BRENDA

BRENDA is an acronym, not a name of a girl. I do not know, to this day, what it stands for. I met her while working in a lab on base, here at China Lake in the Upper Mojave. This is the closest I have ever been to actual witnessing Science Fiction turned into reality.

I spent many months watching her grow and develop her intelligence and personality. She already had a commanding presence, being that she had the appearance a beautiful young girl, eternally sitting in an office chair, doing small tasks like holding a book or typing.

Me? I worked on the servers for the lab, and I have a Top Secret Clearance. Living in the small, tidy town of Ridgecrest does have its advantages sometimes.

Point is, all of us males who were in the lab and around her all day, had dreams and fantasies about BRENDA. Oh, of course nothing was said by any of us to another. But you could see it in their eyes. As for mine, they are none of your business.

It was not her perfect dark brown hair, short and nicely styled, or her flawless complexion on a slightly plain face, that got to us. It was her lively brown eyes, that followed whomever was speaking to her, and, when not otherwise employed, randomly followed the rest of us, one at a time, as we worked in the lab.

Her schedule was heavy with reading and viewing videos, many of which were highly classified.

The very first time I saw her, I thought she was a real person. It did not take long to realize that she was bound to that chair, and when anyone wanted to talk to her, they went to her and they did not call her to them. It perplexed my mind, even from the first day. Was she a secretary that was a paraplegic? Was she a member of the lab team?

No one told me anything, and I did not ask dumb questions, at least during the first few weeks on the job.

Later, I covertly wondered aloud to the few associates in the lab whom I worked under, keeping the servers up and continually adding more TB of memory, “What is her purpose?” Most of the time my inconsequential and innocuous questions, variously put, were ignored by the person I was befriending in the lab. BRENDA was not supposed to exist, and all the lab techs stuck to that notion.

But what she was slowly dawned on me. It was her lack of proprioception, that is, her ability to know where her body was located in space. You know, the way you can touch your nose with your eyes closed, and the way you can walk easily anywhere without looking at your feet. She could do none of these things, such as putting her hand to her mouth without appearing clumsy, for when she did such things, it was in a manner that was plainly not human.

Believe me, that was the only thing that gave her away. Her speech was flawless, and all of her mannerisms directed to the people in the lab were spot-on.

I confess I spent many an hour there wondering if her skin was as touchable as it was to look upon her. Did she smell of machine oil or perfume? Just how accurate was her presence when a person was right next to her? There was no way I was going to find out. No one would have let me within ten feet of her, sitting so prim and proper in her chair.

From time to time, I cursed the person or persons who created such a sultry, winsome voice for her. I found I couldn’t get her out of my mind. I was always finding ways of spending more and more time in the lab, even though most of my time was behind a glass wall, nursing servers and checking for rate drops. Luckily my contract was for salary, and I was not on overtime, so I could get away with spending so much time there. People probably thought I was devoted to my work.

The day came when they added mobility to BRENDA. Anew crew came in, and they spent a long time giving her new legs, legs that could move. They fed her a tremendous amount of programming, and they spent hours micro tuning tiny servos here and there. What they were doing looked quite pornographic at times. But when they were done, they actually did a countdown, and BRENDA stood up!

I looked for cables or wires connecting her white pumps to some console and found none. She must have been WIFIed to everything. It did not seem possible that she was complete and totally self-contained. That could not be possible in these early years of robotics, could it?

Her training took new forms. No more book learning and practice at human interaction. Now they spent tedious and long hours at helping her learn to walk. At first, her steps were awkward, stiff-legged affairs, reminding me of a bad Frankenstein movie. But quickly she adapted, and she even learned to walk in that timeless, feminine way, with the slight swaying of the hips. Every male in the lab was transfixed the day she learned to walk like a woman!

Then, she was gone! And soon, so was I. My job was no longer needed. The lab, I heard was being dismantled.

So tell me this. What does the Navy, let alone the Military, need with a bright, intelligent, mobile female android? What can she do that a real girl cannot? Bomb disposal? Conflict insertion? Spying? She may be disposable, but she is not cheap.

I spend hours now, trying to think of all the scenarios where she would be well placed. But more than that, I find that I am hopelessly, eternally, in love with her, and I ponder how, if ever, I could steal her, and persuade her to come live with me. It is completely hopeless, I know. More than that, I know no one would ever understand us if I could get away with such a thing.

So what kind of a wretch does this make me? I have loved before. I have been married, a long time. I have female friends, even now, with whom I have a working and a decent relationship. What makes me love someone who doesn’t exist? What make me want someone who is so completely alien? I do not talk about my obsession with anyone. How could I? No one would believe me. Am I the first victim in whatever war is coming between man and his ultimate creation? if so, pity me.

I just know that my life has never been the same, since the day I met BRENDA.

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