Girl Meets Toy

My Tamagotchi beeped at me. I pressed the button to feed it. It looked happy and grateful.

I named it Edgar.

I woke up the next morning and fed my Tamagotchi. I played with it on the subway to work, and cleaned it in the elevator. I saw Tim coming towards me in the hallway, and I kept my head high and my smile tight. We nodded stiffly at each other. I turned into my office. I pulled Edgar out of my pocket and pressed his play button. He did a little dance. I smiled.

There were some guidelines on Edgar’s package as to how long I could expect to keep him alive. According to the package, the Tamagotchi would get more demanding the longer it lived — if you had to feed it three or four times a day to start, by the time it was a week old, you were feeding it every half-hour. Most Tamagotchis lived for about a week, before they starved, died of boredom, or were fatally sickened by their own filth — the package said that seven days was "average." Keeping it alive for two weeks made you "great," and if you could get your Tamagotchi to survive for more than twenty-one days, you were a "master."

I knew then that I would be a master. I would lavish care and attention on Edgar, and Edgar would live forever. Never mind that he’d been programmed, ultimately, to speed up and fail. I would defy science for love.

The next week was a Pavlovian symphony of beeps and responses. I checked Edgar constantly, pulling him out of my pocket under the table at meetings, placing him next to my plate during meals. He was so adorable, and so easy to please — every time I pressed his button, he shuffled his feet in delight. I grew to love the slight weight of him in my hand, the celebratory beeps he emitted after feeding, the shift of his grey squares as they formed a six-pixel smile. Edgar proved that I was excellent at loving, and that Tim was wrong to abandon me. He proved that if you took care of someone, they should love you in return.

I was at the dentist that week, reclined practically flat in the chair, the dentist’s gloved hands deep in my mouth, the tang of blood on the back of my tongue, when I heard a beep from my pocket: Edgar needed me. I instinctively reached for him under my plastic smock, but I couldn’t draw him out — the dentist was blocking my arm. Edgar beeped again, more insistently. Was he hungry? Dirty? Bored? If I didn’t respond quickly, he would grow weak and despondent; it would take extra vigilance to restore him to full vitality. Beep!, he said helplessly. Beep beep! Tears sprang to my eyes.

It was twenty minutes before I could get to my Edgar, and the squares that formed his eyebrows were drooped plaintively, his listless arms hanging at his sides. I cleaned, fed, and played with him, and he managed to perk up slightly, but you could see the mistrust in his eye pixels. How could I have ignored his beeps? Didn’t I love him? I clutched the egg to my breast, swore that I would never let such a thing happen again. Edgar beeped in reply, already hungry again.

I started waking up in the middle of the night to tend to Edgar. He had a "sleep" function, which put him in stasis for a few hours every night, but he would still chirp with pleasure when he got nocturnal care. He was becoming increasingly demanding during the day — scarcely fifteen minutes would go by that I didn’t need to press one of his little buttons. I still loved him, I would never resent him, but I wished he weren’t quite so apt to need me. I was doing my best to make him happy, but his happiness was more and more short-lived.

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Meanwhile, Tim and I continued to work together, keeping our interactions professional and brief, his grin still locked into a grimace, my own head held so high I thought it might fall off my neck. We had a quick exchange of emails, re: returning the stuff I’d left at his apartment; beyond that, there was no discussion of the year-long love we’d let die. He saw me, on more than one occasion, pulling Edgar out of my pocket under the table at a meeting, frowning at his flagging condition; I could tell that Tim was dying to see his progeny. Once, he was unable to stop himself from giving me the raised eyebrows look, a sharp nod with his chin — See, it wasn’t such a bad gift, after all.

No, it was a wonderful gift. It’s rare that someone hands you an explicit metaphor for the end of your relationship, but that’s exactly what Tim had done. I knew I was becoming perverse, showering attention on a lifeless phantasm that was doomed to fail, desperate to prove my superiority as a lover; I knew that Edgar represented the man who’d borne him to me. I didn’t care. I would love him until death.

It had been almost three weeks since the breakup, and the shock of the abrupt fracture had worn off; the disappointment, loneliness, and humiliation started to hit me. Our co-workers were acknowledging the new state of affairs, offering me their unwanted condolences — or were they snickers? I couldn’t tell anymore. The season changed hard over the course of a week — it wasn’t late summer anymore, it was a cold, grey fall. I came down with a miserable flu.

I called in sick to work and took to my bed, Edgar on the night table next to my tissues and NyQuil. I watched terrible TV, interrupted every few minutes by Edgar’s beeps — feed me, clean me, cheer me up. I could barely feed and clean myself, couldn’t drift off into a nap without being awakened by the incessant beeping. Goddamn it, what is it now?

We made it through the day, but barely; the night was worse. The next morning, Edgar woke from his "sleep," and started chirping right away. I didn’t even want to lift my head from the pillow, aching and fevered as it was. I knew then that only one of us would survive the day.

I forced myself out of bed for juice and soup, taking Edgar into the kitchen, where I dropped him into a drawer. I could still hear his faint beeping as I padded back to bed, the beeps speeding up, getting louder and more agonized. Where are you? I need you! Don’t let me die! You once said you loved me. Keep me alive!

I tossed and sweated in my sickbed, tormented by beeps and dreams of beeps. I napped fitfully, woke in a panic; I wanted to rush into the kitchen and rescue Edgar, but I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. There was no way I could continue to keep Edgar alive; his need was too great, his expiration pre-destined. I could no longer stay his fate, or mine — it was time to say goodbye. I took a long draught of NyQuil straight from the bottle, and dropped off into a thick, dreamless sleep.

In the morning, I checked the drawer. The pixels that had formed Edgar’s wistful eyes now formed two Xs. His cheery chirp would be heard no more, his feet would ne’er shuffle. Edgar was dead.

I kept the lifeless egg in the catch-all drawer by the stove, and forgot it was there, until almost two years later, when I was packing to move — I’d rented an apartment in Manhattan, to be closer to my new boyfriend, a man I’d met at work. I came across the egg and caressed it briefly, remembering how I’d loved it, and how it had loved me in return. But it had never been real; neither the toy nor Tim. It was just me pressing buttons.

I let the egg slide from my hand into the trash, and went into the bedroom to join my new love.
 n°

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