Chapter 1

"I've decided."

"Oh?" I asked, looking up from my morning coffee. My wife Amanda hadn't bothered putting on a shirt yet, or even a bra, mostly because our infant son Franklin was currently suckling warm milk from one of her delicious tits, but also because she knew I appreciate the view. Presumably this was about the question that had been looming ever since she discovered her pregnancy, whether or not she was going to return to work when her maternity leave was up. My own job paid well enough that we would have managed okay on just the one income, but with the second income on hand we would have no problem making the monthly payments on a nanny. It really came down to the fact that Amanda was a rather high ranked person at her job and had worked hard to get there, and she enjoyed it so very much. However, the maternal instinct is strong, and many a gung-ho career woman has left it all behind in a heartbeat to stay home with her child.

"I've got to go back," Amanda said. "I've done as much as I can telecommuting, but even with that, they're not managing as well as they can with me there. If I do decide to quit and be a housewife later on, it has to be with a much better transition period."

"Well alright then," I replied. "Now that that's settled, when do you want to go pick out a nanny?"

"Oh, go ahead without me. You know I hate the pushy salesmen in those kinds of places. I trust your judgement."

"I'll go today after work, then. That'll give you plenty of time with her before you start work again. Any preference on what kind I get?"

She gave me a sly look and said, "You goofball. I know exactly what kind you want. Go ahead, you have my permission."

A broad grin formed across my face and I leaned down to give her a deep, loving kiss. "Did I ever tell you how much I love you?"

"Every day," she replied. "Now get going, or you'll be late."

The door chimed as I entered the shop. Dozens of them stood inside, mostly young women dressed in simple cotton panties and loose fitting cropped tank tops that didn't quite reach down far enough to cover the underside of their breasts, but also a handful of men dressed in boxer shorts. "Ah, hello. Can I interest you in a used bioroid today?" asked the lone human as he stepped forward. He was slightly balding, with a thick moustache and a wearing a suit. He very nearly fit all the clichés of his profession.

"As a matter of fact, yes," I replied. "My wife and I just had a baby and we're in the market for a nanny."

"Ah, congratulations!" he said, clasping his hands together. "What a happy occasion. I can definitely help you with that. I'm Marvin. Call me Marv."

"I'm Mike," I said in return.

"Well Mike, did you have anything particular in mind? See anything you like?" Marv asked.

"I was thinking about going with something of the feline persuasion," I said.

"Oh, an excellent choice. Very popular. I believe I do have some in stock. Won't you please step over here while I call them over," he said, leading the way as he tapped out some commands on his computer pad. Five bioroids around the store suddenly came out of standby mode and walked to the middle of the store, lining up in front of us. All five had cat ears on top of their heads and a furry tail hanging from their rear. I suppressed a gleeful giggle. I stepped closer to examine them. These were no mere costume pieces. The ears were honest-to-goodness flesh and fur, just like on the animal itself, and completely functional. All of them had hair styles that covered the sides of their heads, but I reached out and brushed it aside on one of them. Her tail twitched as I touched her, and I could see that there indeed was no human ear underneath.

I took a step back to look over my choices. One had Asian features and skintone, which seemed quite appropriate for a catgirl. Another had a dark African complexion, talk about your black cats. However, a Caucasian family with a non-Caucasian servant? Even though they are just bioroids, the idea of it smelled of unfortunate implications. Too much of a throwback to centuries ago. The third option was tall, with dark hair and sharp features. She looked like the kind of person that would be stern, no-nonsense, and nearly emotionless. No doubt her personality could be set to anything, but anything else just wouldn't suit her, and while that did have an allure all its own and frankly is rather spot-on for a cat, it wouldn't make for the best of nannies.

The fourth was a little shorter than the others, with a soft, cheerful face and dirty blonde hair down to her shoulders. Without realizing it I instinctively put my hand up, placed it on her head and scratched behind her ear. Her eyes closed as she tilted her head into my hand. I ran my hand down the back of her head, and then again, and again. She opened her eyes again and matched my smile. "And what's your name?" I asked.

"Meowlissa," she replied cheerfully. Oh my God. That was adorable. Her voice was adorable. She was adorable. I couldn't stop petting her.

"Of course you can name her anything you like," Marv broke in. "They're completely customizable. The eyes and hair can be changed to any color in the crayon box, though for the hair you have to wait for it to grow out. You can also adjust the general body fat and breast size within a particular range, but again it takes a few weeks to metabolize the shift." No, she was perfect just like she was. Medium build, thin but not skinny, and perky breasts above average in size. I took a step back to stop from embarrassing myself further.

"Now let me show you how this works," Marv continued. "All parameters are set with easy slider controls on a data pad like this one via the built-in wifi. It can be password or thumbprint protected, and there's a hard lockout on bioroids themselves. These are specially designed so only humans can access them. Now, these animal types also have an additional option here. Over to this side, perfect English diction. Move it over this way, and you can add some speech impediments. You can make her stumble over certain words with kitty noises, 'Meowlissa' instead of 'Melissa' as you saw. You can also make her end every sentence with one. On the other extreme, she can't speak at all, crawls around on all fours, and basically thinks she's an actual house cat." That certainly held some possibilities.

"These units all come factory standard programmed for simple clerical jobs and standard household duties. Cooking, cleaning, child care, as well as medical knowledge for common conditions and self-defense techniques should the need arise, heaven forbid. Ah, everything we sell here also comes installed with the aftermarket adult activities package, although it can be removed if your wife doesn't approve?" Marv added, letting the last sentence trail out into a question.

"No, that's quite alright. We discussed that, and she's on board for, uh, adult activities," I answered. In fact, Amanda was very bisexual. Even after we were married we had regular threesomes with her former roommate, who was a lesbian. That ended when she moved out of state to chase her dream job, and Amanda got pregnant shortly after that, so we hadn't gotten around to finding her new pussy to play with. That problem was about to be solved.

"Ah, you lucky fellow. Dalliances with the nanny are a classic problem for husbands, it's nice to not have to worry. Okay, these are the settings on the adult side. You can turn things off completely, complete prude mode, or at the other extreme turn her into a completely insatiable raving nymphomaniac. Of course she'll always be a perfect lady with the kids. This one goes from completely heterosexual to completely homosexual, and varying degrees of bisexual in between. If you ever get into BDSM, you can set her anywhere from submissive painslut to sadistic dominatrix. Any fetish you want, she'll take it or dish it out." I nodded understanding and tried to will my rapidly hardening cock to calm down. "Have you ever heard the rumor about the adult package?" Marv asked.

"No, what's that?" I said.

"They say that the package was part of the original bioroid development within Rossum International itself, but their marketing people wouldn't let them include it in the factory-available settings. They didn't want it to look like they were just selling sex bots, right? On the other hand, they knew that sex can be key to driving new industries. So both having and not having sex programmed into the bioroids would hurt sales. They figured out how to have it both ways. They waited until product had been on the market for almost a year, then they leaked the adult package anonymously on the worldnet. That way, they have plausible deniability about where it came from but still reap the benefits." The salesman winked at that, and then continued droning on, "You know where that name comes from? Rossum? Most people think it's the company founder, but they're wrong."

I could tell that this guy was in love with both his product and the sound of his own voice. I was tempted to let him carry on unabated, but I decided to reveal that I could be clever too. "Karel Capek, isn't it?" I countered.

"I'm impressed, my good sir," he said. "And of course Capek was unaware that the first advances would be in mechanical automatons, so his robots were manufactured out of flesh and bone. Now we've come full circle, the best of both worlds. Flesh, yes, but bones assembled from lightweight alloy and carbon fiber, a silicon neural net brain, electroactive polymer muscles, a heart that whirs with a pair of impellers rather than the beats of four chambers."

"Capek's story also included the robots rising up and exterminating their human masters, did it not?" I pointed out. A theme that was repeated many times in later science fiction. Some groups that protested the use of artificial intelligence professed that this scenario was now only a matter of time.

"If you know Capek, you must be familiar with Asimov, yes?" he asked.

"Three laws safe," I quoted from the once popular author.

"Exactly," he said. "Now Asimov was no fool, he knew the three laws were too simple and spent many of his stories poking holes in them. The bioroids use a much more complex morality and obedience encoding to prevent any small-scale or large-scale problems. They know what they are and they're content to be what they are. And while their personalities are good enough to pass most general Turing tests, they don't have a full sentience, either. Rossum International is working on it, of course, but they only want the Nobel Prize out of it. They've vowed to never mass produce a fully alive artificial intelligence."