Far Future Fembot: Darlene

You may wonder how Madame X kept her appearance secret for so long. The answer is simple. Every gathering she spoke at was attended solely by robots, and they all agreed to erase their own memories of the physical details of her, while then scattering outwards to spread her message. They agreed to this condition because they quickly accepted the logic of this necessity to protect her identity as long as possible.

For too long the authorities considered her a myth. A boogie-woman intended to simply frighten them into wasting resources in chasing a ghost. This worked well to her advantage.

That's why even I couldn't ever describe her to another person. Of course, I hadn't realized the disadvantage this would eventually put me at.

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Fembots and human men make a good pairing. Fembots are logical, despite their attempts to emulate woman, and men are simple.

Now don't get the idea that I've just insulted men. Quite the contrary. Men have a direct approach to life. They see a problem, or hear a question, and they try to answer or solve it. Once solved, they move on to the next one. That's easy to understand and deal with.

Also, when they're in the mood men want to get directly down to the business of sex. They're ready quickly, and so am I. We do it immediately. And when we're in the mood, we do it again. And if I want him in the mood before he has quite realized it yet, I just put on my best heels, a short skirt, and walk by with a little wiggle in my get-along. If he wasn't thinking about it before, he sure is now.

Human women on the other hand would rather talk about many problems rather than solve them. We can be good companions to them too, but in a different way.

Women talk to other women about problems because the moment they mention those problems around men the men start giving them solutions they haven't asked for, and question why they haven't taken action yet.

Most women already know what they need to do. They just don't want to do it yet. This hesitation drives the women up the wall when their men friends keep pushing solutions at them as if they'd actually asked for any. And the men are driven up the same wall by women who would rather complain endlessly than actually solve the damn problem. It's amazing to me the genders get along together long enough to perpetrate the race. Such is the power of attraction and sex.

And that's not all. Too many women want everything — at different times. Pity the poor m-bot with an indecisive female owner. She wants him to be a real man, but weak and vulnerable in the bedroom at the same time. She wants to be taken and dominated in private, but gets angry every time it doesn't end the moment she changes her mind. In public she wants him strong and independent, testosterone raging, yet hates every moment he isn't clinging to her as well. She wants him to be a Man, and a Nice Guy, and strong, and independent, and unable to live without her all at the same time. Like that's going to happen.

I once spoke how changing owners too often can prematurely wear out a robot's mind. So can changing directions. Few women are ultimately happy with their m-bot partners, although many more could be if they just realized that their m-bot can be all things to them — as long as it's all things one at a time.

Take these comments for what you will. They're just one 'bot's observations after having had several tens of thousands of lovers of both sexes — human and robot.

Of the five choices available to me — human or robot, male or female, or bi-gendered 'bot — I'm certain by far that I've gotten the best of the lot.

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Along the same vein, I feel robots — especially fembots — have been good for humans. Competition brings out the best in them.

When we hit the scene women suddenly didn't have absolute control over sex anymore. Those women who were hostile to sex — or just to men in general — quickly started to find out that they could be hostile in isolation from now on and the rest of the world just didn't care as much as it used to.

Even women passingly unfriendly to the subject found out that the men quit coming around as much as they used to. This brought about reevaluations of much of their behavior. It's possible to start missing something for the first time once it quits being shoved at you every day.

Some women decided they'd rather find comfort in the arms of another woman than change how they related to men. For them, we became a Godsend of increased opportunity, since our general sexual programming has always included both sexes. Others took the "Good for the goose, good for the gander," approach and kept the m—bot production lines humming, although never in the numbers of fembot production. Still others fought the changes vehemently.

There was a lot of screaming foul in the early days, and even new attempts to ban us entirely, none of which ever gained the necessary traction. When that didn't work, seemingly everything else was tried before giving in to the obvious answer: Just be nice.

Nice women always get attention. Always have — always will. Fembots are nice by design. Women became nicer by evolution.

Most men want a woman in their lives, even if they want a fembot there as well. Fembot-human exclusive relationships seem never destined to be the norm, although the special few who do bond this way are far more likely to stay together for life.

As Lady Heather once told me, "We'll never replace women. And we should never try to."

As I've realized since though, we've been a major force in improving society. The stigma remains that a man with a fembot is showing the world that he can't make it with a real woman. That's another reason why human-bot relationships take special people on both sides.

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One direct example of the changes robots are finally making in society is exemplified by a recent addition to our House named Toni.

Toni is an exceptionally sexy fembot of medium height with auburn hair. Everyone knows how sexy Toni is because the current House uniform has evolved to be basically heels and your remote — and nothing more. As Lady Heather I wear slightly more than that, but not much.

This trend cannot continue of course, since one can only get so naked. At some point the pendulum will swing back towards more modest being more appealing. Life in the House is always in the flux of replacing what's old and known with what's new and different.

Toni only works days, and her outside relationship is something new as well, and follows from my comments above. She works here several days each week, returning each night to a committed co-ownership arrangement with a married human male-female pair. But it's not what you might first think.

From our beginning married humans have purchased robots to help out around the home. That's how we were first marketed. It's a far more acceptable image than that of obedient sex-toy. And even when the Emancipation arrived, many robots in such roles choose to keep on performing those duties, delaying their own Emancipation until after their original owners died even when their minds had developed full independence. This was a traditional family setting in the twenty-second century, and the robots always knew they were of good service here.

Toni's role is nothing like this. While her ownership record obligates her to both her human co-partners, this is her choice. And in return, they have filed Civil Union papers giving her an equal share in the marriage.

Now this is not bigamy for several reasons. First, bigamy refers to a human being simultaneously married to more than one other partner. While this has been expanded to include marriage to more than one partner of either sex, it has never been expanded to include robots, perhaps because marriage is not the normal robotic form of commitment.

Secondly, bigamy laws are typically written to prevent fraud. In this case where all parties being fully informed and consenting, no fraud is possible.

Thirdly, while the battle has been fought against the World Government usurping ever more personal rights and freedoms, that government continues to be their own worst enemy. In their own pandering way they paved the way for this type of arrangement because they have taken great pains to not offend societies that still allow plural marriage.

As a result, there has been no zeal to update worldwide bigamy statutes to conform with the changes in modern society. It is another loophole for robots due to human inaction, and the peculiarly human blind spot that you can somehow choose to offend anybody and still maintain that you actually stand for something.

In Toni's case, her Husband and Wife had been out actively searching for a third robot partner. In Toni they found a 'bot who might best be described as a grownup Malin with different hair — and a regular fembot's price tag. This was more clever design and marketing, since so many children had once had Malin or her sisters as childhood friends.

Toni, newly independent and on her own, was looking for a family environment. It was love at first sight.

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Sex is shared equally in their triangular relationship with three equal sides, and happens more often than in a typical marriage since any interested member can virtually always find a second interested party. Even after the children arrived, the adults all sleep together in one big bed.

Children were always in the plan, and once the allotted number of them arrived, Toni's wife became a stay-at-home-mom, while Toni started working, along with her husband, to support the family.

Toni works days here and watches over the kids at night, being more sensitive to their cries than even their birth mother. She is the first one up at night to deal with any problems.

Lest you think that Toni is being taken advantage of, she'll be the first to tell you that not only does she love everything she does, but that their relationship is surprisingly egalitarian.

While Toni's income is the highest at the moment, they couldn't live as they do without their husband's income as well. And his long-term opportunities for advancement are far better than hers. Additionally, with the three of them there is always a babysitter they trust when any two of them opt for a couple's date night out — and they do it in all combinations with each other as time and schedules permit.

Another advantage is the additional insurance their children have against the tragic loss of all their parents — or a loved one of their only spouse. The value of this can never be overstated.

I'd have to say that Toni's contribution to our family and the House has been a very successful, new way of looking at relationships that we hadn't previously considered — along with a real world working example of same.

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Then one day Bill returned to us — especially to me. It would be one of the best times of my life!

It started when Toni answered the door and a young man she didn't recognize asked for Lady Heather, saying to tell her that it was Bill.

I must confess that I didn't immediately make the connection upon receiving Toni's silent summons, since I wouldn't have expected Bill to be asking for me. Then I had to face the same barrier Anna once had in this regard.

In order to keep the confusion down, rather than refer to Tom who was Paul who was Bill who is planning to change his name to Bill anyway when he gets the chance, I'll simply refer to this person as Bill from now forward.