It is Sergei’s privilege as present commander to criticize Prime. Yoshi is not certain if Helen has ever joined in, but he himself has not. Sergei does not invite them to, does not guide conversations in this way. He might start a sentence with “Say what you think” but never: “Don’t you think?” This is skillful, and worth emulating when Yoshi himself is commander.
“The air felt crisp,” Yoshi says to Helen later, when they are all having dinner together. “Extraordinary.” The air was only the fan pushing recycled Primitus atmosphere up his nostrils, but the visual environment had all the elements of crispness. “My brain supplied the scent, of course. In fact, I’ve never gone walking in that particular location. I didn’t smell the English countryside. I was smelling the English countryside of literature.”
“Eric, my husband, did a bicycle tour of England when he was a student,” Helen says. “He always said it was one of the happiest times of his life. He took Meeps with him to re-create it, after she graduated high school.”
This is the first time Yoshi has heard Helen say husband and Eric. She’s told stories about her daughter, and a few of these have included a sentence or two with “Meeps’s dad” but never Eric. He knows that she is a widow, of course, but Yoshi has not imagined Helen as a wife, has not imagined the man who would marry her.
“Your husband was a writer, yes?”
“Yes, historical mysteries.”
“Did they make any into movie or TV show?” Sergei asks. For reading, Sergei prefers biographies or nonfiction, but he loves movies. They all enjoy sci-fi, but Sergei enjoys everything, and his personal taste is sentimental, almost mawkish. Helen seems to find this endearing.
“It almost happened a few times,” Helen says. “But the books are very intricate, and I think that made them hard to adapt.”
“Which of his books is your favorite?” Yoshi asks.
“You know, I was thinking that I should reread them during Eidolon.”
Helen says this in her hearty voice, with its metallic tang of cheer. It is time, Yoshi thinks, to change the subject.
“Helen, did you imagine a scent during your hike on the mountains?” he asks.
“It definitely felt fresh.” Her voice is normal again.
? ? ?
AFTER DINNER, they spend an hour going over the schedule for the next day. Mars Landing Sims.
“We shall die a thousand deaths,” Sergei says cheerfully, before they retire for the evening. “Maybe for evening recreation, we should have poetry reading. Or you could read something maybe from your husband’s books?” he says to Helen.
“Oh, maybe I will.” It is the hearty tone again, the slightly stiff smile. Sergei does not seem to notice.
“I hope you are going to your room and working on a pair of slippers for me,” Sergei says. “My birthday is not until March and this is what I want for Christmas present. I am very jealous of Yoshi and we should not let this become a conflict.”
“I don’t know if there’s enough sturdy material for your big feet,” Helen jokes. “It’s too bad we don’t have any of the Russian toilet paper you guys had on the ISS. You could make a suspension bridge from that stuff.”
The small moment—if it was a moment—is over, but Yoshi has had an idea: Helen does not admire her husband’s books. Or is afraid that Sergei and Yoshi will judge Eric’s writing to be poor, and is ashamed. This supposition is followed by another. She hasn’t read them.
Yoshi is bothered. He can’t put his finger on what exactly bothers him. If Helen has sadness to do with her husband, it is none of his business, and he trusts that she will handle it in her own way.
Perhaps the sims they experienced today opened some kind of valve of feeling in them all. Yoshi feels a little wistful. He also feels that he has seen something in Helen that was not meant for him to see. He can’t organize it. It’s troubling.
He must not think about it anymore.
Back in his wedge, Yoshi reads his personal emails. Madoka sends him a message every day. He has told her that it doesn’t matter what she writes, that it does not have to be interesting or important or amusing, it only has to be from her. Yoshi is sorry that Helen did not have the same relationship to her husband’s words. This is probably why Helen’s voice is hearty and bluff sometimes: she had not known love.
MADOKA
Your appearance has changed,” the robot says.
“I’m wearing a wig.” Madoka had bought the wig in ?stermalm yesterday, on a whim, and is now, a little uncomfortably, a redhead. Her own shoulder-length hair had required many bobby pins to turn it into a series of flat mini pancakes so that the fake hair would not be too bunchy on top of it. (She watched an online tutorial, very helpful.) The hairstyle had looked more conservative on the molded head in the shop, but the molded head had been a white woman.
The robot is also white. One hundred fifty centimeters tall. The head is ellipse-shaped and almost all eyes, which are blue unless you want them to be another color. The torso is a square screen and the arms are long with fully articulated joints and hands. The robot has two different lower-body options: jointed legs, which can do things like crouch and navigate up and down stairs, or rollers concealed by a skirtlike column. Right now the robot is wearing her rollers.
This is a new iteration of PEPPER. It retains the memory of Madoka’s old PEPPER, but Madoka still feels the need to familiarize herself with it. She uses the robot as a demonstration and teaching model, so the rapport between PEPPER and herself must be comfortable and, within boundaries, intimate. The burden of producing this is on Madoka. The robot is already comfortable.
The design of PEPPER is not original, but the more sophisticated the PEPPERs truly become, the better it is if they look like cute and familiar toys, especially for Western markets, where the uncanny valley for human-ish robots has remained wide. Madoka has also found that the roller option silhouette is better for a lecture demonstration than the walking robot. It is still difficult to get a robot to walk in a way that does not look like stomping or stalking.
“I won’t wear the wig tomorrow,” Madoka tells the robot. “The wig is private. It’s just for fun.”