Week 2 Story: Metamorphoses

Romance in the Digital Age
Sophie Curtis. Source: (The Mirror)

Pygmalion hadn’t left the apartment in six weeks.

His work room smelled of sweat and stale air, and reeked more strongly of acrid mechanical fires and the artificial odor of lubrication he favored for android joints. Despite the smell, his work table is pristine – wires neatly twisted and tied by color, and drawers clearly labeled with glowing LCD screens that thrummed with the name and number of the parts within. Pyg tapped furiously on two of his five keyboards, his gaze focused on the screens that covered half the wall next to his desk.

“Still working?”

Pyg stilled, and turned to face the woman at the door. Very few things could distract him from his work. Carrara was one of them.

“I’m almost done.” Pyg pushed his glasses higher up the bridge of his nose. They slipped back down and wobbled at the tip, oil and sweat slicking his skin from missed showers.

“Don’t work too hard.” Carrara smiled, her mouth jolting up in small increments. Her words projected without vibrancy from the voice box in her throat, dull without the color of emotions and pitching in odd places as her AI attempted to add inflection to please him. Pyg was charmed anyway.

“I won’t.”

Her smile stuck a few moments too long, before smoothing into a neutral line. Carrara carried over the tea she’d prepared for him and set it on his desk, still steaming from the freshly boiled water. Pyg tipped his head back to admire her. Marble white hair plaited into a braid, golden eyes that clicked and whirred as they focused on him, and full lips tinted pink like the flowers of a cherry blossom. When she bent to kiss his forehead the press of her mouth was soft but cool, and when the android straightened her lips shone with the sweat from Pygmalion’s skin.

She was his greatest creation. Nearly perfect in every way, and none of his other androids could compare. After Carrara was completed it seemed almost an insult to keep the rest. So he’d sold them, one by one. Now his bank account was weighted with enough currency to do the one, last necessary thing to help her achieve perfection.

One of the monitors blinked with an incoming message. As soon as he read ‘Venus,’ Pyg clicked the message open.

Venus: | ai is finished. |

Pyg tapped a reply.

Carlion: | with all the specifications? |

Venus: | of course. got a rep to keep. in love with you. interested in all the things you like. conversation bank is deep enough to mimic someone around 20 years and reaction time is .5 seconds off from human. |

Pyg held his breath, before letting out a quivering exhale of excitement.

Venus: | gonna be as real as she can get. just send what you offered. |

Pyg took Carrara’s right hand and kissed the knuckles on it, one by one, tasting methanol as he licked his lips once, twice, and transferred the money. 

Author’s Note:

I took Ovid’s Metamorphoses and gave it a futuristic twist with the marble statue being the android Carrara, and Pygmalion being her shut in creator. One line that struck me from the source material was how Pygmalion judged other women as living their lives in ways he didn’t approve of. So this gave me a feel of a man who had lofty ideals of what the woman he loves should be. Ideals that are impossible for anyone to live up to. So he only found love with something he created to his specifications, which in the source material was a statue, but in my take was an android.

Ovid's Metamorphoses, translated by Tony Kline (2000). Web Source.