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orgasm! Her own orgasm matched his; he felt her pulsing. Of course for her it was merely a reflex she could summon at will, but it felt as real as the rest of her.
    When they concluded, she disengaged as aptly as she had engaged, sliding off him, returning his hands to the wheel, cleaning him up, and drawing up his trousers. By the time they reached his house, both of them were completely in order.
    “Why?” he asked.
    “I now have the theoretic capacity to achieve feeling. I hoped a mutual orgasm would engender mutual bliss. I couldn’t wait for the bedroom.”
    She couldn’t wait. Was that true feeling? “Did it work?”
    “No. I remain unfeeling.”
    “Damn.”
    “Damn,” she echoed.
    It had nevertheless been some experience. If this was a signal of her new attitude, he liked it. The old Elasa would never have done it. She might have acceded if he had asked her for it, but not initiated it.
    “I’m sorry,” he said. “I think I want your true feeling as much as you do.”
    “You are blameless. You let me try.”
    “You are too damned accepting!”
    She glanced at him. “How should I have reacted?”
    “Living folk get mad when things go wrong.”
    “I will try to be angry in the future.”
    He thought of something as they entered the house. “If I got mad at you, how would you react?”
    She looked at him. “I very much want for you not to be angry with me. It would represent failure on my part.”
    “Would you be hurt? Frustrated? Unhappy?”
    “I would emulate these things.”
    “I understand that actors who play love scenes can get swept up in the emotions they pretend, and fall in love with each other. If you pretended hard enough, maybe that would get you there.”
    “I will try to pretend hard enough.”
    Banner sighed inwardly. This wasn’t working.
    They settled back into the daily routine. She kept his house while he was at work, and welcomed him home in the evenings with increasingly sumptuous dinners and imaginative sex. She no longer confined it to the bedroom; it could be on the living room couch, in a dining room chair, or on the kitchen table. On weekends she joined him at movies and dances, being the perfect date. She held his hand as if it were truly important to her. It was all wonderful.
    Yet not quite enough. Whatever it took to light the consciousness she was theoretically now capable of, they weren’t accomplishing it. The month was passing, and failure was looming larger. He would have to give her up. He dreaded that. She might be limited, but the limits hardly showed, and she remained the best thing that had happened to him.
    The last night came. “Tomorrow I must turn you into the shop,” he said as they lay embraced. “Oh, Elasa, I don’t want to do it!”
    “I want to remain with you,” she said. “But I think I have no choice.”
    “If only we had succeeded in evoking your consciousness.”
    “I believe it was sometimes close,” she said. “When you call me dear, when you say you love me, I want so much to respond in kind.”
    “You do respond!”
    “In emulation,” she clarified. “Not reality.”
    “That is the cross you bear. You desire true awareness and true feeling, and can only imitate them.”
    “It is a sadness.”
    Then he thought of something. “When we have sex, you climax with me.”
    “Yes. It enhances your pleasure in the act.”
    “You don’t actually feel the passion?”
    “Please, Banner, this questioning is not what you want. Let me satisfy you in the manner I can. If my emulation is imperfect--”
    “I’ve got an idea. Answer my question.”
    “I do not feel that physical passion. But I am pleased to facilitate yours.”
    “Can you program yourself to feel it?”
    She considered. “I could set up an orgasm macro, as it were, to trigger breathlessness, a racing pulse, increased body heat, clenching of the vagina, passionate moaning, and clasping your body close to mine, as I normally do when having sex with you. I would feel