Emotions, Skin-Nerve Sensations and the Whole Human Mess.

“Please don’t do it,” the girl pleaded, but the words bounced off the walls without effect. She was thin, with long black hair and white skin. She had no way of fighting this new-age creation with an algorithm instead of a heart…

Her name was Mandala. She was of Japanese and Hindu descent. Her mother, Nilanjana, fresh out of Boston University, went to Japan to teach ESL and search for answers. She fell in love with Japan and the Japanese culture, never looking back. Mandala’s father, Akio, worked for an advanced Japanese AI company. Little Mandala grew up in a peaceful home, surrounded by books, knowledge, and fine culture. Unfortunately, Mandala’s parents were killed in an automobile accident when she turned twenty. The daughter grieved hard. She could not stop. It was then that she switched schools and moved to a small village in Canada, Warrington, in hope that the changed surroundings would awakened a sense of survival. Yet, she continued to cry for months until one day her roommate, Aly took her to church.

“I’ve never been to church,” Mandala informed. “My mother was a non-practicing Hindu and my father was Buddhist. I grew up with no real religion.” 

“But now you’re grieving and you need help. Jesus is your guy when it comes to peace,” Aly said with a smile. 

Mandala looked at Aly doubtfully, but they had met years before at a private boarding school and Mandala decided to give Aly’s suggestion a try and accompanied Aly to mass.

The next day, when walking to her classes at her new university, a Japanese man approached Mandala waving, “Hello, you don’t know me. My name is Daisuke. I heard of Akio’s … your father’s tragic death…” Mandala got teary. “I’m sorry,” Daisuke added, seeing the girl’s deep sadness. 

            “No, it’s not you… I just can’t stop crying…” 

            “It’s understandable; it’s human,” Daisuke said with clear, peaceful eyes. “They were your parents.” He bowed his head. “I hate to impose on you at a time like this… but… I knew your father when we were at university together in Tokyo. He was brilliant.”

            “And…” Mandala asked wiping away her tears. 

            “I am requesting to see Akio’s notes. I know your father was working on something very special. I just want to see if maybe I can finish his work. I am not as brilliant as he was, but maybe I can do something to honor his work.” 

Mandala looked at Daisuke and seeing no harm, she replied, “I don’t think that should be a problem. I’m going to Tokyo next week just to bring more things, but I can’t bring his notes. If you want to come with me and bring a big suitcase, you are welcome to them. I am sure he had most of his work on the computer, but he did believe in using actual handwriting to stimulate a different part of the brain, so many early notes are by hand. There are dozens of notebooks. Just give me a phone number for your lab and I’ll reach out with the details.”

Daisuke smiled. “Thank you. I much appreciate it.” 

Mandala nodded. “I really must get to class now.”

“Of course.” 

“Bye.” 

“Bye.”

They parted ways for the time being after exchanging phone numbers. 

It took a long time to unpack all of Akio’s research, but Daisuke managed to sort though it enough to see order to it. When he realized what it was all about, he was not only amazed by Akio’s genius, but also surprised by his true foresight and complexity as to how far and deep into the subject of AI Akio’s foresaw. “Mistakes are inevitable…” Akio wrote, “but if we set our sights on goodness and creation maybe they won’t be so hurtful.” Before science there was prescience. Daisuke secured a spot on a ship to take all the notes on Akio’s lifetime work from his private lab. The AI company held the rights to his work at the lab; but Akio had worked on quite a different project in his own, spare time. Once in Canada, Daisuke unpacked and read through it all. Although a Buddhist himself, working in AI Akio had a profound interest in human nature all of his life. He studied not just the wiring of the human body, like a doctor, but also the mysterious phenomena of the human race. Anything of the miraculous nature fascinated Akio and he read and investigated all stories of miracles he heard about. The one figure he was fascinated by the most was father Pio, a Catholic priest whose body temperature was supposedly a lot higher than a regular person’s and who, through his very presence, healed people. Akio knew of Buddhist monks who, through specific and learned breathing techniques, could melt ice on their bodies by raising their temperature, but what fascinated him about father Pio was that his temperature never went down and was associated with miracles. Akio studied this as a real possibility. He considered an idea to recreate someone who could heal people without medicine. What a breakthrough that would’ve been for humanity! A complete leap over all the mumbo jumbo of painful surgeries, taking of painkillers that destroy the digestive system while taking the pain away, and other painful procedures, which would then prove unnecessary. To heal with energy! Akio dreamed a seemingly impossible dream. 

            Daisuke looked through Akio’s notes and was amazed how precise everything was. How totally worked out. He wanted to make sure he had full permission to consider finishing Akio’s work. He called Mandala. 

            “She’s not here,” Aly said. “I took her to church and now she goes every day. It’s not what I meant to do. I just wanted her to feel better. I think I failed.” 

            “I’ll meet you there,” Daisuke said. “Can you give me an address? I need to speak to Mandala.”

            “Okay.” Aly provided the information. 

When Aly and Daisuke met at the church the daily noon mass was almost ending. Mandala sat in the second last row with tears streaming down her face. The priest was very old and looked at the young girl with compassion and discomfort her deep suffering was causing him. He didn’t understand how, or why someone so young and beautiful could be so distraught. Daisuke and Aly also watched Mandala with discomfort. No one knew what to do. She looked so broken. 

            “She grew up in a very happy and loving family, “Aly whispered to Daisuke. “She had a rare bone disease It wasn’t a death sentence. The disease was manageable with diet and exercise, so her mother doted on her.”

            “Yes, love is dangerous,” Daisuke whispered back. “Once experienced it’s difficult to live in any other state. It’s why so many people, scientists especially, stay away from it. It might seem like fear, but staying away from it also protects their work, which is also love. We all choose which state we are most comfortable in. It’s another form of our survival instincts.” 

            “Are you going to talk to her?” Aly asked. 

            “I have to. I have to make sure I have her permission to continue her father’s research.” 

            Warship ended and Mandala got up. Seeing her two friends, she wiped her eyes and smiled at them. “My two favorite people,” she said. 

            “Mandala,” Daisuke said, “I looked through your father’s notes and I just need to know I have your full permission to continue. He was on a cusp of making something amazing.”

            “Yes, of course,” Mandala said. “I would love for my father’s work to continue.” 

            “Okay, thank you.” Daisuke replied. 

            “My pleasure.” 

            “I will go to the lab and maybe you and Aly can go out and do something.” 

            “Yes, let’s do something Mandala.” Aly concurred. 

            “Okay, we can go out for lunch.” Mandala said. 

            Daisuke watched Aly take Mandala’s arm and the two friends walk to the nearest restaurant. He watched them, so shaken by the grief he had just witnessed, his mind began to form an idea. 

With the death of the old priest, and the continuously decreasing number of young priests, it was no surprise that Daisuke’s suggestion to place an android at church was welcomed out of sheer despair. “He is programed after a priest, so he can perform all the priestly duties,” Daisuke explained. “His creator, who is in heaven now, was brilliant.”

The dioceses’ other priest in the village, father John, had seven churches to run and there was no way he could take on another. So, when the archbishop actually met the humanoid priest and could not tell the difference from afar that it wasn’t human, he accepted the experiment out of sheer lack. Sad as he was, he felt his hands were tied. “Better an android than to close down another church,” he told himself to elevate his guilt. 

The parishioners welcomed the new priest, father Philip Dick, and most of the older ones, like the archbishop, couldn’t even tell he wasn’t human. He was so well-made. 

“He’s so handsome,” the women said, to which father Philip nodded his head and walked away programmed to be angered by such remarks, seeing how priests were supposed to be celibate and women weren’t supposed to tempt them with compliments about bodily appearance. Father Philip was programed to a “t” as to what and who a priest should be. 

As with humans, androids also got their wires crossed because when father Philip met Mandala, he found her strange. She didn’t follow any human behavior he had encountered and coded into himself until then. She didn’t give him compliments about his looks, nor did Mandala show any surprise that he was an android. She just sat in her second last pew, actively listening yet not present at the same time, lost somewhere deep inside herself; some dark place where no one could follow her. Stress oozed of her body. There was a disease in her too, father Philip could sense having been programed to sense diseases, a disease which had been managed all her life yet ignored lately and getting worse. It was human instinct to survive and do whatever a person could to save themselves, yet Mandala didn’t seem to care that she was slowly dying. Even though life was in her hands, managing her disease was in her hands, something had happened to completely push her into this dark place where her survival instinct was totally paralyzed. As if it didn’t exist at all. It was anti-human. 

The android considered all possibilities over a few months. The young woman, instead of going out, making friends, creating a life for herself came to church for mass every single day. According to his algorithm this was not normal behavior. He decided to do something about it. He had been programed to have healing powers; powers that surpass all the medication in the world. 

One Sunday, after Mandala had gone to mass twice, just to uplift herself she came home and lay on her bed, writing an essay for one of her classes. A strange heat descended on her heels first, then her legs. It was like a poking, gentle at first then, it got stronger. Soon her whole body was embedded in some sort of an inviable energy pool that poked her like invisible needles from all sides. “I don’t want this,” she said to no one at all. She tried to get away from the source, but it followed her everywhere. 

She went to yoga and the poking did not stop. At one point an invisible arrow-like beam shot through her breast so painfully tears just sprang from her eyes. “Please, don’t do this,” she pleaded with the android, but to no avail. 

She went to see the android priest and gave him a note. He looked at her with such smugness, she was filled with disgust. “You didn’t expect I could do that. Did you?” he winked in self-assurance. 

“Please don’t do this. You’re not helping,” the girl whispered. 

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” the priest answered. “I have been programed to heal. I can heal you from all disease.” 

“But God gave this problem to me to work out. Maybe it’s supposed to serve some higher purpose.” 

“Disease is against humans. It’s causing you pain,” the priest replied. 

“You are causing me far more pain than any disease, or grief ever did. I know now I was wrong to grieve my home so hard, but it was so filled with love, I just could not let go. As for you, I know one thing, your supposed solution is a worse problem than the one you’re trying to solve, so stop it.” 

“I can’t. I’ve been programed to heal. You need healing.”

“You have no consciousness of the suffering you’re causing.” 

And the priest kept poking her body. Most of it was takeable except her breasts filled with various nerve ending which serve pleasure in the female body both during love-making, or when a little baby suck milk and the woman is filled with pleasure of love. The android priest had not been program to understand the female body because a priest did not need such knowledge. He was ignorant of the female. 

Mandala started to act strange all the time. She held her bag on one side so that she developed a tennis elbow because only holding her bag that way prevented the priest from poking her breast all the time, when she was doing other things. “It sounds terrifying,” a Hindu monk who heard and believed her story said. He was one of very few people who believed her. 

When she tried to tell one of the ladies at church, Nancy, what the priest was doing, Nancy said, “You’re possessed by the devil, Mandala,” words which hit Mandala right in the heart. 

“I can see the love of Jesus really is shining out of you,” Mandala replied. “What a loving thing to say,” and she walked away realizing even though the woman wasn’t an android also did not have full consciousness. Something had happened to make her cold. 

She stopped being friends with Aly, who talked about Jesus all the time. Mandala knew better now. It was just talk. So many of these people actually didn’t love their neighbor at all. Everyone was so focused on their own suffering no one actually listened, or worked together. 

She told the priest numerous times that he was not helping, but the priest did not hear. His algorithm did not allow him to see that his wiring was faulty. He was a healer and healing he would give her. No matter what. The priest was an android set to do certain things, but without a heart. 

Totally at her wit’s end, Mandala went to the bank. She wanted to open her safety deposit box. Inside, was her great-great-great grandfather’s Samurai sword. She took it home. 

Daisuke had tried to contact Mandala for days and could not reach her. He had been away in Tokyo and had not seen her. “She moved out,” Aly said. “She started to hate church and since I talk about Jesus all the time she said she cannot be my friend. She lives close to the university. I’ll text you the address.” 

            When Daisuke entered the apt he wasn’t even surprised to find a body instead of Mandala. Beside her lay a note addressed to him. 

Dear Daisuke, do not grieve me. I appreciate your effort to continue my father’s work. The thing is the work is faulty. Whomever it’s modeled on was a sociopath. Many people lack the human heart and I can’t blame them because I did the same. Lost in my grief, I did the bare minimum to get by without extending myself the way my parents did. I failed them. I was supposed to be a great scientist like my father, but I could not even get my master’s. However, my name is Mandala and mandalas die into themselves only to be reborn in a different way from the same energy. If my death serves science I will consider my fate fulfilled. The android is faulty because he heals by force. I asked him numerous times to stop. He did not listen. He has no empathy. So, dear Daisuke who honored my father’s intricate work, please continue to improve the android and I will rest in peace.

“It is strange that karma should come even to an android,” Daisuke commented. 

Daisuke worked hard to create another android. He didn’t want to get nasty, but because Mandala’s suffering had a perverted sexual nature there was no way to avoid it. He disconnected Philip and added a penis to his make-up. A priest had not needed one, but he needed to improve the android. He created another android, father Jules Verne. He then let both of them into the church. Jules had a different chip inserted into him, too. Jules tried to heal Philip in the same way Philip tried to heal Mandala. Philip coiled in pain as his penis was poked. He screamed for mercy, but Jules was also programed to heal, so he continued to poke Philip. Philip coiled and coiled and coiled. Finally, when he asked to be disconnected, the new chip activated in Jules. It was a chip of empathy. Empathy won and all imposed and forced healing stopped.