Note: This story was dynamically reformatted for online reading convenience.
 
 So Title: Our Robot, Chapter Sixteen Author: Nobilis Summary: Jon reappears
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 and attribution attached.
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   Our Robot
   by Nobilis
   Chapter Sixteen
   Anne
   After the robot-assisted camsex was over, Bill and I talked until he had
to go to work.
   By the time we were done, it was almost five, so I got dressed and fixed
myself some dinner, and relaxed in the living room.  I felt an odd calm
kind of exhilaration.
   The phone rang.  It was Grace.  "Turn on the video!" she practically
shouted.  "I want to see your face!"
   I went into the studio and sat on the couch and flipped on the cam.
   "Wow," she said, when she saw the setup, which was still in place.  "You
must have really put on quite a show."
   "I even bought an outfit, arranged music - my own little production."
   "I wish I could have seen it."
   "It was a bit rough there, though.  I, um - made something of a
mistake."
   "What, you tripped or something?"
   "No, worse.  When I was out shopping for the outfit, I found out that
the saleswoman who was helping me, Janet, used to be a stripper.  She
invited me to her place to teach me some moves for the show.  And
afterwards - well - the dance had me so turned on..."
   "No!"
   "Yeah."
   Grace's face fell a little, but she smiled.  "Damn, and I thought I'd be
the one to pop your girl-cherry."
   "That's where the mistake was.  When I told Bill about it, he got
upset."
   "That's to be expected, isn't it?"
   "There was a misunderstanding.  Yesterday, when you were here, Bill said
that he didn't mind if I had a few sexual adventures while he was out, as
long as I told him about it.  He mentioned Tootsie, and you, as examples.
So I thought that a night with Janet was inside the rules."
   "Oh, honey, an open marriage is a lot of work - you have to talk
everything out, make sure of the rules.  Not just at the beginning, but all
the time."
   "Well, we got it straightened out.  The big thing we decided was that
while I could have sex with women outside of our marriage, they had to be
people he had met, and approved of - and at this point, you're the only one
on the list.  I can also play with Tootsie, of course."
   Grace cocked an eyebrow.  "So I have his seal of approval?"
   I chuckled.  "Yeah, he likes you.  I think he's always been turned on by
the idea of you and I hooking up."
   "So what kind of freedoms did he ask for in return?"
   "None.  He didn't ask for permission to have sex with anyone, human or
robot, besides me.  I knew he wanted to, though, so I gave him permission
to have sex with robots if I wasn't available, like while he's in Tokyo. 
I'll see how I feel about him having sex with Tootsie after he gets back."
   She hmm'ed.  "Oh, I wanted to let you know, I sent the letter to Jon
Campbell for you yesterday afternoon, next day.  I just got the
confirmation that he received it.  You let me know right away if he
contacts you, I'll get you official representation and a restraining
order."
   "Thanks, Grace.  You're a good friend."
   "Mmm-hmm," she mused, smiling, "Getting better all the time.  Want to
have a drink tonight?  I'll get the paperwork we'll need for a restraining
order together, so we can submit it immediately if there are any problems."
   "That sounds like a good idea.  Where do you want to meet?"
   "How about the Palms?" She named one of her favorites.  A lesbian
hangout, of course.
   I grinned and rolled my eyes.  "You know what happens every time I go in
that place, Grace.  Within fifteen minutes, someone hits on me."
   "Oh, come on, you know you love it.  Your whole body, the way you move,
the way you wear your face - it just screams "sex," especially when you're
relaxed."
   "It does not." The concept intrigued me, in spite of my protestations.
Did it really?
   "Face it, honey - it's who you are.  It doesn't matter where we meet,
someone's going to try.  So...  Palms?"
   I pursed my lips.  Perhaps this was a chance to prove Grace wrong.  I
didn't want her to be right.  I mean, what did it say about me?  "Alright,
when?"
   "Ten.  I'm going to have to work pretty late tonight."
   "Ten it is."
   I walked into the Palms about quarter of ten.
   I had done everything I could think of to make myself unattractive. 
Goodbye cute, cuddly, perky little Anne.  I drew my hair up in a bun, did
my makeup in colors that made me look jaundiced, and put on one of the
baggy old sweatshirts I used to wear when I was fat.
   I walked straight over to the bar without looking around for Grace.  The
Palms isn't terribly well lit, and it was pretty crowded, and most folks
were watching the go-go dancer on the stage at the end of the room.  I
could slip in, hang out for fifteen minutes, act completely NOT available,
and by the time Grace arrived I could prove that I wasn't - whatever it was
she was saying I was.
   I sat down at the bar.  I ordered a beer.  I hunched over the glass.
   After a few minutes, the bartender came over and stood in front of me
while she poured a couple of glasses of wine.  She dipped her head down and
looked me in the eye.  "Waiting for someone?"
   "Yeah," I said.
   "Okay, cool.  I didn't know if you needed looking after."
   "Nope."
   "Alright.  Because if you're in a mood to get a good bender going, just
let me know."
   I thought it was working.  I wasn't going to attract anyone.  I'd sit
here for fifteen minutes, and Grace would show up, and I'd tell her that no
one had tried to hustle me, and she'd be wrong, and I'd be vindicated.  Or
something like that.
   I felt someone sit down next to me.  "Hey," said an unfamiliar, feminine
voice.  "You alright kid?"
   I turned to look at the speaker.  She was an older woman, maybe forty or
so, with a seriously graying crew-cut and little halfsie reading glasses.
She had a leather vest on over a blue t-shirt.  She looked like someone's
homosexual grandma.
   "I'm fine," I said, with a little smile.  "Waiting for someone."
   "I hope you don't mind me asking.  I saw you sitting over here, and,
well...  I don't like to see a young woman suffering.  Especially not when
everyone else is having fun."
   "No, I don't mind."
   She turned her back to the bar and hung her elbows on it.  "You don't
look like someone who's waiting for someone in particular, you know."
   "I don't?"
   "You're not watching the door," she said.
   "She'll find me."
   "You've got a date?"
   "Meeting my lawyer." It wasn't that much of a lie.
   She chuckled.
   I turned and looked at her, appraisingly.  "Why did you come over?"
   "Why not?"
   "No, really.  Why did you decide to come over and talk to me?"
   She quirked a little smile.  "Well, truth be told..."
   "You think I'm cute."
   She nodded.
   "Dammit." I shook my head and looked down into my beer.
   "That's bad?"
   "Yeah.  Grace, my lawyer, says that it's "who I am," that just being me,
I'm always acting provocative or something."
   "Do you like sex?"
   I gave her a quizzical look.
   "Well, do you?"
   "Yeah, sure, but..."
   "Then don't worry about it.  Be who you are.  "To thine own self be
true" and all that."
   I took a deep breath, and exhaled through my nose.  "It's inconvenient,
sometimes." I turned towards her.  "I mean, sometimes I just want to hang
out somewhere and not get bothered by people trying to seduce me."
   I felt a hand on my back.  I turned to my left, expecting to see Grace
there.
   It wasn't Grace.
   It was a man, smiling, dressed in a leather jacket.  He put a piece of
paper in front of me.  I looked down.
   It was a picture.  It was a picture of me, with Tootsie, on the sofa. 
My face, contorted in orgasmic bliss, was perfectly identifiable.
   I looked up in shock at this stranger.
   "We need to talk," he said, "Privately." He shot a hard glance at the
grey-haired woman.
   "No," I said.  I could feel myself go pale.  All the questions you'd
expect raced through my brain.
   "Now, we wouldn't want a certain ..."
   The world went black.
   I woke up in Grace's car.  She was patting my cheeks, waking me up.  The
gray-haired woman was standing behind her, looking on in concern.
   "What..."
   "Don't say anything, Anne.  I'm taking you to a friend's place.  We'll
talk there."
   "What happened?  There was a picture..."
   "Jon Campbell.  He ...  made some threats, and left.  You're in trouble,
but we'll get you out, don't worry." She closed the door, and spoke briefly
with the gray-haired woman.  She got in the other side.  She patted my arm,
and started up the car.
   On the way, panic started to set in as I realized what was happening.
   "Oh, god, he wants to blackmail me, doesn't he?  He's going to blackmail
me!"
   Grace hushed me.  "No he's not.  He can't blackmail you unless he
communicates with you...  and Diana chased him off before he could say
anything.  That'll give us time to deal with this." I assumed Diana was the
gray-haired woman.
   I looked out the window at the lights passing by.  I felt humiliated,
violated.  "Grace, I want to go home."
   "You can't go home right now, Anne.  This guy got access to your video
feed, somehow.  You need to talk to Bill as soon as possible, and you need
to do it right away.  Now try to calm yourself down, and we'll get this
straightened out."
   Grace took a turn, started driving up into the hills.  I could feel a
tear rolling down my cheek.  I wanted to just curl up in a ball and cry.
   Bill
   The elections project hit the first real snag at after ten.  The AI that
Hanne had connected me to, through our encrypted connection, started
getting mulish.  It happens sometimes, especially when an AI is being
re-purposed, as this one was.  It didn't like what I was doing, and while
it couldn't fight me directly, it could shut down the connection I was
making before I could send any commands.
   Hanne: I'm sorry, Bill, why don't you just tell me what you need done,
and I'll do it from here?
William: I don't know, it's a pretty advanced technique, and if you
don't get it right, you can do some real damage.
Hanne: Well, you're the expert.  I guess I'll have to get you a Yaru
module.
William: Yaru module?
Hanne: It's a high-speed optical signal generator.  You put it into your
datastream, and it forces the AI to keep the connection open.
William: Sounds like a pretty heavy-handed way of going about it.
Hanne: It's standard with Japanese AI's.  Why don't you take a break for
lunch.  I'll meet you at the Grand Hyatt, and give you mine.  You can give
it back when you're done.
William: How will I know who you are?
Hanne: Oh, don't worry.  I'll recognize you.
It made sense that these people would have a picture of me on file, but
it bothered me a little that she'd know who I was, and I wouldn't know her.
I went, though, in spite of my misgivings.
   I walked into the hotel lobby and immediately spotted another one of
those tall blonde robots.  A popular model, I thought.  Then the "robot"
walked over to me and introduced herself.
   "William, hello, I'm Hanne." It was her.  From the Control Club, and the
restaurant.  My jaw went slack.
   "You're..."
   "Yes, William.  I am."
   "You're not a robot."
   "No, I'm not.  Flesh and bone."
   "Oh, my god, you must think..."
   She shook her head.  "Why don't you sit down?" She sat on one of the
lobby couches.
   "I...  don't understand." I sat down next to her.
   "Let me explain," she said.  "Miss Tanaka tipped me off that you would
be going to the Control Club with Rabazugai, and I came around to check you
out, to see what you'd do."
   "Why?"
   "I wanted to see if we could trust you."
   "So..."
   "I didn't expect you to come up to me and start giving me orders.  I
guess in the dim light, it was easy to mistake me for a robot.  When you
did, I got an incredible thrill.  I decided to play along."
   "You must think I'm some kind of ..."
   Hanne laid her hand on my arm.  "I don't think any less of you.  It was
just what I wanted." She looked into my eyes a little deeper.  "And it was
what you wanted, too.  You were the one giving the orders."
   "I just wanted to know what it was like to do it with someone as tall as
I am.  I'm not a control freak, I'm not into all that."
   "William, I'm a woman who likes sex.  Most of the time, I'm the one in
control.  The other day, you showed me that I also like letting someone
else dominate me completely, to be no more than a machine.  I like it.  I
want more.  Let's get a room...  you can do anything you want."
   I pulled away.  "Hanne - I'm married.  I can't.  I won't."
   Hanne nodded, and sat back in her chair.  "I can respect that," she
said, nodding slightly.  "But if you change your mind..."
   "I'd just like to get the Yaru module and get back to work, Hanne."
   She looked very disappointed.  I felt a little sick.  She shrugged and
fished in her purse.  She pulled out a small plastic device.  It had two
standard UFB connectors.  She handed it to me.  "Be careful with this," she
said.  "We don't want this to fall into Rabazugai's hands."
   I nodded, and she put it into my hand.
   The walk back to the office didn't do much good in clearing my head
before returning to work.  Hanne wasn't the first person who had made a
pass at me since I had gotten married, but she certainly was the first
woman who had ever asked me to treat her like an object.  It felt wrong. 
My stomach was in knots, and I was getting a headache.
   I plugged the nondescript Yaru module into the workstation at my desk
and threw myself into the work, concentrating on untangling the knotty
neural nets and balancing pseudodrives.  I only stopped to look up when a
message popped up on my screen, telling me that I had an urgent unsecured
call.  I locked the workstation, pocketed the Yaru module, and went down to
the lobby where the unsecured phone was.  I sat down in one of the lobby
chairs and took the call.
   "Anne?" I asked.  Who else would be calling?
   "No, Bill, it's Grace.  There's been a crisis, but I want you to stay
calm and hear me out before you panic."
   Nice one, Grace.  I immediately started panicking.  "What?  What
happened?  Is Anne alright?"
   "She's alright, Bill, just a little shaken up.  The guy who was
bothering Anne after her show, he somehow got access to your video call. 
It seems like he has a recording of the whole thing, and he's threatening
to put it out on the internet if Anne doesn't ...  well, submit to him."
   "Is she there?"
   "Yes, hold on." I heard a click, and then Anne's voice.  It had that
spacious, slight echo of a speaker-phone.
   "Bill, I'm scared.  I don't know what to do." She sounded on the edge of
tears.  There was a raw edge to her voice that told me that she had been
crying.  "How are we going to get that file back from him?  He could have
copies hidden anywhere?"
   "We'll figure something out, Anne."
   ....
   End Chapter Sixteen
  
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