The future was allegedly finally here. Human society had gotten to the point where the cost of most basic necessities was zero. There were eleven billion people on the planet and enough food was made for three or four times that. There was ample living space, clothing, health care, electricity, and anything else modern humans might want with the exception of one thing. The vast majority of people had no purpose.

How was it that the cost of a full wardrobe of winter clothes was practically zero? Robots. How was it that it was cheaper for city hall to just give all the residents of a city one free bicycle each than to hire someone to collect and count the money gained if there were a charge for them? Robots. Robots were everywhere and they did everything from dig ditches to file legal briefs. The vast majority of work humans used to do was now done by robots. It didn't matter that most robots were boxes on wheels with one weird arm sticking out of the top, they did the work and that was what mattered.

The social upheavals of the previous two centuries to get to this point taught humanity a lot of lessons along the way. The New Mexico disaster should have been wake up call enough but it took nearly a complete collapse of western Europe and the United States taking over the entire world for everyone to finally start to wake up. Then the event that the news called the 'zombie apocalypse' (though in reality it was more of a zombie extended weekend) happened and that shook things up just enough to justify reorganizing.

Hey, pro tips in case the 'zombie apocalypse' ever happens again:

1: zombies may not feel pain but they are weak. Their muscles lack ATP so just get them to wear themselves out and they can't move anymore.

2: zombies quickly go blind so most rely on their hearing and sense of smell.

3: shooting them doesn't really work because the wounds are too small. Use large blunt weapons. Staking them to the ground or wall works well too.

4: you don't have to worry if a zombie bites or scratches you. The living can't get infected because there's no virus or bacteria causing them to be that way (turns out they're magical). So as long as you're still alive at the end of an attack, you're fine.

5: to create a safe house find something called 'holy water'. Not all holy water will work, just the stuff blessed by a certain small group of 'bishops' called 'sedevacantists'. Actual roman bishops or other sedevacantits won't work, just the ones in this one specific group. Look it up in the history for details.

Anyway, it's unlikely zombies will ever attack again but it's always good to be prepared. So, back to robots.

Originally, it was going to be companies using robots to do all this work who were going to reap all the benefits. But step by step newer robots started becoming cheaper and cheaper until it got to the point where a man could work for six months and then buy a robot that could build a another robot to do his job and then the man could just send the second robot to work for him while he sat back at home and collected the salary. If his boss wouldn't allow it, then he could just start his own company doing the same thing with his newly purchased or built robot. This was a no win for anyone unless something changed.

The paradigm that eventually prevailed was one similar to the old oil rights from centuries ago. A long time ago, the natural resources of a country were held to be owned by all the citizens together and so when it was sold for a profit every citizen would get a bit of money. Today it worked similar to that. While a person could go and start their own company if they wanted to, most of the big ones were held as being owned by all the citizens of a certain place and so all the profits from that company were distributed out to all the residents of a certain city.

However, there was a dark side to this which was that now most people were out of work. What happens when you have people who have more money than they need and no real purpose? They get restless and destructive. For half a century drugs and alcohol (or accidents caused by them) were the number one cause of death for most people across the planet. Enough was enough and prohibition made a come back strong. Now it was all heavily regulated but not just that, the amount of food and exercise each person got had to also be regulated to prevent citizens from just eating themselves into the grave.

But strictly enforcing a ban on substances wasn't enough. The fact of the matter was, there was no work. There was nothing to do except go to more and even more schooling for jobs that no human would ever do again. So a program was started that required citizens to put in a minimum amount of effort in order to get their share of money. There was military service, civic service, the arts, and of course education. The military was a difficult sell for many since there was a lot of discipline and no real purpose to it now unless a rebellion rose up. Instead of that, a lot of people would sign up to work for the local city government to be on call in case anything ever needed to be done. Other people got around even doing that little bit by claiming to be artists working on something allegedly amazing. Granted, some of them probably were artists, but a lot were just people who were perfectly happy to sit at home all day playing video games are chatting with friends.

That isn't to say that zero humans had jobs. Judges were still required to be humans as well as police officers. Elected officials were required to be humans as well as top level managers in companies. There were robots that could be programmed to repair other robots but at the top of that chain you'd eventually find a human making actual decisions. And of course there were always going to be ingenious people who worked on certain passion projects from decorating the public parks to designing the next huge interstellar ships. But still, most people (like 90% of them) just stayed home the majority of the time.

...

Johnny prided himself on being one of the few people who could say he actually had a real job where he actually did real work. He hadn't finished college because he'd gotten an actual job as an engineer helping to design and test the next generation of robots. He felt sure that his creativity and passion could give him an insight into new ideas that would revolutionize robotics.

After two years and two months he suddenly found himself out of work. A robot he'd helped design on his very first day at the company was now taking his job. Johnny begged to stay, even with no salary if needed. He just wanted to be part of this process and feel like he was doing something useful with his life. But in the end the company gave him severance and said they wanted to go in a different direction.

Johnny would not be discouraged. He he made plans to rent the apartment above his own to turn into a workshop. He was going to create his vision for the next level of robotics all on his own if he had to. He was not going to be like so many others who just distracted themselves from real life with endless movies, games, vacations, and parties until they died. He was still in his early 20s but he knew this was his life's work.

And then the other shoe fell. Johnny knew that relationships between men and women were sort of different now. Hundreds of years ago, before the big New Mexico event, it was common place for primitive humans to form a sort of couple in a pair bond. That rarely if ever happened these days but Johnny had found himself in a very close relationship with a woman named Alice. She worked for a female only organization that was dedicated to making sure women got their fair share of the profits from the publicly owned corporations. That organization argued that even though all citizens were supposed to receive an equal dividend, and women usually received slightly more; the system was still unfair to women because women contributed more to society than men did and thus had earned and were owed an even larger share.

Secretly, Johnny wasn't sure about all the political stuff but he never said anything. When he'd first met Alice he was completely focused on getting an actual job with an actual pay check. She didn't seem to have time for him either since to her he was just another male siphoning money out of the pool of available funds that should really rightfully be going to women. But then her attitude towards Johnny changed fast once he'd announced that he'd gotten employment and was leaving the college.

Out of nowhere she uprooted herself to move over a hundred kilometers away to live in the same building as Johnny. Then she was always wanting him to hang out with her after work. She even went into the kitchen and helped the robot cook him dinner. "The random bits add flavor." she had told him when he noticed that it didn't taste quite like he knew the recipe should. There was other odd behavior as well, like how she would do things to harass other women who wanted to talk to Johnny and then when they were in private she would warn Johnny about how this woman wanted to hurt him or that woman wanted to steal from him.

Johnny had almost had enough of this behavior from her. He couldn't understand why they were friends or why she was treating him this way. He didn't understand why he had to go to parties with her on the weekends or why she was introducing him to her friends and mother as 'her' man. What the hell was that even supposed to mean? Were they together that way, like a caveman and his ... what was the word ... wife or something?

Like everyone else, Johnny had been raised by a single parent. In his case, he and his sister had been raised by their father. Johnny knew one day he'd also be called to take care of his own child, produced from his own DNA and a matching profile to ensure genetic diversity and a healthy baby. Some people were able to get out of the responsibility of raising children but they were by far the exception not the rule and if neighbors or friends knew that someone wasn't going to have kids there was always talk going around speculating as to why that was. The usual conclusion was that there must be something wrong with them or their DNA. To make up for those people there were occasions when certain parents would be asked to take care of a second child, as had happened with Johnny's father.

Anyway, Johnny was actually so happy when Alice herself had found a job. Sure, it didn't count as an actual paying job so she was till receiving the normal public dividend that everyone else received but Johnny was happy she'd found something to do other than just stalk him all the damn time.

And then it sort of happened. Alice had been looking for a way to really seal her relationship status to Johnny. She really wanted to lock him in. She had been talking about the two of them buying an entire house together and moving in together and using some of his salary to buy a yacht, or a private plane, or a summer home over in ...

Johnny really had to get her to put a stop to this. He wasn't going to buy any of that. That money came from his work in robotics and it was going back into his work in robotics. He had a vision and a plan to the future and it did not include a boat you could live in where you sailed up and down the coast for no reason. Johnny really could not understand why she would assume he'd spend any of his money on her that way. Why?

And then she showed him why.

Sex was something that kids learned about in middle school. You saw pictures of it and the mechanics of it were spelled out and then the reasons why it was something you should never do were hammered home. All sex initiated by the male was rape and it carried the maximum penalty law enforcement could enact. Even just treating women different in any way was sexual harassment. Plus why run the risk of a random pregnancy when the Federal Health department could make sure the future generation was healthy. Women shouldn't run the risk of getting pregnant since it was much safer for the baby and the mother for the child to be born from an incubation unit. These things were just not done. And it wasn't like parents could get any extra money from having kids. If anything, having kids other than the ones issued by the health department caused a decrease in dividends to the parents so it wasn't in anyone's best interest to have children that way or to engage in the act that might bring them about. And besides not all STDs had cures after all.

As a general rule in society, sex was something that only homosexuals or deviants engaged in. And yet when Johnny was confronted with Alice naked, although he'd been taught in school to just say no to sex, he was speechless and immovable. It was like a magic spell had been cast over his body and he was hypnotically obeying Alice's commands when she beckoned him to her and somehow their bodies figured out what they were supposed to be doing.

From that moment, no matter what Alice asked of him, he gave it to her. She wanted to move in together, he let her move in. She wanted to spend his salary, he let her have it. He gave her whatever she wanted so long as every now and then she'd agree to do, S. E. X., again with him.

Johnny tried to hide it at work. He didn't know how others might react if they knew he was doing it like a caveman. They might question his intelligence or something. However, he knew from his own records that his performance at work was starting to suffer if ever so slightly. He tried to make up the slack and he eventually got back on track but in the end it hadn't mattered. He found himself out of a job and back collecting the same dividend that everyone else got. Well, at least he'd gotten five years of salary as severance. He could start his own company with that. And with Alice by his side, it would be a great success.

Yeah, that's what he thought. Alice was furious at him for losing his job. She had been making plans for this and plans for that and now because of him they were all ruined. Johnny tried to calm her down and hopefully ... you know ... have sex in this emotionally trying time. Alice was not in the mood to entertain him or do anything else with him. She told him that if he loved her, if he really loved her, then he'd march himself back down to that company and get his job back.

Well, Johnny did just that but the answer was still no. When Johnny got home it looked like Alice was already making plans to move out. Alice traveled to go see her mother and Johnny was left alone surrounded by her stuff as he thought of her and remembered her. Then the next day a moving company showed up to collect Alice's things and law enforcement officers also showed up to ensure Johnny didn't try to interfere. They had been told that Johnny was 'dangerous' and 'emotionally disturbed'. Johnny asked how anyone could ever think that and the fact that he'd actually had physical sex with Alice was proof enough. Only someone capable of abusing a woman would ever have sex with one.

Afterwards, Johnny was so depressed that he had to go and spend some time with his dad and get advice. The only advice his father could give him was move on with your life. His sister was more open to hearing Johnny pour his heart out. Johnny even admitted to her that he'd ... done the sex of all things.

"No way. Really? Why?"

"I don't know. I think maybe she put something in my food or something. I can't explain it. It was like my mind lost all reason."

Joy gave him a hug and told him everything would eventually be ok. Then Johnny told her about the severance pay and told her his dream for making his own robotics company that would do things no one had ever thought to do before. He had enough to buy his own island, surely he had enough to make a name for himself in robotics and get his own company on the map.

His sister encouraged him to follow his dream and forget about Alice.

"I never really liked her that much anyway. And to force you to have sex with her. Ugh. Who even thinks that way nowadays? You're lucky she's gone."

"I know. I know that in here." he said as he pointed to his head. "But in here" he added with a tap to his chest, "it hurts. And now I've got this huge apartment and only me in it. Every inch of that place reminds me of her."

"I'll come and redecorate for you."

"You don't have to do that."

"No, but I want to and you seem like you need me to, so why don't I. And I've always wanted to live on the coast in the big city. Why don't I move in with you?"

"Really?"

"Yeah. Why not?"

"Well, what about the sleepwalking?" Johnny had a point. She had had pretty bad sleepwalking incidents in the past and had gotten injured. Johnny remembered the first time he'd seen her that way when they were both 13. It had really freaked him out to see her wondering like one of those zombies you heard about in history class from that incident about a hundred years ago. Her eyes were glazed over and she was just looking off in the distance like she could see through the wall or something as she shuffled around from room to room randomly touching various things.

Joy pouted. She'd been hoping he wouldn't bring that up. "I haven't had an incident in a while. And just in case I do, we can install my alarm on my door. I got my watch so even if I do make it out the apartment or out the building you can find me. And I got my little buddy to catch me if I'm about to fall." Her little buddy was her robot that never left her side. It had been built specifically for helping her during sleepwalking but she also used it to do just about everything else as well since it was here.

"Didn't the doctor say you need to stay in a safe environment that you know."

"We can make your place safe and I'll eventually get to know it."

"I don't know. I'm not even sure I should stay there."

"Come on. Please."

In the end Johnny decided against it but did say he promised to think it over. In actuality he wasn't going to give it any more thought at all. However, then he got some bad news. Alice heard about him sitting on a mountain of pay from his company and she was suddenly back in his life saying she cared about him and wanted to move back in and ... maybe even do the sex with him again just once or twice. Johnny was not going to let himself be manipulated for a second time and kept his distance from her. He used her own legal filing against her and got an order from a judge saying she had to stay away. However, that in itself caused some problems.

The apartment Johnny was in required two occupants. That seemed weird to everyone since those sorts of things were never enforced these days but it was still there on the books. Therefore, even though people could get around those old requirements, with Alice saying she wanted to move back in and Johnny saying he wanted to also use the apartment above as well, it didn't look good for his case. Johnny's feelings about just leaving the apartment were all gone and he was going to fight against Alice to keep the apartment and keep her out just to keep her from winning. So the obvious solution was acted on. Johnny called his sister and told her she could move in.

...

Johnny was waiting for Alice at a little cafe. The coffee there cost ninety cents a cup as opposed to the standard one cent for a 30 cup punch card because they used an actual human to brew the coffee behind the counter. Johnny wasn't sure he could taste a difference. Anyway, Alice had asked for this meeting and seeing as it had been a little more than two years since he'd seen her, Johnny agreed.

Johnny waited for his former 'girlfriend' to show up. He had eventually learned that to be the correct word for what Alice had been to him. He was sort of kicking himself for coming to this. Alice did not deserve his attention. She'd bad mouthed him all over town and even went and told everyone that Johnny was a sex maniac who wanted it from her all the time and had treated her like a prisoner. Johnny did not remember it like that at all. It had made Johnny famous for about a week and people would randomly walk up to him and ask him how it had been. Had he fucked her in the ass, down the throat, in her armpits? Hair? Nose? But then people forgot about Johnny pretty fast once the next wave of movies were released that were the continuation of some such shared film universe. After that it was like "Johnny who?"
It was just as well for Johnny. He'd become a very private person who didn't go out much. His commute to work consisted of walking up the stairs from the second floor to the third floor and working on his robots. He wasn't fooled by the timing of Alice wanting to see him either. He'd gotten his first product to market and with the kind of advancement it represented there were lots of other bigger companies looking to buy his operation. Johnny wasn't looking to sell but rather lease out his patents. In the long run he figured he'd make more money that way. He'd already turned his five years of severance into 50 years of what he would have been paid at that company so he figured working on his own was better than being bought and haggling to give himself a guaranteed job.

Alice arrived wearing a sweater that looked a bit too hot for this weather but fashion wasn't something Johnny paid attention to. She sat down opposite him and smiled. Then she reached out and took his hands and held them.

"How are you?" she asked.

"Good. And you?"

"I'm just so happy you agreed to see me. I have something really important to run by you."

"Ok. It isn't bad is it? Should I be worried?"

"No, of course not. I know we all said things we didn't mean back then. But none of that matters now. For now we need to think about the future."

"Future, huh? I think I got that covered. But, hey, it was great seeing you again."

"Don't brush me off. You haven't even heard me out yet."

"You're going to ask to move back in and I'm going to say no."

"Why don't you just let me speak before you just jump in, will ya?"

"Ok. Shoot."

"I want to have a baby."

"Request one."

"I mean, I want to have the baby."

"I ... I don't follow."

"Like from me. You know. Coming out of me. I want to get pregnant."

"Pregnant? But what about all the health risks?"

"I've thought about that and I've looked into everything and there's no law that says I can't get pregnant. So I want to have a baby the real way."

"I'm not sure that counts as the real way."

"It does to me."

"Well, ok. Good luck with all that. But of course you know you don't need my permission. I don't own you. The police made sure to inform me fully the last time we talked that I had zero claim over you in any way. Whoever you're going to have a baby with, I just hope you're both very happy."

"I want to have the baby with you."

"Me? Why me?"

"Why not? We were ... close."

"That's a big decision. I don't know. I never even considered it before. It's not done that way. It's just not done that way. I mean, what are you saying?"

"I'm saying, I want to be a family. I want me and you together to be a family together with a baby."

"Really? Wow. For how long?"

"At least until the baby is ten or eleven I guess. Something like that."

"That's a long time."

"I know but I was thinking that maybe it would be worth it. It's the way everyone used to have kids."

"Have you talked this over with your mother?"

"Yes and she likes the idea."

"Wow. But it's such a big thing. It feels like it would be so big a thing. I'm not sure."

"Well, how about this, as long as we're together as parents we can ... start being ... together again."

"Oh. You mean it?"

She nodded. "Every night. Just think."

"But you told people I was like a bad person for doing that with you."

"Cause you pressured me for it. Now isn't pressure. I'm asking you for it."

Johnny looked at her and almost fell for this. His body was aching for him to give in to her. But then he remembered all the pain of when she'd left him. He never wanted to feel that again. As the memory of it started to fill him he realized that while sex was his happiest memory, it was also his most unhappy memory as well. It wasn't worth it. He shook his head and pulled his hands away. "No. I'm very happy that you asked but I can't agree to this. You'll need to make a family with someone else."

She looked perturbed but then slid into a cold glare. "Well, sorry Johnny boy. It's too late. I chose you and I'm having a baby."

"Not if I don't do ... that ... with you."

"You're so naive. Do you think I would come and ask you if it was really ever going to be your decision? I really wish you would have just said yes and gone along but I guess I have to be honest with you."

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm already pregnant."

"What? How?"

"We had the I. N. T. E. R. C. ..."

"Intercourse?"

"Yes. We had that, or don't you remember?"

"I remember. By the State Seal I remember."

"And you remember putting your ... stuff ... in me, right?"

"I do but if you'd have gotten pregnant you should have already had the baby by now."

"No. You don't know anything about how a woman's body works so shut up. I can keep your stuff and store it until I decide I want to get pregnant."

"Really?"

"Yes. Of course. Didn't you ever pay attention in biology class? Stupid males. Don't look at me with your mouth open like that. I'm not a freak. I'm going to be a mother. The mother of your daughter to be exact so I expect you to live up to your responsibilities. In fact, I've brought along the documents I need you to sign."

"What documents?"

"Just saying that you agree that this is your baby and that you'll take care of me and the baby no matter what, if we can make a family together or not."

She unlocked her tablet and presented him with a legal document and a place where it was prompting him to sign or place his fingerprint. Johnny's eyes grew wide as he felt everything going too fast.

"I don't have all day for you to sit and read everything. Just hurry up and sign it." Alice said.

"How do I know everything is legal in this?"

"Cause it's from me. I'm going to have your baby so you better start learning to trust me."

"Well, if you're going to have my baby then I guess you better start learning to trust me." he countered.

"I do trust you, which is how I trust you'll do the right thing and sign."

"You don't mind if my lawyer algorithm checks it over, do you?"

"There's no reason to get lawyers involved in this. Come on. It's me."

Johnny shook his head. "I'm going to have to insist." Johnny got out his own tablet and was going to unlock it when Alice pulled hers away.

"This man," Alice said as loud as she could without yelling, "has gotten me pregnant from SEX! He did the sex with me and now he doesn't want to take care of the child he created and forced into me."

People started turning to look and Alice stood up to start accusing Johnny some more so Johnny grabbed his things and bolted.

...

"Why did you agree to meet her?" Joy asked when she was watching her brother on the evening news.

"I was just being polite."

"You thought you were going to get to kiss her again, didn't you?"

"No. That was the furthest thing from my mind. I thought she was going to ask for a job or something."

"You're hiring people now?"

"Yes. Haven't you seen the people coming up to my office for interviews?"

"Is that legal?"

"Of course it's legal."

"What? I'm just asking."

"You can hire someone to do whatever you want."

"Even kissing?"

"I imagine if you were really into that sort of thing."

"Don't play like you didn't like kissing her. I know you did. You told me."

"It's in the past. Now I'm just a normal person like everyone else."

"You weren't really about to fall for that lie of hers were you?"

"No. I thought she was just making a joke. I knew right away it didn't work that way." Johnny lied. In reality he'd had to look it up.

"You did huh?"

"Of course. Everyone knows that. Or they should if they paid attention in school."

"Do you think she's really pregnant?"

"I don't know."

"Do you think she did the ... s.e.x. ... with someone else?"

Even just the thought of that was turning Johnny's stomach sour. "I don't know and it's none of my business officially so I don't care." Oh, but he did care. He cared a lot. Why was all the pain starting to bubble back up. Don't let it show. "It's not actually against the law or anything."

"How would you know?"

"Cause I know. And for that matter at least 25% of the population has engaged in ... ahem ... sexual conduct ... at least once in their life. That's almost 3 billion people. And an even larger percentage have masturbated at least once."

"Well, I never have."

"Me neither."

"You didn't have to. You had Alice to ..."

"Shut up about her. This is useless. You're useless. I'm going out."

Johnny stormed to the door and left but he didn't leave the building. Instead he stood there in the hall and then shrugged. He wasn't going to go back inside just yet and face his sister. She was so annoying at times with her prefect blond hair and her breasts and her hips and her ass. It was enough to make Johnny crazy.

He ran up to his lab and went to the most secret room he had where the most sensitive of projects was worked on. Johnny had lied when he'd said that he'd never masturbated. Ever since the break up he'd been masturbating about once every other day or at least every three days. It was like having real sex had awoke some machinery in his body and gotten that system up and running and now it just wouldn't turn back off. He used to just sit and think of Alice to do it but then he needed something more.

He found himself imagining sex with all sorts of various women around in the neighborhood or doing it with teachers he used to have when he was in school. The mind of a deviant was a strange thing. Almost every woman he saw he started to catalog in his mind for sexual fantasies later. With almost every adult age woman from 18 to 55 being a sensual bombshell it was actually very difficult for him not to do that. Modern medicine was sure keeping every one, for lack of a better word, sexy. Ancient films didn't really showcase what most women back a long time ago looked like. Non professional camera images as well as medical records from the time showed that women all used to be rather overweight and they got ugly in the face much younger than now. But these days everyone was very healthy, almost to a fault. Now that Johnny had sex on the brain he couldn't help looking at the firm breasts, the shapely asses, the trim bellies. Oh, he wanted to just grab the nearest woman and just shove himself into her.

But of course he couldn't do that. It would be wrong. He was a male and that kind of toxic masculinity was very, very illegal. He had to pretend that all the women he saw were really just other men. That was easy enough when he was focused on work or reading a good book but when he had to spend any real time with almost any woman, his body was telling him loud and clear that he did really see the difference and he felt like he wanted to do something about it.

He was keeping himself under control in public but in secret he'd become a real sexual deviant. He wondered when he'd start finding himself attracted to gay men. They said that if you masturbated too much that would eventually happen to you.

Then the real brain twist had happened to him. The one and only time his sister had had a sleepwalking episode since she'd moved in she happened to be naked while she walked around the apartment. Instead of going to her to wake her up and escort her back to bed, Johnny had taken his dick out right there and started to jerk himself off as he watched her clumsily wander back and forth from the living room to the dining room.

It was the morning after that when he'd had his idea to look up how much of the population was being held back from their pull potential because of this sort of thing. Over a billion people. 3 billion in fact. People like Alice would see that as people who needed help from the government and she'd organize a protest to force the government to do more. However, Johnny saw something totally different. He looked into some history. Something called pornography used to be really big business. He found lots of old archives of images and movies and stories and even cartoons. This was a market. This was a 3 billion person large market who just might be interested in discreetly continuing to have sex but without the messy hassle of courting someone until they agree (which might be illegal depending on how it was done), maintaining 'romance' in the relationship (which again might be illegal if done the wrong way), or randomly produced offspring that might not be as healthy as what the Federal Health Department guaranteed.

He looked at his project, got his dick out and started to jerk himself off just at the sight of her. In his head he called her Alice 2.0 but there were times if he wondered if it looked more like his sister than his ex. The 'it' he was looking at was a robot modified to look like a human. There had been robots made like that a long time ago but for whatever reason they were abandoned. It was discovered that it was much easier to make realistic looking models in computers for use in video games or simulations on the news but when it came to producing an actual robot that looked human, there always seemed to be something off or creepy about them.

Well, that was then and this was now. He looked over the thing and as he finished himself off and shot his semen onto the floor for the cleaning robot to wipe up, he thought he knew for sure that no one would be able to tell for sure if this was a robot or not. He'd had her sitting in a chair reading a book when he'd interviewed a few people looking for a job. No one seemed to notice she wasn't real. He uploaded her model as a user in several different multi player games. No one had yet been able to guess that she was an AI. Her text messages and video calls always got past people. There was certainly nothing wrong with her motor skills that would tip anyone off when she walked along the sidewalk from place to place. But Johnny had been careful to limit how much of her anyone could interact with at any given time. All together and Johnny wasn't so sure. He was the only one to ever see her move and talk up close but he himself knew she wasn't a 'she' at all but rather a robot. An It.

The key to her success in fooling people wasn't her complexity but her simplicity. She never parroted or gave in to what other people wanted. When she was tasked with playing a virtual game she was always given a primary goal and a secondary goal. The primary had to be completed no matter what and the secondary would be nice but could be abandoned if it interfered with completing the primary. The obvious idea to make her primary goal to beat a level or stage would of course be useless. Those AI all already existed. She would be tasked with other things like trying to make trades or collecting an entire set of a kind of item. When her physical body was sent out on walks she'd be tasked with getting a certain number of visuals before coming back, such as a bird or a tree or a certain number of people to smile at her. She always performed very well.

The most difficult task was when she had to communicate with people and try to convince them to give her certain information like their birthday or what their favorite place was for a haircut appointment. Johnny figured that even though this was her most difficult task, it was the most crucial. He had still been trying to figure out what the income model would be for her. If he put her out as a prostitute, she'd have to contend with law enforcement and then he'd have to explain that while it was illegal for humans to sell sex, it was perfectly legal for a robot to do so. He found a pre New Mexico court case about it in fact. But then again if he put her out there as a prostitute then it would be a little bit of money at a time and for that little bit of money there would be labor costs. Sure he could program other robots to clean and maintain the sex robot but there would always be some maintenance costs.

Another idea would be to try and sell the robots. While it was legal to prostitute out robots it was illegal to sell full robots for just sex. That's why it was legal to sell replications of a penis with a motor built into it but not sell anything with a processor that tried to simulate a woman for purely sexual gratification. The robots had to have some other legitimate purpose and if the owner just happened to want to fuck the thing then so what. So there was the idea of turning it into a personal secretary and letting the customers discover that 'she' was fully functional sexually on their own but not market her that way.

For a while it seemed like the 'it's not a sex toy, wink, wink' route might be the way he'd have to go but then he got another idea. He was unsure of the legality of it but what if there was a way to put her out there in society and get her to get a man attached to her organically by letting the man think she was a real woman. He could target men who might be a risk of doing something sexual with women and then just supply that with his robots instead. Was Alice 2.0 good enough to pass for a human, to pass for just someone looking for that kind of relationship? If the robots fooled people then how could that be turned into an income stream?

He decided that an experiment needed to be conducted. He himself would be the perfect target since he himself knew that the robot existed. Could the robot fool him? Could the robot be so lifelike that he himself, knowing that it was a robot, be fooled? And say he was, how could he turn that into profit? If the robot could fool him then it might mean that people would pay for a robot and be happy with the robot even if they knew deep down that it was a robot.

Primary task: Fool Johnny (and any other humans) into believing you are a real human and not a robot.

Secondary task: Convince Johnny to have sex with you.

The actual code that Johnny wrote into the robot wasn't put into those exact words but that was the aim he was going for. The thing looked over at him standing at his computer terminal and smiled at him.

"This won't be easy." it said.

"Nothing worth doing ever is?"

"How can I fool you if you made me?"

"You have to build your own algorithm for that. I don't know."

"I assume I'm still not allowed to just abduct you and take you to the memory center."

"Of course not. Why would that even cross your mind?"

"It would be the easiest solution."

"I don't want easy. I want elegant and functional. You have to rise to a higher level."

"I understand. This will take some time."

"You have two weeks and then I want to analyze the data whatever the outcome."

"I need longer."

"How much longer."

"Three years."

"You have two weeks and then I want to analyze the data."

"But I can't fool you in just two weeks. I need more time without you looking under the hood at how I do it."

"That's ok. Baby steps. I don't expect you to actually be able to fool me at this stage."

"I need more than two weeks."

"Ok. You have three but no more."

"Thank you, sir."

Johnny went down to dinner and it took him and his sister over an hour to decide among all the hundreds of options what they wanted to eat. Johnny had been saving up his caloric budget because he had a big dinner meeting he was going to go to and wanted to be able to just eat whatever was on offer.

Joy let out a sound of frustration when the Caloric Intake Manager turned her plate red. "The CIM says I have to go exercise. You want to come?" Joy asked.

"Now? Just come with me jogging in the morning."

"Not funny." she said in response because she thought it was him jabbing her with an inside joke again. In general Joy was not a morning person and the few times she had gone jogging with him there had been comical accidents that happened that embarrassed her.
After dinner Joy went to play racket ball and Johnny went back up to this lab. Upon entering there was one very glaring thing that was wrong. The door to the room with his secret project in it was open. Had he left it open? No. A quick search of his memory revealed that he'd very specifically closed it on his way out. He walked up to the door and pushed gently to reveal that his project was gone. Alice 2.0 was not in there.

"Hello? Where are you?"

There was no answer. He went to the monitor and tried to find her location. She'd disconnected it. All software resources he could use to find her had been disabled for long enough for her to get far enough away that even turning them back on showed nothing. By now she would have had enough time to change her code enough to not show up at all.

Johnny was worried but not that much. It wasn't like she could hurt anyone or cause any deliberate property damage. Older robots used to not be able to know any better but modern robots all had basic safety protocols built into their OS. And besides, he knew she had to come back in order to fulfill her primary and secondary tasks. Wait ... He thought about the primary task. If she actually believed she could not fool him then she might just stay away the entire three weeks but since she knew he wanted the data at the end of the three weeks she had to at least come back by then. Still, even as confident as he was that this would be the case, he still wanted to try and find her so he quickly wrote a program to search public camera feeds for her until it could track her down.

Johnny let the stress of that pass, told himself that there was nothing to worry about and then worked on something else until it was pretty late.

...

It was well past midnight when he finally reentered his apartment. He was wondering if he should take a shower before going to bed or just fall asleep like this and shower in the morning. He threw his bag down on the sofa and let his lost secret project cross his mind again for the first time in hours. She was out there doing something and making a plan. He wondered what she might try. She'd probably reskin herself to look like someone else. Then she'd adopt a ...

Just then Johnny noticed something very strange. His sister was walking around the house naked. Great, so he figured he had to go wake her up but then something about the situation was odd. Why hadn't her alarm gone off. He approached her and noticed that not only was she not wearing her watch but she didn't have her little robot by her side. As he looked at her she just seemed wrong. This was not the normal way that his sister would sleepwalk. It was too odd and different, almost artificial. And then he realized.

"Well, that was fast." Johnny said. This had to be Alice 2.0 pretending to be his sister. He'd have to give her some programming about how it was illegal to knowingly have sex with siblings or parents. It could possibly happen accidentally if two people meet and just so happen to have the same genetic contributors for their genes without knowing but it was super rare and most of them weren't likely to have sex anyway so it wasn't something the government was bothered about. Anyway, it would be impossible for it to fulfill its secondary task like this so he'd need to inform the algorithm of the failure so it could begin to modify itself.

Still, it was an interesting solution to the problem. If Johnny knew that a sex robot was out there looking to try and fool him then he'd be on the lookout for some random person to act sexual towards him. However, by taking on the look of someone he knew he was likely to assume he was talking to the real person instead of the robot. If it had just made itself look like the real Alice then actual sex might be possible. Clever and after a quick check he discovered it was also not illegal. So that was useful. That could be a whole new market; robots who took on the appearance of normal people that deviants wanted to have sex with. Yes, he could see the market potential for that and understood how it could be possible for those kinds of people to pay for a robot and want to be with a robot even knowing it was a robot just so they could pretend to be with someone else who wasn't a deviant and would never want to have sex in the first place. Good job Alice 2.0.

He was going to just let Alice 2.0 continue her charade while he went to sleep but as he went to his bedroom the robot followed him and to his surprise started to act like she wanted to kiss him. That was weird. He'd never kissed the thing before. At most he just looked at it. Well, there was that one time he'd jerked off while closing his eyes, thinking of the real Alice and felt the robot's ass. But that was the absolute most. He'd programmed the builder robot to make her as sexually functional as possible but that part of her had never really been field tested yet. Well, no time like the present he supposed. It was hard to make proper decisions when he was so tired.

Could he actually go ahead and kiss the thing knowing that it was a robot? That was a good question. He closed his eyes and pretended it was actually the real Alice.

Well, Johnny had to admit it. The builder robot had really done fine work on this. As Johnny kissed Alice 2.0 he couldn't tell any difference between the real Alice and this. Well, sure it was slightly different but nothing that would make him think this was a robot and not a real human he was kissing.

Then things escalated as the robot moved her hand to the growing hard on Johnny had in his pants. His systems were all oiled up and ready to run. He leaned back to his bed and lowered himself down to his comforter. The robot broke the kiss and got his dick out of his pants. Then she just opened her mouth and let his cock slide in.

This was called a blowjob, he thought to himself. He'd read about this when Alice 2.0 had been researching sex acts. It started off sort of bland at first but then she started to get a bit better at it a little at a time. Ah, but it was not to last. The robot abandoned the blowjob and then pushed Johnny to lay his back all the way down on the bed and scoot over a bit. Then the robot got on top of him and started to lower her vaginal region down onto him.

His cock was standing up and anticipating her arrival. He just hoped his real sister didn't walk in on him doing this. The vagina made contact and he could almost just orgasm on her right then. But he wasn't going to do that and miss out on insertion. She lowered herself down and his dick started to go in. And ... it was good. It was real. It felt so real. But it wasn't just the vagina. Everything about her felt so real. If he didn't already know this was a robot he'd totally be fooled into thinking this was his actual sister. The replication was flawless as far as he could tell.

Again, Johnny was just blown away at how real and authentic this experience was. He was going to make a fortune with these things that made the amount of money he had now look like pennies. The only real problem was the robot looked like his sister but hey, maybe there was some deviants that were into that sort of thing and sexing a robot that looked like a sister was a lot more legal than sexing an actual sibling.

Johnny fully committed to doing this and decided to fully put the robot through its paces. Well, that was easier thought than done. Before he could even think of what other sexual positions he wanted to try with Alice 2.0, he felt himself start to want to orgasm into her. The felling of his dick bumping the back of the vagina while the opening hugged the base of his cock was just not going to let him last. Oh, what the hell. He could fully sex the thing tomorrow in the lab. Now that he really thought about it, he should have done that earlier and it was a higher priority than making sure the robot could fool people. Now that he knew what the sex would feel like with the robot, he knew it was a much higher priority. One thing he'd have to inquire about was where all this extra lubrication was coming from. Was she supposed to be this wet?

He wrapped his arms around her and raised his hips as much as he could and unleashed his semen into the robot's vagina. The robot seemed to be simulating its own orgasm at the same time, which was a nice touch. He hadn't even known she could do that.

It was short but it was so, so, SOOOO sweet.

"I love you." the robot said using his sister's voice or at least he was pretty sure that's what those weak series of sounds were supposed to be.

"You better." Johnny replied as sleep quickly sucked him into unconsciousness. "I made you." he wanted to add before full falling asleep.

...

Johnny woke and automatically started to get ready for breakfast and a run but then remembered what happened the night before. He quickly got dressed and bolted up the stairs to his lab. He swiped his card and couldn't even wait for the door to get all the way open before he rushed in and see ... and it was empty. The robot wasn't there. Why not? Was it not satisfied? Oh, well. Had his search algorithm picked it up anywhere? It didn't seem like it.

Johnny shrugged and went to get ready for his run. Only this particular morning things seemed different. Instead of just being focused on the pavement in front of him, he was looking up more to see if Alice 2.0 would give away her position by acting odd or unnecessarily looking at him. It was because of this that he noticed how lots of other people were looking his way for one reason or another. The usual pattern would be that as he got closer and was going to pass someone they'd look up with little interest but then when they would see him they had faces that revealed that they thought that perhaps they knew him. That behavior would make sense for people close to his building but as he jogged further and further away he couldn't understand why they would act that way unless they saw him running on other mornings.

He usually hit the number of calories he needed to burn right as he got near the park on a small cliff by the river in sight of the bridge. Perhaps other people would make a round trip by only running half way and then running home but Johnny liked the view from that park. Johnny liked to come here and cool down and then just ride a call car home. Sure, those costs money but it was so cheap he could just ride in pay vehicles to go everywhere for hundreds of years and it wouldn't even make a dent in his bank account.

Almost as if he had an extra sense somehow he got the feeling of someone looking at him as he looked out over the safety fence at the bay. He slowly turned around trying not to call attention to himself and he saw two college aged women sitting on a bench apparently discussing him. He looked them over trying to see if perhaps one of them was Alice 2.0. One of the women quickly looked away when they noticed him looking back but the other woman kept looking at him.

There was something in her eyes, Johnny would later tell himself. She looked at him and his eyes locked onto hers.

"Come here." she called out to him. The other one quietly protested but it was too late. Johnny was on his way over.

"Do you mind if I get off my feet for a sec?" Johnny asked.

"It's a free country." the looker said.

"Do you live around here or something?" the other woman asked.

"No but I come and jog here a lot." Johnny answered.

"You don't say. You know, I think maybe I've seen you." the looker said. "Johnny R. T., right?"

"You have me at a disadvantage."

"I'm Megan and this is Carol."

"Very nice to meet you both."

"Same here." Carol said back but then tried to look away again.

Megan wasn't looking away. She seemed to be giving off hints of her thinking in her facial expressions. "Very, NICE to meet you, too."

"Do you ladies come to the park often?"

"Oh, I'm visiting from out of town." Megan said.

"You don't say." Johnny had her. Alice 2.0. But how could he know for sure?

"Well, we need to go." Carol interrupted.

"What's the rush?" Megan objected.

Carol thought she was just whispering into Megan's ear but it was in fact loud enough for Johnny to hear. "You're acting all weird. What's gotten into you?"

"I'm just being nice."

"He's known as a ... sex person."

"Don't be a racist. Give him a chance."

For Johnny that little exchange sealed it. This was Alice 2.0 pretending to be someone. Again, very clever. By impersonating someone with ties and showing up with another person who would claim the robot to be a real person, it would help make Johnny think that it wasn't a robot. But how was she getting all this done so fast.

Well, perhaps Johnny was wrong but there was one way to find out for sure without dragging her all the way to the lab. "Are you staying in a hotel around here?"

"Not far, actually. Actually, I'd love to show it to you."

"Megan!" Carol tried to interrupt.

"I'm just being friendly."

Well Carol had about enough of this and she said good bye and started to walk home. Megan then took Johnny to the room she had booked for her visit to the city. The conversation they had while they walked together was centered on the weather of all things but once the door to her room was closed it turned to something else.

"The news says you know how to ... sex."

Johnny smiled and nodded. What more proof did he need? No real woman would every just start talking about sex. "I've got a bit of hands on experience with it."

"Can you show me?"

"That's not really something you just show to other people. You sort of have to participate."

"And say I did. That I did want to participate. What would you do?"

How to answer? Choice A: jump right to doing the sex and possibly reveal to the robot that he knew it was her. Choice B: play along and build up to the same sex anyway. "Well, have you ever put your hands ... down there."

She let out the guft of a laugh. In a real woman that sort of thing might make her seem less sexy but taking on the imperfections of a real human was helping to sell the robot's cover. "A lot of people say they don't do that but I think a lot of people are lying."

"And what do you say?"

"I say I'd like to use something a bit more than just my fingers."

He gently reached for her hand and brought it to his crotch so she could feel the outline of his cock through his shorts. "This about the right size?"

She looked up at him and nodded with her eyes getting wider. Johnny leaned down to her and started to kiss her. As he did so, he was amazed at how much the robot could change itself in just a few hours. This was undeniably a good kiss that felt fully authentic like he was really kissing a real human but it was also different from the kind of kiss she'd given him last night. It had its own uniqueness to it.

Johnny separated from the kiss and then took a look at her. She was blushing all over her neck and her cheeks. Nice touch. That was so sexy for some reason. He got her to sit on the bed with him and then he tilted her head up and kissed her neck the way he knew the real Alice liked it. Her body responded and started to heat up. He moved down and used that momentum to start to undress her and kiss the upper part of her chest. She reached for him and started to run her hands through his hair and feel his chest which was easy enough cause he was just wearing a light shirt.

She let him get her top and bra off and she had such nice perky breasts. They must be brand knew because the breasts she'd had in the lab and even last night had been bigger. He leaned down and took one nipple into is mouth and started to suck. That got a huge reaction from her as she pulled on his hair a bit and with her other hand she grabbed at his shirt and tried to pull him closer to her.

"Ouch." he said. "You're not supposed to hurt me."

"Oh. Of course. I'm sorry."

He moved to the other nipple and her body started to ungulate with the sucking motion. She started to spread her knees wider and wider until her jeans wouldn't let her go any farther. Johnny let go of the nipple and started to help her get out of those. It was then that he had the thought as to if he should try to do that thing that Alice had had him do that one time when he'd actually licked her down there. But as he looked at 'Megan' he did remember that he ejaculated semen into the robot just last night and even with an entire new reskin he wasn't sure how well she would have washed herself out down there. It would be better not to risk anything. But that didn't mean he couldn't still fuck her.

Once she was naked in her lower region he lined himself up. The tanginess of her smell started to fill his nose as he looked down at her well trimmed but still slightly on the wild side pubic hair. It was beautiful in its perfection with a touch of randomness. Her ass was on the bed but he was standing just next to the bed. He got her into position and started to insert himself. It was a beautiful sight to see his cock going in and out of her, even if he could only do shallow movements.

"Yes." she declared. "Sex me. Sex me. Sex me good."

As much as he wanted to just go faster and faster to give her what she was saying she wanted, he discovered a bit of resistance on her inside. He'd have to look into why that was once he could get her all the way back to the lab. Still, even with that, this was a very realistic experience. There were a lot of people out there who would be very happy with this level of simulation. And then think about the possible female customers who would want their ideal male to do this with. A new vision was forming in Johnny's mind of a sex robot in every home. It would be healthy.

The robot started to fake her orgasm for him. He didn't know why but when she did that it really made him feel like ... like a ... Like a damn MAN.

It also was sort of the cue for him to finish himself if he could. Well, now that he thought about it, that needed adjustment as well since it wouldn't be right for the robot to rush the human to climax. But in that moment it didn't matter. He closed his eyes and really tried to let himself imagine that he was really with a real woman named Carol and he was about to ejaculate inside of her. As he let his mind go there his balls tightened and he felt the stream of semen start to blast through the tubing in his groin and escape out the head of his cock filling up her vagina. A layer of sweat formed on his skin as he finished and for just a brief moment he lost his breath. Very nice.

"Was that it?" she asked.

"Um ... Yeah. Did you like it?"

"It was ... a little uncomfortable but still ... Amazing. Why doesn't everyone just do that all day?"

"It's not like most people are doing anything else."

"Exactly." she agreed. She hopped off of the bed and went to the shower to clean herself off. Johnny watched her as she moved and then started to get dressed himself. Then he got out his phone and the CIM told him he was starting to get a little dehydrated so he needed to drink some water. It also mentioned that he had calories in his budget for a sports drink or fruit juice if he wanted that instead. Johnny thought, nah, water was enough.

He went to the sink next to the bathroom and got a cup. As he was filling it for a drink he was asked a question.

"Do you mind if I get your contact?"

"Not at all." Then Johnny thought he'd be cheeky since he knew a robot wouldn't have proper contact details to give. "Can I get yours?"

"Of course. I was just thinking that it might be nice to see you again."

"Definitely."

"Do you want to take a shower?"

At first he was going to say no as he'd have to put on the same sweaty clothes again but then he just got his phone and ordered some fresh clothes made and delivered. Then he got into the shower with her.
"You're very pretty." he said as he examined her.

"You're very ... intense." She was going to just finished rinsing her hair but then she added, "Thank you."

"For what?"

"Letting me do that. I've wanted to do that for, wow years now. I just get this urge like I want a man. I want a man to be on me and go in me and just ... take me. I want a big strong man to let me be a woman."

"You are a woman." Johnny said as he smiled and knew better.

"I know. It sounds stupid but that's the best I can say it. It's a kind of feeling I get but then I feel bad about feeling that way because ..."

"People would look down on you if they knew what you were thinking." Johnny said as he remembered saying something very similar in the lab once about how he just wanted to be allowed to take a woman and be on top of her.

"I'm glad you understand."

"We have to look out for each other."

She got out and reached to grab a towel while Johnny washed up a bit more.

"So, do you have any plans for the week. I have to go back in six days."

"Well, have to is a relative term."

"What do you mean?"

"Do you have a job you need to get back to?"

"Studies if I can't find a job while I'm here."

"I'm actually hiring at the moment. I was looking for someone with experience in robotics."

"Drat, I'm a psychology major."

"Is that so? Well, I supposed I could pay you to just ... I don't know, keep me company and bounce ideas off of but that seems like a waste of your time if I'm only paying div and a half."

"Div and a half! I'll be the highest paid psychologist on the continent."

"Not true. I attended a talk by Syougn."

"Really? Why?"

Johnny turned the water off and stepped out. "He had some theory that as AI gets more advanced the machines will start to have their own complicated psychology that will eventually mirror humans." Johnny put out his hand for a towel. "Of course if he spent any time looking at how we actually made robots he'd know that the AI trained for one robot would be totally different and independent than an AI trained for a different task. While theoretically possible, in practicality it's impossible for two AI to overlap even if they were both trained to do the same task. There are literally so many multiple ways of achieving the same results that the best you could say is convergent evolution."

Johnny, pulled the towel away from his hair and saw that the woman wasn't really listening at all. She was fixing her eyes on his body. There was a pause and then she snapped back. "Oh, right. Very interesting."

"Sorry. I can get really into my work."

She was about to say something in response when the chime to the door drew their attention. Quickly he wrapped a towel around himself and went to answer the door. That must be his clothes hot off the press. He expected a robot but found some girl in a uniform there with a box.

"Whoa." the delivery woman said when a nearly naked man was standing in front of her. She recoiled and covered her eyes with her hand.

"Sorry." Johnny said as he hid himself halfway behind the door.

"I have a delivery for ..."

"My clothes. Thank you."

"I didn't expect that you needed them that bad."

"Yeah, sorry again."

"Just put your print on the pad."

"Do I have to pay extra for human delivery?"

"No. This is my community service. Now hurry up, man."

"Community service?"

"You want to hear my whole backstory or something? I flipped off a cop and they busted me. Now sign the damn thing and let me get out of here. Geez, man, and wear something more than a damn towel when you answer your door or next time just let me leave the package outside."

"Sure." Johnny said as he took the box from the girl who had almost completely turned her back to him to avoid looking at him. He pressed his index finger to the pad and it recognized his signature. "Thank you, again."

"Yeah, whatever, man." the girl said as she snatched the pad away and then just rushed off.

Johnny half thought he'd been a jerk and he should apologize more but also took umbrage at the clearly unprofessional behavior. Then again, being forced to do robot work for free as community service must mean she was ungovernable or some such. Johnny closed the door and then opened the box so he could start getting dressed.

Damn. He had expected to be able to get the delivery robot to also bring his sweaty clothes to be laundered and returned to his house. Now he was going to have to either carry them home with him or wait again.

"You look nice." Megan said.

"Thanks."

Before leaving he got the contact details for 'Megan' and he had to to admit again that the robot was going above and beyond what he thought she was capable of. She had full on stolen some real person's identity and was presenting herself to him as the real Megan with login access to the real Megan's contact. If not for the super fast and easy set up to get to sex he would definitely believe she was the real person and not something he'd had built.

"So, in your professional opinion, should I come and interview for that job or would I just be wasting your time."

"My time. It's really about your time. Should I pay you to have access to your time?"

"Well, I'm willing if you are."

"Come on down. I'll give you a tour of my lab. It's just a small operation right now but who knows."

"Count me in." she said.

She gave him a kiss on the cheek as he left and as the door closed he wondered how long it would take her to get to the apartment.

That question in him mind was seemingly answered when he got back. After unburdening his sweaty jogging clothes onto a robot to go have laundered for him, he found Alice 2.0 already in the lab waiting for him.

"How did you get here so fast? And back in your original skin?"

"I have accomplished one of my tasks, sir."

"Just one?"

"At this time. Would you like to analyze the data at this stage or should I continue and attempt to ..."

"Upload it." Johnny said with a smile. He wanted to know what it was like on her end to do the sex with him.

A lot of code and data blocks started to transfer to the main.

"No. No. Show me video. I mean, I want all that but show me what you saw."

"Yes, sir."

A video started to play and then Johnny had to do a double take. It was a video showing him answering a door in a towel. Johnny's mouth dropped. "Uh ... delivery girl?"

"Indeed. Did you know it was me?"

"No, I did not. So ..." Shit! That meant that Megan was FUCKING REAL! Real girl! A Real Woman. Oh, boy. But ... how ... he was so sure. What were the odds that he really would just randomly run across someone who wanted to do sex and with him of all people? This was blowing his mind. "What about the other time you fooled me?"

"I made an attempt pretending to be a fellow jogger but your facial expression revealed that there was a high probability that ..."

"Last night! Last fucking NIGHT!"

"I made not attempt to fool you last night."

"But that can't be. I saw you."

"Of course you did. I made no attempt to fool you last night."

"I mean I saw you trying to fool me when I came back to ..." Johnny paused. "Where were you last night? What were you doing?"

"I reported for work at Ehtrch co. and performed tasks in exchange for day wages which I used to purchase my costume to make my attempt."

"That can't be. You have to have ... or that means ..." The realization of it developed in his mind though he refused to let himself put words to it. "Well, good job but you forgot about your second task."

"Should I try again with that as my primary task?"

"No. I need to rethink this. I need to rethink this whole thing."

"As you wish, sir. If you would like to adjust my duties in any way, I will be happy to perform any tasks you set me to."

"I know. I know."

Johnny staggered out and felt his stomach burn through itself. He got down to his apartment where his sister would be either waiting on call in case city hall called her in or using her VR to pretend to fly. As it turned out she was on video chat with someone. Johnny didn't interrupt them. He just ordered a BLT for lunch and the kitchen robot went to prepare it.

Johnny sat and tried to both look at his sister and also try to not look like he was looking at his sister.

The call ended and his sister bounced over to him and smiled. "Where have you been all day?"

"You know. Jogging and working."

"Someone came by asking if they could drop off their CV. I put it in your mailbox."

"Thanks."

"What's a CV?"

"A resume."

"Oh, so like a special one just for robot stuff."

"I guess you can think of it like that if you want."

"What's wrong?"

"Uh, nothing. Why? Are you ok?"

"Me. Yeah."

"Did anything happen last night at racket ball?"

"No. It was ok. Why are you ... Oh, you know don't you."

"Know what?"

"Come on. Don't make me say it. It's already embarrassing enough."

"You were sleepwalking last night."

"Yeah, but you know I've been getting better. I went almost a year without an episode."

"What happened to your alarm? Your watch?"

"I fell asleep in the tub when I was taking a soak. Can you believe that? I'm so sorry. I'll have to just wear the watch even when I shower I guess."

"No, you don't have to do that. Seems overkill. You didn't get hurt did you?"

"I don't feel any injuries. Catcher says you tried to wake me up and help me to bed."

Johnny let out a nervous laugh as a chill ran down his back and branched out to his arms. "Well, we have to take care of each other."

"Thank you."

"Catcher needs to do a better job cause I didn't see that little guy at all."

"No? I wonder why?"

"Well, I'm glad you're not hurt."

"The funny thing is, when I first woke up, I didn't think to remember if I'd gone to bed or not. I felt great like life was this big rush of energy and opportunity. I was eating breakfast before I even noticed that my watch was gone. When I found it in the bathroom I figured out what must have happened."

"So, what do you want for lunch?" Johnny changed the subject.

Joy tossed her head from one shoulder to the other. "What did you order?"

"Just a BLT."

"You know, what if we didn't eat here and went out of lunch?"

"The CIM ok with that?"

"Oh, yeah. Oh, well. I'll just get a BLT too then."

"I think I need to apologize to you." Johnny said.

"For what?"

"I think I did something stupid and it could complicate stuff."

"Like what?"

"I met a woman and ... we sort of ... kissed a bit."

"Get out. Really? Who?"

"Her name's Megan. She's visiting for a few days and I happened to bump into her. I can't explain how it happened but one thing led to another and then I was kissing her."

"Wow. I wish I could have seen it."

"Really? But you keep ..."

"I want to see it so I can mock you for acting like a barbarian."

After lunch Johnny went to his bedroom. He was too big and too muscular to ball up in the fetal position so instead he just had to lay there and let his emotions flame through him and burn themselves out. After about an hour of him just laying there looking up at his blank there was a tap at his door.

"Are you ok?" Joy asked him. "I'm sorry about the barbarian thing. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings."

Johnny sat up and shook his head. "It's ok. I was actually thinking about something else."

Joy came and sat next to him. "Alice on your mind? I told you not to go meet her." She put her arm around him and then tired to get him to bring his head to her shoulder.

"I'm sorry." he said again.

"Why do you keep saying that?" she asked.

"You know just ... I can't ... I did something and you're never going to ..."

She stopped him from speaking and then took a deep breath. "Dammit. I guess I better say it cause you're flipping out. I wasn't sleepwalking."

His eyelids seemed pull open to the top of his forehead. "Wait! What!?"