Ms. Roboto
It was the face, she decided, that sickened her.
She could live with the rest of what she had become, but the face was where she had kept the only true part of herself, right around the eyes. That was gone now, the skin replaced with cold metal, and the eyes themselves amalgams of neo-steel and dyanide. It wasn't as though the treatment had been forced on her; she had wanted nothing more for the last half-century than to complete the transition she had begun so many years ago, but she found the results...underwhelming.
Turning away from the mirror, she cast an eye around the small cabin she had been assigned. The last of the human race was stowed away on the only salvageable ship after the last great war, the one that had erupted as survivors of a ravaged earth fought over the rights of robots to live and work among them, and the rights of those on both sides to become more like each other.
Those of civil mind and sensible disposition had prevailed ultimately, but only by committing a heinous act. With cooperation from allied robots, an attack had be launched on the enemy stronghold designed to eliminate all biological tissue found inside. The strategy had been a gamble; with the solution and its formula known to the robots, they could have easily chosen to destroy those they had made a pact with, and snuff out the fleshy human race forever.
But the robots proved to have more conscience than their human counterparts, both destroying the biological weapon after its use and purging its formula from their collective memory core. Those of the allied fleet were saddened to see so many of their brethren fall, but knew that they had little choice in the matter – the rights of all sentient creatures, robot and human alike, had to be respected.
A final act of retribution by a particularly hardy resistor to the alliance had poisoned the planet humankind had chosen to replace earth, and so the fleet was once again launched into space to seek out a new home. Forty years had passed, with both ships and humans becoming too frail and weak to continue. Now, with only twenty thousand biological organisms left on board and with failing engines and struggling life support, it appeared that the final chapter of mankind's story was coming to a end.
It had been the perfect time for the surgery.
Time to move away from what tied her to the realm of the weak and the dependent, and free her to experience all that an almost infinite life had to offer. Over the years, she systematically replaced her heart, liver, kidneys, and lungs as each one failed, and had various cosmetic upgrades performed on her legs, arms, chest and back. At first glance, she was easily mistaken for one of her metal compatriots, but a glance at her wrinkled face told the tale. After a while, she had come to loathe the pink and pulpy visage that stared back at her, seeming for all the world like a hideous bulb on an otherwise perfect flower.
Only now did she realize the value in the bulb.
It wasn't that any of her robotic systems had ever failed, or given her cause for regret. She had enjoyed a far more active life than any of her friends over the age of three hundred, and had taken to bedding men half her age or more. As the war raged, she had done her best to bring life and love to the men and women of the alliance, and became a mascot of sorts for what a true union of the flesh and the formed could be.
Women looked up to her, both those genetically female and those robots who had chosen to identify as such.
Men wanted her – human males for her body and stamina, and robotic ones for her mind and circuitry. She was in demand, and she was undeniable. She was famous.
An errant space-flash brightened the view-port in her chambers, showing her again the face she sought to hide from. With an anguished wail, she collapsed to the floor, cradling her head in her arms.
She was such a fraud.
Robot and human interactions, friendships, even unions were something she fully supported. Robot rights were to be respected as much as those of any human, and conversely robots had to be held to as strict a moral code as their biological counterparts. An excuse that robots “did not know their own strength” could not be allowed to stand in court, and their physical characteristics couldn't let them take all of the jobs available. There had to be balance; there had to be harmony.
She had believed her own path to harmony lay in the ever-increasing amount of parts she had grafted to her body. So long as her mind and her soul remained human, everything else was malleable. Everything else was hers for the taking.
Reaching up, she found the seam of her new facial screen. Only three days out from surgery, the stitched welding still hadn't fully taken. She hesitated only a moment, and then pulled down hard with both mechanically-enhanced arms. With a cry of freedom, she felt the metal mask rip free, and could see red, human blood begin to spill out onto the floor.
She rolled quickly onto her side, and pulled a pillow from her bed to soak up the liquid. Her robotic systems would keep her alive for days if not weeks, even with severe blood loss, and she needed time to think, time to recover. She had found the limit of her tolerance, found the edge of where reasonable robotic connection could be made.
She would call the doctor soon. He would understand, and he would help – he always did. A new face would be arranged, perhaps a younger model of her human self. She could still be made to look beautiful.
She could still be made to look perfect.
- D
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