The woman was standing imobile in the same spot he had left her two days back. Johnny caught himself wondering if she had started gathering dust like all the other pieces of furniture in the room. Before he realized it the stairs had ended and he was making his way towards one of the cupboards.

When he had finally reached the cupboard he was almost parallel with the woman, only the big table and a couple of meters of air between them.

“Can she make the distance in one leap? I bet she can.” Johnny thought.

“I have frightened you, I apologize.” she said abruptly, focusing on him.

“Stay the fuck away from me!” Johnny yelled, waving the desk leg around.

“I will not harm you. Even if i wanted to I could have not. But just as well if i would have wanted and could that door would not have stopped me. I am faster and stronger than most humans. I do not tire and need no sleep. The other night my eyes were white because I was using a quantum of specters to analyze the environment in order to better protect you. As i said i am programmed to protect human life.”

“Whatever...” Johnny said as he snatched a bottle of whisky and bag of chips from the cupboard and ran up the stairs.

Panting inside the room he put the chair against the door knob again and started carefully listening for any sign of movement. The entire house seem to be quiet as ever.

“Quiet as a tomb.” Johnny thought to himself and started wolfing down the potato chips.

The big bag was empty in less than two minutes and Johnny felt how good it was to have a full belly. He fell asleep almost instantly on the floor. Johnny slept for almost 24 hours straight and when he woke up there was light coming through the window and his body felt like every drop of water had been squeezed out.

“Eating those chips was not a smart move.” Johnny said, wincing at the pain coming from his cracked lips.

He took the bottle of whiskey and took a big gulp. The liquid seemed to burn his insides and Johnny had trouble keeping it down. He tried urinating once more through the window and just as the last time it mostly ended up on the carpet inside. The room was starting to smell bad and the cold was almost unbearable.

Deciding to warm himself up, Johnny jumped in bed and started covering himself with every blanket and pillow he could find in the room. The only exposed parts were his face and his left hand holding the whiskey bottle.

He started dozing in and out of consciousness regularly. It was not sleep but more of a temporary blackout. Whenever he was up he would take a couple of drinks from the bottle to warm his chest up then fall back into slumber. Most of the day passed like this and by the time the sun was setting he had finished the bottle of whiskey and was delirious from the alcohol and dehydration. Then he fell to the blackness again.

Johnny was shaken awake by his nose. There was a potent smell in the room, strong enough to cover the smell of urine and wood. It was coming from downstairs. It smelled like something cooking, something good, something making his mouth water if it would have been able.

Half delirious and with shaking legs Johny made his way out of the bed, out of his room and down the stairs. He saw the woman standing near the stove, stirring something in one of the larger pots. The fire was roaring in the fireplace and the entire room smelled wonderful, it smelled like a fairytale home.

“Lucy, I’m hooooooome!” he yelled, opening his mouth as wide as he could, making his lips crack and bleed and multiple places.

“You are hallucinating. Please sit down.” the woman said. “You are severely dehydrated, eat this.” she continued placing a big bowl of steaming soup in front of him. The soup was mostly broth and some small pieces of vegetable.

“But I want steak!” Johnny cried in a childlike fashion.

“Your body cannot handle solid food in the state it is at the moment. Please finish your soup.” she said in a calm, but firm tone.

After he had finished the soup she put a large glass of water in front of him and made him drink half of it. Johnny fell asleep, face down on the table.

Over the next two days the woman nursed Johnny back to life. When he came to he realized only glimpses of what happened. He could remember being woken up and spoon fed and made to drink water. He remember having his head cradled in a loving mother type of manner.

Johnny opened his eyes and saw he was laying on the couch on the first floor, covered with some blankets, wearing fresh clothes and smelling good. He ran his hand across his face and saw that he was freshly shaven. It was day outside.

He got out of bed and managed to stand up on shaking legs. He was dressed in his pajamas. He never wore his pajamas the entire time he was here.

“What the fuck happened here?” Johnny thought to himself as he saw the woman coming down the stairs with the corner of his eye.

“Hello. You are awake, that’s good. Come, have something to eat.” she said, inviting him towards the table.

Johnny sat down at the table and he was given a glass of water. He gulped it down, some of the water trickling down the sides of his mouth. A few minutes later he was given a steaming bowl of soup which he wolfed down without breathing. Then came a medium piece of meat and potatoes. The entire meal was consumed in under five minutes. As a treat he was given an ice cold beer.

“What happened?” Johnny asked.

“Four nights ago when you came down the stairs you saw me surveilling the house and got it in your head that I was out to kill you.” the woman replied without any inflexion in her voice.

“Yeah.” Johnny said and drew back in his chair a little. He started remembering the whole affair. The fear was starting to creep up on him once more.

“You must understand that my programming does not allow me to hurt humans, directly or indirectly, and also I cannot sit idle while a human is being hurt or facing conditions that would threaten their life. Even if those conditions occur due to the human in case.”

“Like this little affair of ours.” Johnny added.

“Precisely. That is why I was cooking. By my calculations you were severely malnourished and dehydrated, therefore even if you wouldn’t have come here when you did I would have come after you and force fed you if necessary. May I remind you that I am physically able to go through that door and force you to eat?”

“Yeah, Yeah. Thought never left my mind.” Johnny said getting up from the table and slowly walking to the refrigerator. “I’m gonna grab a beer for upstairs and the go to sleep.”

The climb to the second floor had taken all the fight out of his still weak body and when he entered the room he noticed that everything had been cleaned-up, including the urine soaked carpet, and the desk had been fixed. His laptop was resting as usual on the desk.

Johnny cracked open the beer and pried the laptop open in attempt to write something. His mind skidded to other things as he slowly sipped the cold beer. He realized that the four days of fasting had done miracles for his body and his beer gut was almost gone.

“It’ll be back in no time.” he thought as he went over to the bed and enveloped himself in all the clean blankets.

When woke up it was early morning and Johnny felt better rested than he ever had. A smell of coffee crept up on him and his stomach growled so he got out of bed and started walking through the door. He noticed he hadn’t secured the door the prior night and a wave of irrational fear came crashing over him.

He slowly crept down the stairs to see the woman stirring something over the stove.

“Good morning, John. I have made breakfast. Please eat.” she said.

“Good morning.” he said and cautiously walked towards the bathroom. By the time he came back and was seated at the table a big plate of eggs and bacon was set in front of him, as well as a big mug of coffee. Johnny ate his meal watching the woman clean the dishes with the corner of his eye.

“I’m gonna take the coffee upstairs.” he said grabbing the mug and making his way up the stairs.

“What would you like for lunch?”

“Oh, I don’t do lunch.”

Johnny was inside the room, ashamed of his poor manners.

“Come to think of it she had all the time in the world to kill me, all the possible occasions. She even shaved me while I was out cold. She could have cut my throat without me knowing.” Johnny tried to reason with himself, however the fear he felt was not something rational, it was something deep rooted in his bones.

The better part of the day had passed with Johnny engulfed in his thoughts and when he came back to reality he saw it had started to snow outside. He checked the time and saw it was already three in the afternoon and he hadn’t written any word so he decided to get something to drink and start writing.

The whole trip to the first floor was eerie at best. He had easily walked down the stairs and seen the woman standing upright in the middle of the room. He’d went to the bathroom without saying a word. Neither did she. He grabbed a bottle and scuttled up the stairs.

Until late evening he managed to write a couple of pages, however it required considerable effort to pry out the words. The bottle of whiskey was a considerably easier chore and had managed to finish more than half of it.

The alcohol had mellowed his fears and he started thinking about the woman again in semi-endearing terms. He thought about her body and how she kept feeding him, kept thinking about how he would like to know more about her.

“A real marvel of technology...” he thought “...and goddamn it if I’m gonna be one of those closed mind hicks rejecting new things.”

“Shit. Oedipus much?” he asked himself giggling.

Johnny descended to the first floor with visible ease now, mostly fueled by the alcohol. He was greeted with dinner composed of a small piece of fish and steamed vegetables.

“So, how were you made?” he asked between bites.

“I do not possess such information. I apologize.”

“Sorry, that was a stupid questions.”

“Do not worry. I will answer anything I am able to.”

“Did you know you’re kinda stiff? I mean, you’re too formal.”

“I apologize...”

“Please stop apologizing. I mean, it’s not your fault right? It has to do something with the programing I guess.”

“Yes. However I am programmed to learn from each social interaction and improve my people skills.”

The two carried out the conversation for a while more, Johnny finished the bottle of whiskey and decided it was time to head to bed.

The next three weeks passed in the same fashion and the interactions during the two meals of the day grew in length and quality. During the day Johnny tried as hard as he could to write, but the words came out as trickle at best. The quality of the writing was nowhere near decent, but it was the best he could manage.

The woman had changed considerably in this period. She was no longer rigid in her body positions or language. She was begging to appear more and more as a real human being. She had even started to simulate a breathing motion with her chest and abdomen after Johnny had pointed out that it was really disturbing to see her not breathe.

One morning while the two were discussing laughter as the product of humor Johnny’s phone rang.

“Mr. Barber?” the voice asked.

“Yes?”

“I am calling on behalf of DrexLabs.”

“Oh...” is all that Johnny managed to say. He’d forgotten completely about the pick-up date and now that it was here he realized he felt sorry to see her go.

“We would like to apologize and inform you that we are not able to pick up the unit at the present time…” the voice continued talking but Johnny had shut his brain to this conversation. He was happy, he really didn’t want to see her go.

“I understand” he said blankly.

“We will confirm pick-up once the roads are accessible again.”

“Goodbye.” Johnny muttered and rushed towards the door.

What he saw outside left him dumbfounded. Everything was under a thick cover of snow. His pick-up truck was only a shape underneath a mountain of powder and there were no distinctive traces to the landscape. Only a sea of white. He realized he hadn’t been out of the cabin for a month now.

“I’m stuck here. I’m stuck here.” he though as the desperation slowly creeped up to him.

He didn’t know for how long he had been standing on the porch, the thought playing over and over in his head like a broken record, when he heard a voice. She was standing next to him, barefooted, dressed only in his shirt. Her niples were showing through the fabric of the shirt, otherwise no sign of the cold bothering her.

“Let’s go in.” she said and only then he realized he was freezing.

That night Johnny got very drunk and went to bed. The next morning he had made peace with the situation and everything was back to normal.