VAL v1.4

Hank: (Frowns at the puzzling question. Drinks more coffee while in thought, then opens eyes wide with an idea) "How about we use one of those headsets with imaging visors that they use in the high-end simulators and games? We could display real-time video images, while playing back digital recordings of sexy sounds. We could even have an infra-red scanner on the retina of her eye to detect which images get her strongest attention and reaction. And pulse rate measurement would be a piece of cake. We can also have a mini-mike to monitor her audible feedback, even with speech recognition of key words."

Back and forth we brainstormed for most of the morning, and by the time the dozen donuts and coffee had been consumed, we had a reasonable concept ready to document on our 3-D Computer-aided-design system. We didn't even stop for lunch - especially after six donuts apiece. By five o'clock I had perspective layouts of our concept and Hank had a bunch of computer program flow diagrams detailed. We carpool it to and from the shop, and on the way home, Hank had one more 'slight snag' to discuss.

"You know, Jack," he said. "Working for 8-10 hours each day on techniques to get a woman stimulated and fucked to orgasm is going to make us hornier than teenagers with their first dirty magazine. And knowing you, I can imagine that some night when you and Melissa are engaged in hot, sweaty sex, you're going to be tempted to call a timeout to analyze what it is that you two are doing. Or even worse, you'll write yourself one of those notes on that pad you keep on your nightstand for sudden midnight brainstorms. This is one project that we definitely don't bring any work home, and it probably should be handled on a need-to-know basis, like the government classified stuff."

Hank knows me only too well, and I had nothing to say to defend myself. I waited until we were stopped at the next traffic light before replying.

"You're right, Hank," I said. "It will be better to handle this project as if it were Top Secret. How about as a cover, we tell Melissa and Patti that we've been engaged by someone who wants to automate figure measurements for custom-fitted designer jeans? It would explain why we'll have female mannekins and anatomical measuring apparatus in the shop, whenever they come by. Speaking of anatomy, have you given any thought to what kinds of lab surrogates we can use to replicate a live woman?"

Hank replied, "Hey, I'm the programmer here; hardware is your responsibility. My suggestion is to modify our female trauma victim mannekin, and make her, as they say, anatomically correct. We can buy artificial vaginas and penises through any number of sex stores on the Internet. And I intend to create some simulated biological response profiles to use for first-cut sensory feedback data. That should be good enough for a while, anyway."

Little did we know at the time that Hank had put his finger on the major obstacle in the engineering path toward a successfully operating system.

Dr. Carr bought into our concept design, and we negotiated and signed a contract the following week. Hank and I immediately dived into the design and development phase. We give all of our projects some acronym name, followed by the software and hardware version number. We called this project VAL, for Virtual Automated Lover, and so our first model was VALv1.0. (Hint to anyone buying new software: NEVER spend money for any version labeled 1.0, unless you're ready for a boxful of bugs.)

The Internet sex stores yielded everything we needed to convert VictimFv1.7, a prototype female trauma robot left over from that project, into Victoria, our lab subject. When we finished with her upgrades, she was complete with a penetrable artificial vagina including clit, which had its own pressure sensor for sensory feedback. We also added bendable and spreadable legs, and cyber-skin plastic breasts with touch sensors under the nipples.

Mostly through empirical trial-and-error tests and adjustments, we eventually got a working prototype system built into a standard sofa bed. Its servo-mechanisms could stroke and caress Victoria in all the right places under software control. You would have to be a techno-geek to understand the elation and high-fiving between Hank and me when, for the first time, our PC-driven robot actually located Victoria's plastic pussy and thrust an eight-inch dildo into it. By the end of the fourth week, we had advanced to VALv1.2, which could execute three different types of foreplay stimulation as well as penetrate Victoria's vagina with a variety of movements and energies. We were well ahead of schedule, we thought. The last major step we had left to do was close the servomechanism loop with sensory feedback data from Vicky. That was where the thread got caught in the zipper of progress.

"It's just no good, Jack," Hank said dejectedly mid-morning on Tuesday of Week 5. "I totally under-estimated how long the computer response time would be for using canned lookup files for simulating female bio-sensory data for stimulation feedback. We have pulse rate, breathing rate, audible sounds, and EKG brainwave data to simulate. Even with a 4X acceleration of all the file lookups and simplified datapoint interpolation algorithms, it's well over five-point-two seconds to get a next-motion decision. And even then, all I've got is an educated guess on how a woman would actually respond from that kind of stimulation."

Hank demonstrated how the simulated responses to VAL's foreplay stroking of Victoria's body parts were slow and erratic. The simulated intercourse was even worse – the feedback delay of Hank's canned physiological reactions by Victoria was long enough to sometimes make VAL's in/out motions and intensity levels go completely unstable. This was a very, very large problem. Hank had made some reasonable judgments (we thought, but weren't sure) on what would be a woman's reactions to various movements we had mechanized VAL to perform. Their simulations in software simply took too long for his computer program to reproduce and change, whenever VAL's stimuli were varied.

Hitting a serious roadblock in a project is nothing new to Hank and me. My experience has been that getting around, over, or somehow past that roadblock usually involves swallowing your egotistical pride and shit-canning your first approach to search for another one. It was time for another brainstorm session. It was also time for lunch, so we went to our second venue for conceptual thinking: the all-you-can-eat buffet lunch at the Mandarin Pagoda, a small Chinese restaurant near the shop. In between snarfing pot-stickers, fried won-ton, beef with pea pods and tomatoes, General Tso's chicken, and sweet and sour pork, we talked about what Hank needed for his software.

"So what we're going to have to do, Jack, is to get some live response feedback to record and use in our tests," Hank concluded. "The real problem, then, is who can we get to volunteer to be our laboratory fox?"

Little did we know that there were candidates already waiting for us at the shop. We returned a little past one o'clock, and were surprised to see Melissa and Patti standing in the workshop. It was fairly common practice for them to drop by after a shopping trip to the nearby mall, but they usually called first, and Hank and I could cover up our 'Top-Secret' work. But this time, Hank and I were caught with our pants down - or more correctly, with Victoria's panties off. Our two wives were examining her, lying on her back on the sofa bed, with legs wide open, and VAL's dildo/penis pointed straight at her obvious target. In Melissa's hand was a reject artificial vagina, part of our Internet shopping, that I had facetiously commandeered as a pencil holder for my drafting table.

"Oh, shit," I whispered to Hank. "Better start thinking of a good explanation for Patti. Melissa's going to bust my balls about this."

Our wives heard us come into the shop, and Melissa stared me down with a look cold enough to make me shiver.

"All right, you perverts!" she barked at us. "Just what the hell have you been up to?"

Hank spoke while I was still collecting my thoughts.

"Melissa, it's not what you think. This is really a contract job. For Celeste. She's a sex therapist. She wants us to make a robot to help women enjoy sex more."

Both Melissa and Patti gave him that 'Yea, you expect me to believe that' stare. I was almost expecting a cloud to form in the room, the disbelief and tension was so chillingly heavy. Hank looked at me, his eyes begging for help.

"Hank's right, honey," I said. "This really is a bona fide customer-specified project. Our client is a Dr. Celeste Carr Dobbs, who runs a psychology clinic in the city. I can show you the contract."

I went on to relate the whole story to our wives, down to the details of ordering the sex toys on the Internet. I'm not certain, but I think it was Patti who first became interested, but, to Hank's and my relief, in about fifteen minutes both of our wives had calmed down enough to begin asking questions about Victoria and VAL. You would have to know Hank to really understand how verbose he can get when he has an opportunity to talk about whatever engineering project he is working on. Someone once described him by saying, "Don't ever ask Hank for the time of day; you'll wind up listening to him explain how a watch works."

Patti and Melissa were used to his going on and on about things technical, and had developed techniques (or possibly defense mechanisms) to throttle down his motor mouth and cut to the chase. It didn't take very long before they comprehended what the project concept and intent was, and then they, too, became intrigued. Proving once again, if you want to get someone's attention, just say the word 'sex.'

I was feeling lots of pride in Hank's and my accomplishments, as he chattered on about the neat features of Victoria, our prototype subject, and how VAL could be programmed to arouse her, from light caresses to super-human intercourse. Melissa, as usual, cut me off at the knees when I started boasting on how well VAL can operate.

"And what makes you such an expert on sex, Jack?" she asked. "I doubt if you know more than five different positions, and even less about what kinds of foreplay really make a woman hot."

"I couldn't agree with you more, Melissa," Hank declared, trying to ingratiate himself with Melissa. "Jack probably doesn't know what it takes to make you hot."

This time, Hank's impetuous speech backfired on him. Patti whirled on him, and blasted him, as well as me.

"And I suppose you do, Mr. I-fucked-them-both-in-college," she exclaimed. "Let me tell you, sweetie: you're no hot shot expert on that subject, either. I think that neither of you two know jack shit about what you're doing here."

Hank didn't argue, simply saying, "Actually, honey, you've touched on the crux of the matter. Our project is bogged down at the moment because we can't simulate Victoria's sensory reactions in real time. We need some help and advice; from the woman's point of view."

It never ceases to amaze me how my technically brilliant, but socially clumsy, partner can continually step into shit, and then come out with a shoe shine. He had said the magic words: 'need help from a woman,' and almost immediately, both Patti and Melissa were listening intently to Hank, their earlier anger and disbelief totally suspended. He explained how his software required actual sensory feedback data in real time, so that the servos and stimulation movements could employ the artificial intelligence he and I had designed into them. Right now, you're probably drawing as blank a stare as Melissa and Patti were at that moment. I stepped into the discussion to try to clear things up for the women.

"Here's the problem," I began. "Per Dr. Carr's specifications, VAL here is supposed to be superior to all the masturbation toys and so-called fucking machines ..."

"Like the Sybian™ machine," Patti blurted out, then blushed as I stared at her, surprised that she was aware of such a product. "I saw it one time, on the Internet," she explained defensively. "You saw it, too, Melissa. You were there as well."

After staring at Melissa and raising my eyebrows over this disclosure, I continued, "Well, since we're talking to such knowledgeable people, let me tell you how VAL here is supposed to be superior to the state-of-art sex toys, and what Hank's and my problem is."

Hank and I demonstrated what we had already done, and we described how we could sense a female subject's reactions to arousal stimulation, right through intercourse. We went on to show how we could evaluate that data and adjust VAL's motions and intensity, thereby optimizing the positive sensations for the woman. I concluded with showing Melissa and Patti how canned patterns for feedback were too slow and limited, and we were stumped on how to test and improve on VAL's capabilities.

"So let me get this straight," Melissa said to us. "Your robot here is designed to turn on a woman and give her some of the best sex she's ever had."

"Correct."

"And that what's it here ..."

"Hank and I call it VAL, honey. It stands for Virtual Automated Lover."

"Whatever. But it is supposed to slow down, speed up, change techniques, and so on, all based upon the woman's heart rate, breathing, and muscle movements."

"Yeah, that's what it is theoretically supposed to do. Only we're stuck on proving it through testing, because we don't have the right kind of real-time feedback data."

Melissa looked at me, and her eyes had that certain sparkle that she gets when she is turned on to something. It could be finding that just right pair of shoes at a store sale, or a particularly stimulating article in a newspaper or magazine. It also happens when she is feeling sexy.

"This I got to see. Hank, get that plastic and metal bimbo off that bed, and wire me up. I want to try out your VAL thing."

"Are you really sure you want to do this, honey?" I asked. "Patti and Hank are here, too, you know."

To my astonishment, Melissa and Patti both argued for the opportunity to try out VAL. They flipped a coin to determine who would go first. Melissa won. I told them that Dr. Carr had said that her normal patient routine is to have the patient disrobe and wear a shorty kimono, and she had provided us with two samples. I suggested that Melissa and Patti use the former ladies' locker room and change into the robes there, while I disconnected Victoria and cleaned up the sofa bed and Hank readied VAL's computer software to accept real-time feedback data from our actual sensors.

When our two wives returned, each now looking quite sexy with shapely bare legs displayed under floral print silk kimonos. Hank introduced Melissa to the sofa bed and VAL. It was bizarre, to say the least, observing Hank give instructions to my wife, prior to her getting it on with VAL. And all the while I was standing next to his wife, who was equally interested. It didn't seem to phase either Hank or Melissa, as they diligently acted as though this was just another ordinary laboratory test. He picked up the modified EKG electrodes he needed to attach to Melissa's body, and he calmly asked her if she wanted to be nude or keep her kimono on, and whether she wanted to use the missionary or the doggie position.

"What the hell," she said, grinning at me and winking at Patti, as she dropped her robe. "Might as well go all the way. And I'll choose missionary."

She stretched out on her back on the sofa bed, and Hank attached the EKG sensors to specific locations on her body, which he then connected to the laptop computer system.

"Jack and I realized the noise and appearance of VAL's servos would be a turn-off, Melissa," he said. "So we've got a virtual reality headset for you to wear. It's got some sound-cancelling headphones and a miniature plasma video display for you to look at. At first, you will see a sequence of ten second previews of video, ranging from sensuous outdoor scenes to artistic male and female nudes, all the way to a porno flick. They all have matching sound tracks. To pick one that you think will put you in the right mood, just say, 'Yes,' or 'Hotter.' Now, Melissa, make yourself comfortable on the bed. Start your background music and video, and when you're ready to get it on with VAL the robot, just squeeze that grab bar at the head of the bed. And any time you want to stop, just let go. VAL is completely under your control."

Melissa took a deep breath, and put on the virtual reality headset. Seeing my wife's naked breasts and trimmed pussy exposed to Hank and Patti, as well as my anticipation of what I was about to witness, made me aroused, and my cock became partially erect. Patti noticed the bulge in my pants, and she laughed at my predicament, and playfully squeezed my cock. She followed me to my position at the laptop PC on a table nearby, where I could control the motions of VAL. Melissa selected the sensuous music and nude visuals and settled into position. I was pretty confident that our system would work mechanically, but wasn't at all sure about how it would react to the sensor feedback from a live subject. There was a finite possibility that something could go amok, and Melissa might be injured by VAL. Hank, Patti, and I stared intently at Melissa lying on the sofa bed, as she squirmed around to get comfortable. None of us could see her face because of the headset, and I wondered what she was feeling at that moment. The tension in the room was not unlike what it must be in NASA's control center just before liftoff.

When Melissa used the grab bar, servo motors began to whir, and an aluminum frame in the back of the sofa bed moved forward. A laser beam shining downward reflected off the sheet that covered the mattress, which allowed the system to detect where her shoulders were located. The top section of the frame then lowered itself and stopped when two of four dangling soft chamois leather strips lightly brushed against her face. This told the computer precisely where Melissa's head was, and then the mechanized arm dragged the chamois sensors down her torso and across her hips and legs. This first pass determined the position and size of Melissa's body, and I entered the command for initiating tactile stimulation. The frame went slowly up and down her legs, pussy and breasts, tickling her body with the soft leather strips for about a minute. I was observing from the front, and I noticed that as Melissa was stroked, she would arch her back and sigh with pleasure.

I punched the keyboard on the PC to activate the next step, which lowered a plastic tube that blew warmed, aromatic air across Melissa's body, pausing to scan across her thighs so that the air tickled her vagina, and at the same time pinpointing its co-ordinates to the program. Melissa murmured contentedly, relaxing more with each pass of the stroking and air kisses.

I entered another command, and this time the arm rotated to expose a common dusting tool (purchased at Target – hey, we had a small budget) that contacted Melissa's rib cage and slowly and lightly brushed over her breasts. This action gave our computer program the profile of her breasts and where her nipples were located. Melissa jumped and squealed in surprise when two soft plastic cylinders connected to a vacuum pump lowered from the arm assembly and positioned themselves on her breasts. The vacuum made the cylinders attach themselves around her breasts, and two tiny soft rubber wheels inside each cylinder began to rotate to tease her nipples. They were programmed to sometimes flick against a nipple, other times to press tightly against it and also pinch and pull. A microphone in her headset and the EKG sensors picked up Melissa's voice and body reactions to all of these stimulations, and the program remembered which particular motions and strengths elicited the strongest reactions.