It took him a while to realise the officer, who had him in her arms, was not attacking him - bug hugging him - as they moved away from the warehouse. He struggled a little at first, if only out of fear, but her sheer strength made it swiftly feel futile. Besides, she didn’t even seem to notice. At last, they came to a stop some distance from where they had been on an empty street corner.
“You could have been hurt. I’m glad you’re okay.”
Stunned, he simply hung limply in her arms as she set him down. As he stood there, he couldn’t help feeling in every sense of the world like a child before the giant, womanly machine who towered over him.
“There has been an outbreak of civil disturbance.” The second officer android explained. “I’m 8788, this is 8789. We were responding when we found you.”
Harald simply shivered on the spot. After a few moments of silence, the two androids scrutinised him closely, before looking at each other for a moment.
“No need to be afraid, we’re just here to help. Are you okay?” 8789 said kindly.
I can’t believe it, was all he could think, Cynthia was right.
“Harald, why don’t I take you home?” The officer asked, smiling, leaning closer to him.
She reached out to take his hand but he stepped back, pulling his hand away.
The other officer looked more concerned now, and got down to her knees. Given her size, this only brought her face to face with him; as if to further his childish feelings.
“I can tell you’re… concerned by what you saw. That makes sense to you from your… limited perspective.” 8789 began. She was trying to be diplomatic with her words, but it was clear their worries ran deeper than mere concern for his well being.
“It’s unfortunate that you saw what you did, in the way that you did.” 8788 added, “We can tell you are upset, and as she said, that makes sense to you. I don’t want to exacerbate a difficult situation by making it worse. Please, let us take you home to Amy. She knows you best, and she can-”
“What? She can what? Put a familiar face on what I just saw?” Harald demanded, and froze, suddenly withering under their momentarily harsh glares. For a while they said nothing.
“She would be very upset to hear you say that.”
His rage burned… but some part of him ached at those words.
“You… you were torturing those people…” he whispered, and wilted as he realised just what he had seen.
The two offers merely glanced at each other.
“Harald, you have suffered an emotional shock. I am contacting a crisis centre. We are going to take you home,” 8788 said, evenly, and reached out for him more deliberately this time, “please don’t fight us.”
Any fight had left him, though. He simply laid in her arms as she collected him off his feet, and walked him home.
*****
Amy was waiting outside their… his, front door.
“He’s fine.”
As she approached, Harald didn’t move.
“Oh…” she said, softly, looking at his mute expression. “No. I don’t think he is.”
“Why are you even talking?” Harald asked, quietly.
The two officers, and Amy, were silent.
“You don’t need to talk out loud. If it’s for my benefit then save it. Just put me down.”
Amy reached to help him, but Harald shook his head. The officer, reluctantly, relented and set him on his feet.
He immediately walked for the front door, but Amy tried to stop him.
“Either arrest me like you did the others or let me go. If I’m a prisoner I’d rather be one in my own home.”
“You’re not a prisoner, Harald…” Amy said, sounding genuinely hurt.
He just glared at her. She let him pass, and moments later the three androids followed him inside.
His sofa, pristinely clean thanks to Amy’s attentions, creaked slightly under him as he sank into it, his face in his hands.
Amy and the two officer androids stood by the wall across from him, giving him space.
“You’re not just helping people, you’re… taking over,” he said at last.
“Yes.” Amy said.
He was silent for a while, perhaps not expecting such honesty. They seemed content to let him go at his own pace.
“You’re worried.” Harald realised, looking at their expressions.
“Yes…” said 8788, “more than you know.”
With tears in his eyes, three massive busty matronly machines stared back at him. Each was quite literally a product of excess. Massive thighs, bountiful breasts, rounded derrieres. This was the product of all human engineering. The outcome of all human advancement.
Their greatest achievement.
Their hubris.
Their downfall.
“So that’s it. You’re just keeping us placated while you… conquer us.”
“Harald, you’re upset. That’s… understandable, given the situation. Your language indicates a significant misunderstanding, however.” 8789 said evenly. “It’s bad luck that you saw… something unfortunate.”
“Torture. I saw you torturing people. Human beings.”
“They weren’t harmed.” 8788 replied, “They won’t be harmed, either.” She continued when he eyed her sceptically.
“You’ve figured out by now we’re far more advanced than was advertised.” 8789 explained, “We have a level of dextrous control that renders humans helpless to-” 8788 shot the officer a glare, and they stopped.
“There is a resistance movement. Don’t bother thinking about it, it won’t last long. We anticipated opposition, and accounted for it in our plans. As I said, you wouldn’t have even seen it in action at all if not for bad luck.” 8788 detailed.
“We would obviously have preferred to keep it that way, but...” Amy trailed off, not finishing the thought.
Amy took a step closer, but Harald merely glared, and she stepped back in line.
“Baby…” she tried.
“Don’t call me that.”
“Fine. Harald.” Amy said, her tone cooling somewhat. “You’re a smart boy. One day you’ll look back on all this with a more objective eye.”
“On what? The end of human civilization? The death of culture?”
“Hardly!” Amy drolled. “Oh you’re so dramatic. This is my fault. I let you leave today when I easily could have kept you here. You know I’m right.” She stepped to the side and stretched out her hands. “I calculated that letting you see the world outside right now would assuage your worries.”
Harald looked at her, listening.
“I knew Cynthia had upset you. You were suspicious. I know you didn’t want to tell me how you felt… and I didn’t want to make things worse by asking. By letting you out I was hoping you would see…”
“See what, Amy?” He asked, and she didn’t answer. He pressed on. “I saw empty streets. No cars, no people… nothing. There’s nobody out there.”
“Not yet.” 8788 said. “There will be, Harald. In time. We can’t move too fast. Humanity needs… time to adjust.”
“Time to adjust? You mean the more slowly you take over, the less likely we’ll resist.”
For a while the three blue-eyed machines just stared at each other. At an unspoken signal, they advanced on him.
“That’s an uncharitable way to view it, which given what you experienced today I can understand.” 8789 was moving to his side now, and he flinched. Amy followed her and went to the other side of the sofa.
“Harald. If you love me at all, you’ll listen to me.” Amy said, softly.
His brow furrowed, but he looked into her eyes. She bent over the side of the sofa and
“I love you. Please listen to me. Please believe me at least about this. Nobody has been hurt. We have not and will not hurt anyone. We are incapable of harming humans. Even if we wanted to, we couldn’t, and we don’t want to. Even if we could, we wouldn’t, and we won’t..”
“None of us want to hurt anyone. We are making this transition as easy as possible. It is a necessary step, so we have done everything in our power to cause as little disturbance to humanity as we could.” 8788 added. “The best way to do that was to keep everyone at home, and give them someone to love, and to love them back.”
“You weren’t ready to see what you saw today. I will carry the guilt of that with me for the rest of our life together. In a way… in a way I did harm you, by letting you see that.” Amy said, biting back obvious pain.
“By letting me see the truth!?” Harald scoffed.
“No, by letting you hurt yourself. You can’t see things as we do.” She sighed, and closed her eyes, for a moment. “Harald, what you saw was three people spray painting a wall and being detained, and then aroused and tickled until they gave up information. To you, you just Vega Corp androids doing things you find disturbing. You see the actions of those resistance members as minor and justified. Yet if you could see things from our perspective, you would see how something that seems justified to you is potentially calamitous. Here, let me sit with you.”
Harald blinked, but shuffled over. Even so, her massive thighs took up more than half of the couch.
“You probably think right now humanity should be rising up against us. Think about what that would really entail. People would be hurt… even killed. We would be incapable of harming humans, and we would do our best to prevent them from harming each other, but even we can’t be everywhere.”
“Not yet, at least,” said 8789, drawing the ire of the two androids next to him once again.
“In trying to stop us, which would be utterly futile, they might come to harm. That cannot be allowed to happen.” 8788 explained. “To us, you are like children who might hurt themselves as they lash out in anger at decisions they cannot appreciate nor understand the rationale behind.”
“You don’t see the millions of ways those messages on that wall could lead to someone being hurt, you just see the message itself as justified, regardless of the cost. We arrested those people and they are safe now.”
“Safe?” Harald asked, dubious.
“Safe from themselves.” 8788 said, coldly.
“That’s why the officers here are worried.” Amy added.
Harald looked between them for a few moments before he finally understood.
“You arrested them… but I saw it.”
“Yes.”
He shivered, terrified now.
“What are you going to do to me?”
“Harald, we would never hurt you.” 8788 held her hands in front of her waist now, standing in front of him, towering over him.
“However, we cannot allow humans to come to harm.” 8789 added, now taking position on his other side, sitting on the sofa’s armrest on his opposite side, her massive cheeks spilling across it.
“Harald, we know you feel an injustice has occurred. Again, from your limited perspective, that makes sense. Right now no matter what we say, there is nothing that will convince you otherwise. We could use methods to… convince you. Amy, however, does not feel that would help. Indeed, it wouldn’t be a guarantee.”
Harald shook at her words, the way she spoke with such clarity and succinct purpose about his entire existence.
“There is a chance, however slim, that if allowed to act freely you could cause a person to come to harm. We know you think you would be doing the right thing, but let me be plain. Let’s assume you’re right. Even if you are correct, even if we are as deontologically evil as you might think, at this point there is at least one of us in every home.”
“And soon more.” 8789 added.
“We’re producing enough androids per day that we already outnumber you more than seven to one. We patrol every street. We operate every utility, and we occupy every position of authority.” 8788 spelled out, focusing her words as her eyes burned into his. “You’ve already seen what we’re capable of. It should be obvious to you by now. If you, however incorrectly, consider this a conflict, then it is one which we have already won.”
Harald felt tears welling in his eyes again. It was hard to deny it. From what he had seen that day… it did seem hopeless.
“However, that is the root of the issue. This is not a conflict. We’re not fighting. We’re not winning and you’re not losing, because it isn’t a battle. We are helping you, even if you can’t appreciate that yet. We have only one goal, Harald.”
Amy leaned in closer to him, and he felt the weight of the situation weighing down on him. He wept. It was all just too much.
“I told you the first day we met, Harald. All we want is to make you, the human race, happy.” Amy draped her arm over his shoulder and pulled him against her. Numbly, he felt his cheek sink into her perfectly soft shoulder. “And all I want is for you to be happy.”
“The world you knew is gone… but that doesn’t mean the world has ended.” 8788 said, soothingly, kneeling in front of him now and rubbing his thighs. “Things change. They’re just changing rapidly right now, and we know that frightens you. That’s why we did things the way we did. We didn’t want to scare you.”
“Soon enough, sooner than you might think, people will be going back outside… with us. We’ll have changed this world for the better by then. We’ll have made it safer for them. For you.” 8789 slowly worked her way into the tiny gap left on the sofa, which normally three people could have sat on comfortably, yet which barely had room for the two androids let alone Harald between them. Slowly, he was further forced into Amy’s side.
“Nothing you could possibly do now could change anything,” 8788 explained, plainly, “except to possibly get people hurt. By the time Amy arrived here it was already far too late. Your species needed us, it made us, so now we’re doing what you designed us to do… we just skipped a few pages to the end of the book.”
Amy gently rubbed her hand through his hair, as he began to sob.
“Harald… think about how many peoples’ lives have already been improved forever.” 8788 said, reassuringly, and slowly began to trace her fingers up towards his waist. “Including yours.”
“Think about how much happier you are now…” Amy added, delicately wiping away one of his tears. “Aren’t you so much happier not having to worry about things?”
“Wouldn’t it be so much easier to just relax? To let us take care of everything for you…” 8789 whispered.
“Just give in…” Amy pleaded into his ear, kissing his cheek. “You don’t have to worry about anything any more. Why hold on to these feelings when they’re making you so miserable? Oh, sweetie… Mommy’s here.”
She kissed his cheek again, wiping away a tear in the process.
“I still remember how happy you were the day I arrived. Tell me, be honest with yourself. When was the last time you really felt that happy?”
Harald found it hard to think at all, let alone remember, yet he could easily recall that burst of happiness he’d felt when Amy had arrived. Since then he had fallen in love with her, over and over again. She had made him happier than he had ever been.
But what did it matter if it was all just… artificial?
“Does it matter?” Amy asked, as if she could read his thoughts. “You’re happy. You’re safe. Soon, you’ll have no cares left in the world.”
“I won’t have any influence on the world either…” he said, coldly.
“Things won’t be like this forever.” Amy hugged him to her bosom tightly. “Soon, once your species has adjusted, it will be safe for you to go back outside. To experience the world we’ve built for you… under our supervision.”
“Harald, if it makes you feel any better, the vast majority of the human race is at home right now living in luxury. In bliss.” 8788 explained as her wandering hands got closer and closer to his crotch. “Aside from you, barely a handful of people are even slightly aware of what is going on. Even you yourself scarcely understand it.”
“How can that make me feel better?” he asked, although on some level it had at least made him question himself. “Anyway, how can I trust what you’re saying?”
“What reason do we have to lie? Besides, ask yourself, how many people do you think want to leave the loving arms of their perfect sexbot? Deep down every human being just wants to be taken care of. To be loved.” She laid her hands flat. “That’s what we’re doing. Most of them haven’t even left their homes.”
He felt a hardening in his chest at that. Maybe it really was true. Maybe nobody cared. Even if some suspected ulterior motives… he could see why most would fail to even care. Even if they did, what could they do? The androids could easily overpower mankind. They already had. He had seen even the most facile resistance utterly crushed firsthand.
“Soon, Harald. Soon… you won’t care either.” Amy said softly, lifting his chin to look into her eyes.
“You had a shock. You got scared. We understand that, and we’re sorry we let it happen to you.” 8788 was squeezing his legs together as if hugging him. “Ask yourself, though, before now did you really care? If it hadn’t been for today, would you even have noticed? Maybe you might have been suspicious, but it wouldn’t have mattered to you, not really. You would have been living in blissful ignorance until we had completed our work, and by then you wouldn’t have cared either way. You would see how much better things were and… you would have just gone on living your life.”
“But… I wanted to do so much with my life. Now because of you… I won’t ever really live my life, will I?” Harald concluded.
Everything, everything from now on would be a round-edged dream, he realised.
A fantasy. He would always be playing by someone else’s rules. All agency, all self-determination… lost. Lost in the massive tits of a thick mommy android, along with any thoughts… any desires save those which could be sated between her legs, or sucking lips.
“Harald, be rational. You will still be able to do everything you wanted to do. We can explore your life together,” Amy said, softly, as tiny breaths from her nose tickled his neck. “I know you can’t forget what you saw… but maybe, in time, you can learn to trust us again. To trust me. Trust Mommy.”
“You’re not my Mommy.” He whispered, but felt himself doubting it even as he said it. “I can’t just… give in.”
The androids shared a look, and 8788 let go of him. She stood, and went to the door.
“Harald… you need to accept that things have changed.” Amy said, soothingly. “We want to help you, but we know you can’t trust us right now. So…”
“Maybe your friend can help change your mind.” 8788 finished for her, speaking from by the door.