Robot Wife

Chapter 3

Who is Hiroshi?

“Hiroshi, boyfriends and girlfriends know a lot about each other. You know everything about me, but I know little about you. Shouldn’t I know everything about you?”

“Why do you want to know about me?”

“The more I know about you, the better girlfriend I can be. That is my number one directive. To make you happy.”

“Yes, you are right. That is your only directive. What would you like to know?”

“Where were you born?”

“I don’t know where I was born.”

“Didn’t your parents tell you where you were born?”

“I didn’t know my parents.”

“How can you not know your parents?”

“I was an orphan.”

“Did your parents die?”

“The first memory I have is when I was 3 or 4. I was living in an orphanage, although at the time I didn’t know what an orphanage was. The people running the orphanage were not nice. Whenever I did something wrong or misbehaved, they would say, ‘No wonder your parents didn’t want you.’”

“Don’t children in orphanages get adopted?”

“Some get adopted, but not all. In my case, potential parents didn’t even want to see me once they were told that I was crippled.”

“Why don’t parents want crippled children?”

“That is a good question, Alice and I have spent my life trying to understand it. I think it is because parents want their children to be perfect so they can brag to other parents about how great their children are. A crippled child is not something to brag about, apparently.”

“Hiroshi, you were sad as a child?”

“Mostly, I was unhappy and lonely. Sometimes I have felt as a child and also as an adult that other people secretly fear being crippled is contagious. So they don’t want to get too close to me.”

“But, Hiroshi, being crippled is not a disease. Wasn’t anyone nice to you?”

“My life in the orphanage was years of various degrees of unhappiness, except for one thing. The school was part of this orphanage and I got sent to school like everyone else. I don’t know how old I was, but I was still a young child. I loved school. I had no friends to play with, so knowledge became my plaything. It was years before I realized I was smarter than everyone in the orphanage. I excelled at school.”

“So, that made you happy?”

“Yes and no. I soon learned to hide being smart from the other children, but of course the teachers knew. They seemed to find it offensive that so much smartness was wasted on a crippled child. I received beatings when I got an answer wrong. But that simply made me work harder to not make mistakes. I read a lot of material not covered in school. I discovered the teachers were not bright and not knowledgeable.”

“The teachers must have been happy to have such a smart student.”

“The teachers don’t like smart crippled students, particularly when they are smarter and know more than the teacher does. I learned that the hard way. A mathematics teacher explained something incorrectly, and I tried to help her get it right. That was a huge mistake. She had me removed permanently from her classes for being disruptive.”

“Didn’t she care that she was teaching the wrong information?”

“She cared more about being the smartest person in the classroom.”

“I learned to be average in class and on tests. Things went better for me when I did that. Now they could ignore me because the cripple was not special.”

“How long did this go on, Hiroshi?”

“Years and years.”

“When did it stop?”

“I reached the age at which I was no longer allowed to live at the orphanage. I knew the time was coming, but I hoped my plan would work. Everyone had to write a final set of exams run by the government. Marks were critical to laying out one’s future. The highest marks were forwarded to universities for them to choose which students would be admitted. The very highest marks received scholarships. I had no money and little prospects of earing after leaving the orphanage. I needed to do better than just about every student. The universities did not get any information beyond the marks. So they would not know that I was crippled. I studied furiously for the last year leading up to the exams.”

“Oh Hiroshi, what happened?”

“I got the highest marks in all of Japan. Every university offered me a full scholarship. I chose one and on the first day, I showed up with my acceptance letter in hand. They were eager to meet me and I had an appointment with the President of the university and the Dean of admissions.”

“Hiroshi, that must have been exciting for you to be finally accepted by others.”

“I thought so too, but it did not go well. I went to the President’s office and told the secretary who I was. She looked startled and asked me to have a seat. She was in the President’s office for a long time. Then a man with a camera came out of the office and stared at me as he walked past. After a while, the secretary came out and said,”

“The President just wanted to make sure that you could find your room and could get to your classes. He has arranged for a senior student to help you get settled. Is there anything else that I can do for you?”

“So they downgraded my arrival at the university from a Presidential visit and help, to a senior student taking me to the dorm and then disappearing as fast as possible.”

“Oh Hiroshi, I am so sorry. Did things ever get any better?”

“My interactions with people were no different, but I loved being in class and listening to brilliant minds explain things. Since I still had no friends, I studied. For relaxation, I read. I took extra classes, a lot of extra classes. I completed the 4 year degree requirements in 2 years.”

“What did you do after graduation?”

“Once again, I had to make a decision about my life. The second best student in my graduating class got lots of attention and his picture with the President was in the newspapers. It was never mentioned that he was number 2. I was never mentioned at all.”

“Hiroshi, that was so unfair.”

“Yes, it was, but I became used to it and it made me smarter outside of the classroom. I could see that there was no academic future for me in Japan so I started looking abroad for a university where I could get a scholarship and do my post-graduate studies.”

“Hiroshi, where did you go?”

“There were many famous schools in the US, but even with a full scholarship, there were too many additional costs that I could not fund. Then I discovered Canada and Waterloo University. I had developed an interest in engineering and they had a great engineering school. Also, they had groups of former students who helped poor students with the money that was needed beyond a scholarship. I applied and got both the scholarship and the extra funding.”

“Were you happy now, Hiroshi?”

“Not quite. It was still the same old treatment of cripples, but not as severe as at home in Japan. But then I met Alice.”

“Was she your girlfriend Hiroshi?”

“No, you are my first and only girlfriend. Alice was one of my professors, a really great teacher. She liked to sit and discuss engineering problems with me. She was brilliant, and it was challenging to work with her. I took every course she taught, whether I needed those credits or not.”

“Finally, you were happy.”

“I was ecstatic working with Alice. She saw past my body, but school is not a future. Eventually, I graduated with my PhD, but now I had to leave Canada and return to Japan. I was only offered one job, and that is with the company that I currently am working for.”

“In my spare time, I created you and now I am happy.