We never hooked up. Both of us were wired straight. Pippi had a regular friend named Trevor who was usually away on business trips. I paid for it or went virtual every once in a while, and left things at that.
We were both enjoying sunlight at our favorite park, two blocks away from Pippi’s apartment complex. Sitting beside a sculpture there I’ve always loved, spindly rails of color tumbling taller than me like animation lines, edges glinting pink and blue and purple. The smell of tomato and basil and sage filled the air.
Pippi had her face turned up to the light, soaking in the warmth. She had been indulging in tanners again. Her orange shirt and shorts were vibrant against the expanse of her brown skin.
I was more cautious. I don’t want skin tumors later on, so I keep a gauzy over-shirt and hat about me. Silvery sleeves to deflect the light were set over my arms, strapped into the walker’s maneuvering legs. Underneath the sleeves, mercurial light played over my skin.
We both saw him when he entered the park: Tourist-new, still dressed in arrival shorts and paper shirt with “Be nice, I’m a newbie” printed on the back, which guaranteed him a 10% discount at any participating business.
Pippi squinted over. “Is that . . . ”
I followed her gaze. Dark glasses gave me the advantage. “Yep. It’s an AI.”
“Not just any AI, though,” she said, eyes watering. “Unless I’m wrong?”
“Nope, it’s a sexbot,” I said.
It was just after what the newsies were calling the Sexbot Scandal, when that Senator was caught traveling with an AI and had used the momentary notoriety to call for AI rights. Now the Senator’s ’droid and several others of its kind had bought themselves free. I’d seen an interview with one while trapped in line picking up Chinese takeout the night before. Its plans for the next year were to travel with its friend, another of the bots. Wink wink, nudge nudge.
The oldest human urge: Curiosity about who or what each other was fucking.
He had the white plastic skin most AIs were affecting that year. On his head a slouched wool hat like a noir detective’s.
He looked up and saw us looking at him. He froze, like a car grinding gears to a stop. Then he moved again, almost impatient, flinging an arm up as though against us, although I realized a second later that it shielded his eyes from the dazzle of sunlight off the sculpture. Trapezoids of colored light danced over his tunic, glittered on the lenses that were his eyes.
Pippi waved.
He stepped backwards, ducked into the tunnel.
Of course we went in pursuit.
He took the West tunnel. Moving fast, dodging between walkers moving between stations, grabbing handholds to hurl himself along. It wasn’t hard to follow him—I’m small, and mostly muscular in the chest and shoulders, so I can rocket along as far as anyone from handhold to handhold. Pippi slowed me down, kept hissing at me to wait up for her.
We emerged in the most touristy of plazas, the complex of malls near the big hotels, the public gardens. I thought I’d seen the flicker of his tunic, his hat’s crumpled feather, as he ducked into the Thai garden.
The dome overhead admitted unadulterated sunlight. There were parrot flowers and bua pood, a waterfall, and a grove full of gibbons, safely behind mesh. Trails led off to discreet clothing and lifestyle boutiques, a restaurant, and a walkway to the next mall. I saw his hat bob through its glass confines and elbowed Pippi, pointing.
She said, “He could be going anywhere from there. There’s a tube stop in the middle of the mall.”
“Where would a sexbot go?”
“Do you think he’s for hire?” she said.
The interview had said only a few sexbots had chosen to keep their professions. Most of the others had made enough to fund other careers. Most had become solo-miners or explorer pilots.
“It can’t be the first time he’s been asked the question,” Pippi said.
I hesitated. I could talk her into asking. Could machines feel embarrassment? What was the etiquette of communication? Was a sexbot, like a human, capable of being flattered by a flirtatious or even directly admiring question?
Gibbons hooted overhead. A long-billed bird clung upside down to the other side of the mesh. If we stayed here much longer, we’d have a park fee added to our monthly taxes. Two parks in a single day was way too extravagant.
We went home.
I had a run to the Gate the next morning, so I got up early, let myself out. Took the West tunnel to the tube stop. Grabbed a mushroom roll on the way and ate it on the platform, peering into shop windows at orange and blue scarves and fake ferns and a whole window wall’s worth of animate Muffs, the latest wearable animals. The sign said they lived off air impurities. They had no eyes, which to some people made them cute, I guess, but to me just looked sad.
Tourists going past in bright shirts and arcs of perfect white teeth. Demi-gods, powered by cash.
A feather reflected in the window. Behind me stood the sexbot.
This time I followed at a distance. Got in the train car at the opposite end, but kept an eye on him. Luckily for me he was getting out at the port. I don’t know what I would have done if it’d looked as though he was going further.
Maybe followed him.
Why? I don’t know. There was something charming about the way he held himself. And I was curious—who wouldn’t be?—about the experience of someone
The port platform straddled the Dundee cliffs, overlooking the Sea of Tranquility. He was there at that flickering curtain of energy and I remembered what it did to constructs—shorted them out, wiped them clean. He had his hand outstretched, and I’m the last to deny anyone their choices, but even so I shouted, “Hey.”
He turned, his hand dropping.
I caught up to him. I was in the cradle walker because I was being lazy that day. I could see him taking it in, the metal spidering my lower body, the bulge where my flesh ended, where legs might have been on someone else, the nubs of my left hand—two but as useful as three of your fingers, I swear.
I said, “Want to get a cup of tea and talk about it?”
So cliche, like something you might have seen in a cheap-D. But he said, “Okay,” and his voice sounded as sincere as a mechanical voice can.
The cafe was half-deserted, just a couple of kids drinking coffee near the main window. We were between main shifts, and I was late for my pick-up, but I thumbed a don’t-bother-me code, knowing I was one of the most reliable usually. They’d curse me but let it slide.
It’s weird, talking to a mechanical. Half the time your mind’s supplying all the little body movements, so you feel like you’re talking to a person. Then half the time you’ve got a self-conscious feeling, like you were talking to your toaster in front of your grandmother.
Maybe it was just as strange for him. There’s a lot of Gimps up here—lower gravity has its advantages, and in a lot of spaces, like my rig, the less you mass the better. Plus times are lean—less elective surgery. Here he was in the land of the unbeautiful, the people who didn’t care as much about their appearance. Strange, when he was beautiful in every single inch, every graceful, economical move.
We didn’t say a word about any of that.
I told him the best places to sightsee, and where he could take tours. I thought maybe he had some advantages—did he need to breathe, after all? Could he walk Outside just as he was?
The big casinos are worth seeing, particularly Atlantis and Spin City. I sketched out a map on my cell and shot it to him.
“Where do you like to go?” he said.
I’m not much for shopping, and I said so. I liked to take the mega-rail between Luna and the Cluster—cheap and you could stare out the window at the landscape.
“Let’s do that,” he said.
The Cluster used to be a fundamentalist-founded station that ended up selling its space to private concerns in order to fund itself. The remnants of the church were there. They ran the greenhouses that grew food for Luna, where most of the water got processed too. The stuff at the market there was always fresh and good and cheaper
