Five Micros

Five Micros Taara Khalilnaji (bio) Fruit Flies I'm typing, engrossed in my document. A buzzing sound startles me out of concentration. I flutter my hands around my head, disturbed and huffy. The buzz returns each time I attempt to refocus my eyes on the monitor in front of me. I catch glimpses of the bastards, but only peripherally. I scan the room, seething. I can't figure out where they're coming from: I examine the plants I've collected on my desk, carefully looking for the slightest movement in the dirt. I inspect the leaves of my Chinese evergreen. I study the undersides of my philodendron vines. The soil beneath my rubber tree appears unspoiled. Still, there's buzzing. Where is the source? Where is the rot? ________ Conditions My father-in-law-to-be shifts in his seat when he hears of our combined last names. I try to reconcile his support of our union as a couple with his disdain for our elongated, hyphenated surname in honor of that union. I fail. ________ Under Her Machinery In 2010, The New York Times released a video of one of its journalists interviewing a robot built by a private research facility in Vermont. There's a delay between when the reporter finishes asking the robot a question and the robot's response. The journalist, at first, fails to recognize the lag. She repeats herself just as the robot begins to speak. She turns impatient, frustrated. The robot is called Bena 48, a machine replica of a real woman named Bena. According to the journalist, the real Bena did End Page 33 not respond to requests for contact. The New York Times employee finds interacting with Bena 48 painfully boring. She has to will herself to be gentle with the robot. She tells the robot's caretaker, "I want to help her be less confused. " The caretaker smirks. He comments that he has an easier time conversing with the robot because he has a deeper understanding of her machinery. The journalist appears to feel sorry for the caretaker. In the final few seconds of the video clip, the woman asks the non-woman, "How do you feel about Bena? " referring to the human the AI is modeled after. Not-Bena considers the question and says, "I wish they could capture more of her so that I could be more truly Bena. " In the end, we have witnessed a programmed being express dissatisfaction, an early-generation performance of the dynamic emotions of its biological creators. ________ Conditions, Continued He wants his grandchildren to bear his last name and his last name alone. He cannot see the beauty in a joint denomination, which was his own son's idea. He thinks I'd grow a person inside of me, and let him stake his flag in my child. He does not consider the possibility of his own lack of depth. He confines us to his unimaginative perception of posterity, of preservation. ________ Fruit Flies, Part II I pull my pants down to pee and see a fruit fly as I descend onto the toilet. In the shower, I spy gnats on the steamy walls around me. I lay my head down on my pillow, and there's buzzing again. I spend my days swatting, wondering, "Am I the rotting thing? " End Page 34 Taara Khalilnaji Taara Khalilnaji is an Iranian-American writer living in Seattle with her husband and cattle dog. She spent a decade working in the technology industry, which continues to inspire her thoughts on the mechanization of personhood. Her writing has appeared in Two Hawks Quarterly, JMWW, Maudlin House, Nowruz Journal, and elsewhere. Copyright © 2024 University of Wisconsin Board of Regents