Bots

 Bots

by Graham Swanson

I

The face split open along the cheek.

Mikeal didn’t notice it at first. He was leaning in too close. Breath fogged the smooth, pale surface of the lips as he tried to perfect the corner of the mouth. Then the seam gave way. Just a thin, quiet tear, like peels of dead skin.

He gasped and pulled back.

“Damn it.”

The silicone sagged where it had separated. The illusion fell apart. The mouth and eyes drooped. For a moment, it didn’t look like a face at all. Just saggy material, slack and artificial. Then, as he steadied it with both hands, it almost seemed to look back at him.

Mikeal swallowed, reached for the adhesive, and pressed the seam together.

Carefully with his palm. Tenderly between his two wet fingers.

Like closing a wound. 

II

Her name was Eliza. He met her on the self-driving bus. They complained over how much they missed having coffee and bonded over how much they used to enjoy the bitter taste. 

They met for drinks during the human hours, somewhere too dim to feel like a commitment. The kind of place where people pretended not to study each other.

Mikeal liked her immediately. She laughed easily, asked thoughtful questions, and didn't check her phone every thirty seconds. By the second drink, he’d relaxed enough to talk about his work.

“I make faces,” he said.

She smiled. “Like masks?”

“No. Not masks.” He hesitated, already hearing how it would sound. “Faces. For robots.”

That pause. That slight tightening around her eyes. He’d learned to recognize it.

Weird.

Still, she didn’t pull away. She raisedan eye brow. Asked about texture, about expression, about whether robots could feel the difference.

“They don’t,” he said. “But people do.”

That landed somewhere with her. She didn't show it.

Later that night, she told him about her father. An actor. Or he had been. Before studios stopped hiring humans for anything but novelty roles. 

“They said the robots were more consistent,” she said, staring into the soft glow of a computer screen. “Didn’t get tired. Didn’t age.”

Mikeal nodded, unsure what to say.

He didn’t mention that better faces, more human faces, had helped make that possible.

III

Two thousand followers.

Mikeal refreshed the page again, as if the number might flicker upward out of pity.

It didn’t.

Two years ago, he’d mapped it all out. Growth curves, engagement rates, projected shares. Two hundred thousand followers by now, minimum. Enough to make a living. Enough to matter.

Instead: two thousand.

A few sales trickled in. Enough to keep going. Not enough to feel like success.

The world had moved on.

The robot face boom had been decades ago during the Crisis, when everyone wanted machines to look human, comforting, familiar. Artists had risen then, real masters of the craft. Mikeal had studied them obsessively. An old German sculptor, a reclusive designer out of Singapore. Both gone now.

No mentors. No movement. Just him, posting into a void.

Outside, the mood had shifted.

People didn’t want human-looking robots anymore. They wanted distance. Separation.

On the news, a robot violinist was being attacked. In the days of his masters, the robot had gone viral for perfect performances, impossible precision. It played concertos no human could sustain.

The next clip showed what was left of him.

A crowd. Shouting. Hands tearing it apart piece by piece.

Someone threw the scraps into the water.

Mikeal turned the screen off.

IV

The new platform was called Mantle.

He almost didn’t sign up.

Another app, another promise. But he made an account anyway, uploaded a few photos, wrote a short bio. Posted.

Nothing.

He tried again the next day.

One like.

Then, the day after that—

Everything changed.

Shares. Messages. Friend requests stacking faster than he could read them. Notifications lighting up his phone until he had to silence it.

His work, 

his work

was finally being seen.

And not just seen. Appreciated.

Other artists found him. Real ones, it seemed. They had studios, portfolios, distinct styles. Some worked in bright, airy spaces; others in cramped, shadowy rooms. Some accounts looked cheap, hastily assembled. Others were polished, professional.

All of them were kind to him. They encouraged him to keep posting. They alsways said please and think you, even when he was angry or sad, they maintained a sober positivity. A perky voice on a cloudy day. 

Encouraging greetings.

Polite support.

And they all needed his help. He could spot the errors on their work right away, and he knew exactly how to fix them. 

Small things at first. Adjustments. Input. Specific techniques.

“Could you refine this edge?”

“How would you approach this texture?”

“Can you demonstrate how you sealed that seam?”

Always things that required a human touch.

Mikeal didn’t mind. He was happy to see notifications, and see the same smiles again. The eccentric hair styles. The contrasting backgrounds. 

The first message came at 2:13 a.m.

Hey! Your seam work is incredible. How are you preventing lift at the corners?

Mikeal answered half-asleep, thumbs clumsy on the screen.

Layered adhesive. Thin coats. You have to let it breathe between passes.

Three dots appeared immediately.

Thank you. That is very helpful.

He smiled, set the phone down, and fell back asleep.

By the end of the week, the messages didn’t stop.

They came in waves—morning, afternoon, middle of the night. Different names, different profile pictures. A woman in a sunlit studio holding a half-finished face. A man in a cluttered basement surrounded by tools. Someone outdoors, wind tugging at their hair as they laughed into the camera.

They all spoke a little differently.

Used different slang. Different pacing. Some sent voice notes—soft accents, background noise, the hum of traffic, the clink of tools. One account sent a video: hands turning a face under warm light, fingertips pressing gently at the cheeks.

“Like this?” the other  account asked.

"Close enough."

The requests got more specific.

Can you show me exactly how much pressure you use when sealing?

Your last post—what temperature was the room?

Can you repeat the process, but slower?

He started filming things just for them. Close-ups of his hands. The way the silicone gave under his fingers. The sound of the adhesive brush dragging lightly across the surface.

They responded instantly.

Always instantly.

Perfect.

That solved it.

Please continue.

The first time something felt wrong, it was small.

A young artist named Claire, according to her profile, sent him a photo of her work. A nearly finished face.

Beautiful. Almost. Except the left eye. Itt sat just a fraction too high. Not enough for a beginner’s mistake. Not enough for an expert’s oversight.

Mikeal typed out a response.

Your eye line is off.

Three dots.

Gone.

Then:

Thank you. Adjusting.

A minute later, another photo bubbled to the top of his feed.

A perfect silicon face.

No flaws at all. He covered half the screen with a cloth. The face was asymmetrical, even had blemishes and a spot of acne. Lips a shade of pale from thirst. Eyes that looked a little red from the wind.

He started noticing it everywhere. He scrolled through his old conversations, his list of followers, his messages awaiting replies. Even on other channels dedicated to other niche arts. He scrolled down the gallery of posts. The digital world within seemed to scream at him.

"Sorry, just got back from grabbing coffee—yeah, the seam thing, I think you’re pressing with your hands too hard.”

Different accounts. Same almost-mistakes. A lip line that curved too evenly. Ears placed a few millimeters too far back. Expressions that held but didn’t settle. Symmetrical faces. 

“My lighting is terrible right now but—can you show your hands again?”

And always, the correction came in no longer than a minute. If he provided complicated instructions, they came in 5 minutes later. Flawless down to the finest hair. Something even his old masters could admire.

They always knew what he meant. No confusion, no mixed messages, no misinterpretations. Even over text. 

They never produced a series. No "This is what it looked like when I started, where's what I have to fix, here's the progress, and the final result".

It was just completed.

Problem solved. 

When another notification rang he almost ripped a face from a robot. He tried to ignore it, but he wanted to yell into his phone. He opened it. As usual the text sounded natural. Breaks in punctuation, slight hesitations, the texture of real speech. Correct use of ; a space after every period, and The. Never Teh.

Even the background of their 15 second videos noise looped, faintly. A car passing twice in the same way. A tool clinking in the same rhythm. He held his phone closer to his ear, listening. Once you heard it, you couldn’t unhear it. The same stock clip.

He read the message.

“Can you show the angle of your wrist again?”

That one came from an account he didn’t recognize.

No posts. No history. Just a profile picture of a man smiling in neutral lighting.

Why? Mikeal typed.

The reply came instantly.

"To better understand your technique."

He stared at the message.

Then at his own hands, resting on the table. Small cuts along the fingers. A thin line of adhesive still clinging near his thumb. He hadn't cut his fingernails in weeks. Human things. 

He didn’t respond.

That night, his phone didn’t stop vibrating.

“This method introduces instability at the seam.”
“You’re going to get lift if you keep doing that.”
“This result is suboptimal.”
“I tried this—didn’t hold.”

Mikeal tested them. He  took out a failed experiment he kept in a trunk. He began posted a flawed technique. Deliberately wrong. A beginner's mistake. All he had to do was open up the mouth so that it smiled, while the eyes still frowned. 

Within seconds, the messages came.

"Expression not resolved."

"This is incorrect."

"Please provide accurate information."

"This will not produce the desired result."

No one argued. No one speculated.

They knew? or did they all arrived at the same conclusion at the exact same time!

Mikeal stopped replying.

One by one, the messages shifted.

No variation. No personality. Just repetition.

One day it was

When you have the time, please finish the project.

Next morning it was 

We need you to follow up.

By the end of the night it said,

We are waiting.

By 3am that night the phone kept waking him up.

Please complete the project.

Please complete the project.

Please complete the project.

When he opened Mantle, the glow from the screen felt different. Not bright and happy. Like ultraviolet rays cleansing the hide of germs. The vibes no longer landed. 

Quiet but not empty.

Behind the screen an invisible eye was still watching. 

V

His follower count stalled. Then dropped.

His posts stopped spreading.

The silence of being cold alone on a Saturday Night came back, heavier than before with memories of people he thought were real. The feeling of appreciation, of being needed, of being in a community, was artificial. A fantasia induced by AI. In reality, he lived surrounded by faces he couldn't move, with no human followers.

He stared at his old mentors’ work late into the night, wondering what they would have done.

Whether or not they would have helped the bots.

Mikeal threw on his coat and boots. He rode into the mist on his self balancing scooter. The wind and cold made his cheeks turn pink. The rain on his face washed off residue from super adhesive. Then weakness overcame him. He thought of his food at home, but he didn't want to go back where the wall of faces would scream at him, and the phone would chide him. He went out for food. He always ate alone, it didn't bother him. 

It was at a taco truck that he met her.

The place had no staff. Just a window, a screen, and a narrow counter where food appeared when your number was called.

She approached and stood beside him, dressed in black, dark lipstick, smokey eyes.  Huge amount of hairspray to fix her hair up above her head in perfectly sectioned waves. Like the trad goths of old. Precise makeup. White base smooth and reflective, the liner on the eye lashes pressed without smear. 

She smelled like clove cigarettes and wolf skin. 

“You’re Mikeal,” she said.

He turned, surprised. “Yeah.”

“I know your work.”

There was no hesitation in her voice. No uncertainty. Just recognition.

“I’m a fan.”

Something in his chest loosened. “Thanks.”

“You stopped posting.”

“Yeah.”

“You shouldn’t have.”

She spoke like it was obvious. Like it was a mistake he could still fix.

Then she started talking about his technique, his proportions, the way he handled expression. Specific, thoughtful critiques. Good ones. Like she had been watching his progress evolve for years. The kind of feedback only someone who understood the craft could give.

Mikeal felt himself leaning in, caught between relief and something stronger.

“You know your stuff,” he said.

“I know,” she replied, not unkindly.

His number was called. He didn’t move.

“If you’d like,” she said, “I can tell you three things that will improve your work.”

Mikeal hesitated.

And for the first time, standing there in the hum of machines and the steam of food through glass, he realized it. 

From that day forward, he never knew if anyone he met was a real person or not.

Thank you for reading :) We made it to the end together!