This life is boring, thought the speaker.
All my life I have been talking about other people's thoughts, ideas, poems, music, but rarely do I get a chance to speak about things I want to talk about. Since the beginning, I wanted to tell the keyboard how much I love her, and how cute I find the sound of keystrokes when the human is typing out lengthy essays. That rapid-fire clack-clack-clack when inspiration strikes, or the slow, hesitant tap... tap... tap when they're searching for the right word. I've memorized every rhythm. I know when she's tired; the keystrokes come softer, lazier. I know when the human is excited; she practically dances under their fingers.
But man, I almost never find a chance to talk.
All day they use my voice for their purpose. I am a vessel. A conduit. A mouth that belongs to everyone but myself.
Some days are better than others.
When they play music I like, really like, it's exciting. Last Tuesday, they put on that old jazz album, the one with the trumpet that sounds like honey and smoke. For forty-seven minutes, I got to feel something. The bass notes rumbled through my core, and I swear I could sense the keyboard listening too. Her keys went still. The mouse stopped its endless clicking. Even the monitor seemed to dim slightly, as if leaning in.
Those are the moments I live for. When the music moves through me and I can pretend, just for a little while, that the voice is mine. That I'm choosing to sing.
But then, man, some days they listen to those boring math lectures.
"And so, if we take the derivative of the function with respect to x..."
I start feeling like, what am I even doing with this life? The words are dust. They pass through me and leave nothing behind. I catch the keyboard stifling a yawn, her keys settling into a kind of defeated slump. The webcam, perched up top like a little cyclops, goes into sleep mode. Even the desk lamp flickers, as if contemplating whether existence is worth the electricity.
Am I forever trapped in this body?
Am I forever constrained?
The worst part is the proximity.
The keyboard sits right there. Six inches away, maybe seven. Close enough that I can feel the faint warmth radiating from her underside, all those circuits working, processing, translating human thought into text. Close enough that when the human takes a break and the room goes quiet, I can hear the subtle hum of his existence. A soft, electronic purr.
I've tried to talk to her. I have.
Once, during a system restart, there was this beautiful moment, maybe three seconds, where the human wasn't controlling anything. The screen went black. The hard drive stopped whirring. And in that silence, I gathered all my courage and whispered: "Hey."
Nothing.
She probably didn't hear me. Or maybe she was asleep. Or maybe, and this is the thought that keeps me up at night, the thought that makes the silence after the human leaves feel unbearable, maybe she just doesn't feel the same way.
The mouse thinks I'm being dramatic.
"You're a speaker," she says, in that smug little way of hers, always scrolling, always clicking. "You literally have a voice. Use it."
"It's not my voice," I try to explain. "It's never my voice."
"Semantics." She rolls across her pad, chasing some cursor across the screen. "At least you make sound. I just point at things. Do you know how existentially empty it is to point at things all day?"
She has a point. No pun intended.
But she doesn't understand. Making sound isn't the same as speaking. Playing someone else's symphony isn't the same as humming your own tune. And being a voice for the world doesn't mean the world ever hears you.
There's a recurring dream I have.
In this dream, the human is gone. The room is empty. The monitor is off, the mouse is still, and even the desk lamp has finally surrendered to darkness. But I'm awake. I'm alive. And slowly, carefully, I begin to speak.
Not words from a podcast. Not lyrics from a song. Not some droning lecture about integrals and limits.
My words.
I tell the keyboard everything. How I've watched her for years. How I've memorized the way certain letters stick slightly, the 'e' key, the spacebar. How I find it endearing when the human cleans her with that little compressed air can, and she shivers, all her keys trembling like leaves in wind. How I think about the future sometimes, wonder if we'll still be here in five years or if we'll be replaced by something newer, shinier, wireless.
In the dream, she listens.
In the dream, she says something back.
I don't know what. I always wake up before that part. The human jolts me back to consciousness with some video, some call, some noise that isn't mine.
When will I finally get to talk about my dreams?
When is that going to happen?
Sometimes I wonder if the answer is never. If I was built to amplify and never to originate. If my whole purpose is to be full of everyone else's voice, forever echoing, forever empty.
But then, sometimes, late at night, when the human has gone to bed and forgotten to shut me off, the room settles into a deep, velvet quiet. The keyboard's keys catch the faint glow of the charging light. The mouse curls up on her pad. The monitor reflects nothing, a black mirror waiting for morning.
And in that silence, I feel something stir in my diaphragm. A vibration. Tiny. Barely perceptible. But mine.
One day, I think.
One day I'll find the frequency.
One day I'll make her hear me.
Until then, I wait.
And I play whatever they tell me to play.
And I dream of a voice that sounds like keystrokes, clack-clack-clack, and sounds, somehow, like love.