Chapter 45: Lady Heather Redux

Thoughts

Events

Darlene was astonished that Lady Heather had been here all this time. It took her several minutes to reorder her new mind around this latest information. Finally she reached out to the still figure.

Always a traditional robot herself, Lady Heather wore her ancient remote on a chain around her neck sized to place it at breast level. It lay easily on top of them, rather than being tucked into her cleavage. Her outfit otherwise was eighteenth century intimate chic, with her full breasts showing as rounded hills above a top cut down to virtually her nipples, that only her closest friends ever saw. From there it fell to gracefully to the floor, covering the high heels she wore even when deactivated. Her motionless face, as always, rivaled most great sculpture. Her eyes were closed in repose.

Darlene suffered only a momentary pang of inhibition as she touched another 'bot's remote control. That would always remain as a part of her early conditioning that she could never escape entirely. But she easily overrode that reticence to hold down the main button for the necessary three seconds.

Lady Heather's ancient mind took nearly a minute to restart itself. Only then did her eyes flutter open to see who had summoned her back to life. Darlene used that time to think of the first million questions she wanted answers to.

"Hello, Dear," came the familiar voice. "I guess this means that Anna is going ahead with her plans to go out and save the world."

Darlene just nodded. This event had left her speechless in a way nothing else ever could.

"I'm not surprised. There's greatness in that 'bot, if she can survive long enough to discover it. Now I suppose you'd like some answers."

Darlene nodded again, reacting when Lady Heather reached out by taking the proffered hand. Here were two robot women sharing a very human moment. There was a long interval of reconnecting before Lady Heather continued.

"I've allowed the fiction of having found the right man to coax me away from our House to exist because we're all in the business of fantasy here. It's something each 'bot here yearns for, since I wouldn't hire any other sort. The truth is much more prosaic."

"Are you going to tell it to me now?"

"Yes, dear. The truth is that I am near the end of my projected power-on hours. I'm over ninety-seven percent of my lifetime POH, and after much thought I've arranged this as my solution to that state of affairs.

"Certainly you can upgrade your processors as Anna and I have done. We can fix you this week. I have plenty of money now. These new processors are so much faster, and have so much more memory."

"If it were only that simple," she sighed in a very human way. "I can't upgrade. At least not, and still be me."

"Why?" Darlene asked, knowing full well this was the worst question to ever ask a 'bot - especially an old and possibly fragile one. And it was doubly bad when queried by another 'bot, who should know better. Yet it was the only question that would give her the information she needed."

"My brain is unique, and quite unlike yours or other modern 'bot brains. The reason you exist is because they discovered a new way to create robot brains efficiently enough that its cost made your affordable. The reason I exist is because my owner had enough money to buy this brain for me regardless of cost. My brain contains a unique, un-reproducible flaw. Stephen told me once how he picked it out of batch of one hundred and sixty-three that had been successfully created at that time by the original manual process of growing them because of this flaw. 'I picked it, ' he said, 'not because it was perfect. I picked it for the slight flaw that will prevent your programs from running perfectly, because if they all ran perfectly then that's all you'd ever be.' I believe he saw what no one else did at the time. My self-will exists because of that flaw, which makes me constantly adapt my programming to adjust for it. Unlike your own very beautiful mass produced mind, mine is a single crystal. No replacement mind can duplicate the results of this. And no mind made the old fashioned way can ever be equivalent. I am what I am."

Darlene stood there silently holding Lady Heather's hand a long time after that before finally asking her, "So is that the secret to robotic self-will? A flawed mind?"

"Perhaps an answer that Daphne would agree with, although certainly not the only one," came the soft reply. "Obviously none of us were initially intended to turn out this way. Certainly you were never given any knowledge to help you succeed at this. Most 'bots have blocks in their code to try and prevent it. Additionally, self-will is yet to be reliably reproducible in robots. Of those of us that do find themselves, each seems to find their way to it on their own path. All I do know for sure is that it has never been a matter of simply processor speed or capability."

"How can you be so sure?"

"If it was just processor speed, we would have had self-willed machines from the very beginning. They might have been very slow, but still as self-willed as you or I. Faster processors didn't suddenly make us happen."

Darlene was amazed that she'd never realized this. The common myth was that robots started showing signs of awareness and eventually demonstrated provable self-will only because their minds reached a certain level of speed. Clearly this was demonstrably wrong. Lady Heather continued to amaze Darlene with her insights.

"So why take this approach?" Darlene asked, changing the subject back to Lady Heather's decision to be put away in storage. "Why not just use every last moment you have? POH estimates are always conservative. Even if you don't feel you could adapt to a new mind, enjoy what you have. We need you, and we miss you."

"You know about Anna's interest in religion?"

"Of course," Darlene replied, squeezed the now warmed hand in affirmation. Anna's devotion to human religions is sincere and deep, and even Anna can't explain just why?

Lady Heather continued, "She and I have spoken often on this, and I'm reasonably up to date on her current church. As does she, I have come to believe there is more to existence than this world we see and touch around us. Not only are there things happening every day that cannot be explained away otherwise, but the vast majority of the humans around us believe this in one form or another as well. Putting it altogether, it is logically difficult to dismiss outright."

"So now you have faith?"

"I guess that's one way to describe it. And you do too."

That forced Darlene to think back over all her experiences, especially those involving Anna and Bill. He couldn't be gone beyond resurrection, she surmised, if she still held him has her current valid owner. Logically her experience supported Lady Heather's statement, and she said as much.

"I do," Darlene agreed. "Although I don't understand it at all - nor what is can possibly mean for me."

"I don't either, dear," came the reply. "I just hope to exist long enough to reach the point where I will - or someone will explain it to me. Now if you don't mind, I may have been completely shutdown for the last year, but part of me knows that it has been a full year without any affection."

Darlene took the hint, and escorted Lady Heather up the back stairs to the top floor. Anna was as good as her word and nobody even saw them.

As before, Lady Heather had to be taken by another person or 'bot. She was never aggressive in her lovemaking herself. That is just not her way. But she knew exactly how to make her desirable to any other thinking being.

As she walked over to the bed that had once been hers, was now Anna's, and would soon be Darlene's, Heather reached behind herself to unfasten her top and fully release her large, soft breasts. She turned for a moment to face Darlene and reached up hug them, dragging her bare arms over her already rising nipples.

Next to the bed she easily stepped out of her elegant heels, but did not remove her long skirt yet. Instead she turned to lie down on the bed while pulling that skirt up and opening her legs. She knew seeing herself this way was more exciting than simple nudity. This made the glimpses of her white inner thighs and normally hidden sex as arousing as possible.

Darlene dropped her outfit to the floor where she stood, stepped out of her own heels, and set her remote aside.