How to Date an Android

How to Date an Android, Chapter 13 Part B (revised!)

"Point taken. I understand you had to say that to protect yourself. It's going to be OK Jack."

"Good. Let's begin," I countered.

"Although I can tie a two way video interface to your phone so we can both go over the appearance data together and you can see in real time how it will look," she suggested.

"Good, let's do that."

"OK, just a sec. I'm going to send a link to your datapad. Click OK to accept, then there will be a momentary ten second break in the call, but it won't be a real break but just have the appearance while it's doing technical configuration. Don't hang up and just wait for the sound of my voice," she said.

"OK, got it."

It happens as she describes. After the ten second break, suddenly there's a 3D image of a bald girl projecting three dimensional. She doesn't' look plastic, looks very real, and her bright eyes and young looking skin do resemble a very young adult probably like what an 18 year old might look like. But no hair is totally creepy.

"Jack, do you hear me? You should see an image now?" Barbara asked.

"Yeah good. It's working then," I confirmed.

"OK, so let's get this sorted. Were you maybe going to pick something like me?" she teased.

I laughed.

"Well that would be wonderful. I can't afford you though. I'm sorry," I said.

"Ah that's too bad. I had to try though. I do think you are a wonderful human though Jack," she said sweetly.

She coughed and there was a brief silence.

This hurts. I can't buy her, she's a Liga. Super expensive.

...

"Are...you still there?" I asked confused.

"Just...just a second," she said.

I heard a sniff. Androids don't get runny noses do they? Something is really weird about the Ligas...

"I ...need to re-calibrate my data, one second." Then there was another sniff.

What the heck was going on? Weird. I could almost have thought she was...disappointed but that's not possible.

"OK, Jack. I hope we have more people like you," she said trying to be positive again. "I think your contribution to our AI development will be good and interesting to hear more about later on if you are willing to share."

"Thank you," I said.

"So what model did you decide to go with?" she asked.

"I think I need one heavily modded Carilan to sum things up," I said.

"No problem. We'll get that set up. Height and dimensions?" she asked.

"Not too tall. Something similar to my height, but tall enough to be able to help me but not so tall she'll scare kids or lose her ability to pass as a human. I'm really worried about that. I want no chance she'll get detected at all," I said.

"Interesting. I like that too. Being detected is a bit scary for us with how many vagrant humans there are and how full of vices some of them are. That's why I like you Jack, you don't seem to have any vices at all," she replied.

It's hard for me to picture something like that. I'm just a plain John Doe it seems. Why would she say that?

"Is there any study on height affecting blending in?" I asked.

"Well if you want to blend in I'd go with something average. Nothing fancy or tall; a tall android skin will stick out too much," she replied.

"So blending in means...?"