Ben had never really cared much for the sex industry, so he felt extremely awkward waiting in the middle of the convention center. Some people accused him of being old-fashioned, but he just wanted something at all left to the imagination.
Here though, there were stark naked strippers every fifty feet, he'd seen multiple saleswomen, and salesmen to be fair, giving live sex-toy demonstrations, and more than one couple he'd caught having sex in an only barely concealed corner. Technically, only representatives of the companies at the expo were allowed to engage in full public nudity or lewd acts out in the open and licensed prostitutes interacting with visitors needed to find someplace relatively private. However, convention center security tended to accept sexual favors to look the other way.
"Where are you, Brian?" Ben wondered aloud.
"Hey there, handsome," he heard a tinny voice say. He turned around and right behind him was one of Orgasma Inc's new sexbots. They had lost SEXPO hard this year to Aphrodyne, and apparently, they were trying to salvage the situation by having their robots solicit customers right in the main lobby. Sure enough, he looked off over the robot's shoulder to see an identical model leading a man with a huge boner off somewhere down the hallway. Orgasma had gone in completely the opposite direction of their competitor, accentuating their sexbot's robotic features rather than something that could pass for human. He guessed they were sexy enough, but more in the way a sports car or fancy motorcycle was sexy rather than a woman. Their biggest limitation was in their behavior, where the best hardware in the world couldn't have made them comparable to Aphrodyne's new super bots. He tried to ignore the blue and chrome-plated gynoid, but Orgasma seemed pretty desperate.
"You know, if you like what you see, we're offering a discount to Orgasma loyalty customers," the robot said in an obviously artificial but not at all unpleasant voice.
"Thanks, love," Ben said, "But I'm waiting for a friend." The sexbot smiled at him and moved on to somebody else.
"You should have taken it up on its offer," Brian's voice echoed in Ben's head, "I've been wanting a piece of that chrome ass for a long time."
"Sure, if you're into Decepticons," Ben said, "Is that why Aphrodyne fired you, wanting to fuck the competition?"
"Haha," Brian said, "Bruce, you there?"
"Ready and waiting," the old street samurai said, "While you're up there, I'll be sampling some of the amenities down here. There's a smokin' hot Puerto Rican babe--"
"I don't need to hear about it, Bruce," Ben said as he walked to the elevators up to the hotel. He passed a saleswoman bouncing up and down on a dildo in her booth, and two strippers, a black man and a white girl, who were doing a hip-hop routine completely naked.
"Run me through your part of the plan again, Ben," Brian said, "Just so I know you know what you're doing."
"For crying out loud, Brian!" Ben said.
"Sure, in public, in broad daylight, tell you out loud our plan to steal a state-of-the-art robot from one of the most ruthless corporations in America," Ben said. "These cybernetic phones can't read minds and this job is risky enough as it is."
"It's just Aphrodyne," Brian said, "They make glorified fleshlights."
"Yeah, and they're owned by Robocorp," Ben said, "Ruthless. Okay I'm alone in the elevator now. I'm going to head up to the Aphrodyne brothel, purchase an hour with one of the "girls," remove the transponder, plug in the control chip, and walk out of here with her under your control via the maintenance level on Subfloor 3. This isn't my first robot heist, Brian."
The elevator opened on the twelfth floor which Aphrodyne had rented out completely for a temporary robot brothel. He rounded a corner and found two women, at least he thought they were real women, making out right on the countertop. One of them clearly worked for the hotel, so the other he assumed was a sexbot. Except she looked like she had just gotten out of the pool, so was she a visitor and the other woman was the robot? Were they both robots putting on a show to entice customers? Were they both real women taking advantage of their relatively private location? Ben realized grimly that this conundrum was about to become a lot more common.
"Excuse me, ladies," The woman who worked for the hotel gasped in shock and hastily buttoned up her blouse but the other woman looked more annoyed rather than surprised.
"I'm so sorry," the hotel employee said, "Monique, you should probably get back to work." The other woman in the bikini smiled at them and left. So, she was a robot... unless she was one of the strippers downstairs? Dammit, Aphrodyne!
"Oh, you didn't have to stop on my account," Ben said in his smarmiest and creepiest act, "So is it true these sexbots can be any woman I want?"
"It sure seemed that way on stage, didn't it?" she said.
"Well hot-diggity-dog," he said, "Say, how much will it cost to sample some that ass for an hour?"
"$5,000 an hour, sir," she said with a large but strained smile, so clearly his perv act was working. Hopefully, she would never suspect him for some kind of criminal/engineer mastermind. But goddamn was Aphrodyne gouging the price. All the same, Ben paid the fee upfront and the hotel employee directed him to room 1241
"Nice! Hey, maybe I'll even ask her to look like you, doll," he said before he left then cringed at himself.
"Okay, this is the room. Brian, how should I play this?" he asked.
"Play along at first," Brian said, "We need its serial number so I can look up its maintenance password. The number should be on its ass, but you need UV light to see it."
"Does she have any security features I need to know about?" Ben asked.
"Don't put in the control chip until after removing the transponder," Brian explained, "And don't say the serial number out loud, or let it know that you're looking for it."
"Will I still be able to read her serial number if she shapeshifts?" Ben asked.
"No," Brian said, "Its skin is normally translucent, so ask it to morph into its default form."
"Alright, here goes nothing," Ben said.
"Have fun!" Bruce said.
"Shut up," Ben said, "I already feel like a basement-dwelling creep." Then, he swiped the temporary keycard the hotel employee had given him and opened the door.
The sexbot was lying sideways on the bed in the body of a stunningly gorgeous black woman in stark, white lace. She looked at him with dreamy bedroom eyes and beckoned him over with her finger. If he didn't know already, he would have been certain she was a real woman. While his two partners had enthusiastically volunteered for his part of the job, he was the only one who had dissected an android before. Despite knowing fully well what she was, he just couldn't help himself, and before he knew it, his pants were getting tighter.
"Hey there, handsome," she said. Unlike Orgasma's fighter jet downstairs, her voice sounded completely natural.
"Hi," was all Ben could say. The robot sat up, folded her legs off to the side, and arched her back to draw his attention to her tits.
"Who suits your fancy today," she asked, "Someone famous, maybe?" He blinked and was stunned for a moment when she morphed into a flawless doppelganger of Britney Clark.
He hadn't actually seen Aphrodyne's now-famous presentation, but he'd heard about it and had Brian's description of their capabilities. He wasn't prepared for the transformation. It was nearly instantaneous, but smooth and slick, not jarring like a poorly edited video transition.
"Doesn't Aphrodyne need Britney's consent to use her likeness?" Ben asked.
"She's promoting her new movie," the robot said, "Maybe you prefer somebody... larger than life?" Next, she morphed again into a comic book superheroine with ridiculously huge boobs. As in, big even for a superheroine.
"I don't read comic books, so I don't really know who that is," Ben admitted with a shrug.
"Okay," she said, "How about we play a game of roulette?" Then she transformed into dozens of different women within a few seconds, finally settling on a leggy, naked, Japanese woman.
"Do you want to spin again and see who comes up next?" she asked.
"So... you can really be any woman I want?" Ben asked.
"Any woman," she said. Then she stood up, walked over to him, and ran her hand over his chest while looking dead in the eye.
"Any. Fantasy. You've. Ever. Had," she said with an intensity that made Ben's erection start throbbing like it was sore. Any more, and he wondered if she might damn well kill him, and that was despite his aversion to sexbots. She was going to make this very distracting if he allowed it to continue. Then he remembered what Brian had said about finding her serial number.
"Actually, you know what?" Ben said, "I can find a super-hot human gal in any brothel on the planet, but this is a robot-brothel. How about something more..."
"Technological?" she asked then reverted to her default form.
"That's more like it," Ben said, "Wow, they really spared no expense on your, er, soft parts, did they?"
"You mean my tits and my ass," she said, "Oh, that's all me. You seem like a guy who likes them curvy."
"Yeah," he said, "Hey, how about bending over so I can see that butt?" The robot twirled around playfully and bent over the bed.
"Stay just like that," Ben pulled the UV light out of his pocket and knelt down behind the robot's synthetic bubble butt.
"Go ahead and touch," she said, "This is a brothel, not a strip club." Ben played along and spread her cheeks as he looked for the serial number. When he found it, he took a picture of it with his cybernetic camera and sent the image to Brian.
"X-514... got it!" Brian said, "This one's maintenance password is Q14-HC6. Now we just need its name for it to accept the password."
"Hey, what's your name, babe?" Ben asked.
"All of the units on display today are the Venus X-5 model," the robot said. That sounded a lot more robotic, like a prerecorded disclaimer.
"That's not what I asked," Ben said.
"Demo units have not been given an individual designation yet," she said.
"Dammit," Brian said.
"Venus Five," Ben said thinking fast, "How about... can I call you V?"
"If it accepts the name then we're gold," Brian said.
"V..." the robot said and seemed to taste the name as it rolled off her tongue, "Sure, V. V for vagina."
"I was thinking V for Venus and the Roman numeral five, but whatever," Ben said, "V, execute maintenance diagnostics Q-1-4-H-C-6." Suddenly she became as stiff as a rail and stood up straight at her hips with her arms akimbo. Lastly, her chest cavity and face opened to reaveal all the machinery and circuitry inside. Ben made sure the door was locked then plopped down on the bed with his tools.
"Alright, she's in sleep mode," Ben said, "I'm removing the transponder now."
