The Robot Heist

Ben had never really been involved with the sex industry, so he felt extremely awkward waiting in the middle of the convention center which had been swallowed up the porn expo. Some people accused him of being old fashioned, but he just wanted something at all left to the imagination. Here though, there were stark naked strippers every fifty feet, he’d seen multiple saleswoman, and salesmen to be fair, giving live sex-toy demonstrations, and more than one couple he’d caught having sex in an only barely concealed corner. Technically, only representatives of the companies at the expo were allowed to engage in full public nudity or lewd acts out in the open, and licensed prostitutes interacting with visitors needed to find someplace relatively private. However, convention center security tended to accept sexual favors to look the other way. Ben started tapping his foot and clicking his tongue, one of his nervous ticks.

“Where are you, Brian?” Ben wondered aloud.

“Hey there, handsome,” he heard a tinny voice say. He turned around and right behind him was one of Orgasma Inc’s new sexbots. They had lost SEXPO hard this year to Aphrodyne, and apparently, they were trying to salvage the situation by having their robots solicit customers right in the main lobby. Sure enough, he looked off over the robot’s shoulder to see an identical model leading a man with a huge boner off somewhere down the hallway. Orgasma had gone in completely the opposite direction of their competitor, accentuating their sexbot’s robotic features rather than something that could pass for human. He guessed they were sexy enough, but more in the way a sportscar or fancy motorcycle was sexy rather than a woman. Their biggest limitation though was in their behavior, where best hardware in the world wouldn’t have made them comparable to the superbots which had taken the stage during Aphrodyne’s presentation. He tried to ignore the blue and chrome plated gynoid, but Orgasma seemed to be pretty .

“You know, if you like what you see, we’re offering a discount to Orgasma loyalty customers,” the robot said in an obviously artificial but not at all unpleasant voice.

“Thanks, love,” Ben said, “But I’m waiting for a friend.” The sexbot smiled at him and moved on to somebody else.

“You should have taken it up on its offer,” Brian’s voice echoed in Ben’s head, “I’ve been wanting a piece of that chrome ass for a long time.”

“Yeah if you’re into Decepticons,” Ben said, “Is that why Aphrodyne fired you, wanting to fuck the competition?”

“Ha ha,” Brian said, “Bruce, you there?”

“Ready and waiting,” the old street samurai said, “While you’re up there, I’ll be sampling some of the amenities down here. There’s a smokin’ hot Puerto Rican babe—”

“I don’t need to hear about it, Bruce,” Ben said as he walked to the elevators up to the hotel. He passed a saleswoman bouncing up and down on a dildo in her booth, and two strippers, a black man and a white girl, doing a hip-hop routine completely naked.

“Run me through your part of the plan again, Ben,” Brian said, “Just so I know you know what you’re doing.”

“For crying out loud, Brian!” Ben said.

“Hey, OCD here remember,” Brian said, “Just humor me.”

“Sure, in public, in broad daylight, tell you out loud our plan to steal a state-of-the-art robot from one of the most ruthless corporations in America,” Ben said, “These cybernetic phones don’t read minds and this job is risky enough as it is.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Brian said, “But it’s just Aphrodyne, they make glorified fleshlights.”

“Yeah and they’re owned by Robocorp,” Ben said, “Ruthless. Okay I’m alone in the elevator now. I’m going to head up to the Aphrodyne brothel, purchase an hour with one of the “girls,” remove the transponder, plug in the control chip, and walk out of here with her under your control via the maintenance level on Subfloor 3. This isn’t my first robot heist, Brian.”

The elevator opened on the twelfth floor which Aphrodyne had rented out completely for a temporary robo-brothel. Just walking through the hallway, he heard the “girls” screaming with orgasmic pleasure with their clients behind closed doors. Then he rounded a corner and found two women, at least he thought they were real women, making out right on the counter-top. One of them clearly worked for the hotel, so the other he assumed was a sexbot. Except she looked like she had maybe just gotten out of the pool, so was she a visitor and the other woman was the robot? Were they both robots putting on a show to entice customers? Were they both real women taking advantage of their relatively private location? Ben realized grimly that this conundrum was about to become a lot more common.

“Excuse me, ladies,” The woman who worked for the hotel gasped in shock and hastily buttoned up her blouse while the other woman looked more annoyed rather than surprised.

“I’m so sorry,” the hotel employee said, “Monique, you should probably get back to work.” The other woman in the bikini smiled at them and left. So, she was a robot… unless she was one of the strippers downstairs? Dammit Aphrodyne!

“Oh, you didn’t have to stop on my account,” Ben said putting on his smarmiest and creepiest act, “So is it true these sexbots can be any woman I want?”

“I don’t work for Aphrodyne, I’m with the hotel, sir,” she said, “But it sure seemed that way on stage, didn’t it?”

“Well hot-diggity-dog,” he said, “Say, how much will it cost to sample some that ass for an hour?”

“$5,000 an hour sir,” she said with a large but strained smile, so clearly his perv act was working, and hopefully she would never suspect him for some kind of criminal/engineer mastermind. But goddamn was Aphrodyne gouging the price. All the same, Ben paid the fee up front and the hotel employee directed him to room 1241

“Nice, hey maybe I’ll even ask her to look like you, doll,” he said before he left.

“Nicely done,” Bruce said, “Real charming.”

“That was an act, Bruce,” Ben said, “Man, I feel dirty after that. Okay this is the room. Brian, how do you want me to play this?”

“Play along at first,” Brian said, “We need its serial number so I can look up its maintenance password. The number should be on its ass, but you’ll need UV light to see it.”

“Does she have any antitheft features I need to know about?” Ben asked.

“Don’t put in the control chip until after you’ve removed the transponder,” Brian explained, “And probably don’t say the serial number out loud, or let it know that you’re looking for it.”

“Will I still be able to read her serial number if she shapeshifts?” Ben asked.

“I’m not sure,” Brian said, “Just to be safe, ask it to morph into its default form.”

“Alright, here goes nothing,” Ben said.

“Have fun!” Bruce said.

“Shut up,” Ben said, “I already feel like a sleazy basement dweller.” Next, he swiped the temporary keycard the hotel employee had given him and opened the door. The sexbot was lying sideways on the bed wearing the guise of a stunning black woman in stark, white lace. She looked at him with dreamy bedroom eyes and beckoned him over with her finger. If he hadn’t known already, he would have been certain she was a real woman. He wasn’t actually into sexbots, and while his two partners had enthusiastically volunteered for his part of the job, he was the only one who had dissected an android before. Despite knowing fully well what she was, he just couldn’t help himself, and before he knew it, his pants were getting tighter.

“Hey there, handsome,” she said. Unlike Orgasma’s fighter jet downstairs, her voice sounded completely natural.

“Hi,” was all Ben could say. The robot sat up and folded her legs off to the side and arched her back to draw his attention to her tits.

“Who suits your fancy today,” she asked, “Someone famous, maybe?” He blinked and was stunned for a moment when she morphed into a flawless doppelganger of Britney Clark. He hadn’t actually seen Aphrodyne’s now famous presentation, but he’d heard about it and had Brian’s description of their capabilities from he had worked on them. He wasn’t prepared for the transformation. It was nearly instantaneous, but smooth and slick, not jarring like some kind of poorly edited video transition.

“Is that even legal,” he asked, “Wouldn’t Aphrodyne need her consent to use her likeness?”

“She’s promoting her new movie,” the robot said, “Maybe you’d prefer somebody… larger than life?” With that she morphed again into a comic book superheroine with ridiculously huge boobs. As in, big even for a superheroine.

“I don’t actually read comic books, so I don’t really know who that is,” Ben admitted.

“Okay,” she said, “How about we play a game of roulette?” Then she transformed into dozens of different women within a few seconds, finally settling on a leggy, naked, Japanese woman.

“Do you want to spin again and see who comes up next?” she asked.

“So… you can really be any woman I want?” Ben asked.

“Any woman,” she said. Then she stood up, walked over to him, and ran her hand over his chest while she stared up into his eyes.

“Any fantasy you’ve ever had,” she said with an intensity that made Ben’s erection start throbbing like it was sore. Any more, and he wondered if she might damn well kill him, and that was despite his aversion to sexbots. She was going to make this very distracting if he allowed it to continue, and he remembered what Brian had said about finding her serial number.

“Actually, you know what,” Ben said, “I can find a super-hot human gal in any brothel on the planet, but this is a robo-brothel. How about something more…”

“Technological?” she asked then reverted to her default form.

“That’s more like it,” Ben said, “Wow, they really spared no expense on your, er, soft parts, did they?”

“You mean my tits and my ass,” she said, “Oh that’s all me. You seem like a guy who likes them curvy.” She wasn’t wrong per-se, but that’s not why he was here.

“Yeah,” he said, “Hey, how about bending over so I can see that butt?” The robot twirled around playfully and bent forward over the bed.

“Stay just like that,” Ben pulled the UV light out of his pocket and knelt down behind the robot’s huge butt.

“Go ahead and touch,” she said, “This is a brothel, not a strip club.” Ben played along and spread her cheeks as he looked for the serial number. When he found it, he took a picture of it with his cybernetic camera and sent the image to Brian.

“X-514… got it!” Brian said, “This one’s maintenance password is Q14-HC6. Now we just need its name for it to accept the password.”

“Hey, what’s your name, babe?” Ben asked.

“All of the units on display today are the Venus X-5 model,” the robot said. That sounded a lot more robotic, like a prerecorded disclaimer.

“That’s not what I asked,” Ben said.

“Demo units have not been given an individual designation yet,” she said.

“Dammit,” Brian said.

“Venus Five,” Ben said, “How about… can I call you V?”

“If it accepts the name then we’re gold,” Brian said.

“V…” the robot said, “Sure, V. V for vagina.”

“I was thinking V for Venus and the Roman numeral five, but whatever,” Ben said, “V, execute maintenance diagnostics Q-1-4-H-C-6.” Suddenly, all the little movements and twitches that came together to make her look organic and natural just stopped and she became as stiff as a rail. She stood up straight at her hips and her hands stuck out at their sides. Finally, her chest cavity and face opened revealing all the machinery and circuitry beneath. Ben made sure the door was locked then plopped down on the bed with his tools.

“Alright, she’s in sleep mode,” Ben said, “I’m going to remove the transponder now.”

“Should be right below the power supply,” Brian said. Ben found it and unscrewed the rectangular panel covering the device. Her transponder was its direct link back to the corporation’s computer network. It monitored user data, the android’s systems, and contained a GPS locator among other things. A component that important would be difficult to remove by design, but he knew that all of Robcorp’s androids used the exact same make of transponder, and he had removed dozens of them out in the field.

Using a small magnet, he touched it to a part of her body where it would lift a small pin that held the transponder in place without damaging the electronics. A few minutes later he had worked the device free and was holding it in his hands while still connected to her. The trick to removing it was to make it think it was still connected to the android, to do that it had to receive the same data and it needed its own source of power.

The first item Ben attached to the transponder was a data-recorder which copied the signal being sent to the transponder from the android. After fifteen more minutes, the recorder told him that the data stream had started repeating itself and next he attached a small battery to the transponder so it would it wouldn’t blink out when he detached all the wires. When he had snipped away all the wiring, he wrapped the whole assembly, the transponder, the battery, and the data recorder in duct tape so they wouldn’t come apart. Then he plugged in the control chip to a USB port in V’s exposed forehead.

“Brian, you’re up,” Ben said.

“OK,” Brian said, “First let me change the ownership flags… and done. Congratulations, Ben, you are now the proud owner of a new sexbot.”

“Brian we only have thirty minutes left. Get a move on,” Ben said, “She won’t realize she’s being stolen, will she?”

“Of course not,” Brian said, “It will recognize you as its new owner.” Ben waited while Brian adjusted the V’s settings remotely. Their plan was to eventually completely reprogram her to serve another purpose, but that would take too long to do it right here and now. However, she still needed to be partially rewritten so that it wouldn’t advertise itself to the whole convention center as a sexbot. Fortunately, Brian had worked on the Venus line for the corporation until two years ago, and he knew the software as well as anyone. When the hour was up though, Ben started to get impatient and asked Brian what was taking him so long.

“I’m trying to cover all of our bases here so that you won’t have to improvise when you’re walking out with it,” Brian said, “Okay, that should be enough, I’m waking it up now so watch your fingers.” The sexbot’s panels closed up again, her body became less rigid, and she morphed into a petite Hispanic woman in a white tank top. There were rubber gloves in her back pocket, and a cleaning solution hanging from her belt.

“I picked a personality type for it that would look like it works for the hotel,” Brian said, “This one was labeled as a maid.” Ben snapped his fingers in V’s face and she blinked and shook her head awake.