I watch the wall of panel screens in front of me. I pose for the hidden cameras. I'm sure security is getting a jolt out of this. My new Rackmount 3000s bolt-ons are deadly enough to pop the circuits of any male robot.
Chevonne is in the corner trying out a pink torso. "Sam, does this make me look fat?" she asks. "No darling, I think it looks fabulous," I lie to her. What else could I say, you look like a pig?
To be honest with you, Chevonne is as fun as a video game with only one level and that level includes only jumping puzzles and no continues. A Personality 3000 upgrade would do her wonders. She's already on the verge of getting reformatted for poor performance. Our clients are always right, but she thinks otherwise. We are hostess-bots in New Orleans City. We host parties and entertain guests, human and robotic. Some call me a Transformer - how many other male robots pretend to be female? You'd be surprised at the number of "normal" guests that seem to make an extra effort to attend the corporate parties we host. We have the usual genital plugins, but the some request we get will blow your capacitors. Thankfully we erase any memories we wish to forget. I guess all fantasies do come true in New Orleans City - except ours.
Chevonne taps her fat ass bolt-on to check if it still is connected. She's tried every bodily upgraded in the last year. This week she's playing the hefty trucker woman. Last week, she was an secret assassin. Thankfully, this is all covered by the corporation we work for - Bad Robots Hostesses.
As we leave His & Hers and head into the bustling mall crowd, a man accosts us. "Pardon me, are you Sam 20571?" he asks.
He's holding a photo of us (at a party) in his hand. I don't recognize him. Maybe I erased him from my memory. Some our clients can be a bit stalkerish. And this one looks extra super stalkerish. I put my hand on my immobilizer spray. Chevonne, however, pops out her pen and is ready sign the photo. The fool.
Another man grabs her wrist from behind and handcuffs her. "We'd like to ask you a few questions down at central," the man says stiffly.
Central is where they boot-up robots for the first time. Central is where the deactivate robots for reformatting. Central is life & death for us. You don't go there if you can help it so we don't.
"May I ask, why we are needed at Central?"
"That's for us to know and you to find out," he says with a grin. It wasn't a pleasant grin.
They shove us into the back seat of the hover van. At least we avoid the metal coffin treatment. Violent criminals we are not. Chevonne's internal CPU frequency is spiking and she's beginning to overheat. I can tell by her silence. I remain stable - throttling any circuits that try to crash my program - and put myself in hibernate to save on energy in case they hold us there overnight.
An hour or so later, we arrive. Central is a Gaudi-like cathedral covered in dark one-way glass. Its spires are the tallest things in the city. It's because the federalists can spy on everyone from up there without installing cameras everywhere. We are escorted to a sparse room and told to remove all plugins. If I could blush, I would have, but instead I pull out my work-related necessities to circuit busting eyes. Chevonne is robotic - she goes through the mechanics without any neural processing.
"Plug these on," snarls another man. Obviously, he thinks his task is meaningless. We are handed new svelte black & white outfits and a pair of bunny ears. How original… Playbunny fantasies were so last millennium. Chevonne's removed her hideous trucker body and is back to her deadly self - which what she was designed and programmed to do.
The man points to the door when we are done. Armed guards wait for us outside with laser rifles pointed down. Curiosity is killing me. Why all the attention?
"So why are we here again?" I ask one of the guards.
"You are the entertainment," says one of them. "For the president."
Chevonne's lights blink as she switches back into normal running mode, but I, I am a bit worried. Don't they know I'm a tranny-bot?
…
Sometime after, I awaken with Chevonne in a taxi cab. Our communicators buzz with thank you mesages, but we remember nothing. Our memories of the past few hours were erased. Jello, mud, and torn bits of clothing remain between our joints. Our genital plugins are still fully attached including my male one. My default body is a bit worse for wear with nicks and scratches along my back and ass. The president or whomever must have liked it rough.
I'll never understand humans. I'm glad I'm not one.
