A series of people flashed across her screen, doing all sorts of household activities in a very standard, suburban middle class house. One shot, a blonde woman in a floral dress doing the dishes. The next, a ripped man without a shirt helping move a bunch of presumably heavy boxes. After that, a shot of a near supermodel-tier woman in a modest, traditional maid outfit. She began to pull from the back of her neck, revealing a metallic, yet still recognizably humanoid form underneath as a professional woman’s voice read:
“With our new line of cosmetic skins, you can make your house robot that much more human!”
‘Ugh. Three thirty-second ads this time?’ Erin thought to herself as she lay upon her bed. Her eyes lost focus on her phone screen, its light creating a glossy sheen across her light-yellow irises. ‘At least give me the skip button, c’mon.’
The next ad began - one for a hair product she’d seen at least a hundred times now, targeted at bio-android women. Her own, scruffy dirty-blonde hair could probably use it, but the chances of her buying it were slim-to-none, just out of spite for the commercial. Exasperated, she threw her phone down onto the fluffy, purple sheets of her bed. Her attention for whatever lame video she was planning on watching had completely dissipated.
‘I need something to do. Just like, anything, seriously.’
With boredom surrounding her, Erin sought a new activity.
‘Reading? No, I just finished that new fantasy novel yesterday. Rather disappointing, too cliché for my tastes. I could start something new, I guess, but I have a big backlog that I ought to go through. Nothing’s calling out to me now, though…’
‘A video game? Same issue, really. I did get the new ‘King of Street Fighters’, but Len’s out of town for the next week, and none of my non-android friends can really play fighting games on the same level as us…’
‘I guess I could pick up a new hobby. Like, I always wanted to pick up an instrument, but I’ve heard it’s too easy for androids, so I’ve never really tried…’
She was stuck, and as stuck minds often do, hers began to wander to places often best left untouched.
‘Fuck, I’m so lonely. I wish I was dating someone. I just can’t do a dating program though. I know they promise ‘complete algorithmic compatibility’, but it just seems too scary and invasive for me. I’d like to stick to friends if possible, I suppose. Len’s super cool, but I’ve known him forever, and that just kinda feels wrong - like dating a brother. And Priscille is already off dating some guy. I don’t think she swings both ways anyway, which seems a bit dated. Who am I to judge, though?’
There was a clear outlier though that she was trying to ignore. A sharp, bitter memory of the past. A harsh rejection from a close friend that had made her scared to pursue a relationship ever since.
—
Erin remembered it vividly, as bio-android brains were wont to do. She’d just gotten off work for the weekend - a little later than usual, 18:18 - and rushed home to get prepared for everything. She and a few friends were having their Thursday evening hangout, and she needed to clean up regardless. Her small apartment was really never that dirty, since it was just composed of a small kitchen, a small nearby nook for a couch and TV, and a tiny bedroom, which didn’t make it hard to clean. It just felt wrong to her to let things get dirty, anyway. But this time she wanted to ensure that everything was utterly perfect. She’d invited one friend to show up roughly fifteen minutes earlier than the rest of the group.
Celeste was special. They’d been friends for nearly as long as she could remember, and they just meshed together in a way that nobody else could. But over the past two months, she’d noticed that she might like Celeste as more than just a friend. Celeste’s rough exterior would melt away a little around Erin - enough to see a soft, more gentle person underneath. And her little sly, crooked smile had made Erin have to look away, flustered, on a few occasions. Even smaller things, like the way she held her index finger to her cheek while thinking were just… so endearing to Erin.
“So, what’s all this about, Erin?” Celeste questioned after a usual greeting-hug.
Erin tried her hardest to keep her composure through it, although she was sure she was shaking at least a little. She was unsure whether Celeste picked up on it though.
“So, I’ve had this kinda… feeling?... over the last few months,” Erin stuttered out “and I just can’t really deal with it anymore. I hope it’s fine of me to assume that you’re into girls? It’s not uncommon anymore. And….-”
“Hold on, are you into me?” Celeste seemed darkly amused, giving the same smile that Erin had once found alluring.
Erin gave a small, fearful nod.
“Fuck, I don’t wanna deal with this.” She let out a long, heavy breath and leaned away onto the nearest wall. She narrowed her eyes, her sharp eyeliner giving a dark and remarkably unfriendly appearance to her glare. “Sorry, but I don’t date fuckin’ androids. It’s just weird, y’know? I can’t fall in love with a machine, even if it’s wrapped up in the shape of a real person.”
Erin was fighting back tears at this point. She assumed that Celeste noticed this, since she changed her position once more, pushed her glossy black hair out of her eyes, and walked forward to give Erin a little pat on the back.
“Sorry, Erin. You’re still my best friend, y’know? I just, I dunno. I hope we can move past this, ‘cause I do value you a lot, yeah? I know this didn’t go how you wanted, but I guess that’s just life - sad as it may be.”
—
Erin hadn’t seen Celeste in a couple of months now. While they used to be inseparable friends, the uncouth rejection two years ago had really shaken Erin, and despite both of their wishes to remain friends, they found it harder and harder to hang out with each other due to the new tension that had been introduced.
While she wasn’t sure how Celeste felt about it all, Erin hadn’t gotten over it at all yet - despite what she might say to the contrary - and often found herself getting lost in it, as if picking a scab that she never let heal. And thus, despite her best attempts on this day, the topic of dating was just too closely linked to this event, and she found herself obsessing once more.
‘I… I wonder what Celeste’s up to.’ Erin’s digital mind wandered. ‘As a friend, of course. I’m fine that she won’t date me, just like, I miss our close friendship… Maybe if I reached out, we could hang out again? She did set up the last time we met two months ago, so I think she still likes me - I’m just scared that she actually hates me due to what she said all that time ago, and just was tolerating me all that time to not hurt my feelings.’
Tears welled up in Erin’s eyes, as she thought back on Celeste’s harsh words. It was hard not to recontextualize their friendship up to that point. If she couldn’t date a ‘machine’, could she really treat one as an actual friend? Probably not, she decided.
As she wallowed in her misery, a plan hatched in her mental circuits. Yeah, she should try to mend things with Celeste - some harsh words had unfortunately been said, but surely they could be mended with effort. …But wouldn’t it be nice if she could also get what she wanted initially, too?
—
A notification on her phone the next morning awoke her, bathing her pale skin and the white walls of the room in a slightly blue-tinted light.
Rubbing her eyes to get a clearer look - inadvertently getting some day-old red eyeshadow she had forgotten to remove from the previous day on her hands - she groggily made out the message on the screen.
Three separate notifications shone on her phone, all with the same message: [Customer ERIN RIJNDAEL, a parcel from H-VAT CORPORATION has safely arrived at your place of residence. Please pick it up from your mail receptacle in a timely manner. Thank you for using DAINTREE EXPRESS SHIPPING]
Thirty minutes later, after she’d done her standard morning routine, lightly applied eyeliner and mascara, and got dressed in some athletic-styled leisurewear, she headed out the door of her apartment and hastened down the outdoor path to the complex’s mailroom.
Immediately upon opening the door, she noted a strong scent of stale cardboard emanating from within. The mailroom itself was quite cramped. There was a metal door to the individual mailboxes to the left of Erin, but beyond that it was just a small, grey room with a rather unremarkable front desk that was barely not just a hole in the wall. A little digital chime came from above her head upon stepping in, and the person working in the room behind the desk stopped their task with the packages and trudged over.
“How can I help you, miss?” The silver-haired man at the desk uttered. His mannerisms gave off the general sense that he’d died long ago, yet his body had somehow remained animated.
“Ah, hello!” Erin eagerly chirped back. “I believe some packages should’ve just arrived for me. Could you look under ‘Erin Rijndael’?”
“Ehh… Sorry, miss, but we can’t give you your packages until all of our morning shipment’s been processed.” The first glimpse of anything remotely resembling an emotion on this man’s face - happiness. “No exceptions. Come back later.”
As he turned to leave her standing there, she noticed her name on a small pile of packages sitting on a small plastic folding table in the room behind him.
“Sir, they’re literally right there.” Erin leaned forward over the desk and pointed at the boxes. “I know you have an order to all of this, but can you just scan them in next and give them to me?”
The elderly, wrinkled man turned and stood there looking at the packages of interest. His face gave away absolutely no reaction from him.
A very confusing minute passed before Erin gently asked “Can I please have my mail?”
“Fine.” The man stated flatly - a slight hint of defeat in his voice. “Come here. You’re an android, right? Your weird yellow eyes with those concentric rings sure make you look like one. Show me your ID mark; I’ll check it out of our systems.”
Erin stepped up to the desk, leaned her side into it, and rolled up her left sleeve, showing a very complicated pattern of numbers, lines, and geometric shapes of various sizes and thicknesses. The mailroom man grabbed the package and set it on the front mail desk. He fumbled with a plastic grey scanner nearby and shakily scanned the barcodes on the boxes. A yellowed monitor on the side of the desk noted for each that it had been scanned in correctly. He turned to look her in the eye - it could have been a glare, it was hard to tell on his near-emotionless face - then lowered his gaze to her ID, scanning it as well.
The monitor read “[ERIN RIJNDAEL], Serial Number: 20394864”, and had an old picture of her from shortly after she’d been recognized as a legal adult. She didn’t really get why bio-androids had to go through the same childhood experiences as humans, when they could just make them as adults and code in the knowledge and socialization they needed into their digital brains. Perhaps it was to make their existence more palatable to the average human? Still, she looked back fondly on that time, so she didn’t mind too much. As for the picture; it wasn’t very flattering due to the overwhelming lighting and low angle. However, it was remarkable how much it looked like her nearly five years on.
The mailman accepted the confirmation with a curt nod, and shoved the boxes into her chest before dropping them into her hands.
“Have a nice day.” He murmured, and walked away to continue his other duties.
—
Five minutes later, and Erin had stumbled back into her apartment, struggling with the three boxes teetering in her arms. With care, she gingerly set them on her old, beige couch. Once she was sure they wouldn’t fall off, she briskly strolled to the kitchen, grabbed a small paring knife from a small wooden knife-holder she had sitting next to the stove, and came back to cut the tape at the top of each box, before returning the knife to where it originally was.
She eagerly lifted the brown flaps and peered inside each of the three boxes. The first two had identical inhabitants: A skeletal, metal, humanoid frame, curled up into a fetal position so it could fit into the box. As she lifted the first out, she noted that it was significantly lighter than she’d expected, although upon further thought she realized hadn’t found the boxes too heavy, so she should’ve seen that coming. She sat both on the couch next to the boxes in an upright sitting position.
Lying in the boxes underneath each of the frames was an odd-looking earpiece that had a small set of thin, transparent wires of varying lengths extending from the upper tip of the ear, tipped with small, sticky nodes.
‘It seems like this is the interface mechanism for the frames.’ She concluded. ‘I should only need one for both of them. At least, I think that’s what the online documents said. My electronic brain can be transmitted through this into their replica processing units in their head, which should allow me to essentially puppet two more bodies at once.’
Reading the user manual that was tucked away in their abdomen, Erin found that setting up the synchronization between the headset and the frames was easy - only requiring the use of a simple ‘sync button’ between the devices. The headset itself was also rather easy to set up. Just plug it in the ear to hold it in place, and attach the nodes in rough locations across the back of the head to transmit data. As she did so, she noticed that her long, roughly straw-colored hair covered the entire headset to the point that it’d be practically invisible to anyone not directly searching for it.
She made sure everything was set up right, and she turned it on.
“Holy fucking shit!” She exclaimed as her eyes grew wide.
In an instant, it had felt as if her mental space had greatly expanded, and the sensations of two new people had suddenly become processed in her mind. The two frames, previously idling on the couch, lifeless, were now just as much a part of her. She could feel the rough, burlap-style fabric under their legs, the cool apartment air on their lightweight metal body, and the weird gaps in their metallic frames. Unnervingly, she could also see herself twice over.
“Alright, let’s see… How do I control you?” Erin pondered, looking down at the frames on the couch.
She noted that she could hear herself through the other bodies, yet it didn’t seem overwhelming or confusing. It was as if she genuinely was just three separate people with a shared consciousness.
Some experimenting with them later, and she found that it was actually quite easy to get used to controlling three bodies at once. It took slightly more mental effort than just being on her own, but it was very intuitive, and within a minute or two, she was able to move everyone simultaneously fairly easily.
It came time for the contents of the third box.
It was smaller than the first two, yet a bit heavier than each. Inside lay a pile of neatly folded, warm, skin-like garments. She lifted the first out to find another below. And another below that. Three total, one for each body she planned on using.
—
Erin looked the skinsuits she’d unboxed over with excitement as they lay on a pitiful wooden table she had in her small entertainment space.
The first - the one she had planned for herself - was a tall man. He had short, messy brown hair, was cleanly shaven, and had a rather athletic build to him. His skin felt rougher than what she was used to on herself. Stretched out in her arms, she could tell he was easily a few inches taller than her. She’d never used these before, but she was pretty sure they were supposed to fit perfectly regardless of the wearer’s original body size.
As Erin opened the fleshy seam along his back, she noted the inside was mostly pitch black, with small sparkles moving here and there within. Even when held up to the light, it seemed none penetrated the interior. It was rather unnerving. Yet, she entered anyway.
It was comfortable. Like how she’d imagined a cloud would feel when she was a kid. A soft, floating feeling, really. She stripped out of her leisure wear, took a seat on the couch and worked the skin up her body, watching herself put it on through the eyes of her other selves. She’d bunched up the legs as if she was about to wear some very long socks, and put in her feet. Slowly working it up, she felt the feeling start to transform from the soft floating back to as if it had always been her skin.
She felt her face get hot when she reached the crotch region, and her view of herself from her other bodies confirmed that she had started to blush. She stood up and hurriedly secured the penis and buttocks, and moved on to work the rest of the body on. At last, she plunged her head inside, experiencing a small moment of pitch blackness in her original body before opening her eyes as her new self.
—
The suiting went much the same for the frames. Erin had selected two female skins: the first, a replica of herself. Thanks to easy access to pictures of her own body, she was able to get a skin that was basically a perfect facsimile in every way. The second was a bit harder though. She had made a skin of Celeste. She only had access to photos they’d taken together - which, to be fair, was quite a few over the years - so minute details were completely glossed over or substituted with default skin designs. Still, it was good enough for her, and she felt content with it.
With the suiting complete, Erin - now Eric - and his two other bodies walked over to his bedroom and sat down on the edge of his bed as he pondered what to do to move forward with his plan. Eric had never dated anyone before, and generally refused to have one-night stands or any other kinds of hook-ups, leaving him rather unfamiliar with anything to do with sex. But, he liked to tell himself he was an adventurous soul, and decided to just wing it and see what happened.
He commanded the first frame - Erin - to move aside for the time being, and told the replica of Celeste to lie down on the fluffy bed. As he commanded the bodies more and more, he found it took less effort to control them, and it soon felt as if he were just two separate people that both did exactly as he wanted.
The Celeste frame gently spread open her pussy lips, and the athletic man that Eric had become started to pump up his penis. His heartbeat was accelerating as he found himself getting close to having sex for the first time - as a man to boot - and he found it easy to get his erection up due to his newfound excitement. He realized that he could indulge in some of his deeper fantasies when he had full control of both people in the situation, and was highly tempted to.
‘Later.’ He firmly thought to himself. ‘First I’ll see what it normally feels like, then I’ll engage in the more depraved shit I want to.’ He noted that despite his external voice changing, his internal thoughts had remained the same voice.
No longer ignoring the invitation of his other body, he climbed on top of the girl on his bed, lined up his dick with her vagina, and slowly inserted.
The experience was novel, but familiar - exciting, yet disappointing. The two bodies had far different reactions to Eric’s horniness, and their immediate thought to both of them varied quite a bit.
He was both the one being penetrated and the one penetrating. He’d experimented before with masturbation, of course, and even had messed around with a dildo now and then for fun, but it was quite different to being filled by another living being, even if it was just himself. The feeling of his own, new girth filling the vagina of his former best friend he’d wanted to date - who he was also in control of and could feel - was such an odd feeling of taboo and twisted pleasure, and they found themselves both bucking their hips together almost instinctively.
Both bodies quickly began to breathe heavily as the sound of their thighs slapping together filled the cramped room. Eric turned Celeste over onto her back so they could look at each other while they gently made love.
“I love you, dear.” He made her say to him - something he’d wanted to hear for so long, even if it wasn’t real.
In an instant, that accelerated his heartbeat, and he found himself getting caught up in how horny he was. He pulled her up so that her large breasts were touching his chest, locked lips with her, and began to thrust into her faster and faster. And, being the same person mentally, Celeste found herself just as aroused from the whole situation, and grabbed onto her lover’s back, gently digging her nails in as she occasionally broke free from their kiss to moan.
Eric found himself reaching an orgasm quite soon, being unused to male pleasure. He pumped his artificial cum into the vagina of the guise of Celeste as he let out an unsteady and rather loud moan.
They fell down onto the bed together, and as Eric racked his brains for what to do next, he realized that the frame of Erin was still standing off to the corner of the room, silently watching the whole time.
“C’mere, bitch.” He beckoned her forward to add some semblance of authenticity to the situation, making it try to seem to himself like it wasn’t just a lonely girl messing around with herself in her room.
Erin strutted forward and draped herself around Eric, planting a kiss on his cheek, then climbed into bed next to the two. It was Eric’s turn to sit things out for a moment, as Erin indulged herself - initially pulling Celeste into a deep kiss, before groping her tit with one hand and creeping her other down to her vulva. Celeste followed suit, and the two girls found themselves trying to get the other off while not breaking their make-out session. Erin had gone straight for penetration, sticking three of her fingers right up Celeste’s pussy and slowly moving them in and out. However, with Celeste, she’d decided to do something else. Celeste’s fingers reached down and gently began to rub Erin’s clit. Erin let out a small gasp and involuntarily shivered at the initial contact. She began to finger her friend faster as they both got closer to climax.
The pleasure was far more familiar than using a penis had been - despite using two bodies now - and Erin and Celeste found themselves cumming once more. The double climax was utterly wonderful, but Erin wondered if she would be able to offset them between the different bodies with more training. After all, most couples generally don’t cum at the same time. She interrupted her thoughts, however, as Eric’s dick slapped right into the faces of both of the girls.
“Suck.” He commanded his other bodies.
The two girls competed to double-team his cock, licking up and down the shaft, drinking at the leftover artificial cum from his earlier ejaculation. Celeste used her larger assets to give Eric a titjob as Erin began to suck him off at the top.
Eric found it way too hot for it’s own good. Fucking the tits of the girl he’d lusted after for ages and getting sucked off by the girl lying underneath his skin felt all too good and all too kinky.
They suddenly got a curious idea. Celeste removed her tits from Eric’s shaft, and Eric grabbed the back of Erin’s head. He jammed her down onto his dick, cramming it all the way down her throat. Sure enough - while it was uncomfortable, she didn’t gag or choke. Frames didn’t need to breathe.
Eric began to rapidly fuck Erin’s face. He found he had more stamina this time, likely because of his refractory period from cumming last time. Celeste came around the back of Erin and began to stroke her tits and pussy from behind.
All the stimulation had built up, and they found themselves cumming for the last time that morning. A glorious, body shaking orgasm struck all three of them at once, causing all of them to fall over onto the bed from their upright state.
Eric detached himself from the frame of Erin and laid down in bed as normal to relax. The two girls soon came up beside him and rested along each side, giving a big hug from both sides. It was all himself, but it still felt nice to be cuddled by two cute girls. He gave each a soft kiss on their foreheads and pulled them in tightly as he fell into thought.
Perhaps it was time to try to mend things with Celeste.