Chapter 15 #2
Her back shook for a moment, and I thought she laughed.
My pain sensors flared and the collar activated.
I grimaced and took the blasted thing off, uploading it with a quick program I wrote to make it think it was still on.
No one would see us here, and I needed to feel what I felt without trying to mask it.
When Sera turned around, her face was tense, her eyes red-rimmed. I realized she didn’t laugh. My confession made her suffer.
Before I could prompt my language module for a sufficient apology, Sera pulled closer with a sad smile.
“You know what’s ironic?” she asked, looking up at the sky with a tearful sort of smile.
“Everything that’s happening right now is like a dream come true for a younger version of me.
She was in love with Japan, enraptured by Neo Tokyo.
She would have given her kidney for a chance to have a personal cyborg like you.
Even being chased by evil bots… It was her jam. ”
I pulled up the information about the accident and checked the date. Sera was nineteen when it happened.
“And now, I have it all but I don’t deserve it. My mom only got that car because I asked her,” she said, her voice brimming with tears.
I ran a quick diagnostic in the background, realizing she was likely on the brink of emotional collapse. The threat of death coupled with jet lag and her erratic sleep schedule must have depleted her resources.
So now she was breaking, and I was the only one here to help her stay whole. Panicking, I prompted all my systems for clues on how to behave. The algorithm I wrote to give me quick Bro Signal advice was the fastest to engage.
Become her shoulder to cry on.
I came closer, the water rippling. It reflected the sky that turned shades of apricot and peach, still dark blue in the west. Sera watched me expectantly, and I reran her last utterance to understand what she wanted from me.
My mom only got that car because I asked her.
Guilt, my emotional module prompted at once. Debilitating, crushing, life-altering guilt mixed with heartbreaking grief.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said, embracing her with enough space to let her push me away if she wanted. “You didn’t know the car was faulty. You couldn’t have.”
She shook her head, sniffling. “But she got it because of me! She’s dead because of… my obsession with everything high-tech, smart cars, smart fridges, everything! I was the one who made her get it!”
Her sobs wracked her whole body. I held her closer, emitting heat, but not too much. The onsen was warm on its own, though the morning air felt cool enough in contrast. I searched my algos for possible things to say, but all of them felt trivial or stupid, so I stayed silent.
Sera wailed for four more minutes, then calmed herself down, breathing deeply through her tremors. I held her until she was silent, then opened my torso compartment and produced a pair of her panties that I kept as a naughty souvenir.
“I’ve laundered them,” I said. “It’s the closest thing I have to a tissue.”
She snorted with wet, sobbing laughter, and blew her nose. When she pulled back, her eyes were drawn to my still open torso.
“There’s light in there,” she said with a tired sigh. “I’ve never seen that before.”
“Yes. It’s my core. It lights up with various emotions when you’re near.”
She leaned closer as if to look, and I swung that part of my armor wide open to show her. The water lapped at my hips, and there was no risk of any getting inside me, not that it would be a problem.
I knew what she saw. The gun I carried was stored near the side of me, as were my other tools, but the core, a crystalline cylinder filled with wiring and processors encased in ballistic glazing, sat right in the middle.
I didn’t have guts or lungs, so there was a lot of space inside me.
The core reached from where the top of a human sternum would be to roughly the point of a human perineum, and all my limbs and sensors were connected to it.
“So that’s where your brain is,” she whispered.
Her face was inches away from the cavity of my torso, lit by the purple and red light spilling outside. The light grew brighter even as she watched, and I felt at once exposed and elated.
“Brain and what organics call heart, too. It’s my processing center. Everything that’s important to me is stored there.”
I had files upon files connected to her stored high in my core’s hierarchy. I didn’t tell her that.
The pleasure sensors in my core hummed, making a soft, whooshing sound that resembled a heartbeat. It was sublime to have her so close, her entire attention on what made up the core of me. I didn’t stop to think, saying what I wanted without heeding the consequences.
“Would you like to touch it? It’s warm and safe. It won’t electrocute you.”
Her breath hitched, and she looked up at my face. I felt it like a loss. I was down here, not up there, even though most of my cameras were placed in my head.
“I… Okay.”
She looked back at me, and I pulsed with anticipation and pleasure, cutting off everything so I could focus on this moment alone.
Sera reached inside with a hesitant, trembling hand.
Her damp, cool fingers grazed the outer shell.
Pleasure and heat rippled through me, and she cringed away, squeezing her eyes shut when bright light spilled out.
All of my sensors vibrated, overloaded with pleasure.
“Again,” I managed to speak through the debilitating ecstasy that shrunk the world to just this pool, me, her, and her fingers hovering an inch away from where I needed her touch. “Please.”
She expelled a shaky breath, hesitating, then her fingers brushed against me in the lightest, most curious of touches. I let myself explode.
My body locked as high-potency currents ran through me at frequencies I didn’t bother to calculate. Every sensor, processor, and part of my being was engaged, and I felt whole and fully myself for the first time since I’d awakened. Here was me, a person.
I am.
I am.
I am.
She is.
It passed after a few seconds, and I reengaged my cameras. Every non essential circuit was turned off or redirected so I could feel and fuel that explosion, and I didn’t see, hear, or think for those blissful few seconds.
I did now.
Sera was at the other end of the pool, hugging herself as she watched me with wide-awake, scared eyes. I hissed, evening out my internal pressure, and swung the door to my torso compartment shut.
“I am,” I said, trying to make her understand.
She nodded. “You most definitely are. Did you… It seemed like you had… An orgasm.”
I considered this, activating all my modules and helpful algos that didn’t turn on automatically. The experience rebooted me, I realized. Was she right?
An orgasm was often compared to an explosion, and it felt thoughtless and blissful. So—yes.
“I think I did. It made me whole. Thank you.”
She hid her face in her hands with a deep groan. “But neither of us is supposed to have orgasms with each other! What are we even doing? This is wrong!”
I was still light and crisp from the fresh reboot, so her words didn’t hurt much—or frankly, at all. My pleasure sensors hummed with a high, vibrant awareness. I wanted to go again.
Before I could ask her to rub my core, Sera already climbed out of the pool and wrapped herself tightly in her towel.
I followed, thinking maybe experiencing it on dry land would be different.
Could we do it in bed? And maybe I could keep my cameras rolling next time?
And wait a little longer? The period of high tension before the explosion was immensely pleasurable, too.
When the bathroom door slammed shut in my face, I realized maybe Sera wasn’t on the same page as me.
Of course. I had an orgasm but she didn’t. I downloaded all the information I could find about making human women come, put on my collar, and waited by the door, humming Ravel’s Ma mère l'Oye under my breath.