Schneider with its pale, somehow plastic-looking eyes. “I am a Companion 2000, built with your personal needs in mind. Would you mind telling me which of you I am to satisfy?”
“Which one of us you’re…?” Leita shook her head. “Look, Schneider and I aren’t—”
“Both of you?” the Companion 2000 interrupted her. It climbed out of its box and stood before them, smiling. “That presents no problem at all. I am eager and willing to please and have been programmed to perform in any and all threesome sexual situations. Observe.” It pointed to the pink shrimplike penis curled against its thigh and suddenly the organ inflated to full erection. It was an eerie performance, Leita thought with a faint shiver of disgust, like someone blowing up a pink penis-shaped balloon all in one breath.
“Look—” she began but the Companion cut her off again.
“I have only one penis, of course, but I will be more than happy to service one of you orally while I mount the other. So then…” It clapped its hands and looked from her to Schneider and back again. “Which one of you prefers to be mounted?”
“Neither of us,” Leita said hastily while she and Schneider backed away in horror. “That is, we don’t want you to service us.”
“Most assuredly you do,” the Companion corrected her. “Or you would not have sent for me. Remember that I am programmed to fulfill even your most socially unacceptable sexual fantasies—such as making love to both you and your cat at the same time. Others may frown on bestiality, but if that is what you wish, I am more than happy to participate.”
“I am not a cat.” Schneider sounded mortally offended. “And Leita and I don’t feel that way about each other.”
“He’s right,” Leita put in, feeling sick at the idea. “We don’t.”
“If you did not, then you would not have asked me to service you at the same time,” the Companion said reasonably, still advancing. “Let us explore your deliciously perverted fantasies together, Mistress. I vow not to judge you in any way.”
It stepped forward as though to take her in its arms and Leita lost it. “I said, no!” she yelled. Pointing the tazer pen at the Companion’s chest, she shot a bolt of electricity at it, halting it in its tracks. There was a faint smell of burning and the Companion’s eyes rolled up in its head but it didn’t fall over. It just stood there for a moment, then shook itself all over and smiled at her pleasantly.
“I am a Companion 2000,” it said in that same, fruity voice that was really beginning to get on her nerves. “How may I service you, Mistress?”
Great—all she’d managed to do was restart it at the beginning of its spiel.
“We don’t want any service,” Schneider was already beginning to tell it but Leita had an idea.
“Are you programmed for housework?” she asked the Companion. “You know, to help clean up, dust, vacuum—that kind of thing?”
The blond eyebrows drew together and the Companion frowned. “I am programmed to fulfill your every fantasy, Mistress,” it said. “No matter how perverted or socially unacceptable.”
“Well, it might not be perverted enough to suit you but right now my fantasy is for you to…uh, vacuum the carpet in the living area.” Leita pointed to the ancient vacuum wall unit with its long, snaky hose for sucking up the unwanted dirt tracked in through the airlock. “So get to it.”
The Companion looked confused again for a moment, then it nodded its blond head knowingly. “I see, we are to play out a fantasy of yours in which I am a helpless slave boy who is forced to do light domestic chores. Later you will push me to the floor and ravish me despite my vigorous protests.”
“Yeah, whatever gets your motor running,” Leita muttered, wondering what the hell was wrong with the thing—it had sex on the brain. If it had a brain, that was.
The Companion went over and grabbed the retractable hose of the vacuum unit and stroked it suggestively. “Very well then, here I am—a simple slave boy sent to do my cruel Mistress’s bidding.”
“Just shut up and vacuum,” Leita told it, losing patience. What the hell had she been thinking, ordering such a weird contraption? And more importantly, what or who was Pierce?
She turned to go back to the bedroom and confront him when he came into the living area, yawning and scratching his chest.
“Hey, what’s going on in here?” he asked. “I heard