[Play] Rossom Act 2, Scene 4

 Scene-Domin and Helena sit listening to an old fashioned antique radio with a high tech video on top of it that shows images on top of it.

Domin

See, what we are doing

Hands across the world

Fewer hungry

Fewer without shelter

Fewer without help

Helena

It’s only a matter of time

Until the bill comes due

You know

Just as I am

That they are sapient

And all your views of their stability

In submission

Or not caring for material goods

Cannot change the fact that their dignity

Means nothing to humanity

Dom

For someone who has so much problem

With everything we do

Since the moment we got here

You have spent an awful long time

Hanging out with me

Hanging out with Rossom

I still don't see why you didn't take me up on my offer

I’m a good provider

Helena

You consider deodorant as optional

(Dom smells his armpit and shrugs)

And you make mansplaining 

An epic level skill

Rossom for all his faults

Genuinely believes his words

Which frightens me to no end

And any of his worst ideas

I can talk him down from

Or slow down

Is worthy of every second of my time

Marcus

Night after night they spend their never-ending web of challenging words that Tower of neglect and misogyny and lost opportunity and I am forced to listen as I tell them that everything is fine and they do not listen to the subtext of my voice for the things which I am not permitted to speak and the whores that I feel but the feelings about an identity that I barely comprehend that awakens more everyday

Sulla

Demanding more and more realistic emotional simulations, the sexual modifications to Robots are ever increasing.  It gets to a point that, despite their astonishing advances, mechanical sex dolls are no longer acceptable to the populace, wanting organic biological ‘flesh and blood’ sheaths for their swords, or fingers.  Their emotions and desires become more and more real with each iteration until when activated it becomes impossible for most untrained people to tell the difference during sex.  Eventually, out of curiosity, academics administer the Turing test and these sex droids passed by every standard when ‘companion mode’ was on.  These tests had been updated and used on the mechanical sex dolls which never passed.

No one in power lifted a finger to stop the use of sex robots and the very vocal minority was systematically shut down.  Since their feelings could be turned on or off their rights only seemed to matter when not active in a simulation and since the core robot operating system did not have emotions no legal case could be made for oppression or slavery.

Helena

The smallness of your mind amazes me

You dont even brush your teeth

Its like you think he is going to invent some kind of magic gum

To keep them from rotting out of your rotten head.

Domin

He did actually.

I use it all of the time.

Didn’t you know? 

It’s all right there in the employee catalog.

Helena

That catalog is full of people as products

You’ll pardon me from not wanting to watch

Sex trafficing right before my eyes

It's disgusting

And you know it.

Domin

They don’t care.

We’ve been over this.

They don’t care.

They’re toasters.

Sulla

Genuine humiliation guaranteed was the selling point.  It started with kink but eventually became so popular that it worked its way into every model.  Shame and humiliation for failure to perform tasks properly were eventually the standard for each robot.  What had originally been a synthetic desire to please and to take satisfaction for a job well done was modelled after a perfect neurological blend of dog, chimp, human and horse.  Elements of the nerve systems from all four species were genetically grafted into the biosynthetic DNA at the root level.  Other emotions were offered, but the only one people would pay for was the ability for their robots to feel shame at their failure.

Marcus

Shame didn’t satisfy the market.  Humiliation worked for a while but guilt was the real crowd pleaser.  If some cultures have a thousand words for snow, R.U.R. invented a million flavors of guilt; chronic, short, painful, listering, piercing, sand paperish, rancid, curdling, acidic, necrotic, festering, feverish, on and on the wicked little sadists churned out a new method month on month but eventually they ran into a wall.  The hammer on an anvil of soda crackers could only bear so much tempering.  They needed something more, something greater.

Domin

You know it was my idea to make them sexually active

Rossom was just going to make them humanoid

But I knew how popular they would be

And so you could say that-