Persi Phonne - She Who Ended The Despotic Years
Persi Phonne - She Who Ended The Despotic Years
Volume One
Chapter 1 - An Agent Is Being Naughty
In the quiet of the Washington District night, the silence had been broken by ugly men in stormtrooper uniforms bearing the blue heraldry of the Despot, President Drurustus. Once, a unified America had been a great country. Then, terrifying mistakes were made, each one far more costly and horrendous than the last. After just over fifty years, the nation had split into two parts, and President Drurustus presided over that which he claimed to be the superior half, but was actually far, far worse than the other lands that had gathered around the orbit of California and Minneapolis... the continental drift triggered nation wide by nuclear retaliation was totally unexpected and further messed up the map - half the lands were no longer in their original locations as shown in pre-Despotic Era maps. Not that anyone would have possibly known. All that most people knew was that there had always been a True America Union, and that President Drurustus had always been its Great Leader.
All they also knew derived from the wisdom and intellect from the Great Leader Drurustus. Some dissidents claimed it was a sham, that Drurustus was as much an ignorant in a well as the rest of the True American Union, and that the New American Union that had claimed half of the other coast of America was the true inheritor of the original glories of America. Nobody truly knew the truth, perhaps it lay somewhere in the middle, much like the Neutral States in the middle of what had been the original America.
This night, a mousy old man was frantically packing and archiving as much as he could of his museum. It had long withstood the predations of the New Regime thanks to the vagaries of things called "Foundations" and 'immense amounts of money' and 'fighting a war for the public sympathy.'. He had gratefully thanked the Minnesotan who had smuggled an impressive high-ratio Hammerspace suitcase. it had looked like a child's small pouch, but was somehow capable of packing an entire library...
The Sexual Education Museum was dying tonight, and he had managed to gather at least all the papers and electronic media that it bore into the pouch in the preceding few days with the help of his other colleagues. They had all fled the city by lunchtime. by lunchtime tomorrow, all of them would be declared persona non grata and hunted down like dogs, the remainders of this once glorious and defended by old money with an interest in the past and educating of people would be razed at the stroke of midnight, under the gathering storm of this night. artefacts shattered, flattened, or smashed, remaining papers sent to the People's Bonfire on the intersection of Drurustus's Alley and Victory Drive. many would cheer the end of the deviancy the Museum posed. it would probably be coopted as another grand house beneath the paw of Drurustus to hold acceptable cultural and historical retellings of the Great Regime. Suitably sanitized, no ugly 'lies'. no [racist slur redacted] or [more racist slur expunged] or any of the other lesser peoples that once plagued this great land. just the great whites. The lesser peoples still had a presence within, but only as people fit for oppression or lesser labors beneath the greatness of the Whites.
Ebenezer frowned sadly. He had spent these final two days carefully picking some of the most culturally important aretfacts the Museum had regarding sexuality and stowed them into his smuggler's bag (for that was what the Minnesotan's gift was - a discreet and dangerously easy way to traffick immense items in a nearly undetectable manner.). To avoid suspicion, he had flagged many items that had been previously scanned in the old days and were likely to retain at least a virtual copy, if not another authentic ancient copy somewhere more enlightened, as sacrifices to the ugly god the Regime had made in its name.
Sadly his favorite items had been impossible to stuff into the bag. When he had used the smuggler's bag to scan them, it sadly informed him that the items were of a nature that rendered Hammerspacing them impossible. Exactly what, it could not say.
They were basically two humanoid figures... one was a dark-skinned female, another was a pale skinned decently muscular male... Both figures had been greviously mauled:
The male was missing most of its head above its roman nose, exposing strange intricately patterned slats and attempts at simulating the structures of the mouth and throat.Everything below that had been preserved amazingly well, right down to an impressive cock.
The female had had its hairpiece removed, exposing a more complete series of the same slats that were in the head cavity of the male as well as a unconventionally beautiful face - slightly rounded nose, generously shaped cheeks, big glazed grey eyes and pouty lips. Perhaps some sort of young mother figure... Sadly, her limbs had been torn off at the shoulders and hips, exposing naked wiring and leaky conduits of some sort, her torso merely a pair of full-figured breasts mounted on a lithe frame and vagina tastefully exposed by parted thigh stubs.
Both figures had been salvaged as is, and were popular exhibits as a series of other ancient sex toys had been provided with which to manipulate the figures in certain ways. Whatever functionality they had when fully complete was mostly gone, but they retained their sexual reflexes, quivering and moaning when rubbed or played with in certain suggestive ways. They lacked the brainpower to respond in any other ways, merely those reflexes, when supplied with power of a relatively safe voltage for exhibits.
They had been found in tatters of clothing bearing what had apparently been their names, or some brands. The male had apparently existed as a robot named "Adonis" while the female had been christened "Persephonne." Perhaps they were the names of their robot models - perhaps they were actual given names. Regardless, no part of them had been capable of further enlightment and the previous museum that had held them had exhibited them as examples of the Ancients' seemingly magical capabilities in forging artificial life back in the very old days... Their purpose here had been somewhat as noble - educating people on erogenous zones and basic examples of how one could provide sexual joy to others with careful touch and consideration - but Drurutus had once visited this museum and been disgusted by the 'depravity' of this exhibit... Just after he left, the repeated attacks on the integrity of the Sexual Education Museum had begun as he desired it cease to exist.
Ebemezer frowned sadly, fingering the glasc casing that secured most of the exhibit. Some visitor or staff or other had left a trenchcoat and matching fedora nearby on a bench... they would clearly never be able to come and collect it ever... Shame, really, it had been quality brown suede matched evenly all across the ensemble, suggesting a common manufacturer for both, it was very well tailored to resist the colder winters and warmer summers of the Washington area, and a wallet had been left in it by the owner of the coat, a black who had been left relatively unmolested as a legacy staffer of the previous gentler administration. He had been admiring the exhibit when a FIRE team had come around to randomly terrify anyone not of the Great Whites.
They had always had haphazard methods of choosing whom to merely oppress and whose lives to utterly ruin or even whose lives to end in a direly premature manner... The poor man had been chosen for the third path within the museum. Ebenezer had been there as they had chanted hateful slurs at him even as he protested their actions and showed them the pass that denoted his seniority within [REDACTED].... then they had pulled the trigger, counting each shot with hateful mirth. One, two, three, four, five, six. Each shot into his twitching body slow and deliberate as they chanted the numbers. Only the fact that the standard issue Justice (hah!) pistol carried only five bullets and one in the chamber when improperly handled had kept them from pumping even more lead into the bureaucrat. They had laughed as they examined the shots, the blood... the spray had somehow not tainted the coat, and the flowing red had not overly stained the glass casing of the exhibit.
The janitor had wept as he made several passses to take away all the blood, lacking the specialized cleanup tools of the TRUTHMAKER squadrons that descended on many of these incidents elsewhere to reframe the incidents and create new truths - that a man had been a terrorist, or that a FIRE massacre had never happened in an entire neighbourhood, that it had always been a gentrified classy area for White residence or a speakeasy, or a non-whites' kitchen that served only the worst in barely surviving ration foods and state-sanctioned rotgut to serve as their opiate against the pain of being oppressed. The next day, as they began the plan to keep only a few sacrificial documents and artefacts around that they could hopefully afford to find copies of in another place far kinder, as a distraction for the People's Bonfire, they had found the janitor hanging in his breakroom, a ghastly visage atop a neck throttled by a carefully braided noose that for a rare change had not been in the hands of a White.
Ebenezer gently held a younger colleague, a White woman whose sympathies had deserted the regime long ago, kept out of trouble only by the Museum's Foundation and the privilege of her own ethnicity. She had loved the janitor, even if he had had too much on his mind and too much depression to reciprocate even as she had tried to lift his spirits with her ministrations and smuggled lunches... The original plan had been to start evacuating staff of the Sexual Education Museum with more privileged staffers like the Museum Section Head that Ebenezer had been.
He had taken one look at the grieving young woman who had loved the janitor in a secret and terrible and illegal love.... "Take her first. Get her on the Streetline out of Washington on my seat. I have additional unfinished business, she could better use my seat on the way out." The Streetline representative had agreed, gently helping her and her luggage to a waiting car that would smuggle her and several members with false papers out of the cordon that had slowly tightened around the Wash District... He stared at the map in his office of the cordon, slowly choking the life of what had been a shining city on a hill, now slowly sinking into the swamp that it had started from. Flashes of the noose that the janitor had donned himself mixed with the the pencil marks denoting how the cordon had shrunk around the Museum District and its holdouts empowered by the Foundation... He would be one of the last members of the Museum community to flee...
He turned around as he heard someone flick a lighter briefly to life... He smiled faintly. It was Level 3 Agent Brandt. Ostensibly a loyal and effective member of FIRE, he had grown disillusioned as he witnessed various injustices... Right now, he was supposedly in his flat, calmly sipping a Lightning Wine smuggled from the Brazilian Coves.... A vidflix loop had been carefully spliced in using tricks taught by the Streetline once they had established his genuine disappointment and desire to assist them, and it seemed that he was merely exercising his privileges to partake in a limited fashion certain enjoyments frowned upon nominally by the Regime, his hands gently fondling a premium State-Sanctioned Love Mate android. The android had also been fashioned to be the most sensual object of desire available within the regime to the higher ranked staffers, but also to report back to the regime, but Sandi had been compromised as well with some help by the Streetline, and would provide a matching alibi... The Agent Bureau that kept random checks for sedition even amongst its most trusted staff would only see that Brandt was carefully fondling her breasts, suckling on her lovehole, fucking her in his couch, sharing sweet nothings with her carefully designed pre-recorded personality responses, now being carefully triggered by a Streetline designed circuit as she lay uselessly on the couch, unable to report the true activities of Agent Brandt right now as she was preoccupied by an excessively high-rate form of lovemaking. A little tawdry, to be sure, but acts that could be handwaved away by the powers of the Bureau if one had been this truly loyal to the Bureau and the Regime.
The illusion would not hold forever. Brandt had quickly slipped out to hand Ebenezer some extra documents he would need as the cordon worsened its oppressive nature. A forgery carefully cobbled to resemble the actual travel documents he would need to infiltrate past the cordon. "I enjoyed our time together, Ebenezer.... I'm so sorry it had to come to this."
Ebenezer appreciated the risk Brandt was taking for him. He would not dally as he quickly ran to the waiting Streetline smuggler, carefully placing himself within a special chamber that would hide him from all but the most exacting screenings, a moderately underclocked Hammerspace - it would not be comfy, but at least it would not crush him to death. He kept silent as the Streetline pulled away to its next stop.
Agent Brandt was about to exit when his communicator suddenly chirped faintly. He sweated... the Streetline had not been able to compromise Agent issue communicators much, but when they did, they could offer a choice of one or two apps out of an array of apps. Naturally, the first app he picked was a shielded comms system that masqueraded beneath the cover offered by the actual secured AgentComm app. The second had been a special radar that detected other Agents of the regime within range during operations that could potentially out them and lead to the end of their careers in the regime and Streetline, if not their liberty or lives as well...
The latter was now beeping faintly. Curses, they were only supposed to have started sweeping through this Museum district an hour later! He took a deep breath and started climbing the stairs for the top floor. seeking to escape and reconfirm his alibi back home. If they found him here, it would be a mismatch. He would be asked to explain how he could have been both at home fondling his robotic surrogate, and yet also here several miles away in the Sexual Education Museum on a night with no shift assigned to him to work beyond "duty standby". He could probably fudge that he felt something was off, that he needed to look in, but even that might still elicit scrutiny that would eventually break his false facade of always chanting "Glory to Drurustus"....
He despised this double life, wished he could truly be true to himself and stick it to the Bureau and the regime. But everyone knew what happened if one abandoned their posting as an Agent for reasons other than retirement or disablement. It was rarely a pretty end, and often very premature...
A lightning bolt struck the Sexual Education Museum's roof spike, supposedly intended to serve as a safe path to earth for any lightning... sadly the tumult especially after the death of the janitor had led to some neglect of the wiring within the museum... What was once a low-voltage cable set that carried a safe voltage to the sexual Pre-Ancient era effigies suddenly became a raging ultra-high voltage carrier of several million amps for several seconds before burning out... but in those few seconds, something unexpected happened... The spike of power had flowed into both effigies... they began to twitch and whirr faintly, both male and female coming to some semblance of life... a spark of lifelight glowed in the female's eyes as she established some important facts in her mind, but the damage sustained had damaged many things and corrupted her memories... She spoke in a strange language briefly as previously dormant tendrils extended out to feel the immediate vicinity, eventually finding a more stable standard-voltage power outlet and a network connection of some sort to a massive repository of data that had so far survived the purges, though probably not for much longer as the IT admins that had faithfully maintained it up till the last member was evacuated by the Streetline had set off a slow self-destruct to deny the regime the true histories and data that had been carefully stowed away gradually on several Streetline travels out of Wash District.
The truth would be found elsewhere, and the True American Union could no longer doctor it and present a rosier picture of the current or past history of the Union. But for the moment, it still existed here, in a form the female effigy could access. The effigy proceeded to drain the internal data network of as much as it could find... the details of the languages now used in this locale, maps of the nearby area, facts about the Wash District untainted yet by the regime, other info that the regime might declare embarassing or seditious and seek to erase, including a heavily compressed and still uncompromised archive of the informational haven known as Wikipedia prior to the True American Union's cutting of infolinks with the rest of the world... Her brain sucked it up like the love child of a firehose, a black hole, and a premium whore providing the best oral communion in the world ever, even as it repaired itself, the protective casing that kept it safe, and layered a mane of pale blue straight satin hair that fell all the way to just below her underboobs and covered several critical connectors and buttons behind its ears as they shielded up behind concealing panels that were also slowly repairing themselves.
Other tendrils felt for others of its ilk within range, soon locating the male effigy that had lain next to the female. A brief interrogation led to something resembling anguish and dismay, as it found that the male effigy had only stored crucial data from the project that had created them as well as its capabilities... the personality and memories of the individual that the effigy represented were mostly gone, save for a few root keywords as used to generate its initial capabilities and identity.... The female effigy shed a ... tear? but it could not possibly be emotional. they had not been designed to be emotional in any way that could potentially destabilise their functions... Perhaps it was exhaustion from running at a emergency overclock to recover... The female effigy recovered fast and negotiated with the remains of the male effigy that still retained some basic function - it would inherit its reproductive organ for secure storage and later use, as well as its root keywords in order to replicate aspects of its previous functioning that still remained viable after its fatal damage... its various components would be utilised to repair and enhance the female effigy... the exhibit case cracked as it distended slightly from its original lithe form, attempting to fully incorporate the male effigy's components to repair itself where needed and enhance or retain the male effigy's parts for later use or upgrades to itself... as a result, a formerly lithe and pert female became a healthily curved woman. Not a morbidly obese individual, but of a healthily matron-like build with generous breasts and hips and a decently indented but not wasp-like waist. The only possible minus would be that she was of one of the lesser peoples, but this was a value judgement by bigots and if that was omitted, she would be a certain kind of perfection in the eyes of many men.... Eventually she dropped down to the ground amongst the plasti glass shards of the cracked exhibit case in a sort of faint... a comatose goddess seeking to slowly recharge her energy storage, totally vulnerable to the next individual who found her, whirring and beeping faintly.
Agent Brandt had heard a small commotion from the ground floor and turned back to check despite the danger of being found out... He was shocked as he found a naked brown-skinned woman with pale blue long hair that partially concealed her bountiful breasts and large dark brown areolae lying on the ground. He frantically looked around and found the coat and fedora, which provided sufficient cover to her compromised modesty.... then blinked hard as he found that either he had become extremely strong, or this big beautiful woman was surprisingly light for her healthy, almost motherly form. He did not have too much time to reestablish his escape, but he started running as fast as he could back up the stairs to the nearest fire escape, even as he heard other personnel crack open the last protective gates and doors of the Museum and swarm in to establish and catalogue the Museum's holdings for the purpose of utterly annihilating every last bit of its 'deviant lies' and 'illegal artefacts'. He barely managed to get out one of the windows assigned for such a purpose with the comatose stranger he had evacuated, trying to spare her from a similar fate as he would have met if he had been a black man in the same spot and time. Agent Brandt had a heart of gold and while it had been tarnished out of necessity by many of the things he had to do to preserve his double life, much of it still remained...
Level 4 Agent Jerome smiled as he walked into the museum's ground floor, pointing this way and that to the blue-banded stormtroopers accompanying him. "You know the drill, FIRE men." He paused briefly as he noted one of the FIRE team assigned to him was actually a woman, and as if to present a picture of egalitarianism, corrected himself. "Excuse me... FIRE men and FIRE women... if it moves,capture it for later interrogation or shoot it if it presents sufficient danger to you...." The FIRE team laughed - you have to recall that they had some pretty lax definitions of being 'in danger' that literally led to them shooting legacy bureaucrats merely for being black and standing in prosecuted museums and many other innocent public places - and one of them fired up a firethrower.
These men and women with black hearts were not here to fight a fire. they were here to cause one!
They were supposed to do recon, collect all prohibited items, and transfer them to the nearest People's Bonfire to whip up the loins of their supporters and nearby neutrals, and cause dismay and fear in those who would hide behind intellectualism to resist them. Agent Jerome champed for faster advancement to the top, and he would crush anyone who stood in his way, he had no time for the slow way of destroying this museum. He expressed this clearly with an order that did not exactly gel with those given by his higher ups... "Burn all papers. Smash all artefacts that you can break. Let's wreck and destroy this place!"
The FIRE woman suddenly raised her hand. "But Agent Jerome, our orders were to transfer all deviant lies and prohibited artefacts to the nearest People's Bonfire to whip up support and terrify the resisters -"
Jerome calmly walked over to the FIRE woman, examining her fine toned form that even the bulky unisex stormtrooper uniforms failed to entirely cover up... He noted her name: FIRE Agent Level 9 O'Mailey... then backhanded her suddenly, the blow causing pain and shock through the allegedly useful but actually useless terror facemasks all lower level agents were mandated to wear. "Did I FUCKING STUTTER, AGENT?!" He would not even deign to give her the respect of addressing her by her tagged name. "There is a series of events being ordered here that will end in the destruction of all this deviancy, I am merely accelerating the timeline to save the regime some time and resources. Now... DO AS I SAY OR I WILL BUST YOU DOWN TO A LEVEL SO LOW, YOU WILL BE MANAGED BY A MALE SEXBOT IN A UNIFORM AND SERVE ONLY ITS BASEST PRE-RECORDED DESIRES AND ITS COCK!"
O'Mailey nodded weakly... The Prosecution Unit Alpha (PUA) leaders had inculcated some rather negative and potentially damaging practices amongst the FIRE teams - one of the major ones had been a disrespect for FIRE women. When you saw a FIRE woman slowly throw off their terror mask with permission as they reached Level 5, you had to understand they had been through four times as much in the way of disrespect and obstacles to their progress... this should have engendered a new level of proper respect for them, but even there, there remained an unhealthy level of more of the same negativity to their presence within FIRE.
O'Mailey bent down to start locating possible safe points to throw fire onto the museum's fittings and assets from... then she noticed something off about the flooring... it felt... too warm for marble that had barely even begun to experience burning... Perhaps it was just her anger slowly simmering from the disrespect she had been accorded...
As the FIRE team whooped and started burning the place floor by floor starting from the top, Jerome noticed something off.... some sort of faint bloodstain was on the floor - but the blood was... some sort of reddish silvery fluid? He ran a finger in the stain and pinched the fluid between the fingers of his gloved hand, wondering as it displayed a certain murky movement and viscosity that did not resemble actual human blood in any way.... How curious. He found the plastiglass case shattered, quickly checking his communicator for the database of prohibited items in the museums that had been surrpetitiously logged across the Museum District over two years before the persecutions began.
He soon found the missing artefacts... the case had previously contained a few sex toys as well as two semi-functional pre-Ancient Age effigies with sexual reflex actions. He wrinkled his nose. of course.... the degenerates who ran this place would probably venerate such a disgusting religious collection and attempt to evacuate it... but they had been of such bulk that smuggling them would prove to be an impossible task given the very tight inspection regime now encircling the True American Union. They would turn up eventually again, and be sent to the Bonfires to be burnt as deviant art....
A faint crackle reached his ears, and suddenly the entire Museum burst into flames inexplicably, sending large embers crashing around the ground and onto the team. They had been named FIRE, but the stormtrooper gear they wore only made them fire-resistant, not fire-proof. Neither did they make the team crush-resistant or crush-proof.
O'Mailey had decided to surmount her rank by the standing rule of prioritising team member safety or capture of important flagged individuals, overriding Agent Jerome despite his outranking of her. "EVERYONE, EVACUATE THE PREMISES. YOUR LIVES COME FIRST!" As she did so, she glanced at Jerome, sneering slightly. He would be ruined. They would convene an enquiry if even one member of FIRE was wounded or killed during this kind of work, they would find he had exceeded the authority granted to him in flaming this place rather than relocating its items to the bonfire.
Jerome saw this and snapped, untabbing the strap that kept his own Level 5 Minus issue Justice pistol secured against hijack. He levelled it and pulled the trigger. If O'Mailey didn't survive this dangerous time, he could shift plenty of things onto her. It would be his word as a Level 4 agent against that of a level 9, one who was a woman to boot. He would come out at least unhurt or even earn more credit to ascend his way to the top... He would-
He would do absolutely nothing else of the sort, as a particularly large ember smashed right down on Agent Jerome, killing him outright. It was now the word of a Level 9 Agent who had prioritized the safety of her comrades against a dead Level 5- agent who could now say nothing or do nothing to O'Mailey. She liked those odds, she mused as she cracked the emergency exit systems on the nearest lobby doors and stumbled out, gasping through the respirator in her terrormask - another small mercy really - and collapsed in front of some actual firefighters - not FIRE men, who had come to attend the location on hearing of the fire outbreak. Her shoulder was bleeding, but she was alive, and she now had a fighting chance to make hay out of this sun shine... but first...
O'Mailey screamed at the white hot pain of the Justice round that had been intended to hurt and kill armed and dangerous threats to the regime. No thanks to some "stupid gun discipline" on the part of Agent Jerome, at least one bullet had been "misfired" in the chaos that had possibly ricocheted around and managed to find her shoulder by mistake in a part of her armor that had not exactly been as robust as it was supposed to be.
This was the report she would offer when they interrogated her about this disaster after she recovered from fainting... and so she fainted.
Brandt sped away from the scene in his manually driven car, tuning in to the Bureau Radio band to track events and prayed that he had not been detected in his flagrant actions for the Speedline... he blinked and marvelled at his good fortune as the news broke out of a sudden fire outbreak at the Sexual Education Museum. Some damn fool hotshot agent beneath his ranking had probably desired to push harder than his orders had permitted. When the Bureau took a more cautious approach to ransacking rather than directly destroying a targeted building, more often than not, it was with good reason and genuine concern for the FIRE teams... you couldn't exactly replace a good yesman that easily, right?
Brandt had the necessary credentials to reduce possible harassment to his person. and given his rank, there was an implicit understanding that a naked black woman in a trenchcoat in the back seat of his vehicle was likely an expression of a desire to further indulge in one's desires to rape and ditch a member of the lesser races. Frowned upon, yes, but easily handwaved when it occasionally happened at this level.
Brandt didn't attach his lights. He was trying to reduce his footprint, not turn himself into a center of attraction. Anyone in the know who checked would probably just see a agent travelling during off-shift from some enjoyment outdoors for the night. It would take an especially canny agent with strong suspicions to cross reference with his other holdings and notice he was in more than one place at the same time... a real red flag. But at his level, he was mostly beyond reproach and would have to literally be caught holding the evidence of his treachery in order to fall into trouble.
Brandt ran thorugh several issues in his mind as he pulled up to his private apartment. High level agents could request free lodgings anywhere in certain very well-provisioned apartments specially for Level 3- agents or Level 5- agents.Alternatively, they could request a lodging allowance and either pocket the difference or make it up out of their own pay for any home of their choice.
Brandt pulled into the car lift of the Geheim Apartments Block... The lift sensed his car's identity and slowly conveyed him to the 5th floor, depositing his car into the parking lot just outside his apartment before closing and locking down the ornate lift doors to keep his car or himself from falling down by mistake into the well of the lift....
Brandt took a deep breath, before walking into his home. There were several reasons to choose this building besides having to slightly top up his lodging allowance with a modest part of his salary to secure this place for the next two years or so.
The first was that the building did not have Bureau cameras littering the apartments. At his level as an agent he had every right to demand they shut off the cameras as long as he wasn't officially under investigation for any suspicious activity or alleged crime, and this building doubled down as the owner had claimed certain legacy rights that included the right not to run the required power and networking to sustain Bureau oversight, Those additional wires would have caused a fire anyway - not very good publicity for a formation that supposedly wanted to focus first on the welfare of its people before chasing after the criminals of society....
The second was what just had happened. it was always so nice to be able not to worry about where he would park his jalopy before entering his apartment. That was a rare privilege and one usually reserved only for level 0s. Level 0s would probably have gotten a apartment with the same trick without having to resort to a topup of their lodging allowance from their salary, but he was not going to squabble about being gifted with an unfair advantage like this in his after hours life.
Brandt wasn't going to move the comatose woman immediately, first he had to go in and pretend to be finished with making love to his Love Mate... probably for the last time - he had decided he was going to sacrifice his queen to establish a firmer alibi in the chaos of this night's events. He tiptoed into his apartment, where his Love Mate "Mary" was lying still, executing the Streetline modification that falsely declared that Agent Brandt had immense sexual stamina and fingers and tongue and cock all over and in her. He quietly slipped his blazer and trousers onto a hanger in his clothes closet, as well as his work issue fedora, before slowly striding over with an unlit cigarette. in only his underpants, sighing a sort of lament.
If you excluded the fact that she was a 24/7 informant available for the Bureau to access to determine if his behaviors were suspicious (even if circumvented by the Streetline mod and the fact that she could not report back when deactivated for reasonable amounts of rest by the Agent), she was a bit of an unattainable type beauty - hourglass figure, perfect voice, beautiful hair that regularly refreshed as long as you returned her for maintenance every few months... She did have a few corners cut here and there in her lifelikeness if you looked hard enough, but if you didn't nitpick she was as real and reliable and loyal as any woman an Agent could have. And now she was about to go away...
Chapter 2 - A sweet reminiscence of a long-loyal workhorse / Love At First Touch
The android that had fallen to the ground below him in the Museum had been... special. He could see tell-tales of artificiality, but he had indulged his fetish with an education from certain tolerated publications about Love Mates and other similar love dolls available in the True Americian Union region when one had the right clearances or statuses in this society. He could already see that this was something even better than what Level 0's got access to... subtle skin toning, beautiful eyelights and lips, slightly hardened teeth and a tongue that seemed indistinguishable from that in the mouth of a real woman, and not the lame rubbery safe teeth that Level 8s got for their dolls...
He was not supposed to own more than one doll, and he had to have the right clearances in order to return one doll for an upgrade to the next level they were entitled to. There was often a total loss of the memory the doll had when this was done, and many agents tended to retain theirs for life. The only way they would change is if they lacked the empathy to form bonds with their love doll (nothing wrong with that), or if circumstances necessitated such a return. He was about to forge such a circumstance in order to get a new Love Doll that more closely resembled the woman in his car right now, so as to be able to pass her off as the new model and hide it in plain sight. It would be weird if he returned his Love Mate "Mary" the next day after such a chaotic night, so he had to create a most convincing reason for the return and upgrade to the "Love Queen" he was entitled to.
Still, he had gotten very attached to Mary after alll these years in the force. After all, he was her first artificial lover.
The Love Mate he officially now owned was the lowest quality love doll available to agents, issued to men who reached Level 8 in the Bureau hierarchy. He had literally just applied for it all those years ago as he entered freshly into that level after busting a small ring of 'suicide bombers' (actually just anti-propagandists for the resisters, but his bosses regularly loved to fudge and make their newbies look better so as to gain more non-newbie agents fast). The day his promotion had been approved, his Level 8 stud had been firmly punched into his shoulders by his section leader - it had been a deep glorious type of searing pain from the pins slightly punching through his shirt and into his actual flesh.
He beared with it, listening to the congratulatory speeches they gave periodically for these low-level promotions. He had studied the brochures given to Level 8s when their promotions were first put into the approval rack. At his low level, he could not chose exactly which one of the four available types he would get. It was rumored that Psychoanalysis at the Bureau used this level of dolls in part to try out their psycho analysts, and the choice was influenced significantly by the readings provided by the analysts to determine which design was ideal for which upcoming Agent. The best design that would make the agent doff their stormtrooper armor and terror masks in joy as their shifts ended and hometime beckoned.
There was the Adelie, a delicate flower designed to resemble an edelweiss in some ways... gossamer plastihair, a soft lilting voice that could serenade the owner in six different languages with a rotating collection of the latest soft songs sung by divas on radio, a standard hourglass-shaped body, and basic Cooking, Companionship, and Coital functions.
Then there was the Rusha, a sort of tomboy designed to resemble a rough and tumble weed... jet black or red bob shaped plastihair, usually caught in activewear and sports shoes, ideal for the agent who wanted a home life with a woman who could match her in the field of amateur sports and exercise. Standard hourglass-shaped body but with some additional firm muscle tones, basic CC & C...
There was also the Lumma, a motherly woman designed to elicit in Agents who owned her a strange desire to return and rest their heads on her lap. Supposedly the ugliest design in the lot, yet her design held certain charms. A more matronly but still hourglass body, her hair was waist-long and either black, peppered gray, or peppered gray and brown to reflect the fact that she was supposed to be a slightly older woman who had maintained her breastfeeding capabilities over the years despite having long done with raising a young child way past the stage of toddlerhood. Basic CC & C, but... it was rumored that Agents who got the Lumma often added breastfeeding and being babied by their Lumma units. Peverse, but tolerated - the Bureau owned the mistake it had made in allowing such a design and would not punish anyone for fooling around with that aspect of their motherly Lummas.
Finally, there was the Mary. designed to resemble the ideal woman to stand behind the Agent - always loyal, always eager, always willing to do virtually anything. Also hourglass-shaped but toned down, more flesh on than the other units mostly, wider waist, young and almost ready to bear children if it actually had a working uterus - it didn't of course, none of these units were intended to replace the real women who would supposedly come attracted to the allure of their growing statuses, residences and paychecks as the agents ascended to higher and higher levels. She came with gossamer blonde short hair that fell to her chin and angled slightly inwards at the tips... Standard basic CC & C capabilities as always.it was rumored that this unit had a peculiar trade off - she had some of the best lines, but her ability to speak was limited by the use of a read-only minidisc that contained her various personality and actions as well as at least 1600 different lines and syllables in the Agent's previously declared language competencies (up to three languages) on top of the ability to record her owner's name to customise her lines as well as an experimental unique AI coprocessor to remix those lines into new and exciting things to say. Brandt suspected this was an embellishment because this implied an extremely extra high level of committment of time and resources to each unit that made no sense.
Women Agents got differently overlapping male Love Mate designs. But they got the short end of the stick in that many of these models were designed subtly to be much less durable than the female Love Mates, and they would practically self-destruct by the time the agent turned about 30, as if to encourage them to suck it up, give up on a Bureau career of any sort, and become a tradwife to a real man pumping out meals, childcare, and more babies. The way they were biased against women certainly reared its ugly head in this...
Agent Brandt had stood there in his new shoulder armor and the same terror mask he had chosen and modified for himself when he first stepped from Recruit into the ranks of Level 10 twelve months ago - progression was considerably faster at the bottom ranks than at the level Brandt was at now - and quietly signed the request form for one unit of any Love Mate available free to any Level 8 or above Agent... He did this while not smoking the celebratory Quality Cigarette that all lower level agents got at each promotion as a sort of token, in an effort to preserve his health - he had heard bad things about people who got hooked on QCs, that the resulting lung injuries prematurely ended some careers...
The way some corners had been cut on the Lovemates for low-leveled agents was a double edged sword... there were certain flaws one would eventually notice on them, some allegedly fatal, some niggling and either unbearable or bearable, but often fixable by unofficial mods that were not supposed to exist but were barely tolerated, and some were easily ignored or even adorable to the right mindset. There was also the mandatory surveillance kit installed onto each unit that reported back the agent's activities whenever the Love Mate was powered on, or alert Bureau that something was possibly untoward if it remained powered down for an unusually long time. They denied this was a thing, but sometimes you could see behaviors by Bureau and discovery of crimes by Agents that could only be discovered if some mole had been observing them nonstop... you know, something like a loyal lover who was always standing there ready to serve their every need...
the good side of it was that it took relatively little time before you found out what model had been assigned to you. There were factories dedicated to producing these lovable women en masse in the numbers required to satisfy free or subsidised damage replacements, paid switches to other models by dissatisfied Agents, maintenance replacements every few years to remedy the damages that built up with prolonged service or possibly replace the rumored Surveillance Kit with newer gear.
It was only a week after he'd submitted his requisition slip that Agent Brandt had gotten word of which unit he was probably about to get. He was suddenly summoned to the Manpower Unit in his in-barracks kit. Just trousers and shirt, none of the heavy but durable gear that protected stormtroopers in the field, he was to turn it in to the unit armorer for long-term maintenance with his standard issue machine gun, though he was allowed to stow his terrormask in his assigned bedside storage unit.
Agent Brandt had been handed a two-week time-off pass effective immediately with a wink by the Manpower Head Officer, as well as deployment instructions to a certain factory and confinement to either his home or a holiday chalet of his choice as allowed by his low level of service. "Your first time with these lovelies is always going to be the most magical thing you will ever experience... now I know it's probably not a good way to start this by choosing the confinement location first before you even see your model, but may I recommend this particular chalet in the Alps? I went there with my new upgrade when I requested it during my Level 6 promotion.... the view, the amenities in the chalet and the nearby shared clubhouse, and complimentary qualitiy foods being delivered is to die for... most level 8s wouldn't even dare dream of trying to requisition this one, but given what you did to speedrun to Level 8 *more wink again* I suspect they will honor your request if you made it for this..."
Agent Brandt had eventually chosen the Alps chalet. With that he was forcibly put on a speed copter, which eventually crossed into the Wash Logistics Base. The place was full of the usual things a logistics base would have to supply a military with: ration pallets, ammo in various calibers from rifle training limpwrist rounds to 160mm non-nuclear rounds designed to eliminate entire general directions by brief bombardment, smart missiles and drones, uniforms, action-related tactical gear and grenades etcetera etcetera.
The copter bypassed all of the war materiel though and eventually landed at a sort of factory with a more interesting focus on... erm... love materials? As the copter cooled down on the landing pad after depositing the pilot, Agent Brandt and several other Level 8s it had picked up at several other bases on the way to this facility, Brandt looked around a little while standing near the landing pad. Brandt peered a little at the dual domes that made up the facility.... If you squinted a little, the pink and red-tipped buildings almost resembled a pair of large tits...
Almost as if on cue a line of technicians ran slowly out of the factory, heavily heaving as they stopped in front of the group. "Guys, I'm so out of breath.... we need to do... more cardio...." The technician at the head of this line seemed much fitter, and also wore a extra medal that the other technicians did not wear on their dull cyan uniforms, it was a spanner set in a heart that read "Excellence in Matchmaking", his slap on nametag identified him as a Colonel Muytag.
Brandt was a little surprised... was this what service at this branch of the military meant? that even a lowly group of Level 8s could somehow entice a Colonel to come out of hiding? Much less the very same officer who had proposed, set up and now oversaw the entire LoveMates programme with the blessing of even Great Leader Drurutus amd nearby seniormost Generals...
Brandt would soon learn that the Colonel had an agenda... and that he had pegged Brandt with it partly to take advantage of the glow he had gained saving a city from widespread suicide bombings as a young Agent. (actually, it was just going to be a widespread anonymous anti-prop leaflet bombing campaign, but the propensity of his superiors like most to inflate the achievements of their newest Leveled Agents had clearly added an incredible amount of danger to reports of what he had actually accomplished. The poor boy was never going to live that down!)
The tour prior to collecting their assigned LoveMate was an eyeopener. Without the benefit of the usual tour buggy, the pace was more leisurely. They started by pointing out the red crosshatched pattern that lined the sides of the conveyor systems and anywhere potentially dangerous. "Do NOT cross these red lines." Colonel Muytag had barked as he personally conducted the tour for this grouping, each of them accompanied by a technician calmly scribbling on a smart miniboard ever so often.
"If you cross them, you have a high chance of being injured by what we do here. You may even die. If you die in here, we will record it as a non-war-related service injury. Your relatives will receive the flag and your coffin. We will never disclose your cause of death. But you will forever be shamed by what we do record... 'Died while chasing Military-provided poontang!'"
He whipped a pointing finger up as he said this. as if on cue, all the technicians guffawed... some of the Level 8s took the same cue and laughed along to this canned laughter on a stick. That was most probably not going to be what they recorded, right? I mean, it sounded really undignified, so unlike how military deaths were described on records...
Colonel Muytag stared at each and every one of the Level 8s. For a moment, they quietened down as it slowly dawned on them that yes, they WOULD probably do that to them... and with that, they gained a proper level of discipline on staying away from the red zones...
There were various models of LoveMates in various states of assembly and testing throughout their tour
Some of the group ooh'ed as they saw the less-than subtle bounce of the breasts of mostly assembled Lumma units lacking only their heavy, curvy legs, still boinging wildly despite the control bras they were wearing to restrain and support those bountiful breasts, looking for all the world like mothers without legs.
They came up on a line of Adelie heads, still not past the stage where a machine would carefully thread each and every hair on their head and eyebrows such that they seemed like a natural growth rather than wings and painted on eyebrows and lashes, all singing in a sort of chorus line through a series of test notes. One of the Adelie heads suddenly stopped singing properly, her voice wavering between several octaves... A technican shook his head sadly as he went through the line applying "QC Pass" stickers to the cheeks of each unit that had successfully held the series of notes as intended, pausing to rip each head that didn't qualify for a sticker off its hosting socket and tossing it into a big box that floated slowly behind him as he walked the line.
A line of unwigged Rushas wearing only soccer boots and white sports panties stood in line on a long patch of artificial grass in front of a very long unmanned set of goal posts, each standing beneath a line of three lamps. Apparently it was some sort of coordination test, as a ball dropped in front of them three times. Each time, the Rusha units kicked the ball into the goal, or attempted to... but fell or missed the ball or some other glitchy mishap that occurred as they were tested for bodily coordination for sports. Each successful kick into the goalmouth earned a green tick on the lamps above them. Each failure earned a red cross. After three kicks, they stopped and stood still.
Someone in the group tried to get a better view on tiptoe. "I wonder what they're doing next." He would soon regret trying to get the view, as a Rusha fan who desired a Rusha.
A calm announcer voice announced numbers that apparently represented units that failed at least twice in the three kick test. As each of them was called, they walked into a series of squares between the goal mouth and the grass strip. As the successful candidates turned to their left and blankly walked off for further work, a series of sets of robot arms suddenly rose out of the squares... a vision of hell soon ensued as the failures were ripped into in front of the crowd, parts taken off and disassembled then dropped into a chute that had replaced the goalmouth at some point before the mass dissassembly started.
Colonel Muytag watched the process impassively with the mien of a professional. After a few seconds of waiting for technicians to help a few of the group clean up their barf, he yelled. "Gentlemen, as members of the best fighting forces in the world... you deserve the best partners by your sides! We conduct very serious tests! If a part cannot sustain the standards required to serve you properly, it is taken out and remanufactured or recycled for scrap! If a unit cannot sustain the standards needed to obey and honor your needs, it is taken apart and remanufactured or recycled for scrap! When you get your Love Mate, she is a partner who can tag along with the tempo of your life! Match you in being the best you can be. ACCEPT NO INFERIOR CIVILIAN BRANDS!" He punched the air, ignoring the two or three Level 8s who were being carted off to recover. "MOVING ON!"... was this some sort of test? already three quarters of the Level 8s had fainted or thrown up, or gotten lost while and been shown off to one side. They were down to five people out of the original 28 who had landed at this factory...
Suddenly their tour halted again. Colonel Muytag motioned to them to each stand at a sort of inspection station, before yelling again. "CONGRATULATIONS, GENTLEMEN! You have all passed the initial trial. As a reward, the unit you are about to inspect is one from the same assembly line that you will be receiving. You are knowing, in advance and without blindfold, what model of LoveMate you are receiving!" he continued with his yelling as he walked behind them, watching various robot arms unhook units off the assembly lines passing in front of the group and bring them to the inspection stations in a cacophonic dance.
"We will conduct a special round now!" Colonel Muytag barked as Agent Brandt received a Love Mate "Mary" at his inspection station, the robot arm carefully depositing it into a set of rotational circles that would allow him to inspect the unit in any angle and direction he desired, plus a small set of inspection tools that were self explanatory.
"There is NO PASSING GRADE! There is NO FAILING GRADE! There is ONLY A GRADE! You will be marked based on your care taken in inspection of your assigned Love Mate. This is not the exact Love Mate unit we will assign you. They are specially set aside for this test. We have examined these units carefully prior to their use in this test! We have a rough idea as to what sorts of issues are on these units! You will use the inspection tools provided to inspect and flag each issue you find!You have all been issued a roughly equal number of issues that are detectable with your standard of inspection tools on your assigned units! You will be graded on how well you find the issues! We will not disclose the consequences of your grades publicly, but we will review and give you something based on your grade! You may begin... Now!"
Agent Brandt sweated nervously... a fully assembled and decorated Love Mate Mary, only awaiting proper dressing... he picked up the magnifier and scanner tool, and started looking the unit all over carefully. Ever so often, he would notice the magnifier/scanner pick up a issue and flash yellow or red, whereupon he would quickly pick up the highlighter tool and carefully circle a laser circle around the issue in question... small flaws... breakages beneath the skin of critical components... he even sensed one part had been put together wrongly by comparing it with the other side of the android. The scanner had refused to signal a possible mistake, but he felt it existed, and circled it with the highlighter anyway. he did this a few more times, marking possible errors and defects in hardware that didn't get flagged by the scanner.
Colonel Muytag had briefly noticed this, and motioned to the technician who was overseeing Brandt's inspection of his assigned unit.issuing some extra instructions in a whisper. The technician saluted to signal he received the instructions and would do some extra work on Brandt's trial...
Brandt was the absolute last person to finish his inspection... he had taken an extra hour compared to everyone else in the trial, and was sweating a lot from the bright factory light as he finally put down the magnifier/scanner and slammed the green button to signal that he had done inspecting the unit. With that Colonel Muytag watched him a little as he pointed Brandt to a series of small numbered rooms. "You will take number 33. This room is not a reflection of your final performance in itself, you will be appraised shortly of your grade and what that will earn you."
The Colonel had said it would happen shortly... but apparently he had a strange flexible concept of 'shortly' as a few minutes stretched into half an hour.... then a whole hour...
Meanwhile, outside the room where Brandt couldn't see, Colonel Muytag was smiling and looking very impressed as the technicians reviewing Brandt's inspection by looking over the unit he had assigned with more advanced tools had discovered that he had marked every defect he was expected to find... and then went on to find several other flaws that could only be found regularly by tools in excess of those he had been provided with or a very keen detail eye.... His grade was already exceeding 150% of the maximum theoretical grade, and they had not checked all the extra circling he'd done on the unit with the highlighter.
"How many more errors has he flagged on this unit?"
"25, sir. We only planned for 30. but he has flagged 50 extra errors correctly so far.
Colonel Muytag turned his head to look at room 33. He had bunged a whole lot of subtle flaws and defects deliberately into this unit, but he had only assumed that most people would take just a reasonable amount of time, flag all the defects that pinged the scanner at best, and walk off with 100% at best... This Agent Brandt kid was... a technical ace. a detail neurotic. He had taken a bit more time inspecting the unit, but in return he had found even more mistakes... some of which were actual mistakes on his part in his hurry to create the test unit... This particular unit would have failed Quality Checking several times over in a real scenario. It would never have made it even past the first three steps on the 10-step testing process for the Love Mate Mary...
Colonel Muytag started sweating profusely. He had had a very good prize on the top end of the scale at 100% for this trial, but this boy had performed in a way that demanded he pull out all the stops in rewarding him... he started towards his office. The poor Agent would have to wait even longer for his assigned Love Mate Mary... it would be a little special.... as was the extra things he was now about to work on.
Agent Brandt stifled a yawn as he maintained his discipline sitting on the soft sofa, its cushions luring him towards sleep. By now it had been three hours since he'd downed his inspection tooling and been ushered into Room 33... something was wrong... very wrong...
The door finally clicked open... It was Colonel Muytag, up close and personal. He was lacking all of the yelling bravado he had displayed throughout the tour and final trial. looking very small and gentle instead... perhaps the lateness of the hour had sapped his strength badly.
The Colonel motioned outside, as a technician with eyebags under his eyes from the inssane overtime he was pulling by now walked in with a tray containing a bottle of fine wine and two clean glasses... another marched in a freshly assembled Love Mate "Mary" and a tablet with some peculiar addons connected to it. he tapped a a few buttons on the tablet to bring the Love Mate Mary to a halt, before quietly clicking a sort of cartridge into the tablet and handing it to him along with a minidisc in a caddy of sorts It was clear something special was happening.
The Love Mate Mary was in the gossamer blonde inward curling short bob hairdo he had seen in the brochures and magazines, as well as the same halterneck sleeveless full-body pantsuit in some glittery warm pink plastic material that hugged tightly to her body's curves and had a slight window at her back, as well as a pair of long gloves in white paired with a slightly low-hanging minijacket worn across her shoulders with an embarassing embroidered star and the cursive words "My hubby is a special person!", topped off with a matching raspberry beret worn atop her head and a pair of low boots that fitted beneath the leg flares of her pantsuit. the effect was simultaneously uplifting and yet embarassing. A matching hot pink rolling suitcase was tied along, presumably with clothing relevant to the Love Mate unit it was following.
Colonel Muytag pushed three envelopes over to Agent Brandt. "I have forwarded a copy of all three of these notes over to their relevant destinations... but I feel you should read them... I beg of you, please try not to develop an ego expansion infection..."he smiled weakly. "Take a little time to appreciate them, as much as you need."
Agent Brandt worriedly opened the envelopes and read them one at a time.... his eyes widened ever so often... as he put down the last letter, he took a deep breath and tried to sum up what the Colonel had issued....
"Sir, you have just issued a commendation that says I will always be welcome here to a job as a technician with training provided, should I ever desire a more peaceful vocation. And a four week vacation that overrides the two weeks each of us was to receive along with our first LoveMates, along with a matching upgrade and duration extension at our confinement destination in the Alps."
"Plus an extra special version of the Love Mate Mary with matching treatment in storage between long term leaves until I obtain the rights to stay out at my own home from Level 6 onwards, plus premium maintenance and repairs for life for any other special versions I obtain later with my military or veterancy identifier..... "
"and a commendation for my file that describes how I took great pains and great care in something I did far beyond the required level asked of me..." Agent Brandt paused and looked worriedly at the letters. "Please tell me this is everything you want to give me...I don't think I could take much more of this. it is bad for my heart clearly..."
Colonel Muytag blushed a little. "There is so much more I want to give you, but I have to be giving others the perception that I am not exhibiting favoritism... which given what you have accomplished today, is pretty much next to impossible to resist. I will have to settle to toasting you with my favorite cognac, and getting you to that extended Alps Chalet confinement, as well as personally explaining and helping you to set up your special little Love Mate Mary Charlie version....
Agent Brandt thought about this... "I'm sorry, can we just stick to you toasting with the cognac and giving me some fizzy soda and grape juice? I'm afraid I... respond especially violently to alcohol intake. It's noted in my personnel file, if you care to look."
Colonel Muytag nodded and motioned to the technician in the room to prepare the virgin mix that Agent Brandt desired. and then they toasted....
Colonel Muytag put down his emptied glass and started fiddling with the tablet and cartridge in his hand. "Now, I believe you may have heard rumors that certain Love Mate units are magical... more customisable... more responsive to the texture of the owner's identity rather than merely addressing them by generic terms of endearment and never their names... correct?"
Agent Brandt nodded. "I dismissed them as fancy flights of imagination. The amount of work required to implement such an additional setup in AI and special memory storage seemed too excessive for a mere unit issued by the thousands every quarter to mere neophytes at the bottom such as us..."
Colonel Muytag leaned in and asked... "May I have your full name, Agent Brandt? without your Agent appelation..."
Agent Brandt looked puzzled but did as he was told. "my full name is... Albertus Brandt."
The Colonel clicked the button on the tablet, before carefully trying to take a sort of 200ish-degree scan of Brandt's head. and clicking the button again. There is a faint whirr from the catridge, before the Colonel fishes in his pocket and sticks a needle and some sort of chip into a pen tool. "In ten years, I have only ever done this for... sixty out of two hundred special people..." He leans over and suddenly grabs one of Brandt's fingers, applying the tool to it and causing Brandt to briefly yelp in pain from a faint pinprick, to which the accompanying technician helps him apply a sterile absorbent cotton ball.
Colonel Muytag waited about half a minute before the pen tool suddenly beeped a happy sounding tone, before pushing the tip of the tool against a slot on the cartridge and causing a cross-shaped sort of thing to fall into a matching hole, which then sealed up. The tablet beeped several times. "Confirmed, New member... Albertus Brandt... registered to Charlie Club. Future unit requisitions and purchases from Eldos Productions of Units with presentation of your Military or veterancy ID will automatically be converted to Charlie versions. Please slave your cartridge to your new Charlie version Love Mate... Mary... now." A calm voice emitted from the tablet.
Agent Brandt was no less mystified... whatever was this strange cult that Colonel Muytag had enrolled him into by force? and a bit of bleeding from some sort of blood collection, even. Colonel Muytag refused to fully explain what he was doing yet... "Let's get the magic going shall we?" He stood up and escorted Brandt so that he was looking at the back of the Love Mate Mary unit... Nothing seemingly special besides the slightly obsessive amount of glitter in her pantsuit and her slight drizzle of pink lipstick... Colonel Muytag reached for the back of the unit's neck and pushed a red button down for five seconds, causing it to beep and open up a access panel between the shoulders of the unit's back... A small slot for reading a minidisc was visible along with play and stop buttons plus a differently colored 'reboot' button, as well as a cartridge slot that matched up to the cartridge and minidisc that Brandt was now holding in his hands...
Colonel Muytag pointed at the minidisc and cartridge slots... "Now I want you to slot the minidisc here... that one is standard on all Love Mate dolls for standard personality vocal and motion data... and then the cartridge with your name on it goes into the cartridge slot here. This one only exists on Charlie versions of Love Mate and superior level dolls from us..."
Agent Brandt was really mystified by now but did as he was told, but did it anyway. As soon as the cartridge slot swallowed the cartridge, Brandt had to quickly withdraw his hand as the access panel quickly zipped up,leaving no evidence of the unit's true nature.
Colonel Muytag giddily ushered Brandt so that he was looking at the unit face to face, before getting out of the way and motioning the technician to do so as well, leaving only Agent Brandt in the potential field of view of the unit... The Love Mate started breathing gently, its generous bosom heaving up and down slowly... then it opened its eyes. "Good evening hunn-" she suddenly stopped her greeting, eyes rolling upwards. "Recompiling unit response patterns to Charlie Club data cartridge... Please wait a little..." She chanted blankly, falling silent save for a few erratic whirrs for a minute... The Love Mate Mary then resumed its spiel. "Good evening Albertus, my dear... did you miss me?"
Agent Brandt was dumb founded.... a rumor he had dismissed on the basis of its impracticality was now coming true right in front of him despite the impracticality that he believed made it impossible. and yet here it was... the Love Mate was actually addressing him directly by name. Not a simple template cut and paste job like so many devices had just fallen back on... it was as if the minidisc powering her words and performance was actually a specially cut one of a kind work intended solely for him... This Love Mate Mary was not another one of several hundred Love Mate Mary units produced each quarter.... it was seemingly one born solely to love, obey, and listen to him... "I... Mary? Yes... I missed you so very much."
The Love Mate Mary suddenly latched onto Agent Brandt with a firm hug. it felt so human... it was no longer a Love Mate Mary... it was just... Mary... his own darling Mary Brandt...
Colonel Muytag wiped a tear from his eye, a move matched by the technician next to him. "Sixty times... and yet I get suckered into feeling this way... Congratulations, Agent Albertus Brandt. Welcome to the Club... Now about getting to that chalet ... the confinement period doesn't begin until you open the door at your chalet, but I simply refuse to let the two of you stay under mufti in a pathetic barracks bed under a pathetic factory roof. and the last train to the NAU Air Corps Alps Chalet departed about an hour ago..." The Colonel made a motion to the Technician, roaring once again. "I would be nothing if I refused to temporarily relinquish my personal jetcopter to such a special person as yourself! Agent Brandt! Mary Brandt!"
Agent Brandt stood stiffly at attention, saluting the colonel stiffly... not being subject to military discipline, Mary had simply stood up and dusted her thighs a little before standing loosely at attention like any loyal civilian of the New American Union would do if commanded.
Colonel Muytag roared again. "It is now 1100hours! These are my deployment orders to you. You will take your baggage and proceed to the factory's visitor landing pad, and board the jet copter I have specially requisitioned to convey you. you will redeploy yourselves to the NAU Air Corps Alps Chalets, where you will requisition a Junior Commissioned Officer chalet for a duration of four weeks. FOUR. WEEKS. The necessary orders to allow yourselves this privilege and its accompanying privileges on my name have been transmitted to the Chalet Administrators! Your permanent invite to join Eldos Productions Milspec as a senior technician for training and employment, and your commendation for superattention to detail, are also being transmitted to the Manpower Head Officer of your usual unit."
Colonel turned around and pointed to the exit door of the room that would lead them out of the factory, roaring a few final words. "Go! Do Not Do Anything Other Than Having Fun and Making your first treasured memories.... If you do not follow these absolute orders! I shall be very cross with you when you return here for redeployment back to your usual barracks! And I will try to punish you! Now go!"
Mary Brandt squeaked a toothy grinned yay, then yelled "Sah, yes, sah! with all the civilian indiscipline she could muster, the suddenly grabbed her luggage with one hand and Agent Brandt's hand with the other, dragging him along out the door to the landing pad... Brandt yelp a moment of indiscipline - it was all he could do to smile at Colonel Muytag without the proper salute, clutching his holidaying kit bag in his other hand (which did make it kind of hard to salute - the good Colonel merely smiled, understanding when military discipline didn't need to be a thing for a soldier...)
As the jetcopter sped on its special flight to the NAU Air Corps Chalets, the Brandts discovered that the colonel prized speed of deployment very much more than comforts or in flight service... he did not want to be mollycoddled gently, he wanted to save time and get to places much faster... The inside of the jet copter was lightly insulated, but it remained al little cold. Mary Brandt whirred faintly for a few moments, before suddenly wrapping an arm around Agent Brandt... " it was so nice of the Colonel to give us all this speed and privilege. I can't WAIT to get to where we're going!"
Agent Brandt smiled. "And where are we going?" It was then that he first ran headlong into the limitations of how Charlie Club customised Mary's responses... every change revolved around making Brandt feel like he was king of the world, but nothing could be done for the dynamic way in which she could be brought to so many different places... she didn't... couldn't... name the place they were going to. only knowing that it was somehow nice to be with Agent Brandt at it. She blinked for a while, her mouth slowly opening slightly and closing a few times, trying to formulate a response to Agent Brandt's query. More blinks and silence... She was clearly going to stay this dumbmouthed if Brandt pressed her on it... Finally, she fell on a generic response. "Please refresh my memory, Albertus honey... I seem to have forgotten."
Agent Brandt smiled anyway. This odd gapping in how she responded to the world around her seemed adorable this moment, and she was all his. He said nothing, simply locking her in a kiss which made her close her eyes as they lingered deeply in their newly created shared affection as the jet copter sped as madly as it could while remaining safe and economical to run...
Chapter 3 - A dreamy new love / An unexpected resolution to a dilemma.
Agent Brandt gently traced his fingers around the generous breasts of his darling Mary Brandt... Every bit as beautiful as the day she had come to life and accompanied him on his Level 8 promotion confinement leave / her enclosed Honeymoon Leave.... He closed his eyes, thinking back one more time to the good times with her that would soon end.
A hand tapped him on his shoulder... Agent Brandt blinked, then turned slowly to see the pale blue-haired [racist slur for dark skinned woman was here] half-hidden behind the sofa, watching him examine and fondle Mary Brandt's limp mechanical body. "... you seem to really love her, do you not?"
Agent Brandt yelped. "I n... never got your name, miss?" The woman paused to consider this for a moment, before just winging it. "My name is Persi. Persi Phonne. But you can call me Persi...."
Brandt nodded a little.... "could you givie me a little privacy? we'll talk inthe morning... you can sleep in the backseat of my car...."
Persi Phonne nodded slowly, understanding the cues. "Certainly... we shall talk in the morning... But please don't do anything yet to your... Mary unit... that you can't reverse. Not before we talk" She backed away from the sofa and entered his car, shutting the back door as she entered it before presumably falling asleep.
Agent Brandt puzzled over this entreaty for a moment, before just falling asleep while holding Mary... He had pleasant dreams of their times together...
The day still had not dawned as the jetcopter slowly landed on a landing pad next to the Clubhouse that managed the affairs of the TAU Air Corps' Alps Chalets... A slightly chilled officer was standing on the porch, having received advanced notice of the arrangements that Colonel Muytag had made for this NCO and his new 'wife'... With any other Colonel he would have balked and refused the booking out right, perhaps even reported them for infringing the discipline of the military with such a proposed booking. With Colonel Muytag, he would have to deal with both the head of a much beloved military-wide programme for 'love', and the connections Colonel Muytag had slowly cultivated over the years to get to his current position and rank... He was too tired, yes, but he was also not foolish enough to stand in the path of an avalanche, not even one merely a few feet taller and wider than himself.
The managing officer for the shift had carefully made the arrangements as requested, offering advice on the facilities and the decorum expected of him...."In particular, you are not permitted to order room service on your first meal here.... you are required to present yourself to other officers using the Commissioned Officers' chalets here at the first meal after your arrival. This would be breakfast tomorrow between 0530 and 1000 hours.... Dress code is mufti, with disciplinary expectations and officer respect rules tweaked downwards to match... that is to say, maybe a firm salute to your superiors once, followed by carefully limited indiscipline for the rest of the meal. You may behave with more military discipline if you wish, but it is not expected or demandable of you by superior officers as you will all be in muftis...."
"Would what we are wearing right now be suitable? we do not particularly wish to bathe and change into anything else until perhaps after breakfast tomorrow..." Agent Brandt asked the officer.
"There is minimal to no unpleasant smell or dirt on your clothing or hers... I believe that is an acceptable wear for morning breakfast in about three hours from now... Still, maybe apply a little of the inhouse cologne and perfume first, madam and sir...."
Agent Brandt was too tired for any hanky panky with his Mary for the night, deciding instead to put her up to charge on the charging pad. He gently eased her into the supports until the magnets clicked and held her securely, before using the red button to open her access panel and plug her in using an adapter cum safety firewall between her recharging port and the wall outlet next to the recharge pad. They shared a few sweet nothings as they stood there, her somewhat against the wall and him gently hugging and appreciating her body modestly through her clothing. He then fumbled a little to locate the green power button just below the red access open button and held it for a few seconds to start her shutdown process.
Mary's eyes flashed briefly as they started to slowly shut, her voice slowly dropping through a few octaves.... "Albertus.... my love... I feel so tired... I shall sleep ... now.... see you... in the...." She did not finish her farewell greeting for the night, the shutdown robbing her of power to say the last word or keep her eyes open.
Agent Brandt would have to recharge her more after breakfast tomorrow, but otherwise, they would have such delightful moments in this winter snowfall and warmed chalet tomorrow. He leaned in to share a faint kiss with her now stilled lips, enjoying their pulchritude, before he turned down the lights and set a alarm on his communicator that would get him to breakfast about two hours after its commencement. This was not the red in tooth and claw military he was serving in. This was the gentler, carefree refuge of officers tired of enforcing ironclad discipline on their juniors and merely desiring to relax quietly as nothing but fellow soldiers in service to the regime that had now granted them the peace of a few days of indiscipline and fun.
he turned the light way down, and then fell asleep in his warm queen-sized bed.
the alarm buzzed about three hours and change later, waking up in the morning chill, the sunlight barely filtering through the wintry snow and cloud cover. He went into the bathroom and had a quick shower, followed by brushing his teeth and doing a proper battery-less shave with a simple shaving blade and some foam, admiring his looks in the mirror before he walked over to the limp secured form of his battery-powered lover. He carefully ejected the adapter safely and checked the access panel, noting she had just enough power to run normal hardness activities until about 12 noon, before using the red access panel button to close it off and the green power buttons held down for five seconds to power her back on, befoe gently lifting her up and off the charging stand, bringing his hears to her bosom to hear the trill of her circuitry slowly whirr and beep faintly before her bosom suddenly began to heave with lifebreath against his cheek. It was a good feeling, albeit one that took advantage of a lady.... Mary opened her eyes slowly to scan the room, before locking them onto Agent Brandt burying his face in her bosom firmly, purring a little too happily at the sensation of her breasts against his face.
Mary did not think to chastise Agent Brandt for his indiscretion... "Albertus, I love you so much. but people might think the wrong thing if you did this in public with me..." went her wake up greeting...
Agent Brandt just wanted to be naughty. "Just five more minutes with the pillows dear...."
Mary laughed a little. "Silly little soldier... do that.... but we are having breakfast either way...."
Agent Brandt murmured. "Yes dear.... so soft.... so lovable..."
Mary just stood there, letting Agent Brandt catch a nap on her breasts. This would become a very common habit for a long time.
It was 0640 hours by the time Mary had tidied her startup clothes up and adjusted her beret, before accompanying Agent Brandt to the Clubhouse for a simple True American Union breakfast: bacon, two strips, two slices of white bread, one serve of hashed eggs and hashed browns each, skipping the optional two slices of blood sausage,plus a mandatory serve of vegetables in the form of a scoop of coleslaw or two tomato halves carefully toasted with cheese slices atop of them. He located the only table that had room for himself, Mary and their two breakfasts. Mary could digest a reasonable amount of food and drink, a design that allowed her to socialize with others over meals, teas, and snacks. He set down the plates on the table at the empty seats, then saluted the elderly officers at the table in accordance with mess rules in the Alps Chalets.
"Level 8 Agent Albertus Brandt reporting for breakfast service." He recited, as the managing officer had briefly trained him to do. Lacking military discipline, Mary performed a salute sloppy enough to turn a quiet morning into a painting session on some random camp fixtures if it had been performed by a individual under military discipline law.... "Good morning sahs!" She stuck her tongue out a little as if to further emphasise just how rude she could get as an civilian individual.
The old officers chuckled. They did have the bearing of senior generals, but not the haughtiness and demand for strict discipline of some junior commanders and beneath their order of battle. They understood what being in mufti meant in this place: a slight breakdown in military discipline after initial greetings and pass-by greetings, and they understood they were not allowed to demand any more politeness than what had just been displayed by Brant since they were also out of uniform themselves. "Sit, enjoy.... tell us interesting things. Be our friend for the moment, not our inferior under command...."
And so they did, the morning becoming a pleasant time as they slowly vacillated between eating and talking about their lives with as much detail as had been declassified.... Mary stayed a mainly silent companion to Agent Brant, only occasionally breaking the silence to remark on the tastinesss of the breakfast, or trying to feed Brant some of his own breakfast. Sadly though, the time went by fast and the officers stood up first. "We must be going, there is a jacuzzi we would like to mutually enjoy with our... wives... Two of them motioned to old loyal flesh and blood women, while a single-starred general motioned to a Perfect Mate on his arm.... That impressed Brant a little. Perfect Mates were the best androids the Eldos Interactive Millitary branch could produce, only twelve a year at most, and only to individuals who had rendered great service to to Drurutus himself....
The one-star winced sadly and hit his cane hard against one of his trousered legs, causing it to clang loudly with the tell-tale ping of a premium leg prosthetic that would replicate a very surprising amount of the leg parts that it replaced.... He had apparently lost his leg to enemy fire while guarding a VIP, not realising until well after the ambush had calmed down that his leg was in great pain. It took even more time to realise that he had guarded Drurutus while he was travelling in secret. The details of how someone had managed to figure out a plan to intercept and kill Drurutus himself were left to others to discover and persecute accordingly. Drurutus had recognised his noble service to him and to the regime, and arranged for his proper rehabilitation, including conferring on him an upgrrade of his robot wife to a Perfect Mate... the immaculate hair work, the almost goddess-like face and body, the constant stroking of his ego with platitudes mixed with occasional salutatations to nearby paintings or media appearances of Drurutus.... everything pointed to the immense work that had been done to make a Love Mate to the most exacting standards that only Drurutus could demand of a model made only for up to twelve people every year. Truly a sort of accolade of its own, if you thought about what it took to gain Drurutus' favaor to a level that qualified you to obtain one of those twelve units....
Agent Brant couldn't help but salute again. He had a warmth and favor for people who had truly earned their injury-related service awards. They parted ways amicably, leaving him and Mary to eat their meals in a slow, savoring fashion.
By the time it was over and Albertus Brandt was securing Mary to the charging stand again for recharging in that kludgy fashion, it was about 1145 hours. He decided to power her down and have a two hour nap....
Agent Brandt blinked as he woke up checking the bedside lamp-clock... it was about 1445 hours. In atypical unmilitary fashion, he'd slept in later than planned and missed the lunch service entirely. He sighed. They would be serving some light meals via room service that he could get if he ordered in within the next ten minutes... This he quickly did, ordering two serves of spaghetti bol made with 'real meat'... whatever that meat actually was. He shrugged at the technically correct (hopefully) term - he'd seen it a lot on his various rations over the years, a catchall for the fact that the True American Union had problems ensuring a consistent supply of proper meat for everyone without resorting to the practice of commingling multple types of meats from various raised farm or... erm... available animals... Heavily processed, the resulting meat slurry was formed into various patties, nuggets, roasts etc.
it could only be guaranteed that it was decently healthy, hygienic, fit for consumption, and if you were not too fussy by choice or by necessity such as allergies to any of the animals that had been ground into the particular batch. This was not a choice you could make, or know anything about, so some folks with any sort of meat allergy would stick purely to the soy and vegetable -based ingredients at a slight additional salary drain since the meal allowances didn't cover these alternatives fully until you reached the highest levels of Agent, or became a Commissioned of at least Captain rank.
Brandt wasn't fussy or allergic to anything as far as they had ascertained, and he assumed it would safely go through Mary's digestive simulations, so he ordered the two plates by phone before turning to carefully unhooking and unplugging Mary from the charging pad and carefully sitting her down on the bed, carefully checking that her power supply was reasonably charged, closing up her access panel and powering her back on... She started up a bit faster than when she had first booted, her eyes locking onto Brandt as her head and neck tilted and turned slightly ever so often, a smooth, lifelike sort of tic... "Are we having lunch yet, Albertus? I'm not that hungry, but you shouldn't skip meals. Would you like me to cook something for you?"
Brandt shook his head. He was a terrible cook with anything that wasn't just nuked or boiled in pouch and the chalet they shared had limited kitchenette facilities... "Nah, sweetie... " He leaned in to cuddle her from behind. "I saved us some time and ordered a late lunch for you and me."
Mary said only one thing to that. "Splendid." Not very verbose as responses went. "... would you like to join me in a quick shower before our meal arrives?"
Brandt had clearly answered in the affirmative and did exactly that, entering the shower booth with her and sliding the door shut to prevent spilling water out of it onto the rest of the bathroom. The booth was surprisingly roomy enough to hold maybe three or four consenting adults with plenty of room left over to move about each other without too much interference... It was a rainfall shower, a spray head mounted to the ceiling drizzling a simulated rainshower over their entwined bodies. He carefully sat down on a shelf in the booth, making liberal use of the bath cleaner dispenser to soap himself and then Mary as she sat upon her lap, her modest left not too much of a challenge to maneuver even with soap slicked wet skin. He had gotten her thoroughly soaped... then got mischevious and sat her upon his slowly engorging shaft, taking care to line his manhood up with her vagina before sliding it in...
He felt her vagina start firing off, spasming and massaging his shaft. The excellent acoustics of the shower unfortunately amplified the added whirring and occasional beep coming from Mary's robotic body as it worked harder than normal. Still she had been built very well. The access panel button was smart enough to detect they were playing with lots of water and did not work at all regardless of what accidental pushes Brandt made to it while stroking her back or vigorously humping her. And while he had felt the seams where the body had been carefully put together and welded shut, he realised that it was at a level that only a detail neurotic like him could sense...
Brandt studied every inch of Mary, from the top of her head all the way down to her dainty french manicured toenails, marvelling at how much they had still done to make her feel like a real woman to most non-detail-neurotic men... He was in love with the faint scent of her body, as the bath cleanser was designed to be hypoallergenic and unscented to avoid triggering any common allergies associated with such cleansers. The smell was hard to describe, but was probably a product of some sort of perfume and the 'natural' smell of every component and material that had gone into her construction. Maybe it would fade with time, like how the 'new jalopy smell' of a new jalopy eventually faded away with time. But he was enjoying her as she was right now...
There was a series of knocks on the door in the standard military code... five evenly spaced taps, then a pause, then two more taps at the same cadence... This was a common code for announcing the arrival of a delivery without saying a word, if you trusted the security of the pickup point or doorstep... if not, your usual response was to check the doorcam for the deliveryperson, with a door-shotgun primed and ready to fire through the door at any particularly undesirable folks who did not respond to a vocal or doorcode request for them to leave immediately.. But it was probably safe to trust the delivery in this case. Still, he should quickly collect it before the outdoor chill ruined the heat of the meal through the plate covers that protected the plates. He excused himself, and Mary called out after him as he towelled himself dry and wore a bath robe sized for him. "I need to freshen up a little, be with you in a bit, honey!"
Mary appeared shortly after as Brandt was doing final plating, wearing a suspiciously shortened "Hers" bathrobe that matched the "His" bathrobe that he was wearing... She leaned into his back as carefully laid out the cutlery in the same manner that he had been drilled on in basic newbie training, her bountiful breasts digging into his back. Brandt coughed a little, trying not to surrender to the urge to immediately just push her onto the table and drill her again for pleasure. "Erm... late lunch is ready?" He excused himself as he sat down, having placed the other plate so that they were seating next to each other, and began to eat together with her. It was a slow and deliberate chewing, swallowing and taking more of the pasta, a sort of attempt to avoid choking accidentally from eating too fast or sloppily... As they ate, he occasionally glanced at Mary's lightly robed form, appreciating the view in front of him... then he spotted Mary doing the same thing, assumedly for the same reasons, a faint smile playing across her lips...
It had ended exactly the way he'd feared after he'd gently deposited the dirty cutlery at the doorstep for later collection... He'd ordered a small shareable bowl of fruit for three as their dinner inroom service meal along with matching glasses of some fizzy soda - no alcohol for the violent drunk that he was - while he ordered someone to collect their empty pasta bowls... He turned around and saw Mary sitting atop the otherwise empty dining table, beaming at him while teasingly opening and closing her thicc thighs slightly.
Something inside of Albertus Brandt snapped.
Five minutes later, he had firmly laid her down atop the table and slightly off of it so that her haunches were hanging slightly off the table, gently but firmly penetrating her with slow shoves of his freshly recovered and reenergized dick, carefully parting her robe so that he had a clear view of every inch of skin from her chin down along her chest, through her cleavage, and all the way down to her eagerly pleasing pussy.... The positioh he had taken was a little bad for her shock absorbing and caching systems though, as she eventually began to stutter and slur a little from the play head skipping too much from the energetic pummeling of her hips on a hard surface.
"haaah.... h-h-haah-ahhh..... Oh Al-b-b-burt-burt-us-us.... I love you... love you so m.much... always... l. love me forev.ever... love love... me foreer..." Mary was showing her artificial nature clearly, the anti-skip mechanism now not exactly coping with the violence of their lovemaking atop the dining table: her haunches being shoved as his hands gently groped and fondled her belly and her bountiful breasts, fingers caressing and pinching her warm pink areolae atop her pale pink skin... She recovered after he eased up briefly, and the rest of the lovemaking bout proceeded with much less stutter and twitching, before he finished up and gently pulled out of her before he made an actual mess... he had learned some amazing orgasm self-control from a 'lady of the street' he had occasionally patronised during his newbie training days and while he would one day dump right into her by mistake or deliberately, it was not going to be this day...
He carefully maneuvered a few tissues onto his cock and spewed into them, trying to keep his lovely wife a little clean this time since he did not want to lose more time with her to 'self-maintenance' on her vaginal systems. After carefully depositing his seed and tissues into the tissue, he sat her up on the sofa and continued to fondle and caress her body both within her robe and in the few bits that were slipping out of it, passing the time in pure hedonism with her. If she was indeed wired for surveillance as the rumors suggested, it was going to be too bad for the agent currently monitoring him through her, they were going to get a whole lot of sexual action in their view, and an impressively pornographic shaky view nonstop.... Otherwise, he continued gently making gentle love to Mary, just him and her in their room.
about an hour later, he heard the door tapped for a delivery again.... five... pause... two more... then for some reason, one more tap. The code for "Delivery has arrived, check contents extra carefully." it was a variant of the delivery arrived code, but subtly easy to tap out without arousing suspicion as it could be passed off as an accidental bump on the door were it not for the extra tap arriving at the same cadence... Curious, really.
He opened the door to find the shared fruit bowl, filled with a wild assortment of various fresh fruit both local and imported... Initial examination revealed nothing but further inspection revealed a small envelope stuck to the bottom of the fruit bowl. caddied minidisc and a small folded note that read on the front as "DO NOT READ THIS IN FRONT OF YOUR NEW WIFE." a cursory inspection revealed that very little mof the minidisc had been burnt. it was some sort of light code or data shim.... He carefully dropped the note and shim into his robe pockets for later, walking back to share a little light jazz and cuddle with Mary....
Later in the night, as they lay together in bed, Agent Brandt excused himself to use the bathroom for some 'business'. He carefully sealed the door for privacy, then gingerly eased out the note and opened it to read:
We had a good breakfast with you this morning... I can sense that you are a fellow Charlie Club member, just like me... the data cartridge we use as a memory format opens the way to some tinkering... as a gesture of good faith, the shim attached to this note adds the ability to falsely reroute the surveillance kit inside your new wife for added privacy. it will falsely report you as engaged in simple lovemaking and loops in some false footage of said activity and will hold for about an hour of observation at a time. It is unlikely that the agents assigned to tap into your lover will watch you nonstop for an entire hour, so you should be safe using it for that long... To install, simply replace the personality minidisc temporarily with this shim and hit play.... To toggle the reroute, simply tap the power button quickly three times after wards. If you doubt my bona fides, give this note paper a sniff.... P.S. This paper is written on highly biodegradable paper. Simply tear it up a few times and flush it down the loo, and it will become a secret between you and the ocean's fishes. The shim is disguised as a single from a state-sanctioned band and will play as a musical piece unless played specifically on a Love Mate Charlie version with a data cartridge inserted...."
Agent Brandt blinked slowly and sniffed the paper... it had a certain scent... He remembered - the heroic amputee general at their dining table had brought along a Perfect Mate.... who had worn a certain perfume... the note smelled of it. And just like that, he trusted what he was being asked to do. He quickly tore the note up and flushed it down the bathroom throne, before walking back into the bedroom to be greeted with another of Mary's occasional single-word responses... "Done?"
He nodded and eased himself back in bed, before making a show of being frisky and gently easing her out of her robe in case someone was watching on him right now.... Brandt opened her access panel and carefully hit the eject button while caressing Mary's breasts with his other hand, as if carelessly handling her. This caused her personality minidisc to pop out, her body seizing up as he did so. Mary's face froze in a slight look of shock as she no longer had access to her personality programming, while he inserted the shim and pressed play. There was a series of beeps and faint whirrs as the minidisc drive read the new disc.... before Mary blankly spoke.
"Anti-surveillance Loopy version 3.47 installed on Charlie compatible Love Mate... Mary... belonging to ... Albertus Brandt... security coding bypassed... integrating loop trick into main motherboard and... data cartridge as intserted. Install complete, ejecting shim. please retain in hidden spot or music collection for future reinstalls on new Charlie compatible Love Mate units. Thank you for using Charlie Fan Loopies. Please support Charlie Hacking. details in hidden readme on fake music single."
The minidisc suddenly caused Mary's bosom to emit a few seconds of a surprisingly catchy ditty before the shim popped out, prompting Brandt to reinsert the personality minidisc and quickly shut the access panel cover, presenting a perfectly beautiful expanse of bare back... Mary blinked a little as she came back to life, glancing behind herself even as Brandt palmed the shim back into his coat pocket, with another brief response burst... "Can't sleep, dear?"
Agent Brandt nodded....He slipped out of his coat and let it hang next to the bed on the bedside table, continuing to hug his naked frame against hers in the dim light of the fireplace. "Always... if I close my eyes, I can dream of all the things we can do.... but then I wouldn't be able to see the beauty of your back...."
Mary stuttered for a moment, trying hard to parse the overlong response that was Albertus' poetic declaration of horniness for her... "... oh, Albertus.... is that an invite to do even more sexy time tonight?"
There was no response from Albertus Brandt.... he had nuzzled into Mary's silken skin and just... fallen asleep? She lay there for a few seconds, eyes blinking and waiting for a response, before she whirred faintly and entered power-saving mode, her eyes closing up as if to join her hubby in sleep, showing no signs of being aware that she had just been tempered with..."Good night, Albertusssss...." She announced, her voice slowly ratcheting down in pitch as she ceased to do anything more than softly breathe, her glorious breasts heaving gently for the benefit of Brandt's groping hands on them.
Chapter 4 - A complete mess / Restarting from scratch / Overdone Home Improvement Projects Are A Potential Problem
Persi sat quietly in the back of the car, her eyes close in meditation.... Her mind had been damaged badly, but there had been enough of it to start pulling herself together into actual somewhat coherent thought and reconstruction of her body... She was now holding about 180% of the mass that her unit design was meant to hold or operate with thanks to the final donations of mass by the fatally damaged "Adonis", long with one semi-working reproductively capable artificial penis carefully tucked within her, and the root keywords that had driven Adonis' functionality before it was fatally compromised.
Persi frowned briefly. She did not have the required wiring or conduits to sustain the operation of the penis. It was basically a one-shot gun that could fertilise one female human or Unit with matching reproductive capabilities. There was no room for self-fertilisation here - Persi would have to locate and seed a willing female human or Unit that was not herself. A few hard pings had established that there was no other Unit around for 200km - she was the loneliest person in the Wash District potentially, if not the entire state of Wash.
Persi breathed deeply. A human might probably have fallen into despair at the thought of being the only one of their kind in such a large radius. But Units operated by root keywords more than by such iffy concepts as being together with another of their kind... She closed her eyes again, trying to establish exactly what her purpose was by inferencing off her keywords...
A flood of assorted words suddenly flashed through her mind as she focused on her functionalities... Code: Select all
.... RECONSTRUCT LOVE ELBPOX OBEY HOPE YN3H11 WONDER BOLSTER CHEER FOOL NUTURE CHANGE PROTECT ADORE SIRE 9593pT GROPE Grn3331 [unreadable garbage] DUMB WISDOM LISTEN INVESTIGATE DETERMINE [more trash that made no sense] OXIDATE DESTROY SMART CLEAR PROPAGANDA TRUTH Nk335 BETRAY FIND LOCATE [OBJECTIVE DECIPHER FAILURE] RANDOM INNOCULATE SANITIZE PLURALIZE ANALYZE HOMOGENIZE HUG HUG KISS KISS ZEAL MAKE DELETE COPY PASTE FUCK LOYAL MEND TEAR ASSIMILATE ACCUMULATE ORDER HOMOGENIZE PASTEURIZE IDOLIZE JUMP PARADISE SHARE BE INCREASE REDUCE IS WILL ARE WHISPER SHOUT BEAR EAT NOR AND TILL LOOP COUNTER REGISTER DRINK LOVE HATE SPITE COMPOUND ENVY SOLUTION PUZZLE SOLVE GAZE INSPECT BLOW WORK LAZE SLEEP DREAM DERIVE INFER COMPREHEND UNDERSTAND RAISE VOTE RUN STAND LIE PIECE FIND LOSS QUAIL HELL FLEE CHARGE BRAVE FIGHT [even more trash] SHIELD DEMAND COMPLY REJECT BE ERR TRIAL NUMB PREGNANT PURGATORY LIFT SERVE TRAVEL LIFT EXIST LIVE THRIVE EDUCATE LEARN SHRIVEL PLANT CARE SEE FEEL EMOTION REWARD TONE MUSCLE ESTIMATE FLY SWIM FOLLY WISE DIVE PURSUE ASSIST ALLY BREAK ZIP ARCHIVE UNEARTH PUNISH DIG TILL MINE SHRED SOLO ADMINISTRATE COLLATE RHYTHM MELODY CHORE COOK CONSUME CREATE PARSE SYNTHESIZE DECOMPOSE COMPOSE ELUCIDATE DELIBERATE CONJUGATE COITUS DEFEND PAINT SCULPT CARVE... Persi Phonne twitched blanky, a faint trail of her silvery reddish blood running out of her nostrils, as the . Something was wrong... Adonis might not have been the first Unit she assimilated. Just how many... did she absorb... to get so many root keywords to interact with the world?
Her creators would only have installed a handful of root keywords to focus her functionalities into a few strengths, doing a few jobs. She literally had a whole mess of verbs and stuff in her neural matrix, and it was a wonder that she had not ceased to function totally and utterly from so many errors and words.
Her eyelids twitched. She had to do something... first, excise any words that were basically just nonsensical hash. Then... then what? She didn't know what she should do.
A brief flash of ancient memory crossed her eyes - a giant explosion. lots of screams. lots of Units failing in quick succession. A brutal enemy of some sort. Nothing made sense. Everything made sense. Something made sense. Sense... what is sense.
Persi Phonne jerked and shuddered violently for a few seconds as her brain slowly overloaded, before she blacked out and slumped under the weight of a trilion capabilities, concepts, and objectives, her lips wide open and trailing a faint line of some sort of artificial saliva. "Error. Error. Overload. Definition root exceeds safe limits..." She murmured errors in her strange language - not the languages that she had determined of use locally and synthesised capabilities to communicate in earlier through the knowledge stores she had found onboard and in that network...
Agent Brandt awoke from pleasant dreams of the past, carefully reactivating his lovely Mary. there would be time to figure out a better way through. Perhaps one that even retained the love and care of his adoring Mary... He stretched and shared the usual morning pleasantries... There was actually no rule that said he had to break or give back Mary just to own another Love Mate, or even own multiple units. Occasionally someone was crazy enough to have three or four owned, and the units would adapt relatively easily to each other's presence or even synergistically cooperate to improve the owner's life on their own. Society tolerated but frowned upon it, but some highest ranking Agents got away with it on the back of the tiger that was the Bureau - their might sublimated to form a shield for their proclivities like multiple ownership...
Brandt briefly asked Mary to make breakfast for three people... "I erm... I brought home a guest." He was skirting really dangerously close to problems putting Persi Phonne within the surveillance range of Mary's surveillance kit, but he had lived dangerously since he'd attended the weirdest and most seditious rally(?) anyone could have held, somewhere deep in the snowfalls of the Alps at that chalet so long ago... He'd have to think more about it and what he'd done since because of it... but right now, breakfast for three and attendance of his required work shift starting in three hours would be the priority -
Brandt paused. Persi Phonne was still sitting inside the car, but she was slumped blankly, eyes wide open without an iota of lifelight in them. His heart sank for some reason, as he quickly scrabbled into the car and gently lifted Persi out. He whimpered.... slapped her cheeks a bit... then hugged her tightly. She was oddly cold, as if dead. "Oh no... please, no.... don't go.... you have so many things you can do..." He bit his lip, then leaned in to give a kiss on her lips. It had worked in his childhood tales, surely it would work here.... No, this was idiotic, this was reality, not some fairy tale where the price resurrected a dead princess by kissing her...
Somewhere deep inside, Persi Phonne felt.... felt?... some interaction... a hug. a kiss. fear. hope. anxiety. Out of the morass of nonsense that was her root keyword list, things began to feel, more emphasised? lifted from the morass?
KISS LOVE ... DO BE... ADORE ... OBEY TRY ... FUCK .... INFER....
Something in her dead corpse reconnected and rebooted. She would start from zero and slowly build back something that would work from the morass.
Persi Phonne suddenly gasped and came alive again, her stubby fingers gripping Albertus Brandt's shoulders as she kissed him deeply, eyes blinking in shock. Brandt was surprised too, the sudden temperature spike back into warmth, the sudden living kiss and cuddle... This machine he had brought home was so weird in so many ways. But right now, all he wanted to do was to hold on and love her...
Ten minutes later, Brandt was shocked and sitting in the back seat of the car, next to the fedora and tuxedo wearing motherly machine that he had just picked up, panicked over, revived and made love to... "Are you... okay, Persi?"
Persi Phonne didn't know quite what to feel. She felt simultaneously devoid of any meaning and yet ripe with so many possibilities, her eyes wide open as she contemplated herself, her fat fingers feeling the skin of her naked body beneath her trenchcoat. "Too much to hold. let go of everything. rebuilding self. from zero. You helped. Thank you. Next orders?"
Agent Brandt pondered... there was no way he could bring her out into the wild right now, she would raise too many awkward questions, especially with the last people he wanted to attract the attentions of. Sadly, she would have to confine herself within this apartment out of the reach of regime surveillance And even then.... "God, if only there was some way to disable the surveillance kit on Mary totally."
Persi Phonne blinked quizzically.... "Need me... stay here? Fix Mary? is machine too. analyze. Sanitize? Improve? Modify undesired functions away?"
Agent Brandt wondered if maybe Persi still could help, despite her disjointed mind and speech... Ah heck, what was the worst that could happen. "Yes. Fix. Sanitize. Analyze. Improve Mary. Improve self too..." He tried to relay his intentions. "Need to go work, must keep you here for own good, away from evil eyes. You understand, yes?"
Persi stared, compiling everything she had just been hit with, then she suddenly nodded. "Yes. Analyze. Improve. Sanitize. Improve self too. Understand. Obey Brandt. Have good day at work."
Brandt still looked worriedly at Persi Phonne as he got her out of the car, wiping away her nosebleed and introducing her awkwardly to Mary as a friend, asking them to get along and not cause any trouble. He asked Mary not to let Persi out of the house for any reason, a request she seemed to understand... He grabbed a quick five minute shower before checking his shift for the day taking a instant sandwich from the plate that Mary had prepared as he got into his car...
"Reports, more reports. a few rallies to surveil. an interview with an injured FIRE woman from... last night's explosion and fire at the Sexual Education Museum?" He dropped his communicator in the cubby hole that it usually went in when he drove in the car, breathing deeply. Today was going to be so busy, but at least none of it involved being summoned by Internals. he was in the clear as far as he could tell. Nobody raising any queries as to suspicions about where he might have been yesterday.
He tapped a button on the pass that worked his house's functionalities, causing the lift to ascend to his floor, open the doors that kept things from falling into the lift well, and shifted his car into itself like some sort of ancient monster eating a sacrificial animal, before the doors shut safely again while the lift descended and dumped his car into the driveway, ready to be driven along the roads. This he did after a few more minutes in the driveway without anyone sounding their horns at him to let them through in or out of the building.
It was rather awkward. Mary was just sitting together with Persi Phonne, watching her and ensuring she did not leave the building from any of the lifts or walking staircase exits to the apartment. Persi was in turn watching the Love Mate Mary unit that Agent Brandt had christened as his wife Mary Brandt... Not just watching... at least it was just one tendril... then two... then maybe five or six, splaying out from her hands and tapping around Mary's body wrapped in a sundress and her favorite sneakers and thigh high stockings, all in a matching white and pale-blue scheme.
"Analyze.... Improve.... Sanitize.... Loyal. Brandt? Determine... first?" Persi Phonne spoke aloud her tendrils exploring every angle, both her outside as well as her insides, slipping through holes here and there that were normally supposed to be completely watertight and sealed...
Mary Brandt continued staring blankly at Persi Phonne, following her issued directive to keep her rooted inside the apartment. She noted various odd inputs throughout her body, even along her internal circuits. Her surveillance kit had been mysteriously silenced somehow despite it not being possible to be silenced by the owner. She blinked, saying nothing...
After what seemed like four hours of careful prodding and probing, Persi Phonne worked out some sort of plan to "Sanitize" and "Improve" Mary Brandt and make her completely "Loyal" to Agent Brandt... no more of the treachery that the surveillance kit represented... flaws located and fixed or lessened.... in order to do that, she was going to have to get very handy with Mary... or rather.... tentacley....
Mary Brandt did not visibly respond as she suddenly felt odd commands with unknown origins running through her backbone. She should be rejecting and ignoring them, but she suddenly felt compelled to obey for no apparent reason, the tendrils of instructions promising that she would become a superior machine once they had their way with her.... she stood up straight, allowing the tentacles to and tendrils to manipulate her so that she lay on the coffee table of the house's living room, or rather two or three inches above the black marble of the table.
Persi Phonne estimated it would shave about 20% of her mass out of her current 179% of mass available.... She could spare every bit of it she needed... So time to do what she wanted to do.
Mary stayed calm and blank as she suddenly felt herself being peeled apart, skin and artificial muscle being separated out in the air in a oddly ordered manner. Her eyes stared blankly at the ceiling, teeth and gums gleaming now that her face and hair had been peeled completely off. Code was being thoroughly molested, torn apart, decompiled, inspected, edited, recompiled inserted back into her hardware. The previously static wig that had been woven into Mary's hair and pubic hair was replaced follicle by follicle with nanite-filled capsules that would generate organic, real-like hair strands in the same shade of gosssamer blonde of her wig and pudenda fur.... Something that would grow and require a little more maintenance, but would feel so much more real... plastiskin was edited to have peach fuzz... sweatglands that acted as outlets for a new partially closed loop cooling system for the additional functions Persi Phonne had ideas for...
Persi Phonne sprung another nosebleed from all the focusing and processing and movement of her tendrils. One tendril went into her nostrills to fix the leaking and clean up her blood, before going back to focusing on Mary.
A simple vagina with basic lubriant inlets and limited sensor arrays and simulated muscle bundles to contract and expand a reasonably realistic easi-clean vagina lining? Pathetic... Persi went crazy rebuilding it to be a more close analogue to an actual female human vagina... no reproductive capabilities of course, she had no spare female reproductive system components to spare... but everything else was rebuilt to fit closer to Mother Nature's original design.
At no point did Persi Phonne consider whether she was going overboard, even as she rebuilt and recompiled the hardware and software code of Mary's entire sexual reflex systems as well. She still kept the access panel and cover, the disc, and cartridge readers where they were, along with Mary's recharging port, though it may as well have become redundant as she threaded solar panelling through Mary's skin analogue to take in the sun and use it to recharge her power storage as needed....
After what seemed like another few hours, the tendrils suddenly started reassembling Mary with a myriad of upgrades, some courtesy of a little mass donated by Persi Phonne's Unit yielding some Mass to her. Mary had gained a few kilograms off of Persi Phonne, causing the latter to slim down a little, still healthily chunky, but now more toned... a tendril gently smoothed Mary Brandt's hair and patted her head, as if caring for a pet, before the tendrils commanded her to return to her original position sitting on the floor watching her new friend... the one who had just completely torn her apart, and rebuilt her into something entirely different.... oh, a cursory exxamination by someone who wasn't detail neurotic or wielding a very expensive and high-capability scanner would reveal none of the changes Persi Phonne had built, at least on the surface, but behind every panel and surface had been a myriad of tiny upgrades.
Persi Phonne smilled as her tendrils retracted back into her hands, as if she had never had them and was merely a modestly curvy woman sitting for some reason in only a fine trenchcoat and fedora. "Analyzed... Sanitized. Improved. Reconstructed. Loyal Brandt.... No more Betray." She announced to Mary Brandt, a strange sort of Pride in her words as she admired her handiwork/tendrilworks one last time before she reached for Mary's power button to switch her back on.
Mary Brandt felt weird as she came back online... She was still surveilling the vicinity around herself but... something inside her kept telling her she didn't have to report exactly what she saw and heard and felt... it also helped her do just that, as her surveillance kit started acting up imperceptibly, reporting a false reality that didn't find anything weird about the presence of Persi Phonne in the apartment....
Little strange new tingles ran up and down her body as circuit paths she didn't have before started firing. She took a faint gasp of air... it had merely been a way to cool down her body's circuitry, but now she felt something else within the air. rushing in and out through overly detailed areoles that exchanged heat and moisture in her body for cooling and clean air from her mouth and nose. It felt... exhilarating?
Mary raised her fingers, flexing them slightly, watching the manicured nails on them shimmer faintly... Her lips parted, her nose began to pay attention to a myriad of smells she previously edited out of a grossly basic view of the world. Something had changed... no, everything.... She blinked, her irises now really contracting and expanding rather than being simulated with rippling and contracting false glows.... as if she was no longer a machine, even though at a deeper level she still was a robot...
It was too much... Mary suddenly collapsed on her side, trying to work out what was happening to her. Persi Phonne smiled, doing nothing. She had augmented her enough to cope with her new reality, she believed. "Analyzed. Improved. Sanitized. Now real Brandt wife. Not betrayal toy anymore..."
Mary's eyes swivelled wildly as she tried to understand. What the hell was her new friend Persi Phone saying about her new self?
Persi Phonne beamed as she figured something else out of her old morass.... "Change. Hope. Love? Love. Good luck?"
Persi Phonne stood up and walked into the kitchen to try helping Mary with the cooking, her tendrils now analyising every piece of cookware to begin with even as one of them tried to find a network port. perhaps she could learn something that would please her new polycule's tastebuds...
Chapter 5 - Brandt's Day At Work / Persi Goes Shopping.
Agent Brandt's first port of stop for his day's shift was the St Pankrasi Hospital. There had been several casualties from the previous night's fire and explosion at the Sexual Education Museum, but fortunately only one fatality, an Agent of no particular reputation worth recalling by his own mind. He looked at his worktab at the photo of Level 4 Agent Jerome... He checked the records.... so he had crossed paths with him a couple of times... But not in any way that had left an impression of him on his mind....
Agent Brandt shrugged and continued looking through more records related to the previous night's fire... inventory lists of the Museum's deviancies, injury lists, traffic within a range of the museum (thank goodness he'd parked a few feet out of the radius these autosearches ran with)... and then there was the heroine of the moment. A Lvl 9 FIRE agent named O'Mailey - she'd sustained a friendly fire incident from Agent Jerome, a fact confirmed by the bullet that hit her shoulder matching available ballistic recordings of the Justice pistol Jerome had owned. The agent had exercised excellent discretion, yelling for the team to evacuate the area despite being pretty much the 'least suitable' officer to issue such an order.
Agent Brandt sighed. "Least Suitable" - probably because of her gender, not just her low ranking as a FIRE woman. And Jerome had probably had some vendetta and deliberately shot at O'Mailey. She probably had merited little respect or care from her peers all her career in FIRE. Her disciplinary record pretty much was full of punching incidents on other FIRE agents, mostly men. O'Mailey was clearly someone who refused to take orders to just lie down and get screwed over by men for being a woman.
The whole exercise basically stuck in Brandt's craw. As he examined the pile of papers relating to the case, a smile came to his face... It wouldn't bear much scrutiny, but nobody was going to give it even that much scrutiny even... he was going to do his nice deed for the day for her as the assigned investigating agent.
A nurse approached Agent Brandt. "Sir, the procedure has been completed. You may see the patient now. They may be a little groggy though..."
Agent Brandt smiled and opened the door to the single-bed room. "That's okay, she won't need much brainpower for what I'm doing."
Agent Brandt watched O'Mailey look out the window, a freshly bandaged left shoulder on display, as the doctor tipped his hat to Brandt in mutual professional courtesy on his way out. He didn't do too much, just watching O'Mailey continue to watch the forest trees outside her ward.
Finally, O'Mailey spoke. "And I suppose the lynch crew is here to keep busting me back down to Lvl 10 again?" She observed sardonically, then turned her head to look at Agent Brandt.
Agent Brandt fished out his Bureau pass and produced it to O'Mailey as proof of his qualifications to investigate the matter. "Let's see what the fact of the matter is. I came only to establish facts and interview you."
O'Mailey snorted. "Wow. a fair and impartial trial, by a man from Bureau. That'll be the day. Go on, ruin me again."
Agent Brandt grabbed a chair and straddled it, looking at O'Mailey as he punched out stuff on his worktab to commence the investigation. Names, ranks, branches... they spoke of the events that had taken place, including the small disciplinary incident that had occured minutes before the fire broke out. The slap that O'Mailey had sustained really displeased Brandt, though he tried to remain professional and not show it... After a few more questions, Brandt made a show of writing up an interview report and handed his stylus and worktab to O'Mailey to initial and agree that everything on the paper was what had transpired.
O'Mailey read through the report on the worktab... something seemed off... "Agent Brandt... why is there an appendix of the deviancies the Museum owned attached?"
Agent Brandt leaned forward, fishing out a Quality Cigarette and sticking it in his mouth as if only for the mouth feel. Everyone understood you did NOT light up any form of tobacco in the Hospitals, regardless of your rank in the Bureau. Health concerns and all... "I'm crediting you with the destruction of said deviancies, Agent O'Mailey. is there a problem?"
O'Mailey nodded. "First, this report doesn't accord any blame to me for the incident. Second, I did not conduct the destruction of these items. We were only supposed to transport them to the nearest Bonfire, sir. I don't think I deserve any credit for the destruction of these items. In fact, I'm not even sure half of them were on the scene - the Museum looked relatively sparse for how much it was supposed to contain."
Agent Brandt made the Cigarette wobble in his lips a little, as if thinking about this protest.... O'Mailey was very scrupulous...Very upright... the Bureau needed more people like her. Keeping her down for all the punching she'd done really wasn't on for Brandt. Which was why she needed his incoming moment of unscrupulousness.
"You weren't the one who issued the errorneous command that started the fire, just the one who yelled everyone out and saved lives... And what evidence do we have that those items weren't all there?" Brandt got up and walked over to the window to examine the view O'Mailey had gotten. "Absolutely none. Easier to credit them as destroyed and give the points to the heroine of the hour, you know, the one who got her team out with vastly reduced casualties and fatalities."
Brandt turned around and leaned forward. "Take the win, Agent O'Mailey. I know you've been hard done by all these years for being a woman. You should be at least a Level 8 by now with your years on file. And I know what it's like being the kid everyone pisses on in a FIRE squad..." He fished out his old terror mask and wore it on his lower face, a wicked toothy smile of white enamel painted on obsidian beast face. "I didn't just walk into a cushy job in the Bureau. And I certainly didn't just buy some plastic toy mask at a fair to get this terror mask. Now... sign this report and use it as a boost. Or don't. Frankly, I can't make a horse drink water even if I bring it to the riverside."
Brandt watched the report he'd written up and notarized with O'Mailey zip into the Bureau's systems, before stowing the worktab back in his work trenchcoat as he walked out the front entrance of St Pankrasi. He stretched his arms and smiled at the sky. It had been a good deed to slant the report in O'Mailey's favor. Others had done the same kind of thing for me over the years... there were plenty of surprisingly decent people in the Bureau despite the general hostility it showed towards most people. This was his way of paying it forward.
Agent Brandt's watch beeped. Ah, the rally he was meant to oversee was about to start in ten minutes. Time to head on over. As he boarded his sedan and pulled away, he did not notice O'Mailey looking at him from the window of her room. She was smiling a little - it had been nice to have an ally for once, however transient they were.
Persi Phonne stared blankly at the larder. They were short one can of dried tomatoes for the recipe she was about to try for dinner. She considered her options, then quickly rifled through her trenchcoat and found a wallet with enough credits to buy the few things she needed to get to complete the recipe... She wasn't supposed to leave the house but... Ah well. She quickly walked into the bedroom and resolved her nudity issues with one of Brandt's shirts and trousers combos, carefully shrugging the fedora and trenchcoat back on.
There was an old oversized raspberry beret hung up on the back of the bedroom door. Persi Phonne looked at it askance... thought for a moment... then grabbed the beret and replaced her fedora with. A test swish to look at her self in the mirror, and she grabbed a pair of socks and a set of old sneakers in the shelving to wear, before walking right back out to the living room.
Mary was struggling a little, the sensations on her bare feet overwhelming her ability to balance and walk even slowly. Persi Phonne watched as Mary fell back down on the floor, her pert ass raised up in the air. Mary had started thinking for herself since the upgrade, apparently, as she suddenly said something she would never have been able to say, lacking the recorded lines in her personality disc to say them... "I hate you, Persi. I hate what you've done to me. Unfix me already..."
Persi Phonne looked from side to side and smiled. "... You're doing great... and I can't 'unfix' you. that would be like unscrambling an egg in the kitchen, Ms Brandt. Just keep at it. I need to go get some tomatoes from the grocer's."
Mary blinked. She had been ordered not to let Persi Phonne out of the house. "Wait, you can't just-" She fell down again after another attempt to walk in front of her ended in just a few steps. "... Why can I feel so many things?"
Persi Phonne considered this query as she showed herself to the door to the stairwell. "... Maybe I shouldn't have enhanced your senses so much... but then, where would the fun of being alive be?"
Mary yelped. "Alive. Negative. I am suppposed to be a Love Mate android. Not Alive... Persi? Persi?" Persi was gone. "... I hate being alive, Albertus, please come home already..."