Metallic Love

there on the sheet and pillows; the dirty plate and mugs from earlier yesterday, still lined up in the kitchen sink. I looked into my closet and a couple of drawers. I felt over a random selection of my garments, carefully, every inch. Nothing.

Crazy, as I said.

I thought, I’m just trying to hang on to him, by telling myself META is hanging on to me. My God, I even imagine perfumes now—

Then I went back to the apartment door and opened it, to see if I could catch any last lingering scent. I didn’t think I did, but something else was there. Two something else’s.

“Hi,” said silver Glaya.

“Hi,” said black Irisa.

Glaya’s claret hair was done in dozens of long narrow plaits with crystal beads. She wore a short black dress in the latest “ragged” fashion, with carefully tailored holes along the arms and hem. Irisa had hair so short now, her head seemed covered by a skullcap of thick black fur. She wore an ethnic dress down to her strong narrow ankles, red cloth painted with golds and lavenders, one peerless shoulder bare. Like Black Chess, her asterion mate, Irisa could just pass as black; Glaya’s skin was silver, uncamouflaged in any way, unless you counted her sapphire lipstick and the blue jewels pasted—or formed—on her eyelids.

I didn’t (uselessly) slam shut the door.

“May we come in?” asked Glaya, deliciously formal.

I moved back and let them by.

“Thank you,” said Irisa, “Loren.”

They knew me. We were all old in acquaintance.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“We’ve been sent to help you get ready for tonight,” said Irisa.

“What about tonight?”

“You haven’t seen any advertisements or vispos? Verlis is playing in concert tonight.”

They looked at me benignly, two special friends who had come to lighten my darkness. In the maddest way, I was reminded of Grandfather’s Apocalytes.

Had I seen any vispos? All I’d seemed to see were vispos and ads of them all, doing this, appearing here, there. I’d gotten myself to the stage of looking away or turning off the VS. It had seemed to me, meanwhile, the whole city, at least, would know him—all of them. But, like before, a great portion of the city evidently hadn’t noticed a thing.

“Of course you’ll be at the concert,” said Irisa. “META will be giving you one of the best seats.”

“Why?”

They smiled wickedly, like the two long-standing and conspiratorial friends of mine they were.

“But you know, Loren.”

I felt trapped. Panic was snapping at me, pulling bits of me away. Blankly I thought, I’ll see him again.

“And as you’re to be in the best seats,” said Irisa, “META thought you, too, would like to be at your best. It’s part of our skills, you understand? To prepare a customer for any important occasion.”

My slaves. Slaves on tethers that stretched to infinity. Slaves who kill. Slaves who are gods.

Better give in, Loren.

I gave in.

Had you ever wondered—I don’t think I ever had—reading the Book, what the other first robots really were like, those other eight? Jane mentions them and stresses they weren’t like Silver. But they must have been fairly convincing, mustn’t they? A lot of people back then, presumably, took them up, enjoyed everything about them. For Jane, for me—for you, too, maybe—there had only been one silver, one robot who was supremely human. That’s what love does.

But Glaya and Irisa seemed entirely human. If gorgeously, divinely so.

They even unpinned my rose and left it in water. They made Prittea for me, and made little jokes, and chatted to each other and to me. We (they) discussed what shades of color or styles of hair would suit me the most, and how would I like this or that done? Their hands on me were very decorous. I’d made it plain before, and evidently with my reaction to Verlis, that males were my sole sexual option.

I became Cleopatra, waited on by two favorite, clever, loving, and lovely servants.

Perhaps it’s only what you’d get in the most ten-star beauty parlor. I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been in one.

Did I like any of it? Honestly? No. I was uncomfortable throughout, knotted up with tension even as Irisa gently kneaded my shoulders to relax me, and Glaya’s pedicure tingled my toes.

My mind, too, was busy, anywhere but there. It was leaping like a squirrel through boughs of excited distrust and near rage. I even thought rebelliously, Well, if they want to make me beautiful, that isn’t going to happen.

They saw me stripped, too. But plenty have, here and there, even women, when I roomed with Margoh and others in Danny’s gangs—I mean, you don’t always bother to shove on a shirt coming from the shower when you know each other, and know that none of you is going to take it as an invitation.

Now, while I was conscious how inferior my young, quite firm body must be to their technologically flawless state, I almost flaunted myself. I sort of clutched it to me, my inferiority.

Unnoticing, or programmed to total indifference, Glaya and Irisa ushered me through the scented herbal bath and hairwash, the painless dipilations, the cleansings and creamings and maquillage, the hairdressing, the dressing.

They had produced the ingredients of the entire makeover from the tiniest purse. The dress they had brought, with undergarment, emerged from a little bag they unrolled—but at a flap everything was uncreased. They told me the dress was mine, from now on. But personally (like in the dream), I wondered if it would actually vanish in twenty-four hours—or, as with Cinderella, at midnight.

It nearly made me laugh, the dress. Of course, it was in my size. A precise fit. It was of heavy amber silk, and had no seams. You drew it on, or they did, and then it lay against you. It described every curve and indentation, softly, then from the pelvis fountained away to the feet.

The only underclothes were the amber silk briefs.

They finished the makeup after the dress was on. Then they put a bracelet on each of my bare arms—the bracelets were both of amber, the one on the left arm loose and fretted and milky, the right one translucent inside, and full of tiny inclusions, bubbles, little fronds, and fern-things from prehistory.

“Amber is magnetic,” said Irisa.

“Would you like to see yourself now?” said Glaya.

Do they take a weird pride in me, their handiwork? Don’t be a fool, Loren. They only make it seem like that.

And I thought, Now I’ll see the travesty, this new “Loren,” dressed up like a million dollars and still a nobody, a clown.

There was only one big mirror, and it was in the bathroom. The steam had gone by now. They glided me in, one on either side.

We stood, looking in the glass.

Will you believe this? Believe it. The liar is being painfully frank.

For a second I looked into the reflection, and I saw there were three of them—of us. They had made me into one of their own kind.

Yes, that is insane. It was only cosmetic. My skin, though good, and now apparently poreless and smoother than the looking glass, wasn’t metallic. In fact, there wasn’t any hint of metal anywhere on me. Not about the black brows or smoky eyelids, the succulent mouth, nor in the amber jewels or sculpted gown or palest apricot pumps. Ebony hair in a cascade without even a clip. Nails enameled to pearl.

Here is one of our new range, the Verisimulated Nonelectronic, Nonmetallic Robot….

“Mirror, mirror, on the wall,” chanted Irisa like a spell.

“Who,” chanted Glaya, “is fairest of us all?”