This piece originally appeared at Purple Prose Parody Contest.

[Note to Editor: John, baby, what we need here is the image of a large, bare-chested man with flowing locks engaged in anatomically impossible clinch with swooning woman. Or if you want to go high concept, let's try that literary sci-fi classic, a babe in a bronze bra being carried off by sentient sushi waving tentacles and eyes stalks. Your call.]

RoboRock threw the beauteous Blossom down on the bed. "My processors are lusting mightily for you," he rumbled. At least, he attempted a rumble. It had been a while since his bio-augmented series Q vocal cords had been serviced, so his Zeus-like voice lacked its usual thunder. At any rate, today the human-computer-technogadget-screwdriver-hunk had a different type of servicing on his mind.

RoboRock, you see, stood six foot six, with a bod like you wouldn't believe. Then again, maybe you would, if you read romance novels. Anyway, the studly sir had a few minor oddities, such as not being human, but nothing drastic. Besides, said oddities weren't obvious to the naked eye. Or the naked heroine. Except she wasn't naked yet.

"Oh, no!" cried Blossom. "Don't rectify my resistance with your robust resonance."

RoboRock blinked. "What?"

"It's a metaphor, Robo."

He took her hands in his. "I'll mix your metaphors, my dear."

Watching him through half-closed lids, the intrigued Blossom murmured, "Do tell."

Being a cyber-stud of action rather than words, and mindful of the writer's credo to "show don't tell," the obliging Robo lowered his ever-so virile cyberself onto her ever-so comely curves and smothered her swollen lips with kisses. Technically, of course, her lips shouldn't swell until after the osculation activities, but hey, who cares?

Finally he lifted his head, which was a good thing because the breathless Blossom was close to asphyxiation. His eyes lingered on her body. Then he picked them up and put them back in their sockets.

"Good grief," Blossom said.

"Darn," Robo said. "I thought I got that fixed." He let go of her hands and grasped her bodice-encased bosom, which promptly heaved out of his grip. However, the ring he was wearing caught on her neckline and ripped open the front of her dress, which allowed the author to do bodice-ripping events in a politically correct manner.

The de-bodiced Blossom gasped as a chill breathed across her bodacious bounty of bosomy behemoths. Robo lowered his head and laved her levs with lusto gusto. (You know. He partook of her lacy pink confections.)

"Oh, my," said Blossom. She would have swooned a great deal more, with gasps, moans, back arches, and so on, except that she was a copy-editor in her other life, when she wasn't having her circuits coupled, so she blue-penciled the purple prose.

We thus come to the moment when the hero tears the heroine's clothes to shreds, unable to control his passion.

Oh, sorry. Blossom says she shops at Saks even though she can't afford it and that if Robo rips up her clothes she won't have anything to wear. So we have to cancel the shred-producing activities.

Anyway, Robo stripped off her clothes and tossed them on the floor. Then he took off his bursting-at-the-seams shirt. We're talking cyberbabe deluxe here. His bronzed, powerful body defied all literary adjectives created to extol the beauty of the male form, or at least those literary forms in genres where writers aren't supposed to lust over male hunkitude. The muscles of his chest rippled, as do all muscles of strong and aggressive yet at the same time gently sensitive alpha-beta-gamma-deltoid men. Next he zapped the zip, rigged the mast, tattled the tail, viced the versa, and otherwise revealed the mixing his aforementioned metaphor.

At this point, I had all sorts of delectable prose about how the beguiled Blossom bloomed. However, a problem arose. When Robo lowered himself onto the sweet Blossom, he froze.

After waiting a moment, she said, "Robo?"

"404 Not Found," Robo said. "The requested URL was not found on this server: Please return to the referring document and note the hypertext link that led you here."

It seems Robo had forgotten to update his web links.

The End (Well, not really. But they turned out the light.)

Catherine Asaro writes romantic science fiction books. Tor publishes her Skolian empire books and Bantam publishes her near future suspense novels. Her novel The Last Hawk and her novella "Aurora in Four Voices" are currently on the final Nebula ballot. Her book Catch the Lightning won the 1997 Sapphire Award for best science fiction romance.