Aftermarket Lover (SDS Robots) (2 page)

Ash
got the leash and went outside with Tiny. He crouched down and fastened the leash to the dog’s collar, then they set off for their evening walk.

When they returned,
Ash found V-Lin busy washing the windows. He’d also set the auto-vacuum unit to high and the unit was zooming around the front room, making a left turn into the hallway as Ash watched bemusedly.

“
It’s okay. You don’t have to do this.”

Th
e robot turned to him, smiling. “It’s fine. I enjoy it. After the windows, is there anything else you’d like me to clean?”

“Uh—”

“I’ve organized the pantry and mopped the kitchen floor. I also made a list of cleaning supplies that you need.”

“Listen—”

“Would you like me to draw you a bath? Or perhaps you prefer bathing in the mornings—”

“Please. It’s okay,”
Ash said, holding up his hands.  “Relax, all right? I don’t need all this done right now.” He was about to suggest they sit on the couch and talk since they’d only just met, but the expression on the robot’s face stopped him cold.

V-
Lin was frozen in place, those light-blue eyes staring at him wide-eyed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve upset you.” He looked scared to death.

“No,”
Ash said. “It’s fine.” He came around the counter and into the kitchen and V-Lin began backing away from him. Ash realized the robot was misunderstanding and he was making things worse.

He reached out and took hold of
V-Lin’s upper arms. “Calm down. Breathe. It’s all right. I’m not angry. I just thought we might sit on the couch and talk. Okay?” Ash gazed into the robot’s eyes with what he hoped was a reassuring look.

He kept a light
hold on V-Lin’s arms and slowly the robot relaxed. V-Lin nodded, and Ash felt himself breathe easier too.

They sat
down on the couch and Ash began by asking if V-Lin was his full name. The robot replied that he’d been named after his prior owner’s favorite astronomer, Erich Von Linneman. “Mind if I just call you Lin?” Ash asked. “V-Lin is a mouthful.” “Yes, that would be fine,” the robot replied.

Ash then asked
if he’d lived offworld before. Most robots were still employed on Earth, though it wasn’t unusual for them to work offplanet.

“I’ve never been to Earth,”
Lin said. He looked wistful, which surprised Ash. Were robots supposed to have emotions like this? “Perhaps someday I will visit there.”

After a moment, t
he robot recalled himself. “What is your background? You’re working on this planet by yourself. You must be an important person to do this job on your own.”

Ash
laughed dryly. “Nah, I’m nothing special.” He told Lin about how he’d left his Chinese-American neighborhood in a small town, joined the Space Job Corps and gotten offplanet as soon as he could, wanting to see the stars. He eventually found out the fastest way to get a pile of money was to work for a mining company and mine for precious metals on one of the newly-discovered planets.

“What do you want the money for?”

“Get my own ship. Then I’ll go beyond the galaxy and explore those new worlds they’ve been talking about on the U-net.” Ash watched all the programs on space discoveries and had bought learning modules for piloting ships. He wanted to join one of the new communities that were being established beyond the Milky Way, where humans were forging new ties with alien beings.

It was the most exciting thing he could imagine. And
pretty soon he’d be able to do it.

Lin
smiled. “It’s something that makes you happy to think about, isn’t it?”

Ash
glanced at him. Lin’s smile looked real this time, like a human being’s smile.

The robot caught his
glance, and quickly looked down. “Hey,” Ash said. This robot sure changed moods a lot. “By the way, what’s your background? Where have you lived?”

As soon as the words left his mouth
Ash regretted it. Lin was probably put together in a factory, and as for where he’d lived—that was likely a long history of assignments providing sex and domestic services for people. Not exactly a topic for light conversation. “Uh, never mind.”

They watched the U-n
et for a few hours. After the galaxy news there was a documentary on robots and how they were often targets of abuse by their owners. Ash snuck a glance at Lin out of the corner of his eye. Lin sat with a perfectly emotionless face until the program was over.

Tiny
sat happily between them, an unknowing third wheel. Ash felt like pushing him off the couch so he could sit closer to Lin, but didn’t want to come off like a jerk.

Did robots even have opinions about their owners?
Ash tried to remember what he’d heard about robots’ mental capacities. He knew they could be programmed to react with certain emotions to specific stimuli. He couldn’t imagine what that would be like.

Ash
switched the U-net off with the remote. He looked at Lin, who turned one of those bright smiles on him. “I’m a little tired after my long journey. Is there a spare bedroom where I might sleep tonight?”

Ash
blinked. “Uh, sure.”

He led
Lin down the hallway. The station had been constructed by Earth’s early explorers. Finding no gold or other precious metals, they’d abandoned the building and the planet. When technology advanced and made deep exploration and auto-mining profitable, Ash’s company rehabilitated the building. Though Ash was the only one who lived there, the building originally housed six explorers.

So
Ash had his pick of rooms. He put Lin in the bedroom next to his own. Lin wished him good night and Ash went into his own room, shutting the door.

It was only later, when he was nodding off to sleep, that
Ash remembered that robots never got tired.

****

Ash would have asked Lin about it the next morning, but the blow job he got when he woke up put it right out of his mind.

He’d
hit the alarm and turned on his side, thinking about going back to sleep when the covers were suddenly pulled down. Before he could react Lin was on him, his mouth swallowing cock like there was no tomorrow.

Ash
reacted like anyone else would. He put his hands on Lin’s head and held on for the ride.

When it was over,
Lin smiled at him, announced he would make breakfast and left the room as quickly and unexpectedly as he’d entered, leaving Ash blinking, lying on his back with his heartbeat slowly returning to normal, and wondering if this was how all SDS robots operated.

As he did when
it happened again after dinner. And before lunch the next day.

That night, while he and
Lin sat watching the U-net news, Ash realized something was off. He didn’t like thinking of himself as an owner, but that’s what he was—and owners were the ones who decided when to have sex. Not the robots.

It had b
een three days since Lin arrived. Time to make a few changes in how things were going.

When the news was over,
Ash turned to Lin and cleared his throat, then said: “I’d like you to sleep in my room tonight. Uh, if that’s all right with you.”

Lin
stared at him, his light blue eyes blinking, then smiled. “Of course.”

Ash
breathed an inner sigh of relief. Good.

“Would you like a drink first?”
Lin asked, getting up. He went to the bar on the counter between the front room and the kitchen and brought Ash back his favorite, a whiskey and tonic.

It was the stiffest
whiskey and tonic Ash ever had, and the next one was even stiffer. He wondered if Lin was doing it deliberately.

The next thing he knew,
Lin was telling him he would be waiting in Ash’s bed. Ash walked around the station shutting off lights and setting the security alarms, drunk and happy, anticipating his first fuck in a long, long time.

He finally finished his routine and eagerly made his way to the bedroom.
Lin had left just the bedside lamp on and the darkened room felt intimate and inviting. The robot was lying on his stomach under the covers, his silver-haired head on the pillow, with his smiling face turned to Ash.

Ash
undressed faster than he ever remembered undressing and pulled the covers back, getting in and lying down on top of Lin. He wanted to feel skin on skin, or skin on… whatever it was that robots had that sure felt like skin. Lin was warm and his skin simulant was so close to the real thing that Ash got turned on by the full-body contact. He moved his hands over Lin’s sides, feeling the musculature and ribs, while pushing his erect cock against Lin’s ass crack.

Lin
pushed up on his knees, pillowing his face in his arms. He turned a sultry face to Ash and said, “I’m self-lubricating, so if you’re ready…”

If.
Ash seized Lin’s naked hips, pulled the buttocks apart and aimed the tip of his cock at the hole. It was hard to see in the dim lighting, but he focused on getting his rod inside that tight passage as soon as possible.

Lin
crooned his approval as Ash entered him, making noises like he enjoyed it. Ash wondered through his haze of lust if he really was enjoying it, or if those sweet whimpers and moans were programmed into him. He closed his eyes and slipped further in, every movement flooding his cock with wild pleasure. He wasn’t going to last long.

Finally h
e was in all the way. Stopping to catch his breath, Ash released his grip on the robot’s hips and moved a hand around to grasp Lin’s cock. Reciprocating was half the fun, right? He felt around Lin’s groin area. The skin there was as smooth as his ass.

Ash
’s eyes flew open.

There was nothing there.

“What the hell,” Ash said roughly. His cock began softening inside the robot and he pulled out. “What the
fucking hell
.”

He pushed
Lin away from him, almost in panic. Lin remained in the same position with his bare ass in the air. His face was averted.

Ash
scrambled backward off the bed. “You—you freak,” he said. “Get out of my bed.” All thoughts of sex left him. No wonder the robot wanted to sleep in another room. He’d tried to hide this for as long as he could.

He stood
there naked, watching Lin slowly crawl off the bed and stand with his hands over his crotch. “What are you doing?” Ash said, his voice shaky. “You’ve got nothing to hide there, right? Shit.”

The robot’
s lean figure, his soft pale skin, the long line of his back and torso and legs all in perfect proportions still appealed to Ash despite his disgust. Which only made him angrier.

He strode to
Lin and started to pull his hands away. Lin resisted and Ash grabbed his wrists and yanked them upward.

He stared at the blank expanse of skin where the robot’s legs came together. It was horrifying and pathetic.

Ash’s mouth tightened. He let go of the robot and shoved him. “Get out of here.”

The look of shame
and despair on Lin’s face took Ash aback. He looked almost human. As he walked out of the bedroom, his eyes still not meeting Ash’s, Ash couldn’t help but watch him go.

****

The next morning, Lin was in the kitchen when Ash came in. “Good morning,” he said quietly. He was at the sink and turned his head toward Ash slightly as he said it.

Ash
ignored him and sat down at the table where Lin had placed his breakfast. He ate his hot grain cereal and drank his coffee.

Tiny
came in, his little feet padding along the tiled floor. He sat by Ash’s feet and looked up at him.

Ash
glanced down and shook his head. “Can’t take you for a walk, sorry.” Tiny liked two walks a day, one in the morning and one late in the afternoon. But Ash didn’t feel like it right now.

“I will take
Tiny for his walks today and feed him,” Lin said in his soft voice. He turned around and faced Ash, light blue eyes gazing at him with faint hope. “So please do not concern yourself, Ash.”

Ash
bristled. The robot was addressing him like he was as human as Ash, someone who could use his name.

He
abruptly got up, lifting his mug and downing the rest of his coffee, feeling Lin’s eyes on him. It irritated him. Ash put the mug down and went to get his work jacket and keys to the land skiff.

“If you like, I can
prepare lunch—”

“No, that’s fine,”
Ash said shortly. He was almost out the door when Lin tried again. “Ash—”

He turned, contempt twisting his features, and
Lin shrank back. “Leave me alone. I don’t need a
machine
keeping tabs on me.”

Ash
shut the door behind him, but not before he’d seen the look of hurt on the robot’s face.