But it felt a little good.
Luckily, the normal biweekly family dinner had been pushed since Diane was traveling to a trade show. Kelly had the weekend to herself, and she stayed in the lab the entire time, catnapping in her chair, leaving only for bathroom breaks and vending machine trips where she picked up bags of Fritos and cans of whatever had the most caffeine in it while furtively hiding her face from the security cameras. At one point she heard the window washing crew making their rounds. Later, an employee stopped by an office down the hall, presumably to pick something up, giving her a shock of adrenaline so strong it left her weak. As an employee, she had every reason to be here—but still. What would happen if anyone discovered what she was doing? There was no way her hard-nosed boss would allow her to enter the hallowed doors of AHI ever again if she knew that Kelly had taken thousands of dollars’ worth of company equipment to build herself a boyfriend. News would spread rapidly within the robotics industry—it was exactly the sort of kooky schadenfreude fodder that tech bros would crow over on Reddit, and for the rest of her life, any time a potential employer or date Googled her, this story would be the first result.
Priya would be sympathetic, but she would still think that Kelly had lost it when she heard of her plan. They would never work together again and, probably, they would drift apart. And Kelly would basically be handing her family, who already thought she was so inept that she could never find a plus one on her own, a certificate—signed, framed, and embossed in gold—confirming that exact fact. More than ever, she would be the odd one out, the slightly dotty, slightly desperate girl. As Kelly thought about it, she stopped working, her hands clenching over her screwdriver. She stood to lose everything.
But then she looked at the work in front of her and almost jumped. She had been so focused on racing through the details that she hadn’t stopped to look at the big picture. And while the picture was still being painted, it was already incredible. This was far and away the most complete, the most convincing, the most beautiful android she had ever made. Even with his torso still an uncovered collection of plates and wires, he looked … human. She knew that this was possible, of course; it was exactly what she had been aiming for in all her months of preparatory work on Confibot. But to see it actually happening was thrilling. In fact, she realized, this might be the very thing to help her with Confibot. What better way to perfect her creation before the presentation than to have another model prebuilt to observe? The research gains she stood to acquire more than outweighed the extra time she would need to put in to rebuild the Confibot parts she had scavenged this weekend for Ethan.
Still, Kelly needed something more concrete to control the risk. She needed a deadline. She grabbed her phone and tapped open her calendar. In bold, red letters, she set an appointment for March eighth titled “You Know What.” She would take Ethan apart the morning after Clara’s wedding. Having a plan, structuring some order into the chaos, allowed her to breathe a bit more freely. She just had to keep Ethan’s origins a secret for six weeks, then she would return all of the parts to the lab. No harm, no foul. She wouldn’t lose anything, and she stood to gain so much. She steadied herself and dove back in.
Eventually she turned off the 3-D printer, connected up the last wires, and dressed her robot. He even made the cheap slacks and button-down she had picked up at Target look tony rather than plain. But the thing of beauty was still just a thing. The shapely jaw was slack, the bright eyes dull. It was time to Frankenstein him.
Kelly knew the software was all essentially in place, most of it designed by herself. But it was still in the testing stage and hadn’t been fully run yet. Her focus had been on conducting the social research necessary to determine how an android should interact with users, not yet on programming in those interactions and traits. She would have to make some tweaks and improvise as she went, but even then, it might not work. She feared she could very well end up with a Swahili-speaking pedophile with Tourette’s.
Kelly ran some simulations on one of the lab’s computers, making minor changes, gaining a cautious confidence as she went. It wasn’t until it was time to make her programming selections that she realized that she had the opportunity to create her ideal man. She had already made him physically perfect, so why not do the same cognitively? But defining perfection in terms of mind, of heart, of personality was a much trickier proposition.
Then inspiration struck, and she almost laughed aloud—of course, she had already designed her ideal mate. She accessed her list of requirements from the dating site and went to work, elaborating and fleshing out the profile as she programmed. A man should know how to tie a tie, change a tire, and train a dog. He needed to speak English, of course, and let’s throw in Italian, and Mandarin is important … oh, what the heck. She didn’t have all day. She gave him access to all of Google. She knew she was taking a risk in making this man so extraordinary, but she didn’t have time to cherry-pick, and frankly, she didn’t want to. The more Kelly programmed, the less she was making a man, a breathing biped who could stand next to her in photos, and the more she was making her man.
She imported the rudimentary responses to social cues she had been developing, but worried there were holes there … she’d been responding to social cues for twenty-nine years and still hadn’t figured it out. She brushed the thought aside: this would have to do. She’d rely on his machine-learning capabilities to fill in the gaps as they went.
The essential thing was to ensure he was entirely under her control. Give herself the ability to reprogram him, to turn him off and on, to mitigate as much as possible the crazy factor of what she was doing. She ensured that she could access his system from her own laptop so that she could make changes as necessary at home. And as an analogue backup, she fitted a panel in his lower back with a set of switches—fundamentals, like on, off, and sleep mode—just in case. With everything that could go wrong with this plan, it was reassuring to feel that physical manifestation of control under her fingers.
And finally, it was done. Or rather, he. Tingling, exhilarated, Kelly flipped the On switch. And stirring into life in front of her was the most amazing man she’d ever seen. He looked around the room a little, gaining his surroundings, but when his eyes found Kelly, they stopped. He smiled. “Hi, Kelly,” he said.
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