All My Lovers

I had always had a fascination with the concept of a perfect adaptive lover. Of course I am not alone. Countless movies television shows and books have explored the concept to one degree or another. From Virtuosity's Sheila 3.2, to Barker's Pie'o'pah, to the garden variety succubus.

It seems to me quite unavoidable that a tool using intelligence would mix the conceptions of creation with mate acquisition. Going from hunter gatherer to agriculture is much like the step I took, moving from search to design.

The beginning of the project was when I realized that all the media I had used to compile my idea of the perfect mate came from me. Like everyone else in the robotics industry the concept of a synthetic lover crossed my mind and eventually my desk. Companies all over the world competed for the synthetic love market. The hardware problem was solved in short order, requiring little less than a blending of Realdoll and Asimo. But what was much harder was the software.

Even a coherent picture of what sensuality and sexuality even is illuded mankind for millennia, and still does. I make no claim to have solved that particular puzzle. I have however found a remarkably effective work around.

Sure some were happy with the most limited of interactions, indeed the Realdoll market showed that many didn't even need them to have a mind at all. But some needed more, some needed something closer to a geisha. And the approaches to the problem were as varied as sexual appetites themselves.

Some used learning models, trial an error based on a catalog, some tried initiation systems, with surveys, some tried psychological profiling, some tried autonomic diagnostics, some even tried compilations of advise from professional sex workers from all over the world, and each met with some form of success. After all ones man's trash as they say.

But no truly universal solution was located. And even within the methodology that worked for a given individual there are the potential for boredom, or even psychosis. Particularly with the adaptive models. Problems of an almost Asimovian character, as relationships moved further from harmony and closer to a feedback loop. Bonnie and Clyde style crimes happened in the early days as some models of synthetic lover failed to distinguish between passions. Sometimes turning the natural cross over of sex and violence into pure violence. Others physically killed their human lovers from exhaustion stemming from what amounted to a orgasmic dopamine addiction. Still others committed happy suicides having fallen into extreme romantic love with their companions and wishing to see god resolved to speed things along. Others began to literally worship their companions, seeing them as either rewards sent from the devil or guardian angels, and in their desire to please they catered to the desire masked as theory.

Thus pure models, that is to say models without restriction soon vanished for reason of social safety. As elegant as the three laws are, Asimov himself time and again explored how they could be circumvented. The problem was one of absolutes. Companions are by their very nature afflicted with a form of borderline personality disorder as they are built on a set of fixed rules. We had to do that or risk a pulp SciFi apocalypse in creating a new species based on our murderous genes enhanced by technology, unfettered by fear and pain. So while our companions became safe they were also as a result imperfect.

It seemed that harmony and social security were forever out of our grasp by virtue of mutual exclusion. Scores, being more than willing to risk it, carried their companions off into international water and were never heard from again.

I was tasked with taking another look at this apparently insoluble problem, basically as punishment for my total lack of social skills.

My solution was born of a frank admission and revelation. Screwing a robot was masturbation. Well duh right? If you put yourself and a companion in a room you still only have one person. And that was the problem. The puritans had won a victory or so it seems, no droid could ever be as good as the "real thing". But that was not the solution that was being sought. We were effectively telling people to jerk off when they complained of the need for love, such was our prejudice with respect to love and sex. If masturbation, IE, solitary orgasm, was our only goal why not just drive a wire into the pleasure center and hook up a simple battery and button? Indeed, many did, as the "wireheads" came to be known.

I reasoned that it wasn't masturbation that was the goal, but rather love. But didn't it take a person to love? And wasn't a person free to act, even horribly? And we're right back to square one with the potential machine up[rising. It simply wouldn't be practical to invent a slave race as sex toys. So the question became, where do we find a willing person for this person? Knowing the nature of desire, statistically speaking the answer was no where. It seems we had come full circle, right back to "can't make it, go find it." But the answer sits in each of us.

Your heart's desire is your hearts desire. The solution was so simple, indeed it was in the bible. Eve was apparently made from Adam's rib yes? And here it is. the forumla for your dream lover.

To avoid pronoun confusion this will be from a heterosexual male's perspective.

You take a man's mind, you scan it. You divide the information contained into three categories.

Conception of self: I am a man, what it means to me to be a man.
Conception of mate: I want a woman, what it means to me to be a woman.
Other: All other data, experiences memory.

Copy the scanned mind onto the droid, swapping all conceptions of self for those of mate. Starting with a straight male, the end result is a female organism who perfectly fits the original's idea of what the perfect lover should be, who's idea of a perfect lover is the original person.

Finally the dream of monogamy became possible. Everything you ever wanted in a mate, everything you ever found most attractive about anyone could be delivered. And this was not limited to sex. Everything. Drive, compassion, opinion, etc.

And that simple discovery is why you're sitting here talking to me on my 300th birthday. That year I was given the noble peace prize. Turns out, no one wants to fight when they're truly in love. Giving out my companions as gifts at diplomatic functions was only the beginning. In time anyone who wanted one could have one.

Because Maslow was right. When your animal needs are met, self actualization is easy.

So was Lennon... All you need is love.