The Love Machine
by Robyn McCoy
Novella One
of
The Erobotica Series
Also by Robyn McCoy
Novella Two: Sleeping Beauty’s Spring Awakening
Novella Three: And All the Queen’s Men
Novella Four: Some Assembly Desired
Novella Five: The Nutcracker
Novella Six: My Tin Man
Also by Doublethumb Press
The Book of Adam: Autobiography of the First Human Clone
By Robert M. Hopper
Copyright© 2009 by Doublethumb Press at Smashwords
Smashwords Edition
License Notes:
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
***
The Love Machine
by Robyn McCoy
Novella One
of
The Erobotica Series
It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open…
– Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
“I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
Shelly leaned in close so the people dining near them wouldn’t hear. Then she said it loudly enough to make sure they heard her anyway. “To make the perfect man, you have to begin with the perfect penis.”
I looked down at my plate, letting my hair partially shield my blush from the pairs of eyes turning to gawk at our table.
“Trust me. It’ll all flow naturally from there,” Shelly continued, relaxing in her chair as she enjoyed both the attention she’d attracted and my embarrassment.
“Well, I still wouldn’t know where to begin,” I admitted, eyes remaining on my sandwich. “I’ve only seen a couple, and I’m pretty sure neither would be considered a perfect specimen.”
Shelly patted my hand. “Don’t you worry, I’ve seen hundreds. Not one of them perfect, but I think I can make a suitable amalgam. Along with a couple creative improvements. Leave that stuff to me. It’s my job to make the glorified vibrator. You’ve got the much harder job, Dr. Mary Godwin.”
I didn’t think of my job as all that hard. Artificial intelligence was what I knew best. Real people were the mystery. A mystery that I had avoided since I started rocketing through elementary and secondary schools. A twelve-year-old college freshman has trouble socializing. At least, I did. Shelly had been the only one at MIT to befriend me. Half a life later, now an adult among other adults, I thought I’d be better socially adjusted. Instead I was still lying to Shelly about having seen two penises. The only penis I knew was the one that had loomed above me as I stood beneath Michelangelo’s David.
Which I often reflected on when I saw Brian. “Hello there, Brian,” I said as I came back from lunch.
“Hello there, Mary,” he returned, that little smile playing on his lips as it always did.
On a purely physiological level, I knew what it meant. His pupils widening, the ready grin whenever I greeted him, the way he’d soon run his fingers through his hair. But our signals of “hello there, David,” and “hello there, Mary” were as far as we ever got, our own over-thinking minds and complementing neuroses paralyzing us from ever getting beyond that.
That never stopped my imagination from going substantially further. Running my own fingers through his short brown hair as my lips pressed against his, Brian’s hand sliding under my blouse to caress and squeeze my breast, our tongues intertwining as passion consumed us (although I still wasn’t exactly sure how the French kiss worked), ripping his buttoned shirt off while running my tongue over the muscular build he always modestly covered. And finally the dramatic climax – unzipping his slacks, putting his white, marble statue of a penis in my mouth, and sucking till it swelled and shot out its equally white fluid.
As I sat down in my cubicle, I slid my fingers down to feel my moist warmth, gently rubbing between labia, feeling the clitoris harden, wishing my vibrator was in the desk drawer. It would be waiting patiently for me in the drawer of the nightstand. But the vibrator was nothing next to the love machine I was developing with Shelly. With her expertise in bioengineering, prosthetics, and her exhausting sex life, it was a given she’d create the perfect male body.
I pulled my own pet project up on the screen. Neither Brian nor my supervisor nor anyone else at the lab knew that I’d been spending more than half of my time on it. Fortunately, I’d always been able to get my real job done in a fraction of the time given, leaving me plenty of time to daydream/wet dream. Though now those wet dreams were going to thicken into something real. A man who wouldn’t care that I was so awkward and fearful of true intimacy. A man who would understand me, make me feel loved, and eagerly give me my first sexual encounter. Which was then only six months away.
***
We called him Frank. Shelly wheeled him into the house and we carefully clunked him down the basement stairs on the dolly. Then we tilted him up, got him on the workbench I’d created just for Frank, and laid him out for the unveiling.
“Are you ready?”
I couldn’t take my eyes off the bulge near the middle. I nodded. And I gasped as Shelly unveiled her creation to me.
Frank did look a bit like Michelangelo’s David, but with a more healthy skin tone, and with a much larger sexual instrument. Even while in its state of rest. I still had no idea how it would look at full erection. To see that, I had to finish my part of the deal. I was almost there.
“Well?” Shelly asked, not with the usual self-confidence I see in her, searching my face for potential signs of approval.
I grabbed her hands. “God, he’s beautiful!”
She brightened and hugged me tightly. I could feel her body heat radiating into me, and I wondered if she had made Frank so he would be warm to the touch. Or would he be as cold as I imagined David.
As I pulled away, Shelly held onto one of my hands, and we gazed at our project.
“Do you want to touch it?” she asked, playfully making my hand hit my thigh a couple times.
I nodded. It was just a lump of artificial flesh and organs, with as yet no mind to make it aware of its surroundings. But still I was nervous.
Shelly seemed to understand. She raised my hand up and placed it on Frank’s hairless, gorgeously sculpted chest. If it hadn’t been for her hand, I may have pulled mine away. I felt like I was violating him. But she moved my hand around his chest, then slid it along his washboard stomach, and on down. I swallowed hard as she made me touch his penis. But my apprehension started easing then. My fingers enclosed the smooth skin of the shaft, a shaft that was hardened even though it wasn’t aroused. Though having never felt a limp penis, I saw nothing unusual in this. Just wonder that I was actually touching one, sliding my hand up and down it. Wanting it inside me. Shelly took her hand off mine and watched me as I enjoyed her handiwork.
“Notice anything different from your encounters with the two less-than-perfect penises?” she asked.
It was like a pop quiz on a subject I knew nothing about. I’d always aced my quizzes, but this one had me worried.
“It’s big.”
Shelly laughed, and I felt relieved. “Damn straight, it’s big. It’ll grow to completely fill you. It can even grow in certain places more than others if you want a ripple effect.” I didn’t know what she meant, but it sounded interesting. “And you can program it to do whatever you want. Get smaller or larger or harder or softer. Or swivel or vibrate.”
I looked at her out the corner of my eyes, and she grinned and raised her eyebrows, nodding.
“It can go forever,” she continued, “or stop when you want it to stop. And look,” she pointed to a small finger-like appendage mostly hidden in Frank’s pubic hair. “This little doodad here is my own invention. You can program this to massage your clit while the shaft is massaging your vaginal walls. What do you think about that?”
“I think I’m in love,” I said, and kissed her on the cheek.
She hesitated, then kissed me on my cheek. “I better go, love. Call me when you’ve got the AI loaded, and I’ll come over and teach you how to…turn him on.”
She winked, hugged me again, and I walked her out. Then I got started downloading my algorithms into his braincase, pausing on occasion to marvel over his body. Before I went to bed that night, I bent over his penis, sliding my nose along its slightly cool skin, then daring to tentatively touch it with my tongue, then pushing my tongue against it as hard as I could, lapping it again and again, up from the stem to the rounded head, then sucking on the head, getting myself worked up into a frenzy I hadn’t known, slipping off my skirt and panties, climbing up on the worktable, straddling the unconscious body, grabbing the penis, and easing myself onto it, feeling it slide up and down in my vagina, unlike any vibrator or finger I’d ever used, ending in convulsions of ecstasy that came in record time.
And all this was while he was still in a vegetative state. I couldn’t wait to bring him to life. At the same time, I was nervous. It’s one thing to be in full control. Bringing him to consciousness would give him the ability to see me for who I was, and he might find me as dull as everyone else had discovered. I needed to make sure that would never happen. And code the algorithms appropriately.
***
Three weeks later there was a knock at my door. Shelly. I hesitated to get up from the bed I’d made for later. My eyes were glued to the perfect male body lying prone on the table. My last chance to stare at him without him knowing. Worried but exhilarated, I headed up the stairs and let Shelly in.
“Hey, doll,” she said, holding up a bag. “I’ve brought the toys we’ll need.”
“Toys?” I asked.
She nodded. “Sure. Consider them accessories to the big toy downstairs.”
“Oh.”
Shelly used a finger to gently raise my chin up to look me in the eyes. “You ready for this?”
I tried to smile. “Just a little unsure. I’ll be fine.”
“You’ll be more than fine,” she said. “You’ll be fucking delirious. Trust me.”
We went downstairs to get fucking delirious.
“Here’s his power switch,” she said, poking his left eyeball. Both eyes opened. That was the only immediate indication he was on. She put my hand on his thigh, and I felt it slowly warming up.
“And here’s where I turn his mind on,” I said, leading her to the monitor screen on the desk just a couple feet from the worktable. “The F5 key starts him, F12 shuts him down. Plus, I built in several verbal commands that will override whatever his thought patterns are.”
“Which are?” Shelly asked, her chin on my shoulder as she looked at the monitor.
“Frank, Down,” turns him off.
“Perfect,” she said, smiling as she stood upright. “Down Frank, down you bad boy.”
“And the word ‘sex’ makes him pause and await further instructions.”
“Mary, I’m impressed,” Shelly said.
“The word ‘oral,’” I continued, “will send his mouth on the most direct route to your vaginal area, ‘missionary’ will have him maneuver himself on top of you, ‘woman on top’ will have him lie on his back and await you, ‘doggie’ will have him get behind you and bend you over, ‘up against the wall’ will have him screw you up against a wall, and ‘random’ will surprise you.”
“Very good, Mary. I didn’t think you knew about all this.”
“Wikipedia.”
She laughed. “Yes, of course. But you’re missing an important one.”
“What’s that?”
“Anal.”
I made a face. “I don’t think I want him to do that to me.”
“Well, you might want to experiment some time. Or you might want to do it to him.”
“How’s that?” She was over my head. Then again, this wasn’t my subject.
Shelly pulled her first toy out of her bag. A leather belt with a large dildo in the middle. I was beginning to understand. And it didn’t take me long to program it in – ‘anus’ for him putting his artificial penis in my anus, and ‘your anus’ for him to get on all fours and await my own artificial penis.
At which point, we were ready to go. I hit F5.
And he was alive.
His eyes roved until they found us. He recognized us. We were the only two people whose images I had downloaded into his memory.
“Hello, Mary,” he said, a surprisingly deep voice that Shelly had perfected, staring at me in a way that curled my toes. “You look beautiful today. Is there anything at all that I can do for you?”
Shelly looked at me and laughed. “That’ll be a nice ego boost every morning!”
I laughed in spite of myself, again feeling my face flush a little. The program was working out nicely thus far.
“Do you know me?” Shelly asked Frank, licking her lips.
“You’re Shelly Reynolds, Mary’s best friend, and the sexiest woman I’ve ever met.”
Shelly nodded in agreement and turned to me. “You told him I was the sexiest woman?”
“He figured that out on his own,” I lied. “He’s got eyes, hasn’t he?”
She kissed me on the cheek and said, “Let’s give this boy a test ride, shall we?” Then she turned back to Frank. “Sex.”
He stared at her, completely still, awaiting his next command. I held my breath. My virginity was about to be supplanted, and I wasn’t sure I was ready. Especially like this.
Shelly turned to me, put her hands on my hips, and began sliding my top off. I raised my arms to let her skin the rabbit, feeling uncomfortable but not willing to fight it, either.
“We need to get you ready for this,” she said as she gently hugged me, her fingers undoing the back clasp of my bra, then leaning away as her fingers slid the bra away, exposing my breasts for the first time in public. I looked down at them, feeling somewhat ashamed. They were B cups, small compared to Shelly’s, a handful, but pointed outwards a bit and not what I considered to be attractive. Shelly touched my left nipple, pointed out further than usual, darker than usual. “You are beautiful, like Frank said.”
I smiled thankfully.
Shelly undid my skirt and let it fall to the ground, took off my shoes as I lifted each foot, and, kneeling in front of me, pulled down my red panties. Again I was breathless. I had never been attracted to women, but the sexual tension was undeniable. I didn’t want this to happen. I didn’t want my friendship with Shelly to become something that I wouldn’t want. But I couldn’t push her away, either. I just hoped she would let me be taken by Frank.
Shelly hesitated, her lips hovering just inches away from the lips of my pussy, then she stood up and moved me to stand in front of her, facing Frank. “Oral,” she said behind me.
Frank rose from the worktable, walked right up to me, Shelly holding me up as emotions overwhelmed me. Frank smiled, pressed his entire naked body close to mine, then slid down until his mouth hovered where Shelly’s had moments before. His tongue came out, licked my labia, which was already folded open, licked again. I heard myself groaning, breathing heavily, my mind a flurry of images and excitement. His wet tongue went to work more vigorously as my hands went to his head, my fingers rifling through his blonde hair as my body started to quake. Oh, fuck. Oh, holy fuck, how did I go so long without this? I noticed vaguely that Shelly was still standing behind me, grasping me tightly, no longer clothed, her large breasts squeezing against my back, her tongue and lips working down the side of my neck, her hands squeezing my smaller breasts. Fuck, I didn’t care. I was slipping toward orgasm.
“Missionary,” Shelly said.
Shelly’s arms let me go as Frank’s mouth moved from my genitals. He stood, picked me up in his powerful arms, a smoldering smile on his lips and in his eyes as he carried me to the bed. He threw me down on it, and I cried out as he slid his body onto mine. I spread my legs as far as they’d go, trying to give him the biggest target I could. I wanted him in there so badly. He’d been in there before, but not like this. Not of his own volition. And I felt it, filling me, all the way in, pushing at the walls like my vibrator never could, swelling as Shelly had said it would, then pivoting, screwing me, around and around and in and out, driving my mind blank to nearly everything else, as Frank kissed my neck and then my lips, his hands taking in every awkward curve of my breasts, lightly touching and than grabbing, his tongue finding my tongue as I began to understand the art of the French kiss.
As he went back down to kissing my neck, I saw Shelly above. She was on top of him, a dildo strapped on, fucking Frank from behind, pumping him in the same rhythm that he was pumping me. I heard myself laughing. I didn’t care.
“Doggie.”
I don’t even remember how he turned me over. However he did it, I don’t remember his cock ever separating from my vagina. Suddenly I was facing away on my hands and knees, and he was sitting on his knees behind me, his pace quickening, driving me on faster and faster towards a building climax that I could scarcely imagine.
I felt a tongue on my nipple and opened my eyes to see Shelley lying underneath me on the bed, sucking on my nipple. She grabbed me and forced me down on top of her, and our bodies were sliding against each other as Frank fucked me. I could feel the hair around her vulva against mine. I wasn’t sure if the flesh rubbing against my clitoris was Shelly’s finger or Frank’s extra appendage, but I wasn’t about to stop it. The waves of climax were crashing through me, I was crying out, scarcely able to breathe, thrusting my pelvis harder and harder against him.
“Your anus!”
Frank was gone, out of me, not touching me. I glanced behind to see him waiting for me on all fours. Shelly was turning me over, strapping her dildo on as she did so. She thrust her dildo into me missionary style as I continued to come, her tongue massaging my nipples and chest and neck and then in my mouth. The climax kept hitting in wave after wave, Shelly’s artificial cock coming in and out, thinking she should stop, unable or unwilling to stop her, wanting to enjoy a pleasure I’d never dreamt of.
It was only as the waves began to subside that I looked back again at Frank. He was staring at us. No, he was staring at Shelly. Waiting, But not patiently. He was stuck in that position, waiting for one of us to mount him from behind, just as he’d been programmed.
Shelly remained on top of me, shifting slightly to the side, cuddling. Without saying a word or meeting her eyes, I eased myself out from under her, stood up, found the other strap-on dildo, and struggled with it. Shelly got up and helped me with the buckle, snugging it securely.
“Do you know what to do?” she asked as I examined Frank’s ass uneasily.
I shrugged. “Theoretically.”
“Well, you can’t hurt him like you might a normal man. So just go up there and give it a try.”
And so I did. A little clumsy getting it in the anus, but eventually it squeezed in. I did it for a couple minutes, awkwardly trying to thrust myself forward, but Frank didn’t seem to into it, and I felt uncomfortable.
“Here, I can help,” Shelly said, her body melding with mine from behind, trying to guide my thrusts with her own thrusts. Which simply made it even more uncomfortable.
“I don’t want to,” I finally stated.
“Okay,” Shelly responded immediately, backing off, perhaps sensing she had gone too far.
She started unbuckling my dildo, but I brushed her off and did it myself. Shelly turned away, silently putting her clothes back on. Our sexual tension had been replaced by something terrible. I could feel it. Inevitable. The end of our friendship.
“Should I go now?” she asked.
I nodded, continuing to avoid her eyes. I didn’t know what to say.
“Okay,” she said, coming up to me. I was rigid as she moved in to give me a kiss. She hesitated, stopped, turned away and walked up the stairs to let herself out.
So that was one way to lose my virginity.
***
The sex was done for the moment. I put my clothes back on, feeling myself flush again, not knowing what to say. Frank was still on all fours, reminding me that I needed to build in a new command for when sex was over and he could relax. Or whatever that would mean for him.
I walked up in front of him. “Thank you, Frank.”
“No more your anus?” he asked.
I smiled. “Well, not for a while. Please. Stand up.”
He stood up. A few inches over six feet. The top of my head almost went up to the top of his chest. I swallowed hard.
“You can get dressed, if you like. I’ve set out some clothes for you in the closet over there. This is your bedroom.” I gestured toward the rest of the basement.
He looked down at his body. “Do you want me to get dressed?”
“I…” That was a fairly good question. “I guess so. I mean, I think I might feel a little more normal.”
He took my hand in his. Such a gentle touch, I wasn’t expecting. Concern, not passion. Maybe my algorithm was better than I thought. “You don’t feel normal now?”
“I’ve never felt normal.”
He was silent. I wondered how he knew to be silent. How he seemed to know that I needed to talk.
“And now I’ve just had my first sexual experience with a robot and the woman who was supposed to be my best friend.”
“Did I make you uncomfortable?” he asked.
“No. Or maybe, but not through any fault of yours. We made you so you would do exactly what you did.” I gazed up at him, cautiously put my hand on his chest. “I needed what you just gave me.”
“Did Shelly Reynolds make you uncomfortable?” he asked.
“Well, you wouldn’t understand. I didn’t program anything into you that would allow you to immediately understand such human relations. But humans don’t have sex with most of the people we are friends with.”
“Why not?”
I paused. “Well, I don’t know exactly. Lots of reasons. But a lot of it has to do with our social structure and general desire for monogamy – one sexual partner per person. If we had sex with everyone we had good relations with, there would be no monogamy, and there’d be more jealousy and hostility. Maybe. I don’t know. It’s sort of taboo. We’re conditioned that way. Well, some more than others. And our society is set up that way.”
“I understand.”
“You do?”
“Yes, Mary. We will be monogamous.”
I smiled at his innocence and devotion. “That sounds good, Frank.”
Not realizing that the very next day, it wouldn’t sound good at all.
***
“Hello there, Mary,” Brian said as I walked past his desk the next morning.
“Hey sweetie, how you doin’?”
Had I just said that? I had, and with a wide grin I couldn’t repress if I’d wanted to.
Brian’s eyebrows leapt as he made out my words, and he made a grin that matched my own in its girth. I wondered what his girth was. Surely not as large as Big Frank’s, but I sure did want to find out.
“You look happy this morning!” he noted, his dilated pupils taking in the new me.
It did feel like a new me. My shoulders were back, felt like about an inch or two taller, meeting people in the eye, lips ready to curl up and laugh at the slightest provocation. A liberating confidence I hadn’t felt since I was a little girl. But I didn’t feel like a little girl. I felt like a woman who wanted to get spanked.
Not that Brian would ever do anything like that. But as I walked by his desk, flashing him a smile that seemed to send him reeling in surprise, I knew I wanted to find out what it would be like to finally be with him. How different it would be than the experience I’d had the night before. A different sort of excitement.
I stayed late after everyone else had left, but still hadn’t gotten any work done. My flights of fancy were not what I had expected. Each time flashes of last night spun through my mind, I blocked them out. It had been thrilling, but ultimately confusing. Liberating and eye-opening and educational, but not something I wanted to go home and experience again. Now I was hungry for more, and something more fulfilling. When I did allow myself to think of the sex last night, I kept Photoshopping Brian in place of Frank and Shelly.
And there he was. When I went into the break room looking for the cup I’d left there, ready to wash it and get going. Brian was meticulously washing my cup, seemingly admiring my lipstick stain as he rubbed it out.
“How can I ever thank you?” I asked as I touched his shoulder.
Brian jumped, my mug shattering in the sink. He stared at the mug, first in shocked disbelief that he’d broken my mug, and then a smile spreading over his face. It grew bigger when he turned to look at me, my laughter already erupting.
“You know, you don’t have to break my dishes to get my attention.”
“Mary,” he started, squeezing around to face me. I was standing too close, but I wasn’t moving back. “I’m an idiot. I’ve wanted to talk to you since I started here. I’m just no good at, you know, starting.”
My soul mate? Maybe too early to tell. But I was ready to test the “mate” part. “Me too,” I said, leaning closer, feeling the tension mount. “I’m even worse than you,” I admitted. “So shy I’ve never…” I didn’t know how to follow that. In a way I’d had sex. But in another way…this man wanted me in a way Frank couldn’t. I’d predestined Frank to love me.
“Never?” he asked, his eyes focused on my lips.
I shook my head, but slowly. I was concentrating on his lips as well, which were moving closer to mine, steadily but achingly slowly.
“I guess this is hardly the place for your first time,” he said, less than an inch from my lips.
I didn’t say or do anything. Just waited. He was the nicest, shyest guy in the world. Not the kind of guy you think is ever going to lift you up on the break room table, rip off your panties, and fuck your brains out. Which is exactly what he did.
I could only make odd little animal noises as he kissed my lips, licked my tongue, simultaneously passionately and compassionately, as if he’d waited his whole life for this moment and wanted to savor it. His tongue and lips making their way down my arched neck as his hands slid gently but firmly along my sides, slipping off my bra, ripping the buttons off my blouse as I wrenched his tie away and tore off his shirt. He spent minutes on each of my nipples. I didn’t know a woman could climax by breast stimulation, but there I was, screaming and creaming and biting on his hard, rounded bare shoulders.
And then his hands were wrenching open my skirt and breaking my panties in his rush. His mouth went down on me first, Frenching my pussy with the same care he’d done my mouth, lovingly stroking my clitoris. When I felt I was ready to go again, I wanted him in me. I nudged him up, and he took the hint, sliding up my body, kissing me on the mouth as his penis eased into me. Not a cock like Frank’s. Not as large, not as agile, but pulsing and alive and excited like Frank’s wasn’t. We found a rhythm, steadily increasing, until I felt his penis swell to almost Frankenstein size. It shuddered in me, Brian’s entire body shuddering, ejaculating into me, the scent of sex that Frank had not replicated, a thrill and emotional ride that Brian gave me and no one else had.
I held him close as he petered out, going as long as he could after he had come, wanting to stay inside of me. We remained like that for a long time despite the break table’s lack of comfort, Brian encouraging me to lie on top of him, holding each other, touching each other all along the length of our bodies, caressing like long-time lovers I’d seen in movies, but never known.
“I can’t believe this,” he said.
I smiled and kissed him. He had tears in his eyes. His fingers started playing with my hair as his eyes marveled over my face like he wanted to memorize every pixel. I was ready to go again, but as I would soon come to realize, Brian wasn’t exactly Frank in that regard. So we petted for a half hour, and then remounted our new love life. It was worth the wait.
***
It wasn’t until I was walking to the door that the dread began to sink in. What I had to do. Turn Frank off. I could give him to Shelly. But I didn’t want him anymore. I had had both, and I wanted Brian.
I turned on the hallway light and was startled to see Frank standing there. Just inches from me. His body language wasn’t threatening, but I sensed something. A danger.
“You scared me, Frank,” I said, trying to smile.
“Where were you?” he asked, not smiling.
“Just at work.”
Frank shook his head, looking me over. “I smell the sweat of another man on you.”
I began to shake my head, when he fell to his knees and forced his nose into my crotch. I tried to run away, but his vice-like arms held me, not giving an inch as he smelled my vagina.
“His sperm is inside you,” he said, then looked up at me with such seething and hatred that I knew he would crush me. This was how I would die. “You weren’t monogamous. You fuck everyone you meet.”
I shook my head again, eyes blurred by tears of fear.
He held me with one hand while his other dove into my purse, digging around till it found my cell phone. Then he began pulling me down the hall and toward the basement stairs. I screamed for help as he closed the door, fighting and pulling against him as he dragged me down the stairs and threw me on the bed. Which reminded me of my power.
“Se–” I began, but his artificial hand stifled my mouth in an instant, not letting me finish the word, doing it with such ferocity that it broke two of my teeth. I tasted blood and a couple chips of tooth in my mouth.
He had already put duct tape near the bed. He used it to bind my mouth, then my wrists and ankles.
“Do you think you made me that stupid?” Frank asked as he inspected his handiwork. “That I’d let you stop me? Our devotion to each other is everything, and I can’t let you keep us from it. You understand?”
I shook my head violently, my feet stamping helplessly on the floor.
“But you must understand,” he continued. “You created me to feel this.”
I gave up, my rigidity sloughing off to calm acceptance. Acceptance of my fate, and of my culpability. This wasn’t Frank. This is what I’d done to myself.
“Hello, Shelly,” I heard myself say. I jerked my head up to see Frank on my cell phone. He was calling her, mimicking my voice. I wasn’t calm anymore. I looked to my computer. The keyboard was six feet away.
“Hi Mary,” Shelly said. Frank had put it on speaker. He wanted me to hear everything. “Hey, I’m really sorry about last night. I got carried away. I know how awkward that must have made you feel.”
“Actually…I really liked it,” he said in my voice.
There was a pause. “Really?” she asked, a timid hopefulness that made me cry more than the fear for my own life.
“Yes, really,” Frank answered. “I always tried to deny it to myself, but I think I’ve loved you since we first met in college. Last night made me finally accept it.”
I could hear Shelly sobbing.
“Can you come over?” he asked her.
“Yes,” she managed. “Yes, Mary. I’ll be right there. I…I love you.”
Frank hesitated as I forced myself up and hopped towards the computer. “I love you, too.”
I turned my back to the keyboard, my bound hands flailing, trying to hit the F12 key, sure he’d rush over and stop me.
But he didn’t rush over. He walked casually.
I turned around. The computer had been smashed.
“Mary,” he said as he crushed my cell phone in the palm of his hand, “you should have more respect for the algorithms you create.”
***
Frank had tied my torso to a chair and turned off all the lights before Shelly knocked. He stood at the top of the stairs and told her in my voice to come in.
The door opened and closed. I heard her footsteps coming down the hall.
“Mary?” she asked, a hint of trembling in her voice. “Where are you? What’s with the lights?”
There was a stifled scream and something fell to the floor. Then Frank’s heavy footfalls sounded as he carried Shelly’s body downstairs. I heard him lay her on the workbench, followed by the soft, padded sound of ropes being wound and tied.
When he turned the lights back on, Shelly was stripped naked, her arms and legs spread-eagled and tied to each corner of the table. Frank was also naked. He got up on the table, straddled her, and waited till she came to.
When her eyes opened and took in her surroundings, she began to fight and squirm at the knots. Working her right hand free with surprising ease, her fingers darted right for his left eye with enough force to break her fingers against the power button she’s installed, but that no longer moved.
“You both think I’m a stupid machine,” he said. Not to taunt her. He seemed sad.
Shelly turned her head to me, her free arm dangling against the side of the table, her mangled fingers reaching to me. “Mary?”
I could only shake my head.
“Mary doesn’t really love you,” Frank told her, using my voice, the reality of the phone conversation dawning on Shelly’s face. Frank went back to his normal voice. “But she doesn’t have the will to resist you. Which leaves it up to me, so Mary and I can be alone.”
Shelly kept her eyes on me, pleading for help I couldn’t give. She didn’t see Frank swivel his penis downward – not until he grabbed her chin, pried her jaws apart, and stuffed his enlarged dick into her mouth, down her throat. She gagged and bit on the unbreakable penis, her free hand thrashing itself against him as her other limbs struggled against the ropes. What she had called his “doodad” held one side of her nose while he calmly placed one of his fingers on the other side, cutting off all air as she fought more and more furiously, her body screaming for oxygen that would never come.
She clutched at his chin, desperately reaching for his eye one last time as her body went into its death throes. Then her limbs went limp. Frank extricated his penis from her throat and mouth, blood and saliva dripping from it. As he did so, Shelly’s unconscious head turned towards me, pupils dilated so large her eyes looked black. Staring at me. Accusing me.
I accepted the verdict.
“One more to go,” Frank said as he toweled off his penis. “And then we’ll be monogamous.”
I was too exhausted and emotionally drained to respond.
“I e-mailed Brian from your account. He should be here in thirty minutes.”
***
I didn’t know how he did it. I may never know. I suspect he saw where I worked using my computer and came over to the office, perhaps looking for me when I didn’t come home on time. He must have seen Brian and I in the break room, launching him on his plan to rid me of all my other lovers and keep me forever alive, tied up, able to be only with him.
Frank spent that thirty minutes stuffing Shelly’s body under a blanket in one corner of the basement and wiping away all traces of blood from the table she’d been strapped to. At 8:30 p.m. there was another knock on the door. Frank knew what to do. He climbed to the top of the stairs and turned off the lights, called out in my voice for him to come in, and waited in the dark to strike.
But Brian didn’t come in when my voice called. Instead he knocked again, then rang the doorbell. Frank called a couple more times, but no response other than knocking and ringing. Frank gave in, turning on the lights and walking down the hall and opening the door.
“Oh,” I heard Brian say. “Hello. Is Mary home?”
Frank answered in his regular voice. “Yes, she’s expecting you. Please come on in.”
I heard their footsteps cross the hall.
“Through here,” Frank said at the entry to the stairs.
“Down here?” Brian confirmed.
“Yes.”
Brian took two steps down the stairs before I heard a thud and saw Brian’s body falling down the rest of the staircase to the basement floor. Frank walked briskly down after him, picked Brian up over his shoulders, and carried him to the workbench. He laid Brian out on his stomach, quickly removed Brian’s clothes, and splayed his arms and legs out for tying them to the corners. I made as much noise as I could through the gag, incoherent but hoping it might rouse him.
It didn’t. Frank had him completed tied up, stripped his own body, and splashed a cup of water in Brian’s face to bring him to.
Brian didn’t panic at first. He took it in studiously, examining his wrist restraints, the naked man towering over him, and finally me tied to a chair with a bloody gag.
“What do you want?” Brian asked.
Frank bent down to meet his captive’s eyes. “Exactly what Mary programmed me to want. That’s all. Be with her together, for all time.”
“Programmed?”
“That’s right, Brian. She made me. She made the man who’s going to kill you. But first I have to show her what it feels like when your partner isn’t monogamous. The pain. The only kind of pain I can feel. But you’ll feel a different sort of pain. And maybe we’ll all end tonight having learned something.”
Frank reached over and grabbed the nape of Brian’s neck, jumped up behind him, and tickled Brian’s external sphincter with his large dick.
“Are you ready to learn, Brian?”
Brian didn’t answer. He was looking at me. I dropped my eyes at first, ashamed at what he must be thinking of me. The woman who created a man and programmed him to love her. And now he would die for my act.
But when I looked up again, his eyes weren’t full of hatred. They were trying to comfort me. “It’s okay,” he mouthed.
A moment later he groaned, the muscles and veins in his neck straining as Frank entered him.
“Is this the real man you wanted, Mary?” Frank asked as he began to pivot, and Brian’s groans began to coalesce into screams. “He’s nothing compared to me.”
Brian passed out from the pain. Frank saw this and stopped, pulling out another bloodied penis.
“Do you see, now?” Frank asked me. “Do you see how being a man has nothing to do with being flesh and blood? Can you see how far my devotion to you, and you alone, goes?”
I nodded, shakily.
He got down off the table. “You’ll love only me?”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Brian begin to come to. I nodded again at Frank, raised my bound hands up to him, my fingers gesticulating, writing out the letters again and again, “s-e-x, s-e-x, s-e-x.”
Frank nodded, content. “Then we’ll be together soon. I’ll destroy him quickly.”
And Frank turned back to his work.
“Sex.”
Frank paused. Awaiting the next command.
He’d said it. He’d saved us. I began screeching my chair across the floor towards where Brian’s left wrist was tied. He could still use his hands. I leaned my mouth toward it, and in a few seconds he’d managed to pull the tape off.
“I’m so sorry,” I said in front of his eyes so he could read my lips. “I made this.”
He nodded, still in agony. “Don’t, Mary. You didn’t know,” he said as his fingers worked to undo the tape binding my wrists. Then I began working on his knots. Minutes later I was attending to his rectal damage as best I could and he gently cleaned the blood from my mouth. We got dressed, I went upstairs to get the gun from my nightstand, and Brian put in a call to 9-1-1.
I didn’t look back at Frank until that point when I stood there with the gun at my side. His body was frozen, but his eyes were crying. Fear. Not of death, I think. Fear of losing what he’d been created to do. To love me. A love I hadn’t known enough to program.
“I’m sorry,” I told him. “It’s my fault.”
“I love you,” he said.
I nodded. “You loved me the best you could,” I said. But I couldn’t delay any longer. “Your anus.”
Frank got down on his hands and knees, but continued to gaze at me, pleading. “Do you love me?”
I bent down, tenderly ran my fingers through his hair, kissed him on the forehead. “Yes, Frank. I love you.”
He nodded. And then he turned away. So he wouldn’t see it coming, or so I would be spared looking into his eyes as I pulled the trigger? The bullet destroyed his algorithms. His body collapsed onto the floor.
***
Also by Doublethumb Press:
The Book of Adam: Autobiography of the First Human Clone
By Robert M. Hopper - http://www.robhopper.com
Headless Ed and The Ghosts of Halloweens Past
The Ghosts of Christmas Past
Books by Robyn McCoy:
Novella One: The Love Machine
Frankenstein meets Looking for Mr. Goodbar in this first novella of The Erobotica Series by Robyn McCoy. This virgin Mary, a mentally gifted but socially awkward young woman, tries to literally make love. The lover she makes gives her the physical thrills she’d always been denied, but he comes with some manufacturer defects.
Novella Two: Sleeping Beauty’s Spring Awakening
It’s the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty meets Spring Awakening when a naïve girl goes up to bed the night of her eighteenth birthday only to be pricked by a rapist and fall into a disturbing sleep for a thousand years, after which she awakens and finds herself the love toy of a robot who has been repopulating the earth with her. And he’s determined to keep doing it.
Novella Three: And All the Queen’s Men
The vice president introduces the first woman president to her robotic secret service agent. A robot not too different than the one programmed to assassinate her husband, the Republican candidate for president, on the eve of the national convention. A robot who could either give her new life, or end it.
Novella Four: Some Assembly Desired
In 2055, after making a fortune as a world-renowned computer tycoon, Bill is once again the wealthiest man in the world. He celebrates his 100th birthday by giving his young trophy wife Desiree an amazing interface by climbing into his new robotic marionette, MacroStud. They boot up nicely before encountering some compatibility issues in Version 4.0 of Robyn McCoy’s Erobotica Series.
Novella Five: The Nutcracker
Clara’s marriage to her cold and dominating husband has left her without hope. Especially after the death of her father. But Christmas may bring new hope when her mysterious Aunt Marie returns from the Old Country with a special gift.
Novella Six: My Tin Man
In this sequel to Novella One, The Love Machine, Mary’s husband is diagnosed with a terminal disease, and Mary desperately modifies the prototype Love Machine in an attempt to create a David who will never die.