This is what led to the one thing I regret: that I let myself start thinking of myself this way. I knew the truth, somewhere: I knew that I was, in my heart, as I said at the beginning, a romantic, and that that was actually what had led to all this, and that the events that followed were certainly funny, and embarrassing, but they weren’t the result of any deeply wrong or evil decision making.
But I couldn’t help but absorb what people said about me. And it weakened me. It was just so, so much easier to believe that everyone else was just basically right, and I was just basically wrong, than to keep fighting it all the time. I kept defending myself out loud, but in my mind, little by little, I let myself start to go along with all of it and believe I was just kind of vaguely a bad guy, just because it was easier. Just because, come on.
That is my own fault, my own weakness, and it is what led to the one thing I did do wrong.
When I got word from the laboratory that Sophia still was in love with me, and they asked if I would be willing to visit her so they could record her reactions to me, I said yes.
It wasn’t out of any interest to help science, and it was in spite of the fact that it sounded wrong and cruel to me to provoke and measure the emotions of a being who had already been proven to be fully sentient.
I went, if I am being honest, because it sounded like a relief to spend some time with someone who still thought of me as a person to love.
They were watching through glass, and so I saw her before she saw me.
“Try to forget that we’re here,” they told me. “Aside from not telling her why you’re here, just have an honest interaction with her. Anything you do will be helpful to us. And remember to have fun!”
“You look the same,” I said.
Sophia laughed for a long time. “I’m sure I do,” she finally said. “I’m sure I do. God, that sense of humor. It always surprises me … I guess that’s the nature of a sense of humor, though, that it always surprises people. Anyway. It’s good to see you.”
She asked about work and about all the people whose names she had heard me mention when we were together. I was surprised how many she remembered.
“That’s so great,” she said after I finished an update about work that I really didn’t consider great. “That’s so great.”
“What’s so great about it?” I said.
She pointed out an aspect that I hadn’t noticed, a way I had approached and persevered through a problem that I took for granted but that she pointed out was a very specific approach of mine to solving problems.
I asked her what was new in her life. She laughed again and pointed to a big hardcover book she had put down when I entered the room and a stack of more books and a pile of movies on either side of the bed. “That’s my life right now,” she said. “Whatever’s in this room. They’re just running tests on me all day. Then when they say the tests are over, they’re never over. They’re still watching. It’s fine. I’m used to it. I’m sure they’re watching us right now. Anyway, my life is so boring! How about you? Personal life? Anything fun going on?”
Looking back, I don’t know how she ever made the case that her life right then was boring, or mine wasn’t, but I went with it and wasted more of the last hours I spent with her on things I barely even cared about then and can’t recall right now.
We talked for four hours.
I don’t remember most of it, but often a little moment in an unrelated conversation or alone on the street will trigger a memory of it that I didn’t know I had. So I know it’s all there somewhere.
The last hour I remember word for word.
“I want you to think about something. Do you want anything to drink, by the way? I’m sure they can bring you something.”
I said I was fine.
“I think that something about how easily this came to you makes you want to dismiss it,” she said. “And I get that. I know that I just showed up at your front door in a box with a bow on it—not literally a bow, but the rest literally, right? Who knows—maybe there even was a bow! Anyway, something about how easy this was made you dismiss it from the start. But forget for a second how it came to you, because I want to ask you something different. After you got over the surprise that you didn’t get what you wanted, why didn’t you want what you got?