Accelerando Disjunct

Dorothy did smile, an almost imperceptible curve of her lips that remained as she modeled the outfits one by one. How strange that a modification that was so very subtle should require an entire new wardrobe.

"Now that we have the plans, I'd like to do it," she said. "Norman said it can be easily removed if it doesn't work well."

She had been the one to bring it up, after several long conversations with Big Ear. There was a way to upgrade her sensory input in the form of a padded "skin" that covered her entire body. It would give her a true sense of touch, as good as an average human's. Among other benefits, she would no longer have to worry about casual exposure to water. She could bathe or take a swim or walk in the rain without having to take any special precautions. She would no longer be cool to the touch, the covering would insure that the heat she generated in activity would not dissipate quite so quickly, and it wouldn't be nearly as obvious that she was an android.

The potential advantages were great enough that she felt it was worth trying.

"Of course," he said. There was no other possible response.

"My dresses don't fit!" She was sitting on the couch, the puddled folds of Roger's too-large bathrobe making her look very young. He studied her face carefully. There was a difference, but it was very subtle. If he hadn't been looking for it, he probably wouldn't have noticed.

"It never occurred to me," Norman sounded apologetic.

"Can the dresses you have be altered?" It seemed the most practical solution for the immediate problem.

"I think so," she said. "But I've nothing to wear to the dressmaker's."

The humor of it struck him unexpectedly. "I'm sure she'll make a house call," he said. "You can't be the first of her clients to... gain weight."

She glared at him. "The new modifications don't weigh more than a few pounds," she said.

"It's either that or diet," he couldn't resist teasing her a little.

Her face unexpectedly relaxed. "This is funny," she said.

"A little," he grinned. "It's not funny that you have nothing to wear, but it's funny that none of us anticipated it. Of course your measurements would change."

"I'll call immediately." A relieved Norman headed downstairs.

"Do I look any different?" she asked.

He studied her again. "Let me see one of your hands," he said. She stretched out her arm and the sleeve fell down past her knuckles, which made him laugh. "We'll just fix this," he said, rolling up almost half of the length. He took her hand, pressing his fingers against hers. It felt more or less like a human hand now, and it was comfortably warm. "May I?" At her nod, he turned her arm this way and that, observing how the padding made it seem almost as if muscle was under the skin instead of baked-enamel-on-metal. He lightly squeezed her forearm and observed that it did indeed seem to have the resilience of human skin. "I think," he said, voicing his earlier thoughts aloud, "that if I wasn't looking for it, I wouldn't have noticed it until I actually touched you. Does it feel very different to you?"

"Yes," she said. "It's going to take a little getting used to."

The dresses were let out, but there were lines from the earlier seams that couldn't be removed no matter how patiently Dorothy brushed and pressed and steamed. "I think that it would probably be better just to get you some new clothes," Roger said when it became clear that nothing would erase the marks.

"These are perfectly good still, it would be wasteful to throw them away" she said. "It's only cosmetic."

"But it bothers you," he said.

"Yes," she admitted after fussing with the iron for a few minutes more. "It's frustrating that the mark won't go away no matter what I do."

"Then we'll get new dresses," he said. "Save those for days you're just going to be helping Norman around the house-it will keep your new clothes in good shape."

"The new clothes," she said suddenly. "I would... prefer... that they not be black."

"We'll see," was the best he could commit to.

"I like it," she said. "It's much easier this way."

"How so?" he asked. She hadn't left the house for nearly a month, so she couldn't be talking about how others reacted to her. The first few weeks had been difficult, so difficult that he wouldn't have been in the least surprised if she had abandoned the idea completely. It was no small thing to suddenly be possessed of a sense you never had before, and it took more than a little getting used to.

She persisted, though, and as he had watched her with Pero, he watched her now, running her fingertips over this surface or that, so absorbed in the newness of the experience that she didn't even notice he was there. Two weeks after the modification, she had realized that many of the adjectives humans used had arisen out of the same sense of touch she now possessed. Soft, hard, warm, cold, smooth, rough, velvety, abrasive, silky... with her new direct experience of these sensations she no longer had any confusion about their meaning, no matter how abstract.

As it had been with Pero, she was changing by the moment, although he was no longer so smugly certain that "becoming more human" was the end result. It was more that she finally had a sort of Rosetta stone that translated things about humans that she had previously found incomprehensible, and each new insight triggered many more, rapidly filling in the previous gaps in her understanding.

"I don't have to be so careful," she said, recalling him to the conversation. "Norman slipped on some water in the kitchen yesterday, and I caught his arm before he fell. It's happened a few times in the past, and usually my grabbing him quickly like that leaves bruises. He always tells me not to worry about it, he says he'd rather a little bruise than a cracked skull, but I don't like that I hurt him. It's easy to tell now if I'm squeezing too tight."

"You'll be cracking eggs before you know it," Roger said, that task having been too delicate for her to handle in the past.

"I already have," she said.

The new outfits weren't all black, but he couldn't complain in the face of her obvious pleasure. He especially liked the blue dress, not a pastel blue but a rich, deep midnight blue. "You should wear that one the next time we go out," he said.

"I will," she said, and her smile grew infinitesimally wider

"Roger." Her soft call and the feel of her hand against his cheek woke him. He must have dozed off over his paperwork.

Her fingers brushed over his face again. "It's prickly," she observed, then suddenly pulled her hand away as though she was afraid she had trespassed. "I'm sorry," she said.

"It's all right," he said, giving her a sleepy smile. Of course she would be curious, she was more accustomed to seeing him clean-shaven. He reached out for her hand and brought it back to his face. "If I let it grow, it would be softer," he said.

She touched again, then ran her fingers through his hair so gently it was more like a caress. "Like this?"

"Not quite," he said. It occurred to him that it was the first time she had ever touched him simply because it pleased her to do so.