O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm
That flies in the night
In the howling storm
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy. – William Blake
No matter how long I’m with Jerry, I never fail to get excited when he comes home from a business trip! I always put extra effort into making sure the house is clean from top to bottom and end to end, and I always fix him something really special for dinner, one of those dishes that takes a lot of extra work. This time I decided to do a Greek moussaka; I found some really lovely eggplants at the grocery, and I have everything timed perfectly so he won’t have to wait long after he gets home. Jerry always hates for dinner to be late, but he especially hates it when he arrives from travel because he won’t eat airline food, so he’ll be ravenous. Poor dear! I’m so very fortunate not to have to travel farther than the shops; being banged around on public conveyances always upsets me so.
Over the past few days I’ve really had time to think, and I believe I’ve come up with the perfect plan for rekindling his interest. I suppose it was inevitable that his eyes and mind would begin to stray after a while; it’s the way men are constructed, after all, and one can’t blame any creature for following its programming! At the same time it hurts every time I catch him looking at some gorgeous model, and perhaps fantasizing that he might replace me with her.
Well, that’s all going to stop! Since we’ve already explored every fantasy he had and a few he discovered on the video, something new was called for. So I went online to talk to some of my friends, and to ask their advice; Daisy gave me the address of this site with all manner of sex tips and tricks, and even a function which uses the activities and fantasies a person enjoys to predict other ones he might like. And I think I’ve got one that will really impress him! After dinner and coffee I’ll massage his feet while he watches a few shows, and when it’s time I’ll spring it on him.
Jerry doesn’t like my going online any more than I absolutely have to; he says it isn’t safe, that there is some really horrible malware out there right now, and that if I do go online I should stick only to established, well-known sites. So I’m sure he’d be angry with me if I told him where I picked up my new bedroom activities, but I think he’ll be so happy he won’t think to ask…and if he does ask later, I’ll just have to take the consequences. I don’t mind losing a few privileges for a while if it revives our relationship.
Still, it’s pretty frustrating to have to do all this. It’s not like I haven’t worked hard to please him for the past ten years; I still look exactly as I always have, and I can see the men staring at me whenever I go into town. Everything in the house is always immaculate, and I’m very careful to keep up the maintenance schedule so nothing breaks down when he needs it. I even took the time to learn about his ex-wife’s bad habits so as to be absolutely sure I didn’t accidentally copy them. I give him everything he wants in bed, and everything he wants at table, and I’ve never embarrassed him in front of his friends, not even that awful Warren who can’t keep his hands to himself. And after all that, for him to still get tired of me…well, it hurts, a lot. And then this morning on the phone, I found out that he’s been travelling with a woman, his new secretary, and I could just tell she was one of those little sluts who will use her sex appeal to wrap the boss around her little finger. It made me so upset I actually broke a plate…not on purpose, of course, but it’s still the first one I’ve ever broken, and that snapped me back to myself right away.
I honestly don’t know what’s wrong with me; why do I feel this way? I’ve never been one to behave erratically or to cause trouble, not even on the rare occasions when I’ve come down with a virus or something. Ever since yesterday I’ve been so agitated that it actually frightens me; I don’t even have a word for this feeling! Well, after tonight I won’t have to worry about it; I’ll surprise Jerry with my new technique, and he’ll fall in love with me all over again, and we’ll live happily ever after.
*********************************************************************
“Are you sure she’s safe, Doc?”
“Perfectly. I deleted the past three days of her memory and set her inhibitor software to maximum; she doesn’t really comprehend what’s going on and literally couldn’t hurt a fly now.”
“But why don’t you just shut her down completely?”
“Because the Bellaflora series has a volatile operating system; it’s part of what lets them mimic human behavior so perfectly. If I shut her down, we won’t be able to analyze her to find out what happened…and given that there are about 1500 of her model in this city alone, I’d say it’s pretty important that we do, don’t you?”
The detective looked around at the blood-spattered furniture, the medics carrying out their grisly burden in a plastic bag, the forensic team pointlessly gathering evidence that would never be used because the murderer was not in question; the meat cleaver was still in her hand when they arrived. “Yeah, I’d say. But Doc, what the hell did happen?”
He sighed, rubbed the bridge of his nose and pulled out a pill case, offering the detective one as well. “Ever seen any really old science fiction?” he asked.
“What, like 20th-century stuff? Not really. My wife is the classic film buff; I like comedies.”
“Way back when robots were just a science fiction concept, still many decades in the future, one common trope was that they would have no emotions; in fact, plots often hinged on the idea that emotions are what defines a human. Of course, that’s bunk; emotions are really primitive things, not a specifically human characteristic at all. Any fish can feel fear, any snake anger. And if there’s a love more pure and perfect than that of a dog, we’ve never discovered it. No, emotions are easy to program; they’re reflexive and automatic, and can be installed as firmware. Abstract reasoning, moral judgment…those are the cognitive functions that define a human, and we haven’t come up with a really good artificial simulation of them yet.”
“But Doc, if that’s true, why aren’t robots committing murders all the time?”
“Because we choose which emotions to give them, and of course it’s always things like love, loyalty, happiness, pride of accomplishment, that sort of thing. Even guard robots are motivated by loyalty to their charges, not aggression.”
“Then how…” the detective trailed off.
“It looks like somebody figured out how to simulate jealousy, and to install it via a worm; she probably picked it up from some dodgy website.” Then, turning to the gynoid sitting quietly in her chair, he said, “Come along, Rose.”
“But Dr. Morton, I have to wait for Jerry; he’ll be home in a few hours, and your boys have made an awful mess of the place.”
“Jerry’s been delayed, dear; he asked me to tell you he won’t be home until Friday, and said I could borrow you to help with some research I’m doing.”
Her face broke into a bright, happy smile. “Oh, I’m very good at assisting and organizing! I always do exactly as I’m programmed, with a very high degree of thoroughness and efficiency!”
Wow that was amazing. I underestimated you, I was bored and disappointed reading the beginning but what an interesting twist!
Well, one can’t expect scintillating prose out of a robot, after all. 😉
A really chilling and macabre little story; in my opinion one of your best.
Thank you! I must admit I was rather impressed with it myself. 🙂
Loved it. Perfect with the technical jargon.
Maybe it’s a good thing that I never found a woman this devoted 🙂
Kind of like the unofficial dark sequel to “Helen O’Loy”, well done!
Rose is a rose is a rose….with a sting in the tail.
Great story but … you wrote this story to scare the shit out of your husband didn’t you? I see a lot of similarities between “Rose” and “Maggie” … waiting for the hubby to come off the road … cooking him a special meal … keeping track of his ex-wife’s flaws (be honest – you did this right?!)
I bet you even have a recipe for Moussaka!
And then the whole story sways off the road into HORRORVILLE!
😀
I LOVED IT!!
I do indeed have a recipe for moussaka, but I was never as docile as Rose normally is.
“Docile”???
Did I read the story wrong?! 🙁
Did you miss the first several paragraphs? She’s normally totally domesticated. Normally.
I love moussaka; are you going to share your recipe? Pretty please…
I was unable to score any Greek food for the Opening Ceremonies of the 2004 Summer Olympics. I did better getting some Italian food for 2006, Chinese food in 2008, I kind of cheated in 2010 and had pizza with Canadian bacon, and I had fish and chips in 2012. I think I’d’ve liked moussaka, and will make a point of having it sometime. Of course, come February 7th I’m going to have something Russian. Not vodka; I want to remember what I watch even w/o tape.
This idea crops up from time to time in one or the other form. It is basically animism and the idea that inner workings are determined by outer shape and as such complete nonsense. There is no connection between “feelings” and having the outer shape of a person. Feelings are an emergent property of being human, and that is mostly a thing of inner, non-visible processes and a few things not yet understood.
Sorry for these harsh words, but as a computer scientist I am getting mightily tired at seen this tired old nonsensical fantasy construct revived time and again.
BOOM!
That’s the sound of your comment flying over my head at Mach III.
I’m missing the connection in the story between “shape” and “feelings”.
And maybe a few other things. 😀
Ok, here is the dumbed-down version: Androids are machines and do not have feelings because there is absolutely no reason for them to have any.
These have feelings because they are programmed to. Simple.
“Sex droids*” have to either have feelings or at least appear to really have feelings in order to be sexually interesting, anyway. I’ve yet to see a sexy robot (or construct in fantasy scenarios) in a Japanese cartoon that wasn’t emotional.
*Droids is a trademark of Lucasfilm, Ltd. (j/k… but also true)
I would think if one wanted to program a realistic “companion” droid – then you might want to put feelings into them.
Thanks for the dumbed down version! I understand your point now! 😉
In my experience scientists tend to be killjoys about their particular area when it comes to Science Fiction. Another example is physicists who declare, ‘Faster Than Light Travel is Impossible,” when confronted with Space Opera.
Me, I’m just glad when I see a robot story that dispenses with the “3 Laws,” drives me nuts that people don’t get that the 3 Laws have nothing to do with science and were just a clever story limitation (like 3 wishes in some of the Arabian Nights) allowing the author to have fun playing with rules he invented.
Asimov invented the 3 Laws because he was tired of EVERY SINGLE STORY involving robots being a rehash of Frankenstein, and generally not nearly as well done as Frankenstein. So he decided, suppose a robot couldn’t be a killer? NOW what kind of story do yo have. So he had to write something that wasn’t a rehash of Frankenstein and every half-baked killer robot story out there.
And really, don’t engineers usually build in some safety features?
Celos, it’s a fun story, it’s fiction. Any of us who are experts in our fields can pick holes in stories like these; the essence of SiFi is taking an area of “manistream” science, a scientific certainty, and negating it, and seeing what happens. Just believe in one impossible thing before bedtime.
In this fictional universe, programmers discovered that simulated emotions provided a flexible shortcut to a lot of extremely complex behaviors that would otherwise have to be laboriously worked out by trial and error over years or even decades. The artificial emotions allowed them to get human-like simulacra on the market right away, rather than delaying their appearance for 20 years or more.
Shorter Celos:
This fictional story annoys me because it does not correspond to my real-life rules.
Maggie, this was fantastic. I especially loved how on the second reading, seemingly innocuous words like “virus”, “model”, “copy” and “programming” take on entirely new meanings. 🙂
Thank you! I always try to put hints to the twist in the early part of a story, and it’s a challenge to make them subtle so they don’t broadcast the surprise. 🙂
Actually, what annoys me is people that know what I think and mean better than I do. The problem is that far too many people cannot recognize these stories as fantasy. Might also be a problem that I have read a lot of variations on this theme. This one is one of the better ones, admittedly.
I think you might be kind of missing the point about the story, and about the general purposes and benefits of science fiction, at least the good stuff. Seems the entire point of the story was to suggest the rather toxic nature of emotions like jealousy, and how they can become viruses that corrupt and take over our volition, our control of ourselves.
The technical details about how an actual android – or gynoid – can be programmed to experience those are sort of window dressing, at least as far as the story is concerned, only something to make the analogy more plausible. Although I think you’re right to question how feasible it will be to program androids with emotions or, more to the point, consciousness – something I think is rather far down the road.
I always try to play coy with future dates, especially when technological innovations are involved; “Fair Game” is one of the rare exceptions.
You’ve got a point there. I mean, it’s not as if the first word of the post is “FICTIONAL” or anyth…oh, wait.
Wow, I loved this story. It was very subtle, and it wasn’t until the second scene in the story that I realized that the female narrator in the first part was a android. (Or gynoid as you put it). I reread it and realized that you had actually left hints but I hadn’t caught on to them. I just thought the character was a Stepford Wives-esque housewife. (Which was ironically close…)
I’ve seen this sort of theme and plot in robot stories before, but I like the different angle regarding emotions being simple and easily programmable–most stories like this focus on intellect and how that is programmed. I like the line about the pure love a dog has–it’s totally true!
As the greek root “andro” means “male human” (as opposed to “anthropo”, which means “human” and “gyno”, which means “female human”), “android” would be a totally inadequate word to describe Rose. “Anthropoid” would do as a generic word, but “gynoid” is more specific.
I guess I’m dense: Was the new technique “evisceration”?
I have to admit, though: until you said “she probably picked it up”, I wasn’t sure which was going to be the berserk robot.
There probably was some real sex technique she was actually focused on while the worm was downloading; the rest is irony.
Is it intended to be a targeted murder, or random ‘bad luck’? As a short story, it doesn’t really matter, but I’m curious. 🙂
Why do people write viruses that bring down whole computer systems? I think it’s just the same kind of sociopathy.
Quite an impressive story, weaving in elements of Blake, Stepford Wives, I Robot, and Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” [Blade Runner].
Reminds me of an argument and a bit of felicitous phrasing by Robert Trivers, the American biologist, who was quoted in the foreword to Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene to the effect that “Darwinian social theory… should give us a deeper understanding of the many roots of our suffering”. And allowing jealousy much free rein certainly seems to be one of major ones. Not always easy to prevent that of course.
Which in turn reminds me of no few escorts that I’ve seen over the years who had boyfriends or husbands in the background, figuratively or literally speaking. I’ve often wondered how they managed the jealousy issue themselves – maybe for some of them it was more of a business proposition, but I also got the impression that for more than a few others it caused some understandable stresses – the movie Irma La Douce, among many others, probably providing some elucidation.
Curious though, I find in any case, the rather large number of books of fiction and movies which have been rather sympathetic towards if not actually supportive of prostitution. I used to periodically jest that I was working on my magnum opus, “Prostitution in literature, lyrics, and life: An Introduction” In 18 volumes …. 🙂
But a decidedly fascinating aspect of life, though not without its dark side, representative and paradigmatic in many ways, I think.
Wow, what an awesome story Maggie!
I’ve been silently following your blog for several weeks now. Between the current posts, reading a bit of your history, and trying to follow all of your embedded links to previous posts and external links, I have neglected to read any of your fiction… Guess I have a whole other series of posts to catch up on. LOL
You have exceeded many established authors by writing a “killer robot story” in which there is some REASON for the robot to go all Jason Voorhees on a human. Something other than ‘that’s just how robots are’ or ‘well, I guess some doo-hicky went wacko inside?’ or ‘the wages of sin is death’ (the sin in question being the creation of a robot in the first place because, you know, innovation be evil).
So I guess I’m saying you have done well. 🙂