by Sarah Archer
“My opinion’s not scientific,” he warned. “It’s not in your data set.”
“Look.” Kelly swiveled to her computer, pulled up the folder with all her months and months of research, and dragged it into the recycle bin. She resisted the urge to clutch her bosom and scream “My baby!” and forced herself instead to look back at the psychologist, who smiled.
“All right, then,” he said. “I’m going to do a very psychologist thing and turn the question on you: What do you think Confibot should be?”
Kelly resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “I think he should have a face that’s the most pleasing to the greatest number of people and—”
“Not other people. You.” The doctor looked around and gestured to Dot-10, who waited lifelessly in a corner of the room. “Dot-10’s big right now, right? Why do you think that is?”
“I have no idea. Her functions aren’t even the most advanced on the market.”
“I can guarantee you that it’s not about her functions. It’s about how she makes people feel. So how would you want Confibot to make you feel?”
Kelly considered carefully. “I would want to feel comforted,” she said at last, “like I could trust him to take care of me and live in my home. I mean, I’d be trusting him with my life, really, if he was handling my medical care. And I’d want to feel stimulated, like I could have intelligent conversations with him, but that I also wasn’t intimidated by him. And—what are you writing down?” Dr. Masden was scribbling notes as she talked. Kelly worried that he was preparing another gut-wrenching diagnosis for her. But he lifted the notepad with a smile.
“This is your data,” he said.
Kelly had started the day with a sinking feeling that she could be heading toward another dead end. But as she and Dr. Masden worked together, her skepticism shrank and her optimism grew. The more the doctor elicited her ideas and talked through his own, the more she started to realize, begrudgingly, that he could actually be right. Together they were sketching out a vision of a robot who could be sophisticated and multifaceted, interacting with users on a deeper level than just blasting them with digital trophies like Dot-10 did, yet still fun and broadly likable.
As she threw the data set out the window and just listened to what she, and Dr. Masden, really wanted, she was called back to that manic weekend when she had made Ethan. She saw now, suddenly, how she had been making the process of designing Confibot so much harder than it needed to be. She had been tying herself down, ignoring the value of her own ideas—and as an engineer, a creator, ideas were her currency. This was what she was here for, what she loved about this job: the adrenaline of invention, the ability to open her mind and imagine anything in the world she wanted, then magically make it happen in the flesh (or in the silicone, as it were). Unshackling herself from the data put the art back into her science. It put the humanity back in the process of creating a robot.
But a buzz from her phone pulled her down from her high. Left cheek, Q3 motor. Now. She pursed her lips, imagining Robbie sitting there at his desk, issuing commands like he was Genghis Khan or something. If Genghis Khan ate unflavored oatmeal every morning and drove a Prius. She would never make any real progress if she was constantly being interrupted, and daily now she was having to stop what she was doing to satisfy Robbie’s demands. This was his third text in the past half hour, since she hadn’t responded right away.
“You’re popular,” Dr. Masden remarked.
“For someone with antisocial tendencies,” she answered, looking up from her phone to smirk at him.
He laughed in response. “Okay, I’ll give you a revision: How about ‘selectively social’?”
“I’ll have it printed on a T-shirt.” She grinned in return. “But I do have to get this. I’ll be back.”
She pocketed her phone as she stood decisively. This was ridiculous. If Robbie was at his desk, he was right down the hall from her. They dated for six months, for Pete’s sake. Asking Dr. Masden about his thoughts had helped. She should just ask Robbie too.
“What do you want?” she asked as she marched up to Robbie’s cubicle, not bothering to keep her voice down; most of the other engineers were off at lunch.
Robbie startled, spinning in his chair. He recovered himself, assuming his “you may kiss the ring” face. “Was my order not clear enough?”
“I don’t mean what part, I mean what do you want from me? What do you want from—all this?” Kelly whipped her hand around, gesticulating.
“I want to be allowed to complete my own work in my own cubicle without being molested.”
“I’m not here to molest you, Robbie,” she said firmly. “I just want to talk.” And now his face took on an infuriating air of judgment, as if he were calculating just how much of his time Kelly had earned. But she stood her ground—though she did throw in a “Please?” He did have the upper hand, after all.
At last, Robbie relented. “I don’t have much time,” he said in a clipped tone, pushing his chair aside to make room as Kelly dragged her own over to sit next to him. It was a tight squeeze. She wasn’t sure how Robbie had managed to secure a different chair for himself than any of the other engineers had: a spare, Scandinavian piece in blond wood. If anything, it looked less comfortable than the squishy black ones the company had probably mass ordered from Office Depot. He had Robbiefied his whole cubicle, filling the shallow shelves with his Fitbit, smart air filter, digital calendar, personal coffee press, all of the silvery gadgets that regulated his days. Kelly had always known that Robbie took a particular interest in transhumanism, forever looking for ways in which humans could transform and better themselves through machines. She had understood his attraction to the field on an intellectual level—she herself found the advances in the area exciting. But now, eyes skimming over the possessions he used to upgrade every facet of his life, she wondered if there was more to it on an emotional level. Maybe Robbie did this work because he thought that humans on their own, himself included, weren’t good enough.
She took a deep breath and forced herself to look at him. “Why are you blackmailing me?”
“We’re in direct competition. This should be obvious.”
“You strike me as someone who would want an honest win.”
“You have wrought your own demise. I would say that that’s still fair.” Robbie’s face stayed still and serene, but his right foot jiggled beneath him, his shoe making an infinitesimal squeaking noise, like a baby mouse.
She shook her head insistently. “It still doesn’t make sense. You could just tell Anita what you know and get me out. What you’re doing isn’t really helping you.” She pointed at the demo video of Brahma running silently on his desktop in the background. “And you don’t even need the help! You’re doing well on your own.”
“What was it you said about Brahma? That he’s what happens when the production line at the robot factory gets stuck?”
Kelly blushed. It was true, Brahma at first glance looked like too many robot parts had ended up on one body. Rows of metal arms bristled from his back, and digital eyes ringed the entire circumference of his head. And sometimes she and Priya did joke about Robbie in the lab. But he was always so utterly placid that she thought he didn’t notice, or didn’t care . . . Maybe she had mistaken his tendency to not show his feelings for him not having any.
“Maybe I’m not doing so well,” Robbie burst out, his foot going overtime. “Anita has scheduled me for a performance review. She said we need to block out an hour for ‘a good chat.’ How am I supposed to take that?”
“Well, I mean, you could take it as her wanting a good chat. Anita’s tough, but she’s fair, and she’ll give you a second chance even if you’ve messed up. I would know.”
“Oh no, what if I’ve messed up?” Robbie’s thin chest began moving rapidly up and down below his starched shirt.
“Robbie, stop.” Kelly leaned forward,
clasping her hands. Magically, having to manage his anxiety seemed to dissipate her own. It was kind of nice not to be the one trapped in a vortex of panic for a change. “You’ve been doing well, you always are. You don’t need to freak out. For that matter, you don’t need to sabotage me to do well in the competition. You’re good at your job, you’re good at everything.”
“I wasn’t good enough for you.” The words seemed to burst out before Robbie even knew they were there.
“What do you mean? Like, when we broke up?”
Robbie’s own internal struggle played out in the tortured movements of his lips. Finally he spoke. “At least I was real,” he exclaimed. “But that didn’t stop you from throwing me away to ‘focus on your career.’ Now here you are, ready to throw out your career for a guy who’s not even real! He’s—he’s a talking hat rack!”
“I never tried to throw you away, Robbie,” Kelly protested. “I honestly didn’t think you were hurt when we broke up.”
“We didn’t break up. You dumped me. And yes, when somebody tells you you’re not good enough, it hurts.”
“You’re telling me! You know what I love about Ethan? For him, I am good enough!”
Kelly and Robbie stared at each other for a moment, neither sure of what to say. His foot had finally stopped jiggling.
And then the naked emotion on his face locked itself away. “Must be nice,” he sneered. “If you’re done, I do have work to complete.” He turned firmly back toward his computer and began going through the video. Onscreen, Brahma was zooming around a kitchen on his wheels and extending various arms and levers, washing dishes, stirring a pot, observing a visitor at the door via a camera and directing the smart lock to unlock. He was doing many of the sorts of things that Confibot was meant to do, but much faster and more seamlessly. With a new feeling of nervousness, Kelly rose from her chair.
“Yeah . . . so do I.” Once she was out of Robbie’s line of vision, she nearly ran back to the lab.
The rest of that week, Robbie stopped asking her for parts. In fact, he didn’t speak to her at all. And the knowledge of his knowledge, the unpredictability of what he might do with it, the silence, was almost worse than his relentless demands. What if he waited until the day of the presentation to do her in? She had an inkling now that his feelings for her ran deeper than she had given him credit for; that his ire at her relationship with Ethan was more than just poor sport. And she understood, finally, why Robbie had blackmailed her, asking for parts from Confibot and Ethan, slowly and steadily impeding her progress rather than just exposing her straightaway to Anita and eliminating her wholesale from the competition. It gave him power. For once in their relationship, a relationship that she saw now was strangled by his inability to love her, or anyone, when he so thoroughly hated himself—for once, he had been the one in control. Those sorts of feelings ran deep. She herself felt some sort of psychic resolution from their conversation, and it was possible that he felt the same. Or it was possible that his feelings would rear again.
But all Kelly could do right now was her job. Over the past few days in the lead-up to the presentation, she put in what felt like a thousand hours on Confibot, rewriting codes, reworking her entire demonstration with Dr. Masden’s assistance, and actually giving the poor robot a decent face. It was dizzying, but also exhilarating: finally Kelly was seeing her vision come to life. Confibot was shaping into someone who was professional, polite, and gentle, yet still able to crack a joke or play games; capable and intelligent, yet not intimidating. By nine p.m. on Thursday, Kelly was so sleep-deprived that she thought she saw the Wicked Witch of the West fly past the office window. Some light hallucinating would not have been enough to convince her to pack it in for the night, but something else was nagging at her. Clara gave only a terse response to her text the other day, then hadn’t made a peep since. And she could no longer put off her own concern, so she set about quickly sealing Confibot up. Eyes blurring, she reattached the last metal plate and wire she had removed and buttoned his shirt on to cover the whole mess of knobs and filaments. She stumbled out of the lab, convincing herself that some particularly loud NPR would wake her up on the drive out.
The only thing she forgot was the screwdriver she had left lodged by the central command switch, right in Confibot’s chest cavity.
* * *
• • •
Kelly couldn’t remember the last time she had been to her sister’s apartment. Was it right after she and Jonathan had moved in together? That’s right, and Clara had tried to make some elaborate meal for the family but burned it beyond repair, so that she had ended up ordering pizza instead. Somehow she had laughed and smiled through the whole thing. Kelly would have stuck her head in the offending oven.
After she rang the doorbell, she realized that she had no idea what to expect when the door opened. Was Clara sick? Was she even here? Was she avoiding them all for some reason? With a pang, Kelly thought back over all the little jabs or testy moments that might have hurt Clara. She couldn’t blame her for pulling away. And, suddenly anxious, she began to pull away herself, bouncing a little on the balls of her feet, edging her weight back from the welcome mat, thinking she could just call tomorrow instead—
“Kelly. Hey.” Clara seemed understandably surprised when she opened the door. Her strawberry-blond hair had been hastily pulled back, and her normally sparkling eyes looked flat. “Come in.”
“So what’s up?” she asked once Kelly was inside. Kelly looked around—it really had been a while since she’d been here. Furniture was shuffled around the living room, new pop art posters colored the walls, a string of unlit white Christmas lights had been strung around the picture-window frame, and a new coffee table composed of painted packing crates, evidently some kind of debatably successful DIY project, sat precariously in the middle of the room. What Clara lacked in funds or decorating skill, she tended to make up for in gumption.
Kelly stammered. “Uh, nothing. What’s up with you?”
“But I mean, you’re here. Is something wrong?” Clara asked.
“That’s actually what I wanted to ask you.” Kelly perched on the arm of the white cotton sofa. “Gary and I noticed you had been kind of incommunicado lately.”
“Sorry, I’ve just been busy.” Clara had plum-colored grooves under her eyes. She looked tired.
“So, uh, everything’s okay?” Kelly asked.
“I’ve just been working a lot lately,” Clara said. “A lot of overtime.” Kelly was confused—certain times of the year consistently had Clara working heavy shifts at the vintage boutique, but this wasn’t one of them. “And I’ve actually got an early shift in the morning,” Clara went on. Her eyes flickered to the door. Kelly jumped up from the couch.
“Oh, sorry, I guess I’ll get out of your hair.”
Clara looked suddenly guilty. “No, you’re fine, it’s just I wasn’t expecting company.”
“I’m not company. I’m Kelly,” she said awkwardly. She was used to her sister being loquacious, but Clara just looked at her, twitching the hem of her shirt. Kelly waited before bursting out with “Are you sure everything’s—”
The opening of the bedroom door interrupted her as Jonathan came out. “Just checked the bank statement—oh, Kelly, hey.” The extra day’s growth of his stubble and the crease between his eyebrows suggested that he was every bit as worn out as Clara.
Kelly seized her opportunity. “Hey, Jonathan. I was just coming by to check on you guys. Gary and I hadn’t heard from Clara in a while and wanted to make sure everything was okay.”
Clara gave Jonathan the tiniest shake of the head “no,” but he turned to Kelly. “We’re fine, we’ve both just been pulling extra shifts. We need the money.” Clara looked ready to protest, but he went on. “It’s okay, Clara. I made a bad investment; we lost everything we had. It was with a friend whose judgment I trusted and, well, Clara trusted mine. And with my stud
ent loans coming due, we’re in a tough spot.”
“Oh. Oh.” Kelly crossed her arms now, looking at Jonathan. “And now my sister’s working herself half dead to make up for your mistake and your debt?”
“Kelly, don’t.” Clara laid a placating hand on her arm. With her other hand, she squeezed Jonathan’s before pulling Kelly aside into the kitchen. “It was a mistake,” she told Kelly. “Everyone makes them.”
“This sounds like a pretty big mistake.”
“Listen, we’re broke. It sucks.” Clara laughed a what-can-you-do laugh. “But we’re here, and we have each other, and that’s what matters.”
“But it’s not your fault. You shouldn’t have to pay his way. You didn’t know.”
Clara looked up, surprised. “Oh, I knew about the debt. And I agreed to the investment too. I had some doubts, but I trusted Jonathan, and I still do.”
“Really?”
“Of course. This isn’t his problem, it’s our problem. Every day, we choose each other,” she said simply. Seeing the doubt in Kelly’s face, she took her by the hands. “We’re fine, Kelly. We’re both working hard and we’ll get through this together. It’s just a bump in the road. You and Ethan would do the same, wouldn’t you?”
“Sure . . .” Kelly said. In truth, she didn’t know how she would react if Ethan ever hurt her. She had no data from which to judge.
Clara’s face relaxed a little and she started busying herself in the kitchen, putting dishes away from the drying rack. “I’m kind of glad you know, at least. It’s less stressful now that it’s not a secret. And I do want to be involved in your wedding, you know.” She looked back at Kelly. “It’s just there’s not much I can do right now.”
“No, of course.”
“Just think, a few years from now, we’ll both be happily married. Maybe our kids will be playing together. Yours can tutor mine in school.” She laughed. “You and Ethan want kids together, right?”