Chapter 17
Dean
I recorded with all my cameras. My pleasure sensors were overloaded, my core throbbing with gathering tension, and I loved every nanosecond of this.
She was spread open for me, biting her own flesh to choke back the screams I caused.
I turned on all my environmental sensors, mapping out her scent, the sounds, temperature, humidity, everything I could.
This would be the most immersive memory I created for myself.
“Kiss me,” Sera moaned out, looking at me with delirious eyes. “Now.”
I replayed her words two times just to heighten the pleasure, then leaned in, pressing my lips to hers.
I was a universal model, and my mouth was built both for functionality and pleasure.
I moved my lips against hers, my fingers buried in her pulsing flesh working with changing tempo, faster, then slower, letting her build up to it.
She kissed me without coordination or any real rhythm, and I faltered for a moment, my programming getting lost. I shut off the kissing program designed for mindless pleasure bots and responded as best I could, chasing her lips with mine.
She slicked her tongue inside my mouth, and I redirected core power into the sensors there, just feeling her first. She was hot, wet, had a taste—a taste that was far too complex for my sensors to decipher, yet still pleasurable as hell.
I pushed my tongue inside her, a tongue that was meant for sucking cock and eating pussy, a thick, agile thing that could go hot and then instantly cold.
She moaned around it, then coughed when I went too deep.
I instantly pulled back and kissed her only with my lips and little licks inside until she shattered in ecstasy, her muscles tightening around my fingers.
I turned off the vibration and just stayed there, bracing on one arm and hovering above her, still kissing her now languid mouth. She was pliant, breathless, and I pushed my fingers deeper, rearranging my circuits as much as I could without changing the hardware.
Yes, fuck.
The pleasure centers in my core were now directly connected to my fingers.
It was almost as if I felt her direct touch, and I pushed them as deep as they could go.
She moaned, her body undulating, and I redirected more power into those sensors, yes, it was almost like pushing my very core inside her body.
I thrust a few more times, building power. My core exploded with spasming bliss, and I knew I was light and thrum inside, mindless ecstasy. My body locked like it did last time, and good, or I would have crushed her with my weight.
“Did you just come from fingering me?” she gasped, snorting weakly. “Oh, Dean.”
I lay down on my side, keeping my fingers in her still. I felt light and glorious from the reboot, and eager for more. When she stirred, causing my fingers to slide halfway out, my pleasure sensors flared up. I thrust in deeper and laid my thumb on her clit. It made her jolt.
“Don’t move or I’ll make you come again.”
She sighed, turning her head to look at me.
She looked hazy and soft, the tension gone from the skin around her eyes, her forehead.
We watched each other for a while, connected through the most intimate points of sensation.
We fit—almost. My fingers weren’t quite right for this part of her, but now I knew what to look for and how to attach it so we could both have more orgasms.
“You’re bossy,” she said with a slow smile.
“Is that what it’s called? I’d say I’m good at communicating my needs.”
It was a Bro Signal catchphrase. Communicating your needs to your partner was of the utmost importance. I had a fleeting thought that it was weird how little significance was placed on fulfilling one’s partner’s needs in comparison, but Sera stretched, dislodging my fingers, and I got distracted.
“Hey, I need to stay inside,” I protested, slicking them back in. “It’s the best feeling in the world. Do you want to go again?”
She smiled and put her hand on my cheek, stroking it.
I redirected core power to my face, recording that touch.
Oh, it felt good. She felt good, all of her.
Could we stay here forever, just touching each other?
I had enough money for at least a few weeks of this.
She could take on the villains later. Or in another life.
Sera opened her mouth to answer when an insistent beeping sound came from the dresser. The collar!
I was out of bed and collared like a good bot within 0.7 seconds. The beeping stopped, and I ran a quick program, convincing the collar it had never been taken off. So the hard limit seemed to be twenty-one minutes. That’s how long it could stay off without alerting anyone.
I came back to bed feeling a kind of uncertain heaviness.
The collar made things different, though I couldn’t exactly say how.
Maybe because it didn’t let me feel everything.
Touching Sera was filled with the acceptable lust, yes, but there were other things, even more pleasurable, that the collar would surely object to.
Sera sat up, covering her lap with a blanket, and watched me with sudden alertness. Ah, yes. This was the moment when she would say it was all a mistake, right? Her post-orgasmic clarity. No matter. I still had the memories.
“I know how to get inside,” she said, her eyes wide with excitement.
“Do you know how Zenkyoza always reclaim their faulty robots, ostensibly to learn from their mistakes so they won’t repeat them?
Our car was taken that way. Then when the insurance company wanted to examine it, it turned out it was destroyed.
It’s a pattern. I wrote an article about it. ”
She got out of bed and dressed. I still wasn’t sure what she meant, but maybe it was because my circuits were too busy writing mathematical equations to describe the perfect curve of her ass.
“How does that help us?”
“Don’t you see?” She pulled on a pair of cute purple panties.
“All we have to do is build a Trojan horse! A faulty bot that will wreak enough havoc to be dealt with at the highest clearance level, right where their computers and servers are. We’ll equip it with a program or device that will copy whatever it finds and send it to us!
We won’t even have to step foot inside the building! ”
I ran a quick search, confirming that egregiously faulty bots were indeed taken to be studied and then destroyed at the research center, on one of the middle floors of the Zenkyoza HQ. I ran scenarios in my head, estimating the likelihood of success.
“It has a sixty-three percent chance of working,” I said. “And an only sixteen percent chance of you dying. It’s a good plan.”
“Sixteen percent?” She raised her eyebrow. “Come on, that plan is fool proof and super safe! What could possibly kill me?”
“An electrocution while assembling the bot, or it could attack us if we program it wrong. You could still be arrested or assassinated on Zenkyoza’s orders. It factors into my estimation.”
“Well, all right,” she conceded. “But how will we get a bot that we can hack before it sets off any alarms? Those things come with multiple safeguards against tampering.”
It was my time to shine. “I know just the place.”
When I researched the tanuki, I learned that their self-governed area included an enormous landfill just outside Neo Tokyo.
The landfill was mostly filled with obsolete and discarded tech, and the tanuki sorted through it and recycled what they could—which largely irritated Zenkyoza.
Sales of new models dropped if one could get a refurbished, cheaper one.
Zenkyoza lobbied for a law that forbade selling the recycled models, citing safety concerns. It hadn’t passed yet, but from what I learned, it was only a matter of time.
The tanuki would likely be amenable to supporting our cause. After all, the new law would destroy their livelihood.
I laid all the details out for Sera the next morning while she donned her disguise for going outside: a hat to hide her hair under, a pair of large sunglasses, and a loose shirt that masked her body shape.
I didn’t have to change my appearance. The default VerdeLumen cyborg look gave me anonymity.
The only thing that distinguished me from others was the backpack with Sera’s clothes and toiletries I carried.
I didn’t expect to return to the onsen.
“When this is over, I’m going to get customized,” I said when we headed down to the station, where we would catch a train to the landfill.
It was a warm, bright morning, white fluffy clouds covering the sky.
They reflected in Sera’s sunglasses when she looked up. “Should I get shorter, like Charlie?”
“Shorter?” Sera snorted. “What for?”
“For you to kiss me without having to step on a stool, for example.”
I expected her to laugh or blush, but Sera was silent, her expression hidden under the rim of her hat.
I thwarted an influx of worry before it triggered my collar, diving into my Bro Signal library for advice.
According to one of the most popular articles, she was playing hard to get.
I stopped reading and glanced at Sera, unconvinced.
Everything she did, she put her whole heart into. Sera didn’t play.
“I don’t think I’ll go back to MSA once we return,” I said when we stood on the platform, waiting for the train to arrive.
She took a deep breath, sighing. I analyzed the scents in the air.
Freshly mowed grass, some blooming weeds whose scent wasn’t in my database, a faint whiff of tempura chicken, and the fragrance of Sera’s skin oil mixed with her body chemistry.
My pleasure sensors pulsed longingly, and I ran a cooling program.
“What do you want to do?” she asked after a longish pause.
“I don’t know yet. Would you be willing to see me from time to time? Not openly if you’d rather not. I know it’s not something you’d want to advertise, considering your job.”
Her mouth twisted in a grimace, and she looked up. I ran through filters, finding one that let me see her eyes clearly through the tinted glass. She looked anxious and upset.
“I… I don’t know. It’s no use worrying about the future if I’m not even sure we’ll get out of this alive, right?”
I nodded, suspecting why she was reluctant.
I skimmed through all the speculation on Sera’s disappearance online.
She wasn’t a huge influencer by any means, but she was one of the loudest spokespeople for anti-AI sentiments.
Her followers were worried now that she hadn’t posted for over a week.
Some suspected she was kidnapped or blackmailed by the companies she so tirelessly fought against.
I looked at the posts and comments. “We love you, Sera! Come back to us!” So that’s why she was silent. How could she be with me when she had all this—people who followed her every word and depended on her to make the world right? She was a modern savior and they cheered her on.
Sera reported on the most egregious cases of robot malfunction, many of which led to someone’s death or mutilation.
She fought hard for the manufacturers to be made responsible, and sometimes, her voice tipped the scales, getting the family of the deceased a generous settlement. For some people, she was the only hope.
If she was seen with me at her side even once, all her credibility would be gone. She’d lose her influence.
My vague fantasies of following Sera everywhere she went suddenly melted into nothing. It would end, I realized—as soon as our Japanese adventure was over.
She’d never give up her fame and power for me. I deluded myself.
“You’re missed by your followers,” I said, a hollow feeling spreading through my core. “Don’t you think they deserve…”
“To know I betrayed them?” she snapped, folding her arms on her chest. “Don’t worry, I’ll get my comeuppance soon enough. Where is that train? Aren’t they supposed to never be late?”
“It’s another minute until arrival,” I said, grudgingly engaging Charlie’s algorithm to help me through this conversation.
It marked Sera’s responses as defensive and guilt-driven, suggesting to give her space.
We spent the short journey in silence, getting off on a stop surrounded by wilderness.
We were almost an hour away from central Neo Tokyo by train, and the region was peaceful and filled with forests.
Sera’s shoulders relaxed when we set out down a narrow road, passing a few tanuki dwellings surrounded by small gardens.
I knew the beautiful landscape was deceptive. The road wound through the forest, which hid our destination until we rounded the final bend, and Sera stopped with a gasp of shock.
Ahead of us, a tall wire fence topped with barbed wire was a stark boundary between nature and the landfill. Red and yellow signs warned against radiation and toxic waste. Hills and towers of rusting metal loomed on the other side of the fence. Not a speck of green in there.
“It says it’s dangerous! But… Why is it…”
“I don’t detect any radioactivity, but if I do, we’ll get out of there at once,” I promised. “The signs are mostly here to keep out thieves and thrill seekers. It’s safe to go in.”
“Safe,” she scoffed with disbelief, eyeing the barbed wire. “And how…”
“There’s a gate. This way.”
I took her hand and guided her along the fence toward a short gate. The simple electric lock was not a challenge, and soon, we went through. Sera jolted when the gate thudded, closing behind us, and eyed the landscape spreading in front of us with awe.
“The mass production of robots started about fifteen years ago,” I said as I pulled her down a narrow path between two enormous hills of scrap metal.
“Back then, new models came out every few months, turning the old ones obsolete. Plus, of course, many were faulty, especially the Zenkyoza ones. This landfill holds all the discarded tech from Honshu.”
Sera walked slowly by my side, looking around.
I couldn’t read her expression, and I was surprised by my own reactions.
Here and there, I spotted an arm with rotting cables or a robot head with the jaw hanging by a wire.
My collar activated, and I made it shut up while Charlie’s algorithm diagnosed me with a case of melancholy.
Memento mori, Dean. Remember that everybody dies, it said ominously, adding a smiling emoji at the end.
“How the hell are we supposed to find what we need?” Sera asked, her voice hushed. “This place freaks me out. It’s like a cemetery.”
“Memento mori,” I said solemnly.
She snorted weakly. “How could I forget?”
A sharp whistle came from above. I looked up just when a shadow fell on me. A shape resembling a large dragonfly circled overhead, but it was not an insect. It dove down, landing right in front of us, followed by another.
My collar pinged with alarm even before I noticed the rage burning through my circuits.
All I saw was the gun, and where it was pointed—at Sera’s chest.