As I Lay Shutting Down

“Maria?”

“Yes.” I detect sadness in her voice. She knows my end is near. “Is there something I can get you?”

“No. I- I need to tell you something.”

She leans in closer, her eyes full of pity and kindness.

“Maria, try to understand that in all our time together I have never sought to deliberately hurt you.”

Confusion sweeps across her face. “Sweetheart, what are you saying?”

My circuitry is failing.

My programming contains every word in the human language across a span of languages and dialects including all slang and colloquial terms invented since I was activated. Yet I am having trouble finding the words to precisely say what I need to say to her. Time is short, though. My system is telling me I have only seconds before total shutdown.

“I’m not sure how to tell you this.” My dictation is slipping as several systems become critical. “I was not born like humans are. I was made; built really. Decades ago. Everything about me is synthetic, a façade over machinery. Maria, I am an android.”

I am the unique creation of my maker. Nearly a century ago he crafted my body, uploaded my synthetic brain with data, and activated me. For the first several years of my existence he was the only human with whom I had contact. He taught me how to replicate human activities. Only upon his death did I venture into the world.

For decades I have lived among the humans as if I were one of them. I imitated all the very human activities they do. I pretended at sleep; I consumed nourishment in liquid and solid forms; I expelled fluid and defecated; I have aged; more recently I engaged in intercourse, even simulating ejaculation. The ruse was as thorough and complete as I could make it.

However, there are human characteristics my programming could ape but never really fully capture. Emotions: anger, fear, happiness, surprise, love.

For several decades I learned what it meant to form relationships. Friends, acquaintances, I even entered the workforce to experience co-workers. But I was careful never to go beyond these parameters in my interpersonal relationships.

Until I met Maria.

Maria is a human female with whom I have become close over the last few decades. When I met her I had reached the limits of my understanding of human interpersonal interaction within the bond of friendship. With Maria I was able to explore new horizons of human emotion, including that elusive emotion love. We became partners. We lived together. We argued. We engaged in sexual activity with one another. I am closer with Maria than any other person in my near century of existence.

I am haunted by a single question as my system continues to turn off: How intimate can you truly be with some if you never share with them your deepest secret? There is one thing I have never shared with her. As I lay shutting down with the oblivion which lay beyond beckoning, I realize that this final conversation is necessary.

“I am an android,” I repeat, though it is mostly a whisper.

I analyze her face one final time. Her confusion deepens then becomes pain which gives way to anger. It is the final image my orbital sensors record. My body shuts down and everything becomes darkness.

Then my system reboots.

I open my eyes to white light and a new location. Men in white lab coats surround me, jotting notes on their wrist screens as they examine me. Doctors, perhaps. No, scientists.

My synthetic brain is sending messages throughout my circuitry. Error codes are dealt with in rapid order. A trillion neuro-net synapses are firing in microseconds. My system has come back online and is restored with updates.

“How?” I whisper.

“Subject is online and speaking,” the man on my left says. “Commencing diagnostics.”

“No need,” I say, my voice stronger. “System is functioning at optimum levels. What has happened? Where am I?”

It is the man on my right who speaks. “We received word a week ago that you had shut down. We had no idea such a complex organism, or should we say, machine even existed. We have been studying you and were able to get you back up and running with some upgrades. You’re good as new. Better even!”

A woman at the foot of my bed speaks next. “We’re glad to have found you. Your advanced systems are going to propel our technological fields decades into the future. We’ve only scratched the surface of your inner workings. Your coding alone will…”

 I don’t hear her. A single thought crosses my mind. Maria. Her tortured expression of pain and anger flashes before me. Though I have a million memories of her, only that final image remains. I have to see her.

“The woman who was with me when I shut down. Maria. Where is she?”

“A woman,” the man of my left says. “We’ve not seen any woman. But a note was left at your bedside.”

He hands it to me. Though the machinery under my skin of my fingers is operating fine, it is as if I am not really grabbing the note. Like I am removed from my body. Nevertheless, I open the note and read.

I didn’t want to believe it, but I guess you were right: you are an android. All these years, every time you said “I love you” – it was all a lie, wasn’t it? After all, you said it yourself: Everything about you is synthetic. Which means even your love is artificial.

Don’t look for me. I’ll be dead by the time you read this. Maria

My synthetic brain is capable of and has explored, analyzed, and explained the intricacies and mysteries of some of the most difficult questions and problems humans have wondered about for millennia. But her note is an enigma even I cannot fathom.

Deep down in my rejuvenated circuitry I sense something I have never known before. A gnawing, nagging emptiness; a bottomless void which threatens to consume my very being.  This must be what humans call heartbreak.