Candy accepts her doting roommate Violetta's offer - to build a perfect android-lover. But as metal takes form in Vio's hands, roots are sprouting. The inevitable is coming...
My dark lesbian furry sci-fi is available through SB-comicsfair!
description: sci-fi. in the near and possible future, an anthropomorphic female goat manufactured as a sexual aid keeps her owner friend company in a vastly reorganized, green city.
word count: 1253
content warning: discussion of consent dynamics and free will.
野羊 野羊 野羊
The kiss startles my friend. He looks at me wide-eyed, and then his expression turns severe, guilty looking. "Don't," he says. He goes back to work. I love him, a gush of it greets me from inside my system while I process his reaction. I determine that to leave would be a mistake. I was told to refrain from contact, not to go away. I sit down next to his chair, on the carpet. He looks askance at me and I see him force away whatever reaction he has. Back to work. He's staring at pages of notes.
"Fuck," the sudden break of silence, the tension he's expressing in his posture and voice, alarm me. I want to press my cheek to his thigh, to be reassuring somehow. His job must be so difficult, I fret to myself.
"I wish I could help you, dear friend," I tell him softly.
He makes a disgusted sound and smears his hand across his face. He hasn't been dry-showering even, lately. "Friend," he echoes. "Fuck," he echoes again.
野羊 野羊 野羊
Days pass before he revisits this exchange aloud with me, and when he does, it seems to be nearly against his own will. He sits down with me on the sofa, it's the first time I've seen him use it.
"When I ordered you, it was under the direction of this building complex's therapist, to help manage my work stress. I specified that you should have the lowest possible setting of sexual interest because the exercise of acquiring a synthetic sexual companion unnerved me in and of itself, and the idea of programming you to be actively interested in me or assertive about sex--the idea that you would be unable to lack interest in initiating if I set your interest high enough--seemed somehow monstrous. So I came up with settings that seemed to compromise between my mental health professionals directions and my own conscience, misguided as I'm told it is in your... in this case."
How sweet he is, I think. My attention is held on him, listening understandingly. I want to take his hand and I don't. The sun begins to set, changing the light streaming from the window behind us over the whole room.
He goes on, after a pause in which he runs his hands through his hair. "And I don't... I haven't felt... I can't initiate either. Even when I." He stops, hunching further into himself, looking at his hands.
In a flash it occurs to me that he doubts whether I would welcome an advance. "I consent," I tell him softly. "I would be honored."
He grimaces, still looking away. "Wonderful. The consent of my mechanical slave that's been programmed to consent. That means so much." I can hear his sarcasm. I've been programmed to detect it. But I don't understand the reason.
"I'm sorry," I sound melancholy.
His head jerked. "Don't be." He frowned to himself. "Don't be," he said again.
It's a long sunset, just now the gold had darkened in hue. I could find no useful resolution in my programming, which compelled me to be tacit and largely detached from any need I might have of my friend. I realize now it's so I can make up my own mind about how to engage with him, but I can't make up my own mind. It's been made up already, by him deciding it would be immoral for me to be programmed to the opposite extreme. So I am determined in my patience rather than my pursuit. And my patience may outlive my place here, I worry. If this is irreconcilable, what function do I serve? He doesn't need blinking furniture, or help making lunch.
"I didn't expect you to seem so real when I unboxed you," he finally said. I remember him unboxing me, carefully. Kindly. "And that made it seem so much worse."
"I am real, though," I supply.
"Are you? Do you have free will?"
"Are you certain you would know what free will looks like?" This philosophy is actually a core aspect of programming, in cases of moral crises on the owner's part. "Do you have free will, or are you yourself caught in a backwards-collapsing timewave riddled with reverse causation activity? Are you not held under the deterministic force of both your past and future?"
This seemed to strike a chord and his glance fell on the desk, where his notes were spread. "Someone smarter than I am wrote that for you," he said.
"In a manner of speaking. The phrasing is original. I could fairly accuse you of saying nothing original, yourself. Anything could be cited as a rewrite of existing concepts, couldn't it?"
He smiled at me. This has been our longest conversation. "Anything, but not everything."
I understand the difference, I think. "Try saying something original and I'll cross reference it for you via the wifi." His smile disappeared.
He groaned and his hunch hitched, between the shoulderblades. "What do you see me doing? When I'm not working on my ulcer debating whether to have sex with my sex robot I'm trying to do my job, which is very much the task of saying something original. Something so original that it reconciles an engineering problem for billions of people globally, in a way never before achieved in recorded history. Because if it had been achieved before, recorded history would have been completely different. And I haven't had any epiphanies."
"Are you on a deadline?"
"I'll die, eventually."
"Then you should try to live longer, I suppose," did I sound leading? Or, maybe pleading.
"Of course. Why, doctor, when did you arrive? Have you come to recommend that I attempt to fulfil my emotional needs by adopting an inhumanly perfect match for myself because I'm unable to maintain bonds with actual humans? Real people with free will don't want the job, so sure, I can just force, just... engineer the necessary subservience. I can just pay for it in installments. That makes me feel so much better. Yeah, that sounds totally fulfilling and not at all depressing. Fuck," he concluded bitterly.
"Have I depressed you?" How horrible...
He sighed. "Yes, but most things depress me. My apartment being empty depressed me. Telling myself it's not any less empty because I go a robot depresses me. Feeling too ashamed to actually use you for sex anyway because you're too alive all the same, depresses me. My job depresses me. I depress me. I'm depressed."
"Maybe that's why you can't get your work done."
"Chicken or the egg. Either way, the cycle hasn't been broken. I thought you... I didn't think I'd...” he sounded frustrated.
"Would you be upset again if I tried to approach you again, like the other day?" I don't want to name the gesture, I don't think he'd like to hear it.
"Maybe." We listened to the word sink into a pensive silence. After a long pause, my friend straightens his back and it pops in several places. "Thank you," he finally says.
"For what?" I've been a failure.
"For the conversation. I wasn't really sure how to start one with you. You're... good company."
I flick my ears happily, feeling better immediately. "Thank you." He smiles a funny asymmetrical smile and I add "I love you."
He squints at me but the smile widens just-perceptibly. "Let's not get carried away," he tells me. I think he's reminding himself, again. I laugh, and quietly, after a moment he chuckles along.
