by Sarah Archer
Dr. Masden scraped back in his own chair. “I wasn’t aware that you felt that way.”
“I guess you weren’t paying attention,” she replied.
But now Dr. Masden didn’t look confused. He looked insulted. “I’m a psychologist. Not to flatter myself, but I pay pretty close attention to people’s behavior.”
“Then stop! You’re here to help develop the simulation, not analyze me. Which you’re doing a pretty poor job of anyway.”
“You think so? All right, then, here you go. Normally I charge hundreds an hour for this, but you’re about to get it for free.” Kelly tried to hold her crimson face high as the doctor leveled his searching gaze on her.
“You’re a control freak.”
“Is that the clinical term?”
Ignoring her, he plowed forward. “You’re smart and you’re good at this job and you know it. But part of why you’re good at it is because you’re a perfectionist. Any unknown variables that are introduced might mess up your perfect little world. And another human being is an unknown and unknowable variable, and in this case I’m the lucky one crossing your path. For the first couple days I thought you were just a little shy, but now I can see that you’re constantly on edge, with antisocial tendencies bordering on aggression. Any suggestion of friendliness is enough to upset you. Who knows what kind of crazy, frightening, fun, sad, unpredictable things could happen if you made a friend, or more than a friend, so why not just cut it off before it even starts? Better to have people think you want nothing to do with them and leave you alone than for them to find out everything that’s wrong with you. I wondered initially why you cared so much about developing a companion robot. It’s pretty obvious now that you’re so interested because you’re afraid that you yourself are going to end up alone, and guess what? If you don’t change, you will.”
Wow. Kelly had thought he was just going to call her uptight. Her entire being froze. She pondered how long she could go without making a response. If she just stayed still long enough, eventually she would be left alone. Eventually an asteroid would collide with the Earth and render her whole predicament irrelevant.
“I’m sorry. That was way out of line.”
Kelly’s eyes focused to realize Dr. Masden was looking at her, his own face now flushed. She was embarrassed, she was frustrated, she was flustered, and all she wanted was to get the doctor out of the room so this moment could end. Strike first, regret later. It was the safest tactic she knew.
“When you spend all day picking apart other people’s flaws instead of acknowledging your own, I guess it comes naturally.”
The doctor shook his head and pushed himself up from the chair.
“Good luck, Kelly.” And with a slam of the control room’s back door, he was gone, leaving her, once again, alone.
Kelly swiveled back to the control panel, unconsciously kneading her hands. There came the regret. What would happen to the Confibot project? Would the company find a replacement psychologist? Would they pull the simulation entirely? Did everyone think of her the way Dr. Masden did? Were they right?
Kelly had always known she was an introvert. She was awkward, sure, and not a brilliant presenter or performer, but essentially a functioning person. But maybe she had it all wrong. Maybe Martin had been relieved rather than bewildered when she made her untimely exit. Antisocial tendencies bordering on aggression … everything that’s wrong with you … The bulbs on the control panel misted into a glittery haze, like Christmas lights seen through an icy window, as Kelly’s eyes filled.
She squeezed back the tears, embarrassed, reminding herself that she didn’t have time to loaf around the office, blubbering like a too-short kid at a roller coaster entrance. After all, without a partner, she had more work to do than ever. The soft science stuff didn’t seem quite so minor as she pondered tackling it without a professional guide. She adjusted her chair and got back to work.
Kelly had never made a trip to the principal’s office, but she imagined now that this was what it must feel like. The airy prism in which she waited for her boss, however, was considerably more chic than a public school office. Sculptures of fluid silver filaments were scattered with effortless grace among awards, books, and photos on the white oak shelves, and a broad desk, arched like a ship’s bow, speared into a sweeping view of the palm-tree-lined avenues of San Jose. Through the frosted glass of the door, Kelly could read in reverse the letters “Anita Riveras, CEO.”
As Kelly studied Anita’s carefully curated photographs, she smoothed her already smooth blouse self-consciously. Even in miniature, Anita’s presence was formidable. The angles of her cheekbones, her sleek black bobbed hair, even her offered handshake all somehow aligned into a careful geometric construction. Kelly wondered what she would look like with a bob, if people would take her more seriously if she had Anita’s expensive yet effortless-looking hair. She tried looping up the edges just to see.
The door swung open decisively and she dropped her hair, simultaneously catching her foot as she stood up too fast. She had a tendency to hurtle through life like she was running a one-woman three-legged race. But Anita swept to her high-backed chair like she didn’t see.
“Have a seat, Kelly.”
She fixed Kelly with a clear gaze. There was nothing visibly judgmental about it, but Kelly felt judged. Anita could do that. She let the silence hang for a moment. Her chair was a curve of pristine white leather. The weightless ease with which she sat in a chair with no arms was conspicuous, as if she had bought that chair just to show off her mastery of the art of sitting.
“I’m sorry about what happened,” Kelly blurted out.
“What did happen, Kelly?”
“I just … it was a personal issue between myself and the doctor. It had nothing to do with the project.”
“But it does. Because you needed him to complete the project, and he’s no longer here.”
Kelly’s throat felt parched. “Are you—do you mean that I can’t complete the project?”
“It’s your project, Kelly. You tell me. Can you?”
There was a right answer to this. Kelly’s confidence rose. “Yes, I can. Please let me, you know how much Confibot means to me.”
“You say it means a lot to you, but from your performance, I have yet to see why. Convince me.”
“There’s so much we can do with it.” Kelly’s words came faster now as they pivoted to her work, flowing with liveliness and ease. Talking about Confibot brought out her fervor for science, awakening the little girl who used to take apart Gary’s Speak & Spell and rebuild it again and again until she knew exactly how it worked. “If we can create a fully convincing android, with which people can interact as if it were a human, we can take robotic caretaking to a whole new level. Users can develop meaningful relationships with their Confibots, making them true robotic confidants. If you look at the research about the effects of companionship and mental stimulation on health outcomes, the physical and lifestyle devastation of loneliness is astonishing, I mean, it can increase your risk of everything from dementia to heart disease to arthritis to—”
“Old people are a gold mine,” Anita mused, her eyes trained far out the window.
“I—I’m sorry?”
Anita sat up smoothly in her chair, focusing on Kelly. “The Baby Boomers are on the brink. When they crash, I plan to be ready to reap the dividends.” Not exactly how Kelly liked to think of her own work, but she bit her tongue. “Confibot’s commercial potential is massive, we both know that.” Anita waved a hand tipped with bone-painted nails. “The success of your project hinges on your ability to complete an android that can pass for human, and you’re the closest of our engineers to achieving that. And with that technology, we can go anywhere.”
“I am? I mean, I am. Thank you. It’s been thrilling to see how close Confibot is coming to real humanity, and I—”
“According to current projections, you’re the closest,” Anita corrected. “But other companies, even some of
your own coworkers, have been logging astonishing progress as well.” Sitting back again, Anita looked pleasant, unhurried, yet still radiating a cool intensity.
Meanwhile, Kelly was sweating like a lumberjack. “Right, so … I’ll get back to it, then?”
“You are directly competing with these coworkers for investor funding,” Anita went on, as if Kelly hadn’t spoken. “And if you win the competition, you will be directly competing with the creators of every other robotic caregiver and assistant device in the world. The company that comes to market first gets to charge a premium. Anyone who lags behind has to cut prices to compete. So if you cannot make AHI the first to market, I will find another engineer who can.” She scrutinized Kelly with eyes that were impossible to read. “Confibot is the first project that you’ve spearheaded,” she noted. “Your first opportunity to bring one of your own ideas to life. As such, it requires high-level project management skills on which you have not yet been tested. You’re building more than a physical robot here. You are designing a whole person. And if you fail to make this work, you will not be afforded such a high-level opportunity again.” Kelly tried to gulp, but her throat was so raw, so dry, that it stopped halfway. “Robotics engineering is a human discipline, Kelly. It’s collaborative, it’s interpersonal. If you fail to think on this level, you will fail as an engineer.”
Every time Anita said the word “fail,” the blood in Kelly’s ears pulsed painfully hot. Her boss was calling her interpersonal skills a failure. Dr. Masden had called her pathologically antisocial. What was she doing wrong? Was she that incompetent at things that appeared so basic for everyone else? Was she writing her own doom in her career, her relationships? Would she push everyone away forever?
“I’m taking a sizable risk on you, Kelly,” Anita was saying as Kelly forced herself back to the surface.
“And I’m grateful for it. I won’t let you down.”
“No.” Anita looked at Kelly with a placid smile. “You won’t.”
Kelly held herself together long enough to make it out the door. As soon as she was down the hall, she allowed her knees to turn to jelly, pressing her back against the cool wall, lifting her face to the fluorescent-lit ceiling. She didn’t know what she was doing wrong, but it was clear that there was something. When she came to a dead end in her work—a limb moving at an unnatural angle, a memory fault—she would force herself to back out of the situation and look at it from a bird’s-eye view, searching for a new way in, trying something different. And here, she had to do the same thing.
When she walked back into the lab several minutes later, Priya was already there. She rose from her chair. “Finally, let’s get lunch. I was about to eat my intern. Also I have to show you these sick pictures my friend posted from this new club called Sadie Hawkins. I’d totally take you there if you weren’t still being No-Club Nancy.” Priya began fishing out her phone, but Kelly interrupted her.
“I’ll go.”
“What?”
Kelly looked at Priya with resolve. Here was something different she could try. It wouldn’t solve her problems with Confibot, but taking any action would make her feel better about herself right now.
“Let’s do it,” she said firmly. “This weekend, I’m ready to try out the clubs.”
four
Kelly’s second thoughts about this scheme hit her immediately. Priya buzzed for the rest of the week, ready to plan them the perfect night out, whipping out her phone at random moments to show Kelly the latest bar that they just had to try, or a Pinterest mood board of hairstyles that she knew Kelly could definitely rock. Priya went out with friends virtually every weekend, it seemed, but Kelly was her going-out white whale, and her electric anticipation of this weekend was at a high. Meanwhile, every time she brought up their plans, Kelly was vividly reminded of the last time they had gone out together, more than a year ago: she had ended up with her shoes in her purse, her drink in her lap, and her dignity somewhere in the next town. She may have tried to gaze flirtily at a man across the bar while drinking seductively from her cocktail and ended up sticking her straw up her nose instead. She chose not to remember.
Yet here she was Friday night, at Priya’s high-rise apartment in North San Jose, sitting squashed between pink, orange, and gold pillows on the bed while Priya battled wills with her eyeliner. “Are you sure you won’t let me do your makeup?” Priya asked.
“I already did it,” Kelly said, watching Priya attempt a winged eye with her liquid liner. Every time she fixed one eye, she had to add more to the other to even it out, and the effect was increasingly alarming. Kelly had already worked her way out of Priya’s offer to dress her by reminding her of what she did to her own clothing last time. She would be more comfortable in her own jeans and shirt. It was just a simple black top, but it had gold buttons on it, which she had convinced herself would demonstrate to the world that she was a free-wheeling partier.
“Finally you’re coming out again. We are going to scorch this club tonight,” Priya asserted, pausing to assess her handiwork. “We are going to slay on the dance floor. Flay on the dance floor. Flog it to a pulp.”
“Nasty.” Kelly wrinkled her nose.
“Come on, it’ll be fun,” Priya urged. Kelly wasn’t sure that her definition of fun looked like Priya’s, but with “antisocial tendencies bordering on aggression” ringing in her ears, she knew that she needed to give it a try. Part of why she so seldom agreed to go out with Priya was because a night out with Priya was a night. As much as Kelly adored her friend, she was convinced that she was harmlessly certifiable. Her historic hijinks ranged from commandeering the PA system at the grocery store to announce that the vegetables had gained sentience and were on the attack to giving the department store Santa Claus a lap dance and nearly a heart attack in the bargain. But as long as Kelly could stay out of the spotlight herself, she enjoyed Priya doing her thing. Maybe having a best friend who was “the crazy one” allowed Kelly to be anything but.
Priya did manage to get Kelly to borrow some of her shoes—a pair of nude heels with gold studs all over them. Kelly had to admit, they looked pretty good as long as she was standing in front of the bedroom mirror, holding on to a chair back for dear life. Logically she knew that the way to walk in them was just to transfer her body’s weight onto the front halves of her feet. But her body didn’t seem to grasp the concept.
While Kelly pondered physics, Priya scrutinized her own butt in the full-length mirror with a painter’s meticulous eye. “I’m going to give you a very precious gift,” she announced.
“A Tesla?” Kelly asked.
“Better. My three rules for dating in Silicon Valley.”
“I’m the one who grew up here,” Kelly reminded her. “I should be teaching you about Silicon Valley.”
“Uh, no, the fact that I grew up in New York is what makes me an expert. I’ve been outside the bubble. I have perspective. You could have a guy come up to you and act like a total tech bro and not even know it because the air around you is so dense with tech bros.”
“Okay, so what are the rules?”
“Numero uno: Don’t go out with anyone who works in robotics. He’ll hack your phone while you sleep, looking for company secrets.”
“How do you know that?”
“Just guessing,” Priya said innocently as she stuffed things into her purse: her phone, lipstick, keys. She threw in a tin of mints, took it back out and tasted one, grimaced, then tossed the tin back in anyway. “Two: If a guy tries to pick you up by telling you that he’s employee number whatever at a certain company, run. That’s a ‘douche crossing ahead’ sign if I ever saw one.” She slung her purse onto her shoulder and paused. “Unless he’s, like, number four and it’s Facebook. Then you go for it. Get that coin, queen.”
The girls headed for the door. “And number three?” Kelly asked.
“Everyone in Silicon Valley works way too hard during the day. So if you’re going to go out at night?” Priya gave her a sly smile. “Have
some fucking fun.”
They could hear the muted hubbub from inside the bar all the way up the bustling Menlo Park sidewalk as they approached. Inside, Kelly regarded the trendy exposed ductwork and glowing blue lights with a wary eye. Priya dove into a group of guys like a puppy into a snowbank, but Kelly inched her way more slowly into the dauntingly fashionable crowd. She settled at the bar first and tried not to stare at the bartender’s hairstyle as he mixed her drink. His head was completely shaved except for a long tuft at the top, gathered into an aggressively perky ponytail. Maybe she was supposed to stare at it?
“All of our ice is made using water unlocked from the melting polar ice caps,” he informed her, sliding her a glass. “It’s the purest water on Earth. Twenty-three dollars.” Kelly dragged out some cash.
Just once she would love to be at a fancy bar or restaurant and have an unfamiliar cocktail delivered to her table, like in the movies. No, make that a fancy dessert with some sort of froufrou chocolate thingamabob on top. “Oh, I didn’t order that,” she would say.
“I know, mademoiselle,” her waiter with the pencil-thin mustache would reply as he gestured across the restaurant. “That gentleman did.”
And she would look across and see, smiling mysteriously at her, the most dapper, debonair, dashing—
“Is this seat taken?”
Kelly turned to see the most dapper, debonair, dashing man she had ever seen.
Well, not quite the most dashing man, but this guy was certainly cute, with hazel eyes and rounded lips. Kelly stuttered.
“No, I’m alone,” she said. Probably unnecessarily.
Hazel Eyes laughed, slinging himself onto the stool. “Well, that’s lucky for me.” She blushed vibrantly enough to be visible even through the neon-suffused gloom of the bar’s atmosphere. He nodded at her drink. “Did you get the line about the ice caps water too?”
