It was a hot day, even for the Los Angeles Basin, and the air control unit was malfunctioning again. Not that Roger could feel the heat (except in his hands, where certain connections simulated human nerve endings), not that it made him uncomfortable (he was unequipped for such physical sensations), but it was one of his programmed functions to make sure the house servos were operating properly for the Thuringers.
After bringing Mr. and Mrs. Thuringer breakfast in bed, he had examined the unit without success. Roger was basically a domestic robo and possessed little mechanical programming. He called the Service Center and a robo at the other end of the line promised to send out a repair unit later in the day. Once the call was completed, Roger proceeded with his other duties.
He began upstairs by vacuuming the guest room, not that it needed it, but Mrs. Thuringer was quite clear about how often she wanted certain rooms cleaned. In the hall bathroom he scrubbed until the tiles sparkled. He viewed the results with appreciation: satisfaction in a job well done was one of his basic parameters. By the time he reached the master bedroom his owners were up and about, Mr. Thuringer with an early golf date and Mrs. Thuringer somewhere downstairs. It was when Roger began washing the bedroom windows, which he did every Saturday, that he saw Mrs. Thuringer in the back yard. She was stretched out in one of the lounge chairs by the pool, wearing a two-piece black bathing suit and putting suntan oil on herself.
Roger watched as he cleaned the windows, as the sun beat down, as Mrs. Thuringer's bare brown body gradually took on a glossy sheen. She rubbed the oil over her feet and legs, her arms, her stomach which was flat and lightly downed. Finally she massaged the shiny liquid onto her shoulders and back ... where she missed a spot. Roger thought that if he were by her side he could rub the oil on the spot she had missed, but Mrs. Thuringer had never asked him to rub oil on her.
Though he often wondered what her body felt like, Roger had never touched it. And the only time she touched him was when she shut him off for the night and opened his chest panel to set his automatics for the morning.
Roger knew he was only a simulation of a man, and not a very believable one at that. The metal plate on his right hip listed his manufacturer, city of origin and warranty service number. His model and serial number were electronically coded into each of his blank fingertips and in several other places on his somewhat featureless anatomy. He knew he was only a machine, and machines were not supposed to want, but when it came to Mrs. Thuringer, "wanting seemed to come naturally."
This was a line he'd learned from the trivee.
Most nights the Thuringers didn't entertain, they watched the trivee, and more often than not the show was about sex. Roger would stand in the shadows of the living room awaiting their orders: scotch over for him, gin and tonic for her. Though sexual knowledge was not part of his programming, the learning ability was. He was advertised as the domestic robo who could learn to do anything. While he waited, Roger watched the trivee and he learned. Yet he had never viewed Mrs. Thuringer in terms of the women on the screen until the day he discovered her with Mr. Bennet.
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