Self Harmer
Self Harmer By BA
Connie was enjoying her well-earned break. Although her body never fatigued in the human sense, she was programmed to emulate the pressure of her job’s long hours and really appreciated time out as she and Mark spent a week on a sunshine cruise. He was out sea fishing while she relaxed on-ship and read retro fiction novels in the sun. Hers was a conservative design; perfectly human in appearance with a shapely but not extravagant figure and a kind, pretty face framed by her dirty blonde bob. She was not the sort of catwalk stunner to draw stares wherever she went but was a funny and attractive woman, perfectly designed as a comfortable everyday working wife.
In her bikini she drew more eyes than usual with her surprisingly firm curves on display; her taste for paperback fiction rather than eyewear playback or other modern media marked her as rather eccentric and gave fellow passengers an excuse to let their eyes linger a little longer than politeness would otherwise allow. Connie didn’t mind a bit, she was proud of her body and liked the idea that the men - and some women too - passing by were noticing how good she looked; nobody would guess she was just a machine which made it all the more fun.
Between the paper pages; which she read slowly, word by word, for the decadent pleasure of taking up time; she looked around at her company on the sun deck. Most people were obviously human – nobody would build an android with the sagging body or bad skin which modern lifestyle left so many people with. There were good-lookers here too though, she supposed some could be human-real robots like her but she doubted it. Much more common were the ‘fantasy’ type models that she could see all around.
It wasn’t so much that they were unrealistic but that most androids were built to someone’s ideal image – a little too extreme a stereotype to pass as human. This wasn’t a cheap holiday package so there were plenty of top-end models here to look at. Some of the sports units were quite open about themselves; hard to pretend when your skimpy swimwear shows off joints and maintenance panels as well as your perfect plastic physique. Connie had no problem with these honest girls being what they were but she found the impossibly busty Barbie dolls acting the part of human women despite their fake bodies rather ridiculous. At least she herself was designed within plausible parameters, these bimbo-bots should at least admit to what they were.
She smiled as another glossy girl made of legs, tits and platinum hair gave up her place in the sun and went for the shade. The temperature was soaring and Connie was glad she’d been out early to snag a lounger by the rail where the sea breeze took the edge of the sun. She ran a quick self-test and found all systems normal, at this sort of activity level she could easily run all day without charging and could practically forget she wasn’t human. The hot sun even minimised the power needed to keep her skin temperature up. Her body was very well designed and she probably cost more than most of these other androids. She turned the page and read on, loosing herself in the twentieth century romance with the sound of the sea and murmur of happy voices in the background.
“Thank you.” Connie smiled at the pretty young waitress who placed her drink beside her; she was a tiny brunette whose tight little body was hugged close by her uniform board-shorts and crop-top.
“My pleasure ma’am, is there anything else I can get you? It’s very hot; would you like to join our snorkelling trip to cool off?” Connie knew her limits; swimming was not on the agenda for her on this holiday or any other. Her body was well waterproofed for showers and baths or even a hot-tub but to go swimming was to risk catastrophe, not to mention her uniquely inhuman buoyancy profile and complete lack of any swimming software.
“Thank you but I’m very happy enjoying the sun with my book for now…” The girl smiled again and left her to read. Connie reached for the frosty glass and registered its icy cold surface through thermocouples in the synthetic flesh of her fingertips, she took a sip and frowned, it really was very cold indeed. She registered the iced soda at well below zero C, very odd. She put the drink down and began a new chapter but the drink troubled her slightly for some reason. Why… How could it be so cold? She turned the page and realised she hadn’t registered what she had just read so turned back. Still troubled by something she couldn’t quite put her finger on, she was also rather pleased with herself for the, oh so human, absent-mindedness.
Re-reading the page. Connie was annoyed when it suddenly dissolved into big-pixel blocks. She blinked and her vision restored for a moment then jumbled up again. She looked around and found that her worldview had become jerky, intermittently freezing and then rushing to catch up with big areas disintegrating into coloured blocks. She made to sit up but found her body did not respond as she wanted, jolting awkwardly rather than rising up smoothly on her elbows; the book fell from her hands as it dawned on the pretty android that she was malfunctioning.
“Oh!” the gasp was quite loud as her arms jerked and dropped her back on the lounger, she heard her glass crash to the deck and saw several faces turning towards her in surprise, their movements broken into digital snapshots. Connie realised that she was going to suffer a serious malfunction in front of all these people and there was nothing she could do. A string of system errors confirmed her fears. She had malfunctioned once before, over a year ago now, but then her diagnostics had given her ample warning to find somewhere discrete at work, call for technical support and shut herself down. She could not understand why this episode had come from nowhere and made the mistake of trying to sit up again; if she could get back to her cabin she could save the worst of her embarrassment.
The robot woman registered a fatal error as her conscious struggle to control herself diverted resources from self-correction. Her system abandoned its attempt to rectify the fault and automatically cut power to Connie’s motors to minimise further harm; it signalled the machine’s need for assistance by emitting a harsh beep from deep inside her chest and opened her CPU panel to allow emergency access. Connie collapsed limply on her back on the angled lounger; arms hanging to her sides as she saw a square of her skin below her breasts sink into her body and slide upwards revealing several winking lights, buttons and ports.
“Wait… Oh! What’s… what?” Connie couldn’t seem to hang on to any thoughts as she slumped helpless, looking down her own motionless body. She saw her nipples harden through the thin bikini and realised that she felt incredibly aroused by laying here, a helpless machine for all these people to see. She struggled to speak to the same pretty little waitress as she hurried over, concerned; she felt an overwhelming urge to explain, to say that she was normally completely reliable, that she didn’t know what was wrong. She was smart enough to realise that struggling to speak would only make things worse by tying up resources trying to make her failing systems respond but found compelled to keep struggling, hearing her own jumble of words become more urgent and take on a breathy, sexual edge. She felt her pussy moisten as she realised she was going to climax loudly very soon and the more she tried to control herself, as she couldn’t help but do, the harder it would be.
“Oh! I.. I’m not, no… I can’t seem… oh my…” Her voice sounded over the beeps from her core as the waitress touched her with icy hands. She watched as the slim little fingers reached inside her open body then her existence winked out.
Connie lay face up, straight and still with her wide crystal grey eyes aimed ahead, expressionless, lifeless, deactivated. The ship’s ‘bot-tech had removed her bikini which was on a hook in a clear plastic bag with her book, sunglasses, bracelet and watch. Her wedding band was still on her finger as it was a permanent part of her robot body, the two tiny fibre-optic ports on its underside being the main interface with the processors of her electronic ‘brain’. Her hand lay palm down so that the ring interfaced with a control output on the hard repair table.
“You see here Mr Blair, these regulators must have been slowly frying for over an hour before they shorted.” The technician indicated two misshapen black plastic lumps on a surface mount board inside the inert android woman’s lower belly; she was open from the waist practically down to her smooth pink pussy with electronic parts spread in sad disarray around her. “Most androids wouldn’t have lasted any length of time at that operating temperature; your wife is a very well built machine. The thing I couldn’t understand is why she let herself get so hot, she’s an intelligent unit and well programmed so I checked her sensor logs.” The white-coated man showed Connie’s concerned husband a handful of computer printed code, pointing at the relevant lines.
“Here you see?” Mr Blair was clearly none the wiser, “She never registered her internal danger temperature … which let me to…” He plucked a tiny component from deep in Connie’s open chest with a flourish, “this!” Disappointed with the lack of reaction to his brilliant piece of fault-finding he explained in calmer terms that Connie’s temperature processor was faulty, that it was in fact service-life expired and should have been swapped out several services ago.
“So you see, it wasn’t your wife’s fault at all, she was functioning perfectly in every other way. I’d be happy to write you a statement to pursue her maintainer for damages…”
“I see, yes I’m quite angry, that would be very helpful. But for now, can you fix her? Do you think there’s any serious damage done?”
“Oh no, most of the harm will be to her pride I should think. I can replace this and the regulators from stock, the ship’s sex models are compatible, no charge of course. She’ll be as good as new by this evening.” Mr Blair’s relief was evident. “Should I reprogram her? I can delete the incident or tone down some of the emotional impact if you like?”
“Err… No, thank you. I think I’d like to leave her as she is and deal with things online, at least for now. Just make sure she’s not going to be hysterical or too embarrassed to show herself!”
The tech showed Connie’s husband out of his workshop before beginning his work to fix her helpless deactivated body.
Connie inspected herself in the mirror. Mark had gone fishing again today and she had decided to enjoy a lie in followed by a long bath with her trusty novel. She was operating perfectly again after her malfunction yesterday. The tech had explained the problem very kindly, showing her the burnt out components and where he had fitted replacements inside her open body before he sealed her access points again while she lay and watched. She had been fascinated to see her internal systems for the first time and had marvelled as mechanisms jerked and moved inside to cause her graceful feminine movements on the surface.
The android admired her firm legs and flat but not too hard tummy as she turned to and fro. She had always been confident and happy with her looks but now she couldn’t stop thinking about what lay beneath the humanlike surface of her body. She imagined the intricate internal mechanisms moving as she moved, the little electronic indicators, the lines of code that made her who she was. She now appreciated just how much of an engineering masterpiece she was, something she had never considered until yesterday.
The pretty wife unit smiled as she recalled last night. She had been a little nervous before dinner, facing all the passengers who had seen her malfunction, it was a good thing the waitress had shut her down before she’d become truly x-rated. The technician had explained that a sudden malfunction could often trigger simulated emotional responses as an android’s human emulation software was forced to operate in uncharted territory; a sexual reaction was not unusual. But Connie had never been ashamed of herself and had faced the evening with her head held high and found that nothing worse than a few knowing glances were in store for her.
Throughout the evening though she had felt curiously self-conscious; more and more aware that she was nothing more than an expensive and intricate machine, a possession of her husband, a plaything, a toy and not the real woman she had always felt like. She had practically dragged Mark to bed last night and she felt her body respond again now as she remembered the intensity of her climax as she thought of her internal robotics while he made love to her.
In front of the mirror she watched carefully as her nipples hardened; fully aware, as she had always been, of the programmed code and electro-mechanical responses that made it happen but which she had never consciously dwelt on until now. She watched as the microscopic fluid ducts to her synthetic vagina caused it to moisten in response to an arousal algorithm and her tiny sensor rich clitoris to harden. The smooth pink skin glistened and she realised she had become greatly more aroused than usual without Mark or other company to interact with. Connie let her finger trail a feather light path through the dewy sheen and tasted herself; the sensations were wonderful and she touched herself again, letting her finger linger between her thighs. She imagined her systems processing the increased demand as she began to masturbate alone for the first time.
Connie concentrated for a moment and her control access opened and withdrew up into her chest so she could see her system indicators winking in the mirror, the sight turned her on more than ever and she sank to her knees in front of her reflection. She concentrated harder for a moment and ejected her paplexus panel, a sub-panel to the big part of her abdomen, which the tech had removed to repair her. The little trapezoid clicked out from the smooth tan below her belly button and she placed it aside on the floor, her other hand how rhythmically strumming across her hot wet clit as exposed lights blinked just above.
The naked android woman quickly brought herself to a small orgasm, just enough to make her shudder and cry out softly. She was so wet, she couldn’t believe how much being an android was suddenly turning her on, she couldn’t wait for Mark to get back… in fact she couldn’t wait at all! She quickly began exploring herself again, sitting with her legs spread towards the mirror and admiring her plastic flesh and exposed robotics. She could see the two regulators nestling amongst a forest of wires and tubing deep inside her open paplexus access, right down amongst her sexual hardware, she had never needed to open the access before but automatically understood each and every component she saw. She remembered the helpless uncontrolled ecstasy that had overcome her on deck; the robotic feeling had been so strong.
Still masturbating, Connie reached into herself, squeezing her slim hand between mechanisms which moved occasionally, and very gently eased the component lock open on the uppermost regulator…