Short Story by Elisa
I like to call myself an anomaly. Little children point their fingers, crying at their mothers when they spot me. Their horrified mothers either cover the little beings’ mouths without a glance or smile a brief apology at me. In both situations, the kids are whisked away.
My father becomes irritated when I call myself such. It’s interesting to watch how the disease of anger ruptures his face. It first manifests in his twitching eyebrows, spreading to reddened cheeks and thick veins in his neck. Then–it’s so fast, you’ve got to be watching carefully–the anger explodes. He launches into hour-long lectures about how my mother and him blessed me with a life greater than his own, emphasizing our enormous house and the opportunities I’ve been gifted.
When he was a kid, robots weren’t welcomed into society, much less families. My father tells me, “Saying you’re an anomaly is offensive.”
As quickly as his livid anger flares, it’s just as abruptly snuffed out once my mother arrives. Her distaste for such a word is personified in pity.
“Oh, you poor, poor child!” she wails. Then, it’s all head pats, hugs, and smiles.
Does this seem absurd to you? Of course, my parents’ responses are logical according to statisticians and social scientists who extrapolate male rage and motherly affection, but isn’t it still incomprehensible? I’m an intelligent thing, something programmed to understand, yet…
One parent attempts to make a truth clear while the other comforts. Each decides my life’s goal is simply in the pursuit of understanding. They may be correct; I’m merely a composition of coded nodes that all work toward the singular purpose of learning how to be human. And it’s all very intentional if you look at it that way, but there’s something else. It lurks, invisible but present, ready to be caught and defined. I see it suspended in the code, but it only sits as I grow more agitated just watching it.
This–we’ll categorize it as simply “an odd feeling”–began on my weekly ice cream trips with Margo. Margo is my government-mandated friend whom I’m required to meet with at least once a week to help acclimate me to human interactions.
All robots begin with multiple human friends. We choose the one we will eventually fuse with. I am the outcome of a fusion between a robot and their human male partner whose body I inhabit. I’ve never met my non-human creator because, as my adoptive human parents tell me, they decided to dedicate their program to “the future of science.” My male creator is temporarily deceased or, more precisely, missing from this current earthly axis. Only once I donate myself, malfunction, or as you humans prefer to name it, pass away, does my male creator re-materialize and replace my consciousness for his. And then, he continues in his typical linear stream of life. Of course, these humans never have to, want to, or can return, but I guess that’s why my robot creator donated themself: to fix that.
I don’t have any of the male’s memories or know if we think the same, but we share the same physicalities. I was somewhere else before, but you and I can’t even begin to grasp that notion. It really can’t be explained within the walls of a brain.
My adoptive parents were exceedingly supportive in my journey of finding a human consort. It was an extensive process involving many humans. Vivien was kind, but she hugged me too much like my mother. Ryan was too afraid of me, dropping objects and apologizing every other second. But I liked Margo. She didn’t care to over or under value my robotic parts, worshiping or dismissing the fact that I wasn’t also born from a uterus. Margo didn’t care who I was. She just knew why we were here, that’s all.
My father drives Margo and me to the local Ben & Jerry’s in the town square each Friday evening. The idea was Margo’s. Fridays are usually so crowded that the line for ice cream is out the door, but Margo and I don’t mind. As people conglomerate around us, we are forced into silence, just focusing on side-eying cutters and keeping our spots in line.
After individually swiping our cards on the payment terminal and throwing the change in the tip jar that my father pointedly hands us each car ride, Margo and I grab our cones, sit on one of the free benches near the parlor, and lick, quietly watching all the people who pass by.
Once our tongues are numb and our brains are comfortably buzzed on sugar, we stroll up and down the plaza’s parking lot until my father comes to pick us up.
The evening this feeling started was in December. Lights were strung over trees, and children ran merrily around the side shops. My father drove to the town center’s entrance, handed us a couple of coins, then nodded to Margo.
“You two kids have fun today.”
We tugged on our coats and began our chilly trek to the parlor. We walked side-by-side, close enough that people couldn’t walk between us and far enough away that we didn't look awkward.
Since it was winter, Margo and I were the only ones in line for ice cream. Today, she motioned that she needed to use the restroom and gestured for me to grab my ice cream ahead of her.
I paid for a scoop of Phish Food and sat myself on the curb outside. It was eerily dark, and flurries were beginning to form, so I focused on balancing my ice cream cone between my fingertips and watched the scene before me unfold. There were about ten cars left in the parking lot, and only one boy and one girl were standing on the sidewalk across. The pair didn’t speak, perhaps acting like Margo and I, just staying still, coexisting alongside each other and the indifferent world around.
I listened as other cars sped by and looked at them, not looking at each other. It comforted me to see these two also followed the unspoken rule that if you weren’t conversing with another or preoccupied in real life, you must be talking to someone else or doing something online. The girl had her earbuds in; the boy had his phone out. The girl absent-mindedly twirled her index finger around a stray lock of hair as the boy nodded his head in agreement with the news on his screen. I assumed the pair’s bus was behind schedule that day; I bet the lateness was a common occurrence. The girl sighed and shuffled her feet as if to expel the cold. The boy momentarily glanced over, licked his lips, opened his mouth, and thought about it. He hesitated and was a year too young for it not to be too much of a hassle to try again, so he closed his mouth and looked back down at his phone.
He would stay that way, suspended in time, staring down at his phone, waiting for someone to come pick him up and pull him out of his trance. But until the bus came, until the girl looked over at him first–for now–his words would leave soundless traces, blending in with the ever-falling snow.
I glanced down at the frozen ice cream in my lap and suddenly felt like chucking the chocolate fish butts in my scoop at the boy. I hardly felt the ridges of my ice cream cone, but I knew that if I just held the cone a little tighter, the whole thing would crumple between my hands. I didn’t even care about this sugary treat. Its contents would slide down my throat to rot in my stomach anyway.
The bell on the parlor door jingled as Margo stepped out. I watched her as she spotted me and furrowed her brows. She paused, then walked over, and I started to stand up, but just two steps away from me, Margo dropped her ice cream.
I’m not sure what flavor it was, probably Chunky Monkey, considering the dollops of vanilla and crushed walnuts on the concrete floor. But all I remember is the twist of disgust on her face. The corner of her mouth quirked at a slight upward angle, and she scrunched her nose as if to scold her lost ice cream. But the cruel expression only lasted a moment because then she was gazing up at me.
Why was Margo here? Fact: Margo is my government-issued friend. She’s supposed to die because of me. What good do I, as a robot, contribute? 98.9999% of the reason Margo’s here is so I don’t start a robot rebellion. The government doesn't tell us that, but we both know.
As we meet each Friday, I’m always looking around at the other people. I’m watching the kid in the bright red puffer tug on his older brother’s arm, begging him to walk faster so they can get home for playtime sooner. I’m staring at the finally graduated college students, hugging each other, mashing their tears and slobbery noses all over each others’ gowns. I’m studying how two strangers momentarily meet eyes then walk past one another, never looking back again.
Sometimes I wonder if I’m just observing all these people to see what’ll happen–if something moves me, I guess. I’m numb all the way to my fingertips, loaded on sugar and examining everyone, welcoming myself to an overwhelming amount of sensations, indulging and experiencing everything in hopes of just something being right.
And every Friday, without fail, I find my eyes wandering toward that being radiating beside me, her steady, unwavering presence just there. When I find myself noticing her, it’s like I suddenly need to look away. I’m a robot, this novel hunk of junk that’s supposed to serve as some semblance of a son, firing at a target again and again, desperate to find one meaning that will land and strike me in the face, startling me sensitive and shaking me awake.
When my father scolds me for being an anomaly, he’s not speaking to me. The anger births in the prevailing frustration that he just can’t find the right words, blinding him. He’s spewing every term learned from his university history classes and repeating the same advice his father repeatedly reminded him as a child. He says I am not such an offensive “thing” because I am chosen; I am a human in “all the ways that matter.”
To him, or to me? I’d like to ask.
I really don’t think that being human is about having empathy. It isn’t about feeling and being kind to other people, nor is it about having the capacity to do evil, be evil, and love evil. I think it’s all about trust. Do I trust you enough to let you exist? Do I trust you enough that even if something else, something new happens, you’re still that same person you say you are even in this evolved untruth? Once I’ve surrendered my body to you, can I trust you enough that you won’t let me melt away like a toddler’s fallen ice cream on a warm, sunny day?
It had only been a second after Margo dropped her ice cream, and in that moment where I could have done a million things, I threw mine to the ground.
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