Shine Shine Shine

by Lydia Netzer

  Maxon watched the simulated docking procedure, watched the holographic cargo module getting closer, the engineer and pilot arguing over angles and coefficients. He uncapped his pen and wrote in his notebook: “You are a weak, sick man, and your frailty in the darkness of space is a vile embarrassment to your species.” Remember this, he thought. But did he really believe it? He tried to stretch his long legs into the cramped tube between the sleeping quarters and the command space, but his knees brushed the wall. He couldn’t get symmetrical, one angular shoulder jutting out into the back of Phillips’s seat. Inside his white jumpsuit, his bones were a cage for his live beating heart.

  He looked at the men and the way they talked to each other, the way Gompers preferred Tom Conrad, the pilot, over Phillips, the engineer. He saw the way they papered their personal areas with photographs, the way they listened to podcasts from their wives on their laptops, the way they prayed.

  You are a man just like them, he thought. You love, you regret, you forgive. Your eyesight blurs. You even forget things, sometimes. Love, regret, forgive. They were three bloody, muddy stains left on the snowy white tablecloth of his research. Three items left to be dealt with: love, regret, forgive.

  *

  “GENIUS, WE JUST LOVE your robots so much. When are you going to make us a robot that will love us back, you know what I mean?” Phillips had said to him once, teasing him during training, while they sat waiting for the pod to start spinning them again, testing their reactions to g-forces. In a round room, the pod sat on the end of one arm of two on a central axle. Like a giant spinner in a game of Twister.

  “It’s not impossible, Phillips,” Maxon answered. “The world is only electrical and magnetic.”

  “Okay,” said Phillips. “So why not?”

  “You don’t understand,” said Maxon. “It is all electricity. So the question is really: Why?”

  “I am not following you, Genius,” said Phillips. “You’re making it sound easy, and then acting like it’s hard.”

  The machine began to spin them. At first, it was slow.

  “Can it, Lieutenant. Shut up, Dr. Mann,” said Gompers, always quick to remind him that he did not have a military title. But Maxon was already talking.

  “Listen. From the smallest, deepest synapses in the human brain to the interactions of galaxies with the universe, it is all electricity. If you can shape the force of electricity, you can duplicate any other impulse in the world. A robot can yawn, it can desire, it can climax. It can do exactly what a human does, in exactly the same way. You really want a robot to love you? You want it to fuck you back, when you fuck it? Just like a woman? Let me tell you: There is no difference between carbon and steel, between water and ooze. With a number of conditional statements nearing infinity, any choice can be replicated, however random. The only hard thing about creating more sophisticated AI was acquiring the space needed to hold such a myriad of possibilities. There is nothing different in a human’s brain from a robot’s brain. Not one single thing.”

  By this time the machine was spinning so fast, his cheeks were flapping. The other men in the module were quiet, intense. Their eyes were all open. Their faces looked skeletal, all the skin pulled back.

  “GET IT?” Maxon screeched.

  And even in the pressure of all that simulated gravity, Fred Phillips found it possible to roll his eyes.

  When the machine stopped, Phillips said, “Mann, dude, I feel for your wife.”

  “What do you feel for her?” said Maxon.

  *

  WHY DID THE ROBOTS not love? Why not feel good about themselves, just for once? Why not prefer one entity, one electrical epicenter, over all the others, for no other reason than that it felt good to do so? Maxon knew why. They could not love because he had not made them love. He had not made them love because he didn’t understand why they should love. He didn’t understand why he should love, why anyone should love. It wasn’t logical. It wasn’t rational, because it wasn’t beneficial. That was the truth of the matter. He chose for them not to, because loving defied his central principle: If humans do it, it must be right.

  To show preference only for a good reason, to accept any choice made with the best use of available information, to suspect a source of giving incorrect data when incorrect data had been received from it in the past; these responses were beneficial to the robot, to the human. To love for no reason, to grieve over a choice that had been made rationally, to forgive, to show mercy, to trust a poison well, also potentially damaging. If humans do it, why do they do it?

  He understood the value of a mother’s love for her child. That had a use. He understood the value of a soldier’s love for his brother-in-arms. That had a use. But the family structure was so integral to the foundation of a civilization, and the solidity of the family was so important to the civilization’s survival, that choosing a mate based on some ridiculous whim seemed insane. It seemed destructive. How could it be so? Yet he, Maxon Mann, gearshrinker, droidmaster, having decided that all romantic love is at odds with the survival of the species, had fallen, himself, in love. He had fallen deeply, hopelessly, inexorably in love with Sunny, and it had happened almost before he got started in life. Over seven thousand rotations of the Earth ago. Certainly before he understood the ramifications of his electrobiological behavior.

  That night, his second night in space, the feeling of breathing in was almost crushing him, the quarters so close that taking a deep breath almost had his bony chest brushing up against the shelf that held his laptop, his mission log, stuck down with Velcro. He let his head roll back against the wall, his crisp curls brushing the back of his neck. One hand went up to cover his eyes, the other hand still held the pen, poised over those three words; love, regret, forgive. When he finally slept, lulled by a cyclical computation worked out on the back of his eyelids, the pen went scratching across the paper, one final subconscious underscore. First there was Asimov, and his fictional laws of robotics, all written to protect humanity from the AI they’d created. Then Ito’s laws, excusing the failure of programmers who wouldn’t dare to try to re-create a human mind. Now Maxon’s laws, because he was the only one left with the stones to know when to stop pushing the buttons that he himself had wired. Maxon Mann’s Three Laws of Robotics: A robot cannot love. A robot cannot regret. A robot cannot forgive.

  7

  The contractions stopped. Fluids were drained into her. She went home. Night came and everyone slept. Morning came and the nanny took Bubber off to preschool. He went out the door with his head pointed forward, wearing his helmet, with a snack and emergency pants in a horse-shaped backpack he called “Word.” Sunny was supposed to lie down as much as possible, so she did. She lay down in her pumpkin-colored bedroom. She put her bald head down on the embroidered silk duvet cover, so carefully joined in color and historical context to the weird footstool she’d found at an estate sale, which was itself so carefully coordinated with the Morris chair in the corner, by the pumpkin-shaded light. The theme of her bedroom decor flowed around the space like a gentle ellipse through a series of perfectly oriented points. Not one curtain rod, not one shoe tree, not one alarm clock fell off the graph. On the TV, the NASA channel was playing without sound. But Maxon was not on the screen.

  She fell asleep and dreamed of a matrix of all possible babies that she could be carrying at that moment. The possible babies spread out over a three-dimensional cube. At point zero, zero, zero was a normal human male baby, looking exactly like Maxon. Tall, mad-eyed, long-limbed, and pale. From there, the change in babies radiated out along a three-dimensional grid through the whole volume of the cube. At the intersection of every line was another scrawny infant, crouched and curled, naked and wrinkled. Eye color, hair color, pianist hands, knobby legs, short neck. Along this axis, more and more freckles. Along that axis, more and more hair. Of course, there cannot be an incremental change in gender. So, all alone, the baby at the opposite point of the cube, with her large alien eyes and her bald alien head,
and her padded fingers and short legs, was the only female. She rotated like the other babies, but in the opposite direction. Already different.

  The phone rang, waking her up. It was the director of the school.

  “Mrs. Mann,” he said, “I would love for you to spend some time here with us when you pick up Bubber today. I have arranged a meeting with our staff psychiatrist for you.”

  He didn’t know about the car accident, because she hadn’t told him. He didn’t know about the wig.

  She sat up, held up the phone firmly to her head, and said, “No.”

  “Mrs. Mann,” he droned on, “Bubber has had a meltdown this morning. Now he is back in his helmet, and we are all fine. There is no need to worry. But the behaviors we are seeing are becoming prohibitive.”

  “What do they prohibit?” asked Sunny.

  “With respect, Mrs. Mann, we have an extraordinary facility and many resources,” he said, “yet we cannot quite account for Bubber and his behavior.”

  “But I thought Miss Mary had been working with him.” Sunny had spent a lot of money on the school. Miss Mary was one of many resources.

  “You mention Miss Mary,” said the director. “At the meeting today, she’d like to discuss the results of some tests. They need to be read and discussed.”

  Bubber had had many tests, and Sunny had read and discussed them all with doctors of every stripe. What she should do now was to search out the appropriate files to bring, the appropriate numbers to consult for comparison.

  Instead Sunny said, “You know what? No more tests.”

  She found herself thinking, This will not be tolerated. Then she put the phone down, stood up, and stretched a long, long catlike stretch ending in a neck roll. On a normal day, she would now replace the wig, comb it down, inhabit it. Instead she got dressed, got into Maxon’s car, and drove over to the very special preschool to take Bubber home. She felt kind of strong in her bald head. In the moment, she was only thinking about how Bubber was being tested again, and pissed off that he would again be found wanting.

  Sunny was the mom with the multicolored activism ribbon in magnet on the back of her van. Sunny, heretofore, had been a very good friend of tests.

  When she arrived at the school, the other parents were waiting to pick up their children, too. It was like a minivan convention in the parking lot. Silver ones, mostly. Some burgundy. Some teal. When they had purchased their minivan, Maxon had yearned for the black one, but Sunny said no.

  “I’ve never seen a black minivan,” she said. “We have to blend in with our environment.”

  “Well, if you’ve never seen a black minivan, might that not mean that the black minivans are blending in very well?” Maxon pointed out.

  But they bought the silver one. On the highways, it was virtually invisible. The wig and the minivan together made an invisibility cloak. Walking past the rows of other cars, the different-colored ribbons on the bumpers, the soccer balls, the black-and-white ovals from vacation spots, Sunny remembered the first of three terrible things she had said to Maxon on the day before he went into space: It is all your fault, that we don’t fit in here. I’m doing my goddamned best. What’s left, Maxon? It’s all you. You won’t even try. You won’t even give it a decent effort. Of all the children at Bubber’s school, Bubber was the one that was autistic. Bubber was pushing the limits of what the school could handle. They kept telling her this.

  On the sidewalk, a little stream of children bumped past her, the few girls with their little sparkling backpacks, their hair accessories glittering, their leather shoes squeaking comfortably, each holding a larger, duller, flatter parent by the hand, pulling them along. The children did not look up at Sunny as they passed her. They were dispassionate. She could have been a talking hawk, or a rhinoceros. They were like little hairy animatronic children, marching down the sidewalk, already thinking about lunch. The parents, in contrast, had no time to hide their surprise at Sunny’s bald state. These were women she had chatted with, day after day, waiting for pickup time in the rain, or at the Christmas show, or at the grocery store, over the grapefruit bin. She didn’t know all their names, but they were Taylor’s Mom, and Connor’s Mom, and Chelsea’s Mom, and yet they walked right past, carefully averting their eyes and also smiling with lips drawn together in a line. Some crazy bald lady came to the school today.

  Inside, the director was distributing art projects to take home, making sure sweaters were matched with the right children, and giving out lollipops that had no artificial colors. He was actually a man with no hair. He did have eyebrows, chin hairs, the rest of it, but his head was shining and bare. Sunny had never truly forgotten that fact, but in the days since the wig went on her head, she noticed bald people with less interest than before.

  Back in the old days, it might have been like, Hey, high five, my brother. Then with the wig it was just another hairstyle, of the many that we regular humans can choose from. Now it was as if she were an animal, identifying another of her species.

  The other parents began to clear out. The other children were all delivered to their families. Then there were only the three bald people in the room: the director of the preschool, and Sunny, and the baby inside her. The director’s name was Mr. Dave. He recognized her, even without the fake hair she had been putting on her head. Mr. Dave said, “Hello, Mrs. Mann.”

  “I’m bald,” said Sunny. “I’ve been wearing a wig this whole time. Eyebrows too, and eyelashes.”

  “Have a seat,” said Mr. Dave. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. Just, you know, the wig went flying off my head yesterday. We had a car accident, Bubber and I. The wig—well, I decided to leave it off.”

  Mr. Dave nodded in an understanding way. Mr. Dave’s voice had never been raised. He had never shouted at her and pumped his fist in her face and made spit flecks come out the sides of his mouth. They’d had their disagreements, but he had always stayed quiet. She wondered if Mr. Dave was capable of getting riled. She had always appreciated his calm demeanor.

  “Does Bubber realize you’ve made this decision?” he asked.

  “Well, yes, he knows,” said Sunny. “He was there when it flew off.”

  “Did he seem upset by it?” asked Mr. Dave. “Bubber was very angry today. We were wondering if it had something to do with your husband.”

  “My husband is in space. He went up in a rocket yesterday.”

  “I know,” said Mr. Dave.

  “Well, we didn’t think it would be a good idea for Bubber and I to go down to see the launch. We thought it was too much.”

  “Okay,” said Mr. Dave. “I see.”

  Sunny tried to sit down in one of the chairs in the lobby, but Mr. Dave asked her to follow him deeper into the building, into his office, where there were better chairs.

  The psychiatrist was there already. She had long gray hair, parted down the middle, making a curtain around her oversized glasses, her dark pink mouth, her lined cheeks. She closed a file she was holding open in her lap, and stood up. She smiled a big yellow smile and stuck out a hand.

  “You know Miss Mary,” said Mr. Dave.

  “I’m so happy to see you again, Mrs. Mann,” said the psychiatrist. “I’ve had such an interesting time talking to your son, Robert.”

  “We call him ‘Bubber.’ Where is Bubber?”

  “He is still back with Miss Tanya,” said Mr. Dave. “They’re having some extra art time so we can have our meeting.”

  “I wasn’t aware he was being tested again,” said Sunny. “I didn’t realize you could do that without telling me.”

  “It’s okay,” said Mr. Dave. “We just wanted to get a good look at what was going on with Bubber before we decided what was best for him.”

  “And what is going on with Bubber?”

  “Won’t you sit down?” Miss Mary invited her to join them at the desk. She held out a sheet of paper to Sunny. “Mrs. Mann, I asked Bubber to draw me a picture of his favorite pet today, and this is what he ga
ve me.”

  The drawing was definitely Rocks the dog, done in pen and ink. He was black-and-white, with a squashed-up nose, pointing bat ears, no tail. The drawing was childish, with simple lines and exaggerations. However, it was as if the dog’s skin were invisible, and all the organs inside the dog had also been drawn in, too, also in childish lines and exaggerations, but with no system left unrepresented, including the lymphatic. Organs were overlapped and blood vessels ran from point to point. Each one was clearly labeled, all names spelled rigorously according to phonetic logic. The dog had produced a dialogue bubble, and inside were the words “Bow wow.”

  Miss Mary handed Sunny another sheet. “Here’s one he gave me, when I asked him to draw Mommy.”

  Sunny took the next sheet. There was a tiny stick person in one corner with an obligatory scoop of hair on each side of its head, a triangle to represent a skirt, and a label: Mommy. The entire rest of the page was filled up with something that looked like a map overlaid with a topographical drawing. There were buildings, farms, and many, many tiny trucks along the roads that radiated from the buildings to the farms. All was done in a quick, infantile scrawl, but the details were all there. Every wheel of the trucks, and the cargo was varied. A pig, a stack of sacks, a strange machine. Labels. Parenthetical explanations. Signs.

  “He sees me with hair,” said Sunny. She was awestruck. She thought how her mother would feel about this. Would a grandmother feel disappointment, resignation? Would she say that it was as if all her efforts with Sunny had been in vain? In the mind of the grandchild, the daughter had a wig on. Had she failed as a mother? She remembered the second terrible thing she had said to Maxon on the day before he went into space: My mother never thought you would make a husband. You and your goddamned robots. She told me not to marry you, and look at us now. We’ll never be right. None of us.

  “Well,” said the psychiatrist, taking the papers back from Sunny’s hand, “our school is full of children with special talents, but clearly Bubber is some kind of a savant. A four-year-old just doesn’t draw pictures like that.”