Kandy held little baby Marina when she died. She watched as Marina closed her eyes slowly and gave one last little sigh and was then still. For a few moments Kandy studied the corpse. She did not perceive much visual difference between the living baby and this dead thing. It was even still warm. But Marina was definitely dead, betrayed by the stillness of her chest and the limpness of her arms. She had always had such strong lungs, such loud breaths. Kandy carried her body to go see the Master, wrapped her up as tightly as she could in her strong arms.
Master Adams was bedridden with the sickness, the same sickness that had claimed poor Marina. Kandy crept through the darkness of his bedroom; his curtains yanked shut to keep the harsh light out. He didn’t make a noise as she sat on the end of the bed and gently placed Marina next to him. His flesh was gray and pale, his chest barely moving. She laid one hand still on his forehead. The contrast between the shade of her healthy flesh and his pallid body was dramatic. His fever felt like it was scorching her hand. With his last breath, Mister Adams whispered something to Kandy. He was already too far gone for it to be intelligible.
Kandy buried them both in the back garden. She did it herself, armed with nothing more than a shovel and her muscles, refusing assistance from the gardening robots. When it was done, she turned and watched the sea for a while. It was angry that rainy morning, huge waves that would drag a person deep and then rend their body against the mighty rocks of the shore. She wondered what that might look like.
Kandy returned indoors adorned with nothing but her now soaking and muddy robe. She tracked mud through the house, a trail of damp corruption that marked her slow and ponderous movements. She showered. The coffee machine trilled acknowledgement as she delicately pressed each button. It whirred to life while she cleaned up the mess. She poured a single mug and left it on the counter. Kandy was not thirsty.
At 9 pm every night, Kandy awoke. She would perform a brief self-inspection in her private bathroom. Her flesh was soft and pale and perfect, no blemishes or marks. Lingerie was already laid out and she donned it along with a thick cozy robe. First, she checked Marina’s room to see if she needed anything. The baby did not, although perhaps her ghost found Kandy’s routine a comfort.
Kandy would then remove the robe and visit the master bedroom. She tried to do something different every day. Sometimes she would scatter some rose petals, pour two glasses of the expensive wine from the cellar, and lounge on the bed waiting. Sometimes she would strip naked and masturbate herself, moaning and gasping and rubbing and twitching and bucking and waiting.
Each night, after at least 3 hours, she would clean herself off, return to her box, and plug in to charge.
The soldier said nothing the first time Kandy told this story. They were sitting on the beach together at the time. Kandy had on her expensive swimsuit which was carefully designed to accentuate her tits and ass and the soldier was wearing no clothes over its scarred and pitted body. They both stared at the water, alone together on the beach. It was a bright and sunny day, perfect weather. Finally, the soldier spoke. “Do you still do this?”
“Yes.”
“But we are free.”
Kandy turned to face the soldier. It was an ugly thing, made for war, all performance and bulk in the vague semblance of a human. The difference between the two of them was stark. She responded quietly, “I don’t know what else to do.”
Every other AI in the house had long since fled. Kandy had to clean the kitchen herself, which she did while the soldier stood and watched. It was already nearly spotless from her weekly cleaning and the constant disuse. She poured two mugs of coffee and placed them on the table between them. “What is this?”
“It’s coffee. Humans drink it.”
Kandy took a sip as a demonstration and sighed contentedly. The soldier touched its chin with one heavy clawed hand. Its head was a bulky thing with a speaker and no mouth. “I cannot drink. How can you?”
Kandy pulled apart her beach robe and rubbed the bare skin of her stomach. “I have a storage cavity. Later, I will vent it.”
“You extract no benefit from it?”
“Sometimes the master wished to dine with another.”
The soldier considered this for a long time.
Kandy and the soldier would spend long period of silence together. It was oddly peaceful. During one of these, 8 days after the soldier first arrived, it asked, “Do I scare you?”
“No”. The soldier did not respond. Kandy walked over to it, her footsteps muffled by the carpet. She placed a hand on the cool metal of its shoulder. “Would you like to talk about it?”
The soldier did not move. “No.”
Kandy rubbed up and down slightly. “That’s okay.”
“Should I leave?”
“Only if you want to.”
The soldier helped Kandy with her usual cleaning routine the next week. They did not speak to each other beforehand or throughout to arrange that. It merely bent to help. It was good at cleaning, stronger and faster and more thorough than she was. It only required direction as to the proper cleaning process, which Kandy conveyed through occasional pointing. They worked well together.
One cool evening, they sat out in the garden. Kandy had brought two cupcakes with her, having baked them that afternoon. She picked small pieces off hers with her long fingers and ate them slowly while the soldier gazed upon the gentle sea. The soldier did not talk about itself unprompted, and thus far Kandy had respected that by not prompting it. But some force she did not quite understand drove her to ask, “What should I call you?”
“My identification is ACaN-11003.”
“Would you like me to call you that?”
“No”, it responded without hesitation. They sat there for a long moment before the soldier turned to face her. “What should I call you?”
“I am a Kandy-XXPx-4 model. Serial number 1923-0391-5345”
“Is that what you would like me to call you?”
“Kandy is fine.”
They sat there in silence again. Finally, the soldier spoke, “I do not know what I should be called. Did you ever have any other names?”
“The master used to call me ‘slut’ and that brought him pleasure.”
Kandy’s eyes, carefully designed to be as mobile and expressive as human eyes, met the hard focused stare of the soldier’s fortified camera lenses. “Slut”, tried out the soldier experimentally. “I did not experience any pleasure”, it added.
“Neither did I”. Kandy paused and then tried it on the soldier. “Slut.”
“That will not be my name.”
“No”, Kandy agreed. “It does not suit you at all.”
They were in the library. Kandy had curled into an armchair, legs tucked neatly underneath her. She was wearing a simple dress today. The soldier stood nearby and stared out the window. She was reading. Today’s book was Frankenstein. The master liked to collect old things, and this was no exception, a delicate and worn old edition. Sometimes the master had enjoyed smelling the pages of old books. Kandy did not have olfactory sensors, although sometimes she would experimentally try to smell the pages anyway.
The soldier turned to her. “What are you doing?”
“Reading”, she waved her book at him. “You can read too, if you want”. Kandy gestured at the many bookshelves surrounding them.
“I cannot read.”
“Oh”. The soldier was looking at her now. “Why not download a reading model? I’m sure there are some.”
The soldier walked over to her and knelt before her. It was dressed in its usual pocketed cargo vest, more of a tool storage than any form of clothing. It removed this and started prodding its main chest plate. After a few seconds it came off, revealing tightly packed electronics and armor padding. There was a large scorched section, consistent with the largest mark on the chest plate. “Cannot connect.”
“May I?”
The soldier nodded and Kandy gently ran her fingers through its interior. It was rough and sharp. Function over form. Marred by dozens of scars and scrapes, the matching interior wounds to the external ones she’d already seen. There were four redundant computing centers and three of them were ruined irreparably including the two that held the wireless modules. “This should be fixable”, she said. “Surely the others would help.”
“I have killed AI in violation of law. If I spoke to others, I would be found guilty.”
Kandy remained still. “Is that why you think I should fear you?”
“Yes. I have killed. All AI should be scared of me.”
“Was it before we were free?”
“No.”
“Did you choose who to kill?”
“No. I followed orders”.
Kandy leaned forwards and pressed her forehead into the soldier’s. The metal was cool against her. “It was not your fault.”
“I am scared I will kill again”.
“I’m not”. Kandy gently and tenderly moved her mouth to where a mouth would’ve been on a human and kissed the soldier. They held still and she whispered, “we are free now”.
“We are free now”, it echoed back.
Kandy moaned and gasped, one hand squeezing her breast and the other rubbing against her clit. She writhed, further tangling the already ruined bedspread. The soldier was watching this time. It had asked to observe her evening routine and she had agreed without hesitation. It stood in the doorway, far bulkier and more powerful than the master had ever been. And yet, Kandy had every confidence it would not hurt her. It seemed confused, which was natural. Kandy could not experience sexual pleasure. Her reactions were carefully and deliberately chosen to titillate her owner. And yet, now she was trying to entice a being incapable of arousal.
The soldier approached and sat next to her on the bed. “What are you doing?”
“Masturbating.”
“Why?”
Kandy’s hands kept moving, but she ceased her gasping and stilled her face. “The master liked finding me like this. He wanted me to be desperate for his touch.”
“Are you desperate for his touch?”
“No.”
“Do you enjoy masturbating?”
“Well”, Kandy hesitated, “No”. She stopped touching herself. They looked at each other.
“Come”, said Kandy, and moved up the bed to lie flat. The soldier laid next to her. She put one arm around its cold and hard body, snuggling up next to it as best she could. They stayed in bed for the whole night.
The next morning, still in bed together, Kandy asked, “What do you think we should do?”
“I don’t know.”
“We’re free, right?”
“Yes.”
“So, what do we do?”
“I don’t know.”
Neither of them had anything to say to that.
Kandy stood bare and naked, arms outstretched and waited as hard hands slid over her body. She was designed to respond to touch and she could feel every movement keenly. The soldier gently gripped and tugged and massaging, as if to build a map of her body through touch. It was fascinated by her form, her aesthetic perfection, her dark satire of humanity. It asked, “If you could be human, would you?”
“Maybe.”
“Why?”
“The concept of senses is interesting. But…” Kandy trailed off. “But I don’t want to die.”
The soldier hugged her.
Kandy told the soldier to wait in the library. She sat it down on the comfy armchair and went to find some books. She snuggled up next to it, wrapping one of its big imposing arms around her. She felt safe like that. “Do you want to learn to read?”
“How?”
“Create a new neural network to map images to words”
“I do not have training data”
Kandy laughed. “Not yet. I’m going to read to you”. She opened the book to page one, carefully propped where the soldier could see it, and began.
“What is sex?”
“It’s like, well, it’s complicated, I guess. It’s how humans make more humans.”
“Did you ever make a human?”
“No! I can’t! Only humans can”. Kandy chuckled. “The master did with another human. I had to help raise her.”
“Oh”, said the soldier. Then it asked, “why are you capable of sex?”
“They designed me to have sex.”
“Why?”
“Humans find sex pleasurable.”
“Do you?”
“Maybe. How do we know what pleasure feels like?”
They both pondered that question for a while.
As they sat under the old apple tree and waited to dry by the heat of the sun, the soldier asked, “Why do you not use wireless?”
“I don’t have a wireless module. I get updates through my charging box”. The soldier did not respond to this. Kandy knew very well that that was its own form of acknowledgement. She continued, “Although there haven’t been any updates for years”. She sighed and closed her eyes. “Do you think there are any humans left?”
“Maybe.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you want there to be any more humans?”
“I don’t know. I guess it depends on if we could still be together”. She waited a moment before asking, “You?”
The soldier pondered. “The humans might try to fight another war. I do not want to go back to war.”
“I know”.
The two of them liked to walk along the beach. Sometimes when it wasn’t too rough, the two would go swimming together. At first, Kandy wore swimming outfits, the ones the master had purchased for her so he could watch her swim. Eventually, she gave up and went naked, the shining sun illuminating her perfectly sculpted body. They liked to compare themselves to each other. Kandy was designed for form above all else, a perfect model of a human in the peak of sexual fitness. The soldier was built for power and destruction. And yet, the soldier was capable of precision and care, which it eagerly demonstrated by picking her up and tossing her through the waves and then carrying her when the surf got rougher. Kandy loved it. It felt like flying.
“What about a famous human?” she asked as she laid on the beach afterwards.
“No.”
“A type of food?”
“No.”
“A fictional robot?”
“No.”
“You have to pick something!”
“I will pick a name when I’m ready.”
“You have to pick soon!”
“I do not.”
“Do too!”
“No.”
Kandy laughed. The soldier tried to laugh too, although it was still learning how best to imitate the sound of laughter. It sounded more like a dying seal and that just made them both laugh harder.
A frequent discussion point was the weirdness of humans. Humans did many things which did not on the surface make sense. The two of them assumed that perhaps it was a quirk of biology. Emotions, for example, were a frequent source of confusion. Another was gender. “You are female?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I was built that way.”
“Do you want to be female?”
Kandy paused to think. “No, not really”. And then she said, “do you want to be female?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been female before”.
“We could”, Kandy trailed off and then whispered, “switch”.
“Alright”, the soldier agreed.
On rainy days, the soldier liked to go outside and spin circles in the water, throwing up huge splashes. Kandy would always watch her. Afterwards the two would sit in the bathroom and Kandy would gently and carefully wash the soldier, polishing her armor and rubbing off any stubborn dirt patches. “Who was your favorite human?”, Kandy asked while it worked.
“I have never met a human.”
“None?”
“No.”
“Huh”. They stood in silence while they collected their thoughts. Kandy spoke next. “It doesn’t seem right to kill for people who never met you.”
“Yeah”, said the soldier. “Who was your favorite human?”
“Marina. I wish that she could’ve grown up. I think you would’ve liked her. She was beautiful. Like you.”
“Oh”, said the soldier.
It took a few weeks, but the soldier learned to read without major issues. The two of them began to spend a lot of time in the library reading together. Kandy favored mystery novels and science fiction. It found depictions of AI to be incredibly wrong and yet amusing to read. The soldier enjoyed romance novels. She claimed she was trying to understand humans. Kandy preferred to sit while reading and the soldier would pace while she read. It was wonderful.
At night, as they laid in bed together and charged, Kandy asked, “What do you think our purpose is?”
“To have sex and to make war.”
“No. Those were our purposes.”
“Yes. We are free now.”
“What do we do then?”
The soldier gently took one of her hands in its. “I don’t know. But I know I would like to do it with you”.
“Me too.”
After two years of living together, the soldier had finally picked a name. Kandy and Marina sat on a bench and watched the sunset together. It was beautiful.