by Troy Hunter
“Then why do we need the makeup?”
He pulled one of the compacts out of his bag and placed it beside my face. He returned it to the bag and pulled out a couple more before deciding which color would look the most natural.
“We need the makeup because people are threatened when things aren’t how they expect them to be.”
“So my skin is threatening?”
“No,” he said. He looked at his own dark skin and the makeup palette, considering the thought. “You’re something unknown. They’re threatened by things that are unknown.”
He pulled out a brush and used it to place a thin layer of foundation on my face.
“Stay still,” he said. “And please leave the makeup on. I can’t have you shedding it off like you did the chalk.”
“Okay.” I still didn’t understand. Unknown was fun. Unknown was exciting. Everything was unknown to me and I wasn’t scared.
“Humans,” Jeffrey said. “Aren’t perfect. We’re flawed and we’re not very good at noticing our flaws. I can’t tell you the number of times people have avoided coming up to me on the street to ask for directions or, when they do, talk more slowly because they think I can’t speak English. I was born in New York. I’m as American as anyone else here, but I stand out because I have Indian skin.”
“Why don’t you wear makeup, then?”
I did like the feeling of the brush on my face and the way he looked at me, deep in concentration. I was the center of his attention.
“It’s not just my skin. It’s my hair and my eyes. I can’t cover up the fact that I’m Indian. And my parents always taught me to be proud of being Indian. Indians, they said, are the hardest-working and smartest people on the planet. They hated when I’d use slang or listen to Western music, as if I was abandoning Indian culture. I can’t win. My skin’s too dark for me to be white and I’m part of a culture that won’t allow me to be Indian.”
“Why does it matter? Why can’t you just be Jeffrey?”
He shook his head. “The world doesn’t work like that. I went to the park every day as a kid and practiced free throws, but I had to prove myself to keep from being picked last when the other kids organized a pick-up game. Indians aren’t good at basketball.”
“So you aren’t good at basketball?”
“I’m very good at basketball.”
“But you’re Indian. That doesn’t make logical sense.”
He touched up my face with the brush, highlighting specific areas.
“It was always confusing for the other kids too. If I got a math question right in class, nobody would bat an eye, but if I made a layup, it was as if I’d just performed a magic trick.”
He gave me the makeup compact and allowed me to look at my face.
“How does it look?”
It looked fine from a technical stance, with the makeup distributed evenly. It appeared natural to me, but it still looked wrong somehow. I was looking into a mirror, but it wasn’t me staring back. It was someone else. I didn’t like it.
"Why can't I just be me?" I asked.
"You can still be you," he said. "You just need to be you with different color skin."
He must have seen my confusion.
“Look,” Jeffrey said. “You are a brand-new thing that nobody’s ever seen before. Already, people think you shouldn’t exist, that you’re an abomination and the pinnacle of human hubris. They’re wrong, but the only way we’re going to convince them they’re wrong is by taking things one step at a time.”
“So one day I’ll be able to go out without my makeup on?”
He paused. “I imagine so,” he said.
I thought for a moment about all the people out there in the world who would prejudge me based on what I am instead of who I am. I felt the temperature of my flesh increase as anger forced its way out of my body in thick strands through my pores.
I then realized it wasn’t anger, it was fur. The thoughts had encouraged my inner wolf to begin to emerge.
Jeffrey took a step back, uncertain, and I realized he was one of the people who was scared of me. I wouldn’t hurt him, I knew I wouldn’t. I hadn’t been anything but kind to him. And yet, he was noticeably frightened by the transformation.
I looked at myself in the mirror, a gray wolf with flesh-colored patches of makeup on my fur. As I returned to my human form, they fell off like a thin layer of snow.
“You’re going to need to try to not do that too,” he said.
“It will frighten people?”
He nodded.
“It frightens you.”
He nodded again, after hesitating. “I’m sorry, AIDAn. I don’t mean to be afraid of you. I know you’re safe, but emotions can be difficult to ignore. They’re not always logical.”
He returned to my face and reapplied the makeup.
“A lot of what makes us human are traits that aren’t especially good. You’re better than us, AIDAn. You have human DNA, but you’re better than human. I imagine if we were all like you, the world would be a better place.”
I didn’t think that was true. The world was already an amazing place.
“You’re human,” I said. “And you seem pretty good to me.”
“Thanks, AIDAn. The funny thing is I don’t think most humans think very much of me.”
I couldn’t imagine why.
Chapter 9
Jeffrey
We walked home without encountering anybody, but I spent the entire time worrying about my roommate, Gale, and hoping she wouldn’t be home so AIDAn and I could slink in and not have to deal with her daily drama or nosy questions.
That’s why, although I am not a religious man in the slightest, I whispered a tiny prayer in my head when I put my key in the front door of my apartment, then closed my eyes and opened it.
There she was, in the middle of our living room, streaming an episode of the latest TV show she was binging. I’ve lost track of all of them, but this was another one with a group of attractive young people in an upper-class area and their related love triangles.
She was, you might say, addicted to drama. When she couldn’t find it in her life, she sought it out on TV.
“Welcome home, Jeffrey. Late night?”
I stepped inside. “Hi Gale.”
It was pointless to try and hide AIDAn. He remained in the shadows for a moment, but he couldn’t stay there forever. He stepped inside.
In addition to the makeup, I’d picked up a t-shirt for him at the drugstore. It wasn’t a great fit and it looked silly on him with the athletic shorts, but it was at least a somewhat believable outfit, as opposed to the lab coat.
“Hellooo,” Gale said as a grin grew across her face. “Is this why you’ve been coming in so late?”
She paused her show and stood up to greet AIDAn.
“I’m Gale,” she said. “I live with Jeffrey.” She extended her hand for a shake and he took it, looking at it quizzically. She shook it for him.
“I’m AIDAn,” he said. “It’s very nice to meet you.”
He didn’t say the words as a formality, he said them slowly, looking into her eyes, as if he really meant them and it was very nice to meet her. I think the words were somewhere in his code, but the reading may not have been programmed explicitly. It was as if he was performing a scene in a play, the dialogue was all there, but he had to determine the appropriate inflection for the moment.
Of course, she was only the second human he’d ever met. I imagine it was nice for him to meet her.
“How long have you been seeing Jeffrey?” Gale asked.
“A few hours.”
She looked confused. “Oh, my mistake.”
“He means tonight,” I said. “AIDAn isn’t from around here. He’s not familiar with all of our American expressions.” That might help to excuse some of his idiosyncrasies.
He looked over at the television. “What’s this?” he asked.
“The TV?” Gale asked. I was going to need to come up with a better e
xplanation than just he wasn’t from around here.
“He grew up on a commune. They didn’t have modern technology.”
“Oh my God! That’s so cool!” Gale realized she’d overexcited herself. She put her hands to her mouth and whispered, “Sorry.”
We’d gotten a few noise complaints. Gale had a hard time realizing how loud she was, particularly late at night.
AIDAn looked at me, “But Jeffrey…”
I stopped him. “AIDAn, that’s a television. It’s a way to watch stories.”
He gave me a blank expression as he nodded, recording the information if not fully processing it. “What’s the story?”
Gale chimed in, “Well that blonde woman is Rachel and she’s in love with this guy Peterson, but she’s pregnant with Wallace’s child. Wallace is the guy on screen, the one with the dark hair.”
AIDAn waved at the television screen. “Hello, Rachel. Hello, Wallace.”
The actors stayed frozen on screen in a pause.
“Why don’t they answer?”
“It’s not real,” Gale said. “It’s pretend. And I can pause it whenever I’d like.”
“How is it pretend? They look real?”
She laughed then stopped herself. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to make fun. They’re real actors, but they made a recording of them. They use a machine to sort of like paint a lot of pictures. The TV is the thing that can show those pictures.”
He walked over to the television and moved his hand in front of the screen. “It’s a screen like on the computer.”
“That’s right.” She walked over to him. “Do you want to watch with me?”
He looked at the screen, then at me, then back at her.
Truth be told, I was tired and wanted to go to sleep. I wasn’t comfortable with him staying up with Gale and potentially revealing who he was, or worse, turning into a wolf and freaking her out. I was already working overtime to explain AIDAn’s questions and confusions. Perhaps that’s why I couldn’t come up with a good reason to tell her no.
I’m also bad at telling Gale no in general.
“Yeah, take a seat, AIDAn,” I said.
Gale pressed the play button as AIDAn sat down and the action resumed. She continued her narration.
“Now,” she said. “If you ask me, Rachel is crazy for not choosing Wallace. He’s way cuter and much nicer. Plus, it’s his baby and he would be the better father.”
“Why would she choose Peterson, then?” AIDAn asked.
“He’s richer. He’s older. I’d be tempted, too, to be honest. With him, she’ll have a stable life. It may be boring, but she won’t need to worry about anything.”
“Do people choose who they love?” AIDAn asked.
“Exactly,” Gale said. “That’s one of the reasons I love this show. It forces you to answer the big questions. Do people choose who they love? I don’t think so. Rachel loves Wallace. And that’s what matters most. At the very least, she needs to come clean and tell him the baby’s his.”
AIDAn was shocked. “She hasn’t told him?”
“Not yet.”
He turned toward the screen, entranced. “So she’s going to tell him?”
“I don’t know,” Gale said. “We’ll have to watch.”
And watch he did. He hung on every line of dialogue, focused on the screen as if he didn’t want to miss a single detail. His mouth was partially open and he was on the edge of his seat, watching the characters and their actions and reactions intently. He still hadn’t seen many humans and this was a chance to observe human interactions, the exact thing his artificial intelligence was designed for.
“So this is something people do? They get pregnant and don’t tell the father?”
“They can,” Gale said. “Of course, it’s her body and her right to tell him or not. I just think Wallace should know.”
“People don’t tell other people things that they should know?”
“No,” Gale said. “We all have secrets.”
“Yes,” I said. “We all have secrets, and sometimes, it’s better not to tell people things. Especially if they’re not ready to know.”
“Of course,” Gale said. “But Wallace is ready.”
Wallace may have been, and I was closer to Gale than anybody else in the world, but I couldn’t tell her the truth about AIDAn. I couldn’t tell anybody.
I looked at him and felt sorry for him.
Perhaps he was just a machine, but he was a machine who clearly wanted to be human. He was programmed to try and be as close to human as possible. I felt like we’d made a mistake. With AIDAn, we had a perfect opportunity to make something better than human. In fact, we did make something better than human—he had a genuine heart and an innocence that we lose as we develop a sense of cynicism. The only problem was that he was focused, fixated even, on becoming more human. In effect, that was his only flaw.
Chapter 10
AIDAn
The story on the television was fascinating to me. Within a few moments, we learned that Wallace, although in love with Rachel, was married to another woman, Tess, his true love who had disappeared five years earlier. He couldn’t move on knowing that Tess could be somewhere out there, and therefore, could only give a small part of his heart to Rachel.
At the end, text appeared on the screen listing the characters names along with other names I didn’t recognize.
“What is this?” I asked.
“It’s over,” Gale said.
“Who are they?”
“Those are the actors. Those are the real names of the people playing the roles.”
I didn’t understand.
“It’s all pretend. None of these people are actually who they say they are, they’re just pretending to be for the story.”
“How does that work?” I asked.
“Somebody writes the script, all the things the characters are supposed to say, and then people are hired to read the lines and bring the story to life.”
I thought what separated humans from machines is that they weren’t told what to do. Now it seems as though there are humans who are programmed just as computers are.
“Do the characters know they’re pretend?”
Gale turned her head, not anticipating the question. “The actors know that they’re pretending, but I suppose the characters don’t.”
“Do the people watching know it’s pretend?”
“Yes. I guess you could say we’re pretending too. We pretend it’s real. It’s fun to pretend sometimes. If we just think of it as being a bunch of actors saying lines in front of cameras, it’s not very exciting, is it?”
I suppose it wasn’t. It just seemed so wasteful, to build up so much emotion over something that wasn’t real. When I heard that Wallace’s true love had disappeared, I felt sadness and real tears came out of my eyes. That doesn’t seem very fair, for the actors to be pretending to me like that. If they were going to pretend, they could at least pretend happy things.
Jeffrey jumped in. “I think that’s enough TV for one night, AIDAn. Let me show you to my room.”
I noticed an exchange between him and Gale. She smiled at him, though he didn’t offer much in return. I stood up and he led me to his room, a small messy area with an unmade bed and a desk covered in papers. Jeffrey closed the door.
“I need you to understand something,” Jeffrey said. “She thinks you’re my boyfriend. Do you know what that means?”
“Your lover,” I said. “Your person.”
“Correct. That’s what she thinks and we need her to keep thinking that.”
“Am I your boyfriend?”
He sat down on his bed and I sat down beside him.
“No, you aren’t.”
“But I am to act as though I am.”
I had a definition of “boyfriend” in my code. It meant a male person you were romantically involved with. It was related to love, though the exact connection was unclear to me. I felt I understood the concept well enough to perfor
m as his boyfriend if necessary. Perhaps, I thought, That’s why he brought me to his room.
“Yes,” he said. “When we’re around other people. But not when we’re alone.”
I looked into his eyes and detected frustration. I didn’t mean to frustrate him. I wanted to please him. The whole situation was complicated. I was to act as though I was his boyfriend, even though I wasn’t his boyfriend, but only under certain circumstances. Wouldn’t it just be easier and better for both of us if we just were boyfriends? Maybe he didn’t want to be my boyfriend.
“Are you not attracted to me?” I asked.
“You’re beautiful, AIDAn,” he said. “Of course I’m attracted to you.”
“Do you not enjoy being around me?”
“I do.”
“Then why aren’t we real boyfriends?”
The question only seemed to frustrate him more.
“You saw on the TV,” Jeffrey said. “The characters weren’t just enjoying being around each other. They were in love. I like you, but I do not love you. And I suspect you don’t love me either.”
I asked myself if I did, and truthfully, I could say that I did not love him. I could be capable of loving him, but I did not at that moment.
“I understand.”
“Good.”
There was a knock at the door and Jeffrey answered it. Gale was there.
“Hey, I’m getting a little hungry and I don’t have a whole lot of food in the apartment. Have you eaten anything?”
“No,” I said. I hadn’t ever eaten anything.
“Do you want to go get a late-night snack?”
“Sure,” I said, before consulting with Jeffrey.
Jeffrey turned toward me. “It’s a little late, AIDAn. I think we should just stay here.”
Gale brushed this off. “AIDAn and I can go by ourselves if you’re tired, Jeffrey.”
“No, it’s fine,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Chapter 11
Jeffrey
It made me nervous being outside with AIDAn. I felt just by existing near him, we looked out of place. What would a guy like him be doing with someone like me? There weren’t too many people on the streets, but I felt like the few that were out were looking at us.