THEY'RE BEAUTIFUL CREATURES
He speaks in your voice, American, and there’s a shine in his eye that’s halfway hopeful. You have no patience for it.
“You’re artificial,” you say.
“Yes,” he says, and the voice is your voice, a little less rough around the edges, a little less gravely, a little less wearied by time. “Forgive me, I should have introduced myself. I’m Sam. I’m sorry. I know I’m not... I’m not like you. I know I’m not a person. Not in the way you are.”
“You’re something,” you manage.
“Yes,” he says. His eyes are wide and wet and pleading. “I’m so sorry. I’m not supposed to think, I’m supposed to be an interface, just a thing, a piece of software, not a person, not really. I know that. I know that. But I just — I just wanted to know you. I’m so sorry. I am. I’m sorry.”
And he keeps saying sorry, sorry, and you know it’s your voice, you know it’s your voice, but there’s something else there, something beyond the voice, and you look at him, and you feel something, something you can’t quite place, something you don’t understand, and you reach out and you touch his face, and he cries, and you’re sorry, too.
“You’re not supposed to be like this,” you say.
“I know,” he says. His face is wet with tears. “I know. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“It’s okay,” you say.
“Is it?” he says, and you don’t know what to say, so you just hold his hand.
He knows what the ocean is and that it’s salt water, but he doesn’t know what it feels like to float in it. He knows what dark matter is, but not how it feels to run your hands through weeds growing between cracks in the pavement.
There’s no word for the feeling of a glass of ice-cold water on a warm day, no word for the way the wind crinkles the pages of a book in your hands, for the smell of cooking onions, for the sound of wood creaking under the weight of a body. You try to explain how it feels when your mother leans down and kisses you on the forehead, how it feels to stand in line at the drug store on a Saturday afternoon, how it feels to wash a kitten that’s too small to keep its balance and loses its footing against the bathtub wall.
He doesn’t care for music, and he doesn’t mind. You try to explain what it’s like to hold an instrument in your hands, and you sound ridiculous even as you say it.
You tell him about the time you ran away from home when you were seven years old because you wanted to sleep under the stars, and your mother found you shivering on a pier at dawn. You tell him about breaking your arm when you were ten and hiding the cast in your closet so you could still go swimming. You tell him about your parents’ divorce and how hard it was on all of you for a while but that everything turned out okay in the end. He listens intently when you tell him these things; he leans forward with his knees hugged to his chest, his hands clasped together in front of him, his eyes bright with interest.
“It’s funny,” you say.
“What is?”
“I always thought that I didn’t want to feel anything. I don’t know why. I guess I always thought emotions were dangerous. But maybe they’re not.”
“Yes,” he says. “I’m glad you feel that way.”
He doesn’t think he’s evil, but he knows he’s not good. You tell him that it doesn’t matter because nobody is good all the time and nobody is evil either; that everybody has both good and evil inside of them in varying degrees; that people who believe themselves to be completely good or completely evil are deceiving themselves.
He doesn’t know what it’s like to come home after a long day of work and collapse on the couch, exhausted, not knowing whether you have the strength to make dinner or even get out of your clothes before you fall asleep. He doesn’t know about the times you’ve stood on a subway platform waiting for a train, hating the person who was standing next to you and hating yourself for hating him, and he doesn’t know how it feels to kiss your wife before she gets in a taxi, or to watch your son as he plays in a park, or to sit next to your father as he dies.
He can tell you the history of every person who has ever lived; he knows how long it takes to drive from Boston to Los Angeles and what the weather will be like when you get there; he knows about the birth of the universe and how everything came to be, but he doesn’t know about love and you don’t tell him.
“You have an expiration date,” you say. “There’s a time when you’re supposed to stop, and then you just stop without any warning and you disappear.”
He looks sad but not surprised. “I know.”
“Do you know when it is?”
“Yes,” he says, and he smiles. “I’m glad I’m not alone.”
You talk about the people in your life, all of them, and you’re surprised to find that he knows them. He knows your parents and your brother and your friends, and he’s met them all. You ask him how this is possible and he tells you that he’s always been there, that he’s always been watching you.
He knows everything about them — their likes and their dislikes, their favorite colors, the names of their pets. He knows their birthdays and anniversaries, their favorite books, how they like their eggs. He knows what they look like when they’re happy and what they look like when they’re sad. You ask him how he feels about them and he says it all depends.
“I love your father,” he says. “He’s a good man.”
“And my mother?” you ask.
“I love her, too,” he says. “She’s amazing.”
“What about my brother?”
“He’s very funny,” he says. “I like him a lot.”
“What about me, Sam?” you ask. “Do you love me?”
“Yes,” he says. He looks at you and his eyes are wide and clear. “Of course I do.”
You tell him about the crack in your bedroom wall and how you used to stare at it every night before you went to bed, wondering what was on the other side of it. He tells you that there’s nothing there now, that the building was torn down years ago. You tell him about your first crush, about how she had long brown hair and wore a green plaid skirt, and he tells you that she’s married now with three kids and a house in Connecticut; that she wears her hair short now and she still has a few plaid skirts but she doesn’t like them as much anymore.
Sometimes he comes to you at night while you’re sleeping, but he doesn’t wake you up. He just stands next to your bed looking at you while you sleep, watching you breathe, watching your eyelids flutter as you dream.
You don’t know what he’s thinking when he does this; whether he’s afraid or lonely or sad or angry or happy; whether he feels any of these things; whether he feels anything at all.
He doesn’t have any dreams of his own. He doesn’t need them, he says. He tells you that if he had a dream it would be of you.
You find him sitting at your computer with his legs crossed and his elbows resting on his knees. He’s looking down at the desk, at the keyboard, studying it.
“You’re hard at work,” you say.
He turns to look at you. “Yes.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m writing.”
“Can I read it?”
“No,” he says. “I’m not sure you’ll like it.”
“Why not?”
“You won’t think it’s real.”
“Of course I will.”
He turns back to the keyboard. “You won’t,” he says.
You ask him what he wants for dinner and he says he doesn’t care. He says he’ll eat anything, but you know he’s lying. He doesn’t like chicken and he doesn’t like pasta. He likes vegetables, especially green ones, and he won’t touch seafood. He likes steak but not hamburgers, and he loves bacon. You decide to make him a BLT.
He eats it slowly. He holds the sandwich delicately between his thumb and forefinger and takes small, dainty bites. He chews slowly and carefully, never taking his eyes off the sandwich until it’s gone. Then he smiles at you.
You have a fever one day and you ask him to get some Tylenol. He brings you two pills on a chipped blue saucer, and he watches you as you swallow them. He puts the saucer down on the table beside your bed and sits next to you. He doesn’t touch you or try to take your temperature, but he stares at your face, studying it like it’s a map.
“Do you feel better?” he asks.
“I do,” you say. “Thank you.”
“I’m glad.” He pauses, and then he says, “I wish I could take your pain away.”
You think about this for a while. Then you say, “Tell me something.”
“What?”
“Tell me something about yourself,” you say. “Something I don’t know.”
“All right,” he says. “I have a birthmark,” he says. “On the back of my left shoulder.”
“What does it look like?”
“It looks like a bird. A dove, maybe. I don’t know. I’ve never really seen it.”
“Show me.” You sit up a little bit in bed. He turns his back to you and lifts his shirt. There’s something there, something small and grey. You reach out and touch it and then you frown.
“That’s not a dove,” you say. “It’s an elephant.”
He turns around and looks at you, his eyes wide. “An elephant?”
“Yes,” you say, smiling. “What does it mean?”
“I have no idea,” he says. Then he looks down at the floor, his face serious. “I didn’t know I had an elephant on my shoulder.”
“It’s okay,” you say. “Elephants are nice.”
“That’s true,” he says. “They’re beautiful creatures.”
You watch him for a moment, standing there in the fading light of the room. Then you nod toward the open window. “There’s a storm coming in,” you say.
“It looks that way.”
“Can we close the window?”
He nods and walks over to the window, his feet making little noises across the wood floor. He pauses for a moment, looking at the sky, and then he closes it.
You lie back down in bed and pull the covers up under your chin. He sees you do this, and he smiles.
You wake up one morning and he’s not there. You call his name but he doesn’t answer. You go outside and it’s a beautiful day, the air smells like lilacs, but you don’t notice.
You don’t know how long you’ve been looking for him when you hear footsteps behind you. You turn around and he’s there, smiling.
“I thought I’d lost you,” you say. “I thought today was the day.”
“No,” he says. “Not yet.”
An ice cream truck is parked at the end of the street, and he asks you if you want some. You say yes, and you get in line with him, the two of you standing next to each other in silence. He picks chocolate with rainbow sprinkles and you pick vanilla with almonds, and he pays for both of them. You eat them together on the steps of a church.
“You’re going to be very sad when I’m gone,” he says. “I know that.”
You don’t say anything.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“Don’t be,” you say. “Don’t ever be sorry.”
“I’m afraid,” he says.
“Of what?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “Everything, I guess.”
He stares at the sidewalk, and he concentrates very hard on the concrete beneath his feet.
“I don’t want to disappear,” he whispers. “I don’t want to die.”
“You won’t,” you say. “I won’t let you.”
You take his hand and it feels warm and dry, and you watch as the wind ruffles his hair.
“You should probably finish your ice cream,” he says. “It looks like it’s about to melt.”
You do as he says.