Why We Have Such A High Rejection Rate
Why We Have Such A High Rejection Rate
Part 1
ou approach the building, in the middle of the hive of deviancy that is the Harland district. The building is a corner block, albeit one that has taken over and incorporated the entire block it sits on and now has considerably less concerns about trying to fit something in that sharp triangular corner where its entrance nestles.
On either side, the pedestrian street that runs headlong into the entrance splits into two other streets, both covered with the peculiar mix of technology and sex Harland is known for. But neither of those interest you today, despite sex tech being one of your beats at the paper. Your main focus right now is on a certain concern that has remained reclusive for years but has branches all across the Almares Galaxy.
You glance upwards briefly. At the very top of the building is a garish neon sign, one that would have been banned for being this close to a airport back in the days where pilots were humans and not robots reliant on things other than the visual eye to track their descent. Here, it's just eyecatching... It reads "Dreamlandia Paradise" in both the Galactic Standard Language, as well as Korean and Russian, the mainstays of virtually any town in the Sovinhaya regions of Almares.
There are windows below the sign, about seven, one for each floor. They are all covered in curtains, all diaphanous save for the thick velvet of the last two floors. As you watch, all but the topmost velvet curtains are backlit, exposing female figures of various builds from lithe to curvy, sinuously carvorting around in what is either very little or nothing, judging by their shadows.
As you approach the doorway into the building, you notice several robots and Autoslavs parked on either side of the corridor. They're probably replicas - some of these are what the perverts you've previously added to your contacts for leads about sex tech would call mythical.
A disembodied artificial vagina labelled "First illegal sex mod for robots".
A pair of breasts missing the rest of a woman, with a small label beneath hastily scribbled with "First safe hybrid breastfeeding/external fuel cell illegal breast mods."
A pair of decapitated human hands ending in exposed wiring and hydraulic feeds, signposted with "First safe handjob-capable Autoslav hand mods". You briefly wince, thinking of all the injuries that must have occurred to people trying to attempt it with hands that didn't have the right mix of gentle precision and firmness. It's all you can do to hide your discomfort at the thought.
A laughably crude facsimile of what someone with no artistic sense would consider a woman, if you were generous enough to give something resembling a bunch of logs draped in velvet a woman. Apparently, it's a "First State-Sanctioned Autoslav model". You'd heard about this one in college. The Ikanusk 9 Buro's first model of the Patriotic Mabchina (the Mother-Machine), conceived as a machine to provide motherly affection, though clearly only a child desperate for a mother might have called it that. Or a certain type of pervert...
You shake your head and laugh a little. So many things have progressed in the century since then. You've kept up with your rejuvenation treatments after the first three the Godon administer to every person within this galaxy who will accept them and can benefit from them. They do provide more, and it's theoretically possible to have the same alleged immortality that the Godon have, but the therapy every quarter of a century is expensive enough that an eighth of your pay for all that time goes to making the bill when it comes due, all ten of them to date, the last only a month ago. Just as Muslims pray to their God in the direction of Mecca back on the remains of Earth, you make the same pilgrimage to the rejuvenator and back with a religiosity that would not seem possible for the godless heathen you are.
As a result of your dogged adherence to the schedule, a middle-aged man of relatively decent upkeep stares back at you in the partial reflection of the case. You will never win Mr Galaxy - the Felinyx and Shee'beh have it locked up tight with their looks many years despite the contest being over seen by a impartial panel of various aliens and humans - but you have fallen in love, out of it, had one-night stands, sometimes even for reasons other than professionalism.
You hear a slight gorilla-sounding grunt to your left, and quickly your attention goes from the historical display of technological Sodom and Gomorrah to... a hulking gorilla in a dark purple and gold edged suit, a pair of sunglasses perched on its face. its slightly cartoonish rather than realistic, but it is still a little scary when it snorts, nostrils flaring out like a pair of motes in a jet black mass of fur and wrinkled skin.
"Mr Haryanto, of the publication "Adventures In Perversion", from Neo South Harales?" The giant gorilla points at the pocket in your South Harales -style shirt, a garish floral bouquet of sorts rendered into a wearable dress in polyester and cotton. There's nothing unusual in it, just your journalist's Multi-Pen and- you blink, quietly drawing out a card that was sent to you with the invite to Berequel Customs all the way out here in Harland.
It was peculiar really, you thought they would just fob you off with a press FAQ, or at best a invite to a local franchisee's HQ of operations, when you asked to interview about their notorious "Sleepers Dream" programme. More to the fact, it was more likely they would just tell you to forq off with their classic boilerplate about staff and customer confidentiality and a brief description of the product "Sleepers Dream".
You nod, and present the card. It is a tastefully textured plastic card bearing the name of the CEO of Berequel Customs, Tibbes Saulomon, PhD. As the card moves towards the gorilla's outreached hand, you can see the ridged perspex of the card play tricks with the underlayer of the card, causing a set of of ribbons to slowly warp into the logo of the company.
The gorilla examines your card, and then scans the back of it with his eyes... Was there something else on it? you hadn't noticed. But he has, as he nods his head slightly and beckons. "You're actually ten minutes early. The Dreamlandia Corridor nightclub is still closed so there's zero action on the floor, but... would you like something hard but light to drink before I bring you up to see Dr Saulomon?"
Part 2
The unease given to you by the bouncer (because that is apparently what the gorilla who met you at the door was designated as) ensures you can't quite seem to remember the minute you spent pacing across the unlit disco light floor leading up to a well stocked bar of sorts. Someone has apparently decided a Sprite gently cut with a dash of fine Chirav will relax you without knocking you out even if you're a teetotaler who merely doesn't drink often.
The slight lemon and fire of the cocktail tickles your throat as you set the glass down, thanking the bartender. Clearly a human guy... and as he winks and smiles at you in that certain way you suspect you're his type. It's a pity that you're not his, you apologise silently in your mind to him, for fear of offending him. What was that maxim about never offending the chef or the bartender?... That sort of thing was more of your mom's favorite thing, playing with language. You just reported what you saw in the simple, brutal language of a reporter promoted past his natural abilities.
You smile briefly and look back at the couches on either side. Each of them sit three people, and are textured in the finest leather you've ever seen in a while. On each seat is plastered a limp figure. It is quite an impressive array of Autoslavs, some of which you probably wouldn't dare to take out of here.
Like the nearly totally naked blonde whose entire pelvic area has had its skin and flesh substrates replaced with some sort of flexible transparent plastic, exposing how the sausage is pleased - artificial vagina subsystems, hip muscles arrayed into a network frighteningly capable of sexy gyrations and grinding, or at least that's how you imagine it. Presumably soft greyish blobs representing the slight fat on a fine ass. a faint blue glow radiates out in lines from her tailbone, probably induction charging paired with low-drain RGB light decorations for light shows while performing for customers.
Or the aristocratic young woman stiffly sitting in another seat. Her face is frozen in a look of slight discomfort as she stares at the opposite side of the corridor, possibly because of the two pairs of D-cups she's packing on her chest, beneath a shimmery lycra top designed to pretend like it's even bothering to hide the best parts of her form from the kind of perverts who are into that thing.
You have just enough time to silently enjoy the range of various takes on womanhood in your view, all of them wrong in the own way, before the gorilla returns to fetch you from the barstool. As you deposit a thousand ruble coin in the empty glass in respect of the bar tradition you've heard of in these parts, the bartender reciprocrates by slipping a small note with the name "Kerensky" and a mobile communicator code scribbled hastily beneath it. "Call me, darling." He whispers, a slight tinge of hope and desire in his silent mouthing.
You get up, smiling a little. You're going to have to disappoint him eventually, but it doesn't hurt to be nice to him for the moment.
You follow the gorilla to a pair of large elevator doors, at which the gorilla scans his... paw. "By the way, my name is Block. I'm the chief security here for the entire building."
"Block?" you say, "As in that thing you do to people you don't ever want to hear from again on the Bluesky noonet?"
The gorilla nods. The lift is surprisingly roomy even with a gorilla and you in it. You remember the upper floors include a warehouse full of unactivated and rental Autoslavs, a smaller customs shop for the everyday joe for whom Berequel is out of reach, and a hotel for overnight stays (and presumably test drives). Obviously there would be a need to carry lots of people potentially to service all these floors in reasonable time. You are even more surprised when the gorilla scans somewhere on the elevator panel again, causing all the buttons to frizz over. Some of the buttons then fritz again, replacing the garbage with "Cancel" and "Basement 1" to "Basement 9", to which Block presses the button now labelled Basement 9.
The lift makes its way down slowly. "Funny thing really," Block pipes up. "Most people tend not to realise Harland district used to be a extensive underground Military and Royal Shelter base back in the terrible days of the Tsar Gadkiy."
You are surprised by this. You swear you read up a tonne on the shuttle from New South Harales to Belkow - you were going to get your fill of the free flow sushi and noosphere connection since Dr Saulomon footed the First Class Fareticket, confound it - and this had never gone in your Multipen. Maybe this is why the boss assigned the gigs for "Military News" to Maxima back in the office - you briefly wonder what sort of connections or sources she would use for such research.
Block continues. "The Tsar was, to put it bluntly, kind of a fucking blyat. at least one of these floors was assigned to house women forced into a sort of concubinage... which was probably a nice way of saying he had sex slaves on tap for his tortures further down in the dungeon." He frowns, somehow. "Maybe that's why the building manager put the Autoslav warehouses upstairs, he just didn't want the stench of that history tainting what we do in this building."
I smile a little. "Perhaps the ship has already sailed on keeping this building from being tarred with the 'sex dungeon' brush." I offer to Block.
Block grins in reply. "All the fucking way to Neo York, Mr Haryanto. All the fucking way to Neo York."
Our discussion then turned to other small talk, which lasted surprisingly long. What was up with this lift, I wonder?!
Part 3
Eventually, somehow, the lift buzzes as the doors part at Basement 9. Block points out of the lift, straight ahead. "Go right down the Corridor and through the double doors. Do not take any photos except where permitted along the corridor." He pauses, then winces a little as if trying to beg. "Try, Mr Haryanto, not to dally too much. I realise you have a bad habit of taking in everything you see, based on your writing style. Or at least, that's what Dr Saulomon says."
"Where did you get the idea?" I laugh. (Writer's note: *stares* WE'VE BEEN SEEING IT FOR THE PAST HOUR, HARYANTO)
Pausing briefly only to watch the lift doors close behind me, I then set off along the corridor
The corridor is a bit long, and it doesn't help that as Block said, there are many weird things of interest in the offices.
A typical Autoslav assembly and repair bay, full of busy technicians working on presumably Berequel's trade specialty... I have gotten used mostly to this kind of jarring display after visiting a few factories on the sex tech gig, but exposed wiring and v-muscle continue to make me uneasy a little. I move on fast.
A man calmly inserting a oddly red-colored EDRRM (Emergency Data Rapid Restore Module) into a finely crafted wooden box, surrounded by hundreds of wooden boxes and perhaps enough EDRRMs to rival the entire GDP of a tiny moon in price...
A room full of slightly tired-looking men typing furiously on terminals and referring occasionally to manila folders full of papers. Surrounding them are dozens of girls of various ages in short blue dresses walking around and attending to their needs - wiping their brows, refreshing small cups of soda or bringing away empty food containers for disposal in a backroom...
Another room full of suits poring over forms of all sorts. Occasionally, one of them violently brings a chop down on a set of forms before feeding it into one of two slots marked "Reject Outright / Refund Immediately" and "Further Review".
Another room full of men in sciency outfits poring over more forms. They do the same thing as the suits, except the slots are marked "Reject Now/KIV" and "Dr Saulomon".
A waiting room of sorts, tastefully attired in pastel blue and yellows with several soft sofas in matching colors, upon which are sat a few men of various income points and reasons to be here. Or rather, they would have been - most of them are cowering in corners of the room as a man in very fancy expensive clothes, Digiani current-season or one-season-off clothes, most likely, is arguing with a supernaturally calm young lady.
I can barely make out the words through the spittle: "How dare you turn me down in just ten minutes?!"
The lady responds silently, the glass doing a great job of cutting the sound from the room. "Sir, we believe Sleepers Dream is not suitable for you, please consider our other offerings upstairs..." I note a brief moment of glitching in her mouth movements... clearly an Autoslav, and not programmed for the level of violence being offered to her.
I speed up a little before I somehow get involved. When there's glass in between me and the involvement, it is often not very pain-free.
I take about five, ten more minutes than I should to get to opening the double doors. It does not help that my obsessive detail sense lingers over the oak of the doors - where does one get this kind of oak on a barren planet? - and the only reason I do not obsess over this any longer is because of how the office looks.
For one thing, it is surprisingly dark... warm faint orangey light fills the room, supplied mainly by bouncing it from a sort of triangular statue in each corner of the rectangular room. There are windows behind slattered blinds, on the wall facing the entry doors, which are probably being lit or dimmed based on the time of day to maintain some sort of sense of the day cycle.
Near one wall is a simple office table, on which is perched a portable computer and a vintage table lamp. A chair on rollers is wedged into the opening between its drawers.
next to the windows, there are two chairs: one of these is a chaise longue, in a simple orangeish cloth upholstery (as much as I can tell with how much orange there is in the lighting), and the second is a simple highbacked sofa done up in a minimalistic style lacking in ornamentation, focused purely on providing support with the minimum of unnecessary geometry.
The most interesting thing is the man sitting in the sofa: dressed up in a professional blazer that puts me in a mood of shame at my decision to dress like I'm attending a hula party back home. He seems to be... Nordic? He is entirely bald, the only hair on his head being his eyebrows, lashes, and a well-groomed beard, in hair that is clearly a sort of red (again, the orange light is not helping my color perception)
The man is calmly sipping from a crystal glass of sorts, a small globe of ice clinking against a warm looking hard drink as he swirls it by twisting his wrist slightly.
I proceed to do the dumbest thing I could possibly do, one that is as stupid as the day it was done to another doctor hundreds of years ago on Earth. I reach my hand out in a greeting handshake, and utter the dumb words "Dr Saulomon, I presume?"
Part 4
"Ah yes, the good gentleman from the "Adventures In Perversion" magazine... Pleased to meet you." Dr Saulomon takes my hand in a grip and shakes it briefly before letting go. It is a strangely reassuring grip, as if the man wielding it is prepared to safeguard you from harm. He motions to the chaise longue and watches as I sit down.
I try not to waste his time. My research tells me that he prefers to minimise niceties and proceed immediately to important matters, so I talk interview right away, triggering the recorder on my MultiPen subtly by tapping my pointer fingers together.
"Dr Saulomon, I understand that your company's most popular product ever since it was founded by yourself a hundred and fifty years ago is something called the 'Sleepers Dream', correct. But to date, very limited details exist of it. We have spoken to former staffers, and maybe a few current customers, who all seem very happy with what they got or worked on to a man, but extremely not into sharing exactly what it is," I begin by politely confronting him, trying to put him into a defense where he might spill something I can use for coverage. "What is going on here?"
The man is unshaken.... Dr Saulomon puts his drink down on the table to his left, beneath the warm standing lamp, and picks up a manila folder. He fishes out a small sheaf of forms and a clippable writing light. "I think it would be best to do a demonstration."
I panic for a moment. "Dr Saulomon, I'm not sure I can afford the pricing for it... Last I checked it says... The cost of the Autoslav or other android used as a base, plus 25% of its cost pricing, plus an ongoing 'enhanced care contract' with an annual upkeep fee that seems quite like a ransom." I look at the forms in my hands as the clippable light makes it more readable. It's mostly questions with answers for writing spaces.
"I believe it is well within your means, especially with certain considerations in mind." Dr Saulomon responds. "Now, why don't you get started on the form first? it will only take a few minutes."
By only a few minutes, he, of course, means half an hour. The questions are all disturbingly personal. They are all centered around an idea... "if you could find the perfect person to be with, somehow, what would they be like?".
They start off simple - gender identities, favorite colors, favorite things, things they might say to you, where they might hail from. Things a lame quiz stuck onto a social media post for engagement might do.
Then they go into more intangible things: beliefs. principles. ideals.
Finally, there are some pointed questions that I am unsure as to the purpose of:
"Is this intended as a replacement goldfish, a voodoo idol, or some other means of dealing with a person whom you have or had strong feelings for?"
"Is this person dead or live currently?"
"is this person, if alive currently, likely to approve of any plans to clone them?"
"Are you prepared to sign a enhanced NDA covering your use of the results of your participation in Sleepers Dream, tangible or otherwise?"
Half an hour later I hear the sound of something being poured as I sign the last page... Dr Saulomon is pouring me a glass of Chirav on the table between us, smiling. "That didn't take long."
"Beg to disagree," I frown just a little, but that does not last long as I let the glass of Chirav down my throat slowly, the hotness of the Chirav's alcohol mixing with the chill of the fresh iceball he has added. A true gentleman in action, indeed.
Dr Saulomon smiles as he walks over to his table and slides the completed forms into a slot on the table surface, before proceeding to pick up a medium-sized lugg-... lugg-... suitcase... why is the room spin-ning....
The last thing I hear before I black out is "52GA... your father saved my life in 52GA..."
This next bit is important to explain why the next bit startled me.
My father was a veteran of the UCNA-Sovinhaya wars. Started by the acrimony between a bastard tsar and the Coalition government of the UCNA, it devolved into a random mix of open battlefield confrontations and quiet battles in the shadows in the fringes of the Neutral Zone...
He did not make it very far of course... the island he was born on, on another tropical planet on a nearby orbit from The Harales, was nuked by the Tsar in one of his mad fits. He was a great insurgent in many of the ways insurgents have to be to survive longer than a couple of weeks, but he did not escape unscathed, spending the rest of his fortunately shortened life with harrowingly painful weepy third degree burns all over his back. my mother fared no matter, having been vaporized in the blast.
For the remainder of his life, he did not regret what he did to earn his 'mark of honor': shoving two "Europeans", a young man and his slightly older wife into the water of a well, providing them with the kind of shielding against radiation that even just a few inches of water can provide. The woman had reciprocated by coming to our home and tending to his needs for a few months until they were called home.
We had serious communication problems. With no common language between the two of us (I would learn Galactic Standard only two decades after), we had to resort to pantomine and intonation in sounds to communicate, so I never got to know her name.
I did, however, get to know her body.
It was by accident, I swear to whatever God exists. I was extremely tired from ball games with the village guys in a peaceful phase of the ongoing war. I pedalled my bike home down the dirt road, and got off at the doorstep to my thatched home. I walked through the empty house and into the bathing area and saw...
The lady was borrowing our area to do a little bathing herself. I was still quite young at the time, but I think I felt something indescribable that I hadn't as a younger baby being bathed by my birth mother. Curves in all the right places. Azure blue eyes. the shimmer of yellowish-blonde hair. The intonation of her honeyed voice, gently asking me something.
The plastic washbasin right in my face. (Writer's Note: :rotfl:)
For some reason, I kept editing that part right out whenever I remembered her fondly. And by fondly, I mean I may have beat off to that memory a few times over the rest of my life. That's right, I admit it, I may be a MILF lover. Everyone in my magazine has a fetish. everyone who's a contact with me has a fetish. I dont fucking care, I will stand here and be judged like a man for my transgressive-
I did not get to finish that last sentence in my dream, waking up maybe a little too early before it should have finished. Dr Saulumon is looking away, blushing, as he sits in the sofa next to me, the suitcase in his lap. He quickly lifts it and puts it on the side of his sofa far from me, smiling. "A good three hour sleep, wasn't it? Dreaming of my lovely wife..."
"It certainly was a nice knockout-" I paused and hurriedly checked my Multipen. It had disabled recording for three hours since I got roofied, the clock pretty much said so as it lazily scrolled down the body of the pen. I should have been more careful given the odd placement of the bottle relative to his own glass-
Something suddenly clicked. "Mahimina Island. 52GA. My dad saved you and.... your wife?"
"Bronii. Bronii was her name. We were vacationing at the time. Young and foolish at heart..." Dr Saulomon seemed a little sad as he recounted this.
"Cool, cool." I looked away embarassedly. "So... how's the wife doing?"
He looks back. "oh, she got a little nursing work done, but the nukes scrambled any hope she had of taking the rejuvenation treatments properly so she passed on a long while ago." He says, looking at me with a strange fondness.
Shit, I have stepped on a landmine. "I'm so sorry for mentioning! I think we should end this interview and I should can this article and I should apologise and I should-" My mouth runs far ahead, trying to get ahead of the way I offended him.
"Stop it. You came here to ask what is Sleepers Dream." Dr Saulomon waves at me to sit back down. "So sit down. NOW."
I quickly sit back down. "Erm... so, what IS Sleepers Dream?"
Dr Saulomon nods and proceeds to lift another bottle of Chirav up in front of me, from the left side of his sofa. I momentarily panic until he nods. Don't worry, this bottle doesn't contain any part of the process." He smiles as he empties my glass into the bin, washes it out with a water bottle, then refills it with his own Chirav. And then, he talks about what we were supposed to talk about three hours ago.
Part 5
Dr Saulomon leans back in his sofa... "I'm a psychologist by training. Almost none of the technical stuff in Berequel Customs is something I can handle. But the part I just conducted on you is a bit that I can do. Normally I would ask someone else to conduct it, and we have enough of them to perform this neural screen five times a day at this branch alone. Now before you point out that seems very little... we do weed out enough people earlier and in the questionnaire."
"Oh, so I passed that? whoopie. What's the prize?" I ask, feigning boredom as if I've been surprised enough by the Doctor so far.
"Two prizes, actually. Bronii, command word: wake. demo mode." Dr Saulomon utters, looking somewhere near where my feet would be placed on the chaise longue.
I look over, and what I see freaks me out more than anything I was prepared to expect.
"Yes, Dr Saulomon." A honeyed voice from my young teenage days sounds in my ears as the familiar figure of the woman who had rewarded my peeking in on her bathtime with a bathtub to my face walks out in front of us. She is every bit as I remember her, top to toe, feminine as the gauzy bathrobe on her voluptuous frame barely hiding the details of her body: the tiny pink pinched nipples, the tidy lips peeking out from the neath of her pudenda, the pale pink lips, the azure blue eyes...
I have a bit of a mental breakdown right on the chaise longue. Anyone would after being told their young teenage wet fantasy had died years ago, and then suddenly have them reappear in the flesh in front of them.
Bronii (or whatever she actually is) continues chanting words... "Greetings. I am a product of the Sleepers Dream programme. Sleepers Dream provides qualified customers with a AutoSlav customised to fit their desires."
"Through thorough psychological profiling and neural scanning, we can provide a model that has an over 90% match to their desires. To further enhance realism, we disable many technical alerts and warnings reports and implement a simulated personality that is designed to fully ignore the actual true nature of the unit, and install several modifications to improve realism. As some of these changes can lead to problems in maintenance by most normal people, we also provide an extensive always-on technical support and maintenance programme with all orders that includes installation of additional equipment for daily unit maintenance and alerting local representatives whenever any form of care is required." She continues evenly talking, her eyes blinking in a slow, irregular cadence like a living woman would.
I look down, a little winded. (I had restarted the Multipen when I asked 'what's the prize', so I am just flabbergasted just transcribing from it.)
I look up after what feels like forever. I do not ask Dr Saulomon anything, but it's clear what he needs to tell me.
Dr Saulomon obliges. "Part of the first test runs involved me. We did the scan, the profile... I was very, very surprised when the techs came back and showed me the resulting interpolation. It was all too much like my wife... which makes things bad."
"In what way? You have your wife standing in front of you," I motion to the Bronii clone standing in front of us. "Just, I don't know, have a happy ending or something."
Dr Saulomon shakes his head. "Oh I tried. But let me tell you something... one of the criteria we reject customers for, and we have a very high rejection rate because of lots of criteria, it's like a minefield, is the customer who desires a replacement goldfish. Every moment I had with her was fun but... that 10% that didn't match, that was the reminder over and over again that she was not my wife. It was just easier to wipe her mind and put her away as a very bad idea. I failed to respect that rule I made, and I paid for it."
Dr Saulomon looks away. "And yet she still plagues me. So I'm going for plan B. It involves giving her away, with a new Emergency Data Rapid Restore Module with her artificial memories and a little reprogramming for someone else for whom it would not be a... Replacement Goldfish. When you mailed us asking about an interview, I did my usual pre-agreement research and found our ties."
Dr Saulomon paused for a moment, then walked over and knelt in front of me. ""I have this dagger in my heart. It has hurt me for so many years... I need you to pull it out of me so it doesn't hurt so badly, and take it away with you. I have a good franchisee in New South Harales, I'll put him in touch with you, and give you enough funding to keep her operational indefinitely. Just in case you decide to live very long after this."
I take a deep long breath. It's not the frustration of being voluntold to do something, but fretting about making sure Dr Saulomon comes out somewhat okay if he does everything he wants from me. "And the second thing you want me to do is...?"
Dr Saulomon nods. "I want to give you a position at the New South Harales branch of Berequel Customs. I need someone who's been fully read in to go into the office once a month and provide any advice they can... and when it conflicts with your magazine job, you're welcome to focus on it."
I briefly glance back up at Bronii 2.... it's all very tempting. I really shouldn't give in to all of these requests. I should be a professional and just turn Dr Saulomon down, go back to my previously scheduled life of gallivanting around Almares, discovering the latest in galactic horniness, occasionally bedding some ingenue for research or reviews on their performances in the sex industry, come home and share my earnings and my progress with-
Who, really? The bamboo cluster plant next to my bed is great for oxygen, but it's so terrible at talking to me or hugging me. I don't have a pet. my real mom died ages ago and my dad passed soon after to leave me dangling as a village orphan. I don't have friends with the amount of time I travel to places where I'm a stranger. My colleagues are colleagues, little more, little less.
I close my eyes and think of the possibilities with a second warm body in the house, even if that body is warmed by hot wiring and executed code.
I open them again, reaching for my Multipen to write something with it on a piece of notepaper scrolling out of its body. Something I haven't exactly done for ages. "I accept both your requests. I will be advisor to your company's presence in my home locale, and custodian of your... ... erm... anyway, I will help you take care of her. Here's my address..."
I do hope I'm not setting myself up for trouble.