Eye Candy (10 page)

“You are. You and your five orgasms thinking about Danny.”

“Rory. Grow up. Come back to bed. Let’s do it again. I’ll pleasure you while you think about your therapist girl.”

Rory paused in the gathering of his clothes and faced her. “Harley, that’s sick.”

“I’m kidding.”

Rory stood in the center of Harley’s bedroom. He held his clothes in a messy ball under one arm, and his shoes in the other hand.

Harley lay across her bed, propped up on both elbows, her legs slightly spread. The bright moonlight illuminated her from behind, throwing strong contrast over the muscles of her shoulders and thighs, over her breasts.

Rory began to get an erection.

He dropped his clothes and shoes, and approached the bed.

Harley spread her legs wider.

Rory recognized the hungry look which came into her eyes. He positioned himself above Harley. His penis rested on the soft tuft of her pubic hair.

“I want you to look at me,” he said. “Keep your eyes open. Agreed?”

Harley nodded.

Rory maneuvered his hips, positioning his body until he was ready to enter Harley. He penetrated her slowly, gently, their bodies glowing together in the moonlight. They kept their eyes open.

Chapter 10

All’s Fair in Love and War

Classical music brought Danny back to consciousness.

He was face-down on his bed, buried in white sheets and pillows and comforter. When he lifted his head and opened his eyes, he regretted it: daylight bit into the backs of his eyes and his skull began to pound. This was why he seldom drank, and when he did it was never to excess. Well, mostly never. Last night’s football festivities at Positronic Pizza & Pub with Rory and Harley notwithstanding.

Danny clamped his eyes shut, dropped his face into the mattress, and reached out for his phone, groping blindly around his nightstand. He found it and answered by feel as he brought it to his ear. He was too asleep, and too hungover, to take a moment to wonder who might be calling at such an ungodly hour of the morning.

“What?”

It was a male voice. “Good morning to you too, precious.”

“Who is this?”

“It’s Rory, dumbass.”

“Why are you calling me so early?”

“It’s eleven-thirty.”

Rory lifted his head once more and cracked one eye open. He consulted the red digits of his alarm clock: 11:30. Crap.

Rory continued, “I’d ask how you’re feeling but the fact that you’re still in bed says it all. I hope you used the autodrive on your mighty steed last night, after the herculean amount of beer you drank. Even Harley was impressed.”

Danny grunted a general acknowledgment.

“Why don’t you come by the office and we’ll grab some lunch. I’ll meet you out front around one o’clock. I still want to hear about your blind date, since we never really got a chance to talk last night during the game.”

Danny grunted once more.

“See you at one.”

A distinct
beep
indicated Rory had ended the call.

The task of getting out of bed was surpassed only by the struggle to make it to the shower. Danny spent a good thirty minutes leaning against the wall while the water nudged him further back to life.

Slightly more coherent, he exited the shower, dressed, and made his way to the kitchen. The refrigerator door was open and Howard’s mechanical butt was poking out of it; Floyd was nowhere to be seen.

“Good morning, sir,” Howard called from inside the refrigerator.

Danny attempted to reach the carton of orange juice, but was blocked by Howard’s substantial girth. “Howard, can you come out of there, please?”

Howard backed up slowly and then stood erect. “Good morning.”

“Good morning,” said Danny. “What are you doing with your head in the refrigerator?”

“Conducting an experiment, sir. According to my Owner’s Manual, my cranial structure and positronic brain can withstand temperatures well below freezing before experiencing noticeable lag in function. I was attempting to quantify this through a real-world experiment with actual temperature variation.”

“Then why not stick your head in the freezer?”

“I sought to proceed slowly, in case I experienced any ill effects due to exposure to cold. I wouldn’t want to put my head in the freezer and experience a mental freeze-out.”

“That’s a good one, Howard.” Danny reached past the robot and grabbed the carton of orange juice, then pulled a clean glass from the cupboard.

“A good one, sir?”

“Yeah. You know: mental freeze-out. Because your head would be in the freezer.” He added two scoops of raspberry-flavored vitamin-mineral powder to the orange juice, and watched it effervesce.

Howard merely looked at him, red eyes glowing. If the robot had had eyelids and eyebrows, they would’ve been all the way up to his forehead. Danny could almost hear the positrons rushing through their nano-channels as Howard computed his last sentence. There was still room for improvement when it came to robots and their comprehension of humor and sarcasm.

“Forget it, Howard. Please close the door.”

“Certainly, sir.”

“Where’s Floyd?”

“He went out, sir.”

“Didn’t say where he was going?”

“He merely said ‘out’, sir.”

“I think he’s got a secret mistress he doesn’t want anyone to know about.” Danny forced himself to chug half the orange juice concoction at once, waiting to see if it would disagree with him.

“A mistress, sir? But Master Floyd is not married. One cannot have a mistress unless–”

“Call it a secret love affair, then.”

“Intriguing. Would you care for some breakfast, sir?”

“No, thank you. I’m meeting a friend for lunch. Did the garage call about the shuttle?”

“Not yet, sir.”

“You really think it was sabotage, Howard?”

“It would seem so. But let’s hope not. Shall I forward their call to you when it comes, sir?”

The last thing Danny felt like doing was dealing with what amounted to attempted murder. If the garage found anything untoward about the shuttle, he’d have to call the police.

This led him to wonder what the objective had been:

Himself?

Candy?

Perhaps Howard?

Howard
was
the very first of a new line of advanced bots preparing to go into mass production. Floyd had paid a lot of money (and called in a lot of favors) to get the first one. There was more than one anti-robot activist group out there clamoring for the abolishment of all robots. And they all had clever-sounding names which disguised their true anti-robot agendas:

The National Human League, also known as NHL (this made fans of ice hockey none too pleased), which comprised most labor unions.

The Coalition for Peaceful People, or CoPP for short, which was interesting because CoPP had a reputation for hit-and-run attacks on robots found moving about the city without their owners to look after them; Danny found such attacks truly cowardly.

But the most well-organized, most well-funded, most outspoken, and thus most widely known anti-robot group was STERN: the Society Teaching Every Robot Now.

Rumor had it that Les Grossman had ties to the group, although once he’d announced his bid for the Presidency, those ties seemed to have been promptly and decisively severed.

STERN was comprised of people from all walks of life who referred to themselves as Humanists. Humanists believed that robots were an abomination, an evil work born of man’s hubris, and that they should all be destroyed and their existence and production made illegal
ad infinitum
—forever. And whatever robots were used to serve mankind should be simple service bots with very little artificial intelligence; nothing more than drones, really.

Danny found these STERN people to be even more nuts than the vigilantes of CoPP. Robots were machines. Yes, they had powerful processors which allowed them to communicate with people and with each other. But the very same was true of automobiles and airplanes and telephones. Yet no one seemed to be forming coalitions or activist groups calling for the destruction of any of those objects.

Robot-on-human crime was literally nonexistent. The only people who were harmed in any way were criminals who were apprehended by sanctioned robocops only after having committed a crime. Apprehension could come in the form of being physically detained, or through the use of deadly force. The former was the ideal scenario but if innocent people were in danger, such as in a hostage situation perhaps, the robocop was equipped, and legally sanctioned, to make the difficult choice of using deadly force in order to serve the public trust. Candy had a robocop in her office right now—

Candy!

Rory wanted to hear about his blind date with her. Which meant Danny had to stop daydreaming about robots and get on the road in order to make it to Santa Monica by 1:00.

Danny swigged the last of his orange juice and handed the glass to Howard. “You be the judge. If there’s something weird with the shuttle, have them call me. Otherwise we’ll talk later. I need to hurry.”

“Very good, sir.” Howard began washing the glass in the sink, turning the glass rapidly under the water while keeping his red eyes fixed on Danny. “Enjoy your lunch.”

“Thanks, buddy. And keep your head out of the freezer.” Danny headed for the garage. “At least until Floyd gets back!” If Floyd wanted to assist Howard with the refrigeration experiment, that was fine, but Danny didn’t want to be responsible for Floyd coming home and finding his one-of-a-kind robot bent over with its head in the freezer, deactivated. Repairs for such an event would surely be astronomical, were they even possible.

Danny entered the garage and found it empty. Trying not to panic, he ran to the garage door and peered through one of the windows: his convertible was there in the driveway, where he’d apparently left it.

The exertion caught up with him and his head pounded. He could feel every artery and vein in his head stretching with each blood-pumping beat of his heart. Damn Rory and his Monday night football celebrations. And the requisite pitcher after pitcher of beer.

Danny began to think about Harley as he made his way through the side door of the garage and out to his convertible. Did she really want to go flying with him? Tonight? The way his head was throbbing, he was
not
about to get behind the controls of anything that couldn’t pilot itself with one hundred-percent automation. And his Viper Jet did not qualify. Its autopilot was quite good, but it was designed for in-flight use only, not take-offs and landings or traffic or terrain avoidance. The fact that those tasks remained in the hands of the pilot was precisely what made flying so much fun. If Harley—

Danny rounded the corner of his garage and stopped. Something was on the windshield of his car. It appeared to be . . . a white envelope.

He walked to the driver’s side, lifted the wiper blade, and removed the envelope—which it indeed was—from the glass. There was simply a bold letter
D
on the front, albeit penned in a stylish cursive handwriting.

Danny carefully tore it open and peered inside: something small and black and shiny, a fabric of some kind. He removed it and held it up. The object unfolded and he immediately recognized them: panties. Specifically, a black thong. A sexy one. As if a thong of any color could be anything but sexy.

Suddenly aware that he was standing in his driveway in broad daylight and holding a pair of panties before his eyes, he quickly lowered his hand. A cursory glance over both shoulders revealed that he was alone; no neighbors in sight.

Danny peered into the envelope and removed a slip of paper. He unfolded it carefully.

D,

I trust our next date shall be every bit as thrilling as our first two. Until then, here’s something to remember me by.

C

Danny detected a sweet, spicy scent. He brought the note to his nose and smelled it. But it didn’t seem to be the source. He smelled the envelope; also strong, yet— He looked over his shoulder again and waited for a red hatchback with four teenaged boys in it to pass by.

He brought the thong to his nose and inhaled.

He nearly keeled over for the heavenly aroma. He inhaled again and again, breathing deeply. He pressed the silky black fabric to his nose and mouth, and realized how odd he must have appeared standing there with his eyes closed, sniffing a pair of knickers.

Honestly, he didn’t much care.

Images of Candy were flooding his mind. Her long legs and blond hair and big green eyes. The way she fed him a bite of her fruit salad, and then ate from the same fork. The way he’d put his arm around her while she slept during the subway ride back from Palm Springs. The smell of her hair.

He was getting an erection.

Danny shoved the thong into his pants pocket and climbed into his car. He placed the envelope and note carefully within the center console, and fired up the engine, enjoying the roar of the motor and its dual exhaust. Both so
unds were completely artificial of course, being that his vehicle was electric. The motor and exhaust options were aftermarket add-ons, and perhaps a bit sophomoric, but Danny enjoyed them nonetheless. They made him nostalgic, though he knew not for what. That, it seemed, was the very problem with nostalgia.