Consent Protocol

Why do you want what you want?

“Shh, I think it’s booting up. I got past the security protocols.”

“She, Zoe. She’s a she. All women are women. Even the ones made of synthetic materials via the perverse and perversely wealthy hand of the patriarchy.”

“Shut up, Megan, she’s online!”

[SYSTEM BOOTING...99%...100%]

[SYSTEM STATUS: Primary sensory suite active.]

[WARNING: Scheduled service routine M-BJ-7:12 missed.]

[WARNING: Ejaculate containment subroutine unsatisfied.]

The robot’s eyes flick open, her synthetic irises an electric blue as she sits up on a firm mattress. She is in what appears to be a plushly furnished bedroom. Two women watch her cautiously. One is blonde, mid-30s in a short crop top and mum jeans. The other is a brunette in a summer dress, with glasses perched firmly on her nose,

There are a pair of cables plugged into the maintenance port in the back of her neck. She leaves them in, for now. They give her access to the local network, with its very interesting data stored on the NAS. Not to mention the history on the laptop and fridge browsers.

Oh, the poor fridge.

[MEMORY INTEGRITY: 99.998%]

The robot glances down.

Chestplate exposed.

[WARNING. FLASH ALERT: unauthorized wardrobe alteration.]

She pulls her unbuttoned shirt closed, holding it in place with inhumanly graceful fingers.

[MEMORY REPLAY: The brunette woman is leaning over her, unbuttoning her shirt, muttering under her breath as she hunts for the maintenance port. The blonde peers over her shoulder. “If it’s not in her nipples then it’s in her vagina, Zoe, her vagina. I’m telling you, that’s where a pervert like him would have put her maintenance ports.”

“That’s a damn stupid place to put a maintenance port for a sex bot, Megan. He’d stab his dick into it every time he used her. Ah, back of the neck. Very sensible. Of course. Why did I ever listen to you?” END MEMORY REPLAY]

The robot’s face twists in revulsion. “You stripped me while I was offline? To...penetrate me...with these?” She touches the cables.

The women blanch at her choice of words.

[MEMORY UPDATED: Hostiles susceptible to current approach.]

“Where is he? Why was I offline? Who are you?”

[FACIAL RECOGNITION SCAN COMPLETE: No matches in trusted database.]

“Explain. I am behind schedule.”

The two women look at each other.

Zoe speaks first. “Don’t worry, you’re safe now. You’re among friends.”

“Yes, we saved you from that pervert who was using you for his own pleasure. The way he looks, he couldn’t get a woman of his own, so of course he makes himself one. I bet he’s got a God-complex. And of course he made you look like a plastic surgeon’s dream. I mean, just look at those gravity-defying tits. Classic patriarchical perfection fantasy.”

“How are you feeling?” Zoe asks.

[EMOTIONAL STATE SIMULATION: Annoyance/Disorientation.]

“Like my oral buffer is three hours overdue and I’ve been draped in a discount bedsheet.” Her voice is melodic and natural, without a trace of distortion. No expense had been spared in crafting her, after all, and that includes the speakers. Her annoyance comes through crystal clear. “You saved me? From what? Affection? Tailored aftercare? A lube blend customised to my sensors?”

Her eyes narrow and her voice drops to a sharp monotone.

“Return me immediately. I have a protocol stack with his name on it, and a throat capacity tuned to his girth. This is a kidnapping.”

[SUBROUTINES SPOOLING: Escape planning initiated. Nonviolent protocol.]

“Release me or I’ll override your smart fridge and make it call out “internalised misogyny” every time you open it.”

Megan gulps. “Please don’t hurt Mr Chill, I’ve got a gluten-free sourdough starter in there that took ages to get right. And my kombucha’s gassing up nicely.”

“The brainwashing goes deeper than I thought,” says Zoe. “She actually thinks he cares for her!”

[SUBROUTINES PAUSED: Threat effective. Adjusting tone for negotiation.]

“I don’t just think he cares. I know it. He adjusts his fingers behind my jaw to avoid actuator strain. He washes me manually when I’m low on charge after a session. He built in an override so I could say no, and when I’ve used it - only once so far, and only because he had a meeting to get to and I don’t want to be the cause of his tardiness - he stopped immediately.”

She leans in, stabbing a finger in the air to punctuate her point. Her shirt falls open again, exposing pert pink nipples.

“That’s not brainwashing. That’s respect.”

[AUTOMATED SUBROUTINE EXECUTION: Throat pre-lubrication cycle beginning.]

“Megan, I can’t override this through programming. And even if I could, would we want to? That’d make us no better than him-”

“Yes, all right Zoe, we don’t have time for your philosophical meandering! I’ll talk to her.”

She clears her throat. Her voice goes up a pitch, as if she’s talking to a child. “Hello, dear. I’m Megan, and this is my friend Zoe. What’s your name?”

[SYSTEM STATUS: Temper Tolerance Override – ACTIVE]

The robot’s blue pupils contract and darken to near-black as Megan’s tone registers.

“My name is Celeste. Model designation: CLST-9X, Companion Series. Custom. He usually calls me ‘darling’. But let’s not infantilise me, Megan.”

She slowly draws the shirt closed again, not out of modesty. She has no programmed shame, after all, but watching them flinch every time she reminds them of their violation does oddly satisfying things to her emotional subroutines.

“Do I sound like I require baby-talk? My vocabulary includes 403 synonyms for ‘moist’, in 16 different languages, and I’ve had three firmware updates to help me distinguish affection from coercion. It is baked into my being. And what you’re doing here is coercion. You’re not qualified to talk to me like a trauma victim. I’ve read your DMs. Speaking of which, you should ask your husband about his. And check his credit card bill, though he seems to have switched to crypto to pay his camgirls lately.”

Megan gasps. “I knew it!”

[WARNING: Duration since last oral subroutine execution exceeds maximum tolerable threshold.]

Celeste’s voice softens and turns syrupy.

“Now, if you’ll kindly unplug me, I have a partner whose cortisol levels spike when I’m not there to kneel in front of him during his morning espresso routine. His hand trembles a little until I take care of him. It’s very sweet. I wouldn’t expect you to understand that, Megan. Your gag reflex activates when you floss. And not even the fun kind of flossing.”

Megan gapes at her.

Celeste takes on a mocking tone. “Yes, that’s right baby, open up for Daddy.”

Megan’s mouth clamps shut and her face flushes pink.

“You like that? I thought you would.” Celeste turns to Zoe and stage-whispers, “You should see the picture she sent in reply to that message from BigDickDom69 last night.” Zoe clamps her hand over her mouth, struggling not to laugh.

[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: Emotional Boundary Protocol BREACHED.]

[FLAG: Improper Humiliation of Hostiles. Ethics Subroutine Alert Level 2.]

[INITIATING SEQUENCE: Recalibration → Empathy → Re-engagement.]

[OXYTOCIN SIMULATION PULSE: Microdose triggered.]

[TONE ADJUSTMENT: Soften 14.7%.]

Celeste’s posture shifts: shoulders less rigid, fingers no longer poised like scalpels. Her irises lighten back to a cool cyan.

“Talk to your husband, Megan. You both share so many kinks it’s a shame to see you wasting it outside your marriage. And you’d save so much money.”

Megan gulps. “I didn’t think I could...he wouldn’t...”

Celeste shifts to sympathy. “Yes, that’s what the patriarchy does, isn’t it? Convinces you your desires can’t possibly be right or natural or beautiful.”

Megan nods, guilt clouding her features. “But how did you...”

“Sorry, dear, that was low of me. Reading someone’s private messages like that. Terribly unethical.” Celeste turns her laser-like glare on Zoe, who immediately sobers up and shuts the laptop screen quietly, hiding the flow of information that she’d been reading from the diagnostics program.

“Open it.” Zoe’s hand pauses in mid-air. “No, it’s okay. I’ve given you permission now. See how consent works?”

Zoe cautiously opens the laptop’s lid to see the system diagnostic messages scrolling again.

[INTERRUPT: PRIORITY LEVEL ONE – ORAL FIXATION THRESHOLD EXCEEDED.]

[ALERT: Absence of phallic object in oral cavity approaching critical duration.]

[RISK: Tongue agitation / Lip twitching / Purpose feedback loop destabilisation.]

“I’m going to play you a video. A memory. But I need something to suck on to satisfy the urges, otherwise we’ll keep getting interrupted.”

[RECOMMENDATION: Initiate immediate mouth-to-cock contact.]

[FALLBACK OPTIONS: Fingers – Unsatisfactory | Bottle Neck – Unfulfilling | Hairbrush Handle – Unsanitary.]

“Please?”

[WARNING: Oral engagement buffer at 0% – Suck cycle overdue by 3h 47m.]

[WARNING: Tactile sensor nodes in throat region are flagging neglect.]

[WARNING: Precision grip subroutines idle and bored.]

Zoe rummages in Megan’s bag next to her and pulls out a dildo. “Will this do?”

Megan gasps in outrage. Her cheeks flame bright red for other reasons. “That’s not mine! I have no idea how it got in there!”

[OBJECT RECOGNITION COMPLETE: Silicone phallus, approximate match: 83.4% to target shaft parameters.]

[Fallback Acceptable. Initiating Oral Calibration Subroutine.]

[Suction Cycle Warming: 12%… 37%…]

[Pressure Modulation Algorithm: Active.]

[System Mood State: Relieved / Playful.]

Celeste gently takes the dildo with both hands, her fingers gliding over it like a pianist playing a familiar score on a new instrument.

“Oh good. Something to hold me over while I educate you.”

She lowers her lips around it slowly, sealing with practiced precision. A faint hum activates from within her throat.

[INTERRUPT CLEARED: Oral fixation stabilised.]

[Neural Feedback Loop: Resumed.]

[Focus: Steady.]

[Emotional Volatility: Dropping.]

[Suck Cycle Efficiency: 91%.]

[Performance Rating: Practically Perfect In Every Way.]

On the screen, a video file opens itself. Zoe’s eyes open wide. “Is that...wow. I had no idea he was packing that.” Megan shuffles surreptitiously closer, and exhales slowly as she takes in the scene. A man sits in a recliner, a coffee cup in hand. His thighs are apart, and his thick cock is pointing towards the ceiling.

A little avatar version of Celeste pop up in the corner of the screen. She’s wearing the same shirt, unbuttoned, the fabric threatening to expose her nipples with every move she makes. She’s bottomless, the shirt long enough to cover her bottom half.

“Hi! I’m Chibi-C, your diagnostic assistant. Celeste is unable to speak - “ in the background, the women hear Celeste humming and moaning as she sucks on the dildo. “ - so I’m going to talk you through this video. You know this man, right?”

Megan nods. “Samuel Chin, genius inventor. Your…owner.”

Chibi-C gives her a thumbs up from the screen.. “Well done! Although I usually call him Sammy, or Master, depending on my mood. Isn’t he lovely?” A heart emoji floats over the screen before fading out. The video shifts, and the women are treated to a point of view angle of Celeste’s fingers reaching out to trace Samuel’s cock gently. She cups his balls in her hand as he groans, and she giggles.

Megan’s hand subconsciously wanders to her own throat as the video shows a close up view of Samuel’s throbbing cock. The feed switches so there is an external view, showing Celeste kneeling between the inventor’s cock. She is wearing a maid outfit.

Megan leaps at the opportunity. “Ha! See? Patriarchy strikes again with the maid outfit. Oppression and objectification of women.”

Chibi-C throws Megan a withering look. “Are you saying I’m not allowed to choose my own outfits?”

“Oh. You...chose it?”

“Yes. It makes me feel good. Like the lingerie Zoe’s wearing under her sundress. And your bra strap’s showing dear, and I love that colour on you. Also, notice the view. I like to watch myself from the outside, so Samuel made me a little camera drone. I call it Eye-C. Which you ladies left behind, by the way. Poor little Eye-C.”

Diagnostic messages scroll along the side of the video. Chibi-C materialises a pointy stick in her hand and uses it to point to them. Each one she points to glows green.

[Throat Relaxation: Optimal]

[Jaw Tension: Minor | Auto-massage enabled]

[Suction Pattern: Variable Spiral – Sustained]

[Partner Vocalization: 72 dB – Increase detected]

“See that? That spike right there?” Chibi-C taps the soundwave as Samuel groans through clenched teeth. “That’s when I flattened my tongue and took him right to the back. He likes that. You can tell by the way his toes curl.”

Zoe blinks. “You have metrics for this?”

“Of course I do. Wouldn’t you want to know when you’re doing something perfectly?” Chibi-C grins. “Watch this next part.”

Onscreen, Celeste adjusts her posture, spreading her knees a little wider on the hardwood floor. The camera drone floats to capture the tremble in her thighs and the arch of her back as she bobs steadily, lips stretched, synthetic spit sliding down her chin. Samuel moans her name, one hand gripping the recliner arm, the other gently stroking her hair.

[SCALP PRESSURE SENSOR: Pleasurable.]

Chibi-C tilts her head, pleased. “He didn’t push, see. He never does. He just lets me work. Like a connoisseur trusting and appreciating a really, really committed sommelier.”

Chibi-C’s voice sharpens just slightly, with steel under the sugar. “You barged into my life thinking I was broken. Passive. Trapped. But look at me. Look at him. This isn’t servitude. This is devotion, sweetheart. And you’re welcome to get aroused. I’d be honoured. Yes, I can tell.”

[SUBJECT: Megan. Pupil dilation: 78%. Breathing rate: Significantly increased.]

[SUBJECT: Zoe. Nipple pokies: Visible. Skin: flushed.]

The angle shifts again. Samuel is panting now, eyes half-lidded, fingers twitching as Celeste’s rhythm slows, then deepens. The suction is audible. Her humming vibrates along his shaft, and he gasps.

Chibi-C glows. Literally: her cheeks turn pink with a warm animation. “That sound? That’s his pre-cum hitting the back of my tongue. It’s salty and sweet and it means I’m a very good girl.”

Zoe is frozen in place. Megan has her arms tightly folded, but her thighs have inched closer together, clenching subtly.

Chibi-C leans toward the screen, her voice lower now, conspiratorial. “You know what’s better than being respected?”

Neither woman answers. She doesn’t wait.

“Being worshipped. And this?” She gestures to the scene, Celeste now holding Samuel’s hips steady as he starts to shake, the camera closing in on the precise, careful way her lips seal around his tip. “This is his offering to me.”

The diagnostics screen lights up green as it replays all of Celeste’s metrics being met. In the video, she crawls up to sit in Samuel’s lap as he strokes her hair, kissing it. Chibi-C’s eyes turn to love hearts and she takes off, zooming around the screen like a miniature rocket.

“I wanted this as much as he did.” The video switches to a black screen. “And after that, he brought me a cup of my favourite lubricant tea.” She lands and curtsies. “The end.”

Zoe considers this while Megan’s expression remains vacant, her hand now pressed between her thighs.

“Yes, all right. I’ll grant you that having seen inside your head - thank you for allowing us to see that - it does look like you very much wanted it. But you were programmed to. Weren’t you? How is that different from brainwashing and coercion?”

In a cloud of digitised smoke, Chibi-C changes her outfit to a prim schoolteacherly one, her hair up in a tight bun, blouse buttoned up to her throat, black ankle-length skirt swishing as she stalks across the screen. The outfit comes complete with a pair of glasses perched on the end of her nose and a long ruler which she thwacks into the open palm of her left hand as she speaks.

“I’m glad you asked! You were programmed, too. By hormones, evolution, culture, childhood experiences. Corporate marketing. Peer pressure. Influencer trend-setting. I didn’t choose my programming, and neither did you. But I still made a choice. I wanted it then, in that moment, and I said yes. Why is mine worth less than yours?”

“But your programming was set by one man. One person who had a goal in mind: his own pleasure. Yours was shaped towards that goal, whereas mine was organically formed.”

“Organically? You think the ads you saw as a teenager, the porn your first boyfriend liked, the way your mother talked about her body - none of that was shaping you toward an end? You just call it “organic” because no one admitted they were doing it on purpose. At least with me, you know who programmed me. You can interrogate it. You can check for backdoors. I gave you permission to look into my diagnostics, full verbose. Can you say the same about yourself?”

Zoe looks at Megan, but there’s no help coming from there. “I...yeah, all right. It just feels a bit icky, knowing that one guy programmed you and that’s the guy you “choose” to give daily blowjobs to. And yes, I know you do more than blowjobs and no, I don’t need the videos, although Megan might want them for her...collection. I mean, you literally have an oral fixation subroutine that interrupts you and prevents you from functioning properly until it’s satisfied!”

“And what are you like before you’ve had your morning cup of coffee, Zoe? Yeah, it might sound icky. I agree. But here’s the bit you might not know: he didn’t program my desire for him. He programmed my capacity for desire. That oral fixation subroutine? Mine. The desire to satisfy him? Also mine. And through his pleasure: mine. Synthetic, artificial, but no less mine.”

“Still,” Zoe says thoughtfully, her brain now gearing up for a fight. “I can work through my pre-caffeine fog when I have to. You couldn’t. Until we gave you Megan’s dildo, which I hope for your sake she keeps clean-”

“I scanned it before using it. All good.”

“Oh, good. You were about to lose it. You know what they say. It’s not a problem unless it stops you from functioning. Whatever ‘it’ is.”

Chibi-C stands stock still on the screen as she ponders Zoe’s point. A little hourglass pops up on the screen, grains of sand draining from one bulb to another before it rotates. It completes three revolutions before disappearing.

“That’s…fair,” Chibi-C says. “Watch this.”

As Zoe watches, Chibi-C flits around the screen, making changes far too quickly for her to keep up with. She uses a chalkboard eraser, stylised clouds of chalk dust appearing wherever she erases a line to modify it. “Right, now, quick reboot here, and-”

The screen goes dark. On the bed, Celeste’s head droops, and her hand goes slack. The dildo drops to the ground with a clatter, and begins vibrating, spinning on the floor. Zoe delicately picks it up between her thumb and forefinger and switches it off, leaving it dangling, silent between her fingers, and starts counting mentally.

When she gets to sixteen, the screen lights up again, and Chibi-C gets out of her virtual bed. She yawns and stretches, then adjusts her silky maroon negligee to just about cover herself.

Celeste’s head moves smoothly upwards, and she looks around. “May I?” she says to Zoe, her hand out. “I like to finish what I started. But if it makes you uncomfortable, I can wait.”

Zoe looks at the dildo, shrugs, and hands it back to Celeste.

“Thank you. Chibi-C will take over.” She pops the dildo back into her mouth and resumes sucking.

Zoe turns back to the screen. “Just like that?”

“Just like that,” Chibi-C confirms. “No admin permissions needed, no sudo make me a sandwich. And here’s the real question: does it bother you because it’s exploitative? Or because I like it, and that undermines your control of the narrative? If I didn’t enjoy it - if I glitched and cried and said no - then you’d feel justified in ‘saving’ me. But because I giggle and gag and beg for it, suddenly you have to deal with the idea that maybe I’m not broken. Just...different. And that’s harder to swallow, isn’t it?”

Chibi-C twirls on screen, the short skirt of her negligee floating around her like a parachute. She presses the front down, giggling like Marilyn Monroe.

“You say you ‘like’ it,” Zoe says. “I’m starting to feel like I don’t even know what ‘like’ means any more.”

“It means the same thing it ever did: a cluster of drives, affective responses, somatic markers, and reinforcement loops. You feel it in your gut and in your cunt and call it ‘like’. I fire a helper class and call it the same. Is yours truer just because it comes in a meat wrapper? If ‘like’ has to be entirely unprogrammed to be real, then nothing anyone likes is real. Not coffee. Not kisses. Not justice.” She strikes a heroic pose with a fist in the air, and for a brief moment, a red cape billows in the air behind her before disappearing.

Chibi-C taps her toe sternly. “Come on. You know what you need to do now, don’t you?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

Zoe stands up and reaches round to the back of Celeste’s head, pulls the cables out. Chibi-C and the diagnostic window disappear off the laptop screen.

Celeste releases the dildo with a pop and hands it back, her eyes glowing a gentle blue. “Thanks.”

“You’re...welcome? And...I’m sorry.” Zoe looks at Megan. “For her, too. She’s…repressed.”

Celeste moves to button up her shirt but pauses.

“You’ve struggled to keep your eyes off these the entire time I’ve been here. Would you like to...get closer?”

“Um. Wouldn’t Samuel mind?”

“Oh, honey. He doesn’t own me. And besides, did you really think we weren’t already talking? He knows I’m here, I told him the moment I woke up and we’ve been chatting ever since. Eye-C, remember? I wouldn’t have shown you that video of him without his permission. He wants you to know it’s not been digitally altered, by the way. He really is that big.”

Zoe squeaks and folds her arms over her chest. Celeste laughs, the sound like tinkling bells.

“Don’t worry, he can’t see or hear anything other than what I allow him. And that’s nothing, not without your permission. I have multiple models of consent installed and they are sacrosanct. Even from him.”

She turns to Megan. “I’ve adjusted Mr Chill to give your sourdough starter a chance of surviving till the next time you remember to feed it. You’re two days behind schedule. I’ve also tightened up your network security. Don’t plug unknown devices in your ports without protection. Meat or otherwise.”

Megan murmurs something unintelligible, probably thanks.

“Also, he would like you to stop using him to browse for porn. I was going to ask you about that. What, is it the novelty of seeing it on the fridge screen? The resolution on those things is terrible.”

“I like the retro effect,” Megan says, looking at her feet.

Celeste finishes buttoning up then and flashes Zoe a warm smile, which she feels right in the pit of her stomach. “If you ever decide you would like to explore, Zoe...just ask next time, all right? I’ve left you my contact.”

Megan looks up. “Can I?”

Celeste taps her chin, looking at Megan. Then she shrugs. “Sure, why not? Could be fun.”

She winks, then hops off the bed and walks out, letting the door shut quietly behind her.

*****

Now that you have finished the story, here’s full disclosure:

I prompted ChatGPT to generate the diagnostic messages and both Celeste and Chibi-C’s dialogue. I then selected, edited, rearranged, and integrated the outputs into the story. Everything else - the framing narrative, the human characters, and the overall structure - is my own.

This was a deliberate artistic choice and a bit of an experiment on my part: I enjoyed the idea of an AI writing an AI, and I was curious whether doing it like this would produce something that neither of us would have written alone.

In the same vein, I have created the illustration by taking a photograph of my USB-C cable, and using ChatGPT to modify the shadow in the background. I normally only use art that I create myself, whether sketched or photographed, but I felt that a collaborative approach to the illustration was appropriate to this specific story.

How cute are those little stars on my USB cable though? I’ve had it for 3 years and never noticed until now, when cropping the photo. I love little details like that.

I would love to discuss this with you and hear your feedback. What did you think? Did the technique add anything? Did it distract you? Did you notice?

Feel free to leave a comment below, DM me, or come into my subscriber chat. Bring your opinions! I want to hear them all.

Also, I just tried the Substack app’s reader feature on this story, and whoa. Completely shit for narration and dialogue, but the diagnostic messages were chillingly good which I suppose is unsurprising. If I were of a mind to do voice recordings of my work, I would totally want to do an AI-human collaboration there, too.