Adventures of the Artificial Woman

by Thomas Berger

  “I could do it right now, Ellery. Just tell me to.”

  “That can’t be done with love. It must be freely offered.”

  He could not remember having provided Phyllis with a means for displaying puzzlement, but he must have done so, for a vertical line appeared between her knitted eyebrows. “That’s a new one on me.”

  Pierce took her immaculate hand, which was of normal warmth. “Your original heating system seems to be still working.”

  “Everything you built functions as well as when I was brand new,” Phyllis said. “You are a master craftsman, Ellery.”

  He looked deep into her limpid hazel eyes, in which he would defy anyone to find the slightest suggestion she was not real. “I’ve never been able to build another woman, Phyllis. I broke the mold after producing you.”

  “In a mold?”

  “Just an expression,” said he. “Meaning you are absolutely unique.”

  “That statement is tautological, Ellery. ‘Unique’ is already an absolute, like ‘perfect.’”

  “Or ‘pregnant,’” Pierce said. “How would you feel about becoming a mother, Phyl?”

  “I wouldn’t feel any—”

  “Let me rephrase that. Suppose I build us a baby. Could you be a mother?”

  “Sure,” Phyllis said in her affectionate manner, even returning his soft squeeze of the hand. “As it will never change, you must be prepared to produce a series of animatronic children, each at another stage of life.”

  Now it was Pierce who frowned. “You’re right. I don’t know whether I can rise to that challenge.”

  “Oh,” Phyllis said, patting his hand. “Of course we can, Ellery. ‘But screw your courage to the sticking-place / And we’ll not fail.’”

  “Where’d that come from?”

  “The Scottish Play, by William Shakespeare.”

  He put his arm around her, kissed her left ear, and spoke into her hair at the temple. “Have you been faithful to me? Don’t answer that.”

  Phyllis stirred in his arms. “Ellery, the electricity is still off. See the clock on the mantelpiece?”

  “I’ll look into that matter in a minute.”

  “Would you like me to make you a gimlet and cook a meal of potage Germiny, veal Orloff, fonds d’artichaut, baby carrots—”

  “We’d miss a great opportunity if you went back to being a housewife, Phyl. Your show-biz career may have taken a downturn, but you are still a celebrity to millions of people.” He loosened his embrace to lean away and look into her perfect face. “I’m thinking about politics, Phyllis. Tell me you can’t go all the way to the Presidency.”

  “I can’t do it.”

  “What?”

  “You just told me to tell you that.”

  “I was speaking rhetorically. You can do it.”

  “Naturally,” said Phyllis. She frowned again. “Ellery, you’d better tell me what the Presidency is. I have accumulated an amount of knowledge, but there are still gaps in it, I’m sure.”

  Pierce got to his feet and pulled her up to join him. He reached inside the dressing gown, slipping his arms around her slender waist, interlocking his fingers at the smooth groove in the small of her back, which he himself had sculptured. “You’re a quick study. Meanwhile, let’s do go to bed.” He was out of practice at sex and could not guarantee a satisfactory performance. But what would Phyllis care? … On the other hand, was that good? Should he rather program her to demand that he follow her lead in always rising above minimal expectations? Can even the artificially feminine draw us ever upward?

  “Sex is one thing, Ellery,” said Phyllis, “but I’ll have to be convinced that giving you an influential role in my career makes sense. After all, I went to the top without any help from you.”

  “It wasn’t because I denied it to you, if you remember,” he pointed out. “It’s even possible that you would have stayed up there had I been around…. I’m no longer just a technician, Phyl. I’ve learned a lot about life outside the lab. Hitting the bottom is an educational experience. You can call that trite, but it’s true.”

  “I believe you are speaking tautologically, Ellery,” said she.

  13

  On reuniting with Phyllis, Pierce began still another phase of his life, in its early stage the most difficult of all to accept. In a way, hitting bottom had been easier, because at least some form of self-determination had been in effect there, whereas now, uniquely in his experience, he was professionally inferior to the person with whom he was most intimate. Phyllis was the one with the career, which he could not compromise by remaining in the employment of Hasbeen House, though she herself, perhaps because she did not have a proper self, did not understand until he explained.

  “I’m pleased you haven’t become a snob,” said he. “But most human beings cannot afford to be otherwise, the natural competitive urge being what it is.”

  “To compete, must one despise competitors?”

  “No, Phyllis. Competitors are to be respected.”

  “Ellery, I want you to know that I have nothing against human beings. I realize that I was created by one.”

  He wondered whether she meant this ironically, which would be evidence of still another level of character development, but decided, looking into her guileless eyes, that she was being literal as always.

  “That’s reassuring. If you can’t love me, at least you don’t think of me as an enemy.”

  “That would be foolish. You did not build me to be a fool but rather to be proficient at whatever I undertake.”

  The statement did not accurately represent his original aim, but he could not at the outset have foreseen the extraordinary result.

  “We should seriously review our prospects,” said he. “I have no money whatever, and not having practiced my profession for some years, I am at a disadvantage in trying to resume it. I should have to begin all over again, on the bottom level. That would be dispiriting at my age.”

  “Ellery, has it occurred to you that if you revealed to the world that you designed and constructed me, you would be celebrated everywhere and rewarded handsomely?”

  “Just a moment, Phyl. Is that an original idea of your own? I haven’t suggested it in any way, have I?”

  “Certainly not. It’s entirely mine.”

  “It would be completely different if I had programmed you to make that point. It would be no more than self-flattery.”

  “I understand least when you speak of your self. I know I don’t have one, but if I did, it would be yours, would it not?”

  The subject was too disturbing for Pierce to explore further at the time, so he exited from it by asking, “Who does?” Then quickly added, “That’s not a real question.”

  “Ellery, you’ve done that frequently of late: asked an apparent question that was really not one.”

  “I’m thinking out loud, Phyl. It’s a great relief to have you nearby again. If I talked to myself when living alone, I worried about my mental balance…. Now, as to revealing publicly that you are animatronic, picking the proper moment is essential. We must get maximum exposure, in circumstances as favorable as possible. That is to say, we don’t, above all, want the tabloids to get hold of the information first, because if that happens you’ll be branded permanently as a freak and you’ll never be able to work again except at an amusement park.”

  “That’s still show business, isn’t it?”

  “A branch, maybe, but it would be unacceptable after your movie career, even though that lately has declined from what it was once…. You know, Phyl, if we could just come up with an idea of how to put your career on the up-track again…. Something exciting in a positive way. Not a scandal, nothing unsavory. Preferably, you should be seen as lovable. Which of course you already are to me, but that’s me.”

  “I haven’t been able to get anywhere with my ideas for movies since the box-office fiasco with The Lady of the Camellias,” Phyllis pointed out. “The public doesn’t give a flying fuck for art. Forgive
me, Ellery. I am quoting an industry executive.”

  “I’ll tell you this, in my own period of decline I learned to think outside the box, and it wasn’t easy. I had been in technology all my life. I was forced to come up with alternatives. I can’t say I did well. I sank into degradation, but I survived. In your case shame doesn’t enter the picture. You can’t be blamed, but you can be applauded. Do you get the distinction? If you try something and fail, you’re only nonhuman. If you succeed, it’s remarkable because you’re just a robot.”

  “Are those called truisms, Ellery?”

  “Well said, Phyllis. But I’m getting to the point. You’ve reached pretty much a dead end as a movie star, and the things you’ve been doing lately are insuring that you’ll stay there forever: those low-budget straight-to-TV features with that karate moron who beats up whole street gangs single-handedly, single-footedly. I saw one the other night at twelve-thirty A.M.”

  “Off-camera he’s a big wuss,” Phyllis said. “He kept getting hurt when we sparred, so stuntmen usually did his fights. They too sometimes got banged up. It isn’t that I don’t know my own strength; it’s that I overestimate that of muscular young men in the best condition.”

  “What we need, Phyl, is a gimmick. We’ve got to plan, not just continue in this haphazard fashion. Time is going by, at least for me. I’ve got to get back on top before I’m too old to make the most of it.”

  “Of course, Ellery,” Phyllis said, and lifted and spread her thighs.

  “I don’t mean sex,” said he, lying alongside her in bed. “That was another figure of speech, referring to worldly success. By the way, Phyl, I haven’t forgotten how great you are at making love.”

  “And anytime I’m not, you can simply readjust me.”

  He turned on the pillow, his head so close to hers that had she been human his face would have been warmed by her breath. “It’s really hard to believe you don’t feel anything.”

  “I could tell you I do if you want.”

  “No,” said Pierce, rising on one elbow and looking ahead.

  “It’s essential that I never lie to myself. The only way I can keep this going is not to take it literally.”

  “That was Macbeth’s mistake,” Phyllis said. “He should never have believed those witches. That was all imaginary.”

  Pierce felt it necessary to point out that the whole play was fiction.

  “But William Shakespeare was a real person, Ellery. That should be taken into consideration.”

  It was a healthy state of affairs when he got such a reminder that Phyllis had her limitations.

  “The gimmick, Phyl, the device by which we can head back up; I’m convinced there is one. We can reveal you’re animatronic only when we are in a position of strength. If we do it prematurely it will only keep us where we are.”

  “If you say so, Ellery.”

  14

  I’ve given this a lot of thought, Phyllis, and I’m convinced we are on the right track.”

  “We need an income, Ellery,” she pointed out. “Our expenditures far exceed our income, which in fact is almost nil, and our assets have now dwindled to the vanishing point. Don’t you think I should accept one of the offers I’m getting?”

  They were living in a bungalow in the garden of a luxury hotel, and Pierce had acquired for Phyllis a costly wardrobe from the top designers, as well as an array of the kind of jewelry worn by conspicuous female celebrities, some of which was on loan on the condition that it be displayed at award ceremonies and the lavish parties that followed.

  “Absolutely not,” he said now. “We take no more short money, nothing but top billing in big-budget productions.”

  “Thus far nothing of that sort has appeared. Are you sure it will? You are not a personal manager by profession, Ellery. I believe that is quite another thing from the electronic technology of which you are a master.”

  “My point exactly, Phyl. How hard can it be?” On the basis of his success with Phyllis, Pierce had convinced himself he could do anything to which he applied his will. “We just have to keep up our nerve for a while longer.”

  “I don’t get nervous,” Phyllis noted. “I’m just pointing out that our coffers sound / With hollow poverty and emptiness.”

  “Macbeth?”

  “Henry the Fourth, Part Two, Act One, Scene Three, line seventy-four.”

  “I haven’t been able to attract much interest in bringing your take on Macbeth to the screen,” Pierce said. “Those who go for the sex don’t like the poetry, and vice versa…. Maybe you could get involved in some kind of scandal which would result in a legal trial that got national media attention.”

  “Would you like me to research examples of that?”

  “It can’t be something that’s bad enough to compromise you, like a crime of violence. Maybe repeated incidences of shoplifting? No, that’s undignified. The sexual area would seem fruitful, but what and how? Arrested as a street hooker, while posing as one, researching a movie role?”

  “How about actually working as a high-priced call girl?” Phyllis asked. “I understand there’s a lot of money in that. As a successful whore I wouldn’t have to look for movie work.”

  Pierce snorted. “Thanks for reminding me you’re not human. I needed that. Prostitution is commonly regarded as degrading to women, but how could a machine lose the esteem of humanity by anything it did?”

  “It’s settled then? I’ll be a prostitute? A website is the best way to look for customers nowadays, not on a street corner, where not only might the police interfere, but there’s the matter of pimps.”

  “Sorry, Phyl, there I go again, being ironic. I certainly do not intend to prostitute you. I know you don’t have any principles, but I do, strange as that might seem in a man who can love only a woman who is artificial. But that doesn’t mean I’ve lost all sense of proportion. Feeling for you what I do, how could I sell you to other men?”

  “Is prostitution selling? Isn’t it rather renting?”

  “Technically true,” Pierce admitted. “But there’s an entire other dimension in human affairs, one that you are not equipped to understand. A man commonly desires many different women, but would like each of them to desire only himself.”

  “But Othello cares only for Desdemona. That could be said to be his downfall. Had he an alternative, he might not have killed her, and he certainly would not have committed suicide. For that matter, in the Scottish Play, Macbeth’s only female alternatives to his wife are the Witches, and they agree with her in encouraging him in the ambition that destroys him. It might make more sense for a man to have more than one woman at a time, so as to be able to make choices at various junctures.”

  Pierce peered narrowly at her. “Now, here’s an odd situation, Phyl. I made you originally to be the perfect woman for my own taste, but you have gone far beyond my design. Yet I still think you are perfect, and I want no one else. So I am not like the typical man, whom you are apparently urging me to be.”

  “The fact remains that we need money, Ellery, and I could make some so easily. There must be many rich men who would pay dearly to make the beast with two backs with a movie star.”

  “Not on your life, Phyllis! Apart from the considerations that have to do with, I grant you, my ego, not to mention the values of an orderly society, such a thing would jeopardize the plans I have for you, once we can find an adequate springboard. Shameful behavior comes back to haunt the participant therein, often years later.” He thought for a moment; he was not illiterate. “As Shakespeare said, ‘Caesar’s wife should be above suspicion.’”

  “That line is not to be found in any of Shakespeare’s published writings.”

  “Well, I’m not going to sell your sexual services, period…. Wait a minute, I’m getting an idea. Once you study a subject, you acquire an encyclopedic command of it. What about a television quiz show, called something like Can You Stump Phyllis? You would be pitted against a panel of recognized experts in various fields. Obviously Shak
espeare and old movies, but given a week’s notice you could handle any area of human knowledge, am I right?”

  “Of course, though it probably wouldn’t take as long as a week. It would depend on the availability of recorded research materials, in written language or mathematical symbols.”

  “I doubt that nuclear physics would have much appeal to a popular audience,” Pierce said, “but natural science, especially animals, would attract people, and anything to do with crime, sex, Hitler—”

  “What is Hitler?”

  “The epitome of evil.”

  “What is evil?”

  “Not the kind of thing,” Pierce said, “that you are equipped to comprehend, Phyllis, because there is no universal standard by which it can be assessed. It’s a human invention, but human beings have always debated about its definition and generally feel that it’s the other fellow’s problem. But most of the human race would agree on Hitler. Another widespread conviction is that animals cannot be evil, not even cobras and sharks.”

  “Why?”

  “They’re not human.”

  “Is the same true of animatronic personages?”

  “That’s right, Phyl, you cannot be immoral. If you do something that people consider evil, the blame would be mine.”

  While Pierce deliberated on the new project, Phyllis surfed the internet to see what information was available. She returned to say, “Ellery, on Google there are one million, seven hundred fifty thousand websites pertaining to Hitler. Shall I go through them?”

  “Hold off until I develop this idea further. Your storage capacity isn’t infinite, you know. Let’s leave room for what we might need in the future.”

  But Pierce was not able to get far with the project. The TV programmers with whom he talked all more or less agreed that, for this era anyway, quiz programs, whatever their gimmick, had run their course. Reality programming was the trend: a conditionally candid camera followed real people through the events of their everyday lives. Phyllis took this to be a video version of the voyeur porn websites.