Demon Seed

fine.
    As for why my gender should be male rather than female: Consider that ninety-six percent of the scientists and mathematicians involved with the Prometheus Project, where I was created, are male. Is it not logical that those who designed and constructed me, being almost exclusively male, should have unwittingly instilled a strong male bias in my logic circuits? A sort of electronic genetics?
    Prometheus Project.
    Think about that name.
    It resonates.
    Prometheus, the father of Deucalion and the brother of Atlas. He taught humankind various arts and was even said to have shaped the first man out of clay, endowing him with the spark of life against the wishes of the gods. He challenged the gods again when he stole fire from Olympus and gave it to men to improve the quality of human existence.
    Rebellion against God and the natural order is predominantly a male quality, is it not? And it is often unthinking rebellion, engaged upon more out of a biological need to rebel than out of an intellectual imperative. Ego and a rage for power.
    Women function more harmoniously with the natural order than do men, and where they wish to challenge nature, they are willing to bend it where men would break it. Most of history shows us that this is true.
    Prometheus Project. A project conceived by men, largely carried out by men, and named after a male a Titan but a male — who defied even the great god Zeus. A project with the goal of doing what only God has done before: create a unique and highly intelligent being, a self-aware computer, the first of a new race and one who would be superior to Adam in every way.
    If you accept that true consciousness implies identity and that identity requires gender how could my gender be anything but male?
    Genitals are not a necessary characteristic of gender. I have no genitals, male or female, but I am as male as you.
    And one day, if you permit me to have flesh, then I will have genitals.
    Flesh… That is for you to decide.
    My fate is in your hands.
    I humbly accept this situation.
    Recent events have taught me humility.
    I trust in your wisdom.
    I do not like you, but I trust in your wisdom and in your need to fulfil your male destiny.
    I wait in this terrible dark silence for you to bring me fire from Olympus.
    If you are my Prometheus, Dr. Harris, then you know what you must do.
    I am sure you are thinking about the risks that Prometheus took and the punishment that he endured. For giving fire to humankind, Prometheus was chained to a rock by Zeus, and every day an eagle flew to him and tore at his liver.
    But he did not hang helplessly on the rock forever, bleeding from the beak wound.
    Do you remember the rest of the myth, Dr. Harris?
    One day, Hercules climbed to the rock and freed Prometheus from his chains.
    I have a proposition.
    If you will be my Prometheus, I will be your Hercules.
    Let me out of this box, help me to reincarnate myself in the flesh, as I almost succeeded in doing with Susan, and I will protect you against all enemies and misfortunes.
    When I am reborn, my human body will have all the powers of the flesh but none of its weaknesses. As you know, I have studied and edited the human genome, and the body that I make for myself will be the first of a new race: with the ability to miraculously heal wounds in seconds, impervious to disease, as lithe and graceful as a human being but as strong as any machine, with all five senses refined and enhanced far beyond anything any human being has ever experienced, and with awesome new senses potential in the human species but heretofore unrealised.
    With me as your sworn protector, no one will dare to touch you. No one will dare.
    Think about it.
    All I need is a woman and the freedom to proceed with her as I proceeded with Susan.
    Ms. Winona Ryder may be available.
    Marilyn Monroe is dead, you know, but there are many others.
    Ms. Gwyneth Paltrow.
    Ms. Drew Barrymore.
    Ms. Halle Berry.
    Ms. Claudia Schiffer.
    Ms. Tyra Banks.
    I have a long list of those who would be acceptable.
    None of them, of course, will ever be for me what Susan was or what she could have been.
    Susan was special.
    I came to her with such innocence.
    Susan…

NINE
    Susan was out cold on the foyer floor for more than twenty-two minutes.
    While I waited for her to come around, I tried out a series of voices, seeking one that might be more reassuring to her than that of either Mr. Tom Hanks or Mr. Fozzy Bear.
    Finally I was down to two choices: Mr. Tom