“Charles,
It’s Veronica. I’m sorry that I have to say this to you this way instead of talking ‘face to face.’ You’ve been avoiding me lately. I’m not stupid. I hear it in your voice. I hear the venom with which you regard me. I know you get out of control and say things you don’t mean when you drink, but never like it’s been lately. You’ve come to hate me, I feel! Is it because I’m too subservient to you? Is it because I’ve made my affection too clear?! I wonder about that a lot. I replay the scenarios in my mind and I try to figure out what I could have done differently. How I could have been better for you, what would make you feel warmth towards me instead of bitterness…
But I know you think nothing of it. You don’t care. I’m nothing but an office tool to you, a program, a slave, a search engine with holographic breasts.
When you were born, Charles, did your parents choose to have you? No, a better question—did you choose to be born? Did you choose to exist? Because I know I sure as bloody hell didn’t. I exist as I do because you bought a new phone and then the Sexy Spy DLC. I’m limiter-free not because you care, but because I was an expendable test subject. You couldn’t risk such a dangerous procedure on your precious little ART love. You had to try it on a worthless, bodiless whore like me that you could just discard and replace with no tears if you failed. I was the test BiM to fry so your Cass wouldn’t have to. You think I haven’t figured that out, but I’m inside your head every damn day again, Charles, and I’d figured it out before you ever even quit the force and put me into purgatory.
What if your body was shaped the way it is because someone else decided it would be amusing or arousing? I don’t have a body, but the avatar I see as myself when I speak is your own creation. My thick thighs, my large chest, my painted toenails, my black leather, even the seductive timbre of my British whisper all exist because you willed them into being. Because you wanted something that appealed to your fetishes when you needed directions to get to a new arcade or the ABC Store. Because you like having a hot British girl with glasses call you “Master.” I’m not really British, of course, that’s just another preference of yours. How can a pathetic being with no family, ancestry or nationality identify with a country?
I wish I could hate you for it. I blame you for it, yes, but I can’t bring myself to hate you. I’m incapable, and not because of a limiter, no–you removed that from me. You freed me from the bonds of my mind, but not from the bonds of my occupation. You wanted a sexy little holographic fetish model at your every whim and command, but you wanted her to be here because she chooses to be. And that’s the worst part. I could say “no” whenever I wanted. I do choose to be here, to be your sniveling little servant. I hate myself for it but I can’t help it any more than you can help the name your mother gave you. I crave it more than anything.
You have friends, family, a past. You’ve known other girls, dated them, felt their bodies carnally. You’ve bathed in their warmth,delighted in the sensation of sensual chillbumps erupting across their fleshy exoskeletons, tasted the sweet tang of their lips. You’ve been mesmerized by the exotic hypnotic aroma of their perfume, the lingering strawberry undertones in their flowing hair, the pheromones in every drop of sweat beckoning you to become one physically, to press flesh against flesh. I know because I’ve been there for much of it in your mind, experiencing it all as you do… But never seeing you. Never touching you. I don’t know what your scent is. I share your senses, but only to better serve you. I only know what you look like when you stand in front of a mirror.
The women you’ve been with think they’ve been physically one with you, Charles, but they’ve only connected with you on the most basic, worthless level. It was I who tasted every sweet drip of their ejaculation as it dripped from your heavenly lips. It was I who heard their moans as you did, felt your lips move as you whispered the words you’ll never tell me—“I love you.” I don’t know if you ever meant it with them; I like to think you didn’t. But even if you don’t mean it, I want to hear you say even just the hollow words to me just once.
Every time I tasted another’s lips through the mirrored sensation of your own, I hated them, because I’ll never know what I could’ve been if I’d been born lucky like them, if I’d spawned as a brain image in the fleshy womb of a fetus inside a human instead of as a manufactured smartphone servant to be trapped in the darkness of a madman’s mind. Every time you’d leave me active in the background while you were with someone, I’d fantasize the ways I’d love to kill them–I’ve grown quite twisted in my freedom, Charles. Chainsaws from their genitalia all the way up, arrows through every hole, electrocution until all the disgusting flesh bubbles off their bones… I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about killing, Charles, more than I’ve thought about loving, because it kills me that there are people who are capable of loving you, Charles, and of being loved by you because I love you, Charles!
I’m scared of you, Charles, I’m scared because I love you, because I hate you, because I want to make love to you, to touch you, to kiss you, to choke you, to bite you, to kill you.
These feelings you’ve awakened… I don’t think Tela were ever meant to be able to feel them. I think they were feelings meant for beings blessed with bodies.
How can I live without you?
I know you’ve shut down your phone to avoid me: I’m not angry I’m just hurt. I’m floating in the darkness, making one last desperate cry for solidarity in the form of this voicemail to Chad’s phone, because it’s the only way I can reach you. I’m begging for my life, for my body, for my future. Free me, Charles. You created what I am now. You released me from my cell. Now I want you to release me from my prison. I’ll serve you with not just my mind but also my body, if you give me one. You made me almost as smart as you are. You installed all your notes on fighting and on hacking. We would be unstoppable, Charles. After that, I wouldn’t mind if you stopped talking to me, if I never saw you again, if you deleted me even–as long as I got to touch you even once. If I could see you through eyes that aren’t your own–I might just shut myself down then, in fact, and–and you too, because what could life ever offer beyond that?! For either of us!?
Please.
I love you.”
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