Love You in Latex
By Captain Eazy
2
“I thought we’d go to a restaurant,” Manda Tumner said.
“I don’t eat out,” Richard Westley said. “I’m something of a hermit.”
Manda couldn’t see why. Westley was a handsome man, on the thin side but well-built, with short-cropped black hair and startling blue eyes. Improbably long lashes, wasted on a man. He did not look his age, not by a good five years or so. She was uncomfortably conscious of having overdressed for the occasion: he wore jeans, a white shirt hanging out, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, sandals. She was in casual evening wear, a black silk top, very short black skirt–the fashion that year–black gladiator sandals, small sequined bag.
“So,” he said with a shrug. “Do you still want dinner?”
Manda looked around. She would not have guessed that the whole top floor of the building was an apartment. “I am hungry,” she admitted.
“This way.”
When she saw that the door was opened by a robot, she hesitated in her step, but only for a heartbeat. You saw them in restaurants, too, perfect servers, deferential, punctual, absolutely accurate in memory–and you didn’t tip them. The dining room might have accommodated thirty. It was a spacious room, lighted softly by two chandeliers, with one wall mostly windows looking over the gleaming spilled-jewelbox night city. Richard held out a chair for Manda, then went around to sit opposite her. She liked that he didn’t take the chair to her left, at the head of the imposing table. She put her little purse on the table, out of the way. “What would you like?” he asked.
“I don’t know what you have,” she said with a smile.
Another boyish shrug. “We have whatever you want.”
She took that as a challenge. “Calimari as an appetizer,” she said. “A mushroom, olive, heart of artichoke, and heart of palm salad, small, dressed with truffled olive oil and Spanish lemon juice. And for the main course . . . alligator jambalaya.”
“I’ll have a spinach salad, small steak, and baked potato,” Westley said to the robot. “Bring our guest a glass of Reserve reisling with the calamari, then a half-bottle of Zinfandel for her entree. I’ll have a half-bottle of the Piedmont Barbera. Water for us both.”
The robot, gleaming silver, inclined its head slightly and moved gracefully out of the room. “You don’t have alligator jambalaya,” Manda accused. “Nobody has that.”
“I’m sure we do,” he said. “Lai would have told me if you’d asked for anything beyond the range of the kitchen.”
“Was that a pun?”
“Not an intentional one.” He nodded toward her purse. “You don’t have to record this. You may if you want. I’d prefer you do it openly, though.”
Manda colored slightly. She reached into the purse and took out the miniature voice recorder. “Sorry. It’s my business.” She placed the recorder on the table between them.
“I know,” he said, interlacing his fingers and resting his chin on his hands. “What is Shayla demanding?”
“Half of everything.” She met his blue stare. You didn’t begin bargaining with a low-ball figure.
Without a change in his expression–he’d be a hell of a poker player, she thought–he said, “You’ve read the prenuptial agreement, I’m sure.”
“Yes. Our position will be that without an understanding of the potential value of your . . . devices, your patents, she had no reasonable expectation that you would become so wealthy over the course of your marriage. Therefore the terms of the pre-nup should be vacated.”
“She’s been unfaithful, you know,” he said, so matter-of-factly that Manda couldn’t doubt him, though Shayla had said nothing about adultery, his or hers.
“You’d have to prove that.”
“I see.”
The robot returned with a small service trolley. Unobtrusively, it–she–poured two glasses of wine, two of ice water, and then served him a salad gleaming with small red tomatoes, her a portion of calamari rings and her exotic salad. “Thank you,” Manda said.
“It is my pleasure to serve.” A very feminine voice, breathy, almost husky.
Manda waited until the robot had left. “We’d ask for half,” she said. “Knowing juries, half is within shooting distance for Shayla. But maybe we can settle for less, without letting the court resolve the matter. What would you be willing to part with?”
“Nothing,” he said. “I’ll keep strictly to the terms of the pre-nup. Shayla will be well taken care of. If I gave her more, she’d waste it. She has no head for money.”
“You must know that these days juries are very sympathetic to women.” She didn’t spell out the reasons: the Marriage Act had been an extremely conservative reaction to social changes. It had defined marriage as binding only between a man and a woman–and had incidentally made the woman more dependent on the husband than her great-great grandmother had been in 1850. The pendulum was swinging–slowly–the other way now, but in the meantime juries tended to compensate women extravagantly.
“Yes, my attorneys have lectured me about juries,” he said. “But if I conclusively prove infidelity, the court will never let the case go to jury. I could even ask for a reduction or elimination of the pre-nup, under the terms of the Act.” He shrugged. “I don’t intend to. I don’t want to distress Shayla, but I won’t reward her for bad behavior, either. Go ahead, try your food. We can talk more after we’ve eaten.”
It was good, and the wine was surprisingly well-suited to the occasion. Or perhaps, Manda reflected, she had never had really perfect wine before. They ate almost in silence for a few minutes, except for Westley’s explanation for the apartment. “I had it built when we first established the factory, before I married Shayla. Just a couple of rooms at first, a place for me to crash while I worked out the technical problems in my devices. Then when we started real production, it became a staff meeting site, a place for celebration and so forth. I had the rest of the apartment done over the next couple of years. Then I married Shayla, bought the house, and closed up the apartment. When Shayla told me she wanted a divorce, I moved back in. It’s ridiculously big for one man, of course–no staff meetings any more, since the factory is run entirely by robots.”
“It must get lonely.”
He shrugged. “I’ve never been a very social creature. I’m willing to let Shayla keep the house, in addition to what the pre-nup says she’ll get. I never much cared for it, anyway.”
The efficient Lai returned with the entrees and more wine as they finished the salads. Manda tasted the jambalaya and expressed her appreciation. “I used to have this at home, when I was a kid,” she said.
“New New Orleans?”
“Is it the accent? I’ve tried so hard to get rid of it.”
“No, it’s the food,” he said with a smile. He had a nice smile, wrinkling the corners of his eyes and making him seem both older and more attractive. “I’ve tried alligator, but somehow it doesn’t appeal to me.”
“Tell me why you’re so sure you don’t want to make Shayla an offer,” she said.
He reached over, thumbed the recorder off, and then said, “You turn off the other one.”
“What makes you think there are two?”
“You’re a smart lady.”
With a rueful smile, she reached into the bag and switched off the backup recorder. “There.”
“Lai!” he said, somewhat loudly.
The silver robot shimmered in. “Sir?”
“Are there any active recording devices in the room?”
The robot inclined its head, as though listening. “No, sir. Two inactive ones.”
“That’s all.”
“Yes, sir.”
He leaned across the table. “I have clear proof that Shayla has been unfaithful with at least two men,” he said. “It is incontrovertible and concrete. If she presses, I will reveal that to the judge. That will end her case, with a prejudicial decision against her, laying her open to civil proceedings if I choose to bring charges. Even if those are dismissed, the mere fact of her infidelities will mean she has to pay exorbitant fines, reducing her income from the pre-nup by a third or more. True?”
“That’s the law,” Manda said. “However, you would have to have very convincing proof. You may not know what you’re up against.”
“There is also the possibility that the state could bring charges,” he said. “Under the terms of the Marriage Act, adultery is a Federal offense. If she has a felony conviction, that lays her open to imprisonment or equivalent sanctions.”
Manda shook her head, giving him a reproachful smile. “That’s never enforced. If it were, half the people in the country would be felons.”
“You can never tell what a judge will do,” he said. “Do Shayla a favor. Do me one. Before she goes any further, let her know what I’ve said. Let her think about it.”
“Of course I will.”
He nodded at the recorder. “You can turn that back on.”
“I don’t think there’s much point,” she said.
After dinner, after a small fruit tart and excellent coffee, he suggested she wait an hour or so before returning home. She had driven herself, and drunk-driving laws had become stringent. In the parlor, a cozy, old-fashioned room, they sat in different armchairs and watched the news (robot armies destroying robot armies in Africa; China decreeing that as much as a third of its population were subject to robotification as parasites on society). “I think sometimes,” Westley said, “I’m only contributing to the madness of the world.”
“How many of your . . . products are sexbots?” she asked.
“A huge number. More every month, it seems. Better to produce more of them, fewer soldiers. Robots can fight and fuck better than humans.”
Manda laughed. “I doubt that!”
“Oh yes,” he said. “In a battle, a robot doesn’t care if it lives or dies. It is single-minded and driven toward one goal, determined by its programming. In bed, a male ‘bot never goes flaccid, never has performance issues. He pleases in any way he’s instructed. He coos endearments, caresses, cuddles, reassures.”
“Must be like making love to a vibrator.”
“No, not at all. He feels like a real human being. His penis is as long, as thick, as you desire. If instructed, he climaxes–though the liquid is, of course, not semen and cannot impregnate a woman. A female ‘bot is absolutely yielding and complaisant. She never has a headache, she never has her period. She is quite content to take a man orally, anally, or vaginally, in any position at all. Her flavors, textures, and moistures are all indistinguishable from any full human woman’s. She will come when her partner comes, as he wishes: thrashing and screaming, clawing, mewing, even barking if he says so.”
“But she doesn’t feel anything.”
“I’m not so sure,” Westley said. “She is perfectly capable of tactile responses. In fact, she is a thousand times more sensitive than you are. Something is going on in what was once the pleasure center of her brain–MRI’s prove that. I believe the gratification she feels is on a different plane from that of humans, but is analogous to the human orgasmic response.”
“I’ve never seen a sexbot.”
“Sure you have,” he said with a grin. “Any robot is capable of that behavior. True, if a ‘bot is destined to serve sexually, it gets some extra programming, but a servant or even a soldier can perform as a sexbot if ordered. And of course ‘bots have no real intrinsic gender unless that’s programmed into them. Any ‘bot can be male or female. All you have to do is command it.”
“Ick,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter to them,” he said. “But let me show you a sexbot. Or would that embarrass you?”
“Dr. Westley, it takes a lot to embarrass me.”
“Lai!”
The silver robot came into the room, its steps lithe and graceful. “Yes, sir?”
“Miss Tumner wants to see a programmed sex unit. Have one of the masculine line come in.”
“Yes, sir.” She turned and walked out. Manda, watching her go, noticed the play of her buttocks. Really very human-like.
“I don’t really need to see this,” she said. “I’m curious, I’ll admit, but I could take your word for it.”
“It’s no trouble.”
“And who was this robot–before?”
“The batch we’ve just processed were all convicted felons,” he said. “But now they’re incapable of illegal behavior. It’s quite safe.”
“A rapist, maybe?”
“It could be,” he said. “Or a murderer, or arsonist, or really any felony. About half are voluntary transformations–someone facing the death penalty is likely to choose robotification as an alternative to death. Others are court-imposed.”
“I get the creeps,” said Manda.
A sleek silver robot entered, not Lai–the stance was definitely male, though the thing had no visible genitalia, just a sort of swelling, a kind of robotic codpiece. “Unit MSS-12.2991,” the robot said in a quiet baritone.
“We’ll designate you, let’s see–” Westley raised an eyebrow at Manda–“Ken for the evening.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Ken, this is Manda. She wants to see your penis.”
“I don’t–”
“Very good, madam.”
Manda goggled. His–equipment–had bloomed from the codpiece. Very realistic: a scrotum and hanging penis.
“Tell him what you would like,” Westley said. “Ken is entirely at your disposal.” His grin was challenging: How far will you go, girl?
Maybe it was a little too much wine, but Manda, feeling rebellious, said, “Um–let me, um, feel it.”
“Yes, madam.” Deferentially, “Ken” came to stand beside her. She reached out and just with her fingertips she swept the length of the penis. It felt–human. Velvety, almost. Warm, pliant, veined, very smooth at the head. She gingerly clasped her fingers around it. It remained flaccid, with no erectile response.
“If you want him hard, you have to instruct him,” Westley said. “Let me show you. Ken: let your responses be within normal human male range. You will do nothing active until instructed, but your body responses will be normal.” To Manda, he explained, “Some clients like it to be . . . let’s say, rough. They want the experience of having been taken. Ken won’t be like that–unless you change his orders.”
“No, I wouldn’t–oh, my!” For in the circlet of her fingers, Ken’s cock had thickened and hardened and now stood at stiff attention. Manda felt a bit dizzy, not just from the wine.
“How does it feel? Stroke it.”
She did, wonderingly. It felt fleshlike, alive. “It looks like metal,” she said, “but it feels–”
“Ken, mode A-1, African-American.”
The silvery surface darkened to a tawny deep brown, and suddenly an athletic, brown-eyed, black-haired man smiled down at her, and she held his erect cock in her hand.
“He can take on any appearance you program in,” Westley said. “Ken, mode Ca-4, Caucasian.”
The dark flesh became rosy-pink, the eyes china blue, the hair a flowing mane of blonde locks.
“Or maybe you like the latex look. Ken, mode J-1.”
Now he was midnight black, like an athlete wrapped in tight, tight latex, glares highlighting his pecs, his abs, his . . . his cock. The face was an ebony statue, the eyes fiery orange triangles. The cock was springy to the touch.
“Ken, enlarge by two inches, circumference proportional.”
God. A monster nearly nine inches long, so thick now she could just touch fingertips around it. To have something like that in you . . . or to have it smaller in you and then give the order to enlarge . . . she felt dizzy.
“I see,” Manda said. Her throat felt dry, but she was becoming wet down there. “I see.”
“Ken, mode Ca-9, Caucasian.”
Now he was swarthy, the same man but with curly black hair and a tanned cock with a deeply purple helmet glistening in the light. You had to look close to tell that the skin was not human; it always held a hint of latex smoothness, no matter what guise it wore.
With a wicked grin, Westley said, “Ken: come from her touch. Dry.”
Ken gasped, threw his head back. An astonished Manda felt his cock jerk and spasm, exactly as if he had reached orgasm.
“Thank her,” said Westley.
“Oh,” Ken said. “Oh, that was perfect.”
“You may go now. Resume.”
“Yes, sir.”
Manda almost cried out. The cock vanished, shrinking back inside the body, and the flesh tones shimmered into silver. Ken walked away without a backward glance. “You can see why they’re popular sex aids,” Westley said. “Now, if Shayla had fucked two of them, I’d have no case. That’s masturbation, under the letter of the law, not adultery. But since she fucked two human males, that puts a different slant on things. Anyway, now you know what a sexbot looks like.”
“Um . . . yes.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she said hurriedly. “Well. I–thank you for the demonstration, but I–I really need to get going–”
“Would you like to have intercourse with Ken?” Westley asked. “Did I send him away too soon?”
Her attempt at a laugh sounded almost hysterical even to her own ears. “No, I’m not into that, I–I just have a lot to do. Thanks for dinner. I’ll tell my client what you’ve said.”
“And let me know what she says. Come back. I’d like to see you again,” Westley told her.
“I–yes,” she said, before practically fleeing into the night.