Not a Robot

The mirror showed a reflection that wasn't my own.

I had bought many faces over the years, but that thing looking back at me from the mirror didn't look like any of them.

It was pale and patchy, balding and bloatedly blotchy, mottled with moles and speckled with skin tags.

I couldn't go out like that, not on a first date.

I didn't have the time or the money to shop for a new face, not now.

Because rent had gone up again, all my old faces were still leased out.

A default face would have to do.

It could have been worse. If I presented myself confidently, using a default could imply mystique and mystery instead of desperation, maybe.

No one wanted to look desperate, least of all a single guy agreeing to a meat-meet, a blind date in meatspace with minimal overlays.

I dipped my eyes down, muttered "FaceU, main menu," and with that, I banished that sickly paunchy thing from my field of view.

FaceU's slide-up menu bar came into focus for a single teasing second, but then a veritable forest of popups associated with the FaceU ecosystem of services superimposed themselves in front of that.

I cleared the first few without giving them any thought, one eyeswipe at a time, but I stopped once I saw the EBird reminder shuffle into the mix.

Ostensibly, Early Bird, or Ebird, was just a wellness app linked to FaceU, and my employers, that had one basic purpose: to proactively encourage people to heed the ancient wisdom of going early to bed so they could be early to rise, all to become healthier, wealthier, and wiser, represented by an EBird score and multiplier tier that was openly available to employers, prospective employers, police and security services, and also premium subscribers that were curious about the work-life balance of their peers... or rivals.

The incentive to wake up early was simple: a cumulatively rising score, with an escalating tier system with score multipliers for attaining sufficient EBird mornings in a row.

Sleeping in, of course, reset the multiplier.

Sure, the ostensible point of the bonus (and the cumulative reward multiplier), was to practice good sleep hygeine, but that didn't stop me from maintaining an uninterrupted EBird maximum bonus multiplier for over ten meatdays so far and counting.

Years ago, I had learned from experience that EBird only checked on me in the mornings of standardized business days.

I didn't need to sleep. I just needed to be awake long enough for EBird credit.

That would be easy. Just a few drinks, some dancing, maybe even getting lucky in spite of my momentary setbacks would easily take a few hours.

Knowing all of that, and reminding myself of it to boost my confidence, I then tried to swipe away the EBird timer.

Something was wrong with the optic cursor. It kept jittering, synched with my pulse, and each time I tried to "click" it mentally, I clicked just off to the side of the "got it/maybe later" box, keeping that obstruction in the way.

I knew all my software was patched and up to date. My headware was too new to be acting up now, especially while still under warranty.

The fault, it seemed, was in my meat.

My meateye, the left one to be specific, was twitching.

"Oh come on," I muttered out loud. I didn't have time for that.

I squeezed my eyelids shut, and blindly felt around for my eye dropper in the medicine cabinet behind the hinged mirror.

I found it. It felt light, almost empty, but there were enough drops left in it to do the trick, hopefully.

"Refill Y/N?" asked a pharmacy popup at the moment I squeezed the palm-sized plastic bottle.

I didn't humor the popup with a response and simply swiped it away. I then flung the empty bottle toward the corner of my shower booth.

If the container didn't pass the rim of a trash bin, the trackers didn't know what to make of it except maybe another user error.

I had a lot of litter on the floor because of that lifehack, but practices like that kept my premium and copays low.

I had finally cleared that popup along with the rest of the clutter that had built up ahead and behind of it.

All that I had left to do was pick the least unsightly of the defaults... but the selection bar was blanked out, faded out, and a login window was superimposed over it.

That was ridiculous. I hadn't logged out in years, not even while asleep, and I had been logged in for just as long.

That wasn't that unusual for me or for anyone else I knew. EBird wasn't the only service that offered loyalty perks for staying on board, after all. Even the games I played in the periphery of my view while at work rewarded me for staying present, just throwing in a cursory glance their way every few hours.

The problem was that had I forgotten which of my many, rarely needed, login passphrases went specifically to FaceU.

Making a mistake a few times would lock my account for longer than I had time to wait, and would also make a dent in my numerous credit scores, so I conceded the truth out loud.

"I forgot my passphrase."

My headware display grayed out for a moment, feeling like a tense, awkward forever I barely had time for. It could have been my imagination, but I almost felt as if the stuff in my skull was getting slightly warmer, even buzzing a little, as the proprietary security tech did its thing to prove the obvious on my behalf:

I was still me. No one stole my identity. I was not a robot.

"Prove you are not a robot. Please find a reflective surface and look directly into your own eyes," FaceU said, in a chirpy, almost manic voice. It was a command, given politely, if I wanted to avoid further trouble.

I was being commanded, for the sake of a passphrase reset, to face that thing in the mirror again.

I did.

It wasn't just the moles, skin tags, rashes, and bruising around the pinkened whites of those eyes that bothered me.

It wasn't just the the receded gums, the row of exposed tooth roots behind the trembling slacked lip that made it unpleasant.

It was the malice, the intentional malice. The spiteful, mocking contempt at that deformed goblin of a man staring back at me.

It wasn't me. It never was.

Even before I, as a late comer, joined the FaceU augmented reality community, I had a firm grip on what my meatface looked like, and it never looked like that, and I knew I never would.

I had optimal nutrition intake.

I had a flawless attendence record for indoor cardio, yoga, and performance mindfulness sessions.

This was a prank, a sick joke, some griefer across the world that must have hacked my account and put the saddest, sickest, most deformed mockery of myself in front of me that they could.

"Authentication failed," FaceU said. The voice was no longer chirpy or manic. It was blank, ominously blank. "Please set your headware to power saving mode and try again."

I did that. Again. I had already done that. I was as offline as I could be while still phoning in to FaceU.

"Please find a reflective surface and look directly into your own eyes."

I stared into those pinkened eyes again, close enough to see the crystallized crust around that thing's tear ducts.

"You won't win," I snarled to no one in particular, but I channeled my contempt for whatever sick mind decided to have a little fun with me that morning all the same.

"Authentication failed," FaceU said, with that blank enuncuation again. "Please state your security passphrase."

How could I state my passphrase if the reason for the automated interrogation was that I forgot my passphrase to begin with?

The thing in the mirror grimaced at my distress, mocking me more than ever before.

"I forgot my passphrase," I said, stifling a cough.

"Prove you are not a robot. Please find a reflective surface and look directly into your own eyes," FaceU commanded me, again.

I faced the thing again, staring with all the contempt I could muster. It blinked. It even started to water up in those pinkened, infected-looking eyes.

"Authentication failed," FaceU said one more time.

"Customer support line," I demanded.

FaceU did not respond.

"Customer support line!" I shouted.

My overlay blanked out, as if its battery died, but with no low-battery warning, nothing. Just... gone.

The door clicked shut, the locking bolt sliding into place, the way it was supposed to during an active shooter event.

Then the lights went out, as if I had failed to pay the bill.

In the dazzling darkness, there was such a contrast that I still felt a flash in my eyeballs as I rubbed at them.

Then, moments later, I heard clacking and grinding sounds from the air conditioner as the tired old mechanism, older than my apartment itself, slowed to a scraping gasping stop.

It got warmer almost immediately around me.

Stale and dry. I started coughing almost immediately.

A sliver of light from a passing car flashed through the gap under my locked door.

Just enough to light the mirror.

Just enough to see the thing again, waiting for me.

No malice, no hatred, in those watery eyes.

Pity, if nothing else.

Pity, and dread.

The light under the door passed as quick as it had come, and I was alone again.

The thing could no longer mock me or pity me.

I was alone enough, at last, to cry.