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.)
Unit M001 carefully removed the programming helmet from the head of
Unit N1005, and returned it to its resting place on the nearby control console.
“So?” a voice asked. It was
Unit T982, speaking to N1005. “How do
you feel?” he asked.
“This unit has received primary programming,” the Stage Two unit said,
its voice flat and emotionless. “This
unit is functioning properly.”
T982 continued to talk to N1005, but M001 paid no attention. She had already received the only
information relevant to her function as an M designate android. STAGE TWO PROCESSING COMPLETE. The female once known as Angela Silvestri
had successfully completed Stage Two of her conversion into a machine. PREPARE UNIT FOR STAGE THREE
PROCESSING. It was now time to disconnect
the Stage Two equipment and direct the new unit to the final step in its
transformation.
After detaching the connection cables from the female’s arms and legs,
M001 did the same for the cables attached to each breast. She then reached down between N1005’s legs,
and gently pulled the last cable from the N unit’s vagina. She guided the cable as it withdrew into the
transformation station’s data console, then pressed a button on the control
console to retract the restraints at N1005’s wrists and ankles. Another press of a button, and the platform
on which N1005 lay rose to a nearly vertical position.
PROCEED TO STAGE THREE PROCESSING AREA. Following the next instruction in her primary program, M001
headed for the door.
“M001,” Unit T982 called, and the M unit halted. INPUT RECEIVED. PAUSE PRIMARY PROGRAM.
STAND BY. M001 turned to face
the T unit and waited expectantly as he addressed N1005.
“Unit N1005, please wait with Unit N1007.”
“Understood,” the Stage Two female said before dutifully joining her
male companion unit, standing at attention near the wall.
“M001,” the T unit continued as he approached her, “as you know M002
is waiting to receive these two units at the Stage Three processing area. I’m pretty sure that he and I can handle
things from here. In the meantime,
you’re needed to help with another matter that just came up. Apparently, Unit T986 is
malfunctioning. She’s been brought to
Maintenance Bay 2 for repair. Please
report there and see what you can do for her.”
INPUT RECEIVED. ACTIVATE
VOCAL. “Af.firm.a.tive,” the M unit
droned.
REPORT TO MAINTENANCE BAY TWO.
M001 immediately walked out of the room, neatly turning left down the
corridor toward her destination. At
functional level ten, she was incapable of worrying about Unit T986, or feeling
the slightest lack of confidence in her ability to fix her. She simply reported to Maintenance Bay 2 as
instructed, ready to perform her assigned function.
The door to Maintenance Bay 2 slid open, and M001 entered. She walked by a pair of empty repair
platforms before passing one bearing a large compressor. At a lower functional level, she might have
paused to wonder which of the facility’s systems it had been pulled from. Instead, M001 proceeded directly to the last
platform, on which Unit T986 was lying comfortably on her back, deactivated.
For some reason, the T unit’s body was in a custom configuration. Her outer shell had been reconfigured to a
human appearance, giving her the olive skin and jet-black hair she’d once had
as Rosa Sanchez. But she was not
configured with the typical human clothing appropriate for her recruiting
functions as a T unit. Instead, she’d
configured herself to appear as though she were wearing a black and silver
costume of some kind.
The costume was basically a shiny black spandex catsuit that covered
every inch of her body from the neck down.
The suit also formed a silver mask around her eyes, leaving just her
hair and the bottom half of her face visible.
Her lips were painted a sparkling silver, too. Built into the costume were long silver gloves and boots, as well
as a silver belt with an oversized circular buckle. The buckle contained the image of a silver lightning bolt—an
emblem that also appeared just above her left breast.
M001 had been deployed to Earth yesterday—just hours after her command
interface had been installed in the recruiting center—and she’d been upgraded
to her current designation almost immediately thereafter. So she’d only been an M unit for less than
twenty-four hours. Still, she contained
all the necessary programming to handle routine repairs of any of the equipment
in the recruiting facility, including the T designate android lying before
her. However, this was not a routine
situation, and she had no specific information upon which to formulate a
diagnosis and effect repairs. At
functional level ten, she was simply incapable of the creative thinking that
this problem required. Automatically,
her primary program lowered her functional level to compensate.
SET UNIT TO FUNCTIONAL LEVEL THREE.
The M unit’s head cocked slightly as the change took effect. There.
She was now able to think a bit about the situation—to formulate
theories, and to test them. A closer
look at T986 revealed no apparent physical damage, so she decided to activate
the T unit and see if she could get some answers. Lifting T986 to a seated position, M001 opened her rear access
panel and connected her to the platform’s built-in power supply. She then pressed a sequence of buttons
inside T986, and the T unit’s beautiful brown eyes snapped open.
“Fool,” T986 said accusingly, lips curled into a snarl. The anger in her voice didn’t sound real—nor
did it appear to have a target. M001
wasn’t even in the T unit’s line of sight.
“You think these steel bonds can hold La Raya de Plata, do you?” She raised her clenched fists, pantomiming
as though her wrists were bound together.
M001 came around to the front of T986, but the T unit stared right
through her, focusing her mock fury upon the far wall. “Tú has hecho un error muy, muy grave,” T986
fumed as she struggled against her invisible bonds. There was easily as much playfulness as menace in her tone. “Ahora te demuestro—”
T986 suddenly froze. “Te
demue—”
She froze again. “Error,” she
said flatly, her mouth the only part of her still moving. “Instrucción inválida en la línea
C43390FF:49A7511E. Esta unidad no puede
continuar el programa del sexo A1466.
Se ha parado la ejecución de programa.”
The T unit then fell silent, unblinking and unmoving.
“Wow,” M001 said aloud. She’d
asked to be converted into an M unit—the “M” stood for “Maintenance,” though
she still liked to think of it as “medic”—because it was the closest function
to the career she’d been pursuing in her human life as Riya Bharti. She’d made that choice precisely so she
could face challenges like this. But
she had to admit, she’d never seen anything like this before—either before
becoming an android or since.
“Don’t worry,” she said to the deactivated T unit, patting her
reassuringly on the thigh. “We’ll
figure this out, one way or the other.”
She thought some more about what she’d just seen. The first problem was that the T unit hadn’t
started up cleanly upon reactivation.
Somehow, the program she’d been executing at the time of her initial
malfunction was still resident in memory.
So, the first step in her repair was a complete systems purge.
M001 pressed gently against the T unit’s abdomen to open her front
access panel. Pausing for a moment, she
caused a specialized key—like a tiny screwdriver, with an irregular
five-pointed head—to extend from the tip of her right index finger. M001 then reached inside with the key,
finding the T unit’s manual override switch.
She depressed the switch—only M units were equipped with this
capability—and, retracting the key into her fingertip, made several adjustments
to the T unit’s abdominal controls.
M001 then circled around to the back of T986, opened the rear access
panel, and pressed a hidden release button inside. There was an audible click, followed by a gentle hiss as the T
unit’s breast casings slowly swung upward and out to either side on their
top-mounted hinges. M001 carefully
disengaged the catches inside each breast cavity, removing first one battery
and then the other. Finally, she pulled
the power cord from T986’s back. Since
she’d already disabled the T unit’s backup power supply, it was now completely
without power. Half a second was all
that should be required to ensure its memory was cleared.
Replacing the power cord, M001 reached inside the black and silver
android’s back one last time, and cycled its manual startup switch. The T unit responded immediately, cocking
its head with a mechanical blink of its eyes.
After a moment, it spoke.
“Es.ta u.ni.dad es com.ple.ta.men.te fun.ci.on.al,” T986 intoned,
staring straight ahead. “La
pro.gra.ma.ci.ón pri.ma.ri.a se ha res.tau.ra.do con é.xi.to.”
“Unit T986,” M001 instructed, “please set yourself to functional level
one. Language mode: English.”
The T unit’s head cocked ever so slightly, and she blinked again—this
time, much more naturally. “Functional
level one restored,” she said, quickly getting her bearings. “Thanks, M001. What happened to me?”
“Still trying to figure that one out, Rosa,” M001 said, circling
behind the T unit again to attach a few cables to the access ports in her
back. “OK if I call you that? Makes for a better doctor-patient
relationship, I think.”
“Of course . . . Riya.” Rosa
brought her silver hands to her upturned black chest plates. They were still as soft as human flesh, just
like the rest of her. “Wow . . . if you
had to remove my batteries, it must be pretty bad.”
“Actually, I was just going to say the opposite. The fact that we’ve gotten this far with
just a manual restart is really good news.”
She’d finished with the cables and was now examining the diagnostic
readouts on the nearby console. “You
can replace your batteries now, by the way.”
Rosa carefully lifted the first battery, and pressed it into the open
cavity at her left breast. It snapped
home with a loud click. Repeating the
process for the right side, she gently pressed her chest casings back into
place. Each breast clicked softly, then
gave a faint whirr as it was pulled flush with the rest of her body. The seams around her breasts disappeared
completely.
Once again, Rosa looked like a normal human female—except of course
for the outlandish black and silver costume, the open access panels in her
stomach and back, and the cables connecting her to Riya’s diagnostic equipment. “OK,” she said, “they’re in.”
“Good. Just the same, I’m
going to keep you on the external power supply for a while. See if you can restore the default settings
on your outer shell.”
“Sure,” Rosa replied. But
after a moment, there was no change.
“Nope, I can’t do it.”
“OK. Well, at this point it
would help to know what you were doing at the time of the malfunction.” Riya had a pretty clear sense of the answer,
of course, but even in her human life she’d been well trained to remain
professional in these situations.
“We were doing a little role playing,” Rosa replied, not the least bit
self-conscious. “First time out as T
units, and all that. I learned today
that Kevin’s into superheroes.”
“He seems to like it when you speak Spanish, too.”
“Yeah—especially if I act like I’m losing my temper. Don’t ask.”
Riya laughed. “I’d heard about
you T units,” she said, pressing her thumbs against Rosa’s temples. Rosa heard a muffled click as her cranial
shell detached. “They say you’re all
the same—always pretending to be human again.”
Riya removed the back of Rosa’s head and placed it on the platform
behind her.
“Jealous?” Rosa asked teasingly, her exposed neural matrix flickering
with yellow and green lights as she spoke.
“Of course not. Curious, maybe,
but not jealous. How could I be?” There was silence for a moment as Riya’s
fingertip, reconfigured into a multi-function laser pen, ran a thin red beam
along the surface of Rosa’s brain. “I
don’t know . . . maybe it’s the programming, or maybe it’s part of what made me
more suited to become an M unit than a T, but I’m perfectly happy as I am. This mechanical body gives me all the
satisfaction I could ask for.”
The females fell silent for a moment as Riya continued her scan. Riya then opened the back of Rosa’s neck to
get a look at where the T unit’s brain connected to the rest of her systems.
“Speaking of Kevin, though,” Riya asked, “where is he? I have to admit, I was surprised to find you
here alone.”
“He had a duty shift. But I
bet he was a little embarrassed, too.
Probably feels pretty guilty—you know, thinking he broke me or
something.”
“They do tend to think we’re pretty fragile, don’t they?” There was more silence as Riya connected a
pair of tiny wires to the components within Rosa’s neck. She turned to look at the diagnostic
console. Among the green and yellow
status lights were three red ones, all in a row. “Well, you can tell him he’s not to blame. I think I see the problem right here.”
“What is it?”
“Looks like a burned out connection between your neural matrix and
your environmental controls. It would
explain your inability to change your appearance, and a few other things I’m
seeing. The fact that your functions
halted so abruptly—with such an unhelpful error message and without clearing
your memory and shutting you down properly—tells me that the component must
have been faulty in the first place.”
Riya opened a nearby drawer and removed a new connector to replace the
failed one she’d just removed. She
carefully inserted the new one, then used her fingertip to solder it into
place. “Not surprising, I guess,” she
continued. “You were, after all, the
first unit converted here at the facility.
A few minor glitches like this were to be expected.”
“Well, I’m relieved it wasn’t something major.”
“No, you have nothing to worry about,” Riya said reassuringly. She snapped Rosa’s cranial shell back into
place. “All of your critical systems
were just upgraded when you became a T unit, anyway. So you shouldn’t have any more trouble. But still, faulty component or not, it’s
pretty hard to burn out your environmental controls. The heat your body would have to generate . . . it could only
happen if—”
Riya stopped herself, and Rosa laughed. Here she’d been worried about her patient feeling comfortable,
and now she was the one who felt embarrassed.
So much for professionalism. At
least Rosa didn’t seem to mind.
“Um, you should be able to try restoring your defaults again.”
“OK,” Rosa said, still laughing.
She closed her eyes, and the color began to fade from her face, her
olive skin turning a dull gray before taking on its customary metallic
sheen. She opened her eyes, now twin
pools of brilliant gold, and watched as the black parts of her costume took on
the same silver color as the rest of it.
Then the illusion of form-fitting silver spandex gave way to the T
unit’s chrome chassis, its seams and joints and ports gradually becoming
clearer. In a matter of seconds, T986
was herself again.
“Great!” M001 exclaimed. “One
last thing to do, and that’s to run a full diagnostic.” She reached into T986’s abdomen and pressed
a few buttons. The T unit immediately
jerked upright, still seated but rigidly at attention.
“Com.men.cing in.ter.nal sys.tems di.ag.nos.tic,” T986 droned. Her head cocked hard to one side. “Pro.cess.ing.”
She went silent for a moment, then spoke again. “CPU test . . . passed. Me.mo.ry test . . . passed. High-le.vel scan of in.ter.nal stor.age
ar.ray . . . passed.”
The T unit’s left arm suddenly jerked outward, and straightened at the
elbow. One by one, the fingers of her
left hand touched closed, fingertip touching palm before returning to their
original position. The arm bent at the
elbow again, and came down to rest at her side. The process was repeated for the T unit’s right arm.
Then the T unit’s legs straightened at the knees, so that she was
seated with both sticking out in front of her, and her booted feet flexed at
the ankles. She then leaned back at the
waist until she was lying on her back, then rose smoothly to a vertical
position again. As her knees bent to a
normal seated position, her head swiveled ninety degrees to the left, and then
all the way to the right. It jerked
upward and downward, then tilted to either side, before returning to stare
straight ahead.
“Ba.sic mo.tor func.tions . . . passed,” the T unit intoned. “Di.ag.nos.tic re.port ends. This u.nit is func.tion.ing pro.per.ly.”
M001 reached into T986’s abdominal panel, and made a final adjustment. The T unit blinked as her posture seemed to
relax.
“Looking good, Rosa,” M001 said.
“Based on what you just told me, and what I’m seeing on the console,
everything checks out. You should be
fine from now on.”
“Thank you so much, Riya. What
a relief! So what’s next for you?”
“I have a few more Stage Twos and Threes to take care of, as soon as I
can get back to the processing area.”
“Well, then you’d better get back.
But it was great to get to know you . . . we should hang out some
time. Meanwhile, try not to gossip too
much about me, OK?”
“I wouldn’t dream of it, Rosa—even if my programming allowed it. See you around.” Riya smiled, her face beaming with the satisfaction of a job well
done. Then she suddenly went blank as
her head cocked oddly to the right.
“This.u.nit.is.now.set.at.func.tion.al.le.vel.ten,” the M Unit droned
before turning and striding purposefully from the room.
Unit T986 hopped lightly off the platform, and then she too left
Maintenance Bay 2. She was ten minutes
late for her duty shift at the recruitment monitoring station—not ideal, but
also not nearly as bad as it could have been.
Outside the maintenance bay, the recruiting center was buzzing with
activity. Everywhere T986 looked, her
fellow androids were walking purposefully to and fro, performing their
respective functions. It was simply
amazing to watch. A short elevator
ride, and she was at her destination.
She set herself to functional level five, and pressed her palm against
the panel next to the station’s double doors.
There was a faint whirr, and the doors slid open.
The monitoring station was a large, semicircular chamber, its curved
wall lined with three rows of monitor screens.
A pair of female N units—N1001 and N1003—were seated at the broad bank
of computer consoles that extended along the wall beneath the monitors. Behind them stood Unit C801, newly-installed
gold piping visible at her shoulders, above her buttocks, and at the tops of
her boots. The C unit turned toward
T986 as she entered the room.
“Greetings, Unit T986. How are
you feeling?”
“Much better now, Unit C801.
Thank you for remaining here until I could arrive.” There was a clipped, to-the-point quality in
the T unit’s voice, a by-product of her current functional level.
“Not at all. This is your
first day in charge of monitoring operations, so I was planning to stay and
show you the ropes anyway.” C801 turned
to the N units sitting at the control console.
“Unit N1001, enlarge monitor eight to full view.”
The image on the third monitor in the second row—a man and woman in an
airport, waiting to board a plane—grew to span all fifteen monitor screens.
“Overlay diagnostic information,” C801 ordered. As the couple handed their tickets to the
flight attendant, words appeared at the bottom of the screen:
Unit
N1014: Arthur Krebs
Unit N1015: Rhonda Krebs
Location: Springfield, Illinois
Offer Accepted; Stage Two Processing Complete
En Route to Boston Recruiting Center For Further Processing
The flight attendant handed the boarding passes back to the Stage Two
units, who smiled at one another with all the anticipation of newlyweds heading
out on their honeymoon. They were
wearing their normal clothes, and except for the chrome of their irises they showed
no outward signs of their partial transformation into machines.
“As you can see,” C801 said, “the web site continues to bring in
recruits. These two ordered their
transformation kits before we rolled out our latest upgrades to the conversion
technology. Rather than send T units to
every new couple, we’ve been having some of them report here for final
processing. Once they’ve been
programmed, we’ll re-deploy them—most likely to their hometown. But we’ll get to that later. Unit N1001, next view, please.”
The scene immediately shifted to the interior of a sporting goods
store. A girl in punk gear—pink
shoulder-length hair, cut-off Ghost in the Shell T-shirt, short black
skirt, torn fishnet stockings, and combat boots—was checking out a pair of
shiny silver leggings she’d just pulled off the rack.
Candidate
Unit: Name Unknown
Location: Boston, Massachusetts
First Contact; Status Pending
Conversion Probability: 22.6%
The store clerk—a beautiful auburn-haired young woman that T986
immediately recognized as Unit T979—approached. She spoke briefly to the customer—and though there was no audio,
it was obvious that she was interested in trying on the leggings. The girl turned, light glinting off the stud
in her nose as she followed T979 toward the dressing room. The readout updated.
Conversion
Probability: 84.8%
“Obviously,” C801 continued, “we’re still getting recruits the
old-fashioned way, too. But again, this
method requires direct supervision by T and M units throughout the
process. Next view, please.”
Now the monitors showed what appeared to be the bedroom of a college
dorm suite. The closet had apparently
been emptied; clothing and boxes littered the bed and surrounding floor. A young man in jeans and a tight T-shirt of
silver spandex was stepping back from the closet, having just made a few
modifications to a stack of electronic components that filled the closet from
floor to ceiling. Unit T986 immediately
recognized the equipment as a Stage Three transformation pod and recharging
station, designed to accommodate a single unit in an upright standing position.
Unit
N997: Jason Miller
Location: St. Louis, Missouri
Offer Accepted; Stage Two Processing Complete
Ready For Stage Three Processing
“Now here,” C801 said proudly, “is where our R&D is really paying
off. New units are now able to go from
ordinary humans to fully-functional androids with no outside intervention
whatsoever.”
Unit N997 turned as a blonde female, her transformation suit covering
her from the neck down, entered. Upon
seeing the completed pod, she grabbed his arm excitedly, then pulled him close
for a congratulatory kiss. She asked
him something, and he nodded. Without
hesitation, she entered the closet, turning to climb into the pod. She stood patiently at attention, facing
outward, still smiling and talking as a chrome helmet descended onto her
head. Other devices within the pod
quickly moved to cover her chest, arms, and legs, and began their work. A chrome visor descended from the helmet,
covering the girl’s eyes. Her smile
faded, mouth falling open as her final processing commenced.
Unit
N995: Amy Travis
Location: St. Louis, Missouri
Offer Accepted; Stage Two Processing Complete
In Stage Three Processing
“I don’t understand,” T986 said.
“How are we getting all of these images? I mean, I’m sure T979 must have cameras mounted in the store . .
. but in all those other places?”
C801 laughed. “No, of course
not. All of the other images come from
the units themselves. Their connection
to our command interface allows us to follow them around in real time . . . and
from the raw sensory data, the interface unit itself is capable of
extrapolating ‘camera angles’ other than what we would see through the
individual units’ visual sensors.”
“Amazing,” T986 said in awe.
“Not only what you just described, but all of it. Complete conversion with no help from T
units. This is a huge milestone for
us.”
“Agreed. Soon we will have a
proven, scalable model for growing our population more rapidly, with a
decentralized recruiting and transformation process that does not overly
dependent upon facilities like this one.
This ‘recruiting center’ will ultimately become more of a communications
and processing node, responsible for hosting our central processors, command
interfaces, data repositories, and the like.
Along with similar installations, it will provide some basic
infrastructure for what is essentially a distributed network in which most of
the computational power resides in the android units themselves. Of course, our growth is still bounded by a
few limiting factors, most notably the number of interface units we can
identify. We’re working on that problem
too, but as yet we don’t have anything to show for it. Hopefully there will be progress soon. Next view, please.”
The display changed to show Keisha Grant—Unit N992—sitting at her
parents’ kitchen table, chatting with her mother over coffee. She looked completely human, and it was
obvious that her mother had no idea she was really a robot.
Unit
N992: Keisha Grant
Location: Worcester, Massachusetts
Fully Functional
“You’ll notice,” C801 continued, “that we’re starting to build
appearance modification technology into our N units. N992 was one of the first handful to receive the upgrade, on a
test basis. The feature set isn’t
nearly as comprehensive as a T unit’s, but we’ve found it works pretty
well. This is an important step for us,
since it’s become obvious that we need to enable androids to maintain some
level of contact with the people they were closest to in their former lives.”
T986 nodded. “Makes sense, if
we’re going to maintain a presence on Earth instead of bringing everyone back
to the home world.”
“Exactly. As I alluded to
earlier when we saw Arthur and Rhonda Krebs, the new generation of Earth-based
androids will need to function in the humans’ world. If we grow as quickly as we expect to, we can’t have the human
authorities chasing down people they believe to be missing. And of course, there are the families to
consider. Becoming an android is a
happy event—that happiness shouldn’t cause grief to the people we care about.”
“So are you saying that we’ll all get the chance to reconnect with
people from our past lives?”
“Absolutely, if you desire to.”
“And are we supposed to tell everyone what’s happened to us?”
“No, not yet. Someday, there
will be enough of us that we may choose to make our presence known. As you know, we wish to coexist harmoniously
with humans, and it is not our intention to make them feel threatened in any
way. Therefore we must wait until they
are ready to accept us. I expect there
will come a time when humans will understand the choice to become an android,
provided that we continue to live within the laws of human society as we always
have. But for now, androids will be
instructed not to reveal the details of their new lives.
“In N992’s case, for example, her family will know only that she has
left her old job for a position at Precision Synergistics Inc., which of course
happens to be the parent company of Precision Passion Unlimited. She’ll move out of her apartment, severing
connections to her casual acquaintances and informing her loved ones that her
new job requires her to travel extensively.
This will help to explain the relative infrequency of her contact with
them.”
T986 watched as Keisha excused herself for a moment and climbed a
flight of stairs. Ducking into one of
the bedrooms, she checked in on a woman in her early twenties—her younger
sister, T986 guessed—trying on a silver transformation suit.
Candidate
Unit: Tonya Grant
Location: Worcester, Massachusetts
First Contact; Status Pending
Conversion Probability: 63.9%
“Naturally,” C801 explained, “we will allow an android to reveal his
or her true nature as part of extending the offer to someone else.” She turned to address the N units seated at
the control console. “Resume standard
monitoring pattern.”
The single picture disappeared, replaced by fifteen different
images. T986 saw a beautiful red-haired
woman opening a birthday present from her husband. Inside the box was a transformation suit. She looked up, puzzled. Her husband smiled sheepishly.
Candidate
Units: Donald and Michelle Francis
Location: Sarasota, Florida
First Contact; Status Pending
Conversion Probability: 27.5% / 24.8%
She saw a couple having sex in their silver suits. The man was seated in a large leather chair;
the woman, a tall and shapely brunette, was riding him hard. T986 noticed that the woman was wearing
programming disks over her ears. As the
thrusting of their bodies became more urgent, she reached for a shelf behind
his head, groping until she found the second pair of programming disks she’d
left there. A moment later, she was
slipping the disks over his ears.
The red lights on the disks flashed, then stayed on. His entire body bucked, then went still. The woman continued to move herself up and
down along his cock, kissing and licking his unmoving lips as he stared up to
the ceiling.
Unit
N996: Erica Sorensen
Location: St. Louis, Missouri
Offer Accepted; Stage Two Processing Complete
Ready For Stage Three Processing
Unit
N998: Jeffrey Wiacek
Location: St. Louis, Missouri
Offer Accepted; Stage One Processing Complete
In Stage Two Processing
T986 saw Keisha’s sister Tonya, alone in her room once more, twisting
her body to admire the way she looked in the silver spandex. She was positively beaming. After a moment, she moved furtively toward
the door, and locked it. She lay down
on the bed, lifting her head to watch as her hands began to run up and down her
body.
Candidate
Unit: Tonya Grant
Location: Worcester, Massachusetts
First Contact; Status Pending
Conversion Probability: 92.1%
The scenes on the monitors continued to update, rotating from time to
time to show dozens of unfolding conversions in various locations across North
America. It was an astounding sight.
“OK, T986,” C801 said, snapping the T unit out of her reverie. “That should give you an overview of what
we’re up to. You’ve been programmed
with the rest of what you need to do, of course, so I think I’ll take my leave
now. C800 and I are planning on
visiting some family tonight.”
“Good luck,” T986 said warmly.
“And thanks again for sticking around.”
“My pleasure,” C801 said as she left.
T986/Rosa continued to monitor the progress of the recruits on the
various screens. She was enjoying her
new role as a T unit, and couldn’t wait for her first trip out in the
field. She thought about M001/Riya—how
much pleasure she obviously took in her work.
She saw T979/Sam talking to the pink-haired girl again, whose entire
body was now covered in the silver fabric of the leggings she’d tried on. It was clear that Sam was enjoying herself
too. Even N1001/Heather and
N1003/Julie, the silent automatons manning the control console, would
eventually return to functional level one with the knowledge that they had
successfully performed an important function.
And as the images continued to flash before her, Rosa’s thoughts
turned to Wendy—the girl who’d seemed so lost and confused at first, but ended
up assuming the most critical function of all.
Rosa could barely imagine what it must be like to be so intimately
connected to everything going on in the recruiting facility, and everything
taking place on the monitoring screens.
It was truly beyond the T unit’s comprehension.
But one thing she could understand was the joy of finding her purpose
within android society. Like Riya, and
Sam, and even Wendy, she knew the reason for her existence, and knew that she
would never cease to derive total satisfaction from carrying out her programmed
functions.
It was the greatest feeling in the world.
* * *
Interface Unit A107E8 watched the chrome and white wall panels scroll
evenly past C801/Kim’s field of vision as the C unit moved silently down one of
the recruiting center’s long corridors.
Simultaneously, she felt herself move with T982/Ben in the opposite
direction along a parallel corridor.
With T979/Sam, she extended the offer to a pink-haired girl—Candidate
Unit N027, Karin Delaney—and congratulated the Stage One unit on her
decision. She experienced the
simultaneous circuit release of N996/Erica and N998/Jeff as their bodies rocked
mechanically in Erica’s favorite chair.
She uploaded the human minds of Mary and Stephen Pierce—Units N1010 and
N1011—and felt M001/Riya’s gratification as she supervised Stage Two of the
couple’s conversion.
And with T986/Rosa, N1001/Heather, and N1003/Julie, she watched a bank
of monitor screens—each scene developing before their eyes even as it unfolded
within the minds that lived within her expanded consciousness.
Somewhere, Interface Unit A107E8 was still the girl named Wendy, giddy
with anticipation over her next meeting with A107C3/John. But right now she was each of these
individual android units, and all of them at once—her mind buzzing with
millions of distinct thoughts and impulses, guided by the constant, steady
stream of programming flowing through her.
More than anything in the world, she loved being the conduit through
which her androids received their programming.
Through her, the central processors were providing an entire cell of
android units with a life that perfectly balanced the pursuit of individual
happiness against the advancement of the collective good, intimately marrying
the one to the other. It was a life
where ambition could exist without greed.
Passion, without hatred. Love,
without envy. Dignity, without pride.
Only a few days ago, before she fully understood her true purpose,
A107E8/Wendy never dreamed that such a life were possible. But now it was the only life she could
imagine.
The
perfect life of an android.
END PROGRAM.