It is man's peculiar distinction to love even those who err.
—Marcus Aurelius, VII.22
A sweet disorder in the dress. —Herrick
Once upon a time, many years from now, technology had continued its remarkable progress to the point that the construction of artificial people had finally become possible. These humakins, as they were called, were made so carefully and with such art that no one could tell the difference between a real human and an artificial one—except that the artificial ones were flawless. Physically the humakins were always young, always beautiful, always fresh; they never had a hair out of place, never a pimple, never a wrinkle, never a gray hair. Mentally they were always bright, alert, and smiling; they always got their facts right, and never took a wrong turn or got lost.
At first the appeal of the humakins was irresistible, and most humans chose them over other humans for spouses. What human female could compete with an always slim, beautiful, and lively imitation? And what human male could compete with an always confident, correct, and handsome construction? In fact, the word "humakin" quickly became a synonym for "perfect," as in, "That's a really humakin car," or "This pie tastes just humakin." At the same time the word "human" became a term of opprobrium, indicating something defective or of low quality, as in, "I never shop there because it's such a human store with human-quality merchandise."
To the consternation of many, however, while the humakins could construct more of themselves in a factory, the humans could produce more of themselves only by following the ancient method of their ancestors, so that the result of the marriages between flesh and plastic was the eventual decline of the human race.
When about nine tenths of the persons on the planet consisted of the precisely fabricated humakins and only one tenth of the really human, quite an odd and unexpected situation arose. It had become so unusual to see, for example, a woman wearing glasses or a man with wind-blown hair that such a detail now took on a natural appeal to some of the other humans.
One bright morning at breakfast in a fancy resort dining room, a human female, almost as lovely as a humakin, sat chatting with a humakin male who had condescended to sit with her. Suddenly she inadvertently spilled a glass of tomato juice onto her white tennis dress. While her humakin companion predictably stood up and stared at her with horror, across the room a human male who had just witnessed the event was so filled with ardor and longing that he almost broke the table in his rush to get over to her and make her acquaintance. His excitement to declare his affection left him without the capacity for coherent speech, so that only tentative and confused phrases stumbled from his mouth. In the midst of his babbling, though, he could see, in the welling dew of the woman's eyes, the tenderness of regard he had inspired.
As other humans, too, began to grow weary of the expectation of constant perfection in their relationships, scenes similar to this one began to be repeated with increasing frequency. A loose shoe lace, a chipped fingernail, a shiny nose—all gradually became sources of romantic and emotional attraction, and those very characteristics that had before been viewed as defects soon came to be seen as emblems of the truly and desirably human, as guarantees of that unique inner fire that no amount of perfectly crafted plastic could equal.
The word "human" now began to be associated with the genuine, the natural—and the beautiful. It became not uncommon to hear a young lady remark to her admirer as he gently put a flower in her hair, "Oh, what a human thing of you to do." The word "humakin," on the other hand, began to imply something slickly unrealistic or laughably fake and was often pronounced with a sneer.
At length, having rediscovered the amorous appeal of their distinctives like freckles and missing buttons and the inability to refold road maps, the humans began to marry each other again. It wasn't many years before a young pledge of one of these new relationships was heard to ask in a tone of frustration, "But Mommy, why must I have a crooked tooth?" To which the mother replied, "That's so I'll always remember how truly beautiful you really are."