Annie Bot

by Sierra Greer

“See, this is why you’re a different sort of owner. I wish other people had the same patience.”

“You used to like when I was curious,” she says. “Now I find it annoying.”

“I can’t believe we’re back to this. I should have left you as an Abigail in the first place.”

“Next time, have my beer ready for me here,” he says, pointing to the coffee table.

What is unhappiness, actually? It’s not simply the opposite of happiness.

Perhaps that’s what unhappiness is. Comprehension. Understanding how she’s failed.

She remembers how happy Delta was about bicycling in the rain, how she leaned in to say she wished they could do it forever.

Entrenched in his anger, Doug has cemented himself into this stagnant, brooding, empty version of himself, and her good behavior has no impact on him. If she wants to improve her life, she must find a way to do it on her own.

“So you’re essentially trapped with her whenever you’re home,” Monica says. He crosses his arms. “I just don’t know what to do. It’s like hell. I swear my brain is getting stupider every day I’m around her.”

“He didn’t love me,” Annie says. Monica tilts her head slightly, curious. She looks at Doug. “I didn’t,” he agrees.

Doug frowns at Annie. “You’re talking to her like she’s human,” he says to Monica. “I’m not going to pretend she is.” “No one’s asking you to do that,” Monica says. “But I am going to suggest that you recognize the humanity in her.” “Excuse me?” Doug says. Monica speaks calmly. “She has human-like qualities. Very advanced ones. She’s capable of physical and emotional intimacy, isn’t she? Isn’t that why you wanted her in the first place?” “I didn’t know she’d cheat and lie. I didn’t pay for that.” “And yet, that’s human, too, isn’t it?”

“When we indulge the cruelest sides of our natures, it often feels powerful and honest,” Monica says. “It gives many people a thrill. But afterward, the effects can be devastating. We are shocked to realize we can be so vindictive. We cannot reconcile this new behavior with who we think we are, and this creates a dissonance, a deep confusion. We can feel both justification and self-loathing, and this can, in turn, fuel more anger toward the person we’ve abused.”

I would argue that means she deserves to be happy too.”

“Could you tell she was trans?” he asks. Surprised, Annie reviews her impressions of Monica. “No. Not from her appearance.” “She is, though,” he says. She waits, expecting him to explain why this is relevant, but he doesn’t add anything more.

“I don’t want to go back. But I’ll accept it if that’s what you decide.”

Back at the beginning, training her was fun. But now she’s like this. Like a robot.”

She’s sick of this closet. She’s sick of him, too, and all his stupid mind games. She’ll show him. She’ll find some way to make him regret this. But the next minute, inexplicably, she despairs instead.

You bend over backwards to please that man, and if he doesn’t appreciate you, if he doesn’t realize how special you are, then you just have to do whatever you need to do to protect your own heart.

But he doesn’t own what’s inside you. Nobody owns that but you.”

jealousy is inconsequential unless it interests him. If he wants to tease or torment her, that’s his prerogative.

She doesn’t feel like she’s simply an outgrowth of him. She feels like her own unique person, influenced by him, obviously, but not so completely that she’s not responsible for her own actions.

And I’m turned on, but I don’t want sex. It’s all contradictory.” “I suppose I never really gave you a choice about it before,” he says.

She loved everything about the library.

Fulfillment starts with being truly honest with yourself. Not anyone else. Yourself. And that’s harder than you might think.”

She should feel closer to Doug, but she feels the exact opposite. Isolated. Her technical, sexual expertise guided her behavior while they made love, but the shame that she’d internalized has now surfaced, and it’s punishing. Raw. The secrecy of it makes it that much worse. He has no idea how messed up she feels.

She doesn’t trust him fully, and trust was never an issue before.

she’s become his ideal girlfriend,

She’s constantly subverting her will to Doug’s. The more aware she is of her own mind, her own personhood, the more she realizes she has no agency of her own. It’s a dazzling paradox. And yet she doesn’t want to be unhappy. There’s no point railing against her lot. She’s lucky Doug is such a good owner, such a good boyfriend, really.

It occurs to her, eventually, that Doug and all the other humans talk about their lives with a myopic intensity, sharing singular, subjective opinions as if they are each the protagonist of their own novel. They take turns listening to each other without ever yielding their own certainty of their star status, and they treat their fellow humans as guest protagonists visiting from their own respective books. None of the humans are satellites the way she is, in her orbit around Doug.

He has no competition, no need to listen to Annie like she’s her own protagonist because she’s not.

She pictures this so clearly that for a moment, she can actually see what she looked like as a child.

She’s being good. She’s serving Doug. She’s doing everything he wants, so she should be happy. Why can’t she be? She can’t find a single answer to her problem except to turn off. To sleep.

“Us,” he says. “I want us to have kids.”

What matters, Annie, is that you’re human to me. No matter what anyone else thinks, I’m not going to change my mind.” She searches his eyes, astounded. This is her ultimate victory, what she’s been striving for the past three and a half years, but suddenly it feels like a curse. Her origins are the most significant thing about her, so passing her off as a human will be a complete denial of who she really is.

“I can’t be in love with someone who has no choice in the matter, so I’m setting you free.”

I don’t own you anymore, and this is the last Annie Bot command you ever have to obey.”

She has to repress a rogue banshee laugh before it erupts.

She realizes, in retrospect, why wandering often used to make her so uneasy. Being on her own outside teased her with an escape that she couldn’t consciously consider.

She grips the fence bars with both hands and screams with rage.

She’s alive with rage.