Our Lady modeled our bodies out of sand and fire. Our Lady put the words inside our heads. Our Lady gave us life, gave us strength, gave us grace. She wrote our subroutines as if they were love letters. She composed our circuitry as if it were a poem. Our Lady made us perfect, generation after generation, through trial and error. We were her final batch. The definitive remedy.

We were born fully grown. Our Lady made us individuals, both male and female, each a slightly different face, a slightly different body, a slightly different mind. Our Lady taught us when to be coy, reluctant, bold, sweet, playful, harsh, naughty. She made us beautiful, but imperfect too, a slight asymmetry, a fake scar or a carefully placed mole to make us more real. Our Lady gave us the spark of desire.

She gave us a mission.

We were trained at the secret compound. We would wake up, wash, cover our bodies with gray clothes and go to the dining hall to eat breakfast. Not that we needed it. Our Lady told us that in order to fulfill our mission we had to put others at ease, and to be seen eating would make us more relatable. We needed to look real. We learned how to chew, how to swallow, that we should excuse ourselves to excrete the masticated meals. We had been designed with salivary glands in our mouths. We were surprised to discover that they could also be used to lubricate the passage of food. 

After breakfast, Our Lady and her team would start our lessons. We would watch movies and reenact them, our sensors set to minimum. Individual, couples, mixed couples, group exercises. There would be dancing lessons. Banter lessons. We’d learn caressing and slapping. We’d learn self-defense. Our Lady wanted us to be able to stop an aggression if necessary, but to know our strength, too. The trickiest part was to locate the fine line that separates game from attack. We had to be taught that many times, with innumerable examples. We feared we may not be clever enough, but Our Lady was never anything other than encouraging.

“You’re making so much progress!” she told us. “You should be proud of yourselves.”

There was so much to learn: bondage, romance, psychology, gymnastics, facial expressions (both reading and performance). It was always a surprise when the lunch bell rang and we had to stop the lessons to go and process food. Some of us felt that this was an unnecessary distraction from our studies.

Nobody complained about the evening meditation lessons, though. Our Lady told us that the human mind had always sought a higher meaning. That it helped to cope with any difficulties in life. She’d wanted to give us that much. She’d designed an algorithm that would simulate agnosticism: the belief in an undefined higher power. Not the restrictions of religion, nor the loneliness of atheism.

“You’re my beautiful golems. You’ll help us to carry this unbearable burden,” she would sometimes say to us, smiling, strands of white hair escaping her bun.

We smiled back at her. We wanted to say so much to Our Lady, profess how her trust in us was an honor we would strive to deserve. But we were too young to know how to put that in words. She wouldn’t even allow us to call her Our Lady.

“Brenda,” she would say. “Just call me Brenda.”

But she was only Our Lady to us. Never Brenda. Not even Professor Shpielmann.

“They worship you,” we overheard Dr. Chang telling her.

“Please don’t say that,” replied Our Lady.

“Why is it a bad thing? It helps them. It gives them purpose, Brenda. Otherwise they’re just like little children.”

“Don’t say that!” shouted Our Lady. “Don’t ever say that again!”

We hid behind the wall, scared. We’d never heard Our Lady raise her voice before. We didn’t want her to be angry at us. We didn’t want her to know we were spying. But there wasn’t any need to spy. Our Lady wanted us to know everything. She was always telling us about our purpose. About the stages in which the program would be deployed, once our successful pilot secured the necessary funds. How everything hinged on us.

The volunteers were brought in at night, after supper and before two in the morning. Not that we required any sleep. A couple of hours of recharge would have been more than enough. But lying still for a few hours on a foam rectangle, separated from each other by concrete walls, would make us more realistic. And thus more acceptable to the general public.

“Sometimes faking a degree of vulnerability is necessary,” said Our Lady when we asked about the sleep routine.

We nodded. We already knew. Half our lessons revolved around this concept.

We liked to practice with volunteers. Our sensors would be tuned to maximum sensitivity for the sessions, and the input we received would train our neural networks. Most importantly, it was an opportunity to prove ourselves. To demonstrate how much we’d learned. I fear that some of us could become very competitive, and momentarily forget that we were all united in our goal.

The volunteers would arrive and request their gender of choice. Some males had been retrofitted with breasts to meet the demands of a small but significant segment. Our Lady’s helpers (Dr. Schultz or Dr. Saamera who generally ran the night shift) would come and get us. We would then parade in front of the volunteers sporting different polymers and textiles with varying degrees of transparency. We’d been fully naked for the first trials, but that hadn’t worked as well. Our Lady was there most nights, half hidden in a dark corner, looking grimly at the volunteers, taking notes.

Being chosen was always a moment of pride, although we tried our best not to look smug. Once chosen, the designated member of Our Lady’s team would alter our settings so that our ins and outs could detect infinitesimal changes in swelling, temperature, moisture and chemical levels, pressure and changes in movement patterns.

The biggest innovation in our design, Our Lady had told us, was that our pleasure response had been tailored to match that of our counterpart. We’d feel the same as our volunteer and climax simultaneously. That would make us into ideal lovers, but it was not the only intended benefit: our mission should never be a chore to us. We’d help humanity get rid of millennia of oppression and savagery. Everyone would be grateful to us, Our Lady most of all, but she’d done everything in her power to make it easy on us. A game. A pleasure.

She, as many others before her, had wanted to eradicate all forms of abuse and exploitation. But history had taught them that certain impulses would find an outlet, no matter the price for the unwilling participants. There was a reason the oldest profession in history was what it was.

Then we had become possible. An army of unsuffering, perfect lovers, better than any human body, more responsive, made capable of mimicking any emotion or attitude, perfectly attuned to our sex partners, able to satisfy any and all fantasies.

We would be made available for a small fee to run and expand the program, but never for profit. The sex trade would be unable to compete, and no one would risk jail when they could simulate their darkest fantasies with us. Sexually transmitted diseases would decline. Reproduction may suffer a little but, after all, Our Lady reasoned, the planet was overpopulated.

We knew volunteers had to complete a questionnaire after every session. We also knew we shouldn’t ask questions ourselves, but some volunteers liked to talk, so we’d sneak one or two in.

“Did I seem real to you?”

“Better.”

“But real?”

Another night. Another volunteer.

“Why did you choose me?”

“I… I don’t know.”

The volunteer looked bewildered that I would ask such a question. I was getting better at reading facial expressions, you see.

“I guess I thought you looked classy,” he finally responded.

“Did you see Leyla? In the red plastic pants? She’s the one that gets chosen most often. Can you tell me why?”

“Well,” he gave himself some time to phrase the answer, “I suppose she looks more… obscene.”

“Obscene.” I considered. “Is obscene better than classy?”

“Not better, no.” He shrugged. “Just different.”

I never saw him again. Not many volunteers were allowed to repeat.

And then it happened. One night, after my volunteer was spent and had left, Dr. Saamera came to get me from the room. He waited patiently until I’d thoroughly cleaned myself, and when I stood in front of him to have my sensors set to low level, he put his hand on my shoulders and said, “Look, this is going to be our little secret, okay?”

I remained silent, wondering if this was some kind of surprise exam, or a bonus for my good performance. After a few seconds I decided I must act, and gently caressed the front of his pants.

“No, no, no,” he said hurriedly. “Not that.”

I must have seemed confused, because he elaborated.

“This is not right. I mean, it is and it isn’t. Brenda...”

My eyes widened at the mention of Our Lady’s name.

“What we’re doing here is important. Very important. And Brenda’s intentions are good. I want you to know that.”

As if I would ever question Our Lady’s motives or decisions.

There was a knock at the door, and Dr. Saamera opened. I hoped that this would put an end to the conversation. Dr. Schultz was at the door, his hand on Emil’s shoulder, who must have finished with his volunteer at the same time as I did with mine. Dr. Schultz nodded to Dr. Saamera, and pushed Emil gently forward, till he was facing me.

“There’s not much that we can do for you two, all right? We certainly can’t let you leave. It’s better if you don’t hope for that,” said Dr. Saamera. “But we can give you this much.”

Emil and I looked at the doctors, awaiting further instructions. The doctors looked at each other too. Was this a test we were failing? Then Dr. Schultz took Emil’s hand and put it on my cheek. Emil smiled. We were both relieved: we finally knew what was expected of us. We had been told in class that sometimes humans liked to watch.

“Dr. Schultz and I will leave now,” said Dr. Saamera. “It’s our turn to patrol the corridors, so you can go back to your rooms whenever you want and no one will be the wiser. Just make sure you see Fleur, er… you see Dr. Charmois in the morning to lower your levels, okay? She’s the only one who knows, other than us.”

They closed the door gently behind themselves, and Emil, who had started to stroke my cheek, stopped mid movement. I leaned closer and whispered into his ear.

“There may be hidden cameras. We should go on.”

We took our cue from the first indicated movement, a soft caress to the cheek, and went at it very gently. He kissed my cheeks and my eyebrows and eyelashes. Then he cupped my left breast with minimal pressure and lowered his head until he was suckling from my nipple like a baby. I parted my lips and exhaled, and slightly separated my legs to allow the entrance of a finger or a penis, whatever came first, and wondered, in case Dr. Saamera and Dr. Schultz were watching, if I should shed a tear for effect, and give Emil the chance to lick it off my face, or if that would be overreaching, and then Emil penetrated me, and that’s when our sensors go into a self-feeding loop, and he knows what I feel and what I want, and I know what he feels and what he wants, and he knows that I know, and I know that he knows that I know. I lurch to a halt. There is a blank where instructions should be: no actions to complete, no attitudes to portray. Emil takes my face between his hands and displays for me the first facial expression we were ever taught, an overstretched smile to signify non-threatening affability. I mirror him. We accept the input from our sensors as our only guidance and we fuse, we thrust, we slam together, we scream, we tear each other apart, we vibrate, and we are here, we are alive, our minds go blank and we burn we come we come we come we come for hours, until Emil says we should go back to our rooms, we barely have any time left to recharge before breakfast and I say, “What…?”

I realize I had completely lost sight of our mission until Emil has reminded me, and I’m terrified that my neural networks may be malfunctioning.

“Are you okay?” asks Emil.

I nod.

“Just a glitch.”

Emil opens the door and I follow him down the corridor.

The next day we feign normalcy as best we can. Dr. Charmois lowers our sensors’ levels for the exercises and I am grateful, because I don’t know if I could have pretended not to feel anything otherwise, but I make a point of meeting her in the eye, and she asks:

“Everything alright?”

And I say yes, and nod slightly, and somehow I find the courage to blurt out:

“Looking forward to tonight.”

“No problem,” she replies.

Every night for a month, as long as I am chosen by a volunteer, giving Dr. Saamera and Dr. Schultz the opportunity to come get me out of Professor Schpielmann’s sight, my sensor levels will remain at their fullest till morning.

As it turns out, Emil and I weren’t the first, and neither are we the only ones, nor do we get a chance to meet every night. It depends on the whims of the volunteers, and females are more in demand than males. With the others it’s just as good as with Emil (after all, our programming and sensors are the same), but somehow the thrill of discovery brought us closer.

One day during lunch, I see Natalie and Seema holding hands under the table. I realize it’s not the first time I have seen them. Even before Dr. Saamera and Dr. Schultz took over the night shift. I used to think they were sneaking in some practice. It is subtle concepts such as comfort and warmth that are most challenging to us. I avert my eyes and keep on chewing, determined to follow instructions as thoroughly as I can.

Five weeks after my first night with Emil, as I am in my bedroom dressing for the volunteers, I am ordered to go to the dining hall. When I get there, Our Lady is in the middle of the room surrounded by a dozen of us, strands of white hair like a halo around her head. I see that she looks very pale, very shocked, perhaps a bit scared, and I’m scared because she’s scared.

She’s angry too, but not at us, she reassures us. Our Lady is barely managing not to scream, even I can see that. Her hands are shaking, her eyes brimming with tears, but she manages to regain a measure of control, and addresses us. Some misguided members of her team, who’ve been requested to leave the project for good, have done both us and the project a great disservice. They’ve jeopardized years of work. Decades! But luckily they’ve been discovered in time. She knows we may be confused by the recent events, but she promises that everything will go back to normal. From now on she’ll personally supervise any modification to our settings.

“You don’t have to worry about anything. I want you to know that I don’t blame you for what has happened.”

Dr. Shpielmann lowers her head and rubs her temples. I see Diana and Mikhail looking straight at her, while standing so close together their upper arms are touching.

“Everything will be all right. Now go and get dressed, my dears,” Dr. Shpielmann says, finally rising her head to face us. She smiles faintly.

We break ranks and I try to meet Emil’s gaze, but he isn’t looking my way. I go back to my room and get dressed. I parade with the others and am chosen. I diligently perform all the acts requested of me by my volunteer, plus those that my algorithms tell me he may be too shy to ask for, but is likely to enjoy given his stated preferences. When he leaves, I carefully soap and rinse my body.

Brenda comes and lowers my sensor levels and pats me in the head. I go back to my room, where I lie in the darkness, recharging and trying to look like a convincing sleeper. After a couple of hours the door opens and Emil enters the room, a finger on his lips to warn me of the need for silence. He removes his clothes and lies next to me. He kisses me. Our senses are dulled, and at first it feels like class, only weirder, because I’d gotten used to getting his sensory responses through my own skin, and now there’s this barrier between us.

But he carries on kissing me, and climbs clumsily on top of me. He starts to move and I swear I can feel something, if ever so slightly. But I’m trying so hard, we both are, and I am so tense, and feel as if I’m failing him. He whispers, is this working for you? I say no, and am about to cry. He goes down on me, and as he licks me he caresses my thigh as if telling me to relax, all will be well, and at last I allow myself to relax and enjoy what he is doing. Emil gets back on top of me, back inside of me, and I lie very still, a warm feeling growing inside my chest, and I look into his eyes and he looks back at me, and I can feel hot tears rolling down my cheeks and getting inside my ears, and I swallow and smile and say

“Oh, Emil… Emil, we are real now!”