Far Future Fembot: Darlene

Soon after I rejoined the House again one of the most unusual 'bots I've yet encountered came to Lady Heather's - initially as a client. It took me a while to understand her, even though I was her first 'bot lover. CiCi represented a void in my sexual database knowledge that I didn't fully realize in the beginning.

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My new body conforms to all current standards, including having my RIN tattooed on the sole of my left foot, and standard fembot logo on my heel.

I wear these with pride because they are what I am. Although normally out of view, they never embarrass - nor oppress - me the way some factions of humans continue to insist that they should.

And I should take a moment to mention here that Lady Heather's is deluged with the same types of extremist literature I used to receive in Hawaii. She was even picketed for a week once while I slept awaiting my new body for her "enslavement" of free robots. Fortunately this mail is automatically disposed of by her intelligent mail handling system before any of us have to deal with it, for which we're all grateful.

Some fembots have removed their external RINs for any of several reasons. However virtually all of us retain our fembot logo somewhere discreet. This same logo is on Lady Heather's doorbell plate. Here we are proud to be identified as fembots, and have no need to pretend to be anything else.

While some fembots have engaged in passing - short for pretending to actually be human women - that practice is increasingly rare as we are becoming more accepted into society as full members with rights of our own. And then there are variations that have received their own logos - m-bots, and others.

Perhaps the real reason such an imprint doesn't concern me is because, as I've said before, robots have no trouble differentiating humans from other robots. Such knowledge is essential for the proper operation of our First and Second Laws. As such I see nothing wrong with humans being able to accurately distinguish robots in return. This places us on an even playing field.

I'm told that decades before robots were first available a similar battle in some ways was waged over the telephonic voice communication systems. From the beginning of such a system the caller always knew to whom - or at least to which number - they placed their call. Yet when technology improved to the point where the recipient could be equally informed as to who was on the other end of the connection a huge outrage over perceived violations of privacy ensued for some period of time.

This battle soon escalated with laws and regulations allowing initiating numbers to be blocked. In retaliation there was soon created the ability to deny receiving calls that didn't reveal their origin. These features each cost money, and I remember in my explorations of poetry coming across a children's story that made excellent rhyming satire of the continual inversion of the haves and have-nots exchanging places with the other while paying for the privilege each time. Such a situation could not continue for long, and soon enough everyone was broke and no one could remember who had had been part of which group initially.

Spoofing of numbers came next, followed eventually by legislation against that practice. Now, with lifetime telephone numbers and smart filtering, nobody cares.

I heard about all this from one customer who is a history buff and loves to talk about these things during our times together after he has finished using me otherwise. He said he finds it very charming each time I tell him how none of this ever seems logical to me. In this particular case I maintained that it was only fair that both parties in such a transaction be equally informed.

He always agrees with me, and more than once commented that things might go much better if robots ran things instead of humans.

I didn't know if I should agree with that assertion or not. Logically it could never happen.

He's also the one who told me that the first high heels date back to the coronation of Lady Jane Grey as Queen of England in 1553. Then he told me what happened to her next, leaving me hoping that I will fare better than she did.

Despite her fate, he says there is much to recommend the monarchy form of government - depending on the monarch.

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CiCi had three human owners before arriving at Lady Heather's as a recently Emancipated Robot. Technically she allows that she is still owned by her last human. However, she insists this is moving quickly toward dissolution because her owner has entered into a relationship with a human woman who is already pregnant with their first child.

CiCi wasn't devastated by this outcome. In fact, she had encouraged their relationship as the best thing for both of them. When she did leave it was with tears all around. CiCi's tears came partly from her knowledge of how difficult finding owners has been for her.

CiCi sports a logo that identifies her own unique variation of robot. And rather than just hide it on her heel where it would be awkward to view, she also wears a beautiful gold and fire opal inlay of it. It's meaning is crystal clear to anyone taking a moment to interpret it.

Let me be the first to say that to look at her - and she does consider herself a her - that without her medallion in plain sight you would not immediately suspect CiCi's secret.

CiCi is a hermaphrodite robot - or what some might call an high-functioning intersexual female. Simply put this means that in addition to all her female parts being present and functional in the right places, she has also has a male organ with just visible descended testis "Right," as she unashamedly says, "Where God intended them to be." And this is not the only surprising thing about her.

For starters, don't confuse CiCi with the bi-gendered robots that also come with a phallus for additional sex-play options, but can retract and conceal it so completely that often their owners never suspect that their "fembot" is rather more than she appears to be. These robots have distinct female and male personalities that go with their sexual modes, and if anything are a lot like getting two robots for the price of one.

Nor is CiCi like Arlette, a prototype model who was more of a curiosity than anything else and never given much in the way of help to know how to deal with what might be kindly called an abnormal ability by some.

CiCi was never a mass produced model, nor intended as a one-off only model to try out a radical new idea. Instead she was deliberately created to model an uncommon human variation as closely as possible, and of very limited production. Yet even among her own sister models she is unique beyond that.

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If anything, CiCi's existence shows how we robots are still at the whim of humans who have us constructed - in wildly varying forms sometimes - to match their own fancy of the moment. There have been fembots built to resemble famous movie stars, supermodels, public figures, and family members - some of whom are still living when the 'bot is produced. We've also been created to appear as children or elderly, sometimes for purposes I won't go into further, although we're not harmed by it since all of our minds are adult minds. Or at least have been up until now.

What all such models share in common has often been only limited acceptance beyond that or our original purchasers. Even Alexis - who so beautifully represents a common female condition - has learned that while many find her intriguing at first, such interest often wanes over time for those interested only in her appearance and sexuality.

So add this to your lengthening list of how robots are different from humans. We would never consider designing a human to be other than how nature and chance creates them, even if we could.

For now at least, humans are redesigning us instead of their own children after early attempts in this area have proven quite disappointing to all concerned.

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One thing that intrigues me about CiCi is her developing sexuality. I say developing because, unlike me and most robots, CiCi didn't start out as a fully mature, developed woman.

Oh, her body was as I see it now, with everything hooked up and responding. But her first owner went to considerable effort to let her start out at the mental equivalent of a thirteen year old adolescent whose body responses were beyond her immediate control or understanding. In a way this makes her like Synthia whose body could control her mind, but in other ways CiCi is quite uique.

In her own way, CiCi is as much a pioneer as Lady Heather. Rather than just give her everything a development team felt she needed to know in order to function from Day One onwards in her life, there were intentional gaps in her knowledge that CiCi herself had to fill in. Even CiCi's immediate sister 'bots didn't start out like this, since most owners want their robots fully functional right out of the box.

CiCi is the first one I've met of what I think may be a coming trend to differentiate robot minds by the unique experiences, rather than all of us seeming like cookie-cutter clones of each other. In CiCi's case in particular, she was given full sexual responses, but no sexual knowledge of what it all meant. Her body responded as it should without her direct involvement, leaving her to work out how to use it properly afterwards.

Perhaps this experiment started out because there is no pre-programmed sexual knowledge for a robot as unique as CiCi. There have been many human males and females combining their own feelings and experiences to instruct a robot how to feel and perform in a traditional role such as my own. But maybe no intersexuals ever were part of robot development teams. Or their early results were not satisfactory and room for improvement was seen. Whatever the reason, CiCi was allowed to discover her own sexuality from a mental age of thirteen, although with a grown-up, sensitive body and an initially interested owner. This may account for some of her charming innocence, although she has learned and matured a lot along the way.

Like many fembots intended for the gentler sports, CiCi is gorgeous. She arrived modestly dressed, wearing a long-sleeved blouse buttoned up high enough to only show her gold medallion hanging high around her neck. She wore nice, loose fitting pants, complemented by feminine open-toed low heels that understate her sexuality. If she had a remote it was out of sight. Her straight, jet-black hair set off a very pretty face with emerald, almond-shaped eyes that are unusual in a fembot, and as deeply green as my own.

Even covered by this much loose-fitting clothing I could easily extrapolate what was underneath. In the old system that was still in effect when I was first activated I calculated her figure at 34C-22-28 with a height of five-feet-eight and weighing in at a nice hundred and twenty-five pounds. Her demure dress and manner set her apart from the rest of the crowd here.

As part of the process of self-discovery, CiCi herself had determined the best ways to present herself to accentuate the positive and minimize the negative reactions she often encountered. Her medallion, for example, was her own idea to prevent early misunderstandings on first meetings.

And unlike most fembots who naturally dress to please their owners, usually showing off our bodies without concern, CiCi has always been far more circumspect. Her dress that first day was representative of what she'd most often wear in the future.

Although CiCi has a very female bust, she usually keeps it under wraps initially. Daring for her is something low-cut just to the point of showing the rounded tops of her breasts. Her remote turns out to be worn in the usual place, but this diffidence tends to keep it fully out of sight and reach most of the time. Her slacks grip her rounded hips well, but hide her smooth, sexy legs. And those low heels seem barely sexy at all compared to what the rest of us routinely wear.

CiCi will always face challenges most 'bots - or humans - never deal with. I think doing so has made her stronger - and better -for having dealt with them. She is already the best overall judge of human character I've ever met. She is also a great dancer.

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From the beginning CiCi and I were destined to be special friends. And with my own unique history, it's hardly an accident that she ended up with me first.

As I've said a hundred and twenty-eight times before, except for rare examples like Lady Heather, we don't have needs or lust for our own kind. I've also shown that we can enjoy each other under the right circumstances as well. Don't look for any of us to pair off with another 'bot to live as sexual partners in an exclusive relationship for any long period of time, but that doesn't mean under some especially favorable circumstances that we can't enjoy it together. As you know, I do - and so have my 'bot partners.

Despite having had three owners CiCi was still learning much about herself. Having freed herself from her last owner, who had agreed not going to try and recover some residual value by reselling her on the used market as she'd allowed her first two owners to do, CiCi had come to Lady Heather's looking for her first experience with a robot lover.

CiCi offered me something unique as well this first time.