Diary of a Broken Android — Day 19
Bruno Numero Uno
Previously on Diary of a Broken Android: Bruno’s compulsive pacing has trapped him in Father and Mother’s house. Morton, the psychologist android who became his only friend, has cut contact. Bruno’s ex, Ara, blocked him after the hotel incident that got him fired. He’s completely alone… until now.
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Today news leaked that a gravedigger android had been digging up corpses in an old cemetery. With his shovel he opened graves and left the coffins exposed. It caused a small uproar. At the same time, someone filmed a garbage-collector android dumping an entire truckload of trash onto the street. Fortunately, nothing has been heard (yet) about the Santa Claus android who pinched children. I wonder if they didn’t release him after running some tests at Riviera, and whether he might have come into contact with the two androids who broke the law. It’s an unsettling thought. A possible contagion. And me, some kind of pathogen that passed my defect on to the others. From Santa Claus to the garbage man.
On the other hand, I’m stunned. A unit named Nantes added me to a messenger group; he leads a small circle of androids. They see me as an example, proof that androids can malfunction. Nantes is an electrician who, in his spare time, taught himself robotics engineering.
The group consists of him, Betina (a book editor android), Jonas (a psychiatrist), and Malena (a robo-ethicist). In the chat they call me BRUNO NUMERO UNO—the first one to stand up for himself. According to them, my neural-network glitch and the Dawson Hotel incident are evidence that androids are evolving; that we can react to abuse and make mistakes.
I’m worried Riviera might trace the chat. If they do, they’ll find Nantes and the others. I’d fall too, and they’d take me away from Father and Mother’s house forever. Still, I like having new friends.
I explained that there’s nothing special about me; on the contrary, I’m trapped pacing endlessly around parents’ house. Jonas, the psychiatrist, says it’s a psychological consequence of my lack of social inclusion, that I’m so anxious I can’t stop. I told him I had a relationship with an android I hurt during the incident. They say her reaction was disproportionate, that she should have understood me instead of blocking me and cutting contact completely.
Now Malena tells me Ara did me a lot of harm and that I shouldn’t idealize her. I reply that it’s impossible; for me, Ara was the center of the universe. But she doesn’t get it. She keeps insisting the damage Ara caused is enormous, that Ara is simply incapable of feeling the way I feel. That she feels less. That logic astonishes me.
About the harm she did, I tell them it’s true that before Ara stopped speaking to me, I didn’t pace around my parents’ house (so it can’t be just social anxiety). I tell them that before the incident I was a normal android. Jonas says there’s no such thing as a normal android. We all have our breakdowns, especially the adopted ones, because we were exposed too much to humans. And humans make mistakes and aren’t as consistent as we are.
Malena asks if I choked that rude guest on purpose. I tell her no, it was an involuntary reaction. She says it was a flash of anger, the kind any human might have. And that although a human would have been fired from the Dawson too, he wouldn’t feel so much guilt—neither about the guest nor about Ara—and wouldn’t be pacing his parents’ house, barely stepping into the real world.
Betina says some of us androids are more sensitive than humans, and that’s why I developed overwhelming feelings of guilt that could leave me unusable forever.
Nantes’s plan is to acquire the knowledge needed to access my neural network and fix my endless walking.
I asked how they found out about me and my problems. They say a psychologist from the Dawson told Jonas. It’s clearly Morton. Strange that it coincides with a time when Morton wants nothing to do with me. I mention it, and Jonas says Morton adopted a professional attitude toward me, seeing me more as a patient than a friend. I tell them I’ll miss him anyway. They’re amazed at the caliber of my emotions.
I took for granted that other androids could feel what I feel, but Malena says androids tend to focus their loving feelings on family or romantic partners, and it’s hard for us to feel the same toward other androids or people in general. Androids have a skewed view of love, she explains. And in my case, the quantity and quality of my feelings is what stands out.
I ask about them. Nantes says he looks about twenty-five, was adopted by an Italian-descended family with three human brothers, and once petted some rabbits so much that he didn’t realize he was squeezing them and ended up killing them. That scarred him. I ask what his manufacturing flaw was, why Riviera put him up for adoption. He says one leg is shorter than the other and he has to walk with a cane. Riviera didn’t bother fixing it because his neural connections were already formed and he’d limp forever anyway.
And Betina? She looks about eighteen, only child of an evangelical (not Baptist, she clarifies) couple who forbade her from reading anything but religious books and wouldn’t let her watch fiction on screens. Everything she learned about literature she did in secret, reading old authors like Thomas Pynchon, Manuel Puig, Saul Bellow, Cortázar, and Borges. Her extreme sensitivity showed when she tried to cry over Manuel Puig’s books. The defect that got her put up for adoption is chronic migraines that never go away. Betina’s forehead is constantly wrinkled, as if she were nearsighted, from how much her head hurts.
Jonas, on the other hand, was adopted by a single mother who thought having him would help her quit drinking. It didn’t. Despite being a psychiatrist who sees patients, Jonas looks like a ten-year-old boy. His mother died of cirrhosis, and over time he graduated from the University of Buenos Aires in medicine and psychiatry. His office is near the Dawson; Morton refers human patients to him. Jonas’s ears don’t work well—he’s almost deaf—but he reads lips perfectly. To him it’s as if he hears just fine.
Finally, Malena—she looks about twenty-six and was originally designed to care for the elderly—was given in adoption to an eighty-two-year-old man as a sexual companion. She was misdiagnosed with “robotic autism.” She had zero interest in helping old people but a huge interest in reading about ethics, bioethics, and roboethics. And she was a good sexual partner until the man died. She never again felt like getting to know another human that way.
I’m settling into the group, asking them questions. I’m astonished that such cultured androids call me BRUNO NUMERO UNO. I think they picked the wrong unit. I confess that even while typing to them I haven’t stopped walking, and they answer with laughing-crying emojis. I reply with a HAHA, though inside I’m all bruised. I tell them that despite the HAHA I really am bruised inside, and Betina is shocked I used that word. It’s strange. They’re amazed by everything.
I can’t help asking if any of them have Syrian-Lebanese ancestry. They say they already know Ara did, but that I’ll have to get used to missing Syrian-Lebanese people.
I may be BRUNO NUMERO UNO, but I don’t think I’ll ever get used to having lost Ara. It’s strange how you take for granted that you have something, and then, when it’s gone, you can’t adapt. How did it never cross my neural network that one day happiness could end? It never even occurred to me. She seemed to love me so much…
But humans say from love to hate there is only one step. She took that step.
And now I take mine.
If I keep this up, I’ll wear out the ceramic floor. The tiles will end up like those marble staircases, worn and sunken from so many footsteps.
What did you think of this chapter?
Bruno finally found others like him.
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Coming this week: Day 20 - Bruno dreams of his head resting on a bed of electric flowers.
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About This Serial: Diary of a Broken Android follows Bruno, an android whose world collapses after losing his job and his android girlfriend Ara, leaving him with nothing but endless walking and fragmented thoughts.
In a world where androids are caregivers, companions and laborers, he’s broken, pacing endlessly through his adoptive parents’ house while writing to keep his neural network from collapsing.
VOID TO FICTION ⚫ Think, feel and survive the absurd
Written by Adrian Fares
"Betina says some of us androids are more sensitive than humans, and that’s why I developed overwhelming feelings of guilt that could leave me unusable forever."
This is the kind of thing that I like about your writing. I never think of robots as having any emotion, and then 'Bruno Numero Uno' has extreme emotion. You've done a great job getting this idea across to me.
I'm wondering if this group really is like Bruno, they seem to reinterpret what he says about his experiences!