For the Love of an Android

Something a bit different from me: a science fiction tale. I've long been a fan of the genre but have not written a sci-fi story for a very long time, and certainly never before for Literotica.

I'd like to acknowledge that certain aspects of this story have been inspired by the 'Detroit: Almost Human' game on PlayStation.

***

CHAPTER ONE

Its name was Jacinta. The kids called it 'Cint' - which was cute in a way, I suppose.

It was gorgeous, as all androids were. I was never sure why this was the case, I guess the manufacturers figured out early on that it's easier to sell a pretty robot than an ugly one. Built to appear female, it had beautiful flowing straight hair, a shimmering brunette tone with golden highlights; large owlish eyes set against honey-toned skin, synthetic but convincingly real; not tall, maybe 165 centimetres, and slight in figure, with 'breasts' that seemed somewhat overlarge and, of course, unnaturally perky. It looked as though it had been sketched by an undersexed nineteen year old boy, which very possibly may have been the case.

And I had just been offered its ownership.

I frowned quizzically. My ex-wife and her husband - Julia and Brad - had dropped the kids off at my place on their way to yet another 'romantic getaway', and I had been mildly surprised to see Jacinta step out of the autocar too, with a suitcase in hand.

Jacinta was, almost literally, part of the furniture at their house. I had met her before of course, they'd had her at their house for years now, and she was usually the one to open the door when I dropped Lilly and Stacey back to their mum after every three-day visit. But the android never came around to my place, it was kept essentially as a handmaiden at their house - cleaning, cooking, accepting deliveries and whatnot.

"You're... giving it to me?" I said.

"Signing it over," Brad clarified, in that special Brad-clarifying-things-to-Julia's-dopey-ex tone of his. "We've had her four years now and we've just upgraded to a newer model, it was delivered this morning."

"And the girls have grown so attached to Jacinta," Julia added. "We were going to return her to the factory for recycling, but they were distraught at the idea."

"You can't recycle Cint!" Lilly, our six-year-old, chimed in.

"She's family," Stacey added. Stacey was three years older than Lilly, and usually less given to such childish sentimentality - or so I had thought. 'This robot must have really endeared itself to them both,' I reckoned to myself.

"So I'd be entering a lease?" I asked, cautiously and very not-committing-to-anything-ly.

"Open-ended," Brad assured me. "No lock-in contract, pay by the month, jump out whenever you want. They get much looser with the costs and contracts once a model is superseded, and Jacinta here is four years old - two new generations have come out since, with significant upgrades. She's pretty outmoded, but she still works well."

I looked quickly to Jacinta. It was standing there, holding its suitcase, with that vaguely blank smiling expression that seemed so typical of its android kin. It was basically waiting for a command, with no apparent perturbation over whether I chose to accept it into my household or send it off to be scrapped.

"Well..." I said. "I am trying to save for a house. And I've only just finished paying off that ski holiday I took the girls on last year."

"Dad!" Stacey snapped. "You CANNOT let them send our Cint away to be destroyed. We love her. She's family!" she said again.

I pulled a face. This, surely, is how the mob at CyberLife hook the unwary. Get a 'bot into their homes, sting them for updates and upgrades every month, and if the poor shmos find they can't afford to keep the thing - bam, the kids are in tears because you're fixing to send their human-looking best friend off to be shredded.

Julia must have decided I wouldn't go for it, because she was gearing up for 'consolation mode'. "Girls," she began. "I'm sure Daddy would love to bring Jacinta into his home. But it's harder for him, he's earning a single wage while Brad and I both bring in money..."

'In Brad's case, a LOT more money,' I thought to myself - a sentiment I'm sure was echoed in Brad's head, too.

"Scotty, mate," Brad began - both of which I hate him saying, which I'm sure he knows. "She's a good model, this one. Has pretty much all the upgrades," he added, with a twinkle in his eye that I couldn't immediately decipher. "She's fantastic around the house, extremely efficient, she's super personable, and the girls just love her. With the old-gen discounts they're offering, she's practically a steal."

"She'll walk us to school!" little Lilly chimed in. "And pick us up every day! She's never been late and she's never forgotten," she added, with a look at me.

"Oh come on," I returned. "I forgot just that one time, months ago."

"But she's NEVER forgotten," Stacey repeated, taking up the cause. "She knows all our favourite meals and all our favourite brands, she's memorised all our favourite stories. Please, Dad?"

"Pleeeeease?" Lilly chimed in, with the big wet shiny doll eyes and the promise of a flood of tears if I said no.

I huffed a huge, exasperated sigh. "I'll have to do some sums..." I began.

Stacey and Lilly were already cheering. "Yay! Thanks dad! Love you!" they chorused.

"No promises!" I cried, hands raised - though I already knew I was defeated.

Julia's half-smirk telegraphed that she knew just as much too. "You're a good man, Scott," she told me - which still hurt to hear, coming from her.

"Tell you what, Scotty," said Brad. "We'll shout you a free week. You can road-test it, see if you like it, make a decision after that. If not, we'll have it picked up for recycling."

"Nooooooo!" the girls shrieked. I rolled my eyes.

"Will Mister Scott be taking me into his household?" Jacinta asked, mildly - the android had apparently been following the whole conversation.

"For a week, at least," Julia confirmed. "Brad, can you do the whole command-code transfer thing?"

"Ugh, I'll have to search up the procedure," Brad sighed, tapping at his wrist implant and bringing a search page shimmering into the air.

"You want me to look it up?" I offered, reaching for the phone in my pocket.

"I can't believe you still use that thing," Julia smiled.

"Dad's old-school," Stacey threw in, making it sound like the worst insult in the world.

"Hey: if a 'brick' was good enough for my grandad, it's good enough for me," I told them all. "Saves me the trouble of having junk surgically grafted into my body too, for the sake of having to pull something out of my pocket."

"It might as well be a pocket-watch, Scott," Julia chided.

"Well: it's cheap, too. Saving for a house..." I reminded everyone who cared. Which probably amounted to no one.

"Yeah yeah," said Brad, confirming my suspicions as he found the right page, setting the hologram up to shimmer in front of his face. "Alright, here we go. Jacinta: Command Proxy Transfer, Protocol Alpha-Three-Nine."

Jacinta transferred its gaze to Brad, fixing him with its full attention while Julia took the girls into my house. "Acknowledged," it responded. "Mister Bradley James Humphries, Contract and Command Administrator."

"Jacinta: CyberLife Industries Model Thirty-Two-Gamma-Gamma-Epsilon-Dash-Nine," said Brad, reading off the scrolling prompts in his instructions file. "I hereby transfer Contract and Command Administration to Scott Perk - uh, Scotty, do you have a middle name there?"

I blinked. "Um, yeah. Casey."

Brad grinned, typically derisive.

"It's a guy's name too, okay?" I told him, trying not to sound too pissy about it.

"...to Scott Casey Perkins." He shuffled over to stand next to me, so I could read the prompts off the projection from his wrist, as Jacinta transferred its steady, piercing gaze to me. "Now you read this bit."

I pulled a face, and with a gesture I pulled the projection off his wrist and onto my phone's screen. "Jacinta: confirm Command Proxy Transfer."

"Confirmed," Jacinta acknowledged. "Command Proxy Transfer to Mister Scott Casey Perkins: successful."

I waited for more; it simply stood there, its piercing brown eyes fixed into mine. "Is that it?" I frowned, scrolling through the rest of the documentation.

"That's all it takes, mate," Brad nodded. "She's all yours. Be sure and get the full run-down of her features and upgrades," he added with a smirk, seconds before Julia came back out of the house.

"Okay, girls are settled," Julia announced. "You're right to keep them until Sunday?" she added, as a pointed reminder.

"For sure," I nodded. "Where you guys off to again?"

"Blue Mountains," said Brad. "Beautiful, this time of year. Great view from the hot-tub out over the valley."

That was plenty more information than I wanted or needed, but I didn't bite. Brad was always dropping little digs like that; at least half the time I reckoned it was probably subconscious, as though he wasn't deliberately rubbing his wealth or his bawdy good times with my ex-wife in my face. For the likes of Brad, being an insensitive shithead was something that came without effort.

"Righto," I said. "Safe trip. Going by autocar or skycar?"

"Taking an autocar via the Tube down to the city," said Brad. "Then we might treat ourselves to a skycar up into the mountains. Awesome treat, swooping in over the mountains at sunset."

I was sorry I asked. I caught Julia's eye; she just rolled her eyes silently, even while she smiled at Brad's casual boorishness.

"Enjoy your trip then, guys," I allowed. "And, uh, thanks for the robot."

"Android," Julia corrected. "Don't let the girls hear you call her a 'robot', they'll tear you a new one."

"Yep, they probably will," I laughed. I waved them off; once they were gone, I looked at my new acquisition somewhat awkwardly.

"Umm," I said. "Welcome to the household, I guess."

The android smiled in reply, doing a pretty effective impression of a warm, human response. "Thank you, Mister Scott," it said. "It was good of you to take me in. The girls will appreciate it."

My eyebrows had raised at that. "Uh, yeah," I returned. "What's in the case?" I added - it had been holding the fairly bulky suitcase the whole while, its robotic strength apparently untroubled by the weight.

"A few outfits," it replied. "Missus Julia purchased a few different clothing options for me at the children's request. Young Lilly likes to play 'dress-ups' with me."

I nodded - that sounded about right, little Lilly treating their robotic servant like an oversized doll. "Well, come on in, then. Make yourself at home," I said with a shrug.

"I will. Thank you again," it said - and it walked on in to my house with its suitcase, leaving me to follow in its wake.

***

I don't know why I said that. Any of it. 'Welcome to the household'? 'Make yourself at home'? I may as well have thrown a welcome party for a new fridge.

It was pretty obvious, though. A fridge doesn't smile at you when you walk into the room. A toaster won't look after your kids and help them do their homework while they're waiting for you to get home from work. And no kind of three-seat sofa has curves like that.

It was insidious, in a way. CyberLife, Jacinta's manufacturer, was pretty much the Mercedes of android makers; their new models, coming out every two years, were more and more human-seeming and lifelike than the generation that came before. It used to be easy to spot an android: shiny plastic skin, straw-like hair, dead blank eyes, unnaturally still facial features, a certain stiffness and artificiality to their movement.

But with every generation, they got better and better. They moved more fluidly. They replicated facial twitches, expressions and emotions more and more convincingly. They spoke ever-more naturally. The materials they were built from actually seemed real, natural and alive. If it weren't for the glowing blue LED-circle on their right-side temple to mark them out, a person would be hard-pressed to tell the latest models apart from an actual human being.

Jacinta was very advanced, with an uncanny naturalness to the way she moved and spoke. Her hair looked real, and her skin seemed soft, aglow, alive. Still, being two generations superseded, she did have a very slight aura of artificiality about her. It could be hard to pick sometimes. It mostly showed when she was at rest, waiting for a command or for something to do. She'd be too still; she'd stand - or sit, if she had been invited to do so - and that blank expression would fall over her face, the countenance of a machine idled.

It was reassuring, in a way. In my capacity as a journalist interviewing politicians and top government officials, I'd recently had dealings with examples of the newer models out of CyberLife who served and assisted the elite, and their humanness was eerie. Unsettlingly so. I couldn't live with it - and so, in a way, Jacinta's very occasional machine-like lapses were a comfort to this old-fashioned hack.

Jacinta was already making herself at home. She was busying herself in the kitchen, what with dinnertime approaching. "Mister Scott," she hailed. "What were your plans for dinner?"

"Chicken schnitzel burgers," I told her.

"Yay!" cheered the girls.

"With chips and steamed veggies on the side," I added.

"Ohhhhh!" the girls chorused in dismay. "Do we have to eat veggies?" Lilly added.

"Only if you want ice cream for dessert," I told her - as I had told them both a thousand times previously. It provoked another cry of despair, which as an Excellent Father I heartily enjoyed.

The android had already gathered the fixings from the fridge. "These store-bought schnitzels are less cost-effective than home-made chicken fillet schnitzel," it observed.

"Yes," I allowed. "But it's much more time-efficient too. I'll never have time to prepare anything like it myself."

"I am happy to do so for you," Jacinta informed me, giving every impression that it would, in fact, derive a great deal of happiness to fix home-made chicken schnitzels for me. "When you have a moment later, you can give me access to your standing grocery orders, and I can make the necessary adjustments."

I was instantly wary - I was not at all keen to relinquish my grocery-ordering regime, feeling like I had it honed to the finest of fine points. "I would rather keep control of that for myself, thank you," I told it, shortly.

"If you prefer," Jacinta returned, mildly. "However, I am programmed with Stacey and Lilly's favourite meals, and it would be very easy for me to work them into your standing orders. And I could include the basics for chicken schnitzels, too."

I pulled a face. This is exactly what androids are good for, of course, taking on the mundanity of life such as the grocery orders and micro-managing them for their masters. I was being a fuddy-duddy and I knew it.

"Okay, fine," I grumbled. "But I want to review and approve every order. I'm on a budget, here."

"Of course," Jacinta allowed, most graciously. "I will forward each order for your final sign-off, until further notice."

There was something in the way that she said it, which caused me to pause - as though she was sure I would eventually realise I was making a fuss over nothing and I would gladly leave the marshalling of grocery deliveries to her expertise. "Righty-o," I returned, letting it go with a shrug; I'm a fairly easy-going kind of guy, and I had better uses for my energy than putting sassy robots in their place.

Dinner was soon served, and I had to admit that Jacinta was a wiz in the kitchen. The schnitzels and chips were nice and crispy, the buns neatly prepared, the perfect dollop of sauce applied - even just the right amount of salt on the chips. "This is really good!" I crowed, as we sat in front of the holovision and ate our dinner.

"Of course it is," Stacey chastised. "Cint is the best in the kitchen. She cooks everything perfectly, every time."

"She's much better than you, Dad," Lilly added, cheekily. "Your chips are soggy."

I put on a show of mock offence. "What?" I cried. "How dare you! How can you say such a thing about my masterful chip-preparing abilities?"

"Soggy chips!" Lilly returned, unabashed. "Soggy chips, soggy aaaargh!" And she screamed with laughter as I set about her, tickling her for her precociousness.

Lilly laughed, and Stacey laughed too as I tortured her little sister. I beamed, enjoying the warm moment.

I looked, and I saw Jacinta smiling too. It appeared to be enjoying our bonhomie as much as we were. A programmed response, I reckoned; just another way CyberLife made their models fit in with their families better, making them feel more essential to day-to-day life and less likely to be returned.

Jacinta took away our plates when we were done, served up the promised ice cream - only earned because everyone had eaten all of their veggies, of course - and I heard her washing the dishes as we ate. Jacinta then volunteered to run the kids through bath time, which I was happy to delegate to her; I had a big piece due by midnight and I hadn't done nearly enough on it, and I needed every spare minute I could get.

I was interrupted only shortly in my work, to be advised by Jacinta that the kids were ready to go to bed. I popped out of my office/bedroom and quickly kissed Lilly and Stacey goodnight.

"Thank you, Jacinta," I said once the kids were abed, surprising myself again as I said it. "You've saved me a lot of time tonight."

"You're welcome, Mister Scott," Jacinta returned, warmly. "That's what I am here for."

"Of course," I said, mostly to myself - I was already feeling silly for thanking what was, basically, an appliance, for fulfilling its function. "Well then. What do you do once you're finished for the night?"

"I will power down for the evening, in a convenient location," it replied. "Is there any place in particular you would like me to go while I power down?"

"Not sure why it would bother me," I told her.

"Missus Julia used to get 'creeped out' if she found me powered-down in unexpected places," Jacinta elaborated. "She preferred I went to the garage for the evening."

"Ah," I said - that sounded a lot like the Julia I knew; though parking the thing in a corner of the garage seemed a tad harsh. "Well I don't really mind. Pick yourself a spot in the lounge room, maybe on the sofa? Make yourself comfortable."

"Comfort is not an issue for me," it told me, sounding appreciative all the same. "I will sit up on the sofa while I power down for the night. Are there any chores or activities you need done tomorrow morning before you wake?"

"No no, no," I assured her. "The kids are happy with cereal of a morning, no need to fix up a lobster béarnaise or anything like that."

Jacinta blinked, an almost-quizzical look crossing its face. "I did not see the fixings for lobster béarnaise in the fridge," it said. "Would you like me to add them to the next grocery order?"

"Holy crap, no!" I returned, eyes wide. "No no no. That's far beyond my budget, Jacinta. It was just a joke."

"Aha," Jacinta replied, registering her understanding - though I was quite astonished to see what may have been a cheeky glint in her eye, as though I had in fact been stung by a jape in return. "I see. Your style of humour is much drier than Mister Bradley's. It might take me some time to adjust," she allowed.

"Uh huh," I frowned, regarding her warily. I was beginning to suspect there was more to this robot - 'Android, Scott,' I reminded myself, 'don't call her a robot' - than met the eye. The thought was a trifle unsettling.

"Well," I added, and again, I don't know why I said it, but: "Good night, Jacinta."

Jacinta almost seemed taken aback by the gesture, but she rallied very quickly, and treated me to another very warm, unnervingly human-like smile. "Thank you, Mister Scott," she replied. "Good night to you, too."