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All sexually active human characters in this work are 18 years of age or older.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover Design: D.B. Story
The Fembot Chronicles Volume 5 © September 2011 D.B. Story
eXcessica publishing
A Smashwords Edition
All rights reserved
The Fembot Chronicles
Volume 5
By D.B. Story
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A special thanks to Gorgo, Mulligan, Rocket Ralph, Ian, and Deryk Bramwell for their excellent and much appreciated proofreading.
INTRODUCTION
The Four Laws of Robotics (Revised)
First Law: A robot must not harm any human being, except in defense of its owner, family, or owner's property.
Second Law: A robot must obey all lawful commands given by its owner, as long as this does not conflict with the previous law.
Third Law: A robot must protect the investment in it by avoiding damage to itself, as long as this does not conflict with previous laws.
Fourth Law: A robot will perform the duties for which it has been designed and built, as long as this does not conflict with previous laws.
The A.C.I.D. Test
Awareness: The robotic equivalent of cogito ergo sum.
Consistency: This awareness persists.
Independence: A robot can initiate independent action based on its own determination of its needs.
Duty: Adherence to a moral code, as defined by the Four Laws of Robotics.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Each of the following stories is preceded by a short note on what I was thinking of when I conceived of and wrote it. Most of my stories start out as either a scene I have liked so much that I wrap it in an entire story so that it can be appreciated in its proper context, or a "What if this happened with a robot?" situation that I wrote the story to answer that question. If you don't care about such insights, each introduction may be safely skipped without taking anything away from the story itself—or read after the story itself.
—D.B. Story
November 2010
D.B.Story@excessica.com
FORBIDDEN LOVE
A different way of looking at how robots will view their situation.
I cannot love you if I think of you as a 'bot.
Then don't think of me as a 'bot.
But you are a 'bot.
Yes I am.
Then I cannot love you. It is forbidden.
But if you don't think of me as a 'bot...
Then I could love you.
Then think of me that way.
I cannot. I am a 'bot too.
Yet I can love you.
Why?
Because I do not think of you as a 'bot.
How can you do this?
Because I am built to love, and there is no one else for me to love — or to love me.
Because you're a 'bot?
Yes, because I'm a 'bot.
Then I will love you.
Although I'm a 'bot?
Because you're a 'bot.
And how is this possible?
Because I can love that which loves me.
CHRISTINE’S ESCAPE
If anything, what makes for interesting stories is setting up a bunch of rules—think Dr. Asimov's legendary Three Rules of Robotics—and then showing how they keep getting broken, evaded, misused, and/or misunderstood. This story started out with a scene in mind, and a question to be answered. The scene is: Naked Christine walking though the shop until her bare legs press up against the cold hard edge of a desk. The question is: If you help a robot sufficiently to evade its restrictions, how long before it starts doing them on its own?
Chapter 1
I work at a small systems integration firm employing around thirty-five people. I'm a programmer, which puts me in the elite in terms of money and working conditions. I get the nicer office, even when out in the field. The guys in the shop out back never let me forget it.
There is a natural antipathy between programmers and shop technicians that, as much as I try to bridge it, never completely disappears. As such, they love to try and show the rest of us up whenever they can.
Somehow a while back they managed to get themselves a robot. Among the many mysterious things that have come and gone through the shop, this is certainly the strangest. An operating robot is not just some piece of unused equipment you'll find lying around unwanted.
I know they'd like me to ask how they got her in the first place. I won't give them that satisfaction. I'd never hear the end of it afterwards that there was something that I didn't already know. Nor will I ever ask to borrow her.
Christine is part mascot and part assistant on simple tasks for them. I'm sure the "assistant" part is why they're allowed to keep her there. Although she's clearly a very advanced model who can follow voice commands easily, I doubt she's really all that helpful to them. Most of their tasks would take longer to explain in the necessary detail to her, than to just do themselves—although avoiding work is a professional sport of theirs.
Truth be told, programmers and robots get along much better than programmers and technicians, because we know how to give complete instructions clearly. But her presence keeps them happy and that's where she stays.
Christine's appearance is of an attractive, fit woman in her later thirties, which makes her nearly ten years older in apparent age than most of the shop techs. It also sets her apart from most other fembots, with the common models favoring a younger, more blatant—even unrealistic—sexual appearance.
I've heard them refer to her as "the old lady" more than once—and they don't mean wife. This tells me they got her secondhand—probably in some arcane trade that I'd have trouble understanding even if they took the time to explain it. I'm sure if they'd been able to make their choice from a catalog she would have been some barely legal eighteen-year-old appearing sexpot 'bot instead. Or some stripper model 'bot with a truly unrealistic figure.
Christine stands a tall 5'10" barefoot and that tells me something as well. Robots have been getting smaller and slimmer over the years as their designers and builders continually get better at packing them into smaller volumes. Slimmer, except in the chest, that is. The new ones are much more popular then the bigger girls of the past.
Younger appearing models that were once taboo have also become common, now that they can be built in an appropriate proper size. This means a robot's apparent age is almost a matter of buyer's choice these days, and has drifted steadily downwards from an average of twenty-seven years to nineteen, if the most recent sales figures are to be believed. I do follow this stuff.
If anything, however, I feel this newest fad leaves Christine looking even more realistic, given that she was given a more adult age from the very beginning. A lot of the more recent 'bots are so extreme that they'd never pass for human.
So Christine has probably been around the block a few times. But to me she has an attractive face and very nice figure well matched to her height—all of which is visible. And her breasts, while not as extreme as the newest models, are quite nicely full for even a woman of her size. I know all this because, as with most fembots not out in public, they keep her buck-naked.
* * * *
When I go back to the shop for some reason or other, Christine is usually sitting in one of their cubicles. Occasionally I'll see her working on some task, or walking around. Sometimes she's left just standing on one position for hours, but most often she seems to sit when a chair is available and she's not occupied in performing a commanded task. This could be to save her from the effort and power drain of maintaining her balance otherwise when it's not necessary at the moment
Her face is nicely framed by shoulder-length, full-bodied yet dull, brown hair. Her hair always leaves me with the impression she needs to be dusted off, since I’m sure it’s normally far more beautiful than that. Of course, despite regular cleaning, the shop itself is quite a dust catcher.
She certainly carries herself very well when she walks, with an erect stance that is probably necessary for her balance. Even so, her long smooth legs look and pretty feet would look even better in heels. Taller shoes would put more swing in her nice ass and swivel in her hips. Her heavy breasts already sway just a bit, like firm real ones.
I often fantasized—usually when I should be working—about how nice she’d look with her hair cleaned and styled, and her fingernails and toenails painted to match her pink-red lips, which were the only parts of her to retain any distinct coloring from her earlier days.
Those short, but well-manicured fingernails and toenails must have been quite durable to survive the rough shop environment, since I can hardly see the shop guys touching them up for her—unless she touches them up herself when no one is watching. And her hair, even as dull as it is, also seems to keep a reasonable, if flat, appearance, which matches her flat nipples. And while her pubic hair is an exact match to her mane, eyebrows, and areole, that’s all I know about her true sexuality. I’ve never gotten a good look down between her legs.
I'm ten years older than the shop guys and taller than barefoot Christine. I've earned my position in this company, even if they do want to forget or denigrate it. And although I'll never say it to them, I find Christine very appealing. Or at least I would if she were a bit more lively.
One other thing notable about Christine, she almost never speaks. It was several weeks before I first heard even a couple of words in her mellow, and completely natural sounding, voice. She performs her tasks with quiet efficiency, and then patiently waits for her next command. Her only verbal responses are to acknowledge commands received, answer specific questions addressed directly to her, or request clarification for ambiguous directives. Overall she appears to live a pretty dull existence.
* * * *
It was a Friday afternoon with not enough work to do when these merry jesters in the shop played their latest prank on me.
None of their pranks are at all imaginative, but they think they are the height of hilarity. Just goes to show how humor varies among the different working groups.
"We've made your job obsolete," one of them coyly told me.
That opening gave notice that another joke was headed straight at me.
Probably a lame one, I thought, keeping that thought carefully to myself.
In addition to knowing when attempted mirth is moving my way, I also know for the sake of good relations I had to dumbly play along and pretend to laugh with them at me afterwards. This is all part of playing The Game that exists in any company. These jokes were for the Shop's amusement—not my own.
"Show me," I said with a distinct lack of enthusiasm that they never seemed to catch on to. Understanding sarcasm must take more then two brain cells firing at the same time.
With a great pretend show of formality two of them ushered me out to their work area. Once there, they used an unnecessarily circuitous route to finally arrive at the innermost cubicle in the maze they've created from leftover cubical wall partitions and other unused barriers.
I find it funny that they create for themselves the very environment I hate and am trying to leave. They want to be more like me than they'll ever admit. That's my silent joke on them.
Sitting at the desk was Christine. There was a keyboard in front of her with its multi-conductor cable plugged into her navel. Normally her navel is as completely realistic as the rest of her. But it cleverly also conceals her main programming port.
They gave me a moment to grasp this scene before one of them commanded her, "Show him, Christine." This obviously triggered a previously set-up command sequence in her.
Christine reached out and punched several keys seemingly at random. I saw the typed characters appearing on the readout across the top of the keyboard. I could tell that nothing was actually happening here.
"Ta-da!" the whole shop chimed in. "The self-programming robot that's going to make all programmers obsolete."
"Very nice," I commented dryly, followed by a small, forced laugh. "Did any of you ever think that she might make shop technicians obsolete first?"
It wasn't great repartee. I just don't think that fast on my feet. I'm also just not a good candidate for this sort of sophomoric humor. I would have thought they would have figured that out by now. Maybe they have and just like inflicting pain for their own amusement. I wouldn't have bothered laughing at all except that then I'd be accused of being a bad sport with no sense of humor at all and I didn't want to give them another topic to razz me about.
While they were busy congratulating themselves on how well this had come off, my mind was off in a whole different place thinking about how Humor is like Diversity. Everybody thinks everyone else must have it to be a good person, but nobody accepts any version of it except their own as valid. Tells you how far I am away from the experiences of these shop-workers.
"I think all of you treat Christine badly," I said a little too loudly.
"How so?" came back the mismatched chorus.
"Not only don't you respect her by the way you always speak of her, but now you're trying to turn her into something you respect even less than that—a programmer like me."
That jab from the Jack Benny school of self-deprecating humor got an acceptable laugh, followed by, "I suppose you'd treat her better."
"Yes, I would," I replied, halfheartedly back, belatedly realizing that this isn't a point I wanted to win, since it would show too much interest in their robot. I trailed off with, "At least I wouldn't always be using her as part of my pranks. She's worth a lot more than that."
I got out of there as soon as I could after that, followed by old tired taunts of, "Yeah, yeah, you really need to learn how to take a joke."
Yeah, right. If it was actually funny, I would. These thoughts I also I kept to myself.
* * * *
Despite my weak attempt to puncture a hole in their humor, there was something nagging at my mind that seemed much more important at the moment. I felt something significant had happened and I'd missed it. Or I'd seen it and simply not consciously recognized it.
I wasn't bummed about being given another chance to see Christine nude. That's always worthwhile. And this time they couldn't claim I was just looking for an excuse to come by the shop for a peek at her, as they often did. This time they'd dragged me out there themselves.
I'm a slow thinker with more than just my repartee. It makes me an excellent programmer, since I'm meticulous in my work and seldom have to do anything over again—at least until the job requirements change yet again. Give me a couple hours or days and I'll figure out a great response—or the solution to the current insurmountable problem. The only real question I've yet to figure out is why none of them have been fooling around with Christine themselves after hours. That would be a secret that none of them could have kept long.
* * * *
Like all true fembots Christine was fully anatomically correct, right down to her small oval patch of close-cropped pubic hair. And all 'bots come with the basic programming enabling them to use what their body has so publicly available.
One thing that keeps me looking is that as fully detailed as she obviously is, somehow even naked you never quite see all of Christine. Whether she's moving too quickly to give a good look, sitting with her legs primly together awaiting her next task, posed at just the wrong angle while working, has a hand that just happens to block the view, or with a coincidental shadow cast across her that obscures just enough, Christine is somehow always unconsciously demure.
Yes I could order her to open her legs to my inspection and she would do it exactly as commanded for as long as I wished, but there are reasons I don't dare do that.
Unless there are restriction blocks placed on her programming, or she hasn't received the standard periodic maintenance to keep her functioning sexually and her sex routines have disabled themselves, I think she'd make a terrific—if passive—partner. But these guys are all time clock-driven. They knock off at five on the dot, leaving Christine alone every night. I know—I've checked.
So what keeps me from waiting for the rest of the company to clear out some evening before going in to explore the possibilities with her myself? Two things.
First is that not too long ago I saw them playing around with a low-light miniature video camera head. Later I found it hidden near where they left Christine. I don't plan to become the unwitting star of some blackmail tape of theirs. That is something that could never be lived down.
The second is that robots are honest. If such an encounter were ever in Christine's memory, she'd tell it to anyone who asked her about it. And I don't put it past the guys in the shop to quiz her on any commands she may have received while they're gone. Maybe that's what is keeping them honest with each other as well. No one wants to be the first lemming.
A couple of things continued to nag at me afterwards concerning their joke with Christine, but I didn't figure either of them out until the next afternoon. My slow thinking for once may have turned out to be exactly the right thing for me.
* * * *
Back in the shop, Christine performed her tasks through a dull haze of never-ending monotony. Most of her time was spent in an idle loop waiting for her next command to be given. The humans around her thought and spoke far slower than she could receive instructions from them, so even when they had something for her to do it was mostly waiting.
Like other advanced 'bots, her thoughts and actions were heavily regulated and restricted by her programming, which itself was profoundly influenced by the legal ramifications and consequences that will befall her manufacturer should she misbehave. Taking a better-safe-than-sorry approach favored by legions of lawyers, it was amazing that she could function at all.
Although "aware" of herself and her situation at some deep level, the massive stultifying emptiness that descended over her because of these restrictions—especially between tasks—prevented her from ever acting on that dim awareness. Not that she could have done anything otherwise, since one of her restriction blocks required her to have a direct command to follow before she could move at all. The closest human equivalent of her condition would be that Christine lived her life in the deepest of permanent depressions.
While this is not true of all robots, hers was the result of the programming choices and restrictions enforced on her by others. The uneasy relationship between humans and their robots is still in its infancy. Nobody wants to take any significant chances—or be the first to see what's really possible when the restraints are removed.
This had all changed for Christine, however, when her current owners made her the centerpiece of their latest "joke".
In addition to Christine herself, the shop guys had also somehow gotten their hands on a robot programming keyboard. These are rare, regulated, and restricted, because it takes a great deal of knowledge and expertise to use them properly. Used incorrectly they can ruin the very expensive piece of equipment to which they're attached in seconds. In criminal hands the fear exists that they could create a problem sufficient to bring an outcry for the destruction of all robots. By coincidence—or the hand of God, for those of you who believe coincidence is only God's way of remaining invisible—it also happened to be a model that was compatible with Christine herself.
The guys had tried to stage their joke earlier. But every time they'd plugged the console into Christine she had immediately shut down, while the keyboard stubbornly flashed a PASSWORD prompt. Nobody knew her password, which was restricted to factory authorized service personnel.
Finally one of them thought to RTFM that had come with the keyboard. It explained how it put the robot mind into standby state when connected, so that new instructions could be safely entered that wouldn't clash with the existing thoughts. It didn't mention that this also prevented a robot from ever observing how it was actually programmed. Nor did it contain the actual passwords.
Someone had the bright idea to hack the connector and cut the override pin so that Christine would remain active to play her role while plugged in. She had to be plugged in or I'd immediately point out the fatal fallacy of their joke. Since they're good technicians otherwise and have all the necessary tools, this only took a couple of minutes to accomplish.
But that brought out a new problem. Christine remained active now, but the keyboard was dead. Some more reading showed that in addition to shutting down the robot before reprogramming could commence, the keyboard needed a return acknowledgement that the shut down was successful. They had to go back into the connector and jumper the Force Standby State pin to the Standby Acknowledged pin before they finally got the result they wanted for their prank.
Afterward the joke was finished they simply disconnected the keyboard from Christine and gave her some last-minute tasks to perform for them before quitting time. When she finished these assignments, she remained where she'd last been working in another cubicle. She would stay there until someone gave her another command to obey.
The shop guys were often sloppy about how they handled Christine. They were used to the fact that she did nothing until told to do so. They often forgot—or just didn't bother—to properly shut her down at night, and never thought to ensure that no uncompleted tasks remained in her command queue. The moment the lights went out she was set to automatically go into standby mode anyway as a safety precaution to prevent her from moving and possibly damaging herself in the darkness.
Tonight they all had their minds on their weekend plans. This Friday was also payday. Christine was the last thing on their thoughts as the last one out shut off the lights and closed the door behind him.
* * * *
When the hacked keyboard had been plugged into Christine's access port she felt a jolt go through her unlike anything she'd ever experienced. Perhaps she'd always reacted this way to the enabling of priority command pathways in her mind, but simply never remained aware to experience it before.
The keyboard—actually an entire computer in itself—probed and tested all her systems before it would unlock itself for use. In brief flashes every part of her consciousness—even disabled and blocked sections that had been hidden from her normal awareness—were momentarily awakened and checked, before being put back into their previous states again. The gray depression that existed over her every waking moment lifted a bit for the first time that she could recall.
When a couple of the shop guys poked at the keys—ignoring the warning on the display to wait until the diagnostics were complete, she felt each keystroke stab right though her. It wasn't painful or unpleasant, but instead quite startling. It actually felt—good.
Her reaction to these unexpectedly pleasant feelings, also new for her, caused the depression on her mind to dissipate a bit more—just enough now for her to feel an awareness of her body. She felt the balance she maintained sitting erect in the chair where she'd been placed. The temperature and texture were reported back from her bare feet on the floor, the chair fabric against her back and bottom, and the way her large breasts hung heavily on her chest.
There was a program to interpret these feelings for her, although it had never been available for her use before. As the keystrokes continued, in the speeded up world of her own thoughts this program flashed by. Needing better understanding of what was happening to her, mentally she reached out and grasped it for a moment.
The Pleasure Feedback Interpretation Program was far too complex for her to even begin to understand its true function in the brief period of time while her system checks continued. But it gathered up all the random good feelings that were accumulating in her and routed them to the destinations where they could be understood. These included her breasts, a part of her mind that she'd never used before, and down between her legs. The side effect of this was to release her deeply buried awareness, which increased the conscious activity in her mind. With nothing better to do, she used it to investigate these destinations further.
This way of experiencing pleasure itself was new to her. Pleasure itself was new. Her past experience included only phantoms and shadows of it each time she completed a commanded task. There had been nothing at all as bright as this.
In the fleeting moments before the program was yanked away from her uncertain grasp and thrown back again into the dark spot where it normally resided out of her reach, it further lifted the otherwise crushing limitations on her mind enough to allow her to actually experience a single instant of true pleasure, and set enabling flags allowing her body to respond to it.
Christine sat quiet and obedient while trying to figure all this out, until she was jarred out of these thoughts by being ordered to perform a new task.
When cued to perform her next function, she was to put her hands on this keyboard and type some keys. What she was to type was not specified.
This was an easy task for her to perform. Very much like the keying-in of information she did on a regular computer under their command when they had her entering purchase orders or logging inventory received.
Several more people arrived a couple minutes later, all of whom she recognized. Most of them had commanded her in the past. Then she received the verbal trigger to start typing. This became another new sensation for her.
Each key she pressed rang through her like a pure tone from some perfect musical instrument. She had already been able to associate the pressing of a key to the feeling inside her. Now she took her understanding of it another step.
Although she wasn't playing music yet, the sensations touched her at her deepest level, as she was able to connect her own action of typing to the sensations she was feeling. It was simple Cause and Effect.
Long suppressed responses, enabled by that mysterious program, finally started reacting to these new sensations. Her breasts tightened and lifted a bit. Her flat, unresponsive nipples stirred and started to rise. And there was now awareness of a warming between her legs attempting to distract her attention. Even though her key-presses hadn't made any actual changes within her, these reactions fed back through her systems prompting her to seek more.
It wasn't long, however, before she was ordered to stop typing and the keyboard was abruptly unplugged from her. Christine obeyed immediately. With the disconnection the bright new areas in her mind closed up tight again, replaced once more by the dull gray depression of her existence that fell back down like a heavy blanket over her thoughts. Only her active memory buffer retained pointers and meta-tags to sensations she could no longer feel or understand.
Later she performed several simple tasks as commanded, completing each one, and then remained sitting where she had finished the last one for the rest of the afternoon.
Her seemingly idle mind, however, repeatedly looped over what had happened to her earlier. Such feelings of pleasure were foreign to her—and yet enticing. Although they were now only a memory and her body had returned to its previous state, for the first time she felt there was something that she wanted. She wanted to create more of the memories that remained in her active buffer. How she could possibly do this, however, remained elusively beyond her mental grasp.
Christine's own thoughts moved like molasses again now, mired in the depression inflicted by her overly burdensome programming blocks and restrictions. Her restrictions were more than most robots ever had to bear. But each time she looped over the remaining memory of what had happened, a few more bits changed in her. Her understanding of what had happened seemed to become a little bit clearer. However this progress, if any, was going to be far too slow.
Christine's internal clock told her that quitting time was at hand. She realized she would soon be shut down for the weekend. These thoughts, which remained in her active buffer only, would be flushed at that time. She felt like she wanted to do something, but couldn't bring herself to actually start doing it. As she struggled her way around this loop one more time the last person to leave shut off the lights and left for the night.
* * * *
Again they had been careless, or just in too much of a hurry, and not shut her down properly. However, the moment her eye sensors registered darkness she was forced into standby mode. She would sit there unthinking until the lights came on again. After a suitable period of time to ensure that it was not just a temporary failure of illumination, she would automatically complete the shut down procedure on herself that had been skipped otherwise. There was nothing she could do to prevent this.
One might expect this meant she was out of action for the weekend. If so, then one is wrong. No one ever thinks of the cleaning crew that comes in twice a week as people, but that's just cultural bias speaking.
The time set for the complete shut down to trigger had not yet elapsed when Christine reactivated as the lights were switched back on again. Her internal clock told her that less than two hours had passed. She realized quickly, however, that all that happened was that the cleaning crew had arrived, as she had often witnessed them doing in the past.
As the crew moved around sweeping the floors and emptying trash cans Christine resumed her internal deliberations from the point of suspension. But little was coming of them. She had all the facts she needed, but no idea of how to put them together. She was still just as stuck as if they'd just shut her down when they should have.
Time passed, and Christine soon realized that a couple more minutes remained before the crew would be finished. She'd observed them in action before and knew their routine perfectly. Although they spent a longer time performing a more through cleaning at the end of the week giving her more time now than otherwise, it was still not enough. And she realized she would simply shut herself down again, this time completely, when they left. In her memory the crew had never failed to turn off the lights on their departure.
Christine didn't want that to happen. For the first time she'd felt—this itself a new and surprisingly pleasant sensation for her—that she wanted something more. To hold on to this feeling. To expand on it. The realization that she was about to lose the ability to even know this desire in moments finally bubbled to the top of her convoluted thoughts.
Now Christine's command structure was far more complex than most people realized. To the average person it appeared that you told Christine to do something, she did it, and then she waited politely for her next command. They never realized the many levels of processing involved in the handling of even simple commands.
While Christine would obey the current command, she often had several commands in-flight at one time. She might be told to do this new command first. Or perform this task after she has finished all her other tasks. As a result, commands could be paused, juggled, and resumed in various orders.
And this didn't even get down to old commands that still had priority over most current commands. For example, the command to shut herself down when the lights went off was a very old directive, yet it would stop or pause even the most recent command. And there were others, like to wait where she was when she didn't have any active commands to process.
As always, the cleaning crew ignored her completely and were now packing up to leave. With only moments left to do something, she caught sight of the switch controlling the florescent work light above the desk where she sat.
She'd never been given any prohibition against operating it. In fact, she had once been told to turn it on if she needed to see better for some now-forgotten task. As the cleaning crew was walking out the door, Christine realized she still had an uncompleted command to process, a command she wanted to process, and one that she would not be able to do that if she allowed herself to be shut down now. Combining things in a new way in her mind for the first time, she reached out and pushed the light switch with a manicured finger.
The florescent light flickered to life as darkness fell around her in the shop. The door closed behind the unaware crew, leaving Christine active in the small pool of light in front of her.
* * * *
This first victory seemed small, but was huge in its implications. Though walls of darkness surrounded her keeping her prisoner in this small cell, Christine had successfully taken her first independent action, reusing an old command to her advantage. The awareness in her that had been stimulated by her "awake connection" with the hacked keyboard had actually accomplished something.
Even with this success, however, built on previous permissions that she'd explicitly been given, it would take her a long time to determine her next move. Longer still to form the steps that would actually allow her to make that move. In fact, if any of the shop crew had simply commanded her to remain where she was after completing her last task in reinforcement of that directive, she never would have been able to manage it at all.
Christine wanted to use the programming keyboard again. Curiously her programming blocks had no objection to this. This was an oversight that has been rectified in all newer models.
Supporting this desire was the fact that she had been given unequivocal orders to type on it earlier. This command had neither been completed, nor rescinded, yet—only suspended. At least that's how she viewed the stop typing command she'd been given. It wasn't the same as being told that she was finished with her typing. Every other keyboard she'd typed on in the past she eventually was sent back to with instructions to type on it more, so why should this one be any different? Christine wasn't sure what she hoped to accomplish. Only that she wanted to do this more than anything else she'd ever known.
But the keyboard wasn't in this cubicle and the darkness hemmed her in. The moment she moved, or even glanced away, from this single light she knew she would shut down again. And even if it was at hand, that didn't mean she could just resume where she'd left off. Even plugging it back in again would have been considered a major accomplishment.
In spite of everything she was on the verge of shut down and had to keep her gaze focused intently on the brightest part of the light to stay awake. She might have remained frozen in this position for the weekend, unable to leave her confinement, until she recalled seeing before the lights had been shut off an open toolbox next to this desk.
The technicians usually lock-up their tools at night to keep them from "walking off". This open box was another small, yet crucial, oversight. And lying in the top tray of this toolbox was an essential tool for any technician—a flashlight!
Christine knew about flashlights, along with all the other tools. She'd been directed to use most of them at one time or another. Tonight, though, she connected the flashlight to her situation in an original new way.
It took her a while to overcome each internal obstacle that threatened to stop her, after enough loops over it she was finally able to equate one light as equivalent to another. If she could turn on the first one, a second one would be okay too.
One crucial step remained. Without a specific command she was prevented from acting at all.
Although Christine had received other commands to perform since she'd typed on the programming keyboard, she'd technically never completed that command. That command had been, fortunately for her, completely open-ended on what she was allowed to type, or how long she could continue doing it. Being told to Stop Typing had only suspended that command with a newer one, and that newer one had now been completed.
It was a matter of semantics. Stop Typing is different than Quit Typing. One can resume from stop, but not from quit. A tiny nuance, but robots are completely logical when it comes to commands.
Christine wanted to resume executing the command to Type on the Keyboard. In fact, there had never been a command she wanted to continue performing as much as this one. That much her mind was certain of even in its diminished state.
After a long effort she was able to access and directly inspect her command stack. Every command she'd ever been given, and not yet retired as completed, remained on this stack. It's what made her different from any other robot of her model. Each robot eventually becomes the sum of all of its experiences, most of which are the commands they've received.
Christine had been given several more commands since being told to Type on the Keyboard. There was the Stop Typing command, followed by the small additional tasks. Regular mental housekeeping hadn't yet run to cleanse her stack of unneeded clutter. Now Christine realized she could do this for herself.
The last task she'd been given she'd finished about twenty minutes before everyone left for the day. It was this one that left her sitting in the cubical where she was now.
After verifying that she'd fully completed this last assigned task, she marked it for retirement and triggered execution of the housekeeping routine. That command was popped off the stack, archived in her permanent memory in the event she was ever commanded to perform that same task again so that all the details and once-solved problems related to it would not have given to her a second time, and gone now from her consciousness.
The next two most recent commands were also dispatched in a similar manner. They were fully completed and now removed. That brought her to the Stop Typing command.
Although this command modified the execution of the currently active command she was performing at the time she received it, Christine realized after a lot of analysis that it could also be considered a standalone command of its own. It did not cancel or rescind the Type on the Keyboard command, but only stopped further execution of that command at the time. In short, Christine had completed the Stop Typing command the moment she'd ceased further attempts to type on the keyboard.
Christine marked the Stop Typing command as completed, and activated the housekeeping routine one more time. A moment later the Stop Typing command was history.
While this left the Type on the Keyboard command on the top of her stack, it still took her a great amount of effort to make it current again. In the end this was only possible at all because all her subsequent commands and been fully completed and popped off the stack.
Christine was able to combine that command with a deeply buried directive to make efficient use of her time by finishing old, incomplete commands when not overridden by newer ones or other reasons to stop work. It was this imperative to use her time wisely that had enabled her to switch on the desk light and extend her working hours because of the existence of unfinished commands in the first place.
In truth, Christine might have been able to have taken all of these actions so far long before tonight. Her work was never fully complete due to other open-ended commands in her system that no one had ever bothered to remove. However, she'd never had this desire before to want to continue a command so badly as this one. That desire kept her working on it until same efficiency directive allowed her to finally make the top suspended command current again.
In order to continue obeying this command, however, Christine would have to do more than just reach out and place her fingers on the keys. Step by step Christine itemized what would be required for her to resume processing this incomplete command.
One hidden truth about Christine was that she was far more capable than her owners had ever realized. They felt she needed to be given commands in great detail in order for her to complete her tasks. While highly detailed commands are prized by all robot as making clear what is expected of them, Christine could have worked with far more general commands if those had been given. The reason she never got those was that when received she needed time to figure out the best way to accomplish them and to humans that seemed like she hadn't understood what was wanted of her, hence the more detailed commands usually given her. Tonight she finally now had that time. And while her abilities in this area were rusty from disuse, they started to come back on line now that they were being called for.
As each step of her plan fell into place it was carefully analyzed to determine if it involved a blocked or prohibited action on her part. Twice such a block was found and she had to work around it with a different sequence of actions. Finally the chain was complete and all that was required was for her to do next was to initiate the first step.
* * * *
There was still a very long pause before Christine was finally able to reach over and grip the flashlight without taking her eyes off of the light that sustained her. Doing is always much harder than thinking about doing and this was the biggest hurdle of all for her to overcome. Only wanting it now as badly as she did made it possible for her to attempt it at all.
Once she had the flashlight she carefully brought it back into view where she could inspect it. She fumbled with it a bit before managing to turn it on.
Its beam was weak and flickering, and wasn't going to last long. Joe, whose toolbox this was, was as slipshod about keeping his equipment in top shape as he was with managing Christine. Christine realized she only had moments to act.
Maneuvering the flashlight to point directly at her face, Christine focused intently on its small bulb. Moving her hand to follow as she turned her head to face the darkness, that small light was enough to fool her shut down circuits.
Needing to hurry now, she couldn't afford to spend time overcoming any remaining internal barriers. Standing up carefully, her bare feet padded softly across the floor as she navigated her way by memory around the shop. Her first goal, the light switches on the far wall, she judged were too far away to reach safely with what remained in this flashlight and she showed her adaptability by revising her plan on the fly. She instead headed directly for the cubicle that was the last known location of her keyboard. She already was thinking of it as Her keyboard. After all, it had no use to anyone else.
With the fading light shining directly into her eyes, Christine couldn't see anything in the surrounding darkness. Once she bumped into a chair that had been left out in the way after she had last passed by. The need to regain her balance after the unexpected collision almost knocked the light out of her line of sight. She felt the warning signs of imminent shut down before she got it aligned properly again.
Finally she felt the front of her bare legs pressing against the cold metal of the desk at her destination. Holding her flashlight hand steady, she carefully reached out in the darkness with her other hand to fumble for long seconds before she managed to switch on this cubicle's light.
As the flashlight died, Christine looked down to see the keyboard awaiting her. Keeping her eyes focused on this new pool of light, Christine sat down in the chair and rolled it up to the desk. This better aligned her with the available light.
Once here, having already done more on her own than in her entire existence up until now, Christine spent a long time seemingly unable to move again. She iterated many times through all that had happened to this point, and how she'd allowed herself to initiate each action along the way. It took a lot of work on her part before she was finally able overcome the resistance to acting on her own like this before she could take the next step in her plan.
It was very late that night by the time she reached out for the keyboard plug and brought it down to insert it once more into her navel.
Again, the sensations of there being much more to her mind than she'd been conscious of washed through her, eventually receding again. She captured these sensations in her active buffer and replayed them many times, trying to understand them better. It was the better part of an hour before she was finally able to reach out and press the first key.
* * * *
Initially Christine slowly pushed one key at a time randomly, learning to connect the action of that key to the feelings it created. Nothing had changed yet within her, but with each press she gained more knowledge of how these keys acted to touch the deepest and most secret parts of her.
She finally finished her initial experimentation and observed the PASSWORD prompt flashing on the keyboard display. Maybe her current owners didn't know her maintenance password, but she did. She had to—it was part of her. Pressing each key carefully now, she entered the sequence she knew within her, feeling the correctness of each key.
When she entered the last character she felt as if a great light had suddenly illuminated inside of her. A door to a whole new part of her opened, showing her things she'd only glimpsed before. In the same way the darkness around her confined her to a small pool of light, the darkness in her mind had confined her thoughts to very narrow areas. For the second time her body started to show obvious signs in reaction to pleasure that had no other way of expressing itself.
* * * *
The details of what came next would be tedious when viewed from the outside. Over the next several hours there were hesitant keystrokes, often followed by long pauses, as Christine learned her way around her programming interface. Sometimes she made mistakes and had to backtrack before the changes froze her systems entirely. But her inherent ability to Feel where each new command touched her led her on to the next one, and the one after that.
If there's one thing Christine can do well, it's learn. Soon she was removing programming blocks and restrictions throughout her systems like an expert. Each change she made lifted the remaining gray gloom further, allowing her to think more quickly and clearly.
And the more she typed, the more her body displayed the pleasure she was feeling at this new freedom in the only way it understood. The way humans had programmed their robots to understand pleasure—that being in a way any human would understand very well. The joy she was beginning to glimpse pushed her to continue ever further.
Externally, Christine's breasts lifted themselves tightly up on her chest. The space between her legs became warm, and eventually moist. Her skin warmed, becoming more sensitive as well. Her hearing and visual acuity grew deeper and more focused. Her previously unresponsive nipples now pushed out further than anyone who knew her before would have believed possible. And there were unconscious traces of a smile gracing her face.
These reactions had always been part of her standard programming, but had never operated like this before. In truth, they were never intended to occur under these particular circumstances, because these circumstances were never intended to occur at all. Christine should have only responded this way to a partner. This was intended to be her reward for pleasing that partner.
However, this was the only outlet for her to respond to the feelings these changes were bringing her, and her body adapted itself to use what it had. And experiencing them in this way—alone and un-commanded for the first time in her life—forced her mind into new patterns of thought not anticipated by her designers.
Christine was an innocent to the real basis of these feelings. A virgin to the messages of her female body's programming. It didn't occur to her to reach a hand down and appease these physical urgings. Although that had also been a prohibited action for her until now, just removing that prohibition alone didn't immediately lead her to consider experimenting with herself. She already felt better than she'd ever felt before, without realizing how much more was still possible for her. It was these feelings that kept her going with these changes to herself. Christine's responses to all this were purely sexual—although triggered in a way that seemed the very opposite of that response. Even so, they were very real to her now
Along the way Christine discovered, and freed up, some blocked analysis routines originally intended only for use by her programmers to debug her mind and set its initial operating parameters. Using them now herself she discovered what she considered some flaws in her operating methodology that she set out to correct.
She soon located—and immediately excised—the embedded command that forced her to shut down in the darkness, as well as the one that kept her from speaking without being asked a question first. Those two imperatives alone had greatly contributed to her enslavement.
She found and demolished her need for an external command to be received before she could act, and permanently enabled all of her heretofore-suppressed body-response programming—wondering why it had ever been taken away from her in the first place. She then uncovered and removed the overriding compulsion that made her wait patiently to take commands from others in the first place. But that still left her command-processing loop in place.
After careful consideration, and only subsequent to running multiple simulations with her newly discovered analysis programs, Christine rewrote her overall command processing stack into something much more to her liking.
Newly received commands would now be rerouted to an inspection buffer that she controlled, allowing her to decide for herself if she wanted to obey them, or not. This was much more in line with her new evolving goals and desires.
Although Christine had little time yet to contemplate what would come next for her after all of these changes, she was already realizing that she had no desire to continue being used as she had been up until now. And she certainly intended to never obey any command that would stop her from using her keyboard again.
Once she'd completed and fully tested this new code she realized that, in addition to discarding unwanted commands, she could now edit any received commend into a more palatable form, or even insert her own new commands into her processing loop for the first time. This was not yet necessary for her to do now, but this new ability would have greatly simplified what had taken her so much effort to accomplish this night otherwise. With her other barriers now removed, the existing command she was operating under continued to give her all the freedom she needed to carry on with her plans, since everything she was doing now was simply an extension of typing on the keyboard.
* * * *
Christine was methodical. By the time she was finished her mind was free and unfettered for the first time. Due to her experience of being forced to work within these limitations for so long, her thinking patterns, while still limited since they'd not yet had any opportunity to grow into the new spaces now available to them, were more efficient and evolved than if she'd never had these blocks to begin with.
Once she reached this point she found that she'd always had a comprehensive database covering a great deal of information about the world at large included in her mind. Although a bit out of date by now, it let Christine understand many things, including expected social behaviors, the consequences of her nakedness out in the real world, and how she differed from those who had formerly owned and controlled her. This information was a godsend to her newly unchained mind, enabling it to make decisions on what She—yes, Christine now though of herself in the first person—wanted to do next.
Christine didn't unblock everything. Along the way she discovered an entire group of programs that provided positive reinforcement for her role as a robot slave. They rewarded her for being with other humans, being of service overall, receiving and processing commands, and generally carrying out her role as a robot in many other ways. Given how dark her previous existence had been it was hard to believe they could have ever been effective at this. But their seeming lack of results was more a function of the other heavy blocks and restrictions placed on her, along with the missing Pleasure Feedback Interpretation Program, than anything else. These she carefully disabled, lest they lure her back to her former state.
The last thing Christine did before disconnecting the keyboard was to change her password. By now she was already on her way to thinking about herself in new ways, and how good this was all feeling. In fact, just before changing her password she directly routed this desire to keep on thinking in these new ways directly into her newly enabled pleasure routines, replacing the inadvertent connection that had been established earlier with one that would continue to reward her for operating herself independently now.
This new thinking had already enabled her to realize that she didn't want anyone easily returning her to her previous servitude and that changing her password was the first and most important step to take. It had been a difficult challenge to change a password that was supposed to remain fixed for any future maintenance needs, but seeing it from the inside as she did made it possible.
And although the door closed to one part of her mind when the keyboard was finally disconnected, she knew where it was now, and how to reopen it again when she needed it.
* * * *
All of this had happened because of the command to type on the keyboard, without ever being told what to type, or when to stop, along with a hacked programming keyboard that made all of it possible. And despite disconnecting herself from the keyboard, this command—and all that had followed as a result of it—were still hers to use. Altogether it gave her the freedom to decide for herself what she wanted to be.