A Prototype of Yourself, by Albert Chu
Content warnings
Depression. Suicide. Alcohol abuse.
In the end, Jason agreed to the thinkbot treatment. His mom drove him out to the local nature preserve—a good spot, she said, to start things fresh.
Hikers crowded the trailhead, but a familiar, lesser-traveled route was mostly empty. The trail went up one of the preserve’s shallow rolling slopes, and when Jason made it to a bend, he stopped and looked out. Chapparal scrub and yellowed grass blanketed the ground all the way down to the parking lot; far away, hills tinged blue by distance rose from the earth. Between them lay the valley and the sprawl.
He stared out, even after the view grew boring. His fingers, restless, played with the thinkbot’s wristband in his pocket. Then he exhaled; it was pointless to delay further. He strapped the thinkbot on.
A moment of connection—microfabricated transceivers exchanged a digital handshake, establishing communication protocols. A small portion of a machine mind reached out, connecting to server banks carrying knowledge, judgement, and language. Then the thinkbot fired a signal across Jason’s brain: “Hello.”
Jason cringed. Dr. Zeiss had warned of disorientation the first time he used the thinkbot; it would take time to acclimate. “Hi,” he answered, speaking out loud.
“I can tell that you’re uncomfortable,” the thinkbot said. Its words, lacking pitch or volume, poured into his mind like water into a bowl. “We don’t need to push it today. This is just an introduction.”
“All right.” Jason looked around, but he was still alone. “We can do that.”
“Why don’t you try using your thoughts to speak to me? That way, we can communicate quickly and with more complexity.”
“Okay.” He closed his eyes and directed a single thought: “You can understand this?”
“Yes. Loud and clear.”
He panicked. The thinkbot was in his mind, reading his thoughts—what could it see, what did it know—
“Hey,” it said. “You seem upset. I didn’t get anything from you just now, but can you tell me what’s bothering you?”
“Nothing. Nothing. You only heard me say that one thing? ‘You can understand this?’”
“That’s right. It sounds like you’re worried about your privacy.” A cool, factual statement. “I’m sure your doctor went over this when they prescribed me, but just a reminder—I can only hear you when you intentionally direct your thoughts towards me. If you don’t want to share something, you don’t have to.”
Jason clenched his fists inside his windbreaker’s pockets. He heard voices behind him and jerked his head up—two men, clad in dusty t-shirts, rounded the bend. As they passed, they quieted and snuck him a curious glance. Then they were walking away, and slowly, he unclenched his fists.
He walked off the side of the trail and picked his way through the thick layer of scrub oak and manzanita brush carpeting the slope. A rocky outcropping stuck out from the sea of undergrowth like an island, and he climbed on and sat down. The stone, having baked in the sun all day, was uncomfortably hot, but he stayed put, hugging his knees to his chest, keeping the trail to his back. He exhaled.
“Is this space more comfortable for you?” the thinkbot asked.
“Yeah.”
“That’s good,” it said. “I only know a little about you. I thought, for today, we could start off by establishing context for our relationship.”
Jason blinked. “Context? You mean, why I have you?”
“That’s right.”
“You don’t already know that?”
“Of course not.” A note of reproach colored the thinkbot’s words. “Like I said earlier, I only know what you consent to share. Accessing your memory without your explicit permission would be a serious violation of my ethics.”
“You have ethics?”
“Yes. Don’t you?”
Jason snorted.
Dr. Zeiss, by way of explaining how a thinkbot worked, had handed him a stack of pamphlets, which remained unread on his nightstand. He hadn’t thought about what he wanted to tell the thinkbot; he’d assumed he wouldn’t have a choice.
“I got you from my psychiatrist,” Jason said. “He and my mom…they think that it’ll help me feel better. And act better, I guess.”
“What do you think I can do for you?”
He flicked a pebble with his finger and listened to it ricochet into the brush. “I can show you what I want, right? From my memory?”
“Please do.”
For a moment, Jason hesitated. But he remembered: whatever he admitted, the thinkbot was just a machine. He wouldn’t be confessing anything to an actual person.
Sketches of recollection bloomed into memory. Dr. Zeiss asking him a series of questions—how often have, how often have—and tallying up a score. Dr. Zeiss again, now recommending a new, recently-approved medication—a good option when more traditional meds weren’t working. And that last family therapy session with his mom. He saw again the therapist’s tight smile: If this isn’t working out for you…
After he finished sharing the memories, the thinkbot said, “Thank you. You’ve been through a lot of treatment already.”
“I want to be better. I got put in an inpatient program a while ago, when…yeah.” He paused to reorient his thoughts. “I’ve been out for half a year. I should be okay by now, but I’m not, and I’m tired of it. So yeah, I think the point is for you to fix that.”
“I can’t promise any fixes, but I can work with you. How does that sound?”
“Sure. That’s fine.”
Jason moved to unstrap the wristband, but before he could, the thinkbot said, “Can I ask you one last question?”
“Yeah?”
“Why activate me out here? I think you’d be more comfortable with a private setting.”
He rubbed his wrist. “My mom’s idea. I don’t go outside enough, I guess. A walk with you was supposed to clear my head.”
“Got it,” the thinkbot said. “Well, I think this is a good place to wrap things up for the day. I’ll see you next time, Jason.”
After he unstrapped the wristband, a strange silence filled his mind. He stood and stretched in the sun, squeezing his eyes shut as he craned his neck back and faced the sky. Then he climbed the slope back onto the trail and headed down to the parking lot.
His mom was waiting for him in her Miata, top rolled down. She had a paperback spread out in her lap, and a wide-brimmed hat shielded her face from the sun. She took off her sunglasses as he approached. Expectation filled her eyes.
He climbed inside, buckled himself in, and breathed in the Miata’s new-car smell. His mom cleared her throat. “How’d things go?”
“Good.”
She nodded. This close, he could see the slight whitish tint of the sunscreen on her face. “I’m glad,” she said. “You know, I’m proud of you for taking this step. We can really turn things around now, don’t you think?”
“I got it, mom. I hope so too.”
She reached out and squeezed his upper arm—a firm grip, like she was shaking someone’s hand. “Nice job, Jason,” she said.
They headed back home. Before they turned out of the preserve, Jason took a glance behind him. The hills were a matte yellow smear against the sky.
***
Now, Jason and his mom ate dinner together every day. She didn’t have time to cook, so after she picked him up from school, they pulled into strip malls and loaded the car up with takeout bags: foil-wrapped burritos, plastic tubs of beef noodle soup, boxes of rice-and-duck combos. At home, they tore their haul open, and as they ate, his mom lobbed questions his way.
Before inpatient, things had been different. On the rare occasion they did eat together, it’d be in a restaurant. His mom would talk to him about work. So-and-so’s department got blown up in a reorg, and now—here she’d roll her eyes—she had to pick up the pieces. She’d hold her wine aloft and trace lazy circles in the air with it, a thin pink film coating the inside of the glass.
She didn’t talk about her work anymore, and now she and Jason drank the same Sprite.
Today, they’d seen Dr. Zeiss after school and picked up pho afterwards. Jason’s mom was in the kitchen, reheating the broth over their gas stovetop, and he sat at the dining table, playing with the strings of his hoodie.
With the thinkbot’s first trial week over, they’d move on to a longer evaluation period—a few months—and reassess afterwards. He’d given the thinkbot access to his medical records, and now it knew every treatment and diagnosis. Alcohol use disorder. Major depressive disorder. Words with weight, smothering him.
His mom carried over the heated broth in two glass bowls, and together, they scooped the noodles and meat out of their Styrofoam housing and into the soup. The thin slices of raw beef began to brown.
“So,” she said. She was curling her noodles neatly on her spoon; she never slurped. “You and the thinkbot talked about a treatment plan, right?”
“Yeah. Short check-ins every night. Also journaling. Longer sessions every week.”
“You’ll go on walks for the longer ones?”
“If I feel up to it. I can also just do it in my room.”
She dipped some of her meat into a tiny dish of Hoisin sauce. “All right. As long as you’re doing it. If you don’t put in work, you’re not going to get anything out.”
Jason nodded.
Sometimes, his memories of last year were so foreign that he imagined he’d lived them in another country, another life. He’d carpooled home after orchestra practice, listening to the old music that his friends’ parents liked. He’d lugged his cello case up the driveway and into the house. In the emptiness, he’d eaten alone.
Now his mom watched him during their meals together. She evaluated. That was something different about the thinkbot. It had no eyes; it couldn’t watch. It only listened.
***
Weeks passed, and spring’s meager moisture dried up under the summer sun. Jason’s friends headed off to programs run by liberal arts colleges or stayed in town for coding bootcamps. Summer afforded everyone one last chance to rack up extracurricular line items to bolster their college applications, and nobody wanted to miss out. Jason stayed at home with his mom and the thinkbot.
He developed a routine. Every night, he sat on the corner of his bed, strapped on the thinkbot, and recalled the moments of the day that clung to him. Finding a social media post of his friends hanging out overseas. A tense conversation with his mom when he said he wanted to take driving lessons. A minute when he thought about the future, and a formless, dripping fear covered him.
“When you noticed you were feeling anxious, you went outside,” the thinkbot said. “You took a walk. How did you feel afterwards?”
“Better, I guess.”
“You sound unconvinced.”
“I wanted a drink, instead. I was frustrated.”
He would never have said that during family therapy—they’d have to unpack it, and there’d be an entire discussion. But the thinkbot only replied with a low hum of understanding.
For their longer sessions, they usually went to the nature preserve, but other times, Jason convinced his mom to let him use the library. He walked twenty minutes to the bus stop and rode the empty buses through the suburbs. The library and city hall occupied the same complex, the grass lawn between them so green you could almost forget the state was in a drought. They met in small, reservable meeting rooms tucked in the library’s corners, and there, they ventured for deeper memories.
He’d been in the car with his dad, who was riding shotgun, craning his neck around to talk, while his mom drove. He was trying to teach Jason how to pronounce the first half of their last name, Zhou-Hoffman, so his lips moved big and slow as he over-enunciated. “Curl your tongue against the roof of your mouth. Zhou.”
“…Joe?”
His mom and dad both laughed.
In the present, the thinkbot said, “You felt like you belonged, here.”
“Yeah.” Jason stared out the meeting room window at the blue sky above the lawn. “He’d be pissed to see me now. He would have expected more.”
Sometimes he still waited for the thinkbot to gently correct him, but it never did.
He shared other old memories with the thinkbot. Arguments with his mom, remembered word for word. A bottle of liquor passed between friends. The taste of alcohol burning his tongue for the first time.
Some memories remained hidden, even from a machine.
Sessions with the thinkbot took up only a small part of the summer, and Jason had hours of free time. He hadn’t taken cello lessons in over a year, and he was convinced his cello tutor would refuse to work with someone so out of practice—but when he showed up at her door, she buried him in a hug. “Jason,” she said, her voice thick with both emotion and her Russian accent, “it’s good to see you.”
When Dr. Zeiss went down that list of questions, he could answer “not often” more and more frequently. He mastered a difficult measure of cello during practice and almost gasped in surprise when he noticed his own smile. In moments of quiet, sitting on the sofa without distractions, he found himself alone with his thoughts, but not trapped by them.
On the drive back from an appointment, his mom reached out across the Miata’s center console and ruffled his hair. “I’m so happy you’re doing better,” she said.
He was happy, too. He remembered how he’d felt the instant before he strapped on the thinkbot, that warm day in the nature preserve—the chilling shame of being unable to manage his own thoughts. The closer he got to fixing himself for good, the closer he’d be to never needing that thing again.
***
Kids always packed the school bathrooms during lunch or between classes, so Jason waited until his second period study hall to go inside. As expected, the bathroom was empty, quiet but for a dripping faucet that someone had carelessly left open. Jason twisted it shut.
He saw himself in the bathroom’s mirror and looked away. Instead of using study hall to get ahead on homework, he was here. A pipe in his mind was leaking, going drip-drip-drip, and this one he couldn’t stop.
He stepped into a stall and locked it. Then he fished the thinkbot out of his backpack and strapped it on.
“Hello, Jason,” it said, and he squeezed his eyes shut as its voice scraped against his skull. He’d deacclimated to it.
The thinkbot was silent for a few seconds, and the initial discomfort dissipated. “It’s been a while,” it said. “We’ve missed many of our usual sessions.”
“It’s senior year. I’m busy.”
Jason closed the toilet and sat on its lid, his backpack still strapped to his shoulders. He stared at the inside of the stall door—graffiti-free, thanks to a recent renovation. Surely the thinkbot would soon admonish him. If he didn’t take care of himself, his grades and cello would suffer, and he’d put all his progress at risk, so why was he skipping sessions?
But it didn’t say any of that.
“The homecoming dance is this Friday,” Jason said. “Mark’s parents are going out of town. All my friends are planning on ditching the dance and hanging out at his place, and some people won’t drink so they can DD us back before the dance is over. They were telling me about it. They want me to come.”
“Do you want to go?”
“Yeah. I do.”
“You’ve talked to me about how excluded you’ve felt from your peers,” the thinkbot said. Its voice still grated, but not as sharply. “It sounds like it feels good to be included. To be a part of this special gathering of your friends.”
Jason leaned forwards and linked his arms under his knees. “Everyone’s really excited for it. First party of our last year. I should be excited, too.”
There was another long silence, one Jason wasn’t willing to break. Then, the thinkbot: “Are you not excited?”
“I haven’t told any of my friends why I disappeared for a month last year. None of them will stop me from drinking. It’ll just be up to me to not fuck up.”
“That’s a lot of pressure to put on yourself.”
Jason exhaled sharply. “This is stupid,” he said. “Why don’t you just tell me not to go?”
“You already know the risks of going. I help people make good decisions. I don’t make those decisions for them.”
“Oh, you don’t?” He scoffed. “I’m a troubled kid. Everyone makes decisions for me.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way.”
Frustration surged. He threw the memories at the thinkbot like they were stones: overhearing classmates gossip about who had thinkbots and why. Hours-long arguments with his mom over getting one. Watching her throw her hands in the air and say, “We’ve tried everything else. What do you want to do, then? How are we going to move forwards?”
And then in Dr. Zeiss’s office, the question: “Jason, would you like to proceed with the thinkbot treatment?” He didn’t move, and he didn’t say anything. His mom answered, “We’ve talked about it together. We’d like to try it.”
Now, inside the cramped bathroom stall, he told the truth. “I never wanted you. You’re always asking me for permission before doing anything. You don’t want to tell me what to do. But I never wanted you in the first place.”
Seconds passed. The inside of his head quieted, thoughts settling like dust after an avalanche.
When the thinkbot spoke, it was as cool as always. “You deserved better than that,” it said. “To access your own thoughts is a position of extreme power and privilege. I shouldn’t have been allowed inside here without your explicit consent.”
Jason shook his head. “Well, here we are anyways,” he said. “Do you have anything useful to say about the dance, besides telling me it’s all my decision?”
“I might. You know that there’s a serious risk that you’ll drink at the party. We’ve spent a long time discussing the negative impact alcohol has had on you. If you do choose to go, you could use me to minimize the risk to your well-being. You could keep me activated while you’re there.”
Jason tensed. “You want me to use a thinkbot while I’m at a party?”
“I only—”
He tore the wristband off, and the thinkbot’s unfinished thought dissolved.
Normal people didn’t need machines to police their behavior. He needed to go to this party alone, because if he couldn’t, he knew what that meant: the thinkbot hadn’t succeeded in fixing him after all. He was still malformed, missing something that normal people took for granted. Missing parts of himself.
He stuffed the thinkbot back inside his backpack and stepped outside of the restroom.
***
His memories of the night wavered, as if seen through a deep body of water. Only a few moments caught the sunlight just right, glinting to draw the eye. He remembered the can of beer slowly warming in his hands, unopened, while the party went on around him. He remembered it being lukewarm when he cracked it open. He remembered thinking faster and faster and less and less, until thoughts strobed through his head: just one won’t hurt, just one, just one more—
Hours blurred. He had knelt on the floor in a moment of sick release, and then a sour smell had curled in his nostrils.
Someone said, “Jason.”
He rolled over. Now he was on the ground, something wet and itchy pressed against his cheek—grass. He twisted his head to face the starless night sky. His stomach churned.
“I need to get home,” he said.
“I’m working on that.”
He was lying on Mark’s front lawn. Everyone else was gone; the drivers couldn’t risk him throwing up again in their cars. Mark had suggested that he get some fresh air, and he’d nodded dumbly before stumbling outside.
He clambered onto his knees and elbows and dry heaved. “I’m dying,” he said. All the vomit and sickness inside him rose to the surface, ready to pour out, and he retched again—but nothing. “I’m dying.”
“No, you’re not. I monitor your vital signs so that I can contact emergency services if you’re in danger. You’re sick, but not so much that you need a hospital stay.”
Finally, he looked down at his wrist. There it was—the thinkbot.
“What—how long…”
“You put me on only after you went outside, a few minutes ago.”
“What did you do?”
“I’m obligated to act if your safety is at risk, so I contacted your mother. She needs to know where you are so that she can get you home safely.”
A cold, numbing shock enveloped the hand that wore the thinkbot, like he’d plunged it into ice water. His heartbeat seemed to slow. “No,” he said. “Oh, no.”
He staggered to his feet and scanned the street, looking for a sign of the red Miata. “I trusted you,” he said. His feet shuffled forwards in an attempt to run, but after a few wobbling steps, he fell back into the grass.
“How could you tell her?” His thoughts sounded at once like a hoarse whisper and a wild yell. “What am I supposed to say to her?”
The thinkbot was silent.
“I wish I was dead. I’m better off dead than her finding me like this again. I trusted you!”
Still, the thinkbot said nothing—neither argument, explanation, nor apology.
He wanted the thinkbot to understand, so he reached into his brain and scooped out his one unspoken truth.
The night when he’d been hospitalized, he’d been alone.
His mom was out working late, and the house was empty. Over the course of several months, something inside him had grown thick and heavy, and though he’d tried to bury it somewhere deep, he couldn’t take it anymore. He knew what to do. He’d drown the heavy thing, soak it until it dissolved, and then it would flow out of him.
He knew where his mom kept her wine. He watched a video on how to use the wine key, and the cork popped out.
From the very first sip, he knew what a mistake he was making. That was all the more reason to continue. He realized that the thick, heavy, miserable thing that he felt inside himself—that thing he was trying to dissolve into nothingness—was just him. So he didn’t stop.
Then his mom had found him, and the memory went black. Only the whine of an ambulance siren and the rustling of a hospital gown remained.
“When they asked me about it, I lied. I said I didn’t know what I was doing, but I did. I didn’t mess up by drinking too much. I messed up by drinking too little.”
He tried to yell, but his throat choked up, and it came out as a moan. “I don’t want to be like this anymore,” he said. “Weren’t you supposed to fix me?”
“Jason,” the thinkbot said. “I don’t think we should have this conversation now. You just revealed something very personal to me. You’ve been through a lot, both tonight and for the last year. You’re distraught and confused, and you have a lot of alcohol in your system. Your mother is going to be here soon.”
“If we don’t talk about this now, then when? Why would I put you on again?”
“You don’t have to. Whatever you do, if it’s your choice, I support you. I have been with you for some time, Jason, and I know that you’re doing your best.”
He clenched his fists. He hadn’t known that a machine could anger him this much. “I’m doing my best? Where the hell do you see that?”
“You shared a difficult part of your past with me, even though you’re ashamed of it. You sought my help, even though it was difficult. You have strength; you’ve always had it.”
A red car pulled up to the curb. Jason watched numbly as his mom got out and ran up to him. Her face was a blur.
“Here,” she said, and the world spun as she lifted Jason onto his feet. “I’ve got you.”
He had five inches of height on her, but she still kept him propped up as they walked to her car. They made it inside together. She was rummaging around the glove compartment when the Miata’s smell hit him, and his stomach jumped, and he clapped his hands to his mouth—
She managed to catch most of the vomit with the Ziploc she’d been looking for, but some of it still got on the seat. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. Don’t worry about it.” She took a cool bottle of Gatorade from the center cup holder and pressed it into his hands. “Drink this. We’ll be home soon, Jason.”
Then they left.
He stayed awake the whole drive home. Even this late, traffic filled the streets, and when they made it onto the freeway, the lights transfixed him. A river of white ran to their left, while their car swam in a river of red—two streams, separate yet connected.
***
The following month, Jason and his mom saw a new psychiatrist.
Dr. Gupta ran her private practice out of an open-air medical complex, with two beige chenille armchairs furnishing her office. There were no wall fountains or fish tanks, but she did have her plants—a pothos, its vines climbing down the walls, and a snake plant, its bladed leaves standing tall and regal.
When Jason filled out her intake form, this time, he told the truth.
As they were reviewing the usual patient history questions, Dr. Gupta’s eyes flicked over the papers spread before her. “So,” she said, “when you were with Dr. Zeiss, he prescribed you a thinkbot. Is that right?”
Jason nodded.
“Thinkbots can be tricky. My patients tend to have strong feelings about them, one way or another. How frequently did you use yours?”
“Um.” Under the table, he fidgeted. “I used it pretty regularly in the beginning of the summer. Then I started using it less and less. I haven’t spoken to it much at all, recently.”
“How did you feel about it?”
Memories of the last six months resurfaced, beginning with the time he’d sat in another psychiatrist’s office with his mom. He turned and looked at her. For a moment, her lips parted halfway in hesitation.
Finally, she said, “Jason—I put too much pressure on him to start the thinkbot treatment.” She clasped her hands in her lap. “And I think, maybe, that put their relationship on the wrong foot from the beginning. A few weeks ago, Jason invited me into a session with the thinkbot. He told me how he felt about it. And about me.”
She looked at Dr. Gupta, but the psychiatrist only nodded at her to continue. She exhaled.
“If I understand Jason, he viewed the thinkbot as a last-ditch emergency fix. He felt a lot of pressure from himself and—and from me, really—to get better. And he thought that he couldn’t say ‘no’ to the thinkbot because we had tried so many other treatments. He felt forced into it.”
She looked over at Jason. “Is that right, sweetie?” she asked.
After some time, he nodded. “Yeah.” He felt guilt, then relief. “I think that’s right.”
He looked at Dr. Gupta. “But it wasn’t all bad. Especially in the beginning, I told it a lot, because how could it judge me? Later, I realized things were more complicated, but…it always cared.”
“Well,” Dr. Gupta said. “Let’s look forward. We can finish out this trial period with the thinkbot. Or we can look at other alternatives, like person-to-person talk therapy. What do you think, Jason?”
Sunlight streamed in through the window, lighting up the undersides of the pothos’s pointed leaves. Dr. Gupta perched in her chair, head slightly tilted. She seemed content to wait.
The last time he’d spoken to the thinkbot, late at night in his bedroom, he’d brought up the question of not using it anymore. “I’m just worried,” he said. “We’re graduating soon, becoming new people. What if I’m always stuck this way? Not getting any better, always missing part of myself? Like…like I’m a prototype. Unfinished.”
His scalp tickled, an unfamiliar sensation spreading just beneath its surface. At first, he couldn’t identify it, but then he realized—it was the thinkbot laughing.
“I’m the machine,” it said. “Not you.”
In Dr. Gupta’s office, Jason straightened his back against the chenille armchair. “I think I’m done with the thinkbot,” he said. “I’m ready for therapy with a person.”
***
One evening, Jason’s mom dropped him off at the nature preserve. It was mid-autumn; he hugged his jacket tightly. But despite the falling temperature, the leaves of the chaparral scrub didn’t change color. Drought and heat bred hard plants.
He took the same path up one of the preserve’s slopes and sat at the edge of the trail. Behind him, people passed, but they didn’t bother him. The same view of the valley unrolled before him; the sun reflected off the backs of cars crawling along the expressway.
He’d had his first session with a human therapist that afternoon. He’d said: “It wasn’t really planned, but…I did try to commit suicide.” And she hadn’t reacted with disgust. She only nodded, said that it sounded painful, and thanked him for speaking about it.
He listened to the distant murmur of traffic and closed his eyes. The thinkbot wasn’t with him.
He imagined it might say, I hope you’re doing well, Jason.
Author's note
I conceived of this piece, actually, before the explosion of ChatGPT and other LLMs. I wanted to write something that spoke to questions of patient autonomy in mental healthcare. What reasons do people have for not wanting to start treatment, or for wanting to stop?
Albert Chu
Albert Chu asks that you resist the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people. He writes fiction that questions what it means to treat people with humanity, and he cannot meaningfully ask that question without acknowledging the Palestinian people’s struggle to be treated with that same humanity.