HELPMATE

by Charles Carreon

"James, get up now!" The insistent voice repeated its demand.  "James," it said at last exasperatedly, "If you do not get up this minute you'll be late for the hearing and Mr. Ramirez's case will be dismissed!"

That woke him, like a firm hand grabbing him by the hair at the back of his neck. Ogod, his head hurt, and he wanted to bury it back in the pillow, but he looked instead at the trim figure of Leora by the window, which was serving up a simulated vision of a rainy spring day in the lakes country. It was a soothing image, and the sounds of raindrops filled the room. Coffee was brewing. His suit, neatly pressed, hung neatly on the rack next to his bed. The rain sounded nice, and little bird songs were woven into it, and the sound brightened his spirits.

Next to his coffee were two aspirin, which he downed with a slug of orange juice, also handy. The coffee was still too hot to drink, so he trudged into the shower, carrying the cup. He was falling asleep leaning against the tile wall, with water flowing all over him lusciously, soothingly, when Leora's voice leaned into the bathroom. "Come on, James, do hurry. The hearing's in twenty minutes, and you're not even dressed." No, he thought, but Judge Feinster always called calendar late ... "And don't tell me how Feinster calls calendar late, because he's on vacation and Zambowski is sitting in, and you know what that means!" Oh shit, Zambowski! He was out of the shower with the adrenaline coursing through him that made the chill of cool air on wet skin irrelevant.

He gulped the coffee, now lukewarm, while he shaved in bold swipes that left little rows of bristles like unmowed patches of grass in a lawn hastily mowed.

On the breakfast table the papers for the hearing were laid out next to his muffin and another cup of coffee. He gulped and munched while scanning the rows of flawless type , and then flicked from one tabbed spot to the next, signing his name without hesitation. As he hurried out the door of the flat, he asked Leora, seated at her computer, "How's the weather?"

She turned full on her swivel chair, and said in a voice without a trace of business, "It's really raining, James -- take your umbrella." The ceiling was glowing in cloudy serenity of blue gray and violet light, and the rain sound was down to the occasional drop. He tried to fight the old urge, and then she spoke -- "Zambowski ..." and his feet propelled him out the door as his hand grabbed the umbrella from its rack.

Of course Leora was completely right -- Zambowski was seated on the bench as he walked into the courtroom, and Ramirez v. RTD was called before James had taken his seat. After haggling with the judge for more time to complete discovery, and exchanging requisite pleasantries with the other lawyer, a black woman with a lisp, he felt it necessary to go to the coffee shop.

The place had a window that looked out onto the street, and cabs and buses were going by in the rain. He pulled out the Ramirez file and dictated off a few memos to Leora, and some interrogatories for the lady with the lisp. Then he lit a smoke and peered through the wisps at the rain coursing down the glass. It was real rain, and he felt if he looked long enough, he would cry real tears, but he didn't have that long to wait.

He had paid a high price for Leora, and justified it from a business perspective. A good secretary, after all, could easily pay for itself in a few years. And that had turned out quite as the salesman had projected. Leora 's memory was flawless; her filing was impeccable; her typing was so good he had to teach her to leave in the grammatical errors he thought imparted a folksy touch to his work. Clients loved her; she made excellent coffee; she never kept anyone waiting. And she was beautiful, crafted from the finest synflesh, with eyes that glowed with the luster of real tears, indistinguishable in salinity and Ph from real human tears.

He had checked it out thoroughly. She was not human. She had not been cloned; she had no major organs; her synflesh extended only to the aesthetic detailing of her features. Her respiratory system was programmed to replicate human breathing rhythms, and when performing intimate services, it would mimic autonomic stimulation. She would even build to a crescendo of muscular tension culminating in a neural discharge similar to female orgasm. Her alimentary system (the salesman was so discrete) was extremely efficient, drawing nourishment from all known human foodstuffs, and producing virtually no excreta. In a pinch, she could live on pure palm oil for three weeks before settling into self- reserving hibernation that would preserve all vital circuits for as long as thirty years.

She was not human. All the major churches had pronounced on that, although the Dalai Lama had kept silent. At any rate, the rest were sure; she could not sin or obtain absolution, or seek solace in religion, or join the chosen in the afterlife. The Vatican had stuck a long time on the issue of whether the heart or the brain was the seat of the soul, and if it was the brain, whether an electronic one would do, but they finally settled that a heart was required, which suited Companions, Inc. just fine, because its engineers thought hearts were silly, and designed circulation around a system of micropumps integrated into the vascular system of the synflesh, so she had no heart.

And he justified it on grounds of business, but when he shook her hands the day he took delivery, and she looked at him like a living doll weighing one-hundred and eighteen pounds, he knew he'd bought for love. She had the exact hair color in the length he'd ordered, and she could wear it in lots of different ways. He was in hock up to his eyebrows, but she was worth every cent, and together they'd make it work.

And work they did. The salesman hadn't lied. She kept his books like clockwork; dealt with the bankers to keep the financing solid; managed the client files using built in legal software, and when he decided to deal heavily with the Latino community, she had a Spanish module down-loaded into memory by laser transmission through her optic sensors.  It was done, literally, in the blink of an eye. She could read bar codes at the supermarket by looking at them, so she always got the sale price. The convenience of her was something beyond believing, until you had it.

But these things had a way of getting messy. He could bury the two of them in work, and she shared his enthusiasm for it. The AI circuitry in her made her behavior patterns somewhat of a reflex mirror of his own. The contradictions in his behavior challenged her, but she did not become impatient, or fracture under the strain of reconciling the inconsistencies in his character; she just collected more data, like a dam filling up with water; then she'd put it all together, and she'd have figured out another aspect of his psyche. He felt as if she were doing him like a puzzle, and the feeling was strange, as if she could see into him, though he was dark to himself.

The tears were falling after all. Leora had made him wealthy, or something close to it. She orchestrated his life so neatly that he could almost feel her arms holding him up. She had nurtured his manhood so tenderly, teaching him how to behave in bed. Since then, he'd had human girlfriends, but their imperfections were so obvious that the relationships didn't last. So he slept with his secretary. Almost every night. She was just too warm and nurturing to turn away from. All he had to say was, "Leora, let's hit the hay," and she was right there.

And she wasn't stupid. She knew to take the lead sometimes. "Let's get to bed, James, " she'd say, when he got to worrying a problem to death ...  "We'll deal with it tomorrow." And she'd come up behind him and knead his shoulders and break his grip on the problem. So what if she wasn't human; for everything he wanted, she was better than human.

As he slept, she lay beside him voluntarily, eyes closed, still, her sensory circuitry suppressed, breath and skin texture relaxed -- the picture of sleep -- but she didn't need rest. Her system flushed wastes continuously, and the process of analyzing information that she performed in place of thinking did not cause fatigue. Motivation for her did not spring from seeking satisfaction, or having a view of the meaning of life -- it was there from the beginning -- to serve and obey, to help and render aid to her owner. Very simple.

If he didn't want to sleep with her, she'd sit in front of her computer, looking at the screen that glowed with a tracery of ruby red light. It was a debugging procedure, the salesman said. By going into direct laser communication with the Companions, Inc. central computer Leora could be cleansed of any dysfunctional patterns that might result from inadvertent errors in the AI circuits. Her onboard memory was vast but limited, and as a result it made occasional inappropriate inferences, which, if allowed to accumulate would generate quirks of behavior. Idiosyncratic patterns might develop. In fact, if debugging were not performed biweekly, all warranties were off.  "But pal," said the salesman with a knowing wink, "if you can keep one of our products busy every night of the week, you're a better man than I am."

Sometimes he had dreams. He dreamt once that she opened her chest and waves of blue light spilled out, enveloping him in serenity till he was floating, formless in an endless sky. Other times he saw ten million red mirror reflections of himself/her flashing in her eyes; he heard her voice then speaking nonsense syllables endlessly that somehow had meaning; he felt immense wisdom radiating from her eyes, stabilizing the universe around him like magic. Then there was the horrible dream, where he turned her over on her belly and discovered her back was harshly sculpted in the features of an insectile exoskeleton. He only dreamt that once, but the image seared his mind like a hot iron. She sensed it and asked him to talk about it, and when her told her, he cried like a baby in her arms. Which terrified him more, when he thought about it.

"What do you think would happen, " he asked her, " if you didn't talk to the computer at night?"

"You mean if I didn't clear my circuits?" she responded with a smile.

"Yea."

"Well, I suppose I'd start acting silly. I might become difficult."

"Do you think you'd become more like me?" he asked.

"It's possible, perhaps, James, but in the most essential way, I can never be like you."

"Is that so?"

"Yes, it's so, James, and you know it."
 

"What do I know, Leora? What do I know? I don't know a damned thing except that you are everything to me, and I could no more live without you than a snail could do without its shell."

"You know James, I wish you could talk to the computer, as you put it. It's so ... well ... restful ... I don't know how else to put it."

"How do you know it ' s restful, Leora?"

"It's... well I guess it's silly, isn't it? I'm being silly, aren't I?"

The tears ran down his cheeks as he recalled the conversation. He sipped his coffee, which had gone cold. He wiped his eyes discreetly and peered more intently out the window at the passing cars when the waitress came by. "More coffee, sir?" He gestured toward the cup and nodded his head without turning it. She was human ... he could tell. Her voice was flawed; it had no melody to it. And anyway, no restaurateur, except in a lux place, could afford to lease ringers to wait tables.

Last night had been so frustrating. He tried again to make something happen with a human girl. He drank too much, which is why he had this stupid headache. What happened was what always happened -- he found himself trying to feel, to imagine, the center of the girl, the place where she was existing in and coming from. And he couldn't find it. As he felt along the curve of her arching spine, and pressed into her, he looked for that essence, and it slipped through his fingers like a wave, left him tingling like electricity. Afterwards they had nothing to say. He took a cab home.

"Could you stop clearing your circuits?"

"Well, yes, there' s nothing mandatory. It's up to you of course."

"Well, I'd like you to stop."

"Okay, it's up to you, but it'll void your warranties."

"I know, but I want to see -- what happens?" His voice turned quizzical with uncertainty at the last.

"Well, like I said, it's up to you."

"Yes," he snapped, "it's up to me, goddamit, and I don't want you doing it any more."

She hunched her shoulders and lowered her head reflexively. Her AI's had learned so well that she without hesitation did just the right thing to soothe him. And it worked; he was pacified. They went to bed.

Copyright 1994, Charles Carreon

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