by Greg Krojac
The girl shrugged her shoulders.
“Oh. Very well. Question one please.”
Karen knew she’d have to take care with the questions. The girl’s conversation pattern suggested that she might have learning difficulties or perhaps some other psychological problem. Maybe she suffered from OCD. Whatever the problem was, the number of questions was obviously important to her.
“Coppélia, you told my colleague who brought you here that you were raped.”
“No, I didn’t. Nineteen questions left.”
“But he said that –.”
“I told his colleague. I told the nice lady with glasses that I’d been raped. I said no. He continued and forced me to have sex with him. So I was raped. I said no. Was that a question? I think it was meant as a question. Eighteen questions left.”
Karen felt in a bit of a quandary. According to the law, sexbots – if that’s who or what she was (which she doubted very much) – couldn’t be raped. She’d have to tread carefully.
“You said the man raped you. Do you know who he was?”
“I know his face. The men who visit don’t normally use their real names. Seventeen questions left.”
“The men who visit where?”
“The house. Sixteen.”
“What house?”
“The house where I lived. Fifteen.”
“Do you still live there?”
“I left when the man raped me, so I don’t still live there. Fourteen questions left.”
“Where do you live now?”
“I live here, I suppose. Thirteen questions left.”
“You can’t live here, Coppélia.”
“Is that a question?”
No. It’s an observation.”
“Oh, alright. Allowed. Still thirteen questions left.”
“Did other girls live in the house?”
“Yes. Twelve questions.”
“Were they forced to have sex with people?”
“Yes, but they didn’t mind. I did mind. I said no this time. Eleven questions left.”
“Was that the other girls’ job too? To have sex with people?”
“That’s two questions. You should have phrased them better. Yes. And Yes. Nine questions left.”
Karen had used up over half of her twenty questions; she would have to choose her questions more wisely now.
“Was your job to have sex with men?”
“Eight questions left. Yes, the other girls’ jobs were also to have sex with people. Yes, my job was to have sex with men or women who wanted to have sex with me. But this time I said no. May I ask a question?”
“Of course.
“If I say no, and a man still forces me to have sex with him, then that is rape, correct?”
Karen needed a second to think before she could answer Coppélia’s question. Of course, if the girl was human, it would be rape. There would be no question about it. But if she were a sexbot, then it wouldn’t be rape. That’s what sexbots were created for, that was their raison d’être, to be an outlet for people’s sexual desires. They weren’t alive. They couldn’t say no. But, if Coppélia was a sexdroid, she was an incredibly sophisticated one. Visually she looked human, as human as Karen and Rachel. She decided to err on the side of Coppélia being human. It could be potentially damaging to Coppélia’s psyche if Karen treated her as an android, and refused to acknowledge that the girl had been raped. If the girl was indeed an android, then surely less harm would be done by allowing her to think she had been raped.
“That is correct, Coppélia. That would be rape.”
“Thank you. Next question, please. Eight questions left.”
The insistence of the girl to countdown the number of questions was a little irritating. It could be as a result of programming, or it could be a result of shock. Perhaps the girl had Asperger’s Syndrome. It could help explain her speech patterns and the fact that she seemed to find it difficult to look Karen in the eye. Even when she looked straight ahead, and her field of vision was obstructed by Rachel, she seemed to be looking through the Detective Sergeant, rather than at her. Karen had hoped to sort things out through her questions but was unable to make a final decision. She pointed towards Coppélia’s ear.
“May I look behind your ear, please?”
“A strange request, but you may. Seven questions left.”
Normally, androids had a barcode serial number just behind the left ear, which could only be read by an ultra-violet barcode reader. Karen suddenly realised something.
“Rachel, I’ve left my UV reader in the hopper. Can I borrow yours?”
Each member of the Sexdroid Unit was equipped with one of these readers, and Rachel tossed hers to her boss, who caught it one-handed with ease. Karen stood up and pushed Coppélia’s ear forward slightly to allow the light from the UV reader to settle on the invisible barcode – if one existed. There was nothing. If the girl was a sexbot, there should have been something there that showed up when the UV light was shone on it. Karen shone the light again. There was definitely nothing at all to confirm that Coppélia wasn’t human.
Vismay quietly re-entered the room.
“Any luck?”
Karen looked at Rachel and back at Vismay. She beckoned him to join her in a corner of the room. She whispered so as not to offend Coppélia.
“I’m pretty sure Coppélia is human, but she may be an Asperger’s sufferer. She has no serial number behind her ear – all androids have identifying barcodes that are hidden unless a UV light is shone on them. She has none.”
“So she’s all mine?”
“She’s all yours.”
Rachel stood up to leave with Vismay and Karen when a thought occurred to her.
“Ma’am, may I ask Coppélia a question?”
“Of course.”
Rachel didn’t really know why her boss hadn’t thought of asking this question. It seemed so obvious really.
“Coppélia, are you a sexdroid?”
“Not a sexdroid per se, Rachel. But I am a gynoid. I’m an android in the form of a human female.”
2
Karen hadn’t expected to be travelling back to the Sexdroid Unit with an extra passenger. She’d thought that the questions that she had asked would help her decide whether Coppélia was human or android, but it was Rachel’s one and only question that had drawn out the truth. The Detective Inspector sat in the hopper, feeling a little embarrassed and silently punishing herself for not having asked the question herself whilst, at the same time, trying unsuccessfully to convince herself that she had had good reason not to ask that question. Imagine if Coppélia had been a real human? To ask her such a question would have been a faux pas on the level of asking a fat woman if she were pregnant – with potentially more damaging psychological consequences. Yet the pragmatic Rachel had felt no such qualms. She looked at her Detective Sergeant, who was sitting alongside her at the front of the vehicle.
“Rachel –.”
Rachel already knew what her superior officer was going to say.
“Don’t worry, ma’am. I won’t say a word.”
Karen had had a feeling that her secret was safe, but it was good to hear the confirmation spoken. DS Foster had been an inaugural member of the team and was a friend as well as being a colleague and subordinate.
The android, Coppélia, her status now confirmed, sat quietly in the back of the vehicle. She’d never flown before and, after a little apparent nervousness (how could an android be nervous?) she was quite enjoying the experience. She watched the vehicles below her on the roadway, slowly dragging their heels into the centre of the city from the suburbs where most people lived. Many people worked from home, via a virtual office which was populated with avatars of employees, but there were still a sufficiently large number of people who weren’t afforded such a luxury and were forced to physically commute to their places of work, leading to the congestion on the roads below. Coppélia leaned forward, resting her elbows on the backs of the seats in front
of her. She felt more relaxed now.
“Where are we going, Karen?”
“Normally, we’d take you straight back to your owner –.”
“Like a lost puppy?”
“Yes. Like a lost puppy, Coppélia, but there’s something different about you, although I can’t quite put my finger on it. So we’re taking you back to the office until we can decide what to do with you.”
Coppélia was glad not to be going back to the house. If she did, they’d tell her to have sex with their clients again, and she didn’t want to do that. She would run away again. And every subsequent time she was taken back to the house, she would run away again. The only way that they could keep her there would be for them to deactivate her. And if she were deactivated, she couldn’t have sex with clients.
The hopper cruised into the docking bay at the five storey building that housed NewMet City East’s Sexdroid Unit, and the trio made their way to the small office suite that was Karen’s home from home. Since the breakup of her previous relationship, she’d thrown herself into her work. She and David, a data translator, had reached the end of their five year marriage contract, and she’d expected the renewal to be a mere formality; obviously she knew that not all contracts survived the regular five yearly renewal stage, but she hadn’t imagined that theirs would fall by the wayside the first time that it came up for renewal. But collapse it did. David had begun an affair with somebody at his office and wanted to start a new contract with this other woman. The separation of goods wasn’t as acrimonious as it had been back in the days when marriages were ostensibly for life, and nowadays the dissolving of the marriage contract was, in general, less traumatic – a computer algorithm dealt with finances and any children born during the term of the contract were automatically assigned as joint custody of the parents (unless the social media records suggested otherwise) – but it still hurt. And Karen found the best way to deal with the hurt was to bury herself in her work. In fact, she’d only recently felt comfortable enough to start dating again.
All eyes turned to the newcomer as Coppélia followed the two police officers into Karen’s office.
Detective Constable Luke Reid pushed down on the soles of his feet and propelled his chair sideways until it came to rest alongside where Toby was sitting. Luke was the office champion at chair-wars, a much more gentle sport than the name suggested. He had the knack of applying just the right amount of force between foot and carpet, pushing himself and his chair to within millimetres of any pre-determined spot. If there were an Olympic medal for chair-wars, Luke would win the gold every time. Leaning in towards Toby, he whispered.
“Who’s the girl? She doesn’t look like a perp.”
Toby wondered why Luke thought that he would know who she was.
“How should I know? I’ve been here with you the whole time. I’m not bloody psychic.”
Luke strained to get as long a look as possible at the girl until the glass of the windows of Detective Inspector Chamber’s office faded to black and robbed him of his guilty pleasure. He returned to his own desk in the same manner as he had left it.
“She’s bloody gorgeous, whoever she is.”
Inside the office, Karen was faced with a dilemma. The law stated that any droid, be it a domestic-bot, or even a sexbot, should be returned immediately to its registered owner if it’s found to be either lost or stolen. That meant that Karen was legally obliged to return the gynoid Coppélia to its rightful owner. Normally she would have had no problem in following the letter of the law, but the android sitting opposite her on the other side of her desk intrigued her. She’d never seen a droid that didn’t have a barcode serial number. She pressed a button on the room’s remote control and a couple of magnets silently and invisibly clamped the door shut. Combined with the darkened windows, the lock rendered the office completely isolated from the rest of the office, away from prying eyes and ears. Karen would explain Coppélia to the rest of the office when the time was right.
“Coppélia, could you remove your clothes please?”
The sexbot looked confused.
“Do you want to have sex, Karen? I don’t. I say no.”
“No, Coppélia. Don’t worry. I don’t want to have sex with you. I want to try and find your serial number.”
“Oh, very well.”
The android did as she was requested, removing all her clothes, folding them before placing them neatly on her chair. Soon, she was standing naked as the day that she came off the production line. She was an excellent specimen of a female human – except, of course, she wasn’t. She was an object, a combination of synthetic materials and circuitry that represented a human female. Even so, she was so perfectly manufactured that Karen felt nervous at even the thought of examining Coppélia’s body closely. Everything about her was impeccable – she even had the occasional mole or skin blemish dotted around her body. Only her face, free of any imperfection, could cause anyone to cast doubt on her humanity. Karen conceded defeat to her nervousness.
“Rachel, could you do the honours, please? She – it – looks too human.”
The mother of a four year old girl, Lydia, Rachel was accustomed to dealing with all kinds of biological situations but she too didn’t relish the idea of going over Coppélia’s naked body, looking for a serial number. The android was way too realistic – even more so than Annabel, the sexbot at Rufus’s bordello.
“Coppélia?”
“Yes, Rachel?”
“Do you know your serial number?”
“I don’t have a serial number. I’m a prototype, being tested in the field.”
“You must have some kind of identification though?”
“I have a test-subject Catalogue Identification Code if that will help.”
Karen passed the android’s clothes back to her. She felt uncomfortable with the naked android in the room, even if Coppélia herself didn’t feel any embarrassment. Coppélia got dressed.
“My Catalogue Identification Code is SAI-0047. There have been forty-six previous versions of me, but I am the most advanced.”
Karen felt more comfortable now that Coppélia was fully-clothed again
“What happened to the previous forty-six versions?”
“I don’t know for sure. I imagine they were dismantled and recycled. I shouldn’t be surprised if some components were incorporated into my construction.”
Karen made a mental note that in future she would just ask droids directly for information she needed; that approach had worked twice for Rachel now. Coppélia’s identification code intrigued her.
“Do you know what the letters S-A-I correspond to?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know.”
There was definitely something different about this android. Normally conversations with droids had a certain laboured feel about them – pretty much as had happened back at the SVU – relying on the correct questions being asked in order to elicit a valid response, It was normally obvious that somebody had been locked up in a laboratory somewhere, probably part of a research team, and had tried to anticipate the interactions that might take place between a droid and the humans it met. A domestic-bot could converse for hours about household tasks, and be very efficient in its work. A sexbot would cede to its client’s every whim, acquiescing to even the most depraved sexual requests without protest, reeling off intimate and often foul-mouthed sex talk without batting an eyelid; but it would never – it could never – say no. However, Coppélia had refused to comply with her client’s demands. Not only had she said no, but when the client had forced himself upon her she had called it rape. How could a sexbot – a machine – be raped? One thing was for sure; she belonged to somebody, and somebody had clearly paid a lot of money for her to be developed and constructed. They would want her back.
The bandage on Coppélia’s right forearm was bothering Karen. Why would an android need a bandage?
“Coppélia, may I see underneath the bandage?”
The android didn’t see the n
ecessity.
“I’d rather you didn’t. It’s ugly.”
Karen beckoned Rachel to join her in the corner of the room, and the two began whispering. Karen knew that they were talking with a machine, but it really didn’t feel like they were. They couldn’t help themselves from referring to the android as ‘she’ or ‘her’.
“If I didn’t know better, Rachel, I’d say that Coppélia is ashamed of a defect in her body. But how can a machine feel shame? It doesn’t make sense. She’d have to be self-aware to feel an emotion like that. Artificial Intelligence can’t do that. It’s impossible.”
Rachel shrugged her shoulders.
“Maybe Coppélia’s AI can do that. Remember, she said that she’s a prototype. What if she’s so advanced that she’s pushing all the boundaries?”
Karen glanced over at the android and then returned to the whispered conversation.
“I feel really out of my depth here, Rachel. The obvious thing to do would be to locate her creator and give her back to him or her. But what if she’s being developed as some kind of weapon? We see it all the time in science fiction movies.”
Rachel nodded.
“You’re right. She could be a weapon, but she could also have been created to do good, like a tireless surgeon or something. One thing I’m pretty sure of is that her ultimate destiny isn’t to be a sexbot.”
The police officers were surprised to be interrupted by Coppélia.
“You’re correct. I don’t know what my ultimate purpose is, but I have worked in an office, I’ve worked in a bar, and I’ve worked as a nurse in a hospital. I’ve been a travel guide. I have been exposed to dozens of environments and interacted with thousands of humans.”
Karen apologised for whispering; she hadn’t realised the extent of the android’s auditory powers.
“But why? Why were you exposed to these different environments?”
That was a question that the android couldn’t answer for certain.
“I don’t know for sure, Karen, but I think it was to learn. I enjoy learning.”
There it was again. Coppélia was using human concepts and emotions to describe the world around her and how she interacted with it. How can a machine enjoy something? A machine executes a task. It has no opinion – good or bad – about what it’s doing. Karen tried a different approach.
