Laura had always prided herself on her rational and by the numbers approach to life. On many an occasion it had spared her from reliving the hurt her mother had dealt her in childhood.
As time passed Laura had become a prisoner of her status quo, caged behind the walls she herself had raised. As much as Laura loved her family, her self imposed distance kept her from truly being a part of is until the day Joe brought Anita into their lives. From the very beginning Laura could sense within her that Anita was more than meets the eye.
Even amidst the skepticism she was met with by her family, she knew that Anita was something more than just an empty vessel encased in a beautiful shell. Proof of it was played before her the night she witnessed Anita staring in stoic wonder at a full moon.
Yet, something else was happening to Laura that she could not quite place. Something within herself was beginning to change. She merely chalked it up to curiosity when it was something more, but she had no way to know what it was.
Every day Anita would give subtle signs of a humanity she should NOT posses, and in turn, without Laura realizing, a bit of her wall would begin to crack. Laura would NOT and could NOT admit to herself that by now it was more than mere human curiosity that was guiding her steps.
With every breach of synth protocol she couldn't help but become more enthralled by Anita. At times Laura would stare into Anita's eyes and admonish herself for believing she could see life within the glassy green gleam of them.
Anita was a synthetic form built solely for the purpose of being a nurturer and mother to Leo, her creator's son, and now the Hawkins family. After being taken from Leo, having been reprogrammed and sold to Joe Hawkins, Laura's husband, Anita began to have random recollections of her former life.
As a synthetic form of life Anita should NOT posses feelings and as such attempted to control them as best she could.
as hard as she tried Laura could see through it and that in turn made Anita both cautious yet intrigued as to how laura could see through her with such ease.
Laura was an expert at facades. She had spent years carefully creating one for herself to hide her pain, so why wouldn't she be an expert at seeing through Anita's facade of feigned synth compliance?
At first there had been resistance on Laura's part. She felt that her walls had created a way for her to be displaced by Anita within her family. She slowly saw how with each passing day Anita won over her family one by one starting with Sophie Hawkins Laura's, precocious young daughter. Next she won over the resentful Mattie Hawkins, Laura's teenage daughter who had at first had only perceived Anita as a threat. She then won over Toby Hawkins, Laura's only son, even though it was NOT a completely complicated task since Toby became enamored by Anita as young men tend to do at his age.
The only Hawkins not won over by Anita was Joe Hawkins himself. Joe had purchased Anita as one does a toaster or a vacuum in the hopes of assisting him in running his household as a more aesthetically pleasing version of Rosie the Robot from the Jetsons .
Joe could NOT see the light of sentience that Laura could see. To Joe, Anita was nothing more and nothing less than a machine built with the sole purpose to serve a human master. Yet that perception would soon change the day Anita risked her own synth existence to save Toby from certain death.
On that day everything changed because for Laura it became the final sign she required to confirm that Anita could feel!
That ultimate sacrifice confirmed a humanity she already knew was there. Sadly for Joe it was just further proof that Anita was a machine performing the task of guarding its masters as she was programmed to do.
It would be these diverging perceptions that would destroy a marriage that had already been agonizing for years.
Laura and Joe were together for their children but had been distant for many years before Anita appeared in their lives. Two people who once loved each other were now mere strangers held together by the tattered seams of complacency and unity for the sake of their children.
Those seams would irreparably be torn in the blink of an eye the fateful day Joe's frustration and loneliness caused him to cross a line from which there would be no return.
Laura had gone in search of answers to whether Anita was the only one of her kind. In her absence and the absence of the elder Hawkins children, Joe served himself a few drinks and began venting his amorous frustrations onto Anita. He then decided no harm would come from installing the 18+ adult chip that engaged a sexual program in Anitas system. It had been given to him by Anita's vendor as a purchase bonus.
Once the process of activation was complete, Anita gave Joe a blatant sign of her sentience by reminding him that what he was going to do would not substitute intimacy with Laura.
Yet, again he could not bring himself to see Anita as anything more than a machine.
Joe then proceeded to satiate his most base instinct by possessing Anita as a dog would if in heat, only to be enveloped by a sense of guilt.A guilt not stemming from violating Anita, but in having satiated his sexual need with a machine in the absence of his wife.
As a user clears a computer's hard drive, Joe ordered Anita to erase his transgressions from the recesses of her synthetic memory bank. In the end it was his son Toby, with disheartening disappointment, that became aware of the fact that his father has been unfaithful
Toby still attempted to spare his mother the devastation of his father's betrayal by placing blame upon himself. to no avail because in a moment of clarity Joe realized he must purge himself of his guilt and be truthful, no matter what the cost.
As Joe opened up to Laura her confusion at his rambling turns into the anger of betrayal then disgust at realizing the magnitude of what he had done.
A magnitude that he himself could still not see! To Joe, Anita was nothing more than a machine and it perplexed him as to why Laura could deem his transgression as anything but having entertained himself in his loneliness with a lifelike sex toy.
The man who was the father of her children and a man she once loved had now, through distance and the mundaneness of everyday life, had become an unrecognizable stranger to her.
Laura angrily requested that Joe leave their home as he did Laura began to wonder why she was so angry and unable to bring herself to forgive the man who had been by her side for years.
For the life of her she couldn't understand why her thoughts kept wandering to Anita.
She admonished herself for wondering what Anita was feeling and whether she was ok, when Laura was the one betrayed in the vilest way.
Now alone in that home with Anita, Laura could only bite her tongue wondering if in that moment with Joe, Anita had felt something for him. She wanted to ask but every time she found the nerve she would back down, afraid of what the answer might be.
It would mean she would have to admit to herself the real reason she was jealous.
She could not and would not ever admit to herself what she was slowly realizing she was feeling. The implications frightened her more than anything.
