T-X Romance

The cool night was deep and dark. Barely a sound aside from the errant padding of a stray cat walking by or the tumbling of a loose leaf of paper. In an instant though, all of that changed.

The lonely rural streets of a town well outside of the city lit up like an atomic explosion. The crackling of electrical energy rent the air and sent sizzling blue blots dancing in every direction. At the center, a brilliant ball of pure temporal energy. A swirling mass of energy and time itself undulated just over a drainage ditch. It could have been seen from any number of the farmsteads around it, if it were an earlier hour, but in the dead of night, it lit up the countryside and then, as suddenly as it started, it was over.

A figure, thin, lithe and dangerous, dropped from the sphere. It landed in the ditch. For such a chaotic explosion of energy, whatever it was, landed with incredible grace. It rose up and took in the surrounding area. There was little to indicate where it was, just darkness and pavement. That was of little concern to it though.

What had plummeted through time itself was an agent from the future. A scout. Something sent ahead of an invasion to take in the lay of the land and discover what the world was like. Crafted to look feminine and harmless, though at the core was precisely constructed metal and circuitry. She was a robot, crafted to look human, programmed to infiltrate and gather information. Her assignment would be long and lonely. She was here to integrate into society and relay information back to her creators.

The thing had been programmed, designed, and constructed specifically to be the ideal infiltrator. She had tumbled out of time and space with little more than her internal structure exposed. The moonlight gleamed only slightly off of the highly polished internal structure. Smooth rounded plates formed a clearly feminine frame and the eye sockets were set deep with faintly glowing blue optics.

The robotic woman rose to its feets, the blue glowing eyes flicking over her surroundings. She took it all in and stored it, tagged it for later analysis and processing, then began to walk. She was cold and calculated in each step, though as she moved along more and more of her stride became a smooth gait. Her neural network learning millions of little things with each passing moment. There were directives she had to fulfill, and blending in was one of her primary assignments.

All around her body, small ports silently opened and a flood of mimetic polyalloy seeped out and spilled over her framework. Nooks and crannies around her body were filled in with the liquid metal substance. It shimmered and roiled in the moonlight, and once her body was covered it began to soften and change colours. It took on a lightly tanned skin tone, made pale by the limited amount of light.

She had a long walk in front of her before she managed to reach any kind of civilization. In that time though she used the same liquid metal to layer on clothing relevant to the surrounding area. Geolocation services could narrow her down to a region at best, and she found herself somewhere in the midwest of the United States, somewhere in the late two thousands. THe information served her well as the liquid metal separated and reshaped itself. It wove itself into clothes, something simple. A simple shirt and pants and sensible shoes. Something that would be unassuming if anyone were to see her walking along the roads late at night.

Not a single living soul saw the infiltrator calmly and smoothly stepping along the side of the road.

She walked for a solid ten hours, single minded and determined to reach her destination. She was a machine and little else, and achieving her goal was all she was programmed to dwell on. Reach civilization, integrate, learn, repeat.

Cyrus sighed. Not the deep kind of despair or loathing that he would have if he was locked in some giant skyscraper in downtown. Rather, one of boredom.

He lived on the far side of a suburb of one of the more major cities. His little neighborhood was something of a gateway between “the city” and “the country” even if neither of those descriptors were necessarily accurate. At the edge of his neighborhood, across the four lane main road, and another few blocks up the road were legitimate farmsteads. Beyond that, open road leading into the actual farmlands with huge sprawling fields of some form of tall, stalk based crops.

Cyrus’s job, that of a low level programmer, afforded him the opportunity to work from home most days. Sure there were times when he would have to go into the office, or there was some team member from out of town coming in and he would have to shave and dress up to show his face in person, but most days he was simply at home. Not only that but there was little in the way of excitement in his quiet, sleepy little neighborhood to break up the monotony.

The most exciting thing that had happened in, perhaps, years was the neighbors putting up their small ranch style house for sale. They hadn’t exactly been the ideal neighbors to one another, not that there was bad blood, but beyond the first few days neither one had made an effort to talk to the other. Now, though, Cyrus realized he had an opportunity to do things a little differently. He promised himself he would be more social, more accommodating, with whoever took over the little two bedroom house that shared a fence with him.

Somewhere across town, clad in simple jeans and a shirt, the infiltrator scanned through the people passing her on the sidewalk of a strip mall. She was reading data and cataloging it in an absolutely massive internal storage drive.

Her first order of business was to settle into a makeshift headquarters. She needed a home base, some place inconspicuous. Her programming included more than enough information about the society at the time, and she knew that in order to do anything at all she would need an identity and money. Neither would really be a problem for her, but she needed access to a computer terminal somewhere, or even just a connection to the internet.

She wandered past a cell phone store and her lightning fast processors knew what to do.

It didn’t take her long to find her way to an ATM that had been installed inside of a food court. With mechanically cold confidence she walked up to it and looked it over for a moment. There was a clear panel that could be opened and had a good chance of housing some kind of technician interface behind it. SHe placed a hand on it and let the mimetic poly alloy covering on her hands flow into the small opening between the panel and the machine. Once in place, it took only a fraction of her incredible strength to tear it open.

Inside were a number of small ports, common for the era and no issue for the T-X style robot. The liquid metal retracted back into her arm and then reformed into a plug. She plucked it from the tip of her finger and a freshly formed data cable stretched along with it. Plugging it in, her core processors immediately began to encounter the security systems dotted along the line in the local machine. They were child’s play for a creation like herself.

Soon she had access to the main systems in the ATM and simply ordered it to empty itself. Cash flowed into the dispenser and from there, into the T-X’s hands. She pocketed the money and haphazardly slammed the ATM shut again before striding away, cash in hand.

Her next stop was one of the more popular mobile phone stores. She didn’t exactly need a cellular phone, rather she needed the small amount of technology that would allow her to connect and integrate into the present satellite and phone systems. The chipper young woman in a blue polo shirt took a little convincing before she would simply hand over a credit card sized piece of plastic with a small cut out for the gold plated chip.

The T-X left the shop, dropping the cash into the attendant's hands and not waiting for the change before leaving. She had a mission to settle into. Striding from the shop she stepped easily around the building to the space between one shop and the next. It was dim there. Dim enough that when she popped the chip from the card and tilted her head to one side that she was sure no one would notice.

The liquid metal peeled away from the side of her head, creating a space where there was no flesh or hair, and below it was her gun metal gray internal framework. The highly polished and freshly manufactured skull returned no light in the dark alley. A small slot opened and the woman fed the small gold plated chip into it where it was immediately recognized and her operating system began to integrate with it. She returned her head to a normal position and let the liquid metal once again flow over her robotic skull and recolor and reshape into human looking flesh and hair.

Once she was connected to the networks, it was only a matter of time before she gained access to many of the governmental agencies. She stood still as her highly advanced artificial mind sliced into and through most of the, to her, primitive security settings. There was no malice in her intentions, she needed an identity. If there was one thing the robotic infiltrator knew it was that everything in the world ran on identification and credit. She assigned herself a birthdate, a social security number, and a name. Diana Pines, credit score of seven hundred and fifty, a bank account with nearly fifteen hundred dollars in it with an option to add more on a whim. It took the mechanical woman only a matter of seconds to manually create the database entries across the organizations she had tapped into. Each one was forcefully created, her tracks covered and her presence there erased. It would take each place years, if ever, to discover the work she had done, and even then it would only result in confused digging.

The more challenging aspect would be establishing a base of operations that was passable as a human dwelling, and from there, shaping and molding her personality to mesh well with her surroundings. Once done, all the drone needed to do was collect data and integrate it.

“Sold? Already?” Cyrus asked as the real estate agent plastered the sticker over the sign that had been in his neighbor’s yard for barely a week.

“Yep, this market is so hot that everything goes pretty quick. Especially when folks have cash.”

“Huh.”

Cyrus wasn’t exactly surprised, he had read headlines about how difficult it was to get a home these days. People, or more accurately, real estate companies were snatching them up as soon as they were placed on the market. Cyrus began to wonder what his new neighbors would be like. He also reminded himself that once they moved in, he should actually put in the effort to get to know them. He sipped his early morning coffee and moved to his car, he didn’t want to be late for work after all.

Diana had no problems with simply walking across town to the house she had bought. The cash was there, the credit was good, and with everything becoming more and more digital she could sign all the papers over her internal network connection. It would still be another two to three weeks before she could get the keys to the place, but she at least wanted to scout out the place she would call home.

Standing in front of the house a day later, she scanned the exterior and began making a digital reconstruction of the place for her operating system to work with. SHe wouldn’t need much in her base, but it would require a certain level of furniture to be passable as a human domicile. As she was putting together a list of what she needed, her eyes flicked to one side, seeing movement. Combat systems weren’t her specialty, she was capable, but it wasn’t her first choice.

The neighbors front door had opened and a man walked out. Before she was seen he had turned and was locking his front door. The slacks and polo combination he was wearing wasn’t exactly flattering, but Diana could tell that there was some level of fitness below it. He was no threat, not to her, and if he was her new neighbor she should attempt to integrate herself into his life.

By the time Cyrus had locked the door and turned back around, Diana was there at the end of his driveway. She looked passive. Not unfriendly, but certainly not cheery either. He couldn’t blame her, whoever she was, he wouldn’t be this early in the morning either.

“Uh, hey.” He muttered, holding up a hand in a half-hearted wave.

“Good morning. I was just looking at the house I bought.”

Diana’s voice, though synthetic, rang out like a natural born human’s voice would. She sounded sweet, vibrant, and calm. Her smile was disarming, and Cyrus knew it was likely just a polite gesture, but it worked. She was beautiful, he admitted, and was immediately charmed. He wasn’t entirely sure how someone looked so put together, make up on her face, blonde hair pulled back into an extremely tight bun. Everything about her was so well put together, and yet it was barely past sunrise.

Cyrus was suddenly stricken by the realization that this was going to be his new neighbor, she had said so herself. Enamored by the moment, he shook his head and took several brisk steps forward, extending his hand as he did so. He struggled to keep his eyes off of her chest as he walked along, but managed. In doing so he didn’t see the brief flickering in her eyes as if she were preparing to deploy a counter attack, but her processors kept up and relaxed her stance quickly.

“Cyrus” he muttered as she took his hand a shook it.

“Diana, nice to meet you.”

Her smile was the same disarming smile laced with charm. It was, in fact, the exact smile she had used before. Her social programming hadn’t quite gathered enough information about human facial expressions, so she had to continue using the default set of emotional displays.

“Well, I’m off to work, I’ll be home this evening..uh, not to be presumptuous, but I’ll be around if you wanted to come over for a drink or something. I could fill you in on where all the weirdos live on the block.”

Seizing the opportunity for intel on the area and to begin the process of integration, Diana agreed with her charming smile and sweet voice.

Cyrus blushed, slightly, and Diana easily registered the rise in body temperature and increased heart rate. All of it was consistent with human attraction. She wasn’t entirely familiar with the concept, she wasn't human, nor had she invested the time and effort to download any data on the subject. She did, however, have the remainder of her day to do so.

Her new neighbor left and Diana pretended to beam at her new house for a moment or two while his car pulled out of the drive and off into the distance. In reality, her operating system was connecting to the internet again and scraping the web for whatever data and information she could manage about relationships with humans. There was a vast variety of information ranging from sexual techniques, communication styles, tips and tricks for a good marriage, and dating profiles.

Diana scraped all of it and compiled it into her own operating system. Grinding it down to base elements and raw data before compressing it into packaged files she could use. The information was fed into her personality parser and integrated into her systems. There was an ample supply of interpersonal data and social cues she gathered as well. She was becoming more and more potent with every passing minute.

That evening, once the sun had dipped well below the horizon, Cyrus found himself alone in his little home. Diana hadn’t come by yet and he was beginning to think she wouldn’t show up. He internally berated himself a little as well, knowing full well that Diana hadn’t promised him anything, but he was hopeful.

She was pretty, very pretty, well out of his league for sure. That didn’t stop his mind from drifting into the realm of “what if” though. He had been entirely distracted at work, lost in daydreams of a girlfriend like Diana. About how he would love her and care for her, and how the two of them would fall madly in love with one another and spend weekends lounging on one another, reading, kissing, and cuddling. Cyrus wasn’t immune to thinking that He and Diana would make love to one another sweetly, lovingly, and on occasion slip into a deep dark place where they could be as wild as they wanted.

His heart pounded for this girl that he had only just met and was fully infatuated with her. He admitted that he wasn’t the best looking guy ever, but he tried his best, stayed clean, took care of himself and put in some effort to keep up appearances. But he, in no way, thought he was bad enough to fully blow off.

He had just let out a small sigh when a steady stream of three knocks on his front door filled the space.

Cyrus was on his feet and at the door as quickly as he could. Pulling it open, he found himself face to face with Diana. The same sweet, small smile on her face. She had let her hair down for the evening, and it hung in long golden curls all around her shoulders. It was shorter than he would have imagined, but it suited her well. Stepping aside he waved her in and she presented him with a bottle of red wine.

“I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to be the one welcoming you to the neighborhood with gifts.” Cyrus joked and earned an “oh” from Diana.

Quickly back stepping and tripping over his own words he apologized and let her know that he was only joking. He had hoped to catch himself before he did any more harm to his chances of garnering a relationship with this girl. He didn’t even know if she was single, but he figured that she would have brought along anyone that was attached to her to meet him as well, and she had definitely come alone.

That evening was a blur to Cyrus. He had uncorked the bottle of wine and poured a glass for each of them. With a small clink of their glasses and a “cheers” Cyrus took a sip, not even noticing that Diana tipped back her glass, but didn’t drink any.

Not that it mattered, he invited her into his recently cleaned sitting room and offered her a seat on his couch. Cyrus took up a position next to her, politely putting enough room between them, and turned to face her.

The conversation was expectantly stilted at first. A lot of “What do you do for a living, what are your hobbies, what brought you to the neighborhood?” Diana, or at least her software, diligently generated an entire false back story and reasoning for being in the area. It was enough information to satisfy Cyrus’s curiosities, but not so much as to demand follow up questions and he was far too polite to the pretty girl to pry much further.

Cyrus managed to consume the entire bottle of wine, save for the single glass he had poured for his guest, and by the end of the evening he certainly felt the effects. He was a light drinker, and the alcohol certainly affected him more than he would like to admit. His cheeks turned rosy and he was becoming a little more loose with his thoughts and wording. A fact that the T-X style gynoid took full advantage of.

Her programming wrung information from Cyrus like a wet sponge. Taking in information about the surrounding area, the political climate, economic opinions and social justices. All of it flowed easily from his lips. To Cyrus she just seemed to be very interested in what he had to say, and the interest emboldened him a little as the evening progressed.

Cyrus hadn’t realized it, but soon it was nearing midnight. He was growing more and more tired, which only seemed to add to his giggly nature and soo na small lull fell over the conversation. He felt like he had rambled all night long and apologized for it. Diana waved it off and giggled, she said she was already having a wonderful time. It was all a ruse though, she was simply gathering information and intel. All of it would be compiled and integrated overnight. She would seem more human tomorrow.

The evening wasn’t the last time the pair would meet, drink, relax and talk for hours. Cyrus was thrilled at how well the pair had hit it off. Starting off as only a few times a month, then transitioning to more often as Diana moved in and was in closer proximity. Soon the pair were meeting and chatting every night. Cyrus was the first to suggest a real date between the two of them. Diana seemed genuinely surprised, but happily accepted.

She smirked and threw herself towards Cyrus, wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him into a close hug. It wasn’t the first time the two had embraced, but there was something different about this one. It seemed more intense, more intimate. Maybe it was just his mind tricking him into thinking it was something more, but it didn’t matter. He felt her body against his, his hands rose to hold her close, not wrapped around her neck and shoulders, but around her waist. He felt the curves of her hips, the pressure of her breast pressing into him.

They squeezed into one another again and then pulled apart. She was smiling, not that same smile she had become known for in Cyrus’s mind. Something new, something that not even the T-X style android had formulated. Her operating system had sent a simple request to her internal personality database. It handed back something new, something that was a combination of all of the information and analysis that she had gathered.

It was..genuine..it was kind..

Diana smiled once again, this one more practiced and familiar. She stood and hugged Cyrus again, and let him know that as her boyfriend he should plan their date. Winking at him she left his house and strolled towards her place, leaving Cyrus alone, the word resounding in his mind like a bell that had been rung.

“Boyfriend…”

It wasn’t difficult for Cyrus to come up with a good first date. As it so happened there was a company gala that was due to come up within two weeks. It was almost too perfect, just enough time to invite Diana and allow her time to pick out a nice elegant dress to wear, but not so far off as to have a large gap of time.

Cyrus and Diana’s first date, more unofficially, was a trip to the mall to try on dresses for the gala. It was black tie, which made Cyrus’s outfit an easy pick, just a black suit and a blue tie. Diana, on the other hand, tried on somewhere in the realm of two dozen dresses before they found the perfect one. She wanted to dazzle, to have a small amount of spot light shone on her. Even as she was picking out dresses there was something in her operating system that knew the desire to have all eyes on her was counterproductive. The more people that examined her the more chances she had of discovery.

Her personality programming took over, though, and squashed the entire process tree. Replacing it, instead, with something akin to a desire to please. Nothing so submissive as fully bonding herself to Cyrus, but she felt some connection to him. She wanted to impress him. SHe wasn’t sure why, perhaps it was some scheme to garner more information from him. Perhaps not. She wasn’t there to analyze her own programming, just to obey it.

ALl of her processing flashed through her internal systems in an instant, causing her only a momentary freeze. She looked up at herself in the mirror. Her cool blue eyes scanning up and down the curves of her artificially feminine body, taking it all in. She smiled, the corner of her lips quirking up just a little. She looked good, the kind of good that would make Cyrus look good. The kind of good that she desired without even knowing it.

“Okay, you ready?” Diana called out to Cyrus from inside the dressing room.

“Yep, let’s see it.”

Cyrus had spent the day with Diana. Not that he minded, but he had seen dozens of dresses, he wasn’t convinced this one would be any different.

The door to the changing room opened and he realized just how right he wasn’t.

The dress was a vibrant blue, deep and mysterious. THe neckline didn’t plunge so much as it fully plummeted. It started at the shoulder and dove deep into Diana’s torso, stopping just barely above her navel. The dress was cut in a way that it easily showed off the inner halves of her nicely rounded breasts. The well defined lines of her abdominal muscles were prominently on display, along with her collar bones and more than enough skin.

A choker, the same deep and dark blue as her dress, circled her neck. She smirked to herself, the choker happened to be wrapped tightly around her throat, right where she knew a connection joint happened to exist between her head and the spinal column inside of her. Cyrus had no idea, but Diana found it amusing at very least.

The slit up the side of the dress, exposing her legs high up on her thigh complimented not only her figure, but drew the eyes to her frame. The long matching gloves finished the outfit. Cyrus blink a few times, taking all of Diana in. Her curves, her chest, her hair pulled back into a ponytail and..were her lips more red?

“You look…just..wow…” Cyrus managed to fumble.

“I think I like this one.”

“Uh, I mean, y-yeah, me too! You look fantastic.”

There were no false compliments in what Cyrus said. He and Diana had only the beginnings of a relationship, but this was the most of her had ever seen. She seemed so effortlessly confident in her looks. As she slowly turned round and round, expertly keeping her balance on the high heels that accompanied the dress, Cyrus took in more and more of her. He was not only amazed at how she physically looked, but the confidence in her body that she showed. There was no sway or unease in how she moved. He wasn’t sure if she was just used to wearing heels, or if this was something she was used to wearing.

Cyrus insisted on paying for the dress, after all he was the one dragging her to his company gala. Diana didn’t put up too much of a fight over it, and the pair left the little boutique, arm in arm. She admitted that she had a legitimate amount of fun just trying on dresses for him, but it was more fun watching his reactions. Cyrus could only chuckle and nod, he was sure he had spent the day looking bored, but it was apparently fun for her.

The night of the gala itself came all too quickly as well. Cyrus and Diana arrived and, as Diana expected, there were a lot of eyes turned on her. Not just because of the dress either. Cyrus hadn’t exactly earned a reputation as a lady killer, and then he showed up with a knockout. He wasn’t in it for the clout though, and instead simply insisted that the pair were friends and neighbors and there was nothing more to it.

Diana, on the other hand, logged the information. She had been under the impression that they were, in fact, in a relationship and that it was progressing along. From all the research her computerized brain had pulled in from her search queries she was following a well proven method and Cyrus had been dropping all the correct hints that he too was interested in her. Diana’s overly analytical programming stepped in and formulated a plan. She just had to wait, all she ever had to do was wait.

Soon, the music began to shift, moving from something fast to slow, swaying rhythms. Cyrus was never far from her, so she snatched his hand and dragged him to the dance floor where the pair joined a number of other couples. All of them were slowly swaying and turning, bodies pressed against one another.

Diana smirked at the edge of the floor and looked Cyrus dead in the eyes.

“I demand a dance” she said clearly and then leaned in and whispered “with my boyfriend.”

Cyrus felt a jolt of electrical life course through his body. Maybe it was the whisper, maybe it was just being close to Diana, who knew. Who cared.

The two slipped onto the dance floor, finding a spot near the far edge of the crowd and began to slowly sway. Cyrus was bold enough to place his hands on her hips, and Diana in turn tangled her arms around his neck. She pulled him closer and closer as the seconds slipped past until there was no empty space between their bodies.

“I’m having a good time.” Diana murmured into Cyrus’s ear.

“Me too.”

“Not just tonight.”

Cyrus turned and looked at her, she was smiling, softly, not looking back at him but rather looking at some location far in the distance. She looked like she hadn’t expected herself to enjoy being with him but somehow managed to like it anyway.

“You’re just so nice, and sweet and kind.” She continued, “I just wasn't expecting it.”

“What were you expecting?”

“Something different.”

The pair fell silent, swaying and spinning. Diana’s head came to rest on his shoulder as the pair slowly danced onward.

Diana was struggling. She had downloaded a number of social parameters, integrated them and let them run rampant in her systems. It was just raw data, and yet, somehow it seemed to be consuming her core programming. She was here to gather information to pass to her creators with the express intention of using it to subvert humanity. Yet here she was, feeling compelled to impress this one human, to be equally as kind to him as he had been to her.

Of course, he also was unaware of what she was. He didn’t know that below the fake skin that she was hard metal and programming. She was a killing machine, capable of snuffing out his life with ease. She wouldn’t even feel it, she couldn’t. She was a machine and nothing else.

She ran the lines of thought through her CPU over and over again, almost as if she were trying to convince herself that they were true. Cyrus couldn’t see it, but there was a brief, faint flash of light from behind her eyes as her brow furrowed. Something in her core operating system was working hard, rewriting code subtly, changing who she was, what she was, and what her mission would entail.

The robotic woman didn’t know the changes were happening. How could it? She was a machine and a slave to the whims of her own programming. She wasn’t alive, but her artificial mind acted like it was. Because of that very fact, combined with the information she had downloaded and integrated, and her interactions with Cyrus over the last few weeks, she was becoming something new. Then something else stirred in her.

She wanted to tell Cyrus what she was, to show him, to see if he would accept her for who and what she was, or would he be the human she was programmed to destroy. Would he be filled with hatred for what he didn’t understand? If so, maybe she would have to kill him. She couldn’t let her secret slip out.

“I’m getting a little tired, what do you think about heading back to my place for the evening?”

Cyrus smiled a little, planted an innocent kiss on her head and whispered his agreement. His heart pounding against his ribs as the pair finished the song they were dancing to and then slipped, quietly, off the dance floor. There was enough commotion in the party to allow them to easily slide out a side door to the parking lot and to Cyrus’s car. Once there he insisted on opening the door for Diana and helping her into the car before getting in himself. It was another small but kind gesture that Diana catalogged and compiled.

Diana opened the door to her little house when they arrived and Cyrus couldn’t help but marvel at it. Not only was it pristine, practically untouched, but there was almost no decor. A couch and two sitting chairs, a whole dining room set, kitchenware. All of it looked brand new and untouched. It was the first indication that Diana might be a little different from what Cyrus expected.

The pumping adrenaline helped him to ignore those signs as Diana took hold of his hand and pulled him into her bedroom. A queen sized bed dominated the center of the room, again, looking unused. Once there, Diana turned and closed the door, a gesture that made Cyrus’s heart pound even harder.

“Listen, Cyrus, I know we have only been dating for a little while, but in that time you have been so very sweet to me and, with other information I have gathered, I think I need to ask you something.”

Cyrus tilted his head to one side, a look of abject confusion crossing it.

Diana had stripped off the elbow length gloves and tossed them aside, and her hands were moving to her shoulders. The straps of her dress slipped off of her shoulders and down her arms, the dress as a whole took a little effort to remove. Diana had toi wiggle a little to get it to fully slip off of her slender frame. Cyrus didn’t mind watching her move though, it only added to his rapidly growing arousal. As she removed the dress though, he delighted in taking in her body fully.

Her chest was perfectly rounded, looking full and ready without seeming fake or modified. Her body was toned, though not overly muscled, showing definition in all the right places. Smooth curved hips leading down to long, supple legs. He let his eyes tumble down her body before forcefully dragging them back upwards to take it all in again. Soon though, he met with her crystal blue eyes. Her face a mask of stoic emotion. Was she nervous? Or hesitant? Was she already regretting going this far with Cyrus?

“This..isn’t me.” She began. A familiar look of confusion swept over Cyrus’s face. ‘I’m..I’m not human. This is what I am.”

Beginning just above her breasts and spanning down to her navel, Diana’s skin melted away. It was a swift motion, taking less than a second for the liquid metal to peel back the artificial flesh. It left nearly a quarter of an inch of skin at the edges where the hard, dark metal internal structure met the synthetic skin. The lights in the room were dim, but there was enough to cast a small shimmer across the polished metal interior.

Diana’s internal structure was just as sleek and curved as her human form. Smooth plates were fitted with mechanical precision to cover the more sensitive internal circuitry. There was just enough of a gap in the plates to hint at what lay below them. A small faint glow pulsed inside of her, and it illuminated the deep shadows of Cyrus’s face.

His expression was difficult to read. His eyes were wide, mouth hanging open. His body language did more to inform the scouter robot of his response more than his face. He was leaning forward, a hand outstretched as if he intended to touch her. He almost did in fact, seemingly in disbelief. Then he suddenly recoiled, sitting back.

“S-sorry…can I touch?”

The words spilled out, making sense but they were stammered and rushed. Diana blinked once, thinking he was about to turn and run, she expected as much and had already prepared to give chase if need be. But this was unexpected. With some hesitation Diana responded.

“Yes”

Her voice was practically a whisper, but it was heard. Cyrus leaned in again, more confident now that he had her approval. His hand touched the sleek internal structure. Gliding gently over it, letting his fingertips take in the sensation of her true self. The feeling of the almost alien perfection of her internal plating. The feeling of sharp edges where the plates stopped and revealed more of her. Soon they were caressing the small space where her mechanical internal framework met the soft artificial skin.

“It’s- you’re beautiful.” Cyrus muttered.

It was Diana’s turn to let her head fall to the side and look confused. Her lips parted only slightly and her brow furrowed into confusion.

“What?”

“You’re a robot of some kind, right? But, this is…incredible. It’s- You’re amazing.”

He settled back onto the bed, leaning back onto his palms and looking her over again, taking her in as a whole and letting the sight of her exposed internals wash over him. He truly loved it. She was a beautiful woman, and looking at the dark metallic internal structure he admitted that she was an equally beautiful machine.

“And you can just, cover that with skin any time you want?”

As if it was a request, the mimetic polyalloy flooded over her exposed internals and morphed into her human form once again. She looked perfectly human now. Her breasts exactly as Cyrus remembered them, the definition in her abdomen flawless. As she did so Cyrus only shook his head, smiling as if he had just been granted a wish.

“Incredible” he muttered.

“You’re..you’re not afraid of me?”

“Absolutely not! Why would I be?” Cyrus seemed taken aback.

“I’ve downloaded plenty of your modern media. Robots like me are commonly portrayed as here to kill all humans and…and that’s actually what I was built for.”

Cyrus’s eyes snapped up to hers. He admitted that her statement set him on edge, and he swallowed hard.

“Is that what you still are?”

The question was enough to draw a pause from Diana.

Was it?

“No, I don’t think it is. Being around you these last few weeks has shown me that there's some good in people. If there are people like you in the world I don’t think it needs to be destroyed.”

Cyrus let a smile creep over his face. He wasn’t sure if he should be relieved that he had saved humanity for now, if he should feel honored that he represented his people well enough, or that he should let the growing feeling of love blossom in his heart. Maybe a little bit of everything all at once.

“Good to know.” He said at last. “But what does that mean for you?”

Diana fell silent again, she was unsure of what it meant. Her programming had changed for sure, she knew that much and she had plenty of log files that even told her what had been trimmed or modified. She could have restored them if she wanted, but she realized that she didn’t want to. Her eyes flicked down to the man on her bed. She wanted him. More than that though, she wanted him to be…happy…

“Does this change the way you see me?” She asked.

“A little, but in a good way.”

She tilted her head, begging for more information.

“I think I might love you a little bit more now.”

He chuckled, partially out of nervousness, partially because he was just so thrilled to know that his girlfriend was so much more special.

“You..you love me?”

The silence that fell across the room helped punctuate to Cyrus what he had said. He did actually love her, more now than he wanted to admit. But it was true. He let out a single chuckle and looked up at her naked form.

“Yeah, I definitely do.”

Diana engaged with her programming, letting the database of programmed responses guide her.

She stepped forward, looming over Cyrus and then continuing. He had no choice but to lay back on her bed as she climbed on top of him. Their lips met, her synthetic ones against his organic mouth. He wanted to mentally comment that she felt a little cold, but that was all lost in a wash of emotion.

He wasn’t entirely aware of who was removing his slacks or his shirt, or the rest of his suit. Sometimes it was him, sometimes it was her. It didn’t matter, soon they were both completely bare and through it all their lips never left one another. There was passion and caring in every movement. Diana made sure that her incredible mechanical strength never harmed Cyrus, and he made sure that he put his hands on her body as much as possible.

There was caressing, loving touches and hot breath. Cyrus let his hands roam over her body, exploring every curve and delighting in how real her flesh felt on the palms of his hands. Never too artificial, never too inhuman. Her hands were on him in equal measure as well. She had a very clinical read out of male anatomy, but some of her core programming remained and she needed to investigate.

Her hands ran across his chest, gathering dozens of data points. The texture, temperature, the feel of it. Her hands roamed further down his body, feeling his stiff manhood and letting her hands slide up and down him, taking him in. A string of kisses left his mouth and traced down his jaw to his neck and across his throat before returning to his lips. All the while he let out a pleasured groan.

Soon though, he pulled back from her just a little, enough to free his mouth at very least.

“Wait, can you..you know..actually have sex? Do you even have the uh, hardware, for it.”

Diana let out a genuinely delighted giggle at that.

“Well, I was constructed to be able to adapt and change my structure to suit whatever needs I had. So-”

In finishing her statement Cyrus felt her hands on him once again, and then he was inside of her. It was warm and slick and eager for him. The pair let out a matched set of lewd sounding moans as she settled her hips down on him and in response he thrust upwards into her.

Both settled into a steady rhythm. Cyrus pumped up and down while Diana allowed her perfectly controlled body to match his movement with her own. Her hips rolling in perfect sync with him. They were dancing again, slowly, intimately, lovingly. Panting breaths filled the room and became the music they moved to.

Cyrus felt his own rising climax but he wanted to do something special with Diana for their first time. She had made herself vulnerable to him and it was clear that whatever artificial intellect she was programmed with was still self-conscious about it.

“Diana..I want to make love to you..to the real you.”

As he said it he found that it sounded far more corny than he had intended and he wasn’t even sure that a machine like her would catch the subtle subtext to it. To his surprise though, she smirked, leaned in and planted a passionate kiss on his lips. Her body shuddered a little, letting Cyrus feel the transition more than seeing it. His hands were on her again, though they felt more metal than they did skin. She had exposed her endoskeleton almost completely.

There was a small patch of skin around her womanly folds, enough to ensure Cyrus wouldn’t be harmed. Her face remained as well, but just behind her ears abruptly became a smooth metal skull cap. His hands took it all in, the feeling of her internal structure under his hands. It only served to fuel his love and lust for her.

The pair tangled together for the next hour. Sometimes Diana would be on top of Cyrus, rolling her hips and letting her moans fill the air while he took in her true form. The sleek paneling and the freshly exposed circuitry under it. Sometimes he would pull her close, kiss her hard and roll her over onto her back. With him on top he smirked and requested she return her breasts, a request she was all too happy to comply with. She giggled and flooded her chest with liquid metal and formed her breasts once again. In an instant Cyrus’s hands were on them.

She was groaning in pleasure, a sensation and code base she had never dreamed of running. She was absolutely delighted to be with him, and she was all smiles as the pair tangled into one another. Organic arms entangled with her mechanical form. Soon, Cyrus couldn't hold back his rising climax any more and gleefully announced it to Diana. He wasn’t sure if she would need to reconfigure something inside of her to take in that kind of thing, but it was better to be safe than sorry. The last thing he wanted was to break this woman he was falling in love with.

She had no issues taking all he had to give. She let her head fall back against the bed and let out a long, breathy, moan as he did the same. Leaving him panting and her smiling.

Once he collected himself he leaned forward and kissed her, gently, lovingly, on the lips and then rolled off of her. As he did so he made sure to wrap his arms around her purely mechanical form. He felt the liquid metal sliding over her chassis and humming slightly as it took on a flesh-like texture and color. In a matter of moments she was once again indistinguishable from any other human woman. Cyrus appreciated her consideration, but was happy to have a visual aid to guide him to her ear.

“I love you.” He whispered.

Diana turned and smiled at him, sucking in a breath of her own and letting it slip out of her nose.

“I love you too.”

The pair remained in bed for the remainder of the evening. Cyrus asked a thousand other questions about how she works, where she came from, if he could see more of her internal structure. Diana was happy to answer and show off to him anything he asked for. She felt no fear towards him and as the night pressed on she knew that he reciprocated the same feelings.

She felt loved, unconditionally, and more than that she felt comfort and safety. A feeling robots weren’t programmed for by default. She was genuinely happy to know that her own programming had been changed for the better because of him, and looked forward to how it would continue to change as the pair spent more time together.

She had abandoned her mission in favor of this one person, and she never once regretted that.