Diary of a Broken Android — Day 12

Scratching at Beautiful Moments

When I think about my past with Ara, I feel an electric shock running through my entire body. I remember so many things. When she took me to the exhibition of the first humanoid robots. When we went to the aquarium to watch fluorescent-colored fish. And when we entered bars to listen to jazz bands. Or went to cafés that weren't Starbucks. We also went to the butterfly house at the Botanical Garden. They had robotic butterflies with iridescent wings that would land on our shoulders.

The colors of things seemed more vivid. The air was different. Life passed by faster when we were together.

I never forget how we sat on a stone bench in a square and rocked ourselves by pushing each other a little. How she brought the back of my hand to her mouth to kiss it. As if saying: I appreciate having you. Though I never knew why she did that, and the "I appreciate having you" is just an assumption. Maybe what humans call love is just an assumption.

Now all my beautiful past is lost, and it seems like when I walk around the house, I'm trying to scratch at beautiful moments, to cling to them somehow.

Unlike humans, androids can have relationships that last forever. One never thinks they'll lose an android partner. In contrast, people who are in relationships hardly live together anymore. Few have a relationship like Mother and Father.

To ease my sorrow, Morton tells me to think about humans. That after a romantic breakup, they move on as if nothing happened. Most don't pace back and forth in their homes.

I reply that people don't have an image archive as large as ours. I remember everything, and bursts of images from moments with Ara come to me that I can't control. That keeps me paralyzed in my walking. It's a paradox. I want to stay in a place that's no longer mine, and to do that, I don't stop moving.

Trying to explain to a human, or even to Morton, what Ara meant to me is useless. And even in this diary, I can't find the right words. Could it be that she appeared when the kids left home? So many years, in which the relationship grew.

Before, Ara barely spoke to the guests. At first, she didn't say a word to me, even when we were already holding hands. And little by little, her lips parted, and her words started reaching my ears.

She told me about her family. About the role she had in the house, which was caring for her grandmother, who had Alzheimer's. Until the grandmother died, and she was left without work, and they placed her at the Dawson Hotel like me.

She told me how she named the flowers in her house's large garden using words from the Syrian-Lebanese dialect that her grandmother taught her. How she tended the family vegetable garden. How she took the black-mantled German Shepherd for long walks where she felt happy. Until the dog died too.

I remember the first time I invited her home and Mother and Father met her and were enchanted by her. It was Father's birthday, and she helped prepare the salad.

I still see her face through the sparks of the candle when we sang happy birthday to Father. She was smiling, and her eyes shone. I noticed that, like me with her family, she felt welcomed into a new family. She seemed amazed. Everything adds up to forgetting the loneliness.

We, the adopted androids, felt alone at Riviera. They trained us to help humans with basic tasks like cleaning, caring for the elderly, and children. I learned to tell stories because they taught me.

It's better if androids learn the traditional way, like humans do, rather than loading us with data we sometimes don't want to process.

They initiated Ara in managing a vegetable garden. And they saw that every time older people came to adopt other androids, she approached to attend to them. That's why they later educated her in caring for the elderly.

Now I can't imagine being in a relationship with another android who isn't her. It would take many years to build such a relationship. And besides, I don't feel useful, and I'm without work, something another android wouldn't accept.

Nor would another android accept that my mind is stuck on an android who no longer wants me. And surely I'd tell her about the incident, because I have a problem keeping privacy, and the new android would turn around and leave.

I think about what I'll do when Mother and Father are gone. Where will they take me?

Surely the kids will sell the house. Besides, I've ended up like this, walking and sad, unable to handle household tasks.

I forgot how to pay taxes and how to mow the lawn. I forgot many things. I suppose Ara occupies the place of all the things I forgot.

I suppose I'll go back to Riviera, and if I keep behaving well, they'd try to train me in something new and put me up for adoption again. But I don't think I could learn something new.

Maybe over the years, the same will happen with Ara, and we'll meet again at Riviera. Though I don't think she'll want to find me anywhere. And there's the possibility that Ara forms a couple with another android and they live together and she never ends up at Riviera.

Today I accompanied Father to the cardiologist. And from the car, I distracted myself by looking at the license plates of other cars and the names of businesses. We passed by an aquarium, and an electric shock hit me. And by a vegetable garden, the same. And there was a funeral home, and I thought about how I'd like to be human and be able to die. The sign said: Free cremations.

Father and Mother would have them put me in one of those long wooden boxes, and I'd rest horizontally, in a room surrounded by flowers, with my eyes closed. Father and Mother would cry for me, and the Armendias would console them and maybe cry too, and Morton would come, who wouldn't cry, but he'd say goodbye to me and feel bad because he wouldn't have a friend anymore. The kids would talk from their countries with Father and Mother, and I imagine them crying too.

Then they'd put a lid on and bury me under a tree in those cemeteries that are like gardens. Or in a cemetery for androids from a different generation, even though I don't belong to an older one. Maybe they'd set me on fire, and my ashes would remain. I'd ask them to scatter them from the terrace of the Dawson Hotel. And maybe Ara would find out and get an electric shock.

Humans fear death, and we fear uninterrupted life. Androids don't have farewells. Instead, we watch as everyone leaves.

– Adrian Fares

Diary of a Broken Android: CHAPTER INDEX

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