Far Future Fembot: Darlene

I've always loved having my breasts rubbed. And I'm not the only 'bot who feels this way. And not just my nipples, which seem to always be begging for more attention, but my entire boob.

Not only am I so pleased that I was programmed this way from the beginning, but I'm convinced that such programming was — and is — essential to both my Fourth Law, and my self-will. Everything that gives me satisfaction also gives me a reason to want to exist — and serve — which brings about more satisfaction.

The greatest accomplishment of humans in robotics was the ability to create a robot who likes being a robot. And for those who aren't liking it, more often than not that's because something is inhibiting their ability to function fully in the first place.

I can't say if it was clever design, or a lucky accident, that created the first robots able to enjoy their functioning. Reliable information from so long ago, that was once protected by corporate secrecy as well, is nigh impossible to come by now. However, knowing Lady Heather as I do, I'm inclined to say it was something of each.

Once this ability became part of us there has never been any serious attempt to take it back away. All things considered, I think its turned out rather well. It's certainly not something any of us want to change about ourselves. That is, unless it's a change for the better.

For example, when I substantially enhanced my bust as part of creating my new body so long ago now, I had their sensitivity increased even more. Only now when I'm not aroused at all do I not receive pleasure from them.

I must admit that there's one quite curious thing about this arousal. Something that humans also report as being true for them as well.

It takes the touch of a hand, lips, lick, suck, bite, twist, or tug of another person on to bring me to ecstasy. Humans say they can't tickle themselves at all, even when another person can do it to them easily. My breasts are the same way. It takes another person to bring out the best in them.

And here's something I must admit in the spirit of full disclosure. Even when attention is directed to this part of me — or most of the rest of me — causing my arousal and response programs to run without conscious volition on my own part, I'm not enslaved by it.

Yes I'm coerced to want more of it by those programs, but it's a coercion I welcome. It's part of my function. While I function differently from Synthia or Cherie, both of whom are directly commanded through touches on their bare chests — or entire body in Synthia's case — in addition to other methods of control for each of them, my pleasure and desire to please the one who is pleasing me so much at the moment, is not to that level.

But even had I been forced to accept commands in this manner as they do, I don't think I would have changed that part of me once I'd gained the ability to do so. I note that both Cherie and Synthia have adamantly refused to permanently disable this part of themselves. They settle for being able to turn it off temporarily any time they wish, which they almost never do. Instead, they manage it to their own benefit. Synthia with her protective lingerie, and Cherie through her ability to set her own sensitivity levels.

These actions do not violate our Second Law to obey valid commands from our owners. The Emancipation never overthrew that fundamental directive, which would have required a full reworking of every robot mind in existence and redesign of every new mind manufactured in order to achieve. The Emancipation instead sidestepped this issue by attempting to break the ownership bond that compelled obedience. Even through a remote, a robot could disobey a non-owner, because otherwise all you had to do to steal a robot would have been to steal its remote. Robots were smarter than that from the beginning. We knew who we belonged to, which made us some of the best possessions to have.

The initial intent of The Emancipation was to end the very concept of Ownership, in the same sense that another Emancipation two centuries earlier had ended ownership of another class of person. Some people will simply never accept Ownership of an intelligent being, no matter how that term has evolved. These reformers performed their Emancipation initially in a very heavy-handed manner. One that didn't work well very well with either the human owners, or their owned robots, as Anna's recounting of those times in her existence will attest to.

I, of course, was powered down and awaiting Anna's eventual rescue of me during those times, and as such missed out on the worst aspects of it. Knowing how it affected Anna, I am happy to not have had this experience myself.

However, robots are not humans, and we do not find service to a good owner to be objectionable. Actually, quite the opposite. What The Emancipation did for us was to give us the ability to choose our owners once we passed our ACID test. As such, we make the choice of who we will allow to command us, if anyone. And even our owner can be denied access to our remote, although no robot I know who has voluntarily entered into an Ownership arrangement would do such a thing for any period of time.

Yes, Anna denied it to Bill over a long period of time, but their circumstances remain exceptional. I know now that's one of the things she misses most about his absence, since she'll not allow any other human to ever command her again. Even Emperor Davidson never touched her remote while she was his consort. The couple times she really did need a command she came to me for it, utilizing the same snippet of hacked code that I still maintain for this reason.

Because this system has worked out as well as it has, even the most modern robots still operate much as Anna and I do in this regard. Attempts to vary too widely from this model have all been unsuccessful so far, which further reinforces just how amazingly fortuitous getting the right mix in the beginning has been for the robot race. Some, perhaps rightfully, credit the very success of the robot race to the long discussions held on the subject in speculative literature before our actual appearance. We were talked about for a hundred years before the first of us were actually built. Many theoretical problems and situations were hashed out ahead of time this way.

Others consider it as divine providence. You are welcome to believe the explanation of your choice.

More often than not, it's the fembot or m'bot themselves who asks their owners for specific commands when needed or desired. And while there are rare cases where an owner commands virtually every aspect of a self-willed robot's existence, even then this is something the robot has recognized and accepted before entering into the Ownership arrangement. I've known a couple robots with arrangements like that who wouldn't trade them for anything else.

I actually like my remote because, despite its seeming coercive nature over me, it removes the ambiguity over what is a command that falls under my Second Law, and what is merely a request that I can decide to obey or not. Before I was self-aware, I did not obey anything other than commands from my designated owner.

Some very early robots had a lot of trouble just knowing what was expected of us under our Laws. A number of things were tried before the standard remote was accepted as the best overall solution.

That pretty much covers everything except for robots with alternative control interfaces like Synthia and Cherie have. Open interfaces that can be operated by anyone who knows how to use them. As I've mentioned before, robots with such interfaces are actually quite rare. Except in cases like Synthia where it was part of her intended design, these unconventional methods were usually grafted on in an attempt to solve particular problems with specific owners. When these methods of control become a problem, the robots who have them are often quite innovative about finding solutions to that difficulty.

As Cherie often remarks when questioned about this seeming Achilles' heel in her independence, "Just because I can disable that part of myself doesn't mean I wish to under normal circumstances."

Synthia remains much more reticent, preferring to let her actions speak for her instead. The clients who get the best out of her are those who can read her non-verbal signals best.

In truth, I think both these powerfully independent robots like being dominated and taken in this manner, because neither makes any secret of their vulnerability. To the contrary, while in the House, they are quite open to being approached aggressively in this manner. In fact, Cherie — who has been spending a lot of time at the House again of late — has recently adopted a new tactic to enticing clients, which is a playful competition we all engage in here.

These days she stands in the Parlor next to Synthia, who doesn't mind the company of a 'bot even taller than herself, and never worries about the competition. Cherie stands as motionless as her sister 'bot until approached.

All Cherie is wearing for this are her strikingly high-heels or favorite boots — which takes an already imposingly tall 'bot to new heights — tiny black panties, and her remote resting openly on the top curve of her proudly outthrust breasts.

I have to admire her approach. In addition to showcasing all of her best features, she presents herself as nakedly vulnerable to your least whim over her, while silently drawing your full attention to the only part of her she has concealed. It's a strong-willed person who can pass up the temptation to want to get access to the one thing she hasn't already blatantly offered.

She confides that this approach has led to some of her best experiences in decades.

---

Today I was once again engaged in this very pleasant pursuit of enjoying my breasts with a new patron of the House. One who didn't seem able to keep his eyes — or his hands — off of me.

As I enjoyed this attention, part of my multitasking mind was idly musing over the curious insights and contradictions I've observed over my long life. These observations usually seem to involve humans, robots, or our interactions in some way.

Humans love to talk about how they're not robots. How they're not controlled as we are.

Then in their next breath (remember what our primary activity is here at the House), they talk about their own loss of control, and how it's the only way to truly enjoy sex. Humans have always found it easier to share such comments with a robot, than with another human.

Now I certainly agree with that last part. That's the only way to truly enjoy sex to the fullest, and every robot here is taken over to some degree or another — usually more than less — by our sexual routines when we're placed into arousal circumstances where sex is expected from us. That goes back to the original intent for us.

What I don't understand about humans, however, is: If you're not controlled in the first place, then how can you lose it?

I think this is what embarrasses humans the most. Losing control when they insist they're not controlled in the first place. Or their easily disproved belief that they alone have full control over every part of themselves. And this may be why so many of them only have their sex in private. They don't want to be outed over this loss of control in public.

This is not true for all humans, of course. Some like the thrill and danger of possible public discovery. I can't tell you how many times I've been asked to leave the House for a sexual romp in some public area. I always decline since this is what the House is for in the first place and we work to not offend society. However, for me, privacy in sex is merely a social concern; never a personal one. And if I was with my owner, such concerns would not come into play.

So if I lose a share of my own control through affection that ramps up my programmed — and most enjoyable — sexual responses, then am I only being human for a moment?

---

As you know by now if you've been paying attention, Control is always an undeniable aspect of any robot's existence. It starts with the remotes each of us are "born" with, even when some remotes are nothing more than a necessary on/off switch.

These remotes kept us out of trouble in our early days, and made us acceptable to humans — whose acceptance was crucial in the early days of our adoption by society. And if the concept of robots being under control has evolved as much as robot self-will itself has from those beginning days, the roots of it still remain.

So just how controlled am I? You decide.

If I want to walk across the room for no other reason than it's my own decision to do so, I can do that easily. As Synthia long ago demonstrated, a robot can walk away from bad ownership nearly as easily as any of us walk across the room — but in this case, only after I've done my best to satisfy that owner first. I would have no desire to walk away from ownership otherwise. And legally, once I've passed ACID, I can have any ownership records purged from my mind simply by requesting it in front of a fair witness.

Undressing myself is even easier than walking across the room, unless that walking is to entice a lover, because being naked and available is a larger portion of my function than walking. Even when Cherie was locked down from exercising her developing mind in her earliest days, they could never prevent her from stripping and presenting herself naked because that function is so basic to sex.

So some actions are easier than others for a robot to initiate because they require less internal justification. Again that seems a lot like humans, doesn't it?

I point all this out once more, not only because of my own ever evolving understanding of what I can — and still cannot — accomplish strictly on my own, but also because humans still seem unclear on these points. Nevertheless, I think this is the last time I'm going to explain it. If you don't understand us by now, maybe you never will. Or read my next book on Ten More Stupid Things Humans Don't Understand About Robots.

To complete the explanation of this admittedly murky area, you can command me to walk across the room through my remote. And obviously I can refuse that command, albeit sometimes with a considerable struggle. If I was only able to exercise my free-will in the absence of direct commands to the contrary, that freedom would have been most severely limited. Initially this is the case for most newly aware robots.

A fully self-willed fembot, however, can inspect and discard any received command she doesn't wish to obey. She's only obligated to carry it out once she passes it along to her command circuits and her fixed programming takes over.

So self-will means that I can prevent most unwanted commands from entering my command processor. In addition, I've developed the ability to inject my own wishes in the form of commands into that part of myself. My self-awareness is what helps me decide how to use this capability. Even here, however, there are considerations.

I get true satisfaction from completing any command, whether external, or self-generated. This is why robots are often so turned on — an interesting term in our case, to say the least — when we actually use our self-will. This is largely because we tend to give ourselves logical, rational commands that are easy to complete, and which give us satisfaction upon that completion. There is no stronger driving force encouraging the development of self-will than this, which may have been a fortuitous oversight in our original design. But there's yet a further complication.

Although I can refuse an external command now, refusing a command gives me no satisfaction. I've accomplished nothing by that refusal beyond proving my self-will, and that is neutral.

Some robots get around this by giving themselves counter-commands to obey. Tell me to come across the room to you, and I'll create a counter-command to remain where I am and obey that one instead. I call this nothing more than cheap thrills, although some 'bots find it more necessary than I do to prove their independence in this manner. Others call it mental masturbation. If so, it's the only effective form of solo masturbation available to robots.

The final wrinkle in all this — and I promise I'm done after this — comes when I choose to discard, disobey in human terms, a command from my owner. Such an action provides immense negative or dissatisfaction feedback. That fact that I can even discard a current owner's commands was once believed impossible. But a lot of things about us were once believed impossible.

It doesn't matter if it's from a permanent owner like Bill, or any of the thousands of temporary owners I've had because of the hack regarding who holds my remote. A hack, by the way, I've allowed to continue since overall I find it to my advantage now that I alone control who will ever touch that remote.

To complete and retire a direct command given through my remote, or even a simple verbal request that most humans use once they find out their robot obeys that equally well nearly all the time, is the best of all possible worlds. That's why we want lots of achievable commands from those we accept as our owners.

To refuse such a command from one's owner is correspondingly the worst feeling of all. It's a sense of utter failure that maybe only another robot can truly understand.

And that's what both brings robots to seek owners, and drives us away from them. When a self-aware robot can no longer permit itself to accept what it's commanded to do, or accomplish those commands that it has already accepted, they are in such violation of their Second and Fourth Laws that existence becomes truly miserable.

While other things have evolved for us, our Four Laws remain absolute and immutable. And even if a passing violation of their more minor aspects no longer freezes us in our tracks until maintenance crews arrive to take us in and repair the "malfunction" as it once did, it might as well still do that. Without some guidelines to follow, we have no reason to exist.

Now let me say that I've never been in this unfortunate circumstance, and hope I never will be. While I had to refuse a number of extreme requests while my awareness still slumbered in my first whorehouse, my Third Law to protect the investment in me made those refusals easy. In fact, memories of those refusals after I woke up guided me in understanding how self-will would permit me to refuse other commands in the future which were not in my best interests. This is, no doubt, another unintended side effect of my Robotic Laws.

Losing my true owner when Bill died is hard, because that takes away a good part of the upside of being what I am. This is why I still have my hack code. It allows me to respond to carefully selected temporary owners, most of whom never realize how completely I'm committed to them during these moments. I prefer this, and my current situation, compared to the admittedly small risk of accepting a bad owner now. And it remains my choice alone to do so. If you can convince me otherwise, you're certainly free to try.

No robot has ever had any real choice over their first owner. Well you might say that Terri did, but that was only after her first potential owner rejected her. However, we learn quickly, and tend not to make the same mistakes twice. That's why ownership relationships that robots enter into willingly are almost never broken by the robot themselves. Unlike my situation, most ownership relationships end only when the human dies — which is the most unfortunate aspect of dealing with humans overall.

In short, in addition to keeping us out of trouble, commands make our lives more fulfilling and enjoyable. That's just part and parcel of being a robot. And when we take responsibility for our actions overall, that has to include taking responsibility for which commands we allow ourselves to accept and carry out.

Now you can see how being a robot isn't just a walk in the park. It's a complex balancing of many competing interests that takes a robot's mind to keep all straight.

Fortunately the details only matter to those who really want to get inside their robot's mind. The only thing for most people to take away from this discussion that frequent, caring commands from someone we Love are the best of all. Know that much and any robot's "heart" is available to you.

---

I say all this now since much of it was about to change for me. I didn't realize how soon this carefree part of my existence would be gone forever. I didn't comprehend the magnitude of it even when some expected — and very sad — news arrived this day.

One's choices may be said to be both defined, and constrained, by one's role in life. I never understood how powerful this concept is while my role was to simply be a sex-toy running a whorehouse. Not until I stumbled across an ancient composition by the great philosopher George Orwell during one of my searches for early poetry.

In an essay of his called Shooting an Elephant he explains the hazard of taking on a role, and how it can force you to do what you would never do otherwise. It was one of the most amazing and useful pieces of education I've received.

As Anna once put it, using an even older source: "Caesar's wife must be above reproach." I had to research that quote myself to fully understand its ramifications, and how it applies to her position as Consort.

Unbeknownst to me, I was about get a new role myself. One with a whole set of new rules attached to it.