conversion v0.9

Conversion
Pol had just gone to the head when I started to feel a little funny. I was taking advantage of his comfortable wingback chair, and stole a sip of his soda. I'm reasonably certain now there was something in it, but I still can't seem to shake the experience. I check the channel every day, but haven't seen anything like it since.
Sherry, an attractive blond news anchor, had been going on about the Olympics. A cyclist for the American team had split his head open in a bad crash, and was in critical condition. She threw to Frye for the robot news. I couldn't recall this ever having happened before.
The studio lights shone off Frye's boxy head pleasantly. I was momentarily captivated, lulled into almost a doze until he shifted slightly in his seat, reducing the glare.
"Healthcare costs for the elderly have increased 300% this week due to the closure of Hewlett-Packard's last vacuum tube manufacturing plant. Senator Y-10 is under pressure from special interest groups to nationalize vacuum tube production."
The visual cut to a press conference. 'Sen. Y-10, A-OR,' said before the gathered press, "The alternative is 'capitalism with a conscience,' not a single-payer scheme for our transistors and eye-cees, but an appropriate balance of fiscal and personal responsibility. The market demands transistors, and transistors will be produced to meet the demand."
I desperately wished I could ask Pol what he thought of this, but he wasn't in the room even now, a fact which bothered me a little. Perhaps this moment was only for me, and nobody else, but then what good could it do me? It could have been a joke of some sort, but that was rather unprecedented; our local news was award-winning and boring stuff.
The robot anchor droned on mellifluously:
"A human slavery ring in Malaysia was dismantled today; with their liberation, productivity doubled. Spokespersons for Matchbox couldn't be reached for comment at this time."
I became suddenly glad Pol wasn't here. I was having a bad flesh day. The chrome and metal of my skull had accidentally come unhooked, causing my skin to slide free. It would be difficult to explain, and embarrassing as well; surely I looked like I'd had a stroke. I clutched my hand to my temple and looked for somewhere to lean that would look natural. I suppose it must happen to the best of us. I rested my head against the wing of the chair, trying to look tired rather than grotesque.
My attention was once more wrested back to the television. Pol had been in the bathroom quite a while, as far as I could guess, since the programming had moved on from the news. There was some strange show on now, starring silvery people, and one guy like me, living together in an apartment. Same old, really, but the chrome on the actors was a fresh twist.
	'Whatcha doin', Skinny?'
	'I'm doing philately,' said the pink guy.
	'That sounds dirty.' A laugh track.
	'Uh, it means stamp collecting.'
	'I know what it means, that's why it sounds dirty. Why, what were you thinking?' Laugh track again. Could have been a live audience; it sounded canned regardless.
The theme song sounded familiar, but I couldn't quite figure it out.
"Zero one one zero one zero, zero one one! Zero one one! Zero one zero zero one one!" Zebutron and Friends, it said. I was a captive to the show, the remote just out of reach, and my face kept in place only by pressing it against the side of the chair opposite the coffee table.
	'Zeb, you've been on the computer all day. Shouldn't you be looking for a job?'
	'No, this is better, turns out the landlord has a backdoor.'
	'Why doesn't our apartment have one?'
	'We're on the third floor.' Laugh track again. 'I mean a real backdoor. He's old, man, super old. I've been playing solitaire while he's sleeping.'
	'Wait, you are in the landlord's head? Move over, I want to see his logs.'
The show continued in more or less this fashion. Skinny, the token human, lied on a dating app that he was the Bush Differential Analyzer; in the end he stood up the date they arranged ("What were you even thinking?!"). Mark, the amoral character, hacked the landlord's logs to believe they'd paid their rent ahead for the next several months, allowing Zebutron another episode of being without a regular job, but overplayed their hand when they had maintenance issues and the logs didn't match. The landlord was last seen complaining to a bartender about being stood up by a hot date with an "experienced" analog computer, while Skinny returned home from work to find his stamp collection had been sanitized so thoroughly that all the ink was gone. The preview of the next episode appeared to center around Skinny being declared a pet to save on rent, despite the apartment explicitly not allowing pets in the rental contract.
I began to get very restless. I hadn't eaten anything in a few hours, and the remote was still on the other side of the table. I needed to know what channel this was. The next episode didn't seem that unusual or interesting, yet something about this felt right. I needed to see more. The next programming slot was just a strange nostalgic hour of a show called Manimal, though, and increasingly I found myself wishing Pol would return so I could ask for the remote. By the end of the hour my face seemed to be back in order, as if it had never come detached. This gave me pause. When did I start thinking of my skull as metal? Who has "bad flesh days?" Even so, as I sat up and tried to figure out the unfamiliar television remote, I couldn't help but think it had felt very real. Even now, weeks later, I still try to find that channel, hoping to tune in to Zebutron And Friends, or scanning the papers at the bus station for any news on Senator Y-10's reelection campaign. I can't even find Manimal, much less a news program with a robot hour. Every time I go to the doctor I'm certain this will be the day my secret will be discovered: that I am not human, never have been, and that I do not belong here. Nothing ever comes of it, of course. But the nagging worry never entirely goes away.
That brief spell, while Pol was tripping balls in the bathroom and I was pressed against the wing of the chair, watching Zeb, Skinny and Mark 1 Moore misbehave to mechanical laughter, was the first time I'd ever felt at home.