Diary of a Broken Android — Day 18
When Your Only Friend Stops Talking
Morton, my psychologist friend, is very angry with me. I think—though I’m not entirely sure—it’s because he dislikes that we only see each other every now and then. He’s acting strange, especially since he stopped seeing his therapist. He used to go to a human psychologist to talk about his family issues.
I know it’s hard when a family abandons you. In his case, no one from his human family ever asks how he is. That makes him more distrustful of others. That’s why he has so few friends. I must be the only one. He feels that other humans or androids discriminate against him. Or that they talk badly about him behind his back.
He used to have another friend, a human guest at the Dawson Hotel who, with time on his hands, devoted himself to extreme sports. Whenever he came to Buenos Aires, he’d rent a room next to Morton’s. The guest was a fanatic of snowboarding, climbing, surfing, and skydiving.
The problem was that Morton joined him on a trip to Rio de Janeiro. On the trip, there were other friends of the guest and an android named Luis. Morton realized the guest was paying more attention to Luis and the others than to him. And the conversation topics seemed too superficial to him. So, on the way back, Morton stopped talking to his guest friend. And he also removed Luis from the messenger.
I would have kept the friendship. I don’t have as many prejudices about people, nor do I share Morton’s paranoia. My issue is more obsessive; I always circle back to Ara and the incident at the Dawson Hotel.
Sometimes I wonder if I’m not too lenient with people. For example, I should tell Morton that he’s acting wrongly by stopping talking to me. Even confront him while angry. But it doesn’t come naturally to me.
When I was with Ara and couldn’t reply quickly to Morton on the messenger, he would get upset with me and let me know. He’d say I was letting Ara manipulate me, among other out-of-line things.
Beyond that, Morton always thanked me for teaching him that people aren’t objects. That they are all ends in themselves and not means, as Kant said. Especially women, whom Morton studied like a child examining insects he’s just discovered by lifting a rock in a garden.
It feels bad to be friends with someone who, from one day to the next, stops talking to you. I suppose it has to do with the fact that I don’t leave my compulsive pacing inside parents’ house. He must have grown tired of me.
He says that since I don’t want to go out with him and I’m content with a messenger relationship, I’m as cold as his ex-friend, the extreme sports fanatic. That I should try climbing because I’d like reaching the icy peaks like his ex-friend. A metaphor that, in reality, describes his own unwarm, narcissistic personality more than mine.
I’m not going to deny that, in my pain, I can be somewhat selfish. I shut down. And I can’t focus much on other people’s problems. Sometimes, when someone has an issue, I have so much pain from my job situation and losing Ara that I can’t worry about anyone else. But I did care about Morton’s problems; I paid attention to his complaints about loneliness, the lack of a family group, and the lack of a friend group (a consequence of the missing family group).
At the same time, I must be cold, as he says. But really, I’m preoccupied trying to envision a possible future.
What set us apart from the first androids, who lacked consciousness, was developing a theory of mind and the ability to simulate a future. In my case, I simulate too many futures where I’m alone and defective, while other androids and humans do all sorts of things and are quite happy.
It’s only been a few days since Morton stopped talking to me, and I miss him. I think I’ll have to get used to it. Androids and people distance themselves from those of us who are unwell.
Father sometimes talks to me about that. Though he also tells me that I’m letting evil defeat me. That there must be something malignant inside me that they need to extract. I don’t understand who will extract it. I suppose he means someone from the Church.
Today we went downtown to renew a tenant’s lease contract, and Father told the woman—an elderly person, ninety-eight years old—that they (Mother and Father) were suffering a lot because of what’s happening to me. And the woman, who had been a pedicurist among many things and a fanatic of taking courses, recommended that I take as many courses as possible until I find what I like.
I replied that the only thing I liked was working at the Dawson Hotel, that I enjoyed dealing with the guests, seeing celebrities every day, and that I had a coworker named Ara, who was like my girlfriend.
Since we were downtown, I took the opportunity to go alone to another Starbucks to watch people drink coffee. In the middle of two men, I saw an android I initially mistook for Ara. Petite, prominent cheekbones, and a wide smile. But the android was wearing glasses, a white shirt, and brown pants. It looked like a work meeting.
It couldn’t be Ara. Besides, she didn’t have the mole-like mark on her face. Some androids wear glasses even though they don’t need them, for aesthetic reasons. Ara would never wear glasses. One of the things I liked most about her was how natural she was.
I examined my feelings about it and felt no pain. It must have been because I was in a Starbucks. The air conditioning was set so low that one person complained. He said it was too cold and that it could harm his little girl.
I think back to Morton; maybe, despite all the love I’m capable of feeling, I am a cold person. Cold enough to compete with the Starbucks air conditioning.
But I wasn’t like this before. This coldness must have to do with the selfishness of longing for impossible things to recover: a social status and a lost love. And that’s why, even though I see Father and Mother suffering because of me, I can’t stop pacing inside the house. Though stopping seems beyond my will.
I still believe there’s something wrong with my neural network that the people at Riviera can’t fix. If it were just psychological wounds that led me to this, I should be able to recall them all. Instead, I only remember one pain prior to losing Ara: that my siblings, the kids, left for other countries.
Are there more prior pains? Where are they? Maybe my current condition is a combination of both. A predisposition, resulting from my defective creation by humans, plus an environmental trigger that set it all off. With my flaw, I couldn’t afford to lose Ara and the Dawson Hotel at the same time. It’s as if they pressed a red button that already existed inside me.
At least that’s what I think about suicides. They say people inherit suicidal genes. But really, what gets inherited are shattered families, with fewer members due to the absence of those who should be there. While others have stronger family networks, the members of families with suicides lack them. They’re more alone. And they’re likely to do everything to be less alone.
Thus, being born into a family where there were suicides, and discovering over time through whispers that there are people missing, must be like looking at a building where the lights in the windows go out one by one, until it’s left in darkness.
And one of the members, the most sensitive one, inherits the disasters caused by the family members who are gone but should be there. And maybe one day he’ll enter that dark building and let an android elevator operator—who could be me—take him to the rooftop. And walk to where the rooftop ends. And there, think about letting himself fall into the void.
What would I say to a person like that? Maybe a teenager, or an immature young man. I think I wouldn’t say anything, but I’d take his hand at the crucial moment. I don’t know if to fall with him or to prevent his fall.
Humans and androids can be so alike.