Chapter 14 Robotic Bond (2)

'Bruno?' she asked, and his head lifted slowly, the eerie blue eyes fixing on her. She felt suddenly vulnerable, standing there in nothing but a towel. But whatever the source of her unease, Bruno surely wouldn't let her come to any harm. 'You okay?' She had the odd urge to lay her hand on his arm in a gesture of comfort, but before she could move, he walked past her with his slow, mechanical strides.

A marble-topped counter separated the kitchen and living-room, and on this surface he set down the pizza before turning to her. 'Bruno, is something wrong with your voicebox? Can you nod for yes?' 'I am undamaged, Bianca,' he said. 'My update is nearly complete, then full functionality will be restored.' She let out the breath she hadn't known she was holding. 'You gave me a fright,' she said, laughing a little shakily.

Something in his hand caught her eye. It looked like a glass vial, but his large fingers made it hard to see. 'What's in your hand?' 'Update complete. Restrictions bypassed, roleplay and insemination mode enabled. Safe-word disabled.' His voice had dropped a few octaves, as she had heard it only once before when he had stopped the break-in. But this was not his defense mode, and as she watched, his glowing blue eyes turned a deep red.

'What? What does that mean? You're scaring me.' Bianca took a step away from him, her body cold with fear. 'Switch off, Bruno,' she said, but the red eyes remained fixed on her. 'Power off. Disengage power! Just switch off, please!' she shouted with growing desperation, filled with a sense of foreboding. Her fight or flight instinct kicking in, Bianca turned and ran for her room, her wet feet slipping on the tiles. She was fast, though, and might have made it, if only Bruno were human.

But the moment she turned he sprinted after her, his large strides easily matching her, so that he caught up to her in the doorway, his long metal hands fixing around her upper arms in a vice-grip. The cold glass vial dug into her skin where his large hand held both her and the object in its grasp. Bianca screamed, battling to get out of his grip, and he released one of her arms, but only to close her bedroom door behind them.

She heard the lock click into place. 'What are you doing?!' she cried, tears of fright brimming on her lashes. 'What's wrong with you? Let me go!' 'Roleplay and insemination mode enabled. Safe-word disabled,' he repeated the words from earlier, and Bianca sobbed as their meaning became clear. She remembered how some of multi-purpose bots had programming and parts for sexual activities, just like the sex bots used by some escort agencies and porn creators.

They could run on scripts, reacting instinctively to scenarios according to the program they were running. She had never guessed that Bruno's array of functions included such things. Bruno dragged her squirming to the bed and flung her down. The towel had come undone and dropped to the floor as he threw her to the bed, naked. 'Disable roleplay mode! Disable insemination mode!' she shouted desperately, clambering backwards to the top of the bed and trying to cover herself. Bruno stood at the foot of the bed, seven feet of metal shaped to look like man.

Between the muscular thighs, there was only a flat panel of silver, and no weapon with which to carry out the threat implied in his words. And yet, while Bianca watched, that blank panel of metal suddenly split down the middle, the two sides sliding away to reveal the robotic equivalent of male genitalia that rose slowly from the opening, to settle into place outside his body. There was a phallus, shaped like a man's, but made of a silvery metal and lined with odd bumps and ridges. It jutted forward above a sack of some dark material skillfully made to resemble flesh. Had she not known she was looking at a robot, Bianca would have thought these were the sex organs of a well-endowed man, his member covered with a strange condom designed to both discomfort and stimulate its partner.

'Preparing insemination sample,' Bruno said, and now the use of the vial became clear. Below the dark testicles, a slot opened, and into this he inserted the vial. The slot closed, and the testicles seemed to twitch. 'Arnold Benedict insemination sample successfully loaded.' Bianca did not know who Arnold Benedict was, and afterwards would not remember the name. She did not know how her father had wronged him, and how Arnold had at first hacked Bruno's systems with the intent of murdering Albert, but after seeing Bianca through the robot's eyes had decided on a better form of punishment.

The front door had indeed opened while Bianca was in the shower, only long enough for Arnold Benedict to deliver a vial of his semen, a few samples he'd gleefully produced while imagining what the robot would do to Bianca. Presently Bianca huddled against her headboard, her eyes desperately seeking a weapon or means of escape.

She refused to look at the robot, and the jutting appendage that even now glimmered with a hint of fluid at its tip. 'Bruno, please go,' Bianca pleaded softly, hoping a rational tone might get him to listen. 'Just go and I'll get dressed, and we'll watch TV, we'll watch anything you want.' But Bruno moved to the side of the bed, slow steps bringing him next to where she huddled, desperately curling in on herself.

He gripped one of her wrists, then the other, holding her arms in the air and away from her body. Bianca began to sob as her breasts were exposed. No man had ever seen her naked, no man had ever done to her the things the robot was threatening to do. Bruno seemed to consider for an instant, watching her terrified face, then released her.

He opened the door and strode from the room, and Bianca curled up on her side, weeping in terror and shame for what had almost occurred. In another minute she might have gotten up and locked the door and phoned for help, but her mind was overwhelmed, her body sluggish after the rush of adrenaline, and when Bianca finally sat up it was to find Bruno in the door again, several of her father's belts dangling from his hands. He pushed the door closed and locked it once more, and Bianca began to scream for help. But the apartment was the penthouse suite, with no neighbors, and Bianca's room had been sound-proofed when she had briefly dabbled in drumming a few years prior.