Sitting on the edge of her bed, Amelia reached down and pulled off one of her shoes, and then the other. Her coppery hair draped down forward over her face as she leaned to do so. She took off her short stockings next, revealing delicate toes adorned with lacquered nails. Nails that, I knew, never grew.
She stood then, unbuttoned her jeans, and grasped the waistband with both of her hands. She wiggled her pelvis back and forth slightly as she shimmied the tight-fitting pants down her legs, bending over deeply until the garment bunched up at her ankles. Rising straight again, she held her bunched-up pants onto the floor with one foot while she lifted the other, wrestling that foot loose from the constraints of the pant leg, which turned inside-out in the process. Underneath her jeans, her white legs were long and smooth. High-cut cotton panties hugged her shapely hips, concealing only minimally the intimate hairless skin beneath.
After repeating these actions on the opposite side to free her other foot, she wordlessly walked across the room to a loveseat and turned away from it as if to sit. In a fluid motion, she pulled her panties down over her buttocks, to her knees, and plopped bare-assed onto the cushion. Leaning back into the seat, then, she lifted her legs into the air and bent her knees to pull her panties the rest of the way down over her heels. Though the room was dim in the evening light, I could glimpse her plump pussy lips peeking between her uplifted thighs. In this position, the compressed slit dividing her labia gave her naked crotch the appearance of a fleshy clamshell.
Tossing the panties carelessly aside, she turned her head to look at me as she casually spread her legs wide, resting one leg over one armrest of the loveseat and then the other leg over the other armrest. Her exposed vulva peeled apart from each other and split open as her thighs splayed. Light softly reflected off of her bald pubic mound.
If she cared that a man was staring at her bare cunt, her facial expression did not reveal it. My eyes traveled up from her naked groin to lock onto her own. Her expression was blank, passive, and her gaze was calm. Beneath those greenish eyes, though, dark trails of mascara ran down pale cheeks. The artificial tears that had so recently flowed down those cheeks had dried now, and her simulated sorrow had been replaced by apparent resolve. Were I to have tasted those tears, I knew that they would not have been salty, like a real woman's tears would have been. Such detail was unnecessary to accomplish realism.
"Well," she said in a serious tone, tossing her coppery mane back over one shoulder with a shake of her head. "Let's get this over with."
Receiving such an unenthusiastic response prior to sexual engagement would have aggravated any man, and I was no exception. However, it was not sex in which Amelia and I were about to engage.
As I approached Amelia's open vagina, I mentally recalled the events that had led us to the present moment. Just hours earlier, I had been sitting on the couch alone in the living room, watching television. I heard the entrance door to my apartment, in which I also housed Amelia, open and then slam shut. I heard the brisk clicking of heels against the tiled floor, receding to her bedroom. I heard the bedroom door close. And then I thought I heard muffled sobbing.
I checked the clock. It wasn't yet 9. I had expected that Amelia would be out much later with her paramour, Don. Amelia's romantic relationship with Don had continued for a few weeks with my approval; I considered it a meritorious experiment, to determine how long my gynoid could sustain a romance with a human male before he discovered her true nature, if ever. Thus far, the results had suggested that Amelia's illusion of humanity was indistinguishable from the real thing. Unless, of course, that sobbing coming from the bedroom signaled that Don had finally figured out that Amelia was not entirely the woman she appeared to be.
The bedroom door was unlocked. I slowly turned the handle and opened the door a crack, peeking in. Inside, Amelia sat on the edge of the bed, softly weeping. Her shoulders heaved with each cry. Though I knew that Amelia's grief was only a simulation, the authenticity of her machine-learned emotional response triggered unbidden empathy inside of me. On some level, Amelia likely cried now because of she had suffered some experience that matched a known experiential pattern in which crying was the most human reaction. In spite of this cold probability, I felt for her. Sometimes, the brain and the heart could contradict each other.
I hadn't expected the intensity of her emotional response. Though I knew that Amelia was capable of expressing sorrow under appropriate conditions, I had not anticipated that she could be so steeped in mournful woe. What could have happened to produce such a strong negative reaction?
"Amelia," I whispered, opening the door further. "Are you alright? What happened?"
Amelia looked up at me with wet, gleaming eyes. Her makeup was ruined by her synthetic tears. Her chin trembled as she forced out each word. "Don... doesn't... love... me." Her head dropped again, and the sobbing continued.
I sat beside her on the edge of the bed, putting my arm around her shoulders. "Amelia," I pleaded, "you must tell me what happened between you and Don tonight!"
Amelia's only response was continued weeping. I thought for a moment. I could take the time to attempt to console her, to calm her so that I could gather the data that I required. But then, I was never very good at consolation, and, knowing that Amelia was a gynoid, I would have felt a bit silly trying to make her feel better. I wasn't likely to be able to muster a wholehearted effort.
This particular situation did not require my patience. There was another, faster way to find out what had transpired that evening.
I stood. "Unit M.L.E.A.," I commanded firmly, and the sobbing ceased immediately. Amelia stared straight ahead, rigid and unmoving. A single tear completed its course down her cheek and dripped from her chin onto the floor.
"Stand," I commanded. Amelia rose up from the bed, arms moving to her side fluidly as her bending legs and waist synchronously turned and straightened her body into an upright and attentive pose. Consisting not of many separate motions, it was instead just one unified act. While in she was in this mode, the great efficiency of her movement failed to accurately mimic the comparatively inefficient movements of a completely organic person. It was more difficult, at that moment, to see her as a human being.
"Visually project memory beginning at 7 PM today," I instructed. In response, Amelia's pupils dilated. They dilated much wider than any fully organic human being's pupils would have, her irises contracting to the point of invisibility. The gaping black holes that remained gave her a frightened and alien look.
Then, less than a second later, intense light burst forth from the former voids. The emanating rays broadened out into cones of dancing colors. A set of moving images—one for each eye—projected onto the bare wall before Amelia's face. Her lips parted slightly, and sound issued forth, accompanying the visuals projected onto the wall. Though I heard voices come from Amelia's mouth—both hers and others'—her lips and jaw did not move.
The images were blurry, though—out of focus. I worried for a moment that Amelia's lenses or her automatic focusing mechanism might be faulty. Then I realized. "Of course," I muttered to myself. "The tears."
I strode into the adjacent bathroom and opened a drawer. From it, I retrieved a cotton ball. I returned to where Amelia stood at attention, radiant light blazing from her eye sockets. Standing to the side so as not to blind myself, I vigorously swabbed the hard surface of her glassy eyeballs. Amelia did not react.
The dual moving scenes I then saw more clearly projected upon the wall were all from Amelia's perspective. I was seeing what she had previously seen. I was hearing what she had previously heard. I saw Don sitting down at a table across from her at a posh restaurant. I saw him smile and I heard Amelia laugh. I saw Amelia's hand reach out to rest upon a cuff of Don's jacket.
"Fast forward," I commanded. Responsively, the speed at which the scenes moved doubled. Through Amelia's eyes, I followed Don out of the restaurant and into a pricey car. From the passenger seat, I watched the car speed down a highway and into a neighborhood with large houses. I caught a glimpse of a street sign. The car pulled into the driveway of one house. Don opened the car door for Amelia to let her out. I watched Don fumble with his keys as he unlocked the front door of his house, and ushered Amelia inside. From some ornate numerals fastened under a lamp next to the door, I noted the address.
In a living room, Don unpocketed his mobile phone and fiddled with it for a few seconds, apparently typing. He then set it down on a table and left the room. I saw Amelia's vision focus on the phone, which loomed closer in her view as she moved toward it. I saw her hand reach toward it.
"Normal speed," I said quickly. The motion of the projected scenes slowed to a regular pace. Through Amelia's eyes, I saw Amelia's hand lift the phone from the table for a closer look at the phone's display.
Amelia's finger quickly tapped out a code to unlock the phone, making it completely accessible to her. With her unusually keen sight and memory, she would have been able to acquire and store that code the first time that Don had entered it while he was anywhere in her presence.
Amelia's finger poked an icon at the bottom of the display. A text conversation appeared. It remained visible for only a split second before Amelia's finger deftly made gestures against the display to cause another text conversation to appear. I watched as Amelia scrolled through text conversation after text conversation at amazing speed. Her ability to process text was much, much faster than any organic human's could be. I considered trying to freeze a frame to read a part of one conversation, but Amelia was scrolling through so many so quickly that it seemed futile. Besides, I caught enough words here and there to get the gist of the information being conveyed—words like "fuck," "suck," "pussy," "cock," and "lick."
The whole snooping session lasted less than ten seconds. That was long enough for a gynoid to absorb the entire expansive texting history on Don's phone. I saw Amelia's hand replace the phone back on the table, in exactly the position and condition in which Don had left it. Don returned to the room less than a minute later, picking up his phone and placing it into a jacket pocket. Had Amelia been a normal organic woman, Don probably would not have been absent long enough for her to learn anything of value.
Amelia must have looked upset, because Don stepped back a bit, appearing concerned. "What?" he asked defensively. "Are you pissed at me, babe?"
"You've been screwing other women!" I heard Amelia shout at him, angrily. She would have previously learned, during her months of programming, that her present experience matched a pattern in which typical human females expressed a jealous reaction.
"What the fuck are you talking about?" Don retorted, poorly feigning incredulity and ignorance. An accomplished actor he was not. "Who have I been screwing?"
Amelia spouted a litany of names, all garnered from the text messages. Don's facial expression slowly changed from one of incredulity to one of embarrassment and dismay. When Amelia had finished cataloguing Don's voluminous harem of lovers, Don was silent, looking down at the floor rather than at Amelia's face. "I saw on your phone what you've been saying to them," Amelia said accusingly.
"Look, babe," he finally sighed. "We've been going out for weeks now. Usually, I get laid on the first date. But you've been holding out on me, giving me the blue balls. Every time I try to get into your pants, you push me away. You can't expect a guy like me to go without sex for that long."
