One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories(21)

I will state my defense quickly right now—I want to get this out of the way so I can tell the rest of the story. It won’t take long. It is a one-point defense.

1. What if I had discovered what had happened and reacted in the exact opposite manner? In other words: what if instead of returning a sex robot who had fallen in love with me, I had gone in the other direction—professed my love to her as well, announced to the world that I was in love with a sex robot, that I was seriously dating a sex robot, that a sex robot loved me and I loved it back, that I was marrying a sex robot, and the whole world was invited to the wedding? What if that was what Brian Williams had announced? Would that really have been so much better?

Or is it possible that I did the most rational, correct thing that a person with a strong sense of self and, yes, romance, would do in a situation like this and that people are simply going to find the situation funny no matter what?

That’s all.


The late-night talk show hosts, the cable comedians—good for them. It was their job to make fun of me, and they did it well. But everyone made the joke well. Everyone could get the same laugh by saying my name, and so everyone said it. I’m sure you did it yourself. I wouldn’t blame you. If I were you, I probably would have, too.

In drawings and in TV comedy sketches, I became a well-known caricature, with my once painfully average-looking face exaggerated a tiny bit more each time, each parody cribbing from the previous one and building on it, until the predominant cartoon image of me was something so familiar that I could recognize it as myself, out of the corner of my eye across a room, just as quickly as you would recognize yourself in a family photograph that had hung on the wall of the house you grew up in.

Even the more supposedly “intelligent” jokes repeated themselves endlessly, just to remind you how overwhelmingly prevalent this type of joke became. For example, a common political cartoon to illustrate the na?veté of politicians was to draw them on dates with me. I must have been sent a variation of this idea by a well-meaning friend, trying to gently filter my fame for me, at least five or six separate times, with the president or a governor or mayor thinking, I think this is really getting somewhere! and on the opposite side of the table is me.

The guy who bought the first robot capable of love and handed it back. The guy who came across the greatest discovery in the history of science—and returned it, because his sex robot was crying.

Did I get what was so funny about it? Of course.

Did it hurt? Of course.


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?”