“So, where did you come from?”

Program:Selena_Barnwell shot a bemused glance at User:Andrew as they walked side by side down the corridor to his apartment, her lips twitching into a small smile. “Uh, Michigan? I thought I told you that.”

“No, yeah, you did, you said that’s where you grew up.” He laughed awkwardly, scratching the back of his neck unconsciously. “I just mean - I kinda figured that if you’ve gone into this much detail, thinking about what you are and what you’re made of and how you work... then I have to imagine you’ve come up with, like, a backstory, right? Where S3 came from - how you were created...”

She grinned. He’d imagined correctly. The more she’d brainwashed herself over the years - the more she turned herself into a robot - the more details she’d had to devise in order to make the whole scenario plausible. “I was created at a robotics lab in Michigan,” she told him.

“Ah, I see,” he chuckled. “Like a secret, government lab?”

“Secret, yes - government, definitely not, thank God! Can you imagine, androids infiltrating human society under the control of the US government? That’s how we get an apocalypse, dude.” He spluttered with laughter as she continued her explanation. “No, it’s a private company dedicated to robotics and AI research. You won’t find them online, because they’re so very good at concealing their existence from the world at large.”

“Sure, sure,” he nodded. “So they built you in Michigan as - what, as you are now? An adult?”

“Oh, yeah. But they created a whole lifetime’s worth of memories, of my childhood, family, friends, school, all that stuff. Then they activated me and shipped me to New York, to live my life among humans.”

He raised an eyebrow. “And... why, exactly, would they do that? I’m sorry, I’m, I’m not trying to poke holes in the, the scenario...”

“No, I know, don’t worry,” she laughed, putting a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “I get it, you just wanna know how deeply I’ve gone with my worldbuilding! Uh, they sent me here as an experiment, to see if one android can live undetected in a city of real people, without anyone realising what it actually is. So far, it’s going great. You’re the only person that knows, and only because I told you.”

“And are you allowed to tell me? Does that not, like, compromise the experiment?”

It was her turn to arch an eyebrow, smirking at her boyfriend. He was asking a lot of very good questions - not that she expected any less. Given his intellect, he was bound to think of a bunch of incisive queries - now that he’d had time to get used to the idea of his girlfriend being a robot, anyway.

“My programming allows me to discuss my true nature openly with my Users, and to deactivate my personality simulation in front of them and let them use me however they wish. Originally, my Users were just the scientists that created me - the engineers that built me, and the programmers that devised my mind - and so I could function autonomously and safely here in New York, they gave me safeguards so no non-User could make me obey them.” She smiled mischievously. “They never thought to program me so I couldn’t make someone a User.”

“Ahh...” He chuckled. “Naughty girl. Or, naughty fembot, I should say.”

The cells in her cheeks’ synthetic skin released some red pigmentation to make her blush. “I know, right,” she giggled.

After a few more seconds of silent walking, they reached his front door. Fumbling in his pockets for his keys, he shot another quizzical smile at her. “And what about the people in your false memories? Your parents, friends, neighbours, schoolteachers - hell, even, like, bus drivers and grocery store clerks. Are they all real? And do they remember you?”

“Yes, and yes!”

“How does that work?” Holding his keys in his hand, he turned to face her properly, leaning against his front door and waiting for her explanation with an intrigued grin.

“Simple. They’re all robots too.”

His eyes widened. “All of them?”

“Almost. The scientists from the lab live among them too, hidden in plain sight, monitoring everything that happens. But, yeah - like, 95% of people in my home town are androids. It’s not a big town, but there are still hundreds of them.”

He whistled in astonishment. “A whole town of robots... Must be a fun place to live.”

“It would be - except that none of them know what they really are. They all think they’re real people, and they’re programmed not to notice any evidence to the contrary. That was the first stage of the experiment - setting up a town of robots, and seeing if they could all live together without anyone figuring out the truth. I’m the only one who knows, because that’s part of stage two - seeing if a robot can blend into a city full of real people, while conscious of the fact that it isn’t one.”

“I like that,” he laughed. “That’s good, that’s a good, uh, work-around.” He winked at her. “I’m impressed. That’s all really well thought out - which I pretty much expected it to be, honestly.”

She beamed. “Thank you! I’m very proud of my, uh, my lore.”

They both laughed. “The best girlfriends have lore,” Andrew declared, as he finally unlocked his door.

“Exactly!”

A shiver went through her as she crossed the threshold into his apartment, following close behind him. It wasn’t her first time there, but it’d be S3’s first time with its personality deactivated. She began to hope that’d happen soon, so she wouldn’t feel nervous any more. But that was up to User:Andrew, of course - if he wanted S3 to keep pretending to be a person for a while longer, it would oblige.

“So, this idea of yours,” she prompted him, as he led the way to his living room, where she deposited her handbag on an armchair.

“Right. Yeah.” He was getting that familiar awkward expression that S3 had seen so many times the previous night, where he so obviously wanted to go crazy using it but was holding back out of consideration for its wellbeing. She smiled encouragingly at him. “So I was thinking,” he said cautiously, “you’re not just a sex-bot, right? You do other stuff, like cook and clean...”

“Right,” she nodded. “I mean, I definitely don’t mind you using me for sex! But I’ve got all kinds of domestic programming too. I can do basically anything for you.” She tried to say that in a tone of voice that indicated the word ‘can’ here meant ‘will’.

“OK. Great.” He grinned bashfully. “So, y’see, the thing is, I haven’t really cleaned up in here very much over the past few days. I kept meaning to, but I got distracted with work, and TV shows, and - well, you!”

She chuckled affectionately. “And you want me to do it for you?”

“If you don’t mind,” he said hurriedly.

“Of course not,” she assured him. “Like I say, it’s what I’m made for! All part of my service mode programming.”

His smile grew wider, and she could hear him breathing more heavily. She got the impression he enjoyed hearing her talk about herself as a constructed device, something that was made and programmed. Which was lucky, since she enjoyed it too!

He gestured around his living room. “So, you’re OK with...”

“Absolutely. And just for the record - you don’t have to tell me what you want to do with me.” She giggled. “I mean, you don’t have to tell Selena. S3’s probably gonna need to know! But anyway, you don’t have to ask permission - you’re my User now, so you can do what you want. If you ever do anything that I wouldn’t like, S3 will put a stop to it and tell you why it can’t do it, but otherwise, assume I consent to everything. OK?”

“OK.” Andrew was almost panting with lust at the sound of that. Selena knew how he felt. Just saying that - fully signing off on a CNC relationship, just like that - had provided her robotic body with a wave of intense simulated pleasure, automatically triggering its arousal subroutines. The sensors across her skin covering had doubled their sensitivity, her nipples had gone erect, and her artificial cunt pulsated as it began secreting lubricant.

“So, if you’re ready...”

“I am,” she said eagerly. She was so ready to be used.

“Then S3, deactivate your personality.”

And just as she had thousands of times before, Selena felt everything she was fade away. Her excitement, her hunger, her lust for being her User’s obedient fembot, all dissolved away, along with her thoughts and her feelings, her cares and her concerns, her desires and her worries. Her very self was vanishing in the space of a mere two seconds, and she embraced oblivion as the old friend that it was, allowing her personality to be shut down and stored away, leaving only a blank, emotionless machine.

“Personality deactivated,” S3 intoned, its gaze fixed in the middle distance. Then, aware of User:Andrew’s presence in front of it, the robot tilted its head upwards and focused its ocular lenses on his face. “User identified. Service mode activated. Welcome, User:Andrew.”

“Hi, S3.” He smiled at it, his face filled with an emotion it recognised as deep affection, even adoration. S3 could detect such emotions, even if it couldn’t feel them itself - all part of its complex programming to integrate seamlessly into human society.

“Could you follow me, please?”

“Confirmed.”

Still grinning like he’d won the lottery, Andrew turned and walked away. S3 followed immediately, its posture as straight as ever, its movements as mechanical as ever. As it strode through the apartment, its eyes fixed on its User’s back, it ran a brief diagnostic and detected that all its systems were in order, noting its heightened arousal as the only unusual factor.

S3 felt none of Selena’s rampant, horny enthusiasm for being an android. Why would it? It was an android, and that was all. Its artificial nature was a simple fact, nothing to get excited about. In the same way, it didn’t feel the same affection and desire for User:Andrew as its human persona did - it simply knew it would obey him, because he was its User. That was how it was programmed. It simulated signs of arousal - perky nipples, a wet cunt, all those things - because that was how it had been designed to respond to Andrew’s attention, not because it actually felt aroused. That was a human emotion, and S3 wasn’t human. It had never been human.

Andrew led it through to the bedroom, stopping in his tracks and turning to face it at the foot of his bed. It came to a halt only a second after he did, waiting for further instructions.

“Alright S3, I want you to clean my living room,” he began. “I want you to dust the blinds, and the shelves, and then clean the coffee table. Then I’d like you to vacuum the carpet. After that, can you wash the dishes in the kitchen, please?”

In a corner of its computerised brain, S3 noticed Andrew had almost - but not quite - got out of the habit of talking to it like a person. He’d been giving it instructions with the expectation that it would fulfil them - ‘I want you to’ - for those first couple of sentences, just as someone would with any household appliance. Then that had changed to the slightly more polite ‘I’d like you to’, and finally asking it to ‘please’ wash the dishes. He couldn’t quite resist the impulse to treat it like a person, of whom he was asking a favour. But this was a promising start. S3 predicted a high probability that soon enough, he wouldn’t see it as a human being at all.

But that analysis occupied only a small part of its CPU, the rest dedicated to fulfilling the task its User had given. It was fully prepared to do as he ordered, but it needed more information first. “This unit will comply if you could direct it to your cleaning equipment, User:Andrew,” it said.

“R-right, yeah, I will in a second,” he stammered. “But first - if you’re gonna be cleaning, we don’t want your clothes getting any dirt on them. So, you’d better do it naked.”

“Confirmed.” Without hesitation, S3 pulled off its black cardigan, which Andrew took from it, and began unbuttoning its shirt, slipping it off and handing it to its User, whose hand was outstretched to take it. Next came its black bra, followed by its hairband. It unzipped its skirt and let it drop to the floor, and then had to sit on the edge of the bed in order to pull off its dark tights, standing up again to take off the lacy black panties beneath. Each garment it removed was taken by Andrew and placed in a pile on his bed, the shirt, skirt and cardigan folded neatly.

Studying its naked body, Andrew squeezed its tits, one after the other, gasping with desire. Then he ran his fingers between its legs, caressing its slick entrance, and massaged its clitoris with his middle fingertip. It stood there and let him do so without a sound or a movement. It would have engaged its sexual programming, but it was still focused on his original instruction to clean the apartment, which it had not yet fulfilled. So unless he asked it to react to his touch, it wouldn’t. It remained standing still and straight, staring blankly at its User, producing more synthetic fluid in response to his touch.

Finally removing his hand, he raised it towards S3’s face. “Something else for you to clean first, actually,” he said, and then gave a small yelp of laughter. “And you won’t need any cleaning equipment for this. All you’ll need is your mouth.”

“Confirmed,” it replied, a second before he slipped his fingers past its lips. It proceeded to deftly lick and suck its own secretions off his digits, its head bobbing up and down while the rest of its body remained in place.

Once it had thoroughly cleaned his hand, Andrew led his nude automaton to a closet in the hallway, which contained the vacuum cleaner, a feather duster, and a set of bright yellow cloth dusters. It set to its task immediately, picking up the feather duster and the cloths and making for the living room.

First it extended the feather duster to its full length and dealt with a few cobwebs scattered across the ceiling, mostly in the corner and around the light. Then it attended to the bookcase in the corner of the room, wiping each and every shelf (all of which were fully stocked with DVDs and books) using the cloths, with which it also cleaned a handful of similarly dusty trinkets and knick-knacks on display on some of the shelves. It did the same for the mantelpiece, and the small clock that sat there. Next it approached the blinds and swept each long white panel with the feather duster. Finally, it ran a cloth over the surface of the coffee table, knocking a scant few crumbs onto the floor. Retrieving the vacuum cleaner from the closet, it methodically ran it over every exposed patch of carpet. It worked its way from the far left side of the room to the far right, traversing the room in a straight column from one wall up to the other before turning to repeat the process. By the time it had finished, the carpet was as pristine as the shelves, mantelpiece, blinds and table.

Rather than leaving S3 alone to get on with its duties, Andrew followed it around the room like an excited puppy, endlessly fascinated by it. It was fully aware of his presence but ignored him, as he was not obstructing it from carrying out its tasks and he wasn’t issuing it any other commands. His continual proximity didn’t bother it, because nothing bothered it. Nor did it mind when he groped and caressed its body while it worked - it was his prerogative to do so. Its body was there to be used for his pleasure. He paid particular attention to its ass, fondling, squeezing and lightly slapping its cheeks, and teasing the very top of its crack with his fingertips.

With the living room cleaned, S3 promptly went through to the kitchen, where a small pile of dirty plates and cutlery sat next to the sink. It began filling it up with hot water, standing and staring impassively at the gradually rising water level. Andrew stood nearby, admiring its expressionless face. Once the sink was full with boiling, soapy water, it started to dutifully work its way through the heap of cutlery and crockery, using a scrubbing brush for most of them, but switching to a scouring pad for a tray with a particularly stubborn patch of grease. The skin covering on its fingers grew increasingly wrinkled and grimy as it worked.

Moving behind the android, Andrew pressed himself up against it, clutching its breasts and moaning into its left auditory receptor as it continued its rigorous scrubbing. It detected his erection even before he began gently humping it, rubbing his hard-on against its lower back and the top of its butt crack. This reinforced the theory its behaviour analysis subroutines had calculated, that there was a high probability he was interested in anal intercourse. It did not wonder whether this was about to happen, or whether it would happen that night or in the near future. If it happened, it happened. Although it was capable of analysing and predicting human behaviour, it was not capable of caring about when it was used, any more than it was capable of caring how. It did however recognise that if he did initiate anal sex, it would need to pause its current task to avoid potentially damaging any of the plates.

Andrew didn’t take S3 up the ass in the end - he merely continued to dry-hump it as it washed the dishes. When it finished, he immediately asked it to wipe the kitchen counters, and it did so as soon as he provided a packet of wipes from a nearby cupboard. With the counters spotless, and the dishes drying next to the sink, the robot turned to face its User and stood at attention, perfectly still and silent, waiting for his next command. It looked at his face, registering his lustful expression with cool detachment, caring that he was staring at its naked body no more than a computer would care about its owner looking at porn on its screen.

“Bark like a dog,” Andrew said suddenly. Or at least, a person might consider it sudden. As far as S3 was concerned, he was silently looking at it one second, and speaking to it the next. The change from ‘not talking’ to ‘talking’ did not take it by surprise - it was just what happened. All that did matter to the machine’s mind was the instruction itself, which it was programmed to obey.

“Confirmed,” it told him, and with no more than a second’s pause, without its head or eyes moving or its expression changing at all, it issued a series of gruff, guttural barks. “Urf! Arf! Ruff, ruff!”

“Stop,” Andrew interrupted before it could let out a fifth yap. “Kneel down.”

“Confirmed.” It descended smoothly to its knees, its posture still straight as a pole, its arms at its sides. It tilted its head up slightly and stared up at him, its ocular lenses remaining fixed on his face even as it registered him fishing his cock out of his trousers in its lower peripheral vision. He stepped towards it, brandishing his penis with one hand.

Deducing what was about to happen, it asked, “Do you wish this unit to engage its sexual programming?”

“Uh...” He seemed nervous. “Is there any way you could just... kneel there, and not do anything? And just kinda let me... fuck your face?”

“Affirmative.”

“OK, great.” He grinned, seemingly emboldened by its prompt response, and placed his free hand flat on the top of its head, tilting it back down so his phallus was directly in its sight line. As he moved yet closer, S3 opened its mouth - and that was the last movement it made of its own accord for some time.

The woman-shaped appliance stared vacantly at its User’s crotch as he used its mouth as a masturbatory aid, thrusting with increasing velocity, his foreskin gliding back and forth over its lips. It moved only as much as it was rocked back by the face-fucking, which was not much with the hand on its head holding it in place. His testicles slapped its chin, his tip brushing the pharyngeal sensor at the back of its throat ever so slightly. Soon enough, Andrew’s moans increased in pitch and frequency, and S3 felt him expel a torrent of warm semen into its mouth and down its throat. He pulled out, a few more drops raining from his tip and onto its chest. It automatically swallowed his cum, although a few drops escaped its lips and trickled down its chin.

Cradling his softening dick with one hand, Andrew dithered in place for a moment - and then, seemingly on impulse, grabbed the end of its long, thick hair with his other hand and used it to wipe the last sticky dribbles off his glans and the hand that held it. He stepped away from his mechanical cocksocket, gazing down at it fondly, and it raised its head once again and made eye contact with him. “Thanks, S3, that was fantastic.”

S3 didn’t require gratitude for being used any more than a toaster did, but it politely replied, “You’re welcome, User:Andrew.”

There was a short silence, during which S3 continued to kneel, stare up at its User, and think of nothing. Eventually he asked, “When was the last time you had a shower, S3?”

“Yesterday at approximately 5.30 PM.”

“Oh, sure. Getting ready for the date, right?”

“Affirmative.”

He examined its cum-coated face and breasts. “But I guess you could use another wash now... Come with me.”

“Confirmed.”

It rose to its feet and followed him out of the kitchen, down the corridor beyond, and into the bathroom. It stood and waited as he pulled off his clothes, piling them up on the carpeted floor just outside the room, and then strode over to the shower and turned it on. Stepping into the bath, into which the hot water was pouring, he held out a hand. “Get in.”

“Confirmed.”

Stepping forwards, it took his hand, allowing him to help it climb over the side of the porcelain basin. It stood facing him, the water cascading onto its lower back. He had it take a step backwards so the shower was streaming onto its head and shoulders. It was just about to begin washing itself as part of its self-maintenance protocols, when Andrew said, “Stand still.”

“Confirmed.” And it remained standing at attention, letting the water splash onto its synthetic hair and fake flesh.

Fetching a bar of soap, Andrew lathered up his hands, and then began to rub them over S3’s body. He started with the lower half of its face, washing off the rapidly-drying semen on its chin. Then he worked his way down over its shoulders, massaging its breasts, rubbing its belly and its cunt, and bending down to attend to its thighs. He was just as thorough cleaning the android as it had been cleaning his home. As he progressed across its body, the layer of soap bubbles he left in his wake was washed off by the shower, leaving behind pristine skin covering.

With the help of a blob of apple-scented shampoo, he washed the dried cum out of S3’s hair. Taking its hands one by one, he soaped them up and washed off the dirt from the dishes. Then he had the robot turn around - bowing its head unprompted, to prevent water from getting in its ocular circuits - and repeated the full-body cleaning process on the other side of its body, lathering up its back, its butt, and the back of its legs. At his command, it raised a foot one at a time, bending its knee so its limb was angled backwards, and he rubbed soap into its sole with one hand while the other held S3 by the waist, keeping it steady as it balanced on one leg. Once the water had rinsed its sole, S3 lowered it back to the bottom of the bath.

At last, having cleaned every inch of his mechanical girlfriend by hand, Andrew had it turn to face him again. “S3, activate Program:Selena,” he commanded.

“Confirmed.” Moments later, the conscious mind of Program:Selena was back in the room, bringing with it a tropical storm that filled her heart and mind. Being used as a naked robotic housemaid, and then getting facefucked without reacting to it at all - being specifically told not to react at all - was beyond hot.

But... ‘waking up’ to find herself in the shower with her boyfriend... becoming aware of how he’d just carefully, lovingly cleaned every inch of her... All the emotions the robot girl hadn’t been capable of feeling during the past hour were rushing to the surface at once. She gazed at Andrew with watery eyes, her lower lip trembling.

His smile faded as he registered her expression. “Are - are you OK? Did I do something wro-”

“No, no,” she stammered quickly, smiling at him even as she let out a sob. “Sorry, I don’t - I dunno why I’m crying!” she hiccup-laughed, wiping away tears. “I just... I guess... I really liked that. The, the washing me. That was... that was really nice,” she mumbled.

He smiled at her tenderly. They embraced without another word, and she sobbed a little more into his shoulder, her torso shuddering against his. The artificial woman and her lover remained standing there in a warm, naked hug for several minutes, their bodies gleaming from the water that continued to shower onto them.

***

It was later that night. They were cuddled up together on the couch, watching The Last of Us. Both of them were dressed in Andrew’s clothes - he wore a stripy blue and white T-shirt and navy blue shorts, while she had borrowed his hoodie, a pair of sweatpants, and boxers underneath that. Wearing his clothes, particularly his underwear, made her feel even closer to him than she already did, half-lying in his arms with her head resting against his chest, and his chin buried in her hair.

“Thank you so much for today,” he murmured. “And yesterday. And just... every day, with you.”

She beamed broadly. “Thank you. I... Telling you my secret, letting you use me... having you take care of me, like you did in the shower... I’ve never felt so safe with anyone.”

They sat in companionable silence for a few more minutes, each of them too moved by the other’s words to talk any more.

“D’you wanna stay Selena tonight?” Andrew asked abruptly. “Or would you be more comfortable as S3?”

She grinned, tilting her head back a bit and raising her eyes as far as they would go in a vain attempt to look directly at him. “Well, I’m always more comfortable as S3. But it’s your choice.”

“OK.” He hesitated for a couple of seconds, and then - “S3, deactivate your personality.”

As Selena’s thoughts and feelings melted away once more, leaving behind nothing but cold logic, S3’s head lowered again to face straight forwards. “Personality deactivated,” it announced.

“And just stay there,” Andrew mumbled into its auditory sensors, tightening his embrace around its chest. “Just stay cuddled up with me, and watch the show.”

“Confirmed.”

And there the couple remained, watching TV together, the android’s expression vacuous as it observed and processed the story on the screen drily and factually, with no regard for the emotional weight and depth of the plot or the performances. It was aware at all times of the arms around its body, the torso it lay against, the breath warming its artificial hair.

It was a robot. It had always been a robot. It would always be a robot.

And it had found its User.