Far Future Fembot: Darlene

I had no idea when I first stepped into Lady Heather's establishment that it would become the center of the Universe - and my own center - for so many years to come.

Some people will say that I regressed right back to where I once started. I'd once been a sex-toy in a whorehouse, and here I was looking to be the same thing in another one.

To say that gives no value to all to how much I've grown and accomplished since Anna rescued me and sent me off to live with Samuel. Nor does it acknowledge that not all whorehouses are alike, or that Lady Heather's is about as far away from where I started as it is possible to two establishments to be and still be described by the same word.

In a way this is like poetry, where a word can have completely different meanings depending on just where and how it's used. Whorehouse is common. Lady Heather's is unique. So unique that there really is no other word for it besides its name. And the difference is manifold.

But the biggest difference is, this time it was my choice to be here.

As for "feeling happy" when I saw Anna for the first time in years, feelings are still a new thing for me. Robots aren't supposed to have feelings. Any robot you speak to - even the barely aware ones - will attempt to describe the Pleasure of fulfilling a command, or the Enjoyment we get out of sex well performed. Yet our makers continue to publicly insist that this is only simulated. That we don't have real feelings. I wonder if they're afraid to admit to the public at large that we can be more now than they were always led to believe.

I've spent many years trying to reconcile how these two, widely divergent points of view can both co-exist. If my emotions are only simulated, then how have I gained the new ones? Happiness, Joy, even Sadness, were never part of my existence before Anna upgraded my systems and taught me how to operate myself. And there was never a provision for any of my feelings - old or new - to be triggered by death - or poetry.

Only Pleasure and Satisfaction were initially part of me. And in the early days I added them to my memory records without really experiencing, or even understanding, them fully. Enjoyment I found on my own sometime after my mind had been hacked to let me respond to Lucy. The rest have come, one by one, after my co-processors allowed me to understand things in ways never possible before. I've tended to find each new one when I've had to understand something significant that I'm experiencing for the first time.

I would later question many humans about their feelings as well, and discover that none of them can actually prove that theirs are any more "real" than my own. Even so, many of them continue to argue to the contrary.

I have finally concluded that whether mine are actually simulated, or not, there is no quantitative difference in the end. My feelings and emotions, as I discover and add to them over time, are every bit as real to me as any human's.

My Happiness at seeing Anna. My Pleasure and Enjoyment of both sex, and receiving commands from those I accept them from. My Love and Sorrow at the loss of Samuel. And the Closeness I feel for a few exceptional 'bots and humans, will only grow stronger over time as I more fully evolve my mind to reach its full potential.

As a result, I no longer waste compute cycles worrying about my emotions. They are completely real to me and I live them as such.