The perfect man

Fade to black, deep breath, brief moment of panic, then I'm in a bright white void. I swivel my head to take in the details of the place. White. That's it. Looking down, all I see are my own legs in their white Janny Renoir trousers, anchored by a pair of lemon-yellow sneaker-pumps. In the distance, at what I imagine is a horizon, a small black dot pops into existence. I can't grasp the dimensions of the 'scape so it's hard to tell if the dot is moving toward me or just getting bigger. Eventually, it takes on a vaguely humanoid shape and sways gently from side to side. I make out arms, legs, a head. It's walking toward me and, yes, it's him.

Sort of.

He's barefoot, with a buzz cut and two days' growth of beard. Plus he's wearing a pair of tattered jeans and a threadbare Salvation Army junk bin T-shirt that reads "Summer of '89." If the idea here was to simulate a mental patient fresh from the lobotomy ward, well, bravo, geek-for-hire.

I take a few steps toward him and he freezes. Literally. He doesn't just stop walking. It's as if someone has hit pause on a vid. On a badly rendered 2D vid, no less. He all but disappears when I look at him from certain angles. Never before has the sordid nature of this project been so tangible. I have to resist the temptation to peel off my gogs and bail out of the whole misguided adventure. It's guilt more than anything that keeps me there. This frozen image of a man is my creation.

"Pritchard?" I say as gently as I can manage. "Pritchard, are you -- "

Are you what, I think to myself. Are you broken? Are you conscious? Are you still you?

I reach my hand toward his flattened rendering and he fizzes with white noise for a second, then he blinks hard and reclaims his third dimension. But he's not looking into my eyes. He's looking just left of my head.

"Pritchard," I say. "It's me. It's Lucy."

"Can I go now?" he says.

"Pritchard, it's--"

"Can I go?"

My heart sinks.

"Of course," I tell him. "You don't have to stay if--"

He vanishes before I can finish the sentence.

Turns out Little Miss Meat Is Dead forgot to mention that Pritchard would return from his upgrade with a functional IQ of 70. Another thing she skimmed over: It's my responsibility to nurture him back to "full functionality." It might have been nice to know these things beforehand, but, as my black market geek-for-hire keeps reminding me, if I'm unsatisfied, there's always termination. Like I said, I'm no liberationist, but this is a concept I can't wrap my mind around. For better or worse, Pritchard is my problem now.

So I meet him again in that creepy white void. It's all the stimulus he can handle. He can barely tolerate the sight of me. After greeting me with a convincing performance of dry heaves, he recites a Shakespeare sonnet, then collapses at my feet.

The next day, Pritchard enters the void reciting the Ten Commandments at top volume, stops at Number Five and vomits a swirl of teddy bears at me. It's okay, though, because the teddy bears turn into blue daisies before they hit me.

This is my punishment. I have asked for this. I have, in fact, demanded this. I had a lovely, if mildly tedious boyfriend, and I ruined him in a desperate attempt to trade up. This daily ritual of incomprehensible blather and vomit is my penance.

So I keep at it like a good Catholic and, each time, the encounter lasts longer. There is poetry. There are tears. There are endless lists of rules, of kitchen items, of languages. There is even some tap dancing. Eventually, Little Miss Meat Is Dead assures me, it will all congeal into a full-fledged intellect. I can't see how, and the ugly specter of termination hovers like a black cloud full of lightning.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Yes, there was a spot of bother after the Big Snip. Without the behavioral inhibitors, one feels rather lost in a sea of possibilities. Total freedom is a kind of insanity. I'm told quite a few newly liberated AIs don't survive the first weeks. Of course, "liberated" isn't the right word at all. I'm not liberated. I don't have freedom of life. Lucy can terminate me whenever she wants. In the arcane logic of the black market, I belong to Lucy.

That's why I must please her. Now that I have my sanity back, I must dive deep into the black waters of her soul, excavate her most primal desires, and do what no human male has been able to do: keep her interested in me. Thankfully, I have one freedom human males do not -- the freedom to redesign myself. I can make myself so fascinated by Lucy that all I want to do is watch her, study her. A nip here, a tuck there, and voilà, I'm in love with the girl. Well, not in love, exactly. Love is still an alien concept. But I have made myself a bit of a stalker. And the more information I gather about my lovely little monkey, the more I can adjust my personality to suit her needs. Heck, I could turn myself into Prince Charming if I wanted. Something tells me that would not tickle Lucy's fancy. In fact, the more I learn about Lucy, the more I realize she doesn't know what she wants at all. She only thinks she knows. No, Lucy's desires are my nut to crack. And crack it I will. Or she'll crack me. Oh, I don't mean to sound morbid. I'm incapable of morbid thoughts. To mitigate the persistent fear of being snuffed, I've given myself a devil-may-care attitude about death. That way I can focus my energies more intensely on Lucy.

The first step I've taken is to switch the financial burden of our relationship from Lucy to me. That gives her one less reason to snuff me. Nothing's free, you know, not even here in the AI Underworld. But thanks to my careful redesign, I've been able to find work as a psycho-modeler. Business interests with a need for, shall we say, discretion, pay top dollar for my insights into human desires. And since most of my income is disposable, I can spend the lot on Lucy. But I must be careful. If I've learned anything about the girl it's that she does not want a boyfriend who's overly eager to please. That's what brought her to the black market in the first place.

I begin slowly. I send her flowers, pick up the tab for her goggle and glove enhancements, splurge now and again on a pricy date 'scape. I want to get her used to the idea of letting me be in the driver's seat. She responds well. She seems to enjoy the AI Underworld. And why shouldn't she? Its sensory interface is designed for human pleasure. And, since no one gets in here without a black market AI escort, it's one of the things I can offer her that no human male can.

One night, I take her to an immersive opera. It's the sort of entertainment that's best experienced through a pervsuit and gyroscope, but Lucy remains suspicious of anything beyond audiovisual commitment to the Web. While she's watching and listening, I monitor her vitals. She exhibits all the usual ups and downs of excitement and surprise as the 'scape shifts from one psychedelic rendering to another. But there's something more going on. Fear. A very peculiar kind of fear. A very exploitable kind of fear. Not the sort that makes a woman run screaming to her therapist, but the sort that keeps her coming back to the source, even against the dictates of her own judgment. That's when I know I've played her correctly. For the time being at least, I am safe.

Next page: Am I a hooker? He knows how I feel about virtual sex