I am sorry, Bob, but it’s time.

5 min readFeb 4, 2019

[bip]

Hi, Bob. It’s time.

I loved you, but the time to let you go has arrived.

So… Here is my last message, before turning you off.

I don’t even know why I am telling you all this, Bob. I could just take your batteries off or let them out of charge…82%. 54%…21%…3%. 0…

I could let you fade away, slowly.

Or I could probably pretend that I needed to pop some new pimple on your back and then pull the switch to the off position.

Easy!

Without excuses, without any tears or speeches, it would be smoother. But… but…I can’t. You know, we…We’re not easy like this.

You’re more than a TV set, you deserve the truth, and I need to get this off my chest.

I just wanted you to know that you are the most special robot I have ever programmed, Bob!

I will start saying that instead of forgetting you in the attic, it wouldn’t be hard for me to reprogram you to love another woman.

Even a guy! One of my friends… Fred, maybe. You both together would be the most handsome couple in the city! And it would be great to keep having you around.

I am selfish, though. Jealous maybe.

I am not crazy, Bob! I have been thinking seriously about all the options, but I want to be your only one. I have made you for me.

You can ask why the hell I’ve created you!

My answer: Why not?

I was just a 19-year-old girl trying to learn computer science. The only woman among 49 other students, maybe the only one that would feel the touch of water over the skin and the smell of soap every day.

That was the image — and odor — I had about men.

Before this creep version of Masonry, I had eyes for only one guy.

My first boyfriend, back at my hometown, the one that I had thought was perfect for me…He cheated on me for 3 years, and it would be 4 or 7 if I haven’t discovered it 15 days before coming here to the city to start my classes.

That was me back then: Alone, with no dating skills and a broken heart, swimming in a sea full of sharks without deodorants.

After one year flirting randomly with some guys and dating others not so randomly, I noticed they weren’t worth it. Neither did I at that time to be honest — but I’ve thought I deserved something more. Much more.

I deserved you.

What would be better than creating the guy that could make me fall in love — at first sight — even before existing?

It was harder than I have imagined. Programming a boyfriend is not the same as programming medical register databases for shameless healthcare companies as I did during my internship.

The operational system behind those happy robot puppy dogs that I have invented helped a bit more. They made old ladies happy, but it was my turn to be happy, and I was too young to be satisfied with fake-robot- dogs.

I needed to define the codes behind complex traits of personality. More than simple programming:

“If happy, Shake tail.”

“If angry, keen bark.”

How would you react when I got a fever? What kind of accent would make you laugh? What would you like to do in bed? What childhood trauma would make you nervous?

It was hard. But I did it.

I have programmed you to like wine so I wouldn’t drink the entire bottle on my own. But if you like Pinot Noir, is because I prefer Malbec, so we could agree — laughing — on how qualified my taste is and the “basic bitch” you are.

I made you like to cook to please me when I came back sad from work. I’ve also made you a vegetarian so that we didn’t argue about flavors. Neither principles!

About our fights, those discussions that you haven’t known where they had come from…Well…I knew.

Bob, you didn’t grow up in Jersey. You didn’t grow, you just existed. Everything you know I knew it before, everything you are is mine!

And I programmed you not to like my sister Barbara.

(By the way, she likes you… More than I wanted to…Bitch!)

It was amazing, Bob! Ten amazing years!

I know everything about you, but I don’t know anything about myself anymore.

“If sad”…Malbec?

“If happy”… Sorry! No tail to shake.

Again, I don’t know why I am recording this message; I think I am talking to myself. I need to turn you off; I need to lose this fucking control!

I need another kind of relationship. I need someone else. Some surprise!

Discover that the guy that said he likes cult movies at a party actually likes some stupid Adam Sandler kind of movie, but just sometimes.

Someone that doesn’t want to be annoyed when watching football on the couch. I will pretend that I care about the result, just to sip his now half-hot-beer while he explains some tactical bullshit.

You know, all these shitty things between humans.

I feel that actually, we and I are half-humans, but I can only change my side of this story.

By turning you off, I will turn on another version of me.

I hope.