Upgrading Beth
It was the start of the lunch break and I was making use of a bit of peace and quiet to tidy up after a busy morning. Unless my workshop is pristine I just can’t relax. I had put the power tools on charge and was sorting out some outmoded servo units to separate the trash from those for re-sale.
I’m a robot tech in the AndroCorp central office complex, downtown. We don’t build robots here, it’s not even a service depot but, as you’d expect, the company is keen to employ its latest products in the public eye. Most of the secretaries, clerks, building workers and suchlike are standard models and there are also some that you might not expect…
My job is to keep them all, about sixty at the last count, in tip-top shape. I have the commercial units in for routine services: batteries, servos etc. They are pretty reliable and don’t give me much trouble, but are so dull! Most robots are high tech but with very limited horizons; they don’t give much feedback so I just shut ‘em down, replace n’ repair, boot ‘em up and kick ‘em back out, production line style. The whole morning had been taken up by upgrading power systems in the lobby receptionists, one pretty girl after another under my screwdriver for the same job, none with a single worthwhile thing to say!
Some of the R&D custom built units though are pretty cutting edge. They can do anything a real person can, and I mean anything! Most of them could pass as human and a few do, used by the Corporation in PR and sales positions to wow clients and the public. I spend a lot more time on these making sure their performance remains perfect and suitably impressive. Being cutting edge they can be prone to failure so I bring them in at every opportunity to check systems over. I think of them as people, they each have a full personality, and value their opinions about optimizing performance; after all they don’t come with a handbook! To be honest I suppose many of the top end units are my friends.
“Hey Dawn, look what I got!” Beth breezed in waving a small plastic packet at me. She was willowy and elegant in tight jeans and a white sleeveless blouse: a beautiful and perfect, late twenties executive type.
“Hi Beth, what are you doing here? You doing okay?” She’s worked in sales for about a year now, on the twelfth floor. It isn’t common knowledge that she’s a robot, not a secret exactly but the sales director likes to show her off to clients: “See how well she blends in!” etc. She had been running flawlessly since her last overhaul and wasn’t due for servicing so I guessed she must have malfunctioned.
I don’t like doing unscheduled repairs. They mean I have to shut the unit down, log her malfunctions and speak to the lab to make an action plan before getting to work, it can take days to approve a simple job on a prototype. Poor Beth shouldn’t be shut off in a corner; she should be out having fun.
“I’m fine babe…look at this!” she thrust the package under my nose. It contained an ordinary looking microchip in a holder with several complicated linkups coming off it… “AI 044…” I read aloud. “ Where did you get this?” It was the latest personality simulation chip from Fujitsu.
“Perks of the job of course! Its amazing what you can get to sweeten a deal, It’s a pre-production model… much like myself I suppose; Mr Kahn threw it in with the model 16 order. Can you fit it?”
“Whoa! Wait a minute girl, you’re not due for an upgrade and when it comes it should be the 043. The ’44s aren’t due out ‘till next year sometime! Anyway its lunch break.”
“C’mon Dawn… you know its compatible. My system’s rated for far higher than this, if there was such a thing, you told me yourself! It’s plug and play, you can just pop it in right now, I don’t even need to reboot. C’mon… please please pleeease!” She clasped her hands and mock begged in a very appealing way. “Also…. there’s a Sales social tonight… I can really impress with this upgrade… I’ll be so hot! Please!!”
She was quite right; it was only a ten-minute job and would bump up her abstract thought to far higher levels. With this chip she could probably go a whole evening of close social contact without raising the slightest suspicion. I could imagine the sales director’s smug face as he took a client to aside to reveal the truth about the gorgeous lady he’d been chatting up all evening! And she was my favourite, and so cute. I could always work the upgrade back into the schedule later…
“Okay, okay… if it’ll shut you up! Get your shirt off.”
Beth grinned her thanks and yanked her top off over her head, not wasting time on the buttons. Drawing the crisp cotton upwards she revealed her pale, toned body and pert breasts: perfect and apparently completely human. Her hair lifted as the blouse slid over her head revealing the tiny silver stud set behind her left ear that is the only outward sign of her true nature. One firm press here and the bubbly young woman in front of me would shut down, closing her programs, locking her servos and cutting power in seconds. I’ve done this dozens of times of course but I prefer not to, the expression of surprised annoyance that freezes on her face disturbs me and stays there until I reboot her.
I pulled on some anti static gloves and approached Beth. She was leaning her butt against my workbench, holding the edge behind her with both hands, topless and unembarrassed. Why should she be? I’m as intimately familiar with her whole body as it’s possible to be.
“You’ll owe me in a massive way for this!” I placed my hands on Beth’s ribs, below her breasts and ran a thumb down to a place under her sternum, pushed in and then up to release a small catch with a click.
“Servicing protocols engaged”, Beth’s eyes took on a red tint to show she could no longer properly emulate human behaviour and her posture straightened, arched backwards over the bench.
“I know, I know, I wrote them remember.” Although I’m not a programmer I have written the maintenance restrictions for the advanced units. I try to keep them as normal as possible, just adjusting what little I need.
Starting at the top I worked my way down Beth’s ventral access panel, pulling the thick flesh layer away from her midriff. I took care to uncouple each of the many cross links at the join. The skin of a model like this is a complex component itself, with sensors, complexion and temperature control and erectile hairs built in; even perspiration ducts on this Rolls Royce of androids. As I got lower I undid a couple of her fly buttons to reach the bottom of the panel, just above her neat patch of pubic hair.
I placed the flesh panel to one side as Beth looked curiously into herself. She was less cocky now, slightly nervous with her inner systems on display. Knowing well how to cooperate with my work she pulled herself up onto the bench and rested back against the beanbag I keep there for support. As she moved I could hear the exposed servos whine and see her mechanisms move inside her. She held her jeans aside to give me full access into her body and waited passively for me to begin my work. I noticed her nipples had risen, standing stiffly up from her athlete’s breasts; officially this protocol is to ease access to their erectile mechanisms but I always enjoy the sight and have no doubt Beth enjoys the feeling too!
Working carefully and precisely I unscrewed Beth’s CPU cover plate. This was fixed amid the forest of multi coloured wires, circuit boards and actuators that made her function. I prised it free and rested it gently on the passive robot girl’s arm. The LED status indicators underneath blinked at me showing her various processors jumping in and out of use. With a No. 6 actuator probe I reached in and disconnected the linkup cable bundle from her AI 042 processor. Hooking the end out of her belly with a finger I laid it over her other arm, well away from any exposed electronics.
I could hear Beth’s breathing deepen; looking up I saw a dreamy expression looking back. She gently squirmed her hands against her jeans and let out the tiniest little moan. This isn’t one of my protocols (honest!) but sometimes happens when human emulation programs get mixed up.
Beth is fully aware of her own nature; she is very intelligent and possesses true, thinking AI. Superimposed over her “self”, to maintain human appearance, is an emulation program. This governs unconscious functions: complexion, blinking, expression, mood, arousal etc, taking its queue from outside stimuli and controlling the android’s body and “mind” as required. Programmed to function in a normal environment, Beth acts appropriately most of the time. In my workshop though she cannot act as a human; dismantled and exposed, her emulation program sometimes grasps at straws. Lying passively on my bench, helpless and vulnerable she was becoming aroused, inappropriate but great to watch! To be fair my “nipple protocol” may help tip her over the edge too…
Taking my probe, I reached into Beth’s open torso, gripped the old chip and pulled it free. She gasped and turned her head, pushing again with her hands towards her crotch. “Easy girl…” The chip in question was not part of her personality; it simply provided a range of spontaneous thoughts related to her current activity. It allowed her to be an active personality rather than simply responsive.
“Error: Device AI 042 not found. Please service. God I hate saying that rubbish!” Beth was flushed and lightly panting, her nipples were in danger of poking my eye out if I bent too low. Although capable of full sexual function, Beth was not programmed for self-release, why would she be? When she gets like this I think its only fair to let her run full course, what other chance does she get? She looks sexy as hell stripped down and turned on…
The new chip was the same configuration as the old and slotted right in. I hooked up the cable link, clicking the connection together with the probe then held it in place, deep inside Beth’s body, ready to break the link if things didn’t work to plan.
“New hardware: device AI 044 detected. Running system check….”
She looked so good there: open, aroused and helpless. As she tossed her head, tip of her tongue wetting her lips, I glimpsed her shutdown stud again. One touch and this beautiful, sexy person would be a simple, dead machine. She was at my mercy: I could program her to be whatever, whomever I wanted; to do whatever I liked. I could feel my own nipples inside my lab coat, stiff and tingling. God I wanted this gorgeous machine/woman badly.
“I works Dawn, I can feel it inputting. Oh that feels great, so good. Oh god, I feel so good… Ohhh my …mmmmm…ohhh”
Beth squirmed very gently, held back by servicing limits on movement; mouth agape and head back as she began to orgasm, my tool still held carefully inside her. I steadied the CPU cover with one hand holding the probe in the other as I felt a deep down rushing sensation thundering up within me too.
I had always had a crush on Beth but now I was turned on like I’ve never been before. I could feel my own orgasm rising, I realised my panties were sodden, my whole body trembling. With my hands full I could do nothing but press myself hard against the bench leg and try to stay still.
The world went black, “LOCKED FILE - ACCESS DENIED”. The world came back on just a fraction of a second later. I guess I’d twitched a little; I was still holding the CPU cover but the probe had slipped across Beth’s CPU. I could see it pulling at the legs of her control chip before I whipped it away, “Shit!”
Beth was still climaxing under the control of her emulation program, her face a mask of ecstasy but now with a hint of concern struggling to take control. Her body began to twitch, her legs moving spastically, “OH! What…Oh GOD… Error. Control malfunction. Error… Error… Error… Please service. Dawn, whats ha… Error... Error! Please ser…” Beth's mouth began to move without words as she lost control, fear fighting with passion in her expression.
She began to twitch harder, her back giving irregular spasms. I dropped the forceps and reached over her naked body to snatch a PC connector from the servicing station, if I could just hook her up I should be able to restart the control processor…
She began to struggle, deliberately or just out of control I couldn’t tell. Her arms pushed at mine feebly but hard enough to stop me getting her linked up in time. Her face seemed to be a mask of passion as her emulation routine took her body through a quite magnificent orgasm, weather she appreciated it or not I couldn’t tell, perhaps not with the number of red LEDs now lighting up her insides. Without the power of speech Beth couldn’t detail her malfunctions but the electronic beep from inside her body told me she had a critical system error.
“What the hell are you doing? That units going haywire… get out of the way Dawn… MOVE!”
Alex is the Building Systems Supervisor, my boss. I don’t why she happened past at that moment but she clearly wasn’t going to be impressed! She grasped Beth’s tossing head by her hair, twisted it sharply around and shut her down at the neck with no more thought than she would give to turning off the lights. The helpless robot froze in mid spasm, looking right at me as her systems closed, her face became a mask reflecting the fear and lust at the last moment of her thought. Deactivated, she slumped back onto the bench, one leg bent up at the knee, forearms sticking unnaturally up into the air, mouth frozen in a silent word of protest, eyes blank and wide. The red glow faded slowly as the workshop became unpleasantly silent.
Plucking the AI 044 chip out of its new home, Alex peered at it carefully. “Shit Dawn, this unit’l need a full diagnostic, resetting, testing… She’s a busy one too. I don’t know what’s wrong with you, this is definitely an illegal mod…”
I was mortified and confused, I had damaged company property, and hurt my friend; my actions had been illegal. I stood still as Alex approached me, arms at my side and eyes cast down. I didn’t know what to say, I couldn’t explain why I’d broken the rules, it just happened. My mouth opened to speak but no words came, my jaw moving in a silent stammer as the world took on a reddish tint.
Alex lifted my chin and looked into my eyes, I tried to say sorry but… ERROR 460… no words came. Her gentle touch to my face re-awoke my desire… ERROR 460… She undid my lab coat, pulling at the poppers, as I stood, passive, struggling to speak. She tugged my blouse free from my waistband … ERROR 460… and I briefly felt her cool hand… ERROR 460… against my belly before my vision rushed away to a tiny dot in the blackness and went out.
SENSOR SHUTDOWN….
ACTUATORS OFF-LINE….
CLOSING AI….
CLOSING OPERATING SYSTEM….
ROBOT SYSTEM #AC 0178…. DESIGNATED DAWN…. RECONFIGURED FOR EXPERIMENTAL SYSTEM REPAIR…. MALFUNCTION IN AI AND CONTROL SYSTEM…. REQUIRES REPAIR AND REPROGRAMING…. NON FUNCTIONAL UNIT….
SHUTTING DOWN.