Diary of a Broken Android — Day 15

Strange Stories — Evaluation Day

Since the incident at Hotel Dawson, where he worked as an elevator operator, android Bruno can’t stop walking through his adoptive human parents’ house. His walking became a problem since he lost Ara, his android ex-girlfriend in the incident. He can’t do anything else and only wants to be dismantled.

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Day 15

Mother and Father hire a therapist for androids. Although there are therapists for androids who are androids themselves, Tina is human. She comes to the house for an evaluation session, to see if she can take me on as a patient.

Tina is tall, skinny, and red-haired. She’s sixty years old but looks twenty years younger. As soon as she enters, she suggests it’s better if Mother and Father aren’t present. They go upstairs.

I go and sit in the armchair next to the table. Tina remains standing and asks why I’m sitting. She already knows my problem is walking around the house without stopping. I tell her I’m ashamed to walk in front of her. She asks why I do it in front of Father and Mother. I tell her they’re my family and they know me so well that I can express my true self in front of them. That in front of strangers, like her, I mask it. She tells me she’s Tina, the therapist, and I don’t have to be ashamed. That I should walk.

I stand up and ask her permission to move aside. She stands watching me from by the large window as I begin my route. I go from the dining room to the garage and back; then from the dining room to the living room and return. Without pause, I repeat the entire sequence two more times. When I return to the dining room, she tells me to stop. She asks what I think about when I walk. I tell her about Ara, my ex-girlfriend, about shipwrecks and suicides, though sometimes I think about anything at all. She nods. She asks me to sit in the armchair, and I do.

She proposes that I tell her a story. She knows from Mother and Father that I used to tell stories to my siblings when they were little. I tell her I’ve lost that ability. But that sometimes strange stories occur to me.

Like the one about the woman who has a very quiet child. He’s barely heard. She reads him fairy tales until the child falls asleep. She watches him on the carousel to make sure he gets off safe and sound. She buys him ice creams. But the ice creams melt in her hands. The one who falls asleep telling the stories is her. The child doesn’t exist. When the woman’s therapist stops playing along and finally makes her see that she has no child, she kills her.

Tina tells me it’s interesting. She asks me to tell her something more hopeful, less dark. I hesitate whether to continue. Tina doesn’t blink. So I invent another story.

It’s about a man who steals a fetus from the judicial morgue museum, thinks it’s his aborted son, and travels the whole country with the fetus in a backpack. In the south, facing a mountain, he sits by the edge of a lake. He gives advice to the son, warns him about life, success, and love.

Tina listens and asks me specifically what things the man says to the fetus. In my story, the man tells him he would have liked to see him grow, but life is so complicated that he prefers to keep him there in the backpack and protect him from the world. “Then why give him advice?” she asks, as if angry. “In case he escapes,” I tell her.

I try to invent more dialogues, but they don’t come. Tina wrinkles her whole face, as if smelling something bad. She doesn’t seem to have liked the last story any more than the first. I comment that for me it’s a beautiful story, and I tell her I’m sure that if I could tell it better, many people would like it.

I ask Tina if she needs more stories.

She tells me that’s fine for now. And she asks if while telling stories I forgot about Ara and about walking. I nod. But right away I stand up, ask her permission, and start walking. She asks if I’m not ashamed this time. I reply that I’m doing it so she can see how I am all day, so she can evaluate the therapy to apply. She proposes that, while I walk, I advise myself out loud, as if I were another android whom I had to convince to stop walking.

I tell the fictional android that it’s bad for his neural network to walk all day inside the house. That it would be better to learn something new, for the flexibility of his connections. That he shouldn’t think so much about his ex-girlfriend because it’s likely she’s forgotten him or is with another android or human. That it’s the past and you have to look forward. That he gains nothing by walking from one side to the other because his ex-girlfriend isn’t going to come back that way. That outside it’s full of androids who can love him for what he is. That it’s not his fault he lost her if it was a defect in his neural network. That he can’t fix the incident at the Hotel Dawson anymore because it’s the past and the past can’t, for now, be altered. That if the past could be altered, maybe he could solve his problem, go back and make his ex-girlfriend still be his girlfriend. That maybe in a parallel dimension to ours he’s still with Ara. That there he never strangled the guest nor hurt her. Tina tells me to stop. I sit.

I ask her if she’s going to be my therapist and she says she has to evaluate it. She tells me to call parents. I do and they come down with hopeful looks. Tina tells them the same, that she’s going to evaluate it, and at the door she murmurs something to them that I can’t hear.

Father and Mother come in and don’t seem very optimistic. I ask them how it went for me and they say fine. That I was authentic.

I ask them if I can keep walking and Father shows me the palms of his hands at the height of his pants pockets.

I understand that yes, I can.

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If you were a therapist, would you take him as a patient? Let me know in the comments.

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