Binary Love (18+)

Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?

Nova's workshop was in a space station in the middle of nowhere. Granted, a lot of places in space felt remote, but Delta Quadrant Four was one of the most sparsely populated quadrants of them all. There were a few reasons for this; it sat in the outer rim of IA space, far from a lot of inhabited planets, but also was on the edge of uncharted space.

That amount of rural was just right for Nova as it allowed her to keep her privacy, while still giving her access to trade routes for her business. Faolan Space Station also acted as a hub for a major terraforming project, meaning that resources that would normally be harder to get so far out were pretty easy for her to get access too.

Privacy was a big deal to her - she had put in a lot of effort into having her own privacy - so she wasn't surprised when she found the addition of an android too much for her.

This might seem strange for a lot of people. In fact, she could almost hear a little inner voice in her head questioning why such a thing would bother her considering she owned a sexbot company. But designing, making and then shipping a sexbot is very different to living with one.

And this one, well... this one just wasn't quite right.

After receiving the returned android from the Madame, Nova had studied and tinkered away at the Mark 3 trying to figure out what could possibly be the issue. It's out casing was fine, despite being in an altercation on the Mayflower when some customers got rowdy. This custom Mark model came with a human standard body frame, with black hair and blue eyes, as most of his custom work was more to do with his equipment and skill set. She knew that the shell was unlikely to be the reason, so she started checking the internal wiring, the fluid systems and the ridiculous amount of code. Nothing. After a week of not finding anything, she turned it back on.

Whatever was wrong very quickly became apparent.

It started off small; little deviations in the behaviour codes that she had programmed, not noticeable to the average person but for her were obvious.

Sure, she thought, that's strange but not really an issue. The android still followed instructions and did that usual thing a bot does when left with nothing to do; it would wander off with its toned body and go to the recharge station. It asked whether "this platform could help you with anything?", and other such sex invitations programmed into it's audio database.

Then she noticed how it started to take an interest in her work. How it started to pay more attention to her and what she did. It would be quite harmlessly going through its tasks, or helping her to construct new orders, when it's eyes would flicker to a new schematic she was working on, or a custom build that was giving her a tough time. It would pause for a bit, as if it was thinking, then continue on.

Then one day it did the same, but instead of getting back to work, the Mark 3 model said, "Ms.Williams, that schematic could be improvised to be 14.5% more energy efficient if a different a different material was used for it's connections."

Nova glanced up from the Sheila Squeals main frame she had been working on, to look at the schematics Mark 3 was gesturing too. She soon realised that his eyes were very much focused on her, awaiting an answer to his statement.

"I know," Nova responded cautiously, "but that was the material the client requested."

"But it is an inferior product." The android rebutted straight away.

"The client can't afford the better stuff." She was surprised that it was questioning a client's choice or preference as that behaviour certainly wasn't something you programmed into a sexbot. "There's no need to be elitist about it, just because you were made with all the good stuff."