Becoming the Perfect Wife
Becoming the Perfect Wife
Maybe it was always just vanity.
None of the other partners are androids or gynoids. I still have a great record in court. I have no problem getting clients. I absolutely look and feel my age, and could stand to lose 20 pounds, but the doctor says I’m healthy.
My youngest entering her senior year of high school must have affected me more than I wanted to admit. Or maybe it was my eldest getting married last spring. Or maybe it was the new junior partner that looked like she belonged on a TV show about lawyers, not in my law firm. I knew people at the firm called me a bitch behind my back, and have for decades, but I could feel myself getting shorter with people. I was drinking more. Everything my husband did seemed to annoy me. My therapist was about ready to leave town because of me.
Still, it was a difficult conversation with James. It would involve emptying out a huge chunk of our savings and retirement accounts at a time when we were about to start putting our fourth child through college. And James was frank with me; he was afraid that - given the current tension in our marriage - this was a prelude to me starting over with a younger man.
I countered with the advantages. I could operate for 22 hours a day without fatigue if I stuck close to a power source. I wouldn’t come home from work exhausted anymore, even if I put in 100 hour weeks. I’d have perfect control of my mood. There would be no more menopause symptoms. And I’d look like a fashion model.
I had to offer a lot of concessions. The uploaded copy of my brain could be manipulated, and I had to agree to some personality changes. Fidelity was at the top of the list, and I quickly agreed. I pushed back on some of the directives to put James and the kids first, but it ultimately felt a bit selfish. I was using a lot of family resources to improve myself, after all. They should get something in return.
Then came the sex stuff. I’ll be honest, I love him dearly, but my husband sucks in bed. I’ve had about a dozen different partners in my life, and he’s the worst. And it’s really hard to get excited about sex when you know you’re in store for an underwhelming outcome. I was never cruel enough to tell him that directly, so we danced around the issue. I agreed that my chassis would have a short trigger when it came to orgasm, and that my new personality would be a bit more ‘eagerly amorous’. I pushed back on some of the kinky submissive stuff when he gingerly brought up the idea, so that was at least one argument I won. I think I actually laughed when he brought up making my asshole better for sex. I had never done anal with anyone. However, he made a good point that I wasn’t going to be using it for pooping anymore. We compromised on a self-lubricating, sensitive channel without any vibration, ridges, or anything else that was closer in form to a fleshlight than a human anus.
The last concession was the biggest. James would have the legal authority to modify me. I got the logic. The procedure still wasn’t common and every now and then the uploaded personality didn’t act as expected. If I became obsessed with work, or had an unhealthy notion of how the kids - and any future grandkids - should be treated, he could override it without the consent of my glitching mind. He played the “don’t you trust me?” card, and I folded.
Designing my new body was comparatively trouble-free. I sent the manufacturer a few hundred images of myself in college and law school and they sent back a 3D model. It felt weird obsessing over a nude image of myself, especially with my husband sitting next to me. But really, he was going to see plenty of the end result. We tweaked things from head to toe for about three consecutive evenings until we settled on a slender, dark haired beauty that didn’t look too much like any of my daughters.
I was probably the easiest sale the conversion provider’s sales rep had ever made. There were only two within driving distance, and I wasn’t about to fly to Los Angeles and back once a week. The other nearby option was run by this sleazy fucker on the city council and I wasn’t about to give him any business. And living the way I had been living wasn’t an option.
I think he was miffed that we already had a manufacturer lined up, even if it was from their preferred partner. I probably cost him a commission or referral bonus, but oh well. Every little bit of money we could save on this was going to help. He tried to upsell us on some of the chassis parts, but I cut him off.
We got the schedule done first. Start with the estimate for when the chassis would be ready, work forward to a time when the surgical theater and med staff would be available for an active brain scan, work backward for the 6-8 weeks of passive brainscans they needed to do.
I think James was more uncomfortable talking about reprogramming my future self than I was. Every time we brought up a change that didn’t quite fit the ‘successful bitch lawyer’ vibe I tended to give off, he felt the need to clarify that it was something I wanted or we agreed on and not something he was forcing on me.
The rep was helpful in explaining how it all worked. Programming a robot with how to react to every possible situation was impossible. The trick was to take advantage of a bit of human psychology. We all have a narrative about who we are and what we believe, it’s what makes changing our opinions so damn hard. The programming would change that narrative so that I not only wanted to act a certain way, not only instinctively acted a certain way, but would resist deviating from that narrative. And I’d still have enough of my original values to navigate any conflicts between narratives in the same way I’d always had to balance family and career.
The company had dozens of pre-set narratives that were further customizable. We started with self-worth and a ‘perfect woman’ narrative. Maybe the word ‘perfect’ was a bit corny, but I liked the thought. The particulars could have filled a paperback novel, but I approved the short description. "The perfect woman loves her children and husband more than herself. The perfect woman maintains herself physically and psychologically so she can better love them. The perfect woman is proud of her career. The perfect woman is unashamed of her sexuality. The perfect woman is pleasant and kind by default, and forceful when she needs to be."
The kids were grown, so I skipped an explicit ‘perfect mother’ narrative. I wasn’t comfortable with a ‘perfect boss’ or ‘perfect business partner’ program either. But we did do a narrative for the perfect wife. It was a little more submissive than we had discussed in private, but it wasn’t kinky enough for me to protest. I signed off on this one as well. "The perfect wife loves to serve her husband. The perfect wife has her own wants and desires, but is never angry when her husband's wants and desires take precedence. The perfect wife wants to make her husband a better man in the ways he wants to be a better man. The perfect wife has a high libido and desires only her husband sexually."
The last one was standard by the provider. They were also going to do my maintenance, so they had a definite incentive to make me generally compliant when I was doing things explicitly related to my new body. It was easy to sign off on it. “The perfect synthetic human considers themself no better or worse than a biological human. The perfect synthetic human does not regret their conversion. The perfect synthetic human enjoys their maintenance sessions.”
After that it was the legal paperwork. And of course I felt obliged to read everything. It was more paperwork than we signed to buy our house and almost as much as it took to set up my firm. I think I had to initial the form that gave James the authority to reprogram me 40 times.
We waited until a week before I started the upload process to tell the kids. My youngest seemed most concerned about if it meant he had to go to a public university rather than private now. My eldest made a comment of being the ‘old lady’ of the family, which I think came out less like a joke than she originally wanted. But there were no screaming matches, or declarations that they would never speak to me again. I would have liked some more enthusiastic congratulations, but I’ll take apathy.
Work went about like I expected. I told the other two senior partners first. Yves wanted to know if I would still be allowed to appear in court, certify documents, and all the other things I had been doing. Ida was already pondering how to spin it to clients and prospective clients. She had a whole new branch of our firm catering to ‘synthetic human’ issues built in her mind by the time I was done talking. I negotiated a paid leave of absence, fired off an email to the associates about taking time off for ‘personal renewal’ and started the process of making sure everything didn’t collapse while I was gone.
A month after the forms were signed, it was time to start the passive brain scan. Having a local anaesthetic applied to your scalp is a bizarre feeling, but it’s probably better than feeling a nurse permanently remove your hair with a combination of electrolysis and some cream that smelled like someone tried to clean up diarrhea with a lot of bleach and didn’t quite finish the job. It was also better than feeling the two dozen tiny cuts she made in my scalp to slide in some pea-width sensors between it and my skull before sealing them back up with superglue. She wrote numbers on my head next to each sensor, which still had a little bit of wire sticking out through the superglue. Then the brick came out. It was larger than a computer desktop from when I was a kid. It had one covered on-off switch and then spots for 24 wires to connect. The wires were loose at the computer, and at my head, but were thankfully bundled together in between. Each wire was numbered and I sat there quietly as the numbness wore off, letting the nurse clip the end of wire 1 around the protruding part of sensor 1 and wrap a little tape around it. Then it was number 2… number 3… I almost fell asleep. James followed along so he could detach and reattach the cables when necessary. They wanted me to wear it as much as possible, including while sleeping, but I’d have to take it off to shower. It was going to be a long six weeks.
It was mortifying walking through the office. Even with the knit hat on and the wires fed down the back of my blouse, everyone stared. Carrying around that big brick like a briefcase all day long didn’t help. I could rationalize it if people were talking about me being in the process of becoming a gynoid. They were going to find out anyway. I was worried everyone thought I had cancer and this was some ritzy new treatment. When I showed up with my new body, there’d be a narrative of pity. I could handle people being jealous of me. I could handle people being impressed by my change. I don’t think I could handle people thinking that I only did this because I had no other options. It felt like a bigger lie than walking around with a new face.
But the work got done, my docket got cleared, and the big day came. They had a list of approved supplements to help me sleep without messing with my brain, but they didn’t work all that well. James detached the wires from my head one last time and drove me to the medical center bright and early in the morning. None of the kids were interested in coming. They said they would see me when I woke up. Even James had scheduled a few afternoon appointments.
And I get it. There wasn’t much to see. I didn’t even have to sit down in the waiting room. I gave James one last kiss with my old lips and followed the pretty little nurse to the elevator. I didn’t ask if she was a machine. But I did try to figure out if the mechanical sounds were from her or the elevator. It was a good distraction.
The nurse led me to the room where the last of the transfer and programming would be done over the next week. I was supposed to get into the surgical gown and stash my belongings there. I realized then that this facility was not initially built for turning people into robots. It looked very much like an exam room, except there were two pods - horizontal like bunk beds - on one wall instead of a padded table in the middle. It looked like enough space for two sets of pods, but the second set would interfere with the door. A much larger room, or a set of smaller rooms would have been a more efficient use of space.
Or maybe I just wanted to look at anything except my future chassis. It was lying on its stomach, head turned to the side, totally inert on a thin bed extended out from the lower pod. There was a long gash in the skin from the base of the neck to the top of the ass letting a dozen cables connect from the pod wall to the interior of the chassis. I could see the black carbon-fiber spine and some of the grey muscles anchored to it. I crouched and looked at my new face. The head of the chassis was set to the side, facing outward, thankfully with its eyes closed. They had applied makeup to it already and it looked amazing. I looked over the rest of it. The skin was perfect, the thighs were cellulite-free, and I think they had even done a manicure.
I probably shouldn’t have messed with it, but I couldn’t help myself. I put a finger between its lips. They were soft, but dry. I guess that made sense, it wasn’t doing any eating or talking. I avoided the cables and gave its ass a squeeze. Yup, nice and firm. I checked the door to be sure the nurse wasn’t peeking in and nudged the legs apart just enough to get a feel of the pussy. It was dry too, but the labia felt real otherwise. I rushed to get out of my street clothes and into the gown, hoping that the total time would be right when I exited and met the nurse again.
I could have dropped dead right there when the nurse asked me, “Did you get a good feel of your new body?” I almost lied and denied it. Instead I just lowered my head like a child that had stolen a cookie before dinner.
“Don’t be embarrassed, Everyone does it. Most people aren’t handling them all day like I do.”
I mumbled out a response, “Did you touch yours?”
She seemed puzzled for a moment, “OH! No, I’m way too far down the totem pole and way too poor to have a gynoid body. One day though. I’m not sure how it will happen, but I want one eventually.”
I felt even more embarrassed. Thankfully she led me to the operating room without any more chatting. While the reading of my old brain and writing of my new brain would be automated and take almost two weeks, it required more probes to be installed. And it required those probes to be in the grey matter itself.
I had never needed major surgery before. I had been under general anesthesia for two dental procedures and a procedure for my knee, but those were outpatient procedures. I was expecting an operating theatre like out of a movie, but it was more like a double-sized version of the dentist office’s procedure room. The nurse had me lie on the operating table as she hooked me up to a saline drip.
At first, I thought it was another, younger, bustier, blonder nurse who walked through the doors. “Hello, Mrs. Cochrane. My name is Dr. Brittney Ngoepe and I’ll be performing your surgery today. How are you feeling?”
“Fine. Nervous, but fine.”
I felt a little racist that my first thought was ‘how interesting, an African woman chose a caucasian chassis.’ I thought about it a little more and ‘How nice, she took her husband’s name even though it’s African’ didn’t sound any better. I had already guessed wrong about someone being a robot once in the last ten minutes, maybe I was wrong again?
It was enough to keep me quiet rather than accidentally say anything racist or otherwise embarrassing out loud. She ran her tiny hands over my scalp and the sensors that were still beneath the skin.
“Just keep relaxed. That’s the best way to improve the quality of the upload. The less adrenaline, the better.”
The words were comforting. The sight of her pushing a cable into the skin on the underside of her forearm was less so, even when she repeated it on the other forearm.
“What are you doing?” I tried to control my breathing.
“Oh, it’s hardwiring my chassis to the robotic tools I’ll be using in the procedure. Human-sized hands are a bit large for neurosurgery.” She held up and wiggled her fingers, which resulted in some of the tools hanging above me to move too. At least now I knew for sure she was a synthetic woman.
The nurse reached into my gown to apply a few vital sign monitors. I shut my eyes, but hearing the preparations in the dark wasn’t helping my anxiety. I looked over and Dr. Ngoepe had another cable feeding into a now-empty eye socket.
“Is there any way you could do this after I’m under?”
The nurse chuckled, “I think the doctor did too good a job eliminating her stress responses. She doesn’t empathize all that well.”
“I empathize just fine, Jamie. Is there anything you’d like to tell us before you go under, Mrs. Cochrane?”
Last words. Oh joy. “Domo Arigato, Dr. Roboto?”
Dr. Ngoepe laughed, the nurse didn’t. Yeah, the Doctor was definitely closer to my age than she looks. And I was going to be in the same situation.
“Count backward from 100, Mrs. Cochrane.” Jamie slowly injected the anaesthetic into my IV drip. I vocalized the numbers, but I drifted off thinking about being mistaken for an intern at work.
I dreamed. And like any dream, I didn’t remember everything.
I remembered walking through a grocery store, pushing a shopping cart, walking behind my husband and children. We were all putting stuff in the cart and it was nearly toppling with the stack of just random stuff in it. I put stuff in there too, and usually they would take it out.
I was walking naked through the office. I tried to hide, but the partners found me. They made me work in the nude and no one seemed to mind.
I was in a stereotypical steel refinery with the giant cauldrons of molten iron while female-shaped mannequins moved around between the sparks on a rack like shirts at a dry cleaner’s. Then I felt myself swaying on the rack. I struggled but couldn’t get off. Dr. Ngoepe pulled me away and I was outside myself for a moment, watching her pull off my featureless head and put on my human head.
Then it was just a carpet of squirrels in my high school locker room.
I woke up with my eyes closed. I could feel the light material on my rising chest and the rest of my chassis. I didn’t hear it, I didn’t read it on a head’s up display in my vision, I simply knew the status message “Initial boot sequence complete for unit UX-49a4”. I was a machine and it filled me with an unfamiliar contentment.
I opened my eyes and saw James. Simply being in his presence for the first time like this consumed all my attention away from exploring myself. His pleasure, his enjoyment of this moment was my first thought. I smiled, partly because it felt so good to be focused on him, and partly because I knew he wanted to see me happy.
And I was immediately horny. I knew the increasing lubrication levels in my mouth, cunt, and ass. I knew the change in my breathing simulation and the changes my synthetic flesh were going through to indicate arousal. I loved the feeling, and I loved it more realizing James would like it.
Anything I could say would be filler. I wanted him, he wanted me, so I moved forward and kissed him. That kiss was the most pleasure he had given me in years. I couldn’t even be mad at him about it. I was in the moment, appreciating how great he was making me feel.
I could have kissed him forever. He was the one who disengaged. I still wanted to be close to him, so I rested my head on his shoulder. I still wanted him to know I was available to service him sexually, so I moved my hand to his butt.
He spoke to me, “So, how does it feel?”
He wanted an indescribable sensation put into words, but saying it was impossible to describe would be demeaning to his comment. All he wanted to do was show he cared. I felt so content being possessed by someone so wonderful.
I tried my best to tell him, "Absolutely heavenly. I didn't know how good I could feel until this moment".
With my hand on his ass, it felt silly to stop there. This was my husband, I wasn’t in a Victorian novel. Anyone who judged me for wanting to fuck this man was wrong, not me. I moved my hand toward the front of his pants. As great as it felt to be right here, I knew that he wanted to try out my new body, and it felt even more amazing to be desired. I knew that bringing him more pleasure would give me more pleasure.
So I said as much, “But I think we can top it.”
I barely acknowledged that the sales rep was leaving. But I supposed James would be more comfortable without an audience. I was surprised how little I cared about anyone seeing me get on my knees. It was silly of me. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying giving head to your husband. It was an expression of love to focus on his pleasure.
I didn’t think he would mind me starting without asking. Thankfully he had worn boxers, and it made it easier to get his cock free. I didn’t have much to work with, but damn. When my lips touched his cockhead it absolutely topped the feeling of kissing him on the mouth. It was more than arousal, more than contentment. It was bliss. I worked into a rhythm of running my lips up and down his shaft, letting my tongue play with the underside of the head. With the rhythm established, the pleasure ebbed and I could think a little more clearly.
I thought about the vibrating lips option I had turned down before. Now it sounded wonderful. But I wasn’t focused on using them, I was loving the idea of having them installed, of being customized. The thought of James customizing me sounded even sexier. Those were new urges, I hadn’t had them when thinking about being a robot, or pondering my chassis. It must be additional programming.
And that thought got me really excited.
I didn’t really notice how my excitement had increased my pace on James’ cock until it started twitching. Everything else faded away again as I felt his cum in my mouth for the first time in years. I felt complete. I had briefly dabbled in some hard drugs after college and before law school, and this was so much better.
I swallowed without thinking twice about it and leaned back to sit on my heels. James wiped a little of the leftovers off my lips. Maybe if I had been expecting it, I would have had the presence of mind to suck on his finger. I wanted more, but I understood it would be a while before he could go again.
He spoke to me, “Do you know what I did?”
I assumed he wasn’t looking for ‘you came in my mouth’ as an answer. “You added additional programming to what we agreed upon.”
I wondered what that programming was, and my body helpfully fed the short description into my awareness. The ‘Perfect Woman’ and ‘Perfect Wife’ descriptions seemed the same, but the ‘Perfect Synthetic Human’ description had been replaced with ‘Perfect Robot’.
"The perfect robot is subservient to its owner. It loves to obey. It loves to be programmed. It loves to be modified. It loves being a machine."
That explained a lot. James owned me, and it didn’t seem like a betrayal. It felt right. I was silicone and electronics now, it made sense to be someone’s property.
He - my wonderful owner - spoke again, “Are you pissed?”
I smiled at him. I probably should have been furious, but how could I be angry when becoming a machine -every part of it- had felt so amazing? I shook my head ‘no’.
“I’m perfect.”