His Robot Girlfriend by Wesley Allison (best desktop ebook reader .txt) 📕
Mike looked at the clock on the wall. It was 3:20 PM. He counted off six hours on his fingers—9:20. He sat down on the white sofa that was almost never used and looked at the shapely nude robot. With a wry smile, he realized that he could sit and stare at it for the next six hours, or he could get up and do something. He went back to the family room, picked up the texTee, and flipped open Moby Dick, but he didn't read any more of it. Instead he turned the select dial to the bookstore and typed in "names". The titles of half a dozen books appeared including "The Name Book", "The Secret Universe of Names", and "The Baby Name Wizard". He selected the last book of the six: "Virtue Names". It took about twenty seconds for the book to download to the texTee. Looking back to the screen, Mike turned to the first page of the name book. The first name was Agape. Agape? The book said that it had something to
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He stopped to make himself a supper of a deviled ham sandwich, which he ate along with a diet Pepsi and a handful of potato chips. He stood in the dining room, chewing and looking through the passage at the shapely form of the Daffodil still standing naked where he had left her. When he finished eating, he started wiping down the kitchen counters. He had them nice and clean by the time eight o’clock rolled around and Gunsmoke came on. He went back to his recliner, which had long ago conformed to his shape. Just as the story was getting interesting, his phone rang. It was Harriet calling to see if he was alright. He assured her he was. When he closed the connection and put the phone back in his pocket, the vueTee went to a commercial. Mike turned around and then jumped in his seat. The Daffodil was standing behind him, looking at him from the arch between the family room and living room.
“The primary setup procedure is complete,” she said. “The secondary setup procedure requires approximately thirty-six hours. During this period, I your Daffodil, will be capable of other activities.”
“What did you do?” asked Mike. “In your primary setup, I mean?”
“There are one thousand sixty seven individual tasks accomplished during the primary setup procedure, the most important of which are the initialization of the BioSoft operating system, registration of the InfiNet connection, and charging of the Honda X88 fuel cell.”
“Well, that’s good. Oh. There are some clothes for you in the living room.” He pointed over her shoulder.
She turned around and walked into the living room. Mike followed. She picked up the two dresses and held them in front of her one after the other, smiling.
“I wasn’t sure what size you wore, um, Patience. That’s what I decided to name you by the way—Patience.”
“Patience,” she said slowly. “The capacity, habit, or fact of being patient. Patient: bearing pains or trials calmly or without complaint; manifesting forbearance under provocation or strain; not hasty or impetuous; steadfast despite opposition, difficulty, or adversity. That is a very good name. What should I call you?”
Though both Mr. Smith and Master flashed through his mind, he said “Mike”.
“You are named for the Archangel Michael, who is like unto God.”
“I think I must be named after my uncle Mike, who is like unto, um, my grandfather.”
“In answer to your unasked query, I will usually wear size 3/4 or 5/6 U.S. miss sizes. Which dress would you like me to wear, Mike?”
“I think the blue one. It matches your underwear which is still in the bag there.”
“May I use the bathroom to wash up and get dressed, Mike?”
“Um, yes. You don’t need to say my name every time.”
“During the secondary setup procedure, I will be adjusting my diction and vocabulary so that I am better able to communicate with you, Mike.”
“I see.”
“Which way is the bathroom, Mike?”
Mike pointed. “There’s the little… I call it the privy… on the other side of the kitchen, or you can go upstairs, because this one doesn’t have a shower or anything.”
The Daffodil went through the kitchen, toward the privy. Mike turned off the vueTee, and then sat waiting for her to return. It was growing dark out and both end table lamps automatically clicked on. She didn’t keep him waiting long. When she returned, he marveled at how real, how human she looked. She was dressed, and the plastic over her hair was gone. Her hair was long and straight and black, and cut with bangs across her forehead. She stepped to the center of the room and twirled around, then bounced up and down twice on her tip-toes. This made her look really young.
“Shit. I forgot to buy you any shoes,” he said.
“That is alright,” she smiled. “I can choose and purchase my own wardrobe if you like.”
“Yes, that would be good. But you have a limited budget. I don’t have that much in the bank, and I spent all my payNEtime money on… well, on you.”
“I understand, Mike. I won’t spend any money until I am sure of our finances.”
“Our finances?” Mike remembered the orange-haired lady and how her Daffodil paid her bills for her. “Are you going to be my secretary too?”
“I will be anything and everything you want me to be,” she said. “It is after nine o’clock. Have you eaten dinner, Mike?”
“I had a sandwich.”
“Are you still hungry, Mike? Would you like dessert?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then may we sit a talk for a few minutes?” She made her way around the coffee table and sat down on the couch. “What time is your bedtime, Mike?”
“Um, I usually go to bed about eleven.”
“And what time do you usually get up, Mike?”
“I get up at six twenty.”
“That is not enough sleep, Mike. You should go to bed at 10:05.”
“I have a hard time getting to sleep that early. I have to take Sleepova anyway.”
“I’ll help you, Mike.” She smiled sweetly. “This is a very nice dress, Mike. Is this the type of dress you would like to see me wear often?”
“Sure. Um, I would like to see you in different clothes too. Isn’t that what most people want? You are kind of like a big Barbie doll.”
“Would you say you preferred me to dress demurely or provocatively or somewhere in the middle, Mike?”
“Provocatively… sexy but appropriate. I’m a middle school teacher. I don’t want you to get me arrested, or worse, fired… although one would probably lead to the other.”
“These are very nice underwear, Mike. Is this the type of underwear you would like to see me wear often?”
“Absolutely,” Mike said. “Whenever you wear underwear, they should be sexy. That’s why you’re here.”
“Sexual congress?” She looked at him wide-eyed, without the least hint of embarrassment. Well, she wouldn’t be embarrassed, would she? She was a robot. It was hard, looking at her, to think of her as anything but a real person.
“Yes, well, not just for that. I’m tired of being single. But…I’m fifty years old. It’s hard to find somebody at my age, and let’s be frank—I’m nobody’s idea of a catch. I guess with you I don’t have to be though, do I? And I don’t want another wife anyway. I want you to be my companion, you know, in all the ways that another person would be a companion. You can do that, right?”
“That is right,” said Patience. “I can be anything and everything you want me to be.”
The next day was so busy that there were times when Mike forgot about Patience, at least for a moment or two. That was saying something, because it had been an eventful night. They had talked for a while, Patience quizzing him on his likes and dislikes, though in retrospect, it seemed scant enough information for any kind of detailed profile. Then she had given him a massage and they had gone to bed. The sex had been pretty incredible. It wasn’t like he thought it would be. She didn’t feel cold or plastic. She felt squishy in all the right spots—firm in the right spots too. She seemed to know what he wanted before he knew that he wanted it. Afterwards, he had fallen asleep, waking up once during the night to find her looking through his closet.
In the morning, she had served him breakfast in bed—cereal and milk, toast and grape jelly, and orange juice, which was about all the breakfast food he had in the house. When he had taken a shower, she had been there waiting as he had come out with a clean, dry towel. Though he usually didn’t allow for any extra time in the morning, and eating breakfast had taken up enough time that he actually had to hurry, he still took a moment to notice that she had been cleaning during the night. She had picked up all the dirty clothes off the bedroom floor and the bathroom had been cleaned. Who knows what else she had done that he hadn’t noticed.
“Turn your texTees to ‘Our World’ page 1056,” Mike told the class. “The ten review questions on this page will be the first ten questions of your final exam the day after tomorrow. Look up the answers you don’t know at this time.”
Two hands went up.
“What is it, Curtis?”
“I don’t have my texTee.”
“Is that your problem too Mabel? You don’t have your texTee?
The dark haired girl two seats behind Curtis nodded her head.
“Why even bother to show up without your texTee? You know it’s review day. Why are you even here?”
“My mother makes me come,” said Mabel.
“It’s not my fault,” said Curtis. “I left it at my dad’s girlfriend’s house.”
“I would be willing to bet that you have your phone with you though,” said Mike. “Get one of the classroom texTees out of the cabinet.”
“Whatever!” said Mabel.
As the two students retrieved the reading devices, these particular ones covered across the top with bright red reflective tape, there was a knock at the outside door. The classroom had an inside door which led to the hallway and the rest of the school and an outside door which faced a small lawn and the back of the adjacent power plant. Peering in through the metal mesh that covered the outside door was Patience.
“I brought you lunch, Mike,” she said, when he opened the door a few inches. Patience was wearing the black and white polka dotted dress.
“I usually eat in the lunch room.”
“Here.” She pushed a soft-sided grey lunch box with the word Thermos on the side toward him.
“Where did you get this?”
“It was in the cabinet.”
“It was?”
She nodded. Then she turned and walked across the lawn. Mike could see the blackened souls of her bare feet as she walked away.
“Who was that?” asked several students as he closed the door.
“Was that your daughter?” asked Mabel.
“Um, no. Let’s get focused on our review questions.”
At lunch time Mike unpacked the lunchbox. There was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, an apple cut into slices and bagged, a small container of a white semi-gelatinous substance that turned out to be vanilla pudding, a single large sugar cookie, and a diet Pepsi with a chemical cold-pack wrapped around it.
“That’s a nice lunch,” said Miss Treewise from across the table.
“Mm-hmm,” Mike nodded.
“Somebody must like you,” said Mrs. Cartwright.
Mike shrugged.
When he got home, Mike found Patience waiting at the door. She looked pretty and pleasant and on impulse, he leaned over and kissed her on the mouth.
“That was a nice kiss, Mike. Is that the kind of kiss you would like me to greet you with often?”
“Wow. I almost forgot for a moment that you were a robot.” He looked down. “Hey, you’re wearing shoes.”
Patience lifted one up behind her, taking a kind of Betty Boop pose. On her feet were black shoes with large white bows just above the open toe. They had a half-inch thick platform soul in the front and a four inch square heel in the back.
“Do you like them? They’re called Peeptoe Platforms.”
“Yes, they’re fine. But where
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