The Perfect Life

WORD ART by Whitney Goodman

It seemed perfect, the small, quaint, quiet town that I was living in. It seemed too perfect at some points; I thought. The way people got up every morning with excitement on their faces and put on their nice outfits to look presentable.  It was like they were going to see the president every day even though most of the time they are at home. Women wore dresses or skirts that were neutral colors, but never comfy clothes. They always had to look elegant,  and pearls in their ears was the norm. Men always wore black suits and made sure they cleaned their hair up nice and neat. Each house was built to look identical to the one next to it. Every house had a grand front porch that was decorated with bright flowers and showcased a bright green, freshly trimmed lawn.. It was too perfect. I woke up each morning with these thoughts pounding in my head and wondered what I was doing with my life as I made my husband Benjamin’s breakfast.

“Charlotte, Charlotte, is my breakfast ready yet? I am running a bit behind for work, sweetie,” said Ben, shouting my name from the upstairs master bedroom. Every day I make him the same boring breakfast. A slice of toast, one sunny-side-up egg, and two slices of fresh-cut bacon. I know the recipe by heart. I constantly ask Benjamin if I can make him some sort of other breakfast, but he always abruptly says that he loves what I make for him each morning. When he says this, I just know that something is off about him and I can’t seem to put my finger on it.

I cleaned up the kitchen because it is usually quite a mess after cooking in the mornings, and I headed upstairs to get ready for the day. I still do not understand why we have to get dressed each day, but I feel the need to do it so that I fit in with the other wives on the block.  I brushed my long black hair because it gets awfully tangled when I sleep and put in my contacts. I picked out my favorite summer day dress since it was getting warm out finally. It is flowy with a sweet lovely simple navy color. Ben usually likes me to wear neutral colors so that I don’t stand out in a crowd. 

I decided to head back downstairs to check the fridge for what groceries we needed when I heard Ben yell as he was racing out the door. “Bye Charlotte, I am heading off to work. I’ll see you later when I am home for dinner.”

As Ben ran off to work like he did every morning, I thought to myself, why is it so perfect here? I can’t seem to wrap my head around that. It seems like it is too good to be true and these thoughts that are running around in my mind won’t leave. Finding a town that has no crime, no hate, and a perfect routine every single day seems weird in the world that we live in. How do I wake up each morning and do the same thing? Why do I not remember my past? I try to change things up, but they somehow always go back to the way it has been. I decided to take matters into my own hands because I could not keep sitting in silence anymore. I needed to figure out what was happening in this town because why was everyone always so perfect and pleasant? Even Ben, my husband, seems to act unnatural sometimes like something is going to happen or there is some valuable secret I can not know about. Ben is always on some weird schedule and things are done consistently at the same time every day. The way he talks down to me whenever I try to change the order of the day makes me feel like I’m foolish, so I get sidetracked and forget the conversation ever happened. 

Right as he walked out the door, I went to his office to search through his files and found nothing. Shocking! Trying to dig through the piles and piles of paper made this search even more difficult. It was evident that someone had concealed whatever was happening so that it remained undiscovered. This town has no crime, or any problems that happen in the real world. So why is this place the only exception? I decided that when my husband gets home from work; I want to stir some chaos and get to the bottom of what is going on in this town. If he failed to give me the answers I sought, I would poison him with melatonin the following morning while he drank his coffee, allowing me to escape and live wherever I desired. I wanted to live a normal life where I could make my own decisions and think for myself; not through my husband.

Throughout the rest of the day, I did the normal housewife things that all the wives do in this town. I scrubbed the hardware floors, cooked dinner for the evening, and did the laundry, of course. Benjamin came home later after work that evening and I acted completely normal so that he wouldn’t get suspicious that I thought that something was up. I knew that if I acted off, he would quickly realize I knew something. I started telling him about all the things I had done during the day when he interrupted me and said, “What is for dinner? I am craving my favorite Charlotte and I know you made it because I could smell the savory smells as soon as I walked in the door,” Ben said as he walked into the kitchen and kissed me on the cheek.

“How was work, sweetie?” I asked, trying to see if he would tell me anything about his day since I told him all about mine.

He answered with a bit of hesitation, “It was good. I’m just tired and hungry now, so let’s eat!” said Ben as he helped to finish up the cooking.

Something seemed odd. He seemed a little more anxious, like something may have happened during the day that threw him off guard. I was concerned for him because I had never seen him act this way before. I knew he always acted weird when I asked him about his day, but today was different. I think he figured out that I could tell that something was off. He looked in a way that sent a shiver down my spine, and I quickly went to the other room to set the dining room table up for dinner. I knew that he was going to dodge whatever questions that I asked him about his day. He always has and will continue to do that. We sat down at our dining room table that I had nicely set with tablecloths and silverware so that we could have a nice dinner. I cooked his favorite meal, which is lemon chicken with mac and cheese, and parmesan broccoli. I almost forgot the hot buttered rolls, but Ben reminded me just in time to take them out of the oven before they got burnt. Ben seemed to be in a good mood all of a sudden while enjoying his dinner, so I decided to ask him a few things just to see how he would react.

“What did you do at work today? Was it a busy day?” I asked in a cheerful voice to show that I truly cared about his day. “It was fine,” said Ben in an annoyed tone.

I don’t understand why, is it a secret that he can’t tell? It’s driving me insane that my husband can’t tell me what he does on a day of work. He always answers very dryly, like he wanted to tell me everything, but he couldn’t. I could see behind his eyes that he wanted to talk to someone, but he feared what could happen if he said what was holding him back.

Then I asked, “What are you not telling me?” I decided that I just needed to be direct with him because being sweet was not getting the point across that I needed to know. He said, “Honey, honey, I don’t know what you mean by that.” I said “Sweetie”, but with a more forceful voice to try to get my point across that I needed to know what was going on. “What are you not telling me?”

He acted with hesitation about what was going on and tried to get out of the conversation by changing the topic to talk about the dress I was wearing and how much he loved it. But I needed to know what was going on because my mind wasn’t going to settle until I knew. These unknown thoughts are causing me to not sleep at night. After arguing back and forth for a bit, he eventually said that the business I do during the day is stuff you don’t need to worry about. I did not want to settle for this answer. We went to bed for the night and I couldn’t stop thinking about this argument that we had. I went to my neighbor’s house, who also was my best friend, Evelyn, to talk to her if anything similar was happening to her. Evelyn said that she thought it was weird that her husband said nothing about his work ever and that she had not thought much of it until I brought it up. I talked to her about all of my thoughts that were running through my mind and she also thought that everything was too perfect. This made me feel less crazy about myself, and we both knew we needed a plan to get it out of them.  

Evelyn decided that we would give them a high dosage of melatonin so that they would go to sleep. While they were asleep it would give us time to figure out what we wanted to do with them. We wanted to ask them if we could move to the big city and have a normal life outside of this demented town. 

So the next morning I played it cool. I did my usual morning routine, and I made a slice of toast, one sunny-side-up egg, and two slices of fresh-cut bacon like I do every morning. I brewed a fresh cup of hot coffee but made sure to add a few drops of melatonin secretly while he was still getting ready. I didn’t want to hurt him because I do care about him dearly. I just need to get out of this town.

“Benjamin, your breakfast is hot and ready! I hope you didn’t oversleep again.” I said as Ben came down the stairs dressed for work.

As my husband started to drink the coffee, Benjamin’s face got extremely red with anger. Fear overwhelmed me because I didn’t know what was going to happen. I was terrified on the inside but I couldn't show that. He looked at me with anger and madness behind his eyes, which sent a chill down my spine, scaring me of what he might do next. I heard a screeching scream from my neighbor and I knew something suspicious was going on. I was confused and scared and didn’t know how to act. The next thing I knew, my husband’s clothes slowly started to melt off. His nice suit that he had put on earlier that morning slowly dripped down his body. It reminded me of the ice cream slowly melting on a hot day. As the clothes started to melt off, I started to look at him closely and realized that it didn’t look like skin underneath the clothes; it looked almost like a medal of some sort. All the thoughts started piling up in my head. I quickly realized that my husband was some sort of robot and I didn’t even know how to react. What if he tries to hurt me? I don’t understand how I missed this because I’ve been with him every day for years and he’s my husband. I felt like I knew him better than anyone.

“I’m sorry I should have told you, but I just couldn’t,” said Ben. He looked at me with a sense of relief but fear too, because he didn’t know what I may say next. I stood there speechless and took a second to take this all in and think about it to give me time to catch my breath before I said anything. I just wanted to know why and I needed him to explain everything to me.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I said with deep sadness and confusion. I didn’t have anything else to say.

“I simply couldn’t because I could get in serious trouble. I can explain everything quickly, but then you have to go because I’m afraid that we don’t have a lot of time before something will happen to you and I don’t want anything to happen” Ben said in a shaky voice with tears slowly coming down his face. He started to explain what was going on, and why everything was the way it was. It scared me to hear, but I had been waiting to find out, so I knew I needed to hear this.

“Ben said that the reason they are all robots is that the government set them up to create a perfect life simulator to test out new theories. The government randomly selects women from the outside world to marry one of us and they build the perfect living conditions for us, making the world appear perfect and ensuring that nobody ever wants to leave. They think that eventually, this is how the world will live. Every day when I go to work, the government is programming us and fixing us to improve our lives.”

“So they are slowly trying to create a perfect society for the rest of the world to live in?” I said. I was confused. I didn’t understand how I got here. How did I just not know that they plucked me out of the life I was living and threw me into a new one?

Ben said, “Yes, they are trying to create a perfect society, but they don’t want people to leave because this world is a secret. They have set up cameras all around the town and they are listening to our every word and watching our every move. They track us to see if any emotions come out that they don’t want in this town. That is why I can’t tell you anything that goes on during my day, because I don’t want to get in trouble with the government and put you at risk. You don’t know how you got here because they pull out the memories from your life here.”

“I guess it is too late now. You’re going to get in trouble after telling me all of that,” I said. “What do we do now? Am I going to be taken away?” As these worst-case scenarios were repeating rapidly in my head.

“Yes, I know Charlotte and that is why you need to leave right now. Grab the necessities and get out of here quickly. We can’t waste time. The government is probably on its way now, and who knows what they will do with you? ”

I heard a scream coming from Evelyn's house. I had gotten too caught up in my own life and forgot that Evelyn had also been in on the plan to poison her husband with melatonin, and I knew I needed to find her to make sure she was okay.  She had the same dream as me to escape and live a normal life. I heard a pounding knock on the door, and Ben yelled at me to go hide somewhere before he opened the door because what if the government already found us? Slowly, he creaked open the door, only to realize quickly that it was just Evelyn and her husband, Joe. I came running out and hugged her because I was so relieved to see someone who knew the same things as me. Joe looked just like Ben does. Gray metal with a human face. It was creepy because I never would have thought this would happen. Joe said that he told Evelyn everything and that she knew that she needed to leave right at this very moment.

Evelyn looked at me and said, “You ready to go? I think we need to get out of here. I am afraid of what is going to happen if we don’t.”

“I agree, but what is going to happen to Joe and Ben?” I said with confusion on why they just can’t escape with us.

Ben said as he was trying to hold back tears. “Please don’t worry or stress about us. We will figure something out. We just want you to be safe and live the life that you have always dreamed about. We both know that you guys have wanted to leave, and this is your opportunity to do that.”

“Well, what is going to happen to you guys? Are we ever going to get to see each other again?” said Evelyn, who was also fighting to hold back tears.

Joe started to explain how past robots have had the same thing happen to them. Joe said that there haven’t been a few, but it’s possible. He mentioned that there is a way for them to get out, but it’s difficult to not get our hopes up. Joe said he and Ben are smart and have already been working together to plan for this because they knew that this was going to happen, eventually. The government can’t keep us in hiding forever.

“We have already scouted out a route and know the best way to get out of here and return to the real world and we even hope that when we leave, we have hopes that we will be human again. We have witnessed very few people that have successfully done this but we are determined to make it through,” said Ben confidently.

“OK, I guess we should leave now. Let’s grab our stuff and head out,” said Evelyn, tears flowing out of her eyes. “I’m not ready to go. I don’t know if I can do it,” I said.

We finally said our last goodbyes, grabbed our bags, and headed out the door. I started to tear up even more and so did Evelyn because we did not know when we were going to see them again. We gave them one last hug and prayed that one day we would see each other again. As we drove off into the distance, we saw the speedy police cars pulling up to the house. “Step on the gas, Evelyn. We need to get out of here right now.”