By keraptis02@hotmail.com
Inspired by “The Offer” by Android675@aol.com
If you have not read “The Offer” by Android675@aol.com, to which this
story is a sequel, stop right here and read it first. (It’s available here,
among other places.) You should also
read my first sequel to the original, ambitiously entitled “The Offer, Part 2,” which is also
available on this site. If you don’t, you may not understand
everything that occurs in this story!
Note: The following story contains explicit sexual material. If stories about sex, and particularly
robots and sex, do not appeal to you, please don’t read any further. This story should not be read by anyone under
eighteen years of age. (You know who
you are.)
Rising
to her feet, Wendy locked her fingers above her head and stretched. As disappointed as she felt, she had to
smile as her suit sent a cascade of tiny electric pulses along her arms and
legs. She absolutely loved the way her
silver skin—she thought of the suit as a part of her—tingled as she moved.
The
reception area was empty and quiet—it was as though the androids had completely
forgotten about her. Wendy removed her
headset and hooked it to her waist, just above the programming disk mounted on
her right hip. She needed to clear her
head for a while, to try to make sense of her jumbled thoughts. Walking through the double doors behind her
station, Wendy entered the android processing area—the room where human
recruits underwent their final transformation into machines. The processing stations stood unused,
dormant except for the occasional blinking of a status light on their
monitoring consoles. Wendy suddenly had
the urge to lie down on one of the tables, to see if she could try to hook
herself up and effect her own transformation into a machine. Her heart beat faster as she imagined
connecting the cables to her body, lifting the programming helmet over her
head, and saying goodbye to her human self once and for all.
If only
she knew how to work the equipment . . . but she didn’t, and a part of her knew
that things could go seriously wrong if she tried anything so foolish. Besides, she just couldn’t bring herself to
go near the processing stations. It
wasn’t so much that she was afraid of getting caught, really, though that
thought did occur to her. It was more
that she’d already been so well conditioned to obey her programming that such a
deviation wasn’t possible.
She
decided at last to leave the chamber, passing through another door into a long
metal corridor. She saw Unit N992—Wendy
still thought of her as Keisha Grant, and briefly wondered if the android even
remembered that name—walking smoothly toward her. The unit seemed oblivious to Wendy’s presence, a blissfully blank
expression on her chrome face as she strode past. Unit N992 was a perfect robot—the most beautiful thing Wendy had
ever seen. Wendy wanted so badly to be
just like her.
Wendy
watched as the robot turned mechanically and headed along another corridor—one
Wendy had never been down before. As
far as she knew, it had only recently been completed by the androids, who were
working incessantly to build out the new recruiting center. Curious, Wendy followed—and saw Unit N992
pass through an archway into a brightly-lit room with gleaming walls of white
and chrome. The left-hand wall was
flush with the corridor, and bare, as was the wall directly ahead. As Unit N992 turned right and moved out of
Wendy’s sight, Wendy crept behind her until she could see through the archway
into the rest of the room.
Mounted
in the far wall was a dazzling array of electronic panels and consoles, their
hundreds of status lights blinking yellow, red, and green. All of this hardware, Wendy sensed somehow,
belonged to a single computer of immense power—and the room itself, with its
high arched ceiling, seemed a sort of shrine designed solely to house it. She was so focused on the computer—on its
intermittent blinking and beeping and the low, palpable hum that emanated from
it—that at first she didn’t notice the two female androids in front of it. Unit N979—Samantha Taylor, the girl who’d
recruited her—and Unit N986—Rosa Sanchez, the first of her fellow recruits to
be transformed—stood side-by-side at attention, staring blankly ahead with
their backs to the computer. It
appeared that each was connected to the computer by long, thick cables that
extended from one of the consoles to the ports in their backs. Behind the clear plastic panels in their
abdomens, the girls’ status lights were blinking in time with the bigger lights
that lined the wall behind them.
Still
paying no attention to Wendy, Unit N992 walked up to the computer and pressed
her palm to one of its many panels.
After a moment, she pulled her hand away and pressed a sequence of
buttons on the console next to the panel she’d touched. There was a loud click, followed by a faint
hiss as a hatch opened in the console.
A cable identical to the ones connected to the other androids extended
from within the hatch. Firmly gripping
the cable, Unit N992 turned away from the computer and stood next to Unit
N979. Reaching behind her, Unit N992
inserted the cable into her back—and instantly froze. A few seconds later, after her status lights had begun to blink
along with those of her fellow androids, her feet snapped together, her arms
jerked to her sides, and her head ratcheted up to stare straight ahead.
“This.u.nit.is.now.set.at.func.tion.al.le.vel.ten,” she droned.
Stepping
into the chamber, Wendy stood in awe at the sight of the three female units
blinking silently in unison. Once, only
a few days ago, each had been a young woman of flesh and blood, living an
ordinary life in Boston, Massachusetts.
Since then, each had been converted into a sentient but utterly obedient
amalgamation of circuit boards and microchips, perfectly engineered to carry
out its pre-programmed functions in this ever-expanding android society. The androids retained a great deal of their
individuality, but their distinct personalities manifested themselves only when
allowed by their programming. Right
now, any such distinctiveness was completely absent from the girls. Aside from their different facial features,
and a slight variation in height, the three were absolutely identical, inside
and out.
Wendy
moved closer, examining each of the three androids in turn, feeling their
impassive stares pass right through her.
Did they even know she was there?
Maybe not . . . but she was pretty sure that the computer did. She was certain it was only a matter of time
before it did something about her intrusion.
Just
then, Wendy noticed movement out of the corner of one eye—and she wheeled
around, startled.
Unit
N979’s head had suddenly cocked to one side, and as Wendy turned toward her she
could see that the android’s lights were slowing down, clearly out of synch
with the others’. Soon just a single
green light was active, gently strobing inside her silver stomach as her head
smoothly righted itself. “This unit is
now set at functional level four,” N979 said, still looking ahead but blinking
once as her golden eyes became aware of her surroundings again. Then she suddenly noticed Wendy staring at
her, and the android’s head swiveled neatly in the girl’s direction.
“Greetings
Unit N988,” Unit N979 said, her voice hollow and flat. Her face was completely devoid of emotion.
“Hi,
Sam—I mean, Unit N979,” Wendy replied nervously.
“Stage
One units are not authorized to enter this area,” the android continued. “Your presence here indicates a possible
malfunction. Please stand by for
further instructions.” Unit N979’s eyes
seemed to unfocus slightly. Wendy guessed
that she was accessing the network, querying some other system for guidance.
“I’m not
malfunctioning,” Wendy pleaded as Unit N979 continued to stare
impassively. “I know I’m not supposed
to be here, but I was bored . . . and lonely.”
Something
clicked in Unit N979—apparently, she had her answer now. Her eyes locked on Wendy’s. “You are acting outside the normal parameters
of your programming,” the robot said flatly.
“This unit has been instructed to observe and record your behavior.”
“Um,
OK,” Wendy said. At least she didn’t
seem to be in trouble—that was good.
“But while you’re doing that, could we just, you know, talk? I could really use a friend.”
Unit
N979 seemed to think about that for a few seconds, her head tilted oddly to one
side. Then she spoke again. “That is acceptable.” The android’s head twitched again. “This unit is now set at functional level one,”
she said, her voice softer and more human.
She looked at Wendy and smiled affectionately. “Sounds like there’s something on your mind.”
“Yeah,”
Wendy replied, her voice echoing against the cold walls of the chamber. The other two androids remained oblivious to
the sound. “Thank you so much, Unit
N979.”
“No
problem, Wendy. We haven’t spent any
time together in a while—this should be fun.”
“What
were you doing here, anyway?” As if to
provide the context for her question, Wendy glanced past Unit N979 to where the
other two androids were still staring ahead in silence.
“Oh,”
N979 said. “Nothing, really. In case you didn’t know, that”—and here, the
android gestured over her shoulder with her thumb—“is the central processor
that runs the whole recruiting center.
This morning, one of its subsystems failed. We were able to repair the problem, but the load on the system
grows every time we add a new piece of equipment or a new android to the
facility. Until we complete the
construction of a second central processor, we can’t risk any more trouble with
this one.”
“So,
you’re . . . .”
“Increasing
the central processor’s capacity by allowing it to utilize our CPUs directly,”
N979 explained. She still hadn’t
removed the connection cable from her back, and it snaked along the floor with
each movement of her metal body. “Right
now, additional resources are required to keep this place operating at peak
efficiency—and that means our internal hardware. It’s perfectly normal—in fact, repurposing ourselves as extensions
of the central processors is one of the functions we’re specifically designed
for.”
“Amazing,”
Wendy said. “I wish there were some way
I could help.”
“Don’t
worry,” N979 replied. “It’s a situation
we’re designed to handle—and soon we’ll have a second central processor, which
should be more than we need for the time being.” She reached behind her to take hold of her connection cable. “Come on, let’s go somewhere where we can
talk.”
“I have
a better idea,” Wendy said—and Unit N979 stopped to listen. “What if you re-establish your link to the
central processor? Then you could take
some of the load off the other two girls.”
There
was a sudden flash of gold in N979’s sparkling eyes as she grasped what Wendy
was saying. “I understand. The central processor could distribute the
computational load across three units instead of two. We’d each have about a third of our CPU capacity to ourselves,
which is plenty if all we want to do is hang out and talk.”
“Sounds
great!” Wendy said eagerly. She was desperate for the company and so
happy that Unit N979—Sam—had figured that out.
“OK,”
Sam said, “hang on a minute.” The
android’s eyes unfocused for an instant, and her head jerked almost
imperceptibly. Several lights in her
abdomen lit up simultaneously, remaining on for three full seconds before
blinking in their separate rhythms again.
“This unit is now set at functional le.vel six,” she said at last, her
voice now laced with a faint metallic reverberation.
A moment
later, the other two androids’ status lights flashed in an identical
pattern. After a few seconds, both had
slowed down to blink at the same intervals as Sam’s—though Wendy noticed that
no two of the androids were blinking in quite the same sequence. “This u.nit is now set at func.tional level
six,” the pair said, in perfect unison aside from slight differences in where
each voice slipped into halting monotone.
Unit
N986—the female Wendy once knew as Rosa Sanchez—was the first to blink her
eyes. She neatly turned her head toward
Wendy. “Gree.tings Wen.dy,” Rosa said,
the gentle smile on her silver face contrasting with the hollow metallic ring
of her monotone voice. From the neck
down, she was still facing the wall opposite the central processor, arms held
rigidly at her sides. “Your idea is
ex.cellent. Now we can all spend some
time toge.ther.”
“Yes,”
Unit N992—Keisha—agreed. She too had
turned her head toward Sam and Wendy, her shoulders still square to the far
wall. “So, Wendy, how.are you doing?”
“OK, I
guess,” Wendy replied as Rosa finally started to move again, walking to the
side wall with perfect robotic precision.
The android depressed a small panel, and three silver platforms—a table
flanked by a pair of benches—began to extend from within the wall.
Despite
the stiffness of their movements and the unnatural modulations in their voices,
Wendy was amazed at the relative ease with which the androids were interacting
with her. At level six, an android
would typically be unresponsive to external input and unable to carry on a
conversation, yet these three androids were able to talk to her. Wendy wondered whether it was because they’d
received specific instructions to engage and observe her. Or maybe in this case, “functional level
six” was really a hybrid state in which they switched back and forth between
functional levels two and ten.
“It
must.be strange, waiting so long to com.plete your conversion,” Rosa said
sympathetically as the platforms came to a halt. She and Keisha sat with their backs to the central processor as
Sam joined Wendy on the other side of the table. As she passed behind Sam, Wendy could see the lights in the
android’s back blinking furiously to either side of her connection cable.
“It is,”
Wendy said. “I wish I knew what’s
taking so long. I’m so ready to be a
robot. I even had a dream about it.”
“Really?”
Sam asked, her head cocking quizzically.
“I am curious—what hap.pened in your dream?”
Wendy
hesitated for a moment, unsure of herself.
She was embarrassed to answer the question—but if she didn’t talk to Sam
and the other girls, who else could she talk to? She had to tell somebody what she was feeling. “Well,” she began, “I was a robot—beautiful
and shiny and made of metal, just like you.
Well, not exactly like you.
Somehow, I could make myself look human whenever I wanted.”
“So,”
Keisha said with a wry smile, “not even ful.ly functional yet and you want to
be a T unit?”
Wendy
thought about that for a second. It was
true that T units—like T800 and T801, the android couple who’d recruited Sam
and who were responsible for building the recruiting center—could change their
appearance. It was also true that T
units were specifically programmed for recruiting; the ability to look human,
of course, was a key advantage in carrying out their functions. “I guess so,” Wendy said. “In my dream I was back at school—I’d been
sent there to recruit more androids.
But I was an N unit. I know it
doesn’t make sense, since N units aren’t designed to be sent out in the field
like that . . . but anyway, there I was, recruiting my classmates.”
“And
how—” Rosa began, before suddenly
freezing in mid-sentence. Eyes wide,
mouth half-open, the android’s head jerked hard several times to either side. “How—
how— how—”
Wendy
looked over at Sam, worried that Rosa was malfunctioning. But then, just as suddenly, Rosa’s head
snapped back to a normal position, and she smiled sheepishly. “I.am.sor.ry, the cen.tral pro.cessor needed
al.most all of my CPU there for a moment,” she said, her metallic drone
gradually giving way to a more natural speech pattern. “I was trying to say, how did you do?”
“Really
well,” Wendy replied. “Maybe too
well. It’s not like I asked anyone’s
permission to reprogram them, and none of them seemed to question what was
happening to them at all. They just
went right along with it.”
“Obviously,
it doesn’t work that way for real,” Keisha said. Every one of us made a free decision to undergo the process.”
“I know,
but in the dream I had these little programming disks that made it incredibly
easy to reprogram people. After putting
on their transformation suits, the new recruits would put the disks over their
ears, and within minutes they were done.”
“What
did the disks look like?” Sam asked curiously.
Wendy
shrugged. “Nothing special . . . just
flat silver cones with a red status light at the center. The cool part was that they were
wireless—you didn’t have to plug them into anything like the headset I’ve been
wearing.” Sam and Rosa exchanged
glances as Wendy finished her description.
“What?” Wendy asked. “Is
something wrong?”
“No,”
Sam reassured her. “It is just that
U.nit N986 and I recently received schematics for a new ma.chine we have to
build tomorrow. It is designed to
manufacture devices very si.mi.lar to what you just described.”
“How
could.she know about that?” Keisha asked incredulously.
“She
could not,” Rosa said. “It must be a
coin.cidence. But it sure is strange.”
“There
was other weird stuff in my dream,” Wendy continued. She told the androids all about the part with Rick in it—the
aching anticipation of finally finding a partner, the way her body had turned
to chrome in his arms, how he’d responded to her very thoughts. “As soon as I thought something, he could
hear it. He was acting . . . well, like
one of us—except that I was in control of him.
I made him kiss me, made him want me. I made him . . . you know.”
Wendy blushed as she looked down at the chrome table.
“There
is nothing to be a.shamed of, Wen.dy,” Sam said, reaching out to touch her
arm. Wendy could hear the faint whirr
of the robot’s servos as she executed each part of the surprisingly complex
maneuver. “It was just a dream.”
“It
sounds like a pretty harm.less fantasy to me,” Rosa added. Wendy heard the metallic echo of footsteps
behind her, and turned around. A male
android—Wendy recognized him as Sam’s partner, Unit N982—had entered the
room. Oblivious to the others in the
room, Unit N982 proceeded to one of the central processor’s many consoles, and
began unscrewing one of the bolts holding it in place. His movements were clipped, precise.
“Functional
le.vel eight, you think?” Rosa wondered aloud.
All four girls had turned to watch Unit N982 as he worked.
“At.least,”
Sam replied, excitement somehow coming through the dull monotone. “Aren’t they just beau.tiful when they’re
like that?”
“Yeah,”
Wendy said wistfully as N982 finished loosening the last bolt and pulled the
console out of the wall in a single, neat motion. “I wish—”
Wendy
stopped as soon as she saw the blank, unseeing expression on Sam’s face. She turned toward Rosa and Keisha—both of
them were frozen as well. As Unit N982
set the disconnected console on the floor, Wendy noticed that the entire wall
was ablaze with blinking lights, most of them yellow and red. The same was true of Sam’s status
indicators, which blinked furiously within her unmoving body. Wendy couldn’t see them, but she was certain
that Rosa’s and Keisha’s lights were doing the same thing.
Five
seconds passed as N982, reaching into the empty space where the console had
been, rerouted a connection or two. His
adjustments complete, he turned and smoothly descended to one knee to work on
the console he’d removed. Almost
immediately, the central processor’s status lights began to stabilize.
“I—” Sam
suddenly intoned, still staring somewhere beyond Wendy’s shoulder. “I—”
At last,
Sam turned to Wendy and she seemed all right again. “I am sorry,” she said.
“Were you saying some.thing, Wendy?”
“Nothing,”
Wendy replied as Rosa too regained her self-awareness and turned to
listen. Keisha still sat perfectly
still, staring into space with her mouth open.
It was obvious that the central processor hadn’t yet relinquished her
CPU.
“Wendy,”
Rosa said gently, “what.is troubling you?”
“I’m
just sick of waiting,” Wendy replied.
“I want to feel the way I did in my dream—now.”
“I
know,” Sam said. “Of course, you will
ne.ver feel quite that way—I mean, none of us has the kind.of abilities
you described.”
“But
everything I experienced seemed so real,” Wendy protested.
“Sure,” Rosa
said reassuringly. Her voice seemed
more natural, as though the central processor wasn’t using her at the
moment. “You don’t really know what it
is like to be an an.droid—not yet, at least—so your imagination filled in the
gaps. You can’t take everything in your
dream literally. And you certainly
can’t expect to have some kind of special ‘powers’ once you become an N
unit. We’re all programmed exactly the
same way—we’re completely interchangeable, by design. You’ll understand once you experience the real thing for
your.self. And you won’t be
disappointed. Trust me.”
Soon
N982 had completed his work on the console, and lifted it back into
position. He pushed it back into place,
and it snapped home with a loud click.
Keisha instantly sprang back to life.
“What.did.I.miss?” she asked.
Wendy just laughed.
After
tightening the bolts, Unit N982 turned and walked smoothly toward the
exit. “See you later, hon.ey,” Sam said
playfully, not expecting a response as she watched him go. As N982 left the room, another android—Unit
N991, whom Wendy remembered as Cheryl—came in.
She was carrying what looked like a mass of silver cables. As she passed Unit N982, Cheryl glanced down
to get a look at his silver body.
“Hey,” Sam said with mock jealousy.
“Eyes front, girlie.”
“Sorry
dear,” Cheryl said with a smile, bowing her head slightly before turning toward
Keisha. It was obvious that she was
currently set at functional level one.
“I thought I’d find you here, ’992.
I brought you a present.”
Cheryl
held the tangle of cables up, and Wendy leaned forward to get a better
look. Each of the “cables” was actually
a braid of slender chrome wires, radiating out from a molded base and
terminating in a shiny black ball at the other. Wendy couldn’t figure out what it was at first, but then Cheryl
turned it—and she saw how much shorter the braids at the front were, like the
bangs on a wig.
Keisha
jumped from her seat with a delighted shriek.
“I can’t be.lieve it—it’s beautiful!”
“Thought
I’d surprise you,” Cheryl said. She
then turned to Sam and Rosa, who like Wendy seemed puzzled. “She was telling me how she didn’t like her
hair,” she explained, “so I made this.
’986, would you mind helping her put it on?”
“Not.at.all,”
Rosa said, standing up stiffly and putting a hand on Keisha’s shoulder to get
her to sit back down. Wendy was amazed
at how, without a word, Rosa had taken on more of the central processor’s
computational burden to let her friend enjoy this moment. Stepping mechanically over Keisha’s
connection cable, Rosa stood directly behind her. “Rea.dy?” she asked.
“Oh yes,
definitely,” came Keisha’s answer. She
was beaming like a little girl on her birthday.
“De.tach.cra.ni.al.shell.”
Keisha
raised her hands to her head and pressed gently with two fingers against each
of her temples. “Detaching.” There was a muffled click, and Wendy gasped
in awe as she saw a perfect horizontal seam form across the top of Keisha’s
forehead. Placing her palms against the
back of Keisha’s head, Rosa gathered Keisha’s shoulder-length obsidian hair
with her fingers, and cupped her fingertips around the seam just above the
ears. Then Rosa slowly and smoothly
lifted off the back of Keisha’s skull.
As Rosa
carefully placed the detached headpiece on the table, Wendy climbed up on the
table herself to see Keisha up close.
The smooth, rounded surface of the android’s exposed neural matrix shone
in the sterile room’s cold white light, its hundreds of tiny processor nodes
blinking intermittently at odd intervals.
A staggeringly complex maze of golden connections zig-zagged between the
nodes, linking them to each other and to the thousands more which lay
beneath. Keisha’s eyes had been rolled
upward to watch Rosa lift her new headpiece above her, but then she became
aware of Wendy’s awestruck gaze. She
lowered her eyes to Wendy’s and smiled.
“Amazing, isn’t it?”
“It’s
beautiful,” Wendy said simply as she moved around for a closer look. It occurred to her that the android looked
absolutely gorgeous bald—she wondered why any of them wanted hair at all. “I mean, you’re beautiful.”
“You’re
looking at Unit N992,” Sam said matter-of-factly. “All the rest—arms, legs, motors, power supply—is just a bunch of
interchangeable parts. But that”—Sam
gestured toward Keisha’s head—“is the one component that makes this particular
unit unique—the part that makes her . . .
her.”
“Too bad
we have to build new components if we want to change our look,” Cheryl said as
Rosa fitted Keisha’s new skull into place, “instead of just reconfiguring
ourselves automatically like the T units can.”
“Or like
Wendy,” Keisha joked. Rosa and Sam
laughed.
“All.fin.ished,”
Rosa said at last.
Keisha
stood up to look at her reflection in one of the central processor’s glass
panels, turning her head gently from side to side to make the braids swirl in
graceful arcs above her shoulders.
“It’s perfect,” she said after a moment. “I can’t wait to show everyone, especially my companion unit. Oh ’991, I’m so grateful.”
“You are
go.ing to have to make one of those.for me, too,” Sam said to Cheryl. “I think it looks absolutely incre.dible.”
“Or you
can bor.row mine,” Keisha said. “I’m
not going to wear this one every day.”
“Don’t worry,” Cheryl said.
“There’s plenty of time to give everyone one of their own . . . by the
time you’re finally one of us, Wendy, I may even have one for you.”
“Can you make mine purple?” Wendy asked playfully.
“We’ll see. But right now I
have to go—only a few minutes of self-programming mode left before I go on
duty. I’ll probably see at least one of
you back here later, since I’m scheduled to link my CPU to the central
processor in a few hours.”
“Actually,” Sam said as Cheryl left the room, “I’d better get going
too. I, ah . . . had a few things I
wan.ted to do before my next du.ty shift.”
“No.need.to.ex.plain,” Rosa droned as Keisha flashed a knowing
smile. Wendy guessed that Sam’s
companion unit must be coming off duty soon, and her heart ached with longing
for a male of her own. As Wendy climbed
down off the table, Rosa turned robotically and pressed the wall panel. The table and benches began to retract, and
Rosa and Keisha dutifully took their places in front of the central
processor. Sam reached behind her back
to take hold of her connection cable.
“Ready?” Sam asked.
“Ready,” Rosa and Keisha said in unison. Both let their arms fall to their sides as they turned to face
the wall opposite the central processor.
As soon as Sam detached her cable, the lights in the two androids’
abdomens—along with those on the wall behind them—changed their sequence once
again. Units N986 and N992 froze, their
heads tilting slightly as the central processor took full control. “This.u.nit.is.now set.at.func.tion.al.le.vel.ten,”
they droned in unison.
“This unit is now set at functional level one,” Sam said as she helped
her cable pull itself back into the connection console. “Come on,” she said, turning toward
Wendy. Wendy followed her friend down
the corridor, toward the row of private programming cubicles the androids had
begun to build for themselves. When Sam
reached hers, she stopped. “End of the
line,” she said warmly. “See you
tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” Wendy said. “So now
that you’ve observed me, have you reached any conclusions?”
“That is not my function,” Sam said with a shrug. “It will be up to the T units to analyze and
act on the data I’ve collected. But I
think you’re fine. You know, even
though you shouldn’t really be snooping around, I’m glad you came by the
central processor chamber. It was fun
talking to you. Go get some rest
now. And hang in there, OK? The wait will be over soon.”
Without
a word, Wendy turned and headed for a little alcove where she’d stashed a sofa
left behind by the building’s previous occupants. Lying down, she stared at the ceiling for a while. It was no use—she was never going to get to
sleep at this rate. Only one thing
could give her the rest—the release—she needed. Reaching down to her waist, Wendy took her headset and lifted it
over her ears. She then pressed a
button on one of her hip-mounted programming disks, and took a deep breath as
she heard the whirring sound it made.
In a few
seconds, she would once again be pleasuring herself, oblivious to everything
but the familiar stream of pre-programmed instructions that gave her
purpose. And then, after an inevitably
perfect climax, she would be shut down for the night, her mind blissfully
turned off while her body rested. She
was so grateful for the pleasures her programming afforded her. But the tears forming at the corners of her
eyes reminded her that they were not enough.
Tomorrow,
she promised herself. Tomorrow she
would find a way to become a robot.