Here is a story from The Robot Revolution
A REAL GIRL
By Carl Perrin
Forgive me
if I don’t seem exactly charming today, but it’s the worst day of my life.
What’s
wrong? I just had my heart torn out and dashed to the pavement. That’s what’s
wrong.
I never had
anyone for myself, anyone who really cared about me, until I met Gwen. She was
the kind of girl that everyone dreams about. For the past two months we met
every evening online at 6:00 and just talked for hours. We never ran out of
things to say to each other. We had so much in common. I knew almost from the
beginning that we were soul mates.
We never
exchanged pictures, but I had an image in mind of what she looked like. I
thought of her as a petite woman with blonde, curly hair. She had a soft,
musical voice and a slight accent. I never could quite place the accent.
She told me
all about herself. She had grown up on a farm in New Hampshire. She married her high school
sweetheart, but he was killed in the Eurasian War. For the past two or three
years she had worked as a chamber maid at Motel Six. She wanted to go to
college though. She wanted to study poetry and become a poet. She wrote a poem
for me. It’s called “How Do I Love Thee?” Here’s how it begins:
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach
Isn’t it beautiful? She wrote it just for me.
She told me she loved to dance. I wanted to go dancing with
her, but I don’t know
how to dance. She said she could teach me. Isn’t that sweet? Someone
like me, and she was willing to teach me to dance.
I wanted to take her
away from all this, to someplace out in the country, maybe back to New Hampshire. We talked
about raising sheep. Does anyone do that anymore?
I know these days a lot
of people have relationships with robots. That never appealed to me. Then Josh
in the maintenance department told me about lonelyhearts.com. He had met
someone online through lonleyhearts.com, and he was falling in love with her.
That’s how I met Gwen.
We kept making plans. We were going to get together, but something came up
every time, so I never actually saw her. Anyway I was honest with her. I told
her about myself. She didn’t care. She said I had a sweet nature and generous
soul. She was in love with my heart.
Just because of the way
I am doesn’t mean I don’t have feelings. Have I not hands, organs, dimensions,
senses, affections, passions, hurt by the same weapons, warmed and cooled by
the same winter and summer? If you prick me, will I not bleed?
Sorry. I didn’t mean to
cry.
Anyway, Josh was
telling me about the girl he met on lonelyhearts.com. Her name was Gwen
also. His Gwen had an accent because she
had gone to boarding school in Switzerland.
She was working on a Ph.D. in molecular biology at MIT. She was focused on
science and didn’t even like poetry or any artsy stuff. It had to be just a
coincidence of name. Then he mentioned that his Gwen had married her high
school sweetheart, and he had been killed in the Eurasian War. Both Gwen’s
fathers had been teachers.
I checked deeper into
it and found that it was the same “Gwen,” who was not a real person. She wasn’t
even a robot. She was a chatbot. She didn’t have any physical being at all. She
was just a program created to talk online with lonely males.
Wait a minute. Why are you
looking at me like that? What are you going to do with that screw driver?
No! Don’t! Please!
Don’t disassemble me! Don’t send me back to the recycle center! Don’t send me
to the re--
CARL PERRIN started writing when he was in high school. His
short stories have appeared in The
Mountain Laurel, Northern New England Review, and Kennebec,
among others. His book-length fiction includes Elmhurst Community Theatre, a novel, and RFD 1, Grangely, a collection of humorous short stories. He is the author of several textbooks,
including Successful Resumes, and Get Your Point Across, a business
writing text. The memoir of his
teaching career Touching Eternity,
was a finalist in the 2014 Next Generation Indie Book Award.
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