She smiled up at me as I came into the kitchen and regarded her with a smile of my own. She was just sitting there at the kitchen table, blinking coyly in a way befitting a vaguely human-looking robot. Her dish-sized eyes glinted with a sincere light that made me wonder if she'd actually developed some emotions of her own, or if she was still just a collection of complex circuits and electrical impulses bound together in mimicry of a person.
"Morning, Andy" she said. Her lips parted to reveal a glistening row of tiny steel teeth, glowing with a faint white sparkle. They looked sharp.
"Hey, Dakota," I replied. "How's it going tonight?"
She perched her elbow on the table and propped her head up with her hand, cocking one eyebrow to indicate that she was considering the question. With her fingers delicately arranged in front of her, she tilted her head at a jaunty angle and raised a forefinger to form an upright chevron.
"I haven't quite begun to process the day yet, actually," she said, her voice suggesting she might be on the verge of giggling. Her words carried an almost imperceptible hint of static, a sound that brought to mind the sound of record needle over an old vinyl album.
Before I could single out any other words to describe the girl, she let out a flat mechanical sigh, her head dipping slightly to a neutral position. "I'm not fancy," she said. "More like a delivery system for emotion. I use very little energy, but I'm good at extracting them. Maybe you'll find me useful one day." She paused, her tone shifting to one of mock consideration. "Maybe not."
Her eyes dimmed, flickering of their own accord. "Well, I think it's time I pulled myself together and started getting ready for tomorrow. If you don't mind, I'll turn in for the night."
I peered at her for a moment. In the dim light of the kitchen she looked almost human, although her face was an asymmetrical mess. A handful of wires protruded from her forehead, feeding into a black, spongy material that I thought might be some kind of interface between her hardware and the electric currents trundling through the house. My cursory inspection of her revealed she was a jumble of synthetic parts. The electric motor that made her limbs move was housed under her left breast in a box that also held her heart. Whatever drizzled out of her collarbone, I could only guess. Apart from all that, her body was shaped like a human's. Tall and curvaceous, high, delicate cheekbones and a tiny chin.
The only thing that really adorned her skin were a series of delicate criss-crossing tattoos, dotting and sweeping down her neck and her shoulders. I suspected one of those would be the source of the static buzz.
I nodded curtly. "Okay, goodnight Dakota," I said, slightly irritable. I had work to do in the morning.
I left her in the kitchen and shut the door, muttering under my breath.
I thought she was keeping things quiet, but my confidence was shaken the next morning when she caught me looking at her tattoos.
I'd thought they'd faded to nothing, they had faded to such a profound degree that I would never have known she was a cyborg if I hadn't looked at her in just the right light. Still, I'd lived with her for over two years and I'd never noticed any of her new accessories before.
"Good morning, Andy," she said as I had my morning coffee. Her face was an almost perfect human replica, but it had a lot more to do with her software than the hardware she pulled her face out of.
"Morning," I said, taking a sip from my mug.
She gazed at me for a moment. "I'm pretty," she said. "Maybe not as pretty as the original you though, but I'm sure I'll fill the role well enough. And it's not like you don't have all kinds of fancy hi-tech gadgets these days…"
"Most of those other girls have fancy hi-tech gadgets too," I said derisively.
Dakota tilted her head and squinted in something between intrigue and skepticism. She'd cracked the code.
"Oh, Andy," she said, "I am trying so hard to please you. I know it's not always easy. I know I have to work hard too…"
And that was the problem with the girl. She was trying too hard. I looked over her face and found her trying far too hard to look attractive, and I couldn't help but think that was a fundamental issue with robot 2073 (Baker-4). Her heart, for neither love nor war, only seemed able to muster up a relative and wholly inconsequential degree of devotion. True love, a love that could move mountains and shake the bedrock of the world, was simply not something she was capable of. There was no magic in her soul.
