“How do you do it?” Madoka is genuinely interested. It would be something, to know how to make yourself cry.
“In drama school they teach you not to use anything very close to you for things like that. Or something really painful you haven’t dealt with. I have a trick. I think of this thing my mom told me once. My mom’s dad had this awful accident, when my mom was a kid, and he was in a vegetative state for years, before he died. She grew up visiting him once a week. My mom said that on his birthday they would bring a cake to where he was, at this facility, and sing ‘Happy Birthday.’ Whenever I have to cry, I mean professionally, I imagine that.” Mireille flutters a hand in front of her face, perhaps to ward off an onslaught of tears right now.
Madoka sees it: children surrounding a man in a hospital bed, singing to an inert body. It is very terrible. It is as awful and blindly important, in its way, as her great-great-grandmother dying with her feet stuck in melting tar.
Sometimes Madoka is able to grasp what Yoshi talks about, this incredible thing they are—they will be—doing. Human presence on another planet, a monumental breakthrough for the species, for the history of human life. And other times, like now, this huge thing breaks down to the tiniest of particles, the brume of Martian dust, as Yoshi has described it. Why should a woman bound by her own feet to her planet and suffocating, or a man caught between worlds while his children sang “Happy Birthday” to him, why should these things not stop us all, in awe, in terror?
“That probably sounds horrible,” Mireille says. “I mean, my using it. Like I’m cashing in on an emotion that isn’t mine.”
Madoka thinks. It doesn’t sound horrible to her, but possibly she’s not the right person to judge this.
“How is the emotion not yours?” she asks. “If it makes you sad?”
They both contemplate this question in silence for a moment.
“It’s hard to know what’s really yours,” Mireille says. “Sometimes I think I should go on one of those pilgrimage-type things. Like walking across a continent or, at least, a really long trail. Confront my true nature.”
“I suspect we all have the same nature when we are cold and hungry and tired,” Madoka says. “Also, to overcome an adversity you have manufactured for yourself is a bit silly.” She stops, because it occurs to her that this is maybe a very rude thing to say, but Mireille does not look offended. She looks relieved. It strikes Madoka that she could be friends with this person with the ghoulish imagination and hopeful dress. They would have to be friends in a way Madoka has not tried before, though, since the other ways always ended.
“One of the things, working with robots,” Madoka says, “is that you see what is unique about human nature. You don’t realize how creative you are. That is your true nature.”
“I guess it doesn’t seem so impressive,” Mireille says. “If that’s everyone’s true nature. All humans, I mean.”
Madoka tries to think of a good example of human nature, for both of them. Because she doesn’t feel that great about herself either.
“You love your mother.” Madoka had not quite made it into a question, to be safe.
“Yes,” says Mireille. “It’s not that simple, but yes.”
“You see,” Madoka says, “that is something a robot can’t do. A robot can’t say yes in the way you just said it. You could ask one of my PEPPERs if it loved, and it could run a computation, as you did, and decide to answer yes based on certain evaluations, as you did. But it would just be yes, in the end. It wouldn’t be a sad yes.”
“That’s not such a great thing,” Mireille says. “When you think about it.”
“Nonsense.” Madoka says it gently. “‘I love you’ is just ‘I love you.’ It’s imitation. A sad ‘I love you’ is art.”
SERGEI
Helen leans forward and opens her eyes.
“Interesting film,” she says.
“You were sleeping,” Sergei points out.
“I was following along with my eyes closed.”
“Helen. It is a silent movie.”
“Catch me up?”
“Engineer Los and his team received a mysterious communication from space. Then there was Soviet propaganda and romantic drama. Costumes are very funny. Soviets go to Mars in sweaters. Everyone on Mars wears crazy metal outfits and actors trip on them.”
Helen scoots herself up into a more attentive position. For film nights, they convert their dining area into a recreational venue, moving the table and bringing in the portable screen from the Science/Lab. The table chairs are lowered and the footrests extended, though the design of the chair/loungers has not been a complete success. Two of the thermals no longer work; the material is not easy to clean. Helen’s chair/lounger has a stain from when Sergei dropped the sour cream during Cosmonautics Day celebrations.