Wives from the Mail

When you start telling somebody about yourself and how you're doing, usually you give them some background: give them a name, an idea of who you are, where you're from, what things were like for you when you were a kid. I can't give you all of that. I can tell you what they call me. It's not my true name, no, but if you had my true name I wouldn't continue through this politely. My given nickname I don't like very much, but I haven't had much reason to raise protest. My nickname, what the people from my circle have called and I presume will call me, has to do with the job I've taken on. The job doesn't have health benefits or anything like that, but the pay is quite nice and I get to work with some very good people. The problem with the job however, is that it isn't legal - not on my home planet or any of the planets that have been colonized in the past few decades. 

My name is The Shipper. Before you start snickering or trying to crack jokes, I've probably already heard it before. The Shitter. The Shitbird. Many more like that and just about as creative. My pal told me once in a bar that they call me The Shipper because of how one wise guy I hired was selling my services. Apparently the kid said: "They call him The Shipper. He ships you to where you're going to make it, for the relationship you're going to take it." Goofy kid. I fired him after that. I'm a professional. I always figured anything with a half-brained slogan that rhymed was trying to swindle me, and I wouldn't want to be putting out that kind of image. I guess in the end all businesses are trying to swindle somebody. Whatever the case I don't want someone slinging my services like I'm some amateur in need of a quick buck. 

Anyways, like I was saying, the name comes from what I do. The people I deal with call me The Shipper, the government calls me a trafficker. I don't see it that way, but I haven't had much reason to raise protest to the g-men either. I do my job, I get paid, and the people I work for will ensure I won't get put in a cell or at least that I have a very short stay. I'm not ashamed of my work either. I get people out of a place they don't want to be and train them to act as society would expect of them while they're in my care. The way I do things comes in the form of the Andy & Andria bots everybody talks about - damned androids are all the rave now. It doesn't even seem that long ago that people talked about customizing their tablets, smart phones, and so on. Not even a full century later and we've colonized planets and are worrying about about customization with your personal, nearly human android. 

I'm sure you remember how they were before. Maybe not. Perhaps you're too young to remember the first generation of Andys and Andrias. The first generation Andy and Andria were very doll like. Their skin was like a basic plastic compared to how realistic they are now. They all looked the same too, sometimes people even got their Andy or their Andria mixed up with somebody else's. People grew tired of that pretty quickly. They wanted something that looked a little less creepy. They wanted something new, something better. I'm glad they demanded better. Back then the first generation androids made my work hard. They've advanced quite a bit. I can't even really remember what generation they're at now, but I've purchased one of each every time they came out with a new one. 

I didn't do it because I needed a day-to-day servant or someone to take special care of me at night when I was feeling lonely. I needed them for a different reason: a point of reference. The releases changed ever so slightly each time and thankfully, the better the companies get at it, the easier it usually makes my job. As a trafficker (as the government calls me) my client is shipped to me in a stolen Andy & Andria box. From there I give them the run down on how they should act, how they should look, and what they are and aren't allowed to do. Generally I work with women. I've worked with a few men, but I wasn't able to naturally pull it off and it only made those sniffing around in my business all the more suspicious. 

The government has everything tracked as they usually do. They keep an especially good eye on me ever since one of my clients ended up trying to kill me in the middle of a diner. She couldn't take it. She had to act like a proper android, and I had to act like a proper master. She didn't want any of that anymore. She grew too complacent I suppose. I tried to blame it on a bug in her programming, but it was easy enough for them to find out she wasn't made out of computer chips, gears, and chords. I feigned ignorance and the charges were dropped, but the eyes weren't. If I was to have another incident, I'd be put in the slammer without a second's thought.