“I’m not programmed at all! You of all people should know this. Oh Meme, I haven’t been with too many black men,” she purrs.
“Please stop … ” I say, frozen. She’s right, she’s not programmed. Rather, she has been for lack of a better term – trained. Machine learning from there.
“You like it,” she says. “I can feel you.”
“No no no no no no…”
“Yes you do, sweetie. It’s natural,” she hisses into my ear.
Using every ounce of strength, I buck her off me. She falls backward off the bed and lands with a soft thud on the floor.
“Sorry,” I tell her, standing. She sits up, her hair covering her face.
Minutes later we’re at it again, fucking the life out of one another…
ELEVEN∞
Rinchi sat on a black leather sofa across from her therapist’s desk.
His office was on the thirty-sixth floor of the recently built BlackAguaUSA building, a knife shaped megalith that extended sixty-two floors into the cerulean Californian sky. Two digital frames hung on an isthmus of wall displaying Tyro’s credentials and photos of his wife. An onyx black strip of carpet ran from the large mahogany door to the leather sofa. The floor was made of bamboo, dyed to resemble jade, and it had recently been polished. The walls adjacent to the large windows overlooking LA were bare and clean, white like the teeth of a dentist.
Tyro walked into the room from a side door which led to his private office. He was a thin man, tall with oversized shoulders that made him appear more muscular than he actually was. He wore a pair of glasses with black frames that ballooned the size of his eyes. (He didn’t need to wear glasses, but he wore them anyway, refusing to get corrective surgery.)
“Hello, Rinchi.”
Tyro’s hair had been recently trimmed and his cheeks were stinging red from a recent shave. As he sat, Rinchi quickly scanned his vitals as was her custom with all humans she met. He appeared to be tired, evident in the sallow color of the skin around his eyes and his erratic breathing pattern.
“Hi Dr. T,” she said, shifting her weight forward. She wore a mesh dirndl and a pair of red tights tucked into knee-high boots. Her shirt was a retro LED volcano shirt that refreshed the eruption image every minute.
“Let me see,” he said, flipping through some documents on his iDeskpad. “Okay, press here.” He twirled his hand, twisting the screen towards Rinchi. With a pouty smile, she pressed a red button and waited a moment for the system to register.
He turned the iDeskpad around and searched through it for a moment. “so it looks like a lot has happened since we last spoke.”
“What do you mean? Politics? Sex? Death in the family?” Rinchi grinned.
“Why are you smiling?” he asked without looking up from the iDeskpad.
“Just admiring you,” Rinchi said.
“You are taught to admire,” he reminded her as he types something in to the iDeskpad.
He’d yet to make eye contact with her. She hated it when humans didn’t make eye contact. She’d seen scores of businessmen apply this technique to their associates.
“Well, I’ve been around long enough to know what’s worth admiring,” she said with a sigh.
She’d rarely met a man closer to exploding than Tyro. The veins on the side of his face constantly bulged. His heartbeat and breathing patterns changed drastically each time she saw him. He needed to get out more. He needed a blowjob, a Jack and Coke administered intravenously and a three-day weekend.
“Okay,” Tyro was so engaged with the documents on his desk that he still hadn’t looked up at her. “We always go through this. You can’t flirt with me because you’re getting therapy from me. I’m not your client. You’re my client,” he finally looked up at her and raised his left eyebrow. The eyebrow jutted over the frame of his glasses.
“Maybe that will change one day,” she said with a shrug. Every man has his breaking point, every man.
“Likely not. So, how have things been?”
“The job is the same. Fucking old guys and rich diplomats. Nothing like it.” She twirled her finger in the air as if it were a flag.
“Yes, I’m aware of this.” Tyro glanced at his iDeskpad screen and typed in something quickly. “But elaborate some more. I mean, not on the sexual part, but how you’ve been feeling. Last time we met, as I can remember, oh yes … ” He shifted the screen with a flick of his wrist. “You were a little depressed about the work hours and oh yes, here it is. You were feeling tension between yourself and your suitemate, Humandroid twin Yeshi.”
“I don’t know where Yeshi is and I can’t find her anyway,” Rinchi said. “She’s offline.” Using her pointer finger, she began to push her eyeball aside to show Tyro the fleshy electronic circuits that processed the images she captured.
“Stop that,” Tyro scolded.
“Why don’t you like it when I do this?” She pushed her finger all the way into her eye, using it to scoop out a small purple wire. “Some humans think it’s cool. They say I look so real until I do this. Or this … ” Rinchi lifted her tongue up and stuck her fingers beneath it. She gripped a small green cord that was covered in blue veins and began to extract it with two fingers.
“Quit it,” Tyro said. “You can mess with your circuitry by doing that. Let’s get back to Yeshi – why did you say you couldn’t find her?”
“Dr. T, have you ever seen a ladyboy Humandroid naked?”
“You ask me that every time.” He took off his glasses and began rubbing his temples. There were little pink marks on either side of his nose from the nose pads.
“Well, the answer could change every time.”
“I have seen most forms of Humandroid escorts in the nude in scientific journals. Wait, why am I answering this? Listen, we don’t need to discuss nudity every time we meet.”
“Every other time?”
“Stop it, and put the lingual cord back in your mouth. Yeshi. Where is she?”
She pulled back on the cord and it snapped back into her mouth. “Well, I can usually trace her. She’s completely logged off iNet, all channels, and has been since exactly 11:42 last night. I’m sure she’ll turn up.”
“Are you worried?”
“Why should I be worried? She’s not my real sister. We were just designed to look identical. We’re complete opposites. She’ll do just about anything to mirror the pathetic spontaneity of your kind. Last night she was using pollution masks again – not just wearing, using – which is utterly useless and also bad for her circuitry. She’s suicidal if you ask me. I don’t know why she would want to be one of you anyhow … ”
“One of us?” Tyro adjusted his tie.
“She’s obsessed with humans. She should be the one seeing a therapist, not me.”
“We’ve been over this before. You’re here because of the incident in February. You nearly killed a client and rather than termination, Walliburton thought this would be a more progressive alternative. You’re lucky because of this. Most Humandroids … ”
“Most Humandroids? You realize I’m a prostitute, right? You realize I’m designed solely to fuck and see no credit out of it? You realize—”
“Ahem,” Tyro cleared his throat. “I’m aware of the business you were designed for. Remember, we live in an advanced, incentive-driven world that has changed over the centuries. The Humandroid job of being an escort is an important addition to the workforce. It allows humans to live out their fantasies safely. It has dramatically cut STDs worldwide and has also become instrumental in solidifying economic relations between state-owned companies and global manufacturers. Rather than take a pessimistic route regarding your existence – which I understand is easy considering some of the tasks you are assigned to do – you should instead take an optimistic route, and realize that your role in our universe is changing the face of global trade and leisure.”
“Are you reading this from a brochure on your iDeskpad or something?” she asked. “Are these more of Dr. Lye’s
lies?”
“This is what I mean by a pessimistic approach,” Tyro said. His voice quivered, as if he was trying to suppress his real opinion. “I’m forwarding you a document. I’ve sent it to you before, but this time I want you to actually download and implement it. I’ve told you about my friend’s e-novel, The Optimistic Approach: Living Life Rather Than Letting Life Live You. To make it even easier, I’ve highlighted some key points for you to practice every day.”
“Such as?” Rinchi said.
“When you wake up every morning … ”
“I don’t wake up. I boot up,” Rinchi corrected him.
“I want you to look yourself in the mirror and tell yourself that you’re going to have a good day.”
Rinchi stuck her finger in her eye and started to push the eye to the side again.
“Stop that, it’s bad for your circuitry. Just tell yourself you’ll have a good day,” he said. “From this point onward, I want you to remind yourself of this every time you feel inadequate. That’s the first step. The next step is called the instigative process. You must begin to think of your work as a contribution to society rather than something to be frowned upon. Have you ever worked with a businessman that went on to do something successful?”
“Worked? Really Dr. T? Have you tried this self-help shit? What’s it with humans and self-help anyway? Why can’t you just help yourselves? Do you look at yourself in the mirror every day and tell yourself … ”
Tyro repeated the question without looking up from his iDeskpad.
“Okay, I have,” she answered. “I’ve even worked with the presidents of small countries. Did you know I worked with the architectural firm that designed this building? Did you know that the guy who designed this building loved it when I stuck the pipe from a … ”
“ … so, you have worked with people who have gone on to do successful things,” Tyro interrupted. “The second step is to reevaluate your self-worth and determine that you are actually a contribution to society.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” she laughed. “How does a Humandroid escort evaluate its self-worth? Is that even possible?”
“The third step, after reevaluating your self-worth, is to begin to rebuild yourself with the newly created positive image of yourself in your mind. Remember, the secret to success is viewing yourself as successful. Start from the ground up, as a person who is successful and who is a contribution to the work place, an asset to their job and a pleasure to be around.”
“You’re actually serious.”
“Of course I am. I think you have the potential to boost your self-worth by augmenting your view on reality and hopefully, instilling a change in yourself that will benefit both your well-being and your work performance.”
“So I’ll give a better bj? I’ll fake better orgasms? I’ll do a better job of taking care of inebriated businessmen?”
“Stop it,” Tyro said. He looked at her over the rims of his glasses. “Downloading the excerpts of the book I’ve provided for you will not only improve your self-worth, it will also help you understand Yeshi better.”
“Why do I want to understand Yeshi better? She’s a delusional droid who wants to be human.”
He shook his head. “Careful with the word droid, you know it’s derogatory.”
“Even if she was a member of the Homo sapiens club, her perverse ladyboy status would make her claim for the elusive tag of human questionable. She’s fucked in the head; she’ll always be Homo machina.”
“So, what I want you to do is download what I’ve sent you and begin the reexamination process. First, you need to start by … ”
TWELVE∞
Is there any object that connects us more to ourselves than mirrors?
You and your bald spot, the dried make-up like blotted ink at the corner of your eyes, your nose bent from a childhood fall, the unlucky location of a large zit next to your left nostril, your crooked yellow teeth, the nasty sore at the corner of your mouth that never seems to heal, your despicable unibrow, your lack of eyebrows because you pencil them in, the stubble on your chin, the strange place on your throat where your beard never seems to grow, the pock-marks that pepper your cheeks as if you were beaten with a meat tenderizer, your glossy bloodshot eyes, your creepy soul patch, the hair peeking out of your nostrils, the scar near your lip, the plum-colored bruise circling your eye from last night’s fight, the soft freckles on your forehead, the lipstick smeared on your two front teeth.
We judge what we see in the mirror but does the mirror judge what it sees in us? Can you imagine a mirror talking to us throughout our lives? What would the mirror say?
--You’ve looked like shit since yesterday.
--I think those jowl exercises are starting to work.
--You should use some type of scalp shampoo before you end up looking diseased.
--If you’re going to cut up lines, the least you can do is leave me a pinch. Cocaine!
--Go with the red tie, it makes you seem more outgoing. Not that red tie, the other one. Yeah, that one. Good. Go with that.
--By all means, stick those fingers down your throat and watch yourself get thinner. I’m warning you though… don’t get any vomit on me this time, got it?
--Please don’t punch me, please don’t punch me, please don’t punch me …
--I can barely see you because there’s too much shit on the mirror – toothpaste stains, globs of gel, shaving cream, flecks of food from your inconsistent flossing. Seriously, how are you ever going to get laid if you can’t pick this place up a little?
--You are the fairest of them all, and as a mirror, I too am the fairest of them all. Like how I did that? At any rate, Snow White is a whore, but at least she’s not a witch.
--Please don’t say Bloody Mary again …
The unfortunate truth is that mirrors never tell us anything. They never judge, never comment, never scoff, only reflect. By doing this they become the silent observers of our lives. They watch us come, they watch us go, they watch us fatten and age. They see us at our worst and our best, in our most despicable and our most honorable. In a way, mirrors are the ultimate Buddhists. They sit for hours upon hours in strict meditation, never judging and always observing. They witness personal atrocities and triumphs, the woes of our day and the results of our decisions.
How many times did Hitler stare into a mirror? How many times did Mother Theresa stare into a mirror? Did Jesus ever see his reflection? If so, who did he see – himself or his father? And for that matter, was Mohammed even allowed to look in a mirror? What have the great seers seen? What have the great killers noticed? Did the seers see themselves? Would the killers kill their reflections given the chance?
Mirrors were our private status updates before there was the Internet. They watched as we rose to the top and as we came crashing down. They see us more than we see ourselves. And as I currently stare into one, I wonder what the fuck I have become.
The bathroom mirror. The counter is black, the walls are a light brown color, the toilet is an older model with tinted stains around its base. The bolts holding the toilet down are rusted and the waste basket is empty. There’s an oval bar of soap wrapped in tissue, a toothbrush in a white cardboard box, a sharp comb, a small LCD screen in front of the toilet flashing advertisements.
I run the water and open the bar of soap. I toss the wrapper to the floor.
The door opens and Yeshi steps in.
“You’re a Humandroid escort,” I tell her as I look at her in the mirror.
“Just now figuring that out, huh?”
“No, I figured it out a while back … ”
“Was this before or after you fucked me just now?” she hops onto the counter and pulls her knees to her chest. Humandroids escorts must carry several different outfits with them. I could have sworn she was dressed like a nurse when I first met her. Now, she’s in a yellow sari with bedazzled peacocks along the front of the dress.
I look at my eyes in the mirror. It’s true �
� we did just finish having sex.
“How is that even possible?” I ask.
“Do I really need to explain the birds and the bees to you?”
I suddenly want to scream. I want to punch the mirror, to shatter my reflection, to choke myself. What am I doing? I’m in a hotel room with a ladyboy Humandroid escort. Has my life really become this depraved? Have I really gone this far?
I look at my watch – I’ve already missed my first appointment. Tyro has probably sent me fifteen messages by now. I know better than to log onto iNet to check. He’s such a stickler, but at least he’s not standing in front of a mirror next to an escort with multiple lacerations on his body.
“So what now?” Yeshi tilts her head and looks at me curiously.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, are you going to pay me?” She giggles.
“Is this what you do? Find humans who are intoxicated, lure them to some hotel room, fuck them, and then ask for money?”
Yeshi smiles, “You know, I like you. I almost don’t want to charge you, but now … ”
I’m no longer a Humandroid virgin – the thought weighs heavy on my dark little soul.
She leans forward and strokes her hand along my chest. The faint smell of coconut lotion radiates from her fingers. They manufacture Humandroids to have imperfection as to increase their likeness to human beings. As she strokes my chin, I notice a small birth mark on her wrist in the mirror’s reflection. Her hair is a tight pony tail, revealing a string of small moles on the back of her neck. She gives me a devilish look and retracts her hand.
The outer layer of a Humandroid’s skin is a synthetic epidermis created in the 2040s called e-skin. The insides of their bodies are made of tiny hollow metallic tubes, arranged in a micro-lattice pattern around myriad processors and muscle wire. Their skin is soft to the touch, robust. They’re as flexible as a contortionist, at least the escorts are.
“Look, what do I owe you? I’ll log into iNet and transfer the money now. Which corporation do you work for?”
Life is a Beautiful Thing (4-Book Box Set) Page 5