Learning Curve
by Gary Clifton
part 1
“Whadda ya mean, ‘Fat Pig,’ you pigmy freak? You stick your vampire-lookin’ little ass in here, then go nuts when a girl rejects your kinky proposition. Who the hell invited a creep like you to a first-rate bash in my penthouse anyhow?”
Geno was a “made” guy who could not tolerate a drunken brawl at a dinner party. He raised a hand to alert a pair of goons at the end of the bar. Both had already started.
Geno turned to the guest at his elbow. “Sorry, Mr. Mayor. That little geek is a lawyer from some outfit on the west coast. I saw him in the office today. One of our lawyers musta invited him. The boys will show him the door.” He leaned closer. “The chick? Oh, that’s a pig from accounting. We aways bring in three or four girls from the office so even the biggest losers can score. Looks like that little weasel also screwed that up. They’re tossin’ him now.”
While one bodyguard escorted the rowdy guest down to street level, the other approached Geno, then hesitated a respectable distance, grinning broadly. Geno motioned him forward. The heavy, stifling a laugh, whispered in Geno’s ear, then turned and walked away.
Geno turned back to the Mayor. “Too good to miss, Mr. Mayor. The guy wanted a threesome with the fat girl and a rubber love doll.” Both he and the Mayor roared with laughter.
Down on the street, Percival Orlando Smith III, attorney at law and lifetime total screwup at relating to the opposite sex, hailed a cab. His luck with women had remained traditionally unlucky.
* * *
Percy Smith had been a bright, but not spectacular, Ivy League educated attorney, laboring in the legal department of a west coast defense contractor when the significance of AI blinked around the corner. The technical world, always ready to explore new opportunities, were all in from the get-go.
Percival, a skinny little nerd, was afraid of ghosts, lawnmowers, and crying babies. He had only a hint of hair left and recurring acne. Languishing in force-fed mediocrity, underpaid, bored by endless dealing with threatening inquiries to the firm, he remained permanently a legend in his own mind.
His employer, a manufacturer of several key sections of the U.S. Air Force X-GD22 space project, had been stricken by failure of two of their mainstay products. Smith, through glib legal double-talk, skillful briefings with Air Force mucky-mucks, and outright lying, managed to get the nose up sufficiently for his employer to keep flying. Smith could have plodded along as the golden boy until the next crisis.
But he’d tasted success and the adulation of his inferiors. He wanted more: AI... AI dominated water fountain gossip, and after-work martini revelations were incredibly appealing. Percy Smith was gonna by God be a player at all costs. Accumulation of a war chest was the immediate first priority.
His unique position in finding legal loopholes to facilitate a default on corporate loans and substandard manufacturing allowed him to steal from his employer like Attila the Hun. He was uniquely ponied up with a wealth of information of origins, potential, and vital data necessary to translate AI theory into semi-sentient reality and stacks upon stacks of hundred-dollar Yankee bills.
Thus was born Goober International.
In the first six months of manipulating facts and circumstances to ignite his new horizon and keep his banks at bay, he had stolen enough critical information, disgruntled engineers and assorted lab squints from his previous employer to become a minor player in the new goldmine of AI. His new dream, Goober International, began to breathe on its own.
In another year, he had managed to hold on and expand exponentially. Goober International announced not only a variety of marvelous stationary machines to store, think, innovate and impact the world, but also available were rugged, intelligent robots in the form of faux humans who could walk around like real people and do all the work.
Repeatedly rejected by the plainest of females, he eventually concluded that the curse of a name like Percival contributed to his wimp-ism. He declared that hereinafter, he was “Chip” to any who approached. However, a simple name upgrade does not a stud make. Percival, now Chip, needed another crutch.
Goober International cranked out over a million bots. All were stand-up, walking around machines which cloned the movements and form of the human model. They were made with identical metal faces and a single voice for each gender. The human imitation models became soldiers, cops, and CPA’s with countless world-wide functions. They were brilliant, but as attractive as a crescent wrench.
One afternoon, while inspecting the newest and most human-like model the boys in Cosmetic Research had shaped up, Percival, now Chip, experienced a revelation! That beauty, metal aside, was already ninety percent over the hurdle of being an exact human clone. He wondered if the same lab crew had looked into the difficulty of covering the shiny metal females with artificial flesh and skin; hair would also be a nice addition. He called in the Director of Laboratory Innovations. They spent the rest of the afternoon huddled over Smith’s desk, examining both the new model and the stack of blueprints necessary to the new beauty’s existence.
Could she be tweaked and upgraded to become indistinguishable from the girl next door? With a few plumbing alterations and some ingenious cosmetic magic, she was not that far away from becoming a priceless bonanza. Why buy a plain software engineer when for only ten times the cost, a Barbie programmed with graduate engineer knowledge up the wazoo could be purchased.
Female pleasure models went to the drawing and plumbing board that day. The AI lab honed up their computers. Smith realized he could do with some high-powered assistance.
* * *
Bill Brown, former football star, was lanky, muscular, with movie star good looks. He was not only one of the few who could spell the name of the university he attended, he aced his way through the electrical engineering program, achieving the dean’s honor roll all eight semesters he was on the university athletic payroll.
NFL teams, like starlings on a high line, flocked to the jock dormitory lounge, each promising to exceed his university salary by a factor of at least two. Brown signed. Alas, a half step slow, an inch too short, he bombed. Bill Brown, star jock, was alone in an indifferent world. He had to find a job.
Intellectually sharp, socially capable, physically a handsome hunk, Bill Brown, engineer, quickly landed a job with a major airplane manufacturer in the Southwest. In two years, he had achieved a high six-figure salary as head knocker of engineering, had bedded an impressive swath of young, ready to rumble female employees and was featured in several trade magazines as an upcomer to watch.
When three formerly cooperative ladies filed paternity suits, all viable and top-loaded with dead-level damning evidence, made the news, the media were sharks in bloody water. Brown swore off women forever. Well, maybe.
Celibacy, a month later, made for some lonely times as the normal libido of the active young engineer endured the absence of the satisfying touch of a woman. Then, Brown attended a dinner party held by a scientist who headed a firm engaged in the manufacture of AI-armed robots for all purposes.
The cocktail waitresses, attired in skimpy costumes, were reasonably attractive and flirtatious. The host, a wimpy, nearly bald little man named Percival something or other, was a mucky-muck in a new firm, Goober International, a mover in the burgeoning world of AI.
Three martinis in, Brown was taken off guard slightly when a sweet young waitress eased up and said, “Hi, I’m Mia. Got a minute?”
Mia, who Brown estimated to be about an eight by standards of the time, brazenly led him into a convenient bedroom and spent the next hour violating his sacred vow of no more hands-on contact with the opposite gender.
When Brown sheepishly emerged, Percival Chip Smith, the host, waylaid him in the hallway. “Whatcha think about Mia, Bill?”
Instantly concluding Smith’s question was a ploy by a lawyer suing him for his paternal faux pas, Brown stammered. When Smith disclosed that he had just laid in lust with a machine, Brown was flabbergasted. Smith bragged that Mia and the rest of the girls were actually worker bots designed to be programmed as domestic help or more skilled technical duties as the customer ordered. He also promised that upgraded models were in the works. Brown was intrigued.
That Smith swore to design and market even more comely female companion-bots, all flawlessly far more lovely than Mia, Brown was convinced. One hour and three additional martinis later, Brown had agreed to join Goober International as VP of Engineering.
* * *
In less than a year, spearheaded by Brown, Goober’s lab squints had ginned up the undoable. They had developed the nearly human, beautiful model like Smith had dreamed of. Shortly, Goober was rolling off Hollywood-grade masterpieces in mass numbers. The 276 Delta pleasure models were universally beautiful, marvelously conversant, highly intelligent, of varying descriptions, but always flawlessly gorgeous. All were fully cooperative and functional. Incorporated into the brains of each was the AI sum total of all knowledge accumulated by mankind up to and including the previous week.
All were not only swimming-pool airtight ready but still integrated into their matrix atop the AI miracle, each was impregnated with the fail-safe system which prohibited any negative, spiteful hate speech or thought. Sales orders were over the moon. Brown got rich and Smith, richer.
Spearheaded by Brown, Goober announced that a new product, the 377 Delta, a male version of the perfect pleasure companion for ladies — as well as gentlemen of discretion — would begin immediately.
Smith, having gone through a weekly rotating sample of love-bot encounters, was like a child with too much candy to make a choice. He found no permanence in any model. Weary of making selections, he had kept Heather FR9743 in tow for several weeks. Privately he called her his main squeeze.
Heather, tall as were most models, was a sparkling blonde of identical quality, but esoterically different from thousands of others. Oddly, although Heather was juiced up with all knowledge knowable, she had, however, been inadvertently partially loaded up with psychological data and treatment options normally reserved for med-bots. Since it might have been due to a routine factory mix-up, no record of the extra knowledge was recorded.
Heather, robot-bent to please her benefactor, was totally devoted to the indifferent little tyrant, Percival, “call me Chip” Smith. Corporate headquarters personnel were surprised when she showed up with a tattoo, “Heather/Chip” on her left forearm.
Senior executive assistant Rosemary Flores was shocked when she carelessly entered the unlocked door of Emperor Smith at lunchtime, where she encountered Heather doing a wild feather dance atop Smith’s desk. Not easily surprised and deadly aware of the need to keep her mouth closed, she would carry in silence the image of a tattooed snake winding upward around Heather’s shapely left leg, heading north. Little Percy was experimenting. Heather settled in.
To Smith’s mind, all the pleasure models he sampled were still just toys, all programmed to function when called upon, then to be stored in a nearby broom closet until summoned again. After two months of outwardly monogamous attention toward Heather, he carried her home, as he often did for use if needed. Heather was stoically robot-silent when she encountered an unknown face Nicole LT3426 comfortably adorned in a scanty gown atop Smith’s enormous bed.
Nicole, also a super-shiny blonde, greeted Heather cordially as pleasure-bots are pre-fixed to do. Heather, mechanically bound, reciprocated.
Both ravishing models were equipped, as were all bots, with small remotes which were normally ignored by their human owners. Basically, an off and on switch, entry required a complicated keyboard code, definitely not convenient to a big wheel like Smith in this exigent moment.
Heather, left in full operational mode, sat quietly watching Nicole take her place in Smith’s boudoir, even faithfully offering a casual “Should I join in, baby?” or a more direct and earthy suggestion.
When Smith finally erupted with a “Shut the hell up” command, Heather did just exactly that. When Smith left her, fully powered up, in a hall closet for the next week, the humble robot quietly complied with expected mute resolution. After all, the machine had no feelings.
The specs were clear; Heather was not programmed to even realize that the new babe now made the daily trips to and from Goober headquarters. Hellfire, she was subject to being parked powerless at the curb with certainly no explanation required. Goober had produced thousands of models with similar restrictions without a hitch.
* * *
Smith, despite having the buying power to maintain a squad of bots with specialty functions on their manifests, kept only one full-time machine in his palatial home. Maid-housekeeper bot Hortense, four years in service, was one of the metal-faced production workers. She labored long hours, cooked Smith’s meals, kept house and, since no sleep or rest beyond a twenty-minute daily battery recharge was necessary, she maintained the vast landscaped flower gardens on the estate.
That Heather remained parked in a closet, fully powered up, seemed inconsequential.
On a bland Tuesday evening Smith, with Nicole’s blonde hair waving in the open topped convertible, wheeled his high-dollar automobile into the multiple-door parking garage. “Hit the bedroom, baby. I’ll be up after I get Hortense squared away on dinner.”
Nicole swayed away while Smith called for Hortense in several areas of the spacious house. When she didn’t respond, he spoke into his cellular. “Find Hortense... now, dammit!”
No response led him to consider power failure of some sort of minor mishap. He walked up to his bedroom, only to find Nicole, now changed into a skimpy gown, alone.
“You see Heather, babe? Or Hortense?”
“No, Chip.”
Kidnapping flashed across his mind. Competent thieves had reportedly evolved sophisticated software to defeat the fail-safe burglar resistant systems installed in all Goober manufactured units. Aware that his small satellite-capable sending unit would reach the kill switch of both missing bots from considerable distance, he started to switch both off. However, shutting down completely if one or both had wandered out into the remote area of the outer perimeter might leave them isolated and alone. He thought better of the idea and summoned the local Virtual Mind Police instead.
In seconds, the hologram of a virtual uniformed cop standing in the beam, appeared in the bedroom. Smith explained the problem. The cop studied a screen strapped to her wrist. “Two bots, identified as female by 77.8 percent near the reflecting pool 3000 meters due north, sir. Do ya need me to buzz over the scene?”
“No, no...I’ll check it out.”
At that, the cop was gone and Chip began his own search. He walked toward the reflecting pool.
* * *
He found Heather sitting on a concrete bench, staring blankly at Hortense at the bottom of the three-foot-deep pool. She purred, excitedly, “Taking a walk, baby. Poor thing, must have fallen in.” Her beautiful features were serenely innocent. Smith reasoned that Heather, finding Hortense in a chance encounter in the heavily wooded rear area was unlikely but not impossible.
Smith, studying the scene, was not certain a bot could drown. At worst, she retained considerable value after renovation. He summoned Goober Maintenance, then called Bill Brown to dump the whole affair on him.
Smith explained the scenario to Brown, having concluded that Hortense had somehow accidentally fallen into the pond and been unable to save herself. Bots of any level were incapable of any rash act and were programmed to report any such activity immediately. Heather hadn’t called. Nonetheless the two men rushed to the conclusion that they were dealing with an accident.
Hortense was wheeled away by worker bots from the salvage yard. Smith told Brown to conduct a follow-up inquiry, no matter the difficulty.
Heather remained on the bench. She looked up pensively. “Baby, did Hortense... suffer?”
“Heather, did you see Hortense drowning?” Chip asked.
“No, Chip, I came along later.”
“Why were you here?”
“Just walking, Chip, like I said.”
Smith studied her expression, curious at her ability to speak in terms of human suffering. Then, was that a tear on her cheek? Heather had no mechanism to produce tears! The first hint of a major problem tickled a corner of his mind. Tears?
* * *
Copyright © 2026 by Gary Clifton
