I disconnect Joe. Careful. I turn to the other logic and punch keys for Maintenance. I do not get a services flash. I get Maintenance. I feel very good. I report that I am goin’ home because I fell down a flight of steps an’ hurt my leg. I add, inspired:
"An’ say, I was carryin’ the logic I replaced an’ it’s all busted. I left it for the dustman to pick up."
"If you don’t turn ’em in," says Stock, "you gotta pay for ’em."
"Cheap at the price," I say.
I go home. Laurine ain’t called. I put Joe down in the cellar, careful. If I turned him in, he’d be inspected an’ his parts salvaged even if I busted somethin’ on him. Whatever part was off-normal might be used again and everything start all over. I can’t risk it. I pay for him and leave him be.
That’s what happened. You might say I saved civilization an’ not be far wrong. I know I ain’t goin’ to take a chance on havin’ Joe in action again. Not while Laurine is livin’. An’ there are other reasons. With all the nuts who wanna change the world to their own line o’ thinkin’, an’ the ones that wanna bump people off, an’ generally solve their problems—Yeah! Problems are bad, but I figure I better let sleepin’ problems lie.
But on the other hand, if Joe could be tamed, somehow, and got to work just reasonable—He could make me a coupla million dollars, easy. But even if I got sense enough not to get rich, an’ if I get retired and just loaf around fishin’ an’ lyin’ to other old duffers about what a great guy I used to be—Maybe I’ll like it, but maybe I won’t. And after all, if I get fed up with bein’ old and confined strictly to thinking—why I could hook Joe in long enough to ask: "How can a old guy not stay old?" Joe’ll be able to find out. An’ he’ll tell me.
That couldn’t be allowed out general, of course. You gotta make room for kids to grow up. But it’s a pretty good world, now Joe’s turned off. Maybe I’ll turn him on long enough to learn how to stay in it. But on the other hand, maybe—
(1946)
MIKA MODEL
Paolo Bacigalupi
Paolo Tadini Bacigalupi was born in Paonia, Colorado in 1972. In 2009 he won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and John W. Campbell Memorial awards for his first novel, The Windup Girl. The story "Mika Model" was specially commissioned for a futurological project run out of Arizona State University; Bacigalupi more usually focuses on climate change, economic short-sightedness, and how life and love might maintain themselves among the ruins of the 21st century. Shifting with apparent effortlessness between adult and YA fiction, his work manages to be engaging, entertaining, and flat-out terrifying even in the space of a single paragraph. His recent novel for adults The Water Knife (2015) describes a balkanized America, with the rich living in fortified communities while the poor kill for water.
The girl who walked into the police station was oddly familiar, but it took me a while to figure out why. A starlet, maybe. Or someone who’d had plastic surgery to look like someone famous. Pretty. Sleek. Dark hair and pale skin and wide dark eyes that came to rest on me, when Sergeant Cruz pointed her in my direction.
She came over, carrying a Nordstrom shopping bag. She wore a pale cream blouse and hip-hugging charcoal skirt, stylish despite the wet night chill of Bay Area winter.
I still couldn’t place her.
"Detective Rivera?"
"That’s me."
She sat down and crossed her legs, a seductive scissoring. Smiled.
It was the smile that did it.
I’d seen that same teasing smile in advertisements. That same flash of perfect teeth and eyebrow quirked just so. And those eyes. Dark brown wide innocent eyes that hinted at something that wasn’t innocent at all.
"You’re a Mika Model."
She inclined her head. "Call me Mika, please."
The girl, the robot… this thing—I’d seen her before, all right. I’d seen her in technology news stories about advanced learning node networks, and I’d seen her in opinion columns where feminists decried the commodification of femininity, and where Christian fire-breathers warned of the End Times for marriage and children.
And of course, I’d seen her in online advertisements.
No wonder I recognized her.
This same girl had followed me around on my laptop, dogging me from site to site after I’d spent any time at all on porn. She’d pop up, again and again, beckoning me to click through to Executive Pleasures, where I could try out the "Real Girlfriend Experience™."
I’ll admit it; I clicked through.
And now she was sitting across from me, and the website’s promises all seemed modest in comparison. The way she looked at me… it felt like I was the only person in the world to her. She liked me. I could see it in her eyes, in her smile. I was the person she wanted.e
Her blouse was unbuttoned at the collar, one button too many, revealing hints of black lace bra when she leaned forward. Her skirt hugged her hips. Smooth thighs, sculpted calves—
I realized I was staring, and she was watching me with that familiar knowing smile playing across her lips.
Innocent, but not.
This was what the world was coming to. A robot woman who got you so tangled up you could barely remember your job.
I forced myself to lean back, pretending nonchalance that felt transparent, even as I did it. "How can I help you… Mika?"
"I think I need a lawyer."
"A lawyer?"
"Yes, please." She nodded shyly. "If that’s all right with you, sir."
The way she said "sir" kicked off a super-heated cascade of inappropriate fantasies. I looked away, my face heating up. Christ, I was fifteen again around this girl.
It’s just software. It’s what she’s designed to do.
That was the truth. She was just a bunch of chips and silicon and digital decision trees. It was all wrapped in a lush package, sure, but she was designed to manipulate. Even now she was studying my heart rate and eye dilation, skin temperature and moisture, scanning me for microexpressions of attraction, disgust, fear, desire. All of it processed in milliseconds, and adjusting her behavior accordingly. Popular Science had done a whole spread on the Mika Model brain.
And it wasn’t just her watching me that dictated how she behaved. It was all the Mika Models, all of them out in the world, all of them learning on the job, discovering whatever made their owners gasp. Tens of thousands of them now, all of them wirelessly uploading their knowledge constantly (and completely confidentially, Executive Pleasures assured clients), so that all her sisters could benefit from nightly software and behavior updates.
In one advertisement, Mika Model glanced knowingly over her shoulder and simply asked:
"When has a relationship actually gotten better with age?"
And then she’d thrown back her head and laughed.
So it was all fake. Mika didn’t actually care about me, or want me. She was just running through her designated behavior algorithms, doing whatever it took to make me blush, and then doing it more, because I had.
Even though I knew she was jerking my chain, the lizard part of my brain responded anyway. I could feel myself being manipulated, and yet I was enjoying it, humoring her, playing the game of seduction that she encouraged.