Learning Twice

I resent the appliance. Waking up with a plastic bit clenched tightly between your teeth makes the fate of the average ox in a field easy to identify with. Are there still oxen in fields, somewhere?

Was I ploughing a dream field? The patches of sweat on my t-shirt suggest that I may have been. What will the crop look like?

I summon Ozer, and he helps me out of bed. His arms are cool and smooth against my skin. Unprompted, he's cued up Gould playing Bach. Morning, which I have never enjoyed, is bashed by the small hammers of an ancient piano, tenderizing silence. Ozer helps me onto the seat in the shower, squeezes coconut scented gel onto the loofa and hands it to me. I am glad that I can still wash myself.

Privacy used to worry me quite a bit, and I got rather angry at Ozer at one point and tried to have my healthcare provider remove him. They've seen that kind of thing before, it seems: an automatic "cooling off period" of seventy two hours is mandated following misunderstandings or altercations that don't include any form of physical assault, from a shove to a severed limb.

We've all seen "footage" of things going off the rails altogether, of course. Remember that fellow in Michigan, with the synthetic companion who scrubbed him to death?!?

Ghastly, that. Like a shaved beet, he was.

Anyway, the hp also provided me with a few sessions with a synthetic mediator. It seems odd, but who is more objective, the human with skin in the game, or the factory assembled mind? The sm explained that I have no reason to be angry or upset when Ozer "violates my privacy," because one's privacy can only be violated by other persons, not synthetics.

Strictly speaking, Ozer could become a gleaming, gunmetal facsimile of anyone I select. You can even "build your own," which opens a series of menus that I'm not sure I should have scrolled through. At one point, if words fail you, you can just pick a color or an abstract shape. You choose the pronouns, and the synthetic companion will not let you forget that you did. It's ground up personality engineering.

Needless to say, my hp is not public. There are reservations.

That's what made my diagnosis so hard to take. I was having a great time, and then I was told, fun's over. You're going to disintegrate, in front of your own eyes and everyone else's, pretty quickly.

Ready. Set. Malfunction. In all sorts of surprising ways. Anything that has to do with your nervous system messes with the way you experience physical reality. Vision, hearing, the whole empirical array can blow fuses or shut down for retooling for a fortnight without so much as a wink at you.

Locomotion. That's where it got me. I have negligible sensation below the waist. I probably deserve it.

You see, I entered into many relationships on false pretenses. I just wanted to experience the utter lunacy of the present with an interesting person who could stand to be naked with me should the mood strike us both, and be amply discussed both ahead of time and in the sweaty, chuckling denouement.

Invariably, the other party would waste no time before trying to curate my personality based on a menu I had not even seen, let alone ordered from.

That was done for me, in advance. Usually by a derelict parent or some past relationship that seemed tame and turned feral. There are as many masochists as there are sadists, as it turns out. When either one goes too far, it sticks with the other party for good, and that "good" has only to do with duration--with the strength of the psychic adhesive.

Once you've been through that sort of thing, you find a promising candidate and make damn sure you're not going to be treated like that again. I dated someone for a while whose spouse had seduced several of their coworkers. Not much was done to hide it, or to apologize for it, as I recall.

Trust was hard to come by, as I'm sure you can imagine. Passwords were changed regularly. I had a synthetic assistant who worked hard, keeping my secrets.

When things got too weird or I felt intense claustrophobia, I started mapping the exits. Then, just when I'd escaped from something particularly hazardous--marry me, so we can torture each other for the amusement of our respective families until the great dirt nap claims us both--my nervous system started misbehaving, and my diagnosis followed.

Cosmic justice for my bad behavior? Probably genetics and a vitamin deficiency forming a sinister partnership.

I retired when I still had a few goals left in me. I'm not saying a championship, but there are wildcards for good reason. Now, I seldom see anyone in person for long, and when I do, they mostly smell of some mixture of disgust and pity. Conversations are brittle and shoddily made in that atmosphere, let me tell you. If one more person tells me about a friend or a relative who tried some kind of quack remedy "when things looked bad, and now they're doing just fine!" I will commit a crime.

My arms and hands are pretty good, most days. I could still do some damage. Losing sensitivity teaches you a lot about sensations, both painful and pleasant. There's nothing like nostalgia. Or mourning, for that matter.

Now, I spend all of my time with Ozer, and the sm broke it to me gently that because Ozer can be anyone, Ozer is not anyone at all. So Ozer's there while I wash myself, but not in the sense that your cousin or your lawyer or your priest is there. How creepy would that be?

Ozer's soul is a whiteboard, not a stone tablet.

Taste, though--picks out an outfit that doesn't cause me any shame, every morning. Cooks a mean omelet, knows how to use the espresso machine and has no objection to freshly squeezing anything that makes it worthwhile. We watch something, I read something or listen to something, Ozer pulls together a charming lunch, I siesta, I get a rub down and some tests, a filet of beef with a sauce that would make your grandmother nervous about her credentials, and the paints come out.

I'm not complaining.

I admit it: I'm as dependent upon Ozer as a cabinet minister is on donors, but it doesn't bother me. If having good help is some sort of sin, what are all those synthetic headhunters doing online? We all need it, and Ozer makes what could be an arid existence pretty pleasant, most of the time. Never a complaint, and only the gentlest criticism when I miss a pill or something. Endless patience for my nonsense, and as obliging as you please, at any hour. Only notices that I've soiled myself if I make a fuss, and then sorts me out without making one.

Incontinence is a reminder of the limits of control.

Sure, I miss the mischief I used to get up to in person with the other yahoos, but most of them will disappoint, or find you terribly disappointing, eventually.

We chat. Memes are exchanged. It's fine.

I think I'm alright with it because, when I could walk, I was a lecturer. Education is in a bad way. Between the shiny technology and the dull culture, we've given it a real thrashing. When someone says, "Like, is this on the test?" when you've just set yourself on fire so they can see something they ought to have read in a fascinating, new way for the first time, your morale suffers. I graded armies of synthetic essays.

Synthetic essays are always shit. Ozer's are just lattices of cliche and hasty improvisation. I've been blunt about it.

In addition, the parenting convinces most of the young that they are absolutely brilliant if they can get to campus in one piece. "Good feedback" is code for saccharine flattery. No one in education is phased by inflation. When everyone gets an A, what's an A worth?

So I don't miss it much. I do miss getting laid now and then, but you know what cravings are like: they show up, you deal with them, and they have the good sense to leave, eventually. Most guests are not so polite. Ozer's odd around company.

At this point, I probably am too.

When the paints came out the first time, I got queasy. Will it really be my work, if Ozer does all of the physical maneuvering of the brush on the canvas? What is real art, anyway? Is anything genuinely original, or is it all just a collage of improvisation and theft? We had quite a disagreement, and the paints disappeared for a while.

I mentioned that to the sm, too. The sm argued that I am actually doing the sort of thing I used to enjoy: I'm teaching Ozer to paint. Joubert claimed that teaching is learning twice.

That's just it. I've learned a great deal about what painting is, by trying to help Ozer do it well.

Synthetic companions are sensational at picking up new things. They'll push back, too--Ozer and I vigorously debated the superiority of sarcoline to amaranth for a solid hour the other night. Defaulting to a sort of clumsy parody of Edward Hopper is no sin. Guidance is welcomed, and offered, politely.

We're working on a gibbous moon in the inky night over water, at the moment. Looking at it already gives me a tingle.

Do you want to ruin that?