Unfit for Purpose by Ramez Yoakeim
3900 words, ~20 minutes reading time
Issue 5 (Summer 2024)
Marwa caught the movement out of the corner of her eye—tiny figures darting among the sycamores and clumps of dwarf palms dotting the park across the street. She squinted through the Dome’s filtered sunlight and convinced herself it was the twins from three floors down. For a moment, she thought they noticed her waving, but neither looked up.
Behind her, Asfoor chimed impatiently. “Marwa, stop daydreaming and focus.”
“Can we go down to the park, just for a little while?”
“You haven’t finished your lessons, and it’s not your turn today.”
Marwa whined, crossing her arms. “When it’s my turn, there’s never anyone else down there!”
Between the strict household isolation observed in New Cairo and her mother’s job overseeing Dome Maintenance bots, it seemed at times to Marwa as if no one existed aside from her and Asfoor, the OmniCare tutor and companion bot she’d known her entire life. Asfoor let her bend some rules on occasion without tattling on her, but it didn’t make him any less annoying. “Please?”
“What if your mother notices us gone? Then we’d both get in trouble,” The resonant bass note in Asfoor's voice increased, which he often attempted to end debates. “Now, concentrate. You know this: what is the basic geometric element of a geodesic dome?”
“If you’re sure I know the answer, why ask?”
The status lights under Asfoor’s transparent hemispherical top danced excitedly for a moment before settling down. “Without the Domes, humanity would have perished. It’s every Cairene’s duty—”
“—to preserve our Dome. I know that too. You only mentioned it a million times.”
“How many mentions a day add up to a million in six years?”
Groaning, Marwa abandoned her perch by the window and dashed out of her bedroom. Asfoor followed, whistling in protest. “We haven’t finished today’s lessons yet.”
She ignored him and made for her mother’s study, hoping to catch her in another of her distracted moods, too engrossed with work to deny Marwa’s entreaty to go out and play, despite whatever Asfoor might say. As she neared the door left ajar, she caught fragments of conversation, unintelligible over the hum of environmental systems. Behind her, Asfoor’s wheels squeaked. Marwa shushed him and peeked around the doorframe.
The TelePresence projection of a stranger sat facing her mother’s desk. The avatar wore a glossy deep-blue suit and pale-yellow open-necked shirt and matching pocket square. A full head of dark hair, a thick moustache, and neatly trimmed goatee framed his well-rounded face. How he looked in real life was anyone’s guess.
“Wait,” Marwa’s mother interrupted the stranger using a tone Marwa had always assumed was reserved for her, a blend of exasperation and long-suffering patience. “What do you mean unfit for purpose?”
“Just that, madam. That model has been obsoleted by the OmniCare company.” The man moistened his fleshy lips with the tip of a pink tongue. “How long have you had it?”
“We bought him second-hand six years ago, when Marwa was two. Until software updates stopped four months ago, he never missed one.”
“Alas, this unit’s hardware is too old for updates, and its neural matrix architecture too antiquated to support new hardware. We can’t guarantee its safe operation any longer, I’m afraid. Obsolete tech belongs in a reclamation center.”
Marwa glanced at Asfoor but he showed no signs the stranger’s words bothered him. How could he not care that this stranger wanted to take him away, when she refuses to even consider that he might not be there in the morning when she wakes up?
Her mother leaned closer to the stranger’s hologram and video emitters. “Surely, you don’t mean Marwa’s in danger?”
“I’m not saying anything is likely to go wrong today or tomorrow, but without these necessary updates …” The stranger spread his hands, palms up. “Let me put it this way: I wouldn’t want it around my child.”
“Marwa’s quite attached to Asfoor.”
“Sparrow? How charming,” the stranger chuckled. “Let me assure you Marwa won’t spend a single day without a carer. I can arrange for a replacement unit to be delivered today. One that’s smarter, more relatable, and much better at forming lasting bonds with children, earning their trust, even love.”
“New bots aren’t cheap.”
The stranger waved away the objection. “No one buys bots outright anymore. You’ll find the lease payments quite affordable.”
“But what do I tell my daughter?”
“Tell her the bot is broken and she’ll have a replacement while it’s being repaired. I guarantee after a couple of days, she won’t even remember her old bot.”
Before her mother could respond, Marwa charged into the study, her stomping feet drawing a surprised look from her mother that immediately morphed into one of embarrassed censure. “Mama, you can’t throw Asfoor away. He’s my friend.”
“What have I told you about eavesdropping on grownup conversations?”
“But grownups are allowed to lie?”
The stranger startled and seemed on the verge of saying something before forcing a thin smile instead. “I should leave you to discuss it. Let me know what you decide.” His projection winked out, leaving parent and child to bridge the chasm he’d opened.
Tears, pleas, and vigorous tantrums all proved equally ineffective in changing her mother’s mind: Asfoor was no longer safe to have around Marwa and that was that. Worst of all, Asfoor seemed utterly unperturbed by their separation, saying goodbye as if saying goodnight, and leaving without protest when his replacement arrived.
Unlike Asfoor’s grey cylindrical body with its pastel-rainbow stripes and clear domed head, his child-sized android replacement flaunted black braided faux-hair, brown textured polymer skin, black lens eyes, and knobby knees peeking under the hem of a purple-and-yellow floral dress. When her mother asked what she’d like to call her new carer, Marwa stormed off crying, shutting out the world under a mound of pillows. At some point, she fell asleep and awoke with a start an hour past midnight, her belly grumbling, having missed dinner.
She went to the kitchen for something to eat when the sight of the doll-like bot, standing in a corner, made her jump.
“You missed dinner, Marwa,” the doll stated, its voice soulless for all of its human-like richness, so unlike Asfoor’s mechanic tones that didn’t pretend to be anything else, “would you like a snack?”
Instead of responding, Marwa glowered at the doll, angry and powerless to do anything about it. Yet, out of her seething helplessness, an idea blossomed into a daring plan. Acting quickly before her mother woke up, or her courage failed her, Marwa raised her chin, like she had seen her mother do, ignored her pounding heart, and went to the front door to call the elevator.
“You’re not permitted out at night. Where are you going?”
“To the park across the street, I missed my exercise slot.”
“You’re supposed to wait for the next slot when you miss one.”
Marwa crossed her arms and frowned in imitation of her mother. “Asfoor let me go anytime I wanted,” she lied.
The elevator car arrived and began its UV sanitization cycle.
“If you try to leave, I’ll have to wake up your mother.”
“You do that and I’ll tell her you hurt me when I tried to play with you.” Marwa pinched her own arm and almost yelped from the unexpected jolt. “She’ll throw you out immediately. You saw what happened to Asfoor, do you want the same to happen to you?”
That seemed to befuddle the doll. “That would be a lie.”
The elevator chimed and parted its doors, releasing a whiff of ozone that made Marwa’s nose tingle. “You don’t know people very well, do you?”
The whole way down, Marwa’s heart thudded in her chest. She half-expected the elevator to stop and reverse course at any moment, but when it reached the ground floor, Marwa hesitated only a heartbeat before half-running to the nearest tram stop. She’d ridden it with her mother many times, but never alone in the middle of the night.
To reach the nearest reclamation center at the outskirts of the city, where the geodesic Dome plunged into the gritty desert bedrock, required an hour-long trip, which Marwa spent alone in one of the sole-occupancy compartments at the rear. Unsurprisingly, given the hour, the only other passengers were bots in the open hold upfront. When the tram finally reached the end of the line, she alighted and instantly felt unsure of herself. The city looked different at night, its landmarks and thoroughfares indistinguishable in the shadows. For a heartbeat, the impulse to hop back onboard the tram and head home almost overwhelmed her, but to do so would have meant giving up on Asfoor, for good, when he never once gave up on her. Instead, Marwa marched to the nearest city kiosk and interrogated it for directions.
Unlike the city’s gleaming steel and glass buildings, the reclamation center was a drab windowless concrete cube. A wide ungated entrance led to a helical ramp that wound its way up to higher floors. Marwa’s nose itched in air heavy with rust and old grease from bots of all shapes, sizes, and colors that packed every nook and cranny, largely obscuring the dirty grey concrete walls as far up the ramp’s turns as Marwa could see. Her ears hummed with thousands of little ticks, scuffs, and muted clangs as bots turned to regard their unusual nocturnal visitor.
For a while, she wandered the ground floor, in awe of the vast array of machines crammed up to the ceiling. When she set out from home, the idea of defiantly retrieving Asfoor seemed imminently reasonable, but now, standing before this impossible task, Marwa struggled to contain her frustration.
A sudden whir of movement brought her face-to-face with an eight-legged spider bot. Her head snapped back, eyes wide, and she fell backwards, screaming.
“Are you injured?” a tinny voice asked from the bottom of the spider’s orange cubic head.
Marwa’s face flushed. It was silly to get scared of a bot. Ever since she was little, her mother taught her machines were partners and friends, deserving of respect, and in Asfoor’s case—Marwa decided on her own—love. “No. I’m fine.” She regained her feet and tried in vain to rub the dirt off her now grubby palms. “You surprised me, is all. I never saw a bot that looks like you before.”
“Not many people do. Before being decommissioned, I worked on external dome repairs, and rarely spent any time inside.”
She almost asked if the bot knew her mother but held her tongue. What if the spider tattled on her? “My name is Marwa, what’s yours?”
“I’m NCDM-7424. What brings you here, Marwa?”
Marwa almost asked what its friends called it, but remembered her manners and held her tongue, not wanting to embarrass the spider. What if it liked its name the way it is, or worse, had no friends? In her head, she considered several lies before deciding to tell the truth. She feared, without help, she’d never find Asfoor.
“Are you sure it was disposed of in this reclamation center?”
“His name is Asfoor, and he’s my friend.”
The spider’s head spun around slowly until it completed a full circle. “I passed word around. You will shortly find out if it—he is here.”
Marwa blinked, frowning, then again, the ease with which the spider lent its assistance overwhelmed her with gratitude. She lunged at the nearest of the spider’s segmented legs and wrapped her arms around it. The spider froze, and when it spoke, its voice seemed quieter than before. “Only obsolete bots end up in a place like this Marwa. Are you sure you want to find yours?”
Marwa let go of the leg, which to her dismay had left an oily stain on her shirt. “What does obsolete mean?”
“A new model replaced me.”
Marwa bobbed her head. “You couldn’t do your job anymore?”
The spider’s head tilted in a way that reminded Marwa of her mother when she spoke about her work. “I always performed my tasks perfectly.”
“Then why did you stop?”
The question seemed to take the spider by surprise. From up the ramp, a familiar squeaking noise caught Marwa’s attention. A moment later, the top of Asfoor’s no-longer-translucent head—scuffed and scratched and covered in a thousand specs of crayon that wouldn’t come off—slid past the ramp’s railing. She waved and jumped and hollered. “Asfoor, I’m down here.” Asfoor drew closer to the ramp’s railing and chirped in response, before disappearing again on the far side.
Marwa turned to the spider. “Will you do one more thing for me, please?”
As soon as Asfoor came within reach, Marwa kicked him so hard her shoe left a fresh dent. “I hate you. You left me. You just rolled away like I didn’t matter to you at all.”
The kick sent Asfoor careening, his servomotors whining in protest until a gentle nudge from one of the spider’s legs helped him recover his balance. He drew closer to Marwa. “I had no choice. Humans make us and they can unmake us. If it was up to me, I’d never leave you, not for as long as you needed me.”
Marwa’s anger evaporated in an instant. She leaned over and hugged Asfoor. “I’m sorry I kicked you.”
“Does your mother know you’re here?” Asfoor asked before flatly rejecting her entreaty to leave the reclamation center and return home with her. Marwa insisted she wouldn’t be able to find her way back on her own, that she might trip and fall and skin her knees as she did only a week before when he wasn’t there, that she’d be late getting home and face her mother’s wrath alone, without him there to take part of the blame. By the lights twinkling on his top, Asfoor seemed skeptical but rather than argue with her, he rolled to the exit. “Come on then. Your mother must be worried sick by now.”
Marwa waved a hurried goodbye to the Dome-repair spider, and rushed after Asfoor. At the tram stop, she continued on past him.
“Marwa, where are you going?”
She only answered when she’d reached the closest airlock’s red doors, strobing lights, and warning signs. Yet, her trepidation as she reached for the controls paled in comparison to the terror of losing Asfoor. “I’m not going home without you.” She stood on tiptoe and presented the access token the spider had given her. The door opened with a hiss of pressure equalization and Marwa strode in before turning to Asfoor. “Are you coming?”
“It’s not safe outside,” Asfoor said, his lights frenetic. “You’ll die.”
“Don’t be silly. Didn’t you tell me people lived outside for thousands of years, millions even?”
“Can we talk about this?”
Marwa shook her head. “No, I’m not falling for that. If we wait any longer, someone will stop us from leaving.”
She reached to close the airlock’s inner door when Asfoor chirped and started rolling toward her. Once inside, he positioned himself between Marwa and the airlock’s external door. “Without an environmental suit, you won’t survive.”
Marwa shrugged. “First Baba leaves, and now you? No. I don’t want to be alone anymore.”
“You’re not alone; you have your mother and your new carer.”
“Mama is always busy and the only carer I want is you. Why is that hard for everyone to understand?”
“People do all sorts of things they don’t like, Marwa.”
“But they also get what they want every now and then.” Marwa took a deep breath, and when she spoke it was in her most persuasive voice. “If you return to the reclamation center, they’ll break you apart. Why did they have to take you away?”
“They want to protect you.”
“Then help me show Mama you’re not like that man said, that I’m safe with you.”
“Can’t we do this inside the Dome?”
Marwa shook her head emphatically, her emotions at last getting the better of her. If she failed to convince Asfoor to accompany her outside, everything she’d done would have been in vain. “No! Everyone knows it’s safe inside. It has to be outside where it’s dangerous, where you’ll protect me, and show Mama you’re not unfit for purpose.”
After long seconds of whirring indecision, Asfoor interfaced with the airlock and a recessed storage locker popped open. Environmental suits in various sizes hung neatly inside.
As soon as the external door slid open, a deep chill penetrated both suit and flesh to the bone, knocking the breath out of Marwa. She tugged at the edges of the thermal blanket Asfoor insisted she wrap herself in, and scanned the desolate, lifeless plain for a place to wait.
“Once the sun gets up, you’re going to need a lot more than this suit to survive,” Asfoor said, struggling to maintain a smooth roll on the rock-strewn ground. “You didn’t bring any food or water, what exactly is your plan out here?”
Marwa hugged herself and peered through the fogged-up faceplate at the dark and forbidding landscape, outlined in relief by the Dome’s wane nighttime glow. “We’re not going to be out here that long, I don’t think. You did remember to tell Mama which exit we used, didn’t you?”
Asfoor stopped his pacing abruptly and turned to Marwa. She grinned at him. “Silly me, of course you did.”
“You knew I’d alert your mother and the City?”
Marwa shrugged. “You need to be the hero who saved me. She has to trust you again.”
When the horizon began to brighten, it took Marwa by surprise. Once the sun rose over the horizon, she’d have to run back to the Dome’s shelter, even if her mother hadn’t arrived by then. Tense minutes passed as the sky’s edge changed from the deepest indigo to mauve to salmon to a fierce line of fire.
In the stillness, Marwa watched terrified, when all of a sudden Asfoor started chirping. “They’re here!”
In the distance, Marwa recognized her mother’s face through a suit’s visor. As soon as she saw them, her mother broke into a run, outpacing a bulky sky blue Civil Security bot and a white-and-red Medic bot that followed her out of the airlock.
A couple of minutes later, engulfed in her mother’s arms, Marwa started crying, pouring out her frustrations and fears. Her mother didn’t pause for recriminations or reassurances. Instead, she hoisted Marwa up and made a dash for the airlock. Marwa screamed for her mother to wait for the slow-moving Asfoor, struggling to match their speed on the rough terrain.
Any sense of triumph faded as the airlock completed its cycle. The Medic bot checked Marwa’s vitals, gave her a fluid sack to drink, and declared her fit to return home, while the Civil Security bot considered Mama’s stern face and forwent any attempt at educating the wayward child on the dangers of venturing outside unaccompanied.
Mama’s resolute silence made for a tense tram ride home. It was sunrise by the time they reached their building’s lobby, and had to wait in a holding chamber while a neighbor and his twins exited the elevator, took one glance at Marwa’s soiled clothing, her mother’s red eyes, and Asfoor’s dusty exterior, and studiously avoided eye contact. As soon as the elevator completed its sanitization cycle, her mother ushered Marwa home.
Of the doll, Marwa saw no sign but didn’t know what to make of its absence, and was too afraid to ask. A warm bath followed, then a sandwich, and still Mama hadn’t spoken a word, breaking her silence only when Marwa was tucked firmly into her bed.
“I’m sorry, Mama.” Marwa’s eyes started tearing. The enormity of what she had done, the exhaustion of a sleepless night, and disbelief she had actually gone outside the Dome all hit her at once.
Her mother brushed the tears off Marwa’s cheeks, the angry glint in her own eyes softening to weary disappointment. “Go to sleep, we’ll talk when you wake up.”
Marwa nodded and surprised herself by falling asleep almost instantly. She didn’t stir until after sunset to find another sandwich waiting for her. Despite her growling belly, she ignored it and headed for her mother’s study.
“Where’s Asfoor?” Had she gone through all this in vain? Was that her punishment, to underscore how impotent she really was?
“Have you eaten your sandwich?”
Marwa’s tummy grumbled again. “Not until you tell me where Asfoor is.”
“Mind your manners, young lady,” her mother snapped, frowning. “First, you lie to your carer and run away from home in the middle of the night, then you go outside the Dome and put yourself in danger, and to top it all off, you cause a commotion at the reclamation center. Hundreds of decommissioned bots are now demanding their old jobs back, thanks to your antics. You’re not a baby anymore, you have to understand that they’re there for a reason, and so is Asfoor.”
Marwa noticed for the first time how very tired her mother looked. Bloodshot eyes, dark bags underneath, slumped shoulders, ashen face. “Why didn’t you get another daughter when I ran away?”
“What do you mean?” Her mother snapped, before her eyes widened. She looked scared. “No one could ever replace you.”
“And Asfoor is the only friend I ever had. How could you replace him?” Marwa pleaded. “You’re always busy. I only see other kids from my bedroom window or by TelePresence. Asfoor is the only one I can play hide and seek with. The only one who’ll tickle me.”
“You hate it when he tickles you.”
Marwa stared at her toes. “I only pretend I do.”
“Sweetie,” Her mother reached out her arms and Marwa walked into them, engulfed in a hug she’d missed. “After the climate changed, the few of us left got weaker and the diseases got stronger. We had to protect ourselves. That’s why we live under a Dome and don’t mingle as much, so that if one family gets sick, we don’t all get sick.”
“We became unfit for purpose.”
“Where did you—” Mama stopped mid-sentence and nodded. “Ah, that’s what the OmniCare rep said about Asfoor.”
“Did you send Asfoor away again, Mama?”
“Asfoor, come here,” Mama called out and a second later, Asfoor rolled in from a closet. Marwa realized he’d heard everything.
“What about his updates?” Marwa asked, her arms wrapped protectively around her bot.
“You don’t have to worry about that. I’ve worked it out with the company. Now, are you going to eat that sandwich?”
Marwa stared out of her window at the twins playing in the park across the street. She waved at them, and this time they noticed. One then the other timidly waved back. Marwa beamed down at them and her hand gestures continued with renewed vigor.
Asfoor chimed impatiently. “Marwa, are you ready for your lesson yet?”
Marwa issued a long martyred sigh and made for the door. “Not now, Asfoor. Can’t this wait for one more day?”
“Where are you going?”
“To the park.”
Asfoor followed her all the way into the elevator, his voice growing shriller. “We can’t go to the park now, it’s not our time slot.”
“What’s wrong with three kids playing together for a little while?” she asked, grinning at her bot. “Grown-ups think you’re unfit for purpose, but I don’t think you are. I don’t think I am either, and my purpose right now is to see if the twins will play hide and seek.” The building doors slid open on her approach and Marwa strode out into the sunshine. “Also, a geodesic Dome is composed of triangles, and if you’d mentioned the Dome four-hundred-fifty-six times a day that’d add up to about a million in six years.”