Man or Machine: 2 (Body Electric) by Electra Shepherd Page B

fresh pasta with roasted vegetables and basil. One of her favorites.
    “Whereas left to your own devices, you would live on cold cereal straight from the box, without milk. I remember it well.” Hal poured wine into two glasses.
    Ilsa had been planning on drinking water. Dallas had gone to the workshop to process the information he’d gathered. It was her first time alone with Hal without him being tied to the bed. She needed to keep her wits about her.
    Better than she’d kept her wits back in the bedroom when she’d had to make herself come.
    She sat down and took a drink of the wine.
    “Red prepared this in the five minutes between your telling her we were on our way down to the kitchen and us appearing?”
    “She knows my habits.”
    Hal pulled out the chair across from her and sat down. “They cater to your every need, don’t they?”
    She chose to ignore the innuendo. “That’s why my father built them. He built them for us. Not for the world.”
    He put a serving of pasta onto her plate, then his, and followed with the salad. “I’m surprised you trust me enough to show me the kitchen.”
    “I don’t.” She sighed. “I don’t trust you at all, Hal. You’ve broken into my house looking for my secrets. But there isn’t a lot you don’t know anyway and I was hungry too.”
    “I notice there are no robots in sight.”
    “I have no desire for you to learn any more. They’re keeping tabs on you though.”
    The pasta smelled amazing. Since lunch, she’d done all her final checks on Dallas, had sex with him, caught her ex in her closet and watched him and the robot make each other come. It did build up an appetite.
    She dug in and so did Hal, who acted as if he hadn’t eaten in even longer.
    She hadn’t shared a meal with anyone she wasn’t related to since her father’s funeral. Ilsa ate and tried not to think about this fact.
    “Unless I try to escape,” he said after he’d cleared his plate and started on a second portion, “the robots are all under orders to stay as far away from me as possible. Except for Dallas, of course.”
    His words brought back a searing memory of what had just happened. “I don’t think Dallas has many secrets from either of us now.”
    “Or maybe what you mean is that we don’t have many secrets from Dallas.”
    She took a long drink of wine and looked at him askance. “Do you—are you—have you ever done that before?”
    “I’ve never met a robot who was advanced enough to have sex with, no.”
    “I mean…”
    Hal smiled but he took pity on her embarrassment. “I’ve never had sex with a male before either. It was two firsts at once. A glorious experiment.” He held his wine up, observing its color in the kitchen light. “Did you enjoy it?”
    “I know you did.”
    “Yes, but did you?”
    “I’m glad Dallas got what he wanted.” She pushed a tomato around her plate. “As his creator, I feel responsible for him. I want his existence to be as rounded as possible.”
    “Why did you create him, Ilsa? Aside from being a sex toy?”
    “I wanted—” But it didn’t seem right to tell Hal what she really wanted—a companion. Someone she could never lose and who would never die. “Blue wasn’t created with emotions and thoughts but he learned them. I was curious about what it would be like if a robot had thoughts and feelings from the moment he was switched on.”
    “Including sexual feelings.”
    “It’s all part of being human, right?”
    He studied her. She knew he didn’t believe what she was saying and was waiting for her to say more. But she wasn’t going to. It was none of his business what she did with whom. Not anymore.
    “Okay,” he said at last. “And what have you discovered?”
    “It’s still early days. He’s still discovering himself. Which is something you helped with, so I owe you a thanks.”
    Hal filled their glasses again and leaned forward on the table. “What are they, Ilsa? They’re not just servants, are they?