Prologue
Geno Electronics had made a revolutionary breakthrough in robotics
They had created androids known as Maidroids that, as the name implies, were designed for domestic services, and in the case of some models a sexual ones.
These Maidroids were equipped with a complex A.I. capable of independent thought and emotion, one might even argue free will. Though admittedly this “free will” consisted almost entirely of the desire to serve their owner, so such arguments were generally laughed at.
The Maidroids was one of Geno Electronics top selling items. There was, however a large slew of complaints and a half dozen law suites about them. The major theme of which seemed to be that the Maidroids were really dumb.
This is not the say incompetent; they did what they were designed to do perfectly. The issues arose when it came to other, often what one would call simple and mundane, things. To put simply the maidroids had not a drop of common sense.
One example was a man who got fired from his job when he had his boss over for dinner, and his Maidroid happened to tell him how her owner really felt about him.
Another good example was a Maidroid who failed to grasp the significance of putting cloths back on after sex, when answering the door for nuns collecting for charity.
Luckily this was not a major issue. Most people were perfectly happy with their ‘dumb machines’ they did what they were suppose to and they had limited expectations of anything else.
It was however an issue the company wanted looked into, and corrected for the second generation models.
This is what brought Dr. William Fredrick, head designer of the Maidroids, and Dr. Isablle Fox, another designer on the project, in front of the board of directors.
“Let me start by saying there is nothing inherently wrong with the Maidroids.” Dr. Fredrick explained “The logic, emotion, and learning programming all work exactly as they are suppose to, though we may wish to add modesty to the emotions of the non-sex models True none of these are close to what you would call human, but it should be good enough grasp what you would call common sense. The problem is a lack of practical worldly understanding. However given enough time the units should self correct.”
The Dr. turned to the board.
“Huh?” One of the members spoke up. “What does that mean?”
“It means that they lack experience,” Dr. Fox cut in. “But they can learn.”
The Chairman spoke up. “We don’t care if they’ll eventually learn.” The man said with a hint of irritation, “We want them without this problem at the get go.”
“I’m getting to that,” Dr. Fredrick stated, “Now just straight programming won’t fix the problem, the amount of information a person learns in just the first five years of life is staggering complex and almost imposable to create a program to come anywhere near it.”
“Are you saying you can’t do anything?” the Chairman asked.
“Not at all, it just required a little thinking outside the box.” The Doctor replied,” I have come up with two possible options. Option A, we take a maidroid and basically teach it, then use its memory for the base for other maidroids. The down side of this is it will probably take at least 10 to 20 years for it to have a large enough experience base to use.”
“That doesn’t sound very viable.” The Chairman stated, “What’s B.”
“We cheat,” the board looked perplexed, Dr. Fredrick continued, “Basically the idea is we copy the memories of a human and used those as a base.”
There was a silence, then the chairman spoke. “Don’t you think there might be a problem with maidroids with human memories?”
“Though the original prototype will defiantly have them,” Dr. Fredrick explained, “But the over all idea is to take the practical data from it without having the memories themselves.”
The Chairman seemed to consider this for a moment.
“You might have trouble finding a woman willing to have her memories used for this, given that some units are basically sexbots.” the Chairman said, “and it will have to be a woman, consumers might have issues if it was a man.”
“I’m willing to volunteer,” Dr. Fox spoke up, “With a few provisions of course.”
She walked up to the chairman and dropped some papers in front of him.
“Retaining ownership of the raw data, Ownership of prototypes with raw data, 1% of profits on maidroids made with the practical data.” the Chairman spoke as he looked over the sheets, “Nothing to unreasonable. We will have to talk this over. We’ll get back to you.”
Dr. Fredrick and Fox walked out of the room, then out of the building. They stopped outside the doors.
Dr. Fox took out a cigarette and lit it.
“So do you think they’ll accept,” Fox asked as she took puff.
“You do know this is a no smoking area, right?” Fredrick stated.
Fox looked over at him, “Bite me.”
Fredrick shrugged “Yes, they’ll probably accept it, but are you sure you want to do this?”
“Well someone had to.” Fox explained, “They wouldn’t even have considered it otherwise. The chairman was right. No one would want to donate their memories, with or without the sex toy angle; the idea of someone having access to every aspect of your existence is pretty disturbing.”
“Then why are you…?” Fredrick began,
“Because if we didn’t come up with something workable I suspect it would have been bad for us,” Fox replied, as she through her cigarette on the ground and stepped on it “and, if this works, I’m rich.”
Fox went to her car, and Fredrick went to his. The next day they got the go ahead for the project.
Part 1
Isabelle woke up suddenly. It wasn’t surprise or shock, it was just sudden.
The last thing she remembered was the doctors at Geno Electronics medical division hooking her up to the nuroelectric imager, and giving her a sedative, saying they would be injecting her with a stimulant while she was asleep for a better reading and she might wake up with a mild headache.
Isabelle didn’t have a headache, or any kind of ache… but her body did feel odd. Not unpleasant exactly, just… odd. She wasn’t exactly sure what it was or how to describe it.
She was on an incline, and Dr. Fredrick and Jack Wendell, an intern on the project were standing over her. It was strange that Wendell would be there, as he didn’t come with them for the procedure, but Isabelle didn’t give it much thought.
“Fredrick, get those doctors in here,” Isabelle requested, “something is seriously off.”
Dr. Fredrick got a thoughtful look, and Wendell looked confused, and this was the only response.
“Don’t stand there like idiots!” Isabelle shouted, “This could be serious, get the damn doctors before I decide to sue you and Geno’s asses!”
“Is it supposed to think it’s me?” a vaguely familiar voice asked from out of sight.
Isabelle turned her head, and saw a woman at a table with an ice pack held to her head. The woman’s face she realized that it was the same one she saw in the mirror every morning. Then she realized that the voice sounded the same as hers from the video of the Christmas party.
“The procedure was unprecedented.” Dr. Fredrick, “Exactly what would happen was unknown. That’s why we did it, though this is not entirely unexpected. Your memories are a lot of data, and have likely overwhelmed her.”
Isabelle stared at herself.
“Funny joke guys,” Isabelle said nervously, “you can stop now.”
Fredrick sighed, and pulled out a mirror.
The face in it had shoulder length blond hair and emerald green eyes. It wasn’t her face.
She looked at her body now. She had DD breasts now and, was wearing the standard maidroid uniform. A low-cut aqua maid outfit with thigh high stockings, over her chest was the Geno Electronics logo, and printed on the right stocking was“P1-G2-M- S00000001 Nymph type ‘Mina’”. The Nymph part was just a pretty way to say sexbot.
This was far to elaborate to be a joke. Isabelle knew that those same marking were on her skin underneath where they were on her cloths. She felt under her skirt, and touched the recharge port at the base off her spine.
She was a robot.
When she had worked on the maidroids she had often thought of what it would be like to be one. They were machines, they had no rights, their minds could be reprogrammed or even erased at the whim of a human. She had found the idea terrifying.
Now she was one and she felt strangely absent of fear. Intellectually she understood that it was undesirable, but she was emotionally flatline on the subject. She suspected it was shock.
“I’m a robot.” It was a statement not a question.
“Yes.” Dr. Fredrick answered.
“Are you going to reprogram me?” Isabelle asked.
“What? No, never.” Dr. Fredrick answered casually, “You’re an experiment. The point of an experiment is to see what happens. When all is said and done you’ll be kept around for posterity’s sake if nothing else. We might analyze some data from time to time, but beside that, you’re free to do what you want.”
Isabelle tried to put her thought in order. She trusted Fredrick, he was a tad eccentric true, but he always had a kind of affection for the maidroids, so she was fairly certain that there was no immanent threat of having her mind altered.
But what to do now? Fredrick said she could do whatever she wanted.
She had had plans for her life. Ok yes the original still had that life and she was now technically a robot,so it might be a bit more difficult and need a tad bit of revision but, why not try to hit the ground running.
She had always hated the maidroid outfit, so first thing was to get new cloths.
“I want new cloths, this outfit sucks.” Isabelle stated, perhaps she should have asked a bit more politely given the circumstances, but she had always been straightforward and abrupt, so way change now?
“Of course, what ever you say Isa-“ Dr. Fredrick stopped mid reply “Um, it occurs to me that we already have an Isabelle, if we call you Isabelle it might get confusing, any other name we might use?”
He had a point, Isabelle thought. She momentarily thought of Mina, but dismissed it quickly. She was Isabelle, there for logically the name she used should be something Isabelle was called.
She had been called Izzy, as a child. She had hated it, but there was no other name she could think of. She took a moment and thought over the name Izzy. What exactly was wrong with it? In retrospective it didn’t seem so bad.
“Call me Izzy.” Isabelle or now Izzy now stated.
“Of course Izzy. Now you’ll also need lodging, I’m sure you don’t want to spend your time stuck in the lab.” Dr. Fredrick continued, “Wendell, you have a spare room, how about you take her for awhile.”
“What? Ah, well-“ Wendell began but was cut off by Dr. Fredrick.
“Oh yes, cloths!” Dr. Fredrick, “Wendell, take her out shopping, buy her what she wants. You’ll be reimbursed, and you may as well take her back to your house afterwards so she can get acclimatized.”
“Um, but-“ Wendell began but was once again interrupted by Dr. Fredrick.
“Come on Chop Chop.” Dr. Fredrick continued, unfazed by Wendell attempts at a say in matters.
“Ah, yes sir.” Wendell submitted.
Izzy and Wendell left, leavening Fredrick and the original Isabelle alone.
“I didn’t say anything,” Isabelle began, “because my head feels like I have a nail lodged in my skull, Mild headache my ass! But why did you just give my android over to Wendell?”
“Because, Wendell is spineless and easy to manipulate.” Dr. Fredrick stated, “He also live alone, is a slob, and can’t cook, and for the record, we are all considered Co-owners for the purposes of testing.”
Isabelle stared at him for a moment.
“Let me rephrase that,” Isabelle said slowly and in an annoyed voice. “What are you planing?”
“It’s an experiment. Observation and analysis of course.” Dr. Fredrick , “But to be specific…”
And he told her.
“Ok, I get it. I’ll go along with it for now,” Isabelle replied when he was done, “but I do have a favor to ask, don’t tell anyone I used to be called Izzy.”
“Don’t like it?” Dr. Fredrick asked ”I Hate it.”
“Excellent!”
To be continued...
Identity – Part 2 (revised)
As Wendell and Izzy began to leave the building; Izzy began to figure out exactly why she felt off.
First was her sense of touch, or lack there of. She could still sense things when she touched them but it didn’t feel like “touch”.
She wondered if this was what it was like when people senses get mixed up and they say they taste blue.
Her sense of temperature was more like looking at a thermometer than experiencing hot and cold.
She noticed that her movements were more calculated and graceful but also more restrictive. Not that any human would notice the last part, as it tended to be little things like not being able to bend her fingers backward, and remembering the designs for a maidroid such things would quickly be overlooked by what her body could do.
A maidroid can do a perfect split both horizontally and vertically, it could put its heel to the back of its head, and perform various gymnastic feats. A maidroid’s body was very much divided by the line of perfection/impossible.
Izzy thought she should probably give her new body a go through the motions once she got to Wendell’s.
As she walked into the crowded lobby of Geno Electronics Izzy realized she really didn’t feel self-conscious. She thought she would; here she was walking through a lobby wearing one of the stupid maidroid uniforms for everyone to gawk at. She should be as embarrassed as all hell.
Then again it wasn’t as if really saw her. They just saw was a maidroid; a robot indistinguishable from any of the others that milled about the lobby.
They were everywhere; minding desks, cleaning floors, secretarial models following their owners about ready to record any utterance they spoke. The maidroids were outnumbering the humans a good two too one. She had less presence in that place then a vending machine.
They walked out of the building and entered Wendells car. Izzy hoped the mall would be as equally unawkward.
“You still haven’t found something you like?” Wendell complained as they moved from Shop #11 to Shop #12.
“No” she replied, somewhat uncomfortably.
Truthfully, her indecision on the matter was starting to wear her as well. Why couldn’t she find an outfit she liked? She didn’t remember being this picky. Was the stranger’s face and body looking back at her in the mirror?
Compounding this was the fact that walking about in public was starting to feel as awkward as she had originally feared it would, though not for the reasons she thought.
It wasn’t the outfit, or the mere fact that she was a maidroid; there were almost as many around the mall as there were at the company.
The fact that several passersby were openly groping and fondling their droids to the complete apathy of the general public made the place seem a bit more relaxing in her mind.
Her problem was with her interactions with Wendell.
He was an intern and she bossed him around. She had always bossed him around; she remembered always bossing him around. But now it was accompanied by an uncomfortable and uneasy feeling. She suspected it was the many eyes it drew.
When she did it everyone looked at them. A maidriod ordering around a human was unheard of. Wendell’s constant “Come on, just buy something you like!” were also beginning, to get annoying, but it did provided further motivation to accomplish her task.
Though Izzy was actually starting to get impressed at her own analytical powers, she had started looking at cloths at a normally, but as she went along, she realized she could just scan and extrapolate how the cloths would look on her body, and she could do it at an incredible rate; it got to the point were she was scanning 20 a second.
Not that it did any much good, the concept of “outfit you like” seemed to be getting increasingly epithermal and foreign.
“Come on, hurry it up!”, Izzy had already reached 30 scans a second, it was starting to have an impact on her other systems.
“How about this? I’m sure you’d like this.” Wendell grabbed some random cloths. “Ok, maybe that’s a little to slu-“ Wendell started as he actually looked at them, but was interrupted by Izzy.
“Thoseareperfect!Howdidyoudothat!?!Youhaveexcellenttaste!” she grabbed the outfit with mechanical speed and precision, and moved to the check with the same. Wendell ran after her, and quickly paid, as Izzy slowed herself down.
“Ok,” Izzy mused to herself, “that was kind of weird.”
With her cloths in hand, Wendell rushed her out of the mall; he’d have enough shopping for the day and Izzy didn’t really feel like continuing the experience again either.
She looked at the cloths she bought, a tank top and lycra hot pants; the sort of outfit she had never liked, they always seemed awkward on her. But she was sure she liked it; she liked it a lot, but why?
Maybe it was her body.
Isabelle hadn’t been unattractive, but she never been described as a “mechanical sex goddess” as penthouse did with their “Nymph” review.
She probably just needed to get used to the look of her new body.
“Ok, get us out of here!” Izzy ordered Wendell, then scanned outside. Not a person in ear shot, but for some reason she still felt uncomfortable doing it.
Unofficial continuation in WilloWisp's Identity 2.0