Inside the suburban Fembot Command station, the frantic minutes turned into hours as the electronic beauties in the basement worked to fix one of their kind. Though they could move and work at superhuman speeds, they still weren't able to repair the Pam unit until over six hours had passed.
It was only at the end of those seven hours that the Master Computing Device attempted to generate an excuse Pam could use for her absence. While the robotic soccer-mom was getting her batteries replaced, the supercomputer was stuck in the worst way on what to make her say.
Another 20 minutes went by before the vast artificial intelligence encased in all those consoles simply gave up. It figured that the generation of such an elaborate excuse would take another three hours, after which an entirely different excuse would be required to explain that further delay. So it sent Pam on her way without any guidance at all in that area. She would have to come up with her own excuse and apology routines.
She got back into her SUV at around half-past five. Her own comparatively basic AI had only just then started to process the need for an explanation. As she loaded and ran her driving programs, she set aside a small portion of her processing power to find a way of mollifying Brad. She calculated success of that task to be somewhere around 2%.
Colin had changed vehicles by then and now tailed her home in a pickup truck. He had sent an email update to brad, but there wasn't much now to add to it. Colin could think of his own excuses for Pam, and he was sure his client would come to many of the same conclusions. He always felt a little bad about these failing relationships, but he always got over it quick.
When the black-haired fembot got back to the house, she had made no progress at all in thinking of a way to explain why she had suddenly disappeared for half the day. She fell back on her most reliable defenses - her artificial sex hormones and pheromones. She walked with a moist plastic crotch from the vehicle to the door and reached into her purse to get her keys.
Brad opened the door, triggering the generation of a startled response from the robot. She scanned his face and read the expression. She saw that he was mad.
He glared at her a second longer, then moved in so she could enter. She walked through the threshold and made some more scans with her newly repaired and rebuilt optics system. Her freshly fixed microphones had picked up the sound of the television, and her eyes verified that it was on. The two human children were sitting in front of it.
She looked back at the other human. He was still furious. He waited for her to kick off her shoes and grabbed her forcefully by the wrist. He led her by that plastic and metal appendage to their bedroom. After closing the door a little harder than he should have behind them, he turned to look at her.
She stared back with a blank look. Her processors couldn't quite figure out what kind of facial expression her facemask should make.
He just shook his head as he looked at her. "Well," he said, "what do you have to say for yourself?"
She automatically searched through her system files to find any kind of excuse at all. No data was found. "I..." she said hesitantly, "I don't know."
"You don't know?" he said, even angrier now. "YOU DON'T KNOW??!"
The anger she detected from him made her load some preliminary crying procedures. he saw her eyes flutter, and saw the moisture as it collected between her silicone eyelids. He too was speechless now. He wanted to ask her where she had been, but he knew. He wondered if he should reveal to her that he had hired a PI to follow her.
"Marcus got kicked off the team, by the way." he said, trying desperately to calm himself. "Your friend Annette took him to her place, and picked up Jessica too."
Pam's AI 'knew' she should say something, but her overtaxed logic circuits couldn't keep up.
Brad looked away, bit his lip and shook his head. "We'll talk about this tomorrow. I'm going to the bar."
