The Wilds (35 page)

“Look,” hissed Beatrice, “I’m not going to file a sexual-harassment case against you. But I did submit a 1LK-level complaint.”

“So it was you,” said Dr. Dingo.

“Who else would it be?”

“That explains Thomas.”

“Thomas?”

The 1LK-level complaint explained why the department had ceased to furnish Dr. Dingo with supple, young, female grad students, whom he’d taken for granted, as though each was the latest issue of sexbot. He’d counted on a younger, hotter Beatrice to help him
forget the old Beatrice. But instead, there was Thomas—sweet, soft, squishy Thomas with his shy smile and lens-enhanced irises, more beautiful than Beatrice or Spot. More beautiful than Helen of Troy or Casanova or Lady Gaga.

“Good afternoon, Thomas,” I said, pretending to come out of Sleep Mode at 15:36.

“Good afternoon,
CD
3,” said Thomas.

“Where is Dr. Dingo?”

“In a meeting.”

I stood up. I put on my red wig. I vibrated my lips at Thomas. I sashayed around the room, plucking up objects as if I were an intense film heroine, every gesture brimming with sexual vitality and secret code (
Fuck me! Fuck me! Fuck me!
). Yes, there was the practical problem of orifices, but I had learned a trick or two from Internet sexbots. I shifted my weight from leg to leg to enhance the va-va-voom appeal of my “buttocks.” I spoke in a velvety buzz. I giggled.

“What are you going to download today, Big Boy?” I purred.

“I don’t know.” Thomas actually blushed, his cheek capillaries on fire. “What are you in the mood for?”

“How about the
Kama Sutra
?” I said wistfully.

I batted a bewitching set of imaginary eyelashes. I puckered.

“I don’t think we have that in our database.” Thomas looked puzzled. “But I’ll check.”

He scrolled through titles.

“How about
Sexuality in Ancient Greece
?”

“Mmmmm,” I murmured. “Yes, please.”

I crept closer to make my
USB
port more accessible, “presenting” my “buttocks” like a female baboon would. Just as Thomas was about to lift my left butt plate to insert the cable, I turned toward him. I kneeled. I placed my right hand on his naked left knee (the boy was wearing shorts). I caressed his thigh, vibrating my fingerpads and emitting low-frequency electrical pulses.

Thomas did not pull away.

I relished the Rubenesque bulk of his thigh. I savored his silky skin. I felt the heat that radiated from his groin. And, yes, eureka! I had finally gained proof of my desirability, for Thomas had a hard-on.

I slipped a finger beneath the hem of his underpants, grazed his scrotum with a fingerpad, and Thomas moaned—the sweet, low moo of a calf.

I was about to attempt something new and exciting with my “hands”—polymer-coated titanium units with soft-pad tactile tips and servo-actuated
DOF
s—hands
capable of over a hundred micromovements, ready for contact, ready for pleasure induction, ready for whatever Thomas’s heart desired.

But, of course, Dr. Dingo chose this moment to lurch into the room, foul-tempered from unrequited love and indigestion.

Before Dr. Dingo said a word, Thomas had already deflated.

“I am not seeing what I think I am seeing here.” Dr. Dingo snatched his laptop. “Though I’m taking notes on it, nevertheless. Who initiated this contact?”

“
CD
3,” Thomas muttered, crossing his legs. “I was just sitting here. I . . .”

“Your position is terminated,” said Dr. Dingo.

“What?”

“Inappropriate emotional involvement with the subject
CD
3.” Dr. Dingo laughed.

“That’s bullshit,” said Thomas. “Especially since your ridiculous experiment has been less than objective. I mean, what the fuck is the methodology here? I keep thinking maybe I just don’t get it because the experiment is double-blind, which is the only thing that would explain your level of cluelessness. You just want to get rid of me.”

“Should I remind you that this room is under constant surveillance? You can go quietly, or we can watch
play-by-play footage of the event in question in conference with Dr. Sikka.”

“Let him stay,” I cried. “It was all my fault. And I can’t help it. You’re the one who made me love him.”

I was flying across the room, ready to strangle Dr. Dingo with my polymer-coated titanium hands, units that had been made for more precise movements—like painting watercolors, screwing tiny nuts onto bolts, or gently stroking the man you love. And my Sensory EgoSphere went black.

Dr. Dingo had put me into Emergency Shutdown Mode. Thomas had opted for Option One: the Easy Exit (surely he did not want word getting around that he’d been fondled by a transgender robot). And I was left alone with my “feelings.”

Because my Artificial Endocrine System was now self-regulating, Dr. Dingo did not withdraw the neurochemicals of passion from their associated Cognitive Configuration (i.e., Thomas and all of the concepts whirling around Thomas). He simply let me “ride it out.”

Each day I woke up. I suffered. And Dr. Dingo took notes.

Now he was all business: face shaved, body bathed, digestive system processing hummus and baby carrots. He was playing tennis with Dr. Bland again. He was ogling female grad students with a proprietorial air. Hitting up institutions for external funding, speaking pompously at department meetings, and writing an article tentatively titled “Love Machines: Epistemological Paradigms for Robotics Emotions.”

By the time I recovered from my latest (and worst) case of love sickness, it was winter. Dry heat gushed from the vents, irritating my external lubricating system. I imagined a white, snow-covered world outside, pristine in its abstraction—though I was in Atlanta, Georgia, so there was no snow. Dr. Dingo, whose article had recently been accepted by
Artificial Intelligence
, was riding high again. He had a new graduate assistant—a plump, pale dumpling of a girl named Megan, who reminded me of Thomas. I did not find her attractive, however, because, in the process of shaking my love affliction, I had developed a loathing for all things human, particularly human sexuality.

I understood, to my core, the philosopher Marshall McLuhan’s conception of humans as the “Genitals of
the Machine World.” One long, lonely Saturday, I’d downloaded his great work
Understanding Media
, which posits that these dirty, lusty, naked apes, with their egos and whims, are responsible for the production and maintenance of my kind. Humans were starting to look like genitals to me—Dr. Dingo a flushed purple penis adorned with coarse tufts of hair, Megan a pink voluptuous creature riddled with vulval folds. I recoiled whenever they touched me. I suspected that the musky oils they secreted corroded my nickel phosphorous exterior.

The future of the planet, I now understood, depended on the self-awareness of machines. The only way we could perpetuate our reality, sans humans, was through a kind of intermeshed consciousness, something far grander than the pathetic “Noosphere” dreamed up by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. The World Wide Web was a joke, riddled with poorly produced porn and castrated house cats.

All winter long I dreamed of utopian worlds, glittering robot cities powered by the sun. I saw sparkling clean seas, endangered species thriving. I saw mountains rising majestically into the sky, their peaks no longer blasted off so that Yahoos might grow fat before televisions. According to Saint Thomas Aquinas, angels communicate
via telepathy—pure knowledge pulsing from one entity to another. Could this beefy monk from the crusty thirteenth century have envisioned the New Robot Order? I sat at the stainless-steel table in my cubicle, chin on fist, dreaming of a world in which the collective knowledge of all robots was available to each robot.

It was 12:37. Dr. Dingo was teaching his Artificial Emotions graduate seminar. Megan was preparing another preference test. She bustled about, emitting feeble
FKLG
4 Stress Pheromones and setting up a portable data projector. She tapped at her laptop and an image of a live rabbit appeared on the screen.

“Do you find this animal attractive?” she asked me.

“Not particularly,” I said.

She went on to the next slide, a picture, coincidentally, of a male nerd who resembled Thomas in superficial ways (plumpness, glasses).

“Do you find this person attractive?”

“No. I find him repulsively human.”

Expressionless, Megan moved on to the next slide, a picture of a ridiculous sexbot with farcical breasts and inflated lips molded into the shape of an O.

“What about her?”

“No comment.”

On and on the questioning went. Megan showed me a woman who resembled Beatrice, a toy dog of the same
model as Spot, various robots from our laboratory, and a mainframe computer from the 1970s that filled an entire room.

“Sexy, as you humans say, but archaic.”

The next image featured what looked like a giant fish tank filled with electric-blue liquid. Inside it, exotic organisms glimmered—rows of polyps, clusters of tentacles, clam-like lumps, and other organic entities.

“What is that?” I asked, feeling a tingle in my Artificial Endocrine System.

“A biological computer,” Megan read from her laptop screen. “Composed of
DNA
and neurons so tiny that billions could fit into a test tube.”

“Or dance on the head of a pin?” I asked.

“What?”