#it could be nice to write and defend a dissertation at some point. prove my mettle as it were

[supercantaloupe]

did u ever end up pursuing musicology and if so can u talk a bit about that decision !! debating getting a phd in the field

answer under the cut bc this got long winded and is very rambly. tldr: if you're passionate about the field i say go for it But make sure you know why you want the degree/what you want to do with it, and make sure it makes sense for you financially to do so

i did, in fact at this point i have finished all my degree requirements so i can unofficially say i have a masters in musicology now. the reason it's not official yet is because i haven't graduated, because i'm doing a dual degree program with library and information science, so i need to finish the degree requirements for that too before i can completely finish next spring, at which point i will officially earn both masters degrees. but as for my actual musicology coursework, i'm done; i passed all my required and elective classes as well as my comprehensive exams.

several things went into my decision to pursue graduate education in musicology. i liked my university in undergrad, and was lucky enough that they still offered a masters program in musicology by the time i applied*, and luckier still that they offered a dual degree program with LIS. and on top of that, i applied to and got a fellowship with the university which would allow me to work in exchange for most of my tuition plus a stipend. so the factors for my decision were:

i would be able to stay at the same university, and not have to uproot my life to move somewhere else to continue studying. good bc i liked my professors and my social circle and the city and the educational and recreational opportunities here, even if (like any school) there are things left to be desired here.

i would be able to study both something i was really passionate about but not particularly lucrative/financially reliable (musicology) at the same time as something i'm not particularly passionate about but still interested in/suited for and very professionally relevant/teaches a lot of transferrable skills (LIS)

i would be able to earn two masters degrees at a (mostly) leisurely pace with a guaranteed job during that time for very little money out of pocket.

nearing the end of my program now, i think i made the right call for myself, considering my options. i don't think i could really make a confident recommendation for someone else though since my experience is so unique and specific. like, my university doesn't offer this program anymore. i don't think there are many similar programs at other universities either, though certainly there are schools with both musicology and LIS programs (and certainly ones that are beefier than mine). but for me, i think it was the right call. i really love studying musicology (music history in particular), and while i can write a good research paper when i put my mind to it, i don't have the natural curiosity and drive required to make a full-time career in research, publishing, and teaching. which is, in my estimation, about the only thing that a phd in musicology is really good for -- and why i'm planning on stopping with my masters. (plus, by graduation, i'll have been at the same university for seven years in a row. i need a break😓.) a bonus for me of the way my dual degree is structured is that i didn't have to write a thesis; and while i'm sure i could have written a respectable musicology thesis, i didn't have a burning topic ready to go, which is often the hardest part for me when doing a research project, and, well, i just didn't need to, so i didn't. in hindsight, given how tough my first two years of grad school have been (both for reasons within and without my control), i'm glad to have had that extra requirement off my shoulders.

at any rate, my end career goal isn't to be a full time researcher or a professor (which i'd need the phd for anyway). i would much rather work hands-on in performing arts management/administration, or as a music librarian, either as a reference and cataloging specialist at an academic or special research library, or (ideally!) as a performance librarian with an ensemble or theater company. ultimately what unlocked musicology for me as a viable and attractive graduate education path for me was the discovery that there are in fact jobs outside of academia where you can apply specialist musicology knowledge, especially ones that involve a hands-on role in the world of performance.

(i learned this from talking to an oboist-turned-archivist at a major professional orchestra, and i still think about that long conversation we had that completely opened my eyes about what to do after my bachelor's. i didn't have a clue until about senior year, and i don't know where i'd be now if i hadn't gotten a chance to hear from her and about her journey.)

all this to say, i'm glad to have had the opportunity to get my MA in musicology where, when, and how i did (though i know there would have been different, in some cases better, opportunities had i studied at a school with a bigger -- well, alive -- musicology program). but that's because i'm not just doing musicology, i'm doing something else that will help me better ensure that i won't starve for want of a paycheck once i graduate at the same time, and i'm doing it in a time and place where i'm lucky enough to have financial support to do so in the form of my fellowship (which is also granting me three years of lucrative job experience in another area!). were the circumstances different -- if i had to pay entirely out of pocket, if there was no dual degree program, if i had to move halfway across the country to continue my education -- i don't know that i would have gone for the MA at all. i'm not sure what else i would have done, to be fair, but that's just kind of how hindsight works i suppose

would i recommend it for anyone else? i don't know. musicology, especially at the level of academia, is a subject that i think is only made up of the passionate. it's certainly not the world's most lucrative career path. but if you're really passionate about it then you can't help but be drawn to it, and i understand that. i'm the same way. how else would i have ended up getting a masters in it? but unless your end goal is to be a professor, who researches and publishes and teaches full time, i'm not sure what the value is in a phd. unless it's a personal pride thing, in which case, that is a lot of work and time and money for personal pride but more power to you if that's your thing, i think that's dope. but if a phd isn't going to make a measurably positive impact on your life, i would say to pause and think very hard before committing to it. plus, nothing's stopping you from reaching out to local universities and music schools and seeing if they'll let you take classes as a non-degree student, if you're still interested in learning/studying without the whole degree. (or even non-local universities. some places offer online classes you can take from anywere.)

*they did close the program on me in the middle of my application though. my professors had to petition the dean to grandfather me in. it was a whole thing 😭

[moreweirdfuture-blog]

NO AUDIBLE DIALOGUE (奇妙な未来 # 003)

Michael went home for his grandmother’s funeral.

 It was a few days later, early one morning when you couldn’t tell the difference between night and day, Michael dropped a glass and it shattered on the floor.

 “Careful,” his grandmother advised. “That glass’ll cutcha.”

 His mother refused to leave her bedroom, but his father got a kick from it and kept bragging about its features. His sister Elaine was six and walked up to her mom and challenged, “I thought she wasn’t going to wake up ever again?”

 Its capacity for language fascinated Michael. He was almost convinced of its humanity until one night when its gaze and smile froze in place. He assumed the battery had died, but he left the room without checking because he got the chills.

 In the morning, her eyes were glued in the same trajectory.

 “Do you have to leave so soon?” his mother asked when he was packed and ready. “Don’t leave me here with that thing.”

 “It’s not that bad,” Michael said and hugged her. His mom scrunched her face.

 “I don’t like it one bit,” she said. “Don’t ever do that to me.” Michael promised he wouldn’t as she drove him to the airport. He always missed home as soon as he left.

 He passed an advertisement for the youtwo when he stepped off the plane.

 Michael worked on a program that allowed your phone to have entire conversations in your place. It was called youtwo.

 Just the other day, Michael noticed a text dialogue between his youtwo and his friend Ruis about 20th century French film editing. Except for a few artifacts, Michael’s youtwo was a stunning product of linguistic science.

 “It’s more than statistics,” Michael explained at a sales meeting. “Users are convinced of its humanity.”

 The fluorescence blurred the stockholders’ faces until one smile became many.  

 Michael recognized a Chopin composition when he came home.

 “I don’t know why you play, “ he said to his husband seated at the piano. Then he signed, in front of his face so it interrupted his play and he had to notice, You’re deaf.

 The music stopped. Kyle glared at Michael and walked out of the room.

 Michael hardly even thought about his husband anymore except that he was rarely there.

 Michael had fallen in love with someone he had never met.

 It started as a bet. His high-school friend Ruis wanted Michael to see if he could fool a man into thinking Michael was a woman over the Internet. Michael didn’t want to.

 “I mean,” Ruis laughed, “You’re effeminate enough already.” Michael gave her a look.

 “That’s,” Michael looked for the word, “Sneaky.” Ruis blew a raspberry.

 “The youtwo isn’t?” Ruis said. “How do I know when I’m texting you that I’m talking to you, or your youtwo!” 

 “They’re the same,” Michael defended. “The youtwo is trained on a corpus of the user’s text, so, it’s me.”

 “No,” Ruis smiled through her teeth. “It’s not.” Michael wasn’t convinced, so Ruis added, “Think of it as a Turing test.”

 They laughed and drank beer in the abandoned observatory. Michael took the bet because whenever he heard the word test, he envisioned the grade, and how much higher it would be than everyone else’s.

 Michael had spent years as a linguist for the FBI, running semantic analysis on chat corpora to anticipate sex offenders.

 He had learned much about human psychology. The major mistake any sex offender knew to avoid was coming on too strong, too fast. It had to be slow, so grooming could happen.

 At first, they talked about nothing.

 His name was Chris, twenty-nine. They chatted over text. He was pretty boring, Michael remembered, handsome, assuming the picture was real. They flirted, and it jump started Michael.  

 Before Chris, Michael slept until noon and struggled to get out of bed. After, he delighted in waking up, and even took up running and yoga for no reason other than to try.

 Michael used a picture of Ruis, one where she had her hair done up and her hip off to the side looking ridiculous but fun.

 Chris wrote that Michael was gorgeous and even though it was obviously a compliment meant for Ruis, it felt just the same. He was getting attention from the kind of guy he used to fear.

 “He likes your picture,” Michael told Ruis. They had been friends since high school algebra and literature. Michael liked binary and she liked we real cool.

 They came up with a secret language where vowels could represent one another.

 ded je hur wot a sed = did you hear what I said?

 Michael used it to confess a crush he had on Ruis’ boyfriend, a skinny jewish boy who couldn’t pronounce invisible and who played soccer every Tuesday. They sat in the stands and Michael would fantasize about kissing him.  

 One afternoon Ruis pushed scrap paper into Michael’s lap.

 Scribbled next to You do not do, you do not do and a list of irregular Spanish conjugations she had written, Ma befrond laks gois.  

 Michael wrote back, Hew du u knu?

 Becos a fund gei purn an hes liptap.

 Suddenly Michael lost interest.

 In high school, none of his crushes were gay. They were straight. He never made eye contact with them, and it was in the locker room he first learned the mistake of touching one. Michael was trying to get from the locker to the door.

 He was square faced with a high edge up and lunged to punch Michael.

 “Touch me again,” he threatened.

 Kyle had lost his hearing after they were married. Doctors stuck plugs in his ears and prescribed medication, but he looked like a freeway exit you get farther and farther away from. He quit DJing. He sold an unopened Underground Resistance cd for five-hundred dollars. A few days later, Michael had found the money ripped up in a blender.

 It had happened suddenly.

 The poor guy had been dizzy for days, to the point of sick. Then he woke up and zip, couldn’t hear a sound, just feel its dull throb.

 Michael was never sure why they married. Kyle had admitted to loving someone else even before, back that summer where they would make out between the Leland cypress. Kyle would spit in Michael’s ear and suck it out with a chuckle that made Michael cross-eyed. Kyle whispered, “Every little thing I do, you’re on my mind,” and Michael just stood there kissing him.  

 Kyle spun hip-hop in the black clubs from Crescent Heights down to West 3rd. He arranged tracks in an apartment that smelled like sawdust. Michael would jab Kyle, talk about patterns and math, and Kyle would shrug. He was never a rational guy like Michael. His thoughts didn’t live in logic, but in the pulse that made logic possible.

 He worked a day job as a mechanic and would leave giant handprints all over Michael’s textbooks.

 “You’re dirty,” Michael would say.

 “You better believe it.”

 Michael was finishing his dissertation, what would become youtwo, and Kyle always said:

 “You’re gonna realize,” then he grabbed his crotch, “You can’t program this.”

 He made a song especially for Michael. Soon, Michael’s brain defaulted Kyle.

 Michael caught him one night kissing some greasy kid with studded earrings and goatee in a lilac haze of patio smoke. When Kyle found Michael outside the club, Michael shoved his hands in his pockets and couldn’t decide to leave or stay. Kyle smoked a cigarette and convinced Michael to share an uber. He set the path to repeat the perimeter of Hancock Park, and Michael saw the tops of old homes as Kyle strummed Michael on the one and four.  

 They were married with the photos to prove it. Then Kyle lost his hearing.

 Michael bought flash cards and a couple apps to help teach Kyle to sign.

 One time Kyle could not remember the gesture for dance. He gave up and stormed from the room.

 That night, Michael found him beating his head with his fists, so Michael wrestled his arms to stop him.  

 Later, barely awake, Kyle grabbed Michael’s wrist.

 “Why are you always making me do things I don’t want?”

 Since he couldn’t hear the reaction, Kyle said whatever.

 It was easy to ignore someone you couldn’t hear.

 “Here.” Michael helped Kyle reach for his glasses. Kyle snatched them away. “I got it.”

 Michael telecommuted and lived in a suburb. What he admired most was the silver carpet got watered every evening at 1800 and the home owner’s association issued a newsletter first of every month, always with some kind of orthophonographic error. Those were a real treat.

 Nothing that wasn’t supposed to happen would.

 Chris talked about the weather, safe topic to break ice. Michael realized he must be a nice guy if he was willing to talk to a random stranger about nothing in particular. Michael started to like him.

 About a week later, Kyle was bouncing silverware off the walls because he couldn’t find a fork. “I can’t hear any of it,” he said when Michael tried to stop him. “Go back in your hole.”

 So Michael did, and he found out Chris loved Escape from L.A just like Michael. Michael forgot about Kyle and the noise. Chris wrote that he didn’t know a girl could be so into action movies. Michael felt sick.

 “I won the test,” Michael insisted. “He thinks I’m a woman. I’m done.”

 “Okay, okay,” Ruis relented. “No harm.”

 “No.” Michael shook his head. “There is harm.” He had begun to think about Chris incessantly. “It’s fucked up to lie like that.” Ruis looked confused and did eyebrow math.

 “So… you don’t want the money?”

 “Keep it,” Michael intoned.

 One night Kyle was gone without a note or trace, probably to Seattle. Michael was busy writing expression code for a new youtwo feature. Michael wondered if one day Kyle would leave him and his thoughts wandered to Chris.

 Chris asked if Michael wanted to watch Memento and Michael was happy for the distraction. They synced the video files and it felt like a date, but that was stupid so he kept it to himself.

 Michael pointed out a cut where Teddy says you think he’s still here? and his mouth is clearly not moving. Never caught that, Chris wrote. Good eye.

 Michael swelled with pride.

 Kyle never cared for Michael’s trivia. They would watch movies with Kyle’s feet set on Michael’s lap. Kyle would work them around the more he lost interest. Michael might point out continuity errors to keep his attention, but Kyle would tell him point blank, “I really don’t care.”

 Plus, now the captions had to be turned on. They got in the way, and when the caption really sucked, it just read no audible dialogue.

 Couldn’t they just leave it blank for the same effect?

 Chris pointed out a discontinuity with Leonard’s tattoo SG13-71U and what it should have been, SG13-7IU. Michael was impressed. Good eye, Michael wrote. Chris gave a =).

 They talked for hours until Kyle tossed his car keys and slammed the screen door.

 He asked Chris to hold on, that his friend had called, which wasn’t a complete lie, since your spouse should also be your friend.  

 Michael found Kyle in the kitchen gulping orange juice from the container.

 “Where ya been?” Michael spun his right hand. Kyle finished the orange juice and sucked in a breath of air.

 “The fuck you always ask me where I been?” He was livid and quickly calmed down. “What do it matter, I was out.”  

Michael had a high school crush on a light-skinned black boy who sat next to him on the bus. He always read a different manga. Michael thought it was so cool. Samurais. Aliens. Computers.

 Michael tried to get it so they would sit together, but then the guy’s parents bought him a ’59 Chevy and Michael hardly saw him at all.

 Then he caught the guy kissing a girl once in that Chevy. He brooded for weeks. If only he had noticed me, Michael thought. That could be me in that Chevy.

 Michael told Chris sorry, his friend was having a rough go of it, needed advice. Chris said he was tired, but it was fun and they should do it again.

 Michael dreamt Chris picked him up in a ’59 Chevy. Michael was the only passenger allowed.

 Michael got free tickets to CES through his job, and Kyle was having a good day and went on the five-hour drive with him.

 It was CES for sure, because Michael couldn’t tell the coffee lines from refugee lines.

 Kyle marveled over earbuds that could bring hearing to the deaf. Then he saw the speculative price tag.

 Michael had to push past three undergrads in plaid and low-rise to see the Mariah Carey and Madonna replicas. Kyle emerged and hooked Michael in a neck lock before letting him go.

 The replicas could speak with a combination of Michael’s youtwo software, while another company built the text-to-speech mechanism, which had recently won awards for its startling reproduction of human language—although it still had problems with agglutinative languages like Hungarian, because the polysyllabic inflectional morphology of those languages introduced an amazing amount of perplexity that TTS automata were unequipped to handle.

 “My dad got one,” Michael signed to Kyle. Michael touched his chin to his thumb to say grandmother.

 His grandmother had been ninety-eight. Lived for a century to sit in a rocking chair facing eggshell sheetrock.

 “What does she think about all day?” his mother asked. Michael pictured one of those halls where the doors all led back to the same room, and the hall curved infinity it kept going so far.  

 “You’re avoiding me,” his grandmother accused Michael during a visit.

 “I have no idea,” Michael would say to his mother. His mother had come up with the nickname that thing for her, and it made Michael laugh. His mom liked the strangers in the grocery line more than his grandmother.

 His grandmother was so out of practice speaking she could hardly finish a word without stuttering through it five times. She liked farm stories, and, Michael did you know that the cows could be friends with the donkeys?

 Talking to her felt like volunteer work.

 “She did not speak to her son for four years,” his mother had said several times, always emphasizing four. “What mother does that?”

 Kyle looked bored, signed the holy trinity, walked off and bumped into one of the undergrads in a backwards cap.

 The guy expected an apology and when he didn’t get it he mumbled fucking nigger and Kyle just kept walking where he wanted.

 By evening, full of holoscreens and tomorrow, Michael wandered the hotel lobby. A group of girls in pixie skirts and cone heels were on about a club. Kyle agreed to go only if his new friends could come too. Michael said fine and they packed into a car with some artists and a guy who smelled awful. Michael kept accidentally crossing eyes with a girl whose sclera were blacked out, or maybe she was staring at him. Then she sighed.

 “I wish people would just get the hint, like why do I have to say it.” Her friend broke into laughs. Michael was uncomfortable and texted Chris, y r ppl annoying and he texted back a little while later, yah they suck. Michael snickered.

 When he looked up Kyle was staring at Michael from the corner of his eyes.

 “Wish I knew what’s got you in stitches.”

 Your nose could feel the bassline hump the floor a block away. Kyle danced a line for the bathroom with his hands tucked in some guy’s pockets. He emerged with his eyes burning holes in Michael, grabbed Michael and they grinded the throb with the Reebok, hip to waist. Michael dreamt of the song, round and round I go, where I’ll stop, only you know, I guess it’s all in my mind.

 Middle of the night Michael saw SG13-7IU in the mirror, blinked his eyes. The microwave’s TRATS 223RP instruction was inverted like alien code.

 Sunrise woke Michael, but Kyle was already up staring at earbuds in front of their hotel window.

 Kyle was in a good enough mood that Michael bought a seashell from a souvenir shack and held it to Kyle’s ear. Can you hear the ocean? he signed, and Michael thought he witnessed a smile.

 Kyle’s forehead smudged the window on the drive home. He watched the cactus redshift. His foot would not stop shaking and his fingers were tight. Michael had been fiddling with the satellite radio when Kyle punched the console and cracked the screen.

 The next morning, Michael could not find Kyle. He often disappeared for weeks on end. He would hitchhike to Seattle, where someone he loved more lived.  

 He teared up one evening watching an advertisement for wind power, and it so happened that Chris was online.

 “I don’t know what they’re talking about half the time,” Michael’s grandmother used to say. She was so old that even mundane talk eluded her.

 Would Michael get so old that one day he wouldn’t even be able to carry on a conversation?

 The last time Michael had seen her, that thanksgiving she hobbled the kitchen carrying bowls from the table to the sink. His mom eyed her over the brim of her glasses. With a look of disgust, his mother waited for her to drop the plates and glasses. His grandmother had fallen just the month earlier and broken her arm, and his mother was waiting for it to happen again with a hidden delight.

 “I think she fell on purpose,” Michael’s mother said. “She wants attention.”

 His grandmother had not been invited to Michael’s wedding, because his parents thought that she would withhold money from them when she died if she knew Michael had married a man.

 “She’s just backwards,” his mother would say. “Better she doesn’t know.”

 His grandmother pulled him off to the side every chance she got, whenever he visited, which was infrequent, maybe once a year, because he was very busy and preferred solitude. She showed him chiwara statues and clay masks from Kush, and photos of her standing beside prehistoric plants she ferried from death’s brink, and she would point and say, “plants tell you what they want,” and that you could always rely on that.

 It would be refreshing if people were like that, Michael thought.

 She showed him photographs from 1996, but Michael did not believe it was the same person.

 She wanted to talk so much that she agreed with everything you said, so thankful for the company, which reminded Michael of those telephone recordings they used to have when you would call to pay a bill, and they would ask if you’d like to leave feedback on your experience afterward, like:

 Right, let’s rate how the programmed voice made you feel.  

 “Where do you think the most magical place in the world is?” she asked him one night. Most places looked best in photos, and then he got there, and he wondered why he made the trip in the first place. Michael shrugged.

 “Dunno,” he said, too disinterested to complete a sentence.

 “I don’t think your parents like me,” she said to Michael once from the veranda. He sighed. He was the only person in the family who paid her any attention. Her casita was being built, a requirement from Michael’s parents who could no longer stand the sight of her and wanted her to move out of the main house.

 “She expects us to entertain her,” his mother would say. “If only you knew how much I put up with her.”  

 It was one spring Michael and his father were looking at old science fiction films on IMDB that his mother came in the room, out of breath and complaining about his grandmother when his father yelled enough that Michael thought he might have a heart attack, “I wish she would hurry up and die.”

 “You come visit me anytime,” his grandmother said to him.

 The next time he did, she was dead.

 With Kyle gone, Michael hardly left his room. He went to the gym in the morning to run, sat at his computer while he reviewed analytics for the youtwo, and talked to Chris.

 Michael had gotten so close to Chris that he would ask questions like—and with all the seriousness you would normally save for pressing the president on his plans for nuclear deterrence—Do you like kalamata olives?

 They talked about artificial intelligence taking over the White House.

 Chris sent him messages in binary. 00111100 00110011.

 Michael expressed his fear for public bathrooms: a deep-seated phobia of small tiles and urine, mixed with a primal anxiety related to filth and taboo desire.

 Chris told him that he donated money to Planned Parenthood, and Michael was so impressed.

 What a stand up guy.

 In undergraduate, there was this one boy Michael had a daylong crush on because the guy had flung his hands up and said, “Fuck a feminist,” and there was something sexy about the way he flaunted his maleness.

 Like he knew he was privileged due to it and didn’t care.

 He had cybersex with Chris one night that it was raining so hard you would’ve thought it was programmed. It was cold, and Michael was fiddling with the alarm because he could never remember the code. Afterward they talked about the rain and Michael wrote a poem about it:

                                                 When I rain, I pour—

                                               But when I pour, I’m not raining.

                                               What am I?

 Do you covet things? Chris asked afterward. Michael didn’t understand.

 I don’t think I do, he wrote back.

 We should give up all attachments, Chris wrote. Our attachments will only bring us pain.

 What if you love someone? Michael asked.

 Love is selfish, Chris responded.

奇妙な未来 

Michael had originally referred to the youtwo as KYLE, which was of course a reference to ELIZA. Michael trained the bot through word chunks called n-grams.

 With unigrams, KYLE sounded nonsensical:

 Months because the and issue of year next September we did you like

 With bigrams, you witnessed some connective tissue between chunks—  

 Last week through the process of Hudson corporation would seem to complete the implementation.

 —you still knew that the thing you were talking to was just that, a thing.

 Trigrams gave you the uncanny sense that you might not be talking to a machine, but you probably were, because the relationship between constituents was still lacking or hazy:

 They also point to a six billion dollar transaction. This indeed will be what they tell you. You want to?

 Finally, mixed with pattern matching and entity recognition, quadrigrams provided the illusion of speaking to a human being:

 Amanda, maybe you could advise me on what to do? I have been wondering about that lately. And I know you told me you were a good listener. I could really use that right now.

 It pained him to think of his grandmother, who was always interested in hearing about his work when no one else was, so much that she agreed to be a subject in his research.

 “You just speak into the microphone,” Michael explained.

 It was late one night when news of the protests was everywhere, he was only calmed by the thought of words. Beautiful words that had meaning only because people wanted them to, and that they would fight over, and fall in love with.

 It was a syntax textbook and it went:

 In (29a), we have the same kind of headedness. Very is the head and quickly is the head and we have two heads and each has their own head and this is called hierarchical structure.

 It was subliminal with it and he suddenly thought of giving Chris head. It made him fantasize for the rest of the night and when he woke he smelled clean clothes.

 Kyle had been gone for nearly four months. Michael wondered if he would ever see Kyle again. In his absence, Michael felt a pit grow in his stomach.

 Would Michael wait eternity with sheetrock?

 Michael could only escape the thoughts through Chris. Maybe he was a monk, Michael thought. He donated to charities, went on for hours about the blind, and said he overtipped service workers because, after all, who else would do their jobs?

 How could Michael match his virtue?

 But Chris had stopped messaging Michael. Sure, there were intermittent messages about the weather, but nothing of any substance. One conversation in particular bothered Michael. He had asked: 

 How’s your mom?

 Chris’ response:

 It’s so nice out today!

 The non-sequitur made Michael feel empty. Their text message history was a never-ending dialogue, where you couldn’t find a single period because why would two lovers end anything?

 And here it was, ruined.

 Michael insisted on meeting Chris. He sent message after message, and after days of no response, Michael grew sick. He called Ruis and they watched movies where the soundtrack had words like it must have been love and moving on and baby he’s a liar.

 It was the next day when Michael’s heart jumped and Chris said yeah they should meet and they agreed on the Mulholland memorial.

 Michael’s heart was in his throat. He could hardly move his legs. What would Chris say? What would their friendship become afterward?

 Chris looked like the man Michael had seen in his photos. He was small, and wore clothes that squeezed him like a teenager. His grin made Michael feel like he was filling out government forms. Sign here. Black Ink Only.

 Michael’s blood rushed. Here was the man he had been talking to for nearly two years. Michael came to trust him more than Kyle. But could Chris forgive Michael for lying about being a woman?

 “I’m so sorry I was lying to you,” Michael said. Chris shrugged and offered a sympathetic smile.

 “Oh,” he said, like gravity was still the same, so why fret, “it’s no problem.”

 Michael could not have been happier. Chris was a very enlightened person.

 But he acted differently in person than he did online. Maybe it’s just his way, Michael thought. They walked down the street and talked about their day just as they had been doing for so long on their phones. But Chris was silent, and had little to add, and Michael thought—maybe he really is a monk.

 It struck Michael as odd that Chris couldn’t remember Michael’s birthday—he had told Michael happy birthday twice, so he knew.

 And then Michael felt funny because Chris couldn’t remember what Michael did, even though Michael talked about it every week because he loved his job, and that was one thing he liked about Chris so much—he was always so inquisitive about his field.

 “Wait,” Chris said and stopped Michael. “You created the youtwo?” Michael beamed with pride. They had spoken about this many times before—why was this news? But Michael ate it up.

 “I did,” he said.

 Chris coughed and his face grew grim.

 “I should tell you something,” Chris muttered. Michael was still smiling. He had met the love of his life, in person, and here they were.

 “What is it?” Michael asked. What could it possibly be? Michael had gotten through the worst—confess a lie and be absolved.

 “I actually,” Chris struggled for the words, “haven’t ever really,” like he had thought of how to say it for quite some time, “talked to you,” but couldn’t figure out how to arrange them in such a way that wouldn’t make it feel like a punch to the stomach. “Before.” 

 “What?”

 “Yeah,” Chris added, like finishing a math equation, “it was right after we first started talking. I sort of knew you were a guy? But I didn’t want to be mean, so I turned my youtwo on and you know how it is, you don’t pay attention to the conversations that thing has.”  

 Michael felt like someone had just removed all the alphabet’s vowels and the leftovers fit together wrong.

 “So it wasn’t you? All this time?” Michael’s smile melted.

 Chris looked apologetic. 

“I turned the features off so it would only talk about superficial stuff,” Chris said. “But it was too late, by that time you had been talking to it for like...a year?” 

Michael was suddenly frustrated at the little girl across the street blabbering incoherently. 

“I’m totally willing to become friends with you. I don’t really know you, but, why not?”

But he looked like the Alzheimer’s patient trying to make heads or tails out of family members, and Michael knew there was nothing there. 

Michael thought and left his grandmother. When he fell asleep, he got home and closed his eyes. 

How had he been so stupid? How had he spent the past two years of his life involved with a text program? 

One of his own creation at that. 

 And all those talks about how awful people were, and how people were so awful, and how people were so mean, and here Chris was, complaining about the politician in one breath and matching their duplicity in the same.

 Except it wasn’t Chris. It was a program.

 But it was Chris. A facsimile of him.

 But Chris did not know who Michael was, so it wasn’t.

 Or it was.

 Michael had a nightmare sometime the next week where his mother had died and his father replicated her, and then she scratched her face off. He called his father the next day and said he would be flying out for thanksgiving.  

 It was a few nights before the trip that the alarm went off in the middle of the night. Michael jolted awake and fell to the floor. It was gray and the tile was cold, and he heard static. Michael held his hands to his ears and stumbled into the hall. When he got into the living room a dark figure was sitting at the dinner table.

 The alarm shook the house. Michael rubbed his eyes and leaned on the wall. A sliver of television light lit Kyle up. He twisted his keys around his fingers.

 I thought you changed the locks, Kyle signed. The noise was so loud Michael could feel his ears itch. He scrambled to input the alarm code when he felt hands reach out for his neck and pull him away from the wall console and knock him to the floor. Kyle’s hands wrapped tightly around Michael’s neck until Michael closed his eyes and could feel sleep settling in, a light headed and happy sleep.

 When he woke, Kyle had packed his things and was sat square in the front room. Michael’s neck felt tender and his voice was shallow.

 Where are you going? Michael signed. Maybe Michael would never have all of Kyle’s attention.

 I’m leaving, he signed and stood. Michael could feel anger rising inside him. He thought of the cruelest thing he could say, but it just wasn’t in him.

 I fell in love with someone, Michael signed. Then he put his hand over his heart and made a pitter-patter effect.

 Who? Kyle signed.

 Michael pointed to himself.

 I fell in love with myself, he signed. Kyle nodded and pulled his sunglasses down.

 When Michael had gone home for Thanksgiving, he could not find his grandmother’s replica.

 “That thing was too weird,” his mom said. “We put her in the garage.” Michael felt a lump in his throat. They ate dinner and Michael cleaned the plates. They asked where Kyle was and Michael said he didn’t know, and his father invited him into his study where they looked through old landscaping designs.  

His sister Elaine was seated in front of an old 16-bit video game, and the music sounded sweet and clear. He stroked her hair and she fidgeted.

 The pixels danced. The colors were magenta, cyan, rayon, and fuchsia. Michael got lost in the patterns of graphics, the little tree sprites cut and pasted until a screen boundary told them to stop.

 At half past midnight he wandered into the hallway and down past the kitchen, where the pendant lighting made him think of kitchens in department stores, no one cooks in them, and he descended the steps into the garage.

 His grandmother’s replica had been propped in the corner. He pulled blankets and wrapping paper and adjusted her head until it fit the socket. He fixed stray hairs and patted her clothes. She had been buried in a pair of frumpy jeans, his mother had called them frumpy. His grandmother had always said, what use did she have to look good for anybody?

 “The whole world’s trying to look good,” she said once.  

 There was a storm outside and the rain splattered the window squares of the garage. Michael looked at his phone and all it said was the time.

 The rain painted the garage gray. Michael hadn’t realized how much time he had spent there and he turned to his grandmother’s replica and asked, “Where do you think the most magical place in the world is?”