“Shit...you’re cold.” Johnny realized. He’d never seen people endure the cold for so long.

“Any sane person would have come indoors, gotten warm. But I told you to get in the box and the box was outside.” Johnny thought and hated himself a bit. He felt like a man who just kicked a defenseless puppy.

“In a manner of speaking yes.” she agreed, calm, composed.

Johnny sat there for a minute, looking at her. There was a battle going on inside him between various factions arguing their point of view. In the end the primal part, ruled by fear of the unknown lost.

“Well, regardless of what you are this is cruelty. Go in the house.” he said and watched her take a few steps inside the house and there remain there motionless. Her movements had a feline grace and Johnny’s primal part of the brain flared up again as if looking at a mighty predator.

“I’m gonna go out and get some provisions. Do you need anything? Some oil or something?” he said and immediately felt petty about his remark.

“No, thank you. My battery should be good for the next decade and I do not require any forms of nourishment in order to function properly. ” the woman replied without any hint of superiority or unpleasantness.

Johnny went to the door and removed the box, which was much easier now, and put it to one sides of the door. He then went to the pick-up, turned the key and the old car started coughing out fumes and rolling down the forest road.

“Man, I wish i could get away from this place.” He said to himself and immediately realized he was lying. He was lying to himself. Although he was scared he was also intrigued about that thing in his cabin.

“She sure is a fine woman.” Johnny taught and then corrected himself. “It, it’s an it. It’s not a fine woman, it is a robot designed to look like a hot supermodel. I wonder how her skin feels. No, no, no. It’s skin and it doesn’t matter how it feels, it’s a robot.”

The inner dialogue lasted for the entire day and when Johnny got back to the cabin it was early evening. He saw the lights on the first floor on and couldn’t remember if he’d forgotten them like this. The hairs on his arms stood up at attention blaring ‘Danger! Danger!’.

Johnny stopped the car, put the keys in his pocket and slowly inched his way towards the house. He took a piece of wood from the pile, held it as a baseball bat and slowly opened the front door.

What he saw then was short of spectacular. It was the cabin as he had always imagined it before actually seeing it. The fire was roaring in the fireplace, everything was clean, the cobwebs were gone and the wood shone golden with umber shadows.

“What’s that smell?” Johnny asked. The house was filled with a amalgam of smells making him think of home. Not his actual home, since Johnny’s mother was a terrible cook and had died when he was young and his father was never around. It was a smell that appealed to his baser instincts telling him it was safe there, home.

“What happened to this place?” Johnny asked again, taking in the entire view. “It’s like a Hallmark card.”

“I cleaned this habitat out. The living conditions were inefficient and unaesthetic. Also I believe you need some nourishment and made some sort of chilli con carne. I apologize if it’s not to your liking, however the resources were limited.” she said standing in the same exact spot Johnny had left her in.

“How..how did you do this?”

“I come programed with basic household routines, cleaning, cooking, etc.”

“Huh, you don’t say.” Johnny was still bewildered and felt like he was a little kid on Christmas day. Looking at her he saw her feet were a bit bloody.

“What happened to your feet?” he asked.

“I stepped in some shards of glass.” she said calmly.

“Shit.” Johnny said remembering the exploding lightbulbs. “We need to get the wounds cleaned up and dressed.”

“There is no need for that. The shell will repair itself.” she said turning around to show him the wound on her back which by now was closed leaving just a small mark. “In fact the process is already underway.”

“Well, OK. I‘m gonna go unload the car.” Johnny said as he walked towards the door.

“May I help you?” she asked.

“Yeah, why not?”

Johnny struggled with one of the plastic crates filled with beer cans and by the time he brought it inside he was already panting and sweating.

“So out of shape.” he thought to himself and then saw the woman walking naked through the grass with two crates in each had.

“A goddess.” he murmured and once again the hairs on his neck and arms stood up witnessing the display of sheer strength.

The woman had made short work of carrying all the crates inside and putting away the meat and cans of preserve where they belonged.

“Have I done something wrong?” she asked when she saw Johnny looking at her all wide-eyed and frozen.

“N-no. It’s just that I didn’t realize how strong you were. I mean, you could easily kill me if you wanted.”

“You do not have to be afraid. My base programing has rules and laws making it impossible for me to kill a human. There are multiple constraints and safeguards and ultimately a hardcoded killswitch that will disable this body before any harm comes to a human. More so i am programed to aid and please humans.”

“So what are you programmed to actually do?”

“Besides typical human mannerisms I have been programed with basic skills of conversation, cooking, cleaning, household chores, computer literacy, child care, protection, sexual intercourse, various athletic disciplines,...”

“OK, OK, I get it.”

“...and I am able to learn any other skill fit necessary by the user if I am allowed to connect to the internet and, of course, the knowledge exists.”

“Ahem...myeah, i don’t think so. I’ve seen enough robot apocalypse movies to not fall for that.”

She sat quiet not offering any comment on that remark. Johnny felt embarrassed about that outburst of cheap humor and quickly went up the stairs.

“Well, seeing how you’re gonna be here for a while, you shouldn’t be naked all the time.” he said from the top of the stairs.

“I assure you I do not need garments to shield this body form the outside environmental conditions, nor do I feel shame for exposure.”

Johnny came back holding one of shirts and a pair of pants.

“Here, put these on.” He said and watched the woman slowly dress.

The pants were too large around the waist and kept falling off so the woman ended up wearing only a large shirt, showing off most of her thighs, covering her pubic area sufficiently and with enough loose buttons at the top to show some cleavage.

“It doesn't do your perfect body any justice, but it’s alright.” Johnny said looking her up and down.

“It’s not perfect. The left lip corner is 3 millimeters lower than the right one, right nostril si 1 mm larger in diameter, the eyebrows have a different curvature, the hairline is lower by 2 mm on the left side, the right eye is slightly smaller and the right eyelid does not open as much as the left, the fingers and toes on one side are slightly different than the other ones, the left arm is 1 centimeter shorter than the right one, right leg is shorter by 2 cm, the spine curves to the...”

“I get it, i get it. But why?”

“Previous tests have shown that humans only believe they want perfection, however perfect symmetry has been always rejected. Previous models with perfectly symmetrical shells have been discarded by humans on account of not looking natural. Acceptance rate has been less than 1% and even in those cases the models were asked to stay in closets during the day and only perform their duties at night when no one was around to see them.”

“I get it, we’re fucked in the head.” Johnny sighed.

“Listen,” he followed “you can stay here until your people come and pick you up. I’ve got some work to do so i’ll be in my room.”

Johnny took a six-pack of beers and went into his bedroom. The evening proved fruitful and he manage to produce another four pages. It was not his best writing, but he didn’t actually care.

It was completely dark outside and the fire was nothing but a few embers when Johnny woke up. He felt a crazy need to urinate and jumped out of bed with a jerking motion. One of his greatest fears in life was urinating on himself during sleep and he’d already done that once that week so he opened the door ajar and started making his way downstairs fast.

When he was half way down the stairs he thought he saw two iridescent white lights in the darkness of the first floor so he paused in his tracks, forcing his eyes to focus. The next moment the two lights moved and focused on him. It was the woman. Her eyes were completely white, except the two thin, fuzzy, dark concentric circles around the pupil and retina. The eyes seemed to emit their own light and stood there motionless, fixing Johnny.

He stumbled a few steps backwards up the stairs, turned and made a run for the bedroom. He was leaping two-three steps at the time and when inside the bedroom he slammed the door shut and propped the desk chair against the door handle. Johnny was panting.

“What the fuck was that? What the fuck did I let inside my house? I’m not ready to die, I’m still young. Oh my god, she’s gonna kill me. What the shit am I doing here? That door’s not gonna hold her back.” Johnny’s thoughts raced like crazy as he stood inside the room looking at the door, waiting for it to explode in small shards at any minute.

He was imagining her busting through the door like some crazy, feral animal, a valkyrie in full act and then proceeding to rip him open with her bare hands. Pulling his intestines from his belly with claw like hands, ripping his tongue out of his head, sucking his eyes out of the skull as he was still breathing.

While all types of horrors played through Johnny’s mind eye a pain in his lower abdomen crept up on him. He was reminded he still needed to urinate. The pain was so intense that it seemed to paralyze his lower body. He could barely keep it in now. He inched over to the window, legs crossed, slowly as to not drop his precious cargo, opened the window as fast as he could and let out a steaming stream. He was still not fully in control of his body so part of the contents of his bladder ended up on the window sill and wall.

After he was done he closed the window, added a few pieces of wood to the fire and sat down on the floor facing the door. Time passed as he surveilled the door and Johnny fell asleep at some point.

When he woke up it was day outside, no sound inside or outside. He was thirsty, his mouth was so dry the inside of it felt like sandpaper when he swallowed. All the beer cans in the room sounded empty when Johnny rattled them, however he managed to find a bottle of whisky under the bed that had three fingers worth of liquid in it. He drank it with one long gulp and felt the burn in his mouth and down his throat.

Johnny sat down on the floor again, facing the door. He was no longer frightened per se. By now the terror had seeped into his bones and he sat the looking blank at the door, waiting for the moment she would come in.

“Why are you torturing me like this? You could come through the flimsy piece of wood anytime and finish me off.” Johnny thought.

He fell asleep and had vivid nightmares of himself floating somewhere in the dark, motionless, weightless, feeling completely care free. Then she would come, radiating light like one of the saints painted on the walls of a church he had seen. She was completely naked except a diaphanous light covering the contours of her body. She would come closer in a saviour like pose. Her warm body would be then pressed against his and he could feel her warmth and the softness of her skin. He was naked too. Then her areolas would turn into gaping, slobbering, mouths filled with long, brown-yellow, razor sharp fangs that would bite of chunks of his flesh.

Johnny woke up with a gasp and felt a mix of terror and arousal. He had a painful erection.

“This is not right.” he thought, got up and looked through the window. It was night again and his thirst was even greater.

Johnny couldn’t shake off the dream so he went to his laptop, entered the address to his favorite pornography site, typed the word ‘redhead’ and started masturbating.

“If i’m gonna die at least i won’t go unsatisfied.”

The whole affair was quick and 30 seconds later Johnny came on the floor.

In the following moment of clearness Johnny realized he still had his phone on him so he dug in his pockets and produced it. Fingers shaking with happiness he dialed the emergency number and waited as the call to the police department connected.

He recounted the entire story in a hushed voice to the woman on the other end and by the time he was done she started laughing at him and told him that although it was a funny story he should not keep the line busy with prank calls.

“You should be a writer!” the woman giggled as she terminated the call.

“I’m trying to. If i don’t die that is.” Johnny thought.

Johnny felt the need to urinate again so he opened the window as he’d done the last time and went about his business. The dehydration made the process painful and he wasn’t able to produce more than a trickle which ended up mostly inside the room, on the floor.

The night was hell. His body decided it was hungry and thirsty and started aching all over. Sometime in the dark the fire started going out and Johnny didn’t have any wood to stoke it. He was cold, pained by hunger and thirst, alone in the dark and scared. He tried scanning the house with his ears for any kind of sound, but it was all dead quiet.

Johnny laid in the bed, decided to sleep and ride out the night. In the morning he was set on going downstairs and facing her. His phone clock read 2:05, he checked what time the sunrise was and saw he’d only have to wait 5 or 6 hours until dawn. He decided that if he’s going to go there he’d at least do it during day time so he could see.

He laid in his bed for what seemed like hours on end. He couldn’t sleep, he was too hungry and thirsty to sleep. He checked his phone again, 2:56. Johnny became irritated at first and then slowly started getting raging mad. He could feel his sanity and determination slipping away second by second. Each minute felt like an eternity and streams of thoughts flowed through his brain.

When the first light appeared on the horizon Johnny has already half past mad. His eyes were wide open with little threads of blood crisscrossing the white, his face was frozen in a tormented grin. He got out of bed, grabbed one of the desk legs and starting tugging at it until it ripped from top. The desk fell to the side spilling the laptop and other contents on the floor.

Holding the desk leg as it were a bat Johnny slowly made his way down the stairs as stealthy as he could. The stairs however would not cooperate and the more softly he tried treading on them the more they creaked.