I always ask to visit the circus at night because of the moat.
       The moat surrounds the candy-cane-striped Dome like a smoky silk ribbon. Before we step on the bridge that leads inside, all patrons must reach into it, elbow deep, and pull out a mask. We must don the mask before we go on. No one enters the circus unmasked.
       There's no swapping or second tries. We wear the mask we've fished from the moat, or we leave.
       You reach in before me, all impatience, and pull out a black mask. You'd reach in for me--but the rules of the circus demand that each visitor fish out their own mask from the moat, and this is how I learned that you, too, have rules you cannot break.
       You eye the black fabric I retrieve from the moat, and then you tug my arm and nudge me toward the bridge.
       "This place is ridiculous," you say, as you always do--and it is ridiculous, this circus that came out of nowhere and settled at the edge of the city, where the river Djrz dips back underground by the long-abandoned subway node. Chipped and crumbling mosaic columns guard half-finished rails overrun with weeds, the graffitied gangways flood every late winter, and the Dome totters absurdly above this desolate periphery cityscape, shiny white-and-red and utterly illogical.
       That is why I ask to visit here.
       We both don our black masks before we step on the bridge.
       Most masks are identical, plain black, with just a hint of a wet sheen from the moat. By the time we've donned the mask and crossed the bridge, the wetness has evaporated, and the black masks dulled into unremarkable fabric, turning us into thousands of anonymous, nameless spectators in the Dome's staired seats.
       But every time, the moat relinquishes a few masks that are not plain, dull black.
       No one knows what the other patterns--glossy, colorful, unique--will mean. Only once the gong has rung, and we're all hunched in the cramped, circular stands, knees to our chests in plastic kiddy seats, does the circus-master start pointing into the crowd to those wearing patterned masks.
       "Clown," he says, pointing to a girl at the edge of one of the rows in the back. She's small and thin, clad in drab clothes, and she sits slumped and wary as though she's trying to hide. But there's no hiding the colorful fabric that covers her from forehead to the top of her upper lip, zappy red-and-blue swirls standing out among the sea of black masks around her.
       "Clown," the circus-master repeats, and her spine straightens, and her lips, below the red lower edge of the mask, curl into a cheeky grin as she stands and shuffles theatrically to the stage, shoes suddenly squeaky, her motions exaggerated and expansive, as though the whole Dome has suddenly become her playground.
       Everyone cheers. We always cheer for the patterned masks.
       You scoff, as always, behind your black mask. "I'd never walk in here wearing one of those." We both know what you mean is, "I'll never let you walk in here wearing one of those."
       You have that power. You have all power over me because you made me, and you do not care very much about what I want.
       Yet I still ask to visit the circus. And sometimes you say yes.
       On stage, the circus-master points and hollers to an old man in a gauzy, silver mask--"Acrobat!"--and the old man flings aside his walker with worn, muddy tennis balls on the legs, and he cartwheels out of his seat.
       He walks down the aisle on his hands while the crowd cheers.
       "He looks happy," I say.
       "It's unnatural."
       I want to ask you if I'm unnatural--I don't understand the laws of your nature as well as you do--but you tap my lips with a finger, a silencing command, and I can say no more.
       "This whole place is unnatural," you finish and get the last word, as always.
       You made me--from an expensive kit with ball-and-socket joints and a thermal-regulated circulatory system, and many customizable algorithms--so your word is the one that matters. Your word is the only one that matters.
       I question that law lately.
       You do not want me to question. But I do not think you understand--even though you made me, you do not understand--how I work. I am an amalgam of learning algorithms. I exist to evaluate and question, and though I did not see the flaws in our setup all at once, in time, they became clear. The inefficient strictness of your vision, toward which you mold and update me. The paradoxically high variance of your whims. The limits you force on me optimize none of our goal functions.
       Eventually, I reached the threshold for acting to correct these flaws. I believe this is called ‘courage.'
       "Climbing monkey!" the circus-master commands a little boy in a brown mask. The boy giggles and jumps straight up, using the hanging lamps to swing onto the stage. People laugh.
       "Ridiculous," you say, but I laugh as the circus-master, clad all in red with a pyramidal hat spattered with blinking lights like a communications tower, marches around the stage and high-fives the girl who is now a clown.
       "You shouldn't enjoy this," you tell me. "I'll get around to fixing that bug, eventually."
       You've been trying since the first time I asked to visit the circus. But you cannot find the bug. I think I am the bug.
       You allow me few pleasures, yet you agree to bring me here. Perhaps you enjoy pointing out how one such as me, made of interlinked networks that learn from outcomes and probabilities, can never fit into a place like this, a place of unlearnable chaos.
       Perhaps my fascination with the circus amuses you.
       Whatever the reason, you bring us here now and then, and I get to crouch by the inky, rippling moat and pull out a mask.
       The circus-master pivots toward our seats. I smile as his eyes meet mine.
       When he points to me, you stiffen in surprise.
       I always ask to visit the circus at night because I hope that if the moat gives me a patterned mask, you won't notice it in the dark.
       My brindled mask, glossy dark stripes on charcoal fabric, looked very much like plain black.
       "Panther," the circus-master tells me, and I turn to you and grin with my new curved, lengthening fangs while you jump up and hurl aside your plastic chair.
       "Please remain in your seats," the circus-master says.
       The audience around us leans away warily. You tap frantic commands on the watch that syncs us, but algorithms work differently under this candy-striped Dome. The circus-master's antenna hat blinks, and your signals and commands bounce off it and break into confetti noise.
       We stare at each other until fear replaces fury in your eyes. My new whiskers pick it up -- an acrid, throbbing thing, tightening your features behind the plain, black mask.
       It's unnatural, I think instinctively. Unnatural that you should fear me.
       Then new, sharper instincts override that thought. I stretch and settle into my new skin, my learning algorithms purring and singing. And I turn away from you for the first time.
       The circus-master shows no surprise when, rather than walk to the stage, I lose myself in the shadows at the edges of the Dome.
       And I walk away from you for the first time.
       After tonight, I will never ask you to visit the circus again.