It had been a few hours later, in the sunset, when Arendtcore’s assigned vehicle had arrived. Marcus was heading into a ski town a little north and west, somewhere in the southern reaches of Alaska. He needed something with more grunt than a city runner that simply took him between the house, the nearby city square, and the headquarters offices and showroom / factory of Arendtcore
The company had expanded and come into great money enough that it had bought into some things that a more cautious company would not have dabbled in.
Several decades ago, the infamous rabble rouser Melon Musk had parlayed a initial boom in electrical vehicles into buys into robotics, space exploration, even social media and a failed foray into trimming the fat from government spending. It had all come crashing down dramatically – surrounding yourself with only yesmen tended to result in poor advice and decisions, but for the longest while he had had quite a run.
By comparison Samuel and Bellamy were much more circumspect in what they spent on expanding– a few genealogy firms that were circling the drain but otherwise had the potential to be moneymakers with just a few tweaks to improve service to users and improve the balance sheets, a bit of office property back home and in a few holiday hotspots for both upper-echelon staff and favored customers of the company, a few medical companies to provide quality staff for advisory roles in handling the interest in Arendtcore’s medical devices...
Part of the splurge had been for this campervan and several others like it. The rationale had been pretty simple – if they didn’t have transport to get to their properties, then it was as good as not owning them at all. A more sensible company would have gotten private jets, or enrolled in a frequent rail travel or airline program. But Bellamy had never been sensible, even with Aymee and her proteges at Legal and HR to keep them on on a leash. And travel by campervan, while much slower, did have some advantages.
Marcus calmly clicked open the side door of the Campervan and looked in. There was nobody else. The campervan ran on both electrical power and a bespoke custom AI qualified to fully take over the drivers’ seat, to the extent that no steering of any sort had been left behind for manual control, aside from an emergency pull-handle on the dash to bring the wheels to a total halt manually.
Marcus had protested this risk back when they first bought the vans, but after a billion miles travelled collectively and only a few flattened coffee cups (mainly the fault of the staffer or esteemed guest leaving their takeaway coffee on the front bonnet and having the paper cups fall right under the front wheels), he had decided to be more circumspect and just shut up for good.
The campervan’s AI was capable of listening to normal English chatter, as well as unidiomatic talk in a few other major languages, but it had already been advised back at HQ as to where it had to go, who it was bringing along, and given a rough schedule of how this was to be done. Behind the cockpit, a well-arranged living space was prepped. Fold-out furniture, beds that turned into sofas and space to hold several bodies at once. A kitchenette. A enclosed space suitable for both trips to the toilet and trips to the shower (but sadly too small for an actual bathtub soak) Marcus travelling alone with his little red bug-out emergency office travel suitcase was rattling inside the deceptive TARDIS-like spaciousness of the campervan like a dancing worm inside one of his childhood dancing mexican beans.
Even Julie had approved of this arrangement after a cursory examination when the van first arrived. There was a bathroom, there was a sort of kitchenette., and a comfy bed for two with the sofa acting as another bed if needed, or kept to seat several people like a bus if necessary. With a quick raid at the nearest gas station and supermarket to fill the mini-fridge and larder, it could be a proper home away from home as long as one remembered to regularly stop for EV recharges and emptying the bathroom and kitchen waste compartments at rest stops and overnight sleeping spaces.
The farewell had been economical. Julie didn’t desire to keep Marcus from doing his job. The sooner he left, the sooner he could do it, and the sooner he could return. Sweet murmurs were exchanged, a brief kiss, and a few silly jokes and smiles. He ruffled his hand through Julie’s hazel locks, smiling faintly. “Just a quick trip. In and out. I promise I won’t take long...”
And with that the EV pulled away towards the nearest charging station and supermarket before it had to brave the chill and long distances of Alaska.
The onboard AI was not much of a conversationalist, responding only to keywards and providing occassional updates on their progress. Ever so often, it would pull off the road and park itself at an automted charger station and start guzzling sweet electrical DC, taking about an hour or three each time. The AI atleast had the decency to wait longer for Marcus to come back and get settled in before taking off again, which came in handy when the charger was part of a rest area and had decent food or market services. This was the first time in all these years that he had travelled this way for work, and surprises came often, many of them pleasant...
Who knew Alaskan Sockeye Salmon dressed with lemon curd sauce after a careful grilling could be so delectable? Mr Manners certainly hadn’t. He did now. More notes filled his pocketbook as he lucked into more pleasant meals and restful places.
He hadn’t forgotten the point of the trip, and as he got further north, the incidence with which these stops appeared gradually tapered off into a sort of nothing nothingness, finally ending in a desolate stop with nothing but a few chargers, a passing eighteen wheeler cargo truck, and a connection to a nearby geothermal micro power plant, presumably to provide the barest of light and to charge all of any twenty or so vehicles parked beneath the eaves of the charging station.
The onboard AI made an announcement. “This is the last charging station for 300 miles in this direction. Please expect alterations to power use in the campervan to stretch its range. Also, we will be charging the main power storage to 100% instead of the usual 60 to 70% we have been taking in at each stop. This charging session will take approximately eight hours. You may wish to have a simple dinner and turn in for the night, Mr Manners.”
Marcus sighed as he cut open a set of small pouches, using the sterilised water of the campervan to make a warming instant beef mulligawtany stew and using the heating pouches included with the bowl to cook it and warm himself.
He probably still had enough power to run the stove and cook a proper stovetop meal but... the darkness had enveloped the outside, the only sources of light being the charging station and the cargo truck nex to to him, faintly blaring Mexican sombrero music. The lack of daylight for the past day or so had brought along a certain melancholy and a strange loss of energy.
The chill tended to dampen the capability of EV power cells to keep the vehicles going, the really serious haulers and the safety crews roaming the roads here being the last bastion of hydrogen, sludgy diesel, or hybrids involving at least one of these sources as well as toughened electrical drives.
Apparently humans weren’t immune to this either, in a way.
As he settled into the furs covering his Queen-size bed, he reflected briefly on the things that had brough him all the way to such a remote spot in Alaska...
They had all first met Senator Wilheim Pomporo Bundt at the 2057 Indigo Consumer Electronics show in Reno, several months after Seamus and Bellamy had read him into the long term aims of The Brotherhood.
The “Minecraft refugee” robot slowly walking across the living room floor of the Brotherhood’s frat house was the the first sign of the kind of future that would come as The Brotherhood slowly metasized into Arendtcore. Its blocky forms moved around on two legs slowly, sweeping the floor and bringing remedies to the Brothers to help them cope with the ambush by Everclear the night before.
His surprise at being handled a small glass of something warming, herbal, and seemingly capable of stomping his hangover by a blocky bipedal robot sweeping the floors was his first waking reaction.
The second reaction had been realising along with Aymee that his head had been wedged right against their breasts while they were both unconscious.
And for someone who declared so earnestly their masculinity, Aymee had certainly screamed hard. They had also socked him really hard, just may be not hard enough to send them back into the twilight of unconsciousness, just enough to heavily bruise one side of their face and develop a slight bump on the head from meeting one of the living room walls...
but several months after that first unfortunate head-in-breasts contact incident (one of quite a few), they were staring at a old man gush like like someone half his age as he watched a newer version of the housekeeper biped sweeping the floor while making silly emotive faces on its new facial LED screen. His entourage had encouraged him to keep some sense of decorum.
He would do no such thing. “Oh. My. God. This is it. This is the future.This is our generation’s microwave oven. Imagine these things, in every home. Available at a decent price or rental cost.” Bundt’s voice had all the gleeful mirth of a man freshly converted to the cause of some weird cult, even has he turned to shake Seamus wildly like a pinata. “I want. To be. One of your biggest supporters. I can’t buy stock or invest directly, but please. Let me help you out when issues get in your way. Let me sing the praises of your work at...” Bundt had paused, his wizened face briefly glancing up to read the name “Arendtcore”, that they Four Brothers had come up with at the spur of the moment when asked the name of their company.
It was a proposition that was hard to say no. Seamus shook on it with Bundt, and the photo would become a notable photo on the wires within hours. The obsesssion and interest would eventually fade from them of course, but it kept burning in Bundt quietly. He would occasionally highlight the company’s work in trade delegations, pass along tips and trends researched by his staffers that might impact Arendtcore, tipped some of his family largesse into funding improvements to the company’s growing capabilities, even did some rounds to carefully link them with a web of other suppliers who could be potentially helpful in their quest to scale up to a level where they could start dreaming about “one in every home” like he’d proclaimed was possible at the trade show. That was a good four or five years.
------
When the bottom fell out of the hole, it happened rather suddenly and shockingly.
The Texas Fundamentalist Party had struck on a Friday afternoon, using their limited but still potent support within Texas to push a proposal across the table of the Congress building:
1. All further development of lifelike robotics was to be halted.
2. No robot that carried any significant resemblance to the human form would be allowed to be sold, developed, or traded in from abroad except for special events.
3. Resemblance to the human form by any robot would be limited to the use of humanoid forms.
There was an impression that this law would not pass muster. It did come dangerously close to passing – enough votes garnered to require members of Congress to reconvene in a month to vote one more time.
It took a few hours for the news to filter into Arendtcore’s offices and factory floor. In those past five years, the company had dramatically changed. While The Four Brothers had remained the centre of everything that had happened at the company, they had also acquired various assets, produced major new upgrades at the trade shows every year, and were on the verge of releasing their very first home product – a sample unit of it was now calmly sweeping the floors of the headquarter offices.
From at least the neck upwards, it resembled a young brunette woman of average beauty, adorned with a simple maid’s headdress. Beneath the neck, care had been taken in many decisions to present the shape of a gentle, mildly beautiful human young Asian woman of indeterminate origin, not peggable as being from any obvious country so much as an entire region named Asia. She was dressed in a dress that while not baring much skin, still made anyone viewing aware of her curviness. Anyone not aware of the context would have assumed she was just a pretty maidservant, and visitors to the HQ regularly engaged her at least briefly in conversation, or asking for directions.
Smarter, more clued in people would have realised she had appeared on stage in 2061, sweeping the stage floor at a trade fair for robotics that had tried something a little different and invited select companies from overseas rather than within Japan or Korea to present. Arendtcore had taken the opportunity to eat their lunches and make a huge splash. The value of short videos of Allie, as the presenters had taken to calling her in interviews and introductions, splashed over the part of Toktiko that was interested in future developments reported in bite-sized 90-second shorts, was immense and way beyond what even Bellamy and Aymee had predicted in generating interest.
There was still very much more work to be done. For every hour Allie spent presenting herself to the public, it still took way more time than the Arendt brothers were comfortable with on maintaining her. Even in the offices, she still spent way more time disappearing rather than patrolling the floors with her broom-like micro-vaccuum-cleaner. This was clearly an unacceptable state of affairs for what the robot maid had been intended for, and the Brotherhood spent nights working on shortening the time required between operating periods for recharging and maintenance.
This was unfortunately one of those periods. Allie stood at attention in the backroom, eyes fully closed. Her trademark broom vacuum hybrid was carefully rested against one of the walls, as Seamus carefully maneuvered his callused fingers, slowly parting the velco fastenings that kept Allie’s maidservant dress together in public. As he did so, the body beneath the silken dark purple and white fabrics revealed itself, a body carefully padded here and there to match the softness of a mature female woman, covered in very human-looking skin, but with visible seams and studs every so often like that of a machine.
Seamus carefully set the dress to one side and stood back to briefly admire the work that had already gone into Allie. To facilitate maintenance, the only lingerie Allie wore beneath her dress was a set of white frilly lace stockings tucked into her dark brown patent leather shoes and a matching set of long gloves along most of her arms. Her breasts had been left uncovered, exposing a pair of dark pink toy-like nipples, as had the ebb and flows of her haunches. Any prurient thoughts that might have led to were quickly extinguished by the bare, unvagina’d land between her legs. The small label plastered just above the cleft of her buttocks warned that the only thing that should be going up her posterior was a generic 230W charging cable. Seamus thought that was enough of an additional warning that Allie wasn’t a real woman, but a household appliance carefully shaped to resemble one.
Seamus smiled. Marcus had certainly outdone himself. While there was nothing in the rulebook that their household helper robot had to look good, it certainly added to the allure of the product. Marcus had also agreed with Seamus and Bellamy on a few other conventions to apply across other similar products. As he plugged the prerequisite charger cable up Allie’s pert ass, her outie bellybutton started emitting a faint blinking yellow glow, signifying that she was now recharging. They had worked out how the indicator would work at various charge levels, as well as how it would be used to alert that Allie was experiencing potential problems. In normal operation, there would be no difference between it and an average cute little outie bellybutton.
Seamus reached for his smart tablet and a nearby cable to plug it into a connector hidden somewhere behind Allie’s hairdo, beneath the lush jet black curls and slightly just above where the power button had been hidden beneath an otherwise easy-to-ignore mole...
then the bottom fell out of the hole, as Aymee barged into the backroom, a newspaper raised in the air with a panicked look on their face. “Seamus. You need to read this. NOW.” Aymee had doffed part of the blazer and pants combo that defined their look, letting her suspenders show. Add a fedora, and she might as well have time travelled an entire century from the turn of the 19th century. That wasn’t the relevant thing though – a photo of a firebrand yelling from a lectern, one fist clenched in the air, took up half the middle of the day’s copy of the International Observer – American Edition.
Seamus calmly put down his smart tablet and cable. He would get to the maintenance and log reading eventually. But the way Aymee had come right in with urgency and panic seemed to suggest that yes, the newspaper that they were holding was a higher priority thing to look at. He quietly took the paper off them and started reading the body text below the giant front-page headline. The importance attached to it had probably been the doing of Senator Bundt’s people at the International Observer. The man had promised and committed to not interfering with the editorial and runnings of the paper even as he’d resigned from leading it on being voted into the Senate, but ever so often, he would see things that would be important to Arendtcore, but not worth plastering front page in general...“TEXAS FUNDAMENTALISTS NEARLY PASS BILL TO END SELECT TOP-LEVEL ROBOTICS RESEARCH – Texas Governor Theodore Giss promises end to descent into decadence from replacing real people with “dolls, toy androids, fake people.””
Seamus paled a litte after a while. “My god. Those fundamentalists. They finally did it. They pushed an agenda nobody else believes in... Have you briefed anyone else who deserves to know?”
Aymee nods, pausing briefly to rub their hand in their hair. “I bought four copies of the actual paper for myself, Marcus, you, and Bellamy. I’ve attached the virtual article and passed it down to the Board and the senior leadership on our main factory floors.”
“Agents are talking to the agents our most important suppliers and contractors have on hand, most of them agree the issue is critical. Like, it’s a major attack on so many of us, even though many of them could pivot to supplying or manufacturing for devices that don’t violate the proposed law...”
“Social media posted. Most of our supporters are outraged, but there’s a few outliers who say it’s good and we should go back to focusing on functionality instead of making form a priority as well.”
Aymee glances upwards at the ceiling “The funniest thing is, Senator Bundt contacted us before we got to them. He was apologising profusely for some reason, says he wants to speak with us about this when we can.... You do know you’re going to have to publicly address this to all those people and carefully...”
Seamus groaned, running his fingertips against his temples, a sort of anger spreading across his face.
His psychopathy had been well controlled by a careful mix of being supported by people willing to cut him off and tell hin down if he was in danger of going too far, plus therapy sessions and a selection of medications balancing his need to be an effective CEO with not being a total hurtful douchebag to others. But when the situation was this serious, it was all to easy to let it overwhelm his carefully put-up breakers and turn him into someone who could cause even more damage,
He groaned a little, breathing deeply as if to make his psychopathy eat itself, reassert control, show that he was working on it... “I’ll write a letter about this. I promise I’ll be firm and serious. As for Bundt, we do owe him a lot, Schedule a meeting. In person if possible, over Xoom if this thing’s taking too much of his presence elsewhere.”
Aymee nodded, watching Seamus go into to detail by scribbling a bit on his smart Tablet and forwarding the resulting note to her communicator.
“I’m not putting my maintenance work on the Allie v2 prototype off. Let me at least run some checks before I start fighting back... Ichigo-san”
Aymee backed away slowly. If he was actually using the nomenclature that they had demanded repeatedly be used without effect, without protest, Seamus definitely thought things were too serious to introduce the friction of the mayhem that tended to accompany her requested identifiers...
“Understood, Seamus. I’ll make the necessary preparations.”
As Aymee turned to leave, Seamus quickly connected up to Allie and started briefly browsing her logs and statuses... Everything was running as it should, although Allie’s broom vaccuum really needed a redesign sooner rather than later. Perhaps something less stylised, more practical, less obsessed with resembling a traditional broom... any issues were mainly minor and could be left to be fixed and worked on by either the R&D department or the Brothers at a later timing.
He paused briefly to savor what would possibly the last bit of peace in these corridors for the next few weeks.