by Jon Jacks
We all recoiled in horror as she threw the glove across the table.
‘Oh yeah? So you’ve got your whole family living with you too have you? You’ve go–’
Her face creased in a fusion of fury and agony as two waiters suddenly caught hold of her and began to forcibly drag her away.
‘I’m ever so sorry Miss Havisham!’
Mr Bodor, the faultlessly dressed manager, appeared by our table as if from nowhere. He also nodded obsequiously towards Fullerana and Gilleria.
‘Miss Defro, Miss Voller. There’s no charge for the meal, obviously.’
As he talked, another pair of waiters carefully removed the glove. One swiftly placed it in in a container he quickly sealed. The other diligently sprayed the areas where the glove had landed and rolled across the table.
With a shocked frown, Mr Bodor silently indicated that the whole table cloth and setting should be immediately replaced.
‘And I’ll see to it personally,’ he said, ‘that she is relieved of her role so you won’t be bothered by her again.’
‘Oh, that won’t be necess–’
‘Angeic!’ Gilleria was shocked. ‘Not necessary? The woman insulted us all!’
‘That’s right Angeic!’ Fullerana agreed.
‘I’ll see to it right away!’ Mr Bodor said, purposely heading off towards the kitchen.
*
‘Thank you Claude, thank you Maria.’
As soon as Claude had placed the multi-coloured bags of shopping on the floor of the apartment’s foyer, the Wallabdroid had rushed over to pick them up.
With a bow of his head, Claude returned to the lift that would take him down to the servant’s quarters a couple of floors below.
Maria disappeared into the living room, holding the bags high in the air so she wouldn’t drag any of them across the floor.
‘The master’s already back ma’am,’ she trilled happily over her shoulder.
‘Back? Already?’
At this time Dorian was usually still in either his laboratory or his office, going over ideas or plans for new production runs. It was a long time since we’d spent a whole evening together, unless it was attending a film premiere or charity dinner.
By the time I’d casually made my way into the living room, Maria had exited through the door leading to Dorian’s quarters. She’d left the bags on the low table by the main window, for me to look through later.
By the bags, a warm pot of tea and a small jug of cold milk was also waiting for me.
Maria was efficient as well as cute, there was no doubt about that.
The pile of vibrantly coloured bags with their shop’s logos confidently emblazoned across them instilled a strange mingling of pleasure and anger.
Pleasure, of course, because I was looking forward to trying on the light, cool clothes I’d bought to take on our honeymoon.
Anger because, despite Dorian’s successful complaint to the Press Council that I was being trailed everywhere by a cortege of paparazzi, I was now familiar with their trick of photographing Claude either carrying the bags or loading them into the back of the car.
There would be the inevitable follow up of interviews with shop assistants who had served me as they tried to piece together a story or scenario from the clothes, jewels or food I’d purchased.
The bikinis, in particular, would once again open up speculation about our honeymoon destination. It would be an excuse for a medley of shots of beautiful islands enveloped by bright blue skies and seas.
Everything about my life on TV was made to seem idyllic, effortless, enviable.
After all, we were the perfect couple, weren’t we, Dorian and I?
How many times had the viewers been informed that our DNA profiling was so perfectly matched that the wedding organisers had transformed our coding into a symbol of linked spirals, stamped on everything from the invitations to the specially printed wallpaper that would grace the reception rooms?
‘Shopping again? What a surprise!’
Dorian chuckled at his own irony as he entered the room.
Casually dressed in a billowing white shirt and linen trousers, he looked at ease, relaxed, as if he’d been home for ages.
‘If I’d have known you were home, I’d’ve called.’ We drew closer. ‘We could have gone somewhere to eat.’
I tugged playfully on his opened, flaring shirt. He ran his hands up my bared arms.
‘I’ve been busy until a few minutes ago,’ he breathed.
‘As always!’ I teased.
‘As always!’ he agreed with a gentle laugh.
He kissed me warmly, tenderly.
It took me by surprise.
‘It’s nice to have you home early.’ I sighed happily as he kissed my neck. ‘I’m so lonely here without you.’
Of course, the penthouse had been built so that the living quarters divided Dorian’s section of the apartment from mine, as was expected of an engaged couple living together.
But unlike many couples, who enjoyed continuing to live almost separate lives, we preferred to share our time together when we were awake, whether it was eating in the kitchen area or watching TV and films in the lounge.
‘Lonely?’ Dorian drew away slightly in surprise. ‘You’ve always got Maria to keep you company! She’s such a sweet little thing!’
‘Yes, yes, very very sweet! But it would be nice to be able to talk to someone human for a change when I came home!’
‘Human?’ Dorian’s eyebrows rose in mock horror. ‘And what would it look like to everyone I’m trying to sell my Droids to if we didn’t trust them with simple tasks like waiting on us and cooking for us? They’re intelligent, attentive, energetic – all qualities you’d be pretty hard put to find in any human!’
‘Dorian, you know what I mean!’
I gave him a light-hearted push.
‘Human servants can talk about things that Droids just don’t understand, right? Your focus groups must have told you that! That’s why you’re having trouble persuading people to buy them as maids and what have you!’
I didn’t add that some people felt that employing young girls and men from amongst the Perma-Leisured was the right thing to do. Jobs were scarce, and every day more and more roles were being filled by Droids and Bots manufactured by companies like Dorian’s.
‘Is that what you want to do when I’m not here? Talk to the servants?’
I pulled back, confused.
The voice, although Dorian’s didn’t seem to have come from him.
I heard him laugh. But the laugh didn’t come from his mouth.
Far from smiling, he looked uncharacteristically apologetic.
‘Dorian? What’s going on?’
The laugh was louder now, and more obviously coming from off to one side of the room.
I whirled around.
Another Dorian was standing by the door leading off to his section of the apartment.
‘He fooled you didn’t he?’ he sniggered, walking into the room with a nod towards the Dorian standing next to me.
‘I’m sorry, ever so sorry,’ the closer Dorian said.
He looked pained, like he really meant it.
I instantly knew who the real Dorian was and who was the fake.
‘Did you think this was funny?’ I snapped at the fake Dorian standing by me.
I reached out towards his face, meaning to pull off what I presumed must be some form of ingenious latex mask.
But my nails only scratched at skin, drawing thin white lines across the flesh.
‘What?
I was more confused than ever.
How could he look – yes, even feel and smell – like the real Dorian?
‘Dorian ordered me to–’
‘Ordered?’
‘You still don’t get it do you, my sweet, sweet Angeic?’
Dorian slipped an arm around me as he drew closer.
‘All I get, Dorian, is that you’ve played an awful trick on me!’
I angrily spun away from him.
‘Trick?’ he snorted. ‘Is that really all you think it is Angeic?’
He sounded astonished, even offended.
He pulled his strange twin towards him, like he was putting him on display for me.
The twin lowered his eyes, too ashamed to look at me.
‘It’s a masterstroke Angeic, not a trick!’ Dorian declared arrogantly. ‘This is a totally new level of android, a–’
‘Android?’
I was totally aghast. Completely bewildered.
My head swam with the implications of Dorian’s words.
Pity. Horror.
I was unsure how to look at and feel about Dorian’s – creation!
‘It’s illegal Dorian! You stretch every rule to its limits with your Animadroids, may God help those poor creatures! But to use a human is–’
‘But the resemblance, Angeic!’
Dorian firmly grabbed me by the waist, like some Victorian gentleman trying to prevent a woman having hysterics.
‘You’re forgetting the resemblance between us!’
I stared curiously at them both, trying to work out what Dorian could mean by the importance of their resemblance.
‘You…your DNA?’ I said unsurely. ‘You somehow used your own DNA to…’
I drifted off, unable to fill in the colossal gaps in my knowledge of Droid generation.
‘Raised him up from nothing more than a petri dish!’
Standing back, Dorian slowly brought up his hands as if he were miraculously conjuring up life from clay.
With a satisfied grinned, he slapped his creation on the shoulder and pushed him closer towards me.
‘Say hello, Angeic, to Dorian A!’
‘You mean Frankenstein, Dorian!’ I snarled furiously as I stormed off towards my rooms.
*
Chapter 3
‘Frankenstein was the doctor,’ Dorian had roared uproariously as I’d stalked off.
I’d stopped at the doorway to my quarters to quickly change the Permission Profile on the DNA locks, blocking entrance to everyone but Maria.
I’d spun around, snapping at him, ‘Same thing!’
At that moment, Dorian and his twin couldn’t have looked more different.
Whereas the real Dorian smirked with obvious pleasure, his android seemed strangely, shyly abashed.
It wasn’t a look I was used to seeing on Dorian’s face.
I’d almost felt sorry for him.
And yes, thinking about it now, wallowing in the slinky comfort of my favourite leather sofa, I realised I did pity him.
He was an android. He hadn’t asked to be created, to be brought into being.
Dorian alone was completely responsible for that choice. Just as Dr Frankenstein had created his monster, Dorian had created his own, semi-robotic twin.
It was monstrous!
Not because Dorian A was a monster; no, no, not because of that all.
The real monstrosity, of course, lay in creating a slave, a robotic hybrid, from something that should have been fully human.
‘The master says you’ll be eating alone today ma’am.’
Maria walked in, deftly controlling the robotic trolley containing the dishes sent out from the kitchen.
‘Yes, that’s right thank you, Maria,’ I answered as she and the trolley began to quickly prepare the room’s table for dinner.
Maria moved lithely, effortlessly.
Underneath her smart uniform, I knew, her body was more humanoid than wallaby. It was a mix of bio-robotics, enzyme plastics and, if the rumours were correct (Dorian laughed as if it were a ridiculous question whenever I asked), parts culled from the Apedroid family.
Did something similar lie under Dorian A’s loosely-fitting clothes?
When he had stood close to me, held me, I hadn’t felt or sensed anything out of the ordinary.
From what little I had seen of him, he seemed to move with the same urgent grace Dorian possessed.
‘Maria; this Dorian A – what do you know of him?’
‘Nothing much ma’am.’
Maria wasn’t to be deflected from her task. She was putting the finishing touches to the table setting while the trolley ladled out the soup.
‘First time I saw him was just a few moment ago.’
She pulled back the chair, inviting me to take my seat.
‘Yet you knew he was called Dorian A?’
‘Of course ma’am; he wore a small badge.’
Ah, did he now; Dorian must have removed that so he could play his awful trick on me.
‘Can you tell the difference between them? Between the master and this Dorian A, I mean?’
‘Of course miss. The master doesn’t wear a badge, does he?’
I laughed. ‘No, no, the master doesn’t wear a badge Maria!’
Dorian A.
Was there a plan for a Dorian B? A Dorian C?
Swamping the world with a never ending supply of Dorian replicas.
No; Dorian could never do that.
He would never allow any Droid that looked like him to be subservient to someone else.
If he had an alphabet of Dorians in mind, it would be as some of sort of master race at the very least!
I chuckled to myself.
No, not even Dorian would stretch to that.
*
The room’s wall-screen blinked.
Dorian wanted to talk.
He knew I was angry. He knew better than to try and cajole me out of my rooms by pleading for forgiveness at the door.
But he also knew that after I had fumed and simmered for a while, I would eventually forgive him.
How could such a perfectly matched couple ever stay angry with each other?
We’d been matched to improve our chances of survival. It was our duty to make it work.
Besides, everyone knew Dorian was a Jekyll and Hyde character; it was that mix of qualities that both drove him and made him a success.
His natural, easy-going charm got him the funding for his research, for his sales.
And his aggression, his frustration, whenever an experiment or a project failed? All that (well, most of it anyway) was usually simply poured back into his work, spurring him on to further achievements.
‘Immunity, Angeic,’ he would say whenever I protested that he was spending too long in his laboratories. ‘That’s what all my work ultimately comes down to; giving us some way of fighting back against bacteria, preferably by developing some form of biological immunity.’
Yes, I was happy with the choice of husband I’d been given.
With a casually raised finger, I accepted his call.
Dorian’s smiling face suddenly filled the wall.
‘I told chef to prepare your favourite.’
He looked down at the dishes laid out around me on the table.
‘I told him it had to be something to put you in a good mood as I needed forgiving; again!’
‘That’s ever so kind of you Dorian.’ I tried to ensure he wouldn’t miss the sarcasm. ‘Or is it Dorian A I should be thanking?’
He chuckled.
‘I thought I was Dr Frankenstein. So there seems to be some improvement in the way you think of me.’
‘Well don’t worry: I’m sure that Dr Frankenstein it will be on all the news channels when they hear of your latest creation. Just think of all those reporters you’ve so carefully courted, turning on you in a feeding frenzy when they pick up on this juicy little tale.’
‘And who says they’re going to hear of it? I’m not ready to tell them just yet; are you?’
‘What, tell them my darling fiancé has started creating human hybrids? Tell them I’m affectively
engaged to a monster?’
‘Oh, so I’m back to being the monster, am I?’ he laughed.
‘Don’t you realise the seriousness of all this Dorian?’ I snapped, angered by the way he didn’t seem to appreciate any of the problems he’d created for us. ‘You’ve gone too far Dorian! If even the slightest drip of information gets out, the whole company will be shut down, all our assets frozen. And what about Dorian A himself? – haven’t you even considered the morality of entrapping a thinking, living human as part Droid?’
Even as I said it, I was hoping Dorian would simply confirm what I had already guessed must be the case; that, just as an Animadroids thought processes could be manipulated in the early embryonic stages, Dorian A’s mind had been somehow stripped of the self-awareness and emotions that would otherwise turn his own body into the most horrendous imprisonment imaginable.
‘Angeic, what’s the prime selling point of my products? That I can generate the emotional control within my Animadroids that makes them ideal for any task you want to give them. And with Dorian A, I wasn’t working with embryos, but from the original, basic DNA strands; the very building blocks of life!’
‘That’s it – that’s it, isn’t it?’
I stared back at him in almost open-mouthed admiration as it dawned on me how Dorian could shrug off any legal challenge to his new creation.
‘And I just thought you were being melodramatic when you said you’d raised him up from nothing more than a laboratory dish!’
‘Me, melodramatic Angeic? Shame; how little you know me!’
‘Oh, I know you all right Dorian. But, yeah, I admit it; I really, really believed you’d gone too far this time! That the law would come down so hard on you as soon as it had even an inkling of what was going on here. But that’s the beauty of it all, isn’t it? The laws deal with embryos; there aren’t any laws dealing with using DNA to create Droids, because no one ever thought it was possible.’
‘See, I knew you were ridiculously intelligent! We are a perfect match, aren’t we?’
Absolutely nothing of Dorian A would have existed if he hadn’t been raised up from little more than a few chemical strands lying in a laboratory dish.
‘The law has to catch up with Dorian’s genius before it can begin to hold him back! Oh, how you must have loved it when you figured that one out!’
I couldn’t resist an appreciative chuckle.
‘You flatter me, Angeic; as always!’
‘And I take it there are no plans for a whole army of Dorians?’
‘Of course not! One’s enough for the world, don’t you think? I couldn’t live with another me. He’s only partly me –not completely me.’
We laughed together.
‘So, do I take it I’m forgiven?’
‘Forgiven? Partly – not completely.’