Single Wired Female (Wired for Love Book 2) (4 page)

The night after her phone call with Sal, Bonnie fell into a deep sleep. It was one of those sleeps that comes after a long day of mental exhaustion and fatigue. After lying down and losing consciousness, she found herself falling. Falling back through the bed and down through the misty clouds of a dream world similar to the real one.

When she saw the Space Needle she knew that it was Seattle she was falling towards. It was an older version, like something out of a past century. The cars were driving neatly along roads that ran between the buildings and the air was clear of everything with the exception of a rising, Boeing aircraft. She fell through the rooftop of an apartment building and landed softly on a bed where a dark-haired woman was sleeping.

The place seemed familiar and she was lucid enough to get up and walk around to see. She recognized the woman to be an android and next to her lay a pale, naked, and emaciated young man. There were computers, wires, and medical equipment all around the room and when she looked closer, she could see that they were hooked up to him.

The android stirred and then woke up. She looked like one of the old depictions of a female robot from the 1930’s. While her face was pretty and very humanlike, her body was all silver with visible bolts where her joints should be. Bonnie thought she looked absurd, especially since her breasts were carved from metal instead of being made of silicone. That was standard for any android female, wasn’t it? Everybody knew that. So, why was this one a machine with a human head?

When the woman stood up, Bonnie was even more shocked that she had a navel, buttocks, and a vagina.
Why would she need that?
she asked herself, but stopped when she realized that the android had been having sex with the man. The metallic woman saw the way Bonnie was looking at her master and stepped inside her field of vision, as if to protect him from her judgment.

“What is it that you need, lady?” she asked Bonnie through what appeared to be a false and frightening grin.

Bonnie tried to talk and was surprised that she could. “I’m curious about your ability to have sex,” she said to the machine and then touched the woman’s abdomen to examine the feeling of the metal. “You’re a machine, but your metal is soft and … oh my god, you’re warm! Are you one of those sex-bots? I’m dreaming about a sex-bot. Oh my,” she gasped and suddenly felt embarrassed.

“I am not a sex-bot. I was built to love and my purpose in life is to keep him happy,” the android replied, still smiling.

Bonnie chuckled and examined the body that was on the bed. “You mean this skeleton hooked up to the machines? I think that he lost the ability to feel pleasure a very long time ago, my dear. Whatever are you doing to him, besides the obvious?”

“Brad is sick,” she replied. “I am helping him to get better. His organs are failing but I have studied all of the medical manuals. There is a 5.002% chance that he can survive and then he will be himself again.”

“So, you’re a medical droid who sleeps with its patients? Is that what I’m to get from all of this?”

“I don’t think your tone is nice or appropriate,” the android said and the smile vanished from her features.

Bonnie walked over to one of the terminals and tried to read what was on the screen. The dream’s blurry edges made this hard to do so she gave up and faced the android once again.

“Seriously, what’s wrong with him? I do want to know,” she said.

“He traded his health to make me beautiful and now his life is depleting. On the internet I learned that the human body is made up of elements measured to an exact percentage. I have managed to supplement them back to Brad’s body. It took a lot of learning and now he is whole again. Soon he won’t need those drip lines. The brain is what has been a real challenge but I am almost there in figuring it out. There is an ancient practice of—”

“Are you talking alchemy?” Bonnie asked as she took the heel of her hand and smacked it against her forehead. “Seriously?” she said and began to laugh. “So magic and love is what you’re using to bring your master back? I like androids but you are something else. I don’t know who messed with your clockwork, sister—”

“Keep on laughing if it makes you feel better. See if I care,” the android said. “Any minute now the cops are going to barge in here and ruin everything I’ve worked on, anyway. They will come to haul Brad away for mechanophilia and then they will see the medical equipment and assume that I am up to something sinister.”

“But you are.” Bonnie laughed. “You’re trying to make lead into gold!” This last bit made her scream so loud with laughter that she could feel herself waking up.

“Well, it may be funny to you now but there was a time when we really tried to love him, Bonnie.”

This final statement stopped Bonnie’s laughter as the impact of the “we” came through. She sat up in the bed and drew her legs in close. It was a silly dream but the android’s final words had managed to frighten her. She looked through the glass door that led out to her balcony and stared at the ships in the harbor.

Had she watched a movie that inspired such a creepy dream? It was so sexy yet frightening at the same time. Bonnie thought on this for an extremely long time but then chalked it up to the long period of time that she had been without a partner. It made sense, at least for the android to be sleeping with a human man. She recognized the woman’s face as the accomplice from the video—that was why she dreamt of her. Now the medical equipment was self-explanatory. She had been in a hospital for a really long time and so the dream had combined her horny subconscious with the tubes and drips from her hospital room. The alchemy was just the oddball logic of her dream, and the man…well, he seemed familiar but she just couldn’t place him.

Her throat felt dry so she went to the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water. She took a deep drink but then a thought came to her mind and it made her freeze to consider. She was a young woman who hadn’t slept with a man in an extremely long time. She had been married but they had no children and she had been menstruating her entire adult life. It dawned on her that she hadn’t had her period since the time she discovered consciousness inside of the hospital bed.

She had examined herself—some for hygiene, some for play—and things were working as they should. Everything was as it was supposed to be since the last time she checked but she hadn’t bled, and that more than anything else became a cause for panic as she stood like a statue in front of the open refrigerator door.

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One of the great things about this time period, this Transcendence Age that Bonnie was living in, was that across the globe, healthcare was a right and not a privilege. Bonnie decided to take advantage of this but she thought that it would be too embarrassing to ask Sal to dig up information about her OB/GYN.

She took a cab from her apartment down to a private hospital. She walked in and gave a false name to the clerk, who got her an appointment with a doctor named Saul Hearne. When the clerk tried to scan her for identification, Bonnie thought that she would discover her false identity. She stood frozen and watched the clerk intently, but nothing came up inside of the database. This sent a red flag wailing inside of her head. Had Sal erased her identity during the investigation? It would only be thorough if he did.

The clerk went through the motions of asking her questions in order to build a new medical file. Bonnie couldn’t tell when she first engaged her but after ten minutes of questions she decided that the clerk was an android.

“Are you a machine?” she asked suddenly, and the older black woman looked up from her computer with a stoic look on her face.

“I am an android, yes, Mrs. Surefire. Is that a problem?” she asked, pausing to wait for an answer.

“No, not at all. It’s just that you just seem so real,” Bonnie said while simultaneously fanning her hands as if to say, “go on.”

The woman winked and went back to punching in the information, and Bonnie looked to see if anything in her appearance should have given her away.

“Do you feel like an android?” she asked, and the woman kept typing without bothering to look up at her.

“I’m sorry but I’m unable to process that level of question,” she said before facing Bonnie once again.

An advanced-looking machine with an older, limited core
, Bonnie thought. “Do you have a home? Um, does one of the doctors take you home at night when you all close up? Or, do you just sit here doing clerk stuff all the time?” she pressed.

“You ask a lot of android-related questions, Mrs. Surefire. Is this appointment a legitimate one?” the woman asked suddenly.

“What’s that supposed to mean? Of course it’s legit,” Bonnie snapped. “Seriously, did they program you to be a jerk, or did you pick that up from humans?”

“I am sorry if that offended you, Mrs. Surefire, but your line of questioning indicates that you are either a robotics enthusiast or someone that has an interest in our practice that goes beyond patient care. You have triggered my warning algorithm at core level yellow, which means that you are a vendor, pretending to need our doctor so that you can have him in a room for solicitation.”

“Not quite, Lisa,” Bonnie said sarcastically, using the name written on the woman’s lapel. “I’m here to make sure that all of my female business is working and there is nothing that I want to sell to your doctor.”

The android smiled warmly before speaking. “I am sorry for the suspicions, Mrs. Surefire. I have taken down all of the information I need. Please report to room 305, which is the fifth room on the third floor. Once inside you must remove your clothes and put on one of our robes. The doctor will be in to see you in just a few minutes.”

Bonnie gathered her handbag and scoffed at the android before crossing the empty lobby to take the elevator up three floors. She was feeling good, especially after telling the android off, and now she just needed to know about her menstruation.

“You fooled Lisa, congratulations,” said the red-headed doctor as he came through the door an hour after Bonnie had put on the robe.

She was already annoyed by the length of the wait but wasn’t surprised since it looked as if Hearne was the only doctor working that night. He was young and sharp, and as he walked up to her she felt uncomfortable with having him check her out.

“I know that you would prefer a woman, but I am a professional, Rita,” he said as she stared lasers into him. “Giving a false name and coming in off the streets doesn’t really give you many options in terms of who sees you. Get my drift? I’m not trying to be rude, I’m just saying. Now what’s going on with you, Rita Surefire?” and he rolled his eyes at the name.

“I haven’t had my period. I hope you can understand my need for privacy?” Bonnie said to him and he dropped the smirk and nodded his head assuredly.

“Have you taken a pregnancy test?” he asked and she stared at him to indicate that she wasn’t stupid.

“Okay, so, when was the last time you had sex or took a pregnancy test?” he tried again.

“Over a year ago. I’m not pregnant. This is all sorts of odd and that’s why I’m here. Do you honestly think I’d split my legs for you instead of just buying a pregnancy test?”

“I had to ask. You’d be surprised,” the doctor said calmly and then slipped his hands inside his lab coat. “Are you on any hormones, or any form of birth control? Those have a tendency—”

“No and no,” she said and then exhaled audibly out of frustration.

The doctor dropped the questions and began his routine, first checking her heart rate and then going even deeper into his analysis. After ten minutes had passed he had her lay back and then a nurse brought in something that looked like a metal tray. She lay it down on Bonnie’s stomach and the doctor began to work on its surface.

When he was satisfied he stood up and the nurse—another android—took the tray out of the room.

“Well, that would explain why you aren’t having a period,” he said with a perplexed expression on his face. Bonnie sat up and crossed her arms as she stared at him, questioningly.  “You’re not human,” the doctor said without making a move. His face was like someone that had seen a UFO or something so traumatic that it had him in shock. His eyes were wide and he started fidgeting, as if he couldn’t really understand what she was.

“So, I’m some sort of alien creature. Is that what you’re telling me?” Bonnie said.

“No, no, not an alien. You’re some sort of high-functioning android, Rita. Someone made you to look like a human, in such a way that even your insides look organic. If I was a first year doctor I would have fallen for it, but I can tell fake blood and bones from the real thing. You’re some sort of masterpiece, like government-issue. How did you happen to come here? Is this some sort of test to see if you can fool a doctor with the way you look?”

Bonnie would have probably answered his questions if she were able to move as she stood staring at the floor in disbelief. How? How was she an android? She was Bonnie O’Neal, a human woman with a childhood and parents. Sure, she couldn’t exactly remember any of it but she was sure that—

She sprung from the table and snatched up her bag, not bothering to collect her clothes as she pushed past him to exit the room. Tears poured down her face as she found the stairs, and she descended them quickly to the bottom floor. As she crossed the lobby and saw the clerk, she recalled how rude she had been. It made her feel foolish beyond measure and when she got outside she felt as if she had been drowning and finally found air.