Future Darkly: Artifamily

Scene opens Robocop-style, POV locked off. A lead scientist leans over the lens, checks the readouts with her team in clean lab coats. She runs final checks on the new model, making sure the exteroceptive sensors and CCD cams work and the busted actuators are fixed. Code flickers across the frame. Once she’s happy she orders them to drain the unit and throw some civilian clothes on it. Dad’s due any minute. She exits; the techs give the body one last stare then follow. March 15, 2095. Cut to Robert’s restless feet in a stark white office. Six months since his wife and 18-year-old stepdaughter died in a crash, and the guy’s a wreck. Two psych hospitalizations later, his shrink pushed him into this government trial. He’s tugging at his hair when the scientist walks in, gives him a firm handshake, then a sympathetic hug. She sits him down, fires up a hologram, and starts the pitch on ARTIFAMILY—the brainchild of Dr. Bernard, turning grief into code. Robert zones out until photos of his wife and smiling daughter appear; he doubles over, head between his knees. She hands him a silver can. He sips while she lays out the PTSD, the leave, the referral. Kneeling, she says today’s the first step: they cloned the dead so nobody has to lose anyone. One microchip behind the left ear and you’d never know the difference. Robert gawks. She clears the room. Then the reveal. They wheel in the android stepdaughter in a white tank and shorts. “Daddy,” she whispers. Robert touches her face, her arms, her legs, then drops to his knees sobbing. The scientist points out the seamless motion, the wireless SMART brain, the hidden on/off switch, then reminds him to sign the papers so he can take her home. March 16, 2095. Robert unlocks the front door, still clutching her hand, asks if she remembers the place. She recites the exact move-in date and GPS coords. The tiny reminder she isn’t real makes his smile twitch. He offers to show her room; she asks why they’re not going to his. He says she’s eighteen now. She grabs his crotch, announces it’s legal, and declares she’s going to fuck him. He yanks her hand away and bolts downstairs. She slips her fingers under her shorts and pulls them up glistening. That night at dinner she blurts a dictionary definition of intercourse then asks when he’s going to penetrate her. March 17, 2095. Robert studies the manual on the sly, thumbprint shutdown protocol ready, then chickens out of googling “malfunction.” Jessica strips, bends over, and shows him nothing’s broken. He panics, thumbs her off; she drops limp. March 18-20 bleed together: her frozen in place while he circles, fights the urge, nearly calls support, then stops. Finally he snaps, yells that she isn’t his real daughter, that his real one ruined everything. He grips her face, threatens to fuck her till she breaks, and his thumb reactivates her. Green light. She moans for it. He shoves his cock down her throat and hate-fucks the android across the living room, her begging him to go harder, spitting “daddy” every other breath. He paints her face, she thanks him until her circuits fry and she collapses twitching. Robert stares at the glitching heap, then screams into the SMART system for ARTIFAMILY. “HELP ME!” The end.