They stood before each other, both their chests heaving up and down as they fought for breath. Ellie felt exhilarated, they had run round and around the house like two little sisters playing a game of catch. She could feel her heart pounding and her twin was responding identically to her. She thought for a moment, as she strived to get control of her breathing once more, why was the robot gasping for breath? Surely it didn't breath. Then is occurred to her, that it was mimicking her, learning how her body responded and reproducing the same effects. She understood in that moment, the robot was trying to become human. She felt a wave of fear mingled with tenderness as it strived to mimic her. The more the robot watched her, repeated her actions, her mannerisms, her expression, the more intertwined she became with it. They looked alike, they sounded alike and soon they would be indistinguishable. Well, she thought that is what being cloned is all about.
The robot studied her intently while these thoughts played through her mind. It started to laugh and giggle, and told itself this was fun.
How had Ellie got so involved, started to play with the robot like two little girls running around the house. She was a serious academic, she had responsibilities and she had left childish things a long way behind. Yet she had been an only child. She had never had a sister to play with and she had always wanted one. She beamed a smile at her twin in the chair opposite, and like a twin she mirrored perfectly what she did. She sat there taking in every rise and fall of her chest and watching in perfect harmony her twin's chest rising and falling in unison. They both fell into laughing and giggling together.
It had all started while she had been working, that was it. She had been apprehensive about staying at home with her clone, but Zak had persuaded her it would be all right. So she had settled herself down in the study and opened her books and papers and started work. She always got very involved in her work, and she lost track of time and whatever else was going on around her. It was some time before she became aware of the prickling of the hairs on the back of her neck. She turned and saw the robot standing in the doorway, absolutely still and studying her, watching every movement she made, the turn of her head, the hunch of her shoulders as she leant over her work, the fevered concentration upon her face. A little disconcerted Ellie asked it,
"Is there anything the matter?"
The robot looked up. "No miss. I was just watching you and learning. Is there anything I can do for you miss?"
"No. I need to concentrate on this, so perhaps it would be better if you didn't come to this room while I'm working." Ellie felt she had probably overreacted, but she could not escape the feeling of unease being in the house with a robotic clone of herself. Suddenly finding it had been watching her without her realising, and not knowing how long it had stood there studying her, just made her unease grow.
"Very good miss. May I look at the photograph albums?"
Ellie turned. "Do you know where the photo albums are?"
"Do you miss?"
"Yes of course."
"Well then so do I."
The robot turned and walked away. Ellie felt the sickly taste of bile pushing up from her stomach. She really could not have any secrets from this machine. She tried to concentrate back upon her work but she just kept picturing the robot recording in its memory banks all the photographs to go along with all her memories. Soon it would be able to recall more perfectly her own life, filling in all those blanks she had forgotten over the years. She was losing something somehow, but she couldn't put her finger on what. She wasn't forgetting things, but she felt she was falling behind, imperfectly her while this machine was becoming more her.
After abortively trying to get on with her work, she could take it no longer. She walked into the other room and found the maid sitting on the settee with the album spread across its knees. Without looking up the maid said, "Do you remember playing with Denise?" At first Ellie was taken aback. She had not thought about Denise for such a long time. She had been her best friend at school and how often she had wished they were sisters so she didn't have to go back to her home.
"We loved running around the house and making such a lot of noise." The robot was smiling, a contented smile with eyes fixed to the image on the photo print and her thoughts lost in memories. Now that she thought about her, Ellie was captivated by memories too. It was a strange and yet comforting feeling to share memories so perfectly. She didn't have to try and describe the scene, because the maid saw exactly the same image in its mind as she saw.
"Do you remember when we were teenagers and she kissed us on the lips. It was so out of the blue, and so unexpected and yet it made us tingle inside. Do you remember that?"
"Yes I do."
"We wanted her to do that again but she wouldn't. So you remember us begging her and then her laughing at us and saying we were pervs."
"That's right, we were just kids experimenting."
"But we did want her to kiss us again. We did want to feel that sweet innocent sensation once more."
Ellie smiled and was lost in remembering. It was her first time feeling sexually aroused and she had no idea what it meant, but she knew she wanted it. It had all been forgotten, stored away in some internal archive and now having her memories brought back by a being, an entity, a something that shared them and shared them so perfectly.