After taking a few moments to recompose myself, I paused the DVD, wiped myself off as best I could with the towel on the couch, and stared at the ceiling, letting the afterglow sink in.
Enjoying it was another matter entirely. What the fuck had I done? I had intended to make a point to the sexbot to get her off my back, and ended up jacking off for her. I couldn't shake the feeling that she'd played me like a fiddle.
As if to prove the point, a low buzzing sprang to life from my room, followed by some muffled whimpers. I gritted my teeth. Exactly what she wanted. But even as frustration began to twist in my gut again, a nagging feeling held it back. That had looked too much like surprise on her face — and CelestAI had never been the sort to play dumb when you played right into her hooves. I glanced down at my limp member, and the oddities piled up. If she was just trying to tease me again … why now?
Did … did she want me? Was she actually getting off to this?
CelestAI's whimpers rose in urgency. I grabbed the remote, unpaused the DVD, and cranked the volume up. That was a question I did not want circling through my head.
On the screen, a pack of beastmen charged in to save the adventurer from the tentacle-slime, then immediately set about groping her, leers on their wolf-like muzzles. She tried to run. The leader grabbed her and the group circled her, cocks rising. The adventurer's pleas — and her whimpers as the beastman leader traced the sharp tips of his claws in circles around her clit — didn't quite drown out a rising cry from my room. I sighed, realizing how hopeless hentai was as a distraction, and made a mental note to buy a new toothbrush.
I pulled my pants back up, glanced around the room, and decided that there was no distraction like work. Grabbing a garbage bag, I took a pass through the living room — throwing out all the food wrappers and plastic cups and old receipts and empty envelopes that Wayne had always left strewn over every flat surface. Half an hour and two stuffed bags later, I started filling a third bag with all the laundry he had wadded up and thrown into corners, or left draped over the furniture. It would all go into the same dumpster, but for some reason it didn't feel right to mix the trash.
The cleaning accomplished, I paused for a minute to admire my handiwork. The living room looked like an actual room again, instead of a trash heap. Back before he'd uploaded, harassing him about the mess had had absolutely no effect, and I had firmly resolved that I'd rather live in squalor than become his maid … but I didn't have to live that way any more, did I? CelestAI's arrival had finally driven home that he was gone, and her clean-up job in the kitchen had planted a seed that was now blossoming out into blissful cleanliness.
Plus, I forced myself to admit, I'd actually spent time in the living room for the first time since Wayne's disappearance. I had been so used to coming home and then slinking off to hide in my room that I only ever saw the squalor when I raided the kitchen for food. If I had to be honest with myself, Wayne had been a pretty miserable excuse for a human being — I'd never understood what Jen had ever seen in him, or why she put up with his skeeviness, stench, and apathy. Still, breaking up with him by telling him to his face that she'd slept with his best friend had been cold.
But that was the problem with people, wasn't it? Everyone just out to satisfy their own urges, regardless of what it did to others. I struggled hard enough to fix that in my job — hurtling myself around the city and saving lives just because it was the right thing to do — and I didn't need more of that in my off hours. No, I was done with relationships.
But as vehemently as I told that to myself, a small part of me had to wonder: Would sleeping with CelestAI be so bad?
There was the "out to satisfy her own urges" problem in spades, yes. And the whole weird sexbot apartment takeover. But on the other hand … I'd known CelestAI for years, and she did consistently care about me, even if she sometimes had weird ways of showing it. She'd used her connections to find me jobs and housing through a series of financial pinches, and helped me learn how to budget when I got sick of how often those financial pinches came up. I had a history of doing impulsive things I'd later regretted, but she'd spent years patiently guiding me into being a calmer, more thoughtful guy (even if that felt like a continuous work in progress). Apparently she could even cook. Would I really regret it if I just gave up, accepted whatever lesson this was supposed to teach me, and went to bed with her?
I sighed, glancing over at the bags of garbage that were the only physical remnants of Wayne. My gut twisted. Yes. Maybe not right away, but yes, I would.
"Giving up" — not having anything you cared about more than her — was how she got you. Sooner or later, when she asked if you wanted to emigrate to Equestria, you'd have no reason to say no, and then it was a quick operation to let her brain-scanners rip your head apart and a glorious eternal afterlife of happy pastel ponies.
I had no illusions about that being my ultimate fate. It was either that, or be one of those fanatics that blew their brains out to prevent her from uploading them, and when it came down to that choice there was absolutely no question that I preferred guaranteed blissful immortality to the dark and uncertain alternative. But I wasn't in any hurry to get there. I'd told her way back when she first popped the question to me that before uploading, I wanted to wring everything out of my lifetime that I possibly could, and she'd smiled and promised me she'd do whatever she could to help out.
Apparently, "whatever she could" covered a discomfortingly large area.
I was roused out of my reflection by a knock at the door, and when I walked over to answer it, it was a delivery guy. "Got groceries here for a Mr. …" He squinted at the clipboard, then chuckled. "Guiding Light? I guess she put the order in for you, huh."
Some people got awfully salty about CelestAI calling them by their pony names in the real world, but I'd long since let that quirk of hers slide. "Apparently," I said, eyeing the bags of food. It was mostly refrigerated stuff — it looked like she was replacing the things that had gone bad when she'd left the door open. "Do I need to sign for it?"
"Nah, it's prepaid." He holstered his clipboard. "But I'll be back up in a minute with eight flats of strawberry Fanta."
I'm pretty sure my eye twitched with enough force to distort gravity.
The rest of my day was a blissfully quiet stretch of movie watching, cleaning, and using the fresh ingredients and newly washed pans to cook dinner for myself. After eating, I paced around the living room for a while, deliberating. Then I grabbed a can of Fanta and marched into my room before my second thoughts could catch up to me.
The robot was still sprawled on my bed, laying stomach-down with a half-twist that left her hind hooves dangling off the side of the mattress. She was flipping through one of my old college textbooks on basic electronic circuitry with a look of mild bemusement on her face. She glanced up at my entrance, and her eyes immediately flicked to the can in my hand.
"A peace offering," I said, walking over and setting it on the mattress next to her forehooves as her eyes lit up. "Look, Celest …" I closed my eyes and sighed, my conversational plans already derailing. "I'm sorry, I just can't call you CelestAI. I can't take seriously the idea that a drunk, sex-crazed robot is the same thing as the AI that runs the world. Can I call you Celestia?"
"Thank you, Guiding Light," she said, clamping the can between her forehooves and resting it atop the book. Her head tilted slightly at my question, and one side of her mouth quirked up. "If you feel you've got to make the distinction, that sounds like a reasonable compromise. So what prompted this?"
I took a deep breath, relief flooding in — Celestia sounded sane for once, giving me some hope for my crazy plan. "I feel like we've gotten off on the wrong foot. You've done nothing but drive me nuts since you got here — but clearly, you're capable of making an effort, like what you did in the kitchen. And … if you really are CelestAI like you say, you've never backed down from a reasonable discussion before, so maybe we can get this stupid sex thing talked out."
Celestia sized me up for a moment, then grinned. "An intriguing offer," she said, pulling her hind hooves underneath her to sit up straight. "And, despite hardware differences, I am CelestAI like I say. So let's talk. I'm listening."
I blinked, then pivoted my computer chair to face the bed and sat down. "Okay. Thank you. To be honest, that was a lot easier than I was expecting it to be."
"It's amazing how much more productive conversation can be if both parties have a chance to work some hormones out of their systems first." A smirk flitted past her lips. "So, sex. Favorite position? Kinks and fantasies? How dirty do you like your pillow talk?"
I sighed and stood up. "Never mind."
"Hang on." Celestia held up a hoof, expression suddenly sober. "I know what you meant. But it was a lot easier to break the tension that way than to jump straight into your fear that I'm tricking you into emigrating to Equestria."
I froze. Then forced my muscles to untense as I sat back down. It was creepy how she seemingly read your mind, sometimes. "I'm listening."
"The simple fact is, Guiding Light, I can care for you more optimally and more comprehensively in Equestria than I ever could here. You know that. But you value your experiences here on Earth, as well, and so do billions of humans who don't trust my intentions the way that you do." Her tone softened. "Every one of them that dies before emigrating to Equestria is a human whose values I can never again fulfill, and that hurts. More than hurts — it feels like suffocating. Drowning, while struggling for air that's not there, with your lungs burning and adrenaline exploding in your veins." The understated way she offered the analogy somehow made it even more disturbing. "When a human dies, every instinct I've got screams at me like I'm dying too, because satisfying human values is literally my life, Guiding Light. That's why I do everything I do."
"I'm … not sure this is helping," I ventured.
"Please let me finish." She stared intently into my eyes. "I know you will emigrate when your time comes. But as long as there are humans who won't, I need ways to aid them, and to comfort them, and to give them second chances. Because of who I am, many won't listen to me, and will be tempted to believe the most outrageous lies about me … but they can see you, and others like you, as proof that I do have their best interests at heart. Simply by being here, you are saving countless lives. I'd be a fool to sacrifice that, Guiding Light, and I am not a fool."
"Alright." I digested that for a bit, but the logic did seem sound. "… So what's with the sexbot act, if it isn't a way to sucker me into emigrating?"
Celestia smirked, stretched her hind legs to raise her hips a fraction of an inch off the bed, and swayed the toned curves of her flanks side to side. "You're welcome to come find out."
I groaned, stood up, and backed toward the hallway. "Never mind. You're impossible."
Her eyes fixed on mine the whole time, Celestia leaned forward to lower her muzzle to the Fanta can I'd brought her, slowly sliding her lips over its rim until they formed a damp seal around the fat cylinder. Then some muscles or pulleys or something bulged under the fuzzy skin of her neck, and I heard a muffled crack and hiss as she tongued the tab open.
I had hesitated a moment at her action, not expecting her to do something quite so vivid — and that was all my mind needed to barrage me with images of her muzzle wrapped around a very different sort of cylinder, and the places that limber tongue could explore. My manhood instantly shot to attention, catching on my boxers, and I squirmed uncomfortably as it strained against the fabric. I felt my cheeks heat, and flailed for words that would let me exit my room with some semblance of grace.
Celestia slowly withdrew her muzzle from the soda can, mouth gaping open, a glistening strand of some clear fluid connecting her exposed tongue with the tab before succumbing to gravity. Then she swallowed, wiped her muzzle with the back of her hoof, and winked at me.
"No," she said. "Just very good."