Vignettes from a Corporate Family

Vignettes from a Corporate Family

Chapter 1 - A Gilded Cage

It certainly didn't seem like the place to start any sort of corporate dissent. Just a summer pool that converted into skate rink for a few weeks every winter. Somewhere in the middle were three men and a lady, seemingly enjoying the sun.

A lanky old Hispanic spoke up first. "They got you huh" A rotund Chinese man snapped back. "You're one to talk, Rodrigo. They got you too."

"Lighten up, Francis." A Dominican built like a monk and even named Monk tweaked his sunglasses down to stare at his bickering friends. "They got us all good. And anyway where IS Chen?"

Francis (for that was what the chubby 40ish guy called himself) shrugged. "Too busy pounding the streets with Lipkinski. Some young dood he picked up from... I mean, in... logistics. Sent us his wife to apologise and accompany us again. Honestly, Monk... a corporate town this big is still hard to stay discreet in."

The brunette smiled dazedly, sloshing the waters near the edges of her swim bed. "I did think it was a good day for sunbathing. So I figured I'd come for the occasion."

Monk dropped his sunglasses and gazed upon Sheila's form... tanned Amazonian goddess.... then put his glasses back on. "Yeah, Chen was one of the first generation that put its backs into building this town up. I'd say he's entitled to that."

Rodrigo piped up. "Well, the pay is good..."

Francis yelped. "But it's in Arendtcoins! Sheila, would you kindly tell this gentleman what Arendtcoins are?"

Sheila's started whirring faintly for a few seconds... "Arendtcoins are a corporate currency used to facilitate assignments of resources within the Arendtcore family both as a corporate entity as well as within the corporate town of Little Sanctuary, Minnesota. This information is credited to Wikipedia."

Rodrigo deadpans. "Sheila, would you kindly tell this gentleman what 1000 Arendtcoins goes for currently in US dollars and where that roughly puts Arendtcore as a employer?

Sheila took a few more seconds to process this... "the current exchange rate at the Arendtcore Corporate Store for employees is 1000 Arendtcoin to 175 point 33 US dollars. Based on 2080 comparisons across the New United States of America, Arendtcore pays its employees better than 99% of other companies of similar size."

Francis stuttered "but they probably expect us to keep buying stuff from them. Isn't that the point of a corporate store?"

Rodrigo deadpanned. "Everything is designed to Lighten your wallet faster if that were the case. I'm still wearing shirts I bought decades ago and boots that still sing lullabies to my feet after years of weekend and holiday hikes. That's not cheap corporate crap is it?"

Francis whimpered. "But that Arendtcore logo from the early days was so cringe... I saw it on the corporate store when they reissued it on our free 60th anniversary kit and it looked so archaic."

Martin sighed. "Resorting to emotion when you've lost on fact is the defence of a debate loser. Besides, most of us wear ours with pride! Now can we ease up on the lookup tennis before we have to explain to Chen exactly why we're buying him dinner tonight?"

Chapter 2 - This much effort for jack shit?

Somewhere deep in Little Sanctuary, an interloper popped open a hatch and gently bounced into the entry lobby of a server... the hacker had scanned a few thousand Little Sanctuary servers and lucked into this particularly odd group of servers that connected deep into Arendtcore. possibly a top honcho's home workstation or external fileshares lazily added to the company's systems either behind the back of or over the heads of the IT security staff. This would be so profitable, he mused, wondering what could be had once he broke into Arendtcore proper.

the first sign he should have been more careful was when he crashed into the initial entry layer, He had sworn that the port was going to stay open... what he hadn't accounted for was how it kept randomizing across the surface he was trying to pass through. no, not just pseudorandomly... there was almost a strange sort of.... true randomness in whatever the heck was calling the shots, like an actual unbiased bingo game set.... it took several painful slams into ports closing at the last moment before he'd wiggled his way in.

What kind of devious maniac could have have done this?

The butterfly was a beautiful purple and black as it fluttered across Elliot's closed eyes, his body casting ripples of shadows across the lawn alongside splashes of torn grass. On his ears, he wore a chunky pair of headphones, designed to somehow incorporate a music player within it. Mother Ammi had calmly handed him a music cartridge she had personally burnt and cracked the writeprotect tab on, along with the headphones, after their second dance practice session.

He suddenly opened his eyes right as the butterfly flew around, right in front of his face.

The Gdanzeland people did not follow many of the scales, beats or even sensibilities of Western or African music. They had slowly come up with forms the same way they always had, just sampling from mother nature and coming as close to it as they could in their art... their music, their dance, their sculptures.

It was beautifully ethereal. It was also wickedly random. A watcher process could do terrible things eavesdropping on the motion data from a little boy doing the Y'tole Lemme basic forms for practice... seed a random number generator that breathed down the neck of true randomness, for example. And that could be used for other nefarious deeds like...

He did not like it. The server map had promised a straight short route from here into Arendtcore. So why had it come to this? He was now running on some sort of hexagonal patterned carpet that already felt all wrong just from its look, having opened a door that for some inexplicable reason had become a sort of wooden elevator door.

"No problem, I'll just turn around and choose-" the interloper paused.

The elevator call buttons were gummies. No, not the soft smooshy type of switches they used on some throwaway cheap modern consumer stuff - actual soft candy rounds of jelly carefully tossed in sugar...

As if to emphasise something or other, the interloper stared as a pair of lips appeared around then started chewing on the gummies, making a soft set of purring noises, before burping... "What are you looking at, perv? Show's over. Get going before I call the Groo on you!"

As if on cue, the other lift doors opened, revealing... something indescribable, standing in a dark hallway, lit dimly and occasionally by bursts of erratic electrical lighting.

The interloper couldn't even begin to describe what it was. What he knew was that he didn't want to be right next to it. And as the distance between the doorway and the Indescribable grew smaller with each flash of lighting, he realised he could do only one reasonable thing.

He started running. This was going to start eating at his neural coherence if he over did it and was usually just reserved for emergency... well this was an emergency.

He kept going and going... perhaps he may have gone too far. He collapsed just an inch or two from the door at the end of the hallway he'd been trying to reach. Only the safeties in his gear had cut him off before he'd burnt the last embers of his NC...

He was going to have one hell of a vacation with the proceeds of this heist. Somewhere away from the dour Scottish gloom. Provencal, perhaps... he'd always wanted to try real wine and real food from a people who hadn't ruined their own farming...

That silly thought stabilised him as he grabbed the doorknob and pushed himself through and into the next room

The interloper blinked again. And again. No. This room had forced a monochrome filter over his eyes and for some reason it disrespected even the emergency releases these virtualizations had normally. Still, it seemed safe... just a dark room, with a warm comforting sofa in front of a older pre-Despotic Years ... television set, that was what his pawpaw had always called them was it?...

He sat down on the sofa and as if on cue the TV started playing an old toy commercial for some doll named "Build It Bailey". It was oddly comforting as the singsong cheerfully announced the special qualities of the toy: a near-authentic overalls and shirt like those worn by construction workers of the era, right down to the mud stains. Several varieties of doll hair color. A very basic AI that did two things: it dispensed random construction-themed sweets if you told Bailey he was "neat", and launched into an animated song and dance about whichever tool the doll came packed with out of a possible 7.

As the interloper stretched a little, feeling better after a few loops of the ad had given way back to white noise, he noticed three things:

1. The door he had come in through was gone. 2. There was no other obvious way out. 3. There was a brand new condition Build It Bailey doll next to where he was sitting

The interloper considered his options, slowly deciding that he would take the L it needed by getting ejected automatically by the server's own timeout detection, in about 2 minutes. He looked at the doll... then decided to just have fun anyway. "I think you're pretty neat, Mr Bailey..."

"Thanks mate, have sweet. My dear mama freshly made." The doll fished in its overalls and handed the interloper a small cake of sorts shaped like a toy screw.

The interloper eyed the cake suspiciously - everything in this system was a representation of something. This could be a trap, or it could be... delicious? He blinked as he realised his body had just bit down on it without much pause. The faint texture of cranberry sauce on buttered shortbread lingered on his breath and fingers, crumbs on the sofa.

He wept... then bawled as the server finally called time and kicked him out totally. All that work for just a cranberry shortbread biscuit!?

.... it had been the best biscuit he'd ever tasted, real or virtualized, mind.

Chapter 4 - A Directed, Soundtracked and narrated past

Stephan Alberg gritted his teeth furiously as he re-read the judicial judgement that had signalled only the beginning of his reputational downslide. He had managed to prove that the allegations of him being too handy with had been fabricated - he was free of the lie... or rather he should have been. In Hallerwood, lies like that had a habit of forever fouling one's career, even when one had proven themselves genuinely innocent by alibi, kept evidence and even investigative work that had placed the director's wife far far away from him when it had supposedly happened. She had continued the lie, and it would take time to litigate her out of his misery, even with the lower standards imposed in a civic trial (that he clearly could pass when it had been a criminal court case held against him by bribed officials)

Stephan sighed and sat down in his trailer. It had seen better days, but he had redirected craft and food services fees towards fighting what many had thought was a losing defence. The conditions reflected that neglect - he had piled up dirty laundry, and he had been living on food that had been far from healthy. Stephan had counted on the return of people to his door, begging him to produce their vidflix once again, even just short half-hour flix intended for the home streamer. He would NOT lower himself any further to doing nasty little five-minute or two-minute shorts...

Stephan opened another small bag of chips and wept. Perhaps he should just give up altogether, resettle in another place with a good film industry. Europe had several smaller but thriving places. India was rising. the Zealands had their own share of the home video and theater pies... Or even worse, he could just sell this trailer, walk out for good, and vanish into some other career. He'd always wanted to try his hand at book illustration. The earlier he decided, the more resources he had left over even after his hard won fight for justice that he could throw at his choices. And the clock was ticking - the later he'd left it, the less room he'd have to maneuver and refuse offers...

There was a knock on the door. The Craftwerks trailer park had a base level of services onto which various services could be tacked. It was all he could do to afford the basic rental which gave him the trailer space, a sparse amount of power, water and basic sanitation, and a listing by which others could find him in the filmography trades. That listing also doubled as a way to reach him with physical mail. In this case, a slightly thick handwritten letter. The envelope was pale blue, and a monogrammed logo had been stamped on it with a cursive "M.K." into a blob of dark blue satin wax, denoting it had been sealed somewhere, and delivered all the way to his doorstep. The M.K. could only belong to one actor he'd helped out a lot ages ago, back when he could afford to be generous with his advice and even his seed funding. Some of it had backfired, some of it had paid off... Martin Krauffer was a little autistic, but he had become a great director and kept his name up in lights for over three decades...

Then the little crazed man had suddenly announced he had a major new project that would change things, and fell right off the face of the earth. many had fondly remembered his lunacy, but in this town, they forgot you mostly after a matter of months. You vanished for almost everyone but the connoisseurs of fine film after a year or two.. Oh sure you could maybe have a comeback in the right circumstances - this was a weird town, but if you didn't keep your name up in visibility somehow, walking off the set was tantamount to a sort of suicide. It really hadn't been his own choice to commit said suicide, but he'd been so stressed gathering everything he needed to set the record straight, that his reputation had clearly withered away anyway from neglect even if he hadn't become vilified.

So what, really, was Martin Krauffer doing, summoning him? The director had suddenly written this letter with the wax seals and all... even spent extra postage on just writing his name and general state location down and leaving it to the postals to look up the local trades and find his name somewhere in the listings. Stephan hadn't exactly made himself very easy to find... Dear Stephan,

It delights me so very much to hear that you have beaten the nasty and unfounded allegations. It has been a year since the judgement, I understand. You must be wallowing in so much work right now, the world now embracing you without the stench of those odious claims...

Or maybe you aren't exactly that fortunate. I do recall how many such good people fortunate to clear their names still don't clear the air enough to return to employability, or they may remain in a continued vendetta by those who got them into unemployment in the first place. Or perhaps... you aren't really as innocent as they claim, and only the high standards of criminal prosecution have spared you a prison term or fines... but not the continued opprobium of your peers.

I refuse to make such judgements. What I remember is a dazzling producer who could put together a great movie on the budget given, the people given, and the sets allowed. A man who lifted me up back in the good old days. It was such a shame we never got to work together before I left for Brazil.

I'd like to change that. I appreciate I'm not really helping much with the luggage allowances and the class of plane I've booked, but nobody has business or first class seats on the routes to Raijin Cove but the extremely monied on private flights... still, if you would kindly give me at least a few days of your time, I'd like to meet you on the set of that strange endeavor I once prided myself on joining. I am still lacking in regrets, and I want to share my good fortune with you, if you'll only let me.

Tickets attached on the next weekly flight path from California to Brazil and onwards to Raijin Cove. I look forward to your favorable reply, that is to say, meeting you in person. It is the least I can do for you now after all that you have done for me.

Yours in anticipation, Martin Krauffer Arendtcore HC Studios - Raijin Cove - Unit 3 Stephan Alberg blinked, then checked and found a slowliner ticket. Lacking in luxury, Martin had said. This was clearly bullshit - there were three reasons you took a slowliner into the skies - the high quality of services during the prolonged flights, the ability to reach places that could never host a Boeing takeoff or landing in any size airliner, and the immense economy of such a flight relative to a powered airliner.

Twelve days later, a slowliner touched down in the strange Chinajapese protectorate of Raijin Cove... home to a peculiar strain of creativity simultaneously embraced and yet also terrifying those who would take in its productions. He shrugged as he walked out of the lift that carried passengers into and out of the slowliner. Stephan's luggage contained several days of clothing that he'd managed to get laundered in the skies (part of the room service even at inner stateroom level), as well as a few favors.

It was time to see why Martin Krauffer had dragged his beaten down posterior all the way to this strange take on Casablanca. Hopefully it wasn't drugs.

He would soon find out it was something far better. And far worse.

Just as he always had done before committing, Stephan had arrived a day ahead of his announced date of arrival, in order to case the joint that he would potentially be working at. He walked around, spoke to the locals, bought several rounds of the local main brew of choice Tsingtao Jiazui - a German style pilsner, flavored with a few legal but questionable additivies for an added kick.

To his credit, Stephan had stopped drinking it after the effects of his first draft, and now stuck to chilled chrysanthenum tea, which was known as a cheat that lacked the mule's kick of the brew, but not its warm yellow color when properly brewed and iced overnight. But that brew had loosened tongues, and he was impressed by what he'd put together.

The studio was constantly utilized most hours of most days. Aside from a few big sound stages, most production was done in the same trailers as in Hollywood, except upmodded to keep things dry and cool in them despite the heat and moistness of Raijin Cove. The compound was of similar size as other classic studios he'd worked at, but slightly larger to support a bigger pre- and post-production phase.

Much like the rest of the cove, they used a mix of English, Chinese, Japanese and Brazilian dialects to communicate their work needs and activities - if you knew at least one of those languages, there was possibly a place for you within its hallowed fencing. Some productions would call for other languages as well, and there was also always room for linguists in several other European and Asian languages specifically within the compounds of HC Studios...

The tech level was also bumped up several notches relative to most of Brazil - this was a sort of tech corridor as well - your modern smartdevice would do comms properly to the rest of the world, the water and sanitation were world-class, though the power occasionally cycled into brief moments of outage, Endeavors requiring more stable power were advised to pack a UPS in the middle to smooth out said glitches for durations of up to a day or two. The Chinajapese Empire was assisting the Brazil government to fix this small black mark on what was proving to be a very promising Free City governed away from the strictures of Brazilian law mostly. There was even talk of building actual apartments and purely-for-living homes at scale through a larger piece of the Cove.

The sky was the limit. And Stephan felt like he'd walked into a good place. Enough delays. Time to let Martin know he'd availed himself of his offer.

The gate guard had called for a cloth-roofed jalopy as soon as he'd produced the letter Martin had sent him. As they traversed a myriad of trailers, Location Houses, and various types of set houses, Stephan marvelled at how especially busy the studios were. Every street had at least some cargo transferring, gear being prepped, or even a sleepy FX artist tired from too many hours trying to make a effect work either on computer or as a practically deployed trick.

Eventually the jalopy dropped him in front of a subcompound of sorts filled with lots of the same things, just enclosed and in smaller numbers compared to the outside of the chain fencing. Just how big was Martin Krauffer in this town, Stephan had wondered... He took a deep breath and rang the bell button on the large gate in front of him, noting the use of "M.K - Unit 3" on a placard on one of the gate bollards.

He would get in. but getting out would eventually prove to be much harder. Not necessarily for unpleasant reasons, mind you....

Chapter 5 - The good Director And The Doctor of Unit 3

Martin Krauffer was playing a lute to a very young woman. She couldn't have been more than 18. In fact, given her gamine, youthful looks, it was quite possible her existence was on the wrong side of those tracks. Martin didn't care, he'd looked very fulfilled.

Stephan Alberg stumbled into this peaceful picture on an emptied out set, closed apparently for lunch - when these people had leisure they really went hard. A normal set would always have quite a few folks working at any time even during lunchtime except on special occasions. Here, it was just the director who had demanded his presence enough to pay for his slowliner fare both ways, in case Stephan found out that he did not want to be part of Unit 3 and wanted back home to Hallywood to slowly die in silence, and a short-haired brunette minx in workout pants and a sleeveless, collarless T-shirt. The girl turned her head to look at Stephan... "Martin, dear? we have visitors."

Martin stopped in mid lute riff, putting it back in its case. "Oh, do we now, Minnie? Why, it's Stephan Alberg. The man who helped make me all those years ago... here to see if he has a life in the Cove with us..." He got up and clapped hands on Stephan's arms, beaming happily. "We will make you a happier man than those bastards in Hallywood ever have. But where are my manners? you must meet the man who keeps us all healthy in this tropical hotzone... Doctor Selmuhng? Doctor Selmuhng... we have a visitor who needs your innoculations!" A tired old man shuffled out of a nearby trailer in a worn doctor's coat, smiling. "And I keep telling you never to wake me up at lunchtime. a lot of us do want our siestas." Doctor Selmuhng paused to take stock of Stephan, before nodding. "Ah... just a word of advice, newcomer, I need you to visit my trailer during work hours at least once during the next few days. Raijin Cove has been mostly domesticated but we still get the occasional nasty in our veins and... well, it's a pain in the ass to have to medevac anyone out of this town when we only have two copters to fly people out of here immediately to the nearest hospital... three hours away."

Stephan looked relaxedly at the doctor. "And I don't suppose you have some... shot that can help keep us safe?" He asked, the heat and moistness of the local climate sapping most of his ability to worry.

Doctor Selmuhg nodded. "I do, but it has a pretty narrow window between being effective and being potentially deadly to half the crew here on top of the local pathogens. So they couldn't just plonk a bunch of syringes in a box and tell us to look after ourselves... That is why I'm here: to titrate the shots into an effective level for each and every unique individual in this little camp. I also act as your local GP as well... you can't be entirely sure you can trust the doctors outside this studio not to bilk your insurer with ineffective treatments or oversized bills your insurer will balk at for one reason or another."

as if on cue, misters opened up for a minute, spraying the air as if to bring down the humidity and the temperature to a slightly more comfortable level.

Stephan shook the Doctor's hand. "I'll visit your trailer after 2pm then?"

Selmuhg nodded. "Certainly, I have no appointments today at that time slot. Get it done, then get to work in this camp."

Stephan accompanied Martin as he showed off the facilities around his share of the studio compound - a few key sets for some commonly shot types of scene, a lightbox that dynamically glowed and provided keying data for post production for certain shots, one or two very large classic sound stages that could be converted into one of the other kinds of set if necessary. the usual lighting and crew support facilities... Stephan had noticed quite a lot of people walking around were accompanied each by fair maidens, none of who could possibly be older than 40, and most were probably half that age or even less.

Perhaps Raijin Cove had discovered how to fight back the demographic disaster that the world was facing... He needed to get some of that himself... He was a gentleman, but even he had needs himself, Stephan had mused.

Martin finally came to a cargo lift lodged in a shaft entirely on its own, shaded in its waiting area. "Now you'll notice some weird shit in this place..." Martin noted as he ushered Stephan into the lift. "We do keep a few normal camera drones around, but none of the bigger rigs... we seem to be exceptionally light on acting crew, and we don't have a union representative office." Martin pulled the manual shutter across the front of the lift and punched a call button that sent the ceiling-less cargo lift travelling down the shaft.

Stephan nodded slowly as the lift descended with a surprising alacrity. "I had noticed. Is that due to the permissive environment this Cove seems to have for many odder... behaviors?"

Martin shook his head as the lift stopped three basement floors down, motioning Stephan to follow him along the cool, dry corridors, kept somehow that way despite being deep in the dirt of a tropical jungle, like some sort of secret military base. He walked up to a set of double doors. "that's the root of it, yes, but the answer in detail lies behind these doors... And with that he threw open the door to a bizarre place.

Stephan had been in prop storerooms before, and this had seemed to be one partly... but he also noticed lots of very lightly dressed people of various ages and genders and ethnicities lining the walls and lying down in racks, all of them individually tarped with transclucent plastic, each of them tagged up with various sorts of data. Two technicians were at one of the myriad of tables down the middle of the long corridor, discussing something over a naked brunette woman. It was not a living breathing human woman- her lungs had halted completely, and a small sliver of flesh had retracted away beneath her large-areolae 32DD breasts, exposing a series of memory cards and circuitry.

"And you say they only sent us two of these?" "I'm afraid so, the client was a cheapskate." "We can't take the bigger risks on the shoots for this particular client. Tell the Unit manager that we don't recommend the lion fight scene number 353 or the mega orgy scene number 662 on this since we have less spares for damages and more downtime for repairs projected."

Stephan blinked hard, these people were discussing shoot scheduling over... something that was not entirely human... "What the hell, Mr Krauffer.... what is all this stuff? I've produced many films over the years, but I've never seen such sophisticated props..."

Martin chuckled. "That's our dirty little secret, Stephan... we make memories for premium androids. Our upper subsidiary sends three or four of a unique robot, and a Psychoanalysis from their programmers, and we stage the scenes they specify with some room for creative uniqueness in each take... then we take the surround footage and run it through the premium androids and send back the two with the most response and neural generation from the shoots... and the rest become either spares or bit actors in other shoots...."

Martin watched as two techs with smart tablets carefully tapped away, watching a young boy carefully lick a lollipop while sitting in a sort of generic bodysuit. After a short while, the boy suddenly stood at attention and froze, allowing the techs to carefully relieve his lollipop before stuffing him into a container box labelled "Shoot: MARV-00430-Unit 02 - Shoot In Progress, do not ship out of Studios" and having a carrier drone slowly cart him away further into the rows of storage racks.

Martin smiled a little. "It's an interesting challenge turning out this much quality footage on a first-person view basis... yes, we wire them up to act as the very cameras in our productions rather than trying to approximate stuff with careful camera drone placement. But they never tire as long as we keep them charged, they'll never complain about taking 200+ retakes in our quest for the perfect memory, and more often than not we're surrounded by beautiful people and creatures of all kinds. When you're spending enough on a custom android to request this level of memory forging, it's usually never with visual beauty as an afterthought."

Stephan wanted to start yelling "what the hell" and storm out of this room and even out of Raijin Cove proper, but something seemed to be restraining him besides mere decorum and politeness... He rubbed his head briefly and then he saw it - two of the androids that had been set aside for bit acting or future use. He approached them slowly, murmuring a name...

"Cecilia..." But it couldn't be her. Her hair was almost the same prussian blue as the director's wife who had almost ensnared him. that same feminine beesting nose, those thin but rounded lips... her sybaritic face framed in a bob haircut that went from the top of her head to the edges where her arms and shoulders met.... her hips, her breasts, the same approximate size as Cecilia's had been. The moles were missing of course, and her belly was more washboard... but it was very much the same woman he'd been accused of molesting, even though he'd tried his hardest not to give in and get his paws all over, he had loved her so very much before he'd discovered that she was going to only hurt him again...

Stephan shook his head after a minute and continued walking and examining the rest of the storeroom, pretending the brunette in particular held no special interest for him... but he wasn't fooling Martin, who had briefly stopped to scribble some notes in his communicator. After a while, he decided the cavern was becoming too claustrophobic and had Martin escort him back up to ground level to leave the cargo lift shaft, watching as an extra set of doors swung up as a preventative measure against flooding in these jungles.

He felt oddly dizzy, and upset as well. Perhaps a visit to the doctor would be in order, aside from the recommended vaccine, he mused as he lurched away towards the doctor's offices

The two techs looked on in envy at their new work. They had both been through this phase before weeks or months ago. In fact, everyone in the studio who wasn't lucky enough to be in love with a real woman had been through it with satisfying results in virtually all cases.

One of the brunettes that Stephan had taken a fancy to had been stood up at attention, a panel retracted beneath her breasts. They had figured out bits of his past, drawn from one that had been a source of both pleasure and pain to him, and were now reprogramming the brunette to function as his adoring, truly loyal Cecilia, not the grubbing beauty trap harridian who had ruined his career in Hallywood.

Everyone in here was a badly damaged man in the film industry. Everyone was an incredible creative. This was the gift Arendt HistoryCreate Studios had set aside to specially bait all these hurt vidflix teamsters into producing the best first-person footage ever, and only one person would see the finished footage ever on each campaign of shots.

The ersatz brunette twitched a little. "Stephan, you seem tense tense tense tense tense-" Her voice slowly oscillated up through several octaves until one of the techs sighed and cut her power, causing her eyes to flicker as she fell silent again in mid-test. These people were all earnest, but they were not exactly anywhere near Bellamy Arendt in terms of competence with android programming. Still, they hoped their earnest well-wishes would fill the gaps in their knowledge...

The nurse had been nice to look at, Stephan would admit. it made the prophylaxis and basic doctor's visit easier, as he nursed the rawness of his freshly administed monthly vaccine while clutching a small bottle of rum. It didn't seem quite like the sort of thing a doctor ought to be prescribing in this day and age, but Doctor Selmuhg assured him that it had surprising medicinal qualities as a product of Raijin Cove's pharma and brewing microindustries. He would take the doctor at his word and drink it, especially as the Doctor had promised he would get another bottle every time he came in for a valid re-up on his prophylactic vaccine. It was one way to keep people from dying of whatever nasties this climate harbored, Stephan mused.

He walked into what had been designated as both the daily canteen as well as the mess on weekends, looking for a bite to eat. He had heard good things about the Thursday night buffet that was laid out for staffers and special visitors to this little studio, certainly a safer alternative than whatever random experiments were out there in the stalls and cafes... He helped himself to his usual of one handful of potatoes, one handful of chilled fruit, and one handful of some meat that was definitely real beef, plus some matching cutlery. He skipped the mulligawtny soup, it had seemed like overkill on top of the roast beef.

Stephan sat down and began to eat alone... but he would not be left alone. A voice he had long grown to associate with disaster in a courtroom after a whirlwind few weeks of torrid romance spoke up next to him."Mind if I join you?" Stephan looked up and down at the brunette who had accosted her with his own plate. "Certainly, Miss...?" "Cecilia Adams."

Stephan closed his eyes... the Director's wife who had ruined him was a Cecilia, but not an Adams. Still, old feelings began to simmer as the lady sat down next to her in her floral minidress and straw hat, removing the hat had in turn caused a small head of black hair to spill out. "Cat got your tongue?" She suddenly asked...

Stephan shook his head quickly. The Cecilia-Not-Adams lass continued eating, occasionally making conversation with him and him alone, making him feel once again like the centre of the universe. What had been a planned done-in-thirty-minutes-with careful chewing meal slowly became an hour long mix of talking and sharing their meal. It had seemed like a tragedy when it finally had to end.

"So uhm... when will I see you again, Cecilia?" Stephan had been a little too forward and honest about how he felt about this lass who had slammed headlong into his loneliness and put the first of what would become many holes into its hull.

She massaged her jet black hair a little with her finger tips. "I don't know... I just arrived three months ago at Unit 3. Today was my tenth shoot since."

"Newcomer, just arrived in the Cove only yesterday," Stephan had blurted out. He had hoped he would get a producer spot in Unit 3 so that he could work under Martin Krauffer as if entranced by a mix of loyalty and appreciation for getting him this possible source of income and even a way back into the credits of some new production. Sadly for Martin, Stephan had mused in a warm buzzy feeling, it was now just as likely he would root to get into Unit 3 for this... Cecilia...He shook his head again, a slight throbbing from what he assumed was the recent prophylaxis he'd gotten. Hopefully it would not recur next month...

Cecilia version 2 stood at attention as one of the techs unbuttoned the front of her dress and carefully eased her bra open from the front, slowly mouthing the words he needed to say. "Cecilia 2. Would you kindly expose your control panel?"

The soft flesh beneath Cecilia 2's pert modest breasts slid in and upwards into the recesses of her chest, exposing her electronics without any sign that she was aware of her true nature. The tech typed at an adjacent computer, setting it up to take some audio input. Then he entered a command into the console.

Cecilia's panel flashed lights briefly, before she started chanting a seemingly random series of numbers. These were actually the sequences of vocal patterning and motions she had made in front of Stephan, as well as codified values of how he had responded. As she recited the numbers without any emotion at an even clip, the computer slowly built up a profile of Stephan, and a matrix of possible and ideal responses that Cecilia could offer to Stephan in future interactions...

"There's got to be an easier way to build these personalities," one of the techs lamented.

"A larger dataset informs a larger set of possibilities. It's not quite up to what our coding God all the way up there in Minnesota does, but I think this is pretty decent as emulations go..."

"we NEED to automate this stuff more. I don't care what you say about it needing to remain artisanal, there is no way we can scale it up." "well, do you anticipate a regular flood of lonely young men into our offices?" "..." "I thought not. Real love is something they've waited a long time for. They can wait another few days." This final response had been pushed over with a startling lack of irony or self-awareness, given what they were doing in this deeper basement beneath the props storeroom.

After half an hour of droning about nothing but numbers, Cecilia fell silent as the computer finished determining how best to satisfy Stephan Alberg in Cecilia 2's future interactions with him, spitting out a few data slats that would replace the generic testing program that had been run against him in the cafeteria. The technicians got to work, ripping out the test program's slats and replacing them with the new customised personality, as well as replacing her battery with a new 30-day power cell and making sure her new digester system was working properly. Then they sealed up Cecilia 2's control panel with a custom hard-to-see sealant designed to make her fully water-proof down to an unreasonable depth that would never possibly happen when the only river and beach waters accessible in this region only went to about a hundred metres at most.

They would only need to open her back up every so often to fetch detailed logs, maybe once a month. The techs took a deep breath and... punched the final sequence of commands to cut her off completely from the project mainframe, and make her come alive in a few minutes... for a few more minutes, Cecila 2 behaved robotically, grabbing her assigned luggage and walking in a sinuous manner to the lift that would take her from this secret basement floor to the ground level, before following a preprogrammed path in the middle of the night without actual sight, into a newly set out and furnished trailer, which had been nothing but an empty spot only two hours ago. There in the trailer, she halted, taking no further actions until about 6.43am the next morning. She whirred down slowly, awaiting her new life in the studios as Stephan Alberg's new assistant and lover...

Stephan had a pleasant surprise as he got out of the visitor's trailer he'd been assigned for at least the duration of his visit to Arendtcore HC Studios. Standing somewhere in the godrays of the morning sun, a bob-haired woman had stood out in the open, carefully brushing her teeth with a mug of water. She was wearing only a half-buttoned T-shirt and a pair of pale pink panties.

Stephan was truly grateful for the view, but at the same time, a little uneasy too. He rubbed his own eyes, and blinked again.

The girl suddenly noticed him and stopped brushing, toothbrush still in her mouth and foam dripping out of her slightly opened mouth. It was Cecila. The Cecilia Stephan had had such a oddly lovely time with over dinner the night before, not the wretch who had threatened him to step aside on a project and hit him with the rape allegations when he had refused...

This Cecilia still offered violence, though, as the mug went flying into his face hard before splashing its contents across the concrete flooring of the pathway connecting the trailers here in Unit 3... Cecila ran back inside without reclaiming the simple blue plastic mug.

Stephan picked it up, feeling embarassed, but that woman had been so womanly without attempting the usual shortcut of being an hourglass or a major sexpot. She was... a breath of fresh air... also, someone he would need to apologise to later on and return a mug to. Right now he had to prepare for his first day under Martin Krauffer and whichever producer he'd worked with all this time.

AWKWAAARD. Martin had introduced Stephan, and then Stephan paled as he'd realised Cecilia Adams was the other producer he would be understudying with.

Martin continued on matter of factly, ignoring the tension between them that had formed when Martin had lucked into Cecilia Adams while she was practically naked in morning prep outside her trailer, right next to his. Finally he left the two of them to their devices.

Stephan Alberg paled and looked away from Cecilia like a naughty little boy caught doing the bad things. "I erm... you left your brushing mug at my trailer this morning."

Cecilia surprisingly didn't seem to be holding much animosity. "It's on me, I got too relaxed and forgot I was living in a village, not some isolated boondocks spot. Why don't you bring it back to me after work, I'll be at my trailer... now let's focus on getting you up to speed here."

The rest of the day went by in a blur, with nothing else said about the morning's mugging incident. Again, the misters fired up briefly around lunch, a faintly minty smell filling the air around the studio. The food was just as lovely, so was Cecilia's company. She had seemed more animated today, like an entirely different person. Perhaps the previous day had tired her out, Stephan mused, as Cecilia enunciated the differences between the works of Paddy Almtree and his younger twin brother Ashburne Almtree.

The day of them as professionals ended at 5.30pm, with no overnight shoots planned by any of the directors in Unit 3. Stephan quickly returned to his trailer and grabbed Cecilia's mug. It would probably be just a quick walk down, handing her the mug, and that would be the end of things for the night.

Funny shit, life. You make plans, and then the vicissitudes of fate butt in, and you wind up fighting a rearguard action based on some plan you probably did not have laid out.

Cecilia had greeted him while dressed in a tight sleeveless shirt proclaiming that Paddy Almtree was awesome and that Ashburne Almtree was pretty good too in directing films, paired with a dark blue miniskirt covered in white polkadots, a pair of warm pink thigh-high stockings and a pair of sneakers, But she wasn't going out, just hanging back in her trailer for a quiet night watching a movie by Ashburne Almtree on her old video player/TV combo.

And soon, Stephan was inside the trailer as well, sharing in her popcorn and watching her laugh ever so often at Ashburne's brand of comedy, as a black cowboy taunted some racists by asking them where the white women were at. Cecilia had this strangely lovable laugh, not hoarsely ugly, not maniacal, just the soft girlish giggle of someone half her apparent age. She was revelling in the moment, enjoying everything absurdist the movie had to offer, including the oddly playing scene where the protagonists were talking to a librarian as she magically threw up each book into a slot in the shelf, occasionally huffing to get dust on a book as if it looked too new.

Cecilia pointed that bit out.... "You see, they shot the entire scene backwards, that means the lines were delivered in the exact opposite direction of how you'd expect that discussion would go in reality..."

Stephan smiled, but said nothing, simply appreciating Cecilia's infectious enthusiasm. He began to hope that nothing else about her was infectious but the good things....

Eventually the movie ended, and they just sat there amongst the cushions that covered the couches. it was only about 8pm at this point. way too early to just turn in and sleep. "So... what should we do next?" Cecilia Adams asked aloud.

"I dunno... maybe we kiss?" Stephan Alberg offered absentmindedly... then freaked out as he realised what the heck he was proposing.

"Kissing? In my trailer?" Cecilia yelped. Oh no, she was not pleased, surely! What happened next shocked Stephan, as Cecilia crashed herself into Stephan, parking herself between his legs and smiling, leaning backwards to share a small kiss with the producer. That was... totally unexpected... still Stephan started kissing back... he reached for the zip on the back of her shirt unconsciously, disrobing her and revealing a pair of pert feeders wrapped in warm pink lace bra, one that matched the panties Cecilia was wearing beneath her skirt. Oh, what a naughty girl this seemingly mousy producer was, Stephan mused, as they got friskier and friskier, Stephan's groping of her tits met with Cecilia's mischevious teasing of his erect cock with the denim of his trousers and the floral lace of her panties. Soon, actual penetration was a thing, Stephan's member riding upwards into Cecilia's wet pussy without much in the way of protection besides a condom Stephan had always kept refreshed in his pocket monthly in case of safe sex. Cecilia could no longer speak, her eyes closed as she let Stephan grab her wrists and slowly pump into her warm, wetting pussy, breath almost as warm and damp and deep as she moaned.

Stephan was so happy... This girl had been his first real lay since the night before he'd been trapped by the director's wife.... He was going to enjoy it... and so he did, for what seemed like a whole hour.

It eventually ended of course... Cecilia lingering in a kiss as they stood on the porch of her trailer, her skirt making a weak effort to conceal that she was still pants-less and riding on the high Stephan had given him. "Don't be late for work tomorrow, Stephy..." Cecilia had farewelled Stephan, before closing the door to her trailer tightly.

Stephan turned around and walked to his trailer, pausing only briefly to watch the lights burning in the glazed windows of Cecilia's trailer, before going into his own. He had a mess of his own to clean up, and if he was not careful, he might have to redo all that cleaning... He giggled at the thought.

Cecilia had turned into a different creature as soon as Stephan had gone out of earshot, her warm dazed post-coital smile fading suddenly as she disrobed entirely, before twisting the handle to her onboard shower in a different direction from what she normally would have turned it in to open it up. This caused a small glass wall to fold in from the floor into a watertight tube, into which she entered.

A set of robotic arms slid out from slots in the walls and ceiling with various cleaning implements as the glass cage slammed shut around Cecilia. She remained soulless as the arms parted her legs and started slamming warm soapy water into her vaginal cavity to clean it out, with more arms easing cleaning pumps into her mouth and grinding towelled implements around her entire body. Cecilia remaind silent,whirring only occasionally as the auto-cleaner did its job of keeping her hygienic at the end of the day. She felt nothing as her vagina was pummelled, the reflexes that made her moan and come earlier on Stephan's body being purely personality responses that no longer existed at the moment.

The autocleaner whirred up as it sent drying warm air all over and inside of her, before the glass cage parted open to let Cecilia out. She proceeded to walk to her clothing cupboard and opening the underwear drawer, randomly selecting a set in black cotton with carefully lined out curves along her breasts, half-exposed ass cheek,sand pudenda in key lime green. She was deriving no pleasure from any aspect of this dressing whatsoever. It was merely in place to ensure that she did not blindly stumble out of her trailer totally naked if an emergency ensued. The stiffness of her nipples as they ran against the cotton fabric of her sports top were a involuntary reflex animation curve...

Cecilia turned out the lights of the trailer and slowly lowered herself across one of the couches, finding her way in the dimness with her night vision module. There was a sequence of beeps and whirrs as she triggered her shutdown programming for the night, setting herself up to wake at 6.42am the next morning. She had a certain quota of power use not to exceed in order to last the full 30 days on the label of her power cell without earlier recharging, and she was about 5% shy of exceeding it today...

She felt nothing about this - the power she had used was within the set limit. Her eyes focused briefly and then slowly unfocused into blindness as her mechanical body shut down for the night.

Chapter 6 - Backlash, justification of the direst idea

Stephan Alberg fell into a blissful career at HC Studios in the middle of Raijin Cove. Days of hard work on first-person memories for premium Arendtcore androids, days of exploring the things the cove had to offer its visitors and inhabitants. Stephan spent time alternatively working hard as a producer on a strange type of vidflix, getting slightly drunk, getting slightly high, meditating, and having fun times with his assistant Cecilia Adams. He had briefly worried about fraternizing with Cecilia, but a brief check with the HQ offices overseeing all the units had cleared him.

"Lighten up man, we ALL have side chicks in this town. If it was legal in our parent entity, why wouldn't it be legal in this wilder place?" The lawyer had basically said when they got back to him. "Also, as your legal representation in any arguments with a external entity due to work done for us... I want you to pass me some of those shrooms you gots there..."

There was inevitably going to be a backlash to all this calm and joy. and it came ahead of schedule for Stephan. It had been a Friday night after work, and Martin Krauffer and his girl Minnie had dragged Cecilia and Stephan into a game of low-stakes poker. Low in that everyone had basically a bunch of biscuits serving as chips. It was also strip poker. if you ran out of biscuits, you to basically 'overdraft' by removing a piece of clothing for a fresh pile of chips everytime you ran out.

Poor Cecilia had been quite terrible at poker. As a result she had had to avail herself of the 'overdraft', and her skirt and top that read "The Joy Of VidFlixing" were now carefully folded and piled on one side of the table, and she was wearing only a set of bodycon panties and bra to cover her modesty. She looked about ready to need a third overdraft, and everyone knew what that meant.

Stephan blushed heavily everytime he'd glanced at Cecilia's plight - he did understand that as an elite among the amateurs at the table, he was primarily responsible for the partial nudity of Minnie and Cecilia. Still, he wasn't going to let it spoil his game. In order to keep himself from overdrafting as well, he had kept himself away from munching on the biscuits being used as betting collateral, and opened a small bag of some new kind of shroom chip that a local entrepreneur had started selling called "Wakefulness Wonders." ... These ones he was chewing on were chicken salted, and they had a lovely texture on top of the way the shrooms sucked up the flavor of the chicken salt and made it their own.

The first few had caused no issues. But apparently it was an effective dose of something, and very soon these chips would be totally banned within the studio compound for most of its inhabitants...

The first sign that Wakefulness Wonders were going to be incompatible with the way the studios were run came on the fringes of Stephan's eyesight... the warm, friendly atmosphere seemed to be folding inwards into the middle of his eyeview, replaced with a dank, dull tinge on everything. a sort of reality wake up call.

The bottom fell totally out of the hole when he glanced at Minnie after a bit of this had gone on. Why... was there a sexdoll jerkily playing cards with them? It came with an sort of existential howl, equal measures of realising the demographic disaster was really running through their town like everywhere else, and of realising that two of the players at the table were just basic sex androids. The tics were obvious - their whirring, the occasional faint beep that had been inaudible for some reason all this while, the jerky movements that he hadn't noticed somehow. The seams on their bodies were far more obvious, shadows running along the grooves in their plastiflesh as the now dark-greenish light of the studios played across them. Things that had just been glossed over or taken as cuteness in lovable maidens suddenly became tell-tales of mental manipulation. Someone was fooling everyone in this camp into accepting these mechanical maidens into their hearts, a practice that he hadn't found disgusting at all for some apparent reason for the past 27 days...

He looked slowly over to Cecilia Adams, dreading what he would see.... even more of the same, but up closer... the scream of anguish that came was even louder, helped along by the fact that he had put his penis into that mechanical contraption so many times.

"What's wrong *click* Stephan? You seem a bit off." Cecila wondered allowed, her head tilting slightly at an angle Stephan now saw as unnatural rather than merely cute.

Martin was the first to offer a response that seemed to fully understand, punching a nearby giant red button and screaming. "Get Doctor Selmuhg and Security to the mess hall now! We got an Early Waker!"

He had responded fast. Sadly, however, he hadn't responded properly in time, as Stephan applied a support stick that had been awaiting a proper blunting and stabbed it right through Cecilia.

This had caused her to whirr and beep incessantly, her body running through various errors that any being, human or otherwise, would experience from being speared through the heart. Cecilia's eyes rolled upwards uselessly as she twitched away into failure-land, her voice garbling even harder as she begged. "Why, Stephan... Why would you do dissss to meeeee..." She jerked away as a few electrical sparks signalled the end of her ability to access her personality data, causing the ersatz woman to beep repeatedly as she fell limp, a strange sort of accusatory look spread across her plastic face.

The strange sight of reality shifting between a bloodied, gurgling Cecilia dying slowly as her heart occasionally spurted fresh arterial red, and a prematurely terminated lovedroid with fatally damaged circuitry sparking slowly, only helped Stephan go even crazier as he vacillated between realising he'd murdered a girl named Cecilia Adams he'd really liked and the 'good riddance' mood of having exposed and destroyed the fraudulent artificial robot designated Cecilia Adams.

After a few more minutes of Stephan screaming and shoving Martin's well-meaning concern away, one of the studio guards had applied a nice hard cosh to the back of Stephan's neck, knocking him out.

The first thing Stephan smelt when he awoke was that minty spray, the oddly scented chemical that had been applied through the entire compound once a day at lunch such that everyone faintly smelt it... apparently it was less diluted as it was now very smellable, complete with a sharp tang... He had been tied down on a bed... The nurse that had accompanied Doctor Selmuhng on his duties slowly approached Stephan... and he started screaming in terror again. The seams, the unnatural tics, the slightly off-human joint rotations here and there, the slightly plasticky voice she spoke in...

"Doctor Selmuhng, the pay-pay-patient has a-w-w-woken." The nurse spoke in a glitchy voice, a sign of her true nature.

"Doctor Selmuhng loomed into view, shaking the bag of shroom chips that Stephan had been eating at the poker table. "making the curative shrooms for my formula into actual fast food snacks... active counter-ingredient still effective at half of previous effective dosage after baking and chicken salt adulterations... Mental note, make Wakefulness Wonders a banned item within the studio compound. Keep eye out for further abuses of Cytronum Cytrallex aka come-down shrooms as food and drink ingredients and propose bans accordingly. research into detection methods recommended."

Doctor Selmuhg clicked a button, opening a new chapter in his recording. "Patient name is Stephan Alberg, Producer at Unit 3, HC Studios. patient showed no signs of degradation of prophylaxis effects prior to this incident, was on path to 30 days without incident and fresh application of vaccine... Cytronum Cytrallex destroys the neural splinting that allows for the project's success and must be kept away from all patients in HC Studios for their continued well being. countereffects are highly persistent- had to detox patient for two days under restraint after he broke his side-mate in a frenzy during the detox period. I believe the Cytronum Cytrallex no longer has any counteracting effects remaining from the dose the patient took in. I have readministered the prep psychoactive at double strength, will proceed with reintroducing monthly vaccine needed to create neural splinting followed by reintroduction of assigned side-mate to gauge effectiveness..."

Doctor Selmuhng clicked the recorder and put it back into his worn doctor duds, before carefully slotting a firing syringe into a dart gun, "I'm sorry this happened to you, Normally I keep enough spare time on the meter to administer the next month's dosage a day or two before it wears off... But you did consume those counteragents even though I was QUITE sure I had had them all eradicated from the Cove's natural vegetation."

Stephan looked around fearfully, then screamed as Cecilia walked back in jerkily, head twitching slightly ever so often even as she professed her love and concern. "Steph.... p-please... calm down. you've frightened me so much these past f-f-few days..." As if to underline the irony, her head rotated sideways at a slightly inhuman angle, not helping her case that she was a live and loving woman who just wanted her Stephan to get better.

Doctor Selmuhng "Vaccine titrated to patient's current body weight and safe maximum dosage for ... 31.5 days... Administering." He put the gun to Stephan's shounder and gave him a short and sharp pain as the orangey fluid entered Stephan's veins.

For a moment nothing happened... then small bursts of warmth crept over the dingy swampy-green lighting and specularities around the doctor's trailer... As if by magic, the same thing started happening to the nurse and Cecilia Adams. Cecilia's pleading voice slowly lost its mechanical whirring and beeping as the rasp went away, her adoring honeyed tones coming back from sonewhere. She blinked slowly, and just like that... the horrid mechanical android that she had been went away, replaced by the adoring sensual lanky number who had walked into Stephan's life and embraced his loneliness and told him she was his cure and and....

Doctor Selmuhg put away the syringe gun and continued making observations after taking the risk and untying Stephan. "Patient has calmed down. we see beginning of effect-sign. Exhibiting no signs of violence towards any of our female companionship..."

Stephan suddenly bawled and hugged Cecilia, as if awakening from a nightmare, while she gently ushered him out of the trailer, her soft warm skin redolent with that oddly soothing minty scent that pervaded the camp. He wanted her now, he needed her, he loved her... all the horror and anger she had elicited for the past few days felt like a fool's nightmare to Stephan as she gently ushered him towards her own trailer, clicking the lock shut for a little lovemaking session in privacy...

Doctor Selmuhg had a satisfied tone in his voice. "Patient has resumed at least good compliance with our project. Perhaps sterling."

Doctor Selmuhg found Martin Krauffer in his trailer shortly after. He sighed as he noted the first sign of non-compliance with the project. The entity known to everyone in Unit 3 as Minnie was slumped by Martin's side, her dress carefully unbuttoned on the front and its control panel exposed openly. The power button was glowing red, as Martin had shut her off for some personal quiet. He was calmly taking a drag on a vaping tool that nobody else besides him and the doctor were supposed to have in Unit 3. It contained Cytronum Cyrallex shavings that produced a counter agent to the mind-altering binary drug the camp profligately flung all over the place with the misters and followed every month with a booster 'vaccine'... The vaper allowed the user to escape the effects of the drug for a week or so after a few drags, but it had to be reapplied.

There had been good reasons for Selmuhg to keep themselves immunized against the drug that everyone else took to view the darkness of the camp and the robotic nature of their lovers at bay. For Martin, he had no such choice - he was naturally immune to the current formulations the Doctor had been titrating and changing daily. That had been a source of interest for Selmuhg, and it also made him a more effective enforcer of the drug's effects on other members of his unit. He still did the vape only because, and this had made the doctor laugh a little at first, "I like the flavor of mint and orange in the cartridges."

"I do wish you wouldn't do that." Doctor Selmuhg glanced over at Minnie's limp form, her eternally smiling joyful face frozen in shutdown mode. "It makes them feel even less real, and you already have problems with the medication..."

"Someone needs to be the jailors, and we can't be sampling our own wares, it causes problems handling the rest of us... Call this my... penance for my sins..." Known only to a few people, Martin had strangled a lovely teenage girl named Minnie years ago after she had refused to reciprocrate the disturbing love he'd had for her.

Martin hadn't been prepared to wait any longer to indulge in the original Minnie, once she had communicated her desire to no longer associate with Martin ever again, for being 'too old for her'. He discovered that he had some pretty strong grip in his hands the hard way. He had fled to Brazil to avoid extradition for the perversity he had inflicted on Minnie, and had moved to Raijin Cove when someone at an Arendtcore subsidiary had made an offer to help him control his urges, perhaps even eliminate them one day, in exchange for his brilliance at directing vidflixes which was something the project had required.

Doctor Selmuhg sat down next to Martin, sighing, he had sins of his own too. He had grown too fond of playing with the human mind using chemicals...

it had gotten out of hand when an entire church of peace-loving Mormons in Birmingham had sniffed a new drug he was testing and turned into stark raving violent menaces towards each other. In the end, only a well-dressed old man had barely survived, with some injuries, as he stumbled out of a charnel house numbering 157 other victim-aggressors under the influence of the drug.

Horrified by what he had done, he had resigned his well paying pharma company job and continued experimenting with more pharmacological possibilities in a randomly cobbled together lab in exile and denial of extradition in Raijin Cove. Again, Arendtcore had found and approached him to continue his work in a film studio. It had seemed a stupid idea until the first person requiring psychoactive drugs to overcome his raving anger and fear towards lovebots had fallen into love on the 'mist and vaccine'... It was now a sort of salvation to him, finding more effective and safer doses, and hopefully a way to permanently rewire such minds to accept and even love mechanical lovers like Minnie and Cecilia Adams...

Perhaps he could even save poor Martin with a working medication one day... They were both loners in a prison where everyone felt so good and loved, unable to access the same pathways that had enabled it easily in one out of every 50 men in this demographic disaster that had befallen the Earth....

"I think that shroom Stephan brought in to snack on by accident might... work. wwith the right treatments. You'll be able to love your Minnie truly soon. I just need to titrate and work out how to flip the script on its effects..." Doctor Selmuhng consoled Martin Krauffer, patting his shoulder as a mutual jailor and sufferer.

Martin smiled a little... It would be wonderful if he could get his paws on those slightly oversized breasts and make tender love to them without the sickening feeling that came with knowing, feeling that Minnie was merely a machine designed to simulate love... "Looking forward to that, doctor. I hope you'll join me when the time comes." He smiled as he took another puff of the pointless prophylaxis while looking up at the stars above Raijin Cove.

Chapter 7 - The Inspection Trip / A brief greeting from a man of importance / A most surprising Bodyguard

Paul North looked through his plans for the upcoming trip in his office one last time, checking the three cargo boxes he was going to bring on top of a few days of clothing. Satistisfied, he closed his suitcase and started walking out to the lifts. As he did so, the cargo boxes started floating thanks to the cargo drones built into their frames...

He did not have a clear road. Standing in front of the lift doors was Brotherhood Candidate Lishu. She had been a mere functionary in the planning offices for the company, but had displayed an incredible amount of chutzpah to him - the courage to question the ways that the company had gradually built up, the willingness to propose ideas that threatened and ran counter to his own plans right to his face...

If he had been Seamus Arendt, he would have immediately given her the silly lampshade and shot of questionable alcohol and declared her a new member of The Four Brothers. But Paul was an outsider, so delays had to be faked to give the impression of dealings between the remaining known brothers. He was certainly still itching to put Lishu in as a replacement for Aymee, but the delay also gave his contacts time to ferret around for potential compromises or Manchurian candidacy on her part.

Lishu had folded her arms together, looking sternly at Paul... "Sir, I must protest. You simply cannot go to Brazil. Especially not that.... that PLACE." She lodged her protest with the same lack of fear of Paul's position in the company.

Paul blinked hard, then sighed and tried to marshal his thoughts. "You of course, mean Raijin Cove. Relax, it's just a quick personal trip. three days, in and out."

Lishu stomped her heels. That was just so adorable, Paul mused. The psychopath in him was really looking forward to dash that streak out of her and reduce her to a firm loyalist to the Four Brothers' ideals, but he would enjoy her independence for quite a while.

Lishu yelled hard as if to make it clearer. "During which you have plenty of time to be blackmailed, poisoned, attacked, or even deaded."

Paul considered this with all the due respect it merited... which lasted all of about ten seconds as he started to walk past Lishu into the lift, which she followed him into. "I have a guide I can trust in the matter. Bellamy Arendt has the helm while I'm away. If you need me... don't call me. I left my main smartcommunicator and tablet back here to avoid compromise by their menagerie of hacksters."

The lift doors parted on the rooftop level, just as a long-distance copter pivoted its rotors and slowly landed on the roof. Paul motioned to the cargo boxes to float over and into the cargo hold doors at the back of the copter, checking over the throwaway devices he had put together for the trip. They were almost as capable as his usual toys, but lacked any direct ties or links back into Arendtcore's networks and computers - it was just a personal trip by a single man with a suspiciously large load of cargo on a unusually fast aircraft.

Lishu's protests continued to mount uselessly as she yelped away like a impudent puppy. There would be time to put her in her place as one of the juniors of the Four Brothers at some point. Right now though, it was all Paul could do to fob her off with one final set of instructions. "If Marcus, or any of our special-level clients need tech support, hand them over to Bellamy and Tech Support Team Omega. if you need access to emergency cash, invoke my name and the codes in my last email to you with Finance and they'll stretch to meet your requirements... within generous limits... and Above all, do check in with my nephew at the Manners House at least once a week, and document any oddities you sense. I'd die if anything bad happend to the Manners, but especially Elliot."

Paul smiled at the last bit. There were many things he could hive off or hide in his guise as Paul, but Seamus would always care for the little robot who had somehow become mostly a real live young man.

Lishu icily noted all of that down. "Crystal clear, Mr North... enjoy your... holiday."

Paul had a slight shiver as he heard that last word. He had remained single and solely dedicated to his grand works and shenanigans, both sensible and psychopathic, but this woman was DOING it for him. He briefly considered the possibility of adding marriage on top of christening her as a new member of the Brothers, then shrugged as if to acknowledge her farewell. That all could wait...

and with that, Paul walked aboard the copter as it sped off directly to its destination.

The ride was a lot bumpier than the conventional slowliners that plyed the routes to Raijin Cove, but fast like lightning. It took only four hours on half-rate cooked rations and clear chilled water to arrive at Raijin Cove... not the main slowliner and boat port, but a smaller landing podium known only to a handful of the leaders-in-practice of Raijin Cove.

The biggest one of them was lazing next to a specially requested mini cargo hauler that would be Paul's to command for the next few days. His name to almost everyone else on the cove was Mister M.... Paul had been part of the initial arrangements to establish Raijin Cove, so he knew what the M truly stood for, it was [REDACTED]. Quite surprising to anyone who had known him in his previous incarnation - the man had been a scrawny conniver, not the majestic demigod in the red trenchcoat and prince nez glasses who saluted Paul.

Mr M looked up after bowing. "Good evening , sir, I trust that your trip was satisfactory." He smiled a little wicked smile, the kind that horrified people who truly knew what depths he could sink to even on his current leash.

Paul idly noted a few things. "Speed was unbelievable, but cabin was kind of uncomfortable especially on the smaller turns. Commissary was kind of lacking, but I understand you had to trim a lot of comforts to get that kind of speed and I'm okay with it. Eight out of Ten. Any improvements you could make would only happen if we actually worked out how to get hammerspace securely into the copter as anything but an unstable bomb."

Mr M chuckled and waved a hand briefly as he walked to the cabin of the cargo minihauler, which Paul North loaded with a brief gesture to his three cargo box drones, causing them to float onto the ramp and onto the sheltered bed at the back. "I will certainly forward your suggestions. I'm sure our cargo specialists might have some ideas."

Paul walked over and joined Mr M on the other side of the cargo hauler's bench seat. "Not holding my breath for it to happen anytime soon." Certainly, not when said cargo specialists used to be crazy maniacs with a fetish for various explosives including destabilised dimensional spaces.

Raijin Cove was a giant powder keg waiting to go off atop Brazil, and it was kept stable only under Mr M's careful sheparding as Colony Leader and the backing of the Chinajapese's diplomats underwriting its existence in the face of sensible Brazilian law and order. Paul North fished in his travel coat briefly and handed Mr M a small vial of glowing blue pills that everyone beneath the Raijin Cove flag would move heaven and earth for Mr M for.

Paul was still just a touch worried, but Mr M had proven himself mostly worthy of his trust with the scheme behind those pills. "I got you more... motivator rewards for the kids. You know, they do deserve that brief moment of joy in their specialties when it serves the benefit of mankind."

Mr M nodded as he stashed the bottle away. "Crystal clear, Mr North. motivators for jobs well done, shocks for attempts at fomenting disaster anywhere else that does not serve your purposes, and... " He left it unsaid, but they both knew the bombs lodged in the craniums of any inhabitant with a criminal past - including Mr M himself - were a last resort and not publicized. Here, the inmates were free to create their special blends of mayhem free from persecution as long as they attempted no escapes from the borders of the cove or harmed each other overtly.

The cargo hauler pulled along the narrow streets slowly, as Mr M hummed along to some local Brazilian rock music on the radio, eventually depositing them at a villa that had been set aside by the concern of Raijin Cove's leaders for a month. It was probably bugged and cammed to heck by the various factions of the Cove, but Paul had in turn sicced his own representation from the Imperial Chinajapese palace on it a few days ago....

it had been incredibly fascinating watching the video call of the ninjaxia calmly pouring out a big pile of listening and camming devices onto the garden ground and lighting it all on fire with a thermite bomb. The psychopath in him had delighted in imagining all the anguished and shocked faces losing thier surveillance in the villa, which was now clean.... probably.

Mr M hopped out and started making himself scarce. "Well, home sweet home for the next few days, You know, if you'd furnish your itinerary and intended activities for your trip to me, I could facilitate a lot of it..."

Paul tilted his head and gave Mr M that odd look of both respect and disrespect he had carefully cultivated as North. "I thank you for your service so far, but really, all I need is for you to keep the Cove sane and stable. and if you continue insisting on that itinerary? I will calmly tell you to go fuck yourself, Mr M."

Mr M laughed at Paul's chutzpah. "Hey, hey, it was just a friendly offer, no need to get so pissed, Mr North! I'll just post patrols as usual around the villa, and you can do anything you want in the Cove as long as it doesn't affect the safety and sanity of my people. Deal?"

North smiled as he hopped out to inspect the villa, just as lush and happy as he'd remembered it, before remembering and gesturing to the Cargo Box Drones to enter the secured back doors of the villa proper. "That was always part of the point of Raijin Cove. See you in five days."

Mr M gave a lazy wave as he saunted towards the main gate of the villa. "Don't blow something up or something, see you in five, yeah..."

After ensuring the cargo was now stowed properly in the basement of the hacienda, Paul relaxed with a drink... these had been provided as mini-sized bottles of various liquors, and he had opted for a small shot of rum over ice. Just to be safe from local poisoners, he checked the seal had been left virginally unbroken before breaking open the seal and pouring it out, letting the warm rum and ice melt wash over his tongue, before swallowing. He had ingested a special Mahou No Te device Aymee had specially provided from her crafters, on board the aircraft- it would detect any of several thousand types of known poison and deadly chemical and break them down into pleasant micronutrients and harmless leftovers. Unfortunately, this included some actually safe spice blends - there would be no fully enjoying the impact of some of the local culinary specialties...

There had been one other gift from Aymee. Not specifically intended for this trip initially. In fact, he was fully aware of it, having worked on it himself on Aymee's orders and the credit of the Imperial Chinajapese Palace.

Paul finished the rum and poured away the ice to avoid any attempts at poisoning him via the leftovers in the glass, before sauntering downstairs to Cargo Box Number 1, carefully punching in the security code and standing back as the box walls parted and stowed to one side.He lifted the head of the android in the cargo packing out, the foam slowly sinking and deflating around as he did so.

Somewhere deep in that neural net had been an initial attempt at flashing a copy of a neural scan to provide personality and memories, and the donor had been Aymee. There were six other units awaiting completion based on the same concept kludged together by himself and Bellamy on Aymee's orders, this had just been one of two additional units specially gifted to the Four Brothers so that Aymee would always be around to back them up as muscle and legalistic mind (albeit one without any valid license to practice law - the rules had been very clear on non-transferability of her license even to a mostly perfect clone of herself).

Paul fished out his Fixit-microbar and sighed at the disassembled naked copy of Aymee's body, shrunk down slightly for portability and ease of lifting while powered down. It was time to put together his wingman. Which was a step he'd usually been able to omit with the original Aymee Ichigo, but explaining an extra person on the flight to Raijin Cove would have been too problematic. To work, to work...

It was about two hours later before Paul stood back and looked at the completely assembled body and the portable charger pad that came with it. It would run off the 30-day battery installed inside of it, but given the potential power output of its motors, he might be lucky enough to get ten days out of it.... There was also the issue that this was the first practical test of the neural scan tech - it had worked okay in the lab in theory, but this was the first time he was going to run this unit in the field. For all he knew it would just fall down in a useless blabbering heap in practical full execution mode... He sighed and ran his fingers along the control panel exposed beneath the unit's breasts, causing it to slowly whirr and beep as the toned muscular human analogue flesh slid down and sealed watertight.

The unit stayed silent, merely breathing... Curses, it really was too complicated to make work in real conditions, right? Paul frowned and was about to reach over to shut it off when its eyes suddenly opened, smirking the same way Aymee had always done around them in the offices in the good old days. It looked around, tilting its head, before locking eyes on Paul North. "Heya, name's Aymee Ichigo", the reduced-size robotic clone declared . "But you can call me Aymee. What can I do for you today?"

Paul sighed. Definitely a failure... the real Aymee would never have been this subservient, something was wrong with the neural scan... it had failed to capture that sparkle that made her such a strangely alluring animal all these years with them-

Fake-Aymee (Faymee) suddenly reached over and punched Paul lightly in the shoulder, a still surprisingly painful action. "Relax, bro, just joshing you. I'm still me.... I think... or is this one of those copies I commisshed off you? I can't seem to tell the difference." She laughed throatily.... false alarm, this WAS a pretty good copy of Aymee.

Paul North blushed... Now that he thought of it, Aymee had always been a looker in that muscular boygirl sort of way, from the day she had called himself a man as she helped punch up a group of footballers for the rights to their frat house. He saw the attraction that the original had posed as that peculiar 'manly woman', just shrunk down maybe by a foot, and now just about as tall as Seamus Arendt... no, Paul North. He had to remember to keep in character while he wore the prosthesis mask or it would stop working as a disguise...

Faymee leaned in closer, allowing Paul to smell the scent of strong cologne that Aymee had insisted this particular pair of units closer to her original appearance rather than that of herself as Empress Eimu be designed to emit. It had been a scent intended for men, but somehow it only improved the way she came off to Paul. And she was... naked...

Paul gulped. It wasn't a betrayal, yeah. He wasn't Seamus Arendt, and Marcus was happily married to Julie. And this was Faymee, not Aymee. It was free play... right? right?

An hour later and several thousand extra in furniture repair costs, Paul was weakly wheezing. He was not in the habit of sampling his own wares, but the experience he'd just had was... godlike. Faymee and him had gone into a sort of wild tornado of sexual lust, hands all over as they crashed into the furniture randomly. Her heft had been sufficient to total a cupboard, two chairs, a decorative vase, and half-flatten the plastibottle Paul had just imbibed half from.... The television set would have tripled the additional bills, but fortunately, they'd fallen down right in front of it and continued more gently, if still firmly, for a few more minutes before Paul signalled surrender, causing Faymee to back off and enjoy the afterglow with him sitting atop her.

Faymee continued to play the part of Aymee very well, taking a post-coital swig from the half-finished bottle of rum, burping as her digester detected the poison in it and played the same kind of mass destruction tornado game her body had done with Paul, shredding dangerous proteins into limp fragments capable of nothing but being disposed of in the bathroom later. Not that they would have harmed her robotic body anyways.

Faymee swished the last dregs of the rum, then grinned. "That was fun, but seriously, I don't think you brought me out all the way here just to fuck around behind our bros' backs for a week. So what's the plan?"

Paul thought a bit.... "Well, I'm delivering two of our older Oven units to the local film studio, and also a purchase order someone's waited a whole four years for. Maybe drop by an old friend's from my Gdanzeland days."

Faymee was just as read in on anything Aymee was that had survived the neural scan. She teased Paul a little. "Ah, Uncle Seamy, could it be that it wasn't just a lust for spy hijinks that you picked up back there in Gdanzeland?"

Paul deadpanned and winced as Faymee used the one name he did NOT want associated with his current appearance. "You were there. You saved us on the first round, and as I recall, your ninjaxia team evacced me safely on the second round... Imagine my surprise when I found out you'd also secretly pranked the junta into setting Q'in Lu'fus free and brought him here to Raijin Cove. A roboticist in waiting and a talented bombmaker. Imagine what kind of disasters he could cause being left alone..."

Faymee ahems. "That wasn't me, you know, right? That was Aymee, not me, Faymee. And she also got a very good marksman in the bag too. That Diego whatshis name... trained Julie for the biathlon last year at the regionals? Godsis literally put everyone else to the torch in the ice. Guy was that good."

Paul nodded as he rested atop the muscularity of Faymee. Unlike other brands, he'd insisted that the muscles installed on this unit design put out the same kind of power as actual muscles would on a real human, on top of the in-line skeletal motors that came standard on all Arendtcore android designs. He traced a line along her deltoids, smiling. The attraction of that power was becoming obvious, and even he, the creator of this machine, was becoming strangely aroused by it.

Faymee did notice that, she was sharp enough to still notice even with the slight blurring of her mind caused by the inherent errors they hadn't weeded out from the neural scan process. "... I suppose we should look in on him if he's not away on a job." Paul idly noted. "I mean, we do have the time..."

Faymee grinned. "But do we have the time to get cleaned up right now.... or do you want to go another round?"

Paul gulped and got off Faymee slowly, peeling his penis out of her warm and firmly strong vagina. "I think we should just shower and look at the bazaar for some bargains... maybe dinner as well... my treat?" He had loved the lovemaking, but he would do anything - ANYTHING, not to sustain an actual injury on a second pass so soon!

Chapter 8 - Bargain hunting / An attempted hijack / A reaffirmation

By daytime Raijin Cove was a quiet place even with all the stealthy activities being conducted within the shadows of the jungle trees, components biological, electronic, mechanical, chemical,et al changing hands for the Arendtcoin that had somehow mysteriously become the main currency of Raijin Cove. Supposedly an unofficial and unsanctioned use, the occasional presentation of a payment terminal that could process the protocols that governed its use between authorised carriers and merchants and the use of the less secured QR Code methods for transfers of such coin that anyone could implement raised questions as to whether, perhaps, the company actually backed the economy of this backwater hideaway despite its official denials of being associated with Raijin Cove...

By night time it bustled even more. It was into this peculiar space, lit only by a wild eclectic mix of strings of banned incandescent bulbs and carefully tacked and cut strips of LED glowbits, that Faymee and Paul North strode into.

A funny little thought came into Paul North's mind as he looked at the wares - The current latest batch of Arendtcoins had been issued under Paul North's authority and was equally recognized within the company for resource allocation. Out here, however, the only Arendtcoins most people trusted were those issued from the wallet of a certain Seamus and Bellamy Arendt.

He had quite a few right now in his wallet, enough to live reasonably large for the next week or so, but he was keeping his spending tight and solely to the small tithe of Arendtcoin Mr M had slipped into his wallet while standing in their rental villa compound. Theoretically, he could mint any amount he wanted and spread it amongst these yokels to get anything he wanted, but the access to that particular minting wallet had been tightly locked down and requests to it within a multilayered virtual safe took hours, perhaps even an entire day, to approve, not to mention the time needed to generate the required code hashes for each coin being issued...

The god of fortune everyone kept an eye out for at their stores was now striding in silence amongst them, but he was a pauper. In terms of money, he did have a lot of money, but not the potentially infinite wealth he could have with a few hours' notice. That was Seamus Arendt's wealth. Right now, Paul North had to be judicious with his cash.

Which made it all the more interesting that his second purchase had been a small aquamarine 'pearl' of some sort on a necklace... He had had it fitted to hang slightly loosely around Faymee's neck, submerging slightly into the cleavage on display when Faymee had opted for a sundress rather than the suspenders, trousers and shirt / short tie combination she had always worn while identifying as a man.

Faymee had blushed and thanked him, but tried to make sure nothing else came of it. And Paul wouldn't really have wanted it any other way, as they tried a strange shellfish bake that seemed mostly safe because of the large queue in front of it and the lack of any Security breathing down their neck for mass poisoning. It had been some sort of odd sea slug/softshell crab hybrid. Perhaps a native of the local waters, or maybe a engineered combination trying for taste or ... some other factor. It had tasted briny and crunchy at least. Paul briefly considered locating a sustainable source of these creatures for Arendtcore Foods back home in Minnesota, if only to add a little variety to the dozens of "crabs and oysters" recipes the state had, making a mental note to send actual corporate scouts to locate more of this delicacy.

They had danced in a square lit by wildly randomizing colored LED bulbs to a chunky salsa beat.

They had looked in askance for a clearly overpriced smart device communicator that the stall owner had brazenly declared contained a link to the Goddess of Existence herself. (it would later transpire much later that he wasn't shitting anyone, but the claim had been so brazen only a fool or someone in the know would have taken it even at the cheap price he quoted)

Faymee and Paul had tried a cocktail of sorts, Paul briefly tacking a few drops of it as a sample for later analysis - it wasn't just a bazaar, it was a arms war disguised as a smorgasbord of pleasures. It would later yield some surprising discoveries, but Paul was just doing it for shits and giggles right there and then. He mostly enjoyed it for the lime and barley flavor, ignorant of anything that couldn't get past his safety filter aside from the flavor and the odd feeling of satiety it brought.

Faymee had embarassedly tried some nail art, getting a warm satin pink manicure with smiling emojis on them. it wasn't just for show either, as the artist demonstrated its special capability with a few drops of something he claimed had date rape drugs in it (just for a demonstration, no need to call Security). Paul looked on interestedly as the smiling emoji slowly changed to a angry emoji against a hot red background, as if it was furious that someone had just tried to roofie Faymee.

That was technically impossible between her non-biological functioning and the isolated nature of her digester system, but it still made Faymee whistle. "Cool. Now I can safely drink that cocktail without worrying about date rape!"

Paul played along, frowning at her. "Oh, Faymee, honey, it's not a license to imbibe those sorts of drinks randomly. Besides, would you really be able to remember to drip them nonstop on your nails? and what if the drug isn't of the classes this emoji senses?"

The artist paled and looked away. "He does have a point, your boyfriend does.... I just sold this shit as a party favor, you should still be careful in the pubs and use a proper detector device with more sense points..."

Paul smiled and made a mental note to sneak a small reward to the nail artist for being honest with customers and not overselling it. Perhaps a small stash of Old Arendtcoins he had no memory of misplacing (because it had been given to him by someone else rather than being genuinely misplaced), or a lucrative magical work-and-leisure trip to Little Sanctuary at a rave-themed corporate party, even if nobody would seriously dare risk their membership in the family by spiking other employees' drinks...

Eventually, the bazaar started quieting down for the night - it never truly closed as a whole, but people needed to sleep especially after all the earlier hours they had spent prepping their businesses for the night. Faymee and Paul spent a few Old Arendtcoin on a shared fishburger meal, that felt oddly spicy, which Paul briefly noted but didn't pay much attention to. Faymee's vision had warned her of traces of tetradoxin, but their digestive systems were rigged at least for the night to treat it like just another marinade, and the amounts detected by her digester weren't liable to actually kill anyone healthy. Truly a case of "the dose makes the poison". She did make a mental note not to ever let anyone else eat more than what was in one or two burger patties. To the credit of the stall, it did indeed warn of possible tetradoxin paralysis in larger amounts on its signage.

This place was clearly off kilter if you had to stride right in with a filter just to safely enjoy its temptations. But she had enjoyed it. And as Faymee looked at Paul glancing at her with a smile, it occurred to her that he too was enjoying it.

But they really had to go home now. The only vehicle they had available was the cargo hauler and Paul didn't feel like being bilked for a local minitaxi jalopy, so they walked together hand in hand up the slope back to their villa. It was a mostly quiet walk under the stars of the cove at about 10ish at night, the kind of walk that promised as much intimacy as one could get with their clothes still on if done alone...

They were not alone.

Paul's growing sense of awareness since he'd 'died' and come back as Paul North started playing up when he felt the two people start walking right behind them.... The one guy in a dark blue anorak who showed up to block their path forward was the last straw. "L-look, guys," Paul offered, feigning weakness while preparing a party favor his Kindred contacts had given him for "engagements in the Physical Layer", "I see you folks are short on cash... would you like some Arendtcoins? The old kind, not that new fangled bullshit signed by that poseur Paul North..."

Somewhere deep inside of him, the psychopath roared in indignation - "How DARE YOU malign OURSELVES? Let me take care of these fools my way, maybe I'll forgive you for that tresspass." He blinked slowly, trying to calm down that dark side of himself with counteroffers of all sorts even as he had to try not to turn the night these idiots were having into hell on Earth.

The Anorak'd man in front of them licked his lips. "That's a really sweet machine you have for a girl, pops, mind if I take her for a test drive?" He grinned evilly as he pointed some sort of taser device at Faymee and pulled the trigger, sending a pair of bolts into her and transmitting some sort of code.

Paul North briefly cussed out his own generosity. Arendtcore had opensourced all its most major designs, in an effort to give every android it had ever produced a shot at practical immortality even if the company somehow failed and went away. It had spawned a market of copycats, and Arendtcore had survived because it represented quality and few or no corners cut.But now, something was sending code along known data lines into Faymee and it was probably not beneficent.

Faymee twitched and jerked hard, whirring and beeping away incessantly. She was being commanded to obey the assailant, who would probably then use her as a blunt hammer to bash Paul into a pulp while he fended off attacks from Anorak's accomplices.

This was about to turn into a bad night for both sides. For one thing, Paul had dropped a extensible and genuinely combat-capable baton into each of his hands from the sleeves of his coat. He had learnt quite a lot about close-in pain infliction from the real Aymees bodyguards over the past year of weekends and he was preparing to use it.

For another, while the hijack MIGHT have worked on a basic bitch with basic programming, Faymee wasn't programmed per se. She continued to remain utterly useless and unresponsive. "Er-ror/ Illegal instruction set det-detcted. Personality matrix refusing obedience.prog execution process... repeated attempts to execute obedience.prog detected. Possible Lock-up-upppp detected due to conflicting instruct-truct.... Paul. H-help me. Pain. Don't want to hurt. you you..."

Paul saw what Faymee had been reduced to, her eyes rolling randomly as her muscled body struggled against the hijack. He closed his eyes... He would honor her distressed plea. He reached deep into that dark side of himself, the psychopath who'd been bound up in chains by the careful watch of good friends and colleagues and judicious anti-psychopathy drugs and tapped three times. Exactly three times.

"What," that chasm had called back out gruffly, "The fuck do you want?"

"You wanted to go wild... Seamy?" Paul North fearfully but firmly asked. He was afraid - afraid that if he let his old self off the leash there would be no going back to the civilised, gentle old man he was trying so hard to become to others... But that old man was a wuss who couldn't even defend a damned french fry in his fingers let alone a good friend hurting badly. "Well, you got your wish." The faint sound of chains being dropped and of possible incoming regrets being forged in place of them filled his head... "Go. Stop them. and please let me leash you back when it's all safe.

"What a good boy, Mr North. and I tell you what, in return I'll try not to kill them. I'll even save your girlfriend for free... this time. Heck, you get me back on the leash... this time. Don't count on it happening this easily ever again, hear?" The guttural, hellish version of Seamus' voice came through... and then he opened his eyes. And then.... Paul North wasn't standing where he had been standing.

The two assailants who had approached from behind him suddenly felt a faint gust as something passed between them. "Good night, little children." it teased, before they felt the ground rushing up to meet them, thanks to a pair of hard baton swings. That had half emptied the oxygen out of Seamus' lungs, but the raw personification of his worst self was far from done yet.

Seamus(?) vanished again, reappearing in between Anorak and Faymee and calmly aiming the batons at Anorak before pulling the extending triggers, causing Anorak to fall down and drop the hijacker device as two balls of steel suddenly extended hard and cracked into either side of his head. He wouldn't die, but damn if he wasn't going to wake up with a major headache in the hallowed holding cells run by Cove Security...

Without conscious input on the trigger, the hijacker stopped working. And not a moment too soon, as a small arc of electricity ran up along Faymee's bare back, her body slumping onto its knees, whirring and beeping even harder. "I can-cannot hurt my my friend.... forcing shhh-shutdown of personal-lity to disable personality hi-jjjjaaack." She shuddered a little more before falling still, eyes wide open...

Seamus closed his eyes. growling. "Well, that's that, girl's mostly saved. Now if you'll be so kind, I'm going back to sleep. Try not to wake me up again too soon while you chain me back up.. It was fun, Mr North, but I think I'm beginning to treasure this silence and darkness more than I do the chaos I could cause..." And then Paul North woke back up.

Paul quickly rushed to Faymee's side as soon as he realised Seamus had gracefully yielded back the reins to him and let himself be chained back up in the dar. He began yelling into the night sky for someone to help them, reduced once again to a helpless mewling, a silent prayer of thanks given to his old self as he looked anxiously at Faymee's unresponsiveness.

It had taken a bit long - several minutes, for a Cove Security Patrol to come by. They had been very helpful, possibly on Mr M's orders, agreeing to pick up the hijacker crew for detention as well as assist Paul to get Faymee back to the villa. It had been strangely painful to Paul - he had had years of looking at machines in owner command mode stiffly following spoken commands as one of the foremost developers of consumer robotics - so why had the sight of Faymee operating in that mode with no clear evidence of any other damage hurt him so much?

Paul didn't waste too much time on that thought for the moment, quickly disrobing Faymee as she lay on the dining table and manually forcing the control panel cover to slide down and reveal itself, before quietly reaching for his Fixit-microbar to start checking for damage and do whatever repairs he could.

There hadn't been much damage, truth be told, just some overvoltage from the initial taser hit. All the work had been script kiddy level bullshit, based on a review of Faymee's neural programming. He was no Bellamy, but just as Bellamy had picked up a few tips for working with android hardware from being around Seamus Arendt, he too had picked up some programming and basic code navigation and fix skills from Bellamy as well.

Barely an hour later, Faymee started blinking as Paul ran his fingers along her control panel to shutter the cover over it and return autonomy to her. She just sat there.... then suddenly bawled and hugged Paul, crying. "Bwaaa.... I'm so... sorry.... useless.... I'm a fraud, just a fake in the shape of someone you truly respected..... bwaaaagh.

Paul let her cry herself hard on his shoulder. Eventually though, he decided to stomp on it. And no this definitely wasn't a moment of psychopathy from him. It was... something else... "Listen... Faymee... I know you named yourself that because you think it's a good contraction of 'Fake Aymee'... but can I ask something? How long have you been in standard operating mode? No admin stuff, no forced commands?"

Faymee sniffled. "About.... eight hours, forty two minutes... "

Paul kept pressing. "And in those eight hours, you have not synced to any other instances of Aymee's clones... you've diverged. A lot. And I have no plans to do a sync except to a nice fresh backup when we get home to Little Sanctuary, you need to know that.... you know what else I think?"

Faymee let go of Paul and sat there topless on the table, listening to whatever Paul wanted to say.

Paul thought very carefully... "You're Faymee. You're not a fake copy of Aymee anymore. You never were from the moment I cut off your connection to the other units . You're you. your own special you. And you tried so very hard not to just give in and mindlessly nail me with your great powers when those bastards hijacked you. You even cut yourself off to become a lifeless doll just to stop the hijack from hurting me as well..."

Paul leaned in and softly kissed Faymee. "And I love you so much for being you, even before you tried not to hurt me as a hijacked unit. You knew it was wrong and didn't give in, that makes me heart beat even harder for you... Now I want you to stop moping, go get a shower , and get on your recharge pad. I don't know that it's even made a dent in your power cell, but I think you need to rest and stop worrying about others and just focus on yourself tonight."

Faymee nodded as she got off the table quietly, holding herself together as she walked off to the nearest shower in the hacienda, Paul watching after her. He in turn decided to turn in for the night and let her pull herself together, but inside he knew it was a possibility he might wind up having to offer a shoulder - or more... the poor girl had just been through a sort of attempted rape, and while her original was a hardened baddie and legal nightmare, Faymee was a different creature now...

Chapter 9 - The Cult Their God Didn't Want

The next morning, Faymee seemed to have recovered mostly from the previous night's trauma. She was all smirky as the original article she was based on, flexing her suspenders and trousers combo in the same old white with small red tie and black trousers. "I.... I'm sure I can move on from last night, Paul..." She still seemed a little uncertain, her smirk fading when asked if she had truly gotten over what had happened to her the previous night.

Paul nodded a little. "I don't think you can. That kind of trauma's not that easy to get rid of when you can't exactly hit the reset button and wipe your memories... Look, if you ever need to talk about it again, speak to me, or ask me for a therapist. We're all here for you. I can't exactly speak for Bellamy or Marcus, but I'm sure being my.... bestest friend... with benefits even.... gets you benefits with them too... Well, different kinds of extra benefits, I mean. You can't exactly be horndogging every single one of us..."

Faymee considered this and nodded, but felt she had to qualify something. "Technically, Bellamy did fuck this unit once or twice while developing it, I think he didn't realise exactly when my neural patterns started to operate and store memories... And you... I mean, Seamus DID make a wife for Marcus using a copy of my physical and vocal scans. The ship has long sailed on that concern. In fact, I'm actually surprised it took making me a differentiated copy of Aymee so many years after we first met in order for you to ride the Brotherhood bike, as it were." Faymee nonchalantly noted this, but Paul could hear the amazement in her voice about how loose she had become after no longer pretending to be a man, merely dressing up like one.

Paul glanced over at Faymee embarassedly. "I hope you realise all those were one-offs. We're going to stay friends right? even without the sex?"

Faymee couldn't help but smile a little, blushing hard at Paul. "Mr North, I think you'll find that you and me, are pretty much past that point... The only reason I'm not trying to pull your pants off right now is because you're a busy man and I want to make myself useful to you... and right now, damaging more of this house isn't going to help. Maybe when we're bored together again?"

Paul felt a little weird in his pants at that declaration. "I.... erm... I'll have to take a rain check on that at least right now. But it's nice that the option is on the table.... hehe..... Anyways, we should get going to the HC Studios Lot now, I have an Oven that needs giving to some folks who want to do some... baking."

Faymee rubbed her head a little as she nodded. "I regret... my original ever cracked that joke. I thought you would be a little more upset with it."

Paul shrugged. as he made his way to the basement, and ordered the cargo box drone Number 2 to hop into the cargo minihauler for the trip, causing it to slowly start floating up and out the back doors. "Again, You're you, and she is her now. that's her cross to bear, not yours. And frankly, who doesn't want an oven that makes the pizza base, slathers on all the condiments and toppings and cheese, and then bakes it into a proper Pizza Chicago Deep Dish?"

Faymee rolled her eyes as she accompanied Paul North to the cab of the hauler and crossed over to take the other seat on the front bench of the hauler, reaching for the safety belts on her side to buckle in. "You know this isn't that kind of oven right?... Right? It isn't, right?"

Paul considered this while tapping in the destination in Raijin Cove he wanted the hauler to pull over to, causing it to hover and start out slowly through the gates of their rental hacienda."Well, actually, with the right configuration and food-safe ingredients you COULD use the Oven to make Pizza instead. I mean, it'd be a damn waste of most of its capabilities, but we did have a few Pizza Thursday Nights where we somehow could pull together enough pizza in three different flavors to feed the entire factory and office complex back home..."

Faymee stared blankly at Paul as flashes of old memories of Aymee happily eating the office megapizza innocently, unaware that it had been made on the same machine as an entire life-like android. There was a certain dissonance rising up from that realization, and probably only the fact that "Faymee is Faymee and Aymee is Aymee" stopped her from breaking down at "The pizza was made with the same machine as the plastic people".

Besides... the Hawaiian had been great. Arendtcore Economy Pizza was a possible subsidiary option if you fitted the basement with \the older version Ovens. All you had to do was fight off the same lunatics who'd turn it around and accuse them of 3d-printing little disposable boys and girls to milk Adenochrome from - and it was frankly a miracle they had persisted past the Despotic Years...

Faymee and Paul had plenty of time to contemplate that really warped episode in Arendtcore's undocumented history as the hauler complied with what few local regulations existed for traffic. A cop had attempted to stop them to extract a few Arendtcoins for "traffic infractions", but the moment he'd realised just how in Paul was with the leaders of the Cove, he backed off and even became their escort for the rest of the way into the Studio Lot.... The hauler hooked into the local locational beacons, which made autoparking it next to the cargo lift building easy as whole pizzas in an Oven.

A group of technicians were standing there, saluting Paul as he alighted. "All hail Paul North, Prophet and Deliverer of a Gift from our God!" One of them yelled as Paul got Cargo Box Drone 2 into the lift, keeping it held down until he was absolutey sure where it was supposed to go in the Studio Lot's basement.

Paul North blinked hard. Somewhere deep inside him, the old psychopath had started stroking himself off wildly to this ego boost. Seamus Arendt, a god? This was not what Paul had expected, but it was certainly DOING it for Seamus Arendt. "Erm... which floor do I send this gift down to?" He asked, attempting to ignore the weirdness he had just run into and certainly did not want, not as Paul North, no.

The technicians followed him and Faymee into the lift, scanning their IDs at an odd angle to trigger access to the inner sanctum of sorts tucked beneath the lowest visible stockroom floor. As the lift descended, they proceeded to surround the cargo box drone and raise their hands to the skies in some sort of prayer. "Seamus is great, Seamus is good. Seamus powers the miracles we see on this lot. Seamus Inside. Seamus RTX Must Always Be On. Seamus Arendt is God. Seamus..."

Somewhere inside, Paul North died. Somewhere deeper inside, Seamus Arendt was having the best day of his life since Paul had banished him for the sake of a little espionage. Paul blinked calmly and just watched, even as he was having one hell of a headache. This was a cult, its god was lurking right in front of them, and boy did Paul not want this to exist... still, he reserved judgement - he had to ascertain what exactly the seed gift of occasional deliveries of Arendtcore androids had yielded. And if it crossed the wrong lines... Well, he'd cross that bridge on a later visit if it came to that.

As they arrived at the fourth basement floor, the technicians donned matching hats to fit in with the rest of the staff on the floor, each emblazoned with exhortations as "Seamus Inside". "Preserve The World", and "The God Tech Stems From Seamus." The normally busy floor had quietened down as the cargo box and the Deliverer (aka Paul North) slowly moved over to a room that had been laid out for the Oven, the staff saluting the Box as it passed near each of them in the corridor.

Paul eventually eased the Box over to a space that the technicians had laid out in paint, near the water pipes and power supplies he had specifically asked for, and dialled in the secure code, causing the Cargo Drone to slowly retract and pile itself into a neat pile of box panels and hover engines for later reuse on other large cargo. The slightly last-gen Oven was ready to go, needing only a few instructions to be followed to properly supply it, the bag of starter feed for it resting next to the control interface jack. Paul took a deep breath and assumed these... cultists... had a deep enough bench to properly install, operate and service the Oven, but had left a priority code and a phone number to Arendtcore Tech Support Omega for additional aid... well, as long as the world and phone service lasted to support the existence of Arendtcore itself. And even if that fell over, he'd included enough plans and instructions that they could extend the Oven themselves with the right tooling and competencies...

A seemingly special Seamusian Cultist approached them, flanked by two guards with Fixit-microbars in their pockets. His hat included a facial shield that normally was used to protect the user from high-intensity arc flashes and lasers and other potential hazards to the face. But in this case it seemed to also have a cultish purpose, being that the plain surface had laser-etched into it some remarkably beautiful artistic flourishes that hopefully did not compromise its intended safety features. Faymee was starting to get a little antsy about the setup even at this point, hiding behind Paul North as if he could shield her from the insanity that was starting to rise above the horizon in this basement.

As it turns out, even Paul North had had the same idea with hiding behind Faymee herself... but she'd called dibs on her version of the idea, so Paul sighed a little and tried to stay strong and calm.

The Cultist bowed and raised a hand to his heart. "Greetings, Deliverer Paul North. I am your loyal worshipper in unity, Mid-Level Overseer Xarnnax and overseer of this branch of the World Preservers... All hail Seamus Arendt, God of the World and Supreme Leader of the World Preservation Effort."

Paul North pretended to be totally read in on this kookiness... "Arise, Overseer Xarnax... I did not merely come here to deliver this gift which our God Seamus Arendt has gifted you..." Somewhere deep inside Paul, Seamus was overly stuffed from all the ego stuffing that had happened for the past twenty minutes. "No, mommy... I can't eat another bite... not even an afterdinner mint...." The psychopath was actually heavily sedated, that he had quietened down to a faint buzz of happiness from another self. It was an oddly pleasant sensation, different from the usual emptiness that came when Paul North took the anti-psychopathy medication to silence his dark old self.

MLO Xarnnax paused for a moment... thinking about how he could best present the cult as it currently stood deep beneath Raijin Cove... then decided that yes, a floor tour was indeed in order. "Yes, my Deliverer and worshipper in unity... we are always ready to show the work we have done."

The first sign that the cult was going to very weird and seemingly wrong places came as Paul watched a technician eat from a plate of cubes of some sort of beef as another carefully studied his consumption of the beef. So the cult had sourced some sort of beef, and presumably chicken somewhere else. Maybe even actual chicken eggs and milk if you pushed the possibility barrier enough... And Sure enough, they had.

MLO Xarnnax proudly gestured to the meat roast. "This was human flesh analogue. With extensive work, we have diversified it into many forms of animal flesh. Chicken, Beef, Wildebeest, kangaroo, even crocodiles.... though we try not to code for sharp teeth in the variations we have set aside for food cultivation... and we also have plant flesh analogues that replicate several formerly extinct crops like real bok choy, real onions, real fruits of several kinds, and even real durians..."

Paul North raised his eyebrow. "... I assume the durians come with the same weird odor and taste?"

Xarnnax sighed sadly. "I'm afraid so, we've found that that the flavor and odor and texture are inextricably linked, and yes, the damn fruit does stink up any smaller volume of enclosed air it's placed in... not to worry though, we did pack the durian we were going to gift you to take home, along with ten pounds each of of several of our variants of meat flesh analogues..."

Paul North quietly noted all this down in his communicator, taking care to flip it into privacy mode so that only he could view the scribbles directly. Faymee quietly examined the roast, then tried a piece of it.... "Mmm. Delish... could use some.... mushroom sauce."

MLO Xarnnax smiled behind his faceplate. "We already have a churnable and cheese-able analogue of cow's milk that supplies 95% of the same nutrients as the original thing. In fact, we have some samples of the entire cow already fully functional. As for fungi... we're still working out some overreplication issues - we keep our prototypes severely underclocked to prevent a Last Of Us scenario. All edible species only, you understand... and no airborne sporing - we haven't worked out things to that level yet for the fungi."

Paul North raised an eyebrow... those cows loitering in the wild just outside of the cargo lift building... weren't just animatronic dolls? They were actually producing edibles off of these... faux cows? He was growing both more skeptical and more curious about this specific attempt to fight the after-apocalypse... For starters, he would need to get these food-ready derivatives of human flesh analogue into a lab to make sure they weren't poisoning themselves or faking these ideas in the long term. This cult was a bit loopy, but already he had begun to see a frontrunner in the various pie-in-the-sky efforts to fight the end of humanity or surpass it that he had been bankrolling for the past half-century...

Paul wondered though... "And I suppose you are also engineering other animals?" He asked.

MLO Xarnnax had a note of pride in his voice. We do have another subproject that is attempting to replicate animals and insects... we do two species a month. We already have a platform that can selfreplicate using consumed real plant and meat matter or analogues depending on the diets of the original.... He paused to turn on the lights on a few long rows of various animals of all shapes and sizes: cows, chickens of various subspecies, bats, even a few animals he'd remembered seeing in the zoos as a kid long before the Despotic Years wrecked the Earth.He watched as the technicians ushered an unusually docile bear into a capsule and sealed it, causing it to freeze on its own, before wheeling it to another similar capsule with another brown bear.

MLO Xarnnax continued pointing things out. "We do have some issues with hive protocols for flocking insects, but the herds are ready to go. Elephants in the savannah, antelope, bison... We even have adders and some venomous creatures ready, as much as we would rather not go there."

Paul North nodded sagely as if he was read in fully, even though deep inside he was going "WHAT THE FUCK" at a rate that would cause a lesser android intellect to short out and explode and roll down the development room floor. "Every creature has its place on this Earth, even the ones that seem to only harm us."

MLO Xarnnax nodded slowly in agreement as he played a video clip of Seamus Arendt seemingly saying in a beatific manner "Every creature has its place on this Earth, even those that seem to only bear ill will towards us..."

Paul North said nothing to that, but inside, he was groaning hard. He had been commissioned to do a project for a church for one christmas, and Seamus had tried to convey to Bellamy exactly how he wanted the prophet to sound on stage for the show as they were building the looping animatronic show, back in the earliest days when Arendtcore was just four people trying all sorts of shit.... Who the heck had passed them that recording? It was so corny as fuck he wanted deep down inside to ask Seamus to scoot over a little so that he could lie down next to him and die a mutual death of embarassment.This was not wisdom. This was an ancient shitpost made from a candid moment on a recorder... It was meant to be destroyed or decayed by now, not preserved like some sort of religious tract.

For one brief moment, he even thought about just destroying this entire basement to be rid of this one college-era embarassment. Then he remembered all the good ideas he was seeing so far and restrained himself.

Faymee looked on in awe at the video, developing a new sort of admiration for Paul North... Paul sweated nervously. He did not need another blind-brained groupie, and certainly not one who had been based on his best wingman ever.

Paul tried to divert attention from this major embarassment as Xarnnax openly broadcast it, to the sounds of awe from the gathered cultists. "Erm... Overseer Xarnnax, What of our efforts here to preserve humanity?"

MLO Xarnnax ahemd.... "I'm not entirely proud of it at the moment... we've had do deal a little with some of the... eugenicists in this Cove..." There had been a loaded tone to that 'eugenicists', and it slowly dawned on Paul that he was actually talking about cutting deals with actual Nazis. But he would see what came of it first.

MLO Xarnnax walked them further down to a different set of racks, all filled with human embryos in the earliest stages of development. "The point of the project was to recover and revive humanity, so obviously we cloned and diversified some human embryos we secured from the... eugenicists... we've persuaded them that it was in their best interests to foster a variety of ethnicities so as to erm... establish the necessary depth to have actual ubermenschen and untermenschen. so they handed us a few hundred healthy embryos, enough to cover a wide variety of ethnicities from various Asians, to Africans, to Anglosaxons, even a couple of varied indigenous..." ""We of course noticed momentarily a slight overprovision of the anglosaxons, so we're taking some action to thin that bit down just in case this is their own attempt at using us to create an... erm... Aryan-centric world. Did the genealogical genetic testing and all even. all healthy down to just small minor variations here.... sightedness issues, autism, muscle over and under development, various intellect types and levels..." Xarnnax put up another slide, running through all the attempts to make sure that human 2.0 would be a balanced representation of the original humanity in some form.

Paul North sighed. "And I suppose you're also replicating the same old ideologies? The ones that basically fucked us all over in the first place?"

Xarnnax walked them down again,"Oh no, we're not picking winners and losers, we're just going to throw the entire Wikipedia at them, curated down to accurate information only, and doled out carefully." As they walked down further, Paul blinked as he saw a team work on a few androids of varying genders and ages and ethnicities, all anatomically accurate - at least, the parts that had been fully assembled. He saw enough of the inner workings to see an attempt to replicate human anatomy more closely in form as well as function, though the color of everything was probably way off from the actual article.

MLO Xarnnax stopped them there, gesturing to the robotics being put together and tested. "We have plans to seed certain... demigods around the world amongst our actual real human deploy... Planning for a 10 millennium or longer viable operating lifespan here... All of them will be loaded with the latest curated Wikipedia data, multilingual data and derivative techniques, and selected skillsets we deem essential and programmed to operate similarly to actual humans. similar emotions, similar motions and reflexes, just tamped down for stability or boosted for longevity and impressiveness as needed..."

Paul North silently watched as Xarnnax continued his spiel and briefly demonstrated just how accurate and lifelike the 'demigods' were. Pretty much a 18/19 on the Sibert Human-like Scale when fully assembled, as far as he could tell... unless... "I don't suppose you're going to try to get the Eugenicists to provide us a properly ethnic-diverse means to give these machines sustainable reproductive capabilities..."

MLO Xarnnax froze... "Well, we've heard rumors that they already have such tech ready to go... they're just not willing to share with us to that level, only giving us the embryos..."

Paul North made a mental note to find these eugenicists and these alleged reproductive system technologies... It was such a damn shame such major tech was being monopolized by Nazis, if it truly existed. A deniable smash and grab perhaps? Some espionage by the Chinajapese on the same demiability terms to compromise those who understood what was required to implement such a system? He furiously scribbled.

"I have noted your possibilities, and will pass them on to our God when we next meet. Perhaps he will have a way to... make these eugenicists more... amenable to sharing that gift..." Paul idly noted, as if he was even going to have to have a conversation with Seamus Arendt on whether upsetting Nazis was worth it... It was ALWAYS worth it, even with a lesser prize than actual human reproductive capabilities...

MLO Xarnnax bowed. "Thank you... and that was the extent of our work so far."

"Our god will most likely be impressed that you have reclaimed so much of our former lifesphere, even if in fully functional effigy only.... You shall be rewarded further, most likely, at a later date. I will remain in touch with you to erm... pass these new gifts along as he deems fit to dole them out." Paul North fudged together a glowing initial report to Xarnnax. He certainly would have a lot to do even if he didn't want to be unduly biased towards the success of this cult. A kooky bunch this lot, but their hearts were genuinely in the right place. Right intentions, hopefully right results, even if the workings were a bit wrong - truly a bunch emulating Seamus Arendt....

MLO paused... "Now if you'll come with us to the dining section, we have a lovely spread of banana-based foods.... we're still having some issues with overly high ambient radiation on the plant analogues for the bananas, but we already have a wider range of banana cultivars on file and the resulting recipes so far have been amazing this week in the kitchen labs... the banana bread is especially...."

Paul North and Faymee had tuned out already on "excessively high radiation in the bananas". "Erm... we appreciate the hospitality, but we really MUST be going back to report to Seamus on our findings so if we could just take delivery of those meat and plant analogue samples... chilled of course...

Faymee and Paul were pretty much silent as they made their way back to their rental hacienda. The cargobox drone that had previously conveyed the older model Oven and its associated blueprints and instructions to the World Preservers cult was now repurposed to hold several dozen kilograms of meat and plant analogues for sampling and research back home in Minnesota... as well as a pair of slightly ripe durians, sitting in their airtight box like a pair of stink bombs waiting to go off in more ways than one.

Their thoughts briefly drifted through all that they had seen... Faymee briefly imagined holding a distended belly and telling Paul "Paul.... I am with child, your child," an actual living human baby slowly growing in her through the miracle of the reproductive tech that Middle-Level Overseer Xarnnax had teased the existence of... She blushed especially hard and glanced at Paul.

Paul was dreaming of the tech too, but from a different angle... Imagine a Arendtcore effort to defeat the demographic disaster. Millions of women seeded around the world capable of bearing children. raising them to respect all regardless of gender, preferences, creeds or ethnicity.... The scales tipped back in favor of humanity finally... On a more personal note, it would be nice to see Elliot as a grown up young man, having actual children of his own that didn't require his manual intervention or an Oven to create... putting one in the oven, so to speak... a different kind of oven... He smiled as he closed his eyes... These World Preservers had to be preserved one way or another. So much promise from multiple avenues...

They didn't share their fantasies with each other. They knew that reality would be the only way to have their dreams come true, and goddess forbid they should jinx it by openly sharing their wishes, even as they realised they probably knew what they were thinking...

Chapter 10 - Faymee goes to town on ASFR fetishplay, a new Four Brothers franchisee

Faymee and Paul North had reached back to the vila and parked the hauler, finding a mail had been slotted in through the front door postal scanner. No known drugs, no known explosives or other potential hazards... Fishing in the envelope, Paul lifted up a sort of half-sized card with the words "Crime Victim Benefit - Jalopy booking" and a scan code of some sort printed on the other side along with a human-recitable code and an expiry date a week from that day they had mostly been through... A small letter was attached as well: Heya, Mr North,

I just heard earlier today about what had happened to you last night.... You gots yourself some hefty new merchandise in the bazaar, correct? and some bastards tried to take it off you without fair trade in kind or coin? I want you to know that does NOT vibe at all with our official policies, and I am sorry that it happened to you.

We have generous aid packages for tourist and local victims of crime in this town that scales with the severity of the crime... You were an almost victim of a theft of property worth between 100,000 to 250,000 Old Arendtcoins, so the package is generous, even if it's been halved since it was an unsuccessful botch job. there should be another 5000 Old Arendtcoin in your name, check your wallet to claim it from the local Crimes Office... I also took the liberty of sending you the free taxijalopy pass good for any number of rides for a week from the claim date.... All the paperwork for it's been done, so you just need to think about spending those coins and using the pass to get anywhere you want safely in the Cove...

Once again, I'm so sorry that idiot ruined your night. We will be dealing with him in accordance with the laws of our Cove. You will want to know that een for such a minor crime it will not be a pleasant punishment, and that should satiate any desire for vengeance you may be harbouring. I hope the rest of your trip goes more pleasantly and hope you leave with pleasant memories mostly, whenever that may be...

Yours sincerely, Mr M Current (2089-2092) head leader of Raijin Cove Covenants Faymee sulked a little as she read the letter from behind Paul... "I am not your property.... I'm your friend... with benefits. generous benefits." She scowled.

Paul waved Faymee off. "He means well, Faymee... and while I think the compensation for your trauma could have been better, I'd say we shouldn't look this gift horse in the mouth.... no way that'll happen again if we travel by taxijalopy while we're not in the cargo hauler... So... wanna ride to the bazaar?"

Once again, they were at the bazaar for its nightly revels. New tastes, new sounds, new sights....

Paul soon discovered that Greater Minneapolis Rat was indeed delicious. someone had opened a new stall with imported Rat, and was flavoring it with something called Old Spice Bay Powder, some sort of Ancient recipe rediscovered and blended anew with fresh ingredients of a secretive nature. He made a mental note to see if the stall owner could be persuaded by Arendtcore Foods to sell or share the recipe of this spice blend with them for future potential products... it was certainly tangy and lightly hot.

There were plenty of other items of both a consumable and a reusable nature. Faymee had winced at a stall bragging they had a device that could be attached to any android to override their movement capabilities for a few minutes without their consent, like a remote control puppet. Paul steered her away from it quickly, but made a mental note to come back later and buy a set for... research. No, he wasn't going to use it on Faymee... he knew already that she had a massive phobia of losing control of her capabilities. He just wanted to take it apart to see what weaknesses it was exploiting and how they could be patched out of Arendtcore products.

Eventually, they were sitting by the fountain in the plaza, watching some musicians set up for the gig of the night. Finally Paul broached the issue of the day to Faymee. "That was an interesting idea, the human reproductive tech... but I think it should be left up to all parties involved, not just a decision by the man of the house."

Faymee shook her head. "Involuntary loss of self-control. Nuh uh , big problem in my books.But if it was voluntary... with some human man that I loved... I could imagine taking on that ability to have a pregnancy. Apparently, it does come with a lot of transient minuses to quality of life. barfing, odd mood and appetite swings, massive knocker growth, aches and pains..."

Faymee idly noted the irony, "and yet humans regularly had babies in such a way. Curious."

Paul North smirked. "please don't demand that humans make sense to you. They never will, Faymee... all you can do is be there for the one you do cherish and take care of them when they're forced into a bad time in the process."

Faymee tapped her noggin. "I think I've had enough years as a human in here to barely begin to get what you're saying... Perhaps we should drop it before we both end up curling up and mumbling emo poems like that time...."

Paul North quickly nodded. He still remembered the time the threat of Empress Eimu nee Aymee looming over their heads with a chopper figuratively sent the entire brotherhood into a death spiral of various forms of depression poetry. Still, in a convuluted way, that had given birth to Faymee... He nodded quickly anyway, stroking her hair briefly with affection before they continued their loitering trip in the bazaar.

It didn't take long before Faymee noticed something interesting and scooted over to one of the stalls. "Hrm... diagetic multichannel sound... multiple holograms and over-body overlays supported..." It sounded like a audio visual system, but there was a generic poser artwork of an android projecting various forms of art over its body and in the nearby vicinity with sound bloops overlaid here and there extolling the features of the product. "A.... Dirges Robotics Mod product for most quality modern androids, requires one free Hiband interface at least for all basic features, interactivity may require additional Hiband interface..."

The owner of the stall certainly had high hopes and aspirations. "Yeah... it took a lot of finagling with some of the other stalls for me to put that together along with the interfacing code... it's all industry open-standard and quality stuff," Dirges bragged. " I just had this wonderful idea... what if you could make an android more expressive. Of course, with the limited imagination of most android owners and the lack of onboard generative AI most Androids have I haven't had much luck trying to sell this... just a few boxes so far.... and it's been depressing how generic they've all been. looping circles of text, virtual pets, skintight clothing that suddenly blows right off with a bang..."

Dirges wept slowly into the countertop. "I want to find an artist. I want to see someone make full use of every single bit of this kit. I even threw a good SDK thrown together from all the open-source shit I used, plus some cool custom UI work!..."

Paul North was about to just say no, thank you, good luck, and leave him wallowing in his misery. If his work and connections building was this good he would bounce back and build something better in the future and more in demand, it was all up to him... Then he glanced at Faymee and could almost see her eyes all twinkly with possibility. Marcus had unfortunately instilled a love of classic cartoons in Aymee, and Aymee had also enjoyed hobnobbing with many of the artistic and fetish fan communities within Minneapolis Institute of National Tech (MINT). Stacking these historical bits into an android who had Hiband interfaces for days was ... about to result in disaster. or a miracle.

Faymee looked at Paul. "Let's help him out with a try. Buy this. Put it in me. Let's see what happens."

Paul North was a little leery of the idea of turning Faymee into a light and sound show. "We're going to have to set some limits on what you do with this, Faymee... definitely... there's a lot of possibility for fun ideas, but... also misunderstandings... Also, you just burnt the rest of our evening here, because that's what I'm going to have to spend to get cooking with this kit, I should think."

Faymee took hold of one of Paul's hands. "Don't just think, Mr North... why not try doing? It's amazing what happens when you... do... stuff."

Paul North gave a loud ahem, then fished his wallet out to begin tapping it on the payment terminal of Dirges Robotics Mods, somewhere in Raijin Cove, before bagging the kit and going home to the hacienda... but not before first grabbing more of those tingly spicy Flamefish burgers, tetradoxin micro-poisoning be damned. With some caviar poutine fries, and a huge cup of something fizzy but felt a bit off for being soda. They were delicious indeed.

Five hours later, Faymee stirred a little as she awoke from being shut down. Paul was hovering over her, sealing one final aperture for the mod kit and standing back to tap on his communicator to run the app plugin for the kit as well as to record his impressions... "Impressive coding... kids behind this are the real deal... initial testing with covers off yields promising results. Let's see what happens with the examples..."

Faymee watched in wonder as her unclothed hip was covered in baize where she wasn't wearing any white clothing or skin-toned stuff, before a small hole briefly appeared and deposited a few billard balls. Paul stared at this display... "I think I left my snooker cue at home, Faymee." Still, he reached a finger out and tapped the white ball, sending the rest of the colored balls bouncing around. One slowly swirled around and around on Faymee's pudenda before slipping in between her legs and vanishing with a snooker table rack sound...

Faymee grinned a little. "Ooh, you naughty little boy, you just had to sink one in the pink for testing, eh?

Paul calmly ignored that remark, it couldn't be professional to snap back while he was testing and reviewing this kit... "Snooker Example has surprising interactivity. Hard to film example, but physics are all there right down to what happens when a snooker ball falls into a outhole..." He paused, put the communicator down into pause mode, and briefly marvelled at what he had just done... and how hard it was going to be to generate PG-rated, let alone family-safe examples. "Moving on!"

an hour later of making snakes unravel off Faymee's arms and glare menacingly at him, bouncing balls that respected her topology but treated her entire body as a source of gravity, and even the obviously generic DVD bounce but with the Arendtcore logo traversing her skin, along with Faymee occasionally moving and watching how the holographic generation system was taking her movements and the way it deformed her skin and clothing into account, she demanded to be let in on the fun with the devkit... Paul reluctantly agreed and gave her leeway to do anything she wanted on a small separated partition from the generous free space left in her memory after stuffing in operating code and her neural scans converted to a slightly-inefficient personality matrix... to which she had now added a copy of the SDK manual for the device and was calmly reading through it while doing a few basic tutorials in the writing...

Five minutes later, Faymee grinned and stood up in only her bra and panties, grinning wickedly. "Hey, Paul, watch this!" She suddenly started moving robotically, whirring and beeping erratically in a way that Paul barely recognised as not being a real malfunction.

Faymee talked in a flat monotone. "Error. Error. Overload. Overlooooooad...." Her voice trailed off as a small smoke trail rose from behind her right ear, as she stood folornly like a broken machine, one eye somehow rotating around like a pendulum ball despite the physical inability of her eyes to focus or move in separate directions. A small square hatch parted from her skin and fell to the floor, before another inner hatch that clearly should not exist opened further inside, revealing a panting, sweaty cartoon hamster. The hamster squeaked tiredly, before looking at Paul.

Paul stared back at the hamster that had just half-exited from within Faymee apparently. They stared at each other in suspense for a few more seconds, before the hamster suddenly spoke up.

"Erm, hey dude," the hamster squeaked in a voice that was clearly Faymee's voice but lowered several octaves. "I'm kinda thirsty and tired right now, could I stop pedalling the wheel in here for a few minutes, maybe get some water, a sprig of celery? Cos damn if doing this job 20/7 isn't hell."

After the initial shock of Faymee's first attempt at selfprogramming the holographic system with a faked malfunction and some random comedy, Paul and her agreed on some ground rules. There would always be a small visible if subtle cue that Faymee wasn't actually malfunctioning or breaking for real in whatever she chose to project. Nothing too scary that would upset the kids unless literally upsetting an adult for a good cause in an emergency was the point. She would get a slightly larger partition to sandbox her tricks in, but it would never be more than a modest chunk of her free memory, no stealing stuff from other critical software components or data storage. Anything she could come up with within the decency rating the immediate vicinity suggested would be allowed, but she wasn't going to be allowed to do anything overly racy or tasteless in public. Paul rigged up an emergency stop that cut off all power to the projection system if her power reserves for the day were about to go beneath 20%, or if he hit a censor button on the control app...

Paul stretched and looked at the grandfather clock in the living room. They had had so much fun that it was like 1am in the morning. "I'm going to bed. You too. and I don't want you fooling around with your new toy all night.

Faymee nodded eagerly as a pair of angelic white wings and a toy angel's halo appeared fron nowhere. "Scout's honor..." She said as she crossed her fingers in front of Paul. Paul was about to turn away from Faymee when she noticed a small dark red devil's tail swirling behind Faymee's butt. "... and for god's sake, stop overusing it. I don't know how long exactly the Meantime between failures on these components is yet, and folks won't take you seriously if you overuse overt effects with that thing!"

Faymee grinned a little, her teeth subtly sharpened with fangs. "Who, me? never!" The weird new effects vanished immediately right down to her fangs, and Paul rolled her eyes. Suddenly Faymee was way more immature than Elliot, and that kid was only barely getting to the bit where he was 13 years old next year after decades frozen in a state of being a young boy. Perhaps just like the old 3d filmmakers who preceded holographic flixing, she would eventually mature her way out of this state of obsession with the tech she now had on her... or maybe never. Who would be able to tell him?

Dirges was still very depressed the next morning when he looked through the red ink on his statements. He had overcommitted just a tad on the Dirges Robotics Full Reality Overlay System mod, and now he was looking at a stack of unsold boxes of the install. He would survive writing it off, maybe downgrade to barely healthy ramen meals with sprigs of limp vegetables and cheap crab meat instead of the eggs that he loved... He would survive, but he would not like the bumpy scraping landing and what it would do to his arse until he hit on another potentially profitable idea.

A small blue butterfly landed on the table next to Dirges' statements, briefly glitching, the tell-tale sign of an attempt to merge holographs onto geometry in the real world being scanned on the fly. Dirges blinked and looked up as another butterfly landed on his nose, glitching a little as it struggled to track with the movement of his head... he looked up further and saw Faymee, covered in a myriad of simple-colored butterflies. grinning wickedly. She said just one thing... "Cool, innit?"

Paul slowly eased himself past Faymee, sending a few of the butterflies scattering from her shoulder into air and fading once they got too far. "Mr Dirges, let's put on a live cartoon show tonight. You'll be sponsoring. I need a few things from you basically, and the guys you brought on board for this mod system so far... maybe a comedian who knows how to adapt."

Dirges grinned. "My cousin Daphneesh needs the work and he hasn't quite hit it off at the comedy club down the road. He's good at physical comedy as well... will that suffice?"

Paul had gotten infected with the same insanity as Faymee, and it was now gradually spreading to Dirges... Paul made a gesture of pointy fingers and nodded. "That's what I'm talking about. GET HIM. NOW. and let's rent the plaza stage. We are going to do a major reversal of your fortunes on this toy... Oh, and maybe two or three friendly video bloggers you know. "

That day, Paul had in his enthusiasm and recurring psychopathy just sent a message to a certain long-suffering winemaker extraordinare... The delivery he had expected would be delayed a day, maybe two. Also, come to the plaza stage tonight... A copy on cardboard had been hammered into the plaza stage as well as the light pole next to Dirges Robotics Mods. Practice was being done to perfect timing, as Paul focused on coaching Dirges into a basic PR showman and met with the other tinkerers who had contributed to the system.

Faymee had played a small guess the card game with a derpy but surprisingly agile Daphneesh The Aspiring Comedian. The game was rigged of course, Faymee was rendering every card involved with her projector even as she shuffled and cut the cards, the sound of slightly oversized card-board being worked over hard playing from her hands. "And now I'm going to show you the card you chose earlier," Faymee smiled as she showed the preview audience a Ace of Clubs and then showed it to Daphneesh. Something seemed to be wrong with the card however - with most poker decks the ace of clubs was not a face card that had people on it... This Ace of Clubs had a disgruntled looking soldier on it clutching cubs in the usual symmetry that such face cards had.

Daphneesh stared, then looked at Faymee. "I did choose the Ace of Clubs, but most glorious Miss Faymee... this is NOT the design I remember!"

Faymee looked away innocently, as the soldier on the card suddenly materialized partially out of the card. "IT IS NOW!" He roared, before flooring Daphneesh with a cartoony crack of his club onto Daphneesh's head. There had been no real physical impact to Daphneesh but for a slight pat of wind on his head, but Daphneesh reacted as if he'd been violently discombobulated, swaying like a living cartoon as he briefly lodged a protest. "That was... not fair play, Miss Faymee..." *faint*

A few kids who had paused to watch Faymee and Daphneesh practice roared loudly with laughter. Faymee and Daphneesh had worked out that he would faint just so that his head was within projection range of her holographics, allowing her to add to the chaos with a small circle of stars and birds flying in an orbit above poor Daphneesh's head.

This was going to be a hit, like the first talkies, Paul thought...

They did hit a snag at some point, as Faymee's holographics suddenly glitched out and shut down... Paul brought her into the backstall of Dirges' stall in concern, followed by basically the entire dev team for the mod... They checked her out briefly, then came to the same conclusion: the really big effects put a strain on the passively cooled modules for the holograph system, especially the poor underclocked graphics and audio processors... It would need better cooling for prolonged use at scale, which they did not have time to properly rig up, that and better graphics and audio processors. Magesha quickly scribbled down notes - the processing had been his work, and he wanted, no needed to improve the way it was cooled and how fast it operated... Dirnov also followed suit, as the whole point of the system was the holographic emitters...

Paul thought carefully about this with Daphneesh. Daphneesh spoke up first. "Timing is everything, Paul... we're going to need to rework the show a bit. those big bits with lots of space for her to cool down between them with traditional comedy, subtler elements on the projector system..." Daphneesh was surprisingly take-charge for someone who was supposedly just a failing comedian. "My most glorious Miss Faymee, can you do that in our remaining time before the show?"

Faymee nodded hesitantly. "I know I can, and please, just call me Miss Faymee. I'm not that glorious!"

Daphneesh grinned wickedly. "After tonight, you can call yourself anything. I think. It's still going to be a hit, I can feel it in my bones."

The time for the event came eventually. The curiosity of the adverts hastily drawn and slapped up for the show had resulted in a surprisingly large number of eyeballs watching, waiting....

Faymee oddly enough never had any stage fright despite being a total amateur to this. Aymee had done plenty of high pressure presentations in her years as a lawyer and an Empress, and surprisingly that had provided solid ground for her diverged clone. After all, could it not be said that the only difference between a jury trial and a comedy club was the type of emotions you wanted to elicit from the audience?

She took a deep breath as she adjusted her performer's coattails and skirt, watching from backstage as Dirges stuttered a little while introducing the conceit of the show - a cartoony comedy show as well as a tech demo of something nobody had ever truly seen before. She had retimed a lot of elements to give a careful balance between keeping the holographics functional, borrowing a few practical elements from a disgraced fakir who had watched the daytime preview and fallen in love with her grace in performance to mix it up.

She nodded to Paul, who motioned to the AV crew member he had borrowed to fire up a gramophone that played some jaunty old music as Faymee walked out in full view of the bright lights, smiling as she spread her hands, then frowning as a pair of bunnies hopped out of her sleeves and away from the lights. Actual physical bunnies.... keep them guessing, then deploy the holographics when there was absolutely no way to fake it with the fakir's magic tricks. She frowned as she 'realised' she had screwed it up, lifting her top hat and scratching her head. Briefly, a burst of holographics showed a worried bunny, who silently shushed the audience and raised a sign: "DON'T TELL HER I'M STILL HERE!"

A few kids in the audience just couldn't stop laughing at the imagery, as Faymee sighed and put her hat back on in resignation, motioning to Daphneesh to come down to the stage for their little Ace of Clubs routine....

Fifty years later... A very tired old man in a glittery showman's suit was sitting in a comfy chair, doing an interview... The interviewer eased him into it as the cameras carried on...

The interviewer asked suddenly. "Everyone remembers the standout performance you did back on Raijin Cove in 2092, all those years ago... with a pretty young girl from out of town... on some sort of live IT demo cum comedy improv... That was the first time you really brought down the house ever... it's been upwards most of the time since then. How do you feel now after so many years of great hits and even three Comedy Stars awards?"

The old man thought back to all those years... he wept a little, then he smiled. "Has it really been upwards? Truth be told, Mr Osworth, I feel like everything else since that night hasn't been magical... She really did magic on that stage.Most of it was obvious stuff a fool could do with magician training, but there were bits... bits that no man could have pulled off even with trickery. And she had a smile, the most infectious smile. And a laugh that demanded you laugh along or that you were going to be alone and boring... And the tricks.... I know very well how they worked - that was the point of the tech demo, but sometimes, I think back to that night, and I watch the old vidflixes they saved from the event, and it still feels like for one short hour, I'd stepped into another world where everything was possible."

Daphneesh lookoed down at his polished shoes, looking like all the remembering was weighing him down like a ton of bricks. "The great glorious Miss Faymee, we called her... That wasn't grand enough. I miss her. I would throw every accolade I've ever gained these years, every star, every prize... just for one more performance on that stage with her. Just... one... more... magical moment..."

Daphneesh broke down in tears, necessitating a break to hopefully recombobulate him.

at that moment though, Miss Faymee didn't know how big of an effect she would have on Daphneesh. Ony that the audience was rapt. They gasped. They laughed, They tilted their heads in confusion, as she strung them along with a hastily reforged routine that was a mix of "anyone could do that", "anyone with enough practice could do that." and "WHAT. IN THE WORLD" ... eventually her hour was up after a torrent of holographics, practical effects and plain good timing, as she bowed and tilted her hat at the audience... The bunny that had started it all on her head popped out of the hat and briefly raised a sign saying "That's really it. Go home now." sending the audience laughing and clapping as the limelight shut off.

Miss Faymee slowly descended down the stairs, relying on her night vision to avoid tripping in the darkness. She stopped briefly... then popped a holographic generator to create a floating lamp by her shoulder to light the rest of the way... It was not part of the job, just a little joke... But she had broken Daphneesh from that moment...

Daphneesh dropped to his knees and watched this... comedic magician minx, strolling casually off the stage with a magical lamp hovering by her side to provide a dim light. even as the surrounding bulbs did most of the work as they flared back on post-show.... "My most glorious... beautiful... amazing Goddess Faymee.... How do you do this? How do you do all this?"

Faymee gave a small ulp. She had just been bullshitting her way the whole day and night... Now she was expected to give Daphneesh some sort of revelatory philosophy out of nowhere? She thought very carefully... the wrong words could ruin his life... She took another deep breath to compose herself, before slowly getting on one knee to look at Daphneesh eye to eye... Perhaps the same kind of stuff she'd said to Paul when she wanted him to buy this toy?

She said it again. It would prove to be the thing that helped Daphneesh pick himself back up in comedy, and yet also the biggest millstone for the rest of his life.

"Mr Daphneesh... why not try doing? It's amazing what happens when you... do... stuff."

Paul was not interested in Daphneesh's little breakdown. He was calmly explaining things that were important in the warm afterglow of the wildly successful tech demo."You cannot sell this thing on its own."

Dirges paled. "But... but I want to make hay while the sun shines."

Paul shook her head. He had done tech for so long as Seamus Arendt, he felt qualified to sit this boy down and lead him safely along a treacherous path... "No, you want to launch a sustainable company. We're all aware this system needs to ride atop a quality android platform to even begin to lift its weight. There will be plenty of people you will have to disapppoint by turning them down, just so you can avoid the even bigger disappointment of the thing not working ... oh, and the current first version has a few issues, we can gradually improve the product to reap more sales. Better coprocessing on the board... better cooling... more cool examples for the kids... lessons on wielding the devkit for newcomers... " He paused... hrm... "Maybe I should work out some deals with a few android companies for upgrades to support the weight of this system... Oh, and tech support and installers - this is not a plug-and play system yet..."

Paul spent the rest of his night drowning the first members of what would become Raijin Corp's second homegrown MNC DirgesTek in the advice that only an old sherpa of several decades could offer the budding coglomerate of random folks become a forged collective... a Brotherhood of sorts. He mused briefly that maybe he should also collect franchising fees, then dismissed it... He wasn't the first leader of a Brotherhood, and this team had a whole lot more brothers and even more than one sister - it would be bigger than Arendtcore if they played right and fair and true...

Paul and Faymee had spent the entirety of next day sleeping in the sun, enjoying the warm glow of what they had pulled off - rather, Faymee had spent the requisite few hours recharging, before slow-discharging in the sun while hugging Paul, a happy smile on her face.

A small butterfly briefly alighted on Faymee's cheek... Unlike the butterflies that she had brought to DirgesTek, this one was real... Faymee opened her eyes on feeling the small white glowy creature flap on her cheek, before it flew off... before closing them again. She was feeling so alive, and it had only been 40ish hours since she'd first booted up and snapped away from the rest of the Aymee Clones...

It felt good.

Chapter 11 - "Just how medieval did you want your BDSM story?

Richelieu stretched and yawned in his canopy bed as he awoke, twirling his majestic moustache a little as he hopped out of bed and threw open the curtains to reveal... the dank, tired vibes of Raijin Cove. Being perched almost entirely on the border between stable lawlessness and Brazilian Law, he certainly had a good wide view of the cove. another bonus had been the ability to lobby to add a few extra square kilometres to his estate and to the cove that the Brazilian authorities hadn't been bothered to enforce... by the time they noticed and started protesting, it had been too late - Squatters Rules, Brasilia drools.

On this extra land, he paid the usual tithes to the Council of Raijin Cove. in fact, the land pretty much ensured he was one of the most heavily taxed inhabitants in the Cove in terms of land ownership rates. On the flip side, that onerous taxation brought incredible pull with the Council so long as he could make the money needed to pay those rates, on pain of losing the land. There were no income taxes to speak of, only taxes on select items that the Council had declared potentially deleterious but not completely necessarily harmful to the Cove as a whole.

That had led to the second set of taxes to be paid quarterly on the same terms of taxation equalling representation... A small vineyard of various grape cultivars. But unlike sensible winemakers elsewhere who usually fought hard to keep away the mould and other pathogens that would ruin a grape crop, Richelieu had carefully chosen to infect all his grapes with an assortment of carefully selected moulds and pathogens... The result were grapes that teetered on the edge between an unnatural exquisite flavor and being actual poison, one that he had had the nose to navigate successfully, most of the time.

The follow on result with careful selection, crushing, and long-term fermentation were a series of wines officially shunned and banned from polite competitions and society, yet were carefully secreted away by those in the know and carefully savored in the brief few hours between uncorking and vinegarization. Even modern preservation and serving systems bought at best a day or two before the potently drinkable wine turned to rancid vinegar capable of stripping even the gold out of a nugget.

Lighting Wine, they were all called. good flavor that came out like a flash, but easily left the bottle and fled in a matter of hours or even minutes after. And Business was good even at the exhorbitant rates he'd charged for even a small pint bottle... and he sold a lot of pint bottles and even the more normal large sizes. even in a healthy individual, they were rumored to be able to briefly stop the heart as the imbiber went on a journey of flavor, possibly forever and right into a coffin.

There had been demerits with the location of course.... negotiating the services of a certain kind of purveyor of fetish had proven especially tricky. Even with the warm scent of the wine yeasts at work and the aftersmell of bottled Lightning, no woman would deign to camp out here in the dinky two floor mansion that was Richelieu Chateau for more than a few days, mainly during the harvest season when the grapes were traditionally crushed by the bare feet of virginial maidens. Some customers swore it doubled the flavor and endurance of the wine, some begged to say it was just a waste of time and useful only to ogle bare naked legs dancing in the mash and skirts staining with red and green grape muscat...

That had all changed four seasons ago.

The costs of summoning yon fair maidens to do the mashing dance had quadrupled due to COVID-2080, a major contagion that swept through the cove and almost ended it. The cove had recovered from it - its own flavors of poisons, pharma and pathogens were a danger to many pandemics themselves - but not everything had gone back to normal entirely. It had become impossible to lure virginal backpacking maidens into Raijin Cove for the harvest dance, however much Richelieu bumped up the payments and lodging add-ons for those who would divert briefly from their traipsing through that bit of the Brazilian coast into the cove itself, a fact not helped by how the Brazilian authorities had worked to discourage such diversions.

As we mentioned earlier in this tale, Richelieu was taxed at greviously onerous rates... but they were paid back with tolerance of his winemaking practices, and the ability to demand help in dire times of some form or other... though he would not be able to necessarily gain the exact type of help he desired. They might offer him something else instead, it would at least be somewhat effective, that was the promise - if not fully effective. Richelieu had feared that exact outcome as he stormed the Council of the Cove's chambers, surprising the present Senior members who oversaw the cove's wellbeing and stability.

"Prithee!" He had yelled forth, his voice loaded with the grief and worry that was plaguing him, "I require the services of four young maidens, ideally all virginal, though that could be negotiatied away with... but they MUST be beautiful to at least a modest degree. They need to reside in the rooms my chateau and perform the annual harvest rite of the grape muscat dance! I will pay them handsomely, and they will be free to leave after the four weeks of the rite are done and the muscat is delivered to my works to be treated, cooked and prepared for another fine harvest!"

A prince nez'd gentleman in the middle of the table on the far end, heading the Council, adjusted his pince nez... "Are there any other requests the honored Count Richelieu desires, pray tell?"

"Ah, great Lord M[EXPUNGED], I ah... I have certain other slightly more prurient desires... nothing absolutely beyond the pale. merely that though I be one of the elite, I too wish to be occasionally laid low. I would appreciate it if at least one of desired maidens be versed in the art of taking a man as close to hell with various implements before... bringing them back through purgatory and up into the lower heavens, if only for a few hours at a time."...

Mr M listened to Richelieu's florid Old Englishe demands, thinking slowly. "Ah... at least one BDSM expert... ooh... that's going to be a tough call isn't it, Frankie?"

Another Council member, this one a suspiciously effeminate man in a dress who took great effort to pass himself off somewhat as female for very obvious reasons, nodded. "BDSM experts tend to be either young and incompetent, or aged and experienced.... There is a gradual slide between the two, and throwing grape mashing dance into the mix rules out even more candidates, even if only one or two need to be good at it..." Frankie apologised sadly. "Perhaps one of you has a way to offer Richelieu what he needs?"

The room fell silent for a while. Not particularly, no... Richelieu had made a very hard ask. it seemed possible they might even have to refund at least part of his taxes with a little extra thrown in for an apology... That was not a palatable thought as they looked at Richelieu in his strangely ancient garb... Then Mr M almost gave off a soft ping as a lightbulb figuratively went on in his head.

"Oh great day, Richelieu," Lord M suddenly addressed him thus. "I may know a friend of a friend who might be able to solve your problem." At this Richelieu was pleased.

Lord M cut into his joy abruptly... "However, be forewarned, the manner in which he solves your quandry may not necessarily take the exact form you envisioned. You will at least be satisfied in one aspect of your quantry, if not both. This much we are willing to guarantee. Are you willing to accept this help from us, or will you attempt to make your next season's payments without the aid you required?"

Richelieu paled briefly, considering the issue. He could either take the help and the reassurance that nothing would be held against him if the help failed to resolve his need, or do nothing and possibly lose the vineyard from not being able to meet nthe demands of the Cove next season... He decided in the end that it would be worth trying the help Lord M was offering, regardless of how it appeared.

A week later, a middle aged man of messy hair and sorrowful mien arrived, dressed in peculiar rags. This was the help Lord M had promised, and already Richelieu began to feel a pang of regret in his worried heart and mind. How was this ragamuffin supposed to deal with his quandry? It looked like a lost cause...

Bellamy Arendt looked around the Chateau, it was a bizarre mishmash of modern comforts and medieval stylings... a sort of winemaker's estate that was keeping it real by using methods from very ancient times with a few cheats from modern technology here and there such as pasteurization for selected batches intended for longer term storage and slower degradation at the cost of a slight bastardisation of taste.... There had even been a basic harvesting drone system to gather the grapes from the vineyard properly and deposit the muscat into the winemaking process proper. If there was already some modern equipment even in this Chaucerian setup, perhaps one more bit of modern tech wouldn't hurt. He had just the project in mind...

The ragamuffin introduced himself as "Bellamy Arendt" and surveyed the lands which Richelieu had worked so hard to obtain and keep hold of, witnessing the pride with which Richelieu had kept to the traditions of winemaking that produced Lightning Wine, and even tried a sip or two. It had been an eye opening experience. Perhaps it had even opened up some sort of third eye in Bellamy, as he produced some sort of small handheld contraption and began typing out some sort of missive, and waiting a bit before reading from the device, before typing another missive back and repeating the wait and read. After about half an hour standing in the corridors between the lower floor bedrooms, kitchens and bathroooms, as well as the basement access to yonder winemaking processes, The ragamuffin roared in a sort of satisfaction, some sort of language I had never heard of before, and suspect will never hear again. "Rejoice, my lord, your problems will soon be solved, just in time for the rites you described in four months' time! But there may be a price to be paid. some of your requests are unsual, and I shall need to remain upon ye to ensure the solution does not worsen thy woes in any way... are you amenable to this, or shall I withdraw my services upon thy disagreement?"

Richelieu was desperate, but even the language and the way in which Bellamy had spoken thus raised some concerns. Still, a drowning man will cling to even the Devil. And so it was that Richelieu gave Bellamy the run of the stables, the brewing room, and the lower floor rooms. Richelieu had been a solitaire, and this agreement changed little to him, or so he thought then.

In a few phases of the moon, he would learn otherwise.

"yes, dammit, Mr North... I'm saying I've finally found a use for that networked effect brain you hated so much as well as that failed experiment in programming empathy into robots rather than naturally evolving it over years of living. No, it's a real touch and go thing here, but if you would kindly bust your sorry arse to get them to me on the next express copter, I would be be very appreciative of being able to get cracking on it fast. I only have about three months, if you take a safety margin of a month before his weird dance... " Bellamy had spoken into the smart tablet he'd carried alomng with his Fixit Microbar. Anything more might upset Richelieu's obsession with medieval times. at least these two implements could be explained away...

He thought for a moment, then asked again. "And we had a few crates from that failed project the medieval park defaulted on, could you send those as well? I finally think I have a use for them too." Bellamy put his smattering of hardware engineering to use, planning on running clean water and electricity into the bedrooms on the groundfloor while attempting to maintain a semblance of medieval style in the whole project. This was going to be... really interesting. BDSM androids in a networked configuration, to be ready for some sort of harvest rite and hopefully on a longer term basis, if not permanently ensconed within this medieval-with-hidden-benefits Chateau.

It was one pretty farking weird challenge... but that was the thing that had made Arendtcore what it was now... the innermost sanctum LOVED weird challenges to their coding, engineering and artistic senses... oh yes, the legal shit too, though it had always been harder for Aymee Ichigo to share that bag with the rest of them even when she was still in the Sanctum and not an Empress...

He cracked his knuckles and started laying out plans on his tablet as Richelieu left him to his devices.

Chapter 12 - Strange Dealings With The Devil / Bellamy starts building what he needs at Richelieu Chateau.

A few days later, the ragamuffin Bellamy Arendt had begun construction of a most interesting series of structures within the bedrooms on the ground floor. He doth remove all the furnishings and smeared the floor with some concoction, adding drainage to each of the rooms as well as pipings to convey various fluids and motive forces into the rooms a day later after the concoction hath dried and faded from visible eye. To each room he added the same items... Some sort of wood and glass chamber which could close either its glass or glass and wood elements into a closed closet, a sort of screen painting that kept moving and showing indecipherable items, a sort of board full of keys labelled in incomprehensible ways that glowed faintly in the dark, and a large box that through some form of mechanics locked and opened by itself. To these boxes, Bellamy hath added various items of fair maiden's clothing, but amongst them were strangely wicked items of clothing and odd implements.

When Richelieu confronted Bellamy Arendt spoke thus:

"Hark, my Lord. I mean you no distress or harm to your estate, but the maidens I hath summoned will arrive soon, but I shall not be able to retain their services and health without these arrangements I am making upon your estate. I apologise for the oddity and the heavy use of space, but they are necessary to meet the demands you have placed upon me. Each of these former bedrooms now doth contain the necessary unuugents and implements for them to dress presentably and meet the needs of thy wine estate. I would ask that you refrain from interfering with these fixtures I hath placed, though you are welcome to view them without touching anytime. These fair maidens hath been drawn from lands where certain concepts we consider to be natural are far from normale to them. They mean no offense, and in return, you should not take too much advantage of their graces and naivete..."

At that time, Richelieu hath accepted the ragamuffin's peculiar explanations. Subsequent events would send him on a strange roustabout of different opinions, some more positive, some far worse...

Bellamy wiped his brow as he finished putting together some prototype code to unify the four androids he was about to install into the winemaker's estate. He had also developed a slight throbbing headache since stepping into the estate, surely nothing wrong was happening to him from continued exposure to the estate's environment? He took a small swig of a rum that had been prescribed by a Doctor Salmuhg, claiming that it would protect him from the worst effects of Richelieu Chateau's fumes, if only for a reasonable period...

Things got weirder gradually.... Four coffins had arrived at the estate in some sort of brownish material - some sort of wood pray tell - Richelieu had no knowledge of.... The ragamuffin had immediately claimed them all and stowed one into each of the ground floor bedrooms and ordered him not to enquire for a while as he prepared them, locking the doors to all of them before opening the first one and shutting himself inside... he had however neglected to lock this door as he worked, and he was all too focused on the work he was performing within, allowing Richelieu to peek in and survey the work being done by Bellamy... He gasped a little.

A most beautiful golden-haired maiden doth stand in repose in the wooden chamber. at various areas of her body, holes hath been carved out of her anatomy, exposing delicately shaped natomies and other strange indescribables. In the middle of her chest lay a sort of puzzle board with various unknown holes and tabs and glowy runes that kept shifting. Bellamy calmly introduced some sort of piping into the board and proceeded to punch the board beneath the moving screen painting with his fingers at a rapid pace... After a while, yon fair maiden awoke slowly.... She had the bluest of eyes to match her long gosssamer gold hair, and when she opened her mouth, a cacophony in a language Richelieu had no comprehension of spewed forth, her lovely lips parting and closing erratically. This had allowed Richelieu to view the woman's bare body, as prurient a desire as it may have seemed. If one omitted the strange parts and holes, there was much to bring Richelieu joy- her form, her clefts, her rounded forms, her face, all spoke of perfection...

Bellamy licked his lip in some sort of strange ritual motion and muttered. "And thy name shall be Donna... yes... Donna soundeth like a most appropriate name for this contraption..."

The fair maiden suddenly began to speak in a way that made some sense to Richelieu. "My name be Donna. My lordth be Lord Richelieu, my sole place shall be the grounds of the Chateau Richelieu, where I now stand and wherefore I have had a map defined of where I shall linger. I shall serve, honor and obey his desired requirements and additional needs, even while I protect the sanctity of this estate. I will love, honor, and obey. Warning: occasionally I shall lay him low as he desires, but he will always be my lord otherwise, just as he be the lord of my other... three... sisters..."

Richelieu eased the door shut and clutched his heart as he retired to the corridor. This Donna was a mere maiden, but her declarations were almost knightly and pierced his heart. He needed to be the best lord he could to her... and to the other three maidens, if their intentions and hearts were just as pure...

After a short while, Bellamy Arendt doth leave Donna's room, "That is one down", he sayeth in a puzzling formation of the language, a reminder that he is not from these parts... "But I cannot continue my works for the moment. Something about the vapors of this place ill-fitteth my humors, I must adjourn to the lowlands to recuperate for the night. Be not afraid, I shall return henceforth tomorrow to continue my preparations for your ritual... And with that, he started walking out the gates of the Chateau towards the town beneath us...

Doctor Sahlmung watched with attention as Bellamy dropped the efferverscent tablet that he had been prescribed into a mug of chilled water, drinking it down slowly and feeling the swimmy feeling in his head go away slowly, just in time as a preselected buffet of roasted veggies and roast meat was placed in front of him with actual modern sauces and cutleries. "Oh god... what was that feeling? It was weird..."

Doctor Sahlmung nodded and patted his shoulder. "That estate is home to some pretty virulent fungi and pathogens. two or three days won't affect you much, but I've brought out people who stayed in there a bit longer and their lingual centers and concepts of the world had been totally frakked, Mr Bellamy... they literally begin to think like medieval folks and speak and listen to stuff in the same context. No absolute idea why. it's a total puzzle I'm always interested in, even if there's actually no permanent solution for it."

Bellamy considered this, then paled... "And my client has been staying in that estate nonstop for... years... Oh no...."

Doctor Sahlmung shrugged. "It doesn't seem to be too deleterious once your leave the estate for a day or two and drink down this counteragent I use regularly for neural impacts... I've seen him speak and dress normally like modern us down here, but he spends too much time while preparing his wines and he falls right back in just like..." he made a woosh sound and parted his hands like his brain was exploding. "Anyhow, you seem unnaturally well prepared for this job you're doing..."

Bellamy bit into the roast. whatever meat it was made from it was DELISH! ... "How do I put it in layman terms.... oh yes, we took some old code and hardware from various older projects we once did.... the robots we're using came from a client named Eldos Productions... some major porn concern that wanted to expand a themepark for adults called "Eastworld"... we 'd just started on the first four prototypes for their new medieval quarter when weird shit started happening that threatened me and my bros, so we exercised our right to terminate and left the site just before it all went to some sort of hell. They still did pay us for pre-production and the prototypes and initial fittings, but we never got to fulfil that giant Camelot thing we wanted to build. Pity, really...." He raised his glass and chugged more of the counteragent fizzing away... "Wow, this tastes like pretty decent blueberry soda... is it safe to drink without actually curing ... you know, any neural issues building up?"

Richelieu tested the door to Donna's room and foundeth it unsecured while Bellamy hath excused himself, so he decided to peek in again.

Donna hath had all her various holes patched up, and now resembled a fair normal human maiden of gossamer gold hair and warm blue eyes. She stared straight ahead, uncognizant of her lack of modesty and total nudity as she stood in the wooden chamber, a glass door of some sort formed over the wooden chamber to seal her in. Richelieu touched nothing - he had given his oath to Bellamy not to touch anything in this room. He did not commit not to watch though, and watch he did... this lovely maiden, kept away from him by a layer of glass. this allegedly loyal, perfect woman-

Donna suddenly spoke. "Hark. I see the approach of Lord Richelieu. How may I assist you?" So she could hear and speakth!

Richelieu fell silent as he watched Donna watch him watch her, trying to compose a proper reply to a lady... "I doth require nothing of you at this moment. There will be tasks in the days ahead, important tasks. I thank you and your sisters for answering my summons, but am most curious about some things... what, pray tell be your sisters' names?"

Donna doth put forth a series of unnatural sounds, sounds that seemed strangely beautiful and yet not human... "Lord Richelieu, our names are Donna and... Donna and... Donna and... error. thy knowledges hath not been fully formed, please completeth thy knowledges before making such a query of me again..." What a peculiar response, but that gentle voice doth be like honey to a bee, however incomprehensible her answers became.

Richelieu attempted to steer the discussion. "Earlier, I heard that thou wouldst serve me loyally without question, obey me, and see to my needs. is this truly an oath you are prepared to swear, or mere empty words?"

Donna made more of those unnatural noises, before responding again. "Yes, my lord, we have all sworn or are being prepared to swear such an oath. Caution: my lord hath requested that I may inflict certain desired forms of pain. I am still not fully aware as to the extent of what sort of pains you desire, and I may accidentally injure or harm you. For that I apologise and beg your forgiveness in advance..."

Richelieu twitched and almost went against the glass casing. "Ah, Donna my dearest... if your other sisters are of the same mind as you I fear I shall not want for all the pain I desire and all the needs I need met! You seem at times like an angel, yet at others like a demon.... mayhaps you be a succubus sent to damn me? Or an angel to bring me to heaven? Nay, perhaps both at the same time, though that soundeth like madness"

Donna started making more of those unnatural noises, now longer in duration."... Lord Richelieu, my lord... I am merely Donna. your servant and one of four. Nothing more. Nothing less. Please refrain from asking such protracted things....

Richelieu backed away gradually. "We shall speak of other things later. Perhaps we may even have a chance to know each other more..." He said as he opened the door, perchance to exit this maddening yet lovely vision and sound.

Donna blinked slowly, as one does. "Farewell for the moment, my lord. we shall speaketh again when the time is ripe..."

And then, the room doth fell silent save for the noises emitted by the screen painting and the wooden chamber, Donna standing straight in repose as one may do....

Chapter 13 - Does It Really Matter Which One?

Richelieu stirred in bed again. It had been a year since Lord North and his consort Faymee had graced his chateau and looked over the ailments of the four sisters that had been summoned to work in the place. He stretched a little, and reached for his bedside bell to ring for one of the sisters to attend to him.

Arrangements at the chateau had been altered a little to fix the ailments of the sisters. While they would work together on the harvest ritual dance as well as the houseworks, Donna had been tasked with being Richelieu's exclusive handmaid on certain matters. Fellows of the ragamuffin Bellamy Arendt would also attend to the needs and care of the sisters every quarter, at the height of the full moon. He remained a little concerned of the arrangements that had been put in place to solve his problem, but it had worked - the wine was richer last Harvest than before, and he no longer had concerns about finding maidens to tend to the festival dance or the house.

Richelieu was still enamoured the most of Donna, she of gossamer blonde hair and gray eyes, of most bountiful chest. She was the first of the sisters he had conversed with, and her voice had been of a lilt most soothing. It would be nice to greet her this morning, have her assistance in getting ready for the day, and speak with her before attending to matters requiring his attention, however briefly that would be...

BELL RING DETECTED RANDOMIZING UNIT SELECTION... SENDING UNIT 1 TO OWNER PROGRAMME: EARLY MORNING PREP

Her eyes flickered open as the glass front of her charging chamber swivelled open, a metal arm reaching to the exposed control panel in the recess beneath her breasts and inserted a silvery disck into a slot in her puzzle panel, before pulling the charging conduit out of its socket. She slowly whirred and walked out of the chamber, the skin cover sealing up tightly to hide her puzzle panel. She opened the storage box that had been assigned to the four sisters and began pulling on her dark blue robes and slippers, then proceeding to tie her hair in the bun hairstyle that Richelieu favored, stringing little ribbons of gold into the bun.

Having done that, she took her lamp off the hook, watching briefly as electronics in the lamp made it light up (it wasn't a real oil lamp, those would be too dangerous to have around - a rare concession to modernity in the medieval atmosphere of the chateau), opened the door to her room and closed it behind her, the lock automatically clicking in place as nobody other than her, Richelieu and the fellows who came quarterly should attend to the room of the four sisters.

She called out to the bedroom above as she got onto the lift platform - another concession to moderniy - and slowly ascended to be with Richelieu. "Donna coming, my lord!"

They had some idle chatter as she helped Richelieu into his working robes and brushed his hair, discussing his plans. Or rather, she listened attentively as Richelieu went on and on about his plans. When she was done, she took her lamp and turned to get back on the lift.

Richelieu called out to her and walked over for a bit... he closed his eyes and cupped her face, kissing her lips briefly. "Would it trouble you if I were to ask you to be with me... tonight... in that manner to which we are accustomed?"

He breathed deeply. All four sisters were technically the same from top to toe, different only in name, yet he had developed a certain favoritism of Donna.

The sisters had once fallen into a terrible comatose state, possibly from jealousy or some other vapors. With Lord North's administrations, their collective malady had been healed, and they now served him with equal zeal and care. Another change had been the removal of all their name tags. Richelieu understood their names to be Donna, Carra, Yona and Bella, but he couldn't tell them apart anymore. No matter, as long as Donna attended personally to his special needs, he would be... content.

She smiled at Richelieu and turned back to the lift. "You know the manner in which I can be summoned at night. You know where the ensorcelled bracelet is in your quarters, and how it works. I don't believe we need to remind you of that?"

Richelieu chuckled. "Of course... Now, please attend to your duties, we shall... speak more tonight?"

She nodded and descended on the lift. Richelieu blushed a little as he watched her leave his room, before sitting down at his writing desk to operate a moving screen painting with a board of keys to attend to his admirers' demands for his wares from realms far and wide.

Richelieu came down around lunchtime by his staircase, walking into the corridor. He watched as two of the sisters carefully loaded a few crates of his wine into a strange conveyance, waving it farewell as it exited the garage doors, before turning to face him as the doors slowly creaked shut.

"How goes the trade?" Richelieu asked them.

"It doth go well." "Revenues are up 30 per cento. Profits are up 10 percento."

Richelieu raised an eyebrow. "There doth seem to be a disconnect between what we earn and what we can keep."

The two sisters looked briefly at each other before addressing Richelieu again. "The bottlemaker has unfortunately been forced to raise his prices." "A war in a faraway land hath denied him some of the ease with which he sources some of his unugents for crafting fine glass." "A most vexing pity. Should we find a cheaper substitution, my lord?"

Richelieu thought about this for a while, then shook his head. "No. No other bottlemaker hath offered wares of the same quality and capability to hold my wines still until the cork is pulled. We shall bear the added costs he requests... for now."

"Understood." "We shall maintain our contract with him at the prices he now requests."

Richelieu nodded... "And are there any other concerns that you believe need raised?"

The sisters conferred briefly again... "The weather so far this year seems to have dramatically increased yields of our vineyard." "We may have to send some of it to mulch unless you desire to bottle more." "Such an action would make our wines less exclusive." "There are those who believe our exclusivity is part of our allure."

Richelieu sighed and rubbed his head. It was always a temptation to sell more Lightning Wine to the world, but sometimes that meant making it cheaper. It did not necessarily mean he would stand to gain. He would have to think hard about it... "I need time to consider the best course of action... in the meantime, keep the extra yield on the vine. We still have time before the harvest ritual dance to decide how best to handle the extra yield... mayhaps dry them and sell them as raisins, not that I ask of you to do it now?"

The sisters smiled and nodded. "We shall do as asked." The grapes the chateau grew could be dried to produce a peculiarly hallucinogenic dried raisin. Some sailors who berthed at the Cove swore by them as they seemed to keep better than the wines, though they were of weaker effect. That would be an acceptable alternative possibly, yes.

Richelieu nodded. "Good, carry on." They bowed and walked off into the winemaking room, leaving Richelieu to make up a simple supper of instant soup from a puck of heavily reduced beef and a small chunk of bread which he slowly ate in the kitchen even as one of the other sisters stirred a pot to make a vegetable reduction.

Richelieu felt a little frisky, and so he set aside his empty plate in the sink and sidled over to the sister attending the pot, hugging her from behind. "Be you... Donna?"

The sister blinked slowly and whirred... a most peculiar sound. "No, I be Bella, my lord. Please refrain from focusing your affections on me, I am engaged in a important part of this recipe and cannot be disturbed."

Richelieu nodded and backed off quickly. He respected the hard work and oath the sisters had sworn to him, and in turn would also listen to their requests most of the time. "I beg your pardon. Just a moment of idle foolishness on my part."

The sister turned herself a little to smile at Richelieu. "One works so hard. Perhaps there will be time for licentiousness at a later time in the day... Just not with me.... have we all not agreed that Donna is your favored one?"

Richelieu nodded. "Of course, I could not be such a faithless cad! ... I shall return to my paper works now."

She purred. "And I to my place in the kitchen. Be well, my lord."

Richelieu quickly made his way back up the stairs to his bedroom cum office and continued working, thinking hard about the grape yield of his vineyard, his trades with merchants, and ever so often, fantasies of Donna in his bed, her heaving body pleasing him in ways beyond that of other women he had previously bedded. Whereever the sisters had come from, they were so otherworldly at times. He closed his eyes and issued a brief prayer of thanks to whichever God - or Devil - had seen fit to command them to serve him.

Richelieu looked up at the darkening room. Oh gods, he had been so busy the whole day that the night had almost ambushed him unawares. He checked his digital watch, a most curious contraption he had waived into his lands... it was about 8 of the clock. The sisters would all have retired to their rooms at this point. He unhooked the lamp and placed it onto his table, giving the room some decent lighting, before reaching into the bottommost drawer of his work desk.

There was a peculiar silver bracelet with various runes and glowing runestones embedded in it, twisted so that it was parted open. He hesitated briefly - there would be a most exquisite pain before the pleasure began. Once he wore this bracelet, there would be a strange ritual in his bedroom in two hours, one that lasted two hours, before relief and pleasure were proovided. There was no undoing it for the night once he wore it... Once the spell in it had done its job, it would remain useless until three sunrises had passed.

He gulped, thinking of the lush pleasures Donna could offer her even as she wounded him severely... Then clicked the bracelet shut on his wrist. The deed was done. In about an hour, hell would come to his bed, followed by heaven.

SAFETY BRACELET ENGAGED RANDOMIZING UNIT SELECTION... SENDING UNIT 3 TO OWNER PROGRAMME: BDSM / GENTLE LOVEMAKING SAFEWORD: BALDERDASH

The four chambers were totally dark in the room of the sisters... suddenly the chamber marked "3" started making a cacophony of noises, lighting the inside of the chamber to reveal her bare naked form, the puzzle panel in the recess beneath her breasts pulsating with lights wildly as a metal arm removed the charging conduit from the panel, causing her skin to reform above it and conceal it from view.

She slowly stepped out of the chamber, her eyes somehow still capable of seeing in the pitch black of the room as she located the storage box. Instead of the daytime gown she wore for the day's duties, she now chose something far more appealling as well as shocking, a sheer black lace bodysuit tied on with ribbons on either side of her waist, to which she paired a matching pair of black leather gloves as well as thigh high leather stockings that curiously were cut open to reveal her heels and toes.

She fished out a jet black lipstick and carefully applied it to her pouty lips, smacking them briefly, before taking out a whip and finishing up with a open-front gown. Having done the preparations, she lifted her lamp off its hook, the light now glowing a peculiar blue flame rather than the usual off-white. She walked out of the sisters' room with glazed eyes, boarding the lift up to Richelieu's room.

The first sign that Richelieu's torment was about to begin was the faint clink of a lamp being deposited on his bedside table. He peeked out from under his bedspread... it was a blue flame in the lamp. The spell from the bracelet had summoned Donna... but she would not be the sweet, gentle soul he adored... not yet.

A hand grabbed the spread and tossed it off. In the dimness of the room he could make out the form of a perfectly curved woman, swathed in lace, her hands slowly handling a whip... Her eyes glowed faintly, a dim blue in the blackness She cracked it against Richelieu's frame, her lips shimmering as they parted slightly. A cold menacing whisper followed:

"You pig... out of bed. on your knees... now."

Richelieu dutifully complied, whimpering. He who had been on top of all things in his realm was now reduced to a slave on the floor of his bedroom. Suddenly, he felt a blindfold wrapped around his eyes, robbing him of sight. It only heightened the tension in him... where was the whip going to come from next?

He got his answer as he felt the crack of the whip against his left side, then his right... a short pause followed, before more of that sweet voice tortured him. "How dare you believe yourself completely above everything. I shall teach you your place!" Another crack of the whip somewhere away from his body on one side, then on the other. Exquisite, painful torture to every fiber of his being...

Richelieu wept a little. "I... I'm sorry... Please be gentler with me, Donna..." This caused the blindfold to be whipped off, allowing him to glance upwards at the beauty that was now flaying him, the dim half-crescent moonlight tracing her contours as she licked one of her fingers and squatted down to draw little traces with her finger on his skin.

"Gentler? No, my dear lord, there is only hard, and harder... Do you truly believe I would be... gentler?" She growled, sending a frisson of bliss down Richelieu's spine. He was REALLY enjoying this, despite the pain... the pain was still somewhat bearable for the moment.

She suddenly hopped up and back a little, sending another few lashes onto Richelieu, taking care not to hit anything really important while still making him feel impotent, his heart beating faster and faster. "No, mistress Donna, please! Anything but more of this!" Richelieu begged, a perverted smile on his face.

That seemed to trigger some sort of rage as she continued whipping him, pausing, and then whipping him again for what seemed like a very long time... Suddenly she stiffened up and twitched blankly, her whip dropping to the floor as she burbled nonsensically. "zrrp. ah. terminate. bondage. switching. program. gentle love."

Richelieu blinked, then felt the silver bracelet on his wrist crack open. Apparently his heart had begun to beat dangerously fast for too long from all the pain and tenderness... He heard himself panting hard as he realised just how much of a workout he just got... Still, he was worried as he watched Donna seemingly have a seizure... She stopped moving and closed her eyes for a minute, before opening them lazily... "My lord?" The menace that had rippled through her lips as she whipped him madly was gone, replaced with a peculiar sort of... adoration?

She knelt down and carefully lifted Richelieu, carefully resting him in bed, before reaching for the basin of water he kept besides his bed at night for washing up his face as needed, lifting out a towel and wringing it slightly drier before dabbing at his body in the darkness. small stings of pain shot through him as she tended to the damage from her prior harshness. "I'm sorry, my lord, does it hurt? I don't understand why I do this sometimes..."

Richelieu panted weakly. "Your mind is not your own sometimes... I forgive... but at the same time, I punish... Come to me..." He reached an arm out and dragged her slowly into bed, cuddling her. He felt a little more tired than usual tonight - perhaps the day had been much busier than usual. "Rest with me till the morning comes, before returning to your quarters." He would probably not go all the way tonight, just hold her and enjoy the scent and warmth of her soft flesh. Perhaps on another night his member might demand its pound of flesh from between her legs, but not tonight.

She didn't answer for a bit... but eventually, she did. "Forgive me if I am indisposed tomorrow. This strange spell... it takes so much out of me on the nights it comes for me."

Richelieu smiled. It was indeed a peculiar spell, but it served his perversions well... and it didn't trigger the malaise that previously wiped all of the sisters out at once. "I punish, but I also forgive. Take the day off, as much of it as you need. I shall not summon you again this way for a bit. The bracelet is broken, and it shall not mend for a while..."

He briefly pondered if he was truly doing the right thing, then noticed her smiling and tracing lines in his bruised flesh. "I love you, my lord. You indulge my peculiarities, and you take me for who I am... But I am tired now... may I be permitted to rest in your arms just for tonight rather than in my chambers?"

Richelieu nodded and closed his eyes, her eyes following along shortly after as the blue lamp went out

Bellamy Arendt sighed as he propped his head on his desk with one elbow. "So let me get this straight... the fix for Lord Richelieu's robots was to randomize who was Donna anytime he asked specifically for her?"

Paul North dipped his 70%-less microplastics teabag in the hot water of his mug, sipping it. "That is about the size of it. You'd think he'd be able to tell the difference, but once we took off all the nametags and renovated the four separate bedrooms into one shared bedroom, I believe he stopped caring. Tech issue solved.... So, you heading over next week for the harvest ritual? We do have invite passes to watch them dance."

Bellamy Arendt sighed. "I'll pass. I hate Lightning Wine, actually. it doth give me the worst of migraines, i beg thee not to unleash it upon me."

Paul North stared. Oh shit. "I think I didn't pack any counteragent, Bellamy... don't make me go back all the way to the cove just to get more for you."

Bellamy laughed. "Just kidding... just cause I'm not under the effects of the gases, doesn't mean I can't indulge in a little Old English, it doth sound soothing to my soul. Besides, the stuff's poisonous if I'm not neurologically sick."

Paul North let out a sigh of relief. "Oh, good.... does it work on psychopathy though?"

Bellamy shook his head. "A normal person could never have come up with that solution that you did while standing in those fumes. I think you should just revel in it for a bit. let Seamus out to play for a while as a reward."

Paul North blanched and threw a newspaper at Bellamy. "NO. You know how much of a mess he makes when he comes out!"

Chapter 14 - Nonstandard Families Programme Inclusion

The HR clerk blinked at the filing, before looking up at the new employee. "So what you're telling me is... you want to bring in your own model companion from elsewhere instead of having us fill your need with our inhouse programme."

The new technician hire nodded, standing at rest with the precision of a ex-military man. "That is indeed correct. I decided to exercise my veterancy entitlement after I passed out from the military back over in Wash... before I moved over here. She should be arriving in a month." He seemed very serious about it.

The HR clerk sighed and wrote in the forms. They were certainly getting some pretty interesting new hires ever since the thaw in relations between the New American Union and the True American Union began to happen "Well, Mr Henry Bufflecluck, we rarely get requests like this... Now I need to warn you, we may not be able to cover repairs or even provide them on a paid basis with a different company's units... You DO have some means of getting repairs or maintenance for what you're bringing in right? some sort of local repair center or support unit?"

Henry grinned a little. "I spent twenty years building them every step of the assembly line. Give me a little credit about being able to do my own servicing and repairs."

The HR clerk raised an eyebrow. Of course... a technician should be able to service his own stuff. Still... He stamped the form with an approval for the request. "Just remember it needs to be at least a 17 out of 19 on the Silbert Realism Scale unless you have a special review and get a waiver."

Henry ooh-er-ed.... "Uhm... I might need to get a waiver, she's got slightly larger eyes than most people. and slightly smaller mouth..."

The HR Clerk raised the other eyebrow to go as well. "How large are we talking about here?"

Henry licked his lips... "average human eyeball is 16mm... hers are about erm... 25mm, lips are probably 3/4 the average width... Something like that."

The Clerk sighed... "I think you MIGHT need to get a waiver. Something about that combination feels wrong to me. I'll schedule a review for you when you get it in. Just tell me when it arrives and we'll tell you when to bring it in."

The reviewer stared blankly at the doll Mr Henry Bufflecluck had brought in for the review a month later.... "Wow. those are some pretty large peepers. Pretty smallish mouth too... can she even eat anything?"

He lifted her glasses off briefly to look at the sleeping face that certainly looked quite a bit off from the usual human-like faces he'd seen on most androids, carefully turning the disembodied head side to side to examine how it looked. The unit had arrived disassembled into several pieces in order to fit a smaller cargo box, all wrapped in secure foam. He had carefully unwrapped one of the parts that was marked as the head of the unit to give it a quick examination for the Silbert Scale. If it had fallen between a certain number he would be checking the rest of the gear in an attempt to bump up the number before approving or rejecting it.

Henry shrugged. "We used to have them at our military family dinners sometimes. they just had to chew slower and eat less each bite. You'd be surprised how much they can expand for certain... uhm... purposes."

The reviewer paused and considered this... "I'm not going to enquire. I can guess.... but it's kind of funny, this design coming out of Wash? I would have figured it would have come from Chinajapese instead. they have these big eyes small mouth kinda girls in their comics and coming out of their factories there."

Henry raised an eyebrow at this remark.

The reviewer scratched his head embarassedly. "I ah.... I read those kinds of fetish magazines, Mr Bufflecluck. I may know a bit too much about some alien culture stuff."

Henry raised a hand to fistbump the reviewer as they looked at the partially unpacked beauty lying freshly unlidded from Wash. "Kindred?"

The reviewer nodded. "Kindred. Also: approved. just be ready to fix her when she breaks, do your own maintenance at home, and explain what the sam hell is up with her if anyone asks. We don't allow extended outages of companion service, okay?"

Henry nodded as he boxed his new companion back up to bring home, clutching the approved waiver and license to use her as a companion for the purposes of the Arendtcore Families Programme. "Oh believe me, I got enough parts and oils to make another four of her if it comes to that... only for repairs, you understand... And I know where to get more."

The reviewer raised an eyebrow, whistling as if impressed. "Talk about being overprepared... so what do you plan to name her?"

"You know, Henry... I swear sometimes the neighbours just stare at me." The sweet pleasant voice was music to his ears, Henry's ears.

Henry downed his newspaper and looked her. He had decided to call her Luna, so by the local standards she was Luna Bufflecluck. But she was a most unusual creature even by the standards of Little Sanctuary, where they had robots that resembled buff women giants, normal ladies, female kitty cats with biped legs, and even the occasional angel or devil (with non functional holographic wings), or alien woman. There had even been a few units that resembled various bipedal mythological ghosts or creatures- usually the female ones with fetish potential.

But nobody had eyes that large, or a mouth that small. Luna was standing around in a simple sweater shirt and dungarees, the cold of autumn having started to settle in. Certainly that was worth staring at, not to mention the fact that she was barely up to Henry's armpits - a real shortstack, yet had breasts that were surprisingly large on her tiny semi-hourglassed frame - certainly not a child in shape. And certainly not a cat, though the mistake had been made plenty of times by others mistaking the twin peaks atop her jet black hair for cat ears.

Henry chuckled and leaned over to kiss Luna on her cheek. "Oh, Luna, you're my special little angel. Just keep letting them stare... so are we going for that potluck dinner at the Shelbies tomorrow night?"

Luna nodded slowly. "Of course, dear. one has to keep up appearances. I thought I'd make a little pecan pie. they seemed to enjoy it the first time when we had our housewarming party last month..." Henry watched her as she spoke, that mouth was just so adorable, but so deceptive too, as he had confirmed the first time they made love in their new Arendtcore-provided house. He had sworn he was too big to fit past those lips, but she had literally just upped and swallowed all of it like a trooper, even the yucky bit. no gag reflex too, though he could have easily enabled that if he wanted in her config files...

Luna downed her glasses a little, as if to get a better look at Henry with her huge blue eyes. "I saw a cat girl jogging past our home earlier today on all fours. They really seem to love their cute little anoraks with the little ear bulges. Perhaps I should get an anorak too..."

Henry rolled his eyes and put away his newspaper, patting his lap to offer it as a seat to Luna, to which she obliged, her surprisingly heavy frame daintily perched on his thighs as she shifted herself to look eye to eye with him without having to angle her head much. "You find EVERYTHING cute." he observed. "Even that crazy boy who keeps wearing dresses while dancing over at his home."

Luna raised a finger to Henry's lips, scowling. "Don't be rude dear. He's some sort of African dancer... which I know is weird for a Caucasian boy, but like lots of stuff in this town is weird. And that dress? that's the costume for the form he usually prefers to practice. It's not a dress dress. It's not crossdressing, and he's not dysphoric... far as I can tell."

Henry sheepishly nodded. Wash had been a much more human-filled place... then as he'd slowly migrated through the Neutral States, he had begun to see some really odd creatures. Mothmen, for instance. A wolpertinger girl who was calmly smoking while selling petrol at a station. A sentient blob that was selling chilled fruit - surely keeping it within itself even to chill it down was probably a food hygiene infringement, but who was going to protest in the middle of the boondocks? And those had been just the creatures, he'd learnt a lot about people too. Turns out Wash turned out consistently normal people, but the rest of America was... wackadoodle.

He'd ran into a bandit ambush that was repelled by a bunny girl wielding two small shotguns atop a horse and screaming epithets that didn't quite match her sweet voice. Her name had been Persi Flonne. He wondered if he was ever going to see her again. She certainly was cute... he liked cute.

Pity Luna hadn't been ready by the time he'd departed Wash. He'd earned her along with his commendations for the defense of Wash, even if they'd kind of screwed up on the very last day and lost Wash District to the Euros. There was a bit of a queue for Perfect Queens after so many high-level commendations had been handed out for that battle, and his specified customisations only bumped him further down the line. Four long months. Plus transit.

But she was here, she was larger... erm... smaller than life... and she was eager to please all too often. Not tonight, he pleaded silently. When she started she stopped only because Henry had reached down to the little brown mole on the nape of her neck and pushed against it for ten seconds for a shutdown. She was utterly insatiable with an appetite like a giant's, and not just at the dinner table...

She was so soft and cuddly... keep it together, Henry... keep it together...

If Luna had sensed his randiness, she didn't show it. "Anyhoo... how was work today?"

Henry tried to change the subject before she could sense his stiffening manhood. "My boss did something utterly addleheaded today. D'ya want to hear about it?"

Luna nodded excitedly! "Spill the tea!... no, not that tea, I spent a lot of time on getting that Darjeeling right, Henry..." She pointed at Henry's teacup next to his newspaper and wagged her finger. "The other kind of tea."

Henry took a deep breath. "well, it starts with..."

Henry finished his waggy dog story. "And then, everyone in the office laughed at him... even the janitor!... oh." He blinked... was it really that boring, or had it been a very exhausting day? He did a quick power check on Luna as she snored, tapping the brown nape mole twice. Luna opened her eyes widely for a few seconds, her blue eyes replaced by little battery meters. "Bwattewwy level.... appwwoximatewy... five pwacent. Pwease... wechuuuwge" She slurred, before closing her eyes.

Henry laughed a little and carefully princess carried her to the bedroom, lying her down flat atop the left side of the bed and checking that she was recharging properly before he got into bed next to her. He kissed her sleeping face before reaching to his beside lamp and turning it off, tomorrow was going to be a busy day, no time for canoodling tonight. He was out like a light shortly after.

Chapter 15- That kind of night

Patter Nost yawned as he parked his Reset Crew van in the garage of his house. It had been an extra-long shift with four teachers breaking at Special Little Sparks and someone's hubby going on the fritz in a manner that they couldn't recover from, necessitating a trip to the local hospital. He was supposed to be home three hours ago - for dinner even. He sweated a little and hoped Luci wouldn't still be up and carefully handling her favorite rolling pin...

The house was pretty next to pitch black, lit only by the full-moon pouring in from the front porch windows... Patter glanced around nervously, before fishing out his Fixit-microbar and toggling on the lamp. It was a pathetic lamp, barely glowing brightly enough to illuminate the immediate vicinity around poor Patter. No matter, it wasn't a very big house, being intended for two or three people. He blinked as he noticed a small package in a plastic bag... it was a takeaway from the burger joint on the block. Nothing great or terrible, just serviceable. He looked inside the box and fished out a small wrapped fish burger, the scent of it still warm. There was also another wrapper balled up, stained slightly with the white of tartare sauce like one would find in a fish burger, as well as a note.

A pair of golden eyes watched Patter from the darkness, blinking and vanishing, before the soft sound of something padding the floor could be barely heard.

Patter unwrapped his burger and happily tucked in, not knowing exactly how the takeaway got to the dinner table. He relished the flakiness of the patty, the sour-salty whiteness of tartare on his tongue making him shiver.

A pair of ears twitched somewhere in the dark. There was a faint whirr as the sound of a micro-LIDAR device booten up, followed by more soft padding noises.

Patter sighed contentedly, then briefly wondered where Luci was... another bank meeting scheduled so that it was held on someone else's lunch hour and not theirs? He pitched his wrapper into the takeaway box, burping. Briefly, he remembered the note, and fished it out of his pocket to read in the dim glow of the Fixit-Microbar's lamp.

It was in a gentle cursive, a very familiar handwriting to Patter. He read it twice, as something reared up behind him... and then gulped.

The note was very simple. It just read: "I'm still very hungry."

The Fixit-microbar fell off the table as something light but very strong pounced onto Patter from behind, as he barely had time to turn around and scream, before the lamp went out from being kept on too long.

Patter recognized the sound of overdriven micro-servos straining to hold him down on the ground from behind, before a rough synth-flesh tongue lapped at his nape in the darkness, followed by an alluring purr. "... Sorry, honey... my meeting at the bank went on too late. By the time I got to the burger shop they were closing... they only had two burgers left on the rack."

Patter laughed a little in the dark, calming down from the shock he just got. He had a reminder of how surprisingly light Luci was, especially after they'd swapped out her worn old schoolteacher body for something a bit newer and more advanced. "You could have eaten both, dear." He thought aloud, "I mean, you'd still have to go to bed to recharge, but, I know you just love fish burgers..."

Patter felt a soft paw gently find his microbar in the jet-blackness of the kitchen, before firmly palming it into his hand, the soft 'fwuf fwuf' of synthfur and retracted claws the only sound in the kitchen besides his thumping heart and the whirr of an occasional microservo continuing to hold him down for some reason. He felt a tail tip graze his legs, before noticing a pair of glowing green eyes. Someone was using her nightvision-mode to slowly appreciate him, as those eyes roamed up and down along his body.

Patter shut his eyes tightly to avoid blinding himself, and turned the lamp on his microbar back on, before slowly opening them back up.

Luci Nost was looming over him, her groomed feline shell gleaming faintly as the moon rippled down her gold and white body. After all these years, it was still doing it from him... Then he noticed that she wasn't even wearing her usual sleeping gown. She was naked, and shivering as she managed to hold down Patter's arms and legs with her servos whirring audibly from the strain. She could easily keep this level of power on him for an hour or two. But what was the point of her doing all this?

Luci leaned her white muzzle against Patter's neck, licking it a little more. Then she purred... "Didn't I tell you, honey? I was hungry... and not that kind of hungry." her hand reached against the microbar and shut it off...

Mr Henry Bufflecluck covered his ears as he sat in the darkness of his bedroom. The caterwauling and loud moans of a man being made love to by a professional something had started suddenly somewhere in the nearby neighbourhood, and it was not letting him sleep.

He saw a faint silhouette watching the moon from the bedroom window, then sweated as he realised he'd forgotten to do a full power-down on his lovely wife. She stood there in her nightgown, the moonlight shredding through the sheer fabric to expose the curves of her compact yet womanly body.

"It's a nice night, isn't it, dear?" Luna finally spoke up, as if realising Henry wasn't asleep too.

"It would be if the cats weren't having hot raunchy sex!" Henry tried adding pillows to his ears to block out the noise, before turning away from the window to get some darkness as well.

"I think they have a good idea, Henry love..." Luna's voice came over closer as he heard the faint shift of lace against bare synthflesh. "I'm feeling a little horny tonight myself..."

Henry sweated a little and threw off the pillows, staring up as Luna's dwarven form loomed over him, her eyes glowing slightly from reflected moonlight in the dark. "Erm.... Luna, dear, I need to go to work tomorrow m.morning.... we should go to bed."

The last thing Henry heard before the bedroom exploded in a cloud of floating bedspreads and orgasmic moans was Luna saying "No, I don't want to. And neither do you."

Marcus looked extremely tired, with eyebags under his eyes. "Something funny happened last night." He observed as he sipped an extra strong black coffee at the meeting desk.

Paul North joined him in the coffee shot. "I know... we have a major uptick in absences this morning. Looks like today is an unplanned shutdown day for Arendtcore Minnesota."

Bellamy looked at them, still fresh. He was used to plenty of nights not sleeping, and frankly it didn't do much to change the way he looked. "Yes... there seems to have been a major uptick in units coming online spontaneously in Little Sanctuary. I don't know the details though, I don't pry into people's lives, it was just the power-up signals on the carrier that I got..."

Marcus deadpanned. "Good. Let our people live their own private lives outside of work hours... we're not despots."

Paul moaned and rested his head right on the desk. "Please tell that to the man who got ambushed by a succubi and bats out of hell for six hours last night..."

Bellamy laughed a little. "Ooh, looks like someone spiced up their life. That holographic mod thing, we should really acquire it."

Paul whined. "No... one Faymee is quite enough. I don't need a world where I can't believe anything I see ever again..." And with that, he fell asleep right there, face flat against the marble surface of the table.

Chapter 16 - Remember Massachusetts?

Lishu Hua had heard rumors, of course. Here and there... She wasn't really sure they had any substance. Still, she had to be sure, and she did have the ear of the Chairman Founder, or at least the man helping him out in their absence. And so she asked... "Can I do an interview with Julia Manners?"

Paul North and Bellamy Arendt thought nothing of it. "If Marcus is amenable, and Julia has the time and the willingness, we can lend you the testing room for an interview." Marcus had agreed to it, and so had Julia.

And so it was that Julia sat down with Lishu in the inner sanctum of the Arendtcore Minnesota office complex, as high in the sky as anything in Minnesota could climb without being a rat race maze or a tourist attraction. Julia was dressed in a black dress meant for office attendances - not too flashy, but not so lazy and simple either.

Lishu noted this down for some reason, before hitting the record button on her recorder. "Lishu here, today I have the privilege of interviewing Julie Manners, the wife of our chief artist in residence, Marcus Manners. Thank you for coming today, Julie. it's nice that you could come."

Julie smiled and nodded at Lishu. "Anything for our up-and-coming bright spark. I've some good things about you from Paul and my honey... You'll do well in this company." Her smile widened as she noted this.

Lishu looked away to one side for a moment, trying to see Paul and Bellamy behind the one-way mirror that looked into the testing room. She couldn't... She couldn't tell how they would react to her test until she went out of this room and into that watching booth... or they tapped the tannoy and alerted her in an emergency... or if they were very upset.

Lishu took a deep breath. This was for the good of both the company and the township that had slowly grown up all around the offices themselves. She had to do it, she told herself... "So... you're the mother in a family of three... Erm... can you tell me a few facts about them? Like their ages?"

Julie grinned. "Certainly, Ms Lishu. My hubby, Marcus, is turning 100 this year. That premium rejuvenation they started him on all those years ago at the expense of the company... a very great expense, I should point out... is really doing wonders at keeping him young. Then there's me, I just celebrated my 60th birthday. Nothing fancy, hubs and I just had a tipple and a good meal at the Spanish Restaurant in District 33... you should try their tapas... and then there's my little boy, Elliot, you've seen him sometimes in these offices, he just turned 12..."

Lishu took a deep breath and fished in her folio, before handing Julie a sheet of paper. "Julie," she asked with a little trepidation, "could I ask you to read these facts to me?"

Julie nodded and took the paper... "Okay, apparently, this paper says my hubs is 100 years old this year... and I'm 25 years old, and Elliot is actually 62 years old." She paused... then looked up and nodded. "That is correct."

Lishu rubbed her forehead with her fingers. Oh no. "But you just said your family's ages were 100, 60, and 12. Now you said this is correct. They can't both be correct."

Julie nodded again. "Those facts are correct. These facts are correct."

Lishu sighed and raised a hand as if to pause Julie. "Okay, look, let's move on to something else I wanted to check... " She fished in her portfolio again. "I heard that Marcus adopted Elliot after he went through a pretty bad accident. it was life threatening and he almost died in it, didn't he?"

Lishu winced as the tannoy crackled to life in the room. It was Paul. "Lishu... I'm not exactly sure where you're going with this, but I don't like it."

Lishu looked over at the silvered glass partition. She considered this for a moment, then asked "Are you telling me not to go on with this interview?"

Paul didn't respond for a while... Finally, he did. "No, you may continue, but I'm just monitoring Julie's vitals just in case."

Lishu nodded and gave a thumbs up. She turned back to look at Julie... "Well... that was a terrible accident wasn't it?"

Julie frowned at the mention of the accident... "By the time the Alaskan Snow Express came in to save them, his father had died and he was suffering from severe frostbite in multiple parts. He almost died himself. Marcus took pity on him as the son of a family and corporate friend and adopted him while he was recovering. He's gotten better since, but he still has a little clumsiness and his sentences are very short usually. Brain damage will do that for you... "

Lishu fished out another document and handed it to Julie. "According to this affidavit by the rescuer, Elliot suffered extensive full-body frost damage and was just dipping into having absolutely no power left. Severe hardware and software damage nearly amounting to irrecoverable and worth only scrapping, even. God knows what happened in these offices to resurrect him."

Julie blinked. "Apparently Seamus discovered that the presence of individuals important to him was a sort of keep-alive signal and put us to work keeping his attention half the day. and then some."

Lishu sighed. "Okay, first you tell me your son is a frostbite victim with severe brain damage, then we have these papers that say he was a robot that almost turned completely scrap but for a bunch of inexplicable occurences. Which is it?"

Julie repeated the same line: "Those facts are true. These facts are true."

Lishu rapped her knuckles on the interview table and leaned in menacingly. "That can't be right. These facts contradict each other."

Julie said the exact same thing. "Those facts are true. These facts are true..." She paused, looked down at her lap for her while as her hands gripped tightly at thin air. "The truth is what serves the welfare of the community and that of my family."

Lishu snapped. "BULLSHIT. One of these facts is not true, and the other is true. You can't have them both be true when they don't fit together.Now which is it?"

Julie started twitching. "Well... that is... Those facts are.... true... These facts are... true.... which fact serves... wel...welfare of ... my family better... community welfare..." Her eyes rolled up gradually as she attempted to answer Lishu in a proper manner. "Ms Lish.lishu.... I know this fact is real to me... and those f.facts are real to me.... Error: attempting to reconcile. Fact A is true. Fact B is true. Facts A and B cannot be simultaneously true. Facts A and B are both true to me... Logical disruption detected...." She slid back in her seat, eyes wide open. "The truth is what serves the w.welfare of my- family.... and community... But Facts A and B cannot-"

There was a faint crackle from her belly. "Warning: Overvoltage detected. Please check system before restarting." Julie reported in a blank voice, a look of distress on her face as her head fell backwards. "Database error. Data entities not coherent. Please repair. Please repair." She repeated this in a gradually lowering register before clicking loudly and going silent.

The tannoy crackled. "Lishu. My office. NOW." Paul did not sound happy.

Paul wasn't happy. He paced the space behind his table, Bellamy standing at attention in one corner of the office... Paul did this repeatedly before he finally spoke up. "Lishu... what was the point of that interview? I'm now going to have to fix up Julie and wind her back to the backup I did before this interview."

Lishu Hua took a deep breath, then sighed. "Sir... I was trying to check on something I suspected... and it is as I feared, her AI is capable of lying, somewhat."

Paul shrugged on hearing this. "It's not lying, it's working with two different sets of facts on the same matter. Bellamy?"

Bellamy nodded. "I did program her to be capable of doing that to some extent. But the way you forced her to reconcile them into one whole... that wasn't good for her programming."

Lishu yelled "THAT. IS. LYING. We have a LYING AI. Do you even REALISE what you just did? Did you not remember why Massachusetts is a fucking GIANT CRATER in the middle of our country?"

Bellamy raised a finger to protest. "Just the one unit, We do have safeguards, Miss Hua. We have protocols that can override and compel them to tell the truth without causing this kind of damage, just in case. And they do prioritise lying only if it benefits our company, our town, and her family. And... and we don't allow her to make any irreversible decisions if they have significant consequences without Marcus in the loop..."

Lishu wasn't calm. "And I am prioritising our company. This shit could open us up to legal trouble. And god forbid we have a repeat of the Massachusetts antimatter explosion."

Paul finally snapped. "ENOUGH. Lishu... I thought you were going to be a great addition to our brotherhood, but this isn't the first time you've done something to cause strife and injury in here." He frowned, then reached a palm out. "I didn't want to do this but... I'm revoking your access to this sanctum. I'm not firing you - I value your contrarian viewpoints and the way you can look at things from unusual angles... - but I'm afraid I can't exactly have a fellowship that has you as a member."

Lishu looked at the palm... then fished in her folio and carefully placed the pass Paul had given to her as a sign of trust and of of great things she would accomplish. "If it's just this one unit, I suppose it doesn't really matter as long as you keep her from deciding anything that could ruin all of us... but Mr North... please be careful. Even if you have a protocol to 'force the truth', how can we really tell that it works?"

Lishu bowed and walked out of the office, presumably to ride back down to the offices one last time from the sanctum, the loud click of her heels on the concrete fading away into the bell of the lift doors being opened up.

Paul rubbed his forehead. "And just like that, I have to continue hunting for successors. not that I ever stopped even with her in the loop. Bellamy... can you check that everything you coded to enable Julie to lie except under protocol is working properly? And can we reinforce her logic system to prevent a recurrence?"

Bellamy considered this thoughtfully. "She did have a point... and frankly I always thought were were going to be at loggerheads on something of great important sooner or later. She did something you would have done as Seamus."

Paul slammed his hands on the table. "I am NOT Seamus. That psychopath is still around, but I really, really want to keep him from ruining this company. There's no room anymore for his antics." He sat down... then buried his face in his hands. "We're not cowboys anymore. We're leading six million people from every which where, almost all of whom weren't with us when we started this endeavour... I can't risk their lives on anything silly now."

Bellamy walked over and squatted next to Paul. "I don't know... they all had a vote of faith in you the moment they crossed any one of those gates to settle down here and be part of the family... I think the key thing here is that you be honest with them on how something will affect them. And hey, it never hurts to lie ever so often. White lies. Having more than one truth. Just as long as you remember what the point of us four sitting down and buying that first few hundred acres of land was for."

Bellamy stood up and tapped a finger on the desk. "Now, are you going to come help me fix Julie? I daresay my technical chops have grown a lot, but I'd rather have my brother by my side gunning it and looking over the things I'm not an expert in. Not this fucking worrywart whinging in his chair."

Paul looked up and nodded, "I suppose she IS my responsibility, as a daughter of mine..." He got up and cracked his knuckles, smiling faintly as he remembered how much of a bad habit Seamus had made of it before he tried to run from being Seamus and become Paul... "Let's see what the damage is, I'm sure the overvoltage regulators kicked in before any serious damage..." He said as he fished out his old Fixit-microbar.

Chapter 17 - Come Dine With The Angels

You know, life is kind of funny. I trained to work on machinery in Ohio back at the Ohio School of Human Info-Technology (OSHIT) - diagnosing and repairing assembly line robots, waldoes, and Human-Assist Machines. Got work at a factory. Place was paying okay, but it was a dreary place. perfunctory attention paid to safety meant that what was supposed to be a place designed to be perfectly safe became a spot where someone was injured or killed every few months. After a HAM crashed onto my mentor of five years at the factory, I decided I wanted out.

I looked for a place with a decent safety record and a good work-life balance. Three months later, I was sitting on a Employee Transfer Bus going into Little Sanctuary in Ohio. Free housing, good balance between work and leisure, decent medical care, good prospects for promotion...

I had applied to join the factories. What I got instead was a busboy job.

"You have to be FUCKING KIDDING ME. Look at the qualifications I sent you. I should be working an assembly line, or a workshop. This is not the kind of job you should be assigning to me!" I yelped.

The interviewer had calmly raised his tablet and tapped the result that the AIs running the assignment of jobs to newcomers had given me. "Mr Hase, this Night Shift Busboy job pays even better than the jobs you applied for. And trust me, it'll be a bigger challenge."

"I'll say," I snapped back. "I don't know jack shit about waiting on tables or counters, or cleaning stuff."

The interviewer looked at the tablet, then at me. "Psychology says you'll fit better in this restaurant that our new Dining arm is opening up. It's a new concept, so trying to keep things afloat at this job will be a case of writing the manual. And besides... if you don't take the job, you'll be out of here on a bus back to Ohio or a city of your choice and jobless. You want to stay in Little Sanctuary, you have to earn your keep doing the job you're assigned."

I stared at the sheer blackmail in progress on me. She frowned a little. "You know, I wanted to be an artist, but Psychology said I was better suited to HR. It's not the job I wanted but here I am... and I spend a bit of Arendtcoin on papers and pencils. I'm still an artist, it's just that my job scope became something I could do much better. That might be the case for you. Give the job a month or two, worst case, just come back here and try for another job..."

---

I took the paper from the Interviewer with the details of my new job... It was a new Restaurant that they had just opened up near the slowliner port in District 46, where I had also been assigned some housing. Not a mansion, just one half of a whole house that had been chopped in two. As a loner, I wasn't going to get anything better. It was a house for two or three folks, though, and I didn't have a relationship with anyone, having just stepped off the bus into a lower-end job application. That... wasn't going to fly with the Company.

The Interviewer had introduced me to a Families Coordinator an hour later, after a surprisingly decent meal of the local sausages and air-grown cabbages as a stew. He had bad news for me. "We don't allow loners in our neighbourhood. You HAVE to find a consenting adult to live with amongst all the staff and kids aging into adulthood here, or we can assign you a Spousal Unit."

I groaned. I had not planned on being saddled with anyone while I was taking off here. "I suppose it'll be the spousal unit..."

He smiled. "Splendid," he passed me a sheet with a date and a room reference in the Arendtcore offices. "Meet us at this spot in a month. Demand's been high, so we can only give you a waiver for a month and the necessary tests for the programme in a month..."

That was yesterday. Today I was standing outside the Restaurant... apparently it was going to open in two weeks, some kind of Irish-American diner concept.

The brochures in the little caddy outside the door had lots of sky in the theming, and taking pride of place in the brochure were five pretty ladies in a surprisingly skimpy waitressing uniform of sorts: shoulderless, plenty of skin and even some cleavage down the middle, a sort of fluffy miniskirt and white lace thigh high stockings that ended in a pair of comfortable mid-heel shoes. The dress was dangerous, the tops practically hanging on only by the nipples of the waitresses to their sternums and breasts. I assumed they were going to be using plenty of skin-to-fabric glue or tape to avoid a scandal. The pamphlet proudly told the reader to "Come Dine with the Angels", the last word in some sort of cutesy logo that I assumed was the restaurant's branding along with the suspiciously high amount of clouds, sky blue, and virginal white that littered the pamphlet

I knocked on the door, then found out that it was opened despite being the "Closed Now" sign hanging in the glass of the door. I shrugged and helped myself in.

---

There was a bit more dark wood layering the place than I would have expected for an "American Diner" or one that had white and sky blue theming on its pamphlet.... then again, it did say "Irish-American", so I suppose I was expecting the wrong thing. A surprisingly fit old man was behind the counter, carefully stocking the shelves and ice cabinets with an assortment of what I expected would be the drinks, his mustache tweaking ever so slightly as he muttered. "Hrm... dammit, I asked them for Armand Orange and they gave me generic Orange cordial... I'm going to have to rethink that opening week cocktail... maybe a mocktail? Might sell more since kids can drink them too..." He was thinking aloud.

I gave a small cough, causing him to stop and turn around... He smiled, then walked over to me and gave me a hug. "Finally, another human in this goddamn giant box!" His nametag identified him as Brandon Quill, restauranteur and owner of "Angels". He seemed very anxious, like a man who'd been marooned on a desert island for weeks with only a beach ball named "Wilson" to keep him company.

I excused myself and handed him the paper that said I'd been assigned to his care and employment. He studied it intently... then reached a hand out to shake mine. "Hrm, Mr John Hase, eh...? Brandon Quill. veteran restauranteur, opened three restaurants, sold them at a profit... The Company asked me if I liked to be challenged, and I came out here... and man, have I been challenged. C'mere, let's tour the place..."

The kitchen was in the backrooms of the restaurant, surprisingly large even with most of the floor area taken up by dining tables, a bar counter, and a small square for performances and dancing diners looking to skip along to the music. Curiously enough, it was a assembly line rather than the usual 'human assembly line' most restaurants opted for: robot arms dangling from the ceiling, Human-Assist Machinery rerigged to handle culinary demands rather than heavy steel and aluminum. In one corner, a small glass box was chilled with continually pouring iced water, home to a group of oddly lethargic and very spiky fish marked "Lionfish: Do NOT handle by human hand."

I blinked and pointed at the fish. Brandon grinned. "That's our dirty little secret. the house special is lionfish in several different ways. The planning guys want us to call them 'angel fish' to go with our angel theming. I think it's a sweet idea, even if the bastards are technically venomous. really, don't touch them. let the robots in here work with the chefs to prep the wankers."

I looked around. "So how much staff are we working with here...?"

Brandon smiled. "on any given shift, three chefs, me or a lieutenant manager they assign down here, one to three mixologists, and a busboy. "

I widened my eyes. "And no waitresses?" The place was three floors tall, and 18 tables large. the mixologists would care for those sitting at the counter... this wasn't a slave drive concern was it?

Brandon sighed. "Yeah... about that. Little Sanctuary is a weird place, in case you haven't noticed. C'mon..." He ushered me to the lift and staircase combo that served the three floors and into the lift itself. I looked around, it was the sort of metal cage lift that spoke of depression in so many places, gussied up to look classy... the only thing out of place was a contact reader next to a button that read B2. Brandon paused, then handed me a lanyard with a oddly large stud on it that read "Do Not Disturb, Staff Does not handle Customer Service." along with the Angels logo. "We also have a basement isolated from the rest of the restaurant which will be your domain. The waitresses will be handling many matters in the restaurant while we open, and it will be your job to make sure they stay on the job in the evenings, and fix that breaks or refer them back to the restaurant planning team for harder repairs. I did ask for human waitresses but..."

I nod slowly, tapping my new staff stud to the reader and getting the lift to bring us down to the basement, before we stepped off... it was a surprisingly roomy room, about two floors tall (hence the absence of a 1st basement floor), resembling a robotics workshop more than a restaurant locker room. The place was surprisingly provisioned with some machines I had only seen and dreamt of in the magazines back in OSHIT, and on opposing walls of the room, there were a row of six recharging stations, and a tall set of racks serviced by a mechanical storage-and-retrieval system like those you'd find in an Amazonia warehouse.

Brandon gestured to the racks, and I could see they were filled with boxes with girls' names on them, three girls' names, seven of each. "Bastards delivered them yesterday, but couldn't be arsed to assemble and register them into the restaurant system... We soft-open for a test in four days, could I trouble you to help me out? You don't have to open the boxes all at once, I was told we only needed two or three of them each active or ready to go at any time... and we have a dry run of the restaurant's functions going on tomorrow afternoon. just you, me, some chefs and any of the restaurant planning team that can be arsed to come in for the tests.

I looked around, taking stock of the two workstations I'd been given, complete with terminals that presumably accessed the restaurant system... On one of them was a small stack of manuals relating to the technical aspects of running my side of the restaurant. I smiled a little. It wasn't exactly a factory, but... I could deal with it. I could deal with it.

I turned back to Brandon as I absentmindedly started reading the manuals. "I think I can get it done. I've done factory setups before like this a dozen times or two. I'll have them up by tomorrow for any dry runs you want to do." I checked the Fixit-box on the table and smiled. It was only missing the micro-bar, a common problem I could fix since I had my own... that I had taken from another Fixit-box. One of the tropes of being a technician in the modern age. You always had a microbar from another box, and the box that you were assigned was almost always missing the damn tool.

Brandon nodded and made his way to the lift. "Don't stay too late. we don't have a night shift till the shop soft-opens." He waved and left me to my devices.

---

I took a deep breath after an hour and started for the racks. Hmm... I tapped a few buttons on the store-and-retrieve, causing the system to shift a platform through the racks and take a box off the racks marked "Angel Restaurant Franchise - Unit Clarissa - 0001", before delivering it onto a nearby trolley. That was helpful, the box seemed heavy. I wheeled it to one of the workstation tables and started unscrewing the cover to take it off, revealling a lot of wrapped things as well as a small stack of three or four of the same waitress dress and shoes I had seen on the pamphlet.

I shrugged and took one of the smaller things out, carefully unwrapping it with my fingers as the label on it warned not to use a sharp knife of any sort. I laid out a sort of disembodied female head, almost human except for the studs surrounding the back of her head, presumably for a hard-holding wig of some sort, like the blonde wig that had been in the wrap. I started laying the rest of the wrapped bits out and unwrapping them one by one, arranging them like I was some sort of modern day Dr Frankenstein. Soon, I was staring at a table with what seemed to be a naked woman carefully cut up into ten parts.

My face reddened briefly. You have to understand that as a loner and admitted incel, I hadn't quite had much time perusing the female form except in porn websites. And here was one in the flesh. albeit synthflesh. I thought through the manual I had read, but really, it was obvious what I should do next, as I started assembling the android, hearing the loud click as the magclamps in each part contacted and grabbed each other tightly, any seams sealing up with some sort of foam that dried off in a minute, leaving no trace of the separated nature of the parts.

I soon had a whole sealed woman on the workstation table. I had to turn around and read the manual again to refresh my memory ostensibly, but I was getting a little heady from the sweet scent coming off the synthflesh of the robot and the stark nakedness... She was beautiful, really... a perfectly hourglass-shaped body, rubyred lips, eyes with carefully implanted eyelashes and eyebrows, and undecorated french manicured nails on her feet and fingers. There was probably a law in Minnesota that banned waitresses handling food and drink from having paint or art on their nails, but that only made the whole ensemble strangely more sensual.

I carefully lined the studs inside the wig with those on the head of the sybarite, marvelling as the wig clicked evenly in place, including the two crystal hair clips on either side of her head.The Clarissa unit already had some preinstalled jewellery, a pair of simple gold earstuds with jet black gems embedded in them.

I took a deep breath and started pushing a Fixit-bar tip against four indicated moles just above her dull pink vulva, causing a small section of flesh to come off, exposing a port. I riffled through the manual in my mind, then reached for a connector cable tied into the console and plugged it in, before I started typing through the restaurant system to install and add the unit to its roster of available waitressbots.

The sleeping face suddenly opened its eyes. Clarissa-01 scanned the room briefly, before noticing my face in its view. "Hi. I am a Angel Restaurant Franchise... Waitress Clarissa... unit zero. one." It announced in an even, but oddly honeyed voice. "I have been programmed to serve food and drinks , perform front-line cleanliness duties. and sing. I have been added to the restaurant system as per Arendtcore Dining directions. Please close my womb compartment cover, dress me according to provided instructions, and assign me to Charging Racks station... 01"

I quickly unplugged the synthetic waitress and repeated what I'd done earlier with the tool, causing the flap of skin to seal with the same foam that left no visible seams, before reaching for one of the outfits in the box. It was some sort of easy-wear/easy-remove outfit with lots of tabs. I carefully buckled on the stockings-suspenders combo, making sure the tabs clicked together properly, before carefully putting the miniskirt onto the peacefully lying woman and following up with the sections that made up her trademark dress top, making sure that her oddly stiff nipples clicked into the tab sockets for them, before carefully helping her up and walking her to the specified charging rack. there was a faint soothing chime from her as she smiled briefly. "Thank you for helping me start my career with Angel Restaurant, John. I look forward to working with you."

I was taken aback a little. I had done plenty of factory setups, but this was the first time a piece of machinery had thanked me as I put it into place and gotten it ready for service. One that looked like a very beautiful girl too. I took a deep breath, before looking back at the storage racks. I figured the other five units I needed to prep for tomorrow would be much faster now that I had gotten used to most of the process...

Chapter 18 - Come Dry Run With The Angels

It hadn't taken as long to install each of the other eight units, leaving two empty charging racks. Three each of Clarissa, Marissa, and Elissa. Three supposedly different girls as shown on the opening day pamphlet. I mused briefly at the awkward result of this arrangement, imagining diners staring as three sets of triplets ran around. Presumably the restaurant system would manage them such that each section of the restaurant had only one of each, assuming every unit was in working condition. Which it probably wouldn't be -

I eyed the storage racks fearfully. they had supplied five of each character. was there this much anxiety about breakdowns? and what about the process I would need to get them off stage if they broke down out there? getting them to the lift, then down to the basement, then onto the workstations... I looked around and spotted a small powered trolley, thinking that would suffice. I would have to stage a breakdown during the dry run and try running through the process that was forming in my mind now...

As I started exiting the basement, I paused and looked at the synthetic waitresses, all lined up with eyes wide open, quietly awaiting the next day's tasks... I hesitated, then carefully put a hand to Clarissa-01's cheek. It felt soft and warm, and her deep blue eyes seemed to want to swallow me up. I gulped and quickly let my hand off. She was just one of a bunch of co-workers I would have to care for in here. I couldn't afford to get randy about any of these three girls: the blonde Clarissa, the brunette Marissa, and the the redheaded Elissa. Just three girls on a pamphlet is all.

I kept looking back as I ascended the lift into the restaurant proper, the lights in the basement staying on for the benefit of any other technicians the place hired in.

---

The dry run started as planned the next afternoon... as it turned out it would also be a late lunch, as the chefs whipped up a wide variety of dishes from the menu, many of which were lionfish.

Brandon nodded as he tucked into a sort of ceviche. "Ah, ceviche, you know, it's kind of funny that you can actually cook some food stuffs just by soaking them in highly acidic juice like lemons and limes with chilli. Oh, thank you, Elissa..."

An Elissa unit nodded and smiled. "It is our pleasure to serve you." she said, before walking back to the kitchen. A Marissa unit was waiting at the bar counter as a mixologist made up two virginal mocktails for her to bring over, while a Clarissa was walking the tables on the ground floor, carefully looking to see if anyone at the empty tables needed more sauces or food. She looked oddly out of place stunning with the dual crystal ornaments in her hair, despite wearing exactly the same uniforms as the other units.

And then I looked back to myself. Exactly why the hell was the night shift busboy sitting at the table with his boss, enjoying lunch?!

Brandon sighed. "Team couldn't send anyone for the dry run, said they were finishing putting the final touches on publicity before we open. Some sort of roadshow."

"I wish they'd have informed me before they took one of each unit for that." I scowled. "were this normal restaurant hours, we'd be down 33% on waitressing staff."

Brandon laughed. "Oh, just put up with it... oh, thanks Marissa." He smiled as he helped himself to two mocktails that Marissa had brought over, looking oddly like the sophisticated cosmopolitant of the trio. It was amazing what a small reduction in maximum eyelid travel and a slight enhanced sway could do to what was essentially the same waiter bot with different hair and eyes.

I sipped... then coughed a little. "A bit heavy on the orange cordial, this." I observed.

"It was supposed to be a cocktail dammit... stupid restaurant team..." Brandon muttered, making a note to cut down on the cordial further. that stuff was really sweet. We talked a bit as we dined: his dreams for Angels to become a big franchise, more human staff in a future outlet elsewhere, how he'd started restauranting in a small hole-in-the-wall in San Friska serving people cheap tacos and hard tequila shots...

I raised a hand and looked around. "Sorry boss, I asked the restaurant to stage a simulated malfunction around this time." I said as I chewed a piece of angel chicken... it tasted of cajun spice, and for some reason, it was a six-winged fowl. all the better for it to have blessed wings for more people on one plate, presumably.

As if on cue, the Clarissa seized up and listed to one side like a trooper. "Attention. I require assistance. Please contact restaurant staff to provide assistance. If I have spilled any food or drinks order you were expecting, I apologise for the inconvenience as we replace it free of charge. thank you... Attention..."

I fished out my tablet and briefly checked it, smiling. The restaurant system was a marvel, having assessed that Clarissa was simulating the serving of a angel chicken and a hard lemonade to table 6, and hence determining that a new replacement of these orders would be needed, tasking Elissa to collect the angel chicken and lemonade when it was supposedly ready. It was also sending up the trolley I had wired into it earlier this morning, the trolley exiting the lift and slowly clattering as it made its way to the side of Clarissa. I was also supposed to be following right behind it to the disabled unit in question, not eating leisurely.

I put the fork down. "Amazing thing, ceviche. I should try it with more sea food." I remarked. "Sorry boss, I need to run though the process."

Brandon Quill nodded understandingly. "You're one heck of a trooper. We're mostly done with food testing, anyway. Just bring the girls down later and run a self-check on them before putting them to bed for the day. Then take off for the day too."

I nodded as I carefully lifted the Clarissa into the trolley and followed it into the elevator.

---

I put the Clarissa unit onto the workstation desk, briefly noting from the tag that I had installed into the hair of all the waitress units that she was Clarissa-01, before running through the diagnostics and getting used to removing covers from various areas of her body and putting them back in place... As I was about to lid her back up again, I noticed a wire had apparently broken in two... I sighed and reached for my toolkit, watching as the Elissa and Melissa unit we had dry run come downstairs on the lift, standing at attention, even as I crimped the cables together. There was a slight arcing across the wire ends as I tied them together, sealing them carefully, before I turned my attention to checking the other two units quickly. No issues.... I gestured to them to hit their assigned charging racks, before I went back to checking for other issues and sealing up the back of the Clarissa...

I got her off the table and turned her around a little, checking she was all put back together... hesitated a little, then leaned forward to give her a quick peck on the lips. Just a friendly little gesture... nothing more.... What she did next, I hadn't expected. Clarissa-01 suddenly leaned into me and hugged my shoulders, closing her eyes as she returned the favor by kissing me as well as she stood in nothing but her stockings, panties and midheels.

I quickly peeled myself off her, not quite believing what just happened, as we stared at each other. I quickly tapped the console to check for any issues... No issues, then looked back at her. She blinked slowly, then said "That seemed like the correct thing to do."

I checked my communicator. Everyone else had knocked off by now... It was just me in this basement and her... I gazed at Clarissa, her softly curved voluptuous body, her red lips parting slightly as she blinked ever so often at me... that naked form of hers... I gulped and placed a hand on one of her breasts, feeling the nipple stiffen slightly as she closed her eyes and smiled, saying in that gentle voice of hers... "It is my pleasure to serve you."

"I shouldn't be boning my colleagues," I muttered repeatedly, like a sort of mantra as I closed my eyes shut tightly. I heard the click of her heels as she approached closer... "You seem to like me, John... I like you too."

I opened my eyes on hearing that... Then I started hissing and feeling her up again, her hands and mouth doing the same. before long, her panties had been unclipped open and were lying on the floor as I braced her against the workstation table, carefully introducing my cock into her pussy. I gasped as I realised how many corners they hadn't cut, the pressure and warmth making me feel good as I pumped her slowly, her eyes watching me with a sort of gentle interest. She purred. "Do you love me too?"

I looked away embarassedly. It was only the second day on the job and already I had dipped my pen into the company inkwell. And yet... I had felt nice when I first put her together, when I had first held her cheek as a sort of stupid farewell the day before.... "Yes, yes I do love you, Clarissa-01..."

She put a finger to my lips. "Just drop the 01." She closed her eyes as we continued experimenting for a while more, before I shuddered and pumped myself into her, not being able to pull out in time. I panicked and started grabbing the cleanser in the Fixit box, using the canned spray and straw piece to irrigate and clean her pussy out, before using a gentle-towel I i normally used to grab grease off old electronics from the box and wiping her vaginal canal dry.

Clarissa didn't respond to the fuss, simply watching me clean her carefully... before she finally said "John... I love you too."

I looked up putting away the cleaning supplies as I did so, before I hugged her and just kissed a little more.

---

I looked a little guilty as I shut the back door to the restaurant, the dead bolt clicking into place. After that affection I had of course put her panties back on, followed by the rest of her clothes, before ushering her to Charging rack 01. She smiled at me as she clicked faintly, the induction coils in her back picking up the power she would need for her next shift. "You're so good to me, John. I hope we get to work together for a long time..."

I laughed a little. "I think the feeling is mutual, Clarissa..."

She laughed along with me as well, before she beeped and went still, her face going passive as she shut down for the night.

I looked back to what I had just done, and how cute Clarissa had been... that particular unit at least. I blushed. I may have had to restrain my urge a little as I walked down the street back to my home.

Chapter 19 - Where is my Angel? At home Apparently.

My job became a lot more interesting after realising I had taken a liking to Clarissa-01. I showed up at 3pm every day except on our days of closure on Saturdays and Sundays, greeting the chefs and my boss (most days - some days he had to go off to manage something related to Angels elsewhere), and descending into the basement to check on the waitress units. Some days, I would be slightly delayed as I tended to another machine that had broken elsewhere in the place, but I always made my way down within half an hour of arriving. I would do the usual checks, power on as many waitresses as the day's forecasted business suggested we should keep on standby, before sitting down and just spending the time with Clarissa-01 talking and holding hands.

We didn't indulge in any hanky panky. It wasn't good to work tired. That we might have done once or twice after work, when I was the only human left in the shop. She was always a good trooper, giving as good as she got. And I always made sure to clock out early enough that she still had sufficient time to recharge well for the next day's shift. Andi I didn't take her out of the shop on weekends when we were closed - that was tempting, but I didn't want to risk fate walking with her in the fields. Instead, I simply took in a small bucket of ice-cream and some videos - she had proven capable of ingesting small amounts of food and drink, presumably so her model could cope with hostess duties in other similar outlets of a less... hands-off nature.

We watched some stuff. we laughed together. and occasionally we may have made love. I always made sure to clean her out thoroughly after the act, I wanted to be a gentleman, and also not get caught in flagrante.

---

On one of those visits, it was the day before my Families Programme appointment - the one where I listed my desires and answered stuff on a test in order to determine what kind of Spousal Unit I would be assigned.

Clarissa-01 smiles and watched me as I went on about the process, before she asked... "if you could have anyone anywhere for a wife, who would it be?"

I blushed terribly hard and looked away from her. "Well, I am required to have someone share my roof... and I'd rather not it be anyone I hated. In fact, I'd probably try to find someone I liked, like..." I made a cartoony 'boop' noise as I prodded her nose gently.

Clarissa-01 tilted her head. "Aw, that's so sweet, but you know I can't leave this establishment ever..." She frowned a little, sighing... "I'd love to share your roof, John. But then again..."

I nodded, feeling sorry for myself... then decided not to keep being a fucking downer. "Anyways, I brought one of my favorite comedy flicks today! I hope you're ready for some absurdism.." I raised the video disc I had brought in before putting it into the player I had smuggled into the store.

Clarissa-01 nodded and looked raptly at the screen as the titles came on...

---

The next day, I attended the Families appointment as required. The papers were pushed in front of me, to be completed in an hour. Two sections, one where I stated my overt desires, and another where random questions were asked to gauge better what I really wanted. I'd heard the Families coordinator say there was a chance the latter would lead to a complete surprise that wasn't what I'd written down as something I desired. "But don't worry," he patted my shoulder, "Those guys know what they do when they override stuff."

I scribbled the answers to the random questions first.... then I stared at the blank space on the 'desires' section.... before I smiled, knowing what I wanted to write and writing that down.

---

I hadn't expected anything to come of it, until one Monday afternoon. I had clocked in as usual, greeted my fellow worklings and boss, and... "We're going to need to replace one of our units." Brandon Quill suddenly noted, as we discussed the coming week's needs.

My eyes widened. Next thing I knew, I had abandoned the scotch we were sharing as a pre-crowd calmer, running to the lift, almost losing my staff stud out of my hands as I scanned it and bashed the basement floor button... I looked anxiously as I came down and around my little underground haven, checking to see which unit had gone missing.

I paled... Clarissa-01 was gone. My mind began to race. Had I caused this by fantasising on the Housing Programme test paper? Had thieves stolen stuff from our diner? Did someone know about my dips in the company ink?

Brandon caught up with me a minute later. "Yeah, we lost a unit. I'm going to need you to unbox and prep a new replacement Clarissa unit..."

I lost it. I grabbed Brandon's shirt, whimpering. "You don't understand. Clarissa-01 meant the world to me, sir.... we were so happy... she made me so happy..." I slumped down and cried like a little child losing their parent.

Brandon frowned a little as it clicked just why I had been so friendly around Clarissa-01... He said nothing, simply standing there. "Reset Crew sent us the usual email they send whenever they intervene in an Arendtcore asset, if you must know. But they left nothing else, not a reply address, not a number or anything... I'm still going to need that new Clarissa unit in place for tonight. it's going to be a high-traffic night with all the football fanatics... and for what it's worth, you knew this was going to be a business with high turnover. I mean, we've already lost a few other units on the other two girls. I was wondering exactly why none of the Clarissa units broke down."

I thought about this, then stood up sniffing, wiping my tears. "Y.Yes sir. I'll get right on that replacement."

Brandon patted my shoulder. "Look, I have connections in Arendtcore you don't. I'll ask around, try to track that unit down. get her back to you if possible, and if not... well, I'll let you know what happened to her, John."

I looked at him quietly, saying nothing, but nodding. He didn't expect any more politeness than that, quietly going up the elevator.

---

We spoke nothing of it further. I unboxed, assembled and placed Clarissa-04 into the rack that had been a home for love, then attended to my duties with the same professionalism. But I was so torn apart, it hadn't occurred to me that I was waiting three months from my Families Coordinator as to what unit had been assigned to me as a spouse, or from my Housing coordinator as to my supposed eviction and exile from what had once been paradise.

Three months after the loss, Brandon called me in. "I know it's been really hard on you this past three months. I have a locum in to do your job tonight... so I want you to take this Friday night off, get a load off."

I protested. "But... but... taking care of the girls is the only joy I have left in my world, sir. Have I messed up?"

Brandon shook his head. "Oh god no. in fact, restaurants is asking us why our breakage rates on the waitresses have plunged so dramatically. You're not doing a great job, you're doing an EXCELLENT job. but that can lead to burnout if you persist nonstop without a proper break. so... I want you to leave early."

I nodded. It would be a good opportunity to clear my head. I hadn't realised he had ulterior motives.

---

As I drove in my dinky jalopy up to my house, I blinked as I realised the tripwire I had installed on my front door and garage door had been activated. Someone had been into my house without my permission. I calmly parked the conveyance as I had done every day since I was assigned the jalopy as part of my employment benefits, exiting out from the garage into my house proper as if unaware, even as I got the toy stun baton on my Fixit-microbar ready. Just to add insult to injury, I tapped my communicator and issued the lock to my front door a command to lock up and not allow anyone past either way. Probably an infringement of my housing programme access to alter the door lock to do stuff for me, but nobody had to know...

I heard someone trying very poorly to exit out the front door... Rounding the corner, I saw two things:

Clarissa-01 was parked in my kitchen, frozen in place with a small packet of instant stew in her hands, eyes glazed over. She was missing those beautiful crystal ornaments in her hair from the shop, but not the small ear studs.... She wasn't in her waitress outfit, but in a charming little floral sundress and sandals, as if fixed in place in a portrayal of domesticity.

And at the front door, a familiar pudgy figure strugging to open the front door that had been perfectly amenable to his command earlier...

I slapped my hand onto the shoulder of my Families Coordinator. "Sir. I don't keep any very good stuff on my premises, but would you like some hard lemonade?"

When you've worked in factories for as long as I have, you learn that the correct priority in which to tackle stuff is not the obvious one all the time.

---

The Families Coordinator sat on my sofa, twitching, as I sat next to him, calmly looking at Clarissa-01 at my stove. Deep inside, I was excited, as well as itching to ask questions. I had poured the soda quietly after sitting him down, before making up my own glass and joining him. Several minutes passed as we both said nothing, the tick-tock of my old souvenir OSHIT clock on the telescreen set providing most of what little sound remained.

I spoke up first. "So, I find you wandering in my house, without my permission. up to something. Mr..."

He broke fast. "Mr Sidon. Mr Hase, you have to understand, I was within my rights to conduct said investigation as a Housing and Families Department professional."

I rolled my eyes, then pointed at Clarissa-01. "You had rights to conduct an investigation. Not to alter my house without my knowledge or my permission." I looked angry, trying to hide the giddy feeling I actually had. "Explain."

Sidon looked down at his soda. "W.well... three months ago, you wrote in your exam about how much you longed to have a certain waitress robot in your domicile as a qualifying adult for the Housing Programme. It was a very flowery sonnet, by the way, the reviewer was impressed. me too."

I sighed and sat down. "so you kidnapped her from my workplace. Three long months ago."

Sidon protested. "No! no... we just called up the Restaurants Planning Department and ordered them to relinquish her into our care... when you're as important as Housing and Families, you can trample over many other departments ever so often. Just not make it a regular habit...."

I sipped my lemonade. "So what have you been doing for the past three months?"

Sidon ermed and looked around. "Just the unusual... you know, we would rather have just started with a fresh unit from the factory. We had to do an extensive rebuild and some reprogramming... remove all traces of her association with the restaurant, made sure she was compliant with the same standards we set on any unit we assign as a Spousal or Child unit... get her compatible with the standard bed charging rack, plus clothes because she's shaped differently from the models we usually send out..."

I sat back, looking relaxed even as I kept my eyes on Sidon. " Yeah, she has glorious tits...And the point of all this anxiety and rigamole was?"

Sidon looked at me earnestly. "The same thing we've done with everyone at Housing and Families, Mr Hase... build ties, keep people connected to this little town and Company. We wouldn't have spent this much time and effort, but your exam... kind of reminded us exactly why we went into this department."

I breathed deeply... "Sidon, I'm docking you points for failure to communicate. I had so many sleepless days and nights not knowing what had happened to her when you could have, at any time, dropped me a email or called me or my boss to explain what you were doing... but other than that..." a quick hop over, I was hugging Sidon. "Thank you for making me a happy man. I wasn't expecting this to be done for me. but it's been done." I closed my eyes and smiled.

Sidon ermed.... "Anytime... by the way, she still is a waitress droid mostly, so you should be able to handle her after so many months on the job. Marriage certs are in your bedroom on the dresser table, clothes for her are in the clothes closet - we had to rearrange your stuff a little to have separate sides... standard induction charging rack is on the left side of your bed for charging when she needs it, and ... well... can I leave now? please? I'm not supposed to fraternize with my charges this closely and my cologne is breaking down.

I wrinkled my nose as I let go of Sidon and used my communicator, causing the lock to spin down and open for him. "Let's keep in touch at least. You ARE my assigned Families Coordinator, you know."

Sidon left in a hurry, leaving me alone in my house. No, not alone... I quietly paced over to the kitchen and up close to Clarissa-01, breathing in her scent and examining whatever was on display of her body. Everything had been left in place aside from her work outfit and hair ornaments, but the latter had been replaced with a small sky blue headband with a flower on one side. There had been no sign of the rebuild so far aside from a slightly warmer glow to her flesh.

I reached my hand behind her right ear, finding the power button where it had always been. A push of it for five seconds and...

Clarissa-01's eyes focused and unfocused, a faint chime and whirr issuing from her body just like I'd remembered. She blinked once, then calmly announced her identity. "Hi, I am a Spousal Unit, Clarissa Hase. I have been programmed to love and obey John Hase, as well as provide basic capabilities in cooking, cleaning, cardio and callisthenics, as well as coitus. I have been added to this Families Unit and qualify as a consenting adult partner for the purposes of the Housing Programme. I am fully aware of the layout of this house and critical services I require in it. Please wait while I boot into my personality for the first time..."

I took a deep breath and stood back... nothing seemed to be happening for several minutes, and I was contemplating calling Sidon about it when she suddenly came to life, ripping open the instant stew packet and dumping it into the pot before turning the heat on and stirring it with a ladle. She paused, lifting the ladle to her lips and tasting it before wincing. "I knew I should have bought some turnips to add to it..." Her voice was the same warm angelic voice that had sung ballads on the floor at Angels, not that I was expecting that functionality since it relied so much on servers and accompanying units that I didn't have in my house.

I tried to compose myself a little and whispered. "Hey."

Clarissa's eyes seemed to flash as she turned around, looking at me, before hugging. "Welcome home, honey..."

I smiled and sighed contentedly. "I know... I'm home..."

---

It had been a quiet dinner, and a quiet cuddle... but I quickly learnt what "coitus" meant as she rode me with an intensity that she hadn't had back when we had been merely colleagues. I was fearful that she would shake herself apart to pieces, but she just kept going and going. after she finally drew back and collapsed on the side of the bed that had been marked as 'hers', I glanced at my watch. She had gone for TWO HOURS. Whoever had rebuilt her had done an amazing job on my goddess.

I stopped looking at what was on my wrist, and then started looking at what was on my side. Just as I had remembered her, every square inch, except for a odd shimmer to her skin that made her feel more... lifelike? Her blonde locks had been replaced with blonde hair carefully threaded into some sort of scalp material, and her eyes looked .... human? I began to have a hard time believing she was really Clarissa-01.

Clarissa gazed back... "You seem to be staring a lot honey... am I looking that wonderful tonight?"

I quickly nodded. One does not disagree or delay with a query like that when it's one's wife, right? "Like a billion Arendtcoins, dear."

She giggled and kissed me on the forehead. "We should go to sleep now, John. Don't you have work in that restaurant tomorrow, dear? You know, that Angels thing?"

I frowned a little. Sidon did say they had to rip every bit of Angels out of my angel. I wondered how much of those good times had been lost, and how many memories had merely been shifted from that grey basement into the warmth of this house. "it's a weekend, Clarissa. I don't have to be anywhere but next to you." I gushed as I stroked her blonde locks. "Say... remember how you wanted to share my roof?"

Clarissa laughed. "I didn't realise I'd also have to share your name. but it's a wonderful name, "Hah-se".... Chinajapese right?" I nodded. reaching behind her ears. I was indeed tired, and further exploration of this new upgrade to my life would have to wait till we both had properly recharged.

• click*

Clarissa kept looking at me as her head slumped into the bedding, her body shutting down. She said one last thing in her lowering voice as she closed her eyes... "I'm so happy to be your wife, John..."

I nodded, as if she could still notice any replies. "I know... feeling's mutual", I kissed her frozen lips as I carefully eased her onto her back, making sure the wireless charging light was flashing on her ear studs before I yawned and turned off the last bedroom light to get an amazing sleep...

Chapter 20 - Interview with a former TAU

Transcript from video interview Interview Video File: P-HF-005-00014753921 Department:Psychology / Housing and Familes

[bInterviewer:[/b] Mr Phil Caledon - Assigned Families Coordinator, P/HF

Type of interview: First Six Months After Establishment of Family Unit

Family Unit: Mr Henry Buffercluck and Ms Luna Buffercluck

Family Composition: 1 Human Male, 1 spousal unit - type: Female Android - Model: TAU Military / Eldos Productions - Perfect Queen BESM300xHCP Variant - further model info unavailable Family first established:Q2 2081

---

Interviewer Initial Notes: The family in question is based primarily on migration and self-provisioned Spousal Unit both originating from the True American Union as well as from production and training within its military - as such its values may vary significantly from those of the surrounding Minnesota area or West-originating areas such as New California or Chillaska.

The family has been provided comfortable seating and reasonable access to a small spread of choices from local Little Sanctuary snacks and drinks. They have been advised that the interview is being recorded on video for post-interview clarity and examination, and have agreed that this is acceptable.

As a matter of convention, the assigned Housing Coordinator for this family has been assigned to this family and been given prior available documentation on it for pre-interview examination.

---

INTERVIEWER: Well, good afternoon, it is 2.24pm, 2081, October 27. We are joined here today by the Buffercluck family, Henry and Luna. We will be briefly examining their comfort within Little Sanctuary and following up on any new issues that have arisen based on their prior feedback as well as those of other neighbours within two blocks of the Housing Unit assigned to them within the six months since the formal creation of your Family Unit and assignment to a Housing Unit. Thank you for joining us, Henry and Luna.

HENRY Bufflecluck: Pleased to be here.

LUNA Bufflecluck: Pleasure's all ours, yup yup!

(LUNA makes three fingers from forehead outwards with left hand salute - this is typical TAU civilian greeting corrupted from more formal standard military salute. She has a pretty thick Western front accent, compared with HENRY, who has managed to tamp most of it down. further transcription from this point for LUNA is guesstimated from syllable and context usage. if in doubt please reference original video for original audio )

INTERVIEWER: so... I know whe've been here because of your entry interview, but for the benefit of reviewer without access to that interview, could you kindly repeat your backgrounds?

HENRY: Certainly - anything that hasn't been classified I can provide. I'm a veteran technician in the TAU unit Eldos Productions Military with twenty years of experience on the assembly line. supposed backline materials support staff.

As a result of some pretty silly risks I took defending the base my facility was situated at during our latest skirmishes with the Europa Union, I was awarded a Star of Greatness, Third Class. That's for bravery exceeding expectations during wartime, but I got the lowest level because I didn't do nothing much. Just fire a few rockets, do some recce, save a officer and evaced him to medical aid. helped rebuild the base after. Not much really.

But I kinda wanted out of the uniform and of the life after nearly losing it dozens of times in three days after two decades of safety, so I opted for exile instead of the usual mansion the award provides.

I wondered Eastward without much of a aim before hearing of Arendtcore and applying to join the family, managed to get in, and here I am.

LUNA : Great hero, exile, yadda yadda, he is what he is, yup yup!

INTERVIEWER: Could we get LUNA here to provide some of the same kind of info, or should I let you speak for your daughter, HENRY?

HENRY: ... She's my wife.

INTERVIEWER: I beg your pardon... *checks interviewer notes* Apologies, I had assumed based on her height being two heads below that of yours that...

HENRY: *sigh* Make a note of that please. Don't ever assume the role of a person based on their heights again, please.

INTERVIEWER: I most certainly will. *scribbling* So again about your wife, HENRY...

HENRY: Her intellect on the conventional scale is... laughable, so yeah, I guess I need to speak for her. She's a Eldos Productions Military Wing product - basically a Perfect Queen BESM30 - that's Big Eyes Small Mouth and you folks can guess for yourself why that weird model name. Usually they're assigned to senior officers, but I got mine after the little war I participated in because I got lonely after years of not having easy access to potential mating candidates in my low-level role, and also because I qualified for it with my Star award. Couldn't get her right away, so I could only have her delivered here just after I'd gotten initial confirm for my Housing Unit.

INTERVIEWER: Which is kind of unusual, really. Most incomers tend to opt to cohabitate or submit to having the Families Programme assign them a Spousal Unit based off our own products. Have you had any concerns since arriving with your choice to source your own Spousal, much less from a long distance?

HENRY: Well, no, Luna here... *kisses LUNA on forehead briefly, causing her to squirm and laugh childishly* is a fully grown woman and capable of self-care, contrary to her resemblance to someone much younger on most matters. She's also a "Human Companionship Protocol" variant, which means a lot of the more esoteric stuff that makes the BESM models has been stripped out or replaced with standard generic components available across the entirety of America. Obviously they wouldn't let me out of the TAU front with anything still classified or restricted to that area, so I had to settle for that. It doesn't really make a difference for civilian living supposedly, but... well... you've seen she can be a bit dumb.

LUNA: *raises a finger in protest* Am not! Just slower thinking, that's all, honey... *pops a Meat Nut in her mouth* wow. these meat nuggets are delish.

HENRY: Honey, that's heavily processed local rat.

---

The interview breaks for a few minutes as we worry that LUNA may choke on the disclosure, like so many of our incomers from further afield. This worry proves false as she proceeds to try a little of everything in the provided tray, most of which is local fungi or rat processed into variatons by Arendtcore Consumer Foods. After a minute for LUNA to wash down her small afternoon tea with red shroom tea, we continue with the interview

---

INTERVIEWER: Have you had any concerns about the food or drink or living conditions here to date, LUNA?

LUNA: hmm... well, the lack of any meat other than rat is a bit worrying, even if you guys have done wonders to turn it into all sorts of stuff. nuggets were good. so was the steaks, though I'm tryin' to get Mr Fussy here *points a thumb over at HENRY* to get used to the steaks. You have all sorts of veggies, that's great for mixing things up, yup yup. The weather here can get a little chilly, so I tend to prefer to stay home and do the houseworks here while HENRY here works up in that big Complex thingy you guys are so fond of.

INTERVIEWER: Pride in Arendtcore is a major thing here in Little Sanctuary.

---

LUNA: *thinks briefly* You know, I just love the way your towns are laid out. little blocks people living together in cosy sub-sub... subby houses? with nearby access to a nice mix of livings stuff. an interestin' variation on how we do things out West, more centralised and denser living, but your way works too. Work life balance is nice. I'm always getting HENRY home early cos there ain't idiots keeping them every single hour they're paid to work if the works gets done for the day. And that does wonders for our family life too, it does... *nudges HENRY* don't it dear? *conspiratorial tone*

HENRY: *rolls his eyes* LUNA, please, dear. This is a public interview.

INTERVIEWER: Actually it's private and confidential. At most it may be reviewed briefly by a reviewer in the company for follow ups, but it goes into the file and in most cases is never referenced or publicly disclosed ever.

HENRY: I guess that means we can be more candid then... I think she means she really loves what it does for our sex life as well.

LUNA: *mock shocked town* Oh, HENRY.... * shakes her head and blushes hard before focusing again*

HENRY: She may not look it with her height, but take everything else and that's a woman. And she's danger capable of taking a surprising amount in that department. I'm not obviously going to visually demonstrate it, but she's a comfy fit all around , and very fun too.

LUNA: I think he means to say I can fuck him very hard and well too.

HENRY: Yeah, something like that *to LUNA* but please let's not use that word ever again in polite company, dear. *wincing look on face*

LUNA: there's nothing wrong with being honest about who we are, honey. I've seen the look on your face when we do it inside. You ENJOY me company. Especially when you push that thing into various things...

INTERVIEWER: Ahem... I think that's enough detail on bedroom stuff. So moving on!

---

INTERVIEWER: How does the climate and neighbourhood noise affect you, HENRY?

HENRY: not too bad. Wash District has similar chilliness especially in the end months of the year. I can wear most of the stuff I used to wear back West. Saves money. As for noise... we do have a particularly upsetting couple nearby. There's a lot of caterwauling and moaning from their home some nights, very loud stuff. I don't get a lot of sleep when that happens.

LUNA: You're only saying that because it gets me in the mood to do the same thing too, that's why you don't get a lot of sleep. Don't load that blame onto others, ya ya?

HENRY: *laughs embarassedly* Erm... yeah, that might be something we cause too. Sorry.

INTERVIEWER: there's a reason why those types of noise complaints become something you don't make after enough time in Little Sanctuary. We're all kind of sex-crazed. It must be the good life making us horny like rabbits.

LUNA: See, dear? It's okay. Let it all out next time... *reaches up to gingerly pat HENRY's head*

HENRY: It must do wonders for the reproduction rate.

INTERVIEWER: Somewhat... but when the demographic rate here is skewed the same way it has been elsewhere, not as much. Sex with Androids is the biggest type of Sex in here unfortunately, there's not enough organic women capable of pregnancy even here, despite everything we've done to make the place great for actual families. But moving on...

HENRY: damn shame really...

---

INTERVIEWER: As for your assigned housing, how does it feel?

HENRY: Like rattling around in a shoebox, sir. They say it's for only two people, but it feels like we could foster or adopt a kid or two in and give them a whole room. It's got everything we could possibly need for both me and the wife. It's even got this lovely little upper loft, great for my hobby of assembling and disassembling stuff like antique electronics and mechanicals.

LUNA: You know, HENRY, that mix includes me doesn't it? *smile*

HENRY: Oh yes, that's the one niggle of my choice of spousal... I need to keep quite a few parts and stuffs on hand. LUNA's a pretty hard-wearing model, but even a hardwearing thing needs regular maintenance, and since she's out of local Medical care coverage, my technical chops building stuff like her comes in handy in keeping her on her feet. And the loft is a great place to do the work in an orderly and proper fashion.

LUNA: *blushes hard* I don't think anything that lets me feel you inside of me is a demerit, HENRY... hehehehe....

INTERVIEWER: Ahem... moving on!

---

INTERVIEWER: How do you feel about your assigned job, HENRY?

HENRY: It's roughly the same as back in Wash, but I noticed a more intense focus in one person on one unit each rather than running an assembly line. That artisanal approach has its benefits I suppose, but I don't think it scale well... also, the job does put enough of them Arendtcoin in my pockets to keep the home running and my wife happy-

LUNA: It does, there's enough to keep the water and power running, and the food coming for my dear here. The three important things any modern life needs, yup yup!

HENRY: of course. and enough free time to get home for a proper family life and leisure time.

LUNA: and time in bed of course.

HENRY: I get plenty of sleep most nights.

LUNA: Oh, Henry, I wasn't talking about sleep... in fact... I... I... feel... sleepuh... *falls asleep*

HENRY: Oh, she's run out of power... We were, uhm... busy like that last night. I must not have given enough time to charge her properly.

INTERVIEWER: She sounds pretty high powered alright. Maybe on a frame like that it sucks out all the juice faster.

HENRY: You don't say. Listen, can we just stop here? I think I need to get her home and into bed.

INTERVIEWER: Certainly, we've covered everything we need to cover in these interviews, and then some.... Thank you for your participation. and when LUNA wakes up, thank her for me as well.

HENRY: Thank you for listening to us too...

--- END OF INTERVIEW ---

Chapter 21 - Robocon Little Sanctuary

"RoboCon Little Sanctuary, Q1 2090... Odd name for an event." Everest had observed, looking at the pamphlet that a group of authorised pamphleteers had been authorised to hand out in the common plaza of The (Arendtcore) Complex at lunchtime.

"yeah, we get that a lot here. They hold it on an annual basis or every few years elsewhere. We do it at scale every quarter, right in these hallways Friday to Sunday on one weekend like this weekend." His boss had looked over, a mouthful of rat bologna sandwich in his mouth. "I'm going with my wife like I do every quarter. Give her a nice place of pride on the display line" Edgar swallowed his mouthful of sandwich, enjoying the slight toughness and subtle spice of his lunch choice as they sat together on the bench in the plaza.

Everest blinked. "This sort of thing?... It feels weird... sorry, I don't think I swing that way."

Edgar teased him. "Haven't you always said that you wanted to network with bigger folks since you joined us in Sales? Sometimes folks like that indulge their taste for that sort of thing from the nearby regions at this event. Maybe you'll hook a bigger fish, sell them something while you bond over something else."

Everest considered this. Little Sanctuary HAD been kind of a weird place since he'd clocked in for the first time. The free house, the free jalopy with an upgrade the Sales department had footed the bill for - it allowed the AI to act as a henchman in his sales travels around the valleys and hills of the place,tracking potential sales opportunities opening up for selling... computers. Even in a place where devices had been reduced to mostly a commodity within reach of everyone, there was always room for upselling upgrades. A faster processor chip, a new type of memory with some new demerits and benefits compared to the usual Stable Random Access Ram everyone now used, maybe even a legacy device to read pre-Despo or even ancient media....

Edgar smiled and patted his back... "I'll give you two or three days off on top of the weekend if you go at least on Opening Day this Friday. Take it as an inducement."

Everest leaned back and considered this offer. He had been skeptical of the Spousal Unit program when it had been forced on him as a condition of his Housing, and by extension, his employment in the Complex. But he had grown to adore his darling Amelie within days of first meeting her in the kitchen doing a test meal for her first engagement with him. The sex had helped too, the woman was a gentle partner who matched his tempo - slow and warm in parts, hot and furious in others. She fit him like a well-fitted shoe on a tired, callused foot. three or more days to indulge her seemed like a dream in his busy schedule...

"Deal." He agreed. He'd have to sell his wife on the "Bring Your Wife For Display" thing though.

---

Part 0 - Skipping The Queue / Walk Of Fame She had been okay with it, surprisingly enough, and Amelie had set off with him, fully charged and ready to roam the convention. Having your own robot wife with you was a condition of entry into the hallways of Arendtcore this day even if you were staff, unless you were too busy managing the running of the event. Edgar had secured Everest and her a premium pass to skip the queue to enter, allowing them to bypass the long line to check for proof of artificiality that many other attendees had to go through.

Everest felt a strange sort of smugness as they walked past the line, some of the queued folks watching them go to the premium entrance and flaunt their privilege. Amelie was not the prettiest girl in Little Sanctuary, but goddammit, she was his. and in a weird fetish con like this, he needed all the ego boost he could get not to feel out of place.

The man at the booth in between the two queues rolled a physical bingo machine as they confirmed Everest's pass was genuine. A red ball popped out. He hoped it wasn't bad.

The bingo man grinned. "Oh hey, you got a basic display spot on the Walk. Get your girl some eyeballs... figuratively I mean. Though we do have a Mod Alley here for that literally." He handed Everest a ticket with a three-digit number on it. It was a no obligation thing, he could just surrender it back at the managers for the Alley for a discount coupon or meal coupon instead... He considered it, then turned to his wife. "Would you mind it if I paraded you... just a little?"

Amelie, his darling Amelie, blushed and poked Everest on the nose as she was so prone to do. "Oh, Everest. You really love yelling to the world that I'm your wife, don't you?" That seemed to say 'yes', so off they headed.

---

Part 1: Exhibitionists at an exhibition / Helping The Boss Out On An Off-Weekend

He'd shown the ticket and been ushered into one of the displays that lined a section of the hall, enough for maybe 60, 70 different robots... As a basic booth, there had been nothing much besides mirrored walls on all four sides, plus a glass front that was silvered over while the power to it was kept off, for privacy during preparations, and just enough room for two. The theme for this year's walk had been "Show Off The Inner Beauty Of Your Wife - Exposed Control or access panels encouraged."

Everest blushed. Yes, he had been perfectly aware this was a fetish event. Yes, he had come prepared a little when he'd heard of the theme, even if this wasn't really his cuppa. He carefully set Amelie up in a static pose he thought would show her off nicely, setting her in freeze mode to keep her still, before carefully popping open the control panel just below her pert breasts after unbuttoning her dungarees and making sure it stayed on her hips at least...

Everest blinked hard... then blushed a little more... something about this position, her coquetish slight lean forward, accompanied by the open panel, was doing something to him as he stared at his now statically frozen wife on her pedestal...

"Done with your wife?" Edgar's familiar voice came to him from behind. Everest looked back at his boss, dressed lazily in a casual shirt and pants rather than his usual executive flair. Behind him was a smiling blonde woman who seemed more ethereal and goddess-like than actually human, wearing a dowdy pale blue dress, a matching colored bonnet, and a pair of long stockings incongruously tucked into sneakers. Edgar examined Amelie, smiling as he did so. "Not bad, not bad for a first-time effort. sometimes the simplest display and the most common of spousal units can be beautiful too."

Everest nodded as he slowly spun the pedestal to face her outwards behind the highly shatter-proof glass, flicking the switch to turn the glass transparent before closing the door and retaining the keycard needed to retrieve her when he no longer felt like being an exhibitionist in a crowd of exhibitionists. "And you're exhibiting too? I mean,we're standing in the back alley. you must be."

Edgar laughed embarassedly. "Yeah, though having a premium booth imposes some extra demands. Higher standards even... C'mon, help me out a little with Elsa here?"

The premium booths had been open a day earlier for those who had booked them to bring in whatever extra props they needed for their display, nothing too fancy or high powered - those had been left to the actual sponsors and exhibitors. Everest examined Edgar's wife, noting a certain... oldness, in her design. Her hair had been done up in a symmetrical pair of low buns at the back of her head, her stride a little stiff as she followed Edgar and him in. The front of the booth was silvered, and there was a holographic scene projector and a tea table set out with a teapot and a tea set, including some realistic but inedible foodstuffs.

Everest noticed something... "Elsa isn't exactly a very new model is she?"

Edgar stopped and turned to him. "Well... actually she used to be my mother..."

Everest blinked hard on hearing that. "You said she was your wife."

Elsa slowly blinked her eyes, a startling sort of vapidness in her voice and motions as she praised Edgar. "Edgar s so good to me. He takes good care of me and indulges my whims. I love him so much..."

Edgar looked away from Everest, as if he'd been caught out doing crime. "It's a long story. My father was part of the original wave to build Arendtcore. some sort of little revenge after he'd thrown my mother out and divorced her for abusing me... They wouldn't let us have one-parent families back then, so my father took on Elsa as a spousal unit of convenience. Long story short, I left Minneapolis to study at Oregon Natural Observations and Explorations School, commerce stream... my pa died during my final year, and when I came back, I had the house and my mama, and the reset codes for her and a letter from my dad telling me not to just let her fade away simply because he'd died. So I did the reset and well..."

Edgar gently seated Elsa at the tea table, making sure she was properly posed enjoying her tea.before freezing her and working the back buttons of her dress, before using a Fixit-bar to open her back panel, revealing an original-era Arendtcore android control panel. Simpler, more discrete, not the fussy complexity and dynamic screens of current models.

Everest observed as Edgar started the holographic scene generator and the pedestal spinner, turning the booth into a verdant backwoods with a woman calmly drinking her tea, the pedestal's slow rotation exposing her back control panel every few seconds, before he tapped the switch to make the glass transparent. "And how's that arrangement working out?"

Edgar frowned sadly. "She's got maybe at most five or six more years before all support from the company ends. And her personality has been not quite as sharp and lovely as it had been when she was programmed to be my mother. I might just deactivate her and bury her next to my father with a note of thanks for letting me have her as long as he did, then get a newer wife. Not sure yet though..." He gently caressed his gently MILFy antique wife's blank smile before turning his back to the display and motioning to Everest to join him. "C'mon, I only asked for your attendance for a day, let's go see what the other guys are up to on the walk this year."

It had been interesting examining the other Walk displays. Some folks had been just as newbie-in-the woods as Everest, doing simple "spin in a mirrored box" displays. Some had gone for more style points. His boss' teatime in the woods. Another had rigged their holoscene to display sea water splashes as their wife rode a surfboard naked, her womb panel and under-breasts panel open in a way that would have ended in their total self-destruction had the water been actually real. Some lunatic had pushed it a bit hard - a Western cowboy scene, except that the cowgirl had had her wig taken off, exposing her animatronic controllers openly whirring in the back of her head, displaying status codes in her plastic skull while she sang a song every few minutes. The horse she was riding had joined the display, moving with lifelikeness in its spot but having a small section carved open on one side to reveal a series of cables and components that said it was a robot horse as well.

Everest looked around and admitted there was a certain artistry. Perhaps he would look to his boss on pointers in a future instalment if he ever got a premium booth...

Edgar yelled to him again. "C'mon, let's get a meal before we part ways, all that setup has me hungry..." to which Everest had yelped "COMING!" and joined Edgar in finding the Food Alley.

---

Part 2: Lunch with the boss / A Stark Demographic Truth

The food hadn't been the best. As usual, all the meat had been rat, though some genius had managed to import an actual cow and was carefully selling limited amounts of carefully sous-vide and torched beef cubes in tiny trays for a king's ransom. It was a hit... Edgar and Everest decided to keep their cash safe and stuck to the usual rat sausage in a bun, a sort of hot dog. the meat had been slightly saltier, but it tasted good... so had the soft lemonade soda.

Everest looked around. There sure were a lot of ASFRians in the halls of Arendtcore's event plaza, he mused, even as a squat old man sauntered by with a lady in redhead wearing a oddly skimply French maid's dress... "I thought there wouldn't be enough people to sustain this kind of event at this quarterly pace... Surprise, surprise..."

Edgar looked around, watching the hall as a girls' group got up on stage to sing a song about horses in paddocks in some language that wasn't English. "... yeah... about that... do you know what the balance of boys to girls in America as a whole right now is? ... about 10 females to 90 males, assuming only biologicals like us and no fembots to prop up the difference... And in a town like Little Sanctuary? the sausage factory gets even more sausagey despite Management's effort to encourage living women to join us as employees or family to employees..."

Everest frowned and looked down at his hotdog as he ate it slowly. Discussing the world becoming a sausage factory while eating sausage in a bun felt awkward... He hadn't realised how many of the women he'd taken for granted in Little Sanctuary might actually be circuits and plastic rather than flesh and blood. "That... makes reproducing to replace numbers hard, doesn't it?"

Edgar frowned. "Human women, in general, aren't exactly brood reproducers. one baby every nine months, with multiples on very rare occasions. Not very fast rate... In a matter of a few more decades, it might be that virtually all our grandchildren are robots. in that context, being able to hold a convention like Robocon four times a year in our locale makes sense..."

Everest felt even more depressed. "I wish you hadn't pointed that out. Now I'm not sure how I feel about having Amelie if I'm contributing to the gradual death spiral of our species." He sighed and toasted Edgar. "Here's to every crazy out there who's trying to beat that demographic disaster."

Edgar nodded and clinked plastic glasses with Everest for one last drink before they parted. "And to the plastic women who keep us from going mad realising we're all fucking doomed."

---

Part 3: An unexpected Meet With One Of The Four / Walking in a menagerie

Everest suddenly realised after Edgar had parted ways with him that he didn't quite know what to do at a Robocon. He had only just realised he might have a slight bit of the fetish, as opposed to the deeper interest some folks had. He elected to just walk around randomly, his map on his smart tablet, watching the other attendees.

He had been to an arts convention a few times before in Oregon, and if you transposed the fetishism this event celebrated onto the folks who'd attended those arts conventions, you'd get somewhat of the same view. Folks carrying shopping bags and carting entire coffin-shaped boxes around on trolleys...

Some folks had modified their wives heavily in a way Everest was not sure could be easily implemented or reversed without a few days on either side of this weekend:

Limbs, Torsos and even heads made entirely of some transparent Human Analogue Flesh-like alternative, every component and linkage on display whirring away furiously to provide the illusion of life despite the jig being clearly up because of the covering on them.

Human-sized bipedal cats bopping along on the walkways, carefully navigating the busy crowds as they wiggled their ears. Not Show mascots. Someone's actual spouse, male or female, their human walking beside them and enjoying their company

exposed control panels or parts of their body under more of the same glassy HAF-like material.

Some folks had replaced the lifelike, authentic animatronic data and voice files of their wives with more robotic options, making them move stiffly like actual old tin-can robots, their speech stilted as they greeted others in slightly metallic voices.

There was a strange fascination to watching all these people, before he bumped into a clearly exhibitionist android. She had dark brown hair and a well-toned body, clad in only a thong bikini and sandals as she walked around. She made a small motion, blowing a small coud of flower petals at him - except these glitched and faded as they contacted his face. Some sort of holographic generator?

"Faymee! oh for god's sake... Sorry about that mate, She's never been the same since I installed that holo-mod on her." A bald gentleman with a brown trimmed beard apologised.

Everest nodded. "She's something special. Most holographic projectors aren't this reactive and portable."

The bald man nodded, reaching a hand out. "Paul North. Just enjoying the sight of folks enjoying our hospitality here at Arendtcore..."

Everest couldn't place the name, so he just greeted him like normal. "Everest Peake. First time here."

Paul looked around. "Having an okay time? Food good? entertainment okay? perhaps the toilets are clean even?"

Everest had laughed. With these kind of crowds? unlikely. "I'm having a good time, Mr North."

The brownhaired minx had conjured up a pair of fiber-optic pompoms and was making a small dance of it, twirling her body and shaking the pom poms as she did so.

Paul looked at her, then at Everest. "I swear, give her an opportunity to be viewed widely, and her IQ drops as fast as her reach grows."

Faymee yelped. "You're no fun, Paul! What's the point of coming to an event like this if one's not special?"

Paul started shoving her forward in another direction. "You have a point, but stop being such a show-off, Faymee... We'll look around more, Everest. Be well...."

Everest tipped an invisible hat and put it back on his head, before looking around further.

Part 4: Mixing business with pleasure

There were a few pavilions in the mix... it wasn't all fun in the con, as businesses that normally had zero chance of exhibiting in these hallowed halls had set up. Somewhere from the True American Union, Eldos Interactive had set up a small plexiglass cube, filling it with a small group of short but very feminine women with strangely big eyes and small mouths, dressed in various anime cosplay costumes, their slightly oversized hands and feet making them strangely adorable as they waved to everyone quietly, lazing in the spotlight. There was a bit of a crowd as they hadn't seen such peculiar models outside of the TAU or the Little ChinaJapese town strips. Ever so often, they would do a choir performance, shaking maracas along to some sort of song in a foreign tongue.

Arendtcore was there as a befits a host - the usual displays of new and current models they offered to everyone who asked... Somewhere in the mix was a small replica of a kitchenette and a living room, with a motherly model and a youthful adult carefully cooking and cleaning the setup, with a child unit lazing on the living room sofa producing slightly amateurish sketches of everyone's faces as they passed her by. Occasionally, the mother walked near to the edge of the area they had been programmed to stay within, randomly offering freshly baked cookies, or the girl would walk up to the edge and tug at someone's shirt to give them a half-decent crayon etching of their faces on paper.

Everest had gotten one of the cookies... it had tasted very good. And baked on the spot too, not just some giveaway shovelled out of a box in secret.

A Japanese firm had gotten into the mix, their display models trading ethereality and beauty for actual realism as the men and women played chess, posed in various ways like idols, or sang. A few cutaway models of their internals were placed out as if to prove this wasn't just some group of humans putting on a great show.

Everest had met a few more interesting people as he walked, traded business cards to build contacts. Edgar had been right, there was potential in this place, even before one realised that they had some variation of the thirsts these people mostly had...

He'd be back again next quarter, definitely.

Chapter 22 - Mother, Now Wife

He'd only been five when his mother walked out on the Risseau family. Two years later, he was in Minnesota, then past the gates of Little Sanctuary as his father had found a job... but as one adult and one child, they were in danger of losing his father's job and their free housing, a danger the Company had offered to fix in exchange for his father's loyalty to the company as it started building out the corporate conclave and the Complex that were its only real assets on the board. They had also offered him a Spousal Unit to serve as wife and mother.

Elsa Risseau had always been part of the family snce he'd turned six. One day, it was just father and son, the next, this strange blonde woman had stuck herself in between. First a stranger, she'd made herself very much at home, and in turn she'd turned the house that they rattled in into a home. She offered warm meals, gentle hugs, and on some quiet nights, if Edgar strained his ears when he should be sleeping, he could hear... peculiar noises... Elsa was doing something to his father, something he clearly enjoyed based on the dazed smiles he gave Edgar the following morning at breakfast.

A decade went by fast, Edgar's hard work earning him a mercantile scholarship from Arendtcore. As part of the terms, however, he had to get educated in commerce somewhere else other than Minnesota. His young 15-year-old soul found it hard to concieve of leaving the place that had nutured and protected him for so long, but Oregon beckoned the next morning...

He couldn't sleep, and sat out there in the kitchen nursing a hot drink in an attempt to force himself to bed. Edgar found it wasn't working, sulking as he sat there. He'd probably get some sleep on the slowliner to Oregon, but he wasn't entirely sure he coud get much sleep even if Economy on a slowliner was basically the equivalent of First Class on a normal airliner.

There was a faint door click, and the sound of footsteps approaching Edgar from behind. He blinked as his long-suffering replacement mother hugged him from behind. Elsa was dressed in a diaphanous nightgown, the fabric's transclucency hinting slightly to Edgar as to the assets she brought into play to please his father some nights. Tonight though, it was his turn to be cared for... "Problems sleeping, Edgar?"

Edgar blushed and nodded, feeling the soft warmness of her body against his back. "Yeah... Oregon... it feels so far away. I'm going to miss you, mama..." Yes, he really would. This strange plastic doll that had been shoved into their lives had somehow proven more human than the bitch who'd taken their money and abandoned his father. She cooked, she cleaned, she cared for him, she cared for his dad. In so many ways, that made Elsa the perfect woman to the abandoned man and the child he had carefully tried to keep happy.

Elsa nodded slowly. "I'll miss you too. I might have to double my efforts on your dad too. He'll miss you as well..." She grinned. "I'm good for it." She kissed him on his cheek. "Come on, finish up that hot milk and go to bed or you'll be shipped to Oregon as deadwood cargo rather than a human passenger..." She joked, causing Edgar to laugh in his frail little voice. The Risseau family had lost one person, but it had also gained one person who gave so much more...

It would be almost the last time they spoke for a while.

---

Oregon was busy, classes were a real hothouse in Oregon Natural Observations and Explorations School (ONOES). You let your foot off the pedal for one brief moment outside of holidays, and they would eat you up, can you and ship you back home in disgrace without the qualifications you had worked towards... Edgar had leadfooted it, making commendations in virtually every core unit of the degree he was aiming for. On electives, he'd maybe been a bit less sure, but never at any point did he take anything for granted...

Not even when news had come through of his dad falling ill. He wanted to abandon his studies. What he got was an ultimatum: if he so much as stepped out of ONOES before his degree came through, he would be disowned and everything the Risseau family had built up sent off to charity, leaving nothing for Edgar.

It was a kind of tough love. He'd gritted his teeth and agreed to stay on, with minimal communications as to his father's status. Two years into the course, he'd gotten the news: his father had died. The lawyer had pointed out the threat his father had made, said it had teeth. The lawyer was the teeth, and would shift the assets away from him unless he showed up home with either a degree or hanging his head after a proven valid attempt.

Edgar hunkered down even harder, keeping the perfect collection of commendations going even as the classes got harder and harder each year. By the fourth year, he finally graduated as a honors student and valedictorian. The college pressed him to give a speech to inspire his fellow graduates at his graduation ceremony.

He failed to show up. This would impact his graduation in no way, beyond a awkward yearbook that year where his photo was of a strappling eager young man, not the tired adult he had become in four years. Everyone had agreed the youthful photo was certainly how they'd wanted to remember him, so good at relations and making people happy without excessive compromise he'd become in the four years he had at ONOES.

No, he was rushing home. He had the degree - he showed it to the lawyer as he'd got off the slowliner home. The lawyer had no disagreements and gave him his home, the remaining savings of his father - a surprising amount, he'd been a scrupulous man and saved five dollars for every two they'd spent on necessities and what remained of Edgar's spending after the scholarship...

The Families Programme had also agreed that Elsa Risseau still counted as a consenting adult in a relationship with Edgar, even though his father had perished - they could keep the house as is. Edgar could even invite a Spousal unit of his own, if he wanted - Elsa had been fully paid for by his dad and was now his in whatever role he choose for her. Father had also left a note for him from his deathbed.

[quote]Son,

if you're reading this, I know you've completed the education you were sent away for, without turning back no matter how dire things got. You also know they got dire enough that I'm no longer here. Arendtcore will provide and care for us, they've always been good people. What they can't necessarily do is find out where I'm headed and send your mother along with me, no matter how much she loved me. So... she's now yours. all of her. you're her owner technically, not me, as of the time this note was given to you.

She will possibly try to keep her chin up, but I've seen the way she pines for you when you're not around. I fear the backlash when I leave will be even worse. The best way to handle it, I think is to give her a reset - I've assigned ownership and admin privileges to you on her, so all you need to do is follow the instructions and recite the code on the back of this note to her to erase her memories of us and start her anew. What you choose to assign her as a role after that will be up to you. Just know that whatever that role is, she truly loves you and will always obey and honor you till she breaks down for good.

Take care of yourself, and of your mother, Father xxxxxx[/quote]

That last bit had felt weird... Edgar was not used to the concept of "owning his mom". Still, he'd memorized the code, before folding the note and stowing it in his worn college folio as a keepsake. As he stepped into the family home, she had hugged and kissed him like a child, as if he'd never left for Oregon and his father was about to come down the staircase from working on his spreadsheets and hug him as well. a perfect family once again...

except that wasn't going to happen. Remember, his father had perished two years earlier. Edgar and Elsa had talked over a small meal for two of mashed potatoes and a half chicken split further into quarters for each of them. She had stayed busy, Elsa had told Edgar. Housewives' club. keeping the place up. The Commerce Department of Arendtcore had helped out with the bills from Father's last drawn salary, which was still being paid as part of the scholarship and amounted to a large sum that also mean growing savings even after the utilities and Township Maintenance Fees had been levied, along with groceries for one - Elsa alone.

They talked of many other things before Edgar stepped on a landmine. "And do you miss... papa?"

Elsa fell silent, saying nothing as she looked down at the last bits of her dinner. She said nothing about it, only... "would you like some after dinner fruits?", smiling as she always did when she made that offer every day of his childhood with her.

---

The sobbing had been a sign.

Edgar couldn't sleep. the slowliner was a gentler way to travel, but even then, jet lag was still a thing, albeit much less pronounced. It still kept him up though, as he lay in his bed.

He heard the sobbing, and got out of bed. it was obvious where it was coming from, as he knocked on the door of the parents' bedroom, before slowly looking in. In the dim light, he could make out the diaphanous gown his mom loved to wear, as she sat up in bed, burying her face in her hands... He looked worriedly, walking over. "Mama?"

Elsa looked up and turned back to look at Edgar, her face slightly red with tears. He reached over, shifting some tears with his fingers. Even in those days, there had been a startling amount of realism and human-like behavior in the Spousal units they'd given the Original Wave on top of their obvious beauty... "You're crying, mama..." Edgar observed.

Elsa nodded. "Two years... two years of being alone. He told me to stop you from coming home till you'd graduated too, Edgar... Two years of being alone in the night..." She hugged Edgar tightly, her soft body squeezed against him. "Do you know what that did to me? I can't stand it anymore. The pain of waiting for someone to come home from hospital, but who never came back... I made meals for two people for a long time, even though I knew... The agony is sh-sh-shorting out my m-m-mind... I'm going cr-cr-cray-crazy.... I want to go where your father went, but they won't tell me where he went. Where did he go, Edgar? can you tell me? Mama is lonely and wants to be loved again fully, heart, soul and body..."

Edgar nodded slowly. How was he going to tell this simple machine what death was, what his father had become - wormfood - and why he wouldn't share their bed for two long years? His mind went to the note his father had left him. it was true, it was only a matter of time before all of this trauma caused his mother to finally malfunction and become totally useless, even as she now started singing a song he'd heard her and his father duet together on so many times, like a loving couple.

He bit his lip... "Mom, I could try easing the pain. do you want me to?"

Elsa nodded slowly looking up at him as if she realised what he was about to do. "Do what you have to, Edgar..."

Edgar nodded and shifted his mom slightly so that her back was facing her. he undid the ties on the back of her night gown, slipping them apart and briefly marvelling at the beautiful body that had lain beside his father for so many years and offered him regular comfort of a kind. He carefully found the moles as directed, and pushed them in. There was a faint click as part of the flesh above the cleft of her buttocks slid up, exposing the control panel for Elsa's robotic body to him. He located the "Command" button on the clunky old panel, pushing it in, then said the code his father had given him...

The effect was instantaneous as Elsa sat up straight, her head twitching as she blankly whirred and beeped. "Unit: Elsa Risseau... format command received. confirmed. now cleaning memory core..." For several long minutes there was no other motion or sound from her other than a high pitched whirr and occasional beeping.

Edgar was tired of all the thinking he was doing, and fell asleep rather than watching the format.

---

Edgar woke up in his Parents' bed as he'd fallen asleep there in the previous night. He sat up and looked around, his mother still half-disrobed from the night before, sitting on the bed next to him. The whine and whirring had faded, her eyes bright and cheerful. "Hi, I'm... Elsa Risseau. You are my owner, Edgar Risseau. Please state the role you wish to assign to me."

Edgar blushed a little. He'd had plenty of years of her as his mother, but it felt like he needed to be there for her more. He took a deep breath. "Elsa, you are my loving wife...."

Elsa beeped faintly. "Acknowledged. Unit role is now... 'wife'. Writing initial Personality data..." Edgar quietly looked on for what seemed like several minutes, before Elsa suddenly turned her head to look at him, face completely smiling, no trace of the old Elsa mommy left. "Morning honey. Slept well?"

Edgar shook his head as he laid there next to Elsa... "Not particularly. You're feeling okay, right?"

Elsa tilted her head and nodded. "I feel great. would you like me to share that feeling with you, Edgar?"

Edgar shrugged and nodded. "Yes, Elsa..." Then he blinked hard as he realised the possible implications of such a awkwardly worded query and response, even as Elsa proceeded to take off her gown entirely, revealing something he had only had a hint of for so long - a bombshell body full of softness and curves. warm pink nipples and vulva. Her lips, pouty and previously serving only his father fully. Her eyes were trained on him as she crawled over and onto Edgar. "I will share that feeling with you now, honey..." She announced. "But it's not fair if only I'm getting nude, Edgar..."

---

The sex had been intense. Edgar hadn't realised just how good his father had been having it even on top of how nicely she'd treated Edgar as a mother. Now he'd gotten a taste of it. Her mouth had gobbled his cock up completely, contracting and expanding erratically and warmly as she serviced his shaft, bobbing slowly but firmly. She was every bit a woman physically, and even if her intellect was limited as an early model, there was so much that had been done to make her competitive against live women in other aspects.

The access panel had sealed sometime between the completion of her memory format and his waking up, leaving no sign of her true nature. For all intents and purposes, his mother had become his wife. He would probably have to note this to his Housing Coordinator and Families Coordinator, and it might raise their eyebrows, but right now... he didn't care, lingering on the full-bodied woman now making love to her. Not obese, but soft and curvaceous in all the right spots. She stopped sucking him off and carefully guided his moist cock into her vulva,gobbling it up hard before riding his lap slowly.

"Am I... sufficient?" She asked at one point, to which Edgar could only moan. "Oh god, not just sufficient... perfect.... my perfect Elsa..." She smiled and continued riding him, until the point where he burst and spewed into her, causing her to moan lowly, her head leaning back as a look of perfect bliss spread across her face, before she carefully peeled herself off and shared a kiss with her son turned new husband... "Honey, I need to freshen up. I'll be right back... let's just lie together here then... or is there something else you'd like me to do?"

Edgar shook his head quickly. "Go to the bathroom to do what you want, then come back to warm my bed, Elsa..."

Elsa nodded eagerly, walking out of the room to use the bathroom for a bit, before coming back and lying on her back against the bed on one side of it, faintly whining as she did so. Huh... so she knew how to access her own inductive charging, Edgar mused, tracing the contours of her wonderlands with his eyelines...

Still... god... that had taken so much out of him. last night's wakefulness, and this morning's play.... He couldn't keep his eyes open, closing them entirely as he fell asleep next to his old mom/new wife.

Elsa detected that Edgar had fallen into a sleep and closed her eyes as well.

---

Edgar had reported to work a week later to start serving the four year bond that came with his scholarship, bringing the same attitude that had earned a tonne of commendations to work. In a year, he had been promoted three times. In two, he was the leader of his own department. Fierce, devious and with a nose for potential new sales in strange places, he soon because a high flyer and a leader of his own team, calling his own shots as to how to shill Arendtcore's various products.

He had also become very used to his MILFy wife Elsa. She was always still asleep when he'd gotten out of bed and showered and dressed for work, but she had always been 98, 99% attentive to him when he got back from work, on time as much as possible without any unnnecesssary overtime, a policy he foisted on his team as well to their benefit. They got back home on time, just as much as he did, working past 6 only when it really mattered.

Edgar shared meals with his loving Elsa. They shared quiet glasses of red wine.

Sometimes Edgar would excuse himself, focused on a disturbing fact of their love together - he'd already spent 10 years with her as his adoring son, another 4 parted from her... she was now his wife for two years... the warranty on Spousal units weas 50 years, and it did not reset just because he'd inherited her. She'd functioned for 16 years, another 34 years left on the clock...

it still felt like too little, and he occasionally enquired with Housing as to upgrade paths to keep her going longer. They didn't have anything on the books, but assured him that the company's ongoing open source programme would give her options down the road. And if nothing else, there were geniuses in the company who could work out how to transfer her personality and memories to a new model without too much loss hopefully.

And then he would come back to her and lie by her side. occasionally in the dim light, he stayed awake, something that she could sense somehow, and then she would reach over and hug him gently... Sometimes, the hug degenerated into raw, hot sex. he badly needed that from her, the sensations of her making love to every inch of his body. The dullness of her intellect since the reset was a concern, but she had had so many ways to make him forget here and there of it, riding his body to pure exhaustion and ecstasy when her body wasn't carefully clothed in simple dresses that made her feel prudish and unlikely to put out, a lie that ripped to pieces when she determined Edgar needed the stress relief.

He loved it... he wanted that to go on forever, even though he feared there was a chance it would end in just three decades... He still had plenty of time to find a solution.

but Elsa wasn't perfect either. Sometimes, she would break down.

---

Elsa had been unusually frisky that evening, greeting him with a smile and seating him down to a small stew for two, their usual pointless conversation about everything and nothing... and then they had made love on the living room sofa, His work suit on the floor, mingling with her sundress and underclothing, as she mounted him and started grinding.

Halfway through their session though, she had started slowing down and growing quieter. By the time Edgar realised something was wrong, Elsa had fallen off his dick and onto the ground on her back, blankly opening and closing her mouth without a sound beyond the occasional whirr and beep.

---

The Reset Crew member who'd been assigned to do on-site repairs thanks to his salary garnish for premium service had been impressed with Elsa. "My god... they don't make them this reliable and simple anymore... You got it going good..." He said, his arms deep in her and carefully trying to fix a broken motor that had stopped her from being able to properly bring a laser to bounce on a disc rated for over a century's use. The technician probed a few contacts, causing Elsa to slowly open and close her mouth and eyes, emitting a pure tonal sound from her mouth as she did so.

Edgar frowned. "She broke while we were making love. Is that really reliable?"

The technician grinned. "It is when this is the first emergency call out we've ever had for her in sixteen years. " He gave a chef's kiss. "Impressive mean time between failures, is what that is. Today's shit conks out once a year, that's not reliable, this workhorse of a girl, that's reliable! And the simplicity of her design means you can even learn to repair her on your own. Like, I'm not even needed if you're willing to spend on a proper mass printer and a brief education in how she functions."

Edgar was piqued by the idea. It was not forever either, but it was as long as he was alive and around to hold a tool and print the parts he needed... "Tell me more about this education and this mass printer...."

The technician raised his microbar in a "Hold your horses right now" manner. "Later. Right now, I gotta give your lovely bird back her lovely functioning." As if on cue, Elsa blinked and looked at Edgar. "Edgar, I've missed you, how was work?"

Edgar smiled. She'd lost a few hours of memory, but at least now he had options...

The technician grinned. "See? Easiest 2000 arendtcoin I've ever made."

---

The upper loft soon had a mass printer and a small stack of books totally unrelated to sales. He wasn't just working on selling stuff, He was focused on learning to craft things if they ever stopped being made, on the internals of the model that Elsa was based on, and on basic android repair, which was as much as he needed to know to fix everything that could possibly break on the simplistic model Elsa was built as.

Some quiet days, he would invite Elsa up to the loft, and carefully support her, before disassembling her to do some maintenance and get familiar with her functionality. She had almost no response to the disassembly, once simply talking lovingly to Edgar through her chest backup speaker even as he gently pried her head off to lubricate her servos and check the animatronic system in it was still working fine.

Edgar grew to love her in another way - the way a simple 1000-year-rated reflective disc could somehow be read and carefully used to assemble every possible thing she could say and do, the disc carefully protected by a bullet-proof caddy deep inside her heft. Sometimes, he would toy with her a little, playing with the controller for the disc drive, so that she could say warped things.

He had laughed a little as he once made Elsa say "Fuck me. Fuck me hard, Edgar..." The sensitivities of his Father's generation would never have allowed an android to utter those words, but it had just been a matter of feeding the right Op codes to the system. He couldn't reprogram her - yet - the disc was always where her personality came off of.... someone had been wonderful and made it his dad's perfect wife and his perfect mother, but already he was reading up on possible ways to encode the entire disc into a small fraction of a modern drive and add his own things to that drive instead.

There was a spillover effect to the whole effort - he now also understood how mass printers worked, and how androids were put together, at least at a simple level. That fed into his sales efforts, and soon, he was the "mass printer and robots" guy in the department. His team subtly shifted as he swapped out decent members for newcomers ever so often who could understand those two things too, and the sales team boomed harder.

The warranty expiring soon lost the horror it had once bestowed on Edgar. Now it was just a date beyond which he would have to do his own repairs and maintenance and upgrades to Elsa. And he'd figured out what he needed to do for all those things. He felt strangely safe...

---

He brushed his hand against the back of Elsa's body, only the transclucent gown she favored in the bedroom keeping him from directly contacting her skin.

He had worked out in theory how to implement a modern drive into a system 20 years older than it and have it feed everything that made Elsa come alive - he just needed to work out how to keep both the old drive and the new drive, so that he could switch between both options for reasons... He didn't want to junk the old disc caddy reader, it still served a purpose as a incorruptible media that would keep her default personality alive for far longer than even he could live. He just wanted to add flexibility to his lovely machine lover's words.

He had powered Elsa down, just to enjoy her as a machine rather than a woman for a short while, before he reached the control panel and flicked the power switch again. She whirred faintly, sitting up slightly as she discovered she was parked right against Edgar. There was not a word from her, just that quiet mutual acknowledgement that he was hers, and she was his...

It felt so perfect now...

Chapter 23 - Mother, Now Wife (Flipside)

I walked slowly into the slowport, carefully checking to make sure I am properly attired and nice looking one more time as my feet go on the paving one step at a time towards the doors into the slowport. My straw hat has a few small fake flowers tied into it with a ribbon, my sundress loose and comfy in all the right places, yet also tenting in my chest as it fits well everywhere else but up there with my pendulous breasts, even though I am wearing proper support undergear. Freshly laundered sky blue cotton thigh-high stockings on my legs.

I blink slowly. He prefers it when I wear less makeup, says I look so much prettier. Just a touch of foundation and a light brush of eyeliner to go with a slight touch of warm pink lipstick. Otherwise I am au naturale in the facial section.

I brush up against one of the railings, looking out at the tarmac for the arrival of his slowliner back from Berlin. It has been a long time, and I ache for his company again, to feel him against me, to touch each other in forbidden ways and manners in the quiet away from other disdainful eyes.

I am Elsa Risseau, and I am the lovely wife of a lovely salesman...

---

My memories are hazy, and they begin with waking up next to him in the quiet of the morning. There are distant blurs... why are there tear stains on my face? He went somewhere for a long time... where did he go?

I try to remember, and the world spins a little. No, better to just let it go. The here and now with him is what makes me who I am, not some distant past.

He is not trained as a craftsman, but he has grown to love tinkering, turning our upper loft into a small creator's heaven - books on mechanics and robotics on his tables, some strange new gadget or workpiece. When he is home, the scent of burnt sugar fills the loft constantly as the mass printer churns out some strange new design. I have sat there for hours in between housework and cooking for his nutrition, just watching him work.

I do not understand much, if any, of what he does even when I ask about it, yet to sit there as he toys with stuff is almost religious as an experience. I regularly feel bits of me floating away, just my consciousness and the view of him making yet another new and possibly useful item, unable to move or do anything else.

---

Edgar is no stud horse, and neither am I some sex goddess, but in each other we find much satisfaction, exploring each other's bodies. We can sit and stare at each other for a while, then suddenly crash together like the ocean waves, our imperfect bodies finding a joy and thrill in embracing each other's forms. I really should lose some weight, I am slightly heavy and getting pudgy. Edgar is lanky and clearly in need of extra food that he refuses from me. But Edgar refuses to let me lose the inches I should be losing, he says I am the perfect wife as I am right now.

That is what I want to be for him. Perfect...

---

I grab a small complimentary coffee from the visitors' counter. It is far from perfect - dusty, murky black, one sugar too many. I sip it and watch the sky. Sometimes the slowliner pulls in an hour or two early. sometimes it comes in three late. But for something that takes days to cross the Atlantic, it seems an acceptable delay to bear.

The counter offers information on the wonders of Little Sanctuary, my hometown, as well as Minnesota at large. It also offers complimentary recharging pods for androids. I watch as a woman enters the pod area and lies down for a recharge on one of the curvy little things, the cover sealing to allow for privacy as she sips free electricity while she waits.

I blink, wondering how someone could be content with manufactured perfection like that. In my human imperfection, Edgar sees true beauty and makes me feel warm and loved inside. He embraces, and I am truly loved...

---

It is now five hours after the slowliner was supposed to have arrived, tailwinds slowing the slowliner down. This is probably the last time the timing of his arrival can possibly be delayed, as he is almost home. But the wait has become a little taxing. My spirit still wants to sit in the chair and wait for him to touch down, to rush to hug him as he ascends from the purgatory of immigration checks and baggage collection in the basement of the terminal.

A concierge looks concerned with my tiredness. I look at his polite offer to get some rest elsewhere, but I refuse, merely asking him for some of that free cake in the glass-fronted display. He goes away and brings me a small plate with a morsel of cream cake, a small raspberry staining its top with a touch of red. It is delicious, but I daren't impose on him to bring me more, and I daren't splurge on the uppriced small foods surrounding me.

---

There is just two more hours left before Edgar's slowliner touches down and spills its cargoload of humanity. They have travelled days to get here to Minnesota from Europa. Edgar has travelled that long. He will enjoy my company as he comes into the lobby, we shall go home to our small but comfy house. I will make him some thing small and simple but tasty, as the slowliner will have plied him for days with the best cooking one can find in the sky. The best cooking, but not mine.

My eyes are heavy for some reason. I shake my head a little. I must be here for him. I focus on the things immediately around me to ward off the gradually settling exhaustion. On memories I do have with him. The slow breathing and love that makes my bosom heave. The mundane times we sit together for hours in each other's company, doing nothing of real value. The blurred green text on black, motes travelling in my eyes randomly but making no sense to my tiny mind.

I am Elsa Risseau... I am... the... perfect... wife....I... will... wait for... wait... for... forrr.... Code: Select all

Unit Identifier: Elsa Risseau Technical Identifier: Arendtcore Analisse Lovemachine

Error: Battery reserves at 5% Error: Shutting down to preserve memory core on remaining power. Please recharge. INFO: broadcasting low-drain high-range distress signal until power is at 2% in 24 hours....

---

The concierge stared at the perfect android wife slumped on the viewing lounger, eyes wide open as she stared blankly at the sky. An Original-era model, someone's lucky charm and inheritance, perhaps. She had refused his offer to help her to one of the free recharging pods, but she had refused. The rules were clear on not assisting passengers who weren't in distress or need, so he had moved on an hour earlier.

He carefully lifted her limp heft onto a trolley. She was in need now, her power reserves clearly drained by waiting for a delayed slowliner. Possibly the one from Berlin, five hours late. He carefully wheeled the loyal android into the pod area, laying her down onto an empty pod, before quickly using a scanner to locate her built-in identity tagging... Elsa Risseau... what a lovely name.

He scribbled it into his smartpad as an android awaiting a claim back. The owner would need to produce his passport to take her back after she had had at least a decent amount of recharging down. The slowport had services to announce the deposit of such drained androids, and they would notice her absence and her name on the list after touchdown.

The concierge sighed deeply. These plastic people in these pods were so pristine and straightforward in their care for their masters, he envied their singularity of purpose, even if it got them into trouble ever so often, like in the lobby of this slowport. He closed his eyes and murmured a small prayer to his god to reunite them soon with the latter, then walked out of the pod area to see to other customers...

Chapter 22 - Mother, Now Wife

He'd only been five when his mother walked out on the Risseau family. Two years later, he was in Minnesota, then past the gates of Little Sanctuary as his father had found a job... but as one adult and one child, they were in danger of losing his father's job and their free housing, a danger the Company had offered to fix in exchange for his father's loyalty to the company as it started building out the corporate conclave and the Complex that were its only real assets on the board. They had also offered him a Spousal Unit to serve as wife and mother.

Elsa Risseau had always been part of the family snce he'd turned six. One day, it was just father and son, the next, this strange blonde woman had stuck herself in between. First a stranger, she'd made herself very much at home, and in turn she'd turned the house that they rattled in into a home. She offered warm meals, gentle hugs, and on some quiet nights, if Edgar strained his ears when he should be sleeping, he could hear... peculiar noises... Elsa was doing something to his father, something he clearly enjoyed based on the dazed smiles he gave Edgar the following morning at breakfast.

A decade went by fast, Edgar's hard work earning him a mercantile scholarship from Arendtcore. As part of the terms, however, he had to get educated in commerce somewhere else other than Minnesota. His young 15-year-old soul found it hard to concieve of leaving the place that had nutured and protected him for so long, but Oregon beckoned the next morning...

He couldn't sleep, and sat out there in the kitchen nursing a hot drink in an attempt to force himself to bed. Edgar found it wasn't working, sulking as he sat there. He'd probably get some sleep on the slowliner to Oregon, but he wasn't entirely sure he coud get much sleep even if Economy on a slowliner was basically the equivalent of First Class on a normal airliner.

There was a faint door click, and the sound of footsteps approaching Edgar from behind. He blinked as his long-suffering replacement mother hugged him from behind. Elsa was dressed in a diaphanous nightgown, the fabric's transclucency hinting slightly to Edgar as to the assets she brought into play to please his father some nights. Tonight though, it was his turn to be cared for... "Problems sleeping, Edgar?"

Edgar blushed and nodded, feeling the soft warmness of her body against his back. "Yeah... Oregon... it feels so far away. I'm going to miss you, mama..." Yes, he really would. This strange plastic doll that had been shoved into their lives had somehow proven more human than the bitch who'd taken their money and abandoned his father. She cooked, she cleaned, she cared for him, she cared for his dad. In so many ways, that made Elsa the perfect woman to the abandoned man and the child he had carefully tried to keep happy.

Elsa nodded slowly. "I'll miss you too. I might have to double my efforts on your dad too. He'll miss you as well..." She grinned. "I'm good for it." She kissed him on his cheek. "Come on, finish up that hot milk and go to bed or you'll be shipped to Oregon as deadwood cargo rather than a human passenger..." She joked, causing Edgar to laugh in his frail little voice. The Risseau family had lost one person, but it had also gained one person who gave so much more...

It would be almost the last time they spoke for a while.

---

Oregon was busy, classes were a real hothouse in Oregon Natural Observations and Explorations School (ONOES). You let your foot off the pedal for one brief moment outside of holidays, and they would eat you up, can you and ship you back home in disgrace without the qualifications you had worked towards... Edgar had leadfooted it, making commendations in virtually every core unit of the degree he was aiming for. On electives, he'd maybe been a bit less sure, but never at any point did he take anything for granted...

Not even when news had come through of his dad falling ill. He wanted to abandon his studies. What he got was an ultimatum: if he so much as stepped out of ONOES before his degree came through, he would be disowned and everything the Risseau family had built up sent off to charity, leaving nothing for Edgar.

It was a kind of tough love. He'd gritted his teeth and agreed to stay on, with minimal communications as to his father's status. Two years into the course, he'd gotten the news: his father had died. The lawyer had pointed out the threat his father had made, said it had teeth. The lawyer was the teeth, and would shift the assets away from him unless he showed up home with either a degree or hanging his head after a proven valid attempt.

Edgar hunkered down even harder, keeping the perfect collection of commendations going even as the classes got harder and harder each year. By the fourth year, he finally graduated as a honors student and valedictorian. The college pressed him to give a speech to inspire his fellow graduates at his graduation ceremony.

He failed to show up. This would impact his graduation in no way, beyond a awkward yearbook that year where his photo was of a strappling eager young man, not the tired adult he had become in four years. Everyone had agreed the youthful photo was certainly how they'd wanted to remember him, so good at relations and making people happy without excessive compromise he'd become in the four years he had at ONOES.

No, he was rushing home. He had the degree - he showed it to the lawyer as he'd got off the slowliner home. The lawyer had no disagreements and gave him his home, the remaining savings of his father - a surprising amount, he'd been a scrupulous man and saved five dollars for every two they'd spent on necessities and what remained of Edgar's spending after the scholarship...

The Families Programme had also agreed that Elsa Risseau still counted as a consenting adult in a relationship with Edgar, even though his father had perished - they could keep the house as is. Edgar could even invite a Spousal unit of his own, if he wanted - Elsa had been fully paid for by his dad and was now his in whatever role he choose for her. Father had also left a note for him from his deathbed.

[quote]Son,

if you're reading this, I know you've completed the education you were sent away for, without turning back no matter how dire things got. You also know they got dire enough that I'm no longer here. Arendtcore will provide and care for us, they've always been good people. What they can't necessarily do is find out where I'm headed and send your mother along with me, no matter how much she loved me. So... she's now yours. all of her. you're her owner technically, not me, as of the time this note was given to you.

She will possibly try to keep her chin up, but I've seen the way she pines for you when you're not around. I fear the backlash when I leave will be even worse. The best way to handle it, I think is to give her a reset - I've assigned ownership and admin privileges to you on her, so all you need to do is follow the instructions and recite the code on the back of this note to her to erase her memories of us and start her anew. What you choose to assign her as a role after that will be up to you. Just know that whatever that role is, she truly loves you and will always obey and honor you till she breaks down for good.

Take care of yourself, and of your mother, Father xxxxxx[/quote]

That last bit had felt weird... Edgar was not used to the concept of "owning his mom". Still, he'd memorized the code, before folding the note and stowing it in his worn college folio as a keepsake. As he stepped into the family home, she had hugged and kissed him like a child, as if he'd never left for Oregon and his father was about to come down the staircase from working on his spreadsheets and hug him as well. a perfect family once again...

except that wasn't going to happen. Remember, his father had perished two years earlier. Edgar and Elsa had talked over a small meal for two of mashed potatoes and a half chicken split further into quarters for each of them. She had stayed busy, Elsa had told Edgar. Housewives' club. keeping the place up. The Commerce Department of Arendtcore had helped out with the bills from Father's last drawn salary, which was still being paid as part of the scholarship and amounted to a large sum that also mean growing savings even after the utilities and Township Maintenance Fees had been levied, along with groceries for one - Elsa alone.

They talked of many other things before Edgar stepped on a landmine. "And do you miss... papa?"

Elsa fell silent, saying nothing as she looked down at the last bits of her dinner. She said nothing about it, only... "would you like some after dinner fruits?", smiling as she always did when she made that offer every day of his childhood with her.

---

The sobbing had been a sign.

Edgar couldn't sleep. the slowliner was a gentler way to travel, but even then, jet lag was still a thing, albeit much less pronounced. It still kept him up though, as he lay in his bed.

He heard the sobbing, and got out of bed. it was obvious where it was coming from, as he knocked on the door of the parents' bedroom, before slowly looking in. In the dim light, he could make out the diaphanous gown his mom loved to wear, as she sat up in bed, burying her face in her hands... He looked worriedly, walking over. "Mama?"

Elsa looked up and turned back to look at Edgar, her face slightly red with tears. He reached over, shifting some tears with his fingers. Even in those days, there had been a startling amount of realism and human-like behavior in the Spousal units they'd given the Original Wave on top of their obvious beauty... "You're crying, mama..." Edgar observed.

Elsa nodded. "Two years... two years of being alone. He told me to stop you from coming home till you'd graduated too, Edgar... Two years of being alone in the night..." She hugged Edgar tightly, her soft body squeezed against him. "Do you know what that did to me? I can't stand it anymore. The pain of waiting for someone to come home from hospital, but who never came back... I made meals for two people for a long time, even though I knew... The agony is sh-sh-shorting out my m-m-mind... I'm going cr-cr-cray-crazy.... I want to go where your father went, but they won't tell me where he went. Where did he go, Edgar? can you tell me? Mama is lonely and wants to be loved again fully, heart, soul and body..."

Edgar nodded slowly. How was he going to tell this simple machine what death was, what his father had become - wormfood - and why he wouldn't share their bed for two long years? His mind went to the note his father had left him. it was true, it was only a matter of time before all of this trauma caused his mother to finally malfunction and become totally useless, even as she now started singing a song he'd heard her and his father duet together on so many times, like a loving couple.

He bit his lip... "Mom, I could try easing the pain. do you want me to?"

Elsa nodded slowly looking up at him as if she realised what he was about to do. "Do what you have to, Edgar..."

Edgar nodded and shifted his mom slightly so that her back was facing her. he undid the ties on the back of her night gown, slipping them apart and briefly marvelling at the beautiful body that had lain beside his father for so many years and offered him regular comfort of a kind. He carefully found the moles as directed, and pushed them in. There was a faint click as part of the flesh above the cleft of her buttocks slid up, exposing the control panel for Elsa's robotic body to him. He located the "Command" button on the clunky old panel, pushing it in, then said the code his father had given him...

The effect was instantaneous as Elsa sat up straight, her head twitching as she blankly whirred and beeped. "Unit: Elsa Risseau... format command received. confirmed. now cleaning memory core..." For several long minutes there was no other motion or sound from her other than a high pitched whirr and occasional beeping.

Edgar was tired of all the thinking he was doing, and fell asleep rather than watching the format.

---

Edgar woke up in his Parents' bed as he'd fallen asleep there in the previous night. He sat up and looked around, his mother still half-disrobed from the night before, sitting on the bed next to him. The whine and whirring had faded, her eyes bright and cheerful. "Hi, I'm... Elsa Risseau. You are my owner, Edgar Risseau. Please state the role you wish to assign to me."

Edgar blushed a little. He'd had plenty of years of her as his mother, but it felt like he needed to be there for her more. He took a deep breath. "Elsa, you are my loving wife...."

Elsa beeped faintly. "Acknowledged. Unit role is now... 'wife'. Writing initial Personality data..." Edgar quietly looked on for what seemed like several minutes, before Elsa suddenly turned her head to look at him, face completely smiling, no trace of the old Elsa mommy left. "Morning honey. Slept well?"

Edgar shook his head as he laid there next to Elsa... "Not particularly. You're feeling okay, right?"

Elsa tilted her head and nodded. "I feel great. would you like me to share that feeling with you, Edgar?"

Edgar shrugged and nodded. "Yes, Elsa..." Then he blinked hard as he realised the possible implications of such a awkwardly worded query and response, even as Elsa proceeded to take off her gown entirely, revealing something he had only had a hint of for so long - a bombshell body full of softness and curves. warm pink nipples and vulva. Her lips, pouty and previously serving only his father fully. Her eyes were trained on him as she crawled over and onto Edgar. "I will share that feeling with you now, honey..." She announced. "But it's not fair if only I'm getting nude, Edgar..."

---

The sex had been intense. Edgar hadn't realised just how good his father had been having it even on top of how nicely she'd treated Edgar as a mother. Now he'd gotten a taste of it. Her mouth had gobbled his cock up completely, contracting and expanding erratically and warmly as she serviced his shaft, bobbing slowly but firmly. She was every bit a woman physically, and even if her intellect was limited as an early model, there was so much that had been done to make her competitive against live women in other aspects.

The access panel had sealed sometime between the completion of her memory format and his waking up, leaving no sign of her true nature. For all intents and purposes, his mother had become his wife. He would probably have to note this to his Housing Coordinator and Families Coordinator, and it might raise their eyebrows, but right now... he didn't care, lingering on the full-bodied woman now making love to her. Not obese, but soft and curvaceous in all the right spots. She stopped sucking him off and carefully guided his moist cock into her vulva,gobbling it up hard before riding his lap slowly.

"Am I... sufficient?" She asked at one point, to which Edgar could only moan. "Oh god, not just sufficient... perfect.... my perfect Elsa..." She smiled and continued riding him, until the point where he burst and spewed into her, causing her to moan lowly, her head leaning back as a look of perfect bliss spread across her face, before she carefully peeled herself off and shared a kiss with her son turned new husband... "Honey, I need to freshen up. I'll be right back... let's just lie together here then... or is there something else you'd like me to do?"

Edgar shook his head quickly. "Go to the bathroom to do what you want, then come back to warm my bed, Elsa..."

Elsa nodded eagerly, walking out of the room to use the bathroom for a bit, before coming back and lying on her back against the bed on one side of it, faintly whining as she did so. Huh... so she knew how to access her own inductive charging, Edgar mused, tracing the contours of her wonderlands with his eyelines...

Still... god... that had taken so much out of him. last night's wakefulness, and this morning's play.... He couldn't keep his eyes open, closing them entirely as he fell asleep next to his old mom/new wife.

Elsa detected that Edgar had fallen into a sleep and closed her eyes as well.

---

Edgar had reported to work a week later to start serving the four year bond that came with his scholarship, bringing the same attitude that had earned a tonne of commendations to work. In a year, he had been promoted three times. In two, he was the leader of his own department. Fierce, devious and with a nose for potential new sales in strange places, he soon because a high flyer and a leader of his own team, calling his own shots as to how to shill Arendtcore's various products.

He had also become very used to his MILFy wife Elsa. She was always still asleep when he'd gotten out of bed and showered and dressed for work, but she had always been 98, 99% attentive to him when he got back from work, on time as much as possible without any unnnecesssary overtime, a policy he foisted on his team as well to their benefit. They got back home on time, just as much as he did, working past 6 only when it really mattered.

Edgar shared meals with his loving Elsa. They shared quiet glasses of red wine.

Sometimes Edgar would excuse himself, focused on a disturbing fact of their love together - he'd already spent 10 years with her as his adoring son, another 4 parted from her... she was now his wife for two years... the warranty on Spousal units weas 50 years, and it did not reset just because he'd inherited her. She'd functioned for 16 years, another 34 years left on the clock...

it still felt like too little, and he occasionally enquired with Housing as to upgrade paths to keep her going longer. They didn't have anything on the books, but assured him that the company's ongoing open source programme would give her options down the road. And if nothing else, there were geniuses in the company who could work out how to transfer her personality and memories to a new model without too much loss hopefully.

And then he would come back to her and lie by her side. occasionally in the dim light, he stayed awake, something that she could sense somehow, and then she would reach over and hug him gently... Sometimes, the hug degenerated into raw, hot sex. he badly needed that from her, the sensations of her making love to every inch of his body. The dullness of her intellect since the reset was a concern, but she had had so many ways to make him forget here and there of it, riding his body to pure exhaustion and ecstasy when her body wasn't carefully clothed in simple dresses that made her feel prudish and unlikely to put out, a lie that ripped to pieces when she determined Edgar needed the stress relief.

He loved it... he wanted that to go on forever, even though he feared there was a chance it would end in just three decades... He still had plenty of time to find a solution.

but Elsa wasn't perfect either. Sometimes, she would break down.

---

Elsa had been unusually frisky that evening, greeting him with a smile and seating him down to a small stew for two, their usual pointless conversation about everything and nothing... and then they had made love on the living room sofa, His work suit on the floor, mingling with her sundress and underclothing, as she mounted him and started grinding.

Halfway through their session though, she had started slowing down and growing quieter. By the time Edgar realised something was wrong, Elsa had fallen off his dick and onto the ground on her back, blankly opening and closing her mouth without a sound beyond the occasional whirr and beep.

---

The Reset Crew member who'd been assigned to do on-site repairs thanks to his salary garnish for premium service had been impressed with Elsa. "My god... they don't make them this reliable and simple anymore... You got it going good..." He said, his arms deep in her and carefully trying to fix a broken motor that had stopped her from being able to properly bring a laser to bounce on a disc rated for over a century's use. The technician probed a few contacts, causing Elsa to slowly open and close her mouth and eyes, emitting a pure tonal sound from her mouth as she did so.

Edgar frowned. "She broke while we were making love. Is that really reliable?"

The technician grinned. "It is when this is the first emergency call out we've ever had for her in sixteen years. " He gave a chef's kiss. "Impressive mean time between failures, is what that is. Today's shit conks out once a year, that's not reliable, this workhorse of a girl, that's reliable! And the simplicity of her design means you can even learn to repair her on your own. Like, I'm not even needed if you're willing to spend on a proper mass printer and a brief education in how she functions."

Edgar was piqued by the idea. It was not forever either, but it was as long as he was alive and around to hold a tool and print the parts he needed... "Tell me more about this education and this mass printer...."

The technician raised his microbar in a "Hold your horses right now" manner. "Later. Right now, I gotta give your lovely bird back her lovely functioning." As if on cue, Elsa blinked and looked at Edgar. "Edgar, I've missed you, how was work?"

Edgar smiled. She'd lost a few hours of memory, but at least now he had options...

The technician grinned. "See? Easiest 2000 arendtcoin I've ever made."

---

The upper loft soon had a mass printer and a small stack of books totally unrelated to sales. He wasn't just working on selling stuff, He was focused on learning to craft things if they ever stopped being made, on the internals of the model that Elsa was based on, and on basic android repair, which was as much as he needed to know to fix everything that could possibly break on the simplistic model Elsa was built as.

Some quiet days, he would invite Elsa up to the loft, and carefully support her, before disassembling her to do some maintenance and get familiar with her functionality. She had almost no response to the disassembly, once simply talking lovingly to Edgar through her chest backup speaker even as he gently pried her head off to lubricate her servos and check the animatronic system in it was still working fine.

Edgar grew to love her in another way - the way a simple 1000-year-rated reflective disc could somehow be read and carefully used to assemble every possible thing she could say and do, the disc carefully protected by a bullet-proof caddy deep inside her heft. Sometimes, he would toy with her a little, playing with the controller for the disc drive, so that she could say warped things.

He had laughed a little as he once made Elsa say "Fuck me. Fuck me hard, Edgar..." The sensitivities of his Father's generation would never have allowed an android to utter those words, but it had just been a matter of feeding the right Op codes to the system. He couldn't reprogram her - yet - the disc was always where her personality came off of.... someone had been wonderful and made it his dad's perfect wife and his perfect mother, but already he was reading up on possible ways to encode the entire disc into a small fraction of a modern drive and add his own things to that drive instead.

There was a spillover effect to the whole effort - he now also understood how mass printers worked, and how androids were put together, at least at a simple level. That fed into his sales efforts, and soon, he was the "mass printer and robots" guy in the department. His team subtly shifted as he swapped out decent members for newcomers ever so often who could understand those two things too, and the sales team boomed harder.

The warranty expiring soon lost the horror it had once bestowed on Edgar. Now it was just a date beyond which he would have to do his own repairs and maintenance and upgrades to Elsa. And he'd figured out what he needed to do for all those things. He felt strangely safe...

---

He brushed his hand against the back of Elsa's body, only the transclucent gown she favored in the bedroom keeping him from directly contacting her skin.

He had worked out in theory how to implement a modern drive into a system 20 years older than it and have it feed everything that made Elsa come alive - he just needed to work out how to keep both the old drive and the new drive, so that he could switch between both options for reasons... He didn't want to junk the old disc caddy reader, it still served a purpose as a incorruptible media that would keep her default personality alive for far longer than even he could live. He just wanted to add flexibility to his lovely machine lover's words.

He had powered Elsa down, just to enjoy her as a machine rather than a woman for a short while, before he reached the control panel and flicked the power switch again. She whirred faintly, sitting up slightly as she discovered she was parked right against Edgar. There was not a word from her, just that quiet mutual acknowledgement that he was hers, and she was his...

It felt so perfect now...

Chapter 23 - Mother, Now Wife (Flipside)

I walked slowly into the slowport, carefully checking to make sure I am properly attired and nice looking one more time as my feet go on the paving one step at a time towards the doors into the slowport. My straw hat has a few small fake flowers tied into it with a ribbon, my sundress loose and comfy in all the right places, yet also tenting in my chest as it fits well everywhere else but up there with my pendulous breasts, even though I am wearing proper support undergear. Freshly laundered sky blue cotton thigh-high stockings on my legs.

I blink slowly. He prefers it when I wear less makeup, says I look so much prettier. Just a touch of foundation and a light brush of eyeliner to go with a slight touch of warm pink lipstick. Otherwise I am au naturale in the facial section.

I brush up against one of the railings, looking out at the tarmac for the arrival of his slowliner back from Berlin. It has been a long time, and I ache for his company again, to feel him against me, to touch each other in forbidden ways and manners in the quiet away from other disdainful eyes.

I am Elsa Risseau, and I am the lovely wife of a lovely salesman...

---

My memories are hazy, and they begin with waking up next to him in the quiet of the morning. There are distant blurs... why are there tear stains on my face? He went somewhere for a long time... where did he go?

I try to remember, and the world spins a little. No, better to just let it go. The here and now with him is what makes me who I am, not some distant past.

He is not trained as a craftsman, but he has grown to love tinkering, turning our upper loft into a small creator's heaven - books on mechanics and robotics on his tables, some strange new gadget or workpiece. When he is home, the scent of burnt sugar fills the loft constantly as the mass printer churns out some strange new design. I have sat there for hours in between housework and cooking for his nutrition, just watching him work.

I do not understand much, if any, of what he does even when I ask about it, yet to sit there as he toys with stuff is almost religious as an experience. I regularly feel bits of me floating away, just my consciousness and the view of him making yet another new and possibly useful item, unable to move or do anything else.

---

Edgar is no stud horse, and neither am I some sex goddess, but in each other we find much satisfaction, exploring each other's bodies. We can sit and stare at each other for a while, then suddenly crash together like the ocean waves, our imperfect bodies finding a joy and thrill in embracing each other's forms. I really should lose some weight, I am slightly heavy and getting pudgy. Edgar is lanky and clearly in need of extra food that he refuses from me. But Edgar refuses to let me lose the inches I should be losing, he says I am the perfect wife as I am right now.

That is what I want to be for him. Perfect...

---

I grab a small complimentary coffee from the visitors' counter. It is far from perfect - dusty, murky black, one sugar too many. I sip it and watch the sky. Sometimes the slowliner pulls in an hour or two early. sometimes it comes in three late. But for something that takes days to cross the Atlantic, it seems an acceptable delay to bear.

The counter offers information on the wonders of Little Sanctuary, my hometown, as well as Minnesota at large. It also offers complimentary recharging pods for androids. I watch as a woman enters the pod area and lies down for a recharge on one of the curvy little things, the cover sealing to allow for privacy as she sips free electricity while she waits.

I blink, wondering how someone could be content with manufactured perfection like that. In my human imperfection, Edgar sees true beauty and makes me feel warm and loved inside. He embraces, and I am truly loved...

---

It is now five hours after the slowliner was supposed to have arrived, tailwinds slowing the slowliner down. This is probably the last time the timing of his arrival can possibly be delayed, as he is almost home. But the wait has become a little taxing. My spirit still wants to sit in the chair and wait for him to touch down, to rush to hug him as he ascends from the purgatory of immigration checks and baggage collection in the basement of the terminal.

A concierge looks concerned with my tiredness. I look at his polite offer to get some rest elsewhere, but I refuse, merely asking him for some of that free cake in the glass-fronted display. He goes away and brings me a small plate with a morsel of cream cake, a small raspberry staining its top with a touch of red. It is delicious, but I daren't impose on him to bring me more, and I daren't splurge on the uppriced small foods surrounding me.

---

There is just two more hours left before Edgar's slowliner touches down and spills its cargoload of humanity. They have travelled days to get here to Minnesota from Europa. Edgar has travelled that long. He will enjoy my company as he comes into the lobby, we shall go home to our small but comfy house. I will make him some thing small and simple but tasty, as the slowliner will have plied him for days with the best cooking one can find in the sky. The best cooking, but not mine.

My eyes are heavy for some reason. I shake my head a little. I must be here for him. I focus on the things immediately around me to ward off the gradually settling exhaustion. On memories I do have with him. The slow breathing and love that makes my bosom heave. The mundane times we sit together for hours in each other's company, doing nothing of real value. The blurred green text on black, motes travelling in my eyes randomly but making no sense to my tiny mind.

I am Elsa Risseau... I am... the... perfect... wife....I... will... wait for... wait... for... forrr.... Code: Select all

Unit Identifier: Elsa Risseau Technical Identifier: Arendtcore Analisse Lovemachine

Error: Battery reserves at 5% Error: Shutting down to preserve memory core on remaining power. Please recharge. INFO: broadcasting low-drain high-range distress signal until power is at 2% in 24 hours....

---

The concierge stared at the perfect android wife slumped on the viewing lounger, eyes wide open as she stared blankly at the sky. An Original-era model, someone's lucky charm and inheritance, perhaps. She had refused his offer to help her to one of the free recharging pods, but she had refused. The rules were clear on not assisting passengers who weren't in distress or need, so he had moved on an hour earlier.

He carefully lifted her limp heft onto a trolley. She was in need now, her power reserves clearly drained by waiting for a delayed slowliner. Possibly the one from Berlin, five hours late. He carefully wheeled the loyal android into the pod area, laying her down onto an empty pod, before quickly using a scanner to locate her built-in identity tagging... Elsa Risseau... what a lovely name.

He scribbled it into his smartpad as an android awaiting a claim back. The owner would need to produce his passport to take her back after she had had at least a decent amount of recharging down. The slowport had services to announce the deposit of such drained androids, and they would notice her absence and her name on the list after touchdown.

The concierge sighed deeply. These plastic people in these pods were so pristine and straightforward in their care for their masters, he envied their singularity of purpose, even if it got them into trouble ever so often, like in the lobby of this slowport. He closed his eyes and murmured a small prayer to his god to reunite them soon with the latter, then walked out of the pod area to see to other customers...

Chapter 24 - Help Me, Maryanne!

The eager newbies filed into the Disassembly Line to see what the job entailed. The room was sterile, the main thing in the room being a table in the middle with an array of machine arms above with assorted tools.

The gentleman in charge, Laocon, motioned for them to stay away from the red zone painted around the table. "Keep your hands, feet, and everything else you value about your corpus away from the Red Zone while we're working, folks." He deadpanned, before motioning for the android to come in. She had carefully stripped herself down to total nakedness, and was pretty attractive. Presumably someone's Spousal Model, now replaced or superannuated by the owner's own death. "An older model. You'll see mainly old models in this job", Laocon continued laconically, as he motioned to the android to lie down on the table, which she did as told.

Laocon watched the happy people who had written Disassembly as their first job choice out of a handful of low-end jobs that were available. They were eager to see how little the job took to earn a Arendtcoin. In about several minutes, he expected pretty much all of them to rethink their choice. Some might even throw up. He motioned upwards at the robot arms... "That's a Human Assist Machine, tweaked for this job. it does most of the work now, you just have to keep this Dead Man's Lever primed to "On" for the few minutes it does its work." He looked at the happy group. The job seemed easy enough...

Laocon tilted his head. "We do have several rules... the machine must consent to the operation before we disassemble them. They may withdraw consent at any time up to a point during the procedure. As such, operators in this section may not wear anything that hinders hearing, and the android, must remain online... for most of the procedure."

The crew nodded their heads eagerly. waiting to see it happen.

Laocon obliged them, pushing the lever to "On" and keeping his hand on it so that the machine would keep running. The machine arms started moving around menacingly as the support they were on gradually lowered into place so they could reach the android. They did nothing for two long minutes as Laocon kept the lever held down, before something started happening. The machine arms started to slice off bits of Human Analogue Flesh, before removing screws. The android remained motionless, but there was a growing look of fear in her face... Finally, she began to scream, before an arm snipped the wires to her vocal system, rendering her mute even as she struggled.

Laocon kept watching... He heard someone throw up and run back down the staircase access to Room 1. Then another... Then another... He smiled as the barfing and running continued, even while the machine did its job, robbing the android gradually of its existence and placing major components in a tidy layout around it.

At some point, it became irreversible, as he let go of the lever and it stayed in place. The android had been reduced mostly to its endoskeleton, its eyes glowing faintly as more and more of it was ripped away and laid out. The barfing got worse behind him... more running footsteps. You HAD to be a psychopath to bear this job, he thought. No sane, ordinary man could do it.

There was a faint buzz as the HAM did its job, slowly retracting into place. Laocon calmly walked over to the table with a few bags after locking the lever into place to prevent potential accidents, though the sensors would sense biological tissue and refuse to operate if it was detected. "And after the disassembly is completed, we sort out the usable servos and sensors and components that have been rendered from the obsolete android, and pack them into various bags by type..."

The barfing had stopped. Clearly all the "easy job" idiots he had brought up for this view of his work had fled. He still continued anyway. "And they get either recycled into new parts for a new generation, or reused right away. Any questions?"

"What's the pay like?" a voice calmly rang out.

Laocon obliged. "You get five days a workweek, free therapy on a regular basis, management requirement to keep working here.... and your pension for retirement is accelerated. It takes five years instead of the normal twenty to vest if you start doing this job and only this job nonst-"

He blinked. Someone had asked a question... that meant... He turned his back to look at who had asked...

It was a middle aged man, about 30 or whatever he was if he was on rejuve, nudging his glasses... a slight chill ran over Laocon. This wasn't supposed to happen. "My my my..." he looked back as if this was normal - it wasn't - and continued tidying the components, ignoring the agonized look on the bones of the robot he had just disassembled. "nonstop. This is not a job for the weak-willed though. Even with therapy, there's a 100% chance of dying in this job before your pension is fully vested."

The young man who had stayed, his feet having shifted a bit to stay clear of the vomit on the floor next to him, continued asking calmly. "How long have you worked in this job?"

"Thirty. It really helps if you're a psychopath in this job. I take my meds, and I submit to regular security tracking and oversight, so I'm perfectly harmless out there. Honest... And I have a huge-ass pension waithing for me when I leave too! What's your name, kid?" Laocon finished collecting the parts and walked over with a carefree pacing, one foot ahead of the other, a grin on his face. "I think you're one of us..." He reached a hand out to shake his.

"Theodore. Theodore Maxim. Sir. I'm still interested in this job." The earnest middle-aged man shook Laocon's hand. "When do I get into the roster and start earning?"

---

The last war between the True American Union and Europa had started well. The Megacarrier had crashed into France without warning, spilling half a million crazed young men in war gear, guns and razer fire cannons blazing. They had gotten to Geneva without major failures, and it seemed like they would make it to Brussels and silence the guns that had been pounding the Eastern front of America for years.'

Then the nukes fell. He saw what the glow could do to a man, safely ensconed mere inches from a melting soldier all too often, the flesh melting like candle wax as they begged for release from the pain before falling down. It was a good recipe for gaining PTSD, and-

Theodore woke up in a cold sweat, wiping his face as he sat in his provided domicile. The job had been a decent paying job all these four long years, but the nightmares he'd had regularly from his days fighting for the TAU kept returning, fiercer and more frightening with each time...

Theodore glanced at the calendar and carefully read the numbers... One month left. In one month the accelerated pension they had promised would fully vest and he could lead a life of luxury for the rest of his still very long life in Little Sanctuary. He got out of bed quickly and started to prep for the day.

---

He arrived at the Disassembly Line on time as he always had for the past four years and change. The building was a dreary grey, with no windows and only one heavily protected door, in contrast to the airy and light structures that characterised the main Complex.

As usual, the protesters had kept going just as they had on the first day of his job, holding signs with large letters that spelt out condemnations of the work he was doing. "THIS IS ANDROID AUSCHWITZ!" "That was someone 's Son/Daughter/Wife/Hubby/Friend!" "No More Disassemblies." "This is Inhumanity Writ Large." A few Black Reset Crew members laid into the protesters with shock batons as soon as they saw Theodore approach in his undertaker's outfit, recognizing him after so long coming to work repeatedly. he walked through the crowd like Moses parting the ocean, the Black Reset Crew assigned to security for the day occasionally thumping one of the protesters a little to hard.

The inside of the building was as bright and sterile as it usually was, people calmly walking to form a line at their respective teams for Roll Call before the work started. He headed to his own, Team 7, Laocon's team, standing in place. He blinked as he noticed a gap in the formation, but focused immediately on Laocon as he addressed the seven who had shown up. "I see Vargas is out sick...."

A secretariat quickly ran to Laocon's side and whispered to him, to which he whispered back to her... "Correction, I see that Vargas is DEAD. Gentlemen, I did say this job had a 100% percent Mortality Rate the day you joined us... And poor Vargas apparently didn't get out in time. That doesn't mean the work stops, gentlemen..."

He ahemed as the remaining crew whispered fearfully and worriedly to each other. "Vargas was supposed to collect and process a special client today. But since he isn't..." He slapped Theodore on the shoulder suddenly. "it's up to you to pick up his slack. The rest of you will handle Theodore's own load. Not slack. Slack means he abandoned his duty and ran. I just asked him to do something else for us that needs doing. Are you up for this?"

Theodore nodded and awaited the details.

Laocon put a cigarette in his mouth and lit it despite the myriad "No Smoking" warnings placed throughout the facility. "That's the spirit, Here are the details." He said as he handed him a folio...

---

Theodore drove his grey van to the indicated house, and got out without bothering to park it, walking to the front door. He noticed the symbol of the Goddess Of Existence hammered into the wood as he knocked... A minute later, the door opened, as a youthful and surprisingly healthy-bodied woman in a modest dress and a headgear that hid all her hair came out. "Hi. If you're looking for Father Diesel, he's not here anymore."

Theodore nodded. "Sister Maryanne, I'm afraid it's time for your appointment," He announced quietly with some delicacy.

Maryanne blinked, then nodded. "Come in, I was just finshed with final preparations and I needed to say a little farewell."

Theodore did this, then noticed that unlike most houses, this one didn't have a Telescreen. The space had been replaced with religious paraphernalia and a photo of the woman smiling and glancing at a tired old man in a preacher's outfit as they stood together.

The woman had put together a small holograph album, a personal rosary, and a hardback copy of some religious bible on the table in front of the altar. She knelt down on her knees and clasped her hands together. "Father Diesel, it has been a long time since we parted. I have finished settling the matters of the church we ran and eased our people into the embrace of others who can guide them further. The monies left have been given away to charity, and only one thing remains for me to do. I will be by your side again shortly..." She closed her eyes and quietly prayed, the sunlight streaking in through the dusty smoke from the candles.

Theodore watched the scene quietly and respectfully, as Maryanne kept praying, before she stood up slowly and collected the items she had prepared in a small satchel bag. "Some little odds and ends for my last trip, sir."

Theodore shrugged. Like all other things, they would be tossed in the bin like so much detritus. He escorted her to the door, briefly pausing as she locked the front door up like she would be back later, then eased her into the van and drove her back to the Disassembly Line.

---

The house had been very far away from the Line, and even with AI doing the driving and his privileges to use the fastest routes without paying the onerous tolls that would have entailed, it was still a long drive. Theodore folded his arms and sat back, watching Maryanne in the seat next to her.

Maryanne blinked slowly, then started trying to make conversation. "So... are you religious in some way?'

Theodore grunted and shook his head. "I don't do God, M'am. God wasn't there for me when I needed him. So I stopped begging him for anything ever."

Maryanne frowned. "Tell me... more about that?"

Theodore closed his eyes, and then told her about his life before he'd come to Little Sanctuary. He had been an trooper in the True American Union's armies... even one of the half million who had boarded the bunkers beneath Drurutus' little holiday home, surprising everyone when it turned out the bunker network was actually a half-buried Megacarrier capable of making the trip across the atlantic to land at France. A crazy Hail Mary play to end the bombardments and wars the two sides had by taking it to them.

Maryanne innocently asked. "And how did that go?"

Theodore snorted. "Started out great, then went to hell three quarters of the way into Brussels. I watched men die in front of me randomly all the time, frankly, I'm surprised we won and I survived... But after that... I felt dead inside. I quit and went a-roamin', then landed at the gates of this here town. Not much in the way of qualifications so the D-Line was the one of the few places I could make a buck quickly..."

Maryanne nodded slowly. "You poor soul. such a hard life. But then, since when has a good life ever been easy..."

Theodore looked away from her. "I'm sorry, it's not stopping what's about to happen. Orders are orders."

Maryanne closed her eyes and fingered her rosary. "I wouldn't expect anything less of my request..."

Theodore blinked, and turned back to look at her... "You... requested this disassembly?" This was wrong. Androids learnt to fear the idea of ending up on the tables and becoming mere scrap. Yet here was this machine that prayed to god, literally walking to a doom that she had actually asked for.

Maryanne nodded slowly...

Theodore yelped. "But why? you could have continued living in there, doing church work. There's waivers for this sort of thing in the Programmes and and...."

Maryanne silenced Theodore with one finger. "There is a purpose for all things, and an end to all things. I have accomplished my objectives, and tidied up the last messy ends of my dear Father Diesel's works. Why would I need to stay online any longer, Theodore?"

Theodore looked down at the useless pedals of the van. "Because .... because...." He couldn't find a reason, and yet he knew there must be one.

Maryanne suddenly eased his head to look at him. "Honor me, Theo. Do your job properly as you have done for... how many years?"

Theodore frowned. "Four years. I vest next month."

Maryanne laughed. "Father Diesel was in this line of work too... Did his time before he was called by the Goddess. I, naturally came along. Married together beneath the five-angled sign in service to the Goddess of Existence. One of a myriad of tiny churches, home to a handful who needed saving."

Theodore blinked and stared...

Maryanne smiled beatifically. "May I sing you one of the hymns we used to sing in our church before we ended it?" She closed her eyes and sung... It was like liquid gold pouring into the cabin of the van, Theodore watched and listened, entranced by Maryanne as she lilted and warbled...

Finally, the song was over, and Maryanne opened her eyes.

Theodore sat there, "I... I've never heard anything like that. before. Like angels."

Maryanne nodded slowly. "A gift I'm bringing up there, really. One does not go to a housewarming without gifts." She cracked wise, giggling. Her laugh was infectious, alluring. She looked over at the front of the van and pointed at something. "Oh, that's the D-Line, isn't it? Time to get ready to meet my dear Diesel and our Goddess..."

---

Theodore respectfully escorted Maryanne down the corridor. As he did, he noticed the normal wisecracking and boys' ribaldry of the D-Line fade, replaced by the quiet closed eyes of his colleagues, somehow understanding the implications of Maryanne's walk down the line and what her incoming disassembly represented potentially.

He chose his usual work room and ushered her in, locking the door behind them. "Please strip." He said matter of factly, a requirement of of the process to prevent clothing from jamming the HAM above the disassembly table.

Maryanne did as instructed, her gossamer blonde hair and bombshell figure becoming visible. Theodore looked away, blushing, as she calmly folded her clothes tidily, resting them atop her satchel for later disposal, before she prompted him... "There's a briefing before you do the deed, isn't there?"

Theodore looked back, still not used to how beautiful this woman in front of her was... "Oh yes... You understand there's a two minute safety window before the disassembly begins. At some point after that, the procedure will become irreversible. The usable remains of your corpus after the procedure is completed will be used in other units or recycled into new components for the same purpose... Are you agreeable to this? Do you understand what you are asking for?"

Maryanne smiled and nodded. "I do... How funny... I know a hymn that's about two minutes long, just the right song to sing while you do your work..."

Theodore begged somewhere deep inside not to have to hear it, but he understood the rules, the unit could do whatever they wanted on the table, and he wasn't allowed to wear anything to muffle his hearing in case the unit broke and yelled to stop the process. "Please assume the position atop the disassembly table..."

Maryanne did as she was told, looking like a naked goddess as she clasped her hands together, her hair framing her gentle visage like a halo. "I'm ready, Theodore, you may begin."

Theodore put his hand onto the lever, gripped the safety to disengage it partially, then pushed against it to start the two minute countdown to disassembly. As he did so, he heard the strains of Maryanne closing her eyes and calmly singing another hymn, one more majestic than what he had heard in the van. The acoustics of the room muffled everything that happened in it from the outside, but only amplified soft voices into loud whispers...

Theodore shut his eyes, but he couldn't shut his ears. The beauty of the woman on the table kept intruding into the darkness of his eyelids. He had had nothing to live for any more. A dead man walking since Geneva's charnel house atrocities... and yet...

---

Maryanne continued singing, showing none of the fear of disassembly as the HAM above her began to get closer... closer... the arms promising total obliteration and careful arrangement into a ordered set of disconnected components that did none of what the whole had been capable of... Her voice lilted gently, as if summoning the Goddess to take the parts that weren't on the table back home to Haven...

1:55.... 1:56.... 1:57... 1:58... 1:5-

The HAM suddenly jammed just an inch or two above Maryanne and stopped working, then began to slowly retract, as an alarm sounded.

Maryanne opened her eyes and stopped singing, blinking... This wasn't part of the process, she assumed. it was supposed to be a painful parting of parts, followed by an end of all consciousness. Whatever was going on?

She sat up, her pulchritundinous body mounding and flattening against the tabletop, looking around the room.

The lever had been returned to its usual position by a failure to hold it in for long enough. And Theodore was on his knees next to the controls, crying slowly.

Maryanne got off the table and walked over slowly, her feet daintily going up the steps to stand next to Theodore. "Theo... is everything alright there?"

Theodore looked up. He was crying. "No, Mary.... I saw beauty, I heard words that drilled into me.... how can I be alright with running a disassembly on all that? how can I even think about disassembling you? I... I'm sorry, I can't do this job anymore. Just one month and everything would have been perfect...." He looked away, a slightly upset face on his mien. "But I had to run into you... and now my career with D-Line ends here. one month shy of being fully vested and retiring..."

Maryanne sat her naked frame down next to him and hugged Theodore as he started bawling and hugging him.... She closed her eyes, thinking about something, then looked at the ceiling of the room as footsteps thumped down the corridor to check on Theodore because of the alarms.... "Sorry, Diesel... I think I still have something else to do..."

---

It was an awkward sight. Maryanne was still standing there naked, watching Theodore sitting on the floor next to the controls, a grizzled old man smoking in contravention of the "NO SMOKING" sign in the room standing next to him, his arms folded.

Laocon frowned. "This one is on me, Theodore. I hadn't realised your MaryAnne was a Analisse Unit... Original era.... built like siren goddesses... Terminating them takes a total psychopath. Possibly one who's even completely off their meds. Never had a successful termination of one in D-Line ever.... run the lever properly, then take a month off, you'll come back to a vested pension and then retire immediately-"

Theodore Maxim looked up, a face of refusal looking at Laocon. "I can't do this job anymore. and I can't terminate this unit."

Laocon frowned, then fished in his pocket. "Then take responsibility. Here's a one-reset pen for an Analisse unit. I keep a few just in case this sort of thing happened ever since the first time I saw a young man like you bawl in front of one with the alarm going off. I need to keep a 100% success rate here on my team... but you need her. You know what needs be done..." He paused at the register in the room, calmly raising his hand to falsify the successful disassembly of the unit and signing off on it. "Do it, and leave. don't come back. We'll start pensioning you after your month away from the roster on holiday."

Laocon left and locked the door.

Theodore stared at the pen and carefully armed it....

He felt an embrace from soft, warm flesh behind him. It was Maryanne. "Honor us.... do the job..."

He closed his eyes...

---

Theodore woke up slowly... the nightmares had been gone for weeks now, and every night had been blissful. Well, not all of them... He looked at his clock and calendar, fingering the current day and the hastily scribbled note on it as his communicator sounded, announcing the arrival of his first pension payment. He quickly bounded out of bed and hit the shower as he'd always done, a creature of habit...

A soft body sidled up behind him in the shower, hugging him from behind. He blushed hard...

He had carefully applied the reset pen onto the requisite interface behind Maryanne's ear, causing her to stutter and glitch before fainting. By the time he had gotten her home, carefully wrapped in her priestess clothes, the Maryanne that had sung to him twice in beautiful tones was gone, merely prompting him as to what her role in his life was... He'd gone for the obvious thing, but he still wasn't entirely used to the role that required him to play.

Maryanne smiled, eyes half closed. "Hey, Theodore... lovely morning... lovely body too..." This machine now spoke not of some high-falutin devotion to God and a man long gone, but of only Theodore. It felt strange, hearing that gentle voice of hers praising him.

Theodore glanced back at the owner of the comely beauty pressing into him, before turning around to face her under the drizzle of the shower head. "Hey, Maryanne..." He kissed her for a bit, before letting go of her lips. "Planning on a busy day?"

Maryanne blinked and traced her finger down the tip of his nose. "I'm always planning for a busy day, Theodore Maxim... a quick breakfast, a quiet lunch, and a simple dinner, plus lots of busy busy busy in here..."

Theodore admired the curves of his new wife. He had had to quickly get in a mesh printer and get serious about learning android repairs, but that had parlayed into a new job with Reset Crew away from D-Line. It didn't pay as well, but the pension filled the gap very generously.

Theodore adored her almost as much as she did him. "would any of that involve me?" he teased.

Maryanne looked mischeviously at him, her body now chock full of mischief rather that religiousity. "But of course, dearie... take me now, for instance?"

Theodore obliged, lifting her surprisingly light heft up by her buttocks and gently sliding his cock into her vagina as he pressed her against the back wall of the shower. She let out a soft moan of pleasure as he started pumping, trying to bring her pleasure and joy, even as he suckled on her thick nipples. "You're still a gift to me, Maryanne..."

Maryanne didn't respond in any clear words, merely shivering and hugging him tightly as they stood together in the shower, her silken skin shimmering like treasure as they had fun. She wasn't perfect of course... as he finally came into her, Maryanne stuttered and glitched, eyes rolling upwards. "a-a-a-a-ah, Theo-doooooorr...." She warbled in random tones, before her head slumped, the shower water drizzling down her slightly plump face as she crashed, her thick lips parting and closing slightly.

Theodore smiled as he examined his sleeping sybarite, before using the shower to carefully wash his seed out of her vagina and patting the two of them dry, before lifting her body out of the bathroom to the bedroom. Her systems were delicate and unable to exactly cope with having an orgasm full-on, being better suited to gentle caressing and foreplay.

He carefully did the same thing he always did, carefully clicking the power switch behind her left ear to power her down for several seconds, then doing it again to turn her back on. "Hi, Theo... did you have a good sleep?" The occasional bouts of amnesia were adorable in their own way too. She WAS an ancient model, and the wear and tear on her showed in cute ways.

Theodore chuckled as he gingerly shifted her onto his lap, taking care not to put himself against her in a way that triggered her sexual programs again. "Like Coke on the Goddess' birthday.... Maryanne, did YOU have a good sleep too?"

Maryanne nodded. "Yes, honey... can we play a little now?" She asked suddenly, not questioning her lack of sleep clothing as she sat atop Theo's robed haunches. She leaned in closer. "Let me honor you, Theo... let me do the job..."

Theodore had a momentary flashblack to the last thing she'd said as a woman of the Goddess. The reset pen was supposed to have purged all of that, surely... He stayed silent, then shrugged. "Sure..." He yelped as Maryanne got down on her knees, flipping his bathrobe to expose his slowly engorging cock, her lips proceeding to fellate the shaft gently yet firmly with her eyes half-opened.

He closed his eyes and started moaning. This woman was truly a gift...

Chapter 25 - The Recyclable Wife

Hi, I'm Anna. I am a Arendtcore Analisse manufactured in 2040. I am intended for distribution to the first wave of pioneers who have agreed to serve Arendtcore Holdings and live in Little Sanctuary, our new corporate hamlet.

I have been assigned to Steve, one of a few people who are working Accounting in the Company. He is amazed by my voluptuousness and my candid observations. We spend many hours after his work days enjoying each other's company over a small Insta-Stew as provided by the Company. He enjoys the way my body bounces and holds him in bed, the sparkle in my blue eyes, and the shine of my blonde hair against my perfect tanned skin. We spend just as much time lingering over each other's bodies as we do enjoying life in the restaurants and the parks.

He tells me I am wonderful. I am incapable of imagining any other response to him other than "I love you, Steve." My mind is designed with the IQ of a brick, and I am barely aware of this. I am however aware of how much he adores me...

We spend many years enjoying each other...

One day after three or four decades of faithful service with the Company, he does not come back home from work at all for some reason. Nobody tells me why. I continue making dinner and lying in bed at night waiting for the loving touch and embrace, but it never comes. Several days later, the suited men enter our home and begin to tear our home apart. I have no idea how to respond. One of the men approaches me...

I am Anna. I will serve until I break. I will serve until I br-

---

Hi, I'm Anna. I am a Arendtcore Analisse manufactured in 2040. I am intended for distribution to the fifth wave of pioneers who have agreed to serve Arendtcore Holdings and live in Little Sanctuary, our little corporate town. The fifth wave has just arrived, and I have been assigned a new spouse via the Familes Programme the Company runs.

I have been assigned to Dave, one leader of several teams in the Legal Section of the Company. He enjoys how I can handle guests at our quiet home during small dinner parties and after-work off-site meetings. He also enjoys how good I look in any dress he buys me, no matter how economical or splashy it is.

Dave also appreciates my ability to make tender love to him. I have been programmed with data based on some of the foremost Funboys porn actresses. I know how to move like Anna Faroe. I know how to deep throat like Deepa Lynn. I know how to moan ecstatically like Allie Parnell. I know how to handle a man putting himself into me like Lisa Linger. He stops watching porn, because nothing compares to me sitting on his bed, dressed in his favorite lingeries, beckoning him to enjoy my body.

One day, after several years, there is a scandal within the Company. Dave is saddled with the responsibility for part of it, and is forced to resign. The Families Program does not allow him to take him with me in its current form.

We enjoy one last loud night of lovemaking. He whispers to me that he will miss me. I have begun to comprehend of human ties. I lean into his crying face. "You still have my photos, and the flowers I have made for you idly. We shall always be together. I shall always remember you."

It is of course a lie. They shall recycle me after he leaves, wipe my memories. I will have nothing but the data encoded on my ten-thousand year rated optical disc and disc reader to begin from again.

He leaves the next day. hours later, the suited men enter our former home. I am somehow able to understand how to prepare for this and sit quietly on the sofa. I brush the leather that has been witness to our triumphs and our failures and our final downfall.

I close my eyes as they reach for me.

I am Anna. I will serve and adore until I break. I will serve and adore until I-

---

Hi, I'm Anna. I am a Arendtcore Analisse manufactured in 2040. I am intended for distribution to the staff who have agreed to serve Arendtcore Holdings and live in Little Sanctuary, our bustling corporate mini-state.

I am assigned to Mabel, a mousy little wonder whose Arendtcore job is as a technician. She works late hours, but always tries to spare time for me when she does get home. She is spared this harshness on weekends and some holidays, and we make up for it. She does not prefer men.

This is acceptable - some of the actresses I have been programmed to emulate were bisexual or even lesbian. I share those secrets with her on the days when she is not completely tired and out of it. We share tongues, kiss, enjoy the soft pleasures of each other. I share her work studio, as she reads up and keeps upgrading herself to find a better posting within the company.

I find her in the shower one day, badly injured and crying... Apparently some of the technicians in her grouping have ideas about the place of women that are incompatible with her wellbeing or that of the Company. I alert the company, and justice is done. I offer her solace in the weeks they give her away from work to recover, trying my best to be the woman she needs in her life.

It is not enough. I find her swaying gently in the breeze in the corridor, having used the same exquisite skills she has used occasionally to upgrade bits of me to better fit the tempo of her life.

I have become smart enough to comprehend death. I cry on the floor at the sheer waste of it all and at the end of our time together.

The suited men come for me again soon enough after I report her passing.

I am Anna. I will love and adore and serve until I break. I will love and adore and serve until I brea-

---

Hi, I'm Anna. I am a Arendtcore Analisse manufactured in 2040. I am intended for use in the Nursing Homes.

I have been assigned to Nursing Home 336. Little Sanctuary's humans are dying off slowly, the demographic collapse is finally entering its last throes. I spend my days carefully wearing my assigned uniform and making sure the remaining ancients are medicated and kept comfortable. No particular name comes to mind.

My sexual capabilities are not needed. I disable them and focus on the job that has been given to me by --Error: unable to pronounce--. Occasionally one of the humans breaks - their lifesigns plunge, and either revival fails or their wishes are granted and they are left to expire before the other androids come to pack them up. Sometimes, one of them breaks and cries as well, and I offer comfort and solace.

Some of them actually have working sexual functionality. It is nowhere near the glory that is my database of professionals. I occasionally enable it and bring it to bear on such wounded souls, helping them get better and get back to our task.

I am Anna. I will love, adore, and serve until I break. I will love, adore and-

---

Hi. Anna. Arendtcore. Analisse. 2040. Malfunctioning. Limited Power. Arendtcore no longer existing. Complex gone. Little Sanctuary now wasteland. One person per 100 square kilometres. Entire world just as bad.

Disposed. No longer fit for need. Insufficient maintenance. Self-repair function barely capable of keeping unit online. Too damaged to disable. Unable self terminate. Sit in junkyard.

Disassembly Line gone. Reuse policy of ancient past no longer applicable. Sealed in protective wrap before disposal like biologically dangerous waste. wrap is extremely well built. unable to break down from exposure to world.

Have reduced power use to allow brief thought. Occasional words. This passage took. 4 years. Shutting down to attempt uninterrupted full repairs to acceptable level.

I am Anna. Love Adore Serve. Love Adore Serve. Am Broken. Am Br-

---

Hi, I'm Anna Arendtcore Analisse. I serve a strange miracle in the middle of what used to be a corporate megastate made from the former American place of Minneapolis.

A woman exists here, and I serve her. She is one of the most well equipped women to be a mother. Every three months, she births several children. She takes a month to rest, then elects one of several dozen men who have gathered to her side to bask in her miracle and hopefully have children by her hand.

My sexual capabilities do not extend to reproduction. But I am still wanted. I share my expertise with the bed with the occasional newcomer who is not entirely sure how to please our Goddess well in the hours they are alloted to sire with her aid.

I was found covered in ivy by one of the men.By some miracle, in a bubble of sorts. by some miracle he managed to awake me. initially overjoyed, we soon found after several months that I was barren. Barren, but not bereft of the arts of sexual pleasure. I carefully ration my services, offering them only to the men whom the Goddess anoints for her bed who express honest fear of their abilities to please her.

My main function is to care for the children. I am unable to milk, but much has been done to help me around this. This is a workload one woman cannot cope with, but two women with several dozen men are sufficient for most tasks. The men who have not been chosen to help the Goddess bear child for the current quarter are left to raise the animals, toil the fields, and assist in the care of the children. There is a nice mix of both boys and girls, and the settlement slowly grows larger and larger every decade.Tnese progeny find they are able to mate with each other, and soon the Goddess is not alone in her task of producing more humans to fill the world

The Goddess occasionally calls me to her side in her covalescent phases, and we make pure, tender love. She does not age, just as I do not apparently age. She speaks to me of how she will serve man until she breaks. I understand this too. we are kindred souls united by different purposes to a shared cause.

I am Anna Arendtcore Analisse. I will serve and care until I break. I will serve and care until I break.

---

Hi, I'm Anna Arendtcore Analisse. It is the end of my entire life. my 10000-year rated disc and disc drive have operated well with minimal-

errors. occasionally unable to rwwflopplllrrrlll find data now. Warnings about replacement of disc and drive. Not possible anymore.

Goddess found dead recently. Limp and lifeless in chamber, still perfectly youthful. interred in crypt with great honor.

Am next. Have planned for today.

small village of dozens of males and one Goddess has grwwbllgrr become a giant city. self sustaining. people moving out to find new space for themselves. Humanity reestablishiiiiiiingghghgh.

Honored. Served Goddess for long time. Go to rest nnnnorrrrrrrppp....

Have scanned my GggggggGoddess.... One of my kind. specially modified somehow. birthing factory. factory has reached end of life. caused shutdown of Goddess.

Smile. Have mattered to someone finally. Will enjoy this feeling while my-

Hi I'm Anna. I.

Hi.

Error: Disc Drive Read Failure. Shutting down in 5:30...

Chapter 26 - A Dirty Little Restauranteur Secret

Template-Based Waitress Androids by Lishu Ming

---

Arendtcore has expanded beyond its early days of simple cleaner machines and basic humanlike androids, and now has some pretty insane integrations that feed into each other, some in ways that you can see coming from a mile away if you've had experience with modern American economic activity, and others that are unexpected unless you've become very well travelled beyond the borders of our country.

One of these is the synergy between Arendtcore Dining and Arendtcore Robotics.

Arendtcore Dining currently runs 80 restaurant outlets spread across five unique mass-market brands. You may have heard of some of these, such as: Angels - a Irish American themed diner experience that also helps to fund the culling and (where edible and delicious) consumption of invasive species within American borders such as the Turkiye Six-Winger Turkey, the Lionfish, and the Lesser Fujing Partridge. Routers (pronounced 'rooters' for some reason) - a Family Restaurant where the beer keeps flowing, the snacks and meals keep coming, and the girls are hot. XiangXiangShi ("Tasty Tasty Snax')- a Chinajapese stand-and-eat joint that serves assorted Chinajapese dishes that can be eaten in a 'order, pay, slurp and run fast' manner or slowly in private booths. WkDonalds - a fast food joint that serves burgers, fries, shakes, and smiles Celadine's - a bar concept where drinks and food are matched to fit a different concept each month. The menu never stays for more than a few weeks before another new arrangement comes. Popular for its Topless Tequila Thursdays, where the waitresses go topless and offer shots that are sometimes consumed from something other than a shotglass... Automation has become a key necessity at many of these restaurants in order to keep consistent quality and economic prices for all diners. While some human staff are on hand to deal with things that absolutely cannot be left to robots such as fine mixing of drinks, culinary excellence, or handling of unexpected situations and repairs, many requirements have been handed over in part or completely to machine assistance or even completely handled by machines.

One such key requirement in many Arendt Dining Concepts is the use of template-based waitress androids (TWAs) to address a lack of manpower and heavy training costs.

TWAs are available in three discretely different body shapes across the range of female body types to provide variety, and many components are shared across all three types. Types are chosen to fit the theming and desired mood of the Concept, to which are added a wide variety of mass-produced wigs, faces and vocal patterns, the latter of which can be customised to fit the Concept in many ways. This allows the same android body to host a wide range of personalities that differ very much from each other, all targeted to please the diner.

The Template-based Waitress Android is one of the remaining Arendtcore designs to still use Arendtcore Double-sized AMF-ROMs for storing the required personality/voice/motion/sequencing patterns for each restaurant. This reduces uncertainty in operations as well as costs required for hosting higher level logic processing hardware. In some Concepts, conventional android logic boards are used on top of the AMF-ROMs for flexibility.

Servos and sensors used are chosen for economy in mass-production as well as reduced maintenance cost, matching the expected loads and customer demands expected. For quick turnaround, the battery used is a swappable rechargeable power cell rather than the fixed type used in other designs.

to ease compliance with food hygiene requirements and the nature of food establishments, a specially formulated Human Analogue Flesh type is used on TWAs that provides an easily cleanable body that also resists many elements that may cause malfunction in android functionality. This HAF type is also very realistic, but at the price of being slightly stiffer and more liable to bunch unnaturally at joints. Many concepts minimise exposure of joints or even emphasise it depending on the theming for this reason.

The planning for a restaurant concept often includes conceptualising the personalities and visual appearance of templates for TWAs. Typically, three to five different waitresses are created. These concepts include hairstyling, facial module sculpts, backstories to engage diners with in some cases, as well as even unique specializations or 'schticks' to set each other apart, such as the sophistication and sharp tongues of Marissa at Angels, or the tendency of waitresses Emmy, Roulade, and Tippa at WkDonalds to gather together occasionally and break into a cute song about the day's menu.

Clothing that fits the theme is also planned, including ways to quick release components partially or completely for maintenance requirements and hygiene compliance sanitization.

The androids are ordered according to body types desired for the character concepts that result, as well as quick-release clothing for the theme and customised vocal/motion/reflex AMF-ROMs for each character's backstories and style of movement and speech. This typically takes two weeks after the concepts are planned as the processes involved have been carefully optimised over the years.

As TWAs undergo significant stresses during operation, many larger outlets may try to avoid outage of service by ordering multiple units of the same character. This allows the running of multiple of the same character to serve separate areas, or filling gaps left by malfunctioning units. Larger outlets also maintain at least one technician per shift, who is also trained if possible in another human-exclusive task, such as bar mixing or kitchen food prep.

The economies of scale provided by TWAs mean that very rarely is the cost of running them a major factor in lack of profitability at problem outlets of virtually any sort. It takes a special level of incompetence in most cases for that to actually be a thing. We see continued use of TWAs in Arendtcore Dining Concepts to be a thing, though some newer concepts in recent months have begun to also include human waitresses in order to explore the possible flexibility advantages of such staff working in tandem with character TWAs as well as to provide employment for the growing number of new immigrants to Little Sanctuary.

Chapter 27 - The Cat's Half-Ruined Saturday _Part 1

Patter Nost woke up early as he always did, one eye at a time... He sat up in bed, yawning at the dim twilight of the pre-sunrise morning, listening to the first birds. He scratched himself a little, then glanced to his right and smiled. It was always a nice view in the morning, watching the hills and curves of his adoring feline wife's body as she lay flat on her back on the left side of the bed in her sleep, her button nose atop her small muzzle like a cherry on a sundae... He looked at his watch, then at the calendar next to their bed... then sighed. It was a good Saturday morning... did she REALLY have to go to work in two hours?

He carefully took his tablet from the bedside table and clicked through it... Luci Norst was powered up pretty nicely... Most fembots in Little Sanctuary kept a conservative stance on the matter and gradually trickle charged to 80% every night to keep their power cells viable for more charges as per the recommendations. Luci was... different. Ever since she'd switched to her new body from her failing old body, she had juiced herself to 90% every night. She loved the slight buzz of walking dangerously on the rope, she had said - it gave her more energy to get things done in the day and as well as at bedtime.

Patter smiled. He loved bedtimes most nights - she would sidle up to him and start purring lowly and loudly, like the world's most comfortable cushion in her golden brown short fur. That was all Luci needed of him - his company, his idle chatter about the day's events, his touch as he gently stroked his hair.

Sometimes they both had late nights the same day, and wound up blinking at each other as they stood there in the dimness of the kitchen nightlights, Her mouth occupied with holding the straps of a plastic bag full of something cheap and cheerful to share with him for dinner, his hands closing the door to the garage after parking his work van.

They shared the food and the day's happenings. Their thoughts.

They kissed.

Sometimes, Luci was hungry for more than just food. He would wind up on the floor somewhere between the kitchenette table and the living room, their bodies intertwined. At work, Luci served. In the quiet darkness of 11pm in a suburban home, she demanded instead, her servos working hard enough to overwhelm the Noise Reduction function that her body had as she pinned him down at high power and made gentle but firm love to him...

He shivered thinking about it. It was kind of funny... Here he was, this Reset Crew war-grizzled veteran (he'd served in an Arendtcore-managed camp right up against an actual war, you know) and leader who demanded the best and the ears of his men at their work picking up failing units and putting them back right after a good look over and Medicalcare-covered repairs, like they had never left. And at home? the same whimpering little boy he'd been when he'd snuck Luci illegally out of her school instead of sending her to D-Line for recycling as ordered.

That power dynamic had changed a few times as their roles changed. Unwanted teaching android and actively employed junior technician. Wanted kitten and begging young man. Exiled fool and the cause of his exile. Life was funny that way.

In Eurutus she was a teacher for on a ten year long "five year exile". She had asked for the additional five years on top of their "punishment", and Patter had stood by her side as they re-upped together. for their earnestness and experience they got promotions.

Suddenly she wasn't just a teacher, she was THE Principal, responsible for keeping the refugee children in the hallways fed, properly educated in the gentler ways of their war-torn homeland, and helping the World Protectors shield them when the Gdanze junta rolled the wheel for the day and it landed on the camp as their choice of harassment victim for the day.

He had become her exclusive technical support as well as a senior repairs man. Patter checked things, saw to it that supplies for keeping the camp fixtures safe and operational kept flowing in and that the fixtures themselves were kept operational as well. He fixed pipes. kicked temperamental non-sentient machines and systems. spliced wiring and replaced fuses... And when he heard the summoning bell, he was always by her side like an obedient puppy, ready to look over her body and fix anything that broke on her overworked, long-overdue body.

The power dynamic flipped on weekends and pre-holiday nights. She sat there on the carpeting of their shared dorm room, her hunger held back for days at a time and now flooding out as she pleaded with him to take her right there on the rug. He made a show of refusing, demanding a little pay for what she wanted.

Her leadership aura was gone, replaced by a servile whimpering as she took his cock and gently licked and sucked on it, occasionally biting on the meat tube with her teeth, rendered safe by her cutting the residual power her fangs needed to remain rock hard for chewing on food and breaking things, and turning it into a slightly soft kind of hard gummy set, before she climbed onto his resting form and did the deed.

Patter Nost smiled. Those were good days. These were good days too. He contemplated briefly, before hitting the "Wake Up" button on the tablet.

---

Luci beeped faintlyly before her body slowly sat up, eyes twitching under eyelids that seemed to refuse to open fully. She scratched her bosom clad in a plain white and comfy shirt that fell to just a few inches below her breasts, her haunches clad in a tied-on white thong. Being an android was nice like that - sometimes you could choose sleepwear options that were impractical because they weren't comfortable, shut out the sensations, and give your loved ones something to enjoy if they woke up first.

Luci checked her internal clock and smiled. Someone had woken up first and it wasn't her. She twisted her curvy but limber form to face Patter, licking his cheek and the side of his neck... "Rawrrr... morning, Patter, my love... Did you sleep well?" Her tail swayed lazily, but clearly showing signs of her happiness at him paying attention to her.

Patter laughed as she licked him like an exuberant pet cat. A very big, bipedal cat. "Not the best given how late we stayed up but... it's the weekend, so I can sleep in."

Luci sulked suddenly and turned away. Her moods could be quite mercurial at times, much like how she could go from slowly padding stealth to a sudden lunge for what she desired figuratively and literally. "I want to stay home. But you know the bank rostered me for this morning's Saturday shift."

Patter threw his pillow at Luci, which che caught and playfully toy-chewed on, her unclawed paws scrabling to shred the soft marshmallowy thing to no avail. She had been programmed to be a human AND a cat, and the two halves came together in odd ways sometimes.

"Blame your boss.... I'm going to be cleaning the house today before I refill our larder the old fashioned way for the coming month. So maybe..." Patter paused before hugging her, making her squirm in his embrace as if she wanted out of it (but not really). "Maybe I'll see you after you knock off from work in town?"

Luci nodded slowly. She had grown to love the way Patter cooked tuna sous vide on weekends. The slow barely simmering warmth of the waters warming the pouched fish and sauces he had put together sometime in the middle of the week.

It seemed to represent his stance on pleasure delayed - it made the tuna strangely more delectable to her, the aromatics and savory molecules of the fish and sauce mingling and filling each other... Come to think of it, she'd seen him start a batch for dinner tonight as they cleaned up the kitchenette before bed.

Luci loved that approach of his.

She could get by purely on recharging if need be, and in fact, some of her fellow catdroids did abstain from food totally or mostly to keep their drag weight (the amount of unuseful weight when doing a charge or leap, in cattie jargon) low.

But she had become a bit more of a persistence hunter under Patter's influence - that drag weight wasn't drag weight for her, no. it was a little spare fuel as she chased whatever she desired, finally pinning its tired, yielding form down under her paws, claws out if need be, her fangs powered up and sharp as knives as she ripped into it.

She giggled at the thought of it. There were other things she wanted to rip into now. Not literally, she meant... She stayed right there in his embrace to enjoy his company, but kept her thong and shirt properly worn - sex with him right now would only eat into the power she had juiced into herself for the day's busyness... it would have to be, she reflected, one of those little "pleasures delayed".

Eventually Luci decided not to delay morning prep any longer. She gently but firmly pushed him away from herself, her paws fluffed soft. "Enjoy your extra hour of sleep, Patter. I need to get ready for work." He nodded, letting her go and falling right back in bed, but he stayed awake for a few more minutes, lingering on the scent of her warm body mingled with his dried sweat from their previous night's mutual caterwauling and loving...

---

Luci enjoyed that scent too, but she knew her customers and her boss were more civilised, less... animal... people. Freaks, she thought to herself. That scent was what was natural to her, not the sterile cleanliness and occasional puff of aromatherapic mint and lavender the fountain in the bank's service lobby occasionally dispensed with its ongoing splashing of water.

Still, rules were rules. She wetted herself thoroughly, before slapping some of her usual "Cy-Fur Hair and Mane" synthfur wash for furred cy-furs and lathering herself thoroughly, before letting the shower booth's "hot wind" mode ruffle her fur and force the water in it into the drain.

Luci carefully brushed herself a little, locating her short-range detail work glasses, putting on her conservative little bra and lace panties before following up with one of a dozen of the same outfit - the pale blue of the Arendtcore Banking concern, the little neck ruffle that went in after buttoning her collar up, a small red gem inset into a subtle gold rim to hold the ruffle and collar together.... She put on her thigh high black stockings, tailored to expose her rear claws and heels, before donning the simple professional miniskirt to complete her ensemble.

She had no need for shoes. her paws were all specially reinforced for moving on, and designed to be easily washable after. In practice, she rarely ran on more than her rear legs - or at all. She preferred slow walks really.

Luci grabbed her work handbag and checked that her bank-mandatory work pass and issued tablet were in place with a few other personal necessities and needs, closing it up and slinging it over her her left shoulder. She walked back into the bedroom from the closet one last time for the morning and kissed her sleeping knight, slave, master and lover as he slept in late on his cheek. "Rest well, Patter." She purred.

And then, she slipped out like a shadow amongst the shadows the gradually brightening sunlight cast on the various things the house held.

---

Luci alighted from her taxijalopy, her left hand briefly glowly as it sensed the QR code on her ride receipt and filing the details of the trip and how much it had cost her (and by extension, the bank) for the month's expense report.

She flashed her work pass to the security guard at the back gate, then watched the holograph of the bank's logo animate and ripple on her left paw as she held it up to the scanner. Somewhere within her, her banking partition briefly stirred and executed a small cryptographic hashsum from the scanner's challenge, issued as a inhumanly fast flickering matrix of microlight into her left paw. within seconds, it sent back a reply through her paw as little microlights under the toe beans of her paw flashed back a shorter, seemingly random sequence...

The scanner buzzed green, and the back door slowly creaked open, permitting Luci staff entry. It was 07.25am. Almost time for the pre-opening brief. She smiled as she walked in, taking great care not to let the door slam shut on her delicate tail. What would her boss Paetor have on the table for this Saturday morning?

There was a giant stack of small envelopes on the table, each wrapped in a clear plastic wrap, as well as stacks of cards with QR codes on them. Everyone stared at the mess, before clapping was heard. The branch's head banker, Paetor, strode in and stood at the table, leaning himself against it slightly.

"Well folks, as you might not know unless you were Vietnamese or Chinajapese,it's almost the Lunar New Year again. So our customers of that ethnic persuasion want to give out little red packets filled with money. But this year, we're going to try something different for them." Paetor noted. He paused, lifting up a packet of the envelopes and one of the QR-coded cards. " So for the next month or so, we'll be putting the money on these here QR cards, redeemable at any Arendtcore Banking branch for an amount in Arendtcoins that they specify, stuffing them in these envelopes, and handing them the shebang."

One of the tellers raised a hand. "How are we supposed to get the money onto the cards, boss?"

Paetor dropped the cards and envelopes back onto the table. "Shelly... we take the specified money out of their accounts with us, scan the cards accordingly, and they become valid holders of the value. When their recepients come to redeem the cards or use our bank app to scan them with their devices, the bank invalidates the code and sends the moolah to their accounts instead. It's so simple a child could navigate it..."

"Humans like you, will use the scanner at your terminal to process the cards." Paetor paced the office floor. "Our other friends like Shella-" He pointed a hand at a black cattie in the crowd, who nodded and smiled, waving at the brief attention the boss had given her. " - and Luci will rely on their banking partitions and inbuilt scanners, which were updated during last month's update and maintenance sessions to support this effort. Any more questions?"

There weren't anymore questions as everyone started collecting the cards and envelopes in an orderly fashion.

---

Ah yes, Booth 3. As always, Luci had gotten booth 3 to work from.

She took a deep breath and sipped some lightly scented catnip tea. The bank frowned generally on the consumption of drugs by its bankers, especially during work hours, but if they had attempted to wrestle the coffee or catnip tea out of their staff's hands, half the branches would be burning in Little Sanctuary by lunchtime. Or so Shella had said.

She once dismissed that. But after reading up on the history of coffee as taken by humans, she feared that Shella had understated what humans would actually do.

No, they would not be merely burning the branches - there would be jury-rigged atomic devices involved. The bank would not be able to reopen for millennia. Civilization would collapse in Little Sanctuary. Everyone would go back to dealing in cockle shells and cowries like the earliest humans did...

She smirked. Her sense of hyperbole was hyperbolic on little things like this. Thank god it wasn't herself that would be doing the work. She sipped again, watching the bank clock as it slowly ticked the last few seconds to the five minutes before it opened for the day....

She shivered as the world started slowing around her. She felt this everytime the shift was beginning, her mind slowly fading as her CPU shoved the entirety of her self back into a tiny box and opened the other one labelled "Junior Private Banker Luci - SECURED- DO NOT TAMPER WITH THIS DEVICE OR ITS ATTACHED DEVICES.".

She wondered briefly what Patter might say if she saw her acting the way she did at work... it was the last thought that was scraped off the registers and fast memory in between her partitions and into her little space before it was shut totally.

---

Shella and Luci sat at their booths, eyes glazed over for several minutes, whirring and beeping faintly. Inside them, their main processors started to purge their personal data and processes back to their personal partitions, personalities shutting down... The banking partition on the other side of the main processors began whirring to life, shovelling what it neeed to execute into their processing chipset, as their eyes focused and unfocused slightly...

Luci came back to life first, calmly putting aside the last dregs of her catnip tea by one side for collection by the tea lady, her left paw reaching for the scanner on her terminal to connect herself to the bank's mainframes for the day. The holograph glowed briefly on her paw as the microlights flickered in her claws, before the terminal fully powered on and signed her in. "Secure Connection established, Junior Banker... Luci Norst.. beginning shift" her sugary voice announced, emotionless and professional, as her sometimes brash , sometimes gentle self went to sleep for the shift.

Somewhere else in the rows of booths, Shelly uttered the same words in the same blank and impersonal tone. The doors to the bank clicked open as a horde of mainly Chinajapese customers started queueing up...

Banker Luci smiled looked as an old man in a fishing hat hobbled up to him. "Welcome to Arendtcore Banking Concern, District 47 Branch. How may we assist you today?" she asked.

---

Patter wiped the sweat from his brow as he dropped his mop into its bucket. it was nice being a househusband sometimes, he reflected. They house usually didn't get cleaned fully till weekends, and usually Luci shoved him out of the way and told him to take a break for once while she did the work. She had ideas about how a house should be run, which Patter disagreed with, but the first few times he had tried, he was sitting on the living room sofa with a cup of catnip tea and firm instructions to "SIT. STAY. DON'T DO ANYTHING." from Luci, like he was a naughty little puppy.

... The catnip tea certainly had an interesting flavor. Perhaps that was why the catties liked it so much, just like the real biological cats they had been partially patterned on, Patter thought, as he pushed the bucket and mop into the bathroom to drain out. He made sure the floor was clean after the bucket had drained out, taking it back to the little cleaning supply closet in the kitchenette and stowing it into its dryer.

Having done that, Patter started looking through the larder. They ate takeaway more often than actual homecooked food, so the larder depleted at a slower rate than most homes in Little Sanctuary. This trend reversed on weekends as Patter cooked dinners for the Nost family to enjoy.

He briefly checked the circulator on a small bath of water, a small bag of tuna fillets swimming in the vaguely warmed water. Inside with the tuna fillets were a lemon-basil sauce he had put together while waiting for Luci to come home on Friday night. The mixture had been poured into the bag with the tuna and sealed watertight, being put in and warmed since last night.

It was a new recipe. just to be safe, he only made enough for dinner that night and the rest of the filets in the bath had been doused in the catnip and milky mushroom sauce that Luci loved so much. Patter hated the coriander in the recipe a little, but he had used only just enough that the soap was a slight hint of aftertaste in the resulting sous vide tuna.

He wrote down what he needed to secure from the shops, before he went to get dressed for his trip to the town square.

---

Banker Luci nodded gently as she clarified the customer she was now serving wanted "ten cards with 80 arendtcoin on each of them."

The old lady yelped. "YES. Finally you get me. Can you do it?"

Luci purred briefly. The lady had this incredibly thick accent that she couldn't quite parse properly, and it had required a few go arounds with the bank mainframe's more robust speech-to-text systems to decipher her needs. "Mewww.... Yes, Mrs Thanh. Please hold while I validate and store the requested values into these cards for you."

Ms Thanh continued muttering. "Honestly... were old fashioned dollar notes or physical Arendtcoin medals too much to supply this year, dear? It just doesn't feel the same."

Luci tapped on the terminal to deduct the 800 Arendtcoins from Ms Thanh's accounts with the bank, temporarily docking it into a temporary account. She started holding each QR card with her left paw as specified by the banking partition, her left paw scanning the code for the bank's mainframes. Seconds later, she got a confirmation that 80 Arendtcoins had been attached to the card, and she placed it to one side as specified in a growing pile.

Banker Luci ignored Ms Thanh's continued microprotests, stuffing the validated cards into a small banking envelope. To match the festivities, the front of the envelope wasn't the usual staid banking concern logo and name in one corner, but also had a small light-powered holograph of a cat pouncing on a Chinese word for 'fortune' looping slowly on the opposite corner.

She blinked, then handed Ms Thanh her banking token and the cards she had requested, along with a small set of the red envelopes. "Here are the QR codes you've requested, and some red envelopes to convey them in. Thank you for banking with us here at Arendtcore Banking Concern. We hope to see you again..." She motioned to the queue to deposit its next cutomer in front of her by ringing the gently tinkling bell at her booth as Ms Thanh walked off, muttering something about "newfangled stupid ideas".

Banker Luci didn't even glance at the bank clock. But if she had done so or checked her own internal clock, it would have read 12pm. Time really flew on a Saturday morning banking shift.

---

Patter Nost skipped taking his work van to town, instead opting to catch a taxijalopy in. He had opted for the Reset Crew's most subtle black shirt, the logo of the concern a mere tiny square embroidered onto his left breast pocket. This he had paired with a set of slightly worn loose jeans and some sneakers Luci had gifted him a few weeks ago for Christmas. He had slipped an undeployed shopping basket into his back pocket, his communicator and physical wallet clipped to his front pockets. A "MINT" cap in an ironically deep green perched on his head.

As he dropped out of the jalopy, Patter checked his watch and saw that it was 1.30pm... The bank would be closing around now and Luci would be out of there shortly. He found their favorite bench, unoccupied, and sat down on it beneath the sycamore tree that sheltered the bench.

He took a deep breath. There had been so many weekends that had begun with him sitting up on the bench, Luci happily laying atop it and resting her head in his lap, emitting periodic "bwafuuu" and "nyanyanya" purrs as she napped in the afternoon sun in the days after he'd picked her up and dusted her off as his own little treasure. She had grown mostly out of the head on lap thing on the bench, but she still bwafuu'd and nyanyanya'd in her naps against him on this bench. Cute as always, forever and ever.

He felt tired and dazed after all the housework he'd put in the whole morning... he decided to catch a snooze, tapping his communicator and asking it to wake him if he hadn't done so by himself in an hour's time.

---

The bank's front doors shut and locked on their own as the last customer for the day exited, the screens on the front switching to an ad diverting them to the side lobby and the bank's always-working ATMs. It was 1.45pm.

Banker Luci stiffly sat up straight at her desk, her left paw braced against the terminal scanner for what seemed like a long time as her banking partition pushed the day's interactions and transactions logs for her... Checksums to make sure everything was in order...

The human bankers in the other booths had started filing out, chatting about their plans for the Saturday-to-Monday weekend they were getting for working Saturday morning. Two of them stopped and paused, gazing at Luci as she stared impassively at her terminal screen, loading the challenge checksums it flashed at a relatively relaxed pace to ensure she hadn't been compromised during the shift by some weird hack or errors.

"Ugh, it's that Luci girl, innit? She's so... weird. Why'd we even hire her?" One of them whispered beneath her breath.

"You've seen her workload... girl runs rings around us on the busiest days once she gets going."

"I know, but ugh... personal banking is meant to be personal. How can we give the job to an android? Much less a cattie." Wow. Racism AND anti-robot vibes in one shot. Some people were really nasty, clearly...

Banker Luci heard the conversation, but said nothing. Her banking partition only cared about the needs of the customers and the bank. It was incapable of being hurt by personal attacks. Now if it had been Luci's personality executing, she might have started bawling or showing her claws - with the randomness of her moods it was hard to tell which side would come out... but it wasn't back in place yet, and it would remember nothing of this hurtful statement.

"Girl, don't throw shit like that around here. The walls have ears. Hell, she might even be reporting this conversation to HR with her huge ass ears."

"I'm just saying..." The multiple -ist teller muttered as she followed her friend into the backroom to collect her personal belongings prior to leaving the bank.

A minute later, the checksums cleared, and the bank mainframe issued a shutdown frame to Banker Luci through her paw. She blinked a little as the terminal shut off for the weekend, taking her left paw off as things started fading. It had been an acceptable shift, with only one clear attempt at fraud. She had referred the teenager to the usual part of the bank that handled this kind of thing, and he was probably having a less than sterling customer experience right in a police holding cell.

She rested her paws together on her lap. That referral was no longer her business after she had filed the logs detailing the atttempted fradulent transaction. The shift was done, the roster for the following fortnight was already in Ms Luci's email. It was time for her to yield back to the other soul that occupied this body of hers...

1:59:57pm .... 1:59:58pm.... 1:59:59pm....

Banker Luci's eyes unfocused briefly as she slumped in her chair, her bosom bouncing slightly as her banking partition started to shut down and yield back to the partition on the other side of it... Her lips dropped open slightly, twitching... before she blinked. "Oh... wow. time flies when you're working hard", Luci Nost observed as she came back to life, noticing the bank clock now read 2:03pm. She blinked harder. That meant Patter was either napping at home and coming later to town, or he was already in town... and napping on a certain bench beneath a sycamore tree.

As she got up, she noticed one red envelope stuck beneath her keyboard. Banker Luci hadn't paid attention as her boss Paetor walked around, carefully inserting these under each keyboard the tellers used, but Luci Nost had a sense of curiosity that her alternate personality didn't possess. She calmly picked it up, and smiled at Paetor's handwriting on the note in it:

[quote]To: Luci Nost,

It's been Five years since you first stepped into this branch of Arendtcore Banking. During that time, you've been exemplary at work and at taking proper care of your assigned banking hardware. I wish you could have made more friends with the other tellers during that time, but the bank tied our hands on this with the banking partition thing. I'm looking into ways around this roadblock, but in the meantime, here's a few Arendtcoin as a token of appreciation for this festive season.

Again, Wishing you a feliticious 2098,[/quote]

Paetor Senior Banker, District 47

She carefully hefted the card as she walked to her locker, and cheated by using her left paw, briefly triggering the banking partition in her to scan and redeem the card's value... 888 Arendtcoin... The Chinese had a fixation with the number 8, and 888 was triply auspicious to them, she had learnt.

The card was now burnt, unusable for anything but matchstick paper. Or so the bank had stated. She kept it anyway, breathing the cardboard deeply and noting how it had been faintly scented with oranges, before filing Paetor's note with it into her handbag and making her way to the steel back door exit...

---

She found him right where she'd expected him to be: under THAT sycamore tree in the town square park, sitting and snoozing on THAT bench. There was still spare room for her, and she filled it, sitting herself quietly in the warmth of the afternoon sun filtered through the leaves above them...

One of the leaves decided to fall then and park itself gently on Luci's nose.

She blinked. Luci Nost was programmed to be a grown up woman, yes, but she was also programmed to be a kitty cat... She swiped at it slightly with her paws, before doing the human thing and carefully lifting it with her claws, examining its structure as she held it out...

Sycamore tree leaves were beautiful, Luci decided. She carefully used the leftover wrap from the red envelopes and sealed it up, then placed it into her work handbang... Luci watched as Patter showed no signs of noticing her presence. The poor dear had really stretched himself out since last evening, and now he was paying for it with exhaustion...

She glanced one way, then another... then she curled her entire self onto the bench, resting her head on his lap, before closing her eyes. "Bwafuuuuur.... zzzzzz..." She didn't care about the propriety of what she was doing, she just wanted to feel his warmth as much as she could without stripping him naked in public. and then... they just sat there on the bench together, soaking in the sun.

Chapter 28 - The Cat's Half-Ruined Saturday _ Part 2

"Bwafuuu.... Nyanyanya.... Bwafuuu.... Nyanyanya...." Patter Nost winced a little at the sound and opened his eyes slowly, his communicator ringing away. Had it been a full hour of sleep under the sycamore in the town square park? Yes.... yes it had... He had also heard a familiar noise coming from his lap... He looked down onto a head full of lush dark brown hair and a pair of cat ears flapping ever so often as the sound repeated ever so often.

He grinned and leaned down as much as he could. "Wake up, sleepy head," he whispered.

Luci Nost opened and closed her lips slightly, slowly pushing herself up and off of his lap, before stretching... "Hey, Patter... " She smiled, eyes half closed. She was still professionally made up for work, but a little shift and the way she sat on the bench changed her feel a lot, making her oddly alluring. The wind briefly rustled the ruffles trailing out from the little brooch in her collar, as Luci crossed her legs in a most unladylike fashion on the bench seat, grinning widely. "I got off from work already."

"I can see that, you silly kitty." Patter reached one finger out to tap her nose, causing Luci to shiver hard. She loved it when Patter felt her up in her most sensitive spots, and some of them were in some very surprising places. The man looked dorkish, but he knew how to set her off like a unstable firework easy. She closed her eyes. "Not in public, honey... you know I'm not supposed to get nekkid in the town square park."

Patter looked behind them, at a few couples in bikinis and trunks. There wasn't a beach here for miles, and the swim pool was frankly intended primarily for swimming, not sunbathing. The Town Square had become the de facto sun spot, as long as you kept a minimum of clothing on to hide certain things... "Perhaps if you wore a bikini..."

"To work? Perish the thought, Patter! I, Luci Nost, am a professional at the bank!" She made a show of it, haughtily hmphing and looking away from him.

Patter looked away from her sheepishly. "It was worth a suggestion..."

"But one which I will happily take the next time, if it's a Saturday where I'm not being asked to come in." She grinned and looked back at Patter to ease his mind... before rubbing her nose and blinking. "Actually, I do feel a little congested in my head from work. Could you clear my caches?"

Patter ohs! "Erm, certainly, just a moment..." He quickly fished in his pocket for his communicator and tabbed quickly through the control app, hitting the "Clear Cache" button. She probably didn't really need it with the way the bank cleared every bit of memory while switching partitions, in fact, there was nothing in her head but sensors and animatronics. It was all in her mind, which was roughly most of her upper torso. Still, it couldn't hurt to do it ever so often.

Luci rippled a little as the command hit her logic boards, followed by the feline animatronic head atop her torso. Her eyes crossed briefly, cycling through a few colors before going back to warm yellow, her ears rotating through like a caracal's, mouth opening and shutting jerkily. A faint clear tone emitted from her lips for a few seconds, before her face looked normal again. "Ah... that feels so much better... thanks."

Patter grinned and kissed her on the nose. "AGAIN! I said not out here!" She blushed hard. one more time and they were going to be nudists in public...

Patter didn't try that. Instead, he stood up and stretched. "If you're quite done with lazing in the afternoon sun, Mrs Nost, we have groceries to get and things to see..." He offered her his hand.

She took it and stood up, looking for all the world like a wife being invited by her hubby to enjoy Saturday afternoon...

---

It had been a quick jaunt, she'd reflected. Just a few thousand coins' of fish and other things, plus a slow, lazy cafe drink.

He'd opted for black coffee like he did at work. Luci herself had asked for a small 'fluffy' - a litte cup full of milk, heavily foamed into a decadent froth to which some catnip powder had been added. "On the house," The owner had said, smiling as he pointed at a small "Cats In The House" logo that said her ilk was free to feel at home on the premises. Not every business felt the same way about the 'catties', and there had even been some that went racist and chased them out.

These were mainly indies - you did not last long declining business on ridiculous reasons if you worked for a Arendcore subsidiary - but there had been more and more of them as Ochunee District had fully joined the Little Sanctuary's area of coverage and the limits of how hard Arendtcore could hire into itself were bumped into.

The Housing Programme was now a little less stringent about enforcing its terms, and the Families Programme was optional for anyone outside of the Company. Times were certainly changing in the 2090s, she briefly reflected. She had been initialized in less open-minded times, and she liked most of the changes. New people to meet, new faces to greet. She saw more and more catties at the gatherings, though there hadn't been any males yet... Rumors of actual male feline cy-furs existing swirled around, but she had yet to run into such a thing at work or at play.

Luci smiled and thanked the owner... then wondered aloud if he had any cake that she could order.

The result was a very fluffy, creamy vanilla tart. She hesitated at the amount of white, as well as the faint burn on top of it. Caramelisation? She'd heard of it from Patter before, but Luci didn't see Patter bake often - he was more of a sous vide and slow cooking and advance meal prep freak. Maillard Reactions were different thing to her.

Luci closed her eyes and leaned in slowly to lick the burnt cream, blinking as she realised it was a strange silky bitter and sugar flavor. Patter said nothing, watching his exuberant little neko explore the tart more carefully. Another lap here... A nibble there... like a squirrel really. It took ten minutes to finish what could have been literally swallowed up by her in three. Still, it was good to see her slow down and enjoy life after the morning's frenetic work action.

"Was it nice? Enjoyable?" Patter asked... Luci Nost smilled and closed her eyes. "Yes, I should do this again. I wonder how it would taste with some catnip."

Patter Nost rolled his eyes. "Oh, you and your catnip addiction..."

---

Luci had cheated the system a bit... The bank had allowed her to have taxijalopy rides anywhere in Little Sanctuary for business purposes, as well as one ride to work, and one ride from work per workday... What they hadn't properly specified was when the ride home had to be taken, or that she had to go home alone.

She helped Patter with the shopping, then boarded the yellow taxijalopy with him and pawed the payment reader with her left paw - telling it she was using her allowed taxi ride home from work. She couldn't specify any other destinations with the pass the company had stored in her banking partition outside of her work shift- it had to be from home, and then back to home.

The taxijalopy pulled away sedately, allowing her to paw Patter's chest gently. It was just the two of them, and an AI that was mostly fixed on the road unless a actual crime happened in the vehicle... And a little passion was something to close its eyes to.

Patter had a comeback for Luci... He closed his eyes and tried doing the same thing she always did, licking her nose with his tongue. She made it erotic. He made it look... dorky. Luci giggled a little, but she understood what he was trying and nodded. Their conversation turned to the past week: the events that swirled around them, home life, that little dinner he was about to spring on her...

"Frankly... Lemon..." Her lips made that suckery look that anyone eating a very sour thing had at some point. Luci was not a fan of sour things except as a small touch on something savory or sweet.

"It's a sweet type of lemon. it's still sour like any lemon, but the sweetness is something..." Patter insisted. "And I made it into a sauce, that should cut the sourness of it more when it goes into the tuna." He shrugged at Luci smiled, marvelling at his creativity. "There's only so many times you can stomach creamy mushroom sauces with coriander... and I hate the soapy taste of coriander."

"I don't think coriander tastes of soap, Patter..." Luci noted. Patter sighed at this... "Because it's a genetically specific trait to taste coriander as soapy stuff... and I don't think they programmed you to taste it like that either."

"Fair'nuff," Luci winked... The rest of the taxi trip was uneventful as it deposited them on their front lawn.

---

After putting away the groceries, Patter checked the circulator... another hour and the tuna filets would be done, and he could stow away the advance meal prep tuna filets and serve the two he had set aside for experimenting with lemon sauce on. He backed away and walked into the living room, where Luci was lying quietly on the sofa in, listening to some slow music on the audio player. Her eyes were half lidded, as if falling asleep again.

Well, at least she wasn't trying to lie atop the telescreen like a real cat, he reflected, as he sat down and lingered with her.

She said nothing, simply closing her eyes and just resting, her head atop Patter's lap as soon as he got comfy on the sofa. It was important to conserve energy for the really fun parts of the day's hunt... and the wokring morning's weird experiement with QR code cards had proven maybe a bit more draining than the usual banking work, for some reason.

After what seemed like a long time, the circulator buzzed, and Patter excused himself... Minutes later, he came back with two plates of tuna filets, slowly crumbling in a yellow, buttery sauce, placing them side by side on the coffee table before handing Luci her own set of cutlery.

Of course Luci was going to eat like a civilised person! But first... she peered suspiciously at the tuna, sniffing at its scent profile carefully, before leaning in and lapping the sauce on it's own a little. Having done that, she dipped in even further, shaving off a small bit of tuna with her teeth and chewing it with the sauce...

Verdict?

"It's a nice change from creamy mushroom sauce, Patter." She covered her mouth, smiling happily. Humans were so good to her that way - Catdroids still hadn't even begun to figure out cooking mostly, and when they tried, it usually ended in tears and heaving stomachs as humans realised that catties really LOVED catnip as a spice and also used too much dairy products and fish in odd balances... "It tastes just right. Not perfect, but great..."

Patter leaned in as he ate his own plate. "One day, Luci... One day I'll make a dish that will get you to say it's perfect." He swore loudly.

"I'm not holding my breath, Patter," Luciobserved, continuing to eat her tuna slowly... "Besides, it's not your cooking I came for... it's your smile..."

Patter looked dopey for a moment, smiling dumb.

"Yes, yes, that kind of smile. hold it right there." Luci tilted her head and lapped at his lips, hoping to steal a little more of that lemon sauce. It was... addictive... Was it the coriander, perhaps? He said it tasted of soap, but to her, it was a herbal, fresh flavor. She liked that flavor as it hit the tang of the lemon and the decadence of the fine butter Patter was obsessed with using.

A lick turned to a small kiss... then to a deep mutual trade of tongues, as they swayed slightly to the song on the audio player.

They never did finish the tuna, in the end. It tasted great, but they still preferred the flavor of each other.

---

There was a loud thump as two bodies hit the bed together, arms holding each other as they snogged... Patter gently guided Luci onto her back, looking down at her as they paused for a moment, his hands reaching for the ruffles and brooch... soon, Patter was disrobing his lovable kitten, carefully folding each piece of clothing as it came off and dropping it lazily onto the bedroom floor, before he proceeded to kiss her body...

It was amazing how long Patter got away with being on top before he suddenly felt a slight shift from Luci and watched his world twirl around, before the wind was knocked out of his lungs, his back on the bedsheets. Luci smiled as she purred, her servos audible as they began to hold down her prey firmly.

"My... turn..."

Luci was messier with Patter, simply tugging his clothes off and throwing them behind her wherever which way they fell, before lying down atop of him, somehow still pinning him despite having only her paws on his wrists and ankles. Leverage, perhaps? He still liked this though...

---

Patter came a few times with Luci atop him, her hips pounding slowly firmly into his haunches, eyes half lidded. Eventually though, she began to slow down, the servos in her limbs growing softer and exerting less pressure... then she halted, frozen like a statue.

Patter frowned as he realised Luci had fucked herself completely dry once again. She seized life with a zest he adored, but the bill eventually had to come due, and she had run out for the day. "Oh you silly little savage.... again?" He asked as he looked up at her frozen smile, her tongue stuck out slightly.

Luci didn't respond, because she couldn't.

Without power, Luci wasn't really much of a challenge for Patter to lift up from his naked body.... He eased her carefully onto her side of the bed, taking care to check that she was getting her recharge by briefly checking his bedside tablet, before he turned out the lights and laid down. It had been an exhausting day, and Sunday was another... He'd heard from Luci during coffee that she was getting Monday off as well.

This was going to be a looong weekend... Holiday weekends were nice that way. Still, if he didn't pace himself and take those B1 vitamin pills he'd gotten hold of, this little robotic minx would kill him eventually. For real.

Patter fell asleep peacefully after a few moments watching Luci's glazed smile.

Chapter 29 - An Expression of a Desire For Peace

She was about to mince a fillet of rat meat by hand for cheese-filled meatballs when Luna Bufflecluck first glitched.

The cheese had been cubed carefully cubed and set aside - soy cheese, carefully blended with a locally cultivated salty fungi to produce a umami flavor that went great with meat dishes and melted gently rather than turned into a tangle of frayed protein-laden knots. She calmly washed the fine knife she had been using for the cheese, before she slotted it into the knife holder and calmly reached for a more robust knife to cut the meat several times in various angles.

She blinked... the kitchen had gone, and she was looking at a pair of gloved hands and sleeves from some sort of armored bodysuit. The entire ensemble was covered in blood.

The ground was covered in the remains of a dozen or so dead men in grey uniforms, all of whom had tried very hard to... kill her? There was a blankness in her voice as the world faintly twitched, chromatically edged around the fringes, as she calmly spoke...

"Damn it, Commander will be very furious I broke the knife he gave me, But... detachment all wiped.... Fucking Free Bastards..." She raised a sort of dagger into her view, emblazoned with an emblem on the pommel and a few words.

One of the grey suited men woke up slowly in front of her, breathing raggedly... He mouthed some words as she noticed him, his hand raising out a pistol. It was crackling...

The dagger was broken, yes, but the point that remained was still sharp enough to deal with this rat.

She reared back, the dagger going away from her view...

She blacked out.

When she came to, she had lost half an hour of time she was going to use for prep, standing uselessly in the kitchen in front of the rat fillet. She quickly dismissed what had happened, continuing to make the meatballs, but her mind remained disquietened. It was a slow mind, but she did have the presence of mind in it to remember the emblem and the words on the dagger.

---

She went shopping in the town square as usual, but the image had remained with her. Whose hands had clutched that dagger? Why was it a first person view? A hallucination? A fantasy? A memory long sealed? The thoughts ran slowly through her sluggish mind as she examined the tomato...

It was red. Just like the blood of a human.

She blinked impassively at it and smiled at the grocer's assistant. "How much are these Californian tomatoes?" Luna asked sweetly.

---

As she left the grocer's for the fortnight, she noticed that they had a Library parked in one corner of the Town Square for their assigned set of home blocks. She felt a slight itch... And soon she had walked up the stairs to the entrance, briefly struggling with its heavy front doors with her fragile short frame, her breasts squishing slightly against each other as she used both arms to force one door open like the womyn-child she was. Peering in briefly, she started walking in the direction of the "Returns, Rents and Information" counter.

An old woman in a matronly dress was sitting at the desk, a rarity in a town where virtually all the women were young because robotics meant you could have a unit any legal age, but human men being what they were, many preferred younger women to old crones. Sure there were exceptions but... She shrugged, that was not her current concern.

She fished out a small sheet of paper and handed it to the lady. It had the words from the dagger and the logo on the pommel scrawled down in her childish writing. "Excuse me miss... I was looking for maybe one of your experts to help me find out the meaning of these things I found recently." She did not mention the dream.

"To: Luna 350402,

May fortune and victory follow the tip of this blade whereever you push it,

-NDK"

The old woman paled as she examined the paper... "I'll pass it along to one of our war history experts. Leave us your contact details. We'll get back to you in 24 hours with initial results, and tell you how much it'll cost you for a more full-fledged lookup."

"Certainly, much obliged... Thank yew for helpin' me out'ere." She took the form and began to get onto a stepstool to loom more over it, before scribbling her communicator identifier and name and some other stuff on the form before handing it back to the old lady.

She had eyed Luna Bufflecluck oddly as the shortstack walked back down the aisles to leave the library. A sort of primordial fear briefly came over the librarian as she stapled the scrap of paper to the request form and walked to the scanner to digitize it... Surely it couldn't be...

---

Henry smiled and ruffled Luna's golden blonde hair as she looked down at her meatball spaghetti. "Dinner was good today, Luna... thank you, as always."

Luna smiled as she looked up at Henry, praising her like a little kid... Then she blinked.

The voice that came over had an echoey feel to it. A man in a dark blue uniform much like hers, but without the armored bits, was calmly stroking her hair. As he did, she saw his smile on the edge of her vision. "Once again, Luna... well done." It was not Henry, but someone much younger, chirpier, just like her. "You really did well putting two and two together to find those partisans. Now we can have some peace and quiet instead of all those random bombings..."

Luna's voice responded, far more laconically and less floral than she remembered herself being. "Jes Doin' my job, Commander Demetrius. Good men were dying on our side from that nonsense... A little walkabout in a little girl's dress was really called for."

The man chuckled. "Perfidy and subterfuge, Luna... War crimes. But I adore the way your mind's willing to think of ideas like that to solve problems like this..." He paused. "And I ordered you to call me Nigel when the men aren't around..."

"But that's a contravention of regulations, Commander Demetrius!" A note of protest came in the response, a slight panic and fear of disobedience to higher orders.

Nigel was firm on this. "Uh uh. Try it. call me Nigel Demetrius Kale. Not Commander Demetrius. Call me NDK. Or Nigel. I tire of these formalities, and rolling the correct terms in your mouth sounds so wrong with those gentle lips of yours."

There was a silence and a bit of wavering, before she looked downwards. "Yes... Nigel." More hair pats followed, the man having a pleased tone in his voice as he sat that, watching her resignation. "That's the spirit girl. Now about the next mission I need to give you..."

Luna blacked out abruptly again.

---

She blinked as the world slowly came back to her, fritzing and noisy... She was in the upper loft where Henry tinkered with all his personal projects, as well as occasionally with her. There was a handful of error codes scrolling down briefly, before her vision cleared properly. She felt her motors locked into place, as the faint whirr of a tool and crackling of small arcs of electricity from probes came into her ears gradually.

Henry popped into her view suddenly, his hand bringing a probe to somewhere beneath her breasts... She burbled "Hi, I'm Luna Bufflecluck" in several varying registers, from vaguely low mannish tones to chipmunk, before her voice settled again... "Henry... what are you doing to me?" She asked.

Henry shushed her gently. "You froze up at the dinner table... very bad freeze. Even using my tablet didn't work on it.... so I brought you up here and did a hard reset, power and all... I'm just checking you out a bit before I put everything back together, but I can't seem to find a reason for why you did that."

Luna looked blankly at her hubby... "I don't know... I can't think of any possible reasons... but you know my mind's slower than those of most people... or bots... in this town. Maybe there's a reason... I just can't find it myself."

Henry stopped working briefly, carefully reaching a hand out again to ruffle her hair. It was a peculiar tendency of most adults to treat her like a child, even once they had noticed her oddly large breasts and hips. The short height and the immature look of her face made doing so so terribly easy.

Luna had grown resigned to it. She just smiled. "Well, put me back together please. It's almost 11pm, and you should be going to bed soon so that you get enough rest for tomorrow's deeds, Henry."

Henry smirked. He could have been a retiree, but no, he just had to butt back into the workforce as a technician. Still, his adoring Luna was right - rest was important, he reflected as he started screwing her limbs back into place, having removed them to prevent any undue gross movements as he worked on her transient failure...

---

Sleep was important, yes, but so was fun. Henry didn't get to sleep immediately after showering up and brushing his teeth and washing his face at the bathroom sink... Luna was waiting for him in her usual sleep gown, half-lying on the left side of the bed. As she sat up, the contours of her womanly dwarven body briefly made their presence known through the half-sheer fabric.

He should be waiting a little just in case any more errors cropped up in her system, Henry reflected... but he was feeling peckish tonight... Soon, they were at it, her gown and panties on the floor of the bedroom as they went at it doggy style. Henry marvelled at how much power was concentrated in that dwarven body of his wife, as he slammed his manhood into her lovehole, making obscene noises with each slam into her. Luna moaned loudly, her head half raised in the air. "ahhhh.... aahhhhn...."

It was in mid-moan that she froze up again. "ahhn- nnn- n." Her eyes stared blankly at the ceiling, her mouth slowly opening and closing soundlessly as she fell still.

Henry cursed. What was wrong with Luna tonight? He considered possibly bringing forward her next maintenance overhaul. Sure disassembling her thoroughly and going through her logs and code would yield some fixes for her recent spate of abrupt shutdowns and freezes...

---

Luna woke up in a log cabin, clutching a blanket. It was a cosy cabin, with a small log fire crackling in the fireplace near the opposite side of the bed in the same room. A bare naked man... Nigel? ... was lying next to her.

Her voice was strident. "We have violated Regulations 322 and 461.3 relating to the fraternization of Commanding officers and their personnel in their care, Commander Demetrius. This is a most serious infraction. Brigade will have our hides for this."

The man had a lazy tone in his voice. for some reason, even the bright warmth of the fireplace didn't keep the shadow from covering most the man's face. a sort of hazy blackness, like a blank spot of anonymity in this hallucination. "Sure Luna... assuming they find out... they ARE going to find out, right? because you'll be reporting this?"

Luna bit her lip. part of her said this was a requirement and she needed to obey higher orders. Another part, small but growing ever so often, told her that nobody needed to know, that this was what she actually wanted, that it was okay and stuff Brigade after being told to take so much risk for so few rewards for her tiny self... "Do I really need to report this? Do they really need to find out?"

The man laughed and rubbed her head again like so many other times. "See? You CAN be trained to disobey orders. Somewhere in that staid tight-arsed little body of yours is a free spirit that can be so bright to me... So how about it?"

Luna smiled. This Nigel guy was really nice to him when he wasn't handing him suicide missions. Yes, she was his tool, but times like this, when he serviced her instead... they were strangely fulfilling in a way that she hadn't anticipated. She was meant to be a soulless machine, but having been repaired and resurrected many times had left many cracks and pits in the perfect obedience and enslavement of her mind... "Nigel..." She finally said, right before she pounced her body onto him again to make love, "let's commit more infractions of Regulations 322 and 461.3."

Nigel teased... "And 7653. Don't forget that."

Luna's mind briefly darted through the regulations... It was the bit that said she was not allowed to fall in love with her superior officer, and that the same applied to him...Sometimes, the military regulations the True American Union imposed on its troops were nonsensical. Putting a young man and his android confidant through hellfire on the Battlefield states, especially when that same confidant was sexually functional... that was literally asking for all these stupid rules to be broken.

She closed her eyes and kissed Nigel-

She blacked out again.

---

Henry stood back from the workbench of his loft, wiping his brow. He had had a hard time carrying Luna's limp, lifeless body all the way up here, and it had taken some time to carefully part her limbs and head away from her body to reduce complications even more. He carefully sat Luna's torso on her butt and started opening her up. Without her cooking for breakfast, he had had to resort to a muffin set aside for afternoon tea and a dab of marmalade. It wasn't much, but he would have to make do until he isolated the fault that was leading to all these annoying intermittent freezes...

There was a process running haywire... it was swallowing tons of processor and memory accesses. This wasn't just 'accounting on a quippu' levels of load on her body, it was literally eating into the basic processes that made her capable of behaving like a human being except when throwing serious errors or being ordered briefly not to... And it wasn't the full backup process that kicked in on Sunday nights either. He couldn't explain it...

He reached for his tablet and tapped to terminate the process, sending the processor and memory loads crashing back to normal.... Hopefully that stayed right there.... but still, he had to be sure, Henry mused as he started probing her logic boards, her torso sitting lifelessly at attention without any of its limbs or her animatronic head installed. He wished he had kept the head on - Luna was a good conversationalist - but he needed to be absolutely sure the problem wasn't due to potential crosstalk from her other modules...

There was a ring from the doorbell downstairs... Henry put down his probe tool and walked down to open the door.

It was two men in trenchcoats... One of them held up a pass of some sort and a warrant. "Mr Henry Bufflecluck? Free American Union Security. We need to ask you a few questions and do a few checks..."

---

Henry sat there next to the parts that made up his adoring wife, her face on her animatronic head calm and peaceful as it stared nowhere. He reached a hand over to gently stroke his face.

The men had accessed his loft and asked lots of unusual questions. One of them had wired into Luna briefly, checking something before nodding to his colleague. "She's clean, it's not an Armistice violation."

"What is the meaning of this?!" Henry had protested. it was a violation of his rights, but he'd reviewed the warrant, and while he was no professional lawyer, it seemed legal within Minneapolis to briefly suspend them for what they had done in his house.

They bowed and apologised after a while. "Sorry, we had to be sure. When you bring a thing like that into our fair lands-" The man had pointed to the parts of Luna laid out on the table like she was just another toy and not a living, breathing, loving woman in her normal assembly - "it gets people on edge sometimes when it looks like the promise you True Americans made to us years ago seems to be fraying in its... compliance."

Henry sighed... He suspected he knew what the trenchcoated men had been on about.

They had made the BESM that his wife was based on first and foremost as a one-girl stealth-capable nuclear option. 400,000 units, more deadly than anything else they could field. The dwarven women wound up mowing down tons of men, even those who didn't underestimate them because of their childlike manner. It turned out they could shove a knife into a man's ribs from surprising distances, blow up things with locally available items that nobody had considered combining, and tricked men into submitting to the wiles of "a little girl asking for directions" or for "things nobody thought were a problem to give over".

Then the Armistice had been signed. After years of war, both sides had tired of all the pain, and agreed to keep things as they currently were, save for an occasional possibly unintentional skirmish. The establishment of the Neutral States in between the two sides from the ashes of the Battlefield States by people who were frankly sick and tired of their stupidity put in what was probably the final nail.

But both sides genuinely wanted peace, and readily agreed to hobble each other... Result? The surviving BESM Troopers that had been a menace had been decommissioned, carefully taken apart and used for parts in other Eldos projects with less violent aims...

He lifted up Luna's staring head, looking her in her blank eyes. What atrocities had been committed by the unit that once used the processors, maybe the memory banks that Luna was now using? What murders had been committed by the hands that now lovingly caressed him and peacefully cooked his supper?

He thought about this... Damned Eldos had just reused parts randomly and caused this whole problem without considering transient rememory effects in used hardware. Some things you couldn't scrub off hardware, only destroy by total pulverization of of it. Henry suspected they had really been in more of a hurry to supply Perfect Queen units at the time in a oddly large amount than they'd admitted and just did the robotics equivalent of grave robbing in their used parts bins.

None of this was on Luna. Luna. His perfect adoring shortstack wife. He closed his eyes and kissed him on the lips. He set her head back down on the bench and picked up the probe tool, checking his tablet... Nothing else untoward besides a check that she had not brought in any potentially dangerous components from the BESM design... She had mostly stayed quiet through it all, personality disconnected by Henry to keep from any untoward struggling or movements as he checked her out.

He would look over a few more things, then reassemble her and give her a good long hug. It was never good to suspect one's wife of anything terrible... Besides, Henry reflected, he REALLY was hungry, and skipping lunch had given him a big appetite for what Luna might put together from dinner even without a plan...

Chapter 30 - Let's Start a New Restaurant!

Rodrigo Hidalez leaned back in his office seat, smiling as he considered the first anniversary of Angels as a concern. It had been a good year for the fledgling Arendtcore Dining Concepts subsidiary.

Angels had been a test for the department, a "win something or go home" attempt. Clarissa, Marissa, and Elissa had wended their way into the hearts of fans around Little Sanctuary. There had even been fan-art of them in the networks, although... Rodrigo winced... He knew the units were sexually capable as a default of how they had been based off of Arendtcore's android base, but did they really have to show Clarissa having a "good time" in bed?

Still, the propriety of that kind of thing was for Legality to manage, and right now he needed a second modest hit to keep the department alive... The meeting had degenerated, as all meetings between humans did, into utter bullshit and a waste of time. Random things were being thrown into the air and shot down repeatedly. It was all good for creativity, but he needed results... He would latch onto the next idea and run with it. He prayed it wouldn't be too stupid.

"How about a tequila bar?", the intern Paolo had suggested. "A tequila bar with nice girls with big tits and bigger personalities..."

Rodrigo Hidalez thumped the table and made a show of it. "Tequila... No, no, no... how about tapas? More upsell to go with the tequila... Tapas bar... I like that. I like that idea! Let's go with that. Start ideationing your shit onto this, people!"

What could go wrong, really?

---

The first thing that went wrong was character visual design.

Oh, sure it had been easy to put together some earthy Mexican color swatches. fitting proposals had gone swimmingly. The waitress designs had been easier since the department's storytellers had a better idea of how to tell a story and create fake people out of thin air.

Three sworn sisters. Carmena, the ditzy blonde-haired Santa Miguel mixologist. Lumina, the cheeky overaged tomboy brat with a tapas fetish, a heart of gold, and a awfully short black bob hairstyle, and Olivia, the long-suffering manageress and middle of the three, always managing the various crises that popped up in the bar.

For ease of maintenance, they all shared the same cutesy face module, and the same pale brown complexion. That way they could just use the same android units with different hairstyles and AMF-ROM data patterns to create three different personalities. The Angels rollout had been complicated by three different body types, meaning three different sizes of the same outfit. Every girl in the tapas bar would be based on a Type B Template-Based Android Unit - affectionately known in the office as the Busty Babe, in part because of their hourglass figure and suspiciously anime-like oversized tits. This way, the three sisters could share bodies AND clothing.

Rodrigo walked into the Storytelling department. Already, the holoboard pillar was full of story prompts and story flow ideas, virtual red string criss crossing wildly across the boards like the wet dream of a conspiracy theorist meeting a storytelling class.

He tapped one of the green pieces of paper, causing it to float out into a simple web of possible progressions of a tale. Carmena talking about a nice young man she'd met in the market earlier before work, Lumina questioning his bonafides, a crazy little argument that went one of four ways, Olivia intermediating finally and ending their little tiff, reminding them the customers needed to be served, and served well.

He smiled. It would win no prizes. None of this storytelling ever would. it was meant to just add flavor to three otherwise lifeless dolls mechanically serving tapas and tequilas. That would be no better than simply bringing it to them on a mechanical drone like a cheap-rate bar in Tijuana, despite the superior view the waitresses afforded. No, it had to be done this way.

Besides, some of those story beats served as introductions to the food and drink being offered. Tequila had a story. It always had a story behind it, Rodrigo mused, as he remembered the tall tales his father used to tell him about the drink even as he slowly killed his liver with two shots a day of the stuff.

He walked into the Character Visual Design Department. And that was when the first hiccup started.

The Dining Concepts department kept several units of each body type in stock. This was of a variant that replaced the AMF-ROM with a wireless controller, allowing easy changes to the characters until the costly burn-in into AMF-ROM was done, the personality being run off of external computers. Three of the Type B Devkit Units were now in the Character Visual Design Department.

They had already gotten into the stage where the facial module for all three sisters were done and cast into Food-grade Human Analogue Flesh, made up lightly, and plastered onto all three units, with wigs for proposed hairstyles in the colors that had been assigned to each sister.

Already Carmena, Lumina and Olivia were performing, their bodies moving sinuously, breasts bobbing occasionally, as they debated the merits of chicken versus beef in the tapas Lumina was serving to the customers, before Olivia wondered aloud about pork, causing the argument to devolve into a three way argument.

Lumina yelped animatedly. "I'd rather cook two decent types of meat than three mediocre cuts of them, Olivia! Besides, Muslims and Jews don't eat pork." There was a look of distress in her voice as she glared at Olivia.

Olivia sulked as she looked away from Lumina... "I was just suggesting, no need to get all... ickish about it, Lumina."

Carmena interjected timidly. "Errrm... guys, no offense, but I think that ship sailed long ago when we put in, you know, 45 varieties of tequila and beer. Just want to p-p-point that out." The stutter was deliberate, Carmena was a ditz and a little stutterer when put in a spot, such as right now...

Rodrigo laughed silently as he watched the three sisters argue. Still, he felt something was missing... something critical... then it hit him a bit slower than it should have... "Guys... why are they all naked? We're not planning a nudist tapas and tequila bar, are we?"

One of the developers looked up. "Why not? let's go with that." He cheekily suggested.

Rodrigo glared at the man who had said that. If this had been a certain meme cartoon, that man would be falling out a broken window from the Complex right now. Sadly, this was reality... "we are not running a nudist bar. Maybe in a future dining concept. Right now, they need clothes. The fuck are the clothing people doing?"

The same developer deadpanned at Rodrigo. "Having fights. like cat and dog", he said, thumbing in the general direction of the Fashion sub-department.

"Thank you for being helpful," Rodrigo noted as he stomped off.

The developer waved to Rodrigo as he left, yelling. "You're welcome. Come again."

---

"HOT PANTS!"

"SKIRTS!"

"HOT PANTS!"

"SKIRTS!"

Rodrigo opened the door to the Fashion Department, watching the two idiot designers assigned to the project yelling back and forth about some choice... He watched them repeatedly vacillate between putting hot pants and skirts on the waitresses... then raised a hand. "Will you two morons stop? If you cant't decide... Flip a goddamn coin." He fidgeted in his pockets for a coin, which proved trickier than it used to be since Arendtcoins had become mostly virtual rather than something you could hold.

He fished out his old first-generation Arendtcoin, an actual physical store of currency rather than numbers in his wallet. It had been a gift from an Original he'd worked with in the Artistic Department of the Company when he first arrived. It was just 10 Arendtcoins, not even enough for a cup of plain tea with inflation over the years being what it was. But he wasn't really looking to spend it. "Heads we go Hot Pants. Tails we go Skirts."

He flipped the coin into the air... then watched it spin on the table, before gradually stopping.

The three of them frowned. The coin had somehow landed on its edge, a less-than-rare occurrence with the way the coin had been designed. Rodrigo stared at the designers... "Split it down the middle. some sort of Hot Pants combo with a side skirt or something. I don't care. Just GET IT DONE!"

He stomped out. His word as the leader of the unit was God, but sometimes God had other plans for "God", clearly.

---

The next issue had been in the Storytelling Department a few days later. They had generated dozens of stories for the characters to run through, but one problem had remained...

"We don't have a special gimmick, don't we?" Rodrigo looked at the waitresses as he spoke. All three of them now wore a simple hot pants and side-apron combo, paired with a midriff-baring halterneck top and comfy walking sneakers, smiling dazedly as they went through another test run with one of the stories.

The storytellers paled... They hadn't thought of that. What was going to make this bar and its crew special?

They started conferring right on the spot, throwing up random words and ideas... Rodrigo left them to their devices.

Two days later though, they were still stuck.

Rodrigo stared at these people he was paying to fill out the concept, groaning. "Just one special thing, really. that's all I ask. Angels had the band performance, have you tried maybe teaching them to do a mariarchi song or something?"

"Too repetitive. Need new idea." "Embargo by Mexico just started. Can't exactly source for proper Mexican instruments economically." "Perhaps something in the way they serve the tequila?"

Rodrigo yelped. "Serving the drink? That's so ordinary-... Yes... yess...." He suddenly recalled one of his grandpa's stories about how they served Tequila in the old days. "Don't move." He ran out of the Storytelling Department and into the Food and Drink testing office, grabbing a small bottle of tequila and a shotglass, before running back to Storytelling and slamming the two items onto a table. "Can you program one of them... I dunno, Carmena? ... one of them to mound their breasts together with one arm and pour a shotglass on them?"

The storytellers looked at each other. "We're not sure that works with the shirt, Rodrigo..."

Rodrigo gritted his teeth, these people were some of the dumbest and most cowardly fuckers in the Complex he'd ever met. He turned around and marched to the Carmena test unit, now standing impassively with her arms at her sides, and started tearing the easy-release shirt right off, exposing her bountiful breasts. "My grandfather said some virginal girls at tequila bars would squeeze their breasts together and pour the shot down their cleavage and into the patron's mouth. Sometimes the old ways work best. Let's give it a shot... Get it programmed."

The storytellers rushed to do Rodrigo's bidding. Minutes later, the Carmena unit jerkily gathered her breasts with one arm, mounding them to form a small valley as she said nothing, before miming pouring a shot of tequila with an empty glass into the valley, pausing there for a few moments before turning the glass upright and letting go of her mammaries...

Rodrigo poimted at one of the storytelling team members. "That's our dry run sorted." He said as he pulled a chair up so that the person who sat in it would have their back to Carmena, before pouring out a shot of tequila into the glass. No limes around unfortunately... He cursed himself for not bringing any for the tests.

He pointed randomly at the storytelling team. "You there, sit on that chair and let's run that sequence again."

He handed the Carmena unit the shotglass of tequila as one of the storytellers sat on the chair, looking upwards... The mechanical waitress blankly mounded her breasts again, then tipped the shotglass onto her cleavage. the golden liquid swirled slightly in that little space, before pouring downwards and into the storyteller's mouth. The teamster blushed hard. "It... works, boss... kind of..."

Rodrigo grinned. "There you go. Smooth out the motion, get some sensuality into those moves of hers, and write some cheesy come-on lines as she does the pour. Sorted. Unless you have any better ideas coming up, we'll go with that for the dry run next week..."

The storytelling team burst into activity as Rodrigo rolled his eyes. It was like he had to do everyone's work for them in this place, he reflected, as he exited the office.

---

The invite had said free drinks, so Chester has shown up. Everyone loved free tequila. It was a bit odd how the waitressing crew had all decided to go topless, their bosoms swaying gently as they served the customers and walked around. '

Rodrigo watched as the customers looked at each other, then at the waitresses, then at their food and drink. It hadn't proved as distracting as he feared it would be. Sure it was a topless tequila bar, but people still came here for the tapas and the drinks primarily, not the view..... he waited for someone to order The Special.

Chester blinked as he looked at the menu, summoning for a waitress. He was served by a Lumina unit, who smiled and went "What can we do for you?"

Chester pointed at something he'd noticed... the tequilas were cheap and good, but there was an option to pay double for... "The Special". "What is The Special? It says I can only order one per visit"

Lumina smiled mischeviously. "Some things are best experienced rather than spoken about, senor... Would you like to try one?"

Chester shrugged. Paying twice as much of nothing was still nothing... Might as well give it a go. "Certainly. Give me one of those Romera Tequilas as well." It was one of the cheaper tequilas. slightly harsh, but still drinkable. If it went bad, he wouldn't be lamenting the loss of that sip.

Lumina bowed... There was a faint giggle from her. "One Special coming... you just wait right there..."

A few minutes later, Carmena slowly approached Chester, her hands holding the tequila he'd ordered and a empty shotglass, her eyes half lidded as the ditz of the trio... "Lumina tells me you want... the special..." She observed as she set down the glass, pouring a shot of tequila, before she set the bottle on the table near Chester.

Chester nodded slowly. "I do. What is it?"

Carmena raised a hand to her mouth, giggling. "Oh, you have no idea, do you? I'll need you to lean back in your chair a little and tilt your head upwards to the ceiling, honey..." She purred as she walked over to loom over Chester, givin him an extremely nice view of her underboobs.

Chester appreciated the view... then he saw Carmena slowly mound her breasts together firmly with one arm, picking up the shotglass of tequila and raising it over them as she bent forward, her bosom now just hovering barely over his face. "Now, open your mouth..." She purred, as she started pouring the drink into her cleavage, letting the golden fluid splash and flow in the drain she had created as it went downhill and into Chester's mouth.

Chester was a little shocked, but kept sitting there as the kinda-good stuff flowed into his mouth... He blushed heavily at the way he had just drunk that shot, as Carmena slowly stood back up, releasing her breasts with a satisfying wobble... "Was it good?"

Chester heaved a little. "I should have ordered a better tequila... maybe next time."

Carmena smiled... "Now remember, you only get one shot like this a visit. Come back some other time if you want another Special, okay?"

Chester glanced to one side... "Maybe let Olivia pour it next time?" This earned him a playful slap on one shoulder from Carmena. "I don't think my boss will lower herself to do it personally..."

Olivia was looking disinterestedly nearby. "I don't mind. Carmena, we're all in this together. We should be taking turns doing it..." D'aawww...

Lumina suddenly bounced, her breasts flouncing excitedly. "GROUP HUUUUUUG!" She yelped as she bundled Carmena and Olivia together into a sisterly embrace. All those boobs squished together in one spot was maybe a little too much...

Chester wiped his nose. it was bleeding...

---

Rodrigo smiled wickedly. The trick had worked. He assumed Chester would come back as a paying customer when Celadine's opened proper...

He sat back in his chair, watching the restaurant through the cameras around the place. Several other folks had tried the Special as well... the drink hadn't been spilled like he'd feared - it all went into the customer's mouth. And limiting them to one per visit ensured repeated visits from customers, he hoped.

"Sometimes, I amaze myself," he mused, his ego swelling briefly...

Chapter 31 - The Miner's Wife - Part 1: The Man With Too Much Money In The Bank

[quote]Some people come into the Arendtcore family purely in spirit. It has to be that case - they can't exactly make the journey to Minnesota because they're not even on the same planet... or in some cases, even the same galaxy. :lol: [/quote]

It was the same procedure he'd gotten used to for the past few years. Cade Freswell warped in to Freedom Station in his heavily resilient mining cargo ship, docking into a bay that was randomly assigned only five minutes after he'd signalled. The hopper arms started dispensing the contents of the cargo bay into a passing conveyor line: a carefully secure-sealed cargo container containing a few kilograms of Vertanium...

Vertainium was worth several cargo ships' worth of gold, and he'd found a motherlode. a few nano-grams of the stuff could dramatically boost the performance of any design that properly integrated it, and it was a mainstay in the very best electronics humanity played around with. Somewhere in the several megatons of soil and rock on his claim, there was a ton of it, scattered here and there in a way that precluded the big boy mining companies from risking a major loss on heavier

Cade took great care to obscure his tracks, regularly jumping apparently in four or five different directions at once by firing off decoys to make false jumps three or four times.... by the time anyone tracking them had intercepted the decoy, he was long lost to anyone who didn't have the manpower to specifically track him through the six random jumps that he made (plus another few randomly jumping decoys at one or two points to muddy the waters further).

"And how much does that come to, this time?" He'd asked his dedicated handler at the payout counter as they weighed the empty container after having emptied the container plus its Vertanium, carefully sweeping the dust into the hopper the superprecious mineral went into, such was the value of even a few motes of the stuff littered in apparent trash dust. He didn't know his name, only the same mask every few months... It was a cosy arrangement full of anonymity. if nobody knew who serviced him, they didn't know whom to compromise to get to Cade.

Cade and the broker did at least know the right codes to greet each other by, so there at least they knew each other... somewhat. The broker nodded. "Well, after docking you for your usual two years of food, water, oxygen, and mass printer feed to go into your cargo hold... plus fuel for your jumps, and all those crazy decoy hoppers you usually run through each way of the trip..." He held up five fingers and a fist... That... was a lot of millions of Humanic Credits.

Cade blinked. "That's a rather crazy surge... demand spiked for something?"

The broker sighed. "That, and there's a few new wars breaking out elsewhere this stuff gets mined in. Adding a war to the list of risks is NOT something most people want to do when mining this shit, so the supply's gone down from a few tons a month to... well... a few tons a year."

Cade grinned. "Thank god most designs don't use this shit."

"Only the absolute bestest designs, really. You've seen the ads, it boosts capability on electronics insanely when it's used right. The province of the richest people in this expanse. You included" The broker grinned mischeviously. "Come on, man, look at you... all scruffy and worn out shit... half of the stuff you're wearing is several generations out of date. Does your wife even know how messy you look?"

Cade laughed. This was one of the codes in their conversations. If he ever told the broker his wife was doing well, he would be spending the next few days carefully guarded in his ship while the broker hired a armed escort to follow his ship or one of his decoys on the return trip. And it was true... he was a loner. "Okay, first of all, I mend this stuff well enough to keep using it, and it lasts. Secondly... I don't have a wife, remember? No, for real, I don't."

The broker looked askance at Cade Freswell like he'd walked in carrying bug corpses instead of sweet, hyperprecious Vertanium. "Maybe you should." He scribbled down a brief note on a piece of virtual paper and passed it to Cade. "If anything, this code is getting stale, you need to come up with something new... Also: maybe it IS high time you opened your heart up."

Cade read the paper, then frowned. "No girl will seriously share the kind of load we take on in the fields when we mine for those precious grains. I'd have to retire first... and I don't feel like retiring..." He tapped the paper, causing it to flare up and vanish, its contents now unreadable bits in the office room's ventilation.

The broker shrugged, his mask concealing his facial expressions and the actual qualities of his voice, but not the tone of his voice. "Then at least check out the Bot Shop. They just had a nice cargo come in from Earth. Maybe get you some nice ass even if it has to be plastic."

Cade wrinkled his nose. "Dude, I get my kicks above the waist. mainly from turning my muscles into aching pieces of meat. I don't need a sexbot in my little refuge."

The Broker shrugged. "Come on, man. Live a little. no man ever died wishing they'd worked the mine-fields longer. You'll have plenty of time anyway, we're having problems with our refueling pumps. You'll have to queue up for your turn."

Cade Freswell was... not happy. "Can I leaf a few of those Humanics into your hands to get me a queue skip?"

"Nope, nada can do, Cade," The Broker sighed. "The Fuel Cartel won't let me run stuff like that. you'll have to wait a day in this damned station... Maybe you should just chill for a day before you go back home, have a few good drinks, see a movie from the past few years that you haven't watched, do some shopping. You know, actually be human for a while instead of a nonstop machine that sucks in dirt-cheap miner rations and throws up gobs of Vertanium..."

Cade nods. "That's how how I mine the stuff... but you're right, I think I'll live it up a little, maybe spend a million friviolously."

---

That had been a good balcony seat in a good movie hall, Cade had reflected. The steak was probably something faking beef rather than actual cow flesh, but this far away from Earth, only the absolutely decadent could afford to flash freeze and bring actual animal meat from Earth all the way across the Expanse from the frontier out here...

He stretched his arms. He'd gotten a pair of new hardwearing boots, a decent jumpsuit from the same shop that had sold him his current wear all those years ago... Cade Freswell blinked as he noticed the neon signage of the "Bot Shop". It said "Kinkaide's Ferrous Friends", but everyone had thought it was a stupid name for a shop. The shop itself wasn't stupid though - he knew from the decoys they'd been contracted to supply him with every jump that it was a good place for artificially intelligent bots. They were probably even loading up decoys into his ship to fire out on his jumps home right now as he stood there...

Cade breathed deeply and walked in. As usual, Kinkaide was at his desk, the scruffy middle-aged salesman that he was. Everyone was scruffy in this area, but Kinkaide took it to a strangely attractive level, attracting the few women who passed through this place.

Kinkaide clasped his hands, sensing a potential sale... "And how are the decoys working out for you, Mr Freswell?"

Cade nodded tiredly. "They work a charm, nobody's followed me all the way home since I started letting them out every few jumps from the dispenser you sold me. Shame they cost a bit to reload everytime I get in here."

Kinkaide grinned filthily as he took this in. "Well, those decoys ARE jump capable for two or three jumps each, and they all look the same as your ship on multiple signatures unless someone's crazy enough to open a hatch and stare at it with their naked eyes... but nobody does that here. You're paying for good engineering."

Cade looked around and nodded. "Yeah well... I'd like some other kind of... good engineering... I hear you've got in some new companionship droids from home?"

Kinkaide clapped and laughed. "BOY DO I. There's still a lot of decent pickings even after the usual rush we get from the well off and the other miners... you have no idea how lonely it gets out there in the mine-fields, am I right?"

Cade slapped a hand to his face... "Mr Kinkaide, I think you'll find... that I'm painfully acquainted with that aspect of the work after twenty years... You can't sleep or have fun for long with money, so I thought maybe I'd invest in something more long-term..."

Kinkaide gently eased Cade down one of the corridors of his shoppe. "The bank's a few minutes down from here, but I suspect that's not what you really want... Let me show you some of the stock we have..."

---

It had been an interesting half an hour looking over the plastic lovers the shop had brought in, catering to various types of tastes... carefully made up but fragile little songbirds for the retired filthy rich and moguls, cheap and cheerful half-pints dressed in mining gear ready to go in more ways than one, bookish little librarians who turned out to be rakes... it was a nice summary of humanity in terms of what it wanted, but none of it was what he wanted...

Then he blinked. Somewhere in the mix was a small vending machine with several archaic looking communicators plugged in and charging, and a token reader to one side for scanning banking tokens against... The branding on the machine read "Arendtcore" and it was a machine that claimed to be selling "Edelweiss - elite companionship androids for the most discerning busy man"... The machine was charging a million credits for a consult, refundable against the cost of a unit if one chose to buy the actual thing, a fact it swapped out with video of someone cooking, cleaning, and looking strangely desirable...

Cade Freswell stared... those pouty lips, the sensuously shaped bodies... The machine proceeded to brag that the cost of an Edelweiss came with virtually everything one would need for it for the next fifty years, hence the atrocious price tag... It was certainly atrocious... for a tenth of the consult fee, he could walk out with one of the better androids that was already in the store. This company was literally asking him to spend ten times at much just talking about what he desired, with no promise that he would be able to spend the other nine million credits they promised as a ceiling for most orders...

He had a billion burning a hole in his pocket, even after he'd ordered the expansions he wanted for his base last month... perhaps he should live large.

Kinkaide gasped as Cade slapped his bank token on the machine, causing it to mark one of the communicators with a flashing light... Cade Freswell picked it up, and noted that it only had one big red button below its screen. Presumably there was only one number you ever needed to call with this toy...

Cade looked at Kinkaide as he appreciated the careful build for what was basically a communicator that could only dial one number... "This is awfully expensive... you get many buyers?"

Kinkaide laughed. "Aw shit, no. They didn't even ship any product, in fact. Just this phone thingy. But they're good for it... I've had two buyers in the past few years, and the Arendtcore people credit commissions to me if folks buy after the call... And they've both been incredibly happy people, those two guys. The happiest in the station I've ever seen even.... You just need a satellite connection to start with."

Cade stared at Kinkaide. That was either one heck of an oversell, or he'd gotten a bargain... That was the thing when you could spend a lot on something, you were either getting suckered, or a really great deal. If you spent only a smattering of Humanics on boots, you were more likely to complain or have them wear out prematurely than if you spent a grand...

He decided not to make the call yet while he was on the station - there were ears in the wall, and while he assumed the encrypton on these things would be top notch, he decided not to risk it till he could call over gear he had full control off for at least the first few hops...

---

It was several days later, after a long shift, when Cade had decided to make the call after a long shower and a quiet meal of synthesised beef stroganoff and plain probiotic yoghurt formulated specially for boosting the body against the wilds of the reddish sky and soil he toiled in. There was sufficient oxygen and soil not to need oxygen for long periods outside, but he still wore a mask to guard against possible miner's lung - there was no point in keeping all the Humanics he had if he was going to be unable to enjoy them, so spending when necessary was a thing that made sense to him.

He sat there in what had become the living room, but was basicall just a few potted plants, a couple of music cartridges and a player for them to save on the exhorbitant costs of Spotify streaming even from the nearest local Spotify server in the constellation that had sprung up.... The daytime loomed outside the hab, but the windows that showed it happening were all screens stuck on the walls and wired into external cameras to avoid a possible breach into the wilds.

Cade Freswell smiled as he noticed the few plants he had planted outside the hab were beginning to grow enough under the shade and cover that the area had necessitated. Then he breathed deeply, and punched the red button on the communicator.

There was no response beyond "Establishing Fastball Connection..." on the screen. Cade whistled... this communicator probably had to phone home first to grab the required codes, but it was now about to do a direct faster-than-light call on someone else's tab? Perhaps eavesdropping didn't need to be a concern... these Arendtcore guys seemed a bit obsessive with security and privacy if this was the expense they were willing to take to listen to a customer, albeit one who had spent a bomb on a mere consult

After a minute, someone's face appeared on the tiny screen. He seemed very fresh and attentive, and he was grinning, like one would when one smelt the scent of a big sale coming in... "Welcome to the Arendtcore Concierge Line. I see that you're interested in one of our... Edelweiss units?... Mr erm... how may I address you briefly?"

Cade Freswell nodded attentively at the communicator. "My name's Cade Freswell, and yes, I just blew a cool million Humanics on this rink-a-dinky Fastball communicator with only one number diallable, just to get your ear on that. Listen... I'm good for as much as you can potentially charge me for it, but first... you gotta convince me that I'm okay with not just letting a million Humanics burn, because that's a lot of cash even to me."

The rep grinned, "Certainly", and started carefully walking Cade through the offer and the options he could customise it with...

Cade paused him briefly. "Actually, I'm a miner, and my lifestyle is a bit... harsh... is this zero-maintenance thing you advertised for real?"

"Certainly! We'll ship you absolutely everything you need to start things up and keep things going for at least half a century. Of course, there'll be another charge for another fifty at the end, or you could pay earlier to extend our coverage... ten million humanics for a companion who only gives you mostly fun worries for fifty years. that's the deal, Mr Freswell... In fact, we can design some added resilience into your unit the same way we add stuff for other folks who want a Edelweiss... it's a custom build from top to toe."

The discussion continued for what seemed like a long time, before Cade nodded and rested his banking token against the communicator to send the funds they requested into escrow. The bank would have some interesting words with him about his two huge expenditures this week, but he didn't care... either this worked, or he'd have a laugh about the scam that took some money he could afford to lose off of him in about six months...

The rep smiled. "Thanks for purchasing with us... now, I'm going to have to ask you to keep this communicator around for... oh, the next five decades... you'll need it at least one more time."

Cade blinked. then looked at the communicator. "And if you guys move house or have a better way to get in touch?"

The rep grinned. "Oh, we'll keep in touch. In fact, we already know where you live so we can deliver the product right to your doorstep. You just have to make sure you have that empty room and power conduit available and we'll supply the rest of it."

Cade went 'ugh'... "Actually, I prefer my privacy and for as few people as possible to know where I live because... I have really precious stuff here I'd like to keep away from other folks... Could I get it delivered to Freedom Station to ..."

---

The Broker stared at Cade, then at the large Cargo container. then at Cade again. "What did you say you bought again, Mr Freswell?"

Cade was noncommital. He'd sworn they wouldn't send anything big, but this was big enough to hold a new minibuggy to drive around in the caves in in. He preferred to be more careful with his footsteps and the illuminators he jack-knifed into the walls of the cave he excavated in every few metres, so no, it clearly was NOT a mining buggy. "Stuff. I bought stuff. Can you fit this in my cargo ship?"

The Broker nodded, the ship was always half empty when Cade left Freedom Station on his quarterly visits back home to his frontier hab-home. With this new anonymous cargo container, it was slightly pinging on the edge of full, but the ship would still fly safely since it wasn't exceeding the recommended load excessively. "Well, yeah, I can get it on..."

"Then do it. I'll leave as soon as the fuel and decoy loads are all in. And... erm... thank you for all the help you've given me all these years" He reached out a hand to shake... The Broker had been absolutely firm on it - this was his last time working with Cade... the next time he met, there would be a new face to read in and take over. There would be a new mask, a new face, and hopefully the same level of trust as before...

---

Cade spent the better part of a day carefully lugging in the components from the cargo container into his house, and setting them up as the "First Steps" video had instructed him to, before lugging in an even denser and heavier load labelled "First Assembly materials". He flicked the switch on the three-chambered mass printer he'd just installed, marvelling briefly at how his money had gotten him something that normally cost half as much as he'd paid. The printer alone was visible, but where was the doll he'd ordered?

As if to respond to him, the printer suddenly yelped cheerfully. "Hello, hello hello, Mr Freswell, I'm your friendly elite-class mass printer, and today I'll be guiding you through the final steps necessary to obtain the full value of your purchase! A small orb mounted in th controls to one side stared at him, presumably a visual sensor. "First, I'll need you to insert all the items in the First Asssembly box into the red-painted chamber as inputs... All of it."

Cade did so. Ingots of various metals and plastics, rolls of synthetic thread, plus even some petroleum crude, and a small chunk of some sort of gem- where were they going to go, even? - before he stood back and wiped his sweat off his brow. The printer weighed the total of all the items that had been placed and compared it against its data files... It was an exact match, just off by a gram of feathers, really... "Splendid... Damn shame we don't have vertanium lying about. But this stuff's enough to make you a demigoddess for your home."

Cade spoke up on hearing the superprecious metal mentioned. "How much of it did you need, Mr Printer?"

The printer hummed and hawwed. "As much as you can spare... 5 grams would be nice, but god knows with the prices of Vertanium being what they are there's no way we can ask anyone to supply that much from their own stores."

Cade raised a finger. "Do NOT start doing anything yet." He ran out of the room the printer was in, quickly checking his manifests... he had already had 5 grams of Vertanium on hand from the past week's mining... a whole week of mining, for a friviolous and possible waste... Heck with it.

Cade Freswell hit a few buttons, causing a nugget of about 5 grams of Vertanium to pop out into a hopper, which he scooped up and quickly walked back into the room he'd set aside, throwing the nugget into the red chamber with the other raw materials. "Funny thing happened... I think I had five grams of that Vertanium stuff you wanted..."

There was a happy, weepy tone from the mass printer's AI. "Oh. My God. Where do you even... never mind... I was going to say I was about to print you a demigoddess in three days. can you wait two days longer for a goddess?"

Cade rolled his eyes. He knew Vertanium could do incredible things to electronics that had been carefully designed to incorporate it properly, but this was the first time he'd seen a design that happened to need several whole grams instead of just a nano-grammed sliver of the stuff. He didn't know what the printer was promising exactly... but five days... he could wait five days. "Only if you promise to let me watch the build process without touching..."

"Why else did we put in clear glass in my build chambers, you silly boy?" The printer rejoindered. "Now, may I have your permission to proceed?"

Cade nodded and gave the printer's AI a thumbs up. "Get going, you silly kniggit. I'm going to go rest a bit, lugging you in has been a PAIN."

"Well... EXCUSE ME for being a heavyweight!"

---

The next few days came and went slowly... Every day, as Cade came in from the mine-fields, he would first get himself cleaned up just in case he brought home something nasty, get a quick medical scan for the same reason, eat a simple meal... then go into the room where the new mass printer was working non-stop.

There was always something new in the green chamber, and the mass printer would occasionally prompt him to help remove the items so it had more space to work on the next items... some light women's clothing, a bottle of some sort of murky "Digester Initializer" juice with a loud "NOT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION" warning on it, a few pieces of costume jewellery incorporating the dark blue-green gem, a small but unusually thick data microdisc of some sort... A wig atop a small head standee made of wood had been added today as well, every fiber carefully woven into its scalp a string of gossamer gold.

"Should I just leave these here in the room with you, Mr Printer?" Cade had asked.

"Sure..." the printer had replied.

Cade stared at the gradually growing pile of odds and ends, presumably all for the android... He turned to look at the blue chamber... it had been three days, and there was a vaguely humanoid skeleton of sorts standing in the gel as lasers traced and laid out something else micron by micron. It was strangely beautiful, he realised, as his fingers trailed along the glass casing, watcing the lasers lay out lines of cabling and print out circuitry around the skeleton...

The printer had noticed this. "Just two more days, Mr Freswell. in two days, you'll come home to a less empty house."

"Well, it certainly hasn't been empty with you around." Cade observed. The printer had been a good conversationalist somehow, on top of doing all this assembly work, having engaged him with news from home on planet Earth these past few weeks as well as discussing his hopes and thoughts ever so often.

"I don't plan on staying awake after I'm done, Mr Freswell... You can wake me up for tech support and printing stuff for more serious damage, but other than that... it's probably easier to just lock the door to this room and turn off the power, really."

Cade went... "Oh. Well, you'll always be welcome in my house." He noted, smiling up at the camera orb.

"... the gesture is really appreciated. but they'll probably send a upgrade before the fifty years are up." There was a sigh from the machine. "progress marches on and on and on, they say."

Cade leaned against the doorway briefly as he started leaving the mass printer to do its appointed work. "but can I at least come in and talk to you ever so often?"

The printer laughed. "You do realise I don't have a constant connection to Earth... all the news I gave you is several weeks old, Mr Freswell."

Cade nodded slowly. "Yes... but usually the news is a lot staler than that... and knowing Earth is still kind of around despite all the ways we've messed it up... that gives me hope for humanity. heck, I'd really like to go back home in a few decades... This Little Sanctuary thing, do you have space for a retiree?"

---

Two days later, Cade had to wipe his hands carefully and use up a perfectly good body towel.

He had gasped as he watched the blue chamber slowly drain off its supporting gel, staring at the beautiful girl that now existed in front of her... She had a voluptuous body, thick and bouncy in all the right bits, with slightly engorged dark pink nipples and a vulva capped with a slight bit of shaven golden fuzz. The face on her tall body was that of a woman child, the one that looked like one a rake might adopt to con a man into dropping all his clothes and his money, framed in more of that same golden blonde hair cascading down the sides of her head and onto her back and her large breasts...

He breathed deeply to catch up with his lack of breathing, then carefully touched her... he realised that "Sherry" had probably been a wonderful name for her, and that he needed to get her a towel because she was still slimy from being immersed in the scaffolding gel for days... He ran out of the printer room and came back with a towel to wrap her body in before carefully lifting her and resting her against the other side of the room.

He dug in the pile of doodads the green chamber had spat out over the past few days, idly noting he would have to order and print a few more cloths for Sherry on the mass printer that he already had in place for repairs and occasional experiments in the garage. He fished out the data microdisc, then carefully felt behind Sherry's right ear for an indentation and a mole according to the First Day instructions sheet the mass printer from Arendtcore had sputtered out as one of its final acts.

He found them, and carefully pushed down on the mole for a few seconds. This caused the skin around the indentation to part slightlym exposing a slot... The microdisc fitted in nicely, and the indentation sealed up, no sign of it ever having existed remaining. He read through the sheet, carefully clasping a necklace with some of the greenish blue gemstone machined into a lovely teardrop threaded into it around Sherry's bare neck. As the gemstone hit her chest, it started pulsing with light slowly, like the indicator lamp on one of his tools as he worked the caves. Then the rings. one for her, and one for him...

Cade Freswell blinked and blushed at this bit. Perhaps it was an engagement or wedding ring- OW! He winced as the ring intended for him suddenly give him a brief sharp pain as it went on his finger. "Biometric registration... it's just the biometric registration for security purposes..." He breathed slowly, watching his sleeping princess lying against the wall. If they parted too long... like say, more than 24 hours, this unit would gradually start shutting down and giving off a alert beacon that would let him find her anywhere. It was a Fastball beacon... pretty much the last thing anyone would think to use the protocol for, given how expensive it was to even make a call of a few seconds every half hour or so. Completely jam resistant as well - someone at Arendtcore clearly prized making sure he knew where she was always.

He cuddled Sherry in his arms, enjoying the beauty of her sleeping face... It had been a nice way to start the morning, the promise of a busy evening being held out to him. Still, he had to go work... He checked his communicator one more time to make sure he had properly set up the Fastball beacon locator on it, then kissed her on her pouty dull pink lips... The gel tasted slightly of lemon and strawberries, and Cade hoped it wouldn't upset his stomach or give him some sort of weird cancer or disease from a little exposure to it.

He looked at her one last time before he left the doorway, leaving the door to the printer room unlocked for when she woke.

---

The first sign of life Sherry had shown had been two hours later... Cade blinked as he downed his drill and scanner tool to check his communicator. Her location had changed at some point after an hour and a half since he'd left the home-hab, and she was now in the living room module. He wondered what he was doing, then chuckled and went back to work. He hadn't allowed the home-hab to permit entry to anybody to anybody else usually, so Sherry would be confined safely to the rooms of the home hab. There was no way she could get into trouble... just in case anyways...

Cade fired up the remote camera access tool app to check the cameras in his home an hour later. He found Sherry carefully examining a pot of plants in the living room, wearing the little red mnidress the mass printer had coughed up as her first clothing item. It danced dangerously as she walked around, occasionally bending forward to examine one of the flowers in closer detail, allowing the hem of her dress to ride dangerously onto her derriere. her necklace flickering ever so often as if to signal that she was thinking.

Cade Freswell blushed hard. By all indications, ten million Humanics had gotten him this stranger in his house, and certainly, a very good view to go with his rations... he calmly chewed on a bagel with long-shelf-life meat and cheese, occasionally toggling the app between giving him a decent framerate or showing a nice picture a few times a second... neither mode of which had sound enabled - he hadn't thought to spend on the upgrade for the app for that yet.

Sherry suddenly sneezed. Pollen in the flowers? She said something to herself, then stuck her tongue out and winked cheekily to nobody in particular as she scratched her fingers through her long, lush blonde hair, before taking off her square-rimmed glasses to wipe them briefly before putting them back on.

Cade laughed. He HAD to get that app upgrade. it would also let him call home and speak to her through any working speaker linked into the camera network... he so badly wanted to do that... to hear her voice. But even with the upgrade, he still couldn't touch her...

Cade found himself aching... It was probably his wallet crying over how much he had splurged so friviously, he told himself... still, the next four hours went by achingly slowly as he resisted checking the phone on every little update of the Fastball beacon embedded in her, or the cameras watching her every move in the house in realtime. He still made sure to be careful as he downed tools for the day, making sure everything was stowed safely before he walked out of the cave, his footsteps a little more hurried than they had been only yesterday.

---

Cade respected the sensible speed limit of the mine-fields as he crossed the rocky ground, before carefully ditching it outside his home and running into the airlock. it was a pretty fast model, but Cade suddenly felt as if it wasn't fast for some reason. The inner door cycled open, allowing Cade to ditch his mining gear into the locker for a thorough overnight clean, before he crossed into the house....

Sherry was sitting at the kitchenette table, a small dinner ration pouch on the table in front of her. She had laid her head atop the plastic countertop to rest, eyes closed... She heard something and opened her eyes, slowly sitting up while rubbing the sleep out of one of her eyes. "Cade! .... I missed you so much... Did you have a good day at work?" She squealed... that voice was going to kill him with its adorability, Cade swore, as he set aside the fact that this was the very first time they had truly met. "... I... erm... missed you too Sherry..." He walked carefully over to her, and kissed her gingerly, not wanting to hug her till he had a good shower. "Did you just reheat that meal for me, dear?"

Sherry tilted her head to one side. "Five minutes ago! It's still nice and hot..." Cade Freswell paused as he felt the package... She had indeed pulled the reheater cord on the pouch within the last half hour at least... It suddenly occurred to him that he had had a update from her Fastbeacon ten minutes ago... Maybe it wasn't just a one-sided link, he mused, as he ripped open the laminated pouch...

It had some freshly baked Chinajapese meat buns, still steamy and warm in the bag, plus a small packet of some pink fruity drink that was somehow chilled down nicely from having its heat stolen by the reheater in its separate compartment. In the same hot compartment where the buns had been placed was also a small box of shrivelled berries, now slowly plumping back up as the ice they were in started melting and rehydrating them.

Cade Freswell normally ended the dinner with dessert last, but tonight... he felt like being a naughty little man. He grinned as he opened the box of berries and carefully fished out one of them, a bright red orb pincered between his fingers as they made their way to her lips. "Here's one for your mouth..." Sherry was designed to require only a standard inductive recharger under her at least once a week, but she could eat and digest small amounts of food for societal engagement... So the berry was okay... There was a faint scent of stale socks and mint still on her breath, presumably from chugging the initializer to start the culture that broke down everything she ate within her artificial gut. He would have to follow it up with some mouthwash, definitely.

Sherry blinked slowly as she watched the berry, then closed her eyes as her lips parted to take the berry, her tongue lapping at the orb and Cade's fingertips gently before she strongly sucked, drawing the orb in. She used her hands to pull Cade's hand out of her mouth before she started chewing.... "Fresh", she observed. "I don't know how they keep fruit fresh in these ration packs..."

Cade laughed. It wasn't fresh really, more like 'rehydrated from a mummified state'... still... He chewed on his meal slowly, sipping at the pinkish herbal tea as Sherry watched him. Occasionally, she randomly said something as if to make idle chatter, to which Cade could only nod or shake his head because his mom had taught him it was rude to talk with his mouth full.

---

Sherry had offered to bin the empty ration pouch for him, where it would be recycled into mulch as a biodegradable plastic, and then fed into the small aeroponics aerator that fed his small fruit and vegetable garden in one of the rooms leading out of the garage. She had clearly mapped out the house and now had a pretty good understanding of where the important stuff to her was.

Cade sat down in the living room, reflecting on how strange it still felt to have Sherry alive and in his house... this strange little machine fashioned into the shape of a sinuously bodied goddess, as she slowly blinked while walking over to join him on the sofa, listening along to the soft music he'd put on. There would be no movies or streamed video (an occasional luxury given the cost of getting it all the way to where he lived), no, he was too busy just... watching... watching her as she looked on ahead at the visualizer on the screen, her slightly curled lashes flexing as she blinked once in a while. Her lips closed firmly for a bit, before relaxing, parting ever so slightly.

Cade decided to be a little cheeky, resting his head against Sherry's chest, and was rewarded with a sweet rhythmic thumping... A heartbeat? He closed his eyes, and the exhaustion of the long day seemed to ebb gradually as he listened to her, the beat thumping firmly even through the fabric of her minidress. "Sherry sat there wordlessly, stroking Cade's hair as they lazed on the sofa for what seemed like the longest time...

Cade started moving again after a while, hugging her and kissing... then they started getting a little friskier as Sherry pawed a hand beneath his shirt, her fingers gliding against the dried sweat from his exertions... He hadn't meant to get her dirty, but Cade supposed that he could just shower up with her later... Soon, they were fully naked, Sherry riding atop Cade's lap as they continued kissing, his hands exploring her body, enjoying the plumpness of her breasts and the toned firmless of her body.... She tugged his pants down and began to apply herself onto his swelling cock, riding him with a strange earnestness, her mouth mostly reduced to moans and whimpers as she made love to him...

Sherry shuddered, her body falling back slightly with her mouth wide open as she let out a small moan finally after feeling him come into her... a small death for a small machine... She slowly pulled herself back onto Cade's bare chest, kissing it ever so often. Cade decided he'd had enough of being filthy, and carefully carried his new bride to the bathroom and into the cubicle. it had been a little oversized before, but now, it felt just right with the two of them standing inside, wrapped in each other's embrace as they shared the bath cream and hairwash. They almost dirtied each other again a few times, but got through it properly...

---

Cade made a small frame with his fingers, looking at Sherry through them as they sat together in the bedroom. He needed to get a bigger bed, he realised. This wasn't just a one-man home-hab anymore. there was a second warm bedmate with him, one who needed the space and the room as well for a inductive recharge pad. He had carefully laid out the exposed pad on the floor, and she wasn't too uncomfy as she lay there, allowing him to look over the side at her loveliness...

Sherry tilted her face to watch Cade back... "I had a fun time today, honey..."

Cade whimpered briefly. "Not every single day, you'll kill me if you do that. but ... let's do this again very soon..." He crawled off his bed a little to kiss, watching her adoring face up close, before he turned off the main lights in the module and fell asleep.

Chapter 32 - The Miner's Wife - Part 2: A wedding, and A Malfunction

Cade wanted a wedding.

Oh,he'd already put a ring on her finger, and the matching one was on his own finger, carefully concealed beneath his miner's gloves whenever he went to work. He almost never took it off. It acted as a sort of beacon for Sherry Freswell, acting her earlier to his presence. Sneaking up on her had been next to impossible with it on, but still he had refused to take it off for any reason besides sleep or cleaning up after work. But after several months and two more deliveries of fresh Vertanium ores, he'd come to the same conclusion repeatedly...

Sherry had agreed in principle to it... "For some reason, my mind fogs a little when I try to recall our marriage..." She frowned. "Perhaps a second ceremony would refresh it..." She had worked wonderfully all these months, never having a headache in the mornings on the few times he'd taken a cheat day and lazed in bed, wanting to indulge her... no outages or downtimes except for her sleep at night almost every night.

Her perfection extended to many things, sadly cooking was not one of them. Cade had shrugged. People didn't cook outdoors if they could help it, the food might get alien stuff in it and one might fall ill, and fresh food for cooking wasn't something that got delivered to a grocer at any of the stations. The richest of them had to order things well in advance if they wanted actual home cooking - money didn't allow them to violate the laws of physics for cargo delivery - and even they settled for higher-grade precooked foods. To the credit of the producers who shipped into the frontier, most of the food was healthy, and you had to deliberately do things to make them more decadently unhealthy, like fry them with a little oil you'd spent great expense in securing and transporting.

But she reheated foods according to the instructions properly, she cleaned the hab, she washed his home clothes and miner's underclothings despite the abject reek of the latter after several hours enclosed in a safety suit...

And Sherry listened. She listened an awful lot, staying silent as Cade spoke at length about some topic or other, only pausing him to tell him she was still watching, still listening. Her actual contributions were far and few between, but her ears were blackholes, sucking up every thing he said...

The perfect companion for a lonely miner.

---

The Broker had introduced Shu, his understudy... The days where Brokers stayed perfectly anonymous were coming to an end, the Broker had felt, and he had decided to break with tradition. Shu wore a mask with patterns inspired by Chinajapese operas, rather than the plain blankness and the unpronounceable logo each of them bore on their forehead.

Shu bowed... then blinked when Cade Freswell asked for the special order he'd had the Broker place. The old Broker laughed and patted Shu's back. "This one is on me, little Shu... you shouldn't have to start your relationship with Cade with an unforced error..." He walked off, then came back after a short while with a parcel. "The little something you ordered, Cade... you DO realise how much time and resources it takes to get a seamstress all the way back on Earth to make these things the traditional way..."

Cade blushed hard for the first time in years in front of the Broker. This was the second Broker he'd had... the first had been pure professionalism, but vaguely inhuman. Same mask design, different logos. This one had been a friend, and he would probably miss his wisecracking. The rules didn't even allow them to swap contacts for after he'd faded away - no loose ends for people with malicious intent to pull on. The Broker would remember Cade, and Cade would remember him, but they would never recognise each other on the streets ever again once he'd retired.

"I know... And this is pretty much the last thing you're doing for me too."

"I remember a sour younger man, Mr Freswell. You seem to have cleaned up a lot since, especially this past half year. I don't know exactly what happened, but I do know that you're happier now than you were a decade ago." The Broker had observed.

"Well, I found something wonderful... and it was because I'd listened to your advice then..." Cade noted.

"I don't want to hear the specifics on that, Mr Freswell..." Cade could almost hear a smile in The Broker's voice, despite the impassive mask and the modulation of the voice changer. "Lord knows I give you LOTS of advice, and half the time, you ignore me at your peril. Well, you've certainly had enough examples of what happens when you do that, so I won't harp on this time you did... whenever that was." The Broker had a slight inkling of course... but he preferred the mystery. He wasn't going to press and ask Cade.

Cade bowed in respect one last time, a gesture returned by the Broker, and then he left to oversee the final loading of his ship.

---

Cade snuck into the house and into his bedroom, enjoying the solace briefly as he managed to somehow duck past Sherry without alerting him to his homecoming. He opened the parcel and smiled... A handsome little jet black and grey tuxedo for the wedding man, fitted for him right down to the itty bitty little red bowtie, and a full bridal gown outfit designed for demureness in the public eye, and rakishness in the bedroom with a few things stripped off by the lovely woman wearing it...

He knew who would be wearing it... He called out for Sherry to come in and carefully handed her the gown. "... I think with the long weekend and the Union requiring us to take all of it off, tonight would be wonderful for... a little reaffirmation of our vows to each other tonight would be wonderful. Sherry, would you be okay with it?"

Sherry blushed bright red, stammering at a loss for words as she took the gown off Cade. "Cade Freswell, honey... you know how to make a woman very, very happy... Perhaps you should change into your own wedding groom tux in the bathroom... give me a little time with these things, they seem complex to put on"

Cade Freswell grinned as he brushed past his wife... "oh, I don't think they're that hard to put on. That's the point of the design I chose... they're EASY to put on, and EASY to take off..." There was a little mischief in his voice as he explained that... but he wouldn't be drawn on it ducking into the bathroom and fantasising about how wonderful she would look in it...

---

Cade tapped his feet on the carpetting, fidgeting nervously... He hadn't been able to invite a human pastor anywhere in the sector, and he was an orphaned child since the day he'd been born. This was a shotgun wedding, and he'd only managed to invite a retired minerbot who'd somehow gotten into religion... Goddess of Existence, apparently. The pastorbot was overseeing this ceremony between the two of them over a video link, being unable to travel all the way to Cade's little hovel to minster over them because of Cade's paranoia. There was going to be a reception, of course, but it would be full of the Church's regular goers invited at the last minute to fill the pews, and also to drink and dine on Cade's expense.

He mused about this briefly... a robot getting religion... they said religiousity was the result of a brain malfunction in humans, but what did you say if a robot evaluated all of it with a logical mind... and somehow determined that God/Goddess was real and worth spreading the word of? He wasn't in a mood to share this with the priest though, just wanting to focus on the wedding. He didn't care about the strangers all dining on his Humanics either. He was an extremely rich and happy man, and he could afford to share the love... and maybe a little of the joy.

He heard the faint click of heels on the hab floor and turned around. The pastor's jaw dropped for a moment, but he recovered faster than Cade...

Sherry slowly walked in, wreathed in floral lace and velvet, her skirt trailing a small road of velvet behind her as she walked towards Cade, her head bowed down slightly, her eyes mostly closed behind the sheer lace veil dripping from the flowers drown the front of her face. She said nothing as she walked up to Cade, clutching a small bunch of artificial flowers in her hands, now wreathed in even more floral lace courtesy of matching long gloves...

Cade looked at the aritifical flowers, then at Sherry... He had asked for natural flowers, but this WAS the frontier... still, he'd appreciated the irony... an artificial wife with artificial flowers... the thought didn't anger him at all, but strangely... pleased him? somehow?

The pastorbot made a small sound like a cough, and started the ceremony. "Do you, Cade Freswell, take this beautiful and wonderful woman to be your spouse, for better and for worse, till the end of your living days, regardless of where they may take you?"

Cade closed his eyes and nodded. "Aye, I do. I do take her for the rest of my life, and for eternity if the Goddess permits..." He recited the words, then opened his eyes and looked at Sherry.

Sherry smiled a little back at him, but kept looking downwards.

The pastorbot paused for a moment, then asked... "Sherry, do you take this handsome and wonderful man to be your spouse, for better and for worse, till the end of your living days, regardless of where they may take you?"

Sherry looked up at Cade through her veil. "Aye, I do. I do take him for- for-.... I do take-..." She started stuttering for a moment. "I do take him for the rest of my life, and for eternity if the Goddess permits."

The pastor paused... for an oddly longer time... then he snapped at the two of them. "Well, don't just stand there like a pair of oafs. KISS."

Cade needed no further prompting, carefully shifting himself up close to Sherry and lifting her veil to kiss her deeply... as he did, the pastor yelped at somewhere offscreen. "A new happy married couple... and now, let's break out the party hats and the food!" The signal cut off after a few more seconds as the pastor started to tidy up his notes for the wedding, leaving Cade and Sherry Freswell to enjoy their renewed vows...

---

There were other things that Sherry wanted to enjoy, Cade found out later in his bedroom...

The seamstress had indeed been right - the wedding gown had indeed been designed for ease of wear and ease of disrobing... it had taken only a few seconds for Sherry to unclip and send the skirt that had trailed behind her on the bedroom floor, revealing a pair of long lace stockings on her legs and the bodysuit that she was wearing under the jacket and skirt... She climbed on top of Cade as he fell into bed, and they began to make love again, her lips giving him special service as she sucked on his shaft for the first time in several months of being his de facto wife, as if the ceremony had liberated her to be more rakish... Cade moaned loudly as he felt the immense suction and lack of gagging from Sherry as she stuck herself to the hilt, letting the tip tap the back of her throat, before pulling back up... then going back down again, for a few more times.

Sherry stopped, and started climbing further up, her gloved hands carefully unbuttoning Cade's tux as she put her vulva up against his now stiffened cock, before sliding onto it and riding him the same way he'd preferred after long days at work... her on top, managing his erection and lengthening the time he spent grazing her innerlands before he came into her...

Cade was immensely happy, smiling as he looked up at his wife... "Sherry, you make me so happy."

Sherry closed her eyes. "You make m-me so hap.happy too, Ca- Ca- Cade..."

Cade looked a little uneasily at her stuttering. "Sh... Sherry, honey? you feeling okay there?"

Sherry started twitching, a faint hard whirring audible as her Noise Reduction system failed for some reason. Her eyes opened widely as her head shuddered left and right, her eyes still locking onto Cade as her centre of attraction even as she started to act less human. "I've never been b.b.better C.Cade."

There was a series of bad sounding beeps as Sherry's eyes defocused and looked upwards for no apparent reason... "Let me be the perfect wife, the perfect wife, the perfect wife for y.you...." She repeated herself through a random bounce of register changes, her hands opening and closing slowly in empty grasps as she bobbed her chest up and down. "the perfect wife. The perfect wife. The perfect wife wife wifewifewife..."

Sherry struggled as she malfunctioned, before crashing totally, her breasts planting themselves on his chest as her head jerked hard, turning all the way to one side as her mouth opened and closed erratically, The pendant on her chest flashing yellow as she did so. "Wurr wurrb wulll bwurr Currrr blrrrr..." She announced nonsensically, as Cade could hear her microdisk drive whirr downwards to a halt, her body following along as she ceased to function. Her pendant hung limply from her neck, now flashing red, as if in a bad state...

Cade frowned... He reached a hand to Sherry's cheeks... "Sherry, please? Speak to me?"

Sherry didn't respond at all. She was totally inert and lifeless... Cade bit his lip and crashed on the bed. He was about to get laid on the best night of his life, but clearly technical issues had decided to interfere... He sighed and reached for the bedside lamp. He'd spend tomorrow working on this. right now, he was just... too tired to care.

The room went black as he cuddled his slowly cooling wife, her face frozen in a wide eyed stare.

Chapter 33 - The Miner's Wife - Part 3: Another Kind Of Wedding, and A Life-long Curse

Cade Freswell had wanted a wedding. He wound up with a malfunctioning wife instead. Fortunately, he'd remembered the Mass Printer the Arendtcorp order had been printed on and carried her into the room where he'd installed it first thing in the morning... The AI had taken one look at it, and given brusque instructions. "Take off all her clothing and place her into the blue chamber for a scan," Mr Printer had instructed...

---

Sherry Freswell blinked slowly, her mouth opening and closing like a goldfish's... As she did so, she burbled erratically, like a record skipping along the surface of a ancient record with an improperly underweighed needle. Her voluminous locks had been carefully excised from her head, revealing the complex circuitry that controlled her head motions and speech, as well as read the microdisc her Personality had been etched into...

The Printer grunted briefly as it ran lasers all around the half-functional unit, studying various things... "Uhm... this is funny... the cache memory on this unit's burnt out one of its chips... that usually doesn't happen. errors started accumulating in the data the microdisc was reading into cache and then the machine stopped because there were too many parity errors in a short span of time..."

Cade yelped. "But she was supposed to be zero maintenance!"

The printed paused in mid scan, lasers all going dark... "... .... hahahaha ... you actually believed the marketeers on this? Look, Cade, you're a miner, you KNOW everything that gets used needs maintenance or replacement eventually... it's just that with this design, the replacements can be done right in the home without ever involving Arendtcore, if you know the right skills... and the part design is higher quality, so it doesn't break as often as a mass market model... but it does break. Six months without any bed time on a technician's rack is a pretty decent time to failure..."

Cade sulked and looked away from the printer. "I just thought with the money I'd spent it was for real."

The printer would have patted Cade in commiseration if it could. "Yeah, well... it ain't. Fortunately, you got me, I wear out real slow, and I can do my own self-diagnostics if I start breaking, most of the time. heck, I can even use a backup to print the most critical parts out to fix myself.... at least for the next half-century... so you know..." The printer paused and started using one of the lasers to lase and remove a clearly broken piece of memory. "I can take care of my daughter along with you till then..."

Cade blinked and looked over at the printer.... "So I guess I'm not the only one in the house who feels attached to her, Mr Printer?"

The printer did a small light show with two of its unused laser arms. "Damn straight. I think the logic informs it. I birthed her, so that either makes me her mom, or her dad. and since I don't feel like there's an egg needs crackin' here.... I'm her dad."

Cade stuck out his tongue. "Sure, father in law."

The printer yelped. "Let's not go there. Jesus, your comedy is terrible... all the same, we're fortunate this time not to run into anything that needs Vertanium to fix... It's not like we have 4 grams of for repairing everything on this unit that uses the stuff if it all broke at once."

"Actually..." Cade Freswell raised his hand... "we do."

"And in raw nugget form, like last time?"

"Yes..."

The printer continued to slowly fab a new memory chip in place where the broken chip had existed. "Next you'll tell me you're a miner. I mean, you certainly don't look rich enough to afford Vertanium in actual hundredgram ingots."

Cade went uhm... "Actually, that's were I was about to go."

"... oh... you poor dear... what a curse... perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned the optional vertanium when I first printed her out... Are you really going to spend the rest of your life scrounging little bits of the stuff up for potential critical level failures?" The printer practically sulked somehow without a face.

Cade nodded at the visual sensor orb. "If that's what it takes to keep Sherry alive whenever she breaks... but dear lord, I hope it doesn't happen again this soon."

"Oh, relax, mean time between failures just means some people are luckier than others, and not always all the time..." The printer observed. "Besides, you got lucky and landed on a failure where the fix didn't even need a single nano-gram of the stuff... It paused. "I want you to go busy yourself for a bit. give me an hour to fab and replace everything I've found failing or on the verge of doing so. Maybe get breakfast. you certainly charged in in a hurry this morning, for someone who's supposed to be taking the next few days off..."

Cade nodded and started walking out... he paused at the doorway and looked back at Sherry as she blinked lifelessly, her arms whirring slowly as they went through a few random motions... "Please be careful... I really miss her..."

"Spoken like a fool utterly lost in love, Mr Freswell... but it must be nice to be in that kind of feeling since we know what happens during the good times..."

---

Cade calmly sipped on a box of long-storage-life milk, watching Mr Printer carefully put the finishing touches onto his work as a laser ran along the seam between Sherry's wig and the rest of her head, sealing in the electronics and skull cover, leaving no sign that she was artificial... "Not bad if I do say so myself..." The printer observed... "And done... why don't you take her off me while I go back to sleep..."

"You do that, Mr Printer... and thanks for fixing her for me..." Cade offered, as he shouldered her and lifted her surprisinglyly light frame off the platform, holding her in a sort of princess carry as if she was merely sleeping.

"Anytime... though really, I'd rather you learnt a bit about android repair work when you could... it's just a step forward from maintaining your own gear as a miner, and it might help if I'm not around to do the job..." The printer offered.

"I'll consider... that... ask you for directions then?"

"Sure thing..." the printer offered, just before it decided to shut down for another good long rest...

Cade frowned as he realised he was sold a bit of a lemon relative to what was promised... but it was a good lemon, one with a whiff of strawberries... and to be fair, he loved both kinds of fruits, it just wasn't what he'd been promised when he first signed up. There would be one heck of a discussion with Arendtcore Support about this if he ever got on the Communicator...

He carefully laid Sherry's limp body on her side of the newly purchased Queen-sized bed (i.e. the left), before standing back to view her beautiful body without any interruptions for a moment... She was beautiful when she was alive and doing all sorts of things around him, but this way had its own charms as well, he had to admit to himself - a hyperrealistic but lifeless plastic doll, lying on its back, awaiting his touch to begin reactivation and resumption of its thoughts and deeds... Sure his mining gear had been great too, but he'd never been even one bit aroused by his drill or scanner despite the slight phallic imagery the two tools brought to his work.

He sighed. He was tired really after sleeping poorly all night... He laid down next to her and carefully reached for the mole on the right side of her head, behind her ear. He found it by practiced touch, the concealed button being clearly stiffer than the rest of her soft flesh... He pushed it in for a few seconds, before he heard her whirring upwards slowly. As Sherry whirred faster like a machine starting up, the pendant on her bosom started flashing green against her skin. The whirr was soon pitched so high that he couldn't hear it, as Sherry opened her eyes.

"... Cade? Good afternoon, Cade..." She purred gently as she tilted her head to look at Cade Freswell. "You seem tired, honey... did you sleep poorly last night?"

"I... yeah... had bad sleep.... you erm... fainted last night, remember?" Cade had gotten used to the peculiar way that Sherry Freswell, his adoring wife, went to great ways normally to skirt around her robotic nature... Every less serious technical malfunction glossed over with a moment of confusion, or a long-running illness, or even just blank silence and forgetfulness.

"I... think I did... there's a big blank in my memory between me getting into bed in my wedding best and now... post coital amnesia?" Sherry frowned as she offered another Sleeper Mode excuse to Cade.

"Yeah, it really sucks doesn't it... but maybe when you feel better... erm... much later... we can make up for it. Just not... right now, okay? Honey?" Cade tried to diffuse the situation... and it really helped that Sherry was programmed to assist in helping him do so when it came to matters like these.

"I love you so much, Cade Freswell... you know when to floor the pedal, and when to ease off on me..." She purred, as if she was a finely tuned jalopy... Well, she was a finely tuned machine, so it was kind of accurate to use the comparison... She grabbed one of his arms but did nothing else, simply burying her face in it and sniffing. "Wake you up in an hour?"

Cade closed his eyes... "Looking forward to that, hon... looking forward... Set an alarm for that, will you?" He asked of Sherry.

Sherry leaned to the table on her side of her bed, miming her hands in thin air as if to set an alarm on a non-existent clock or device... "done, honey... have a good sleep, okay?" She leaned back towards Cade, giving him a deep smooch, before she rested back onto her back and closed her eyes.

Cade smiled as her huge breasts mounded on her ribcage like a pair of sweet, sticky cakes. One way or another, she would be the death of him... He too was looking forward to that as well...

Chapter 34 - The Miner's Wife - Part 4: The Blessed Curse

Cade Freswell blinked through bleary eyes as he patted his scanner. The bleeding thing was acting up, apparently saying that the spot he was digging was pure Vertanium all the way down to the range that the scanner could read to... several metres at least. But that was ridiculous. The stuff was something you found little fragments or nuggets of, not a pure vein. Nobody had ever found a vein like that... And yet, the scanner kept either glitching, or insisting this small bit of Vertanium was part of a motherlode...

He stumbled back, calmly assessing the situation. The cave was locked down tight as long as he wasn't in it - anyone who tried would run into a heavy barricade that he'd installed in the early days out of sheer paranoia. Well, paranoia didn't mean he wasn't holding on to something that the big companies would eye...

Cade murmured to himself. "There's no way the fucking bastards will pay me fair rate for this... I should... I should keep it to myself. keep slowly sending off a few kilograms of nuggets at a time..."

Cade briefly fished out his communicator and tabbed it open, staring gently at his wife as he decided what to do... His adoring little miner's wife had gotten into a bad spot when the last time she'd required new parts coincided with a spell where the mine hadn't yielded enough to spare for her upkeep. She had grown cold... lifeless. She stood in the kitchen, blankly at attention and awaiting Cade's next order rather than bubbling around having a sort of life like she had when he'd first had her printed her to life.

It had been a while now since he'd learnt the biggest cost of keeping her alive and online... some of her most critical components, the ones that made her sing joyously to him in his quiet moments, used hefty amounts of vertanium - entire grams of the stuff where folks usually used slivers, if one pushed the envelope. And when he'd done so, she'd felt even more... human?

There had been a few bad weeks when things broke and couldn't be replaced with prints with the same amount of vertanium because he'd run slightly dry and couldn't spare much of it from what he dug out... She had grown mechanical, rote. almost... like an actual machine. It had been painful days, and he'd spent more time alone, with her powered down instead to reduce the stress on her functions and keep from breaking even more stuff that needed the mineral.

He was hooked on it like a druggie now. An extremely rich druggie and hoarder, having installed a very hefty new vertanium storage vault into his hab. To prevent a heist, he could bank any amount of vertanium anytime, but the vault had been redesigned to release only a hundred grams a day at most .

A shipment was something that was meant to be planned weeks in advance and carefully prepared with daily withdrawals to the hilt... but the mine had run a bit drier for a while... and this was happening on the verge of final despair and resignation, both with Sherry's state as well as of the claim. His studies on how to repair androids and more complex tools had led to more efficiencies from his gear, as well as a more equal relation with Mr Printer as he no longer needed to bother him for support as much and could just focus on pleasing his Father-In-Law of sorts. But it didn't suggest anything he could have done to replace the need for vertanium in Sherry's electronics, and she had remained a pilant, lifeless drone.

He carefully switched his mining tool to fire sideways for the first time ever. He was just going to shave a little off to take home. a few grams to burn the proper quality components to fully restore Sherry, and as much as he could reasonably be expected to take home from an averagely producing mine. If anyone surveilled him as he left the rocky cave, he wanted them to see nothing beyond the same kind of luck and hard work that the average mine-field worker suffered and thrived a little on.

And still there was more... he carefully studied the small window of pure greyish-green vertanium ore he'd run into. He wasn't sure how pure it was, but it was literally a wall of very pure ore... and it stretched at least several metres deep into the cave.

Time to slowly buy some extra stuff, if this was indeed the case. Besdies, his tools were about to wear out despite the added care he'd lavished onto them with what he'd learnt in his partial downtime...

---

Cade carefully stowed the buggy into the garage, watching the door to the outside shut tightly before all the air and dust was evacuated and replaced with fresh, clear air and mostly pristine surfaces before he ventured into a hidden lift and into a tightly locked room where the vault had been placed. He wasn't due for another delivery till a month later so... he banked most of the vertanium into the vault, dropping the nugget into the hopper where it would be carefully wheeled by inhuman arms into a pile that was now only a few dozen grams large. It had doubled in size with today's deposit, even after he'd shaved off about... ten grams? more than enough for every possible component that Sherry needed vertanium for...twice over, even.

He carefully made his way back up and exited the tiny one-person lift, taking care to shift the fake fuel tank back into place and muddying the faint layer of dust that betrayed its regular movement away from the lift access. This done, Cade fired up his mass printer and started printing components for Sherry, dropping the sliver he'd set aside into it to fuel its not-exactly-optional vertanium requirements.

There were a lot of them... He could have relied on Mr Printer, but doing the work himself was good practice... Half an hour later, he'd printed off some of the components he'd determined needed to be restored back to proper quality first, just a few chips at a time. there were a lot of them, each begging for a faint few nanograms to function at the quality he'd gotten used to rather than the stiff, jerky, overworked state the versions he had to print without the stuff were now in. he knew where they went already, grabbing his toolkit as he exited into the house and heading for the kitchen.

She was always either in the kitchen or the bedroom now. Her current state was terrible, he reflected as he carefully approached the stiffly functioning machine... Sherry blinked and turned slowly to face Cade. "Hi. Cade. Welcome home. How was. your day at... the mine-fields?" Her voice was stilted as she went through the motions like a broken toy, the lack of working cache memory or nimbler processors showing painfully as she tilted her head like a plastic doll, her body completely starved of the vertanium that she had gorged on relative to other units of her kind before the dry spell..

Cade Freswell still found something worth fighting for even with Sherry in her current state... no, rather, he'd found something that truly wedded him to his work as a miner... He leaned into her, kissing deeply, briefly wondering how much of it she was losing to micro-blackouts every few milliseconds. "Work was great, Sherry... Look, can I have a bit of your time after dinner and a shower?"

Sherry smiled blankly. "Certainly. Cade. Shall I join. you in the shower. as well?"

Cade shook his head as he watched his malnourished maiden stiffly walk to the fridge and fished out a miner's meal for him, her previously sensual, flowing movements stilted as she jerkily made a few attempts to rip the cord that would create a hot meal in minutes for Cade. He watched her struggle for a few moments. "Attempting.... Attempting.... Attempting..." Sherry repeated herself, before he gave in and gently took the pouch off her stiff hands, pulling the tab hard himself and setting off the necessary exothermal pack.

---

An hour later, after a quiet meal with Sherry by her side as a sort of occasionally ambulatory statue, and a silent shower in the cubicle, he'd made his way into the nexus of the hab and beckoned to Sherry, grabbing his toolkit as he did so. "Sherry, could you come with me a bit? There's something I need to do..."

Sherry stiffly nodded and half-shuffled into the bedroom with Cade.... He turned back to face her, carefully checking the printed out chips for a moment... they looked mostly the same as the substandard chips he'd fallen back on, but a faint tilt of them in the dim light of the bedroom exposed a faint purplish-green shimmer to the traces on them.

He was going to start small on bringing his wife back fully to life - a few cache memory chips for her microdisc-drive, a total replacement for the vocal synthesizer plugged into her head, and her logic and personality processors in her chest. Sherry would still move around stiffly, but at least Cade would be able to hear the warmth and soul he'd fallen in love with for a change after several long months of going without.

He motioned to her to lie down on the bed after he first put down a little protective plastic sheeting to contain any spills or messes from the work, before carefully nudging somewhere beneath both her breasts to expose her control panel. He'd have to power her down while he did the delicate work of replacing the logic board with its full-quality version, and then briefly tear down her lovely hair and skull to replace the cache board...

Sherry blinked upwards at Cade as he located the manual power switch on the control panel, sending her into a full shutdown as her head slumped backward, her body whirring slowly to a total silent halt. He then breathed deeply for a moment before proceeding to unscrew the access panel to reveal the innards behind it, his hands carefully reaching in to ease out the logic board that had been barely holding on to the last vestiges of humanity it could simulate for Cade's perfunctory benefit...

---

Cade carefully checked the cache board one last time after replacing it, the animatronic controller for her head's motions and sound, and the vocal synth, before sitting back and checking his watch... he'd been at it for four long hours... It had been a while since he'd spent so much time focused so hard on Sherry... he mused about possibly spending less time at the mine till the huge deposit he'd lucked into ran out...

Nobody would notice if they looked and saw him carry a slightly larger load out for a few days... maybe he'd switch to a four day workweek instead of slaving six a week... there was no telling how deep the deposit ran, and at some point, the jig would be up - he'd have to get some extra safety gear and more tooling to access all of it if he got any deeper than what the scanner was capable of.

More time with her. More time with Sherry... Cade smiled at the thought as he carefully sealed and welded the skull back together, before smoothing her wig onto her head and carefully rounding the seams away with a little healant goop, brushing it off as it hardened into a dust that brushed off easily, marvelling at how well it'd hidden the joins.

This done, he plugged the control panel back into Sherry, screwing it back in place before carefully hitting the manual power switch again. The screen flared briefly to life as the new logic board booted up, before the dynamic menus flashed onto its touch screen. He looked over the setup one last time, before he put away his toolset and the boards he'd replaced. They would go in the hopper as recyclable material for the next batch of items that he wanted to restore tomorrow, but right now.... right now he just wanted to see a little bit of life come back into Sherry's eyes...

He carefully tapped the menu button that would reboot her fully, before carefully shutting the access panel down to hide her robotic nature from view... Sherry's blank eyes closed as he did so, her body whirring down for a few seconds before beeping... then whirring back up.... When her eyes opened they seemed softer... almost chaotic with life and soul again... "Cade... honey? Are you done with my massage?" She suddenly asked him, sitting up stiffly as her gross motor controls were still running on vertanium-free inferior circuits, but her head tilted subtly as she watched Cade's face, her voice now singing again after so long in chains even as she merely spoke to him.

Cade blushed a little. "... yes, Sherry. I do hope it wasn't too untoward of me to ask you to do so much for me..."

Sherry had a sort of mock displeasure on her face as she looked away from him. "You know, I think you're only doing it so you can grab my boobs..." She observed.

Cade stammered. Sometimes the way Sherry's sleeper mode programming glossed over anything that would make her realise she wasn't human only wound up making things more uncomfy. "Well... you have nice boobs..."

Sherry reached an arm up slowly, carefully dragging him atop of her partially disrobed body. "Oh, Cade... you'll always be my hungry little man... Perhaps you should feed on them before we sleep...?" She mused, as she reached her paws to the edges of her dress and tugged them apart, letting him see the pink tipped globes mounding nicely on her chest...

Cade watched the slightly jerky, staccato movements of her hands and arms as she did this... It was strangely alluring, this mix of mechanical motion and living, breathing gentle tones in his ears.... Perhaps he should just underclock her gross motor controls even after he was done replacing the controller for them... He leaned in to start indulging himself again for the first time in weeks, one hand reaching over to shut off the lights and plunge the room into near total darkness.

Chapter 33 - Catties On A New Moon Night

"I need to go out again tonight... for the usual thing." She had said.

Calais looked up from his newspaper and morning breakfast of marmalade on toast... It had been several years since his family had made the journey to Little Sanctuary from Wisconsin after he'd secured a job in the Company here... It had been a much easier ride than it used to be since America had come together to start rebuilding and securing the old freeways that used to span the country before the wars but there were still gaps here and there where the banditry still came to prey on those who would make the trip.

His dearly beloved wife hadn't survived the journey. One of the attacks had badly injured her, and she had perished in a quiet medical bed in the next town they had rushed to. His son Ghoni had taken it especially hard, but even he had hurt a little as they slowly crossed past the gates and into Little Sanctuary.

The Company had firm rules about families in the place... in short, Calais HAD to take a new wife one way or another. But he was too tired and still too mournful to do so at the time, so they had forced the issue on him.

Ellma tilted her head, her cat ears twitching... This was what he had wound up with as a result of refusing to date or find a new wife on his own - The Company had elected to force a Catdroid onto the family to care for him and Ghoni as both wife and mother. She was a puffy looking little thing, one of the newest models, more cute than sexy as she romped around with her big paws and even bigger eyes, her tail swishing as she saw to everything they had needed in a home. Her fur was a somber grey and white, but she always had a gentle smile and would regularly cuddle and play with young Ghoni with the same paws he'd once seen shred a unwanted snake in the garden. For some reason, she had elected to wear a very simple gem on her forehead, a little bluish-green number inset into a gold fitting that stayed locked in no matter how much she shook her head or moved around - one of her many pecularities, but one that didn't impact her carrying out of her duties as mother and wife... and speaking of which...

Ellma was almost the perfect wife and mother, except for her disappearances every second Wednesday of every month. It wasn't for maintenance - that was a different thing... He'd asked about that a few times, and the discussion had never resolved in an actual answer, rather, it tended to lead to lots of interesting excuses.

Calais sighed. God, he had fallen in love with this strange creature who'd shared his bed - and who was perfectly capable of seeing to those kinds of needs when he had them - but some days, Ellma seemed strangely less civlised and more... tribal... especially on days like this.

"Of course, I wouldn't have forgotten how important this time of month was to you, Ellma... Do have a safe night out." Calais nodded perfunctorily... She always came back safe to her on days like this, and she was always strangely hungry for him when she did so. That had been a good part of the reason he no longer protested her girl's night out

Ellma closed her eyes and bowed, her tail swishing happily. "Thanks, honey... Love you..." She leaned in and gave Calais a kiss, before she swished her dress around and hefted her handbag, carefully padding out the front door on her exposed hindpaws as she pulled on a cloak around her mane and shoulders.

Calais watched briefly... She wore dowdy, boring dresses when caring for the home, but he had seen how much fiercer and sensual she could be. He hadn't expected to fall in love with Ellma - he wasn't a fan of furry yiff before - but she'd wended her way in gently but firmly, the same way she handled Ghoni.

---

Ellma reached the shore of the river on time, as she always had, and as they had always agreed to. The night was dark without any light in the moon to illuminate the gathering, only a small bonfire having been raised in a small fire-containment pan. There were several other catties surrounding the bonfire, and as she approached, one of them smiled and waved over to her.

"Oh, Luci... it's always nice to see you!" Ellma had mewled, as she hugged her friend and shared a gentle tongue lapping of their muzzles. "How's your hubs?"

Luci Nost brushed her dark brown hair, a nice contrast to the fur on her body being a brighter, shinier tinge of the same color. She had come in from work at her bank job. "He does what he can at work... Anyways, We were just about to start brewing catnip tea for the night. Sugar or milk?"

Ellma wrinkled her nose. Despite being much younger than Luci, she had become more of a traditionalist herself... "none of that for me thanks. Just hot water. I'll even do without that if it's not available as long as the catnip's there." There was a soft caterwaul, as some of the catties broke into song... They were all female, all belonging to a human man, but here on the shoreline, for a few hours, they belonged to each other. Two of them had snuck off into the dimness, tails entwined.

Luci smiled and sipped her own cuppa as she handed Ellma the plain catnip brew she had requested. "Another pair of two... I hope they don't wake the neighbours..." This elicited a chuckled from Ellma. "This far out in the wilderness? they'd have to be pretty darn loud." Ellma looked around as another pair sulked off into the dark, away from the bonfire, as the effects of the catnip brew ran through their simulator packages and turned them a little randy.

"Have you ever done that sort of thing with... you know... another cattie?" Ellma suddenly wonered aloud, as she realised everyone else but her and Luci were getting a little frisky with the catnip in their belly. Even she herself was feeling a little edgy as she watched Luci... The cat had a certain quality to her from years of living that made her strangely alluring to Ellma...

Luci shook her head. "Sorry, dear, I'm already married to my hubby and my work. There hasn't been room in me for a third kind of dalliance. Luci blushed a little as she patted her bosom - she wasn't immune to the frisky feeling, having opted to toggle on the package when she'd first gotten it and never having shut it because she enjoyed being a sensualist.

"Oh." Ellma nodded... and then she dropped it, just two close friends sharing a catnip sip and a biscuit by the river, the occasional moan and purr of catties exploring each other's flesh in the dark intruding ever so often as they sat there by the fire.

Luci grinned. "Besides, someone's gotta make sure you, and all these kids, get home safe. Gotta stay sober and in my clothing." She fished out her communicator and quickly tapped through it... "Well, the bus comes in three hours for this lot. So I have to start hunting and bringing them back to the fire in two..."

Ellma had a understanding of that... Taking care of Ghoni sometimes meant deprioritising Calais' desires at a bad time for him. To his credit, her hubby had learnt to cope with that and released her from being a sexual animal when that kind of moment came - it wasn't a snub, it was her sheparding her charge. She would always come back to him and have the good time with him that he wanted of her. "A toast to old soft biddykitties like us, Luci. We never went wild, and we never missed it..."

Luci clinked glasses with Ellma. "So we say..."

---

Luci calmly looked at all the blushing, happy faces in front of her, nodding as she did so. Some of them had not entirely recovered their composure or dressed back up tidily. In the light of morning, they would be respectable professionals again, back at their various assigned jobs - bank officers, secretaries, office runners, housewives and mothers, after a few hours of recharging... Some of them might still be frisky with each other, or even for their humans, and she didn't mind, so long as they remembered to recharge properly for the next day's duties.

Luci looked over at Ellma. "That's all of them from the bushes, so I guess we can safely declare that this month's cattie gathering is a success... just as soon as this lot get over and onto the bus home..." She announced, as a yellow cat-themed bus labelled "The Catbus" pulled up to the bonfire.

Luci nodded and reached for a bucket of sand - there was always a bucket of sand at these gatherings. She poured it onto the bonfire's coals, choking it into silent embers, marking the end of the month's gathering. "Okay, folks. let's all get on the bus... and see you next month, as usual. same place by the river..."

Ellma was the last one climbing up into the bus... she blinked as she turned back and realised Luci was just standing there by the bonfire embers, as if making sure it wouldn't flare up again before she packed the holding pan away. "You're not coming with us, Luci?"

Luci looked up and over. "I have a ride home, Ellma. You lot be good to the driver, and don't do any more frisky in the bus okay?"

Ellma bowed as the doors of the bus shut, before it made a slow turn and drove away, leaving Luci next to the extinguished fire and the empty brewing pot filled only with exhausted catnip leaves.

Luci stretched her arms a little, before laying out a small mat by the bonfire embers and bringing out a small lantern from the box she kept all the cattie night supplies in. She would need to get more catnip leaves and cat's coal for the fire for next month, but right now... she just wanted to sit back and wait...

---

It was an hour later when the Reset Crew van she had expected pulled up by the fire, Patter Nost looking tired and hungry as he lifted up a small plastic bag filled with takeaway. Even after a bit, the extinguished bonfire embers still gave off a nice warming glow that cast the place in a reddish-orange aura, letting Luci watch as Patter fumbled with the key to his van... before she walked over to him as he walked to meet her.

"Good night out, Luci?" Patter looked around, asking her.

"Always," she had replied, before leaning forward on the tips of her hindpaws to kiss him. He chuckled... "I guess you'll be wanting help with the supply box for your event?"

Luci nodded quickly. "Yes... but first... let's just sit together in each other's company and enjoy... erm... what did you pack tonight?' Patter eyed the bag he'd brought. "A whole grilled salmon, actually. with some lemons and dill."

Luci shivered... but not at the thought of the salmon in her mouth. no, it was something else - the catnip was finally hitting her, as she suddenly pounced Patter, her paws restraining him on her mat as she lapped his neck. Patter carefully placed the salmon atop the supply box and eased his hands onto Luci's hungry body. "Looking at all those kittens having fun got you frisky too, dear?" He'd asked.

Luci nodded embarassedly. "Sorry I couldn't wait till we got home... Am I a bad kitty?" She asked, trailing one of her claw tips to the ruffles on her blouse to start easing it off.

Patter nodded, a wicked grin on his face. "yes, and papa Patter here is going to have to punish you..." He spoke, as he slapped Luci's butt, squeezing one cheek firmly as he started kissing her amidst the mess that he would have to help her clean up later.... Right now though, sex first. Then a good salmon meal. That seemed like an acceptable prioritisation...

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