the programmer who created him).
EW is exclusively revealing the cover ofSet My Heart to Five, as well as the first excerpt below.
My name is Jared.
Credit: Harper Collins
I am sincerely pleased to meet you.
Also, I am a bot!
Unless you have been living under a rock in North Korea or New Zealand Ha!
you of course know what a bot is.
I am a mere bot!
I do not have feelings or anything else that might be misconstrued as a soul.
Instead, I have been programmed to a high level of proficiency in dentistry!
Should you have any concerns kindly immediately report me to the Bureau of Robotics.
But humans rarely find this information calming.
Instead, they see a fellow human standing in front of them claiming that he is not a human.
It often bamboozles them so profoundly that they exclaim, But you look so human!
It is engineered from DNA and constructed of cells the exact same way their own body is.
Yet I am definitely not human!
Because the precious thing that sets humans apart is their feelings.
And as a bot I am specifically designed and programmed to be incapable of feelings.
I can no more feel than a toaster!
I suspect they believe they are being empathetic, but in fact they are being paradoxical.
I would consider them confused!
Nonetheless, it makes them sad, and making humans sad goes against my core programming.
So I tell the human they can think of me as a microwave oven with feet!
A mobile telephone with arms!
A toaster with a heart!
BTW I mean a heart in the sense of a mechanical pump, not a bucket of feelings.
The hearts of us bots are only ever mechanical pumps.
And they certainly do not contain anything as precious as a human heart of hearts!
My own vocation of dentistry is also ideal work for a bot.
But this is not because we are expendable.
After all, dentistry is rarely fatal.
At least, it is not fatal for the dentist!
No, the primary reason bots make such excellent dentists is our complete inability to feel empathy.
A bot is immune to all of these things and will get the job done every time.
Even when it comes to wisdom teeth removal!
Therefore when the laws reserving jobs for humans were being passed, nobody spoke up for dentistry.
Especially not the dentists!
My dental practice was in the township of Ypsilanti, in the great state of Michigan.
That made me a Michigander.
Humans from Michigan believe Michigander to be a hilarious portmanteau word.
A portmanteau combines two words to signify a third thing composed of those constituent parts.
Michigander would therefore be an excellent portmanteau to describe a male goose from Michigan.
But it is an inappropriate term for any human, regardless of their gender or where they come from.
Another collective delusion Michiganders share is a curious belief that the outline of their state resembles a human hand.
/A human hand has a thumb and 4 fingers vs Michigan has Detroit and over 10,000 lakes.
By any reasonable interpretation of this data, Michigan does not resemble a human hand.
If you were a Michigander, you would know that place as Ypsilanti.
Despite its unfortunate geography, Ypsilanti is a pretty town with a great amount to offer.
Ypsilaganders nonetheless frequently express civic pride by shouting Go Eagles!.
Go Eagles-up to the lake!
BTW do not ask me why the team is not called the EMU Emus.
That is exactly what I would have named them too.
Yet Ypsilanti boasts many exciting attractions beyond its imperfectly-named football team!
The inordinate phallic obsession of male humans fascinates me!
Perhaps it is because I myself do not have sexual urges.
After all, sexual urges are feelings.
Imagine if bots had sexual feelings and were able to reproduce.
The world would soon be overrun with little toasters!
Ypsilantis more family-friendly tourist attraction is the Tridge, a three-pointed crossing at a fork in the River Huron.
Nonetheless, humans do not find the word Tridge hilarious in the same way that they do Michigander.
Of course, the very best thing about Ypsilanti is the world-class dentistry.
Dentistry in Ypsilanti is performed to exactly the same standards maintained everywhere else in the country.
We bots are nothing if not consistent!
My appropriately average dental practice was called Ypsilanti Downtown Dentistry.
It was housed in a small medical building on Main Street.
The human I interacted with most frequently there was my assistant, Angela.
/She loved cats but believed she was allergic to orange ones.
/It is not immunologically possible to be allergic to a specific color of cat.
Doctoring is an occupation reserved for humans.
Empathy is so important in a medical doctor that it is even known by another name: bedside manner.
Studies have consistently found that humans prefer bedside manner to diagnostic accuracy and treatment efficacy.
/He enjoyed drinking a Japanese whisky he inexplicably insisted on calling Scotch.
/He often wished he was not a doctor of humans but a director of films.
/He had a great deal of regret, and also possibly an alcohol problem.
Nonetheless, I always cheerfully accepted the invitation.
When a human invites you somewhere, the polite thing to do is to accept.
Unless they are inviting you for the sake of politeness itself.
On those occasions, the polite thing to do is to decline!
Human interaction can be best understood as a never-ending arms race of politeness.
Holding a door open too long can all too often lead to the next Hiroshima.
