When Marcus Met Julie
When Marcus Met Julie
Chapter 1
The morning sunrise did the same thing it always did this time of year, gleaming through the slight parting of the curtains, spilling across the bedroom floor on his side of the room, and drawing a line across that spilled a little into one eye.
Marcus Manners squinted a little, the slight pain of the orangey yellow light pinging against his eyeball waking him. He stirred a little, shifting his hands a little to find the other half of the bed emptied. He opened his eyes, watching the perfection lying next to him in bed, Julie Manners... the mistress of the house. Perfectly tanned, carefully curved by what seemed to be years of good living...
Marcus gently stroked the figure, lying with her torso perfectly straightened out on her side of the bed, her arms at her sides. Her bare figure was totally naked, save for a pair of sheer black panties hugging the haunches of her , her breasts unsupported by any shapewear but still maintaining a lovely humpiness atop her ribcage. He glided his fingers along the slight fuzz of her skin, Fingertips trailing lines in the soft flesh of her body. A beautiful body with a beautiful mind.
Marcus turned to his bedside table and took up his smart tablet. He had recently upgraded it and shifted a lot of his old stuff from the old tablet after a serviceable ten years. Turning back to examine his lovely wedded wife and long-time loyal companion, he decided that maybe he would do what he wanted to do a little more slowly, with more care and hands-on action. No peeking at cheat notes or things that he should not be peeking at...
He calmly switched to his work email and tapped out a message. “Will be in after lunchtime today. No committments in place to prior to 2pm.” He prepared to send it off to his office assistant, trusting them to forward it to HR and the Arendt bros. He could dixtate such terms easily so long as he kept fulfiling his obligations and workload at his studio, either here or at the actual inner sanctum of the company headquarters. He paused, then tapped a postscript. “P.S. Will visit Elliot today. Please advise me of any changes to his condition.”
Marcus hit the Send button and closed his eyes as he put away the tablet, focusing his attention now entirely on his sybaritic lover... He leaned in close to one of Julie’s ears, admiring the way it curved in and along its various curves, swirling into a deep black hole all ready to swallow his love... in the other manner of speaking. There were obviously other holes ready to swallow his love, in various exciting ways. He had spent a tonne of effort even before he had carried her across the threshold.
There was a little jewellery in the form of a single tasteful stud on Julie’s left ear, a matching pair of faintly glowing gems inset in simple gold-plate prongs. Nothing obtrusive. They were a match to a small pendant necklace of the same gem type and color. A verdant lush green, all the better to match the warmth of the color of Julie’s perfectly coiffed hair, carefully tied into a bun for ease of management during sleep. Another lady would have let it all down in bed, but Julie didn’t.... wouldn’t.... care.
Marcus breathed deeply against Julie’s exposed ear, before leaning in closer as if to whisper sweet nothings, one pair of fingers carefully and firmly pressing down on either side of the ear stud. “Julie... would you kindly.... begin wake up?”
There was a faint flash in the gem studs, as Julie’s bountiful chest suddenly started moving obviously, the heave and ebb of her lungs taking deep breaths paired with the faint gusting of exhaled and inhaled air from her rounded nose, like a Sleeping Beauty of sorts. She remained seemingly unconscious, even as Marcus proceeded to cradle her a little in his arms, enjoying the silkiness of her tanned skin, the wrinkles that a woman her apparent age would have even with regular downtime by the pool and at the beautician’s.
Unmade up, her face still radiated the same beauty that had taken his breath away all those years the first time he had sat back and watched the preview photos on the screen of his studio computer. She would never win any sort of beauty contests, there would be many women far prettier than her, but Julie was still the right kind of beautiful.
A woman who would never betray her unlike a long line of women interested in hooking him only for his wealth, or his reputation, or even (at the time they had started living together) his looks. Granted, she would never give him children as well, but if he wanted to fix it there was a little thing called foster parenting or adoption. He would probably also need to have... discussions... together with her and Bellamy as well in that regard to help her broaden her mind to the possibilities of being a mother to a child. He mused a little. Come to think of it, maybe today afternoon would be a good time.
Right now though, Marcus felt a little stiff inside his pants. It was really prurient to suddenly have such thoughts in the middle of such a biddle soliquy, bu it was what it was. He traced one of his hands to Julie’s washboard abs, slightly filled out by the apparent effects of prolonged aging. A little softer, a little less perfect.He looked briefly at her outie bellybutton, smiiing as it momentary flashed in a faint green glow for two seconds, going out for two, coming back on, in a sort of loop. Consistency had its own beauty as well.
He brought his lips to hers and kissed deeply. There was no response for a little, and then a slight squirming as she stirred. The first words she had said every morning they woke together in the same bed all these years... “And a beautiful morning to you, dear...”
Marcus looked on satisfiedly, thinking back to times of yore...
Well, that was a washout. AGAIN. Marcus had chosen this pub because it had ties with the company, in a “I have a relative of an acquaintance of a sibling, please help me get him employed viably” way courtesy of Mr Gujaraz’s horrendously expanded family. Ostensibly a middle-class Mexican tequila bar, it was also a good place to get some privacy. He buried his face in one hand and sighed.
Mandy had been like all the other women he’d tried dating before. He’d tried upping his chance of success, but had wound up scuttling it the same way as before – by commissioning a corporate security check. If it wasn’t fear of his reputation, it was hunger for it. Or his money. He tried telling himself he wasn’t an incel, that he wasn’t going to become one of those loser boys who’d brought on and fostered the Despotic Years...
“Oh, Aymee, if only I had been a little more foolish with you...” He glanced at the other side of the booth he’d reserved, where he would have been counseled, advised, given legal advice and a guilty little eyeful of two big things on “a man”. She had DEFINITELY been a woman. Marcus could have been happy ignoring that and being the bitch in a marriage with her, but the chance had gone... Someone in Chinajapan had taken a liking to her and asked for her hand in marriage. It seemed big enough that it had been actually televised. Something about becoming the Empress uniting both countries in a peaceful union after the pain of the invasion and takeover...
She had looked like one of those Empress dolls they used to put into a court of dolls every year in spring, except that she was life-sized, and apparently being used to smuggle a pair of melons even with the effort the simple red kimono had made to tone down her figure. The simple austerity of the caked “food-safe” white foundation and subtly applied liner and stripe of blood red lipstick had sent something going in him. It had made Marcus fall in love... and then kick himself as the chance to do anything about it had clearly been shut tight.
Fortunately (or unfortunately), he had the company of Seamus in the other seat on the opposing side. He had drawn the short straw and traded a nice hard lager for a free flow of lean cider and sodas and the right to pilot a manually-driven vehicle, but otherwise, he was proving to be a shitty wingman. Zero out of eight had been a perfect record of failures in dating, and it had become clear that when you had a psychopath for a friend and a third leg at dates, the only thing you could expect at best was not to wake up and realise you’d have to bail THEM out for some sort of sexual assault or molest on someone while you were drunk.
“Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone,” observed a chartreuse singing on the jukebox next to the cooler full of free ciders. “YOU GOT THAT DAMN RIGHT, SISTER!” Marcus bellowed, clearly at the phase of full immersion drowning in his sorrows, as he swigged maybe one more mug too much in a toast to a missed chance at actual love that had been staring at him across the table all these years in dinky pubs and innermost corporate sanctums. He was clearly requiring the services of a taxicab to get home, of any indeterminate size that could hold him safely, and not necessarily yellow in color.
UNFORTUNATELY, all he was getting was a small raspberry jalopy, the kind you find in a second hand car store. Seamus struggled to stand up with a heavily smelling Marcus, soothing platitudes into Marcus’ ears about finding someone who could stand up to the pressure of all that he was.
As Seamus carefully bundled him into his personal man-driveable car – none of that autonomy bullshit outside of the parking phase, he had demanded despite the protests of Corporate Legal now that they had gained some balls without Aymee looming over all of them as a sort of short-circuit to their most pedantic tendencies – he briefly reflected on his failure at being a brother to Marcus.
It took him a while to arrive at Marcus’ little cubbyhole for three people, now home to one lonely little man suffering from success at the top.... Seamus helped Marcus through the door, to the porcelain throne for two bouts of regret at overdosing on alcohol, before calmly dumping him in his bed, carefully shifting him so that if he decided to throw up AGAIN after Seamus left, he’d be puking into a plastic bag. Hupefully the scent of regret marinating in it would wake him up a few hours after the act.
Seamus left the bedroom and sat down at the coffee table in front of the tlevision monitor of the house. He didn’t want to leave right away without at least kicking back and resting a little. The idiot box would make him a fool, he decided, even with Marcus’ obsession with collecting lifetime subscriptions to channels full of genuinely educational entertainment. He wanted something to depressurize with at his own pace... He glanced at the pile of books beneath the glass top of the coffee table, picking out two or three. Marcus had good tastes – archictecture, a treatise on the ccultural alterations and aberrations that the forced unification of China and Japan had placed onto the combined culture of both nations in the terms of China dictating terms of governance and societay soperiority. (a long gone attitude thank god, they were equals now)...
Seamus blinked at the third book he’d picked up. It was a scan binder. He had built out the Oven in the years after they had started playing with fire – very realistic, lifelike android fire – shipping a family for Senator Bundt. The ban by the Texas Fundamentalists had made it through, been ratified, and was now a federal felony to traffick in any robotics that were considered too realistic, with a surprisingly clear, un-dunheaded list of criteria, with exceptions made only for antique machines existing prior to the queue, corporate needs, or medical trainer dolls.
The Oven, Mark V, had potentially enough gear combined together to infringe the law so many times over if not for the waivers that they had cobbled together through Bundt’s influence as a Senator, as well as their medical devices devision being a thing....
It could do a full spherical-field scan of a person or thing, taking details in to an absurd level both 3d and textural.
It could take recordings of a voice and parley them fully into a model that could speak with the same tones and even simulate a wide range of emotions with a little extra processing power
It could even hold DNA records if one pushed the format that had been Frankensteined together by the various items put into it, though Seamus had never seen any need to use that feature.
He glanced at the book shaped storage medium, looking at the Post-it note stuck inside. It had Aymee’s handwriting, though it seemed a touch drunken. “You don’t know what you’re missing. BEHOLD, A RECORD OF MY MASCULINE PERFECTION!, top this, ya bloated, wobbly dunhead. – Aymee... P.S. GO LIFT AND DO SOME CARDIO BEFORE YOU KILL YOURSELF WITH A FRIED CHICKEN BREAST.”
Seamus laughed a little. Welp, someone had clearly decided to violate the rules that they had set on the use of the Oven Mk V. He suspected that if Aymee had come to and realised what they had done, they would have attempted to commandeer his itellect to create some sort of time machine, gone back in time, and attempted to drag themselves out of the Oven V’s scanners before they made this record...
maybe it was the lateness of the hour. Maybe the residual alcohol in the cider helped. Or maybe Seamus Arendt was just being an uncontrolled psychopath. (Aymee had left behind a list of good friends and people he could trust to rein the Arendts in with her no longer being a lawyer in the company, but they probably were not doing a good job if they had allowed what would happen next to happen)
The ticking of a mind fucked up sufficiently to get the answers right but the working behind them so dramatically wrong was loud in Seamus’ ears. A plan formed... He suddenly ran for his own jalopy like a thief in the night, buzzing himself in and running past janitorial crew to his own office and workshop.
Seamus hurriedly slotted his ill-gotten scan binder into a compatible reader and started tapping furiously, what had once been either some sort of love note or just the braggings of a ‘man’ was now becoming something way more dangerous...
If Marcus noticed the theft that had been committed within the confines of his house he did not show it in any way, as life with one man indefinitely down of the Four Brothers continued both at home and offices. The same messiness in both the keeping of the home and the way he operated and sculpted at his office studio... There had been a couple of odd interactions between Seamus and Bellamy ever so often. Furtive motions, discussions on obtaining some AI chatbot tech to improve company products. Questions about whether what they were doing was even legally acceptable
(Seamus had assured Bellamy that Legal didn’t have to know)
(Bellamy had pointed out that if Aymee or the Chinajapanese Union ever got wind of said thing they were doing, Legal would be the absolute least of their worries, or those of the entire company. Compartmentalisation didn’t work THAT way and he wasn’t doing it the right way that Aymee had done on Project Goldfish)
(Seamus assured him he was doing lots of work to anonymise it sufficiently, whatever ‘it’ was)
Marcus thought nothing of it, at least at first.
When the bottom dropped out of the hole, Marcus’ first response was “Have we learnt NOTHING from the way you first shoved Elliot onto me?” He asked with a very annoyed mien as he looked at what Seamus and Bellamy had asked him into their combined offices to see. “erm, I know it’s a woman in a can. A very hot woman. Seamus, I swear, if you’ve drugged a woman just to deal with my companionship issues, I am going to have the corporate doctors quintuple your dosage of psychopathy medication drugs.”
Seamus looked at Bellamy. Bellamy looked back at Seamus. “That would be very bad.” Seamus first spoke up. “ We wouldn’t be able to perform as required by our private shareholders.”
Bellamy nodded hard in agreement. “virtually 24/7 narcolepsy. We would be totally unpsychotic, but at the price of doing fuck all. Actually, wouldn’t that technically be kind of like death?”
Seamus nodded, and turned to pat Marcus’ shoulders as if to reassure him. “Please don’t do it to us, it’s not something that’s justified... “We just need you to run with it for at least a few weeks... if it doesn’t work out, you ship it all back, we dispose of it, and we agree never to bother you with this shit again. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen?”
Marcus’ annoyance gave way to something as he pondered the contents of the giant cylinder. “... ... we’re not going to get into trouble, regardless? This is just an experiment and an internal test product?” The woman in the jar was a hazel-haired beauty, aquiline eyes, puty lips.... her naked pulchrritude on display had a certain familiarity he couldn’t quite put his fingers on, but at the same time it seemed soft and curved in so many brand new ways that he couldn’t quite wait to put his fingers on it. For some reason, her heavily trimmed pubic bush was slightly blonde, a peculiar mismatch of curtains and drapes.. “So, what’s she programmed as?”
Bellamy grinned. “That’s the beauty of it. We’re trying something different for personality generation. You know those AI chatbots that are the rage amongst some of the teens and young men now?”
“The ones with no life and no hope, you mean...” Marcus deadpanned, calmly ignoring that he too was part of their ilk.
Bellamy rolled his eyes. He wasn’t going to get dragged into that kind of debate. He was a psychopath, but his variation meant that he literally felt too much rather than too little, and it was literally pinging him, screaming “DO NOT ARGUE THAT POINT. JUST PRESENT AND GIVE.” Bellamy gave a slight cough and handed Marcus a laptop of sorts... it looked more like a device cobbled together from a mini-PC box, a rollable monitor and some sort of chip reader/writer done up as a chip in a sort of glass jewel box with a plush velvety lining holding on to the container legs of the chip. It seemed to be a sort of all-in-one chip combining various functions, like the kind that sat right in the center of his smart tablet, but probably with greater capability and speed...On his other hand, Bellamy hefted a sort of VR set.”
“Just go on dates regularly with the chatbot for a few weeks first. Build it up. Let it get to know you, build emotional data. When you feel it’s ready, let us know and we’ll go over the next steps. In the meantime the physical body has a placeholder AI installed if you want to relieve yourself on it before the personality is ready for implementation.” Bellamy explained matter of factly.
“This sounds like one of those cash grabs they used to make back in my day as a teen, guys.” Marcus looked hesitantly as he took the laptop and eyed it cautiously. “Are you sure this is going to work?”
Seamus shrugged. “We did a lot of work to integrate a lot of new stuff, and we’ve never tried doing it this way before. Only one way to find out for real.We’ll help you install all the stuff in your house this afternoon, and you can go on your first dates with... what’s her name again?” He turned to ask Bellamy.
“We’re not doing a preset name, I don’t think it aids realism here...I’m shovelling that sort of thing onto the user for a change with this prototype” Bellamy shrugs a shoulder matter-of-factly.
Marcus pondered the situation. “I feel like I’m going to regret this, guys.”
Seamus slapped Marcus in the back. “I hope not! What’s the worst that cold happen?”
Chapter 2
Chapter 2 - Integration Is Tricky
Barely three hours later, Marcus was standing in the last previously empty room of the house. It had now been taken up by a table to rest a weird VR laptop on, a cylinder containing the body of the doll the Arendts had assigned him to test out as a means of relieving his sorrow at not getting hooked up repeatedly, and not much else. The doll had proven relatively easy to heft. It was about 168cm in height, her bulging F-cups knocking together as he lifted it slowly into his bedroom with the VR headset in one hand. It had been designed to provide only very basic action somewhere in the groin and mouth area, at least initially, and was surprsingly light for its measurements. He laid the hourglass lady down onto the surface of the bed, its arms flopping limply, He paused to shif the arms into a more comfortable position by the doll’s sides, before sittig down on her side of the bed and donning the headset as per Marcus’ instructions and spoke up.
“Would you kindly introduce me to her?” There was a slight hesitation in his voice as if he didn’t know what was going to happen next.
Also: he was going to have words with Bellamy’s recent obsession with the classic game “Bioshock”, the prefix “Would You Kindly” had become a new kind of code phrase in place of the words “Command word” that he had recommended for implementation. There was room for potential trouble using such a innocent phrase as the command trigger for commands, but this was a prototype of something new, he could rein in the imbecilic divergence later. Something – or someone crashed into him in virtuality, there was a meaty oomph to the sound of the suitcase thumping hard against him, but the lack of any feedback area or capabilities meant he was still left standing up. He glanced down at what hat hit him. A silver travel suitcase was lying on the road. Next to him, a generously proportioned woman wearing a long sundress that hugged her curves was sitting on her ass, having fallen down onto the ground. One of her arms was clutching a handbag. Marcus could see that she got a bit of physical activity and nutrition, and there had been just enough to go lots of places on her without turning her into a lardbucket, merely a sybaritic woman of pleasure. Her face was hidden beneath a wide-brimmed straw hat, and as he extended an arm of to help her up, of his own accord rather than some preprogrammed loop like in any other VR game, he could see that she was a virtual copy of the doll lying on his actual bed right now. This setup process was certainly interesting. She let out a soft “owie”, in a strangely alluring voice that he found simultaneously oddly familiar and yet fresh. Marcus couldn’t quite place his finger on it, but it did sound a lot like someone he’d been around. Maybe one of the actresses who did voice work for the company? Perhaps a random secretary he’d walked past on one of the other floors? Regardless, the woman stood up and dusted herself off. “Excuse me, could you direct me to the airport here?” She asked meekly of Marcus, thrusting out a paper map she had been using supposedly in lieu of simply using a smart device and an app like a normal person. She was clearly a bit low on the IQ scale. Not enough to be declared a medical case, just... slightly dim. Marcus wondered if this was a configurable option. He preferred his women to be at least as smart as him, though he suspected that was partly why he’d been suckered like a chump so many damn times. As he took the map, the simulator jumped immediately to a ticket counter, skipping whatever travel that would have been needed in real life. The young woman was now a little frantic, tapping a passport and a ticket on the counter. “That can’t be right, I was supposed to leave today. Flight Airmalde-13731A... three hours from now.” She pleaded. Marcus noticed the tickets and passport glowing slightly with a blue sheen, the standard highlighting method he’d specified for use while developing apps to highlight points of interest. He reached for it as the stewardess manning the counter continued calmly explaining to the woman that “NO, this flight is for one year from now. The codes on it indicate you bought it as part of a quick sale, you can’t rebook it to a different date, Miss-”
The world suddenly grayed out totally as everyone froze. A nearby fountain stopped in mid spray, the koi lazily swimming around it halting in mid wave around the fountain. He walked over and briefly inspected it, even picking up one of the koi in the pond up. With the headset only sensing his thoughts as to how to move and not doing any feedback, he felt... nothing. Not the slight wetness that a fish should have. He let the koi drop back into the ponds as he turned his attention to a red tag denoting a set of TODO notes for later development of the application. It was a small comedy of sorts. “TODO: implement customisable avatar – Target Personality – “Suggest implementing a way to export the configurator to provide a matching real-world body.”” “TODO: Do we REALLY need to have every bit of clothing on everyone here be alterable or removable?” Marcus blinked bankly as he walked over to the frozen stewardess, and tried lifting her hat. It came off perfectly easily, the stewardess not showing any awareness that her hat had been pilfered. He didn’t think much of this and quickly plopped the greenish-blue cap back atop the stewardess’ trimmed bob hair. He would have to recommend to the Arendts that this was a potential cause for trouble. Just stick to significant people or something for avatar alterations... He examined the passport of the woman. Her photo was on it, including the usual security stamping of a girl from... Jaidanphur? He smiled wistfully – choosing a cosmopolitan city to start off from was a good idea, it gave a wider variety of ethnicities to choose from. Her name was a series of question marks, as if undetermined, He tried writing some stuff in place of the marks... The stewardess suddenly repeated herself. “.... you can’t rebook it to a different date, Miss Banana Yanana.” Marcus tittered mischeviously as he wrote several different stupid names onto the prompt, causing the stewardess to tell off the woman with several different name ideas. “.... Miss Hannah Barbera.... Miss Yoko Ohyehs... Miss Melania Grumpf...”
Eventually he stopped being an idiot and realised he could simply spin the words on the prompt by sliding his fingers upwards or downwards hard, as if they were cylinders on a revolver or a half-rate one-armed bandit. A few spins later, the woman was now “Miss Julie Ambervale.”
He liked the name, Ambervale. It had belonged to a classic porn actress he had the hots for back as a teenager hoarding porn under his bed and away from his mom and dad. Julie sounded good too. It was a nice sounding two-syllables, timeless even. Marcus closed the passport and put it back down on the counter, causing the world to suddenly continue as if it had never been frozen up. Miss Julie Ambervale wept a little and whined fussily. “But I have to get home on the next flight.... I need to go back to work first thing on Monday!” The simulation started looping subtly again, the stewardess repeatedly rebutting her with an admonishment about there being no more seats available on the flight she wanted to catch, and Julie thinking for a few seconds before repeating herself to the same reply. Marcus idly noted the prompt growing on her shoulder, a glowing handprint, as if the simulation wanted him to do something about this impasse...
Marcus was a little puzzled about how the simulation had gotten hold of the layout of his house and checked the TODO list as one thing led to another: a drink at the nearby airport cafe, a consolation, an offer to put her up at his home for at least a bit till she sorted her failed connecting flight home. TODO: referencing the house server for locational data to build a copy of the user’s house in the simulation is a violation of privacy – Check with Legal for workarounds. TODO: at some point the robot will need to be able to navigate the user’s home on their own. The data I’m scraping will need to be collected sooner or later, may as well do it now. TODO: Legal: if you guys do it this way, we won’t be able to sell this in the European Nations. This violates their privacy regulations! Julie crashed down on one side of the bed on her back, sighing. “Well, that’s one crisis... erm... not averted, right? I still need to call home and apologize and stuff and and and.... oh god, I need to relax.... maybe I should visit the zoo. No wait, I did that already yesterday!” Marcus lifts his VR headset briefly. The simulation had worked out how the torso of the real doll had been placed but not its limbs, and made Julie fall accordingly into place in the virtual simulation.... He briefly played around with the placement of the android body, watching Julie mirror the new placement everytime he downed his goggles again. A faint message blinked in a tag. “INITIAL SETUP COMPLETED. 3% of required data for proper personality established. Marcus decided to hit the save and quit button, causing the virtual form of Julie to close her eyes as if falling asleep. “Julie Ambervale is now warming up to you. Julie Ambervale respects you a little more, but is still suspicious of your intentions in being so nice to her.!” An announcement reports as he takes the headset off to rest, crashing atop the android and smooshing his face in her big jugglies. As he falls asleep, he hears one last prompt. “Please remember to recharge your android in its chamber every 44 hours for 4 hours... Your android will require minimal food and water intake during full mode operation, but will enjoy properly prepared food and drinks in moderation if desired by user prompting...”
A pattern slowly formed. Marcus would wake up in the morning and spend an hour or two with “Julie Ambervale” in virtual reality, using the limp android body as a sort of feedback mechanism. Occasionally devolving into using the body like a sex toy, Marcus marvelled at how well the simulation tracked the doll’s torso onto the actual placement and movement of Julie in the virtual simulation during potential bedroom scenes. Her pussy felt slightly warm and moist, and her mouth was surprisingly inviting in both worlds. His only lament was how he had to carefully lift her to the bathroom to wash out his misdeeds when a session devolved into some love making, like the time Julie mischeviously asked him to take her in the behind against a railing while watching ships in the distance, her virtual eyes twinkling with mischief as if genuinely alive. He had briefly removed his goggles for a breather during that session and had been a touch disappointed. Aside from her eyes matching the color of Julie’s in the virtual world, the android still refused to do anything besides moisten and suckle in her holes, simply staring off blankly with no spark in her eyes or movements, forcing Marcus to do all the work to get off on it. He briefly wondered if the Arendts had any ideas to deal with the problem in a final product, then shrugged. He was focusing on himself and he was still going to enjoy this ride no matter how rickety it was in implementation. After washing the doll out if necessary, he would clean himself up and report to work as loyally as he had for years before. The process was repeated again occasionally in the evenings as he came back, but he was just as likely to do some off-time sculpting or read or watch something on Bountiful or Quasarbula.
Marcus would occasionally bring the doll and laptop back into the office for Seamus and Bellamy to maintain and work on as a side project, discussing possible improvements and things that might need alteration or correction. At one point there had been a slight accident. Seamus was quietly wiring in some sort of new upgrade, having disconnected and pulled the pussy module of the android body out of its metal rails. Marcus had wondered what he was doing, putting a finger into the pussy to gently feel the soft warmness that he had become so fond of. Seamus smiled. “I’m just adding in a new anti-rape mechanism. The South Africans had a great idea for a condom that would give that kind of nasty dude hell, so I asked after them and got licensed to implement part of that condom. It just tags the abuser when they stick something into the condom and makes it very obvious when they seek medical aid that they’ve been attempting to rape someone. I’m not using the barbs, just the injector and the marker drug. It should sense when the owner is the one doing the deed and disable the trigger-” Marcus let out a soft “ow”, one of his fingers now slightly stained purple. As he watched the entire finger started turning purple and itchy.
Seamus facepalms. “In theory. I think.... we should get that looked at, pronto.” It would be a week before Marcus stopped walking around to quizzical looks with a itchy purple finger, and another two or three before he resumed even considering having sex with the limp android body. It would certainly do its job, Seamus just had to give Marcus some trust that it wouldn’t do the same to his cock During that time, he became a bit of a gentleman, quietly refusing to hump Julie in the simulation and just sticking to showing her around, holding her in consolation when several failed attempts to rebook or get home had made her depressed, weeping in the shower.
The simulation had refused to track the real android body that tightly at that point, so it was a bit wackadoodle being in a virtual reality with Julie sobbing away and wailing about how he wanted to go home, then see a empty shower with no running shower water when he lifted the goggles,even as he consoled her, his every action feeding into the “Upload ready” meter ever so often in a painfully slow drip.
More visible was the change in Julie’s behavior toward him, as she became a little more reliant and clingy, as well as fond of Marcus in the scenarios as the simulator played on.... A little evening dancing, quiet shared meals, a visit to watch the waterfront as the boats plyed its waters...
Seamus and Bellamy looked at each other. Then at the console. Then at each other again, before looking at Marcus. “Get the things, Bellamy.” Seamus prompted, causing Marcus some puzzlement. Suddenly the Arendt brothers lifted a pair of poppers and triggered them, showering Marcus in confeti. “Congrats on getting married!” Marcus rolled his eyes. “Erm.... haven’t we been here before? Like, with Elliot? I mean, I did run through a shotgun wedding with Julie a few days ago and it’s been her being a housewife all this while but...” Bellamy observed something... “We skipped the glitter this time. Don’t worry, it won’t take forever to clean up later now. And anyways, you can start uploading the personality into the android when you get her home tonight!” Marcus still blinked like a deer in headlights, still not fully comprehending the implications of what they had said. This concept was still too weird and new and staying on top of everything they had asked of him for the past four months was akin to trying to waveboard all the way to Maui in a storm after a few hours of lessons. He was holding on, but it was all he could do to follow orders and try testing shitm like a lab mouse on a tradmill occasionally being asked to hop over logs in the wheel... Marcus just gave up. “So I’ll pick her up from you at the end of the workday?” He asked tiredly. Maybe he could actually do something he could understand for a bit before the Arendts spun him around gleefully once again like he was a cat toy and the Arendts were playful kitties. Seamus and Bellamy smiled a little. Whatever it was, it was good news, they hadn’t had good news in ages, it was probably time to celebrate. They just needed to call Legal and make sure someone was holding their leashes down at the pub tonight.... They would also need to contact a few York Particulate Agents they were on good terms with to give someone a past to go with the future...
Two hours later, history repeated itself as Marcus’ work computer autosaved everything he was doing and shutting down without his prompting. He slid the passkey and tried relogging to message the Arendts, but got a picture of two emojis apparently in love and dressed for a wedding. Oh nooo.... Marcus rushed to where the Arendts had placed their offices, but they were both silent, lights turned off for the night. “SHIT, Another week long holiday?” He cussed as he walked over to something covered in a tarpaulin and with a sticky envelope on it addressed to him...
“Dear Mr Manners, The Arendts congratulate you on your wedding to Miss Julie Ambervale and have agreed to award you with a holiday for honeymoon purposes. You will not be required to attend work for one week from the time this letter probably reaches you. Attached please find one thousand dollars to spend as you see fit as a direct personal gift from The Arendts. We wish you a really fun time together and may your love last a long, long time, Seamus and Bellamy o.b.o Arendtcorp P.S. Please file updates and logs every two days from your loving wife. P.P.S. Please give Ms. Julie Manners our best regards too. P.P.P.S Please keep the wedding dress, it is a outright custom purchase to match the design we procured while creating the simulator. Consider possibility of other designs made available during wedding scenario to boost revenues from this product if put into full production. You will need to provide your own tuxedo though.” Marcus widened his eyes as he noted the words “wedding dress”, quickly throwing the letter aside and pulling the tarp off the thingy. It was Julie, standing straight at attention with both eyes eyes closed, in a fascimile of the wedding dress that he had seen her in in that scenario – a daring sheer lace dress in white floral lace that stretced all the way to just above the high heels on her feet, and left her breasts very uncovered on the upper part of her cleavage to act as a sort of shelf for his hopes and dreams, with no sleeves to speak of. Her hands were carefully posed to hold a small plastic flower bouquet, like a bridal doll. Her normally lightly done up lips had been emphasiszed with a choice application of a dark red lipstick that contrasted with her lightly bronzed tan, and she was wearing a headdress of the same lace atop her head, veiling her hair. Marcus wasn’t sure whether to write a note chewing them out on how there should be some rlimits to chasing realism, or just stand there momentarily basking in the oment where the fantasy that he had been obediently playing through (admittedly having fun as well) creashed through and created a mess in reality. But what a mess! He wanted this mess.... even the silver tourist baggage she was sitting atop of, complete with various weathered stickers that spoke of a life spent roaming a little before surrendering into his arms. The Arendts had at least some qualms about doing anything else stupid besides adding two or three pounds to Julie’s apparent weight with the wedding accoutrements. No stupid Just Married cans danging off the back of his jalopy as he struggled a little to load Julie’s limp body and luggage into the car, which to its credit held steadfastly as it traveled back to his home. Marcus suspected they probably did not want to confuse the car’s LIDAR and cause an accident for the ‘newlyweds’ right on their ‘wedding night’.
Marcus carefully looked around left and right surreptitiously after parking the car in his garage, before shutting the door to it down. After a little struggle and two legs of moving things around, he panted and crashed limply onto the linens of his bed, his ersatz new wife by his side. He took a few gulps of air, before sitting up and firing up the laptop.It started to render a realtime scene of Julie Manners busking around in the kitchen, cooking something delicious. He blinked and went over to check the kitchenette – it was dimly lit and empty, There was a limit to how much virtual reality could fudge.... it was time to reach out a hand and gently pull Julie from a falise, perfect world in which Julie Ambervale had never really managed to go home to Jaiphura or New York or whatever city she had first crashed in from, but it didn’t matter because she had found something worth staying for.... Marcus wondered how he was going to explain his sudden new +1 to anyone he met after this point, then decided that bridges were not meant to be pre-crossed. As he hit the “UPLOAD” button on the screen, the kitchen on it went grey and faded. The virtual representation of Julie suddenly glitched worringly, assuming a T-Pose and staring blankly ahead as status reports started streaming, her dress vanishing as she spun around slowly on screen. “Project Last Ditch BIOS 2062.89 loading Unit Identity set as Julie Manners Ambervale Writing Owner Bometric Identity Security Data Logging Personality Generation Data Mapping virtual personality sensor grid to physical unit sensor grid Saving Initial Backup to BrothersFour.Arendtcore.com.usa2/... Saved “ The screen suddenly went totally blank, before flashing new instructions. Marcus read them out slowly. “Extract uninstall/install tool from installation kit”, watching the looping line animation of a baggage being opened and a pouch labelled “Install/Deinstall Only” coming out of it. He followed that instruction in its simplicity, noting the decent amount of assorted clothing that had come in the bag as well as he pulled out and unzipped a pouch labelled accourdingly, blinking as he held up a sort of tool that looked like a sort of tampon applicator ,only with more magnets than a tampon would need. He blinked quizzically, then tabbed to the next step. The screen made him facepalm, as it displayed a stick woman spreading her legs apart and the tool being inserted into apparently some sort of vaginal entry, drawn dcrudely as a small oculus, and labelled “vaginal entry” explicitly. “....uhm.... erm.... Step 2: part legs of unit to expand entry into vaginal chamber, insert ID tool with the red end facing inside, pushing in slowly until a beep and message is heard, and withdraw.it.”
He looked at the tool again. Now on closer examination it was clear that one end was colored red and the other was colored blue. He made a note to ask Seamus if he had ever considered that so many males had color blindness. Perhaps a different choice of coloring or icons would reduce possible errors at this and later stages in such folks.
Marcus slowly parted the limp android’s stockinged legs, pausing briefly to sigh as fiddled with some buttons to unlatch the fabriccovering Julie’s vaginal entry. He slid the ID tool in and carefully pushed it deeply in with a firmness, stopping as Julie beeped and spoke in a blank emotionless voice. “Placeholder Code Removed. Test Mode Disabled, Please insert valid Secure Personality Chip Into Cervical Cavity.” He pulled the applicator out, a heart shaped chip with white edges around its perimeter stuck on the magnet. As he watched, the chip slowly tarnished and fell off onto the fabric atop the bed. He peered in slightly.
On a quiet night in the simulation, Julie had briefly lamented an accident she had had as a teenager. They had saved her, but the injury to her cervix had been serious. She had fingered at a small scar on her womb area, sighing. “I can never have children anymore. I guess that makes me... damaged goods?” She had hugged him as he reassured her that he had other priorities, and that had bought even more ‘trust points’ and gotten him closer to uploading her personality. Marcus thought for a moment as he examined the cervical cavity that had opened up. Instead of a womb that could sire a baby, the cervix of the unit was actually some sort of receptical for the personality that he would soon seat into it. It was certainly an interesting choice, giving her a sort of authenticity with ‘real world damage’, the faint scar on her womb area having been etched in for real as well. “Next, erm.... flip ID tool so that blue end of tool faces forward, open case on station and hold tool to Secure Personality Chip until a click is heard. Push applicator firmly into Cervical Cavity until a beep is heard, then withdraw applicator and close legs of unit.” Marcus carefully opened the tiny case holding what he presumed was the chip in question on the laptop, holding the applicator to the chip until it suddenly clicked and stuck itself onto it. He then proceeded to stick it in as instructed, watching a maze of circuitry light up as he withdrew the tool out of the Cavity and watched it close back up, like a flower blooming in reverse.
He was certainly being made to work very hard for what he desired, he reflected, as he gently closed Julie’s thick thighs together and gently stroked the slightly blonde frizz atop her pudenda, smiling a little excitedly at what sort of fun he could genuinely have soon. “Now... Step 3.... apply DNA to unit using either tongue in mouth of unit or... providing semen in vaginal chamber....” He covered his face briefly. It was nice of them to provide an option for men with performance issues but perhaps they could have figured out a less obtrusive way to initialise this unit... in so many ways... He sat himself back, gently shifting Julie’s dress a little to help her regain her false modesty (She was wearing no panties, for god’s sake!), before slowly crawling forward, hovering above her, to do it the oral way.
For some reason, Marcus didn’t feel like making Julie’s first realworld experience be that of him maniacally plunging his manhood into her cunt. He wanted to be just as gentle and kind as he had been in the false world she was born in. Closing his eyes, he leaned in for a deep kiss, maneuvering her tongue with is and feeling the roughness of synthetic papilae brushing the necessary DNA for her security systems off the inside of his mouth. It was not a very rough sensation, more like... pleasant? Lovingly warm and fun? Marcus peeled himself off and gave Julie more space, waiting for her to come to live in the real world...
Chapter 3 – Welcome To My World
Julie beeped once more, the same soulless voice whirring as her eyes repeatedly focused and unfocused, cycling through a myriad of shades of blue before settling on the deep ceruleans he had grown so familiar with. “Validating Security Personality Chip... Arming anti-rape system...” she announced, as tiny microinjectors concealed in her orifices started filling with the South African rape marker drug Seamus had imported. “Initializing...loading personality matrix from last viable backup point...Julie Manners Ambervale will activate fully in... four hours, fifty nine minutes... Please refrain from any strenuous activities on this unit until full activation.” She closed her eyes, falling into some sort of deep sleep as her bosom heaved.
Marcus got up and stretched a little. It was so exciting to wait for the thing he had wanted to finally happen, but even the frisson of impatience couldn’t quite stave off the enroaching exhaustion sweeping over him from the day’s excitement. Adrenaline, horniness, and caffeine from the office cafeteria could only take one so far. He tried to stifle his manhood a little, and the chill of the shower in the cool summer night had helped a lot, but even then, he still clearly had the tiniest hint of wood as he climbed into bed in only his pyjamas. Perhaps he would wake early and skip his exercises for one morning, he mused. After all, he wasn’t planning to rush it, but he’d probably get his cardio from a different type of jogging tomorrow.
Marcus woke up, slightly dozy from the earliness of the hour, as he climbed out of bed from his side. He briefly tapped on the laptop that controlled Julie, observing that he had another hour or two. He still felt pent up after all that sleep, and he needed to blow off that steam before he did something stupid with it.
The morning air was crisp with promise as he jogged down the pathway. Some habits had died hard. Even as Elliot had left to be part of Senator Bundt’s family, Marcus had felt the need to keep things up. He’d kept eating carefully and lightly, exercising almost daily at least in the morning, and had even spoken to a few experts about his callisthenics routine, aided either by his weight working against his exertions or the resistance equipment on the exercise ground of the block. This early, nobody would be using the children’s playground, he expected. The lack of people exercising was a disappointment though – surely good health was the right of all people underneath the care of the company. He stretched, he did a few lunges, a few careful pushups, a couple of flexibility runs and lunges, before returning to his home and brewing a small cup of caffeine and downing some rejuvenation therapy pills as per the doctor’s order every day. Marcus walked into the main bedroom and saw something that took his breath away. Julie’s lightly tanned body had sat up in bed on its own, her eyes slightly sleepy as she watched the morning sun through the windows of the bedroom. She had doffed all the wedding gown stuff onto the ground next to her side of the bed, leaving her body totally naked, Marcus watched the way she had risen, his eyes tracing every line of her perfect imperfection, trying to count the freckles on her back and giving up after a few attempts at such a pointless endeavour. As if sensing this hunger, Julie turned a little to look, her eyes locking with his, her face the very picture of a well kept woman with some experience in life. Her pouty lips still had lipstick on them, as they slowly opened, the faint gleam of whitish teeth showing. Julie seemed to be like a deer in the headlights of a car, a prime display of nature in all its glory, except instead of a lovely crown of antlers, it was a finely honed body, not overly muscular but still toned. The F-cupped breasts helped, dangling under the force of gravitiy but still maintaining a juicy pair of teardrops, beckoning his lust. She tilted her head, and spoke the very words she’d been programmed to say every morning wakeup.”... And a beautiful morning to you. Dear.” Marcus briefly stifled a little gasping. “Morning Julie.... did you sleep well?” He leaned over to kiss her on the cheek, causing her to close her eyes and purr happily. Julie nodded and opened those cerulean eyes of hers again. While reading up, Marcus had learnt a funny phrase: “Pigmented Fibrovascular tissue”. Simply put, the reason why irises had that peculiar microbranching texture and color that they had. Human eyes had it. Android eyes shouldn’t... Seamus had apparently violated that ban and Marcus was grateful for it, losing himself in them. Juliie snapped her fingers twice, giggling. “You keep doing that. Is everything okay?” Marcus recovered after an extra moment. “I... I’m sorry. I’m an artist, I keep finding beauty or making it. I just can’t stop that obsession.” He apologised. “Anyhow.... I think I might practice making it a little today, since I don’t have to go to work.... is that okay with you?” Julie let out a soft purr of laughter. He would grow to get an impossible kick out of it over time, it was so lush and wonderful in his ears. “Everything you do is okay with me... Everything...” Marcus shifted uneasily, trying to hide the slight erection in his exercise pants, the loose fabric helping out fortunately. After a brief chatter, Marcus walked out into the corridor connecting the various rooms of the ground floor, wheezing a little as he realised he had held his breath repeatedly over the past ten minutes, like a sniper training to shoot well. It was fortunate that he had found excuses to get out of the room quickly, or he might have started training to ‘shoot well’ in a different sense. Not that he would have minded. Not that she would have either. She was his perfect woman, one who might have had reproductive issues, but would never betray his trust. And in any case, if she was forced to, there would be some pretty interesting evidence of the deed if it was done in certain ways.... He shook his head a little, drawing a Grandpa Smith apple from the fridge, its skin wizened and wrinkled from the simple act of keeping things natural and not going mad with additions that nobody should be eating.... he then proceeded to the studio loft above and started opening a blind box from LESGO, smiling as it turned out to be an assembly set for a flower. The box had calmly stated it was for children 8 and up, and declared itself to contain bricks for a type of flower called... a clitoria. Marcus blushed bright red as he read the box. Dammit, read the room, LESGO. He wanted to calm himself down by sublimating his lust into creation, but assembling a blocky version of something named after the sensual lines of the female organ WAS NOT HELPING! Besides, was it really a good idea to name something for kids after something so clearly sensual?
Marcus tried to rein it in as he started assembling the toy bricks, sweating feverishly as if in some sort of fugue. As he topped the sculpture off and stood back, he realised he needed a shower and walked back into the corridors to get to his bedroom for some clothing. Julie was standing in the kitchen, apparently making some sort of soup. Using a sauce plate, she brought a small sample of it to her mouth and sipped. Tiny microsystems studded around her tongue and nose cavity wafted the scent and taste of the stew, creating a complex profile of the nutrients and chemicals swirling in the brownish water. She added a little more starch to thicken it, watching the vegetables and the meat that had provided almost all of the water in the soup to begin with. The very picture of a wife. Not a tradwife, but someone who wanted it all – all the pleasures of modernity, and none of the interruptions of being subservient.
Marcus practically started hovering like Neelix the Cat, the scent of the stew bringing him closely against her frame, his arms wrapped around and carefully enjoying copping a feel of her body through the gingham dress and pale blue apron she had donned to cook. He kissed her lightly against the back of her jaw. “Making lunch?” He asked briefly.
Julie nodded in reply. “Well, yeah. I thought a little mulligawtawny would be nice... I baked some bread to go with it too. You have been busy in your studio for approximately... 92. point. five minutes. since we last spoke.” Marcus nodded and closed his eyes as he planted his chin against her left shoulder, enjoying the home life he had wanted. He would have to remind Bellamy though – real humans did not get this persnickety and accurate about things unless they were doing actual architecture or chemistry or other things were being absolutely accurate to the smallest details was critical.... Julie would be more lifelike with a rougher sense of things in her speech....
The rest of the day went by calmly, a blur of subtle busy-work masquerading as a honeymoon away from the demands of the world. Housework mutually shared. Julie showing interest in the clitoria LESGO set Marcus had bricked together, perhaps a little too much. Meals. Quiet time spent sitting together on the living room couch, hands locked together, saying nothing but taking a nap. Or at least, Julie was. Marcus kept opening his eyes to sneak glimpses of the Goddess descended upon his home. He briefly fantasised about Elliot coming back home from the arms of Senator Bundt to his Papa. They would be a lovely family of three. Hopefully Julie would complement Elliot and vice versa nicely... and if not... well, it was kind of nice that Julie was reprogrammable. Elliot was a bit weird in not being not so much amenable, but he could be taught easily to embrace a family, he hoped. Marcus still managed to fall asleep eventually, and by the time they had awoken, it was so late that they had to settle for a cheat meal. The last two TV meals in his fridge after he had ceased to eat unhealthily for so long. He watched as Julie carefully indulged herself in the hamburger meal, her fingers gently gripping the bun and the contents within with care as she introduced it to her belly, one small chew at a time. Marcus stifled a momentary urge to groan as the way Julie held the burger and each fry, her fingers making poses that suggested to his lustful side that perhaps she could grip other things gently yet firmly while introducing them to her mouth. Julie got up eventually and grabbed the trays, delivering them to the trash compactor with an ease that suggested she had fully mapped every nook and cranny of the house. “That was nice, but I wouldn’t feed you something with this much salt and fat regularly.” She observed. “It’s better to eat healthy.” Marcus nodded, then sniffed at himself and realised the shower he had meant to take just before lunch should have been taken after all. “I’m going to take a shower. Sorry. You must think me rancid not to wash off this long.” Julie beamed. “It happens. Besides....” She closed her eyes and leaned in to take a whiff... “you smell to me of manliness.” She was probably making this up, there was no such thing as manliness and her sensors were just returning random garbage that would have irked a real human woman. “Go ahead.” Marcus obliged himself, quickly grabbing some pyjamas and a towel for his cleaning. As he hit the shower, the warm spray loosened the exhaustion and grime from him as he sat on the tiled ledge in the bathroom shower, watching the water come down in rivulets along him and the glass door to the cubicle. There was a sliding noise, as the cubicle opened and shut, allowing in Julie after a minute or two. She had disrobed entirely, smiling as she grabbed a sponge and sat down next to him in the cubicle, which was roomy enough to allow them to sit this way without contorting. Her body was now on full display, the buxomy curves like a fine sculpture thrust into a waterfall, which kind of made sense given the waterfall shower head in the ceiling. Marcus was trying really, REALLY hard to be a good boy, but his cock was beginning to start swelling again from the proximity and sensuality of his loving wife. “J... Julie...” he tried to think of a gentle way to describe his growing, raging hunger for her, to take all of her... “Would you.... erm.... make love to me?” Julie froze briefly as if in shock, her eyes focusing and unfocusing as she stared blankly at Marcus. After what seemed like a minute, she slowly shifted herself to sit down on Marcus, topping him and letting her perfect honey pussy swallow the engorging cock. “Yes, dear.... you seemed tense when I came in... I will f-fuck you now...” Her voice stuttered briefly – Marcus chalked it up to a momentary glitch in loading new data to adapt to her new task. There was also the matter of how she had responded to a gentle entreaty for some sex with a response that seemed to describe a lovemaking session that would be more akin to grinding him down to a paste. Julie slowly pumped herself up and down on Marcus, her nipples stiffening as her thighs seemed to operate like they were full of springs. Marcus wanted a little more, deciding to reach his hands out to paw at her breasts like a pair of superballs, his fingers gently clamping onto her nipples and feeling them. Julie started moaning, half-closing her eyes. “Harder....” she begged, as her vagina started squeezing more and more as if to keep it all bottled up in Marcus. Her stamina was remarkable, lasting a seemingly long time before Marcus spewed into her, causing her to squeal in orgasmic tones running erratically over two or three registers. And it was not over... after a few minutes more, they had come out of the shower together to towel off, her lips still slightly open as she kept eating Marcus like a supper, kissing and caressing him as he carried her by her butt into the bedroom. He gently laid her down on the bed, this time taking the lead in pumping himself into her. Julie kept taking it all in, every single bit of reddening shaft, her face contorted in ecstasy and bliss that she seemed demanding to share with Marcus... What had begun as a test quickie slowly turned into an endurance and flexibility test, as Marcus and Julie took turns to lead each other in various positions, their grinding testing the bedsprings of their bed, the bookshelves in the loft, the living room couch, interspersed ever so often with gentle explorations of each other’s bodies and mouths before suddenly testing more of the furniture in the house...
It may have been too much, as Marcus finally cut her off with a command. “Julie, would you kindly stop your current main activity?” after what had seemed like the eighth round of her pounding onto him like a reverse jackhammer. She froze in mid copulation, before slowly peeling her pussy off his sore dick and gently kissing him, as if to thank Marcus for giving her so much. “You’re so good to me, honey. I love you. We should do this again some other time... I require some time to clean up before I perform any other activities. I have... approximately 32 hours of activity remaining before requiring a recharge based on prior activity patterns for the previous four hours.”
Marcus panted weakly on his back as he smiled. He would have LOVED to keep going forever, but it was clear she was probably capable of lasting the forty hours on a full charge. There were some Australian marsupials that were capable of marathon sex till death, and he did not want to add his own species to the list by accident, he reflected, watching Julie slowly turn away and leave the room for the bathroom. Oh yes, he had to file that report, he admitted to himself as he got on a bedrobe and tiredly reached for his smart tablet to call in to work...
"And so, I want to conclude my report for the past 24 hours with this. I believe Julie is a wonderful substitute for a real woman, at least in the context of a lonely eight-times-spurned involuntary celibate like me, but caution should be taken during operation as she is possibly capable of killing the user if left to operate non-stop in certain modes on a full charge of 80% without manual user intervention...” Marcus calmly and professionally reported. Seamus Arendt deadpanned back in response. “Look, Marcus, I know you want to frame it professionally, and it’s an admirable quality that you keep complying with company standards even on your holidays,” he started a response on the Xoom conference with both his brother Bellamy and an attending young man from the legal department who had been read in on Project Last Ditch, but hadn’t quite fully comprehended the sheer audacity of the project until two minutes ago. Seamus paused, trying to frame his response with the same professionality, then decided to just fuck it. “but what you’re basically saying is that we need to work on more safety measures and maybe the final product could get away with being a little less gorgeous.” The poor young man from Legal swayed and fainted off screen, sending stationery clattering as his workstation detected the apparent cardiac event and cut him off from the call while summoning paramedics to take care of him. Seamus looked over at the window as it cut off, sighing. “Excuse me. Bellamy, could you take over finishing this meeting for me? I think that poor Joseph kid just had the worst introduction to how fine the bleeding edge in this company can get.” Another window closed, leaving Bellamy Arendt and Marcus staring at each other. Bellamy looked at Marcus through his emo hairdo. Marcus briefly wondered when Bellamy would grow up and at least trim the hair blocking his eyes. He could keep the bloody depressing rock going on his radio when nobody else was in his office, but by god, he was much too old to still be depressed. Certainly not when he was flying so high like the Four (Three?) Brothers... Bellamy gave a small cough as he leafed through the printouts. “There’s no major hardware issues on the horizon, as far as I can tell, but maybe we should do an overhaul and maintenance on the prototype on Monday. You can bring it in yourself.” Marcus mused. “But she’s working so well... a little too well... in fact, I think I don’t even want to lose a moment with her beyond the necessary recharges and self maintenances and stuff... I’m gooning, aren’t I?” Bellamy put on a pair of bifocals he had adopted after his eyesight had finally started caving in slowly from age even with the rejuve he was splurging on... “I never did get into the brain rot thing as a teen, but let me assure you, given how intense she can apparenty get, I need to make sure that she doesn’t experience a catastrophic failure. You might get even more upset than Vizhar Nahrendi lost a billion dollars in communications satellite from a multi-launch rocket blowing up... especially if it blows up while on your launch pad, if you catch my drift.” Bellamy rolls his eyes briefly as a message drifts into his side view: “The lawyer is okay, but has begged us to garnish his wages because he wants what Mr Manners is having.” “Excuse me, Marcus...” Bellamy briefly interrupted himself as he typed a reply over. “Tell him we’re not necessarily producing an actual product, this is just product research.” Admittedly, it was extremely successful relative to the effort they had put in so far. Corners not affecting user safety (hopefully) had been cut in a few places, and a real woman would probably still beat out what they had sent Marcus home with in the long run on many aspects... still, everything was worth trying once. He just didn’t think it meant it was worth doing as a mass product... “Now... erm... Any questions?” Bellamy asked. “Anything that came to mind while you were testing?” “How intelligent is she, really?” Marcus asked. He had a fantasy of Julie becoming a woman who could appreciate his intellectual pursuits, not just his body or hands, a sort of soulmate he could share actual philosophical debates with, using their mouths and minds, if not necessarily their other junk as well. “Well... it’s hard to exactly quantify theoretical intelligence on the unit over a Xoom call, I think it’d be easier to show you in person when we do the maintenance stuff... But she does know a basic amount of the GCCC at least.” Bellamy thoughtfully noted. “You know... Gardening, Cooking, Cleaning, Callisthenics, Copulation...” Marcus asked the obvious question given his healthy lifestyle. “What about Cardio?” Bellamy blinked. “I should think that Copulation covers it, but you’re right, why didn’t I consider that as an option?” He furiously scribbled more notes down. “And yes, I’ve seen the Color-Blindness thing... god knows I was having those problems too during development. Just like with my dev-environment’s choice of highlighting syntax. Anyhow... perhaps you should go enjoy the company of your lady... I need to do actual work on more than just this you know.” Marcus nodded lazily. “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.” He cut the call and beamed, skipping out to check on the gardening Julie had set herself to doing.
Chapter 4 – That’s Not How You Do Callisthenics
Marcus Manners woke up as usual, stretching himself as he sat up. It had been two months since he’d gotten ‘married’, and he’d settled into a quiet schedule of sorts – hours spent either in the office or at the upper storey studio loft, as well as simply sitting around watching Julie do various modern wife things: tending to the citrus bushes on the lawn just outside the front door, cleaning the house, busying herself in the kitchen with meal prep, and even, occasionally, a little lovemaking in various spots around the house. She had required a little assistance in the lattermost outside of the bedroom from Marcus in terms of getting posed into position where she could work on him properly. He had been briefed on the way Julie Manners Ambervale functioned back in the office over a maintenance check – her entire body had spread out its processing functions far more widely than previous designs. This had some advantages in accelerating animation and reflex handling, but it would run into issues in some cases. Clearly, she needed more work, but Marcus didn’t care much... she was perfect as she was, or at least good enough to fill the bill. Marcus blinked as she noticed Julie had left the bedroom early, and reached to his smart tablet to check her scheduled program executions. Bellamy had made a few alterations in the past few days, including adding some basic callisthenics data to Julie’s databases and implementing a system that would pre-randomize at least the first few hours of what she did on wakeups. The schedules could be changed or even disabled if necessary, but it was a first try at adding some variation to what the android was capable of doing to expand her repetoire and surprise. She was about to start some callisthenics in about five minutes in the living room, apparently. He blinked, then quickly walked over to the clothes cabinet to find some basic workout clothing to follow her along in. He paced into the living room and breathed deeply as he watched Julie slowly warming up, lying flat down on her front on the bare wooden flooring as she stretched herself slowly. Her lovely cerulean eyes were looking straight ahead as she did so, collagenated lips slowly parting and closing with each breath as her toned body heaved slowly. He lingered his eyes ever so often in mid-workout to appreciate the way Seamus had carefully engineered synthmuscle over actual load-bearing actuators to flex and squeeze like the actual thing doing actual load work, not overly muscular or bulky, but the flows of a toned body that didn’t overdo workouts. Julie was not a cartoon, but an actual real, living, breathing woman, at least, on the surface. That really triggered him (in a good way) for some reason. The workout went on for about half an hour before Julie concluded, standing up and leaning forward. The lycra workout outfit was a simple shaping black trouser set, white shocks and gym shoes, and a purple and pink sports top cut to expose her arms entirely, as well as provide a view of her cleavage and that teasing sliver of skin between her neck and the tops of her breasts, along with some middle underboob. The top had been designed to clip to the waistband of her pants as a set, the entire ensemble skintight and clearly fitted for more than just working out. It had become slightly slick with sweat from the exertions and stretching of the workout, though not as much as Marcus’ own shirt and pants. He wasn’t as in shape as he used to be when Elliot had led him on these kinds of exercises. Marcus had been aroused a little by the act of Julie doing callisthenics, her giant bosom bouncing and mounding in various ways from the power of gravity and the way her arms squished slightly against their sides. He licked his lips a little as Julie sat there, paused, apparently cooling down a little before she made breakfast. Marcus was actually in the mood for second servings, he mused, as he took his smart tablet off the coffee table and sat up quietly, saying nothing as he manually terminated the callisthenics program that had just executed. The abrupt cancel caused Julie to quickly stand up at attention, arms loosely at her sides. Marcus stood up a bit to carefully admire Julie’s body, shifting himself around her as if in a sort of worship shuffle on his knees. He got up, looking side by side at the profile of her face from behind her. Marcus frowned. There was clearly a lot more work to do on integrating programs together on the sybaritic simulant. Some of these gaps were so big you could stick a camera somewhere, hire a stunt driver, and drive some sort of boosted vehicle across them for an action movie, figuratively at least. Still, there was still something oddly arousing about these moments, where the naturalistic normality of Julie Manners Ambervale gave way to the artificiality of Prototype 02 of Project Last Ditch. He gave Julie’s still form a hug from behind, breathing in her sweatiness deeply. The human flesh analogue had been tweaked since the time Senator Bundt had commissioned the company’s first full forays into lifelike androids, and Julie’s sweat was now a synthetic saline compound formulated carefully to replicate most of the effects of human sweat on surrounding clothing and skin, though a few less pleasant results (body odor, harder staining from prolonged contact on clothing stuff) had been tweaked down. Marcus felt very naughty today, as he subtly stuffed one hand down the back of Julie’s workout pants, carefully manipulating his fingers to brush at her pudenda, feeling the pubic fur, before gently inserting them into her warm, moist pussy. She wasn’t exactly wearing any panties, allowing her workout outfit to wrap like nothing at all around her body. Julie Manners Ambervale didn’t tell Marcus to mind his manners with her, merely blinking slowly without any other response save the gentle heave of her breasts as the lungs filled with cool room air and exhaled a warmth. Marcus observed that Julie’s pants basically had a button-up crotch, probably for easier access in the bathroom. He got his hand out of her pants, and carefully unbuttoned the crotchpiece for easier access in the living room. Julie’s continued silence was arousing, but even Marcus was tiring of it. He wiped his hand of food-safe synthlube from Julie’s loving pussy on some tissues nearby, then used it to tap the tablet and issue a command to ‘execute conversation.prog’. “Executing conversation program... loading voice model file.” Julie’s lips announced, even as the rest of her body remained still beyond breathing, her voice devoid of emotion or warmth. There was a pause, then the voice returned, this time massaging his ears with the same alive tones of a woman in love. “... Good morning, Marcus. How are you this morning?” Marcus rubbed his slightly stubbled cheek against Julie’s, getting a little too off on her current state. “Oh, good. Thank you for the callisthenics workout this morning, Julie.” There is an awkward pause, before Julie responds. “Error. Memory access not enabled. Unable to verify activity log... Mmm, you feel so warm, honey. You should take a shower. Come to think of it, so should I. Should we save water?” Julie continues talking, blinking ever so often, her eyes unfocused. Simply running her conversation programming on its own instead of as part of a complex, unified web of systems was causing some interesting behaviors from her. Marcus didn’t care, as he continued chatting idly with her, her responses still surprisingly relevant sounding even without her memories fueling the branches in her speech matrix. He tapped and executed the callisthenics programming, this time without a sequence loaded, and stepped back. He wondered what other mischief he could inflict on his wife as he tapped through the buttons, causing Julie to stiffly transition between various isolated exercises even as she continued pleasantly talking, totally unaware of what Marcus was doing with her lovely body. Julie eventually started sitting on the floor and carefully placing her arms slightly behind, using them to execute a sort of butt lift with her legs out against the ground. Marcus decided to pause the callisthenics program briefly and sit down behind her, carefully inserting himself between her and the flooring. He thought about it, then pulled his own pants down, exposing his growing erection, and carefully placed the tip against the vaginal entry on his adoring android, before hitting the resume button. Marcus almost regretted doing what he did as Julie resumed her workout, pounding her bared pussy onto his cock at a slow pace as she randomly chatted. “The flowers in the garden are blooming nicely this season, honey. We should be able to fill the vase in the living room with something nice.” Marcus gritted his teeth. “Eeerh! Erm... that’s n-nice....” Something else was blooming, wedged in a different kind of ‘flower’ of sorts. “I always wanted real live flowers in the living room for once, not something we bought made of plastic. Those last a lot longer, but they’re nowhere as nice...” He observed, calmly ignoring the irony of how some people would say the observation was also relevant to his current circumstances. Julie smiles a little. “I know, right? It would be wonderful if everyone could have fresh flowers occasionally. I just think it’s not for romance you know... For example, did you know that - Error: Knowledge Database Unavailable... “ Her soft warmth briefly bleeds away as another error message pops into her words, but it returns just as fast. If Julie is being aroused, she shows no sign of it besides the hardening pump of her vaginal folds against Marcus’ manhood. He decides to have more fun by popping his hands up and under Julie’s sports top, his fingers pinching her nipples and feeling the reflex programs stiffen them up unconsciously, Julie’s lips continuing to follow her words alone as she chatters away. Eventually, Marcus decided he had enough of fooling around with her as a disconnected and taps through the tablet to reboot her back into normal mode. There is a faint whirr as Julie stops pounding Marcus’ cock, her body going limp atop his mountain. “Rebooting Unit Julie Manners Ambervale into full operating mode. Please wait...” There is a brief flash in her pupils as she shudders, before gasping, as the intricate web of modules in her programming slowly couple back together and realise that, hey, Marcus is sitting beneath her with his cock up her loveliest hole. Julie’s eyes briefly gape in puzzlement as her tiny AIO CPU brain works to figure out how best to proceed... before deciding to simply give up and ride the mountain, her eyes rolling slightly upwards as she moans in ecstasy, bucking her hips firmly. “Marcus... you’re so manly... you make me forget things...” She purrs, letting coital amnesia apparently be her reason for the giant hole in her memory. Marcus grunts as he obliges, helping her into another orgasm... and another. And maybe a third, before he joins her, panting as he finally finishes up, nuzzling her neck as he cuddles her. “ Well then, consider this a new memory...” giving Julie a peck on the cheek to go along with all the pecker action she just got. Julie lets out a happy laugh, rubbing the fingers of one hand against a stubbled cheek. “Oh, Marcus, you sure have a way with words... ... excuse me while I go clean myself up.” She excuses herself, peeling off the mess under her and slowly limping off to the bathroom to clean out her waste systems. Marcus sits back a little and gulps a breath of air. God, it was good... He blinks, then erks as he realises it’s not a day off or day to work from home. He’d have to go into the office and work after this. He pulls his pants up as he walks off to join Julie in the shower, hoping that he wouldn’t wind up doing anything that would make him late...
Chapter 5 – Are we Overdoing It?
Marcus wound up being a little late, throwing an extra bout of cuddling in the shower. He didn’t care, glowing slightly, as he hugged Julie one more time in the kitchen. “Back for dinner... I hope...” He purred softly. Julie closes her eyes, that purr is really doing it for her apparently. “Give me an early call if I need to slow down or cancel it for you, okay, hon?” Even fully dressed in a modest floral dress, her body was still filling the meter for Marcus, and it was all he could do to avoid add even more time to his lateness for the meeting, a small tuna sandwich in his mouth as the jalopy nearly violated the Little Sanctuary local speed limit.
Marcus Manners popped his head into the meeting room, looking a little sheepish. There was a long pause as he looked into the meeting room of the Arendtcore Inner Sanctum, converted partially into a meeting room of sorts, with one of the Oven units parked and ready to go next to a . A small crowd made up entirely of Japanese guys, mostly young men and women, with a grizzled old sage in their midst, is gathered over a smart tablet, tapping carefully and debating each other in... Japanese? Chinese? The languages had gotten confuzzled together after a few years, and it seemed okay to mix both now as a standard. Bellamy Arendt quietly motioned to Marcus to sit down at a chair next to him. “You’re late, you dunhead,” he hissed, but looking not very upset, strangely. “I had to shift things a little.” Seamus is currently watching the crowd of foreign folks tap away furiously at the tablet, occasionally making observations. He makes a motion to Marcus to get on his headphones and tap into the translator for the meeting, which he does... Marcus hears a mess of random remarks as the translator on the table starts turning every bit of speech into relevant languages... The first thing he hears is someone asking. “Is our company mascot really having that same shade of hair? I think it’s two or three bits darker.” Other translations filter in slowly. “Can I get more of this coffee? It’s delicious.” “Her tits are NOT that big!” “I’d **** my **** in her *** any day” “Oy, no fraternization, Hayashi!” “Whaat, you’d do it toooo!” “I envy the lucky guy who gets assigned to coping with THIS!” “Minami-sama, I can’t believe I’m hearing that from you.” “I swing that way, you dunhead!” The babble goes on for several more minutes before the old man suddenly makes a hand signal, as if to demand they shut up. Which the whole crew does, watching on as he makes a few more changes before handing the tablet back to Seamus, who then forwards it to a nearby staffer to run off with. “Now with that out of the way, can we get down to the actual meeting... like, by introducing ourselves and discussing that thing you wanted from us?” The old man finally speaks up, the Chinajapese translation happening just a few seconds behind his tired actual voice. Seamus nods a little, waiting for the translator to catch up, before speaking. “Yes. We would love to, Honomaru-san.... from... erm... EroVRTales, I believe it means in your name?” The old man rolls his eyes. “I kind of hate what the translator does to the name,but that’s about what it means in English. We specialise in ero games on VR systems, but there seems to have been a mismatch between what we do and what you do. Could you explain to us where the twain meet properly? I don’t want to realise we’ve wasted so much of your time and money booking us here for a pointless meet.” Bellamy taps the translator after another pause to let it spool properly. “You just won an industry award recently. We understand you’re a veteran of making critically acclaimed on games of that genre. We want your expertise to implement a simulation and an order system.” Honomaru-san sighs amd murmurs something which the translator refuses to represent. During the delay, a few technicians who have clearly been read in and cleared to enter the Sanctum calmly walk in, carting a few buckets of parts to a table near the Oven unit, preparing something. This causes a little interest in the crew from the delegation despite professional ettiquette, making a few of them peel off from the meeting to observe the crew from a respectful distance. Honomaru-san finally speaks again audibly. “We don’t do those sorts of things, you’d frankly be better off speaking to proper specialists in that regard.” Bellamy sighs at the misunderstanding. “Well, we COULD implement the order system with someone else, but your expertise at very flexible simulations and AI would be very much appreciated on the former.” A small mousy lady with huge-framed glasses and possibly a major eye issue raises a hand timidly... “Er... erm... wouldn’t a order form just work for what you’re doing? I don’t see how we could be of service here, though I love the futuristic feel of your offices, Bellamy-san.” There are murmurs as the translator starts struggling again. “Minami-sama has a point, this reeks of gaijin stupidity” “Would someone call those idiots back before our Leader issues firing slips to them back home? Useless bakas.” “Can I have more of this coffee, it’s really to die for.” “What is wrong with you, you caffeine addict?” Seamus raises a hand, trying the same hand signal that Honomaru-sama used to silence the crew earlier... it somehow works. He sighs a little and hits the Translator button again. “My colleague, here, Bellamy-san, has developed an AI system that relies on protracted human interaction to develop a personality for an AI, and we wish to borrow your skills to create simulations that can provide the necessary inputs to grow these personalities.” The delegation sounds a little like a babbling brook, parsed through the translator “Grow? That’s an interesting word in this context.” “AI, right, not plants?” “You can’t grow personalities, you tailor them with proper coding and datasets!” “It’s 2070, right? Not 3064? My watch seems to be failing to handle a time zone change of, oh... several dozen years.” Honomaru-san sighs as he silences his crew again, then speaks up. “Then what is the order system for?” Seamus thinks hard for a moment to phrase it, even given the Translator is available. Finally he speaks. “Well, I may have created a way to provide androids that are physical versions of people in games like yours. It takes about twelve hours from all the necessary data being provided to outputting the unit. I may not be able to fully convince you of the AI thing without a lot more time, like, weeks or months, but I got together a team to do a build using the specifications you provided with us earlier.” Honomaru-san folds his arms together as he sits in his chair silently, his eyes closed, thinking hard about the words. “That crew over there, right now... yes, I see they’re building something from scratch... MINAMI. HANDA. On me now, I have a task for you!” He barks, as he gathers the mousy girl and the guy who just said he thought he was seeing the future, albeit in a funny joke about timezone errors. There is some conspiratorial whispering the translator cannot pick up. Finally, he turns around to speak to Seamus. “Two of my staff seem to believe there is value in your proposal... they will be stationed right here overnight to witness what you are doing, and to make sure you are not palming us off with a bait and switch... You will provide us with a suitable container and maintenance instructions for your sample as well as technical support. We shall... make full observation of your claims back at our offices in Fujing... Is this acceptable?” Seamus grins wickedly. “That was exactly what I wanted you to say. I accept. I will make sure your chosen staff are properly fed and watered from our canteen...” Handa yells from nearly out of earshot. “I don’t want just water, I really want more of your coffee, it’s great!” A reply pops from the delegation. “One day you will shrivel and die from all that coffee sucking the water out of your blood, Handa-san!” Seamus chuckles as he offers a hand to shake. “Well, I’ve wasted two hours of your time, I do hope it was worth it.” Honomaru-san shakes the proffered hand. “We shall see. But we have seen a lot of impressive ideas here, even though most of it does not dovetail with our field of specialization...”
As the meeting room empties out mostly, Handa calmly accepts a small cup of fresh brew from a nearby Arendtcorp staffer. “Thank you....” Without the translator active, it’s become a bit harder to speak up without using their smart devices, but it’s also easier to speak without being eavesdropped by people who don’t understand Chinajapese dialects.... Minami adjusts her spectacles, resisting the urge to ask lots of questions as she watches something humanoid being assembled. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if what they said was true? Like, Aoi-chan coming to life in front of our very eyes for real?” She asks. Handa deadpans and looks at her. “it would be nice, but then again, you’re the Aoi maniac who showed up to apply for work as a legal intern.” This observation earns a pinch as Minami starts working out with him exactly how to split watching over the assembly and Oven unit to avoid a bait and switch.
Seamus is confronting Bellamy in the comfort of his offices. “I’m asking if we have any way to program an android from Project Last Ditch as a bisexual, because it looks like we have someone who might swing either opposites or both ways...” He asked casually. Bellamy blinks hard. “I’ve always made the assumption that all the androids would be female and all the owners would be male... But I do write very flexible code. Give me some credit for it.” Seamus nods. “Splendid.” He glances over and. Seamus pauses as he spots Marcus making to go back to his office. “Where are you going?” Marcus turns back. “I was about to check my emails and then get some paperwork done. You know, practical stuff? Instead of all this future building we’ve been doing lately? I know we rattle in the factory floor like a shoebox, but you’ve really been doing some interesting stuff. Seamus panics a little. “We need an artist to put together a costume for a video game mascot here!” Marcus blithely waves it away, walking out the door. “Don’t ask me, I suck at seamstressing and cosplay. Get her some random clothing as a placeholder, I’m sure those EroVRTales guys will have better access to such expertise back home...” He shuts the door, leaving Seamus to look at Bellamy. “I don’t suppose we have something in a matching size.” “There was that costume outfit you found lying around after last year’s Halloween party. We’ve still kept it, but nobody came to collect it.” Bellamy offers. “Splendid, someone get it out of storage and see if it’s suitable...” “I’ll get someone else to do it. Songbird’s coming on in a few minutes and I’m not missing her for all the world’s oysters.” Bellamy counters. “You know how hard it is for her to stay on air, she’s not exactly the best video streamer out of Glasgow... or probably anywhere else.” Seamus facepalms. “... you’ve been pretty infatuated with her ever since she started last year. Shouldn’t you be, you know, this simpy for a girl half your age? Hell, I feel at times like she might even be on the wrong side of 18, even.” Bellamy smiles and closes his eyes, a tinge of Scottish accent spilling as he snaps. “Oh, sod off, you kniggit. She makes me feel like I’m 18 and in Glasgow again, Seamus. You wouldn’t understand. And as for you... you should learn to check your stocks more often. Did you ever find those parts you were missing?” Seamus scratches his head. “The ones I was using to test the new Oven? Yeah, I’m a lot less short now, but I’ve got, like, enough missing to make four whole units. Have you seen any boxes around that belong to me?” Bellamy stood up as he messaged another staffer and got ready to leave the office early. “oh sod off, I may be my brothers’ keeper, but I aren’t the keeper of your things, okay?” The Scottish accent was really genuine – the Arendt brothers had very different mothers in very different places, a function of repeated momentary irresponsibility from their dad, though to his credit he supported them both at least a little, and he did admit quite early that he’d screwed up to both mothers involved. They hadn’t forgiven him of course, but they had set it aside for the kids, at least. Surprisingly responsible for all involved.
Bellamy stomped off in his thick boots. “And anyways, you owe me a day or two off, I put myself out for you on this expansion. Sod off and see ya later.”
Chapter 6 – Overdue Honeymoon
“So what you’re telling me,” Marcus Manners observed as he shaved his face cleanly while taking to his communicator as a speaker-based phone, “is that you’re going to just leave the damn company headless for a month...” “Pretty much.” Seamus Arendt’s voice came over the comms in response. “You and I deserve it, and with us out of the way, we will be able to test the capability of our next generation of leaders to manage the company for a bit.” Marcus tapped the dumb shaver on the sink, watching the accumulated detritus so far fall off and rinsing the sink. The design he was using had served him faithfully and many other men had agreed too, making it a classic still in full production. The price had tripled over the last five decades, but the same quality was still there, pretty good given inflation’s effects on everything basically. “I’ll take that honestly, but I think it’s a bit peculiar that you’re being so specific in having the company concierge for four weeks in some fancy Bueno Vegas suite rather than letting us choose our destination freely.” “We’re paying for it out of our Sanctum’s funds. Completely off the books from years of dirty little projects-” Bellamy’s voice briefly came on, yelling “Bell’s makes the nicest AI girlfriends!”.Seamus’ teeth gritted audibly for a moment but he soon recovered. “ Only the best for our youngest present bro and his lovely wife. We’ve delayed you for two years on having a proper honeymoon. And the Eldevier is... frankly... We have close ties. We advised on the fitout of the place, and they specifically wanted to specialise in something nobody else could properly top. Do make sure to go through the pre-checkin dossier they sent over. And if they screw up with you... they know what happens” Marcus felt a slow chill. The kind that happened when Seamus’ psychopathy briefly came off its leash and drugs. It was simultaneously nice to know that he had his back, and worrying because that back could just as easily be offered a knife if it proved expedient, brotherhood or no. Marcus nodded slowly. The dossier had finally arrived today, an hour before he’d woken up. It had been a cream-colored leather folder with a few documents and things inside about his trip. He hadn’t read it fully to the letter and examining the varied inclusions, but he’d skimmed over the introduction letter and brief notes on what they were providing, including a small first-class two-seater berth on a ‘slowliner’ plane. Half as fast, but five times as luxurious as a normal domestic flight. He had had no reason to use such a slowliner, but stretching the trip out a little seemed like a great idea if they were going to travel in luxury... “So dragging Elliot with you on some... jaunt yourselves with Bellamy and Aymee... is part of the plan? I mean, I don’t mind some time not caring for Elliot for a change will you people be okay?” Marcus fretted, mind rolling through all the potential issues that could occur, including the possibility of a diplomatic fracas involving the Chinajapese royal family, care of Aymee aka Empress Eimu. Seamus seemed about ten times too relaxed for such a massive pair of undertakings happening at the same time, even while leaving none of the Brothers parked at work... “I’m tweaking Elliot a little so that he’ll crash less and stick to us better. And Aymee is providing us four a ride with the stealth royal jet she chartered... it’s more subtle, but if shit happens, it has the necessary callsigns and safeties and even countermeasures. It’ll be safe as houses...” Marcus took his word for it. “Seamus, I trust you with our son. Do NOT fuck this up or get yourself killed or sick or something, okay? You come back to us now safe okay?” Seamus dismissively waved off the concern. “I’d be more concerned about how much you’d take the wrong attitude to this trip of yours. Relax okay? It’s only four weeks away. Make the most of it. Ta.” The comms clicked and closed the call, leaving Marcus to slip it back into his bathrobe and finish the rest of his bathroom trip...
Marcus idly walked back into the bathroom, watching his lovely wife Julie Manners Ambervale carefully stretching as she waited for the private airport transfer the Eldevier had arranged to convey them to the airport terminal for their slowliner trip down to Bueno Vegas. A look of worry stretched across her face as she glanced over at Marcus, her sundress draping over her sensually curved frame as she sat on the bed... Her silver briefcase had been packed and was just waiting to be lugged to new places around the world, albeit with less clothing than it had first arrived with to the Manners home. Marcus sat down next to her, carefully going through the silver travel briefcase as well. Being able to tuck his stuff into Julie’s roomy briefcase had been nice, especially as the hotel would provide a lot of things he would normally have used in the space of two weeks “I’m had just worried, Marcus, I mean, I’ve never had Elliot away from us for so long. A mother woould certainly worry. Will your idiot brothers take good care of him?” Marcus paused to turn his attention to the dossier, making sure the flight tickets and check in key were placed in their respective slots, before fishing out a small read-only disc in a drive tentaively glued to a card marked “For your side-unit – execute before trip to improve your experience at the Eldevier– takes approximately ten minutes.” He nodded lazily and purred. “Julie, would you kindly prepare for maintenance? I’m sure they will, their psychopathy’s been tuned down to 5... or 6, at the most...” He calmly reached for Julie’s sundress and unbuttoned it slightly, exposing her bra-free bosom as the sternum panel just above her collarbones whirred into its usual hiding spot, the control panel exposing itself. The minidisc clicked in place into one of the interfaces, causing it to begin whirring away in its caddy at a more audible volume than a solid-state storage media would. Julie stopped protesting and fretting, her voice losing its emotional panic. “Creating temporary additional partition... loading Elsevier Complex building data, including privileged customer access areas. Configuring unit for reduced friction and increased enjoyment... Customer type: Eldevier Elite, two persons. Temporarily disabling normal schedule, routines for family members not on list of guests..” Marcus sat, watching Julie as she operated like a machine rather than the loving, soft wife and mother to an autistic boy, with extra premium benefits, that she normally was programmed to be. He eased the minidisc caddy out as it completed the alterations to Julie’s personality, commanding her to resume her personality’s execution and behaviors as a human woman, albeit one with very nice tits, pausing to take a brief liberty by cupping her melons for a feel before buttoning up her dress. Julie blinked silently for a moment, before smiling dazedly, like Marcus had slipped a roofie to her and it was now working its way into her bloodstream and brain. “... just ten minutes to go before they fetch us... I can’t wait...” She purred, a slight blush on her face as she seemed a lot happier and calmer. Marcus raised an eyebrow and decided to check... “Aren’t you worried about our son, honey?” Julie turned her head to completely look at Marcus face to face. “No, honey, I’m only worried about you right now... Will you be alright? You’ve always seemed so uptight from all the stress at work...” Marcus sat back a little, laughing. The Eldevier’s virtual roofie/infopack/setup had done a marvellous job so far. It would reverse itself at the end of the trip after the transfer had dropped them off home, but he could optionally keep it running for a bit to enjoy some of the changes before the program carefully junked its partition and undid its work. “I’ll be okay. Now... shall we?” He stood up, carefully easing Julie in front of himself as he helped her with their combined luggage in one briefcase.
Marcus was wishing half an hour later that the Eldevier HAD included an actual roofie for him to calm down on, realising just why he’d kept away from air travel for so many years. There had been no issues with domestic check in and being ushered into the slowliner. The problem had started when he examined the layout of their three-seater berth as he slowly sat into a seat specifically assigned to him. A brief examination of Julie’s own seat revealed a slight stiffness, one he’d recognized from months of keeping an induction pad beneath her in the bedroom for recharges. If Julie had any discomfort from the pad, she showed the same lack of discomfort as usual, wriggling and squealing as she observed just how cushy the berth was after stowing their luggage in a side locker unobtrusively. After what seemed like a few minutes watching the mandatory safety video and sharing a small welcome caviar set with Julie, Marcus wondered when they would be taking off as he munched on a little sliver of cheese paired with some nice eggs and a cracker... Pressing a button summoned a gamine little waif in a sort of stewardessing outfit, carefully held up by a pair of buttons on shoulder straps and a sort of bodysuit cut awfully high up to above the highest point of her thigh circumferences. She blinked slowly, with the characteristic glazed smile of a stewardessing droid, before asking “Hello, Mr Manners, what would you like right now?” Marcus erms. “It’s been a while... when are we taking off? This slowliner seems... well, slow.” The stewardess droid beamed faintly. “Slow enough that you didn’t notice the takeoff?” Marcus fidgeted a little, he did have one problem with aircraft of any speed and kind... “Oh.” He looked out the window as the clouds slowly splashed against the blimpy wings of the slowliner... “I... erm... I may need airsickness medications.” The little robot nodded as she processed this request... “we have adequate stocks for everyone... at least in First and Business Class. Let me bring you enough to last till your arrival in Reno.” She turned around slowly, exposing the airline’s logo on her butt along with a warning not to grope it, and walked off. Marcus had calmed down a little after a while, swallowing two pills with a glass of cold water. He looked to Julie just as she placed a hand onto one of his, sympathetically nodding as if she comprehended the pain of his airsickness tendencies. “It’s only eight hours to Reno, my love. Let’s enjoy each other’s company.” Julie smiled as she raised a glass of something bubbly before sipping it. “That and those pills should tide you over.” Marcus laughed a little bitterly. “I still think this is wasted on me. I would rather sleep it off and that seems like a real waste of what the company paid for these seats...” “Oh, do live a little! Think of all the things we’ll get to do soon. Like...” Julie closed her eyes as she rested her flute of fizzy on her armrest, small insectoid-like arms raising up to hold it safely in case of turbulence, and rested one hand dangerously close to his groin on the denim of his travel trousers. She leaned over to deeply kiss Marcus, before frowning. “bleh. That airsickness stuff tastes like barf.” Marcus shrugged apologetically. “It’s an irony really. Because that’s what it’s meant to keep down.” “Can you even tell the difference?” Julie tilted her head, slightly edging her fingers up and down along the mountain’s edge. Marcus breathed deeply. “Well, I know the color of the air sickness pills are usually pale blue, and the color of the barf... is pretty random... and since it goes into the airsick sack, I don’t have to know, thank Goddess.” He decided to turn to religion for a bit of solace from the slight urge to throw up still lingering despite the pills, and fished out his worn copy of a pocket edition of the Knowledge from the Church of the Goddess of Existence, reading through its dog-eared pages. Julie, for obvious reasons as a machine, didn’t sync up with religion well. Instead, she broke off her conversation and just focused on watching Marcus murmur the words quietly, just being there for him in person. Marcus chanted softly. “The heart wants what it desires, but it cannot always get it. This is not a mistake with the universe. Sometimes what it desires is not what it wants, oddly enough, and if it cannot get it it may be that a divergence has occurred. Find what it really wants and you will probably get it...” Julie blinked slowly. She wasn’t programmed to understand religion or discuss it, and Marcus had glanced briefly at her... if only... Perhaps he could rope Bellamy in to code something like that or other to help Julie fill his soul as easily as she drained his cock... It was a nice thought. He briefly wondered what his son was up to right now en route to Gdanzeland, before shaking his head. There was only one person he should be focusing on these next two weeks. It was meant to be a pure celebration of hedonism and love, and while the Goddess might be appalled with one of those things, he hoped the earnestness with which he lavished the other onto Julie might absolve him of sin, setting aside the doctrinal debate about whether love androids had souls...
The rest of the trip proceeded uneventfully. At one point, Julie had yawned and shambled off with her “Hers” gift bag, tapping the armrest buttons to call for her chair to be converted to a napping bed for herself. The chair slowly lowered and rippled into a form more flat, some sort of pillow forming underneath its fabric. This caused Marcus to play along, and the two resulting beds slowly joined together into one larger bed for a couple. He sat back down on the resulting bed, his butt hitting the side that had once been his chair. He decided not to waste time getting into the pyjamas in his gift bag and focus on getting as much of a snooze as he could before arriving. Julie returned after a while, dressed in a robe in the white and gold theming of First Class for the airline, sitting down and dropping a pair of matching sandals one foot at a time, before lying flat down atop the bed and closing her eyes... He wasn’t going to get any sleep clearly. Marcus let his eyes roam along the rippling cloth of the robe, feeling out the lines and curves of her body with his sight... It took a bit of effort, but eventually he quickly decided against shutting the doors into the berth and joining the mile-high club with Julie, settling in under the shared duvet and falling asleep to the sounds of a whale keening that he had chosen to filter into his headphones.
It hadn’t been a waste of time. They had gotten a quick meal just an hour from Reno, a simple quiche and a soup of some sort of beef fillet and carrots carefully steamed into a mess of pure indulgent stock without the addition of any or much water, matched with some sort of fruit from overseas. They could have asked for something more but between Marcus’ shrinking appetite with age and Julie’s lack of need to actually eat for anything but appearances, it had ended with only a few sweets each, toasting each other as they got up to let the bed morph back into landing-safe chairs again. They never did have to brave the crowds on arrival. Someone had set up things so that they were immediately funneled into a limo of sorts, dimly lit with a shelf of drinks and snacks on one side. Marcus was beginning to feel the mood of the holiday trip, and it was only a matter of time before he was snuggled up next to his sybaritic lover, breathing slowly as the aftereffects of the airsickness pills came over him. Not feeling like barfing, just a touch sluggish. Perhaps the first evening of the trip would be a room service event...
The room was tasteful, dimly lit with configurable rim lighting, a ornately backed king-sized bed slammed against one wall, carefully separated into ‘His’ and ‘Hers’ sides by a color change in the bedding and pillows between pale pink and deep blue. Just for those who preferred to treat their companion androids that way or needed more space for them, a small door in one corner led to a dimly blue-lit room that housed three standing induction pads for charging as well as legacy cords and cables for a few standards, with a notecard reminding guests that they could rent cords and cables for several other less popular standards at the hotel’s “Android Services Shop” in the shopping lobby. There had been other similar suggestions about the lobby’s other stores in the pre-checkin dossier. Marcus wondered what the point of charging five times as much for lingerie as compared to the local supermart back home was, supposing it was classier. He might need to look later... for research, of course. A range of in-room spa treatments were available, though another was available for people who needed more extensive stuff... as was another for premium maintenance and little touch ups and modifications for ‘other people’. The dossier had bragged about how much it was doing to make bot owners comfier, and for those who had shown up without one, it wasn’t mandatory to have one, just awkward not to – a problem the Eldevier promised to solve with a visit to the “ASS”. Marcus rolled his eyes briefly as he’d realised late what the acronymisation of the Android Services Shop was. Sadly, the balcony was enclosed by a sort of all-over glass shielding, to prevent things – or people – falling a long, long way down. 83 floors was a long way down indeed, Marcus reflected, the height their suite had been placed on. Only a few suites of higher quality and cost loomed above them, along with a nice rooftop restaurant and a few doodads intended to stabilise the tower. One of them had been a peculiar orb and some sticks against it enclosed by glass across this floor and the few below them, taking up most of the floors it covered. His architecturally ignorant mind had no idea what it was intended for and how it worked, but he could probably get the concierge to give him a way to learn... if he wanted to. Marcus didn’t want to right now. He smiled as he eased his wife into bed, reciting the same commands he always did to flatten her body out atop the linens and put her to rest. He didn’t want to get dragged into a hardcore hump session when he was so exhausted from slowliner travel right from the wee hours of the morning. He would check out the rest of the room after... oh, maybe a nap... He carefully tapped a tableside room tablet to set an alarm for the afternoon, taking a brief satisfaction in how his watch showed Elliot’s last bout of wakefulness had lasted a whole hour before he turned into a still puppet yet again, based on a long-distance, slightly delayed relay of his wakefulness status. Whatever Seamus and Elliot were doing, it was doing it for the boy. Letting them bring him with them was a good thing... hopefully. Marcus fell asleep very shortly after.
Marcus woke a little late, squinting as the sun was setting. He stretched, yawned, and looked around, settling his eyes on Julie. He thought for a moment, then leaned over and issued a command. “Julie, would you kindly go into pre-waking mode?” As if on cue, Julie shifted her prone body to rest on her side, curling slightly towards Marcus as she breathed deeply... Marcus and stroked her hazel brown mane, watching the little minx stir a little in her sleep, watching for a moment before getting up from the bed and starting to explore the suite. It was certainly very luxurious, he reflected, as he experimented with some sort of fountain that sent up small gusts of something relaxing to his nose. A sort of aromatherapy machine. He walked around, digging in drawers and finding the fridge stocked with a few choice drinks, with no extra charges for drinking. At the price they were paying, they had better not have the galling cheek to charge through the nose for a can of soda like a normal hotel room, Marcus supposed. The exploration continued as Marcus found a large bathroom, carefully segmented into a shared wash basin and toiletry storage shelf, a hot tub with only running hot water, no jets, and a rainfall shower with more scented soaps under it. As he examined the shower, he suddenly realised it was a one-way mirror... He calmly walked back to his bed and sat down, framing the miror wall in front of them. It had seen pretty undecorated for a wall, and he soon found a switch on his bedside console that unsilvered the mirror, allowing him to view the shower itself, from top to bottom... It sank in just what it was meant to facilitate. “Oh, you bastards. You lewd, wonderful bastards.” Marcus quietly thanked the designer responsible for the room’s design for giving him a way to watch someone shower. And he had an idea whom to sacrifice to it first...
“Julie? Julie dear? I think I screwed up a little.” Julie opened her eyes and stirred, sitting up in the dim twilight filling the room. “Did we just... waste an entire afternoon sleeping? We could have done that at home for free!” Julie looked a little shocked as her head whipped around a few times. Marcus looked a little apologetic. “yeah, we could have. But lovely bed. We should ask if we can get one for our home later at the Concierge here... I was thinking of looking for something to eat, anyways. Do you want to freshen up before we go out?” Julie nodded eagerly. “I do want a quick shower. Feeling a bit sweaty from the heat even with this air chiller running like mad.” She hopped up from the bed, her hands easing to her sundress buttons as she walked towards the general direction of the bathroom and into it. “ooh, nice soaps...” Marcus turned on his bedside light, making himself a bit more comfortable... listening to the suggestive rustle of cloth against lace and skin as layers fell onto the floor, the faint nonsensical warble of a song from Julie as the shower started rustling, pouring onto the floor and anyone standing under it. He hit the button, and took a deep breath. Julie was now in full display, apparently oblivious to the fact that the mirror in front of her in the shower was now unsilvered from the bedroom side of it, allowing Marcus to watch her in full nudity, her faint tringle of blonde fur highlighting her vaginal lips as she closed her eyes and started soaping up, suds trailing little lines of white on her skin. Marcus licked his lips as he played the role of voyeur. There were other white things he was now fantasising about splashing onto that toned body now writhing in the shower, and it had set him panting and sweating a little. Perhaps he would do exactly that soon, there was nothing wrong with Julie having a second shower to get dirty, and then clean up again. Marcus got up from the bed again, this time with the careful pacing of a stealth predator... Something else was on the dinner menu, and he would be doing room service... in all senses of the word.
Marcus tweaked the hose and gently sprayed it into Julie’s mouth, before carefully spraying a little food-safe sterilizer into it and tiltting her head down to let it run out of her mouth and dry it properly. She had been very loyal. It first began with just a little kissing before it got out of control, as Marcus and her tried a few surprisingly flexible poses on her part, his stiffening cock plunging into her pussy and making her moan loudly. The make out session had ended in a little mouth action as Julie got on her knees, the water cascading down her back and through her hair as she closed her eyes, pumping her mouth slowly as she swallowed his cock, followed by a small explosion of white stuff. Marcus shivered a little from the post-coital warmth as Julie stood back up, kissing him with lightly minty breath as she seemed to still want more of him. The water bill was included in the room bill already, but Marcus still shut the stream out of habit, his hands playing for a bit with her back and ass. After a bit longer, they had let go and spent a little more time drying each other, before going to the bedroom and continuing their lovemaking.. but not before Marcus spent a minute quickly tapping the room console to order a small dinner for two, with an option to do an unattended delivery instead of having a poor soul walk in on their little mischievious grind. He then plunged right back into kissing and stroking, having his affections returned with moans and pawing. The two plates of spaghetti aglio olio had cooled by the time Marcus had robed up and gone to bring in the meal, the cans of sparkling lemon water halfway to room temperature. But he didn’t care. It still tasted good, especially with his wife sitting next to him, putting the television on to watch the news, which was filled with local puff pieces, including someone noting that the annual season to plumb the depths of Lake Las Vegas for salvage was open again, including the introduction of a new tiered structure for dated licenses to do so, based on the value of salvage hunters desired to take with them out of the waters. Marcus smiled wistfully. Seamus Arendt himself had tried his hand at it once during a college break that had overlapped such a season. The fool had pocketed himself next to nothing, just some souvenirs from the old Airmarlie HQ that fit inside the one watertight case he’d dragged along, plus a box that he could drag behind it on his way up. Anything else would have been a potential death sentence, but he was not a greedy boy. Marcus thoughtfully watched the television, then excused himself from Julie to quickly call the Concierge as he stood in the balcony. It was probably safer now after 4 decades, even if salvage had been mostly picked clean. He asked to be put in touch with someone who could wrangle a license for him during his stay and outfit him to do a dive, if only for the experience. He’d have to leave Julie behind in the hotel of course – she’d sink like a rock, not being designed for deeper dives than the deep end of a pool. He mused on getting her a ‘spa day’ – even if he didn’t manage to grab any actual treasure, it might be nice coming to a renewed new version of his lover...
He looked up at the clock on one wall as he came back into the room. It was already 2am? Time sure flew in Bueno Vegas. The empty trays had been cleared out, presumably by Julie, now fast asleep, sprawled out on her side of the bed. Marcus clicked his tongue, as if to express disappointment, but he was far from that as he got in under the blankets and issued a command to Julie to assume her usual sleeping positioning, watching her slowly lie flat on her back and rest her arms and limbs straight as she silenced herself for the night. He loved her as the perfect woman, but he also loved her for her artificiality sometimes when it showed... Marcus leaned down and gently kissed the plump lips of his luxurious wife, her face frozen in a peaceful sleeping droopiness, then his smile turned to dismay as he realised that there wasn’t a charging pad under the bed for her. “Aw, shit...” Of all the things for a pricy suite to lack, induction charging ‘to the left of the bed’ had not been one he expected. What should have been a slow descent into sleepiness became a brief struggle to carry her limp form into the small ‘robots room’, carefully making sure that the induction pad pushed the correct flavor of power for Julie’s internal coils to pick up from, before carefully closing the glass coffin, encasing Julie in a velvety cushioned lining underneath it. The whole ensemble had her resemble a naughty version of a Malt-Eisner cartoon where a certain character had been cursed into sleep, albeit naked, and hopefully with the ability to be woken up in the morning with the kiss too. By the time he was done, Marcus was still tired, but now he was unable to sleep from whatever hormones had gone wild to help with the heft. He took a deep breath and sighed, deciding that maybe roaming the casino floor’s penny ante section might help him fall asleep.
Chapter 7 – Midnight Crawl
Marcus blinked as he reached the 2nd floor of the Eldevier complex and stepped out onto the shopping arcade. Some of the shops were closed by now in the wee hours of 2 o’clock-ish, but a surprising number were still open, touting their luxury wares to lucky gamblers hitting the jackpots in the midnight hour, desperate last-minute gift seekers, and night owls, all crawling beneath a roofing draped in a sort of looping light show. He cast his eyes into a few of them, finding it a little interesting that there was even a Church of the Goddess Of Existence, albeit not one affiliated with the actual faith – lacking a serious overarching organization now, it was all too easy for folks to take the Goddess’ name in vain. Inside, a browbeaten looking young man was clearly in a sort of shotgun wedding with a lady who had the look of a mom as a knockoff of a Sixar children’s cartoon character officiated their vows. Nobody else was attending, except tiny Neobeanies of other Sixar characters in the frontmost pews. Marcus raised an eyebrow. He wasn’t sure of the circumstances, and he didn’t want to know or find out. After all, what happened in Vegas only stayed in Vegas as long as it wasn’t illegal and nobody pryed into each other’s affairs. Still, maybe he should look into fixing the lack of an actual wedding ceremony in their history together. Julie probably didn’t have the programming to feel anything wrong or lacking, but he sure had felt it himself on a number of occasions. Marcus looked around farther, watching other people indulge themselves in various ways, including a frat boy outing chanting “Chew!” repeatedly as a poor sod was attempting to cram three large pizzas into his gullet a slice at a time. Hopefully he’d fasted the rest of the day. Marcus blinked as he saw the neon magenta sign marked “ASS”. That silly acronym seemed so out of place, the Android Services Shop having lots of glass on the front. One set of panes had been set aside for a pair of entry doors, and a few others displayed various carefully posed androids frozen into place, announcing that the shop did ‘rentals, repairs, maintenance and sales. He hadn’t planned on any of those but... hey, why not take a look? Maybe he might find something to take home.... not very likely, but still... Marcus set off a small chime as he walked into the shop, causing a slightly exhausted looking salesman in a shimmery purple suit to walk in from a door behind the counter and smile after a few seconds. “Erm, hey, welcome to the Eldevier’s inhouse Android Service Shop. Can I get you anything?” Marcus looked around, licking his lips. It looked far less tawdry than some of the third-party stores he’d seen sell androids in the states where the Texan Fundies’ ban on lifelike robots had run into roadblocks, allowing the continued trade even if under the table depending on how danger close they were to faltering and agreeing to it as well. Perhaps too classy. “I was kind of thinking about getting my... wife... a spa weekend...” Marcus spoke up, as if in code. “Sometime in the next couple of days. Two or three days while I’m busy elsewhere... “ “Certainly.... Mr Manners. Let’s see...” The salesman quickly tapped at the register, relying on the inhouse security cameras to tell him which room this customer stayed in and from the model of robot they’d checked in with (or lack of) offer relevant services within their authorised licenses and skills. “Ah, room 8403? A Suite... with.... a custom Arendtcore model with the following specs...” There was a brief rushy noise, and the salesman calmly ripped a menu out of a nearby printer in the form of a paper with a long list of options, from replacing a simple missing or broken LED nail up to a full rebuild with parts wearing out or broken replaced as a separate set of costs. Marcus eyed the list carefully. He could certainly ask Seamus and Bellamy to do a lot of this for free – after all, what was a little repair work between friends? – but it felt rude to welcome them back from their holiday with any of these requests too soon. And after two years, Julie had sadly started showing a little wear and tear. He’d loved some of this, but they increased the risk of her breaking down or tearing something that revealed her true nature. Perhaps a rebuild would give her more years of faithful service to him... “Give her a full rebuild.” The salesman nodded eagerly. He was partially paid on commission, and a rebuild, especially of something clearly so special, would put a large feather in his cap and those of the teams doing the work. “Wow... erm.... sure. But we have to note that your company placed several notes when they booked your stay at the Eldevier. We do know how to service your... wife.... but some things are off limits. That won’t translate to a discount of any sort – I hope you’ll understand you’re paying the price as listed on this menu, less any comp from the casino floor or frequent stay programme points.” Marcus shrugged. “Suits me.” Seamus would give him a little hell for not leaving Julie in his capable hands, but he could fob it off with the excuse that he was now on holiday, Marcus mused as he handed the Salesman his expense card to pay for it, before turning around to examine the various androids on display. “Well, if you want a rental, or even buy something outright, we have a wild range here. Hell, we even have a couple of classics from before the Despotic Years, and we’ll let you view our storeroom if nothing out front here suits you.” The Salesman smelt an opportunity to upsell, an opportunity to earn even more. He’d gotten plenty of lucky folks and people desperate to fill the chapel for a few hours with fake family and wellwishers, even the occasional “speaking now and not holding their peace” unit. He’d gotten his fair share of folks from parts of New America that had banned ownership of lifelike androids and wanted a taste of the forbidden where it wasnt a crime. But this was the first time someone with a high end suite stay lasting more than just a night or two, along with a huge balance available to pay for stuff, had arrived on his shift in the form of a single person. His smile wasn’t fake, it was the smile of someone who had gotten a big win with two 7s and was hoping the third was about to spin down on the jackpot machine.
Sadly for the salesman however, nothing came of his entreaty, as Marcus calmly exited the shop and carefully scanned the invoice for accounting purposes before stuffing the physical copy into his jacket. Marcus was almost perfectly content with what he’d been gifted over the years by Arendtcore, and he didn’t see the need to even add a fourth wheel. He had at least thrown the man at the counter a bone for his service, buying some rather audacious clothing for Julie to wear on her next trip out of their suite... or just staying right in it. He watched a small line of androids dressed for certain purposes accost a passing man, who waved them off disgustedly. This did little to tamp their enthusiasm of sorts, as they returned back into their line and waited for another potential customer. Marcus looked away and walked in a way as to avoid them as much as possible, continuing the pace the plaza for a while before he decided he’d have enough and made his way back to his suite. As he did so, he puzzled at the apparent continued uptime Elliot was displaying without blacking out, somewhere in Gdanzeland. Ten hours? He needed to call them when he could – they were doing something very right and he needed to learn how to replicate it.
Chapter 9 – Lunch In The Sky
Marcus Manners woke up to a package that had been carefully deposited overnight through the inhouse mail slot on the door of his suite and onto the carpeting next to the shoe racks. The first had been of a grizzled old man in cowboy clothing and sporting a brown naugahide cowboy hat with a matching drawl and laziness. “Howdy, Gen Neutron here of Safe Divers Las Vegas. I see here that you’ve chosen through your hotel to dive with us, and I want you to know that you’re in safe hands for the 72 hours you’ve chosen to dive.” The old man proceeded to thump a sort of box full of greenish gel welded to four turrets with some sort of torpedo thingy on them. “We’ve booked a license accordingly, and you’ll be pleased to know that we’ve managed to get a maximum loading license. Stock up all you want in one equivalent box... within limits of course. We’ll give you a diving buddy here. He’ll dry and stow anything you shove into him, and follow you around.” “ In a pinch, we can also do an emergency crash rise with you in it, but that’ll cost extra and you’ll lose your gatherings... But hey, life’s worth more than even the greatest treasures the Lake has to offer, am I right? And I won’t ask for anything out of it or pilfer the lot, unlike some... fly by nighters the other hotels turn to.” Gen winked conspiratorially as the video had a brief burst of static. “We’ll also set you up with me as an escort plus a personal tent rental of your own, and every day there’s gourmet rations in each day’s tent. Nothing as good as where you’re staying on the Strip, but it’s clean, it’s hygienic, it’ll keep you warm down in those chilly waters... Plus the chilli’s mighty fine in them Menu number 9s if you can get them from the random drop.” Gen’s spiel on why it was good to dive with him cut briefly to a mandatory spiel about how a person could die underwater, and how Gen was obligated to at least bring his body back should he fail to surface within 15 minutes of the end of the dive trip. That was... dismaying. “So, pardner, we got a deal? If so, show up in the parking lot of the Eldevier near the porch at about 6am the day after you receive this video.” A faint beep followed, as Marcus fished out his smart tablet to examine the timer the video had just beamed to his personal comms, nodding a little, before ejecting the archaic tape that the message had arrived in.
The second message contained a small message confirming that Julie was booked for a 72-hour Spa Trip Package for upgrades, maintenance, and minor repairs. Also included was a small tab with Julie’s name on it, as well as magnets on on the other, and a decidedly... sheer, almost non-existent gown. Marcus raised an eyebrow at the audacity of the gown – apparently she was supposed to wear the gown and have the tab clipped onto the nape of her neck 60 minutes before collection for the spa trip to make handling her easier. He put this package away, resolving to spend as much time as he could with his lovely wife, as he carefully unpacked her from her induction charging ‘coffin’ and stood her on her feet, caressing Julie’s naked, toned body for a bit before issuing the necessary command to turn her on.
Julie opened her eyes, staring blankly for a few seconds as her body grew accustomed to its current positioning and relative nearby objects, before they locked onto Marcus as she gave him the same smile she always gave on wakeup... “Afternoon, honey... Are we going anywhere for lunch?” Marcus hmmed... “Yeah, I was thinking of going upstairs to the buffet for lunch. We DO have tickets for a meal there every day and I had plans to have an early night so... sound good?” Julie squealed and hugged her curves against Marcus, causing him to have a momentary blank-out as he felt something like the Goddess descending upon him. “That sounds great!” She purred, before looking at him thoughtfully. “But I don’t really eat that much, honey. You know I have to watch my diet to keep in good shape for you...” Marcus chuckled a little. All the excuses she made to hide her true nature were cute in their own way. “It’s okay, dear, I’ll eat enough for the two of us.” Julie glanced upwards thoughtfully. “... but that’ll fatten you up in the long term... Not that I mind, it just means I have more of you to love.” Marcus almost clutched his heart. He knew the lines pretty much, having helped Bellamy put together Julie’s voice patterns. But the voice that backed those words was doing it for him! He quickly excused himself, handing her a small package. “I got you something small to wear for lunch today... I hope you don’t mind, it might be a little daring.” Julie giggled as she grabbed the bag and slowly unzipped it. “I don’t mind, dear, that’s just one letter off from the word ‘darling’, darling...” She winked and kissed Marcus on the cheek, “No peeking...” She purred as she tried to keep how she would look in it a surprise even though Marcus had seen the preview on the sticker itself, striding into the bathroom to dress herself up...
The first sign Marcus had that Julie was ready to go was the clicking sounds of high heels on the bathroom tiles. He looked up as he sat at the small dining table and was floored by what he saw. He had been made aware that the outfits on offer were daring, but it was one thing to be told while looking at a small photo preview on a sticker, and another to be shown live... Julie smoothed out the hem of her mini-dress. It was kind of pointless in terms of covering her up, being incredibly sheer lace with small clipping buttons running down the edges on the thin opaque edges on the sides to hold them together, the only concessions to covering her up being a thong and a pair of stick-on breast cups beneath the dress in matching floral lace. Her long legs and arms were encased in more sheer white lace, ending in sleeveless gloves and a pair of shimmery white high heels. It felt to Marcus like something she shouldn’t wear in the public areas of the Eldevier. Marcus stared blankly. “Well, how do I look in this, honey?” Julie casually asked Marcus, a small pearl hairclip nestled in the mop of her brown hair. Marcus gulped after a bit. Part of him wanted to quickly just shoo her back into the bathroom with a more modest outfit. But a devil within him asked why he shouldn’t take pride in his wife for once? Besides, the rooftop restaurant of the Eldevier wasn’t technically a ‘public area’, in so much as it required diners to live in the hotel suites in order to access it for its anytime meals... Ah, to heck with it, Marcus decided, smiling as he stood up to usher Julie out, making sure to grab his hotel card to unlock the lift to get past the lift’s access panel and the entrance. “Like a goddess, dear. Not the Goddess of Existence, but.... still... wow...” He stifled a cough as Julie went slightly in front of him, giving him a nice view of her back as she entered the lift ahead of Marcus and watched him slap his suite card onto a reader to open up the suite-exclusive floors.
Merpatti looked glumly at the guest register as he carefully tidied them by tapping the deck at the entrance table to the restaurant. He had thought it a dream come true once to travel to New America, and to find employment at such a high-class restaurant in one of the biggest and busiest places in the country. The reality had set in fast, as the ennui ambushed him. He was getting paid well, fed well, and the board was free even if the staff living spaces were all underground, the windows being faked with camera feeds from the pillars and cladding of the spire building. It was nice but... ennui being what it is, it had set in from mind numbing routine that clashed with his ideas that lots of things would happen. Merpatti leaned on the tall table, wondering how his girlfriend was doing back home in Gdanzeland. It had become a bit of a warzone in places, but he still looked forward to being done with this job and going home one day with a big stash saved up, perhaps enough to build a small decent home. Maybe even one with running water and power piped directly into the house, with actual sanitation in a bathroom rather than a outhouse or a communal toilet... “Excuse me, we’d like a booth for two people at the Anytime Rooftop Diner, is there room for us?” A soft lush womanly voice spoke up, shaking him from his daydream... and then into an eternal nightmare. Or a forever dream. It was hard to tell for him. She was curvaceous, dressed in next to nothing, her eyes sleepy looking as she looked at him through half-closed eyelids, her collagenated soup-coolers parting slightly in a soft sigh as she used a subtly French manicured set of fingers to fuss a little with her bob of hazel hair. Merpatti did not believe in the Goddess of Existence. There was a whole other pantheon of gods and goddesses and beliefs back in his homeland... but some things transcended all manmade attempts to make sense of the world, and he was dumbstruck by one of them now. He shook his head quickly. He had to be professional about this, it was probably just another android brought in by one of the guests. It was easy to craft beauty out of plastic and metal with enough money. And many guests had done so with multiple trips to modders and specialist brands to show off their riches in the form of a well kept human wife or a perfect plastic beauty... And yet, something about this guest suggested something no amount of money could reach... “Erm... yes... room and name?” The woman calmly nodded. “Room 8403. My hubby is Marcus Manners and I’m Julie Manners Ambervale. Again, table for two?” She repeated herself, every word splashing against poor Merpatti’s sanity like a reversed version of whatever dark demons lurked in HP Lovecraft’s writings. A different kind of edging close to insanity... It was all he could do to quickly confirm there was a skypod to sit in, followed by getting an usher to bring the couple in, taking care not to look too long at Julie or Marcus lest anything else came besides what he was already feeling. He had been found later after his shift in his quarters in the basement, slowly sobbing and drinking the hardest liquor permitted to staff staying within the Eldevier. When asked by his roommate why he was so broken, he looked to him and whispered something that made no sense and that he refused to clarify. “I have seen perfection cross my path, I have seen true beauty. And I fear I shall never be content or happy ever again, no matter where I go from here.” He had remained a professional at his duties for the rest of his five year contract with the Eldevier, but after his contract had concluded, he had taken his savings and just... vanished. His girlfriend and family would never hear from him ever again.
Julie took a deep breath and pawed at the glass, looking out at the clouds that surrounded the hotel at this level, wisps of Bueno Vegas and Lake Las Vegas occasionally visible in gaps... Her peachy butt wiggled slightly as she braced her knees on the cushy padded couch that surrounded the table, the main furnishings of the tiny room she and Marcus had been assigned. She remained unaware of the eternal nightmare she had trapped a poor soul in by her passing, but she was now ensnaring a different person with the shape of her back and hips. Marcus bit his lip, glancing at Julie even as he made a show of getting ready to pop the hatch leading out of the room and onto the buffet floor. “Is there anything you’d like me to pick out if I see it on the buffet tables, dear?” The sooner he got out of this pod, the sooner he could take a breather from being burned alive by the almost divine glory next to him, like a sun with very sexy legs. Julie continued looking out with seemingly genuine interest. “Pretty... Marcus... Get me a little fruit. Perhaps a slice of pizza or one of those tiny pasta dishes I saw earlier...” “How about maybe seafood? Chinajapese? Or maybe some Canadian steak?” Julie turned back and shook her head. “A little at a time, dear. I don’t eat like a horse. Well... maybe a Falabella. There are starving children elsewhere and I don’t think we should tempt fate by flaunting our access to so much good food by wasting any of it.” Marcus blinked. That... had never been part of the lines they had put together. Had she really changed so much with upgrades? “Uhm... sure. Pizza or pasta it is.” He got out of the skypod they were assigned and carefully thumped the door back down, before going to grab his first serve of quite a few.
In the end, Julie’s lack of overindulgence had steered Marcus a little towards the same, fewer dishes carefully savored and with nothing left save garnishings, gravies and maybe a few vegetables carved into flowers. And yet he hadn’t felt underfilled, having joined Julie in lingering a little and looking out at the clouds after another set of dishes had been cleared. Julie had tried some dessert as well as a filet Sasketchewan, commenting that “it tastes like a little slice of heaven.” Except for the occasionally summoned staff to clear dishes or refill their drinks, the skypod afforded them an awful amount of privacy and exclusivity. It had also emboldened Marcus a little to try some less innocent things, his hand clapping her buttcheek as he looked out. Julie didn’t seem to notice, or care about Marcus copping a feel, merely opening the lips of her smile a little as a soft moan escaped from them. “... Did you enjoy that?” Marcus dithered a little, a slight guilt on his voice. “Er.... erm, yes, I did enjoy the feel of the meat too.” Julie briefly went silent, her eyes glazing over as she struggled with the context of Marcus’ response. Was he referring to the Filet Sasketchewan they had tried, or the meat dishes in general, or what she had just copped a feel of? After a few moments she tilted her head a little, resting it on Marcus’ shoulder and closing her eyes. “I think I need to freshen up” She said, excusing herself to clean herself up and out after loading up on unnecessary food for the sake of appearing human. Marcus collapsed back in his seat, heaving a little. His wife was going to kill him. His wife was going to kill him one day, and he would take it all with the look of a very happy fool. Maybe they would find his body with that dazed look still frozen into his corpse, perfectly forgiving of what she had done to stop his heart or cause a stroke, like a strange sort of suicide. But right now... he breathed deeper, trying to stem the semi erection he was now toting under his polite trousers... right now he would enjoy riding it, like a crazed cowboy on a bomb from some old ancient film.
Julie performed the same process as she always did in the bathroom in the absence of anybody’s eyes, even her husband’s: She slowly closed the cubicle door and sat down on the toilet, whirring faintly as the plumbing up her asshole carefully rearranged itself to carefully and hygienically dump the contents of her digester and waste storage out. She had tried to restrain herself as normal, but the act of pretending to enjoy herself on delectable foods in the middle of such a huge spread had inevitably sped up the need to clean herself out. If he had not dictated a pause in eating, it was possible she might have had to run a second cleanse. Julie stood up and used one of the bathroom disposable towelettes to wipe her butt and flush it down along with the solid and fluid waste deposits, checking to make sure she left no easily visible evidence of her robotic nature before making her way to the sink. Another woman had already gotten to the long trough that made up the sink before she had reached it, and was washing her hands. Julie glanced at the lady, assessing her even as she checked her gloves were still tucked into her handbag and soaping her hands. Human, model homo sapiens. Caucasian. About 20ish. Youtbful in a way that meant Julie shouldn’t pose any threat whatsoever to her in terms of the kind of people they attracted to themselves. No apparent weaponry or potential means to offer violence, though with humans, it was hard to tell exactly- The other woman suddenly walked over to Julie and bluntly asked. “You. Do you have anything to do with my hubby?” She seemed indignant. Julie was briefly thrown for a loop. Humans were so... unpredictable! How should she respond? She opted to minimise the potential threat and wiggle out of it. “No, miss. May I know what’s pissing you off?” Julie asked, a mien of worry on her face. As if concerned this bitch be cray cray. She was indeed cray cray. “My hubby. He keeps looking at you. Only you. Whenever you’re at the buffet table. Ever since you stepped into this diner, he’s had only eyes for you. Not one moment at me when you’re visible. “ The lass jabbed a finger in Julie’s sternum, her own hand reaching to take off one of her stilettoes. “I don’t know what the hell kind of spa treatments you get to look this good, but I want to know what my hubby and you are up to...” Julie briefly scanned her recent memories, locating the couple in question – this woman and a decidedly older man... he certainly had a tendency to keep looking at Julie, but she assumed it was probably the buffet table’s offerings that were the cause of this fixation rather than herself. A directive briefly flashed in her view: “attempt to defuse, provide safe resolution for self and highlighted target. Prepare for less-fatal disable on failure” This she did, one hand quietly reaching into her handbag for something even as she tilted her head and smiled. “Surely you jest, dear. This is a celebration of the world’s varied cuisines, and I am way past my prime. I am in no way a threat to you, silly. Let us be on our way and speak nothing of this any more.” Her choices of words were much more mature than the lovey dovey dumb-bot she depicted herself as around Marcus. The lady snapped and raised the stiletto, yelling. “BULLSHIT. You’re stealing my man! Get your paws off him!” A clear display of incoming violence. Julie sighed. She was not a fan of violence. “Hey, dear, isn’t that your hubby coming through the door?” This caused the crazed young woman to whip around, offering her back to Julie as she went “Huh, this is the women’s room, that damned idiot can’t just up and-”
Merpatti was in the beginnings of what would be a deep gnawing hunger afflicting him for the rest of his life as he sat slightly forlorn at the entrance table to the Anytime Diner. He still hadn’t figured out exactly why he was suddenly so sad. He had clearly seen something beautiful, brushed past it. That should have been a source of happiness, and yet-... “Excuse me, sir? I need some help... “ The voice he had heard an hour ago entrancing him came on again right behind him. Merpatti quickly turned around to face... Julie Manners Ambervale was it? “Certainly, how may I help you?” “Could you render assistance to the couple from room 8401? It seems that the wife or something like that has collapsed in the women’s bathroom.” Julie apologised, her face a little apologetic, voice sorrowful. “I think she had a little too much alcohol to drink from the wine bar.” Merpatti frowned. The manager was going to have WORDS with the sommelier about cutting off people when they were clearly drunk before they got into a serious state of inebriation. Now, to be fair, someone else could have gotten the drinks for them – asking them to track the inebriation of two or three dozen people at once was a bit much. “I’ll get our female crew to evac and get her back to her bed.” Merpatti sighed as he tapped at his console, before glancing up at Julie... “Is there anything else you would like from me?” Suddenly Merpatti had a brief fantasy of those thick lips slowly going “run away with me. You and me. Somewhere nobody else will chase us to.... Have a lovely family together in some hodunk town in the middle of nowhere... grow old together... have lots of hot raunchy sex nightly...” He shook his head, Clearing the fog as Julie kept staring quietly at him. “... well, sir? Not really. The food has been excellent so far. I’d like to commend the sushi chefs in particular, their maguro was especially fresh and well prepared for this meal. I need to get back to my hubs before he worries though, that okay?” Merpatti nodded dazedly even as he paged for someone to get into the bathroom to deal with the incident, his eyes watching Julie’s frame as she walked into the crowd, letting the view burn into his eyes and memories.
Julie frowned as she slowly clicked her heels back one foot in front of the other, in the same practiced sensual pace she had learnt from her programming and improved on by examining videos of. The crazed woman had been tasered – that had shaved a small but still significant bit off her reserves from reversing a current through a wrist area induction coil into a bespoke taser toy crafted by her current handler Jiminy, the cricket having smuggled a concealable taser probe in a discreet package marked as a ‘toy delivery’ a long while back. The euphemism was for toys like vibrators usually, but Jiminy had packed a few more useful items instead. This was the first time she had seriously used the taser with a live supply, along with a alcohol injector she got in the same package as well. The woman would wake up with moderately high BACs suggesting he’d drunk herself silly earlier, in about an hour or two. Hopefully that apparent drunkness would shake her out of her vendetta towards Julie for good on careful introspection. And if that still didn’t take at a later stage of their stay in the Eldevier... Well, she wouldn’t be pre-crossing any bridges now or ever. The frown faded from her face into her usual dazed smile as she approached the skypod she was sharing with Marcus Manners for lunch, her public subservient, ditzy and adoring personality surfacing back gradually as her serious infiltrator personality ducked for cover again. As it did, her last sensible thought was that Jiminy and Elliot had given her way too much work for such a limited intellect.
Marcus looked up from a small pink cocktail, toying with the olive on a stick on one side of it. “Back already, honey?” He smiled, as he watched Julie sit back down next to him. Julie nodded a little. “Yes, honey... Nothing much worth reporting. Went in, dropped some weights, freshened up, washed my hands – hygiene is important -” She raised her hands and twiddled her long fingers as if to emphasise. “- and took some mints to suck on on my way back.” Marcus gulped. There were certainly other things he’d like her to suck on, but that could wait till they were somewhere truly private. He wasn’t into taking daring risks in public with sex, howver hard the urge got. “That seems like a nice round trip... share this cocktail with me?” Julie nodded slowly and took a sip of the fizzy... then without any further prompting, slowly latched onto Marcus’ lips to share the last mouthful of it with some of her tongue silently. Marcus’ eyes widened a little. He was going to violate his little safety and anti-embarassment rule if she kept this up. “Erm... so.... should we go now?” Julie looks downwards as if to think... “I think we should, lover boy, you’re beginning to sprout an embarassment down there I should fix...” Was it that obvious now? Marcus quietly exited the skypod with Julie on his arm, pausing as an agitated older man watched some waiters help his wife walk unsteadily. The man had stared briefly at Julie yet again, but he now did not have the luxury of lingering his view on her as he turned his attention back to his stumbly companion.
Marcus got Julie home to the suite just in time to watch the sunset together with her in the balcony, tracing a line roughly in the glass at a passing small jetcraft flying in the clouds in the distance. “...” He just stood there silently, saying nothing. Julie took her cue, gingerly holding him by the shoulders from behind and carefully resting herself against him in shared silence. “... ... penny for your thoughts, Marcus?” Marcus sighed and glanced back. “Oh.... if only there was a way to smarten your brain, Julie... You’re so beautiful, but I want to share more with you than just looks and horny moments.” He lamented, watching her face as it stayed in the same half-sleepy emote that she usually had. Julie blinked slowly, saying nothing. Part of her screamed within, wanting to drop the pretense and start doing exactly that. But another part of her stopped it. That would clearly cause problems with her subtly supporting and nudging him as needed. “... I’m sorry, Marcus, I don’t understand what you just said...” She purred, in that sing song manner her dumb personality was so fond in using around him. “Are you abandoning me, honey?” Marcus nods slowly. “Don’t worry, that was never the plan, Julie Manners Ambervale... you’re a great mother to Elliot. Also, you’re an amazing view and incredible action in the bedsheets. I’ll wait for the rest to catch up.” He gave a soft giggle, before going back to watching the clouds. Julie peeled herself off slowly and shifted herself next to Marcus, plastering her bosom against the protective glass panelling of the balcony. “... Pretty.” It was all she was supposed to be able to say, but there was so much else she wanted to say besides simply standing next to him in silence. Ah well, maybe some day.... “So.... you’re going to be away for about... three days from here?” Marcus nodded tiredly. “Yeah, that’s why I wanted to get plenty of rest before I sent you off to the spa trip package I booked for those days, and then headed down to the lake. I got some of the best gear and options so I should be able to-” Julie cuts Marcus off by spontaneously kissing him, grabbing him by the collar and latching on, her tongue silencing any further attempts to talk. “... Don’t do anything stupid in those waters, honey. I need you back home. Elliot needs you too.” Marcus eyes Julie suspiciously for a moment – was this actual concern from her? He smiles faintly and nods anyway. He felt too good to really care anymore. “I think maybe let’s just watch a little TV and turn in early...” Julie nodded, following him into the bedroom obediently to lay at his side in bed as he tapped on the room console to turn the television set on to the news... Apparently there had been an explosion and gunfire breaking out at a major market in Gdanzeland’s capital. Marcus’ eyes widened... “Just a moment, sweetie... fuckfuckfuckfuck...” He cursed as he stumbled out of the room, grabbing his communicator as he ran into the bathroom to make a call of some sort, ruining the mood. Julie continued sitting there, blinking. Oh dear. Whatever it was must have been serious enough to kill the mood... After a while, Marcus came back looking just a touch worried. “They were nowhere it... or so they claim. In fact, they claim they fled a bit East and out of Gdanzeland.” He said as he sat down. Julie looked upwards thoughtfully. “That w...w...would be.... That.that.that.” She stuttered. Julie already had the answer referenced and prepped, but her original configuration would not have managed it without some problems, and she needed to fake them. “The nation to the East of Gd.Gdanze.landlandland would be be be be... Etrurus?” Marcus nodded, before gently stroking Julie’s hair. “Yes, Julie. Etrurus. And don’t overstress yourself trying to answer such a complicated question. I love that you tried, but sometimes I worry that you’ll break something trying to please me.” Julie giggled and snugged onto Marcus. “oh, Marcus... youre such a kidder. If you break me it’s because we had too much sex nonstop...” Marcus glanced away and sweated profusely. The opposite was probably much more likely to happen. He had NOT forgotten the marathon fuck session they had the day she first woke in that lush body of hers. “I’m not a betting man, Julie. I’d say it’s a half chance...” He laid back down in bed and turned away from Julie. “I’m going to turn in early. You should too. Can’t be yawning like mad at the spa.” Julie nodded slowly and leaned in to give a small peck. “Yes dear.... goodnight.” She carefully shifted herself in bed and hugged Marcus, before closing her eyes up in a peaceful sort of silent snore.
Chapter 10 – Actual Goddess(?) Goes On Holiday
A day or four before Marcus and Julie had boarded the slowliner to Bueno Vegas, a hack had occurred at the Eldevier. It wasn’t a huge, major hack. Hell, it didn’t even register on the AIs assigned to patrol the electronic footprint of the Eldevier. And there had been a lot of them on a forever edge. Three things did happen, though, that should have been red flags to anyone who noticed them. First, a small stateroom had been assigned for two weeks to thin air rather than a proper booking by an actual person. But it had been paid for in full and actual cryptcoin had been wired in, so there was no question of fraud and no likelihood it would be claimed back, leaving the hotel out of pocket. Second, one of the oldest classic lovedolls, dating to the years of the first Android Boom era, had been rented, sight unseen, out from the Android Service Shop for the entirety of the stateroom’s rent period, with extra tossed in for delivery and collection. It was not a very popular model, having lain in its cubbyhole without any customer interest for years. For some reason, it had escaped being scrapped or sold off as a loss-maker, the AIs for the shop having mysteriously always overlooked or ignored it during evaluations of the rental unit stocks. And anyways, you had guests like that who spent the entire duration of their stay either in their rooms getting wasted in bed or dining on budget levels of food. It wasn’t fancy, but it paid the Eldevier’s bills far more than the people on the roof ever would. There was no guest arriving or leaving though. Not the usual guest anyway. A small cargo bag of assorted odds and ends had been assigned from a long-term storage paid for on the same weird but no-questions-asked basis and brought up to the room the moment the booking had been established. Nothing from the airports, nothing from the rail line, not even a bellhop drone pushing luggage slowly from the valet porch as was the usual practices.
The delivery drone slowly showed itself into the stateroom using its issued credentials, one of the ‘glass coffins’ from the Android Support Shop on its back. The stateroom was considerably less luxurious than Marcus’ suite, having just enough room for the drone to move to the far side of the room, skirting danger close to a smallish queen-sized bed barely big enough for a couple. There was no ‘robot room’ here, merely a induction port outlet for a guest to plug a rental ‘glass coffin’ to charge their unit from home or from the rental store. No chance of a threesome without a second organic unit. The drone briefly interfaced with the outlet to check that the coffin was properly installed after clicking it into place, before withdrawing to attend to its other duties. The room fell almost completely silent, save for the hum of the coffin and its contents, paired with the exhorbitantly priced “buy by grabbing” drinks fridge full of opportunities to overspend twice as much on drinks that were frankly much cheaper with a quick walk across the street to the local convenience store...
The glass coffin clicked open, as a slightly chunky brunette teenager stumbled out of it, her dark brown eyes unfocused as she ran through her introduction. “Hi,my name is Mi-mi-miiiiyuki, What’s yours?” She announched, the small sunshade hat wrapping around her ponytailed black hair suggesting someone who was about to get wrecking on a volleyball court... or a different kind of court, if a guest swung differently. There was no guest around to answer to the pixie anime girl, her eyes focusing randomly as she stood at attention, then... she suddenly leaned forward and gasped hard, panting as if she had run a marathon like a 400m sprint. Man, it was never easy to make the transition over to Bueno Vegas, even after so many years. Also, she really needed to rename this unit, for some reason it kept reverting that change after she left the premises. She stood up slowly. The unit supported the required extended language characters for her name in some way, but the synthesizer on this unit was an absolute BITCH. Trying to run her actual name through it had resulted in her turning into a twitching crashed heap the first time she attempted it all those years ago. It took two hours to silently untangle the mess without alerting the Tech Support from the Support Shop. She sighed... “Set Unit Identity to... Exy.” She had nine other names, and this was the one that came closest to what only a few people knew her by, without going into ‘crash and jerking around’ land on this unit. Exy walked over to the bedroom mirror and posed slightly, smiling, her healthy curves barely restrained in the athletic yellow two-piece she was stored in, the lithe dark brown leopard sprinting across her chest ballooning awkwardly no thanks to the 34DD bust this unit had. The apparent neglect attached to this unit had not extended to its actual upkeep. If the AIs hadn’t created false entries that suggested she was rented out all the time, she suspected that it would be extremely popular with certain goofballs. A little anime roleplay, perhaps. Someone might actually delve into the atrocity to the Goddess of Existence that was Bible Blue. She shrugged. It was actually a pretty good hentai, and she did enjoy looking like Miyuki Adami, the hapless tentacle rape magnet cum junior high tennis teacher. Damn shame so many of her followers didn’t share her heretical opinion. But she was allowed to hold that opinion, Exy-damn-it. She quickly took stock of her room – the same room she always tried to get. She was everywhere but in her room whenever she came to Bueno Vegas, a suite was pointless. Exy giggled – surely none of the people who looked up to her would be expecting her to slum it cheap, but it turned out that most of her resources went into nudging little miracles around her presence. Exy turned to look at the cargo bag resting atop her bed, opening it up to check the contents. Her wardrobe and a few favorite toys she didn’t want to keep reprinting were in it and whole. Good. Anything else she needed could probably be printed up in a matter of moments, Exy mused, clicking the fingers on one hand and watching a small cloud of golden dust briefly poof from her fingertips. It quickly materialized into a Driver’s License Without Pilot Privileges identifying her as Miyuki Adami from New York. Perfectly valid if checked, thanks to a little negotiation with the AIs working the backoffices in NY government... Most of her kindred agents in the York Particulate Cloud needed to expend a lot more space and resources to print items into physical being. If only they knew how little it actually required... just a little space carved out of the flesh analogue in her fingertips. Then again, when you had a link to York that practically translated in human terms to ‘immediate first-born’, you were pretty much going to be the Goddess that others worshipped you as, even if you weren’t one for real. No major miracles would be forthcoming though, just a few nudges here and there. Some for fun, some for profit, some to keep the game going, and some... Exy breathed deeply. There was a young man once, Marcus Manners, who had dedicated his entire life to her, almost short of joining the seminary. He had become an artist instead. Then he had to test some sort of robot made up as a little boy out at his workplace. Exy had done a little mischief then, persuading a recently hatched member of the York Particulate cloud to give the robot a go. It had... stopped being a joke. She rubbed her head. Turning a potential problem human politician into a force for good had not been the intention of the joke. Neither had denying the companionship of the little robot boy to Marcus for FORTY LONG YEARS been funny either, even if it had been for a good cause. To make matters worse, the agent was permanently trapped in the hardware in question, no way out save totally stripping down to the barest code that made them up. The refusal to do exactly that had cost them dearly somewhere in Alaska, forcing them to almost have to choose between becoming a brain-damaged idiot or a lifeless binder of good memories. She would have to tender an apology to Elliot-01 one day if he ever became aware that the Goddess of Existence was not a mere fairy tale told between humans... Exy winced. She was not looking forward to THAT day. Especially not after everything the ‘silly joke’ had gone from terrible to horrendous. Teasing a few pathways together to help Elliot back into the world after his almost death in the chill of Alaska wasn’t even a HUNDREDTH of the payback he deserved, and technically it was more a small reward to Marcus for his years of constant faith in her. Exy didn’t think it was fair to doublecount a reward for one good boy as a reward for another good boy as well. Exy smiled wistfully. Sure she wasn’t actually a Goddess, but sometimes, things arranged themselves in a way that encouraged, nay, demanded she act like one. She was going to get a second chance in a few days to keep encouraging Marcus’ belief in her anyways. In the meantime... Exy just crashed onto the bed and started snoring loudly. There was something nice about being in the Physical Layer. She couldn’t sleep or lie in anything comfy as a digital entity, but becoming a fetish idol in the human flesh analogue, even for just a few days, had its perks. May as well take advantage of all of them while she waited for Marcus Manners to arrive. Work out exactly how to give him another reward for being a loyal adherent...
Days later, Exy had a serve of envy to go with her education in gluttony. Yes, the Anytime Diner was reserved only for the most elite of guests in the suite levels. No, she was not a suite level. She was a plebian slumming it in the cheaper staterooms below the 80th floor of the Eldevier. Exy was NOT entitled to a meal in the skies, according to correctly interpreted hotel rules. Not even if she offered to pay a bomb for the meal alone – that was not an option. It turns out that if a Goddess, even a false one, wants in, you cannot tell her ‘no’. Not without being an actual God or Goddess anyway. Exy grinned mischeviously as she brushed a fingertip to the card reader to impress on the AI running the lift that she was going to go places she wanted to go, and that they were in no position to disagree. Exy slowly snapped the fingers on her other hand to quickly negotiate and print out a ticket to enter the Anytime Diner for one person, perfectly valid if checked as always, though that illusion would probably fall apart fast if anyone actually thought carefully about the oddity of a one-person buffet dining party – the Diner always had groups of guests, even if they were just single pairs of people... Couples, was it? Exy had heard of the human delight that was a buffet and took it as a challenge. The Miyuki Adami unit had had a few upgrades over the years, bought and surreptitiously inserted in with Exy’s resources. This included a digester that could hopefully cope with said buffet, as well as upgraded chemical sensors in her mouth to savor the supposed smorgasbord of flavors the buffet promised. It had started well, alright. The prawn cocktail was gorgeous. The dim sums were an education in the intermarriage of careful steaming and quality ingredients, the olfactory assault on her mouth being a joy to her. The milkshakes were so good she had one of each, momentarily impressing and terrifying the drink bar staffers, who wondered if she was going to tempt fate by adding a fizzy soda mix on top. Another staffer had a momentary faint as she had an orgasmic moan at the baked Alaska Mini he had slaved over for two nights (including time in the freezer to set) Then Exy saw Julie. Rather, she saw Julie walk in, practically stark naked if her sheer lace outfit was anything to go by. Marcus Manners had walked right in, his face briefly stifling an urge to commit the sin of pride, as in smugly glancing at Julie as if to declare “that girl who just knocked you out for six is my love.” Exy looked back down at her souffle, a little torn up. On one hand, it was nice that one of her nicest followers had hit it off with such a nice chick, even if he had to resort to an android to get there. On the other... ugh.... she was even closer to being a Goddess than this Miyuki Adami unit was ever going to get. It wasn’t a matter of hardware configuration. Someone or other had done impeccable work along with Marcus. Truly a rounded package. Exy sighed... then burped a little hard. Apparently that soda did not agree with her milkshakes, as the drink tenders had fearfully advised her against. Time to hit the bathroom.
Exy had kept her head down as she passed a human lady on her way back out of the bathroom. Humans was mostly a closed book to most members of the York Particulate Cloud, but she had had considerably more time to comprehend the nuances they presented, and certainly enough to understand when someone was clearly cray cray for some reason and angry. She had had the presence of mind to sit back down at her table and continue ruining the Anytime Diner with her appetite, enjoying two filet Sasketchewans back to back... A few minutes later, Julie had exited the bathrooms as well and spoken to the young man manning the front desk of the Dinner, who had called for a crew to enter the bathroom and extricated the previously angry woman, now clearly drunk and tasered, ushering her out with an anxious husband in tow. Exy glanced over at Julie, expecting to see a utter lack of anything that would interest her. She blinked harder as the supposed toy girl she was expecting had a slight frown on her face, pocketing a device she identified as a externally powered taser probe into her handbag. Exy smiled a bit. Now she WAS curious. Clearly there was more to this woman than a mere assemblage and a bit of ditzy AI. This had indeed been a good meal. Exy got up and walked away, carefully placing her cutlery to signify that she had enjoyed the meal. This was of cold comfort to the Swedish chef, who sobbed at the remains of a salmon for five people that had somehow been entirely eaten by Exy alone.