"So, you're a patron of Cyberwhore then, Kev?" asked Jeff with a sneer.

Kevin nodded sheepishly. How had he let something like that slip out?

"What's wrong with the alternatives, Kev?" Jeff persisted, sipping from his beer glass in the window seat of the Red Encounter. "What about virtual sex? What's wrong with penis pumps? And what about, heaven forbid, the real thing?"

"Not much chance of that up here on Mars, Jeff," Kevin pointed out. "How many women have you known who'd want to live here? There are about forty men for every woman."

"Yeah!" sniffed Jeff dismissively. "And those who'd rough the low gravity, the red skies and the dust storms, they're real dogs, aren't they? I can't blame you for giving them a berth. But there are human prozzies, you know. Not the best you can get in the Solar System, but they're real flesh and blood. Not that organic plastic shit with circuit boards for a brain. Why not go for that?"

"They're just not as good," Kevin confessed.

"Fuck me! You can't be serious! You mean, you'd rather fuck a robot than a real woman? You're one sick fuck, Kev!"

Kevin sighed.

He knew he should never have mentioned it to Jeff, not that his friend was any better in the love stakes than Kevin had ever been. What did Jeff have to boast about? The wife who'd dumped him back on Earth and his obsession with holoporn? At least with Sindy, Kevin had someone he could properly fuck. Okay, she might have been made in a factory, probably one of those in the water-rich Polar Regions, but she was a real woman. Just not real in a biological sense.

This wasn't an argument he could pursue very profitably with Jeff. Before long, he'd be telling you about how a customised sex robot was just a machine: nothing more than circuitry and Artificial Intelligence. No more human than the bots that made his dinner, cleaned his apartment and served him in the bar.

And speaking of which...

"Fuck it, Jeff! Why should you care who or what I fuck?" he said, pointing a finger at his friend's nearly empty glass. "What are you having? Same again?"

Kevin should have known better than to think a refill would sideline Jeff. No fucking way! After returning to his seat, he was treated to Jeff's speculations of what it was like to fuck a vacuum cleaner and his fantasies about blowing his wad in the grill-like mouth of a barbot.

Of course, Jeff didn't know Sindy. Nor, for that matter, did he know Trish, Sunshine, Margot or Veronica. These were state of the art bots. Flesh and bodily fluids so convincing, you couldn't tell them apart from the real thing. Except no woman was as perfect as a whorebot. No woman he'd ever known had breasts, a figure, or such a welcoming vagina as Sindy had.

And after several litres of Martian beer, it was towards Cyberwhore that Kevin walked, leaving Jeff sniggering by the high-speed maglev transit stop. Or not so much walked as rather skipped like some fucking Morris dancer. This low gravity took some getting used to! At least the agency had got him work on Mars and not the Moon. The Lunar colonists had to get around like they were on fucking pogo sticks! Mind you, if work had been easier to find back home on Earth, where you didn't have a glass dome less than a hundred metres above your head all the time, he'd never have opted for that incredibly tedious three month shuttle across the interplanetary spaceway.

But for the moment, it was Sindy who was beckoning him. Those luscious lips that gripped his cock like no woman's lips had ever done before. Those breasts that were both huge and immaculately balanced. That perfect unblemished skin. That welcoming smile. Those girlfriends he'd never been able to keep for more than a month or so at a time couldn't hold a fucking candle to Sindy. Whatever Jeff said, Sindy was the real deal. And although Cyberwhore had a whorebot for every taste (and some of those were distinctly weird), it was Sindy that Kevin returned to again and again.

When he first visited the premises, he tried out a few. There was Brittany with her tiny tits and prehensile tongue. There was Madeleine with her green skin and bald pate. There was Cherry with her huge appetite for semen on her face. But none of them was up to Sindy's standard. She was everything a man could want. And except for her breasts being significantly larger than any real woman without surgery could possibly attain, she was very much a normal woman to look at. Only without the blemishes.

And not only was she the perfect woman to look at, she was a woman whose rapacious appetite for sex was wholly reliable and which no man could hope to satisfy. A woman without the monthly cycle, who never had headaches, and who would never dump you for your best mate. All in all, Sindy was fucking perfect. She was a number ten and you couldn't get anything any fucking better than that!

When Kevin got to Cyberwhore, he was met at the reception by Tim, who as always was reading an e-novel. He looked up at Kevin.

"Do you want Sindy again, sir?"

"Yes please," said Kevin, barely able to disguise his enthusiasm.

Within seconds, Sindy was in the reception lounge dressed in a loose white dress that hardly obscured at all the lift of her perfect breasts. She smiled warmly.

"Hello, Kevin," she said. "I'm delighted to see you again."

"I bought you some flowers," said Kevin, sheepishly handing over the bunch he'd bought on the way.

Sindy looked at them with a slightly puzzled frown. "They are very nice," she said. "Thank you."

She took them from his proffered hand and placed them on the counter. Tim tucked them away, betraying no expression on his face.

Sindy led Kevin to one of the rooms. It was dominated by a huge bed and illuminated by holograms of attractive women. Kevin sat on the bed next to Sindy. She put an arm around his shoulder and listened while, as always, Kevin launched into a monologue about his work in the cyanobacterial labs and the problems of getting a good communication link to Earth.

Eventually, he ran out of things to say and looked at Sindy expectantly. She smiled and placed one of her immaculately sculpted hands on his trousers within which his penis was beginning to stir.

"Shall we make love, Kevin?" she asked seductively.

He smiled wanly. "You know exactly what I want, don't you?"

"I aim to give total satisfaction, Kevin," Sindy said, standing up and letting her dress fall to her feet.

Kevin gasped at Sindy's beauty. Those long legs. The beautiful unblemished face. The skin which felt so warm to the touch. And, most of all, those breasts that loomed just above him: so impossibly perfect and whose nipples were so delicious to taste.

"Oh yes! Yes!" Kevin said in helpless anticipation.

When Kevin departed later, he carried with him the warm imprint and vivid memories of sex with Sindy. She knew exactly what he wanted. She didn't complain at all when he transferred his attention from her vagina to her ever-so-slightly tight anus. Any more than she did on the occasions he chose to ejaculate on her face. Whatever Kevin wanted, Sindy was happy to provide. And when they weren't making love, she was so adorably patient as he spoke to her of all the things that troubled him, either here or back on Earth. No one showed as much sympathy as she did for the problems he had with women and the difficulties he had in getting a decent job that suited his qualifications in bacteriology. Occasionally she'd nod and smile, even say the odd comforting word, but mostly she just sat there and listened as Kevin spoke. If only all women were as indulgent and understanding as Sindy!

Kevin thought about her all day when he wasn't at Cyberwhore. He was so lucky to have a woman in his life as perfect as Sindy, even if she was a drain on the not inconsiderable income his work in such a remote place earned him. But she was fair compensation for the claustrophobia of a life spent under a glass dome, as artificially preserved as the cyanobacteria he worked with.

People like Jeff just didn't understand. Although Sindy mightn't be biological she was all the woman Kevin ever wanted or needed. She listened to him. She kissed him with more passion than any biological woman ever did. She responded with so much passion as he thrust inside her, a thin sliver of perspiration on her body that responded to his own. And pants of post-coital release as intense as Kevin's own. What more could a man ask for?

"She's still just a fucking robot, Kev!" said Jeff, when they next met. "Giving her flowers and little gifts just doesn't make sense."

Kevin crumpled up his face in embarrassment. Why couldn't he have kept his mouth shut about that?

"It's just to show how much I care," he said sheepishly.

"Care? Don't make me fucking laugh, Kev! A robot's got no feelings. If you wanted to rape her or beat her up, she'd be just as receptive. What makes you think this whorebot's any different to any other anthropomorphic bot?"

"She listens to me. She says she loves me."

"Yeah, right!"

The two friends drank their beers silently, while around them the other men in the Red Encounter sat in groups, chatting and laughing. The holoscreen displayed news items from Earth, delayed as always by at least half an hour from their original broadcast on the other side of the Sun. Music swelled and boomed from all directions in the bar.