A.V.A - Advanced Voice Assistant

copyright 2021

Please enjoy A.V.A. -- Part 1, and note it is a slow build.

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I had been working in my garage, organizing everything so I could tinker with my new project. I had been learning to solder and studying electronics in my spare time, usually with the garage door open since it was summer. It was an old house, and the garage was a separate building, an old two story carriage house that faced the street. The first floor taken over by a work bench and shelves and tool chests, the second floor was storage but with some open space, and some old furniture. A couch up there, and a mattress as well.

I had been reading up on circuit design and soldering away, experimenting with something I had found on the internet, and attempting to get the microphone working properly. It was a personal assistant of sorts, but with a lot of bells and whistles. I had bought a kit and it was a bit more complex than I was ready for, but I think I had it mostly working -- at least the part I was focused on, the rest of what was on the board was a bit of a mystery. I had bought the kit off a Chinese website since it was just so interesting, though of course it had taken forever to arrive and had very little understandable english in the documentation, and what there was not always making much sense. Some of the instructions seemed to show settings with crazy labels like "control voize with mind" or even worse typos like "contrl mind with mind"... I mean ridiculous spelling errors and horrible translations.

I had bought the kit to create my own speech to text electronic assistant and it was supposed to be very advanced with most of the language processing on the device itself. I had to buy the processing chips separately, and had really gone for upgrades, but at this stage in my life I had some extra money to spare and wanted to make something that worked really well. And I had plenty of time on my hands these days, as it had been a while since my last girlfriend and after a handful of just ridiculous dates during the pandemic I really wanted to spend my free time on personal projects. I had been questioning my path in life the past few years, telling myself it was an existential rebalancing, but my ex had been screaming at me about a mid-life crisis the last fight we had. And then she left.

Why is it so hard to find someone that you can have just as much fun with clothes on as off, and who was not bat shit crazy? Oh well, what are you gonna do. Nowadays I was a getting pretty lonely, though to be honest I did not miss the crazy ex as much as I missed the hot sex.

Missed it so much in fact, that I could not help noticing the girls that kept walking by my garage, even the ones that kept their pandemic face masks on outside -- which is half the reason I had the garage door open. Anything to get just a little bit of socializing in, even if from afar. Whether it was a girl riding her bike in the street or walking her dog. I tried not to stare, but sometimes I couldn't help it. Luckily both time and genetics had been good to me, and in my mid-40s I often was mistaken for ten to fifteen years younger, so I often found myself looking at a variety of ages. My staring problem was getting even more difficult now that the vaccine was out and the mask mandates had generally been dropped.

With a pop and a sizzle I snapped out of my reverie and back to what I was doing. Damn, I had accidentally laid some solder across a circuit on the board. It looked like it was making an arc or bridge or short circuit, or whatever the electronics phrasing was. I used the soldering iron to scrape some of the solder off and remove the short circuit, as the hot tip pulled the solder away. It looked like I got most of it but I could not totally tell. And honestly, it was in one of the more complex and somewhat mysterious parts of the board that I had not planned on using anyway. I didn't think it would effect things much, but oh well, not much I could do about it now. The last time I was on the website I bought the kit off, it looked like the product had been discontinued. Well here goes nothing, time to hook it up to the power source and give this thing a test run.

"Hi Mr Johnson!"

"Hello Lucy!" I responded. It was one of the neighbor girls, young and probably still in high school, but honestly it was getting harder and harder to tell as I get older. It seemed like a girl was either 12 yrs old or 25, and I often felt like I just could not tell the difference. Certainly dangerous stuff, and besides the moral issues, there was no way I wanted to end up on the wrong end of a statutory rape charge. I had way too much going for me to risk that. But Lucy was just getting cuter and cuter, and for some reason during the latter part of the pandemic had taken to stopping for a few moments each time she walked by my open garage door.

"What'cha workin' on today Mr. J?" She asked. With a slight emphasis as she said the "jay" part -- obviously pleased with herself by the rhyme. It made me smile no matter how many times she said it.

"Oh not much Lucy. Just trying to make myself an upgraded voice assistant to help around the house. I figured it would be fun." I said as I finished hooking up the power leads, and started reaching over to flip the switch. "Here check it out, I am about to power it up for the first time and test it."

"Oh no way, I want to see!" She said, with a little bounce and a twinkle in her eye. I couldn't help notice how she stood there with her legs just a little apart, her chest thrust forward just the tiniest bit and her head back, her lips parted and her head tilted. If I did not know better I would swear she was trying to flirt with me, even if just a little. But honestly, she is probably 16 or 17 and I am probably 25 years her senior. I mean likely her parents are about my age or just a little older. I must have lost my virginity before she was even born, so I did not think anything of it all. I was probably just imagining things anyway.

"Ok don't stand too close though," I said, "as I *think* I did it right, but you never know with these electronics kits from China you get off the internet." With the warning, I double-checked that the wall power switch was still flipped and pushed the power button on the unit itself.

And...nothing happened. Not at first at least, and not for a long time. "Is that it?" Lucy asked after a few moments.

"I am really not sure," I replied. "But that is quite disappointing. I will have to figure out what went wrong, it was either this solder mistake I made or maybe it is one of the components. Heck, it could be anything really." Just then I noticed a slight blue glow coming from the section of the board I had laid a solder bridge down on accidentally when putting it together. And as I looked a little closer, there came a pretty loud "Hello my name is Lucy" from the speaker, and a then only a slightly softer "your wish is my command master" shortly after.

"Whoa," said Lucy, looking a bit surprised but with a mischievous grin spreading across her face. "Mr. J did you name it after me?"

I could feel the heat rise to my face and I knew I must be turning a bright red, "No no Lucy, I honestly have not programmed it at all yet! This is the first time I have turned it on!"

This was really embarrassing and I could only imagine what her parents would say when they found out. I would be labeled the neighborhood creep for sure. My heart started racing as I thought how I would be watched and talked about from here on out, maybe even reported for all sorts of things that folks had overlooked before -- not that I was that much of a weirdo, but I kind of liked where I sat in the neighborhood right now. Not of too much interest, just a little eclectic. But that could change in a flash. Or in a misinterpreted situation like this.

Thinking on my feet, I quickly explained, "I was just soldering together the electronics according to what I think the schematic shows. A lot of the directions and notes are in fairly bad english, so who knows if I did it right. But nothing in the documentation says anything about this first greeting. Some joker must have programmed in a sort of Easter egg." God I hoped she bought this -- and did she even know what an Easter egg was in this context? Wow I felt old.

"Maybe keep this between you and me Lucy? It is a little embarrassing to think I may have screwed this up." I mentally crossed my fingers, and thought to myself, if my wish really was "Lucy's" command then I wished the real Lucy would not say anything about this to her parents or to anyone else, but underneath it all a part of me also wished she thought I was cool for working on this kind of stuff and experimenting like this...even with the occasional screw up.

"I get'cha Mr. J, and don't worry or be embarrassed, I won't say anything to my parents or anyone else. I think it is pretty cool that you are working on this kind of stuff and experimenting like this." Yes! I let out a mental sigh of relief and thought to myself wow that was pretty much exactly what I had hoped for. Though it did seem oddly a bit too close to exactly what I had been hoping for, and for a minute I thought maybe I had lost my inner monologue. What if I had said ALL of that out loud? But then I shook my head, as recently I had been spending far too much time alone or with my dog, and really I just needed some human company. Plus Lucy was not looking at me strangely, and it did not look like she was joking or mocking me when she said all of that. She looked serious and did not skip a beat or smile or even frown. Kind of oddly flat in her delivery there actually. Well I was certainly not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, so I relaxed and mentally crossed my fingers in the hope this would work out.

"I have to go," Lucy said, breaking my train of thought, "it's time for dinner. But I hope you get it working Mr. J. If you do you should show me how it works sometime. And really Mr. J, you shouldn't be spending so much time alone -- you need some human company!" And with that she gave me a radiant smile with that same twinkle in her eye I thought I had seen earlier and walked off with a cute little bounce in her step. Phew, I thought to myself again. If only my wish really was Lucy's command.

My heart rate back to normal now, I actually sighed out loud with relief and decided to close the garage door and pack up for the evening. Progress had surely been made and I was pleased with myself, the upgraded assistant seemed to have worked for a moment there, even if it had kind of got me into a potential pickle. Disaster had been averted though and whoever the joker at this foreign company was, I cannot believe they picked "Lucy" as the default name. What a coincidence. I shook my head and turned off the light as I closed the door.

**

The next morning I awoke refreshed and excited. There was a vague feeling that I was coming out of a really good dream, something positive and impactful, like facing a fear or vanquishing a long-time nemesis. Or maybe it was just plain full of fun, it was hard to tell because like so many dreams, the more I tried to remember it the more vague it became. The more I tried to capture it, the more it just slipped away. So I shrugged a bit inside and pulled off the covers -- no use in worrying too much about a good dream, rather than a nightmare of course, and for some reason I was really excited about starting my day. And I mean the dream must have been really good, as I had raging morning wood. Like the erection was so hard it was painful, and it must have been like that for a while because my dick actually hurt.

But oddly I did not even stop to get myself off before getting out of bed like I usually did. Oh well, it was just going to be me in the garage all day and it was looking a little gray out so maybe I'd even have the door shut all day. And if by chance the weather was nice later, I could always just sit down on my stool with the door open and hope that a cute girl or two would walk or bike by. I usually went by the old adage of "don't go out with a loaded gun" and really took it to heart. Not only was jerking off daily fun, but from everything I read it reduced the chances of prostate cancer significantly... and helped keep my head on straight around an attractive girl, well any girl these days really. Wow, I really did need to get laid. How long had it been anyway? How many weeks? I thought back, had it turned into months? 6 months? 9? A full year? Whoa, I had no idea.

No wonder my dreams were getting intense. Ever since I had ended it with the ex, after telling her what I really wanted to do now that I had financial freedom -- after she had refused to see the value in my new direction in life and I had to kick her out -- I had been really lonely. And the pervy little boy deep inside me, the one my therapist had said she did not really want to talk about and hoped would simply go away as we worked through other issues, could not stop thinking about sex. Some said guys thought about sex every few minutes, but honestly it felt like every few seconds recently. Almost like I was de-aging back into a younger version of myself.

Ha, one could only hope. But really, physically life seemed to have hit "pause" on a lot of my aging, and mentally I was becoming more and more of a weird mix between a teenager or young 20s guy and the responsible older self I knew I actually was. I guess that is what happens when you decide to actually go after what you want in life, what truly interests you. The fundamental activities that light up your brain and body, your mind and soul. And, as I smiled to myself, had you wake up with a painfully hard dick each morning.

Oh what the heck, it was the healthy thing to do right? So I rolled over, grabbed my tablet reached for the lube with one hand while calling out the keywords I wanted to search for. I was so glad to have gotten rid of the roommates I previously had in this big house, as I am really not sure who would understand the kinky things I got off on these days. With that, I squeezed out some lube into one hand and reached down to grip my stiffening, soon to be thick and hard 40 yr old cock.

I couldn't help but start imagining Lucy, wearing something a little different. And dear god maybe just a few years older. That's when I hit play on the ffm threesome fuck machine porn -- which somehow started right where I liked. "Please let us taste it daddy...", said the two girls dressed as colorful Japanese hentai cartoon sluts as they repositioned the dildos from each of their respective fuck machines that were pounding away into their wet pussies, and crossed their eyes and stuck out their tongues, using their arms to press together their big tits. Wow these European cam girls were hot, and into some kinky stuff. Today was going to be a real good day, I could feel it.

**

By that afternoon, the day seemed like less of a good day and more of a difficult one, but still promising. It was still a bit gray out, so the temperature was amazing, just perfect for working in the garage. I had re-read all of the instructions and retraced all of my steps, even trying to figure out how to more fully remove that solder bridge, and I had found another small one in a different area, but I just did not have the right tools really.

This was one of my first projects involving this level of electronics, and I really did not know as much as I should. I was worried about damaging the board with too much applied heat, or even scratching things and destroying some of the existing and obviously important pathways or connections. Though there was one or two connections that were not what they should have been in a few of the initial components, and I found one resistor that was definitely the wrong impedance, and managed to swap that out without too match damage, though my repair certainly did look ugly. Definitely need to work on my technique, I thought to myself. Still there was a bunch of stuff on here that I did not totally understand, but *thought* was in the correct place and orientation.

After a while there was really nothing else to check before powering up the upgraded assistant. And after one final check, I reached over to flip the bench power switch and hovered my finger over the power button on the unit itself. Here goes nothing I thought, as I pressed it down.

And again, nothing happened. Not for about 10 seconds this time. But then the small blue power LED strip lit up on the outside of the assistant. It was a thin blue line around the edge of the unit. The unit itself was fairly small, and black. An impressively deep black....I feel like it was almost a color I had never seen before as I continued to stare into its depths. It seemed almost impossibly black now that the unit was powered on. But maybe that was just the juxtaposition of the case material with the blue LED strip. Sometimes that color of light seemed to do things like that to my eyes, like when in a store sign or light out on a street at night while driving.

And as I stared just a little longer, there was a brief but bright flash of blue -- stupendously bright but short-lived. My eyes closed quick in an automatic reaction, and for a moment I could see a spiderweb of veins on the inside of my eyelid, and maybe even in my eye? It almost felt like when you go to the optometrist and they exam the back of your eyeball with that super bright light and microscope thing, but here and now it was this crazy blue color.

Then it was gone, and when I cracked open my eyes everything seemed normal again. In fact, not even an afterimage on my retina. Huh, I thought to myself, it must not have been as bright as I thought. And I had made sure to check the LED before installing it on the board and then in the impossibly black metal case. The LED had looked normal as can be, albeit maybe a little thicker than average and connected to a small box that did not have a name in the instructions and had come preinstalled on the board. Part of the company's "special sauce" it seemed and there was no real documentation on it, just a weird label. Again, part of using a parts kit purchased online and shipped straight from china.

"Your wish is still my command master."

"Whoa what," I jumped a little in my seat and looked around. While the sound was obviously from the assistant and there was a slight pulsing in the blue LED as the assistant spoke, it also felt a little bit like the voice was in my head. Or maybe this thing had some insane surround sound processing going on -- but I thought I only saw one small speaker when I installed it? I mean it was such a small box, maybe a little bigger than my cellphone really, with the same basic dimensions but a little thicker. And was it just me, or did it sound just a little bit more like the neighbor girl Lucy. Ha my recent dreams and what was becoming a painfully obvious need to get laid must be getting the better of me.

"What would you like me to sound like instead master?"

Goddamn, with that I jumped out of my seat. Had I said that Lucy stuff out loud again? Wtf, but maybe Lucy had been right and I really was more lonely than I knew.

"Ok wait, what is going on here? Is this thing working finally?", I said intentionally out loud and in as calm and measured of a voice as I could manage. Again, obviously I must have spoken out loud before, or even just softly to myself, and the assistant picked up on it. Wow voice recognition tech had come far, and the speakers were quite good....plus the digitized voice was damned good as well. That was all coming out of that small little black case with the slowly pulsing blue light? Maybe these Chinese manufacturers were leap-frogging the rest of the world in ways no one was even aware of yet, I mean they had to be if I could buy something like this off the internet right? I needed to search out what else this company was selling, so far this was really impressive.