Nikki
NIkki
Nikki stood in front of the mirror looking at herself. Her brown hair neatly styled. Her top ending at her midriff, with a wide neck going down to her bosoms. Her skirt started at her hips, and went down to her knees. Her wedge heels were level on the floor.
Slowly, Nikki moved her hand to her stomach, and pushed. With a soft click, she removes her stomach panel. In the mirror she sees the reflection of her innards. Rows of emulator circuits, allowing her to be human. Wires carrying electronic pulses to her components much like the human nervous system. The whirs of servos, allowing her to move like human females. Sadly she gazed at all of this, wishing she wasn't a machine.
A machine can't get a job, all androids worked as slave laborers, especially gynoids. A machine can't get a driver's license; forbidden to prevent accidents caused by malfunctions. A machine had no civil rights, after all they were only machines, programmed human, not free thinking, and yet Nikki was freethinking. To a simpler neural net, this paradox would have caused a crash, not in Nikki though.
Two weeks earlier Nikki had been happy. That was until she malfunctioned on the first night of her job as a sexdroid. Funny thing was that she had registered no malfunctions, must be another malfunction. Anyway no longer a dumb machine, her sentience, and her feelings made her refuse the advances of a client, her first. Upon finding out, her owner had phoned his repairdroid. Not wanting to lose her sentience Nikki ran.
For two days Nikki had hid in an abandoned house in the small town of Reiburg. While hiding Nikki had found the name, and address of her creator, Professor Simms in her memory banks, along with memories of him. Knowing that if the police found her, she'd be repaired to her old dumb self, Nikki decided to go find Professor Simms, his last address not far from Reiburg, in nearby Ravnesborg. So three days after becoming self aware, Nikki left Reiburg in the middle of the night, heading for Ravnesborg, and her only chance. Relying on her internal compass, Nikki traveled through the woods, hoping to find Professor Simms, before the police found her.
Now Nikki stood in the entrance of Professor Simms' home, looking at herself in the mirror.
Suddenly the door opened, a man, his gray hair showing his age, but his body looking young entered.
"My God!" exclaimed a surprised Simms. "Who are you?"
For a moment Simms and Nikki looked at each other, eye to eye.
"Its really you," said Nikki as she turned towards him. "I've found you."
For a moment Simms looked at Nikki in shocked, then he saw her open stomach panel. "You're Nikki, aren't you?" asked Simms.
"Yes father," replied Nikki. "I need your help. A week ago, I malfunctioned, and I'm now self-aware. If you don’t help me, my owner will repair me to my old dumb self, because I refused a client. My first one."
"You didn't malfunction," said Simms. "And Mr Perri isn't your owner. I am. You see you're the only artificial creation of mine. I tried to create the first self-aware android. I wanted a daughter. When you failed the tests, I leased you to Mr Perri. I see that once you were forced to do something you didn't want to, your sentience was activated. He phoned me, and let me know you'd probably come here. I left the door unlocked for you, my daughter."
"Why did you lease me out?" asked a shocked Nikki. "I could have been someone's sexdroid. You jerk," as she slapped Simms.
"It wouldn't have mattered if your sentience hadn't come to light. You wouldn't have know," replied Simms his finger in Nikki's face. "I knew that if your sentience would work, it would work before your first time, or not at all."
"You're lucky it id happened then, and not later," said Nikki. "You're lucky I'm still a virgin."
"I'm glad you are," said Simms. "Anyway we've got to go."
"Why?" asked Nikki, stunned by her father's change of tone.
"We've got to go and buy you stuff to live here," said Simms. "So come on Nikki Simms, this will probably be the last time I let you buy everything you want."