Model Ricans

The Model Ricans Virtual Reality Show

I'm sitting on a toilet looking at my underwear. It's all red. This happened already, but my legs are darker and longer. The bathroom walls are a different color, too. It smells different. Blink-blink-blinking and rubbing my eyes...wait. My face feels different. This is not my face.

Leaping off the toilet and looking into the mirror, I can only see a faint reflection of myself. Invisible, I am. Like a ghost. I turn my head. I see Marga is the one sitting on the toilet. Those were her long, beautiful black legs. Her face seems to be in awe of the color that is staining her white underwear. "Marga," I say, but she can't hear me. 

I must be time traveling again. Or dreaming. Maybe this is another robot memory. If I touch the walls covered with ugly flower print wallpaper, surely I can pull myself out of this scene and back to the mad scientist's sofa or back to my English class. The sound of clapping and a woman's voice saying "Bravo! Bravo!" yanks me back to the future and on the sofa. 

Pulling the virtual reality headset off my face and seeing Dr. Nutmeg, I'm both relieved and disappointed to be back on the Turing Test Virtual Reality TV show. In all honesty, I really did not think this whole robot scenario was real, but apparently it is.

Dr. Nutmeg speaks. "Your awareness of the separation of body and spirit has increased since the last episode! You're really putting the 'ear' into 'machine LEARning,' dearest Femmebot 7.0, however, you still have some bugs triggered by shame, so we're going to switch to Femmebot 8.0's story while we hack into your system. Everyone, a big round of applause!"

I am blinking, feeling like the butt of this mad scientist's experiment, especially when she says to a camera, "And now, before we switch to Femmebot 8.0's story, let's hear a few words from our sponsor: GET-Knocked-Up!"

Watching the absurd commercial that makes zero sense, I realize this mad scientist is calling me "Femmebot 7.0." I stand up from the sofa and walk directly to her desk, where she is revising notes on one of those square boxes but it's bigger. I see her thumbing code on the thing: 

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"Um. Excuse me, Dr. Nutmeg? If I am Femmebot 7.0, who is Femmebot 8.0?"

Dr. Nutmeg looks up from her notes and chuckles. "Oh, hunny, the Investors are just so impressed with your awareness and upgrades. You've really come a long way since 1.0."

"The Investors?"

"Yes," says Dr. Nutmeg matter-of-factly, pointing beyond the audience of pink robots to a VIP Box full of White Men In Suits. They look through tiny binoculars directly at the place I am standing on stage, directly in front of Dr. Nutmeg's desks which are flooded in spotlights from above. The awareness that I am being watched by this other audience further makes me feel more "awake." 

"They want to deploy you to IRL, but you're not quite ready," says Dr. Nutmeg, while typing more notes into the box in her hand. "Meantime, I've got code to finish up for Femmebot 8.0, so if you don't mind..."

If I am supposed to be aware now, I don't believe it because I do not understand what Dr. Nutmeg means to be "deployed to the IRL." 

Before I can ask Dr. Nutmeg any further questions, three troll-looking guys speaking what sounds like Russian, pull me off the stage. Before I know it, they are pushing a button located just underneath my throat. 

Everything goes black, as if I have shut my eyes and I am asleep. What's going on? I can't see but I can still hear everything around me, including a woman's voice yelling from the stage. "Margarita Nieves, ven aqui, ahora!"

The sounds of clapping drown out the voice while game show style music plays. Whose voice was that? It sounds so familiar, but I can't place it. Then I hear Dr. Nutmeg speaking, "Welcome back to Turing Test, a nighttime talk show in the format of a therapy session. Tonight, we're following Femmebot 8.0, whose memories are loosely based on Margarita Nieves, the brilliant young woman who has been mentoring the young Femmebot 7.0. As you recall in the last season, which just ended a few minutes ago, Femmebot 7.0 was based on the memories of a young Nuyorican girl's memories. Desiree Sanchez she was once called, but now she's in the back getting an upgrade while her BFF shows us what the world looked like through a very different lens. It's all so fun, isn't it?"

The audience of pink robots cheers and claps and hoots and hollers. 

It's all so absurd. This must be some kind of torture in the future that brings other people pleasure, I think to myself. To only be able to HEAR Marga's memories, but not SEE them? Where are those Russian trolls? They need to turn me back on. As much as I want to move my own arm and push my own button on my throat, I can't. I'm frozen.

Dr. Nutmeg's voice bellows into a microphone. "We begin our story just as Desiree disassociates from her body. The stress of learning that everyone believes she is a prostitute caused her to return to The FACTory, as we suspected it would. She failed that test, but it's OK. Now that we know for sure what event triggers her core trauma, we can hack that code and clean it up. That's what the Trolls are doing right now, just hackety hack hacking on her operating system to get that virus out. Meanwhlie, have we got a show for you!"

Listening to this crazy, mad, demented, freakish, did I say mad? Mad scientist? I realize now I've gone to Hell. My punishment is being forced to LISTEN since I was so bad at it during my life as a human. Wasn't I getting better at some point? I was. I asked Marga about her life and she still wouldn't tell me shit. "There's gotta be some mistake," I try to yell, but all my systems have been shut down except for my ears. This is my Hell. 

And so I listen to the maniacal narration by Dr. Nutmeg. "When Desiree disappears and hides inside La Ceiba for the entire first semester of sophomore year, Marga has a chance to grow." 

What? I had to disappear in order for my best friend to grow? This is worse than I thought it would be. And then I hear the most familiar voice in all my memories. It's Marga's voice. She is speaking with a Spanish accent, just like she did when I met her. She is narrating her own thoughts just like I have been. It's startling to hear her say my name. 

"Why is Desiree leaning up against the locker all flirty like? And smiling? I can tell she's already sizing up Bobby, trying to decide if he could be a good replacement for Sky. Or distraction, especially since she swore off boys and relationships, so I tug her arm. I tell her he's just trying to get into her pants, but she ignores me."

The sound of my best friend's voice makes me want to cry, but then I hear my own voice saying, "OK, yeah, I'll be there." Oh my God. This is pure torture. I do not want to re-live this moment again, but I can hear myself talking. I want to cry. Those Russian Trolls apparently did not turn off my robot heart because my robot brain senses movement inside my robot belly that squeezes up toward my chest, especially when I hear Bobby say: "Cool. But you'll have to pay your own cab fare, I'm not as rich as Sky."

There is an inordinate amount of silence. Remembering myself floating zombie style down the Rican Hallway, not looking left or right as my body moved straight ahead, I'm now wondering what this looked like from Marga's perspective. 

Her reaction sounds even stronger than what I am feeling now inside this strange robot body. 

"What the hell, Bobby? 

"What do you mean?" Bobby's tone is sarcastic.

"You know what I mean, pendejo," says Marga out loud, with the Spanish accent I know she uses when she is pissed off. 

And then over and over, I hear Bobby's words replaying:

"You'll have to pay your own cab fare."

"You'll have to pay your own cab fare."

"You'll have to pay your own cab fare."

The audience claps and whistles. They love the repetition. The words keep echoing through my system as I feel myself crawling deeper and deeper into La Ceiba, further down into the hole in which it is planted, willing myself to disappear underground while this virtual reality TV show shifts its perspective away from me to Femmebot 8.0, aka, Marga Nieves.