Flag Street. That was where the obedient and seductive android, Meyla Hunter, killed four humans and then went catatonic. I wasn’t Meyla Hunter, but I sat right behind her eyes seeing what she saw, thinking what she thought, feeling what she felt.
She was excited. There would be a big fee for this one. Her manager, Rollo, had said how pleased he would be, and pleasing Rollo was her programmed purpose as love was her programmed special pleasure.
She liked the feel, the smell, the taste, of love making. It fed a need to be loved, to feel lovable, to become happy through the happiness of others. If it just wasn’t for that tiny knot in her stomach, that little gnaw of anxiety at the back of her head, all would be perfect.
Meyla turned the corner onto Flag Street and walked the block until she reached the main entrance to the James House. The customer had requested that she not come by taxi. He wanted her to arrive warm and a little sweaty. Meyla had giggled when Rollo had told her that.
She was smiling when she dressed to head for the hotel. As she stood in the grand entrance of the James it still confused her, bothered her, about getting dressed. She had torn three of her best blouses trying to put them on. One right after another. Stupid little things like that kept happening ever since those two customers, both men, had copulated with her, both orally and anally, at the same time. She had choked and had passed out, the customers were gone when she awakened, and Rollo had beaten her for not collecting the green. Nonetheless she still remembered the event as exciting and fun, except for that knot in her stomach, except for that tiny gnaw of anxiety at the back of her head. All of those stupid mistakes since then. Dropping things. Throwing things. Ripping clothes. Cutting and burning herself. Very confusing.
The security guard on the elevator glanced at her identification card and smirked at her as the doors to the car closed. She frowned as she watched the numbers on the readout climb in value. She frowned because she was puzzled. She was puzzled because she knew that if she ever saw that security guard again she would take her beautiful manicured fingers and tear the man’s skin from his skull and make him eat it whole, smirk and all.
“I do not get angry,” she said to the empty car, immediately feeling better.
For her stomach and head she decided to see an andy physiotech in the morning. There were pills for everything, and androids had been genetically designed to have less physical problems and easier recoveries than humans. Still, the seed of every android line was taken from human DNA, and not everything was known. Things still happened. Perhaps someone could do something about the knot in her stomach and the stiffness in the back of her neck.
The door to the plush penthouse suite opened revealing a strong, distinguished looking man in his late fifties. He was wearing lavender lounge clothes. “Come in, my dear. What’s your name?”
“Trina,” said Meyla. “Trina Ross.”
Why had Meyla Hunter called herself Trina Ross?
Inside the vestibule the man took her coat, placed his arm around her waist, and led her into a sunken living room crowded with crushably soft overstuffed furniture and low lights of yellow, orange, red, and green. In the center of the living room was a tiny pool of water that reflected the lights. There were two other men in the room and a woman. They were all beautiful, strong, healthy looking, handsome, distinguished. They wanted Trina to join them. Life is good, thought Meyla.
There was alcohol, and Meyla’s special metabolism processed the alcohol with neither damage nor drunkenness. There were powders, and again Meyla participated without damaging herself, saving herself for her job. There were foods: fine cheeses, meats, fruits, nuts, and she ate a little.
Then the clothes began coming off.
The job was described.
A picture was produced.
In the illustration a woman stretched out face up on a narrow exercise table, a second woman straddling her face. A man standing at the foot of the table would engage in vaginal copulation with the first woman while, with the second woman…
The other two men would masturbate each other while they watched. One of the men held out his hand toward a narrow exercise table.
The images before Meyla’s eyes doubled, then tripled, as she felt a piece of her mind shutting down. One of the men began taking off Meyla’s working lingerie, pulling the panties down around her knees. As he went down his tongue left a trail of saliva starting between her breasts, down her sternum, into and out of her navel—
Meyla reached into his right eye socket with her thumb and his left eye socket with her middle finger. Reaching in and bringing her fingers together until they touched, she yanked her arm back quickly removing the bridge of the man’s nose, and his nose, as well as a considerable portion of his face. She went into his mouth to get his tongue, but it was too slippery and she couldn’t get a grip on it. On the table with the fine cheeses, meats, fruits, and nuts, however, was a cheese fork. She thrust the tines through the man’s tongue and ripped it in two.
Using the cheese fork, she went after the remaining two men, removing their genitalia and feeding each man’s naughty bits to the other. After manipulating and cracking a few bones on the woman, Meyla managed to shove the woman’s face into her own vagina, suffocating her.
And all of this time
Meyla was saying
“I am not doing this.
“I do not get angry.
“All I want to do is please.
“Please.”
Please.
And there was no more Meyla Hunter. Her mind had found a hitherto unknown loose thread of that eternally imperfect human DNA, had pulled on it, and Meyla’s psyche had unraveled.
There was only a lonely path through a winter wood next to a clean tiny spring. “You saw?” I asked Shields.
“Yes.”His voice was thick. Strange, I thought. Androids don’t cry. They don’t cry because they don’t feel. Except, they don’t feel only because they’re programmed not to feel. Control blocs were implanted to prevent exactly what had occurred. Trying not to feel didn’t seem to work any better in androids than it did in humans.
In the distance was that little child. I had thought it was going to be the boy with the halo of white hair; I had feared it was going to be me. It was not. As the child came closer I could see it was a little girl.
“Meyla was never a little girl,” I said. “What’s this?”
“I don’t know,” answered Shields.
I thought about it, and there were all kinds of symbolic monsters in the android mind. It would be a bizarre first, but there wasn’t any reason one of them couldn’t be represented by a small child.
I took us to my street, my safe place, and saw that where the little girl had been standing there was the adult version of Meyla Hunter. Her eyes were dull, tired, blank. The little boy with the white hair frowned as he watched to see what I would do.
I changed back to the winter woods, and where the little boy had been sitting was the spring, now dark, still, and waiting. I looked at the little girl. She appeared to be four or five years old. “Hello?” I called. “Don’t be frightened. My name’s Tim. Timmy Shannon. What’s your name?”
She held her hands behind her back, swung her body back and forth, and looked up at me through long, dark lashes. She laughed and smiled. “Meyla,” she answered.
I squatted down and faced her. She was so beautiful, so innocent, so full of happiness, life, and hope. “Why are you here, Meyla?”
“That’s silly.”
“Why’s it silly?”
Her eyes looked puzzled, as though she couldn’t understand why I, a grown-up, couldn’t understand. Or, perhaps, it was why I, her brother, couldn’t understand.