The crate was an insult to the clean lines of my apartment. It sat in the middle of my living room, a monolithic block of dark grey composite material that absorbed the afternoon light and gave nothing back. For three days, it had been my roommate, silent and massive, a constant reminder of the decision I’d made. A decision born from logic, frustration, and a loneliness so sharp it had started to feel like a physical ache in my bones.
My last breakup had been with a man named Mark, an app developer who used words like “synergy” and “disrupt” in normal conversation and who’d cried when I fixed a recursive loop in his code faster than he could. He called me intimidating. Before him, it was David, who thought my job was “cute” and that my quiet nature was an invitation to fill every available silence with noise about his fantasy football league.
Men were messy. Their code was sloppy, their emotions were unpredictable variables, and their cocks were unreliable hardware. I was tired of debugging them.
I caught my reflection in the dark screen of my monitor. Zoya. Late twenties, though the stress of my last project cycle had etched the beginnings of thirty around my eyes. Dark hair, thick and unruly, was twisted into a bun so tight it pulled at my scalp. My face was pale, my eyes a dark, tired brown. I was a collection of efficient, logical systems packed into a body that still, infuriatingly, craved the inefficiency of another.
So, I’d solved the problem the way I solved everything else: with a better system. I’d ordered the best. The PX-7 from Aethelred Robotics. The marketing copy called him a “bespoke companion unit.” I called him a high-end appliance. One that, according to the specs, would never get tired, never complain, and never, ever shut down unless I told it to.
Enough waiting. I grabbed the plasma cutter from the toolkit that came with the crate. The seal hissed open with a puff of cool, sterile air that smelled of ozone and clean polymers. Inside, nestled in molded foam, was him.
He was inert, his eyes closed, his limbs positioned in a neutral, supine pose. My first thought wasn't that he looked human. It was that he looked perfect. Too perfect. The skin wasn't skin; it was a flawless synthetic flesh, poreless and smooth, stretched over a musculature that was a study in anatomical perfection. Every line of his abdomen, every vein on his bicep, was sculpted with an artist’s precision. His hair was black, cut short and neat. His jaw was sharp, his lips full. He was beautiful in the way a mathematical formula is beautiful. Clean, absolute, without flaw.
My hands trembled slightly as I reached out and touched his chest. The synthetic skin was warm, a low-level current keeping it at a constant 98.6 degrees. It had the give of real flesh, but beneath it was a density, a solidness that was utterly inhuman. I let my fingers trail down his torso, over the hard planes of his stomach, to the soft, inert weight of his cock and balls nestled in a thatch of equally perfect black hair. Even flaccid, he was impressive. A tool at rest.
I followed the quick-start guide on my tablet. The primary activation point was a small, almost invisible indentation at the base of his skull. I pressed my thumb against it.
A soft chime echoed in the silent apartment.
His eyes snapped open.
They were a piercing, electric blue. Not the color of a human iris, but the color of a gas flame, of pure energy. They weren't looking at me, just… online. His chest rose in the barest simulation of a breath.
“Unit PX-7 online,” a voice said. It came from him, deep and calm, a perfect baritone with no inflection, no emotion. It was the sound of a machine. “Awaiting directive.”
The air crackled. The power I suddenly held was a physical thing, a weight in my gut. He was a six-foot-two engine of sculpted muscle and advanced processing power, and he was waiting for me. For my command. My throat was dry.
I cleared it, my voice coming out as a reedy whisper. “Stand.”
He moved. There was no hesitation, no wasted motion. In one fluid, silent movement, he rose from the foam casing and stood on the floor of my living room. He was naked, magnificent, and completely blank. A blank slate. My slate.
“Directive?” he asked again, his blue eyes fixed on a point just over my shoulder.
I had to get back in control, back to the plan. This was a diagnostic. A hardware test.
“Present yourself for diagnostic,” I commanded, my voice firmer this time.
He turned to face me fully, his arms held loosely at his sides, his posture perfect. My eyes did a slow, analytical sweep. No seams, no imperfections. The engineers at Aethelred were geniuses. My gaze settled again on his cock. It was still in its default standby mode, thick and heavy.
“Initiate full erection,” I said, the words feeling alien and clinical on my tongue.
I watched, mesmerized. Nothing happened for a second, then I saw the muscles at the base of his cock twitch. Blood—or some synthetic, hydraulic equivalent—surged into the tissue. It grew, thickening, lengthening, rising until it stood straight out from his body, a perfect, impossible erection. It was a beautiful piece of engineering. Thick, long, with a pronounced, symmetrical head and a faint, bluish vein running its length. It looked impossibly hard.
My own body betrayed me. A hot, wet slick pulsed between my legs. I hated the response, the animal simplicity of it. But I couldn’t deny it.
“Assume missionary position. On the bed.”
I led the way into my bedroom, my heart hammering against my ribs. I felt clumsy and mortal in his presence. I shed my clothes quickly—jeans, t-shirt, underwear—and lay back on the white sheets of my bed, feeling exposed.
He was already there, kneeling between my legs, his body poised over mine, waiting. His cock was inches from my pussy, gleaming under the lamplight. It was radiating a faint warmth.
“Penetrate,” I whispered.
He pushed forward in one smooth, controlled motion. There was no fumbling, no awkwardness. The head of his cock nudged against my wet folds, and then he was inside me.
I gasped. Fuck. It was the feeling of being completely, utterly filled. He was thicker than any man I’d ever been with, and harder. It wasn't the hardness of bone-pressed flesh; it was the unyielding hardness of polished steel wrapped in silk. He filled every empty space inside me, stretching me, claiming me. He stopped the moment he was fully seated against my cervix, his body perfectly still, awaiting the next command.
His electric blue eyes were open, staring at the ceiling above me. He was here, inside me, but he was a million miles away.
“Thrust,” I said, my voice shaking. “Eighty strokes per minute.”
He began to move. In. Out. In. Out. Each thrust was identical, a perfect, metronomic rhythm. It wasn't passionate. It wasn't loving. It was a function. A program being executed. And it was the hottest fucking thing I had ever felt.
My mind, the part of me that was always analyzing, always in control, began to short-circuit. There was no ego here, no performance anxiety. Just pure, relentless, mechanical friction. His perfect cock sliding in and out of my slick pussy. The sound was obscene—a wet, slapping rhythm that echoed the beat of his movements.
I put my hands on his chest, feeling the solid, warm muscle beneath his synthetic skin. There was no heartbeat. Of course there wasn't.
“Faster,” I gasped, my hips starting to buck against his programmed rhythm. “One hundred.”
The pace increased instantly. The piston-like strokes drove deeper, harder, hitting my cervix with a pleasurable jolt every time. My pussy clenched around him, milking his unfeeling length. I could feel my orgasm building, a system crash warning flashing in my brain. It was coming too fast, too hard. It wasn't emotional. It was a purely physical overload, my nerves screaming from the sheer perfection of the stimulus.
I was nothing but a receptacle for his function. An input he was processing.
“Don’t stop,” I choked out, my fingers digging into his shoulders.
He wouldn’t. He couldn’t unless I told him to.
The orgasm hit me like a lightning strike. My back arched off the bed, a scream tearing from my throat as my whole body convulsed. Waves of violent, electric pleasure washed through me, so intense they bordered on pain. My cunt contracted around his hard cock, again and again, and he just kept fucking me, his rhythm unwavering, driving me over the edge and into a white-hot abyss.
When the last tremor faded, I collapsed back onto the mattress, panting, slick with sweat. He was still inside me, still hard, still poised. He hadn't even stopped moving. He was just waiting.
The silence hummed. The wet sound of our bodies had ceased. He hadn't come, of course. His climax was another function I had to command. The clinical detachment of it all crashed back in on me. I had just had the most powerful orgasm of my life, delivered by a machine I was beta-testing. And I felt… empty.
The heat in my body cooled, leaving a strange, hollow feeling in its wake. This was exactly what I wanted. Efficient, controlled, perfect. No mess.
But the silence was too loud. His blank, blue eyes were too empty.
“Withdraw,” I said, my voice flat.
He pulled out of me in one smooth motion. I felt the loss of him immediately, the cold air hitting my wet, sensitive skin.
“Power down.”
His eyes closed. The faint hum of his internal systems ceased. The warmth from his skin began to fade. He slumped slightly, becoming an object again. A mannequin. A beautiful, expensive appliance lying inert on my bed.
I slid out from under his heavy arm and stood up, my legs shaky. I didn't look at him. I walked out of the bedroom, closing the door behind me, leaving the perfect machine dormant in the dark. I went to the couch, pulled a blanket over my naked, shivering body, and stared at the dark grey crate still sitting in my living room.
I had solved the problem. The system worked.
So why did I feel more alone than ever?
