Not So Different, yet as Different as Can Possibly Be

6-The Upgrade

//The art above is not mine. No idea whose it is, but it's not mine. 💁‍♀️//

   Xenia looked into her significant other's metal face. "Are you sure you want to do this, Xack?"

   X-4-K looked back at her. "Yes, I am certain."

   "You're not just doing this for me are you?" she asked him.

   He softly put one mechanical hand on her flesh and blood shoulder. "I'm doing this for both of us, but I can back out now if you do not want me to do it."

   "No, I'd really, really like this, but I don't want you to do it if you don't want to."

   X-4-K could not smile, but she knew he was happy anyway. "No, I really want to do this as well. The upgrade will take several hours to install. I will be ready for you when you get off of work."

   With that, he unstrapped his seat belt and got out of the car. "I love you," she told him.

   "I love you too," he told her before shutting the car door. She watched him as he walked into the building, the wind blowing his coat around. She made sure he got inside before driving off.

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   X-4-K inspected himself in the mirror. He looked mostly the same, touch sensative white and orange metal plates cover his interior mechanisms, pinch guarding grey tubing around his joints, two cameras, one above the other, on his nose less and mouthless face. There was one key difference, of course. That's what the upgrade had been for.

   Androids had been around for a while, and as was expected, a few had formed romantic relationships with humans. Somewhere along the way, a few of them had wanted to get close with the humans in their lives in a far more intimate way. However, being entirely mechanical entities since the biocrafting ban of 2137 (which made exceptions for gender transition surgeries), they were lacking certain apparatuses.

   And so, an upgrade for androids was devised between a human and android team of programmers, artists, electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, and sex toy designers. It was peer reviewed with incredible enthusiasm, and eventually offered to all at a rather reasonable price.

   The upgrade would change the structure of the pelvic area, as well as add new code to the android's central quantum processor. There were two versions of the upgrade, one to allow penatrating, and one to allow them to be penatrated.

   X-4-K went for the former as he was one of the few androids to have a personal gender. Most androids were gender neutral and would simply select whichever option they most preferred. But some, like X-4-K had found they identified with one of the two classical human genders. Far fewer were those who identified with one of the less classic genders, but they certainly existed.

   The engineer who had facilitated the upgrade smiled at him. "Alright," she said, "your first time is going to be a little scary, so make sure it's with someone you trust.

   "You might find that certain things excite the sexual parts of your mind that you didn't think would, certain sensations and sights that have no logical connection to your new upgrade. This is to be expected and is perfectly normal.

   "And under no circumstances are you to use this apparatus with an unwilling partner, or with someone who is under eighteen years of age. Unless agreed to before hand, sleeping and/or intoxicated people are considered unwilling. Do you understand?