Diss, Assemble

A few students reached their hands out impotently, expecting Carol's limbless torso to topple over like a broomstick stood on its end.

"You needn't worry about her falling over." Dr. Rossum noted. "She can stay balanced like that with her own sense of equilibrium. But in older models like her, that's the first thing to go. So..."

Dr. Rossum set her down across the desk. Now staring at the ceiling, Carol could see the mini drones circling around her, seemingly focusing more on her exposed ports than her humanoid body parts. After all, the Internet was already filled with images of genitalia. But a picture of her particular robotic sockets...

"Now, if you'd all split into four groups..."

Dr. Rossum distributed the limbs to each group. He explained the procedure for cleaning and refurbishing each limb, starting with the first step on the arm, then the first step on the leg, the second step on the arm and so on.

"Will this hurt her?" Asked one concerned student.

"Carol can't perceive pain in any way. Don't worry about her."

The lecture continued until each limb was refurbished. Then, each group traded for the limb they had previously been deprived, and the process started over, with Dr. Rossum observing as he stalked around the room.

Carol noticed the drones never seemed to be watching the students repairing the limbs. They hovered over her like flies over the corpse of a water buffalo.

Time passed, and Dr. Rossum asked the students to come to the desk. Carol's view of the ceiling was now obstructed by dozens of faces staring down at her limbless body like a Christmas turkey. He showed how to undo the suspension bolts that held her ribs together, pulling them apart like the doors on a gull wing vehicle.

"Unlike a human, where lots of important stuff goes on within the ribs, in most androids... all you'll find is the lungs, which are really just big air bags to facilitate realistic speech. If I disconnect this..."

He turned a tube leading into her neck and disconnected what seemed to be the equivalent of her windpipe.

"Even with no lungs, Carol can still speak with a hidden emergency speaker in her skull. Isn't that right, Carol?"

"Yes, Professor." Carol 'said' in a tinny voice that sounded like it was being projected from an old telephone. Her lips didn't move as she spoke, her face a completely blank mask as the professor continued talking about how pointless most of these bits were inside her, spraying the inside with propelled air to send the flecks of dust out. He reconnected her windpipe and, with both hands, Dr. Rossum slammed the ribs shut until they clacked in place, and replaced her suspension bolts.

"Professor?" One student raised their hand and pointed to Carol's groin. A clear liquid gathered on her external bits and formed a tiny puddle less than a centimeter across. "Is she... aroused?"

Dr. Rossum looked at it, found a napkin that one held a powdered doughnut, and wiped it away with a single dispassionate swipe. "Condensation. Older models, it happens all the time. The circuitry gets old, it gets hotter easier. Don't let anyone tell you that robots last forever. Unless you can spend tons of cash on unused parts or custom parts, eventually, everything breaks."

"Now the most advanced procedure, of course, is separating the head from the torso." Dr. Rossum explained, turning Carol completely over onto her stomach, her head still facing forward and her nose pressing into the countertop in a way that looked very uncomfortable.

"Now in newer models, this is all a magnetic join connector that comes off very easily. But not in Carol, and not most of the models you'll see out here. You have to extract the base of the head here very carefully, without touching the sides of the carriage here, or else you can either short out her torso, or even worse, her head. So most shops will have a rack to put the head and torso in and they move out like a piston so the head comes straight out. But, I don't have that here, so... I'll try freehanding it."

Dr. Rossum's opened his hands and approached her neck.

And the bell rang.

He looked up. "well, maybe next time? Don't forget to download your homework before you go."

The crowd slowly dispersed, many students looking back at the pile of limbs, wondering if the professor would stop looking at his phone and put her back together.

When the last student left, Dr. Rossum put away his phone, turned off the drones, and found Carol's right arm where he'd left it. He quickly and efficiently reattached her arm with the precision of a soldier field stripping and reassembling his rifle.

Once the arm was reconnected, it jumped forward, clutched his collar and pulled him in for a long kiss.

"That was amazing." Carol panted.

"Why does this turn you on?" Dr. Rossum looked at her as if she was the most mysterious puzzle, rather than the object of his life's work. "I hate saying all that stuff about you."

"You're the expert, not me." She smiled. "I just know that it works." She slid her finger down from his collar towards his stomach. "You think you can put me back together and give it to me before our next class? In whatever order you like."

"Next class is ten minutes. We'd better not." Dr. Rossum opened a drawer and pulled out a wrapped parcel of clothing, identical to the clothes she'd worn before, right down to the retro Thundercats T-shirt.

She put her hand down. "Well, then get to work."

Dr. Rossum continued to reassemble her. "You know..." He began. "Since this will be the ten o'clock class... it will probably be even more crowded."

With her one attached hand, she brought her nail to her mouth and bit it.

Dr. Rossum did say that great teachers could make school fun, Carol thought.