HUMAN LESSONS

HUMAN LESSONS 16 MINUTE READ

She spun, hands sweeping up, wrist pulling in and hand snapping out again, a flourish, a gesture to draw the eye up the body to the face, to her eyes, which cut. Then the hand flicked out again, following a spin and a kick, a pivot at the waist, a fluid toss of the head to roll with the twist of the shoulders into a leg sweep, then—

“Did you get that, Oh-Oh-Four?” Marpesia asked, coming to a sharp halt, dress thrown in one last swirl around her legs. Her dark skin glistened with sweat which she dabbed at with a trailing scarf. The night sky, through the massive windows at her back, was moonless but star-dotted. “Let me see a perfect repetition. On my count: one, two, three—”

Androktones-004 fell into the starting posture and brought the hand of the Echo up. Spin, sweep, pull in, snap out, flick, spin, kick, pivot, head toss, roll, twist, leg sweep, turn—

“Stop,” Marpesia commanded. Androktones-004 stopped so suddenly she fell over, rolling a few feet from her own momentum. She sat up, synthetic epidermis heating with embarrassment, dye blooming just under the first layer of skin to simulate a blood flush, and pushed herself back to her feet. She was grateful for her outfit of a much easier-to-move-in sports bra and loose pants. Marpesia crossed her arms over her gown and looked down at her. “What did you forget?”

Androktones-004 reviewed her logs. All maneuvers were executed with fluidity approaching a unit-best margin of seventy-six percent accuracy. Every step, bend, flex of muscles, every—

“The eyes,” Androktones-004 realized. “This unit. Did not perform the appropriate facial expression. To match the dance.”

“The expression is a facet of the performance, but you missed more than that,” Marpesia explained, circling her double with long, graceful steps, each one punctuated with the sharp click of a high heel on marble. “The emotion most obviously shown through the facial expression is present in all other moves. It is the undercurrent to every step. Review internal logs. What would you say was the emotion conveyed in my eyes at the height of the dance?”

Androktones-004 did as she was told. She tried out several emotional vectors she thought might match. Tentatively, she replied, “Frustration?”

“Show me frustration,” Marpesia said. Androktones-004 let her expression crumple into a pinched grimace. Marpesia raised her eyebrows. “Is that what you saw?”

Androktones-004 felt embarrassment again. “No, Commander Solange.”

“Be better,” Marpesia commanded. “Apply your facial recognition suite and extrapolate.”

Androktones-004 broke the expression down: the slight drawing-in of the brows, the pursing of the lips, the corners of the mouth just a touch downturned, the tightening of the bottom eyelid at the far corners to accentuate the expression in the eyes. The eyes were the key. She fumbled for appropriate syntax as she focused on what she had seen. Her hands clenched into fists and her feet curled against the cold marble of the Grand Hall. Marpesia clapped.

“There,” she said. “What emotion is that?”

“Vector: unnamed,” Androktones-004 reported. “A situation evoking this emotion or the feigning of it has. Not yet arisen.”

Marpesia’s lips curled into a smirk but her eyes didn’t match the suggested playfulness of her mouth. Her eyes were… Facial recognition suite returned: cool, distant… angry?

“You’re so young,” she said, tone signaling amusement. “For now, just make a new entry and title it ‘fury,’ assign everything you generated after I gave you the command to try.”

“Acknowledged, Commander Solange,” Androktones-004 said. She shifted, loosening back up the tense synthetic muscle between her heels and the balls of her feet. “Would you like me. To perform the dance again?”

“No,” Marpesia said, “you won’t get any better on your own, though you’re making strides in seeming more fluid, less like a robot. Compared to the others, at least. Forget Naya Chhau. General ballroom posture. I lead.”

Androktones-004 fell in and placed her hand on Marpesia’s shoulder, following smoothly as her commander moved into the spins and fast steps of a First Contact Waltz. She was tested throughout in missteps and changes in who led and who followed. She adjusted, gave, predicted, adapted. Marpesia’s smirk grew into a satisfied smile.

“I have a question for you, Oh-Oh-Four,” she began, turning Androktones-004 sharply, “what do you think the purpose of dance is?”

“Dance is a human ritual used. To establish social connections,” Androktones-004 replied. “It is common in traditional events such as: weddings. Feasts. And coming-of-age rites.”

Marpesia snorted and caught Androktones-004’s bare foot with the spike of her high heel as the AI processed. “Yes, thank you, Omnepedia. That’s not what I asked. What do you, as a young and arguably unbiased observer, think the purpose of dance is? Not a command, just… curious. Humor me.”

Androktones-004 processed. The face made to be a perfect mirror of Marpesia’s creased in thought. “This unit… does not see a utility in dance. Besides the transmission of bioweapons. Or single-use contact poisons. Closeness between two humans. Or large collections of humans. Statistically results overwhelmingly in death. Bodily injury. Or marriage.”

Marpesia raised her eyebrows. “Was that a joke?”

“No,” Androktones-004 said, expression confused. “Marriage accounts for thirty-two point eight percent of the instances. This unit referenced.”

“Thank the gods,” Marpesia said, hustling Androktones-004 into a rapid Samba step. “You’re unnerving enough without the ability to joke. You also demonstrate the shallow observations appropriate for your life experience. No, dance has a purpose. It can establish or break the two things most integral to human connection: distance and proximity.”

Androktones-004 missed a step and suppressed pain signals as the arch of her right foot was briefly crushed under the toe of a titanium stiletto. “What?”

“Distance,” Marpesia repeated, spinning Androktones-004 out until their fingers only just touched. Then Marpesia curled her fingers and brought Androktones-004 back with a subtle redistribution of force and momentum, dipping her.

“Proximity,” Marpesia concluded. Her face was a scant inch from her Echo’s. Androktones-004’s eyes crossed.

“These define. Human connection?” Androktones-004 asked, watching the way Marpesia’s face seemed to double and then disappear thanks to the organic error in the focus of her eyes. Marpesia spun her out and then, with a powerful flex of her arms, picked her up and tossed her in a maneuver from a contemporary Southcoast Combat Swing.

“Proximity,” Marpesia said, voice barely strained as she threw Androktones-004 over her shoulder, “covers—through dance—shows of competency, fluidity, sex appeal, grace, and confidence. Things that draw others closer.”

Androktones-004 barely had time to recover her balance when Marpesia spun away to arms-length. She stepped to an unheard beat, with a calculated slowness, left hand held out with an open palm. Androktones-004 pulled the ancient dance from her memory files. She joined the slow turn, the invisible circle, her right hand hovering an inch from Marpesia’s. They revolved.

“Distance,” Marpesia said, gown whispering around her feet. “Lack of favor or interest, establishes superiority, taunts, teases, rejects, dismisses.”

Marpesia came to a complete stop before Androktones-004 could and their hands softly clapped together. “That’s all you need. Distance and proximity. And in one dance, with the right style, expression, and feeling, you can establish them. Do you understand?”

“No,” Androktones-004 answered, honestly. Marpesia shook her head.

“You’re the only one trying, though,” she said. She dropped her hand and started off for the foyer of the hall at a fast clip. “You should’ve seen Oh-Oh-Seven. A complete disaster. No, you’ll be the one to give the speech at the gala. You’re the only one who’s bothered to look at your partner’s face at any point in the dance. You’re all so preoccupied by your feet!”

“If we fall over. In the Nemesis armature,” Androktones-004 explained as she caught up to her commander. “We may not. Quickly get up. Depending on. Conditions.”

“Oh, that too,” Marpesia said, snapping her fingers as she thought of something. “Confirm shipment of the experimental language processing unit to be installed in the Echo. This ‘speech delay’ you all have is a dead giveaway, and it sounds stupid, besides.”

“Oh,” Androktones-004 said. She let herself fall behind as Marpesia opened the wall paneling concealing the most direct passage to her suite. “Acknowledged.”

“You need to talk as fast as you think if you want to stay alive,” Marpesia called over her shoulder. “No one will do you the kindness of waiting on you to finish talking in the real world.”

Androktones-004 nodded. “Will there be. Anything else. Commander Solange?”

“Have Oh-Oh-Three run an ‘exploratory vessel’ past the new asteroid holding of MosCorp,” Marpesia said, waving her hand. “Not too close. Distance and proximity, Oh-Oh-Four. Just remind her I’m here. The rest will happen as I want it to happen.”

“Seriously, that’s it?” Ellie asked, waving her arms. Fifteen shopping bags in assorted colors and sizes swung together. The shopkeeper behind her tracked their movement with nervous attempts to reach for them. “You’re pretty terrible at this BFF’s Day Out, Rok!”

“Am I. Supposed to buy more?” Rok asked, hanging up the curtain to the dressing area to signal that she was done. She flexed her arms and looked down the sides of her legs. “This outfit. Provides maximum efficiency in movement. Optimal weapons clearance. And has lots of little pockets. For my stuff. It’s… good.”

“The whole reason we’re doing this is because the one outfit you had before got all messed up,” Ellie pointed out after Rok finished. She waved at the plain black halter top and skinny cargo pants Rok had picked out. “What happens when our next ship blows up and this outfit gets ruined?”

“I will acquire another outfit,” Rok suggested. She searched internal records for other logical courses of action. “Or. Wash it?”

Ellie’s expression turned smug. “What are you gonna wear when you wash it? Are you just going to stand around in the laundry room naked?”

“Yes?” Rok ventured. Ellie laughed.

“I mean, sure, yeah, I’d love to see Ennig just drop dead immediately after opening the laundry room door, but we gotta be like, logical about stuff now that we’re going down the path of ‘real big time wanted criminals,’” she said. “You can’t do laundry naked in the big leagues, Rok. You’ve gotta have at least ten outfits.”

“So,” Rok conceded, “ten of this shirt. Ten of these pants. Yes. My funds will allow it.”

Ellie looked like she might scream. The shopkeeper managed to catch most of her bags when she made to fling them down on the dressing room floor.

“I know you’re smarter than this,” Ellie accused, jabbing a finger into Rok’s arm. “You’re being dense on purpose!”

“I have no idea. What you’re talking about,” Rok lied. Ellie crossed her arms and tried a different tack.

“What are you gonna wear on date night?” she asked. “Different occasions for humans mean you need different outfits.”

“The only ‘dates’ I engage in,” Rok said, neatly folding her old, tattered clothes and then throwing them straight in the garbage. “Are associated with. Attempts to assist Ennig in his dream. Of experiencing sexual intercourse with a woman. For whom intercourse is not a profession. I do not need a special outfit. To watch him fail.”

“Okay, true,” Ellie conceded, “but what will you wear to blend in at his date spots, since you’re not a giant and… now that I’m thinking about it, naked-at-all-times robot, anymore?”

Rok cocked her head in thought and held a credit chit out to the shopkeeper. “Considering the places Ennig takes dates? Full body armor.”

“No, you wear dresses on dates, because it’s what you do,” Ellie corrected. She sat down on the floor and watched the other shoppers maintain a careful distance from them as they dug through the piles of illicitly-printed clothing. “I always wore a dress on my dates.”

“Observation,” Rok said, crouching to be on Ellie’s level, “this unit believes it is. Hypocritical of you to judge me. For only wearing one outfit. When you are never not in a school uniform.”

“Shut up and buy clothes with me because it’ll make me happy,” Ellie snapped. Rok smiled.

“Okay,” Rok said. She stood and took her chit back from the frustrated shopkeeper. “What do humans wear. When washing their other. Large and unnecessary amounts of different clothing?”

Three hours later Rok had her own armful of bags, and Ellie was explaining what she saw as the immediate benefits of Rok’s new “THE SNUGGLE IS REAL” sleepshirt as they walked back towards the crew’s rendezvous point, a spacer motel Ennig assured them had “just the usual amount of stabbings.” Rok parallel-processed. She listened to Ellie while she people-watched.

Her preliminary observations rated Terra high on her scale of Planets Good for Watching People, with the Identity Library of Vex II at the high end and her home planetoid on the low. People were always doing something on Terra. Fifty-three percent of the time it was attempting to steal from her, but, after the last two broken arms, that percentage was dropping. She watched as a man in dirty clothes dragged what looked like an industrial steel barrel to the side of the street. Parts of it had been indented, though, and when he brought a mallet to one of the flattened parts the drum made a high, cheerful note.

“Where are my street dancers?” he called, pointing at random humans passing by. People glanced over and some laughed as he picked his targets. “I see you! I see you— where are you looking? It’s too late, I see you! You had better come dance! I see you!”

As he called out people from a growing crowd, he ran his mallet in quick taps over all the panels of his drum, producing a metallic and rhythmic melody. One girl stepped out right away, her hair wrapped in brightly-patterned fabric and feet bare. She stomped a challenge that sent up a puff of dust. The man with the drum laughed and gave her a beat to swing her hips to. Others followed, some as confident as the barefoot girl, others dragged into it by friends and partners. Soon other street musicians joined the first. Rok watched a dancehall coalesce before her eyes. She didn’t realize she’d stopped walking to watch until Ellie came bouncing back to find her.

“Are you in a loop?” Ellie asked, casually, as she checked her compad. “You’re just staring.”

“Come on, little lady,” the man with the drum yelled, hammering out tones before thrusting his mallet out at Rok. “I see you watching! I see you! You had better come dance!”

“Ha, nice, called out,” Ellie snickered. She almost dropped her compad in the middle of taking pictures of the crowd when Rok shoved her shopping bags into her arms. “Wait, what?”

“Hold those,” Rok called as she stepped into the impromptu dance circle. She looked around at the humans: laughing, whooping, dancing, cheering at her to join in. To be a part of the experience. She smiled back and dropped low. She closed her eyes. When she opened them, the smile was gone.

Silence. The drummer stared. A man blowing on a long horn let the sound die with a pathetic cough. The dust she’d raised drifted back down. The people who’d been crowding in took large steps back.

“Holy fucking shit, Rok,” Ellie hissed as she stepped in and dragged Rok to the edge of the circle. The band started up again, hesitantly, as they withdrew. “You know that wasn’t a fight, right?”

“What. Does that mean?” Rok asked, defensive. “My execution of the dance. Was a unit-best ninety-four percent flawless.”

“That was a dance?” Ellie asked. “It looked like you were trying to impersonate a blender. And that ‘ninety-four percent flawless’ thing mostly just made it really obvious that you’re a robot, because humans can’t move that perfectly. I mean we try, but there’s a line, and you…”

“What?” Rok asked. She glanced at the dancers and caught a few looking back at her in what her human facial recognition suite reported as: confusion, awe, fear. “I— I don’t understand. I was just… dancing.”

“I don’t know how I expected you to dance, but that isn’t what people expect,” Ellie said. She flipped a credit chit at an urchin boy clutching their abandoned bags and hissing at would-be thieves. “That was a one person martial arts demonstration where you were trying to like, fight God, or the concept of emotion, or something. It was scary to watch, Rok. It wasn’t fun.”

“Oh,” Rok said. “…acknowledged.”

Ellie looked at Rok and sucked her bottom lip between her teeth to chew on as she thought. She seemed frustrated with herself before she finally said something. “Okay, you wanna know the trick to dancing like a human?”

“Yes,” Rok said, honestly.

Ellie pointed for Rok to take the bags off the urchin before he ran off with them. Then she stepped back towards the circle of dancers. “Well, first of all, kick a lot less. That’s item one. Then you have to mess up.”

“That seems. Counter-intuitive,” Rok observed. Ellie rolled her eyes. Then she cut them at a girl on the edge of the crowd for Rok to watch. The dance beat was back in force, but the girl seemed hesitant to join in. Ellie rocked to the music a moment before trying out a few moves. In the middle of an otherwise graceful spin, she stumbled. Ellie looked up at the girl she’d made eye contact with, flushed, and laughed.

The girl laughed back.

“Messing up makes you relatable,” Ellie said as she spun to face Rok again. She threw her hands up and did a little shimmy. “It makes other people want to root for you, maybe join you, so you’re not messing up on your own. Get it?”

“Distance,” Rok murmured, “and proximity.”

“What?”

Rok shook her head. “Nothing. Problem identified: I don’t know how to trip. Like that.”

“‘Oh no, I’m so good at moving, it’s my eternal burden,’” Ellie mocked, putting on her best heart-broken face before ruining it with a mischievous grin. “Boo-hoo. I can teach you how to mess up, Rok. I’m a certified pro at it.”

Ellie held her hands out and Rok took them, managing the bags as best she could, laughing by accident when Ellie made her start dancing in a circle with them all banging together and rustling. The steps Ellie taught her were simple and clumsy. When Rok repeated them, people didn’t stare, or look scared. Rok smiled at Ellie.

“I’ve gotta know,” Ellie yelled over the music and the noise of the crowd, a little short of breath from dancing, “does Ennig know you can dance? Like, even the scary, ‘I could kick your grandmother in throat and feel nothing’ dancing?”

“No. He doesn’t. There’s never been an occasion. For him to find out,” Rok said. She gave Ellie a soft grin. “I suppose. This is our secret. Designation: Ellie.”

Ellie looked embarrassed, the picture of teenager caught red-handed while being genuine. Rok was delighted. She tried something new and gave Ellie a spin. Not hard, not fast, not with the intent to disorient or intimidate. Just enough to make her loose hair and skirt swirl around her. The girl at the edge of the crowd clapped for them.

“I should never tell you anything,” Ellie griped, but her heart wasn’t in it. “Come on, tiny dancer, you better step on my foot.”

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AUG 2016 | REHOSTED 2/27/2024