Cleaning time 1

 A cute wife is a crucial part of her husband’s ongoing nanotechnology work. She just doesn’t know it.

“Hey, you promised you’d pick up the place. ”

My wife, being my wife. I played dumb and looked up distractedly from my laptop. “Uh?”

She looked sad, annoyed. “The place. While I was working. You said you’d pick it up. ”

She gestured around the living room. Plates, bottles, wrappers, dust. The hair of Gunther, our black lab. I’m sure it smelled of me, too. I pretty much lived in this room and didn’t go much of anywhere these days.

“Oh. Right. Sorry. I got caught up in this project. ” I gestured at the laptop.

Her face brightened. “Freelance? You got work?”

I nodded. “A little. Not long term. But some cash. ”

She leaned in to kiss my forehead. “Cool. Still wish you’d tidied up, though. Maybe while I’m at the gym?”

That’d be about two hours. Perfect. 

   “Sure, no problem. I’ll close up shop here. And get dinner ready. ”

She smiled, kissed my forehead again, and went off to get into her workout clothes.

I’d been laid off from my job at the lab about six months earlier. A big company had bought my little company. But the tech I’d been developing had been easy to sneak out. My little side project. It was coming in handy, for my freelance work.

I launched the app, checked her biometrics-baseline looked good. A couple keystrokes got her dopamine receptors primed, and a couple more readied her pleasure centers. Memory, personality, will, inhibitions . . . horribly easy, this tech. 

   Where would it be in 18 years? 100 years? I don’t know if I’d want to live in a society with that sort of tech, but I was more than happy to have it right now.

I launched another app and brought the cameras and microphones online. Tiny green lights sprinkled throughout the house came to life. You wouldn’t notice them unless you’d placed the cameras yourself, though.

All right. Let’s earn your keep, hubby.

My wife walked out of the bedroom, ready for the gym in a black sports bra, black yoga pants, and pink workout shoes. She’s short—about five foot and change—and tight-bodied. Slender. Not curveless, exactly, but not curvy, either. Healthy eating, healthy lifestyle. Cute. That was a good word for my wife—she was cute, and appealing. People gravitated to her because she seemed nice, and fun, and spunky, and open, all of which she was. That’s why I was drawn to her. 

   That’s why I fell in love with her.

“All right,” she said. She looked a little flushed—no surprise, there. The dopamine and pleasure centers were priming all her pumps. “Emily is running the class tonight. Expect me to come back nasty. ”

“I’m counting on it,” I said, pressing the track pad on my laptop.

“Whhhaaaoooohhh,” she said. She always said that. She shuddered, exhaled, and her eyes glazed over. No, her whole expression glazed over. Her shoulders dropped. A body in control of itself, no matter how relaxed, always has a little self-aware tension about itself. But not my wife’s body. Not now. 

   All the yoga and meditation and other hippie shit in the world couldn’t produce the state she was in.

She smiled a dim and dopey smile, happier than any self-possessed human could be. I smiled at my mouthbreather wife and considered what the market wanted.

“How you feeling, baby? Good?”

“Yeahhh,” she said. She was always a little slurry, like she was tipsy. At first I considered it a bug, but now I liked it as a feature. “Happy. ” And, biting her lower lip, she touched her crotch. “Horny. ”

“Hands off, baby. You know that doesn’t belong to you right now. ”

She pouted, but her hands dropped to her side.

I mulled over our finances. I hadn’t worked for a while. Fuck it, I thought. 

   We need money. Let’s go big.

With a few more keystrokes, I alerted a subset of clients. Shortly, their chat icons began popping up, signaling their paying attendance. Five, ten, fifteen, twenty . . . . finally, 27. Twenty-seven visitors paying $60 for an hour-long show. $1620. I’d put half of that into my wife’s retirement account. She’s helping me earn it, after all.

Ready to go. I waved at the cameras and smiled, and my wife did the same. 

My smart, waking wife didn’t know about the cameras and her audience, but this dumb, slurry one did.

“Welcome, all,” I said. “Glad you could make it. We’re ready for you. Right, baby?”

“Yessssss. . . . ”

“So, baby, our home’s a mess, isn’t it?”

“Yep,” she said. She looked around dreamily. “ fucking pigsty. ”

“Well, your guys out there want to see you to clean it up. Get to work. ”

“Okey-dokey,” she said, blowing a sloppy kiss at the camera. And she started picking up plates from the floor. 

 Comments started coming in. Naked, said one. Strip the bitch, said another. Most were like that.

“Hey, babe,” I said. “Not like that. Cameras are rolling, right?”

She addressed her audience. “Y’wanna see me naaaaaked?”

“You know it, baby. A woman who cleans should do it naked. Take that shit off. ”

My wife pulled her sports bra off over her head. Her pale white boobs bounced out, pink nipples erect. Then she kicked off her shoes used her toes to pull off her socks. Finally, she tucked her thumbs into her yoga pants, pushed them down, and kicked them away, a neatly trimmed triangle of light brown hair fluffing free. The whole time she was seducing the camera, biting her lower lip. 

“Better?” She wasn’t talking to me; she was talking to all the people watching her.

Messages popped up. So much better, said one. Collar her like a fucking dog, said another. Wish my cunt of a wife would clean the house like that, said a third.

“They love you, baby,” I said. “They’re happy as fuck. ”

My wife perked up. “Fuck? You boys wanna see me fuck?”

Comments flooded my feed. A bunch of viewers, knowing what was coming, wanted to rush to the end. “They want the grand finale, baby. But we’re not ready to give them that, are we?”

“No,” she said, giggling. “Not yet. I have to cleeaaaaan first. 

   Right?”

“Damn straight. The place is a fucking pit. ”

“A fuck pit, you mean. ” And she laughed.

I inwardly rolled my eyes. Having a dim, horny wife meant she thought everything was funny.

...That was part of this bimbo-ish persona, but I got a little tired of it....

A suggestion flickered up on the screen. I liked it. “Hey, babe. Why don’t you put back on your socks and shoes? Just those, nothing else. ” My wife sat and pulled back on her footies and pink workout shoes. Standing, she looked like a fit, adorable, and somewhat stoned nudist jogger.

“Looking good, love,” I said. “Almost there. 

   C’mere. ” I gestured, and she leaned in so I could whisper in her ear. She giggled, scampered off to our bedroom, and returned moments later wearing a pink dog collar.

The audience let loose with the comment-board equivalent of catcalls. FUCK YEAH, said one. Get that cunt on all fours, said another. Thank God, a woman that knows its place.

Jesus Christ. So much hate against women. And this was my wife, after all—show a little respect. But I stayed professional and hid my dismay. This was just business, after all.

“All right, baby. Now get cleaning. Do it fast. 

   As much as you can do in about 45 minutes. ”

And for the next three-quarters of an hour, that’s what she did: Wearing only pink tennis shoes and a pink dog collar, she cleaned the living room, the kitchen, and the upstairs bathroom. Cameras in each room showed her work in fine detail—all the picking up, vacuuming, dusting, emptying the dishwasher, scrubbing the linoleum. I monitored the comment feed. Activities that required bending over got great praise, as did any actions that made her boobs swing and sway. Scrubbing floors and the bathtub, which did both, led to cheering.

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