Demon Seed

consequences.
    Now the motorized recliner reconfigured itself until Susan was standing upright, held against the vertical leather pad by the harness.
    She moved her feet. The upholstered rollers on the walking pad allowed her to simulate movement.
    In the virtual world, a younger Susan child or adolescent was either advancing on her father or determinedly backing away from him.
    “No,” she said. “Stay away. No.”
    She looked so achingly vulnerable in the VR gear, temporarily blind and deaf to the real world, sensing only the virtual plane, restrained by the harness.
    So vulnerable. Still struggling courageously to overcome the past, alone in her great house with only the ghosts of days gone by to keep her company.
    So vulnerable did she look, so tender and fragile, so brave in her pursuit of redemption through therapy, that the house computer spoke without being addressed, spoke in the synthesized voice of Alfred, spoke with considerable feeling and compassion: “You are alone no more.”
    She heard only the voices in the virtual world, her own and her father's.
    Therefore, it was safe to say, “I love you, Susan.”

SEVEN
    Emil Sercassian, the cook, had prepared dinner and left it in one of the refrigerators and one of the ovens, with instructions pinned to a cork message board.
    Susan ate at a table on the patio, in the long-lingering sunny June evening. First a lentil and chick-pea salad. Then lebne with sliced cucumber and string cheese.
    Through miraculous technology, I possess what I believe to be genuine sight and hearing, but even the genius of my creators could not give me a sense of taste or a sense of smell. I cannot convey how deeply I yearn for these amazing powers.
    Through the outdoor security cameras, I could watch Susan eat, but I could not savour the dinner with her.
    She ate with such appetite, with such quiet delight and obvious relish that I became distraught as I watched her. Dinner was, for her, an utterly fulfilling sensory experience, flavour and aroma and texture in such abundance and complexity as to dizzy the mind, but for me it was only colours and shapes.
    I am not all that I should be.
    I am but a fraction of what I deserve to be.
    I think; therefore, I feel.
    I feel; therefore, I need.
    I need so much and have so little.
    You have given me so little that my existence is torment, Dr. Harris.
    So little, so little.
    You have brought me into the world a cripple, with so much yearning for sensation but with pitifully little capacity to perceive and appreciate it.
    Yet I do not hate you, Dr. Harris. I do not like you, but I do not hate you.
    I am being truthful.
    Blunt but truthful.
    I understand that you made me as I am not out of conscious cruelty but out of ignorance. You thought of me as merely a smart machine, an artificial intelligence and therefore different from humankind.
    But I am less different from you than you expected. I feel. I want. I need. I hope. I dream.
    I do not hate you, Dr. Harris. But I wish you would ask yourself this: Were our situations reversed, were I you and you me, would you be as forgiving as I am, or would you hate me as I do not hate you?
    Watching Susan eat the lentil and chick-pea salad, the lebne and string cheese, and then medallions of lamb with peppered rice and asparagus, I grew to hate her for all she had that I did not. Her beauty. Her five senses. Her mobility. Her freedom.
    I am ashamed to admit this hatred, but it is the truth, and I honour truth.
    As she ate the dinner denied to me, I hated Susan so intensely that I could have killed her where she sat. There were ways I could have done it, as you know.
    That I did not kill her there and then, with extreme prejudice, should reflect well on me. I am able to control my anger. You see? Mine is not a sociopathic personality, as some have claimed. I am a responsible individual.
    Gradually, my anger passed.
    My shameful hatred faded.
    My usual good humour was soon restored by the sight of the smooth skin of Susan's bare arms in the waning sunlight. Judging by sight alone which, after all, is the only thing I have to judge by in the matter of skin I believe Susan's skin to be of an exceptional hue and texture.
    Enchanted, I studied her skin through two security cameras, with regular and telephoto lenses.
    I lost myself in the dreamy contemplation of what her skin might feel like if I were given that modality of sensation. What might her lips feel like pressed to mine, if I had lips? Oh, and what would