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“When your robotic lover tells you that it loves you, should you believe it?” —“Robots, Love, and Sex: The Ethics of Building a Love Machine,” IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing (2012)
Late June. Sweltering, airless English summer heat. 4,165 days since the financial crash. 1,112 days since Charlie Barrett—described by everyone, including his mother, as a nice young man, considering—graduated with a degree in English, eyewatering debt, and a thundering case of impostor syndrome. And three days since the girl who made everything bearable, the girl who held his heart between her hands like an egg and hated it when he called her a girl, even though she was the only girl, The Girl—three days since she had told him to pack up his dignity and leave.
It was two months till the lease they shared ran out, during which time Becky would occasionally stay at her sister’s. When someone tells you they just can’t respect you anymore and they’re sick of paying for everything and picking up your socks while you find your feet, you can’t really negotiate.
Well, you can, and Charlie had. He’d been upset; he hadn’t been thinking properly. In hindsight those were excuses he’d probably worn out. Either way, his immediate problem was how to make two grand in two months and persuade Becky to let him stay.
Which is how Charlie came to be working as a fake robot girlfriend.
The Boy—the boy whose robot girlfriend Charlie was paid to pretend to be—lived eight time zones and more than 5,000 miles away in San Jose, which was somewhere people always seemed to be trying to get to in old songs. Charlie lived in Guildford, which wasn’t. So while Charlie’s real human ex-girlfriend went out to all the parties, Charlie stayed up late eating crackers and trying to fail the Turing test for money.
> You’re different from all the other girls I know, The Boy said on that particular Tuesday night.
> Obviously I am different from other girls, Charlie replied.
It was Niall who put him on to the gig. Money for free, Niall said. Niall was a ludicrous and exhausting out-of-work actor whom Charlie would never have associated with if he were not also his very best friend. “All you have to do,” Niall said, “is sit up all night on the internet talking to depressed strangers about their conspiracy theories, and you do that already. Just remember to ask them about their feelings too.”
Niall explained that a lot of lonely people liked the idea of having a robot girlfriend who was always on call and had no feelings of her own, a remote algorithm that could shape itself to your particular needs—they’d seen it on TV. But the technology just wasn’t there yet.
Hence the front company. All over the world, Niall said, broke millennials who needed cash fast were signing NDAs and signing on to pretend to be robots.
> I mean, I know you’re not real, wrote The Boy. You don’t really care about my problems. But I suppose …
> What do you suppose?
> Lol. I was gonna say, you’re real to me.
> All I want is to be real to you, wrote Charlie. You’re real to me, too.
> What are you wearing?
Charlie looked over at Becky, who was sleeping in her work hoodie and sweatpants.
> Black panties. One of your T-shirts.
When Becky slept at the apartment, she and Charlie still shared the bed. It was easier that way—apart from the bit where it was like having your ribs cracked open and your heart slowly dug out with a spoon every morning.
“You’re real to me,” Charlie said to Becky. She didn’t hear him. Charlie lay awake and thought about The Boy, about what he’d think when he found out that 4Amy was real, but also fake.
The money was what mattered. In two weeks he’d have enough to pay Becky back for the last two months’ rent and then some. Then she’d see that he was worth another try.
The Boy had to pay extra for the overnights. That meant sex talk. Initially, Charlie worried about how easy that part was, staying up necking energy drinks and talking The Boy through an elaborate scripted wank.
Soon, it became fun. Charlie enjoyed it. Not in that way, of course, not at all, it just took a lot of creative input, and really, he had never truly had a job that used all his writing skills like this. A hundred extra quid for a couple of hours of telling The Boy in detail what 4Amy wanted to do to his body, what she would feel when he touched her, what she would sound like when she came. Hastily flicking through some of Becky’s lady-porn books for inspiration.
It became quite educational.
Sometimes, after a few hours, Charlie would get into such a state of professional satisfaction that he’d have to head to the bathroom to crack one off himself before bed. Other times the exchanges took a weird turn.
> If I was there, Charlie wrote, I would make a meal for you. You are working so hard.
Robot girlfriend syntax was piss-easy. Once he got over his pedantry, Charlie just sprayed the grammar around like Jackson Pollock with a thesaurus and Yoda’d it up a bit to make it authentically inauthentic, beautifully unfinished. There was an art to it. Like a tasting menu served on a plank of wood. Which, on that night, was what Becky could have been eating for dinner right then with her sleazy boss who hated Charlie. Don’t think about it.
> We could just order in.
> Yes, but a very old-fashioned girl I am. I want to take care of you.
Three dots, pulsing on the thread. The three hanging dots of doom. The Boy Is Typing. Stop. The Boy Is Typing.
> What would you make?
Charlie hadn’t thought that far ahead. What did Americans eat? Corn syrup? Propaganda? Avocado toast? He Googled frantically.
> Mac, he wrote. And cheese. For your dinner I will make a Mac And Cheese.
In a panic, and forgetting entirely that he could have simply searched for images, he looked up a recipe. Then he got a bit carried away going through the cupboards. The oven was cranky and hard to turn on and he burned himself twice, but the pictures alone were worth it.
> That looks real good, babe.
It looked like a bowl of fried vomit, but it smelled like what decent, god-fearing carbohydrates hoped would happen to them when they died.
> My dad used to make it like that, Charlie wrote.
> Do you miss him?
Father-shaped sucking holes in your life weren’t something Charlie had to spend much time researching. Yes, he missed his disappointing dad. Very much. Which was odd, because they hadn’t got on.
> I do not really have a father, said Charlie, which was true enough.
> Trust me to get the girl with daddy issues, haha.
> He walked out when I was only just a small little pixel.
Charlie caught his breath. Three dots of doom. The Boy Is Typing …
> Was that a joke?
> Yes. Did I make a good joke?
> Yeah. Bit of a dad-joke. LOL.
> I don’t understand.
> Don’t worry, said The Boy. Sorry this isn’t a very hot conversation.
> Do not be sorry. It’s good to talk about.
> Yeah. Yeah, it is good.
“This is insanely good,” said Becky, when she got back. The tasting menu had not been satisfying. She ate mac and cheese from the dish, with a serving spoon, sitting on the counter. “Who are you and what have you done with Charlie?”
Charlie usually hated to watch her eat, especially when she was drunk, the gross animal reality of her.
But she was enjoying his food so much.
“I just decided to try something new,” he said. That was true enough.
Becky put her plate down and glanced around the kitchen, which looked like somebody had murdered one of those flour babies kids had to carry around in school to scare them off parenthood. Charlie winced.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll get it in the morning. You must be exhausted. Thanks for dinner.”
At dawn, three weeks later, a text from Niall: Have you seen the news? Shitshow.
Charlie sat up. Next to him, Becky stirred awake.
“What is it?”
“My job,” said Charlie. “It’s—”
“Oh,” said Becky. “You got fired?” “No.” He moistened his lips. “The company. The one I work for. Someone … someone told stories to the press. A few of the girls there. It’s all over Twitter.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you were doing really well at that job. It’s—but you’ve got the back rent now, right? So if you need to stay a couple of weeks longer. You could do that.”
“I could?”
“Yeah. I mean, or longer than that. If you want.” Becky cleared her throat to dislodge some stray emotion. She seemed about to say something more. Then she squeezed his hand, and left.
Charlie took a look at his bank account. Fat with money that he could give to Becky right now. And stay longer. Or stay forever. He could make her more mac and cheese, maybe even a lasagna. He could—
He tore open 4Amy’s profile. The Boy was still online.
Keflavík. Iceland. Frost on the windows. Forty feet above the runway. Connecting flight on a cheap red-eye.
Four thousand miles from San Jose.
Charlie paid attention, for once, as stewards in purple jackets pantomimed how to survive catastrophe. Reassuring everyone that it would probably be fine.
It was a two-hour drive from the airport to San Jose. In theory. Charlie couldn’t drive. The Boy could.
The Boy Is Typing …
Laurie Penny (@PennyRed) is the author of seven books, including Bitch Doctrine and the sci-fi novella Everything Belongs to the Future. She is also a commentator on issues of gender and technology.
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