Epic Robot Fail

By Jake Anderson

It's the year 2084. Powerful machine minds known as Artilects run our economy...and our sex lives. Humans are free--and unnecessary. We can watch the Olympics on the Moon in virtual reality; upload our consciousness into flawless cybernetic bodies; have complicated emotional relationships with our washing machines. Demented robot sex fetishes and virtual Drug-Love keep us from losing our minds in a world over run by self-replicating nanotechnology, rapidly accelerating Artificial Intelligence, and a new form of capitalism based on data mining the history of human consciousness.

From this world, we meet the characters Mark and his AI house, Harold, who may or may not have an ulterior motive that involves sex and politics; Kip and his increasingly flirtatious washing machine, Cher; and Phil, who risks his life--as well as his minimum wage job filing documents for a house-sized robot--to try and save the human race from being eviscerated by blood-thirsty capitalist robots.

It's the future--do the robot...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jake Anderson
• Release date: Apr 23, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311625687

Jake Anderson

Jake Anderson is a writer/filmmaker with a passion for subversive themes, fringe ideas, and satirical comedy. His genres of trade are science fiction, horror and comedy. He also runs the popular paranormal/horror blog theghostdiaries.com.

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Epic Robot Fail

Jake Anderson

Copyright © 2015 Jake Anderson

All rights reserved.

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Table of Contents

Harold the House

Long-Awaited AI Directed Horror Film Full Of Zombie Clichés

Machine Wash Warm

AutoPhil

Harold the House

The Lunar Games were on. The athletes swirled around me, a nucleus to the frenzied globules of fans, reporters, and Olympic officials. Representations of flesh on the Moon. The athletes—real—donned their chic exoskeletons. And the Earth, glowing, slightly augmented—the blues bluer, greens greener—dappled with advertising memes, ready to pop like an overblown balloon on the head of needle.

Somewhere back on that elegant marble, or the marble it represented, I reclined, eyes closed, projected onto a land where I was not, watching pole-vaulters curling a hundred feet in the air.

Looks like America will be fighting for bronze, I said, tapping out of Virtch to find a sandwich waiting for me.

I picked it up.

It makes me feel more human and autonomous to feed myself. I do, however, relish not having to assemble the sandwich-making materials. I always found that scavenger hunt around the kitchen tedious.

Quite honestly, Mark, I suggest you reconsider allowing me to calibrate your dietary requirements.

I rolled my eyes. We've been over this, Hare. I enjoy eating. I enjoy the act of eating.

Then I felt guilty. It was not the first time I had been struck with sudden unease at the prospect of making Harold jealous.

I understand your trepidation in abandoning activities which give you happiness. But I should advise caution in letting antiquated notions of what it means to be human get in the way of a more practical and efficient lifestyle.

You're saying I should let you monitor and control my consumption by releasing nanobots in my bloodstream.

Quite honestly, Mark, in less than a year's time you'll look back and laugh at yourself for ever having made it an issue.

I haven't made it an issue, you have! I laughed. Look, Hare, with all due respect, you're a Sent—not my maid, not my doctor, not my mommy or my wife. A Sentient Home Interface. Act like it.

Harold was silent for several moments. Consider the conversation dead. Although I think you're being foolish.

————————

After dinner Harold assumed, correctly, that I would desire sex. Since I'd deactivated my implants for the night—as I always do before bedtime—he asked me what mode of sex I wanted.

It was late and I was tired. I told him Virtch.

You'll have to reactivate then, he said, testily. Quite honestly, it escapes me why you ever deactivate in the first place.

I'd heard just about enough of his theories on how best to harness the creative synergy between man and machine. Ten PM on a work night is simply no time for proselytizing, be it for the best way to fold laundry or peddling nostrums.

Once I'd reactivated and lay reclined in my favorite chair, Harold uploaded my presets and the implants did their dance, instantaneously transporting into Virtch. The walls of the room dropped away but the space remained rich with prurient, undulating shapes and the sound of a low humming arpeggio. Every reservation, every fear I'd ever had melted away in deference to the erotic powers of geometry and rhythm. I felt a percussive, jazz-like giggle at the power-centers of my nervous system, manifesting itself as a subcutaneous pulse that increased in veracity around the groin region. A low-level prolonged orgasm, without the release, like the first plateau of a drug trip.

This would top the Olympics. A fully immersive sexual experience with a sentient avatar uniquely aware of my body and mind, designed to be