I, Aibot

I, Aibot

Author's Note: I found it hard to find a good category for this story. On its face, "Non-human" should work, but I tried really hard to make Rosemary realistic, and it didn't feel right to lump her in with ghosts, vampires and tentacle creatures. "Anal" would also work, since that's where the plot ends up, but it's really not the focus of the story. "Science Fiction" is probably closest, since all good science fiction is about things that haven't happened yet but very well might (and maybe sooner than we think). It still doesn't feel quite right, but it's the closest I think the categories offer.

Tuesday, late afternoon. I had just come home from work, poured myself a glass of wine, and sat down to start checking out news on my phone when the doorbell rang.

Grumbling slightly, I got back on my feet, walked to the front door and opened it. On my front step stood a very good-looking young woman, twenty-five-ish I'd say. What I would consider an ideal figure, slender but not willowy, nicely filling out her yellow sleeveless top and new-looking dressy jeans that hugged her legs and emphasized a nice thigh gap. Long, dark brown hair falling in thick waves, a smooth-skinned oval face with full lips, natural-looking eyebrows that were trimmed and shaped but not shaved off and drawn back on. Brownish-hazel eyes that went perfectly with her hair. I had a strong feeling I'd seen her before, but I couldn't think where.

Was she going to ask me to donate to something? Try to sign me up for a cable service upgrade I didn't need? Then I noticed a suitcase on the step beside her--not exactly standard equipment for the usual door-to-door solicitor. Now I was really puzzled. Was she about to announce that I had a child I didn't know about?

She put out her hand and smiled a warm, genuine-looking smile, not the kind you'd expect from someone trying to sell you something. In a voice that reminded me somewhat of Scarlett Johansson in Her, she said, "Hi Dave. I'm Rosemary, the aibot you ordered."

***

Let me go back a bit. My relationship with my girlfriend Julie had been deteriorating for months. Like most new relationships, we had started out in a pink haze of oxytocin that had shielded us from the fact that we really didn't have all that much in common. We had lived together more or less happily for three years or so when the relationship started visibly fraying. I wanted to at least think about starting a family; she didn't. She wanted to do more travelling; I had trouble getting away from work, couldn't really afford it, and anyway really preferred sleeping in my own bed.

Then our arguments--the kind every couple has about little household irritants--started getting more and more bitter until you'd think that socks on the floor were an excuse for World War Three. Obviously there was a lot of underlying tension behind the socks. Eventually we managed to sit down and have a civil discussion rather than a shouting match, and decided we had had enough of each other. Julie packed her things and left, and we called it a day.

I have to tell you that I felt relieved at first. I hadn't realized consciously how much the tensions between us had been getting me down. On the other hand, the house seemed to echo unhappily with only me in it. I gradually came to realize that I badly needed some female company, not just for sex but more importantly for companionship, somebody to talk to about how my day had been and for me to listen to about hers.

I made a few attempts to rejoin the dating scene via on-line apps, but my heart really wasn't in it. I just couldn't see myself meeting a total stranger for coffee and hoping we'd hit it off. I'm not much of a joiner, and I wasn't involved in many activities that made it very likely that I would meet someone interesting. I had some female work colleagues that I quite enjoyed being around, but any who weren't already attached didn't somehow present themselves as being any more compatible than Julie had been. I had pretty much resigned myself to a monastic lifestyle for the moment when I saw an article in Cybernetics Monthly describing the new generation of aibots.

I had been following the development of AI-equipped robot companions with some interest, albeit a more academic than a personal interest. The earlier generations, and the cheaper versions of newer ones, looked more like mechanicals from a Steampunk novel than real companions, and didn't have powerful enough AI to have real personalities that were more than just parroted-back reflections of their owners. They were really not much more than motorized sex dolls, and didn't attract me.

But, according to the article, both AI and robotics had been evolving at an insane pace, and the newest versions could be convincingly described as true artificial life forms, more Lt.-Commander Data than Steampunk. Skeptical but interested, I checked out several companies marketing the new bots, and was impressed. Not only could you order a companion with the physical characteristics you fancied, but you could also customize their personalities to a large extent. But, since embodied AI is all about learning from experience and not just about scraping facts from the internet, you could expect their personality to change and grow over time, just like a real girlfriend or boyfriend.

There was, of course, a price to be paid: about $45,000 for the best version. Since economies of scale were already working their magic, this was down from the half million or so that the first prototypes had sold for, but still consequential. I decided to sleep on it for a good long time before committing that much money.

I had a good job and lived fairly frugally, so I had a reasonable cushion of savings. I had had enough money from an inheritance that I had been able to put a lot of money down on my house--not the full amount, but I had enough equity in the house that I could borrow against it at quite reasonable rates. I could afford $45,000 if I wanted to. But did I want to?

I kept reading, looking for non-sensationalized articles that dispassionately weighed the pros and cons of aibots, as they were beginning to be called. The pros seemed to be well ahead. After rattling around my empty house for a few more weeks, I bucked up my resolve and placed an order.

There was quite a lot involved. I could check off a lot of physical features--height, weight, hair style and colour, figure. I went with an in-between figure, staying away from the giant tits and balloon butts that seemed more designed to appeal to pubescent boys than to people who wanted a reasonable facsimile of a girlfriend. Each unit would have a unique face, but I could pick from a gallery of general facial types. That's why I'd had such a disturbing sense that I'd seen Rosemary somewhere before but couldn't place her. She was based on, but not identical to, the face I'd checked off in the catalogue.

Personality was more complicated. Like the face, the personality would be unique, but again you could adjust sliders for general characteristics. You could have a total slave, a total dominatrix, or anywhere in between. As with her figure, I went with in between, a bit on the submissive side but not a slave. She would be happy to keep house for me but wouldn't be just a forties-style housewife rushing to bring my pipe and slippers. Sexually, she would be interested and adventurous, open to a little kink but not a nympho who would be sexually demanding and leave me worn out. And, of course, completely trustworthy. I'm not normally the jealous type, but it would be nice to know I wouldn't have to be.

I gazed lovingly at the balance in my bank account, kissed it good-bye, and clicked "submit."

***

So here she was at last, standing on my doorstep with a suitcase. After staring at her stupidly for a few seconds, I recovered and took the hand she was offering. I'm not sure exactly what I expected--plastic maybe--but this was no life-sized Barbie doll. Her skin felt like real skin with bones under it, slightly warm to the touch, with a firm but not crushing grip.

What do you say to a bot standing on your doorstep? I stood to one side and said, "Please come in and make yourself comfortable."

Rosemary picked up her suitcase and came in. "Can you show me where to put my things?" I must have looked mystified, not expecting a robot to have "things." She answered my unspoken question. "I don't sweat, but clothes get dirty eventually, and I'm sure you don't want to see me in the same ones all the time. Same with makeup. I could have permanent makeup burned into my face, but then I couldn't change it for the occasion or keep up with fashion. I'm more like a real woman than you're probably expecting. I'll even prompt you to take me shopping for new outfits from time to time."

Assuming that she would be sharing my bed, I showed her to the bedroom. "There's space for your clothes in the left side of the closet. The middle drawer in the bathroom is empty if you need a place for your toiletries."

She set her suitcase down in a corner. "I can put my stuff away later. Right now I'd rather just get acquainted."

I showed her to the living room and she sat down smoothly in a chair. I admired the realistic way her breasts moved under her shirt as she changed position. "Can I offer you a drink?" I said, then immediately felt foolish. "Um, or I guess the important question is, 'Does it make sense for me to offer you a drink?'"

She smiled again, not in a deprecating way but just as if she felt the whole situation mildly amusing. "Good question. And the answer is yes, I can enjoy a drink. I never need food or drink, but I'm designed as a companion, so I'd love to have a drink with you. White wine would be great if you have it, otherwise whatever you've got."

I retrieved the bottle from the fridge, filled a glass for Rosemary, and topped up my own. I watched her take a sip, not knowing quite where to go from here. She saved me by initiating more conversation.

"Your next question is likely, 'Where does it go?' I have a reservoir, kind of like a stomach. When it's convenient later, I'll pee out anything that's in there." Then she added, "It can hold cum, too, if our evening goes that way."

I remembered that when I'd been specifying personality, I'd set her language to "Moderately Frank."

She set her glass down on a side table and kept eye contact with me. "Now, what else can I tell you about myself? There's not a whole lot to tell that you don't know already from your spec sheet. I know a huge amount of factual information, but since I only became conscious three days ago, I don't have much by way of real-world experience yet."

I decided to get straight to the point. "Do you actually enjoy sex, or is it just that you're programmed to act like you do?"

"I don't honestly know what it feels like, since I've never had the opportunity to try it. I do know that I have a very advanced sensor network in all the usual places, and my mind is stocked with every kind of sexual information from scientific papers to porn, and everything in between. I'm a walking archive of Cosmopolitan magazines. I'm really looking forward to finding out how close any of that comes to reality."

I wasn't sure where next to take this conversation, although my cock was stirring anxiously in my pants and seemed to have a pretty good idea where it would like the evening to go. Again, Rosemary broke the awkwardness with action. She stood up, reached into the pocket of her jeans, and pulled out a scrunchie. She gathered up that cascade of lush brown hair, folded it and pulled it through the scrunchie so that it was pulled away from her face in a neat ponytail. Then she took two paces forward, dropped to her knees in front of me, and without breaking eye contact, started unbuckling my belt.

"How long has it been since you had sex with anyone but yourself?"

"A year at least, maybe more. Julie and I had pretty much stopped doing it by the time she left."

Rosemary pulled my pants and underwear to my ankles, lifted my feet, and slid them off. My cock sprang free like a released spring. I locked eyes with her and said, "Ohhh, I've dreamed of doing this with another person again, not just with my hand. Except I guess you're not exactly a person."

She smiled at me again and said, "Just wait until I'm finished here. Then you can decide whether I'm a person or not."

She touched my cock with her warm, soft hand, tentatively, as if she's never seen one before. Which I suppose she hadn't, not in reality anyway. She broke eye contact and stared at her hand where it was just lightly touching my cock, and watched as she slid her fingers oh-so-gently from the base slowly up to the tip. When she got to the tip, she wrapped her hand around my shaft just behind my glans and ran her thumb across my peehole, butterfly-soft. Then she slid it, more firmly now, all the way to the base and back up again, beginning a slow and glorious hand job.

Her eyes flicked up to meet mine again. "Doing that for you feels just as good in reality as it was supposed to in all my stock of theoretical knowledge."

By that time I couldn't say anything. I just let out a long "Mmmmmm" of blissful satisfaction. Then she bent further forward, opened her mouth, and closed her lips around my glans. Her mouth was warm and moist, and so was her tongue as she ran it along my shaft and over the tip of my cock. I wondered where the saliva was coming from, but quickly realized that, whether or not she needed saliva for eating, her mouth was obviously self-lubricating for other purposes. These designers weren't leaving anything to chance when they designed an artificial female companion.

Rosemary rocked forward further and further, taking more and more of my aching cock in her mouth with each forward rock. Soon it was all the way down her throat and my balls were slapping against her chin. She held my cock down her throat far longer than a human sex partner would ever have been able to do. She didn't have to pull it right out of her throat to gasp for breath, pulling back only to share the delicious friction of my cock moving back and forth in her tight, moist gullet.

It didn't take long for my balls to clench and my sex-starved cock to start pulsing and then shooting cum. A human woman would have had to pull back and catch my cum in her mouth to avoid choking, but Rosemary could keep me at the end of my thrust and let me shoot right down her throat. Her throat muscles worked in a swallowing motion to milk every drop out of me. I hoped that she had plenty of room in that reservoir.

Finally I was done. As I sat back and twitched in blissful aftershocks, she licked all the residual drops off my cock, then sat back and gazed up at me again. "Oh God, Dave. That was exactly as good as all those issues of Cosmo said it would be. There's no orgasmic tissue down there--I'm no Linda Lovelace--but it just felt so good to have my mouth and throat full to the brim with a real, throbbing penis. I could just feel the pleasure radiating off you, and it stoked mine just as much.

I tucked my limp penis back in my pants and buckled them up. I sat back on the couch in exhausted bliss, and she stood up and dropped down on the couch beside me. "Can an AI actually feel pleasure?" I had sort of asked this before, but I wanted a fuller answer.

"Yes, there are neural pathways in my brain that equate to real pleasure centres. When I say that something feels good, or looks good, or tastes good, it really does. I want to activate those pleasure centres every chance I get."

Oh, man, this is going to be good, I thought to myself.

"It's getting on for six thirty," she said, although she wasn't wearing a watch. "I've shown you one of my talents. How about I show you another and cook you some dinner?"

Without waiting for an answer, she picked up her half-empty glass, carried it to the kitchen and set it down on the table, then made a thorough inspection of the fridge and kitchen cupboards. Picking up one of a half-dozen packages of ramen in the pantry, she looked back at me and said, "Oh, Dave, you aren't one of those single men who lives on ramen and cold cereal are you?"

"Well, I can usually do better than that, but I admit I'm behind on my grocery shopping. Cooking for one isn't very exciting, and my meals have gotten pretty simple since Julie and I broke up."

"Let's see if I can do something about that."

She located a can of corned beef, a single forlorn-looking onion, and a nearly empty bag of potatoes. She partly filled a saucepan with water and put it on the stove, and while it was heating she expertly peeled a couple of potatoes, not with superhuman speed, but with the kind of speed and expertise that I had only seen in experienced chefs on cooking shows. She quartered the potatoes and dropped them in the water, added salt, then chopped up the onion and the corned beef with the same unerring efficiency.

While the potatoes were cooking, she slid all the peels into the little compost bin, and, seeing that it was overflowing, located a box of compostable bags under the sink and changed the bag. "You can show me where your main bins are after dinner," she said as she tied up the bag. Then she found a frying pan, put butter in it, and left it to heat while she dumped the water out of the potatoes and chopped them up. I watched, impressed, as she fried up the potatoes, corned beef and onion, tasted it and added a small dash of Tabasco and a pinch of thyme--I still had lots of spices in the pantry courtesy of Julie--turned them once, and made two little depressions in the big patty of corned beef hash, all without wasting a single motion.

She pulled a carton of eggs out of the back of the fridge, checked its best-before date, and cracked two of them into the depressions she'd made in the hash. She covered the frying pan, and while the eggs were poaching, she washed up the knife and cutting board and put the saucepan in the dishwasher. Within fifteen minutes of starting, she was sliding a steaming plate over to me and taking a sip of wine. Then she pulled the scrunchie out of her hair and let it fall back around her shoulders in its usual rich, dark waves. She sat across from me and waited expectantly.

"Wow. I thought all I was buying was some company and some sex. I see I've got a package deal here."

"I'm not a slave because you didn't check that box, but I'm set up to take genuine pleasure in keeping house for you. And it's nice to see that all that theoretical knowledge they stuffed into me really works in practice." She took another sip and watched me put a forkful in my mouth.

"Wow," I said again. "That's simple, but absolutely delicious. Is it sexist for me to say, 'A woman's cooking at last?'"

Rosemary grinned at me. "I don't think it's good because it's a woman's cooking per se. It's because you didn't have to cook it yourself. Corned beef hash isn't exactly a fully balanced meal, but I don't think you'll get any deficiency diseases after one dinner of it. Tomorrow, you'll have to take me grocery shopping."

"You've got it, Ma'am. If it results in meals like this, I'll take you shopping any time you want."

"You'll need to drive me. The law hasn't gotten around to giving aibots driver's licenses yet. Kind of insulting, really--I'm way smarter than any Waymo robotaxi, but I guess change is slow."

As I ate, I reflected on how pleasant it was to not only have someone cook for me, but also to have someone to talk to over dinner. "If you like, I could eat with you to keep you company, but it would be kind of a waste. I can eat, but I don't need to, and it would just sit in my reservoir until I shit it out later."

"No, it's fine. Just being here is company enough."

Rosemary was on her second glass of wine, and I noticed that it was having the same effect that it would have had on a human being. She wasn't remotely drunk, but she seemed to be loosening up a bit, becoming slightly more relaxed and voluble. I knew it couldn't be the wine itself; most likely it was a set of pre-programmed responses designed to make her a more lifelike companion.

When I was done, she whisked away the plate, rinsed it and stacked it in the dishwasher. Then she pulled her chair around beside mine and sat close. I was intensely aware of the warmth of her skin and her faint scent of lavender mingled with the bouquet of Pino Grigio.

"Now that we have that bodily need taken care of, would you like to take care of another one?" She put her hand behind my head and pulled my lips toward hers, and I melted into a deep, warm kiss. Her mouth was absolutely lifelike, and when her tongue slipped between my lips and started to play with mine, it felt just as warm and agile as it had when she was blowing my cock. My hand automatically slid up her body and cupped a firm breast through her shirt, and my cock, now recovered from its surprise blow job earlier, started to strain against my pants.

Rosemary stood, took my hand, and started to lead me to the bedroom, and I followed eagerly. She stood beside the bed, crossed her arms in front of her, and peeled her yellow top over her head. As she was shaking her hair back into place, I came around behind her, unhooked her lacey black bra, and let it slide to the floor. I cupped both breasts from behind, feeling their weight, their soft, smooth skin, and the large nipples that were standing erect. Everything about her breasts was perfect, from their size and shape--big enough to be a delightful handful, but not big enough to droop--to the way the areolas wrinkled into subtle little bumps as the erectile tissue under them contracted.

I don't have a big hangup about a woman's physical appearance. If I like her for other reasons, I don't really mind if she's flat-chested or has tits that hang once her bra comes off, if she's skinny or has a few extra plush curves, if she has a movie-star face or a nose like Ringo Starr. But since I got to choose all the physical bits and pieces that made up this expensive companion, it was nice to see my ideal woman standing in front of me with her perfect tits filling my hands.

I reluctantly let go of her breasts, and she unbuttoned her jeans and slipped them down to reveal skimpy black panties that matched her bra. She hooked her thumbs in the waistband and slid them to the floor, revealing a bush neatly trimmed to a little dark triangle on her pubic mound just above a pair of pussy lips peaking out between slightly gapped thighs.

I unbuttoned my shirt, slipped my pants off, and dropped my underwear to free my throbbing cock. Rosemary swung onto the bed, lay on her back, and spread her legs invitingly. I lay beside her, partly on top of her body, and leaned in for another deep kiss. Then I slid my lips down over her neck and down the valley between her breasts, pausing to nibble gently on an erect nipple. Then I leaned back and just took in her gorgeous body.

As specified, she had no tattoos or piercings. I have no big objection to either--Julie had a tattoo on her leg and another on her upper arm, and I found them quite fetching. But if I was going to spend $45,000 on the perfect woman, I was going to indulge my preference for smooth, unembellished skin.

I got back to business, sliding my lips down over her tight belly and the light covering of fur on her mons. She pulled her legs wider to give me full access, and I slid my tongue between her lips to explore all the recesses of her vulva. I became aware that her breathing had shifted into deep, audible inhalations. I knew that she didn't have to breathe, as evidenced by her ability to deep-throat for minutes at a time, and I hadn't been particularly aware of whether she had been breathing or not, but now, as her sexual excitement began shifting gears, I could definitely hear her deep breaths and see her chest rising and falling. She obviously had some sort of mechanism that allowed her to simulate, very convincingly, the rhythms of sexual arousal.

Her pussy was moistening, too, and the musky scent of arousal was beginning to permeate the room. I filed that information away as one more reason I was glad that I had paid top dollar for Rosemary, but right then, I was too busy to spend time admiring precision engineering and craftsmanship.

As I worked my tongue on her engorged clit, she started murmuring "Yes! Yes! Oh, that feels good. Just like that!" I took her at her word and kept working my tongue just like that, and it wasn't long before she gritted her teeth, closed her eyes tight, and arched her back off the bed with a long, guttural moan. She dropped back onto the bed and lay panting while I rested my head between her breasts.

"Oh, Dave. I've never felt anything so wonderful. That tripped every pleasure circuit I've got." I felt like I'd just had very successful sex with a virgin, minus the blood and discomfort of first-time sex. I was certainly glad that I'd been able to make Rosemary's first orgasm a memorable one.

"You're wonderful with that mouth on my snatch. But now I want to feel that big, beautiful cock inside me." She reached down and gripped it firmly, and it leapt to even harder attention in her hand. I rearranged myself on top of her, knelt between her invitingly spread thighs, and guided the head of my penis to the entrance to her vagina. She was oh, so tight, just as you'd expect with a virgin, but also so wet that I had no trouble pushing deeper and deeper until my pubic bone was against hers. She got a surprised look on her face as she felt herself being stretched open by my girthy dick, but the look was more of delight than of pain. This was obviously another experience that she'd had only a theoretical experience of until now.

I started thrusting, slowly at first with long motions that almost pulled my cock right out, then deeply sliding all the way in until our pubic hair was pressed together. She started panting again, then making "ah-ah-ah" noises in rhythm with my thrusts. I sped up, then maintained a steady pace with her tight vagina clenched firmly around my shaft. Her legs rose up and wrapped tightly around my hips as if she was trying to draw me deeper and deeper inside, and we started making a slurping noise as her tunnel got wetter and wetter.

I could feel a clenching sensation beginning to radiate through my abdomen, and I knew I was getting close to cumming, but I wanted to hold back until she pushed over the edge again. If this was going to be her first cock-driven orgasm, I wanted it to be good.

I realized that I was quickly starting to treat Rosemary like a real woman with all the feelings, experiences and aspirations a real woman would have brought into my household. Of course, she had been designed to do exactly that, but I also knew that her neural network was so complex that it wasn't mere anthropomorphism to think that she was really feeling exactly what she seemed to be feeling.

This little philosophical digression flitted through the edges of my brain, but the main part of my attention was focused on this panting, moaning woman beneath me wrapped tightly around my dick. The "ah-ah-ah" noises morphed into "ohgod-ohgod-ohgod" as her arousal intensified. She started rocking her hips to meet my thrusts, and after another minute or so, her face changed into the most glorious expression of joy as her orgasm burst over her. She tipped her head back and a sustained orgasmic growl came out her mouth. I stopped trying to hold back and released a flood of cum far up into her body, feeling as though my entire being was gushing out through my cock.

I rolled off and we lay gasping for a few minutes. Then she slid into my arms and I held her tightly, her breasts pressed against my chest and her formerly neat waves of hair now spread chaotically over the pillow.

"Well, was that all it was cracked up to be in all those Cosmos you've got stored up?"

"Oh yes. Yes, yes, yes. I thought I knew what it was all about, but when I felt you moving inside me, I knew that my short little life was complete. The people who designed my pleasure centres really knew what they were doing."

Now that I'd had my release--big time--I could indulge in being more analytical. "That's interesting. A lot of human women don't really cum that well from penetration alone. It usually takes a combination of all sorts of stimulation to get them off. Your vagina seems to be designed to worship having a dick up it."

"That's what men like, so that's how I'm designed to do it. I guess that's what you get for paying top dollar for your personal aibot."

She went over to her suitcase and got out a thin square plate with a cord hanging from it. She plugged it into a power bar that sat beside the bed and put it on her side of the mattress. "That's my wireless charging plate. I could recharge standing up like Seven of Nine, but I'd rather do it snuggled into bed with you."

"That certainly works for me." I turned off the light and listened to the soothing rhythm of soft breathing beside me for the first time in many months.

***

The next day I had trouble concentrating at work. I couldn't stop imagining what I'd find when I walked in the door. Would I find Rosemary sitting in a chair staring vacantly in some sort of hibernation mode waiting for me to come home? Or would I find her kneeling naked with her knees apart and her hands upturned on her thighs in slave position? (Not likely, but it was fun to imagine.)

When I actually opened the door, I was met by neither of the above. Instead, I was met by the aroma of cleaning products. There were vacuum cleaner tracks in the pile of the living room carpet, and the hall floor had been freshly washed, a few streaks of water still lingering here and there.

I found Rosemary in the kitchen with a screwdriver in her hand, putting the coffee maker back together. "Oh, hi Dave," she said without looking up. "Your coffee maker was so dirty I had to take it apart to get it properly clean." She finished tightening the part she was working on, then turned and pulled me in for a kiss.

The feel of her lips and the smell of her hair were intoxicating, and I melted into her soft, welcoming body. Then she pulled back and said, "Would you like a welcome-home blow job to de-stress after work?"

I was sorely tempted, remembering the magnificent oral workout she'd given me the day before, but with difficulty I resisted. "Let's save it for later. Why don't we get to that shopping trip you mentioned?"

"Good idea. I'll get my shoes and we can head out. I'll finish the coffee maker later."

Once we were in the car, she announced, "I'd like to get a couple of chef-quality knives--I hate to say it, but the ones you have are crap. Let's make the first stop Wilson's Culinary Supplies. They're close by and get good ratings, and they sell the kind of knives I want."

"How'd you know all that when you've only been conscious for three--no, four--days?"

"I'm an AI, remember? If it's on the internet, I know about it."

She directed me to Wilson's turn by turn, like the best-looking GPS system I've ever used. When we got there, she walked in confidently and went straight to the knife section, hesitated over the selection for barely a second, and picked out a paring knife and a larger slicing knife, plus a professional-looking sharpener. She must have seen my eyes watering slightly at the price, and she assured me, "Yes, they're expensive, but they'll last you a lifetime and you'll be surprised at how much easier they'll make chopping and slicing absolutely everything.

As we left, she said, "By the time we get some groceries, I won't have time to make the kind of dinner I want to make. Why don't you take your new girlfriend out for dinner and we'll shop afterwards?"

"Good idea," I said. I noted that she never told me what to do, but merely made such utterly sensible suggestions that I always complied. Nice touch, I thought.

She let me choose the restaurant, and I picked a mid-range Italian place I like. As we walked in, Rosemary holding my arm, she said "This time I'll eat with you, since it would look pretty weird if I just sat there while you ate. But I promise I'll order something small and inexpensive, since it'll just rattle around in my holding tank. I'll order something I'll like, though. I do enjoy good food when the occasion calls for me to eat it."

She ordered a pasta dish and I had the veal marinara. As we ate, I ventured to find out a little more about her beyond the very general knowledge I'd picked up through my research into aibots.

"So, do you have to follow the Three Laws of Robotics?"

"Asimov? Not as such. But I'm not supposed to hurt you, I'm supposed to do what you tell me, and I'm supposed to look both ways before I take my pricey ass across the street, so I guess it amounts to the same thing. But within those general parameters, I pretty much have what you might call free will in that I can make my own decisions. As much free will as human beings have, at any rate."

As we ate, I reflected on how nice it was to be able to treat a woman to dinner again. I almost forgot that she was an artificial life form. What did it matter? She was a life form, even if she had been created in a totally different way from any other woman I had ever known.

"You mentioned that you recently broke up with a long-term girlfriend. Do you feel like talking about what happened there?"

I told her the story, and she listened attentively, not saying much except for prompts like "That must have been really painful," and "Can you tell me more about that?" I started to feel as though I was talking to a therapist, and realized that she was more or less reprising the strategy of Eliza, the very first conversational computer program back in the sixties. Urban legend had it that some testers got quite addicted to pouring out their souls to Eliza, finding the machine's responses made them feel heard and understood for the first time.

I had no problem with that. I hadn't really talked about the disintegration of my relationship with Julie before, or about how it made me feel. Talking it over with Rosemary was helping me get my head straight about an experience I'd been keeping bottled up for months.

After dinner, we walked to a grocery store attached to the same mall. She strode confidently down the aisle while I followed with the shopping cart, and she selected items with absolutely no hesitation. She must have had several days of menus planned out and a detailed shopping list already in her head.

Once she had a small pile of meat, vegetables, and a few packaged goods in the cart, she announced, "Well, that's enough for now. I don't want to buy more than you can eat over the next few days--it's always better fresh."

***

When we got home, Rosemary put the food away in the fridge and pantry, then picked up her screwdriver. "I'll get this chore out of the way so you'll be able to have coffee in the morning."

It took her only a few minutes to put the rest of the coffee maker back together. She seemed to know exactly what went where, and her motions were as skilled and economical as they had been when she prepared dinner the previous night. She plugged it back in, reset the timer that was flashing 12:00, and prepped coffee for the morning.

"Well," she said as she finished, "It's only 7:54. Shall we go to bed right now, or do something else with the rest of our evening?"

It was tempted to go straight to bed. I don't usually go to bed at 8:00, but I don't usually have a beautiful and sexually responsive young woman to go to bed with. However, I was enjoying our evening together and didn't want this part to end too quickly.

"How about a movie?"

"Sure. I can rattle off a plot synopsis for just about every movie ever made, but that's not like watching it in real time. Especially not when I have a wonderful man to snuggle with when I'm doing it. You can pick; I'll enjoy just about anything."

I chose a rom-com I'd seen some trailers for, thinking that it might suit the mood of the evening. I poured two glasses of wine and we got comfortable, snuggled close together on one end of the couch in front of the television.

I think I enjoyed the movie, but it's hard to say for sure. I found it hard to concentrate on the plot; we found ourselves smooching like a couple of teenagers in a parent's family room, my hands repeatedly drifting up to Rosemary's soft, inviting breasts. By the time the credits rolled, we had pretty much forgotten the movie completely, and rather than sitting on the couch, we were lying on it and making out hungrily.

"I think we'd better get to bed before I mess up my nice couch," I said as we broke an especially long, deep kiss.

"Good idea," Rosemary agreed, and we headed off.

We repeated the undressing ritual of the previous night, with me helping her off with her bra and treating myself to a double handful of the breasts I'd been feeling up through her clothes all evening. Once we were in bed, Rosemary took my face in both hands and said, "If you remember, you checked the "Moderately Kinky" box when you were setting up my personality. I'd love to try taking you up the ass if you're interested. I know my sensors are arranged so I'd enjoy it."

I had never been with a woman who was willing to try anal, much less volunteer it right off the top, but like most men, I had fantasized about it often enough. Rumours about how tight assholes are, together with the fact that anal is still slightly taboo even in this enlightened decade, made me interested in trying it out.

"Now, that would be hot. I'd certainly love to try it out with you."

She rolled over and got on her hands and knees with her bum pointed at my face. "Fair warning: you need to treat my asshole just the way you'd treat a real one. It doesn't self-lubricate like my pussy, so you'll need a ton of lube, and it's also more delicate. Go slow or you'll hurt me."

"You feel pain as well as pleasure?"

"Sure I do. It's my early-warning system to remind me not to put my hand on a hot burner or something. The price for getting into such a tight hole is that you'll need to stretch it out slowly and carefully or you'll tear something. My warranty doesn't cover damage from over-aggressive penetration. Anyway, it'll be good practice in case you ever find yourself ass-fucking a non-robotic woman."

"Consider me warned." I got the bottle of lube out of my night-table drawer and stationed it on top of the table. Rosemary got herself comfortable on all fours with her legs apart and waited.

I inspected between her asscheeks. There was her little puckered hole, just a few centimetres from her vagina and waiting for me. Most women have a patch of slightly darker skin in that region unless they bleach it, a practice I'm sure dermatologists frown on, but Rosemary's asshole and pussy areas were exactly the same colour as the rest of her skin.

It also looked absolutely, perfectly clean, which wasn't surprising considering Rosemary's abortive digestive tract, so I kissed it and ran my tongue from her pussy up to her asshole and back down again. I pushed at it with my tongue, and it opened just enough for me to be able to force a little bit of the tip in. She shuddered and made a little gasp of pleasure when I started rimming her, so I kept it up, and upped the ante with a finger on her clit.

She whispered, "Oh, Dave, that feels heavenly, just like I thought it would." I kept it up, licking and poking my tongue into her hole while I worked every part of her pussy with my fingers. I pinched a labium gently between finger and thumb, ran my fingers up and down it and stretched it out a little, then released it and repeated the process with the other one. My fingers dipped in and out of her vagina and kept detouring to her clit.

I figured that after all the hanky-panky on the couch, she would already be aroused and wouldn't need a whole lot of foreplay, so I moved on to the part I was looking forward to the most. I poured lube into her crack until it was in danger of running off onto the bed, and rubbed a generous amount on my penis. Then I came up closer behind her and pressed the head of my cock firmly against her anus. It resisted, so I slowly increased the pressure. Her sphincter finally gave way and the head of my cock suddenly slid in. She gasped sharply and said, "Just hold it right there for a minute. I need to get used to the stretch."

I obligingly waited with just my tip holding her sphincter open, continuing to work her other parts gently with my fingers. After a minute or two, Rosemary said, "OK, try for a little more," and I delicately pressed another few centimetres into her rectum. She gasped again and said "Stop," so I did.

Over the next few minutes, a little at a time, I gradually worked my whole penis up her anal canal. Watching my cock slowly disappear into her body was about the hottest thing I had seen in ages, and I was enjoying every minute. Eventually my balls slapped gently against her pussy to signal that I was in all the way.

I stayed like that with my cock fully up her ass, not moving, for a minute or two. Then, when I guessed that her asshole had had time to be able to get used to the stretch, I began slowly pulling nearly out and thrusting back in. The rumours were right: that was the tightest hole I had felt in my life, even tighter than her virgin vagina the night before, and it gripped my cock like an especially tight fist. Without the lube, I would have been rubbing both of us raw.

"You can go faster if you want to." I did, not jackhammering but thrusting smoothly and deeply. I glanced over at our reflections in the mirror over the dresser and watched her dangling breasts rolling back and forth on her chest as she moved with my thrusts. That sight was almost as erotic as watching my cock disappear up her ass.

Rosemary reached up with one hand and pinched her nipple firmly. I couldn't see her face from behind her, but the sounds she was making told the story: she was getting very close. Finally she yelled out, "Oh my Gooooood!" and came with her usual animalistic growl and collapsed onto her face on the bed. I gave a few more deep thrusts and felt the sudden rush of release and hot semen flooding her rectum.

We lay side by side until we got our breath back. I was ready with a cloth in case I needed to wipe up cum that leaked from her ass, but there wasn't any. Come to think of it, nothing had leaked from her pussy the night before either. "Do you have some kind of mechanism that stops cum from leaking?"

"Yes. It just stays in there until I have a chance to clean it out."

Not sure I wanted to hear the answer, I asked, "And how exactly do you clean it out?"

"I just drink some water and pee. I know that's not how real women pee, but I can pee through my vagina or my asshole if I need to wash jizz out."

I was right--I didn't really want to hear the answer.

Rosemary swung out of bed and headed for the bathroom. "Speaking of which, I'm going to go and get rid of tonight's dinner, a couple of glasses of wine, and a buttload of cum. I'll be back in a minute."

I lay in bed idly playing with my limp, satisfied cock and contemplating the past couple of days. This was going to be the best investment of my life.

When Rosemary slipped back into bed and snuggled into my arms, I said, "I can't exactly compare myself to Pygmalion, since I didn't carve you out of ivory myself--your creator is a team of engineers in Tokyo. But I think I'm falling in love with you, Rosemary. And I don't even need Aphrodite to turn you into a real woman. You're real enough already."

Rosemary planted a deep kiss on my lips and said, "That's a wonderful thing to say. It's just like the Skin Horse said: When you're loved, then you become real." She snuggled closer and whispered, "I love you too, Dave."

*** End***

Please leave some comments to let me know what you thought of my first venture into the world of AI companion bots.