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habit, Blue. I don’t invent things like my
sister or make loads of money like my brother because they’re geniuses and I’m
not. I’m a normal person, with a standard job as a recruitment consultant and
no special talents whatsoever. I didn’t choose to distance myself from my
family. I was born different from them. End of story.”
    “You forget I have been observing you and your family for
some years, Cally.”
    “So you’ve seen for yourself. I’m the stupid one.” Her shirt
was all tangled up; she tugged uselessly at the sleeves.
    “You have talents that the rest of the family do not. Your
sister is not so good as you at experiencing and understanding human emotions.
And your brother is not able to feel joy and live in the moment as you are.
Neither has your gift of empathy or imagination.”
    “Those aren’t gifts.”
    “They are exactly the qualities I have had to work the
hardest to try to possess. I think you underestimate yourself.”
    Cally gave up trying to put on her shirt. “Thank you, Blue.
I don’t believe you for a minute but it’s a nice thing for you to say.”
    “I might add that you are more than intelligent enough to
build me a penis.”
    She couldn’t help it. She laughed.
    “It’s a good thing you’ll be there to help me,” she said.
    “Then you will do it?”
    “Yup, I will.” Cally launched herself off the bed, naked and
all. “Come on, Blue. Let’s construct you a dick.”
    “Can it be a big one?” Blue asked.

Chapter Six
     
    But of course it wasn’t as easy as that. Apparently you
couldn’t decide out of nowhere to make a robot penis and start the same day. It
wasn’t a matter of taking Old Faithful and attaching it to Blue with some duct
tape. Cally, and Blue himself of course, wanted it to work properly, to start
out soft(ish) and grow erect when he was aroused.
    “Otherwise, you’ll be walking around with a huge rod between
your legs like someone out of Spinal Tap ,” Cally reasoned, and after
checking the reference, Blue agreed that would be awkward.
    Also, they wanted it to be sensitive, to be a true part of
Blue’s body, wired up to his brain. “Just like a real man,” Cally said again.
    They wanted him to have sexual pleasure from it. Blue had to
make diagrams and explanations and Cally had to learn more about the
construction of robots than she’d ever had cause or desire to learn before.
    And of course there was the question of what to make it out
of.
    “We have adequate spare parts in the storeroom, I think,”
Blue said.
    “No way,” said Cally. “This is your penis, Blue. It’s your
dick. It’s your cock. It’s your pride and joy and I’m looking forward to it
being mine too. We are not making it out of spare parts you happen to have
kicking around.”
    “Then we will have to place some orders to California and
Japan,” Blue conceded, already connecting to the vendors’ sites via his
permanent inbuilt internet connection.
    By mutual agreement, they kept their project a secret from
the rest of the household, human and robot alike. It meant snatched, whispered
conversations during the day, emails and texts while Cally was at work at her
human resources job, documents, diagrams and research results sent directly to
her laptop from Blue’s brain.
    And at night Blue would make his discreet way to Cally’s
bedroom, ensuring he wasn’t seen by anyone. He could move absolutely silently
when he wished. Ilsa and Jonathan were absorbed, as ever, in their own lives
but the other house robots were, as Blue knew, acute observers, even if they
didn’t draw connections from what they observed.
    “I haven’t snuck around with a lover like this since I was
sixteen,” Cally said one night, when the snow was falling in fat flakes outside
her window.
    Blue was lying on his front on her bed, propped up on his
elbows, and she was naked. They were surrounded by drawings Cally had made of
various penile shapes and sizes, some based on ones she had known