[ WP ] `` A lot of people are calling you a hero . '' `` A lot are n't . ''

`` A lot of people are calling you a hero.'' 
 
 `` A lot are n't.'' 
 
 I tear the velcro cuffs of my gloves, tossing them across the table — they land on the other side near the newspaper. Ironic, the gloves that made it atop the articles that hate it. I hold in my laugh, which I'm sure is more repression than genuine humor. Jerald continues to force his nose in my face, as if I wanted to hear what he had to say. I already know what I did. Nothing can change my mind. 
 
 `` You saved a lot of lives with this discovery, Rob,'' Jerald says. `` The least you can do is admit that.'' 
 
 `` That's why I did it, right?'' I say. `` To save lives.'' 
 
 I fall to my swivel chair, staring at the lifeless, metal entity that stands at the edge of the room. Its face... if you can call that lens a face... it just stares back at me. I wonder if it can hear Jerald yap about how consciousness is more than a soul, how I made it transferable—things I had been chastised for over the last month. I wonder if it still feels. 
 
 ``... and so far you've given fifteen people new—'' 
 
 `` Shut up!'' I say, halting Jerald's mouth mid-chomp. `` I've given them nothing. Have n't you heard?'' 
 
 I reach over to the newspaper, flipping the gloves to the floor as I whip away the folds. I point to the front page, to the headline that reads `` Origins of the Soul: Researcher Develops Consciousness Surrogate'' in bold, black, fucking Times New Roman lettering. 
 
 `` They say I found the soul, an'echo of God,''' I say, underlining the quote with my finger. 
 
 `` Yeah, and? What's your point, Rob?'' Jerald says. 
 
 `` God. *God*. I'm playing God, and I do n't even understand what I've created.'' 
 
 I point to the mechanical eye-sore that haunts the corner. 
 
 `` That *thing* is not human. That conscious being, that genetic'person' that we transferred... I do n't even know what it is anymore.'' 
 
 `` But Rob, you *do* know! You researched all of this, tested it, molded it all to fit and work and...'' 
 
 His words start to trail away, derailed alongside his thoughts as he looks at the metal surrogate. 
 
 `` The real person,'' I say, `` the real human, she's dead. She's *been* dead for months. And those people know that transferring her consciousness from a functioning body to a... machine—its pointless.'' 
 
 `` Why do you think its pointless that you saved her?'' 
 
 `` I did n't save her. I just installed a figment of herself. Her mind, yeah—but a lifeless copy.'' 
 
 The lens of the surrogate still stares to the floor, unmoving, unknowing. I have n't even turned it on yet. I'm too afraid to hear it speak *her* mind.
