An Android Switch

with an ever so slight hitch

Photo by Andy Kelly on Unsplash

I stared at the thing sitting across the table from me. It had been my companion for the last few weeks, and I still hadn’t gotten used to it. Every single time I looked at it, I had to remind myself that it had been made to look like me. Still, it was jarring to look over and have my own green eyes and crooked nose looking back at me. Goodness, was my nose really that crooked?

Spending time with your exact replica was hard and weird. But trying to teach it to become you was worse in every single way. Today was no exception.

She (it? I don’t even know at this point.) was having a very hard time understanding the finer points of ordering milkshakes. She didn’t seem to care that I only liked to order specific flavor combos from specific diners. 

This lack of caring for details wasn’t new, though. I had this very same problem when I had to teach her how to order the correct sauce for my chicken nuggets, depending on which fast food place I was ordering from. I hadn’t understood the depths of my quirks until I was forced to teach them to this thing.

It didn’t help that she wasn’t even looking at me anymore.

“Hey! This is important. Pay attention,” I said, waving my arms around my head.

She side-eyed me and spit out my orders word for word. Ugh, why did androids have to be so high-tech and annoying these days?

Seeing that it was pointless to try and continue this lesson, I followed her gaze across the diner. When my eyes landed on the man she was staring at, my jaw almost knocked my milkshake off the table. 

He was the cute guy from the bar the other night, and from the grocery store a few days before and from the tennis courts a few days before that. Were we following him? Considering it was my android double who had picked this diner today, that was a strong possibility.

I slid my eyes back and forth between them, and by the third slide it was painfully obvious.

“You love him, don’t you?” I asked.

“Love? Is that what you humans call it?” she replied in her pretty monotone voice that somehow made the words sound romantic.

I rolled my eyes and sighed. Of course my android would go and fall in love with some random guy mere days before she was to take my place. This switch was going to be much harder than I had anticipated.

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Thanks for reading! Today’s story comes from the archives of my Instagram days. The original prompt was: “You love him, don’t you.” "Love? Is that what you humans call it?”

The little quirks included in the story come straight from my life, and it has me wondering… What’s something you’re strangely opinionated about that you would have to try and teach your android?

Have a great week and see you next Tuesday with another story!