"What's that?" Brandon pointed across the attic at something that looked like a human figure, draped in a white dustcloth. "Creepy."
Pete looked up from the cardboard box he was pawing through. "That's the old sitter-bot."
"Shit! You guys are rich! You've got a sitter-bot? That you don't even use? Does it work?"
"Yeah, it works. We're not that rich. Dad got it almost free from a private school that was upgrading its faculty. It was the librarian, and he brought it home and enabled the childcare options. Don't get sidetracked, come help me find that stuff for my mom."
Brandon ignored him and walked over to the table, pulling the cloth off the robot's head and shoulders. "Man, she's hot! Are you sure she works?"
"Yeah, it works. It's in hibernation mode. It stays warm and does routine maintenance, and calls Dad if it needs something. Mom and Dad keep it maintained so they can give it to my sister when she starts having kids." He grinned at Brandon. "It looks human, doesn't it? Dad thought the sitter should LOOK like a sitter. When it was teaching Jenny how to swim, I was crushing on it. I used to sit up in my room and watch it through the window. It looked good in a bikini."
Brandon grinned at him. "You were hot for her, huh. She looks like that bot at the theater. You know, the usher?"
"Yeah, it was a popular model. I see them all over the city. Different hair and skin, but basically the same robot."
Brandon had accessed the owner's manual on his pad and was thumbing through the pages. He absently wiped the sweat off his forehead. "Shit, your attic gets hot in the summer."
Pete nodded and pulled off his tee, using it to mop the sweat off his neck and face. "If you'd come help me, we'd get out of here quicker!" He turned his attention back to the box on the floor in front of him, looking for the drives that his mother had asked him to bring down from the attic.
"Pete!" Brandon sounded surprised.
"Yeah, what?" He said absently as he opened another box.
"This is fully functional." He pulled the dust cloth off and let it fall to the floor, revealing a robot dressed in a pale orange jumpsuit, eyes closed. It was a high end human emulator, and in spite of being old technology, could pass for a twenty year old human female in nearly any setting.
"Yeah, so what?"
"Pete, this is fully functional! Shit, it's a sexbot!"
Pete looked up, annoyed. "No, she's not. She's a librarian with childcare modes enabled."
"Pete, look at the manual, she's fully functional!"
"No, she's not. Get real. What would we be doing with a sexbot? And be quiet, someone will hear you." He gestured at the door which silently dilated shut, and joined Brandon, looking over his shoulder at the pad.
"Wow." He grinned. "She has a lot of options, I'll say that." He took the pad from his friend and tapped in an access code. The robot on the table chimed and he tapped the pad a few more times.
"See?" He pointed at the screen. "Fully functional, yeah, but it doesn't have the subroutines for EVERYthing. Conservative family here, remember? No sexbots here, dummy."
"So what? Let's install them."
Pete laughed. "Do you wanna fuck my robot?"
"Duh, SURE! And so do you! It's awesome! I saved up for six months for a session with a bot that didn't have half the capabilities that this one does! It was great!"
Pete looked at his friend. "You bought a sexbot session? Liar. You can't do anything like that without parental approval."
Brandon blushed. "Dad was okay with it. He said I needed the education. Besides, I'm eighteen now, you're nineteen. We can do anything we want!"
"That's not the point, Bran. It's not my robot, and Mom and Dad sure as hell aren't going to let me start nooky'n with the family bot, not even for 'education!'"
Brandon shrugged. "They don't have to know."
"How can we do it without them finding out? I can't just have an active robot in my room, they'd notice. And besides, we don't have the codes for the subroutines. You think we're just going to walk into a mart and ask for sexbot codes? Codes like that are expensive."
"Pete, it's old technology. I bet I can find pirated codes in ten minutes." He snatched his pad back and tapped furiously for a couple of seconds.
"See... here's the basic code, and there are three... no, four modes." He looked pleadingly at his friend. "Shit, man, you've got the most awesome toy, and you're wasting it!"
Pete ran his finger over the bot's arm, feeling the lifelike synthskin. "Her name is Chloe." He shook his head. "My dad's not stupid. He can look at the installed code page as easily as we can."
"I'm not stupid either, Peter! I can bury it so deep, so many passwords, he'll never know. Come on, man, let's get us some bot action."
Pete grinned. "You're perving out on me, Bran." He looked at the robot again. "I was seriously crushing on her when I was thirteen. It really made me mad when they deactivated her and put her up here."
Brandon nodded. "Yeah, and now you can get there, Pete. Do the babysitter. You know you want it."
Pete paused and brushed hair out of the bot's eyes.
"Okay, I'm not saying we're going to do it. But, here's what we'll do. I'll try to sell the idea of reactivating her, and you see if you can find some code that isn't dripping with viruses."
------------------------
The next morning, the whole family was gathered around the breakfast table. Pete cleared his throat. "Dad, I'm in college now, and I've got papers to write. Devon and Jen are always on the library nodes."
Devon looked up, insulted. "NO, we're not!"
His mother shushed Devon and said, "Homework trumps... you just have to tell them, Pete, and they'll let you use a node."
Ignoring the dirty look from his sister, he plowed on. "Yeah, but that's awkward. I've got a better idea. When I was up in the attic yesterday getting your drives, I saw the old bot. It's got a built in library node. We could reactivate it and not have to pay for another subscription."
"No," his father said, "that bot is a childcare provider for when your older sister starts her family... and then for you when you start yours."
"Dad, okay, but those things are indestructible. Using it for library work won't wear it out, and when Samantha needs a babysitter, we'll just send it over. No way do those things ever wear out!"
Dad started to shake his head again, but his wife put her hand on his forearm. "I've been thinking about reactivating it too. The maid service isn't keeping the house clean, and that sitter-bot has house cleaning routines. We could save some money and the house would look better."
Pete smiled inside. Saving money always worked for Dad.
"Okay, go ahead and bring it back online," he said thoughtfully, "but activate bounds ... I don't want it going off the property and getting hit by a car."
Pete nodded solemnly. "Don't let it leave the property, can do. Thanks, Dad."
After breakfast Pete went up to his room and called Brandon.
"Hello?"
"Brandon, get us some codes..." ------------------- Two weeks later, Chloe had been reactivated uneventfully. She'd helped Pete with the research on a couple of his papers, and was keeping the house neat and tidy. It was late morning and she was downstairs cleaning the carpets.
Brandon, however, hadn't found codes that weren't corrupt or worse, and Pete was beginning to think it was a lost cause. Pete had tried not to think of Chloe sexually, but Dad insisted she wear regular clothes, not standard house robot uniforms because he wanted to downplay the robot-ness of his household staff. She dressed in the tight jeans and tee shirts that any 20 year old girl would wear, and Pete involuntarily found himself watching her ass as she walked around the rooms.
This morning, Pete had slept late, and had just stepped out of the shower. He was in front of his closet, vigorously toweling his hair when the door dilated and Brandon rushed in.
"Damn, Bran, knock or something!" Pete pulled a pair of swim trunks out of the drawer and stepped into them.
"Since when do either of us knock? But never mind that, I got it!"
"Got what?"
He waved his pad in the air. "Codes, man, I found codes!"
Pete looked at him, then at the pad. "Chloe codes?"
"Yeah, for Chloe, what do you think I'm talking about! When can we install them?"
Pete thought for a minute. "I think everyone's gone. Maybe now? How long does it take?"
"Just a few seconds. Where is she?" "Downstairs, I think."
Pete pulled on a shirt without buttoning it and they raced down the stairs.
"Chloe," Pete shouted, "Chloe, where are you?"
"In the living room."
They tore around the corner, skidded to a stop and looked at Chloe. At five eleven and about 125 pounds she was almost too tall and skinny for classical beauty, but she was a handsome machine. Blue eyes and outfitted with brunette hair to her shoulders, she'd be getting lots of attention from guys if she were ever allowed to leave the house.
When she did leave the house she wore the shapeless orange jumpsuit required of household servant bots. It showed other humans that she was a servant robot, and not to be spoken to except for purposes of communication necessary to her job. Because she wasn't going anywhere today, she was dressed in cut off jeans that she'd rescued from Pete's older sister's closet and a too small tee that his younger sister, Jana had given her. She was barefoot. Pete spent a fraction of a second thinking about how totally fuckable she looked.
"Um," said Pete. "Um, Chloe, I've got new access codes and some subroutines for you. Let's install them now."
Chloe smiled. "Okay. Right here?"
Pete and Brandon sat down on the couch in front of the bot. "Sure. Are you okay with laying on the floor?"
Chloe wordlessly lay down on the floor in front of them, by the window. "Do I need to power down completely?"
Pete looked at Brandon, who shook his head. "No, just go into standby. But backup first, okay?"
Chloe blinked once. "Backup confirmed. Standby initiated." Her eyes closed.
"Brandon, are you sure you know what you're doing?"
"Yeah, relax." He handed his friend the pad.
"Enter the access code."
"Wait. Hold on. What if someone walks in when we're ... you know?"
"Can't happen. Let me show you, just give me access. If you don't like it, we'll scram her back to the backup."
Pete shrugged, entered the password, and wordlessly handed the pad back to Brandon.
Brandon tapped on the pad industriously for a few seconds, paused and looked at Chloe, then tapped twice more. The pad chimed twice, Chloe chimed twice, and Brandon sighed.
"Okay, it's done. Let's check the installed code page." He tapped at the pad and showed it to Pete. "See? The RS section is still grayed out."
