Galatea

The cardboard box was filled with crap. Crap that was carried tenderly on the subway ride over. Crap that was shielded from the rain at the expense of a good hair day. Crap that was balanced carefully on Raven’s hip as she approached the door she had planned to enter for months. That’s not to say that what was inside wasn’t important. We can’t judge whether Raven was silly for protecting a box of old shit, or if she was foolish long ago in the separate acts of slowly gathering the stuff inside. One cardboard box will not change whether or not love, and its accompanying symbols, are important; not to humanity, and not to vulnerable girls like Raven. It just happens to be, objectively, a box of crap.

Miranda worked in this particular shop. She was just out of college, and although she enjoyed her job, her degree was in family counseling. On bad days, it didn’t seem like a true application of her education. On good days, she thought she was creating the foundation of families, and that was close enough. On the best days, she thought she was witnessing true love. She had a steady boyfriend, Steve. He was handsome and loyal, and failed her only on those best days when he seemed regrettably human.

The shop was called Galatea, one of a recently successful chain of stores Raven had read about, famous for “uniquely tailored results.” Of all the things she valued in the world, today she had only her cardboard box and an appointment at eleven.

Raven pushed open the door with her free hip, set down her box on the floor and pulled her hair into a soggy bun.

Miranda couldn’t quite see what was in the box, but the sight wasn’t unusual for the job. People came in with boxes all the time, all of them filled with precious, meaningless things. Sometimes it was small boxes, filled with tear stained love letters, and sometimes they didn’t need a physical vessel to carry mementos in.

Galatea specialized in creating “true love.” Their motto was, “We don’t create the love between two people, we create the people and let love do the rest.”

“I have an appointment. First name Raven.”

“Hey there Raven. My name is Miranda. I’ll be your counselor for the next few months. You’re signed up for every Monday at eleven, correct?” Miranda was trained in making people feel comfortable in these first few minutes. They tended to be awkward minutes. Facts helped. People wanted what they wanted but beat around the bush anyway. At one point, she had been instructed to say, “I see you’re here to create true love,” but, in her opinion, those words did nothing but point out the obvious void.

For Raven’s sake, because she is not that kind of girl, we will not beat around the bush: Galatea serviced the heartbroken. People came in, picked strengths and weaknesses, entered in algorithms, and waited the month it took for their newfound love to be grown and inserted into their life. Opinion columns have fought over the morality of creating something for such a sinister purpose as love, and whether or not these “Andis” (short for Android, although they are flesh and loving blood) deserved any sort of rights at all. Critics argued that it fed obsession. Supporters ask if there is any healthier way to obsess?

Unsurprisingly, in Raven’s lifetime, humanity hadn’t solved true love, but instead, sated the question with legislation. Andis weren’t to exceed a certain portion of the population. They could not know what they are. No one may purchase more than one Andi in a lifetime. In the rare event that an Andi were to ever step into a shop like Galatea, procedures were in place to prevent them from reproducing.

            That first Monday they didn’t even get to the box. That was normal. Raven continued to bring it with her, never letting the cardboard corners get ratty or bent.

Mementos weren’t part of the process, strictly, so Miranda had to just wait for Raven to bring it up herself. Eventually Miranda arranged to have their meetings over lunch. It was unorthodox, but something about Raven’s certainty of what she wanted—

“into movies, like really into them. Willing to illegally download them, and share with me. Has to know his way around a computer, both hardware and software components. Long eyelashes. Dark Hair. Dark Eyes, probably brown. Tall enough that I’d have to tiptoe to kiss him, but not too tall. Must be into music, but the pretentious, indie kind. Has to be strongly opinionated, borderline snobby about his likes and dislikes. However, he must be willing to share and teach me about those opinions. Nerdy, awkward, passionate, sentimental only when it’s really important. Logical to a fault, except when he’s wrong. Mischievous. Charismatic in crowds, but goofy alone. Doesn’t realize the effect he has on people.”

—fascinated her. The Mondays stretched out as Miranda and Raven planned creative ways to create these components in another human being. They laughed and joked over soups and salads and anecdotes and formulas. They were great days, the kind that made Miranda sad to go home to regrettably human Steve. 

There were two things they never talked about: what was in the box, and the breaking point. There’s always a point, the moment when customers decide that they’ve had enough of humans and are willing to take control of love. Raven never mentioned the point, nor any specific name that put her there. She spoke as if her appointments at Monday just happened, and the box just packed itself.

On the last day they were back at Galatea, putting all the pieces together. As they were finalizing details and entering them into the computer, Raven finally offered to show her what was inside. Up until that point, Miranda hadn’t even been sure she’d ever open it.

Raven gingerly lifted the top. She pulled out a large, soft, green hoodie, and a tattered Batman comic book. Out came a stack of classic records, Jimi Hendrix and The Eagles with Pink Floyd on top. A bright green wristband that seemed like it was from a concert and some yellowing sheet music. A ring in the shape of a bunny. A red and grey striped tee shirt. Two handwritten journals. The bottom of the box was lined with books, cheap paperback editions. They needed the least explanation, but then, books rarely do. You shouldn’t have expected anything special. I already told you, the box was filled with crap.

“It’s sad, I know. So… is it what you expected?” Miranda laughed to herself.

“Kind of. It’s not sad; I see things like this all the time. I never understand why people keep them though. I’m usually more of a ‘burn it all’ kind of girl.”

“I keep these things… to remind me that I did love them. It’s easy to hate them, hate what they each did to me, and to be cynical about love in general. If I hated them, then I’d hate what I loved about them, and I didn’t love those things arbitrarily. It’s not like these were celebrities, abstractions, I formed obsessions with. These guys were interested enough, at least at one point, to pursue me. I don’t know where it went wrong. Some told me I was too upfront, but one told me that I was a pushover. For some, it seems like only thing I did wrong was fall for them. Then they were done, they all were. That’s where true heartbreak is you know. Somebody once told me, the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference. Every single one of these guys has reminded me of that in the most painful way. But that’s why I’m here, I can’t stop loving, right?”

Miranda didn’t need to say anything. She gestured to the keyboard, complete with an absurdly large, heart shaped “Just Add Love” button attached.

            “Last step. Time to make him love you. Press the big heart, and then Create.” There were several algorithms for “type” already programmed, but the final one, the one that identified only Raven as the object of his affection, was still waiting to be activated.

But Raven just shook her head sadly. “He’s done already.”

“Raven, sweetheart, you can’t expect them to love you unless you design them to.” She swallowed hard. This was what she had wanted. The one, invisible piece in the box she couldn’t have shown anyone.

“Let's be honest, then I wouldn’t love him. Not like that. It’s not that I like being hurt like that but… I can’t make him love me. Who wants to be loved because it’s dictated?” She pressed Create.

Miranda was quiet for a moment. She considered the unethical, briefly, and then approved the build.

Months later, Miranda was wondering what happened to Raven. She was working a different shift, this time accompanied by a coworker, when a tall, bearded man walked in. She recognized him because she had been thinking about bright, beautiful Raven with her cardboard box for a while now. She quietly pulled up the file on the computer behind the desk just to be sure.

He looked at her with wide eyes. Miranda rarely saw the finished product of one she had ordered, and Andis were so common to see on the street that you never examined them as anything other than human.

“I’d like to order a… correction.”

“Do I know you from somewhere?” Miranda blurted out. That smile. An awkward, lopsided thing that was designed to comfort, not entice.  Miranda instantly knew Raven’s heartbreak.

“I think you do.”

An alarm beeped on the computer in front of them. A chip somewhere in his body was set to go off if he ever came back into Galatea. Miranda’s coworker looked at her with shock and whispered, “He’s an Andi. My god, this has never happened to me before. Stall him, I’ll go get the procedure manual from the back.”

Miranda turned back to face the man. “What kind of correction were you looking for, sir? You know it’s not in our policy anywhere to correct true love.” She was uncharacteristically sarcastic. It was the truth, but not the whole truth. They didn’t correct love because they couldn’t. Andis were programmed and grown, like test tube babies. There was no changing them.

“I know what I am. I know what I’m risking by coming here. I want to love her, Raven, but I can’t. She created this incredible empathy within me but no way to access it, not for her. She said she wouldn’t love me any other way. How did she do that? Program me to make me ignore her the more she loves me? She told me who you are, and how you helped her. Make me love her.” Miranda’s breath caught in her throat. For the second time in her life she considered the same, unethical action and then—

--her coworker ran in from the back doorway with what looked like an animal tagging device in his hand. It was more gun than computer. He stuck it in the man’s neck and violently pressed the trigger.

Miranda could almost hear Raven’s scream echoing in the short shriek that left her throat.