To tell you the truth when I first read about this in Gizmag and watched the video I thought it was a joke, you know “fake news” but because of my never ending nosiness and lack of a real job I decided to stick my nose in where it wasn’t welcome and very nearly died as a result.
Still I am getting ahead of myself, I guess I should back up a little and start the story at the beginning.
SHOW ME THE MONEY
My name is Nick Rowney and I am 63 years old, I have never visited a prostitute, or watched a porn video and until a couple of months ago I had never seen a sex doll, not even a blow up sheep. But what had started out as a simple search for some different financial advice has changed my life forever.
I was looking for Harmony a New Zealand money lending site, on Google; but what turned up was Harmony and it changed my views on relationships and what it means to be human.
Its not because I can’t manage human relationships but rather the fact that I am obsessed with the future and what that looks like and where it is going, I investigate things that are out of the ordinary. And a rubber doll that talks and can interact with its human partner is right up my Conservative view point of “out of the ordinary”.
So armed with the details of this company I decided to see if they were as far in front in this field as they claimed.
My first port of call was to a couple of friends of mine who work for WetaWorkshop and who have been creating the most realistic creatures and people in the Film world for the last 20 years.
They told me in the strictest confidence that they had been creating “Human skins” for a Robotic company, but refused to give me any more details. Still that was all I needed, my over imaginative brain and obsessive compulsive nature had by now totally kicked in.
So by means that I am not at liberty to disclose I found the Hong Kong company they had been dealing with. But it appeared I was too late as the website had been taken down and instead an official warning from the Chinese Government about their anti corruption drive and how the owner had voluntarily surrendered to Chinese officials for questioning. Never a good sign, and a warning I failed to take.
But there was a name of one of the company officials and with a little delving it turned out he was also involved with, not a robotic company but a sex toy company called Shenzhen Chaoying Art Culture Co .
And that’s where the story might have ended but as I looked at the sex dolls I realised that the quality was nowhere near what Weta would produce and so it wasn’t their “Human skins” being used here. So in that case where?
THE SET UP
Only one thing for it really, I decided to go to China and take a look around.
As anyone who has visited China will tell you, that’s not really how it works, but my ace up my sleeve was my old Weta Workshop ID card. I figured I could use it to pretend I was scouting for new opportunities for co-operation in Film between NZ and China if I got caught in any compromising situation.
And this is where it started to take a very serious and frightening turn as by pure chance I was talking to a fantastic young Chinese medical student and when I mentioned I was looking for Robotic Sex Dolls he nervously took me aside.
It appears that the Chinese Govt has just lately been cracking down on the production of robotic Sex dolls and there have been some very Public trials in which Directors of some companies have either been jailed or simply disappeared.
But what frightened me most was the calm way he later explained at dinner that as part of his medical studies he had been involved in grafting medical grade Silicone pieces onto to backs of living rats. When I asked him what for, he said they had been told that Silicone skin was much cheaper to produce and didn’t need special storage so could be used in the battlefield for grafts for burns etc.
HIGH CRIMES
They came for me at two in the morning, sixteen policemen an interpreter and the “medical student” and what looked like a local TV news film crew.
I would have gone meekly and without resistance but it was obvious they wanted to make an example, you know to scare. Firstly they beat me with sticks, then they used electric cattle prods and finally they dragged me by my feet down the stone steps on my face and threw me in a van.
It was two weeks till I regained consciousness another three days till I could open my eyes and four weeks before my broken jaw had healed enough to talk.
Over the three weeks of interrogation I was subjected to I managed to convince them that I was just a stupid Westerner on some sort of sex doll holiday, not a criminal but also not very desirable. My Weta Workshop ID caused me more problems as they insisted I had stolen it. I signed the obligatory police release form that says I had not received any bad treatment and was immediately deported.
SO WHAT’S THE REAL STORY?
While I was in prison I shared a cell with two people who had worked in the robotics industry ( put there to trick me into revealing why I was in China) but as luck would have it they used it as an opportunity to tell me what was really going on.
The Silicone skin was in its infancy but they have been trying it on prisoners, who they had flayed of their skin and then slipped the “Human skin” over them like a grotesque Onesie which was grafted at the hands and feet ( hence I suppose the medical students experiments in grafting).
The misery and pain suffered by these poor individuals is beyond comprehension, and I believe the longest any of them lasted has been measured only in days.
But the medical side is really just part of an elaborate hoax, they are not really interested in grafting “Silicone skins” on to humans. What they really want is to convince the Western world that their robots can move, respond and behave just like a real humans. You know right down to the emotional nuances like affection and love.
They want us to believe that their Robots and AI capabilities are so far advanced that they behave just like us.
FOOTNOTE
I have just received some heartbreaking news today , the couple inside the “Robot skins” in the video were forced to go through the whole marriage ceremony, after function and then forced to have sex for the cameras. They have since disappeared.