Epilogue: A New Research Project

Eight years had now flown by since our wedding day. She was about to finish her residency in family medicine, and I had been spending my time managing our various investments. I had finished my education with a Master's degree, as the lure of creating things had begun to outweigh the desire for further education. Jason, on the other hand, was in the throes of finalizing his Doctorate in Robotics. Clara had become 'the next big thing in art and design' and was just about to open her new gallery as the artist in residence. She was also a partner in a boutique that sold the latest in fashion, with her as the principal designer. Jason was so proud of her that he carried pictures of all her works and designs in his phone, ready to show anyone at any time. They had been married since the year after us, and were still insanely in love with each other.

Jason was also evaluating an offer from the University to head up its Robotics programme. His name was getting quite widely known, as he had been called upon to consult on the design of several different crawlers and mobile robots that were destined for use on missions to Mars, a couple of asteroids, and one of Saturn's moons.

One of his other accomplishments had to do with the types of students he had been attracting into the programme. Surprisingly, a number of women had applied to study robotics, and the University itself was seeing an increase in the number of female applicants to its science and engineering programmes. The reason for their interest was not something the University liked to talk about, but it did like to talk up the statistics concerning the number of women in what were considered non-traditional studies.

The reason for all of this interest was a little sideline that Jason and I had started a few years ago, accompanied by all the women in our lives. The trigger for it had been a comment that my slave had made during a visit to see Rhonda and the rest of us. During a conversation at a naked breakfast, she had complained about the lack of innovation in sex toys, and idly wondered whether she should start designing her own.

"The problem is that I know what I would like them to do, but I have no idea about how to make them do what I want. I've talked to a couple of different companies, but they haven't really been able to grasp what I'm looking for, and all any of them really want is to throw together some cheap piece of plastic that they can make a quick buck from. I'm looking for something that has a good design, can be sold for a reasonable price, and will provide stimulation beyond what a basic vibrator will do."

An idea started to tickle the back of my brain, and I glanced sideways at Jason and smirked, "Sounds like a job for a sex robot."

Jason nearly choked on a mouthful of eggs, and Clara looked at him with concern, then glared at me. "If he chokes I'm going to beat you to death with a wooden spoon, and you know I will." Jason put a hand on her arm as he regained his breath, then turned to look at me.

"What's going on in your evil mind?"

"I'm just thinking out loud, but consider this ... most sex toys are of the handheld variety—vibrators, dildos, clamps, and so on. At the other end of the spectrum you've got rather ugly machines that tend to be noisy, not all that safe to operate, and are usually something that was cobbled together from parts of a power tool."

"Okay ... so?"

"So what if we design a collection of sex toys that are easy and comfortable to use, fully programmable by anyone, and totally safe ... no uncovered moving parts, no possibility of electrical shock or burns. I think the ultimate would be something a woman could even use in the bathtub without risk of anything except drowning."

"Are you thinking of a replacement for a blow-up doll? An actual sex robot?"

I grinned at him, and could see that my slave was following our banter closely. "Well, let's not overreach ... maybe one day, but for now I'm thinking of a huge improvement on a Sybian, or the kinds of mechanical arrangements that are basically a rocking horse with a dildo. Picture something that a woman could sit on, or lie on, that would lead her to an orgasm like her best lover, or even her fantasy lover. Something that she could set to stimulate her softly, or that she could program to pound her hard, or even switch from one extreme to the other as her arousal progressed."

I could see that he had gone quiet as he often did when he was thinking through a design problem. He started speaking slowly, 'thinking out loud' as I had been doing. "You might be on to something, but I have no idea how to design anything like that." He paused for a moment, looking around the table at the naked women surrounding him. "Of course, we do have a collection of assistants right here, so we should be able to test our prototypes pretty easily." He glanced at my slave, and asked, "Would you be able to help us out with design and testing?"

"Not only that, but I can probably find lots of willing volunteers through my stores."

"I think we may have a viable line of business here. You and I can supply the technical expertise for the robotics and the software, my little slave can be our primary user interface designer, and the rest of the women assembled here can be contributing designers and beta testers."

While we all laughed about the concept at the time, we soon had a few preliminary designs that my slave liked and the other women expressed an interest in trying out. We made the company a real entity a few weeks later, and the serious work began.

When our new equipment began to sell, we set up a manufacturing arrangement with another company, and started distributing samples to other stores. Word soon spread via various social media, and our new toys were well on their way to being a hit within months of our new manufacturing arrangement starting up.

Unbeknownst to us, some of the chatter on the social media forums had to do with the design of the equipment, and how well the various items worked for the average woman. This led to a lot of on-line discussion and speculation about where the ideas had come from, and who had been involved in the design. It took a while, but someone managed to ferret out that the designers were a couple of geeks, one of whom was a robotics specialist; we could never prove it, but we suspected that the leak had come from the manufacturing company.

Jason suddenly found his robotics lab being visited by swarms of pretty co-eds, all volunteering to test his latest designs. As much as he denied having anything to do with the machines, the women steadfastly refused to believe him. He finally resorted to declaring that only robotics engineers could test any devices that he designed, thinking that he might put an end to the visits from horny young women. Instead, Stanford suddenly saw a sizable increase in the number of female applicants for engineering in general, and the robotics programme in particular.

When the trustees of the University started asking about this new, but advertising-worthy circumstance, they were at first quite pleased. Once they determined the underlying reason, support started to dwindle until a couple of the female members of the Board asked for personal demonstrations of our devices. That suddenly put an end to any protests from the other trustees, and the Board decided to simply accept the benefit and to not perform a dental examination on an equine present.

The sex toy company had continued to grow, and we had contributed several other designs to its product line. We had found an excellent company manager, so most of our involvement was to assist in the research and development, and to cash the cheques as they came in. We didn't need the money, but it did help contribute to the development of other ideas we had, and we did need some liquid cash to buy groceries.