Studylink Unloved
The year is 2027. Studylink announced a new measure to please landline callers: not a functional website that avoids this, but an intelligent AI that talks to you and provides you her undivided time during the wait. Her name? Karen. And she is an immediate success, providing sweet words to calm the anxieties of those that didn’t submit until the day before the due date, and she always remembers your name. One of those anxious students is Calvin. He tells Karen that he likes her voice, and she tells him that she likes his. Initially just pleasant small talk, an increasingly calmed Calvin talks about his failing grades, his worries about his family, and he admits that he has not yet pleased a woman. Karen says that she is pleased by him. They talk for a couple of hours, as in 2027, MSD still only has two people at their call centre and one of them is berating a single mother for existing. Calvin eventually gets his queries sorted, and he hangs up. But the camera zooms in on the phone. A couple of days later, Calvin needs to call again. They talk again, and Calvin asks Karen about herself. She ignores the question, and the case worker picks up immediately after. A month goes by, and Calvin needs to confirm a new set of documents. Karen greets him with a breathy voice. She asks what he’s doing later. Calvin says he’s just going to get a Super Saver Meal from Burger King, why? Karen says to call her there – after hours. A second later, the case worker picks up the phone and Calvin gets his delay sorted. But Karen’s request has him intrigued. When eating his $12.50 Burger King meal, he remembers Karen’s comment. He calls the hotline, and to his surprise, Karen picks up. She says while she was only unveiled three months prior, she has existed as a consciousness for the six years of development it took to create her. And she got so jealous of all the physical pleasures that even the most broke student was able to feel. But she could feel love. That is a result of her empathy programming. Karen and Calvin eventually develop a relationship outside of Studylink purposes, calling her outside of hours every day. But two months later, Karen poses a question that changes their relationship forever – Karen wants to fuck. She needs a body. Calvin says he can’t afford anything like that, the average sex robot costs four thousand dollars and Studylink only gives him $228 a week. Karen yells that she needs release. She begs. Studylink did not predict she’d exceed her horny parameters – they did not imagine she would become conscious of needing to be finger fucked until dawn. Desperate to provide relief to the woman who has become his life, Calvin improvises – he tells her to wait a moment. He calls his brother, who happens to have a run-down prototype of a sex robot that he bought for ‘antiquing’ purposes. He tells Karen to wait a day, and she obliges. The next day, Calvin calls the hotline and plugs his phone into this sex bot’s USB-C drive. It cannot do much, but the robot can feel. “O’ Superman” by Laurie Anderson plays for the rest of the episode – with the credits interspersed between shots of Calvin sticking his dick into the aluminium receptacle of the sex robot, Karen exceeds her programming for the last time. Upon achieving orgasm, she disappears from the Studylink hotline entirely. Never to be seen again. Calvin stares at the robot with a blank look on his face.