And When Did You Last See Your Father?

A One Shot for SciFi Spring 2024

And When Did You Last See Your Father? by William Frederick Yeames

‘And when did you last see your father?’ The detective asked. At least the boy thought the sullen man to be a detective. The dark rings around the eyes, the chain smoking, the incredulous questioning. He hadn’t yet told the boy his name, nor had the boy told the detective his. Such details weren’t relevant. The detective dove into his deep pocket and retrieved his pack of cigarettes for the third time. His lighter failed to ignite twice and the detective gave it a good shake, likely the fluid was low. The flame hissed upwards on the third attempt and the detective took a deep drag from the filterless cigarette.

‘Four days ago,’ the boy answered. The detective had danced around the question for half an hour, mostly pacing the ground floor of the house. He’d asked about the lock on the basement door and whether the family had any pets, the boy had dodged both questions, feeling the weight of his necklace with each.

‘You’ve been home alone for four days? No mother, grandparents, concerned neighbours?’ The detective began opening the kitchen cupboards with a disinterested gaze, he closed each just as fast and anyone would think he was nervous but the boy knew better, the detective was looking for a hiding place for a key, a key to the basement.

‘I can look after myself,’ the boy said, he sat on the barstool and kicked his legs back and forth, making himself appear innocent.

‘You can’t be much older than ten.’

‘Eleven.’

The detective grumbled into his cigarette, held the smoke as he tapped ash into an empty glass, and blew out a ring. ‘Have you gone out? To the shops, to see friends?’

‘Not yet. A friend came here the other day. We played on the VR all day.’

‘Skipped school?’

‘I’m homeschooled. My friend skipped school.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘I’m not getting him into trouble.’

The detective laughed, ‘I’m not going to report him to his teachers. Bigger problems on my plate than that,’ he crouched down and searched the cupboards around the centre island. ‘Everything is very clean and tidy. You say you cooked?’

‘I didn’t say I cooked but it is part of looking after myself.’

‘I see…’ he crushed the last half centimetre of cigarette on the side of the glass and dropped it in with the others.

‘Do you have a warrant?’ the boy had seen the question asked in crime movies and wondered if it was a real thing.

‘No I don’t have a warrant. I can leave if you ask me to, though you might be hindering my investigation,’ the detective padded into the dining room through the double folding doors. The table was set for a three course dinner for eight guests, the boy had spent an afternoon a week ago polishing the silverware but now there was a fine layer of dust on the whole lot. ‘Who was meant to be dining with you?’

‘Dad’s work friends I think. I don’t know, they talk electronics and mechanics. It’s all boring but the food is good, or it would have been. I guess Dad cancelled.’

‘Do you know why he cancelled?’ The detective made a show of checking the fine layer of dust on one of the forks then of unfolding one of the swan napkins.

‘No,’ the boy was tired of the detective trying to hide the obvious. ‘Where is my Dad? Is he missing?’

The detective shoved his hands in the pockets of his ankle-length coat, threadbare around the cuffs. He strode back into the emerald green and white kitchen, ‘Yes, your father is missing. What’s your first memory?’

The boy flinched, his eyebrows darting up and down, ‘Dad teaching me to walk, right over there.’ He pointed through the archway into the living room. The intricate wool rug he’d learned to walk on still dominated the room, though it was paler around the edges and a red wine stain was hidden by a coffee table.

‘That’s an unusually early memory.’

‘I have an exceptional memory, or so the doctors say,’ the boy shrugged. ‘I don’t know any different though.’

‘I have a terrible memory,’ the detective pulled out a notebook and pen. ‘Have to write everything down, by hand. Typing doesn’t make it sink in.’

‘So you write stuff down so you don’t have to read it.’

‘Sometimes,’ he reached for another cigarette. The air had a thickness to it and the stale smoke had overwhelmed the morning bacon. ‘You don’t mind?’ He twirled the cigarette around his finger.

‘No.’

‘Most kids cough or complain about the smell.’

‘Dad smokes, cigars and pipes usually. Cigarettes aren’t much different.’

‘I see,’ the detective’s lighter worked first time. The tobacco flared orange and he hid in a cloud of smoke for a moment. ‘What is it your father does?’

‘Something with computers. The really advanced ones that do stuff for us. I think the company he worked for used to make… err… robots.’

‘Synthetics we called them. Human-like machines. Banned now, before your time, way before your time. I was a kid when they were banned. Who does your father work for?’

‘I can’t remember. He has a mug with the logo on, somewhere,’ the boy knew exactly where it was, in the basement, with half a cold yuanyang.  The key felt heavy about his neck but it didn’t show through his shirt.

‘Nothing else that would help?’ The detective opened the mug cupboard above the sink and rifled through the mugs. ‘Half of these have logos on, do you remember the logo?’

‘Not really,’ it was a blue swan with spread wings but the boy saw no reason to tell the detective.

‘I thought you had an exceptional memory?’

‘For stuff I like. Have you played Adventures of Rascalor?’

‘Can’t say I have,’ the detective had his nose in the mugs.

‘I have mastered all the extreme bosses, I know their patterns, and never die. Well, unless someone else gets something wrong. That’s what my friend and I were doing the other day.’

‘Games, always games with kids. VR ones too. I didn’t have VR as a kid, had to deal with the game being on a screen and using a controller. I bet you just think and your character moves now,’ he closed the cupboard door, leaving behind a dense cloud of smoke.

‘Not quite that advanced yet,’ the boy laughed. ‘Would be cool though.’ There was a lull and the boy considered asking the detective to leave but clearly he hadn’t found what he wanted. ‘Are you going to bring my dad home?’ He wasn’t, he’d arrest him but the detective would lie about it.

‘Of course. Missing person, I find missing persons,’ the detective lied. ‘Have you heard of Idyll?’

‘No,’ his dad had mentioned it a couple of times but the boy wasn’t sure what it was.

‘It’s a city. Well, thought to be. Probably a fable, like Atlantis. Said that some of the synths that were scheduled to be terminated following the ban escaped and founded their own city far to the north in the ice. Though no satellite has ever seen it. You said your father worked with synths, how old is he?’

‘He has grey hair.’

‘Where is your mother?’

‘Dead.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that, do you remember her?’

‘No, she died in childbirth. Dad has a photo of her in his office but that’s in the basement.’

‘Only one photo?’

‘She didn’t like having her photo taken, dad said. She didn’t know he’d taken it.’ His dad had not gone to Idyll, not yet.

‘Must have been quite an age gap,’ the detective pretended to say to himself. ‘Did your father pack anything? Did he seem hurried? Stressed?’

‘No,’ the boy shook his head. He hopped down from the barstool, ‘Do you want a pancake?’ He found the flour, milk, and eggs. He remembered his dad was harried, rushing more than usual, and that he had to get a few things sorted before they went on a big trip.

‘No thank you,’ the detective walked to keep the kitchen island in between him and the boy. ‘When’s your birthday?’

‘November tenth,’ the boy said, without a pause. ‘What happened to all the robots?’

‘They were turned off. Humanity agreed they were too dangerous, too numerous. They were outlawed, their manufacture forbidden.’

‘Oh, that’s sad,’ the boy cracked an egg into a glass bowl.

‘I guess. Most weren’t fully synthetic though, just bits and pieces that made them. Seem human but a few of the expensive models were indistinguishable from people, or so their makers claimed, but eventually they were all found too.’

‘But if they’re no different to humans then why’d you turn them off?’ The boy tried to say indistinguishable but the word refused to bend round his tongue.

‘A machine is a machine, a human is a human, no matter how much one looks and acts like the other doesn’t make it so,’ the detective leaned on the barstool and lit another cigarette.

The boy began whisking while the butter melted in the frying pan.

‘Do you cook a lot?’

‘Everyday with dad, though it’s a bit boring on my own.’ He poured out the first of four pancakes.

‘I just order in. My parents weren’t big cooks either, no time. I have no time either.’

‘That’s lazy, you just have to make the time,’ the boy set two plates on the counter.

‘Maybe. Why two plates?’

‘I won’t eat four pancakes at the same time. Two for now, two for later,’ the boy lied. He could eat four at once but dad said that was greedy. ‘Is it just you looking for my dad?’

‘No, the whole department’s on it.’

‘Which department is that?’ He flipped the first pancake.

‘Well I’m working with Missing Persons but I was roped in from another department along with a couple of others,’ the detective said.

The boy knew the detective wanted him to ask about the other department, the man had given too much information for no reason yet not enough to figure anything out. The boy, instead, said nothing. He set the first pancake on his plate and poured out a second portion of batter.

‘A colleague of mine is at your father’s company now. It was a colleague who reported him missing you know.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘Why didn’t you report him missing? Does your father often vanish for days, weeks, at a time?’

‘Once before. A friend of his needed help moving last minute. Bad landlord or something, I dunno,’ the boy set the second pancake on his plate and began on the third.

‘Have you seen this friend of your fathers?’

‘No and I don’t know his name, before you ask.’

The detective laughed, ‘I wasn’t but thanks for clearing it up anyway. Is there anyone I should contact to come and stay with you? An aunt, an uncle, older sibling?’ The detective crushed another spent cigarette. He dove into his pocket and fished out his phone.

‘I’ll knock next door and tell them but I don’t like staying away from home.’

‘Do you have no other family?’

The detective wasn’t going to move on until the boy had answered, ‘Not near by,’ the boy answered.

‘They wouldn’t travel to look after their nephew?’

‘My aunt and uncle are older than dad and I don’t have older siblings,’ he set the third pancake on the second plate and drizzled maple syrup over it. The fourth cooked much quicker and he set that atop the syruped one and drizzled more syrup over the top. Then he cut a lemon in half, squeezed out the juice and poured that over the first plate of pancakes along with a tablespoon of sugar. He took the lemon and sugar pancakes and jumped up on the barstool opposite the detective.

‘Thought you weren’t eating both now?’

‘I’m not. They’re better cold and full of syrup,’ the boy didn’t like maple syrup, nor cold pancakes.

‘Lemon and sugar is an old-fashioned way of having pancakes. Is that how your father has them?’

‘Sometimes,’ the boy said. Once a year, the rest of the time his dad had them with grapefruit or maple syrup.

‘Alright, I’ll leave you to your food. Here’s my contact details, if anything happens let me know. I’m going to talk to your neighbours and see if they have seen your father. I’ll be back tomorrow with a colleague from forensics,’ he set a white card next to the boy’s plate. There was a phone number, an email address, and the detective’s name and department — Synthetic Investigations.

‘See you tomorrow, I guess,’ the boy pierced a cut of pancake and spread it through the sugar and lemon juice. ‘I’ll show you out,’ he said with his mouth full, something his dad would tell him off for.

‘Don’t worry, I know the way. Enjoy your meal,’ the detective slowly made his way through the living room and into the hallway. The front door clicked shut half a minute later.

The boy finished his pancakes and waited, listening for his neighbours doorbell. It rang and a minute later the door opened and, from the garbled conversation the detective went inside. The boy hopped off the barstool and fetched a clean knife and fork along with the plate of maple syrup pancakes. He crossed the kitchen, set the plate on the floor, and reached for the key around his neck. The basement door opened with a heavy clunk. He descended into the dark, with the pancakes, and saw light from one of the rooms beneath the house, he pushed it open with his elbow. ‘Dad, I brought you some pancakes.’

‘Ahhh! Marvellous, has the man gone?’ His dad’s office was the same as ever. Sheets upon sheets of blueprints and design documents filled the shelves on the left while mammoth tomes on mechanics and electronics filled the shelves on the right. In the centre was his dad’s draughtsman’s table hitched high up, his dad hunched over pencil and ruler making minuscule markings.

‘He’s gone but he said he’d be back tomorrow with forensics. He left this,’ the boy set the plate on the desk and handed over the contact card. The profile portrait photo of his mother hung on the wall above his dad’s desk, blonde hair blowing in the breeze as she looked out to the sea that would claim her life.

‘Hmm, we can leave tonight. I know someone who can box our things but in case they can’t, pack your favourites. We won’t be coming back.’ He smiled, warmly, wrinkles obscuring his eyes beneath thick, white eyebrows.

‘Okay. Won’t the detective watch the house?’

‘He might but I know how we can leave without him noticing. Once we’re in Idyll no one will come looking for you again, we’ll be safe there.’

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Thanks for reading!