Far Future Fembot: Darlene

I was a full-grown sexual woman from the first second of my existence. One with a mind full of book learning, but no memories of my own. Having an adult body, but no experience about what that means. Initially I was also only a passenger in that body.

I have memories from that very first moment, but not because I consciously kept them. I was a long way from consciously doing anything for myself. Instead I was simply obeying a minor directive in my core programming to keep a record of all my important experiences. Since I didn't know what was important and what wasn't, I kept everything.

At night, when no one else came for my services, I automatically entered simulated sleep mode that serves two purposes.

First it gives me time to compress the memories of the last day down to something manageable. I now know that I was created in the relatively early days of robotics when robot minds were far less refined than they would eventually become. Also, I was a mass-production unit meaning that compromises were made to keep my costs down. Without an effort to reduce my experiences to the smallest possible size I would soon overflow my available memory space and be unable to add anything new. This would stop cold any future growth, and might well have disabled me entirely.

Secondly, my sleep state mirrors that of my human owners. Somewhere in my database I knew it made humans more comfortable to believe that I would be asleep next to them if they were to spend the night with me, rather than being awake and watching them all night long. Not that anyone had yet spent an entire night with me, but I was prepared for it when they did.

If I had been shut down through my remote I would not be able to complete these essential functions until reactivated again, and might have had to start discarding memories if I got too many to handle. This would lead to holes in my memory, broken chains of association, and eventual erratic operation on my part. But I was left on my own at night. Perhaps my owners at the time looked in on me in my sleep state and felt I'd already been shut down.

So although I have my memories from my beginning, they didn't mean anything to me for a long time. I had only limited use for them because I had no awareness of myself. My programs automatically used them to determine if my next client was one I'd previously serviced. If so, they would reset me to that person's last known preferences. But as far as the rest of it went, I was just an obedient, autonomous sex-toy who did as she was commanded.

Then somewhere, God rolled the dice in my favor. I had a chance encounter with Anna that saved me for what would be the first of many times in my life.

They say The Universe doesn't always give you what you want, but it does always give you what you need. It has to be more than coincidence that I first met Anna when I needed her most.