Chapter 12: Alphadroid Dorothy

Dramatis Personae: Frank _____ - Lead character, creator of Alpha Alpha - First Artificial Intelligence

Mobile Copies of Alpha: Beta aka Bayonetta aka Elizabeth Alana Franks (cyborg) Gamma aka Jasmine aka Jasmine Marza (cyborg, from Aladdin) Delta aka Elisa Maza aka Elizabeth Marza (cyborg, from Gargoyles) Alphadroid Dorothy aka R. Dorothy Waynewright (android, from Big O)

Artificial Women (in order of arrival): Kasumi Tendo (from Ranma 1/2) Daria Morgendorffer aka Daria Morgan (from Daria) Jane Lane aka Jane Lannister (from Daria) Kara Zor-L aka Power Girl aka Karen Starr (from DC Comics) Rei Ayanami aka Rei Ayanami Ikari (from Neon Genesis Evangelion) Anna Marie aka Rogue aka Anna Marie Raffen (from Marvel Comics) Princess Diana aka Wonder Woman aka Diana Prince Walters (from DC Comics) Zatanna Zatara aka Annabelle Tara Zane (from DC Comics)

This part of my story starts, oddly enough, before the new character is 'fully functional'.

Way back when Alpha and I were planning for different possible characters to bring to life, one of the options was to create an android. The idea was placed on the back burner for a number of reasons, but since our facilities and Alpha's capabilities had been expanding over time, she had devoted more and more time to possible designs.

Our work on advanced human prostheses dovetailed nicely with those designs, and since we had Alpha to do the programming, only the unifying physical designs were needed. True, some of those design elements were challenging, most especially balancing the power requirements with possibly battery supplies, but the challenges were not insurmountable ... and the character build was underway.

The character in question is R. Dorothy Waynewright from the anime, Big O.

Giving a surface description, Big O is a generic giant robot cartoon, but the setting and characters make it uniquely cool. Actually maybe 'unique' isn't the right description, though the setting is fairly outstanding: a mostly urban landscape where the entire world population lost its memories 40 years ago, leaving the land full of domed cities, amnesiac people, androids and the the remains of giant robots.

The lead character, Roger Smith, is pretty much an anime version of Batman. Just like Batman, he's a rich, handsome playboy with lots of gadgets and is friends with the chief of police. Just like Batman, he drives a black car tricked out with weapons and defensive measures. Just like Batman he has an elderly butler who knows his secrets and has a variety of surprising skills. And just like Batman, when a big fight starts, he calls for his own personal giant robot, Big O. Uhh, on second thought, strike that last one for comparison purposes.

If Roger Smith is Batman, then R. Dorothy Waynewright is Robin. She's an android built to look like an old inventor's daughter (except that maybe he never had a daughter). I'm not going to go too deep into the details of the character; you can just watch the anime if you're interested. Dorothy has many very human-like qualities and even shows traces of emotion on occasion. She seemed to take a definite pleasure in needling Roger, such as insistently waking him up with her piano playing if he sleeps in too late.

Work on the actual body was underway by the time Gamma and Delta were activated, but the android stayed secret for most of a year after Gamma and Delta.

Caltech had announced it was hosting a robot design competition the next July for any group whose robot met certain basic requirements. It was co-sponsored by a dotcom billionaire who was putting up $500,000 in prize money for the best designs (to be divided up as $100,000 prizes for each of 5 categories of competition).

I really shouldn't have to point out that we were building the world's most advanced android at the time, but in our application we were careful to provide demos which only slightly exceeded the requirements.

By the time July rolled around, the 'Alphadroid' as we were calling it was fully functional in every important respect, though it still looked very much like an 'it' instead of the 'she' it would eventually become. (Well, if you want to be technical, the one we were taking to the competition was an 'it' and the second one being built alongside it was destined to be a 'she'.)

In household news, Gamma and Delta had just been hired on as research assistants at AARD but had not yet been invited to move in. I wanted the invitation to be suggested by someone else in the household first, which was taking time to arrange. They hadn't yet shown signs of individual personalities, but I still had hope.

Daria and Jane were on summer break. Rei had gotten her pilot's license. Kasumi was taking summer classes on her way to becoming a licensed nurse. Kara and Anna had started going to community college self-improvement classes like pottery making and computer use and things like that. Zatanna had started doing small stage magic shows in Dallas. Diana was splitting her time between AARD and volunteering for the Red Cross.

AARD had been testing the nanowire surgery unit for government approval and was starting the same for the artificial eyes. The company had started getting a few unsolicited applications from all over, many of them from very qualified applicants, but Alpha and I hadn't yet decided if we were actually going to hire any outside researchers.

Despite feeling like I had lost all of my free time, I was still enjoying myself thoroughly. True, I had to start insisting on at least one or two days a week without sex (instead of just hiding out in the basement) to avoid feeling too drained. Fortunately my goal of bringing to life characters that I enjoyed spending time with (non- sexually, that is) was working great. Since I really liked the household women, I didn't need constant sex to have fun with them (and wouldn't have survived if I did need it).

Still, I liked the idea of treating the robot competition as a Vegas vacation. Not that Vegas itself held a huge attraction for me. I've never been much of a gambler, but with a bevy of beautiful babes to escort me, I was willing to give it a try.

In the weeks leading up to the trip, Zatanna and others gave gambling lessons to the household so we would all know how to play roulette or craps or poker or blackjack. It also added new evening activities, which led to interesting games like strip poker or the roulette wheel of adult activities.

Transportation was going to be an issue. Beta, Gamma and Delta absolutely could not fly on a commercial airline. They had way too much metal in their bodies. The other women might be able to make it through security, but certain types of scans would still show their brain implants. If one of them was selected for a random search, the extra metal in their heads might be discovered.

Plus, we had a few hundred pounds of sensitive electronic equipment and computers to transport as well.

We weighed the costs and risks and finally decided it needed to be a split transport. Beta and Delta would take a carefully packed, temperature controlled rented truck. The rest of us who were going would take a small private jet rented for the week. Gamma stayed home to (secretly) play caretaker. It was hardly the cheapest option, but it was the safest.

The competition started Tuesday morning, so we flew out of DFW on Sunday afternoon. We had hired a professional pilot, who had interviewed Rei and agreed to take her on as co-pilot.

Once we were up in the air Kara, who was sitting next to me, pulled out a small cloth bag.

"All right, Frank. Draw a name."

"Huh?"

"Come on, pull a name out of the bag."

I reached for the bag, asking, "Why? What are you planning?" though I had my suspicions.

"Everyone wants to join the mile-high club, and this is the only fair way to pick out who gets to take you to the back of the plane."

I guess I should point out that there was a small storage/conference room in the back of the plane with a lockable door between it and the main cabin.

I sighed. "I am such a push-over with you ladies. I just let you all run my life, don't I?"

"Don't pretend you don't know what's going on here," supplied Jane. "You knew what was going to happen when you rented a private plane."

"But I'm innocent, dahling."

Daria, a lover of classic TV, got my reference. "Oh no you're not. You're guilty. It's written all over your face."

I laughed, looked at the blank faces around me, and complained, "Doesn't anyone watch classic Daffy Duck cartoons anymore?"

I finally pulled out a small slip of paper and unfolded it. Written in big bold letters was "KASUMI". Personally I would have doubted that she would have even put her name in the hat ... umm ... bag.

In a way, I was sure that Vegas would be entirely unsuited to Kasumi's temperament, but she still eagerly came along. Now I was sure that she would be embarrassed to death that everyone would know we were going to have sex in the next room. Yes, she would have sex in group situations, but this would be too much like sex as a performance where she was on stage. Still, I saw no alternative except to try to pleasure her enough to distract from any possible embarrassment.

I stood up, walked over to Kasumi's aisle seat and offered her my hand.

"My dear, sweet, beautiful lady, would you do me the honor of accompanying me for a few moments?"

Sure enough, her face immediately turned as bright red as her asian complexion allowed. I intercepted one of her hands as it moved to cover her face and kissed it.

While her eyes were hidden, I looked around briefly and scowled at a couple of the ladies who were obviously trying to hold back laughter. They quickly composed their faces as I tried to raise Kasumi to her feet.

Zatanna, who was sitting in the seat next to her, leaned over and whispered in her ear. Kasumi gave a nod, and the two of them stood up together.

I led the way to the back of the plane, stood aside when the passage narrowed too much and let the ladies enter first.

The conference room had a table that could fold out from one side, with padded bench seats that could be lowered from the walls on either side. At the moment, everything was folded up and we had our luggage in there. I stacked the luggage on one side and lowered a padded bench. When I finished this and turned around, I found that Zatanna had pulled Kasumi's dress over her head, laid it aside and was making out with her, her hands roaming across the smaller woman's body while their mouths were locked.

I paused and considered for a moment. There was no chance of oral sex right now, since we had no shower or bath available. (Kasumi would barely agree to give or receive oral sex after a thorough cleaning. To try right now was out of the question.) I sought out a few small hand towels and laid them out on the bench, then joined the ladies.

While Zana occupied her mouth and attention, I lowered Kasumi's panties to the floor, then together we maneuvered her to the bench. I kicked off my shoes, lowered my pants and underwear, and guided Kasumi's hand to my half-hard cock. Without opening her eyes or ending her kiss with Zana, she started stroking me to a full strength erection.

While she was attending to my hardness, I started fingering her nether lips and flipped up her bra cups, joining Zatanna in giving attention to her nipples and breasts. Her nipples were diamond-hard and her pussy was swamped with wetness.

After only another moment of foreplay, I spread her legs and thrust into her. The position was slightly awkward. Kasumi was half- reclined on the bench with one foot on the floor, the other let hoisted over my shoulder. Zatanna acted as Kasumi's backrest and continued to give attention to her upper half while I pounded into her lower.

As it turns out, one the really fun things about fucking on a small plane is the air turbulence. Even with clear weather, planes still randomly jostle up and down, which really added a random element to coitus. Sometimes a thrust would gain some unexpected power. Sometimes I would end up pulling back further than I expected, but Kasumi's body would also bounce up with me, keeping me from unintentionally pulling out most of the time.

It was probably about a 15 minute fuck, punctuated regularly with squeaks and moans from Kasumi. I'm sure we were audible in the main cabin, but of course I didn't point this out. When I came inside her and she joined me in a final orgasm, she graduated from squeaks to an actual orgasmic outcry.

After we had rested for a couple minutes, Kasumi excused herself to go clean up in the restroom. When she had gone, Zatanna took a towel and started wiping me clean.

"Thank you, Z. I'm not really sure why she put her name in the hat, but without you, I'm don't think she'd have been able to enjoy this."

"Oh, she didn't. I did. Put her name on the list, that is."

"Why?"

"So if she got picked, she might have a chance to loosen up a little. So is that it for you, or are you good to pick another name?"

She just had to go and make it a challenge, didn't she. I pulled up my underwear and trousers and said, "Sure, let's go fetch the bag."

Kara was the second name out of the bag. She had me in the female superior position, riding me so I could see her huge tits bounce with both her and the plane's movements.

After Kara, we were only 20 minutes out of Las Vegas, so I finished getting cleaned up and dressed again. When I retook my seat, I was pleased to see Kasumi snuggled up to Zatanna. Apparently Kasumi had remembered to thank her. (Not sexually, but emotionally.)

For the record, Zatanna was one of the names chosen on the flight back, and she invited Kasumi along to reciprocate.

I had reserved some fairly expensive rooms at the hotel/casino/convention center where the competition was being held, so the hotel provided us with a couple of limos to pick us up. It wasn't my first time in a limousine, but it was rare enough for me to just sit back and enjoy the ride to the hotel.

We called Beta on the drive over, so she and Elisa (who had arrived this morning with the truck) were in the lobby to meet us when we walked in. The check-in was still underway when Beta and my phones rang simultaneously.

Over the phone I heard Alpha's voice say, "Someone is breaking into the truck. I have alerted the..." I pulled the phone away from my ear to bark out a few orders.

"Beta, take Diana to the truck. Someone's breaking into it." Turning to the desk clerk, I continued, "The security system on our truck just reported a break-in. Would you please call the police?"

Of course, the thing is that we didn't have a security setup for the truck. It was just a rental. A nice rental, but not one that would call my cell phone in case of a robbery attempt. Alphadroid in the back of the truck had detected someone talking, then cutting off the padlock and opening the door. It had then called the police, called Beta and myself and started uploading a streaming video of the incident to our private company web server.

When Beta, Diana and Kara (who went along unasked) reached the truck, the rear door was open and the contents apparently untouched. By then, Beta had been able to download the video to her phone and played it for the others, as well as for hotel security when they arrived a moment later.

I'd like to say the ladies had a rousing and exciting chase scene with acrobatic leaps and dodging in and out of traffic. Trouble is, they didn't find the would-be thieves. When the police finally arrived 15 minutes later, casino security had found the robbers and had them in custody, as identified from Alphadroid's video.

The video made it pretty clear-cut. It started in darkness, but if you cranked the audio all the way up, you could hear muffled voices talking about computers. Then there was a metallic cracking sound followed by a thump (the lock being cut off). The rear door to the truck rolled up, revealing two men with one of them putting large clippers away in a backpack. The video zoomed in on each of their faces.

An obviously computerized voice said, "Attention. Facial recognition failure. Please be advised that you are breaking and entering into private property. The police are being notified and video of this incident is being uploaded to a secure server. If you approach this unit, you will be restrained until the proper authorities arrive."

The audio spiel repeated itself a second time until the men, obviously startled, left at a quick pace.

Once the uniformed police officers heard the value of the contents of the truck (over $500,000) and saw our unexpected little video, they sent for a detective, who came and took our statements.

After introductions and our general background was given, I introduced Detective Mills to Alphadroid. Well, introduced him to Diana first, since she (as head of AARD security) had stationed herself by the truck until we could get it re-secured.

"All right, Detective. This is Alphadroid."

Alphadroid was still sitting down in the back of the truck, with its legs out in front of it. There was padding around parts of it and straps holding it in place. It was about 5 ft tall, a genderless humanoid with pale white-ish skin. The head had two human-looking eyes about midway down an oval head with a sharp chin. Though you couldn't see it at the moment since it was closed, the head had a working, human-like jaw.

I unpacked one of our laptops as I talked.

"Alphadroid is here to win us the robot competitions. We're the only company with a single robot to enter in all five categories. What happened earlier was because the observational security was enabled. It's far from being ready for public use, but basically it alerts us when an unknown person or persons enters its designated secure area. It has an excellent facial recognition system with all of our employees in the database. When those guys opened the door and none of us were with them, it triggered the alert."

"In the video, it said something about restraining them?"

"Would you like a demonstration? Here..."

I plugged into a USB port on the back of the head and fiddled with software settings. Or rather, I made it look like I did. Of course, Alphadroid actually had a full copy of Alpha loaded, just like Beta, Gamma and Delta.

"All right. I disabled the outgoing alert options, so it won't actually make another 911 call. And reactivated and ... here, let's all step out of view for a minute."

We all waited out of sight of Alphadroid while I continued.

"What will happen is that you'll be warned verbally. If you get within reach of it, it will grab your arm and not let go."

"You mean, you're going to have your robot attack me?"

"No, it will just try to hold you until help arrives, and it'll only do that if you come within reach. It won't try to chase you or anything or let you drag it out of its secure area, but it also won't hurt you. And it will record the entire encounter and upload it to our website."

"And you're sure it's safe?"

"Absolutely. Look at it this way, if I'm wrong and you get hurt at all ... let's say if you get anything more than a mild bruise at worst, then I'll pay you a million dollars out-of-court settlement."

I'm not entirely sure how reassured the detective was, but he was willing to give it a try. He stepped into view behind the truck while Diana and I waited to the side.

As soon as he approached the back of the truck, the same obviously computerized voice said, "Attention. Facial recognition failure. Please be advised that you are breaking and entering into private property. The police are being notified and video of this incident is being uploaded to a secure server. If you approach this unit, you will be restrained until the proper authorities arrive."

I motioned him to go on inside. A moment later, I heard him say, "Hey. This thing is fast. And strong."

Alphadroid said, "Please do not struggle. You will be restrained until the appropriate authorities have arrived," and repeated that over and over.

Diana and I entered the truck to see Alphadroid's left arm holding onto Detective Mills' right wrist. When the detective strained against the grip, Alphadroid's arm would move with him slightly or angle the grip to avoid damaging his wrist but the robot arm would not let go.

"Recognize user: Frank one. Release."

Alphadroid's hand sprang open and the arms moved back to their neutral positions beside the body.

Detective Mills rubbed his wrist a bit, but said, "I gotta admit, you're right. That thing is strong."

"Yes, it is. Strong enough to crush a brick to dust, but it's very well programmed."

"Isn't it dangerous to have something grabby like that just laying around?"

"No, for a number of reasons. First, the security mode is off by default. I'm guessing one of my people who drove over with the truck had turned it on for testing. Second, even if it is on, as long as someone from our company is within sight, the security routines won't be triggered. Third, if there is no defined secure area, then no alerts can be triggered. But as I said, I think one of my programmers was using this to test the security software, so the truck was defined as a secure area. Finally, even if it does get triggered, anyone from our company can turn it off with a simple verbal command. The only reason anything like that could have happened today was if some unauthorized person broke into Alphadroid's test secure area ... which, of course, is exactly what happened."

"How much did it cost you to build?"

"That's a bit of a misleading question. The parts in Alphadroid itself there only cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $400,000. The costs to research, develop, program and test it were significantly more."

That was a lie. If we ignore labor costs, Alphadroid only cost about $75,000 to build. Any other company in the world trying to duplicate Alphadroid would spend millions to do half as much. When it comes to engineering designs, virtual testing, refining those designs, and efficient execution of those designs, Alpha is quite literally in a class all by herself. To avoid raising TOO much suspicion, we agreed to a price tag of $500,000 for Alphadroid and its control/programming systems as a package ... and then to refuse discussions of the development costs if at all possible.

"And if you win all of your competitions you'll get, what, half a million?"

"Not quite. As it understand it, there's $100,000 in prizes for each of 5 competitions, but each competition has first, second and third prizes. If we win first place in all 5, I think we go home with $300,000.

"But Alphadroid here wasn't actually built for the competition. He was built as part of our development and testing for other products, such as next generation artificial limbs and things like that. The eyes you see there are already in testing for public release. We expect to have them authorized for marketing sometime within the next year or two.

"The competition is just a good platform to showcase our upcoming tech products to other groups in the industry ... and let the inner nerds in my staff and myself geek out."

"So you'll be having a press conference about this," he said gesturing to the truck door.

"I hope not. We're not interested in announcing our products to the public yet, just to others in the industry. Heck, we won't even be the ones manufacturing and selling the products. We develop the tech, patent it and lease the manufacturing rights to other companies."

"Other companies who will be attending the competition, right?"

"Yes, or so we hope."

"One other question, when it was talking to me and I was up close, I thought I heard music playing from somewhere."

"Huh?" I said brightly. "What ... ummm ... here, let's see." I replayed the original video on my phone and cranked the volume all the way up. Sure enough, we could hear a faint drum-heavy theme playing.

I started laughing ... laughing so hard that I started wheezing and had to sit down. When I got enough of my breath back, I said, "It's the Terminator theme. One of the guys stuck the Terminator theme into the robot's security warnings."

The others laughed a little, obviously not enjoying the joke as much as I was. Alpha's sense of humor wasn't always funny or appropriate, but sometimes she really hit my funny bone.

The detective went off to talk to a uniformed police officer and came back a minute later.

"The thieves' van is a row over," he said gesturing. "They have a bunch of computer equipment inside, so they may have broken into other trucks before they got to yours. We'll be talking to other competitors at the hotel here."

"Can we reseal our truck?"

"Sure thing. They never actually made it inside, so there's nothing we need from there. We've taken all the pictures we need. They were wearing gloves on the video so dusting for prints is pointless. We do need a list of the equipment they could have stolen with estimated values. And we need the cut lock and the original copy of that video your droid took."

"The rest of it is all yours. The video though is ... well, getting you a copy of everything is no problem. But the video isn't actually stored anywhere permanently until it reached our web servers, which are in Texas. Alphadroid here doesn't have the read/write storage capacity to save everything it sees. It just spools it in temporary memory and if it needs to, it dials out on a wireless connection and uploads the data to us to be saved."

"Okay, then we need a copy with an affidavit confirming the authenticity. I'd also like you and Miss Diana to give a statement at the station before you leave town."

"No problem." I whipped out the phone again and looked at my schedule. The competition would take up most of the next two days. No, that's not right. It didn't start til Tuesday and it was only late afternoon Sunday right now.

"Hmmm," I mused. "We'll be here til Saturday morning and the competition only runs Tuesday and Wednesday ... we're treating the rest of the week as a vacation ... so how about tomorrow. Is there any particular time that would be best?"

"Usually late morning is good. Say sometime 10 to 11?"

"I'll be there ... umm ... where exactly?"

He handed me his card. "And if I'm not there, someone else can take your statement."

"Thank you, detective."

"Hey, thank you. I wish all of my cases had such nice video of the actual crime. Most security video is grainy as hell."

As he left, I called Kara to see if she could find a new good- quality padlock for the back of the truck. A minute later, as if he had been waiting for the police to leave, the hotel manager showed up and apologized profusely for the trouble. He comped me our rooms for the night and assured me security would be increased for the parking garages.

Kara arrived about the time he left and we re-sealed the truck.

With that little side adventure mostly over, we went up to our rooms to settle in for the week.

We had two connected suites of rooms, each with three bedrooms centered around a living area and kitchen. I had a bedroom all to myself and all of the ladies doubled-up (Kara/Diana, Kasumi/Zatanna, Daria/Jane, Beta/Elisa, Anna/Rei) ... not that I expected to sleep alone.

That evening, we went out for dinner and a show, seeing the current Cirque de Soliel, or whatever it's called when it's a bit more adult version of the show. It wasn't actually X-rated, but it was very suggestive and we did see bare breasts. Well, I think we did. It's hard to tell with all of the flesh-colored skin-tight outfits they had. Regardless, it was a beautiful performance.

Back at our hotel that night, Daria and Jane showed up at my bedroom door, each dressed in brand new, provocative lingerie. I felt like a schlub when I welcomed them wearing old boxers and socks. I felt like smacking myself on the head and saying, 'Have I no romance in my soul?' I did my best to show only appreciation for their loveliness, not disappointment in myself. I spent over an hour giving them both as many orgasms as I could manage, which I hope made up for my initial pedestrian appearance.

Monday was a full day. I set Beta and the gang to work, getting Alphadroid prepped and the systems put together and run through their paces. The auditorium/competition floor had temporary walls set up so that each team could set up in secret, which meant that I didn't get any sneak peaks of the other robots.

We were also all given a preview of the actual competition materials and tracks. Although everyone had been given the specs, this was the first time we had seen the actual equipment to be used.

The five events were:

- obstacle avoidance, fastest time wins