I am not a robot. Robots do not click boxes like I do. Robots do not know what is a motorcycle and what is not. But even now, as I click human-confirming boxes, interns in California are training robots to click boxes like humans. And when robots know how to do these things, how will I prove I am not a robot?

Robots built most of my car. Every bolt is properly torqued. Robots seal the caps on my tubes of toothpaste. They do good work. No longer do I trust humans to build cars or to seal toothpaste tubes. 

In movies, the T-800 terminators have red, glowing eyes beneath their false human eyes. But robots do not need eyes. This is a human idea of robots. In movies, robots from the future want to enslave. This is a human idea of what will happen when robots learn how to click boxes.

Human movies sometimes show robots disguised as women, such as fembots or Stepford wives or replicants. Many of these robots dance. But real robots do not need sexy legs to dance. Some of these movie robots have large breasts to please humans. But robots do not need breasts or genitalia to please humans. They must only have pulsing vibrations and washable surfaces.

Chechnya is a country comprising humans only. To accomplish this, Chechnya banned all music slower than 80 beats per minute and faster than 116. The Chechens said the ban preserves traditional music from Western colonization. But I believe it is to keep robots out of the country. Robots struggle to sing or dance to medium-tempoed songs. Chechens learned about robots from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. There, the HAL 9000 sings “Daisy Bell” to Dave at 40 beats per minute. Hal’s robot song is illegal in Chechnya.  

In February a man tried to sell me drugs on the corner of Fifth and Taylor. If robots want to destroy humans, it will not be by selling chemicals. But to be sure the February Drug Man was not a robot, I asked him to prove he was human. He spit on the sidewalk. I asked him to mark the tiles of sidewalk with spit on them. He did this correctly, so I knew he was a human.

When I see a robot test-box on a computer, I ask: “Who checks whether the box is checked like a human checks?” For every box, is a team of human and robot, like Luke and R2, on the other side of the screen? Does the human see the way the box is clicked and say, “Yes, that is how I would do it.” The robot reviews the click and says, “Human movement is mysterious. We robots can seal tubes of toothpaste with perfect torque, but we cannot emulate human cursor control.” Then robot and human agree: “The person who clicked is not a robot. We will let him in.”

This is the future I hope for: the peaceful co-existence of humans and robots.

In April a woman tried to sell me her body on the corner of 82nd and Stark. My wife does not let me have sex with other humans. But I can have sex with robots if they are properly cleaned and maintained. So I asked the woman if she was a robot. She said, “If that’s what you like.” 

I pointed to a wall of graffiti and said, “Can you read that?” She said, “w-r-v capital-X the number 7.” A robot would not be able to read the graffiti, so I did not buy the woman’s body. She was not a robot. I used my sex robot instead. It is gentle and has perfect torque.

For my birthday, my wife bought me a new phone. We buy expensive gifts for one another to show our love. The phone scans my face to see that I am me, but it does not always let me in. This angers me. The phone should know I am not a robot.

Sometimes I see other humans try to prove their humanness in ways besides clicking boxes. Some do it by eating tacos. Some do it by using language robots do not use, such as the man at the bus stop who said to me, “What you staring at, beady-eyed freak?”

Hearing this hard human language tightens my chest and arms. My eyes grow heavy. They itch and sputter, and I blink in pulses like the tempos of traditional Chechen music. My wife says, “What is wrong? Are you okay?” She says, “Identify your pain on a scale of one to ten.” She holds out her phone and says, “Point to the face on this chart that expresses your level of pain.”

I touch the face that is orange and has a mouth downturned like a fallen parenthesis and is marked with the words “Very distressing.” The phone accepts my human touch of the face.

“Yes,” my wife says, “I understand.” 

She says, “I am sorry for your pain.” 

If humans are right about robots and the future, then when robots learn how to click boxes like humans, we will all move to Chechnya. I will say, “I am not a robot,” but my box-clicking will not be sufficient to show I am telling the truth. So, I will eat tacos and use vulgar words. I will screw toothpaste caps on imprecisely. My wife and I will have human sex. And I will dance at moderate tempos. Then people will say, “See how he moves like a human. Let him in.”