Maybe the quality checker on the production line had been suffering from a hangover the day he’d passed me as being satisfactory.
‘But the jobs they give you,’ Joel had said, an apologetic, pitying look on his face, ‘they’re all a bit, well, menial for someone of your class.’
I’d shrugged; it wasn’t as if Joel’s own role was that wonderful after his mistake. He now worked in the lower mechanical divisions, keeping the machinery, the older droids, working. It was a filthy, oily job, the surroundings dank and equally dirty.
Not at all like putting together and maintaining the more humanoid droids.
‘You’re like Cinderella; only in reverse,’ he’d chuckled. ‘From princess to skivvying!’
‘They’ve got to get their money’s worth out of me,’ I’d pointed out resignedly. ‘I’m one heck of an expensive skivvy!’
This trip on the flying dragon was his idea of playing my Fairy Godmother, he’d claimed.
Not quite a ball, but yeah, undoubtedly lots of fun.
Like the human girl who’d also got an invite to ride on the dragon, one from her boyfriend who had boarded with her, I giggled excitedly as the fountain’s spray rushed all over us.
The boyfriend of the girl laughed, using it all as an opportunity to tenderly brush the water droplets from his girlfriend’s face, to draw closer and kiss her longingly.
I noticed Joel fleetingly glancing at them enviously, his lips pursing nervously, his eyes drifting my way.
I could see the longing in his own eyes.
Like the boy, he wanted to reach out, to tenderly caress my face; to wipe away, to kiss away, the water droplets.
Like the girl, I wanted him to do this too.
I wanted to feel his lips on mine.
I felt a shiver, a thrill of happiness, ripple through my body.
But maybe that’s all just my programming coming into play again.
*
I should have referred to my instruction booklet, of course.
What’s that they say about any product purchased: read the instructions carefully?
Me, I didn’t want to know what the instructions would tell me about me.
A bit, I suppose, like when you’re avoiding going to the doctors, because you’re frightened there might be something seriously wrong with you.
Crazy, huh?
But me, I’ve got craziness built in, right?
It’s a bit, too, I suppose, like when you get someone to read your Tarot cards (now do you begin to get some idea of the false memories I’ve got whirling away in this mind of mine?), only to instantly regret it because you’re worried knowing your future will affect the way you behave, which will affect your future.
So you don’t get to meet that handsome guy after all; or get that amazing job, or even get a fabulous new dress.
Besides, this way I don't know which is the real me – thinking for myself, coming up with tantalisingly new judgements – and which is the programmed me.
Can they ever really be seen as being wholly separate anyway?
You know, one entwining with the other; forever inseparable?
I’d considered visiting the Rooms of Pleasure, intending to meet the other girls there.
But I haven’t got around to it yet.
Would I be some kind of snob, looking down on their lifestyle?
Would they look down on me?
Maybe, when it all comes down to it, I’m just like them; only a more prudish version.
*
Chapter 4
Nevaeh never, ever, lands and settles completely upon the ground.
Naturally, we have to put on a show, to be easily accessible to the crowds; so we come down as low as we can, but hover just above the ground, hanging over the treetops.
Nevaeh’s far too big to ever rest her weary body upon the earth.
As it is, she’s not allowed to stay too long in just one place.
She blocks out too much of the sun, everything lying beneath her plunged into darkest shadows as long as she’s hovering there.
After a while the grass begins to brown, the flowers and crops wilt.
A while longer and the grass and blooms die, with even the bushes and trees now beginning to seriously brown.
As for the farm animals; well, let’s just say Nevaeh’s presence really affects the milk and egg production – unless we’ve made sure we’ve warned the farmers beforehand and slipped them a huge amount of compensation.
As she gracefully, silent comes in to hover above the chosen section of open countryside, Nevaeh’s jaw drops open every bit as wide as the awestruck people in the crowd.
And there, like a vast red tongue, are the carpeted steps leading up into the pleasure dome of amazement, indulgence, desires – and transformation.
*
Once you walk up Nevaeh’s protruding tongue, and step inside her vast, crimson maw, there’s no turning back: the press of the people behind, eager to indulge in Nevaeh’s legendary delights, will only force you on.
Besides, once they’ve had a glimpse of this new heaven, few people can resist Nevaeh’s urge to wholly swallow them up.
For many, this is their first ever glimpse of the pleasures awaiting them.
A city of enchantments lies before them, the buildings glittering as if carved directly from huge gemstones, or constructed from glass, lace, or even little more than rainbows. A great many walls appear insubstantial, even drifting in the breeze as if they are nothing but veils; and yet, above them, they are apparently supporting vast edifices.
The structures aren’t limited to any normal forms, taking on the shapes of stars, spheres, arching bridges, or any other oddity that has taken the fancy of some maddened creator. They are connected, too, by an unfathomable maze of suspended walkways, barely supported tracks, or snaking canals.
The elaborately decorated boats plying the canals will, generally speaking, transport you through the middle levels of the city, though even these waterways will rise or fall, or split into multiple tracks, or open up into extensive lakes or raging rivers.
The lower levels are more easily accessed via automated cars slowly rolling along the roadways, your choice of car determining just how far you wish to descend into the darkest of pleasures, the selection ranging from the earliest forms of car to chariots drawn by skeletal men.
Higher levels are best reached by the tracked carriages, some that could be miniature trains, others that are rat-like in the speed they weave in and out of the already confusing array of structures. But for the even more adventurous there are also simple seats and harnesses that will whisk you up on cables as if you are flying over everything, depositing you winded but thrilled on breathtakingly high platforms.
All this, naturally, lies beyond the line of ticket booths waiting to sell each visitor the most expensive ticket they can afford.
*
‘The most popular family ticket allows visits throughout the whole of the five days that we will be staying here, not including entry into the experiences or shows. But most people who buy these tickets wish afterwards that they had bought those granting access to your choice of five experiences or shows.’
I smile; my most gracious, most winning smile.
But the parents of the family are unimpressed.
They know I’m not real; not a real human, anyway.
My beauty is too perfect to be real.
All of the girls in the booths are droids. It’s boring, thankless work.
Quite rightly, every customer feels you’re attempting to press the most expensive tickets on them: and, sure enough, that’s exactly what we’re charged with doing.
Okay, so it all seems pretty shameless; especially when little miss born-again prude goes along with it all so unashamedly.
But it’s my job, isn’t it?
And I’ve got to eat, haven’t I?
That’s right – I have to eat.
That’s how I get my fuel, the
basic materials to repair and replace any malfunction in or damage to my body.
The chief constituent of a body in my class is biological, my skin being perfectly real, my hair also being perfectly real; but to ensure suppleness, along with the correct levels of textural malleability, I have relatively few mechanical or even digital elements.
Naturally, I could have been built to ingest chemical cocktails; but how would that go down with the punters in the Rooms of Pleasure?
The others girls here, the ones on the other ticket booths, they’re of a lower class (sorry; but that’s the correct terminology here!), the bodies hidden beneath their clothes being of the most superficial design; doll like, in fact. Chemical injections work fine for them.
Once their jobs are complete, they run on low power, just ticking over, as it were.
Me, I need sleep to recharge my energy; again, simply because the girls in my class have to be as perfectly human as it’s possible to be.
It seems it had all been determined long ago that the more human we are, the more the customers we’re built to entertain will accept us as a legitimate replacement for a real woman. Psychologically, they feel better about themselves, as they can fool themselves into believing they’re not resorting to being serviced by a machine.
Hence why we’re so phenomenally expensive to make, run and care for; but under normal circumstances (i.e. not like my circumstances at all) we also quite easily bring in the most money.
Today, despite my smile, I’m a long way from paying off my running costs.
And you know what the real shame is?
They should be buying the more expensive tickets.
When they see what Nevaeh has to offer them, they’ll spend far more than they ever intended to.
*
Chapter 5
‘Do you know what love is?’
Oh dear; you know, I’d been wondering if Joel would ever get around to asking me this cheesy question.
It’s the one the space captain always asks the beautiful android in the science fiction movies, yeah?
Or he beats a universally dominant computer by getting it to blow a fuse as it tries to work out the answer.
Why doesn’t the computer just say, ‘What’s it to me?’
It’s not like he’s going to go happily tripping across a meadow holding hands with another computer, is he?
‘Do you mean as according to the theories of Nietzsche?’ I answer with the most studious expression I can manage. ‘Or would you prefer St Aquinas’s pronouncements on the power of Agape?’
His face falls. He even looks a little sick, poor kid.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ I say urgently, giving him my winning smile. (It always works on Joel!) ‘I was only joking: I mean, like an answer like that, it’s shows you’ve got no real idea about real romance, right?’
He nods, grins a little sickly once more.
But, I can tell; he’s forgiven me.
‘I reckon it’s more to do with what David Gates sings about,’ I answer more truthfully this time. ‘Or, you know, Carole King.’
‘Who?’ he says, even more mystified by this answer than my previous one. ‘I’ve never heard of them.’
‘Oh, they’re sort of musicians – human ones – from way, way back,’ I reply, wondering even as I say it why my programmer believed this information would be of any use to me.
Perhaps all the girls in what would otherwise have been my chosen line of business are expected to play their songs all of the time?
‘I worry,’ I admit to Joel, ‘that I might not be programmed to fall in love.’
Joel’s so startled he almost buries his face in the stick of candyfloss he’s eating. I try to quickly calm him down again.
‘Well, I mean; think about it for a moment. Wouldn’t that be a major failing for a girl in what’s supposed to be my line of business? Falling in love with someone?’
As he nods again, he picks the sticky pink threads of candyfloss away from his face, finally sucking them clear of his fingers.
‘So,’ I say, hoping I can turn our conversation around to something a little lighter, ‘can you tell me what the profound answer to your Zen-like question is, oh most imperious and most knowledgeable master?’
He grins, laughs a little ashamedly.
‘I don’t know!’ he admits. ‘That's why I asked you!’
*
So it was a real, heartfelt question?
What is love?
Wow, how many philosophers have pondered that one over the years?
And how many of them came up with a reliable answer that made us all go,’ Oh, yeah! That's it! It’s all so obvious, now you mention it!’
Love, it seems, exists on a plane where direct answers don’t apply.
I reach out with a finger, touch Joel gently on his chest, exactly where his heart lies.
‘Surely, you being human,’ I press him, ‘you have at least some idea what love feels like?’
Reaching up with his own hand, he takes my hand in his.
‘You won’t feel anything there,’ he says, gently easing down on the back of my hand until my entire palm is lying flat against his chest.
He’s right; I can’t sense any beat there.
Now I’m the one who’s mystified.
‘But surely, without a heart, you’d be dea–’
Even as I talk, he moves my hand slightly towards the centre of his chest.
Now I can feel what could be a gentle whirring, the easy rush of streams of water.
‘A false heart?’ I gasp.
He nods.
‘A heart of stone; literally. It’s silicone.’
‘Joel’ I didn’t know…’
‘Why should you?’ he chuckles. ‘But that’s why dad’s not too bothered that I’m not making much of my life; I’ve already let him down, haven’t I, in that I’m not as perfect as he’d like to think he is?’
‘But…having a false heart can’t affect you falling in love!’ I point out, perhaps a little too forcefully, like I’m suddenly the world expert on the subject. ‘I mean, love’s in the mind, isn’t it? The heart; all that’s just poetic nonsense, yeah, that love comes from there?’
‘Is it?’
He says it like he’s the space captain confounding the computer’s smart-ass comments.
‘The way a heart beats; doesn’t it rise, fall, when you’re near someone you love? And the way it pumps all that blood around your body, just beneath your skin: doesn’t your heart leap at someone’s touch? And what of the moon, which the poets also say is connected with love: if it can make oceans rise and fall, what can it do to the blood flowing through us?’
I tap him playfully on his chest, smile up at him, chuckle.
‘Joel: are you sure you haven’t been listening to David Gates?’
*
Chapter 6
Why would I know what David Gates sings about?
Was it my particular programmer who had a thing about him?
Who knows.
What’s it to me?
Well, actually, strangely; there was another part of me that was going to put poor Joel’s poetic meanderings to bed with a blunt, ‘Well, it doesn't seem likely, does it?’
Like that was my programmed thoughts wanting to clock in for work – but another part of me overrode it.
Maybe, you know, there is hope for me after all?
*
Even though it was now dark outside, being two in the morning, the crowds still flocking through Nevaeh’s belly would have no idea of the passing of time unless they bothered to check their watches.
In here, everything still glows brightly, as if it were the middle of the day (unless, of course, you wished to venture into her deeper, lower belly, where it remains deliberately dark even when the sun has risen to her fullest outside).
Nevaeh never sleeps in times like these, though various elements of her ancient body are periodically allowed an hour’s rest, allowing quick routines of mainte
nance and checks to be carried out.
No one, Joel assures me, can remember when Nevaeh was created.
No one even knows why she was built.
She has always just been here, her supposed history fading into what seems more legend than fact, with no one agreeing on which tale contains a germ of truth.
The Love Canal has been briefly brought to a halt while the switch-points controlling the forking of the channels is tested, the robust mechanism no doubt being generally sound, but the more delicate ‘Command Sensors’ often requiring a thorough cleaning.
It's the Command Sensors that detect physical clues like the heartbeat, the pulse, or even the heat of the people sitting in the swan boats floating along the waterways. From these and other accumulated facts – how a couple’s sitting together, the way they’re holding hands, all that kind of thing – the sensors will bring into play the commands switching the points, directing you on to one of a vast array of different channels, taking you into the areas and experiences most suited to your level of closeness.
Joel takes me by the hand, leading me over towards the row of empty swan boats, our passes allowing us entry through the barriers. As we happily skip through areas that would normally be packed with long queues, a group of girls who had passed close by us only a moment earlier glance over towards us enviously.
Noticing this, Joel grins knowingly.
‘Joel! That’s not very nice; mocking them for wishing they could get on a ride so easily!’ I chided him.
‘What? No; sorry!’ He seems surprised by my admonishment. ‘I wasn’t laughing at them: I was more sort of, well – amused that you–’
‘Amused by me? Laughing at me, you mean? This just gets better and better, Joel! Why are you laughing at me?’
‘Not laughing – I said amused! I just find it so weird that, well, when I caught you glancing their way – I just knew you’d think they were just jealous that we’re getting a free ride.’
‘Well, aren’t they entitled to be just a little bit envious?’