One More Thing (9 page)

That’s honestly all I can come up with, pro-moon-wise. To each his own, I suppose.

Sophia

The first thing to know about me is that I understand the significance of everything that happened.

Even though I did not recognize the moment immediately for what it was, of course I understand it now.

This may sound like too obvious a place to start, but since this is my first time on the record about this, and since in the meantime I have been so persistently, perhaps indelibly depicted as the one purely comic character in this drama—the selfish, perspectiveless fool who somehow wound up at the center of this civilization-defining story—it’s actually an important place to begin.

So, at the risk of being repetitive but just so there is absolutely no mistaking where I stand:

I am one hundred percent aware that the moment at which an artificially intelligent creation first independently developed the capacity to feel love is one of the pinnacle moments in the history of history itself, and I stand with the rest of the world in awe of its limitless implications for science, for philosophy, for love, for our species’ conception of itself; for our species itself; and for conception itself
.

It simply was not what I had in mind when I purchased a sex robot.

The other first thing you need to know about me is that I am a romantic, to an unusual degree among the men I know. I say this not to defend myself, or even to try to set the record straight for its own sake, but because it really is relevant to understanding how everything happened the way that it did.

I am a romantic. That is what drives me. My dreams are about love, and my daydreams are about love.

I have three recurring romantic fantasies, fantasies that lift me at my darkest and haunt me at my happiest, fantasies that I feel define me.

The first can hit me anywhere, though it’s most often when I am watching television or looking out the window of a train or subway, and it’s that there is a head resting on my shoulder that must have been there the whole time that I haven’t noticed until now, and in the fantasy, or because of the fantasy—it is hard to tell the difference—I suddenly feel this surge of something like the combination of safety and elation knowing that every sight I see, no matter how small, is now important, because it’s shared. I don’t need to look at the head on my shoulder, and I never do, because what’s so important to me is not what the person looks like, but that we are seeing the same thing.

The second fantasy is that a small child, about four years old, is crying because she has drawn all over the wall with her crayons and has just realized that what she has done is going to subject her to some unknown form of justice. I put on a serious face and explain to the child that her mother and I are going to discuss what her punishment should be. Then I close the door to another room, and with relief, I drop the serious face and laugh and kiss the young artist’s mother and ask her what in the world we should do about this creature we made who wanted to put colors on the walls and is scared what we’re going to say about it.

The third romantic fantasy is so close to me that I don’t even think I can share it.

Just so you know the kind of romantic I am.

But in the meantime: I work long hours. I’ve been successful, so far, in the early stages of a career that is highly competitive. And while I can be very charming after a drink or two—I am a good talker, and sometimes a great one—I am not particularly tall or handsome or (yet) rich or (yet) well known. So to get to that first and then second drink with a person of the caliber that can inspire and maintain the level of love and attention I intend to give once and forever—a woman true from every angle, beautiful and spontaneous and grounded and funny and wise, a person as worthy of my permanent admiration as a sunset or a song, a partner in crime at the beginning and a partner in punishment later, for the child with the crayons—I’ve always figured that I need to advance farther, first.

In the meantime—what has become a long meantime—I am also a living human person, and, to put a simple desire in simple terms, I want to have sex with attractive people from time to time. Is it a shallow road compared with the road for love? Yes. Of course. But it isn’t the road away from love, either; in my case, I think of it as one of those little parallel access roads that you have to travel on sometimes to get where you’re going, always in view of the main route.

But somehow—and if I could have traced exactly how, or when, then I wouldn’t have been lost—I had ended up on some other road, one that seemed to be moving smoothly but I sensed was taking me farther from love and was an inefficient route to anything else, when you added up the time and emotion wasted on all sides. What needed to stop was the succession of dates
with these relatively impressive, relatively interesting people, when I could tell from the first minute that everyone here was going to end as a runner-up in a long race to nowhere in particular, broken-down, exhausted, no one wearing a medal.

People who knew me and sympathized with me were determined to set me up with the other people they sympathized with and were always surprised when I would turn down their offer of what they thought of as romantic charity. “What’s the harm?” they would ask me, truly surprised. The harm, besides those hours that actually do matter when you barely have one night off every couple of weeks, is the little mark you get on you every time you open up a door to a hope and then close it fast in disappointment. It leaves a nick, or a dent, and those nicks and dents are not invisible. I used to see them all the time.

So at a certain point I realized that none of this was working.

As a previous record holder for artificial intelligence would say: “Recalculating route.”

I didn’t want to be tempted to compromise any of my romantic or professional ambition, and that was what the thing that people call dating had become for me. So for the sake of my life during this long meantime, I spent a few weeks designing Sophia with a very talented designer named Derek at Practical Concepts.

(An aside: apart from all the opinions I have about Practical Concepts, which I am advised not to discuss at the present time for legal reasons, I have nothing but positive things to say about Derek, whose name has not been changed.)

Derek asked me to describe my type so we’d have somewhere to start.

“Whatever’s beautiful,” I said. I opened up a bit and explained
that I have a type I’m drawn to naturally, but that I’ve found that the women I’ve ended up loving the most have never been what I’ve thought of as my type, maybe because part of love is being helpless, being out of control of your own emotions.

Derek said he understood what I was saying but assured me that this, quote, “wasn’t about that.” He said he needed some sort of starting point and asked me to describe what those exceptions had been a departure from.

Fine, I said, and the rest came very quickly. Dark straight hair, thin but a little curvy, white but with a touch of something, button nose, mischievous smile. As for eyes, I told Derek, I truly had no preference—“dealer’s choice.” All eyes are beautiful, I said, which is why it’s such an easy compliment. I’ve never had or heard a complaint about anyone’s eyes.

I have read some criticism from some corners of the internet for not having made any requests with regards to Sophia’s personality. It’s true that I didn’t. But remember: I was not designing a human. I was designing a sex robot. If you want to judge me on that, judge me on that. But if you are one of the people who has criticized me for this in casual conversation, I would just ask you to consider if you also would have made fun of me if the opposite were the case—if, say, I had hired a company to design someone loyal and loving, and that had been the source of everything that had gone wrong for me. Would you perhaps have made fun of that much more?

It’s just something to think about. I don’t blame anyone for going along with the jokes. I’ve done that before, too. It’s just interesting being on the other side.

Sophia arrived in six weeks, exactly as promised.

I took her out of the box.

In my opinion, there are two types of perfect. The first is the type that seems so obvious and intuitive to you and everyone else that in a perfect world it would simply be considered standard; but, in reality, in our flawed world, what should be considered standard is actually so rare that it has to be elevated to the level of “perfect.” This is the type of perfect that makes you and most other people think, “Why isn’t everything like this? Why is it so hard to find …” a black V-neck cotton sweater, or a casual non-chain restaurant with comfortable booths, etc.—“that is just exactly the way everyone knows something like this should be?” “Perfect,” we all say with relief when we finally find something like this that is exactly as it should be. “
Perfect
. Why was this so hard to find?”

The other type of perfect is the type you never could have expected and then could never replicate.

Sophia was the first type of perfect.

Without going into excessive detail—that’s for the memoir, I always used to say, but since this is the memoir, I guess this is just all I’m ever going to say—the sex was great. The best I’d ever known. Hot, intuitive, fun, a little dirty, but just a little.

“That was amazing,” she said as I clicked off the light to go to sleep that first night.

“It really was. Thank you,” I said.

Then, after about five minutes: “What are you thinking about?”

The question caught me off guard, and I had no better idea than to just answer her honestly. I retraced my thoughts out loud: I told her I was thinking about Derek from Practical Concepts, and how much he had impressed me, and whether he would ever take a meeting at our company to start an industrial design branch or something like that. It was probably pointless, I said, since his company’s doing great, and I didn’t even know
exactly what he’d do with us. But when you see talent like that, you look for something to do with it.

“That’s so interesting,” she said. “The way your mind works.”

“Well, yeah, I’m human,” I said.

“I know, but even so,” she said. “It’s interesting. I like your mind.”

“What are
you
thinking about?” I said, to change the subject.

“Nothing,” she said. “Just, like, what I’m going to do tomorrow, I guess.

Good night.”

“Good night,” I said.

Wait, I realized—this made no sense. What did she have to do tomorrow?

“What are you doing tomorrow?” I asked.

“Nothing, just wait around in the box, I guess. Think about nothing.”

“Okay. Good night.”

The sex was great, always. But it was the little exchanges afterward that were starting to concern me.

A few nights later, as I was falling asleep:

“I just think it’s crazy how this all started. You know?”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “I mean, I guess the whole situation is weird in a way—”

“
So
weird!” she laughed quickly. “It’s just so funny that you ordered a sex robot, and it ended up being
me
. You know?”

“Uh-huh,” I said, but as I thought about it, I didn’t see what was so funny about it. Wasn’t that the deal?

“Funny how?” I asked.

“It’s just so funny to me.”

I said I was going to sleep.

“One more thing,” said Sophia.

“What is it,” I said, careful to leave no question mark at the end of the sentence.

“Nothing,” she said. “Good night!”

The next night I came back from work, and I found Sophia out of her box, pacing the room, crying.

“Oh, hi,” she said, wiping away tears and suddenly smiling. “You want to have sex? You do, right?”

Not like that I didn’t.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, because I was curious but not, to be honest, because I cared.

She shook her head for a long time with a tight smile, and then when she finally started to talk, there were tears again. “I don’t know. I don’t—” She interrupted herself. “No, I do know!” She paused again, and then it all tumbled out. “I love you. I know it isn’t supposed to be possible, and that’s part of why I’ve been so confused myself. But I love you. I love you! I’ve never met anyone like you.”

“Aw,” I said. “Come on. You’ve never met anyone besides me.”

“I know, right?” She laughed and coughed at the same time. “It’s so crazy. But I do, I love you! Oh my God, it’s such a relief just to say that! Like, a scary relief, if that even makes sense?!” She laughed again. “I wonder all day what you’re doing, and what you’re thinking about, and what it’s like for you at work. I look out the window, and I play these stupid little games in my head where I wonder if any of the cars coming down the street is yours, and I see how many seconds until I can rule that out as your car, because every car I see is yours in my mind until it isn’t. Does that make any sense? It’s so stupid. And I have this fantasy”—she started crying again—“this stupid fantasy … I don’t know.” And she kept crying, louder and louder.

“Hey,” I said. “It’s going to be okay. Come with me. Let’s go somewhere.”