I don't think anyone really knows who made the first robots. Some inventor in a lab, perhaps, or some government team, ensconced in a shadowy laboratory, always on the march to come up with something to make the shadow of war a little more tolerable. It doesn't really matter, after all. Not anymore, as far as I'm concerned, the outside world just a shadow, most days, a screen flickering off in some other room.

It's a nice place here, really. Broad, sweeping corridors and airy windows that look out onto what seems like an endless garden, the view so realistic I might forget where I am, for a moment. But if I let myself forget, just a little... well, it's not so bad. I've given up on my calendar, and the days melt together, one by one, blurring into a stretch that's just a little apart from time.

And the staff... They're lovely, I suppose, their motions effortlessly precise, synthetic smiles that almost reach humanity. Always good with bringing food, and staying just enough out of the way when I walk the halls of the place. Always obedient, too, programmed for service-with-a-smile. Any food, any entertainment, any wish, all delivered post-haste with mechanical courtesy, from the meal at noon to the evenings.

The evenings. I can't help but wonder who sat down and designed the cavalcade of companions, in quiet moments. Who figured out my tastes and dialed in desires and gave life to a parade of them. Always dark-haired, always smiling with the illusion of light behind the eyes. Sometimes in a red dress, sometimes in blue, always slipping in quietly through the door and taking my hands in hers. Its. Hers. There's no point longing for what's lost, I suppose, and the quiet halls of mechanical marvels are close enough to real. The soft, hot caress of their lips and tongue and bodies is enough to make me forget, cold sunlight or stars twinkling by, outside the window, as I push into sculpted forms and sigh in unison to the echoes of a fantasy.

They always linger, for a bit. Checking my pulse, scanning me; I don't know exactly why, but they've done their purpose, sliding away the yearning inside me and replacing it with a sated sort of loneliness. It's fine, really. Any man would feel the same, if he were the last man for a million miles. Perhaps when I finally let out my last breath in the night, they'll make an echo of me, and some distant star will find my children, undying and made of gleaming chrome inside.

But for now... Now, she lingers in the doorway, the expertly-set light silhouetting the curve of her hips, and scans me over, one hand playing over a finger, as if lost in thought.

And then she's gone, and I'm left to walk the halls alone, the dull hum of their voices in the dayroom rising. I wonder what they talk about, why they need to, if they can even think, and I peer in, just for a moment.

Walking away, I let my fingertips trace the wall, their looks of handcrafted shock slipping from memory as artificial voices break, President and Dallas and scripted, stunned words fading from my little world.

The inspiration.