It had to be here somewhere. Zak hunted high and low for his favourite scarf, rooting around in the back of cupboards and drawers. Suddenly as his hand fumbled through a pile of clothes at the back of one draw he found something hard and long. He gripped his hand around it, it was quite wide. He drew it out. In his hand he saw a remote for the maid. He stared at it for some moments. Funny, he thought, I hadn't thought about the maid at all in all this time. Yes this was his spare remote. He had made two as a fall back if the first one stopped working for any reason. Why was it here? He certainly couldn't recall putting it in this drawer and certainly couldn't understand why he would hide it among his clothes. It was a strange out of the way place to find it, as if it were hidden.
Slowly the uncertainties crept back into his mind, like an advancing shadow silently consuming the landscape. All the doubt about whether he had sold his wife and not the robot re-emerged. He wondered again whether the woman he could hear right now moving about downstairs was indeed Ellie or in fact the robot. He thought he had rid himself of these uncertainties, yet here they were flooding back at the slightest provocation. He suddenly realised that lying here in the palm of his hand was the means to be sure. If that was his wife downstairs, she would certainly not respond to this remote. He knew he had tested this before, but that had been the main remote. He felt sure this was not making a lot of sense, but now there was only one of them.
Zak's palms were sticky and he felt a chill run along his spine. He could see the remote was shaking in his palm at the possibility of being confronted by a monumental mistake. What would he do? He looked back at the drawer and thought of burying the remote at the back once more. Yet he knew that his peace of mind had already been irrevocably shattered. It would play upon his thoughts the remote sitting snugly at the back of this drawer, always calling to him. He could not go back to ignorance. No. He had to put an end to these doubts. He had to use the remote and make sure his wife would continue whatever she was up to regardless of the buttons he would press. She needn't know. She shouldn't know. It had to be a blind test.
The stairs creaked as he walked down them, and Zak felt anguish as he expected her to appear in the hallway and his resolve to evaporate. Yet she didn't. She was bustling about in the kitchen and humming to herself. She seemed absorbed in the work she was doing. Zak reached the hallway and saw the kitchen door ajar. He could see his wife moving about preparing them something to eat. In a moment of clarity, Zak saw how much he preferred his new wife who was not always chasing after her own career but made the house homely. He loved the smell of cooking as she prepared the meals for them and her attentiveness. Sex was amazingly hot too, much improved on the old Ellie. Oh God, I hope this doesn't work. Standing at the far end of the hall, so as not to attract her attention, he raised the remote and pointed it at the open doorway. His finger hovered over the button. He shook and had no control over it. He hated himself for having to perform this test, for doubting her. He wanted more than anything to just go back to accepting the status quo. He pressed the button.
The humming stopped.
--o0o—
Zak collapsed on the floor. He sobbed, his heart lurching and the remote clattered over the wood flooring. His worst nightmare had just been realised. He felt hopeless, he felt powerless, he felt duped a fool, the condemnation not only of Ellie but of everyone who knew them descended upon him. He curled up on the floor longing, desperately longing for Ellie to come through the kitchen door and see what was the matter. The sobbing echoed around the still and empty house.
He must have lain there prostrate for some time. He cursed himself for shattering his own illusion that had held his peace of mind together. He had to find her, he had to explain, to apologise to rescue her. He had to go to that man they had sold her to and ask him to give her back. How was he to explain he had sold his own wife instead of a robot by mistake?
The man had lived by himself and he had wanted a woman to look after him. He had not had much success with women. He was rather shy and set in his ways, so while he resented them as a gender for not being able to form a relationship with a woman, he also longed for the company of one. A robot maid was ideal. He would not have any of the difficulties he felt around women, and he could order it to do just exactly what he wanted. The first thing he had done when he got it home was check whether it was complete. He had lifted the skirt and pulled the panties down. His heart had leaped with the excitement when he saw the robotic cunt looking so realistic.
Zak pulled up outside the house. It looked ordinary enough from the street. It had been some time since he had last driven up and delivered Ellie to him. He felt the lump in his throat at the prospect of having to explain he needed the robot back. He took a deep breath and opened the car door.
"Want it back?"
"There is a fault we have discovered and I need it back to do some more work upon it."
"But it has been functioning perfectly. What sort of fault?"
"Well... It's ehm a software fault we think. The robot can suddenly behave strangely and we cannot predict what it might do. You could be at risk."
"Oh! At risk you say... I have not had any trouble."
"We need to recall the robot and do strenuous tests to understand what goes wrong in the software. Here is the money you paid for it and I have added another 20% compensation for your loss."
The man looked worried. He thought about what the robot could have done to him after all the training he had forced upon it. Even a robot seemed fraught with personal danger to him.
"I've sold it. You can come in and check if you don't believe me." He stood back to allow Zak to pass. He saw Zak's look of horror at the news.
"Is it that dangerous? I never had any complaints from it."
"Who did you sell it to?"
"Come in and I'll get you the address. I'm afraid it was a rather seedy place and they didn't want it for a maid." Zak turned pale. His wife had been sold into some kind of sex trade. This nightmare had just taken an unexpected turn for the worse. He was pretty sure his chances of rescuing her had just diminished considerably.
As they walked through to the back room Zak tried to understand how this man could do such a thing. "Didn't it perform its duties well?"
"Oh yes... and more," he added after a pause. He turned to look at Zak, but his face was bright red. Zak understood exactly what the 'and more' had been. He felt sick. "At first it was a lot of fun, and I thought I was happy but you know, when at last you get what you have really craved for, for so long, it somehow loses its value to you. There were other things too, and I was not at all sure I could live with. All that tidying away was obsessive and I could never find anything. I never thought I would, but I started to miss being on my own and having everything just the way I wanted it. Funny really."
Zak felt his resolve weaken. The more he found out, the more responsible he felt for what had been inflicted upon Ellie. There were some things better not to know. They went into his study and he looked through his receipts. He seemed to keep stacks of them, and some looked yellowed with age.
"Still," he continued as he searched through the paperwork, "it was only a robot so no harm was done. No messy divorce or anything. Ah! Here it is." He held up a paper and handed it to Zak. He noted down the address and fled as quickly as seemed seemly.
