The Artificial Wife

by Rachael Eyre

  Rachael Eyre

  The Artificial Wife

  © Rachael Eyre 2018

  The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  This book is dedicated to my father. I couldn't have created Robert Percival without his example.

  By the same author

  The Governess

  The Revenge of Rose Grubb

  Love and Robotics

  The Betrayer's Wife

  The Artificial Wife

  Vivaan: Germination

  If you had told me that a post work pint would lead to one of my uni friends buying a robot wife, I would never have believed you.

  It was Wednesday evening. I'd spent a frustrating day fixing the latest batch of Home Butlers; to put it bluntly, they were crap. Something about spending your working week with your arm up an android’s arse makes you question your life choices. I'd begged to go an hour early, had somehow been granted permission, and slipped into the nearest dive. I thought I'd have a couple before going home to Thao. She at least was completely fulfilled; she designed robots at CER and loved it.

  I've never been much of a drinker. I was sitting in a corner, growing dozy, and wondering if I should tap a decent tune into the spinner. It had been playing the same tinny beat since I'd arrived - it was setting my teeth on edge. I'd stood up, reeled, realised my drink was far more potent than it looked, when somebody in one of the booths caught sight of me and waved.

  “Vivaan! Vivaan!”

  I screwed up my eyes. It was Robbie Percival of all people, sipping a gin like it was radioactive. When I said ‘friend’ before, I was being generous. I doubt Robbie has friends as such. He has people he condescends to notice, people he passes the time of day with, but nothing as healthy or normal as ‘mates.’ He'd be horrified by the idea. He'd think he might catch something.

  All this considered, a seedy bar in the outskirts was not his natural habitat. Once I'd finished gaping, I bought a round (“Brandy,” he said with a pained smile), and joined him at his table. “What's all this? This is hardly your -” I slurred.

  “Milieu? Too right.” When he's drunk, Robbie’s speech becomes, if anything, even more controlled and pedantic. He could’ve been an elocution teacher. “It's the same old shit, Vivaan.” (Another trait: although he's universally known as Robbie, he refuses to abbreviate anyone’s name).

  “Woman trouble?”

  “Exactly.”

  I couldn't say I was surprised. In the twenty years I've known him, Robbie has had a prodigious number of girlfriends, and not in a good way. While the rest of our circle have settled down with the girl or guy of their choice, this goal has eluded him. He's always pursuing that oasis, thinking this time it'll be different.

  “What is it about me?” he moaned. “Why do I drive them away? I'm not bad looking, I have a decent income, I lead a life of the mind. Why can't I convince anyone to share it with me?”

  A mirror was tilted over the booth; he stared into his flushed, bony reflection as though it might hold the answer. He attempted a smile, but his teeth were so jagged and yellow, he ended up covering them with his hand.

  “Maybe you're trying too hard,” I said carefully.

  “I mean, look at you.” When he's off on one of his soliloquies, you have to patiently wait for him to run down. “You come from nowhere and have a mediocre job, yet you’re happily married. How did that happen?”

  “I found a woman who was willing to overlook my many faults.”

  Robbie didn't like this answer. He struggled with it, weighed his own shortcomings on an invisible seesaw. He must have fallen short since he pursed his lips and went off on a different tack. “It's the women. They're spoiled nowadays.”

  I wondered if this was something I really wanted to hear. “How?”

  “The way they’re educated. Too many opinions, not enough substance. Nothing original.”

  If Thao had been there he would’ve been wearing his drink. She couldn't stand him anyway. He’d made endless cracks about exotic brides on our wedding day, and she'd never forgiven him. “I don't know how you can be friends with that racist dick,” she'd say whenever his name was mentioned.

  “Hey, that's not -”

  “Vivaan, I have known three times more women than you in an intimate context. I consider myself something of an expert. Perhaps I could found a new academic field: Women and what the hell you're supposed to do with them.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Good luck getting that passed. They’re the superior sex, after all.”

  He shifted in his seat, reminding me he was half a foot taller, as well as wealthy, white and several other things I wasn't. I was sick of him. Once I'd finished this pint I'd go.

  “Says whom? Numerous ancient cultures were patriarchies. The Farvans were the greatest civilisation to have lived - they had male Emperors -”

  “And where are they now? A footnote on a dusty old vase.”

  “What I need,” he mused - he was staring at a point somewhere in the distance - “is a blank slate. Someone uncorrupted by today’s harmful ideals. Somebody with a fresh, pure, innocent mind. She would make me a fine wife.”

  As far as I was concerned, it was drunk talk. I hadn't reckoned with Robbie’s staggering literal mindedness. I chuckled. “The only way you'd find someone like that is if she was a robot.”

  He went so rigid, I thought he was having a heart attack. Wan, rinsed with sweat, clutching the edge of the table - it was an unsettling sight.

  “Say that again,” he murmured.

  “It was nothing. Forget it.”

  “Could I get one? A robot wife?”

  Why did I go along with it? Part of me must have still hoped that it was your standard pub conversation, mercifully erased the next day. “The technology’s getting there. Some of the bots at Thao’s work are so lifelike, you'd never know. Arties, they call them. Short for artificial human.”

  For a moment he was transformed, enraptured. You understood why those women had been bamboozled. It was the face he wore when he had a philosophical breakthrough: he'd abandon his listeners mid conversation, sometimes mid date, and hurry home before the brainwave faded.

  He clasped my hand. “Thank you, Vivaan. I am eternally in your debt.”

  He then had to rush outside, aiming for the gutter but splashing his shoes instead.

  ***

  Thao greeted me warmly, sniffing my breath. “What time do you call this, you dirty stop out?”

  “It was only a few post work.”

  “You'd better be hungry. This stew’s grown.” She was right - even after two enormous bowls there was gallons left.

  We swapped a few work stories, lounging on our cramped sofa. Our apartment was a student start up and chaotically messy, but we weren't around enough to justify anything bigger. We had a cat, Spike, but before you accuse us of animal cruelty, Thao had put her together from a kit. Her purr was always on the rusty side.

  I waited before Thao was in a mellow mood, laughing at Spike trying to eat her tail. “I saw Robbie.”

  Instant frown lines. “That gobshite. Why?”

  “It wasn't intentional. We just sort of ran into each other.”

  She grudgingly conceded this can happen in the city. “Has he got a job yet?”

  “He's a philosophy tutor.”

  “In other words, no.”

  Smoke streamed from Spike’s ears. Thao dashed over and jiggled her upside down until she had recovered.

  “He's on his own again,” I said once the drama was over.

  “One of Nature’s bachelors. He’ll live. Think of all those women who’ve had a lucky escape.”

  If I mentioned our conversation, she'd only say it was typical Robbie. Althou
gh it showed every sign of developing into a full fledged obsession, I let it lie. Thao wouldn't want to know.

  ***

  The next few days were so manic, I more or less forgot Robbie. The Home Butlers were coming into the workshop faster than we could deal with them. It was growing harder to grin and make some wisecrack as the customers dropped them off.

  “CER have lost their touch,” Amro said. Peering around and lowering his voice, he hissed, “Makes you wonder.”

  “What this time?” The guy’s a one man conspiracy factory. It's mainly about tech companies, hardly surprising in our line of work, but he can also be heard spouting about how the Queen had the Prime Minister of Therek blown up on holiday, or how coded messages can be found in the works of Willa Shah. You just smile and nod.

  “It's CER’s way of keeping tabs on the workshops,” he babbled. “We could put them out of a job, you see. By nobbling their machines, they make sure the bots end up here. If they install a remote visicam -”

  I shook my head disbelievingly. “It's a duff series. Nothing more.”

  The robot was scattered on the bench in front of me. Like all Home Butlers it had a big vacant face like a baby’s, a bow tie and an extendable body. They're designed to skitter around but this one had something wrong with its runners.

  Amro had gone off in a huff, so I was alone. I made a face as I finished my brew - it had gone cold - and went in search of a better screwdriver. You couldn't see the floor for malfunctioning Home Butlers; the blighters were stacked halfway up the wall. I finally located the screwdriver near the bottom of the pile and went to pull it out. I must've been too rough. An avalanche of chrome heads showered upon me.

  “Shit!”

  “Is this a bad time?” a lugubrious voice asked.

  It was the last person you'd want to stroll in if you were making a prat of yourself: Robbie. He has the lowest opinion of my job anyway, calling me a worker drone.

  “Give me a second.” I tried to put the heads back in some semblance of order. He watched, not lifting a finger to help. It wouldn't have occurred to him.

  “So - uh, why are you here?” I asked, not too rudely.

  He was examining the heads. “This isn't the sort of thing you were alluding to, is it?”

  I stared at him blankly. He sighed in that histrionic way he has. “That discussion we had the other night, remember?”

  One of the heads fell out of place. I scooped it up and shoved it back. “It was a joke, Robbie. I didn't mean anything by it. To actually buy an artie for, uh, the purpose you suggested would be very time consuming and expensive.”

  “I have the time. I have the money. I need your help.”

  He stood in the middle of the workshop, the image of an arrogant, down at heel academic. He's the only man my age with elbow patches. Amro came in, recognised him from a previous disastrous encounter and went out again. I heard him stage whisper, “Khatri’s weird boyfriend’s in,” to the guys in the backroom.

  Robbie heard. “You see? Something about me gets people’s backs up. I need your, um -” He fumbled for the precise word.

  “People skills?”

  He nodded. It was as much self awareness as I'd seen him show.

  “Look,” I said, as he continued to loiter, “this is my work. I’ll do whatever I can to help over the weekend, but I can't do anything here.”

  “I see. Well, see you tomorrow.” He loped towards the door, not looking back.

  Amro waited a safe minute before coming out to investigate. “What did that tosspot want?”

  Although it was the kind of story he loved - perversion in high places - it didn't reflect well on me. “A second hand Home Butler.”

  My colleague snorted. “Him with a bot? That'd be the day. He wouldn't even know how to switch one on.”

  Summer: Ms Adelaide’s

  The day the wolf came for me, I had been at Ms Adelaide’s Finishing School for five years.

  I say that with the benefit of hindsight. I couldn't remember a time where I hadn't been surrounded by girls, sleeping twenty to a dorm, going from one exercise to the next. By this time we must have been the most finished young women in the world, as smooth and unblemished as pearls.

  Ms Adelaide would lead us through the same mantra every morning. She was a tiny creature, white haired though she couldn't have been that old, dressed in black with a long string of jets. She smelled of metallic powder and cold cream. “We are Ms Adelaide’s girls. We matter,” we’d chorus. She always broke off at this point and said, “Never let anyone tell you otherwise.”

  Our days panned out predictably. We learned music, dancing, deportment. We were taught how to type and serve - “Some of you will have jobs,” Ms Adelaide would say, making a face. I was one of the better pupils, praised for my handwriting and ‘pliability,’ whatever that meant.

  Every now and then a visitor came to the school. It was usually a man, meaning the girls flocked to the window if one wandered into the grounds. Ms Adelaide would call us down to meet him. The guest strolled up and down, asking questions of us, Ms Adelaide. They disappeared into her office for an hour or two. One of the girls’ names was called. We watched her walk down the drive after her new owner, never to return.

  The other girls chattered excitedly about what it meant to be chosen. They supposed they would make the most of it if their owner was a woman, although the preference was for young, handsome men. We were very romantic in those days. There was a magazine, Girls’ Love, which was passed around the school; it buoyed us up, gave us ideas. I daresay we talked a lot of nonsense.

  “Mine will be a playboy,” one might say.

  “Mine’s an artist -”

  “Rubbish! How could he afford you?”

  “A rich artist.”

  “Mine will be a lawyer, and tell me about his cases.”

  I joined in; it was what you did. It wasn't as though we had anything else to think about. In truth I didn't want to be chosen. I wanted my life to remain as it was, on the same even route. I purposely stayed at the back during the visits, kept my head down, didn't speak. It had worked so far.

  Until the wolf came.

  ***

  It was another morning at the school. We were taking dictation - a task that should have been rendered obsolete with the technological advances, but some businesses were too cheap to make the change, Ms Adelaide claimed.

  “‘You are jewels of inestimable value. You must never squander yourselves, give yourselves away, allow yourselves to be sullied. You are unique.’”

  The room teemed with the sounds of typing, murmurs (“How do you spell unique?”), Ms Adelaide pausing at each desk to check our progress. She stopped at mine and read over my shoulder.

  “That’s beautiful, Summer. Not a single error.” It was like being smiled at by the Goddess.

  One of the menials knocked at the door. Everyone averted their eyes. We had been told never to acknowledge their presence.

  “Begging your pardon, Ms Adelaide, but there are two gentlemen downstairs,” she said.

  Ms Adelaide was startled. “Nobody’s made an appointment. Are you sure?”

  “Positive, ma’am. They said they wanted to see the young ladies.”

  “It's highly irregular, but we can hardly turn them away.” Glancing towards us, she raised her voice. “I'm going to welcome our visitors. Don't come down until you've been called. “

  She glided onto the landing, an aloof black swan. Of course we abandoned our task as soon as the door closed.

  “Two gentlemen?”

  “One each?”

  We sped to the window to catch a glimpse, but they must have already gone inside. We fell to discussing our strategies.

  “I'm sick of this place,” a girl called Leda said. She had a sly, furtive appearance - perhaps why no one had chosen her. “I'll take whoever it is.”

  “Even if they're no good?” Rosalie asked.

  “The uglier they are, the richer. That's the rule.” Smir
king, “Of course Summer here will hang around in the back and try not to be noticed, like she always does. “

  My face grew hot. “I do not. That's a lie.”

  Miarka, the eldest and most level headed of us, said, “She has a point. Don't you want to be chosen?”

  I tossed my head, exasperated. “I don't know! There's either this -” I gestured to the classroom - “or that. Can't there be another choice?”

  “What other choice is there?” Fatima asked.