Prompt #61: Magic
Rating: PG
Her heart thudded dull in her chest as she thought to herself – This isn't normal. She let her gaze flicker from point to point, taking in the sparse room beyond the glass. This. This is completely surreal. Well. Here we are.
"Hello."
His voice was lilting and cadenced, like he'd been taught English by a German. She cleared her own throat. "Hello. What is your name?"
He approached her. "Martin calls me Z."
And indeed Martin did. "Do you call yourself by another name?"
He considered this. "I like the name Zephyr."
"Do you know what a zephyr is?"
"Well, yes. A zephyr is a soft, gentle breeze." He'd stopped before her. If not for the glass separating them, he could have reached out and touched her. "I know the concept of a breeze, but have never had the pleasure of experiencing one."
She couldn't stop staring. He was built lean, tall, like a runner. His hair was tied back and fell in copper rings to his shoulders. His feet were bare. The dim light glanced off his skin in such a way; she couldn't quite grasp in her mind that the man in that room, clothed in off-white cotton and navy joggers, that man standing on the other side of the glass, was actually composed of wires and carbon fiber and various densities of conductive gel.
"If we are to be introduced, you must tell me your name."
In this instant, was she having a conversation, or was she interfacing with a piece of hardware? Her mouth was dry and it was hard to swallow, but that split second was enough for her to form a few coherent sentences.
"My name is Amethyst. But no one calls me that; my friends call me Ami," she added hastily.
"Ami." He turned the word over in his mouth. "Are we friends? May I call you Ami?"
Is one able to make friends with a piece of hardware? Was there a more appropriate verb? "Ami is fine. I hope we can become better acquainted."
He grinned boyishly, his eyes lighting up, and she suddenly noticed that they were a crisp hazel green. "I forgot! Of course, time is one of the important factors in developing friendship. Of course, I hope we may eventually become friends."
"Another factor of friendship is symbiosis, or interdependence." He shifted his weight with a casual grace, his smile fading but not all the way. "So Ami, what do you need from me?"
"How many have you made?"
The man to her left smiled broadly. He was in his late thirties, maybe early forties, a full head of hair and a healthy build, but sunken eyes and the pallor of being office-bound as programmers oft become. "Since Aquila? Well that was quite a while ago, so let's see..."
As he ticked off some mental checklist, she wondered again why she was so amazed. She'd seen them before. She'd even built one during grad school. But this was on another level. This was a sealed glass room with a table and chair and a curious observer-interviewer taking notes. She hadn't realised the technology had progressed so far so soon.
"If you count Z there, there would have been four with these current upgrades."
Her mind returned to the present conversation.
"But of course there were previous models with varying levels of sophistication. Maybe sixteen, seventeen?" His easy laugh was in stark contrast to her stone-dumb shock, hidden quite well, she was proud to say. "We have a tendency to reuse spare parts around here."
Ah good. There's a good neutral topic. "I would love the opportunity to see your lab."
His smile didn't waver as he ushered her back into the corridor. "It didn't really take off until after I turned on the first prototype!"
She nodded in agreement. He was tall, and she had to stride to keep pace. "That's the nature of technological advancement though, isn't it. The depth of the proprietor's pockets."
He shrugged ruefully. "I'm lucky enough to be my own proprietor. Hard to believe this all started as a hobby. Curiosity, you know! Curiosity!"
They turned down yet another hallway identical to the last, and she had to wonder if the route to the laboratory was deliberately incomprehensible on account of her. He stopped abruptly to key in biometrics in a panel she'd barely even noticed, before pushing in a section of wall that she hadn't realised was even a door. The rush of compressed air and whiff of ozone were tell-tale signs that this room probably existed in a vacuum. Whether for practical reasons, or as a security measure she could not say, for the vast room was dimly lit and almost completely empty. Long tables, probably housing computing surface units, ran lengthwise, and well-concealed panels along the walls likely hid integrated hardware. She watched as his tapping brought up some lights and threw holographs against the white surfaces. His own proprietor, huh? This is some hobby.
He talked fast and brief, and she thought she caught most of it. She got the distinct impression that he was talking to himself as much as he was talking to her.
"Doctor Martin, please."
He stopped in the middle of his wide tangent about photopigments.
"Doctor Martin, you are clearly passionate about your work. Your accomplishment is nothing short of incredible." She took a deep breath, "But I am not a programmer. My strengths lie in biomedical engineering, not programming or advanced computer engineering, and certainly not mechatronics." Her finger edged the corner of her suit jacket as she forced herself to look him in the eye. "So why are you showing me all of this? Why am I here?"
"From what can be determined from films and serials, this very much resembles a date," he observed aloud in his lilting voice.
They were seated to dinner in the padded room, facing each other on either side of the pane of glass that bisected a utilitarian white table. It reminded her of speed-dating, minus the 5-minute gong and background eating part was also rather one-sided. He played with a wine glass filled with clear liquid, sipping occasionally as she picked at her steak.
"Maybe only at face value," she replied. "A date has connotations beyond just company during dinner."
His brow furrowed. "Connotations such as?"
She paused to take a gulp of red wine. "Such as intimacy. Expectations. Like sex. Some expect more than others."
"What signals are given to convey these expectations?"
Even male androids, huh.
"I believe the main ones are eye contact, smiling, laughing, minor skin contact." She swallowed. "I'm not really an expert."
He shrugged. "Seems arbitrary to me. What is there to distinguish the eye contact of a polite conversation with the eye contact of intention? The margin for miscommunication seems rather large."
This made her laugh. "You have just managed to sum up the human condition in one sentence."
His brow furrowed. "The human condition?"
This was also beyond her expertise. She was a biomedical engineer, not a philosopher. "The search for the meaning of life, the reason why we exist on this plane. The dissonance of communication. The nature of platonic and romantic connections."
"The meaning of being human?"
"Exactly."
He laughed for the first time. "You can see how this could be of interest to me."
He swirled the liquid in his wine glass around like a seasoned sommelier. It was incredible to watch him. She would catch herself looking at his hands, each of the tapered fingers, the ways the skin stretched and slackened, the ridges on the fingernails, even the round prints he left on the glass.
He'd moved the conversation back to the original topic. "So in your opinion, this is not a date."
She set her plate to the side, appetite lost. "No. No matter your intentions, there is no expectation of intimacy."
He looked at her steadily, thoughtfully. "You do not consider this conversation intimate?"
She swallowed again. Remember, he's designed to push the boundaries. "I'm... not sure. Intimacy is... rapport." She cleared her throat. "Intimacy is confidentiality. We have not revealed anything in confidence."
He leaned closer to the glass. "All right. Intimacy requires a revelation. Well then, I will first make a confession. You are not the first woman to come here, to eat here with me."
She sat back in her seat. "Zephyr, that does not surprise me at all. If the doctor expects to observe your behaviour, there would have been other interviewers."
He stretched out in his chair, so remarkably human that she had to remind herself; tilting his head back, locks of his copper hair slipping off his shoulders, "I do not think I was what they expected."
"Depending on their specialties, your mere existence probably shocked them more than anything."
"This might be true. But I think the skin bothered them."
"The skin? Your skin?"
"Yes." His gaze fixed on her with some amusement. "It is only a polymer mesh, but I think they found it too... alike."
He stood now, rounding the edge of the table to come towards her. He was taller than her by a head. The dim light illuminated his remarkable, unnerving detail. Hesitatingly, he pressed his palm to the glass, spreading his fingers starfish-like, looking at them as if he hadn't realised that they belonged to him.
"Too alike what, I am not even sure."
She stood too, now, standing facing him. There were little halos of condensation beneath his hand, little blooms of body heat against the cold surface. She could make out the whorls and arches etched into his fingertips. Her own hand was small, pale, unadorned. There was a scar from a childhood accident. The nails were short, and there was a yellow callous on her middle finger from years of writing. He was watching her, head inclined towards her. Her breath misted the glass barely as she stepped a little closer. Her veins ran blue and green beneath her translucent skin as she held it up under the lights against the template of his.
She blinked.
She glanced up to his face, then back to the glass between their hands. These fingerprint loops... no, not loops, these are-
He followed her movements. She traced the letters first with a curiosity, then with a leaping urgency. She met his gaze once more. His eyes were insistent. His hand was pressed so hard to the glass, she thought he would try to reach through it and grasp her.
They are all dead. Get out.
Author's note
I hope this one was a satisfying end to the hiatus. As you can see, I was really inspired by Ex_Machina (2014), but I've added my own little twist. To be continued, perhaps in its own story...? Let me know what you think in the reviews!
Zoicite/Ami