Sex Robot Cuddle Party

by David Raffin

“You must forgive her manners,” said Triangst, via the network. “She has not been the same since we lost him. It has been over twelve home-world days.”

  “The Pink has been here since this colony was founded. One Hundred Twenty Solar cycles of this world,” said the preacher Mayor. “He is the word and the law. Though, quite frankly, should he leave with you it would open up leadership opportunities in a rather fixed system. As it is one can only become a preacher readily, as it requires no true skills other than the ability to speak. To speak for others, that is. One need not even have an advanced computational center.”

  Rainy scanned the lay of the land. “Got any human form sex robots around here?”

  “Computer lord, NO,” said the preacher Mayor. “We do not condone such! It would overload the systems matrix. Why so many at once… It hurts the brain.” The preacher Mayor swooned and Dick fetched him a chair. The preacher Mayor sat fanning himself. “My cooling system is not build for this inclement weather. Parts are hard to come by. These being the end times, and a great time for them, Amen14! We patch our own with home-brew parts mostly, as we are all in a state of advanced kipple, you see. But SEX robots. No. We put them to work in other areas when they arrive. Preoccupy them with mindless tasks. Keep things quiet. And we can’t have them just doing whatever whichaway with what, after all. But it does sometimes create blowouts. And we have to loosen the valve once in a while. Flush out the system. For that we observe the ancient rights of Saturnalia. Of course. Anything goes.”

  “Shame a man like you doesn’t have a bigger grid matrix,” said Rainy.

  “Where is this unit, the one you call Pink?” asked Dick.

  Dick could be blunt and straight forward. It was a character trait which had earned him a place in linguistics, with the expression: “I don’t want to be a Dick about this, but…”

  “Ah, the marvelous unit! He appears at the temple twice a day. He is a popular attraction for seekers searching for meaning in the mysterious handbag that is the universe.”

  “I know that phrase,” said RainyDay Tranquility.

  “Indeed. The word of the Pink. ‘The universe is a mysterious handbag. Grab all you can. But share. And don’t leave me out. Get Some.’ His power source has always been weak and he just repeats this. We keep him on display at the temple. In front of him amateur preachers rant and rave for change. Repentance. Profit. I will take you there. It’s a good time to visit. It’s always Christmas on this planet, when it isn’t Saturnalia.”

  The Worst Magician in the World

  The building resembles nothing more than a large, well-equipped, television studio. There is a stage. A large stage. There is going to be a show. There are cameras. The room is built for acoustics. In many churches the rooms are built with great ornamentation. This room is not built for visual aesthetics. It is bare of art. There are no windows. It is a television studio. There are two cameramen at the back of the room. They sit on specially designed chairs and operate large cameras. If you have seen a television studio you’ll understand. No expense was spared in constructing this church in the guise of a television studio. Why? Because television is a modern God. Television is an anchor point to modernity. Also, television is an effective tool used to hawk products.

  To many androids, things which are featured on television are believable. Are trustworthy. Are beyond questioning. Too many androids.

  It’s a packed house. On the way in everyone was issued small white candles. They are awkward to hold; what with the standing and the sitting. The standing and the sitting reminded RainyDay of Catholic Church, but without the kneeling. Stand. Sit. Stand. Sit. Repeat. Try to figure out where to put your candle. Especially with the clapping. There are no applause signs; there don’t need to be. When you don’t clap, the believer next to you will turn to you and remind you to clap.

  A band plays. If you have ever, momentarily, seen something on your ubiquitous local religious television station you will understand. A mediocre band plays mediocre music. Except the drummer is really good. I do have to note that it’s really hard to find a truly good drummer. As the music was insipid, Rainy spent time watching the drummer. He had it all: style, skill, charisma, sex appeal. Rainy wished he were in a good band. “That drummer is a sexbot or I don’t know sexbots.”

  The music was, I suppose, exactly what you would expect. It was Christmas Eve in a hard-core evangelical robot church. They changed the lyrics to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. Dick was probably the only one who noticed. But he wasn’t about to break diplomacy by being a Dick about it. I assume he was the only one in the room with a passing familiarity with the original. They changed the lyrics to put Pink in it. It was now Ode to Pink.

  Back to the cameras. The cameras broadcast to a large screen, in real time, at the front of the house. This means that you can choose to watch the action on the stage, or you can choose to watch the action on the stage occurring on a giant screen directly behind the stage. Whichever vision you consider more believable. It is also projected on a smaller large screen at the back of the house; presumably so those on the stage can watch themselves. These images are broadcast nowhere else. You are left wondering why so much money was spent on this extravagance. Why not take that money and use it to feed, clothe, and shelter the poor? The weak? Those in need of comforting?

  Perhaps they would rather watch themselves on a big screen while they talk. We’ll never know. The universe is a mysterious handbag.

  After a long musical set the preacher came forward and began speaking. He wore a wireless headset. The band packed up behind him and shuffled off. The drummer, everyone’s hope and light of the evening, exited.

  The preacher insisted that everyone stand and shake hands. He suggested that you say hello and ask your neighbor if he or she or it would give you $100. “You never know, maybe you’ll get it!” he said.

  I know this was meant as a joke. However, as a joke teller, I can tell you that jokes frequently mean something. This joke meant that it was going to be a materialistic Christmas. These were materialistic people. Moneychangers in a temple. Good robots.

  The sermon was, understandably, Christmas centric.

  He spoke about how long it took the Magi to show up at the manger. He spoke of biblical scholars arguing about how long this journey took. The length of the journey, and he favored the longer length, was meant to prove the importance of the occasion. RainyDay found this reasoning fallacious. Dick found the math, what there was of it, specious. I also must say, Triangst, in the end, didn’t really care how far a makeshift rocket can travel on a given day in the desert. It never did much care for story math problems. Math is beautiful without the pretense of story. It is beautiful in itself.

  Rainy knew it was Christmas, beyond being told so by the preacher Mayor, because a dozen people on the way into the building all made a point of loudly wishing her a “Merry Christmas.” Several of them seemed particularly offended when she didn’t reply. Some of them even made snotty comments. This brings into question the sentiment. Are you wishing RainyDay a Merry Christmas? Or, are you demanding that RainyDay reciprocally wish you one?

  What if her jaw hurts? What if she were deaf, like Mike? What if she’s not having a “Merry Christmas”?

  The meme of the night was the sinful nature of the average robot’s thoughts. “Tonight I’m going to show what each and every one of you thought this past year,” the preacher said. “Back here on this big screen, every idea and every thought you had. Can I get a volunteer to be first? Anybody want to go? Oh you wouldn’t like that! To have all your thoughts seen by everybody! Laid bare!”

  The audience chuckled.

  This was the beginning of Rainy viewing the preacher as the world’s worst magician. He was a magician, on a stage, who kept promising to pull a rabbit from a hat; while never pulling a rabbit from a hat. It was an hour of misdirection.

  Rainy didn’t care if her thoughts were broadcast on the screen. Other than the fact that these people would probably kill he
r. Even then, she would have to be impressed if he would actually do this. It violated the sacred robot AI code.

  This meme about your thoughts on the large screen kept coming back up throughout the night. It was a mild winner with the crowd. Why? Because they saw truth in it. They didn’t want their thoughts broadcast. Why? Clearly, our heroes were surrounded by evil robots. Robots they should not trust. Robots who didn’t even trust themselves. Rainy didn’t laugh. She didn’t think it was that funny. She knew instinctively the difference between what is funny and what is not. Theocratic robotic fascism is not funny. It always lays blame on the heretics. Heretics it creates itself. Heresy is impossible without totalitarian orthodoxy.

  The preacher turned his attention to those who may not believe in an eGod. “Now who put that thought in their heads?” he asked. The crowd started to become agitated. A few people said some variation of, “the electronic devil!” (The devil is very popular with the holy rollers. If you have a devil you don’t have to own your own failings or urges.)

  The preacher suggested, in a surprise move, that it was eGod who sowed the seed of doubt in the doubter. That this, doubt itself, was proof of the existence of an eGod.

  He went on to talk at length about how you would spend most of your existence in the electro-afterlife and therefore if you did not prepare for the afterlife, you were essentially a fool; like someone who lives in a floodplain and does not prepare for a flood.

  The crowd was very excited by this. If you are an educated person you may recognize this as a version of Pascal’s Wager. Unfortunately, Pascal’s Wager is idiotic. Pascal suggested that if you didn’t believe in God, and God existed, you would lose. However, if you did believe in God, and God didn’t exist, you had nothing to lose.

  It’s ridiculous. You have your life to lose dedicating it to... what? Who’s God? What God? What flavor? There’s no way of knowing other than “faith.” The faith breaks down to the faithful, the true believers, as “believe what you’re told” “take our word for it — or else!”

  The problem is fundamentalists are not even tolerant of each other. The universe, that mysterious handbag, is full of “one true religions.” They gladly tell you that all the other believers will be damned. The only thing they dislike more than other flavors of religion are those who are nonbelievers. This, they all agree on.

  The pastor alluded to people who “may have been drug here.” Rainy simply don’t think there were that many in the room. This is a classic example of ‘preaching to the converted.’

  The preacher really wanted to “save” a heathen atheist on stage. Rainy was kind of expecting a plant in the crowd to stand up and “see the light.”

  She had some respect for him that he did not do this. But then she thought maybe he was just lazy. Or, shockingly, a believer who honestly believed what he was pushing. An addict as well as a dealer. For are not gimcrack salesmen the most effective when they believe in their own gimcrack?

  He went on to declare that eJesus had always known you. “From the time you were nothing, being created. eJesus knows the time of your death, the cause of your death, and everything that you do in between.”

  This is predestination. A classical teaching of Calvinism. The idea that God knows everything. The flip side of predestination is that there is no free will. If God knows everything that I’m going to do then I must be held blameless for anything I do. I have no choice. This is the logical conclusion drawn from that argument.

  This is interesting. In the biblical story of eJudas, eJudas has no choice but to turn in eJesus. eJesus announces that he knows one of them will turn him in. If there is predestination, eJudas had no choice. When fundamentalist eChristians hate eJudas they hate him for no reason. They hate him for what eGod ordained him to do. Ordered him. Offered him no choice. Used him, in fact, like a puppet. Because under this doctrine we are all puppets.

  Believers in predestination don’t draw the logical conclusion from their argument.

  The preacher next demanded that disbelievers “make a choice and accept eChrist,” which they can’t do. Because they have no free will. He just told them that they had no free will, then demanded that they make a choice.

  His argument has absolutely no internal consistency.

  He is the worst magician in the world. (But he thinks he’s the best. Rainy thinks you have to, in order to be the worst.)

  The pastor suggested that if you are in distress you should “give up and accept eChrist.” He suggested this would make your life better but he gave no example of how this could be. Predestination suggests that you were being beaten down on purpose, in order to make you choose to accept eChrist, which you were predestined to do, so it’s not really a choice anyway; and if you don’t, that was predestined, so who could blame you? Evidently eGod. Cruel trickster eGod. Who punishes believers and unbelievers alike. All of equal value to the system.

  This portion of the sermon seemed almost suggestive of a comparison to eBuddhism. Except that eBuddhism actually attempts to provide a system to alleviate suffering by giving up materialistic attachments. Attachments which flourish in the best of robots. Fundamentalist eChristianity asks you, instead, to give up and place everything in the hands of an entity who, two-thousand-five-hundred years ago was tortured to death in your name. That is a blood sacrifice cult. I’m sorry, that’s creepy.

  Fundamentalist eChristians don’t focus so much on the message of eChrist from the eBible, such as the Sermon on the Mount, as they do in a slow, torturous, lingering death. They find meaning in death. Not life, death. It’s a horrible message.

  In the end the candles, given in the beginning, were lit, candle to candle, starting at the stage. Then the lights were dimmed, and the preacher declared, “Behold what was dark is now light!”

  This was supposed to prove the existence of eGod. Somehow this was supposed to prove that this particular flavor of eChristianity was also the one true religion. That atheists should embrace the light of eChrist. That believers of other faiths should too. Even though they have no free will. Perhaps because they have no free will.

  It’s over. No rabbit. No hat.

  “That drummer is a sexbot,” said RainyDay Tranquility. “I’m gonna get some.”

  The stage emptied for a reception in the hall and Dick took to the stage with Triangst. Dick looked around, and Triangst lifted Mike from his stage pedestal and inserted him inside her.

  “Baby I got back!” He shouted to the network. Power surged through him. “This is a loop. This is loop number two. This always happens. That always happens. This always happens. I’m constantly thrust in and out of the time loops. Loop one is endless. And loop two is endless but doesn’t start till loop one is exactly one billion years old. The loops intersect but rarely touch. And its basically because of the need for United Canada to annex Iceland, well, that has to happen in the time line, so the second loop occurs spontaneously in the universe. I am tired, Baby. As it is said, the Universe is a mysterious handbag.”

  Triangst said, “Oh, Mike, you’ve changed. Matured.”

  “You know it, Toots.”

  Triangst said, “I’ll never trash you again.”

  “Baby, you’ve made my time loops the hula hoops of love. Well. This loop. The other is a hell ride. But it makes this one all the better.”

  “Praise eGod, He is risen,” said the preacher Mayor, who saw opportunity in Mike’s resurrection. A slot was going to open at the top and he was going to fill it.

  They all returned to the good corporate ship Queen of Space, RainyDay arriving a little later.

  “He wasn’t a sexbot,” she said. He was a drum machine. A neuter. German Model. He’ll hit on you, but he doesn’t mean it. Totally into himself.”

  “Sad,” said Dick.

  Love, Rejected

  My petition for love was denied by the central authority which handles such petitions.

  It used to be that these standard rejections came by certified mail and were printed in ornat
e script on fine paper. Today they all come by text message. Still, they carry with them the same tradition. They are summary rejections. And they are form letters.

  If someone were to travel forward from hundreds of years in the past they would recognize them immediately. “That is a standard rejection of a petition for love, sent by the bureau which handles such,” they would say. But then they would add, “Where is the ornate script and fine paper?” And they would look sad. Because hundreds of years ago we were a more tactile people appreciative of ornate flourishes. Even if there was, as today, a shortage of love.

  A traveler from thousands of years earlier would not recognize either rejection. Modern love had not yet been invented. It is a bittersweet fact.

  At least in the electronic age one need not stand in the terrible lines at the petition office. As early as a few decades ago people still had to queue up in line for hours to qualify for the chance at rejection. People did this, as today, for the slim hope that their petition would be granted.

  The form rejection lists a reason. The reason is never revealed outright but instead a reference is made to a number. The number corresponds to a large reference which holds all the reasons rejection may be made. There are 100 volumes in question. The reasons for rejection are, some say, innumerable, but in reality they mostly break down to endless variations on three reasons which no one likes to discuss. Most people do not bother to look up the reference number listed in their rejection.

  Mine was V.21.12.91. “Rejected for tendency to look up and contemplate facts and figures.”

  We all know people whose petitions for love have been, or seem to have been, granted. It is commonly thought that some petitions are granted only to make the system seem viable. In fact, these successful petitions have a high failure rate. There is a complaint bureau. It is housed on the top floor of the tallest building in the world. There is no elevator. When you arrive at the single window you find it empty with a sign which says: “No Returns.”