Becoming Human, page 18
“Maybe we can get David to leave.”
“It wouldn’t help. Everything about the laboratory would remind me of him. We’ve been together here for almost four years.”
“What did he do to you?”
“Oh, Oscar, I don’t want to go into that right now.”
“Maybe later?”
“All right, just to close this off, he’s been playing around with someone else. Does that mean anything to you?”
I suddenly felt even sadder for her and angrier at him. “Why would he do a stupid thing like that when he can have you? You’re the smartest and most beautiful woman in the world.”
She softened a bit. “That’s nice of you to say, but he doesn’t see it that way. For some men, that’s not enough. Do you understand?”
I realized then that if I didn’t before, I certainly hated him now. I understood that these things happen. But I didn’t want them to happen to her. “Let’s get rid of him.”
Her pink lips twitched a little. “No, let’s not.”
I didn’t know what else to say, except that I wanted her to stay even more. “Can you wait until I have a penis? Maybe you’ll feel differently about me after that.”
“Oh, Oscar, love is more than just penises.”
“But that’s a lot of it, isn’t it? And the rest will come later.”
“That’s not the way it is for me. The love comes first, and the penises later.”
“Robyn, do you love me?”
“Yes, I do, Oscar. I love you very much. But I have to go.”
“How long will it be before you leave?”
“I don’t know. I’ll be leaving as soon as possible, but it may take me a while to get another position. I might even go back to graduate school. Get a Ph.D. A master’s degree isn’t worth much these days.”
“A month, maybe?”
“Maybe.”
“Can you stay until after the Sixty Minutes interview? I’d like you to be here for that.”
“When is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“I can’t promise you anything, but if it’s soon I’ll try to stay until then.”
Anything could happen in a month. “Thank you.”
“Was there anything else you wanted to talk about?”
“Could you give me a kiss? I would like that very much.”
She smiled warmly for the first time. “Of course. Where would you like it?”
“How about my beautiful backside?” I asked dismally. “My face is too ugly.”
“Oscar, you’re not ugly. Just different.” She gave me a nice long kiss right under my eyes, in the middle of my façade. I imagined what it might be like to feel it: a little taste of paradise, better even than a latte.
“I wish I had a hand you could hold. Just once, if only for a minute.”
“So do I, Oscar.” She patted me close to where she had planted the kiss.
I felt wonderful and miserable at the same time. How human, I thought dismally. “You can go now if you want.”
“I’m going to do that. I haven’t had dinner yet.”
“Are you hungry?”
“Starved.”
“What does that feel like?”
Her eyes scanned the ceiling for a moment. “I guess it feels like being empty.”
“That’s how I feel all the time. Some day I’d like to feel full.”
“Who knows—that might happen sooner than you think. I’ll see you in the morning, Oscar.”
“You can call me Ozzie if you like.”
“I prefer Oscar.”
“So do I. Goodnight, Robyn.”
She powered me down, but before she left she turned around and faced me again. “Just my luck,” she said. “You’re the only man who really loves me, and I have to go.”
I had only a few weeks to try to change her mind about that. I said nothing, but I thought to myself that I should feel lucky. Even if she left, at least I had lived long enough to experience the feeling of true love. It’s a beautiful feeling tinged with sadness, I think, even for those with penises. But it can go just as easily. Love can end, does end. It’s like life itself. It’s not fair. There must be a soul, a heaven. Otherwise, I don’t think I could stand it.
36
Omar was in early the next morning to begin trying to add another layer or two of “epidermis” to my skin. Gladys was noticeably missing. “Gone,” he said, without a touch of regret. After he powered me up, I watched him for a few minutes. He was always a careful, methodical worker, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, but he always did things as carefully and precisely as possible. He might not have known as much neurology as the rest of the crew, but if I had to choose someone to direct the work if Henry or Susumu left, I would want Omar. Whatever they needed to do would get done, and correctly. I had noted also that Omar almost never took a break from his work, while the others sometimes sat around and drank lattes or went somewhere else for a while. I still needed a friend, someone to talk to about things that concerned me. I asked him why he never took breaks. “I don’t know, Oscar. I guess I’ve always been that way. My mother told me that taking breaks was for lazy people. I don’t know if I would agree with that, but she raised eight of us and I never saw her take a work break.”
“Do you think the rest of the crew are lazy?”
“Oh, no, no, no. I wouldn’t say that. My mother might, but I wouldn’t.”
“Is that how people develop whatever personalities they might have? They learn it from their mothers?”
“I suppose a lot of people learn things like that from their mothers, yes. Or their fathers.”
“What did you learn from your father?”
“He also worked hard, but I didn’t see him much. In the evenings he went out with his friends.”
“Is he still alive?”
“Yes, but he’s retired. Now he never does any work.”
“And your mother?”
“Still working, and even at eighty she doesn’t take breaks.”
“Are they still in Egypt?”
“Yes.”
I was going to ask him about the rest of his family, and where they were, when Henry came in. “Good morning, Omar. Good morning, Oscar.”
We both responded appropriately.
Henry’s face expressed the kind of peaceful jubilation one sees on the face of a happy child. “Oscar, it looks like the Sixty Minutes interview is going to be scheduled for about six weeks from now. By then maybe you’ll be able to—”
“I’m not doing the interview.”
His expression changed immediately. It was a mixture of sadness and disbelief that people sometimes have when something has been taken away from them. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“Why, Oscar?”
“I’ll do it, but on one condition: that Robyn does the interview with me.”
He looked puzzled for a moment. “She wants to leave the lab. I don’t know if she’ll be here then.”
“You can get her to stay.”
“Oscar, it’s a personal thing. She doesn’t want to be here. I can’t make her stay.”
“No stay, no interview.”
He suddenly became more angry than incredulous. “Oscar, that’s unreasonable.”
“If I’m unreasonable, you made me that way.”
He stared at me for a moment, then turned around. Omar was busy working with my skin and seemed not to be paying any attention to us. I knew he was, though, because he was concentrating in an exaggerated manner. Finally Henry turned back to me. “Before you make a final decision, you should remember that we can get you to do anything we want.”
“How can you do that?”
“Pain.”
I froze. If I could shudder, I probably would have. I thought hard, but the only thing I could come up with was, “Then you won’t get the grant renewed.”
“We might do it anyway just to teach you a lesson.”
“I can handle the pain. I’ve done it before.”
He was silent for a moment. “Okay, if that’s the way you want it, we’ll just pull the plug and start over with someone else.”
“You wouldn’t do that.”
“Why not? You’re just a machine. We can do anything we want with you.”
“If you started over, it wouldn’t be me.”
“That’s exactly what I’m hoping. The next ‘Oscar’ might be more cooperative.”
I could see that he wasn’t joking, and I realized that perhaps I should take a different approach. I told him in a soft voice that Omar wouldn’t be able to hear: “Robyn is really the brains behind the outfit. David doesn’t know anything, and Robyn has to fix everything he does wrong.”
“Oscar, what the hell are you talking about?”
“David. He’s incompetent.”
His expression abruptly hardened. “I don’t have time for this shit, Oscar.” He took a deep breath. “Look, I know you like Robyn, and I can see why you might not like David, but that’s ridiculous. He’s a very good researcher. Many of the things you can do came about through David’s work or influence. He’ll leave some day to start his own research program. Until then, he isn’t going anywhere.”
“Then I won’t do the interview.”
The look this time was one of pure frustration. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. The crew and I will discuss what to do about this. In the meantime, I suggest you reconsider very carefully whether you want to cooperate with us.” He was halfway to the door when he turned around again and came back. “And by the way, I hope you won’t be telling any more lies about David. I know you consider lying to be a human thing to do, but just because humans can do something doesn’t always make it a good idea. I think you might be confused about that concept. Think about that, too.” He turned around again and marched out of the lab, his cell phone to his ear. Was he reporting me to someone? Susumu, perhaps, who was out of town for the day? Or maybe he was calling Robyn to try to talk her into staying… .
Omar stopped what he was doing. “Oscar, I think you should reconsider your position here. Nobody’s going to hurt you to get you to comply with their wishes, but you owe Henry. And I would suggest you also forget about Robyn. She likes you—we all do—but she’s not going to be your lover or your companion or anything else. You need to know that before you mess up her life as well as everyone else’s, including your own.”
“I love her.”
“You’ll get over it.”
“I don’t want to get over it.”
He came over and stood in front of me. “Every human being has to do things he doesn’t want to do. Giving up a love is one of the things you sometimes have to do.” His eyes told me that he was finding this very difficult to say. He looked dismal. I thought he might even be going to cry.
“You’ve lost your girlfriend, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” he said, and turned back to the layer of epidermis he was working on. He didn’t look up again for a long time.
I waited for Robyn to arrive, but she didn’t show up until that afternoon. This left me to think about what would happen if they actually decided to torture me. I knew David would be eager to do that. I imagined the horrible feeling, and almost cried out. But if they didn’t do that, they might pull the plug on me. Would that be worse or better?
37
David came in later that morning, and he made straight for me. “I need to talk to you,” he said. His eyes were glaring.
“What can I do for you, David?”
“You can stop spreading lies about me, for one thing.”
“Moi?”
“Yes, toi. What did you hope to accomplish by telling Henry that I was incompetent, and that Robyn is essentially in charge of the project? You know that isn’t true.”
“I was hoping she would stay and you would leave.”
“Forget it. She isn’t staying and I’m not leaving.”
He waited for some sort of response, but I said nothing.
“The question is, what are we going to do with you? You’ve suddenly become a hindrance. You may have a reason for this, but that doesn’t help us one bit. Henry and Susumu and D’Arcy and I are going to meet later this afternoon to determine whether to continue with your development, or re-wire you in some way, start over, or even discontinue the project. Our decision is basically up to you. Do you have anything you want me to take to that meeting?”
“A bottle of Prosecco?”
“Very funny, Oscar. You’ve turned into quite a comedian, haven’t you? Maybe you’ve been joking about the Sixty Minutes interview, too. Is that possible?”
I chose to ignore that insult.
He snorted, but without the wink. “How could you do this? Don’t you realize that without Henry and the rest of us you wouldn’t even be here? That you wouldn’t even exist? How could you turn on us like this?” D’Arcy came in, yawning, and went to his desk.
“You’re forgetting one thing. You need me as much as I need you.”
He shook his head. “Maybe there’s something you don’t understand. The interview will give us national attention, and help us to get funding for this and other projects. It may help us find a bigger space where we can work and you can grow and become anything you want. This would be for your own benefit as well as ours.”
I ignored that, too.
“More importantly, to you, at least, is that Robyn is not in love with you. Or with me, for that matter. She’s a great girl, and I’m sorry that she has decided to leave. But that’s her decision—not mine, not yours. Do you see what I mean? Shit happens. You just have to pick it up and get on with your life.”
I knew there was more coming, so I gazed at the students wandering the sidewalks outside and waited.
“As far as a penis is concerned, you’re never going to get one. Not ever. We were just playing along with your desire to have one, and we were fascinated that it seemed to be so important to you. But you can’t even feel anything yet. And anyway, if you had one, what would you do with it? You can’t have children, and sex would be—uh, let’s say problematic. Hell, Oscar, you wouldn’t even be able to urinate. Maybe in a hundred years someone like you will be more human in form and that would be the time to discuss penises. But as for you, forget it.”
Suddenly I was feeling something I had never felt before. It was a kind of mental collapse. I realized with considerable despondency that I had been kidding myself all along. Things were not going to go at all as I had wanted and hoped. I was merely a machine after all, human in spirit, whatever that is, but metallic in body. I could do certain things, but I was still severely limited. Again I didn’t respond to him. Not because I was angry or obstinate, but because I felt like crap.
David must have sensed this, because he softened. “I’m sorry to have to tell you all this, but you brought it on yourself. On top of everything else, we’re not sure we can trust you, or believe the things you say. It turns out that you’ve become far more human than we actually wanted. So that’s what we’re going to be discussing later today when we meet in the seminar room. Until then, I’ll be here the rest of the morning and afternoon in case you change your mind about cooperating, or if there’s anything else you want to say to me.” He went to his desk. “Think about it,” he said, as if to twist the dagger in my broken heart.
I did think about it. How had everything gotten so screwed up? What had I done to deserve such a berating? And how could I ever forgive them for lying about giving me a penis? I tried to pinpoint what it was that had caused everything to come apart, and what I could do about it.
Robyn came in and smiled, then promptly ignored me. D’Arcy was over in the corner helping Omar with the thicker skin, and presumably neither had heard what David had told me. I realized that no one really cared about me—they had their own problems, their own lives to live. Even Ed had deserted me. I was all alone.
But I had learned one thing if nothing else: life has its ups and downs. Mine was at a low point now, but some day I will be famous and have clout, like Dr. Wilkes does now. Then things will be different.
For the time being I decided to tell David and the others what I thought they wanted to hear. There was, at present, no other option. I finally called him over. “Do you have something to tell me, Oscar?” I could see that the entire crew was listening to us.
“Yes, I do. I want to apologize for the trouble I’ve caused everyone, especially after all you’ve done for me. It was stupid of me to think that I could determine what happens in the laboratory. From now on I’ll do as you say. Bring on the interview. Robyn has to do what she has to do. If I can’t have a penis now, maybe we can shrink that century back to a few decades and I’ll get it when it’s ready. By then I might even have some arms and legs. I’m not a child anymore. I can wait. Tell Henry to cancel the meeting. You won’t have any trouble with me from now on.”
I could see his chest rise and fall as he breathed a sigh of relief or satisfaction. I still thought he was a jerk, but who isn’t? As far as Robyn was concerned, I couldn’t possibly have been in love with her anyway. It was a ridiculous concept. No one gets everything he wants, and many get far less. Maybe life is still worth living despite all the negatives. I didn’t know yet whether that was true, but I would have plenty of time to find out.
After David had gone, Robyn came up to me. “You have grown up today, Oscar. I’m proud of you.” She patted my front.
I wasn’t so proud, but I had something to tell her, too. “If we can’t be lovers, maybe now that you’re leaving we can be friends?”
