by Ray Verola
And so, the deed was done.
Now, two weeks later, as the road flashed by at high speed, Taylor had to acknowledge to himself in the quiet of his PTV that yielding to Sophia had worked out well. Given his average looks combined with a touch of social awkwardness, he had to admit there would be no chance he’d ever be able to attract a real woman who’d even come close to the gorgeous Jennifer. The only previous serious relationship in his life, with a co-worker when they were in their mid-twenties, had ended in heartbreaking disaster. At that time, Taylor swore off ever having a close human relationship. A vow he’d kept since then.
Jennifer was anatomically a human duplicate in every way. Every part of her body looked and felt like that of a human female. In fact, outside of a small blue patch under the left armpit, required by law for all personal robots, Jennifer appeared to be human in every aspect imaginable. But she’d never grow old, never lose her perfect figure, and never get sick. She didn’t need to eat and never would develop pesky human foibles like body odor or bad breath. And the sex with Jennifer was amazing.
Like all RobotWorld personal robots, Jennifer could evaluate the emotional reactions of humans more accurately than a real person, according to scientific tests conducted by RW. Just as important, a personal robot could respond appropriately and with great empathy to human speech and body language. The ability of a personal robot to “read and react” to a human being was perfect almost every time, according to the RW advertisements Taylor had a part in writing. RobotWorld ads boldly claimed a relationship with an RW personal robot was “better than a real one—and without all the drama.”
Almost home now, Taylor grinned in satisfaction at the thought that Jennifer would never develop the petty grievances and jealousies that all humans seemed to eventually create. His testing of this new personal robot prototype had worked out beyond his wildest dreams even though, as he found out a week later, all the final testing had already been completed by RW scientists.
Being a personal robot, Jennifer had been programmed to be totally compliant with his wishes. And if he ever tired of her (which right now he could never imagine—he always saw himself as a loyal, one-woman man, even if the woman was a robot) and wanted to rent or purchase another personal robot resembling Sofía Vergara or Brigitte Bardot (two other all-time Taylor favorites) for one-on-one hanky-panky or even a threesome, Jennifer would happily give her blessing.
Taylor parked his PTV in the underground garage of the luxurious Galaxy Apartments, one of the few such apartment complexes in Capital City. As he exited the vehicle, Taylor saw Ernest Billick standing near the elevator bay. Ernest had been the apartment’s porter for a year, almost as long as Taylor had lived here. Ernest, about the same age as Taylor, wore his usual work clothes of a dark-blue shirt and pants. Ernest had gone prematurely bald and had a protruding belly that fell over the belt of his work pants.
A smiling Ernest hit a button on the wall to call the elevator for Taylor and walked toward him. “Hey, hey. Here comes my favorite tenant. Good to see you, sir.”
“You don’t need to call me sir, Ernest. Given how long we’ve known each other.”
Ernest said, “With as much as you’ve accomplished in life, you deserve to be called sir.” Ernest displayed a permanently slumped-over posture and a pronounced limp, with his right foot dragging on the concrete, in what appeared to be a constant struggle to keep up with the rest of his body.
Ernest pointed at Taylor’s parked vehicle and said, “Hey, hey. I love your new PTV. How’s it been running?”
“Just fine, Ernest.” Taylor smiled. “Let me see your wrist computer.”
Ernest returned the smile and extended his arm. He knew what was coming.
Taylor extended his arm, and both their wrist computers beeped as they almost touched.
Ernest said, “Thank you, sir . . . I mean, Taylor. Always appreciate it.”
Taylor nodded and beamed, happy that he’d done a good turn for Ernest with a fifty-dollar tip that he’d programmed into his wrist computer to go from his bank account to Ernest’s.
Taylor had known Ernest for years and recommended him for the porter job. It made Taylor feel good to help Ernest get the job. Every week on this day, a Wednesday, Taylor would slip Ernest a fifty-dollar credit “for outstanding service.” Taylor had felt sorry for Ernest for as long as he’d known him and felt a need to help him out. Ernest seemed genuinely grateful for the job Taylor had obtained for him and the tips, which—he’d told Taylor—no one else in the apartment complex ever gave him.
Taylor said, “Always good seeing you, my friend. Gotta get upstairs.” He just had to see Jennifer. Couldn’t wait another minute. Taylor rushed past Ernest and entered the elevator.
“Always great seeing you—and thanks again for the you-know-what,” Ernest said as the elevator door closed.
5
Taylor rode the high-speed elevator up to his tenth-floor penthouse apartment. Upon entering, he was immediately struck by the surprising smell of food cooking. His eyebrows raised. Jennifer had never cooked before, as far as he knew. But almost before the aroma registered, out of the kitchen dashed a barefoot Jennifer, wearing a snug white blouse and tight blue jeans, her long, blonde hair flowing like a flag whipping in the wind.
“Honey!” she screamed.
Taylor dropped his briefcase just in time to catch her with both arms as she leaped toward him and wrapped her legs around his waist. He laughed uncontrollably as she peppered his lips, neck, and face with rapid kisses. When he finally caught his breath, he placed a hand around the nape of her neck, kissed her hard on the mouth, then pulled back and said, “So happy to see you too. Have you been cooking?”
She slid her legs slowly down his lower body until her feet hit the floor, and they were standing face-to-face, arm-in-arm. She said, “It’s a surprise, baby. My first attempt at the art of food preparation. I know how much you enjoy those meals from Lee’s China Garden restaurant that we’ve ordered in. So I decided to go shopping this afternoon and re-create one.” She kissed him softly on the lips. “I downloaded the food preparation instructions into my head this afternoon. You are requested to please change into something more comfortable, and meet me in the dining room in five minutes or less.”
After a quick shower and changing into jeans and a white, V-neck T-shirt, a barefoot Taylor entered the spacious, brightly-lit dining room. Jennifer kissed him, took his hand, and led him to the dining room table, which consisted of two heavily lacquered white pedestals that supported four thick curved-glass panels, which in turn supported the weight of the large glass top. Six white leather swivel chairs surrounded the table.
“How do you like it?” Jennifer asked, pointing to the table top.
On the large dining room table was a piping hot buffet spread of wonton soup, boneless spare ribs, steamed broccoli with garlic sauce, and sweet-and-sour shrimp with fried rice.
“Fantastic,” Taylor said. “It looks great and smells great. You got all my favorites. You’re too good.”
“I know. Like my modesty?” She chuckled. “Please sit and eat. I’ll serve.”
Jennifer filled a large bowl with wonton soup and placed it before him. She sat across from him and gazed into his eyes.
“I know I’ve asked this before,” Jennifer said, “but do you think it’s weird that I don’t eat?”
He shook his head. “You don’t have to keep asking. The answer will always be absolutely not, love.”
“I could fake eating and drinking, as so many of us personal bots do, but that would be . . . faking. And I don’t think you’d want me to fake things.”
“Absolutely right. Real is what I’m after. And you’re as real as real can be to me.”
“Okay, then. For the last time, let me ask this question. Do you think it’s weird that I like to watch you eat?”
“Absolutely not. In fact, I enjoy
the company.”
Jennifer giggled. “Great. I like to be with you as much as possible. I won’t ask silly questions about eating again. I promise.”
“Mmm. This soup is better than the restaurant’s.”
She displayed a hint of a smile as she winked. “I added a pinch each of garlic, turmeric, and ground cumin—as suggested by one cooking website maintained by a master chef—to give the soup an extra kick.”
With the care and dexterity of a topnotch waitress, Jennifer served each course. They made small talk while smiling at each other. Taylor loved the way Jennifer paid strict attention to whatever he said and how she always laughed at his jokes (no matter how lame) with enthusiasm.
After he’d cleaned his plate, Taylor patted his belly with both hands and said, “I’m stuffed. Without a doubt, everything was superior to restaurant quality. If you ever wanted to, you could put Lee’s China Garden out of business in a heartbeat. Spectacular job, Jen.”
“Thank you, honey.” She rose and grasped his hand. “You know what I think? I think a great meal like you just enjoyed deserves a pièce de résistance, as the French would say.” She smiled. “To the bedroom, my love.”
He laughed. “I’ll go without any résistance, sweet.”
He followed her to the bedroom where they slowly undressed each other and fell onto the bed.
Jennifer reached over to an end table and opened the drawer. “I’ve got another little surprise for you, hon.” She held up a small white box with the word Serenity printed in black across the top and the familiar blue cloud under it.
“Whoa,” Taylor said. He recognized the distinctive package he’d seen countless times on the telescreen. He’d heard all the advertisements about how Serenity provided “a strong pleasure sensation—anytime, every time.” But he’d also read the rumors about its strong addictive properties and how it suppressed human initiative. The rumors were believable, especially after observing the society around him. One of the strange properties of Serenity was that its negative side effects, outside of the blunting of the human spirit, could be different for each person. The most common negative symptoms were headaches, sluggishness, and hand tremors. And there were many other variations, like the need to vomit after meals and blackouts.
Taylor said, “I don’t know if you’re aware of the stories regarding Serenity, Jen. Although it’s supposed to give a great pleasure buzz, it’s rumored that Serenity takes away one’s drive, some even say one’s humanity, over time. And there seems to be a correlation between those downtown homeless disappearances and Serenity use. I don’t know why the government doesn’t crack down on this drug.”
Jennifer frowned. “I know all about Serenity. Literally. The day before yesterday, while you were at work, I downloaded every word ever written about it into my head. Serenity comes in many doses. The lowest dose, eighty-one milligrams, which is what I have here, has been proven in tests to be nonaddictive, hangover-free, and safe—as long as one doesn’t exceed four pills per day. And those disappearing homeless people are probably drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana also. Alcohol and marijuana cause far more problems than Serenity. The homeless are drinking and smoking themselves into oblivion. You know the old saying: you reap what you sow.”
The exact match of Jen’s “reap what you sow” words concerning the homeless with Sophia’s back in the bar surprised Taylor. But he shook it off. “I’ve read the research too. But I don’t trust it, I guess. I believe it’s propaganda.”
“Oh, the research can be trusted, silly. If it’s on the telescreen and the government says it, then it must be true.” She popped a pill from the box and reached for his mouth. “Let’s give it a shot. One time can’t hurt.”
“But the sex we’ve had has been so great.”
She winked at him and smiled her irresistible smile. “As the telescreen adverts say, Serenity will make any situation, including sex, better. You know the Serenity slogan: ‘It’s all good.’”
“Yeah. It’s all good. Allegedly. Well . . . it sounds like you did the proper investigation—with your brain download, of course. I guess it’ll be okay.” Taylor laughed as he opened his mouth, but had a gnawing doubt he might be sorry to do what he was about to do. Ah, what the hell.
She put the quick-dissolving pill on his tongue, and he swallowed.
A pleasant swirling sensation started in his head and quickly moved down his body. Every bit of tension he’d been carrying in his muscles was instantly and gently released. Jennifer kissed him tenderly on the lips.
Taylor didn’t remember much after her kiss, although he did remember feeling spectacular, a word he rarely used before Jennifer came into his life two weeks ago. Now it had become his favorite word.
6
The next morning at work, wearing his usual gray pants and gray short-sleeve shirt with the red RW logo on the left pocket, Taylor massaged his forehead with both hands as he sat at his desk. He felt slightly dizzy, a strange sensation he didn’t like. The Serenity? Hell, Jen said it was the lowest dose. She researched it. Everything she’s researched for me before has checked out. It’s probably just the virus going around here at work. He ambled to the sink in the small restroom of his private office and splashed cold water on his face. Taylor had a meeting in five minutes with Sophia to discuss last month’s sales figures.
Sales was Taylor’s only focus in his job. Last month’s production was terrific, so Taylor wasn’t dreading this meeting. In fact, he was looking forward to it. He expected nothing but positive feedback from the boss.
But Taylor did have a problem with RobotWorld and the effect its product was having on society. He had a growing concern about how personal robots had evolved and become sentient. The majority of humans hadn’t noticed this situation, it seemed. But Taylor had—and it wasn’t because of his high IQ or his one-percent intuition power. Why hadn’t others? Perhaps it was due to the way the government had manipulated the population to ignore societal problems through the wise use of the media over recent years. Add the tacit and not-so-tacit government support of Serenity, which numbed the minds of so many. Add the intimidation factor of an aggressive police-army, and it was clear that a person who displayed the bad judgment of locking horns with the government did so at his or her own risk.
As Taylor saw it, industrial robots were a problem in that they took jobs from humans. But even though this situation was significant, it was not Taylor’s major worry regarding the RobotWorld revolution. Industrial robots looked like robots, not like people. They were hunks of metal built for functionality to perform repetitive tasks, mainly in factories and all types of stores. There was no attempt in the RW manufacturing process to make industrial robots look human.
The bigger problem to Taylor was with RW’s personal robots, even though he was currently thrilled at being in a relationship with one. Personal robots were intended to look and act human—and the designers at RobotWorld had managed to succeed in this goal to an outstanding degree. Even the most perceptive of humans couldn’t tell a personal robot from a real person.
A year earlier, Sophia had called Taylor into her office. She stood as he entered. With an unusually broad smile (which he hadn’t seen before or since), she loudly announced, “Our scientists have just made your job a lot easier, Taylor.” She paused a beat to maximize the significance of what she was about to say. “They have defeated the uncanny valley for mass-produced personal bots.”
Taylor raised his arms to the ceiling and let out a “Whoop!”
They both knew what defeating the uncanny valley meant. The Uncanny Valley Hypothesis was proposed in 1970 by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori. It underlined the greatest problem of the robotics industry, dating from the initial time (long before the existence of RobotWorld) companies started building robots that were intended to pass for human.
Mori’s hypothesis stated that as the appearance of a robot becomes more huma
n, a human being’s emotional response to the robot becomes more positive. However, as the appearance becomes almost but not quite human, humans generally react negatively, with feelings of strangeness, fear, or revulsion being the most common responses.
The “uncanny valley” referred to a graph of human feedback to this phenomenon, with “similarity to a human” being the horizontal line, and “positive feelings of familiarity” being the vertical line. People usually have a favorable reaction to robots the more human they look, such as a cute Robbie the Robot type or C-3PO of twentieth-century Star Wars fame, until the likeness becomes too strong and yet fundamentally not human. At this point, the acceptance of the robot drops suddenly, indicating a negative “valley” reaction on the graph.
RobotWorld had spent millions of dollars trying to get its personal robots to appear, act, and feel completely human with none of the “tells” that would expose them as robots. Taylor had been one of the first to hear from Sophia that they had accomplished this daunting task. The uncanny valley was no more.
In the year since this formerly unsolvable impediment had been overcome, numerous tests of RW personal bots had established the breakthrough of RW scientists. One popular telescreen show, Real or Robot, was a half-hour broadcast each week asking human contestants to determine whether an individual performing a task was a human or an RW bot. It was a hopeless mission with often comical results.
Although RobotWorld had been the foremost producer of robots in the world for nearly a decade, it had come to totally corner the market in the past year. A frequently-mentioned saying around the RW offices was, “There really is no number two.”
The huge twenty-five-story, solid-gray RW building occupied three square city blocks near the center of the former Washington, DC, right over what used to be the Metro Center stop of the old Metrorail. Taylor hated the ominous, antiseptic look of the RobotWorld complex.
RobotWorld was a self-contained operation, with all its functions happening at this giant facility. The westernmost part of the structure held the office area, including the executive offices where Taylor worked.
