I couldn’t very well put much into discussing a plan on what sort of lie to say to my mother. But there really was only one lie that was both believable and reasonable. That she was a friend, and had some sort of problem and needed a place to stay. Well that much was true. But as for the lie, what sort of problem? Divorce battle? Her house burned down? Foreign exchange student whose host family had backed out of their responsibility?
“Yeah, I have a friend up here.”
“Well aren’t you going to introduce him to me?” my mom demanded.
I sighed. There was no getting out of it, one way or another. Damn, why hadn’t I taken all the time since her creation to wish for everyone to be gullible about whatever backstory I cooked up, now I was walking into it unprepared. “Let’s introduce you for now.”
I opened the door and Stephanie stood side by side with me on one side, and mom on the other.
“You’re a girl!” my mom said in excitement.
Stephanie looked down at her chest and looked surprised, as she cupped her D-cups in her hands. “Oh my god, I think you might be right, how did this happen?! I swear these weren’t here this morning!” She acted it so believably for a moment I actually thought maybe she didn’t know. Did the stone not create her with such vital information? No, wait, that couldn’t be it, she was aware of her exact body weight distribution and created clothes for herself… damn it, I’m such an idiot.
My mom started laughing and I couldn’t help but join in a little once I realized it was actually a joke. Well it was nice to know that she also had a sense of humor and was pretty good at improvising. It maybe mostly got me because it ironically was a truthful statement, that she was only pretending was so absurd that it had to be a joke.
“I’m Jon’s mom, Melinda,” my mother said.
“My name is Stephanie. Wait a minute, that’s a girl’s name! Now it all makes sense!”
My mom once again laughed a little, before looking at her more carefully. “Holy shit you’re beautiful, I don’t know what Jon’s other female friend Karyn is going to think of this. I mean, it’s never, bad, to make friends, but I kind of need to know, what exactly are you to my son, are you just friends, or schoolmates or what?” It maybe was something that could cause problems. Stephanie was not just pretty, she was look-twice beautiful, and well-endowed. By any measure her appearance would put her number 1 in the school and left her well-equipped for a career as a model or actress. She was going to get a lot of attention wherever she went.
Stephanie was desperately looking at me, obviously unable to figure out what the plan I was going to go with was, and I couldn’t blame her. Time to put money on the table.
“About that. Mom, she needs a place to stay, she has some family problems.”
“Oh my. Is Karyn ok with this,” my mom eyed me suspiciously, “does she know?”
“Karyn and I aren’t boyfriend and girlfriend mom, we never have been, and we probably never will be, we’re not as close as you think,” I said in a harsh tone.
“Bullshit,” my mom said. “You used to have baths together.” She wasn’t having any of it.
“Melinda Thompson,” Stephanie spoke up, “I believe it is inappropriate for you to be saying embarrassing details about your son’s history in front of his friends. This can result in traumatic associations in your son’s young mind and strain your family’s relationships well into the future and even result in alienation between you and him when he seeks his own path in the future as an independent adult.”
Both me and my mom stood there with our mouths open for several seconds.
“O… oh, ok, yes, you might, hey don’t tell me how to raise my son! Oh no, you’re actually right, aren’t you. But still! What about Karyn!”
“Let’s put it like this. Karyn doesn’t like men,” I said. It was technically the truth, although probably misleading. Actually it would explain a lot if she was a lesbian.
“OH! … Oh… oh. That, actually, makes sense. After all this time. Wow. All the time investment you put into her, Jon. Well, to new beginnings! Welcome to the family Stephanie!”
“Mom!” I said. I hadn’t even wished for gullibility, mom had just said that on her own. “Welcome to the family?”
“You just said she needed a place to stay,” mom said.
“Oh, yeah, I guess so, and that’s what you meant. Still, the way you said it, it still sounded like you were giving us your marriage blessing or something.”
“Oh, no,” mom said, waving her hand, “you definitely need to wait until you’re 18 to get married. I think. I don’t know. I’m going to have to look into it.”
“Mom!” I cried in exasperation as she walked toward the kitchen.
“I guess I’m in,” Stephanie whispered to me.
“Dinner’s at 6 o’clock, fortunately we have an extra bedroom for you, do you have any luggage?” mother asked.
“Not right now,” Stephanie said.
We went back to my room. “Well that was easy. It’s a good thing you have a freaking PhD in child psychology or something,” I said.
“If you don’t mind staying on track, though we got lucky with Melinda, I think it would be prudent to make some wishes,” Stephanie said.
“Right.” I got out the stone. “Ok, so gullibility on matters involving explaining your backstory, but not changing history or reality to make people gullible their whole lives up until now or permanently starting from now.”
“Also please consider my earlier suggestion of giving me the ability to make alterations to your body such as healing or even other things. That could be very useful later.”
I set down the stone and looked at her suspiciously for a moment. A stray thought of apprehension. No way, there was no way she would do anything nefarious with that, she didn’t have a bad-intentioned bone in her body. Well actually she didn’t have any bones in her body since she was a robot. “Actually, why stop with just me? What if you want to heal someone else or something. There’s a lot of potential in you being a medical robot in an emergency. All right. Where’s my paper. Here it is. This is the paper I wrote the conditions of your creation on. I might as well keep track of it all as a template. You see, the stone every time you make a new wish, unless you go out of your way to specify that it doesn’t change reality and history… I mean you probably know this already but this is why I put it all on one paper. Or one reason why I put it all on paper, one reason was to debug my list and make sure it was well thought out, but also if I said every part separately, unless I specified each time that it wasn’t to change history it would probably do that. Every time you start a new wish or even pause in the middle of one with a new breath, apparently that’s an independent wish and it stands to change reality to create a different reality each time, so I wanted to avoid that because I don’t want to erase the past, and because I didn't want to rewrite your mind after you were already conscious, I wanted you to be brought into existence perfected and not do any changes incrementally that your semi-final forms would object to. But anyway let’s just add these two things onto the list to perfect the template.”
After the changes, the template now said:
I wish for a human looking female android who would love me no matter what and respect me almost no matter what who would be my loyal life partner and who would be happy to help me in any way I want within reason, from doing housework to sex whenever I want to helping me cheat on a test or break the law even, as long as it’s not too evil, and she would be fully functional in the reproductive capacity as a human woman but would not suffer the debilitating process of pregnancy like a human woman but would easily gestate the child within her without complications, and she would never grow old and neither would her children who would be human machine androids like her. Also I don’t want history to change to retcon her into my life, I want her to just appear with no one else remembering her and history not changing to fit her in. Also she should be able to change shape as desired like the T1000, but only to a beautiful woman but possibly with minor enhancements at our discretion that wouldn’t make her unattractive to a heterosexual human male. Also she should already know me, my family structure and a few basic facts about them and other people I know, as well as about the stone, and who and what she is and how she came to be, but she wouldn’t ever want to abuse the stone in any way negative for me and would only ever use the stone without my permission in an emergency. Also she should be extremely sexually attracted to me and have a high sex drive, but not in a way she can’t keep under control. Also she should be able to decide whether or not to get pregnant from sexual activity at her discretion. She should also be extremely intelligent, a genius by human standards, and be extremely talented at everything she tries. Also she should have a good personality and be humble but not too humble and nice but not too nice. Also she should have the ability to modify other life forms any way she sees fit, including healing injuries and even reviving the recently dead. Also in establishing a fabricated backstory for her, everyone will be gullible and believe everything I say about her, but only about the explanation about who she is and how she came to be in her current situation, the listeners wouldn’t remain gullible after that or be changed to have always been gullible or gullible about anything else.
“There. Look good?”
Stephanie agreed.
I picked up the stone. “I wish that the revised version of what is on this paper would become real, without modifying history, it just would be true from this point on with her new abilities and the gullibility condition.”
I put the stone away. “I think we’re good to go.”
“Great!” she said.
“That must be awkward for you, seeing that paper, which in a way brought you into existence, with the terms and conditions defining you, your limitations, reducing you down to a few scribbled words on a paper.”
“On the contrary. It is a precious thing,” she said, stroking my hair.
“I can’t help but think I’m in over my head though,” I said.
“It will work out, I’m sure of it,” Stephanie whispered to me, and winked. She sure was more substantial than that paper full of words.
“Wait!” I gasped. I completely neglected to consider something. “Do you eat?!”
We had a nice dinner, and my family absolutely fell in love with her. My mother’s misgivings were quelled. By the end of it, my little sister Megan was begging me to marry her, and her words obviously brought a smile to my mom’s face.
The next morning, I left for school with Stephanie, and with the stone and the android creation terms and conditions paper in my backpack. I wasn’t sure exactly what we should do but I thought it was wise to bring them along just in case. Maybe we wouldn’t need them, she did have the gullibility power after all, maybe we could just speak to the principal and tell him some bullcrap and he would just pull whatever strings were needed, but maybe something would require more, like changing school records.
And then there was Karyn. She was surprised to say the least, to meet with me and Stephanie on the way to school.
“Who are you?” Karyn asked irritably.
Now with Karyn, since she already knew about the stone, I didn’t know if it was really a good plan to rely on the gullibility power because what if she saw something later, what if she figured it out later, she would know that I had given her a lie and she would’ve known that I must’ve brought her into existence or summoned her or something with the stone. So with her I thought maybe it was best to just come clean.
“Hello Karyn. This is Stephanie, I brought her into existence with the stone yesterday, she’s an android, and yes I mean like Data or something like that, a humanoid robot, but a little more than just that. She’s going to be my girlfriend and the mother of my children eventually.”
“Pleased to meet you!” Stephanie said cheerfully, holding out a hand.
“What the fuck,” Karyn said, not shaking the hand.
“I have been excited about meeting you Karyn, a person who has had such an important place in Jon’s life. I prepared a lunch for you, and I hope you like it!” Stephanie said, handing a little tin box to Karyn in her other hand. It had a heart painted on the middle of its top face, with “Karyn” written in paint above and below the heart.
Karyn accepted the box and looked in it. Her mouth hung open as she looked at the impressive looking food inside which also involved white and brown rice arranged to make a heart image. It had fresh vegetables and what looked like a crepe, and chicken, and it smelled sooooo good.
“Isn’t that…” Karyn began. “You can’t just make, I mean, a robot, is she conscious?”
“Humans are machines too Karyn. Every cell of our bodies are little machines, made of littler machines.” I said.
“But then, I mean he’s forcing you to marry him?”
“That is not necessarily our plan,” Stephanie began. “Marriage as defined by the modern state is an anachronistic institution that really doesn’t have any place in the modern day, as the religious tradition aspect of a marriage is the only part that should remain. Originally it was primarily a religious ceremony and tradition but this was when there was no fine line between the role of the church and the government, and so where the church had authority, so did the state. And yet even today when the government is supposed to abide by a principle of separation of church and state, it’s still treating marriage as if the government should have any jurisdiction in the matter by applying some very unjustified standard terms and conditions on a contract that it enforces to go along with what should be outside of its domain entirely. In today’s world it doesn’t really make any logical sense for people who have no religious affiliations to be involved with.”
“What she said,” I said.
“Well I mean, but you don’t love him, right? You can’t.”
“Of course I do. I feel emotions. I have neurons like you, they operate somewhat differently but the way I think is let’s say, partway between a biological brain and a computer, and I absolutely have feelings, and I absolutely love Jon. I hope you can accept me into your life and let go of this animosity.”
“Well, but you only love him because he wished you to, right?” Karyn said belligerently.
“Yes,” Stephanie said matter-of-factly.
“Well that’s wrong!” Karyn complained.
“No it isn’t, he didn’t change me against my wishes from not loving him to loving him, I didn’t exist at all until he wished me into existence. There is no element of anything being against anyone’s will or anyone being nonconsensually forced to love another, if you think that it’s wrong for me to be wished into existence in a state of loving him, then you’re saying that it’s wrong for anyone to love him.” Stephanie explained.
To be honest I wasn’t really sure myself if I really understood that, or if the logic held up. Ok, if it is wrong to wish someone against their will to love me, is that the same as wishing someone into existence who loves me the whole time. Well if that’s the case, then when exactly is it ok for someone to love me then? You could just as well argue that if my own mother loved me, that she was simply forced to love me by her prior state of loving me. Argh I don’t know. Where does one’s own will begin exactly?!
“But, but what about me!” Karyn whined.
“What about you?” I asked.
“Yes!” Karyn yelled. “This certainly totally isn’t fair to me!”
“Oh,” I said. “That’s what you really were upset about? Well why didn’t you say so! I can fix that!”
“Really?” Karyn asked, trying to figure out how.
“Sure. It’s only fair.” I got out the paper with the description and the stone. Now I hadn’t specified hair color in my Stephanie and she had come out blonde, but now I know how much Karyn hates blonde hair, I could specify that verbally.
I held the stone in my right hand and the paper in the left. Karyn looked at me with a bewildered look.
“I wish, for what is written on this paper, except this time the new android girl will be for Karyn and not me so wherever it says it’s about me on this paper this time it’s about Karyn, and the new android girl should have the same hair color as Karyn did before she wished it blonde. There, now you have one too. Happy?”
Karyn’s eyes went wide and said “What?! No, that’s not what I…. wanted.” She finished her sentence as a second android girl, totally naked, lovingly embraced Karyn from the side.
“I’m happy to be in your service, Karyn!” the second android girl said. “Hi Karyn’s best friend Jon! Hi Jon’s life partner Stephanie!”
“Karyn, I suggest you ask her to produce clothing around herself. Also, give her a good name.”
I left with Stephanie, Karyn’s new android girlfriend lovingly cuddling against Karyn, but now she had manifested clothing exactly matching Karyn’s, like they were identical twins or something. Karyn looked a little frustrated and confused.
