Doctor Mason Lee never understood why so many great engineers of the past struggled with their biomechanical cell cultures dying almost immediately. It made that particular brand of layman’s science fiction more entertaining, he supposed, with the valiant hero racing against the clock to solve whatever microscopic issue was threatening Earth, before both he and the rest of humanity met their doom. The doctor found it laughable, absurd, even—and he used that word sparingly, as it was the highest insult he knew—that mankind needed millenia to figure out how to invent a proper mech cell. But, of course, a large part of that was because it took mankind millenia to invent him. Had Dr. Lee been born sooner, humanity would have gotten one hell of an adrenaline shot, he knew that much. 

He’d discovered the key to the perpetual mech cell at fifteen (though he never referred to it as a ‘mech cell,’ as that was a term soiled by pop culture), and the only reason it took him that long was because he didn’t have access to the Adelaide University laboratories until then. They were crude, but they would do. 

He quickly found the problem lay just where he’d expected, in the fact that the culturing algorithm failed to account for the relatively fast corrosion of the steel molecules while overestimating the mass lost through gas diffusion by up to eighteen percent. The mech cells were oversaturated with oxygen and swelling with cytoplasmic rust, then lysing. All that needed to change was the environment in which they were tested. He’d laughed at the ceiling, startling his lab-mates when he discovered it. He was alone, living in a lifeless world of idiots. 

The university had offered him a full-ride following that, as well as a dormitory named after him, but six better universities had offered him better full-rides and better dormitories. At the University of Paul’s Canyon, George Washington Hall became Mason Lee Hall. 

He was awarded his doctorate and a faculty position at nineteen, which he put to use dating as many students as he could wear down. Despite a lifetime’s worth of first dates, he rarely got a second, which he attributed to his intimidating personage. At the age of twenty-six, he put in for a mail-order bride. 

When Savia arrived, she was wearing a well-fitted white pencil skirt with a pale pink blouse, the top three buttons of which were undone. She stepped off her twenty-hour flight with dressing-room fresh honey-amber hair, and an opaque blot of crimson lipstick spread creamy on her lips. 

He’d wondered if she knew it didn’t match the blouse.

She’d strode toward him before he even held the sign up, as if she already knew exactly who he was, even though the photos had only gone one way. Her white heels had struck the linoleum dispassionately, carelessly, as if she were walking down a grocery store aisle instead of toward her new husband. 

Upon reaching him, he’d opened his mouth to say hello and stiffly stuck out his hand, and she’d dropped her pink tote bag into it and started for the exit. Lee stood there blinking for a minute afterwards, wrapping his fingers around the bag’s handle as if to assure himself of what just happened. 

Somewhat numbly, he headed for the exit and emerged into the bright-white day, shielding his eyes from the sun to try and see where his new wife had gone. After searching the pick-up zone for her up and down three times and beginning to believe she’d run off, he’d pulled out his phone to dial the police and report her before coming to stand in front of his own car and seeing her in the passenger seat, staring indifferently at him. 

Smothering the chill that came over him—how did she know which car was his?—he pointed a furious finger at her and said, “Never do that again!” He pulled the driver’s side door open, threw her bag in the backseat, and started the car. 

* * * 

At home she rarely kept to the room he’d designated for her. 

He’d even tried to make it homey for her, with generic art prints he’d picked up from a home decor store and a light blue bedspread he felt was very feminine. The room had a large window overlooking his small backyard—he, of course, could have afforded a much larger property, but what use did he have for outdoor entertainment space?—with curtains that matched the comforter. The set had been discounted along with it. 

Despite this, and despite his repeated heavily-enunciated explanations that she was meant to stay in this room unless going out on errands, he often found her in his study, his library, his sitting room, and even his small home laboratory. Once, he’d found her standing in his bedroom, staring out his front-facing window at the house across the street, and that was the only instance he insisted she stay. 

He’d been hoping to cancel his cleaning service and fire his cook, but he quickly found her to be equally incompetent in both domains. He’d have to spray the counters himself and then physically place a cloth in her hands before she’d wipe them off, and he’d have to purchase a frozen lasagna and preheat his own oven before she’d be willing to slide it inside. 

He found her habits to be strange at best, infuriating at worst. The woman would leave taps running all over the house, and once he caught onto it and had the maids make regular rounds to check them, she simply started doing it at night, when the maids were gone and he was asleep. 

He began looking into getting a separate water line for his lab and personal bathroom. 

She would also spend an increasingly large amount of her time gazing out of the front windows, and later simply standing in the front yard, staring ahead into oblivion. He felt himself breaking down and softening to the point of offering her a room at the front of the house, if it meant she wouldn’t stand in the yard like some sort of phantom. 

She accepted—one of the few times she spoke to him in her deep, red voice—and he had her things moved. While he was overseeing the maids, he was surprised to see her pink tote bag, her sole personal item, had yet to be unpacked, even though she’d been living with him for six months. 

The bed took the longest to move, as it had to be disassembled, and he stepped in to lend his mechanical mind to the girls to help take it apart. Once it was put back together in the new room and it was re-dressed in the blue comforter, he dismissed the maids and stood alone. His wife had disappeared while they were taking down the curtains. 

It was odd—he sensed her absence much more than her presence. She almost felt more tangible, more unavoidable when she wasn’t visible, as if she could materialize anywhere, as if you could step out of the shower and find her cross-legged on your bathroom counter, gazing into her own reflection. 

Next to the foot of the bed sat her tote bag. It was still full, still bulging at the sides. With a wary glance at the door, he knelt down and pulled it toward him. It took him a minute to find the zipper—it was made of clear plastic and blended in with the bag. He yanked on it. It rose only an inch before snagging. 

He yanked harder, but it did not budge, so he jammed his fingers inside the small opening and groped underneath the zipper, and found a wad of pink thread caught in it. He stood up to retrieve a pair of scissors, but footsteps on the stairs startled him, and he hurried out of the room. 

* * *

Her behavior eased following the room change. She no longer ambled around the house, or left water running, or stood in the yard. Finally, she was content staying put whenever he wasn’t in need of her. 

This was excellent news, as he was beginning to think of a new way to occupy her: he’d decided he wanted a family. 

His closest friend at the university had recently gained a son, and the adoration in his voice alone had sold Lee on the idea. 

He hadn’t asked Savia if she wanted children. He hadn’t paid her way to him to ask her opinion. He simply told her he wasn’t going to use protection anymore. She hadn’t said anything. 

Months passed without success, and he began to wonder if she was taking something to keep him from his son. He confronted her about it, searched all her drawers, had the cook prepare all her meals for her, but there was no progress. 

He’d cursed her name to his friend, who’d set a reassuring hand on his shoulder and told him some women just weren’t lucky that way. 

He was nearing a breakdown by their anniversary, and he spent it alone in his lab, fussing over his equipment and wondering at how it was legal to bioengineer a mech cell but not an heir. Why should one be different from the other? 

Scientifically speaking, he could do it. It may even be a fun side project. He already had all the tools, as well as a free incubator. 

In fact, why not go even further? Why couldn’t he inject his wife with mech cells, program her to do what he had her shipped in for? 

Slamming his fist into the workbench, he let out an anguished groan and cradled his head in his arms, and eventually fell into an irritable sleep. 

* * * 

The night of rest clarified what needed to be done. He gave the cook the week off and prepared every one of Savia’s meals, each well-mixed with fifteen CCs of mech cells in solution. He had to keep to soups and pastas with heavy sauces in order to disguise the cells, and he had to over-season each dish to cover up the metallic taste. 

Every night he presented her with the meals, then took his seat across the table and watched her eat. He’d take a bite or two from his own plate, but the thick, bodily smell of cooking with the solution usually stole his appetite. 

After a week had passed and she had consumed more than enough programmed cells to have an effect, he tested her out. 

“Go wash the dishes,” he said after his final self-made dinner.

She stood and walked over to the sink, and his breath caught. Had his nightmare finally ended? 

His wife twisted the tap on and walked away. 

* * * 

He suffered the final embarrassment when a colleague of his dropped him off following a university event where he’d had a bit too much to drink, and they pulled into his driveway to find the ghostly outline of his wife standing in her window in the darkness, illuminated only by the white headlights. 

The brief shock on his colleague’s face followed by the bellowing laugh and the “That’s your wife?” were enough for Lee to finally take action. He stumbled out of the car, to the front door, fumbled with his keys, and struck the door open with a fist finally ready to take charge, then tripped over a camera in the entryway. On his knees, he shouted for Savia to come down. 

When he looked up, she’d appeared in front of him. 

“What is wrong with you? Were you dropped on your head? Are you stupid? Is that it? You are the single most incompetent woman I’ve ever met!” She said nothing. 

“I knew I made a mistake the instant I saw you dressed up like an expensive whore. I guess that’s what you are! You’re my ten-thousand dollar live-in whore!” She said nothing. 

“I’m not too proud a man to admit when I’ve messed up. I’ve carried on this experiment as long as I can. I’ll pay your airfare back. Now go upstairs! I don’t want to see you again tonight!” 

She turned and vanished into the darkness. 

* * * 

The next morning, he purchased her an economy ticket on the first flight available and drove her to the airport. 

As soon as he pulled into the drop-off zone, she opened the door without hesitation and started toward the entrance without a word to him, or, he thought bitterly, a final word from him. 

He watched as she disappeared into the airport and became lost in the crowd of travelers, then rolled down his window, spat on the ground, and sped off.

When he got home, he felt as though he could breathe for the first time in a year. She was gone. She was finally gone. His home was his own again. Of course, that meant his bed was entirely his own again, but that could be fixed easily enough. He’d be more careful this time, vet the catalog more thoroughly. Maybe even hold an interview beforehand. 

Finally, he could entertain colleagues again without worrying about his wife passing through the room as a ghost, never uttering a word, just to leave the guest bathroom shower running and go back upstairs. Finally, his life could return to normal. After all, every reasonable man was a bachelor at heart. 

He worked in his lab without fear of her appearing over his shoulder, he ate his dinner without the knowledge of her lurking somewhere in the house, staring, waiting, and he settled into his bed that night with the strongest feeling of relief that he would never awake to her standing over him. Instead, he awoke to a loud thud from the other corner of the house. 

Warily, he told himself it was only the tail-end of a bad dream, and pressed himself down into his mattress. He closed his eyes. An hour passed. With a grunt he threw the covers off, wedged his feet into his slippers, and stomped down the hall loud enough to rattle the pictures on the walls. He threw her door open, and sitting on her still-made bed was the pink tote bag, open, having spilled its contents onto the floor. 

He looked down at the collection of digital cameras and photos now splattered across the bedroom. With his pulse in his ears, he stepped forward, and his foot sunk down into the wet carpet. Disgusted, he jerked back and pressed himself into the doorframe. The entire floor was soaked, the photos curling at the edges. 

Fingers shaking, he reached down for the nearest one. It was him, asleep in his lab. The next was the back of his head as he read in his study. His throat constricted—there was a one-foot clearance between his chair and the wall. There was no way she could have been standing behind him. 

The next was him laughing with the department chair in the den over drinks. It was taken head-on, within both of their lines of sight, but he knew she hadn’t been there. 

Photo by photo he found his life documented in private moments by someone who had stolen access to them. The pictures became increasingly personal, increasingly humiliating. The next-to-last one was the final time he’d put her to use doing the one thing she was capable of doing, but she wasn’t in the photo. It was taken from the side of the bed, him on top of nothing.

With bile rising in his throat, he reached for the final picture. It was him in her room after he’d moved her, pulling at the bag’s zipper. It was taken from a window across the street.