Free Man-Droid the Orgasmatron (Siren Publishing Classic) by Doris O'Connor

happened.”
    Beth fought the blush creeping into her cheeks, and Brian smiled.
    “I see. You were intimate, I take it? At the party?” He smiled at her tiny nod. “Certainly sounds as though he was in top form. Elliot has always had a mischievous streak. Something that I didn’t program into him. He just developed it. I should have foreseen that giving him actual emotions would cause problems, but I was fond of Elliot, and he so wanted to be more like a human.”
    Beth didn’t like the sound of that was.
    “Was? What is that supposed to mean? Was? You can fix him, right? You’re not giving up on him, are you? Brian, answer me.”
    Brian turned to face the window, and the defeated slump of his shoulders turned her heart to stone.
    “You can’t just give up on him. There must be something you can do. You’re like a genius at this. Everyone says so.”
    Brian gave her a weak smile, and Beth threw a cushion at him. “Damn it, be all genius like and fix it. I want him back. I want my Elliot.”
    She clamped a hand over her mouth in horror at what she had just said, and the quiet understanding in Brian’s eyes proved her undoing.
    “Oh, Beth, I am so sorry,” he said. “You’ve gone and fallen for him, haven’t you? I was afraid this might happen, but Jerry was adamant you wouldn’t. We have so fucked this up for you. I have fucked up. Me and my stupid ideas.”
    Beth opened her mouth to argue, but the words wouldn’t form past the lump of misery clogging her throat, so she sat next to Elliot instead and cradled his head in her lap. A tear splashed on his face, followed by another, and Beth sniffed and wiped them off his face.
    “There must be something you can do?”
    Brian shifted from foot to foot looking even more uncomfortable.
    “I would need him in my lab for that, and we haven’t got the time to get him there. They will be here soon.”
    “Who the fuck are they , and come to think of it, why did Oliver Barnett know Elliot’s safe words? What haven’t you told me, Brian?”
    “It’s a long story and I don’t think we’ll have the time for it.”
    “Damn it, Brian, then make time. I deserve to know what has been going on. I signed up to this stupid trial, and I was supposed to get an uncomplicated fuck buddy, not—”
    She couldn’t continue, she just couldn’t. To say it out loud would make it real, and what was left of her heart would splinter into too many pieces to ever find their way back to each other.
    “Robots can’t die, and that’s what he is. You just have to fix him.” If she said it often enough then surely it would become true. It had to. She’d only just found Elliot, and she never even told him how she felt, too hung up on the issue of his not being human.
    “You’re right—robots can’t die, but Elliot is not a robot. He is a feeling, sentient, self-evolving Man-Droid as close to human as I could ever hope for him to be. He has free will, and I’m afraid he has chosen to self-destruct, rather than fall into the wrong hands.”
    Beth looked from Brian to Elliot in disbelief.
    “Why would he do that? What the fuck are you going on about?”
    There was the screech of car tires out on the street, followed by several thuds, as car doors opened and shut. Brian glanced out of the window and paled.
    “They’re coming. I haven’t got time to explain, and it’s probably best that you don’t know the full story. Even Jerry doesn’t know it all. It was safer for her not to. Just stick to what you know. You signed up for the sex-android trial, and you don’t know anything else, because—”
    The front door popped off the hinges, and the room filled with smoke, interrupting Brian mid-sentence. Acrid smoke filled Beth’s lungs, and her eyes streamed and swelled until she couldn’t see much past dark shapes filling her living room. She fought against the hands pulling Elliot’s lifeless body from her grasp. She kicked and screamed, but it was useless. There were too