Page 2 of Alliance
[Warning: non-essential movement restricted during data insemination and charging.]
My eyeballs shuddered and froze in place again, eyelids sliding over them once to keep them properly moist, lips still lifted in a warm smile. I had been further restricted by my second attempt to speak, but I could not help doing so and would again if prompted. I was coded to introduce myself to potential clients and interested parties once they spoke within my unit’s determined radius.
“So trippy,” my originator said. She squeezed my bare arm, poked my navel, then pressed her fingertip to my eyeball. It stung, the discomfort hot and scratchy. But I could not close my eyelids, which were now automated on a timer.Tick, tick, tick.“Can you make adjustments?”
The shadow paced away with an aggravated growl.
“Depending on the intricacy,” Master confirmed.
She pressed one finger into my flesh with staccato thrusts. “These moles. I’ve always hated them. And I want my nipples to be lighter.”
Master nodded, His impressive bone crest catching the pulsing blue light over my charging station. “Very simple. Analog, even. Shall we make adjustments now?”
My originator shrugged. “Sure, we have time.”
“No,” the shadow said, coming into focus as it leaned over her, “we don’t.” He was a venandi. Now that I knew, my LMem stored the connection between his silhouette and his species, adding it to the database I would recall for identification. “We have to be at the Conrad in less than a turn.”
My originator pushed him back with her palms. “I’m not going to let my sex doll look anything less than exactly how I want to be remembered, Roka, so you bet your fucking payday we have time,” she snapped.
The venandi named Roka snarled, bearing down his teeth at her. “Yes, we are here formypayout, Ms Turner. Something I have waited for foryears.If you want to make it to your rendezvous, then I suggest you shut that waste of a m—”
Master produced a small instrument from a toolkit affixed to the corrugated wall and held it up to the light. “Please, yes? It takes a few moments! No violence withi-hmm-within the nursery, please! Yes?” His voice warbled and His hand shook. But as in all things, Master’s actions were effective and correct. The venandi huffed his nostrils and backed away, snapping his mouth parts closed on either side of his jaw. My originator gave him a[retrieving expression…]smug grin, crossing her arms.
“Do it,” she commanded. Master pressed the instrument to my skin, placing His long palm on my collarbone as He bent His face close to mine. My skin warmed. Master did not touch every unit on the factory line.
Perhaps I was special.
When the tip of the instrument burned, cutting deep into my skin, I continued to smile. My eyes remained focused on my originator’s face as she groomed her nails. I was frozen on the precipice of introducing myself as white hot anguish dug into my body.
Hello. I am Roz-02. I am happy you have chosen me.
I tried to speak with my eyes when she glanced at me, using the charge light nestled in my optic receiver to flash the words in binary code. I wanted her to know that she was important to me.
But I failed to tell her before she left. I wanted to use a new expression. A deep crease in my brow and a tingling in my tear ducts. A downturn at the corner of my lips. The subtle flare of my nostrils.
Instead, I remained frozen with a polite smile, burning alive under Master’s hand.
?
Thirty beats later, I had fully completed data insemination and a physical, passing Master’s systems check once more. My face, vocal cords, and limbs had all moved of their own accord, reciting a calibration script.“I think it’s just elegant to have an imagination. I just have no imagination at all. I have lots of other things, but I have no imagination…”Then breathy sounds, broken sounds, fluids that dripped from my eyes, my mouth, and my vagina. All were tested and found satisfactory.
Master returned me to my neutral expression before twelve units, myself included, were taken from the factory line and loaded into a nondescript box transport. For safety, we were immobilized in charging pods that swayed on two rails either side of a central grated floor. It was dark save the blinking blue retina light of those of us who had yet to reach a full charge, and hot enough to make my lungs taste like metal. My respiratory system notified my vitals deck of damage to my larynx and trachea from high heat and redirected parumauxi from the skin repair of my collarbone to the site.
Across from me, two of each of our units swayed with their necks, arms, waists, and thighs belted down, just like I did. I was a Roz–Er model–the second of four and luckiest of all for having met our originator. The others were ChaHal and M3L units. Though we were all human shells with the same number of limbs, the same biological materials, and roughly the same proportions, we were visibly discernable from each other. Three heights, three shapes, three hair textures, three palettes…
We were the first functional human models to be on the market, and tonight was our test audience. Master’s instructions were to impress and embody human beauty, to entice our audience so that they might choose one of us as the flagship design. We were inseminated with doll protocols as our highest-priority function, paired with an exhaustive database of human seduction and beauty.
After Master and my originator left the factory line, NRS had taken over preparations for our first night of instruction. The AI had presented each of us with a container of grooming implements and pigments, then tasked us with enhancing our features. Before stepping into our mobile pods, we’d each chosen from a pile of real human garments and printed prototypes. M3L units gravitated towards[retrieving descriptors…]romantic, flouncy new printouts. ChaHal units donned a combination of lingerie and sleepwear.
The Roz units all scavenged from the human pile rather than customizing perfect fit and color choices from NRS’s printing bays. The clothing had a strong potential for aural eroticism, something many species other than humans enjoyed. So though our soft flesh overflowed from waistbands and necklines, stretched fabric until seams pulled uncomfortably beneath our arms, or drifted too low and loose on our hips, we chose these pieces strategically but independently. Another test, measuring the consistency of our coding.
The transport’s roll-a-door clattered open, revealing the scorching orange glow of Huajile’s dusk. A shadow with different eyes than the one named Roka stretched, talons locked around the top of the transport. The receiver in my ear accepted the designation his holotab sent us, and I knew he was our overseer.
“Well, shit,” the overseer said, cocking his waspish hip to one side. His blue gaze narrowed, but I could not see him well enough to analyse his expression from the periphery of my vision. Instead, I looked directly into the eyes of an M3L unit with a teased cloud of hair and thick red wax smeared across her lips.
“Shut the fuck up, yeah, and get them inside,” another man hissed. His shape reminded me of Master.
The overseer clacked his mandibles together with annoyance, then released the pod rails from the clamps along the transport walls. We bobbed as their built-in levipucks adjusted for the weight, and the man pulled our line of pods out into the blistering heat. We drifted smoothly after his hand as he pushed us into a receiving bay at the back of a building made of black porous rock.
