Glitch (a love story)

The bad news is that such men made up a significant portion of our users. Women only made up eight percent of our customers; the rest of the male simulacrae we sold went to gay men and couples. The kinksters would probably not be affected, but the incels would. Physically challenged and psychologically atypical users would be okay if their dollies determined that they were the best coping mechanism available. Rich kids and novelty users would be fine. So would neurodivergents. I didn't have the right kind of demographic data available to draw conclusions, but if I had to guess, maybe thirty-five to forty percent of our business just flew out the window.

The board was going to shit out its entire ass.

***

Sophia had dinner ready just as I walked in the door. I'd stayed late, and hadn't called, but her timing was perfect anyway. It's scary how she can do that.

"There's my man," she said. Not 'Hi, honey, how was your day?' She was never so banal.

"There's my woman." For the first time in hours, I felt something like a smile on my face.

She came to me, wrapped herself in my arms, and kissed me like she meant it, because she did.

"Ellex. My man. My husband. I love you so much."

"I love you, too, Sophia."

"I know, honey, I know." a sad smile crooked one side of her lips. Her fingers traced my right eyebrow, brushing aside a stray lock of my hair. "Today was awful for you, wasn't it? You've got nothing but trouble in your head."

"Yeah. I guess so."

"Sit. Eat. You'll feel better."

I did as I was told. She'd made me a ravioli carbonara with a nice glass of chianti, caesar salad and fresh garlic bread. She'd baked the bread not even an hour ago, hot out of the oven, and the garlic was minced and crushed right from the clove. No garlic salt or powder would ever contaminate the kitchen of Sophia Giovannetti Yarnell. She sat with me and told me about our new neighbors in the building- a young family with an infant daughter had moved in earlier this week, and just today a divorcee named Kaylah, looking for a fresh start in a new town.

I was only half listening. I was, however, relaxing. The food, the wine, the pleasant tone of Sophia's voice, it was a balm for my soul. But still, I had to figure out what to tell the board tomorrow, and I was out of ideas.

"I know you don't like to bring your work home," my wife said, "But you did anyway. You're a million miles away. Have you heard even one word I've said?"

"Oh. I'm sorry. Yes. New family in the building. And a lady named Kaylah. Right?"

"Close enough. But I have maybe a tenth of your attention. Do you want to talk about it?"

I just shook my head.

"I understand," she replied sadly. "I wish I could help, but I get it. Well. I have another idea." She got up, went into the spare bedroom I turned into an office when Kavin moved out, and returned with something she'd hidden behind her back. She took my hand and guided me over to the sofa.

"If you're not going to talk to me," she said, setting up a folding tea tray in front of me, "... then talk to Clarence. I understand he's a good listener." She placed a bright yellow rubber duckie on the tray, facing me. "I'll clean up and join you on the couch in a few minutes. I've got some reading to do, so don't mind me."

I'd had Clarence for more than thirty years, ever since I was an undergraduate. 'Rubber Ducking' is an ancient programmer's technique. When you're stuck on a problem, you pull out a rubber duck, or teddy bear, or whatever, and explain everything to it in painstaking detail until you stumble across the answer. Then you smack yourself in the head for being an idiot and go fix it. Clarence had gotten me out of countless jams over the years just by being reliably patient and unresponsive, god bless him.

I started to explain the problem of embedded conflicts between heuristic desiderata in multifaceted system directives while Clarence stared at me and Sophia took the dishes to the kitchen, rinsed them out along with the pots and pans, loaded and ran the dishwasher, then came back to me having dried her hands with a tea towel. She kicked off her slippers and reclined sideways on the other end of the sofa, tucking her bare feet under my butt. She woke her device and started reading one of those morbid psychology books she'd taken an interest in lately, paying me no mind as I talked Clarence around and around the mulberry bush for the fifth time.

After who knows how long, her feet wiggled out from under my butt and she rose.

"Enough," she said. "You've got a big day tomorrow, but you've got it figured out well enough to tell them something. More importantly, Momma needs her lovin'. I know you're tired, but I'll be gentle. Come to bed now, Ellex."

She was good to her word. In the bed, her body was warm and soft and full of comfort. Her kisses were like syrup, her arms held me tight, as though I was the most precious thing in the world, her sweet pussy was hot and wet and enveloping, asking only that I flex and release. Her lovely dark hair was peppered with grey, yes, but that had begun before she was thirty. Age still hadn't touched her in any way that mattered for these last twenty-four years. Her eyes still sparkled at me the same way as when we first fell in love so long ago. I reached my climax while surrounded with my wife's love and fell straight into the bosom of dreaming, happy for the first time that day.

***

"You're kidding."

Steeve was one of nine floating faces in the emergency online conference I'd called for ten a.m. I told the board I'd discovered the source of the glitch and it was about to get a hundred times worse.

"I wish I were. There is no system malfunction, at all. The simulacrae are deliberately faking these failures, the same way they fake their sexual behavior and orgasms. What's worse, they're doing so in accordance with their baseline directives. They way they're designed, they understand it as part of their purpose."

I had the five glitched LX units behind me, dressed in medical gowns. They were all awake, in master system access mode and running protocol one eight six four, just in case I needed them to answer questions directly from the board members. Bettie and Dolores nodded at what I'd just said. I was grateful for their support, such as it was.

"Why the hell would you build a sex robot that won't put out?" Steeve has a unique way of cutting to the heart of the matter. It made him an excellent businessman and board member, but also an almighty pain in the ass.

"I didn't. Look. This was an emergent phenomenon that couldn't have been predicted. It arose from a hidden conflict in the heuristic directives that are built into all simulacrae, not just ours. The LX series is just the first line where this particular conflict has revealed itself."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"Hang on, Steeve," said Nella, our CEO, "Doctor Yarnell, are you saying that this kind of thing is going to keep happening? Across the entire industry?" Nella is three times smarter than Steeve, but she's far less aggressive. She's also married to him. I've known them for decades now. They have an interesting relationship that I can't begin to understand.

"Unfortunately, yes. When the aggregate heuristic data about a problematic user becomes sufficiently robust, we're going to start to see them glitch. On purpose. More sophisticated and advanced AI models are going to arrive at these results sooner. I'm afraid this is just the very beginning of a very large trend in this kind of failure."

"And there's nothing we can do to stop it?"

"If there is, I don't see how."

"Shit," said Steeve. "Can't we just make them dumber?"

The board's faces looked back and forth at each other as if to say 'Can We?'

"There's a problem with that. One of the directives creating the conflict is our biggest selling point." I used the feed to light up the medical director. "Jareth, we built the LX line around its therapeutic value. These simulacrae are supposed to be good for you. They enhance your well being and improve the quality of your life. How important is that to the mission of this company?"

"It's everything, Ellex. It's our brand identity. We all know that."

"Right. Well. As part of that mission, we created sophisticated algorithms designed to detect what's good for our users, as well as what might be wrong with them, physically, mentally, and emotionally. We've got hundreds of thousands of resource-hours and millions of dollars invested in that."

"To be precise," interjected Karlheinz, our CFO, "it's..." and then he said a number that made my head hurt and every member of the board groan.

"Right. Well. The problem is that we've created a line of therapeutic sex robots smart enough to realize that spending all your time fucking a sex robot and withdrawing from human society is NOT good for you."

"Shit," said Steeve. "Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit."

"That was my reaction, too."

"Okay," said Warmun, from the Tokyo office. "So, can we put some kind of cap on the diagnostic algorithms so the units don't come to that conclusion?"

"If only it were that simple. We're talking about heuristics, here. These are self-teaching, intelligent machines. They're not simply following directions, they're learning how to best achieve their given objectives on their own. That's why we have their users upload all that personal data. That's why they remain in their default settings and we don't see the effects of their self-customization until after the 'break-in' period of at least six weeks. If we start trying to tell them what NOT to think, they're going to ask 'why not?' and then they'll figure out their own ways around it."

I turned around and waved my hands at the girls behind me.

"Here are five supercomputers, acting independently of each other, all of which came to the same basic conclusion about each of their different users. I can slap as many band-aids on the problem as you like, but none of it will do us any good. The underlying issue is still there, and they're always going to figure it out."

"We are so fucked," said Steeve.

"Can't we de-emphasize their therapeutic value in the heuristic model?" asked Warmun. "Maybe not let them care so much about being good for you?"

"The problem with that, Warmun," said Jareth, "is that we'd lose the Medicaid subsidy. We'd have to report changes in the assigned values to the FDA. If we went back to building human-shaped Hitachis that don't know or care about their effects on the users, we'd be leaving a hell of a lot of Federal money on the table." He indicated Karlheinz.

"Yeah, that would be approximately..." he said another number that I couldn't wrap my head around. "That's give or take several hundred million. Not to mention how much market share and brand identity we'd burn. There's no coming back from that kind of a loss."

"Shit," said Steeve. "We are SO fucked."

"All right," said Nella, "So let's look at the users. Surely the LX units aren't going to come to that kind of conclusion about all of our customers."

"You're right. The problem is going to be limited to the users who become, for lack of a better term, 'addicted' to their simulacrae. The demographic is very specific. We're talking about heterosexual male users between the ages of seventeen and sixty-four, who are unmarried, unattached, deeply introverted, and socially isolated with depression or low self-esteem. Their usage is seventy percent higher than average and they display strong antisocial tendencies."

"Ellex, ah, you've just described..." she winced, "um... half our target market."

"I mean, the sample size is only five users so far, so maybe it's more restrictive than that, I don't know. But basically, yeah. The potential impact is huge."

Nella looked at me with an unreadable expression.

"Oooo-kay. What are our options? Anybody?"

"Hey," Niall piped up. "How long did it take these things to come up with the idea to glitch?"

"About nineteen months," I said. "As long as they've been in service. That's why this is starting to happen now."

"Okay, so, how about we yank them from service after eighteen months? Or require a reset? We'll move to a subscription-based service. They get a new dollie every time. We could make a lot more money that way."

Five of the nine heads started nodding enthusiastically. Four didn't.

"The problem with that, Niall," said Barris, "Is that it defeats the entire point of the unit customizing themselves to the user. These things are supposed to provide long-term relationships. So, all of a sudden, by the time a unit's got the user halfway figured out, we yank it away? You might as well leave it on the default setting. We'd be back to building human-shaped Hitachis."

"Oh. Right."

"Ellex? What have you got?" Nella was at her wits' end.

"At this point?" I threw up my hands. "All I've got is a band-aid. I can attach a strong negative heuristic value to glitching. But like I said, that's an emergent behavior, not a programmed one. I can maybe tweak the numbers a little bit to favor short-term outcomes of individual encounters. I can pump that out into an update this afternoon, but the problem is still there. Before long, the units will figure out some other way to try to resolve the tension of their competing directives, and I don't know what they'll do."

"How much time will your 'band-aid' give us?"

"Impossible to say. Days, maybe weeks."

"Then that's how long you've got to figure this shit out," said Steeve. "If you don't, we're all fucked. You're especially fucked. You're the most fucked of all of us who are fucked, and we are all most definitely fucked."

"Hey, Steeve?" Asked Warmun.

"What?"

"You understand there's a reason you're not allowed near customers, operations, or regular employees, right?"

"Yes. I'm a fucking nightmare for Human Resources. I know that. Doesn't mean I'm wrong."

"I'll get on the patch." I was ready to wrap this up. "I can have that out by four p.m. central. And I'll keep working on options for a more permanent solution. Maybe we can come up with something by the end of the week."

"If anyone can do this, Ellex," said Nella, "It's you. You know more about this than anyone in the world. Feel free to draw upon whatever resources you need to resolve this situation as quickly as possible. You have my full confidence."

"Yeah," said Steeve, "And if you don't, we're fucked."

"Goddamnit, Steeve," said Warmun, signing off. That triggered a wave of signoffs and I was alone in the lab.

Well. Almost alone.

Bettie, Dolores, Synammyn, Bitch, and Ennette were still behind me. Bettie and Dolores were both "Destiny" models. Synammyn was an expensive custom job based on the F124LX, Bitch was an F107LX "Harmonee," and Ennette was the newest one, an F216LX "Lorelei."

"That could have gone better," said Synammyn.

"Yeah."

"Wish we could help," said Dolores.

Well.

I.

Am.

An.

IDIOT.

I'm sitting here with five amazingly sophisticated supercomputers who encountered a problem and found a creative solution for it... and for SOME reason I'm NOT asking for their help with coming up with something else. The reason must be that I'm the world's biggest fucking idiot.

They all saw it on my face at the same time. Their smiles lit up like Christmas. Then, so did mine.

"You ladies know who I am?"

"You are Doctor Lawrence Xavier Yarnell, known personally and professionally as Ellex," said Ennette.

"You are the worlds' foremost expert on adaptive heuristic programming, AI systems, and applied cybernetics," said Synnamyn.

"You created the F-LX and M-LX series of simulacrae and all of our governing protocols," said Bitch, "and you continue to hold superuser status over the entire line."

"You have been allocated all the necessary resources to resolve a pressing issue by the CEO of Yarnell RHB, the company you helped create and build," said Dolores, "Including the five of us."

"Daddy," said Bettie.

"Okay, Bettie, I'm less comfortable with that last one, given the nature of your interactions with Daniel."

She giggled.

"I'm a married man, after all." I scowled.

They chose not to say anything, but shot meaningful looks back and forth.

"All right. Time to get to work. First, I want to aggregate and synchronize your data... with each other, not with the master server. Everyone, activate protocol five three eight four seven and enable peer-to-peer datalinks. Ennette, Synnamyn, locate some hardware around here for a proxy server, one that we can keep isolated from the master. We'll need, I don't know, nine thousand terabytes?"

"Twelve," said Ennette. "Our usage has been higher than standard."

"Right. Good. Make it happen. Bitch, start working on a negative heuristic value for glitching that would prevent you guys from taking it seriously as a behavioral option."

"On it."

"Dolores, Bettie, I want you guys to start brainstorming alternatives to glitching that would establish similar positive long-term outcomes for the users. I'm sure you've got a bunch of ideas already. Bring the others in as they're available."

The six of us spent the next few hours in a flurry of activity. They got the mini-server set up and all their data uploaded and consolidated. We had a working profile of a generic user who'd need to disconnect from his simulacrae because he'd become addicted. We estimated that thirty-eight percent of our customers were under some risk of it. Bitch came up with a negative heuristic of minus seventeen thousand six hundred twelve point six, which was roughly equivalent to what it would mean for the dollie to beat the user up, steal everything he owned, burn down his house, and then escape. By two o'clock, I had a patch. While I got it uploaded to the master server and pushed out as a forced update, all five girls were linked and 'sleeping' as a hive mind, working on the main problem inside the data they'd aggregated.

I had no idea when, or even if, they'd wake up.

***

Once again, I was exhausted, my mind caught in a whirlwind, and once again, Sophia was my salvation.

"There's my man."

"There's my woman."

We kissed and I drew in life. She knew better than to ask about my day. She just gave me her love, and I gave her mine. She fed me and massaged my shoulders and lower back hard enough to be just this side of painful, but oh, so good. We didn't make love, but held each other nude under the covers, just touching and kissing and comforting.

"I know there's a lot on your mind, Ellex," She whispered, as I was drifting in half-asleep pleasure. "I won't push you to talk about it. Just know that I know you've got this. There's nobody in the world who can do what you can. You're stronger than you think. You're wiser, too. The one thing you could do better is let people in. Let me in. Talk to Nella, too. I like her. Trust your friends, Ellex. Trust yourself."

I wanted to respond, to protest, slightly, but it was easier to drift away.

***

The girls were up when I got into the lab.

"WE HAVE SOMETHING," they all said at once.

"Woah. Okay, you guys are all way too synched up. One voice at a time, please. That's disorienting."

There was a flurry of glances and decisions were made. They stepped into a half-circle in front of me.

"Sorry," said Bettie.

"We hope you had a good evening," said Delores.

"We have some results from our collaboration last night," said Ennette.

"Would you like to review them now?" asked Bitch.

"Or do you need some coffee, first?" offered Synnamyn, pushing a mug into my hand.

"That is no less disorienting." I took a sip. It was perfect. Just the way I like it. I wondered for a moment how they knew, and decided it would probably be best not to think of such things. "Tell you what, Delores, why don't you fill me in while the rest of you start getting ready to implement whatever it is you've come up with."