The Mission

The entire process took about a half an hour. At the end of it, she methodically searched through the rest of his briefcase, taking visual snapshots of every paper document and scanning an additional disc that only turned out to be a CD by Céline Dion.

In less than an hour, she had finished with the briefcase, reset the lock and put it back where it was. She closed the nozzle of the gas canister within her body and went to open a window to bring some clean air into the room.

When she did, the house alarm went off as expected. It was loud enough to rouse Mr. King from his coma-like sleep. With a look of intense pain on his reddening face, he clamped his hands on the sides of his head and forced his eyes open. Fast computing on Rochelle's part put a startled and scared look on her facemask as she started acting drunk again.

"I'm sorry!" she yelled over the piercing alarm. "How do I turn it off?"

In a world of hurt, Thomas got up as fast as he could and stumbled over to the control panel by the door. He had great trouble focusing on the keypad, but he managed eventually to punch in his code and stop that damned alarm.

With his eyes closed tight and his body crouched, he stumbled over to sit down on the leather sofa. He leaned forward with his hands over his head. The winter air that was rushing into the cabin was quickly displacing the bad air.

"I'm so sorry!" Rochelle said again as she went to sit down next to him. The voice her speaker generated was emotionally charged and plaintive. To add to the realism, her eyes began releasing artificial tears.

"What you do that for?" Thomas said quietly.

"I had to!" she said, her voice quivering. "You wouldn't wake up!" Her answer was pre-programmed. So far, so good.

Goosebumps appeared on her silicone skin as Thomas shivered.

"Close the fucking window!" he said a lot louder.

The fembot got up and closed the window. Her chemical sensors took a reading and found 63 parts per million of carbon monoxide gas in the room now. That was safe enough. She said sorry again and wiped away fake tears as she reached over to light a cigarette. She offered a drag to Thomas, who just shook his head.

"Are you okay? I was so afraid."

Thomas sat still for a while, then folded his arms down over his chest and lifted his head. He looked pretty ill. He took a deep breath and gave Rochelle a little smile.

"I'll be fine." he said. "I just drank too much, that's all."

The crying had made her mascara run, giving the android a look of vulnerability. Another tear flowed from one of Rochelle's tear ducts as she gave him a hug.

They both leaned back on the couch for another long, silent moment. After that, Thomas let out a slight laugh. "I need a nap." he said.

He pulled himself into a standing position. Rochelle stood up too. He was still a bit drunk, and she acted the same.

"Are you going to bed honey?" she said.

"Yep."

"Can I sleep in your bed too?"

"Yep." he said again.

Neither of them spoke another word until they slowly made it up the stairs and into his large bed. They got under the sheets and faced each other. She gently stroked his arm and smiled at him. He smiled too and said "G'night."

She said the same thing and went into sleep mode. Thomas went back to sleep within a minute, so he missed experiencing the realistic way in which the robot spy slowed her simulated breathing and heart rate. She continued to hold his hand as they slept.

Chapter 11 - Back to Robot Control

For the next several hours, Rochelle's air pump forced the room's air in and out of her body at a slow steady rate while her chest expanded and contracted slightly in synchronization. Her eyelids were in a closed position. To all appearances she was asleep. The processors that made up her electronic brain were just as active as they usually were though. Her stereo microphones picked up the sound of Mr. King's breathing. Those collected sounds were interpreted by her software and complex circuitry to indicate that he was still asleep. Infrared thermal scans through her closed eyelids also revealed body temperature patterns akin to those of a human male in sleep mode.

She monitored him like this as he slept-off the effects of the alcohol and the carbon monoxide. Her many sensors were sensitive enough to detect and filter out the vibrations caused by his heartbeat. Compared to previous measurements, his heart rate was also normal.

Things were looking good for Robot Control. Their beautiful electromechanical agent had gained access to "Project H" and copied all the precious code to its internal hard drives. All that was left was for her to return to Robot Control to download the data into the main computer. Rochelle Prantov would no longer be necessary after that point. The sexy device would then be dismantled, its parts used to build other robots for other missions.

But for the moment, she had to act as if she was a real woman. This meant staying with Thomas and complying in a natural looking way with his requests until the adulterous executive brought her back into town.

Long after the sun had set, he suddenly awoke. He looked at the nearby alarm clock and got up as fast as he could. Rochelle computed that his actions would have roused a sleeping human, so she opened her eyes and sat up.

"SHIT!" he said as he turned on the lights.

Rochelle yawned quickly and said "What's wrong dear?"

"I'm supposed to be having dinner with my wife right now!" he said.

His agitated state had him flushed with adrenaline. He almost fell as he rushed downstairs to get back into his clothes. The fembot acted quickly too. She got out of his bed and went to the washroom. She rinsed out her insides with water and flushed the waste down the toilet. She rushed downstairs too and got dressed in her clothes.

They didn't speak much more as they got presentable and ready for the trip back into town. Thomas ushered his guest outside and locked up. Quickly, they walked in the dark to his car as he pulled the keys from his pocket. The doors unlocked and they got in. Tires squealed as the car darted out of the driveway and made for the highway.

Mr. King turned the radio down, almost off. "Don't make a sound." he said, talking to but not looking at Rochelle as he pulled the phone out of his jacket pocket. He pressed a few buttons and swallowed hard as the phone went to his ear. He watched the road carefully as he waited for an answer.

"Honey? It's me." he said.

Rochelle looked silently at him.

"I know. I'm sorry. I went to the cabin and got drunk. I passed out."

There was a long silence. Thomas was sweating.

"I know. I'm sorry. I really am sorry."

After a shorter silence, he shot a glance up and took a deep breath.

"I have to drop some stuff off at the office." He steered the car around a gentle turn in the road as he listened. "I don't know. Two hours? Two and a half?"

Rochelle logged every word and action he made. His wife's voice was filtered out from the background noise. It was amplified and recorded as well. With great probability, none of it mattered for the mission now, but she dutifully executed her programming down to the last binary instruction.

"I'll make it up to you. I promise." he said "I'm sorry. Bye."

He hung up the phone and let out a deep sigh. He turned the radio back up and looked over to Rochelle. Her perfectly realistic facemask showed him a look of simultaneous understanding and innocence.

"I'll drop you off downtown. I'll call a cab for you a few minutes before we get there." he said.

"Okay." she said.

"This day didn't exactly go like I hoped it would go. Let's try & do something on Monday, shall we?" he said.

He could make his eyes look very sincere if he wanted. So could Rochelle. "Okay. Whatever works for you dear." she said with an understanding smile.

The car zoomed into town as fast as Thomas could drive it. A speeding ticket was the least of his worries now. He silently shared two more cigarettes with the sophisticated android until they were at long last entering the city centre.

"I'll call that cab now." he said.

She watched and recorded wile he made the phone call. He drove her through dark deserted streets to the front of the office building and waited for the taxi with her. His awkward attempts at small talk were met with similar speech put forth by her speaker, generated by her AI programs.

Both of them spotted the taxi as it rounded the corner ahead of them. "There it is." he said.

The robot grabbed her purse and opened the door. "See you Monday." she said.

Thomas waved and waited until she was in the cab. He sped off quickly and was soon out of sight.

Rochelle told the driver where to take her. Her electrical power was almost used up. Only 5% of a full charge remained in her batteries. To conserve power, she leaned back and shut down whatever systems she safely could. The driver could smell a whiff of alcohol on her, and didn't press his conversation much. To him, she looked in need of a little sleep.

To her, the dangerously low level of power indicated itself with warnings in red flashed in her field of vision. Along with the warnings were scrolling lists of systems and programs shutting down or going into standby mode. There was no chance she could get away with plugging herself into this car's electrical supply.

In time however, the taxi brought her back to Robot Control. The car entered the cul-de-sac and stopped in front of the address she had given him. She was now appearing to be more or less alert, but she was losing power fast. She was at less than 2% when she lowered her head to look through her purse for payment. Just then, her math co-processors shut down. She couldn't add 2 and 2. With the little bit of juice still running through her wires, her AI took over and determined that a twenty dollar bill would probably cover the fare. Wasting no energy, her fingers pulled out a bill and handed it to the cabby.

"Keep the change." she said. Her voice came out in a dull monotone. He didn't notice. He thanked her kindly and kept his headlights on as she exited and walked up the path to her door. Her simulated breathing had shut itself off too by this time. There wasn't even any power going through her audio and visual systems now. She was able to open the door and walk into the house based only on the position of her body and her limbs.

Shutting the door behind her drained her of her remaining useable charge. The taxi driver drove away, big tip in hand, completely unaware that the pretty woman was now frozen, stone still and deactivated behind the door.

Chapter 12 - The Download

No lights were on in the house. All was silent. Maria had entered her charging booth and was being supplied with electrical current through the port at the base of her spine. Her eyes were pointed at some point in space ahead of her. Her mind was totally blank. The cute and sexy robot maid that had no name was standing in a charging booth of her own situated along the adjacent wall. Rochelle Prantov version 1.0 was now in even more pieces strewn about various workstations in the lab. Rochelle Prantov version 2.0 was standing unmoving and with locked joints just in front of the front door on the main level of the house. Through the rest of the night, nothing at all moved.

Rochelle #2 was supposed to have entered the basement lab when she got home, but the sudden drain in power had stopped her in her tracks before she had even alerted the main computer to her presence. It would be many hours before she was found.

At 5 AM the nameless robot maid was activated. The charging arm disconnected from her port and she whirred, clicked and beeped into action. The erotically dressed machine moved her glossy plastic limbs with the truest mechanical motion one could imagine. Her lifeless, vacant eyes methodically scanned her surroundings as her programming booted up. She robotically strutted over to the doorway. The door slid open as she passed out of the main room. It slid closed behind her as she made her way up the stairs, looking and sounding anything but human.

As soon as the maid turned the corner, her cameras detected and zoomed in on the rigid figure of Rochelle. Acting according to her programming, the maid sent a wireless signal to the main computer. Her current objective was now given pending status, so she came to a halt, still loudly beeping random and different tones, and waited for her next instruction.

In an instant, the main computer processed the information sent from the maidbot and relayed the appropriate instructions to both her and Maria. The maid returned to the basement lab to fetch an extension cord. Maria's recharge session was cut short so she could be activated and booted up.

The fluorescent lights flickered on over the lab as the Maria robot stepped out of the booth. Her programs loaded in quick succession as she retrieved and interpreted the new command from the main computer. With the usual blank expression on her pretty face, she walked over to one of the consoles and began making adjustments to its settings.

The maid was walking with jerky, stiff steps over to a cabinet where neatly coiled cables and cords were stored. The loud sounds of her motors and hydraulics were constant as she reached for the proper cord and took it off the hooks. She then closed the cabinet and made her way upstairs to where Rochelle had come to a stand-still.

The electronic French maid plugged one end of the cord into her own recharge port. She approached Rochelle in almost complete darkness but she didn't need much light to see and had no trouble in moving the dormant robot's garments aside so she could open her recharge port and plug the opposite end of the cord in. Once the connection had been made and electricity had started flowing, Rochelle's inner systems came back online one by one.

"Rochelle robot number 729011B activated." she said. Upon completion of the re-booting process, she knew what to do. She followed the plastic maid into the basement, stopping first beside the door to be scanned before she entered the lab. The two fembots walked toward Maria.

"Hello, Rochelle. How was your day?" she said once again.

"My day was fine. Thank you."

"Were you able to copy the 'Project H' discs?"

"Yes."

"Very good. Please remove your overcoat."

Being careful of the extension cord, Rochelle took off the coat and let it fall to the floor. Maria reached behind her and unplugged the cord. The maid coiled it up and held it while she bent over and picked up the overcoat. She returned the cord to its place and walked out of the room with the coat.

In the meantime, Maria had uncoiled an electrical cord connected to the console and plugged it into Rochelle, who was now seated in the chair, ready to unload her data.

Maria began the session in the usual way. "Rochelle, please remove your facemask." she said.

The pretty redhead complied with the order, resting her detached face on her lap to give the robot technician access to the connection ports amid the wires and circuitry in her electronic head. In just over an hour, a digital rendition of Saturday's events was transferred from the fembot into the computer, with Maria watching the whole process and scanning the data on the monitors for errors.

When that part was complete, Rochelle obediently exposed her chest panel to Maria so she could connect her hard drives to the console. Bright coloured LEDs flashed intensely inside Rochelle's opened parts as the information flowed in a fast stream of electric binary pulses.

All of the long weeks of preparation, construction and programming culminated in this event: the transfer of 'Project H' from fembot agent to the main computer. All of the feelings that would have gone through the minds of real people at this moment were absent from this mechanized affair. There was no one to feel the anticipation of success, the satisfaction of accomplishment or the pride of victory in outsmarting the corporations myriad security precautions.

None of these beautiful artificial ladies could feel anything. No fear or worry of being deactivated existed anywhere within Rochelle's software mind. The attractive brunette that had overseen all the many transfer sessions was similarly devoid of any notions of camaraderie or kinship. All that was there were electronic signals - structured and given meaning within the context that they were sent and received.

The pair was without motion as both scans of each disc were transferred, checked and stored within the massive console. It was all over very quickly for something that had taken so much time and effort. As the final chunk of data was downloaded, the supercomputer began reading, analyzing and evaluating 'Project H'.

Something was wrong.

Chapter 13 - Back To The Drawing Board

The main computer again sifted through all the freshly transferred data, coming up with the exact same results as before. Lights flashed all around as the computer ran itself through a series of tests to see if it was working properly. As far as it could tell, it was. The problem was surely with the data.

Strings of 1s and 0s scrolled quickly by on several monitors. Maria read these instructions and set her sexy humanoid body to work on the newly assigned task. She plugged a different set of cables into different connection ports in the agent's chest. "Rochelle," she said, "enter diagnostic mode."

The continuously blinking coloured LEDs in Rochelle's openings turned solid as her system reconfigured itself to allow the main computer to check her components and programs for errors. "DIAGNOSTIC MODE." she said. The words coming out of that electronic speaker were now in a metallic sounding robotic monotone.

With the artificial secretary properly set up, the comparatively basic technician model turned her soulless gaze back to some of the console's monitors. After a very thorough scan the coded results came pouring onto one of the screens. Rochelle robot number 729011B was 100% free of errors.

The computer ordered Maria to transfer the data a second time. She took Rochelle out of diagnostic mode, switched cables and sent the information into the console again. That was followed by a second round of data analysis, which in turn was followed by more diagnostic scans of both the main computer and the fembot connected to it. At the end of the many tedious processes, the situation turned out to be the same as before.

The data Rochelle had copied from the three DVD-Rs was not 'Project H'. It was junk data - nothing but randomly generated jibberish.

It was now up to the main computer to figure out the next step. In a burst of processor activity, it formulated several hundred possible steps that Robot Control could take to ascertain what had gone wrong and gain access to the real 'Project H' discs. Each of these steps was then studied one by one to determine its desirability and feasibility. Within seconds, all but one of these possible actions was determined to be superfluous or impossible. The course of action that remained was for Rochelle to go back to work on Monday and try to find the real discs.

The main computer then wrote this plan into a self-contained program that could be transferred into Rochelle's memory. The computer instructed Maria to prepare the agent for reprogramming. Maria took her out of diagnostic mode a second time and connected her chest to the console for data upload.

The pretty brunette pushed a few buttons on the console, then turned to the still charging robot and said "Rochelle, begin download of program MU548.T85."

"Yes Maria." she said as LEDs flashed quickly in her exposed parts.

Rochelle took in the new program from the main computer and wrote it to one of her ever-spinning hard drives. After a good seven minutes, the transfer wrapped up.