Moscow but Dreaming

“So you made him an immigrant,” Cecilia says and laughs.

Veronica, who has a cold, laughs too in a sexy deep throaty way that makes me insanely jealous. “Everyone’s an immigrant somewhere. Except the people who stay home.”

“And who would want that?” Cecilia laughs and laughs. I’m jealous of how lanky and long she is, how her neck elongates and strains as she tosses back her head and finishes her drink. This is something about these two that I want so desperately and yet have no prospects of achieving: being in the center of attention, attracting people no matter where they go, having seemingly hundreds of friends. I always feel so honored when they choose to hang out with my own insignificant self.

“ What are you working on now, Elena?” Veronica asks. “Besides rewriting history, of course.”

“Still cockroaches,” I say and sigh. The AI lab I work in, the Minsky lab, is world famous for our research. I get to be a nameless collaborator, the one who equips our robotic cockroaches with sensors and simple programming, little chips that allow them to teach themselves to avoid light and scatter at the sound of footsteps. So they scatter and are a huge pain in my ass to catch and fix. “I’m doing vibration sensitivity programming now.”

Cecilia nods, politely. Or maybe she is genuinely interested. “They act like real ones?”

“Yeah,” I say and drink my beer. “It’s not much, and I’ve been in the lab for five years now, and I still do cockroaches. It’s something, I guess.”

They agree.

“What’s next for you?” Veronica asks. “Rats?”

I’m not sure if she’s mocking or not. “Probably more cockroaches. I want to make something that can learn more things, you know? More patterns. Like, not just light and sound and vibration, but the time of day, something that can make decisions. And not just react but to anticipate, to affect . . . ” I stumble over my words and fall silent, afraid to bore, to take up too much of their valuable attention. Besides, they are training to become neuroscientists, and I expect them to have some contempt for those of us who try to replicate a great complexity of a brain via computer chips and switches linked together, the artificial neural networks that are not at all neural.

“It sounds pretty cool,” Veronica says, her white teeth gleaming, her skin the color of an ominous sunset. “This is the problem I have with much of the neurosience—it always interprets living beings as reactive, and you can’t really make a breakthrough within those constraints.”

I nod and hold my breath—it is not often that Veronica (or Cecilia, for that matter) want to geek out with me. Normally, they just try to give me advice, because apparently to them I look especially helpless and awkward. And I am grateful, I really am, and I hope to learn their effortless laugh and ability to not become tongue-tied when faced with people, and managing to not dress as a dork. Not mangling every English idiom I learn with such effort would also be nice, but I’m not setting the bar high here. At least, in terms of personal social achievement.

“I think most of us are reactive though,” I tell Veronica. “It takes a hero to be able to shape the circumstance rather than follow them. You know how only main characters in books manage to shape their own destiny and the rest just follow? I think it’s the same in human history.”

“I was thinking more about my animals,” Veronica says, and mercifully doesn’t laugh. With a blistering wave of shame, I remember that she works with bats. “But I take your point. Bats are always scanning their environment for clues, so they are searching for their own shape of being . . . of their spaces. It’s one thing to merely perceive the surroundings, and yet quite another to send out the signal to find out what those surroundings are; by choosing direction, they create the reality they want to interact with.”

I nod. “This makes sense. Maybe I should equip my cockroaches with a sonar or some echolocation device. This way I can teach them to make decisions about what to explore.”

“Let me know how it goes,” Veronica says.

Cecilia smoothly interjects, “And meanwhile, we’re having a party this Saturday. Our friend Todd will be bringing his band.”

“You have something to wear, right?” Veronica says, and their concern with my lack of a cohesive wardrobe forces away all other thoughts, and I bask in their attention and consider highlights. We finish our drinks and Cecilia skips, to prepare the place for the party. Veronica stays with me, and before I can get over the prospect of a one-on-one conversation, she informs me that we have to go to Filene’s Basement. “You absolutely cannot wear those palazzo pants again,” she tells me firmly. “They’re too synthetic, there’re sparks flying off the cuffs when you walk.”

I want to debate whether it is even possible for something to be too synthetic, isn’t it an either-or situation? But Veronica grabs my hand and it makes me melt a little, and we’re off to scour the expanse of Mass Ave for proper party outfits.

But before we reach Filene’s Basement, something in a store window catches my eye and I freeze despite Veronica’s impatient tugging and pulling, and I stare. It looks like some local gallery, one of those shops with hardwood floors polished so even the most modest heel clacks too loudly and the fronts of which are nothing but thick glass. In this window display I see: coral beads, copper gongs, dishes, wonderful objects. This place has Hainuwele all over it, and I go inside, suddenly conquering my fear of these posh and severe places.

Veronica follows, her perfect eyebrows drawn like Scythian bows, and her nose, reddened by the cold, sniffling with irritation. “What gives?”

“I have to see this,” I say. Our shoes clack on the parquet, blond and polished, and there’s no one but us in there. I look around for clues, for some sign that I’m in the right place. Finally, I see a dinner plate, carved out of soapstone, heavy and perfect, with a bunch of smaller knickknacks piled on it. “Take one,” the handwritten sign over the plate invites. I sort through— mostly single earrings (my ears aren’t pierced), coral beads, tiny statuettes, until finally I find a tin five-splayed star, painted red. The star Chapaev wore over his helm, I have to assume. I clasp it in my fist and tell Veronica, “Okay, we can go.”

At the party, I feel unusually at ease—perhaps because there’s a red star hastily sewn onto the bill of the hat I picked up while shopping. It is gray and has copper buttons on the sides, and gives a vaguely military impression. I’m wearing it with my new dress despite Veronica’s suggestions. I am at ease.

Cecilia and Veronica went for a tropical theme, and there are piña coladas and pineapples and papayas everywhere. The place is a loft, and they moved most of the furniture into the kitchen, and there’s a vast expanse of hardwood floor, like the gallery, but the sounds of heels are muffled by so many bodies packed into the space, their soft heat dissipating any too-clear sounds. The sideboard with drinks and fruit and strong cheeses is stretched along the far wall, by the window, which shows an incredible molten sunset, streaked bronze and pink and red, and soon it is violated and abandoned, cheeses crumbled and left undone on the bamboo cutting boards, the dull flat knives crusted over with white film like murder. I make my way over to the sideboard and pick on crumbs of camambert and smoked gouda, and sneak a grape or two. I would’ve liked some pineapple, but I know it would only make the corners of my mouth turn red and hurt for days, so I wisely stay away and sip a piña colada. The band is tuning up in the corner and the party surges toward them, leaving me and the cheeseboard in a contented solitude.

Our silent communion is interrupted when someone above me says, “Cecilia tells me you’re in Minsky lab.”

“Yeah,” I say through a mouthful of cheese and give the intruder a hostile look. “What of it?”

He stares down at me through his thick glasses, his face expressing sincere concern. “So do you think AI is really possible?”

I swallow my cheese, and don’t enjoy it anymore. “It depends on how you define AI. It probably isn’t going to be cute or sexy if that’s what you’re asking.”

He frowns and takes a step back. My mom always tells me that I’m too abrupt; she gave up on the honey and vinegar analogy some years ago, ever since I asked why would I want to catch flies in the first place. I knew, of course, what she meant.

“I’m just being curious,” he says, frowning. “You don’t have to be . . . like that.” He of course means to say “such a bitch,” but to his credit doesn’t.

I shrug and scope the board for more stray cheese bits. “You don’t have to ask inane questions. You asked Cecilia what I did so you could talk to me, but you don’t really care. So don’t expect a thoughtful well-reasoned answer while making small talk.”

“Nothing wrong with small talk.”

“Of course not. Just try not to trivialize shit other people care about.”

At this point, I expect him to make an exit, but he just shakes his head. “Would asking you about your hat also qualify as trivializing?”