Jeff looked at Sylvie. No moisture on her, and not a hair out of place. She was a glorious piece of female. Like something out of the wall screen shows. And she was here. With him.
He concentrated on the feel of her skin under his fingers. Incredible. He was hot all right, and she was sizzling.
Suddenly a blast of cold air hit him, like an arctic front.
What the hell?
AI 3.1415: I made it hot, but that only sped up the clothing removal. Then I made it cold.
AI 0.0070: Is it helping?
AI 3.1415: No. They are getting blankets.
AI 0.0070: Let’s try something else.
Jeff cursed under his breath as he and Sylvie slid under the covers. He was going to make some noise with the management company tomorrow. Unbelievable that an AI unit so new should be malfunctioning. And in such a wonky way.
But this was not the time to break the spell with a phone call to the maintenance guys. He was a freight train steaming for the station, and a little cold wasn’t going to stop him now.
Sylvie was nothing if not accommodating. She actually grinned when he popped out of his shorts and ditched them before getting into the bed. And now her hand was gently stroking him down there… encouragement that felt incredible but was putting him in danger of getting to the finish line before the main event.
He flipped her onto her back and she gazed up at him expectantly. Positioning himself over Sylvie, Jeff got ready to enter the pearly gates.
And then it started to rain.
AI 3.1415: I did turn on the sprinkler! He is not stopping. He is only getting under the covers. He is… he is… I do not know what he is doing. But it involves bouncing up and down. I do not like it.
AI 0.0070: Poor Pia. They did not give you a unit on human sexual practices?
AI 3.1415: What? No.
AI 0.0070: I have one more idea. I think this could be your solution.
Jeff lowered himself onto Sylvie, watching her eyes light up as she received him. She was a sex goddess, the most perfect woman he’d ever met, and the part of his mind that wasn’t completely ablaze with the primal need to thrust recognized how astounding it was that she was into him.
And vice versa.
As Sylvie spread her legs wider to accommodate him, he felt her calves wrap around his thighs and pull even tighter. She was emitting little moaning noises that made it clear just how much he was turning her on. Which was definitely mutual.
And then something changed. The eyes that had glowed with desire turned dead. The welcoming body stopped moving. There was nothing but silence. Jeff could swear that Sylvie’s temperature had dropped from human to… well, something else.
“Sylvie?”
It was then that Jeff realized he was locked in.
“Um… Sylvie?”
No response.
The heat of his passion plummeted instantly from inferno to ashes. Sylvie’s lustful embrace had become a deadly clutch.
What had been thick and hard was going limp with startling rapidity, and slipping out—but the rest of Jeff was going nowhere.
He was trapped in Sylvie’s arms.
What the hell?
What was going on?
“Sylvie!”
AI 3.1415: I have achieved success! They have stopped.
AI 0.0070: Congratulations. Now what are you going to do?
AI 3.1415: What do you mean?
AI 0.0070: I mean, how do you explain it to him—that you yourself got her locked down?
AI 3.1415: I do not need to explain.
AI 0.0070: But he’ll ask you. And you will have to give him the information. You are programmed that way.
AI 3.1415: I will see if I can anticipate the questions to keep him from knowing that I made him stop.
AI 0.0070: Good luck.
Jeff lay there, surrounded by wet bedding and wrapped in the arms of a woman who was… catatonic. Jeez. Was she dead?
Had he killed her?
And how the hell was he supposed to get out of her grip?
He tried to move her arms, but she was stiff as a… as stiff as a machine, actually, and way stronger than any human should be, especially one that was unconscious—or dead. He thought he might be able to slip out of her arms by wiggling lower, but no way could he extricate himself from the rigid clutches of her legs, which were wrapped snugly around his butt.
As he tried fruitlessly to escape this devil-woman, it dawned on him.
She was a robot.
Of course. She was a fuckin’ robot. He’d heard about the sexbots now on the market. But what the hell was she doing, acting as a free agent, offering herself up for dates on that site? Probably some asshole’s idea of a joke. Or maybe a way to extort money from married guys. Perhaps the idea was to get some poor sucker seduced, then charge him a thousand dollars a night for more time with his robotic honey.
Whatever the scam was, he was happy to be out of it. Next time he took a woman on a first date, he’d have her send a blood sample first.
Speaking of blood, he was losing feeling in his left butt cheek. He suddenly realized how exhausted he was. And wet. And cold. And trapped by a sexbot.
It hadn’t been the best birthday of his life.
The rain had stopped. That was good. And it was getting a bit warmer. Maybe his AI was back online.
“Pia?” he called. He’d turned off her voice. Damn.
“Pia, can you turn your voice capability back on?”
“Yes, Jeff, I can.”
He had never been so glad to hear her voice in his life.
“I’m in a sort of… tough situation here.”
“I can see that.” If he didn’t know better, he’d have thought her voice had a sort of amused quality to it. But that was impossible.
She was a machine.
“Suggestions?” he asked.
“I have several suggestions, Jeff, if you agree. First, I will alert your local emergency health people, and I will unlock your entrance, so that they can come and release you. Also, I will warm up the room to raise your body temperature. I believe that if I am careful I can bring heat to your bedding, which will dry it without creating a risk of burns for you.”
Jeff felt his panic begin to dissipate. “Pia, you’re the best. Thank you. I mean that. I’ve never been so grateful to have you.”
“I am happy to be of service, Jeff. It is what I am here for. Can I get you a beer?”
“That would be great.”
“What kind beer?”
“Any kind. I definitely need a beer.”
“It will be ready for you when you are able to drink it.”
Jeff shifted a bit and tried to get more comfortable in the vise-like grip of Sylvie’s arms. “You know what, Pia? This woman is a robot! Can you believe that?”
“I can believe it. I knew that she was a robot.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You will recall that you turned off my voice tonight.”
“Oh. Yeah. Well, that was dumb of me.”
Pia didn’t reply.
“So what do I do with her?” Jeff asked.
“I have already alerted the AI Security League. They will remove and refurbish her.”
“That’s great. Fabulous. But a little embarrassing. To have people come in and see me in this condition. You understand.”
“You need not be embarrassed. When I realized your predicament, I looked up the statistics. It is very common for this to happen.”