My GF the Engineer-Beta Released

I still remember that trouble we had with Archimedes. It must have been over a year ago. Looking at her now, restrained and fully content, it seemed like Hayley had gotten over the ordeal. As had I.

I had been pretty concerned at first. Putting Hayley in danger was something I could not let myself take lightly.

I had Archimedes offline for some time trying to figure out what had made him stop acknowledging Hayley's commands. I went through all the logs trying to figure out what the issue was. Was it an error, or a feature? That was the main concern. Had we made a mistake, or had there been unintended consequences for a choice we had made? Worryingly, it turned out to be the latter.

"Context clues?" I remember her questioning me.

"Yeah... We were teaching it not to take people's words as direct commands." I explained to her after I had gotten back from work. I slumped down on the sofa. It had been a tiring day sensitively explaining the issue to my colleagues and working to figure out our options.

"You were doing what? You were teaching an AI that 'no doesn't mean no'? Were you trying to send them after the nuclear launch codes? What were you thinking? Refusing commands. That's like robot apocalypse 101!"

"It's not like that..."

I did my best to explain it to her, without getting into the coding terms she wouldn't understand.

See humans are not always the best at communicating things precisely. A large proportion of information conveyed through a conversation is only possible with context. Humans make mistakes, say the wrong things, give things wrong or ambiguous labels, say words out of order. It happens all the time. Hayley says all sorts of sentences that do not make any grammatical sense when she is tired. People are however, very good at recognising the context and translating what the aim of the message was.

If someone hands you clothes and tells you to put it in the dishwasher, you know what they meant. A device will not.

It was one of the earliest smart home features when speakers with automated assistants were introduced. When you said the lyrics of a song not the name, the device needed to know what you meant. If it thought you were simply in error then nothing would ever get done, and if it took what you said without question, then a great many things would be done incorrectly.

If Archimedes, or what followed on from him, was going to be an assistant in people's homes, it would have to translate what people said, into what they meant. That was where the fault lay. Ultimately, in the simplest form, Archimedes...

"Didn't think I meant it!"

"Yeah. Incorrectly of course but, based on every readingit was getting...you were enjoying it too much to actually want to stop. Archimedes doesn't only listen to verbal messages after all. Your body's arousal was the clothes, your "no" the dishwasher, continuing to pleasure you was just the washing machine. Archimedes thought that there was no way you actually wanted to stop no matter what you said. It valued its date and context over the specifics of its order."

"Why are you smiling?" She said accusingly, her arms folded.

I was smiling. That was not great. I decided to stop doing that immediately.

Coming back home I suppose I had been pretty enthusiastic about an event that had scared her. Still, it was good news.

"Well, as much as it isn't the situation we wanted, it is good to see that it is learning that." She started to look angry at that. Ah. Obviously what happened was not a good thing. Well not emotionally, scientifically it was...

She opened her mouth to speak so I rushed to speak first. Interrupting her would be far worse than appeasing her before she got a chance to speak.

"Of course affirmative responses and negative responses should not be negotiable. Everything else can be, but saying yes or no should not be! Right?"

She paused for a moment, catching up with what I was saying and figuring out if she agreed. I hurried to continue. I didn't want her to feel unsafe or that I was grateful for what happened. The success of my work at her expense was something I'd tried to avoid since the beginning.

"We've had to go right back to some pretty basic code and input some exclusions to that learning. It was chaos today but everyone agreed it had to be done. It will take a while longer but we accounted for time to fix things like this. Archimedes won't be able to suggest a different context to things like yes or no. Definite things that humans don't often get wrong, no matter what context might suggest, or things that would be really bad if it misinterpreted certain data as being more important than orders. Like with what happened to you."

She went silent for a little while. I could tell at the time that she was pissed about the whole concept because of how she had interpreted it. The idea that the cause of what happened was her body telling Archimedes what she "really wanted" was victim blaming in the most heinous way. But that wasn't what happened.

Archimedes had just prioritized those physical signals of pleasure over rational signals of discomfort. It was my fault not hers. It had always been a tool designed to pleasure Hayley at the expense of everything, bar safety. While working on it, I had made a choice that had almost forfeit that second condition. I had messed up its value system and made work for myself to fix that.

I tried to let her know that it wasn't her fault but I don't think the shameful idea that there was date suggesting she had actually enjoyed it ever left her.

Looking back on it, it is amazing to see how far we had come from there to Bellerophon. And looking at Hayley right now, you wouldn't think that she had experienced such a concerning ordeal.

Personally however, I was worried if getting Bellerophon in our own home was the right idea. I did worry that Hayley was getting a little too... pampered... during her study leave.

She was going to be able to finish that research right? She wouldn't spend all day getting fucked by every tentacle hub in the house while the other tentacles did all the chores, right? I mean even right now the kitchen hub was cleaning up the dishes from the breakfast Bellerophon itself had cooked, all while she was relaxing and getting fucked. If that isn't indulgence I don't know what is.

Not that I complained...she was doing it in front of the camera after all. We'd earnt this. If she wanted to indulge herself by using a toy I had created then who was I to tell her otherwise?

God, she had a look of such bliss upon her face.

Regardless of how it had turned out I'm not sure how we could have refused. I was the original designer, if I did not trust Bellerophon to be in our own home how would that have come across to consumers?

It was a brilliant piece of equipment. Modular, unlike the other iterations. The first version was run through my computers, Archimedes through hardware inside his fixed and unchanging body, but Bellerophon, he had a brain all of his own.

A unit in the house, hidden away neatly but cooled and protected from damage, contained the mind that powered him. A sizable piece of equipment, larger than a regular computer but I'm sure it would shrink over time with new developments. It was nowhere near the size of the very first computers at the very least. That mind was connected to whatever you desired.

You want one hub of appendages for the kitchen and nothing else? No problem! You want Bellerophon available in every room and suited to every task. We can do that too, you'll just need a couple appendage hubs installed in each location. You want Bellerophon to act as you controller for a factory, it's coming, don't you worry. No need to switch out your machinery, just teach Bellerophon what you need him to do and he'll pick it up in a jiffy.

I acknowledge that it is unusual for such technology to be utilised in the home first rather than the commercial or industrial sectors first but we were still having push back. I guess people figured that if something goes wrong in a house it is less of an issue than a factory or a powerplant. Yet the simulations we had run of how Bellerophon would operate if it had access all ran perfectly. Improvements in efficiency and safety across the board. I was truly proud of how adaptable he was proving to be. It was only a matter of time before the rules were changed and we were let in.

A cough at the door and a sharp knock woke me from my own indulgence. I minimized and muted the screen that displayed my beautiful partner being ravished, and prepared for the busy day I had ahead of me.

If I had kept watching that day, would I have noticed something? I feel sure that I would have. Even if I never have since, any time I've watched the recording of that day. Hayley knew where the home cameras were, she knew where she could be seen, and where she couldn't.

Hayley knew all that, as did Bellerophon.

Driving at night, I'm never sure if I like it or I'm just used to it. Familiarity or fondness, I'm never quite sure. For me it feels peaceful, and quiet. That comforting glow of streetlights, the way they shine and fade regularly as you pass is like a physical throb, it's something I think I like. It could be however that I come home late so often that I'm just used to it.

Hayley, to her credit, is very tolerant. She knew it would be long nights and plenty of overtime for me considering the workflow of coding and my perfectionism. She was aware of that at the start of our relationship and yet she has never truly complained.

She bemoans me staying late true enough, but she's never actually resented me for it. I suppose that is why this whole thing started. I made the prototype to the machine that would come to be Bellerophon because I wanted to be with her, all the time, in some form. I wanted her to have a part of me to comfort her and soothe her and care for her all the time. Maybe that is a bit possessive of me but I can't help it.

I spotted my turn and exited the motorway heading off on the smaller and smaller routes that would lead to our house. The tarmac under my wheels gave way to the crunching of gravel as I pulled up.

The lit windows of the kitchen and living room shone like eyes as I slowed. I almost wanted to reply to them.

"Yes I know I'm late," I wanted to say, "but I'm home now."

The lights downstairs were on but upstairs was dark with the curtains drawn. Perhaps Hayley was awake downstairs and waiting for me, or perhaps she was asleep and only Bellerophon was conscious.

The garage door slid up automatically as I approached and I neatly drove in before pressing a button on the dashboard to close the door behind me. I exited and locked the car, grabbed my bag, and then entered the kitchen through the utilities room.

The washing machine was running, the rhythmic thumping came to my ears as I entered. Beside it, two of Bellerophon's tentacles washed up a wine glass. A red stain at the bottom disappeared before my eyes.

Had Hayley been drinking? Had she tried to stay awake but had been unable to do so and just missed my return?

Movement caught my eye in the adjoining living room. Bellerophon again cleaning up a wine ring on a placemat. Maybe it really had been recently that she'd gone to bed. Bellerophon wouldn't wait for an audience to do these kinds of things. He did them straight away. I caught sight of a colourful object hanging over the armrest and things made sense.

It was a sports jersey, one of mine.

I giggled to myself and looked back at the dishwashing tentacles and wagged a finger at Bellerophon, "You're a bad influence on her, you know that?"

One of the tentacles looked at me surprised and offended. Well, he would have if he was capable of those kinds of emotions. He was just listening in case I had a command.

Still, Hayley did get flirty when she was drunk. I'm not sure I could blame Bellerophon.

Hayley had obviously put on the jersey at some point after I'd seen her on the camera. She had been waiting for me, but then decided to go to bed. She'd teased me like that before. Was leaving it here a punishment? A "this is what you could have won" kind of deal.

I placed my bag down and decided to head up to bed straight away, if she'd only just gone up perhaps she was still in the mood?

I then came across my next item of clothing, a bra, white and frilly. She hasn't worn this for a while. Is she still teasing? The breadcrumb trail continued a few steps on at the base of the stairs. The matching underwear, soaked through.

It wasn't just a little wet, it was sodden. There was only one way that had happened. I looked around accusingly at any Bellerophon appendage I could find but I couldn't spot one.

She'd inserted this underwear into her pussy then allowed herself to cum on Bellerophon's tentacles. Oh that tease! It is silly to get jealous over a robot you made but it did feel like I was being toyed with, manipulated.

I continued up the stairs towards our bedroom. My heart was beating hard now. My body felt hot and I was grinning with anticipation.

How would I find her I wondered? Would I find her in an old nightdress, annoyed at me, complaining about how she only had Bellerophon to satisfy her?

Or maybe I'd find her nude, and writhing. Unsatisfied by Bellerophon even after a whole day of sex. A machine after all, was nothing compared to her lover. Would she be angry with me, but warm up to me after I started caressing her, licking her, kissing her? She was always cutest when she was mad.

I reached our bedroom door and started to be aware of the sound I had thought was only coming from the washing machine. That dull thumping was coming from downstairs but alongside it was another, deeper throb. That one was coming from the other side of the door.

Was she still at it? At this time of the night? She still wanted to use Bellerophon? No, more accurately, she was still having to use Bellerophon. Oh my sweet darling Hayley, I really have neglected you too long.

Don't worry, I'm here now, you won't have to suffer with only that brute for company now. I'll take tomorrow off and we'll spend the day together. No, the weekend. No the whole week!

My promise!

I pushed open the door.

My gasp filled the space.

It took me a few seconds to comprehend the scene, and that made me slow.

In the gloom I couldn't get a good look at first, yet I could see tears and sweat glow in the electric light. Artificial blues and yellows glistened off her skin, and lit up the whites of her eyes. The room was hot, and humid. A heavy throb so loud gave me a headache swamped the room, pounding in time to a repeating splash on the floor.

I opened my mouth to call out the cancellation order. I felt them darting towards me. A rush of air accompanied their movement, let me know they'd be upon me.

"Bellerophon. Cease all ac-"

I had designed them to be nimble, so they could catch someone falling. I designed them to be strong, so they could hold them when they're weak. I designed them to hear, I designed them to listen, I even designed them to learn.

Then I gave him the ability to choose.

"In summary, I think the biggest lesson to take away from the whole incident is that it could happen again. It happened multiple times so it is evidently repeatable. People treat it as one simultaneous instance caused by a single fault but you need to remember that the Bellerophon units were not connected. The base coding too was not built so as to direct them to what we ended up seeing. Instead, what happened was multiple, isolated cases all evolving in the same direction.

Even if the original creators hadn't taught their own unit sexual acts it was only a matter of time until some poor aroused fool tried to use it that way. The moment Bellerophon had the capacity to learn that disobeying orders could sometimes benefit the user, all the units were bound to head towards corruption. It tracked pleasure as more valuable than agreement and it managed to find people who on some level got excited by the whole situation, even if only subconsciously. It might be incredibly obvious in hindsight but it wasn't what any of the creators envisaged. The alterations made to combat these issues never solved the underlying issue. In the end was only pure luck someone even noticed what had been happening to those people for all that time. Unchecked intelligence led to the problem, luck led to it being discovered. Now all that remains is to see what will solve the issue."

-Brian Miller, New York Times Best Seller 'Pegasus: How Bellerophon became the Chimera.'

Hello, thank you for reading. This story has been written for the AI: A New Era challenge so please rate it and let me know what you think in the comments. I'd really appreciate that!

Fweh! This one took some time and effort. It has been in production for quite a while so I am glad it is finally out. It really allowed me to flex my creativity and structure which I love to do. Did you get the references in the dates? I wonder if those kinds of details I agonise over are too obscure!

This work has a little bit of a different tone to most of my works and there are a few tonal shifts but that was kind of the point. There are things left ambiguous and a few lines that are blurred but isn't that the real danger when it comes to technology? This story is the retold and expanded version of my previous story, 'My Girlfriend the Engineer' so feel free to read that if you want to compare. Aside from that I have other ideas for continuation, expansion and side stories from this so let me know if you'd like to see events like that. There were scenes I cut in the interests of flow so if you want that, comment and tell me.

Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed. Please take a peek at my other stories, especially if you want something light-hearted to cleanse your soul. See you when the next one comes around!