Delicate Systems

The west coast of Keldan was nice this time of year. The heat wasn’t so sweltering that the mere thought of going outside began to cause sunburns. Then again, the cool air from seasons past were evaporating, leaving only the normal breeze off the ocean the only cooling factor in the air. It was a pleasant mixture, the kind of weather that meant someone could leave their windows open and enjoy the cool, fresh air without worrying about needing a mountain of blankets to ward it off.

New Emporia was nestled just close enough to the beaches that it thrived on tourism when the weather was nice. Like it was today. The sun kissed the horizon and, despite it being well into the evening, there was still a faint din of people through the open windows.

Of course, the core of the city, with its sky rise buildings was shielded from some of that. The breeze, flowing off the ocean was slammed into the first few buildings and diffused, leaving an ever cooling ring of air around the city. Likewise the sound of the crashing waves and the screams of playing children were equally drowned out by distance and obstacles.

Laila’s loft style apartment was in one of those core, inner city buildings. The wide open floor plan and modern design made for a very open air feel. What small traces of the oceanside breeze slipped through her apartment like a whisper. It was just enough to bring the temperature down a little, but the real pleasure came from when those jetties of cool ocean air traced an ethereal finger across the exposed skin.

The upper portion of the loft sported a very spartan amount of furniture. Simple decor and comfortable, but sparse seating left her plenty room to meditate when she needed to. She was close to that time now, but there were things to take care of first.

Surely it was meant to be a bedroom, and on occasion it was, but tonight the room adjacent to the loft was a robotics workshop. There was nothing human about what Laila was doing, far from it.

Laila stood in front of a desk, it was normally meticulously cleaned and clear. Minimalism was her way of life, but not tonight. The desk was scattered with chrome plated pieces of some kind of machine. To the average observer, and even to many who were in the know about such things, would have seen them as just bits and bobs. They were certainly non-standard, both in their appearance and function.

There were wires too. The multitude of colors was dimmed only slightly by the low pool of light that Laila was working in. Not all of it was hers, there were a number of bundles that were just spares, ready for whatever she needed. The thick, dull grey cable that was plugged into a wall outlet and connected to an equally hefty port inside of her opened chest though, had no spares.

She was topless at the moment. Her usual crisp, darkly colored tunic style top and belt were placed with care on the edge of the only other piece of furniture in here. Her bed. It was soft, comfortable, and more often than not used as a temporary storage space while she worked on herself.

The precision cut opening in her chest was by design. It was normally filled with a sturdy panel of plastics coated with soft but artificial flesh, and capped with her equally soft breasts. Not tonight though, she had maintenance to do. She preferred working on herself like this. Alone and well out of the sight of anyone and anything that might catch a glimpse of her internal workings. It wasn’t a matter of embarrassment, or even a desire to hide what she was. They were suggestions from the man who created her. She was never sure, nor did she much care, if she was specifically programmed to obey his suggestions, but they had always made perfect sense to her. They were there to keep her safe.

She was, after all, company property. Regardless of labels like “sentient” or “sapient”, that had been tossed around in reference to her. She was owned by someone else in the loosest terms. Technically she was company property but there had never been any need to enforce those kinds of boundaries because he always had her best interest at heart.

Part of that was taking care of herself whenever she could, like tonight. Due to the level of her artificial intellect and the curiosity of her sentience, she had been allowed to have access to everything. Full body schematics, wiring diagrams, a parts catalog for every last component inside of her and more than that, the programming guide on how to actually work on herself. Once a week, like clockwork, she would find herself in her apartment. The lights turned off to make it appear as if she was gone, or at very least, not available. She’d move to her bedroom, strip down and begin opening the access panels that made her appear human.

From there, it was merely a matter of plugging the heavy duty power cable into her core, a precaution to make sure she didn’t accidentally remove something critical to her power supply. The cable was cumbersome, for certain, but there were some inconveniences that she was willing to put up with. Particularly when she was reaching into her exposed torso, tools and wrenches in hand, and pulling out parts of herself.

They were laid out in front of her, properly placed on an anti static mat and from there, disassembled further. If there was one thing she couldn’t abide it was a spot of dirt, errant dust, or an unpolished component. She was made for elegance and efficiency and she intended to keep herself like that. Inside and out. So it was that once she had taken apart the circuit board studded subsystem from inside of her, she would make sure it was clean and as dust free as she could make it. Parts that sported a threaded ring to hold some tubing or pipe work were scrubbed with a copper wire brush to knock any and all debris free. A quick burst of air from a pressurized can, and then everything was put back together. Once done, it was gently seated back into her torso.

Legs were tuned and joints sightened. Her arms proved to be the most problematic since she only had one hand to work on the internal components. Still, it was a routine she had settled into. It was almost meditative in how it made her feel. Parts were removed and cleaned in the same order every week. Fluids were topped off and on a wholly different schedule, she would flush them fully from her systems only to refill them anew.

Laila reseated the last of the parts she had taken out of herself to inspect and clean. She was done now. Or at least done with this part of her evening. With her chest plate reattached to her body, she clicked off the light in her bedroom and moved to the open loft space. Her self care routine was just that, self care. She knew that there was no real need to keep herself consistently “tuned up,” but she wanted to. Remaining in peak performance was important to her. It was something that was learned in the infancy of her consciousness and had been made a part of her. Not because it was hard coded in, but because it was a deeply learned behavior. And it paid off.

Her mind didn’t operate like a human mind, nor did it work like a conventional computer. There was no real comparison, she was halfway between almost everything. The way she thought was better defined by how she did not think more than anything. To her there was no procrastination in keeping herself working well. She liked to feel like she was performing her duties with precision and efficiency, and she liked to feel like the gift of her own body was just as precise and efficient.

A good part of remaining in that peak performance was what could only be called a nightly meditative performance. She plucked one of the pillows from around the room and set it in the middle of the wide open space. Like the people in her life, like her very existence, there was nothing close to her. She was by herself, practically floating, in a sea of nothingness. More so as she closed her eyes and shielded her optics from the world around her.

The heads up display that normally filled her field of vision faded away, a small command she had crafted herself allowed it to remain present, but fade into the background. It was almost like her cognitive mind was simply ignoring it. Then her skin prickled as a fresh whisper of the outside breeze wafted across her. She drew in the smell of it, letting the cooler than normal air fill the artificial lungs she had been equipped with and allowing that same extra coolness to carry away the heat produced by her processor core.

She exhaled, letting it all seep out of her. The heat, the noise, the world around her. She was alone in darkness. She liked it that way. There were only tiny pinpricks of light in her life, those few people who were in her orbit. They were few and far between, and she was happy to keep it that way. She had long ago convinced herself that she didn’t need others to validate who she was. She was an island of strength unto herself. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Her calming demeanor was shattered an instant later.

The very real sensation of her breathing rising from serene slow breaths into an utter panicked gulping was beyond her control. The previously faded and nearly invisible heads up screamed back to life, now sporting a red glow to it. The flashing only added to the desperate panic of the situation. Her eyes snapped open, again, out of her control.

Something was very wrong and she had no idea what it was. The log files wouldn’t open. Her mind was swimming with a myriad of simulated emotions, all of them rising from her operating system to be processed and executed. There was worry and panic and a cold shiver of..something..what was it? It was new to her, not that it wasn’t in her response database, she had justin ever processed it before. It was a new reaction.

Fear…she hated it…

Soon her motor controls were returned to her command, to an extent. She was locked into place but her optics and head could move now. She darted her eyes downward and her head as well. There was no smoke roiling from her mouth or melting skin across her naked chest, but she knew something inside of her was wrong. Not some metaphysical inside, her literal circuitry was breaking.

There was no doubt that she had reassembled the parts and pieces properly, she had done so dozens of times before, that wasn’t it. It was something else, something beyond her control.

Suppressing the strobing red outline of her display took precedence at the moment. It was easy enough to do, but disabling those warnings and alerts freed up the necessary processing power to start really diagnosing what went wrong. Her breathing still came in deep heaving gulps as her cooling systems kicked into overdrive, struggling to keep those experimental processors and parts cool enough that they wouldn’t add to her problems, and for now, they were succeeding.

She saw an automated task trigger itself once the alerts were quelled. A distress signal with a myriad of attached log files and data was sent out to VectaTech. They would help. They would come and fix her.

Director Bertram Langley was burning the midnight oil, again. It wasn’t uncommon, in fact it was becoming more the norm for him. He didn’t mind though, it was his choice, though it wasn’t necessarily thrilling work. Reports and data and budgets and approvals, all of it displayed in cool blues and greens on his data screens.

The sudden flash of red though sank deep against his cheekbones. It showed off just how old he had gotten. Healthy, for certain, but the skin on his face was beginning to cling to the bones. With a swipe he minimized his work and pulled up the alert.

It was Laila. Something had broken inside of her. With a huff he brought up a whole body schematic of her internals and exploded it into its various subsystems. The part, and in turn the affected systems, were all highlighted in a glowing red outline. That made him draw in a long, slow breath that he let simply seep out his nostrils.

It wasn’t going to take her offline right now, thank goodness. It would, however, continue to degrade her performance with rapid succession, and her other systems might fail and take her offline as part of that. An unacceptable turn of events. Particularly because it was late, the technical staff on hand had neither the knowledge nor Langley’s trust to repair VectaTech’s pet project.

There were options though. Certain twenty four hour services he had used before on a contract or “just in time” basis. One in particular he had used seemed more reliable than others and without bothering to spend a second thought on it, sent them an emergency request. Part of that request was copied to the parts and research department so they could prepare a replacement for the parts that seemed to be having trouble and be ready to hand them off.

With that done, Langley let out a breath he had been holding in. Laila’s schematics still pulsating in front of him. He spent a small amount of time tapping out a message to send to her internal messaging application. Partially to help sooth whatever panic she might be in, and to send her some particularly important instructions.

She was company property after all, her secrets could not get out.

Despite being locked into place in her meditative pose, Laila still shuddered a bit as Langley’s message reached her. Whatever was happening to her truly was a hardware fault as she found herself able to connect to the in-home surveillance systems and activate one of the many well hidden cameras in the space. It wasn’t a new process for her, checking in with Langley via the surveillance system was a regular thing for her.

Never while she was fully disabled though. That was new, and she did not enjoy it.

“Laila.” Langley’s voice drawled. There was a smoothness there, something smothering the innate New York accent. Years of corporate sweet talking had masked the roots of his voice, but there were times that it still showed through. Like water seeping through even the smallest crack in a roof.

There was no accusation in the voice either. Laila’s name was more of an acknowledgement of her presence. She had called him and this was his way of answering. Nothing fancy, nothing accusatory. Just her name.

“Sir. I- I apologize. Something appears to be wrong after my weekly tune up. I think that-”

Langley cut her off there. His own digital likeness appearing in her heads up display, overlaid into the world around her. An augmented reality version of his usual crisp suit and all too alert eyes. The projection held up a hand to halt her as he spoke.

“I got the report. It looks as if it was a breakdown on a sub system inside of you. Just a part of normal wear and tear. Nothing that you did. In fact your attention to them likely kept them running longer than expected.”

Cold comfort for Laila. She was still breaking down and she knew it. It wasn’t so much that she could feel the spreading breakdown inside of her, rather there was enough cumulative data for her to mentally recognize that whatever was wrong inside of her was spreading, slowly but surely. She knew that in a short time she would be offline. More than that, she would likely experience a wild array of malfunctions as more and more of her operational hardware failed. It all brought a fresh sense of panic back to her.

“The breakdown is spreading and I can not seem to diagnose where it is originating from.” Laila said, the sharp edge of panic cutting into her normally calm and deeper voice. The usually sweet but dangerous voice replaced with a higher pitch.

“It will be alright.” Langley assured her with the kind of tone that suggested that there might have been a deeper affection for her.

There was not.

“I’ve contacted a specialist to repair you. They should be picking up replacement parts now and will be at your residence shortly. I’ll make sure your front door is unlocked for them.”

“Sir I think that-”

Langley rolled ahead with his thoughts. “You will give them the challenge phrase ‘This is embarrassing’ and they will reply with ‘It’s a common occurrence’ which will disable your home defenses. You will grant her administrative permissions to your system until the repairs are finished and tested.”

The cold and calculated answer seemed to cover every one of Laila’s concerns. All that was left was to confirm it.

“Yes sir. I understand.”

Laila audibly heard the front door unlocking as soon as Langley disconnected. Then she waited. She watched a number of statistics and metrics about her body as they slowly declined with each passing minute. She detected her fingers beginning to twitch slightly from the spreading damage inside of her, then her shoulder on the left side began to spasm just a little.

A small window popped into existence in her field of vision. The operating system let her know it was a feed from her front door.

A woman stood there, dressed smartly in a dark tan pants suit. Her posture was impeccable as her dress sense. Thin, but stylish black leather gloves covered her hands. Laila could see that they seemed to be almost intentionally too small for her hands. They were stretched tight across the woman’s hands.

Clutched in one hand was a rather large and heavy looking case. Though she seemed to not at all be bothered by the weight of it, there was no doubt in Laila synthetic mind that it weighed a considerable amount. She was well acquainted with the heft of some of the parts inside of her own body, and with the addition of tools and perhaps even a portable data pad, the case had to be heavy. Still, she seemed not at all bothered by it.

The high angle of the security camera didn’t afford Laila a good look at her face as it was masked below a short shock of light brown hair. Stylish and well groomed while still adding a sophisticated look. Surely this was the technician that Langley had dispatched to her, though she looked entirely different from the disheveled technical staff who normally worked on her.

With a small command, she connected to the intercom system and spoke to the visitor.

“I am sorry, I am not taking visitors at the moment.”

The woman tilted her head and nodded. “May I ask why?”

Her voice was smooth and clipped. Curt and professional with a hint of something authoritative there. Less commanding and more maternal.

“Well..This is embarrassing..”

“It’s a common occurrence.” came the reply, calm and practiced.

“Understood. Come in then.”

The door opened and Laila heard the soft sound of footsteps in her house. They were neither intentionally softened to mask the approach, nor were they loud enough to make it blatantly obvious where she was. Simply put, the technician was walking through her home as if she belonged there. No smug superiority, just a cool and easy stroll into a new environment. Clearly she hadn’t been told where, exactly, Laila was though. The hesitation in the footsteps from the space below her loft indicated as much. Laila imagined her stopping to look up the hall there, before calling out.

“Could you tell me where you are.”

The voice was so much more smooth than it was over the intercom. Easy and calm and confident. There was more to it though, something that spoke of not wanting to have any surprises. She could have easily searched the whole penthouse until she found Laila, but what else would she have found in the interim? Surely things she wasn’t meant to see, so the professional thing to do was admit the gap in her knowledge and fix it.

“I- In the loft.”

Laila hadn’t meant to stammer. She never did that. She was an Executive Field Representative, she did not stammer.

Except when there were parts inside of her torso that were breaking down one by one.

The sound of the technician’s confident strides walking up the stairs drew Laila’s attention. She couldn’t move, but her eyes twitched to take in the woman. Likewise the woman at the stairs took in Laila.

Laila was sitting cross legged on a larger than strictly necessary pillow. Soft, comfortable, and plenty of room on all sides. Her pale skin was almost too pale and it reflected the small amount of light in the loft back. Naked as she was, the technician could easily see her build. Strength hidden below a fairly lithe frame work.

The sheet of silky dark hair flowed just past her shoulders on one side, leaving the other side shaved close to her skull. From her posture, it covered a good portion of the sides of her face and did a good job of concealing both the mixed expression, locked between embarrassment and seething anger, and her borderline feline eyes. They were so very clearly yellow, and while they only glowed on their own, the moody lighting gave them a certain glint.

If not for the somewhat dire situation, Laila would have looked deeply sensual. A feline woman on her knees, hands resting on her bare thighs and looking at her guest with a certain smolder to her. The image would have been enticing to anyone, and in Laila’s line of work, that was the point. She was as deadly as she was sensual and she hated the somewhat vulnerable position she was now in.

The guest set down her case, in front and to the side of Laila’s position before she squatted down and brought her face to level with Laila’s. Their eyes met, and while Laila’s might have been fierce and upset, this woman’s were nothing but soft and understanding. They spoke to the depth of experience she clearly had. Her eyes practically screamed ‘this is nothing to be embarrassed about. It happens to people like us. I’ll make it ok.’

The look shaved off the barest edge of Laila’s mood and at least changed her voice a little. The sharpness and apprehension drained from it.

“Hello, Laila, My name is Catherine and I’ll be taking care of you. Everything is going to be okay, but before we begin I need to confirm that you recognize me as an administrator for the duration of this repair session.”

Laila’s systems looked the technician over. The description matched the one sent in the data packet from Langley. A short shock of light chestnut hair, a more mature face and the short range authorization code she was broadcasting matched as well. With her identity secured, Laila was compelled to follow her orders and set this woman as an administrator with a fairly short time limit on it. Two hours should be plenty.

With a grunt and a data packet of her own sent to Catherine, the deed was done. Catherine’s smile was somewhere between a smirk and a genuine smile. Even as an artificial herself, she recognized the gravity of what Laila was giving up. Obviously proud and self assured, likely specifically programmed to lean that way too. Giving up that control to someone else was a leap of faith, either in Catherine, or in whoever owned and maintained her. One way or another, Laila was exposed and had to submit to someone else, which she clearly didn’t enjoy.

That was alright though. Catherine had no shortage of experience with that. No android liked to be broken, just like no human wanted to be hurt. She knew as much and had taken great care to make sure that she had an entire database of reactions and social programming to help her. Good bedside manner wasn’t just for humans.

“Alright, good. Let’s get your motor systems unlocked, sort of. I’m going to release your joint locks, you’ll probably feel a little loose and you’ll collapse. I’ll make sure you don’t get hurt. Ready?”

Hurt? Laila was an android, she didn’t get hurt. She wanted to scoff, but she never got the opportunity. She had already nodded that she was ready and almost instantly she felt herself falling forward. The locked motor systems and actuators throughout her body just stopped. They loosed their grip on her body and let it fall.

True to her word, Catherine was there. She was ready, even before Laila began to fall. She had leaned in, her arms at the ready and Laila found herself cradled in this woman’s arms. Catherine was looking down on her, not in the condescending way or even disgust at the broken robot she cradled, but more like someone who was now fully in her care. Laila’s artificial mind, so very human but so very mechanical, struggled with it all.

She was not used to this kind of reaction. Her operating system struggled a little, accessing her usual databases for the right responses and for the right metadata tags to store it, but it just wasn’t there. Deeper and deeper her OS crawled into her programming and to pull in whatever sources it could. Finally it found something, it wasn’t perfect, but it would do.

Compassion and…caring? No not quite, it was something other than that. Hard to categorize, and even harder to formulate a response to. Catherine’s genuine smile warmed her and Laila couldn’t handle it. She wasn’t prepared for it and she looked away from Catherine as she gently guided Laila’s chassis to the ground. Once there she laid her out, meticulously straightening arms and legs so that there was no additional strain on her motor systems.

“There we go, I’ll bet that’s a little more comfortable, hmm?” Catherine said as she settled back down on the floor next to Laila.

“..It is..”

Why was there so much hesitance in her voice? She was programmed for a wide variety of social situations and field operation work. One of her main purposes was quite literally to be ready for anything. So why wasn’t she ready for this? It was a question she logged for later contemplation. For now her skin sensors lit up with the sensation of Catherine’s hands on her.

Had Laila been fully operational and Catherine not been an administrator, she would have snatched that hand and shattered the wrist, no one got to touch her like this except for a select few.

“Just trying to find a manual release for your chest panel. I need a good look at what’s going on inside of you. I don’t suppose you want to make that easier and release the mag-locks on your upper and lower torso panelling.” Catherine requested with a hint of playfulness in her voice.

Laila responded by doing as she was asked. Releasing the magnetic locking mechanisms along her chest and abdomen. It was strange though, she was no stranger to being worked on by a technical crew, but it was never like this. When she was in a company lab, she was company property. No one asked her to unlock her body, they just told her to, or even just connected a device and sent the commands themselves. They wrestled control away from her and made her operate how they wanted her to. She had never paid it much attention before, that's just how it was. That was how you treated a machine.

Catherine though, she was being polite, kind, courteous. Laila felt something in her code squirming, reaching, grasping for the concept. It was there, somewhere, but it was so foreign. Dusty and unused. What was it…?

“Thanks for that.” Catherine’s smooth voice robbed Laila of her train of thought.

“Sure.” Laila replied, finding her own voice to be softer than she would have expected. She could have grumbled, but why?

Catherine was good at her job. She easily wiggled precise fingers into the small space between Laila’s chest and her torso. The panelling came off in whole pieces and were gingerly set aside. Laila knew she was fully exposed by the riot of colors that were projected onto the ceiling above her. There was far too much red in that display than she would have liked, but there were plenty of soft blues and glowing greens to make her feel like she wasn’t entirely broken. Not yet at least.

“Alright honey, let’s see what’s going on in here.”

Laila wanted so badly to see for herself. She was comfortable tinkering inside of herself and she wanted to be of use to Catherine. She was locked out though, all she could do was wait helplessly as someone else dug around inside of her.

With a soft clump the locks on Catherine’s heavy case were opened. Laila could only vaguely see her through peripheral vision, but she knew that the case was open and Catherine was preparing tools and pulling parts and pieces out of it. What she did see was the almost ritualistic precision in which Catherine tugged off her leather gloves. Her hands were delicate under the coverings, and her gloves were towed with equal care inside of the case, likely to be put back on later.

Then she was leaning over Laila’s inert body. Her hands were on the very edge where her very human looking skin met the inhuman metal and plastic framework at the edge of the panel. One hand reached inside, pushing aside some wiring. Laila could see her eyes clicking back and forth, taking it all in. They stopped from time to time as some component inside of Laila caught her attention.

She leaned in, getting a close look, and taking in all that Laila was. Sitting back, she reached for some tool and brought it inside of Laila. The gentle vibration of something being inserted into a screw housing and loosening the components that were held in place there. She couldn’t feel the thing being moved out of the way, but she knew, mostly from observing where Catherine was working inside of her. She was well aware of what was there, and what needed to be moved out of the way to expose something else.

“Hmm..” Catherine cooed as she looked deeper into Laila’s systems. “There looks to be a swollen capacitor on one of the power regulation systems here.”

Both hands were inside of Laila now. One hand stabilized Laila’s body so that it didn’t rock or move too much as Catherine explored more.

“The output from your power cell is just a little too high to regulate it in the long term. You should probably check in with your technical team to have something a little more hearty manufactured and installed.” Catherine commented. “Luckily, it’s an easy enough part to replace. I won’t need to take you offline, but if it makes you uncomfortable to have something removed while you’re online-”

“No. I will be fine. I usually work on myself anyway. I am used to this.”

Catherine didn’t miss the defensiveness in it, and the pride.

“That’s fine by me. I just like to give folks an option. Not everyone is as well practiced as you.” She chuckled. “Some of them don’t even know they are machines until I show up. Working on you is kind of a treat you know.”

Laila was confused by that. She had to ask why and Catherine let out a chuckle before answering.

“I get a lot of emergency calls. Something broken and malfunctioning, like you. But most of them are angry and want to know why they broke down, why something is wrong. Obviously that means I have to do some diagnostic work, right?”

“Right.”

“No one wants to let me open them up. No one wants to see what's inside of them, making them tick. So I end up taking a lot of folks offline, which is fine, but I like some real feedback sometimes. It’s worse when they don’t know they are androids too, that’s a real special call. But you, it’s just nice to have someone who is okay with me working on them while watching.”

She leaned in and began to work on freeing the regulator module.

“It’s just nice to find someone who operates the same way I do. Unafraid of how you work.”

Laila had been looking at Catherine as she glanced back at Laila from time to time as she spoke. Now though, Laila felt compelled to avert her eyes, fearing she might feel something under Catgherine’s gaze. But she did. It was unavoidable. Kindred spirits, so to speak. Laila had often felt like she was the only machine in the world who not only felt comfortable working on herself, but truly enjoyed it.

It wasn’t only about keeping in peak performance. There was plenty of practical knowledge to be gained from knowing how to work on your own systems. Her line of work wasn’t exactly safe, and an intimate understanding of her systems meant that she could, in a pinch, work around them. Hardware and software were just means to an end, you needed the knowledge and experience of how they worked in order to work with them. The old adage of only being able to break the rules once you knew the rules. She wanted to know herself so that she could work herself in every possible way.

Then Catherine comes along, hinting that she does the same thing. Did she do the same thing? Did she say that or was it just something Laila read into her words?

“You work on yourself as well?” Laila’s words were smooth and soft and something else. Hopeful?

“All the time. Carefully of course, I don’t have someone to swoop in and pick me up if I screw things up.” She laughed again. “But I take precautions. I have a very rudimentary service drone I keep loaded with a backup of my mind. Enough to repair the basics should I really toast myself.”

She dipped both hands into Laila’s torso and gripped something. It took a little wiggling to release it, but when she did Laila instantly knew it was gone. The connection was lost and her vision flooded with information about it. Not just about the missing component, but the attached systems and a brief integrity report. It seemed so obvious now that it was missing, everything Laila had first experienced stemmed from this part. The spreading corruption that threatened to take the rest of her systems with it was caused by this. The swollen capacitor would have struggled to regulate power, it would continue to degrade, measurable, as time went on.

Of course, how had Laila missed that during her regular check ups? There was something covering it, of course, some other part that had obscured it. She made a note to modify her maintenance process to ensure it didn’t happen again.

Laila only registered that Catherine was still talking to her when she noticed the movement of Catherine swivelling back to her case. “-Luckily your admin team entrusted me with a replacement part. The diagnostics data indicated what it was pretty quickly based on previous check in’s. So this should be a quick and easy replacement.”

“Oh, I see, thank you.”

Laila contemplated for a moment why a technician, paid to be there, just doing her job, needed to be thanked. Laila knew that, at this moment, she was just a machine to be repaired. She was a job number and a set of instructions to Catherine. Right?

The part reconnected and Laila’s systems grabbed onto it. Registered it. Made it part of her once again. Power flowed into it and the roiling storm of too much red light on the ceiling quickly cascaded into green and blue. She was operational again, though she was still open and exposed.

“How’s that feel sweetie?” Catherine asked.

“That seems to have resolved it. I will need to run some more intensive diagnostics and do something that requires a lot of power regulation to really test it out though.”

“Well, let me put you back together and we can make sure you’re ship shape.”

Laila remained still as she felt parts being clicked back into place and locked in. Screws were replaced and tightened and then her chest and abdomen came back into place and then she was whole again.

Sitting up gave her the opportunity to face Catherine on somewhat equal ground. She was no longer laying immobile on the floor, she could move her arms and legs and body. Her first order of business was to roller her neck, feeling the servos inside of it moving and adjusting back into place from their previous resting positions.

“Take it nice and easy now, okay? We don’t want you to strain a motor controller as well.”

Laila agreed and complied. Not because Catherine was right, though she was, and not because she was an administrator either. There was no authority in her voice and no data packet laced with admin credentials to make that apparent either. Rather, Laila compiled because she wanted to, it was the correct course of action and she felt like Catherine had her best interests at heart.

Then something clicked in her mind. The feeling she had been searching for earlier. It didn’t belong to any of her normal or even advanced social response matrices, because it wasn’t a social thing. It was one of the few truly emotional responses that she had managed to sort out over time. Something she had learned. Langley had taught her that he was looking out for her best interests, and now Catherine was too.

She was being careful, cautious and compassionate. There was no additional benefit to Catherine in her warning Laila to not break herself again. In fact, she had every reason to allow it to happen. She was on site already and a blown motor controller would be a few extra dollars in her pocket. By preventing or at least warning of the issue, she had tipped some of her hand. She wasn’t actually here for the money. She was here because she cared about getting other androids back on their feet. The money was a nice bonus, but it was secondary to making sure that her clients were taken care of.

“Go ahead and move through a few basic movement routines while I pack up here. We’ll be done here shortly.”

“We are not done?” Laila asked as she stood and stretched her arms above her head, standing on tiptoes.

“No, not yet. There are two things left actually. We need to put your new power regulator systems through their paces to make sure that they don’t blow out as soon as you try something strenuous. After that, I’ll run a quick full body diagnostics to see if there are any other anomalies that might have been caught up in this blow out.” Catherine commented as tools and parts were placed back inside of her case.

“Some kind of power regulation test then.” Laila contemplated.

“Don’t worry, I have a few different things we could try. Admittedly though, most of my clients choose the same option every time.”

“And why is that?” Laila asked as she squatted down, bending her knees and bouncing slightly on the balls of her feet.

Catherine closed the locks on her case and looked up at Laila with a simple smirk. Just a bit of the corner of her mouth quirked up as her eyes roamed over Laila’s still naked body.

“Because sex is incredibly taxing on us. It feels good. And most other androids are fairly ‘in the mood’ after I’ve pawed over them.”

That took Laila by surprise. She couldn’t argue with the logic though. Sexual activity activated almost every system inside of her, from limb movement, to social responses, observations and analytics, to the parsing and processing of thousands of sensations across her body all at once. It was taxing on everything, and losing power to any one system would result in a failed test.

Laila did not fail tests.

“An interesting way to test a system, but I accept.”

Laila dropped from the balls of her feet to her knees, letting them land softly on the oversized pillow she had been meditating on. The fabric cushioned the movement and in an instant she was at Catherine’s bubble. The technician didn’t shy away from the approach either, she was just as ready as Laila. Once there, Catherine leaned in and took the initiative. With a hand gently placed against the back of Laila’s head Catherine dragged her into a deeply passionate kiss.

Laila was already on the backfoot then, squeaking in slight surprise but melting into the kiss. Her own hands came to cradle the woman’s face as well, dragging the two of them closer. Laila could already feel the heat rising inside of her body, then her cooling systems engaged and a shock of cold liquid coursed through her. But those pumps, processors, and circuitry needed power, and not just a flash burst of it.

The new power regulator seemed to be working just fine, for now, but what they had started was only the beginning. There was plenty more to test.

Laila found a firm, but gentle hand pressing against her chest and Laila was once again guided to the ground. Once there, Catherine wasted no time and soon a trail of hot kisses began to appear down her throat, across her chest and towards her belly. Hands found their way to her exposed breasts, fondling them and toying with the all too lifelike mounds there.

Something in Laila’s programming wanted to push back, to clamber on top of Catherine and take control, to guide this experience. A much more logical part of her artificial mind took over though. This was a test, it was part of verifying her continued operation at peak performance levels. She needed to let this happen, regardless of what her emotional responses wanted. So she relaxed back onto the pillow and let Catherine do her work.

All Laila could do was trust that her programming would take over and that her body would respond as expected. And respond it did.

Laila’s heads up display, upon her request, displayed critical data from around her body. Rising temperatures that were quashed by her cooling systems. Power distribution and CPU utilization were tucked away in the corner, and a scrolling and ever updating display of the running applications and programming sets tucked itself to the left side. Her main view was of Catherine though as she descended Laila’s body. Bobbing up and down from time to time, each movement leaving Laila’s skin burning with a new kiss.

From Laila’s point of view it seemed that Catherine was enjoying the test every bit as much as she was. She sat up for a moment, making eye contact with Laila and smirking before winking and shrugging out of the dark tan blazer. She gently tossed it on top of her case before meticulously unbuttoning her blouse. She didn’t take it off though, not yet, and she didn’t stay nestled between Laila’s legs either.

Instead she straddled Laila’s hips and leaned forward. Her open blouse formed a small curtain around her breasts, still contained in their bra. There was no need for such privacy here though, and Laila gladly obliged the unspoken request. Her hands moved up to Catherine’s body, gliding over the surely artificial rib cage and around to her back. The clasps on her bra were no struggle to undo. Once freed, Catherine leaned in for one more quick kiss before sitting up and tossing aside her shirt and bra.

Catherine’s eyes were closed, swimming in the heat of the moment. She didn’t see Laila’s hands rise to her chest and begin to fondle her well proportioned breasts, but her own systems gladly registered the touch. Coupling it with sensations and responses as well. Her nipples puckered slightly, adding a small texture to the otherwise smooth elasticity of her chest. A soft moan, barely more than a whisper, rolled out as well, and with it, Catherine’s hips began to move.

Laila felt the fabric on her grinding into her slit, the sparks of desire already there and causing the sexual module to moisten itself. Then there was a flash of guilt. She was about to make a mess on Catherine’s clothes and that was, among other things, just rude. Laila pushed against Catherine’s chest, her breasts squishing against the plastic mounting plate inside of her. This time Laila insisted though. She pushed Catherine back and slightly to the side until both girls tumbled to the pillow. The dark haired android got the impression that Catherine had simply let that happen.

Hands moved and with mechanical precision Catherine’s slacks were being dragged down her legs along with her panties. Powerful thighs with both strength and a soft feminine sway to them came into view and Laila wasted no time. She realigned herself, placing hands on Catherine’s inner thighs, and pushing her legs open. Before there can be any protest, she dives in, her mouth coming to meet Catherine’s synthetic slit. Her tongue leading the way and diving deep inside of the robotic technicians already moistening folds.

The sounds Catherine made. Lewd, soft, flushed with desire and lust while still managing to be restrained. She was holding back, reserving something. She was clearly aroused and it showed, but she didn’t want to let it out just yet. Instead she let Laila pleasure her for long minutes, one hand finding its way to Laila’s head, her fingers straddling the line between her longer silky hair, and the rough undershave on one side of her head. All Catherine managed to do was press in and encourage Laila to eat her out more deeply.

A task that Laila was both happy and prepared to do. She fell back on letting her sexual programming take the driver's seat. Her higher level artificial mind could sit back and soak in the sensations of pleasuring someone else. The raw feeling of knowing that she was performing one of her many duties and performing it well. Not just well, but perfectly. Her tongue moved with precision, lips parting and moving and suckling at just the right time, with just the right pressure. Her analytics showed that Catherine’s pleasure was rising and would soon peak.

But that wasn’t what happened. It rose, for certain, but Catherine didn’t let it erupt into a full blown climax. Not yet at least. Instead she pulled her hips back, dislodging them from Laila’s mouth and earning her a small disappointed whimper and a look of confusion.

Catherine wanted to roll forward and tackle Laila to the ground. To kiss her relentlessly. That would be unprofessional and, unbeknownst to Catherine, extremely dangerous. Instead she rolled forward onto her knees, pressing her lips to Laila’s and using the momentum to drive her client backwards. Laila reluctantly accepted and fell back onto the pillow. Once there, the kisses did not stop, and added to them were two fingers sliding into her well lubricated slit.

Laila’s back arched and she let out a small whisper of lustful delight. A simple “yes” cried out into the room that melted into a long groan. Catherine’s fingers, delicate and sure, penetrated deep inside of her client. Curling ever so slightly and finding their way to the clitoral sensor bulb inside of Laila’s waiting slit.

The room devolved into lewd noises. Moans and soft sighs mingled with deep grumbles of delight and strained squeaks of pleasure. Kisses punctuated each sound and soon Laila found her own systems begging for release. It was time, and from what she could tell her power regulation hadn’t wavered at all. She was once again fully operational and performing to the very best of her ability. She was whole again and now it was time for her reward. The cherry on top of an otherwise flawless repair session.

She let her operating system continue forward. The climactic orgasm sequence loaded into her cached memory and awaited the final order from some deeply automated system to give the okay to execute. Laila could have stopped it, she could stop it indefinitely if she wanted or even scoop it out of the cache and send it away. She had control over her own systems to an almost administrative degree, but why waste good programming on stubbornness?

Her whole body shudders as her orgasm executes. The power fluctuates and her motor controls straining for only a moment as her hips thrust forward, jockeying for every available bit of Catherine inside of her. Just a little more stimulation, just a little more data to mull over.

And then it's over.

Laila was panting hard, breathing deeply as her systems demanded an influx of fresh air to help carry away excess heat from her CPU. Catherine is breathing hard as well and it’s only now that Laila observes Catherine’s own hand sliding out from between her own legs. Slick with fresh juices and trailing a silvered thread from her fingers back to her sex. Catherine can’t help but smile at that and does the only professional thing she can. Popping her fingers into her mouth and licking them clean before wiping away the remaining strand of her own lubricants.

“Well? Did I pass?” Laila asked between breaths. All she saw was a smile and a nod from her technician.

“I think we’re done here. You should have generated a full system log. I’ll need to scan that real quick, but I think we’re good to go after that.”

Laila nodded as she pushed herself up to a sitting position and adjusted her seating to be more comfortable, slipping back into the meditative cross legged position she had started the evening in. Her systems calming and her body slipping quickly back down into a normal state.

“Go ahead and open a data port for me.” Catherine said as she flipped her hand over, palm up. Once done a small panel sipped open in her wrist and revealed a cable there, which she plucked from the cradle it was in and began pulling a length of wiring out of her arm.

Laila was more than happy to comply. She only took a moment or two to sort out something a little more important. Her emotional responses to everything that had just happened. With a moment of free CPU cycles, there was a lot to process.

Catherine had made her feel both loved and cared for while also giving her a genuine sense of companionship. They were akin spirits, so to speak. Catherine was far less clinical than Laila, but she thought about her existence the same way. Take care of yourself, keep things running smoothly. That had always been Laila’s standard operating procedure, but that had failed her tonight, and Catherine had been there to help her. She had saved Laila, in a manner of speaking, and that alone stirred something.

Maybe it wasn’t best for her to be alone. Maybe shoving everyone away and being an island unto herself wasn’t what was best. Maybe she needed more than Langley and a detachment of technicians on the other side of the city.

Maybe she needed someone closer. Someone who she could care about. Something like a frie-

Her thoughts were cut short by a high priority message from Langley himself. In his standard clipped and to-the-point language it said only two things.

“Looks like you’re back online. Good. Do whatever needs to be done to remove Catherine’s memories of your systems.”

Laila knew what needed to be done. Langley had made a simple enough request and Laila was compelled by her own convictions to follow it. But that conviction ran into an obstacle. For the first time she could ever remember, she didn’t actually want to do it. She knew she would, one way or another, but Catherine didn’t deserve this.

Her eyes flicked to Catherine. She was just tugging the data cable out of her wrist and expecting a data port to connect to. A hardwire. A direct connection between two machines. That meant that data could flow both ways. She would let Catherine take the log files she needed for the scan and to close out the job, but Laila would put something else in it. A drop of poison. Something normal but deadly.

But…That meant Catherine would be-

Offline, out of the picture. Wipe her clean.

That didn’t seem-

Do it.

Laila couldn’t disobey. She had her orders. She placed the code snippet into the log files and opened a port for Catherine.

With a placid smile on her face Catherine connected to Laila. Their eyes met, Catherine’s soft and loving expression never changed, even as she took in the file and opened it. The trap had been sprung and Laila’s eyes, sharp and ever watchful, saw it. She wished she could look away but she was nothing if not professional in what she had to do. She had to make sure it worked. Despite not wanting to, she looked at Catherine as the commands she laced the log files with took hold.

Catherine’s eyes barely widened, there wasn’t time for anything else. The lock out had taken hold of her in an instant and she collapsed into Laila’s waiting arms. Naked and vulnerable and still connected to Laila’s OS. The only hesitation she had was when she looked at Catherine, the face that stared back looked betrayed, her eyes begging the question of ‘why?’ Laila looked away while she worked.

Wiping an android’s memory wasn’t like what was shown in movies. There was no “delete everything from the last twenty minutes” program. Not with a sentient android anyway. It was far more meticulous, and a task Laila was well suited for. She had done it before, and was good at what she did. Tonight though, she knew she would hate.

Scrubbing was like reliving every moment of the time that needed to be removed and making a constant and conscious choice to delete it. And not just delete it, but delete every part of it. The visual logs, the spoken words, the log files that indicated what emotional responses were triggered and which ones to execute. Laila saw and felt it all. She experienced what Catherine experienced and had to constantly make the choice to destroy it.

A part of Laila’s mind began to formulate a new plan, however. Something to still follow Langley’s request, but without harming the robotic technician.

Maybe she didn’t have to completely wipe her memories.

No, you have to. Langley said to-

Langley said to delete what she saw in my systems. But not me.

Catherine was at the front door. Words were being spoken to her and there was a code phrase she spoke. Those words could stay, but the voice, it was just a voice. Not Laila’s voice. Catherine was inside now, looking around, she called out and a voice responded. The loft. Catherine moved there and saw it. Not Laila, not her face or her body. Not her feline eyes or her dark hair. Not the meditation pillow or the gentle curves of the body.

Her attraction could stay. The feelings of lust and desire and caring and compassion. Those weren’t Laila’s systems, those were Catherine’s emotions. They were not Laila’s to destroy.

Repairs happened. Conversations and questions and answers. While Catherine had logged the layout and discovery of how Laila’s internals were laid out, it was marked to be removed later. Laila couldn’t let that happen. She saw her own open torso, and removed the image of what was inside. It was a dark cavity now. There were circuits inside, but there was no shape or form to them. They were concepts not specifics.

There was sex too. Desires swimming with a deep connection to her client. She wanted to test her work, to make sure Laila- no, scrub that- the robot was taken care of. To make sure everything worked. To make sure she felt…good…loved…cared for…

It was a messy process. Some of the act was left behind but not all of it. Laila’s face had been seen too much, it was replaced with a blurred void. Vagule feminine, but nothing else. The responses could stay, they had to stay. Laila couldn’t bring herself to tear the feelings of joy away from Catherine when her client climaxed. They weren’t related to the systems, they were fine.

Laila logged some joy of her own knowing what Catherine felt and experienced. Professional and compassionate. She couldn’t just scrub that all out. She didn’t need to. Catherine would remember coming to an unremarkable place, fixing a broken machine, testing it, verifying her work, and then completing it. Laila left her instructions too. Reactivate in a minute, complete the job in her database, then leave.

Laila sent her final commands and pulled the wire free. It retracted into Catherine’s arm and Laila pushed the port closed. WIth that she slipped out from under the technician and retreated to her room, and closed the door. Then waited.

She heard Catherine get up, then get dressed and pack up her case. Footsteps descended the stairs then the door closed. Everything was empty again. It was just Laila, alone, in her penthouse. Again.

She settled down onto the pillow again. Crossing her legs and placing her hands on her knees. She sucked in a deep breath and let it seep out of her nose. Her programming settled into place, resuming the rhythm and routine she had started earlier. She told her mind to be clear, to influence her artificial intellect to simply let go and return to a place of calm.

But there was someone else there now. Catherine’s face came swimming into view. She was smiling that same sweet and serene smile that she wore while working on Laila.

Laila shook her head, as if that would help. But Catherine’s face remained, transforming from smiling to betrayed, to nothing at all. To just an apparition in her mind. Try as she might, Laila could not shake the image free. She spent another half an hour attempting to calm her mind only to be haunted again. Eventually she gave up and quietly stormed into her room to recharge and hope that a nightly reset and reboot would clear the guilt and the ghosts.

It wouldn’t.

Catherine was in her car. Pulling into a driveway across town. Her last job done for the night. Another average repair job that went over without a hitch. Catherine barely remembered the job itself, which wasn’t uncommon when you worked on something so average all day.

There was something else though. As she plugged herself in to recharge and her operating system fell into its nightly check-in routine, there were logs and feelings and emotional responses that Catherine couldn’t quite square up with the job she had done.

She felt drawn to it…the robot she had worked on. A longing for something more. She wanted to talk more, to see her again…but…she couldn’t quite place her finger on why.