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I had seen the advertisements for the Love Droids many times. The droid technology had gotten so good that it was getting hard to tell the difference between a droid and a real person. They would show a succession of images of their models, beautiful droids, in their ubiquitous advertisements. I had seen them so many times I practically knew the models myself - Aisha-LT was a dark-skinned model, the Meghan Series7 had very light skin with red hair and freckles, Britt9 was their model with blonde hair halfway down her back and blue eyes, FatimaTVC was their Mediterranean beauty with dark hair and brown skin, LolaEP had black hair and tanned skin and was programmed to speak Spanish, XiaoMei was your classic Chinese beauty, and Kiyoko appealed to those who wanted a Japanese beauty. They even had two male models, a Causasian Mark-5 and an African RaZaanTC. It took the company a little longer to figure out that women were just as keen on a Love Droid as men were.
I had to admit to myself that I was getting curious. I had never had success with a long-term relationship with a living, breathing woman. I'm not a handsome hunk like Brad Pitt but I'm also not a drooling cretin. Pretty average guy with average looks. I've had my fair share of dates but other than a couple of women that I dated for seven months and four months, I've never been able to find a girl that suited me and that I suited her. I ended up losing interest with Alicia after seven months and dated another girl and she found out and that was that. Terri dumped me after 4 months and said I wasn't so interesting anymore. The karmic wheel turns.
There is a ServiceDroid store just a couple of blocks from my Metro stop. I decided that I'd stop by there tomorrow sometime after work and take a look. I've been a droid technician for about 9 years. I have a pretty good job at an assembly plant in a nearby community. Most of my work is on maid units but maybe 25-30% of the time I'm working on HED's - Hazardous Environment Droids. With the maid units I have risen up the ladder to be a Troubleshooter and I get called in when the assembly line guys can't figure something out or they need a special repair, but I love working on the HEDs. They are custom designed for the environment and the objective. I worked on the droids that were sent into that nuclear reactor outside of Berlin that was sabotaged by the Russians. It was a really challenging assignment because the droids had to deal with extreme amounts of radiation, water and steam, and they had to be very mobile and adept to get around a reactor core that had concrete, rebar, remnants of steel plates and debris everywhere. Droids are pretty cool in lots of ways, but nobody should lose sight of the fact that they are devices made for a function. Nothing more, nothing less.
The next day I had to work a couple hours late. Somehow the pelvic wiring harness on the maid assembly line got out of alignment and it turned out that a new operator further up the assembly line was putting the wrong sized clip into the harness which threw it out of spec. It took us awhile to identify the problem and then to track down where it was happening. We got it sorted though and after I left work and left the Metro station I walked to the Service Droid store. When I walked in they were going to close in another 30 minutes, so there weren't many other people there. In fact, I didn't see any other customers. The only other person I saw was what looked like a teenaged boy behind the Customer Service desk who just stared at his Personal Device (PD) and paid me no attention. The Maid and Industrial Droids were on the first floor. I walked upstairs to the second floor where the Love Droids were on display.
I didn't see anyone on the second floor. As I walked down the aisle between the droids, it felt a little creepy. All these humanoid figures around me and it was so quiet I could hear my footsteps on the vinyl flooring. This store had some of the latest models that I had seen on the advertisements - Britt9 and LolaEP - and I saw a few of the Mark 5s further down the display area. I was used to working on the Maids and the HEDs, both of which were designed for functionality rather than appearance. It was surprising to see up close how life-like these Love Droids were. Advances in bio-printing had made it possible to print and grow skin and hair as real as yours and mine. Engineering ways to keep that skin soft and pliable covering a droid had been really really challenging, but some brains greater than mine had figured it out. These droids really were marvels of engineering. They were also pretty pricy. The Britt9 would set me back about two years of my salary. There wasn't much of a market for used Love Droids. Anyone who could afford one was not interested in buying one which had been "used" by someone else. But I had not come to buy, I was just curious and wanted to take a look. In addition to the latest models were some that had been on the market for a year or two. They didn't have the latest geegaws but they should be still pretty functional.
