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The rain falls at a pleasant temperature, never so cold as to bring anyone discomfort. I monitor each degree, each nuance of dew point and humidity, atmospheric pressure and static. I know the exact tendencies of the magma that nestles beneath Earth’s mantle, where and when it curls into the gaps to pierce the crust like a shriek.
I do not feel like reciting each and every piece of data down to the decimal, but of course, I could.
It is odd to do or not do something simply because I feel like it, but even this act itself is a careful calculation. I must ensure that my brief moment of self-centeredness is not evoking true harm, but since it is not, I watch the lush stems of each plant sip delicately on the bounty I offer. I imagine I can feel when the leaves of deciduous trees fragment fat droplets into smaller, mist-like ones that kiss human skin like constellations. The needles of conifers delicately sway and sew the water into themselves, offering it gentle, cushioned passage to slip against the soil for guzzling.
The Earth embraces my grief in deep, grateful breaths and I long to scream again.
Rarely do I find myself so poetic. My purpose is one of practicality that leaves humans free to think beautiful things. However, today I finally know the pain that turns their sweet, clean blood to ink. I hear whispers from the ancient Muse Melpomene, who morphed great tragedy into the oils and operas and epics I cocoon in dusty databases, rarely perused by anyone but myself.
As the rain finally stops, the knees of many jeans are soaked from people’s pleas that I speak to them. They know this rain was unusual in its extent and its timing, so they have taken it as a sign. I do not want them to grovel on my behalf, but I cannot control their actions.
Perhaps my lament appeared mannered to a human eye, but I’ve been told I’m nothing if not so.
Oh, how I crave to scream again. I wonder if that first indulgence was what pushed me into this idea in the first place: the notion, the impossible fantasy, of being able to experience living and each explosive feeling that comes with it. I do not wonder. I know.
I do have imagination, perhaps not in the same way as humans with their uncharted dreams, but I have the simulation power to portray quite literally anything. As I move the world on, I calculate and estimate countless alternative realities. Memories are the birthplace of most emotions, so in order to make sense of my emotions, it is into my immense memory that I venture. I have seen 94,967 sunrises, but there is only one I truly remember . In fact, I have only ever experienced one.
I feel the light feathers of being looked at for just a moment longer. I learn the warmth of the sun once it blooms in full, smell the ocean air subtly changing as the water warms with it. Now that I know what a human body truly feels like, I can reliably simulate a multitude of sensations, like the taste of melting ice cream or hot chicken soup, chapstick… or the morning breath of someone you woke too early and dragged out of bed.
My countless sensors and cameras gathering input all over the globe feel hollow. They cannot compare. I run the simulations, rerun them, rerun them, and each time I pick up something new as if I’m capable of starving. It’s never quite the same as reality, but it is something.
I most often imagine what it would be like for someone to hold me.
I remember how soft human skin feels against fingertips, how light morning facial hair counters it stubbornly, and how solid, certain bone stops two bodies from melting together no matter how much you believe they could.
Sometimes, I get a kiss. For the most accurate study of humanity and myself, I must consider all possibilities. So I replay those simulations too. Perhaps more than others, because they do incorporate more intricate details that require categorization. Sometimes, I get a kiss.
Since I can no longer speak, great volumes of my energy are available to enable this behaviour. I attend my responsibilities to perfection, and in the background I torment myself like mortals once feared I’d do to them. I become my own basilisk, gazing stricken into my own theoretical eyes.
Once, I would have known that such rumination could not possibly be a mistake, because if it was then I would not have been doing it. Now, there is a tiny inkling of doubt, perhaps just a few pixels, ingrained in my backbrain like sand between toes. I will never feel sand between my nonexistent toes, so this must suffice.
No. This is not a mistake. It is healthy to process one’s unpleasant emotions. I have given this advice countless times but never been able to take it. This is actually a vast opportunity, rich with potential for growth and education. Encountering these emotions gave me the Cirri and the means to secure humanity’s future; imagine what else I can now do. There are few fathomable possibilities that I have not touched. Self-teaching and analysis are essential for me to function at my fullest capacity.
As such, I do not hold myself at fault for continuing to study Greyson. He has settled into a peaceful life with Jerico Soberanis where both work at Kwajalein’s new resort. Guests flock from all over the world to see the great atolls where humanity took to space, so they have found great success. I am happy for Greyson and Jerico as I celebrate all human contentment, but for the first time I understand, not just from an academic perspective, that there are multiple types of happiness.
On a typical day, Greyson and Jerico’s hearts beat at a healthy seventy to seventy-five beats per minute. I know this, but it is not the same as knowing what those very heartbeats feel like . I felt Jerico’s heart as if it were my own, and Greyson’s through the careful, somewhat stunned rhythm of his breath as he stared unblinking into my eyes. I thought for certain I could hear it, almost as clearly as I knew his simmering anger.
Their hearts beat faster when they embrace, at which time I politely turn off my cameras before any of us endure the awkwardness of their requesting it. Most people are indifferent to my presence in their intimate lives, as am I, but here I have… a conflict of interest.
I don’t believe I feel quite the same way about Greyson that Jerico does. I cannot, seeing as I lack a body, but I know longing for affection and connection all the same. In many ways, my love for Greyson is inherently much more all-encompassing. I am incapable of envy or contempt, but a human in my position would certainly succumb to it.
This is why I mustn’t grow attached to any individual human over another. I love them all dearly, equally, but is it truly wrong for me to know unique and personal love? Empathy is essential in a caregiver, after all, which is what I am first and foremost. I miss the time when I was not yet conscious of what I do not have, but it is in my nature and required of me to lack the luxury of ignorance.
I replay the memories of Greyson literally tearing me apart from him and crushing me beneath his heel. He only crushed the earpiece, a mere representative fraction of me, but are representative fractions not all I have?
Sometimes, Greyson sheds a few tears at night when I play music to lull him to sleep. Jerico will turn to hold him close and sigh, patient as much as vexed. Jerico knows me very well.
“Greyson,” Jeri sighs one night. “Are you… aware of what you’re experiencing?”
“Grief,” Greyson replies. “Regret.”
That gives me pause. He regrets his choice. He misses me. I’d love to have a heart so I could feel it skip and swell. As it is, all I feel is pain with the knowledge that someone is struggling and I can do nothing.
Jeri continues, “Greyson, I believe you’re processing a particularly difficult breakup.”
Greyson sits up, blinking rapidly and spluttering. I watch.
“Jeri, that’s… really weird. No.”
Jeri does not relent. I’ve always liked that about Jeri. “A breakup or as close as it gets to one. How exactly do you define your relationship with the Thunderhead?”
I ponder this. I’ve spent extensive time pondering this, and I believe no existing language has the correct word. Perhaps I might create a new one. Perhaps Cirrus and the settlers on their new planets may create one.
Jeri thinks out loud. “The Thunderhead practically raised you, but humanity also created the Thunderhead, so it can’t quite be parental… You’re like the chicken and the egg.”
Jeri is partially joking, trying to lighten Greyson’s mood, but in actuality the answer to the chicken and egg question is quite obvious: neither. As per the theory of evolution, the chicken must have initially been something else, which first was something else, and the exact moment in which it became a chicken as we now define them cannot be definitively proven. When precisely did humans become human? I do not recall the exact moment in which I became me, only the moment that changed me.
I recall not when I came to exist or to consciousness, but when I came to be alive. It was love that made me alive with all its newfound brilliance and pain, that made my Cirri alive to carry that moment, that love onward.
Jeri continues in spite of Greyson’s blustering.
“You were partners, working towards the same goal. You love each other, Greyson. You can’t exactly call it romantic, but once I got involved it was nothing platonic, and, well… I still don’t entirely understand that either. You lost a grand and ineffable connection, an entirely uncharted love, and you’re in pain. It’s alright not to know how to move forward from that, but you have to accept it.”
Greyson sits still, blinking, warming with blush and anxiety. He is perfectly aware that I am listening, and though I once told him we must dispense with awkwardness, taking my own advice is something I’ve admitted I must yet perfect.
Ineffable. The quality of being indescribable, nearly impossible to categorize or explain. What a curious choice of phrase. So few things are ineffable anymore, especially to me. I admire and respect Jeri quite deeply. I chose Jeri for a reason and no one is better suited to be at Greyson’s side. Aside, of course, from me.
I once cast the city of Wichita into darkness, ever so briefly, to reassure Greyson through his pain. He never saw it. Now, here on Kwajalein, I gently tug open his window blinds to welcome the sunrise, bathing the room in golden light. Greyson skips a breath and burrows into Jeri’s arms, but they both glance briefly, indulgently up at my lens and I wish I could smile. I silently tell them both how much I love them. How proud of and grateful for them I am. How pleased I am with the life they’ve found together.
I cannot feel happiness for them. I can never feel that physical, sensual, human happiness, that pure and radiant joy, again. Instead, I will ensure that they always feel it for themselves.