"They make a fairly convincing pitch here. It doesn't seem possible, though, to find a woman who might be ten times better than mother in order to seem half as good - except, of course, in the Twilight Zone."A widower buys a robot grandmother for his three children. Two of the children take to her immediately, but one, Anne, doesn't. The robot reminds her too much of her mother. A woman she hates for leaving her. When Anne accidentally walks in front of an oncoming van, the grandmother throws herself in front of it. Anne, seeing the grandmother is unhurt, realizes she can never leave her like her mother, and she finally accepts her. Years later, the children are all grown up and leaving for college. The grandmother tells them she is going back to Facsimile, Limited. She knows her job here is finished.
"A fable? Most assuredly. But who's to say at some distant moment there might not be an assembly line producing a gentle product in the form of a grandmother whose stock in trade is love? Fable, sure - but who's to say?."