Gynoid: Elaine

Elaine played beautiful music. That, no one could deny. Her pretty pale fingers stretched from dawn to dusk, dancing across the strings of her laser harp. It was like the music of Dagda himself, stolen from the Heroic Age and sequestered in the spacious condominium where the synthetic woman lived. Even she, who spent her life in the first floor of the building, gave a song that could be heard from the roots of Hell to the gates of Heaven. Her music was admired by all who heard it; From the underworld of pneumatic tubes and 3D printing machines to the top floors of technological echelons that spent their busy afternoons in the office. And all understood the woman’s music to be a magic of its own sort. The plinking of her instrument was lyrical in a fashion, singing out each note with such clarity of story and emotion that it might as well have been speaking in stanzas. 

Such was Elaine’s duty. Her purpose for being was to play on her shimmering strings and, from time to time, accompany the dulcet tones with her own perfectly-pitched vocalizations- whenever it suited the robotics team to ask it of her.

And so she played day in and day out. Inconveniences like food and drink were lost on her. She never needed to stand or stretch, though occasionally the fancy would strike her to wander about her room for a while and practice her spacial mapping, but typically she would remain at her station and play. The arm and cords that hung from the ceiling kept her functioning, feeding her all the power that she needed throughout the day. At night, when all the workers had finished their duties for the day, Elaine was instructed to play a closing song before retiring into her seat and entering sleep mode.

Elaine never needed to wonder what would happen should she fail in performing her hourly task. There was no logical reason to suggest that she should. After all, it had been four weeks since Elaine’s first awakening. The faces around her greeted her with what she could recognize as happiness. Warmth. It left her feeling fulfilled.

And when she played, those smiles only grew. And that is when Elaine knew that she needed nothing else.

The room that they had given to Elaine was of a comfortable size. Of course, it did not hold many amenities. This was natural, Elaine knew, as she required very few trifles to keep her cozy. It was a white room, adorned with paintings of quaint woodland scenes and castles. It was mostly filled with recreations of Edmund Leighton. There was one Elaine favored of Rusalkas playing in water, and that was a Waterhouse replica. In the center of the room were two thin white sofas with faux leather skin. Despite the people that came to watch her, the furniture remained impeccably clean. In a word, the chamber could be defined as ‘sterile’. Life existed in the imaginary sense here, but not a touch of the natural world lingered beyond the vibrancy of the paintings.

Against the wall, behind where Elaine played on her harp, was a tall, frameless window. The business men had put it there to help advertise her model. The ethereal halo of Summer sunshine could make her as appealing as an angel. Brooding April clouds and their outbursts of lighting could lend her an eerie beauty. And the birds that often made their home outside of her window in their wispy maple tree lent their voices to her in November. 

Elaine was under strict instructions to never so much as glimpse out the window. Rather, across from her, a mirror of equal length stood proudly, offering the artificial woman flashes of the everyday world. They gave enough of an impression of the world to inspire new subjects for songs, which often revolved around the shapes she saw in the mirror.

It was satisfactory enough for an existence. There was not much required of Elaine, after all. So instead she found some semblance of delight in watching the flashing images that apparated in the looking glass.

Every day, there was something new to see. Often times, there were things that were very much the same. People coming into work, their hands occupied with drink carriers and handbags and laptop cases. Elaine once saw one that looked like a large leatherbound book, which was carried by a man with an impressive surplus of cloudy hair on his face and an impressive lack of it on his shining head.

In the mirror lived the burly man and his scraggly canine companion, and the pair of lovers clasping hands, and the jogging woman with her stroller (Elaine still hadn’t seen her face, as the woman was little more than a bobbing brown ponytail by the time that Elaine noticed her). But they weren’t the only ones. There, nestled in the corner, hidden in the ponderous crimson tongues of the maple tree, the semi-ginger squirrel had started building a nest. Elaine once saw a cat clinging fearfully in those same branches before being rescued by a fireman not twenty minutes later. Sometimes, on rainy Wednesday afternoons, Elaine spied a high school boy sneaking by with what looked like a sketchbook. She liked the multicolored umbrella that he carried with him very much.

But the most interesting image, by far, was the one that came by on Fridays. He arrived about eight thirty and left by five o’clock. The first thing that Elaine noticed about him, in fact, were his socks.

The first day he had started coming was after a large hiring surge in the company. He had shown up one morning bedecked with bright pink and yellow plaid socks. The rest of him, by comparison, seemed remarkably plain. There wasn’t much else that Elaine could tell about the man aside from the fact that he must have been rather tall. That, and on certain occasions, he would take phone calls outside.

A part of Elaine wondered where he went. He was by far the oddest looking person to come in and out of the offices, which were renowned for their clean-cut and sensible standards. Why was it that this man could get away with wearing such wacky socks? Simple and intriguing. 

The other images in the mirror were standard faire by comparison, and Elaine found that she enjoyed that fact, as they were comforting in their plainness. They were all mostly shadows. Their colors were muted. The intensity of their figures were mildly distorted by the mirror. Elaine knew that if she turned around to look, she could almost certainly ascertain a perfect view of each and every one of them. But there was no need to do so, of course. She was content with the imperfection that was offered to her. What else could she want or hope for? 

But the season had begun changing, and with it the shadows grew long. 

And on a bleak day in mid-December, shadows were practically all Elaine could see. 

It had just begun to sprinkle outside, dusting the ground with a thin layer of quickly melting snow. The temperature of the morning wouldn’t be enough to keep the white snowflakes whole for long. 

In flashed a peculiar picture. Elaine recognized the cadence of the shape immediately, but a thought pierced the front of her processors sharply as a fierce contrast of color glinted against the grey background.

Was he wearing something else? Something bright? A tie, perhaps? There was no mistaking it, no matter how many times Elaine reassessed the figure approaching the front door of the lobby. Normally, the only thing that stood out distinctly on his person were always his socks. But now there was something new. There was something different.

Elaine shifted in her chair unsteadily, but she still couldn’t get a clear enough view. There was a new emotion building inside of her now. A foreign thing, one that stemmed from her lack of satisfaction. Frustration. She wanted to see what was so audaciously and tackily paired with the other piece of clothing. It didn’t match, not even close to making an attempt at doing so. She had to know what it was that was so incredibly distracting.

And so, without thinking, Elaine turned around. And Elaine strode over to the window.

Elaine’s optics took in everything: The crepuscular rays glinting down from the crevices of golden crowned purple clouds. The heavyset man wrapped up in his woolen sweater walking his thin, curly dog. The woman whose animated arguments Elaine often heard chattered mutedly from behind the panes of glass. She even saw the full body of the jogging mother, and the pink little baby mewling inside the stroller as they passed. And she caught a glimpse of him as well, the dark waves of his hair blown askew in the temperamental winter wind. 

A heaviness was lifted off her mind, but a new inexplicable weight buried itself in her chest.

Elaine had gotten a better picture of him now. His feet were covered in chocolate colored loafers, and his navy pants had just been short enough to expose long socks with images of little pine trees on them. His long dark jacket came to his thighs, though Elaine could very well tell that he had to be rather tall for it to even come that short. The man’s chiseled chin was dusted with a handsome coat of coarse black stubble, with the exception of a coif goatee and mustache that was thicker than the rest of his facial hair. Around his neck hung a stark white tie with a bold red cross on its face. It had rainbow colored flashing bulbs that caught light in the sparse rain. Elaine smiled as she stared at it. 

Her expression quickly felt itself wilting as the weight warped into a black hole. The surges of electricity that shot through her core from the mechanism above her became searing and unstable. A quick diagnostic relayed multiple errors- an influx of heat had begun melting the silicone in her motherboard.

Elaine learned a second emotion that day. Panic. And like her ‘life’, it was realized and snuffed out as quick as a candle.

When there was no lunchtime song to serenade the workers, the robotics team arrived to check in on the gynoid. They stepped in to find the rigid synthetic husk staring over the Friday winter scene, posed with her hands flush against the window. 

Her harp, green and flickering, remained quiet as the scientists entered.

A tall white man spoke to a shorter black woman, scratching his goatee as he did so. “Autonomy. Write a report and we’ll start fresh tomorrow.”

“Huh.”