This is a picture of love

Febriani Idrus

It started as a joke. “Hey babe,” Ed said to Ally as they watched the holo-TV. He pointed at the ad flashing before them. “Shall we give it a go?” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

The ad was for the new virtual reality brothel that had opened in town a year prior. Normal prostitution had been legalised at least a century ago and no longer raised eyebrows. But a VR brothel? A whole different story. The idea of putting on a virtual reality visor and projecting yourself into a sex robot who would allow you to see, hear and feel everything from the robot’s point of view – for Ally, this was a step too far.

Until it wasn’t. Six months after the VR brothel opened, Ally was in a mag-train accident – the carriage derailed, punching a hole through a train station wall, and Ally snapped her neck. It was fine, she lived, her rented robotic limbs allowed her to gingerly dance with Ed on their wedding day… But she was dead from the waist down. Couldn’t feel a thing. And now she was watching an ad with Ed about this VR brothel, where a breathy voice crooned that you could live out your wildest fantasies, that you would feel everything the robot felt, and she found herself saying: “Ok. Let’s do it.”

And now they were here, in their small city’s heritage precinct, looking up at the ancient nineteenth-century building concealing the hyper-new VR brothel within, distinctly aware that this was no longer a joke. Ally wiped her sweaty palms on her dead legs.

After an initial meeting with the sleekly androgynous consultant Victoria, Ed and Ally parted ways. A robot attendant escorted Ed upstairs, while Victoria wheeled Ally to VR Studio #1. Before they separated, Ed fussed over Ally’s wheelchair, coaching Victoria on how it worked in case the motor stalled which it had been doing lately and if it did stall Victoria shouldn’t worry, Ed would come right back and Ally would just sit and wait, she was good at waiting until someone arrived to help her. Ally gripped her armrests tight while Ed continued to talk about her like she was a child, invisible to all the grownups. Six grinding months of being treated like she was completely helpless – a blob of meat in a chair, to be moved around at another person’s will. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, counted to ten, then breathed out. He does this because he loves me, she thought. This is love. When she opened her eyes, Ed was staring at her. He silently looked away. They both waited for her anger to simmer itself into steam.

In VR Studio #1, two robot attendants stripped Ally down, laid her on a white-sheeted bed and began applying electrodes, round white stickers, out of which black wires snaked to computer CPUs on nearby wheeled carts. One attendant applied a larger master electrode to the nape of her neck. The other attendant readied the VR visor. It was entirely silver on the outside, but on the inside she could see the eyescreen, black and gleaming like an orca’s fin. Before the attendant lowered the visor on, he said, “Your safeword is Red. If the safeword is said at any time, this session will cease immediately. Do you understand?” Ally nodded.

The visor fitted snugly over her eyes, shutting out all light. “Are you ready to begin?” Ally heard. She nodded again. Her hands coiled themselves into tight fists. A faint bzzzz; then words appeared across Ally’s field of vision. “Operational control transferred to client. Safeword protocols activated. Your robot’s name is Yasmin. Enjoy.”

The blackness lifted, like a waterfall curtain rising, and Ally saw herself in a mirror. Except it wasn’t her – it was Yasmin, the robot she was projected into. Yasmin wore a tight black dress that showed off her figure. It was terribly short though. She reached down to tug at the skirt and saw Yasmin do the same, and, what’s more, Ally felt Yasmin’s hand graze her thigh while she did it. Exhilaration crackled through Ally’s chest. She really was inside Yasmin’s body – Yasmin’s sensation-rich cybernetic body. This was working.

A door behind her opened and Ally turned. There he was. Ed. Unexpectedly he walked right up to her and pulled her into him, nearly nose to nose. “You’re…taller than Ally used to be,” he murmured. Ally didn’t even know where to start with a comment like that. “You’re really in there?”

Ally rolled her eyes. “Yes, idiot, I’m here.”

Ed laughed. “I love you,” he said. He tucked his head over her shoulder and held her, tightly, for a long time. When finally he released her his eyes seemed wet. They both said nothing, pretending not to notice.

Then he kissed her. She felt his lips sliding softly over hers, his beard tickling her face, his hands sliding down her back to squeeze her borrowed arse. She pressed her hips against his, because she could now, and felt his erection pressing back against her. He yanked her through the open door into the waiting bedroom and began stripping them both of their clothes. While Ed shucked off his shirt and unbelted his jeans, Ally stretched out naked on the bed and surveyed her new body. Her hair – long, silkier than real silk. Her legs were long too, her feet slender, ladylike somehow. Apart from the breasts (larger than her own, but not grotesquely so), and the stomach (too flat, too toned), being Yasmin was almost like being human. Then Ed was upon her, his hands greedy for her flesh. It was like he was another person. He kissed her again, messily because he was too urgent, then buried his head in her neck and bit her. “Not too hard, babe,” she warned, but he was already scrambling down her body, groping her breasts, sliding his hands over her hips. She could actually feel everything, even though he was doing it a bit hard. Pressure, warmth, skin on skin – it was all there, all— “Ow!” Ally stared down at him. “Did you just bite my thigh?”

“Sorry,” Ed said. He avoided eye contact. “I won’t do it again.”

“Okay.” Jesus. What had gotten into him? “Ow!” This time Ally tried to pull away but Ed held her down by her hips and hung on, digging his teeth into her borrowed thigh. An adrenaline spike shot through her, and for once she didn’t count to ten to calm herself. She thumped her heel into his ribs, hard. He let go. “What the hell is wrong with you?” she snapped. Her thigh was already bruising.

He shifted up onto his elbows, a little boy caught red-handed. “I’m sorry.” He hesitated, considering. Then: “I’m a bad boy.”

A strip of text unfurled across Ally’s eyescreen. “BDSM safety protocols initialised. Do you wish to proceed with set-up?”

Ally jerked as if suddenly woken from a dream. “What’s going on?”

Ed frowned. “You do this, don’t you?” he said.

“Do what?”

“I read about it in the pamphlet. I say the right phrase and it triggers an additional programme. Right?”

The line of text blinking on the inside of Ally’s visor was still waiting for her answer. “An additional programme for what?” she said slowly. “What exactly do you want me to do?”

Ed’s voice was so small. “I was always going to tell her what I wanted,” he said. “Eventually. But now she can’t do it. And she wouldn’t want to anyway. She’s too vanilla. But you…” And he gazed, doe-eyed, at Yasmin. “You can do it. You can do what Ally can’t.”

So that’s what this was about for him. Ally’s heartbeat fluttered. It wasn’t about getting her mobile again or allowing her to feel for the first time in half a year. No. This was just his chance to get something his stupid dead-in-the-legs wife couldn’t provide.

“You’re a bad boy?” Ally said. “You want me to hurt you?” Ally’s voice was full of tears, but her mind was clearing, like a camera being focused by an outside hand.

Ed dropped his head, but she saw that his breath quickened. “Yes ma’am,” he whispered.

“Proceed with set-up,” Ally said. At once the line of text was replaced by a single word: “Loading.” Then: “Place your hand on the sub.” Ally leaned forward, intending to place her hand on Ed’s chest. At the last moment she changed her mind. She closed her hand around his throat. His eyes widened, then fluttered closed. He even leaned his head back, exposing more of his neck to her. In Ally’s field of vision a sidebar box appeared, full of symbols and numbers in tiny type. The box showed her Ed’s vital signs: heart rate, BP, levels of cortisol, oxytocin, dopamine… All data gathered as the sensors in her palm read the excitement in his sweat.

“Set-up complete. Enjoy.” The final line of text cleared.

Ally leaned forward and whispered in Ed’s ear: “Get on your hands and knees.”

Ed scrambled to obey. Soon he was like her own little dog on the floor, his bare back and arse and tender nape of neck exposed to her. The sight of him bent over, crouched at her feet, filled Ally with a sense of indestructible power. She was a towering metal skyscraper newly struck by lightning. She thrummed with energy. She slid a trembling silicone-wrapped hand down his spine. His vital signs refreshed. His heart was speeding up. “So this is who you are,” she said. “A helpless little bitch on the floor.”

“Yes,” Ed said. “But at least I’m not my wife.” He looked over his shoulder at her, dead in the eye. “She’s too much of a pussy.”

Her fury roared up in a blaze inside her chest. It felt good. Satisfying. Her rage told her what to do, and now she had the body to do it. She barked, “Put your face on the floor, you dumb whore,” and Ed obeyed at once, pressing the side of his face into the carpet, arse up. She pulled the belt off his discarded trousers, folded the belt in half and with the folded end softly smacked him with it. He groaned, lifting his haunches for more. “Please,” he whispered. “Beat me like my wife never would.”

She hissed and brought the belt down on him hard. He cried out. She did it again. Welts were rising in mottled strawberry red. She liked the look of it. He deserved to have more. He deserved to have as many welts as her tireless bionic arm could deal out. She would turn his back into a mash of skin, if that’s what it took for him to atone. Because she saw him now for who he really was. She saw his desire for not her, and things she didn’t want, or couldn’t give, and she knew he blamed her for all the things he couldn’t have anymore. But she couldn’t help that this was who she was now – a woman with wheels. Trapped in a chair, useless, resentfully waited on by her scornful husband. I hate you. The phrase tolled like a bell in her head. I hate you. I hate you. I hate—

“Warning.” The text blinked across her eyescreen. A red exclamation mark flashed in the vital signs sidebar. “Sub is showing signs of distress.”

There were many welts on him now, spreading like train tracks across his arse and back. This time, she was sure his eyes were wet. She registered at last his half-suppressed screams. She raised the belt again and hit him again, striking him right on a welt. He shrieked.

Suddenly Ally felt her mouth move, even though she, Ally, didn’t say the word. “Red,” Yasmin said.

Ed’s eyes opened. Through his tears he said, “No no no don’t stop don’t—”

The eyescreen flashed red so bright Ally’s eyes watered. Then it went a cold black – and the visor was lifted off her face. An attendant gazed down upon her. “Allison, are you—”

“Take me to my husband,” Ally ordered.

Ed was sitting on the bed when Victoria wheeled Ally in. Yasmin knelt behind him, administering first aid to his tiger-striped back. Ally noticed Yasmin kept her hand on Ed’s uninjured shoulder while she worked. Monitoring his vital signs. Ally wished, strangely, that she could still do that. See into the heart of him. But now that was impossible. She wasn’t a robot anymore. She was only human. All her power was gone.

Ed waited until they were alone. Then he rounded on her. “Why did you say the safeword?” he hissed. “I was fine! I knew you were just a—”

“It wasn’t me,” Ally said, before he called her a pussy again. “The robot stopped it.”

“But why?” Ed said.

Ally shrugged. “Robots are smart but they don’t understand everything. All she saw was a man crying while his wife beat him. Of course she stopped us.”

Ed looked at her. She could not read him at all. “If that’s what she saw,” Ed said, “what did you see?”

Yasmin observed the two clients on a monitor from the control room. They did not talk to each other, or touch. She puzzled over this lack of connection. Nevertheless, the clients were married. Database searches indicate married people love each other. Yasmin blinked, taking a screenshot of the monitor with her eyes, and uploaded it wirelessly to the image database for the other brothel robots to refer to. This is a picture of love, she captioned it. Two humans sit beside each other, nursing their wounds, and never speak.