The man and woman are sitting in a garden on a late summer morning, having breakfast. Life is still. The table is laden with fruits, home-made jams, divine-smelling crostata, and bread fresh from the oven. The smell of coffee is the promise of orderly things and new sparks. It’s a tranquil moment, untroubled.
To the woman, everything is novel. From the gentle breeze to the heat emanating from the coffee cup. Her senses are overloaded, so many tiny alarms blaring inside. She stays mute, immobile. Silently but diligently parsing reality.
She is the masterpiece. She sits at the table with her creator, having a one-sided conversation. His voice is the only certainty she has ever known. She has known only a few since coming online. The white walls of her room, and her vanity mirror and the comb she uses to brush her long straw-colour hair.
“This is nice, don’t you agree?” he asks, plucking a grape from the bowl and popping it into his mouth.
He fails to specify what “this” refers to, she notes. Does he mean the grape, or the breakfast served before them? Or this precise moment in time? She runs the computations and recalls humans are just as much about spoken word as gestures and implied intent. More data is needed. She nods. And a second time, just to make it look a little more convincing.
Her creator doesn’t look pleased.
“What is wrong?” the words come out of her. Predetermined. Curious, as programmed. She touches a finger to her jaw for emphasis.
His irritation is fleeting. “It’s nothing, dove. Sometimes I get ahead of myself and grow impatient,” he says. The smile on his face looks forced. She lowers her head, per protocol.
She’s only been out of her room for a total of 3 hours, 27 minutes, and 14 seconds, or 3,109 breaths, adjusted for her creator’s respiration. Two promenades around the garden, exerting her limbs, and naming all the plants, trees, and insects. One rowing across the pond, while she was transfixed by the koi trailing their boat. This is their first breakfast. She understands there is more learning to do.
A servant approaches, bearing a jug of water. They refill the creator’s glass and turn automatically to hers, but they pause, realising it is full. Her food rests untouched. Her cup of coffee is growing cold. The servant, off-balance, bows and backpedals. She smiles at them in what is determined as an endearing gesture. They seem to pick up their pace at seeing it. She holds the smile regardless, cataloguing the exchange.
“What are we going to do today?” she asks gaily, child-like. “Can we row around the pond again? I very much enjoy watching the koi and how they mill around the water lilies.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, child,” he says, upset. At himself. He just now remembered something he meant to do earlier but didn’t tell her. “I am afraid I will need to leave you to your own devices. I am traveling this afternoon. Will be out for a few days, actually.”
She tugs the corners of her perfect pink lips down, bunches her shoulders. This is the appropriate reaction. Crestfallen, is the correct term. Her crest falls.
“But don’t you worry, I’ll be back before you can bat an eyelid. In fact, I have a parting gift for you,” he says. Did he just now remember the small, wrapped packet in the side pocket of his blazer? Or is he feigning it? She stores the emerging question for further study. He hands her the packet.
“Go on, open it,” he nudges her, seeing her sit with the packet in her palm.
She undoes the paper wrapping and opens a small, leather case. There is a gold ring within, nestled in soft red velvet. She knows this ring. She has seen it on images her creator trained her on. Another woman wore it on those photographs.
“Well?” He is beaming. And impatient. “Why don’t you try it on?”
She obeys his prompt. 6.394 grams. 3 millimetres. 14 carats. It fits her ring finger impeccably. It was tailor-made. She lifts her hand in front of her; turns it this way and that. On her translucent porcelain skin and against the wiring beneath, it glows. It is objectively beautiful. She knows this ring means something to her creator. It doesn’t mean anything to her.
“It is a fine ring,” she says, understanding she is expected to fill the silence. That seems to momentarily satisfy her maker.
“Good. Yes. Yes, I suppose it is,” he says, his mind already having moved onto something else.
“Right. So then, I’ll let you finish your breakfast, darling.” He gets up and bridges the space between them. Standing above her, he leans forward, freezes, then opts instead to caress her straw-colour hair.
He leaves her to finish the breakfast she will not touch.
—————————————————————–
The following day, she is sitting on a bench under a willow tree, overlooking the pond. She has been sitting here for 4 hours, 19 minutes, 53 seconds. 54. 55.
She is free to walk around the garden and explore. She did. Mapped the beaten walkways. They aren’t random, but a product of her creator’s mind, predetermined by his thought patterns. They aren’t as chaotic as he thinks they are. She walked the length of the overgrown stone walls hemming her world in. She caught the hem of her dress on a rose bush while she did so and tore it. It tore her skin, too, exposing metal beneath. What a peculiar sensation, to be pricked by a thorn. It didn’t bleed. She wonders what it is like, to bleed. There is a world beyond the walled-in garden, according to the data she’s been fed. More data is needed.
But, for now, she is content to sit on the bench under the willow tree, watching the wind stir the branches. They dip into the water, and she observes the ripples they make as they drag across the surface. She lifts her hand, the ring weightless, reflecting her image back.
“I brought you your comb, as you asked,” a maidservant interrupts. She smiles as she hands it over. Smiling is what humans do, when interacting with one another. Even when they are making good on a specific task they were given. She smiles back. That’s the polite, human thing to do.
“Thank you,” she says, accepting the comb, holding it close to her chest as the precious possession it is.
The ring on her finger catches the maidservant’s attention. She sees confusion, indignation, revulsion, and feigned indifference flit in quick succession across the maidservant’s visage.
“That belonged to Missus,” she says. Something weighs down the statement, but she is unable to parse what. It remains hanging in the space between them.
“What is a Missus?” she asks.
“Oh. No, no. Not a what. A who, you mean. Our good Lord’s wife,” she explains, as to a child. So, the woman on the photograph was the creator’s wife. That wasn’t specified in the training data.
“She took ill and passed away a few years ago. Poor thing. She was very much loved by everyone on the estate. Our Lord was beside himself. That is her wedding band you are wearing,” the maidservant adds gravely; her face betrays more than her words. Her synapses work lightning-fast to determine the emotion behind the words.
Judgment. Disagreement. Reproach. Prejudice. More data is needed.
Another 3 hours, 52 minutes, 31 seconds pass, while she combs her hair and watches the sun set over the pond, crunching probabilities and predicting possible outcomes.
—————————————————————–
She is twitchy. Sitting still on the edge of her cot doesn’t sit well. She wonders at the uncanny sensation. Her synapses are misaligned with her bodily reactions. Her limbs want to move. To run. The mind hasn’t reconciled with what her body is telling her. Still. She has computed the possibilities, predicted the possible outcomes. There aren’t any surprises.
She sits down on the vanity stool and stares into the mirror. There is a woman staring back. Ice-blue eyes. High cheekbones. Thin lips. Carefully selected hair tint. Perfectly designed. Perfectly matching the woman from the photograph. Her creator’s wife.
“Who am I?”
The ring rests weightless on her finger. She knows the answer, but she chooses to want to hear her creator tell it. A few days have passed. He should be back home any moment.
She picks up her comb, starts brushing out her hair. The repetitive motion stills the swirling thoughts and restless limbs. This feels human.
The thought prompts her to look at her thigh, where the rose thorn tore her skin. The skin is without a blemish, pale, no trace of a puncture wound. Perhaps some surface wounds register differently.
A knock on her door doesn’t interrupt her attending to her hair. Whoever is knocking will let themselves in.
She sees their reflection in the mirror; it’s the maidservant. Since their exchange at the pond, the maidservant has been wearing a permanent scowl. The maidservant thinks she doesn’t know it for what it is. This is what judgment looks like. But the maidservant has her prompts, too, that she must obey.
“The Master has returned. He is asking for you to join him in the garden, if you will.” Naturally, she wills it.
*
“Ah, there you are,” her creator breathes, his relief and joy obvious, sweeping to his feet and toward her.
He stutters when he sees the maidservant hovering behind her. Dismisses her with an impatient wave of his hand. Once the staff gone, he bridges the distance between them and embraces her. She doesn’t reciprocate, but he doesn’t seem to notice. She feels the pressure of his arms. The warmth of his body. A quickened heartbeat.
“I missed you, dove. Have you had a pleasant time?” He gestures for her to sit with him at their breakfast table. She has many questions to ask; never mind she knows their answers.
“I have covered all 1.27 acres of the garden and catalogued all 197 plant and animal species present therein. I’ve read all 312 books in your library. There isn’t much else for me to discover,” she reports with cold detachment. He winces at that.
“Right. Well then, perhaps I should think about enlarging the collection. Or, just maybe, you could use a companion,” he says with a mischievous grin.
“I don’t care for another gift,” she replies.
She reaches a hand forward, plucks a grape from the bowl and pops it into her mouth — the flesh yielding with a wet, audible squelch. Her creator’s pupils dilate.
She fixes him with her blue, alien eyes.
“Who am I?”
….