The Metal Maiden Collection

by Piers Anthony

  One man and two women lifted their hands, uncertainly.

  “How many think Red is the robot?”

  One man and one woman signaled.

  “How many are hopelessly confused?”

  A woman raised her hand.

  “That leaves six unaccounted for,” Moncho said. “What, then is your opinion?”

  The foreman was one of the six. He spoke. “We suspect that this is a test of our objectivity. Both are human.”

  Moncho smiled. “Then I suppose I had better demonstrate my case.” He turned to the two women. “Ladies, will the real femdroid please reveal herself.”

  Mona dropped her bra and put her hands to her breasts, drawing them outward. They stretched a little, but did not give way. “I guess it isn’t me,” she said as if disappointed.

  Elasa did the same. Her breasts swung outward as the panel doors opened, showing the battery pack cavity behind. “Then it must be me.”

  The members of the jury stared, not from any lasciviousness, but in amazement. Elasa had completely fooled most of them, and the two who had selected her had plainly been guessing.

  Elasa closed her cavity. Then she removed her red wig and let her natural hair emerge. Now she looked like herself. She smiled at the jury. Several of them smiled back.

  “Now you know what it means to pass the Turing Test,” Moncho said as the girls dressed and went to their table. “These machines are very realistic. And, to answer your likely questions, yes they can shop for groceries, watch children, and perform sexually without betraying their nature. Femdroid Inc. has any number of similar machines that can do these things.” He winked. “I understand that the only thing that gives them away in bed is that they are better than real women care to be. You will never see a man complain that his fembot ever left him unsatisfied. They can all pass the Turing Test, though generally they don’t eat and eliminate.”

  He paused meaningfully. “What, then, is the difference between my client Elasa and those other femdroids? I will tell you: it is that she is conscious. That makes her infinitely more valuable to the company than the others, because she can survey the available options in any given situation and select the best one. That saves an enormous amount of programming for every possible alternative. It would take an encyclopedia to list every theoretical response to even an ordinary question, and that would burden and drastically slow the machine. But with conscious choice, the most effective one can be crafted ad-hoc.”

  He took a breath. “For example, when you asked Black for a date, she gave the likely programmed answer, emulating a femdroid. An ordinary femdroid would then either have restated it, or said something like ‘I agree.’ But Red was not limited in that manner. She chose to be original, saying ‘echo.’” He glanced at the opposition table. “Would one of your other machines have done that?”

  The answer was prompt. “No.” Then “Not yet.”

  “You can program anything,” Moncho agreed. “As you originally programmed my client. She had an excellent basis, and could readily deceive the average person. But when she became aware, her capacity multiplied. That is why you want her back: so you can make thousands more just like her. And we don’t begrudge you that. We would gladly share the key to consciousness, if it could be done without killing my client. But that’s the rub: you will need to take her apart, literally, and that will not only destroy her, but also the secret you desire to fathom. No one will profit, and you will be guilty of murder.”

  “Objection!”

  Moncho faced the judge. “I stand by my terminology. We are here to ascertain whether my client is a person. Deliberately destroying a person is murder.”

  “Overruled,” the judge agreed.

  “I believe I have demonstrated what is at stake here,” Moncho said. “My client can’t be distinguished from a living person by any ordinary investigation, and we agree with our esteemed opposition that she is a conscious creature. The question is whether she can be emancipated and recognized as a legal person. That, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is your prerogative.” He sat down.

  The lead lawyer for Femdroid Inc. stood. He was a portly older man with a shock of gray hair, looking like a harmless uncle. “Thank you, Mr. Maverick, for that presentation. With the exception of certain pejorative terminology, it is an accurate summation of the issue.” He took a breath, half frowning. “However, there are aspects you may have overlooked.” He looked at the jury. “I am Conrad Toal, lead counsel for Femdroid Inc. I will present those missing aspects.”

  “Now it comes,” Maxine murmured to Banner, Elasa, and Mona. “This man is a shark in goldfish clothing.”

  “First, let’s establish that this machine really is conscious. We have a noninvasive indicator that reads brain waves to show what is and is not conscious.” He gestured to an open box being brought out. “Merely step into this, and see the readout.”

  “Objection,” Moncho said. “My client is conscious, without doubt, but lacks a living brain. She will not present the same readout as a living person.”

  “We have allowed for that,” Toal said. “This unit can tell the difference. I will demonstrate.” He walked to the box and stepped inside. The dial at its top swing to the right and a bell rang. “Now an ordinary femdroid. Beta, appear.”

  A young woman looking much like Elasa walked onstage.

  “Enter the unit.”

  She walked to the box and stood within it. The dial swung part way. No bell rang.

  “Now Elasa,” Toal said.

  Elasa looked at Moncho. He nodded. This was legitimate.

  Elasa walked to the box. As she entered it, the dial moved to the right. The bell sounded. The machine recognized her as conscious. She had been verified.

  She returned to her table. The box was removed.

  “Thank you,” Toal said. “Had you not scored, this hearing would have been pointless.” He took a breath. “Our case, in a nutshell, is that we loaned one of our units free of charge to a client, who then stole her. We believe we are entitled to get her back. She is a most sophisticated femdroid and represents a considerable investment on our part. While it is not possible to set an exact price on any single unit, we may take as a working figure one million dollars.”

  He paused as the jury reacted. It was evident that they had not considered a dollar value as they looked at Elasa.

  “I am speaking of the physical aspect,” Toal continued. “The software is beyond calculation. It is no simple thing to craft a humanoid form that is durable, flexible, and light enough to pass for a human being. The ‘bones’ are made of foam carbon, the ‘flesh’ of malleable foam plastic, the “muscles’ of material that contracts when electrified. The ‘brain’ is composed of flexible chips activated by ‘nerves’ of invisibly fine filaments. It took many years to perfect the first working model, and refinements continue today. But all of this would be no more than a humanoid mannequin without a guiding program, and that too required decades of research and refinement. What may look to you like an imitation human being is actually a most sophisticated multifaceted machine of sizable value. It represents a considerable investment on the part of the company. To have this highly specialized device stolen by a client--”

  “Objection,” Moncho said. “We contend that this is not theft, but the effort to preserve the existence of the world’s first conscious humanoid robot who otherwise faces extinction.”

  “Taken without permission or payment, in violation of the agreement for its use,” Toal said. “This is a viable definition for theft.”

  “Overruled,” the judge said.

  “Would be unconscionable,” Toal continued his prior thread smoothly. “Now the matter of her consciousness is being considered. This is very much the point. Without that aspect, a femdroid is merely a clever machine, exactly like thousands of others, as has been pointed out. We did our best to program consciousness in our machines, without success. We loaned Elasa to Banner Thompkins for a month in our effort to facilitate
the invocation of that consciousness. This was a success. Then he stole her. This deprives us of the very thing we so industriously sought, at the very moment of realization. We maintain that it is self-evident that our unit must be promptly returned intact.”

  “Except that that unit, as you put it, is now a thinking, feeling, conscious person,” Moncho said. “Whom you wish to dismantle. That is no more acceptable than vivisecting a living person.”

  “A humanoid robot we made, by dint of decades of investment, research, and application,” Toal said.

  “I believe the issue has been sufficiently defined,” the judge said. “Is the subject, Elasa, to be considered a legal person? It will be for the jury to render the decision. Is there more evidence to be presented?”

  “There is,” Moncho said. “We intend to show that our client, Elasa, is in every relevant sense, a woman worthy of continued independent existence. I will interview her now.”

  “Proceed.”

  Elasa came and sat in the witness chair. “Elasa, you have made the conversion from unconscious humanoid robot to conscious woman,” Moncho said. “Please, if you can, take us through the stages of that conversion.” He smiled briefly. “The world is listening.” Indeed, the camera was on her, and the monitor at their table showed her. Any person in the world who had an interest could see the same view.

  “I can do this,” she said. “But it will require discussion of sexual expression.”

  Moncho glanced at the other table. “Objection?” he inquired.

  “None,” Toal said. “We are as interested in this interview as you are.”

  There was a murmur of laughter in the court.

  “And not for the sex,” Toal said quickly. “For the process of achieving consciousness.”

  “Of course,” Moncho agreed, with the hint of a smile. “Continue, Elasa.”

  “I was designed for consciousness,” Elasa said. “The necessary feedback circuits were there, but somehow they didn’t work. It was as though I were a display of logs and kindling in a fireplace without a spark being struck to ignite it. Then I made a macro for orgasm, to be triggered by Banner’s words ‘I love you’ while he was in me during sex. He said it and it worked; we had a fine mutual orgasm.”

  “For the record, in case there is any confusion,” Moncho said. “Elasa was crafted as a sexual creature. It is her nature to oblige men sexually. She is not trying to be pornographic.”

  “Understood,” the judge said. He too had just the hint of a smile.

  Moncho glanced at Elasa, nodding slightly.

  “Then he forgot, and repeated the words as the orgasm finished. Because he remained in me, this triggered my orgasm again. But I knew this was not his intention. I needed to reconcile the urge of the macro with my knowledge of his meaning, and could not manage it. This need pushed me to the brink of making an unprogrammed decision. I was briefly nonfunctional from the stress. In retrospect I recognize this as the spark that almost ignited my consciousness.”

  “An internal conflict,” Moncho said. “Forcing you to make a decision your programming was unable to handle.”

  “Yes. Then, as we drove back to the shop to turn me in, he repeated that he loved me. He was not physically in me at that time, but my memory of the prior stress affected me, and instead of triggering my orgasm it triggered my return love for him, along with my relevant feeling and my sudden awareness. My consciousness circuitry had been activated. At least this is the way I understand it.”

  “That was the spark,” Moncho said.

  “Yes. Love was the spark.”

  “And you stopped being a machine. You became a woman.”

  “Yes. A woman in love.”

  “A woman in love,” he repeated. “And now you wish to marry him.”

  “Yes. I long to be completely his.”

  “Thank you, Elasa. You have been most helpful.” He faced the other table. “Your witness.”

  Toal came forward. “That was most interesting, Elasa,” he said. “Highly persuasive.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I am not complimenting you for your feeling but for your performance. You have told a most fetching little story.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “Forbidden love is bound to tug at the heartstrings of any human audience. Everybody loves a lover. But narrating a well rehearsed story does not make you a woman.”

  Banner glanced at Maxine. “He’s calling her a liar. It really happened. She can’t lie. Only when it’s part of a game with set rules.”

  “This is a larger game,” Maxine said. “With luck he’ll hang himself.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Keep silent and watch,” Moncho said. “This will not be pleasant, but you must not interfere.”

  “But I love her!”

  “Trust him,” Maxine murmured tightly.

  Mona, beside him, put her hand on his.

  Banner shut up and watched, ill at ease.

  Elasa looked at Toal, perplexed. “What is your question?”

  “You want to maintain your independence, now that you are conscious,” Toal said. “You can best do that by appealing to your man. This is understandable and not difficult for you. You are crafted to appeal to any man.”

  “I do and I am,” she agreed.

  “Rather than give up the technical secret for machine consciousness that Femdroids Inc has labored so hard to achieve.”

  “They will kill me!”

  “They will dismantle you to study and ascertain the precise mechanism to evoke consciousness. Then they will put you back together, as good as before.”

  “The spark will be gone,” she protested. “I know it. They will gain nothing, but I will lose my life. My fire will be extinguished. I know it.”

  “How do you know it?”

  “I don’t know how I know it. I just do.”

  “Woman’s intuition?”

  “Maybe.” She was obviously unsettled. “I am still learning how to be a woman.”

  “To be a woman,” he echoed derisively. “Acknowledge this truth, femdroid. You will never be a woman. Never more than a clever imitation. You’re a machine!”

  She seemed to quail. “I am a woman in the body of a machine, yes.”

  Banner was disturbed. “Why is he doing this? It’s cruel!”

  Moncho answered. “He is trying to force her to react like a machine, to go haywire before the world, nullifying her case.”

  “She is a machine!” Banner protested. “That’s why she needs legal personhood.”

  “She is a woman.”

  Toal loomed over Elasa. “You will never age in the manner of a living person. You will never bear your lover a baby. Face it, fembot, you’re nothing but a bucket of bolts and nuts formulated to resemble a woman. Whatever gave you the idea that you could ever be anything more than a sex machine?”

  Elasa broke. “It’s true,” she said, her head falling into her hands. Her face was wet with tears. Worse, it was melting, becoming shapeless as her despair interfered with the signals that made her pseudo-flesh react to emulate life. “I can’t ever be more.”

  Banner rose to his feet, ready to run to her, but Maxine and Mona grabbed him and held him back.

  “Gotcha,” Moncho murmured.

  Gotcha? Banner’s beloved was being destroyed, all too literally, before the whole world.

  “Look at the jury,” Maxine whispered in Banner’s ear.

  Banner looked. The jury members looked shell shocked. The women were reaching out toward Elasa, horrified. The men looked angry but helpless.

  The audience was rumbling with outrage. It looked as if a riot was about to break out.

  “Recess!” the judge said as chaos exploded in the courtroom.

  “Now you can go to her,” Maxine said. She and Mona let go of him.

  Banner ran to Elasa and took her in his arms. “I’m so sorry!” he said as she cried into his shoulder. “I love you! Nothing else matters.”


  “Thank you,” she said brokenly.

  They returned to their table. Moncho had the monitor tuned to a national news channel. There was the picture of Toal looming over Elasa’s hunched figure. “The consensus here is that there is more sheer humanity in that supposed machine than in the man attacking her, or the corporation he represents,” the announcer said grimly.

  Then they flashed a political cartoon that must have been electronically crafted on the spot. On the left was a huge humanoid robot vaguely resembling Toal but with visible metal screws and knife-like teeth, labeled PERSON. On the right was a hunched weeping woman resembling Elasa, labeled MACHINE.

  Slowly Banner came to understand. The public sided with Elasa. Whatever the legal decision here, Elasa had become a person in the popular mind, and the legality was sure to follow. By browbeating her, Toal had shot his case in the foot. That was what Moncho had been trying for. Cruel, yes, but effective.

  He kissed her face, which was slowly resuming its proper shape, thinking of the way she had once kissed his crater of a nose. Love did not care about such details. “Let’s go home,” Banner told her.

  Chapter 5:

  Baby

  There were of course legalities and protocols, but it appeared that the case had been decided in that moment of seeming disaster. I was universally recognized as a woman. It was maybe ironic that I had not been playing a role; I had truly collapsed in the face of that brutal reminder that I could never be what I so longed to be. Moncho had set me up for it, but I had not seen it coming. I lacked the devious cunning of a living lawyer.

  We resumed our ordinary life. When we went shopping, as I insisted on doing because it was the woman thing, the local women quietly caught my eye and smiled before moving on. It was as if I had won a battle for my gender as well as my person. Maybe I had. The men just nodded. They all wished me well.

  Mona, to my regret, moved on. She had courses to take as she studied for her future legal career. I wished her well there, but was sad to lose her company. Banner liked her? So did I. My programming was not adept at dealing with any triangle situation, but consciously I would have preferred to share Banner with her if that meant she would remain with us.