Helen and her husband, Edgar, were not getting along, pre-fembot. It is unclear if Helen registers Dolly’s existence as infidelity or as the embodiment of Edgar’s self-serving neglect, the product of thousands of hours spent apart. Perhaps those assessments are one and the same. Helen stuffs Dolly into a suitcase and stashes it in a train-station locker while she negotiates an appropriate ransom with Edgar: a sex robot of her own, the Ken to his Barbie. An A.I.-only open marriage?

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Persons: Helen, Edgar, Dolly, Ken, Barbie, Ron, it’s