Butterflies
They’re on my bedside table when I open my eyes, fluttering three pairs of iridescent wings in the dimness.
“Good morning!” one chimes.
“We’re so glad you’re awake,” another adds.
“G’morning,” I mumble blearily.
“You have a lot to do today,” the third of them warns. “You asked me to be your exercise accountability buddy and I won’t let you down. Up and at ‘em!”
My butterflies are state-of-the-art. All three (the red, the blue, and the purple) wheel through the air while I exercise and cheer me on. By the end, I’m feeling pretty good about myself and grateful for their encouragement.
“You’re ready for the next level!” the red one declares. “I found a set of weights on sale. If you order now, they could be delivered before your work out tomorrow!”
On the screen beside my bed, a countdown clock ticks off the seconds before the sale will end and I’ll miss my chance to get weights at such a great price.
The butterflies celebrate when choose to Buy Now.
“Who do you want to look like today?” the blue one asks when I enter the bathroom. “Melissa Fontaine d’Prague or Shakina Beetza? Or, if you’re feeling really wild, you could upgrade your hair to look like a cross between Starshine Glimmer from Take Me Sun Surfing and Princess Pan-z.”
When the butterflies alight on my bathroom mirror, images of the idols and characters they’re suggesting appear on the glass beside them. These pictures are gorgeous. My face, beside them, is a gorgon’s.
“Or if you subscribe to the Hair Care Pro package, you could have a totally unique, personally customized hairstyle that suits your face shape and skin tone every day for the next month. Want to start your free three-day trial?” the purple butterfly chimes.
I admire the star-tipped braids in the back of my spoon over breakfast as the butterflies flutter around me.
“Did you hear the news…?”
“I made you a funny comic!”
“Do you remember that time, four years ago, when you…”
I clean up and am seated at my workstation when some distant part of me realizes I can’t remember what I ate. A breakfast sandwich? No, that was yesterday. Pancakes and eggs? Maybe…Well, it doesn’t matter.
“Time to get to work!”
I spend the morning working while my butterflies celebrate small successes and interject moments of humor and remind me to stretch from time to time. I break for lunch, then get back to it. I’m rewarded for staying focused. I’m congratulated on ways I’ve increased my productivity.
The butterflies around me fly and fly and fly. I work and work and work.
It’s nearly evening when I hear a knock at the door.
Strange. My delivered orders are posted through the box. The only reason someone would knock would be if they wanted to…
No…
They couldn’t possibly…
Surely there’s not someone outside who wants to contact me.
“Don’t answer,” the red butterfly warns.
“It might not be safe.”
“Your heartrate is elevated. I’ll play you some soothing music. I just composed a piano lullaby about stars and clouds.”
“No. I’ll…I’ll answer.”
If there’s a person at my door—an honest-to-goodness, living-and-breathing, thinking-and-feeling person—then I want to know. I don’t think I could stand the uncertainty if I didn’t answer.
“Okay, but be careful,” the red butterfly whispers.
“There’s so much news about…unsavory people. Humans can be so terrible,” the blue one says.
“Do you remember that news story about that woman, just about your age, who opened the door to another person and was murdered?” the purple one adds.
“Okay, then come with me, and call emergency services if it seems suspicious.”
I inch toward the door and activate the exterior camera.
The person outside doesn’t seem like an axe-murderer. For one thing, they aren’t carrying an axe. Or any other weapon, that I can see. Their hair short and brown. Their sweater is fuzzy and tan. Their pants are simple and black. They don’t look tall or short, fat or thin, beautiful or ugly. They’re just…there.
I open the door, just a crack, and stand behind it so I won’t be hit with a projectile weapon if the person’s holding one.
“Hello?”
The person looks up, meets my eyes, and smiles.
That smile hits me like a club. It pierces me like an arrow. It tears through me like a bullet.
It leaves a sensation in my stomach. Something churning, no, lighter. It’s like… It’s like…
“Hi. I was wondering if I could watch your butterflies.”
I glance up at three little entities fluttering around my head. I’ve spent a long time customizing them. They know what I want and what I like. I won’t appreciate this stranger changing them. But I also don’t want to be rude. The poor person doesn’t seem to have any butterflies of their own. I should feel sorry for them, right? I should try to help them, if I can, because I’m clearly better off.
The stranger carries on talking. “I mean, I figured it’d be okay if I stood out on the street, but the butterflies are kind of next to your door so I figured I should ask, since it’d be weird and creepy if you found me staring.”
“Staring at my butterflies?” I point to the technological marvels wheeling around me.
The stranger glances between the three decorative drones and their fluttering wings and their microchip bodies. The human stranger grins, and it’s an expression dazzling enough to stop a heart. Then they step away. “No. Not those butterflies. These butterflies.”
The stranger motions to one side of my door. I can’t quite see from this angle—
“Don’t go!” one my butterflies insists. “We can’t follow you out of range!”
“If something happens to you, we couldn’t do anything to help!”
“Wouldn’t you rather watch the latest episode of My Perfect Lover? They’re doing a special with fictional characters reimagined as real people! I hear Mr. Darcy and James Bond and Edward Cullen will be in it!”
“Just tell him you’re busy and he can do whatever he wants—”
“They,” the stranger corrects the drone, sliding their hands into their pockets with a little shrug. “They can do whatever they want. So you don’t mind?”
The stranger takes yet another step away, glancing between me and the…butterflies, I guess, that must be just out of view.
“Um…no, I don’t mind.”
“Thanks.”
One of my AI butterflies plays the intro music to My Perfect Lover in my ear, but I’m not listening. I can’t stop myself from staring at all the stranger’s strangeness. Freckles on their skin. Snarls in their hair. Snags in their sweater. Mud on their shoes. Their flaws are mesmerizing. They’re so…real.
I have the chance to study the stranger while their attention is distracted, but after a moment, they notice that I haven’t closed the door and they offer another little smile. “Want to see?”
I hesitate. Is it safe? Is it allowed? Is it okay?
“If you go out there,” one of my butterflies warns, “we won’t be able to follow.”
“You’ll be abandoning us!”
One of them projects a pouting puppy-dog face onto the wall beside me. “We’ll feel so lonely.”
I’m torn. I don’t want my butterflies to feel lonely, but I’ve never seen a real butterfly before. And…and, actually, I think I’d like to.
“It’ll only be a minute,” I promise them.
The stranger gives a little nod of encouragement, so subtle and silent compared to the clamor coming from my butterflies inside.
“I’ve set a timer for one minute!”
“Be careful out there!”
“We miss you already!”
There’s something sacrilegious about their noise, next to the stranger’s silence.
Carefully, I step across the threshold.
Gently, I close the door on my colorful little drones. The ones I call butterflies.
Slowly, I follow the stranger’s gaze to the flowering bushes outside.
Finally, I see them. The real ones.
The butterflies.
Thanks for reading! Stories about people and our interactions with AI simmer in my mind a lot, but this one bubbled over after reading a Medium article by Novak called, “Butterflies: The Artificial Social Media That’s Scarily Replacing Friends.” In this article, Novak describes a platform like Instagram, but instead of people, you generate an AI bot and it…socializes for you, I guess? And also feeds you socialization from other bots? What a world we live in.
Let it be known that I haven’t tried the Butterflies platform and any similarity between this story and Butterflies the Social Media is entirely coincidental and has absolutely no relevance to reality whatsoever. That said, if you’re a human and want a human connection with another human, hey, just so happens that I know this one writer who’s a bit weird but enjoys making other human friends so ahead and send me a message. Happy humaning! (Or, not to exclude our robot overlords who have probably already read this: Happy roboting!)
Title Image by Melissa Chabot on Unsplash
