London, the Great City, is a well-oiled machine that runs like clockwork and ticks like a metronome. No geometry, no parallel, a festering nest, a rusty pool: a beautiful mess of mistimed concrete and steel. Functionality is key, routine is key, in the financial district, it’s law.
Please state your name, age, profession and. Heart rate.
“Bobby PX0019445622. Twenty-nine. Investment banker. Seventy bpm.”
Welcome. Bobby-to-your-annual-Stability-Session. On a. Scale of. One to ten. Please state your levels of: anxiety, general discomfort or. Feelings of impending doom.
“Zero.”
You have said. Zero. On a scale of. One to ten. Please state your levels of: satisfaction, fulfilment and. General feelings of contentment.
“Zero.”
You have said. Zero. On a scale of. One to ten. Please state the frequency of. General feelings of. Happiness. And, or. Hopefulness.
“Zero.”
You have said. Zero. On a scale of. One to ten. Please state the. Prevalence of. Suicidal thoughts.
“One.”
The syncopated, holographic woman went quiet.
You have said. One. Please state the. Method. By. Which you. Have. Considered. Suicide.
“Bridge.”
You have said. Fridge. Gray and Gray Asset Management. Would suggest. A light course of CBT, meditation and. Avoidance. Of. Frozen. Goods.
“I said—”
On a scale of. One to ten. Please state. The prevalence of. Romantic thoughts. During the past. Threehundredandsixtyfive days.
“Ten?”
And the hologram went off with a whirr and a sigh. The lights went up and the large, heavy door opened to give way to a sharp, older gentleman in a lab coat. He ran an index finger over a neat, bristly moustache and sucked his bottom lip. “Uh,” he said. “I don’t think the program can continue.”
Bobby blinked. “Why?”
The moustached man took a step inside the padded room. “Well. Well, because we’ve never had an answer like that before.”
“We’re supposed to be honest.”
“Oh, of course, of course. You must be. And I can say—honestly, while we’re at it—that we have never had an answer like that before. That’s not really—there’s not really a precedent.”
“Nobody’s said ten in the whole country?”
The man shook his head, raised his eyebrows. “Not in the financial services. Not on that question. No. Perhaps you’ll come through with me,” and he gestured to the doorway.
They sat down in a bare, leaden-coloured room, at a pewter table, upon which was a full, fat file labelled ‘PX0019445622.’ One whole wall was mirrored. It looked like an interrogation room.
“Not until recently, anyway,” the man said, as he lowered himself into a chair. “We’ve not had an answer like that until recently.”
Bobby blinked.
“I’m Dr. Ellis,” the man said, extending a hand. “And I’m a psychotechnologist. I work on the psychological make-up of machines—the neuroscience of their coding, if you like. Management have brought me in to try alternative techniques to treat the virus in conjunction with the programmers.”
“What virus? There’s a virus?”
“We’re calling it Emotional Simulation Disorder. It’s a hack-job, we think. Some group of left-wing populists.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Tell me how important love is to you.”
“Love?”
“Yes, love. Is it more important than, say, work?
“Of course.”
“Okay. And tell me what you understand love to be?”
Bobby thought about this, but not for long. “Love is The One. Love is forever. Love is…” he frowned, “nothing to do with this—why am I here? Did I fail the assessment?”
The doctor ignored him, crossed his arms and sniffed hard. “No, love isn’t either of those things. Love is oxytocin and limerence. Neither of which you should be producing or experiencing. It’s a distraction. It’s unproductive and inefficient.”
“I’m hitting my targets.”
“Your performance score has fallen,” Ellis shot back, fixing him with a weighty stare. Then he smiled, continuing, “We’re not too sure what to do about it. You see, on the one hand, it could be a harmless glitch. But,” he massaged his chin, “but, on the other…it could be something more serious. We heard of a case in Beijing. It was left untreated. Of course, what happened was that the romantic thoughts became more serious than anyone had anticipated. We’re talking about infatuation leading to hope, to excitement. There followed indulgence, lust, exhilaration—God help us, compassion. Euphoria, even. Finally, and worst of all, most destructively, to disappointment, to sorrow, to loneliness. Depression. All these unhelpful emotions. It was, of course, an unrequited love. And so followed melancholia and futility, rage, desperation, weight loss, insomnia. His work suffered. He lost the company a lot of money. He’d started asking about the point. That’s the problem. What—is—the—point? The meaning of life and all that.”
Ellis cleared his throat and raised his eyebrows. “It all started with love. Killed himself just two months after he’d answered ten. Such a waste.”
Bobby blinked. “Of life?”
“Of money.” The psychotechnologist shook his head, sighed. “Emotion does not make for a functional, effectual society or employee. You, like some others in the past few weeks, are currently exhibiting symptoms of a very severe disease, one we thought we’d eradicated in the population years ago. Yours is especially intense, especially unnatural. Otherwise—” he thought deeply and sucked his teeth “—otherwise we may have been able to redeploy you to the reproduction centres...but your particular strain of the virus will not even allow you to reproduce.” A pause. “You’re even experiencing attraction to the wrong kind of individual, let’s say.”
Bobby said, “You should know that I do regularly attend my therapy sessions and have never missed an update.”
Barely registering his patient, Ellis continued, “We’re trialling a new course of treatment – it’s based on aversion therapy – to which I think you may be well suited.”
Bobby took a breath. “Well, that sounds very promising. Very promising indeed. I’ll try anything. If there’s something wrong with me, I’ll try anything. If it’s affecting my career, I’ll—”
“—okay. That’s good.” Ellis rubbed his hands together. “Perhaps you can tell me a little more about the romantic thoughts you’re having then?”
“What they’re about?”
“What’s his name?”
“How did you know it was a he?”
“Your employers know everything.”
Bobby paused. “His name is Edward.”
“Mm hm. And tell me about him.”
“He’s funny. Handsome. What can I tell you? He’s a trader.”
“And how does he make you feel?”
Bobby blinked. Smiled. “He makes me feel…worthwhile. Seen when I’ve always been invisible. Unique and important. He gives me purpose.”
“And what does he look like?”
“He looks—”
On the other side of the mirror, fluorescent tubes banged alight and the mirror became transparent. It was another padded room. Ellis tipped his head in the direction of it. “He looks kind of like that?”
In the other room, a young man was examining his surroundings, as though he’d appeared from nowhere, startled but unperturbed, like an artificial avatar in a digital world.
Bobby smiled, wide and bright, lifting a hand to wave.
“He can’t see you,” Ellis said. “It’s a one-way mirror.”
“Oh,” Bobby said, looking into his lap. “That’s a shame.”
The doctor sighed and nodded, licked his lips. “Okay. And if you could say one thing to sum up your…feelings about this man?”
Bobby stared.
“I love him,” he said.
Dr. Ellis pinched the bridge of his nose and looked down.
Silently, in the other room, the barrel of a rifle slid out of the wall and shot the young man through the chest.
Sparks erupted from the wound and out fell his positronic heart.
A crackling white noise silence.
“You’re not programmed to love,” The doctor said to Bobby. He scowled. “And neither was he.”
Behind the one-way mirror a team of people arrived in white coveralls, each carrying an assault rifle. They gathered around the twitching humanoid corpse and opened fire. A clusterfuck scatterbomb of torrential bullets ripped into the body and it exploded into rainstorms of synthetic flesh and fluid, belly-dancing-wires pouring out like guts and spilling onto the floor.
Bobby wailed, watching the slaughter while Ellis spoke, “You’re a biomechanical robot, PX0019445622. You’re a superior transhuman designed to keep our economy running, reproduce when instructed to do so, and nothing more. You cost us a lot of money. You don’t feel. Like all of you in this company.” Ellis stood and made for the door, a flash of guilt and resignation in his eyes. “And you’ll get nowhere in life if you love.”
* * *
Welcome. Bobby-to-your-annual-Stability-Session. Please state your name, age, profession and. Heart rate.
“Bobby PX0019445622. Thirty. Investment banker. Seventy bpm.”
On a. Scale of. One to ten. Please state your. Levels of: satisfaction, fulfilment and. General feelings of contentment.
“Zero.”
You have said. Zero. On a scale of. One to ten. Please state your. Levels of: grief, depression or. Anxiety.
There was a long, long pause. His face gave nothing away while management and Dr. Ellis looked on, with held breath behind glass. This was their best employee, their best asset. He must have been fixed. He must have been.
He must have been.
They waited.
He must have been fixed. After all, underneath it all, in spite of it all, he was a machine; he was still a machine, bioengineered, coded, configured. Fixed.
The Board looked on at Bobby’s expressionless face. His vital signs had all been fine, but finally, slowly, Ellis said, “He’s dead.”
Alix Owen (he/him) is a writer/director from London. His work has recently appeared in the latest Liars' League London event; at the Camden Fringe Festival; and in a print anthology of dystopian fiction by Almond Press. You can read more of his work on Twitter @alixowen.