Murmuration

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. Ben patiently tried to explain it to Shelly as he gently airbrushed the tiny purple veins on the back of her hand. It was from a movie he had loved since his high school days, an exaggeration of its tagline. Ben guessed her next question would be about the word tagline, but her language acquisition software was moving at such a rapid pace these days her questions had become nearly impossible to predict. She was years ahead of the last generation, but still struggled with basic concepts - how long had it taken to assign good and bad? Months? He finally had a breakthrough with fair and unfair. Fair was good, unfair was bad, a balanced scale. He’d just have to attack the nuances on a case-by-case basis. Cat had been so easy, but how would he explain fright?

Ben took off his readers and admired his work. He had been the one to approve her final design, but felt she needed a softer edge. A tiny cowlick in her hair, a mole on the side of her face just below her ear. Shelly would never pass for human, but the little touches seemed to put people at ease. The design team had collectively abandoned the smile. It was wide-eyed, distorted, eerie. Whether they used the words uncanny valley or funhouse mirror, it all meant the same thing. The sound designer had attempted a laugh, to be prompted when a human laughed in Shelly’s presence, to similar results. A complete backfire. Many complained it felt mean or mocking. It would go on for an inappropriate length of time. Ben had scrapped the idea in favor of small cosmetic adjustments. The focus groups had described her look as sweet and inquisitive, and Ben had privately congratulated himself for hitting the intended mark.

“Why would someone scream in space?” As she understood it, screaming was an extreme response to an injustice, amplified by emotion. The sound designer had ultimately decided screaming was an ability she wouldn’t need. There were a few different degrees of volume to her voice, but nothing that would cause alarm. She was, after all, originally conceived to provide comfort and care, to be helpful, to be literally self-sacrificing if need be. Screaming was counterproductive.

Ben paused before answering the question. It brought back so many memories of Maddie at this stage, when she was the why and he was the because. He had been so careful to give her an answer that wouldn’t confuse her, or worse yet, haunt her in some way. Ben’s brother, just five years older, had assigned himself the task of explaining death to young Ben. For the next year, Ben’s perception of “when someone goes away and never, ever comes back” looked a lot like a man sadly waving goodbye to his friends as he climbed the stairs into a bright red rocket. He wondered how he would feel next week watching Shelly loaded into her own rocket. Ben had joked at a dinner party that he might feel like he did when he drove Maddie to Oberlin. In his heart, he was sure of it.

”Someone might scream if something happened that threatened their existence.” Crap. That answer was going to open a floodgate. He sighed.

”Shelly, I need a minute of quiet so I can work on your hands.”

Ben set the airbrush to the side and slipped on the sleek black sensor gloves. It had become routine: making a fist, flexing the hands. He would watch Shelly’s remotely-controlled hands, moving in unison with his own. He always ended it the same way, twisting his wrists upwards and flipping a double-bird. Ben paused for a moment and stared into her soft, liquid eyes. She’s making eye contact, but she’s not blinking fast enough. It would need to be fixed in final tweaks. He typed into his notes app as Shelly pantomimed the same action with her thumb.

Shelly received her last upgrade three days before launch. The other engineers took turns with the sensor gloves, seeing what her eyes captured through the camera and performing intricate functions with her hands. The sensors in her hands could pick up fluctuations in temperature, but when Ben let her pet the cat, he struggled to explain soft. In fact, the more she acquired, the more he floundered. One night, in a fit of frustration, he had muttered, “I wish I knew how to explain this to you.”

Wish, wish, wish. What did this mean? He had cut the lesson short that night. Shelly filed this word away for their next session. Wish, wish, wish.

When the project had been announced, Ben’s software was still in its infancy. He had been a pioneer in his field, first in language cognition, then merging his work with artificial intelligence. There would always be hurdles, of course - no emotions to assign to words, no real means to describe sensory experience. Still, Ben had tried to find the very edges of her limitations. The mandate had been clear: she was to monitor the ship’s environment and its inhabitants, record moments for posterity (these days, a nicer word for “social media page”) and generally function somewhere between human companion and talking housepet. She could perform repairs to the ship’s hull, which would lesson the danger for humans and require less life-supporting equipment. Engineers on Earth could slip into her hand-and-eye functions to do the more delicate tasks. There had been substantial grumbling about Shelly taking a space reserved for a qualified human candidate, but in the end, Shelly was functional, practical, and sturdy.

The media campaign had assured her seat. The agency had published a photo of her prototype online, attached to a contest to find her a suitable name. A fifth-grader for Delaware had submitted “Shelly” as an acronym for something-something-evolving-language-learning-something. Ben had picked it because it was the only one of the top ten that didn’t reference an anime character or a body part. Privately, he had picked it as a tribute to his college girlfriend. He often wondered if the human Shelly ever saw herself in her namesake, opening her Facebook page and seeing a heart-shaped face, not unlike hers, and a cowlick exactly like hers. It was as close as Ben ever came to a greasy “what have you been up to?” private message, but he secretly hoped she would see it and be deeply flattered.

After the final update, Shelly’s questions seemed to focus on want. What is it to want? How do you wish? What does it mean to dream about something? Ben assumed he’d been letting her watch too much TV. He’d been trying to work out the bugs in her speech recognition tech, getting her accustomed to different pitches, accents, vocabulary choices. He spent countless hours trying to iron out the rough edges. Ben made a mental note to review Shelly’s media intake in the days after the launch. He convinced himself it was necessary, but in truth, he was nervous about how he’d fill his days while she was away.

On the day of the launch, Ben had been such a ball of nerves, he was sure the intern had been instructed to only bring him decaf. He hadn’t been allowed to walk Shelly to the craft, but watched her on an array of screens, each camera capturing a different angle. One of the stills would later become quite famous - a candid shot of Simon and Decker, each with a grin and an arm thrown around Shelly’s shoulders. She stared blankly, her programming compelling her to make eye contact with humans and lenses. The photo would become a topic of discussion for years to come, from 60 Minutes to the darkest recesses of the tinfoil-hat internet. As famous as it was, it wasn’t the moment Ben would remember.

As the countdown began, Ben’s eyes darted from one screen to the other. Decker was laser-focused on the task at hand, Simon looked nervous, Rivera tried and failed to contain her smile. The camera trained on Shelly was ceremonial, a gift to the fans.

Ten, nine -

What was that noise?

Seven, six, five -

Ben noticed the bottom of Shelly’s face moving almost imperceptibly. Is she panicking? Can she even panic?

Three -

Is she? Is she… laughing?

ONE

Some stared at computer screens displaying trajectory and temperature. Others said silent prayers or covered their mouths with their hands. No one seemed to be willing to take a breath.

Ben watched Shelly as she stared down the barrel of the camera, lunatic smile with a laugh to match - flexing her hands, turning her wrists, and flipping the entire world a defiant double-bird.