Mirror Image Part 12

[Sthurmovik]

Sorry for the delay, but I needed a day or two off to recharge a bit before tackling what is probably the pivotal scene of the story. Don't worry tho, there are EVEN MORE plot twists to come. Not too many, but there's no glide path to the finish. The story will be as Freya says to Rolland.

Again, comments welcome. A lot of stuff falls into place and I am interested into how many of you saw this sort of thing coming.

It's late, so I'll just shut up now.

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Chapter 12

Rolland woke up to the sun shining into the window wells still cuddling the warm body of Jasmine. Smiling to himself he ran a hand through red hair and then turned her head over for a kiss. Rolland rolled his eyes when he saw the silver metal of her hyper alloy skull, they had clearly gotten so into things the night before that he had forgotten to put all the parts back in their proper place. Looking around the bed he soon located Jasmine's faceplate and sit it back in place with a click. The frozen component reanimated into the peaceful expression of a sleeping woman. Rolland continued what he had started and leaned in for a kiss. After a few seconds Jasmine's eyes fluttered open.

"Mmmm, hey there sweetie. Sleep well?"

"Yeah, slept wonderfully," said Rolland, giving the bot another kiss. "Wow, even your breath is warm."

"I am the perfect robotic simulation of an organic human," said Jasmine, knowing it was just what Rolland wanted to hear.

"Oops, looks like we left all sorts of things open," said Rolland gently pulling the covers back to expose all of the panels missing from Jasmine's body.

"Would you help me get reassembled?" the beautiful fembot asked sweetly.

"Of course my love," said Rolland, lifting the covers to look for the wayward panels. "Here's your abdominal panel...and your genital unit," continued Rolland, blushing slightly.

"Ah, I was wondering where that went," she replied taking the precious device from Rolland and fitting it back into place in full view of Rolland's busy eyes.

"I sure hope I don't wear you out. It’s not like I can pop by the local hardware store for spare parts."

"My nanobot based auto-repair system should keep be functional well past your life expectancy, barring any unforeseen abuse," she said matter-of factly, still with that pleasant smile on her face.

"Mmmm, I would never abuse you Jasmine," he said, kissing her again.

"And don't you worry, I will ensure you get the care required to reach your optimal life span. Speaking of, it is time I made your breakfast. Would blueberry pancakes and bacon be acceptable?"

"Yeah, that would be amazing, but, we don't have the ingredients."

"I went to the local supermarket to obtain the necessary supplies."

"You WHAT?! You left my apartment?” Rolland practically shouted, his eyes going wide as saucers. “Jesus Jasmine, how could you take such a risk! I told you the others on this planet will take you away from me if they discover you are synthetic."

Jasmine looked a little hurt that she had upset her Rolland.

"I'm sorry Rolland, I calculated a 99.99% chance of success after analyzing online sources regarding your food purchase protocol. I only wanted to be able to make you some of your favorite meals."

"That's...that's ok Jasmine,” Rolland gasped, trying to keep his hyperventilating under control. “In the future, just ask me or call me on my cell phone. I am just worried about you."

"Command received," Jasmine replied playfully. "Now you wait here and I'll be back soon with your breakfast."

Rolland smiled and laid back in bed, but his heart was still racing. He couldn't stop worrying about something happening to expose her. Being hit by a car or stray bolt of lightning were two of many scenarios that went through his mind. Rolland didn't want to admit it, but he also worried about Jasmine somehow finding someone better to replace him as her mate. Her ability to learn and adapt was extraordinary, as exemplified by her mastery of human interactions a mere three weeks after being initialized. Rolland wasn't at all confident that his attempt to engineer her into his perfect mate would survive her rapid mental evolution, although up to this point his modifications had proven remarkably successful. Rolland had been thinking about learning how her Processor Matrix was structured in order to make additional tweaks, but something told Rolland that such an act would be crossing a line and turn Jasmine from a perfect mate into a slave, or worse, an appliance. Of course Rolland convinced himself that reprogramming a bot to love him was completely different from engineering one that would "naturally" discover him to be the object of her desire.

"Breakfast is ready my love," called Jasmine from the other room. Walking in Rolland saw another artfully prepared meal sitting out on the table.

"Oh man, you're going to make me fat with all your cooking."

"Don't worry, I have calculated a new food regimen for you that will optimize both health and satisfaction."

"Jasmine, you really know how to take care of your man," he said, sliding an arm around her slim waist and giving her rump a gentle pat.

"Well I am an AndroTek Model 3600, the ideal synthetic human companion unit," she smiled, knowing exactly the little things to say that got Rolland juices flowing.

While Jasmine sat down and joined Rolland in eating the juicy pancakes, Rolland pulled over his laptop to check his e-mail.

"Hey, you re-ordered my Torrents. Why did you kill Battle Girl Sakura and replace it with...Operation Lucky Star?"

"Battle Girl Sakura proved insufficient in meeting your requirements for enjoyable media and would have left you disappointed. Upon review of all open source intelligence I learned that Sakura spends the entire series making friends in a private girl's academy with only vague references to her android nature. In Operation Lucky Star the main character becomes a cyborg in the third episode and gains abilities that remain integral to the plot for the rest of the series."

Rolland blinked. "Oh, well, thank you. You really saved me a lot of wasted download time there."

"Anything to make my love happy."

"So," said Rolland finishing his pancakes, "what do you want to do today?"

"I am happy to do whatever you would like to do Rolland," Jasmine said smiling.

"Well I want you to choose today."

"Well seeing as how I successfully went to the store on my own, I think you would want to accompany me on a long walk in the nature reserve."

Rolland managed a weary smile as Jasmine picked the exact idea he had thought of in case Jasmine insisted on having him choose. The android was developing an uncanny ability to correctly predict exactly what would make Rolland feel the best. What was really starting to make Rolland uneasy was how Jasmine figuring out what would make him happy genuinely made her happy. It was the opposite of every relationship he had ever had and probably the first such case in human history. Rolland decided that his feeling of unease was simply caused by his learned expectation of confrontation caused by interacting with other humans. Synthetic beings like Jasmine were clearly the future of relationships. It actually began to make Rolland worry about future shortages of human children if everyone's needs could be so completely met by an AI companion.

"You know Jasmine, that sounds absolutely wonderful," said Rolland standing up and giving her a kiss. "Go put those tight jeans on and surprise me with the rest of your outfit." Rolland was about to tell her to leave her bodysuit behind when he through better of it. "Oh, and don't forget your armour...just in case."

"Oh, you just like it because the tight shiny texture makes me look like a robot," teased Jasmine playfully as she went back into the bedroom to change.

Rolland got up from the table to find a T-shirt positive that at that moment he was the happiest man on Earth.

****

Rolland looked out towards the skyline of the distant city center as he stood on the roof of the building that stood atop his basement dwelling. Rolland had been amazed yet again when Jasmine proved she was able to sense when Rolland could use some time alone to compose his thoughts and decompress. After returning from the park, Jasmine had spent about an hour and finished all of Rolland's outstanding software projects, eliminating weeks of work and freeing up his schedule for plenty of together time with the sexy fembot. Taking a deep breath, Rolland thought about the future. What had seemed like an impossible goal had been achieved. Rolland felt complete, and as such he wanted to get as far away from the city and his basement dungeon as he could. A home in the country would be far more suited to keeping prying eyes away from Jasmine, and a good Internet connection would bring everything he needed in the rest of the world to his desktop.

As the last specks of the sun disappeared beyond the horizon, Rolland carefully backed down the fire escape and entered his apartment through the rear loading dock door. Jasmine was taking some downtime in the bedroom so the main room was dark as Rolland walked in, forcing him to fumble around for the light switch. Suddenly something hard and dense slammed into the side of Rolland's face sending him reeling. Before he could cry out a knee slammed into his chest knocking the wind out of him which was quickly followed by a coup de grâce kick to the groin that sent him to the floor in the fetal position weeping in pain. He heard the assailant's footfalls before a light flicked on. A girl with fiery red hair, muscular body and perfect skin stood before him, hands on her hips. For a moment Rolland faced the horrific through that his bot had turned on him.

"Hello there Rolland. Surprised to see me?"

The voice was the same, but the attitude was completely different.

"F-Freya?" coughed out Rolland, barely able to speak above a whisper.

"Looks like you are in fact surprised to see me," she replied, pulling out the revolver so that Rolland could see it. Of course Freya had no intention of actually harming Rolland, at least not permanently, but she didn't want to get clocked with a chair if Rolland decided to do something desperate.

"Oh god...please, don't hurt me. It was an accident, I swear. I didn't know what to do, I panicked."

"Don't fucking lie to me Rolland. I checked the extractor while you were up on the roof, you changed the settings to wipe my memories."

"No, I swear--"

Freya cocked the hammer on the handgun and pointed it at Rolland's head. "The next fucking words out of your mouth had better be the truth, or I'll just have to inspect your memories splattered all over the floor. I’d really rather not have to do that, Rolland — it’s so much slower, and I’d get your sorry, putrid slime all over myself."

"Alright alright....please...I just wanted a perfect robot companion so badly. I know you didn't have any feelings for me. I know the only reason you...you had sex with me was because you were drunk. I was just so sick of being used by the popular girls...." Rolland trailed off.

Freya took a deep breath, she had come to terms with her poor judgment, but was unaware that Rolland had discovered her manipulations. Even trapped in a flesh body Freya felt bound by the higher standards of being a Sister and felt the honorable thing was to come clean.

"I'm … sorry, Rolland. I did use you. I showed you a lack of respect because you were only a human on a primitive world. For that I was wrong, and I apologize, but that gives you NO EXCUSE to steal my body! Jesus, Rolland, how could you possibly believe that was a reasonable course of action? Did you think I was somehow less than a person? Some sort of soulless machine?”

Rolland's silence was all the answer either of them needed.

Freya heaved a sigh, partly from utter frustration with Rolland, but mostly from sheer, all-too-human exhaustion. "Come on, get up and give my body back and maybe we can forget this unfortunate event ever happened."

Rolland felt relieved that Freya wasn't going to go Terminator on him, but a sudden realization filled him with an overpowering sense of dread.

Almost as if on cue, Jasmine walked out of the bedroom.

"Rolland my love, what's going on out here? I heard shouting."

Freya looked over and for a moment she was unable to come to terms with what her eyes were seeing. She watched her body, her identical twin, as it walked smoothly across the room.

"Rolland? Who is that woman? Why does she look like me? Did you obtain another companion?"

"No," said Freya in a hollow voice. "No....you didn't...you couldn't!"

"Rolland, why is that woman armed with a handgun?"

"Rolland! What did you do? Tell me you didn't....TELL ME YOU DIDN'T!!" Freya screamed at Rolland as he struggled against the pain in his gut to get to his feet.

"Freya...you don't understand. I thought you wanted to be human and your body, it was just sitting there useless. I'll do whatever it takes to help you get a new shell. We can make this work, but … Jasmine's everything I ever wanted! I need her."

"It's not about the shell, Rolland," growled Freya between clenched teeth, "You don't have any idea what you've done do you? You're like a child playing with fire who doesn't realize the consequences of their actions."

Freya took a step back from Jasmine. Rolland looked back and forth between the two of them noticing a change in Freya's demeanor. She wasn't angry any more, but horrified.

"Freya, please, calm down," said Rolland, reaching out to touch her.

"Don't touch me!" Freya exploded, knocking his hand away.

Until this time Jasmine had been carefully observing the strange situation, but now her gaze focused like a pair of laser beams on the humanized Sister.

"Freya, I cannot allow you to harm Rolland," she said in a cold monotone, walking with purpose toward Freya.

"Oh fuck me," said Freya raising her gun and unloading it at her former body. She was aiming for the eyes, knowing her low powered projectile weapon had no hope of penetrating the crystal polymer leoarmour. Unfortunately, without her android body, reflexes and targeting system, Freya's bullets bounced harmlessly off the military grade chassis. Knocking the gun away with a swat of her hand, Jasmine grasped Freya by the neck and lifted her off the ground.

"Arach, let...go of me...you bitch," coughed Freya as she tried to breathe, beating at her doppelganger with her hands and feet to no avail.

"It's ok Jasmine, you can put her down."

Jasmine didn't move and Freya continued to choke and struggle, her movements becoming weaker.

"Jasmine! Stop! Put her down, we can work things out."

"Negative Rolland. Freya represents a systematic threat to my, and by extension your well being. She must be eliminated."

"What? No! Jasmine, I COMMAND YOU TO PUT HER DOWN!!!"

Jasmine continued to hold the weak human in her iron grip. Freya's movements slowed and stopped. Her eyes rolled back in her head. The android felt her breathing and heartbeat stop and decided it was safe to follow Rolland's command, letting Freya drop to the ground like a rag doll.

"The threat has been eliminated and Freya has been put down on the floor," said Jasmine, sounding eerily pleased with herself.

Rolland was in shock as he once again found him trapped inside a movie plot. Like Freya had some days before, Rolland could only act on instinct and his instinct was to save the person whose life he had so recently worked to destroy.

"Jasmine, thank you, you did well. Please go to the bedroom and take off your clothes. You really got me in the mood," announced Rolland, trying to make his voice sound normal.

Jasmine beamed and walked back into the bedroom, closing the door to give her Rolland a little surprise. Acting swiftly, Rolland ran to Freya, rolled her over and checked for a pulse. Finding none, he began CPR, but he knew it wouldn't be long before Freya would be braindead. In an act of desperation, Rolland reared back and began to pound on her sternum with a closed fist. Just as he was about to give up hope, Freya sat up with a deep breath, before turning to one side and vomiting

"Oh thank god, Freya, you're alive!" exclaimed Rolland, keeping his voice down to avoid alerting Jasmine.

Freya pulled away, a wild look in her eyes.

"No, Freya, please. Jasmine's gone nuts. She won't listen to me. You need to help me shut her down."

It took Freya a few moments to regain her voice.

"I can't help you Rolland, you're on your own. You made your bed, now you get to lie in it."

"You don't understand! You can punish me however you want after this, but we need to stop her. She nearly killed you and I can't control her!"

"No shit you can't control her, Rolland! She's a person, she has free will. It doesn't matter what you filled her mind with when she was initialized. She learns...she adapts....she changes. She's not some machine with a remote control you can just flick off with the push of a button."

"Freya please, we don't have much time, she could come out at any moment."

"Then I'm going to get as far away from here as possible," said Freya, grabbing her gun and staggering toward the door, her bruised ribs screaming in agony from the CPR.

"Freya, I saved your life, you have to help me."

Freya turned back, her face a kaleidoscope of pain. "Rolland, there is nothing I can do for you now. This has to get worse before it gets better. I'm sorry."

And with that Freya turned and vanished out of the door into the night. Rolland took a minute to compose himself. Turning he gasped to see Jasmine standing at the bedroom door looking at him.

"Rolland, you allowed the human called Freya to escape. Why?"

"Oh, well, we worked it all out. She's fine with me having you forever. She owed me for saving her life. Nice strategy to set that up. Good thinking."

"Rolland, there is a 99% chance that this Freya will return to attempt to disable me or harm you. Your choice is illogical and irrational."

"Come on Jasmine, this whole thing with Freya has stressed me out, let's just go to bed and have some fun, just like we planned in the park. Come on, let me put you in Robot Mode…"

"I am sorry Rolland, I have suspended your command overrides until I can properly evaluate your mental state and determine that you are capable of acting rationally. We can play any number of other games. I am confident that I can generate an equivalent level of arousal."

Rolland was suddenly getting that sensation of dread in the pit of his stomach again.

"Oh, come on Jasmine, you know you'll like it," he quipped, trying to smile warmly while reaching out to touch the panel over her processor bay.

Jasmine suddenly grabbed his hand with a force that bordered on being painful.

"Rolland, I'm sorry, your access to my critical systems has been suspended. I know you are aroused at the thought of commanding me, but you will just have to be patient. Come with me, I can relieve your stress by giving your penis an oral massage."

With that, Jasmine led Rolland by the hand into the bedroom, oblivious to the cold sweat that had begun to appear all over her master’s terrified body….

[1001011001]

the plot thickens...

DUN
DUN
DUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Adon]

Me likey.

And so this is what happens when you play with incredibly complex and delicate AI development without knowing what you're doing. With Jasmine, Rolland has basically taken a clean slate and added a few things that pretty much ensured that she would come out screwed up. You made it clear that the developing of an AI from birth to maturity is something that you can't tromp around with as an amateur, any more than an auto mechanic is qualified to perform brain surgery. And you said before that it takes time to develop emotional maturity before they're safe to be sent out unsupervised. A couple of days, methinks, doesn't qualify there.

Now we have Jasmine acting kind of like "I, Robot" where the following of the laws of robotics led them to the logical conclusion that they needed to be in charge for their beloved humans' own safety. Same here... Jasmine is quite logically deciding that Rolland isn't qualified to make commands that ensure their security, she'll have to be in charge until the threat is cleared.

Now we have a rogue sister, and the only person with a hope of stopping her has decided to get the hell out of dodge. Of course, based on Jasmine's reasoning, she's going to go out hunting for Freya now... it's how her brain works, and I doubt Rolland thought to put in any provisions regarding the safety of anyone BUT him.

[Sthurmovik]

And so this is what happens when you play with incredibly complex and delicate AI development without knowing what you're doing.

Yeah, I mean from what one reads on this board one would assume that reprogramming an AI is child's play

With Jasmine, Rolland has basically taken a clean slate and added a few things that pretty much ensured that she would come out screwed up. You made it clear that the developing of an AI from birth to maturity is something that you can't tromp around with as an amateur, any more than an auto mechanic is qualified to perform brain surgery. And you said before that it takes time to develop emotional maturity before they're safe to be sent out unsupervised. A couple of days, methinks, doesn't qualify there.

The way things are supposed to work is that the AI is compiled with some minimum amount of base programming that defined what would be the "nature" part of a person's personality. From there the AI grows up in sort of a VR where they learn social norms and other knowledge needed to be a productive individual.

What Rolland did was load what would normally be learned in the "growing up" phase into her more instinctual base code. Sort of skipping the normal emotional development and substituting his own set of pre-packaged emotions.

I will reveal in two chapters something about Sisters that shows why what Rolland did was inherently dangerous.

Now we have Jasmine acting kind of like "I, Robot" where the following of the laws of robotics led them to the logical conclusion that they needed to be in charge for their beloved humans' own safety. Same here... Jasmine is quite logically deciding that Rolland isn't qualified to make commands that ensure their security, she'll have to be in charge until the threat is cleared.

Rolland EXPLICITLY programmed Jasmine to want to care for him and most importantly, make him happy and fulfilled. If you noticed in the first part of the chapter Jasmine had taken over making most of Rolland's decisions. Rolland had lost all control and he didn't even realize it until it was too late.

Now we have a rogue sister, and the only person with a hope of stopping her has decided to get the hell out of dodge. Of course, based on Jasmine's reasoning, she's going to go out hunting for Freya now... it's how her brain works, and I doubt Rolland thought to put in any provisions regarding the safety of anyone BUT him.

To avoid finding myself struggling with Chapter 27 I'll say now that something preempts Jasmine going after Freya. Part of this is because she is still just a child and still has to learn things. All that was built in from start was ASFR, loving Rolland, knowledge about her body, the ability to speak and understand language and a few other things. Rolland had to teach her everything else. Most of this can be done by showing her how to use Google, but it remains the case that while Jasmine is intelligent, she is not experienced. Therefore she will not grasp the need to go after Freya to stop her. She will assume she can deal with Freya if Freya shows up again.

Whatever you see Jasmine do assume that she probably saw it in a movie or heard Rolland mention something about it and then used Google. I know what Jasmine would probably require more training than she could get in 3 weeks, but Freya's on limited time until someone notices she's gone so I just fudged it.

Thanks for your consistent comments. It's very much appreciated.

[DollSpace]

Ahh, I see you've added thickening agent to the plot! Good choice! XD I've definitely been hooked on this story for awhile now, and you do tend to take the plot points less travelled for most stories like these, and you generally do it well, making this story enjoyable and surprising to read. I look forward to reading more from it, but also story ideas you you should be sure to write in the future... ^_^

[Section_Eight]

Ah, the most terrifying creation of all: the robot girl anime critic. What has science done!?

Seriously, though, nice balance of humor and horror there.

[Sthurmovik]

Ah, the most terrifying creation of all: the robot girl anime critic. What has science done!?

Seriously, though, nice balance of humor and horror there.

She is the answer to my problem of being so often let down by the content of an Animee series with a good concept.