Her eyes darted. "I agree to disagree."

I shook my head.

She sighed. Changing the subject again, she said, "Want to hear a secret?"

I waited for the venom in my veins to dissipate. "Sure."

She whispered close. Her breath hit my neck. So did her lips.

"The humanoids," she said, "they're being recalled."

It took me a moment to register. Then I looked at her. Her secrets attracted me.

"Let's go for a walk outside," I said.

She blushed, and we went to the hallway. I left my father behind with a fat woman who would never get up from her seat at a dining table.

Entering the hall, Holly touched my hand.

Meanwhile, back at the house of Francisco, Clarita and her boy toy lay in bed beside each other. Not touching except for the lace in their fingers. Something was riding down our fair Clarita's stomach. And it came to the point, that she turned her eyes to the boy toy in her bed and looked down his stomach.

"I'm --" she started to say. But she could not finish her sentence.

"You haven't said anything for a while. I thought you were asleep," said Carl. His voice was low. She could feel the bed rumble underneath her as the voice vibrated like a bass from his body.

She did not answer. Then she snapped her fingers, and the music system played something quiet. Mellow pop. She'd hurt it on the radio too many times. Just your regular recycling shoved down your throat until the familiarity made you want to listen to it again. Like an annoying next door neighbor whose regular visits became so old you identified your schedule with them and felt odd whenever they stayed home for even a day.

The butterflies were floating around in her stomach. Their wings brushing the cavity walls of her abdomen. She felt a surge of want. She also encountered a coy restraint. "Want to do something?" She ended up saying.

He raised his eyebrows, looking up through the transparent ceiling of her room. The stars melted their way onto their glowing faces. "Something?" He asked.

She took a deep breath. Was what she was saying really what she wanted to be saying? "Do you want to do something?"

"It's not about what I want."

She shook her head. His passivity almost frustrated her to no longer feel attracted to him. "Of course, it's about what you want." Her face contorted into disgust. Both her eyes were still looking up to the stars. "I want you to have your own opinions. Not to just follow whatever I say."

Carl registered what she said. Then smiled. "Okay."

"Okay?" Do you understand what I just said?"

"You want a real boyfriend." Said Carl.

Clarita blushed. "I guess so. But you don't have to make me feel pathetic about it."

"There's nothing wrong with wanting genuine human emotional closeness."

Clarita sighed. "Do you think I will have to find a real boy to experience that?"

Carl shook his head. "Like I said, if a real relationship is what you want, a real relationship you'll get. I'll choose what I want to do with a combination of data involving regular male habits and preferences my age and in this suburban area, and I will also use a random number simulator to decide. Plus, I'll use your own beauty and personality to measure your influence in my decision-making."

Clarita blushed. "I have an attractiveness level?"

But Carl never answered that. He was registering his choices.

"Well?" Said Clarita. "What do you want to do?"

Carl looked like a curiosity waved over his eyes. And he turned them from the beautiful stars overhead, to her. He measured her young face. He pulled his fingers to the button edge of her nose. He brushed the soft skin of her shining cheeks beneath her eyes. Then, as she blushed, and raised an eyebrow, he moved closer to her, fingering her hair, and moved into a plank position organically, on top of her. She gasped softly and looked up at him. She was out of breath, and needing to breathe more rapidly as she felt something hovering over her bellybutton. Its touch made her heart spill out her chest.

"Clarita," he said.

"Yes?" She said.

He lowered his lips to her cheek and let them slide down her jawline to her neck. His hands slid to her waist, and one to her chest.

Then he asked the question... "Do you want to..."

He lifted his face and looked at her, eye to eye.

She saw her face in his eyes.

Airily, she said, "Do I want to..." She never felt so frightened.

"Do you want..." he said, and he looked to her left eye, then to her right eye, then to her full, supple lips, and said:

"Do you want to... smoke some weed?"

She said nothing for a moment. Simply looked up at him.

He looked at her seriously for a moment. As though wondering what was her deal. Then, all of a sudden... he broke out laughing.

"Are you joking?" Her face went red. She slapped Carl hard in the face and he fell off her, and slipped onto the bed.

Still laughing.

He lifted his head over the edge of the bed. When he noticed she was not laughing, he stopped. "What?"

She bunched her pillow. "Do you think it feels good to not even have your own boy toy want you? I feel insulted."

She buried her face in her hands.

"Well now, wait just a minute," said Carl. He stood to his feet and crept onto the bed beside her. "Just because I made a joke doesn't mean I don't want you. I do."

She dropped her hands from her face and shook her head. "You only want me because wanting me is your function. I'm supposed to feel you love me unconditionally. But I'm smart."

"You are smart," said Carl. "I'm not denying that."

"Yes, I am smart," she repeated. "And that's why it's hard for me to let go of the idea that you're just a robot. You're nothing like me."

Carl paused. "Excuse me? I am not a robot, Clarita."

"Oh what, you think you're special or something?"

Carl paused again. Visibly insulted. "If you can't tell the difference between me, a modern humanoid, and all the robots on this planet, then you are sadly mistaken and in fact I even question your intelligence."

"Face it," said Clarita, she boasted her chest, wanting to hurt his feelings, testing if he had any to actually hurt, "you were made by humans and that makes you a robot. No matter how far robots have come, call them humanoids or whatever you want, they're still robots."

"Oh really? Do you not believe in evolution? Are you technically a chimpanzee?"

"No but--"

"And what makes you so special?"

Clarita pursed her lips at him and crossed her arms. "Obviously, I am real."

"No, you're not."

"Excuse me?" She said.

In a swift lunge, Carl grabbed Clarita's full-sized breasts and Clarita screamed, flung backward, swatting his hands away wildly. "You just assaulted me!" Said Clarita, jumping off the bed and hiding behind her desk.

"Those aren't real," he said, beaming.

"So, what if they're not?"

"Exactly."

"At my core, I'm real," said Clarita.

Carl raised his hand, like she had just proved his point. "Exactly."

Clarita froze, holding her breasts, glancing all about at his body. Head to foot.

"And that's why," said Carl, "you want me, just as much, as I want you."

Clarita registered what he was trying to say. She said, "But, I actually want you very much. I've never had a boyfriend in my life. And I heard from my friends that once you date a humanoid you never want to go back to dating real men. But I still want you very much."

Carl nodded. And from the other side of the bed, he said, "Me too."

Meanwhile, at the company space headquarters, Holly, my ex-wife, and I had broken into a full out sprint, holding hands through the empty halls.

"Into the offices!" Said Holly.

"No they have security cameras. There's the janitor's closet."

"They don't have janitor's closets anymore. There. The bathrooms are surveillance free."

"Men's or women's?"

"Women's. They're cleaner."

"Are they?" I said.

She led the way and we pelted in through the women's bathroom right next to the neutral gender bathrooms, which is really the one we should have ran into, and the place was pleasantly upscale and spotless, looking like no one had used it for months. She locked the door. And yanked my bowtie loose.

Meanwhile, back in the main room, a man took the stage, and the music stopped. The sea of important company people halted their conversations and turned to the stage. The man apologized the CEO could not give his input tonight. But the man would keep it short and sweet and continued on with the speech. He said something about thanking donors for their support with altruistic efforts to support family culture. The dip in males has changed society monumentally ever since sex bots hit the marketplace. Men and women both could have sex with sex bots rather than with each other. Many men opted for not having children and many women opted to have their children by way of sperm banks. The male population tanked accordingly in comparison to women's steady increase.

Francisco and his son were standing in a conversation pit before the silence cut the room and the charity man spoke and asked for donations. Francisco's peers patted him on the back and Francisco was forced to give up a tiny slice of his fortune to increase the support for male inclusion in family life. How his money would help was a mystery to him. Also, the math in how men's numbers decreased just because they were not participating in the reproduction was also a mystery to him, and he wondered if the stats were fake to stir up controversy and raise party politics. Which party, traditional or progressive, he had no clue which benefited.

Francisco was called up to the stage for his generosity and the whole group clapped. His son was left to stand off to the side of the crowd, in his antisocial ways. His son did not like social gatherings one bit. Especially when he could just be enjoying his life under a serene virtual reality helmet. All of sudden though, his desires took side stage when his eyes caught something surreal. He couldn't even determine if it was just his eyes deceiving him. What kind of ocular joke was this? He crept through the crowd. His father gave some kind of lame speech about the importance of altruism and how much he favored charities over money-centric businesses. His son didn't believe a word but also didn't hear him much after a certain point of approaching the thing he witnessed. At the far end of the room, standing through an open doorway, somewhat in the shadows, was a tall, blonde, naked woman. He blinked multiple times but still, she was there. And no one seemed to notice. But him.

He crept forward still until finally reaching the very edge of the crowd. He was on the only person facing away from his father and the podium. There were only a couple yards between him and the nude in the shadows. She stood erect, smiling at him. Beckoning him with her simple stair. But it wasn't her naked breasts or pelvis that lured him. No.

The color-changing contacts over her eyes pulled him in like a Jack Daniel's yarns in a drunkard. Virtual reality contacts were all the rage. And her standing still switched to a backward step. "Follow me," she seemed to say, as she turned her derriere on him, and strode, deeper, into the darkness. Taking the virtual reality contacts with her. Francisco's son looked beyond, as though hypnotized. He nearly floated over the glass floor, and spilled into the darkness of the vacant hallway. When all of a sudden, two men locked the doors behind Francisco's son, and darkness shrouded him.

A bag dropped over his head, and a rope rung his neck.

Meanwhile... my ex-wife had just unbuttoned the second-to-last button on my dress shirt when impatience overcame her and she could not help herself. She busted my buttons and yanked the shirt off me without considering the burn to my shoulders. But I forgave her when she dropped her underwear. Her short dressed waved freely.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" I said. Holly must be drunk.

But no licker tainted her lips. She jumped and pressed them onto mine. And all of a sudden, a mild stream of tears washed the upper curve of my cheek. I felt her shudder. She yanked at me. And I felt her heart crumble.

"Don't ever leave me again, John."

I would make that promise some day.

Meanwhile...