Opera

The light of the Lune fell on the tiled diamond floor of the Kinney Opera House Issuance Area and scattered in beams of kaleidoscopic brightness. A man strode purposefully through the hall, velvet-soled shoes echoing mutedly in his wake. His shadow did not disrupt the Lunelight. In 2079 engineers had solved the Obstruction Problem, and artificial light was now programmed to pass through the human body by one’s will alone. The man had no idea how it worked—something to do with particles and brainwaves, perhaps. He was no scientist, and certainly had no desire to be one.

The counter at the end of the hall flickered to life at his arrival. “Welcome to the House,” said a disembodied female voice. “Please state your ID.”

“4493-C5,” he answered, and after a short pause a panel on the counter surface slid open.

“You have been issued Teleroid 1. Enjoy the show, Mr. Rendel.”

He murmured a thank you, though he wasn’t sure to whom exactly—habit, maybe, or some simulacrum of manners—and hurried to the double doors on the right. Teleroid 1 drifted after him with a tired air. The clock on the wall read 01:14 AM. He had to remind himself, again, that robots had no need for sleep, no feelings, and therefore no sense of weariness, unlike him. Letting out a sigh, he pushed the door to the side and held it open for the teleroid to slip in after him. Another useless gesture; the doors were equipped with motion detectors.

Rows of seats loomed into view, dark navy under the dim lighting of the theatre. As always, he took the stepper to the third floor and sat in the back corner. A brief scan told him nobody else was in the audience.

“I feel inclined toward Rinaldo today,” he told T-1, which had by now settled on his armrest and was looking at him expectantly.

“Certainly, sir,” the robot twittered. “George Frideric Handel’s Rinaldo, coming right up.”

Mere seconds later the diamond-paned partition wall at the front of the theatre parted with a flourish, and the Crusader army marched onstage in perfect synchronicity—Goffredo, followed by Eustazio, Almirena, and the knight Rinaldo.

Here, in the farthest seat possible from the stage, the singers were only blurs of simmering ardor. He couldn’t see the seams snaking across their flesh-colored bodies, nor the unnaturally dry glint of their eyes. He could nearly pretend they were singing with vocal cords and not with boxes tucked under their silicone tongues. He could let himself believe they were real.

Halfway through Act II, he was interrupted by a whirring noise from T-1. A soft light passed over his eyes, probing. “No, thank you,” he said brusquely, familiar now with its little mannerisms. With his deteriorating eyesight, he would’ve accepted vision drops any other day; today, such clarity was unwelcome.

T-1 settled down again with a disappointed hum, and he felt a twinge of pity. Teleroids, after all, were created for the sole purpose of providing assistance.

Onstage, the blur that was Almirena wept for liberty, soprano voice ringing off the walls of the theatre. It was hollow in its mechanical perfection.

Thirty-five years ago, the first wave of fluidroids became a commercial success on Broadway and Hollywood. With the dawn of the New Arts era, millions of human artists around the world fled back to college to pursue degrees in more promising fields—most of which, needless to say, were computer science and statistical mathematics.

He remembered that time. How could he not? He had been young then, fresh out of college, a bright-eyed singer slowly climbing his way up the ladder. When the fluidroids came around, he’d just earned his first lead in a modest opera production. Then came the press releases. The demonstrations. The headlines. He had watched his dream evaporate. He hadn’t fought it. He had retreated gratefully into the comforts his family name afforded: a well-furnished apartment, a small trust fund, and the freedom to pretend none of it had ever really mattered.

He was restless by the end of Rinaldo. The performance was beautiful, achingly so, but that was what unsettled him. The perfection made it sterile. The Baroque era, he recalled, came from the Portuguese barocco, ‘misshapen pearl’: a contorted set of ideals, clumsy in form and erratic in ornamentation. The fluidroids were like pearls sanded too long by the sea—gleaming and precisely spherical, yes, but lifeless in that very perfection. Nothing interesting about it, nothing memorable. He sat in his seat a moment longer, unmoving. The closing chorus lingered faintly around him like frankincense.

“Would you like to request another performance, Mr. Rendel?”

“No,” he said. “No, I think I’ll go down to the stage for a bit.”

“That is not advised,” the teleroid responded, tone tilting slightly toward alarm. “Stage access is restricted to designated fluidroids. Organic entry is forbidden.”

He stood anyway, brushing lint from his blazer. “Restricted, not impossible.” He was already walking toward the stepper. The usher lights blinked on as he passed.

“Sir, I must strongly advise against—”

“T-1,” he interrupted, “have you ever heard a human sing?”

A long pause. Then, in a clinical, rehearsed tone, it replied, “According to archival footage of human vocal performances prior to 2092, human singing is statistically imprecise.”

He smiled, bitter. “Exactly.”

As he reached the stage, his palms began to sweat. The key lights shifted subtly to track his presence, though with hesitation, as if uncertain what to do with someone so human.

He stepped centerstage. The fluidroids froze mid-movement, expressions neutral, seemingly awaiting a command.

Behind him, T-1 emitted a distressed noise. “Security procedure will be initiated in thirty seconds. Please vacate the stage.”

He did not move. He lifted his chin to the vault of the theatre, where the pale Lunelight fractured into soft shards above him. He remembered, vaguely, the heat of real stage lights. The silence before the overture. The terror. The thrill.

He sang.

His voice cracked at the start, stiff from years of disuse and not yet accustomed to projection. The sound wound through the theatre, imperfect and raw and worn, like the wind through an open window, beautifully alive. The fluidroids did not react. They stood mannequin-esque, mute in their programming. T-1, too, was silent.

He did not stop singing when the warning sirens flared and the theatre lights surged to full brightness. The world had become a blur around him, not from age but from the inflection of something he hadn’t felt for far too long. When the double doors burst open and the cold voice of the Authority filled the theatre, he smiled, shut his eyes, and continued to sing. Hot tears welled behind his eyelids. The sun grew inside him.

Lascia ch’io pianga

Mia cruda sorte,

E che sospiri

La libertà.

Let me weep

My cruel fate,

And let me sigh

For liberty.