How Far Will She Go on a First Date
Claire lives across the hallway on my floor: pretty, blonde, curvy and friendly. I clocked her the day I moved in and we became friends right away. After a week he told me she was an android, a Hitachi 206 model with ‘Susan’ detailing; she laughed at my out-of-town innocence for not spotting the obvious signs but, I thought, was also a little bit flattered. She was the first android I really knew socially, though I’ve worked with plenty of them, and I really couldn’t see much difference from a real woman; she was funny, intelligent and good company. She had human and robot friends and I was glad to be welcomed into a readymade social circle in the new city. With hindsight it was only a matter of time before we kissed at a party.
We had been drinking (or at least she ran a sim app which she said was the same - I tend to take things at face value) but there was a real connection. I had to catch a ride but we agreed to meet up, just the two of us for once, next day: our first date. I was therefore gutted when she called to cancel. “I’m really really sorry. I need to go into the shop and get that faulty motor controller changed, it’s being a real pain. A couple of other things to... Look, can you meet me later instead?”
Not such a disaster after all! We agreed that I’d pick her up, fully fixed from the repair shop she used and we’d go for a drink. She gave me the address, “just find me in the waiting area and turn me on!”
The nav address Claire gave me was a city tower and sure enough there was a robot repair shop on one of the basement levels. I headed in and followed signs past glassed off working areas to the collection point. Rows of androids stood elbow to elbow against the plain white walls gazing blankly in their default shut-down poses, spot numbers stencilled on the wall over their heads. Nearly all femoform obviously; most were just bare endo under droid suits or hard-shelled with human-like heads on top of stylised feminine bodies.
The place was busy with techs tending to their inert customers or wheeling them to and fro on hand carts but there was little in the way of customer service; it seemed like everyone but me knew where they were going. I caught a passing technician as politely as I could by the arm, “Excuse me Miss, I’m here to collect a friend...”
The robot girl looked at me with the sketch of an expression on her smooth features. She was housed in a curvy white plastic body shell with plasti-skin arms and face, cute but not even slightly realistic. “Model?”, she asked briskly.
“Err, she’s a Hitachi 206. Her name...”
“Class B area round that corner. Have a nice day!” And she was off across the room.
I followed her indication and sure enough the androids here were far more realistic, several dozen attractive women standing motionless against the walls, each one in a number-stencilled space. Some were dressed for business or in casual wear but I was taken aback to see that quite a lot of them were nude or stripped down to underwear with their clothes on hangers behind them. It obviously made sense; why dress the androids after working on them? It’s all too easy to forget these are just machines and not real women; there’s no more need for privacy here than in a computer shop or a vehicle garage, at least for their sake. I did wonder if they got any teens or pervs wandering in off the streets, after all it was a pretty nice view!
Seeing the B Class units without their clothes was interesting. I’ve worked with plenty before, like anyone has, and they are so real that, unless they glitch, you’d never realize they were artificial. Under their clothes though I could see it was mostly pretty obvious. All of the various makes and models had clearly visible maintenance panels, seams and joins cutting through their various shades and textures of syntheskin or duraderm and into the soft-shell endo-structures beneath. Most had control panels set into their chest or belly, lights dim except for a few plugged in to charge.
I spotted Claire under the stencilled B16 standing straight and blank-faced in modest but feminine bra and panties and I was pleased to see that she had quite a realistic body, something I had taken for granted until just then. The human-real super detailing of her face and neck extended down onto her upper chest and her arms were perfectly human looking right to her shoulders. The finish on her torso matched her legs, smooth and slightly glossy but good enough to pass at a casual glance. She had several visible access panels, all tightly closed and not too obtrusive, and a flesh coloured hard plastic control panel set into her chest above her ample cleavage. I pressed the power button on the panel and waited.
Even modern androids take a minute or two to boot and I gazed around the room as I waited for Claire’s soft beeps to finish. The robot women which were fully clothed seemed to fall into three categories: there were smart-suited business women, affluently dressed wives and the younger, curvier and more sluttily dressed ‘companions’. The fewer the clothes the harder it was to guess an android’s role but by looking at the neatly hung items beside each of them I decided that the slut-bots were realistically finished but too idealised to be real, the business droids were utilitarian under their clothing and the wives were somewhere in between; they had all the ‘important’ parts but contrasting with a lot of bare plastic in between. Unless you’ve got the money to build and support a unique A-Model then I guess no android will stand up to close inspection so why waste money on trying?
I did a double take, spotting an android across the collection area standing in a close-fitted blue and grey dress: it looked exactly like Claire. Shit, it must be another ‘Susan’ model! Had I got the right one? The lingerie clad Hitachi next to me drew in her breath and fluttered her eyelids, relaxing into a more natural posture.
“Thanks... hello...?” She frowned at me with Claire’s grey-blue eyes and moved her arms protectively across her fake plastic body.
“I’m sorry... Claire?”
“Claire? No, I’m Abigail Watts, who are you? What on earth...?”
“I’m very sorry; I mistook you for someone else. Really, I...”
“Can’t you see my serial number?” The android woman gestured at the alpha-numeric code engraved on her chest panel. “You’re not authorised to activate this unit.”
“I’m very sorry, Miss. Err... perhaps I should turn you off again?”
“Yes, perhaps you should!”
“Right...” I reached gingerly for the scantily clad woman’s chest and pressed the power button again as she glared at me. She obediently dropped her arms to her sides and stiffened into her default pose, expression fading into the blank good-natured stare common to all her model.
I caught disapproving glances from a couple of the technicians as I sheepishly crossed the room to where the other Hitachi 206 ‘Susan’ standing smartly in her dress in spot B34. As far as I could tell she was identical to Abigail Watts in every detail, staring vacantly across the collection area. I took a good look around but there were no others of this model here. Fortunately she was on charge so the dress was unzipped at the back and I could easily pull her neckline down to get at her controls. ‘CZ223P4’ was this android’s serial number, shame I hadn’t thought to ask Claire for hers earlier! Well, nothing ventured: I pressed the bower button and waited hopefully for a minute as the techs wheeled another couple of inert ladies into place.
“Oh! Thank you, would you mind pulling my plug and zipping me up please?”
The woman came prettily to life and turned side on, careful not to pull on the cable plugged into her back.
“Claire?”
“Claire? No, I’m Susan Six; I thought I didn’t recognize you!”
“I’m really sorry, Susan. I thought you were someone else, here I’ll turn you off again...” I reached for her chest again but she pushed my hands away.
“No, its fine, you can unplug me; I’m all serviced and nearly charged up. Better than waiting for the techs to get round to it! Maybe I can help you, what’s your unit’s serial number?”
“Err, she’s not my android, she’s just a friend, I don’t know her serial number. I’m not sure... shouldn’t I be authorised to activate you or something?”
She laughed, “Look, it’s not a problem, just unhook me so I can get out of here will you?”
I turned as I caught Susan glancing past my shoulder. “Is this your unit sir?” The white bodied tech could have been the one I spoke to earlier, her bare minimum of expression seemed disapproving somehow and I thought about what they might do to suspected ‘robo-peeps’ here without good reason.
“Err no, sorry. I made a mistake; I’m looking for another one of the same model...”
“Serial number?”
Susan Six answered her for me, “He doesn’t know her serial number. Can you check the database for Hitachi 206s by client name and address for him. And you: can you pull my plug and zip me up please?” She repeated her request to me as the tech zoned out for a few moments, lights blinking on her large chest panel.
“Collection bay B34: Unit CZ223P4 scheduled for post service packaging and shipment to client. Why is this unit online?”
“I’m sorry, like I said, I made a mistake...”
“Shipment’s a drag, I can just as easily get – hey! Don...” The tech smartly pushed Susan’s hands aside from the controls to deactivate her with a push on the button. The android’s body complied immediately cutting off her own objection, straightening up and resuming her default stance and face before powering down with a gentle sigh.
“Please give me the client information for the unit you wish to collect.”
I considered this for a moment. I wasn’t sure if anyone really owned Claire; B Class androids can be pretty advanced. “I’m looking for Claire Watts, she’s a Hitachi 206 android and asked me to collect her after some repairs.”
I gave Claire’s address and the tech droid stood for a second. “Follow me please sir,” she led the way back through the collection areas and through into one of the glass-screened maintenance bays. The first and only other human I saw in the repair shop sat behind a cluttered desk eating a sandwich.
“Client enquiry regarding Unit CZ669P1, currently in Module Nine, job number 226-991.”
The man harrumphed and put down his sandwich. “That’s your 206 in there.” He gestured through the glass. “We fixed her motor fault and upgraded her selfware hours ago but she was also booked to get her intimate relations hardware re-initialised and I’m afraid it blew a seal in testing and fried half her power bus.”
Through the glass I could see another ‘Susan’ unit – Claire this time – spread eagled on a steel table. She was more than nude with a large panel removed from her belly spilling out a tangle of wiring and tubes. Her long, firm legs were sticking out in a wide, straight vee that would have quickly exhausted human muscles and one of the tech robots was probing roughly inside an opening just above her strip of pubic hair while her other hand was pushed inside the smooth plastic vagina itself. A second tech was sorting more carefully through the internals of Claire’s belly and several cables ran from her control panel or inside her body to apparatus around the repair module and some into the second technician herself.
As I watched I could see Claire’s face twitching and gaping as the techs worked inside her. She seemed to be trying urgently to say something to the techs; alternately frowning and gasping wide-eyed as glitches and arousal frustrated her efforts to be coherent for more than a moment. The tech units of course ignored her completely as just another malfunctioning robot, not to mention that they seemed to have muted her voice as well as locking out her body movement while they worked.
The first tech delved particularly deeply into Claire’s robotic sex systems moving her whole body on the table, breasts wobbling; she gasped silently and jerking her head. The techs exchanged a word and the second delicately connected several tubes deep in the damaged woman’s mechanical body. Claire twisted her head back and forth, powerless to do more as her face became a picture of tension poised for release then there was a sudden jet of fluid from her open belly which spattered the techs’ smooth white plastic followed by a few small popping sparks. Claire’s eyes defocused and her facial movements became suddenly random, meaningless feedback, and the tech at her belly turned her off.
“That’s about the third time now. The sex systems on that droid are beyond repair, they’ve obviously been out of use for a long while...” He gave me a significant look which I hoped suggested that I might be personally involved when these systems came back into use . “It’ll take a few days to order in the parts, then another day to install and test. The rest of the damage is pretty superficial and her insurance covers sex malfunction which this pretty much is so she should be good to pick up on Friday, okay?”
“Um, okay! Thanks...”
I left my number on Claire’s file, the tech guy didn’t seem bothered that I didn’t own her; in fact the whole place was pretty laid back in that respect considering how much these androids cost. I guess machines like Claire were ‘grown-ups’ in that they wouldn’t go home with just anyone!
Anyway, I’m looking forward to her being fixed, hoping that it was really for my sake that she got the work done and imagining everything I might do with her repaired systems...