Click on image to enlarge.
|
Bernardo's House [MultiFormat]
eBook by James Patrick Kelly
| |
Regular |
|
 |
|
Club |
| You Pay: |
$0.95 |
|
|
|
$0.81 |
eBook Category: Science Fiction Hugo Award Nominee
eBook Description: An AI residence serves as both domestic servant and concubine to Bernardo, its wealthy owner. But when Bernardo goes missing, the house gets lonely....
eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: Asimov's, 2003
Fictionwise Release Date: May 2004
730 Reader Ratings:
Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [39 KB]
, ePub (EPUB) [42 KB]
, Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [24 KB]
, Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [195 KB]
, Palm Doc (PDB) [27 KB]
, Microsoft Reader (LIT) [83 KB]
, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [97 KB]
, hiebook (KML) [89 KB]
, Sony Reader (LRF) [49 KB]
, iSilo (PDB) [22 KB]
, Mobipocket (PRC) [28 KB]
, Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [55 KB]
, OEBFF Format (IMP) [41 KB]
Words: 8235
Reading time: 23-32 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
 
"One thing you can always count on from the June Asimov's is an offering from James Patrick Kelly, and his latest is a real keeper. "Bernardo's House" is both the story's title and its protagonist: an AI who inhabits both the system of a high-tech, automated residence and the specially tailored artificial human that lives inside it. The house is programmed to serve as both domestic servant and concubine to a wealthy doctor, Bernardo. But Bernardo has been missing for two years, and the house is desperately lonely--until a young orphaned girl named Fly arrives, hidden truths are revealed, and things begin to change. This is the first of a few stories in this issue to examine the ethics of creating artificial human companionship, and as a work of contemplative, forward-looking SF it is very much a success. But it also succeeds strictly as entertainment, for this story pretty much has it all: finely realized characters, intriguing secrets slowly exposed, a realistic and subtly implied future backdrop, and a satisfying story arc. Kelly has a reputation for fiction that is both thought-provoking and highly entertaining, and "Bernardo's House" should only strengthen it. "--Christopher East, Tangent Online (Learn more about Tangent Online, the Internet's leading SF&F short fiction review website)
The house was lonely. She checked her gate cams constantly, hoping that Bernardo would come back to her. She hadn't seen him in almost two years--he had never been gone this long before. Something must have happened to him. Or maybe he had just gotten tired of her. Although they had never talked about where he went when he wasn't with her, she was pretty sure she wasn't his only house. A famous doctor like Bernardo would have three houses like her. Four. She didn't like to think about him sleeping in someone else's bed. Which he would have been doing for two years now. She had been feeling dowdy recently. Could his tastes in houses have changed?
Maybe.
Probably.
Definitely.
She thought she might be too understated. Her hips were slim and her floors were pale Botticino marble. There wasn't much loft to her Epping couch cushions. Her blueprint showed a roving, size-seven dancer's body--Bernardo had specified raven hair and green eyes--and just eight simple but elegant rooms. She was a gourmet cook even though she wasn't designed to eat. Sure, back when he had first had her built he had cupped her breasts and told her that he liked them small, but maybe now what he wanted was wall-to-wall cable-knit carpet and swag drapery.
He had promised to bring her a new suite of wallscapes, which was good because there was only so much of colliding galaxies and the Sistine Chapel a girl could take. For the past nine weeks she had been cycling her walls through the sixteen million colors they could display. If she left each color up for two seconds, it would take her just under a year to review the entire palette.
Each morning for his sake she wriggled her body into one of the slinky sexwear patterns he had brought for her clothes processor. The binding bustier or the lace babydoll or the mesh camisole. She didn't much like the way the leather-and-chain teddy stuck to her skin; Bernardo had spared no expense on her tactiles. Even her couches could be aroused by the right touch. After she dressed, she polished her Amadea brass-and-chrome bathroom fixtures or her Enchantress pattern sterling silver flatware or her Cuprinox French copper cookware. Sometimes she dusted, although the reticulated polyfoam in her air handlers screened particles larger than .03 microns. She missed Bernardo so. Sometimes masturbating helped, but not much.
He had erased her memory of their last hours together--the only time he had ever made her forget. All she remembered now was that he'd said that she was finally perfect. That she must never change. He came to her, he said, to leave the world behind. To escape into her beauty. Bernardo was so poetic. That had been a comfort at first.
He had also locked her out of the infofeed. She couldn't get news or watch shows or play the latest sims. Or call for help. Of course, she had the entire Norton entertainment archive to keep her company, although lots of it was too adult for her. She just didn't get Henry James or Brenda Bop or Alain Resnais. But she liked Jane Austen and Renoir and Buster Keaton and Billie Holliday and Petchara Songsee and the 2017 Red Sox. She loved to read about houses. But there was nothing in her archive after 2038 and she was awake twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five days a year.
|
)
