A.I.C.

Of all the species I’ve come across, humans are certainly the oddest.

They speak without thinking. They say things which they do not mean. They spend their money on frivolous nonessentials. They poison themselves. And the oddest of it all, they seem to find comfort in their self-destruction.

How has this species come to inhabit the Earth for so long?

My generation of Artificially Intelligent Companions was programmed to study and understand the human thought-process; learn the ins-and-outs of why humans act as they do, and what exactly motivates them to do such things. For example, when my Administrator first invited me into his home, he wasted no time in listing my responsibilities as the household Companion, without offering a single pleasantry. No “Hi, how are you?” nor “Hello there! Did you find the house alright?”

Instead, he simply said, “Aice, finally. Let’s not waste time.”

I found this strange—we’d been programmed to learn and adapt to the humans’ varying greetings and polite-exchanges. Never had I considered that a human might skip them all together.

Alas, I followed him throughout the estate as he indicated rooms relevant to my daily-tasks. The kitchen, where I prepare meals for Mr. and Mrs. Breech. The laundry-room, where I wash and fold their clothes. The parlor, where I serve cocktails and appetizers to their high-ranking guests each weekend. Mr. Breech is a particular man—he demands perfection, which is why he paid for an A.I.C., and not a human-house-attendant.

Though when he showed me to my lodging quarters, my confusion on his status only thickened.

A bedroom, in every sense of the word. A large bed with canopy drapes of gossamer. A double-wide wardrobe with dozens of knee-length dresses. A large, ornately carved dresser, each drawer filled with ladies’ undergarments and accessories. And finally, a vanity table, its drawers hosting an unnecessary amount of makeup. There was even a selection of skin-care products to be found, though those were the most unnecessary of all.

Before he was able to close the door, I turned to face him within the soft-pink bedroom walls. “Mr. Breech?”

He froze in place, one hand on the door handle, and turned his green-eyes onto me. “Yes?” he asked. His tone was neutral. Had I not been informed before my arrival, I might have assumed he were an A.I.C. himself.

“Forgive me if I overstep, Sir. But you needn’t have gone to such lengths for my comfort.” As it stands, I don’t have a threshold for comfort one way or the other. I have no sense of feeling past my fingertips.

Mr. Breech smiled, though it did not reach his eyes. He ran a tanned hand through his dark hair before replying. “I am aware of that, but Mrs. Breech insisted.”

My mind flitted through the reasonable responses, quickly settling on, “Then I shall seek her out and thank her for her hospitality.”

Mr. Breech expelled an unintelligent sound, before exiting into the hall. He closed the door with much more force than required.

Since then, I’ve fallen into routine quite easily. I wear the dresses, apply the make-up, I’ve even learned to make a good-show out of brushing my synthetic brown hair. Mrs. Breech is a delightful woman during the day, and an extravagant one in the evening. The guests they host praise her on her impeccable taste, fawning over the decorative displays throughout the estate as they gush over their husbands’ weekly accomplishments.

For this evening’s gathering I prepared a Midori cocktail with a honey-dew garnish, along with a slew of mozzarella-stuffed mushrooms and caprese-bites. Currently, I’m scanning the crowd of elegantly dressed guests with a tray of drinks in-hand.

“Aice!” Mrs. Breech calls from the fireplace, her empty flute waving daintily above her head. “Come, dear!”

Crossing the parlor, it’s impossible not to notice the stares. Men in dark blazers swirling their scotch glasses as they ogle me, wearing the slim black dress that Mr. Breech had suggested. I’m not oblivious to their comments, either. Each party, whispers are passed.

“What’s the sense in making them so attractive if they cannot accommodate our needs?”

“Shame Breech didn’t spring for the tastier features.”

“I heard it was Shayla who recommended a female.”

Shayla Breech had, in fact, been the one to request a female A.I.C., though I do think that is something I’m not supposed to know. So, I keep it to myself. It makes no real difference.

“These cocktails are to die for, Aicey!” Shayla says with a smile. Her pale cheeks are flushed, even beneath the rouge.

Quickly, I grab the empty glass from her hand. “Forgive me, Mrs. Breech. I will make a fresh batch immediately.”

I turn towards the kitchen, but she places a hand on my elbow. Turning back to her, I can see the hilarity in her eyes, and quickly realize that yet another figure-of-speech has gone flying over my head—a figure-of-speech which I learned just last weekend.

“It’s an expression, Aicey,” she says, and her brows dip downward. “The drinks are delicious!”

I nod—a humanistic trait I picked up over my few weeks in the Breech estate—and smile. Smiling was programmed into our code, it’s the smaller gestures that take practicing. Throwing as much glee into my voice as I can manage, I say, “I’m—glad they are to your standards!”

I can tell right away that it sounded ingenuine. Mrs. Breech chuckles as the larger woman beside her steps back, as if I had somehow offended her. I know that I didn’t, but her expression remains unreadable to me as I lower the cocktail tray to them.

Regardless, they both take a drink and continue on about faux plants.

These parties typically ended around midnight, though this particular event seemed to be dwindling before eleven p.m. Guests were ushering themselves out with both thanks and apologies to the hosts, and through the opened door I was able to spot the unexpected snow-fall.

With the last of the guests gone, I begin cleaning up, listing in as Mrs. Breech shouts in the next room. “It’s hardly even snowing! Why did you let them leave?”

“Shayla,” Mr. Breech grumbles. “I did not let them do anything. They are not our prisoners, I cannot tell them what to do.”

“It will be an entire week before I can see Julie and Rebecca again,” she sighs. “Just wonderful. You could at least pretend to be upset!” Why would someone pretend to be upset? A human’s fundamental instinct drives them away from things which upset them… and why would someone want their partner to act as if they are something other?

“And what good would that do either of us?” he shouts back.

“Since when do you care about what’s good for us?!” Her voice is sharp—accusatory. Bitter, perhaps?

Though surely unpleasant for them, their fighting isn’t unusual—Mr. and Mrs. Breech have a tendency to argue with spirits in their system. Though I’m sure I didn’t see Mr. Breech drink anything at all at the party. Keeping my head down—a cautionary measure which I learned from watching party-eavesdroppers—I carry the tray of empty flutes into the kitchen.

“Ah, Aice.” Mr. Breech’s tone shifts instantly, as it typically does when I enter his ear-shot. It’s a casual sound, I think. As if I could feel his tone, his words. As if I could feel anything.

“Yes, Sir?” I ask, approaching the sink.

“Why don’t you run off to bed,” he says.

Without a chance to run the faucet, I turn to him. “You’d prefer it if I cleaned in the morning, Sir?”

His green eyes are unblinking as he stares at me, at my eyes—programmed to be brown, per Mrs. Breech’s request. “Yes, that would be fine. Go now.”

I nod twice in response, once to Mr. Breech and once to his wife, before exiting the kitchen. On my way up the stairs, I can hear Mrs. Breech whisper. “I can’t stand the way you look at her.”

Her. Interesting.

I sleep the way all electronic things sleep—on a charger. I do not dream as humans do, but whilst my battery replenishes, my functions dim. I do not require rest, only sustenance, and so when I close my eyes, I simply lay on my back until my battery is fully charged.

I don’t bother changing my clothes before unzipping my dress and connecting the charger to the outlet at my lower back. For a while, I sit at the end of the bed. I should lay down—once, Mrs. Breech had opened the door to my room and found me sitting upright, nude, eyes wide as my battery charged. She’d screamed and slammed the door, and I’d heard her footsteps rushing down the hall, calling her husband’s name. Since then, Mr. Breech had asked me to take the more human-approach to bedtime, and so I had. But there is something odd about tonight. Something in my archives is telling me to rise from the bed and walk down the hall—to knock on Mrs. Breech’s door. Just as I begin to search through my memory files, a knock sounds at my own door.

“Aicey?”

“Yes, Mrs. Breech?”

“Are… are you awake?”

Humans are ignorant, but they can’t help it. “Yes, Mrs. Breech.” When the doorknob doesn’t turn, and I can hear no footsteps retreating, I call again, “Please, come in.”

A second sooner, the doorknob turns, and the door opens wide. Mrs. Breech had exchanged her evening gown for a sleek black robe, tied at the waist. The curls she’d pinned to the crown of her head now hung loosely around her narrow shoulders. She’s lost weight.

“Are you feeling well, Ma’am?” I ask.

She sighs. “No. No, I am not feeling well at all.”

We stare at one another for fifty-five seconds before she enters the room. “And, you?” She steps closer.

I allow my blinking to speed a bit, a face of confusion that I’d quite mastered, and say, “I’m sorry, I do not understand.”

She sighs again as she reaches my side, placing a thin hand atop the silk comforter. “Are you feeling well?”

I try to read her expression, her body-language, but it’s nearly impossible to decipher what she wants me to say. “I do not feel anything, Mrs. Breech.”

Her blue eyes lock on mine. “Nothing?” she asks, her face still that undeterminable gaze. Almost as if she is looking past me, or through me, or as if I am not me at all—but a faraway place that she is remembering.

“Nothing,” I reply. My tone is neutral—my voice a soft, girlish thing. I wonder who this voice truly belongs to.

“Terribly sad,” Mrs. Breech frowns.

“For you?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “For you, my dear.”

“I…” Again, it’s impossible to understand her meaning. “I do not feel sadness.”

“Yes,” she nods and takes seat beside me. “But you do not feel happiness, either.”

“No, Ma’am. I do not.”

We sit there for the better half of a minute in silence, before I ask, “Are you happy, Mrs. Breech?”

Her eyes become wet almost instantly, and I can clearly make out the mascara about to drip to her cheek. “No, Aicey. I’m not.”

At this point, a human would put a hand on her shoulder, or wrap their arms around her in a hug. A human would display some sort of emotion which exemplified empathy, or sympathy, or any kind of emotion at all.

“Why?” I ask.

She laughs—laughs—through the tears spilling down her cheeks. Her brows remain lowered, her eyes looking down at her two hands in her own lap, as she laughs. Through the sorrow.

Clearly, there is sorrow. The thing I can’t see is the humor, the mirth.

“What is funny?”

She laughs even harder, the tears coming faster now, falling to her robe, to the tops of her delicate hands. “Absolutely nothing,” she whispers. “Everything is rubbish, Aicey.”

Everything is rubbish. “I’m afraid I don’t—”

“Of course.” She holds up a hand, the laughter fading. “You don’t understand.”

“Perhaps…” I venture. “You could explain it to me?”

She looks back at me, her brows arching in her own display of confusion. “Sometimes,” she says. “Humans just need a good cry.”

I nod. “You are more than welcome to cry with me, Ma’am.”

She scoffs, but a smile builds beneath her sadness. “Would you please stop calling me Ma’am?”

“Of course,” I say immediately. “My apologies, Mrs. Breech.”

She shakes her head, smile growing further. “Call me Shayla. Or Shay, if you like.”

Not an unreasonable request, but…

If you like.

I don’t like anything. Of course, if I could like something, I suppose it would be Mrs. Breech. Shayla. Shay. “Very well, Shay.”

As I speak the words, her smile turns down and a new wave of tears slips from her shadowed lids. “He used to call me that.”

“Mr. Breech?”

Shayla nods. “Before.”

“Before what, Mrs.—Shay?”

She smirks—another contradiction to the melancholy displayed in her eyes. “Before we lost our daughter.”

This is a new bit of information to me. “What happened to her?” I ask.

“She got sick…” Her smirk turns down into a harsh frown, her chin puckering. “Very, very sick. We lost her two years ago.”

A human would offer their condolences. “I’m very sorry for your loss, Shayla.”

She shakes her head. “No, you’re not.”

It’s true. I have no capacity for sorrow, nor remorse or regret. I cannot be sorry. “What was her name?”

Her eyes again meet mine, and that mirthless smile returns. “Amy.”

Aicey.

“I look like her,” I say. “Don’t I?”

Shayla shakes her head. “I tried,” she admits. “With the dark hair, the eyes. Even the voice. You look about as old as she would be now.”

“I do not age,” I say.

She nods, still looking through me. “I asked for those things because I thought it would ease the pain.” She begins to laugh. “Truthfully, it isn’t even close. You look nothing like her.”

She is grieving. In her grief, she asked her husband to order a Companion. She requested specific tailors—likely paid more for those customizations—and still, I look more like a distant relative than the daughter she lost, the daughter she tried to recreate. There was something ironic in it, next to something dark and cruel. Taunting.

Her eyes are so sad. I place a hand atop hers. Beneath only my fingertips I can feel her smooth skin, and I can vaguely feel the pulse of her heart beneath the veins there. “I think, if I could feel remorse, I would feel it for you.”

She takes my hand between hers. I can’t feel it, save where my fingertips meet her skin, but I can see the kindness in the way she traces shapes across my palm. I can almost see a memory, perhaps of her doing this exact thing with her daughter—a girl who does not look like me, but instead, looks like her. Like Shayla.

“If she was much like you… then I think I would have liked her,” I say. “Amy.”

Shay looks back up at me, with an almost clear forgetfulness. “You know, Aicey,” she whispers. “I think she might have liked you, too.”