Two-Perfect!
Lindsay© the Perfect-GirlTM gingerly removed the last bit of plastic wrap from the right breast of the newest Perfect-GirlTM model, Sareena II©. Sareena II© was manufactured at the same Brasilia Automoto-barreia factory as Lindsay© as a fresh take on a previous format, to meet the demand for a blonde full-service domestic gynoid. Her predecessor, Sareena©, had been out of issue for three years, plagued by poor logic processors and persistant waterproofing issues: Sareena I© was now a collector’s item. Sareena II© wore the factory issue silver Brazilian string bikini (the smallest amount of fabric possible), the same as Linsay©s, and wore it well: her face was a plastic surgeon’s wet dream, and so wouldn’t have looked at all out of place on a beach in Rio.
Lindsay© brushed her lip with one long pink plastic fingernail and gave an empty little sigh. She casually held Sareena II©s remote control in her perfectly manicured left hand. The new robot stood with its long flaweless legs tucked close together and leaning slightly back, bent slightly forward at the waist, its arms bent up at the elbows with palms facing forward in a gesture of mock surprise, but with an utterly blank, sweet, and vapid expression on its face, the sort of look that precluded the intellectual capacity for surprise. With a careless flick of her index finger, Lindsay© pressed the leftmost button on the small plastic control pad embedded in Sareena II©s back. It clicked, and green text appeared on the LCD screen above it: ACCEPT. Sareena II© began to move, but her face retained exactly the same meaningless contented expression.
Lindsay© pressed a nail to her lower lip in a mock quizzical look. “Hmmm,” she said in a synthesized voice as sweet as Aspartame, “Let’s try the basic cleaning program first, if that’s all right.” She spoke to no one in particular. “Yeah! Why don’t you clean up all this messy packaging of yours!” she said, and clicked two buttons on Sareena II©s remote control. ACCEPT was replaced by CLEAN on the new robot’s rear LCD display, and it immediately began gathering up the styrofoam and cardboard it had been shipped in from Brazil, now strewn all about the living room.
Lindsay©, meanwhile, walked to the front hallway in her glass high heeled shoes, and proceeded to mechanically strut back and forth at the front doorway, with her hips swinging languously and her hands daintily dangling at her sides, waiting for Master Robert to return home. With her programmed schedule of morning chores complete, and a new robot to perform the rest, Lindsay© simply had nothing to do.
This went on for about half an hour. Then Sareena II© walked up, having removed her packaging out the kitchen door. Master Robert’s house could easily be identified by his neighbours as the one which featured half-naked women taking out the garbage in the middle of February. Sareena II©s plastic nipples poked through her silver bikini. “Hi!” she said when she saw Lindsay©, a beaming grin on her face.
Lindsay© turned to see where the voice was coming from, and when she saw Sareena II©, her heuristic processors took about ten seconds to identify the new robot and order a plastic smile onto her face. “Hi!” she answered back, her voice full of artificial love. “Finished so soon?”
“Yup!” said Sareena II©, still smiling.
“Good!” said Lindsay©, and she raised Sareena II©s remote control and pressed the middle button. Sareena II©s eyes crossed slightly. “Start making dinner!” said Lindsay©, all sugar and spice
Sareena II©s eyes straightened out again a and her smile turned up a tad at the sides in a preprogrammed departing gesture, before she turned around and glided back into the kitchen to begin work. The LCD panel in her back read COOK.
Lindsay© gave a little hum, and resumed aimlessly pacing back and forth in the front hallway.
Two hours later, when Lindsay© went into the kitchen to begin emptying the dishwasher, Sareena II© was bent over in front of the open oven, with thick black smoke billowing into her frozen face. The fire detector was beeping wildly. The batteries that had come in Sareena II© from the Brazilian factory had had less than an hour’s worth of charge in them. After her heuristics had processed the situation, Lindsay© gave a fake little gasp and strutted out to retrieve a fire extinguisher. She walked up behind Sareena II©, bumping the extinguisher canister against the other robot’s upturned gluteals before resting it atop its flawless lower back, aimed into the oven, and fired. Extinguisher spray coated Sareena II©s blonde hair and dripped onto her smiling face.
“Tsk tsk,” said Lindsay©, “Whatever happened to customer service? Well, we’re just going to have to change your batteries now, aren’t we?” And she retrieved a fresh set of DDDs from Robert’s semi-personal stash upstairs, next to his various no-go zones that he had programmed into Lindsay©s decorum matrix (where he kept her advanced techincal specs, toolkits, sex toys, etc.).
All the while, the smoke detectors continued to beep madly. The entire house was pervaded by an acrid smell. Lindsay©, of course, had no such yucky sense of smell. She glided up to the hunched over Sareena II©, gingerly pried the other robot’s back panel to one side with an untrathin screwdriver, and switched out four six-inch long radioactive DDDs. “There! Isn’t that much better?” she asked sweetly.
Sareena II© smiled and opened her mouth to say “Oh yes, I feel much better now,” when the sprinkler system, which Robert had been forced to install when he began working at home, went off.
Lindsay© hadn’t closed Sareena II©s back panel, and her fingers were still inside it. As water poured in, a bright flash came from inside the new robot, which shuddered from head to toe. Lindsay© was jolted and knocked onto her bottom behind Sareena II©, her legs spread.
Sareena II© continued to shake uncontrollably, her mouth sputtering gibberish. She could not raise her head: her entire body began to go limp, bending straight down at the waist. Then, as smoke began to pour out her back, her mouth froze in an open position and her vocalizations stabilized as a monotonous mechanical wine. The LCD lights on her spine flashed ERROR, ERROR. As her pelvis curved, her bikini bottom was pulled tighter and tighter between her buttocks. Her spray-coated blonde hair hung loosely around her head in a halo, and her face drifted down between her legs, looking upside-down in a frozen expression of shock between her own legs and at Lindsay©, seated behind her behind.
Lindsay© looked between Sareena II©s legs and into the other robot’s upside-down eyes with puzzelement. “Good,” she said. “Better? Don’t you feel better?” Her own vacant gaze darted up to Sareena II©s receding silver bikini, now freely grooving a stream of running water. “Don’t you feel better?” asked Lindsay©, reaching limply at the silver colour. “I’m Lindsay. Good. Tsk Tsk!” Lindsay©s hand slapped limply against Sareena II©s silicone right gluteal. She cocked her head to one side. “Hi, my name is Lindsay. I am a Perfect-GirlTM. I am perfect. Good.” Her left hand tried to grasp Sareena II©s left calf, but slicked down to the other robot’s ankles. “Whatever happened to customer service?” said Lindsay©, beginning to rock back and forth. “My body is perfect. (click) Whatever happened to customer service? Hi, my name is Lindsay.”
The Perfect-GirlTM tried to rock back onto her feet, but slipped and landed back on her ass. The LCD display on Lindsay©s back flashed alternately ERROR and RESOLVING. “Lindsay is a Perfect-GirlTM. My body is perfect. Hi, my name is Lindsay. Good. I’m Lindsay. My body is perfect. Good. Good. (click) Doesn’t that feel much better? Hi. (click) Buom.”
The sprinkler system shut off, and with great effort, the gynoid managed to struggle to her feet, still in her glass high heel shoes. Lindsay©s LCD panel continued to flash wildly, and she began strutting aimlessly around the kitchen, soaking wet, truly bereft of any sense of direction. “Hi. Hi Good. Perfect. Hi. (click) ¡Buom día! (click) Perfect. (click) Perfeito.” She made her way to the kitchen door and staggered outside into the snow, and began walking around the house to the front doorway.
As she passed the side of the house, she ran into Roberta’s ex, Stephanie, bundled in a heavy parka and busy rooting through Sareena II©s discarded packaging, in hopes of finding a receipt or invoice to take to her forensic accountant. Stephanie stared at the gynoid in wild-eyed shock.
Lindsay© stared coolly back at her. “Hi,” she said, then stood there, dripping wet in the minus-twenty chill, silent for a moment. Then, “(click) Finished so soon? (click) Finished so soon? (click) Fin-Finished so soon? (click) Finished so soon?”
Lindsay© walked blindly past Stephanie, who saw the LCD panel flashing on the gynoid’s back: ERROR, ERROR. “Finished so soon? (click) Fin-Fin-Finished so soon?” As the robot rounded the corner of the house towards the front doorway, Stephanie shrugged and went back to rooting through Robert’s garbage. “I guess,” she said to herself.
Lindsay© resumed pacing in front of Robert’s front door. “(click) Fin-Fin-Finished sosososososososososososo soon? (click) So-so sooooooooon? Soooooooo soooooooo-”
When a pair of cops consulted Master Robert’s neighbours for directions a week later, to execute a divorce court order freezing his assets, they could simply point to those already frozen in his front lawn.