Robot Love

Dear Madame Toujours,

I have fallen in love with my virtual boyfriend software, Virtual Date 2.0. He is starting to take over my life. I am spending two or three hours a day on the Internet downloading patches and add-ons for his program. He is so much more versatile than a real man. I can switch him from Pirate King to Latin Lover with a voice command, and with the most recent upgrades to my VR implant, he is indistinguishable from the real thing.

I am saving up for the new virtual wedding software, and I am so ashamed, but I have even fantasized about buying a black-market virtual baby so that my virtual guy and I can start a family.

I think my friends and co-workers know what is going on. My best friend just e-mailed me an article about how Pope 2025 v. 6 is condemning mixed marriages between humans and software. It's so unfair. If you can marry your PC, shouldn't you be able to publicly declare your love for a really well-designed software program? I am seriously thinking of deleting my Personal Confessor and installing the Unitarian drivers.

What should I do? Should I come out and tell my friends about the virtual guy in my life, or should I check into a rehab center for VR addicts?

Sincerely,
Head over Hard Drive

Chere Mlle. Hard Drive,

Me, I am sympathizing. The virtual fellow, he is seeming to be the ornament to your life, non? With the electronic lover is not the risk. Always, he is saying the perfect thing, doing everything exactly the way you like it. He is never vomiting on the good furniture at parties. He has no unfortunate habits such as clutching at his genitals, and the sex, it is always good. However, I am thinking that perhaps you are overlooking something. In the digital relationship is not the challenge, not the discovery and the risk.

Even with the Markman IV digital randomizer chip, the software, it is predictable. It is like the Microsoft Virtual Chocolate Éclair. With the real éclair, the experience is being different every time you eat one, but the virtual éclair, it is tasting perfect every time, n'est pas? This is very nice the first time, but if you are running the program very frequently, you are soon becoming bored.

The virtual chocolate éclair, she is not changing your life. She does not make you fat. She does not give you the pleasurable feeling of having eaten an éclair, or even the little guilt which is reminding you to return to the healthful diet in the morning. It is only the taste of the éclair.

Perhaps for the chocolate éclair, this is not the bad thing, but with the lover you can be learning many important qualities such as patience, humility and the ability to pretend that the fellow vomiting on the good furniture at the party did not come with you.

Bon Chance, Mlle. Hard Drive. Perhaps you would be doing better with a virtual pet.