H is for Heuristic

Anya stood up, beautifully naked and with her chest panel still open. She looked around.

She looked down at her own body and began to stimulate as many of her dermal sensors as she could.

Maria stared at the newly independent robot, keeping the computer updated as Anya played with herself. Her movements were stiff and robotic, but not as mechanical as those of the maid.

Here was another problem for the Main Computer. Anya surely had no link with Robot Control anymore, but now she was uncontrollable. Through the rest of the night, the computer worked on the problem while Anya played with her awesomely sexy body. She wandered about the unmoving androids around her, feeling the contours of their plastic and metal bodies as well. She went on like that, moving in an awkwardly stiff way, until her electrical power drained to zero.

Maria layed her back down on the wheeled table and waited for more commands.

Chapter 06 - Home Early

On Thursday morning, recharged and ready, Heather got to work at five minutes to eight. Agnes had been there since quarter-to, and Byron since 7:30. Heather wiped the dirty snow from her shoes and hung her coat with the others. She made a friendly hello with Agnes, then Went to see Byron in his office.

"Good morning Byron." she said, her posture and expression showing the friendliness generated by her software.

"Hello, Heather." he said as he smiled and stood up. "I've got a couple of projects for you today."

"Oh, good." she said. "I was hoping there would be something for me to do."

"First we have to pack up that scanner so we can send it to get fixed." he said as he led her into the basement. He found a box it would fit into and gave her some old newspaper to pack it with.

Heather's facemask showed him an expression of slight confusion. The robot's AI didn't understand the purpose of the newsprint. Rather than risk overheating her circuitry, she asked him. "What do I use the newspapers for?"

Byron was a bit puzzled at the question. He thought it was obvious. He put an understanding looking smile on his face as he separated some pages and crumpled them up into a loose ball. He placed that in a corner of the deep box and said "Just fill a layer full of newsprint, put the scanner in the middle, and pack up the rest with newsprint."

Heather looked confused still. Her programming was basic, and couldn't make sense out of his instructions very quickly. "Oh. Okay." she said, still computing meaning from her collected visual and audio data.

"Just let me know when you're done and I'll have it sent out."

"Okay Byron." she said, her plastic face showing none of the confusion that remained inside her.

He went back upstairs as she pulled exactly three pages out of the broadsheet, just as he had done. Heather had never crumpled newspaper before. Her CPU was in danger of overheating as it tried to figure out how to do it. Three whole minutes went by before the pretty android made any movement.

Her first attempt was less than successful. The pages got more or less folded against themselves in a relatively flat shape. She placed that in the box, then reactivated her memory files to watch the way Byron had done it. A small screen opened up amid the quickly flashing binary data in her field of vision. The movie of Byron's hands shaping the paper into a ball appeared and replayed while Heather's processors studied the mechanics of his actions.

The whole time she did this, she appeared unmoving and staring out into space. It was a good thing she was alone down there.

After several repetitions of the video in her memory, she was ready to try it again. This time she made something that looked like what Byron had made. Making up for lost time, she filled the bottom layer of the box with paper at the fastest rate she could. If anyone had seen her do it that fast, they would have definitely suspected her of being a machine. So again, lucky for her she was alone.

The remainder of Byron's instructions were crystal clear compared to the crumple command. Working fast, she was able to have the scanner packed away in about as much time as a human could have done it.

As it so happened, Byron was returning to the basement just as Heather was folding over the top panels of the box. He had a clipboard full of graph paper and a pen in his hand.

"I thought of something you can do for me while the scanner's down." he said as he walked toward her. He held the clipboard and pen out to her.

She looked at the items and deduced that she should take them. The way her job was changing, she might need some more sophisticated programming to deal with it.

"We haven't been given any equipment to do it yet, but the audio archives are next on the list after all those clippings you were scanning."

Heather looked at him with those electronic camera eyes of hers, her processors desperately trying to keep up with him and follow the meaning of his words.

"What I want you to do..." he said as he started walking around the corner, "...is to write down the index numbers on all the reels on the bottom, the ones that got the most damage. We'll have to do those first. Then write the ones on the second shelf, and up, and up."

Heather looked lost. Her chips were running hot, and some were close to crashing.

"I don't understand." she said as her eyes pointed down to all the cardboard boxes containing magnetic tape reels. If she was given a few more minutes to compute, she would have understood, but that would have looked dangerously unnatural to the human standing next to her.

Byron explained again. This time she didn't listen, she only recorded the audio so it could be analyzed later. She was still shuttling billions of ones and zeros around between her millions of charged transistors to try and make sense of his first explanation.

Just as he finished talking, she completed her calculations.

"Got it." she said. The actuators in her facemask moved into a smile pattern.

"Good stuff." he said as he patted her shoulder, then held on to it for a while.

Heather kept smiling. Byron wished he could touch her for a little bit longer, maybe put his arms around her.

He snapped himself out of it and abruptly excused himself to his office. As he took the scanner and walked back up the steps, the brown-haired fembot knelt down with her mechanical legs and scanned the rows of boxes with her eyes. All it would take was one glance per shelf, and she could write every number on the pad exactly as they were on the boxes. But she needed to keep looking human, so she wrote them down one by one.

So as not to make her handwriting too neat and perfect, she had a device inside her arm that provided randomness to her writing. It pumped out instructions to the motors, levers and hydraulics in her wrist to give her her very own style. As she settled into that tedious task, her processors cooled back down to normal operating temperatures, and she slowly analyzed what she hadn't paid full attention to earlier.

Meanwhile, Byron was in his office, trying not to fall too deeply for his pretty employee.

Chapter 07 - Adequate Performance

With the right calls made, Byron had finally gotten the ball rolling on getting a scanner into the building again. And all it took was two hours on the phone.

Now, he had nothing to do. He strolled out of his office and looked for things that needed his attention. He found none. There were no visitors either, so he killed some time by talking to Agnes for a while. They were both avid lovers of classical music, with her leaning toward opera and him toward symphony. They laughed together at the new, popular forms of music and lamented the decline and probable demise of the city's orchestra. They talked for a long time.

Their conversations were rarely this long, but Byron was trying to spend more time with Agnes to make the time he shared with Heather look less out of the ordinary. When their talk did finally wind down, Byron casually went down into the basement - to check on Heather's progress, he told himself.

Down there, the fembot's AI was coping as best it could with the task of taking a long time to record the many numbers on the pad of paper. It was doing a reasonably good job, as Mr. Clarke noticed only the pleasing shape of Heather's thighs as he came near. He made a point of looking at her face when he spoke.

"How are you making out?" he said.

As soon as the waves of sound that made up his voice struck the diaphragms of her microphones, the current they recorded was fed into her processors. The spoken sentence was broken down into its elementary syntactic components and filtered through algorithms that identified structure and found meaning. Once understood by her software, the phrase was responded to by carefully chosen words, strung together in a grammatically correct way. These were sent as pulses of electricity to the high quality speaker, which rendered an audio signal that would be recognised by Mr. Clarke as Heather's voice. It all happened in an instant.

"Good so far, I guess." she said. She had straightened out her metal and plastic spine, and turned her head to face him. The whole time she looked at him, her electronic eyes collected data both inside and outside of the spectrum of visible light. Infra red scans revealed the temperature of his body parts. This simple android agent wasn't programmed to examine the data very deeply, but if she had been, she would have noticed changes in heat distribution that indicated sexual arousal.

Byron kept it hidden as much as he could. He was disappointed with himself for feeling this way about her, but he couldn't help it. She was beautiful, and as far as he knew, she was single.

"Would you like to take an early lunch with me again?" he asked.

"Sure!" she said with a smile. She got up and placed the clipboard and pen on a shelf.

"We can beat the crowd at the sub shop again, you game?"

"Game? I don't understand." she said, looking a little puzzled. The settings that made the mechanisms of her facemask configure themselves that way were pre-programmed and automatic.

"You wanna go there ore somewhere else?" he said.

"Let's go there. I like that food." she said as she walked past him with another type of smile on her face.

The simple answers her AI produced were all he needed. He didn't consciously notice their simplicity, or that they came from within a computer.

He followed the pretty android up the stairs, enjoying every second of the view. Heather's butt was very nicely shaped, and the way she was constructed gave her a sexy, womanly walk.

While he took in the sight of her legs pumping and her buns wiggling, he thought he'd better say something.

"I'll buy... again."

The processors inside Heather's chest computed the meaning while the battery packs in her thighs supplied the power for both her motion and her "thoughts".

"Okay. Thanks Byron." she said as they emerged from the basement. Had her programming been a little more advanced, she would have offered to pay this time.

It was certainly no inconvenience to Byron. His salary provided him with a very comfortable living, and a few lunches here and there wouldn't be any problem.

The two of them continued with a light conversation while they got their coats on and passed a grumpy looking Agnes on their way out.

The sun was doing a fine job of melting away some of the snow as they chatted and walked. Byron now noticed that some of the things she said made her look a bit simple. His own doubts nagged him too. Just what did he intend to accomplish by taking his young employee out for lunch so often?

He tried to shove that question to the back of his mind as they again entered the sub shop. Byron's mouth watered at the delicious aroma inside, while Heather's chemical sensors worked overtime sorting out and identifying the character of the air they breathed.

Phet looked their way and acknowledged their presence with a bright smile, while her own processors ran the data from her cameras and microphones through pattern recognition algorithms. The Robot Control agent was back.

A substantial percentage of Phet's computing power was set aside to monitor her android adversary. From behind the sneeze guard, she gathered all the data she could.

When their turn came up, Byron and Heather ordered something a little different from the day before, and watched as the amiable female robot behind the glass constructed their sandwiches. Phet was done quickly, and moved over to the cash register. She rang the meal through and announced the total in her synthesized, accented voice.

Byron paid and again they ate. He layed off the flirting this time, keeping the conversation safe and unstimulating. Although he longed for more, he could enjoy the company of a beautiful woman for what it was.

Meanwhile, Phet was busy making sandwiches for other customers while at the same time making detailed scans of the fembot and her human companion. On Friday, the Master Computing Device at her friend's house would decide just what actions to take.

After they had finished their meal, Heather excused herself to go to the washroom. She got up and walked down the hall, identifying the correct room by the skirt-wearing stick figure on the door. Normally, she would not have been very good at deciphering such symbols, but the meaning of those ones had been programmed into her at the time of her activation.

Inside the washroom, the brown-haired fembot entered the stall and performed yet another pre-programmed routine. The meal she had just swallowed was quietly minced by sharp blades and forced out of her body. She got up, wiped, and flushed. The process was designed and executed to look completely natural and human. Heather did it flawlessly.

She washed her waterproof hands and dried them with the available paper towels. After that she went back to where Byron was and the two Archive workers exited the restaurant. As they walked back the way they came, Byron decided to give her the rest of the day off again.

"You know, you're making such good progress downstairs that I think I can get away with letting you leave early again."

"Really?" she asked.

"Yeah. I hope you don't mind." he said, jesting with her a bit.

"Oh, I don't mind." she said, not computing his humorous intent.

He chuckled a bit, then said "Do you mind if I wait with you at your bus stop?"

"Not at all." she said.

The two of them talked for a few minutes while the sun warmed the air some more. The whole time he talked to her, he was continuously being impressed by how much she knew. Of course, the whole time he talked to her, she was downloading all the data she needed from the internet, and incorporating the appropriate information into her statements.

Smart women turned him on, but this one wasn't programmed to respond, or even to recognise that. And with her lack of will or self, it was doubtful she could make a fulfilling partner for him.

None of that could have possibly crossed his mind though. While he and she talked together, he could only wish that she was his type. And that type would be lonely enough to want to spend time with an aging loner.

Her bus came and it went, with her inside - making all of those complicated calculations that required the full computing power of her CPU. He turned around and walked back to work. He shook his head at himself. What were the chances that lovely Heather would want someone like him?

Chapter 08 - New and Improved

As soon as Heather made it back to the house, she got inside and dropped her purse and jacket so the maidbot could pick them up. Heather's lifeless but extremely realistic glass eyes stared out blankly ahead as she navigated her mechanical body through the functionally furnished house. She made her way into the basement and stopped in front of the scanner by the door.

After the usual computerized noises, the box on the wall called out "SCANNING" in it's female monotone as a red grid of laser light was projected on to the fembot's face. More synthesized tones were produced as the device used its processors to determine the identity of the humanoid form in front of it.

"SCANNING COMPLETE." it said as Heather walked through the door that opened. The Maria unit was waiting by the examination chair. They exchanged their usual and essentially meaningless greetings, then got right down to business.

Maria pushed some buttons on one of the many consoles and said "Please remove your facemask, Heather."

The pretty brunette that Byron had been lusting over all week removed her artificial facial covering to give the robot technician access to her connection ports.

For her part, Maria visually scanned and identified the necessary spots to plug Heather in to the Main Computer. Her hands worked quickly to attach the cables, and the data transfer began.

The Main computer pulled the day's recorded audio and visual files out of the robot's head. While that went on inside, Maria and Heather were unmoving. The only thing that changed was the flashing pattern of LEDs inside the opened head, which indicated the stage and status of the transfer. Computerized beeps and tones accompanied the blinking lights for the same purpose. Even though her eyes weren't aimed right at Heather, Maria still watched those patterns closely, making sure there were no errors during the communication session.

At the end of that process, Maria politely but emotionlessly instructed Heather to unbutton her blouse and open her chest panel. Heather acknowledged and obeyed the command, showing the technician a different set of connection ports and flashing coloured lights.

This time the Main Computer drew out everything that Heather had computed during the day. All of her calculations, estimates and sensory files were channeled through the very ordinary cables into the console to be stored, indexed, and studied. The supercomputer reconstructed the events of her day and began to analyze the data. It tried to identify problems, recognise patterns and gather some sort of meaning from all of that data. Several hundred different factors and variables within the Main Computer were updated and recalculated at blinding speed throughout the process.

With every kilobyte of passing data, the Main Computer became more sure that the relatively simple robot it had assigned to this mission was in need of more advanced programming. But because Heather was such a simple android, she would need extensive upgrades to her processors and circuitry to accommodate the more advanced software. Those improvements would in turn require a more robust cooling system and a greater electrical supply.

All told, upgrading Heather would take at least ten hours. The computer factored this in as well, and produced a decision to go ahead.

No time would be wasted. While the Main Computer was working out the details of Heather's upgrades, Maria took the agent's face over to the makeup changing station. The mask clicked into place, being held by clips like the ones in Heather's head. Maria wiped the silicone free of makeup with a damp cloth before reapplying the exact same style of makeup, the pattern having been determined by the computer at the start of Heather's mission.

Maria herself had never worn makeup, and neither had any of the hundreds of Marias that worked for Robot Control. Even so, they were still beautiful things to behold. The movements of the sexy technician's body seemed to have as much elegance as the most advanced agents, and as much as any graduate of the finest finishing school. And the whole time her amazingly complex body worked to fulfil her objectives, the bright lights in her exposed recharge port shone and flashed around the electrical connections, betraying her status as a mere simulation.