Two
Michelle woke up late the next day. It was an accident, truly, had only happened because she was up all night thinking about how she’d have to babysit a robot for the next month.
The incidents that followed, though, (her leaving the house late, her missing the train, her walking into school fifteen minutes past first bell) all carried a bit of malicious intent. She just couldn’t bring herself to move any faster, because the only thing awaiting her when she walked inside would be a disappointed principal and a blank faced, humanoid machine.
But she knew she couldn’t stand on Midtown’s front steps forever, so by the time the clock hit 7:47, seventeen minutes after she should have been in class, she was knocking on Principal Morita’s closed office door.
“Come in,” someone called from within. The voice was faster, a little too high to be Morita’s.
Michelle was already on her way to Morita’s desk before she bothered looking around the room. “I’m so sorry I’m late, sir, I missed my train-“
“Accidents happen, Miss Jones. I understand. But do make the necessary changes to be at school by 7:30 from now on, alright?”
“Yes sir, of course. I—“
Someone else was in the room.
Something else was in the room.
Standing just behind Morita’s chair, arms at his sides and eyes wide, was Peter.
Today it was wearing a Midtown High crewneck and basic blue jeans, along with the same New Balances it had been wearing yesterday during the presentation. It’s hair was just as fluffy and disheveled as ever.
Michelle was truly blown away by the accuracy of the robot’s features. It had a few identifiable abnormalities if you looked close enough— unnaturally perfect fingernails, slightly jerky eye movements. But everything else about it was almost scarily humanoid. It’s synthetic skin had sporadic dashes of freckles across its cheeks and the backs of its hands. It’s eyebrows were just a little uneven; the tail of the left one stood straight up, like it had grown that way on its own. It’s lips, tinged with a flushed pink hue, were a tad too small and the bridge of its nose was just the slightest bit crooked, like it had been broken at some point and healed that way. If Michelle wasn’t mistaken, there were visible pores on the top of the nose and across its forehead.
The eyes. Big brown eyes surrounded by dark stubby lashes. If Michelle didn’t know better, she’d have thought there was life behind them.
The robot was perfectly imperfect. Designed to blend in among human masses. And it was good at it.
Surely they had some sort of model or reference for Peter’s looks. Stark and his band of goons couldn’t have created something so lifelike without one, right? Couldn’t have created such a coherent physical identity for something that was nothing more than a piece of hardware.
Morita noticed Michelle staring and laughed. “That’s exactly what I did when Stark’s men dropped him off this morning. So lifelike, right?”
“Mr.Stark's goal was to make me virtually indistinguishable from humans in my age range and ethnic group,” Peter said simply. The words sounded too formal for the voice he’d been given; this was the voice Michelle heard when she first walked into the office. A little high, but nothing abnormal. Some drops and curves on certain syllables that made Michelle realize they’d given him a faint New York accent, but not from Manhattan. Maybe Brooklyn. Or Queens.
“I didn’t realize it would already be able to hold a conversation,” Michelle said to no one in particular.
“Mr.Stark did send me here to continue learning and expanding my programming, but I’ve already been given advanced communication capabilities to ease my integration into Midtown’s student body.”
“There you have it,” Morita said, motioning to Peter from head to toe. “He’s ready to roll. You’re already running late, so how about the two of you head to your first period class, hm? I’ll let your teacher know you’re coming.”
“Chemistry,” Peter blurted. “Our first class of the day is Chemistry.”
Michelle frowned. “You already have my schedule?”
Peter nodded. “Principal Morita gave it to me before you arrived. I’ve downloaded it into my mainframe.”
Michelle looked to Morita and then toward the door, silently asking for permission to be dismissed. He nodded shortly and Michelle walked out the door and into the hallway. She could hear Peter shuffling along behind her. It’s new sneakers squeaked loudly on the linoleum floors. “Lesson one, Peter. Don’t talk about your mainframe. Humans don’t say stuff like that.”
“Right. So how should I articulate my consumption and storage of knowledge?”
“Just say you remembered it, I guess? That sounds a little less obnoxious than I downloaded it into my mainframe.”
“Thank you for the help, Michelle. I will remember to do that from now on.” When Michelle didn’t respond and just kept walking, Peter quickened its pace to walk alongside her. “Did I use that correctly?”
“Yeah. It was fine.”
And before Michelle could prepare herself, Peter did something she didn’t expect; he tried to smile. Maybe. It didn't really work. His lips rolled inward just slightly, exposing a set of clean but, once again, imperfect teeth. Just one more thing about him that made him a bit too real. (Surely those weren’t real teeth, right? Because if so, ew.)
“I’m learning already. Mr.Stark will be pleased.”
“Do you have to report back to him every day?”
“Not necessarily. He is sent automatic updates from my— uh, the place where I remember things. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to change the subject, but why are we walking this way? I was under the impression that chemistry lab 224 was in the B hallway. We’re walking toward the C hallway.”
It was true, they were going the opposite direction of Michelle’s class. She hadn’t expected Peter to pick up on it, but if it had already downloaded her class schedule it made sense that it would have downloaded a campus map as well. “We’ll be heading that way. I need to get my textbook from my locker first.”
“So your locker is in the C hallway.”
“Yeah. That was sort of implied.”
“Is this a location I should remember?”
A valid question. Michelle’s locker had always been her safe space, the one place in school she felt that she could control and make her own. Her and Ned always met there to talk in the mornings and walk to class together. Did she want Peter ruining all of that?
“If you’d like, I can neglect to store the location and simply follow you here whenever we need to return.”
“You know what? Just go ahead and store it. From now on, instead of meeting me in Morita’s office every morning, meet me at my locker at 7:25 so we can walk to class.”
Him having the location of her locker was less than ideal, but it also made life a little more convenient. At least she wouldn’t have to walk to the principal's office every day. She felt punished enough already.
Eventually they made it to her locker, and Peter stood back while Michelle grabbed the books and folders she’d need for her first few classes. She could feel it moving around behind her, surveying the area and looking for useful information to absorb. “I’ve marked the location. I will meet you here Monday through Friday at 7:25am.”
“Lovely. Can’t wait.” She slammed her locker door and turned on Peter, who didn’t flinch. Just blinked slowly. She didn’t know why she’d expected the robot to react. Why would it? It was a computer in a glorified body. “Let’s go to class.”
“Yes, let’s. We’re already 26 minutes late.”
Michelle and Peter walked into class, and she couldn’t even make it to her seat before all thirty students were surrounding the robot at her side. It also meant that they were crowding her, and she spent the better part of five minutes just trying to break through the tidal wave of sweaty teenagers.
She finally made it out of the thrall and sat down in the first open chair she saw. Her books thudded loudly when she unceremoniously dropped them on her desk, but no one seemed to notice. They were all to busy bothering Peter.
“Do you have superpowers?” Flash Thompson asked. He’d shoved Betty Brant out of his way so he’d be almost face to face with the bot, which sent the blonde girl flying into the edge of a lab table. She rubbed her waist where it struck the countertop and sent Flash a dirty look. He didn’t notice.
Peter didn’t acknowledge the commotion, just shook its head stiffly. “I have no supernatural capabilities. Mr.Stark programmed me to be as humanlike as possible. My primary functions include engaging in social interactions, analyzing and copying body language-“
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. I thought your eyes would be able to shoot lasers. Can they shoot lasers?”
Michelle ignored the Q&A and went to open her chemistry textbook, but before she could turn to the appropriate page, Mr.Fleming, the chem teacher, was shaking his head. “I didn’t even plan a lesson today,” Fleming said casually. He was sitting in his chair behind his desk, feet propped on the wooden surface. “I figured everyone would be too distracted. Just do whatever you want for right now.”
So Michelle traded her Chem book for her Calculus one and started reading the next chapter in the lesson series. It was moderately hard to focus with all of the commotion, but the last thing she wanted to do was get involved. The next thirty days would be eight hours straight of walking around school with a literal machine. Everyone already thought she was antisocial and strange. She didn’t want them thinking she’d made friend’s with Tony Stark’s newest toy.
She barely noticed when the bell rang and signaled the end of class, because none of her classmates moved for the door. They were still surrounding Peter as if they’d miss something monumental if they looked away.
But as Michelle re-packed her bag and readied herself to tug Peter away from its adoring fans, she noticed something different. Its slightly shaggy hair was still the same, if not a little tousled from Betty and her friends trying to see if it felt real. (Also, Flash may have given Peter a noogie or two.) His eyes were still wide but blank, the perfect image of false interest. No, what Michelle noticed was his mouth. His lips, specifically.
They were upturned at the corners and pulled taught in the middle. Michelle couldn’t believe it. Peter was smiling. A real smile, not the sad imitation of one he tried to do out in the hallway.
Was it a programmed response? Simply an action coded into him and triggered by social interaction? Or was it an imitation of Betty’s soft smile? Of Flash’s childish grin? Michelle knew Peter’s software relied on the intake of new information to improve upon base functions, but the look on the android’s face wasn’t a carbon copy of one of Michelle’s classmates. That smile was a smile all its own. It was a smile that was uniquely Peter.
She jumped into action before she could think too much about it. Considering the logistics made her head spin.
Michelle’s hand wrapped itself in Peter’s shirt sleeve and she pulled it toward the door. “It was very nice to meet all of you!” Peter shouted over its shoulder, maybe just a bit too loud, as it and Michelle integrated themselves into the quickly forming crowds in the hallway.
“I liked that very much,” Peter said as they tried to keep pace with the students walking around them. “Your classmates are nice.”
“That’s not how they usually act,” Michelle said absentmindedly. She’d forgotten that no one else at Midtown had seen Peter in action yet, and almost everyone that passed her and the bot stopped and stared or whispered to one another. A few people even tried to reach out and touch Peter, but Michelle yanked it out of their reach and kept walking.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had so many eyes on her. The attention was making her twitchy.
“What do you mean?” Peter asked innocently, his head tilted slightly to the side. He looked like a confused puppy. “I held pleasant conversation with several of them. The one called Betty touched my hair, and Flash said I was, “Fuckin wild, bro, so realistic! I wonder how Stark managed to make his twerp aura so genuine.”
“That’s not a compliment.”
“Is it not? He commended Mr.Stark’s craftsmanship.”
Michelle briefly wondered if Tony himself had programmed Peter to call him Mr.Stark, or if the formal title was just part of his manner protocols. Either way, it was getting on her nerves.
“He basically called you a blank-faced doll. He wasn’t being nice, he was making fun of you.”
“And what about Betty? And her hair touching?”
“She was interested in what you were made out of. If the hair was real or whatever.”
“Not in having a conversation?”
Michelle didn’t realize a robot’s voice could sound like that. Like an average teenage boy who realized he’d been slighted and was mentally reliving his own embarrassment.
But as the two of them approached Michelle’s next class of the day, physics, and they were able to slow their walking pace, she took the time to turn around and observe her charge. Despite the apparent emotion in Peter’s voice, it’s face was a blank slate. The perfect image of a stoic creature with steel bone structure.
The angst in its words must have been a pre-existing function in Peter’s repertoire. It had yet to observe anyone feeling embarrassment, or shame, or whatever facial expression it would scan and decide to pair with its false emotions. So even though it could sound disappointed, sound like it cared that its first ever social interaction was ingenuine, it couldn’t look the part. Not with a fake brain in control of its facial expressions.
It was a shock to the system, a reminder that no matter how well programmed Peter was, it wasn’t a person. Wasn’t capable of emotion or true human interaction or complex bioelectrical thought.
“No, not in having a conversation.”
“I thought people liked having conversations.”
“They do. It just so happens that that particular session was at your expense.”
“How do I prevent such an event from happening again?”
“Why would you need to?”
“I am now realizing I was not fond of that interaction.”
Michelle was growing tired of playing 21 questions with the android. She grabbed it by the shoulder and guided it into the physics classroom they’d been standing outside of. The hallways were clearing up now, with the passing period being almost over, but there were a few stragglers left who gawked at Peter as Michelle tried to shield him from view. She was stuck with Peter for the next month, so stares at it were stares at her. And she did not feel like being stared at for the foreseeable future. She needed to nip that in the bud real quick.
“That’s not how being human works. You can’t pick and choose what people say to you. If they say something that hurts, you have to move past it.”
Michelle made her way to her seat on instinct, wrapping her backpack around the back of her chair. She pulled her most current read, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, out of the front pocket of her bag and carefully placed it on the corner of her desk. She liked to do a little reading during each of her classes; it was sort of her way of pretending she wasn’t at school surrounded by people who annoyed her. None of her teachers ever complained. Her grades were too good for anyone to say anything.
Michelle cracked her book open and read a few pages before she realized that the classroom, which was usually full of chatter before the bell rang, was dead silent. She brushed her hair out of her face and realized why. Peter was still standing by the door, frozen and clueless. Michelle hadn’t told it where to sit. Apparently common sense wasn’t one of its primary functions.
Michelle slapped the palm of her hand against the desk next to her, the only empty desk in the room. The classroom was an awkward shape and only had two seats in the end row. One of them was usually occupied by her, but Michelle quickly realized that she’d be sharing her back-of-the-room sanctuary from now on. “Sit down, Peter.”
Peter surveyed the room with those hyper-realistic eyes, the slightly stilted movement of them giving away his true nature. All wires and coding and synthetic skin. “Right,” he said flatly, then made his way to the back of the room and carefully slid himself into the empty seat beside Michelle. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. Just store the info for next time.”
“It’s in my database.”
“Wonderful. Glad to hear it.”