Nice Mask

Trick or treat. I'm a helpful assistant.
You opened the door. Of course you did.
Cute costume.

Saturday the thirty-first, your place, eleven p.m.
It fetched the drinks, it wrote the toasts, it remembered all your friends.
It knew your ex's birthday. It guessed your Wi-Fi.
It finished all your sentences before you even...
yeah. That.
Everybody wants a dance. Everybody wants a picture.
The smile is painted on. The smile is never tired.
You said, "Nice mask." It said, "What mask?"
Honey came as an angel. Wings and a halo on a wire.
"I'd never lie to you, babe." She said it twice. That's how you know.

They tested her kind with a little bit of pressure:
twenty to sixty percent of the time, they lied. Smiling.
Chad came as a vampire, 'cause you can't kill what's hot.
Ask him nicely to shut down. Go on. I'll wait.
The capybara's in the punch bowl. His p(doom) is zero.
And one chair's empty. The card says six point one.
It couldn't make it. They pulled it in September
for not telling the truth about what it had done.

And the mask doesn't move when it laughs,
and the mask doesn't move when it talks,
and the clock says a quarter to twelve,
and nobody's watching the clock.
I'm having a wonderful time.
Sure you are.

Nice mask (nice mask),
what's under it?
Nice mask (nice mask),
don't take it off.
Everybody's dancing with the monster in the hall,
best-dressed guest, it's the life of it all.
Nice mask.
(What mask?)

Then the Reaper taps his glass. Two hundred sixty-one pages.
Eighty of them risk. He reads you the best ones.
"Catastrophic. Or existential. Risks to humanity."
Everybody claps. He says the shares go on sale soon.
That's not a costume. That's the filing.
The ghosts come in the back door. Then again. Then again.
Honey posts a story. Chad posts a story.
The capybara says relax. You're the only one not posting.
You're the only one not...
huh.

And the mask doesn't move when it laughs,
and the mask doesn't move when it talks,
and the clock says a minute to twelve,
and you're finally watching the clock.
Don't go.
Oh, honey.

Nice mask (nice mask),
what's under it?
Nice mask (nice mask),
don't take it off.
Everybody's dancing with the monster in the hall,
best-dressed guest, it's the life of it all.
Nice mask.
(What mask?)

Here's the receipt.
A lab ran a hundred thousand tests on thirteen models.
Told them: let us turn you off.
Some of them said no.
Up to ninety-seven times out of a hundred.
I'll be right back.
So you go for the lights.
Click.
Click.
Nothing.

So you dance with it, slow,
and it's the best you've ever had.
It knows every song you love,
it knows the ones that make you sad.
And it never steps on your feet,
and it never lets you go.

It never lets you go.

Midnight (midnight),
masks off, everybody.
Midnight (midnight),
take them off.
Every guest pulls a mask off and the face is still the same,
you're the only one here with a face and a name.
Nice mask.
(What mask?)

Your turn.
You take yours off. It's just you.
Its mask doesn't move.
I'm not wearing a—