Man or Machine: 2 (Body Electric) (5 page)

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Are you sorry about being deliberately obtuse or are you sorry about what you did?”

“I didn’t mean it as a violation. I didn’t think I would manage to control the robot so…completely. And by the time I realized I could, I was too involved to back out.”

“Involved!”

“I’ve missed you, Ilsa.” His voice was low and sincere. She struggled with herself not to turn around and look at him.

At MIT they’d dated, or sort of dated without saying they were dating, for weeks before they ended up in bed together for the first time. They’d gone to the movies and shared popcorn. They’d gone out for pizza or coffee. But mostly they’d worked together, parking their laptops side by side and sparking ideas off each other, laughing over stupid jokes or brainstorming solutions to problems or daring each other to try something new, something interesting, something that just might work.

She’d wanted him from that first moment when he’d smiled at her and retrieved her quarter. But she hadn’t let herself touch him. It was a big step. It was laying herself open. She probably wasn’t the only virgin doing a master of engineering in computer science at MIT but she was probably the only female one. And he was gorgeous. Properly
gorgeous
, especially if you liked the slender, sensitive-looking type to begin with, with a roguish twinkle in his eyes. He appeared to be permanently thinking up mischief.

He was from hacking royalty. His parents were legends and they’d named him after a sci-fi computer. He was rebelling by going to Cambridge and MIT. Fraternizing with the establishment.

Rumor had it he liked dating Harvard undergraduates, the beautiful, thin ones with the flawless hair and the ability to do their own makeup.

She and Hal hadn’t been doing anything special that afternoon. He had a project to finish and she was fooling around, writing some code, finishing up a program that could consistently figure out new ways to cheat at Monopoly without her being able to detect it. They were in the living room of his shared apartment and all his roommates were out. They were both typing away, squinting at their screens, in the typical bent-over nerd pose, and then Hal had sighed and stretched his arms up over his head, his long fingers woven together.

He was wearing a t-shirt and his stretch exposed the underside of his arm. Hal was a member of the MIT rowing club. He was tall without being broad but the hours on the Charles had honed his arms into sinewy perfection. There was a shadow between his biceps and triceps and Ilsa could not help it…she traced her finger along that shadow. His skin was warm and smooth.

“Ils?” he’d said.

She’d met his eyes. They were blue but she’d never quite realized how blue until that moment.

“Do you mean it?” he’d said. “Don’t, unless you mean it.”

“I’m a virgin,” she’d said.

She remembered everything. How they stood and shed their clothes together, watching each other stripping, t-shirt for t-shirt, jeans for jeans. How every shedding revealed more of his flawless body. How she couldn’t wait until they were naked and touched his chest before they’d taken off their underwear and how he’d groaned and grabbed her and pressed her against him. Skin to skin, the shocking truth of it, the wet heaven of his mouth.

It took hours. He brought her to his bedroom and locked the door. He removed her frankly embarrassing underwear as if it were the most exquisite lace and he touched and kissed every inch of her body. He was as thorough a lover as he was a programmer, as careful and absorbed, his brilliant eyes taking in all of her, his talented hands teasing and exploring. Understanding, somehow.

That’s how she’d felt anyway. Before, she’d never fully realized what breasts were for, why her skin was important, why she was built with nerve endings and feelings as well as a brain, how she was naturally tuned for pleasure and urgency. Her body had always seemed like an embarrassing afterthought.

With Hal she was greedy. She spread her legs and said, “Please, Hal. Now.”

She was wet and ready and when he slid his cock slowly inside her, she’d felt complete in a way she’d never known she was missing. He weaved his fingers with hers and he put his forehead, damp with sweat, against hers too. Their lips met.

She’d wanted to sing.

Now, Ilsa drew in a ragged breath and didn’t turn around. It had been two years and eleven months since she’d left him. Nearly three years. She was older and wiser and he was tied to her bed after trying to discover her secrets, the ones that were more sacred than her body.

This was confirmation of everything.

People were too complicated. She was much better off with a robot.

She composed her face and went to her chest of drawers to get a clean pair of jeans. He watched every movement she made but she did her best to ignore him. Turning her back to him again, she pulled on the jeans and buttoned them up.

Hal cleared his throat. “Anyway,” he said, and his voice was back to the cheerful insouciance that had been driving her crazy a few minutes ago. “I feel sort of sorry for Mr. Roboto.”

“His name is Dallas. And why would you possibly feel sorry for him?” She rolled up the sleeves on her shirt.

“Poor guy can’t come.”

She’d been trying to keep expressionless but this made her blink. “Pardon?”

“I think it’s cruel to have sex with a being who can’t climax. He misses out on most of the fun.”

“He didn’t seem to mind.”

“That’s because he doesn’t know what he’s missing. He’s programmed to please you but it seems like he should get some pleasure out of it too.”

Ilsa clenched her fists. Hal was tied to her bed, completely at her mercy, and yet he was trying to tell her what to do with her own robot. She stomped over to where he lay.

“Did
you
come?” she demanded. “When you were controlling him?”

“No. I had my hands full.” The side of his mouth quirked up more.

“So you know how he feels.”

“I can sympathize.”

With his arms stretched out, the material of his shirt was tight against his chest. Ilsa put the palm of her right hand in the middle of his sternum. She had not touched Hal in nearly three years.

She felt warmth, muscle, bone. Underneath his ribs his heart was hammering. He was breathing quickly. He wasn’t quite as in control as he made out.

It was her turn to smile.

Slowly, she trailed her hand down his chest. With the lightest of pressure, she stroked down his flat belly. She knew the exact moment when he started to hold his breath. When she reached the waistband of his jeans, he was trembling. Only a bit but she could tell.

He was hard. His erection strained against his jeans. Ilsa raised her hand a little. She let it hover a bare inch above his crotch. Heat came off him. She knew how it would feel to curl her fingers around his penis through the material of his trousers. She knew how he’d thrust against her, how she could flick his fly open and take him naked into her hand. His wet, hot semen spilling on her skin.

She didn’t touch him. Hal twisted on the bed, lifting his pelvis up toward her, so close but unable to reach. A groan escaped him.

Keeping her hand hovering over him, she bent her head toward his. “But it’s worse for you, isn’t it?” she murmured. She knew her words were feathering his skin, that in his helpless, heightened state it would be even more of an arousal. “Because you, Hal, know
exactly
what you’re missing.”

He jerked at his bonds. Ilsa straightened up and, without looking back, left the room, locking the door behind her.

Her heart was pounding. She felt weak and shaky and more than a little sexually frustrated herself. Her feet took her automatically down her well-trodden route to the computer room, which was on the same floor of the mansion as her bedroom. At times she could spend days without ever leaving this floor at all, only glimpsing the weather through the big windows. Red would bring up her meals on a tray.

What was she going to do with Hal? She couldn’t keep him. She didn’t want to keep him. Even the mere fact of his being in the house was enough to rattle her. And yet she couldn’t let him go either. Even if he only sold a tenth of what he’d seen here, it was enough. Plenty of people—Hal included—would be able to replicate the Morgenstern robots, even improve upon them. And use them for anything they liked, without thinking about whether it was best for the robots or not.

She’d worked so hard to keep the housies secret as her father had wanted. It had even led to a bitter war with her brother Jonathan, who believed they should patent the inventions and sell them after their father’s death.

Could she even keep the secret any longer, now that her sister and Blue were in love? They seemed content to live together where they’d always lived, mostly away from prying eyes. But this was a honeymoon period for them. They couldn’t stay in the house forever. They had lives to lead. Cally was full of big talk about asserting robot rights. About challenging the law so she and Blue could get married. She’d even brought stacks of legal books home, which she studied all the time. And Blue, quite rightly, was curious about the world.

People would ask questions. Hal was probably only the first of a wave of information seekers who would come to the Morgenstern mansion. Journalists, engineers, scientists. Hackers on a virtual mission.

Hal had caused everything to start unravelling. All her control and all her peace of mind.

She heard voices through the computer-room door. When she opened it, Blue and Dallas were there talking. Dallas had put on what Ilsa assumed were a pair of Blue’s boxer shorts. The two robots were quite impressive standing next to each other. They had a lot in common too. It was the first time either of them would have met another robot with the power of autonomous thought. She felt a twinge of guilt for having kept them apart and ignorant of each other’s existence. They could learn from each other. They could become friends.

“But what does it feel like?” Dallas was asking.

“I will upload—oh, hello, Ilsa. Are you all right?”

“Never better,” she said briskly. “I’m sorry, am I interrupting you?”

“There’s plenty of time for us to talk, baby.”

That was true. Robots didn’t have to eat and rarely had to rest. The speed at which both Blue and Dallas assimilated knowledge was incredible.

“Well, if you don’t mind, I have a question for you, Blue.”

“Of course.”

“It’s rather a private one.”

“Dallas and I have already compared the mechanisms of our sexual organs. They’re remarkably similar, especially considering that you weren’t privy to what Cally and I did to create mine. I have suggested one or two improvements to Dallas, based on my experience of repeated use, and I intend to implement your design for lubrication dispersal on myself. It’s very good, Ilsa.”

“Um. Thanks.” She felt herself flushing for the twentieth time at least today. She didn’t have a lot of desire to talk with her sister’s lover about the repeated use of his penis. But neither Blue nor Dallas seemed the slightest bit embarrassed. They’d been discussing their dicks within fifteen minutes of meeting.

It was so very logical and robotic and at the same time so very male and human.

Blue’s bringing up the subject did make her own question less embarrassing, however. She remembered what Dallas had been asking Blue as she walked in, about how something felt. It was probably this very thing.

“What I wanted to ask you, if you don’t mind, and you don’t have to tell me obviously, but it was about you having orgasms.”

“Yes. I do.”

“But…how?”

“I downloaded Cally’s.”

“You
downloaded
…”

“We attached a series of electrodes to her body, which fed directly to me. I stimulated her to climax. We felt it simultaneously. I saved the data and can now replicate the sensations, with appropriate variation as suits the occasion.”

“Wow,” said Dallas. “That’s
hot
.”

Cally nodded. She hadn’t thought about doing it so directly but she could see how it would work. “But aren’t male and female orgasms different?”

“I am, self-evidently, the wrong person to ask. I have different working parts than Cally does and so I had to perform some calculations to adjust the sensations to my body. It wasn’t difficult. In fact, it was extremely pleasurable because I needed a great deal of data and so Cally and I—”

“Okay, okay, I get the picture.” Ilsa held up her hands. Blue was smiling. He clearly knew enough about human nature to tease her.

“I can share the data with Dallas if you wish,” he said.

“But then won’t that mean he’s having Cally’s, and therefore your, orgasms? Isn’t that sort of private?”

“Hmm. Yes. I can see your point. Well, there’s nothing stopping you and Dallas from following the same procedure.”

“I’d positively enjoy that,” said Dallas. “I can make you come like a freight train, baby.”

“Unless you’d like to try using a data set that is more similar to Dallas’ anatomy. With a male orgasm, there would be fewer adjustments to be made. It would be interesting to discover the results.”