Priya would be sympathetic, but she would still think that Kelly had lost it when she heard of her plan. They would never work together again and, probably, they would drift apart. And Kelly would basically be handing her family, who already thought she was so inept that she could never find a plus one on her own, a certificate—signed, framed, and embossed in gold—confirming that exact fact. More than ever, she would be the odd one out, the slightly dotty, slightly desperate girl. As Kelly thought about it, she stopped working, her hands clenching over her screwdriver. She stood to lose everything.
But then she looked at the work in front of her and almost jumped. She had been so focused on racing through the details that she hadn’t stopped to look at the big picture. And while the picture was still being painted, it was already incredible. This was far and away the most complete, the most convincing, the most beautiful android she had ever made. Even with his torso still an uncovered collection of plates and wires, he looked … human. She knew that this was possible, of course; it was exactly what she had been aiming for in all her months of preparatory work on Confibot. But to see it actually happening was thrilling. In fact, she realized, this might be the very thing to help her with Confibot. What better way to perfect her creation before the presentation than to have another model prebuilt to observe? The research gains she stood to acquire more than outweighed the extra time she would need to put in to rebuild the Confibot parts she had scavenged this weekend for Ethan.
Still, Kelly needed something more concrete to control the risk. She needed a deadline. She grabbed her phone and tapped open her calendar. In bold, red letters, she set an appointment for March eighth titled “You Know What.” She would take Ethan apart the morning after Clara’s wedding. Having a plan, structuring some order into the chaos, allowed her to breathe a bit more freely. She just had to keep Ethan’s origins a secret for six weeks, then she would return all of the parts to the lab. No harm, no foul. She wouldn’t lose anything, and she stood to gain so much. She steadied herself and dove back in.
Eventually she turned off the 3-D printer, connected up the last wires, and dressed her robot. He even made the cheap slacks and button-down she had picked up at Target look tony rather than plain. But the thing of beauty was still just a thing. The shapely jaw was slack, the bright eyes dull. It was time to Frankenstein him.
Kelly knew the software was all essentially in place, most of it designed by herself. But it was still in the testing stage and hadn’t been fully run yet. Her focus had been on conducting the social research necessary to determine how an android should interact with users, not yet on programming in those interactions and traits. She would have to make some tweaks and improvise as she went, but even then, it might not work. She feared she could very well end up with a Swahili-speaking pedophile with Tourette’s.
Kelly ran some simulations on one of the lab’s computers, making minor changes, gaining a cautious confidence as she went. It wasn’t until it was time to make her programming selections that she realized that she had the opportunity to create her ideal man. She had already made him physically perfect, so why not do the same cognitively? But defining perfection in terms of mind, of heart, of personality was a much trickier proposition.
Then inspiration struck, and she almost laughed aloud—of course, she had already designed her ideal mate. She accessed her list of requirements from the dating site and went to work, elaborating and fleshing out the profile as she programmed. A man should know how to tie a tie, change a tire, and train a dog. He needed to speak English, of course, and let’s throw in Italian, and Mandarin is important … oh, what the heck. She didn’t have all day. She gave him access to all of Google. She knew she was taking a risk in making this man so extraordinary, but she didn’t have time to cherry-pick, and frankly, she didn’t want to. The more Kelly programmed, the less she was making a man, a breathing biped who could stand next to her in photos, and the more she was making her man.
She imported the rudimentary responses to social cues she had been developing, but worried there were holes there … she’d been responding to social cues for twenty-nine years and still hadn’t figured it out. She brushed the thought aside: this would have to do. She’d rely on his machine-learning capabilities to fill in the gaps as they went.
The essential thing was to ensure he was entirely under her control. Give herself the ability to reprogram him, to turn him off and on, to mitigate as much as possible the crazy factor of what she was doing. She ensured that she could access his system from her own laptop so that she could make changes as necessary at home. And as an analogue backup, she fitted a panel in his lower back with a set of switches—fundamentals, like on, off, and sleep mode—just in case. With everything that could go wrong with this plan, it was reassuring to feel that physical manifestation of control under her fingers.
And finally, it was done. Or rather, he. Tingling, exhilarated, Kelly flipped the On switch. And stirring into life in front of her was the most amazing man she’d ever seen. He looked around the room a little, gaining his surroundings, but when his eyes found Kelly, they stopped. He smiled. “Hi, Kelly,” he said.
On Monday morning, Kelly had difficulty getting out of bed when her alarm jackhammered its way into her consciousness. She had fallen asleep so deeply when she finally arrived home just a few hours earlier, that her brain was stubbornly refusing to follow her body into Awake People Land. She sat up, yawning, propping her arms over her bent knees. Through the fog, the memory of an odd dream resurfaced … she had a watery image of herself guiding a stranger into her car in the parking garage at work … leading him into her living room, pulling up his shirt, and pressing a button on his back. Coffee. She was going to need a soup-bowl-size cup of coffee.
When she trudged into the living room, she started. There, sitting on the couch, was the man. Definitely not a dream. Though he was dreamy, even in his vacant-eyed, lifeless state. Kelly felt a flutter of excitement. She had just built the most advanced creation of her career. It was time to see how he worked. Suddenly she didn’t need the coffee anymore. She located the button on his back and powered him on.
A thousand imperceptible motions started at once, but the effect was that he suddenly looked stunningly, palpably alive. Ethan turned and beamed at her. “Good morning, Kelly,” he said.
“Um, hi,” she replied.
With the morning light wafting through the window, picking up the glint of Ethan’s white teeth, the jewel-like facets of his irises, the copper notes mingled in the waves of his perfectly groomed hair, Kelly became very aware that she was standing there in the same rumpled clothes she’d had on since Saturday morning, with no makeup on and her hair probably doing a fair imitation of a tangled set of earbuds. But she shook herself straighter, reminding herself how illogical it was to be self-conscious. In the “Are intelligent robots beings with rights?” debate, Anita’s stance was a staunch no. They were machines meant to turn a profit, and she was adamant that her engineers think the same way. Kelly had been taught early not to anthropomorphize her creations. You could never maintain the rigor and objectivity of science if you developed an attachment to your work. But while that mind-set was Kelly’s accustomed pattern in the lab, here at home, stripped of the clinical accoutrements of steel and soldering irons, she was finding it took a conscious effort to maintain the same kind of distance. Especially when this creation was already so anthropomorphic.
She strode past Ethan into the kitchen and pulled down the makings of her favorite guilty pleasure breakfast: a box of Cheez-Its and a jar of Nutella. She dunked with vigor. Working herself blind all weekend had really worked up an appetite. “Come here,” she called to Ethan, and he dutifully approached the kitchen. “Want one?”
He accepted the Nutella-topped Cheez-It as if it were the greatest gift anyone had ever given him. Which, technically, it was. “Thank you, Kelly. This is so generous