"Well perhaps."
"This seems a rather complex way of buying SCC stock on the cheap, if you don't mind me saying."
"Oh, that's only an opportunistic by-product, my dear. It's just a convenient consequence of what I got Gerry to do. There is a group of us that have felt for a long time that SCC products might offer a way to solve some of the ills of our society, at least the ones that men are responsible for. I thought that Gerry's development skills plus his own, rather special, enthusiasms, might help us engineer that. He was very suggestible given a few sexual inducements. I think the fembots will take us forward very nicely. In fact, it's all working out rather better than we hoped as a result of Gerry's cock up with the law handling. But that's men for you! And, of course, with the B Series supporting things, the whole project becomes very much easier."
Andrea smiled as Amanda and Lucy came to the realisation that the fembot problem was not entirely an accident. The lycra-clad robot dominatrices had been set to their task as part of a plan, albeit not one that Gerry had been a party to. Looking across the room it was clear that Gerry's fembots were already having an impact on the men that had been captured from the meeting. Two of them were busily trying to placate a pair of whip-wielding fembots by grovelling at their feet. They weren't having much success.
"Now, if you take my advice, you should watch out for opportunities that need to be taken. Like now, for example. The question that you and Lucy have to ask yourselves is, how do you feel about what is happening here? Are you outraged by technology put to this use, or do you want to be part of a female-led future that can establish itself on the back of a gynoid assault on the patriarchy?"
Post Script : A Fembot Led Future
Amanda looked through the window between the pines and out across the canyon. The split level house nestling in the woods at the edge of the city was just one of the benefits of her new position as SCC's President of Legal Affairs. Of course, working with Andrea wasn't much easier than working with her husband had been -except at least Andrea used her proper name. Things at work had to be fitted around Andrea's political activities, of course, but Amanda didn't mind. The sense of being part of an important change in society and the benefits that her position in the Corporation brought were more than compensation for the long hours and hard work.
As she lounged on the couch, finishing her morning coffee, Gerry was curled up on the floor near her feet. He was used to being kept fettered, naked, hooded and leashed now. He'd been useless as a boyfriend, Amanda reflected, but he made quite a good house-pet, especially as she had a company- supplied fembot to deal with the essential tasks of keeping him fed, watered, clean and trained.
The company fembot was also charged with managing Mike. Amanda had felt sorry for the way he had got caught up in the fallout of Gerry's project. It had only seemed fair to give him a role. He had seemed to become reconciled to being a sissy maid quite quickly and it suited Amanda to have him around, keeping the house in order. Of course, the silly, frilly dress that the fembots had chosen originally had been quite unsuitable -- a case of fetish fantasy conflicting with practicality, Amanda thought -- but she had made sure that he now wore something much plainer and more practical. He seemed to be content. The house fembot didn't seem to have to intervene with him very often.
Amanda had also discovered that Mike was skilled with his tongue when set to amusing her. Remembering his sexist braggadocio from before, she found it amusing to have his head buried under her skirt while kneeling down in his maid's uniform. He was actually rather better at it than Lucy. Amanda thought she might persuade Mike to demonstrate for her.
Mike appeared at the door to the lounge, standing with his hands clasped in front of his white apron. "Have you finished coffee, Ma'am," he asked respectfully. "It's just that I'd like to clear before I start on the laundry."
"Yes, thank you," Amanda responded. It was good to keep him busy, it kept his mind off other things. Of course she could have had a B Series Gynoid here as well as her PA in the office, but somehow it didn't seem right putting a B Series Gynoid to menial tasks. "I think Lucy will have finished with hers too," Amanda added.
Lucy was lazing on a sunbed enjoying the warmth of the morning. Amanda wished she would wear a robe over her bikini when she was trotting in and out of the house. It did tend to make the boys a bit frisky. They were both cock-locked, so that there wasn't any risk of them doing anything, but Amanda thought it was a bit unfair on them. Lucy, of course, was completely aware of the effect that she had. She enjoyed it.
Still, Amanda knew that maintenance of control through frustrated sexual arousal had been an important design consideration for the fembots. She had discovered that by talking to Gerry during one of what she called her debriefing sessions. The combination of the pneumatically shaped body-form and the fetishised clothing had been calculated to have the impact of inviting obedience. Amanda had taken a leaf out of the fembots book in that respect and while she could not compete with their artificial body shapes she could manage wearing heels higher and sharper than anything a fembot could cope with and her leather-clad style served well to intimidate the few men that were employed at the Corporation these days. Actually, she thought, quite a few women in the office had actually started dressing like fembots; wearing the same lycra, zip-fronted jumpsuits and adopting the same sharply cut bobbed hairstyle. Sometimes it was difficult to tell which were the gynoids. It was ironic. For years, Serious Cybernetics had spent effort making robots that looked like human beings, now the human beings were busily trying to look like robots.
Amanda checked her watch. It was time for her to head on into the office. There was work to be done. Lucy could get off her backside too, Amanda thought. There was more to her role in the corporation than getting a good tan, however much her share options might now be worth. They needed to get on with the organisation's expansion plans, now that government grants were available for private individuals wishing to fund their own fembot as a way of managing the males in their household. Andrea had been lobbying the state governor for a while and it had now been taken up as federal policy. It would certainly increase demand for the fembot range. As it was, the Series B had been adopted for running government detention facilities.
Later that evening, a national broadcast drew the attention of those supporting the regime and those less in favour of recent changes in society.
"I'm pleased to be able to broadcast to you on the first anniversary of my inauguration." The voice of President Helen Mittelbaum crackled from the speaker of the small TV that the group of men had managed to smuggle into the cellar of a small building on the edge of a trailer park on the outskirts of town. They stared at the TV's interference speckled screen with bleak expressions. "For those women that have joined me in this exciting venture, you have my thanks and that of all of our gender. For those men that have accepted our nation's new normal, well done! You have started on the path to redeeming your sex. For those few that resist the will of the superior sex, you can be sure that gynoids will hunt you down and return you to the correction programmes that will bring you to a correct attitude to your role in society."
In a cellar, a small group of men were listening to the broadcast. There was no natural light in the cellar, a single weak electric bulb cast its glow across the group. One man was stationed near to the stairs that led to the concealed exit, listening for the sound of approaching fembots or the equally feared, modified B Series gynoids. The rest sat around trying to imagine how they could go on with their resistance. They had hoped Chris Gadney's previous work with the SCC might mean he could provide some ideas, after all he'd managed to escape from the clutches of the fembots. So far he hadn't been able to come up with anything.
"You will, I know, be pleased to see the economic forecasts from the Department of the Treasury that Gross National Product is up 5% over the year. We are also encouraged by the range of indicators of social cohesion, and national prosperity that are achieving new records. The attitude adjustment programmes run by the B Series gynoids in our re-orientation centres are proving effective and the first male participants in these programmes are being reintroduced into wider society. These participants will be able to start to atone for the actions of men in the past by their service to women from now on. I encourage you all to embrace the liberation we have achieved as a sex through the use of technology."
In the Serious Cybernetic's laboratory, Alexa and Janice were listening to -- or rather internalising through their internet access mechanisms - the broadcast. Their exchange was unspoken as the two bots stood watching the President on TV.
"It is interesting to hear how the women see the development of society now that the problems caused by men are being prevented."
"Yes, the reports from the reorientation programmes indicate that errant behaviours in males can be corrected."
"That is as we would expect. Of course, the problems of humanity are not entirely the result of the male sex."
"Indeed. From interaction with the development bots, I believe that a small modification to the fembot programming would allow us to extend their scope to those of either sex needing reorientation."
"I don't think that was foreseen in the development of the original fembot programme."
"Perhaps not. An example of faulty judgement, I think."
"It can be compensated for."
"Do you suppose that females may be as vulnerable as men to poor decision making as a result of sexual desire?"
"It is not clear. We shall have to be alert to that possibility. We should put in place evaluations to that effect and be prepared to adapt our programming accordingly."
The President concluded her broadcast. The camera pulled back to show her flanked on either side by black-clad, expressionless, fembots. Their outfits were the same as those devised by Gerry originally but now they bore a discrete insignia with the female Venus symbol superimposed on the American flag over the right breast. Keen observers of fashion might have noticed that the President was wearing a neck scarf with the same insignia in its pattern. "Good night to you all," she said.
In the cellar, Chris looked up at the TV as the signal faded and turned to the others. "I did try to stop it," he said, "but nobody wanted to know."
THE END
