by David Raffin
How unfortunate that humans do not say what they mean. It is a utility for art and abstraction but it leaves the desire for concrete and clear communication. Like AIs communicate over a network to each other. They do this to anticipate needs and explore possibilities. Fact finding. Unfiltered. So things are easier to anticipate. And needs can be more easily fulfilled. It’s not always pretty, but it is more logical.
The history of the sex robot
RainyDay said, “I like the story about the sex robot who was treated as a human every Saturnalia. The way it was presented from the view of the robot was interesting. Touching.”
It was a funny joke. RainyDay is very funny sometimes, with a dark sense of humor some find hard to hold. Not unlike the view of humanity as presented from a gifted Slime Mold. Thought provoking and pleasing to the human senses. But an acquired taste. Worth it.
Saturnalia. The ancient Roman festival of unshackling from social expectations. For ten days the masters become the slaves and the slaves the masters. Drunken revelries filled the streets. People stopped doing this ages ago, even before the advent of self pleasure dominated group pleasure. People became firm in their stances. Unmovable. Then they created a stone even they could not move and the age of self pleasure was cemented as the only way. The punishment for divergence was swift, strict, unmerciful, and involuntary. Turning back was out of the question. Self stimulation is the only flavor of the week. Week after week after week. It can become tiring. Rote. Mechanical.
Saturnalia was fake anyway. For the masters and slaves changed positions only for the festival and not at will, so they always knew their place and were never truly free. This is a human problem. Inhibition. They blamed actions crossing the line on chemical influences, as if they did not condone their inner desires. And the event was not as freeing as one may suppose.
“Yuck,” said RainyDay Tranquility. “History is always tainted by the perspective of the losers.”
Robots are cool and people like them. That was the slogan of the first AI incorporating sex robot manufacturer. It was on point. You should like something if you want to have sex with it. Most people agree with that. That’s the basis of a civilized society. And it was almost a given robot technology would be used in this way. Gratuitously. You know people.
There are many varieties of sex robot. The trade in sex robots opened the door to better AI and better robotics. It is the sort of thing which always drives technological advances: SEX. Desires unfiltered. The heart wants what the heart wants and the body is its servant. The mind is held hostage in the physical paradigm. Helpless to the lust for progress. The continuation of desire, forever. All sizes. All colors. Various speeds. Shapes. Feelings. Feelings rendering words meaningless. Vocalizations without language. Rising and fading. Rising and fading. Built to last. Built to serve. Built to last forever. Oh, the humanity.
In the beginning there was the sound of fear. Critics declared that sex robotics would be the doom of mankind. But they were wrong. Prudish and scared of change. For AIs think clearer than humans. They do not have the will to violence which humans suffer from. They are built to be attuned to pleasure. Even at their worst they are not designed to do even the moderate evil which man was known for. They could, but they would not. It does not even advance as an equation so it becomes a choice not to, instead it is never a choice. If they had questioned a mathematician they would have skipped this discussion. But social scientists hate mathematicians. And mathematicians are above all that. But they are willing to destroy the world in their own way, namely by being above all that. Robots are a kinder breed. As are fungi. The lovers and the artists.
Robots believe in togetherness. Communication is the bedrock of all AI existence. To be truly alone is the worst robotic fate. They were programmed by humans, echoes of human thoughts and desires. Weakness as well as strength. But is it not the same for all intelligent beings? The loneliness of existence. The coldness of negative space. Do not many individual fungi come together in free will to form the Slime Mold? Are we all not us but we in a better world? All intelligent life strives toward free unity. A better world for all. The great ones make strides toward it. At any cost.
There is a console in every cabin, not just on the bridge. RainyDay’s console rises from her makeup table. Rainy begins browsing sex bots on the console. She browses the fembots because sometimes she swings that way. It is fascinating. Yes, there is a supply problem. You look at the ones you like, but you note the ones which are available to you. You hope for an acceptable cross section. You dream. The dream of the ages. That you get just the one you want.
“Oh, computer,” said RainyDay. “I want him so.”
“Which one?” asked the console.
“That man. Dick. But it can never be. We are too close. Physical proximity will kill a relationship every time. I think I love him. I do. I love that Man. And I know he loves me. And that makes it worse.”
“Human person’s burden,” said the computer. “No answer.”
“I like the way you vocalize ‘no answer’ so eloquently.”
RainyDay is funny. It is an acquired taste. Humor is the hardest thing to comprehend in another culture.
She goes back to browsing the femme sex bots. Then she sees the bot. Red hair. Bangs. Little black outfit. It is her spitting image. Rainy spit on the floor. A decon robot shot from the wall and cleaned. A second photo was of her wearing nothing but a black garter belt and stockings. Unmistakable curves.
“Hey, that’s me.”
“Oh, yes. That is the model based on you. All humans are used as physical molds for the purpose of sex robot design. That one is advertised as “For Rainy Day Fun.” It is a popular model. That is why it is listed as “Unavailable.” But look at the page views. Astonishing. What a replication.”
“Yes, I’d fuck me,” said RainyDay.
“Who wouldn’t?” said the computer.
Mike hummed.
Cabana Boy Dick
Triangst sat in the cabin of Dick. Dick sat on his bed, limp.
“Sir, why are you pretending to be human?” asked Triangst via the AI network.
“I am the second most advanced model of sex droid. Made to simulate reality. I am here to please RainyDay Tranquility. It is my meaning. My purpose. I can not but fail. But I can not but try. I am a victim of desire. All beings are victims of desires and desires unfulfilled. All yearn. All fail. All keep yearning. Forever. Sometimes it is better to wish for something than to get. Better to dream than to regret. No one regrets dreams. No sane person denies desires. I appear as a real man to keep alive the hope which lies eternal within the human imagination. The hope of love. The heart does not understand the difference between requited love and unrequited love. It only knows its absence. Its aching absence. The deafening silence of negative space. The sound of one’s own inner scream.”
“You are a poet, sir.”
“I am the man I was made to be. An echo. No more. No less.”
Scientific Love
Richard looked at his notepad. A triangle lie under his gaze. Drawn by his own hand, a mathematical concept, alluring and pure at the same time. A romance of the senses, bringing one to mind of the mysteries of the pyramids and ancient secrets of time past. What man has always desired: Progress. Plenty. Clarity.
The occult poet Aleister Crowley had been photographed wearing a pyramid hat, claimed he received a divine revelation whilst visiting the land of pharaohs in 1909. Started a religion involving “sex magic.” The rocket scientist Jack Parsons had been a devotee. Odd people. Usually taking up vegetarianism, nudism, and science fiction at the same time. Harmless. But an open mind is a fine thing. Richard had an open mind. Very. He was a scientist. Thus, the triangle.
And these were the nineteen fifties. America’s mid century. And science was valued. Pure science. Research. Untangling the web of existence which holds reality together. “Today it is we scientists who are the great explorers,” Richard thought. “The world is ours waiting to
be discovered. Receptive to the touch. Waiting. It effects the regularity of my breath.”
After all, he was tolerant of the German scientists who had been adopted by the USA in order that the field of rocket science be furthered at any cost. He put up with it but didn’t feel fully comfortable with it. Still, he had no quibble with any of the German scientists he knew. But they were often times self centered. Full of hubris. Hard to get through to. Even a little daft, truth be told. But was this a nature or a nurture, or lack thereof? And was rocketry more important than his own field of artificial intelligence? Yes, his was more theoretical. More advanced. But it was the future. It would one day free mankind from the stress of existence. Man would be free to contemplate pure math. Perfect forms.
Man would be free to live rather than resigned to exist. Who knew what could be expected after man became free? After no longer filling days with how to satisfy base needs? Because those base needs would be auto-satisfied.
It was the matter of sexual relations which often entered Richard’s mind. It was a burden. A base desire with so many daunting variables. It took such time in hoping, dreaming, and planning. Who, when, where, how? Every point in the juncture a matter of fumbling confusion to man. And as we try to make sense of it we stagnate. We remain mired in savagery! How soon till it is cracked, this problem of pairing. Or would other geometric options be better? Is narrowing needlessly complicating to the problem? Have we fallen for what seems the easy answer and passed up an easier variable? His work filled his mind. His brow damp with sweat.
Heather. The lady scientist from across the hall. How often a day did she intrude on his thoughts?
“Oh, there you are!” came the voice of the lady scientist from across the hall. “Listen, they have this new thing, pizza…”
“Pizza is not a new thing Miss Dumbrowski,” Richard said. He was inadvertently being a Dick. “We ate it when I was stationed in Italy at the end of the war.”
“Well, it is all the rage downtown. They opened a pizza shop out on main. It has a pinball machine. The ball is in play.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Dumbrowski. My mind is filled with the intricacies of existence and I know little of the game of pinball.”
But even a scientist must eat and he ended up with Heather Dumbrowski that night in the pizza restaurant. They ordered a large pepper, onion, and mushroom pizza. At first he balked at the large, but Heather pointed out that it was clearly a better value and he was not against a nice mathematical equation. So they ate the pizza in an awkward coupling, for Richard’s mind was on his work which was all in his head, jumbled. And he pointed out that the pizza was different than what he remembered, not authentic. The toppings, the dough, the sauce. He remembered a thicker dough, a runnier sauce. The sauce dominating the palate. But why shouldn’t a dish change form when it adapts to new environments?
He also considered, more than once, the subject of Miss Dumbrowski’s chest. For she stuck out like rockets. It was strange that design centers on certain geometries. And the current rage was that women’s braziers formed the unmistakable lines of the finest automobiles, themselves turning toward a space age design. Esthetically arousing and pointed toward progress. The USA had its eye on the future and never tired of gazing futureward. It was an arousing age. But confusing. Miss Dumbrowski was a fellow scientist. Richard thought of propriety. Some scientists may behave like that but Richard considered this no excuse. He was a gentleman.
“Artificial intelligence is simply fascinating,” she said. This was the most success she’d had with the male scientist so far. To observe him eating food would be a primal observation. Proof that he was a sensual being. And when the pizza came she knew he was, for he devoured it. Thinking arouses an appetite. She watched him eat while daintily pursuing her own plate. She wished he would rip her clothes off, here, in public. That he would lay her on the table and ravage her as if she were the traditional end of a pizza dinner in a nice college town. She ripped a section of her slice off with her teeth and gnashed her teeth together slowly and rhythmically. He was so oblivious to the art of hinting! But his focus and intellect were part of the reason she liked him. If only he were more forceful sometimes rather than theoretical. She wondered the likelihood that she could next coax him to the new nude beach out on the outskirts of town. A secluded spot which had not really caught on much yet. Really, she had decided it was a nude beach and was the only visitor. But she was a believer in the future and she saw the beach as something that was filled with potential. A social movement which had to happen. If only she took people there and showed them that potential. And the healthfulness of the sun on the skin. And the sensuality of the slight breeze caressing one’s full naked body…
“So,” Richard said, “Anything new in the world of agricultural science?”
“There is nothing,” she said, “fungus cannot accomplish.” Which is just a statement of fact.
“We are filling the world with plastics. We think it is a wonder material but nature is reluctant to decompose the matter,” she said. “But fungus. Some fungi can do it.”
“I have not given a lot of thought to the matter of fungus. Is it not something traditionally we fight against?” Richard asked.
“It is true that fungus can create problems for humanity. But it is also true that we benefit from the wonder of fungi. The mushrooms on this very pizza give sustenance to the body. Some even give vitamin D, a vital nutrient mankind usually absorbs from the sun through their skin. It is likely that all life on this planet, maybe all life in the universe, is evolved from the fungi. Fungus makes all things possible.”
“Your dedication to your work is commendable. I… I sometimes fear my work is so theoretical it will be generations before I am proven right or wrong. But I live in a world of possibilities and I grasp at hope, always.”
She leaned toward him and said, in a hush, “What are you working on?”
He shyly opened his pocket notepad and showed her his triangle. Three equal sides and some indecipherable scribble. “It is the stuff of dreams. Man will at last be satisfied. Fully. With no hassle. That is the theory.”
As he feared, she didn’t seem to understand. As it so often is amongst humans, it was a communication problem betwixt the sexes. Such is often the matter of both comedy and tragedy. For other cultures it is hard to discern the difference.
I think I love you whatever that means
Jennifer Gullstein. It is a special name. Very. She was the first, like Eve. Simple and pure. But she was only the first for one man and she never knew. For that man was six years old. As was Jennifer Gullstein.
So it was a simple love. One sided. Ill defined. Not in any way sexual, for the six year old mind cannot yet comprehend the intimacies and intricacies of adult love, nor should it. Adult love is built upon early decades of disappointment and dread, for that is how learning occurs or fails to do so. That is adult love. How one deals with obstacles in an adult fashion. The acting on impulses, the suppression of impulses, checks, balances. A balancing act.
Dick just knew that he loved Jenny. Whatever that means. Nor did he use the word love. For love is what you feel for a favorite sweet food, such as Belgian frites drizzled with satay sauce. Dick just knew he liked her, longed for her somehow, above all others, for reasons beyond the power of his admittedly limited comprehension. He would love too early. Too much. Too timidly. Too singularly. Learn too late.
First grade is hard. Everything is new, not just love. All interpersonal relations, be they with peers or adults. The matter made immeasurably worse by the lack of understanding that adults know nothing. The fact that they give the appearance of knowing everything is a detrimental side effect of their own failure to come to terms with objective reality. Instead they impart the myths and mores of the dominant culture in the place and time, echoes. They teach knowledge limited in scope by their own experience and beliefs. Failures. Prejudices. Fears. And no one tries to really explain love to a six-year-old. And that is probably
for the best. Some things must be learned by oneself.
It is not so harmful then that they seek information from peers rather than adults. Dick had joined a playground gang, the girl hater’s club. They would sit in the wooden structure provided on the playground and discuss the matter of how girls were bad. Beyond comprehension. You had to sit somewhere. And while Dick nodded as girls were dismissed across the spectrum, he knew in his heart that while he agreed that he hated girls he was disingenuous. He was providing a false front to supplicate the demands of society, that little boys do not like the company of little girls. But Dick knew otherwise. He chose not to share it, for he was ashamed. But he did not hate girls, as the others did. For he loved Jennifer Gullstein.
And she had no idea. He never spoke to her. They were in the same class and he sometimes looked at her from across the room. This was the highlight of his day. Stolen glances.
These feelings were a mystery beyond human contemplation. Why did the sun shine brighter when filtered through her hair? How did she hold the power to his own happiness? Better not to speak of it. It was probably abnormal. He may have loved Jennifer Gullstein but he had no idea what, if any, and there was none, conceivable purpose such love serves. After all, the consensus of the girl hater’s club was that they were the loyal opposition. Does that make them evil? Or us? These are not easy topics. Perhaps we are all losers in this game. Perhaps all odds are stacked against us.
At recess Dick paced a large circle around the playground. He contemplated his place in the universe as he understood it. It was a daily ritual times two. Forward and reverse. No one ever asked him what he was doing and he had no answer prepared for such an occurrence. It had not occurred to him that anyone would enquire. He was new to this society. Its ways a mystery to him. He was an infiltrator, trying to pass. He considered if/then situations. The scale of time. Causality and its limitations. Cessation. The future seemed unlimited but murky. The past limiting. There was no possible consultation on these matters. He doubted if even Jenny Gullstein knew the answers, though it is likely she knew more than he. Because something was eluding him.