If you google image ‘Sexy Robot Man,’ that is what you get. PS. FYI.

So, I have been ‘comissioned’ if you will to write a monologue for an upcoming festival of halloween plays, spoken from the perspective of a deceased person. This is what I mustered. Why am I so obsessed with robots even, as of late?

Also, please keep the image below in your mind as you read on. Yes; it exists.

The Way in Which Robots will Make Love to Each other

By Bekah Brunstetter

Elizabeth, middle age, appears. She has been electrocuted. Her hair is frazzled; she twitches.

ELIZABETH
It was a dark and stormy night. (Pause.) No, it wasn’t. It was pleasant, actually. The evening was doing that pleasant evening thing that happens when the weather begins to hover between Summer and Fall, crisp and cool and sweatery. Outside the window, the leaves said Hello, I am falling. I am falling, and there is nothing you can do to stop me.
(She pauses, nostalgically.)
Ernie loved leaves. Hi, the leaf, he would say. I wonder what he is doing right now, and whether or not it involves some memory of me.

We were snuggling, Ernie and I, that night, all wrapped into each other as best we could, as close as two can fit. We were watching something like a Canadian soap opera for teenagers in which the fat girl has no choice but to stay with her boyfriend who beats her, because she is fat, but her eyes are pretty, so she finds the will to live somehow.

We were snuggling like any two lovers would to Canadian television: feet touching, releasing adorable and annoying relaxed sounds towards each other, in and out. We were like any other snuggling lovers. (Pause.)  Except for the fact that Ernie is an Elder Care Robot I ordered online from Japan to care for my dying mother before she up and died two months ago, quietly and in her sleep, with no if ands or buts about it.
I believe in love, don’t you?

It seemed cruel to send Ernie away. He is so good at picking things up, and putting them other places. So clean and strong. So reliable.  So quiet. Naturally ,we fell in love.
This went on for sometime, and I was more than content to snuggle and exchange sounds with this body, as he picked things up for me, and put them where they belonged. I am picking this up, he would say, and sigh, I would say, loving him more than any person might love any person despite the annoying and adorable sounds they release when tired, or bored, or exasperated.

Now, I have always hated intercourse with a specific loathing usually reserved for dirty band aids. I find it to be painful and silly, like some sort of obligatory wedding dance in mis-sized stiletto shoes.  This worked well for Ernie and I. He did not require me to put out, and  I, in turn, laid off his nuts, if you will.
But this night in particular – there was something different in the air. As I watched something like a Canadian soap opera for teenagers, as I watched them kiss and fondle each other, spooning in bedrooms with unlocked doors as Mother carried laundry up the hall – I felt – curious. Aroused. I looked at up at Ernie, and thought:

In the future, Robots will make love to each other via files and jpegs. Their declarations of devotion will be titled iminlovewithyou dot doc. Their hearts will look like blank word documents. Once filled with musings and metallic love sounds, these documents will be transferred via soft robot touches, and love will happen. This love will be measured in  gifs, watts and gigabytes. Man and woman-bots, for the first time, will be able to compare their feelings of love with each other, scientifically.
How fucking romantic, I said, and I never say fucking, or romantic. This was huge. How fucking, fucking romantic.
Having been snuggling me for so long a period, Ernie had entered ‘sleep’ mode. WAKE,, I said, and those big eyes opened like metallic pieces of heaven pie. I touched him like always,  like one lovingly touches a new kitchen appliance, right out of the box: with tender respect, and joy.
I went down further. Further. Farther than ever. ERNIE’s functions moved within him and sounds came out, like sounds should. PERPLEXED, he managed, PERPLEXED. Shhhh I said. Further down I went, until I found someone’s version of paradise: metal, firm. They had not forgotten, these makers. They knew.
Perplexed, I was, as to how it was going to go down. But  I was Determined to take my love outside of myself, and put it onto this thing that I loved, take it inside myself, love it up all good.
It was worth it, I say, in retrospect. The thing that felt like a forest fire through my body and hair was the closest thing I had ever felt to love: love being a matter of risk; love feeling like fire being set to your insides, one by one.