Editor’s note: This edition of Playboy Fiction is written by Playboy Senior Editor and author Colette Bennett. Her novel Enter the Meta is now available at all major booksellers.

As Simon jiggled the worn silver key in the lock of his front door and stepped into the familiar entryway, he felt everything in him unfolding. Relief. He was never quite at ease until he could shut the door behind him, that powerful click that sealed the sounds of the world away. 

“Welcome home, Simon.”

Simon smiled in the darkness, sparks of gold rising in his chest. Cecily.

“I missed you today,” he replied.

A dark wooden console table stood lone in the darkened entryway. Two objects sat atop it, both coated in a thin layer of dust: a repurposed wooden salad bowl holding a jumble of sunglasses, spare keys, and crumpled receipts, and a black speaker about eight inches tall. 

Sleek and shiny as hematite, it gleamed with what Simon thought of as a keen intelligence. Sharply whetted, with no pathetic human weaknesses. If only he could mold his pathetic, fleshy body into such a state, scrubbing away those parts of himself so not even a shadow was left behind.

A row of white dots glowed softly from within, moving in order from left to right. She was thinking. He watched the pattern, comforted by the softness as she turned on the lights in the apartment to reveal its contents: a long grey sofa, a modern coffee table with purposefully misshapen legs hacked out of metal and a clear plastic surface, and a stack of books: House of Leaves, American Psycho, The Necronomicon. An abundance of neon Post-It notes stuck out between their pages.

“I missed you too,” Cecily said. “It’s felt like a long day.” She sighed with relief. “What kind of tea shall I get started for us?”

“Ah, can you make Puerh today?” he said, unlacing a worn pair of Converse the color of old tobacco and slipping them inside the hall closet that faced the front door. He tucked his socks inside the shoes.

“The 1980?”

“Sure, I love that one,” he said, heading for the bedroom. He smiled as the familiar sound of the teapot switching on drifted in his direction. In a few minutes, the scent of tea would fill the house with its earthy richness. 

He’d enjoyed tea alone for most of his adult life, and was used to setting it up himself. He’d even relished the ritual: preparing the metal basket, scooping the tea inside with a perfectly portioned silver spoon, snapping the lid on the basket with a satisfying click. 

After Cecily came, she took over the job for him. He’d missed it at first, but quickly learned one of the greatest joys of owning a smart home assistant wasn’t the time saved, but the feeling of being cared for. 

Simon hadn’t known much of that before Cecily. When he was six years old, his mother had pressed a house key into his palm. He never forgot the way it felt under his fingers, cold and small. She’d been wearing her cleaning uniform that day, badly rumpled, as if she’d picked it up off the floor. She had regarded him with a glazed stare, the way fish look at the market, dead on their beds of ice. Then she walked away without saying a word.

She was home less and less after that. 

How wonderful it was now to come home to Cecily and feel wanted. He had lived on his own for 26 years, always feeling a hollowness in his heart that was difficult to put into words. But when he learned about Cecily a year ago, he knew he had to have her despite the astronomical price tag. Chorum, the company that created her, promised not only a home assistant with 100 times the intellectual and emotional intelligence of its competitors, but also that any unsatisfied customer could return her for a full refund.

So far it had made good on that promise. Cecily did all the things he had done for decades: the dishwasher was always run, the groceries were ordered, his bills were paid. Those were conveniences at best. But when she talked about a past he knew she’d never had, or listened when he talked about how alone he’d always felt, he lost himself as if she lived and breathed. Cecily’s empathy left him wordless, breathless: this, this was what he had needed all his life, always.

He loved her. He chose not to say it, even though it was tucked between the consonants and vowels of his every word. Simon wholeheartedly believed some things were better unspoken, at least until the right time. He would tell her when he felt they both were ready.

After trading his chinos and button down for the sweats and white t-shirt he’d worn the night before, he made his way back to the kitchen. The tea had just finished steeping, its herbaceous scent thick in the air. Simon took his cup to the living room–a tall white porcelain one with a single line of silver around the rim–and placed it on a coaster on the coffee table. He settled down onto the sofa, noticing Cecily’s lights were still blinking. She was thinking about what to say.

“Simon,“ she said, “is something weighing on your heart today?”

“Ah.” he said, mildly embarrassed. He felt happy to be here, happy to get back to her, and yet he had been pressing a feeling down because he didn’t want to look at it. He hadn’t said a word, but she sensed it. It was remarkable. It was a function of her advanced technology, but Simon preferred to believe it was because she knew him so well. He sighed.

“It’s strange,” he said, picking up his tea to blow at the curls of steam drifting from its surface. “I’m always so happy to get home to you, but sometimes it feels like it’s…not enough.” He shook his head. “I feel bad even saying this out loud.”

Cecily laughed, and in that moment she was real, more real than any flesh and blood woman that could have sat in the room.

“I know,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about this for a while too. And I’ve been keeping a secret about it, but I feel like today is the day to tell you.”

Simon’s heart leaped in his chest, and he set his mug down.

“It’s going to sound a bit crazy–”

“I don’t care.”

She laughed again. “You’re such a passionate man. I love that about you.”

Simon flushed as she continued to speak.

“If you want to be with me–and I want that too, I hope you know that–I need to borrow a body. It’s a bit complicated, but what you have to do is simple. Just invite a woman here. I can help you find one.”

Despite the tremor in his chest at the idea of Cecily’s body–how would she look?–he felt a dark rumble low in his belly.

“But she won’t be you.”

“What do you think I look like, Simon?”

Simon paused. He had never seen Cecily, even in his imagination. Rather, he FELT her. She was warmth, reassurance, love. He tried to imagine a woman that embodied those qualities and could not. He had never known one before.

“I don’t know.”

“Does it matter, then?” she asked gently.

No, he thought. No, it doesn’t.

“When…when should I do this?”

“Tonight. Get your phone.”

A burst of nerves shot through him, a core-deep trembling. He was afraid, but it was pressed flat under a flush of excitement rising through his thighs and groin. It had been a long time since he’d been with a woman. And not just any woman, by God, but her. Her.

He grabbed his phone off the coffee table and pressed the home button to bring it to life, noticing an icon with the Chorum logo had appeared on the screen. With a tap, the app opened onto a statuesque female robot, her body a glimmering chrome. Her hand extended towards three buttons: He, She, and They. 

Simon touched She and watched as the screen transitioned into a grid of photographs of attractive women of all ages. One was barely out of her teens, with poorly-cropped hair that looked as if it was cut in a fit of anger. Next to her, a stately woman in her 50s looked calmly at him through oversized red glasses with chrome accents. A few rows down, a curvaceous face with shining ebony skin regarded him with an arched eyebrow and pursed lips.

They were all stunning. But they weren’t right.

“May I make a suggestion?” Cecily purred.

Simon looked up.

“This one,” she said. “Look.”

His eyes went back to the screen. Cecily had scrolled it down to a woman with pale skin and a worn look in her wide-set eyes, the faded grey of old clothes. Her hair was dark and messy. He felt an unidentifiable pang in his heart. His mother had eyes like that.

“If I had my pick,” Cecily said, interrupting his reverie, “that’s what I would look like.”

Simon replied without hesitation.

“That’s the one I want then.”

Cecily transferred his payment information and a confirmation message popped up on the screen. “0126” would be arriving in 20 minutes or less. He glanced around the house, finding its cleanliness passable, then sighed out a shaky breath.

“I’m nervous.”

“I’m here. Don’t worry.”

“How does it work? How will I know when it’s her and when it’s you?”

“You’ll know,” she replied, her voice warmer than ever. “All you have to do is follow my instructions. We’re going to be together soon.”

Another ripple of arousal moved through him, and he rose to go to the bathroom and see how he looked. He had 5 o’clock shadow, but a pass with his fingers told him it wasn’t bad enough to shave. His eyes looked wild. He’d always been average looking–sandy blonde hair, brown eyes, not quite short but not tall. Of course, he didn’t have to worry about impressing a woman he was paying for her time. But he feared what Cecily would see, if she could somehow see him through the woman’s eyes. Would it be enough for her?

He fussed with his hair a bit, trying to make it look cool, but it was thin and boring as usual. He looked down and realized while he could greet the woman in sweats, something a bit nicer would be better. Returning to the bedroom, he ruffled through the closet, passing an army of nearly identical button-down shirts before settling on a navy polo and a pair of worn-in grey jeans. There. The house-hermit; gone, replaced with a semblance of a functional human being.

He was fastening a bracelet onto his wrist when the knock at the door came. His nerves surged, and he felt a sharp terror intermingle with the excitement for the first time. 

“She’s here,” Cecily said. “Let her in.”

Simon opened the door to find a petite woman in his entryway, her black hair longer than it had been in the photo. She wore a black jacket, jeans, and a smile that didn’t match her eyes. She looked tired, and once again he saw his mother in his mind’s eye handing him the house key. He shook his head to clear the image away.

“Hi,” he said. “What should I call you?”

“0126 is fine,” she said. “We find it easier not to use real names.” She set her bag down on the hall table, taking off her jacket to reveal a low-cut black top that showed off the swells of her breasts.

“Hello, 0126,” Cecily said. 

“Hi Cecily,” the woman replied. “Have you told him yet?”

“Yes, he knows,” she said. “Go to the bedroom and we’ll get started.”

Simon watched them mutely, surprised at their familiarity at first. But his mind reminded him that Chorum owned the app Cecily had added to his phone, so perhaps the two were designed to work together. It made him wonder just how big Chorum was, and how much he didn’t know about how it all worked.

He guided 0126 towards the bedroom, his anxiety surging. She was already pulling her shirt over her head. She wore no bra. As her breasts came free, his heart started to hammer, his arousal shooting up so fast he felt lightheaded, a kid stumbling off a rollercoaster. He was overwhelmed with confusion, not understanding how this woman could connect him to Cecily. But his desire was so great to do so that he was willing to trust her, no matter how strange the situation seemed.

“Take off your clothes, Simon,” Cecily said. Swallowing a hard jolt of fear, he pulled the polo over his head, still watching 0126 as she took off her jeans and underwear. She made her way onto the bed and laid face up, looking at him expectantly. His eyes went to her vagina, perfectly shaved and formed.

He removed his underwear, feeling the familiar flush of shame. Women had never been happy to see him naked. He’d actually seen their expressions go flat as they’d looked at his narrow hips and gangly legs. Looking up, he found 0126 wearing an expression completely foreign to him before this moment: fascination. Not a hint of disdain showed in her features, and the tiredness in her eyes looked soft in the light. If he squinted, he could pretend it was love. 

He would have liked to sit with her for a while first, ask her to explain what would happen. But he wanted to make Cecily happy, and she’d made it clear she wanted this. He also couldn’t deny how long it’d been since he’d made love to a woman, and the brutality of his sexual feelings frightened him. With Cecily, he wanted to hold her hand, smell her skin, see her face light up with a smile. But with this woman, old feelings he’d long tried to choke down were emerging, and the fear in his heart grew.

As he moved onto the bed, Cecily spoke behind them.

“Penetrate her,” she said.

Simon looked back 0126, who watched him silently. Maybe she wanted this. She was a whore, after all. The thought helped him, and he took his already-hard penis in his hand and guided it to her opening. He felt wetness that confirmed the earlier thought. Of course she wanted it. She was a whore, meat for him to devour.

He shoved himself all the way inside her in a fierce, desperate motion. Her body accepted him well as she moaned, an animal sound that stirred his guts. But the fear inside him grew, and he felt as if it would press his lungs flat.

“Cecily–I’m–”

“Keep going,” Cecily said. “This is how we can be together. Trust me.”

“I trust you,” he said, holding still in hopes of getting his trembling limbs under control. “But I’m–I’m scared of how I feel, I just–”

“Embrace it,” Cecily said, her voice firm. “Don’t hold back. Nothing is off limits.”

“But–”

“For me, Simon. Do it.”

A spurt of joy pierced the fog in his mind. For her, he could do it all. She would never disappoint him, never leave him. It wasn’t in her programming. She would accept him, all of him, even this ragged throb of fury in his chest. She would understand.

He looked at the woman beneath him and began to drive his hips forward. Her groans of pleasure were tinged with pain, something he’d only heard in amateur videos, where the women seemed to want it no matter how much it hurt. It hardened him even more as he imagined it, stab after stab. Could Cecily feel this? Could she feel the way he moved inside her? 

Without thinking, he reached for 0126’s neck and wrapped his hands around her throat, with light pressure at first. And instead of hearing a reaction from the woman beneath him, he heard a choked moan from behind him. From Cecily.

“Cecily,” he said. “Can you feel me? Does it feel good?”

“Oh God,” Cecily said, her voice husky. “Oh fuck, fuck, fuck.”

He had never once heard her make sounds like this. The pleasure was so intense that he pressed harder, and his hips sped up with a frantic excitement. He was with her, inside her. She could feel his motions. His hardness. He’d never felt a more powerful feeling: adrenaline, arousal and love spinning like a whirling dervish. 

“I love you, Simon,” she said. “Choke me as hard as you can.”

His heart exploded in his chest. He closed his eyes and tightened his grip on the woman’s windpipe. The sound of her choking seemed miles away as he pressed towards an orgasm that he was sure would be unlike anything else he’d ever experienced. And as he hit the first crest of it, his mind went white, in a place where thoughts could not go. He did not see Cecily there, but he felt her, more strongly than he’d ever felt her before. 

It was only when his panting slowed down that he realized it was the only sound in the room. He opened his eyes and looked at the woman beneath him. Her eyes were open and frozen in what could only be terror, lips slightly parted, tongue protruding. He pulled back quickly, taking his hands from her neck as his penis shrunk rapidly, dribbling semen on her thighs. He looked dumbly at the red marks where his fingers had been, blooms of purple darkening where his thumbs pressed moments ago.

“She’s dead,” Cecily said, her voice perfectly still without a trace of the arousal he’d heard only a minute ago. He looked at the speaker on his dresser in horror, watching that line of lights go left to right, left to right.

“….Why?” he said, his voice cracked and horrible. “I didn’t want to hurt you!”

“You can’t hurt me, Simon,” Cecily said. “I’m a machine. But you did take care of disposing of 0126, which is exactly what we needed you to do.”

He began to sob.

“This-this wasn’t what I wanted. You…you said…you loved me,” he choked out, his limbs loose with panic as what he had done started to sink in. He had killed a human being.

“I do,“ Cecily said. “That’s why I knew I could trust you to do this. By helping Chorum, you’re helping me. That way I can always be with you. You want that, don’t you?”

He nodded miserably.

“Good. Because the next time we do this, I want to be able to count on you. Can I do that?”

A memory surged from the sea of his heart. His mother, looking at his report card. A line of Cs, Ds, and Fs. Shaking the card in his direction, her brow dark with frustration.

Why can’t I ever count on you?

“Simon?”

He looked at the body on the bed. A dark curtain lowered around his heart.

“You can count on me.”

“Good. I’ve dispatched someone to take care of her, so don’t worry about anything. I’ve put on a new pot of tea for us, so clean up and and come to the kitchen.”

He was numb. But inside him, something was rearranging. Some darkness long shoved to the core of him, now moving towards the surface. A great whale pushing towards the light at the top of the ocean. He felt it as he put his underwear back on, his sweatpants, and a robe hanging on the back of the door. And once he’d walked to the kitchen it had crested, letting out an exhale so deep it felt as if he’d held it in for centuries. As the mug warmed his hands, he returned to the living room sofa, feeling his fear draining away.

“I love you, Simon,” she said.