Gizzy and Dee plopped the new robot on the workbench and started the examination.
“So why did you pick this one?” Gizzy asked.
“I dunno. Was it a bad choice?” Dee asked.
“Wasn’t much selection, I just assumed you’d pick one more like your current model. You know, short, curvy, blonde. You went raven brunette tall and skinny. I guess I just assumed you’d pick something with… tits.” She shrugged.
“Why? Gizzy can I talk to you about something personal?” she asked.
“Shit, I guess.” Gizzy cringed.
“Nobody… hangs out with me. Everyone else hangs out, in little combinations, game night, even you participate in game night and so did their friend Dee, but I don’t feel like part of the group.”
“You’re part of the group. You’re just the newest one. Everyone else goes way back. I’ve known Vinn and Nicole for years, Jack since he was 16. You’re the noob. You’ll figure it out.” Gizzy said, cleaning the adaptor ports.
“Does your original body look like this one?” Dee asked.
“Not even close.” Gizzy said bringing up a picture on her phone of a giant overlord with blue hair and an oddly blue tint in her skin, tusks, canines, and more muscle.
“So you designed this human body yourself, and you chose the attributes for the missions.” Dee questioned.
“Right. Went human passable, dropped way down to flat 6 foot, went blonde, and became slightly less beefy.”
“So what was the purpose of the huge tits? I noticed your facial features are similar, you went with a muscular body type with low body fat yet you still went with the big tit model. Doesn’t that pose athletic problems with running and balance?” she asked.
Gizzy sighed, looking guilty and as if she had no excuse.
“Look, I’ve had huge tits so long I’m just used to it. You get used to having a body a certain type and once you dialed it in the way you want, it’s hard to break that. I just wouldn’t feel right as a petite young brunette with an A cup like… whatever we’re calling this toaster here.”
“I don’t understand the point of tits.” Dee said, mashing at hers.
“Men like tits. I like tits, everyone likes tits. Just something universal. Everyone likes tits, and a lot of people prefer them larger. That’s all. I mean mine were coolant storage. We use molten salt coolant and vent the heat through our lungs, so bigger tits means bigger heat exchange…except now they’re human tits on this model so I guess I just got used to having them. No real function now.”
“I find your body fascinating.” Dee blurted.
“Please don’t tell me you’re in love with me and my fantastic tits, I just can’t deal with that shit.”
“I didn’t mean it like that. I’m fascinated that you have human flesh and you seem to hate it. You customized a familiar form and something you found pleasing and yet you seem to hate being in your own skin. You didn’t even re-grow your leg when you lost it. Frankly, I’m jealous. Everyone else is organic or, in your case, mostly organic. Maybe that’s why I’m the odd crewman out that doesn’t fit in. I’m still, as you said, a toaster with tits.”
“So you bought a second toaster with no tits?”
“I just felt like trying a different form. Please tell me we can replace the synthetic skin with human tissue.”
“You know, it’s weird. You look like Dee, you have her voice and sometimes you talk like her and her damn sexbot, but then sometimes you actually sound intelligent. I keep forgetting you’re a totally different person. On my world getting a new body is common but we’re the same person, and cloning humans is common, Jack is a… 15thor more generation clone and he’s exactly the same Jack. I keep defaulting to seeing you as just a synthetic clone of the annoying bitch that’s banging my son and draining his bank account, that… I pay for because he has no job at 35.”
“Doesn’t she make good money? I mean she sells herself… quite literally; I’m one of the companion models, I would know how much we cost. She should be making a lot of money. We’re not that cheap.”
“Well, she just gets a percent from the sexbot company for her image and personality program. They really fuck you on those deals, and that’s before anyone fucks the robots and adds insult to injury. Ugh, hold up. They did buy you… new, right?”
“I was bought new. Vinn insisted on it.”
“Oh good. I can’t imagine getting railed by random nerds for god knows how long and then waking up sentient one day with that memory. I’d want a totally new body too. Don’t worry, this robot was used, but it was a waitress model. So they both got a lot of tips thrust at them but… well, different tips. Less messy. I almost said less degrading but that depends on a lot of factors. Why do you want real skin so bad?”
“Ever since I had the upgrade and can feel now I can’t go back. The tactile textures of things, the hot and cold differences, it’s all so surreal.”
“Yeah.” Gizzy sighed. “Try having the organs too.”
“Oh my gosh is it amazing?” she asked wide eyed, her eyes literally brightening from bronze to gold.
“Fucking sucks. This heart beats literally all the time, just bass thumping with no music, you bleed more with real blood pressure, the lungs don’t provide any heat exchange, the stupid kidneys do nothing, they just hurt when you get hit, the damn bones are bullshit, I had them coated in carbon nanofiber microfilm. They break so easy. I hate it. The gurgling, the… everything just being wet. It’s insane. Everything is made of water. Everything sloshes and moves weird. No wonder humans are miserable. Give me poly fiber muscles and dry organs any day. A nice, constantly humming E118 reactor, no thumping like you got something loose and out of balance. I’m on so many drugs to stay sane it’s insane. And you sleep like 4 hours and still feel tired. I take a thousand milligrams of caffeine to function.”
“Why not just… sleep more?”
“For eight… fucking… hours? Every day, for a third of the day, just asleep? You get nothing done. Feels borderline sinful.” Gizzy huffed.
“Speaking of sinning and the subject…” Dee said awkwardly.
“Are we having the sex talk now?” Gizzy grumbled.
“I’ve never been intimate, but I’m programmed to be intimate, so I have all the knowledge and data with no experience.”
“I’m not throwing you a quickie so you can get practice in, let’s just draw the line there. I’m a married woman.”
“But you’re not. You’re a human avatar disconnected from the collective of a hive mind biomech species that has a partner. Technically you don’t have a wife. I’m sorry. I’m being an actual bitch right now, what the hell is wrong with me? Why did I even point that out, that could be emotionally damaging.”
“That’s the Dee personality poking through. Yes, technically you’re right, I’m a human hybrid with Gizzy’s memory downloaded into a computer brain and her full personality, which includes the part where I remember loving my wife… and miss her. But in my… god, I almost said heart, and I literally have one now. UGH, this human body shit is hell on the emotions.”
“I envy those emotions.”
“You think you do. It’s not as fun as you think. Even natural born humans can’t handle them. Crying? The fuck is the point of that? It just impedes your vision.” She said, casually grabbing a scalpel and making a cut along the robot’s spine. “Damn they went MINIMAL on this thing. Wireframe, aluminum alloy joints. This thing is not made for combat. Good luck with gun recoil. The servo joints probably can’t pull for shit.”
“Can we add muscle?” Dee asked with a sly grin.
“You want human skin and I assume human muscle?” she asked, rising an eyebrow.
“Well…” Dee started.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“We can’t clone a whole human on it, The new cloning machine is so alien I don’t even know how it works, you just select and print and we’re all preset. I can lab grow skin easy enough and we could print a second Dee and cannibalize it for parts, including the skin, but you are all padding and servos. Growing muscle is gonna be a pain in the ass.”
“Would it take your surgical skills or could it be done with instructions and programming? What about Jack, isn’t he a surgeon?” she asked.
“He’s… not that kind of surgeon. On his world, surgeons kill people. They don’t fix them. He knows human anatomy well enough to know what artery to sever to take someone out. But we could download some files, and with an assistant helping, theoretically, this could be done without me. It’s really just gluing anchor points and elastomeric threads to wherever the laser points and then manually running wires and spraying on muscle tissue with a surgical regenerator. Easy to screw up but equally easy to fix. You want a project, that’s a project. I may see if Nicole will encourage or order Jack to help. He needs to break out of his funk. He’s drinking more than I do and if I still had a liver, I’d be damaging it. I’ll see what I can do.”
...
Jack stood hungover, staring at the black plastic robot skeleton.
“Why are we doing this?” he asked.
“I dunno.” Dee bluffed. “Gizzy just said we could use a more human passable option for me, something about scanners and robot laws.”
“60 percent organic tissue legally counts as organic life. I get it,” he said while looking at the holographic model next to the black skeleton.
“What do you think… is she passable?” Dee asked.
“As passable as you are now.”
“I mean…” Dee thought over the wording. “I want to still be attractive with the option of not looking like a known online pornstar with a small line of production copies. Is she cute?”
“Yeah. Very cute actually.” He said, feeling strange as he looked into its eyes.
“I don’t really know what humans find attractive or not. Obviously, since this is a production Dee body, they clearly like padding and tits and blonde hair, so there is some concern that I might not look…appealing.”
“Not everyone has the same standards. Look at Nicole. She’s shorter and skinnier than Dee and Vinn thinks she’s the prettiest thing alive. Those two are so in love it’s almost gross sometimes. An 8 foot tall furry were-foxalope and a 5 foot Wednesday Adams cosplay. They make it work and happily it seems. Shit, they have a sex room. Clearly they have a type, and it’s a match.”
“So what would you change? Hypothetically if you were on a dating app. What would you change about this model?”
“Not much really, the pale skin and dark theme is nice, the eyes are…”
“Too inhuman?”
“I was gonna say too orange. I don’t know why I feel like either green or fully red would work better, no idea why. I’ve always liked green eyes and pale redheads, I guess us gingers stick together, but green was always my favorite. Looking at her now, I feel like red would work equally well. The glowing is oddly comforting. Maybe a Gizzy thing.” He sighed. “Maybe something else.”
“Red it is. I suppose you’d give her some huge tits.” Dee winked.
“Honestly, maybe medium. Big on her small frame would look weird. Too fake. I don’t mean FAKE, like you, I mean…” he grumbled at his stupid remark.
“I wasn’t offended by it.” she muttered.
“We’re all fake here anyway. I’m the closest to real on the ship, and I’m a copy of copies printed in a tube. Even Vinn has artificial eye upgrades. It’s not a bad thing. Why do you care what people think anyway? One person’s dream girl is the next person’s bored pass. Everyone has a type, some people have lots of types. Hell, Gizzy’d been married to every body type, gender, different species, and hybrid. The sexier you make her to one person's ideal, the further from someone else’s ideal you get so just… do what you want. They’re your bodies. Honestly, there's nothing wrong with the current one.” He said while rolling his eyes and rubbing them like an idiot.
“Look, I don’t know why I’m acting so weird. I just feel like I lost something with the damage. It sounds crazy but I think me and Samantha had something on the side. I keep having these weird feelings like someone should be in my room when I wake up there, I wake up and expect my arm to land on something and nobody is there. But everyone keeps telling me Samantha and I didn’t get along. I don’t even remember her, how important could she be if she was that little to me that I lost all of her and didn’t lose anyone else? Hell, I even remember you and we only met… months ago?" He pondered, not really sure about the time anymore. "I remember you from the first day we boarded but… you weren’t you yet.”
“How close were you and the original Dee?” she asked.
“Friends, platonic. We hung out with the same people, I cared about her, but she did get on my nerves a bit. The new boyfriends and cheating on them, constantly getting Nicole into dangerous adventures, blabbing her security stuff all the time. She sent me one of her damn onlyfans galleries once asking if the lighting was weird. Her boyfriend was my boss, and there I had nudes of her on my phone, what the hell Dee? She just always had to start some drama. But she had her moments when she was fun, and she did make me smile sometimes. Despite the bullshit and the drama and the annoyances, I kinda miss her a little.”
“Bet the nudes were pretty jarring. She’s not even your type is she?”
“Well, personality wise no, even single I’d never date her, but she’s successful for a reason. She looks good naked and she apparently has talents I have only heard of from exes. Still, just not worth getting cheated on, going broke, being one fan of thousands watching her shows knowing every other guy’s gets more attention than you do. Not worth it for a quality lay and a pretty face.” He shrugged. “But then again I’ve been single since…" he paused and looked at Dee. “I honestly don’t know. It feels like years but it feels like I just broke up with someone too. That Tabby girl was 4 years ago, why does it feel like I was dating someone yesterday? Maybe me and Samantha did have a secret thing.”
“Jack, I probably shouldn't say this, but… I have missing memory files that have been recently deleted. I don’t know why and nobody will give me an answer, but there are very targeted missing data files in my system. Those can’t be removed without me allowing it. They were removed 4 hours after your surgery.”
“What are you implying?” he asked.
“I wanted to forget something…and you feel like you and Samantha had something but you don’t remember her.” She said, bringing up her phone with a picture of Samantha. “Does she look like your type?” she asked.
“Honestly no, she reminds me a little of Gizzy and nothing makes me less turned on than thinking of the giant radioactive overlord who’s about as close to a mother as I ever had. Samantha really doesn’t seem like my type. Any of my types, and I have several types. That’s what bothers me. I was sleeping with someone I don’t even find attractive or get along with? I wasn’t sleeping with Nicole, I’d never do that to her or Vinn. And if a girl who vaguely almost has Gizzy vibes is a turn off, we’re not even gonna joke about me sleeping with Gizzy. So who the hell was in my bed?” he asked.
“Jack, what if I had my files removed because you forgot about ME and I wanted to forget you back?” she asked. He stood for a moment, looking at a picture of someone he felt nothing for, a stranger, nobody, some overly buff blonde soldier with brown eyes and a generic face. He imagined her in the shower, in the bed, feeling nothing spark up at all. Then he looked into Dee’s vibrant orange eyes peering up at him with more emotion than a machine should.
“Why would you do that? Why would everyone else go along with that?”
“Maybe they don’t trust me, maybe they still see me as the cheating bitch who I was modeled after, that everyone keeps complaining about, that Gizzy still forgets I’m not. Someone new to the crew, someone potentially dangerous and unpredictable.”
“I like dangerous and unpredictable. Runs in the family. My dad married a killer.”
“I don’t scare you, a little?” she asked, almost smirking.
“Honestly you do… and for some reason that makes more sense to me. I like things that challenge me. Things that are probably bad news, for bad for my health.” He said remembering Gizzy having to pop his shoulder back into socket, and not remembering the mission where he threw it out. As he tried to remember what happened before, he just remembered a wave of blurry grey in a dark room, and the faintest sense of Déjà vu when he looked into her orange eyes.
“Have your eyes ever been redder?” he asked.
“They’re just LED backlit, I can make them more red.” She said changing the color on the spot. Chills went down his spine as he watched them change, suddenly feeling his body step forward and gently cup the back of her neck as he kissed her. Something felt both right and wrong at the same time. He stepped back.
“I’m sorry.” He said, not meaning it.
“Have we been here before?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Do you have your original companion program intact?” he asked.
“I have everything, 47 different settings and roleplay modes. Dee didn’t limit anything for her customers.”
“Anything… aggressive? Downright predatory?”
“3 alien species known for aggressive behavior, anything specific?”
“Just pick one and we’ll see how that goes.”
“Eridani hunter mode, aggression level 6 of 10 default.”
“Dee sure never had that feature. I’d say that’s an improvement among many. Set it to ten. I’m a big guy, you’re a foot shorter then me.”
“I’m taller if I knock you flat on the floor.” She said pushing him back a little.
“Starting to seem a little more familiar.” He smiled. “This isn’t the first time we’ve been here.
“We’ll adjust as we go. I have adaptive software that reads body language. Do you have a safeword?”
“They can clone me back.” He shrugged. “Do you have one?”
“I’m built to not break easily, and easy to repair if I do.” She smiled.
“You’re nothing like our old friend Dee, are you?”
“No... I’m your personal android companion and virtual girlfriend.” She said as if automatic, looking confused that she said that and the manner that she did.
“Well, if nobody else is letting you do your job, how disappointed must you be?” he asked, grabbing her and lifting her up to eye level, tossing her to the bed, her red eyes glowing in the dark like a haunting memory he craved to understand.
“Let the hunt begin.” She smirked.