Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

Shades of coffee and caramel run under my fingertips like love letters written in goose-bump braille. There’s a heat from the honeyed angles and well-oiled hip joints that quietly beg me for a brush of fingertip. The skin is warm and dry to the touch. You’d think from the smoothness of her back that she’d been polished every day and you’d be right.

She’s easy to turn on. There’s a switch behind her left ear. The new prototype Gabrielle.

I’m putting the finishing touches on my masterpiece. It’s late on a Friday night. I’m one of the only people who manufacture custom units. This warehouse has vats of perfection in the basement. God is in the details, they have said, and details are all that concern me. I hardly sleep.

Robotic lovers are available all over the world but I am the most popular designer of companions.

I have designed the women and men, much to the delight of my customers. I am an artist. I know that it is the flaws that make perfection attractive. A perfect lover must be unique. I make women whose eyes are just a little too far apart. There is a gap in between the front teeth of some of the men. There are two extra pounds of flesh on some models and others who were just that few ounces too thin.

One flaw was all it took. The clients went crazy. I was paid more on top of my already exorbitant prices.

People fell in love with my creations.

On the way up here, I wandered between the vats and looked at the shadows in the murky protein-rich water of each plexiglass container. Renee. Violet. Jessica. David. Thomas. Christopher. Each one was different in the details but similar in perfection.

I looked forward to these nights and I dreaded them. I always dove in with a feverish need to outdo myself and I always left with a horrible crushing feeling of failure in my gut.

I was the best at what I did. A little godling churning out love for the rich.