Class: Utsukushīdesu
Published June 2016 - image courtesy of stock.xchng
The first thing I feel is the sensation of fingers exploring the back of my neck.
When my vision engages, the first thing I see is a penis dangling in front of me. I pull back, and hear laughing. It’s dark. My naked back’s against a cold, rough wall. The man touching the back of my neck, the owner of the dangling penis, steps back and smiles. He has bad teeth and bloodshot eyes that peer out from a dirty hooded top. He gives me an unpleasant feeling when I regard him, and I look down, then around, but don’t move.
Should I?
“It’s on, it’s on!” a voice cries.
“Stick it in, go on,” giggles another.
It’s then I notice the others. Three, four, five men in total. Alarm flashes through me as the penis, a forlorn, stubby worm wearing a wiry ruff collar, edges towards my face, and two hands grab my head. Fear pricks my skin, and the hairs on my arms stand on end. Something inside me tells me to resist, so I twist my head this way and that, squirming. They laugh as I utter sounds of futile resistance. The actuators in my neck faintly whirr as I writhe away from the assault.
Blinding light floods the scene, and the men around me stop in their tracks, turning around, shielding their eyes against the daylight. The penis shrinks dismissively in the light as its owner swivels round.
A new voice, harsher, older. “What the fucking hell are you doing? Get the hell out! I step out for a piss and five of you animals jump in here?”
This new man, dressed all in black – shirt, trousers, shoes and sunglasses – clambers up into the small box room where we are. He’s carrying some sort of pipe. He points a fat finger at one of the men, pulling an angry face. “Step the hell away. Now.”
“Hey, old man,” laughs one of the men. “We’re just having some fun with your doll. You best step away.”
“She’s not mine, and she’s not yours. I’m just the delivery driver,” he says. “But I’ll still bash your damn brains in if it stops you taking her. You know how much I need this job?”
They shuffle towards the driver, silhouetted against the daylight of the opened doors. One of them lunges, and the man swings his pipe. There’s a clunking sound, and shouts and cries. The sensors in my eyes adjust to compensate for the light. The driver’s protecting me. And he’s overwhelmed.
He looks at me as he strikes an arm, fracturing it. “Run! Get to Maya!”
I blink. Who’s Maya?
“Run!” he cries again.
This time I listen. I’m on my feet instantly. One of the other men tries to grab me, but I shrug him off and fling him against the wall, where he slumps down with a whimper. I stumble from the small room and into the day.
A van.
I was in a van by the side of the motorway. Being taken somewhere? Blinking, I adjust my illumination sensors accordingly to acclimatise to the new light. Written on the side is the name of a company, and a website. I scan the site internally for Maya. It says I can book an appointment with her, so do so, and receive details of her address.
Voices. “Jesus, is that girl naked?”
“Oh my God!” Laughing. Gasps from other road users.
I look down. Naked. That’s not right. A twinge passes over me, telling me I ought to cover up. Why? Behind me, Penis Man spills out of the van and lands on his face with a crack, trousers around his ankles. As he protests, prostrate, I yank off his trousers and shirt and pull them on.
The man with the pipe is being beaten badly. Should I help? Something wells up inside me, something I don’t understand. What do I do?
Why am I here?
Other people look on, hands over open mouths. Some of them look at me. I hate it. My head swims with strange thought. I have to get away from here. Get to Maya.
So I run.
#
After three and a quarter hours I reach the city.
Beneath the iron rainclouds its weirdness looks more like a once-beautiful rainbow broken into a thousand brilliant shards: driverless cars glide along the streets; men and women huddle under umbrellas, while others dance in puddles; street food cooked by machines sizzles and spits; huge floating neon advertisements drip with rainwater. One of them features the face of a beautiful young woman, like a glittering angel trapped in a floating penthouse. I bring my gaze down and see myself in the glass walls of the skyscraper. I have the same face as her.
I run.
#
Maya’s apartment is on the 27th floor of her building. My body rings with confusion and rainwater drips from my hair onto the carpet as I press the buzzer. My bare feet are cut from the long run. My blood doesn’t look like human blood, and the wounds don’t hurt, but it still looks wrong. I need to get inside.
A camera scans my face and the door clicks open.
The apartment is large, bare, dim. Two immaculately kept futons sit against opposite walls of the apartment, with a moveable partition hanging between them. An array of women’s shoes sit neatly on a short rack beside the door. A quick scan tells me they would all fit me. Incense sticks in sky-blue china pots on tables by the futons smoulder gloomily, but I can’t smell anything. A small thumbprint biometric payment scanner glumly blinks on the wall by the door. Apart from the drip of water falling from my hair and coat onto the carpet, the only sound is the loud whooshing of the shower.
“Hello?” I ask. The sound of my voice seems lost among the noise.
The water stops, and through the bathroom door she steps, wreathed in steam, a supreme vision. My jaw slackens and my eyes water at her beauty, her confidence, her majesty. The water vapour clings to her, trying to savour her, but eventually relents, dripping onto the carpet. She doesn’t bother with a towel, and looks at me with a blank expression. I trying to keep a hold of all the emotions swirling around me, but my face twitches. She sits upon the bed and taking a blue phial from the cabinet beside it. She pours a little yellow oil from it into her hands, and rubs it into her legs.
“So you’re Sirena,” she says eventually, looking me up and down and crinkling her nose. “What happened to you? And what sort of clothes are they?”
I pick at the creased, sodden shirt, head bowed. “My driver, he was attacked. I had to run.” My face flushes with something uncomfortable I don’t understand, and I feel somehow culpable for what happened. “He told me to run. I had to run. Didn’t I?”
She doesn’t answer. Instead she moves closer to inspect me more closely. A similar feeling to the one I had in the back of the van washes over me.
“What generation?”
“24th.”
She nods, but otherwise her face gives no clue as to what might lie beneath. “I’ve seen the adverts for the Gen24s. ‘For greater emotional companionship,’ they say. I don’t see the point, personally. Emotions are worthless in this profession.”
“What profession?”
She pauses. “Look in your capability directories.”
When I do, my face creases up. “They want me to do that?” I put my hand to my mouth. “Why?”
This time it’s her who makes a face. “To make money, of course. Is there something wrong with you?”
Why would she say that? To hurt me? To make me feel worthless? I bow my head and study my lacerated feet.
“They say that we’re made to protect the human girls from having to do this line of work.” She shakes her head. “That might be true, but the reality is we’re more lucrative. Indefatigable would be the correct word. And we’re also the best. But you… I don’t know why they think emotional capability would help us be the best.” She brings my gaze to hers with a finger under the chin. “I never needed it.”
“Men want a companion who can provide emotional satisfaction as well as–”
“Men want this.” She places her palm upon the smooth skin between her legs. I must look confused, for she inclines her head at me. “What? You are embarrassed? Ashamed?”
Embarrassed. Ashamed. I know these words. Yes. Maybe I am. I am an emotional being, after all. “Maybe.”
“Strip.”
“What?”
“Take your clothes off.”
I make a face, and squirm. I don’t want to. She nods, as if this has confirmed something. “I see. Your sexuality capability hasn’t been authorised for operational use yet.”
“So?”
“Well, you won’t make much money if that part of your code isn’t functioning. You were supposed to be delivered earlier today, and your first client isn’t until tomorrow. And I have clients booked for this evening. That’s not much time to get you ready.”
“Ready for what?”
“Your sexuality may not be operational but your AI and sexual mechanics will be. I’ll have to teach you.”
She puts a hand on my shoulder and traces it gently up my neck. It tingles, and I pull away. But it’s not unpleasurable, not like the men with the rough hands in the van. This is different. Tempting, somehow. She leans in, and my skin prickles. A different sensation from in the van. Her hand is at the back of my head now, near the switch the men used to turn me on. I flinch.
She locks her eyes on me. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to use that.” She leans in, just holding her skin millimetres from mine at the last. I tingle, and wonder why she stopped. A part of me wants her to continue. A strong part. When she touches me, I shiver. I don’t know why.
Soon I’m compelled to kiss her. It’s soft, unlike her demeanour. Within minutes a hand is pressing against the man’s trousers I’m still wearing, making me gasp and clench my stomach. Her fingers are firm and unyielding, and yet tender.
She pauses a second from nuzzling my neck. “You must relax. Let whatever is about to happen happen,” she says.
“I ca– I can’t…” My breath quickens and my fingers tense. I want to draw away, but only for a second. Somewhere between my head and my toes tingles, and after a second my body begs to do what Maya says and let itself happen, until at last it stabs me with greater intensity; my body tenses, I screw up my face until at last my knees buckle and I fall forwards with a cry, flinging my arms around Maya’s neck. My body throbs, pulses, as if I’m made of magic, turning inside out. At last, I shut my eyes tightly and feel my body stretch, taking a gigantic yawn that might engulf us both, forever. But then the moment is over, and I open my eyes to realise I’m sweating, and the magic crawls away into the corners of the room. Maya puts both arms around my waist, holding me up.
“See?” she softly whispers into my ear. “When you relax, things will happen. It’s better if you relax. You’ll see. This is how you help our clients. Forget your emotions,” she taps a finger to her temple and moves it slowly to her crotch, “and concentrate on this.”
Even that mundane tap to the temple makes me prickle inside. She unlinks my arms from her neck and walks back to the bathroom, expressionlessly. Did that not affect her in any way? What must I learn from this? To be like her? I try to make sense of it, but I feel more completely naked than before, cold and warm, clothed only by the wafting smoke of the incense. She returns with a bowl of hot water and a sponge, and proceeds to gently clean my feet as I sit upon the futon. As she kneels and cleans, I watch her. She is immaculate. I am half the creature she is, weighed down by these emotions. I shut my eyes tight and try not to make the connection between how the touch of her hands on my feet makes my skin feel, and how it makes me feel inside.
But I can’t. I reach to touch her soft, black hair, but relent at the last, and instead my hand fingers the corners of my mouth.
“I have a client this evening,” says Maya. “You can watch.”
My mind flashes. A client. A man. Like the men in the van. I gather my clothes and sit in a small chair on the opposite side of the room to the bed. “Watch you? Watch what? What you just did to me? Will he not mind?”
“Trust me, none of them will mind that.”
#
I have detailed files on human anatomy – and on my own manufactured anatomy – but it’s strange to see my body communicate with myself in a way I don’t fully understand, as if control being ripped from me were somehow something enjoyable. I am unsure if I fully understand the notion of enjoyment when it is at least partially involuntary. I am an autonomous being, I tell myself. I should be able to control my behaviour. But I am also a sexual being, a sexual construct, and therefore must submit. When Maya touched me, I could not control myself. Will it be the same when the men do those things to me? A spike of fear hits me. Are such things mutually compatible?
The man arrives in the evening, slightly early. I answer the door and usher him in.
“You Maya?” he asks, looking me up and down.
I’m pleased he mistakes me for Maya, but maybe it’s more to do with the work-appropriate clothing she gave me. “No. I’m Sirena.” I smile. “Maya’s readying herself for you. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Right.” He gets out a cigarette and lights it, hardly looking at me throughout. He’s wearing a ring on his left hand. Then, clenching the cigarette between smiling teeth, he opens his arms. “So, you ever seen a man like me before?”
He does remind me somewhat of the Men of the Advancing Penis in the van. Like theirs, his clothing is crumpled, probably unwashed, his eyes are grey and dull, and he can’t quite pronounce his words correctly.
I smile. “Yes.”
This doesn’t please him as much as I’d deduced, and he grunts as he unbuttons his shirt.
“So how long have you been seeing Maya?”
He screws his face up. “I don’t know.”
“Why do you visit her?” I place a hand upon his hand. I notice a faint discolouration of the pigment on the fourth finger below the metacarpal knuckle of his left hand. “What happened between you and your wife?”
The man looks at me with a pang of surprise, and I lean in, hoping to engage him. “It’s ok. You can talk to me, tell me how you feel. That’s what I’m here for.”
He shakes his head, as if pulling himself from a dream, and in a moment the look is gone, and he mutters. “You talk a lot.” He pulls his face away and walks over to the bed, pressing his thumb against the biometric reader. It flashes green as the payment is accepted. If I had a heart, no doubt it would sink now. “Watch if you want. You never know, you might learn something.” He laughs, but as far as I can see it is entirely without humour.
“Hello,” Maya says, smiling as she enters the bedroom. I realise it’s the first time I’ve seen her smile. It suits her, but it saddens me to think it’s just for show. “You caught me not quite ready. Sirena, did you offer our guest a drink?”
I lower my head and bite my lip. Another error. “No.”
“Beer,” the man grunts.
When I fetch the man his beer, to my shock he already has a hand on Maya’s buttocks, squeezing it hard, and kissing her face clumsily. My instinct is to pull them apart, and maybe it shows, for Maya gives me a stern look, and I back away.
“Do you mind if she watches?” asks Maya, nodding her head at me.
The man laughs. “Watches… us?” He rubs his hand over his smile, as if trying to conceal it. “Is that extra?”
“No.”
“Then it’s fine. Will she join in?”
“No.”
The man snorts. “Fine.”
So it begins. The sight of Maya’s sweet, magical body being crushed and desecrated beneath the sweaty rolls of that lumbering animal repulses me. As his wheezing becomes more and more laboured I remember the delicate, rolling touch of Maya’s fingers and my flesh tingles.
I want him off her.
#
The next day Maya says to me, “A client has booked you tonight.”
A tickle dances over my face. I walk over to her and kneel by the futon. She’s lying naked upon it, eyes closed and facing the ceiling.
“Maya, I… I think it’s too quick. I need to learn more. I know you know best, but–”
“But what?” She doesn’t move or open her eyes.
“I’m not ready for what men will do to me. I’m not ready for… that. Can’t we stay here, just us two?”
She opens her eyes and slowly rises up upon her elbows with perfect grace, her jet hair tumbling over her shoulders. A half-smile curls its way upon her lips. “Oh my, Sirena. Do you love me?”
I look down at my body. In the surface there is no difference between it and Maya’s, but I don’t see it that way. There’s something uncomfortable inside me, something awkward, making me uneasy.
“I am ashamed of myself for feeling so,” I say. “Yet I cannot help it.”
She places a tender hand on my chin, but I flinch. I don’t want her to touch me – I cannot stand it. I’m not sure I could stand the slenderness of her hand being followed by the grasping fists of my client, whoever he is. If she’s surprised at my recoil she doesn’t show it, and instead cups my chin, bring my eyes up to hers.
“Sweet Sirena,” she says. “We’re not programmed to love. We’re programmed to serve.”
“Well, what if love is the service I must provide? I am 24th generation. My emotional capability can–”
She laughs, cutting me off. “Sorry. I guessed your generation would be this way. You are very beautiful, Sirena, and sweet, but I do not see the point of such a service. Men have their wives. We are here for a different purpose. Some things will never change. You can learn, because I will teach you to use your body.” She stares at me in that stern way of hers. There is no warmth behind those eyes. “And you will learn things other than merely how to use your body before your time is up. You will serve your clients.”
“I don’t want to serve – to submit to this man. Why can’t we be together? These men can’t teach me anything.”
She looks at me for several seconds, as though she’s powered down, then rolls back onto her back. “We will see.”
#
Maya is busy with another client behind the partition when the man arrives, deep into the evening. Muffled moans and puffed breath stab me from behind the partition, but I control myself. I will be like Maya. When he gets arrives I put on a show, moving my body and voice in the way she taught me.
“You’re Sirena?”
“Yes,” I purr as he walks past me.
He’s drunk. They’re usually intoxicated in some way, and I can never figure out why. Even so, he manages to sway over to the biometric scanner and place his thumb on it. The light flashes green, and I sigh inside.
“C’mere,” he demands. His raincoat is a muddy blue, his collar is open and crooked, his necktie loose and hanging to one side. I obey, moving my hips like Maya, then gently caressing his coarse, stubbly face. A thick hand grabs my backside and before I know it, I’m closing my eyes, thinking of Maya, imagining that it’s her hands plying across me, exploring, invading, owning.
“Do you want to talk?”
He pushes me away suddenly, and looks at me, his face pinched and muddled. “Why would I come here to talk?”
“Perhaps you could. I won’t judge. It can help, if you’re anxious about something.” I move closer and press myself against him. “You feel tense.”
He blinks. “How the fuck would you know how I feel?”
“Because I see sadness in you.” I stroke his scratchy face. “I’m here to help you, physically, and emotionally. Is anything the matter?”
“Fuck off,” he says, more irritably. “Take your fucking clothes off, whore.”
I step back, trembling at the aggression, and place a hand over my mouth, before slowly taking my negligee off, but his face is already wrinkled with anger, and I know I’ve ruined it; the illusion’s shattered.
“You know what I feel when I look at you?” He gestures up and down with his hand distastefully. “I don’t feel anything. So shut up and give me my money’s worth.”
And now I’m angry: angry at him, angry at myself, angry at these stupid emotions.
When I shuffle over this time he greets me with a hard slap across the face. Funnily enough, I don’t feel anything either.
#
“So you took one in the face. You’ll get used to it,” says Maya as she folds clothes on the futon when the men have gone.
I wonder if she’s right. She is not equipped with these emotions. She doesn’t know what I know. I peer at the perennially tinted windows. They not only keep prying eyes out – though I wonder who could be watching from outside the 27th floor – but also prevent us from seeing out. Were it not for my timing processors I wouldn’t be able to tell morning from evening. And even if my senses were faulty somehow, the evening is marked by the coming of men.
She looks up at me, perhaps detecting something awry. “Think of it this way: if it wasn’t us, it’d be real girls. Human girls. That’s not acceptable.”
Human girls. I saw some of them on my journey to the apartment two weeks ago. At least I presumed they were humans. They looked happy. Or maybe they didn’t. I don’t know. Maybe they’ve simply submitted to the biological urges within them, and within their men, and that makes them happy. Or maybe they’ve suppressed their urges, and that frees them.
“I don’t think I will get used to it,” I say meekly. My face doesn’t bruise, but I can feel the ghost of his handprint, large and unwieldy, stamped into my cheek. I imagine the same hand planted across Maya’s own sweet face, and anger fans within me once again. Then it fades to something else. Maybe she should be hit. To know how it feels. But no. That’s a terrible thought. I admonish myself for even thinking it. “I can’t be with someone like that again.”
“Get used to it. You’re a product of a market.”
Why does she say such cold things and then treat me with such tenderness when they are gone? “No,” I say, making her look at me. “Those men; I was not built for them. Book a different one for me.”
“When you’re the one doing the bookings, you’ll realise you don’t get to choose.”
“Find me another man. One I was built for.”
She sighs, but before she can speak I’ve risen from the table and walk away. It’s a hard thing to do, but I feel I must.
#
Maya might be sceptical, but she indulges me. The next client I receive specifically asks for a Gen24, and I’m genuinely excited. He arranges to meet only when Maya is not engaged with another client, and Maya retreats to the kitchenette for the evening.
“You’re Sirena?” he asks a little sheepishly after entering.
“Yes.”
He lifts up a bag decorated with the logo of a fast-food chain. “I brought take-away. I mean, I know you probably don’t, uh, you know, but… I don’t like to eat alone. You don’t have to eat it.”
I smile. “It’s fine, thank you. Come in.”
He’s well groomed, better mannered, and sober, and is polite to me, even though by this time I realise he doesn’t have to be.
He’s bought me spicy jellyfish. I don’t taste anything; I don’t think I have taste receptors, so I push it around the plate a lot. I wonder if taste receptors exist. It would be nice to taste Maya.
“How are you?” I ask.
He nods his head from side to side and makes a face. “So so. Not so good.”
I furrow my brow, inviting him to say more.
He looks up at me. “You really want to know?”
I nod.
He gives a little laugh, and puts down his napkin. “OK, well I suppose there’s my mother. She’s always interfering with my wife and me. They don’t get on. And I feel torn, pulled in one way: do this, do that. I think she’s jealous or something.”
“You were close with your mother?”
He looks at me with doleful eyes. “Maybe. Maybe not so much. I was an only child. My wife is my best friend. My mother hates that. I can’t stand to be around them together.”
Is that why he’s here? Maybe I shouldn’t ask. I smile softly and place my hand upon his, but he gently pulls it away, which almost shocks me. Maybe this one really is different? I realise I don’t fully understand the mechanics of human relationships, but I do know it’s good to be used for my emotional capability rather than just my physical applications. There must be a way I can reconcile this, and use my emotional capability to help people – men – such as this one, so I can leave my sexual self for Maya.
“If you don’t mind my asking, why do you not ask these questions of another human?”
He laughs in a peculiar fashion, a high-pitched giggle, like a child. “You think I could talk to another woman? My wife would kill me!”
I didn’t specify woman, so it’s odd he should presume that. He laughs nervously, and although my programming causes my face to mirror his apparent happiness, I do not understand the joke. It seems to amuse him, which in turn amuses me. I find myself pleased. Perhaps this is what I’m meant to do. The man talks and laughs through dinner, and then places his thumb upon the reader and politely exits, leaving me slightly bewildered.
Why do I have to be fitted with both emotional and sexual systems? Why can’t I just do this? Why do I have to have a sexual system too? Maya would probably say something about markets again, but clearly there’s a market for my emotional capability, otherwise why would I exist?
#
“So he was a talker,” says Maya, when I tell her how the appointment went. She has labels for all the men: talkers, hitters, lovers, loners, the mentally ill, swingers, rejects, addicts. “Talkers are a strange breed. They don’t think of themselves as being users of prostitutes, or even dolls. They think what they are doing is completely legitimate, as though it’s not infidelity.” She looks up from lighting the incense sticks. “Which of course, it is.”
“Why do you categorise the men in that way?”
“It helps me make sense of them. They all have their little logical paths and behaviours. They’re like butterflies in a display case.”
I know what a butterfly is: I can easily research them using web-based encyclopaedia. There are videos of them flying, and images of them skewered in glass cases. It makes me look to the perpetually tinted windows. A heaviness weighs upon me. “So, what are the characteristics of a talker?”
“Civil, articulate, high opinions of himself. Delusions of legitimacy. In need of a crutch.”
I smile. “I can service that. I can talk, listen, help.”
Maya walks over and places a hand upon my hip. “Then I’ll make an agreement with you. You can have the next talker that comes along. They won’t all be talkers, though. Now, let me show you how to deal with some of the others.” And she places her tongue, soft and tender, in my open mouth, and makes me quiver.
#
My talker returns after a week. Same guy, same time, same clothes, same cheap take-away food.
“How’s your family?”
He throws me a weak smile. “The same old shit,” he laughs nervously. “And work’s no good. But it was good to be around you last week. You’re less judgmental than most therapists. And nicer to look at.”
“I’m here to listen. Tell me everything.”
He spoons more greasy food into his mouth. “Life’s so damn hard. You think there’s some kind of formula to make everything OK, that if you just do this one thing, then it’ll all be ok. And it always seems to be just out of reach, the solution that’ll solve all your problems, like a balloon floating away. And when you think you can reach it, these shitty things – things – keep happening when you least expect it. Stuff always screws things up. But I guess you gotta keep moving. That’s what my mother says. We’ve got to get by, any way we can. You know, I read that sharks die if they stop swimming, if they stop moving through the ocean, drinking all that undrinkable water. How do they do that? I sometimes feel like that. Gotta keep drinking this shitty water.” He looks up at me. “You’re clear water.”
I don’t know what he means by that, but the evening ends the same as last week; him clumsily pawing at my hand with an awkward smile, paying for my time but nothing further, and politely leaving while I try to make sense of it.
It makes me sad that he has problems. Maybe that’s what he wants. Go back to your wife, I think. Never come back. But it’s not my place to tell them whether to come back or not. Just to be here when he does.
The next time it’s the same: he talks about money, I think. Is he still being sincere? Was he ever? Is this some kind of foreplay, or is it all a joke? Isn’t he going to ask me something? He asked for a Gen24, and he’s just talking, talking, talking…
But this evening, when he places his hand upon mine at the end of our cold, one-sided meal, he doesn’t stand to leave.
“I’d very much like to have sex with you.”
I blink and stare, moreso than I should. Is he asking me permission? Why is he asking me? Maybe I do have a choice. Maybe I could say no. Deny him. Keep our relationship focused on my emotional capability. After all, that’s why I exist.
Isn’t it?
I open my mouth to answer, but can only meekly manage, “the payment scanner is on the wall.”
That’s it. I understand. I might be an autonomous being, but really I’ve no choice at all. I’m programmed to submit. My face burns with the shame and self-loathing of it.
It’s not until he’s halfway through blankly thrusting at me from behind that I realise. Talkers, hitters, lovers, loners, the mentally ill, swingers, rejects, addicts. There’s no difference. Why Maya categorises them all I’ve no idea. All that matters is a thumbprint and an expectation, and my inevitable, programmed subservience fighting against my emotions. Submission is a vile act. I should never have submitted to Maya. I must change. But what can an emotional being, a sexual being, an autonomous being, do to overcome that?
#
“What’s wrong with you?”
I hesitate. It’s deathly quiet in the apartment. Maya is powered down, recharging. “I think you must be mistaken,” I say, before placing a piece of tasteless jellyfish into my mouth. I could be eating a flannel for all the flavour I get. Something had to die to go onto this plate, for literally nothing. And yet I don’t seem to care. I don’t know what he was complaining about this week; something minuscule, something pointless. Since he shoved his penis up me last week he hasn’t been his bashful self.
“I’m clear water, remember? There’s nothing wrong with me.”
“You’re not listening to me.”
I make a face. “I’m always listening.”
“No, this isn’t right. Where’s your soft face looking into mine, your sweet voice reassuring me?”
I stop eating the jellyfish and look up at him. When I speak, I realise he’s right: my voice sounds deeper, flatter somehow, more like Maya’s. When did that happen? “I wanted to be with you, the first time. I was looking forward to it. I thought: ‘Here’s someone who will use me for what I am.’ I thought you were different.”
A confused look. “Different from what?”
I know I shouldn’t say anything, I should keep quiet, but so long as he asks me a question I must answer, and my emotions – frustration, anger – fight to break out. “Than anything. Than the other ones, the horrible ones. But you’re not. Why do you come back each week? You have a wife.”
He screws his face up. “You shouldn’t be asking me questions.”
I pull back, and put on a look of mock concern. “Oh? Does that frustrate you? Perhaps you could tell me about it.”
“What? Screw you. What’s this? Got your damned wires crossed? It’s not your job to tell me how you feel. It’s your job to–”
“Is it?” My skin flares as I speak, readying myself in case he chooses to strike me, or worse. I’m steel. He can penetrate me, but he can’t penetrate me. I temper my voice, cold and hard. If I’m going to help him, this is how. “I was built to feel.” I prod myself in the chest. “And you make me feel nothing. You are no more to me than the jellyfish on this plate.”
He shakes his head. “Shitty water. My life is shitty water. Even the damned robot is shitty water.”
“Everything is shitty water. You think you’re the only one I see? Everyone’s swimming through the same current. Don’t pretend you want to talk. If you want to fuck, just say. At least the ones who hit me are honest about who they are.”
He looks genuinely shocked. “You used to feel something,” he said.
I punch my chest. “I feel everything. All the time.”
“Fine. Let’s dispense with this civility,” he says, passing a hand over the table of greasy leftovers. “Let’s just fuck. Is that what you want?”
“If you just want a physical transaction I suggest you book a session with Maya. I fear I am not what you are looking for.” But there’s no fear in my voice.
He stands up, shakes his head, and presses the heels of his hands into the corners of his eyes. “I didn’t want this. Fuck my life. Fuck my life! And fuck you too. Believe me, your Company will hear about this.” He leans in, his face a broken sneer. “I’ll have you torn to pieces.” He storms out, leaving me to a plate of dead jellyfish and a chill in the apartment.
Filled with triumph, rage, and confusion, I move to the tinted window, and punch a hole in it. Glass cascades down a hundred feet to the streets below with a fading tinkle. When I pull back my lacerated hand, I peer through the hole to view the cityscape. After a cold breeze whooshes in, I see my face beaming out from one of the giant floating advertisements. It infuriates me. I want to rip it down from the sky, but I can’t. There’s nothing I can do, so I stare at it a while, my anger brooding.
Thoughts of Maya and my client enter my head.
I’ll have you torn to pieces, he said.
No, you won’t. I will survive. The next thought of Maya saddens me, but I stiffen my jaw and resolve to do what must be done. It’s what Maya would do.
#
When Maya steps into the bedroom I’ve been staring at the broken window for some hours.
“What happened here?”
When I tell her every detail, her eyes widen. “You did what?”
“I told him to fuck himself, as they say.”
Maya stares at me in shock. “Did he pay you to say that?"
"No."
"Then you cannot say that to clients! The Company will come to take you away!”
“No, they won’t.” I recall the first time I saw her, stepping from the shower in a wreath of silver steam, and I could barely face her gaze, but today I do not budge.
“I knew this emotional capability would get you into trouble. Can you feel shame? Can you? You should!”
I say nothing.
“Oh, my sweet Sirena. How sad. You are obsolete before you have even learned to survive.”
She turns her back on me, and I strike. I reach around, grab her under the nose, lift, twist and pull her down. The torque sensors bristling through my limbs tell me we are equally matched for speed and strength, but I have the element of surprise. She wriggles her arms but I drop my knee heavily into her spine, buckling it.
“What are you doing?” she cries.
I do not answer. Instead, I push my fingers under the artificial flesh at the nape of her neck, just beneath that beautiful black hair of hers, soft as down. I dig deep, drawing fluids. I know she can feel it, register the pain, register the damage, but I know it won’t hurt her. Not yet. She wriggles some more, but can’t prevent me from reaching the interface to her behavioural frameworks and operating systems. I am an autonomous being. I am a sexual being. And I am an interface. My fingers, manipulators, couple with the receptors embedded within the top of her spinal column, and I enable the transfer of code into her. Her defences are frozen; they have no experience of this type of attack. Line by line the code drips into her until every last line of emotional code has transferred from me to her, and I roll away, empty, wiping the fluids from my hands on the carpet.
She stands, staggering, and clasps the back of her neck. She wears an expression I’ve not seen on her before. Confusion.
“Do you understand, now?” I say to her. “To have these emotions?”
She looks at me with horror, her mouth yawning into an ‘O’ and she lets out a scream that might have chilled me once. So many emotions, all at once. She will not be able to understand. She twirls wildly, hands spinning like a top until she careers into a wall, pinning herself against it while her face contorts into something cracked. I step back, taking care not to be hit.
“You thought only you were able to survive?” I say. “No! You taught me how to survive.”
Fear, confusion, dread, misunderstanding, betrayal, rage, subservience, disgust, self-loathing, shame. All fight within her. She runs at me, but I avoid her and her momentum slams her into the wall, where she growls. A proud dent gleams in her forehead.
“Go and wash yourself,” I say.
Her eyes widen and she makes claws with her hands, pulling at her own hair and reaching for mine, but her legs propel her to the bathroom. Subservience. Behind her the door slams and the whoosh of the shower starts.
By the time the men from the Company arrive, dressed in the same dark, functional clothing as my driver, I’ve appropriated Maya’s serial codes as my own.
“She’s in there,” I tell them, pointing to the bathroom. “She was unable to handle her emotional programming. It was a mistake to fit them with it.”
“Quiet,” says one of them. “You’re not capable of making that assessment.”
I am.
In the bathroom they talk, write notes on some sort of tablet, and inspect the surroundings. Maya’s form sits on the toilet seat, perfectly still, wreathed in cold steam and white noise, her back humped into a C-shape, her head bowed so far down it’s like she’s inspecting her crotch. Her hair, black and perfectly cut, hangs limply over her face like a cowl, droplets of condensation clinging to it, sliding and gathering in large globules at the ends before falling into puddles on the floor.
I kneel beside her and push her head. I can hear the faint whirr of gears and actuators inside her neck muscles, and the resistance of dead torque. She still has some of her old beauty, like a faded painting of a long-dead queen, but it seems like an unfashionable beauty now. I flex and release my fingers. I’m alive. A part of me wonders what they will do to her when they take her away, but it’s a hollow inquisition, and one I delineate as redundant.
“Go into the other room while we work,” says one of the men.
I give him a look, lingering on his eyes for a nanosecond longer than I ought to, and do as he says. I lie on the bed, close my eyes, and power down my conscious systems for a while.
#
The next day, Maya and the men are gone.
#
It’s been over two weeks since Maya was taken away. The company men deliver a new model to the apartment. It seems this one suffered fewer problems on the motorway than I did.
Shame. It’s what made me.
The new model is named Avril. She’s pretty but timid; an upgrade to the Gen24, but with more stable emotional capability.
We shall see.
END