Jane sat in the lobby of the state-run clinic, feeling like Eeyore on a bad day. She’d been waiting for three hours; first come first served, the receptionist had said like a robot. She’d explained their rates and services in a quick speech; Jane had interrupted with a question, but the receptionist had simply lifted her hand and continued. When she hadn’t answered Jane’s question by the end of her spiel, Jane asked again, but the woman just began the same canned speech. Jane wondered if pretending that she was a robot might not be a wonderful life strategy.
Jane had been waiting for a while, but the only time she’d noticed the woman saying anything different, it was one word: “No.” It was to a saggy-jeaned boy who’d asked to borrow the twenty dollar fee. “Look, I really need this test. I made some really bad decisions last night,” he’d said. Jane had tried not to laugh out loud. Luckily she was so sad that she was able to tamp down the amusement into a ragged sigh. If she were a robot she would not have cried last night when her boyfriend accused her of cheating because he had a rash down there. If she were a robot she would have deduced, coolly, that since she hadn’t cheated on him, he must have cheated on her. Her robot self would have figured this out with a head-tilt at human idiocy, like Zachary Quinto as Spock, and then maybe she would have abandoned being a robot and turned into Zachary Quinto as Sylar and eaten his brains. Except that he didn’t have any super powers, so that would have been illogical and ultimately unsatisfying.
