Title: Our Robot, Chapter Thirteen
Author: Nobilis
Summary: Bill takes charge
Keywords: We don't need no stinkin' keywords

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Dislaimers

This story is intended as Adult entertainment.  It contains
material of an explicit, adult, sexual nature.  If you are
offended by sexually explicit content, please do not read any
further.

This story is a work of fiction.  All characters and events
portrayed in it are fictional, and any resemblance to real people
is purely coincidental.  The author does not necessarily condone
or endorse any of the activities described.

This story may not be reproduced in any form for profit without
the written permission of the author.  It may be distributed for
free with all disclaimers attached.

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Our Robot

by Nobilis

Chapter Thirteen

Bill

I closed the connection and shut down the laptop.

Wow.  I hadn't cum like that in months.

I climbed into the shower and started scrubbing off the rest of
the spooge.  I didn't know if I had gotten any in my hair, but I
gave myself a good shampooing anyways.

Wow.  Anne was hot for Tootsie.  I had hoped something like that
would happen, but this was beyond my proverbial wildest dreams. 
My imagination swam with all kinds of images, things that Anne
might do with Tootsie.  My dick started to get hard again, but I
ignored it.  I wanted to save up my energy for tomorrow morning's
session - and yeah, I felt a little funny jacking off when I had
told Anne she couldn't watch me shower.

I wanted to buy the camera.  I wanted it now.

When I got out of the shower, I went to the phone and called the
front desk.  I asked if there were any electronics stores nearby
that would be open this early.  I was informed that there was, in
fact, such a store, a short drive away.  I asked them to get me a
taxi.  By the time I was dressed and down to the front desk, it
had arrived.

The taxi took me to a brightly lit store, stacked to the ceiling
with multicolored boxes, labeled in Japanese.  I tried to browse
a bit, but it turned out to be hopeless.  I went up to the
counter, and between lots of gestures, a smattering of English on
the clerk's part, and my Japanese-English dictionary, I managed
to get my point across.  If the picture on the box was to be
believed, this camera was made to be brought into the shower.  I
had the option of getting the wireless one, but I decided that
under the circumstances, I'd rather just have a nice, long cable.

He bagged my purchase and I went back to the hotel.  I wanted to
go back into the shower, but it seemed a little odd to get in
when I was still quite clean.  It seemed less honest somehow.

I saw no reason to bring my laptop in to the office.  They would
only impound it at the lobby, so I packed it up and put it in the
dresser, along with the cam.  I doubted there was any danger of
it being stolen.

At the government building, I was given a badge at the front
desk, and went through security in a matter of minutes.  When I
got up to my workstation in the elections office, sat down and
found that my chair was far lower than I had left it.  When I put
my hand on the handle to raise it up, I found that a small piece
of plastic was stuck to the underside of the lever.  I checked to
make sure that I wasn't being watched, and pulled it off.  It was
a little magnet, like a refrigerator magnet, with a shielded
memory mini-card.  It was one of the new high-speed,
high-capacity fiber-optic models.

I plugged it into the port on my keyboard, and a little icon
popped up on the desktop.  It was a fairly ordinary text-chat
program.

"Text," I thought, "How quaint."

The list of contacts had several names already in it.  Before it
was even done loading, a little chat window in a six-point font
popped up in the corner.

  Hanne: William!  Good to see you.  Welcome to the team!

Was that a Japanese name?  The rest of the names were definitely
Japanese.  A few people jumped into the chat right away, and they
quickly introduced themselves.

The team leaders were "Hanne," who was in charge of the AI
hardware we were going to use, "Yuriko," who had responsibility
for the elections computers that we'd be interfacing with, and
"Ichiro," whose team would be running interference with security
to make sure we weren't discovered by Rabazugai or any of his
cronies.  It had been his efforts that had made my trip through
security so much easier.

  William: Is Miss Tanaka going to join us?
  Ichiro: She's almost always busy with Rabazugai.  She reports
to me, so if you need to send her a message or anything, just let
me know.
  William: Oh, of course.  Silly of me to even ask.
  Ichiro: Think nothing of it.
  William: So how is this going to work?
  Hanne: Unfortunately, it's going to be a lot of work for you. 
While you're helping us build the real system, you've got to be
pretending to make whatever progress you can with Rabazugai's
crippled system.
  William: Anything that will get this project done, so I can go
home.
  Hanne: Oh?  Is Tokyo so terrible?
  William: No, but I want to get back home to my wife.
  Yuriko: We shall endeavor to get you back into her arms as soon
as possible.

Compared to the day before, that day was a piece of cake.  I was
in the office for at least fourteen hours with little in the way
of breaks, but we got more done that day than John had in the
entire time he had been there.  We straightened out the
requirements, set out assignments and research projects, and lit
ourselves a light at the end of the tunnel.

By the time I was ready to pack up, I was feeling tired, but I
had a strong sense of accomplishment.  At this rate, I would be
done in less than two weeks.  I decided to treat myself to a nice
dinner.  Well... actually, I decided that the company was going
to treat me to a nice dinner.

At the front desk of the hotel I asked about restaurants, and
they recommended a top-rated French restaurant just a few blocks
away.  I wasn't surprised.  Here in the government district
there'd be a lot of expense accounts, a lot of people looking to
impress each other.  They called the restaurant for me, and I was
pleased to find that I could get a reservation for eight.

I had a bit of time to wait, so I went up to my room to record a
message for Anne.  I had been planning on using the waterproof
cam in the morning, when I called for our session, but I decided
to make a video recording.  The little page of printed
instructions were all in Japanese, but I had no trouble.  When I
plugged the cam in it read the default language and switched to
an English interface.

I brought the cam into the bathroom and looked around for a good
place to put it.  I eventually settled for the top of the toilet
tank, aimed at an angle, towards the middle of the tub, high
enough to catch me from about the knees up.  I set it down and
ran the cord out to the bedroom.  I checked the interface, made
sure it was pointed in the right direction, set it to start
recording, sound and video, and went into the bathroom.

The video wasn't hard to make.  I just hit my marks, remembered
my lines, and didn't trip over the furniture.

After the shower, I felt invigorated.  Imagining Anne watching it
had given me a good second wind.  After a little editing, I sent
the movie off to Anne and wiped it from my hard drive.

I put on my good suit and headed out to the restaurant.

When I arrived, the Maitre d' sat me in the back, near the
kitchen, but I kind of expected that.  There are still some folks
in Japan who have a thing about foreigners like me.  I didn't
make a fuss.  Getting angry about that kind of stuff never does
any good.  I just chalked it up and made a note not to come back.
 I enjoyed a fabulous meal.  The wine was nice.  I suppose that a
connoisseur would say that my palate wasn't sophisticated enough,
but to me beer goes much better with steak, whether you call it
"chateaubriand" or "t-bone."

The waiter walked up just as I was swallowing the last bite of
the red potatoes.  "Dessert, m'sieur?"

"No, I'm..."

I looked past the waiter.  The tall robot from the club, the one
I had used the night before... it was sitting down at a table
just ten feet away from me, opposite a Japanese guy in a bright
blue suit.  What the hell?  Did people rent them out of the club,
or what?

"I changed my mind."  I reached out and took the dessert menu
from his hand.  He gave a pinched little smile and went off to
wherever waiters go when they're not serving you.

I looked over at the robot.  It caught my eye, briefly.  Was that
a hint of recognition?  No, couldn't be, why would there be?  I'm
sure those robots get reformats on a regular basis.

I smacked myself in the forehead.

There's probably dozens of that model robot running around in
Tokyo.  Did I think I had fucked the only one?  Thinking with the
little head again.

I ordered a mousse au chocolat.  It came a few minutes later.  I
tried to be surreptitious about watching the tall blonde robot. 
I don't know why, I shouldn't have bothered, but I wanted to know
what it was doing there.

This one was very, very well programmed.  It was having an
animated discussion with the man across the table, in some
European language that I didn't recognize.  Tootsie certainly
couldn't have held up a conversation like that.  Maybe it was
some kind of escort-bot, programmed for witty small talk and
polite dinner conversation, so that a lonely fellow could have an
illusion of companionship?   It didn't seem out of the question.
Our big mainframe AI's were capable of a wide range of
conversation, it certainly would be possible to program a robot
for simple dinner conversation if you used top-of-the-line
components.

That didn't make any sense either.  The components to build that
kind of a compact AI brain would cost a hundred thousand dollars
or more.  Who would spend that kind of money just to build a
dinner companion?  I puzzled over it while I took little
spoonfuls of the mousse.

When I came to the end of the mousse, I came to the end of my
curiosity.  The night started to weigh on me and I decided that I
wasn't going to learn anything by just sitting there.  I paid
with the company credit card.  The satisfaction that Cho would be
paying for dinner - well, Cho's budget anyways - dispelled some
of the cloud of confusion that the blonde robot had conjured up.

I got back to the hotel around nine-thirty - after five AM by my
internal clock, and the clock back home.  I sent a short email to
Anne, telling her that I'd be available at six AM my time.  I set
an alarm on my laptop, got undressed and climbed into bed.

I dreamed about the blonde robot again.  I was back at the
restaurant.  Instead of sitting with the man in the blue suit,
the robot was sitting with me.  It was laughing and chatting with
me, but I couldn't understand it.  I smiled and nodded when I
thought it was the right time, and tried to pretend I knew what
it was talking about.  Then the waiter came and took our dessert
plates, and it said, in English, "Okay, now, time to reformat." 
It pulled a big degausser from under the table and aimed it at my
head.

"No, wait, I don't want to forget," I wanted to say.

"Sorry," it said, "Club policy."  There was a flash...

I woke up.  My head hurt, a little, and don't think that isn't a
creepy thing to wake up to after a dream like that.  I took deep
breaths and tried to calm down.

The clock on my laptop's screensaver, set to Tokyo time, said
that it was a little after two AM.  It would be eight back home.
I debated calling Anne.  I started to get up, but the jolt from
the dream passed quickly, and I felt a wave of lethargy fall over
me, and I lay back down.  The rest of the night passed
dreamlessly.

When I woke up, my head felt fine.  I remembered the dream,
though, and I was still a little shaken.  I got myself a glass of
water.

There was a video email from Anne on the computer.  I opened it
without hesitation.  She was in the studio, sitting on her guitar
stool.  She was wearing a thin white silk camisole top, and a
blue skirt.

"Hi Bill.  I got your email.  Mmmmm..."  She closed her eyes a
bit and reached up under her top with both hands and squeezed her
breasts.  "Call me as soon as you get up."  The video cut off.

My uneasiness vanished without a trace.

....

End Chapter Thirteen


  
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