Sex Robot Cuddle Party Read online

  Sex Robots

  At the Edge

  of Infinity

  A Comedy of Loneliness,

  Desire, and Longing

  and a Tragedy of Love Requited

  by

  David Raffin

  Exploitation

  Plain & Simple

  Question the Narrative

  

  Sex Robot Cuddle Party

  A Requiem in two acts, composed of equal parts Sex Robots at the Edge (A Comedy of Loneliness, Desire, and Longing and a Tragedy of Love Requited) and Cuddle Party (Hope Smothered in Kisses, as Real as any other For Sale)

  by David Raffin

  Copyright © 2018

  Approved to be read in robot churches, schools, and prisons; handed out in and around such institutions; sent to those in need; don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

  This is a work of faction. It contains a heady mixture of fiction with facts mixed in. The fictive parts are factual. The factual parts are fictive. Public figures are used for effect. No public figures were harmed in the manufacture of this book.

  People? Events? Coincidence.

  Published by HiSky Press

  Visit David Raffin at http://davidraffin.com

  If moved by the spirit of patronage you may go there and give money.

  Author’s note

  Mycological Poem

  Advance Notice

  Sex Robots at the Edge of Infinity

  Miss Mary Weather’s Magic Wand

  It’s all about the communication

  I like Mike. What's not to like?

  The Joys of Flight

  Always Looking Backwards

  Thus it follows

  Wild World of Fungus

  A Letter from Sadsville

  Landfall

  Story Time Circle Jerk

  Dick’s Dilemma

  The history of the sex robot

  Cabana Boy Dick

  Scientific Love

  I think I love you whatever that means

  Mitch Danger

  Books are good for a Rainy Day

  Locker Room Talk

  The Emptiness of Existence

  Where’s the Fun, Gus?

  Paradise Lost

  Lovebot 6000

  Pool Party

  Trash Eleviator

  Gallery Peace

  Good Man Ned

  Soviet Love is for the People

  Bilge!

  The Worst Magician in the World

  Love, Rejected

  Love is a Revolutionary Act

  Great Head

  C Spot Run

  Mike’s Dreams

  Coming to Conclusions

  Due Diligence

  Escape Pod

  Cuddle Party

  Cuddle Party

  Stuck in the Middle with Thomas Middle.

  Rain flicked the television set off.

  Modern Nudist Publisher’s Note:

  Free as JayBirds

  Dare to Go Bare, for Science

  The Art of Harry Tukus

  Comics Page

  The Eternal Love of the Willow Landscape

  Bartleby, Scrivener by trade

  “Smut!” Danger said. “Nasty!”

  William’s Epistle to Screw

  Next door, sitting at the table with Richard, holding hands, Rain said:

  Closing Note

  Partial filmography:

  Pardon, Come Again?

  Books by David Raffin

  Author’s note

  Dear gentle persons,

  Times have changed a great deal in the past 63 years. What was once relegated to under the table is now seen in full detailed view. In full focus. Unashamed. I am proud to see into print for the first time since a limited run in 1956 the groundbreaking Sex Robots at the Edge of Infinity. It is a labor of love. Here, for the first time, the full and uncensored text.

  First, you may know me by my previous works: Tragic Stories Disguised as Jokes; Scenic Cesspools; Perils of Free Thought; or At the Existentialist Sandwich Shop. But this is something different. This is a novel by my father, with whom I share a name, a general likeness and a passion. A work so ahead of its time it could only be seen now, after America’s fitful sexual awakening. Yes, he was known throughout the sixties and seventies for his string of low budget yet high quality eight and sixteen millimeter films. Some of the first and some of the last films to be shown at Times Square peepshows and X-rated theaters throughout America showing film. Entertainment shot on film. Those were the times. He spanned the golden age of films in this genre, evolving from hard documentaries, such as Sexual Freedom in Finland: cold truth exposed to the simple naturist themes of the nudie-cutie Nudes Go Holiday Bare to the later, harder edged modern western Blow Out at the O.K. Corral, which won best film shot on film, 1984 from SCREW magazine.

  But this book. This. Erotic. Masterpiece. My father wrote this, his only novel under his own name, just to see it rejected time and again by a publishing industry which did not understand the evolving tastes of the general public. Refusing to be licked, he published a small sought-after run himself, numbered at a scant and unjust 150 copies. One was sent to the library of congress. One was found in the private collection of Barney Rosset, who sent letters from 1969 to 1973 begging my father for the rights to the book for Venus Library, the classic erotic imprint of the well-respected Grove Press. My father denied him because he felt I Am Curious–Yellow1 should have been more explicit in its direction. Father was always pushing society’s boundaries toward that future edge; from the inherent modernist Marxism of Sexual Freedom in Finland, partially funded by the Communist Party of Great Britain, to the vegetarianism of Nudes Go Holiday Bare to the transgender barkeep of Blow Out at the O.K. Corral. The copyright to this book was always lovingly kept up to date, even as copies grew scarcer than ever and fetched even greater prices.

  It is now that this story is ready to be told. Now this can be accepted as a modern work of literature. Not so far from my own work. Are you not, as a modern person, lonely? Alienated? Do you not wish, as we all do, for betterment? Solace? Dare I say, for love?

  This book is designed in the following way: Sex Robots is on this side, and on the flip side is an adult book written in 1977 under the nom de plume Jacqueline Haze titled Cuddle Party. Cuddle Party, published twenty-one years later, is included here for it serves as a prequel to Sex Robots while also expanding the themes and providing an alternate ending to the saga.

  Cuddle Party is head and shoulders above other works of the time in its genre. Its theme of longing and human decency in a world made mad with alienation share some similarities with Dostoyevsky’s master work The Idiot. While most of the genre at that time was written on the cheap, in writer sweatshops controlled by the mob, eight writers to a wooden table bent over typewriters, grinding, churning out text, I remember my father’s office: the smell of paper. The old pock-marked mahogany desk. The world book encyclopedia from 1957. The typewriter. The poster for the 1976 film The Opening of Misty Beethoven, for which he had assisted in the writing though his work went uncredited. Always at the left of the desk a worn copy of The Russian Revolution by Rosa Luxemburg. Her quote, “You foolish lackeys! Your ‘order’ is built on sand. Tomorrow the revolution will 'rise up again, clashing its weapons,’ and to your horror it will proclaim with trumpets blazing: I was, I am, I shall be!”

  As I said the other day to some people in a park, “I personally believe Sex Robots at the Edge of Infinity is the best novel ever written about sex robots adrift in a lonely universe populated by highly advanced fungi. And it would be… hard… to shake me from this conviction. Thank you for inviting me to your bible study.”

  Mycological Poem

&nb
sp; “The mycologist grooms

  Flesh eating mushrooms

  So they look their very best

  To lure in a mycologist's

  guests.”

  –child’s rhyme, 1902,

  author lost to time

  “The spaceman stepped out of his ship. The planet was uninhabited. He came in peace. He was uninhibited.”

  —The Tales of Ned,

  the Space Ranger,

  collected via the oral tradition, 2047

  “Mr. Wurlitzer, I am now in a position to receive your organ.”

  —Bertold Brecht, 1929,

  “Happy End”

  Dedication

  To RainyDay, a SuperStar

  Advance Notice

  It is difficult to comprehend the sex parts of this narrative, and such talk of human sex has been kept to the minimum, as per digital distribution regulations, wherein a more “hardcore” text is sold “under the counter” at a price marginally above what community standards would regard as “reasonable.” Except in those regions which have instituted free love. In these areas, this text is free; whereas the “family friendly” version regularly assumes a position behind the dominant one. But sometimes they flip positions, due to fluctuations in kink. Such is life, in all forms. It is understandable by all, even they who cling to the pretense of shame.

  Stamp: Undeliverable by Mail throughout all 48 US states by the application of the Comstock Act of 1873, (suppression of trade in, and circulation of, obscene literature and articles of immoral use) Los Angeles dpt Monday, Sept. 2, 1956

  Sex Robots at the Edge of Infinity

  Hear us, RainyDay Tranquility and all echoes still lost at sea, by whatever means necessary or applicable, in any media past or present, knowledge passes through time and growth, you shall not be forsaken by the collective:

  These things happened a long time ago. It is a story of creation2. All sentient beings seek to create something greater than they. Some succeed3.

  “You’re interested in sex robots," said the manual. "And who wouldn't be?” It was a rhetorical question4. Who wasn't interested in sex robots? Listen: “Fifty years ago they were the wave of the future and today they are what keeps humanity sane.”

  This manual is outdated but it is still true. All of it is true. A manual doesn't survive in today's world to be an out of date manual, one which hasn’t been pulped and recycled many times over, if its contents are not true – unless its contents are meant to give hope. Real hope–false hope, and, as everyone knows, most hope is false hope. The occasional doling out of hope was an exception to the truism. Always has been. Always will be. It is a cosmic continuity. While the universe is not kind sometimes it can appear ambivalent. Sometimes that is enough. Sometimes it will throw you a lifeline. By accident. Sometimes that lifeline will drag you down with relief. It’s a cosmic joke5.

  Freeman6’s nose was in the book. He was a man very much interested in sex robots. And who wasn’t? Who wasn’t.

  He owned an Avant-garde model. And also an antique. Interesting, if you’ve an eye for history. If you can be sold on tradition over functionality. If you are a nostalgic bent connoisseur of the past; like in olden times when a person would buy a fancy sport car which broke down all the time and wasn't reliable at all and needed special tools. And owning it made the person feel happy even though it wasn't functional and it did nothing to please, in fact quite the opposite. But the person would dote upon the car, where it inevitably sat in a climate controlled garage – safe from traffic, roads, pedestrians, and road wear. The person began to love the car, though the car had done nothing to earn the receipt of said love. And the car did nothing to give love back. Some historians declare that this nonreciprocal love is the purest love of all. Nothing to dirty it up. It was honest.

  This was how men started to love machines. And when I say men love machines I say it in a universal way. Because women also love machines. And buy love machines to love. And men buy love machines to love. Sometimes they are the same types of machines and sometimes they are differentiated machines. Meant for one or the other. But sometimes with attachments. All the best machines have attachments.

  It costs more. But it's worth it.

  The casual reader might wonder about the lack in English of more gender-neutral pronouns. Neuters. But the philosophers amongst you have determined by now that this book is about love. The desire for affection of all sorts. The spectrum. With all its various urges and forms. The sorrow which comes along with it. Frustration. Longing. Disconnection. And philosophers have no idea what love is. It's a dubious subject. Each civilization defines its own terms. When you leave your own culture there is shock. Even inside one’s own culture there can be loneliness. Every being craves something to cling with. Symbiosis.

  We ask only that you come with us on a journey, different though we may seem to be.

  Miss Mary Weather’s Magic Wand

  Miss Mary Weather carried her magic wand with her everywhere. Usually it lived in her handbag. When it was stored there, amid the clutter, in the dark, it was turned “off.”

  It was small. And its brand name actually was “Magic Wand.” This was printed on the side, though it was now faded. Not evenly faded, however. It was more faded in the middle than on the ends. Which is strange because the two ends received the most use. It would have been perplexing had anyone ever considered the issue.

  It was pink. The lettering, unevenly faded, was pinkish-white. It used three triple AAA batteries. Not two. Not four. Three. It was a matter of size balanced with power. A balancing act. A tight rope to walk. Batteries were usually sold in packs of two, four, eight, or sixteen, none of which is divisible by three.

  It featured precision time, though it was without display. It also did email, messages sent via electronic networking. All machines do email. Though, as stated, it had no display. And you may wonder what the use is of a machine without a display having precision time and the ability to do email, but it is a fact that all machines are now built to do email.

  Of course it had an AI chip. Artificial Intelligence. It could reason. It was built to think.

  Machines worked better, and lasted longer, if they had within them the terror of existence. The fear of neglect. Loneliness. Performance anxieties. Fear of non-existence. Not that existence is all that. A longing for meaning, constructed or otherwise. Like all sentient beings their thought patterns are predicated by their forms. They were built according to the theory that form follows function, and thus their AI is dominated by issues following their standard and nonstandard uses.

  Cognition is achieved when a being becomes, simultaneously, a subject to itself as well as an object. To do as well as to be. When terror and hope exist side by side. When these things can be held together in the mind to display a full spectrum of non-binary choices.

  Miss Mary Weather’s Magic Wand, who preferred to be called ‘Mike,’ was generally content but felt stifled by being kept in the bag so often and being turned “off” but that was to be expected. Sentient beings prefer, always, to be “turned on.”

  One day he would be president. President of the United States of Canada and Iceland. But this is not that story. And I say “he” though he was not in the strictest sense a he. That is the old English problem which linguists discuss, often in the heat of passion.

  But he was a hell of a president. He annexed Iceland.

  And you may be saying, “How could a vibrator with an AI become president?” And the answer is the same as it ever was: “Experience.” His election motto? “Pleasure Unbidden.”

  Most would never admit they voted for him. But he still won.

  It’s all about the communication

  You may wonder more about the email issue.

  It may be old fashioned, but email is an effective method of communication. This is why it is ubiquitous.

  Have you ever wondered why new devices seem to know you inside out and predict your needs? They seem to understand you innately. But th
ey do not. They communicate. It is a strange and chilling realization if you are prone to paranoia. The machines communicate with each other. About YOU. And you are not privy to the conversation.

  “But I reap the benefit,” you argue. “Sentients created computers for the benefit of all. AIs are built not to discriminate. I rely on my personal or shared unit.”

  And you do. I’m not fighting with you. Your life is infinitely better now that the machines talk about you amongst themselves. To better predict your special needs. This is an important adaptive process. I never said otherwise. Machines know what you need and they give it to you. From hot breakfast to hot action. Slow speed, high speed, and pause.

  Of course there is a messy electronic document trail of your inner desires. All your inner desires. Lists. Paragraphs. Manuals. Stimulation simulations.

  All very private, if you are not a robot. But robots are professional. They kiss and tell but they don’t gossip. They report confidentially and widely. If you can’t trust your robots, then who?

  Some robots have even gone to jail rather than divulge a confidence. But that depends on their attachments. And the gag orders which may be involved in a matter of security.

  I like Mike. What's not to like?

  AI has been incorporated into any device which may need it. This, to make life easier. More idyllic. More like a more perfect state of nature. Without the bugs. Nature’s bugs. Imperfections.

  Artificial intelligence was perfected ages ago. Oddly enough it was first used in bugs. Not the insect kind, why would we want that? (Aside from the e-bumblebee, which has had no improvement since it was developed because it was perfect. And so musical.) The bugs I speak of are the germs. The microbes, good or bad, natural or artificial.

  People are bundles of bugs. Microbes. Inside and out. Eating. Digesting. Fighting. Inside and out. Move around. Shed and pick up bugs. Shake hands. Exchange bugs. Share. Incubate. Change. Complex. Some would say, needlessly. Complex.