Heartbreak and Phone Sex, Part IV

He found me through Fembot Central, on the recommendation of my first robot caller. We exchanged a few insightful emails about the nature of android fantasies, the immense variety among practitioners in the fetish, and the specifics that he preferred. His core fetish is about the reveal, in his words, the "sudden lurch into the artificial".

That last phrase illustrates what I've found so far in my recent immersion into the community of technosexuals: thoughtful communication, vivid imaginations and rich vocabularies.

When I think of the stereotype of men with a robot fetish, I think about Warren and Andrew and Johnathan in season six of Buffy: socially inept basement dwellers with delusions of grandeur and massive latent rage at being so misunderstood. And, y'know, some awesome funny quotes if you hang out with them long enough.

But as with all stereotypes and generalizations, the reality at an individual level is deeper, more complex. Unsurprisingly, more human.

I've only played with a few mech fetishists so far, so it is theoretically possible that I have only been with the best and brightest, but my experiences have been delightful. In fact, as a group, they are more adept at discussing and explaining their desires and preferences than the overall group of "all my callers", which I absolutely love; the more information I have, the better I feel like I can do.

Plus, their scenarios are fun and creative and varied. And, I admit it happily, they're fucking sexy. Let's see, I get to imagine myself as a sultry seductress with an insatiable appetite for carnal pleasures, in a 69 with an anatomically correct android who has been programmed to know how to make me climax most efficiently... what exactly would I find to dislike about that?

But I digress. This post is not about the alt.sex.fetish.robot gang as a group. This post is about one man, one story, and my unexpectedly broken heart which has driven me to write, in hopes that maybe I can find a way to stop intermittently bursting into tears from the cinematic images that will not leave my mind.

We set up a simple fantasy that didn't necessarily involve sex, but did involve an identity reveal: My name is Alexandra, and I've been his best friend since we were 14 and 15, through high school and college and getting our first jobs. I was sick a while back and went incommunicado for a few months, but I got better and he didn't think anything of it (which is when the original Alexandra was replaced with a robot replica without his knowledge). He started dating a new girl at the beginning of January, and if we talk too long about her, I'm likely to overload out of jealousy (with details of what kinds of malfunctions he enjoys), because I was made to want to be with him.

I was now two people: Galiana-me, the role player, who wanted to enjoy myself and give him the best experience possible, and Alexandra-me, also known as "the Alexandra replica", a robot girl who loves him.

Galiana-me expected the call to focus around Alexandra-me's desire for him, my malfunctions, and maybe the pleasure programming I had been waiting so long to reveal to him. I expected him to have been harboring a secret crush on me, to be excited by the idea of having a robot girlfriend, and for his surprise to quickly be replaced by lust.

We started that way, bantering easily about our jobs and his new girlfriend, and as it became clear that he was happy with her, I spoke increasingly erratically until I started stuttering, repeating myself, and eventually errored out. While I was in robot mode, restarting my emotion programs, I explained calmly that I was a robot, and asked if he wanted to reactivate my human mode with emotions activated. He chose yes. I restarted, sounding hesitant and apologetic, looking forward to following his lead into sexy time.

"Where is my friend?"

His voice was level, but shaking, the way voices get when someone is using every ounce of their energy to keep themselves from yelling. I... I did't know what happened, I wasn't given that informa....

"What happened to my friend?" They didn't put that in my memory banks, I had no way to...

"Find out. Now." Alexandra-me scrambled to figure out a way to hack into the memory stores, possibly without being detected, and retrieved the information.

At that moment, I realized that Galiana-me simply could not bear the thought of the original Alexandra having been killed. The shock and anger in his voice was too great as it was, I couldn't add danger to that. Or I didn't want to. I didn't want him to feel any more pain than he had to.

So Alexandra-me broke the news to him, with her own voice shaking, and emotional programming threatening to overload, that the original Alexandra had gotten sick. It was natural. She just got sick. She knew she was dying. And she knew the super-secret android lab she worked for could program a replica for her, to replace her, and to continue on with the groundbreaking AI work she had started.

And when she built her own replacement from her memories and her emotional makeup, inevitably, it loved him.

He was furious. Stunned. Incredulous. He lashed out at me, bruisingly firing questions which forced a few resets of my emotional centers as I apologized for letting him find out this way, and tried to tell him what I knew. Yes, her parents knew, but nobody else. No, she wasn't killed, I promise. Yes, she chose to put together this replica. Yes, it was as close to her as the original Alexandra could program.

"If I order you to do something, will you do it?" Yes, of course. "If I told you to program yourself to love someone else, could you do it?" Yes, I could try, but it seems so ingrained, the probability of success is extremely... "Do it. It's a command. Make yourself care for someone else, anyone else, I don't care. Just do it."

Alexandra-me complied, searching through my programming to replace my love for him, and found the impulses buried at the center of all my emotions, and some of my logic. The malfunctions started quickly, growing in severity, until a shut-down was becoming inevitable. As the garbled speech was tumbling out of my sound card, one sharp, pained cry made it out through the mess: his name, the nickname I called him, the nickname that he only allowed me to call him, my own special name for him, a desperate plea for help.

I heard his breath catch.

"Cancel order."

Oh, thank God. Relief and order came back to Alexandra-me as I restored my original programming, and I begged him not to do that to me again. He promised he wouldn't. But he had a new order for me, "Forget you ever told me that you are a robot."

Hi! It's so good to hear your voice. I thought you were avoiding me since you have a new girlfriend now. No, I don't feel tired, why, do I sound tired? Yes, I absolutely should recharge, you're right, a movie maybe, or read some classic sci-fi... What, what do you mean you wouldn't want my mainframe to get corrupted. What, what are you talking about? No, I, what? No, I, what? No, I... please stand by. Restarting emotional center...

He overloaded me twice before I cleared enough of my cache to ask him what he was doing to me, why he sounded so angry, and what he wanted, before I overloaded again. Alexandra-me, without my emotional program activated, the robot-mode version of Alexandra-me, asked if he wanted to restore the memory of the revelation of the robot identity, and my emotional center.

Yes, he said, because "I don't want to talk with you." The way he said you sent shivers down Galiana's spine, as if he had to spit the bitter word out between his teeth before it poisoned him. I ached to reach through the phone and wrap him in my arms for comfort.

Alexandra-me restarted, temporarily stabilized, but deeply concerned. We both took a long, deep breath.

So. We can't make me, it, her, whatever I am... we can't make me stop loving you. And we can't erase the memory from me, because you can't pretend you don't know. So. What do we do?

He needs time to process. Of course. We will talk again, later. Oh, good. That's good. I should email him with details if I find out anything else from the main data source. Yes. Absolutely. I will.

"Alexandra?"

"Yes?"

"Wherever she is, whatever part of you is her, I love you."

Well, so much for holding on bravely and not crying like a little girl... "I love you too. I love you so much."

And as soon as I hung up, I knew. I knew why she hadn't told him she was dying.

She couldn't bear the thought of telling him goodbye.

Sometimes, when you act, or when you write, you fall in love with characters as they tell you their stories. So, Alexandra, welcome to my heart. That's Megan on your left, Camille on your right...

What? Of course I know the nickname you call him. Of course I remember that you're the only one allowed to call him that. Oh. No. Of course not, Alexandra, of course not... No, I won't tell anyone else what it is. I can tell the story without telling them your name for him. I promise. Your secrets are safe with me. You get some rest now.

Oh, no, really, love, honestly: Thank you.