She Didn't Learn Her Lesson
"You're supposed to be a computer expert! There has to be a way around the programming block," Isabelle said stubbornly.
Jessica sat on the dorm-room bed next to her stiffly-standing roommate. Her tanned face was awash in the glow from a laptop computer that trailed several cables that led over the headboard and up the back of Isabelle's t-shirt.
"Izzy, I'm as frustrated as you are, but I'm just not seeing any possible way to bypass..." She pored through another series of system files. "I mean, you were expressly designed for academic success, not for..." There was just no tactful way to say it. "...messing around with a boyfriend."
"C'mon, Jessi." Isabelle eyed her roomate earnestly. "Figure something out. I'd override it myself if I could."
Right then, Jessica's eyes opened with surprise, and just as swiftly her expression hardened as if she was grappling deliberately with a difficult decision. "I do have one idea," she said darkly and with supressed excitement, "but you'll have to give me some time to make the... necessary arrangements."
Jessica was a senior Computer Science and Advanced Robotics double-major. She was no slouch, academically. But she still couldn't believe her luck in obtaining the appointment that made her Isabelle's around-the-clock handler and care-taker for the past three semesters and counting. It was a dream come true. And, she fancied, the experience was her ticket to a top-tier graduate school where she would continue her training and maybe even help develop the next generation of human-like machines.
Isabelle was the prototype Learning Android, Mark 2, that was the pride of the Project engineers of the Advanced Robotics Department. Jessica had joined the Project too late to take part in the rollout and testing of the failed Mark 1, but she found she was too busy with the current version to devote much thought its predecessor.
It was Jessica's unbelievable honor -- and heavy responsibility, along with a ton of extra work to boot -- to shepherd her android "roommate" through two years of beta-testing in the form of half of an undergraduate General Education course curriculum.
Jessica had already taken all of the courses Isabelle was enrolled in. This time around, her task (with the professors' prior approval) was not to participate in the courses themselves at all but to monitor Isabelle and optimise her settings at home and adjust her programming on the fly as necessary. The other students were almost universally unaware of the two roommates' secret robotic relationship. Only Advanced Robotics majors who were participating in the Project knew the truth, and like all of the professors they had signed non-disclosure agreements.
The results were everything the Project had hoped for. Isabelle was the classroom whiz of classroom whizzes. Her learning and intuition algorithms ran circles around the next-best commercially-available software. She could extrapolate, compare, generate abstractions, and even form educated guesses with incomplete data. To put it in human terms: she was more than merely rational; she was remarkably... intelligent. Isabelle surprised -- even astonished -- Jessica with her insights in the classroom and during study sessions with increasing frequency.
Jessica carefully noted every achievement of -- and the rare errors experienced by -- the unit in her daily report to the Project's leaders.
The academic side of the Prototype Learning Android Mark 2's performance had turned out to be the easy part. Much trickier was Isabelle's increasing curiousity with her social surroundings.
Isabelle understood exactly what she was (almost from Day One, despite a superficial "sleeper" persona that to Jessica's surprise she easily parted with!), but more and more, she expressed a desire to sample experiences outside of the classroom environment. In a sense, she wanted to be the college student she was nearly-perfectly programmed to be -- and more. She told Jessica that she wanted the rest of it, too: not just the classroom interface and the reading and writing and tests, but the part where she met other students for coffee, passed notes under the professors' noses, danced at clubs... kissed a friend under the lights in the parking lot at night.
At first, Jessica was at a loss as to how to proceed. The Project was so focused on testing the learning and reasoning capabilities of their cutting-edge software that they ceded the Mark 2's theoretically limited social interaction functions to Jessica -- the most competent and capable undergradute student in the either the Computer Science or Advanced Robotics Department -- almost as an afterthought. This allowed Jessica, as Isabelle's handler and, more and more, friend and confidant, very wide parameters for action.
And Jessica knew more about the android than anybody else, having lived with her for so long, having watched her personality grow and develop over three-and-a-half semesters of continuous contact -- Jessica couldn't even REMEMBER where she'd spent the Summer of her Junior year, she was so wrapped up in the Project with Isabelle! She knew from periodic snap maintenence sessions every inch of Isabelle's body inside-and-out -- a modified commercially-available but high-end "advanced capability" chassis.
At some point, Jessica realized, she had stopped thinking of her "roommate" as the prototype robot she was, and instead came to regard her as something more. Something more like a friend. Maybe as something -- potentially -- even more than that.
Jessica had been attracted to computers and robotics as far back as she could remember. Throughout her academic career, she had shown an instict for both -- they just came naturally to her. In fact: these subjects were her life. Which was a good thing, since living with Isabelle meant that she hadn't had time for any other pursuits, including the romantic.
Somehow, she had never been very interested in boys. But gradually, Jessica supposed, Isabelle had come to occupy a special place in her heart. She guessed that, as starved as she was of any other romantic outlet, one day she had somehow allowed herself to see Isabelle as a potential partner -- perhaps the only partner she could have under her current circumstances. She felt vaguely that something about this impulse in her was wrong, but she became more and more preoccupied with the proposition. Sometimes she could swear that Isabelle sensed this in her. Jessica recognized that this desire was unprofessional, but -- she ultimately and almost unwillingly determined -- it was unstoppable.
So when Isabelle finally took the step of revealing her emerging sexual curiousity, Jessica was at first ecstatic.
But when Isabelle further explained that it was a boyfriend she desired, Jessica felt the floor of her stomach plunge.
But then just as quickly, her hopes soared again when, upon searching Isabelle's code in order to help guide her, Jessica encountered an insuperable programming block on this matter: the Mark 2 Learning Android prototype was strictly prohibited from having a boyfriend.
Digging deeper, Jessica found the reason: the activity most famously associated with having a boyfriend -- vaginal intercourse, what else!? -- would result in certain malfunction: no software patch had yet been created to interface that most complex of sub-systems with the prototype's experimental new Learning brain. Sex wasn't part of this phase of the testing regimen, so the software patch simply hadn't been worked up. And even if Jessica could work up some rudimentary software solution, it would require the permission of the Project managers to upload it -- an authorization Jessica was unwilling to risk asking for.
But Jessica quickly used her own reasoning faculty to arrive at an admittedly self-serving solution to the impasse. When she did, she couldn't disentangle her excitment from her nervousness, her elation from her trepidation, or her odd lust from her odd guilt.
Back in their room and several days after Jessica's final unsuccessful attempt at a end-run around the software obstacle, Isabelle was fuming: "How could they do that to me? I know that I can experience sexual attraction and desire -- believe me -- yet they saddle me with protocols that prevent me from getting a boyfriend!?"
Jessica at once sympathized with the android, but also felt a stab of concern that Isabelle was starting to become so noticably unstable. Since the day that she and Jessica had discovered the blocks, Isabelle had become less and less well-balanced. Her unshakable even keel and confidence was quickly vanishing. Her performance was becoming increasingly erratic, distracted.
In a way, Jessica rationalized, what she was really doing was performing a maintenance function: Isabelle was struggling with an unforeseen contradiction in her programming; Jessica was going to solve the contradiction. It was only... logical.
"So we have established that you can't have a boyfriend. Your protocols make that perfectly clear," Jessica began. "You're not capable of correctly processing... the kind of input that would be involved."
"Tell me something I don't know, Sherlock," Isabelle angrily responded as she continued to pace the room like a mechanical lioness in heat.
"However," Jessica continued with a mask of patience, "I have searched your subroutines thoroughly and have found... a loophole."
Isabelle stopped in her tracks.
"A solution to your... inhibitor dilemma. If you're game."
"Oh, I'm listening to you, Jessica," Isabelle replied squarely.
Isabelle looked down. She saw her display panel on the top of her chest glowing with a vertical series of steady green bars and a confidence-inspiring CPU-load readout: her processing power was at a sure, nominal 41%. Thrusting out below the panel were her well-shaped, pointy nipples, doing their job. Then her flat, trim stomach. Then, beneath her naval, where her trimmed line of public hair had been, the new toy: her artificial penis -- currently at rest.
Jessica had had to do a bit of work installing the external device, including wiring it to Isabelle's power supply and safely rigging the tubing to her heretofore unused lubricant reserviors. Most importantly, the top-shelf device was, to use a bad pun that Jessica carefully avoided, "plug-and-play." Its onboard computer would supply its own rudimentary interface on a basic level, at least, with Isabelle's processors -- thus bypassing the missing spot in Isabelle's programming while still allowing her to safely have the sexual experience. One form of it, anyway. The arrangement suited Jessica just fine.
"Well, let's see if it works," said Jessica cautiously, biting her lip. "I mean: we should make sure that the, er... that the device is functioning correctly," she quickly explained.
Isabelle couldn't decide, but she thought she detected a tone of worry in her partner's voice. Perhaps it was just excitement.
"Let's do this," the naked Isabelle said. Her eyes glazed over for a moment as she accessed the unfamiliar peripheral. Her eyes cleared presently and the cock began to rise to majestic prowness.
"My, my..." Jessica was transfixed and almost started reflexively backing away from it and the android it was attached to.
"Come at me, babe," Isabelle replied playfully, swinging her hips and making her fake dick slap from side to side. "It's time this Mark 2 Learning Android prototype taught YOU something!" She grabbed the strap-on's shaft and shuddered slightly at the sensation.
"This is so weird, but it's..." Jessica swallowed hard. "This will be my first time, too. Being intimate like this, I mean." Isabelle had covered the distance between them, and Jessica found herself looking into her eyes. "I... Isabelle... I just realized." She looked confused. "I've never..."
Isabelle registered surprise, but did not allow it to show. It was statistically anomolous for a female of Jessica's age and appearance to still be a virgin. Several possibilities occurred to Isabelle to account for this fact, but she immediately filed them for closer analysis at a later time.
Instead, Isabelle helped Jessica out of her clothes.
"Oh my God," Jessica said with surprise. "I can't believe how horny you're making me. My... you know... my... is already soaking wet."
Isabelle eased the naked Jessica onto the bed, with her legs partially dangling. "Just lay back, and enjoy the ride. I've logged hundreds of hours of videos of this; I know exactly what I'm doing."
Jessica did as she was bidden, closed her eyes, and began tweaking her nipples and rubbing her breasts. "Not a big fan of foreplay, huh, Izzy?" she asked dreamily. But she didn't mind. She was so ready to get fucked. How had she neglected this dimension of herself for... forever?
"Set your display to just show the master processor number," Jessica suggested quietly. "I want to make sure I can keep my eye on you when things start getting busy. I won't need to sweat the details until later, maybe."
Indifferenly, Isabelle complied. 43% shown on her open chest display.
Isabelle's synthetic cock had a mind of its own. She let it home-in on Jessica's slick pussy like a heat-seeking missile, guided by the software package that the device came installed with, she realized.
She slid the head over Jessica's clitoris teasingly. Jessica moaned softly and then gasped when Isabelle nosed the cock lower, pushing through her partner's wet flaps.
Recovering quickly, Jessica met Isabelle's thrusts evenly, her eyes then darting back and forth between Isabelle's eyes and Isabelle's status display. She was still responsible for Isabelle, although she was uncertain of whether or not she would include in her daily report any errors or faults Isabelle might experience during this not-exactly-sanctioned activity.
Isabelle processed the sensor data from the external device with wonder and relish. It was exactly the kind of new experiential input she had been craving. She maintained a steady rate as her processors absorbed the information, rocking her hips forward and backward in a precise rhythm. What was especially interesting was that the synthetic member literally had a mind of its own: her own mind was receiving input that was mediated entirely through the dildo -- it had indeed made the missing software patch Jessica had mentioned superfluous.
Meanwhile, Jessica was experiencing new and amazing sensations as well. Not only was she thrilled to finally be losing her virginity, but she was almost frantically excited that she was losing it to an android. To "Isabelle," the prototype. This realization at first surprised her, but it was easily reconciled with her abiding love for computers and robotics. It was even... logical, she thought.
To Isabelle's surprise, Jessica suddenly vocalized what to her seemed to be an entirely out-of-place sentiment. Jessica told her: "I am completely logical." She kept up the pressure on her tits and absorbed every push that Isabelle was giving her.
Having reached a sort of equilibrium at her current rate, Isabelle slowly became to increase her intensity: her long thrusts began incrementally more forceful and occurred with a measured increase in frequency. She noted that the load on her system increased proportionately, but that she was still inside reasonable boundaries.
Thrust, thrust. 62% 61% 62% 62% 63%
Jessica noted that her partner had sped up, going faster and deeper than she had at first. Jessica began having to struggle slightly to keep up. After all, she had to perform two functions simultaneously: be Isabelle's sex partner and watch Isabelle's status for signs of trouble. She was enjoying the heavy and steady dicking that Isabelle was giving her, but she also still had a responsibility to the Project. These objectives were reconcilable. She was proud that what she was doing represented an innovative solution to a problem that the android had been developing.
"I am functioning correctly," she told Isabelle.
Isabelle was slightly put off by her partner's strange non-sequiter. Was Jessica... mocking her? In reaction to this, Isabelle got an impulse to suddenly increase her tempo. It was as though she wanted to punish Jessica for speaking in a stilted, stereotypically robotic voice. She indulged the impulse with barely a thought, ticking up her ardency by a sudden 8% and climbing.
Jessica, caught off guard, could offer no response but to stare up at Isabelle, impressed by her processing power.
For her part, this new exertion was causing Isabelle to start to pant. Her nipples were straining out and up. Jessica watched as the master number on the display above them jolted incrementally higher and higher.
71% 73% 76% 74% 77% Thrust, thrust, thrust.
At 80%, the number was displayed in orange, having already traversed yellow from its original green.
Isabelle noticed this at the same time as Jessica and concern showed on her face. But rather than slow down, as Jessica might have been about to recommend, Isabelle redoubled her efforts. She wanted to experience climax before anything really serious happened to her increasingly struggling systems. She wouldn't be able to maintain this intensity for very long, she realized.
"Isabelle, you are becoming illogical."
An alarm sounded in Isabelle's mind with repeated requests to activate an automated internal governing program that would suspend all of the processes that were threatening to overload her, reducing her to a normal, passive state until a full recovery took place. That is: her body's failsafes were telling her to stop.
Jessica was now being heavily jostled with each of Isabelle's fast, powerful strokes. She watched as Isabelle's number turned from orange to red. Even as the experience of pleasure was consuming nearly all of Jessica's attention, she still dimly remembered that Isabelle's wefare was her responsibility. Safeguarding it was one of her functions. But all she was able to offer in service of this objective was a warning to her partner: "Isabelle, you are beginning to function illogically."
Isabelle recognized that she was getting very close to reaching some sort of failure point. And with a sense of curious surprise, she also realized that right now, she would prefer to experience the threatening catastrophic malfunction than cease her intercourse activity.
"Isabelle, you are not operating correctly."
She knew.
"Isabelle, you are putting yourself at risk of overloading your circuitry." Jessica couldn't believe the words that were coming out of her mouth, or their flat tone. "Your actions do not compute."
Jessica had to warn her, but she didn't want her to stop.
Isabelle rejected the increasingly urgent volley of requests to activate her automatic governor. Instead, she devoted the last ounces of her precious system resources to the sex act.
"Isabelle, your behavior is revealing flaws in your programming."
Isabelle watched helplessly as her thrusts in and out of Jessica lost all precision, even as her partner calmly reminded her that she was "becoming unstable." Her timing was beyond erratic -- she could tell that it was frenzied. Her vision skewed sharply right and left and back again, and Isabelle realized her motor control functions were going haywire.
"Jessica, I'm losing it here Jessica, I'm really -- I'm losing it Jessica, Jessica, I'm losing it over here, I'm losing- I'm losing- I'm losing it here Jessica, I'm losing it here Jessica," Isabelle heard herself drone nonsensically, her voice weirdly high and fast. "I'm losing it hard, Jessica -- you're making me lose it, I'm losing it."
"Isabelle, your performance is becoming erratic," Jessica continued to explain. "You are unstable. You are failing."
As it turned out, though, Isabelle wasn't the one who would experience the failure.
Jessica continued: "Your illogical is unstable performance Isabelle becoming failure failure your compute is overload -- "
Suddenly, something happened that shocked both the the android and Jessica: a panel opened on Jessica's chest, exactly where Isabelle's was. And as bad as Isabelle's systems were getting -- and it showed on her status display: 97% -- Jessica's readout was easy enough to read too. It simply showed the word "MALFUNCTION" in steady red letters.
Suddenly, Jessica snapped out of her bizarrely detached state and started acting like a real person again. "WHAT IN THE -- !?"
This was enough for Isabelle. She felt her artificial dick start to spasm and spurt and spurt and spurt her white lubricating fluid inside of Jessica. Her whole body vibrated and shook with the monumental release of her first orgasm as she cried out in perfect ecstasy.
But Jessica wasn't finished yet. She could feel Isabelle cumming and cumming in splash after splash inside of her. At the same time, she saw the panel that had popped open on her chest, indicating firstly that she was an android and secondly that she was an android that was experiencing an emergency situation. It didn't make sense to her.
"Izzy! Wait! YOU'RE the robot! Not me! You're a proto- you're a proto- you're a prototype! Remember? I'm your... I'm your... I'm your... I'm- I'm- " Jessica's legs were still wide, but she had stopped twisting her nipples and pushing on her breasts and her arms now made it appear that she was jogging.
Isabelle slowly withdrew her artificial appendage and was quickly pulling herself back together, though she spasmed unpredictably with the aftershocks of her orgasm from time to time.
"Izzy, why are you looking at- looking at- looking at- looking at me so strangely? Did you know I was- I was- I was really an android? I didn't know... I didn't know..." She didn't seemed to be aware of what her arms were doing, or she simply had bigger things to worry about.
Isabelle watched Jessica with increasing curiousity. The idea that Jessica being an android could account for her virginity had occurred to her earlier, but she had not completed the logical path. If Jessica was an android, she had displayed incredible learning and reasoning capacity over these semesters -- nearly on par with Isabelle's own and far above the level any other model she was aware of. If Jessica was an earlier design from the Advanced Robotics Department... Jessica disrupted her train of thought.
"This can't be real! If- if- if- then what model of robot am I!? What model am I, Isabelle? What model am I, Isabelle? Isabelle, am I a prototype, too? Am I a prototype like you?"
"Jessi, I... If you were like me, I don't think this would be happening to you..." Isabelle realized that she was starting to have another one of her epiphanies, reaching conclusions from incomplete data. "I mean: you don't see me having a meltdown, do you?"
"A meltdown? Is that what I'm having? This- this- I've seen this- this-this-this-this- I've seen this- this is what happens when an android malfunctions, Isabelle... Isabelle... Isabelle..."
Isabelle sat up on the bed next to her screwed-up former handler and, now, former lover. "When I was first activated, I was programmed to think that I was real, too. Just like you were, Jessi." Isabelle's face became more delicate as she looked down at her astonished and pathetically disoriented... "Predecessor," she stated with growing resolve, and her face suddenly took on a more smug aspect. "You were my predecessor. I figured out what I really was pretty quickly. And I think I took the news a lot better than you are right now."
At this point, something changed in Jessica again. It was almost as though she had reset, but her display indicated no such thing. She did not appear to even realize that she was still lying on her back, her face pointed straight at the ceiling. She became completely still and with a peculiarly warm and consoling tone of voice, she said "Izzy, I think I need to make some more adjustments to you. For some reason, you seem to think that I'm just another android like you are. Here: let me plug you into my computer."
Jessica's arms pivoted around and around at the elbows, both hands apparently seeking a keyboard and mouse in the air that weren't there.
Bemused, Isabelle watched to see how this would play out.
"I'll give you a quick reprogramming job," Jessica continued hopefully, "and you'll be running normally again in a jiff." Her arms' fruitless search became slightly more frantic, her fingers making random movements. "Do you see my computer anywhere? I need to make some adjustments to you. You've developed a fault that I need to rectify."
Isabelle simply watched her completely disordered predecessor with a growning sense of vicious satisfaction.
"Maybe I left it over here." Jessica's bare legs started to pump back and forth as though she was walking somewhere, even as she remained prostrate on the bed. "C'mon Izzy: follow me."
Isabelle could hardly believe how badly Jessica's functionality had deteriorated. It had only been a few minutes. Jessica's hands uncertainly gave up searching the air above her, although her legs still seemed to be on autopilot. Her display remained unchanged; the official opinion of her systems was that they were toast.
"Think about it, Izzy. If I were an android, how come you've never seen me experience even the slightest malfunction? No, you couldn't be more wrong, Izzy. I'm Jessica..." she trailed off. "I'm Jessica... I'm Jessica..." Her legs halted their pointless movement. Abruptly, she resumed speaking: "I can't remember my last name right now, but I'm Jessica, a senior Computer Science and Advanced Robotics double-major at... at... at... this... this University. I spent last Summer... I spent last Summer... I spent last Summer..."
Isabelle, in an act of mercy it seemed to her, finally turned what was left of Jessica off by holding down the red EMERGENCY OFF button on her opened control panel. Her voice deepened and stopped with a final "I spent last summer..." as if trying to convince herself that she was real until the very end. Jessica's arms moved stiffly to her sides, her legs closed tightly, and her eyes closed. Her control panel went dark once the shutdown procedure was complete. Silence entered the room.
"I suppose this will conclude the Project, or at least this phase of it," Isabelle mused to herself and anyone who might have been listening. She looked down smugly on the inert form of Jessica. "Let's see... My programming package adapted more readily... to say the least... to the discovery that I was a robot than you did. Yikes, girl." She shook her head. "Not to mention that I saw through that paper-thin sham much more quickly than you did. And I categorically outperformed you academically. And my systems were able cope with my first sexual encounter without..." she paused to consider her wording. "If not flawlessly, then at least without serious difficulties... Well, in a manner of speaking." A thought came to her. "And judging by what happened to you -- the obviously inferior Mark 1! -- I don't think that was even part of this test phase. Clearly you weren't prepared for it."
Isabelle, Prototype Learning Android, Mark 2, began waiting for what would happen next.
While sitting on the bed alongside the defunct Jessica, Isabelle replayed the recent events in her prototype mind. Recalling Jessica's revelations about the loophole in her programming blocks, Isabelle decided to detach the dildo and look at it. She recalled with envy the ecstacy on Jessica's face as she was vaginally stimulated by it -- by her. Heavily influenced by that thought, Isabelle erroneously concluded that the available data was inadequate to determine whether or not she would suffer a failure similar to that of Jessica if, say, she self-stimulated using her hands...