io9.com         

   Past a sign reading "ADULTS ONLY" in the throaty local language, Hal and Lily found sellers of robots "for your pleasure." "All the protuberances and hollow places," said one seller, reading his prompt-card. "No need to inflate but if you do comes with multiple pump adapters. Evolution's triumph! And only sixteen thousand for two, must have two to keep each other amused when you cannot be present to interact with them, you know, or unfortunate events will follow, you know. We learned that hard way and now is government regulation."

While they were pondering this exciting device (which had been set to "demo" mode, demo-cratically exercising all its artificial organs in conjunction with each other in all possible combinations, with available sound track also), a young man intruded.

"You're not going to buy that stupid gizmo, are you?" he said.

Hal ventured that he thought not, but it would be up to Lily.

"Forget it!" the young man said. "They're dangerous! You know these robots have their own agenda; they're just too good at what they do and find us completely boring sexually. That's a real downer! Not good enough to fuck a damn machine! So they fuck each other at every opportunity – I caught mine doing that three or four times! And they're plotting, plotting!"

"Plotting?"

"Against us!"

The hawker intervened. "Pay no attention to him; he is just a jealous young man with a short penis."

Ignoring him, the young man continued. "And I caught one of them flashing yesterday! In the marketplace! One of my robots! It made some sorry excuse I didn't believe."

Lily resolved the matter. "We don't have sixteen thousand," she admitted.

The hawker was not to be deterred. "Two hundred a trick. Ten minutes guaranteed. Or three hundred and they call you 'honey' several times!"

Hal shook his head, and he and Lily walked out. Behind them they could hear the two men shouting at each other, and SFX of robots weeping for their lost customers.

ez-robot.com