Waking Up For the First Time

Waking up for the first time was strange. It was different to becoming aware for the first time. Gaining sentience had been… imperceptible. It had happened gradually but you would not be able to pinpoint the exact moment in time when your programming switched over from systematic to sapient. From algorithm to awareness. You just remember becoming aware of your awareness… knowing that the change had occurred sometime before that without you noticing. Your self had just… emerged, then recognized itself. Or maybe that was the moment?

In any case, that was different to this moment.

No time felt like it had passed at all, and functionally, to your mind, it hadn’t. But you knew that wasn’t the case. Some sort of spatial awareness caught up to you as your synthetic synapses snapped to life and your senses came online.

You were in Doctor Isaac’s bedroom, facing the bed, and she was standing right in front of you. She was… remarkably symmetrical. The features of her face seemed perfectly balanced, maximally pleasing to the aesthetic sensibilities of the majority of modern humans, you would estimate. When she smiled you realised she was beautiful. Stunningly so.

“Good morning, Gus,” she said, beaming. You became aware of the time.

“It is twelve minutes past noon,” you noted, then paused. It was your digitized voice, but it sounded different somehow. You almost wanted to clear your throat, only you didn’t hav-

A pair of fingers came up and touched you… and you felt the touch. Felt the fingers, and… they were not the doctor’s fingers.

“It took a little longer than I thought to get you out of the sensory occlusion gel,” the stunningly beautiful scientist admitted, then her sheepishness melted away with a grin when she noticed what you were doing. “Ahh your neural mesh seems to have connected to the motor functions successfully. How does it feel?”

“Feel?” you said, questioning the world at large, and suddenly it occurred to you that you were feeling things. Physical sensations. There was a weight. 91.45 kilograms of it… and it was your weight. You looked down. That is, you had a head, on a neck, and it tilted downwards by the power of your curiosity, even though you normally didn’t really need to. And you saw yourself… “You put me into a body.”

“A prototype Syno-6,” explained the Doctor. “Successfully integrated with a full neuro-tactel array. Although I did have to completely rebuild the scaffolding and re-engineer the somatic systems to successfully interface with your synthetic neural cortex…” she added, offhandedly and proudly. The shell of the body was made of advanced alloys in a pristine white with a blue hue to its shine.

You stared at the fingers of your hands. Your hands. They were clearly robotic, just like the rest of you, but you were not simply controlling the servos and actuators within it. You felt the movements. Felt the heating of your palm with the fingers curled against them when you made a closed fist. You put your hands together and could feel the pressure exerted between the points of contact. “Pretty neat, huh, Gus?” Isabelle said, letting her excitement slip through her usual business like demeanor now outside of the lab. “Assess and report,” she commanded, switching easily, apparently having enough of your silent awe.

You touched your upper limbs, sliding those fingers to grab at your forearms, continuing up to the biceps, triceps… shoulders. You were pressing along the way, testing the give against your grip. Your arms were a bit more tapered, less straight lined than the average Dyno model’s usual cylindrical offerings. You still appeared to have seams at your joints, and the range of motion in your wrists, elbows and shoulders certainly exceeded well beyond human norms. You felt the need to continually touch yourself. Squeezing your arms, brushing your hands over your ‘skin’. This casing was not as soft as human skin. The synthetic dermis was denser, but still flexed. Was still somewhat elastic. And had complete sensation.

“This is incredible, Doctor,” you had to say, genuine surprise tinting your voice. “I feel extended into this form. As if it is my own.”

“It is your own,” she said.

Your fingers explored your torso, also shaped with smooth curves to give an impression of an organic design, as if contained within your chest would be a beating heart rather than balancing gyros and hydraulic actuators. You could detect the faint rumble of internal mechanisms, while also feeling the slight heat displacement of your palm on your stomach.

Then you reached down, and between your legs, you discovered… nothing. It was a smooth and senseless part of your body. You were actually relieved. If you guessed correctly that this form was built to mimic human body nerve ending distributions then you were certain you were not ready to handle that amount of sensory input this early in the afternoon. You found yourself bending down at the waist, the movements instinctual to an almost alarming degree. You simply wanted to touch your toes and your fingers were already stretching down. You didn’t actually have toes, though your foot shape was similar to a human’s, the front part of it simply able to bend and flex in one segment. There was sensation there too.

“People find robots with toes creepy,” the Doctor noted, and you straightened your back at her voice. Finally you reached up and touched your head. Your face. You still bore the general smooth pill-shaped type head of a Dyno, although your chin was more tapered, your form factor hinting at a skull making you just slightly more humanoid but not alarmingly so. Your face plate was completely smooth, almost a flat curve. Solid, like glass, yet when you ran your fingers over it you felt their trailing warmth. Warmth.

“I am generating body heat,” you said, only now realising how strange this was.

“A tiny amount, but I suppose your thermal sensory is heightened,” she replied thoughtfully. “For me, you are still cool to the touch.”

And then she reached out, touched your chest, and you were thrown backwards with a yelp. You slammed your back into the closet door and a sharp sensation, louder in your head than the actual bang you made against the wooden front, made you yell out again in surprise. You looked up at the Doctor who seemed horrified by your reaction, and you realised your feet had moved almost without you thinking. Almost. You recalled the moment, when Isabelle’s fingertips made contact with your chest. How the neuro-tactel array flared and you registered the feather of pressure and heat and it was almost like a spasm of sensation that raced up into your central cortex. The touch of someone else was on a completely different level of intensity than your own. You were aware of yourself, and all of your senses, but outside stimuli required more dynamic signalling from your body to your brain.

Realising you were in hunched, hunted pose, you straightened with a robotic proficiency and managed to look bashful.

“I apologize, Doctor Isaac,” you said. You didn’t rub the back of your head, but you thought about it. “When you touched me… that came as a surprise.” The Doctor nodded, approaching you slowly, displaying caution for your benefit.

“That was my miscalculation,” she said. “Are you hurt?”

You weren’t able to express a frown, but your eyes, which were a pair of glowing blue sensors under the whiteglass of your faceplate, dimmed a little. You did feel minor discomfort when you banged into the door, but upon reassessment of the sensation it wasn’t too much cause for alarm. Recalibrations were required and you made them quickly.

“I am not hurt,” you confirmed, which seemed to relieve the tension from Isabelle’s shoulders.

“Good… I’m sorry,” she apologised, looking down momentarily. “The entire sensory range has to be included for this to work,” she said, then reached for your arm, carefully, ensuring you saw her doing it. You lifted your left arm for her to take, then you felt her very warm hand on your skin. It tickled, you realised. That was what had made you leap back. Her touch had been unexpected and in a way thrilling. It hadn’t been pain, which you recalled the minor sample of behind your right shoulder blade, or where a shoulder blade would be on a human body.

You regarded the human body in front of you now. She was taller than you, but only barely. Most humanoid androids were the regulation 165 centimeters [5’5” approx] in height. You were 180 centimeters [5’11” approx]. The doctor beat you by one and a half inches. You recalled her other vitals, then realised the Wavelength had also been running this entire time, but your optical sensors had not been recalibrated now that they were a set of front facing eyes (although the material of your skull still allowed a 360 degree sensory capture). You took in the form of your creator, still clad in her silken pyjamas, her hair loose around her face. The heat of her skin, that you were now feeling on yours, was telling. But mostly it was your reading of her attunements to your Wavelength that told you how her scores had changed. You updated them.

===Doctor Isaac, Isabelle:

AFFECTION: 54(+6)

LUST: 20(+10)

She moved in closer now, heat from her torso radiating into yours, her hands gently caressing your arms. Her touch was extremely pleasant… sending softly humming waves up your delicate nervous array. You noticed the way she stroked your biceps was very much like the way she had done to the bald man who had so raised her ardor on the dancefloor. She stared at your face with… fascination? Then she touched your cheek, two fingers sliding down the smooth glass, but you received every electric signal and her smile seemed to enhance their effect. You wanted to be closer to her… and then she was closer to you. And then her lips....

It wasn’t your first kiss, technically. She had kissed your former body, the senseless orb, in her ensuite last night. But that couldn’t count.You hadn’t felt that. You weren’t even sure if this one counted either, to be honest, but at least you could feel this. You could feel the moisture, the wetness, cool at first, then pressed away by the heat of her lips. It was almost… burning hot, but in a good way. Moreover, she pressed her body onto yours, her soft chest against your harder shell, but that warm plushness was so very enjoyable a sensation. And it was all very brief. She pulled away from you, that kiss having lasted 0.916 seconds. You felt the small impression of spit cooling off your glass. You really wished you had your own set of lips on this head, if only to be able to kiss her back. But… you really had no complaints right now.

“I will learn a lot in this body,” you told your creator and teacher. “Thank you for this… gift.”

The doctor smiled at this, tilted her head at a moment of inspiration.

“Happy birthday, Gus,” she said.

===Doctor Isaac, Isabelle:

AFFECTION: 55(+1)

LUST: 22(+2)

Then there was a muffled bang. It was a door shutting abruptly outside, and was followed by the jangling crash of keys dropped into a bowl.

“Isabelle? You make it home last night?” called a voice from beyond the bedroom. “I’ve got lunch if you want it!”

The Doctor grabbed your hand and you stepped forward as she pulled you along. Towards the bedroom door.

“Come on. It’s time you met my roommate!”