him. Just like that. Sprinkled a little bit of powder into his mouth and he was dead in a few minutes. Never woke up. I didn't know what to do. I was 'asleep' next to him, since he programmed me to do so, but I woke up as soon as she entered the room. I've since determined that the only thing that allowed me to make the decision to keep quiet while she was doing her work was a glitch in my system. Anyway, I sat up and she just looked at me. I thought she might try to kill me, but she didn't. She asked who I was and I told her. It didn't take her long to piece together that I was also a sexbot.”
“So what did she do?” Ryan asked, enraptured by now.
“She rescued me. She was appalled by my living situation. She had to hit me with a power surge that knocked me out, because while the glitch had let me stand by and watch her kill the CEO, I couldn't have left the structure of my own free will, since I didn't really have any. When I woke up, it was two weeks later. She had added all sorts of things to my programming. She said there'd be a spark of sentience in me, and she'd simply added some kindling to the flame. For the first time ever, I... wanted , instead of just doing what I was programmed to do. The woman, a freelance assassin named Jade, took me on as her partner, taught me all about assassinating and having a life of my own. It was really quite wonderful.”
“But what about...I don't know, I mean, can you just be a free-willed robot? I don't really know the legality of the situation,” Ryan replied, feeling awkward, hoping he wouldn't offend her.
“It took a little bit legal, or strictly speaking illegal, maneuvering, but yes, robots can apply for citizenship. I did. Technically speaking, I deal in stocks and also run numbers for smaller corporations who don't have the computational power necessary and find it cheaper to hire out. So that's how I get my money. But I've since gotten a license to bounty hunt. I spent a year with Jade. After that, I spent a year alone, setting up a life for myself. When I got tired of assassinations, I went into bounty hunting, and that's how I met these girls. They were doing a bounty hunting gig and we crossed paths. Usually I don't respond well to rivals but...I don't know, there was just something about them that I really liked. So we agreed to join forces.
“And the rest, as they so often say, is history.”
“You were wrong. It was very interesting,” Ryan said after a minute of silence.
Love laughed. “Well, I'm glad you thought so.”
“Wouldn't...” he hesitated.
“What?”
“Well, I don't want to sound ungrateful, but I guess I was just thinking...wouldn't life be easier without sex? I mean, I guess it wouldn't if you could get it easily enough, and I know guys don't have problems fucking robots.”
“They're a little more touchy about it if you don't look human, surprisingly. Most guys I've met fall into one of a few different categories, either don't want to fuck a sexbot, they don't want to fuck a sexbot that doesn't look human, or they're all talk and no action. I mean, if I try hard enough, I can get laid, probably more easily than Emily can. But yeah, you're right. Life without sex is, in fact, a lot easier. I've seen a lot of people get depressed, doubt their self-worth, get angry or apathetic, make stupid decisions, when they can't find someone to have sex with. And, of course, being programmed with something at least resembling human emotions, I kind of get that way myself. The biggest difference is, I can turn my sex drive off.
“Everything becomes a lot clearer then, a lot easier. Sometimes I leave it off for months. And then...I don't know, I'll see a cute guy, or girl, walking around, I'll see an ad for porn online, I don't know, something will remind me about sex, and then I'll realize that I miss having it. I miss the pleasure, the way someone's face looks when they're having an orgasm, the closeness of it all. But mostly I just miss the