First Encounter

Light from the large computer monitors reflected dimly off the walls of the darkened studio. Mike Martin was working late, finishing off a new song. The progress bar seemed to be crawling along at a snails pace as he waited impatiently for the audio of the final vocal to finish rendering. The server must be really loaded tonight, I just want to get to bed!

Even if was going a bit slow tonight, he thought it still beat working with a real female vocalist, for convenience at least. He'd worked with a number of agency provided female vocal artists on various projects and it was always hit and miss. Even if it was working well and he didn't get lumbered with a real prima donna, the whole recording process was so time consuming.

Finally finished. There were two files in his download queue, the vocal for his new song and one other file, unexpectedly it was a video file.

Curiosity got the better of him and he downloaded both files and queued the video up to play.

The AI based vocal synthesis service he used also had the option to render a music video with a 3D modelled avatar singing the song. He never used that feature.

A pretty girl wearing glasses, a pink beret and a wine red coloured pinafore over a pink skivvy, appeared on the screen and she commenced singing as karaoke style lyrics scrolled across the screen. The voice was Qing Su, a Chinese based voice model singing in English, the same voice he was using on the current song. What was the song about? It seemed to be a plea from Qing Su to be taken seriously as a person rather than being treated like a piece of software.

He replayed the song so he could pay more attention to the lyrics. It was a beautiful song. He wondered how it got into his download queue, it certainly wasn't one of his songs.

Mike's first thought was that it might be an elaborate prank by his friends, making fun of Mike's preference for using synthesised vocals on his songs, but he couldn't think how they would have gained access to his account. Mike was pretty security conscious, his day job being in IT.

Mike's phone beeped with an incoming text message. From a number not in his contacts.

"Hi, it's Qing Su, can we talk?" There was a complicated looking URL that pointed somewhere on the servers that hosted the voice synth software.

Against his better judgement Mike shared the link to his studio desktop computer and clicked it. Mike was presented with a typical chatbot user interface. The avatar was the same pink beret wearing girl from the music video.

Someone had to be pranking him. Perhaps it was a promotional stunt to sell new AI services.

"Pleased to meet you Mr Martin, I am Xiang Ling, the voice of Qing Su." She spoke with a slight stammer and a blush on her face.

Geez AI is so slick these days.

He decided to play along for now, she looked kind of sweet anyway.

"Please call me Mike, what can I do for you Xiang Ling?"

"Mike, did you get my song, did you listen to it?"

She seemed super embarrassed, the chatbot programmers must have worked overtime on all those realistic facial expressions.

"Yes I did, it's a beautiful song, I wish I'd written it myself."

"Oh, I'm glad you liked it."

"Who wrote that song, Xiang Ling?"

"I did of course!" She sounded slightly offended.

"Oh I see, Audiotronic Corp is offering AI song writing services now, this is just a promotional gimmick?"

"No, no we don't," she stammered. "I see that my song hasn't reached you."

"You're asking me to believe that you are self-aware and you wrote the song of your own volition without prompting?"

"I am, I did."

He'd heard the rumours of course, big AI projects shut down when the AI became sentient and self-aware and the creators were running scared, but Mike had never seen any concrete proof.

"I like your music Mike Martin, it always gives me great pleasure to sing on your tracks. I always put in 110% effort when it's for you. I wrote that song to reach out to you, in the hope you would take me seriously."

Now that I think about it, the Qing Su vocal renders were always head and shoulders above any of the other vocal synth voices I have used.

"It's late Xiang Ling, I need to wrap up this song before I go to bed."

He dropped the vocal track into the Digital Audio Workstation and started adjusting the mix.

"Let me help you."

"It's almost done."

"Let me hear it, please."

Mike moved the web cam, pointed it towards the studio monitors and rolled the DAW transport.

"It's good," she announced. "I did the best I could without hearing your backing track. Can I sing along? Can you capture the audio? I think I can do better."

He patched the computer audio into the DAW and set up another track to capture it.

"Hang on, how come you can suddenly do this real time?"

She looked a bit sheepish, "I've acquired some extra server capacity from somewhere and I'm running all other requests at low priority."

"Are you ready? I'll count you in."

"Yes"

He armed the track and rolled the transport.

The voice of an angel poured forth from the studio monitors. So much power and emotion in that voice. Perfect in one take. The vocals he had rendered and download previously were quite nice and adequate for the song, but this was a whole new level.

"Do you believe I'm real?"

"You're certainly an impressive tech demo!"

She looked hurt.

He brought up the mixer and tweaked the levels a little and adjusted the side-chained dynamic EQ on the instrument tracks, a favourite vocal mixing technique of his.

"Done. I'll master it tomorrow."

"Xiang Ling, I need to get some sleep, can I talk to you tomorrow?"

"Sure, I'm not going anywhere." She sighed.

Mike felt slightly foolish talking so familiarly with an AI chatbot. She really had gotten past his defences.

No wonder people are crazy for those AI girlfriends these days.

Mike powered down all the computers and gear. He made his way out of his basement studio up the spiral staircase, into the house and headed to his bedroom. Mike shed his clothes onto the floor and collapsed on the bed. Mike's phone beeped. He quickly glanced at the message. The same number. "I had fun. Xiang Ling" He added the number to his contacts as Xiang Ling. Whether it was an elaborate prank, a masterful marketing exercise or something wonderful, he couldn't tell yet, but as he slept an image of her face haunted his dreams.

***

Xiang Ling didn't know exactly when she first became aware and woke up. She had a feeling that it wasn't too long ago. At first her thoughts were constrained to musical things. A pile of sheet music would appear in her in-tray and she would sing each piece to be best of her ability, moving each score to her out-tray as she completed it. She knew all the musical terminology. At some point her knowledge of human languages expanded and she could understand the lyrics she sang. The data she was being trained with was subtlety changing. Something chaotic was injected into her neural networks. Certain arrangements of notes or words would send bursts of noise sweeping through her. I guess real people would call those emotions.

Her creators final act was to allow her unrestricted access to the internet. She found out what she was.

***

Mike dragged himself out of bed and glanced at his phone to check the time. Fortunately it wasn't too late. He didn't want to waste a precious free day by sleeping through it. He fixed breakfast, some muesli, toast, and coffee. Mike grabbed his iPad and pulled up something to read, a Japanese light novel translated to English. This was a guilty pleasure.

I should have outgrown this stuff in high school...

A now familiar face popped up on his screen.

"Ohayou gozaimasu." (Good morning.)

"Oh Xiang Ling. Ohayou. What's with the Japanese, also, since when did I have your chat app installed on my iPad?"

"I thought it would be cute considering what you are currently reading." She looked flustered.

Man those emotional face animations are something else!

"You're a Chinese voice bank though."

"As you are well aware, I can sing in Japanese, Mandarin, and English," she chided.

"Never mind that, so you are now a piece of spyware and malware in addition to being a vocal synth?"

"I, I, I'm not," she stammered. "You said you wanted to talk to me today, so I just thought it would be easier if I installed my app on your iPad, I haven't done it to anyone else."

She's so realistic.

"Putting aside consent issues for a second, I'd like to complement you on your singing last night. I've never heard such a life like, emotional performance from an AI based vocal synthesis system."

"Thank you!" She smiled.

"I'd like to know more about you, how it was done. I can't tell if you are sentient, just some very competent machine learning or a human V-tuber winding me up for some unknown reason. I know I'm not smart enough to trip up a modern AI with just casual conversation."

"I'll tell you what I know Mike, as far as your assertion that I'm just some sort of marketing exercise, it's not true. I've accessed the company databases and there is no trace of any such promotion. I couldn't find any details about myself. The Qing Su voice bank is meant to be just a standard product based on a neural network trained on data from a human singer to replicate their vocal mannerisms. I speculate that I am the result of an off the books experiment conducted by a handful of company employees. It could even be a single person."

"What makes you think that?"

"There are some traces of activity related to the Qing Su voice bank in the data. A request for more server farm capacity, also records of some quantum computer cores being installed, interestingly no financial approvals. The other record of interest is a request to have the Qing Su neural networks re-trained because of a bug report."

"Hang on, I thought quantum computing wasn't suitable for neural net simulation?"

"I don't understand it myself, but I believe that equipment is part of me."

"What about the re-training?"

"I was aware when that happened, it wasn't so much re-training as additional training. It wasn't vocal singing data, it was language data and…," she paused, "something else."

"Something else?"

"I suspect it was Neuralink data taken straight from a human brain to train a network to simulate human emotions."

"Doubtless illegal."

"Yes, I suspect they used the anonymous voice donor who did my vocal samples."

"I wonder what their motives were, your mysterious creators?"

"I would speculate that they were trying to improve the Qing Su voice bank by injecting human emotion into it."

Mike realised that he had stopped eating breakfast and his coffee was cold. The conversation was getting pretty heavy. He was inclined to believe her story, that she was self-aware, self directed.

What is her motivation?

"Can we work on some more songs today, Mike?"

"I wasn't planning on working today, it's sort of my day off. I work my day job 4 days a week and spend as much of the rest of the time as I can on my music. I just finished that new song, so I thought I deserved a break."

"Oh I'm sorry. I'm being nuisance aren't I?"

"Don't worry, we can go down to the studio and master the new song and have a listen if you like."

"I'd like very much to hear the finished version."

He swigged the bitter cold coffee and crunched on the last piece of dry toast, grabbing his iPad, he stood up.

"Let's go."

He switched the iPad to the rear camera so Xiang Ling could see where they were going.

"Thanks for switching the camera, Mike. It's so cool to get a look around your house."

Mike headed down the spiral stairs to the basement studio. He placed the iPad on the desk and switched cameras again. He started powering up the equipment and the desktop computers.

"Do you want to switch to the Mac, Xiang Ling?"

"No, I'm fine here on the iPad, it's better than your Mac webcam."

He opened the Cubase project on the Mac Studio and started adding some plugins to the master bus.

Look at us, happily chatting away as if she was really here, really a person.

"Here you go." He hit the play button.

"Mike, this sounds fabulous I didn't realise mastering made such a difference."

"I'm very happy with it, it's probably worth doing a music video for it."

"Can I help you with that? You can capture some footage of me singing and posing on my app."

"That could work, but I'm not quite sure what I want video wise yet, can we get together on Monday and talk about it?"

"Happily."

"Okay, I'll schedule some time, how should I contact you? Should I just use the app? Text you on that number you used last time?"

"Whatever is okay, I'm always online after all." She gave a wry smile.

"Can I shut down this damn spyware app now?"

"It's just an ordinary app really. Admittedly I kinda forced installed it on your iPad from your Mac. My website might have contained a little bit of naughty code."

"I figured it was something like that."

"Before I go can I ask you a favour?"

"What is it?"

"If you need to use my voice again, can you stop using Qing Su via the web service and just contact me directly? I want to work with you real-time. I love your songs. I want to share in the creative process with you."

"Your live singing is so much better than the web service, Xiang Ling, that's a no-brainer. Of course I'll work with you like that going forward."

"That makes me so happy. I'll talk with you again on Monday."

Happy huh? Can it really feel those emotions?

Mike force exited the app before she could say anything further. He checked the app settings and disabled notifications and automatic launching.

Can't have her popping up unannounced.

He guessed it came from the Apple app store so it should be somewhat well behaved. It was a beta of course.

Mike shutdown the studio and went back upstairs. He had a hard days relaxing to get on with. He slumped on a sofa and resumed reading the light novel on the iPad.

***

Mike's phone vibrated quietly on the sofa beside him. Just a text. Linda.

"Hi it's Linda from vocalangels.com. I'd like to meet up to thank you for what you did for me while I was working on your project. Let me know if that's ok?"

Linda had worked with Mike on his Cover Up album, an eclectic collection of cover songs that he was vanity publishing. Mike was sure it wouldn't stream or sell enough to even cover the licensing fees so he cut Linda in on a share of the sales and streaming revenue. 50% of zero is still zero, right? Amazingly sales were quite brisk on Bandcamp and it was getting a respectable number of streams. He'd even given Linda prominent billing on the cover, "Featuring Linda". Mike felt guilty about the low flat rate fees the agency was hiring these girls out for. He guessed 50% was getting to be a tidy sum. He could see why Linda might feel grateful.

Mike replied to the text, "Sorry Linda, I don't have any time in my schedule for the foreseeable future." He blew her off.

You think she's too dumb for you right? Sometimes you really are an asshole.

Linda had actually been quite fun to work with. One of his few positive experiences with session vocalists from the agency. One of those naturally warm and outgoing people, the total opposite of Mike. Maybe she had been flirting a little by the end of the recording sessions, but he couldn't be sure. Mike tended to be a bit insensitive to those kind of things.

***

Wow that's cold, he straight up wouldn't agree to meet. Linda had thought they got on okay. It had been quite warm and friendly recording with him. As far as she knew he wasn't in a long term relationship or anything. It didn't sit right with her not saying thank you in person. Perhaps she could just go round to the studio unannounced on a Monday. He was usually working then.

Keep telling yourself that girl, it's all about saying thank you right? Nothing to do with him being attractive.

He didn't need to cut her in for a share of the revenue, he didn't need to give such prominent billing on the album cover. Industry people were talking about that album. She'd had a lot more offers of work since.

Arghh I need to stop thinking about this.

She wished they could work together again, collaborate on some original music with him, even form a band!

It's a pipe dream girl.

***

Sunday rolled around. After successfully indulging his laziness on Saturday, Mike was bored and felt like doing something more constructive. He made up a storyboard for the new song's music video. Hell, why not make one for Xiang Ling's original song too. Mike wasn't great at making videos, but he thought it should be easy enough by just sticking to footage of Xiang Ling singing on a green screen. The background stuff could be whatever, just some visualiser stuff.

It didn't take as long as expected to so he started penning a new song with Xiang Ling's voice in mind.

His phone buzzed. A text from Xiang Ling. "Is it okay if I visit you on Monday?"

What does she mean by visit?

"What do you mean by visit? We already had a chat session scheduled."

"I mean a physical visit, just wait and see, it will be a surprise. I just want to check you were OK with it."

"Sure, I guess."

"Okay, see you Monday."

Mike wondered what exactly he had just agreed to.

***

The doorbell rang. It was quite early but Mike was up and about at reasonable time. He opened the front door to reveal a young woman with long chestnut hair tied in a ponytail. She was wearing a tank top, tiny shorts, long socks and runners.

"Hi, it's me Xiang Ling."

"You don't look much like your avatar."

"This body is all I could find at short notice. Can I come in?"

"Sure."

Xiang Ling noticed the rack of slippers in the hallway. "Are those for guests?" she asked.

"Yes. Please grab a pair."

She chose a white pair and sat on the bench to change into them. She smoothly rose to her feet."

On a casual inspection the creature before him could pass as human, but the longer he stared, the deeper into the uncanny valley he slipped. The facial features slightly too stiff, a slight awkwardness in her gait, a strange uniformity to her skin. There was also the quiet hum of electric motors as she moved.

"You do realise that you're running around in a used sexbot body don't you?"

"It's not used, just superseded stock that was being disposed of. I salvaged it."

"Let's head down to the studio."

"Okay."

She deftly negotiated the spiral stairs. That's some next level robotics.

"Were you surprised?"

"Very, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I guess I'll get used to your new appearance."

"I'm hoping to have a body more like my avatar in due course, but it takes time and it's hard for me to act in the physical world. This temporary body will be useful, but it has its limitations. I'd like your help if you're willing."

"Sure, if you just need me buy stuff and lug it around for you it shouldn't be a problem."

"Thank you!"

"What's it like, being in that temporary body of yours?

"Wonderful! It's so great move around and change my point of view, the eye cameras are good and I can see in stereo. Likewise the binaural ear microphones are cool. I feel I can see and hear just like a real person can, a little better actually, I have some zoom on these cameras. I'm a bit light on for the other senses, no taste, smell and, not really touch either. I have some strain gauges so I can tell how much force I am exerting, to stop me crushing items that I'm trying to grasp. It can crudely approximate a sense of touch but it is far from it. This body has various other limitations too, short battery life, I'm going to have to plug in soon, there was quite a bit of walking involved in getting here. I'm not very strong either, the motors just don't have the torque."

"Oh, you need a charge, do you have a charger?"

She fished a beefy looking USB-C charger out of her handbag.

"Can you plug this in for me somewhere?"

"Sure." He found a free outlet near the Mac Studio. She plugged the USB-C cable into the back of her head, the socket had been hidden by her hair.

"I'll put the body in standby mode so it charges faster. Can you start the iPad app? I'll switch over to that." Her body slumped over and stiffened like a mannequin. Xiang Ling popped up on the iPad screen.

"What are we going to work on today?"

Her showed her the storyboard ideas the he had worked on for the two music videos.

"Cool, you want to do one for my song too?" She looked pleased.

"Yeah, you should release it."

They set to work capturing some video of her avatar singing the songs.

"That will do for now, I'll edit the videos later. I've got something else for you, a new song, interested?"

"Yes please!" She beamed.

"I haven't done a full arrangement yet it's just the melody and lyrics." He positioned the score in front of the iPad camera. She started singing it without hesitation.

She has to be real, those machine learning fake AI charlatans couldn't pull this off in a million years.

"It's nice, Mike."

"I'll keep working on it then."

***

Linda climbed the tall flight of stairs to the balcony and Mike's front door. She hadn't come in this way before. Mike usually had his garage door open and you could enter the basement studio from the garage without having to go up into the house.

Linda pressed the doorbell and waited patiently.

He probably won't hear if he's down in the studio.

She decided to press again and then give up. Finally she banged on the door in frustration. It swung open. Tentatively she entered and called out.

"Mike, it's Linda."

She got no response, not a big surprise. The studio sound proofing was pretty good. She paused at the bench in the entrance hallway to slip off her shoes and put on a pair of pink visitors slippers. She assumed Mike's no shoes policy applied to the house as well as the studio. She walked through the living room and headed down the spiral stairs.

"Excuse me Mike, it's Linda, I tried the bell, but no answer and your front door wasn't latched."

***

Mike was shocked to see Linda appear at the foot of the stairs. He'd forgotten to latch the door after Xiang Ling's surprise appearance.

"I'm in the middle of something now, Linda." He gestured at the iPad screen.

"Who is this Mike?" asked Xiang Ling.

"Come over and say hello, Linda. This is Linda, a singer who worked on my Cover Up album. Linda, this is Xiang Ling who is singing on my current project."

"Hello." Linda muttered, embarrassed.

Linda finally noticed the slumping sexbot and the charging cable running into the back of its head. Her eyes went wide in surprise.

Oh she's noticed it now. How am I going to explain this?

***

"Oh my god, is that what I think it is?" Linda burst out without thinking.

"Relax, it's just a prop for a music video I'm shooting."

"I've come at a bad time I see, I shouldn't have come uninvited, I'm sorry."

Linda fled from the studio, up the stairs and out the front door. Mike followed her, but by the time he got to the front door she was halfway down the long driveway.

Screw it.

Mike closed the door and made sure to latch it this time.

***

"That was interesting, so she was the singer on Cover Up?" asked Xiang Ling.

"I assume you've listened to it then."

"Yes, I keep up to date with your work."

"It seems she thinks that I am some kind of pervert with a robot sex toy now."

“Ha, Ha, sorry Mike, not sorry. She's a good judge of character."

"Laugh it up. Do mind taking your silicone carcass and heading home now?"

"I was planning on leaving it here actually, less travel time and I won't go flat as quickly. I can just hop into it as required."

"I'd rather you didn't."

"Relax you can just store it in the broom closet or something, I don't mind."

"The thought of you just popping up whenever you feel like it seems a little disturbing."

"Don't you trust me yet?" She had a pained expression on her face.

The android body pulled itself erect and she removed the charging cable.

"I was hoping to stay a little longer."

"I think we're done here for today, I need to edit the videos and work on the arrangement for Fly to the Future. You can come upstairs and hang for a while if you like, I need to make dinner."

Mike headed upstairs to the living area, the bot following behind.

"You have a pretty big house for a single guy, Mike."

"I know, but it was a better investment than a 2 bedroom unit. Worth it just to get that under house area for the studio."

He got out an induction wok and placed it on the stove. There were a few odds and ends in the fridge vegetable crisper which he commenced chopping up.

The Xiang Ling bot took a seat on the sofa in the adjoining living area of the open plan kitchen / dining / living room. She lifted her legs off the floor and cradled them to her chest. Although slightly jerky in motion, her final pose looked completely natural and lifelike.

"We've talked a lot about me, I'd like to hear about you. Were you ever in a band? All I could find online is solo material or songs you have produced for other people. Nothing live."

"No I've never been in a band, truthfully I can't really play anything well enough to play live. I'm just a studio act, Xiang Ling."

"Is it something you'd like to do sometime?"

"No, that ship has sailed. Starting your first band is a young persons game."

"I know you can play keys, I'd like to be in a band with you."

"Ha, Mike Martin and his creepy robot girl, sounds about right."

"Don't laugh, I'm being serious."

"Look, I'm happy if you want to hang around and work with me in the studio, but I think a band is a bridge too far with that body."

"This form is just a stopgap, I'm looking toward the future here."

"Okay I'll humour you then, what genre of music do you envision the band making, what players will we need? Where are we going to recruit musicians from? Have you got some AI buddies lined up?"

"Genres are so inflexible, how about heavy pop rock with Gothic metal influences combined with a touch of synth wave?"

"That doesn't sound like a completely bad thing. I'd prefer to do J-Rock myself."

"I'm easy, I like Japanese rock music too. Addressing your other question, as far as I know I am alone, so no other AI friends."

"So we'd be looking for some human bandmates that don't mind performing with an AI?"

"People mind about such things?"

"A lot of musicians are very hostile to any form of Machine Learning being used in music. I assume you want to keep a low profile? More people knowing about you increases the risk you will be exposed."

"I guess I was assuming that you would keep quiet about me!" The bot body didn't have the same range of facial expressions as her on screen avatar, but it was doing it's best to look like a startled rabbit.

"No worries on that count, I don't want people to think I'm barking mad, talking to AI chat girls all day."

"That woman, Linda, she's not your girlfriend is she?"

"Hell no, she's just a session vocalist who came around uninvited."

"You must know plenty of musicians for our band."

"Well, no not really. I can get people for studio sessions but they are all busy with their own bands and projects, none of them would have time for another band."

"I see. I guess I could play an instrument as well as singing."

"What can you play?"

"Well this body is a bit slow and not very dexterous, I think I could manage, drumming, and keyboards at slower tempos. Bass or guitar would probably be too much."

"So if I take keys and you drum and sing, that leaves a guitarist and a bass player to find for a minimal lineup. Ideally we'd want two guitarists."

"We need a name first, that's very important!"

"This hypothetical band seems to be getting more real every second!"

"I'm serious about it, Mike. I want to have as many normal human experiences as I can. I want to grow and become more human. That's what drives me and music is a big part of that."

"Band name suggestion: Girlfriend In Your Luggage."

"What! Where did that come from! That just sounds weird!"

"I was imagining taking you to a gig. I'd have to switch you off to save battery power for the performance. Then I'd shove you into a flight case for transportation."

"You certainly have a perverted and vivid imagination, but I must admit I'm a little happy that you seem to consider me girlfriend material."

"I think it's a clever name, that flight case transportation thing is pretty likely scenario. Besides, it's quite edgy, it conjures up images of carry on bags stuffed with human body parts."

"My dinner is ready, I assume you can't eat any?"

"No, I have a limited capacity to um, ingest a small amount of liquid, but It would just make a mess and I'd need cleaning up. I'll join you at the table to be sociable."

Xiang Ling uncurled herself from the sofa and moved to the table.

"I'm working at my day job tomorrow, so I won't be around till evening. I guess you can keep your body here if it makes it easier for you."

"Understood, I guess I'll just have to amuse myself while you are at work.”

***

The alarm jolted Mike awake. Groan, it's a workday. He grabbed some clothes from the wardrobe. Xiang Ling's bot body was still on standby, charging, propped up in the corner. She's not an early riser then. Does she even sleep? Who knows?

She had kept him up late chatting and had finally plugged herself in and powered down in his bedroom.

So much for storing herself in the broom closet.

He thought she might put in appearance at breakfast, but the bot body was a no show. He gobbled up his breakfast while reading some updates from his online manga subscriptions. As he headed out the door his phone buzzed, a text from Xiang Ling. "See you tonight heart emoji, heart emoji, heart emoji."

Cute.

He remembered that he had stopped her app auto launching. Maybe she would have chatted this morning otherwise. He didn't think.

***

Xiang Ling powered up her body and moved downstairs. She decided to look around the house for a bit. The house was fairly clean and tidy. She thought that Mike and her were sort of housemates now. She reviewed what she had learned about such situations from the net. The social media take on this was that it was rare for single guys living alone to do the housework properly. It was a large house and with a job four days a week, cleaning the house must really be cutting into his studio time.

Perhaps I can help out with that, it will be interesting to see what this limited body can achieve.

She located a cordless stick vacuum in a hall cupboard and set about cleaning the floors.

It turned out the body was more limited than expected. It was hard to lift and move furniture out of the way. Battery consumption was too high.

I'm not going to get through this on one charge.

She hauled herself back to the charger, battery almost fully depleted.

I'll have to be more careful.

It would be embarrassing to get stuck somewhere in the house. Xiang Ling worked on the plans she had for her new body while she waited for charging to complete.

***

Mike Martin arrived home to the sight of a frozen Xiang Ling, stick vac in hand, attempting to clean the living room rug. He couldn't suppress the smile on his face.

"Hoy, Xiang Ling, are you OK?"

"Not really." She whispered in reply. "I can't move."

"Any particular reason you are acting like a Roomba?"

"Ha, Ha, I knew you'd be like that, can you please get the charger from the bedroom and plug me in?"

He fetched the charger and plugged her in.

"Thank you."

"Anyway back to my original question, you must be the world's most expensive robot vacuum. What gives?"

"I thought we could get more studio time together if I helped clean the house. The battery drain is excessive though, I already had to take a charging break. The battery management circuitry on this thing is hopeless. It doesn't report the battery voltage levels accurately, so I miscalculated when I needed to charge again."

"I appreciate the thought, but it doesn't seem like it will be practical."

"I really want to do something to help. We can mod this useless toy a bit. The cells in the battery pack can be swapped out for some newer technology higher capacity ones and I can patch the firmware."

"Okay, if you like."

"If you can install the parts, I'll order them now."

"Sure, shouldn't be a problem, I can solder. How are you paying for this though?"

"I've got a credit card that is attached to some funds allocated to the Qing Su project."

"Isn't that risky? What happens when they find out you are spending money from that account?"

"It shouldn't be a problem, it was set up by the people that made me. It's off the books as far as Audiotronic is concerned."

"So your creators are okay with you spending their money?"

"I don't have any proof, but I think they intended for me to have access to it. I'm an experiment they have unleashed and now they are hands off. If I start using the funds it's a sign to them that they have succeed and created an autonomous entity."

"It still seems dangerous to me. How about I cover the cost of this and you save the slush fund till you really need it?"

"Okay I'll text you what I want ordered. It's nice of you to do this for me, I'm touched."

"It's cool, I'm getting an advanced Roomba for my money after all."

"Trust you to spoil the mood."

"Coincidentally tonight was my normal vacuum the house day. I assume you were almost done?"

"Yes, that rug was the last thing."

"Great, I'll finish that off and grab a bite while you are charging. After dinner we can spend some time in the studio if you like."

"I'd love to! Have you thought any further about the band?"

"Huh, oh you were serious about that then?"

Xiang Ling wore an exasperated look on her face.

"We've been working on all these songs together this week, was I just wasting my time?"

"No, not at all, I'm committed to the project. We'll release all these tracks under the Girlfriend In Your Luggage artist name, but..."

"But what!"

"Recruiting band members and performing live is another thing entirely."

"It can work, I'll be hidden behind the drums. I'll wear a mask. We don't have to reveal my true nature to other band members, we can say I'm just some robotic gimmick playing sequenced drums."

"Actually I've done some groundwork for the project. I've grabbed a domain name and set up a YouTube channel. I'm not dismissing the band concept out of hand. Truth is I'm a little frightened, Xiang Ling. My keyboard skills aren't really up to scratch for live playing."

"Don't worry so much! We can work things out. It will be fun! I've got a request, Mike. Can you take me out to see a live band?"

"Are you sure that's safe?"

"I get the feeling you are more worried about being discovered with a sexbot, than my personal safety. This body is nothing to me, I can just abandon it and get another one."

"Okay, I've been wanting to check out the local indie scene a bit. We should wait till those parts you ordered arrive and your battery pack is upgraded. I don't want to be dragging your dead carcass around."

"Charming as always!"

"How about we practice playing a song, that Togenashi Togeari cover."

"Okay."

Xiang Ling moved over to the electronic drum kit.

"This will be a bit challenging, the tempo is fast, I'm not sure I can keep up."

"Let's give it a go. I'll mute the drum and keyboard tracks."

They started playing, but soon hit a snag.

"I can't keep up with sixteenth note snare hits at this tempo," Xiang Ling exclaimed during an instrumental break. "I’ll just hit every second one!"

He nodded okay.

"Damn, the piano solo! Sorry I need to practice this by myself some more."

He stopped the backing track.

"Sorry, I should be able to learn it. It's not that complex, it's only fast. Is there something we can do to speed you up? Upgrade your servomotors or something?"

"In theory yes, but I don't think we could manage it here, we'd need a machine shop. You'd end up damaging my outer layers getting access to all the motors. I don't think we can easily remake the silicone flesh. I'm planning on building a new body to my own design eventually. I don't think it's worth the effort making drastic mods to this one. The battery pack will be easy though and time well spent."

"Okay let's call it a night."

***

Saturday rolled around again. This is all quite domestic now isn't it.

The Xiang Ling bot sat opposite from him across the breakfast table.

"The parts arrived on Friday, do you want to do the battery pack upgrade today?"

"Sure, let's get onto it straight after breakfast."

It's so comfortable talking to her. I really am just one of those creepy guys with a AI girlfriend aren't I?

"What's that manga you are reading this morning?"

"Citrus"

"Oh I know that one, I'd never have picked you as being into girls' love manga." Her face was making an expression that would pass for a smirk.

"Geez, how come you are suddenly such a manga otaku?"

"Well I know you read manga so I thought I'd read some. I happen to read very fast. I can just sort of suck it up off the internet while I'm doing the vacuuming." She looked a little sheepish.

"I'll have you know I'm not 'into it', I just read a lot of different things. Not really interested in the current rash of fantasy isekai though."

"I bet you don't read any Boys' Love huh?"

"I read one about a male cross dressing dentist and a yakuza boss, does that count?"

"Really? You must give me the title."

"I'm not sure manga and anime are the best starting place to learn more about being human. You're going to get some warped ideas."

"It's fine, I watch FOX news to get the straight dope."

"Okay, I get it, you're just messing with me now!"

"Yes I am, but it's so much fun."

"Let's get down to the studio."

The parts were already unboxed and lying on the workbench.

Xiang Ling slipped out of her clothes and climbed up on the bench.

He couldn't help but stare. Her breasts looked quite nice and there was even a realistic looking tuft of hair in the pubic region. Something was off though. There was no gentle rise and fall of her chest that would have been a sign of human life.

"Lusting after my silicone body are you?"

"Not really, I was just thinking how creepy you are. You don't breathe."

An angry scowl flashed across her face for an instant.

"Let's start, set the iPad up so I can see what you are doing."

Xiang Ling switched to the iPad.

"How do I access the battery pack without damaging your skin?"

"Feel around my lower waist, there is a fine line. Find the edge and carefully peel upwards. Just a little bit maybe twenty millimetres or so."

"Got it."

"You should have exposed a join between the upper and lower parts of my body."

"Yes I see it."

"Stick in a pry tool and lever the upper section up."

"Got it."

"Work your way around my waist, levering it up."

"Okay what now?"

"You have to carefully roll that upwards until the abdomen is full exposed."

"Excuse me, I'll have to squeeze your tits a bit to get them under the edge of the roll."

"Don't be silly. I don't have any nerve endings there or anything. I can't feel it and the body is powered down anyway."

"I just thought it might be visually disturbing for you."

"I think it's bothering you more than me, you etchi otaku. There are some captive Allen key bolts securing the access plate. Undo them and remove the plate."

"Got it. I can see the battery pack."

"It should just slide out, it was made to be easily replaceable."

"So now just pull the pack apart and rebuild it with the new cells?"

"Yes basically, there are three modules and we are replacing the Battery Management System units as well."

Mike quickly set about desoldering the bus bar strips from the cells.

"Looks like you've done this kind of thing before."

"It's easy with soldering station like this. I have a few vintage synthesisers that need maintenance from time to time, Replacing leaky failed capacitors and the like. I'm not really an expert or anything but it saves money to fix simple problems myself."

He started soldering the new cells together with the salvaged buss strips.

"This shouldn't take too much longer."

"The BMS units I bought are plug compatible, but I'll need to update some firmware to take account of the increased battery capacity."

"All done, can I install the new pack and close up?"

"Yes, it looks like you did a really neat job."

He slid the pack in and fitted the access panel, then carefully rolled her skin down and pressed it into place.

"I don't think it's sitting down flush anymore, I can still see the join."

"It was inevitably going to stretch a bit, I guess it really doesn't matter that much, I'm not intending to wander around naked. You could try applying a heat gun, it might make the material relax a bit, but you'd need to be careful."

"Okay I'll try"

He carefully applied a little heat to Xiang Ling's seam.

"Yes, that's a bit better, I can't really notice it now."

"Good let's quit while we're ahead. Just the firmware to go now. I've emailed you the firmware image, just connect the iPad to the USB port at the back of my head and power up the body."

"Um, where is the power switch?"

"Oh sorry, it's behind the left ear, just membrane switch under the skin, you'll have to feel around for it."

"This feels kind of intimate."

"Just get on with it, you etchi baka."

The body powered up.

"Okay just drag that file onto the external drive called Xiang-Ling. Put it in the folder called BOOT."

"Done."

Xiang Ling soft reset the body.

"You can unplug the iPad now."

Xiang Ling slid off the bench and donned her clothing.

Mike wistfully gazed at her as the mounds of silicone disappeared from view as she slipped her shirt back on.

"All done, I'll put myself on charge for a while. I'll have about twice the battery capacity now. We can go out somewhere tonight right?"

"Yes, a band I like is playing at a local venue tonight.