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On the news, I see a video of an AI-powered humanoid named Green dancing for Vladimir Putin to the song, The Sun Rose High. Putin calls the robot beautiful, very beautiful, but doesn’t suggest that Green is only dancing to reassure him an AI-powered army will be built soon.

When I tell my professor I want to open my manuscript with, “My client told me I had a pussy as beautiful as metal,” he tells me it’s a bad idea because it would be obvious I was doing it for shock value. He bows, though, in solidarity, “Shit is getting weirder each day.”

My day’s potentia gaudendi diminishes to a speck of dust.

Potentia gaudendi: the potential for pleasure.

I wonder if the client I am writing about would think Green is beautiful the way he thinks I am. I think of Green’s hard metal exterior and lack of interior. I think of Green’s impenetrable color coated wires that try to resemble a heart. I think of the color green.

In class, my professor guides us through a deep analysis of Gertrude Stein’s Lifting Belly. He discuses the concept of shock value. I wonder what Stein would think if she saw Green dance, and if anything about it would be shocking.

“Lifting belly is my joy.”

I wish I could ask Stein: In a world of unavoidable machinery and metal, is it our mission, our life’s mission, to create a beautiful machine that could do beautiful things? I raise my hand in class, “Nothing around here is shocking anymore, anyway,” then imagine Green would say, “Except your pleasure.” – Leah Wasilewski