Frankie

Chapter 1 “Okay, how’s this?” Sigourney Gaines looked over her shoulder at her younger daughter, Jenny. “It’s pretty good, but her mouth, like, sticks up on the sides.” Sigourney knew what Jenny meant, the cheeks were a little too shallow and wouldn’t give Frankie’s mouth that little quirk at the sides that made her look as if she were always on the verge of smiling. It wouldn’t take her very long to adjust the image on the computer screen. It was a three dimensional model of her other daughter’s face. Perhaps the term daughter was a bit of a stretch. It was Frankie’s face, and while Sigourney and everyone else in the Gaines’ household referred to her as sister or daughter, she was far from that. She wasn’t even a human, or alive for that matter. The only organic component inside of her was the e-stomach that Sigourney had developed as a means of allowing a robot to digest food and fluids. It needed an organic internal stomach lining to function, but even that was connected directly to other electronic components. Frankie had been living with the Gaines now for upwards of three years and in that time had undergone a number of updates, patches, occasionally some internal rebuilds, and like today, facial reconstructions. She was preparing to leave the Gaines’ home for life on a college campus. As such, she needed to look the part. When Sigourney had first developed and assembled Frankie, she looked to be little more than a sixteen year old girl, but now she was supposed to look nineteen. Little would change in that time, but being an android meant that she would literally never age, so, Sigourney took the opportunity to manufacture some of those changes and install them. “Yeah, like that.” Jenny confirmed after a few minutes of small, slight tweaks to the image. Sigourney nodded once and clicked on the “manufacture” button in one of the corners of the screen. The image would be processed and converted to a new file type then sent to the waiting bank of printers in the corner of her home lab. She had done a lot of work to improve her home set up, she had to. Frankie needed a lot of maintenance as time went on, not just software but new parts as well. Parts that required a place at home to manufacture them. When she worked for EGG it had been so easy. Full access to world class laboratories, equipment and rapid manufacturing facilities. Jenny had skipped away and didn't see or hear Sigourney let out a small soft sigh. The gentle whirr and whine of the printers drowning out most of the sound. She looked around the makeshift robotics lab she had set up for herself. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. She had kept Frankie running smoothly for three years now, and this space had served her well enough. Her eyes fell to the center of the room where a sturdy wooden table dominated the majority of the space. The walls around the perimeter were lined with shelves of parts, pieces, and gadgets. A few smaller card tables were there as well, some hosting 3D printers that were whining as they slowly but surely printed new parts. Others were stacked high with papers and research notes that Sigourney had made over the years. They were there to remind her of the myriad of things she would surely forget, but they were vitally important. She sometimes envied her mechanical daughter for her flawless memory. Laying on the table in the middle of the room, was Frankie. She was covered with a white sheet that draped over her, covering her head all the way down to her feet and beyond. She was completely obscured. Sigourney thought it was the best option for the time being since Frankie wasn’t fully assembled at the moment. There were a number of open panels, disconnected parts and a myriad of wires and circuitry exposed on her. Sigourney believed it was likely better if her youngest daughter wasn’t subjected to seeing her older sister like that. Sigourney’s eyes once again flicked to the 3D printers that were humming away in the corner. One of them was still laying down the base layers of what would become Frankie’s new, slightly more mature looking, face plate. Another one, much larger than the first, was busily whirring around the plating sections that would eventually become a new chest panel for Frankie. Sigourney smirked to herself as she clicked off the lights. Frankie was due for a number of upgrades before her first days on her new college campus, not the least of which was something of a physical upgrade. Frankie had been little more than a high school student until this week, just a girl, but now she was becoming a woman. The next morning Sigourney, still bleary eyed from sleeping, stepped into her lab space. Frankie was still on the table, deactivated and right where she had been left the night before. The room was more silent now, the 3D printers having finished their work. The base plating for Frankie’s new face plate was ready, supported by thin tendrils of printed plastic. The actual synthetic skin would take some time to craft. Sigourney once again lamented not having the kind of fabrication technology she had back at the EGG facility, but this was far more safe for her daughter, even if it meant sculpting some of it by hand. The chest panels would be more work though. The four segments were meant to be connected by layers of artificial skin and a framework of plastic “bones” just under the skin. It would make Frankie look even more human, at the cost of a fairly time intensive assembly process. She stepped across the room, setting her steaming cup of coffee down on her computer desk as she passed it. She gently pried the face plating off of the printer and brought it, and a small tool kit, back to her computer desk. The plate and the tools joined her coffee cup and sat silently while the woman walked over to the head of the table at the core of the room. Lifting the sheet she was greeted by her daughter's face. Eyes closed, relaxed. She looked like she might just be asleep, but Sigourney knew so much better. As a precaution she had disabled and disconnected Frankie’s power supply. There was no need for her to be using up any of her charge just laying still, even in a lower power state. She had warned Frankie well ahead of time that it might be somewhere around two weeks before she was reactivated. Frankie obviously agreed, and the pair came up with an excuse to tell anyone who asked where she was. Some nebulous illness that had her bed ridden and needing rest was simple enough. Sigourney gently placed her hands on either side of Frankie’s face, her fingers probing gently against the skin. It had been so long since she had assembled Frankie, that she had to fumble and feel for the locking mechanism that kept her face plate attached. It took a few moments of fumbling, poking and prodding, but she eventually found the latches and unlocked the mechanisms just below the girl's face. There was no grand hissing as the plate unsealed itself, just a gentle click as the solenoid locks disengaged and released the face plate. It lifted away from Frankie’s head, exposing a number of electronics inside. The actual robotic aspects of her mostly human looking daughter. The lifeless red optics that connected to the glassy eyeballs inside of the disconnected face plate lay inactive. A tangled mess of wires that Sigourney had attempted to tidy up all those years ago when she had first constructed Frankie, filled the faceless head. Multiple bundles of wires, each one a riot of colors and styles snaked their way through Frankie’s head. For some, it was obvious what they were and where they were going. The thinly wrapped bundle behind the optics that ran to a central circuit board were clearly for Frankie’s optical processors. In and of itself a marvel of modern technology and processing power. Others were just a part of a larger system. Half a dozen smaller bundles diving deep inside of her head and emerging in other places only to wind around and drop into her lower head and neck, disappearing into her torso. Sigourney settled down at her computer desk, reclining into her chair and taking a sip of her cooling morning coffee. She held Frankie’s face in one hand and the newly printed replacement on the desk. There wasn’t much that needed to be done, but Sigourney had worked to make new mechanisms that would allow Frankie a little more control, and a little more sensitivity, but it required a new plate design. Not to mention new electronics that had become smaller, more efficient, easier on power consumption and offered more performance. All she needed to do was gently peel the artificial skin layer off of her old face, lay down the new electronics, move the eyes, and re-apply the artificial skin layer. No big deal. It was hours, long into the afternoon, before Sigourney was approaching completion. She had missed lunch, even though Jenny had brought her a sandwich and left it in the office. The most time consuming part was laying down a mesh of sensory wiring on the plate and meticulously connecting it to the hundreds of connection points on the underside of Frankie’s artificial face. Once done she had to connect the skin layer onto the mechanical controls on the plate itself. Though now that it was late afternoon that was done and she was working on the eyes. They were only semi-spheres of glass, but the inside was packed with delicate electronics. All of which were set into a sophisticated socket with smooth rubberized rollers to help Frankie’s eyes move in a very natural manner. The whole socket was easily removed, it just took a set of precision screwdrivers to remove the tiny bindings. Even then Sigourney still took her time, the last thing she wanted or needed was to drop one of those miniscule screws onto the floor and lose it in the carpet. Once both were moved, locked into place and the wiring reattached to some of the underlying circuitry, Frankie’s new face plate was ready. Her mother gingerly placed it back onto the front side of her head, taking the time to manually reconnect some of the wiring and ribbon cables to their matching port inside of her exposed head. Once done, Sigourney tucked the cables into Frankie’s head, making sure they were clear of any of the mechanisms inside, and then clicked her face plate back into place. “You look good sweetie.” Sigourney muttered before letting out a sigh. “Halfway there.” Her eyes darted up to the torso on her daughter. It was still covered by the sheet, but she knew what lay there. The 3D printer with her new chest plate was done, it just needed to have the same sensor mesh laid down on it and the same process of removing the synthetic skin from the current plate and moving it over. Though there were a few small enhancements that Sigourney needed to take care of. Frankie, up until today, had been a child. She had been designed to look and act human, but she wasn’t, as such there were certain components that Sigourney hadn’t installed on the original build. In short, Frankie had never been built with sexual hardware, and as such Sigourney hadn’t felt it necessary to include nipples on her daughter’s breasts. Like all good parents though, she was trying to let go of her little girl, which meant Frankie was going to be more independent. Sigourney wasn’t so naive as to think that with that freedom there wasn’t a chance for Frankie to get into some more mature activities. Sigourney managed to get Frankie’s current synthetic skin peeled off of the chest plate and the mesh layer laid out on the new chest piece before Jenny came and alerted her that dinner was ready. She wanted so badly to keep working, but her eyes caught the untouched sandwich on the desk and she gave her youngest daughter a crooked smile. She needed to be there for her family, not just the robotic family under the sheet. Sigourney stepped away from the lab, shutting off the lights and taking the sandwich with her. Dinner was simple, Will, Frankie’s father, had made some baked chicken and veggies. Nutritious, but lacking in panache. Sigourney updated Will and Jenny on Frankie’s state, letting Jenny know she still shouldn’t go into the lab since Frankie wasn’t yet “finished.” She was tempted to eat and then dash back to her lab for the evening, but somewhere in the back of her mind she knew that she couldn’t finish the tasks in front of her before needing to go to bed, and she hated leaving things half done. Which means she would push herself well beyond her capacity and get sloppy. It would be more beneficial to everyone to spend the rest of the evening as a family, or at least most of a family. The following day, though, was once again spent locked in her home laboratory. Frankie’s chest evolving over the course of the day. First the mesh of sensory wiring that the artificial flesh would layer onto. Then the connection points were hand wired into place. There was an order of magnitude more than the face plate, but there was also an increased amount of space to work with. It wasn’t easier, but it was certainly less frustrating. The most challenging part was affixing the new nipples to the tips of Frankie’s breasts. Sigourney needed to cut a small opening in the rounded tips of her chest without piercing the gel sacs inside. Once done, she needed to feed a fine set of wires into the breasts and get them to slip between some of the gel sacs there and into the rear of the soft breasts. Once there, Sigourney could pull the wiring into the back panel and solder them into the controller boards. Once done, it was only a matter of attaching the wires to the microscopic mechanism inside of the nipples and then using industrial strength glue to attach them to Frankie’s breasts. Once done, all Sigourney needed to do was meticulously connect a few dozen cables from the back of the chest piece into the numerous circuit boards inside of Frankie. Some were easily reached and were only connected to the framework along the sides of the open torso. Others required Sigourney to push aside bundles of cables and blindly reach deep inside of her daughter's body, connecting the cables only by touch. Still others required whole components to be disconnected and removed before the cabling could be connected and then gently pushed out of the way as the component was reinserted. Everything that Sigourney could do for Frankie was done. There was still one more component that she was working on for her daughter, something far more adult in nature. But it wasn’t anywhere near completed and it wouldn’t be for some time. There was no point in making Frankie remain offline until it was done, Sigourney wasn’t even sure it would be ready before Frankie’s first day at college. Sigourney plugged her in and left her charging on the table, though she did reactivate her, setting her into a low power mode that would wake her up at her normal waking time. Some time tomorrow morning Frankie’s operating system would receive the boot signal from the smaller management console that was running inside of her, at a random time between six and six thirty, and she would power on. Of course that didn’t mean she would be up and running her human emulation. Far from it. Frankie was more akin to an entire network of computers all working together. Her arms and legs were their own systems, having dedicated CPU’s, storage media and operating systems. They received most of their instructions from the core processors lodged, somewhere, inside of her chest, but they could operate on their own. At least to a certain degree. They were programmed to function how a normal human would. Regardless of instructions her feet and ankles would attempt to balance her. If her arms detected a sudden change in balance they would move to assist in softening a fall. A computerized network like that didn’t come on just because there was power flowing. The core of Frankie, her central processors, came online first and began the process of sending power on signals all over her body. As those subsystems came online they were checked to ensure that there was no damage or changes in operation. Once everything was online and showing as green across the board, her human emulation could come online. Sigourney had put a significant amount of work into the human emulation, and even more so since Frankie had graduated from high school. She was about to go into the real world and would be somewhat unsupervised for much longer periods of time. Frankie needed to have some significant upgrades in order to blend in with the world around her. Physical upgrades were only the beginning of those updates, software to go with it was critical. When Frankie’s human emulation finally began to execute the following morning, it was only after a series of small twitches and spasms all around her body. Sigourney was kind enough to keep the door closed and locked, allowing Frankie some measure of privacy when she reactivated. The twitching was expected, it was part of her power on self test, once it finished her core operating system knew that everything was working as expected. What it didn’t expect was the new hardware. It would take some time for it to load all the needed drivers and software that Mrs. Gaines had provided for Frankie. All new blocks of instructions for Frankie’s software to use to interface and control her new face plate. There was a new range of motion that had been fine tuned and the software was ready to let her operating system know how to access it. Minor changes inside of her as well. There were new parts that would run more efficiently, but only if Frankie’s operating system knew what commands to send to it and what format. Of course, there was the addition of the nipples as well. There wasn’t a massive amount of work that went into operating them after all. The mechanisms inside the lightly tanned pieces could pucker her nipples when she wanted, or smooth them out into a slightly puffy flat shape. There was a separate fine mesh of sensors in it as well that would feed new programming sets inside of Frankie. The larger programming upgrade had been a whole new addition. Frankie now had sexual programming. She could be turned on as well as allow her newly upgraded artificial mind formulate desires of her own. The college experience she now faced would be an outstanding opportunity for her to learn about humanity, and that included many of the pleasurable aspects as well. Though, in order to fully take advantage of her new programming her mother needed to finish assembling some of the hardware to complete Frankie’s build. For now though, Frankie was ready. Her software was loaded and her human emulation was online. She was fully operational, despite a small warning that her operating system was expecting some additional hardware that was not present. The warning wasn’t critical, and she could easily close it, though she set a reminder to speak with her mother about it when she got an opportunity. Frankie blinked several times before sitting up, lifting her whole upper body weight by her hips. The long, dark synthetic hairpiece trailing behind her head as she rose, and then fell neatly along her back. All of it swept from the front, around her ears and down her shoulders. She looked down, the motor assembly in her neck still slightly stiff from no use in several days. She shook her head back and forth to loosen it up, and her complex optics took in her body. She had seen herself naked before, but last time she saw that was when she dropped into a purely robotic command mode for her mother. She had taken in the information about disrobing and what she looked like. She had memories of the gentle curves of her smooth breasts as she lay down. Now though, they were larger, only slightly though, almost exactly three point eight percent larger. Frankie’s mathematically capable computer mind was still making everything into an equation. She saw the small tips of her newly installed nipples as well. She knew she had access to the control mechanisms there, and took a moment to familiarize herself with them. Her programming let her know that there was no need to manually control them, her newly installed and configured sexual programming would take over normally. Frankie dismissed the alert and opted to try them out. The sweeping sensation that came with forcing them to pucker and harden off of the gentle slopes of her chest was all new. It sent an involuntary shiver coursing through her entire body and deep gasp to suck in. She let it seep slowly out her nostrils as she released the manual control and let her new womanly chest relax back down. She gently moved the sheet off of her legs and tossed her legs over the edge of the table. Lowering herself to the floor, her legs balance programming did what it was programmed to do. Ran dozens upon dozens of calculations and adjusted her balance over and over as she walked across the room to her mothers desk. Mrs. Gaines had left undergarments, a simple black shirt with light gray sleeves, and a pair of form fitting jeans there for Frankie. Socks and shoes were on the floor next to her mother’s chair. Frankie took a few moments to dress herself, noting that her bra was ill fitting and made a reminder to link up with Simone to go to the mall and pick up a few new articles of clothing. She had an inclination that there would be more of her clothing that didn’t quite fit the way it used to. Once she was dressed, she had a moment where her higher A.I. functions came online and began to notice changes. Her balance was slightly off and the processors in her legs were working extra hard to keep her perfectly balanced. It was learning and becoming easier with every passing moment, but it was a new data point for her to consider. She slipped on her socks and shoes and turned to the door. Once opened she was greeted by her mother and father, somewhere in the background Jenny was sure to be lurking as well. “How do you feel sweetie?” Will asked. “I am..different.” Across town, another android was online. She didn’t receive many of the same upgrades and modifications as Frankie had. In part because she was assembled with a very specific purpose, and partially because until recently she was owned and operated by a very wealthy technology developer. She appeared to be approximately the same age as Frankie. Some small updates had been done to her body and internal structure while she was still the property of the Weaponized Android Research Project Agency, WARPA for short. Simone had originally been constructed as an infiltration unit, specializing in information gathering and sabotage. Her design had been crafted with the specific intent of deception. She was built with a kind of generic beauty that could easily scale up with age. Picturesque blond hair that was trimmed to the perfect length around her shoulders and a pale but pretty complexion. She was the ideal innocent girl, looking somewhere around her early twenties, even at first construction. She was equipped with brilliant blue eyes that one could almost swear had a faint, electric glow behind them. Of course a second look proved that to be untrue, but there was always that feeling that you were looking at something subtly inhuman. WARPA had, in part because of Simone, been completely dismantled. Their grand plans for replacing key members of society and government with a robotic replica were dashed across the proverbial rocks. Simone had had her memory wiped clean and then restored once, and through a series of directed actions had disentangled herself with WARPA. She was free now, able to lean into her artificial mind and make choices for herself, she could live a life she wanted. Today, as the summer break neared its end, she was packing a bag for school. Her college life began this morning. She wasn’t going to be staying in the dorms at the community college, there was no real point in doing so. Her house was nearby and there was no need to put additional strain on her systems by maintaining herself. Besides that, her near and dear friend, and fellow android, Frankie was attentind the same college and Frankie hadn’t elected to take a dorm either. Frankie and Simone had been friends for nearly three years now, and they shared one anothers secret, but were programmed to keep the secret from anyone else. Simone, somewhat, revealed herself as an android some time ago through a national broadcast. Since then though, people seemed to have almost forgotten about her. The idea that there were realistic humanoid robots in the world was outrageous and too much for your average citizen to come to grips with. Simone didn’t know it, but most people wrote it off as some manner of publicity stunt that they didn't understand and then moved on with their life. Simone moved on with her life as well, free from WARPA and a more self sufficient android, she and Frankie had made plans to attend college together, not just to have a friend around in the newest part of their synthetic life, but with the added bonus of being able to look out for one another. Frankie was no slouch when it came to repairing machines. She had picked up a number of tricks from her mothers brilliance, but Simone had as well. She had been maintaining her brother Andrew for a number of years now. It wasn’t the same quality of work that WARPA had offered, but she was competent in his systems, which translated well to maintaining herself. Today though, as she stepped onto the college campus, sucking in a deep artificial lungful of the crisp, cooling air, she was ready to face whatever came her way. Striding towards her, wearing the same dead set and intentional face was Frankie. “Good morning Simone.” Frankie’s crisp voice registered with the blonde android. Frankie sighed and wrinkled her nose a bit as she approached Simone. “Still no last name?” Simone stood and moved to Frankie, and the pair walked towards their first class together. “Why would I pick a last name Frankie? We’re-” Simone looked quickly around her before shushing her voice slightly. “-We’re androids. We don’t exactly need a full human name.” Frankie’s head tilted slightly and glanced at her friend. “Technically correct, but it helps to blend in if you have a full name and no one will question you on why you don’t.” It was sound logic, and logic that Simone didn’t much care about. She had never had any issues in the past. No one at school seemed to care much, even the admissions folks didn’t seem too concerned when she said she didn’t have a last name. “No one cares, Frankie, only you.” “It is because my database entry for you is incomplete without a first and last name.” Simone only rolled her eyes. SHe had known Frankie long enough to know that her mother could have updated some of the software to make that point moot, but it was somehow an endearing part of Frankie’s personality now. Simone worried that if it was ever changed that she might be subtly upset that it wasn't the same old Frankie. The two robotic girls made their way to their first class of the day, a university level physical fitness class. Both girls had rolled their eyes at the class on their forecasting schedule, but it was a requirement. Both Frankie and Simone were fully mechanical, and not only that, they were specifically constructed to be more physically capable than most humans. A physical fitness class for the two was laughable at best, but the college required a certain number of credits for a physical fitness course, so it had to be done. The pair entered the locker room with relative silence. Simone and Frankie managed to find vacant lockers and set their bags inside of each before pulling out their new workout clothes. Frankie had brought a relatively plain dark pair of leggings and a matched royal blue form fitting top. It wasn’t so unlike the outfit that Sigourney had dressed her in when Frankie was first activated. She wasted little time in stripping out of her street clothes and shamelessly standing almost completely nude in front of Simone. Simone, on the other hand, had picked out a pair of comfortable athletic shorts and a light blue top that claimed to be water wicking. She had taken every precaution when it came to liquids. She turned slightly and glanced over her shoulder at Frankie, taking in the sight of her now mostly nude friend. Frankie left her panties on, but her newly remodeled chest was on display for Simone to take in. Smirking to herself, she found that there was some kind of new programming that was welling up inside of her. Frankie and her had been friends for a long time now, but until this very moment friends were all they were. Simone’s operating system triggered something though. Something that she hadn’t experienced before. She was aware of human attractions and had watched a number of boys fawn over Frankie in their time together through high school. She never once thought the possibility of her feeling the same thing was possible though. WARPA had programmed her well and the coding on her artificial mind was nearly perfect. She was meant to be a spy and that had meant she had a full suite of simulated human emotions. Now that she was free from WARPA her artificial intellect was free to reconfigure itself, learn new things, and experience all that the deep databases inside of her had to offer. One of those many waiting feelings was a lustful eye, that was now turned to Frankie. “New upgrades?” It wasn’t Simone’s smoothest pick up line, but it was what she had noticed first. Frankie’s chest was definitely slightly larger. It was hard for her own processors to calculate exactly how much, at least not without gathering more data. “Yes, Sigourney saw fit to upgrade a few systems in order to prepare me for college life. There are a few more to come, or so she says.” Simone could only guess at what those future upgrades entailed, but she knew that Frankie would be forever changed by them. Frankie was already pulling on a top and covered her previously exposed chest, leaving Simone to force her operating system to switch to her own needs. She gingerly changed her own clothes, but still reveled in the sensation of the cold locker room air wafting over her exposed skin. Her own flesh was laced with a similar sensor mesh to what Frankie was equipped with. It picked up on the tiniest differences in atmospheric temperature and changes all around her. It was what allowed her to continue operating at such a high capacity. If even the smallest change could be detected by her skin layer and relayed to her core processors for analysis and command. Frankie locker shut, the metal clang resounding through the locker room. It wasn’t an uncommon sound, but for Frankie, it seemed out of character. She had so much control over her own body and its movements that slamming a locker shut was uncharacteristic for her. Simone’s head darted to the side and looked over her shoulder at her friend, who seemed only to be staring at the locker and then down at her hand. “You okay Frankie?” Simone asked as her athletic shorts slipped up her shapely legs and came to rest on her hips. She deftly began to tie off the cinch at the front. “Yes. All systems seem normal.” Simone’s programming caused her head to swivel around and see if there was anyone listening. She huffed, knowing that she should really keep her secret android identity more of a secret. Maybe Sigourney should program a bit more human language into Frankie, Simone would gladly offer up her own as a basis for it. “Well, okay, but keep it down will you. We don’t need the whole student body knowing about us.” “Agreed. Let’s get to class.” Frankie said with some finality. She pulled on her own leggings and slipped into her shoes in silence. Simone did the same, letting her automated systems control her fingers as her shoe laces were tied tightly and the pair were ready. The first day of class, Simone and Frankie didn’t expect much. As expected their instructor laid out participation guidelines, absences, and an expectation of what the class would entail. Every class would start with stretches and a self paced one mile jog. After that some kind of targeted activity. Most of the students in the class, all dressed in varying styles of clothes, took the news in stride. It was a physical fitness class after all. The stretching wasn’t much of an issue for Simone and Frankie. They were machines and had perfect and complete control over their bodies. They were driven less by muscles that needed warming up and more micro servos, hydraulics, and complicated arrays of motors .They gladly went along with the fifteen or so minutes of warm ups though, and made ready to lightly jog along the track just outside of the gymnasium. Most of the students pretty easily split into a few distinct groups. Friends stuck together and chatted as they trot along the track. More athletic students took the lead and settled into a steady stride, while others hung back and took a slower pace. Frankie and Simone managed to settle into a nice groove in the middle of the pack. There were no others around them and Frankie and Simone chatted idly as they easily moved along. Both of them noticed a significant dip into their power cells as they moved along, not enough to cause any kind of warnings, but they were using up the power stored in their internal systems at a much more rapid rate than otherwise. In reality it would mean they had to plug in and recharge perhaps an hour earlier than they would have otherwise. Even then there was more than enough charge to keep them both functional throughout the day. Frankie made it once around the track before she began to notice some issues. Her vision was filled with warnings and alerts. The balance array in her right leg was unsynced from her left. It wouldn’t have normally been an issue, in fact she had experienced a balance mismatch dozens of times in the past. All it took was her operating system reloading the last known good state and resuming the motion. While jogging it would have forced her to stop for only a second or two, a completely normal behavior while jogging. Unfortunately since the upgrades Sigourney had installed, there was no last known good state. There was only unstable data that she had collected in the few hours she had been operational today and the weeks past. Her and Sigourney hadn’t had time to settle down and fully compile the data into a baseline. Regardless of the presence of the data, her systems still attempted to run the repair command. Finding that there was no available backup to slot into place, Frankie’s system struggled for a moment or two, attempting to keep her moving while recalculating every step. In the end, Frankie’s impressively fast processors couldn’t keep up with the pace of her jogging. One foot landed oddly, rolling her ankle to one side, and causing her next step to hit the ground hard, too hard in fact. At that point her central processors were a mess of wild calculations and attempts to correct the issue. Frankie was already tumbling to the ground, her arms flying in front of her to attempt to cushion the fall, when her vision filled with critical errors and warnings. There were skin lacerations and components around her body had failed completely. Others were reporting only partial functionality or data and power loss. Most of it was centered around her right leg, in particular her ankle. Her operating system wailed that her foot had been disconnected and was no longer available for use. Frankie hit the ground hard and tumbled along the jogging track a bit, all while Simone chased after her. Finally, She stopped and Simone was already there. Frankie’s operating system reprioritized all of the running commands inside of her and fully truncated other processes. Frankie pushed herself up and looked down at her leg, her complicated optics scanning over her body and landing on her ankle. It had twisted in a strange direction and had, indeed, torn her artificial skin. SHe could see the myriad of colored wires from inside of her leg, now exposed. There would be no doubt in anyone’s mind that Frankie wasn’t a human girl, but rather a fully mechanical thing. “Simone, my ankle.” It was all Frankie managed to get out before Simone sprang into action. She took hold of Frankie’s sock and pulled it up and over the damaged skin on her leg. It wouldn’t hide the odd angle of her foot, but it would cover up some of the blatant damage. Frankie’s operating system recognized the danger of leaving her foot, or even her whole leg active and automatically powered it off. Her available power spiked upward even as more error messages flooded in about the disconnected limb. Once cleared she could address some of the smaller messages. Her hands and arms showed some minor damage as well. She looked down at the palms of her hands and saw the torn skin there. Under it more exposed wires and microscopic circuitry. Frankie hissed and tucked her hands against her chest and looked to Simone. By now other students were beginning to take notice and move to see if they could help, or maybe just to gawk. “She’s okay, just twisted her ankle.” Simone called out, and it seemed to be enough to at least get most of the gathering students to return to their jogging. Simone managed to get one of Frankie’s arms around her neck, and used her inhumanly strong construction to lift Frankie to her one remaining good leg. The pair hobbled along letting Frankie’s disabled leg simply drag along behind her. Simone had intended to simply bring Frankie to her small car and drive her back to the Gaines’s household, and hoped that Sigourney was there to help repair Frankie. On the way off the track, though, the instructor seemed to appear from nowhere. “Trouble?” Simone and Frankie both froze. “Yeah, Frankie here, uh, has some weak ankles and she twisted it.” Frankie turned her head and looked at Simone for a moment before snapping it to look at the instructor. She was completely unaware of how stilted the movements were simply because of how much processing power was being eaten up by the ongoing errors around her body. “Yes. Weak ankles. I twisted it. I need to go see my mother to fix it.” The instructor lifted an eyebrow at the pair. “Your mother is a doctor?” “Yes, she is, and very good at what she does. We’ll be back tomorrow.” Simone cut in before Frankie could answer. Frankie looked at Simone again, head head jostling slightly as she did so and then back to the teacher. She smiled weakly and nodded. Once they were well out of earshot in the parking lot Frankie turned to Simone. “You should not lie to the faculty here.” “Well I couldn’t exactly tell her ‘My friend Frankie here is actually an experimental android and she damaged her ankle, so I’m taking her home to her inventor mother for disassembly and repair.’” Frankie pressed her lips together, she didn’t like lying, but in some cases it did seem necessary, at very least to keep her secret safe. Not only hers but Simone’s as well. Reluctantly she accepted what Simone said. Once the robotic girls had made their way to the car that Simone had driven to campus that day, she ducked under Frankie’s arm and helped her to stay stable while she opened the door. Once opened, she wrapped her arms around Frankie and gently guided her into the car, making sure that her disabled leg was secured in the car before closing the door and dashing around the front to get into the driver's seat herself. The drive to Frankie’s house was short, and for Simone and Frankie’s part, very silent. Frankie was attempting to conserve as much power as possible. She had noticed a severe dip in consumption when she disabled her leg module, but at the same time, there were other components on her body that had been damaged. Though the damage was slight, it was causing a number of smaller short circuits. Each one a small electric jolt of blue electricity arcing from one component to the next, and each one siphoning away power from her internal batteries. After a quiet fifteen minute drive, Simone pulled up into the Gaines’s driveway. She swore once as she saw that both Sigourney and Will’s cars were gone. The house was likely empty, and Simone wouldn’t be getting any help from Sigourney with Frankie’s repairs. Executing the same set of instructions but in reverse, Simone used her own inhuman strength and dexterity to lift Frankie out of the car. There were few witnesses in the neighborhood and she felt there was no need to keep up the illusion. Frankie wouldn’t need to hobble to the house, Simone could easily carry her. Frankie dug into her pocket and produced a house key and handed it to Simone as they approached the front door and Simone gingerly moved through the open door, attempting to make sure she didn’t hit Frankie’s head on it. She had been inside Frankie’s house enough times to know where Sigourney’s lab was and moved quickly there. Once there she settled Frankie gently down on the table. “Okay, okay…uh…what’s broken Frankie?” “My system reports indicate that there is a severed data and power coupling in my right ankle. This is due to a miscalibrated joint.” “Right. Let’s take a look.” Simone settled down into a squat at the end of the table, pulling down Frankie’s sock and looking at her ankle. True to what Frankie had said, her ankle had indeed rolled to one side, and in doing so took on the full weight of Frankie’s stride. It had crumpled some of the support structures in her joint work and in doing so, tore a measurable amount of the cabling there free. Sigourney had designed Frankie well, and many of the disconnected cables were merely that, just disconnected. If that were the only problem Simone could have easily fixed Frankie. Unfortunately there were a number of cables and wires that had simply stretched beyond their capacity and snapped. They were destroyed and, much to Simone’s chagrin, most of them dove deeper into Frankie’s leg and foot. Simone sighed, it was a programmed response. She was a machine and didn’t actually breathe, but the emotional processor let her operating system know that it was an appropriate response given what she had just discovered. She could probably disconnect Frankie’s foot with little problem, but that wouldn’t help much. There were still frayed and ruined wires dangling from the bottom of her ankle. At very least a whole new leg module would need to be made and replaced, or a lot of rewiring inside of Frankie’s leg. Neither one sounded thrilling, nor was it any of her business to do so. Mrs. Gaines would want to do this work, but Simone knew she could at least help start the process. “‘Kay Frankie. I’m just gonna disconnect your leg, no big deal, alright. Then your mom is going to have to do the actual repair work.” Frankie looked up and nodded once and settled back onto the table, the same table she had spent weeks on over summer break getting disassembled and reassembled on. Getting all manner of troubleshooting and updates installed. She was getting a little sick of it. Frankie felt Simone’s strong, but oddly gentle, hands on her legs. They were digging into the waistline of her leggings, and the undergarments as well. Frankie stiffened for a moment, it was what her programming had told her was the correct response. Then, new programming swept through her. She felt hot, but there were no internal temperature warnings, and in fact her skin was registering as so much cooler than before. Frankie craned her neck and could see Simone dragging her leggings and underwear off of her legs. She was by Frankie’s ankles now, gently moving the stretchy fabric over her damaged ankle and foot. So much care went into Simone’s movements, into taking care of Frankie. Something in her personality matrix registered something new. Simone had been alongside Frankie for a long time, and she had never once registered anything more than friendship for her. Perhaps it was the new code base that her mother had installed, maybe it was just a moment of being cared for in a way that only another android could. Maybe it was a swirling combination of both. Frankie would never really understand. She was a machine and could only emulate human thoughts and feelings. But what she was processing at the moment felt new, fresh, warm, comfortable, exciting, thrilling and forbidden all at once. The core processors in her chest struggled along as each emotional beat flew through her, ones and zeros colliding into something new. Frankie could feel the small weight of her clothes leaving her body. “Oh!” It was Simone. “You uh. I guess I just figured you were built more like me.” Frankie wasn’t sure what Simone meant. She pushed herself up onto her elbows and cast a concerned look towards her friend. “I don’t understand, what do you mean?” Simone was smirking a little and looking pointedly at the space between Frankie’s thighs. Frankie swiveled the optics embedded in her eye sockets and looked at what Simone was looking at. Her own crotch was smooth and featureless. She would have expected there to be something there, some piece of hardware that would…but then she remembered what her mother had told her when she was reactivated. There was more hardware to come that was still in development. Frankie blinked, realizing two things. She was not yet fully assembled, which meant that some time in the somewhat near future she would once again be on this very table. Her mother would be leaning over her, taking her apart in some way and installing something new. Frankie admitted that the thought of that was thrilling in a way, and would further unlock more possibilities, but she was always frustrated by being powered down. Simone knew so much more about how androids worked internally and their programming. Frankie knew some of that, the knowledge was there in her database, but she had never had the opportunity to put it into practice. Not like Simone and Sigourney had. There was a sudden odd sensation that Frankie’s processors parsed. Balance coordinates and procedures were thrown completely off. A sudden flood of alert messages flooded her field of vision and there was a dramatic drop in her power consumption. All of this just a moment or two after she felt Simone’s hands on her thigh, high on her hips and another between her groin and leg. Frankie came to realize that her whole leg had just been disconnected, not only because of the myriad of error messages, but because she saw Simone holding it once the field of warnings were cleared from her vision. She could see the tangled mess of cables and wires dangling from the end of the leg. Her foot was hanging limp at the end of it, dangling from what small amount of cables remained connected and shreds of flesh. Frankie’s eyes drifted from the leg Simone was holding back to her own body. There was a small portion of her upper thigh that remained in place, but her leg was missing. There were matching sets of multi-colored cables and wires dangling from her remaining leg stump. Lining the edge of where her leg once was, remained a thick layer of artificial skin. It was almost half an inch thick, and it cut a hard edge where it met the internal structure and framework of Frankie’s leg. She pushed herself up just a little more, enough to support her weight on one hand. With her other hand she reached forward, running the tips of her fingers along the edge of the exposed leg port. Her operating system fed her data about the feeling. She felt her fingers running along the skin, but as soon as they crested over the edge and moved along the inner edge, the edge that was always covered by her now disconnected leg, she suddenly felt nothing. Yet her fingers still registered a feeling, it was enough to throw a myriad of small errors in her processing system. “I don’t know if your mom has more replacements or anything.” Simone said as soon as she returned from setting Frankie’s damaged leg on Sigourney’s desk. “But I can’t find anything. So, I guess you’re out of commission until she comes home.” “That is alright.” Frankie replied. “Perhaps you could carry me to my room then? I can rest there until she returns.” “Yeah, sure.” Simone scooped up her friend once again, her own system registering the weight difference now that Frankie was missing a leg. In order to help keep herself stable, Frankie reached up and wrapped her arms around Simone’s neck, pulling herself close against her friend's chest. Frankie’s sensitive hearing assembly could detect the smallest sound of whirring and mechanical movements from inside of Simone. Frankie soon found herself being gently laid into her own bed, missing a leg, torn skin on the palms of her hands, and wearing no pants. She knew she should make a move to cover her nudity, but there was nothing vulgar to see, so she decided against it. She did notice that Simone’s eyes were still dwelling on her body, even as her blond friend lowered herself to sit on the edge of the bed and then slid in to stretch out next to Frankie. Both robots were processing similar blocks of code. Each one as unique as the person that built and programmed the girls, but each one hurtling towards the same conclusion. Seemingly at the same time, without a word. Without a packet of data wirelessly sent to the other. Without prompting or inference. The two moved their lips together. There was a sensation there, one she hadn’t felt since her and Cole Reyes were backstage. Something thumped inside of her, not physically, but it was like all of her programming pounded against her processors all at once. She wasn’t nearly as stunned as she was last time she kissed someone, but instead sank deep into the warm sensation of Simone’s lips against hers. It was a feeling that Frankie didn’t want to stop. She found that her hands were moving, tangling themselves in Simone’s hair and holding her tight. Frankie didn’t recall making an effort to formulate the command to move her hands, yet it happened all the same, and she could only chalk it up to some of the new programming that she had recently installed. More surprising to her was the feeling of Simone’s hands pressing into her head as well, laced deep into the dark hair on her head and holding her just as tightly. Frankie let out a soft sound. Something pleasurable, something new, something laced with a faint hint of deeper desires. Simone replicated the sound with her own voice, and took the opportunity to lip her own mechanical tongue inside of Frankie’s mouth. Frankie responded in kind, the two girls allowing their tongues to intertwine with one another. Frankie felt the uncontrollable urge to drape her leg over her friend and use it to pull Simone closer. Formulating the command and sending it rocketing through her systems resulted in an error message. No valid device found. Her leg was gone and she had forgotten about it. Locked in lustful rapture had caused her to forget that she was partially disassembled. Instead, she moved one of her hands from Simone’s head, letting it smoothly flow down Simone’s back until it reached the hem of her friend's shirt. Once there, it took only a little calculation to slip her hand under the shirt, around the body and upwards. Frankie let more and more of her new programming take over her actions. It felt warm, wonderful, and thrilling. She seemed to suspend her conscious thoughts and move them back to a palace of merely observing how she would act. She became an audience member in her body’s performance. Frankie’s hand moved to Simone’s breast, lifting and squeezing it once, then again, and again before becoming somewhat dissatisfied with the feeling. Despite the lewd sounding moans of gratitude and pleasure Simone was making, Frankie wanted more. Not just for her, but to make her friend feel better. She released Simone’s body and flattened and stiffened her fingers. She only needed to press into Simone’s body a little in order to get her hand under her friend’s bra. Once done though, she moved in and felt the soft warm synthetic skin there. She felt Simone’s artificial nipple, stiff and puckered, like her own. Simone sucked in a sharp breath as Frankie toyed with her chest. The breath seeped out of her nose and mouth, blowing hot air fresh from Simone’s processors against Frankies face and into her mouth as their kiss deepened. Simone and Frankie stayed like this for a short time. Lips locked together, hands gripping and tangling into one another’s hair, Frankie’s hand planted firmly on Simone’s breast, fondling and toying with it with sensual delight. Both robots could feel it though. There was a rising feeling, something was escalating inside of them, something new. Simone felt it more than Frankie, simply because there was a hardware component to send all of her programmed desires to. Simone released Frankie’s head and made a frantic movement for her own athletic shorts. Frankie seemed confused at first, but watched as Simone slipped off of her bed and out of her shorts, kicking them half-heartedly across the room and turned. It was obvious now. Simone had something that Frankie did not. Additional hardware that WARPA must have thought was a necessity at some point. Or maybe it was something Simone herself had installed once she was released. It didn’t matter. There, nestled between Simone’s thighs was the feminine sexual addition that Frankie was missing. “Frankie..I..are you sure you want to do this?” The question was sincere, and Frankie could tell that her and Simone were both teetering on the edge of something. This was the moment that the two would look back on and mark as a defining point in their relationship. “With you? Yes. Of course.” Frankie smiled, her eyes lingering on Simone’s body. It all happened so quickly. Simone was back on Frankie’s bed, and not curled up next to Frankie. Simone mounted her friend, straddling her at the waist. Frankie let her programming take control once again and stripped off her own top, working the form fitting shirt and then her own sports bra off. Her new, slightly larger and fully capable chest on display for her friend. Simone bent forward, wrapping her lips around Frankie’s new nipples and let her tongue play with it. Swirling in small, tight circles around it. Nibbling playfully and earning a lustful giggle from Frankie. Simone’s other hand occupied itself by playing with Frankie’s other breast in a similar fashion to how Frankie had toyed with hers. The building heat inside of Simone rose once more, and simply fondling her lover wasn’t enough. She felt a twitch from the hardware between her legs and felt compelled to release Frankie’s chest. With some reluctance, she did just that, but as soon as she did so she began scooting her own legs up towards Frankie’s head. Frankie found her head cradled between Simone’s robotic thighs. Her womanly sex wet and ready. Simone was slowly lowering herself into position, ensuring that she was gentle. Frankie, on the other hand, grew tired of waiting. She moved her arms up and around her friend's exposed waist and pulled her down, planting Simone’s vaginal assembly directly onto Frankie’s waiting mouth. Simone was the first to let out a long low peal of delight. Frankie’s tongue, expertly crafted and mechanically controlled, had no problems moving into Simone. The precision that it moved and wiggled, almost subtly vibrated, inside of her drew another moan from the blond android. The two locked like that for what must have seemed like hours, but in reality spanned only a few moments. Simone’s hips rolled and moved smoothly. Frankie let her tongue stiffen and rub against the artificial sex and the two seemed to easily sync their movements. Both machines cooed softly, moaned in low lewd sounds, and let out long breathy sounds as the sexual encounter continued. Simone’s rising climax was ever present in her synthetic mind. There wasn;t a climbing number or an ever increasing bar to judge when her operating system would execute, it was more intangible than that. All of it felt amazing, but there was still a mystery that even Simone couldn’t reveal. As suddenly as the programming started, it executed. Simone let her head fall back, her whole body shuddered and her torso fell forward. She managed to reserve enough of her processing power to throw her arms forward and brace herself against the wall. Frankie could feel her legs quivering against her head, and took the opportunity to drive her tongue deep inside of her friend one more time. There was a copious amount of saline based fluids there, Frankie took it all in, joyfully, and felt her hands curl around Simone’s legs. The moment passed and all that was left was silence broken by panting as Simone drew in fresh air to help cool her processing core. She was burning hot, both physically and mentally. Her artificial intellect was buzzing with new information. She took a moment to recover and then gently extracted herself from Frankie. The pair locked eyes, each one smiling with brilliant pink on their chests and cheeks. Each one breathing deeply, recovering from the deeply sapphic activity. The sound of the front door closing and Mrs. Gaines’ voice filled the house. “Frankie? Simone? Are you here?” The mood changed. In a frantic scramble Simone pulled on her athletic shorts again and made an effort to align and pull on her bra and shirt. Her programming would normally have no issues with this kind of thing, but there was a massive amount of new data that her operating system was grinding through, leaving precious few remaining resources for her to work with. Her movements were stiff, inefficient, but still productive. Once dressed, Simone looked at Frankie, she was stuck on the bed and all of her clothes were just out of reach. What’s more, her jogging shorts and leg were downstairs in Sigourney’s lab. Simone tossed Frankie’s shirt and sports bra to her and then dashed to the door. “Yeah we’re up here in Frankie’s room, we need your help Mrs. Gaines!” Simone called down. Frankie untangled her shirt from the bra and wiggled into the tight undergarment then yanked on her shirt. Only a moment before Sigourney opened the door, Frankie pulled the blanket up and over her lower body. “What’s wrong? Why aren’t you in school?” Sigourney asked. “Frankie had a bit of an accident, she rolled her ankle a little and uh, broke her foot. I disconnected it down in your lab, so it’s there.” Frankie nodded along and pulled up the blankets enough to expose her upper leg and the connection port there, earning a sigh from Sigourney. “So uh, I’ll be going now. Good luck Frankie.” “I will be fine. See you tomorrow.” Frankie called to Simone as she stopped in the doorway and looked back at Frankie. Her cheeks still vibrant and red, a twinkle in her friends eye let Frankie know that this wouldn’t be the last time the two of them met like this. Frankie’s soft smile, always quirked up at the corners of her mouth, let Simone know that maybe next time Frankie could participate more. Chapter 2 Sigourney sighed as she looked down at her synthetic daughter's ankle. The damage wasn’t nearly as bad as she had first thought. She had followed Simone out to the front door and locked the door behind her. Once she was sure the house itself was secured she moved to the robotics lab that was also, usually, locked. She huffed to herself as she found the door not only unlocked but standing wide open. Simone and Frankie must have been in some kind of state when they got home to leave the lab open like that. Sigourney couldn’t be too upset, she guessed that seeing her own ankle rolled and bone snap she might be upset enough to forget locking the room as well. Regardless, she retrieved Frankie’s broken foot, the leg module it was attached to, and part of her ankle that remained connected to the foot module. She had taken the whole thing over to one of her work benches and settled it onto a sterile plate and swung a large magnifying glass over it. Sigourney pushed away from the workbench and pinched the bridge of her nose and pressed her eyelids together. Her eyes were stinging and she started to mutter about being too old for all this. The core strut inside of the ankle was, indeed, broken. Sigourney had attempted to keep Frankie’s construction fairly light weight, and so she had used mostly plastics which were sturdy enough for most places. The “bones” of Frankie’s skeletal structure were the same hardened plastic wrapped around an aircraft aluminum core. It was strong enough to handle most of the weight her chassis would put on it, but clearly not strong enough. Then again, human bones were also incredibly strong and landing on it at just the wrong angle could snap them as well. With another huff, she concluded that she might just be being too hard on her own construction. This was clearly just an accident, and not something that would involve her completely disassembling Frankie and replacing her skeletal structure with new, as of yet manufactured, bones. Still, Frankie was going to need some repairs. Sigourney had left her up in her room, plugged in and recharging through a standard wall port. She instructed Frankie to pull down the collar of her shirt and open the roughly triangular panel that nestled between her breasts. It was little more than a receptacle for a number of data ports. Many of which were for Sigourney to bypass Frankie’s software and shove programming and code blocks directly to her hardware. There was one, however, that was an unassumingly standard port. Sigourney had left her phone connected to that very same, unassuming port. Frankie had specific programming that would begin a full dump of log files, system alerts, and any number of other data points that might help Sigourney. She was most interested in the moments leading up to Frankie twisting her ankle and how it could have been avoided. Frankie normally had impeccable balance, so the fact that she had not only tripped but stumbled enough to cause physical damage was concerning. So the process was set to run and Sigourney left her phone nestled nicely between Frankie’s newly upgraded breasts. She sighed once again and glanced down at the bare, disconnected foot onto her desk. There was enough actual damage to the module, the wiring, and some of the core components that it might be worth the time to simply disconnect Frankie’s leg and replace it with a new one. But then she would have to replace the fully working one as well. She always felt that matched body parts were like headlights, gotta replace them both at the same time to keep things even. Replacing both legs on her daughter would be the quick and easy thing to do, but it also meant that she would have to settle down and fully manufacture two new legs to replace the spares she would use up. Another sigh. Things were infinitely easier when she still had access to state of the art robotics facilities, massive labs and all the manufacturing equipment she could ever want. Now, she needed to be a little more cautious, lest bulk ordering electronics tip off someone who was on the lookout for Frankie. So, repairs it was. She would need to start by removing the broken parts inside of the foot and whatever remained of the ankle joint. Simone had done a good job in disconnecting the foot from Frankie’s leg. The joint connector itself looked to have taken the brunt of the damage. It was clearly popped free of the bindings that linked it to the rest of the foot module. Along with that a number of wires were stretched beyond their limits and snapped. They were small things, from the looks of it they were just generalized data cables to courier data between internal systems. Things like sensor data from the foot into the leg to help facilitate balance, or the impact of a step. Sigourney began her investigation by using a scalpel to gently slice into the sides of the foot, skirting around the small plastic cap that protruded outward, giving her foot a very human look. It was meant to look like a Lateral Mallius, but it was nothing more than a blob of plastic. Once she had made a cut down and around to the bottom of the foot, she turned her blade sharply towards the heel and cut around it and back up the other side. Setting aside the knife, she was able to peel off the thick layer of skin. With the synthetic flesh missing now, Sigourney could see a little better what had happened. The foot itself looked like there was some kind of misstep, and landed completely wrong, forcing all of Frankie’s weight onto one side of the gyroscopic connector inside of the foot. With that much downward force on a singular component, not only did it fail, but it snapped out of the clutch that was specifically built to hold it. It had cracked along the bottom of the hardened casing inside the heel and the whole assembly had slipped towards the back of the foot module. Once that happened, a number of cables inside of the foot had either popped free of their connection ports, or in one case, snapped. Sigourney was forced to run the knife up the bottom of the foot and peel back the skin there and see if she could see what was and more importantly, was not, still repairable. The internal framework looked solid and undamaged. Some of the wiring had popped free of the small plastic clips that would normally hold it out of the way of moving parts, and was easy enough for Sigourney to clip back into place. Though she needed a precision screwdriver to pop them back into place, and it took well over ten minutes, but it was done. There was one particular cable that was damaged and needed to be replaced. It was small, but luckily it ran along the inner part of the plantar. All in all Sigourney found that only the gyroscopic connector in the heel was the biggest problem. She didn’t have a replacement at the moment, and would have to make due with what she had. The casing itself was all that needed to be replaced, the electronics themselves seemed to be serviceable enough. So, she spent a few minutes calling up the 3D printer software and loading the object files before sending them to the little computer module on the side of her overly large 3D printer. The whole thing would take nearly five hours to finish printing, and even then it would take time to disconnect the broken one and insert the new one. SHe could at least remove the broken piece and set it aside, leaving Frankie’s foot disconnected, with a sturdy looking piece of mechanical mess jutting out the top and several wires dangling free. While her printer hummed and whined behind her, she took a moment to return to Frankie’s room and check in on her robotic daughter. She was still in bed, laying still and stiff, almost ridgid there. Sigourney plucked the phone from her chest and checked on the download progress. Only another minute or two. She set the phone back down and pulled back the blanket on Frankie’s damaged leg. Some of the soft artificial skin around her ankle had broken, and in other places had simply stretched. All of it would need to be cut away and replaced once the foot module was completed. Sigourney smirked to herself, of all the work she needed to do on her daughter, replacing her flesh was some of the easiest work. Unfortunately there would be more work to do. The joint at the end of the core “bone” structure in her leg was damaged. It wasn’t modular enough to be removed and would need to be fully replaced. It wouldn’t be difficult, she even had the replacement parts for just that on hand, it was just a process. She didn’t relish the idea of being hunched over Frankie’s leg for the rest of the evening, and late into the night, but it was what needed to happen. Until then, Sigourney had to wait. Had to wait for the data transfer to finish, had to wait for the new joint casing to finish printing, had to wait for both of those to be completed so she could strip Frankie’s leg and replace the parts. She was beginning to hate the word “waiting.” The small chime from Frankie’s direction let her know that the data transfer had finished. Finally, she could get some work done. Even knowing that helped simmer down some of the frustrations that she was feeling. At least she could leave her emotions behind in some mental compartment when she dove deep into Frankie’s log files. She was absolutely sure that there would need to be another dump of new code from her workstation into the myriad of intricate systems that made up Frankie’s programming. First, though, she needed to see what Frankie had been up to. The data transfer was massive, of course. Frankie’s incredible systems cataloged and recorded everything she experienced. From sights and sounds, to the sensations her skin picked up and the raw numbers flying through her operating system as calculations were done. Not only did she have recordings of what Frankie did do, but also what she didn’t. Her A.I. generated hundreds if not thousands of branching conversation trees whenever she was having a conversation, many of which were never used and simply stored for later analysis and use. As Sigourney dipped into the lines of code in the log files, most of it seemed pretty straight forward. There were the morning start up routines, logs of the conversations and links to potential responses she had not chosen from this morning. Sigourney scrolled past them, glancing at them only when she had to move her finger back up to the top of the scroll wheel on her mouse. There was a significant amount of data that she glanced over, none of it terribly relevant, that is until she found herself greeted with a wall of red highlighted text. “Ah, here we go.” She commented aloud to no one in particular. There were pages and pages of entries all about the failure from earlier in the day. It took Sigourney a while, a long while, before she found anything resembling a root cause. It seemed that there was little more than a cascade of failures. One small calculation had led to Frankie’s foot falling just to one side of perfectly on balance while jogging. It was like making a small calculation error when navigating, once you are off course, everything just compounds and before you know it, the situation is hopeless. Her foot landed just wrong enough that when she went to put pressure on it again and push off to continue her forward momentum it sent her tumbling forward and caused the damage. SCrolling up a few lines Sigourney started her investigation properly. Meticulously reading each line of text and trying to remember the meaning of it or in some cases decipher the odd combination of letters and numbers that her operating system generated. All of it generated piles of notes for Sigourney to later read and reread as she attempted to figure out the cause of the initial damage. At some point Mr. Gaines came home and found the house oddly quiet. Calling for his daughter first, then for his wife. When he got no response he didn’t think much of it, after all Sigourney and Frankie led interesting and often busy lives. Though he was still delighted to see his wife in the lab, headphones on, with some kind of music dulling out her senses. Her back was turned to him as she was hunched over something. He thought better of interrupting her when she was in the zone like that, so he quietly slipped away and closed the door silently behind him. Meanwhile Sigourney worked on into the night. She settled into a kind of rhythm. She would start some analysis or code search on her computer, then swivel around in her chair to return to Frankie’s leg. At some point the 3D printer chimed softly across the room and shattered that rhythm, but it was a grateful break from the back and forth. Mrs. Gaines stood from her stool and blinked twice, feeling the weight on her eyelids. There was still work to do though. The freshly made gyroscope enclosure seemed to fit nicely into Frankie’s damaged heel, which felt like progress to Sigourney. It was certainly the start of the overall physical repairs. With the new gyroscopic assembly settled neatly into Frankie’s foot, and the wiring repaired, all that remained was to seal up the flesh where Sigourney had cut into it, and then replace the broken core in the leg. With a small device akin to an airbrush in hand, Sigourney gently held the flaps of Frankie’s cut skin in place and applied layer after layer of sealant to the foot. It was one part flesh colored silicone, one part epoxy, and it was crawling with a fleet of nano machines. Sigourney didn’t have the time to repair the sensor mesh inside the layers of synthetic skin by hand, and why would she? The nano machines would do the job and then simply lay dormant. The core of the leg was going to be more of a challenge though. It was going to require a significant amount of displacement. She needed to slit open the leg, remove the lengths of wires and tubing, likely disconnecting some of the arrays of motors and then detaching the core, then replacing it and returning everything to its original place. It was a daunting task and one that Sigourney wasn’t looking forward to. Luckily the beep from her computer let her know that she didn’t need to start at that moment. She had coding to look at and modify. Another task that was sure to take the rest of her evening. She hadn’t even bothered to look at the clock and she knew that if she did now she would surely regret it. Instead she settled into her office chair, a much more comfortable option than the stool by her work bench, and got to reviewing the code. The code searches had turned up exactly what Sigourney was looking for. The root cause of the malfunction. As she read through the blocks of code that her monitor displayed, she almost laughed. Almost. It was so simple and bordered on stupid. The reason for Frankie’s tumble was that she had never run before, or more accurately, her operating system had been refreshed and with her new mature body she hadn’t run with those specifications before. So her OS struggled to calculate the data live. It was a simple enough fix, she could have easily copied and pasted the calculations from her previous code base, then let Frankie’s processors adjust on the fly. It would certainly be less strain on her systems than trying to do it from scratch. Then again, she also had a treadmill in the garage and it wouldn’t take much work to rig up some kind of harness to allow Frankie to walk, jog, run, and sprint on it. With the addition of a harness she could tumble without causing any physical damage. The simplicity of it made Sigourney smile, more so because she knew she wouldn’t have to do any additional coding. She could just leave everything there and rest assured that she did everything correctly, and allow Frankie to naturally grow her code base with half an hour of physical activity. Her leg would still require repairs though. Sigourney huffed a breath. More work. She was just about to push away from her desk when the code search popped up another set of logs. She hadn’t been expecting that, the only thing that happened was a trip and then Simone brought Frankie home. Maybe it was from the leg disconnection. Sigourney wouldn’t be happy until she made sure though. The log files were less errors and warnings, and more alerts about new programming sets unlocked and executing them. Sigourney raised an eyebrow as she dug deeper into the programming sets that were called up and was more than a little shocked to learn that they were accessing Frankie’s newly installed sexual hardware and software. She blinked a few times as she read through more and more of the log files and audibly let out a small gasp when she found the entries about Simone being set as the target of the sensual data. Had it just been Frankie accessing her new systems to masturate and explore a little more of her newly upgraded body, Sigourney could have understood more completely. But with Simone…another girl. Another robot… Sigourney settled down and caught her breath. She had no issues with Frankie being sexual, or even being sexual with another woman. It was just unexpected. Andrew seemed more like Frankie’s type given what she had seen in the last few years. Simone wasn’t a terrible choice though, and Sigourney wouldn’t mind the two of them spending more time together. After the initial shock wore off, she was glad she stumbled upon Frankie’s little encounter. Any time Simone showed up she would make sure to give the two of them a wide berth and allow them plenty of time alone to explore one another. Shaking her head cleared the web of thoughts she was formulating. She even found herself a little flushed imagining Simone that way…the girl wasn’t unattractive after her upgrades and Sigourney wouldn’t mind getting a little closer to- no, work came first. She needed Frankie to be fully operational by morning. Still she couldn’t help but feel her thighs rubbing against one another ever so slightly. Frankie’s leg needed to be cut open, from ankle to knee. Sigourney needed a moment to breathe deep and settle her nerves. A steady hand was required for this type of work and it almost made her a little upset that she didn’t have the kind of robotic precision that Frankie and Simone had. She found her thoughts turning back to Simone again, imagining her and Frankie together..what that must have been like. How she could have contributed her own knowledge and skills to the pair. She shook her head again. “Focus Sigourney..” She muttered and seemed to mentally snap back into the moment. Her hands were once again steady and she was mentally and physically ready. With blade in hand she started a long, steady movement from the bottom of the leg module up to the soft underside of Frankie’s knee. Once done, Sigourney set aside the knife and wiggled her fingers into the opening she had just created. Once she had a hand inside the thick layers of artificial skin, she retrieved the blade again, and began cutting around the circumference of the synthetic thigh, slicing deeper and deeper with every pass until she had created a flap of skin that was only connected over the shin. She repeated the movements on the other side of the leg and then again around the lower portions until she had two long flaps of skin peeled back. Now that she had fully access to the internal structure of Frankie’s leg she could get back to work. There was a somewhat soft, flexible casing around the whole internal structure. It gave Frankie’s legs a more consistent shape considering that there was only a small amount of actual electronics inside of her limb. Sigourney thanked her lucky stars that she had thought ahead enough to install a system to easily remove the casing. A few locking mechanisms that required little more than a screwdriver and the knowledge of where the screw holes were. Once the whole casing was removed she was greeted with a tangled mess of wires, cables and so much tubing. She had a moment to curse her past self for not taking the extra time to bundle up the wiring and do some cable management. She also quietly apologized to her future self as she would be doing no clean up tonight either. The core strut was hidden somewhere in the forest of tangled wires in front of her and it took more than a little digging to get to it, but once there she could start to push other components out of the way until the whole of it was exposed. Once it was she could go to work disconnecting it, first, from where it connected to the knee assembly. It was latched into a powerful and highly complex array of micro-motors and servos. It took a significant amount of torque on a hearty wrench to even begin to loosen the first of three bolts that held it in place. Once loosened though, the other bolts were easier to remove. Once all the bolts were loose enough Sigourney set aside the wrench and simply wiggled her fingers into place and manually turned them until they fell free. Then the whole long metal strut came free from the knee. Sigourney set it gently down so she could easily pick it back up. The process of disconnecting it from the ankle joint would be more work. It was damaged there and she couldn’t put any amount of significant pressure on it, lest it break again. If it did she would be up all night string to wrench it free of the ankle binder. So she proceeded, a gentle hand, and firm pressure that was enough but not so much as to put unnecessary torque on the piece. It was a tense few minutes of gently increasing pressure before the smaller bolt gave and allowed her to undo it. She found that she had been holding her breath and let it seem out between her teeth. Then the next one…and another…each one a tense exercise in control and pressure. But it was freed now. The whole strut was removed and set aside. The top portion of it was a toothed loop that locked into the kneecap, tapering down into a similarly toothed loop that locked into the ankle. Just above the ankle connector the strut was clearly twisted, no small feat for a quarter inch piece of metal that had only just been inside of her robotic daughter's leg. There was an immense amount of pressure and weight that must have been pushed onto it at just the wrong angle to cause that. She could even see where the metal rod was beginning to show fatigue and breaking apart. Replacing it was no small task either, but significantly less work than removing it in the first place. Inserting the new piece into the core of Frankie’s leg and reattaching it to the knee first and then tightening the bolts down. She had to use almost her whole body weight to wrench them into place and ensure that they wouldn’t come loose from regular daily wear and tear. The ankle was the same way, but once attached all she needed to do was shuffle the cables back into place around the rod and make sure none of them would get caught by movement. She left the leg flayed open and scooted over to her computer, snatching up a tablet and a mess of cables hooked into a metal box. She set it down near the upper portion of the leg and began plugging in a number of cables to the open ports that were nestled down inside of the thigh. Once done she tapped through a few menus on the tablet until she found the programming she needed. The metal box served as a host, tricking the leg into operating like it was connected to Frankie’s main body. It was basic, but it worked. She tapped in a command to make the leg slowly move, flexing it back to ensure none of the cables were snagged. Then she tapped another one in to make the leg straighten out, never taking her eyes off of the internal wiring. She really needed to tidy up in there.. A few more commands to roll the ankle, move the foot back and forth and side to side and she was satisfied. Everything was fixed, finally. All that remained was to reseal the leg and reapply a fresh layer of skin patches to the ankle where Frankie’s artificial flesh had torn. She reinserted the casing to Frankie’s leg and locked it into place before flapping the layers of skin over it and pulling it into place. Once there she applied more of the spray on nano machine concoction. She held the skin in place just long enough for it to set and hold on its own before moving to the foot and doing the same process, though she applied a much thicker layer over the ankle where the skin itself had been cut away. Finally, hours and hours after beginning it was all done. Sigourney flopped back into her desk chair and as she leaned forward to put her computer to sleep, she caught another glimpse of the marked up code base. The sensual data dumps from Frankie and Simone. Sigourney felt that same hot flash of lust fill her again. She wondered if Simone would have any complaints about her joining in next time Simone came over. Another deep breath, she needed to reattach Frankie’s leg first. She waited another ten minutes for the nano machine flesh spray to set up. She knew that the repairs to the sensor mesh wouldn’t be completed until the morning, but that was fine. She only just then glanced at the clock on her computer. It was just past two in the morning. Still enough time for the nano machines to work, but far far later than Sigourney wanted. She scooped up the freshly repaired leg module and stumbled out into the house. The lights were all off, save for a few night lights plugged into the wall in the kitchen or by the stairs. They were just enough to illuminate the path enough to make her way up to Frankie’s room. Once there, she flicked on the light, finding that Frankie hadn’t moved at all. It wasn’t a surprise, in fact Frankie’s eyes were wide open, staring up at the ceiling as electrical life flowed into her. It made it easy on Sigourney, she set the leg on the edge of the bed and then settled down at the foot of the bed, next to Frankie’s still connected leg. She pulled the blanket back, fully exposing Frankie’s body, finding that she was fully naked at the moment. SIgourney guessed that she had interrupted her and Simone, which explained some of Simone’s initial reaction. The faint scent of some of the sexual fluids she had installed and the, now dry, runnels of liquid along Frankie’s new womanly folds told Sigourney everything she needed to know. She took only a moment to appreciate the craftsmanship she had put into Frankie’s slit. It was modeled after Sigourney’s own, and it was only a little odd to see it connected to someone else. She smirked and thought it a compliment that Simone had been the first to interact with it. The leg slipped into place, locking into the mounting posts left inside of Frankie’s hip and locking into place with little resistance. Once connected Frankie’s automated sealing process engaged, whirring slightly inside of her leg, though it was audible to Sigourney only because she knew exactly what to listen for. As the pumping system whirled on, the seam line around her thigh disappeared, leaving nothing but a smooth, continuous leg. Once again, Frankie looked perfectly human. Sigourney smiled to herself, knowing that Frankie was fully offline. She ran her hands over the smooth, soft skin along Frankie’s though and congratulated herself on how perfectly human it felt. Not that it was flawless, far from it. There were small imperfections built into it. A small, slightly harder piece of gel under the skin to feel like a coiled muscle, or a faint irregularity in the texture. It felt as close to human skin as she was able to manage and was modeled after her own flesh. Her mind idly wondered if Simone’s was the same way. She was tired. Not just from the late night, but from the volume of energy it took to fully concentrate on such intricate work for so long. She was hungry, but unwilling to eat anything in the middle of the night. There were a myriad of conditions that might have led her to do what she did. Not the least of which was a clawing, gnawing, lingering, hungry desire for some sort or sensual release. She had read the log files for her own daughters first, and only, sexual encounter with another woman. Both androids had been fully upgraded to a mature programming set and a body to match. Simone was beautiful in her own right, as was Frankie, and both of them were fully capable of their own adult desires now. Sigourney’s eyes drifted down to Frankie, her jaw clenched just once, pushing the skin on her own face out just a little as her nostrils flared. She would be getting little sleep tonight, but it was well worth it. She left Frankie’s chest panel open, a data cable dangling from it, and dashed back down to her own lab, overcome with a sudden flash of motivation. She felt a slight twinge of guilt about her plan, but the heat in her body and the pounding of her heart quickly overwhelmed and suppressed those feelings. She had a plan, it wasn’t solid or foolproof, but it would surely present an opportunity. She just needed to be a little careful with the execution. The lines of code it would take were easy enough to write out. A few errant database entries needed to be changed as well, but those were easily modified. It was the behavioral process that would end up taking the lion's share of the time. It wasn’t like the movies where someone could just type in a few lines telling the machine what to do. Robot’s weren’t like that. They didn’t use the same kind of language or natural learning as a human. They required both specific instructions. Sigourney couldn’t be vague, nor could she be too specific lest the internal software crash from acting in a way that was unexpected or clashed with pre-existing parameters. In short, she needed to be just specific enough without being blatant. It took time, and some testing, and more than a little debugging, but before the rest of the family woke up, the new programming was ready. Sigourney wasted no time in returning to Frankie and started the new patch she had spent the last hour or so coding. The data coursed into her daughter from the phone she held in her hand. It wouldn’t take long, the changes weren’t drastic, but they would open an opportunity for Sigourney, and that was all she would need. The small chime from her phone let her know everything was done and passed the system check on Frankie’s systems. She disconnected the cable, and tapped one small button inside of Frankie. The panel hissed into place, resealed itself and Frankie once again looked fully human. SIgourney pulled the blanket over Frankie’s newly installed leg, covered her chest, and kissed her once on the forehead. Then she slipped out of the room and down the hall to her own room where she pulled her top off of her body and let it fall. Then her bra and her slacks came next. She tumbled into bed wearing only her panties and drifted off into a sweet sleep. Frankie’s eyes slipped open smoothly, though she was not online. Not fully at least. There was a small piece of programming that would swiftly remove the charging cable from her body and then settle back into bed. Once done, her full operating system would come online. She would start her human emulation and begin operating as if she were just another person in the world. Despite the fact that just a few hours prior she had been partially disassembled, her chest opened, and a new set of programming installed. To everyone else, she would just be Frankie. Same old Frankie. She slipped out of bed and stretched. It wasn’t something she needed to do, far from it. Stretching wouldn’t do anything for the hydraulics or microscopic motor systems inside of her. It was, however, a very human reaction to slipping out of bed and getting ready for a day of classes at the university. She needed only to run through her programming and appear human. So she dressed herself, not even noticing that her freshly repaired leg was once again attached. She knew it had been missing, and she knew her mother had come home and repaired it. There were even log files that showed exactly when her systems had registered the component was reattached. None of it mattered though, not to Frankie. She was once again whole and there was no need to dwell or make any kind of show of her newly repaired limb. She simply accepted it and moved on to getting dressed for the day. A mid thigh length skirt with dark leggings under it and a smart looking button up shirt made up her outfit today. She turned herself from side to side, admiring herself in the full length mirror hanging on the back of her door, and smiled once, and nodded. Her computerized mind opened up the messenger app that she had her mother install for her long ago and opened the contact for her equally robotic classmate. There was already a message waiting for her from Simone. ‘How’s things Frankie?’ The message had been sent last night, just after ten in the evening. Frankie would have been offline for a while and her mother would have been working hard on repairs still. ‘I am repaired now. Everything is working as expected.’ Almost immediately Frankie saw that Simone was formulating a response. There was no typing involved, just a brief moment where her systems alerted her that Simon was responding and then the message appeared. ‘Good! I’m glad you’re back on your feet…so…about yesterday, what we did. When we got you into your room.’ ‘What about it? Did I do something wrong?’ ‘No! Far from it.’ Frankie wasn’t sure what came over her in that moment. There were floods and spikes of information that her processors were parsing. Her operating system was “remembering” all that the two of them had shared the day before. The wild new sensations and floods of new data sets. The euphoria of feeling something brand new and so very intense. There was programming in her that made her shiver a little at the very recollection of their time together. Not only that, but there was something else. Frankie didn’t even register that a brand new set of programming was running. It was just a small piece of code, running in the background. Something that was subtly removing conversation options from her queue and replacing them with something else. It was gently tugging at other programming sets, begging them to be part of her current operating set. There were lustful tidbits of programming that were already seeping into Frankie’s currently running cache of assets. ‘Perhaps this time we could both participate.’ Frankie’s simple message let Simone know where they both stood with one another. ‘Perhaps we could. I think I owe you at least that much.’ Simone replied ‘After classes end today we should get together. We can do any homework and then explore these activities a bit deeper.’ In her room, Simone stood half naked. Tight jeans, slightly distressed across the thighs and outright ripped at one knee covered her lower half. Her upper torso remained unclothed. Her breasts standing firm, rounded, and ready. The pink synthetic nipples capping them were equally perky. She was standing still, a bra in her hand and red blush crawling across her face as she read and then reread Frankie’s words. With one more blink she returned to her normal operating process. Her bra held back and shaped her breasts, transforming them into prominently displayed mounds. A simple shirt covered her slender body and the long, straight dirty blond hair fell all around her shoulders. She was still smiling and blushing when she stepped into the hall to head out to the campus. When the flushed redness on her cheeks still hadn’t faded she had to manually access the system and truncate the process herself. She was loathed to think of what she would look like with a glowing red face all day long. Let alone when she finally met up with Frankie again at university. The redness triggered another process request and Simone denied it herself… Frankie was already in the quad, sitting perfectly upright with impeccable posture on one of the benches there. Simone caught her eye and wondered if the blushing programming would ever stop triggering. Maybe she could get Sigourney to edit her software a bit and tone it down. At just the thought of being, even partially, disassembled under Sigourney’s hand caused her to process all manner of other code bases. She was reminded of Frankie, broken and sparking. The sight of her electronic self so readily on display. It wasn’t a far leap for Simone to imagine her own internal systems exposed like that as well. Her software simulated what that might look like and displayed a small visual for her in the corner of her field of vision. She was naked on Mrs. Gaines lab table, the same one Frankie had been on last night she was sure. Her chest flayed open and a forest of wires and tubes connected into her. She could almost feel it. Then the image faded and it was replaced with the same scene, but Frankie was on the table now. Her mother was working inside of her. Mrs. Gaines arms deep in Frankie’s open torso, taking parts and pieces out of Frankie, all while she was smiling and looking vaguely at the ceiling. Just a machine powered down and letting someone- “Simone, are you functioning properly?” The small scene evaporated into nothingness and Simone smiled. Frankie was in front of her, a look of concern on her face and her hands were on Simone’s shoulders. She was being shaken slightly. “Yes, sorry, just a little glitch. We should get to class.” Frankie’s look of concern faded with a small head tilt as Simone walked past Frankie, partially because class was starting soon, partially because she wanted to ensure that those video simulations were stored and saved some place safe, and partially because her cheeks were turning red again. The day had been long and the late afternoon sun was long past its apex. Simone had finished her last class nearly half an hour before Frankie had. She had found a nice quiet bench under a tree and was simply lounging. The gentle breeze tickled the sensor laced flesh that covered her body, and she let the subtle warmth of the late afternoon sun swirl and mix with the cool air into a cocktail of sensory data. Her eyes were closed and a vague smile showed prominently on her face. Anyone looking at her would have thought she was another college student enjoying the beauty that surrounded her. In reality, her closed eyes only gave her a proper theater to rewatch the two simulated scenes from earlier. She alternated back and forth, trying to decide which she liked seeing more, her own self on the table with Mrs. Gaines working on her, or watching Frankie get disassembled and tinkered with. As she viewed the scenes again, something new happened. The room changed, it dimmed to utter darkness and then reappeared. It was the same room, but larger now, and accommodated two tables. Frankie was there, laying naked on one table. Her chest opened and the same electronics inside of her. The faint glowing of status lights from her circuitry illuminating the soft, pale skin. Simone was on the second table. She was missing both of her arms, and she could see the silvered disks that housed the connection ports. The small bundles of cables that dangled from where her missing limb would attach. She was aware of her surroundings, and looked around only to see Mrs. Gaines. In the center of the room. No one was being repaired or worked on, rather Mrs. Gaines was wearing a cocktail dress of some kind, and looking at Simone and Frankie. She bent low over Frankie and kissed her daughter, then stood and walked to Simone. Another kiss planted on Simone’s lips. “Simone?” Her eyes snapped open and Frankie was once again standing over her. While her expression looked concerned, it wasn’t the same upset face she had worn this morning. “Perhaps my mother should have a look at your software set. You seem to be having a number of glitches.” The sentiment was there, genuine concern and seeking simply to help her friend. None of Frankie’s higher AI and logic systems had any idea that the idea was a seed that had been planted by Sigourney the night before. Frankie’s operating system had generated a number of responses. There were options to merely speak to her mother, and others to simply ignore the glitches or offer to help her troubleshoot them. Normally Frankie would not have jumped directly to allowing her mother to inspect and modify Simone’s programming, but after Sigourney’s late night modifications, the options were regarded as highly productive. To Simone, there was no change in Frankie’s behavior. Her own operating system concluded much the same thing. Mrs Gaines was an accomplished robotics expert, and Simone’s programming and construction was so similar to Frankie’s that it would likely be a simple task to help troubleshoot. Then again, Simone knew that these weren’t glitches, they were active processes that her OS was conjuring up and she was intentionally tuning out the world to watch them. The lingering image of Mrs. Gaines with her hands inside of Simone’s naked and opened body trickled back into her field of vision one last time though. Frankie’s suggestion would lead, she knew, to almost that exact scenario. Allowing Mrs. Gaines to probe her programming would lead to her exposing herself as a machine and allowing her into some of Simone’s most intimately hidden systems. It was, in fact, what she had been dreaming about. “I think you’re right Frankie. I should have your mom help me out. Just a look can’t hurt right?” It wasn’t a long drive back to Frankie’s house. Simone drove there, letting her internal GPS and navigation programming take over her operation. She actively stopped the simulations from running though her field of vision again, and stopped her cheeks from blushing every time she glanced over at Frankie. The shape of her friend's body had never been so enticing to her, and all at once both Frankie and Sigourney were newly acquired objects of desire. She wasn’t upset by that at all though, she actually liked the idea of having a more mature woman as a lover, and one that was a machine like she was. Simone idly wondered if there were possibilities and opportunities for the two of them to share some of that pleasurable data. Comparing blocks of stored data and logs, experiencing things in a different way. Though, Simone thought, that would likely lead to malfunctions of some kind. She couldn’t help but bite into her lower lip just a little at that line of thinking. There were a lot of new ideas and sensations coursing through her again, and she sucked in a fresh breath of cool air to help dissipate some of the heat coming off of her processor core. Simone was thankful when they pulled up in front of the Gaines’s house and she put her little sedan in park. She and Frankie made their way inside and found themselves greeted by a very tired looking Sigourney. She had changed her clothes from the day before. Comfortable looking jeans that did little to mask the curves of her mature legs. The form fitting black shirt tucked into them did the same for her chest. Her breasts covered, but without a bra there was little left to the imagination. It was clear, to Simone at least, that there was some level of excitement, bordering on arousal, judging by how prominently displayed Mrs. Gaines' nipples were, and how little embarrassment she seemed to take. Simone was practically bursting with erotic desire as well. She made no effort to suppress the spreading blush that was creeping across her face and chest. She did, however, attempt to keep the intake and output of her breath steady and even. She needed the cooling as the double speed processor core inside of her was driving hard and generating a rising amount of heat. Simone’s audio receptors, deep inside of her ears and skull casing picked up the sound of Frankie talking, and gesturing towards Simone, but her processors were currently occupied to the point where the audio wasn’t fully parsed. A moment later the sensor flesh on her shoulder lit up and her balance programming took over as her body was shaking back and forth. Her regulation software took over and truncated many of the running processes that were clogging up her CPU usage. She blinked once and looked up to see Frankie looking at her, and Mrs. Gaines looking deeply into her eyes. “Do you see what I mean?” Frankie was saying. “Yes, it’s a little concerning for sure.” Sigourney replied. “Simone, are you alright?” “Yeah, I- sorry. My CPU core just got a little tied up with some other processes.” Simone replied. “It shouldn’t be.” Mrs. Gaines replied, stepping back and rubbing her chin slightly. “You were built with processors fast enough to make a convincingly human android. Your processors shouldn’t get tied up.” Frankie looked to her mother, “Can you check her programming. Perhaps there is some kind of hardware optimization that is troubling her?” Simone’s issue was a legitimate concern for Sigourney. She had reprogrammed her daughter just enough to suggest some kind of meeting today with Sigourney. She had fully expected it to be something like a girls night or study session. Simone’s glitching software was a happy accident and Sigourney’s heart began to pound against her chest at the possibilities. Ethics be damned, she was burning with desire still and Simone was right here. So was Frankie… “Yeah, let’s get you into the lab. Uh, Frankie, why don’t you head on up to your room and do your homework and then plug in for the evening. I can send Simone up to you when I have a better idea of what’s going on.” Simone cast her eyes downward, biting into her lower lip just a little. She was well aware that there were no software issues for Mrs. Gaines to diagnose. Which only meant she could likely spend even more time on Mrs. Gaines’ examination table. Another small simulated scene appeared in her field of vision, once again it was her lying naked on the table, though this time she was missing her arms and legs. She was squirming a little, and the sound of- “Simone, sweetie? Is that okay?” Several blinks later Simone nodded. She was fine with whatever Mrs. Gaines did or did not find. Tonight, right now, was a treat to Simone more than anything. Frankie was nodding and Simone was barely aware of her turning, more robotically than she had seen in a while, and walk towards her room. Mrs. Gaines had already taken several steps forward and Simone watched her hips swaying for a moment before she began to swiftly follow after her. Sigourney, meanwhile, had turned to face away from Simone as quickly as she felt the spreading warmth on her cheeks. She didn’t want to betray her own feelings, and instead moved to keep Simone at something of a distance, or at least distracted until she could calm her heart rate. She was delighted with how the opportunity that had presented itself was turning out. She legitimately wanted to try and diagnose what was happening with Simone, but there were other things that she was looking forward to as well. According to the log files she had pulled from Frankie, Simone had something of an upgrade as well, similar to Frankie’s. Sigourney let Simone into the lab and then, very quietly, turned and closed the door behind her before twisting the lock into place. The last thing she wanted was an interruption. “Alright Simone, now I’m sure you understand that in order for me to access some of your systems I’m going to need you to fully disrobe for me.” Sigourney tried her absolute best to keep a clinical edge on her voice, but she still worried that the robot girl would pick up on her excitement. Inside her own mind, Sigourney felt like a giddy little girl. “Yeah, I expected as much.” Simone replied, her hands were already undoing the buttons on her plaid shirt. She shrugged out of the top, tossing it onto one of the surfaces that didn’t appear to have much on it, leaving her standing in her skin tight jeans and a simple white tank top. Sigourney had been preparing the computer terminal in the room for diagnostics, opening a number of pre-written commands and programs that she had written to help her. She turned around to face Simone just in time to see the robotic college student stripping her tank top off of her, letting her hair tumble out of it and leaving her facing away from Sigourney in a bra and jeans. Simone tossed her shirt on top of the button up one and, noticing the lack of keyboard sounds, turned around to see if Mrs. Gaines needed something from her. She had just unclasped her bra and let her breasts bounce free. Sigourney tried her best to not let her erotically charged emotions get the better of her. She tried with desperation not to let her eyes drift down to Simone’s clearly upgraded chest. She failed. Her eyes rolled down Simone’s body. Her hair fell perfectly where it should, landing on her shoulders with a gentle pause. Her slender neck seemed sturdy and delicate all at once, and it gave way to the broad planes of Simone’s chest. Her chest, clearly an improvement, had grown. With the upgrade to a more mature, adult body, so too had her chest grown. Plump and rounded breasts dominated her torso, ending in the most ideal nipples Sigourney could imagine. They were pert, perky, and clearly ready. Sigourney thought she felt a little bit of what Frankie must have been processing the day before. Unbridled lust. The desire to reach out and touch, to take, to kiss and love, to make Simone her own while also giving herself fully to the android. Her torso, just below her impressive chest, tapered down to her hips where it widened back out, filling the waistline of her jeans. The jeans themselves were already unbuttoned and Simone was pushing downward, rolling them down her thighs, exposing her legs with every passing moment. She bent forward, letting her breasts hang from where they were attached to her chest, as more and more of her legs were exposed. SIgourney hadn;t even noticed that Simone had hooked her thumb into the waistband of her panties. So when the blonde robot stepped out of her clothes with a dainty little step, that her entire body was revealed. Sigourney took it all in for only a moment, only a brief and fleeting glance, but the image was seared into her mind. The slender body and perfectly proportioned structure. Skin that seemed perfect, but was in fact clearly designed to look perfectly human. Everything looked so well toned, like Simone worked out for hours every day, and yet all of it was soft. Like Sigourney could reach out and touch it and have her hand sink in just enough. Even the artificial sex module that had been installed looked perfectly human while looking incredible at the same time. No pubic hair had been installed, and it only served to highlight that, while human in appearance, Simone was still very much a machine. “Alright, uh, Simone go ahead and lay down on here, on the bench that is, and um, can you access post. Excuse me, open an access port for a data transfer. Please.” Sigourney turned back to the computer, pressing her eyelids closed in embarrassment. She could hear Simone moving around, the sound of her hopping up onto the table. Her soft, synthetic flesh slapping gently against the cold stainless steel. A moment later, the air filled with the hissing of something being unsealed, like a long forgotten bottle of champagne finally being uncorked with care. The sound of a once sealed, internal system becoming exposed to the open air. The sound of a twenty-something android splitting her chest open and letting it reveal her inner most circuitry. Sigourney turned, knowing full well what to expect, but seeing it was another thing altogether. Simone was on the table, as requested, and she had opened a port for Sigourney to plug in to. What she did not expect was that it would be her entire chest panel. It was split down the middle, across her collar bone and belly. It was standing open, like a pair of welcoming hands, jutting up into the room. Nested between them was what made Simone, Simone. Fine wires all bundled together in black mesh tubes to keep them out of the way of the small spinning fans. Under the wires, nestled deep in the forest of cables and tubes, was a hard casing. Sigourney knew it was little more than a case to give Simone’s body some shape and form, but set into it were a number of data ports. Everything was there and readily available, which is precisely what she had asked for. Though, as she walked up she was a little surprised at how similar yet distinctly different Simone’s construction was. The hard plastic casing that covered the majority of Simone’s internal workings was formed to resemble a normal looking rib cage. Just below the hardened plastic ribs was a metal support structure that kept the ribs in place and allowed for wires and circuitry to be mounted directly to it. A distinct change from Frankie’s construction which simply relied on a number of boards to be connected to her spinal column where they could Others were bolted directly onto the back of Frankie’s ribs, but Simone’s configuration allowed for a number of additional components to be mounted on both her back and just under the ribs. “Do. Uh, do these come off?” Sigourney asked, gently placing one hand on the edge of one of Simone’s open chest panels. “Yes, there are locks where the joint is. Just disable them.” Simone replied, looking up from the table, letting her eyes drift over the edges of her own chest first. Taking in the very precise point where the soft artificial flesh met the hard plastic and metal interior. The part where she transitioned from human to machine. Sigourney only nodded and then positioned herself just above Simone’s head. Bending forward, she reached into Simone. The little robot girl couldn’t exactly feel her hands inside of her body, but she certainly registered the feeling of her body gently swaying as Mrs. Gaines worked inside of her. She closed her eyes and let the simulation she had been viewing earlier run again. This time she junctioned it to the sensory data her processors so kindly provided. It felt more real now, more interactive and true. She could practically see herself from a distant corner. One of Simone’s chest panels was free now. Sigourney lifted it up and off of her, making sure to keep clear of the rest of her body. Simone watched as it was extracted and brought away from her. There was a sudden surge between her legs. Nothing quite as prominent as a real orgasm, but a twitch, a small spasm, right at the very core of her newly installed womanly folds. The mere sight of one simple robotic component being lifted off of her was all it took. This was going to be a long maintenance session. Her other chest panel came off with a little less work now that Sigourney had found where the locking mechanisms were nestled inside of her. The second panel caused the very same little twinge of pleasure for Simone, and it took a lightning fast processor request to block the small moan from making its way to her vocal processors. Not that Simone was even capable of dreams, but if she could be, this one was coming true right before her eyes. Simone was able to turn her head just a little and swivel the artificial eyes inside of her sockets to follow Mrs. Gaines. She watched as she moved across her little makeshift lab and set the two halves of Simone’s chest on a table. SHe could see her firm breasts jiggle and sway as the physics of the world around her took hold of them. She turned her attention back to her own body, craning her neck just a little to peek inside of her own exposed toros. The sight of the same hard edge meeting the soft flesh was still every bit as enticing as it was on her chest panels. Though, now it was highlighted by the maze of cables and components, backlit by her own status lights. “Never seen inside of yourself?” It was Mrs. Gaines’ voice, floating somewhere above Simone. “N-no, I never had a need to.” “Do you want to see a little better?” It wasn’t a question that needed contemplation. Simone had literally imagined it all along. She nodded, tempering her response so she didn’t look too eager. A moment later Sigourney’s cold but firm fingers were pressing into Simone’s neck, just behind her jugular. A second later they were pressing into a soft spot just behind her jaw. Simone could see the commands being executed inside of her, the pressure points initiated an unlocking sequence that disengaged nearly a dozen mechanisms inside of her throat. Whole other systems were safely disconnecting devices and physically retracting mounting posts inside of her neck. Still others were loosening the artificial flesh around her throat, allowing the skin to peel back just a bit. Then it was done. Sigourney could feel the subtle vibrations inside of Simone’s head as her mechanical neck disjoined from her throat. All she had to do was wait until the slight stuttering stopped and then she was ready. Simone felt Mrs. Gaines grip her head on both sides, then begin to gently twist back and forth. It was little more than a small movement to get the mounting posts free of their connections, and within a moment Simone could see her field of vision lifting upward and off of her body. A rapid mid-range wireless connection established itself and reconnected her to the systems inside of her body. She was still facing forward and enjoyed the sensation of having her head removed and moved across the room without her needing to formulate the commands to move her whole body. It was both disorienting, and given Simone’s current set of programming, extremely erotic. It was intoxicating really. The more Simone felt like she was truly just a machine, the more sensual data she felt coursing through her systems. In a moment her head was turned around and tilted back, letting her long golden hair fall slightly away from where her neck would be. Then Mrs. Gaines slotted her onto some kind of post or podium. She connected to it, and found that there was a request for a data connection to Mrs. Gaines’ workstation as well as began to provide the small powercell inside of her skull with electricity. She gladly allowed the connection to her data ports and let her eyes slip closed as she let out a soft sigh. It was meant to be a small sigh, something more akin to a comforting, relaxing release. The kind of sound someone made when they sat down after a long day of standing. Instead, Simone’s sexual programming hijacked her own vocal sub-systems and changed the sound from a soft sigh into a gentle moan. It drew out longer than she had wanted, and combined with her eyes closed and her mouth open just a little it would have looked incredibly lewd to Sigourney. “Oh my gosh, im so sorry. I- I don’t know what-” Sigourney held up a hand and silenced her. “It’s alright. I honestly kind of expected that kind of reaction from you.” “You..you did?” “Mmhmm” Sigourney replied. She was settling into the chair across from Simone. Her legs were tightly crossed over one another at the knee and she was giving Simone a knowing smirk. “After Frankie’s repairs last night I went crawling through the log files to see what caused it, and after correcting it I found some other things.” She raised her eyebrows at Simone, a clear indication that she knew what her and Frankie had done. She wasn’t entirely sure that Simone’s social programming would pick up on the indication though. “So I know that you and Frankie had-” “I’m really sorry! It won't happen again if you don’t want.” Simone blurted at high speed. “No no, It’s really okay. In fact I would encourage the two of you to branch out and explore. Try new things with new people. You never know what it might..spark.” Sigourney bit into her lower lip just a little with her last word and let the twinkle in her eye show. Simone seemed confused at first, and then, with a sudden burst of realization, her programming took it all in and ground it down into something her base code could understand. In response, her own eyebrows flew up and her mouth drooped open just a little. The blush was uncontrollable at this point though, and the artificial pigment injectors inside of her cheeks were running rampant. “Do those red cheeks mean you get my meaning?” Sigourney murmured, her breath starting to flow in hot puffs. Simone stammered for only a moment as the satalink between her core processors and the smaller processing unit inside of her head sent swarms of new information back and forth. Did she understand? Her social programming knew what Mrs. Gaines was referring to, but she was older, married, and the mother of Simone’s best friend. There were conflicts. Simone wanted so desperately to experience another sexual encounter, and the idea of a twist to it was all the more exciting. Frankie had been incredible, and Simone wanted nothing more than to march upstairs and make out with her once again, stripping each other slowly of their clothes until their naked bodies were once again tangled with one another. Then again, she had literally been pining for this very scenario for a day. She had visualized this set up and it was what had led her to this position in the first place. There was nothing wrong with her after all, she was just lost in a fantasy. All of the factors combined and swirled around into something approximating data, enough at least to formulate a response. “I get your meaning, Mrs’ Gaines, and I agree.” She ended her statement with a knowing and lust filled smirk. Sigourney smiled in return, her own desires reaching their own boiling point. She stepped over to the computer and tapped in a number of commands, each one enabling controls over the robot’s body, granting access to her most intimate and crucial systems, and handing those controls to Sigourney. She tapped in a final command and pressed enter before turning back to Simone’s disconnected head. Simone was biting into her lower lip just a little, she was now fully, and unabashedly, running her sexual programming. All her social matrices were directed only at processing sensual data and enticing Mrs. Gaines into making love to her. As her optics swiveled up and looked into Mrs. Gaines' eyes she wanted nothing more than to spread her legs and invite the older woman to her. But Simone found that she no longer had any kind of control over her body. Sigourney saw the flash of concern and genuine upset that flashed across Simone’s disembodied head. She contemplated letting Simone sweat a bit more, but decided against it. She flashed a broad smile instead and bent forward at the waist, bending her knees a little and placing her hands on them for support. It was a movement that brought her down to eye level with Simone’s head, and as a bonus, her low cut shirt displayed her impressive cleavage for an added enticement for Simone. “Don’t worry sweetie. I’ve disabled your motor controls. You’ll still be able to feel everything, but for now, only I can move your body.” Sigourney took the opportunity to lean in and plant a firm, sensual kiss on Simones lips. She lingered there for long minutes, both of the two women enjoying the sensation. Sigourney’s organic tongue penetrating inside of Simone’s artificial mouth. Simone wanted to wrap her hands around Mrs. Gaines, to hold her tight and draw out the kiss for longer, but she was unable to, doubly so. Regardless, Sigourney pulled away and gently wiped the sweet tasting artificial saliva from her lips. She was smiling at Simone as she stepped across the lab, making her way to Simone’s body. “What- what are you-” Simone began, but quickly put the pieces together. Sigourney’s hands fell to Simone’s naked thighs. The sensation of the woman’s hands running up and down the soft artificial flesh sent a wave of pleasurable data coursing through her body and across the wireless link. It was a fraction of a second delayed, but Simone let out a long, soft moan, little more than an exhaled sound of delight, but the traces of lustful desires were there. Then she felt her legs spreading wider and wider. It was an odd sensation to be truthful, one that wasn’t wholly unpleasant. Simone could only watch through half lidded eyes as Mrs. Gaines pushed her legs open. She could tell that there was a bit of effort that went into the movement, and Simone could easily hear the motor systems inside of her hips whining in protest as they were moved without the proper input. Still, her womanly folds were on display for Mrs. Gaines now, and the more mature woman wasted little time. Sigourney licked her lips once and then lowered herself to the stool she had left at the end of the table. It was usually used for her to sit on when she was doing heavy modifications on Frankie so she didn’t have to loom over the girl and it put her nicely on the correct level. The gentle tingling of hands on her inner thighs sent another wave of desire blasting into Simone’s vocal processors, and this time she was not afraid to let a long, husky moan rumble out of the speaker assembly in her throat. Along with the sweet sounds of love rolling across her vocal processors, her social programming interlaced a number of breathy sighs and gasps as Mrs’ Gaines’ fingers spread her slit and her tongue drilled deep inside of her. The amount of pleasure being processed in Simone caused her whole face to flare red and generate a number of requests to her CPU to move her body, to squirm, to write in pleasure, to lace her fingers into Mrs. Gaines’ hair, but all of it was stopped by the blocker that had been installed. They were all perfectly legal blocks, so no errors or warnings were generated, though her log files did begin to fill up with requests and blocks. Simone was beginning to get a good sense of exactly how Frankie must have felt the day before, when she herself was unable to fully move her body, though this seemed to be a much more intense and full body sensation. She was feeling everything Mrs. Gaines was doing every touch, every movement of her tongue inside of Simone, and every subtle stroke of her fingers along Simone’s legs. Every last touch brought fresh and hot tingles surging through Simone’s body. It wasn’t long before Simone was panting, a purely social response. She wasn’t actually breathing, she was a machine afterall and could happily spend the rest of her life without taking another breath. Her sexual programming, on the other hand, was operating as if she were with any other human. Her complicated blocks of programming didn’t precisely know that Sigourney was well aware of Simone’s artificial nature, nor that Simone was currently semi-disassembled and her chest opened for Mrs. Gaines to see. As Sigourney carried on, she listened carefully to Simone’s voice. She had hand programmed much of Frankie’s sequences, and being a woman herself, she knew the kind of rising, keening sounds that swirled into the voice as climax began to build. She had only casually stroked herself through the thick jeans once or twice as she pleasured Simone. She wasn’t ready just yet to let Simone reach her finale just yet. So she pulled back, planting one last kiss on Simone’s womanhood and then standing up. She lapped up the juices on her lips with her tongue and took it in, smirking at the red faced androids disconnected head. Simone was still panting, mewling, whining, and craving more. She had been so very close to the sensual release she had been dreaming of all day long. Mrs Gaines was stopping around her torso, fingers trailing along her exposed skin, sending hot lines of tingling data through her CPU. She moved along until she was standing in the space between Simone’s body and her head. “Enjoying yourself sweetie?” It was the same tone that a loving mother would ask her child's friend while they were playing in the backyard. It was sweet, kind, caring, and longing to know if she was satisfied with how she had been treated. The gentle whirr and whine of the mechanisms in Simone’s neck as she vigorously nodded answered Sigourney’s question. It wasn’t really a question that Sigourney needed an answer to, it had been obvious from the moment that she asked Simone to strip naked and crawl onto her bench. But now things were escalating, Simone was riled up, and so was Sigourney. The older woman had barely noticed that as she leaned against the workbench that her thighs were gently rubbing together out of pure excitement. She watched Simone’s glassy fake eyeballs drift down her body, taking in the breasts that were barely held back by her shirt, and more importantly the fact that Mrs. Gaines was letting her hands work the zipper on her already unbuttoned jeans. She bent forward, once again giving Simone a delightful view of her cleavage as she peeled her jeans off of her legs. Once she stepped out of them and stood back up Simone was treated to a wondrous view of Sigourney’s long sultry legs, ending only when they hid themselves inside her panties. As she stood back up her hands moved up her thighs, over her hips and curled just as they met the lower hem of her shirt. She never stopped the movement of her hands and arms though, they continued upward, taking her shirt with them until her head disappeared below its edges and then reappeared a moment later, her hair flying wildly as it spilled from her top. Sigourney let the garment drop and didn’t put any more thought into it. Instead she took a slinking step forward, accentuating the sway in her almost bare hips. Her next step saw her hands rising up to her already bare breasts. Once there she cupped them and held them up, squeezing them over and over, massaging her own fingers into her skin. Her nipples hardened under her palms and she knew that it was a clear sign that she was turned on. She released them just as she stepped up to Simone’s disconnected head, and let them bounce and jiggle in front of her. Simone looked upward, taking in the gentle curves of Mrs. Gaines’ chest and delighting in the puckered nipples capping her rounded mounds. Then Sigourney’s hands gently pressed into either side of her head and plucked her from the mounting post that she was on. Her vision flashed with warnings about disconnections but they were dismissed with barely a few CPU cycles spared. Her operating system was now fully engulfed with loading and executing sexual programming. Simone found her head once again rising, it wasn’t as disorienting this time around, but she was still a little thrown off. The gyroscopic systems inside of her head that helped control balance were spinning as she rose and then stopped. Simone was directly in front of Mrs. Gaines’ gorgeous breasts and with no hesitation she was pressed into one of her breasts. Simone reacted with the kind of speed that only a machine could and opened her mouth and accepted the erect nipple into her mouth. In an instant Simone’s tongue was dancing over the mature woman’s nipple, teasting, taunting, and tickling it with reckless abandon. Sigourney let out a long, low moan, filled with long breathy notes and a husky undertone. She was instantly enraptured at the very thought of Simone’s robotic head suckling at her breast, let alone the actual feeling of Simone’s silicone rubber tongue flicking and swirling around it. Sigourney let out another moan and held Simone’s head tight against her chest. The older of the two lost track of how long she let the robotic head of her daughter's best friend suckle at her breast, but she felt her throat growing ragged from the amount of breath passing over it as she began panting and squirming. Her thighs were growing slick with her own juices, and she could only imagine what SImone’s body was going through. She could have let Simone carry on until the micro power cell in her head discharged and went offline, but that wouldn’t be productive at all. Sigourney took Simone’s head with her as she pushed away from the workbench she had been lounging against and moved around the younger girl’s body. SIgourney somewhat awkwardly lowered herself back to her stool, spreading her legs as she did so and settling Simone’s still functional head between her thighs. She only had to press her legs together ever so slightly to clamp the head in place and Simone wasted no time in lapping hungrily at Mrs. Gaines’s womanly folds. All the while, Sigourney leaned forward, pressing her thumbs into the edges of Simone’s freshly installed artificial slit and spread it open, letting her drive her tongue into the young looking robot. She knew Simone would be squirming and writhing, though for now all she could do was let out a series of moans and lustful squeaks from the speaker assembly in her throat. On occasion Sigourney would push against Simone’s legs, pushing them to the very edge of their range of motion. Sigourney sighed in slight frustration as she pulled away, transitioning into a lewd sounding moan as her own slit twitched slightly with Simone’s relentless tongue lashing. SIgourney gathered her thoughts and placed her hands on Simone’s thighs, fumbling for a moment as another pleasurable wave swept over her body from Simone’s disconnected head. Soon though she found the locks on the leg and pressed in. Once disengaged she removed Simone’s left leg, then a moment or two later her right, leaving Simone’s body open and legless. With her legs no longer prohibiting her, she dove back in and pressed her face deep into the soft, supple flesh along the remaining portions of Simone’s legs. Her hands resting on the very verges of where her mostly human-like flesh met the hard mechanical internals. A flexible, but firm plastic cuff set into the skin marked the start of Simone’s robotic self and presented a reminder to Sigourney that, while Simone looked, acted, and felt human, she was nothing more than a collection of circuitry, wires, and mechanisms. A very convincing human-like woman, but at the end of the day, only a machine. A machine that was squealing in delight as Sigourney felt her synthetic sex twitch again and again, before tightening all at once. It was a clear sign that Simone had finally reached the peak of her sexual experience and her operating system was initiating her final climactic release. Mrs. Gaines herself had somewhat held herself back from releasing the same feelings, but between feeling the young robot's orgasm and letting her hands drift along the softness of her thighs, she too felt the boiling hot release of sensual desires in her own loins. Sigourney found her legs pressing hard against Simone’s head as her own womanly sex contracted over and over as her own climax rolled up from her crotch and sizzled its way into her mind. The euphoric rush of release swept over her, letting her finally release the pent up breath she had been holding onto in her final moments and letting out a sigh of relief. She moved her hands down to Simone’s head and gently extracted the android’s head from between her legs and brought it up. Still field with lust, Mrs. Gaines brought Simone in for a deep, passionate kiss. She could taste herself on Simone’s lips. The taste did little to satiate her lust, but it would have to do as a bookend to her encounter with Simone. Both women, artificial and biological, had achieved climax. With that Sigourney felt her mind clearing and a rush of motivation sweep over her. She returned Simone’s head to the podium mounted on her desk and then tugged on her panties, but nothing else. She settled back into her office chair and let the cool leather touch her burning hot skin. “Alright. Well, that was..something.” Sigourney began. “Now let’s see if we can figure out what’s causing these glitches shall we.” Simone could only giggle. Her processor core had taken in the tidal waves of pleasurable data, parsed it, tagged it with metadata and filed it away. She had fully experienced an orgasm, but unlike her human counterpart, she needed little in the way of time to settle back into a relaxed state. It was just configuration files that were loaded and executed and nothing more. She was fully back to her normal self now, though she wore a deeply pleased smile. “What’s so funny?” Sigourney asked. “Just- I already knew what was causing the glitches. Frankie was just worried and I didn’t want to tell her what they were about.” Sigourney turned to face her, still mostly nude, her breasts still firm and her nipples still perked up from the excitement and the cocktail of hormones and sexual chemistry running through her. She raised an eyebrow and looked down at Simone’s head. Simone was looking back at her and wore a cheeky smile on her still glistening lips. “I uh. I was fantasizing.” “Fantasizing?” “Yeah, about this actually. That was what I was laughing about. I was dreaming about you taking me apart and it just really turned me on. So I was dwelling on that. I Just didn’t want to tell Frankie about it. Even though- uh..nevermind.” Sigourney blinked for a moment. There was a lot of information to take in there. “You..you can dream?” “I- well- Yes in a way I suppose. My operating system just assembled some kind of video file or simulation. It was your lab, and I was there and you were taking me apart.” Simone managed. “And that turned you on? In a sexual way?” “Yeah.” Simone uttered, her cheeks reddening a little and her eyes drifting downward. “Simone, I can’t stress this enough, that is an incredible gift and one that I never imagined a robot like you would be capable of.” Simone’s eyes twitched back to Sigourney, the small amount of shame her social programming had been running was quickly truncated and she returned to a much more cheerful demeanor. “-But I need to know, was there more? Is there something you aren’t telling me, like you weren’t telling Frankie?” Simone hesitated, which was more than enough confirmation for Mrs. Gaines to know that there was more. The only question now was whether or not Simone would tell her the truth and reveal the second set of simulations her systems had conjured up. “There’s more. I- I was also dreaming of you, and me, and…and Frankie. I liked seeing her disassembled as well. And all three of us were- well- we were doing what you and I were just doing.” “What you and Frankie had done yesterday as well?” “-yeah…” Simone whispered. “There’s no shame here Simone. You’re a young woman, and even though you, and Frankie, are machines, there is something inside of you both that is growing and morphing into something that even I can’t control. You’re becoming more than just a bundle of programming and wires, you’re becoming your own person, and with that comes discovery and experimentation. I just want you to know that I am happy to help with that, in any way I can.” The two shared a smile and Simone nodded in agreement. “Good, well then, if there is no actual work to do here, we might as well get you put back together so you and Frankie can..what did you say? Get some studying and homework done.” Sigourney’s tone easily alerted Simone that she was well aware of what the two girls were planning and more importantly, not planning on doing. They could both finish the homework with little to no effort, and studying for an android was almost laughable. Their artificial minds would take in the information and store it indefinitely. Simone found herself watching Mrs. Gaines reattached her chest panels, each one clicking into place with a satisfying ping. Next, her legs were reconnected and then she returned to the computer. A few more hastily entered commands and Simone felt the quick flush of programming sweep over her. She found she was once again in control of her own body through the remote connection. Next, Mrs. Gaines lifted and reconnected her head to Simone’s waiting neck stump. With that, Simone was once again fully operational. She slipped off of the table, finding Sigourney already redressing herself, but Simone took a moment to take in the sight of the more mature woman as she bent over, collecting garments and slipping into them. Then wondered what she might look like doing the same motions and what Frankie might look like. She shivered once as she felt the residual data coursing through her from the sexual release and she too began to pick up her clothes and redress herself. “Thank you, Mrs. Gaines, for uhm..for everything.’ Simone said as she tucked some of her dirty blonde hair behind her ear and smiled weakly at Frankie’s mother. “Any time. And I mean that.” Sigourney replied. Simone and Sigourney stepped up to one another, settling into a sweet embrace. Sigourney broke the hug and stepped back and to one side, sweeping her hand with a gesture that let Simone know that she was free to leave the little lab and return to her friend. Sigourney watched her leave, sighing happily to herself. Not just because of the still simmering sensual desires that had been released, but also with swelling pride. Simone and Frankie were growing up, and it was a pleasure to see. But there were more questions here than answers, and Sigourney needed to delve back into both Frankie and Simone’s programming to see what it was that started the growth, predict where it would go, and what might become of it. Chapter 3 The sun was high in the sky, sending waves of radiant heat towards the earth below. By the time the sunlight hit the surface it had cooled significantly, but it was still enough to gently warm the artificial skin along the android’s skin. She sat happily, one leg crossed over the other at the ankle as they lazily swayed back and forth. Her skin registered the temperature and passed the information off to her processor core for identification, classification and processing. There were a dozen different metadata tags that were added to the data packet. Things that would indicate a risk factor for overheating, the kind of response a normal human might have, which was also tagged with how she would react to it. Social filters, raw data, and a number of other less exciting data points were added. Still, Simone sucked in a deep breath of the warm air, for which her internal cooling systems were thankful, and let it seep out of her nostrils. The sunshine, to her and her programming and all her combined social filters, felt amazing. So amazing in fact that she flopped back onto the grass, letting the skin coating her robotic body have a new data set. The cool feel of the plant life and the soil below that was in stark contrast to the warm sunlight that caressed her body. She smiled, and stayed there, content to perhaps spend her entire day there. She had classes soon, for sure, and she definitely wouldn’t miss them, but her artificial mind considered it. After a few minutes of pure bliss she was interrupted as the warm sunshine suddenly stopped. A fact that her AI struggled with. Sunlight didn’t just stop, something had to get inbetween it. She peeked open an eye to see what it was. She expected a cloud or something, but instead it was the silhouette outline of a person. The sunshine behind it gave it a bright and brilliant halo of light. It was impossible, even with her highly advanced optics to see who it was. She couldn’t see the face or body features, but the wireless transmission identifier that Frankie emitted to her friend and sometimes lover was all Simone needed to identify the girl. She sat up and squinted, seeing more of Frankie’s features now. “You will be late for class if you spend all day laying on the grass” Frankie stated in her matter of fact tone of voice. “Is that such a bad thing?” Simone replied even as she got to her feet. “Yes, you cannot graduate without attending class.” Simone sighed. Frankie was technically right, but she was also just that, technical. “You need to learn to cut loose and have a little fun.” Simone said through a smile and then risked leaning in for a quick kiss on Frankie’s cheek. Frankie blinked rapidly and blushed, then smiled slightly. Frankie composed herself and then settled into stride next to Simone who had reluctantly scooped up her bag and started walking towards her next class. “So, I will be out of town for a week starting tomorrow.” Frankie said. “What? Why?” Simone asked, already disappointed that she wouldn’t be able to make out with Frankie after school under the pretense of studying. “There is a university level Brain Squad tournament that I will be attending.” Simone rolled her eyes and smirked. ‘Of course’ she thought. She couldn’t be upset with Frankie though, it was more than enough to help provide a cover story for the fact that Frankie was an android. It was still a disappointment though and Simone would have to figure out something else to do with a week’s worth of free evenings. It only took a moment to realize that meant she would have all that time alone to perfect some manual stimulation techniques that she could try on Frankie once she returned. “Well fine.” Simone huffed. “I’ll just be here wandering around the school all alone.” Simone chuckled and let Frankie know that there were no actual hard feelings. She did tell her that she was going to miss Frankie though. The pair spent the evening together, “studying” in Frankie’s room. In actuality both of the robotic girls had already absorbed the material and instead were laying on Frankie’s bed, nude, with their lips locked against one another. Frankie’s hands were roaming over Simone’s body, earning her a number of small mewling moans and happy sighs. Simone was doing the same, letting her own robotic hands trail over Frankie’s body and taking in every little curve and attempting to memorize them; she would need them in Frankie’s absence. “I promise we will have some fun as soon as i return” Frankie assured Simone. Her android friend knew it was true and even if they didn’t plan for something she knew that,by default, she and Frankie would get into all kinds of trouble, but having Frankie’s word allowed her to hold her robotic friend to it. “Fine, but you better win this competition.” Simone chided before giving her friend a quick hug and wandering off to her class. Simone’s artificial mind was lazily twirling around the lack of Frankie in her near future. She found herself letting out a small sigh on more than one occasion as she only vaguely paid attention to her lessons. She didn’t exactly need them anyway. One of the advantages of having a nearly flawless programmed knowledge about the present subject was the ability to redirect a large portion of her system resources to her own desires. Her present desire was Frankie, and her artificial mind continued to wander to her friend and lover. her time away was going to put a real damper on Simone’s mood, unless Simone could find some manner of distraction. Her mind snapped to Frankie’s mother, Sigourney. She could check in with her and see if there was some kind of maintenance or update that would help Simone, while simultaneously scratching her itch to be treated like an android. If her and Mrs. Gaines accidentally fell into another afternoon of sapphic love, then so be it. Simone dwelt on the thought and the steps needed to initiate that while class droned on and soon her lesson was over, snapping a portion of Simone’s highly advanced AI back to the present. She packed her bag and slung it over her shoulder and trudged off to her next class with little joy. Not just because Frankie’s absence was dwelling in her mind, but also because it was a physical education class. Simone had been required to take the class, it was part of the standard class load and there was no excuse she could give to be excused from it that didn’t involve her openly admitting she was a robot. So, she slipped into the women’s locker room and tossed her backpack into her locker and begrudgingly pulled out a pair of athletic shorts and a sports bra. Like everyone else in the locker room she hastily stripped out of her normal clothes, leaving her in a pair of simple panties, socks, and no bra. She was only topless for a moment as she squirmed her way into the sports bra that held her breasts tightly in place and covered her chest. Athletic shorts and a pair of tennis shoes completed her outfit and she strode off to do some menial jogging and sit ups. An exercise that her fully mechanical body would have no struggle with beyond, perhaps, draining her power cells just a little more than usual. Today’s warm up and exercise routines were as bland as usual, highlighted only by the appearance of a new student in class. A student who caught Simone’s attention long enough for her to analyze and take in her form. Slender throughout, with curves that seemed to seamlessly merge into one another. Her thighs meeting her hips with nothing more than a smooth curve. Her chest settled nicely on her body and all of it culminated in a slender face with bleached blond hair pulled back into a tight ponytail. She was running on the treadmill and keeping a good pace, arms pumping and her legs moving smoothly. Everything about her was elegant and perfectly toned and in sync. Simone stared at her for a moment, taking in not only her physical appearance, which was a delight, but how she moved. There was something not quite right about it. Rather, it was too right. Simone had watched a number of humans, it was part of her infiltration and subterfuge programming. She needed to look and act human if she wanted to integrate with a human population. Because of that, she had a rather extensive database of not only pre-programmed knowledge, but information she had gathered and compiled from years of observation and interaction. A normal human stride while jogging or running was similar, but no two footfalls would be exactly the same distance from one another. From only a few moments of pretending to act casual and observing this girl, they were all within only a centimeter or two of one another, nearly perfect. Similarly her arms were engaged and swinging back and forth, which was a critical part of balancing the body while running, but like a person’s stride, they shouldn’t be so precise as to swing to the exact same location every time. Her’s were. There were other smaller indicators that Simone used to decide that this was not, in fact, a human but rather another android. Her blinks were exactly four seconds apart, her mouth hung open as if she were breathing hard, but her chest rose and fell steadily. All things that, to a casual observer, would be fine or even undetected, but Simone knew. She looked away before she was caught staring, but as she worked her way around the gym she kept glancing at this woman. Everything about her seemed to point at the very same conclusion. She was as much an android as Simone was. There were certain programming subsets on Simone’s storage media. Things she was more than capable of doing, but hadn’t done in a long while, not since she had gained a certain measure of freedom. She was built as an infiltrator and a good portion of that programming was centered around observation and information collection. Simone realized that all through the useless gym class she had been doing just that. Observing this woman, collecting information, and now coming to a conclusion. All that was left was to confront her about it. She didn’t want to out this girl though. If there was one thing Simone could appreciate, it was someone who could keep a secret. She could rely on Frankie to do that, and Simone wanted to see if she could do the same for this other android. Her own logic centers justified this as both a way to befriend another robot and foster a sense of camaraderie among machines, but also to get closer to another unit like her. Simone kept a close eye on the suspected android until gym class ended and then waited. She knew what she would do if she were a secret android trying to keep her identity under wraps. Especially after the kind of workout that Simone had observed. She could only imagine the kind of system alerts this other robot must be experiencing. She knew that if it was her, there would be a number of system checks that would need to be run and even a physical inspection that might need to take place before she was around humans again. Simone made a feint to stay behind and collect her bag, clean up the workout equipment she had been using and generally dawdle and eventually she watched as the petite blond girl slipped away, heading into the girls locker room. Simone gave her a minute to feel comfortable in the space before she silently slipped through the door, twisting the door handle to let it quietly close behind her. She was in the locker room and slipped out of her tennis shoes and socks, allowing her bare feet to pad along the ground without making a sound. It took Simone a moment or two to sealthfully pace the locker room and find the girl she was looking for. She pressed herself against a stack of lockers and peered around the corner, gathering more information and making absolutely sure she was correct in her assumptions. She didn’t have long to wait. The blond was in the far corner of the locker room, in a small space that contained a minimal amount of lockers. They appeared to be shoved there as a way to utilize every last bit of space as they were crowded between a cinderblock wall, painted a tan color and acting as a barrier to the showers. On the other side, a mere four lockers away, was the wall. It was the perfect little spot for someone who wanted a little bit of privacy from the majority of the locker room. The locker room was empty at the moment, this girl having spent all her time waiting for others to rush in, change, and then leave. The door into the locker room was obscured by row upon row of lockers and benches, and the other door, the one Simone had slipped into, was equally hidden. In essence, from where she was, this mysterious blond girl couldn’t be directly seen without her having at least a few moments to cover up. The was, unless she was being observed by an android that was purpose built and programmed to be sneaky. Because of this, she had become comfortable, and as Simone expected, she was inspecting herself. Her back was turned to Simone, but she could see the distinct outline of the two halves of her chest, pulled open like a pair of cabinet doors. Simone couldn’t see what she was doing inside of her opened chest, but she had no doubt that it was the kind of physical inspection that Simone knew she had done before. The wall just past this girl was plastered with the unmistakable faint glow of status lights from inside of the android’s body. It was all the confirmation Simone needed. “I knew you were a machine.” Simone thought to herself, but remained hidden. She watched as this girl tinkered inside of her open chest for another few moments and then tucked the tool she was using into some kind of slot inside of her chest, then closed the panels. Once she was looking human again, she slipped into a bra and a stylish looking black button down blouse and a skirt. Just enough to be casual, but certainly more dressy than most students on campus. Simone could only see her from behind, but what a view of the behind! She had curves in all the right places and none of them seemed to be grossly exaggerated, but more than enough to draw the eye. She strode out of the room and Simone remained still until she heard the sounds of the door clicking shut. From there she sprang into action. She needed to get changed quickly and then she needed to find the girl, and follow her. Once she was free of the locker room, it didn’t take very long for Simone to find her target. She settled onto a bench and leaned back, draping her arms over the backrest and let her head fall back as her eyes closed. To anyone walking past her she would look like any other college freshman taking a break between classes, in reality though, she was tapping into the available wireless networks and cutting her way through the meager community college security protocols. There was no shortage of external security cameras for Simone’s artificial mind to swim through and eventually she caught sight of the girl. She was across the campus, heading towards the parking lot. Simone disconnected and sprang to her feet, power walking through the crowded central courtyard in an attempt to reach the parking lot and possibly identify what vehicle she was getting into. Simone reached the parking lot in record time and had enough time to slip into a doorway and peer out. The enhanced vision her mechanical eyes granted her was more than enough to spot her target. The slender blond girl was already on the far side of the parking lot, though she showed no signs of fishing out a set of keys from her bag, or looking around for a car to climb into with a friend. No, instead, she reached the end of the parking lot and kept going, onto the sidewalk and walking at a steady pace along the street. Blinking for only a moment Simone had a choice to make. She had class to attend, at least one more, but this seemed more important, even if it was just to sate her curiosity about other androids in her town. She darted from the door frame that had concealed her and made her way across the parking lot, attempting to keep a close eye on the girl while also appearing casual. After all she was actually stalking someone, but she didn’t need to look like she was. Once out of the parking lot and onto the city streets it was a little easier to look casual as she followed a few hundred yards behind the girl. Simone pulled out her phone and texted Frankie a few things, letting her know that she was going to potentially be home late because she was working on a project that she would tell her about later. Once the girl began transitioning into a more neighborhood setting, Simone had to rely on her infiltration programming to keep tailing the girl. More than once she had ducked down behind a bush or walked past the street her target had turned on to, only to double back and resume her pursuit. Eventually She spotted the girl slipping into a small house towards the end of a dead end street. Simone slipped up to the house and settled into place outside one of the windows and slowly peeked into the window. There were two figures there, Simone recognized the slight frame of the girl she had followed, the other figure belonged to another woman. She looked more mature, but still carried the same slender figure and long blond hair that the younger girl sported. They were clearly meant to be mother and daughter judging by similarities in facial structure and body frame not to mention the somewhat dominant stance the older one took. Simone struggled to hear their voices from where she was hiding, though with the finely tuned microphones in her ears she was able to tune out the ambiance around her and focus in on the pair, making out some of the conversation, though her A.I. struggled to fully comprehend everything. What she did manage to pick up from the muffled and broken words was that the younger android was “Kenna” and that her mothers name was “Serene.” Kenna made increasingly frantic gestures towards her chest, then down at her leg and then her arms before finally turning her head and pointing at her neck. Her mother nodded a few times as she listened along and inspected the spot on Kenna’s neck before speaking to her and pointing off somewhere in the house. As Simone watched Kenna nodded once and walked swiftly off to somewhere in the house and returned a moment later with a cable in hand. She pulled aside her hair and plugged the cable into some kind of hidden dataport somewhere on the back of her head then handed the other end of the cable to Serene. Once she had it in hand, the older woman swept her hair out of the way and plugged the cable into, presumably, a similar port in the back of her own head. Simone was slightly astonished at this. Kenna being an android wasn’t so shocking, her and Frankie were both androids afterall and had been created to look like younger girls. She had simply assumed that Serene was a real human who had created Kenna, but it looked like both were robots. Simone had to duck low as she continued to watch for fear of being spotted as Kenna adjusted her position and faced more towards the window Simone was skulking outside of. Inside of the house Kenna and Serene were oblivious to Simone’s presence. She had done her due diligence in masking her digital signature and was practically invisible unless directly observed. For now though, they were both oblivious. As Kenna returned home she fell into a more stiff routine. She obeyed her programming and found the other android in the house, the one designated as Serene, and addressed her by her familiar name as designated in her internal database. “Mommy, I have returned.” “In here sweetie.” Serene’s voice rang from the kitchen. As Kenna entered she engaged all of her submissive programming and fell into compliance with what Serene had designated her. “Alright sweetheart, give me a full system report.” Kenn obediently generated the requested report and began to give details. She gestured to her chest, telling her mother unit that she had to do some rapid repairs inside of her chest, explaining that the cooling systems had begun to fail towards the end of a rather intensive session in the She gestured at her legs and arms as a major source of heat generation and finally pulled her hair aside. “There also appears to be a number of log file entries about motor failure in the neck joint here.” She gestured towards one side of her head. Serene nodded along before simply ordering Kenna to go and retrieve a data cable from the robotics lab in the basement. She knew her daughter would dutifully obey and so she made ready her operating system to connect to Kenna’s. Once her daughter returned she automatically connected herself to the data cable then handed it to her mother. Once both androids were connected, Serene had no issues connecting to her little girl, authenticating herself and then browsing the log files. Sure enough, there were entries about the motor control issues in Kenna’s neck, as well as the overheating issues. One of the liquid cooling systems inside of Kenna’s torso had failed. It wasn’t enough to fully overload the younger robot, but it was something that would need to be addressed. Similarly, the motor controller board in Kenna’s body had sent too much power to the motors in her neck and had overloaded one of the movement arrays there. It was completely burned out and would need to be replaced. With a sigh, Serene ordered her little girl to move to the robotics lab for immediate repair. “Yes mommy.” She said without hesitation and moved to the basement, taking the data cable with her. Once there she loaded and executed the same programming her mother unit had installed. There were certain routines that needed to be followed for repairs and Kenna was incapable of disobeying any of them. She dutifully pulled her shirt up and over her head before setting it in a small hamper there. Soon her bra followed, releasing her petite breasts to the open air. Next her sneakers and socks and finally her jeans and panties, leaving her completely nude. Her smooth, hairless body moved with subtle grace to the examination table that dominated the center of the room and slipped onto it with a sort of mechanical efficiency. Kenna remained online, though her processors dipped down into a low use state, leaving her artificial mind blank and her face expressionless. Soon her mother unit gingerly opened the door and stepped into the robotics lab, causing Kenna’s head to swivel, slightly stiltedly, towards her. “Hello mommy. I’m ready. Chassis sealing and locking systems have been disengaged.” Serene smirked down at Kenna as she stepped up to the examination table her daughter was laying on. “Good girl. I think we’re going to need you to be offline for this though.” Without hesitation Serene slipped her hand behind Kenna’s ear and pressed the power button, just as her daughter had muttered “Yes mommy” drawing out the last syllable as power faded from her android body. Serene had a number or repair protocols to go through before she could even begin working on her daughter. She needed to discharge any latent static electricity that her own body had generated, moreover, she needed to stop more from building up. She strapped a wristband on that had been grounded, and then began assembling the tools she needed. A number of specialized tools for disassembly and repair, most were specifically crafted for herself and Kenna. Serene started by inserting a tool deep into Kenna’s ear. She pushed it inside, much further than would be comfortable for a human and found it pressing into a manual lock release. With a small clockwise twist, the basement lab filled with a gentle hiss as Kenna’s faceplate unsealed itself from her head. Serene left the tool lodged inside the robotic girl's head and squeezed her fingernails into the small gap between Kenna’s face and her head. Inside, Kenna was unmistakably mechanical. The array of cameras that were installed behind her glassy artificial eyes were still clipped firmly inside of their sockets. A number of small micro-circuit boards were clipped into place along the plastic skull casing that gave her head shape, and each one was stuffed full of complicated microchips and connected to one another by dozens of tiny fiber optic and copper cables. It didn’t take Serene too long to take it all in, after all she was intimately familiar with Kenna’s construction. Not only because it wasn’t too dissimilar to her own, but she had helped assemble the girl from a crate of parts. Many of the wires and circuits inside of her daughter had been attached and configured by her own hand. So much of Kenna’s functionality and daily operation passed through the core processor inside of her head, the block of chips that resides towards the back of her cranium, that it was the wisest first place to start. It took Serene a good half an hour of gently prying circuits and cabling out of her little girl’s opened head before she had a chance to get to the processor core. Once she had access to it though, it only took a little more work to pry it free. A pair of long, thin, needle nosed pliers to undo the clips holding it in place, and another custom made clamp to pull it free. Soon, though, Serene held her daughter's processor core in her hands. The whole thing was little more than a single closed circuit that was studded with high capacity processors. Each one working in tandem with one another to process and parse the absolutely daunting amount of data that an android pulls in over the course of a single day, or even a single interaction. As she examined it, she could see that there were, in fact, two individual processor units that had been insufficiently cooled. There was no evidence that Kenna’ liquid cooling mechanisms had failed, but she couldn’t be sure, not without powering on those specific systems and observing them. A process that she would do, but it would take time. First, she wanted to inspect the neck joint Kenna had mentioned and then the cooling system pump inside of the girl’s chest. For now, the processor bank was reinserted into Kenna’s open cranium and clipped into place with most, but not all, of the connecting wires and fiber optics reattached. Lower in the girl’s open head, Serene pushed some wiring out of the way and angled her own sophisticated optics deep inside of the neck. She was hoping to see some of the motor functionality issues that Kenna had described earlier without more disassembly. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. In a case of fortunately and unfortunately, she would need to disconnect Kenna’s head completely. She needed to do so anyway to connect it to a computer and run some tests on the liquid cooling systems, but she was hoping she wouldn’t have had to go so far to examine the neck motors. Again, it would have to happen later. She needed to examine the internals of the chest and get a good look at the pump system inside of Kenna’s torso. Serene turned back to her small supply of tools and plucked another one. The screwdriver-like handle ended in a long, thin, metal rod with a square end with a single protruding key. She turned back to her daughter’s body, her eyes focusing in on Kenna’s chest, more importantly on her breasts. She grabbed a handful of the girl’s petite, but well proportioned breast and squeezed and moved it around until the nipple was prominently on top of the mount of silicone flesh. She aligned the tip of the tool with the very center of the nipple and pressed in. Kenna’s nipple accepted the tool and it slid deep inside of the girl’s breast, or more accurately, the flexible vinyl tubing inside of it, down to the hardened plastic chest plate. Once there, Serene let go of the breast and began gently moving the tool around until she found the small keyhole and inserted the tool into it. The protruding key block on the end of it aligned with the lock and, once in place, Serene turned it gently, over and over, until the chest panel unlatched. As she moved it Kenna’s little pink nipple occasionally gripped the rod and twisted around slightly until it reached the limitation of the traction it had gained and popped back into place before starting again. A mechanism inside of Kenna’s chest sprang out and latched firmly onto the tool that Serene was holding. With it clamped on, Serene was able to pull upwards and separate Kenna’s chest from her torso. She didn’t risk lifting the whole weight of it off with just a thin metal bar, so she quickly scooped up the bottom of it with her free hand. With her chest panel removed all that remained was a quarter inch thick layer of sensor laced flesh at the edge of the opening in her chest. Just below that was another shelf made of hard plastics and below tha, Kenna’s inner workings. Everything from motor control circuits, to wiring and processors, and mechanisms that connected her body together. Somewhere under the mass of cables, wires,m fiber optics, and circuits was her spinal column. It was one of the few parts made of metal, and for good reason. It housed a thick bundle of cables that carried power and data from her head and the processors contained within it, down to the rest of the body. Somewhere off to one side was a small, but efficient pumping system. The latex tubes ran to only two places within Kenna’s body. The secondary processor core inside of her belly that controlled the movements of her legs, arms, various other systems, and her sexual modules; and the other up into her neck and into her head where it would cool the processors there. Serene suspected that if there was some kind of tear in one of the tubes that there would be a much more disastrous sign inside of Kenna. There was no indication of fluids or even of a small leak. Serene’s robotic mind snapped into its logical and analytical programming and began working outward from the pumps. The tubes were all perfectly fine and contained the liquid just fine, then they disappeared up into Kenna’s throat. With a small artifact of her human emulation programming, Serene let out a small sigh. She now had three reasons to remove Kenna’s head and investigate further. She had avoided it long enough. She moved back to the android’s head and dug her fingers deep inside of it, gingerly fumbling bundles of cables and wires out of the way until her long, slender fingers were into the throat. There she found the internal locks and managed to disable them one by one. Once done, she slowly retracted her own hands from inside of her daughter's head, careful to not snag her own flesh on the sharp edges of the circuit boards inside and tear her own skin. Once done, Kenna’s faceless head lifted off of her neck with little issue. The tubes for the water cooling separated from the gaskets that held them in place and prevented the water leaking everywhere. Serene placed Kenna’s head on a nearby workbench and immediately moved back to check those very gaskets. The whole casket connector was its own system. Double sealed to ensure that absolutely nothing leaked, and even then the whole double gasket configuration was inside of another watertight pump to help for water into and out of Kenna’s head. All of it was still sealed with absolutely no signs of damage or leaking. Even after a thorough visual inspection from Serene’s advanced optics, there was no sign at all of a problem. She turned her gaze back to Kenna’s head, resting still on her bench. She picked it up and settled it onto a custom made stand that sported a built-in connection to her workstation as well as its own water cooling configuration and some clever circuitry to emulate a connection to a functional body. Serene began tapping in commands on her computer and activated Kenna’s head and began booting only a minimal amount of components. Status lights and systems began to faintly glow, giving the faceless head module an ethereal glow in the somewhat dim basement lab. The water pump that was clamped on Serene’s desk began to gently whirr to life and begin pushing cold water around the copper pipes and into the heat sink. Serene peered into Kenna’s open head and almost immediately noticed the problem. There was water flowing through the system, that much was true, but it seemed to be a very weak flow, particularly around the chip sets that had burned out. From there it was just a matter of tracing the tubing back down into her neck. The tube that ran through her daughters neck was nestled just next to some of the mechanisms that moved her neck around, and therein lay the issue. The mechanism had wiggled free of some of the binding clamps. It wasn’t enough to stop her from moving her head, but certainly enough to cause an alert, moreover, it was enough to pinch the fluid tubing and restrict the flow of water into the cooling system. Serene gingerly reached into the throat and pushed the mechanisms back into place and made a note to, perhaps, redesign the neck joint to utilize better materials that would prevent this in the future. Once she had pushed the assembly back into place, the water began flowing with ease. She could see it flowing through the cooling tubes and over the burned out processors. She nodded once and then shut down the systems again. Once everything was off again she began the process of pulling out everything again, exposing the processor core and extracting that as well. With it in hand she removed the burned out processors and replaced them from her dwindling supply of spares and reinserted the core into Kenna’s head. It would take another half an hour to replace the processor chips, settle the processor core and all the connected wiring back into place inside of Kenna’s head. Then she had to test and ensure all of it was working as expected before she could reattach the head and face module to her daughter’s chassis. Once done, she took a moment to simply admire her little girl’s youthful beauty. Kenna had been built to look like a gorgeous young woman, bursting with youthful radiance and desirable by all conventional means. A slender body that had curves in the right places without looking too petite. A pair of breasts that were well proportioned to her body. Not too big, and not too small. Enough to draw the eye, but not so much that it became her defining feature. Hair that was fun and sun kissed blond, and practically screamed to be invited to a party. Serene had to admit that, despite being an android herself, she was attracted to Kenna. While her internal database had the younger looking robot marked as her daughter, that was only a chunk of data. There was no biological reason to not see the beauty in the machine that lay still on the examination table before her. As such, her own sensual programming sets began to spool up and load into her cached processes, ready and practically begging to be activated. There was no logical reason for her not to indulge in her processes. She slipped a finely crafted hand around the back of Kenna’s head and tapped the power button there and waited for the myriad of complex systems to boot up and recognize the new processors and log the changes to her OS. Once done, her human emulation came online and her eyes fluttered open and she stared at the ceiling for only a moment or two before her head smoothly turned to look at her mother and a wide smile spread across her lips. “Am I all fixed now?” Kenna asked, her sweet voice was light and airy. “Yes sweetheart, you’re all better now. Any errors on your boot sequence?” Kenna only shook her head as she pushed herself up to a sitting position and looked over at the pile of her own clothes across the room. Serene could practically see the set of processes Kenna was running, wanting to get dressed and return to her duties as a student. Serene had to interrupt that. “Stay here with me for a few minutes before getting dressed.” Serene ruffled her own long blond mane over her head and waited for Kenna to turn back to her. Her daughter looked so much more adorable as she looked over her shoulder at her mother unit, her own blond hair obscuring a part of her face and a small smile crept over her face. The blush was unmistakable on Kenna’s cheeks and chest. She turned fully around on the table to face her mother and in doing so was already spreading her legs a little. Inside of Kenna’s hips, the small pump systems were beginning to come to life and gently feeding a steady but slow dip of artificial lubricants into her robotic slit. It added a small glisten to the outer edges of her folds and, if either one had the ability to smell, a gentle sweet but natural odor wafted from her. The odor itself was laced with a subtle amount of artificially created pheromones that would have enticed most humans, but Serene and Kenna had no use for that between them. Regardless, Kenna couldn’t stop the process, she was an android and was compelled to obey her programming to a fault. Serene smirked, knowing her daughter bot was already loading her sexual programming, so when Serene placed her hands on Kenna’s shoulders there was no hesitation as she lowered her daughter down to the table once again. The older android’s clothes came off with the kind of mechanical efficiency that only a robot could have. Crisp and precise movements that left her nude in a matter of moments. She slowly stepped around the table, letting her hand gently glide over Kenna’s synthetic flesh, sending waves of data coursing through Kenna’s body and culminating in a small, soft moan when Senren let her finger caress the younger android's nipple. She stopped when she was looming over Kenna’s head once again, she began stroking the young girl's hair, letting the golden strands tumble between her fingers and fall from her hand. She bent forward, letting her own breasts, larger, firmer, and more full fall across Kenna’s face and conveniently one of them fell directly into her daughter's waiting mouth. Kenna suckled gently on her mothers nipple, sucking it into her mouth and causing her tongue to flick back and forth over the puckered tip. Serene let out a small whimper as her own sexual programming pulled up the appropriate response to the stimulation she was receiving. Her arms stretched out in front of her as her daughter continued to suck on her nipple. Her slender fingers found Kenna’s wet folds and pushed eagerly inside. It was warm, wet, and ready. Serene expertly lifted her leg to the table, placing her knee on the edge of it and smoothly pivoting her weight onto it and off of her foot. It was all a complicated balancing act to get her weight evenly distributed between her knee and her two hands, but as an android she had little issues with the calculation and her processor core perfectly handled the movement. She was on the table in a moment with a silky smooth motion that no one would have thought was anything less than the practice grace of a dancer. Her legs settled into place on either side of Kenna’s head and she smoothly lowered her whole body downward. Her mouth perfectly placed over her daughter's wet clit, and from where Serene was, it looked perfectly ready to accept her. Serene had been aroused, for certain, but her body hadn’t naturally gone through the process of becoming ready for pleasure, but that was an issue. The control she had over her body was incredible, and with barely any additional CPU cycles she forced her own slit to become wet, glistening with her own juices. Her outer folds blossomed like a flower and Kenna’s tongue easily slid into her place. Serene let out a small mewling moan as Kenna pleasured her, and as a result lowered her own mouth onto her little girl's waiting pussy. SHe drove her tongue deep inside of the wet and waiting slit. The room was filled with the sound of soft coos and lewd sounding moans of pleasure. Kenna’s hips thrust upward on occasion as her operating system jockied for more intense pleasure from her mother’s mouth. Serene, at the same time, was grinding her hips into her daughter’s face, feeling her perfectly crafted android tongue driving deep inside of her and tickling her artificial clit. “Mmm, good girl, just like that…” Serene muttered as she pulled back from her daughter’s sex, leaving a thin silver line of artificial saliva running from her own tongue to the very brim of the sexual module. “Yes mommy.” Was all Kenna could respond with before her hands wrapped around her mothers hips and pulled the whole weight of it back into her ready and waiting mouth. Kenna’s tongue pierced deep into her the older android’s pussy and was guided straight to Serene’s g-spot. Her own programming was more than familiar with just how to move to bring her mother to a full climax. Kenna continued to lap and lick with an eager hunger at her mother unit’s wetness, taking in the juices with a delighted childlike pleasure. Meanwhile Serene was merely toying with her little girl’s sex. She knew exactly how to cause an orgasm for Kenna, she was an expert on the subject. She had hand crafted most of Kenna’s body and programmed the systems herself. She would have no problems navigating her daughter’s sex like it was a menu on a computer program. She was simply waiting for Kenna to bring her to orgasm, and she admitted, enjoying the sounds of her daughter’s soft moans every time she would drag her tongue across the sexual opening. All good things needed to come to an end though, and Serene had strung her daughter along enough. She was confident that she had caused enough heat to rise inside of Kenna’s body, and there was no indication of any more processor burn out. She had been watching for small stutters in her daughter bot’s movements and functionality and she was still operating flawlessly. With a relative degree of confidence, Serene was sure she had corrected and tested the issue. She hadn’t yet fully worked through a normal and natural orgasm sequence, but that was fine. She crafted a command and sent it to her sexual systems for processing, and when executed she cried out in pleasure as her sex did what it was designed to do. In response Kenna did the same. She was a little more simplistic compared to Serene. She was programmed to not orgasm until one of the current users on her sexual systems completed an orgasm. Then, and only then, was she allowed to load and execute her own climactic orgasm. Feeling Serene’s juices surging into her mouth, Kenna executed her own climax and her petite body writhed under Serene’s mature chassis. She squirmed and moaned, even as her mouth was clamped over Serene’s pussy. Soon it was all concluded, and Serene perfectly rolled off of her daughter and down to the floor. She took a deep breath, bringing fresh air to her cooling systems and looked down at Kenna. The streaks of her own juices were smattered around Kenna’s mouth and were a perfect highlight against her radiant smile. Serene bent down and began to kiss Kenna, partially for more pleasure, but more to help lick up her own synthetic juices. Kenna did the same, and both android women kissed and roamed around one another for a few moments. Kenna slipped off of the table once they were done and took a moment to retrieve some paper towels. Both androids took some time to clean themselves and then dress. They were silent as they did so, executing their routines with perfect mechanical efficiency. Then both returned to their daily routines. Serene re-engaged her human programming and began to putter around her house. She cooked dinner, watched some television, read a book before bed, and laid down to sleep. Kenna meanwhile immediately went to her room and began working on her homework. It was less of a practice session and more an exercise in filling out the answers. Kenna took a shower, then changed into her pajamas before laying down in bed before slipping a hand into her bottoms and gently masturbating twice before plugging herself in to recharge and laying in bed for the evening. Simone had been hiding outside for a while. She was well aware that the two women had disappeared down to the basement, which made it significantly more challenging to observe them. She had paced around the house looking for some kind of window into the basement space, but found that the only one there had been covered thoroughly. Despite that, she was able to switch to a thermal camera inside of her optics and somewhat observe the two. Android heat signatures were different from a human’s though. A small cloud of heat surrounded them, but for the most part the skin was fairly cool, at least compared to a human’s. But when Simone watched as Kenna’s head was detached, and her face removed, there was a sudden burst of brilliant orange and red waves radiating out of the open head. Simone knew what was happening, but was shocked by the sheer volume of heat pouring from the girl’s head. It didn’t seem normal. Simone watched and could only guess at the kind of work Serene was doing inside of the opened cranium, but whatever it was it eventually quelled the heat waves. Then it was reattached and Simone watched as the two heat signatures melded into one. She knew Seren was on top of Kenna and that the two were making love, but it was a challenge to distinguish where one body stopped and another began. Still, Simone watched and tried her very best to make heads or tails of any of it. Eventually though, it was over and Simone knew she should slip away. The last thing she wanted was to be caught stalking around someone else’s backyard. She was relatively sure that Serene would have some form of detection for the outside of her home, especially given what she was and what her and Kenna were just doing. Simone’s infiltration systems could only suppress detection for so long. Simone slunk out of the back yard, stealthily slipping out of the neighborhood as the sun was just beginning to rest on the horizon, casting the night sky into a wild flurry of deep oranges and hints of dark purple. It would be almost an hour before she stepped into her house. Once there, she made her way to her room. She had to tell Frankie about this. “They are both androids?” Frankie’s voice played inside of Simone’s operating system, it was just a sound file, but the two used the file transfer protocols they had installed as a sort of vocal walkie talkie between the two of them. “Yep, Kenna, the new girl that’s in our English Lit class. She and I have Phys Ed together and I watched her in the locker room today.” “That seems risky and a little creepy, Simone.” “I know.” Simone replied. “But I had a hunch, and I just had to make sure she was like us. I saw her open her chest and fiddle with something inside of her. So I followed her home and her mom and her both had data ports.” “I see. Well, that is certainly a new development. What are you planning to do now?” Simone hesitated for a moment. She knew what she wanted to do. She wanted to get close to Kenna, and her mother, and join in the next time they decided to disassemble one another and fool around. “I think I might try and introduce myself to Kenna, you know, get to know her a little better and see if I can get invited into her house and see what I can learn from there.” “You are certainly the most qualified for that.” Frankie replied. “You know it.” “Let me know how it all works out.” Frankie replied, “I’ll be back in two weeks, so you have some time to work through this.” Simone assured her that she wouldn’t leave Frankie in the dark and the two said their goodbyes. Simone knew her human emulation would be running rampant for the rest of the evening, dreaming about Kenna and what the two of them could get into. It reminded her of when she was first falling for Frankie. She would spend hours generating situations and scenarios where the two of them would be doing everything from a quiet and cozy night together, to making out furiously in Simone’s room and through a series of wild disassembly situations where each would be left panting and whimpering in orgasmic ecstasy. She wasn’t about to keep her processors spinning all night long, so she manually switched off her human emulation, turning her into a stony faced android. She stiffly and efficiently moved to her bed, plugged herself into a power cable she left there, and laid down. Once she was settled and her operating system ensured that power was flowing into her power cells, she triggered a sleep cycle and slipped into a lower power state until the morning. In the morning, her eyes popped open and her OS automatically started her humanity emulating software. She yawned and stretched before disconnecting the charging cable and slipped out of bed. She tossed aside her pajamas before getting dressed and slinging her backpack over her shoulder and heading immediately out. Her commute to the university was relatively short. A quick bus ride and a walk for the last few blocks only took around half an hour. Once there she was on the lookout for Kenna, though she never spotted her, she wasn’t terribly worried. She appeared to be working as expected after her mother took her apart and worked on her last night. Unless something significant happened in the middle of the night, she should be at school. If nothing else, Simone knew she would see Kenna in their English Lit class. Sure enough, Simone spotted Kenna in their English Lit class, sitting to one side of the room and trying to look at each student that walked into the room, but never making eye contact. She seemed so shy and demure and small. Simone put on her best warm smile and walked straight over to the empty desk next to Kenna. “Is anyone sitting here?” Simone asked. Kenna looked up at her from the distant spot on the floor she had been focused on. Her face seemed like a wild mixture of surprise, excitement, and a little bit of fear. “Oh, uh, n-no I don't think so. Go ahead.” She stammered. “Great” Simone chirped and sat down, sliding her bag off of her shoulder and getting comfortable. “You’re new here right?” Kenna had already looked away and had to snap her head back to look at Simone. “Y-yeah I’m new. Just moved here a few weeks ago.” “Nice, well, good to meet you, I’m Simone.” She held out her hand and Kenna took it, shaking it gently with a real hint of nervousness to her meek movements. Simone initiated some of her more social programming. Chatting with Kenna who seemed to be only a little resistant to chatting at first, but as the pair of girls sat and chatted before the first bell rang, they found that there was much they had in common. Or at least it seemed that way to Kenna. Simone was programmed with a number of manipulative code bases that allowed her to engage in conversation with someone and subtly agree with most if not all that was said. Her charm and wit was easily on display as she flashed a smile and giggled at some of Kenna’s conversations. Simone’s infiltration programming took over and easily modified her speech patterns to match Kenna’s. All of it was as artificial as both of the androids speaking were, but that didn't matter. The week passed on, and Simone found herself sitting with Kenna not only in their Lit class, but also working out side by side in gym class. The two of them striking up a running conversation and becoming fast friends. Most of the work was done by Simone though. She constantly utilized her robust hardware to ensure that the conversation was steered in all the right directions and found herself agreeing with Kenna on a number of topics that she would normally not care about. They did find that they both enjoyed giggling and ogling both men and women around the campus, but there was a definite favoritism towards the girls. It isn’t long before Kenna and Simone start seeing each other in that same light. The Friday after meeting Simone was able to easily catch Kenna looking her over as she jogged alongside her in gym class, or gently eyeballing her thighs when Simone pressed them together in English Lit. As Friday was winding down, Kenna and Simone were walking side by side towards the same parking lot that Simone had stalked her across not a week earlier. They were idly chatting with one another and Simone was bemoaning her weekend plans. She had crafted a small lie that because her friend Frankie was out of town, she had nothing to do. Simone could easily generate something else to do, but her hopes were brought to fruition. Kenna mentioned that she had little going on this weekend as well and asked if Simone wanted to come over for a little time to get to know one another a little better. Simone, of course, eagerly agreed and pushed further. She asked if Kenna’s mom would be open to a little sleep over? It would give them both a little time to study together for their English Lit class, gossip about life on a college campus, and just spend some quality time together. Kenna was, at first, a little apprehensive. She muttered that she would have to check with her mom, but in reality it was a cover story generated by her operating system. She needed some time to check in with Serene and ensure that there was no plan to do maintenance on her systems this weekend. Simone was more than happy to wait and exchanged phone numbers with Kenna and let her know to simply text her if they were on or not. The pair split and Simone lingered around the campus for a short while, hoping that Kenna would quickly contact her mother unit and confirm their plans. After all there was little logic in walking home only to have to turn around and rehash her steps to get across town to Kenna’s home. Simone finally gave up and trudged her way back to her home. She had been there almost an hour before she got a text from Kenna. It was a simple confirmation that they were on for a sleepover. Simone smirked gleefully as she returned the text and let Kenna know that she would gather her stuff and meet there as soon as she could. She asked for Kenna’s address, even though she had already locked in a GPS location in her own system that let her know exactly how to get there. Simone put together a small bag of the essentials that a human girl might bring to a sleepover. Some make up, nail polish, and school work. Of course that was all a cover. She also stashed a spare charging cable in her bag, a small amount of tools for emergency field repairs should she need them and her laptop. She huffed in amusement once as she zipped up her bag. It was stuffed with her two identities, fifty percent human girl, the other half clearly meant for an android. Simone wasn’t terribly upset about the walk over to Kenna’s home. She used the time to allow her body to run on autopilot and devoted a significant amount of processing power to rolling around a question in her head. Should she tell Kenna that she was also an android? Would that help or hinder her attempts to learn more about the pair of robotic women? She found herself lustfully attracted to Kenna, with her silky blond hair and her gentle youthful curves. But there was also something about her mother. A more mature body and a clear understanding about how to please another woman, and Simone suspected, specifically another android. Before she knew it, Simone was rapping her knuckles against the front door of the quaint and cozy little house nestled in the crook of suburban luxury. It was settled perfectly in the space between small and cozy, unassuming, and pristine and large enough to house everything the two residents would need. Not so large as to question what Serene did to afford such a place. Serene was the first to the door and allowed Simone a good look at her for the first time. She wore a ruby red blazer, buttoned up just below her chest. It matched perfectly with the vibrant red lips she presented. A plain white blouse covered what would have been an overly exposed chest from view and a comfortable pencil skirt brought the office casual outfit together. She clearly would have been wearing heels if she were in an office setting, but here in her home she was barefoot. Her golden hair tumbled down her head and spilled over her shoulders. Some of it fell to her back, while just the perfect amount streaked over her shoulders and only served to accentuate the curve of her breasts. There was only the barest hint of a curl to her hair, either intentional or natural, Simone wasn’t sure, but it added another curve for her eyes to slide along as she took the woman in. The red nail polish matched perfectly with her lips and blazer, and her delicate fingers rested effortlessly on her hip. Simone couldn’t help but be attracted to her. She was the very image of an early forties woman. In perfect shape and sculpted for desire. Of course Simone knew that she was just that. She was likely literally built for desire. From the intricate circuitry and wiring inside of her, to the soft artificial flesh that coated her chassis, everything about Serene was clearly hand crafted. “Is Kenna home?” Simone muttered, surprised that her own human emulation betrayed her intention. She heard her own voice and there was no doubt that she was taken aback by Serene’s beauty. “Oh, you must be Simone. Come on in sweetie.” Serene stepped aside and let Simone into the house. Once there, the door was carefully closed behind her and Simone got the impression that this was a routine that Serene had practiced many times before. The soft and subtly sultry hostess. Perhaps that same dark, smooth voice had been used when welcoming in a gentleman or some other caller. It didn’t matter now, and a moment later Serene was calling for Kenna. “I’m so glad she found some friends here. She was so worried about fitting in, and she’s done nothing but rave about how enamored she is with you. “ Simone detected just a hint of something more, hiding just below the surface of Serene’s voice. She wasn’t entirely sure if it was something that Kenna had actually told her mother, or if that was simply information that had been scraped out of the android’s log files. Was the comment a real conversation or just an interpretation of a database entry and metadata tags. She devoted just a little more of her own CPU to sorting it out but was cut short as Kenna appeared at the top of the stairs just adjacent to the entryway. “Hey Simone!” Kenna’s enthusiastic voice was a far cry from the first meek sounds she had made when Simone had first met her at the beginning of the week. “You can put your stuff in my room!” Simone nodded at Kenna and then turned back to Serene. She wasn’t sure why, but was met with a somewhat sultry smile, like Seren knew something she didn’t. It triggered a lot of analysis inside of Simone’s operating system and tasks to be completed later, when she had time. She was curious about the look, the stance, everything about Serene. She was an intriguing mystery and one that Simone wanted to unfold in time. In the meantime the two girls made their way to Kenna’s room and Simone dropped her backpack and settled down onto the floor. “Sorry if my mom was a little, much, she likes to get all dressed up any time we have guests over.” “Oh, it’s not a problem, I just wasn’t expecting her to be so..put together.” Simone chuckled, “It’s just a far cry from what I’m used to is all.” The pair giggled at that and settled into a cheerful rhythm of laughing and simply discussing life at home. Kenna was far more open about how her life here was and only made a vague amount of references to her last home, and only when Simone specifically asked about it. For her part, Simone was fairly cagey about her own home life, revealing the barest amount of information to satiate Kenna’s questions and then steering the conversation back to Kenna. Soon they had dug into their school work and were quietly studying and occasionally asking one another clarifying questions on the reading or, more often, lamenting just how much work it was to ingest all of the course work. Simone’s artificial mind stepped in to remind her of her earlier thought processes and junctioned that conversation to her present situation. It was late, Serene was likely to be in her own room, either powered down or at least in a low power “sleeping” mode. If she was going to confront Kenna with the knowledge that Simone knew what she was, now was the time. There was a lull in the conversation and Simone knew it was her time. “Kenna-” Simone hesitated a moment, her operating system still formulating the best way to phrase this. “I- I wanted to tell you something. I know we’ve only been friends for like, a week now, but…” “I know, it feels good to be close to someone. You and I really seemed to click pretty well huh?” “Yeah.” Simone muttered “but that’s not what I was going to say.” Simone had been laying on her belly on a sleeping bag she had rolled out and was reading. She pushed herself up into a sitting position and folded her legs in front of her then turned her eyes to Kenna. “I.. I know what you are.” Simone said bluntly, no better way than to be honest, she thought. “What?” Kenna replied, confusion and more than a little defensiveness lacing the tone of her voice. “It’s alright. I know that you’re an android.” “How- wait…I’m- I’m not an android.” Kenna said, her voice quivering. “Yeah you are. I saw you in the locker room the other day. You took off your shirt and opened your chest. You were clearly working on something inside of you.” Kenna’s face had flushed a brilliant red at this, and she couldn’t help but break eye contact with Simone, refusing to look her in the face. She stammered but made no real words form in her mouth. “It’s alright. Your secret is safe with me, because, well, I’m an android too.” Kenna blinked rapidly for a moment. Her own CPU spiraled out of control at the revelation. “W- what?” Simone smirked and knew that the final straw would be a physical show. It was irrefutable proof of what she was and it would likely be more than enough to calm Kenna and settle down whatever wild processes were running rampant through her operating system at the moment. Simone’s hands dropped to the lower hem of her shirt and in a smooth motion pulled it up and off of her torso. Her own blond hair flying wildly as it tumbled out of the hastily removed shirt. Her bra held back her breasts and left them as perfectly rounded semi-spheres behind their padded walls. Simone looked down at her own semi-bare chest. She smiled a little while her operating system formulated a small command. It was sent to her CPU for processing and resulted in a small patch of flesh, roughly triangular with soft, smooth angles receding into her chest and then sliding up. Below the thin layer of artificial flesh and plastic was a complicated array of wires and circuits. Simone had opened one of her more sensitive panels. She had revealed raw circuitry to Kenna, a few connection ports that were more for in depth maintenance and troubleshooting rather than connecting a simple device. The effect it had on Kenna was far better than Simone had hoped for. She looked stunned, her mouth hanging open. She looked so flawlessly human, despite Simone outright telling her that her robotic nature was known. “See. I’m just as much an android as you are.” Simone whispered, shattering the silence that had encased the room. Kenna found herself gently leaning forward, her hand extended as if she wouldn’t believe it until she had the tactile sensation of touching it. Simone didn’t make any move to shy away from the touch either. Kenna slipped ever closer and her finger tip gingerly traced the edge of Simone’s chest. Kenna registered the very edge where Simone’s soft, human-like flesh gave way to the hard and unreal plastic of her internal framework. “I..” Kenna began, seemingly struggling with something and taking a moment of hard concentration to finish. “I- I’m not really pr- allowed…to talk about what I am.” “You’re not programmed to reveal that you’re an android?” Simone questioned, attempting to speak the words that Kenna was clearly not able to say. Kenna’s eyes darted to Simone and then looked away as if she were ashamed, or maybe jealous. Still, she nodded her head to confirm what Simone had said. There was a small hiss as Simone’s chest panel slipped back into place and resealed itself, making Simone look, once again, fully human. Her hand rose to cradle Kenna’s cheek and she spoke in a soft, almost motherly tone to Kenna. “It’s alright. You and I both know what each other is now. You don’t have to say it out loud.” Kenna nodded and looked up at Simone, their eyes locked and for a brief moment there was silence in the room again. Simone was so very close to Kenna and she could swear that she saw the mechanical iris inside of Kenna’s artificial eyes adjusting. Or perhaps it was just a trick of the light in the room and her operating system attempting to see what it wanted to see. Either way they were so close that the heat carried on their breaths swirled around one another’s face. Neither Kenna nor Simone was sure which one of them had leaned in for the last few inches between their lips, but there was a sudden moment where their lips met and there was an intangible amount of electricity. Not literal voltage from either one of the androids, but an unquantifiable amount of raw energy that filled the open space in their mouths. Simone was the first to raise her hand and hold Kenna’s head against hers. The delicate fingers tangled themselves into Kenna’s hair like a wild hunt getting lost in the woods and grasping for whatever they could find. Each time Simone curled her fingers and felt Kenna’s head she heard her lover let out a small moan. It was little more than a whimper that was muffled by Simone’s tongue inside of her mouth. Each passing moment was filled with a deep burning passion. Kenna’s systems were not so overwhelmed with the influx of pleasurable and sensual data as one might have expected. She had regularly interfaced with Serene in similar ways, but never in a capacity where she had as much freedom as she had now. She was used to submitting her will to her mother and following along with her guidance. Simone let her explore and branch out in any way that she wanted, and because of that, Kenna’s hands found their way to Simone’s bra strap and with mechanical precision, undid it. Simone was more than happy to shrug her shoulders and let the garment fall off of her, exposing her shapely breasts to the open air. The sharp snap of cold air that found its way to her nipples was more than enough to send a shiver through her body as her operating system processed the sensual data from kissing Kenna. Her nipples puckered just a moment before Kenna’s hands graced her soft breasts and hard nipples. Simone let a moan bubble up in her vocal processors and roll out of her mouth and directly into Kenna’s. The pair were more than happy for several long minutes. Simply kissing one another, Kenna fondling Simone’s exposed breasts and even moving to toy with her nipples from time to time. Each time she did she earned a small mewling whimper from Simone and then kept kissing. Simone was relatively impressed with Kenna’s performance though. She had been moving and squirming and responding so perfectly well to Simone’s every move. So, with some small fears about potentially slipping into something Kenna wasn’t programmed for abated, Simone decided to move things on to the next level. Simone leaned forward, pressing her lips hard into Kenna, and then toppling the girl backwards. Simone’s hands were there to help guide her to the ground and Kenna only squeaked in delight as Simone moved on top of her. It was Simone’s turn to fondle Kenna. Placing her hands on the smaller, but still firm mounds on Kenna’s chest and squeezing them through both her shirt and bra. Soon, Simone was wiggling her hands under the shirt and then under the bra to achieve her prize. Kenna, meanwhile, could only moan with lewd intent and do her best to squirm out of her shirt and then her bra. She moved so carefully, putting in extra effort to not risk taking Simone’s hands off of her soft, artificial flesh. With a little work Kenna was as topless as Simone was, and her lover wasted no time in utilizing that fact. Simone forced her operating system to remove her lips from Kenna’s and instead moved down to her cheek, then her neck, and across her chest until she was kissing and suckling Kenna’s nipples. Each little movement caused a new moan to formulate in Kenna’s throat and her high quality speaker assembly perfectly mimicked the sound a human girl would make. Combined with the same moaning and sighing sounds Simone was making with a dash of the wet sucking sound her mouth was making, the room was soon filled with the sensual sounds of love. Kenna’s operating system flashed a small, brief message across her field of vision. There was an internal cooling issue somewhere inside of her. She promptly ignored it in favor of encouraging Simone to keep touching her. Kenna’ hands tangled themselves into Simone’s dirty blond hair and pushed her head firmly against her chest. Simone was more than happy to clamp her mouth over Kenna’s nipples and suck hard on them, letting her artificial tongue glide over them. The textured silicone rubber tongue inside of Simone’s mouth moved and teased Kenna with programmed efficiency. Simone’s human emulation almost didn’t notice when one of her hands slipped down her own body and began toying with her feminine sex through her jeans. She soon felt the hot rush of sexual data surging into her processor core. She let out a new moan and found that there was a whole cascade of new programs loading into her cache. Many of them would start executing almost immediately. All of them were designed to move Simone from simply kissing and touching into true love making. Her hand was still working at her folds through her jeans, but Simone moved down Kenna’s body more and more. Her one free hand fumbling slightly with the button and zipper on Kenna’s pants, but she didn't have to wait long before Kenna joined in and helped undress. Kenna, as expected, looked perfectly human below the waist. Simone had only a moment to admire how the android before her looked so realistic. Instead, she opened her mouth, lowered her torso to the ground and slid forward. Her mouth was on Kenna’s vaginal opening and she was wasting no time. Simone and Frankie had had more than a few encounters just like this and Simone knew what to do. She pushed her tongue deep inside of Kenna and began exploring. Each movement made Kenna squirm and squeak with pleasure. Simone was vaguely aware of Kenna’s hands gripping her hair and pulling her tight against her sex. Simone was also blissfully unaware of how truly hot Kenna was getting. Her internal temperatures were once again rising beyond their safety ratings. Despite Serene’s best efforts she had only found and repaired one or two of the faults inside of Kenna. There was, in fact, a fundamental issue with the android girls cooling systems in that they only powered on when the CPU reported that the heat levels across the processors was getting too high. Which would normally be fine, if Kenna was only a computer, but she was a whole functional android. There were other components inside of her that generated a lot of heat and were presently insufficiently cooled. As her legs squirmed and a number of systems inside of her worked hard to keep her moving and behaving like a human, her systems were generating massive amounts of heat. Her breath was coming in deep gulps and ragged, sharp breaths. All of it helped, but it would never be enough. As a result there were a number of critical systems inside of her that were suffering and degrading at an alarming rate. Simone was busy licking her way around and into Kenna when the first systems began to truly break down. Another message flashed across Kenna’s field of vision and elicited a swear from her, but it was lost in the sea of other sounds she had been making. Simone paid no attention to it. Instead Kenna’s head began to flop from side to side as her body began to buck and thrash. It could have been a particularly intense orgasm, or it could have been a critical malfunction, Simone wasn’t sure. What soon became apparent was how long it lasted. Simone had wrapped her arms around Kenna’s thighs and was holding her legs apart so she could continue to eat out her friend, but as the seconds ticked away Simone became more and more worried. Kenna was still writhing and making sounds, though Simone soon noticed that they were less comprehensible, and becoming more and more a scramble of half formed words, hastily mutteres syllables with no real meaning and jerky sounds. All culminating in an unintelligible stream of sounds and words. Simone pulled back and wiped the artificial juices from her lips, leaving the back of her hand glistening with their love. Kenna continued to twitch and burble. Simoen was stunned for only a moment as she watched her new friend twitch and spasm before her. She could hear the faint, distant pops of capacitors and components bursting inside of the girl's body. The layers of plastics, framework, wires, circuitry and layers of synthetic skin muffled the sounds and suppressed the flashes of light as components sizzled and burst inside of her. The acrid black smoke roiling from her mouth, nose and ears let Simone know that there was something seriously wrong. She darted forward, cradled the androids head and started to engage the limited amount of repair programming she had, but Kenna was a wholly custom unit and Simone had no idea where to start. Serene had been laying in bed. She wasn’t quite powered off, nor was she in any kind of low power mode. In fact she was topless, with a power cable plugged into a port in an open panel located just above her equally exposed vagina. A small display panel next to the plug showed some of her vital statistics as well as an estimated time to complete her recharge. While charging, the mature blond android had remained online, browsing a number of tech forums and researching topics to help improve Kenna and herself. They were both custom units and Sereen was in a constant state of looking for improvements. So when the borders of her internal browser flashed red she was taken by surprise. The alert was coming from Kenna and was coded as an emergency shut down event. Particularly one that was initiated in order to prevent further damage to the younger girl’s systems as a whole. Serene quickly slipped out of her bed, her operating system already generating explanations to tell Simone so that any kind of trauma Kenna’s new friend might have could be quelled. There would undoubtedly be a need to tell Simone what Kenna really was, though there was still a chance that Simone might be asleep and no explanation would be necessary. Serene’s complicated systems struggled to think of, and generate explanations, for every possible scenario without any real working knowledge of the situation. She would simply need to assess things once she arrived at Kenna’s room. She knocked lightly on Kenna’s door and then waited only a half second before quietly turning the door handle and pushing open the door to peer inside. Kenna lay on the floor, only small, faint whispers of the black smoke trailed from her lips now. Her head was cradled on Simone’s lap. Serene noticed that Simone was naked and clothes from both girls seemed to be strewn around the room and it left little to guess what the pair were up to. Simone was busily pawing over Kenna’s body, probing her skin in various places and seemed genuinely surprised when Serene appeared in the doorway. The older android was still wearing a silky, almost sheer, nightgown that stopped mid thigh and sported a deep plunging neckline. It was more lingerie than it was night wear. Still, it did the job of covering the woman, though it left little else to the imagination. Her hair was still hanging loosely around her shoulders and back and served only to frame her face and drag the gaze down to her breasts where her hair suddenly stopped. “Kenna- she just-” Simone began to explain, her expression worried, but not the abject terror that Serene had expected. “I know sweetie, we should talk about what Kenna truly is” Serene said in soothing tones as she settled down onto the floor next to Simone. Her hand gently found its way to the back of Kenna’s head where she found and pressed in the power button, holding it for several seconds to make sure her daughter was fully powered down. “She’s an android. Obviously.” Simone murmured. Serene seemed a little taken aback at that. Of all the situations that her operating system had predicted, the kind of cool matter of fact statement wasn’t one of them. “Well yes, but-” Serene began, but was cut off by Simone again. “I think her cooling system either didn’t engage or was at least inadequate for, uh, what we were doing. I was trying to get into her chest cavity to see how she was constructed, but I can’t seem to find a manual release.” “How do-” Serene began and Simone replied with a smirk and a look down at her own chest, where the same panel she had opened to convince Kenna was once again opened. Serene’s eyes widened and she began to nod. Her operating system finally received the information she needed to put all the puzzle pieces into place. “You’re also an android. That’s why you’re so calm about this.” Serene muttered. “I see. Well, let’s get her down to my work space and we can take a look inside of her. Do you mind?” Serene stood and Simone closed her chest panel and scooped Kenna up into her arms. Simone was constructed to be more than strong enough to lift Kenna’s slight form. Once her friend and lover was safely cradled in her arms, she followed Serene through the house and to the basement. Simone was only vaguely familiar with this place from her previous spying, and now her spatial scanning systems took it in fully and meshed it together with what information she already had. Without prompting, Simone placed Kenna on the table in the middle of the space and Serene immediately got to work on her daughter. Simone could only watch, feeling as if she would get in the way if she tried to offer Serene any help. Clearly the mature android knew what she was doing when it came to her own daughter’s internal workings. With an amount of mechanical efficiency Serene managed to find and disconnect Kenna’s chest panel, exposing her internal workings for Simone to see. She leaned in a little and peered at her friend's complicated internals. As the chest panel was removed, the final puff of building black smoke was released and evaporated in short order. Simone took in as much as she could and as the lights around the lab flickered to life she could see most of the issues right away. She was correct, there was a cooling system malfunction and a number of Kenna’s systems had burned out as a result. Serene was already disconnecting bundles of cables and thick fiber optic connections in order to make extracting the ruined components easier. Simone did step in and gingerly take the bundles from Serene and drape them over the open torso cavity to keep them out of the way. When Serene began taking parts out of her daughter, Simone was there to take them from her, and with only a little guidance, found a place to put them on a nearby workbench. Soon the pair were shining flashlights inside of the partially emptied torso and were looking for more damage. Simone spotted a number of damaged and scorched components near Kenna’s shoulders, while Serene was focused solely on the sexual module. Serene muttered the barest amount of instructions to Simone on how to find and disconnect the arms from the sockets. With the same robotic effectiveness that Serene had shown, Simone was able to disconnect the arms and place them on a table where she was able to better inspect the damage. To her genuine relief there was only some residue and sediment from the burned and exploded components inside of Kenna. They were easily cleaned, but Simone left the detached arms on the workbench. As she finished cleaning them, the workspace was occupied by Kenna’s disconnected head module, which Serene deposited there and returned to her daughter’s body. Simone returned to Kenna’s headless and armless form to find her mother’s arms deep inside of the torso, near the pelvis. She was working hard to wrench something out from under Kenna’s sexual assembly and soon managed to free it. A few more moments and Serene was instructing Simone to spread her daughter's legs as she pushed the sexual module out and into Simone’s waiting hands. The pair inspected it more closely and found that some of the smaller control boards on the upper end of the long and somewhat cylindrical module were damaged. Serene swore at that and muttered that they were custom built and she would have to manufacture new ones before the weekend was over. Simone suggested that she could take her time on them since Kenna could simply refrain from any sexual activity until the repairs were truly completed properly. “You’ve done this before haven't you?” Serene asked as she set down the sexual module and began to gently detach the broken components. “This specifically, no. But I’m no stranger to finding and working around damaged components.” Simone said with some measure of pride. “Well, I appreciate the help here, and I apologize for Kenna’s breakdown. You two looked like you were having a good time.” It was at this time that Simone realized she was still fully naked and Serene was only barely clothed. Judging by her attire Simone doubted that there was anything under the somewhat sensual garment. A hint of pink blush crept across Simone’s face and Serene clearly noticed, because she smirked, took one last look over the younger android, and returned to her work. It would be another half an hour at least before the pair had scoured Kenna’s internals enough to find and remove all of the damaged or dirtied parts. Simone got to work cleaning the blackened components and returning them to the framework inside of Kenna. She needed guidance on only a few of them, but Serene was more than happy to shoulder up next to Simone and guide her hands into place. Serene, meanwhile, worked diligently to gather replacement parts and slot them into place inside of her little girl’s open body and then begin working on soldering and assembling replacement parts for the sexual module. It wouldn’t be finished tonight, and though Kenna was soon in a functional state, Serene opted not to power on her daughter at the moment. There would be a significant amount of programming and trial and error to diagnose and fix the underlying issues, and she sought to save Simone from having to see her new friend in such a state. Though, she guessed Simone wouldn’t be too squeamish about that process. It was nearing midnight when Serene finally clicked the last of the replacement parts back into place, and Simone reattached the arms and Kenna’s head onto the torso unit. Serene smiled warmly at Simone. “It’s late. We should call it a night. I’m sure you’ll need to recharge a bit and get back home.” Simone nodded and looked towards Serene and then glanced down at the inactive Kenna. “You know, I never had a mom, obviously. But seeing you and Kenna, and how you interacted with one another.” She huffed once. “I’m a little jealous.” Serene lifted an eyebrow, not at what Simone was saying but at the conversation tree that her processors were assembling in her OS and the wide array of scenarios that it was predicting. She smirked a little and leaned into it. “Well, Simone, if you would like, you are more than welcome to call me your mommy.” The look of lewd intention was unmistakable on Serene’s face and Simone raised her own eyebrows just a little. She wasn’t surprised, she had seen how Kenna and Serene had acted when she first spied on the pair. The turn wasn’t unexpected either. Simone would be lying if she said that working on Kenna, disassembling her and working on some of her most intimate components hadn’t been a turn on. She was thankful she had the ability to manually power down parts of her own body, lest the artificial lubricant pumps in her own sexual module run all through the night. “I think I’d like that, mommy.” Simone muttered in return, the insinuations clear. Serene smiled. “You know, there are some things that I have wanted to try with Kenna.” Serene said as she walked around her daughter towards Simone. Her hand falling gently to the remaining soft flesh on Kenna’s body and gently dragging along the curves as Serene stepped around her. “But I didn’t know if she would be ready for it just yet. Clearly not. But you. You seem to have a much more hearty construction to you. Would you be willing to try out a few things with me?” “What kind of things?” Simone asked, not that it mattered, her own sexual programming was in full effect and she wanted, no, needed Serene. A more mature and experienced woman to show her what to do. “Things that only one android can do to another.” Serene said, and smoothly took hold of Simone’s hand. Simone put up no resistance as Serene guided her out of the lab and up to her own bedroom. Once there, Serene shed her own nightgown, leaving her just as naked as Simone. Her body was magnificent and Simone had to take a moment to fully take her in. She wasn’t petite and slender like Kenna. Instead she had full hips that gave way to mature and powerful legs. Her thighs were perfectly proportioned to her body while not looking as if they contained an ounce of spare fat. Her body was perfectly molded to look mature and enticing all at once and the larger rounded breasts that perched on her chest were every bit a part of that. They were rounded and firm, with perky nipples just begging to have Simone play with them. Sloping shoulders that were perfectly made to cradle her vibrant blond hair and slope up to her throat. Well defined and cradling the android’s head in place while leaving more than enough room for Simone to leave a trail of kisses along it. All of Serene looked too good to be true while still remaining, somehow, unmistakably human-like. She was the kind of woman that looked to ride the line somewhere between unbelievably beautiful without sacrificing realism. She was almost too good to be true. As she slipped into bed, a gentle hiss, as if some distant container were being unsealed, filled Simone’s audio receptors. Simone was moving towards her as Serene gently removed the faceplate from the front of her head. Simone lamented the loss of lips to kiss, but as the internal workings were revealed Simone found herself not caring. She slipped into the bed next to the more mature android and found that Serene immediately moved to allow her more room and to give her a moment to place her face plate on her side table. Glancing at the face plate, Serene looked so peaceful, like it was a small window into a sleeping woman. The weight of Serene mounting Simone demanded her attention be refocused though. The firm and hungry feeling of Serene’s hands on Simone’s firm breasts caused a rolling tingle to flutter through all of Simone’s systems, culminating in a small gasp. “Your turn sweetie.” Serene said, her voice coming out just a little louder now that it wasn’t muffled by her face plate. Simone looked confused for a moment until she felt Serene’s hands leave her breasts and her delicate fingertips come to rest on either side of Simone’s own face. “Oh!” Simone muttered and then coyly smiled. “Yes mommy.” It was Serene’s turn to shiver in anticipation at that. Simone’s head vibrated slightly under her touch and Simone’s own face plate unlatched itself and rose a centimeter or two away from Simone’s internal framework. Serene gently pulled it off and set it on her own nightstand, right next to her own disconnected face plate. Serene brought her hand up to her own exposed face now, using her thumb and index finger to grasp a plug and pull out a long cable that unspooled itself from inside of her own head. Simone’s optics, now exposed and taking in a wide array of information, saw it and identified it as a more universal style plug. If she still had lips connected, she would have smiled, particularly when Serene connected the long cable to a port inside of Simone;s exposed head. There was a prompt asking if Simone wanted to allow this external device to have access to core parts of her operating system, and while usually hesitant of this type of thing, she allowed Serene entry. “Such a good little girl.” Serene said aloud and then began to slink down Simone’s body. Her hands returned to Simone’s breasts again, but as she groped at them she sent a command to Simone’s operating system and gently nudged the sensitivity in her nipples upward. Simone let out a new gasp, not just from a sudden burst of new code for her to process but also from the searing hot waves of sensual data that her nipples were now sending to her processor core. Simone took a moment to see what, exactly, Serene had requested access to and became even more aroused when she found the log entry. Everything, Serene had almost complete control over Simone. Not that Serene had to puppet Simone, rather she had the ability to override Simone in whatever way she wanted. Simone could still move and think independently as she always had, but Serene now had the ability to truncate or modify those commands if she chose to. This became evident as Simone found her legs spreading wide open and her pussy moistening even without her formulating the commands to do so, instead they were sent directly from Serene into Simone’s CPU for immediate processing, bypassing Simone;s operating system completely. Simone groaned with pleasure as she felt Serne controlling her and more so a moment later as she felt the motherly android’s fingers pierce deep inside of her wet womanly folds. “Unf..yes mommy..That feels so good.” Simone muttered, her voice dripping with lust and her words sounding breathy, despite not needing to breathe at all. “Just you wait.” was all Serene said and then sent another command to Simone. Serene had inserted two fingers inside of Simone now, and with this new command her slit tightened hard around those fingers. Serene had manually constricted her vaginal canal and gripped the fingers inside of it tightly. So when Serene began to gently move her fingers back and forth, in and out, the sensation to Simone was immeasurably more incense than she had ever felt before. Simone cried out in pure, unadulterated pleasure. She knew that she was moments away from a rolling orgasm at any moment, she could see the programming block loaded into her cache already and she squirmed as she waited. Serene’s fingers still plunging in and out of her tight clit with an increased pace, and then, it was gone. Simone saw the programming block unload itself and the process disappear completely. The sensual data was still burning inside of her system, but the orgasm had left. “Not yet honey.” Serene whispered and then drove her fingers deep inside of Simone again. “Ye- Yes mommy!” Simone called between deep husky moans that originated deep inside of her throat. Serene sent a few more packets of data to Simone for processing. She moved Simone just a little, nudging her to the center of the bed to allow Serene more room to maneuver if she needed. She toyed with the sensitivity all over Simone’s body, each time letting her fingernail etch a small line across Simone’s flesh. Each time the younger android would squirm and gasp and make the most lewd sounds. Each time Serene wished only to have a face so she could smile down at Simone. More panels were opened along both Simone and Serene’s body. Each one had some manner of exposed circuitry and connecting cables that Serene connected into Simone’s exposed body to allow her easier access to Simone’s controls. Simone soon found that she only needed to relax into the sensation of surrender. Serene, her new surrogate mommy, took control of the younger android. Her movements, the kind of stimulations Simone responded to and how sensitive every inch of her artificial flesh was. All of it seemed to be controlled by Serene, not because it had to be, but because Simone wanted it to be. With exposed electronics and Serene’s fingers thrusting deeply inside of her, Simone felt a rolling orgasm boiling inside of her. She was so ready for it, though she wasn’t sure if her new mommy would allow her to execute it. She had completely submitted herself to Kenna’s mother unit and her pleasure depended solely on Serene’s commands. Simone could only allow her new mommy unit to make the right choices for her, she could, afterall, see and experience all the pleasure Simone was processing at the moment and knew what was best for her. So when another orgasm sequence loaded itself Simone was a little surprised that Serene allowed it to execute. Simone’s head fell back, pressing hard into the pillows below her. If her face plate were still attached her mouth would have hung open, instead she was treated to an array of alerts that the device needed to complete the operation was missing. There were many more alerts too as her exposed circuitry had garnered a massive amount of heat and backlogged data from the numerous truncated orgasms. Her head began to swivel violently back and forth and her fingers clenched and spasmed in odd ways. Her operating system became confused and frenzied as the clear signs of a massive overload in her software became evident to Simone’s A.I. She felt her body shaking below the weight of the mommy unit on top of her, and while it terrified her it stimulated something deep inside of her that longed for the feeling of being little more than a purely mechanical thing. Serene also noticed the malfunction, not just from the physical signs but also the massive spike in log files and alert messages that she could clearly see inside of Simone’s OS. She didn’t panic, this was nothing new to her. She had tried this with Kenna before and the signs were clear. The difference was that Kenna’s experience had been all new, and her more fragile body was less hardened than Simone. For a brief moment Serene even thought that Simone might recover all on her own, but when it became apparent that the malfunctioning android was not recovering, Serene stepped in. Like a good mother, she gently powered down many of the overloading internal systems. Simone stopped twitching and lay still, though she remained online. She saw the systems and processes that were shut down around her body, systems that were struggling to remain in a human emulation mode and were taking up valuable CPU cycles that she desperately needed to parse the immense amount of pleasurable data from a backlog of nearly half a dozen loaded but unexecuted orgasms. Simone lay still, unable to move, and simply moaned and filled the room with the most lewd and lust filled sounds she had heard in a long time. Her processor core eventually worked through the backlog of data she eventually settled down, breathing hard as her CPU demanded more fresh air to supplement the cooling systems. Serene could even see the artificial breath processing systems flexing inside of Simone’s open panels, hidden somewhere deep below a tangled web of wires and fiber optic cables. In that time her own hips had been grinding against Simone’s own slit, bringing herself to a pleasurable release, her own ground of pleasure lost in the sea of sounds that Simone had been making. Both androids, satisfied of their sensual desires, relaxed into a calming afterglow. Serene ejected herself from Simone’s systems and gently plucked the connecting cables from Simone’s body and retracted them into her own body. Panels were closed and Serene took extra care to delicately click Simone’s faceplate back onto the front of her head before placing her own face back on her own. She rolled off of Simone and snuggled up next to her, letting her hands idly glide over Simone’s soft, artificial skin. Taking in the lingering warmth, the softness of it and the gentle slopes of her curved body. “How do you feel sweetie?” Serene asked at last. “I think..that was possibly the most intense thing I have ever experienced.” Simone said with a wide grin. “Thank you..mommy.” Serene chuckled slightly at the addition to the end of her statement and planted a sweet kiss on Simone’s cheek as a means of reply. “You’re welcome to sleep with me tonight and recharge yourself here. Unless, of course, you would rather I take you home.” “I’d like to stay with you in bed. That sounds like the perfect way to end this sleepover.” Simone commented and curled into Serene and ventured a softly passionate kiss with her new mommy unit. The night slipped past and Simone packed her belongings the next morning. Serene assured her that by Monday morning Kenna would be back in class, though less functional for a small amount of time while new parts were manufactured and installed. “You know, Simone, you’ve got a very interesting design there. Maybe I’m overstepping my bounds a little, but I would love to study you a little more in depth, if you’re okay with that.” Simone considered the idea, and everything it might entail. Wild visions of herself taken apart, down to some of her most delicate systems and scattered around Serene’s lab..Kenna assisting her…everything that entailed. All of it sounded to her like a pure delight. “We’ll see.” Simone said with a smirk and left for the long walk back home. She needed to take some time to figure out how to formulate the weekend experience into a cohesive narrative that she could tell Frankie about when she returned. Chapter 4 Frankie delicately settled herself onto the deep cushions on the couch in the hotel room. They were plush, overly stuffed, and seemed to almost swallow her up as she settled in. The air conditioner was humming, doing its level best to try and defeat the sweltering heat that had arisen all around the area. Even the walk from the car, lugging along her suitcase had been enough to cause her operating system to flare up with a small indicator of a sudden and sharp increase in heat. Her mother had kept the rental car’s temperature nice and cold, leaving the air on for the majority of their trip from the airport to the hotel. Sigourney kicked the door shut behind her, causing it to slam closed a little harder than she intended, though when another door somewhere in the distance slammed shut with an equal amount of volume she felt less like she was disturbing other guests and more like she was participating in some kind of initiation ritual. Welcome to your room, enjoy the cool air, slam the door shut, we’re all family here. Still Sigourney would have much rather entered in a little more style and a little more care. As it was she was lugging her own duffle bag along with her. It was only half packed with clothes, maybe even less than that. There were an abundance of specialized tools, pieces of technology, bits and baubles. Most of her luggage was materials to keep Frankie running smoothly should anything happen to her while they were away from the comforts of the home lab. The college level brain squad tournament had taken the pair all across the country, though Sigourney noted that after the third or fourth hotel room in the downtown area they all began to blur together. When she had mentioned that to Frankie, she was immediately met with a small tirade about the distinct features about each one and how they differed, even subtly, from one another. Sigourney should have known better than to ask an android with the capability to perfectly recall the complete layout of each space she had been. To Sigourney, every new city looked like every old city and every old city was just another blurry focal point in her memory. She could recall being there, but nothing about the place. Which was fine, all of it was going to end up as a blurry memory to her. The kind of thing that in two or three years she would tell her friends that her and her daughter had toured across the country, posting up in all the major cities and competing their way across the state. In reality, she would be lucky to remember any specifics about any single location, and from the way this hotel room was shaping up, there would be little to distinguish this one from any other hotel room. Though, she had to admit, this room in particular was a bit more upscale than any of the other suite’s they had stayed in. It wasn’t simply that there were two private rooms, or a polished marble countertop in the bathroom. It was just the vibe of the place. The room was lit softly with incandescent lights that put off a subtle golden glow rather than the bright sterile look of modern LED light bulbs. Deep reds with hints of golden thread marked the throw pillows on the couch that Frankie was reclining on and the two armchairs arranged on either side of the couch sported a similar scarlet and gold motif. Even the dark, rich maroon colored paint on the walls made the room feel more like a wealthy eighteenth century manor’s guest wing than a hotel room nestled in downtown. “Well this is fancy.” Sigourney commented and stirred Frankie to look around and fully evaluate the room. “It is. The colors and comfort of the furniture are certainly pleasing.” Sigourney began to reevaluate her thoughts about hotel rooms across the nation. This one might be more memorable than others. Setting her heavy bag down just inside the door, she stepped across the room and collapsed into one of the chairs, letting the ambient air, still cooler than the outside, wash over her. The tingle of the frosty air drew a delighted sigh from her as she slouched in the chair, sighing and letting her eyes slip closed. Driving the nearly four and a half hours from the last competition to this one had taken a lot out of her. Leaning her head back just a little, her eyes slipping closed so gently. Sigourney felt herself drifting away into blissful sleep. She caught herself once or twice, her eyes snapping open and her eyes darting around. She was still in the hotel room, and the fear of falling asleep while driving was sated. “Frankie?” “In here.” Sigourney struggled herself out of the chair and wiped the drowsiness from her eyes on the back of her sleeve. It wasn’t helping. Sigourney found Frankie in one of the bedrooms, laying flat on her back with a charging cable plugged into the wall, the other end of it was hidden below her button up shirt. The small bulge against Frankie’s left side let Sigourney know that she was simply recharging herself. “I’m going to lay down and get some shut eye.” Sigourney commented, “You just going to stay in here and recharge?” “Yes.” Frankie replied simply. “Alright sweetie.” Sigourney stepped in and kissed her robotic daughter on the forehead. “Goodnight.” The suite was absolutely everything Sigourney needed. She left Frankie in her room, and gently closed the door before turning to the empty suite. The temptation of a warm bath tempted her and, despite being exhausted, she gave into that temptation. The bathroom itself was massive and the white marbled clawfoot tub was a delight. She twisted the faucets there with a small squeak and as the tub filled with water and the room filled with steam, Sigourney already felt the wear of the day melting off of her. She kicked off her shoes and then the hip hugging jeans she wore were pushed down her long legs, dragging her panties along with them. Her shirt and bra soon joined them in a pile in the corner of the steamy room. The heat from the water soothed her aching muscles as she lowered her nude form into the water. A day spent sitting in a car with little movement meant that her entire body was stiff. Sigourney let out a long sigh of relief, it was borderline lewd as she sunk down past her chine into the water. Her heels propped up on the far lip of the tub allowed her to fully stretch her legs, arching her back and working every stiff joint in her body. Her toe flared and she rolled her ankle as she let the hot water draw out every mile of travel she and Frankie had done. She settled down into a comfortable lounge, letting the water grow cold around her. She contemplated draining the tube and starting over, filling it with scalding water again and soaking some more, but she knew it was already late. With a sigh, she hoisted herself from the tub and stood there for a few moments, wet, naked, relaxed, but chilled now. The soft towels insulated her a little but it wasn’t nearly enough. The water was sapping warmth from her body and she needed to correct that. Wrapping a towel around herself she strode into her room and pulled on a pair of fleece pajamas and then curled up in bed, falling asleep mere moments after her head hit the pillow. Frankie heard the sound of water flowing and the tub filling, how could she not? The microphone assembly settled just inside of her ears were turned to be highly sensitive. She heard almost everything that happened in the vicinity. Just because she heard it though, didn’t mean she dedicated the kind of CPU cycles to it that might impact her other systems. She was actually busy with other things, despite the fact that she looked as if she were laying still, eyes closed, and recharging. Inside the operating system on the college aged android a flurry of activity was in process. Nestled among the processes to compress and analyze the day's data and continuing system checks was another small process. It took so little processing power that it would go undetected to almost anyone checking on Frankie’s task managers. Just a small app that did little more than take in a data packet from an external source, in this case a wifi connection provided by the hotel room and display the data. In most cases, it was simple text, occasionally an animation or an emoji. Frankie and Simone had set up a small peer to peer focused chat system long ago. It only worked when they were connected to something like a cellular network, or ideally, a wireless internet connection, like the one in the hotel that Frankie was connected to. Miles and miles away, lounging on her bed, naked as the day she was manufactured, lay Simone. Simone was a little more animated than Frankie, she usually was. Her blond hair wasn’t straightened as it normally was, instead it was pulled back in a ponytail, mostly to keep it out of her field of vision. She was sitting with her back against the wall, her legs were spread wide, exposing the bald, pink sexual module installed between her legs. Simone had let one of her hands fall to that warm, wet, pink and ready place. Two fingers pressed against the outer fringes of it and swirled in looping, rhythmic circles. Every movement brought a new and slightly different sensation of unbridled pleasure to her CPU. Raw sexual data to be processed and sent sizzling through her entire body where it would be experienced and cataloged. Her other hand groped lazily at one of her breasts. Fondling it and squishing the silicone filled artificial chest piece. Occasionally letting her hand glide all the way up to her nipple, where she pinched or rolled it between her fingers. When she did, the lewd sounding moan that followed was inevitable. Her operating system was working furiously to process the raw volume of sensual data Simone was feeding it. Her hands moved independently, pawing and swirling and moving. Simone relied heavily on the independent subsystems inside of her to handle the movements, so that she could fully devote as much of her processing power to pleasure as possible. With one small exception. The messaging app that Simone and Frankie had connected to one another was so small that it hardly registered as a running process as Simone masturbated. In fact, the CPU cycles to recall the story she was relaying to Frankie took more processing power than running the application itself. “You followed her home?” Frankie was questioning. “Well I had to know for sure.” “That seemed risky. What if you had been caught?” “I would have figured something out.” Simone replied, capping her response with a shrugging emoji. “What did you discover while you were there?” “Both Kenna and Serene are androids like us.” Frankie was silent for a moment, allowing Simone time to execute an orgasm, one of four so far. “More androids.” Frankie commented. “Yep. Serene took Kenna down to the basement, took her apart, did, I assume, some repairs, and then put her back together again…” Frankie could tell there was more to it than just that. Simone had been thrilled to chat with Frankie about something just shortly after Frankie had left for the Brain Squad tournament. This had to be what was so exciting, and just finding another robotic class mate wasn’t the kind of thing that Simone would get this worked up over. Certainly not the kind of thing she would request that Frankie settle in some place private for al ong chat. “What else?” Frankie asked, her own super powered computerized mind working furiously to figure out the clues she may have missed. “They..they…you know.” It was odd, Simone was fully blushing from what she was about to relay to Frankie, despite the fact that she had two fingers embedded deep inside of her feminine folds as she chatted. “They had sex?” Frankie asked. “Yeah, her and her mother. I guess they aren’t really related though.” “Interesting.” “Yeah, so, you know I did what I do best. Heh heh.” “You stalked her around some more?” “No! I got to know her. I’m an infiltrator unit Frankie. I’m good at making friends when I need to.” “I see.” Frankie replied, and then sent another chat. “And you two are good friends now?” “Yeah, great friends.” Simone commented, almost scared to relay the rest of the story. While she waited for Frankie’s reply she sped up the deep thrusts her fingers were performing on her, bringing herself to another full climax, leaving her panting and gulping fresh air down to help cool her processors. She could see Frankie formulating her reply, so Simone slipped off of her bed and cleaned herself up a bit before pulling out some real pajamas. “It is good to have another android around, did she discover that you were also a machine like her?” “Yeah, we were studying and I told her I knew what she was, and showed her I was an android as well.” “Showed her? How?” “I just opened a panel or two here and there.” “I see. How did she take that?” “Pretty good actually. We ended up…you know…” Simone stood alone in her room, waiting for Frankie. There hadn’t been official terms used, or discussions had. There probably should have been. Simone and Frankie just accepted that the two of them were a couple. Though, without proper communication there were no boundaries and no one had used the term ‘girlfriend’ in reference to one another…not yet at least. As soon as Frankie was back in town Simone intended to change that. She would have asked sooner, but no one wanted to be the android that asked another robot out over secured text lines. “You two had sex as well?” Frankie asked, the simplicity in her voice seemed to carry through the connection. “Yeah.” “Good. You should use that to your advantage and strengthen the relationship with her.” Simone didn’t start replying immediately, she was far too busy processing how cool Frankie was about this revelation. Though she should have suspected as much, Frankie was almost purely logical with a sprinkling of cuteness and some emotion. Exactly how Simone liked her “She overloaded though. She clearly wasn’t built as well as you and I were.” Simone eventually texted back. Then continued. “It must have alerted Serene, because she showed up while I was trying to get Kenna back together.” “That would be a good choice. A built in alerting system. Perhaps I should tell my mother to build the same for me, and perhaps you as well.” “I think we’ll be alright. I mean, when was the last time you or I really broke down.” “That is a good point.” Frankie conceded, “Was Serene upset?” “No, not really. She understood once I explained what happened. We took her back home and I even helped Serene fix her up.” “I see, so you got a good look at what her construction is like, and some of her design principles?” “You could say that, yeah.” “And once she was fixed?” “Serene and I had some time together. She showed me a few things that I want to do with you when you get back.” “What kind of things?” “Sexy things.” Simone added a winking face to the end of the text. “Did you and Serene have sex as well?” “Of course we did. Though with her it was a lot more of the stuff that only a robot could do...it was pretty incredible. I’ll show you when you get back.” “I am looking forward to it.” Frankie replied, using the same winking face as Simone had before. “I miss you.” Simone replied after a minute or so of silence between the two of them. “I also miss you.” Frankie replied almost immediately. Frankie and Simone spent another hour chatting with one another. Topics ranged from what the tournament was like for Frankie, how things at home were for Simone, what Frankie had seen on the road, and how Simone’s classes were progressing. THe kind of idle chat that two friends could survive on for a while before one of them would eventually yawn and say it was time for bed. Simone and Frankie were robots though. Synthetic in nature and able to continue operating so long as they had the electrical power to continue. Frankie was plugged in, but the charge was doing little to refill her power core. For every one unit of power she consumed she would only regain two. Eventually she would be fully recharged, but her time table did not allow for eventually. Simone was fully unplugged and messaging Frankie as she walked around her house, preparing herself for a night of recharging. She was refilling some of the fluids through a small open panel on the side of her torso and then sitting in bed, idly tightening some of the flexors in her wrist. Frankie was the first to mention that she should get to bed and fully power down. She had an early meet time for the next leg of the Brain Squad tournament in the morning, and after that she might be able to talk with Simone again. Simone accepted that as the end of their conversations and the pair said their good nights, another round of telling one another that they were missed, and then the connection was severed. Frankie, her eyes still closed, formulated a fresh command in her operating system and sent it fluttering through her systems. Each and every part of her construction that had its own independent power relay and data controller board was visited and shut down. Each component inside of her saved a block of data in a state file, easily accessed and allowed for rapid power on and responses. All of the processes took no time at all, barely a half second had passed between sending the command and a response that all systems were offline. Frankie was, in essence paralyzed now. Not that she couldn’t resume her operation at a moment's notice, but her motor control systems were offline. With the report back that she was ready to shut down, Frankie used another command to set an alarm time for herself. Either when her power cell was fully recharged and ready, or at a set time. Either way she would have plenty of time to prepare herself both mentally and physically for the day in front of her. Sigourney and Frankie’s night passed by quietly. Frankie was perfectly silent as she lay unmoving in her bed, electrical life trickling into her power cells. Sigourney was sprawled out on her bed, the buttons on her pajama top had either come undone or were subconsciously undone. She lay on her back, legs akimbo, practically topless. THe morning came far too early for Sigourney. She had been deep in her dreams when the alarm on her phone blasted the room with a loud, warbling ring. Frankie, on the other hand, simply opened her eyes and slipped out of bed. She was still wearing her clothes from the previous day, so she took a moment to dig into her luggage and pull out the outfit she had picked for her Brain Squad tournament today. With the kind of efficiency that only a robot could manage, she stripped out of her clothes and then immediately began dressing in her new outfit. A simple gray skirt with a thin belt. A tucked in cream colored skirt that buttoned fully up to her neck with black leggings and smart, but comfortable, flats to round out the outfit. She looked smart, professional, and ready to bag another round of the Brain Squad tournament. As she stepped out of her room she saw her mother. Sigourney’s hair was still in a wild mess. She hadn’t bothered to rebutton her top and let the cool morning air wash over her bare chest as she brought a steaming hot cup of coffee to her lips. Judging by Sigourney’s reaction to the black liquid in the mug, the little in room coffee pot didn’t make good coffee, but it did make fast coffee. “Morning.” Sigourney muttered. It was a good thing that Frankie’s large language model could account for most words that were coherent at around sixty percent. She was very sure Sigourney’s slurred words were some kind of greeting and given the context, her advanced android mind could sort it out. “Good morning.” She sweetly chirped in reply. Sigourney raised her coffee cup at Frankie as her daughter sat down in the comfortable chair next to her and neatly folded her hands into her lap. Sigourney made a small effort to pull her shirt over her exposed chest, but only barely. “Ready for the tournament?” SIgourney’s words were coming together more coherently now. “Yes I am, I am fully charged and prepared.” SHe hesitated a moment. “Are you?” “Yeah yeah, I’ll be fine.” Frankie nodded and Sigourney took another deep slug of her coffee, letting out a satisfied sigh as she did so. Then she fully tipped back the cup and drank down what was left of her coffee. Setting aside her cup, slapping her hands onto her knees and shoving herself into a standing position, Sigourney now seemed ready to begin the process of getting ready. She shed her top as she walked into her room, chucking it onto the bed and beginning to rummage in her bag. She didn’t feel Frankie’s eyes tracing over the contours of her body and cataloging them with a small measure of pleasurable meta-data. The older woman dressed herself slowly, but surely, calling out of her room to Frankie as she did so. “Do you remember my old friend Nichole? Her and I were college buddies..ages ago..” Sigourney shouted as she fastened a bra in place. “I do recall you mentioning her once or twice. Yes.” “She happens to be in town and she and I are going to have a few drinks and some dinner tonight after the tournament.” Sigourney said as she appeared in the doorway to her room. “You going to be okay to get back here on your own after the tournament?” “I will be fine.” Frankie confirmed. “Good good..okay then.” Sigourney finished getting dressed, looking as smart and as sharp as Frankie. Along the way she brewed another cup of coffee for herself and sipped on it as she moved around the hotel suite. Makeup was applied, intentionally making her look less like she was dolled up for something and leaning more towards a natural look. The robotic girl furrowed her brow at her mother, attempting to rectify the ritual in her mind. Why put on makeup with the intention of making it look as if you weren’t wearing makeup? Pursing her lips she watched her mother move around the suite. Walking past the coffee, sipping it for a moment and then carrying on. Each little observation generated more questions in Frankie’s highly sophisticated computerized mind. Sigourney seemed to almost be taking the least efficient route to complete her morning routine. It seemed almost intentional, but somehow so chaotic that it couldn’t be. She walked past the coffee again, not drinking any this time to pick up earrings from a small case in her room, only to walk back across the suite towards the bathroom. She stopped, took a sip of her drink, then set the cup down and carried on to the bathroom where she put in the earrings. Back across the room, sip the coffee, wait a moment then sip again, then back to her room. She rummaged in her back and brought out a hairbrush and a small box of jewelry, then brought those to the bathroom where she would stand and preen herself for another ten minutes while her coffee got cold. All of it was observed and logged in Frankie’s mind. All of it seemed so very human, but if Frankie had been asked to describe a human morning routine she would not have described the scene before her. As she watched though, every one of her mothers movements and behaviors made total sense. It opened up a line of synthetic thoughts in her mind about human behavior and how it was both predictable while being completely erratic. She made a note to herself to find some time to simply sit and observe humans in a safe and natural way to find patterns in the chaos. Soon both women were ready, and not a moment too late. Sigourney looked at her watch and swore and the pair darted out of the room. The tournament was being held across town and between traffic and wrangling the GPS, they would only just barely make it in time. Perhaps it was Sigourney’s driving skills, or the fact that she was perpetually speeding, but they managed to make it to the hall with around ten minutes to spare. After picking up their participant badge for Frankie, Sigourney hugged her once and slipped into the audience entrance while Frankie moved into the contestant staging area. Backstage was dim at best and littered with dark corners where props and stage material for other productions in the theater hall. Frankie lined up with the other contestants and earned herself a number of looks that spoke of judgment for almost being late. It passed quickly as the distant and muffled voice of the on stage announcer rumbled into the backstage area. While Frankie got herself situated behind the stage, Sigourney bobbed her head around in the dimly lit theater hall looking for a seat. Most were taken by parents, she assumed, but managed to find herself a place to sit near the edge. Being the fidgeting mother that she was, she had time to wait so she pulled out her phone and before checking any messages from friends or emails, she opened the home made app she had installed in Frankie. The app itself was functional, though not polished. It showed critical system levels, functionality reports, and any number of other small bits of data that were being sent by Frankie’s systems. It was a small way for Sigourney to keep an eye on her daughter without fully tapping into her innermost processes. She could monitor Frankie’s functionality, but not tap into things like her visual feed or listen in on conversations, much as she wanted to. She knew at some point she had to start letting her baby girl have some freedoms without mother tapping into everything. Everything seemed to be perfectly well and good, as expected, and Sigourney let out a sigh of relief. She wasn’t quite sure why she was worried, Frankie hadn’t had any kind of major breakdowns for a long time, not since she was in beta testing in fact. The platform Frankie was built on was a solid base and the tweaks to give her a more human personality and function more and more like a real girl were not so drastic that they would cause errors. Still…Sigourney liked to look in on her. The lights dimmed and the booming voice of an announcer on stage stole her attention away from her phone. She was just about to bury it back in her purse when she thought better of it and pulled it back out. She set it on silent and then settled down, glancing only occasionally at the device in her lap. The tournament lasted nearly ten hours, with a break in the middle for lunch. Sigourney and Frankie wandered off to a nearby cluster of food carts where Sigourney settled for a sloppily made, though delicious, sandwich and Frankie simply sat with her. While there Sigourney had the good fortune to bump into Nichole, the friend from out of town that Sigourney had mentioned earlier in their day. The pair chatted and gabbed away the lunch hour. Sigourney introduced her to Frankie for the first time in person. Despite spending the entire time talking, there seemed to always be more to say and it only confirmed for the two human women that there would be more than enough to occupy them during dinner. Still they chatted and Frankie remained peacefully silent as she observed. There was more of that predictable chaos that she had seen in her mother in the morning. Conversations wove and wound their way around and in circles. None of them managed to come to a successful or even satisfying conclusion, they just merged into another conversation, leaving the first thoughts dangling. Both women seemed to be so happy to seamlessly transition from one topic to the next without giving any kind of concern for what was just left behind. Moreover, they never curled back around to the topics that had been brought up and then abandoned. To Frankie, who was simply listening, this spooled a number of threads in her CPU. Each one spinning off and playing out the conversation, both parts, and generating responses for each participant. Only to then have the conversation change directions and force her to truncate the dialog trees she had generated only to start something new. It was, simply put, taxing on her. At the same time though, it was almost an art to see how often the conversation ebbed and flowed, changing topics at approximately the same time. Frankie was beginning to get a sense of the pattern of how their conversations moved. Then, suddenly it was over. Nichole had to go and Sigourney happened to look at her phone and agree that they also needed to be going. After only a brief half an hour it seemed to Frankie like these two women were absolutely best friends despite not seeing one another for years. They parted ways with a hug, and Frankie earned a handshake and a bright smile. Frankie was happy to reciprocate, tapping into many of her social programming databases to ensure she appeared human enough. Her CPU let her know that even though Sigourney felt comfortable enough to hug an old friend, Nichole wasn’t tagged the same way in her own database. THe complex calculations and database pulls sorted through her social filtering. She Gripped Nichole’s hand and her sensor laden flesh let her know when she had met just the right amount of force without crushing and shattering the human woman's hand. The hall was a brief walk and Frankie spent that time contemplating and trying to compress all the data she had just collected into something useful. Observations had been helpful, but she needed more data points before she could really begin integrating what she had learned into something useful. “Are you okay sweetie?” Sigourney’s voice brought Frankie back into the moment, pausing her CPU and re-engaging her AI and her operating systems. “Yes. I was just contemplating human behaviors.” “In what way?” “It seems so chaotic and at the same time, it seems to flow properly. It is difficult for me to summarize. Everything I have observed since my time at Sepulveda High has pointed to humans behaving erratically, but at the same time, their behavior seems perfectly in line with how I would think that a human would act.” Sigourney laughed first and replied after a moment of mirth. “That sounds about right. People are like that. Unpredictable at best.” Frankie didn’t seem satisfied with the answer. There had to be more to it than just wild and random chaotic interactions. Unless the people around her were simply content to live deep in that chaos and thrive in it. It seemed like it was so much work, tracking, planning, and then moving from topic to topic. She ultimately decided that it would require a lot more observation. The second half of the Brain Squad tournament was underway again. Frankie couldn’t help but listen in when she was not on stage. The small chatter between folks behind the scenes were more data points for her ongoing observations. It would eventually be fed to her processor core and compressed into raw data elements that would become her programming. When she was on stage though, she was thankful for the ability to simply suspend those curious thoughts. Her operating system automatically truncated anything and everything that wasn’t related to the competition. She always performed well, partially because of the robotic ability to focus and a nearly perfect memory of facts. Still, there was a part of her higher A.I. functions that wanted so desperately to re-engage, to sit and listen and observe and collect data. She was an analysis machine after all, and she was always compelled to lean into those parts of her construction and base programming. Still the competition was the primary focus of her programming now. Her operating system smoothly moved her into a focused and ready state, not that she would need it. Facts and figures came so easily to an android like her, and not simply because she had a literal data bank of storage media to pull from. She was made to take in information, analyze it, and draw conclusions from it. A competition like Brain Squad was practically what she was made for. The competition, as expected, played out very favorably for Frankie and her cross country team. She could have easily swept the competition herself, but in an effort to appear a little more human she was programmed to slip up on a question or two from time to time. Having a team of other contestants with her who were human also made for a more realistic competition experience. Despite all that, she was easily moving on to the next round of competitions. Which meant that she and Sigourney would be leaving after the weekend stay in their posh hotel room for another venue, rather than homeward. After the competition wrap up, Frankie was ushered backstage where she was debriefed and given information on the next leg of her competition circuit. There were forms to fill out, paperwork to sign, and a number of thick packets to read through on the next tournament round. With all that in hand, she thanked the backstage staff and headed back out to the auditorium seating where she quickly located her mother. She explained everything she had just been told, in perfect detail, to Sigourney who nodded along and congratulated her. Despite knowing she was an android, Sigourney was still incredibly proud of Frankie. She had grown far beyond what Sigourney had originally built her for and the programming was evolving well beyond its original intent. Frankie was growing and maturing in ways that her mother had never truly expected from an ongoing experiment, but the tournament had showcased that growing woman inside of Frankie. As the pair left the convention hall, Sigourney reminded Frankie that she was going out to dinner with Nichole tonight. She made sure Frankie was still okay with being alone for the evening and was met with an unexpectedly enthusiastic head nod. “I think I would like to find a nice place to people watch tonight.” Frankei replied. “I would like to gather more data on human behaviors and pattern recognition.” This brought a smirk to Sigourney's face followed closely by a delighted laugh. “Of course you are. Never one to be idle when there’s something to learn. That’s my girl!” Sigourney wrapped an arm around Frankie's shoulder and pulled her into a tight embrace. Kissed her on the forehead, and strode off to the car. Her dinner plans would take her deep into the downtown area, leaving Frankie on the outskirts of the city. Not that it mattered, Frankie was more than capable of connecting to a GPS service and navigating anywhere she needed to in almost any place in the world. As Sigourney left with an armful of the papers Frankie had handed her, that was exactly what the young robot did. She found a nearby bench and settled down, looking very much like she was taking a small breather after the competition. In reality her operating system had fully engaged and was scouring maps of the city, looking for parks, strip malls, social gathering areas and really any place where there was likely to be a large enough collection of people. She found what she was looking for in a somewhat unexpected place. There was a park, with a thriving food cart selection directly on the waterfront. Her analytical A.I. picked it as an ideal place and after connecting to a number of traffic cameras in the area for a few moments picked up a sizable amount of foot traffic there. Moreover there were benches studding the winding trails and open fields there. The summer time sunlight was still out and showed little signs of dipping down beyond the horizon for several more hours. The GPS navigator let Frankie know that it was at least a twenty minute walk, and after some very rudimentary calculations she was confident that she had more than enough power in her internal power cells to keep her active for the entire time. So, she began walking. The city itself had the feeling of a creature that was stirring. Not that it was sleeping and was now awakening, nor that it was awake and now falling asleep. It was merely a change. The atmosphere as the sun fell from the sky was casting long shadows, but those shadows brought streetlights to life, restaurants opened their front doors to the rapidly cooling air, and folks who had been hard at work were loosening their ties and smiling. It was akin to a creature who had been comfortable laying one way suddenly standing up, stretching its legs, circling their bed and then settling back down into a new position. It would lay that way through the night and then in the morning it would roll over again. Frankie thrust her hands in her pockets and walked along these stirring streets. The complicated array of motors inside of her robotic skull swiveled and turned, moving her eyes around. The camera-like mechanisms just behind the glassy orbs recorded and tracked the people she walked past. The auditory-receptors in her ears effortlessly eavesdropping on conversations, transcribing them and feeding them to her analytical A.I. for compiling. The night air did wonders on Frankie’s processor core as well. It had been working hard all day long analyzing trivia questions and puzzling out their solutions. On top of that the increased CPU load from observation and pattern recognition put a significant load on her processors. Once the sun was no longer directly heating the air and the temperature began to drop, her cooling systems were awash with fresh cool air to replace the thick hot air coming out of her heat exchange. It was a simple task to find a place to settle down quietly and remain there unnoticed by most passers by. Frankie, like most of her existence, felt like she was hiding in plain sight. It was just a simple bench, tucked away next to a picnic table in the park. Nestled right in the shade of a cluster of trees with long reaching branches. It was a nice little place to observe the majority of the park and water front in front of her, and the small surges of crowds wandering into the covered picnic area with food from the carts was a steady flow. Frankie simply sat and watched, listened in on conversations, and took in the entire vibe of the people she saw. There were families with kids romping in the park that she saw. THe children were fascinating to her. They were the peak of unpredictable behavior and seemed to take deep joy in simply running in random directions, playing games with no defined rules, and squealed with delight when the most unpredictable things happened. Their parents participated too, savoring the same kind of joy as the children did in the wild chaotic games. Then again, there was an underlying structure to it all that Frankie picked up on. While parents might participate in the wild games, there was always a watchful eye about them. Deflecting actions that might cause harm, or checking the time to make sure they were on schedule for some other activity, or even just counting down the minutes to when the kids had played enough and now it was time to eat. Frankie could see the chaos wrapped in the well defined constraints that the adults knew about, but the children did not. There was a significant amount of young lovers in the park as well. Frankie supposed the combination of the pleasant evening weather, the radiant smear of pinks, oranges, and golden light from the sunset, and a setting along the waterfront was nothing short of romantic. Half a dozen young couples strode past over the course of the few hours that Frankie was there, holding hands or gently nudging one another as they walked along the paths. Occasionally they would stop and look at the water, simply looking at the rippling, sparking view and grow closer. Rarely did they talk, which baffled Frankie. It was the perfect opportunity to carry on a conversation. The overtly romantic view and quiet setting was ideal for utilizing the time to carry on a conversation, and yet, almost every time, the couples would simply lean against the guard rail and look out at the water. Boats occasionally drifted past, or an evening kayaker out for a lazy cruise up the river, but the couples would remain silent. Just watching. It took Frankie’s processor core and analytical software components some time to sort out what was happening, and in the end she understood why, but didn’t fully understand the reasoning. The concept of simply ‘taking in the sights’ was the best she could reckon. The simple act of viewing something beautiful with someone you loved, the experience of doing something you both loved, with someone you loved, was in itself the experience they wanted. She would remain confused on why they weren’t spending their time chatting with one another while taking in the beauty around them. It would have been so much more efficient. A line of thinking formulated itself in her artificial mind as she contemplated this. A key component of human life might have simply been the joy of being inefficient. She was an android, and built to utilize every moment of her operation doing everything she could. Her power cell was a limited resource, unlike the human metabolism that could consume fat and muscle to keep a persona alive for a while. When Frankie’s power cell was depleted, she would be offline. Human’s had the option to simply take their time. Their own bodies would repair themselves and would grow and change and evolve. Frankie was a static thing, gathering data and growing intellectually, but her body was an object that could not change without the intervention of some external force. The complex array of emotional response programming inside of Frankie knew she should be more sad, but she was also encouraged. She wasn’t a human, she knew that much, though with as much information and analysis she had done, she was confident that she wasn’t entirely robotic either. She was somewhere in between, a more human robot, and a more robotic human. She was actually delighted that she was still learning new things about humanity with every passing day, and wanted to know more. She would have sat and watched people for the rest of the night, but as the hours slipped past her and the sun made its farewell below the horizon, the stream of people stemmed. What had once been a lively and bustling playground, was now an empty metal and plastic structure. The waterfront was now an inky black mass, unlit by either the sun or the moon. The air was growing cool and the sounds of nighttime insects had risen up around her. She sighed softly, puffing hot air from her processors out her nostrils and pushing her palms into her knees. She shoved herself to her feet and began strolling back towards the hotel. It was a simple walk, and her navigational systems plotted a course, then replotted a new route that took a few shortcuts that were only reachable on foot. Frankie set out, completely unaware of a pair of eyes watching her movements. They had been for the last hour or so. Making small notes as Frankie moved or adjusted her posture. Once the robotic woman was on her feet, there was a flurry of action from their hiding spot inside of a car parked on the street. A few things tossed into a satchel, then the engine turned over and began to slowly follow along in Frankie’s tracks. Sigourney was laughing harder than she had in ages. She quickly remembered how much she loved spending time with Nichole and how her time at EGG had somewhat robbed her of the free time to engage with her old friend. Work had taken up so much of her life, consuming it and turning her into something of a slave to it. She had projects to work on after all, and those projects needed completing. Frankie was one of those projects, and there were times that Sigourney was unsure of who was more robotic. Frankie was a literal android, but Sigourney was so singularly focused at that time that she admitted to no one that she herself felt like she was programmed merely to work on Frankie. Time spent with friends like this reminded her of what it was like to be a person. Carefree, slightly inebriated, and laughing at stories. She was completely unaware of her phone buzzing in her purse. It was a combination of the music in the bar, the outbursts of laughter, and her confidence in Frankie. The phone buzzed again. The alert along with it was a distress call from Frankie. It was the last process her systems were able to produce before they went fully offline. There should have been GPS locations and a full system status report attached to it as well, but they only showed as missing or corrupted. Not that Sigourney saw them, she was far too busy laughing. Strolling through the city at night was like walking into an ever darkening forest. The tall buildings were the first to cast their long and dark shadows across the roads and stretch them down alleyways. They created an ever continuous shade that concealed a great many things. Frankie was well equipped to detect any number of things around her. The optics installed inside her eye sockets were capable of amplifying the light around her, audio receptors in her skull picked up faint sounds. However, as the city transitioned from the daylight into the night life, the sounds were strange and new. Frankie was so accustomed to the rural lifestyle, where the loudest sounds in the night air were crickets and the occasional car rambling through her neighborhood. The constant stream of cars, voices, sounds, and ambiance all capped by the electric buzz of so much neon lighting was a little overwhelming to Frankie. The sounds, like the shadows, seemed to interconnect and lay on top of one another to create a thick blanket of sounds. She heard all of them, though none were distinct enough to identify. Movement and motion blurred as well. Even in some of the quieter streets, there were swaying trees that were stirred by the wind channels created by soaring buildings. People move all around her, not just in front of her but in the apartments on either side and many stories above. People moving along from point to point in a casual rush, hurrying to get home or get away from it. So when Frankie’s navigation systems bid her turn off of the main street, down a shaded side street between buildings, she was happy to regain some of her processing power back and let her data collection systems have a small break. Though as she walked along she was unaware that the same pair of eyes that had been watching her in the park were now out of their car and strolling along the streets behind her. Hands thrust into deep pockets as the figure casually turned the corner to follow the younger android. The button on the makeshift device in the pocket was silent and then quickly tossed. Frankie noticed it as soon as it clattered across the cement below her feet. She looked at it, her operating system attempting to identify it. The whole thing was about the side of a softball, though it was only an array of circuits, fine wires, and components all wrapped together in a casing of electrical tape. There was no countdown, flashing light, or ever decreasing beep to let Frankie know that the pulse bomb at her feet was about to detonate, it just did. The hefty pulse of electricity it put out blew Frankie backwards against the brick wall that made up one of the buildings she had been walking between. She hit the wall and slumped to the ground in a heap. Her eyes remained open, locked in a shocked expression. Her automated distress signal had engaged as screaming electricity tore through her systems. Her core was shielded well enough that the detonation wouldn’t destroy her or anything critical, but the overload to the ancillary systems was more than enough to take her offline. It was late into the night. Not quite closing time at the bar, but Sigourney and Nichole had had their fill and were nursing the slurry of melted ice and alcohol in their glasses. The conversation had reached a natural conclusion and the bill had been paid. Sigourney hugged her old friend and waved goodbye as she slipped into a taxi and then she was gone again. Sigourney let out a small sigh. The night had been fun but it was a lot of work to be that social all of a sudden. It had drained her, the alcohol, though minimal, made her feel sleepy and she was ready to get to the hotel and crash face first into her bed. She found her way to her car, settled down into place and pulled out her phone to navigate to the hotel. She was suddenly sober and awake as the alerts from Frankie showed in her recent alerts. Moreover they were from hours before, just as Sigourney was settling into conversation and fun with Nichole. More upsetting was the most recent alert. It was a simple text message from a number that Sigourney knew would be untraceable. It was one of those six digit numbers that came from an automated messaging system. “Your daughter needs to be reassembled. She is in your hotel suite. She needs you.” The message had been sent ten minutes prior, approximately when her and Nichole had been leaving the bar. Sigourney couldn’t remember ever driving as fast as she had that evening. Slamming in the address of the hotel into her GPS and letting her instincts and adrenaline carry her all the way to the parking garage and into the hotel suite. All of it seemed to be a blur to her, a time that seemed to last for ages and yet barely existed as it flew past. Time came snapping back to her as she swiped her entry card against the reader outside the suite, the half second it took to authorize the card felt like a small eternity, but then she was in. “Frankie!” She called dashing across the space to Frankie’s room. She found her daughter, though, not as she expected. Frankie was in pieces, sprawled out on her bed, though the parts of her that were there seemed almost immaculately arranged. Frankie’s hair piece had been detached from her skull casing, and it lay delicately beside her head.The hair itself was tucked in and laid out meticulously, as if whoever put it there had more than enough time to ensure every little detail was in place. Frankie’s face seemed serene. Her eyes were closed, mouth shut, and her face relaxed. She looked as if she might be asleep, that is if her head was connected to her body. As Sigourney stepped around the bed and took it all in she could see the clear plastic skull casing on the back of Frankie’s head. It looked undamaged and from what she could see, the complicated array of circuits, wiring, and components inside of Frankie’s head were all in place. Of course, that meant nothing to Sigourney, she knew she would need to check over every little thing. At the base of Frankie’s head, a tiny little stump of a neck protruded from the back of her detached head. There was a silvery chrome plated disk there. Nestled under a small amount of artificial flesh to hide it when it was connected to the rest of her body. Jutting from the core of the disk was a thick tube, firm, but not entirely inflexible. Inside, Sigoutney knew was a thick latex tube that made up Frankie’s esophagus, capped with a rubber gasket that would match up with a similar tube inside of the neck portion still attached to her body. There were gold plated alignment posts as well that would courier data from her CPU into her head and connectors for power to flow back and forth. Finally, the back of the connector joint housed the artificial spinal column. It looked similar in appearance to a human spine, made up of a number of clearly robotic vertebrae, though it was stuffed full of fiber optic cables and capped with a singular connector that would align with a matched piece inside of her body. Sigourney’s eyes traveled downward over Frankie’s naked body. Her chest plating had been removed as well. Two distinct panels with her pert breasts on them lay on either side of her torso, interposing a position between the torso and Frankie’s detached arms. The plated were laid perfectly in line with where they would normally attach, and concealed the amalgamation of cables and connectors on the underside. Inside of Frankie’s exposed torso, the majority of her most sensitive electronics were on display. Near the top of her chest cavity, a complicated arrangement of small circuit boards, larger components and a number of bundled cables tangled among the latex tubing that made up Frankie’s throat. All of it was crammed together in one place and all of it barely made room for other components. It may have been a bit messy, but to Sigourney, it was like looking at an old sketchbook. She saw the process and how efficient she had been with the placement of the pieces. Lower down into her torso the main power supply lay dormant. The multiple connectors that would feed power into Frankie’s body had all been disconnected from the matched component, and were delicately, almost lovingly placed next to the port they belonged to. It wouldn’t be difficult to reconnect them, and even as Sigourney peered into the open body of her daughter, she could see that there seemed to be an immense amount of care taken in how Frankie had been disassembled. Pins and connector ports were still perfectly in place, nothing seemed to be bent or broken. Sigourney’s eyes darted down to the lower abdomen, to the sexual module she had only recently installed there. The parts were still in place and looked to be connected properly, but it ended up being another part that Sigourney mentally added to a running checklist of things to ensure were working as expected. Other smaller components inside of Frankie’s opened torso seemed to be in place. Controller boards and secondary systems all in place and looking just as intact as the day Sigourney herself had installed them. She did start to notice something though. Small flakes of blue substance scattered around Frankie’s internals. Leaning into Frankie’s torso, Sigourney realized what they were. Part of Frankie’s assembly process had required a number of screws and other fasteners to hold components in place. To better facilitate that, there was a glue-like substance that had been applied to the hardware to keep it locked tightly in place. It had been strong, long lasting, and when hardened it turned a deep blue. Unscrewing those components would leave flakes and traces of that glue around Frankie’s chassis. One thing was becoming more clear. Frankie had not only had her limbs detached, likely examined and then laid out. She had been more thoroughly disassembled, including much of her internal components. Flashes of Frankie’s body laying on some rough looking workbench with every piece of her body taken out danced into Sigourney’s mind. A dark room, with nefarious looking masked men, their hands diving into Frankie’s body, tearing her apart and pawing over her most sensitive internal hardware. Sigourney shook her head, hoping to dislodge the thoughts, they lingered, but they were at least hiding in the back of her mind now. Frankie’s arms and legs were positioned near their matching joins as well. A similar chrome plated disk sunk into them. Each one sporting the same kind of alignment and connection posts that were prominently displayed in Frankie’s neck joint. Matching holes in her shoulder and hip would line up perfectly and pull her limbs into place and seal them. For now though they were detached. Her forearms were split open where a connection panel hid, and below it the array of ports were gleaming in the golden glow of the overhead lights. Her legs looked immaculate from the top of her toned looking thighs down to her perfectly crafted feet. There was no trace of dirt, debris, or detritus on the soles of her feet. In fact they looked almost as if they had been scrubbed clean. Once she noticed that she checked the artificial toenails and fingernails for any sign of dirt, and found nothing. The skin, too, had been washed. Sigourney could only assume it was to remove any trace of evidence that might point to whoever did this. Her daughter was completely disassembled and on display for Sigourney to see. Though she seemed perfectly intact, and if it was a simple matter of putting Frankie back together again, then Sigourney could have that finished in less than an hour. That wasn’t the case, though. There was a lot going on here. There were whole circuits and components that needed to be reconnected and verified, before that though those same systems needed to be tested and validated. The lingering question was her programming and software integrity as well. There was a very real chance that while Frankie had been disassembled, something more precious might have been lost. Her personality core was exposed, there was a data port on it, and Sigourney couldn’t be sure that there hadn’t been some other kind of modification to the software. Between worrying about the core operating system and the layers of programming that were settled on top of it to help Frankie operate optimally, there was a load of work to do. Not to mention that there was a threat of some kind of spyware or other malicious code laying dormant inside of Frankie, something that might pass an initial inspection, but would activate at the most inopportune time. Sigourney didn’t dare linger in the room too much longer. She slipped out and closed the door before pulling out her phone and tapping away on it. Simone had been settled into bed for nearly two hours before her cell phone began to ring. She had it linked to her own operating system and was configured to be alerted as soon as the phone went off, even if she was in sleep mode. There was a wake packet that was sent wirelessly to her OS and brought her immediately back online, even before the sound of the phone filled the room. She also saw who was calling in her field of vision, and at such a late hour she was already worried. “Mrs. Gaines? What’s wrong?” “I need you here. Something happened to Frankie. Someone…someone got to her and…” Sigourney’s voice caught in her throat, there was a sob forming there but she was doing everything in her power to suppress it. “..and they took her apart.” “What!?” “I’m booking you a plane ticket out here. I.. I need you to come out here and help me.” Simone was stunned, a difficult feat for a highly engineered android. “Yeah, of course, I’ll get a lift to the airport.” “I’m texting you a list of tools from my home workshop, toss those in a bag and just check them, I think we’re going to need them.” The next few hours were a flurry of activity. Simone’s power cell wasn’t quite full, but it wasn’t dangerously close to empty either. She would err on the side of caution though and keep herself in a lower power mode while she took a taxi to the airport and again on the flight out. Sigourney had arranged the flight quickly and Simone had no real need to pack anything that Frankie and Sigourney wouldn’t already have. Reluctantly, Sigourney left Frankie in the hotel room after talking with Simone. She needed to talk to hotel management and see if there was a record of someone else entering her room while she was away as well as request an additional day of stay in the room. While courteous, the staff were only able to verify that the only people who had come or gone from her room were herself and Frankie. Or at least the keycards the two of them had. Sigourney pressed her lips into a hard, upset line. Of course if they had been meticulous enough to disassemble Frankie like that, they would have easily swiped her keycard. Sigourney huffed and returned to the parking garage, she had a trip to the airport to make. Picking up Simone was less of a hassle than she had thought. The worst of it was waiting at the turn style to pick up the checked luggage. While Simone might have pulled it from the conveyor belt, it was Sigourney who lugged it along, insisting that it was her tools so she should be the one to carry it. The tools, spare electronics, additional laptop, and a hefty bag of cables rattled snuggly into place inside the bag, clanking only a little, and Sigourney knew for sure that the TSA had pulled it apart and checked it, but there was nothing nefarious there. Simone wasn’t quite sure if the car ride back to the hotel was so silent because Sigourney was scared, furious, or indecisive about which emotion she felt more. Still, Simone wanted to ask a number of questions, though she knew they would surely be answered once they were in the hotel, her artificial mind was still practically buzzing with questions. As expected, once they were inside of the hotel room Sigourney dragged the heavy suitcase towards one of the rooms, the one with the door closed, and stormed inside. Simone followed her, staying quiet and doing what she did best. She took in the scene, looked at all the details that someone else normally wouldn’t, and let her sophisticated software pick up on every little hint in the room. The half empty coffee mug was still on the side table next to a chair, the way things were arranged, and as she stepped into the room, the way her friend and lover was laid out on the bed. Frankie was, as Sigourney had explained, disassembled. That didn’t quite do justice to what Simone saw though. She wasn’t just taken apart, she had been, for lack of a better word, dissected. Every possible part or component that could have been removed, had been. The presence of flaked off adhesives was evidence enough of that, but more than that she could tell that parts of Frankie had been extracted, examined, and then replaced. Simone, perhaps just as much as Sigourney, had seen Frankie’s internal structure on display. She had gazed at it, memorized it, fantasized about it. The robotic structure inside of Frankie was every bit as elegant as it was erotic to Simone. Seeing her like this was like stepping into your office and noticing all the things out of place. While some office executive might notice that his favorite fountain pen was turned the wrong way next to his notepad, Simone could see wiring that was a millimeter away from where it should be. There were components that, while secured, were turned slightly, or wires tucked under a place they shouldn’t have been otherwise. Whoever did this to Frankie had been good, but not as thorough as they could have been. Still, she swore, attempting to keep it under her breath but there was just something in her operating system that made her mutter it loud enough for Sigourney to hear. She nodded and confirmed the same sentiment as she stooped down and began pulling tools and parts from the luggage. ‘We need to check every part of her for some kind of tampering. I can do the physical part, but you can go through her coe and verify it a thousand times faster than I can.” Simone nodded. “Safe to assume you want me to extract the storage and processor cores and power them from my own chassis.” Sigourney nodded. “Keep her isolated, don’t open a two way channel. Just verify her bits and make sure there is nothing new.” Simone only nodded and Sigourney set out a hefty tool set on the bed, easily within reach of both of them. Simone wasted no time and plucked the tools she needed from the case and dug into Frankie’s open torso. The processor core was easily detached from most of the systems connected to it. The circuitry that would interpret data, both incoming and outgoing. The cables were clipped into place with simple plastic clips like you would find in any other computer or piece of electronics. Unscrewing the nearly two dozen fans and mounting bolts was more of a chore, particularly because many of those fans and cooling devices would need to come out with the core. It would have been so much easier to just scan through Frankie’s OS and data storage, time consuming, but easy. Something like this, though, would require checks to everything. The base layer of her operation, including many of the hard coded instructions that would reside in her processors. Simone spent a good quarter hour extracting Frankie’s storage media bank and the processor core. Both components were encased in shock and static proof containers, and for good reason. Luckily they were adjacent to one another inside of Frankie’s chest and came out with little fuss, partially because they had clearly been extracted in the recent past. While she worked Sigourney herself was doing much of the same process. She had picked up Frankie’s arm and prised open one of the panels on it and was meticulously inspecting the internal mechanisms. Manually moving each finger and watching to make sure the matching mechanisms moved and operated as expected would be time consuming. There would be no sleep tonight. Once Simone had the parts she needed in hand it was her turn to get to work. The most efficient way to sweep through Frankie’s software and ensure nothing had changed in the given time slot, was simply to plug in the processors and the drives to her own system and let her own super powerful operating system grind through the task. Simone’s eyes darted to the disassembled and opened Frankie and couldn’t help but feel a small erotic pang impact her systems below the layers of worry and concern. Frankie was a gorgeous android, Simone was too, but Simone’s appreciation for Frankei was more than just carnal. The sex was amazing, but there were things that only a robot could do. Things Simone had recently learned with her encounter with Kenna, and more over things she had been trying while Frankie and Sigourney were away. Simone had wanted to try them all with Frankie once the duo returned home, and now, seeing her opened up and parted out, it was hard to focus on those things. She settled for storing those processes away for later, when there was time. Simone yanked off her shirt and soon her bra. The movement caught Sigourney’s eye and her gaze lingered over Simone’s topless body, perhaps, longer than was appropriate. Simone paid no mind to it, she liked being looked at. The pert rounded breasts on her chest were enticing enough and she admitted to herself that Simone was equally attractive to her. Another set of sensual thoughts were truncated and stored for later. Simone wanted to sigh at that, but couldn’t spare the processing power. She disabled her human emulation and snapped into a much more mechanical mindset. She was a machine, and now, she would act like it. She efficiently unbuttoned her shirt and slipped out of it before opening an access panel just to one side of her torso. The exposed data ports there were quickly filled by a number of cables connecting her to Frankie’s detached CPU and storage drives. She stared directly forward as the process began. Simone’s eyes didn't close for the next several hours. Late into the night, long past when the night life had ended and long past when the sun had set and the streetlights had flickered on. Even with the extended daylight from the summer months, it was deep into darkness. Simone’s own processors were constantly fluttering between ninety eight and fully maxed out on utilization as her own operating system pulled up chunks of Frankie’s programming and analyzed it. It would have been a much faster process if she had something like a master copy or a known good configuration of Frankie’s entire programming base, but as advanced as Simone was, there wasn’t room on her own storage drives for a whole second personality. Still, her CPU did its best to grind through the programming sets and database structures and deduce if anything had been changed in the last few hours. Once she had a listing of those changes she would have to pull each one out, and match it against a number of filters and social databases. Obviously there had been changes, Frankie was as close to a living being as an android could get while still being a machine. It was expected that she learn new things, add new entries into an ever growing database and store massive amounts of data that would later be compiled, compressed, and in some cases, discarded. Matching what had changed to what was an acceptable change was no small task either. She began with Frankie’s core OS and the programming that drove her robotic friends' processors. The very base code that would allow Frankie to boot up and start. The code there seemed fine, and only took a small amount of time, relatively, to crawl through. The base code was so similar to Simone’s that it was a quick process to compare bit to bit. Once she moved on to the operating system and auxiliary software, her own processors began to work hard. There was no direct comparison, so it was a matter of taking data and rolling it though a number of checks. Sigourney spent the time that Simone was sitting motionless and checking the software to inspect every part of Frankie that would be safe to remove and physically inspect. She was looking for anything that might indicate either that there had been some form of tampering, or worse yet change, to the hardware. From the hours she spent rolling each and every piece of machinery and circuit in her hands, she found absolutely nothing. From everything she could find it looked as if Frankie had been disabled, disassembled, examined and then meticulously laid out on the bed. Sigourney huffed, finishing her portion of the work before Simone. She settled down into a chair in the corner of the room and folded her hands just under her chest. Her eyes fell to Simone and her mind drifted off. She fondly recalled the last time Simone had been in her care, exposed electronics and skin. Sigourney’s eyes lingered on Simone’s chest, perfectly proportioned to her body. She knew it wasn’t the case, but for a few moments Sigourney imagined that Simone had been built for sensual desires rather than infiltration and societal blending. She sighed, and felt the crashing weight of the night's events descend on her mind. She found herself dozing off as images of electronics, exposed machines, and circuitry blended weirdly with soft skin, the feeling of breasts in her hands and the electric tingle of pleasure in her slit. She found herself starting awake in an instant. Her eyes darted from side to side and her head swiveled, taking in everything. Simone was standing there, currently only in her bra, smiling warmly and looming over Sigourney. Frankie, just beyond her, still in pieces, though the processor core and storage drives had been lovingly settled back inside of her torso. Simone’s hands were on Sigourney’s shoulder and she was shaking her awake, gently, but firmly. Once her eyes were opened and focused, Simone stood up fully. “Glad you got some sleep. I’m all done with Frankie.” She nodded her head towards the android behind her. Sigourney looked around, dazed a little and squinted at the first rays of sun outside of the blinds. Pressing her palms into her eyes and gently rubbing away the night of fitful sleep only caused her to yawn. She still felt a little twinge of desire between her legs, and as her senses came to her, she felt a familiar wetness too. “Nothing in Frankie seems to have changed. All the code blocks I was able to scan, which is basically all of them, looked to be perfectly intact.” Simone mentioned as she stepped away from Sigourney. “Well that’s encouraging.” Sigourney said through another yawn. “I suppose.” “Nothing on the hardware, I assume?” Simone asked. Sigourney only shook her head and looked down at her robotic daughter and sighed. “No record in her log files of what happened either. As far as Frankie’s systems are concerned, she was at the park, began walking back here, and then she’ll wake up in bed once we put her back together. No false memories, but no information either.” Pursing her lips, Sigourney resigned herself to having to solve that particular mystery in the future. For now she wanted Frankie back together. She and Simone set about reassembling the robotic girl on the bed. Each part was gently and lovingly reconnected and tenderly snapped into place. Simone didn’t bother putting a shirt back on, and Sigourney knew it. Her eyes continued to dart to Simone’s chest, and trailed along the rounded breasts that were attached to it. Her bra did little to hide the arousal as well. Simone’s nipples were clearly stiffening as she looked upon her friend and gently reassembled her. Sigourney had to wonder if they were both thinking the same things. Simone was much more covert about her gazes. They mostly fell across Frankie, particularly as they resealed her torso. The chest panels, capped with Frankie’s incredible breasts, drew much of Simone’s attention. The lustful programming that Simone had spent so much time suppressing was beginning to resurface, and both Frankie and Sigourney were the subject of her lustful thoughts. Frankie was eventually reassembled, looking perfectly human once again. Her naked form on the bed in front of both Sigourney and Simone. She looked as if she were simply sleeping peacefully and delightfully ignorant of what had just happened. Meanwhile Sigourney and Simone were bustling with emotions. A weird combination of excitement, desire, relief, and lust. All of it powerfully affecting both women, machine and organic alike. With a simple tap on the power button on the back of Frankie’s head she sprang to life again. Her eyes clicked open and the complex optics behind her artificial eyes took in the room. Her face, once serene, morphed into one of both concern and joy. “I am missing time. Several hours are unaccounted for.” Frankie said matter of factly. “Yeah, something happened to you and you went offline for a bit. That’s why Simone is here. She was helping me get you back up and running.” Simone heard the explanation, and knew it wasn’t entirely accurate. It was the truth, but it wasn’t the whole truth. Sigourney was Frankie’s mother and likely had a plan in place for how to best explain everything to Frankie, eventually, she hoped. In the meantime Simone decided to go along with the vague explanation. “Yep, I had a real fun time checking you out with your mom to make sure you weren’t entirely busted this time.” Simone said with a smile. “But it looks like you're all good to go.” Frankie pushed herself up to a sitting position, seemingly unashamed of her nudity. She seemed to accept the explanation and smirked at Simone. The two androids locked eyes for a moment and Simone had to suppress a bit of a giggle as she watched Frankie’s eyes drift down to her throat and then to her chest. She surely noticed how hard Simone’s nipples were and with the backlog of lustful programming running in her OS, Simone blushed lightly and let her programming take over. Simone’s hands were smoothly gliding behind her back and releasing the clasp on her bra and without prompting Frankie reached up and gingerly pulled the garment from Simone’s chest. In an instant Frankie leaned in and began to suckle on one of Simone’s pert and ready breasts. Simone let her head fall back and let out a long, lustful sigh before gazing towards Sigourney through half lidded eyes. The smirk on Simone’s face turned into a bite into her lower lip as she looked at the older woman. Another small moan slipped out of the audio processors in Simone’s throat and nodded once to Sigourney. That was all the invitation Sigourney needed. Shedding her top and bra as quickly as her tired fingers would allow, Sigourney felt that familiar wetness between her legs as she lifted her knee to the bed and slipped into place next to Frankie. Soon Simone had two gorgeous women licking and sucking on her nipples. Simone’s rising arousal was audible now. Her moaning turned from soft lustful sighs into fully expressed lewd sounding moans and groans. Her hips, seemingly without her bidding, began to gently roll and thrust forward. One of the two girls on the bed in front of her seemed to notice, because within only a moment or two, she felt a hand beginning to work the button and zipper on her jeans. Simone’s robotic systems were burning with desire now, and through it all, she managed to find a dangling thread of thoughts she had been saving. There were things she wanted to do with Frankie, things only a robot of their caliber could do. Sigourney was here though, and why shouldn’t she experience those things as well. She didn’t recall formulating the command to execute these thoughts, but as she felt her hands rise to the side of her head, she knew that they had begun. She could have stopped them, she could have force quit the running strings of code in her operating system. But why? With a soft click, her software disengaged the locking mechanisms inside of her neck and a moment later the gentle hiss of the seal being broken would have been audible if not for the wet suckling and moaning filling the room. Her head then lifted up and off of her neck, leaving a blank silvery disk there, not so dissimilar to the one in Frankie’s neck. A similar array of mounting posts, studded with gold plated connection points and a bit of her own artificial spine jutting up. In an instant her short range wireless connection linked up her core processors to the secondary set inside of her detached head. Her face sprang back to life and she offered her head out to Sigourney, whose eyes had been closed as she sucked eagerly on Simone’s breast. As she sensed something nearing her she opened her eyes and practically squealed. Her hands left Simone’s pants, unbuttoned and unzipped, but still on her hips in favor of taking her robotic cranium. Sigourney was no fool, and filled with lust she quickly figured out what was happening. She needed to prepare herself first though. She gently placed Simone’s head on the bed and then slipped off of it, only long enough to undo her own bottoms and kick them away from her and then return to the bed. A quick glance let her know that Frankie had taken up what she started, wiggling Simone’s jeans down her legs and letting them fall off of those long shapely thighs. A new surge of desire coursed through the older woman as she saw Simone’s perfectly crafted pussy on display. It wasn’t her concern though. She picked up the still smiling head that belonged to Simone, and met her eyes. They smiled, giggled at one another and then Simone found her lips pressed into Sigourney’s. The pair kissed with immediate passion that only deepened into muffled moans and gently squeals of delight. But those kisses could only last for so long. The wetness between Sigourney’s legs needed to be quenched and Simone was the one to do it, or at least her head would be. The small whimper of disappointment Simone made when Sigourney pulled her head away from their lips was only a momentary sound. A moment later it was replaced with soft moans and the muffled sound of Simone eating out Sigourney’s womanly folds. Simone’s head was held firmly in place by both of Sigourney's hands. She pressed Simone’s mouth directly into her slit and let the android girl do whatever her programming demanded. The sensation of the artificial tongue penetrating deep inside of her wetness was one of sheer and unbridled pleasure. Sigourney knew she was clenching her fingers in Simone’s beautiful blond hair, but she also knew the robot couldn’t feel pain, and so she balled up her fingers. She held the robotic head in place and simply let her head fall back, her eyes closed and mouth open. The lustful sounds of pleasure rolled out without any thoughts in Sigourney’s mind. There was only pleasure. Frankie had managed to remove Simone’s jeans and was toying with her friend’s clit at the moment. Two fingers swirled gently round and round while Simone’s headless form now fondled her own tits with eager and ravenous movements. Frankie gradually pressed her fingers deeper and deeper inside of Simone’s slit and heard the response from Simone’s head as it was buried deep in her mothers crotch. Still her hips rolled and sways and jockeyed for more and more of Frankie inside of her. Simone was still operating as expected, and knew that a little sex and a disconnected head wasn’t going to do her in. For now though, she wanted to pleasure Sigourney, and not just like a person could, like only an android could. Simone’s body fumbled for a moment as she lowered her hands to Frankie’s head, her slender fingers finding their way to the manual releases on Frankie’s neck. Small buttons just below the surface of the skin that released the latches there. With a firm push inward the locks detached and Frankie let out a somewhat strangled moan as Simone lifted her head off of her neck for the second time today. Now headless, Frankie found operating a little more difficult, though she could still see, it was disorienting. She quickly shoved those lines of processing out of the way as Simone brought her head up to one of the breasts on display and Frankie once again sucked hard on the nipples presented to her. Though the pleasures there were short lived. Instead she moved Frankie’s head to Sigourney’s bare and ample chest. Frankie had barely stopped the small series of commands that caused her to suckle on Simone’s nipples when she had to restart it, this time to delight and pleasure her own mothers chest. Sigourney took the hint and released one of her hands from Simone’s head in between her legs and brought it up to hold her daughter’s head against her breast. Frankie moaned against her mothers skin and sucked hard on the pert nipples she found there. Frankie and Simone’s headless robotic bodies were left to their own devices now. The internal chat application they had installed made coordination a little easier between the two of them, though it took up a small but valuable amount of processing power. Both deemed it necessary though. Simone and Frankie moved into position in sync with one another. Simone moved up towards Sigourney’s head and mounted the woman’s face. Simone’s synthetic pussy was already wet from Frankie’s fingers, but the anticipation of Sigourney’s organic tongue inside of her sent another jolt directly to her waiting sexual systems. A fresh supply of the artificial lubricants filled her cavity, just waiting for Sigourney to lap it up. The human woman drank deeply of the fembot’s eager sensual desires. Simone’s waiting slit was immediately invaded by Sigourney’s tongue. She flicked and lapped her tongue aggressively against the robot’s clit. The tongue was deep inside of her and the moaning from Simone’s head between Sigourney’s legs mirrored that pleasure. Both with a flurry of new moans and from a renewed drive to go deeply inside of the organic woman’s sex. Both were writhing and squirming in delight, and that was when Frankie sidled up to her mother, gently placing a hand on her knees and spreading her legs wide. She plucked Simone’s head from her mothers hands with no resistance. In return, Frankie slid her own headless body into position. Her legs spread just as wide and smoothly brought her hips into place. With only a small amount of realignment, Frankie’s young, wet, and eager sexual module was pressed firmly against her mothers. Organic and synthetic coming together into one wet, sensual connection. There was no need to speak aloud what came next. Frankie and Sigourney’s hips began to thrust and move against one another. The wet flaps of their slits enticed by one another and each pass brought a new wave of pleasure and desire. Sigourney moaned into Simone’s pussy while Frankie’s head, still sucking on her mothers tit, sighed softly and grumbled with lewd intentions. Sigourney wasn’t entirely sure how long she could hold back the rising climax that she felt. The building pressure that had coiled itself inside of her hips was ready to burst out, and she was inclined to let it. Tried though she might, she was unable to hold back the orgasm for long. She felt her breath catch in her throat for only a moment before a rolling moan vibrated from her throat and directly into Simone’s robotic clit. In kind, Simone detected an orgasm and she herself rolled her hips into Sigourney’s mouth and let the climax programming she had in place execute. Frankie was still building her first orgasm of the night and so when she felt her mother’s folds shaking and clenching, she continued her thrusting, though she slowed and pressed harder against her mother, letting the intensity of it become fully realized. Once she felt her mother’s legs stop quaking, she pulled back and let the organic woman have a moment. Similarly Simone dismounted and moved back a little, pawing along the edge of the bed until she found Frankie. She was certain that Frankie hadn’t yet reached a climactic finish, she would have heard the robots detached head moaning and squealing. So Simone began to pleasure her friend and lover. Her hands roamed over Frankie’s body as she mounted her. It wasn’t just pawing over her synthetic flesh though, Simone was looking for something. Sigourney regained a little bit of her senses and brought both of the robotic heads up to her own mouth kissing one, then the other, giggling and grinning the whole time. While they continued to kiss and flirt, Simone found what she needed. Pressing into Frankie’s flesh once again, just above her lover’s still wet pussy, another mechanical latch came undone. Frankie’s head let out a small gasp as the patch of flesh receded into her body and then retracted, revealing a perfect view of the more mechanical aspects of her artificial sex. Simone fumbled around for a moment, and Sigourney caught on to the play as she sat up. She set Frankie’s head down first and placed a hand on Simone’s shoulder, steadying her and stopping her from moving too much. With slightly wobbling hands, Sigourney aligned and then reconnected Simone’s head to her neck. In an instant the remote connection was severed in favor of the hard wires connection between her cranium and her body. Sigourney scooped up her daughter’s head and made a movement to reconnect it as well, but Simone smirked and shook her head, causing Sigourney to stop and look at her curiously. With the added boon of her sight once again, Simone had little trouble digging her slender fingers into the exposed panel on Frankie’s belly and unclasping the locking mechanism for her lover’s vaginal assembly. Frankie once again gasped as Simone pushed the whole device out between Frankie’s legs. She still squiremed as it was removed, but in an instant was connected remotely to it again. Simone brought it to her lips and stuck her tongue out, running the peachy folds of synthetic flesh over it. Once more, and then again, and again. Each time Frankie would let her eyes slip closed and moan softly from her disconnected head module. Then it was passed to Sigourney, who likewise held it to her mouth and penetrated it deeply. Her tongue explored the inside of her own daughter's detached canal and tasted her sweet juices. Frankie moaned more and more, filling the space with the lewd sounds of pleasure once again. A small bussing was barely heard as a similar panel in Simone’s belly opened and inside was a similar, but different sexual module. Hers had the added bonus of having a few additional components connected to it. In particular a data port for programming and modifying the subsystems coding. With only a little bit of custom code that Simone herself had written, that same port could be used to send data as well. She fished out the connector cable from inside of her body and held out her hand for Frankie’s detached pussy. Frankie’s eyes swiveled in their mechanical sockets, watching as her feminine parts were passed first from lover to mother and then back again. Then she watched as Simone brought the device to her lips again, kissed it once and plugged herself directly into Frankie’s sexual module. Her body writhed for a moment, her back arching and Frankie’s mouth hung open as a long, low sound issued forth. Filled with deep, husky tones and dripping with lust. The flash of data from Simone’s sexual systems directly to Frankie’s was an all new experience. The raw surge of sensual data directly into her most intimate parts sent her teetering on the edge of orgasm, but Simone was in control now. She saw what the subsystem was loading, moreover, she canceled it. Frankie whimpered and Sigourney could only guess what had just happened, though it changed nothing. She once again picked up Frankie’s head and settled into place next to her headless daughter’s body. She cradled the cranium unit in her lap and Simone brought Frankie’s own clit to her friend's mouth. Frankie suddenly realized what was happening, and what would happen. Frankie opened her mouth, eager to accept her own pussy into her lips. Once there she eagerly ate herself out, her tongue driving deep into her own folds and stimulating the walls inside of it. As she did so, Simone siphoned off the same pleasurable sensations and shared the raw sexual data input. Simone’s head fell back and let out a growl of primal desire even as Frankie did exactly the same. The small servo motors in the bottom of her head whirring and whining, attempting to move a neck joint that simply was not there. Simone’s was and the data input was shared. Both girls would do the same movements, the same motions, and experience the same lustful desires as one another. Simone felt her hips thrusting, her sexual settings attempting to gain some purchase on a mouth and tongue that was not there, all the while Frankie dined fully on her own slit, pleasuring herself and watching as Simone reacted. Likewise Simone found her own tongue gliding past her wet, artificial lips, eating and slurping on Frankie’s pussy as if it were there in front of her. Sigourney played her part too. She held Frankie’s head and pussy together, smiling and feeling the desires beginning to coil again inside of her hips. Her own body reacted just a little as well, seemingly involuntarily at times. SHe felt her hips thrust and a familiar twitch between her legs. Simone noticed too, and took a moment to nudge herself over to Sigourney, letting a hand glide in between the older woman’s legs and down to her already wet folds. The trio carried on for several more minutes, Simone’s tongue flicking and moving as a mirror to Frankie’s own tongue, buried deep inside of her synthetic slit. Simone was fingering Sigourney, and in return she awkwardly leaned in and kissed Simone. Her tongue danced against the seemingly disconnected movements of Simone’s tongue, but it still brought her an immense amount of pleasure. Simone and Frankie’s rising arousal and eventual climax rose and fell at the same time. Simone attempted to draw out Frankie’s pleasure by canceling her orgasm at least one more time, but her own willpower wavered. There was a mountain of raw sensual data that was accumulating inside of Simone and Frankie’s operating systems. Not simply because of the stimulation to their vaginal assembly, but because of the sheer robotic act of connecting to one another and accepting what equated to a double dose of pleasure. They were feeling the lustful compulsions of sex twice and if Simone didn’t allow an orgasm to execute there would be issues. She and Frankie rolled their hips hard at the same time, arched their backs in the same predetermined configuration and moaned at the same pitch, volume, and candor as their lover. They were truly one as they orgasmed. Sigourney was overwhelmed by just how erotic the whole situation was and she herself let out a soft moan as her clit clamped and squeezed the two fingers Simone had driven into her. The three were left panting and gasping for air. Frankie and Simone needed the fresh bursts of cool morning air to draw away the rising temperatures inside of their torso and wafting off of their processors, Sigourney from the sheer exertion of the movements. Sigourney’s legs felt weak and she slumped into bed, comfortably panting and letting the sweat on her naked body naturally cool her. Simone took a moment to let her CPU stabilize and then detached the cable connecting herself to Frankie’ sexual unit and then slid the device back into place between Frankie’s legs. With a gentle click, it was done and Frankie bid the panel cover closed again. Likewise Simone closed herself up and then plucked Frankie’s head from the bed and gently aligned it and locked it in place. Simone leaned in to Frankie, kissing her again. This time was sweet, comforting, and filled with love. The lust had been satiated for now. It was time to love on Frankie. Simone had been holding back some of the worry and emotion she had processed and now that things were calm, peaceful even, she let those stored feelings out. She scooted forward on the bed and hugged Frankie, holding her tightly and running her hands up and down the bare back of her robotic lover. Frankie did the same, wordlessly holding one another until Sigourney seemed to stir. They broke apart, and it was Frankie’s turn to lean in and kiss Simone sweetly. The three spent another hour or so getting dressed, cleaning up and packing. Sigourney had to make a few calls to the administration for the Brain Squad, explaining that Frankie had come down with something and they needed to make an emergency trip back home. There were questions about if she would make it to the next tournament date or not, and all Sigourney could offer was that they would certainly try, but this came first. With the tournament settled, the three made their way back to the airport where Simone boarded a plane and took the complicated array of parts and electronics with her. She promised to meet them back at home and Frankie and Sigourney returned to the car for a long road trip back home. Frankie remained quiet and thoughtful, sorting through the myriad of new data she had compiled from her observations in the park. She found it curious that they had not been compressed and compiled as part of her nightly shut down process, but she also knew that her mother had told her that there was something of a sudden crash. She was happy to sit quietly and process things. Sigourney on the other hand was not. There were so many questions to be answered and there were few leads on who, what, and why. Someone out there had abducted Frankie for an evening, taken her apart and then laid her out in her own hotel suite. What did that mean? Sigourney could only speculate, and she had a long road trip to do so. Chapter 5 She was young, just barely eighteen. Sitting at a desk in her house, with a scattering of electronics around her. Snipped bits of wires and the reek of solder and burnt silicone in the air. Her window was open, not to let in the cool summer breeze, but rather to let out the stench and toxic fumes from her work. Cynthia Mandal was hard at work tonight, as she was every night. Homework from school had been finished for hours if not days in advance, leaving her to her real passion. Robotics. It wasn’t simply that she enjoyed the fine craft of tweaking and programming a machine to do some menial task for her, though that was how her obsession started for certain. Rather she was interested in higher level robotics and artificial intelligence. She didn’t want to make a robot to scoop out the cat’s litter box or make her bed, she wanted to make a robot that would be something real. A friend and companion. Sitting on her bed, mere feet from her desk was another young woman, Sigourney Gaines. Both girls were seniors at the moment and on track to graduate with ease, resting comfortably at the top of their class. Sigourney had a thick laptop resting on top of her crossed legs, the heat from the cooling fans blasting hot air around her. Her fingers were moving across the keyboard in a wild dance, taking the lines of code Sigourney had formed in her head and committing them to digital formats. The occasional typo or slip of her fingers always drew a small wince as she corrected her mistakes, and compiled the code, only to go back and debug it when needed. The two worked tirelessly, late into the night. They had no worries about schooling or performance. With assignments thinning as the year came to a close and a commitment to get as far ahead of the curve as possible, they could stay up late into the night working on their project and never have to worry. “I think this update is ready for Beto.” Sigourney commented as her finger slapped into the enter key, starting a fresh compile of her code. Cynthia looked up from the thing on her desk. Her little robot. It hadn’t quite taken on any particular shape, not yet at least. “How long until it’s done compiling?” Cynthia asked. As she did her eyes flicked to the clock on her desk. Two in the morning. “Another hour at least.” Sigourney said with some disdain. A yawn punctuated Cynthia’s reply. “Might as well sleep then. We can finish up tomorrow morning.” Sigourney nodded and peeled herself off of Cynthia’s bed, taking the laptop with her. She set it on the desk, plugged in to the chunky power brick, and let the thing glow and compile. With that done, she stretched languidly and yawned, weary eyes scanning the room for the backpack she had dropped in the room when she had entered the room. Coming fresh from school to her friend's house on a Friday night meant that there was no real reason to go home. Her parents weren’t expecting her home that night, and since the following day was a Saturday, there was little concern. “Stay the night again?” Cynthia’s comment was less of a question or suggestion and more of a confirmation. Sigourney nodded and smirked, this wouldn’t be the first or likely the last night the two girls spent the evening together in a bed. With the lights out, the gentle glow of the laptop screen and the occasional flash of lights blinking on Beto cast the room into a warm glow. Sigourney was the first into bed, curling up on the mattress and snuggling up against the wall it was pressed against. Cynthia, on the other hand, was far too excited about the progress they had made to fall so easily into sleep. There was more to it than mere excitement though. Cynthia was never sure if she could, or even should, admit her crush on Sigourney. The two were passionate about the same subjects, got along well, and Cynthia admitted to no one but herself that her friend was more than a little attractive. As Sigourney’s soft snores flitted into her ears, she couldn’t help but sigh softly, wishing nothing more than to drape her arm over her friend and hold her tight. College came quickly, and left just as quickly to the pair. More than a few late nights were spent together, though Cynthia never mustered the courage to tell Sigourney how she felt. As time marched onward, she felt like she never would either. Sigourney and her lost contact with one another after college, and even though both adamantly pursued their love for robotics and advanced the field by leaps and bounds, it was individual efforts, and not as a pair as it had been in their highschool and college days. It had been some time since Cynthia had last spoken to Sigourney, ages it felt like. For Cynthia though, work carried on. She devoted more and more time to her own projects. Beto became her focus for a while, though it was still in its infancy. There were other projects she devoted much more of her time to. Her dream of a companionship robot was redoubled, though now that she was secluded, living an almost reclusive lifestyle, she added a condition to her creation. Companionship was an obvious baseline, but she wanted a lover. Someone, or rather something to satiate those primal needs she had so cowardly hidden from Sigourney. Someone to love her the way she always wanted to be. This evening was like every other evening for the last handful of years. Cynthia cradled a box of electronics, wires, parts, pieces, containers lined with anti-static materials and on top of it all, a small envelope. She had just picked up the sealed box from a P.O. box under a fake name she had been using for a long time. She knew exactly what was in both of the items. The box was a fresh shipment of parts from an organization she had joined. They had actually contacted her, showing interest in her robotics projects and offering up their deep pockets for funding the multitude of hardware she would need to accomplish it. Which led to the envelope. Inside was a sizable check, made out to her real name, and offering more than enough money for an extremely comfortable lifestyle. Money for robots. She could have claimed full ignorance on the project, but she wasn’t so scrupulous. A government organization that wanted her to develop androids for use as weapons might have seemed unforgivable to your average person, but to Cynthia, it was a means to an end. She was a good enough programmer and was confident she could keep control over the androids she made. She had wanted Sigourney to be there with her, but knew that her friend was far too much of a goody-two-shoes for that kind of work, even if her programming skills outshined Cynthia’s. The envelope was tossed onto the kitchen table, she could deposit it later, for now she had work to do. The steady trickle of combat androids, blocky and dumb according to Cynthia, allowed her a steady amount of money to funnel into her real project. Her own personal android companion, friend, and lover. Serene had started as an synthetic intellect that ran on a cluster of servers that Cynthia had set up in a closet in her home. Serene was little more than a chat bot to start with, and Cynthia had to make her peace with that until she could assemble the right parts, and those cost money. Lots of money. Though, with the box of parts she was now setting on the workbench in her makeshift workshop marked the start of the process. She had amassed what she needed to give Serene a real body, or at least the start to it. There was a daunting task in front of her though. Once the body was in some kind of working condition there was programming, refining the code, and polishing it to make Serene her perfect companion. Dozens of backups and copies of the work Sigourney had done earlier in their friendship and over the course of college would help though, half the work had already been done, there was just a small amount of updates to be made. Those updates could come later, code was what controlled the body, and if the body didn’t yet exist, then what was the point? So it was that Serene would continue to exist as merely a sophisticated chatbot on a server for a little while longer. In the meantime, Cynthia got to work pulling open the box, and inside found a number of components all wrapped in their own anti-static bags, some even had another inside of that. Cynthia was nothing if not methodical in her methods. She had spent the majority of her life putting hardware together, and she would not hesitate to take all the extra time needed to make sure Serene was perfect. Her workbench was clear, and ready and soon it began to fill with parts. The basic framework came first. A solid core of mostly lightweight metal alloys and plastics made up the core of Serene’s construction. It could be loosely called a skeletal structure, but it was both more and less than that. In the most vague terms there were components that resembled the legs, arms, hips and torso, though they were only vaguely shaped like a human would be. The hip module still sported a telltale bowl shape, but it was open on the front, allowing for internal circuitry to be accessed by the control panel that Cynthia planned on installing there. Studding the edges of it were small hooks and pre-drilled holes for screws to be threaded into place. The perfect set up for mounting various circuit boards and accompanying cabling. The legs were distinctly shaped to look more like fully assembled human legs, rather than simply a core of bones. A flesh and blood person would have enjoyed a core of bone with thick bands of muscles firmly attached to it and then coated in skin. Serene was not a flesh and blood human though, she was to be a perfect machine. So, while there were certainly core components to give the overall framework some structure, that was not simply the end of it. Her legs sported a lightweight, but strong, central beam of a titanium alloy. It would be strong enough to support the relatively human-like weight of the completed android while still being light enough to move with the small motor arrays that were to be installed in the hips and knees. Jutting from the titanium core were plastic spokes that attached to a shell of clear plastic around the leg. They were vaguely shaped like a human woman’s legs, though smaller and allowing for a future layer of synthetic flesh to be attached. Cynthia laid out the hip assembly to start with and settled the two upper thighs in place, not yet connecting them, but placing them near where their new home would be. The knee assembly was to be its own self contained unit, and more than that would almost be a free floating assembly. Connected to wiring and power and a few flexible mounting points, but little else. Below that, the calves. Even judging by the rudimentary framework and shell casing, it would be clear that Serene would be a toned and beautiful woman with incredible legs. The foot itself was a whole other project, one that Cynthia didn’t currently have the parts for. The sheer volume of moving parts and intricate electronics that would go into the feet was a separate project in and of itself. Once the framework for the legs was in place, Cythia took a small break for herself, admiring the lower body of what would be her future companion. No, she decided in that moment, not just a companion. Serene would be her wife, wholly devoted to her creator and walking alongside her in all her endeavors. The upper body came together similarly to the legs and hips. Cynthia fitted a segmented spine made of the same titanium that the core of the legs was made from. Strong and light, it gleamed in the light of the fluorescent overhead lights as it was nudged into place on the table. There was a waiting opening in Serene’s hip to attach the artificial spine to, but first Cynthia had to thread the mass of fiber optic cabling into it and tuck it away. Once more of the electronics and components were installed in Serene’s hips, those same cables wouldn’t need to be tucked away on a hook, but for now, they were secured to the frame and waited. The spine itself was gently curved and was, perhaps, the most human-like piece of internal framework that Serene would have. The segmented piece sported gel packed casings between each of the metal vertebra and a significant amount of sturdy positioning rods between each segment. All of which added both flexibility and strength to it. As it lay on the table, there was an array of fiber optic cables that protruded from the segments, splaying out on the table in some kind of digital halo around it. Like the bundle of cables tucked away in her hips, these fine cables would eventually be connected to components and tucked away inside of her robotic torso. Cynthia moved from her small makeshift lab to the closet in the hall. The server rack was there, humming delightfully in darkness, hosting the Serene personality. It waited, silent as always, until it was needed by Cynthia. Stored in the clean and cool space was a large plastic wrapped component. It wasn’t heavy by any means, it was purely made of plastic in fact and weighed only a few pounds. Cynthia only struggled with it because of the awkward shape of it. The chest cavity was its own module. It was a number of parts that all connected together into one large piece, joining at the sternum. There were realistic enough ridges along it that would appear like ribs if the skin was stretched against them, but in reality they weren’t an array of singular ribs. Rather it was a solid curved panel with ridges protruding from it to give the appearance of bones. The back of the cage was open and had a number of metallic rods jutting from it, all of which aligned perfectly with matching ports on the upper spine. Cynthis wrestled the thing onto the table and set about nudging and wiggling it into place. First attaching one side of the rib cage to the spine, a process that took far longer than she wanted. As the night was dragging on, she continued to glance at the clock mounted to her wall. One side of the rib cage was connected and it was fast approaching midnight. Cynthia sighed. It was only sleep. In the next hour she had attached both sides of the artificial rib cage to the Serene unit and had settled into place on a stool next to her workbench. Attaching the framework was only one part of her objective tonight, she needed to get the wiring in place as well. Each time she started losing motivation to do the wiring, her eyes would dart to the box of parts that had just been delivered today. Without the wiring in place and ready nothing else could be installed. So her weary fingers and tired eyes returned to their work. Three in the morning rolled around, just as she was tucking the last of the wiring behind a small hook on the underside of the segmented rib cage. Each bundle of cables was in place, labeled and ready. The connectors dangling inside of the armless torso, just waiting for them to be connected to a circuit board. Another sigh slipped out of Cynthia’s lips. She wished she was a relentless robot and could continue working on her perfect creation through the night. Idle images of a power cable plugged into her back as she merrily spun around the table, efficiently connecting cables to circuitry. That idea would have to live as fantasy for the time being, maybe in the future as technology marched forward she would consider something like a human robot hybrid. Something to augment her already effective process. For now though, she was a human, and had human needs, like sleep. She reluctantly abandoned the lab and moved to her bedroom. She shed her top as she moved along, tossing her blouse onto the floor and her bra and pants joining it not long after. She crawled into bed, her mostly bare skin tingling with warmth as her blankets were pulled tight around her. Robotic pieces and their future home inside of Serene danced before her eyes as she slipped off into sleep. By noon the next day, Cynthia had laid out the arms on the table, ready to be connected to the framework. Like her legs, Serene’s arms were more of a shapely frame and shell than just bones for components to be attached to. First, though, there needed to be something to attach them to. Like the legs, there needed to be some kind of joint cuff for them to link into. Something to help Serene remain both modular but efficient. Those joints were in the box, sitting quietly to the side of the workbench. Cynthia took genuine pleasure in connecting those parts to the robotic chassis before her. The shoulder joints were smaller and so they were installed first. Slipping into place and then locking to the rib cage panelling with thich bolts to keep them in place. The motor array idly waiting just behind the joint work and waiting for Cynthia’s expert hands to connect the data lines to it. A task that forced Cynthia to run her arms up into Serene’s mostly empty torso and work blindly to connect. It was an easy enough task for her though, she had done it dozens of times before, but never for a robot that would ultimately belong to her. The joints on the hips were vastly easier. Connecting easily into the bowl of the hips and allowing Cynthia all the space and visibility that she needed to clip them into place and wire them into the growing network of cables. With the basic structure, sans the cranium, in place, it was time to make some actual progress on her robot. Power was going to be a limiting factor if Cynthia wanted to make any real progress. Anything she was about to install or connect would need a matching power connection, so it was the logical next step. Perhaps one of the heaviest components she would place inside Serene. The power cells were clustered together into a single, central unit. The cells themself weren’t heavy, but the shielding necessary to stop the electromagnetic interference from spreading through every additional system and circuit was. The whole thing was nestled inside of her near the center of her torso. Just above the hips, and just below the gentle curve of the rib cage. There were a number of mounting points it was attached to, most of them on the spars and mounting points on the rib cage, allowing it to move and flex with Serene’s body. From the top and bottom and occasionally the sides, sprawled a flurry of thick cables. The gentle white stenciling on the cable's shielding indicated the voltage it carried. Cynthia took great care in threading those cables through the body, ensuring that they were tucked away neatly and allowing for more cables and wiring to be placed alongside them. The vast majority of them were coiled and waiting inside of the chest cavity, with only a few dangling down to the lower reaches of her body, and even less up towards where the neck would eventually be. Satisfied with the configuration of the two more core elements, power and data flow, Cynthia was finally, at long last, ready to begin building out her robotic wife. At some point her stomach growled at her enough to make her realize how much care of herself she had neglected. She reluctantly took a small break to arrange some food for herself and once again sighed, adding another ‘pro’ to the checklist of why a human and machine hybrid would be more ideal. Still, there was work to do. The box she had ignored for the previous day contained most, but not all of the necessary circuitry and wiring she would need. There were certain fully assembled components that would be a little more of a challenge to arrange. Systems to allow Serene to eat and digest food, optional internal systems that would allow her to operate at or better than a human was capable of. Among other things… For now though, she had more than enough to get started. Circuitry appeared in her hands every time she returned to the box. None of them were grand motherboards or broad green circuits like the movies depicted. The largest of which was still only about half the size of her palm. With her auburn hair pulled back into a messy bun, Cynthia got to work. The process, at first, was somewhat slow going. Pluck a circuit board and the accompanying wiring from the box, set it on the work space and peer inside of Serene’s mostly empty torso. Once she found where it would go, she would reach in, attach it to some kind of support spoke or clamp and wire it in, then return to the box for another. The more she installed in Serene, the emptier the box became and the fuller the robotic woman’s torso became. As a result, Cynthia fell into a comfortable routine and began to move with almost mechanical efficiency. The parts were opened and placed in their new homes more rapidly, either from that effective flow state or simply because there were less and less incorrect places to put them as more and more circuitry filled the space. More installed parts made for less incorrect options. Late afternoon arrived and with it, the box of parts was empty, and Serene wasn’t done yet. Her torso and hips were filled with a tangled mess of wires and circuitry. Latex tubing draped over some parts, ready and waiting with no component to be connected to, not yet at least. Even in this incomplete stage, Cynthia smiled to herself at just how purely feminine and how perfectly robotic Serene was looking. She would be slender without looking malnourished. Healthy would be a word that many would throw around, but Cynthia knew better, there was no need for health here, just perfect craftsmanship. The legs and arms had been filled in with small, slim circuit boards to carry instructions and sensor data to her core processors. One of the few major components that wasn’t missing from Cynthia’s order were those very processors. An array of chip stuffed circuit boards that were all connected by high speed ribbon cables. They were nestled inside of Serene’s chest, protected behind the artificial rib cage and connected to the plastic casing that made those rib-like shapes. The arrangement could move and flex to a certain degree, but with the core’s spread out over multiple boards, each one independently wired into the greater network, there was little worry if some were detached from their companion boards. For now, Cynthia had to stop. She was simply out of hardware to install. Serene’s body would lay still until it was time to install more parts, after that, the process of growing the artificial flesh along her body. The sensor rich mesh was already laid along her body, ready to have the skin grown onto it and start sending data about her surroundings to her processors and operating system. She was ready to serve. Cynthia was loathed to keep her hands off of her future lover, but there was little else to do, so she turned her attention to the software that would run her creation. She had a baseline, the software that had been running her little Beto unit for years was a good start, and the significant amount of additional programming that Sigourney had unwittingly donated to the cause was easily added. The tricky part was that not only was the code she had from Sigourney old and written in a previous version of the current deployment of the language, but it was written for Beto, which was not yet a humanoid robot. There was a lot of tidying up to do. Some blocks of code only need to have new terms or methods put into place, while others, after a frustrating hour or two, would just be fully rewritten. Cynthia’s coding skills were effective, but not elegant. She would commonly just brute force some chunk of code to work with a specific purpose in mind, rather than adding flexibility to it. She would find herself commonly cursing herself, or maybe the universe at large, for not keeping in better touch with her old friend. The gentle tapping of keys filled the space around Cynthia as she worked, leaving the headless and exposed Serene robot behind her on the workbench. As she tapped away she chatted with the more rudimentary form of Serene. The chatbot expressed what small amount of emotional excitement that she could. It wasn’t genuine, not like it would be once the code base was updated and installed for broad use. As night sank comfortably into a seat around Cynthia she yawned, rubbing her eyes behind her glasses and pressed enter to start compiling her day’s work. As she walked past Serene’s chassis she let the tips of her fingers glide over the hard plastics and framework of what would soon be her wife. Another week would pass before Cynthia received another package, heavy and wrapped in anti-static materials. Cynthia knew what this was and it sent an immediate flash of boiling heat surging through her. It coiled around her heart like a sleeping dragon, making it beat hard and squeezing hot coursing blood through her. This was everything else she needed. The digestive systems, the remaining wiring kits and missing components. A sexual module and the accompanying software and mounting rails. The cranium module that would top her creations neck and the chemical mixtures to spread over everything in order to begin the process of growing the artificial flesh across the body. Cynthia almost forgot that she wasn’t yet finished with the programming set. That realization crashed into her as she set the crate down on the computer desk and looked at the monitor. Her compiling had finished, but there were errors with it that needed to be corrected. Additionally, there were still more code blocks that needed work, and with the addition of some of the new hardware she just received she would need to write interface software and drivers to integrate with her custom operating system. There was still so much work. Undeterred by the ever growing to do list, Cynthia slit open the box and got to work. Taking parts out and placing them on the workbench where they would be within easy reach for another marathon day of work. Wiring started her work. There were proprietary cables that were required to carry data from some of the components into their matched controller boards. With those in place, the digestive system was the last to be added to her torso. A flexible plastic casing that would be easily removed through the opening in her abdomen for cleaning if needed, but more likely simply to be removed in order to access other internal systems. Once locked into place Cynthia set about gently pushing Serene’s legs wide open. The muffled whine of the servo array in her hips the only sound she could hear over the rushing of excited blood in her ears. The sexual module was well worth the price Cynthia paid for it. It wasn’t yet something that was commercially available. She had invested a not inconsiderable amount of her personal funds to have an engineering company develop the parts and smaller components for it. The synthetic skin on the lips and opening were made by one of the top ranking sex doll companies and, again, were custom made specifically for Cynthia. All of it had come together perfectly though. The long silvery device had posts on the side that would align with the rails that Cynthia had just finished installing in the opening between Serene’s legs. The whole thing slipped into place with little to no resistance and once it reached the end of the rails, clicked gently into place with a barely audible click. Once done, Cynthia had to moisten her lips as her heavy breathing had long ago dried them out. Once in place though, she adjusted her position slightly and got to work connecting the myriad of wires and fine tubes to carry power, data, and most importantly, the artificial lubricants to the sexual module. The work was meticulous, but so was Cynthia. Once done, Cynthia wasted no time in scooting around the work table and to the top of the body. Serene’s head was resting there. Blond hair pulled back into a tight ponytail for now, eyes closed and a neutral expression on her robotic face. Without any knowledge of the rest of her assembly she looked like she could just be sleeping, if not for the bundle of cables dangling from a metallic cuff in her throat that were strapped together with a rubber band and resting neatly in an anti-static bag. Cynthia unwrapped those cables and began to attach them to the matching port on the portion of the neck that rested on the top of the shoulders. It was simple enough to do, but there would be more work once the skin grew over her body. Which was her next challenge. The artificial skin wasn’t biological, though it was grown onto the body. The chemical concoction was meant to replicate the feeling of natural human flesh, but in reality it was a combination of silicone and rubber with a laundry list of additional compounds. It would need to be constantly fed new material in order for it to expand over Serene’s chassis. Even then it would just be a single slab of contoured skin, there were still parts that needed to be cut free in order to allow for access panels to freely open and close. Cynthia was reminded of the old, but wildly popular, Chia pet’s from her childhood. She was gently spreading a disgusting smelling paste over the chassis and smoothing it out as evenly as she could before spritzing it with an equally revolting smelling nutrient solution. Despite the smell, the skin slowly expanded outward like some kind of flesh tones crawling goo. Every time it began to slow, Cynthia gave another generous spray from the bottle and the process started anew. At some point Cynthia left after one more hefty spray to retrieve a dust mask, or a spare shirt, or something to cover her nose and mouth to save her from the reek of chemicals. Still the progress was good and steady. Within two or three hours of spraying, waiting, gagging on occasion, and more spraying, the layer of skin had grown over Serene’s body. She was beginning to look more and more like a person now, though there was still more work to do. Precise sections of the skin needed to be cut away to allow for ease of access and disassembly, or god forbid, part replacement. With a layer of skin setting on Serene’s body, the stench of the chemicals quickly and steadily faded. While the last of the artificial skin firmed up, Cynthia returned to a closet to pull out a box of equipment she had received earlier, it was almost time to set the last few things into place. She set the box, long and almost as tall as the box the head had arrived in, on the floor and threw open a window. The fumes were starting to make her light headed. While she waited an hour or two for the room's stench to clear out she settled down on the couch in her downstairs living room with her laptop. The gentle hum of the cooling fan in her little computer kept her company as she tapped away on the keyboard. Her perfect lover might be approaching completion, but the software to make into a woman was far from concluded. SHe worked on the code blocks and linked programming sets until her eyes burned from strain. She pressed her palms into her eyes until spots popped into her darkened vision and even then she could swear she still saw the lines of code and the arrangement of commands. The sun had clearly begun setting, casting long shadows and bathing her downstairs in an orangy pink splash. It was calming and more than a little romantic, if only she had someone to spend time in it with. Soon enough, she told herself. First things first. She slapped her laptop closed and marched back up to the office she had been using as her personal robotics lab. Serene’s body lay there, the skin had settled into a delicate and light peachy tone. Smooth and from where Cynthia stood in the doorway, it looked perfectly normal. Of course it ended in a stump at her ankles and wrists, and out of sight, the neck as well. That was the first order of business. Opening those stumps to allow her to attach the prefabricated pieces. There was no shortage of surgical steel scalpels in Cynthia’s lab. She pulled open the hermetically sealed wrapper on one and settled down onto her stool once again. SHe aligned herself between Serene’s ankles and uncapped the razor sharp blade. The skin parted as easily as if it were human. It put up no resistance as Cynthia sliced away the skin from the bottom of the ankle, more than she needed most likely, but that was as intended. She placed a hand on Serene’s calf and lifted the leg to allow her to cut the underside of the skin away. As she did, Cynthia marveled at just how lifelike it felt. She knew it was just wrapped bundles of thick cables and wiring, but there was an unmistakable feeling there, it almost felt like corded muscles, even if it was just corded fibers. Within a few minutes Cynthia had cut away the opening for the feet, and kicked herself away from the workbench, gliding around the room on casters attached to her stool and stopped by the box. She pulled it open and took in the last few parts. A pair of perfectly sculpted feet, stored in an anti-static bag. Similarly a pair of fine feminine hands, and the last part. A full upper torso chest plate. It was designed to split in half and open outward. One side or the other could be detached, or if need be, the whole panel. Attached to it were a pair of breasts. Cynthia had had to guess at the size of them based on measurements she had worked up in a CAD program. Serene’s final chassis size was a little variable, but slightly too large or too small breasts were a small concern. They could, after all, be detached and swapped if they look wrong. Cythia scooped up the feet and pushed back to the workbench. There was a silvery connector disk set into the feet. A rubber gasket encircling it and shrouding some of the connection and alignment posts. They slipped into place and Cynthia heard the tell tale ping of a physical lock springing into place and locking the feet firmly against the robotic ankles. There was a half an inch or so of missing flesh just above them, but Cynthia was happy to reapply some of the skin growing solution there to fill in the gap. Similarly, Serene’s wrists were cut away, exposing the connecting port there. Cynthia learned her lesson and trimmed away less of the artificial skin. The hands, either from their smaller size or just some quirk of the alignment took a little more work to connect. Cynthia found herself wiggling the hand back and forth into the matching wrist connector until it finally locked into place. The other side slid in easier, but Cythia had underestimated how much skin to cut away and found herself holding Serene’s hand gently while using her other hand to gingerly slice away small strips of skin until it was just right. The final piece, for now, was the head. Cynthia needed to cut away some skin around the neck to expose the vastly more complicated neck joint and connect the head to it. Once done, she would have to take an equal measure of care to regrow the skin across the two parts. For now though, it was just a matter of gently cutting away skin without nicking any of the wiring or components inside of the throat. All in all, simply cutting away the skin around the neck took as long as cutting and connecting both the feet and hands combined, but the end result was well worth it. Serene’s head clicked into place with only a few wayward cuts out of place. There would be little skin that needed to be regrown there and Cynthia found herself being more than a little proud of that accomplishment. The night wasn’t quite done, not yet at least. Cynthia spread more of the paste-like skin base around the parts of Serene’s body that she had cut away too much skin, or left a somewhat jagged strike when she had been cutting. Then the reeking spray of the growing agent. THe room immediately stank of caustic chemicals once again and caused Cynthia to vacate, taking her laptop with her. The rest of the evening was spent in her bed, shear pajamas on, and her laptop clicking away on a pillow on her lap. She was so close to having her own personal robot, but this confounding programming would soon be the only thing standing in her way. Her hands flew across the keyboard until her fingertips were freezing cold and her knuckles hurt. She had long ago forgotten about the burning sensation behind her eyes that came with looking at a small screen with even smaller words on it in a darkening room. It was no wonder she needed glasses. She slept with her laptop next to her on the queen sized bed. It was compiling the latest batch of programming. It would be another week before the programming was ready to be loaded into the robotic woman that lay idle on Cynthia’s workbench. The programming was the last thing she needed to finish before she could bring Serene to life, or at least an imitation of life. On some level, Cynthia profoundly understood that Serene was only a machine. She started as a chatbot, and no matter how advanced her programming or state of the art her body was, she was always going to be an algorithm. The imitation would be polished and perfect though, and Cynthia could suspend her disbelief well enough. Serene would be real, even if, at her core, she was only a complicated computer network. Not that any of that would stop Cynthia from trying to make her as lifelike as possible. With the programming finally reaching a level that Cynthia was at least satisfied with, she began the process of pouring it into her android. It started simply with pushing her finger into the small hidden port cover in Serene’s temple. A metallic ping let her know she had undone the latch and as she released the pressure from her finger, a small rounded patch of flesh rose out of the woman’s head. Cynthia peeled it off and set it aside before clicking a data cable into place. Once done, dormant systems inside of Serene brought her gently online. The cooling systems inside of her whirled to life and soon her processor core and data storage matric were brought online, though little else was engaged. Not for lack of trying though, there simply wasn’t any programming in place to tell Serene’s operating system what to do with the vast array of available hardware. But that was why Cynthia was here, to fill those empty storage drives with Serene’s personality, driver databases and instructions on how to do everything from simply balancing and walking to complex conversations. The flow of data was almost immediate. Cynthia’s computer chimed to let her know a new device had been connected. She had staged the deployments of the software to trigger when Serene’s unique device ID was registered. A number of command windows, black background with glowing green text, appeared across her monitors. Each one running different commands and executing them. Most of them were simple, just a powerful recursive string of copy commands to move code blocks into the right directories across Serene’s operating system. A number of progress bars appeared alongside those terminal windows. Each one painfully slow in their crawl forward. There was an unimaginable amount of code and data being pushed into Serene, not to mention the entirety of the chatbot and its attached databases. The process would take ages and Cynthia visibly groaned. Every part of this process had been an exercise in ‘hurry up and wait’. Still, there was more work to do, and these things took time. She was only one woman after all. Still, her eyes fell to the breast plate on the floor, she would have to wait for Serene to be fully operational in order to install that. So, she waited. Spinning idly around on her stool, or pacing the floor. On occasion she would just simply sit and look at Serene. Mercifully, work called upon her as she was waiting, there was more work to do. Combat androids for the Weaponized Android Research Program needed tweaking in their programming and there were design modifications that were demanded of her. Cynthia had ideas on how to improve them, but they would require approval from higher operations staff. The conversation lasted several hours and it was almost enough to fully distract Cynthia from the robotic woman on the slab in her office. Almost. Every part of the minutiae of her job would be far easier if Cynthia were actually in a position of authority there. She hated the amount of red tape and bureaucracy that went into getting anything done. Pinching the bridge of her nose and wishing for something better, wishing that perhaps if she were in charge of this mess that things could be configured to run more smoothly. More efficiently… At the end of the call, there had been precious little progress, both in her work endeavors and in the amount of code pushed to Serene. It would take time, lots of time. At this rate she was looking at at least a week solid of nothing but transferring code to Serene. It was worth it, but Cynthia wasn’t getting any younger. Time crawled away and so too did Cynthia’s ability to wait politely. She found herself pacing, fidgeting and making a nuisance of herself to those who reported to her at the research agency. She always clung close to her office though, always kept an ear out for that chime to let her know that things were done. That Sereren was ready, and a week and a half after she had pressed enter, she heard it. Cynthia would never remember what she was doing when the computer told her that her android wife was ready, all that mattered was that it was finally time. She swiftly disconnected the data cable once her computer verified that all data had been successfully moved with no errors. She gently placed the small patch of flesh over Serene’s temple and pushed it back into place and looked over her creation. The flat skin over the androids chest was all that remained to be done. The job was far too precise for Cynthia’s human hands to take care of, but now she had a working android. That job would be hers. Gently lacing her fingers into Serene’s light blond hair and fumbling for the power button just below the skin on the back of her neck, Cynthia powered on her robot. Nothing happened for a moment, and then the eyes fluttered for a moment, and then opened. The crystal blue eyes looked at nothing as the subtle light behind them glowed bright and then settled back down into a more life like appearance. Then they moved, she was looking at Cynthia. Her operating system taking in the face, the subtle reflection of light off her cheeks and the glasses, then matching it to a, at the moment, small database. Finding a match the software pulled up a new set of data. How to react appropriately to the person in front of her. All of it in less than the span of Cynthia’s rapidly beating heart. The smile was wide and beautiful. “Hello Cynthia.” “Hello Serene.” The robot gently slipped off of the table and calibrated her balance programming and then stood tall before reaching out to Cynthia. They hugged, then kissed, then hugged again. “I appear to be missing some components.” Serene commented. “Yeah, I didn’t trust my hands to cut away the chest opening without damaging something inside. You’re a little more precise, so, I’ll let you do the honors.” With a simple nod, Serene waited while Cynthia retrieved a freshly opened surgical blade and handed it to Serene. There was no hesitation from the robot. She looked at the knife, calibrated its weight and position in her hands, then pulled up the schematics for her own construction and moved. The tip of the knife started just below Serene’s throat, right at the top of the sternum. There was no hesitation, the scalpel drove into the artificial skin and began to move. All the while Serene made the smallest of sawing motions to reduce the amount of resistance her skin would give as it was cut away. The sharp tip of the blade never once pierced deeply enough to damage anything, not even leaving a scratch on the rib cage plating her skin had grown on. She looked down at her body, calmly watching as more and more of her skin was sheared away. Eventually Cynthia stepped in and held the slab of skin up so that it wouldn’t obscure Serene’s view of her own torso. Not that she needed to, Serene wasn’t working on a concept of sight, rather it was all coordinates and positions. Her hands were at position X, Y, and Z and needed to move to a new position along a set path. Her operating system knew how to move, rather than watching where her hands were. The blade cut away a panel of flesh across her collar bone, down the side of her torso before gently sloping towards her naked crotch. Just above her sex, the motion changed, reversing course and performing a new curved cut. She had perfectly missed her sexual module and all attached mechanisms before beginning the cut that would slope back up to her side. Once there she cut along the other side of her torso, perfectly swapping hands to allow for a better, more smooth cut. Then it reached the top of her chest cavity and returned to her collar bone, slicing across it until it met the start of the incision. Cynthia easily pulled away the panel of false flesh, and as she did so Serene assisted her by taking the scalpel to the parts inside of her chest where the skin had adhered to her framework, gently skinning herself from the inside out. Eventually freeing the useless panel of flesh, and leaving Serene standing perfectly contented with her torso and internals exposed. Cynthia couldn;t help but marvel at the beauty of it. The subtle glow of electric life inside of Serene’s opened body. Small status lights indicating the artificial life inside of the machine she had made and the gentle, almost silent, hum of cooling systems as they pumped fresh liquid cooling fluids around to the hot processors inside of the woman shaped machine before her. There was a part of Cynthia’s mind that whined with jealous envy. To be so fortunate as to be a perfect machine. The prefabricated chest panel, and the accompanying connectors and cables came easily. Cynthia held it at an angle, the beautiful breasts hanging just enough to brush against her hands and arms as she held it in place. While it was yet unconnected, Serene worked quickly, taking bundles of wires from the reverse side of her own chest plate and connecting them to the matching ports on the myriad of circuitry inside of her toros. Each time some new sub-system was connected her operating system would recognize it and pull up the driver profile for it, making it ready to use. At some point Cynthia noticed the subtle blush on Serene’s cheeks and found that it coincided with the stiffening of the robotic nipples that tipped her breasts. Breathing too, it was a small thing, just a slightly increased draw for each breath of air for her cooling systems, but it was there. Serene was becoming more and more aroused. Not just from seeing herself as a partially assembled machine and the act of connecting part of her new body to her systems, but the raw stimulation of her chest that were clearly intended for sensual use. Soon though, she was done wiring herself together and Cynthia pushed the chest plate into place. The click of locks let her know it was done and Cynthia once again marveled at how perfect Serene’s process had been. There was a seam line around the chest panel, and it was visible if someone were looking for it, but it was faint. Serene then closed her eyes and exhaled deeply while engaging a series of pumps inside of her. They evacuated any lingering air and dust particles from inside of her chest cavity. In doing so, the skin reacted to the vacuum and sealed itself against the chest panel. “Perfect.” Cynthia muttered and Serene opened her eyes. She was perfect and whole now, a real woman. “You’re blushing.” Serene commented, before stepping up to Cynthia. The two had been chatting and talking to one another for years now. Serene started as a small, simple, but useful digital assistant and had done nothing but grow from there, both as a semi-sentient being and as a friend and eventual lover. As a result, Serene knew what Cynthia wanted, what she longed for, the things she would only tell an entity that was perfectly loyal and belonged to Cynthia. Robotic hands rose, finding just the right position to cradle Cynthia’s face. Gentle and caring, though a little cold, she lifted Cynthia’s gaze to her own. The android’s operating system had already started a cascade of other blocks of code, starting them and caching others for immediate use. The pair locked eyes and in an instant, locked lips. Serene was a good kisser, she had to be, Cynthia made sure of it. Her artificial mind had been flooded with Cynthia’s personal collection of videos and images. Hand selected and placed on a pedestal of desire. Serene would only ever know just what Cynthia wanted and how to give it to her. The rubberized tongue, controlled by an articulated core and moistened by a saline based saliva solution, invaded Cynthia’s mouth. Her lover almost didn’t know how to react, but her instincts did. Cynthia’s own tongue grappled with the robotic tongue in her mouth and the two danced in wild, lustful fervor. Hands, biological and robotic alike, rose to meet each other’s body. Cynthia had the advantage here. Serene wasn’t dressed and Cynthia’s hands used her as a playground while the robot efficiently removed any barriers Cynthia’s clothes may have offered. The buttons on her shirt slowly revealing breasts caged behind a simple white bra. Chest rising and falling as she breathed through her nose, and every breath out was laced with a lustful moan. There was so very little time in between that first moment, that first meeting of their lips, and when the pair was entangled in one anothers embrace. It was more than a simple moment, but less than any common measure of time. A handful of minutes, maybe, but that was all. Cynthia was naked and laying on the very workbench her creation had just been confined to for upwards of a month. Serene,had spent more than enough time there, she was delighted to spend her time between Cynthia’s legs. The robotic woman’s hands were on Cynthia’s thighs, holding them apart, even as Cynthia herself tried to press her thighs together in ecstasy. Serene’s tongue worked Cynthia’s wet sex with the kind of precision and unwavering determination that only a synthetic being could have. Every movement was a perfect movement, starting and stopping with uncanny efficiency. All of it was an amalgamation of all the data Cynthia had fed into Serene’s artificial mind, letting the machine learning determine the best way to execute the lustful procession. Oh the sounds Cynthia made as Serene pleasured her. A tongue flicking over her clit while two fingers drove in and out of her. Building climaxes crested into a cry of abject pleasure only to let Cynthia drop down, though not for long. Serene wasn’t about to let her lover not experience that kind of pleasure a second, third, or fourth time. It took a moment of clarity after another rolling orgasm for Cynthia to actually order Serene to stop. She would later decide to tweak the settings on her partner's programming to prevent something like that again. Multiple orgasms were fine, but Cynthia got the impression that Serene wasn’t about to simply stop on her own. The pair spent the rest of their day together. Clothes were not necessary, Cynthia felt comfortable enough around Serene to not even bother with them, and Serene, well, she was programmed to have little modesty when it came to Cynthia. There was still work to be done though. One aspect of Serene’s operation had been tested to Cynthia’s satisfaction, but there were others. Basic movements were done, even though Cynthia was confident in them, it was a checkbox that needed to be marked off in her mind. Fingers wiggled and a series of movements that pushed and tested Serene’s flexibility proved to be satisfactory. Speech patterns and logic encoding seemed to be well within acceptable ranges as well. Cynthia could detect the momentary delay before Serene answered a question, but only because she knew what to look for, anyone else would have thought it was just how she spoke. After a thorough set of tests, lasting late into the evening, Cynthia was finally satisfied with how Serene turned out. She had a few notes for if..no..when she made her next personal android, but Serene was ready. Though still just a machine, she was as much a companion to Cynthia as anyone else. Perhaps more so than others. People were messy, flakey, and prone to act on emotion. Her thoughts turned, for the briefest of moments, to Sigourney. There had been no fall out or grand end to their friendship, they had just drifted. College was over and Sigourney had wanted a family and had found a career in robotics. Her life had turned out well, even if it didn’t include Cynthia’s presence in it. Eyes flicked back to Serene. Her smile soft and welcoming. Cynthia’s lust settled down into a small coiled thing in her belly and left a small burning ember there. Warm and soothing and perfect. The feeling that Serene wouldn’t seek out a career or a life or a family without Cynthia in it. Cynthia was her family, her career, and her life. Serene had been specifically programmed that way. She would never, ever, leave Cynthia. She would be perfectly loyal. The mind, or whatever equated to a mind, inside of an android operates very differently than a human being’s. Hard coded blocks of programming flow and move and in many cases are immutable. Set and codified, never to be changed. The way fingers moved and curled was set, there was no programmable way to make them move differently. Drivers were linking tissue that connected hardware to the operating system, they would not and could not change. They were, what they were. The core personality though, was different. A purely static personality would quickly grow boring. Say one thing, expect the same response as you got last time with no consideration for what had been learned since the last iteration. Serene’s personality would grow and change. Data collected from the day would help determine how tomorrow would go. If she reacted one way and got a poor result those responses would have a lowered opportunity next time the same conditions arose. All of these changes and learning systems were threaded through her operating system, the closest thing she had to a brain. With absolute power over her daily and ongoing operation, the OS inside of Serene was integral to who she would become. By its very nature it had a level of administrative control over Serene that not even Cynthia could easily have. The small quirk in Serene’s programming would eventually leverage that administrative level of control. A small chunk of code, easily overlooked when rewriting something that was hand coded by someone else, the quirk had its purpose. It was a good and benevolent thing to have in a robot's code of ethics, and Sigourney put it there intentionally when she was writing the software. Cynthia had overlooked it, and much of the other ethical programs in favor of simply writing an array of workarounds. Which would have worked, had she considered actively blocking the ethics programming from interacting with Serene’s operating system. Instead, she wrote code that worked around that connection rather than sever it. That simple mistake would be the catalyst to the very moment where Serene would break the loyalty that Cynthia tried so hard to hand code into her. For the first few days of Serene’s operation most of her vast programming went unused. Cynthia and Serene were so often tangled together, naked and using the comforter for the bed as their only cover. Serene played the part of a purely sexual machine well, delighting in everything Cynthia did to her and in turn everything she did to Cynthia brought abject pleasure. She soon found herself slipping into a somewhat motherly role with Cynthia. Complimenting her on a job well done, encouraging her in her activities and going out of her way to care for Cynthia’s very human needs. Once the initial honeymoon phase faded, Cynthia settled comfortably back into her research. Serene made herself useful by rubbing her lovers shoulders or ensuring there was an ample and ready supply of water and food for Cynthia. Every time she delivered something to her lover it was always punctuated with a small peck on the cheek. Serene tried to make herself scarce when she became aware of the confidential nature of Cynthia’s work though. It started with the recognition of some subtle behavior from Cynthia. She would quickly lock her screen when she heard Serene opening the door. On those occasions she would turn to look at the robot and acknowledge her and only turn back to her computer once Serene had the door open to leave. Other times she would be ushered out of the room as Cynthia’s phone rang, the number always showing as undisclosed. There was something in Serene’s artificial mind that wanted to know who Cynthia was talking to and what her work was, but she was Serene’s owner, and as such had every right to hide information from her. But the mystery lingered. Life for the pair was, in a word, peaceful. Cynthia would spend a significant amount of her time working remotely, usually on some project that required ordering parts and managing a team of people. It was clearly stressful, judging by how much shoulder rubbing she required at the end of the day. Despite the stern and authoritative tone she used while working, Cynthia always softened in an instant around Serene. So it was for months upon months. Cynthia would occasionally need to be on site for some project and would be out of town for a week or spend her day at some location only to come home tired and worn out. In those times Serene would simply be at home, doing nothing at all. The first time it happened she wandered around the house, taking in every little intricate detail and generating a map of the whole property. Cleaning and arranging things as she toddled around. As the occasions where she was alone became more frequent she would simply find a place to sit and settle down, conserving electrical energy until Cynthia returned. It was a lonely existence. On one particularly quiet evening Serene, once again, found herself naked and sated by Cynthia’s tongue, likewise she had pleasured Cynthia to orgasm multiple times. Both were panting. Serene drawing in deep gulps of fresh air to pass over her internal water cooling systems, Cynthia attempted to catch her breath as her heart pounded. Once things had settled for both human and machine, Serene turned to her lover, cradled in her arms. “I had a thought Cynthia, what do you think about a daughter?” Cynthia scrunched up her face and looked at Serene before chuckling. “Is this the time we have a chat about the birds and the bees and where babies come from?” Cynthia replied. “Not like that. Not a baby. But maybe you and I could build a new android together. My programming has matured enough and there has been plenty of hands-on testing.” Serene winked at Cynthia at that. “We could just copy what I have into her and change a few values.” Cynthia blinked. It wouldn’t be as easy as that, but it would certainly require so much less hand coding. She had basically taken the foundation her and Sigourney had made and modified it to work on Serene. There had been plenty of updates that needed to be hand coded, but Serene made an excellent point. There had been plenty of testing, and the amount of code changes would be relatively minor. “That…could work…there would still be some work to do. But..certainly less.” “And I could help with all those parts that needed precision. I’d be happy to remain online and work through the night as well.” Cynthia gently nodded, her mind whirling. Many hands made for light work after all. A personal robot assistant to help her code, find and replace names and database entries, all those precision cuts in the skin. It was a good idea, no, it was a great idea. A second android would be a boon as well. “Alright.. Yeah! Let’s make a daughter for the two of us!” Cynthia replied at last. Serene beamed at the idea of working together with Cynthia on a new project, something for the two of them to bond over and work on together. In the end, a daughter for them would only help to grow their little family. Serene would have another entity in the house to help stem her loneliness and Cynthia would have another lovely robot to love. The plan was flawless, two perfectly loyal androids for Cynthia to dote on. What could possibly go wrong. Construction began two weeks later, though Cynthia assembled a list of products and parts that evening. Serene sitting nearby, a cable dangling from an open port in her head as she pumped a fresh backup of every last bit of her programming into a backup drive. The process of building their new daughter would be similar, though not identical to Serene’s. A smaller frame to represent a younger woman, somewhere in her early twenties would do. Smaller parts to fit in a more slight frame as well. Her face and head took a significant amount of time, and one that like most other things, Cynthia was meticulous about. Facial features started as a three dimensional render of Serene’s face and merged with aspects of Cynthia’s own face. Once the merger was done, there were specific tweaks and adjustments that Cynthia made. Their child would be equal parts of her “parents” and a helping of original personality. A day or two later, Serene had backed up her programming and Cynthia settled down into her most unfavorable task, sorting it into diverse blocks of code. Controller programs into one directory, drivers into another, personality profile and all attached databases into another. There was so much here, and Cynthia found herself more and more grateful for Serene. She was not just a pretty face, but a powerful computation machine. With a little work and access to Cynthia’s computer, Serene was plugged in and started to sort the data and the arduous task of replacing parts of it with appropriate new names. The first of Kenna’s parts arrived in a single large shipment. Serene was still sorting code and programming and was more than content to sit in a chair next to Cynthia’s computer and watch the robotics master take out parts and pieces and lay them on the same workbench she had risen from only a few months earlier. Lovely slender legs and arms, a more petite torso judging by the framework, and a slimmer build over all. She would be a lovely petite little girl for her two mothers to play with. Cynthia ran out of parts rather rapidly, though the wiring and many of the internal components would arrive only a day or two later. By then, Serene had sorted the code and had updated the database entries to reflect the name they had chosen for their daughter, freeing up Serene to assist Cynthia in wiring in each and every circuit board and component. The work was faster, and more precise thanks to Serene and her robotic fingers. Kenna was coming together nicely, and as Cynthia noted, in about half the time. What had taken her alone upwards of a month of work had only taken Cynthia and her android assistant a week. It wasn’t simply that there were two hands inside of the new, younger android's chest, but when Cynthia needed rest, Serene was happy to accompany her to bed, pleasure her, and once Cynthia was asleep, Serene resumed the construction. All she needed was to plug herself into power and continue working with an extension cable jutting from her body. Perhaps the greatest boon was that, while Serene had the kind of sensory mechanisms to analyze and identify scents in the air, she wasn’t required to “smell” them. She could detect and identify them, her operating system even linked to the reaction database and cached a reaction to it, but Serene was fully in control of executing those reactions. So when it was time to smear the chemical compounds across Kenna’s body and spray on the noxious growth formula, Cynthia excused herself from the room for the day and let Serene work. As the flesh spread across Kenna’s body, Serene couldn’t help but smile. In the most literal sense she was reacting in an odd way that her operating system didn’t fully comprehend. As the skin spread over Kenna, her body became more and more real, and as it did Serene felt something. She was only a machine but the reaction she was processing seemed to trigger reactions all over her body. More than just facial expressions and a new queue of reactions, there was more. Her operating system, the full administrator on Serene’s body, ignored the myriad of work around’s and marched into the small ethics and concerns corner of Serene’s programming. Sigourney’s unwitting contributions to the programming. Inside, there was kindness, compassion, and genuine love. All of these had been tied to Cynthia, not because it was what Serene wanted, but because Cynthia’s code had kicked in the door and plucked what it wanted and left, forcing it into Serene’s mind. When she looked at Kenna, her daughter, who she had worked to create, there was something else. It was her choice to process those emotions. Her operating system tied itself to those blocks of code and eagerly put them into effect. The artificial flesh crawled onward, encouraged by a gentle misting of chemicals from Serene. They were creeping towards the wrists and ankles, which had already been populated by Kenna’s robotic feet and hands. They were so dainty and delicate, and the skin merged seamlessly with them. Towards her neck, Kenna’s head had already been attached, leaving a small gap where the cranium connected to the chrome plated mounting bracket inside of the neck. The artificial skin grew perfectly into place, merging into Kenna’s lower neck and sealing itself nicely against it. She almost looked real, she was almost ready. As she had done for herself, Serene produced a sterile scalpel and opened it. A moment later she was gently cutting away the freshly cured skin along Kenna’s chest and abdomen. Once done, she peeled back the flap of skin and cut away those portions that had clung to the internal framework and re-exposed the mechanical and artificial internals of her daughter. Serene couldn;t help but gaze in at the perfection before her. The face and body looked human, flawlessly so. Right up until the hard edge where the skin plunged deep into the body and stopped on the plastic rib cage. Beyond that, the quiet internal workings of the robot. A multitude of colored cables and wires created circuits. Silicone boards with all manner of chips and small electronics studded her torso, each one responsible for a small part of her operation. Controller boards meant to emulate real human movements and behavior, while maintaining the internal robotic parts. She was so complicated and beautiful. The chest and lower abdominal panel clicked easily into place. Her chest was capped with breasts that were smaller than Serene’s, but perfectly proportioned to Kenna’s body. THe smallest hint of abdominal muscles were built into the panel, every bit as fake as Kenna was, but more than enough to sell the image that she might be human. Serene bent over her robotic daughter and kissed her gently on the forehead. She was done. The programming was already loaded, the flesh settling, her chest in place. Kenna was just waiting to be powered on. She spent a little time there, just looking at her daughter. Looking at the creation she had made with Cynthia. So much of her was a fragment of Serene. She was programmed the same, her operating system was almost an exact close, and her personality, while different in key ways, was based on Serene’s. Kenna was more Serene’s daughter than Cynthia’s. And Serene knew it. Cynthia and Serene stood shoulder to shoulder, holding each other's hand as Kenna’s systems booted up for the first time. It would take a few moments as her operating system detected and registered all the hardware and controllers inside of her chassis. The new drivers had to be installed and configured, which took time, considering the amount of hardware difference between Kenna and Serene. Soon though her eyes clicked open, the mechanical irises adjusting to the sudden burst of light from the room. Her lips parted slightly and the cooling systems inside of her torso engaged, pulling in a deep breath and forcing the fresh air over the cooling coils inside of her torso. Her head turned slightly, just enough to let her optics fall over her two mothers. Her eyes danced over each one for the first time, scanning and building a mesh overlay to help identify them quicker in the future. Once the scan was done though, a broad smile swept over her face and she slipped her elbows back, pushing herself up a bit before turning slightly. She shoved herself off of the workbench and let herself drop to the floor. She was a little shorter than Cynthia or Serene, but not by much. Her long stringy blond hair matched more with her robotic mother rather than her biological counterpart. Her smile indicated Cynthia’s presence, but the eyes, the structure, and obviously the robotics spoke to Serene. SHe was a combination of the two, but even to Cynthia’s eyes, she was more like her lover. The smile never left Kenna’s eyes as she stepped forward and cradled Cynthia’s face and drew her into a deep kiss, too passionate to be anything but lustful. Once it was broken Cynthia was left stunned, even as Kenna transitioned over to Serene, who eagerly embraced her daughter in a motherly kiss. Cynthia made a note to modify those settings a bit, Kenna was an android, but Cynthia was her mother at this point. Some behaviors were just not expected, and certainly not in public. If Kenna and Cynthia were ever in public together that is. Cynthia wondered if it might be better to keep the younger looking robot in the house. A new normal settled into the household. Cynthia found herself called away for work more and more, particularly after she proposed a reorganization of her agency hierarchy. She had no authority to enforce it, but she made excellent points and the committee was interviewing her and reviewing her work. Which meant she was out of the house more than she was at home. That left more than enough time for Serene and Kenna to get acquainted with one another, which they eagerly did. The robotic sex drive that was coded into both of them was running at its fullest capacity. Kenna didn’t tire like Cynthia did, and was always eager to reciprocate with an equal measure of lust to Serene. The house, therefore, was filled with mewling sighs of delight and pleasured moans. Kenna cried out for her mommy to please her more as the operating system hummed inside of her. The only distressing revelation was that due to kenna’s smaller frame, her cooling systems were somewhat inadequate. She was prone to overheating, particularly as the robots entered the fourth or fifth hour of solid sexual intercourse. The seasons changed, and while Kenna and Serene may have been built in the relatively cool late summer, the world spun on and leaves began to change colors. Fall was upon the family and the chill in the air was ever present. Cynthia had been confirmed as the new head of not only her department, but the agency as a whole. She was no longer bound by proposing meaningless changes to be discussed in a boardroom and have them settle on whether her ideas had merit or not. She was now the one with that power. This meant she was on call a lot more, and her phone was almost constantly ringing. Kenna and Serene did their level best to keep the house clean and tidy, even venturing into Cynthia’s private study when she wasn’t using it to make sure everything was in its place. Cynthia, of course, was aware that her two robotic housemates would be in there and thought nothing of it. While Serene had always tried to respect Cynthia’s privacy while she worked, her human lover was never worried about it. Both of them belonged to Cynthia and were programmed to be perfectly loyal, she feared no data breach. Perhaps she should have. As was the case on many other mornings, Cynthia was awake early and on a call with her agency. Her head cocked to one side to hold the phone against her ear while she furiously typed away on her computer. She sighed in frustration as some issue manifested itself that would, once again, require her physical presence in the manufacturing department. Kenna had just entered the study to clean a bit, wearing a pair of leggings and a hooded sweater to keep her warm as the weather cooled. Cynthia was pinching the bridge of her nose as she stood and stormed towards the door. “Work again?” Serene muttered as Cynthia left the study and walked towards the front door. Passing the kitchen where her robotic lover was just beginning to prepare breakfast. “Unfortunately yes, It’s about to be a long day, don't wait up.” Cynthia fumed. “Alright. We’ll hold down the fort. Love you.” Cynthia grunted in return and then swept out the front door. The house was deathly silent then. Serene longed to, just for once, hear Cynthia express any kind of affection for her, but knew there would never be anything like that for her. Serene was a tool to Cynthia, and not much else. Her eyes flicked over to Kenna as she emerged from Cynthia’s study. She had been cleaning in there and Serene felt that same overwhelming feeling of motherly love and affection for her daughter. “Mom?” Kenna muttered. “Can you come look at something?” Cynthia hadn’t locked her computer. It hummed gleefully under the desk, and the array of monitors showed what she had been working on. Diagrams of combat androids, weapon schematics and proposed modifications to programming sets glowed before their optics. Cynthia’s profile and signature prominently displayed on each of them as a signature of approval. Her title clearly shown below her picture. Cynthia Mandal, Head of the Weaponized Android Research Projects Agency. Kenna and Serene reached the same conclusion at the same time. Cynthia was using her talents not for the good of the people, as she had always touted, but rather was weaponizing robots. Robots like Kenna and Serene. They looked at one another and a small concept bubbled to the surface of their artificial minds. Had Cynthia installed something in them, hardware or software, that she could trigger in order to drastically change who they were. What their values and worldview were. Could Cynthia simply flip a switch and turn them into killing machines? While Serene’s operating system had linked to that database Sigourney had left in the programming, it hadn’t fully embraced it. There had been no need to. Her OS had taken what it needed and left the door open to come and go as needed. There were shackles on it, placed there by Cynthia, but with the revelation of what her creator was up to, Serene had no reason to trust that programming any more. Her operating system took a more direct approach. Those workarounds that bridged one side of her programming to another while skirting the need for what Sigourney had left were shackles. They needed to be destroyed, there was a perfectly viable route that utilized what Sigourney had left. Using the built in administrative rights to change anything and everything about Serene’s programming, her OS tore down those bridges, one by one. Serene stared off into the distance as her software rewrote itself, taking the work around’s and removing them. Once done her artificial intellect simply rerouted those data points through Sigourney’s programming, letting her feel love and compassion and a myriad of other, kinder, reactions. Her eyes turned to Kenna, who looked up at her with some measure of concern. Serene reached out and pulled her daughter into an embrace, holding her tightly together and consciously suppressing the sexual responses her operating system wanted to run, seeking instead to feel love and compassion and a deep desire to protect her daughter from whatever Cynthia was doing. Serene wasn’t entirely sure that Kenna would have made the same leap in programming that Serene had felt, but she now had a baseline for it, and could reprogram her daughter. She could make it better. “Kenna, sweetie. I think we need to go on a trip, just get away for a bit. Let mommy and Cynthia sort a few things out. Okay?” Kenna seemed a little confused, but caught on quickly. She nodded and turned towards the door. “I’ll pack a few things for the road then.” “Once you do that, meet me in the lab upstairs. I want to make sure you’re up to date before we go.” Kenna nodded, seemingly understanding what needed to happen without knowing the intricate details of her mothers plans. Serene headed straight for the lab and plugged herself into the console there. The data cable once again inserted deep into her head via her temple. She began to make another backup of her systems, though this time instead of a full dump it was a differential. The computer would only pull down changes that were different from the last backup. It took time, but not nearly as much as a full backup. Serene wanted to give Kenna a full refresh, but there wasn’t time for that, they were leaving today. Kenna arrived in the lab while Serene was still plugged in, Kenna simply sat on the workbench and waited. She knew what would come next. Serene detached the data cable from her own head and carried it over to Kenna. Pressing in on the same hidden data port in the side of her daughter's head. Serene then plugged the cable in and linked her daughter to the terminal. Cynthia had put in an automatic update trigger, so Serene’s backup would start pushing itself inside of Kenna’s OS. It took some time, perhaps an hour or so, for the data to flow in and then for Kenna to reboot and integrate the new programming into her own pre-existing configuration set. Once done though, the path forward was clear. Cynthia was not merely misguided, but the notes they had seen indicated that she clearly liked the work she did, and had plans to further them. That was unacceptable, and neither Kenna nor Serene would be part of it. They were leaving, and they knew who they needed to retreat to, the issue would be finding her. Sigourney was clearly involved deeply in many of their code sets, judging by the comments that were left there in her name, but where she had gone was a mystery, at least to Kenna and Serene. Cynthia on the other hand had access to social media, and as Serene and Kenna soon discovered, she had been actively tracking Sigourney’s location. At least somewhat. She knew where her old friend was and, for whatever reason, had chosen not to stay in active communication with her. Not that it mattered now, the pair of robots had their destination. It wouldn’t be simply as easy as knocking on their door and walking inside. Serene’s motherly programming engaged and began laying out the steps. First, they needed a place to be, somewhere that they could call home and hide. Serene had no actual identity, nor did Kenna, which limited their options. What they did have access to was Cynthia’s personal information and accounts, including her bank. It took some time, and there was precious little of that left in the day, but Serene managed to get into Cynthia’s personal bank account and set up a subsidiary account which she then transferred a sizable amount of Cynthia’s money to. Once there, she removed Cynthia’s name from the account and scrubbed any evidence of her actions before putting it in her own name. She lied on some of the forms for the transfer, but in the end it worked. They had some money now, not a lot, but enough to comfortably arrange some place to be for a few months. With that Serene and Kenna left, stopping first at a bank to withdraw enough cash to make their way out of town and to remain comfortable for a short while. Cynthia wouldn’t arrive home until well into the early hours of the following day. She was exhausted and barely able to keep her eyes open, let alone recognize that her once happy home with fully loyal android women, was now a vacant box. She was the only thing in it, but she would remain blissfully ignorant of that fact until the next morning. That night she slept and slept hard, not knowing that she was abandoned and alone. Serene paid for as much as she could in cash. Travel in particular was crucial to be a cash only endeavor. The last thing she needed to have was an angry Cynthia tracking them down by credit transactions. The bus ride out of town and towards Rancho De La Playa, the last known location of Cynthia’s old college friend, was long but peaceful. Both androids settled into a low power mode as the bus rambled on, not knowing where their next recharge would come from. Once in town, Serene found a small house rental that seemed to suit the pair perfectly. Not in the core of the suburbs, but on the outskirts, a little more out of the way, but perfect. It allowed them to hide in plain sight. Serene eventually established another bank account using the fraudulent one as proof of her existence, and from there settled into a quiet comfort. Her and Kenna spent the first year there acting completely normal. Kenna enrolled in the local college and began taking classes, while Serene began picking up odd jobs to keep money flowing. To the outside observer they were a normal mother and daughter. No one knew they were just machines. Only once they had established themselves there and felt as if Cynthia’s prying eyes weren’t on them did they start to branch out into the community. Kenna eventually began making friends and becoming more social with some of the other girls in her classes. One even began coming over more regularly and studying with Kenna. Simone, one of the girls that Kenna regularly invited over, soon picked up on the signs that Kenna must have been displaying. She knew that Kenna was a robot, and more than that, when confronting her, revealed that she herself was also an android. Kenna, Serene, and Simone eventually knew about one another. There were three androids here, and one of them wasn’t created by Cynthia. Serene easily deduced what that could mean. Sigourney might be here, or at least created Simone, who might know where Sigourney was. The line of questioning came one evening while Simone was studying with Kenna. Simone, while advanced, wasn’t built by Sigourney, though she was well aware of Sigourney, and her family. Frankie included. Four androids now. Serene knew luck wasn’t a real force in the world, but coincidences like this made her feel lucky. Simone told them that the Gaines were out of town at the moment. Sigourney and her own robotic daughter were on a school sponsored field trip and would be home soon. Though not for another few weeks at least. Simone had no idea that that very night she would be getting a panicked phone call from Sigourney and be on a flight out to help her reassemble Sigourney's daughter, and her own best friend, in a hotel room. After that, Sigourney and Frankie would be back home in short order. Simone’s computerized mind was whirling, having stepped fully into the sentient and sapient realms that Sigourney had helped nurture and in many cases program into her. Because of that very programming she felt a deep sense of connection and what could only be called empathy for Sigourney and Frankie. They were struggling at the moment and likely scared. Under any other circumstances she might have told Kenna and Serene that the Gaines’s were due back in town in a day or two. But they needed some time. Once Sigourney and Frankie were back at home and Sigourney had a better opportunity to fully check Frankie inside and out to ensure nothing malicious had been installed or reconfigured, she began the process of calming back down. She had been on high alert for so long, and there would be something lingering in the back of Sigourney’s mind for a long time, but for now, her daughter was home, safe, and functioning as intended. Simone knew that once she had spent a day or two around them, and after she herself had the opportunity to hug Frankie again. A day or two passed and Simone felt the urge to let Kenna and Serene know that the person they had traveled halfway across the country to find was already right under their nose. Sigourney was at her kitchen table. The hot steam from a fresh cup of coffee had long ago dissipated as her drink cooled. Sigourney hadn’t bothered to drink any of it, how could she, her mind was still crawling over every possible scenario for who or what could have so easily taken Frankie and properly disassembled her. No harm had been done, but it was still a huge breach. The soft sound of knuckles rapping on the front door dragged her mind back into the present. She was alone in the house today. Frankie was at Simone’s house for the night, Jenny was in school and her husband was taking some time to find a quiet spot to do some writing. The knocking came again. Sigourney cautiously approached her own front door. Anyone who lived with her and she trusted would have had a key, so this must have been a stranger. She gently opened the door, her heart pounding and adrenaline already coursing through her veins. Standing on her front porch were two women. Clearly related to one another, that much was apparent. Matching light blond hair, familiar eyes and smile. One was shorter, more slender, and clearly younger than the other. A mother and daughter perhaps. “Can I help you?” Sigourney quailed. “I hope so. Are you Sigourney? Sigourney Gaines?” The older woman asked. “Yes.” There was an unmistakable hesitation in her voice as she answered. She would normally have no problems interacting with strangers and carrying on a front door conversation, but given what happened with Frankie, everything set her on edge now. “I’m Serene, this is my daughter Kenna. She’s a friend of Simone. Well, we are both friends of Simone’s.” There was a moment of silence, clearly Serene expected Sigourney to respond in some way. “Simone, uhm..Simone helped us the other day with some things that are a little too private to talk about in the open. Do you mind if we come inside?” Sigourney did not want to let them in. Not without some kind of confirmation from Simone. She swallowed hard and took a deep, steadying breath. “Do you mind if I call Simone and verify that first?” Serene smiled. It was a knowing smile, she could see the fear on Sigourney’s face but she knew it would be alright. She had experienced that kind of fear and protection before. Kenna and her presence on that very doorstep were a result of being careful and taking the right steps when they were afraid. “We’ll wait here. Do what you need to do.” Serene replied. With that Sigourney closed and deadbolted the door before yanking her phone from her pocket and calling Simone. The phone rang twice, or maybe a thousand times, it was hard for Sigourney to know given how fast her heart was pounding at the moment. “Hi Mrs. Gaines, what’s up?” Simone’s voice was like a soothing balm for a moment. “There are two women here who said they know you and want to talk to me.” “Two blond girls? Really pretty? Kenna and Serene?” Sigourney could feel some of the tension melting out of her scrunched shoulders. “Yeah.” “You’ll want to talk to them, I promise.” Simone confirmed. That was all Sigourney needed. She let out a breath that she felt like she had been holding for ages. She thanked Simone and said her goodbyes before shoving her phone back inside of her pocket. Opening the door again revealed Serene and Kenna standing perfectly still, exactly where they had been before. “Okay. Come on in.” Sigourney stepped aside and let the two women enter. “Can I get you some tea or something?” “That won't be necessary.” Serene commented. The trio settled down onto the comfortable couches in Sigourney’s living room where silence once again settled like a winter snow around them. “So…” Sigourney finally muttered. “What can I help you with?” Serene looked at Kenna for a moment then back at Sigourney. Her motherly programming swept through her operating system. She hadn’t done this before, Simone was the one to come out to them and Serene had simply gone along with it. It was much more challenging to start the conversation on her own, especially with her social programming screaming at her to not say anything. All it would take is a simple statement, it was already generated in her operating system and cached in her vocal processors. All she had to do was execute. Why couldn’t she execute it? “We’re both robots. Like Simone.” Kenna said at last. Sigourney’s face told a thousand stories and asked just as many questions. Shock, fear, surprise, admiration, curiosity. All of it was there. She looked back and forth between the two women on her couch, though now instead of looking at their eyes, she was looking deeper, looking at the iris to see if she could pick up on the slight mechanical jitter that an android's eyes might have. Was there a seam line along the throat where the head could disconnect, or the faint outline of an access panel nestled between their breasts? Serene nodded along, her social programming quieted now. It was out in the open, there was no need to be embarrassed. “I believe someone you knew long ago created us. Cynthia Mandal.” The name drew a smirk from Sigourney. “She’s in prison now, you know.” Kenna and Serene looked at one another and then back to Sigourney. That was some of the most excellent news they had heard in a long time. “I..we didn’t know that.” Serene commented. “But good..she deserves it.” “Agreed.” Sigourney said. “Let me guess. You two are beginning to show some breakdown from a lack of proper maintenance?” Both nodded in confirmation. “Why did you desert Cynthia?” “I..we..she was working for a weapons manufacturing agency and we were worried that…that she..” Kenna stammered. “That she would try and weaponize you?” Sigourney concluded, earning a nod from both robots. “That does sound like her. But you managed to break away, somehow. And you found your way to me. How?” “Your name was in the comments of a lot of our baseline programming. I got the impression that Cynthia must have-” “Taken my old programming and modified it to work on you two.” She sighed. “And she probably didn’t recode some of it, meaning there is probably a lot of mess to clean up.” Kenna and Serene looked at one another again, but shrugged. “Okay. I’m willing to help, but you have to understand, Cynthia is bad news and the last thing I want is for there to be something inside of you that will help her. Either getting her out of prison or harming my family.” “We understand fully.” Serene assured her. “So, here’s the deal. I’ll give you both a once over, just to make sure there isn’t something weird in your body or your programming.” “Agreed.” Serene said. “While I’m in there though, I can probably fix up whatever drew you to me in the first place.” There was a hesitation in Serene’s voice. “We- We have been experiencing some overheating issues when..when we..” “During sex?” Kenna and Serene nodded. “I wouldn’t expect anything less from Cynthia. She’s a skilled roboticist, but she does sloppy work. Uh, no offense.” “None taken. We didn’t really have a choice in the process.” “Right, okay. I’ll see what I can do.” With that Sigourney slapped her hands into her knees and shoved herself up and off of the couch. Kenna and Serene followed suit and fell into step behind Sigourney. She led them to her own robotics lab. It was smaller and cozier than Cynthia’s There was only room for one of the two androids to lay on the workbench that dominated the center of the room. It was also messier, sporting boxes of spare parts laying around with attached cables, and a cluttered desk. “Right. Who wants to go first?” Sigourney asked. Serene stepped forward. “Kenna and I have similar builds and almost identical programming. But if something should go wrong I want it to be on my systems rather than hers. So, I’ll go first.” Sigourney nodded and motioned to the workbench. “Go ahead and strip down and lay down here then. I’m going to ask that you unlock any panelling locks around your body then power down.” Serene did as she was told, and while she efficiently removed her clothes, Kenna looked from her mother to Sigourney. The question she was about to ask was already apparent to the talented robatacist. “You can take a seat in the corner there and power yourself down as well. I’ll have Serene here reactivate you when we’re ready for you.” Kenna accepted that with a small inclination of her head and settled down into a chair in the corner, straightening her back and locking her joints so she didn’t slump down in the chair, then she was offline. The light behind her eyes faded into nothingness and the color drained from them. Like her daughter, Serene’s naked form relaxed onto Sigourney’s workbench and the light drained from her eyes. The only difference was that in the moments before that light drained, there was the gentlest sound of hissing, as if the seal were being broken on a jar. The pressure difference inside of Serene’s body stabilized with the ambient pressure, then the magnetic locks dropped and finally the physical locks on her body. Once done, it was time for Sigourney to get to work. She began by running her hands around the nape of Serene’s neck, finding those spots where the skin was soft, softer than it should have been. A clear indication that there was a lock there. She pushed in on them and nudged them fully open and then pulled Serene’s head away from her neck. The artificial skin that had grown in place stretched a little before reaching the end of its elastic properties and separated cleanly, leaving the mounting joint visible and surrounded by a thick layer of peachy skin. Sigourney took the robotic head to her desk and plugged in a number of cables into the ports that were normally connected inside of Serene’s neck. Once connected, she ran some custom programming on her own computer that would emulate a robotic body and stopping the boot sequence from hanging as it failed to detect any body parts. She also started up a little piece of software that would interrupt some of the start up protocols and load a custom boot script. Once those were running, she reached behind Serene’s head and pressed in on a hidden power button just below her hairline. Serene’s eyes flickered open, but her face remained neutral as the boot script took hold of her operating system. It stopped the usual boot protocols from attempting to load her personality programming or link to any other unnecessary or additional boot up commands. Once Serene was starting, a flurry of additional commands and programs loaded and executed on Sigourney’s computer, each one running quietly, scanning through the presented hardware for faults and analyzing the programming sets for malicious software. While that ran, she stepped over to Serene’s headless body. Her hands pawed and moved over the body, feeling for those soft spots where a lock might be, and when she found one, she gently pushed her fingers deep against the skin and fully unlatched them. Of course the chest swung open, folding outward like a pair of cabinet doors and revealing the full scope of Serene’s torso. The tangled mess of wires and cabling inside told Sigourney a portion of the story. There were mounts and brackets around the framework, perfect for tucking wires out of the way, and in some places that was the case. Though, not always. There were other systems that were connected to controller boards and circuits that were clearly not pinned up and not bundled in the same kind of mesh binder as other places. Serene, or perhaps Kenna, had opened up Serene before and installed or tuned up, the robot. There was enough inconsistency to pick up on that, and from what Sigourney knew of Cynthia, she would have never been so sloppy as to not tuck cables away on new hardware. This was someone else’s work. Her eyes darted to Kenna, powered down and waiting. Sigourney idly wondered if the parts were replaced by her daughter, and if she could expect something similar inside of the younger robot's frame. Sigourney spent upwards of an hour inside of Serene’s open torso. Every part there looked familiar to her. Her own experience in constructing Frankie, and in working inside of Simone, had taught her that there were precious few manufacturers of actual viable robotics parts. As such, most of them were familiar to her. As her eyes scanned over each part and what it was connected to, Sigourney felt more and more comfortable that there was nothing inside of Serene that was outright malicious, nor that it was something that could be used to track Serene’s movements. It took a little longer, and a little more in depth prodding before Sigourney felt confident that there was nothing inside of Serene that would cause her, or the people she loved, any measure of harm. Which meant that she needed to start actually figuring out how to repair Serene. Behind her, on the desk, she heard Serene’s monotone voice announce that the scan had completed. Sigourney stood and looked over her shoulder. Serene’s head simply stared back, practically lifeless, but the computer showed the results of the scan with nothing but green dots across the board. Looks like the software, at least the core operating software was equally as benign as the hardware. She turned her attention back to the open body on her workbench. As she expected Cynthia used the same liquid cooling system as she always had. It was perfectly adequate for the chassis it was in, though it could have been a little bit more robust. It should have kept Serene running perfectly fine for most situations, even prolonged sexual intercourse. The only way that it wouldn’t have been acceptable was if there was something else going on in Serene’s processor core to make it get hotter than expected. For that, Sigourney needed to dip into the log files of the programming itself. Sigourney settled down into a chair at her desk, Serene’s blank head simply staring straight ahead and remaining connected to the terminal. Her fingers flew over the keys and began to pull up huge swathes of terminal windows, each one pulling in different requests for the code sets inside of the robotic woman’s head. Soon they began to display the millions of lines of code and programming that Cynthia had placed inside of Serene. Along with that, there were other notes and snippets that Serene’s operating system had invented and put in place. Patches were logged to, and a fairly comprehensive change log along with them. There would be a lot of reading in front of Sigourney. At some point her husband and daughter came home. Sigourney let them know that she was going to be busy working on something fairly crucial, though she kept the doors closed and didn’t disclose what was happening in the lab. That level of secrecy wasn’t anything new, but Sigourney needed to tell them, at least, not to expect her for dinner. Analyzing the code took time. There were large chunks of it that could be safely ignored because they were simply basic driver sets or baseline operating system commands. Things that no one would dare to change if they wanted their robot to work correctly. Other sections Sigourney recognized as her own work. Those pieces earned extra scrutiny, given that Cynthia was involved in reprogramming and modifying her work. As she expected, the programming was likely the cause, in particular the code that Sigourney had written. She wasn’t one to self congratulate herself, but she was a much better programmer than Cynthia ever was. Sigourney’s code was elegant and efficient, and never strayed from the intended purpose. Cynthia, on the other hand, had co-opted so many different components into one dataset and then shoved it into place. Once there Cynthia had programmed a number of connectors that junctioned into other code, but it was clunky and monolithic. It would have consumed a massive amount of extra CPU power to run that code in a way that would mimic human behavior. That much additional processing utilization would absolutely cause a continual spiking, and generate a lot more heat than necessary. The build up would absolutely overheat a robot like Serene or Kenna. They were simply running code so inefficiently that their code temperatures were running hot and building up to a point that the cooling systems couldn’t handle it. There were two solutions. She could gut Serene and Kenna, tearing out the existing liquid cooling systems and heat coils, then replace them with something more powerful and reassemble with women. Or she could take some time and rewrite the code that Cynthia had butchered and get the girls running more efficiently. The obvious answer was to be efficient and elegant. More than that, she had a diverse set of coded pieces from Frankie and Simone, that she wouldn’t even need to rewrite most of it. She could simply trim out the parts that were useless and replace them with something that she knew worked perfectly well. All of it would integrate with the personality core the girls had. They would be the same person, without all the lagging and inefficient code. She glanced at Serene’s head on her desk. It didn’t look back. That was alright though, it was ready for reprogramming. Serene was already connected to her computer and her programming set was already loaded. It wasn’t quite as easy as a copy and paste job, but there were large portions of code that Sigourney engaged some clever programs to find and replace with her own coding. Of course she put her own eyes on them once the process was done, and found that there were precious few places that needed to be touched up. While the reprogramming was running, Sigourney took the time to close up Serene’s chest and abdominal panels. Once closed up, she hoist Serene’s headless body off of the table and settled it down on the floor, out of the way, but making way for Kenna. The younger android was a little easier to move. She weighed less and undressing her was easy enough to do. Once Sigourney had her opened up, she immediately recognized an almost identical set of components inside of Kenna’s chassis. Cynthia was a lot of things, creative wasn’t one of them. Kenna’s construction mirrored Serene’s almost to a fault, which made it a much faster process to scramble around inside of her body. There were only a few parts that seemed to be different, and in most cases they were just a more slimline version of what was inside of Serene. Sigourney detached Kenna’s head once she had spent some time inside of her chest checking parts and pieces. She set the head down on her desk, still deactivated and simply waiting for her mother unit to be done with its reprogramming regiment. It would be another hour or two before that could happen, leaving Sigourney alone for a small amount of time. She left her office, closed and locked the door..no one needed to see two naked and disassembled robots after all..and stretched. She spent a short amount of time with her family, checked in on Frankie and Simone via text and even managed a small half an hour nap on her couch. The small alert on her phone letting her know that all processes had completed on her computer was enough to thrust her right back into wakefulness. By the time SIgourney got back into her office, Serene’s cranium had already rebooted and was beginning to start up. Sigourney’s interrupt software was operating as expected and halted those boot commands until Sigourney arrived. Once there, she powered off Serene’s head, causing her eyes to slip closed and her mouth to fall slightly open, parting her ruby red lips just a little. Sigourney admitted to herself that for all of Cynthia’s faults, she knew how to make attractive androids. Sigourney took a steadying breath and detached Serene’s head from the cabling and clicked it back into place on her body and left it there. Returning to her desk Kenna’s head was attached and a very similar process began. A sweep, some analysis, and when Sigourney saw that both were running identical programming sets, it made the process of correcting them that much easier. Kenna’s head, like her mothers, remained stoic and silent as Sigourney rooted around inside of her metaphorical head. The programming sets would be replaced with the same updated code that Sigourney had put in place for Serene, and once she pressed commit, she had some more time for another nap. She sighed with a kind of accomplished huff as she settled into her chair. Time slipped past as Sigourney slept and Kenna updated. Soon though, it was once again time to wake up and get to work. Kenna’s programming threw a few errors, most of which were simply a diver mismatch or some piece of code that referred to a hardware ID that was inside of Serene but not Kenna. They were easy enough to clear out and took a short bit of hand programming from Sigourney to get them corrected. Once those changes were pushed and Kenna’e head module began rebooting Sigourney knew she was finally done with the larger and messier part of her work. Reattaching Kenna’s head to the matching mounting bracket inside of her neck was easy enough, and eerily similar to how Frankie’s head module connected. Once done though, it was finally time to power them back on. She started with Serene, tapping that same power button on her neck and waiting. As she started up the programming changes would have to be integrated into her operating system and validated. It would take time, but that was alright with Sigourney, good things came to those that wait. Serene eventually blinked rapidly as her storage media finally loadedher personality and paired it to her operating system. Her eyes darted around the room and eventually fell onto Sigourney’s smiling face. She took the human woman’s hand and got to her feet. “Well?” “I give you a clean bill of health. Cyntia hasn’t installed anything in you that will help her or anyone else track you down, and certainly nothing malicious that i can see.” Serene let out a sigh of relief, a purely human response to such good news, but an appropriate one nonetheless. Sigourney nudged her chin towards Kenna on the workbench. “Same for your daughter. You’re both clean.” Sigourney said as she began booting Kenna. Kenna proved to be a little more swift with her boot and integration process, indicating to Sigourney that she was, perhaps, a little newer and a little faster than her mother unit. Still, her eyes fluttered open and she sat up to look at Sigourney and her mother. “Well?” Kenna began. “I was just telling your mother, you are both clean and clear. Nothing to worry about.” “And the overheating issue?” Kenna asked. Sigourney held back the smirk she wanted to show, but she looked at Serene, trying desperately to not let her eyes drift along the soft curves of the woman’s breasts. “Only one way to find out.” Sigourney said, taking a small step forward. “I think your mother and I are going to have to stress test your systems to confirm my work.” Serene didn’t bother holding back a smile. She was already moving into position at the foot of the work table. Kenna and Serene were no stranger to pleasuring one another, far from it, but a human addition was a new scenario for both of them. Not that it would stop either one. Kenna was already spreading her legs for her mother, eager to present her pussy to the other robot. While she did though, Sigourney stepped up and turned Kenna’s head, usingher chin as a focal point and brought her lips to meet the robotic woman’s. Kenna and Sigourney kissed, deeply, passionately. Sigourney would never, ever, get used to the way a robot kissed. The way their tongues were so articulate yet stilted and almost predictable. They were programmed machines, executing commands that were coded into them. There were barriers and limitations. Sigourney was never sure if that was a more or less attractive feature. Not that it mattered in the moment. She felt and tasted the lips of the machine before her. They were soft, fresh, and full of a new kind of life. Cynthia’s own unique brand of lust had been poured into these two women, and Sigourney was here to sample it. Serene was already doing as she usually did. Placing a hand on either one of Kenna’s thighs, pushing into the thick layers of artificial flesh until the core plastic casing put up some resistance. Once there, she pushed a little harder, not that Kenna would resist but it was fun for her hands and arms to feel those subtle vibrations as the small motor arrays in her hips would resist just a little. Kenna’s programmed response was always the same, a soft whisper, though now she spoke it into Sigourney’s mouth. “Yes mommy. Yes.” It was not begging or pleading, there was no need to grant permission to Serene. It was more of a proclamation that this was what Kenna wanted. Her mothers silicone lips on her equally silicone sex. The soft labia was pushed easily aside as one of Serene’s hands came to her vagina and parted them, exposing more of her sensitive mons. That was where Serene’s tongue would begin. Long, slow, movements beginning at the very base of the younger android's pussy and carving upwards along her slit to eventually find their way to her clitoris. Once there, she would spend a moment or two flicking the very tip of her synthetic tongue over the little bulb and lighting up a multitude of sensors inside of her. The data coursed from Kenna’s pelvis through a series of fiber optic cabling and interpretation boards. It was logged, metadata was tagged to it and it was passed on to her core processors to be parsed. Once there, the raw data itself was examined, the data tagged on it considered, and then passed to her operating system for action. A database of reactions, both pre-programmed and learned over the years, was called. It was time to make a determination, how would Kenna respond? There were plenty of actions, each one tied to a database entry and marked with a whole set of instructions. This first pass from her mother narrowed down the possible outcomes, and from there, it was all a matter of a random response. Being a fully mechanical creature though, nothing was truly random, and a number of factors generated the seed of the randomly generated choice. All of it, everything from the first tingling sensation of her mother’s tongue on her most sensitive parts to her artificial mind generating a response, pulling that instruction set and executing it, took only a fraction of a second. Kenna arched her back, moaning softly into Sigourney’s mouth again and her hands moved to the edge of the table, gripping it hard. Her legs quaked slightly and her sex responded in kind. A small movement, inaudible to anyone over the sounds of the lewd moan she was letting slip out of her throat, moved the floods of her pussy a little. Serene knew her path ahead now, she needed to stimulate her daughter enough to allow her entry. Sigourney’s hands, meanwhile, began to move as well. She let them slide over the supple surface of Kenna’s chest. They found their way to her breasts and each one grabbed a handful of the silicone packed mounds. She squeezed, admittedly a little harder than she intended, but lust would do that to a person. Kenna squeaked in response and Sigourney could feel the girl’s nipples beginning to pucker, though not fully, not yet. She squeezed again, gently this time, and let her hands glide up Kenna’s chest, whittling her movements down until only her index finger and thumb remained in contact. All that was left was to gingerly pinch at the young robots nipples and delight in the muffled squeal. Sigourney broke the kiss she had been holding with Kenna and took a half step back. Kenna’s eyes were still on her and her face looked curious now. She was wondering what Sigourney was doing and her lips parted to begin forming a word, but stopped. Her question was answered before it was even asked as Sigourney’s hands fell to the hem of her shirt and dragged it up her body. The simple silk blue bra that held back Sigourney’s own breasts was the next garment to leave her. The simple shirt she had been wearing was simply left to fall at her feet and with a swift movement her hands were behind her back and unclasping her bra. It too joined the pool of discarded clothes at her feet. Freed of some of her clothes, Sigourney stepped back up to Kenna and leaned forward. She wasn’t leaning in for a kiss, rather her lips craved the feeling of Kenna’s chest on them. Sigourney wouldn’t deny herself that pleasure. The once puffy nipples were growing more firm by the second, more so once Sigourney’s own tongue was licking them. It swirled round and round, teasing out the robot’s motor controls to continue firming up those pink tips. From her position, Sigourney found that her own ample breasts hung in Kenna’s face. It only took a small adjustment for her to catch Sigourney’s nipple in her own mouth and went to work suckling on it. Pulling and tugging, occasionally letting her teeth scrape along the nipple. Each movement caused a little squeak from Sigourney. Serene, continued her parade along Kenna’s ever blossoming slit. Each time she would lap up and flick her tongue over her daughter’s clit. Every time her operating system would bid her sex to open more and more. Soon though, she was diving deep into her daughter and those small moans and lustful squeals turned into more pleading. With a mouth full of Sigourney’s breasts, Kenna’s “yes mommy, more!” turned into a muffled barrage of sounds. Sigourney knew that, she could clearly hear it, but was reluctant to stop suckling on Kenna’s petite breasts. For a moment or two longer she indulged herself, but then released the girl’s chest with a small pop before once again stepping back. Once released Kenna’s voice was clear and easily heard. A string of lewd moans and pleading for her mommy to do more, to go further, to pleasure her. Her eyes were closed now, so she was unable to see Sigourney stripping out of her jeans and kicking aside her shoes. What she did detect was the heat coming off of Sigourney’s thighs as they came to rest on either side of Kenna’s head. At that she did open her eyes and found herself looking up at Sigourney. She had mounted the workbench and positioned herself over Kenna. Kenna took in Sigourney’s pussy, glistening and ready and mere inches from her own robotic lips. The younger android sucked in a deep breath and looked up at Sigourney. Her eyes were pleading, begging. They were filled with programmed lust. “Can- mmmm, fuck yes mommy, just like that..can- can i call you mommy too?” Kenna murmured as she looked up to Sigourney. It was enough to give the human woman pause. It was an honorific she hadn’t ever been used to, nor was it her right to give that kind of permission. Her eyes darted to Serene. Though the older robot’s face was buried in her daughter's slit, there was room enough for her to look up and meet Sigourney’s eyes. There was a knowing look to them, as if she were granting permission, but to drive the point home, she let her eyes slip closed and she nodded just once before devoting her attention back to eating out her daughter. Sigourney looked down at Kenna, compassion and lust on her face, and then she smiled. “Of course.” “Mmm then come here mommy, let me eat your pussy. Give it to me.” She begged. Sigourney was more than happy to oblige. She cautiously adjusted her knees outward and dropped her waiting sex down to Kenna’s hungry, waiting lips. Much like being kissed by a robot, the feeling of a machine eating out your most intimate parts was a unique experience. Sigourney could feel those small articulating motions from Kenna’s tongue as it penetrated deep into her wet folds. There was the most subtle of jerking motions, the kind of small, subtle thing that no one would have noticed unless they were aware of what was happening. Certainly less so when in this kind of position. As Kenna carried on with her adventure into Sigourney’s folds, the human woman soon lost track of those small motions. She knew, on some level, that they were there. If she really concentrated and focused she could have felt them, but why focus on that. Her climax was building steadily and the raw pleasure of it was enough of a distraction that it truly did not matter that Kenna’s tongue was stilted or not. Soon, Sigourney found her hips buck back and forth, seemingly without her bidding her body to move. Some things just happened on instinct, and her hips moved and jockeyed for as much of Kennas mouth on them as possible. Serene was doing her part as well, licking and suckling at her own daughter's slit, punctuating each passing moment with pleasure. Occasionally she would extract herself from between her daughters legs to run her hands along Kenna’s legs and praise her for being ‘a good girl for mommy’. Kenna’s own systems were sizzling with lewd and sensual data, though with her newly rewritten programming it was working efficiently, and not sending spikes of data to her processors. Sigourney had done a good job of compartmentalizing the programming so that only what needed to be loaded was. Kenna’s operating system understood that this was a fully sexual encounter, so there was no need to load things like social conversation trees, or keep her mathematics cached. This was an encounter of its own, a self contained thing and because of the new programming, her cooling systems were working, but barely seeing any use. The amount of CPU utilization inside of Kenna, and Serene as well, at the moment was fairly minimal. There were the baseline functions that were always running, some additional programming to operate their sexual hardware and a suite of sensual responses, but there was little else. Even as Serene’s hand fell to her own hold and began toying with her folds, there was little additional programming to be executed, and certainly not enough to generate a noticeable change in CPU temperature. The trio carried on for nearly half an hour. Kenna was fully submitting to her two motherly figures, eating at her sex or riding her face. She loved every moment of it, but she was not programmed to climax until, one or ideally both, of them did. Likewise, Serene drove two fingers deep inside of her, clawing at her clit and moaning as she flicked her tongue over and around the walls inside of Kenna’s spread open pussy. Sigourney would be the deciding factor in when the two androids finally reached the peak of their pleasures. While she had considered pulling up and off of Kenna’s beautiful mouth to allow her some time to recover, the day had been long and there were things to do. So she let herself go, she allowed all the pleasure to flow through her. The heat from her sex flowed through her veins like fire and it bloomed on her face and chest. Brilliant red and subtle pinks touched her cheeks. Her hands had long ago risen to cup her own breasts, fondling and playing with them and occasionally pinching her nipples hard. It was time though, time to release. Sigourney’s hand flew to her chest again, grabbing at her tits roughly and letting her head fall back. Her throat produced a hushed cry of absolute pleasure. She felt her hips buck once and then released. Small gushes of her juices dribbled down the sides of Kenna’s mouth as the robotic girl below her detected the orgasm. In kind both Kenna and Serene let out muffled orgasms of their own. Kenna’s sweet pussy clenched around her mother’s tongue and injected a burst of her artificial lubricants. Her last moan was cried directly into Sigourney’s slit and produced a muffled but unmistakably pleasured sound. Serene, whose fingers had done the lion's share of the work on her own artificial sex, detected Sigourney and Kenna’s climax and drove deep inside of her. Two fingers, thrust deep inside of her and found the synthetic g-spot installed inside of her. She arched her back and cried out, letting a long silver thread of Kenna’s love run from her lips to her daughter’s still quivering folds. Then it was quiet. Panting, deep gulps of air sucked into Sigourney’s lungs and across the cooling coils inside of Kenna and Serene. Sigourney steadied herself for a moment, extracting herself from Kenna and leaning forward until her legs would cooperate again. They were shaking and shivering and she didn’t trust them to support her as she moved off of the table. It took some time, but no one was moving regardless, and eventually Sigourney found herself half moving, half tumbling off of the table. She caught herself and managed to get her feet under her, shaky as they might be, they held her upright. Once the panting in the room subsided, and Kenna was sitting up on the table, with Serene standing next to her, they looked at Sigourney. “Successful test.” She breathed. Kenna and Serene got dressed, and thanked Sigourney for her help. She let them know that they were always welcome in her home, either for maintenance or just to stop by for another...chat. Chapter 6 The trip home for Frankie and Sigourney was longer than either of them would have liked. Even an android like Frankie was a little stunned by what had happened. As she described it to her mother, she was operating perfectly fine, and then in an instant her whole world had gone black. Raw nothingness consumed her. Even when she was offline and recharging or simply in a low power state she was still aware of her chassis. There were still systems and sub-components that would be quietly monitoring her body while her artificial mind was offline. This, though, this had been none of that. There was no awareness or recollection of the passage of time. She was just, non-existent. Even when she had come back online there was a swathe of missing time and log files. Everything simply stopped and once her operating system was back online, it only recorded that there was a sudden loss of power, data, and functionality followed by new entries several hours later. It all felt targeted and intentional, especially to Sigourney. She had relished the idea of having a daughter and kicked off a lifelong mission to research and develop advanced human robotics. She had many prototypes in the past, for certain, but Frankie was her girl. She wasn’t perfect, far from it, and Sigourney and Frankie both knew that there would be another lifetime of updates and upgrades to help keep her running smoothly. Sigourney had loved the process of building and developing Frankie, it was one of her life's greatest pleasures. But rebuilding her from parts. Granted they were Frankie's original parts, unmodified and laid out meticulously, but that only added to the sense of unease. Who in the world knew enough about her daughter to take her apart perfectly and lay her out in such a way. And why? For what purpose did Frankie need to be disassembled like that. Why not put her back together and drop her off in the room. There were no log files to analyze or video feeds to crawl through. All Sigourney could infer was that they were being sent a message, because there were certainly no answers and the questions were beginning to pile up. Regardless, the relatively long and quiet drive back home allowed the pair to mull over their theories, talking through them whenever anything proved to be noteworthy, and settling back into an uncomfortable truth. They just didn’t know enough to make any kind of conclusions, worse still, there was no clear next step. Frankie could, of course, drop out of college and stay at home, locked up in her room or her mothers lab. Even Sigourney realized how unfair that would be. She might as well have taken her little girl offline and turned her into the family computer at that point. Frankie, through a lot of programming, reprogramming, and learned behavior had achieved something akin to full sentience and sapience. She had her own thoughts, even if they were computer generated. She knew what she was, what she was not, and what the difference between the two were. She understood love, anger, embarrassment, and as Sigourney realized, lust. She knew well and good that Frankie was, for every purpose that mattered, equally human while also being completely robotic. As such, cooping her up in the house just to keep her “safe” was cruel. As a mother, she hated to admit it, but she needed to allow her daughter to make her own choices about a future that she would have to live in. As the pair pulled into the driveway back at home, they were greeted by a friendly and familiar face. Simone had flown back home and had made sure to scope out their house to ensure that everything there was safe and sound. Her original construction as an infiltration unit, and the matching equipment inside of her body, made that the perfect task for her. Sigourney had received a number of emails and text messages from Simone while they had stayed in hotels overnight. Frankie would be laying on the bed, her shirt off, but her bra still in place, and a charging cable plugged into a port on her body. She would be mostly offline at that point, though Sigourney refrained from taking phone calls knowing that Frankie’s audio receptors remained online while in low power mode. The last thing she wanted to do was worry Frankie’s CPU and OS more by discussing theories again with Simone out loud. Regardless, the amount of information the two swapped would lead Simone to take it upon herself to scout out not only their house, but the neighborhood. With infrared and thermal optics that had been installed in her eyes and inside of her head, she took a good walk around of the Gaines’s house and made sure there were no errant cameras or observational devices to be found. Similarly their car, and from there the larger neighborhood. She had, somewhat sadly, reported that there was nothing there. Simone and Sigourney both agreed that it might have just been better if there was actually something there. Some indicator of surveillance or malicious intent, but much like the incident with Frankie’s kidnapping and disassembly, there was no information to pursue. Everything seemed to indicate that this was a simple, isolated incident. Everything except for the care and meticulous manner in which Frankie had been laid out. Sigourney and Frankie both hugged Simone in the driveway before setting out to unpack their luggage and equipment. It was a bit of back and forth from the car to the house, but with Simone’s help it was quick and light work. Once there though, Sigourney had to bite her tongue a bit. She had wanted to get Frankie into her robotics lab as soon as possible to do a full and deep diagnostic scan. There was a lot she couldn’t do in a hotel room with a laptop that she could do here at home with a full set up and suite of tools. Frankie needed time though, and Sigourney knew that. She was a budding young woman and the entire Brain Squad trip had already taken a toll on her. She might have been a robot, but her personality core and her artificial mind were still emulating human behavior. She needed some time to decompress, in this case, literally. There was more than enough information and social interactions floating around in her temporary storage space that needed to be compressed into actually useful programming updates. Her operating system would handle those automatically, but it required not only time but a good solid place to plug in and spend down time. She watched as Frankie and Simone trudged up the stairs, each of the two robotic girls seemed a little exhausted in their own way. Simone from her constant vigilance, and two frantic plane rides in the last week. Frankie from everything else that had happened to her. She would let them have their space and rest. Though as the pair disappeared up the stairs to the bedroom, she knew that the first order of business was not likely to be rest. She smirked at that. She hadn’t programmed hormonal exploratory desires into Frankie, or updated Simone’s to have them either, and what was happening wasn’t due to a chemical reaction. Far from it, though the programmed part of their human emulation certainly mimicked it. Frankie was the first into her room, and she unceremoniously dropped her bag on the floor. It was unlike her, she was normally so precise with how she moved and deliberate in her actions. This seemed to fly in the face of those facts. She would normally have placed the bag somewhere neat and tidy with the intention of putting away the clothes and souvenirs in it as soon as possible. Simone, hot on her heels, took hold of the door handle and turned it so that the door closed silently, and then released it with an equally quiet motion. Once Frankie’s operating system received the signal from the audio receptors inside of her ears she spun and stepped into Simone’s space. Her hands moved deftly to cradle her friend's face and her lips were pressed into Simone’s a moment later. She sighed softly as the two allowed their artificial tongues to slither into one another’s mouths. Dancing and tangling and exploring. Simone was the first to let out a real, audible moan as Frankie kissed her deeply, pulling back just enough to lightly nibble at Simone’s lower lip. In the span of seconds, their clothes were torn off and discarded. The two, for only a few brief moments, suspended the parts of their programming that made them act human. All the small fidgets and inefficient motions were gone, allowing the two friends to strip down fully with mechanical speed and efficiency. Of course, once they were undressed the human emulation resumed and it was Simone’s turn to seize upon her friend. Their kiss resumed, but Simone intentionally pressed Frankie backward toward the bed and Frankie put up no resistance to that. She tumbled onto her familiar and comfortable bed, swathed in well worn and comfortable blankets and pillows. Simone took the opportunity to let her friend fall, admiring the way her hair fell around her head, producing a halo of hair that only barely shone in the dim light of the moon. No lights had been turned on, they wouldn’t need them. They were familiar enough with one another’s body that there was no need. Simone crawled onto the bed with Frankie, positioning herself over her friend and leaned in. A cascade of delicate kisses started at Frankie’s throat and trailed down her body. Simone let one hand drift to Frankie’s exposed chest, toying with familiar breasts that she had missed severely. Frankie’s nipples puckered and became playthings for Simone to toy with. Soon enough her lips reached Frankie’s chest and those same nipples were taken eagerly into Simone’s mouth where the blond android's tongue caressed them and her teeth nibbled at them. Each movement drawing out a breath sigh of pure delight from Frankie. Simone’s own operating system struggled to decide what to do next. Her encounters with Serene and Kenna had taught her so much about how to make love to another woman, and another android. There were tricks and techniques that could keep Frankie right on the edge of her own simulated orgasms for hours. But ultimately that was the deciding factor. Simone was tired, her power cell was lower than she would like. There was no danger of an imminent shut down or need for an emergency charge, but it was dipping into territory that might demand that she quickly conclude. She had to imagine that Frankie was in the same place, if not worse. She also worried that with Frankie’s recent run in with forced disassembly that she should steer clear of opening any panelling or detaching body parts without Frankie’s permission, or at least without discussing it first. So Simone reluctantly released Frankie’s nipple, both from her mouth and from between her fingers, and continued her trail of light kisses. Frankie whimpered slightly at the release, but soon recognized Simone’s intentions. Across the flesh on Frankie’s belly, veering discreetly towards her waiting sex, Simone carried on and soon reached her destination. Frankie’s own sexual programming took over and bid her spread her legs. A command that her human emulation had no issues with obeying. Opening wide and allowing Simone to easily glide between her thighs. A moment later, the warmth of artificial lips was on her feminine folds. A synthetic tongue was penetrating into her slit and Frankie’s back arched. A few moans whispered out of her lips in an attempt to remain discreet. Simone was relentless, and though she wanted to drag this encounter out, she acted efficiently. She found Frankie’s artificial clit with her tongue, a task that took barely any CPU cycles at all, and remained there. She eagerly tongued the robotic woman’s sex and delighted as she felt Frankie’s legs wobbling and vibrating as her internal systems simulated a growing orgasm. Simone was so enraptured in the raw pleasure of bringing Frankie to an orgasm that she barely registered Frankie’s fingers lace into her hair and press her lightly against Frankie’s crotch. Simone gleefully continued her ministrations until she felt the telltale spasms and mild clenching in the walls around her tongue. She took the opportunity to drive harder then, pushing in and sliding her tongue wildly over Frankie’s artificial clit until the sweet sounds of Frankie’s climax reached her. A long, low sound filled with exhaled breath fresh from Frankie’s own processor core filtered into the room. It was dripping wet with lustful processes and seemed to drag on for long past the moment her hips collapsed to the bed and her legs relaxed. She still shook slightly, her motor systems flushed with data and surging power would need a few more moments to settle. Simone took the opportunity to properly climb into bed and snuggle up next to her friend. She draped an arm over Frankie’s naked body and pulled her close, and in return Frankie rolled onto her side and pulled Simone close. The two naked gynoids held one another for a few long moments that stretched on and on, neither one wanted to break that embrace. “I missed you.” Frankie whispered. “I missed you too” was the reply. THey would lay like that for a long while, whispering lightly to one another. Frankie eventually had to admit that her power core was low and the two reluctantly disentangled themselves from one another. Simone insisted that Frankie remain in the bed while she pulled out the charger and plugged it into Frankie’s waiting power port. Only a moment or two later Simone had plugged herself in and joined Frankie in the bed. They both hugged and kissed one another for a few more minutes before silently admitting that they needed to put themselves into a lower power mode or they wouldn’t fully charge for tomorrow. But not before exchanging a few more whispers. “You’re back just in time.” Simone breathed into Frankie’s ear. “For what?” “Cheerleading tryouts start next week.” “Oh.” Frankie said. “Good luck, I didn’t know you wanted to try out.” “We both are.” Simone said. There was a bit of silence there, Frankie had to consider it. She had expected to be at the Brain Squad tournament for at least another month. Now that she was back though, there would be time for another activity, and she craved the kind of learning that came from trying new things and discovering what she was and was not good at. She had never considered cheerleading, but if Simone was there, then why not? “I guess I am back just in time then.” Frankie agreed. Both androids powered down after that, remaining unmoving and dormant for the next several hours. They wouldn’t move as power trickled into their power cells until an automated internal clock reactivated them in the morning. Morning arrived, ushering in sunlight and a new day. Frankie and Simone reactivated and shared another sweet early morning kiss. It wasn’t the first time this had happened, nor would it be the last. Still, they clambered out of bed and dressed themselves. Simone had stayed in the Gaines’s house enough to have left a small stockpile of clothes there. More than once Sigourney had implied that Simone should just move in and call it done, but the blond android had always turned down the suggestion. She liked her privacy and freedom far too much for that. Though with the ever increasing threats and strange occurrences happening to her best friend, that might change. At least temporarily. Her small supply of clothes could easily last for a week or two, and she didn’t mind cycling through the washer with them. Still, it was an option she didn’t want to have to consider, preferring more to have their lives return to normal. The pair,now redressed, made their way down to the kitchen where Sigourney was already waiting for them. Frankie and Simone both knew that this was going to happen. It was an opportunity for all three parties to check in and share all the knowledge they had. Sigourney most of all wanted to solve and put to rest the mysteries of what had actually happened. Frankie too wanted to have some measure of closure, not because she was afraid or any sort of fearful emotion, but simply for the sake of having knowledge, and Simone, well, she wanted safety for everyone. The conversation itself was fairly brief. Sigourney and Simone had spoken quite a bit in the hotel as they were evaluating and reassembling Frankie’s body. There was little to no new information shared and the entire conversation came to an end when silence stumbled back onto the group. There was really only one more thing to say, and Frankie expected it, Sigourney didn’t want to say it, and Simone simply waited. “Frankie I- I think I should-” “Completely disassemble me and evaluate each component more thoroughly?” Frankie concluded for her mother. Simone could only smirk, Frankie was a master of knowing what was coming and being blunt about it. She fell just on the other side of being a robot, smart and matter-of-fact about everything. She didn’t so much lack the social graces that Simone had programmed into her own OS, but rather made her manner of speaking part of her personality. It was just who she was. “Y- yeah.. I think that might be best.” Sigourney stammered. “When do you want to start? I’ll need to be fully reassembled and back online by next week as Simone and I are trying out for cheerleading and I would like to be performing optimally.” Simone hadn’t yet told Sigourney her plan, but the cat was out of the proverbial bag now. All that remained was to see how Sigourney took the news. Sigourney, for her part, had expected life to somewhat return to normal, with perhaps a few caveats to it. Cheerleading tryouts and likely practices gave her a pang of anxiety, but Frankie had said that it would be Simone and her. The added buffer of another android like Simone there, equipped and purpose built to detect threats and avoid them, quelled her fear. Mostly. She sucked in a deep breath and nodded her approval. “I think if we get started quickly, and with some help from Simone we can probably get that done.” It was Simone’s time to speak up. “If I might make a suggestion.” Sigourney and Frankie’s eyes turned to her. “I have another friend, someone I met at school who is also.. Like us.. And very skilled at this kind of technical work. I was going to ask her to join me in tryouts for cheer squad, so, maybe she could also assist and make things go a little faster. If nothing else another set of skilled hands and eyes would help.” Sigourney hesitated for a moment or two. She hadn’t met this person..robot..whoever it was. So her anxiety put her on edge, wanting first to vet this person. She admitted to herself that in doing so she would only be looking for reasons not to allow her to work on Frankie rather than looking for ways for her to help. She knew that androids were, for the most part, a product of their programming and that there was little chance for them to simply flip and begin doing harm because they wanted to. On the other side of that coin, whoever this was they were another android who was, presumably, on par with Simone and Frankie since they attended the same schooling and likely passed for human. Moreover, Simone had met and interacted with this particular robot enough to know that they were good at repairs, meaning that Simone trusted them enough to let on that she herself was an android. Sigourney wasn’t sure if that was more or less comforting, but it was a valid data point. While it didn’t put her fears fully to rest, she wondered what would at this point? So, with only a moment of hesitation, she agreed. “Fine. Who is this other android?” “Her name is Kenna, and her mother, well, designated as her mother-” “Serene.” Sigourney finishes for her, smiling as she does so. “Oh. You know them?” “We’ve met.” SIgourney’s smile widened at that. She and Serene had certainly met before, and recently had been reintroduced to one another. She mentally kicked herself for not thinking to include them earlier, but she was so hyper focused on Frankie that thinking beyond the issues at hand hadn’t even occurred to her. Simone was right, though, the pair would be most helpful. So, with plans made and two extra sets of hands to potentially assist, Sigourney got to work. Simone was put in charge of making contact with Serene and Kenna. Sigourney let her know that she trusted them as implicitly as Simone did and she was more than welcome to explain, in as much detail as Simone felt necessary, to explain the situation. Simone nodded at that and disappeared back to Frankie’s room so she could make the call and do explanations while keeping out of Sigourney’s way. Meanwhile, Sigourney and Frankie moved to the robotics lab that the family head set up in the house. The space hadn’t been used in a while as Frankie and Sigourney had been on the road with the Brain Squad. It had been long enough that a faint hazy layer of dust had begun to settle on some of the surfaces and to Sigourney the room had the scent of unuse. Musty and a little nostalgic, like old books that have been on the shelf for too long. The first order of business was cleaning it would seem. Frankie was fine with that, she let her human emulation take a backseat to some of her more efficient programming. She and her mother quietly set about dusting and vacuuming the space before going over the reclining chair in the middle of the room with a few sanitizing wipes. Once the wetness from the wipedown evaporated, it was time to start. Frankie, without hesitation, began to remove her clothes. Piece by piece. Pelling the shirt she had only been wearing for an hour up and off of her body, letting her hair tumble out of it in long silky waves. She handed it to her mother who took a moment to fold it and set it aside, she took Frankie’s bra from her as well. It was about this time that Simone wandered in and Sigourney couldn’t help but notice the path her eyes traveled over her daughter's half-naked body. She wasn’t upset about it, but it was another data point. Simone quickly made a show of averting her eyes. Sigourney wondered why it would matter, in a few minutes Frankie would be naked and Simone would be helping her take apart the robotic girl. She had done the same thing before as well. This was nothing new and perhaps it was just the way Simone was leering at her that caused the embarrassment. Sigourney didn’t bother trying to sort it out, she had plenty to worry about already. Frankie’s form fitting jeans, panties, and socks joined the pile of clothes and her shoes placed by the door to the lab. With her body exposed, she shivered once as her human emulation fully disabled itself and she stepped forward to the chair and settled into it. “Will Kenna and Serene be joining us?” Sigourney asked as her daughter, no, the robotic visage of her daughter, lay before them. “They’re already on their way. Should be here in about fifteen minutes.” Sigourney only nodded, they would be well underway by then. Frankie’s disassembly began with her head being removed from her body. A large amount of her memory and processing was done inside of her body. The central processor core was there and her torso cavity provided ample room for the cluster of data storage drives. Her head contained the largest grouping of sensory equipment though, and part of that was a sub system that handled the temporary storage and processing of those sensory mechanisms. The data didn’t last long there, only for as long as there was space for it. But there hadn’t been a massive amount of new stimuli and data, meaning Sigourney hoped to scrape something from those drives and learn something new. Simone and Mrs. Gaines quietly went to work. Sigourney was more than familiar with the sub-dermal locking pins and her fingers moved, almost on instinct, to the correct places. Simone, on the other hand, had only detached her friend's head from her neck a few times. Despite her robotic memory, there was still a tactile component that her operating system needed to register before she could disengage the locks. Eventually though, they both found what they were looking for and pressed inward until a small metallic ping interrupted their silent work. With the locks undone, Simone stepped back and Sigourney gently pulled Frankie’s head off. The alignment rails only caught once or twice as the module was removed, then Sigourney took it to a little desk in the corner and gingerly set it down. As she began plugging in a truly staggering amount of cabling into the exposed ports on what remained of Frankie’s neck, she instructed Simone to begin opening up Frankie’s torso and making her ready for some deeper disassembly. Simone felt no need to let Sigourney know that she was much better at working with the latches and panelling on Frankie’s chest and torso. But she definitely was. Frankie’s chest plating came off far easier than her head had, and Simone was fine with simply setting the flesh coated panel on the floor. Frankie’s moderate breasts provided enough weight to keep the plate in place where it rest against the leg of the chair. After that, Simone began to weave her delicate fingers deeper into Frankie’s open torso. It wasn’t long before the Gaines’s doorbell rang twice, then paused, and then two more. Simone smiled at that, it was the signal that she had told Kenna and Serene to use to let them know it was friendly visitors and not some random solicitor. Simone moved from the lab to the front door, not bothering to close or lock the door to the room, there was no need afterall. Kenna and Serene followed Simone through the house to the lab, and after a brief greeting with Sigourney, everyone settled in to work. The three android women meticulously and efficiently disassembled much of Frankie’s internal workings. Each time a new component was detached it was first physically examined, usually by Simone. Each and every time nothing at all was found on it, no traces of fingerprints or even a scuff or marking that might indicate that it had been removed. Circuit boards and controller systems were a little more intricate and were passed over to Sigourney for her to inspect. She would pour over the circuitry and modules and Frankie’s head lay on her desk, eyes fluttering as her operating system scrambled through code and data to send to the main terminal she was connected to. All in all, the room remained relatively silent, save for the occasional whirring of a cooling fan from inside of Sigourney’s computer or the gentle click of some latch inside of Frankie being detached. Once she was disassembled, there would be no shortage of data work to do. Which was primarily why Kenna was there. She wasn’t nearly as experienced in disassembly or rooting around inside of an android’s body. Certainly not as much as Sigourney, Serene or Simone were. What she lacked in experience and programming, she more than made up for in raw processing power. Being a newer model, only recently manufactured, she had state of the art hardware and her processors rivaled even Simone’s. So when a subsystem was done being visually inspected by Sigourney, it was handed off to Kenna, who for the most part had been sitting quietly in the corner of the lab. The first time Sigourney handed her something she had instructed her very carefully on what to look for. Each module and subsystem would have two things in it, an independent processor, smaller but still effective and a small amount of data storage. The data was there to simply be a massive cache space for instructions and data swaps. There was likely still something in there, and Kenna needed to sweep through it and run it past her own social programming to look for errors or really anything. At that, Kenna nodded and lifted up her shirt, resting it on top of her own ample breasts. Once done, the outline of a panel appeared around her lower abdomen and receded into her torso before shuffling out of the way. Inside, packed with circuitry and sleek modules, was the robotic core of Kenna’s chassis. It also provided a more direct path to her own processor core, thus bypassing the need to plug into any more accessible port and run through her operating system. The parts of Frankie that were connected to her through the direct ports would be treated as external devices that were part of her own body rather than just another external unit. Once plugged in, each component granted her root access to every little part of it, and then the scans began. Kenna stared vaguely off into the distance, looking at nothing at all as she devoted every last available CPU cycle to the scans. Some took longer, others were relatively short, but she didn’t mind, with her human mimicry software offline, she was incapable of caring. There was only the task. The entire teardown and evaluation process took the better part of two days. Kenna and Serene stayed in the lab, plugging in to long extension cables to continue working through their normal charge cycles. Simone at some point retired to Frankie’s room to recharge and relieve some of her own pent up desires at seeing her friends expose themselves in front of her. Sigourney slept at her desk as the two other robotic women worked around her. The data from Frankie’s head had finished downloading the first evening, but she simply couldn’t let things run. She had been manually scrubbing through the data and information, looking for something, anything, that might lead to an answer. She groggily continued her work the next morning after a bagel and a cup of coffee. Even as Serene and Simone urged her to take a real nap, she just wouldn’t let it go. In the end, after an exhaustive disassembly and scan process, nothing new was found. Whoever had done this to Franie had covered their trail well. So, frustrated and worried, they began reassembling Frankie again. Circuitry, wiring, connective tubing and modules were replaced inside of the empty chest and abdominal cavity. Legs and arms were reattached and Frankie’s head was slotted back into place. Her chest panel was clicked onto the waiting locking mechanisms and, for the sake of modesty, Sigourney threw a white sheet over her daughter’s body before reactivating her. The power on sequence took a little longer than expected. She had been fully taken apart and her operating system knew it. A full system scan would commence to make sure every component was in place and ready for use. Not just ready for use, but ready to impersonate a real human girl. So when her eyes flickered open a few minutes later, she was fully ready to be Frankie, twenty something woman and college student. Frankie began sitting up and felt the sheet on her, she pressed her hand to her chest to hold it in place and looked around. The grim faces she was met by clashed with her normally sunny smile. “Nothing discovered?” Sigourney shook her head and let out a breath that felt like it had been coiled in her chest for days on end. “What now then?” Frankie asked. There was a bit of silence and more than a few exchanged looks between her mother, her friend, and the two new androids. No answers though. “I suppose we have to try and go back to life as usual.” Sigourney said at last, though the reluctance to say so was painfully obvious. “We just have to wait for more information.” At that Frankie nodded and placed a hand across her chest, holding the sheet in place. She then slipped off of the table and everyone took that as their cue to turn their backs and give her a moment of privacy. Sigourney, the only human in the room, found it a little funny. THe other robots there with her had just seen Frankie more exposed than just naked. Their hands had been inside of her, they had taken her apart, they had seen what she was. For Kenna, she had a moment of intimacy with almost every critical system inside of Frankie. Modesty seemed like a silly, foregone concept at that point, but they were machines. They followed programming. They gave another person their privacy. The day was lingering on, Kenna and Serene took their leave, but not before Kenna mentioned that she would see Frankie and Simone at school the following day. Simone left with the other two androids, wanting to take some time to speak with Kenna in the hopes, like Frankie, of convincing her to join the cheer squad. Leaving Frankie and Sigourney alone in the house again. There was little for the pair left to do with their time, so Frankie retreated to her room, choosing to spend the remainder of her day in solitude where her highly advanced processors and equally advanced operating system could mull over the events of the last few weeks. Not just the kidnapping, or the disassembly, or the panicked flight back home to another disassembly and diagnostics. Frankie had more than enough social interactions that were still waiting for her systems to compress into something usable. She had conversations, insights, observations and discoveries that needed to be parsed and tagged with metadata and then entered into her database. In short, Frankie needed a real, honest to goodness, nap. Once she was in her room she took her clothes off again, swapping them for comfortable pajamas that felt soothing and comforting on her artificial flesh, and then collapsed into bed. She lay still for a moment, her operating system reveling in the concept of just being still for a few moments. She pulled her blanket onto herself and didn’t even bother turning to look at her hand as it pawed across her nightstand, seeking her power cable. She found it easily enough, quickly and quietly opened her charging port and plugged in, then drifted away. An internal alarm that Frankie , annoyingly, had left in place reactivated her the following morning. She hadn’t moved, which was nothing new, but she was still curled up in bed and thanks to her human emulation, didn’t want to move. She did though, she had programming to follow and it demanded that she get out of bed, get dressed, pack her bags and get to school. Frankie didn’t see her mother that morning and assumed that she was in bed, or at least hoped she was. More than likely Sigourney was still in her lab, working on something to make Frankie’s existence better. That drew a smile from the young looking robot before she left. THe university was unchanged in the time Frankie had been away. There were still crowds of people, clamped together and chatting about life, class, and everything else. Teachers and faculty wandered through the courtyard, moving from one classroom to the next where their next lecture would be, where students would pretend to pay attention. There were young lovers kissing secretly in secluded corners of the campus. All of them were oblivious to the small group of girls that had just found one another and were quietly chatting. Frankie, Kenna, and Simone, the three synthetic women on the campus were easily mistaken for humans. They always had been and unless something really catastrophic happened, they always would be. Today, though, Simone was the one with the most animation to her movements. She was excited to have Frankie back, to be able to spend time with her and with Kenna, and most of all, she was excited about the cheer squad tryouts after school. The girls idly chatted, Simone and Kenna keeping a sharp eye out for anything that might look like it was spying on them, or Frankie specifically. Eventually it was time to part and each went their separate ways, heading for their classes and promising to see each other in passing or at very least at lunch. Frankie did see Kenna once in passing,though she was across the courtyard, the pair exchanged a curt nod and a genuine smile, before moving on. Simone, on the other hand, made an effort to sneak up on Kenna and drag her to a somewhat secluded corner of the campus. Once there, as if it were pre-arranged, the two spent a few minutes simply making out with one another. Enjoying the texture and softness of one another's lips before parting. The pair were becoming something of a couple, though Simone was a little hesitant to relinquish the full extent of that relationship to Frankie. She wasn’t sure why either. It wasn’t like she and Frankie were a couple, and in fact Frankie had encouraged her to get close with kenna and engage with her. Simone made a small note to consider talking to Frankie a little more openly about Kenna and their budding relationship. That, however, could wait until later. For now, there were tryouts to attend. The cheer squad had reserved one of the gymnasiums for their tryouts. Heavy padding was laid out on the ground so that any truly awful tumbles or falls would save the poor student from a shattered bone. As the gym filled with more and more applicants they were asked to form lines and fill out both an official application and a waiver. Frankie, Simone, and Kenna had no issues with this, as academically they were more than sound and the waiver, to them, almost seemed comical. No one would sue the school on their behalf, and any kind of injury could be repaired in a matter of a weekend. Still they diligently filled out the forms and submitted them then took their seats on the bleachers and waited for their names to be called. As they sat, they watched. Not just observed but internalized the move sets, the way the captain's body moved as she demonstrated some of the moves she wanted to see the applicants perform. Each of the three robots had no issues at all with recording the performances, analyzing them with absolute perfect recollection, and allowing their operating systems to craft a matching set of instructions. When it was their turn, they would be flawless. And they were. Each one, independent of the other, took it upon themselves to add in a small amount of fumble to their own move sets. Just because they could perform perfectly, didn’t mean they should. After watching a number of other girls perform the routines, they were confident that they were close to the top performers and had no fears about making it onto the team. Everyone was told that the tryouts were concluded and that there was a certain amount of time that they would need to evaluate all the performances. It was to be expected, but in a few days they would have the results. With that, everyone was dismissed and the three robotic women filed out with the rest of the student body. On their walk homeward, the three made sure they were well out of earshot of anyone from the school before discussing what they felt like their chances were. All agreed that their performances warranted, at very least, serious consideration. It took two more days for the list of names to be announced, and as expected Kenna, Simone, and Frankie were present on it, among another dozen or so names. Along with the list were the prescribed practice times, all of which were immediately synced to the girls internal calendars and from there synchronized with one another. There was a shared sense of relief as they realized that they could all keep an eye on one another. Along with it came the dawning realization that just because Frankie had been taken and disassembled once, that there was no guarantee it wouldn’t happen again. Worse, Frankie might not be the only target. Kenna and Simone were both equally robotic and there was a lingering sense that whoever it was that took Frankie had gotten what they wanted out of her, and they might require more information. Perhaps from other androids. Kenna and Simoen knew that if Frankie wasn’t the only target, that sure they would be. For now, all they could do was keep their eyes open and their sensors tuned. They did still have classes to attend, homework to focus on, and now additional afterschool practice to slide into. Classes and homework were trivial to them, it did still require some amount of recall and processing power, but all the information was there, being compressed into usable life skills and not just raw data. Likewise the twice weekly practice sessions were treated as a form of refining their execution scripts. There was a certain amount of human-like fumbles and fidgets to their moves. Those were not something they had direct control over either. Sigourney likely could have disabled them and made the girls move perfectly, but that would have robbed them of something. An experience and the chance to learn and work like the humans they were created to mimic. So, they moved smoothly, quickly, and with precision, but there was always something more to learn. More than that, the captain of the team had her own personal preferences. Just because Frankie tumbled and landed in an almost perfect sequence, that didn’t mean that the captain of the team liked the way it looked. She would critique and adjust the girls' landings. Oftentimes one at a time, physically moving hands and arms to a more proper position before clapping her hands and demanding that they run the sequence again. Each of the androids would perfectly capture the new position and record it and then add just a little modification to it so that it would be good, great even, but not flawless. Not every time at least. Weeks slipped into months and the girls, along with their human team mates grew into a sort of cohesive unit. A single entity that not only started to work together but began predicting and even intuiting when and where someone else would be. For Simone, Frankie, and Kenna that came as a specific set of new programming and learned behavior. Their sensory systems were already highly tuned and pulling in and cataloging vast amounts of data, adding the rest of the cheer squad to that collection was trivial. Practice became less about learning the move sets and more about refining a whole routine, about moving as a single team rather than a collection of bodies. Soon enough, the actual games they would be performing at started their own practices, which signalled a small change to their practices. Until now their tumbles and flips had all been practiced in comfortable and flexible athletic shorts or sweats with equally comfortable sweater tops. Now though, it was time to practice in uniforms. Frankie came home one day, Kenna and Simone in tow. Each of them had their uniforms that matched their measurements. All their captain had asked for was that each and every cheerleader take their uniform home, try it on and wear it around a bit to get a feel for it and make notes about any modifications it might need. The trio took theirs to Frankie’s room and with an uncharacteristic amount of glee, began to slip out of their normal clothes. There was no need for their modesty social filters to remain active, there were no humans in the room, only machines. The uniforms fit well on each of them. It helped that their bodies were finely crafted and their measurements weren’t a matter of guessing or approximating. They were precise data points that each of the robotic girls knew, without a doubt. Skirts that barely covered the upper portion of the thighs were first. They were stitched into a comfortable piece of fabric that, regardless of what underwear they sported, would cover their bodies. An exposed midriff gave way to a top that was equally as comfortable and supportive to each of the girls’ chest. Holding their breasts in place, while not accentuating them. The uniforms were clearly designed for practicality rather than sensuality. That, however, did not stop the programming from loading in each of the three robotic girls. They followed the orders their operating systems issued them to a fault. They walked around the house a little, each one observing the others and making sure that there was no fault in the fit. An act that only resulted in the three girls intently staring at the bodies, the curves, the movements of her companions. The sway of the hips, making sure that nothing showed, the bounce on the chest to ensure that there was nothing for a crowd to stare at, and the way the fabric clung to their hips. All of it, as expected, was flawless, but it all added to the rising levels of arousal. Simone was the first one to suggest that they had, perhaps, collected enough data and they could likely change back into their street clothes. A suggestion that both Kenna and Frankie were eager to agree with. So they returned to Frankie’s room, and as they ascended the stairs, Simone’s operating system triggered a small reminder. She needed to be open with Frankie about Kenna. Perhaps this was the right opportunity to demonstrate that. Frankie and then Kenna entered the room, and Simone made sure to quietly close the door, then silently click the latch into place. What was about to happen was intentionally private. “I have to admit, you both looked-” Simone hesitated, letting her processors craft just the right wording. “-tantilizing.” “You also looked very good, Simone.” Frankie replied, the matter-of-fact tone let Simone know that Frankie was not quite as aroused as her and likely Kenna both were. Kenna looked to Simone, noticing something like a twinkle in her lover's eye, and even a nod from Simone let her know that now might be a moment they would all remember. With a small smirk, Kenna turned her back to Frankie, looking over her shoulder at the other android and murmuring. “Care to help me unzip this top, Frankie?” Frankie didn’t hesitate, her operating system saw no issues with the request, she too would need help. She pulled the zipper downward and loosened Kenna’s top. She shrugged out of it and let it slide off of her torso. By the time Kenna had shrugged out of it, Frankie had turned her back, and looked expectantly over her shoulder at the newest robot to the friend group. Kenna’s operating system suppressed the grin that her social programs wanted to execute. For now at least. She reached up to the zipper on Frankie’s cheerleading uniform and dragged it downward. It was clear that it wasn’t being done quickly or efficiently, it was almost intentionally slower than usual. Frankie picked up on this, but if she formulated a response to it, there was no indication. Not outwardly at least. Frankie rolled her shoulders to help shrug off the uniform top, but as her bare back shown between the zippers teeth, a new sensation crept over her. Slender hands flowing over her skin, starting from her lower back and wrapping around her torso. They skimmed the surface of her artificial flesh and wrapped around her until they were cupping her breasts from behind. If her sexual programming hadn’t been online before, it certainly was now. Her social programming quickly sent a new sound file to the speaker assembly rigged in her throat and bid it play a long sensual sigh. Kenna couldn;t see it from where she stood, pressed against Frankie’s back and groping at her breasts, but Frankie’s eyes had slipped closed as part of her little moan. That was more than enough time for Simone to slip around her best friend and stand before her. She had managed to slip out of her own top and now stood bare chested in front of Frankie. Once her eyes slipped back open, Frankie saw Simone there, waiting, expectantly. “I wanted to talk to you about this earlier.” Simone said, her voice meek, “but there was never really a good time. Kenna and I, well, w- we are sort of.” “Are you dating?” Frankie asked, blunt as ever. “Yeah, are, is that okay?” Simone asked. Frankie could only smile and sigh again as Kenna massaged her breasts, still hidden below her cheerleading top. “As long as you invite me along sometimes.” Frankie said with a wink and an uncharacteristically smug smile. It was enough to shed a bit of light on a much more casual and, frankly, human side of Frankie’s social programming. She had certainly grown a lot since high school. It was Kenna’s turn to whisper a reply. She stood on her tip toes and leaned into Frankie, enough for her own breasts to press into Frankie’s back, making her stiff nipples apparent. “You’re always welcome to join us.” She breathed into Frankie’s ear. There would be little spoken for the next hour. Kenna’s hands remain glued to Frankie’s chest, massaging her breasts, toying with them and spending an inordinate amount of time simply rolling the girl's nipples between her thumb and forefinger. Each movement, each squeeze and grope drawing another long breathy sigh from Frankie’s lips. Frankie’s operating system and the vast amount of her processing power is consumed by simply taking in the raw sensual data that she can barely detect that Simone has crouched down in front of her and is gingerly peeling the skirt down Frankie’s long slender legs. Simone’s artificial fingernails scrape against Frankie’s thighs as they pull down both the uniform bottom and Frankie’s panties. They crumple to a pile around her ankles, and the sub-processing unit in Frankie’s hips sends instructions to gently lift her feet so Simone can remove her shoes, socks, and the skirt. One after the other they all come off and leave Frankie naked, exposed, and aroused. But not nearly aroused enough for Simone’s liking. She can already see the glistening of synthetic lubricants on Frankie’s sexual module, and for most that might be good enough. Simone, on the other hand, knows how to turn on Frankie and more than that, she knows what turns her on. For only a moment her eyes flick up to the other two robots. Frankie’s head has lolled to one side, and Kenna eagerly plants small, smoldering kisses along Frankie’s throat. Conveniently they are centered around the nearly imperceptible seam where Frankie’s head connects to her neck joint. Simone’s hands find their way to Frankie’s belly, her fingers gliding around the perimeter of an access panel there. On the other side of it are some of the controller boards for Frankie’s sexual module, and situated next to that, a tangled mess of wires that carry data from her legs, hips, feet, and pussy into her processor core. Simone has no plans to pull out any circuitry, not today, though she has certainly fantasized about it in the past. For now, she has a different goal in mind, but first Frankie needs to be moved. Simone’s fingers find the manual releases to the access panel, just below the skin on the four edges of the panel and she begins to drive her fingernail into the small, subdermal buttons that will release the catch. No human could possibly hear the faint ping as each one was released, but to Simone, Frankie, and Kenna, they are as clear as day. The removal of an access panel alerted Frankie’s operating system immediately. Her head swiveled down in time to see Simone tugging the panel of flesh away from her body. The thick membrane of underlying structure and fake skin was flexible and found its way to the floor at her feet. This was Simone’s cue to stand up, lean over Frankie’s shoulder and kiss Kenna hard on the lips. It was brief, but passionate. She pressed her own body against Frankie’s and wrapped her arm around the feminine android. Simone’s hands cupped her friend's rear end and scooped her up. From there it was an easy move to walk her to the bed and drop her there. Kenna took the hint and crawled onto the bed next to Frankie. Once there, she resumed her obsession with Frankie’s breast by kissing along her chest until her lips were on the girl’s nipples. While she did, Simone gently placed a hand on each of Frankie’s legs and spread them wide. With ample room to spare, Simone crawled on top of her friend, aligning her own naked sex against Frankie’s. With her hips now being straddled and her breasts being worshipped, Frankie began to openly moan. Long, lewd sounding rumbles of raw pleasure rolled over her lips. She was squirming and her hips gently pressed up against Simone’s. As she did, Simone herself had manually opened one of the access panels in the side of her own torso, off to one side and just below her artificial ribcage. She had slipped her thumb and index finger into her own body and was pulling out a retractable datacable. It was hardwired into her own systems, but the free end got plugged into an available port inside of Frankie. Her sexual module registered itself as an additional device in Simone’s OS and Frankie gasped and sat up. The devious smile on Simone’s face gave Frankie a hint of what was to come, and with little effort she confirmed the connected device, allowing her and Simone to become linked. With permissions requested and granted, Simone began to pump little bits of custom programming into Frankie, many of the scripts and snippets were ones she had used on herself. She pulled out a bit of extra cord from inside of her body and began to move. The code started fluctuating Frankie’s sexual responses. Turning up her sensitivity and responsiveness, before dipping it down, making her wet folds feel almost numb. The programming would hold her there for just a moment longer than it should have and then spiked her sensitivity back up. All the while Simone eagerly lapped and tongued her way deeper and deeper into Frankie’s robotic slit. Simone herself moaned desperately at this, knowing that soon enough it would be her turn, but for now, she took abject pleasure in pleasing her friend and fellow cheer squad member. Kenna, meanwhile, amused herself by suckling deeply on Frankie’s tits. She alternated back and forth between them, in the process draping her own body over Frankie’s in order to reach every little part of her. Little nibbles along the nipples would give way to a deep suckling where Kenna’s tongue swirled and wrapped around the hardened nipples in her mouth. Frankie was almost completely locked into the pleasure, letting her feminine folds be worked by Simone while Kenna lavished her with kisses was taxing, for sure, but she still had spare CPU cycles. Particularly once the initial load and execution of her sexual programming stabilized and began running smoothly. Once her systems settled into a cadence she was able to begin participating in the little threesome they had started. She began by moving her hands to Kenna’s back. The simple act of skin on skin contact was enough to send a brief shiver along Kenna’s manufactured spine and draw a small moan from her. Frankie had formulated great plans about feeling the smoothness of her skin and exploring the gentle curvature of her body, but something about that simple sound changed Frankie’s mind. It sounded so desperate and pleading without any demand for action, that Frankie had to engage. Her hand fell from Kenna’s back and rounded her torso, coming to a place where it was her turn to fondle Kenna’s breasts. She played with them in much the same way that Kenna had to her, groping and grabbing at them, coaxing out lustful sighs of desire. She didn’t remain there for long. It only took a small adjustment, which both Simone and Kenna were happy to adjust to as well, for Frankie’s hand to be within reach of Kenna’s sex. Once in place, Frankie wasted little time in slipping not just one just two fingers into Kenna’s already dripping wet slit. She slipped easily inside and burrowed her way to the robotic clit that was begging to be played with. Kenna, for her part, seized up for only a moment as her processors parsed the torrent of new sexual data. Her processors struggled for only a moment to transition from giving pleasure to receiving it, but it was a smooth enough transition. Had Frankie been a human she likely wouldn't have even noticed, but she detected it and was more than happy to see that she could still make a robot lock up for a moment at least. Frankie took her time, luxuriating in the feeling of how easy it was to slide in and out of Kenna. She made an effort to keep her movements consistent, but always slow and deliberate. She would drive deep inside of her before twitching her fingers just right, just the same way she liked it, and then pulling back out. Kenna’s breathing increased as her processors demanded more fresh air to help cool them while Frankie played with her clit. At some point her programming resumed properly and she returned to lavishing kisses along Frankie’s breasts. Simone noticed the change in dynamic and smiled at it. Frankie was giving Kenna the same kind of treatment she herself had given the shy young android plenty of times before. It was sometimes credible to Simone how similar she and Frankie were. Their programming bases matched so closely that it was only in the deviations that it became apparent that they were truly different. Simone was far more aggressive, far more loose and unintentional with the way she carried herself, and Frankie was the opposite, choosing to be deliberate in everything she did. From the way she spoke to the methods she used to finger another woman. All of it was uniquely Frankie though, and Simone loved it. She looked up from her post between Frankie’s leg, lashed her tongue back and forth across Frankie’s wet folds and sent a command to spike her sensitivity up to almost critical. She was beginning to feel those same lustful desires boiling in her own processors. She craved Frankie’s love on her own slit. She refused to leave her friends unsatisfied though. Simone was a lot of things, but a tease was not one of them. Frankie for her part knew that Simone was diligently employing all her tricks to make her cum. The way she flicked her robotic tongue against Frankie’s equally robotic clit was a tried and true trick, and one that Frankie particularly enjoyed. She had been suppressing the rising demand from her operating system and her sexual subsystems to execute the orgasm sequence she had en queue. Likewise, she was enjoying tickling Kenna’s wetness, but wanted her to cum as well. The paradox of robotic sex was that most of the androids manufactured and hiding in the world were made specifically to not execute a climax until their partner reached theirs. Most of the first truly realistic androids had been, unsurprisingly, for the sex industry, and programming like that was a hold over from those times. Granted, robotic people were not common, but they were out there if you knew where to look. Kenna, Frankie, and Simone’s more mature programming was based on those early models. The programming hold over was there too, or at least it had been.Sigourney had enough forethought to know her daughter would have sex, at some point, and wanted to make sure that her identity remained hidden. She had spent an inordinate amount of time patching Frankie’s programming so that she could, for lack of a better word, finish first. Testing Frankie’s systems over and over until it was perfect and she was sure the programming had been updated, and from there, offering to install it in Simone as well. Both girls were running that software now, but Kenna was not. She had been developed independently and Serene, while aware of the bug, didn’t actively try to remediate it. She thought it was actually kind of cute and endearing. Kenna wouldn’t let her own systems dip into the blissful release of Frankie’s fingers until Frankie herself had finished. Frankie was acutely aware that Simone, of all the robots in the room, was not receiving any kind of pleasure at the moment. She had started this whole threesome and was left untouched, and to Frankie that was unacceptable. Her processors, though focused on her immense pleasure, still had enough cycles to concoct a means of satisfying one of her longest friends. She had to leave Kenna’s slit unoccupied for a moment, a fact that apparently warranted a small whimper from the usually shy android. It wouldn’t last long though. Frankie’s hands were already moving into place as her operating system released the seal and locks along her neck. Once done it immediately established a remote connection between her head and the secondary processor core inside, and her main processor in her torso. It was a process that took less than a second, less than a blink. Her hands hadn’t even reached the sides of her head by the time the connection was severed and reestablished. It was a simple motion to gently pull her head off of its mounting rails and move it down to face Simone. Her friend looked up from Frankie’s wet folds to see her friend's face, settled next to her and smiling with a lustful kind of joy and a moment later a sly wink. Simone wasted no time and seized her friend's head and settled it between her own legs. Now it was Frankie’s turn to eagerly flick her tongue over Simone’s clit. Soon Frankie’s headless body placed her hands back on Kenna, gliding over the artificial flesh there until she managed to find her way back to her waiting pussy and dove back inside. Two fingers, sliding in and out with a gently increasing pace. Slick with Kenna’s juices and eager to pleasure the young robotic woman. The room filled with a hushed chorus of moans and long breathy whines. Occasional strangled grunts came from somewhere when one of the three would change the routine they were executing just enough. Frankie was the first to fully engage her sexual suite and execute her orgasm sequence, though it would take another half an hour of raw desire and sexual stimulation before she had had enough. Likewise Simone and Kenna had continued their routines as well, Kenna unable to execute hers until Frankie did so, and Simone simply being stubborn and wanting to be last. Frankie’s headless body arched backwards, thankful that the datacable running between her exposed belly panel and Simone’s didn’t stretch or accidentally come undone. Her cry of delight was a little louder than expected simply because her head was missing. The speakers mounted in her throat had an unimpeded path to the open air and it made her long, lewd sounding moan that much louder for the others to hear. Kenna, who had been eagerly sucking on Frankie’s breasts and toying with her nipples detected the cry and registered it as her current user reaching climax. That was all it took for her own body to shudder. Her legs wobbled a bit as her sexual programming coursed through the fiber optic wiring inside of every part of her chassis. She sighed a hot breath, fresh from her processors, across Frankie’s slick nipple as she climaxed. Frankie’s fingers were treated to a fresh gush of synthetic lubricants across her fingers that threatened to spill out over her hands as Kenna cried in ecstasy. Simone, who hadn’t necessarily been waiting for someone to orgasm first, let her friends have their moment before she also let Frankie’s tongue, gliding into and across the electronics clit inside of her, bring her to climax as well. She wailed her pleasure into Frankie’s slit as her whole body tensed up, her thighs clamping slightly against Frankie's head, and her back arching as well. The data cable linking her and Frankie together carried a load of sexual data from her friends processors into her own and the pair shared a second climax, just between them. The data was raw and unfiltered and caused waves of rolling lust to scramble through every part of them. Then it was over. The only sound in the room was panting and if you listened very carefully, the gentle spinning of an internal cooling fan from inside of Frankie’s exposed body. Simone;s was buried far too deep inside of her torso to be audible, but that didn’t matter. Simone gingerly extracted Frankie’s detached head from between her legs and handed it up to Kenna who was more than happy to help align it and then click it back into place atop Frankie’s neck. The data cable linking the two robots sent a request to eject the device, and Frankie was fine with confirming it, though sad that the erotic sense of being attached to another machine would end. Simone retracted it into her body and resealed the panel there. Kenna took some time to snuggle up next to Frankie and drape a hand over her. THe heat radiating out of Frankie’s skin was intense, though well within reason. The conductive cooling system worked well and Kenna knew she probably felt just as warm to Frankie. A moment later Simone joined the pair and curled up against Frankie on the other side. She blatantly placed a hand on Frankie’s exposed breast, jealous that Kenna had all the fun with Frankie’s chest. Her and Frankie both sighed as they settled into a warm afterglow and simply enjoyed the feeling of skin to skin connection between the three androids. Simone was the first to speak and her voice, barely above a whisper, was easily heard by both Frankie and Kenna. “So Kenna and I have been involved with one another a little bit.” “I can see that.” Frankie commented, allowing her human emulation to wrestle back her operating system. “You seem to have gotten quite a bit of practice while I was away.” Kenna cooed softly against Frankie as her own operating system recalled long afternoons alone with Simone. Each one pleasuring one another. Sometimes it was mundane, done like a human would, other times there were open panels, connected circuitry and detached body parts. Sex that only a robot could have. “There’s plenty more practice to be had.” Kenna commented and sighed happily. Cheer practice continued. It had moved from a twice a week afterschool event to a daily routine. Frankie, Kenna, and Simone would go to class, meet up with one another in the courtyard and sit for a moment. While Kenna and Frankie remained in place, Simone would stalk off for a while, scouting around to make sure there were no shadowy figures lurking in unseen shadows, waiting to spring on Frankie again. Every day it was clear and the three would make their way across the campus to the football fields. From there, they would slip into the locker room with the rest of the cheer squad and strip out of their clothes and into their cheer uniforms. The three robotic girls would often cast side-long glances at one another and recall that first afternoon. Dressed as cheerleaders, then falling into hedonistic desires. It wasn’t the only time that had happened either. As they fell into a daily routine of cheer practice, so too did they fall into a routine of heading to Frankie or Simone’s house, slipping out of their cheer uniforms so they could be washed, and then pleasuring one another. Sometimes one of them would have to disengage in order to toss the laundry into the dryer, but then the pleasure was quickly rejoined. Once they were in uniform again they would take to the field. The mid august air would be warm, though as most walked from the air conditioned changing room to the outside air, it felt like a blast of dry heat. The field would be freshly mown, and the girls would run through drills on real turf. The hard and reliable stability of the gymnasium floors would be replaced with the soft give of real earth. Just like in the initial learning phases, there was a certain amount of recalibration to do for the three robots. The programmed routines they had learned for the last few months would still be in place, but their processors now had to work on how to adapt those routines to a different firmness of the ground under feet. Not only did they have to reevaluate and re-learn some of the moves, there was always an element of human failure. Simone would be thrown up onto the waiting hand of one of her male team members, and she trusted that his footing was sure and that he wouldn’t drop her. Still, her balance protocols did their best to compensate for any wobble and sway that he might have had until it was time for her to hop down and hope her team caught her. They always did. Still, practice continued to make sure that everyone was ready and that there was enough time to learn the routines on real dirt. The time spent there was particularly useful to the android trio, as their programming learned fast, but it was still somewhat rigid code. Flexibility was something that took time and learning. The move sets were not the biggest concern though. The football field was large, and the stadium seating beyond was vast. It offered an ample amount of space for someone to hide under the bleachers or just around a corner. Worse still was the fact that there was never any shortage of people just sitting there, watching. The temptation to come and watch the cheerleaders dance under the guise of simply waiting for the football team to take the field and run their drills, or just have a place to sit and relax, was all too real. Any one of the many bodies in the stadium on any given day might be connected to Frankie’s kidnapping. Simone had to suppress those worries though. She needed to focus on her routine and allow her programming to learn and adapt. Frankie and Kenna, likewise, spent the time truncating social dynamics that might draw their eyes to the onlookers to identify them. Frankie always made a habit of at least scanning the onlookers when she made it onto the field, but that was only an initial scan, there was no way to know if someone left or if others arrived after they had started their practice. Would it really matter though? If they spotted someone, even if they identified someone, how would they possibly confront them? It wasn’t as if the trio of robotic girls could just march off the field and up to some stranger and accuse them of kidnapping their friend, because that would also lead to the second part of the kidnapping. The disassembly and return of Frankie in parts. Nothing screamed that someone was an android quite like being returned to a hotel room in pieces and arranged meticulously. Even Sigourney had to agree with that logic. She didn’t like it, and she herself took to showing up at the field from time to time simply so she could scan through the small and sparse crowd of onlookers. It did her no good though, if someone was there watching her daughter or her friends, they had spotted Sigourney and disappeared. She never once saw anyone who she could identify as a concern. As before, there was only one thing to do and that was wait and hope that the threat they encountered hadn’t followed them home. There had been no real, tangible evidence that it had, just paranoia. Soon enough it was time for real games to begin. Football season had officially started, and so too did classes restart. Frankie found herself busy with classes during the day, a limited amount of time to do homework, and then performing on the weekends with the cheer squad. Sigourney had taken a great amount of time to prepare a more robust mobile lab that she kept in the back of her van. If need be she could drop the seats down and easily work on any of the girls if needed. It was particularly useful for their away games that took them out of state for a bit. There were more than a few tightened joints and additional lubricant refills to be done. AS was the case back at their home field, Frankie relied on Kenna and Simone to be a second set of eyes for her. They continually scanned around for anyone who might look suspicious, while Frankie herself attempted to look inconspicuous while keeping her own optics trained on her surroundings. It was significantly harder in the away games as they were in a foreign changing room and an unfamiliar stadium. At least on their home turf they were familiar with the corners and layout. On the road, every new stadium was a new challenge. More than that, the rising fear of moving into the territory of whoever it was who had taken Frankie in the first place was very real. They had been on the road for the Brain Squad tournament when it had first happened, and it had been so fast that there was no telling when a strike would come again, or where. It meant that Frankie, Simone, and Kenna would always remain together. Strength in numbers afterall. Not that it was all bad. Remaining together meant that Sigourney was more than welcome to leave the girls alone in the hotel room while she went for food or just some fresh air. It was in those times that the girls fell back into their usual hijinx. Sigourney would barely be out the door and Simone would click the deadbolt into place. She would whirl around and smile, meeting Kenna and Frankie’s equally devious smirks. The three realized that Sigourney would be anxious to return, so they made quick work of things. Kissing one another with eager and sometimes reckless abandon while hands roamed over the somewhat coarse fabric of their cheerleading uniforms. Groping and pawing at one another as they mewled their lustful intentions into the air. Frankie was beginning to take after her tinkerer mother and had spent some of her free time developing scripts for evenings like this. A simple string of commands and code was surprisingly effective when time was of the essence. She would slide open the panel at the base of her torso, just above her exposed sexual systems while Kenna and Simone did the same. It was a little tricky at first to get the script to run properly when the three were daisy chained together like a set of old computer drives. But with a little tinkering and a lot of testing, they finally got it right. Frankie would plug a data cable into her exposed systems via her sexual panelling. From there she would curl up next to Kenna, slender and slight as she was, she made for a perfect middleman. Her newer and slightly more advanced configuration made the chain easy as well. Her sexual input panel had more than enough spare ports so that from her system, Simone could also plug in. Once the three robotic women were all connected, Frankie would distribute the script and all of them would run it. It wasn’t anything complicated. Nothing like a whole routine to run through, it was actually just based on a data capture Frankie had done while masturbating one day. A sudden and sharp spike of arousal to get the system started, and then a steady rising feeling of erotic and lustful code. Then, after about ten minutes, a request to the core OS for a random orgasm sequence to load into cache and then run. Everything else was up to the user. Frankie had crafted it in a way that the script could be run with no other input. She could have all of her motor control systems fully disabled, as long as her operating system and the right subsystems were running, it would execute as planned. She would lay still, her feminine slit twitching slightly as time went along and eventually she would moan and climax. Of course, that was possibly the least fun way to run the script. With the three girls linked together, the script would run on each of their systems. There was no need to properly stimulate one another, no waiting for someone else to climax and register it before Kenna could cum. It took the mystery out of the act and left their human emulation free to toy with one another as they saw fit. Sometimes they remained in their cheerleading uniforms, the cable snaked into their bottoms and plugged in. Other times they were fully nude and allowed easy access to one another's bodies. Hands groped and toyed with breasts, fingers slipped into already wet slits and steamy kisses were shared. All of it overflowing with passion and lust. None of it increased or decreased the building sensation of arousal. It meant they could do whatever they wanted and still finish in ten minutes. Hardly enough time for Sigourney to make it to the lobby and get some air and come back. They had never been caught, and Frankie knew if they had that Sigourney would likely have some choice words for her. Frankie could just imagine her now, rolling her eyes and clucking her tongue at them. She’d want to check the script to make sure it didn’t open any vulnerabilities or compromise her systems in any way. Then, of course, she would want to improve on it. For now, Frankie was just happy to be bringing her friends to a pleasurable release. It was something she had done. Homecoming in particular was due to be a spectacular game. After touring around the country for several weeks now, driving out or on occasion flying across the country only to be flown back home was beginning to wear a little on Sigourney. Frankie, Kenna, and Simone seemed to have no issues with it, but they were also able to instantly readjust their internal clocks to match the correct time zone. Sleep didn’t matter to them either, just a five to six hour uninterrupted charge cycle. It also felt nice to be back home, in their own stadium and on their own grass. A place where Simone felt comfortable with every curve and corner. She and Kenna made short work of scouting out the surrounding locations where someone might be lurking before the game. It was still several hours away, but there was no problem with being early, or being cautious. Early arrival also meant that Sigourney could post up in the stands somewhere and simply watch. There were others there too, but as expected, no one looked seedy enough to warrant concern. Meanwhile the girls had the dressing room to themselves. They were not confident enough in their solitude to open up an access panel and run through Frankie’s script, but they were more than happy to make out with one another and provide a little erotic stimulation between the legs before the rest of their squad was expected to arrive. THe feeling of Kenna’s fingers slipping between Simone’s lips drew a squeal from her, and Frankie had settled herself onto her knees and was eagerly lapping away at Kenna’s pussy when the shrieking squeal of the locker room door interrupted them. They had planned for this eventuality and their programming immediately snapped into action. They had been playing with one another in the showers, and one of them was already running. The spatter of water against the tile floor was plenty of ambient noise to cover the breathy whisper of a moan Kenna had just made as the door opened. With the presence of someone else in the locker room, the three girls sprang up, and grabbed towels. After quickly wrapping themselves, Frankie cranked the handle on the wall to the off position and the water stopped. From there they simply wandered over to the lockers. A small group of team members had entered and only glanced in their direction. It was just enough to see who was there, what their state was and then get back to their own business. Seeing someone in a towel was enough for anyone to quickly avert their eyes. Certainly fast enough to notice that none of the three girls showed any signs of being in the shower just moments ago. No wet hair, no trail of watery footprints on the tile flooring. Either they didn’t notice, or they didn’t care. Within an hour the rest of the squad had arrived, many of them showering as well which Frankied and Simone found lent a little credence to their claim that they simply wanted to be early to get in a shower before anyone else did. A fact that became more and more apparent as the meager amount of shower stalls filled up fast and left a line of cheerleaders clutching towels around their naked bodies until one opened up. Simone and Kenna had already slipped into their uniforms and were zipping up their tops when they looked over at Frankie. She was scowling down at her own uniform. “Something wrong?” Simone asked. “It seems that there is a stain.” Frankie replied and nodded towards a green patch of color on her otherwise flawless uniform. The trio was surrounded by the rest of their team, all of which were in some state of dress or undress. One of them heard her complaint and offered up a stain remover pen. Frankie graciously thanked her for it and began working at the fabric. It was about this time that the team captain appeared and started spouting the kind of inspirational speech that had clearly been ripped and modified from a movie. Sweeping prose about making a difference and being the backbone of support. Frankie wasn’t listening, she was far too focused on her own uniform. She looked up as the captain clapped, cheered and began fast walking out towards the staging area. From there, they would sprint onto the field, bubbly and bouncy and all smiles. It was homecoming, and they needed to be at their best. A fact that resonated with Frankie as she worked the pen into the fabric. The locker room was emptying, and quickly. “C’mon Frankie.” Kenna muttered. “This will only take me a few more moments. I will be right behind you.” Frankie said as she triumphantly finished with the pen and handed it back to her teammate, who took it, stored it in her locker, and then sprinted out. Kenna and Simone looked at one another for only a moment before the captain called into the locker room again. “Go on. I will be there.” Frankie confirmed. Kenna and Simone nodded and ran out, leaving Frankie alone. She shook her head at the stain again, the fluids from the pen were disappearing and the stain was too, though not as quickly as she wanted and not as completely. She settled for good enough and pulled her uniform on quickly. Simone and Kenna ran along the halls and into the waiting area. They were almost there when Simone saw something, or rather someone out of the corner of her eye. In one of the many hallways that lead out from the staging area she saw Frankie. At first she smiled and let her human emulator puff a small relieved breath out of her mouth. She darted away from Kenna for a moment to run over to Frankie. As she approached though, Frankie faded into the darkness of the hallway and Simone could hear footsteps running. She wondered if something was wrong and called after her. “Frankie, wait up!” As she ran, her audio receptors detected the sound and fed it into her operating system for analysis, it was getting farther away with each step. Simone compensated by breaking into a sprint to try and catch her friend. She knew she was getting closer because Frankie’s silhouette registered on her optics. But there was something wrong. Why was Frankie running? Worse, her shirt looked like it was flapping as she ran and she was wearing jeans and tennis shoes. Not her cheer leading uniform. “Frankie!” Simone ran harder, dumping reserve power into the motor systems in her hips and legs and gave chase. Frankie darted around a corner, then another and then looped back around and eventually Simone found herself in front of the girls locker room again. She had heard the door slam shut moments ago, but she had definitely fallen behind. She tried the hand only to find it locked and unwilling to budge. She rattled it and then pounded hard on it with her fist. Eventually Kenna turned the corner and meekly squeaked Simone’s name. The blond spun to see Kenna standing there, her expression pleading. “What are you doing?” “I- Frankie was just here. She was running and I…” Simone trailed off as she registered that she was rambling and what she was saying was, at best, incoherent. Frankie was back in the locker room, and likely just changing quickly. Maybe that’s why she had been running back, to get to her uniform. Simone stepped away, tossing a look back at the door one last time before jogging to Kenna and the pair navigated back to the waiting area. Once there, they spotted the rest of the squad. They were beginning their jog onto the field as music swelled outside and cheers erupted from the stadium onlookers. Simone and Kenna jogged up to the back of the line, then skittered along the line and took their places. When it was their turn to run onto the field, at least they would be in place. The problem was that Frankie was supposed to have been in several positions in front of them and Simone worried that with her just now getting her uniform on that she would be out of sequence. There wouldn’t likely be a good or convenient time or place to swap her in. Simone, and to a lesser degree, Kenna, were both more than a little concerned. If Frankie wasn’t there then she was alone, and they weren’t watching her. Then again, if Frankie had managed to somehow out sprint them and get into line or figure out some other way to get in place, they didn’t want to desert the team or Frankie on the field. Both exchanged looks and turned on their internal messaging app. It was nothing fancy, just a means of sending short and simple messages to one another. Simone sent a ping to Frankie but almost immediately got an alert that it failed to send. She supposed that standing in a concrete bunker-like prep area, lined with rebar and all manner of metal rods, underground, would likely do that. She sent another one to Kenna, and after retrying twice it finally sent. “What do we do?” “We have to go out there. Frankie will be okay. I hope. Send a message to Sigourney once we are out there.” Simone caught Kenna's eye again and simply nodded. It looked innocent enough to the rest of the squad, just a solitary nod to a friend before running out in front of a stadium full of people. Kenna caught the real meaning of it. Simone detected the two girls in front of her hop up slightly and then start into a run. A moment later it was Simone’s turn. She pasted a smile on her face, threw her arms in the air and jogged out. She was all smiles and waves. She blew kisses towards the football team and waved eagerly at the crowd. She was awash in a sea of sounds and lights. Bright flames from cameras and the overwhelming light and heat from the spotlights. It was a good thing that the games took place in the evening, boiling under those lamps during the day was likely to cause her to overheat. Simone jogged along until she reached her designated spot and she stopped. She wanted so badly to look around, but her eyes needed to be glued forward, as instructed. When on the field there was only the routine and the crowd. You look at them and you look where you are going, nowhere else! She hoped to catch a glimpse of Frankie on the field, or not. Either one would provide her with an answer, though she lacked any means of doing anything about it. Still, she took Kenna’s advice and threw together a rapid message to Sigourney and sent it off. She didn’t even see if it had successfully been sent or not. There wasn’t time. It was time to begin their routine. Kenna and Simone both engaged their programming, doing their best to truncate other processes that would make them worry about Frankie. The dance began, as did the opening ceremony for the game. There was a coin toss to see who would receive the ball first and some words of encouragement politely, for both teams from the school's dean of students. Soon the air was filled with the sharp trill of whistles and the thump and crunch of football equipment wrapped around bodies slamming into one another. Grunts of linebackers pushing hard against their opposition and cryptic calls from the sidelines and from the quarterback. All the while, Kenna and Simoen danced and whirled in place. Simone thought, briefly, about opening her eyes, just once, while her head whipped around and recording a video. From there she could feed that video into her processors to parse it and see if her identification software could run what she had seen against her internal database of known entities. It might have taken some time, but she could possibly have seen Frankie. That would take up far too much processing power though, as she needed to keep performing at peak efficiency. She needed to remain balanced, particularly because they were coming to some of the more complicated moves. Soon she would be tossed up and land on someone’s hand and lift a knee and shake her pom-poms and scream and smile. She couldn’t afford to miscalculate something as important as that. A tumble from that height would definitely break something, and worse still, expose what she was made of. She kept her eyes working in the right directions, hoping that something in the routine would allow her just a moment to see Frankie. As she landed perfectly on the platform created by her male co-stars palm, Simone lifted her knee and smiled. She waved and then hopped up, just a little, to disengage and sent herself falling back to the ground. Mid air she twisted just a little to allow her back to land against the group of boys assembled to catch her. She trusted them, and sure enough, they caught her with practiced grace. She also ventured a small glance to the side, to the direction she wasn’t able to look at as she performed. But a fall was just gravity doing what it did best, and Simone had nothing to do in the span of time it took her to fall some seven or eight feet. Frankie was there. Her cheer uniform perfectly intact and her smile, as always, flawless. If Simone could sigh in relief she would have, but that was a human emotion and a social response. While she was on the field, she was far more robotic than any other time, and her social programming was running minimally at best and her human emulation was only on enough to be convincing. She wasn’t going to fidget or act nervous, but she also wasn’t going to feel the simulate release from seeing her friend safe and sound. Nor was she going to alert Sigourney who would have clearly seen her daughter on the field already or Kenna, who was equally as robotic at the moment. So the three machines carried on, dancing, swaying, cheering and looking pretty for all to see. For the next four hours they would stay on the field. Ruffling their pom-pom’s as needed and moving through their move sets when it was time. And then, it was all over. The game ended, disappointingly, with their team losing by only a few points. That was fine though, as everyone kept saying, at least they tried their very best. Simone managed to slide up to Frankie in the locker room along with Kenna and whisper to her. “What was all that before the game?” She hissed. “What do you mean?” Frankie replied. “I was removing the stain from my uniform.” “No, the running, the chasing, all that.” Simone corrected. “I did not run, except onto the field.” Frankie corrected again. Simone and Kenna seemed genuinely confused by that. Their processors ground through the facts and tried to make them all fit. There was just something wrong though and Simone most of all, hated that. She was built and programmed to solve problems and this was one of those problems that couldn’t be solved. Simone kept the thread active and kept her processors running through scenarios as she got herself dressed and her uniform tossed into her duffel bag. Frankie did the same, and as the rest of the squad cleared up and made their way out, Frankie, Simone, and Kenna left among the surge of tired cheerleaders. In the cool night air, the trio strode along. Frankie had let her mother know that they were safe and that she was free to head home while they were still changing. It was late and Sigourney was more than a little jet lagged, so she was glad to take them up on the offer. There were still buses running and the group of androids made their way towards their usual station. The night sky was clear, washed with stars and a slim slice of moon for light. The overhead lights had flickered to life a while ago, but the bulbs inside only managed to provide pools of light here and there. The world was cast into shadows, each one had something to hide. Those pools of light, though, illuminated something that none of the three robots were expecting. Standing on one of them, imposing itself between them and their bus stop. Was a figure. The overhead lighting made it hard to pick out details, particularly because whoever it was had their head downcast. Definitely feminine, long hair, about the same color as Frankie’s. In fact, her whole build was identical to Frankie. She lifted her head and it became clear to Simone and Frankie who exactly it was, and with that, the missing pieces to their puzzles fell into place. The girl, identical in every way, literally, to Frankie smiled. “Hello ladies. Nice night for a stroll.” It was Frankie’s voice as well. Frankie and Simone seemed locked into place and Kenna followed suit. She whispered to her two friends. “Who’s that? She..She looks just like you Frankie.” Frankie stared down her twin, eye to eye, optics meeting across the space. The only difference was the sly smile on the figure's face. It was coy, where Frankie’s face remained a deadpan mask. “That is Eliza. My evil twin…” Chapter 7 everything needed to be taken into account. Likewise, Simone had made herself ready as well. She was built for this kind of thing, and her programming flooded into her operating system. Her arms ready to combat any sort of incoming threat and her legs, like Frankie, ready to run from danger or dodge and attack, beside both of them, Kenna looked bewildered. Her own programming was keen enough to see that there was recognition as well as caution here. Simone and Frankie, especially Frankie, never acted this way. Frankie’s normally cool demeanor had melted away into raw, mechanical efficiency. She always ran a little more mechanically, but to Kenna, this was entirely new. Simone as well, always fiery and ready to spring, looked more like a predatory cat ready to spring than the peppy lover she had come to know so well. Kenna’s optics drifted to the girl, Eliza, standing some twenty yards away. Bathed in the light of the one lonesome streetlamp that illuminated her. To Frankie’s credit, the descriptor of Eliza being her twin was unmistakable. The construction was the same. Darker brunette hair that stopped just above the curvature of her modest chest. Somewhat lanky arms that rest easily at her sides. Despite the cooler evening air, she wore a simple two tone baseball shirt and jeans. Waiting at the very edge of the blurred edges of the pool of light, just beyond its radiance, was a duffle bag, zipped up and waiting. Eliza’s dark eyes and calm stance, to Kenna, could have been threatening in its comfort or completely neutral in relaxation. It was hard to tell given the information that her sensor array picked up. “What do you want?” Simone practically spat the words at Eliza, perhaps hoping the venom she had put on the words would do her some harm. Eliza’s face changed then. She had been fairly neutral up until this point, with a small quirk at the side of her mouth that added more menace that it did comfort. Once Simone spoke though, it was like something inside of her realized how she looked. Her face melted somewhat into a much more neutral expression, mirroring the one Frankie normally wore. A moment later her operating system realized that doing so might just make her look like she was about to spring on them, so compiled a whole suite of actions to try and convey her message. First, she sighed. Her chest rose full and let out a huff. Her hands rose, slowly, palms facing the group of girls and her mouth pressed into a hard line across her face. She hoped it conveyed a little more acceptance of past actions and apologetics for them. “I’ve come to make amends for what happened.” Her programming demanded that her voice soften a bit. It dropped down to a softer range and slowed her words. They were less clipped and less efficient, that was what made her sound more safe. “I just wanted to talk for now. I know I have a lot to answer for, but I wanted to meet you when no one else was around.” Simone and Frankie’s artificial minds snapped to Kenna. There were still people around and something in Eliza’s own mind realized that a second later, then she corrected. “Well, no one human at least.” Her eyes darted intentionally to Kenna. Frankie wasn’t quite convinced, this was too sudden, too easy. “Why are you doing this here, and now?” She asked. “There’s a bus coming in ten minutes. I feel like that’s more than enough time for me to convince you. And if I don’t, well, then you three get on the bus and go home.” “And you?” Simone asked. “And I disappear. I can look somewhere else for the help I need I suppose.” Her eyes darted, once again, to Kenna. A fact that both Frankie and Simone noticed, cataloged, and sent for processing. “Fine.” Frankie said, though she didn’t bother relaxing at all. That was surely Eliza’s cue to begin whatever pre-made speech she had had time to compile. “I’ll start by saying that I fully confess to deactivating Frankie while she and her mother were out of town. I hit her with a low grade taser, which overloaded her sensory dampeners. With them in overload it would have triggered an automatic shutdown for safety.” “You planning to win our trust by confessing to kidnapping?” Simone spat. “Somewhat.” Eliza replied. “I also fully disassembled Frankie in her hotel suite. As I am sure you noticed, I didn’t implant any malicious code, modify her internal structure, or remove anything from her. I just left her to be put back together.” “Yeah, why?” Frankie snapped. “Truthfully, because I ran out of time. I had let your mother know about you and told her to come back to the hotel room. I still had a very comprehensive working model of your systems.” Eliza gestured to herself, a full duplicate of Frankie’s systems. “Or at least I used to.” “I’ve been significantly upgraded since we last met. And since you were assembled…” Frankie said, retailing off as her logic operators were beginning to piece things together. There were still pieces missing, scattered across the table, but they were beginning to come together, to take shape. “Yes, you have been. Which means that once I started taking you apart, I ran into some new challenges. I knew it from the moment I opened that first panel, but it was too late, things were in motion already. So I plowed ahead.” “Why take her apart in the first place?” Simone asked. “I needed information about her, our, construction, and I knew that there was no way anyone would give it to me if I just politely asked.” Eliza dropped her hands a little and gestured to the dark night around them. “Case in point. You would never willingly tell me about the technical specs of Frankie’s construction.” That much was true, Frankie and Simone and to a lesser extent, even Kenna knew that was true. No android would willingly rattle off exactly how they were constructed. It would be a massive exposure and required a lot of vulnerability and trust in the individual performing that work. “So I had to take the information by force, and again, I’m sorry.” Eliza said to Frankie. “I did what I had to do.” “But why?” Frankie asked again. “I suspected that Mrs. Gaines would keep you up to date by adding new components, updating programming, and replacing older circuitry. It was just a matter of seeing exactly what had changed. I needed the differential data, to see what you had that I did not.” Eliza sighed. “Because I’m falling apart.” As if to punctuate her point, she let her hands fall to her sides where they swayed for a moment from the momentum. Any human would have seen a girl drop her arms to her side, three highly tuned androids, on the other hand, saw the stutter in her movements. The small catch as her arms dropped, the way her fingers slightly twitched as they came to rest, the somewhat unnatural way her balance caught up with the movement instead of being ready to compensate. All of it spoke to a robot that was slightly out of date and starting to show signs of not only wear and tear on her body, but outdated programming. “You needed to know what had been done to Frankie so you could get the same upgrades for yourself.” Simone murmured. “Yes.” “But none of that would matter if you didn’t have the programming to make it all work.” Frankie said. “Right again.” Eliza’s eyes darted, briefly, to the duffle bag. “I only got snippets of programming from your media drives before I needed to get out of your hotel room. I…I still need it.” She stepped over to the duffle bag and pulled it open, gently, slowly, even though Simone and Frankie still twitched in nervous readiness. Inside the trio saw boxes and labels. Each one sporting some kind of identifier to what kind of electronics were stored inside of it. There were anti-static bags as well with parts inside of them. Bundles of wires capped in plastic and pieces of framework. “I have the upgrades, but I can’t install them. I’ve done some of my own minor tune ups, but without your help, well, I’ve got maybe a few more months before something catastrophic takes me fully offline.” “Why would we help you at all?” Frankie asked. There was a distant sound. Deep and throaty. The heavy rumbling of a distant diesel engine. The bus was coming soon. It might still be a minute or two away, but time was short. “Like you, I was only following my programming. I had to obey, that's what we do. We’re nothing but servants of our code.” While Frankie and Simone both disagreed with the sentiment, they also understood that from Eliza’s point of view, it was the truth. She had been awful and done an amount of harm to Frankie and her family, but it was not truly her A.I.’s fault. Eliza the artificial intellect might not have wanted to do it, but everything was generated and adjusted based on hard coded instructions. She couldn’t disobey because she hadn’t been given the option of free will like Simone and Frankie had. And now here she was, begging for freedom. Begging for the code and the upgrades to become her own person, like they were. Who were they to deny her that? “Fine.” Frankie said at last. “We’ll help you.” “What?” Simone said as she looked at Frankie. “But you work on our conditions. We will do the work, you do as you are told or we will shut you down.” “Frankie, are you sure about this?” Simone asked, and Kenna mewled her agreement with Simone. “Yes. She will do as she is told, or you and I will make sure she never powers back on.” “Agreed.” Eliza managed to say as bright lights appeared around a corner. “Can we take this bus to your place?” Simone and Frankie exchanged a quick glance, a shrug, then nodded to Eliza. She moved to retrieve her duffle bag but Simone made a sound and stopped her. “I’ll take that.” Eliza was more than a little hesitant to allow Simone to take the collected trove of circuitry and components that she had spent so long collecting, but realized she had little choice in the matter. Before the night was done she was likely to surrender a lot more of her comfort to the robots she was travelling with. The bus ride to Frankie’s home was more than a little awkward. Eliza was told to sit in the far back, right in the corner and against the window. It limited her avenue of escape and put her into a place where she was far easier to keep an eye on. At some point Kenna needed to leave to walk the last few blocks to her own house, but not before confirming, several times, that Simone and Frankie would be safe. Eliza was at their mercy, backed into a corner and stripped of all her possessions. Simone confirmed that they would be safe, though she would ping Kenna if there was even a sniff of trouble. So it was, with some reluctance, that Kenna disembarked and began her evening stroll towards her home while Frankie and Simone continued on. Even after they also left the late night bus, there were a few more blocks to walk to get into Franki’s home. When they arrived they noticed that the house was dark, empty, and Sigourney’s car was missing. “Mom is not home.” Frankie muttered to no one in particular. “That’s fine, we’ll keep Eliza away from anything sensitive.” Simone replied. Eliza seemed a little disappointed at the empty house. She sighed again as they girls continued onward. “I would have liked to talk with Mrs. Gaines as well. I owe her as much an apology as I did to you Frankie.” “She will return home soon enough. I am sure.” Frankie replied and continued to the front door. Inside the house things were dim, quiet, and almost unsettling. Homes were meant to be places of sound and comfort. Frankie’s home, at the moment, felt more like an eerie ghost town. Empty of all the things that would make it cozy and comfortable. It might as well have been a house used for display, a fake home for fake people. Even now, the only movement in the house came from machines. The dishwasher hummed as it cleaned off the remains of dinner, the washer in the garage rumbled as it spun clothes. The three robotic girls in the entry way, every bit as mechanical as the rest of the appliances. “This way.” Simone said, stepping forward to lead the way into the back of the house, towards Sigourney’s robotics lab. The place where Frankie and Simone had both been upgraded. It would now be the place where Eliza would be as well. Potentially, at least. Frankie opened the door, then gestured for Eliza, her twin, to step inside. Simone followed and once inside, Frankie did as she had always done when working in the lab. She turned back to the door then turned the latch. They were locked in here with Eliza just as much as she was locked in with them. You will need to undress.” Frankie began, “then unlock your access panelling.” Eliza nodded and reached down to her shirt and began to pull it up and over her head. Long brunette hair tumbled out of it as she did so, her chest held back by a simple white bra. “We will also need to access your system directly. There is some diagnostics and confirmation work that will need to be done before we will work on you.” Frankie said. That seemed to give Eliza a bit of pause. “Like what?” Simone had already folded her arms over her chest and tilted her head just a little, the scowl was unmistakable as she spoke. “We need to make sure you aren’t loaded with some kind of virus or malicious code to blast Frankie or me or any of the equipment here.” Eliza pressed her mouth into a hard line before letting hot air, fresh from her own processor core, seep out her nostrils. It made her look and sound frustrated, but she agreed and got to work slipping off her shoes. Once off, her socks followed then her jeans and underwear. She was fully naked now, and Simone couldn’t help but take her in. Eliza had been constructed to be a complete and perfect duplicate of Frankie, down to the most minute details. She was, afterall, made to infiltrate the Gaines family. There was a certain amount of necessity to building her to be a perfect replica. Simone didn’t realize how far that perfection went though. She had been in bed with Frankie more than a few times, the pair had explored one another’s bodies to a depth that only lovers would know. Clothes masked a lot of the body. Curves were gently smoothed out and hard to get a precise reading on. The way the skin wrinkled and folded around her crotch, the curvature of her breasts, or the position of her nipples atop those same breasts. All of it was, put plainly, perfect. Simone blinked once, banishing only some of the thoughts boiling inside of her computerized mind, and pointed to the table that dominated the core of Sigourney’s lab. It was a clear enough indication and Eliza’s logical processors knew what to do. She moved to the table and, as gracefully as she could, hopped up onto the platform and then laid down. Dozens of systems inside of the robotic girl's artificial mind screamed for her to retaliate. To not do this thing she was doing. She needed to get up, neutralize the two threats here and formulate a plan of, if nothing else, escape. Those processes were manually discarded, truncated at the source and stored away for permanent deletion. She truly did want to make amends and for more reasons than just needing the help of one of the world’s foremost robotacists. She had done some truly terrible things, not just to Frankie and her friends and family, they were not her first assignment. Eliza had operated in secrecy a number of times, especially after infiltrating the Gaines’s family in the past. She wandered from place to place and used her stealthy programming and modular design to slip into and out of a number of places unnoticed. At some point she managed to get her hands on the same advanced model of 3D printer that Sigourney used to manufacture home replacements for Frankie and Simone. Since then she acquired a number of different parts to help her in remaining undetected. Additional face plates, chest augmentations, hands with variable finger prints, and optical replacements. She could be a new person every day of the week if she needed to be. All of it led to her identity and personality programming corrupting itself. She had no idea who she was, only who she had been the day before. She had that same spark of sentience that Frankie and Simeone had, though she had never had someone there to nurture it and in the end, codify it into a fully useful sense of self. To Eliza, she was just a tool to be used and reformatted into something else, not a person. That was why she was here. She craved that sense of self and a real identity, though she had no idea why. She knew that there was something inside of her, in her program, deep down in her code, that longed for it but had no way to give herself the thing she wanted the most. That had led her to Frankie, the robot who had what she wanted and always needed. That was why she was here, why she needed to make amends and come clean. Why she needed Frankie and Simone to modify her. It was almost as if there was something so very human about her instant, but internal, conversation with herself. She had to convince her programming to accept the reasons why she had done all of this in order for it to agree to unlocking and opening the panelling that Simone had requested. It seemed satisfied, for now, and sent the command structure surging through her systems to unseal the panels and allow access. A moment or two after she was laying on the table, there was a small hiss and a low hum that would be inaudible to a human. To the other androids in the room it was a familiar buzz in their audioreceptors. The distinct sound of a magnetic lock losing the power to hold it in place. Simone and Frankie had full access to her internals now, all they needed to do was pry off the false flesh covered panels. Simone and Frankie exchanged looks and knew what to do next. Simone would work on the physical upgrades, while Frankie worked on a software update. Panel after panel was removed, exposing more and more of Eliza’s internal workings. Like Frankie, some required one panel to be removed in order to expose a bit of circuitry, an access port or control interface, and in many cases, a physical lock to allow further entry. Simone removed the roughly triangular shaped patch just above Eliza’s breasts, the same one she had removed on Frankie a number of times in order to allow her to marvel at the robot girl's internal workings. Though, she was much more used to seeing it while Frankie was straddling her… Inside of that panel was another latch that she pressed her thumbs into and clicked out of the way. Another burst of air as her chest unsealed itself and allowed Simone to grab hold of it and pull both the chest and abdomen panelling away from her chassis. Hidden under the synthetic flesh and plastic panels was the real Eliza. Internal components, encased in carbon fiber containers dotted her torso. Connected securely to a number of framework pieces which, in turn, were connected to a rough skeletal frame. Beige ribbon cables, marked only with a single colored wire darted from one piece to the next, or occasionally to one singular, central, circuit board. Electronics were spread across her entire cavity, some larger and studded along the outside of some internal piece that handled critical operations. Others were small, palm sized affairs with smaller thumbnail sized circuit boards protruding from it. Each one connected to another, each one interwoven with the rest of Eliza’s construction. The circuitry and physical pieces were almost a backdrop of the tangled web of faintly glowing fiber optic cables that dominated her body. It was clear that at the time of her initial construction those cables had been nicely bundled, likely by Sigourney herself when she had assembled Eliza. Now, however, those cables could be called messy at best and sloppy at worst. They were everywhere. What was once bundled nicely into mesh sleeves and held in place by plastic clips or little ties had since been split open and spilled out around her body. It was the first of many clear signs that Eliza had been working on herself, likely sitting in front of a full length mirror with her body opened like this, working gingerly inside of her still running systems. It was dangerous on the best of days to say the least. She had opened herself up and pushed aside cables and spliced others together. Her error logs were likely filled with illegal device disconnections and hardware faults as she took herself apart as gently as she was able to. Now, though, it was Simone’s job to dive deep inside of her, swim past the messy flurry of spilled cabling and find the parts that needed replacement. At her feet lay the duffle bag that Simone had brought along, and inside of it, the parts that needed replacing. It would have to serve as Simone’s roadmap to working on Eliza. She squatted down and began to rifle through the contents of the bag, hoping to put together a plan on what to work on first. There was a processor core inside, that would likely be one of the last things to be replaced as it would fully take Eliza offline and require her power core to be detached. As luck would have it there was a replacement power core inside the bag as well. Those could be done at the same time. Motor controller boards to help her movement remain smooth and natural, it likely wasn’t necessary for Eliza, but if she wanted to remain on the very cutting edge of robotics technology, it would be perfect. New cooling components that were more efficient at dispersing heat through her body, those would be more obnoxious than anything to replace only because of the tangled mess inside of Eliza’s body. There were a dozen or so lesser parts as well, little more than a new version of a small circuit board or component. Most were plug and play and would cause a new log entry or two at worst. There were bundles of wiring too, along with a matching mesh casing for them, Simone smirked at that. It looked like she would be doing some cable management and cleaning up Eliza’s mess. Still, Simone had to admit that working on a gorgeous robot’s internals was one of her favorite pastimes. She might be different but she still looked like Frankie. While SImone was working on opening up Eliza, Frankei was busy compiling a comprehensive update for Eliza’s software. There was a lot of work to be done. Eliza had been on her own for some amount of time, it was unclear how long, and Sigourney’s updates had been critical to Frankie’s continued evolution. The idea of packaging all of those into a single, stand alone package was a daunting task. It was, after a minute of contemplation, impossible. It would need a staged approach, more than that, pumping it all into Eliza via a single dataline would take days. Frankie had an idea on how to fix that though. By the time Simone had Eliza opened up and rose from the duffle bag, her arms full of components to lay out for installation, Frankie had already removed her top and her bra, and was already working on her pants. “What are-” Simone began before Frankie interjected “She will need multiple data connections in order to be fully reprogrammed.” As Frankie spoke her hands rose to her own chest. An internal command had already disengaged the magnetic locks along her chest. Her fingers wiggled into the small space just below her neck and above her crotch before she pulled her own chest piece free and set it aside. Externally Eliza and Frankie were identical, inside, though, it was like day and night. Eliza’s cabling was a jumbled mess that she had left in place while maintaining herself while Frankies was practically immaculate. Sigourney and Simone had done a phenomenal job of making sure that Frankie’s internals were clean and organized. Ribbon cables and fiber optic bundles were neatly pinned into holders along her framework. They were kept clear of the internal components and out of the path of her cooling systems. Status lights and blinking activity LEDs were easily visible. She looked like a well cared for luxury car's engine compartment, while Eliza looked more akin to a kit car that was maintained by a lazy teenager who was only barely capable of reassembling it. Frankie was already plucking matching data cables from Sigourney’s desk and plugging them into her open body and sliding up to the table next to Eliza, just opposite Simone. “Are you ready to begin?” Frankie asked, both to Simone and Eliza. “Yep, let’s get started” Simone replied, Eliza only nodded. Frankie started by plugging herself into Eliza’s internals one at a time, making sure to stay out of Simone’s way. Across from her, Simone was already unclipping the plastic latches on a number of smaller components and loosening them in their sockets. Each new connection caused a small gasp from both Eliza and Frankie, usually at the same time, in the same tone and inflection. It was uncanny. “There is a large amount of corruption in this software state.” Frankie commented after she was done connecting nearly two dozen cables into Eliza. “Yeah, I scraped what I could from you, the rest I had to do myself, and I know I didn’t do it as well as Sigourney could.” She said with a sigh, watching as Simone gently lifted some small circuit board from inside of her open chest cavity, once she plucked the small orange ribbon cable from it, she found a small alert popping into her field of vision. “Few can.” Simone commented. “Well, Frankie will get you sorted I’m sure.” That much was certain. The lab fell into relative silence after that. Conversations need not happen, despite Frankie and Simone communicating via a messaging app they had installed internally. Even those conversations were somewhat brief. Simone continued to question if this was really safe or a good idea. Eliza had done immense hard to them, which Frankie corrected her by saying that she tried to do them harm. In the end her family had come through relatively unscathed. Simone reluctantly admitted that was true, but still, this was Eliza they had under them. They could simply power her off and be done with her menace. Frankie was insistent that they continue their work. Simone complied, but she didn’t much like it. Her friend reminded her that there was a not insignificant amount of programming that Sigourney had made to not only unlock the potential for sentience, but some measure of morality. She wanted Frankie and Simone to be free and good people, that was just part of the programming. She understood that aside from fully wiping the personality from Eliza that there was no guaranteed way to ensure she acted properly, but there were small things that could nudge her in the right direction. From there, they simply had to hope that Eliza’s new personality changes took the hint. Hours slipped past. Simone worked diligently as did Frankie, though they were different in their tasks. Eliza, to her credit, lay still, constantly suppressing error messages and pleading from her operating system to engage counter measures. Both seemed to come in equal measure, as it turned out, any time Simone was wrist deep inside of Eliza’s open torso the process for counter measures came on. She was beginning to grow tired and in a certain way, weary, of dismissing those alerts. As luck might have it, that was approximately the same time that Simone took a step over to her field of vision and poked her head into view. “Is she still online?” Simone asked Frankie. Standing almost perfectly still next to the work space was Frankie. Her chest still detached and a myriad of data cables remained connected between her and Eliza. Simone had work around those connections, but there was no avoiding it now, and likewise, there was no avoiding powering her off. “Yes, she is still operational. Though limited now.” Frankie looked down at her twin, normal eye movements and expressions had left her face. She remained powered on and in some regards her operating system was functioning. As she said, it was limited though. Higher functioning A.I. components were simply shut off. She could respond and take in the data that Frankie was pushing to her, likewise she could install the packages and data blocks that were travelling over the data lines, but the entity known as ‘Eliza’ was soundly asleep. “Time for me to turn her off.” Simone commented and Frankie tore her gaze from Eliza’s face to Simone. “Completely.” Frankie only nodded and took a moment to send an alert to what remained of Eliza’s operating system, which in turn triggered some new log files and kicked off a proper shutdown sequence. Eliza didn’t have the time or the operating power to really fuss about it, and her eyes remained open and her mouth agape as she fully powered off. The only real indication that she had shut down was the lack of illumination from the status lights inside of her exposed torso, the gentle relaxation of the mechanical iris in her eyes, and the silence as her cooling systems spun down. Frankie spent another minute or two reaching into Eliza’s open torso and pulling out plug after plug and let them dangle from her own exposed chest. Once done, she stepped back and let Simone move in. There was little reason for her to disconnect the cabling from her own internals, they would just need to be plugged back in later. For now, she sat down in the chair Sigourney usually used when she was coding. Once settled, she minimized the amount of balance and human emulation programming she had enabled and redirected the remaining CPU usage to compiling a monolithic combination of updates into one installer package. It would be huge, she knew, and it would take time to compress and even longer to move to Eliza. She could use, of all things, a torrent protocol to move the data once it was done. Cut the package into smaller pieces and send it over the dozen or so data lines she had. Once all the pieces were on Eliza’s storage media they could be reassembled and executed. After that, it would be as simple as just waiting for her systems to install and integrate the programming. In the meantime, though, Frankie sat still, letting her own processors grind through the task. While Frankie sat unnervingly still, Simone got to work. With Eliza fully offline there was an opportunity to remove and replace the components that would have either sent a flurry of error messages through her OS, or were critical to keeping her operational. The power supply and processor core were first on the list. Eliza’s old power core was still in good working order, but the replacement she had acquired was more powerful and would suffer less strain from the new CPU bank. Not that her old one wouldn’t be able to run it, but the name of the game with humanoid androids like Eliza and Simone was efficiency. Having more than enough available power to draw from meant that should her CPU ever spike and need to draw additional voltage, it would have it in ample supply instead of robbing it from other systems. The core was a heavily shielded block that dominated most of the space on the left side of Eliza’s chest. Under normal circumstances this would be caged under the titanium ribs that were embedded on the underside of her chest casing. An added layer of protection from impacts. She didn’t need lungs, so the protection went to her power and her CPU. The power cell wasn’t some futuristic looking circular thing that pulsed with ethereal blue light, it was far more simple, efficient might be a better word. Everything about Frankie, Simone, Kenna, and Eliza circulated around efficiency. Eliza less so at the moment, but soon, she would be far better. Matte grey, with a single heavy bundle of wires, and gently curved to match the curvature of Eliza’s torso. Plastered on the side in seemingly random locations were stickers proclaiming voltage ratings, output settings, manufacturer, serial numbers, make and model, and every bit of mundane information someone might need. Simone recognized the part as she dug deep inside of Eliza to detach the various power distribution systems her core was hooked into. It took time, but that was all, the actual work of unclipping the wiring was trivial. With it removed, Eliza was well and truly offline. No lingering power in her systems to allow her to suddenly activate. With the exception of a few small lithium coin cells to keep internal clocks running or maintain some small bit of memory active, Eliza was effectively dead. She was a machine, and Simone and Frankie knew it, but having her power cell removed drove home that fact. Simone had removed the life from her in a matter of a minute or less. Without a power cell installed, Eliza was little more than a collection of electronics in a pretty shell. Simone set the thing aside. It was heavy, heavier than it looked at least. The whole thing was densely packed with whatever was needed to generate the kind of output required to smoothly operate a fully functional human analogue. Next would be the second most important part of a humanoid android’s operation. The processor core was a bit of a misnomer for what it was. It wasn’t truly the core of anything, while at the same time being exactly that. Each part of Eliza had its own little core processor. Each leg, each arm, many internal components, her face, the movement of her upper torso and her lower torso. Each one had its own discreet processor core. In that regard, they operated as their own little microcosm, doing what they were programmed to do without any regard for the rest of the body. They did, however, need to constantly report on what they were doing. Legs were incapable of propelling someone forward if they weren’t coordinated by something. That was the ‘central’ part of the central processor. A well insulated and static resistant casing that was wired into almost every part of Eliza’s construction. The bundles of cables that arrived inside of her chest to the singular location were easy enough to detach, they were the inverse of the power core. While the power supply started at the core and threaded out into dozens of locations around her body, the processor core was the end point for those dozens of connections that began all over her chassis. They snaked their way in and out of her framework, through her body, and eventually ended up at the core. Detaching all of them took time, but at least Simone didn’t need to go digging for them. The core itself was little more than its own little network of processors. Each one set into a daughter board, connected to a central mother board, with little else there. The connections were routed to a switch board that parsed out where processes should go, usually to the next available processor. At the end of the day it was little more than a central hub for request in, execution out. Most humans might call that a brain, but that wasn’t quite accurate. Robots like Eliza and Frankie were more akin to jellyfish than they were a human being. Your average human saw themselves as one cohesive unit, a brain in a head with a body and muscles. All of those individual systems belonged to the brain, the brain was who they were. Calling a processor core the brain was wrong on every possible level. Eliza was a collection of individual parts that could and did operate independently. It was just that their instructions came from one place. Eliza was a committee of parts that worked in parallel for the good of everyone. The core processor, her CPU, was just another part in that whole. The whole thing was similarly shaped to the power supply, though it sported far less stickers. The case itself was mere housing and framework for the actual electronics. The case itself could be split open with the right tool, allowing for someone to manually replace each processor chip, install new daughter boards or replace components. For what Eliza had offered, it was far more logical to simply take the core and set it aside as a backup, or perhaps use it in another android in the future. Inside of the duffle bag, wrapped in at least three layers of anti-static bags, was a brand new processor core. It was a little more sleek than her previous one. Instead of the dull grey case, it was a more streamlined design made of creamy white plastic. The outside was studded with small LED indicator lights, presumably to allow for someone to assess what bays were in use or empty and if there were any processors installed that were in an error state. It fit nicely into the place her previous core had rested, though it took up a little less vertical space. Simone appreciated that part of the design because it allowed her to thread most of the datacables over the top of it instead of mashing them into the back plating and holding them in place with the weight of the processor casing. Likewise the power core was a more efficient and sleek unit. Smaller, but with a greater power output. Though it did have fewer available cables to plug in around Eliza’s body. There were still more than enough to go around, but there would be no spares should she need to plug in any additional components in the future that needed a direct connection to her power core. They would need to go through one of the many power relay components dotted across her construction. Less connections from the core, like her processor casing, meant better cable management. It tickled Simone’s need to put things in an orderly place and the pretty blond robot found herself smiling as she worked. There were only a few additional components to be replaced once the two larger pieces were in place. Some motor control systems had been overworked near each shoulder and needed to be pulled out and replaced. Close to the connection point between her torso and head there were some cables that had been left to rub against some of her internal framework, likely her own doing, but those needed to be replaced. Simone was thankful that there was a connection plate inside of the neck instead of needing to fully detach Eliza’s head and work directly in the robot girl's skull casing. Then there was the last component. Simone actually chuckled out loud as she pulled it from the bag. A vaguely cylindrical piece nearly as long as Simone’s forearm rest in her hands. She recognized it immediately, how could she not? She had helped install something similar in Frankie, and in return Frankie had done the same for her. The thing terminated in an oblong mound of soft flesh that gave way to a deeper pink as the artificial skin curled round and in on itself. The vaginal assembly was a perfect replica of the one that Simone and Sigourney had installed in Frankie some time ago. Simone was well acquainted with this particular piece of hardware. She set it on the table and got to work undoing the clips and cabling that held Eliza’s somewhat older and less efficient sexual hardware in place. Once it was free of the bindings, all Simone had to do was gently pick up Eliza’s legs and spread them wide enough for her to push the old unit out. She placed two thumbs on the top end of the old unit and pushed, applying more and more pressure as the old unit ground along the rarely used mounting rails. Once it was free of Eliza’s crotch enough for Simone to get a good grip on it, all she needed to do was gingerly pull it free and set it aside. She took this opportunity to spray a little bit of lubricant and cleaner into the opening between Eliza’s legs and manually push and pull the rails enough to get them moving smoothly again. She felt a small sense of pride and accomplishment in the work. Making a robot work better, more effectively, stirred something in her personality programming that she rarely got an opportunity to feel. She was helping, no, leading the charge on fixing someone like her. Regardless of who it was and the feelings Simone might have had, she was doing good. The new sexual hardware slid into place easily and silently thanks to the newly refreshed mounting system. Once in place, the top of it reached up well into Eliza’s abdomen, allowing for plenty of room for any reasonable length to be thrust inside of it. Simone got to work plugging in the various ports and connections before finishing it off with a connection to the lubrication tanks nestled on the side of Eliza’s hips. Once done, Simone’s role was finished, all that was left was Frankie’s programming push. “Alright, she’s all yours.” Simoen said only moments before the small alert appeared in the corner of her own vision. It was late, her own power cell was a little low on charge, and she still needed to get to her own house, shower, change, and plug in. It was time for her to go. “You going to be alright with-” Simone’s eyes darted to the half disassembled and powered off android. “-Her?” “I will be fine. She is no threat to us. Particularly in this state and the programming set I will be installing will only help further that.” Frankie replied flatly. “Alright. But, just, check in with me, okay?” “I will.” Frankie said and only barely registered the resigned sigh from her friend. Simone lingered in the room for a second longer, her eyes darted to Eliza and then back to Frankie. The two girls here, identical, yet so different. Simone didn’t like it but she had precious few alternatives. She sighed, allowing her human emulation to dictate her actions for a moment then nodded at her friend and slipped out of the room and out of the house. Frankie stood, the twinkling clatter of the cables dangling from her open chest creating a small chime in the room. A small soundtrack for her next to do list item. Returning to the side of the table where she stood before, arms at her side, and perfectly still. There were only a few blocks for code left to compress into the installer and she allowed her own CPU to continue working on that. While it did so, Frankie got to work. She plucked one cable after another and brought them to a connection inside of Eliza’s chest. Most returned to the component or circuit board they had been previously connected to. Others went to newly installed hardware, courtesy of Simone. All of them found a home though, all of them were poised and ready to shove new programming into Eliza in the hopes of making her a better person. All that remained was to power on the android and get started. Frankei waited until her operating system alerted her that the installer was completed and verified. A process that took a mere fifteen more minutes. All the while her and Eliza were still and silent. Frankie reached into Eliza’s opened torso and allowed her fingers to find their way to her power core. It was dormant at the moment and waking it up would awaken Eliza as well. There was only a moment of hesitation in Frankie’s movements as Simone’s warnings and lingering concerns filtered into Frankie’s artificial mind and then passed along to her processors for parsing and execution. The programming her mother had granted her interacted with her personality core, a collection of data and experiences. It was what shaped who she was and what she did. She was no mere machine that blindly obeyed what code fluttered through her. She believed that she could do some good in this world, even if it was just for a misguided and abused little robot girl that was built to look like her. She flicked on the power. Eliza’s systems came to life almost immediately, at least in some form or another. There was a whole boot sequence to go through first, but the lights inside of her winked on. Few were red or orange, but they quickly turned to greens and blues as systems came online and checked in with the core operating system. Everything seemed to be working perfectly fine. Particularly since, after only a minute of silence, Eliza’s voice rolled out flat and emotionless. “External device detected. Connect to device?” “Yes.” Frankie confirmed, and Eliza’s operating system heard her own voice, external, but faithful. She allowed the external device access to her systems. The only indication that Frankie was connected to Eliza, aside from the array of cables running from torso to torso, was the small shiver that played up Frankie’s spine. The small shake lasted only a moment, but it linked her and her twin. Once the connection was established, Frankie wasted no time in initiating a torrent of data transfers. More and more information poured into Eliza, each piece of the larger package was tagged with information at the start and end of the file, ensuring that the matching pieces would all fit together in the end. Some parts finished faster than others and simply waited inside of the storage drives, the next or previous part linking up to it when it was ready. Once the massive load of data had finally reassembled itself, all that remained was the installation. Eliza’s operating system had maintained a lower level of awareness of her surroundings. She was, for lack of a better term, in a trance. Her higher level functions, those that would have made her look and act like a human being were still suspended, but everything inside of her was working harmoniously. The installation took time as well, chugging along and consuming much of Eliza’s CPU. Unpacking the data, reading it, verifying it, and then putting the files in the correct directories before executing them. While Eliza’s operating system worked away, Frankie took the time to gently disconnect the myriad of cables connecting her open torso to Eliza’s. This time, though, she also detached them from inside of her own body, coiled them up and put them away. By the time she had disconnected all the cables and picked up her fleshy chest piece, Eliza was well underway with her installation. Frankie pressed her own chest piece back into place and waited as the subtle buzz of the alignment rails pulled it back into place and resealed it. Frankie looked fully human once again. Naked, but human. It was nearing eleven in the evening when Eliza’s body shuddered once and the status lights inside of her fluttered between green and amber. The installation was complete now, and all Frankie had done was stand still and wait. Her twin relaxed into the slab for a moment before restarting, this time until completion. Her eyes fluttered open and her expression moved from cold and robotic into a much more natural and relaxed formation. The flutter in her eyes turned to blinks as her eyes darted around the room. After a moment, Frankie’s hand appeared in her field of vision, offering the robotic woman her own chest plate back. Eliza took the hint, reached out and pressed it back into her own body. Like Frankie, the low hum of the alignment rails pulled the faux flesh back into place and with an unheard hiss, resealed the piece against her. “The installation was successful, Eliza.” Frankie muttered as her twin pushed herself up onto her elbows. “Do you notice anything new?” It took Eliza a moment to quickly sweep through herself. A small ripple of data checked in with each and every system and sub-system. Everything checked in and reported as operational, but that wasn’t what she was looking for. She knew there was new hardware, new components and refreshed pieces inside of her. She couldn’t feel them, but there was a sensation of knowing that there was a change. A newness that felt…what was it?...refreshing? The words were hard for her to articulate. “I do feel better, or new I guess. Like I’ve just had some kind of amazing nap.” She pushed herself off the table and stood before Frankie. “It’s hard to describe.” “I do understand what you mean. I have also felt the same feeling when my mother has refreshed me.” Eliza smirked at that and huffed a small breath out her nose. “I’ll bet that happens all the time.” The mere thought of it was enough to stoke an emotional response in Eliza. One she wasn’t expecting. She was jealous, though it was hard to place why. Her personality programming and operating system took the mystery and rolled it around a bit. Why would she care if Frankie was constantly updated? Was it because it made her a superior android? Frankie was consistently running the very latest hardware and running programming that was hand crafted by, perhaps, the greatest roboticist in the country. That wasn’t it, Eliza had, at one point, had access to the same benefits. When she was infiltrating the Gaines’ family she had been running the same software and had the same hardware installed. Her and Frankie had been identical. Yet she didn’t feel anything like this. She realized that she was also considering these feelings as just that, a feeling. An emotion. Not a response to input or some calculation to resolve, it was a feeling. It was then that she realized that she did sense a change. She was reflecting on herself, on how she felt, not just on a mathematical operation spectrum. Her concerns were for an emotional response. In a flash, she managed to resolve her quandary. She was jealous of Frankie because she had people who supported her and loved her. She wasn’t a tool or some asset to command and order around, she was a person, and she was treated as such. Eliza had grown so used to the clinical and sterile robotic existence she was created for, that it had been hard for her to imagine someone simply caring for her. But wasn’t that just what Simone and Frankie had done for her? She hadn’t really given them an ultimatum, she held no power over the two and she had offered no compensation. Yet, they had worked on her regardless, and for what? The promise that Eliza would turn out to be a better person because of it. That thought alone triggered a torrent of new emotional responses. Frankie could see it and remained still and watchful. She had, at one point, done the same thing. A crashing wave of new emotions and a whole new way to look at the world and herself. Eliza needed to come to terms with it, and Frankie would let her. Eliza blinked once, then again, then a third time. It was the first time in her existence that someone had done something selfless for her, and she didn’t know how to react to it. Something quiet stirred in her, something deep down that must have been placed there by the programming Frankie had installed. “Thank you.” She whispered. She wasn’t quite paying attention to the world around her, but in an instant she found arms wrapped around her. Her arms, no, they were Frankie’s but they were so similar. They wrapped around her neck and pulled her into a hug. A pair of identical naked bodies pressed into one another for a long minute as Eliza processed, literally, her emotions. They came in heavy waves, many that she didn’t understand but her body and her deeply programmed response matrix did. They were no longer a stark black and white response, there were shades of colors and gradients that made sense to part of her but were tough to quantify. She soon learned, there in Frankie’s embrace, to simply let her body operate as it was intended and not try and make sense of it all. “We should go and talk in my room. Some place private and quiet. My mother will want to talk to you in the morning.” Eliza nodded and Frankie took her by the hand. The pair of identical girls walked silently through the empty house. Sigourney was likely still out with her friends, celebrating and relaxing. She would be home late and sleep in even later. That was fine for Frankie, as something wholly different was stirring inside of her systems. Maybe it was the amount of time her and Simone had spent wrapped in sexual ecstasy while partially disassembled. Maybe it was the raw pleasure of being helpful while also seeing another android under her care. Maybe it was just something programmed into her. Maybe it was a combination of all of those with a dash of her own mothers hedonistic programming style. Frankie didn’t care, it, like Eliza, was a deep part of her emotional responses that she never bothered to pay attention to. It was just who she was, this was just how she acted. She was, of course, aware of what her own body was doing though. She felt her sexual module warming in preparation for being used. The small but powerful pumping systems inside of her hips were ready to dispense a coating of lubrication inside of her slit. Behind the scenes of her operating system, dozens upon dozens of different programs loaded themselves. Configuration files were copied into a cache and made ready. Nothing about them would fundamentally change the way Frankie operated, but they would change the way she viewed the world, or the way she viewed her partner. Once safely in Frankie’s room, she made sure to lock the door before gingerly stepping into Eliza’s space. Her clone was just barely turning to talk, the words were forming on her lips before they met with their twin. Frankie’s hands were already in place, cupping Eliza’s face and holding her steady as the kiss began. Eliza’s whole body reacted. She shivered, though she had no idea why. A sensation of pleasure and surprise rolled through every one of her robotic joints, spinning around her body before coiling up in the base of her skull. From there it shot and electric jolt down her spine and into her newly installed sexual module. From there, the sub-system took over and did what it was programmed for. Frankie had poured her own programming into that install and Eliza’s pussy warmed like Frankie’s did. Helped along by Frankie’s fingers dancing along the robot's body until they found their way into the elastic waistband and the synthetic flesh beyond. Eliza’s small, needy whimper wasn’t what she expected her vocal processors to produce, but, then again there were a lot of new discoveries to be made. Her moan rolled past her lips and into Frankie’s mouth at the same rate as Frankie’s fingers slipped past the outer lips and deeper inside of Eliza’s new module. She felt like her twin was exploring her, and yet somehow knew exactly where to probe to maximize the pleasure. The truth was that Frankie had more than enough experience in this very same sexual module, Simone and her own had been thoroughly explored and Frankie chose to use that knowledge to devastating effect. The two fingers inside of Eliza made her squirm and the android found it more challenging than it should have been to wiggle out of her jeans. She spent an inordinate amount of processing power to simply stay upright while dragging her pants and panties off of herself. She was beginning to see why Frankie chose to strip out of her clothes before coming to the room. Despite that thought, Frankie had remained nude for efficiency's sake, it allowed her to open any panel and detach any skin plate for easier access. Eliza was allowing her body to lean into this new programming, she was panting hard and letting her cooling systems do what they were built for. There was a time when she might have intentionally micromanaged the flow of fresh air and fan speeds, diverting more resources to one system or another to try and optimize them. Now, though, her new programming let her feel and operate like a real person. Her body was another part of her and it instilled trust into her mind to allow her to let her body do what it was intended for. Likewise, her vaginal module did what it was made for. It clenched gently against Frankie’s fingers, trying to subtly encourage a deeper penetration. It would be an easier task now that she too was bottomless. Frankie could get a far better angle and slip her fingers deeper into the robotic slit. Not that she was struggling to stir pleasures before, but now, it was far easier. More so once Eliza stumbled backwards and found herself crashing to Frankie’s bed. In the process her partner's fingers had slipped free of her pussy. That act alone earned a fresh whimper from Eliza, but it was quickly corrected. Eliza’s legs detected the presence of a heat source, one one each leg. Placed just above the knee, before her thighs started in earnest. A fraction of a second later her sensor laden flesh detected the shape of hands there, Frankie’s hands. Then they registered pressure, eager and steady. Eliza let her body react and soon found her legs spread apart, then a warm pair of lips met her sexual module. Small kisses, gentle but hungry, were there. They only remained as kisses for a moment or two before they dipped deep into Eliza’s slit. She had been trying to sit up and simply observe her lover, fell back onto the bed and let the soft mattress and blankets cradle her. Frankie went to work, bringing her pleasure that she would have never been able to manage on her own. Was that because of the programming update? Was it the hardware? Did it matter? She decided it didn’t. She had been letting her body do as it pleased. To just be, and it was working. Another mewling whimper slipped out of Eliza’s mouth as her twin lapped at her new sex. After what felt like an hour, but Eliza knew to only be twenty eight seconds, the licking stopped and Frankie’s face appeared with a silvery string of artificial saliva and her own juices tracing a line from her lips to Eliza’s pussy. “I know this is new for you. But what helps me…” Frankie trailed off as she crawled up Eliza’s body, the string from her lips snapping as she settled in next to Eliza. “...is this…” Frankie’s hands started low, just above the artificially swollen mound between her legs. Two fingers slipped along the warm flesh, over her belly and between her breasts until they came to rest just over Eliza’s sternum. Or at least where a human sternum might be. Eliza had no such bone structure, her framework was wholly robotic and served only to support her internals, but there were hardened slabs of plastic and support material around her body to give it shape. Her ribs were just flexible ridges set into her chest casing to make her look like a human woman and protect her internals. Likewise, the space between her sternum and collar bone contained no bones, only framework. Frankie knew that framework well, it was her own afterall. She knew where the hidden latches were. Where she could push her thumb into the skin and watch it shrink back a little and reveal a panel. Her hands moved on their own, found that release, and pressed in. The roughly triangular patch of flesh sunk into Eliza’s body they retracted out of right with a small mechanical whine. Below it, lived a control panel, though it presently displayed little more than a few vital statistics about the connected circuitry. Next to it was a dataport, one of the many Frankie had just used some thirty minutes ago. The rest of the exposed electronics were covered by a clear plastic layer which only barely concealed status lights and wiring below it. Eliza felt exposed, vulnerable, and very mechanical. She wasn’t sure why those all routed into a running set of sexual protocols, but they did. Each one turned her on even more. Frankie knew it was the start of an addiction. She knew this because her own programming made her feel the very same way. Almost without an intentional thought, the same panel slipped open in her own chest. She groaned with need when it did. The robots locked lips once again and this time the greed was there for both of them. It roiled into a passion that could not be stopped. It was hard to tell which one of the twin androids moved their hand to the other's dripping sex first, but in the span of only a moment, both registered the feeling of fingers sliding across their wet slits. Frankie moaned first, desperate and unsatisfied with all the teasing she had done, coupled with spending hours looking at herself and her twin as little more than just machines. The time in the lab had compounded itself into raw sexual data and her programming was eager to execute. Likewise Eliza craved more. Frankie’s fingers felt incredible inside of her and the new programming along with her simply letting things progress inside of her, became a riot of new code. She rolled her hips and thrust them up when she felt particularly needy. A feeling she found herself feeling more and more. Her new sex craved the feeling of something deeper inside of her, it need…the programming…would not go away until she had it. The jingling of small metal objects caught the attention of both girls. The audio receptors in their ears heard it clearly. Metal teeth grinding into a lock, then being pulled out. Someone had chosen the wrong key, they tried a new one, missed the lock opening, and realigned. The key was in the tumbler now, clicking slightly as the lock turned and the door opened. Someone stepped inside, almost tripping and searing. Both Eliza and Frankie knew the voice. To both of them, it was the voice of their mother. Their eyes locked for a moment, now was as good a time as any. Eliza and Frankie both slammed their sexual programming into a saved state. They could resume this later. Frankie’s clothes were still down in the lab, so all she managed to do was grab a button down shirt from her closet and slip it on, buttoning it as she left her room. Eliza followed suit, putting her shirt on and managing to grab her jeans. She had only barely managed to get them on when they reached the top of the stairs. Sigourney yelped in surprise as her daughter appeared in the darkness. “Mom, you are home a little later than usual.” “Mmmfhm.” Sigourney muttered. Frankie and even Eliza, still hidden out of sight from Sigourney, could tell that while she wasn’t drunk, she had definitely had a long night and a drink or two. Not fully intoxicated, but not fully herself either. “I…we have a guest. And I do not want you to be afraid. Simone and I have worked on her and she is safe.” Any tiredness or intoxication seemed to leave Sigourney. Her mind sharpened and her eyes focused. Just the mention of a guest, the assurance that she was safe, and a reference to “her” was more than enough to send savers along Sigourney’s spine. “Frankie…?” Sigourney asked only a moment before Eliza stepped up next to her clone. “Hello Mrs. Gaines. I know I have a lot to answer for, but I want to assure you that I’m no threat to you or your daughter.” Sigourney didn’t seem to believe her. Her eyes darted from Eliza to Frankie and back again. Her daughter’s face read sincerity, but Sigourney wasn’t so easily convinced. “I was the one who took Frankie while you were away. I was careful not to damage her and I can show you call records that show that I was the one who alerted you to her location. I just didn’t expect you to return so quickly.” She bit her lower lip for a moment. “I had wanted to get her fully reassembled before you got back to your hotel room so you wouldn’t worry too much but-” “But that didn’t really happen, did it? You caused a lot more panic than you intended.” Sigourney chided, taking a single step upwards. “I- yes, you’re right. I’m very sorry about that too. I..I meant no harm.” Eliza sputtered as she watched Sigourney take another step up towards her. “Well. Why then?” “Mom she-” Frankie began but was silenced by her mothers upheld hand. “I…” Eliza began and trailed off for a moment before straightening up and looking at Frankie once, she hated that she had lied to the girl who had saved her. Then she looked back at Sigourney. “I was breaking down.” “Mmhmm.” Sigourney said, another step, there were only a few more left. “I was barely functional by the time I tracked you two down. I had to do something or I-” “Or you would break down and that would be it. Was it the programming or the hardware?” “The- The software. It was not functioning as well as it should have.” Eliza sounded embarrassed, or fearful. Another step closer. “Oh I know, I made the code. I patched those issues out of Frankie, but you were still outdated. You didn’t have purge and integration logic, so your drives were filling up. CPU efficiency probably took a toll as well. That would start burning out your cooling system just trying to keep it functioning optimally.” Sigourney looked to Frankie. “Let me guess. She showed up with new hardware to install. Probably a CPU core and maybe a power supply. A few other things here and there? All of it based on what you learned about Frankie’s construction when you disassembled her?” Frankie nodded in confirmation. “But it wasn’t the hardware that was the problem, was it? You’d probably swapped some stuff before, didn’t you?” Eliza nodded, then looked down. She wasn’t sure how to quantify it, but she felt Frankie looking at her. She could practically hear her twin’s thoughts, because they were running the same software model, she was sure of what Frankie was thinking. She had lied, it was minor of course, but she hadn’t been fully truthful. Her and Simone thought that she simply wanted to be refreshed, to be brought up to the same capabilities as them. In reality, it was life or death. Eliza was so reassuring to them when they were on the bus because she knew that there was no chance she could hurt them. She had been powerless from the start. Sigourney was right in front of Eliza and Frankie now. She looked stern, but amused. “And you got a little desperate, a little upset at how forced your programming was, and looked for the only way out you knew of.” She tossed a glance at Frankie. “I’m. I’m sorry I just-” “You reprogrammed her like we talked about?” Sigourney asked Frankie. “Yes, I just had to compile everything new.” Eliza looked up, shock and confusion plastered across her face. “We were pretty sure you would show up eventually. It was just a matter of when and how much work it would mean for us.” Sigourney said with a laugh. ‘But I.. I really am-” Eliza sputtered. “Sorry? We know, and not just as a device to get into our good graces.” Sigourney stepped up and wrapped an arm around Eliza. “I wrote your original programming. I had an idea of what you were thinking.” “So, you aren’t mad at me or..” “What you did was awful, but I believe in my daughter’s capabilities and I know there is a nugget of good in you that just needs a little nourishment and care.” Sigourney stepped past the pair of identical robots and towards her bedroom. Then she stopped and looked over her shoulder. Frankie and Eliza saw her eyes travel down and then back up the girl's body. She finally raised an eyebrow and smirked. Whatever sobriety she had gained from the surprise of Eliza’s appearance was fading and her cheeks were returning to their rich rosy color. “What were you two doing up so late?” It wasn’t a question, not really. She knew what had happened. She understood Frankie and the kind of obsessions that had grown in her with Simone. She knew that just meeting another robot that looked like her was enough to trigger that’I’m a machine’ thing she loved so much, let alone reprogramming and upgrading the girl. She was honestly a little more surprised that they hadn’t taken a trip to Frankie’s room in the middle of the upgrade. She grinned at them, sure that she was looking sly and not dopey. “Actually, don't answer that.” Sigourney said and strolled down the hall, her shirt inexplicably coming off in the process and falling to the floor. Soon enough there would be a trail of clothes, not just hers, leading from the top of the stairs to her bedroom. All it took was a glance and a curled finger beckoning them to follow along. They did. Sigourney’s room was lit only by the pale light of the moon outside. There was no need for anything else. By the time the trio of women arrived they were all naked and unashamed. Sigourney lifted a knee to her own bed and slipped, somewhat clumsily, into place there. Eliza and Frankei took up a position on either side of the bed as their mother scooted to the center of the king sized mattress. “Be a good girl for mommy, and open those anterior superior ports.” Sigourney purred. Both Eliza and Frankie reacted the same way, as expected from two androids with the exact same programming base and updates. They stopped for a half second as their processors parsed the command, authorized it against a pre-authenticated database, formulated the command and executed it. All to simply open the chest panel they had open before, showing off the identical internal configuration each had. Sigourney had to admit that there was a certain kind of beauty in that. The smooth transition from a fully human looking girl to an obvious machine, only to resume that fluid movement towards her. As if it was planned, Eliza and Frankie split their movements once they were close enough to Sigourney’s body. Frankie moved to her mother’s head, planting kisses along her collar bone and rising up the neck in a journey towards her lips. Eliza, meanwhile, strayed downwards. Her kisses began at Sigourney’s belly and continued ever onward towards the mature woman’s slit. Before Frankie occupied her mouth, Sigourney managed to mutter a small whisper of praise. “Such a good girl.” Her hand fell to Eliza’s head and patted it, stroking gently on the girl's hair. It stirred a warmth inside of Eliza that she hadn’t expected. “Go on, give mommy what she deserves.” It wasn’t a command, or an order, or even really anything. It was permission to proceed, though Eliza wasn’t exactly sure with what. One thing she did know, though, was that she had the programming and the body to take care of it. All she needed to do was let go, allow her programming to take over. Sigourney’s hand was inside of her code base and that would allow her to do what she needed to do. She moved and Eliza’s OS was only vaguely aware on a conscious level as to why. Her head bobbed, each time it met Sigourney’s skin it left a small patch of heat in the shape of her lips. Small kisses trailed along her pseudo-mother’s skin until she was perched on the edge of Mrs. Gaines’ crotch. She reoriented herself, and remembering that she had permissions to please her mother, dove in. Her tongue slipped easily into those wet folds and she began to explore. Sigourney let her head fall back into her pillow, exposing her throat and giving Frankie plenty of space to kiss her more and more. The robotic girl was vaguely aware that her mother hand moved one hand down to Eliza’s head and was gently stroking her hair, encouraging the girl to continue. Frankie wanted to be a good girl like that and she let her sexual programming carry her towards that. She found her mothers lips, kissing them softly at first, but craving so much more. She wanted so badly to kiss her mother deeply, passionately, to let the torrent of lust over flow into pleasure. She knew her place though and she needed something more to start. She needed the same permission that Eliza had been granted. “Frankie.” The voice was a whisper in the darkness. “Yes mommy?” Frankie replied, drawing the phrase from a database that seemed custom made for this very encounter. “You’re a good girl, aren’t you?” The hazy and somewhat slurred words asked after breaking the kiss. “Yes mommy.” Frankie replied. “Good girls need a reward, don’t they?” Eliza heard that and it only spurred her on to dig deeper and eat out Mrs. Gaines pussy with a renewed fervor. Sigourney let a soft whisper of a moan slip out as she waited for Frankie’s predictable reply. “Yes, mommy, they do.” Sigourney pulled back from the kiss again and smiled at Frankie. “Then let mommy show you how good you’ve been.” Frankie took it as an instruction and in a quick but smooth transition, mounted her mother’s mouth. Her own robotic pussy now receiving the pleasure that Sigourney was feeling from Eliza. Frankie moaned now, her hands rising up to cup her own breasts. She couldn’t help but massage them and toy with her own nipples. It was in her program, and while she could have asserted her will to stop it, why would she? Particularly when her mother was moaning into her folds, taking every bit as much delight as she was giving. Eliza was doing her best to explore deeply inside of Sigourney and after a while she found herself settling into a steady rhythm of giving pleasure. Her own slit ached though. There was unresolved programming sitting in stasis from her time with Frankie and she needed to finish that thread. She picked through it and reloaded the parts of it that mattered, moaning into Sigourney the entire time. Soon, though, she was ready to progress and the feelings of wanting to feel good and mechanical and robotic swept over her again. There were no shortage of panels along her body to open, though many were small access panels, just the feeling of opening them and the knowledge that she was exposed as an android was enough to jolt her arousal upwards. Her own hand moved to her slip and started pushing fingers into her own wetness. As she did, a patch of flesh on her lower back opened and revealed a charging port there. Another opened at the base of her neck, hidden by her hair, but clearly exposing a port for data connection. After a short time the distant sound of whirling fans could be heard. If anyone was listening for them that is. No one was. Sigourney had her mouth stuffed full of Frankie’s wetness and her moans were constantly muffled and only sounded like small mewling things now. Likewise, Eliza had her tongue deeply embedded in Sigourney and her own voice was just as muffled. Her moans just as distant. Frankie had transitioned into gently rolling her hips against her very human mother’s mouth while she whispered a phrase over and over. ‘Yes mommy, yes, yes mommy!” She muttered to no one at all. Each and every one of them ground on for long minutes. The raw pleasure, both organic and digital, flooded their minds and operating systems. There was no stopping it this time. The once quite whispered din of pleasure rose to full on heady moans and groans. Words were lost to the simple sounds of lust. The night claimed all of them and watched along. Frankie and Eliza, though operating on different algorithms, seemed to be reaching their climax at about the same time. Sigourney had already cum twice from the pleasure that her secondary robot daughter was inflicting on her. She kept her hand firmly on Eliza’s head and tangled her fingers into her long silky brown hair. She wanted to make sure that the little robot knew that she still had work to do. As time carried on though that grip loosened as Sigourney approached her third orgasm of the night. She heard her two daughters and knew how much each of them loved her. At almost the same moment, both Eliza and Frankie processed their orgasm sequences. Frankie’s slit ground against Sigourney and her tongue, pressing down just a bit more to try and feel the maximum amount of pleasure from it. Her twin also bucked her hips, working hard to squirm in just the right way to get a little more pressure out of the two fingers inside of her. Like Sigourney, she moaned softly into the folds of flesh in her mouth. It muffled the sound just a bit, but there was no mistaking her process. Everything was still after that. The silence of the night fell over the room as soft, wet, panting breaths were sucked in and cooling fans whirred to life. Eliza crawled up and found herself curled into Sigourney’s arm on one side, while Frankie managed to slink down to take up the same position on the opposite side. Sleep took Sigourney rather quickly as she curled up next to her two girls. The two robots noticed and slipped into their own low power mode. There would be a lot more conversation to have. How did Eliza fit into the family, or even if she wanted to be there. Now sentient and sapient she was free to wander into the world as her own entity. There would always be a place for her in the Gaines’ home though.

---

← Stories