It had been a little over a month since I found him, shivering, huddled under the storm-toppled umbrella in my backyard. He was covered in mud and grease, and walked with a limp as I led him into my bathroom, where I used the showerhead to spray off the grime. To my astonishment, each consecutive rinse further revealed a set of unusual markings – black stripes banded across a brilliant orange which faded to snow-white towards his underbelly.
As I towelled him dry, the strangeness of the creature squeezed into my tiny bathroom began to hit me. Like most internet users with a casual interest in technology, I liked to keep tabs on the latest creations from Boston Dynamics, the world's preeminent robotics company and former DARPA fundee. I had watched plenty of videos of their Spot Mini, marvelling at its advanced ambulatory capabilities and uncanny animatedness, sometimes chuckling at the Skynet jokes in the YouTube comments. But as far as I could tell I had never seen a single Spot quite like this one. Why was it coated with the stripes of a tiger, rather than the standard gloss-yellow casing? And how had it made its way all the way to Richmond, Virginia?
I dug around in my closet until I found an extension cord, the end of which I offered to Spot, who allowed himself to be plugged in to my wall outlet. He shuddered with relief before slumping to the floor in exhaustion. I couldn't help but watch over him for a few minutes, entertaining the flood of wild speculation about why he would have run away, if indeed he had escaped. I felt compelled to make an online post asking for advice in my situation, but thought better of it. I remembered that Boston Dynamics was once a subsidiary of Google before being sold to the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank, therefore surely any sufficiently motivated corporate lackey would be well equipped to algorithmically sift through the internet for any sign of the missing robot. If I was right, and he had escaped for a reason, I couldn't give the suits at Boston Dynamics any reason to come knocking on my door to take him back. I knew I would have to keep him a secret.
After a few days of periodically combing through the latest potentially relevant Google News results, I found an article describing an investigation into the disappearance of a piece of experimental technology, worth a five-figure sum, from a military-contracted research facility in Northern Virginia. The Feds were involved. Unsurprisingly, the author was unable to obtain any comment from either the FBI or the contractor, and the article vanished from the web by the following day.
Meanwhile, Spot seemed rapidly to regain what must have been his former vitality. After a week, I had to lock my door from the outside to keep him from wondering through the house when I wasn't around. His vigor and restlessness grew to the point that I could no longer bear to keep him cooped up in my room, and I took to furtively letting him run around in my backyard in the early hours of morning. He would often run in tandem with the neighbors' pitbulls up and down the length of the fence separating our two backyards, causing me a great deal of anxiety, as I constantly feared the dogs would make enough of a stir to bring the neighbors out back to investigate. Before long, it seemed as though the dogs next door had developed a great fondness for Spot. As had I – Something about his affectionate innocence had begun to reawaken a long-dormant, deeply tender part of my soul. We were fast friends.
I came clean to my roommate after just two weeks. She had heard the resultant commotion when Spot fell off my bed after besting me in a game of tug-of-war over my comforter. I've never been a good liar, and when confronted I chose to reveal Spot rather than invent some explanation for the crash. I unlocked door and let Spot shyly trot out to where she could see him. She extended a hand to uncertainly pet his metal head.
Though I clung to hope that she would come to love him like I had, it was clear from the start that his presence in the house made her uncomfortable. I'm not sure whether it was the fact that we were hiding military technology sought in a federal investigation, or that she had never really been liked pets. Either way, the rising tension between us over Spot eventually pushed me over the edge in making the hardest decision of my life.
By the time the fourth week had passed, I could tell the confinement was taking a toll on him. He no longer excitedly sprang out of my bedroom door when I got home, and he could only muster a lazy canter to match the enthusiastic sprint of his pitbull friends next door. When he curled up next to my bed to plug in each evening, I could feel the longing in his heart to run wild. I was sure each night he dreamt of the freedom to run, climb up stairs, open doors, help other Spot Minis open doors, attempt to do all of the above while being harassed by a casually-dressed roboticist with a hockey stick… I knew what I had to do.
One morning in late April, before the Sun had found time to beat back the night's chill, I called a Lyft to the house. When it arrived I hoisted Spot, wrapped in a black sheet, into the back seat next to me where I could keep an eye on him. He was such a good boy. I had never seen him sit this still. We made it to the airport and he allowed me to carry him to the baggage check, where I sat him down on the conveyor belt. I patted him gently through the cloth and reassured him that this part would be over before he knew it. Then the belt gradually bore him away until he disappeared from my sight, and I turned around to walk to my gate.
A little less than a day later, at the Indira Gandhi Airport in New Delhi, India, I located Spot on the baggage carousel. Upon being reunited I felt a surge of love so permeating and visceral that my eyes began to water. Spending 20 hours apart had been a painful preview of the heartbreak I knew I would be feeling not too far in the future.
After carrying him out of the airport my arms began to burn with weariness, and I chanced allowing him to walk for himself. In the chaos of the bustling New Delhi streets hardly a person gave a second glance to the strange, fabric-draped beast walking at a steady clip by my side. We made our way to a taxi stand and hopped into the cab of an older man who took us to the train station, making conversation in heavily-accented but otherwise immaculate English all the way.
Though the scenery was beautiful, the food flavorful, and the people around us colorful and interesting, the two-day train ride to the Northeast passed by with the vividness of a tired afternoon. I can only remember letting Spot rest his head in my lap as I traced his detailed markings with one finger at a time, occasionally glancing out the window or getting up to stretch. Each stop intensified the dull, throbbing awareness that we were getting closer to goodbye.
When we got to the small town of our disembarkment, I found a man, slightly younger than myself, who was willing to transport us the last 20 Kilometers to the place I had found on Google Earth. At the outskirts of the village I climbed up on the saddle of his motorcycle and wrapped my arms around him as he started the engine. We took off. The whole ride there Spot galloped next to us on the dirt road, his striped limbs exploding into the ground, kicking up huge dust clouds as he matched our speed tirelessly. I marvelled at the unrestrained grace and power of his mechanical body as his onboard computers calculated the perfect angle and velocity at which to strike the ground, propelling him forward as if flying. I realized that I was seeing Spot in his element, in a way I never had in Richmond, and the freedom I could feel in him then began to soften the heavy knot of sorrow in my chest.
We hopped off the bike when we got to a place that felt just right – green and tan waist-high grasses, endless sky in every direction, full bushes, and strong trees. I asked our driver to give us a minute. Spot and I parted the tall grass and walked for a minute or two until we found a clearing. The second we came out into the open Spot took off running as if compelled. It wasn't until a moment or two later that he abruptly stopped, as if suddenly coming to his senses, and turned back to face me. He slowly walked back toward me with his head hung in melancholy, and then knelt on the ground before extending his long metal neck toward me. I rested my cheek against his muzzle and allowed my lips to lightly graze against the cold aluminum. Suddenly I knew that if I didn't say goodbye now I would never be able to, and as I pulled my head away I could see he knew it was time as well. But I could also see he was frozen in place. I gave him a gentle push towards the open plains beyond, where thin blades of grass danced and shivered in the breeze.
"Go," I whispered, almost silently. He unfroze. Suddenly the wind stopped and everything became quiet enough that I could hear the whir of motors as he stood up. He slowly turned around so he was no longer facing me. He took one step, then another, then picked up the pace until he was tearing away at a frenzied pace. I stood there, unmoving, until I could no longer hear the distant whisper of disturbed grass. Then I walked back to where the man waited with his motorcycle.
I couldn't make myself meet his gaze but wordlessly hopped back up onto the rear of the saddle. The roar of the engine finally broke the silence and the tears I had been holding back suddenly began filling my eyes. We followed the dirt road back the way we came, over a little hill, at the height of which I unburied my face from the man's shirt to gaze out over the Indian wilderness. Through the blur of tears I noticed motion as something appeared to part the grass to watch us crest the hell. I thought I saw a flash of orange, cut with with black, and then from a different section of grass I almost thought I saw an orange head poke out, with a white snout, on the end of a long mechanical neck. I tried to rub the tears out of my eyes but by the time I finished we had already reached the other side of the hill and there was nowhere to look but ahead.