Robot Lover Ch. 01

No actual robots appear in this wholesome story of young lust and surprise romance. I hope you find some humor in it, too. It's a kink-o-rama, though, so keep an eye on the tags; the sex play differs from chapter to chapter.

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Chapter 1

After leaving college, I lived for more than a year in a rooming house in Berkeley. I worked odd jobs and waited to see what the universe was going to do next. If you had called me a stoner, I wouldn't have considered it an insult.

It turned out that what the universe had in mind was a nerdy girl who had been right in front of me for almost a year. She took me completely by surprise.

Claudia was constantly beat up, because she was a skateboarder. This was at a time when boards were often actual boards, and boards with girls on them were few and far between. The term "skater girl" had not come into use. Just to give you a rough idea of the era, she was the first girl I knew who had a visible tattoo.

She was intelligent; god help the guy who argued with her. She was working on a master's degree in something. But her long dark hair was always tangled, and she was not obsessive about things like deodorant. She didn't smell bad, but you knew she was in the room.

Socially, Claudia was a bit awkward. She was working the "tomboy" thing so hard, and ignoring the boys in the house so completely, that I figured she might be gay, although the skateboarding friends of hers who came by the house were mostly boys, as grungy as she was.

Grungy or not, though, there was something about her. Just walking through the room or flopping in the old wing chair in front of the TV, she drew the eye. Her behavior was sensual, but I don't think it was calculated. The guys in the house were all aware of her, but we weren't experienced enough to handle it. We responded like boys on a playground, calling her "Claud" behind her back.

She didn't seem to care what anybody thought of her. Her shirts and jeans were baggy, and she didn't flirt. She was also a conscious feminist, pointing out any disrespect for her or for women in general. Those of us who had inspired one of her little "educational talks" learned to think before airing our opinions. To be fair, we needed educating.

Once in a while, though, she would drop her guard, at least with me, and open up a bit. A couple of times I thought she might even be lonely, but it never felt like she was hitting on me. It just made it easier to be around her--another character among our rotating troupe of poverty-stricken students and stoners.

One night I found myself alone with Claudia in the living room, which was very unusual in that crowded house. We had just watched the episode of Second Generation in which the whole crew of the Enterprise is driven mad with lust by some sort of space thingy, and the sexy female security officer pairs off with Commander Data, an android, who assures her as she is dragging him into her quarters that he is "fully functional" in every human sense.

I was shaking my head. "I don't know," I said. "Data?"

She thought about it. "Interesting idea though," she said. "In a way, it would be like having a giant vibrator."

I snorted.

"But if you told him to shut up about the whole thing," she said, "he would. And he would be a vibrator you could tell what to do."

I was amazed that Claudia was throwing that out there. Android lover as giant vibrator? There was no good way to respond without getting into specifics. I tried.

"But... what would he feel like?" I said. "I mean his skin. Would he be soft? Warm?"

She considered it. "I don't know why not," she said. "If they can build a man, they can make him however they want to. I was thinking more about whether he would know what he was doing. Could he be programmed with the Kama Sutra, or would you have to teach him? Or her?"

The Kama Sutra? Vibrators? I had never heard her say one word that could be considered sexual, and here she was getting very specific.

"I have to admit," I said, "it is intriguing: A partner who looks and feels human, but--"

"It's an obvious idea," she said.

Ouch. This was more like her usual style: abrupt and abrasive. She wasn't wrong, though. Plenty of people have played with the idea.

"There's a guy building sex robots right now, in Japan," she said. "Have you read about that?"

"I saw a video," I said. "They have beautiful faces and, you know, body parts, but they don't really move. They don't look real."

"But you can fuck them," she said.

"Well. Yeah, but..." I made a face.

"So what you want," she said, "is a robot that looks and feels like the real thing."

"What? No! I would rather have the real thing."

"Why?" she said. "So you can have children?"

"What? No! Jesus, no."

"You want to snuggle and have pillow talk?"

I looked closely into her face. She wasn't laughing at me. I also suddenly realized that her eyes were amazing.

"Something like that," I said.

"What if you couldn't tell the difference?" she said. "In a hundred years I'll bet they'll have android lovers. Would you do it if you could?"

Would I? She had incredible eyelashes. I dropped my eyes and seriously considered the question of an android lover for about two seconds.

"Yes," I said. "Out of curiosity if nothing else."

"Me too," she said.

I had absolutely nothing to say to that, but my mind was humming. We were both silent for a minute. A screaming commercial had come on, so I turned off the TV.

"I wonder if Asimov's laws of robotics would apply," she said.

I laughed. "Well, uh... your lover can't harm you, and--"

"Can't through inaction allow you to be harmed," she said.

"Right," I said. "And your lover can't allow itself to be harmed."

"Unless it needs to save your life," Claudia said.

"Something like that."

"The third law," she said, "is that it must do everything you tell it to do, unless it would violate one of the first two rules."

It was coming back to me. "No, it's the other way around," I said. "The second law is that it must do everything you say, and the third law is that it must protect itself, as long as doing so--"

"Would not violate the first two laws," she said.

We smiled at each other. "Nerd!" she said. I laughed and started to say something, but she wasn't finished.

"The second law is the one that we would be interested in," she said. "A robot lover would have to do anything you told it to do. You have to admit that would be interesting."

"It would..." I said, and considered it. "But, in a way, don't we already have that? You don't need robots. There are plenty of guys who would do anything you told them to do. Hell, I would."

I immediately regretted putting that last part out there. Why did I say that?

She peered at me closely. "Really?" she said. "What if I told you to whip me?"

I was stunned. In those days, sadomasochism was sort of a textbook thing. Real people didn't whip each other, except maybe in England. I adopted a false worldliness.

"I'd whip you. I would assume you enjoyed it."

"What if I told you to jack off in Macy's window?"

"I, uh... that's a bit--"

"Or what if I told you to eat your own shit?"

I stared at her. "Okay. You just took it to its logical extreme," I said. "I wouldn't do it."

"My point exactly," she said. "You might not. But an android would."

"You want somebody to eat shit?" I asked.

"No! You're missing the point," she said. "The point is, I could tell a robot lover to do anything--and he would."

I was relieved. I started to think about what would happen to the shit if an android ate it. Would they have a digestive system?

"Okay. Well... never mind eating shit and Macy's window," I said. "Wouldn't it be a little like masturbation, having sex with an android?"

Two members of our household took that exact moment to walk into the living room.

"What the hell are you talking about?" one of them said.

"Claudia, unruffled, turned to them and said, "We were talking about Mr. Data and whatshername... Tasha Yar."

"Oh, God," he said. "The sex episode."

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That night I had trouble getting to sleep. For the first time since I had known Claudia, I was thinking about what she would be like as a lover.

I barely knew her. I had always thought of her as a kid, although she was probably twenty-something, only a year or two younger than me. She was obviously no blushing romantic or sheltered virgin. She was nerdy all right, but in a very knowing way.

There was something about her. And I felt that she had just opened her door to me and said, "Here I am."

I had to laugh about her coming up with Asimov's laws of robotics. Under those rules, what would a robot do if you told it to whip you? I guess a robot could be taught everything there is to know about whipping people without really harming them.

And if you really were into pain, let's face it, it would be hard to find a human lover who would--out of the blue--whip you on command. Would I do that, as I had told Claudia? I had been taught all my life not to hurt people. I pictured her naked ass up in the air as she waited for... pain. For a blow. I could feel lust stirring in my groin and realized I might actually enjoy that. Especially if she did. Oh my god.

Anyway, never mind the robots. That's not what the conversation was really about. Claudia's original comment had been about a vibrator "that you could tell what to do" and wouldn't go and talk about it. That was a sort of BDSM thing; she was talking about a sex slave. A submissive. "A robot lover would have to do whatever you told it to do."

But what if a human lover would do that? For years women had been trying to teach men to stop hurrying toward an orgasm--to give their partners pleasure. What if you could be completely selfish without guilt? What if you could simply take your pleasure with a partner, telling him or her--without regard for their feelings--exactly what you wanted them to do, because they had agreed to the deal? It would be almost as if your partner were a machine. Or, if submission was what you enjoyed, as if you were a machine. Either lie back and receive, or focus on giving, with abandon.

I thought of a woman I had worked with who told me that when she and her boyfriend made bets, they didn't wager money. The loser had to "pleasure" the other, as she put it, for whatever length of time had been agreed upon. That sounded like fun. I'd be betting all day long.

But why wait until a betting situation came up? You could just flip a coin and the winner could be dominant or submissive, as they chose. Or the coin could make the decision. It could be a good game... if you could find someone to play it.

I had been with a couple of women who probably would have done almost anything I could think of. There was one girl I knew only as a friend of friends. In the outdoor shower at a pool party I had found her naked and clearly drunk as a skunk. "Come on in," she said. "Save water." So I did. I was still trying to decide what I should do, here where anyone who walked by could see us, when she said, "Have you ever peed in the shower without getting caught?" I looked down and she was demonstrating--golden streams running down her legs. So I, as drunk as she, dropped my trunks and peed all over her stomach and into her bush. To my amazement, she made animal noises, dropped to her knees, and sucked me off, leftover piss and all.

We talked about getting together a couple of times, but she already had a boyfriend, and we never connected.

Or there was my college girlfriend, who read "Naked Lunch" and became obsessed with rimming my asshole. I once stopped her as she was rolling me over, and said, "My ass is dirty." She said, "I don't mind." I stopped her anyway, because I couldn't deal with it. I wouldn't stop her now.

An image of Claudia, naked and dirty with skinned knees, kept floating in front of me. What was the matter with me?

I pushed my sheets aside and started stroking my cock as I thought about another woman who had told me more than once that I could do anything I wanted to her. We were fucking every chance we got, so as far as I was concerned, I was doing anything I wanted. I don't know why I never asked her what it was she wanted me to do.

And never far from my mind was an old housemate of mine who had kept a "whips and chains" erotic novel on her mantle.

Pain. It wasn't that weird an idea. When I was summering as a camp counsellor I ran around with one of the girls' counsellors. She suggested that we do something special during our last night together for the summer. "You could slap my breasts around, and bite them." Again, I didn't; I couldn't see how that would be any fun for her, and I didn't want to hurt her. What an idiot!

I realized that I had been missing an obvious message: There are women who might sexually enjoy a measure of pain. Or who might actually enjoy doing things that most people think are "degrading." I'm sure the same is true for men.

I imagined what it would have been like to bite and slap those wonderful breasts as she said, "Harder!" I immediately came all over my stomach.

We don't really need robots. What we need is an attitude adjustment.

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The next morning I hadn't been awake for more than two minutes when I started thinking about Claudia again.

I didn't bother to check in with the temp firm I was relying on. I had just bailed out of a "management" job (lots of abuse, bad money) at a huge seafood restaurant on Berkeley's waterfront, and I still had a few bucks in the bank.

I stayed home, sucking on coffee and scribbling on a notebook at my desk while the rest of the household went off to classes or jobs. I was trying to design a sex game.

I was also in the grip of a free-enterprise spasm. I figured that if I could actually produce a fun but dirty game, Berkeley would be the place to finance and sell it.

At first I focused on other games. Dice? Cards? Maybe a board--but with different sex acts instead of real-estate properties.

I already had the name of the game: "Robot Lover."

I wanted it to be erotic, fun for both the "human" and the "robot," and safe for everybody. What can I say? I'm a romantic.

Robot Lover, as I saw it, should somehow incorporate Asimov's laws of robotics, but I realized immediately that I might be violating copyrights. Even if I worded the "laws" in such a way that Sci-Fi nerds would recognize them, it might still be a legal problem. I would ask somebody, and worry about that part later.

Whoever was the "human" could give orders and focus only on herself or himself. The human could demand anything from a foot massage to... what? A rim-job? Anal? And it could be giving or getting. You could demand a blow job or a cup of tea, as you lay back taking your pleasure with no regard for the needs or desires of the "robot," for the time allotted by the dice.

The robot could not knowingly hurt the human except on request, and could refuse to do anything dangerous or permanently damaging to either party, like drawing blood. Other than that, though, for the time allotted, the robot took orders.

I thought for a while about whether I would want to be the robot. How many people would want to be a sex slave? The robot had to be given the very real freedom to do whatever he or she was told to do, without fear of judgement afterward. Being the robot might involve doing tiring or painful or even ugly things.

Of course some people, on a deep level, enjoyed being degraded. And some, even dominant types, enjoyed giving up the power and being abused. But what if you didn't? A lot of people would refuse to play the game if being the robot might mean your first mouthful of cum, or a whipping.

Asimov's laws weren't much use. They didn't cover robot embarrassment or anger, because robots don't have emotions. The three laws didn't even cover purposeful damage to the robot. What to do?

The robot would have to be able to say "No" at any time. And not only that, maybe a rule could reverse the roles of human and robot for a short time as part of every game. Maybe at the whim of the robot.... No, the rules could prevent the same two people from playing the same roles more than... once? Let's say twice, in case you have two people who really like it the way it is.

No, no. Too complicated. I crossed out the whole paragraph.

The robot could say "no" at any time, and refuse to be the robot for more than one game in a row, unless he or she liked it.... And even if you did come up with a happy combination, the roles of human and robot would be decided by another coin toss after three games. The whole point was learning a different point of view.

Really? That was the point?

I carried the notebook down to the living room and tossed it on the couch, then went into the kitchen and made myself a breakfast sandwich, which is exactly the same as a lunch sandwich.

When I carried my plate back into the living room, I found Claudia standing by the couch in an oversized white T-shirt. She had picked up the notebook and was reading.

I was embarrassed. I had thought I was alone, and there was a lot of specific language on those pages. I was also very conscious that I was wearing my bathrobe and nothing else.

"Good morning," I said. "Please feel free to read my notebook."

"Robot Lover?" she said. I couldn't read her expression. She had bed-head, but on her it looked cute. I decided to brazen it out.

"Yes," I said. "I was thinking of it as a role-playing thing, and then I thought maybe it could be turned into an actual game. You know, like in a store."

"Hmnn," she said, and looked down at my ragged scribbles again.

"Do you want a cup of coffee?" I asked. "It's made."

"Sure," she said.

"How do you--"

"Black."

Thinking once again that "Claud" wasn't much for chit-chat, I poured her a cup and re-tied my robe, then went back. She had moved onto the couch.

"I thought I had the house to myself," I said.

"So did I," she said, and glanced at my crotch. I wondered what she might have seen before I fixed the robe.

She still had the notebook in front of her, but she had tucked one leg under her, and although I could see her thighs--girls have to know that boys are going to peek--I couldn't decide if she was wearing undies or not. She settled the question when I gave her the coffee. She turned to put it on the end table, completely exposing her crotch. She wasn't wearing anything but that T-shirt. She had a luxuriant bush, darker than her hair.

I started saying something about how odd it was that we were both home at the same time on a weekday morning, but Claudia really had no small talk.

"I don't get this," she said. "Why are you doing this?"

"I'm-- It's like what we were talking about last night: a robot lover, but with--"

"No, no. I see that," she said, "but what do Asimov's rules have to do with this game?

"Well, that's a good question. I'm having trouble translating those rules to... uh--"

"People."

"Yes, exactly, and--"

"It looks to me like all you really need is some rules and a coin," she said.

And there it was. She was quicker than me.

"I was trying to figure out how to make a game out of it," I said. "Something you could sell in adult book stores, maybe head shops."

She skimmed the notes again.

"I get it. You could still make a novelty sort of thing out of this," she said. "You could print the rules up at whatever length you need, maybe in a booklet, and then include a plastic coin with a robot on one side and a human on the other."

"Yes!" I said. "Or a spinner with an arrow on it, or--"

"Or a plastic coin," she said.