“That’s eerie.”
I looked up from my rapt hug. Nell gave my face a last lick and
turned to watch Sara. “Eerie?”
Sara, to my eyes, looked a little stunned, a little bemused. She
nodded her head emphatically. “Eerie.”
Nell decided that Sara wasn’t of interest so she swiped me with a paw
in her ‘pay attention to me gesture’. Without thinking about it I
murmured ‘in a minute’ and stroked her head. I heard a disgruntled
sigh before she settled to watch us.
I settled more comfortably and ran my hand along Nell’s side while
watching Sara. “So, what’s eerie about our getting acquainted?
You’ve been satisfied so far.”
She leaned back on the bench. “Oh, I *am* satisfied. I wasn’t
talking about Nell’s reactions. I was talking about *yours*.”
She glanced at her watch. “In the last 2 hours or so Nell has
indicated sexual interest 15 times. Each of those times you responded
in various ways, without any hesitation that I could see.” She held
up a hand to stop a comment I wasn’t going to make. “I’ve supervised
most of the ‘getting acquainted’ sessions for humans and bots of
various types. What I seldom see is the human, no matter how much
they desired the bot to be as ‘natural’ as possible, reacting to the
bot with the naturalness they do to real humans or dogs.
She shook her head slightly, then faced me. “To see *that*
unhesitating naturalness between a human and… (she hesitated for
some reason) a bitchbot… That’s *eerie*.”
To give myself time to think I asked her a question. “You hesitated
before you called Nell a bitchbot. Why?”
“I wanted to emphasize that it’s not Nell but also not one of our
usual dogbots. You’ve been reacting as if it were the original, flesh
and blood bitch we based it on.”
I winced at the coldness of her words even while I admitted their
truth. This ‘Nell’ wasn’t the original.
But…
I bent over and hugged ‘Nell’. “I loved her. When I realized that
your company might be able to bring her back for me, I vowed that I
would not treat this Nell differently just because she is a bot. The
original Nell would never forgive me if I made that mistake. ‘The
package doesn’t matter’. It doesn’t matter that this Nell has been
programmed to appear to love me.”
I sighed and looked up. Sara had her head tilted slightly, as if she
were working out a puzzle. I wondered if she realized that head tilt
was something I’d seen many times, when Nell was puzzled about
something.
I sighed and met Sara’s eyes. “I never answered ‘why do you want to
recreate your bitch?’, with the real part of the truth. Oh, you got
some of it.
“But, you never got the most important part of it: The original Nell,
and the love we shared, was the only reason I never suicided. Without
her, I struggle daily just to stay alive. Dying is such an easy
solution. It calls to me. It seduces me with it’s simplicity.
“I need a reason to live. I’d rather live, I think. As long as Nell
is here, I know I’d rather live. I *need* Nell.”
Sara asked the obvious question: “Therapy?”
I snorted bitterly. I felt Nell nudge me with her head in a bid to
draw me out of my despondency. “Yeah. If I could afford a bot, I can
certainly afford therapy. It only confirmed what I already knew. I’m
a classic zoophile but only more so. Humans do nothing for me
sexually or emotionally. Only animals. Only dogs. Only a bitch.
Pretty limited choices available. Nell *worked*. If there was some
way to duplicate her instead of depending on the very small chance
that I’d find another real bitch who fit me as well as she did…”
I bent my head and kissed this Nell. My Nell. My reason for living,
Nell. “Homebots was the only chance I had of living. I had to try.”
I lifted my head again. “I knew as soon as Nell greeted me that I’d
won my gamble. I’ll never be *alone* again.”
