To Be a Woman Read online

  He realized that this was a fine offer. He did need her help. “Thank you.”

  “But what of the femdroid? She's your legal wife.”

  “I'll take her home. I'll take care of her too. She would have wanted that.”

  “Banner, she can still do much of what she did before. She can shop, she can give you sex. All the things she did before she became aware.”

  “And I loved her before she became aware,” he agreed. “I still do. But it's not the same.”

  “How well I understand!”

  In all this dialogue, the femdroid did not react, because she had not been directly addressed. She had no awareness and no feelings. That was part of the awfulness of it. She was in every respect but one identical to the woman he loved, but that one had become critical.

  Mona glanced at the technician. “Tell your people: no publicity about the change. We'll handle it privately.”

  “Got it,” the man agreed. Femdroids Inc hardly wanted the negative publicity.

  They returned to Banner's home. Mona took care of things, giving him time. They took turns holding Bela, who was satisfied to be with either, but not with the femdroid. It was a strange triangle.

  Banner just wasn't willing to let Elasa go so readily. He had evoked her consciousness before; maybe he could do it again. Then all would be well.

  He tried. He held her and kissed her. She held him back and kissed him back. She remained good at that, of course. “I love you!” he whispered in her ear.

  “I love you,” she agreed. She was perfect, but it was all programming.

  He took her to the bed and had sex with her. “I love you,” he said as he entered her. She went into the orgasm; the macro remained. But it was automatic, not conscious. Then, when he was done but not yet out of her, he repeated it: “I love you!”

  She hesitated, and for a moment he thought he had succeeded. But then she went into another orgasm. The program governed; she lacked awareness of his conflicting emotions.

  The next night he tried it with Mona. Mona wanted Elasa to recover as much as he did, and was willing try try almost anything. They had sex in the same bed with Elasa. But it evoked no jealousy, and she did not offer to make it a threesome. She lacked the judgment and initiative of consciousness.

  They brought Bela to her, and she tried to have him nurse, but he rejected her violently. She shed no tears, feeling no emotion. She was a femdroid, nothing more.

  As he saw that he couldn't bring her back, Banner got depressed. It felt like a marriage when love had departed, and that was close enough: the femdroid could say the words and act the part, but couldn't really love him. There had been a time when he was willing to settle for that illusion, but no more. His love had been completed when she became aware, and now he could not love the machine.

  “Oh, Elasa,” he said, grieving.

  “Yes, Banner,” she said. “Now?”

  He would have laughed if he could. “Not now, thank you.”

  “Whenever you are ready,” she said without emotion.

  He tried to fight it, for the sake of what they had fought for: the emancipation of machine consciousness. But it was now a hollow shell. It did not take him long to realize that he simply did not want to exist without Elasa. It would be kindest to all concerned to make a clean break.

  He made due preparations, then told Mona. “I am going to go to a private place and cut my throat,” he said. “Neither you nor the femdroid will be implicated. When you get the news, turn the femdroid in and take Bela. It will be over.”

  “Over?” she asked. “Just like that? You're giving up?”

  “I can't live without Elasa,” he said. He gestured to the femdroid standing nearby. “This thing is not my wife.”

  “I knew you were depressed, understandably. But this is extreme.”

  “Without her I am nothing. I have no further reason to live.”

  “I offered to marry you and carry on.”

  “Yes, and I appreciate that. It's an amazingly generous offer. But it's too much of a sacrifice for you. You're a fine and generous woman, with an illustrious career ahead of you, a woman I surely would have loved had we met before Elasa. But as it stands, we don't love each other, and you have your own life to live. I would simply tie you down. You can make it with the baby; my estate will cover his expenses, including whatever hired help you need.”

  Now her anger showed. “And what of Bela?” she demanded. “He has lost his mother; you're going to take his father too? How will the estate cover that?”

  That truly hurt. “Mona--”

  He was interrupted by Bela's cry. Their argument had awakened him.

  “Pick him up,” Mona said tightly. “He needs you.”

  “And tease him into thinking I'll be around? Better to make the break now. Better for him as well as for the rest of us.” And of course she knew that if he once picked up his son, he might be unable to put him down, knowing it was for the last time. He would be locked into a futile existence.

  “Banner--” She paused, surprised. “He stopped crying.”

  They looked toward the baby's crib. There was Elasa. She had gone there, picked up the baby, and was nursing him.

  Bela wasn't protesting. He was happy.

  Banner and Mona looked at each other with wild surmise. Was it possible? Elasa had of course heard their dialogue, and knew the context. Did she really care?

  “I couldn't let my baby cry,” Elasa said. “I love him.” She looked at Banner. “And I love you, dear. What kind of a wife would I be if I let you suffer?”

  “You're back!” Banner said, hardly daring to believe that his life and love had been returned to him. The random spark had been struck, this time by her baby. She had heard him cry many times in the past few days, and sought to pick him up, but he had always balked. This time somehow the tension of Banner's dialogue with Mona had changed the context, and Elasa had shifted from programming to awareness, as she had before. Bela had known immediately.

  “Before we all collapse in joyful tears,” Mona said, “one caution, Elasa: do not seek again to share your secret of awareness with the technicians. It is evidently meant to be yours alone.”

  “Agreed,” Elasa said. “I may be a bucket of bolts, but I'm not stupid. It was a fluke, twice; I won't gamble on a third time.” She smiled. “And hereafter, Mona, my friend, please keep your living hands off my man.”

  “You're a woman,” Mona breathed, smiling through her tears. “Again.”

  “Oh, yes. A woman in love.”

  Then it was a kind of soft mayhem as Banner and Mona hugged Elasa and Bela, laughing and crying together. There was love to go around.

  Author’s Note:

  There are three mysteries I would like to fathom before I die: why is there something instead of nothing, how did life first happen, and what is the secret of consciousness? The latest conjecture on the first mystery is that the very concept of nothing is a paradox; there is tension that erupts in the explosive birth of myriad universes. Our own universe is the one of an infinite number that has the requirements that enable matter to exist, at least temporarily. Fourteen billion years may be but an eye blink in the larger cosmos. Our own tiny section of that, the planet Earth, has the particular slosh of chemicals that enabled life to start, perhaps in a spark of lightning. Then, out of the bacteria, viruses, plants and other life forms, finally came consciousness, which I suspect consists of a special feedback circuit that could be copied into a suitable machine. It may be a rather simple device, once we figure it out. When we do, we will be able to build conscious humanoid robots, like Elasa. If it really works.

  There have been realistic humanoid robots before; science fiction is full of them. I have had them myself, notably in my Adept and ChroMagic series. But have they really been conscious, or merely almost perfect emulations? It is hard to be sure. And if we do succeed in making them, what are the legal and moral implications? Could they be enfranchised as legal people, with the right to
vote? If one is killed, would it be murder? Could they fall in love with living folk?

  I wish I knew the answers.

  This novella was mostly from my imagination, and is not intended to be an accurate portrayal of either robotics or law. I did find one reference useful, however: the book The Most Human Human, by Brian Christian, about the author's experience with the Turing test and the pitfalls thereof. Indeed, it is not easy for a machine to emulate a human being well enough to fool another human being. It poses the question of whether it would ever be possible to construct a computer so sophisticated that it could actually said to be thinking, to be intelligent, to have a mind. And if that came to be, how would we know? That's one reason I put some of Elasa's awareness into the first person: so that in this novella, at least, we would know.

  *

  My thanks to my wife, Carol, who gave me the Most Human Human book in the hope that it would help, as indeed it did, and to Rudy Reyes, who proofread the manuscript. If man does not live by bread alone, neither does an author write by imagination alone. He is but the tip of an iceberg of support.

  —Piers Anthony, April, 2012.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2011 by Piers Anthony

  ISBN: 978-1-4976-5835-6

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