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The Date

Jason Howell

    The package was delivered by billboard. Ernie McDougal woke up that morning to the sound of pounding footsteps and car alarms going off. He rolled out of bed and waddled to his front door, still in pajamas and shaking with excitement. He was not disappointed. The metal sign towered above the neighborhood, stepping over cars and power-lines, heading straight for Ernie’s house, this advertisement flashing all the time:
    “INSIDE Inc, INSIDE Inc, INSIDE, Inc. It’s what’s inside that counts. So bring the real you out. INSIDE Inc, INSIDE Inc, INSIDE Inc...”
    All the dogs up and down Boon Lane were going crazy. The kids waiting for the school bus gawked and shouted—the younger ones, who had never seen a billboard this close before, scurried back to their front doors, looking over their shoulders, sure they were about to be eaten. However, the big, flat monster merely stopped in Mr. McDougal’s yard and bent down. Two long, thin, metal arms extended a very large cardboard box to Ernie’s outstretched, wiggling hands.
    As he watched the billboard tramp into the horizon, heading back to its usual route up and down the freeway, Ernie thought, “What a brilliant marketing technique. I wish I could have an idea like that.”
    His own job was so much pencil pushing—and that side of it was the most positive. Being a plant supervisor meant he told people what to do, a prospect that made his stomach cramp every morning. But if he didn’t give orders his workers would come looking for him, demanding instructions.
    Hiding in the bathroom didn’t help; he was always eventually found, a sweating mess behind the stall door. Well, his job was going to be easier from now on.
    “No more hiding for me,” Ernie whispered as he stuck his head into the cardboard package marked with two capitalized I’s on the side. He almost fell right in.
    
    Work was pure delight. Ernie quivered inside his box, listening to his digital likeness bark hearty orders and give out brotherly commendations. Strangely, most of the employees pretended not to notice the change. No one offered any comment at all until Ernie approached them directly (which he could do now, with the touch of a button) and brought it up himself.
    “It looks really good on you. It really does. Yeah. Wish I had one,” the workmen would say when cornered. Usually the well-tanned, barrel-chested crew Ernie managed intimated him, but not today.
    “They respect me,” McDougal sighed from within his container. “And how could they not?”
    Indeed, the men could barely hold their grins on their faces, they seemed so happy for the manager.
    “Thank you for saying so,” the beaming image on the front of the box would reply.
    “How silly that this seemed difficult before,” the man inside chuckled.
    Still smiling, he would let his box remind his worker of their duties and then go on about his own—chubby little legs that peeked out from the bottom propelling the cube forward, eager for the next challenge.
    
    That afternoon after work, Ernie met a woman in an elevator and they hit it off, or rather, their boxes did. Furthermore, their boxes, after comparing personal data, decided to spend the rest of the evening together. They went out to eat, shared interesting stories and jokes, and saw a show. Then, at the end of their date, the boxes decided to have sex.
    Ernie was elated. He had set his box to pursue spur of the moment relationships but had not imagined the process would work as smoothly as this.
    When Ernie and his friend closed the door behind them their boxes took full control, as they had been programmed to do. Foreplay was about to begin and so the chance of embarrassment was too great of a risk for the humans to be trusted. The last thing they did was activate their sex ports.
    The boxes remained in holographic form for awhile. However, as things progressed and a rocking motion and thudding element developed, they automatically and necessarily solidified into tangible block shapes. The two cubes, already facing, now melded their glowing fronts together. Both lovers watched an image of the other on an internal screen from inside their boxes.
    She was slender yet full, mature but youthful, and infinitely gentle. Ernie, electrified by the suddenness of events as well as the activity itself, began losing himself.
    “Just this morning,” he thought, “this was impossible.”
    The fact impressed him so much that he began whispering it.
    “This was impossible before. It was impossible.”
    His excitement continued to grow when he said it out loud. Soon, he was shouting at the bouncing, twitching picture. When that image did not react, he leaned closer, wanting to tell her. He twisted against pumps and probes, becoming tangled in cords. The struggle only intensified his need to communicate, which, like himself and the wires, had become twisted together with his sexual desire. He was straining towards the shimmering wall and ignoring the beep of a warning alarm.
    Then, with a sad, wet noise, Ernie was tumbling out of his box. Sweaty, meaty folds smacked the cool sheets and then his back struck the cold floor. He lay there a moment, the sudden lack of sensation ringing through his trembling body like loud music turned off too quickly.
    Ernie strained up into a sitting position and looked around, rubbing the areas where the suction cups had jerked free. The boxes were still on the bed, shuttering and rocking against each other. He stood, dazed.
    As his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he perceived a shape across the room. The figure on the other side of the bed had not yet noticed him. He approached her. She was also on her back, having come to rest between the bureau and a wastebasket, leaning back on her elbows, knees in the air. She was also staring up in pained disbelief at the boxes.
    Ernie’s eyes darted up and down, hypnotized by the sight. She was bleach-white and imprinted with freckles that began at her forehead and continued down, decorating the top of her chest and back, peppering her shoulders and forearms. The cool air had raised goose-bumps everywhere. She had scrawny knees and a mannish cleft in her chin. Where her body folded skin bulged. Her matted hair stuck to her forehead and there were sweat-beads above her lips.
    This was so new. No commercial, poster, or movie; no daydream, fantasy, or masturbation session; not even the handful of hurried (almost apologetic) fumbling incidents with women who had prepped, plucked, and decorated themselves beforehand, could have equipped him to understand what he now saw. This was an alien. And she was terribly beautiful.
    He spoke. It was not a word, because, in his fascination, all Ernie could muster was a bit of air pushed over the roof of his mouth and through his nose. As he mumbled, Ernie started forward, hands outstretched, lips quivering. The strange flower raised her head.
    That’s when several things happen at once, very fast.
    Having yet to regain her bearings, the sight of a large, naked stranger with an awestruck expression coming towards her in the dark understandably alarmed Ernie’s date. She jumped up with a shriek. However, as she did so she remembered something that scared her even more: she was also naked.
    Ernie was still trying to explain and still finding no words. When the woman leapt up, he paused and took a step back—she looked almost ready to fight. The next instance, however, her face changed again. Her arms flew around her body, not to her breasts or genitals, but to cover her belly and hips. She was the one who finally found words and they were shrill, accusing, and on the edge of tears:
    “Don’t you look at me.”
    All spells were broken then. Ernie realized his nakedness as well and, with a little, whining moan of pain, fled to the opposite corner of the room.
    After a moment of blazing humiliation in which they realized there was nothing else to do, the humans began shuffling around the room, heads down, searching for their clothes and trying not to look at, or be seen by, one another. Meanwhile, the boxes had completed their imitation romance. The walls de-solidified and an “ERROR” message began flashing on all four screens.
     Ernie and his date, everything else pushed out of their minds, ran back to their bed of failure with fresh anxiety, forgetting each other and their shame, at least temporarily. Not even the flashing lights, spinning on the glass of the window and throwing shadows through the room in time with the rhythmic earthquake outside could distract the un-boxed lovers.
    Outside the motel, two billboards had stopped short; facing one another down. The one advertising a daily drug regimen to cure and keep freckles away had encroached on the Inside Inc billboard’s territory. It seemed a fight might break out until internal programming clicked and the two ads straightened up into friendlier postures. It turns out both companies belonged to the parent corporation. Holding each other, metal claw in claw, they tangoed up and down the boulevard, city-goers fleeing beneath their crashing feet, dancing away into the night.



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