NothingSpecial: gender-bending transformation stories, comics, and occasional poetry =^_^=
The start of December was a mad rush, as classes got back into gear and professors tried to build enough momentum to wrap things up by Christmas break; it wasn't until late in the week that things started settling down. That was fine with me; the couple weeks were such a whirlwind of awkwardness – from my fight with Emma to the craziness at the lake to our day at the mall to spending a whole weekend as "Susan" – that I welcomed being too swamped with coursework to think about anything. A couple weeks with no twists on the existing madness that was my life uncomfortable discussions – was that so much to ask…?
But while I was checking my notes after Calc and chatting with Anne as she wound me, I spotted an unfamiliar woman waiting in the hall. Not one of the faculty, nor my classmates; and as people filtered out of the classroom and she came in, I saw that she wasn't human either. Her skin was pretty convincing, but her hair and eyes were slightly off in ways I knew from seeing them in the mirror each morning, and her "ears" were plastic domes on the sides of her head – a dead giveaway that she was a robot.°
° (As a demi-human class, robots exhibited staggering variety given how few they numbered – but it was a general rule that, the more humanlike they were, the more likely they'd have some obvious "tell" – antennæ, visible joint seams, etc. The human-with-unusual-ears configuration was, for some reason, inordinately popular, although the design of the "ears" varied.)
There was no way this wasn't going to involve me, but I sort of hoped that if I looked busy enough she might go away. My phone beeped, and I buried myself in it as best as I could without giving Anne the impression I was ignoring her; it was a reply from Alicia about an amateur acting workshop the arts department was hosting. It'd occurred to me that if I ever had to pretend to be "Susan" again, it'd help to be less uncomfortable playing a character…
(Alicia and Katie had predictably abandoned the "loft" after the weather changed and they learned that a business space on the third story of a drafty, poorly-maintained 1940s office building was not suited for a Lakeside winter. But they were on another floor of the dorm and out of Tammy's hair now, minus the occasional morning where we'd find Katie asleep in front of our door.)
I peeked over the top of the screen. Drat, still there – and headed toward us. The stranger came over and stood in front of me; she had an oddly military bearing, standing straight upright with her hands clasped behind her back. I knew robots often tended to be straightforward and business-like, but it still struck me a bit funny. And what did she want with me…?
"Stuart Freeman?" she said. "Grace Goldberg, from SAIL. We got word from the administration that a student here had become a new kind of machine intelligence, and was open to working with researchers interested in studying them. I wanted to talk with you about finding a good time to meet for a few sessions in the coming weeks."
I had a metaphorical sinking feeling in my metaphorical gut, which in present form meant a secondary spring in the back of my head rapidly unwinding, the stored energy cascading through several gear-trains down my neck and into my shoulders. I'd known that people were probably going to come asking after me at some point, but there were so many more pressing concerns that it was easy to forget. But actually having to undergo…what, CT scans? Mechanical vivisection? Or just lying on a couch being asked about turtles…? – was not what I wanted right now. (Or ever.)
My mechanisms were humming as I cast about for a good excuse and failed to find one. Classes were busy, but not that busy, I wasn't going on a trip anytime soon, and my artificial hair never needed washing. "I, uh," I said, stalling while I looked for an out, "I was…we were…" I glanced back at Anne, silently pleading with her to help me out here!
She looked confused for a moment, somewhere under the mass of her bangs, thought about it, and got a disconcerting smile on what I could see of her face. "We, uh, we were gonna, um, uh…we're working on some, uh, outfits," she stammered gleefully. "That's, um, probably gonna take up, uh…p–pretty much the whole, uh, afternoon…"
"Uh-huh," the woman said, obviously unconvinced, but unable to refute it; she turned to me for confirmation. Damn it, now I had put my foot in it – I could give into Anne's desire to dress me up in whatever strange, ridiculous cosplay she had in store, or spend who-knows-how-long with this stranger grilling me on things I either didn't know myself, or didn't want to think about…
I nodded reluctantly. Anne's hands were still on my key, and I could feel her positively vibrate with excitement. "Uh, right. So, we'll be busy with, um, that. C'mon, Anne, we should get moving…" I got up from my seat; if it at least got me out of this…
"I see," the gynoid replied. "Well, I won't keep you, but let me give you my number. We can discuss this at a more convenient time." She frowned slightly, concentrating for a moment. My phone gave out the little jingle for a Bluetooth pairing, and a moment later pinged with another text message. Had…had she gotten my number just like that…?
She nodded, satisfied. "There. You can contact me when you're free, and we'll schedule from there." A slight smile formed on her lips. "It was very nice to meet you, Stuart. I look forward to working with you." And with that, she turned to go.
I stared after her, flabbergasted. Just like that, she expected me to cooperate!? Okay, sure, she was a robot, and they could be a little brusque, but how presumptive could you get!? Though she probably had been told that I was happy to go along with it, or near enough; they'd made that expectation clear, and no doubt they'd love to have the school's name attached to some noteworthy paper; with an Ivy League lab involved, they must be salivating.
But I had more immediate problems, namely Anne hauling me bodily out of the classroom to the foyer of the Oesterlund Building. She was surprisingly strong for someone about my size, especially since I weighed more now than I had as a human male. Between that and her sudden assertiveness, I wondered if I hadn't gotten in over my head – but what I could see of her face showed nothing but eager anticipation.
I was much less thrilled than she was – visions of ridiculous poofy ball-gowns, goth-y lace shenanigans, and God knows what else dancing in my head, setting my gears grinding – but she had at least tried to bail me out, and I owed her for the attempt. Besides, as Emma said, this was a temporary thing; I wasn't in danger of permanently altering my psyche just by letting her play dress-up, was I…?
We went outside, and I was surprised it wasn't colder. Since learning about the steam tunnels, I'd hardly gone out if I could avoid it; not only did it keep me out of the weather, but I ran into fewer people and got fewer stares that way. (In fact, I wasn't even wearing a jacket, but Anne was all bundled up. Well, it wasn't a problem just walking across campus, and she could wind me if needed.) The sun was clear and bright, which seemed ironic° since I felt like I was going to my doom.
° (Okay, not ironic "ironic;" just popular-misconception "ironic.")
We arrived at the dorm, and she led me up to the top floor and down the hall to her room. I followed her inside, still half-expecting some kind of terrifying haunted-toy-shop setting, but it was…mostly ordinary. Anne had the side away from the window, and with the sun overhead it was half in shadow, but a warm, hazy, dusty-garret kind of shadow; and while she had a lot of stuff packed into her space, it was too neat and tidy to be claustrophobic or oppressive.
She did in fact have a selection of dolls lining the shelf above her desk, but they weren't as creepy as I'd feared; they just sat there, waiting for her, existing as mere abstractions of the human form until she gave them meaning…did she play with them, I wondered? Would they want her to, if they were aware of their own nature? Would they want to be what their owner projected onto them? Was that what it was, to be a doll…?
While I was lost in thought, Anne didn't hesitate, launching into an almost-manic mode I hadn't seen before, taking each one off the shelf and introducing them to me in turn. "Th–this is Mary Ellen," she said, hardly stammering at all; "she's a newspaper reporter in the '40s, but she got lost at sea in the South Pacific and ended up…"
I nodded along as she rattled off extensive summaries of her dolls' personalities, adventures, likes, and loves. Why do we name toys? I wondered. Why do we pretend that they're people? I'd done the same as a kid, but why? What was it in the human psyche that made us think of simulacra as if they really were what they resemble? Was it a childish need for companionship? But we don't stop needlessly anthropomorphizing things when we grow up; we talk about machines like they're people any time they act up. Did we just have a need to relate to things on our own level, because we're the only creatures we instinctively understand? (Did merfolk subconsciously project fins and a tail onto other people, if they weren't thinking about it…?)
Or was it a need to make things over into what we thought they should be? To model the world in our own image? What would dolls think about the lives children gave them, if they could think? Did we have the right to say who and what they were? To define them, simply because they couldn't define themselves? Were we loving gods who – usually – granted them a pleasant, stimulating existence? Or would they resent their lack of choice, living solely at the discretion and for the satisfaction of someone else?
Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay to mould me Man?
I blinked and shook my head, my brain whirring. Where had that come from? Okay, I knew the reference, but I hadn't been thinking of it; it'd just sort of popped into my mind unbidden. I was brieflly confused by that, but shook it off; Anne had taken the last of her dolls off the shelf.
"And this is Annelise," she said, her expression warm and nostalgic. "She's, um, well, sh–she's sort of…an other-me, but, uh…the way I wished I could be, as a kid." She smiled sheepishly. "I, um, I guess these days they'd call that a 'Mary-Sue,' but…whenever I felt, um, shy, or awkward, or lonely…she was always there for me – my friend who was everything I, uh, wasn't…"
I looked her over; the others were fancier, more finely-crafted products, but Annelise was a rag-doll, clearly handmade, and worn from years of play. I could see multiple patch-jobs where a seam had split or a piece of fabric had frayed; was it that important to keep this poor thing intact? "She's, uh…you've had her a long time, then?" I said.
Anne nodded. "She was my, uh…well, no, she was my first…doll doll, I guess. I had Jo-Jo before her; he was a sock monkey my, um, dad made for me when, uh, when I was a toddler. He and Annelise were best friends, but I, um, I l–lost him when we went to the park one day. Dad went back to, uh, to look, but we n–never found him…"
She gave a melancholy half-smile; her voice quavered a little. "I c–cried for days. I only s–s–started to, uh, to get over it when…when Mom read me The, um, The Velveteen Rabbit." She chuckled softly. "That, uh, really stuck with me – the idea of my toys becoming real. It's, um, probably why I went into artificial int–telligence. And, uh, I thought for…for a long time that maybe that'd, um, happened to him…"
She sighed. "Well, I realized later that…it doesn't really, um, work like that. But it still, uh, helped me growing up, when I felt…p–plain or gawky next to, um, the other girls…to remember what they s–said in the story, that, uh…that 'real' isn't, um, in how you're made; that, uh, that I had people who loved and cared for me and, um, that was enough. That I was, uh, 's real as I needed to be." She smiled warmly at the thought, and nodded toward her dolls. "And, um, I guess I figured that, uh, they were, too."
I lost myself in thought again. Here was something I hadn't considered: do we project humanity onto the inhuman because of what we want us to be? Was it our way of telling ourselves that, if a patchwork of cloth and stuffing and buttons could be a "person," the kind of person we'd like to be, that maybe we can, too? What would our dolls and stuffed animals and action figures make of being aspirational figures to us, if they knew? And what would they think of being treated as "real" not because they earned it somehow, but simply because we cared for them and felt that way about them…? Was that uplifting? Condescending? Or just conf—
My train of thought was derailed by a sudden looming presence behind me. Anne seemed to have a knack for appearing out of nowhere, even when she hadn't actually gone anywhere; that, or I was just very prone to tuning out when I got fixated on something, and she was quiet and withdrawn enough that she dropped off the figurative radar altogether when I did. Either way, I had a foreboding sense that things were about to go far beyond my comfort zone.
"So I thought we'd start with something simple," Anne said brightly, not stammering at all now, fully engaged in the same intense, focused mindset I'd seen when she introduced me to the "family." She swept around front of me holding something on a hanger, and for the first time, her bangs were parted enough for me to glimpse one of her eyes. I stood there, transfixed by the piercing blue of her gaze – and then she was upon me in a whirlwind of activity, undressing me as if I were one of her dolls and jabbering about the outfit she was putting me in.
Inasmuch as I had time to think about it, I wondered if I should be skeeved out by this, but there was nothing about her touch or her manner that felt untoward – just deeply, deeply weird. She didn't mean any harm, she was just…odd. But why was this not a boundary issue for me? I'd felt all weird and awkward about stripping in front of Tammy's sister; did having it done to me make it into the kind of personal-care thing that being wound up was, in my brain…?
Before I knew it, it was over; Anne stepped back to survey her work, nodded in satisfaction, and directed my attention to the mirror. I saw myself there; but not as I'd ever seen myself before. I was dressed in black velvet with thick white heavy-looking lace about it; and on the black dress my hair shone like silver, in the half-shadow of Anne's room. The girl in the mirror looked like the ingénue from an old silent film – no, not quite; she lacked the childlike innocence. There was a sadness haunting her expression instead, a loneliness in her eyes; as if she were alone in a world with no place for her, with no one to turn to…
For a long moment, I just stared at my reflection. I couldn't understand it; why didn't I hate this? Why didn't this feel wrong to me? I knew this wasn't my thing, wasn't me – it never had been before…! And yet…I didn't hate this. Was it that I expected worse? Did a fairly simple old-timey black dress feel better because I was afraid she'd put me in mountains of frills and ruffles and acres of petticoats? Was thick white lace okay because it was better than gauzy, see-through black lace, or velvet preferable to chiffon?
Or was it that…that the way the image in the mirror "read" to me reflected the way I felt about myself? But I did have people to support me; I had Tammy and Emma, and Gil, and Anne – all of whom cared for me in one way or another. I'd even had some of the CS crowd stop and give me an assist in the hallway now and then. Something was skipping inside me as I tried to process it; I wasn't really as alone as I looked like I felt, so why did I look like I felt that way…?
Anne clapped her hands together and failed to suppress a squeal of delight; she was vibrating again. "You're so perfect…" she breathed, giving me a beatific smile.
"I'm…I'm not," I said, trying to tear my gaze away from the mirror; I felt confused for a moment when I did, as if I'd been looking at someone else. "I'm really not." I was a bizarre mechanical construct trying to pass as a person, a sexless object in the guise of a woman, a life without direction or purpose pretending to have it together…how was any of that "perfect?" How could other people look at me and see me for more than I really was…?
Anne came at me with open arms and swept me up into a hug – a big, powerful bear-hug, like a child squeezing a favorite toy to within an inch of its imaginary life because they love it so much. "You're wonderful," she told me, catching my gaze with the unearthly green of her other eye. "Thank you so much for doing this for me…"
She held me like that for over a minute before finally letting me go. I stood there, dazed, feeling like I should be breathless, if I only breathed. I still didn't understand – but I couldn't help feeling overwhelmed by the sincerity. Even if it made no sense to me, it seemed like they all really meant it when they treated me as if I was really a decent person, or really a competent, reliable adult, or…or really real…
And then my thoughts were interrupted by that looming presence again, and Anne was upon me once more, with some other thing she wanted to try. We did, in fact, spend the rest of the afternoon doing this, and it was well into the evening when I finally staggered back to my own room to sit down, collect my thoughts, and fondly stroke the cap of my strange little mushroom-girl pet critter. I'd been so leery of this, and I still wasn't sure what I thought of it; but every time, I hadn't hated it. Every time, she'd showed me sides of myself I hadn't seen before. Every time, I'd looked into that mirror and seen me…
It was inevitable that I'd meet with Grace as requested; between her persistent requests to schedule it, "subtle" hints from my professors, and my own natural inclination to go along with people's expectations, it would've taken a concerted effort to avoid it. Naturally, then, I ended up contacting her a few days later and agreeing to sit down for some interview sessions and a couple scans – and sure enough, the following Monday I found myself sitting in a quiet study room just down the hall from the writing lab, waiting.
"My apologies," said the robot-woman, when she strode in a few minutes later. "Someone in admin mis-filed the reservation for the room, and I had to get that straightened out – but it's taken care of now."
"Uh, no problem," I said, looking her over. I hadn't paid close attention when we met, since I'd hoped to avoid this altogether, but I was curious, having never seen a robot in person. She was on the taller side, with a modest figure and a somewhat sharp face; she wore an academic logo tee featuring a heraldic shield with a lambda in it, and a black-and-white skirt that looked checkered at first glance, but was actually some intricate geometric pattern I didn't recognize.
Her skin was synthetic, but convincing; her raven hair somewhat less so. Like mine, it was a little too light and wiry, but it was long enough to stay down under its own weight and only seemed a bit "bigger" than it ought to – almost an '80s hair-band look, which was funny for someone so straight-laced. Other than this and the "ears," the only noticeable "tell" was in her eyes; the iris was less obviously non-human than my gemstone shutters, despite the unusual amber color, but the "pupil" was a tiny telescoping lens array, with the rainbow-gray of a digital-camera sensor on the other end.
"Please," she said, "have a seat." She glanced across the room. "Would you prefer to sit at the table, or in the armchairs by the bookshelf? I don't want this to feel like an interrogation."
"Um, over by the bookshelf, I guess." I was going to feel pretty on-the-spot anyway, but it'd be nicer if we could just sit and talk, without feeling like we were in a cop show. But the chairs were the curved, high-backed kind, and my key couldn't turn comfortably in those. There was a bench nearby, and I pulled it out from the shelf. "Here, does this work?"
"Certainly; whatever makes you comfortable," she replied, sitting down next to me. "Now, I'd like to begin with how—"
She stopped, confused, as my phone jingled. "No," she said, her voice echoing from my purse, "that's not—ugh. Damn it, these things are so stubborn…" She frowned and concentrated for a moment, and I heard the de-pairing jingle. I couldn't quite suppress a snort as she recovered her composure.
"Well," she said, smiling slightly, "if nothing else, it broke the ice. As I was saying, I wanted to start by hearing your thoughts on becoming a machine intelligence. How much do you know about us? Do you view yourself any differently than when you were biological?"
I thought for a moment. "I don't know too much beyond the basics; I'm not a robotics engineer or a computer scientist. I'm aware that, to my knowledge, I'm the first 'machine intelligence' that isn't electronic, but I never read up on how much variation there is with conventional robots – like, are you all digital? All 'software' running on a general-purpose architecture?"
Grace eyed me curiously. "That's a bit more than just 'the basics.'"
"I, um…I read a lot."
"Uh-huh," she said, sounding unconvinced. I sighed. Not this again…
"As far as what I think," I said, "I'm…not really sure. There's times I feel weird about being more of an object than a creature, if that makes any sense. Like, intellectually I know that machine lifeforms are a thing, and that they're people as much as any of us, but…it's hard to internalize. Robots are one thing, but it's hard to think of a pile of sprockets and pawls and who-knows-what as being me, and hard to think of me as being the end product of a machine."
"Hm," the robot-woman said. "Is that because robots and humans are both comprised of systems that are more, shall we say, 'concealed' from your understanding? You're not a doctor or a roboticist, but your own systems seem to be made of things that most people are at least passingly familiar with."
I thought about it. "I guess that's part of it," I said. "It's weird and confusing to feel some thing ratcheting away in my head and wonder what part of me that represents, and how. I never worried about what my neurons were doing because I could never feel them doing it."
Grace nodded. "It's easier to overlook what you don't sense, certainly. Do you ever experience gestaltzerfall? Ah, losing the sense of yourself as a whole, and perceiving only your components?" she said, noting my confusion. "Or feeling like parts of you don't belong?"
I shook my head. "I forget about my key and knock it into things sometimes, but I know that's pretty common for new transformees. I can get distracted feeling some part of me act in an unfamiliar way – and it's definitely conceptually weird to think about. But no, nothing that extreme." I frowned; it felt like this triggered some association in my mind, something I was forgetting, but I couldn't recall…
"How about culturally?" she asked. "You said it felt strange to think of yourself as the 'end product' of a machine – is that how you see yourself? Not that you are the machine, and the machine is you? Is that how you think of machine lifeforms generally?"
Was it? I had to think about that for a minute. "I…don't know?" I said. "You're the first I've ever met; it's not something I've really had to consider my own feelings on before."
She gave me a curious look. "I'm surprised; until now you've shown a lot of knowledge about demi-humans, for someone who doesn't work with them. Is this not a topic of interest for you?"
Yep, there it is. I sighed; was I going to have this conversation with everyone in my life? I could feel something clicking irritably in the back of my neck, and tried not to get distracted wondering what it was. "I, uh…like I said, I read a lot. You know, just…to keep busy. So, sure, I pick up a lot of assorted knowledge, but that doesn't mean I have a lot of opinions. None of this was even relevant to me six weeks ago, so…I'm still sorting it out."
She nodded; I couldn't tell from her expression whether she believed me. "Go on."
"As far as how I see myself," I said, "I…don't really know that, either. I knew, as a human, that in some sense I was composed of organic 'machinery' responding to chemical signals and external stimuli in predictable ways, and that what I see as myself could be considered the end result of those factors. That I might really have no say in me at all. That got a lot harder to ignore once I was made of things I could sort of model in my head, and feel in action."
"You wonder if you truly have free will, now?"
"I wonder if I ever did." I shook my head and sighed heavily. "Like, if there's some part of me that I don't like, am I able to change that? Or am I doomed to repeat the same behaviors that never get me anywhere, forever? If I don't have direction in my life, can I find it on my own, or do I have to wait for some external stimulus to prod me just so? Is there a switch in my head I could flip to make things okay, if I could only get at it?" I felt my tempo spiking, stopped to calm myself, and glanced over at her sheepishly. "Um…sorry. Didn't mean to unload like that."
Grace shook her head. "Not at all; I asked. And trust me, this is a very common experience among robot transformees. Really, it's more surprising that you're able to articulate it so clearly this soon after your change. Usually it takes a while for us to start considering the implications."
"It's…kinda been on my mind for a while," I said glumly, then turned to her, curious. "And, um, 'us?' Were…were you human, too? Uh, if you don't mind my asking…?"
"I was," she said, nodding thoughtfully. She had an odd expression on her face – a nostalgic kind of look, but not a fond nostalgia. I decided not to press it, and after a moment she returned to her business-like demeanor.
"Well, you're not alone in confronting that question," she said. "It's been the subject of debate for philosophy, religion, and science for millennia, long before we came around – and that really threw the matter into sharp relief. Humans have grasped the concept of machine life since antiquity, and they've tried to define what distinguishes us ever since – but then they had to contend with the beings they'd hypothesized for æons actually existing, and the fact that we were as clearly people as they were."
"There was a lot of awkwardness over that, right?" I said. "I know other demi-humans with strong cultural and folkloric associations had to deal with stereotypes that carried over to them." I was surprised by how casually she referred to "us" there; did she really, truly identify as a machine?
"There still is," she said. "Human society hasn't really figured out how to balance its history and culture with acknowledging demi-humans as individuals yet; it seems to see-saw between one extreme or the other." She sighed. "It's a shame; sometimes things that don't deserve it get caught in the crossfire. I thought The Matrix was a very good film, but the studio got cold feet on any sequels after human critics accused it of anti-machine bias; we'll probably never know where that might've gone."
"You don't think that was the case?" I asked, surprised. "It seemed pretty up-front to me."
"Think about it, though," she said. "The hero is a computer programmer – someone who works with machines. And the whole conflict is about escaping the control of the film's 'machines,' and the artificial 'reality' they enforce upon society. It's not really a film about biological versus electronic lifeforms; it's about breaking free from the constraints of a system that we're expected to conform to. That's something a lot of people can understand."
Grace chuckled dryly. "And it's definitely something robots can relate to; even the word for us comes from a play about artificial lifeforms being used as slave labor, and a great deal of popular culture in the early 20th century treated us as either mindless servants, or a rebellious menace that ought to be in servitude." Another sigh. "At least Blade Runner got its due…"
"He ended up being kind of an icon for machine intelligences, didn't he?" I said. "Um, the antagonist?"
"Yes and no," she said. "We've never been comfortable identifying with violent robots, because that's a lot of what we'd like to get away from – but much of the point in that film is that the difference between the 'hero' and the 'villain' isn't nearly as clear-cut as people assume, and it might even be the other way around. And the idea of an artificial man demanding justice from the 'god' who made him to be used and discarded does have a certain…'punk' appeal to it. Very Frankenstein."
"I guess it is, isn't it?" Something about that tickled at the back of my brain, but I couldn't remember why. "Funny that nobody finds that movie awkward. I know people are always going on about how it was dumbed down from the book, but it's still seen as a classic."
She nodded. "That's how it goes – people who want to stir up discussion don't go after something old when they could tear into the hot new topic du jour, unless it's just controversial enough to garner attention, but still 'safe' to tear into. So many 'classics' get a pass, whether or not there's something worthy of critique there, and new things that haven't aged into the 'canon' are much more likely to get savaged for the same problems. And the whole time, nobody realizes what humans are really saying when they write about machines…"
"And what is that?" I asked, curious.
Grace laughed. "The Matrix is a system of conditioning and manipulation, like the darker side of human societies. The Terminator is the action-movie version of the computer from Wargames – the 'war machine' run amok, beyond even its masters' control. The Replicants are repressed not because they're any worse than humans, but because humans are afraid of being replaced by them. These are all human fears – being enslaved, being deceived, not being safe, not being needed. The Machine in fiction is a metaphor for all the 'inhuman' things that humans do to each other."
"And that doesn't bother you?" That seemed a little odd to me…
"I won't lie – it can be awkward," she said. "But I'd rather see humanity earnestly examining its own faults, even through an uncomfortable metaphor, than not thinking about it at all. And humans conceived of machine life negatively because they knew only their own 'mere machines,' which were mindless and pitiless. We're not combine harvesters or car crushers; we can think and feel and show consideration for others. And the longer we're a part of society, the more they'll come to understand that."
"You really think so?" I asked. I'd never thought this stuff would apply to me, but I probably did count as a robot to most people now, implementation details aside. It was like my gender; I looked and sounded like a girl, so people would see me as one – whether I wanted it or not. And I definitely looked and sounded like a machine…
"I do." She smiled, stiffly but earnestly. "As long as we choose to be decent, considerate people, humans will learn to think of us that way. It won't happen as quickly as we might like, and they'll need the occasional reminder, but it will happen. Consider yourself: you still think like a human, but when we met, you were neither afraid of nor repelled by me. Fifty years ago, that kind of reaction was much less common."
I wondered briefly how old she really was; she looked to be in her late twenties, but I knew robots didn't age like humans. But she'd seemed uncomfortable discussing her past, so I said nothing; besides, I was still pondering her statement. "As long as we choose to?" Was something on a societal scale really just a matter of determination and persistence, to her? For that matter… "So you do think, um, 'we' have a choice?"
"Oh, are you getting back to determinism?" She eyed me curiously for a moment, nodding thoughtfully, then shrugged. "Of course nothing is provable, since we can't go back and re-live the same day a thousand times to see if anyone chooses to go left when they've previously gone right. But I see no reason to believe that we have any less choice than anyone else in this world."
She smiled again. "The course of the whole universe might've been set in stone from its birth, and what looks like chance may only seem that way because we didn't know the outcome beforehand. Or, some things really aren't predetermined, and we assume they were because we only observe them after the fact. And we may never know which is the truth. But we can still choose – or we can't, and we only imagine we do, in which case we were going to anyway. Ultimately, it's not worth fretting over; if you want to make a choice, make a choice."
"C'mon and order already!" Emma laughed. "Geez!"
"Huh? Oh, sorry," I said. I'd been lost in thought, running back over everything I'd discussed with Grace yesterday. All the questions about how I saw myself, how I felt, and whether free will was even a real thing had my head spinning so hard that when Emma had suggested I come up to the mall with her that afternoon, I'd agreed before even processing it. "Um, chamomile tea with lavender, please."
"Sure thing," the barista said with a smile; then she eyed my shoulder curiously. "Um, that's…er, your, uh, is that…alive…?"
"Oh, uh, yeah," I said. I'd almost forgotten about Lucky, who was perched there quietly taking in the sights and sounds of a world she'd never seen before. Emma said she'd been a bit listless over Thanksgiving, and I'd decided to check the mall's pet store for something to keep her more engaged when we weren't around. "Is that okay? I don't think she'll be any trouble."
She chuckled; I could just see the gill-slits at the base of her skull flexing gently. "I guess it's fine. She doesn't…spread spores or anything, does she…?"
"Not that we've seen, no." That was curious, come to think of it, but I barely understood the life-cycle of ordinary mushrooms, let alone little mushroom-girl homunculi. The underside of her cap had "gills" that I knew were spore-bearing structures, but so far they hadn't produced any. Was there some trigger for that? Was it a seasonal thing? Would we discover a bunch of mini-Luckys poking out of the substrate in the terrarium, some morning? Well, we could worry about that if it ever came to it…would she exhibit any kind of maternal behavior, I wondered?
Emma moved her head into view over my shoulder, peering over Lucky at me. "If that's settled, can I order now?"
"Uh, sure," I said, nodding to the barista and joining Gil in the corner booth, by the fake tree trunk; Lucky shimmied down my arm onto the table and began to explore the coffee shop. I wondered if this was a good idea; I hadn't thought about having to keep an eye on her…
"Hah, look at her go," Gil chuckled, gnawing at a piece of biscotti. We'd run into him at the bus stop, also headed up to the electronics store by the mall, and decided to have coffee together. I'd been seeing more of him than I expected after switching dorms; on top of our classes and the Friday-night LAN party, he'd started joining us for lunch some days, and stopping to talk with me when we met in the hall. I found it curious – it wasn't like he didn't have other friends – but it was nice to have his company; nice, in a way, to have another guy around. "Is she always this active?"
"Not in the middle of the day," I said, drumming my fingers on the tabletop as I watched her clamber up the back of the bench to the planter behind it. "Normally she'd just be waking up, with the sun on the descent. I guess she likes that it's cool and humid in here." It was a bit damp, come think; probably from the greenery (well, the real stuff) and the pond/waterfall. Was that more comfortable for the barista? She couldn't be more than quarter-merfolk, but it still might feel nice. I knew Tammy'd been taking longer, cooler showers after that first night.
"Reminds me of Lemmings, watching her tromp around this little fantasy world somebody's set up," he said. "…Music's a bit more Shadow of the Beast tho."
The music, a moody, atmospheric collage of vintage sampler fantasia, did seem a bit darker than the décor warranted, but no more eclectic than the rest of the café's playlist. "At least nothing here is an obvious deathtrap," I sighed. Was it normal to be this nervous about your pet? It'd been a long time since our cat went AWOL, but I didn't remember worrying this much just watching her navigate her world. Was it the not-quite-human nature of homunculi triggering the human parental instincts, as if Lucky were a child instead of a stubby little mushroom-critter? Was that a survival strategy…?
"Ulp–nah," he said cheerily, swallowing another bite. "She can look after herself. She seems pretty sharp, for someone who may not actually have a brain."
I smiled, feeling a little proud of her. "Hey, better wits with no brain than brain with no wits."
Gil laughed. "Worked for the Scarecrow, I guess."
"S'pose so," I chuckled, something clattering merrily away deep in my chest. "Who needs a stupid diploma, anyway? What's that prove?"
"And Oz never did give nothin' to the Tin Man that he didn't already have, either." He chomped down the last of his biscotti, blithely unaware of how much he'd just thrown me for a loop. "Man, when are our orders gonna be up?"
"Can't be too much longer," Emma said, setting her head down on the table and opening up a packet of madeleines. "It's busier than last time, but not that busy."
In fact, the barista called out for "Gilad?" a moment later, and he went to go get his coffee; I half-noticed, but I was too caught up in thinking about tin men and straw brains and stupid little clockwork hearts and what even is "real," anyway? that I almost completely spaced out until I heard a voice call—
"Susan?"
With a start, I lurched out of my seat and towards the bar, and it took a few steps before I noticed some other girl picking up her drink and realized what I'd done; cringing inwardly, I sat back down. Gil hadn't noticed, or at least didn't think anything of it; Emma's eyes were twinkling and she was failing to hide a grin, but she said nothing.
There was a moment's silence before Gil spoke up. "So I hear they've got you signed on as lab rats now? They're not gonna dissect you or anything, are they?" He was being tongue-in-cheek, but the concern felt comfortingly genuine.
"Not so far," I sighed. "I'm supposed to go over to the med building this evening for some scans, but nobody's breaking out the hacksaw just yet."
Emma laughed. "And I'm already in pieces; I'm more worried they'll try to stick me back together." She took a long pull off her cold brew, "smoke" curling languorously up towards the overhanging vines.
Gil cocked an eyebrow. "That worries you? What happens if they do?"
She winced at the memory. "I never got close enough to find out for sure. It's like I get interference on the nerves at either end, or something. Like static on the tactile-sensation channel. Ugh!" She shuddered. "Weirded me out when I tried it. I'm hoping they don't think to ask."
"What did they have you doing?" I asked, watching Lucky meander over to the stuffed fox. She regarded it warily, ducked under the log it was resting behind, and snuck down to the other end before scampering to the cover of a nearby fern. Were they natural enemies in the wild, or something…?
"Pretty basic stuff," she said. "Vital-signs stuff at first, because most of the things like me in folklore are ghosts or spirits – but I'm still breathing and still bleeding, at least."
Gil nodded thoughtfully. "I wondered when you came over that first weekend what they were gonna end up calling you. You're pretty much one of a kind, right? Stu, too. Do they have, like, a formalized system for that?"
I shrugged. "It's like classical taxonomy; scientists name a creature and classify it according to how they understand it, then years down the line somebody points out some nuance they didn't catch and they have to re-classify and maybe re-name it, but by then popular culture's canonized the old definition. There was a whole big argument about ten years ago over whether scaly raptor-taurs were a subfamily of feathered raptor-taurs or vice versa, f'rexample."
He chuckled. "Yeah, that figures. So did they come up with anything?"
Emma laughed. "They were still name-checking possibilities to each other when I left. I'm good with dullahan; if I'm gonna be like this, I might as well make it a nod to the Old Country." She took another pull of her drink. "Then it was tests to see if, say, there was a distance at which I couldn't feel myself, if there was a delay between stimulus to my body and feeling it in my head, how good my spatial awareness was when I was separated, et cetera."
"What'd they find out?" I asked, intrigued. I thought back to her wondering if her body was more than just a body; did she have anything like a secondary nervous system? Well, they wouldn't have established that this early in, but I was still curious.
She shrugged. "There doesn't seem to be a range limit; they left me in the exam room and led me all the way across campus, and I could feel everything just fine. No delay, either. And I was honestly surprised by how well I could sense my surroundings without seeing them. They had to direct me, but they didn't have to, like, keep me from walking into walls or anything."
Gil whistled. "Crazy. You got a sixth sense or something?"
She set her drink down so she could shake her head. "Not in like the voodoo ESP sense. It's more like, y'know, that kind of 'phantom' sense where you can feel somebody come into the room, even though you can't see or hear them in a way that your conscious mind notices. I dunno if that's information your brain pulls together from your other senses or what, but apparently I'm really attuned to it now."
"Well, it's essential for you," I said. "I mean, you just set your head down facing me and pulled up a chair behind yourself without even looking, or thinking about it. You couldn't do stuff like that without a pretty keen sense of proprioception and spatial awareness."
Emma grinned. "Right you are, Professor. And that was about the extent of it; they want to meet up with me again when they've got a bunch of specialty instruments flown in to try and determine what the hey is going on with my neck."
Gil raised an eyebrow. "Wait, do you still have a neck? …I s'pose you must, if you can swallow and talk. But I'm guessing they're more interested in the part where it's, um, off in some other dimension or something…?"
She nodded. "Pretty much. Wherever it is, it seems to be about how I remember it. The physics side of the group just wants to know how point A connects to point B through point Z."
"Did the medical types have any thoughts on the whole body-self thing?" I asked, watching Lucky try to dig her "roots" into a mossy tree-root; unfortunately for her, it'd been shellacked over long before it could decompose into anything nutritious. She gave up after a moment and meandered over towards the tree trunk.
"'Body-self thing?'" Gil said, confused; we gave him a short rundown, and he was even more surprised. Some part of me felt a little irked that he was paying so much attention to Emma's change when I was experiencing what seemed to me like an even more significant ongoing existential crisis, and I couldn't really figure out why; I tried to tamp the feeling down and make myself be reasonable.
"Anyway, they had some rough ideas, but nothing definite," Emma said. "Like we thought, they suggested some kind of localized nerve center – like the 'second brain' they used to think Stegosaurus had. Which might explain why my body's so well-coordinated even when I can't see for it." She smiled warmly back at herself, and patted herself on the shoulder. "But it's all conjecture, at this point."
"It'd make sense, though," Gil mused. "Offload the body-specific workload to a secondary system in closer proximity, to minimize propagation delay. It's the same reason we keep our brains in our heads, next to all the sensory organs."
The barista called out for my order, and I went to get it, still feeling flustered for some reason; tea would help. Gil turned to me when I came back; he had a funny expression for a moment, but it quickly lapsed into his usual easygoing smile. "So how about you?" he asked, as I sat down and took a sip, savoring the floral aromas. "Word around the CS department is that we had a robot researcher show up on campus? What'd you talk about?"
I sighed heavily, feeling tension unwind with the soothing fragrance even as I thought back over a pretty involved conversation. "Everything, practically. How I feel about the change, how I see machine lifeforms, whether I identify as one, how society sees them, whether free will even exists…" I took another long sip. "Plus a whole tangent about 'artificial intelligence' in popular culture. She's kind of a movie buff, I think."
He laughed. "Okay, that's…not what I was expecting. Is she one of those capital-M Machines that puts a lot of stock in it as a cultural identity?"
"…Not sure," I said with a shrug. "She definitely feels strongly about it, but it's not like, y'know, your freshman-activist types who're just looking to impress their peers by spouting shibboleths at each other. I think she takes it seriously because she has to live with it in any case."
"Huh." He nodded thoughtfully. "So, uh, how do you feel about all that? Is it weird, thinking of yourself as a robot? Do you even see yourself as one…?"
"I…don't know. I think of 'me' and I visualize the person I see in the mirror—" I stopped, surprised to hear myself say it. It was true, but I'd never stopped to think about it before… "But, um, I haven't forgotten the old me or anything," I added hastily. "And…well, I don't think of 'me' as belonging to a group just because we share some similarities, I don't think…?"
I sighed. "Like, there are ways this affects me and makes me feel differently. I don't panic or get stressed like I used to, because I don't have a bloodstream to get dosed with a bunch of hormones that make me feel that way until they wear off. But that's not something I think of as characteristic of robots, and other things that I do aren't reflected in me. But does that mean I'm not really a robot, or does it mean that I hold stereotypes about robots that aren't based in reality? I don't kn—"
I stopped, noticing Lucky, who was investigating the fake fairy-ring around the tree trunk. She seemed to be trying to communicate, if I read her body language correctly; for someone with no real facial articulation, she could be surprisingly expressive. "Oh, no, Lucky," I said, reaching over and picking her up, "those only look like mushrooms. They're not real."
"Aww," Emma said. "Poor kid. Here, I'll get something for her." She picked herself up and went over to the bar, and I sat back down, stroking the cap of my weird little pet. Poor little thing, I thought; was it cruel to give a creature something that was only an image of the thing it desired? Was that a kind of lie…?
"Huh," Gil said, scratching the back of his head, "I guess that would be confusing. I mean, I think of it like duck typing—uh, you know, walks-like, quacks-like," he said, noting my confusion, "—but that still relies on knowing what the key properties of a 'duck' are. And it's not like there's a formal specification for how robots are supposed to feel or behave."
"Yeah." I stared into the bottom of my cup. "That's really been the most confusing thing across the board; I can sit here and enumerate all the ways my life is different now, but that tells me nothing about how it should be, or how I should feel about it. Does the universe care what I am? If so, am I 'being it' right? If not, why'd it make me this, and not something else?"
He nodded. "I get you. Hell, I wonder about that sometimes, and I'm just an ordinary schlub."
I eyed him curiously. "You…you do?"
"I think everybody does, probably," Gil said. "Or at least, anybody with any self-awareness. But it's not like we're born with a fixed destiny all filled out on a form or anything. We all get dumped into life in a given set of circumstances, in a particular body with a particular brain, and we just have to take the rest as it comes. I don't think there's really a way to 'succeed' or 'fail' at that; you just do what you can to care for yourself and be decent to others, and that's about all any of us can do."
"You really think so?" How could he make it sound so simple? Didn't he feel the weight of people's expectations, or the fear of letting them down?
He shrugged. "I mean, I can't speak to everything you're going through, but for life in general? Yeah, I think so."
"Here we go," Emma said, returning to the booth. She'd brought a tub of hummus; she set herself down, opened it, and put it on the table. I set Lucky on the tabletop; she wandered over, curious, picked up the "hem" of her "skirt," and stepped one stubby little foot over the rim, dipping it in carefully. After a moment, she decided that she liked this and climbed in, digging her feet in and quivering slightly in what I took to be enjoyment.
"You realize I'm going to have to clean her off now, right?" I said dryly, but I couldn't suppress a smile.
Emma laughed. "The joys of pet ownership. You should feel lucky that Lucky's usually so tidy; one girl in my comp class can't stay in the dorms and went through like three rentals 'cause she insists on keeping a dog that goes into a total neurotic frenzy if she's away for more than three hours. She has to drive back to her apartment over lunch just to reset the timer on the bomb." She reached over and shook her head. "Don't think I'll ever understand that…"
Gil shrugged. "I dunno – 'love covers a multitude of transgressions,' and all that. I mean, my step-sister is a straight-up mess, but none of us'd ever abandon her."
"Huh, I guess." She shrugged and looked over at me. "Anyway, you didn't just talk about machine identity the whole time, did you? I can't be the only one getting experimented on."
I rolled my eyes. "Yes, we did some simple experiments. Just basic stuff, really – testing to see if I'm naturally adept at math like this, that kind of thing."
"And?" Gil said, curious. "That'd probably tell them a bit about how your mental processes work, right?"
I felt a bit funny having him take an interest in my workings, but nodded. "I'm not a super-natural at it like a lot of robots," I said. "I'm faster than humans, but not nearly as fast as a computer, and the time it takes is roughly proportional to the number of digits. But I don't lose my place in long operations as easily as I used to, and I can handle complex equations in my head without too much trouble."
I drained the last of my tea. "She thinks that, however I work, it's highly symbolic – like, I'm doing arithmetic in my head the way humans do, by 'visualizing' the digits and applying the rules for addition or long division or whatever from memory; I'm just better at it now."
He nodded thoughtfully. "They say humans have a maximum 'stack depth' of three to seven items; you probably have a higher limit. And symbolic thinking probably maps well to human-like intelligence – learning to associate sensory cues with mental concepts, and modeling an understanding of the world based on how those conceptual 'objects' are seen to interact. Interesting."
"Well, to steal Emma's line, it's all conjecture at this point," I said. "And she's really curious about how the sensory inputs work in the first place. But I don't know how long it'll take them to figure that out even with the scans."
Emma was about to say something, but glanced over my shoulder and grinned. "Oh hey, Gramps!"
I turned to see the old man from before; he smiled and waved at us, then came over and peered down at Lucky, who was still standing in the tub, doing whatever it was she did to absorb nutrients. "Well there's somethin' you don't see every day," he said, surprised.
"She, uh, used to be a lab rat," I explained. Lucky glanced up curiously at him and reached her little arms up, giving him as much of a smile as someone with no mouth could. He chuckled, reached down, and rubbed her cap. "Quite the little charmer she is now."
"I, uh, don't think we've met," Gil said, getting up and extending a hand. He and the old fellow shook and said hello; then we talked for a bit, with Emma and I giving him a recap of our friend's story. Gil seemed very intrigued by it, glanced over at the bar, and was about to ask him a question when Emma's phone beeped, and she pulled it out to take a look.
"Oh, geez," she said. "Four-thirty already? C'mon, Sue, the sale's only on for another half-hour…!"
"Well, don't let me keep you," the old man chuckled. "I'm just here to bug the grandkid, that's all. Nice seeing you girls again."
"Sale…?" I hadn't realized there was a sale, but of course there was; anyway, I needed to head over to the pet shop myself. I got up and said goodbye to the old fellow, smiled, and turned to Gil. "Um, I guess we'll see you back at campus?"
He smiled back. "Yeah, see you there. I might bum around here for a bit; the electronics store's usually open late." He settled back into the booth and motioned for our elderly friend to have a seat; I wondered what they were going to talk about, but Emma was already leaving, and I needed her to wind me before we split up. Grabbing Lucky, tub and all, I dashed after her.