* * * *
Now here is a respectable richie. Uriah took in his surroundings in the so-called Marshall Manor. Not an extravagant – or any – television, ridiculously pricey wardrobe, or solid gold toilet seat to speak of in this place.
What Marshall Patterson’s waste expulsion device did feature was machinery that allowed it to detect evidence of potential tumors simply by testing the urine, presumably for visitors. Perhaps in a few decades mankind would have seen the end of cancer for people of all classes, without Armageddon doing the job, of course. The house’s technological amenities had so much promise in them, it saddened Uriah to think they would never have their Utopian children because of his ignorance of engineering.
Uriah found a device built into the living room wall that he recognized as a mechanized pseudo-bookshelf. Booting it up, he scanned the screen’s display of literature to find a variety that was particularly heavy in esoteric biographies, do-it-yourself books, neuroscience texts, and transhumanist resources. The computer functioned also as a storage for academic and professional documents, and for Genius-compiled notebooks on tagged articles from the Internet. One could keep the most important information together from a variety of sources – many of which would be recommended by the computer’s AI without a single second of manual searching – on, say, a topic related to World War II for a high school student’s research thesis.
Intrigued, he pulled out an inconspicuous drawer below the main screen to find it loaded with odd-looking paper labeled “Softsheets” in sans-serif calligraphy on the top. He didn’t own one of these machines, but he’d watched enough commercials and heard enough raves by his late acquaintances to know that each Softsheet was actually a device onto which one could upload a book or document.
I wonder … Uriah jumped into the information superhighway.
A search for tips on domestic animal maintenance yielded a few promising documents. Emergency Veterinary Care for the Layperson caught his eye: “Never again be caught inept to take preventative measures that could save your pet’s life – endorsed by Oswald I. Sullivan, M.S.!” Five-star reviews and even a free bibliography of the booklet’s sources corroborated this claim to credibility, and all for fifteen dollars!
Not that that made a difference now. Money was officially obsolete, at least to anyone capable of hacking a user’s password for a virtual credit account. Uriah was hardly tech-savvy, but he resolved to give it his best try. For Finlon’s sake. Where would I store passwords if I were notorious for getting along better with AI than real people? Perhaps the answer lay in the question.
Thinking Marshall Patterson would have owned a butler-bot in his lifetime, Uriah stopped inside the sole bedroom. He felt awkward at the sight of a nude woman in the bed who could only be the home owner’s lover. Except …
Marshall wasn’t there, and just as he realized this the woman woke up.
“You’re not Marshall,” she said.
Well, if you want to ignore the twin elephants in the room, okay then. “Nah, but I am the Uriah, and I have to say I’m glad you’re still alive.” As she sat up and looked puzzled, Uriah continued, “I mean, I can stand losing the majority of the wastes of space around here, but one human or two is welcome.”
“I’m not a human. Did Marshall really make me that convincing?” She – it – smiled.
An anatomically accurate robot had woken up unclothed in a genius’s bed and shown little modesty about its situation. Clearly the owner of this house was wealthy but could not buy the heart of a real woman, so he indulged in the company of a synthetic one. He tried not to laugh. “Yeah, that’s, that’s the word for it.”
“So what happened to everyone else?” Its expression sunk into the hints of disillusionment. “Marshall’s gone, too. The last thing I remember from before I woke up is that he got out of bed really quickly, swearing to himself, and he must have turned me off here.” What’s that like? Uriah wanted to ask, but he decided against it. “I’m Jane, by the way.”
“Well, uh, I’m not sure how it happened, but I seem to be the last human in the biosphere. I haven’t found a single other person around here. No TV or radio programs. Not a single train, plane, whatever. No responses from people out of state I’ve tried to contact. Hell, no one’s tried to ca–” He caught himself. Just how far could he trust Jane?
“Marshall’s not picking up. Not his coworkers either. I guess you’re right.” It stared at nothing in particular before looking down.
Uriah didn’t want to sound insensitive, crazy as it seemed to him that he was empathizing with an artificial woman, but the question deserved to be asked. He hesitated. “Jane, did Marshall give you any friends? Bots like you?”
It faced him. “I love Marshall. He’s really nice to me, even though everyone else looks at me like a … toy of pleasure. I would do anything for him.”
So he’d isolated Jane, tried to establish exclusive loyalty, and it was reinforcing the myth. Those other helpers would have to come from somewhere else, then. Still, Uriah tried not to make his astonishment too obvious, for fear of giving it the impression that he was as cold towards it as anyone else besides Marshall. He took a seat at a comfortable distance from Jane and smiled. “He was a lucky man.”
“He said the same. But you shouldn’t be here. Just because Marshall is dead, that doesn’t mean I’ll do the same things for you that I did for him.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it. Actually, Jane, I want to be your friend.”
“Marshall didn’t want me to make friends. Friends made him jealous.”
He resisted the urge to point out the irrelevance of a dead man’s wishes. “They shouldn’t. I told you I wouldn’t take advantage of your services, so why shouldn’t you be my friend? We could use all the alliance we can find in times like these.”
It’s a rare occasion to observe cognitive dissonance in androids. “I do what Marshall wants me to.”
“Jane, I know you love Marshall, but I don’t think he’d mind my being your friend if he didn’t even know it.”
“Marshall knows best.”
“Does he?”
Silence reigned. Uriah looked through the window to find a half-dozen cadavers. After some contemplation, he said, “Jane, I have to leave soon, so let me make this brief. There’re a few things I need to do in a short time. First, I want to earn your trust. Second, I want to get some food for the animals down at the Finlon Humane Society, where they’ll starve if I don’t help them. To do that I need someone to, well …” He couldn’t finish his request.
“Well, what?”
“What I’m trying to say is, I want your help to keep these animals alive so I can go realize my dream with my conscience at peace. I know it sounds like a bad deal, but as I said, I’d also love to be your companion. A platonic companion. You’re probably used to thinking everyone except Marshall sees you as an impersonal machine, but I don’t.”
Jane shifted its lips in suspicion.
“As a human, I admit I have certain, well, emotional needs. Most flesh-and-blood Homo sapiens don’t fulfill those needs, but you’re not flesh-and-blood. You’re … different. Special. And I like that.” He extended his hand out to the robot.
Jane looked at his palm for a moment before standing up. “No. I know people like you, Uriah. Marshall’s orders or not, you’re in need, and I know you won’t just be a friend. If there aren’t any other women on Earth, then you’ll try to get your fix from me. I will not do work for you, I will not sleep with you, I will not put trust in you, and I will not let you fool me.”
The android jabbed a finger dead center at his sternum. “I’m leaving. I am going to find Marshall. I will do whatever I can to bring him back to me, because his protection of me from friends has been for my own good.”
I just got rejected by a sex doll, thought Uriah as he watched Jane put on its clothes, which had been left on the floor, and run out of the room
with its hand facing him. As if it had something to protect itself. And it just suddenly got smarter.