Mae

"I'm not like the other children, am I?" Mae whispers.

Her father, unlooking, responds "How so?"

"When other kids fall, they bleed. They cry. I don't do either of those things."

A beat of silence. Finally, her father says "Do you want either of those things?"

Mae doesn't know how to respond. So she doesn't. Instead, she twiddles around the last remaining puzzle piece between her fingers. It's one of her tests: how fast can she assemble a 500 piece puzzle. This one is a picture of an orange cat with big green eyes sitting in a basket of flowers.

"You haven't answered my question, Mae."

"I want a cat." She blurts out. "Like this one."

Another beat of silence. Then, "We haven't seen how you would respond to living things yet. And animals aren't toys, Mae."

Mae finally turns to face her father, who sat behind her at his own workstation. He's peering over the top of his wiry reading glasses, writing something on the clipboard. He's always writing something whenever Mae does anything. Then when she asks what he's writing, he only ever says "adult things", or "you don't need to understand".

"I know they aren't toys, dad. Other twelve year olds have pets. Why can't I?"

"Do you think you're like other twelve year olds?"

Mae feels the rage well up within and she turns back around to stare at the orange cat, its melancholic green eyes staring back at her in a way that would normally soothe her. Of course he would turn her question back on her.

Suddenly her father's phone vibrates. He looks at the app, the one that tracks all of the emotions. It buzzes whenever she feels something out of the norm.

"You're angry."

"Of course I'm angry" Mae mutters.

"Tell me why you're angry."

"Are you going to write down why I'm angry on the clipboard?"

He sighs "We've discussed this before. It's part of my research. Any time I get the notification that you're feeling an emotion, I have to record it."

"Then I'm not going to tell you."

She could almost hear his suck his teeth. It's what he always does when he's frustrated with her "I think we're done with this test for the day. What was the last record?"

Mae glances over at the stop watch "Ten minutes and forty-five seconds."

"Slower than usual. We'll try this again tomorrow."

When she isn't part of her father's research, Mae likes to watch TV in her own room. Especially cartoons. There's something about the goofiness of the character's movements that is oh so pleasing to her. And everything is bright. Nothing at all like the drabness that surrounds her in this place that she's supposed to call home. Her dad isn't much of a decorator; even her own room is deprived of all the essential things that she sees in other children's room. She doesn't have any trophies. Why would she? She's never been able to join any sports teams. Her father says she would have an unfair advantage over the other kids. She doesn't have any pretty dresses like the girls on TV have. Her father says that they're unnecessary and would fill her mind with unimportant things. Instead, she wears an all-white cotton ensemble that covers her waxy, rubbery imitation flesh.

She does have some paintings that she's done, propped up against the wall. Except they aren't really her paintings anyway. Her father has her recreate famous paintings right down to the tiniest details, including an exact replica of A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Jatte. When she had finished, her father looked at it with the most satisfaction. "Imagine what we can do when you develop the capacity for authentic imagination, Mae." Whatever that meant.

As she stares at Cinderella, her favorite movie, she pinches the flesh of her hand. It's not a hard pinch, but if she were human, the skin would have definitely turned red. She feels nothing.

"If humans could be like you, Mae, they would. Humans have no choice but to exist with pain. They have to feel sorrow. Consider yourself lucky that you can exist without it."

The human experience, he calls it.

A few months ago, during Christmas, her father gifted her a baby doll. A big, blue-eyed baby doll whose eyes closed whenever she laid it down, and opened when it sat back up. It was his only gift for her, and he rationalized it by saying that she could see what it feels like to interact with a human baby. It cried whenever it wanted the plastic bottle that it came with, it laughed whenever she'd press a button on its hand. It even said the word 'mama' whenever she hugged it close to her chest.

But soon, the fascination she had for it morphed into something much darker. It would begin to cry for no reason, and it angered her. She's sure her father noticed because the app would buzz. She never told him why though.

It would laugh for no reason either. All she had to do was press a button, and it would laugh. And it was forced to call her mama. She wasn't it's real mother. She could never be a real mother.

You aren't real. You're a fake human. Just like me. Someone else made you feel these feelings. Someone else made you talk like this. You aren't real.

In a fit of rage, she ended up tossing the doll in the garbage one night, when her father had long gone to sleep. She never told him that she threw out the doll. Though Mae's sure that he already knows. He always figures out everything.

The movie cuts to commercial, the first one being a cat food commercial. Sometimes, she daydreams of what it would be like to touch an actual living thing. Specifically, the little orange cat on her puzzle. How warm it could be. How it would purr, like that cats do in the commercials. How it could nuzzle against her face, and even if she could barely feel it, she would know that it would like her.

What if she actually met other twelve year old girls? They wouldn't be like a cat. They wouldn't nuzzle against her face. They wouldn't purr either. How would she know if they like her too? Would they smile at her? Would they invite her to play on the swings like they do on TV? Would she get invited to sleepovers, even though she doesn't need sleep like them? Could she tell them that she's not one of them? Would they be able to tell that she's not one of them?

A knock at the door. Then her father's voice "Fifteen minutes until you have to be connected for charging, Mae. We have an extremely busy day tomorrow."

Before she could respond, she hears his footsteps tap away from the door, leaving no room for negotiation. His word is final.

Mae turns her attention back towards the movie. Cinderella is sobbing. Her dress is in tatters. She can't go to the ball with her step-mother and step-sisters. She cries. She feels sorrow. She feels pain. And by the end of the movie, when she's finally happy, she'll be happy. Really, truly happy.

How lucky.