Time to Come.

Yawn*

It was morning, eight a.m. I think. I don’t really know. I woke up from my alarm screaming in my head. It wasn’t actually a scream… scream, my alarm is my current favorite song but no matter how good that song was, it still disturbed my restful sleep. Taking a stiff breath, I stepped into the shower, letting my silk robe fall out of the glass cubical. I turned the water on to the warm temperature, but suddenly as I saw the water jetting out of the perforated head, a fear raised from my gut to my throat, pleading not to step under it. Even a drop of it petrified me to my core like my brain was programmed not to let water touch my body. It has been happening to me for the last five days. But thankfully, I still don’t feel any need to take a shower, I feel completely awake and fresh. Screwing the tap off, I walked out to the closet next to the bedroom.

Nothing I like more than a pastel green sweater with off-white pants to wear to my office on Friday. There was no other choice today. It’s gonna be a bit cold in the evening so I should wear something warm, I thought and a sweater was perfect to flaunt.

I combed my long blond locks and put them in a pony. Then I put on some makeup. Although my makeup was already fine from the last time that I put it on, which was on Monday. But now it’s more like a habitual reaction to me than an everyday need. Not much just a little touch-up here and there to make it look fresher. Satisfied with what I saw in the mirror of my vanity, I moved up to the next step, which was preparing my breakfast, the most important meal. I decided to cook a multigrain toast and with fried eggs for today’s breakfast, which was on the menu for Friday. I like to have black coffee with my breakfast, so I plugged the kettle on and poured a cup-full of water in it. just ten minutes and the meal are ready. I served it prettily on the plate and then on the table. It looked finger-licking good but suddenly my gut started rumbling up and down again with the same fear that I felt in the shower. Like I will throw up or faint if I took a single bite of this food. I couldn’t eat it. I left it on the table and went to work.

Driving my yellow Mercedes out from the garage, I took off. Swaying left and right, zig and zag from the rush hour traffic I finally landed in the office’s parking. I hate this job but it pays me too much to resign from it and look for some other employment.

Walking to the elevator as the door opened, it was crowded already. I don’t think I could fit-in in that small space. But my office is on the fifteenth floor.

‘I should take stairs.’ A voice came to my head and I went with it. Surprisingly enough, today I didn’t feel out of breathtaking the stairs and it wasn’t just the usual three floors that I was climbing, it was five times of that.

My cubicle was already piled up in a lot of paperwork as I walked to it. ‘Being a good employee suck, but I have to work right?’ Another thought came. It took me four freaking hours to dissect and recheck the information in it before summarizing it for the boss but it was fun, to be honest. I already had most of that information stored in my storage, so it didn’t bug much, it was easy wheezy.

Finally, it was lunchtime, I went with my co-workers to a restaurant in our building for the lunch as usual and ordered some pad thai. That’s my favorite food for lunch, full of flavors and refreshing. But again, I couldn’t even take a bite from it. The day went by pretty fast after that. I had a long chat with my mom after work on my way back but now all I want to do to get inside my bed.

Getting in the elevator of my apartment I dialed my boyfriend’s number.

‘He must be back home too.’ I thought. He was the assistant scientist at the AI Technology and Research Centre. But his shift must be over by now. I called him three times already but he is not picking up, he must be busy somewhere. Tired I changed into a t-shirt and plopped on my bed. The day was good, I didn’t feel tired at all but suddenly I am starting to feel hungry and lethargic.

‘Maybe it’s time…’ I thought.

I locked all the doors and windows of the house carefully and cleaned the stale food from this morning that was still on the table. I washed the dishes and cleaned the house a bit, it was mostly clean already.

‘After this, I am going to have a long good sleep.’ I thought.

Being done with all the chores, I am back in my room. Tying my hair up in a bun, I walked to the cupboard in the bedroom, after switching off all the lights around the house.

The door of it was light proof and as I opened it a sharp beam of little colored LED’s flickered in my eyeballs. I walked inside and closed the door behind me. This is gonna be my sleeping bed for a day.

---

“Ladies and gentleman, this is my girlfriend Laila McGill. She is an executive and a product manager at the Tacca Corporation.”

A suited man was standing in front of hundreds of people, on the stage presenting a presentation on the high screen behind his body. There was a picture of his girlfriend showing on the screen.  

“she volunteered in an experiment by AIT&R corporation to let her life be replaced by a human-sized android made by this corporation for a whole week. In this week we programmed the android to behave completely like Laila. We conducted several physical and psychological tests on Laila to digitally store the details of her personality in the android’s memory, the way she talks, the pitch of her voice, the way she reacts when she is happy, tired, or scared, the way she walks, how she dresses, what she eats and every other teeny-tiny details of her personality. We installed cameras all over her house to continuously watch over her movements throughout those days and here is a clip from the experiment.

She woke up at exactly eight, just like how Laila does every day, she went for a shower, cooked breakfast just as we programmed her to do, drove to work, came back home cleaned it, and went to sleep just not in bed but in this human-sized charging point specially designed for her size. Now to make sure our android is fully capable of replacing a human from its usual life, we interviewed all of her colleagues whether or not they noticed any difference in this week. And these and the clips of it.

“what really? It wasn’t Laila? Then? Really an android. Is that possible?” Her colleague said.

“did you see any difference in the behavior of her throughout the week?” he asked.

“Just that she was ten times as good in her work as she usually was and also, she didn’t eat pad thai, her most favorite dish. Her hair, makeup, dressing everything was on point. I can’t believe it wasn’t really her.”

All her colleagues said the same in the clips shown afterward.

“now I would like to invite Ms. Laila and AI Laila on stage to meet us. Please give them a round of applause”

The hall echoed from the loud applauses as two girls approached the stage. They had no noticeable difference in them. Same outfit, white blouse, grey pencil skirt, and stilettoes. Hair in a sleek pony and they took the same steps.