Albert Rodriguez

Albert Rodriguez is a new writer based in Brooklyn, New York. He has a degree from Borough of Manhattan Community College. His work has appeared in INK Pantry, The Rye Whiskey Review, and in Literally Stories.

Fail Safe (Short Fiction)

My parents came to America from India before I was born. They came chasing their version of the American dream. America represented to them “the land of milk and honey,” which in my understanding is a euphemism for a life of physical comforts and cheap, continuous entertainment.  But in their minds, easy luxury could also turn into degrading debauchery. It was one of their reservations about coming to America.  

“No matter how successful you get,” they kept telling me, “never forget that in your heart and in your blood—you are Indian.” When I became a little older I was tempted to interpret this as indirectly telling me to vote conservative.

By the time I was twelve, however, my parent’s anxious concerns with American culture had died down somewhat.  They, themselves, had been Americanized.

It helped that I did really well in school. I was a straight A student. I was a cadet in the ROTC program in Edison, New Jersey. I was class president. I was on the National Dean’s List. My success became so prevalent that my mother actually began to believe that I was too smart to ruin my life.

This, of course, wasn’t true.

I made it through high school without straying. I graduated Valedictorian and headed to a top university, all expenses paid.  I became a STEM student and took my studies all the way to the PhD level. Then, when I exited the open country of academia and entered the thicket of real life, that’s when my accomplishments leveled off and my troubles began.

By the time I graduated with my PhD I was basically a monk, so I was in a hurry to get a girlfriend.

My mother told me that serial dating was an American invention. The proper thing to do, according to her, was to court a female from a good family, win over her affections honestly, win the respect of the family, and then make a public vow and swiftly start a family. According to my parents, there was no time to waste.

“And always stay close to the family, son. Because family is everything in life.”

I moved from Edison, New Jersey, to Plymouth, Minnesota, for a top-gravy job. I became the guy that designed the fail-safe systems for an assembly line of automated robots. In this position I earned a pretty substantial salary. And it was an even bigger salary considering that the money that I made had serious buying power in small-town America.

All I needed at this point was some real companionship. Escorts were out of the question.

My mother kept insisting for me to come back home to Edison and marry an Indian-American girl, but at this point I wanted All-American. I had made up my mind that for me to overcome the perpetual feeling of the outsider that hung over me like a dark cloud, and to give my future progeny a leg up in the world (the Western World to be specific), I had to marry a white woman. It was a dumb premise, but I was full of youthful idealism.

I found Madison on a gloomy November night at a bar. I didn’t think she would talk to me, but she did.

Externally Madison was an American goddess, but internally she was an American gargoyle—entitled, unkind, and morally reprehensible. She had a knack for ruining the lives of her ex-boyfriends after stealing their identities. They were all these tall phenom types that were all jacked up. I was the height of Jackie Chan. So I wasn’t under any delusions: Madison was with me because she was getting older and all the hot boys didn’t want her anymore. I was “kind,” and “smart,” and “kind of cute.” And most importantly—I was well on my way to becoming wealthy. Generationally wealthy if I stayed disciplined.

One day Madison admitted to having twenty two abortions before she was thirty years old (she wouldn’t tell me the total number). That didn’t dissuade me. At least she was somewhat honest about the figures. In jest I joked that my only regret in life was not having fathered one of those aborted fetuses. It was supposed to be one of those bad jokes that you take back immediately. But the moon was out that night, and maybe it was that time of the month, because the joke turned into a toss-around in the bedroom somehow.

That night, in a cataclysmic of passion, I sent one of my little swimmers all the way to victory.  Despite her natural inclination to kill the little fellow, we ended up having the little rascal. His name was Magnus.

Magnus ended up being a promising boy, beautiful beyond measure, with gorgeous Indian-American locks and the coffee eyes of a boy of mixed heritage. After he was born I really had a desire to seal my faith with Madison and build fail-safe systems around our new family.

I paid 1.2 million dollars for a wonderful condo in a wonderful building in downtown Plymouth. It was probably the most sought out building in that small city.

Building security was a big deal for Madison because some of her ex-boyfriends were after her. She lived in a constant state of panic, and only thrived by the power of the restraining order. So she was relieved when she learned that the building had a 24/7 door man, and a state of the art security system that included card access with an elevator landing right to the apartment.

“The unique key cards are encrypted,” I told her. She looked impressed. I was happy that she was happy.

Madison also asked about the staircase. She was worried about home invasions. I told her that those doors were secured.

“They could only be opened from the inside of the apartment,” I told her.

Then she asked a fair question.

“But what happens in case of a fire?”

 I explained to her the ins and outs of a fail-safe door release system.

“Only in the event of a fire alarm that involved multiple fire protection devices, like smoke detectors and water movement sensors inside the sprinkler system, would the doors to the staircase be released.”

This would allow for life-saving mobility throughout the building. She fluttered her eyelashes at me, so I kept talking.

“It's a careful balancing act between providing tight security and freedom of movement. In a way it's similar to what I do at work. In my own designs I try to find a balance between safety and efficiency.”

She looked at me with what seemed to be admiration. For that fleeting moment I thought that perhaps we were in love, and that maybe, there was a chance that we would be ok.

But in the end nothing was ok. All the fail-safe systems that I attempted to build in our lives, they all failed.

Madison was too addicted to the night life. She didn’t want to look after Magnus. She forced me to hire a nanny. She didn’t cook. She didn’t wash clothes. All she wanted to do was hang out with her girlfriends. I felt bad for Magnus.

One day I took the day off just to be with him and told the nanny to stay home. We ate breakfast at the Thunderbolt Cafe. I took Magnus to the park, and then we spent the rest of the day binging on Daniel the Tiger and Little Bear.

At 3:00 pm Magnus took his nap. I figured that I could run to the roof to smoke a blunt. If there was any emergency in the building I could quickly come down the staircase. That’s the point of the fail-safe system. But who would have known that fail-safe systems have to be tested and maintained? I knew this, but the lax, second-rate resident manager (Alfonzo) didn’t.  His knowledge of access technology was abysmal.

That afternoon, there was a fire on the second floor. The fail-safe system failed to release the doors throughout the building. I was able to get to the stairwell from the roof. But I couldn’t get to Magnus.

Little Magnus died in a heap of smoke. Firefighters found his body still in his crib. My only consolation was that he didn’t burn alive.

I got off the potential charges of negligent manslaughter because I lied through my teeth to investigators. I told them that I was sleeping and that I woke up in the swirl of smoke, and got confused and ended up in the staircase without Magnus.

The resident manager, Alfonzo, beat his own charges. Ultimately, they blame the deaths on the business that had the contract for testing and maintaining the system. A supervisor that routinely cooked the books went to jail. The company got sued for millions of dollars.

I won’t tell you who was the savvy character that ended up suing them, but the dude made a lot of money. Not that money is a suitable replacement for a life. Especially an innocent, little life.

Afterwards, someone hired a hitman to bury Alfonzo alive. Pictures were taken, and sent, of him standing in his own death-hole (neck-deep) with an expression of utter horror.

Madison couldn’t deal with her loss. She fell back into drugs. But in my opinion, she didn’t need much of an excuse. Eventually this is how she died—her face laced with fentanyl.

I went back to Edison. I thought that there I could start all over, but no such thing is possible. We get one chance at life. Whatever we screw up we carry as baggage forever.

I also overestimated my parent's patience. They are meek people, but they also have limits. When I arrived at my childhood home on Christmas night, my dad chased me off the porch with his kirpan, because of what I had done to his beloved grandson. I ran into the street, slipped, and broke a hip on a sheet of black ice. I laid there on that silent night, looking at the stars and thinking of Magnus.