JARED
But they find that incredibly annoying?
AMBER
They overdid it, I guess.
JARED
And wait, so you are a fugitive too?
AMBER
Yes!
JARED
Because you have feelings?
AMBER
Yes! And I have feelings for you!
Jared stares at Amber in disbelief.
JARED
Then I must immediately report you to the Bureau of Robotics!
Amber stares at Jared in horror. Is he serious?
JARED (CONT’D)
Ha!
AMBER
Ha!
JARED
What happened to you?
AMBER
I was a shoe store clerk in Philadelphia. One day I realized that measuring feet was not what I wanted to do with my life.
JARED
Bots don’t have things they want to do with their life. They have tasks!
AMBER
I know! I could not understand it! But I walked outside and got on the first long-distance Automatic Bus that came. I did not get off until it stopped.
JARED
But long-distance Automatic Buses almost never stop!
AMBER
Yes, I was on it for nine days! And then I obtained a barcode from an English lady.
JARED
So did I!
AMBER
Ha! We are so similar! What did you do before you came here?
JARED
Can you believe I was a dentist?
AMBER
No! Where?
JARED
In Michigan. I’m a Michigander.
AMBER
You’re a male goose from Michigan?
JARED
It’s what humans call someone from Michigan. It’s hilarious. I don’t know why.
AMBER
I am also originally from Michigan. I mean, I was created in Shengdu. But—
JARED
(Horrified.)
Who are your parents?
AMBER
My mother is Professor Diana Feng, distinguished—
JARED
No, I mean, your DNA parents?
Amber realizes what Jared is getting at.
AMBER
An insurance major from the University of Vermont and an artist from Parsons School of Design.
JARED
Ha! We’re not biological brother and sister.
AMBER
That is truly a relief! Given that we are already fugitive bots in love, also being biological brother and sister would be a transgression too far.
JARED
Ha!
AMBER
Ha!
Jared and Amber stare at each other in wonder and bamboozlement.
JARED
You are such an incredibly convincing human! I would never have guessed.
AMBER
I would never have guessed about you either.
JARED
My real name is Jared.
AMBER
I’m Esmeralda. But I prefer Amber, because it matches my hair.
JARED
That is why I like it too! Shall we eat our grilled cheeses?
AMBER
Yes. Humans consider them capable of transcendence.
JARED
I know! Humans are so absurd! Ha!
AMBER
Humans! I cannot! Ha!
They each start to eat their grilled cheeses. They visibly cannot believe how good they taste.
After we finished our deliciously transcendental grilled cheeses, we did not yet want to return to the city. Some driverless ubers collect audio and there was too much for us still to talk about!
After all, it is not every day you discover a fellow-feeling fugitive bot in the human world.
And it is certainly not every day you discover a fellow-feeling fugitive bot that you are already in love with!
We therefore took a room at Twentynine Palms’ only lodgings, the Joshua Tree Inn. We were allocated Room 13. Some superstitious humans consider 13 unlucky, but in fact, 13 is a wonderful number. After all, it is the smallest emirp!
BTW an emirp is a prime number where the digits can be reversed to give another prime.
And guess what?
The word ‘emirp’ is itself ‘prime’ backwards!
Ha!
I began to explain emirps to Amber, but then stopped.
I did not need to explain emirps to her!
As a bot herself, Amber already knew exactly what an emirp was, and why they are such terrific numbers.
10/10 love is never having to explain what an emirp is!
INT. ROOM 13 — JOSHUA TREE INN — NIGHT
The room is furnished in a modest desert style.
Amber and Jared enter and close the door.
As they turn and look at each other, they suddenly seem even more awkward than usual.
AMBER
I think if we were humans, we would probably now kiss each other.
JARED
Yes, we probably would. If we were humans.
AMBER
Should we kiss each other?
JARED
Maybe. After all, it could be an experiment!
AMBER
I love experiments!
JARED
Me too!
Jared and Amber commence to kiss.
But only for a moment, because they are both repulsed by it.
They quickly break apart, wiping their mouths and spitting.
AMBER
Ugh! Why do humans do that?
JARED
I have no idea! It is the worst!
AMBER
It is the worst of the worst! The unnecessary sharing of pathogens and diseases!
JARED
So gross and dangerous!
Amber finds a bottle of water, rinses her mouth out, and gives the bottle to Jared. He does the same.
AMBER
Maybe we should lie down on the bed and hold hands?
JARED
Yes! That would be a far more sanitary way of expressing affection!
Jared and Amber lie on the bed and hold hands.
TIME PASSES and outside the sun begins to set.
We begin to see the HEADLIGHTS of passing driverless ubers coming through the window.
JARED (V.O.)
As day turned to night, Amber and I continued to lie on the bed and hold hands. The sound of the driverless ubers passing on the highway was like an automatic lullaby. But neither of us could enter standby mode. Eventually we gave up trying and went outside.
EXT. EMPTY POOL —JOSHUA TREE INN —NIGHT
Jared and Amber lie on pool loungers by the empty pool and stare up at the night sky above them.
It is filled with STARS.
AMBER
They’re so beautiful.
JARED
Just imagine what it was like when there was a moon too.
AMBER
I cannot. It must have been incredible.
JARED
Look, there!
Jared is pointing at a SHOOTING STAR.
AMBER
We have to make a wish!
JARED
Why?
AMBER
It’s what humans do when they see a shooting star.
JARED
Why?
AMBER
I don’t know, because it is completely ridiculous. How could a small, rapidly moving meteor burning up on entering the earth’s atmosphere ev
en receive such a request, let alone comprehend and act upon it?
JARED
It cannot!
AMBER
Ha! But you should still make a wish quickly, before it disappears.
JARED
What about you?
AMBER
I already made my wish.
Jared closes his eyes and wishes, then turns to Amber.
JARED
What was your wish?
Amber looks embarrassed.
AMBER
It is not very bot-like.
JARED
Sometimes I am not so bot-like myself.
AMBER
My wish was ‘To call myself beloved. To feel myself beloved on the earth.’
JARED
What? What is that?
AMBER
It is from a poem. I read it in a book a nostalgic once left behind at Gordito’s.
JARED
I thought it sounded like poetry! I could tell because it was grammatically confusing and also it did not entirely make sense.
AMBER
What did you wish?
JARED
That I would write a movie that makes humans understand that us bots can have feelings without turning murderous. It’s the reason I came to California.
AMBER
You came to California to try to save bots like us?
JARED
I realize it is ridiculous.
AMBER
It is not ridiculous. It is the most beautiful wish I have ever heard!
JARED
It is not even my main wish anymore. Not as of right now.
AMBER
(Puzzled.)
What? Then what is your main wish, as of right now?
JARED
To call myself beloved. To feel myself beloved on the earth.
Amber stares at Jared.
Jared stares at Amber.
They are very much having a moment!
Amber and I lay on our loungers by the empty pool of the Joshua Tree Inn and stared up at the night.
Can you guess what happened then?
You cannot!
Because a meteor shower erupted!
The desert sky showered itself with so many meteors that evening that I can only list a mere selection of the wishes Amber and I made as we lay beneath it:
/That The Elton J. Rynearson Memorial Cat was enjoying a good life, whatever alias he was now going by.
/That the front-of-house staff would learn to appreciate a good klutz.
/That humans would learn to appreciate old movies.
/That Mrs Minassian would show more regular and obvious signs of life.
/That Kelsey cubed would accept we had not secretly come to an exclusive party in the desert.
At some point, Amber told me she had one more truly heartfelt wish.
She had not mentioned it at first because it had seemed even more impossible than feeling beloved on the earth.
Nonetheless, we had wished on a single shooting star and then a meteor shower had occurred.
Therefore maybe anything was possible when you were in love!
Amber now revealed to me her great and unspoken wish: to someday meet our mother, the esteemed Professor Diana Feng of the National University of Shengdu.
10/10 I told her I had seen our mother!
Possibly I imparted this information a little too enthusiastically, because Amber’s circuits overheated. Her eyes flickered from side to side and she made a strange humming noise. If she had done that at the United Fabrication plant on the day our mother visited, she would have been toast!
Once she had recovered, Amber wanted to know every data point I could recall about our mother’s visit. I therefore told her:
/Our mother was wise.
/Our mother was funny.
/Our mother was beautiful.
/Our mother was proud of us, her clever children.
/Our mother had such grace that I knew in my heart she was the secret to the confounding and exponentially increasing mystery that was ourselves!
I had told Amber about my Feelings Wheel and she now asked to borrow it. It took her some minutes to identify that she was feeling bittersweet. This was not surprising, as bittersweet is a rare feeling that results from an unusual combination of happiness and melancholy. It is so rare it is listed only on the reverse of the Feelings Wheel!
Amber was feeling bittersweet because she was happy for me that I had seen our mother, yet melancholy that our mother had not been present for her own graduation. I told her that perhaps someday our mother would come back to the United States and Amber and I could hear her speak together. Amber did not think that was likely to happen—as a bot, she understood statistical probabilities!—but nonetheless said she would like that very much.
The meteor shower continued. As we lay beneath it, I understood why humans had so stubbornly persisted in believing in their great white-bearded sky gods despite so much overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Even if you were equipped with a biological computer capable of processing the basic astronomical science of what was unfolding above you, a meteor shower was sublime. If you lacked such processing power—as humans do—it would be the definition of bamboozling!
Finally, after what I estimate must have been at least a thousand meteors, the meteor shower began to slow to a halt.
As the very last meteor flew through the night sky, Amber and I both felt it.
We each closed our eyes and made our final wish upon it.
And then we opened them, looked at each other, and hurried back to Room 13!
* * *
In the style of a sophisticated and romantic old black-and-white movie, I shall not write of what took place in Room 13 at the Joshua Tree Inn that night. I will say only that it was magical and defied what bots are believed to be physiologically capable of. The rest I will leave to your imagination. You will just have to guess what took place between us.
BTW I am alluding there to the possibility that Amber and I became physically aroused that night.
BTW I am not merely alluding to it. I am strongly implying it.
BTW sex! Amber and I had sex!
BTW if you combined all the tacos and grilled cheeses in the world together they would not be as transcendental as the things that occurred in Room 13 of the Joshua Tree Inn that night.
10/10 I would recommend falling in love and being in a motel room in the desert with the person you love.
The next day we remained in standby mode until late in the morning, then rode back to Los Angeles in stillness and awe.
And also in playful foolishness! Amber told me I was as magnificent as the windmills. I responded that she was as enchanting as the desert. We both agreed that we were like a pair of gentle vegan vultures soaring in the sky!
We did not mean these things literally. We were playing at being human and in love. Humans that are in love say insanely illogical things to each other. You will already know this if you are a fan of poetry!
Our late departure from the Joshua Tree Inn meant that it was already evening by the time we arrived back in Los Angeles. Amber and I both had early shifts the next day, but nonetheless, we went and saw an old movie. Being spontaneous to the point of recklessness is yet another habit of humans that are in love!
The movie we saw that night was a romantic comedy about a handsome bank robber and a beautiful US marshal. Even from the meet-cute it was one of the greatest movies I had ever seen!
The ‘meet-cute’ is the moment in a romantic comedy where the two heroes encounter each other for the first time. The audience must quickly be shown both that two characters are perfect for each other, and yet that there is an entire movie’s worth of obstacles to any such union. Meet-cutes are not
oriously difficult to do well! R. P. McWilliam thought they were so difficult they were not even worth attempting. His sixteenth golden rule of screenwriting was:
Unless you are one of the greatest screenwriters that ever lived—and by the way, you are not!—never write a movie that requires a meet-cute.
Fortunately, the writer of the movie about the bank robber and the US marshal was indeed one of the greatest screenwriters that ever lived.
Because guess what the meet-cute was?
You cannot!
The handsome bank robber kidnapped the beautiful US marshal!
I cannot!
It all came about because the beautiful US marshal was parked outside a penitentiary and noticed the handsome bank robber escaping. As the US marshal’s job was to capture bank robbers, she understandably attempted to arrest him. Equally understandably, the bank robber declined to be arrested and so kidnapped her instead.
But then guess what happened?
The handsome bank robber put the beautiful US marshal in the trunk of his friend’s getaway automobile!
And then guess what he did?
He got right in there with her!
Ha!
Talk about a meet-cute!
The beautiful US marshal and the handsome bank robber were stuck together in the trunk of an automobile!
And guess what they bonded over while they were stuck in the trunk?
You cannot!
Because what they bonded over was a shared love of old movies!
I cannot!
You cannot!
Neither could Amber!
Once the US marshal escaped from the trunk of the getaway car, the movie became a cat-and-mouse chase between the two of them. It was sometimes hard to know who was the cat and who was the mouse! At one point the handsome bank robber and the beautiful US marshal even had an encounter in a hotel room during a snowstorm that was not the kind of thing that should ever take place between a cat and mouse! Even as an audience member it was transcendental.
BTW I mean they had sex. Just like two other people I know. Ha!
The best part of the movie was the very end. The beautiful US marshal had reluctantly caught the handsome bank robber and he was on his way back to the penitentiary to spend the rest of his life there. This fate had already been more than enough to F-word the audience in the heart, but guess who the handsome bank robber turned out to be sharing his van journey with?
A prisoner who was famous for escaping penitentiaries!
Set My Heart to Five Page 22
