Penitentiary Planet

[This story was inspired by The Twilight Zone episode "The Lonely" which was broadcast on November 13, 1959. I imagined Lili Taylor, as she was in the 1990s, playing Alicia.]

"I am persuaded that those who designed this system do not know what it is they are doing . . . I hold that the slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain to be immeasurably worse than the torture of the body."

Charles Dickens, commenting on Philadelphia's Eastern State Penitentiary in 1842.

Corey Jamison was an inmate ending the second year of a four-year stretch of solitary confinement. That was the point when the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections gave him a female android for company. A psychologist on contract to the DOC determined that he was starting to mentally unravel - that wasn't the exact terminology used of course - and something had to be done or Jamison would likely lose his sanity before his stint was completed.

Actually Corey, who was twenty-eight-years old in this July of 2114, had solitude but not true confinement. He wasn't even in Pennsylvania at the time. Like about hundred other inmates he was on a planet in another solar system far from Earth. The prisoners - they were all male - were scattered around the planet and had no way of traveling any distance. In fact, none of them was aware of the existence of the others on their world.

These offenders - the exact number was 104 - were the first inmates ever to be subjects in an experiment know as Extraterrestrial Institutional Processing, or EIP. Pennsylvania had been an innovator in penal reform going back to what was considered the first modern prison, Philadelphia's Eastern State Penitentiary in 1829. Back then solitary confinement - known as the Pennsylvania System - had also been tried and it was eventually judged a failure.

Over the next 285 years trends, theories and fashions in penology came and went and by the early 22nd Century solitary confinement was being implemented again. Yet Penn-Doc tried to be innovative and this time an eventual modification to solitary was tried - in effect it was an experiment within an experiment. Corey was one of ten chosen for the Android Companionate / Conjugal Assistance Program (ACCAP, or "Ack-Cap"). He wasn't consulted or even told about his participation; it just became part of his life one surprising afternoon near the end of his second year of loneliness.

*****

Penn-Doc believed in using sticks as well as carrots to manage its incarcerated population and it had decided that solitary could be a useful tool to isolate and punish certain inmates as needed. There was an attempt at secrecy, but operational security slipped a bit and rumors went through the system soon after the first batch of men shipped out. The planet under the jurisdiction of Penn-Doc had been given a hybrid string of letters and numbers for identification. To the prisoners it was referred to variously as Prison Planet, Lonely Planet, Off-World, or simply "out there."

It was a very arid planet, and even though each cabin was energy self-sufficient through solar and wind power, supplies had to be shipped in about every four months. The ships that brought these in had crews although it would have been possible to automate the process. The DOC thought that this brief human contact was a bit of leeway it should provide to those within its extraterrestrial program. On every third trip a psychologist went along to conduct an examination.

Penn-Doc considered itself to be a firm yet enlightened penal system, and Corey was selected to be a one of the ten cases for ACCAP.

*****

Corey Jamison was hardly the toughest inmate in the system. He had been one of the many "mid-pack" people who try to do their time with the least amount of drama and hassles.

He had grown up in a modest old suburb northwest of Philadelphia called Norristown. When he was younger he seemed to have a relatively promising future and he even completed two years at Drexel University in downtown Philly.

Yet some kind of restlessness or defiance kept getting him into trouble. In his twenties he was recruited into the lower levels of an organized crime group. He wasn't that ambitious about rising up through the ranks yet he found it more satisfying than whatever straight life seemed to offer.

Eventually he got convicted on charges involving burglary, possession of stolen goods and other activities that landed him in the facility at Camp Hill outside of Harrisburg. He probably would have done all right there except that he joined a gang called the Visigoths.

The authorities identified the Visigoths as being "white supremacists" but that was of little interest to Corey. He had connected with them for his own protection and for the bit of status it gave him within the prison population. Unfortunately not everyone else was so sensible, and one day the gang started a melee than resulted in the death of two inmates and injuries to several guards.

Corey hadn't been directly involved in the violence but Penn-Doc decided to crack down on gangs. Old-timers noted that this had been going on periodically for as long as anyone could remember. In fact agency records showed gangs as being a fact of life in its facilities going back to the 19th Century. In any case Corey would up getting his sentence extended and then being sent off to Lonely Planet.

****

One afternoon Corey was sitting in a lawn chair outside his cabin with several crates that the ship earlier had been dropped off. There was an awning set up to keep the sun off his little patio. On orders from Captain Allenby he had delayed opening the biggest box until the ship had left.

That crate had been the one containing his new android. Now she sat on another box about three feet away from him. Corey thought she looked rather relaxed - certainly a lot more laid-back than Corey himself felt at the moment. She seemed a bit bemused by something; she also appeared quite comfortable on her crate as if had long been her favorite place to hang out.

There had been a very sparse four-page pamphlet attached to the upper lid of the crate. It had little to say beyond that the android had been created by the Zola Corporation, 27-101 Queens Plaza, Long Island City, New York, NY. Corey was familiar with Zola and he had even seen its headquarters once in New York. He knew its manufacturing facilities were spread all over the world. However he had no clue about the strides in artificial intelligence that it had made in recent years. Zola had kept the public in the dark about what it had accomplished.

The final line in the booklet informed him that the android "herself" would tell him anything else he needed to know. In the seven or eight minutes since he had opened the crate Corey had only dared glance a few times at whoever or whatever was sharing the patio with him.

Now he did look more closely and his perceptions failed him for a moment. The information coming through his eyes told him that he had to be with another human being. Could this be some kind of trick, some gimmick being played on him? But he had logical abilities, and he knew this couldn't possibly be a real person. He had seen the android open her eyes and "activate" or come to life when he had opened the sealed crate and air had entered the space. Then, while he had focused on the pamphlet, she had gracefully gotten herself out and found her perch on the box.

She said, "I thought I'd give you a moment to get your bearings. That pamphlet isn't very detailed, is it?" Again Corey's thought processes tripped him. She sounded so natural, as if she had been acquainted with him for quite a while. He may have been an inmate but his human socialization instinct made him respond to her voice.

"No, it's not very useful as an owner's manual if that what it's supposed to be." That was kind of a ridiculous thing to say.

She replied, "Well, it does mention that I can tell you everything you need to know."

Is that so? Now that the initial surprise was fading some darker thoughts were churning up. "Allenby didn't say anything about bringing me an android. He never asked me about it; he just dropped you here and left." Four months: that's when he's coming back. Corey caught his own tone of confusion and doubt but couldn't control himself. He added, "An android, that's what you are, right?" Of course she is; another stupid comment on his part. And yet he couldn't shake his sense of dissonance.

She smiled and replied, "Actually, I prefer the term 'artificial person.'"

She has preferences? And yet there was something oddly familiar about her phrasing.

"Artificial person? I know I've heard that somewhere else."

"I don't doubt it. It was from a movie, a very old movie in fact."

"You've seen movies?"

"Not literally of course." She pointed to her own forehead, "They are, however, up here in my head."

"So how far back are we talking about here?"

"I'll give you a hint; it's from the late twentieth century."

So she's playing riddles with me now. Yet Corey deduced something that disturbed him. Did Penn-Doc and Zola program her specifically with me in mind? He tried to remember the endless questionnaires, surveys, interviews and tests that Penn-Doc had conducted with him over the years. He felt that all of his inner self, most of his secrets must have been long drained into the agency's databases.

Corey, in fact, did have some nostalgia for eras that had ended long before he was born. The late twentieth century was one time that intrigued him. He imagined it to be a more vivid period than the present one, a time when the first flowering of high technology seemed to hold great promise. By contrast the culture of the present seemed bland and more than a bit tiresome.

"Don't play games with me." Corey almost added a word like "baby" or "honey" but he stopped himself. "Which one do you mean?"

"It's this one from 1986, Aliens," she said. "Bishop is the character who has the line; he says he prefers 'artificial person' to android. Lance Hendriksen, that was the guy; remember him?"

Corey indeed remembered the film and also Hendriksen. He actually liked the long-gone, rather obscure character actor; he always seemed to bring some hard-bitten truthfulness to his roles. There still was that weird sensation that this girl-bot thing knew more about him that he first imagined. He needed to gain some control over the situation.

"So is Bishop like one of your fellow, ah, people-bots? Do you also have white goo running through your veins?"

"No, I think it's blood, just like in yours. By the way, my name is Alicia. I didn't catch yours."

"That's because I haven't said it yet." He suddenly stood up, "Why don't you get up, I need to get a better look at you," She shrugged and stood up too.

As he circled her, the most notable thing about her was - well, it was the very fact that there actually wasn't anything that striking about her appearance. To Corey she seemed like any of the young women one could see in an office, store or school. She was a bit on the short side, about five-foot two.

Probably her best feature he thought was her thick hair - it was reddish-brown and came down to her shoulders. Corey would probably describe her face as "cute but quirky." He noted that her nose was wider than proscribed by some standards of beauty.

Her clothes were simple: a sleeveless pullover top, a skirt and sandals. Cory wondered: if I was at a bar, would I approach her? He decided, maybe, it would depend on the circumstances.

What he noticed the most were her light-brown eyes. He saw an intensity in them, yet a calmness too. He was getting the impression that she was confident, self-assured. But what has she got to be confident about? She's only really existed for about fifteen minutes. During his examination she had steadily looked back at him without any trace of shyness.

Finally he said, "If you must now, my name is Corey."

"Okay Corey, so what do you think, I mean of me? Or is your type a big blonde?"

"I don't think I actually have a type." She couldn't possibly be fishing for a compliment? "So what version are you, the 'girl next door' model?"

Alicia laughed, "No, but that's pretty funny anyway."

He gave voice to a rather sour, ungrateful thought, "It's not like anybody consulted me about what I wanted."

Alicia gestured at the desolate landscape around them, "Well, it's also not like you were in any position to negotiate." She smiled and he could tell that this was meant as a joke. Yet a prickly kind of pride got to him and he imagined that she was making fun of him.

"You know, I don't have to put up with this shit." Then he shook his head and said, "I've got to think about some things," and he walked inside his cabin.

His first thought in there was, I need a drink. Penn-Doc provided him with something he'd never get in their facilities on Earth. During each four-month segment he got a six-pack of beer for each week and one bottle of vodka for the entire stretch. He never binged but rather always timed it so he ran out just as the supply ship returned.

He got a beer bottle out of the fridge and sat down on his bed against the far wall. He found that he had no further thoughts now, or rather these were so jumbled that he couldn't untangle anything coherent out of them. He came to a decision: he'd have to bring that android chick in here if he was going to resolve anything.

The door was open. It was going to be a high of only 80 degrees today, so he had decided not to run the air conditioner. There were days when it approached 110.

He called out, "Hey, Alicia, would you come in here?" He tried to sound gruff but not too much so. At the moment his agitation was focused on Penn-Doc, not necessarily on her or it or whatever was here in his compound.

When she appeared in the doorway a moment later and saw him she said, "Mind if I have one of those too?"

He answered almost automatically, "Go ahead, help yourself." Then he thought, if she drinks beer, does that mean she pees too? He thought of asking her, then decided he'd find out soon enough.

Then he said, "Sit down, I've got to figure out some things about you." She took a place facing him at his table. It was much like a picnic table with a bench attached on either side. He looked at his bottle and said, "Rolling Rock, brewed in Latrobe; a product of Pennsylvania like I am. I wonder if they kickback something to Penn-Doc, that's all I ever get. Can't complain too much I guess, it's not like they gave any out back on Earth."

He was surprised how easily he slipped into this conversational tone. Time to get down to business. "So obviously you're here as a sexbot."

Sexbots had existed for decades, but even the best of them never seemed fully human. Corey suspected that there must have been some recent advances in technology that he hadn't been aware of.

Alicia replied, "I'm a lot more than that."

"Like what then?"

"I'm here to keep you company. But, in turn, you have to keep me company too." Corey was getting a hint that there was something tongue-in-cheek about much of she was saying. He wasn't sure what he thought of that possibility.

"I'm a convict, I don't have to do anything." Penn-Doc never used the term "convict" but Corey liked the word precisely because it wasn't a euphemism. He had been influenced by a line from The Chronicles of Riddick, a film released 104 years earlier, and it hadn't even been spoken by Riddick. There are inmates and there are convicts. A convict has a certain code. And he knows to show a certain respect. An inmate, on the other hand, pulls the pin on his fellow man.

Alicia replied calmly, "No one said you have to do anything. . ."

Corey interrupted her, "The thing is, Penn-Doc exiled me to this hell and now they drop this - their equipment, whatever you are, on me. It's not enough for them to just leave me alone out here for years, now they have to go improve things - or so they think."

He was struggling to articulate exactly what was bothering him, "I never went with sexbots; I always thought there was something weird about them. Now with you, they programmed you or made you look like something you're not - and you're basically just a machine-slut." The hell with her, she couldn't have any feelings to get butthurt over, could she?

He noticed her wince, a look of skepticism perhaps and then she smiled at him. She gestured towards to the windows, "Well, as you can see, there's no one else out there for me to slut around with. I'm yours and yours alone.

"That's not the point." He blurted out something that he did regret, "They don't ship porn in here you'll notice, that would be bad enough." What bothered him was that he was revealing more about himself than he had wanted. What I have to do, what any convict has to do in dealing with sexuality is none of her damned business.

Alicia said, "It is true that if you just wanted to grab me, I'd comply, but it can be a whole lot better than that."

"Ah yes, and to really top it off, they made you into a little smart-ass too."

"I'd call it 'saucy.'"

"Annoying is a better word. Okay, stop for a moment, I'm trying to wrap my head around this."

"You want me to go outside again?"

He thought of dismissing her then decided against it, "No, you might as well stay for a while."

Underneath his distrust for Penn-Doc was a deeper, more primitive feeling. Corey had never been a superstitious person but he perceived the uncanniness of androids. This entity looked human but it had to be, in his estimate, soulless. Where do her thoughts come from if she really has them? Is she a sort of an artificial witch, a succubus that has emerged from a Zola Corporation factory?

He expressed his anxieties as, "Just speculating, what would stop you from killing me in my sleep if you had a gripe of some kind? It's not like they can put you in jail." Well, they could terminate her I suppose, but does she fear death like I do?

"Why would I do that?"

"I don't know, some kind of replicant rebellion."

"Oh that. The best of that series was the first one in 1982." Corey wasn't so surprised now that she had caught his reference to Blade Runner. He did agree that the five sequels and remakes hadn't been as good as the original.

Alicia went on, "Anyway, you'll just have to trust me, like I have to trust you."

"Trust me?"

"Just so you know, if you were to attempt violence against me I would defend myself as best I could." He thought, doesn't that violate the law of robotics or something?

"Come on, I would never do that."

"I know you wouldn't. And I didn't mean like playacting. If you wanted to give me a good spanking when I'm naughty or if you wanted to tie me up, I'm sure that would be a lot of fun."

Now this little snip is proposing sex games. She wasn't done yet, "Or maybe you'd like me to try a dominatrix role on you. I don't really have an outfit, but I do have a black bra and panties in with my other clothes."

"What other clothes?"

"They're in one of the crates. Corey, I've got to do laundry. In fact, I've got to bathe, or at least shower, or I'd smell kind of funky after a while. Just like you would."

He stood up abruptly and went to a window. He thought of getting more beer, maybe even a cup of vodka, but decided he needed to keep a clear mind. He turned and said, "This is going to be worse than being married."

"Have you ever been married?"

"No I haven't. What I meant is that we're stuck here together. Two years, that's the rest of my time here on Planet Fun and Games."

"You have the option, when Allenby comes back in four months, to send me off."