Page 7 - Unlikely Stories 4

Quintessence

flawless female had been real for me—do you understand? I asked
the chain of command about seeing her again, and that sealed my
fate: they fired me with a huge severance pay package contingent on
my total silence about the Quintessence project—an addition to the
non-disclosure agreement I had already signed when I started with
them—and the threat of legal action if I attempted to contact a robot
already being disassembled for analysis. That is why I won’t tell you
the name of my employer, and I’m fairly certain that Quintessence is
no longer the name of their mad quest to bypass the biological
impurities in human beings by replacing them with customizable
hardware and software.
So that was the end of their story, as far as I was concerned. But
then my life really fell apart. That busybody who had spotted me with
Mary Ann in the hotel bar sent a supposedly anonymous letter to my
wife about it. With a blurry photo. That was the last straw. My family
had no use for me; my domestic life terminated within days of my
job. I was left with very little. And that, my friend is how one
marriage ended with four divorces: wife, mother, daughter and sister,
all alienated forever. I wish I could say I missed them. But I don’t. I
must be like an addict who can never recover, despite being denied
his chemical fix. I only miss Mary Ann.
Swiss Army wife? That’s a terrible pun! Hey, bartender! Give this
man a drink. And pour me one, too.

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