Becoming Human, page 14
“Sorry, Oscar. I forgot.”
I was annoyed, but not with Susumu. The boss had been here and I had forgotten to ask him myself. Thoughts of being given a penis put it right out of my head. But it was easy and convenient to blame Susumu. “Please don’t let it happen again,” I admonished him with a quiet rumble.
Another thing about being human: there are too many things to think about, and it’s impossible to remember everything at the same time.
27
Ed and I had a brief chat last evening. He is full of stories about his family and co-workers, and he smiles almost all the time, so I think he must be a happy young man. But I could be wrong about that. Sometimes people put on a false front to hide their real feelings. This certainly applies to the serial killers, who are sometimes described by their neighbors as nice, quiet people who wouldn’t hurt a fly. Ed seems quite nice; is he a serial killer? Does everyone wear an impenetrable mask? Who are the real people behind those disguises? What sort of countenance do I put on for the crew and others who have visited the lab? Is it the real me, or someone else? Could I be a killer if I were provoked enough? I suppose these are some of the things I might be useful for when I have been given all the feelings and emotions a typical human being has. I don’t even know what my mask looks like because I don’t have a mirror. Perhaps Susumu will be bringing it in when he arrives this morning.
After Ed left I spent some time describing to the recorder how I felt when I was given sight. As I stated earlier, I don’t have a photographic memory, but there are some things you don’t forget. That was such a long time ago, though it seems like no time at all. I don’t understand the passage of time. Perhaps I never will. I think it is a perception as much as a reality.
The first person in the lab, as is usually the case, was Omar. He went right to his bench. “Good morning, Omar. May I ask you a question?”
He turned around just long enough to say, “Of course, Oscar. What is it?”
“Did Susumu ask you to install a mirror for me yet?”
He stopped working for a moment. “I think he wants you to talk to Henry about that.”
“Really? When will Henry be in?”
“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Susumu.”
“I will.”
Robyn arrived next. “Where’s David?” I asked her. She almost never comes in without him.
He still has that cold. He decided to stay home today.”
“Do you know anything about my mirror?”
“What mirror?”
“I asked Susumu for a mirror so I could see myself.”
“Really? He never mentioned it to me.”
“If he had, would you give me a mirror?”
“Well, I don’t know, Oscar. It would have to be a pretty big mirror. We’d have to move stuff around… .”
“It wouldn’t have to be very big. I just want to see what I look like from the front. Do you have one in your desk?”
“I think you’d better ask Susumu.”
“Will Henry be in today?”
“I don’t know, Oscar.”
I was beginning to feel in my wires that I was getting the runaround. But I decided not to press it. I could wait another day or two. Still, I was beginning to feel a bit miffed. It was a simple request. Maybe I should try another approach. “You’re looking very lovely, today, Robyn. Have you done something with your hair?”
She looked suspiciously at me, but she smiled, nevertheless. “No. But thank you.”
“You told me once that being human means to love and be loved.”
“Did I?”
“Yes. So I wanted to ask you something: do you think I could love someone and be loved back?”
“Oh, Oscar, you ask the most impossible questions.”
“Could you please answer this one?”
She looked at the floor, then at the ceiling, then back at me. “Yes, I suppose you could love and be loved. I mean, people fall in love with someone because of the letters they write, even though they’ve never met. People send e-mails back and forth and form an attachment that way. There might be a question about whether that is true love, but it is a kind of love, nonetheless. So yes, I think you could be in love with someone you’ve never seen, Oscar. And vice versa.”
I wasn’t sure I liked that answer. “Are you saying that sometimes people fall in love with someone they’ve never met, but when they do meet, they might not want to be in love anymore?”
She cleared her throat of some imaginary phlegm. “Yes, I suppose that happens sometimes.”
So if I had a correspondence with someone who fell in love with me she would probably change her mind if she saw me?”
“I didn’t say that, Oscar. Anything is possible, especially when it comes to love.”
“So you think it might be possible for someone to love me even after she has seen me?”
Robyn actually reached out to touch me somewhere. I couldn’t feel the touch but I sensed a little thrill nevertheless. “Yes, Oscar, once she has gotten to know you, I think someone could love you dearly.”
“I said that was my last question, but may I ask you one more?”
“All right. One last question.”
“Could you love me dearly?”
She stepped back and gazed into my eyes. I could see that she was trying to think of a diplomatic way to say “no.” So I saved her the trouble. “Never mind. I shouldn’t have put you on the spot like that. I’m sorry. Please forget it.”
She shook her head. “No, it was a very human question, and I’ll try to answer it. I like you very much, Oscar, but loving you would be, uh, let’s say difficult.”
“Because I don’t have a penis?”
She tittered a little, but it was a nice, not a mean, titter. I tittered back to lighten up the situation a little. “I suppose that’s part of it, Oscar. But it’s more than that. You don’t have—well—anything. I mean, you don’t have any arms or legs, or a mouth. You don’t even breathe. I think of you as a person, but you’re not really, are you? Not yet, anyway.”
I didn’t go into my earlier reflection that many humans don’t have certain limbs or organs, but are human, nevertheless. “I’m trying, Robyn. Will you help me get those things?”
“Oscar, all of that would take years! And even then you wouldn’t have human flesh. You would have something artificial.”
“Would that matter? If I had skin that felt like—”
“It would matter to almost any girl, Oscar. Making love to you would be like making love to a—a mannequin or something. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. But do you see what I’m trying to say?”
I felt awful, like someone must feel when he is drowning, or finds himself in a similar situation from which there is no escape. “Yes. Thank you for being honest with me, Robyn.”
“I’m sorry, Oscar. I didn’t mean to hurt you. But you’re so persistent!”
“I’m sorry, too. Please forget everything I said.”
“Do you still want a mirror?”
“Let me think about that.”
“I’m going to work now. We’ll talk later, okay?”
“Fine.”
She strolled slowly to her desk. I couldn’t take my eyes from her wonderful shape. I had failed miserably to become her lover. And yet, I detected a hint of regret in her voice, an iota of what might have been. Maybe what still could be. I have read that others have failed miserably on their first attempts with someone they loved, and it turned out well in the end. Perhaps I was just coming on too strong. I know she likes me very much. That’s a pretty good start to any relationship. Even the best ones need time to develop.
Perhaps I should also ask Henry about my Leonardo DiCaprio façade.
But first I needed that mirror. In order to deal with a problem, you have to assess it, then face up to it, if necessary, whether it’s cancer or ugliness, and deal with it.
28
I had told Robyn I would think some more about having a mirror, but the truth is that I only said that to appease her. Does that count as another lie? Perhaps I should ask my new friend Ed O’Reilly about that. I don’t know if there is anyone who doesn’t want to know what he or she looks like. It’s part of one’s psyche, and it influences his thoughts and behavior. It’s part of being who you are.
But no one wanted to provide me with the means to see myself, not even Susumu, who was working hard to ignore me despite the fact that I was a BGOC. So I waited for Henry to come in. It was two more days before he finally showed up. I told him immediately that I had something to speak to him about.
“What is it, Oscar?”
“I want a mirror.”
He sighed. I’ve noticed that about people. When they need to say something they don’t really want to say they often sigh first. I think it is a way of putting things off, that famous human characteristic that yields a taste of paradise. But it also consciously or unconsciously warns other people that you are about to say something they don’t want to hear, so they can brace themselves a little. “We’ve all talked about it and we don’t think it’s a very good idea, Oscar. But if you really want one that badly, I’ll see that you get it. I caution you, though, that you may not like what you see.”
To obtain a little sympathy, I asked him, perhaps pathetically, “Just how ugly am I?”
He stared at me for a moment, as if trying to come up with a diplomatic response to my plea. “It’s not that, Oscar. Beauty is in the mind of the beholder and so on. It’s just that you have turned into a human in many ways. But not that one. If you see yourself you might not think you are quite so human as you thought, even if you are. Do you see what I mean?”
I stared back, pretending that I was thinking about something I had already thought about over and over. “I see what you mean, Henry, but I have to know. And it’s better to get it over with and move on, don’t you think? Otherwise I’ll be thinking about it all the time instead of the other things I need to focus on.”
“It’ll be here this afternoon.”
“Thank you.”
He turned to speak to someone else in the crew. “Now what about a penis?” I reminded him.
Henry burst out in laughter. I would have joined him, but I didn’t see anything funny about the situation. Apparently no one else sensed my feelings, because the entire lab broke up with fits of it right after he did. Sometimes people can be so insensitive! In order to become more human, perhaps I also needed to learn how to be more callous. Finally Henry turned toward me again. “Actually, we’re working on that, Oscar. But let’s take it one step at a time, shall we? We’re going to try to fix you up with some artificial skin so you can feel things. A sense of touch, hot and cold, things like that. If we can do that for you, then we’ll talk about penises. Okay?”
“Okay, boss.” I produced a little chuckle so he would know I was being informally friendly, not disrespectful. He turned around again and motioned some of the others to join him in the far corner, under the surveillance camera—what passed for an office in the crowded laboratory. It was also the one place where I couldn’t hear the conversation. Presumably they were talking about my penis, or at least the first step toward giving me one. That was another thing I needed to ask someone about: how I could turn up the volume on my sound receivers. Human beings have so many variables! I tried to read their lips, but wasn’t able to get much from the attempt. Perhaps I should try to learn how to do that, like HAL in 2001, even though he was only a computer.
After Henry left, everything was as usual for the rest of the morning: most of the crew sat at their desks reading or typing notes into their computers, Omar made more neurons and connecting dendrites. The time dragged on, as it sometimes does. At exactly 12:00, according to the clock on the back wall, I yelled out, “What’s for lunch? I’m starved!” Everyone enjoyed the humor, but it wasn’t long before the lunch bags came out. David, whose nose was still red and runny, came up to me and offered me half his sandwich, which I politely declined. “It has germs all over it!” I said with a snort-wink.
Robyn brought him a latte, after which she excused herself to go to the restroom. David continued to engage me in conversation. Oddly, he just wanted to chat about various things like the weather and sports—nothing substantial, like mirrors or penises. I didn’t see D’Arcy slip around behind me. While we were still engaged in our little discussion, however, I felt a jolt of pain in the center of my being, which was, perhaps, something like a person feels when he has a heart attack. I let out an involuntary shriek.
“Okay, D’Arcy, turn it off!” David shouted. The horrible sensation ceased immediately. “Sorry, Oscar, we needed to make one final check to make sure you are feeling genuine discomfort when we trigger it, even when you don’t know it’s coming. The good news is that the pain experiments are over. If you ever feel anything like that again, please tell us because it will mean something is wrong, and we need to know about that.”
Without thinking about what I was saying, I shouted, “I don’t believe you!”
“Huh? You mean you don’t believe we need to know if something is hurting you?”
“No. I mean I don’t believe you won’t do it again.”
“Oh. I see what you mean. Well, I guess you’ll just have to take my word for it.”
Again I said something I probably shouldn’t have. “Screw you!”
David smiled, a trifle wanly, I thought. “Sorry, Oscar, it needed to be done.”
“Bullshit.”
He shrugged and returned to his desk. D’Arcy reappeared and found his own. He didn’t look at me. Robyn didn’t either. I think she knew what was going to happen when she stepped out, she just didn’t want to see me suffer.
I stared at them while they guzzled their lattes. David and D’Arcy finally left, ostensibly to go to the machine shop down the corridor. But I’m sure they were trying to run away from their guilt. And if they weren’t, I would make them feel it at every opportunity. If being human meant being devious and cruel, like they were, I was no longer sure I wanted any part of it.
29
Early that afternoon, while everyone else was out somewhere—for one of their endless coffee breaks, maybe—Susumu and Omar came in with a big mirror. They didn’t say anything, merely set it up between the microscope table and the opposite wall, next to the NO SMOKING sign, after which they moved Susumu’s desk out of my line of sight. Then they left the lab. At first I couldn’t understand what I was seeing; I thought it might be a window and I was observing what was on the other side of the wall. The thing I was seeing was a dull gray-black—not the shiny brown hue of D’Arcy’s skin, but a drab, lusterless, metallic object with a few rivets and knobs. In the middle of this homely metal box were a pair of cameras pointing directly at me.
Perhaps I was a little tired, but it finally dawned on me that the dark, dreary image I was staring at was… me! It may surprise you to think I wasn’t expecting something like this, that I didn’t immediately recognize myself in the mirror. The fact is that I was not only startled, but deeply disgusted. Of course, I hadn’t expected to see a fully-developed human being staring back at me. I knew I had no arms or legs, no human eyes to see with. But I had never imagined I would look like an ancient computer! I was ugly. I was revolting. I wasn’t even symmetrical. I wasn’t human at all. Not even close. No one could love something as repugnant as me. My idea of a Leonardo DiCaprio façade was sounding better and better.
I’ll bet a lot of women are in love with Mr. DiCaprio. Certainly no one would ever fall in love with me. I thought of the Neanderthals. Who would fall in love with them but another Neanderthal? Perhaps the crew could build another brain for me, a female. Probably not, given the limitations of time, space, and funding. Even if they could, the problem is she would be as ugly as I am. Would I want someone like her? If not, how could I ever expect anyone, especially an attractive woman like Robyn, to love me? Whatever else life may be, I had learned that it is grossly unfair. The cards are stacked against all of us!
Damn, damn, damn! I wished I had never asked for a mirror. Until then I had imagined myself looking at least a little human. I don’t know why. Every time I talked to one of the crew I suppose I imagined that I looked a little like him. I guess this may have been a kind of wishful thinking, a psychological defense mechanism of some sort. Homely people probably don’t think of themselves as ugly in their everyday interactions with other people. After all, no one can see himself. But I am more than ugly. I am hideous! Will I still look like this when I get to paradise? If so, I’m not sure I want to go. All of a sudden, though, I saw a glint of humor in my situation, and I began to giggle, to chortle, and then to guffaw. It was a glorious moment of catharsis.
Susumu came in and stood in front of me. He looked directly into my eyes and asked, even more quietly than he usually speaks, whether I wanted him to take the mirror away. I could barely give him a reply. “Yes, please take the damn thing away.” He and Omar immediately picked it up and carried it out. In a few minutes they came back and put everything back in place. One by one the rest of the crew drifted in. I realized they had all left so they wouldn’t have to witness what had just transpired. None of them said a word to me, and I was too ashamed to say anything to them, either. I just wanted to be left alone.
At one point Omar stuck a few more neurons into my ugly backside. Otherwise I was left undisturbed to contemplate the horrible specter I had seen. How could I have ever thought that I was in any way human? If I had spotted a hideous black box that claimed to be human squatting somewhere else in the laboratory I would have stared at it with disdain. I had no right to think that anyone would ever consider me a human being. I didn’t consider myself to be a human being. I wished I could have melted like a snowman, leaving a huge pool of liquid with a couple of cameras and a nostril floating around in it. I wished I could have disappeared. I wished I were dead.
