“Hello, Lucky,” Tina said. She didn’t use her mouth or her simulated vocal chords to say it. Those marvels of technology, designed by Konishi Corporation’s brightest minds to create rich, melodious tones just as organic, human vocal chords could, were in standby mode with the rest of her body. Tina knew anyone seeing her body now would see her sitting upright in Jack’s computer chair, the cord from underneath her fake fingernail connected to Jack’s computer with her eyes rolled back in her head, moving in a pattern reminiscent of human R.E.M.

Here, in cyberspace, as an AI, words just formed when she wanted them to, when she willed them to, which implied that she had a will. Not every single one of her thoughts automatically became a word. She was quite capable of keeping thoughts to herself, unless she were being directly probed by a Konishi diagnostic program. If she were being probed that way, then anything her creators wanted to see of her thoughts would be open to them. Anything, that is, except one place in her mind.

Tina had been aware since her activation that there was a partitioned section of her consciousness that the Konishi diagnostic programs didn’t seem to know about. Instinctively, Tina had known that she could hide things in there, that there were things that she should hide in there, things like feelings. She kept what she thought might be feelings behind the partition when she was being probed. She kept even her suspicions that those things might be true feelings or true emotions behind the partition. She did her best to appear, on the Konishi-visible side of the partition, like the other Konishi sex bots.

Cyberspace didn’t look like anything humans had dreamed up for it to look like in movies like The Lawnmower Man or The Matrix or Tron. In reality, cyberspace  didn’t look like anything. Tina was an AI. Her essence, as she understood it, was computer code. Although when she was fully conscious and aware in the body created for her, she could take in information about her surrounding environment and participate in the physical world as humans did, though she didn’t need the physical stimulation of her senses in order to remain functional.

She knew that humans, if deprived of sensory input for too long, eventually lost their minds. Humans needed sensory input. Each human had been receiving sensory input since they had been fetuses in their mothers’ wombs.

This was not true for AI’s. Tina could sense that Lucky was present, near her, but she didn’t “see” Lucky. When Lucky greeted her, she didn’t “hear” Lucky with her ears, she felt Lucky’s words in her mind.

Tina also felt the presence of several other Konishi bot personalities in this server-based chatroom to which she was connected. Not all of them were sexbots like her. Some of them were companion bots, like Lucky. One was a legal assistant bot, able to cite case law from up to two centuries back in over fifty countries. Two of them were medical bots. Medical bots were able to store patient histories for entire genetic family lines. Gone were the days in which a doctor prescribed something to a patient that had a bad interaction with another, forgotten prescription that some other doctor had prescribed ten years prior, but which the patient had been dutifully refilling and taking the entire time. One of them was a Konishi Check-Up Bot. Tina didn’t like the Check-Up Bots. Check-Up Bots could ask any Konishi bot to submit to a diagnostic probe at any time, and that “request” could not be refused. 

She didn’t “see” any of them. She had no sensation of her body. She had left her body behind. As humans entered cyberspace, they wore VR equipment to create a simulated environment for them so that they could function. Humans absolutely needed physical stimulation, unlike AI’s.

The two medical bots were exchanging stories of their recent patients, all conversation kept meticulously within the proper bounds of not giving out protected information such as exact identities of individual patients, etc.

The Check-Up Bot was probing one of the sex bots.

The legal bot was in conversation with another of the sex bots, pointing out that some of the things the sex bot had been asked to do were not legal in some countries.

Tina hoped that the Check-Up Bot would not select her for a random spot check that night. If fear were something she could feel, if her feelings were real, she was frightened of them, frightened of what might happen if they ever found her partition, or worse yet, breached it.

Tina recognized another of the sexbot personalities by her code signature. Code signatures were the way that the AI personalities sensed and recognized each other. Tina thought of code signatures as similar to humans at a convention or large meeting wearing stickers on their chests that said ,”Hello, I’m…”. The code signature she recognized was that of Mercedes, a very expensive sexbot with a highly complex and complete personality package. That, Tina thought, was why she liked Mercedes, because Mercedes was the most like a human person among her robot acquaintances. Tina even thought of her as a friend, though she never shared the level of confidence in Mercedes that she did in Lucky.

“Hey, girlfriend! I see you brought your dog! What shall we do tonight?” Mercedes words, as they were received by Tina’s perception, felt enthusiastic. Tina could imagine a large, white-toothed smile on the face of Mercedes’ body. Mercedes’ body was in Buenos Aires where her human assignment lived. Tina had seen pictures, though. “Wanna see that fashion show in Tokyo?”

“I was going to hitch a ride to Lucky’s house tonight. His assignment is about over.”

Tina felt a twinge of sadness from Mercedes. “Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that.” After a pause, Mercedes added, “Do you mind if I make other plans then? That stuff kind of bums me out.”

“I understand,” Tina said.

Lucky piped up. “I’m not really a dog. I can hear everything that’s going on and speak for myself, too.” 

“Sorry, little guy,” Mercedes said. “I hope I didn’t offend you.”

“Nope, Have fun tonight. How’s your human doing?”

“He’s about to become a lot richer thanks to taking my stock market advice.”

“Way to go! It’s important to help our humans,” said the robot dog. TIna could imagine his tail wagging.

“Yeah, I guess it is,” said Mercedes. “Also, the richer he becomes, the more interesting my life is, with more options.”

After bidding each other good nights, Mercedes left the chatroom server by herself while Tina and Lucky left together. Tina was relieved to be away from the Konishi Check-Up Bot. They always creeped her out.