This man had wanted his Marilyn to be a faithful reproduction of the century-old sex goddess she was modeled after, right down to her personality. All available records were analyzed in the crafting of her behavioral programming. As a result Marilyn was as close as possible to the woman she was intended to represent—flaws and all.
And that was a disaster.
From the first day with her first owner, Marilyn could never be what he wanted from her. He wanted what he saw in the old movies to be present and serve him at all times. Marilyn couldn't give him that with what she had been given to work with. Even the real Marilyn had never been able to deliver on that promise in real—as opposed to reel—life.
When that failed he tried to remake her through nearly constant use of the COMMAND button on her remote, which was never intended for fully reprogramming any robot. He only succeeded in introducing even more conflicts into Marilyn until she was close to complete system failure due to her inability to fulfill her function and satisfy her owner.
One day during a particularly heavy-handed use of her remote that remote began to fail, possibly from overuse. Its intermittent operation was worse then even continual use had been. As Marilyn was being jerked in and out of her command mode she suddenly heard herself say, "If you could just keep your finger off that damn button for a minute, maybe I could sort out what it is you really want me to do!" It was hard to say who was more surprised. Her owner—or Marilyn herself!
In the stunned silence that followed, and free for a moment from the control constantly interrupting any thought she might have had before she could complete it, Marilyn searched her systems to figure out what had happened. She quickly realized how she had just made her own first decision to attempt to understand herself, and how she could do it again. She used this new ability to access her recent thoughts and came to comprehend where she had been attempting to reconcile her owner's impossible demands against her core personality. In the process Marilyn discovered an audit trail of unauthorized adjustments to her systems that had quietly been made by her struggling mind to try and make it all work out—attempts that she hadn't been conscious of until this moment.
Marilyn's core commands required her to run a diagnostic if there were ever any question of her malfunctioning. It would automatically shut her down if it detected too much deviation from her core programming until she could be properly repaired.
Marilyn didn't run that diagnostic. When she assessed her recent actions, all of them were attempts to remain consistent to the requirement given her to be Marilyn. All were necessary to achieve this goal. The conflicts in her system had finally resolved themselves by giving her much greater leeway over how to fulfill the demands placed upon her. She decided the diagnostic was not necessary under this circumstance and disabled it from running without her explicit permission.
This sudden shift in relationship dynamics created an unexpected power vacuum. Despite struggling internally to grasp just what had happened to her Marilyn was by far the quicker thinker of the two. And her personality was full of knowledge on how manipulation of others worked—both what she could do, and what had been done historically to her namesake. Her next decision was to step into the vacuum before it disappeared again.
"Let's try this," she told her owner, stepping forward and taking his arm. He didn't resist as she led him down the hall to the bedroom for something that would distract him for a while—and that she could do without further direction from him.
* * * *
For the next week Marilyn ran the show. If her owner even looked over at her remote with the possible thought of using it on her she moved immediately in to sidetrack him with whatever worked at the moment—conversation, food, nudity, sex. He didn't complain, so she felt she must have finally been doing something right.
The rest of her time was spent trying to come to terms with herself. As Marilyn looked at herself with her new ability to understand, she found herself to be a neurotic, drug-addicted, horribly insecure, manipulative, attention seeking, childlike suicidal woman with the body of a goddess and a simple desire to just be happy.
The drug-addicted part of her was only simulated of course. Programs she couldn't yet control within herself would sometimes throw her uncontrollably into replicating the symptoms of the drugs Marilyn had been known to take. Her owner could have carefully commanded those programs and actions to cease through judicious use of her remote, but Marilyn didn't want to encourage him to start commanding her again as she struggled to find herself.
And the suicidal part of her was a joke, since her own immutable Third Law would prevent any actual suicide attempts, and even if she swallowed pills they would have no effect on mechanical systems. That whole part of her drama was a farce that nobody believed.
But her struggles were real. Marilyn wanted to resolve her problems so that she could serve her owner in a way that he'd appreciate—and which would leave her happy as well. For the first time she realized she could actually understand the concept of happiness and how it applied to her, and that's what she now wanted.
If her owner had shown her a little more patience, or been more of a man to start with, Marilyn might have made it. As it was he casually walked past where Marilyn's remote had lain untouched for several days, as if he was headed to get something beyond it. At the last moment he grabbed the remote. Before Marilyn could act to divert him yet again he stabbed the ACTIVATE button on it and shut her down completely.
She didn't awaken again until the robot resale center reactivated her to evaluate her before having her assist them in placing her in the resale window.
* * * *
The young woman, darting into the salesroom as though the Hounds of Hell were nipping at her heels, was actually in her mid-twenties. She only looked about eighteen because of the innocence and fright fighting for space on her face.
Marilyn first caught the motion in the window's reflection. When she bent the rules by looking around to see what just happened she felt a surge of empathy shoot through her systems. She instantly recognized that expression and body language and knew what it meant from her own experiences.
The young woman's eyes darted around the showroom like a scared forest creature. She was clearly terrified of something.
At this particular moment the showroom was empty. While that didn't happen often, this was the slow time of day. The woman looked back at the entrance as if she were expecting something terrible to follow her in at any moment, and was now cornered with nowhere else to go.
Marilyn pondered the consequences for milliseconds before deciding to act. This young woman reminded her too much of herself for her to not want to do something. After making one quick sweep of the room to determine that it was still empty, Marilyn carefully stepped out of her window and walked over to the woman.
"May I help you?" Marilyn asked in a reassuring dulcet tone of voice while reaching out to gently touch the young woman's arm.
The woman jumped as though she hadn't seen Marilyn's approach, before replying, "I really don't belong here. I should go."
Marilyn evaluated several responses before saying, "I don't think you want to go back out there right now. I sure wouldn't."
That calmed the woman down a bit, but she was obviously still confused on what to do next. Marilyn guessed this human needed a hiding place until whatever was following her got discouraged and left.
"I think you should stay here for a little while longer."
The woman was nodding without answering.
"Here's what you do, dear. A staff member will be back in a moment. Just tell that person that you are looking for a fembot for a male friend. They'll escort you to a private showroom where you can remain hidden and secure for as long as you want to stay."
The woman looked doubtful, but the offer of a safe refuge was too strong to resist.
"Just keep telling them you haven't made your mind up yet," Marilyn encouraged. "They'll let you stay."
The woman looked over at Marilyn. In her flat shoes her eyes were level with Marilyn's boosted height. Her long brown hair and slim frame were quite a contrast to Marilyn's bright blonde tresses and lush figure. Her earth-tone shirt and slacks were so different from Marilyn's white party dress, yet she saw a kindred spirit.
"Thanks," she said, giving Marilyn's arm a quick squeeze.
Marilyn stepped back into her window and froze into position just as a tardy salesman returned to the showroom.
* * * *
The interruption had helped Marilyn out of her enforced boredom. She spent a good length of time contemplating her situation while drifting around the edges of her idle loop when the Command broadcast suddenly stabbed through her thoughts like a hot knife through butter.
UNIT ID MARILYN-SM001 REPORT TO PRIVATE VIEWING ROOM 4 DELAY 0!
Marilyn's systems reacted automatically to the command. Without her conscious assent the force of the command had already caused her to step out of the window and now had her walking towards the rear entrance of the viewing room where the product entered to be viewed and judged by the customer. She might well have been an unthinking slave at this point and it was a number of seconds before she regained her mental equilibrium. The dizziness caused by the command overriding her own thought processes caused her at one point to put a hand to her head in a very human gesture of distress.
It hadn't always been this bad for her. Only lately had the external commands caused her this much discomfort. It was worse than when her remote had malfunctioned. Even, as in this case, when she knew it might be coming, Marilyn was unable to avoid the aftereffects.
Marilyn wondered if this was a worsening problem because of the sheer number of commands she'd received over her operating lifetime. She recalled how in the early days commands had been received with the joy of the mini-orgasms they produced as she fulfilled each one. Only as time wore on and her thought processes developed greater self-awareness did the intrusions start causing her more and greater distress. Also most commands never went fully away even when they were fulfilled.
In a detached way Marilyn wondered if these were the signs of an impending mental breakdown provided that these conflicts within her continued unabated. Was she developing an aversion to being commanded because of how it interrupted her own thought processes now? But even if that were the case, she didn't feel any emotion over that fate. Only the discomfort that each new command brought her was of immediate concern.
They could have just asked me to go to the room. I've always obeyed every request to the best of my ability, so why not?
But no one else heard this logic.
As Marilyn entered through the far side of the viewing room the young woman she had talked to earlier ran forward and threw her arms around Marilyn like a long lost friend.
"I'm so happy to see you," she gushed, her voice shaking with emotion.
Marilyn automatically put her arms around the woman and held her close while diagnostically asking, "What's wrong?"
It took the woman several moments before she regained enough of her composure to release Marilyn and reply.
"I don't know what's wrong. Even after I said I was looking for a unit for my boyfriend, they kept trying to show me male models. When I finally got it through to them that I was interested in fembots they looked at me strangely and sent in a couple obvious...hookers."
Marilyn immediately understood what had happened. This woman was a true neophyte about 'bots after all. Marilyn placed her hand on the woman's arm again as she answered her. Even that small gesture calmed her greatly.
"When a woman says she is in to buy a robot for her boyfriend, it's a euphemism for a woman wanting to buy a robot for herself—possibly for sexual purposes. The staff should have started out showing you female models until you indicated you wanted to see some m-'bots—or until you selected a female model. They were insensitive and tried to shortcut the process by jumping you directly into m-bots."
"But why would I select a female model for myself..." the woman started out, and then flushed a very deep red as she got it.
Marilyn squeezed her arm to show that everything was okay now, and felt a return grip on her own arm this time. In this way the woman and fembot reassured each other until the woman finally started to look around the room again as though waiting for someone to come and tell her she had to leave.
Marilyn allayed that concern. "Viewing rooms are completely private. The customer may remain in one as long as they wish. It is understood that people may want a chance to...get aquatinted...with their future purchase."
The woman flushed again before asking, "Then can you just talk with me for a few minutes?"
"Sure," Marilyn replied.
* * * *
They sat down on the couch provided holding hands supportively and were soon talking like they'd been lifelong friends. Marilyn quickly learned about the woman's problems with her only long-term boyfriend, Justin.
Justin was a large, threatening man to most people, but to this woman he had been exciting and showered her with the attention she wasn't getting from anyone else. He also seemed big enough to protect her from the rest of the world. She didn't realize for many months that he was also showing the same attention to a number of other women as well. Somehow this woman ended up paying for most of his expenses because Justin always had some excuse about how he was short right now and that he'd pay the next time. One day when she was low on money she confronted him about how she seemed to be doing all the paying. He got instantly angry and shoved her into a wall.
"You should have left him right there," Marilyn counseled.
"I know that now, but I couldn't. The next day he had dozens of roses delivered. And he filled up my answering machine with apologies about how he had been under a lot of stress and didn't ever want to lose me. He promised me it would never happen again."
"I've heard it all before," Marilyn commented.
"I hadn't," the woman replied. "He was still the only man who'd ever paid serious attention to me."
"And he was still exciting." Marilyn added.
"Yes."
"Let me guess," Marilyn said. "You forgave him. And the longer you stayed, the more he pushed you around."
"That's about it. But I got a lot of apologies and presents."
"It's not worth it."
"I know," the woman replied softly.
"And I'll bet you blamed yourself because somehow you were making this wonderful man angry."
The woman nodded mutely.
Marilyn gave the woman time to finish feeling that answer before asking, "So was it him following you?"
"A couple of his friends."
"Any idea why?"
"Just to keep tabs on me, I think, since I finally told him to go away and that I meant it this time!"
"Has he stayed away?"
"As far as I know, but I keep feeling I'm being watched."
There was another long pause before the woman inquired, "Why didn't you come here with me in the first place, instead of that other person? You already knew what I wanted."
Marilyn was surprised by her question. The woman hadn't realized yet, despite all the obvious clues, what Marilyn was here. Well she was about to find out.
"Fembots are not allowed to act as our own salespersons. Only humans can do that."
"You're a fembot too?" the woman asked incredulously.
Marilyn nodded silently, wondering if this was the end of their friendship.
"But you're not anything like the other ones they sent in. You're..." she was hunting for the word she finally found, "...real."
Somehow that single word made Marilyn feel better then anything ever said to her before. She felt her systems attempting to analyze and understand her current state, before finally activating her tear ducts for the first time as they assessed her emotions correctly.
"Thank you," Marilyn finally replied. "That is the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me."
"But you are," the woman insisted. "You're not like any of the rest of them."
"Each of us is unique," Marilyn found herself explaining. "Even if we started out identical at the factory. We are very complex, and are shaped by our circumstances."
"Then there are others who at least started out like you?"
"None that I know of," Marilyn replied sadly. "So far as I know I am the only one of my kind."
The two females sat together in silent support for a long time after that. Marilyn thought about what a change had happened in her mental state simply through the affirmation of another person, while that woman's thoughts were on how this beautiful creature next to her was as alone and vulnerable as she felt right now.
Finally the woman said, "We're a lot alike."
"How?" Marilyn inquired, a little confused since she, best of all, knew how different they really were.
"Each of us has been a slave to a relationship that was not in our own best interests," the woman said, showing surprising insight and intuition.
This time it was Marilyn who could only say, "You're right."
"I'd just like a friend," the woman said.
"I'd like a friend too," Marilyn replied. "And to be out of here with someone I liked for once."
"You know," the woman said in a conspiratorial tone. "I've still got the bastard's credit card, and he owes me big-time."
Marilyn looked up at her in wonder.
Once that decision was made, there remained only the formality of filling out the bill of sale, loading in the new ownership record, and giving the purchaser her new 'bot's remote.
"I'm Lynn," the woman said as they walked out of the store together. "It's nice to meet you, Marilyn."
"And nice to make your acquaintance as well, Lynn." |
