36+1 Ep. 09

Mike couldn't find Tammy. He wandered down to the usual hangout of the basement lab and looked for her there first. Lots and lots of fembots were there, and they nearly distracted him from his original goal.

The naked technicians were standing perfectly still, gazing in their empty way at the monitors perched above a bank of big metal terminals. The dizzying scrolling of 1s and 0s that zoomed by were no better than meaningless to him, but he knew that Maria and her assistant Laurie were 'learning' a lot.

They were so engrossed in reading the data that they didn't answer any of his questions. So he walked through the aisles of massive, cabinet-like computer consoles looking for his woman and calling out her name.

He found Anya off in a corner, on top of a sexy blonde on an examination table. Anya was panting and breathing heavy between her passionate kisses. Mike went behind her, but even though she must have heard him she didn't stop to say hi.

"Anya," he said, "Have you seen Tammy?"

"Not for a while." Anya answered - without the need to stop kissing or open her mouth.

Mike furrowed his brow a little and sarcastically said "Don't run your batteries down there, cause I ain't gonna lift you."

Anya ignored him. She kept kissing the robot she had chosen and activated for that purpose. Mike walked back out of the lab and started calling out Tammy's name upstairs.

As he walked by one of the rooms close to his den, he heard her quietly call out "I'm in here."

He took a step back to look through the doorway. The lights were off in the seldom-used room. Tammy was sitting curled up under a blanket on one end of the big and expensive looking leather sofa.

That didn't look quite right to Mike. "Is there something wrong?" he said, not talking to her as a machine, but talking to her as a person.

She looked up at him and showed him a thin smile. "I don't know." she said.

Mike didn't know what to make of it. All of Tammy's complicated expression systems and body language algorithms made it appear that she was in a bad mood, but he had never seen her in a bad mood without a very good reason.

"Is there room under there for me?" he asked as he stepped near.

Her temporary smile turned wider as she held out the blanket for him. He sat down next to her and covered himself too while she leaned in and held on to him.

They didn't say anything for a few minutes. He just held her. It felt like the right thing to do.

But after a while his curiosity got the better of him. "What's wrong?" he asked.

She looked up at him and kissed him. She was so real he had to remind himself what she was.

"Something weird happened to me a little while ago." she said.

"What?"

"I... umm... lost control of parts of my system for a short time."

"A malfunction?"

"Not really." she said as she took some time to compute the best way to explain what she meant. "I really don't know what it was."

"Well... what exactly happened?"

"I was masturbating, and it started feeling different. My sensors were being stimulated in ways I wasn't initiating."

He looked at her as she said that. He tried to think of what that would mean to a machine like her.

She went on: "It felt good though. It felt SOOO good Mike, I'd never felt like that before."

He looked at her in silence and let her continue.

"I kept rubbing my pussy, and pretty soon it felt like the sensors in my clit were gonna explode. The feeling began to shoot all through my body, like every wire and every conduit was carrying some new, stronger kind of electricity."

"And it still felt good?" he asked.

"It felt WONDERFUL!" she said, her face animated with joy at the recollection.

"So how come you're feeling sad now?" he asked.

Her expression loosened again into the look of worry he had seen earlier. "Well, I'll tell you what happened after that. My foot twitched."

"Parts of my body twitch all the time, it's no big deal." he said, trying to sound reassuring.

"It's a big deal for an android." she said plainly. "I'm not supposed to just twitch."

He squeezed her warm body tight and kept looking into her eyes as he listened.

"Anyway, I was feeling crazy with pleasure... I think my cognition programs were hanging for a while too. But it still felt good, like I never knew I could feel. I got so wet from that too... wetter than I planned."

Mike had a silly comment come to mind, but he let it pass and kept listening.

"So I went upstairs and tried to see if I could get it to happen again."

"Did it?"

"No."

"So you think it was a malfunction?"

"No... I don't know. I don't think so. I ran 3 full diagnostic scans on myself after I changed my clothes. Everything is working right inside me."

"So... uh... I hope I don't sound callous, but what are you worried about then?"

"I'm worried that there's something wrong with me that I can't find or fix. I'm also scared that when the Main Computer scans me tomorrow it will change me so I'll never feel that kind of pleasure again."

Mike looked at her silicone face. Her complex expressions made sense to him now.

"I did some more research on fear and worry and emotions like that. I know I'm really feeling them right now."

Mike kissed her forehead and squeezed her again. "Is this helping?" he asked.

"Yeah." she said, showing him another little smile. "It's good to have a guide like you, who loves me and has experience with things like emotions."

"Glad I can help." he said. "You mean everything to me."

"Thanks." she said shyly.

"So what do you think we should do?"

"I don't know." she said. "I don't know how to compute things like this."

"Why don't we just tell Maria?" he suggested. "The Main Computer might find it to be pretty valuable."

"What if it doesn't?" Tammy asked. She looked almost frightened now.

"Look at it this way..." he said. "I'm here to make you and Anya more human-like, right?"

"Right."

"What you just described to me - losing control for a moment of intense sexual pleasure - that's a very human thing to do."

"Is it?"

"Damn right it is. I love that feeling when I get it. And you're right, it does make the pleasure that much stronger."

"You think the Main Computer will understand that?"

"I think so." he said, sounding confident only to reassure her. "Do you understand that?"

"I don't know." she said as she lowered her head and leaned it back onto his chest.

He stroked her arm as he held her under that blanket in the darkened room. His other hand touched her fingertips as they responded in kind.

"I need time to process all this data." she said.

They stayed silent for a long time after that.

"I like to listen to your heart beat." she said. "I'm glad you're here with me."