Stories of Your Life and Others

partners with real personality, and we're willing to invest the effort needed
to create that."
"So what would your training entail?" asks Helen Costas, from the
back.
"First off, sexual discovery and exploration. We'd give the digients
anatomically-correct avatars and let them get accustomed to having
erogenous zones. We'd encourage the digients to begin sexual
experimentation with each other, so they can get some practice as sexual
beings and choose a gender they're comfortable with. Since much of the
learning during that phase will occur purely among themselves, there may
be periods where the digients can be run at faster than real time. Once
they've acquired a reasonable amount of experience, we'll begin bonding
them with compatible human partners."
"What makes you so sure they'll bond with a specific human?" asks
Derek.
"Our developers have examined some of the digients in the shelters;
they're too young for our purposes, but they've developed emotional
attachments, and our developers have done enough analysis that they
believe they can induce similar attachments in older digients. As the digient
gets to know a human, we'll enhance the emotional dimension of their
interactions, both sexual and non-sexual, so they'll generate love in the
digient."
"Like a Neuroblast version of InstantRapport," says Ana.
"Something like that," says Chase, "but more effective and specific,
because it'll be custom-tuned. For the digient, it will be indistinguishable
from falling in love spontaneously."

---

"That custom-tuning doesn't sound like something you'll be able to get
right on the first try," says Ana.
"No, of course not," says Chase. "We expect that it will take months
for a digient to fall in love; throughout that period we'll be working with the
customer, rolling the digient back to checkpoints and trying different
adjustments until the emotional bond is firmly established. It'll be like the
breeding program you managed when you worked at Blue Gamma; we're
just tailoring it for the individual customer."
Ana's about to say that it's very different, but decides not to. All she
needs to do is listen to the woman's sales pitch, not refute it. "I can see what
you mean," she says.
Derek says, "Even if you can make them fall in love, none of our
digients is going to be a convincing Marilyn Monroe."
"No, but that's not our goal. The avatars we'd give them would be
humanoid, but not human. You see, we're not trying to duplicate the
experience of sex with a human being; we want to provide non-human