The Raised Eyebrows

A cluttered robotics laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on a winter night, dark windows, one desk lamp, on a table a robot head, an open face of aluminium and small motors, two large white eyeballs with dark irises, two yellow plush eyebrows raised, two salmon-pink ears of folded card pricked upward, red tube-shaped lips, all on a neck of motors above a plain silver sheet-metal box with two red buttons, its eyes turned toward a woman leaning in with a clip-on microphone at her collar, seen from directly behind, face turned fully away, beside it an open aluminium rack of circuit boards with grey ribbon cables and red and black wires.