Human Enough?

“Describe your bedtime routine. What the hell kind of question is that?” I grumble, smacking the magenta packet onto the kitchen counter. “What do they even want me to say?” Harrison walks over to where I stand, and he runs his hand through his messy curls, and smiles down at me.

“I dunno,” he starts, “if I had to guess,” inspecting the packet, flipping the pages, “I’d say they want you to describe your bedtime routine.” I try to shoot laser beams at him with my eyes, but I haven’t reached that level of ESP yet.

“Yes. Thank you, Harrison.”

“Easy there, buddy. I’m just joking around. No need to try and nerf me with your heat vision just yet,” he sets down the packet, and meets my eyes. “What about this question is so triggering to you?”

“I just,” I hesitate. “I feel like this is their sneaky way of feeling out, you know, certain qualities that I may have? Before they interview me in person?” He frowns.

“You mean your arms?” I nod, and he rolls his eyes. “Oh come on, Maia. You aren’t actually buying into the whole, ‘cyborgs living among us’ thing, are you?”

“Well, that is the running narrative right now.”

“Well that’s BS. I doubt anyone's actually buying into that, but even so, your arms are totally undetectable.”

He is right. The synthetic skin is eerily realistic, and people never look close enough to see that the veins running under my skin are actually wires.

“Rest assured, no one will ever know that you’re a part of the secret cyborg revolution!”

“You’re not making me feel better, Harrison,” I exhale, “Like ‘describe your bedtime routine’.” I read off of the packet, before sarcastically saying, “sure thing. First I take off my makeup, then I brush my teeth, and then I remove both of my fake arms off of my body!”

“Or just exclude that detail. Easy peasy.”

“Well, obviously I can lie. It’s just the principle of the question. Now I feel embarrassed. Sorry I’m not human enough for you, Poly Clean Laundry Service.” I throw the packet onto the floor. Harrison scoffs at that.

“Oh, please. Having prosthetic arms does not make you any less human.”

“I am literally less of a human. Proportionally.”

“Then we can be robots together. Watch this.” He parts his hair behind his ears, straightens his posture, and says, “Hello Maia. I am your perfect companion. Is there anything you need? Other than reassurance of your humanity?” He says in his most monotone, robotic, condescending voice. I peer into his hazely-green eyes, and observe his tauntingly plastic smile.

“Yes, actually,” I warn. He reads the expression on my face, and immediately breaks character, realizing what I am about to do. He shakes his head at me, reading my mind.

“You’re not serious. It’s only nine pm!” His smirk falters in the face of my betrayal. “I thought we were gonna watch the new episode of Bake Off!”

“Harrison. Power off.” I recite.

“Oh come on, Mai,” he pleads. “I was just kidd-” His eyelids clamp shut, his jaw goes slack, and while his shoulders and arms slump, his feet remain planted into the floor. My apartment is silent, and abruptly, it feels emptier.

“I’m sorry,” I say to no one, because there is not a single fellow living breathing being in the room. I step closer to the folded droid. His brown curls, styled in a middle part, protect me from the sight of his wounded visage.

I brush my fingers through his synthetic hair. I should cut it soon, it’s getting kind of long and mangy. But Harrison wouldn’t want that. He likes his hair when it's longer. I beeline to the pantry, at that thought. Droids don’t have feelings. Droids don’t have preferences. Droids aren’t human.

I grab the first pair of scissors I can find, rather than searching for the special shears. I pull up a stool, so I can reach over its head, and then I start trimming away, with no particular method, letting the plastic curls float to the floor. Then I decide to call Fabiola.

“I just don’t understand why they want to know about my bedtime routine?” I say, exasperated from the topic. “Like, who puts that as an interview question? What does my bedtime routine indicate about my working abilities?”

“Why do you care so much? Just tell them your night routine.” She says, her voice muffled by my poor internet. “Unless you have a super weird nighttime agenda that you think would be weird to share with a potential employer?”

“No!” I blurt, whilst simultaneously chopping off a huge chunk of Harrison’s, I mean, my droid’s hair. “I just-”

“You just what?” She persists. I release a sigh of exasperation, before examining the finished product of my droid grooming. Harrison is going to be livid.

“Come on, Fab,” I say, tartly. “You know what looks different about my nighttime routine.”

“No, Maia. I have no clue.” I feel my face twist into a frown. I impatiently stare at the call screen on my phone. Her silence is deafening. How many sleepovers have I had with this girl? Definitely enough to where she should have noticed that I sleep without arms. “Oh wait. Is it that you think the company will think it’s weird that you still own a droid?”

“What? What does that have to do with anything”

“You know, because in your nighttime routine you’d have to say that you power it off, and charge it and whatever.”

“And you think they’d think that it’s weird I have one?” I sputter.

“Well, maybe if it was a cleaning droid, or a cooking droid, it would be fine,” She pauses. “But, ‘Hayden’-”

“Harrison.”

“Right, whatever. ‘Harrison’ is a Companion droid. And, no offense, Companion droids are made for kids.”

“Yeah, and I’ve had him since I was a kid.” I snap back. I feel the steam coming out of my ears.

“Yeah, and you still have him,” She sighs. “Maia, I promise I am not trying to offend you, but most people do not keep their childhood droids into their late teens, let alone their early twenties. Like, remember, I had Dolly? And she was the best! She played Dinosaurs with me, she did my homework with me. Hell, she even comforted me when my parents would fight. She was my best friend.”

“I remember.”

“And when it came time,” she continues, “when I had outgrown her, and I had started to connect with other humans…”

“You powered her off permanently and threw her away.”

“Well, we recycled her, but yeah. Dolly came, served her purpose, and when I was done with her, I was done with her!”

“Yeah,” I contemplate. “But doesn’t that seem harsh? She was your best friend and you just outgrew her and sent her to the scrap yard?”

“Well, she wasn’t actually my best friend. She was a droid. She was a robot. She didn’t have thoughts or feelings. She wasn’t human.” I step off of the stool, and relocate to the kitchen table. Adjacent, is a wall full of pictures. Memories Harrison and I had shared over the course of our childhoods. “Maia, I love how sentimental you are, towards your droid, towards, um,”

“Harrison.”

“Yes, ‘Harrison’. And you will always cherish the memories of your time with him. But you have to think of him as a machine. Because that’s what he is. In the same way your car is a vehicle of transportation, ‘Harrison’ is a vessel for you to enjoy time with, and to help you develop social skills. A kid’s time with a droid is basically practice for forming real friendships and connecting with humans. And now he has served his purpose!” She says, pleasantly. “And, you know I would never tell you what to do, but, maybe, it might be time to let him go soon.”

I glance over at Harrison. Is it truly fair to reduce my truest friend to a collection of metal, even if that is what he literally is?

“And again, I’m not trying to tell you what to do, or trying to offend you, or judge you, but as your human best friend, and you know, real best friend, I should probably let you know that you’ve passed the point at which it is socially acceptable to own a Companion droid.”

“Okay Fab. While this conversation has been, um, illuminating, I think it's a little past my bedtime.”

“Seriously? It’s like 9:30.”

“Well, my bed time routine does take a while, considering I have to literally remove my arms.”

“Oh my gosh! I totally forgot you’re all, like, cyborgy!”

“Goodnight, Fab.” I disconnect the line. I immediately walk over to Harrison, where I search for the power switch behind his ear. A charming noise sounds, upon my clicking of the button, and his body unfolds.

“Wow, Maia. First you rob me of Bake Off by putting me to sleep super early, and now you’re waking me up mid-REM cycle!”

“You don’t have a REM cycle. You’re a droid.”

“And now you’re trying to put me in a box, oh my goodness gracious Maia is that my hair on the floor?” He says, horrified. Harrison rushes over to the mirror above the kitchen sink, and inspects the aftermath of the haircut I had hastily given to him. After a moment of absorption, he refocuses on me, looking absolutely betrayed. “How could you?”

“I am so sorry, Harrison. I was, I was just having a moment.”

“A moment of what? Psychosis?” His haircut is pretty awful. “I look horrible! Do you even know how long it will take to grow back?”

“No! I don’t even know how your hair even grows! It’s synthetic!”

“It’s a synthetic follicle!”

“Whatever! You’re a droid! It shouldn’t matter what you look like.” He physically recoils at that.

“Seriously? You’re going there? Just because you feel insecure about your prosthetic body parts doesn’t mean you can project all of your self-disgust on to me!”

“That’s not what I’m doing.” I snarl. “It is a fact. You are all nuts and bolts and wires and code and programming! You are a machine!”

“I am your best friend. And we’ve talked about this. Sure, I’m programmed to walk, talk, breathe, whatever, but everything about my personality is reactive and has been developed by spending time with you, and experiencing new things. I have preferences and opinions in the same exact way that you do!”

“But it’s different!”

“Why? Because we were conceived in different ways?” His voice cracks, and I can see the raw and unmistakable hurt in his eyes. How is it possible that a droid has so much nuanced emotion?

“No! It's just,” I cover my eyes with my hands, “I don’t even know.” He yanks and pinches my arm, super hard, and I yelp in pain. “What the hell?”

“Your arm is totally synthetic. Made of metal and nylon. Nuts and bolts. But you feel pain there. It’s not some detached mechanism, it's a part of your body, regardless of whether your blood is flowing there.” I rub my arm in the spot where he pinched it. “You experience the same kind of shame and hurt as I do, when people speak poorly about droids, and about cyborgs like you.”

“I’m not a cyborg.”

“You aren’t. You are a human, with two prosthetic arms, as a result of an accident that gave you sepsis, that you had no control over.” He gently reaches and puts a kind hand on my arm, in the hurt spot. “I know I can’t really argue about if I am a droid. I am indisputably a droid, but, I don’t think you're right in saying that humanity is measured by the amount of flesh and blood there is attached to one's body. I think to be human is about the ability to love, to feel pain, and to hold deep connections, and I think that me, even as a droid, checks all those boxes.”

“I can’t really argue with you there.” He laughs.

“No, you really can’t. I mean, you and me, Maia, we are soul bonded. Even if you think I don’t have a soul.”

“I never said that!”

“You basically did, but I know you don’t mean it so I won’t hold it against you. But anyway, I am definitely way more capable of connection and love than any of your vapid and shallow friends.” I run my fingers through his horrible half buzz cut. “And you are not a cyborg. Do you understand?” I nod. Harrison pulls me into a hug. Despite his lack of blood and a warm body temperature, he always gives the warmest hugs.

“I am so sorry about my little freak out. And I am so beyond sorry about my violation of your trust, with your hair. I knew you would be upset and I did it anyway.”

“I forgive you. It’ll grow back. And so will your arms, one day.”

“Oh shut up.”

“Only if we can go watch Bake Off now.”

“I love you. You are my best friend.”

“I know. I love you too.”