Chelsea Rodriquez, “Corriente de Conciencia”
Pistons firing. Coolant flowing.
Joints swinging. Pneumatics flexing.
Systems running. Jackson walking.
Jackson Hayes was walking down the damp, crowded streets of Eniac. People bustled around, bouncing from storefront to storefront, running from one flickering neon sign to another. They all seemed to be in their own worlds — the living ones, at least. Not the ones like Jack, who lacked the warm softness of throbbing organs under their silicone skins. Complex independent thought was still a challenge for them. They followed behind their organic companions, carrying their bags, holding their hands, et cetera. Sometimes, there was the rare solo android shopping alone on behalf of their partners. Like Jack was now.
Rain pattered against the umbrella in his grip, but his mind automatically filtered out the white noise so he could run smoother. He’d never heard rain before. In fact, he’d only recently learned that it made any noise at all.
Jack was relatively new to the world. He’d been running for three months now. A woman named Cassandra Hayes was his owner, a kind but possessive shut-in, older than him by several years. Older than his programmed age of twenty-six, anyway. Technically speaking, Jack was less than a year old; he had been assembled in a plant six months ago and kept in storage until Cassandra purchased him. But he had been equipped with the average knowledge and emotional depth of a person in their late twenties. An artificial intelligence program processed all the information he took in and determined what would be discarded and what would be stored in his memory database.
He had known about rain, of course. He had known what it was and how it worked. But he had known all this only conceptually. Seeing rain fall from the sky for the first time… It had been frightening.
Jack was out shopping for Cassandra, trying to find a gift to surprise her with before their date. It was hard getting away from Cassandra. She clung to Jack like a toddler to a parent, always needing to take up the same space as him. She told him that her exes couldn’t satisfy her, that they always left her for being too suffocating. “That’s why I got you,” she had giggled, running her hands along his face like she was scared he might vanish at any moment. “You’re perfect. Designed to be perfect. You can’t get tired of me.”
Jack was starting to get tired of her.
Every android of his type was programmed to study their partner’s personality and shift their own to best compliment them. Jack’s programming had been flipping across every personality that might suit Cassandra since they’d met, and he still couldn’t figure out how to soothe her plaguing anxiety. He wanted to fix it so she wouldn’t keep him trapped in her apartment, so he could go out and explore the fascinating city of Eniac, followed by the rest of the world.
Jack’s personality had developed to be overly curious to counteract Cassandra’s aversion to leaving her living quarters. It was an effort meant to encourage her to try new things and grow comfortable with experimentation, but she was stubborn, so all it did was make Jack feel restless and trapped. Each day she denied his attempts to explore the city with him, his urges grew stronger.
As he turned away from yet another storefront in his search for a gift, he nearly stepped into the path of a group of kids speeding by on whirring pneumo-cycles. The blasts of air from their crafts sprayed dirty rainwater from the puddles in the street. Jack’s suit took the brunt of the upspray before he could shield himself with his umbrella. He silently watched the teenagers laugh and fly up the street, tormenting other passersby. Jack looked down at himself, then hurried down the road, looking for the nearest android supply station.
The stations were set up every few blocks across Eniac, and were stocked with outfits tailored to fit the different models, mechanical components in case something broke, and staffed with engineers to help with technical difficulties. Jack’s GPS told him that the closest one was a six minute walk away. I’ll have enough time to get a gift for Cassandra, he calculated as he hurried down the sidewalk. Barely. I’ll be cutting it close, but I’ll get one.
But then he stopped. His pistons screeched to a halt, joints snapping into place. His programming was confused as to why he had stopped, searching for errors in his systems. Jack turned his head to the empty storefront beside him. Empty of people, that was. Empty of living people.
Mannequins stood in the windows, clad in sharp, colorful suits. Mannequins striking elegant, dominant, impressive poses. Mannequins of varying heights, builds, statures. Jack was entranced. Masters’s Men’s Suits and Tailoring, read the sign. Jack’s artificial brain zeroed in on the extra ‘s,’ marking it as a critical typo, but that didn’t stop him from stepping inside.
A small bell jangled as the door shut behind him. He looked around as he politely closed his umbrella and propped it against the wall. The space was warm and soft. Wood-paneled walls, moss green carpet, yellow lighting that mimicked the warmth of a fireplace. Jack knew fires were supposed to be comforting, but when he tried warming himself by one, all he experienced was his internal temperature gauge rising. Despite the welcoming atmosphere, the space was silent and hollow. Jack stepped further inside, scanning for signs of life.
A man burst from a back room, carrying bundles of different fabrics. He was out of breath and smiled at Jack like he was gazing upon his newborn child. “Hello, sir!” he greeted, tossing the spools to the ground and hurrying towards his client. He gripped Jack’s hand and shook it firmly, then stopped. His beaming demeanor dropped as he studied the hand in his. “Oh,” he murmured. “You’re an android.” He stared into Jack’s face for a moment. “A Jackson model.”
Jack shifted uncomfortably. “Correct.”
The company that produced the most popular androids had designed six models to choose from, which consumers could make minor adjustments to. It had started with six female models (because of course it had), but they soon realized that women were just as deprived of companionship as men were, even more now that half the men in Eniac had purchased their product. The line of male models soon released, and just like that, a secondary species of people was injected into society, the same way drugs are welcomed into the veins of a junkie. But like such, many people disapproved of their existence. Jack wasn’t a stranger to android prejudice, and he braced himself for the usual hostility he faced from.
Instead, the tailor dropped Jack’s hand and sighed. “Take that suit off before it soaks into your undergarments,” he instructed, turning and walking to a paneled mirror. Jack obeyed, shedding his coat as he followed. The tailor donned a measuring tape around his neck and stuck several needles into a pincushion on his wrist. Jack positioned himself before the mirrors. His reflections stared back at him, flawless and symmetrical.
“So what brings you here?” the tailor asked as he took Jack’s damp jacket and tossed it onto a coat rack.
Jack began unbuttoning his shirt. “I need a new suit.”
“Well, I got that part,” the man chuckled as he helped pull the shirt away. “I meant what are you doing here, in my shop? I thought you robots had your own stations and whatnot.”
Jack nodded, looking at his reflection standing in his undershirt. “We do. I guess I just wanted…” The wheels turned in his head. “I don’t know why I came in here, actually,” he confessed. “I guess I got… curious.”
The tailor fidgeted with the tape measure around his neck as he studied Jack. Then he extended his hand again. Jack took it. “Konrad Masters,” he introduced himself. “And you are?”
“Uh… Jackson,” the android said slowly, giving Konrad’s hand a tentative shake. “I believe this has already been established. You may be experiencing a stroke. Do you feel dizzy, or numb in any part of your body?”
The tailor shook his head with a chuckle, then asked, “Jackson what?”
“Hayes.”
“Do you go by ‘Jackson’?”
“I have a partiality towards ‘Jack.’”
“Jack Hayes,” Konrad said with a nod as he pressed the tape against his client’s chest, measuring the span of his shoulders. He peered down his nose at the markings. “Good name. English origin, yes?”
Jack’s mind performed an extensive research in a fraction of a second. “Irish Gaelic. Derived from ‘descendant of fire,’ or ‘of Aed,’ an Irish mythological god.”
“Gosh, you’re no fun,” Konrad mused and extended Jack’s arms up and outward. He pressed the tape against the faux flesh of the android’s left shoulder and measured out to his wrist. “Knowing everything must be so boring. There’s nothing left to do.”
There was a pause as the tailor continued to work, but Jack felt the need to clarify. “I know everything, but I’ve experienced almost nothing.”
Konrad moved the tape over to Jack’s right arm and performed the same movement. “There’s a difference?”
“A very large one,” he confirmed, then hesitantly added, “I’m symmetrical. My measurements should be identical on both sides of my body.”
The tailor squinted at the numbers on the tape. “I know.” He continued measuring anyway. After another silent moment, he spoke again as he stood behind Jack and wrapped the thin strip of vinyl around his chest. “Give me an example.”
Jack stared out the store’s windows, watching the rain run down the glass. A blurry brigade of Eniac citizens marched by, armed with rainboots and umbrellas. “Rain,” he answered.
“Rain?” Konrad echoed.
Jack nodded. “Imagine you’ve never seen rain with your own eyes before, but you’ve spent your whole life in a library reading books all about precipitation, about how rain falls from clouds miles above our heads. How it can accumulate into floods that wipe out cities, then leave an arc of color behind as if to apologize. How it can come down as chunks of ice or soft, cold powder, or as acidic bile capable of corroding the world around you. You know all these facts about rain, and then you step out of the library and look up.
“And that’s when you realize there’s more to rain than any book could ever tell you. It’s… It’s big. It fills up the whole sky. And a smell you’ve never smelled before hits your nose, and the cold water runs down your face and into the corners of your mouth, and you can taste it. You can taste that it just fell from the clouds and plummeted thousands of feet, completely untouched by anything until it touched you. And there’s something I find… almost sacred about that.”
For a time, the only noise in the store was the faint buzzing of electricity under the constant percussion of the rainfall. The android turned his head to look at the tailor. He bore a strange, somber expression on his weathered face. “Did I say something wrong?” Jack asked.
Konrad waved this off. “No, no. I just…” He trailed off, rubbing the vinyl of the tape measure between his thumb and forefinger. “I just came to terms with something I’ve been thinking about for a long time,” he finished gravely. He didn’t elaborate, instead standing to wrap the measuring tool around Jack’s neck. Jack waited. He swallowed nervously, one of the many natural mannerisms he was equipped with to seem more like a man of flesh rather than wire. The tape measure flexed against his throat. Konrad frowned. “Stay still.”
“Sorry.” Jack fought against his curiosity for a while, but eventually it overwhelmed him. “May I ask what it is you’ve come to terms with?” he carefully inquired.
Konrad turned to a rack of button ups and suit jackets, rummaging through them with his back to Jack. “I understand now why my wife left me for one of your kind,” he said quietly.
Jack could think of nothing to say other than, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry for me,” the tailor said in a tone that held neither bitter malice, nor profound sadness. He spoke with the voice of a man who had finally made peace with a battle lost long ago. Detached, but not dismissive. Konrad spoke with veneration. “You’re all beautiful creatures, Jack,” he said. “Designed to be. I never had that birthright. I was a broken man for many years. Up to my eyes in alcohol and debt. But Charlotte was by my side every step of the way. Always there to pull me out of whatever trouble I tumbled into. And I could tell it hurt her each time.” He tore one of the hangers off the rack and held it up. “What do you think? The blue would go nicely with your eyes.”
“Sure,” Jack said.
Konrad slipped the sleeves over the robot’s arms. “She stuck with me because she thought she couldn’t do any better than an alcoholic running a tailor shop bleeding money. But then… they rolled you out. People made to please. And suddenly nobody stood a chance, least of all me. I remember the way she looked at me when she first heard about the robots. Looked at me like… like she was realizing for the first time that the world was larger than my little suitshop. Like she was staring at a cancerous limb about to be amputated.” He buttoned Jack’s shirt and fastened a navy tie around his neck. They met each other’s eyes for a moment. Jack’s were confused, Konrad’s tired. “Nobody stands a chance against you, Jack.” And then he smiled a crooked, asymmetrical smile. A human smile.
“I’m sorry,” Jack offered again, pulling the tie tighter around his throat.
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” the tailor dismissed. “This is just the way things are. Us humans, we’ll always be crafting our own downfall. Always have been, always will be.”
The bell gave one last solemn clank as Jack stepped out into the rain. He looked back at the door wistfully, wishing for something. One of his systems chimed suddenly. “Processing New Memory…” the pop up read. Jack blinked in surprise, unsure of how to react. He figured — he hoped — that his mind would register this as an experience worth keeping. But he could feel his brain stripping away bits and pieces, whittling down his memory of the tailor shop until all that remained were the ‘essentials.’
Jackson: got his suit ruined by the rain.
Jackson: got a new one from a human-run tailor shop.
Jackson: paid more here than at an android supply station.
Jackson: ran out of time to get Cassandra’s gift.
New opinion formed: Avoid human tailor shops — they cost more money and time.
Jackson smiled, glad his curiosity had allowed him to understand something new about the human world. He wouldn’t make this mistake again, he decided, and continued on his way to his date with the woman who owned him.
