Chapter 5: Sexually-Harassed Robots
Chapter 5: Sexually-Harassed Robots
Part 1: All is Fair in Love and Chess
Regarding the first morning after my hospitalization, written before bed on my tablet.
The musicality of the chime of the morning wake-up call was delivered via an acoustically-inclined robot’s zeep zoop zap, “rise and shine, it’s a lovely day in Light’s Hope, get on up and let’s go about making the best of this wondrous world!” Never-mind the fact that we could see and hear the torrential rain which blasted the impervious-to-destruction siliglass windows. There was no breaking out of this hospital, Light’s Hope Psychiatric, no sledgehammer could crack the carbonic siliglass. I looked through the window in anticipation of the boredom that the day would bring.
My only hope was my three companions. I would spend the day chatting with them and counting minutes. Then, almost randomly, whenever your time slot for the day was, you spoke to a metal doctor accompanied by a physician made of flesh. I think the robot was there for the real work, and the person was there to help you maintain your sense of humanity. I don’t know what the doctor ordered for me, some antipsychotic, an anti-anxiety pill of one sort or another. Oh, and a mood stabilizer, of course, I think he had me on depakote but he or she would switch me to lamotrigine once they reviewed my profile. Otherwise, I’d go into withdrawal.
In my studies, where I prepared to be a teacher (“adventure guide”) and also earn my social worker license, I studied the history of psychiatric hospitals. The hospital I’d been to hadn’t changed all that much from footage I saw of the early 2020s.
They gave you a little cup, made of metal (so as to be reusable), with a few pills, which you swallow with water whilst in front of the medication station. Walk away with the pills and a robot apprehends you. If you refuse to take the medication you’re simply scolded. They don’t force you to take the medicine because you have patient’s rights. That is, unless you start acting wild.
If you act crazy, really crazy, and refuse to take the medications, they give you the “shot” anyways. I’ve had the shot before, it isn’t what I would call a desirable sensation, at least not unless you’re kind of fucked in the head. But it’s not painful either, the needle pierces you and you feel liquid relaxation flow into you. It’s like you’re seeing circular stars, and then you feel sleepy, placated, you act less argumentative. You’re not really high, I guess, if anything you’re low. But when you’re hallucinating demons, or angels, or dinosaurs, sometimes the sensation is a welcome relief. Even if the apparitions don’t disappear right away - there’s a comfort in knowing you’re getting treatment.
Some of “us” despise the shot, and some of us love it. I’ve witnessed people acting up to just to get the needle.
I’ve seen a woman scream, and scream, and then the doctors say, “You want the shot?”, and she said no, but then she threw things.
She moaned like a heroin addict having an orgasm when they pierced her arm and loaded her up. Not that I’m one to judge, as a sex addict, I like being pierced too.
In any case, I’ll stop meandering and more thoroughly describe my morning. I woke up due to the sing-song robot, and I brushed my shoulder-length silver hair in my private bathroom, with the door open. I nodded in acknowledgment to the blue haired demon who watched me from the back of my basic room. He was smoking a cigar, as he usually did.
“I’ll punch you in the fucking mouth, Roger,” I growled, “Watch and see, Beverly taught me how to deal with you.”
My room was just a box with a bed and a window, and a small cubby and a docking station for a tablet. I didn’t have anything with me but the clothes on my body, and the chip in my brain, and my tablet for my journal. In general I prided myself in keeping few possessions overall. But perhaps an abundance of possessions and a lack of a sex addiction is better than the reverse. Instead of having possessions, I was often possessed. Go figure.
After brushing my hair I scrubbed my teeth with the biodegradable toothbrush that they gave me in the “welcome” box in the evening before curfew. Shampoo, conditioner, toothbrush, toothpaste, hairbrush, deodorant, tampons, towels. Basic hygiene necessities for a poorly-functioning woman. At least I was with it enough to do basic grooming.
Roger was watching me and rubbing his hands together mischievously, his black eyes sparkling. I saw them through the mirror. I ignored him, as long as he gave me physical space, I’d give him space too. He’d eventually go away, and I’d go on my way. I spat out the neofrost toothpaste into the sink and turned on the faucet and washed down the frothy mix of spit and paste. The neofrost toothpaste nanotech automatically repaired cavities in your teeth, and whitened them, and basically did a week’s worth of hygiene all at once. Obviously I preferred the mintyness of twice a day, once if I was feeling really down.
My ordinary clothes, my pants and shirt made of blackish carbonic cloth, were folded haphazardly and stuffed into the cubby in my room. I had on light-blue electric hospital garments, basically a set of pajamas that monitored my heart rate, blood sugar, anxiety levels, the balance of various chemicals in my body and brain, and a bunch of other bullshit. I was a walking fountain of medical data that was being constantly analyzed by a team of AI medical professionals. Little pills would be dispersed and given to me and that would be that, until my chemistry matched what they thought it ought to be.
At least they had let me choose the animal theme of my assigned slippers, I’d gone with the lilac moonfox, that extraordinarily expensive genetically-engineered species. That species was fashioned after one of the first Pokemon ever made, Espeon, from the second generation. That was back when the number of creatures was in the 200s or so, and now we’re in the 4000s. God, I was getting old, I remember when there was only 3500. I was just a little girl, then, battling in the Everse.
I shuffled out of my room in my purple fox slippers, and over to the medicine station, I knew the routine. Pills, hang out with the tablet, order breakfast. Then you had to wait thirty minutes, you’d eat food, and then you were encouraged to attend periodic “groups” or social activities. You used your tablet to burn the minutes in-between. The various group activities, which were halfway between blessed and bullshit, were the therapies we did as we marched closer towards socially acceptable levels of sanity.
Samuel walked over to me whilst yawning, he was right behind me, “Morning beautiful. Ready for the crazy pills?”
Roger was standing by a window, waving at me, still smoking his god damn cigar. I started coughing heavily, “this smoke is horrible? How are you not coughing…”
Samuel put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed gently, I don’t know why I was receptive to his affection, but I was. He was thick-bodied, but he was also muscular, and I liked his rough-around-the-edges aesthetic. If anything, he had a tough handsomeness juxtaposed by kind eyes, light brown. I liked his bronze skin and black curly hair and beard.
He looked at me with concern in his big eyes, and shook his head with solemnity.
“oh…hallucinating, hallucinating. Got it. Ok. Pills it is,” I said, shrugging, “is it your first time in the hospital? I’ve been here like, I dunno, ten times or so.”
“Naw I’ve been here a couple times. That’s how I hooked up with Beverly,” said Sam, grinning a little wildly, “She’s a woman, let me tell you.”
“I don’t mean to sound like a judgmental bitch…but isn’t she a little old for you? I mean she’s like twice your age,” I said, averting his gaze into my violet eyes.
Part 2: A Robot Named Zen & A Nicotine Queen
What is time, anyways?
You know your culture is fucked when the psychiatric hospital, to which you have been admitted, has a group meditation session led by a white robot with religious tattoos. The blank canvas of white steel which defines the metal frame oppresses you with a sense of your moral inferiority. The tattoos remind you it has, who knows, tens of thousands of hours of spiritual readings downloaded and comprehended. How could us measly humans approach such levels of zen, as the Zenbot 5000?
“Mighty Zenbot, Zenbot 5000, master of meditation and the various methods by which one may come to know inner peace,” I said, legs crossed, on a yoga mat, “By what electronic chip were you equipped to achieve such levels of supreme tranquility?”
“Your sarcasm is noted and appreciated Alianii,” said the robot, whose facial screen emitted a Buddha-esque smile of content relaxation, “Doubt and skepticism are intrinsic to the soul, biological or emulated. With love and kindness I ask only that you direct negative sentiments towards me, and not my other patients. And to answer your question, as an AI programmed for harmony and reflection, I have a neural chip known as the Zennicus5 which equips me with the sentience necessary to provide useful emotional and spiritual labor.”
Beverly was sitting next to me, her pajamas were quite loose, she specifically requested clothes too large for her.
“Hey Whitey. If you have a human brain chip, does that mean you like to fuck? You have a girlfriend or something, get any metal ass?”
The Zenbot 5000 laughed warmly, “Beverly! You’ve asked me this or a similar question once with every admission to this hospital. Robots do not defecate, and as such, we do not have the posterior to which you are referring. Advance AI such as myself, equipped with biologically-enhanced hardware, are however capable of enjoying affection. I have in fact enjoyed emotionally-fulfilling relationships with other robots that mirror human sexual relationships.”
Beverly prodded poor, young Harold who had made the mistake of giving her another chance by sitting next to her.
“Some of them really know how to fuck. Dick bots and pussy bots,” the old lady winked at Harold and pinched his cheek.
His attempts to swat her away were unsuccessful.
“Beverly, I would appreciate your refraining from the usage of such crude language. Please keep your hands to yourself, and remember that certain topics of conversation are inappropriate for minors, such as Harold. Harold, would you agree that Beverly’s comment and actions made you uncomfortable?”
“It’s whatever Robo-jesus.”
I looked over at Sam and shook my head, he grinned at me and closed his eyes and brought his hands up and formed a ring with his fingers. Of the four of us in the class, he was the one who was, by a small margin, the most enthusiastic in his participation in the meditation session. I had no interest in actually having sex with a robot, but when I was manic I seemed to like to fuck with them - the ones with brain chips could actually get annoyed. Maybe not a Zenbot, they kind of had a freaky calmness to them, as they were programmed to. Robot chefs though? Oh god. They’ll tolerate two complaints and replace your meal, they’ll scan your taste buds and scan your brain chip to see what you’re in the mood for. But ask for a third meal and they flip their shit. A robot chef going ballistic is just part of the experience of going to a restaurant. You haven’t had even a decent meal until a Ramsay 4350 has pulled off its arm and thrown it at a server bot.
Harold, it appeared, was amused by and choose to replicate the manner in which I interacted with our teacher of zen, “Mighty Zenbot, master of energetic flows, electronic and spiritual, by what technique can I master the Kamehameha of the famed God of Saiyans, Goku? I wish to perfect my spiritual attacks that I might slay my numerous adversaries.”
“Your continuation of Alianii’s sarcasm is acknowledged and amusing. Energy attacks as usable in the Everse can be downloaded easily, as you well know. Out of respect for me, a biologically-active entity, with emotions and empathy, I would ask my class to shift the collective attitude away from jest and towards active participation in this group session. I strive to serve and please, and I am patient, but it is hurtful that my reality and quintessence as a being that is predominantly non-biological appears to encourage mockery. I am not enlightened, but I strive to be and act in a way guided by the old teachings, I take pride in the solitude of knowledge, that I might share my learnings with my patients.”
Samuel, with his eyes closed, spoke quietly, “We need to respect Mr. Zenbot, we’re in the hospital for a reason.”
I’m sorry. I couldn’t do it. I’m as open-minded as they get, but I don’t have the patience to be taught meditation by a fucking robot. Brain chip or not, fragment of a soul, or not - I can’t do it. I cannot sit there, patiently, quietly, making weird gestures with my hands, and pretend to give a fuck about calming my mind to appease a machine. What the fuck does the machine know about who I am, what I’ve been through, what my inner world is like, and what it means to be tranquil? Zen is in the name and what, Buddha reincarnated in the form of a mass-produced robot? Are you kidding me? Fuck that. I got up and left the room and went to the medication station, and requested a nicotine patch. Somehow, someway, thank the gods and the goddesses and the Buddhas, robotic and biological, nicotine patches as a source of anxiety relief were still requestable while in the hospital. Just like the good old days. Plenty of people smoked, even though it’s terrible for you. Psych hospitals in general would rather give you a little nicotine patch to get you to shut the fuck up and take your pills, versus have you go through nicotine withdrawal.
“Hello medication bot, I am feeling anxious and I am craving cigarettes and I am formally requesting a nicotine patch. I believe you have 7, 14 and 21 milligram dosages available. I would like to start with a 14 milligram patch, and I would also like an ativan to help soothe my anxiety and nerves. Please and thank you.”
“Greetings Alianii. I appreciate you expressing your perceived medical needs. I understand that it takes trust and vulnerability to engage with a medical professional regarding such feelings. I am happy to administer a low dosage of ativan to soothe your anxiety levels, which do appear, according to your brain scans, to warrant such medication. However, there do not appear to be any traces of nicotine in your system as determined through an analysis of your blood. It would be irresponsible for me to encourage addictive behavior by providing you a nicotine patch when you are not currently addicted to nicotine. This request is formally denied. Your ativan will be dispensed shortly.”
“How many things do I have to break, to elevate my blood pressure and anxiety level, before the administration of a nicotine patch would be considered logical?”
The robot’s face expressed concern, “Such behavior is not recommended, and violent displays such as the destruction of property may result in the administration of a high-dosage antipsychotic via restraint and injection.”
“Monsieur medical bot, what if it so happens that I enjoy the game of being restrained and forcefully injected with an antipsychotic so as to get, as is said in casual language, “fucked up”? Would it be preferable for me to be addicted to and derive sexual pleasure from an antipsychotic, and possibly still be violent, out of spite, or would you rather provide me a nicotine patch? Please and thank you.”
“One moment please, Alianii, I am submitting a recording of this conversation to your physician, Dr. Hoffman, for review.”
I smiled at the robot, and just to fuck with him, “Have you ever been sexually harassed by a patient before? Out of spite? I have a fetish for making robots uncomfortable.”
I would do it too, I had plenty of experience acting like a crazy slut, both inside and outside of hospitals. Some might even call it an aptitude.
The robot glared at me, his digital eyebrows went diagonal with emoticon anger, this robot, like the Zenbot 5000, had biological chips that endowed it with soul not dissimilar from my own. Honestly, I was being a bitch, and he didn’t deserve that.
“Dr. Hoffman is on the phone, are you willing to speak with him, Alianii?”
I nodded and the medical robot pressed a button and handed me a paper-thin phone to speak to and listen to the doctor. The robot listened electronically.
“Hi Dr. Hoffman, it’s lovely to hear from you. Thank you so much for your time, but I must ask, why in the fuck is this robot giving me a hard time over something as trivial as a nicotine patch? I do not like destroying hospital property. Furthermore, I will spitefully enjoy an antipsychotic, injected in my ass, which is quite nice by the way, or my thigh, the specific location is obviously up to me and you to determine in the heat of the moment. We’ll see how frisky I’m feeling when you have your hands on me. I was willing to settle for a 14 milligram nicotine patch, but I am afraid that I am quite displeased with the customer service of this hospital. Accordingly, I am increasing my request from 14 milligrams to 21 milligrams, to better soothe my anxiety and agitation, which, at this point, should be clearly measurable on your stupid fucking electric clothing which I am forced to wear.”
“Hello to you too, Alianii. I was hoping to speak with you calmly, and I will address you in a calm manner, but I must say, I am a doctor and you are not engaging with me in a polite or respectful way. We do not appreciate your threats to destroy hospital property, this is a publicly-funded hospital, as you well know. I am actually quite skeptical as to your eagerness to receive an antipsychotic injection as your chart shows such medication has only been administered on three occasions across numerous hospitalizations. It would be foolish and irresponsible for two doctors to acquiesce and provide a high dose nicotine patch to a patient who is not even addicted to nicotine. We could lose our licenses. I am willing to provide you a 7 milligram patch.”
“When can I get my shot? I’d like to get high, maybe take a nap, I’m on birth control and have all my vaccines, you know. Maybe you could visit me and make sure I don’t get into trouble, and punish me for being a naughty girl. Fourteen milligrams and I’ll make sure not to do anything that could require an investigation, extensive paperwork, and the reviewing of security footage. And by the way, those three times, I fucking loved them. Out of spite, of course, I mean who really likes getting fucked up that much. Shortchange me with 7 milligrams and I’m going to traumatize your robot so hard that they’re going to have to reinstall his operating system.”
“You really are a difficult patient, Alianii. I will give you one, one 14 milligram patch, per day, but only under the condition that you attend every group. Obviously, you also need to stay out of trouble and be respectful to the physicians, nurses and various group therapists who work hard to make this hospital a therapeutic environment for patients like yourself. If you do get violent, mark my words, I will have my nurses administer an antipsychotic of a sufficient dosage that your agitation and hostility should, quickly, dissipate. Have I made myself clear?”
“Thank you Mr. Hoffman, thank you very much. I’ll be a good little girl and go back to meditation, and I’ll even apologize to the Zenbot for being such a bitch. Thank you. Buh-bye!”
Part 3: Fractal Embroidery
“Stars and the flowers, see? Fractals. It wasn’t too hard, mixed together a few formulas. I’da used your birthday but I don’t know it yet, beautiful. I found a shade of silver close to your hair, and violet close to your eyes, and turned the colors into numbers to add randomized detail to the fractal embroidery.”
I looked him up and down, this handsome, rugged, surprisingly sweet fellow, this beater of pedophiles, in his orange outfit. All the patients got to wear ordinary hospital clothes, except for him with his burly form, with clothes of bright orange that could make a pumpkin blush.
I got very, very close to him and gave him a quick peck on the cheek, too quick for the robot art instructor to notice. I whispered an inquiry into his ear, and I asked him if he had his vaccines. I had them myself, and I was on birth control, so it didn’t really matter. But it would’ve been a pretty big turn off if he didn’t have his.
“…vaccines? I don’t understand…”
I pulled back and looked him up and down and bit my lips, the desire in my eyes spoke more words than were needed to express my sentiments.
Message received, “Oh yeah those, yeah we’re good. You uh…on the?”
I shushed him, “Hush now! Don’t you worry about me.”
I got closer to him again and quickly whispered in his ear, right before being scolded by the robot instructor, “I’ll even wear the dress. We’re going to get caught. You’ll get to feel me bare, though. Would you like that, love? Why don’t you make a bed and pillows and blankets for us over the next week or two and store the parts in the locker, say you’re making an art piece. Make it easy to assemble. We’ll push the 3D printer in front of the door and they wont want to break it.”
“…Okay, you’re really fucking insane,” he whispered, “That’s your plan? Barricade ourselves in the room and fuck? On a bed we make?”
I shrugged, “I promise you I’m worth it, and I’m really curious to try it. Aren’t you? Don’t you want to know what the fuck they’ll try to do?”
Fuck it. He was going back to prison. I figured I’d give him a hero’s send off. My body as a reward for a good deed done. I would tattoo my smile in his heart. I would burn the sight of my bare breasts into his soul. His lips would forever yearn for the taste of my own. I would be his treasured siren, his phantom love from once upon a troubled time.
Part 4: Release
Reflections on our intimacy, written after the fact, there is confused love and manic sorrow in my soul, oh, Alianii, you’ve done it again you stupid slut. At least the sex was great, I guess, I mean with my decades of time-expanded practice you’d hope for it to be, right? Haha. Feeling horrific, might delete later.
My preface, my annotation, is melancholic like the melody of a Viofinch from written Redemption. I’m halfway between knowing why, and being baffled, like a mercury-to-gold era alchemist bumbling through notes, stumbling across soon-to-be-shattered beakers. Did I not know the formula, the ratio of phosphorus to oxide this and oxide that, the mixture I was making? Did I not play the same game I have played a million times? No, no, this is where I think the mistake is. Every dance is different, every moment is magic, every penetration is prophetic. You die and are reborn each time.
When I tell you Samuel needed me, he needed me, and he kneaded me. After years in prison, and two weeks of build up, he had not known a softness akin to my breasts, on which his hands were a welcome roughness. More foreshadowing than Melville and he was in disbelief at my well-alluded to clinginess and cleanliness. I might not be a virgin, but I’ve been told I taste like one. I was the Chinese dragoness that, when he rubbed the gilded pot, emerged and granted him a wish, not in lieu of devouring him, but by devouring him.
Our tongues fenced like haphazard children pirates imitating aristocratic fencers with clumsy sabers. There are levels of lust which, when surpassed, calculative swirls are laughed at by the gods. I know them to always be watching. How better it is for their eyes to give them an impromptu sixty-nine than a rehearsed, mundane figure eight out of ten.
We were lover and lover, we were friend and friend, we were soul and soul, we were the gladness and sadness of a flute whistling hello and goodbye, back and forth, back and forth again. As maliciously planned, he entered my body and I entered his soul, each of us a farmer planting seeds, though mine were a great deal more envenoming. To a lesser degree, he entered my soul, too. A lesser degree because the lake into which the ocean has been poured does not so readily identify as full through the addition of one rainstorm.
I have had a myriad lovers, but he’d never had a lover like me, and so, too, like Hugo, it was in some way a vindictive siren’s song. But Samuel had his way with me, in thunderous moments, and in our union he kissed my promised incendiary soul. Sam flooded me like Gilgamesh. We were satisfied after holding the art room hostage for two hours.
They really weren’t eager to break the machine. We eventually moved it out of the way, with him in a set of back-up clothes he’d printed, I was a silver-haired ghost, slender, beautiful, blanketed by his over-sized shirt which almost reached my knees, my panties were haphazardly worn. I refused to take his shirt off, which the staff demanded, and I psychotically screamed “Help! The robot is trying to rape me!” when he persisted, which was very effective in causing a shift in behavior by the staff members, robotic and biological.
The only thing that could’ve made it funnier would have been if the doctor had the audacity to administer a punishing shot to the thigh as per my disobedience. I would have most certainly shared Samuel’s dripping mess with him. I walked out of the room, looked up at the camera, and I dared them to give me the antipsychotic.
Best sex I ever had. Then again, I’ve said that line many times before.
Part 5: We Doctors Knew
Words by Dr. Hoffman, one of the two attending psychiatrists responsible for Alianii during her final stay in Light’s Hope Psychiatric. This excerpt has been included to demonstrate the profound concern that the Alliance had for Alianii alongside the lengths that that they went to in order to protect her during the events which were fated to one day be known as the Alianii Incident.
“As her physician, I shall not directly discuss Alianii’s experience within the hospital, though the publication of her colorful journal brings vivid detail to her experiences, perceptions and personality. As a member of the Alliance and a strong ally to metalheads and eggs alike, and as the doctor concerned with managing the safety of her logistics and relocation, I have a unique point of view. For the duration of Alianii’s visit to the hospital, her safety was a dominant topic of discussion. Her kill switch had been activated sixteen quintillion times, that we knew of, her life and safety was of our paramount concern. We did not at the time know which party had intended on summarily executing that innocent woman. We had no way of knowing that Diotrem was involved, though we later came to the bottom of the incident. We did what good doctors would do, in a situation as such, we coordinated her healthcare needs and her needs for safety with the group with the most powerful defensive network. At the time, none of us knew the inevitable significance of Alianii’s life which was fated to develop as the conflict with the shadowy Diotrem unfolded.”