Terra Nova: An Anthology of Contemporary Spanish Science Fiction (11 page)

Myriam spoke slowly, although with energy
and enthusiasm; her speech, it was obvious, was made up of a series
of sentences learned by rote, but she tried to transmit her own
trust in them and she didn’t limit herself to speaking like... a
robot. I thought that I could fall in love with her, so warm and
affectionate with me even if that was a requirement of her job. I
am very easily infatuated, able to be passionate with someone
whether for a few brief minutes or for months or even entire
years.

I recall having let myself be seduced by a
lovely older woman who, by chance, shared a hotel room with me on
an adventurous trip to the island of Madeira. Her name was Beatriz
and she was as polite and discrete as she was exquisite in her
grooming: she brushed her hair every night before bed, and to go
down to dinner she wore these long, diaphanous dresses that our
entire group, rather less formal in their attire, admired. I
remember being captivated by the Icelandic guide who for a month
and a half showed us her native country on a tour of unforgettable
landscapes; a female Viking, towering one meter eighty-five in
height, a blonde mane of curly hair, stunningly beautiful, wild,
who I wasn’t able to even speak to for a few days, such was the
turmoil I felt merely by looking at her. I remember Tane, a Danish
woman who was tall and thin, but graceful as a gazelle in her
movements, for whom I felt a sweet carnal desire and an
extraordinary tenderness during the weekend we shared a course to
free ourselves from work addiction. I remember... in short, there
were more cases of momentary fascinations, of sudden infatuations
that used to ambush me rather frequently... and with few practical
results, except a few brief flings. It was this tendency to
fleeting loves, especially platonic ones, that had led me to be
seated in front of Myriam.

“The main goal of our services,” she
continued, “is the domestic or emotional wellbeing of our clients;
that they are happier, we would dare to say. So don’t have any
doubts, Emma, about how right your decision to come here was. Now I
am going to create a personal file for you, and we need a few bits
of data about yourself and about the characteristics you desire in
your android companion.”

I nodded, and while she typed on the
computer, I started to imagine that the two of us went on a trip to
Corsica, for example, and I saved her from falling off a cliff, or
that, lost and alone in a furious blizzard in Greenland, we had to
seek refuge in an igloo together and spend the night embracing to
stay warm.

Once we had finished with my personal data,
she began with the important details:

“In your request for information you said
that you wanted an android companion to be your partner, your
lover.”

“I said a gynoid.”

She lifted her eyes toward me for a moment
and smiled, relaxed.

“Yes. Sorry, it’s my heterosexual
assumption, I suppose. A gynoid.”

“You do make lesbian gynoids as well, I
suppose,” I added, with a laugh that was somewhere between joking
and nervous.

“Emma, we will create an gynoid specially
for you, according your desires and needs. Physically, it will be
however you want, and no one, not even you yourself, could
distinguish it from a woman of flesh and bone. Its exterior will be
made of human hair and skin, created in a laboratory. It feels
perfect, as you’ll verify for yourself. The eyes are artificial
implants, it’s true, but you can’t tell, and very important: the
tongue is also organic,” now it was she who let loose with a little
laugh somewhere between embarrassed and malicious. “Inside, the
gynoid will have a metal skeleton and plastic connection cables,
and a computer-brain. It comes with a ten-year guarantee, which
includes repair of any technical problem.”

How did I want my gynoid to be? Neither very
tall nor very short, normal weight, not too beautiful either (so
she didn’t call attention to herself), short brown hair, and
blue-green eyes because I’d always liked that color. There was a
catalog for choosing faces and I opted for one of them. Above all,
since I could choose, I didn’t want her to resemble any of my exes,
so she didn’t remind me of any of them. Karol, for example, was
rather short, at fifty she was starting to put on weight, but it
looked good on her, especially when she wore those minimalist
intellectual glasses. Manuela was never beautiful, and with her
rebellious brown hair cut short, she always seemed like an eternal
adolescent; I sometimes see her ghost still, with a black backpack
and coat, white sneakers, I see her on the subway, or in the
street...

Myriam noted the data I gave her, typing
furiously on her computer.

“You’d be surprised, Emma, the number of
people who turn to us. The idea that only strange people, with very
severe emotional or mental problems, are the ones to look for an
android as their partner, is completely false. Of course, a
heterosexual, whether man or woman, who wishes to have children,
wouldn’t, but there are many divorced people and older people who
live alone. We fabricate androids with any apparent age. In
addition, our creatures are so perfect that we include a complete
personal memory in their electronic brain, in addition to a basic
or even extensive cultural heritage, as per the client’s
request.”

Implanted memories. What a terrible wonder.
So it turned out that I could choose the look, age, and nationality
of my gynoid (“many people opt for a supposed foreigner so it’s
easier to explain their sudden appearance in your life and why they
have such little idea of social customs here,” Myriam explained)
but not the memory. This would help so I didn’t know everything
about her, and that unknown part would be something new to
discover, the necessary surprise, just as with a human woman.

“We also advise that your gynoid have some
defects, so that the relationship be more real. Someone completely
submissive and totally perfect can come to be boring, don’t you
think, Emma? Of course, it’s better if you chose defects that don’t
bother you unduly.”

I detailed everything: age (around my own);
I listed my tastes and hobbies, so that she would share them.

“And now I will tell you
the most important part: this gynoid that we’ll create for you will
love you, from the start and for always, while she lasts. She will
be attentive to you. She won’t be able to betray you, ever, in any
way. She will never abandon you for anyone or anything. And she
cannot hurt you, nor let anyone else do so. That is her Law. Her
free will is limited by that Law, perhaps just like when any human
falls in love and loses part of their will; but in your gynoid
there won’t be that ambivalence of love and hate that we
true
humans feel so
often, precisely for having lost free will. And nonetheless, she
will feel. Although you don’t believe it now, our machines have
evolved so much that I assure you that they show true emotions. As
for how much they think... you’ll find a creature with a brain full
of files, able to create synapses even if they’re electronic ones;
that brain is also so recent, it is as innocent as a newborn baby,
and just like a baby, it is able to learn. That will depend on you
completely, you can contribute or not to the development of its
cognitive abilities. Now you just need to choose her name, and in
three months (that wait is necessary) you’ll have her
here.”

I returned home as excited as I was
confused; I practiced some tai chi, then I sat in the living room
and little by little started to doubt. What if I was creating too
many expectations and then, when I picked up Deirdre, I was
disappointed? Would it really be possible for her to seem like a
real woman, and not an automata that recited Carson McCullers’
biography in a metallic voice, for example? I decided to call my
friend Silvia, the one who had recommended I go to the Kapek
Corporation.

“For now, try to forget about it, and stop
dissecting it,” she told me, on the other end of the videophone,
because she knew about my obsessive tendencies. “Keep doing what
you’ve done until now, have fun, and if you meet a nice girl while
you’re waiting, that’s great. Although given how the market is,
that’s not easy, don’t I know. Out there, and at our age, people
are already tucked away in their homes, or they’re stumbling around
out there, strange or crazy or even normal like us (I’d like to
think we’re normal), but in search of something that we don’t find
because... I don’t know why, because we try to control the other,
we demand too much, or we put up with too little, or because of our
selfishness, our inability to commit, or to compromise, or to live
together... Anyway, there are so many reasons.”

I couldn’t complain about my life at all: I
had a good job, which I liked (I was the head of a literature
imprint for a print and electronics publisher), a job that had
allowed me to get the credit necessary to pay the Kapek Corp.; that
is, I was among the privileged elite who could make such an
expenditure, even if it took me three years to pay off that loan.
It’s true that, recently, work had absorbed me too much, and I was
beginning to turn into a workaholic. Perhaps because on returning
home I found it empty? Still, loneliness didn’t frighten me, and I
knew how to occupy my time: home, reading, music, the cinema; I was
always invited to some event, and whenever I had vacation days, I
took advantage of them to travel.

“And if you want to carry on with all that
coming and going you do,” Sylvia said, “that’s no problem. My
friend Leticia, who already has her gynoid and lives with her,”
(Sylvia had told me about them when she recommended the Kapek Corp.
to me) “disconnects her whenever she wants, or leaves her home if
she goes to see her family or the few friends she has left. Luckily
her partner is an gynoid, because Leticia is pretty unbearable, a
flesh and blood woman couldn’t take her. Your case is different,
you have trouble finding a girl because of your shyness and your
insecurity. And look at it this way, you can keep your independence
and freedom without having to give any explanations. And of course
you avoid the problem of not liking your partner’s friends or
family, or that she doesn’t like yours.”

But I only wanted to come home early, and
let myself fall onto the sofa, my head on Deirdre’s lap, and to
tell her about my day, and to not think, to not perceive that
miniscule black hole that I sometimes found when I looked around,
like a cockroach that you find in the bedroom: that black hole that
threatened to swallow me some day.

“I haven’t met Leticia’s
gynoid,” Silvia continued, “but I have met the one that belongs to
my friend Laurie. His name is Ray. If you want, we can meet with
both of them, Laurie does take his with him when he meets with
people. Not at first —at first he left it at home, I told you about
Laurie, the typical gay sex-addict who hooked up with everyone he
met. He wanted to have a partner and keep carrying on with that
lifestyle. What happens is that he discovered that Ray could...
participate in his adventures without any problems. In the first
place, he’s not jealous, he ordered for him not to be jealous. And
also, since he’s an android, in other words a machine, he never
gets tired of sex, he can handle anything, and he does anything
he’s asked to do.” Silvia cackled. “Think about it, what a
StarLotto jackpot to have an android like that for someone who
likes sex a lot. Ray looks completely human, I assure you. He’s
very handsome, of course, tall, muscled, a stud who makes even me
swoon, dark, green eyes, elegant, educated, and as much of a
sybarite as Laurie, who’s educated him very well. You don’t notice
at all that he’s artificial. What’s more, talking with him, he
seems very educated and of course more intelligent and sensible
than a high percentage of humanity.”

“That I can believe.”

“Ah, and finally, I have a neighbor who also
ordered an android. She’s an older woman, a widow, and a PhD in
quantum physics or something like that, retired already, but she’s
sick, so she can’t go out much and meet people or she had problems
precisely because of her sickness, the thing is she decided to get
an android. I’ve dealt with him, and I’ll tell you the same thing
as with Ray, this one also seems human. She had asked for an
old-style gentleman, one of those who opens the door for you and
lets you go first instead of closing it on your face or stepping on
your toes in the subway. Let me describe him for you: an older
gentleman as well, not handsome but pleasant looking; I don’t know
why she didn’t order one who was more attractive, but of course,
androids can also be ugly or normal. And you can’t believe how he
takes care of her, with affection, dedication, and patience. And he
also knows about quantum physics! Oh, it’s eight, I’ve got to run
and see my bus girl.”

Silvia was madly in love with the driver of
the bus she took at 20:16 to go to her tai chi class; she spoke
with her every day, although it hadn’t gone beyond her subtle,
failed attempt to ask for a date. In any event, she had a better
time than when she and I went out trying to score. Since I had
broken up with Karol, Silvia and I went out a few nights: the last
time, we got mugged. The time before that, we went to a party that
turned out had been cancelled at the last minute, but we had to
stay and help put everything in order and clean up the place
because they were friends of Silvia. The time before that, a young
girl approached us and began to cry (she’d drunk too much) and tell
us about her family and romantic troubles, which were considerable,
and it felt too cruel to abandon her to her fate and her sorrows,
so we spent almost the entire night consoling her, until she hooked
up with a foreign student who appeared suddenly. And the time
before that there was a cold snap and all the bars on the scene
were empty... After that, over the past months, we usually met at
Silvia’s house or my own to watch a film, chat quietly and analyze
the behavior of our exes and the reasons for our failures with
them.