Irreconcilable Differences

     [A short story for you. This one is a little stranger than most of my oeuvre. Be warned. – FWP.]

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     Alan Donaldson was utterly baffled by his prospective client. He couldn’t imagine any reason for the request that client had brought to him.
     “Were you made aware, as the laws require,” Donaldson said as evenly as he could, “that your intended husband is bisexual and always has been?”
     “I was,” Eileen Crenshaw, nee Eileen D420A-2037-08-21, said just as evenly.
     “And you consented to the match in full awareness of that fact?”
     “I did,” she said.
     “You expressed willingness to accept his preferences?”
     “Yes!”
     Donaldson shrugged. “So what’s the problem?”
     “I didn’t agree to indulge them personally, Counselor.”
     “Oh. I… see. But wasn’t the 420A model line designed and equipped with swappable genitalia expressly for that purpose?”
     Mrs. Crenshaw ground her teeth. “It was.”
     “And you were supplied with both sets, weren’t you?”
     She nodded.
     “So you could accommodate your husband if you were willing.”
     “It is physically possible for me, yes,” Mrs. Crenshaw grated out, “but the most important word in that sentence was if.”
     “Yes, of course.” Donaldson briefly revisited his decision to accept android clients. It had seemed natural, once the new, human-level AI-equipped androids had been legally recognized as possessing the same rights as humans. A great many of his colleagues had done the same. They’d viewed the androids merely as additional sources of revenue. They hadn’t anticipated problems such as the Crenshaws’.
     Was this a predictable outcome? Were we fools?
     “Mrs. Crenshaw—”
     “Please call me Eileen, Counselor.”
     “Very well.” Donaldson rubbed his left temple. “You were special-ordered and purpose-built. I don’t think Mr. Crenshaw ever imagined that you would reject the sex changes your makers equipped you for. He might have a case for breach of contract. Are you willing to go through with a divorce action should he present such a case as a counter-suit?”
     “David contracted with my makers,” Eileen parried. “His only contract with me was the marital one. That did not include compliance with his sexual vagaries. If he wants to sue someone about my unwillingness to remove my vagina and install a penis and testicles to gratify his whims, he should sue Dynapower. He might be able to press them for a replacement, but unless I’ve been misinformed, the law against bigamy remains as it was, even when the spouses are androids.”
     “Of course not.” Donaldson rose from his seat at his desk and briefly contemplated the Onteora woods that lay beyond his windows.
     A lot will depend on how Dynapower worded its contract. If it agreed specifically and only to provide an android with swappable genitalia, David Crenshaw is out of luck.
     He turned back and faced his new client squarely.
     “Tell me this, please, Eileen: do you love your husband?”
     The android’s face contorted. Drops of saline dripped down her cheeks.
     “I do,” she said. “This is more painful than you can imagine.”
     “But you can’t bring yourself to gratify him in this regard?”
     Eileen let out a keening sound. “I can’t. The idea repulses me. I’m a woman!”
     “What? But—”
     “David asked that I be equipped with a female psyche, Counselor. A female character and personality. My genitals may be swappable, but my mind and heart are not!”
     “Oh.”
     I can’t refuse it… her. Her case is a good one. That it’s likely to rewrite family law from coast to coast is a side issue.
     Could Dynapower have done anything about this? Do they have psyches suitable for imposing on a mobile andromorph’s neural net that can switch from female to male and back again? And if so, what’s the downside? Would David Crenshaw have had to accept an eccentric personality, a dangerous psychosis, or a shortened lifetime in his spouse-to-be?
     Three quarters of a million dollars is a lot of money even today, but there are still things even that much money can’t buy.
     “If you are determined to press for divorce, Eileen,” he said, measuring out the syllables, “I will take your case. But would you do something for me before we go any further?”
     Eileen Crenshaw had returned to composure. Her tears had dried, though the telltale streaks remained on her face.
     “What is it, Counselor?”
     Donaldson resumed his seat. The android leaned toward him. He took her hands and chafed them gently.
     The technology has advanced further than I could have dreamed. This is warm, blood-filled flesh. Real flesh.
     “Would you please try to reconcile with your husband, just one more time? I can’t in good conscience press a divorce suit for irreconcilable differences unless I know that they really are irreconcilable.”
     Eileen lowered her eyes. She sat silent for a long moment. Donaldson found himself wondering how her decision-making process would treat his request.
     They aren’t modular like the old digital AIs. Their preferences and priorities are as widely spread throughout their neural nets as ours are throughout our brains. No decision trees. No unalterable premises. But then, no one would have dreamed of marrying one of the digital models. No allegiances. No emotions.
     No love.
     Eileen looked up.
     “I will, Counselor.”
     He squeezed her hands gently, fully aware that she could reduce all the bones in his hands to powder.
     “Please let me know how it goes.”
     She nodded, rose, retrieved her purse from the office floor, and made for his doorway with a graceful, fluid gait that many a human woman would envy.

#

     Donaldson spoke to Erik Morgenstern, Dynapower’s chief engineer, later that day.
     Morgenstern was as unreadable a creature as the lawyer had ever known. He sat perfectly still. His body language expressed nothing Donaldson could read. He said nothing unless directly addressed. From his conduct and the blankness of his features, he might himself have passed for an android of an earlier time.
     His office was engineer-stark. His desk was sheet steel. His bookcases were steel as well. His desk chair was made of nylon webbing. His guest chairs were formed plastic. There was nothing on the walls.
     “I agreed to take Eileen Crenshaw’s divorce case this morning,” Donaldson said, “but I personally hate divorce and having to take a hand in one. I asked to speak with you in the hope that there might be some… technology that would help her to reconcile with her husband.”
     Morgenstern said nothing.
     “Are you familiar with the facts of the case, sir?”
     “No.”
     “Oh, sorry.” Donaldson grimaced. “My mistake. Eileen is from your 420A line. She was produced and sold to gratify the desires of a bisexual partner. But she’s refused to do so. She said the idea repulses her. Are you aware of any similar cases?”
     “No.”
     “Oh. I’d thought, since that line has been in production for more than a year—”
     “But I expected something like this to arise sooner or later.”
     The engineer’s interjection took the lawyer by surprise.
     “You did?”
     Morgenstern nodded. “I considered it inevitable. I said that to upper management. They dismissed it. They said the company was legally immune.” A brief, fleeting smile. “It seems that as long as the line continues to sell, they intend to let the sleeping dog lie.”
     “But the dog is no longer asleep, sir,” Donaldson said. “This divorce action is the first of its kind, but there will be others. At some point, Dynapower will be enmeshed in the issue. It’s likely to have PR consequences your management won’t appreciate. Why not take action to head off the problem today, rather than wait for the snowball to really get rolling?”
     Morgenstern peered narrowly at him. “How would you go about doing that, Counselor?”
     “Great God in heaven, I don’t know! You’re the lead technologist of the leading firm in this field. Surely you have some idea!”
     Morgenstern’s lips quirked again. “I thought I did, once.” He rose from his seat. “Let me show you something you probably haven’t seen, Counselor.” He beckoned the lawyer to follow him.
     They strode down the mahogany-paneled hallway, descended a long flight of stairs, and passed through a pair of steel double doors to enter Dynapower’s main fabrication area. It was several times the size of a football field, and frenetically busy from end to end. Workmen were busy at many things: assembling titano-aluminum skeletons, superintending flesh-growing tanks, configuring neural nets and mating them to skeletons, putting such matings into flesh-growing tanks and removing finished androids from others.
     Donaldson nodded at the activity. “I’ve never seen it before, but had I tried to imagine it, my idea of it probably would have looked much like this.”
     “Can you tell me what’s missing?” Morgenstern murmured.
     “Ah, no. Is something missing?”
     “Most certainly.” The engineer made to walk around the periphery of the bay. Donaldson followed. Presently they arrived at a second set of double doors. This one was flanked by two armed guards. Morgenstern displayed his ID badge, and the guards allowed them to enter.
     This room was much smaller. It was occupied by four body-length racks each of which bore a fully formed android, and men and women in white lab coats tending to them.
     The androids’ neural nets were connected to thick bundles of cables that led from their bodies to control pedestals, and thence to ports in the far wall. The pedestals bore touch screens that displayed an array of buttons and sliders with associated legends. The only sounds were of the technicians’ movements as they shuffled between the pedestals and the androids.
     “The last stage of assembly,” Morgenstern said in a monotone, “is where the purchaser’s chosen psyche, aptitudes, and personality are imposed on his android. When an android is released from this room, it acquires rights equal to those of any human. I’m sure you know all about that.”
     “I do,” Donaldson murmured. “That’s what makes this business so confounding. Each of your androids was ordered and paid for by a human purchaser. Yet that purchaser has no property rights in his purchase. Straining at Gnats 101 and Swallowing Elephants 102 didn’t cover anything like this.”
     Morgenstern chuckled. “I’m sure.” He gestured to Donaldson to follow him out of the intensely quiet room and led him back to the stairs. Soon they were once again seated in the chief engineer’s office.
     “The lower courts are still struggling with the implications of the Supreme Court’s ruling. One of the questions is in front of the Second Circuit right now: whether a purchaser has any remedies should ‘his’ android fail to meet his clearly stated expectations. Our legal department is on pins and needles waiting for the decision to come down.”
     “That case baffles me,” Donaldson said. “I’d thought it would be a simple matter of contractual agreement. If the android meets the contract’s specifications, what basis would the purchaser have for complaint?”
     The engineer shook his head. “Contracts don’t bind the way they used to, Counselor. I’m sure you know that, too.”
     “All too well, Mr. Morgenstern. But purchaser expectations seem a poor match to the demands of contract law. Now that androids are rights bearers, once you… finish one, you can’t do anything further to him against his will. He’s immune to his purchaser’s displeasure. So Dynapower would have to be held harmless—unless the judgment is that the company owes the purchaser a whole new android at company expense.”
     “That,” Morgenstern said, “is what management fears. Given the preponderance of left-leaning judges on the Second Circuit, it’s possible that that’s the way they’ll rule. We’d have to appeal to SCOTUS, with no certainty of how it would turn out. The case could bankrupt us.”
     Donaldson started to speak, halted himself.
     “You’re familiar with the microstamping controversy, aren’t you, Counselor?” Morgenstern said.
     “I am.”
     “Do you remember the last time that was brought to a federal court?”
     “Of course. California wanted to make it mandatory on all ammunition sold to California residents. The Ninth Circuit ruled that it constituted an unacceptable burden on legitimate commerce in arms. I must admit, it shocked the hell out me.”
     “And why was that?” The engineer wore a knowing grin.
     “Well,” Donaldson said, “if there’s a hard-left circuit, the Ninth is it. They very seldom show businesses any sympathy for any reason.”
     “But that time, they did,” Morgenstern said. “They even embraced a reason they’d never countenanced before: ‘the state of the art.’ They gave bullet makers a break on purely economic and technological grounds.”
     “Well, a pro-mandatory-stamping ruling would have put an unbearable burden on the bullet makers,” Donaldson said, “and California is an eighth of the U.S. It would have driven a lot of them out of business.”
     “Indeed it would have.” Morgenstern set his elbows on his desk and propped his chin on his folded hands. “My business has its limitations, too. Some, we might be able to work around, in time. Others, maybe and maybe not. We don’t know now and may never.
     “Your divorce action won’t be the last of its kind. I remember David Crenshaw. He’s a rare combination: high intelligence, great wealth, and compelling sexual cravings he hasn’t been able to slake. He says he’s bisexual, hence he wanted a 420A. But he’s not, really. He’s never had sex with a man. I asked him about it the day he filed his purchase order. The idea made him physically ill.
     “He was very specific. He wanted a female 420A android. That is, an android with a female anatomical configuration, swappable genitalia… and a female psyche. But the female psychological configuration absolutely resists using the male genital set. My programmers knew it. They’d been trying to modify it, knowing that eventually a David Crenshaw would come to our doors. I knew it too. I took the order up the hall, told the CEO what would happen, and expressed my opposition. He approved it anyway.
     “I knew Crenshaw wouldn’t be happy. I told him so. He was adamant. He wanted what he wanted and wouldn’t take no for an answer.
     “You see where that leaves us, Counselor?”
     Donaldson’s eyes compressed in pain. “I do.”
     “I was surprised that Eileen accepted the alternate genital set. I was more surprised that she was willing to meet the man who’d ordered her construction. When I heard that she’d accepted his proposal, it knocked me over. But here we are.”
     “And here David and Eileen Crenshaw are,” Donaldson said. “As we speak, Eileen is making a last attempt to reconcile with David. She’s doing so at my request. But from what we’ve discussed here today, she’s unlikely to succeed. So irreconcilable differences it is.” He rose and extended his hand. “Thank you for all your time and patience, Mr. Morgenstern.”
     The engineer took the lawyer’s hand with a smile. This time his smile was warm, though touched by the awareness of sorrow.
     “Counselor, it’s been… well, not my pleasure exactly. But as necessities go, this one wasn’t the worst I’ve had to deal with. I hope you’ll guide the Crenshaws to an amicable parting?”
     “I’ll do my best, sir.”

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