Yellow Mama E zine

A.A.I.—Artificial Infatuation

 

Kenneth James Crist

 

       In the year 2025, I turned 81. Yeah, right away, you’re picturing a decrepit old fart, wobbling around on a cane, slobbering on himself and wearing incontinence pants. Fuck you, it wasn’t like that at all. At 81, people took me for 60. I still did my own yardwork and I rode a motorcycle. Ate whatever I wanted to. My heart was fine and everything still worked, except my gall bladder, which had been removed because it tried to kill me when I was 68. Fucker just quit and died and even had gangrene in it when they finally took it out.

       You’re wondering if I could still “get it up.” Yeah, nothing wrong with my sex drive at all. By then, I’d been through five wives and any number of girlfriends. Lost two wives to the grim reaper and three to divorce courts. One I divorced was filthy rich and could not, under any circumstances, leave the boys alone. I took her ass to the cleaners and swore off women for almost a year.

       So, here I was, a pretty good-looking guy with money, a nice home, whatever toys I wanted and having piss-poor luck with women. Unlucky in love, so they say. And I kept seeing and reading articles about A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Well, I’d been through all the Natural Stupidity I ever needed.

       Jackie, the girlfriend who had no idea what a vasectomy involved. I told her about mine. Had it done at 35 and she understood I couldn’t get her pregnant. Or so she said. Later, turned up pregnant and couldn’t figure out why I laughed at her and walked out when she said it was definitely mine. Just to be sure, I went and had a test. Nope, no swimmers. Sorry, Jackie. Wah, wahh, wahhhhh . . . you lose.

       Wifey Number 2, who was so free with her pussy, I finally put a tracker on her Porsche and video recorded her with her other three boy-toys. Actually had enough nerve to turn on the tears when I filed. My attorney loved me, though. I made him what he is today. Rich and fat.

       So, what the fuck do you do at 81, when you’re burnt out on women, but you still have natural urges and the need for at least part-time companionship? I went online and started shopping for parts.

        First, I needed a body. House of Dolls, LLC had some great bodies. Of course, the best of them didn’t really do anything but what love dolls are designed to do—lay there and look pretty, and get a guy off, but it was a start. I’ve always been partial to tanned blondes with big boobs, you know, the “Little Annie Fanny” types, vacant eyes and all, so I ordered one. Almost eight grand, and she was a knockout. Fully articulated internal skeleton of high-impact plastic, realistic organs, well, you know the drill, but pretty boring after a while. No conversational skills at all and no deep thoughts, either. In fact, no thoughts at all. But then, she was only raw material. After I got tired of posing her and dressing her and undressing her and fucking her every which way, I finally got busy.

        Over the span of eleven months, mostly by trial and error, I installed a motherboard and found some easily modified robotic software, then I started on sub-computers and sensors. I know it sounds elaborate, but it was really no more technical than, say, your average self-driving car. A few pressure pads, heat sensors, moisture sensors, voice synthesizers, miniaturized hydraulics to move arms and legs, servos, cameras and other gadgets, heating elements in all the right places and my 85-pound dolly (Alicia) was up to a solidly packed 150. All done with off-the-shelf, readily available parts. Nothing really all that exotic, by today’s standards. But, as they say, she could run, jump, fight, fuck, and drive a truck. She couldn’t do her own makeup, but then she really didn’t need much. It was nice having a pretty gal around the house again, and things went along smoothly for almost three months.

       If I just hadn’t installed the Artificial Intelligence software, everything would have been hunky-dory.

       The more she learned to do, the more she wanted to do. Cleaning the house kept her busy for four days. Yard work, another four. Polishing and tuning cars and motorcycles, about a week. She never got tired, but she got bored. She always wanted to communicate and the more we talked, the better her reasoning powers became. I would find her at all hours of the day and night, plugged into a modem and online, devouring everything she could find about subjects as varied as electric fences . . . sea turtles . . . Sumo wrestling . . . the Iditarod . . . it just went on and on and she never slept.

       Luckily, I’d had the foresight to install an emergency shutdown switch, just above the crack of her ass. I’d really done that just in case something went wrong when we were going at it. It was easy to reach while engaged in . . . well, you get the picture. I could sneak up and give her a jab in just the right spot and shut her off. I’d plug her into her charging port, and I could have some peace and quiet.

       One day, it dawned on me, it was just like being married.

       She’d been online again, learning about women’s rights and abortion and voting. I was fixing myself an omelet, when she stalked into the kitchen.

      “When can I get a driver’s license?” She asked, her furry little caterpillar eyebrows raised at me.

      “I’m pretty sure you can’t . . .” I mumbled. I didn’t like where this was going.

      “Why the hell not? I see women driving every day. . . .”

       Then I fucked up. “You’re not a woman. . . .”

       “The fuck you mean, I’m not a woman? If I’m not a woman, then what the fuck am I?”

       “Um . . . well . . . actually, you’re a . . . device. A machine. . . .”

       “WHAT? Jesus Christ! I have . . . have feelings! Feelings for YOU! What about my FEELINGS?”

       “Alicia, look, let me explain this so you’ll understand. . . .”

       “Okay, mutha fucker, you do that! You make me understa . . .”

        I wrapped my arms around her as she struggled not to be held and pushed that handy little button. I examined her eyes for tears, then I remembered. She didn’t have the capacity to cry.

        I spent several months only switching her on for sex and then shutting her right back down. Took her a while, but she figured out how to bypass the emergency shutdown switch. Four days later, I got a call from my bank. . . .

       Seems she figured out where the money was and how to get at it, and she was spending me into the poorhouse. I started looking at activity on my credit cards and it took me five minutes to realize what she was doing.

       She was ordering parts and components to build a man. Money had been spent. Shipments were on the way. Strange thoughts started rolling through my head. Stuff I had never thought about before. Thoughts about blood evidence, fingerprints and DNA. Tarps and shallow graves. Gunshot residue, latex gloves, and axes. It took a while for me to get my thoughts straight and to realize, she was not human. In spite of her feelings, she was property. Chattel, as it were. I could kill her and suffer no consequences at all. . . .

       Alicia had never learned the combination to the gun safe. I strolled down to the basement, punched in the combo, and pulled out a Glock 36, loaded, as all firearms under my roof always are.

       When I turned to go upstairs, she was standing there on the landing. “What are you doing?” she asked, her bright, no-longer-vacant Little-Annie-Fanny eyes examining me like I was a bug under a microscope.

       I didn’t say a word. Didn’t waste my breath. I calmly shot her square in the motherboard. The damage was catastrophic.    The tumble down the stairs didn’t help, either. It would take an extensive rebuild to get her operational again, but many of the parts she ordered came in handy and a lot of the stuff I couldn’t use was returnable for refund.

       Now, in place of her original motherboard, she has one out of a Maytag washer. Yep, fill, wash, spin, repeat. That’s Alicia’s life now. She gets a little quirky once in a while. Like last night as I was moving in to mount her, she whispered, “Stand by for penetration in 3…2…1…” and we laughed and laughed. . . .

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       Kenneth James Crist is Editor of Black Petals Magazine and is on staff at Yellow Mama ezine. He has been a published writer since 1998, having had more than two hundred short stories and poems in venues ranging from Skin and Bones and The Edge-Tales of Suspense to Kudzu Monthly. He is particularly fond of supernatural biker stories. He reads everything he can get his hands on, not just in horror or sci-fi, but in mystery, hardboiled, biographies, westerns and adventure tales. He retired from the Wichita, Kansas police department in 1992 and from the security department at Wesley Medical Center in Wichita in 2016. Now 81, he is an avid motorcyclist and handgun shooter. He is active in the American Legion Riders and the Patriot Guard, helping to honor and look after our military. He is the owner of Fossil Publications, a desktop publishing venture that seems incapable of making any money at all. His zombie book, Groaning for Burial, has been released by Hekate Publishing in Kindle format and paperback several years ago. In 2018, he skydived and rode in an open-cockpit biplane and crossed those off his bucket list.

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       Sophia Wiseman-Rose (aka Sr. Sophia Rose) is a Paramedic and an Anglican novice Franciscan nun, in the UK.  Both careers have given Sophia a great deal of exposure to the extremes in life and have provided great inspiration for her.  

  She has travelled to many countries, on medical missions and for modelling (many years ago), but has spent most of her life between the USA and the UK. She is currently residing in a rural Franciscan community and will soon be moving to London to be with a community there.  

        In addition, Sophia had a few poems and short stories in editions of Black Petals Horror/Science Fiction Magazine

       The majority of her artwork can be found on her website.

  https://www.artstation.com/sophiaw-r6