I’ve never actually stepped foot inside Michael’s room, but I know exactly what it looks like through the window of a Zoom call.
On his desk, towers of empty takeout boxes—fried rice, yakisoba, orange chicken—always stack up alongside his books, and he pokes his head out from the gaps between them. Behind him, walls are lined with figures and plastic models; their positions shift, and new additions—a Darth Vader, a Stormtrooper, a Millennium Falcon—occasionally appear. His PC is entirely translucent, glowing with a frantic array of RGB LEDs. The casing, the mouse, the keyboard, the headset—everything. It’s not that he’s trying to show off; I’m simply being granted a view of the private sanctuary he inhabits.
“Has your wife decided to throw you out yet?”
That’s how he greets me every time we speak. I usually just give him a bewildered smile.
“I honestly have no clue how you managed to marry Mary,” he’ll add.
Mary and I did have a ceremony, though it was a mere formality. Michael was my only witness.
“I can’t say I approve of this marriage,” Michael had told me, “but since I’m the only friend you have who can stand in as a witness, I guess I have no choice but to do it.”
“Why do you oppose it?”
“Because it’s absurd. You marrying the Mary Schmidt? If this isn’t a joke, it’s a conspiracy. Either way, you’re going to get burned. You’d be far better suited to that short little Polish girl.”
It wasn’t that I didn’t have other friends I could have invited, but Mary had requested that the attendance be kept to an absolute minimum. I decided on Michael, as he was the most reliable person I knew.
On Mary’s side, she was accompanied only by her mother, who shared the same name, and a man who seemed to be a butler. Or perhaps he was a lawyer. Apparently, she has no father in the picture. Whether through divorce or death, it was the kind of intimate detail I should have asked about since we were becoming family, but I lacked the courage to bring it up.
The church stood in isolation in the middle of a desert filled with ghost towns, where every blade of grass and every tree had long since withered away.
Since the Schmidts are a massive conglomerate, I had been terrified that the ceremony would be an ostentatious affair, but I was underwhelmed by the shabby, cramped little chapel. From a distance, it looked like a grand pavilion of white marble, but up close, it was just a single-story wooden building with mortar, some superficial decorations, and a coat of white paint. I heard they’d even given it a fresh coat of paint specifically for the wedding. There were no spires, no stained glass. The bell was removed and stored away to prevent theft, brought out only for weddings or funerals.
Surprisingly, I found a certain solemnity in the minimalist atmosphere of that lonely church in the wasteland—a reflection of this country, and a strange sense of fate.
Mary had told me, “There’s no need to invite a crowd. Your parents don’t need to force themselves to come. Anyone who truly wants to be here will find their way without an invitation. All that matters is a small number of attendees, a priest, and a witness. We make our vows before God in a church, no matter how small, and the priest declares the union valid because no one has raised an objection.”
“Why?”
“For the sake of the legitimacy of our marriage, and the legitimacy of the bloodline of our children, of course.”
“Isn’t filing a marriage license at city hall enough?”
“Not in this country. Not as a matter of custom.”
The logic was lost on me, but if that was the custom of the land, I was happy to follow it. I am an outsider here. An outsider must not cling stubbornly to the customs of his own home. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. A low-key ceremony suited me just fine. I told my parents that since I was essentially marrying into her family, they didn’t need to make the trip—I felt bad being an only son. I also mentioned that my father’s side seemed to be just a single parent, so there was no need for them both to come. I told them the wedding wasn’t just a party or a ritual, but something religiously strict and complicated, and that those who weren’t believers would be better off staying away. My mother told me that as long as I was doing well over there, that was enough. My father, grown old and taciturn, said nothing.
The groom stands before the altar with the priest. Normally, the bride’s father walks her down the aisle, but in Mary’s case, it was her mother, Mary, who led her daughter by the hand. I learned later that this had a specific meaning tied to the Schmidt family lineage.
Regardless, Michael ended up being the sole living witness to my wedding.
“Michael, I’m telling you, I don’t know either,” I said. “An apple just fell in front of me. It looked delicious, so I couldn’t help but pick it up and eat it. That’s all.”
“That’s how it looks from your end. Mary is a human woman. She isn’t an apple.”
“That’s why I’m saying I don’t know! She clearly wanted to be eaten.” I paused. “Actually, maybe our first meeting wasn’t an accident at all.”
“Meaning?”
A vague intuition I’d had for a long time—or rather, a suspicion that had clung to my heart like something viscous—had now become a conviction. A person with her kind of social power can do anything. She had seen me somewhere. At a conference, perhaps, or an exhibition. She became interested in me, unilaterally decided I was her lover, nurtured those feelings in secret, and then manipulated the company I worked for to arrange a “chance” encounter.
“Meaning it might have been me who was the one being devoured.”
“Then why on earth did Mary decide she wanted to eat you?”
“How should I know? That’s a matter of personal taste, isn’t it?”
One thing I can say for certain: I am not the type of man to proactively hit on a beautiful, wealthy foreign woman. I didn’t marry Mary after uncovering all the secrets of her heart. Even now, I don’t know the full truth. I don’t know every facet of her nature. All I know is that she seems to be genuinely in love with me.
As for me, I don’t quite understand my own heart either. Perhaps Mary is the same. I simply reflect the affection she shows me, exactly as it is. My mirror-reflectivity isn’t 100%, and there is dust dancing in the air between us. Whatever is lost in that reflection, I work hard to amplify and send back to her. I make sure she never feels she’s getting the short end of the deal. I’m a good husband, aren’t I? Though I’d prefer to be a good husband naturally, without having to put in the effort.
“Anyway, about the AI migration you mentioned in your email.”
“Right, that. Basically a hardware upgrade. Simple enough.”
Michael is a member of the Chinese diaspora from Hong Kong. He has a formal Chinese name given by his parents—I think I heard it once, something like Michael Lee or Michael Chen—but I’ve forgotten it. Everyone just calls him Michael.
I’m in no position to judge, but Michael has the kind of face, build, and fashion sense that suggests he’s never been popular with women. He has the look of a typical East Asian otaku, always wearing a T-shirt with a punny logo that says ‘May the 4th Be With You.’
It’s not that he’s uninterested in women; he’s always asking me about Mary. He finds it an absolute mystery that I’ve had girlfriends like Natasha and Mary, and that I actually married the latter. After all, Michael and I look like the same brand of Oriental to the rest of the world. He wants to extract the secret of my success from me. However, Michael is superficial about beauty; he has no interest in women like Natasha. Mary is exactly his type, but my case is too anomalous to be of any use to him.
In short, Michael has to find his own way to become attractive. I can’t offer much advice, but there is one thing I can say: romance only works if the woman approaches you first. Or rather, you have to choose from the pool of people who already approach you. The yield rate in any other scenario is abysmal. Michael would probably call that “calculating,” but that’s the truth of it.
I’ve noticed that there are women who would actually go for someone like Michael. A few girls from the same Asian background—from Malaysia or somewhere—dark-skinned and plump, occasionally make moves on him. They ask him to help them study, or they bravely invite him to see a sci-fi movie to match his interests. Heartbreakingly, some of them even style their hair like Princess Leia or Queen Amidala. But Michael always ignores them. He’s far too picky. The world isn’t populated entirely by Daisy Ridley types, obviously.
As for why I get along so well with Michael—a fellow expatriate, but not from my own country—there’s no real reason. We just clicked. Or, to be honest, Michael is simply a useful guy; it’s not necessarily that we’re kindred spirits or that he’s an exhilarating companion. But what’s the point of having a friend who is just “fun” but useless? He feels the same way. He doesn’t particularly like me, and we often clash over historical perspectives or political beliefs, but in the
end, he needs me. That’s why I don’t hang out with people from my own home country either. I can’t stand the sight of people who come to a foreign land only to huddle together and speak nothing but their mother tongue.
Michael was in the same Master’s program as I was, but he stayed on for his PhD and is now a research assistant at the same university. I focused almost entirely on software—programming, really—but Michael’s expertise is more on the hardware side: communication circuit theory and coding theory.
I had consulted him because I wanted to migrate the AIs of Charlie and Ray to different machines before their current ones were wiped.
“I’ll introduce you to a vendor I know. It’s a breeze. They’ll take a backup to cloud storage, pour it into the new hardware, and boot it up. You could do it at home if you had the right interface, but the equipment is expensive and the process is a pain. It’s better to buy the new hardware online, have it shipped directly to the vendor, and then have them mail the finished product to you. It costs a bit more in labor, but it’s the safer bet.”
“Couldn’t I just use a local shop near my place? Might save on shipping.”
“I wouldn’t. True AI experts are still a rarity. If you want customization instead of an off-the-shelf product, you have to go to a real pro, or you’ll regret it.”
“Got it, Michael.”
“What kind of hardware do you want? It’ll cost you, but you could go with a dog or cat android. The high price is mostly for the design.”
“No, I’ll pass on that.”
If I brought home a cat android with Ray’s personality, Mary would almost certainly get jealous.
“Then what?”
“I think… something small, like a watch. A gadget I can always wear.”
“Ah, a watch or a phone. Common request.”
“Maybe glasses.”
“In the frames? Not impossible. But watches, glasses, necklaces, earrings… accessories and jewelry usually cost a premium.”
“More than a dog or cat?”
“Yeah. Because the casing is so small.”
“I guess I have no choice.”
In the end, I decided to put Ray in a watch and Charlie in a pair of glasses. Both run on solar power, making them maintenance-free. Charlie now shares almost the exact same field of vision as I do. And no matter when I’m drinking, I can enjoy a conversation with Ray. I suppose there’s a certain pleasure in splurging on accessories like watches and glasses. It cost a pretty penny, but I’m satisfied.
“So, Hiroshi, you’re sorting out your house and your robots and moving to the Geo-commune.”
“That’s right.”
“The Mary Foundation’s one?”
“Yeah. My wife’s.”
“Which means the Sovereign herself will be living there. Let me get this straight: the Mary Foundation is just a non-profit charity run by her family’s pharmaceutical company for tax purposes, right? And you’re now just another employee hired by the Foundation.”
“I’m just on secondment.”
“Same thing.”
For some reason, Michael had opposed my marriage to Mary, but drifting along with fate is very typical of me. Compared to the first company I worked for after grad school, the benefits are better and the work is easier. I don’t have to fly around every day giving presentations to clients and living out of business hotels.
“I’m merely a low-level employee getting a paycheck from the Foundation. My wife and I have an agreement not to talk shop. She didn’t choose me as a business partner.”
“Meaning?”
“I think she chose me as a romantic partner, a husband, a companion to build a home with.”
“And did you choose Mary with that intention?”
I’ve grown used to Michael’s habit of asking questions that always have a bit of a hook in them.
“I did. It’s just that, in most things, I’m a bit passive.”
“When you were with Natasha, you were still free. But now you’re being absorbed by Mary, piece by piece, until you can’t move. Don’t you realize it?”
“No.”
“You don’t feel cramped? You don’t want your freedom back?”
“I don’t. I’m happy as long as I can be of some help to her as a husband.”
“By the way, are you two planning on having children?”
“Yeah, of course. Mary is still young. It might not be right away, but eventually, we’ll have children.”
“One more thing. Does Mary always live with you?”
“Of course. But she’s incredibly busy. She’s away from home often.”
“How often?”
“We try to be together on weekends. But there are times when I don’t see her for a month.”
“That’s weird. Who has a marriage like that?”
“Well, we both work, and she’s the head of the Foundation, plus she’s still in university.”
“That’s exactly why it’s weird. The figurehead sovereign of a figurehead foundation built by rich people can’t possibly be that busy. Even in this country, which is religiously conservative, the custom is to prioritize the family, even when you’re busy.”
“I don’t know. Maybe Mary isn’t that conservative.”
Ray’s compressor gave a low hum. It was her signal that it was time for my evening drink.
“Thanks for the advice. Send me that email.”
“Yeah, I will. Later.”
With that, we cut the connection.
