The title of this paper is a question asked by the character Tak (Takura Kimura) in Wong Kar Wai's 2004 film 2046 when warned not to fall in love with any of the robots who form the cabin crew of the train on which he is a passenger. Tak is travelling back from 2046 which is not a year, but a zone in a dystopian future earth which the heartbroken visit in an attempt to recover past loves. Tak is the only person ever to return from 2046 and on his journey back he remains dolorous and eventually falls for one of the cabin crew, played by Faye Wong. Although he has sex with her – the robots are all programmed to cater to the passengers' every need – she doesn't appear to reciprocate his feelings and although Tak initially ascribes this to mechanical causes he comes to realise she loves another and her rejection empowers him to leave the train and resume his life.

Wong's character is involved, then, in both sex work and affective labour. The same can be said for Joi (Ana de Armas) in Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017), the sequel to Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982), adapted from the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K Dick (1968). Joi is the holographic companion of the film's protagonist K (Ryan Gosling), himself an android or 'replicant'. In order for the incorporeal Joi to consummate her relationship with K she procures the services of replicant sex worker Mariette (Mackenzie Davis) with whom she 'syncs', in an act of embodiment, so she can experience physical sensation. K makes love to Mariette's body but she is merely a vessel for Joi and afterwards K avoids her while Joi curtly dismisses her.

Mariette physically resembles the Blade Runner character Pris (Daryl Hannah), a replicant designated as a 'pleasure model', that is, an unpaid, forced sex worker. Or more accurately, Mariette is modelled after Pris, diegetically by the designers of replicants in the world of Blade Runner 2049 and extra-diegetically by the film's real-world producers. Tak, and the crew on the train, are fictional characters within the world of 2046, created by the film's central character, Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai), a science fiction writer, in an attempt to come to terms with his own troubled romantic past; as 'pleasure models' both Pris and Mariette can be said to participate in fictions within the worlds of their respective films: Pris in her performance of the role of helpless waif in order to carry out a seduction; Mariette in her embodiment of Joi which allows her to become, temporarily, a 'real girl' for K. Joi herself is revealed to be a commercially available AI which promises to provide 'whatever you want to hear, whatever you want to see' for its user/owner; as such she can be considered a customisable fictional character. In this paper I will use a comparative analysis of 2046 and Blade Runner 2049 to explore the concept of affective labour – drawing on the work of key theorists in this field including Hardt and Negri, Steven Shaviro and Jodi Dean – and its relationship to sex work and to the reality – in terms of both production and consumption – of fiction in a time when virtual reality and 'sexbot' technology already exists and is quickly evolving, erasing the boundaries between science fiction and real life.