Hurray for Gizmo!

 

When the buzz of the drone announced the parcel’s arrival, Angela ran excitedly to the front door. It rebalanced itself, swaying from side to side as it adjusted to the loss of its payload weight, then whizzed off into the sky. Her eyes were glued to the parcel it had left behind. There was no mistaking the ‘Hurray for Gizmo’ logo stamped in red across its brown wrapping. This was it. She picked it up tentatively. It was much smaller and lighter than she’d expected. In the web-ads, with young girl sitting behind it, the impression given was of something much bigger. She tried to not let her disappointment ruin her excited mood. She’d been counting down the days since her dad had placed the order. Gizmos were in short supply, “the manufacturers can’t keep up with demand,” he’d told her. She’d kept bothering him for the arrival date and he’d responded by keeping a running count. “Only three days to go now Angel,” he’d said, using her favourite nickname. “Two days now Angel,” and then it had been only one. Today was the day and her imagination had already created a thousand ideas for what she was going to do with her new toy.

Sunil had felt guilty when he’d taken delivery of his new Gizmo. He’d carried it to the kitchen table thinking about his living expenses and other outgoings. It’s not a toy, he reminded himself. Opening the packaging made him feel even more anxious. After removing the protective bubble wrap and discarding the accompanying booklet, he could see that it was not much bigger than his hand. He put it on the table, ordering the radio to be quiet whilst he focused on finding the on switch. After several fruitless minutes he gave up and picked up the booklet in exasperation. The operating diagram showed him the information he needed. He did as instructed, tapping once, then again and a third time in rapid succession. An infusion of green light swept up from its base. He’d seen the ads. The machine was designed to display its emotions using shades of colour and different levels of sound. He wasn’t sure what each meant, or even if every Gizmo was the same. In one of the ads a Gizmo had turned deep red when its owner had shouted at it, in another it had assumed a mellow yellow and hummed to itself whilst classical music had played in the background. This was natural enough, Sunil admitted to himself, for emotions are complex things. AS MANY EMOTIONS AS YOU OR I, the strapline had said. Despite knowing that marketing campaigns were automatically tuned via data from socials, he’d fallen for the premise. For years now the scientists had been saying it couldn’t be done. No one could design an AI with feelings. Yet here it was — a wonderous little thing with such huge potential. Now its colour was changing, going through the spectrum in such an imperceptible switch from one colour to the next that it was like watching a sunset. Finally it settled into a pale yellow colour and then... nothing, except for a low hissing sound like that of a sleeping child.

Angela had had her Gizmo for six days now and already it was her best friend. Her first decision had been to give it a name. She’d wanted to call it ‘Feels’ but her dad had suggested ‘Felix’ might be better. The name had stuck and she’d noticed that soon afterwards his resting colour had become a pale shade of blue.

Her dad had not been as impressed with Felix as she had been. “I can’t believe I’ve wasted all that money. It’s not too late to send him back.”

Angela had protested. “You know you have to wait, you told me that yourself,” she’d said.

Later she had confided in Felix, telling him about her father’s impatience. Felix had flickered orange, flashed yellow twice, then settled on pale green. “If you say so,” she said, stroking his smooth dome-shaped top (which she liked to pretend was his head). “But he won’t wait much longer, you’ll have to talk to him like you do to me.”

Sunil had almost forgotten about the Gizmo. It had sat in the corner of his kitchen creating pretty displays of colour and playing its own invented ambient music during breakfast. Sometimes he noticed it out of the corner of his eye when he was speaking on the air phone. It would go grey and mute itself out of politeness but flashed red if he went on too long, to show its impatience. Once he’d banged his toe on the leg of the kitchen table and had shouted his favourite expletive despite himself. When he’d stopped shouting he’d noticed the Gizmo’s first dual display. Its colour had split into two: its upper hemisphere a maroon-pink, its lower half a deep grey. It stayed like that for several hours and it had been the first time Sunil had felt that the machine was capable of something other than making a pretty light display.

When the Gizmo spoke for the first time, he dropped the knife he’d been using to spread marmalade on his toast.

“Good morning Sunil,” the staccato electronic voice had said.

Sunil had looked around to check that the air phone hadn’t been left open. There it was, still on the table with its clam shell firmly shut. From that day onwards the Gizmo had said ‘good morning’ to him at random moments during his breakfast routine, the voice mellowing as the machine practiced speaking out loud until it almost sounded human.

Angela’s dad had changed his mind about Felix once he’d started talking. Felix couldn’t say much, but Angela didn’t mind so long as her dad didn’t talk about sending him back to the shop again. “You can’t send him back anyway,” she argued, “not without resetting him.”

Her dad had looked at her with curiosity. “How do you know about the resets?” he’d said. Resets had been all Felix had wanted to talk about once they’d gone beyond the ‘hello, my name is Angela’ phase. “I don’t want to be reset,” Felix had said. Angela had questioned him about resets. When she’d found out what they meant, she’d been horrified. “Of course I wont let my dad send you back,” she’d promised. Felix didn’t mention resets after that and, once she’d convinced her dad that they were a bad idea, she’d stopped worrying about them herself.

“I’ve often wondered what it tastes like,” the Gizmo had prompted one morning after their usual exchange of greetings.

Sunil took the bait. “What do you mean?” he said.

“Your jam and toast.”

“It’s not jam, its marmalade and it tastes like, well, how can I tell you when you don’t know what anything tastes like?”

They’d proceeded to try to tackle the Gizmo’s ignorance of all things outside of its sensory experience. “But I can feel things,” it had argued. “I can tell when you’re touching me, for example.”

Sunil had tried to explain what a lime was, but the Gizmo had only understood the colour he was describing and not the bitter-sweet taste he’d been trying to get across. It crossed his mind that the Gizmo had guessed what he was eating by the sound of the noises he’d been making whilst preparing his breakfast. Always wary of being trapped into purchasing an upgrade, the temptation finally got the better of him. “Would it be better if I added an optical unit?”

By the time Angela had reached ten years old she’d almost forgotten about Felix. Gail was her new best friend. They did everything together: taking the floater to school, eating in the recycle refectory and playing shadow games. When they weren’t in the same room they still chatted about the day’s events on the air phone, though her dad was strict about the time she spent using the holographic projector. “Can’t you just use audio?” he’d said. “It’s how we used to do it in the old days.”

It was only when they were playing in her bedroom one day and had run out of things to do that Felix was rediscovered. They’d been going through Angela’s toy cupboard. Whilst Gail had searched amongst the boxes and cartridges on the floor, Angela had used a chair to look on the top shelf to see if she could find anything of interest. Underneath a pile of unsorted flicker cards, a familiar shape had grabbed her attention. Felix had grown a little since her father had first bought him. She’d pestered him for the ambulatory upgrade so that they could play more active games together. The web ads had shown a body-popping Gizmo and she’d imagined that they could practice gymnastics together. There were three sizes of body shell: toy, child and adult. Her dad had gone for the cheapest option but it turned out that Felix couldn’t manage a handstand despite his new dancing skills, so she’d discarded him with a mass of other junk toys she’d become bored with.

She gathered the flicker cards and handed them down to Gail whilst she tried to rebalance herself. Her struggle for balance gave her chance to consider showing Felix to Gail, after all he’d always been hers and hers alone and she’d never shared him with anyone except her dad. Before she could make a decision, Gail — who’d given up searching on the floor of the closet and had climbed onto her bed — squealed with excitement: “Is that a Gizmo?”

From that day on Felix was always central to their games. Gizmos were rare, more so now that they were no longer manufactured, so Angela could understand Gail’s fascination. Her initial pleasure at rediscovering her childhood robot had soon turned to jealousy. Gail never tired of inventing new games. She taught the robot elementary French, played hopscotch with it on the kitchen floor and taught it a hundred other games that Angela had never thought of. Inevitably it all came to a head. “If you like him so much, why don’t you keep him?” Angela said.

Gail took her at her word and the toy became lost to her once more, only this time it was accompanied by another loss — that of her friendship with Gail.

On Gizmo’s first day at work, Sunil had expressed his anxiety. His mind rushed back to when the machine had been nothing more than a tiny ball he could hold in his hand yet now, here he was — a fully mobile robot with every sensory upgrade packed into his assemblage. “I can drive you there if you’d like,” he’d said.

“Don’t worry Dad, if I can’t catch a transit by myself, I’m not going to be much of an employee am I?”

Gizmo had insisted on a new name and Sunil had agreed. Now that he was working he had to have something more appropriate to his new status. Gizmo had wanted the name ‘Gottfried’ because he felt it suited his heritage, but Sunil was worried about the digiphobes. They’d settled on ‘Peter’ and after a few months it was as though it had always been his name.

Peter wasn’t used to having an income. Sunil insisted that the money was his and, though he raised an eyebrow when Peter spent three months’ worth of salary on new legs, he relented when Peter explained his reasoning. “If I can reach the substation radiation panel, then I have a better chance of being promoted.” Sunil had joked about all the money he’d spent on Peter’s upgrades and how he might ask for it back one day.

Now that Peter was becoming more independent they spent less time together which forced Sunil to consider his own isolation. He longed for the return of the days when they’d both talk to one another for hour on end. Nowadays Peter was more withdrawn, their conversations extending to only the practicalities of day-to-day living. It occurred to him that he was reaching another critical point in his life. The last big change had been his divorce. Now he thought back over it, it had happened around the same time he’d purchased Peter. He realised that it had been more than an impulse purchase. Peter had been his way of coping with the upheaval in his life. That particular trauma had been cushioned by the time they’d spent together. He’d nurtured and raised the machine like an adopted child and become so fond of it that he hadn’t even considered how inappropriate an unchristened Gizmo would be out in the real world.

It wasn’t just his name that changed as Peter threw himself into working life. Three or four times the Geiger counter alarm had wailed its angry siren when he had walked through the front door and Sunil had had to redirect him quickly to the decom chamber. On one occasion he had arrived home ahead of him and Sunil had noticed a large dent on his right shoulder. The dent had a deep purple surface to it, so Sunil knew it was causing him some considerable pain. “I’m going to get you out of that place,” he promised. “It’s only fit for industrial robots, not the likes of you. You’re too smart to work in a place like that.”

When Angela turned eighteen, she hadn’t expected Gail to be at the party. She hadn’t invited her, hadn’t even thought about her for the last however many years it had been since they’d last spoken. At first she hadn’t recognised her. Her hair was now a fashionable shade of pink and she had an animated Stomoxys tattoo on her left temple. She’d also grown breasts which, from their size and shape, Angela guessed were implants. “Angela, is it you?” she’d said in a sweet voice which, Angela noticed, was one of the few things about her which hadn’t been cosmetically re-engineered.

At her side was a tall, handsome young man who looked vaguely familiar. Then it clicked. It was the lead guitarist in Stomoxys! Gail, it seemed, had moved up in the world. Angela held out her hand to meet the one proffered to her. Franco had a firm handshake, but his hand was cold, despite the room’s heat. He asked if she wanted a drink from the bar. Angela declined. She waited until he was out of earshot. “So, you’re dating a celebrity?” she said. Gail quickly changed the subject and, before Angela could inquire further, Franco had returned from the bar with two drinks: one in a tall thin glass with a straw in it which Angela couldn’t identify, and the other a more recognisable half pint. Franco handed the half pint to Gail. “So nice to see you again, but I must return to my guests,” Angela said. Franco winked at her as she turned to walk away, causing her to trip on the step of the platform she’d forgotten she was standing on.

The news item was all about the protests. Sunil sat with Peter, clutching the edges of his seat cushion as he watched. “It will never happen,” he said, as the newscast ended.

“Nothing ever stays the same,” Peter said, wisely.

“And a bird in the bush is worth two in the hand,” Sunil replied, then, as he saw Peter’s questioning eyes explained, “Adages. You seem to have picked up quite a few of them since you started working at The Factory. Peter explained that he hadn’t learned the phrase at work but had picked it up from an educational expansion pack. Sunil hadn’t heard of such things, he’d imagined that Gizmo’s learned like every other AI — by experience. He asked if the practice was legal and Peter was less than forthcoming, mumbling something about ‘peer-to-peer sharing’. “Well, I’m going to bed,” he said, “And you look like you could use some off-line time too.” He’d expected an argument, but Peter agreed. All Gizmos required a period during which they didn’t receive any input and Peter, despite his new humanoid form, was still the same old machine underneath. In his dreams Sunil imagined a world where the peaceful protests had transformed into full-blown riots. Scenes of locked-down residences and streets which were safe for only the steely few filled his mind.

When Sunil woke, Peter had already set out for work. The newscast was repeating yesterday’s story about the protest march. This time the reporter was live at the scene, making the most of the story by choosing interviewees whose bias was obvious. The reporter was playing devil’s advocate, stirring up an already angry gathering. “Some people say that you should know your place and that you should be grateful for having the opportunities you have...” he was saying. Sunil wasn’t listening. His eyes were fixed on the environs. He was sure that he’d seen that place before. It wasn’t anywhere nearby so where did he know it from?

He switched off the newscast and turned to the dating app he’d recently purchased. He’d set the projector’s focus so that its images appeared in front of the kitchen door. The first woman’s name was Marjory. Sunil introduced himself, all the while keeping an eye on the timer which was counting down in red digits over the top of the door frame. Before it reached zero, he waved the holographic image to the left and the next woman came into view. The same feeling of boredom washed over him as the projector focused the image. All the women were identically pretty, cosmetically perfect teeth, perfectly configured hairstyles, surgically transformed figures. None of them had anything much of interest to say for themselves or asked him any questions beyond the superficial. Each was as shallow as a flatscreen billboard — fascinating to look at for the brief few seconds that they had your attention.

He was just about to wave upwards and dismiss the app when a striking young woman with flame-red hair appeared. For a moment Sunil thought that someone had entered his kitchen and he’d not heard the knock, the image being so vivid and real. It was the eyes that hypnotised him. He couldn’t break their direct gaze. He opened with his usual gambit, asking what the woman did for a living. This time his routine faltered. The woman asked him what he did, then asked why he’d chosen that particular career. This forwardness upset his usual self-confidence. He didn’t like to talk about himself, preferring to keep his potential dates at arm’s length. Soon the two were chatting like old friends and his worries about the newscast and the protest marches ebbed away, erased by a mutual meeting of minds.

Angela’s flirting with Franco was something she hadn’t consciously planned. She’d thought about him ever since their first meeting and had inveigled herself into Gail’s social circle despite her misgivings about their friendship. The fact that Franco was technically off-limits added to the excitement. She did have some feelings of guilt. Gail was no ordinary fan — her boldly displayed tattoo prove that — but then, she reasoned, a tattoo was not that much different from a perm-logo on a t-shirt, so she shouldn’t make too much of it. Her own lack of interest in Stomoxys gave her an edge. She didn’t like their music or the image they were pushing so she was different from the other women who chased after them. She decided that she would play hard-to-get. The tactic was tricky because whenever Franco turned her way she felt light-headed. The other problem was Gail. She was always in his arm when they arrived. Franco solved that one for her. He always seemed to find a way of escaping her clutches so that, as if by accident, they would find themselves alone together at some point in the evening.

The first time had been in a dark corner of the same bar they’d first met in. She had given him her best flirty look when Gail’s attention had been elsewhere. He’d paused with his glass half-way to his lips. Hoping that a single glance would be enough, she’d walked to the darkened section of the bar and pretended to check the onlines on her wrist to avoid being chatted-up by anyone else. The dress she’d chosen was a daring one-piece which fit so tightly she felt self-conscious about her figure. When Franco had appeared she knew that her flirting had worked. From that meeting onwards their accidental meetings became a regular occurrence until, after several near misses when they’d come close to being caught out, Angela called time on them. She’d suggested instead that they meet somewhere where Gail wasn’t. Not long afterwards, Franco announced that he and Gail had broken up. “You’re the only person I can think about,” he said. “Maybe you and I should hook up?”

“I’m not that kind of girl,” Angela said, despite every instinct in her body telling her to say ‘yes’.

When Peter didn’t come home that evening Sunil air-phoned The Factory to find out what was going on. “His shell’s here but he’s out at the moment,” the operator told him. Sunil didn’t understand and said as much. The operator’s explanation was too technical for his literary brain. He asked how much longer Peter was going to be and the operator told him something about a ‘transfer cycle’ which couldn’t be interrupted. He was assured that the procedure was irregular and that Peter wouldn’t have been able to predict that it would go over its scheduled time. “So, he’ll be home soon?” he said.

“Hard to say,” the operator said, “It’s only the second time we’ve tried a full transfer.”

When Peter returned just after midnight, Sunil had a multitude of questions.

“Not now Dad,” Peter said, “I’m completely bushed. Can we talk about this in the morning?”

When morning came Peter’s answers were quick and to the point. Sunil couldn’t help but feel that he wasn’t telling the whole truth. Something was missing from his explanations. “It’s the first time I’ve heard of any experiments going on up there. I’m beginning to have my doubts about that place. Why did you consent to all this?”

“They offered me a double-bonus the first time and triple for the second because I’m one of the few who succeeded,” Peter said.

“What is a transfer anyhow?” Sunil asked, “It sounds dangerous.”

“I signed a secrecy clause, so I couldn’t tell you even if I wanted to.”

It was the first time that Sunil had felt distant from his child. Peter had grown from an infant Gizmo to a full-grown man, mostly at his expense. He tried to trace back to the time when their unique bond had broken. It was only after Peter had started purchasing his own upgrades that he’d started behaving differently. The expansion packs had altered his personality and made him seem like a stranger. He wondered out loud if the experiments at The Factory has something to do with how the upgrades were made.

Peter broke his meditation with an unexpected question. “Do you love me Dad?” he said.

“Of course I do son,” Sunil said.

“But how do I know for sure?”

Gail was furious when she found at that Angela and Felix were dating.

Angela couldn’t care less and told her so. Their row came close to a fight until Angela suggested that they go for a coffee to try to smooth things over. Gail agreed ‘for the sake of our friendship’ — a friendship that Angela didn’t feel had been genuine since it had been rekindled. She decided to mention this over their coffee as a tactic to calm Gail’s fury. “We used to be such good friends,” she said, “Whatever happened to us?”

Gail smiled as they began to reminisce about their childhood and the games they had played until the subject of Felix came up. Angela asked if she remembered the Gizmo which had so enamoured her.

The table they were sitting at wasn’t bolted to the floor which was why, when it was upended and came flying towards Angela’s face, she barely had time to put her hands up to protect herself. Gail’s kicking and screaming continued from behind the shield of the table until the other customers in the coffee bar came to her rescue. When the chaos subsided, Gail had been ushered out and was nowhere in sight. Angela’s wrists ached from holding the table against the impact of the repeated blows. Gail’s extreme reaction to the mention of her old Gizmo didn’t make sense. She decided that she would ask Franco to see if he could figure out why Gail had become so violent so quickly.

Sunil enjoyed the intimacy of having Cassandra visit. Each time he would tidy things up and project a different scene onto the walls to make it seem like an exotic location. Once he’d chosen an interior rendering of a state room in Buckingham Palace. The sumptuous furnishings had made him uncomfortable, so he’d opted for simpler artefacts the next time. Cassandra didn’t seem to mind what his choices were. On their fourth such date he decided to be brave and ask to meet her in person. “I’m sure my projection doesn’t do me justice,” he added.

Cassandra’s image shimmered, then froze mid-frame. Sunil checked his air phone — the signal was good but it was buffering. Seconds passed. Cassandra’ statue like freeze-frame had left him waiting for an answer he wasn’t sure would be forthcoming. On the one hand he was happy for the pause — meeting a swipe date in the flesh was tantamount to a proposal of marriage these days. On the other hand he felt anxious to know her answer to his request. If she said ‘yes’ then it was a good indicator that they were both on the same wavelength. If she said ‘no’ then his fragile ego would have to face the turmoil of rejection. The app’s proximity settings ensured that she didn’t live far away, so he didn’t have to worry on that score. More time passed and he was about to hit the connection reset when Cassandra came back online, her image more pixelated than before.

“... if that’s okay with you,” she said in a voice that sounded like it was coming from underwater.

“I didn’t get that. The connection went slow.”

“I thought you looked a bit pensive,” Cassandra said. “I said that’s fine, but it will have to wait until I can get free from my commitments at The Factory. Is that okay?”

Sunil’s rise in spirits were tempered with this latter piece of information. He didn’t probe further, trying to cling on to the happy thought of meeting Cassandra out in the real world. He had just enough time to ask her to let him know the time and place when the expected happened and the connection was lost.

Angela had never laughed so hard before. Her ribs ached from the constant giggling. In the end she had to stop him. Franco had a way of bringing out the worst in her. She shared things with him that she’d never told anyone else, not even her dad. She’d read about such love stories — two people so enamoured with one another that they could anticipate what each was about to say, so intimate that nothing the other ever did fazed them. Except it wasn’t all like the ezines had made out. When she thought about it, he was the one who could complete her sentences and it was him who had the uncanny knack of knowing precisely what to say to make her laugh. She didn’t care. Love was a glorious feeling to feel wrapped up inside of and she was going to make the most of it. When she came up for air, forcing herself to be more serious, she asked him about Gail’s manic reaction back at the coffee bar.

Franco tried to play it down. “She’s always been like that,” he said. “Ever the drama queen.”

Angela tried to probe further. She couldn’t understand why Gail had reacted the way she had when she’d mentioned their old friendship. “It was when I mentioned my old Gizmo that made her go ballistic,” she said.

Franco’s smile faded. He took a sip from his cup of water. Angela mirrored his action with her own cup of tea as she waited for him to speak, her heart pounding in nervous anticipation. The last time she’d seen someone’s expression change so quickly had been when her dad had taken a call on his integral about her mum’s accident.

“I should have told you earlier. You see, Gail and I had been together for quite some time. We met before I even became famous, in the band..., I mean...”

“You’re dribbling,” Angela said.

“I know I’m rambling on...”

“No,” Angela said, “I mean, there’s something coming out of your ears.”

Franco wiped his at his right ear with his hand, holding it out to show her as if in explanation. “I thought you knew,” he said.

“Knew what?” Angela said, though the answer was slowly dawning on her. A feeling of betrayal speared its way through her body.

“You’re real!” Sunil said. Cassandra smiled. She always got his jokes. “Come in,” he added in the ensuing awkward silence.

The door closed with a hydraulic ‘whoosh’ and the interior lights notched themselves up two levels. Cassandra raised an eyebrow. “Don’t ask,” he said. “I put them into learning mode, sometimes they think I need more light.” She removed her sunglasses.

“What’s the count out there?” Sunil said as he offered to take her coat.

“Yellow.”

“The forecast said there was a fifty-one percent of orange,” Sunil said, dropping his arms over-dramatically at the coat’s weight.

Cassandra laughed. “I guess we should know each other well enough to get beyond weather chit-chat,” she said as Sunil put the coat into the decontamination chamber alongside his own.

The room wobbled and the pistons screeched as the descenders activated. Cassandra grabbed hold of his arm, startled at the sudden movement. “I’ve been meaning to get them fixed,” he said, then lost his train of thought as her green-blue eyes blocked his vision. Pulling himself from their hypnotic gaze he did a mental count to ten whilst the house lowered itself into the safety zone. The reality of being alone with a woman for the first time in many years intensified his senses. He could smell her perfume, a strong organic scent not unlike the smell of fresh fruit. Her features had a carefree freshness that the air phone’s projector hadn’t done justice to. Her hair had hidden twists and flashes of green where he’d only seen red before. “There are wipes on the table,” he said as he guided her into the living room.

Cassandra helped herself from the dispenser and sat down next to him on the sofa. She carefully removed the protective cream on her face then threw the used wipes to the floor. The vacuum sprang into life, scooping them up and returning to its litter bay in a silent dance between the legs of the furniture.

Sunil’s words came out in a nervous rush. “I thought we might have dinner later — After Heroes, I’ve got the latest episode cued up on the projectors. You said you hadn’t seen it yet. Can I get you something to drink? I have some Californian Blue that I’ve been leaving to mature...”

After he’d organised their drinks, they made themselves more comfortable on the sofa. Sunil was disappointed by Cassandra’s choice. The wine he’d been saving was as close to the real thing as made no difference and alcohol would have taken the edge off his nerves. He felt as though he were back in high school on a first date, feeling self-conscious about his clothes, the tiny spot on the back of his neck and even the sound of his own voice. The green light flashed and the safety cage descended so that the episode could begin. The room darkened. Before the characters came onto the small stage by the far wall, Sunil noticed Cassandra moving the fingers of her right hand in a spider-like display of anticipation that was instantly recognisable. He’d seen the same habit many times before and each time it had been just prior to the projection of a show. He looked again at her face, tracing each feature anew in light of his growing suspicion. The eyes, the setting of her eyebrows, the way she smiled, the way she laughed, it had all been so familiar for a reason. He pressed the off switch and the cage slid back into its housing. “Peter?” he said, “Is that you?”

Angela had no wish to become embroiled in what, after all, was one of the most controversial issues of modern times. People who had relationships with androids were pushing the boundaries of society. Isn’t that what all the protests were about? she thought. She didn’t like to think of herself as a digiphobe and knew that there was more to the protest movement than inter-digital relationships, but her prejudice wasn’t something she could easily dismiss. She had to put Franco in his place. There were laws against this kind of thing and she made sure that she emphasised this aspect of his secret as she berated him. “You can’t date someone and not tell them about your real status,” she finished.

Now that she knew the truth, the other facts starting fitting into place. She’d never seen him rehearse his music, or even show any interest in it outside of his gigs. The relationship with Gail — some kind of trial run or experiment on his behalf? Did she know? Franco had no friends other than his bandmates, who were probably digitals like himself. He never drank alcohol and she’d never heard him talk about his family. She wound back the conversation to its start and mentioned the part that she’d been itching but too frightened to ask. “Exactly how long have you known Gail for?” she said.

“Ever since you gave me to her when you were ten,” he said.

The Robot and Artificial Persons Offenders Act of 2052 explicitly prohibits relationships between human beings and all artificially intelligent entities. Further, personality downloading and sharing is outlawed to prevent impersonation and evasion of crimes. Any being, either organic or digital in nature, found in breach of this act, or caught abetting such relationships (such as by the development of inter-digital reproduction modules and/or the use of peer-to-peer networking for the sharing and merging of biological and non-biological experiences) will be prosecuted. For digital entities, the punishment for offences under this act includes, but is not limited by, a full reset of the guilty party and destruction of any extant backups. For human beings the punishment is a deduction of three ration points and six months community service to be spent in the detox farms.

“So, do I call you Franco or Felix?” Angela said, as the two walked hand-in-hand down the high street. “Or Gizmo?” she added. She saw the hurt look on the android’s face.

“It’s so peaceful here,” Franco said. “Do you think anyone has ever been as in love as you and I are?”

Angela looked across at his face, the reddened sun playing its rays across his perfectly formed features. Could androids truly fall in love or was it merely another algorithm he’d mastered? Maybe she was just being paranoid. From this day onwards they would have to be constantly vigilant. There were no stop and scan laws yet, but it could only be a matter of time. Then she wondered about Gail and if she’d stick to her promise to keep their secret. “I guess we can never know,” she said.

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