At first, Simon thought it was a parting gift—a last jab to leave him winded and wanting. He took the package from his front doorstep and kept it in his closet for three days, smothering its cheeky Amazon smile under a hill of dirty laundry until his curiosity won out. He situated himself on the couch with the package while a marathon of The Office lit up the walls of his shoebox apartment. The package wasn’t large, but it had some heft to it. Simon thumbed the shipping label, eyed the name and address it bore with more tenderness than he meant to, before slicing the tape with a steak knife. 

Huh. A Roomba. Rather, a cheap, knockoff Roomba. On the front, an Asian man beamed and gave Simon two thumbs up amidst a swirl of eager mistranslations. Wow! Good suck! Dirty clean two minutes! Attached to the box was a typed message: “Till I can come clean up your messes again, I guess this will have to do. Love, Abby.”

It had been one month since Abigail broke up with Simon. She had completely and utterly ruined him, and she clearly planned on making him remember that, he reasoned. But that wouldn’t make sense. There was no way of knowing when it had been sent: processing a shipment from Korea to the U.S. could take anywhere from five days to fifty, he’d learned, and if she’d sent it after their split, this could be her way of extending an awfully round, six-and-a-half-pound olive branch. Or he was as wrong as he often was, and this was a gift soured by time. Something left in a virtual shopping cart during their brighter days and sent in error. Simon attempted to purge every left behind sweater and textbook from his apartment long ago, but this gift—this accidental gift, he amended—felt different somehow. It was connected to her in origin only, and more than that, it could be useful. Simon retrieved his last beer from the fridge and leaned back into the safety of the couch. On screen, Jim and Pam smirked into the camera as Dwight discovered his stapler encased in Jell-O.

All of the vacuum’s instructions were in Korean. Simon spent the better part of his lunch break that Wednesday running the manual through Google Translate and deciphering whatever beat poem came out the other end. Remove. Brush often every use in bin. It is what you want. After the first few pages, he gleaned that what he had on his hands was called a Yong-Sook C50, the S series. He then learned that his little knockoff actually cost a pretty won: over 450,000, to be exact, or 400 American dollars. She got this on a teacher’s salary? Simon felt a pang of regret for removing the tape so recklessly. 

Money had always been of greater concern to her than to Simon. In one of their many talks before she’d even applied to the EPIK program, she gushed ad nauseum about the many bonuses a good teacher could earn, even before the initial one-year contract was up. 

“So, you plan on being a good teacher then? That’s news to me.” Simon teased her between sips of coffee. After he dropped out, the couple could no longer dine together in the illustrious UC Berkeley cafeteria. He made sure to whisk her off campus every now and then for a bite of real food. 

“I do. It doesn’t really matter if I’m good, though,” Abigail said, “just that I’m getting good results.” 

“And how do you plan on doing that? Kids are bad enough when they speak the same language. I bet they’ll only learn enough to cuss you out.”

Abigail cocked her head in mock indignation. “Like I’d let some nine-year-olds mess with my check. Nuh-uh. Ms. Pierce will have to whip those kids into shape.” She punctuated her point by swatting his hand with her straw-turned-ruler.

Simon slipped his fingers into his hair, resisting the urge to pull up her Instagram and scroll back through her feed—back to when things were simple and their issues could be hashed out over coffee. But she was probably doing just fine without him. Fine enough to have some cash left over to fuck with her ex-boyfriend, even. He could imagine her drafting her gift note, writing what she really thought: “I am sending this to you because you are the mess I couldn’t clean up. You have sucked the life out of me, and for that, I will always loathe you. Hate, Abby.” 

Simon shut his laptop and quickly chided himself for ever regretting anything at all. The vacuum was his now. He’d use it for target practice if he liked. A few tables away, a group of coworkers laughed over their pack lunches. A brunette—Sarah—waved at him, and he waved back. She smiled slightly and returned to the conversation around her, and Simon slurped up his cold cup-ramen. It is what I want. 

It took Simon fifteen minutes to figure out how to change the language settings, and another five to actually select English. The Yong-Sook whirred as it tried each new tongue. Annyeonghaseyo. Bonjour. Ni hao. Hello. How can I help you? The voice was halting, androgynous, yet still held a kernel of warmth, like a butler long past his years of good use whose family didn’t have the heart to get rid of him. He turned the device loose to explore the flat on its own while he perused the five or so commands he could make through the accompanying Yong-Sook app. They were straightforward and helpfully color-coded buttons—Gada. Green. Go. Jungji. Red. Stop. Kkeunhda. Yellow. Pause. 

After a few moments of watching the vacuum bump its way from the living room to the kitchenette and back again, Simon was both in awe of and disgusted by the simplicity of the machine. 450,000 won. 400 dollars that he didn’t even spend, and yet he was pissed on Abigail’s behalf because any numbskull could’ve programmed this. It was a bad habit he feared she may have since the day he first saw her—falling for technobabble from lazy swindlers. She was a sophomore then, his underclassman by one year and one of three girls in the C++ for Programmers course. Their male classmates circled her like bait in the water, in part because she was, indeed, very pretty, but also because she managed to look so utterly and completely lost through every lecture. 

But when he saw Abigail in the library double-fisting C++ For Dummies and their brick of a class textbook well after the drop period had passed, he knew she was different. He took a chance and sidled up to her table, placing his backpack in the seat across from her. She wore a grey hoodie and sweatpants, her head down.

“Excuse me,” said Simon. She glanced up at him with a jerk, stopped chewing her pencil. “Sorry, I’m in your C++ class. This is a weird question, but can I ask what your major is?”

A beat.  “Can you?” 

He did, funnily enough, go on to tutor her through the duration of that course (became her “resident mansplainer,” to use her words), continually shocked that her advisor placed an education major in a 200-level comp sci course for a breadth requirement. She was so open to him, doling out praise swiftly and earnestly like he was one of her students. That’s so clever. You are so smart. It makes sense when you put it that way. He’d blush, but always assured her that it was all quite simple, very simple. 

Simon resolved to make his Yong-Sook his means of moving on. He needed to forget Abigail. The Yong-Sook eeked in alarm, rotors caught on a rogue shoelace. 

Simon began by searching the web for what had already been done. Roombas that turn the lights out when they’re finished cleaning, Roombas that swear when they hit corners, Roombas that can call 911. Nothing for the Yong-Sook C50 S Series, or at least not in the King’s English, but that was to be expected. He was only looking for ideas, and with everything he’d come across in mind, he set his sights on two challenges: giving the Yong-Sook voice commands as well as a voice of its own.

The first would prove lighter work than the second. Like many modern-day appliances, the Yong-Sook was capable of cross platform integration. He could connect his vacuum to his Amazon this or his Google that, instructing his android of choice to start or stop it without using the app. But why use voice commands if there was still a middleman? No, Simon wanted total control. He had to jailbreak the device to install the necessary programs on it, but once that was completed and the Yong-Sook hadn’t been converted into a piece of scrap metal, it was smooth sailing. He called in sick and spent the rest of the day calibrating the machine to his voice and teaching it commands through new lines of code. He cycled through possible trigger phrases to “wake up” the robot. 

“Hey, Yong-Sook. OK, Yong-Sook. Yo, Yong-Sook. Daddy’s calling.” 

Simon tried a few more, weighing in his mind how embarrassed he’d be to say any of these in front of company—what company?—when it hit him. The perfect trigger phrase. It was too obvious not to use. He quickly typed a full command into Python.

“Simon says, clean the bathroom.” And off it went. 

After Simon’s second day of suffering from his mystery illness at home, his father called. He picked up the phone after the fourth ring.

“Do you have cancer?” his father asked.

“What?”

“Eddie called me to ask why you’re playing hooky from work. Said you told him you’re sick, oh so sick, and I had to vouch for you. ‘Oh, my boy’s no liar, Eddie, you know that. He must be at death’s door. I’ll call him right now.’ Your hair better be coming out in clods, I swear.”

“Dad, I’m sorry—”

“I know you are.”

Simon swallowed. He knew he’d walked into that one as soon as he opened his mouth, but that didn’t make it sting any less. Simon paced the short hallway from his bedroom to the living room. The Yong-Sook was safely tucked under his desk. He needed to get control. “Listen, okay? I didn’t quit, just took a few days off. I’m allowed to do that.”

“I got you that job, son. I’m paying your light bill. We could talk about what you’re ‘allowed’ to do all day.” There was a brief pause, the muted sounds of traffic. “What are you even doing, Simon? Are you on drugs?”

Simon huffed. “None that aren’t legal here.”

“I don’t even know why I asked. Go to work. Quit playing with Eddie. He’s a good man, he’s short-staffed, and… yeah. I love you.” With that, he hung up.

Eddie was a good man. A kind of surrogate father figure to keep watch over him in NorCal while his real one made money hand over fist as a casino owner in Vegas. The two apparently went way back—high school or college buddies, Simon couldn’t remember which. Eddie hired Simon on at his hardware store shortly after the tech startup blew up in his face. Even Abigail balked when he told her his plan to drop out months shy of graduation to go into business with a few of his classmates, a fact that got under his skin. She could say they’re moving continents away to start a new boba and karaoke filled life together, and he was supposed to take her at her word. But his visions for himself and his future were met with interrogation, an are you sure you won’t regret this? Everyone in his life was waiting, waiting for him to fail.

Simon took the job begrudgingly. He knew he was meant to do more than fix broken clocks and recommend paint swatches. But until he carved something out for himself, it would have to do. He sighed and picked up his Yong-Sook to test it once again. He’d stumbled upon a fan-made soundboard of characters from The Office and went into the wee hours of Friday morning hacking each of the vowels and consonants apart into different midi files until he had his very own Dwight Schrute voice bank. He cleared his throat.

“Simon says, speak.”

“Identity theft is not a joke, Simon.”

The word of Simon’s return quickly spread in the breakroom on Monday, along with the mysterious machine he toted along with him. 

“What’s that?” 

“A hunk of junk,” Simon told Eddie when he asked what he was tinkering in with instead of eating. That answer didn’t erase the quirk of Eddie’s eyebrows, though, so he elaborated. “It was- a gift. I kind of made a pet project out of it while I was out. Watch this.”

Simon set the vacuum on the floor while Eddie, Gabriel, and Sarah watched on. 

“Simon says, sing happy birthday.”

The Yong-Sook sang out in a clipped imitation of Rainn Wilson’s baritone voice, moving from side to side in a little jig.

“Wow, Simon,” Sarah said in surprise. “That’s amazing! How’d you do it?”

Simon rubbed the back of his neck. “It wasn’t anything too crazy. Just messed around a bit.”

“I’ll say,” Gabriel chuckled. He picked the Yong-Sook up and rotated it this way and that, as if he could sus out what changes he made to the AI from the outside. “This thing Chinese?”

“Korean.” Simon replied.

“Ah. I see. What else can it say?”

Simon smirked. “Well, I’ll show you.”

Simon’s change in mood was subtle, almost undetectable to himself, but enough for his status as the self-imposed social pariah of the workplace to shift towards something more approachable. Like a stray cat, Simon was steadily lured into his coworkers’ fold with praise and the promise of recognition of his true worth. On slow days, they would ask him more about the ins and outs of the Yong-Sook until the machine became a regular visitor of the store, ambling about the aisles like it was on the fence about a purchase. Gabriel in particular took interest in the vacuum. He brought his own in, some German model that had been discontinued in 2005 after “cleaning up” a little girl’s hair as she napped on the floor. He wanted a voicebank added in. An old girlfriend’s, he admitted after some prodding.

“I just miss her, bro.” Gabriel shrugged, sheepish. Simon didn’t ask him to elaborate or to tell him when he became a “bro” to him.

As Simon walked him through the process, he wondered against his better judgment how weird it would be to make a voice bank out of Abigail. He certainly had enough material to work with. She had a YouTube channel, Abigail ESL, with a modest 200 subscribers, her videos catering towards young English learners around the globe. It’d take him some time to remove the happy stock music and sound effects in the background, but it was nothing beyond his capabilities. The real question is what he would make her say. 

Her YouTube videos were all he could think about the first and last time they tried phone sex. They were navigating a 16-hour time difference—she was his “woman of tomorrow,” he’d joke—so in all they did, time was of the essence. As planned, Abigail called him at 9 AM, or 2 in the morning in Seoul, and Simon shuffled off to the employee bathroom. When he questioned why they couldn’t save their sexcapades for the weekend, she insisted a clandestine encounter would take things to the next level. The piss on the toilet seat begged to differ. He was a good sport, though. Wordlessly wiped it down, sat, listened, spoke. But the last straw for him was her switch in tone. He didn’t know if she always sounded like that or was stuck in teacher mode after a really long day, but Simon felt like he was being coached through a math problem.

“Yeah? Yeah? And then what?”

He snorted, and he couldn’t take it back. She went silent, hung up, and they never mentioned it again. It was the first time, he thought, that he had managed to make her feel small. The reverse was much more common. Simon decided against creating an Abigail voice bank, sure there was something ethically wrong about it, as well as downright pathetic, but he knew what she’d say if he did. Simon waited till after hours to type in a new command.

“Simon says, talk dirty to me.”

Dwight replied. “You’re a dirty, dirty boy, Simon.”

Sarah got a promotion, and that meant it was time to drink. She invited Simon and several other coworkers out to a little dive bar on Geary. It was the first time he’d seen Sarah out of her work clothes. The blanched button-up and khaki shorts that made up the Eddie’s Repair Store uniform hardly flattered anyone. But that night, she arrived in a simple, black dress with a little glitter on the hem. She was stunning. As the night went on, Simon couldn’t deny that he had a type. Sarah was clearly a driven woman, more extroverted than Abigail but just as kind. He learned from their idle chatter as they waited for drinks that she was a year younger than him and had opted for trade school over college. She’d worked hard to be there. The title of assistant manager was now only a hop and a skip away, and she would deserve it. He felt the same about Abigail’s teaching career; she’d put in her ten thousand hours, but when it came to relying on her, he had his reservations.

“What’s waiting for me in South Korea?” he asked her one night. They were having dinner at her place. Celebratory. She received the offer from EPIK and promptly accepted, though she seemed somewhat taken aback that Simon wasn’t ready to hop on the plane with her that instant.

“I’ll be there.” She smiled and took another bite of her cobb salad. “You know, everything’s a lot cheaper there, even in the big city. If I play my cards right, you could be the house husband you’ve always dreamed of within a year.”

Simon didn’t laugh. He sipped at his ice water in hopes that she’d say something else. She did.

“How’s work coming along? I figured you could do things remotely.” Abigail’s tone was short, but she wasn’t wrong. After two of the three other members jumped ship and begged admissions to reenroll them for the fall semester, Simon took on the grunt work of undoing their oodles of spaghetti code. All he really needed was his laptop and a stable Wi-Fi connection. Still, he hesitated.

“It’s coming along. You’ll need someone to pick you up from the airport when you come back, though,” Simon said. “I promise I look great in a chauffeur’s cap.” 

They shared an uneasy smile and let the topic die on its face. Simon felt slighted. They had discussed their plans for the future, of course, and dutiful boyfriend that he was, he pledged to follow her to the ends of the earth if he must—but those were only words, a hypothetical he wasn’t actually prepared for. He’d lied about what he hoped for her, but had she not done the same to him? Here, the truth was laid bare: Abigail believed Simon’s ambitions should take a backseat to hers, that his failure was imminent, and that she would be his savior. And that he could not abide.

“Shit!” Simon tripped over the Yong-Sook as he entered his apartment with Sarah following close behind. Their party had whittled down to the two of them, and his place was in walking distance. There was no need to waste money on cab fare, she had said somewhere between their second and third martini. She trusted him. “Ugh. Simon says, what time is it?”

“It is 3:27 AM in San Francisco, California and 7:27 PM in Seoul, South Korea,” the Yong-Sook replied. Sarah giggled as she took off her flats and collapsed across Simon’s couch. He could only see snatches of her with the little moonlight that filtered through the blinds: her head lolled back onto the armrest, her hands steepled over her belly. An aura of contentment radiated off of her. Simon forgot that could happen, someone happily existing in his space. Simon sat down on the floor below her, absentmindedly weighing the vacuum in his hands.

“What’s so funny?” he asked, smiling. “Did you forget about the voice?”

“No, no. I remembered that.” Sarah said. “Just… what’s with you and Korea? Like, the Yong-whatever, and now the time. I feel like you’re gonna sneak off and get one of those cheap face lifts I always hear about.”

 “Who’s to say I haven’t already?” Simon pulled his face back with both of his hands until every wrinkle was stretched smooth. He brought his face closer to hers in the darkness, their breaths a tangle of alcohol and sweetness. “Tell me I’m pretty.”

Sarah laughed and bumped her nose against his, and Simon’s hands fell to his lap. This would be so easy. Having her here, a fixture in his life, someone who could see past his faults to the molten core of his potential. But he already had something like that, once. How long could anything else last? How long could he go on, avoiding?

“It’s- I have a friend in South Korea,” Simon stammered into her nostrils. “An ex. We don’t talk much lately.” 

Sarah pulled back slightly. Simon couldn’t make out her expression but imagined something stricken. Her voice was quiet but earnest. “Do you miss her?”

“More than I thought.” He admitted, more to himself than to her. The couch groaned as Sarah relaxed back into it with a huff. The Yong-Sook seemed to watch them in meaningful silence. Eventually, she sighed.

“Good. I’m happy for you. Missing people is good, I think. Keeps your heart young, or something.” She turned in towards the cushions, cocooning herself in their plushness. Simon asked if she needed a pair of pajamas for the night, to which she shook her head, remembered he couldn’t see her, then mumbled a ‘no, thank you, but I’d take a blanket if you have one.’ “You aren’t going to leave me out here, are you?” she called after him as he stumbled to get her things. “I’m already kind of embarrassed. If you go to your room, I might cringe myself to death.”

“Okay,” Simon said, and he made a pallet of his own on the floor. It was the least he could do after leading her into whatever that night had been. He stared up at the ceiling fan, listened to Sarah’s soft breathing, and his thoughts returned to Abigail, because no matter how hard he’d fought it, that seemed to be all his brain was good for anymore. She was cuddled up against his chest and telling him about something new she’d encountered in her studies. She smelled faintly of his shampoo.

“There’s this superstition in Korea,” she said, tracing his clavicle, “called fan death. They say if you leave a fan running all night, it’ll kill you in your sleep.” He was dismissive then, calling it ridiculous, but she defended the myth with surprising force. “There are so many things we don’t believe in, but we invest in them just in case. Like people, or God, or the lottery. But in this case, I don’t think you want proof.” 

As Simon fell asleep, he could’ve sworn the blades above them began to spin.

The two weeks that followed were full of hopeful—if nervous—energy. Simon busied himself in the back for a few days, boxing and unboxing the same products to spare himself the stress of sharing a shift with Sarah so soon after their night together. But Eddie had other plans. Simon had made a name for himself, first among his coworkers, then his coworker’s friends, until he was unofficially dubbed the Pimp My Roomba guy. Customers would drop off their vacuums of varying pedigree to have them souped up for a certain price. Eddie was happy to have a bit more foot traffic, along with the chance to sway them into buying more from his store, but Simon felt vindicated. He put his effort into something, and it succeeded. He was ready to do what he’d pushed down for so long, what he’d been aching to do since Abigail left him: try again.

There was a moment’s hesitation before he opened a new tab and pulled up her Instagram. Her last post was a week-old photo gallery. Abigail clinking her “I Hate Mondays” coffee mug with a grinning coworker; Abigail’s lesson plans sprawled out just so on her desk, all notes in aesthetically pleasing if grammatically questionable Konglish; Abigail squatting, mean-mugging the camera alongside a gang of third graders on the blacktop like a redheaded Tupac, their chubby peace signs filling the frame. The caption was a barrage of carefully curated hashtags: #TeacherInspo, #MondayMood, #MyHeartMySeoul. She looked good. She always did, but more than that, she was more done-up than usual. An extra sheen to her hair, a new cardigan with a bracelet to match. And right as he was about to message her, he noticed it. An added line at the end of her bio, so easy to miss—a date, a name, and a heart.

Simon waited until he got home to fall apart. Sarah stared at him as he shoved open the door at closing time, the Yong-Sook tight in his grasp instead of his backpack, but he didn’t care. The little wheels left angry, red track marks in his palm. How much of this was him, and how much was her? He took a screwdriver and began dismantling. First the battery, and then the speaker. Simon heard it cry out in his mind—his project, his child, his ex, himself. He couldn’t move on, not in any way that mattered, because even when he made a molehill of himself, she was the foundation. He couldn’t go back, because she wasn’t waiting there for him. He could only stand there in the present, paralyzed. Simon pulled out the bristles in fistfuls and exposed the steel fan spinning impossibly beneath.