the laboratory door, and Nurse Ratched says that Victor is masturbating to make him go away. Victor, who identifies as asexual, is mortified by his friend’s improvisation. He hurriedly hides the android under a tarp and joins his father in the portion of the house at ground level. Victor admits to Giovanni that he went to the Scrap Yards that day, but he claims that he didn’t find anything.

It’s Rambo’s turn to pick the film for movie night, and he chooses Top Hat starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. During the film, Giovanni tells his family the well-known story of how humanity created machines and ended up destroying themselves because “they hated as much as they loved” (63). Victor excuses himself from movie night and returns to his lab. He asks the android for his name and backstory even though he knows the machine can’t answer. He touches the android’s face in fascination and promises to repair him.

Over the next two weeks, Victor repairs the android with Nurse Ratched’s help. She determines that the android has a stutter due to a damaged vocal center, but cautions that attempting to fix the component could do more harm than good. Victor and Nurse Ratched replace the missing arm and foot. Victor grows uncomfortable when they need to remove the android’s pants, and he is somewhat relieved to find that it has no genitalia. Victor uses pieces of bubinga wood to cover portions of exposed metal on the android’s face, chest, back, arm, and leg, and Nurse Ratched observes the wood makes the android look “like a puppet. A marionette” (71). However, they have yet to find a viable replacement for the depleted power core. Rambo wonders why his friend goes to so much trouble to repair what is broken. Nurse Ratched answers that Victor repairs machines, like the humans in Giovanni’s stories, because he is “[s]earching for a connection. Making something out of nothing so the spaces between us do not seem so far” (74). Victor explains that he believes all beings deserve free will and that he will always do whatever he can to help his friends. Nurse Ratched says that she would gladly do the same and teasingly suggests that Victor allow her to prove her point by operating on his heart. Her words give him an idea.

Because Victor was raised by an android who doesn’t experience emotions in the same way that he does, Victor has always struggled to understand, control, and express his feelings. As a result, much of the anger and blame he feels becomes directed at himself. Victor uses the heart he built for Giovanni, the recently acquired circuit board, and a drop of his own blood to bring the android back to life. It awakens and demands to know who Victor and his friends are and what they’ve done to him in a voice that is “deep and guttural. Pointed and sharp. Angry, borderline furious” (81). The android seizes Victor, and Nurse Ratched electrocutes him and heaves him back onto the lab table.

Like Rambo and Nurse Ratched, the decommissioned android can’t remember anything before the forest, including his name. Victor suggests the name Hap because those are the only legible letters on his designation plate. Hap examines his artificial heart in amazement, and Victor explains that he wanted to help Hap because he was hurt and that he is free to go if he wants to leave. The concept of having free will mystifies Hap. The android lunges toward Victor with blank eyes but stops himself with an effort of will. Then Hap storms around the lab in a fit of rage and confusion. When Giovanni comes to investigate the crashing sounds emanating from the lab, Hap steps between the other android and Victor, Nurse Ratched and Rambo with his “arms spread like wings” as if he’s trying to protect them from Giovanni (90).