Page 4 - Unlikely Stories 4

Quintessence

Our first prototype was a multi-purpose female, code-named
Quintessence. Why female? Sorry if it bruises your male ego, but the
male of our species is a much easier target to hit for artificial
duplication. Most of us are often mistaken for automata, as it is.
Yeah, yeah: don’t take it personally. This is all well-known to
sociobiology—and to poets and mystics since the dawn of literature
and religion. Women simply have a greater set of characteristics and
capabilities, thanks to evolution and sexual dimorphism—if you
know what that is. Just take my word for it now. The point is that my
company took on that challenge precisely because it would establish
it as the leader in the field. I think the executives had some
background in anthropology or psychology, as well as computing and
materials science.
And why Quintessence? It was intended to be a synthesis of four
design criteria and four aspects of the Anima or Eternal Feminine—
as deconstructed and reconstructed by our technologists. Those
aspects boiled down—in their opinion, and here they made an
assumption of inclusiveness and completeness—to the attractive
lover, the sweet child, the protective mother and the loyal sister. The
four goals to be integrated were efficiency, replacing the four separate
human roles providing those qualities for the average heterosexual
male; superiority in those roles to any real female’s abilities, based on
a unique response to each man’s idiosyncratic needs; integration of
those roles in each Quintessence unit, eliminating internal conflict
and providing dependability and smooth transition between those
roles; and prediction or anticipation, the real-time adjustment
necessary to avoid external conflict with their male owner’s behavior.
Tall order, eh? But they thought they had it figured out, and that
their grand synthesis of those two sets of requirements would
overcome any minor biomorphic incongruities. Now, as I said, the
company had a pot of money to play with, and they hired a lot of
high-powered talent to implement this vision. I see you are shaking
your head: you must be wondering why anyone would expend those
vast resources on such a project. Was there a demand for a perfect
woman? Well, you need to understand the rationale of disruptive
industries, or innovators, as they call themselves. Apart from the
unbridled exploratory curiosity we primates seem to have in our

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