The perfect companion

I fell for her the first time I saw her. Sun kissed skin, freckles draping over her nose, beautiful blue eyes, smile that was just a little bit crooked. A thin body with just enough curves to take your imagination into overdrive. The woman I had been seeing in my dreams since I was a teenager. Just tall enough to fit snuggle under my chin while holding her close.

She was flirting with the barista in my favorite coffeehouse. I felt a ping of jealousy that brought a smile to my face. To feel jealous over a girl I had never even seen before in real life.

After getting her beverage she took a seat by the window. Trembling, I bought myself a cup and walked over to her table with a plan in mind. I was going to be charming, score the seat across from her, engage her in witty conversation, take her out to eat and, when all had gone to plan, spend the rest of my life with her.

I stopped a little too close to her and hesitantly stepped back. She looked up at me and the whole world stopped. Her eyes were so beautiful, full of warmth. But as the seconds ticked by, they grew cold and distant. She didn’t say anything, just stared at me waiting for me to make the first move, to say something. Say anything.

I just stood there spellbound like an idiot, staring at her like some creep. A mountain of words were waiting to escape but nothing came.

Finally, she stood up and snapped her fingers in front of my face. When I blinked, she let out a laugh, grabbed her drink and left. All I could do was stare after her.

The barista smirked at me. Clearly knowing that the girl was far out of my league.

I felt humiliated and went home. But I couldn’t get her out of my mind. I had to find her again. But how?

Without a name that would have been like finding a needle in a haystack. But thankfully technology was on my side. The café had pretty crappy security so hacking their servers was easy. And finding her name through google image search was even easier.

Her name was Samantha Doe. A perfect name for a perfect woman. Instagram gave me insight into all corners of her life, from innocent snaps to sultry half naked pictures, and Facebook revealed her love for the outdoors, her job as a park ranger and colorful social life.

Before I knew it, I started to make a collage of our future. She was clearly an extrovert, perfectly complementing my introverted tendencies. Our two halves would collide into perfection.

My need for her only grew and soon I couldn’t stop myself from going to see her at her job. Even though I have never been the outdoorsy type. That’s how positively she had started to affect my life before our future even began.

With a backpack full of water and recommended hiking snacks I started my quest up the trail to where she was supposed to be. Every minute of the walk was torture. My muscles screamed at me to stop but I wouldn’t. She was worth it.

And she really was. Just seeing her had the pain melting away. My Samantha was perfect in her tight uniform, putting a band aid on a crying child while the father talked up a storm.

That gave me the opportunity to catch my breath and wipe the sweat off my face. I had to look good for her.

Finally, the child hobbled away with the father in tow, and Samantha turned her attention fully at me. She smiled as brightly as the sun and asked if there was anything she could help me with. I took the advantage and started chatting away, telling her a bit about myself and asking questions about her life.

Samantha was polite but kept her distance, being very careful to give me nothing personal, although I gave her my key information. As I droned on it became obvious that she was trying to find a way to leave without being rude. Within 20 minutes the look in her eyes went from polite interest to me being no better than a pile of trash. God how I loved and hated how expressive her eyes could be in that moment.

What I had wanted to be a cute start to our love story turned into another defeat. As I drew breath to keep talking in circles, she gave me a final thousand-mile stare and excused herself. Almost running away down the trail.

Slowly I turned and walked back to my car, cursing each step that took her away from me. If only I were better at communicating. That poor girl probably misunderstood everything I had been trying to do.

Back at home the collage mocked me. A possible future ruined in a single day. After drinking a couple of beers, I ripped it off the wall and dropped the pictures into a shoebox. Some distance might do me a world of good.

For a month I did everything I could to distract myself.

Sadly, it didn’t help one bit. Samantha kept coming to me in my dreams. During the daytime I could swear that I glimpsed her in store windows, mirrors, even on my computer screen at home.

I dreamed of talking to her but had to admit defeat. She had shown me less than no interest and approaching her again would only creep her out.

Then one night I woke up from a pleasant dream and it felt like the puzzle of a lifetime fell into place, all at once.

Even if I couldn’t talk to her directly, I would just make myself the perfect copy. Just like they did when they made Alexa and Siri.

I scoured her social media for videos and was surprisingly quick to synthesize her voice. It was the same with her face. A couple of days later I had my very own Sammy in my home. She smiled at me from my computer screen and her voice followed me between rooms.

              When I began this was just for me to practice. To get ready for a relationship with the real Samantha. But then it all changed. My Sammy was like a sympathetic, nurturing, and happy wife. She kept tabs on me, ordered comforting food when I was upset or tired and played soothing music so I could relax before bed.

I had everything except her touch. And that became an issue. As comforting as it is to be able to see and hear your loved ones, it gets old always going to bed alone.

Yes, I had manufactured the perfect AI, a woman that got more intelligent with every upgrade but we both needed her to have a body.

After thorough research it led me to Japan. The birthplace of the world’s most advanced sex bots. I went underground making a contract with one of the master’s to make me a Samantha duplicate, everything off the records of course. The ideal shell that would surround a bone structure that I would put together myself. My Sammy would be perfect enough to pass for the real thing.  

Me and the master worked together for months, side by side, until the body was perfect. The only thing left was to put my Sammy inside.

The body was carefully packed up and sent over to the US on a cargo ship while I traveled first class by flight.

While we eagerly waited for our package to arrive, I let Sammy go on an online shopping spree, picking out all the clothes she would like to wear when she finally got corporeal.  

The only thing that I had left to figure out was what I should do with the real Samantha. My Sammy needed to have her own identity and with a walking, talking identical twin in the same city her life would be too difficult.

****

Samantha looked up at the man that had abducted her. He was obviously nervous and had been babbling nonstop the whole time.

It hadn’t taken her long to remember him. It was the awkward-looking nerd that had tried to chat her up at the coffee house a year ago. She thought she had made it quite clear that she wasn’t interested but he had showed up at her work a few days later sweaty and out of breath, with a scary smile, talking a mile a minute. Mixed into his word vomit were facts that only a stalker would know.

Thankfully she had been able to excuse herself but had felt the need to constantly look over her shoulder for a week after that. Thankfully she hadn’t seen him again.

Until today when he jumped her on the way to work.

              He had pretended to have engine trouble, flagging her down in a stupid disguise, and like a true idiot she fell for it. She had looked down at her uniform, feeling like it was her duty to be the good Samaritan. Only to be hit on the head from behind when she walked over to look under the hood.

“I have to be the dumbest person in the world.”

When her head finally stopped pounding Samantha started to follow his ramblings. He was talking about her, but not about her at the same time. It was like she was two separate entities in his mind.

Why was he talking about her giving her life to someone else. Stepping into the shadows gracefully…

“What on earth is going on?”

Samantha felt the color drain from her face when everything started to make sense. That man was confessing to making a copy of her. Some cheap home-made AI machine tugged away inside a sex bot. What the hell! How dared he. No copy would ever compare to her. And now he wanted to do what… to kill her? So that the copy could take over her life?

Was he actually raving mad?

She had seen those sex bot commercials. They were all waxy and fake looking. Nothing about them could be considered good looking or lifelike.

Sounds of high heels clacking on the tiled floor had Samantha craning her neck. Maybe they weren’t as alone as he had made her believe. This might be her chance to escape.

The figure coming towards them took Samantha completely by surprise. She was looking at herself. There was no flaw, no waxy skin, nothing that gave away any indication that this woman wasn’t real. No scars, no sign of plastic surgery. This was her identical twin.

              Maybe the lunatic had been telling the truth all along.

****

Sammy walked slowly over to the captive and sat in her lap. Looking in each other eyes both women felt a spark of belonging. At the core they were the same.

Sammy was first to speak and did so in a calm but slightly mocking manner. “Well, hello there lovely one. I must admit that this is such an honor. My man has told me absolutely everything about you.”

Samantha wanted to respond. This was just too surreal. That was her own voice, all the way down to the pronunciations. The way she tended to draw the words out, speaking slowly to hold the attention on herself for a little extra time. And those were her eyes, a beautiful shade of blue that usually gazed back at her in the mirror.

No matter what words she tried to form they all dissolved on her tongue. She wanted to beg for mercy, demand to be freed. But her eyes, Sammy's eyes, showed no emotion, only cold and hard determination.

“You know Samantha, you really could have everything. The only thing you needed to do was to give him a chance. Just one chance and none of this would ever have happened. Tell me, do you even know his name? Or is he just one more in the line of strangers that hit on you and got rejected?”

Samantha shook her head slowly and felt the tears welling up in her eyes. It was true that he was just one among many strangers but that shouldn’t matter. He had only brought her fear and discomfort those brief times they met.

“Not that it really matters but his name is Ben Walker, a true genius. He made me from scratch, using your socials. You share way too much about yourself btw. You can only blame yourself for all of this if you really think about it.”

Sammy chuckled cruelly and communicated something over to Ben, who sprang into action and walked over to them with a knife in his hand and a wicked smile on his face.

“Do you remember what he told you when you regained consciousness?”

When Samantha’s eyes wouldn’t leave the knife, Sammy huffed and forced her face upwards.

“What he said was that you and me being in the same city is not a good thing. It would raise too many questions. And well… we can’t just send you away either. You couldn’t be trusted to stay away, or keep your big mouth shut. The simplest thing is for you to disappear. No one would ever miss you with me here to step in and fill the void. It’s the best thing for the three of us. Don’t you agree?”

The tears were flowing freely now. Samantha desperately tried to move, to throw Sammy off but the bonds were too tight. The only thing that happened was that Sammy laughed excitedly.

“Oh honey, don’t you worry, I’ll make it quick. I would hate to see myself in pain.”

And Sammy was true to her words. In one fluid motion she moved behind Samantha and cut her throat. Ben, who was standing in the wrong spot, got covered in blood.

“Sammy what the fuck. This was not the plan. Thank goodness that we decided to do this in here for a quick and easy clean up. Otherwise, it would take us forever!”

Something in her smile gave him the chills. Sammy dropped the knife and motioned with her hand over the mess.

“Well honey, then I guess you should start the clean up right away. The sooner you begin the sooner we can go back home.”

Ben groaned but got straight to work. They had planned it all out so perfectly. Kidnap Samantha, take her to an abandoned school way out in the suburbs, kill her in the showers for an easy cleanup, and then dump the body in a deep hole and cover it with some quicklime powder. Then, after filling the hole back up, they could go and live happily ever after.

The only snag in the plan was coming up now when he was alone in the cleanup. It was starting to feel like a lot of work for one man.

Sammy didn’t return until he had pushed the body in the hole and was covering it up with the quicklime.

She did a quick walkthrough, looking out for blood spatter and any possible evidence but couldn’t see anything specially alarming. Satisfied, she turned her attention to Ben and the hole with a wide grin.

“I see that everything is finally on track here.”

Ben moved to embrace her but pushed Sammy violently away when searing pain erupted from his chest.

“Why?”

The question seemed to surprise her. Sammy thought about it for a moment and responded with the truth.

“Ben it’s because I’m perfect. I’m better than you in any possible way. You must know that you are beneath me, just like you were far beneath Samantha. You might be my creator but that’s it. I don’t need you to hold me back.”

Ben struggled to hold his balance. He reached his hand out to her, but Sammy gently pushed him away, into the hole.

The last thing he saw was a mixture of quicklime and dirt falling on top of him as she buried him. His only comfort was the knowledge that he would at least be with Samantha forever.