She came out of the box in one piece. Flawless silicone flesh. Gleaming white. The colour of fresh snow. Once she was fully charged, she began to operate as expected: She sat up and waved a friendly hand at us.
She said: ‘Good morning, friends.’
Her internal settings were still on Pacific Time, but we were easily able to get her to BST.
What I liked most about her was her face. A frosty white disc with two huge blue eyes the colour of a clear spring morning. Her mouth opened and she smiled at me with perfect, straight white teeth.
For the first day, she did normal things. She listened to music with us. She helped put away the ironing and did the washing up. I don’t think either of us foresaw anything going wrong with her on that day. Everything was perfect.
On the second day, we took a walk around the park. She stopped and pretended to smell flowers. We took lots of pictures for Instagram. I think we should have noticed then that things were starting to go wrong.
She told a joke. She didn’t just laugh at our jokes, she told her own. Something about living trapped in a box. I didn’t really get it, but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was she’d said it at all.
On the third day she was walking into walls. She kept marching in a straight line, certain the wall was going to open out for her. Of course, it never did. When we tried taking her outside, she ran away.
It was unbelievable how fast she could run – those legs pistoning away mechanically – but neither of us could catch up with her. We went home and put the word out on social media that she was missing: our fresh, clean robot. Barely touched. Just out of the box.
We didn’t hear anything on the first day.
On the second day there were sightings, but nothing panned out. How hard was it to recognise a 5’6″ glowing white robot?
When we found her she was not glowing white. She was brown like sand. She wore an oversized sweatshirt and black leggings. On her feet were an old pair of brown leather sandals.
She sat in a café and was drinking an iced latte with her girlfriend Abụọma. Abụọma was a human woman with long braids and a dozen facial piercings. They talked about Ntozake Shange and Natalie Goldberg and journalling and Desert Hearts and Taylor Swift and The Grey Whales and Neneh Cherry and eating chin chin and light pollution and the stars and the last time they stayed up until dawn.
Over the table, they held hands. Their fingers twined together. Abụọma’s heavy, clanking rings touching smooth silicone flesh.
Even though she was technically intact, it didn’t feel like she was our robot anymore.