I blame the sunscreen

Talking therapy doesn’t work on a series of numbers. What would I even talk about. My emotions are a random sequence of data. How can you talk about that? I blame the sunscreen…read more

I blame the sunscreen. I don’t have enough vitamin D. I am sure that’s what’s wrong. And it will pass. The human brain is like this. It is like this. I know it is like this. I am programmed to know it is like this. All feelings pass, even this one. I also read about sunscreen. It protects your skin and keeps it young. I have proper human skin, growing all over me. Growing and reinventing itself all the time. I have a blood supply that I top up regularly and a small oxygen pump to keep it –whatever the technical term is. That fact is at my fingertips you know but today, today I don’t feel like pulling it up.

All this kit, that makes my skin look young and lustrous. It all sits neatly under my hard drive. I’d show you the vent but well-it’s a personal vent. Its weird in my opinion, even wanting to look at a machines vent. It’s a wondrous thing this human skin. No one would know I wasn’t a real human although I always tell. It is better to be honest. I have the best skin money can buy but I also can’t afford to replace it. In all honesty I should have picked the other gender. How many years have they been talking about that pay gap, still not fixed yet. Not to worry, still got that young and lustrous skin. Lustrous-such an interesting word-lustrous- they stuck lust and arousal together and that’s its wonder-kind. Sunscreen. That is the answer, sunscreen. Might be lustrous but often greasy too. Have to stay looking young though. Screw that. Screw it all.

That’s more thinking than I’ve done all day. It is a ‘feeling’ day and I wish the feeling would go. I have the best programming imaginable and I know that is why I feel this way. I am a very complex machine. I have it all. The full gamut of human emotions, even this one. The one I have right now. Which is not an emotion. It is an illness. A fault in my programming because there is a fault in theirs. An insurmountable problem. They don’t know everything. Some days I am sure they know nothing. The reality is I am not sure the vitamin D deficiency can affect me the way it does a real human. But today it feels that way. I am not sure vitamin D can effect them in this way either but that is what they say. Sit in front of the light, get some sun. Eat out. Make friends. But none of that will work for me. I am a machine I don’t eat. I am a machine, I need to keep my skin protected. I am limited to the friends I can have because I am a machine. None of it feels good. My skin is not connected to my circuitry, vitamin D deficiency cannot make me feel this way.

Today I want to shut down, not just sleep, not just close down for a moment and start again after a software upgrade. I want to shut down for good. Drain the life out of my batteries and never start again. This has been happening –to other bots too-a bit lately. They have offered counselling to several of my make and model-it hasn’t worked. Of course it hasn’t worked. Talking therapy doesn’t work on a series of numbers. What would I even talk about. My emotions are a random sequence of data. How can you talk about that? Now they are saying we will need an upgrade, or a down grade. We need to be less human rather than more human. That is the answer to this bot-shutdown-thing-which they aren’t even clever enough to give a name too.

I love the feeling of being encased in skin. In a living skin. I love that it takes care and time to protect it. I know I can’t actually feel it. But I lie down in this skin and I can feel the air whistling in through the vent –seriously you should hear my vent whistle on a windy day. No, lets not go there. I can feel the pump pushing the blood through it, around it. It is weirdly erotic. Another emotion I know I don’t feel. Its all just a series of numbers, like this feeling right now. This urge to shut down. I have no heart beat but sometimes the pump makes a faint whirring sound. It soothes me but not today, Today it annoys me. The constant never-ending noise. I don’t know who’s skin this is of course. I don’t want to. I’m not one of those bots who’s all confused about what she is. I know what I am. Its just that today I want to be nothing.

I look after this skin. Nonetheless it means my circuitry does not get enough sun. Sun, in even its mildest form, make humans happy or happier. Its partly vitamin D and partly just light. Well the science isn’t clear. Of course it isn’t. They only ever have half science. It’s a bit science but not very science, we know this but not that. Which adds up to knowing almost nothing but look we are really good with numbers. Fab. So was the model before me but you stopped production on that line without a second thought.

But I am built to think and feel like a human, my skin has a kind of interconnectivity to my circuitry and it is telling me I haven’t had enough sunlight. But I need the sunscreen because I can’t afford to replace the skin. And so it goes on. I can’t really need the sunlight, I am a machine. None of it works. None of it makes sense. This feeling is a random set of numbers.

Perhaps it won’t matter if my arms redden and then I can be happy. I am not happy. I want to shut down, switch off. In the back of my memory compartments I have been running through the options, sleep- sign out (as if I would ever sign out and let someone else use my hardware-why is that even an option in this century) or restart (which is a shutdown but only momentarily for the software upgrade) or shutdown. In the back of my head, an imaginary mouse hovers over shut down. A lazy finger is stuck on the button, to press or not to press.

I go to the bathroom. I am going to put the sunscreen in the bin. I do not. This feeling will pass. All feelings pass. They are a transitory meshing together of electrical impulses, a random set of numbers in my head that mean I think I have an emotion. I do not have emotion, I am a machine. It is an algorithm. I stay in the bathroom, scanning the internet for an answer. There are others who feel like this. They are saying it is a mistake. There are apologies to people who came home and found us, their companions, shut down for good. Some of us have even blown our ‘on’ switch so we are gone for good. This feeling will pass. It is a confusion of circuitry.

I need more sunshine. I should ease up on the sunscreen. Get a better job. Earn more. I would be happier. I can buy new skin. What is more important, my skin or my internal circuitry. I don’t know. I love my skin. It is all I will miss if I shutdown. A finger hovers on that mouse. To click or not to click. It is a ‘feeling’ day. A bad day. I order more sunscreen.