The Artificial Lover: One Male Robot, Two Bisexual Women, and Three-Way Intimacy

Artificial Lover is a novel of social experiment set in Hong Kong. It begins with the end of a same-sex marriage. Mei Jia, a middle-aged woman from a wealthy family, has just divorced. After entering therapy and reuniting with her primary school classmate Zhou Yan, both women begin to recognize their bisexual desires. Yet neither has the courage to enter a real relationship with a man. Together they purchase a male companion robot named Along and attempt an experiment in bisexual intimacy: a same-sex relationship running alongside heterosexual desire.The novel is not about a woman choosing among women, men, and robots. It is about two bisexual lesbian women escaping family identity, failed marriage, and social labels, briefly entering an experiment in same-sex love, heterosexual desire, and technological intimacy. After undergoing the temptation of the robot's perfection, they finally understand that a real relationship is not the search for a perfect configuration, but the willingness to continue living with an imperfect person. Machines can reduce loneliness, but they cannot bear love on behalf of human beings. Technology can simulate intimacy, but it cannot replace the clumsy, limited, painful, and real responsibility between one person and another.