MIKE KOENIG

The Amore Exam

In 2045, the most popular television show was Thy Own Self. It was a game show where contestants won money by answering questions about themselves. These questions were not obscure references to their past, but rather opinion questions about contestants' current preferences and personality. Many male contestants could not correctly identify their own favorite color often claiming it was blue or black only to learn the right answer was green or yellow. And very few female contestants could identify who their best friend was, often choosing a sister or lifelong friend they thought they "should" like, only to have a more obscure name turn out to be the right answer. Upon hearing that their guess was incorrect, most contestants would nod and politely clap, saying things like "that makes sense" or "I should have known that." But no one was ever seriously angry about the results.
           
The show reflected the great irony of the day: people didn't really know themselves. Perhaps that had always been the case, but the invention of the MegaScan 6000, an MRI-style scanning device that captured the complete essence of a person's physical, biological, and mental make-up, proved people were more clueless about themselves than anyone previously imagined. Or as comedian/philosopher/Thy Own Self Game Show Host Hank Williamson would say—there is a disconnect between what a person wants to be true and what is actually true. The MegaScan 6000 was used to verify this disconnect with every Thy Own Self contestant.
           
Despite the relative ease of the questions, no contestant had ever won the thirty-million-dollar grand prize. In fact, few left with more than a few thousand dollars. Hank Williamson's catch phrase, "That's not what the computer says," became something of a truism in the world. People didn't call out of work because they were sick, they called out because the Toxican unit on their toilets, a device that performed 600 medical tests on every sample of urine, said they were likely to feel ill later. This same device transmitted the results to a local pharmacist where a proper prescription was filled. People also didn't pick career paths or colleges. They simply had brain scans to tell them which vocation and school provided the best chance for them to be happy later in life. Why mess around with an art school dream if there was an eighty-seven percent chance you’d love being a CPA?
           
In the dating world, computers were equally effective, arranging the marriage of twenty-five percent of the US population, a number that was expected to reach eighty percent by the century's end. Not that the algorithms for these matches were flawless. Ten percent of computer-arranged marriages ended in divorce, often due to unforeseeable circumstances: a child dying, a car accident that left one spouse in a coma, mental duress resulting from violent crimes, and yes, sometimes the matches were just wrong. Nevertheless, the ninety percent success rate was much greater than the fifty percent people managed on their own -- a statistic that led most states to require an Amore Exam before a marriage license would be issued.
           
Lab technician Diana Robinson explained the exam like this: "The machine detects the feelings of love one subject has for the other. It does not guarantee this love will last. It also cannot predict how or why that feeling might change. Loving a person today does not guarantee you will love them tomorrow or in fifty years. So if the exam reveals you are not in love today that doesn't mean you won't be in a month. This exam is also limited to detecting feelings of love. It does not say anything about the quality of the person or if he or she will make a good spouse. Love is part of marriage; it is not the entire thing. So please understand this exam is only meant to be part of your decision making process. It should not be the entire reason."
           
Todd Sanders nodded at the lab technician. This was all a formality to him. There was no doubt in his mind that he loved Vanessa. She was the very idea of love and spending the next fifty years with her was the only thing he wanted.
           
The couple, having been properly briefed on the limitations of the Amore Exam, was led into the exam room. It was a small, circular room with three chairs and a desk. Two of the chairs were along the far wall and faced each other directly. The third sat behind the computerized desk. Diana took the seat at the desk and began pressing buttons to initialize the exam.
           
"Please have a seat," she said, adding, "It does not matter who sits on which side."
           
The metallic chairs were almost thrones. Todd, a man of medium build, felt like a small child when he sat in the bigger of the two chairs. He had three or four inches between himself and the armrests. Vanessa's chair was narrower, but still had space on the sides. It was also an inch or two too high. She could sit in the chair, but her feet did not rest flat on the floor. From the computer station, Diana adjusted both chairs to meet the size of the current subjects. The metallic sides slid gently next to Todd and Vanessa and the armrests shortened to match the lengths of their arms exactly.
           
"Rest your hands on the balls at the end of the armrest," Diana instructed. "And simply look into each other's eyes. The process should take about ten minutes."
           
Todd looked at Vanessa. She was beautiful even in jeans and a T-shirt. And he loved her hair, blue streaks and all.
          

"Please look directly in the eyes," Diana said.
           
Todd concentrated and locked eyes with Vanessa. At first, one would laugh every few seconds. The stillness of the room and the somber silence made the experience too unreal. But that passed after a while and they just connected -- four eyes in total isolation.

Todd couldn't tell if the exam actually lasted the full ten minutes or not. He fell into a sort of trance staring into Vanessa's eyes. If you had asked him before the exam began what color her eyes were, he would have answered blue, though he would not have answered with great confidence. Now he was sure they were blue, the piercing, shining blue of the helmet of his favorite video game character. How had he looked at her so many times and not seen this beauty? And how many more beauties would he get to appreciate in the years to come.

"I love you," he said, when the lab technician said they could relax. "I absolutely do."
           
Vanessa smiled and mouthed the words back. She came to his chair and rubbed the spikes of his military-buzzed hair. "You’re so damn cute," she said squeezing his shoulders.
           
Diana looked up from her computer, bad news all over her face.
          
"The test has come back negative, Mr. Sanders."
           
"Negative," he repeated.
           
"You are not in love, not with Miss Kelly." Diana quickly added, "That doesn't mean you won't be one day."
           
"What do you mean we're not in love?"
           
"Well, Miss Kelly is in love. But I'm afraid at this time you are not."

"There must be a mistake." Todd turned in his chair and took the exam position. "Run it again."
           
"The results aren't going to change in a few minutes."
           
"You made a mistake," Todd insisted.
           
"I understand your frustration, Mr. Sanders, and we can run the test again if you like. But I think you are experiencing the feeling of denial right now. Perhaps if you just sat outside for a few minutes and drank a glass of water."
           
"Just run the test," Todd said.
           
But the test could not be run again because Vanessa had left the room. Todd chased after her, though he was stopped in the main lobby by an aggressive clerk who wanted payment and then delayed by what seemed to be the slowest elevator in the world.
           
He found Vanessa balled up in the car, her knees tucked into her chest with her arms wrapped around them and her head pressed down. Todd couldn’t see her face, so he wasn’' sure if she was angry or sad. He got into the driver's seat.

"I don't want to talk about it," she said.

"Lab technicians make mistakes."

"I don't want to talk about it," she repeated.

"She said we could take the exam again."

"For what? To absolutely confirm you don’t love me? I know mistakes happen and that even the best machines make errors. Maybe we are that one in one billion error. But if we fail the test again, what am I supposed to think? Don’t do that to me. At least for one day, let me have some false hope. Don't make them tell me how foolish it is. Don't take away that slim hope that a mistake happened, not today."

"House," Todd said in that slightly deeper tone that let the car know it was being addressed. He wrapped his arm around the ball of Vanessa and held her as the car drove itself home.

***

"My dad made me take the exam about a year ago," said Todd's best friend, Neal, over lunch about a week later. "He was redoing his will, and he was looking for a reason to disinherit me."

"You went?"

"Of course I went. He deserves to know that I hate him. I wanted him to live whatever days he has left knowing that his only son hates his guts. Screw the inheritance; I want him to live with that."

Todd smiled. "So you failed the test."

"That's the messed-up part. I got there, and my dad meets me in the lobby, and we shake hands and sit in the waiting room. And I was like actually upset with him. I mean, I could feel my heart pounding because it's just such a jerk thing to do. I mean, who makes their kids prove their love? I mean, he's not even dying or nothing."

"He's King Lear."

"I guess so. Anyway, we don't talk for like a half hour as we wait. He's playing some game on his tablet, and I'm just hating him. I hate his fat belly, I hate his beard, I hate his pants, I hate his shirt. I just hate this man."

"It's not without reason."

"Damn right. Then they take us back to the exam room, and they put us in those two chairs and are like -- make eye contact and keep your hands on the balls of the armrests. You know what I mean?"

"Yeah."

"So I’m like really intense with my stare. I want him to look at me and know before the test starts that I hate him. So I'm squeezing those balls and squinting my eyes and pulling every ounce of anger I have for every comment and slap and 'be a man' expression he ever gave me. And I can feel that I hate him. I just know I despise my father, and I’m happy because he's finally going to know the way I feel. But then something happened. I'm staring at his eyes, and they look a little moist. I mean he isn't crying, but he just looks a little hurt. And it doesn't feel good like I thought it would. I'm actually upset because I hurt my dad's feelings with just this look. But at the same time, I feel good because he deserves to be hurt because he was a shitty father. So now I got so many emotions that I don't know what to think. I stop squeezing the balls on the armrest, and I just relax and stare at my dad. And he's staring back at me, and he doesn’t look angry or sad or mad or anything. He just has a blank expression like he doesn't know what's going on. And I probably had the same expression because I didn't know what was going on. It's a weird thing to stare into someone's eyes for a long period of time. Usually someone breaks contact for at least a second or two. But we didn't. We just stared at each other for, I guess ten minutes, but damn it felt longer."

"So what happened?"

"They said we loved each other. I believe it."

"But you hate your Dad," Todd said.

"I believe that too."

"So what's the point of the test?"

"It's like any truth machine," Neal said. "It tells you what you don't like to admit."

"So, you believe I don't love Vanessa?"

"If the computer says so," Neal said with a shrug, "then you don't. Why are you in such a hurry to get married anyway?"

Todd didn't have an answer. He was going to say, "I just want to." But that didn’t feel strong enough. So he just ate his sandwich instead.

***

Todd did not let the fact that he did not technically love Vanessa stand in the way of dating her. They saw each other almost every night, and on the nights they didn’t see each other they talked on the phone. Or rather they Speak Messaged on the phone. Todd would send Vanessa a Speak Message, a brief recording of his own voice asking a question, usually something simple like, "How was your day?"

Vanessa would listen to the Speak Message immediately, but usually took a few minutes to answer. Sometimes because she was cooking dinner or watching a TV show, but mostly she just took time to fully formulate her answer. Small talk was not the strength of children born in the 20s, and Vanessa was no different. She was not content to say fine or good. She preferred to answer even simple questions with more originality. So ten minutes later, she would send Todd a Speak Message reply that said, "It was nice. I had a fabulous salad for lunch. How about you?"

Todd, like most men, would be aware of how long it took for his message to be answered and tried to take the same amount of time to reply. Todd usually failed in this goal. He answered Speak Messages about twice as fast as Vanessa did. If she took ten minutes to answer, he took about five. Nonetheless, what could have been a five-minute face-to-face conversation would last several hours. Neither party noticed because that was life in 2045. It was important to connect even if nothing of substance was said. There’s just something nice about hearing another other person's voice.
           
That spring Todd and Vanessa went to Panama for a long weekend. Short international travel was not uncommon since the development of low orbit commercial flight. It only took three hours to get to Panama, which was roughly the same amount of time it took to get from the West Coast to the East Coast of the United States since most domestic travel still used traditional planes.

To the naked eye, Vanessa appeared to be Caucasian. But a DNA scan found that one of her great-great-grandparents had been Hispanic with roots in Panama. Vanessa, like many people of her generation, assumed the role of this minority set of genes and promoted with great enthusiasm that she was a Panamanian-American. Most of America was indeed a member of an increasingly specific subdivision of culture, although which subdivision of culture a person chose was fairly arbitrary since computers could link everyone to every race or culture. In theory you could argue that Vanessa had no real ties to the country of Panama, certainly no more than she had to France or Germany and even parts of Ethiopia. She had no personal memory of a relative who had lived in Panama and before the DNA scan had no knowledge of the country's customs or rituals. But it was impossible to argue that her newly gained connection to the country was not genuine. Particularly when looking at her face when the shuttle landed and she stepped onto Panama soil for the first time. Vanessa took a deep breath lifted her arms in the air, and with a big smile said, "Home."
           
For the next two days, she played guide as she and Todd hit up the touristy parts of the country. Most of her knowledge came from Internet searches on her phone, and she probably wasn't the right person to ask if the chicken was properly seasoned. But she loved pointing out how her home country of Panama differed from her birth country of America.

"Look out to the west," she said when they visited the Panama Canal.

"The Pacific Ocean?"
           
Vanessa was hoping he'd say that. "In Panama, the Pacific Ocean is on the East and the Atlantic is on the west." She pulled out her phone and found a map of the country that highlighted the geographical anomaly.
           
"They look the same," Todd said.
           
He closed his eyes and spun himself in a circle a few times.
           
"They still look the same."
           
"That’s the West," she said. "That's the East."
           
Todd grabbed Vanessa and spun her around a few times. She laughed with delight and when he was done he asked her: "Can you tell which ocean is which?"
           
"Just look at the sun. That's the East, so that’s the Pacific."
           
Todd kissed her and picked her up. He turned with her in his arms, not spinning but turning slowly so both oceans, the entire world, could see them. He only completed about three hundred degrees of the turn before he tripped himself and both fell to the ground.
           
"I love you," Todd said, feeling the truth in his heart. "I love everything about you."
           
Vanessa ran her fingers along the hairs of his neck. She smiled and nodded. She too wanted the words to be true, but was cautious to say them. Instead, she just closed her eyes and kissed him.

***

           
When they got back to the States, Todd made a second appointment to take the Amore Exam. In the six months since the first exam, he had felt more in love with Vanessa than ever. The morning of the exam, he watched her brush her teeth and smiled thinking to himself this is love. He loved being in the room with her even if it was just to watch her brush her teeth. What he thought was love before was not as strong what he felt today at that moment. She had a dab of toothpaste spit on the corner of her mouth which he cleaned off with his thumb. She turned from him in a cute, embarrassed way. And Todd knew he wanted to have this morning every morning for the rest of his life.
           
When they were seated in the exam chairs Todd kept replaying the image of the toothpaste in his mind. He loved her today. He was sure of that. But he would also love her more tomorrow.
When the exam began, he locked eyes with Vanessa. He felt his heart beat faster. His chest warmed on the inside, and he knew the results would be different. He was starting to cry, so sure was his sense of love and so grateful was his feeling that they were going to pass the test and after that they’d be able to start their life together.
           
"You can take your hands off the armrests," the examiner said. "The computer just needs a minute to calculate the results."
           
Vanessa ran over to Todd and wiped the tears from his eyes.
           
"Your heart is pounding," she said.
           
Todd nodded, "I don’t..." he couldn’' find the words to express what he had felt during the exam. "It's gonna work this time," he said, squeezing her hand gently. "I know it."

Unfortunately what Todd knew was different than what the computer calculated. For the second time, he was told that while Vanessa did love him, he did not love her.
           
"I don't understand," Todd said, pointing to his own eyes. "Are these not real?"
           
"I must admit," the examiner, this time a man, said, "when I saw you tearing up I thought the results would be different. I guess that's why we have computes."
           
Both Vanessa and Todd were motionless. She was on his lap, and they were still holding hands, but neither seemed to fully grasp the news.
           
"We can run the test again," the examiner offered, "but seeing as the results are the same as last time I can't imagine they'd change."

"No," Vanessa said, "I don't think they would."
           
She got up and walked out of the exam room.
           
"Am I close?" Todd asked. "Closer than before?"
           
"What do you mean?" said the examiner.
           
"Am I closer to passing the test than last time? I feel like I’' more in love. I'm closer than six months ago, right?"
           
"You're either in love or you're not. It's more like an on/off switch than a test grade."

Todd nodded then left the room to find Vanessa.

They didn't talk about the results on the way home. He was embarrassed by having failed the test again. But more than that, he didn't like feeling like a liar. And every time he had said, "I love you," it was technically a lie. Both to Vanessa and to himself. The fact that he hadn't meant it as a lie was of little consequence.

Vanessa was equally embarrassed by the results. She didn't think it was possible to love someone who didn't love you back. But she had now been told twice that it was very possible. She looked at Todd in the car and thought about him crying during the exam. It had been the most moving sight of her life. Was that foolish? Did she love too easily? Did she love for the wrong reasons?

When they got back to Todd's apartment Thy Own Self was on. A new contestant was coming to the stand, an older man in a sweater who used a cane though clearly just for the fashion of it. His first question was: Do you like puppies? Without hesitation the man said, "No." The computer dinged, making the old man one of the rare few to miss the first question. Todd and Vanessa both laughed as he nodded and said, "Now that I think about it, I suppose I do."
           
Todd kissed Vanessa. He could no longer say if it was filled with love, but he enjoyed it as much as ever. When he broke the embrace, he said, "I want to keep dating you. And someday, I want to marry you."
           
Vanessa smiled and kissed Todd again.

***

They continued to date for several months. Most mornings, Todd awoke to find a Speak Message on his phone from Vanessa, and it made waking easier. For that matter, it made going to sleep easier as it promised the shortest amount of time to hear Vanessa's voice again. Two or three times a week, they would meet for dinner, and the conversation was carefree and easy. Todd had a Food Printer 2800 that had over 1,000 recipes from twenty-seven different countries. They enjoyed making random dishes and eating off each other's plates as they tasted delicacies from around the globe. And on weekends, they spent hours together doing crosswords or just lounging around one of their apartments.
           
The only thing that was missing, and Todd only noticed it after a few weeks, was that they never said, "I love you" anymore. They could talk about the most intimate parts of their lives: results from Toxican, details of each other's salary, sexual desires, and even their recreational pharmaceutical consumption. It was particularly meaningful that Vanessa was able to open up about her Questnine habit. Sure, ninety percent of the population used some form of recreational pharmaceutical. And yes Questnine was only a Scale One substance. But since the re-illegalization of marijuana, discussion of drug use was considered taboo even between spouses. There was nothing wrong with using pharmaceuticals. They were legal and generally safe, but it was impolite to discuss their use. That Vanessa was comfortable enough with Todd to talk about Questnine, a muscle relaxer that aided her sleep, meant something about their relationship. But it also meant something that the word love, even in the casual way they used to say it as a way of ending a conversation, okay love ya, was no longer used.
           
Todd asked Neal about this at lunch one day.
          
"Did you and your dad ever discuss the Amore results?"
           
"He put me back in his will," Neal said, drinking a large milkshake. It was common in 2046 for people to enjoy lavish meals at night, but to drink their other meals in tasteless nutritional shakes. "He actually sent me a copy through certified email."
           
"But a real conversation?"
           
Neal paused for a moment. "You know I thought about it a lot: what the exam really means. I love my Dad. I don't want to, but somewhere in my core I think I'm wired to love him. But I don't like him enough to spend time with him."
           
"So you didn't talk to him then?"
           
"No."
           
"Do you want to?"
           
"Did my mom put you up to this?" Neal asked.
           
"Your mom?"
           
"She called me last week and told me he was in the hospital. Stroke. He probably isn't leaving it," Neal's voice was surprisingly devoid of emotion.
           
"Jesus."
           
"She wants me to have some final goodbye moment with him."
   
"Don’t you want that?" Todd asked.

"We had it with the Amore Exam," Neal said, putting his shake on the table.
           
"I'm sorry about your dad, man."
           
"Don't be. He's not a great guy. If you ask me too many people make a big deal out of family."
         
"Says the guy with the family."
           
"Neal shrugged."
           
"You'll get there with Vanessa. If you want my advice, I say marry her now."
           
"We haven’t passed the exam," Todd said.
           
"The law says you have to take the exam. There's no law saying you have to pass it."
           
"But why would you marry someone you didn't love?"
           
Neal took the last sip of his milkshake before answering, "It doesn't matter if you love someone or not. In fact, love is a really antiquated reason to get married. You’re better off picking someone you like, or at least someone you like to be around."

***

           
Todd thought about what Neal had said about love and marriage and whether the two should really be connected. He knew he cared for Vanessa. He was content and happy when she was around. Maybe that wasn't exactly love in the calculable sense of the word, but it was the feeling he wanted to keep for the rest of his life. He wanted to be with Vanessa, and she did love him. In that way, there was some measurable truth to their connection.
           
Todd made Vanessa a beautiful gourmet dinner. It was an old Panamanian recipe which required the purchase of two new herb sensors for his food printer. He bought a hundred-year-old bottle of champagne and two crystal glasses. The apartment was clean, and the synthetic window electronically projected Mercer Park, the spot of their first date.
           
Vanessa knew something was up when she came into the apartment. It was not their anniversary or her birthday or any other occasion that would have merited such effort. So while Todd's plan was to romantically slide to one knee after dinner -- he even programmed the house computer to play "Forever Love Goes" at exactly 7:45, so she would turn to the speaker only to turn back and see him with the ring -- he was unable to do so. Vanessa made him sit with her on the couch.  
                 
"What is all this about?"
           
"What do you mean?" Todd answered, trying to be coy.
           
"Come on, Todd, be honest."
           
"We've talked about getting married, and we've done the Amore Exam, and we connect, and you’re just the best person I can possibly imagine in the whole entire world. And I want to marry you."
           
Vanessa turned to the window and saw the park where they had met. And when she turned back, Todd was kneeling with a beautiful ring in his hand.
           
Vanessa started to cry at the sight, and for a moment it actually warmed Todd’s heart.
           
"We failed the exam, Todd. We failed it twice."
           
"That’s just computer stuff. I've looked at the statistics. All these new arranged marriages work out, and they rarely pass the exam. It doesn't mean we aren't good together."
           
Vanessa looked around the room: the meal, the champagne, the ring, and even the man were everything she had ever wanted in a proposal. But a feeling inside told her something was missing.
           
"Marriages should have love," she said.
           
"I do love you. Maybe not as that machine measures, but I love you with all my heart. If you want to wait until I pass the exam, we can. But I know there is something between us. I’m going to catch up. And I don't want to wait another day. We belong together."
           
Vanessa looked into his eyes. They were moist, just like the day of that second exam, and she knew he was being completely honest with her. She had to do the same.
           
"I don't love you."
           
Todd died a little with those words. He knew they were as true as the ones he had just uttered.
           
"I did love you," she continued. "And I wish you loved me then. Maybe we had a chance. But I don't think we do anymore. You just..." She couldn't find the words she wanted to say. Finally she settled on, "You can't make yourself feel something."

***

In the year 2050, Todd Sutherland became the first contestant on Thy Own Self to answer nineteen questions correctly. The show was no longer the most watched show on television, but it routinely still made the top ten, and since Todd was making history, the ratings were climbing with every correct answer. Now that he was on the last question one out of three Americans were tuned into the show, a feat made somewhat easier by the fact that every person in 2050 carried no fewer than three devices capable of both watching television and informing the owner that a worthy television moment was happening.
           
"So tell me Todd," Hank Williamson asked with an exciting gleam in his eyes, "what are you going to do with your millions?"
           
Todd was overcome with nervousness, "God, is that really the final question?"
           
Hank laughed. "No I’m just asking for all the people at home. We aren't going to hold you to this one."
           
Todd relaxed a little. "I'd like to visit China. I recently learned I have some Chinese ancestry, and I'd love to learn more about that."
           
Hank smiled to the cameras and gave his mustache a little wiggle. He knew the show was being watched by over a billion people worldwide and that as soon as the question was answered, right or wrong, he’d be viewed by less than a million. Hank savored these precious moments.
           
"All right, Todd," Hank said, "your last question, for thirty million dollars. Have you ever been in love?"
           
In the four years since he had broken up with Vanessa, Todd had been on many dates. Most of them were bad, so bad that he had decided to try an arranged marriage. He and Leeza had taken the Amore Exam, and they had failed it. An examiner had once told him it was a pass/fail test, but he knew that wasn't true. He was much closer to loving Vanessa than he was to loving Leeza. Not that Leeza was a bad wife. They were compatible in almost all ways. But passion wasn't their strong suit.
           
Had the question been, "do you love your wife," Todd would have answered easily. He knew he did not. And had the question been "who is the person you most connected with in life," Todd could have easily answered, Vanessa, though he might not have answered out of compassion for his current wife. But the question Todd now faced was have you ever been in love.
           
"I suppose you mean romantic love?" Todd asked.
           
Hank shrugged. "This game is all about how you interpret the questions as written." He pointed at Todd for emphasis and said, "It's Thy Own Self."
           
The studio audience laughed.
           
Todd thought hard about the question. He had done well on the show not because he was particularly self-aware or honest. He had done well because he paid attention to the exact question being asked. Most married people would answer yes they had been in love. Even if they knew it wasn't true -- because that's what they thought they should say. The same went for questions about friendships and sports teams. People want certain things to be true about themselves.
           
Todd had failed the Amore Exam twice. But the examiners said the results only spoke of that precise moment in time. No one had examined Todd the night of the proposal. So while there was no evidence that he loved Vanessa at that time or that he would have passed the exam if given to him that night, Todd always believed he would have. He believed he had one true moment of love in his life. It was when Vanessa looked at him with tears in her eyes just before rejecting his proposal. In that half-second, Todd had felt their future life beginning. He had clung to that moment for years: his one brief encounter with what everyone else seemed to achieve so easily.
           
Now he was asked about the moment, with thirty million dollars on the line and a billion people watching on television. It would be so easy to say yes. He had a wife. It was the thing he should say. But if it was that easy why would it be asked last?
           
"We're gonna need an answer there, buddy," Hank said with a smile.
           
Todd looked up at Hank and calmly said the word he'd been dreading, "No."
           
As balloons and confetti rained from the ceiling, Todd knew something no viewer of the television show had ever imagined: Knowing Thy Self isn't that great.

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