The Turing Test - [Open Novella Contest 2019 Shortlist]

13. Things Change

Davis's hand lands on my shoulder, squeezing gently. I look up to find him crouching beside me, his eyebrows peaked into unwanted pity. "It's going to be okay," he says, so earnestly that I almost believe that he believes it.

I just stare at him. Why is he comforting me? It means nothing. I'm not sad, I'm not scared. I only act that way for his benefit, because someone wrote it into me. I feel warm tears coating my face, physical manifestations of emotions without any just cause. There is no soul suffering under my inorganic skin. So why does he even care?

I guess that's what passing the Turing test means: To him, I'm human. Human enough, anyway, to trick him into showing empathy. But he knows now. Why does he still care? Maybe he just needs a reminder.

"You know when you go to the movies, and one of the main characters says their entire life is a lie?" I ask rhetorically, then plow right on. "My entire life is actually a lie. My memories are lies. I was never a kid. I was turned on like this, I've always been...this. But I remember something else."

I hate the fact that I can't steady my voice. There's no reason to be anything but monotone. I'm a machine. Every involuntary movement of my body is a lie, a betrayal.

I take a deep, unnecessary breath. "My mother used to make these cinnamon rolls on Sunday mornings. They were...so good. But she died before she could teach me the recipe, and I have wanted one ever since. And now I'm sitting here, and I know that I've never eaten one of those cinnamon rolls. I've never met the woman in that memory. I don't have a mother." I look at him, eyebrows raised in desperation. "Do you have any idea what that's like?"

His features sink, the shadowy ambiance making the landscape of his face look even older. He opens his mouth, and I swiftly cut him off before he can waste his energy trying to make me feel better.

"This explains everything. Why I was so stupid. Why I didn't even know what love was. I'm a—a machine! My brain is software. Just some piece of crap made up by some programmer somewhere with a naive worldview. And I'll never know what love really is."

"Ronnie," Davis ventures, his voice hesitant. He seems to be treading on eggshells, searching for the right words. "You just described the most human experience of all."

"What?" I laugh bitterly. "Thinking love could be determined by an algorithm?"

"Well, yeah. In a way." He adjusts his position so that he's sitting next to me, rather than straining his legs crouching. "I don't think there's one of us who didn't start out with some picture of what it will look like when we finally find the one. How perfect they'll be. This and that, and not this and not that. And along the way we find people who fulfill those criteria, but for whatever reason it doesn't work out."

I peer over at him from the corners of my eyes. I've never imagined Davis thinking any of those things. It's just not how he works.

Then again, there's a lot I don't know about him. Whatever happened between him and Sven, it seemed like he thought it was serious.

He sighs. "We get jaded. The original picture gets blurred. We learn. We learn to know better. But eventually something comes along, and it's just so unexpected that it blindsides you. You've no idea it's love while it's growing, and then one day you look up at the person beside you and these three words pop onto the tip of your tongue. Out of nowhere. And you get butterflies, because you really don't want to mess this one up."

I try to imagine the feeling, tiny wings fluttering against the inside of a stomach I don't even have. I can't.

"Have you ever felt that?" I ask.