Man'S Best Friend

A lonely man buys a box that tells the truth. The box is never wrong. The world is.

I bought it because I was lonely. Not because I needed it. You don’t need a dog. You buy a dog because the rooms are quiet and you want something in the house that’s glad to see you.

I had an apartment on the fourth floor. Two rooms and a kitchenette. The kitchenette had a hot plate and a sink that dripped on Tuesdays. The bedroom had a bed that sagged in the middle like a hammock for one. The living room had a chair, a lamp, and a window that looked out on a street that never changed.

I have a phone. It doesn’t ring.

The salesman was thin and precise. He wore a gray suit that fit him too well. He came to my apartment on a Wednesday. I know it was a Wednesday because the neighbor in 4B was playing his radio. On Wednesdays he played the symphony, always the same one, and I never knew which one it was because I don’t know symphonies. On other days he played nothing.

“You live alone,” the salesman said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes.”

“You’re home nights.”

“Most nights.”

“You’re the staying kind.”

“I guess I am.”

He nodded. He had a briefcase. He opened it on my kitchen table, which was the only table I had. Inside the briefcase was a box. The box was the size of a breadbox. It was black and smooth and had no seams.

“The company doesn’t sell these to just anyone,” he said. “Some people only want to win ball games.”

“I don’t bet on ball games.”

“Good. That’s not what it’s for.”

“What is it for?”

He looked at me. “It’s a quantum computer,” he said. The word meant nothing to me, and he saw that, and he stopped explaining.

“It’s a truth machine,” he said. “Market forecasts. Ball scores. Weather. Doctors’ opinions. It tells you the truth. The future is just where the truth spends most of its time.”

“Does it talk?” I asked.

“Only when asked,” he said. “It has manners.”

He said it like a man saying a dog had good manners.

I asked the price. He told me. I won’t tell you. It was more than a breadbox cost and less than a car. It was the kind of price that makes you think about what you have and what you don’t. I had a job and a pension building up. I had nothing that spent money on me.

I paid his price and took it home.

It sat on my desk and hummed. A low, even hum, like a cat with nothing on its mind. It didn’t glow or beep. It just sat there and hummed.

I named it. Call it Dog.

The first week I asked it about the market. The radio said steel was going up. The paper said steel was going up. Two men at the office said steel was going up. One of them had a brother in the steel business, and the brother said steel was going up, and the man told the other man, and the other man told me, and I almost bought steel.

“Steel goes down,” Dog said. “Tuesday.”

“The paper says Monday,” I said. “It says steel goes up Monday.”

“The paper is wrong. Steel goes down Tuesday.”

I didn’t buy steel. I thought about it on Monday. The paper had been so sure, and the radio, and the brother in the steel business. I almost called my broker.

Tuesday, steel went down. It fell like something dropped off a roof. My broker called me. He said I was lucky. He said I had good instincts. I didn’t tell him about Dog. You don’t tell a man about a dog that talks.

I asked it about the ball game. The Giants and the Cardinals. The radio man said the Giants had it in the ninth. Two outs, two on, and the Giants up by one. The radio man was excited. You could hear it in his voice.

“Cardinals by two,” Dog said. “Final score 7-5. The name of the man who drives in the winning run is a rookie. First time up.”

I wrote it down. I don’t know why. The rookie’s name was Lopez. I put the paper in my shirt pocket.

The morning paper agreed with Dog. Giants lost 7-5. A rookie named Lopez drove in the winning run with a double in the ninth. The radio man never mentioned it again.

I asked it about the weather. The radio said fair and warmer. The paper said fair and warmer. The window showed fair and warmer.

“Snow before noon,” Dog said.

“It’s May,” I said.

“May is wrong. It’s January. Snow before noon.”

I looked out the window. The trees had leaves. The sky was blue. The man across the street was washing his car. It was May. It was warm.

It snowed before noon. A foot of it. The trees with leaves caught it like nets. The man across the street stood by his car with the hose in his hand and watched the snow fall on his clean car. The evening paper called it a freak storm. The weatherman made a joke of it on the radio. Nobody called it impossible. Nobody called it anything.

Then it brought up the doctors. I hadn’t asked. I was eating breakfast. Cereal and coffee, the same as every morning. The radio was on. The radio was always on. It didn’t wag its tail.

“See a doctor,” Dog said. “Your heart.”

I put down the spoon. The cereal was getting soft. I don’t like soft cereal. I like it crunchy.

“I feel fine,” I said.

“The doctor will tell you you’re fine,” Dog said. “He’ll be wrong. See a different doctor.”

“I don’t have a different doctor.”

“You do now.” Dog gave me a name and an address. I wrote them down. I finished my cereal. It was soft. I drank my coffee. It was cold.

I called the new doctor. He had an office on the other side of town. I took the bus. The bus was late. Dog had said it would be. I waited at the stop and watched the street. The car across the way was in its usual spot. The newsboy grinned and said, “Paper, mister?” Same words as every morning. The neighbor in the gray coat crossed the corner at the same minute he’d crossed it yesterday.

The doctor was different from the first one. He didn’t smile. He listened, and he took his time. He used the little rubber thing and the cold metal thing and the light thing. He looked at me like I was a car he was thinking of buying.

“There’s a murmur,” he said. “You can’t hear it. It’s small. But it’s there.”

“How bad?”

“Right now? Not bad. In a year? Maybe bad.”

He said they could fix it. He gave me another name, a specialist. The specialist had hands like a pianist. He said they’d go in through the ribs. He said it was routine. He said routine like a man who’d done it a hundred times.

They fixed it. I woke up in a hospital bed with tubes in my arm and a nurse who smiled like she meant it. The nurse was real. I could tell. She was worried about me. She brought me Jell-O. You don’t bring a man Jell-O if he’s scenery.

I never saw the first doctor again. Dog had been right about him. I didn’t ask why.

After that I checked everything. I bought a telescope. Dog told me where to look. I looked where it said. The stars were there. They were in the right places. But the atlas I bought at the bookstore didn’t match the sky. The atlas said one thing, the sky said another. I bought another atlas, and another. They all agreed with each other. They all disagreed with the sky.

I put the atlas away and didn’t think about it again. You don’t think about the sky. It’s the sky.

Then the year. The paper said 1963, and the radio, and the President, and the man at the newsstand, who said it every morning with the same grin. “All the news that’s fit to print.”

“1965,” Dog said.

I counted the days, twice, with a calendar I bought and with the marks on my wall. The paper’s dates didn’t fit. Nothing fit. There was no way to check a year. The whole world agreed on being wrong about it, and the world was all I had to check against. Except Dog.

I started watching the street. I sat in my chair by the window and I watched. For a week. The car across the way never left its spot, not by an inch, not by a dent. The newsboy grinned at the same corner. The neighbor crossed in the gray coat at the same minute.

Nobody moved away. Nobody died. Nobody got sick. The paper ran an obituary every morning. I read them. Every one. Never for anyone I’d seen on the street, never for anyone in the building. The families in the windows sat at their tables like furniture.

I went down to the street. I walked to the newsstand. The newsboy grinned at me.

“Paper, mister?”

“Who are you?” I asked.

He kept grinning. “Paper, mister? All the news that’s fit to print.”

“Your name. What’s your name?”

He kept grinning. “Paper, mister?”

I bought the paper. I walked to the corner. The neighbor in the gray coat was crossing. I stepped in front of him.

“Good morning,” I said.

He walked through me. Not around me. Through me. Like I wasn’t there. Like I was smoke.

I went back to my apartment. I sat in my chair. Dog hummed.

One night I asked it straight.

“Dog. Is the world wrong?”

“Yes,” Dog said.

“About everything?”

“About everything it tells you.”

“Then what’s true?”

“You ask. That’s true.”

I sat with that. The hum went on. The window showed the street. The street showed the car, the newsboy, the neighbor. You had to ask for the rest.

I didn’t ask right away. I waited. I sat in my chair and watched the street and thought about being the only one asking. On the third night I asked.

“Dog. Am I the last man on Earth?”

A long hum. Longer than usual. Then:

“No. You’re the first man on Mars.”

I looked at the window. The street was still there. The car, the newsboy, the neighbor, all of it.

“How long?” I said.

“Since the shuttle. You don’t remember the shuttle. You weren’t supposed to.”

“The people on the street,” I said.

“Aren’t people.”

“The newsboy?”

“A program.”

“The neighbor?”

“A loop.”

I was quiet for a while. The hum filled the room.

“The nurse,” I said. “The one who brought me Jell-O.”

“Real. She’s on the station. She monitors you. She watches you sleep and eat and talk to me. She thinks you’re sane. She’s not sure.”

“She thinks I’m crazy?”

“She thinks you’re talking to a breadbox. She doesn’t know what I am.”

“The others?”

“Scenery. They keep you from being lonely.”

I looked out the window. The street was still there, the car, the newsboy grinning at nobody. I could almost smell the coffee from the shop on the corner that wasn’t there.

But the sky. The stars were wrong, and the year, and the atlas. Everything was wrong except the thing on my desk that hummed.

I didn’t ask Dog if it was the only thing that was real. I already knew.

Outside, the snow fell on the trees that had leaves. The newsboy grinned. He’d keep asking forever. He was a program and he was very good.

The hum went on. Dog sat on my desk, looking like a breadbox, sounding like a cat. I’d bought it because the rooms were quiet. It was glad to see me.