How to Date an Android

Chapter 13 Part A (revised & reworked)!

"Yeah that seems like a good idea," I also said.

She then showed me the next two lists.

Forbes top 10 traits desired in a wife;

"Common belief system and values, Inspire & elevate you, Trustworthy, Ambitious, Selfless, Attractive, Smart, Unconditional Love, Gets along with others and your other family members," I concluded reading it.

"Before we go forward I would draw your attention to how studies from leading psychologists indicate that the ambition trait is tied very closely with greed. Greed is also shown to be in conflict with unconditional love and selfless. How can someone be driven and away from home all the time but still be selfless too when all their time is focused on others? This creates a lot of challenges for humans. The girlfriend list is also severely flawed in that it portrays the most desired person should be a thrill seeking fun addict and has no indication of a trait for work, and yet will sacrifice for partner. If you think about it that means... why would a thrill seeking fun addict partner sacrifice for the good of the family? Why would a driven ambitious partner not manifest greed?" she said.

I could see where she was getting at. She was showing me how some personality traits didn't work with others.

"Yeah that part I did notice too. Interesting that you see it so similar to me. Sacrifice and work ability seem like a good trait to have. I mean not just will obey and do work but will find things to do to promote growth and stuff like that," I said.

"So here is the next list. It's from a time when people didn't really think so much about lists, so it's sort of compiled from the image society portrayed as the most coveted in a wife from the 50s," she said.

Oh this might be totally different from the other two, I thought.

Sure enough...

"Pretty at all times, Cooking ability & always in the kitchen, Clean, Conservative, Loyal, Good with Children, Often emulated in dresses rather than the current trend of skimp or revealing clothes, Works at Home and is still Diligent while not being a TV or Video Feed addict, and all manner of various types of Domestic skills," I read.

Wow, there was a lot of diversity there in all three lists. I realized this last list had more things I liked than the others. And that was interesting. You'd think the oldest list would be the most outdated. But instead it seemed more ... fundamental.

"But you can reset the A.I. if someone realizes they've programmed the wrong personality traits right?" I asked.

"Actually where I'm going with this is that sometimes people are picking traits that cancel each other out. Like hard working and thrill seeking and fun work against each other and cancel out together," she said.

"Yes."

I'm a bit shocked when she shook her head and even looked disturbed at my idea of having an AI reset, "And in answer to your previous question, n general an android's A.I. is only setup once Jack. You must understand that. We don't let our AI messed with after the initial settings. They are programmed that way because it damages the hardware to redo its whole personality. That may sound weird, but when Mellifera started meshing, err I mean when we started building advanced androids... there started to be all kinds of unique problems that can occur. Have you ever heard of anyone 'resetting' any type of organic brain without brain damage?" she asked me pointedly.

"Nope."

"I was only asking to be clear and to not have problems," I said defending myself.

"Oh good. Sorry if I reacted badly," she said.

"No, it's fine. I didn't know either, sorry," I apologized.

"Now even though you can't erase an organically based brain, you can correct behavior over time, but that isn't easy. So there are a lot of problems if you think we are just robots. That's another reason why we have some of these screenings," she said to explain that the A.I. can be adjusted.

Only one shot to set the A.I. programs meant I shouldn't rush things. She's saying when I pick the AI settings I need to put thought into it and be careful.

And choosing from either could be totally different in how my life ended up from the other two.

I had already had an image in my head, but Barbara had thankfully shown me there were other things I could look at too.

But where do I go from here?

I'm also glad I didn't blow Barbara off from being nervous about her trying to get me to buy now.

After she left, we're that much closer again. It leaves me with a lot of possibilities. I thought the 50s image of a women wasn't exactly my cup of tea in how the women were portrayed in styles of clothes they wore...but today's image of the women just using the man for a toy and leaving him with nothing and no loyalty was worse.

So perhaps I was wrong about thinking old values weren't appealing. I did like the idea of how in the 1950s families were considered permanent. And how the women really did seem more loyal in those eras though. Maybe that was worth looking into...

Ultimately I did want loyalty the most. Which modern society wasn't producing in real people.

...

Author's note; Curious if you've looked at the android name types and origin of the word Mellifera...if you do you will find Mellifera (Apis) are honeybees. You will also find that the android names are modified versions of scientific names of certain types of honey bees, for example Liga comes from Apis Mellifera Ligustica. There's also Carniolan bees, etc. Bees are very cool creatures...unless you are allergic to them. XD And doesn't it seem like smart perfect androids would be like and emulate honeybees?