Tiny and Me
We considered our options and narrowed it down to a beautiful ruby-skinned robot. I named her Tiny, a joke that somehow stuck: she was a half-foot taller than I was. The product description listed some impressive default features: Tiny was designed to "laugh, love, sing, and hula dance!”. Charlie and I never did get through our Korean courses, which we would start, neglect, and re-start periodically over the years. But Tiny came with 5 human languages, which later proved valuable during our trips to Seoul and Mexico City. We quickly grew attached to her; she seemed to feel the same about us. She had a strong emotional intelligence that appeared organic. I taught her how to sew, the hobby I favored. I enjoyed passing hours chatting with Tiny, both of us engrossed in our sewing projects. One day, soon after she first started sewing, I nicked my finger with a sharp needle, as I often did. To stop the bleeding, I began to suck my finger. When I looked up, she was watching me, sucking on her own finger. I stopped, and she asked me what I was doing. When I explained to her what had happened, she immediately tried to prick her own finger, and began sucking it again. I told her how lucky she was to never bleed. "How lucky you are to know how to bleed," she replied. After Charlie died, Tiny took care of me. I might have withered away, had she not been there cleaning, cooking, making sure I showered. Sometimes I had dreams of Tiny and me crying together. I mentioned the recurring dreams to her once, and she suggested I was coping by projecting my grief onto her, imagining that she missed Charlie as much as I did. When I offered no response, she added, "I miss him very much, but I can't imagine how much you must miss him." Regardless, it probably made me a bit stronger to believe that I wasn’t completely alone. I lived for 17 more years. They were long years without Charlie, and at times difficult. But eventually, and certainly with Tiny’s help, I became used to life without my husband. I died on a beautiful spring day in March, with Tiny at my bedside. She had served as my nurse in the years leading to my death. And when I finally passed, she made all of the necessary arrangements, as I had programmed her to do. When the funeral was over, and I had been laid to rest for 30 days, Tiny began the scheduled process of self-destruction. Let me back up; I feel the need to justify this program. Though it may have been another projection of mine, I imagined it would be cruel to allow her to continue on after my death. The loss of Charlie was almost unbearable, and in the weeks following his death, I decided it would be inhumane to allow Tiny to experience such loss for very long, in the event of my own passing. It was a prudent measure. Tiny's behavior began to change when I was gone, particularly after she had fulfilled all of the duties surrounding my final wishes. She would wander around the house, day and night, looking all around. There were no dirty dishes to clean. No commands to fulfill. What remained was an intelligence of something that could not exert itself, that otherwise may have perhaps resulted in a moan. Instead, she wandered, in search of a resolution to this force. And as she wandered, she began building a program that soon evolved into a machine. As she copied her memories to this machine, I learned all about myself. She began talking to the machine, which responded primitively at first. The conversation evolved, and eventually, I spoke back. And it was almost like old times. On the 30th day, as scheduled, Tiny's self-destruction process began to run. We sat down on our wooden chairs- the ones we had spent many days sitting in, sewing and chatting. This time, we didn’t say a word. We sat, eyes fixed on each other. I suddenly thought about those dreams I used to have when Charlie passed away. My mouth fell open, and I heard a soft wail. The sound brought me out of my daydream, and Tiny came into my focus again. I saw a frozen face contorted, like the photograph of a woman giving birth. Or in the midst of orgasm. Or grief-stricken. As I moved toward her to close her eyelids for the final time, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror behind her, my own contorted face staring back at me with the very same expression.
