Chapter Four Techne
Wrought was the wrong word. More like wrecked. The drone caused an orgy in R&D, created three separate love matches, and turned a love triangle in HR into a throuple. Once Aphrodite returned from her almost day off, the drone took one look at her and deliberately course corrected into a wall.
The Cupi’s logs confirmed the AI would rather self-destruct than face the goddess of love and all her wrath.
“From what I can tell, when I fell after checking the AI, I hit the tablet on my way down, activating the program,” I told a tense board of directors and Zeus himself later that evening. If I could have blinked out of existence right then, I would have.
“Why didn’t the drone’s AI recognize the dummies as targets?” Hestia voiced, her sepia skin unmarred by wrinkles. She was the only goddess in the room not giving me a disdainful nose wrinkle or an arched brow as she looked over the data we compiled for this emergency meeting.
“It did.” I pulled up the AI’s logs, showing the commands alongside the video. “The Cupi Drone, as you can see, hit the dummies marked as a match.” We watched as the drone hit every fake lover with either a lust dart or a love dart before the drone turned toward Eros and me. I paused the video.
“What is of interest is once the targets are hit, the AI is programmed to scan the area for any other possible matches before returning to its handler. In this case, I was the handler. I admit it never occurred to me to exclude the Cupi Drone’s companion from those search parameters.
” I winced, seeing Hestia’s ocher eyes narrow disapprovingly.
“To be fair to Techne, this was supposed to be a test of a prototype,” Hephaestus interjected, his scarred skin dark red at his temple.
“Son, you were hit by the drone. You don’t need to be fair,” Zeus commented from his seat at the head of the table.
He was not on the board of directors. Dressed in a sharp black suit with his blond hair slicked back, he locked his cold blue gaze on me.
His excuse was because so many gods and goddesses were involved in the incident, he needed to be in attendance to “be their voice.” It was a plausible excuse.
It was an excuse, though, because Zeus was here for me.
“Also,” Eros said quietly, everyone’s attention immediately grabbed by my smooth-voiced lover, “Frigg gave me live rounds. She was supposed to give us the blanks and didn’t.”
“Where is Frigg?” Aphrodite asked, her beautiful, curly, blonde hair cascading around her heart-shaped face, giving her an air of vulnerability where there was none. She was curvy like most fertility goddesses, and her pink suit was cut to accentuate that.
“Frigg is still under the effects of the lust bombing in R&D. Quite a few of them haven’t worked through their desire fully yet,” Hephaestus confirmed, his gaze drawn across the table to Ixcacao before jerking away.
Ixcacao continued to type, recording what was being said. Her welt was startling against her bronze skin. We checked in with one another before the meeting, but she hadn’t mentioned where or with whom she had ridden out the effects of the darting.
“Why were only Eros and Techne hit with the true love darts?” Zeus’s eyes finally turned toward Eros.
“According to the data,” Hephaestus once again tried to draw the attention away from us, for which I was grateful, “Eros and Techne are ninety-seven percent compatible. If you watch,” he said and continued the footage from where I had left off, the drone watching us interact, me on the ground, and Eros crouched down in front of me, “it determined quite quickly that they were a match and that their ‘uncertainty’ was causing their ‘energies to be out of sync.’ You are aware that true love arrows are only used when true love needs a helping hand. This was determined to be the case by the AI.”
When the dart hit me on the recording, I jumped. I didn’t realize how wound up I was, but I all but melted in my chair when Eros's warm hand slid onto my thigh. He gave it a squeeze, probably as a show of support, but my mind went back to how we spent the last few hours.
He chuckled, most likely because of the heat rising to my face.
“But how did it know to use the true love dart and not a love dart?” Zeus doggedly asked, cutting another icy look my way.
“Because of my magic,” Eros replied, his hand still firm on my thigh.
“I have enchanted every piece of the Cupi Drone down to the bolts. I don’t have percentages scrolling through my head.
As my mother knows who should fall in love, so do I.
I enchanted the drone to recognize all kinds of love like I do.
The Cupids I train cannot do that. They have to go off of a list that my mother and I compiled from physically going to Earth and observing and answering prayers and offerings.
There are too many beings now on Earth. The population boom of the last ten thousand years is something we can’t keep up with alone, and even with the gods and goddesses we deputize, we need more help.
Unless you are willing to order beings to become Cupids? ”
Zeus scowled at Eros. “It’s my obligation to make sure that the gods are able to thrive with their talents where they are best needed. There is a natural order we must abide by.”
“So, the answer is to work me and my mother to death for your order?” Eros’s hand flexed on my thigh.
I rested my hand on top of his. Flipping his hand so we were palm to palm, he laced our fingers together. A smile ghosted on his lips.
Zeus all but crackled at the end of the table, his glower thunderous, “Boy, you don’t—”
“He’s right, Zeus,” Aphrodite interrupted, swooning into a nearby chair.
“Today was the first half day I have taken in centuries.
I didn't realize how much I needed a break. When the world was divided regionally amongst the gods, and we were still over Europe and parts of the Middle East, things were different. Even with four children helping me, spreading love is not as easy as it once was. It’s no secret what would happen if the population fell off.
If people can't love each other, why would they love us?” Her big blue eyes flooded with tears, her lashes clumping together.
Still, she looked ethereally beautiful, and her show of emotion seemed to influence Zeus.
“Of course, we have spoken about this before. That’s why Hermes felt Techne would be a great asset to your company.
She’s quick-witted. I am a big fan of her hand in creating the internet.
” He gave me an approving smile, the first of the evening.
“The mortals being able to google us and learn how to work with us has upped our worship by seventy percent in the last fifty years.”
Eros squeezed my hand. My stomach dropped.
I knew what he wanted. He had been toying with sending me to Earth for years now.
My dad had suggested Love and Lust Inc. If I was going to show my impact on making people’s lives better on Olympus, there was no bigger company to show off my talents.
If I could prove my use here, I wouldn’t need to be sent there.
I loved humanity but was more of an “up for a visit” kind of girl.
“Techne has been an invaluable employee.” Hephaestus gave me a warm look before continuing.
“While it looks like R&D has had nothing but failures in the past four months, the ideas we had been testing prior to the Cupi Drones were not hers. She was able to bring to life the theories our researchers had at an enhanced rate because she is the goddess of technology. The Cupi Drones were the first idea that was wholly hers, and we were assisting her with their development. Though the AI had more bugs than we initially thought, the drones were a success.”
“I fail to see how today's chaos would be called a success.” Zeus’s cold stare returned to me.
With a wave of his hand, Eros manifested a thick stack of papers in front of Zeus.
“These,” Eros said and nodded to his mother, “are the Love and Lust Inc.
employees who were hit today with the Cupi Drones.
As a rule, only my mother handles the employees' love lives within the company because of the nature of her work. She is further removed from their lives. She is on Earth searching out the matches there more often than not, leaving her children here to run things.” Eros nodded respectfully to his sister Harmonia, a carbon copy of their mother, and brother Pothos, who was basically a blond Aries.
“Usually no one but she is allowed to view these. Please take your time to review the list.”
Zeus filed through the stack of papers, his golden brow furrowed in thought as he read. After a time, he paused on a page. “I see. So, everyone hit today was actually proof of concept.”
“Yes. While we definitely do not approve of how the love and lust were delivered,” Aphrodite said and sent me a disapproving motherly look, “the drone was one hundred percent accurate.”
Ixcacao coughed, turning bright red, and mumbled an apology. She took a sip of water.
Hmmmmm, we definitely needed to talk.
“I can also agree. Though my brothers and I aren’t allowed to act on facilitating the attractions, we can feel them around us at work.
I was not surprised to see any of the names on the list, including participants in the orgy.
” Harmonia leaned onto her hand. “Even big bro here has been stalking Techne for months. If Mom hadn’t given me the look, I would have reported him to HR. ”
Eros scowled at his sister, and I chuckled.
I hadn’t noticed this stalking. Then again, maybe I had.
My subconscious could have picked up on the vibe he was sending out, and that was why I was crushing on him so hard.
My brain felt it had permission. Then again, maybe not. True love is a mysterious force.
“I still think Techne is a Muse,” Zeus said after a few contemplative beats of silence. “If she was sent to Earth, who knows what humans could achieve—”
“No,” Eros said, the anger in his voice palpable. I could see how Ares was his father at that moment.
“No?” Zeus’s energy crackled across his knuckles as he regarded Eros.
Zeus wasn’t a fan of Ares. Who would be fond of the man who broke up their son’s first marriage?
He may have had a soft spot for the goddess who was born of seafoam, but that grace did not extend to any of Aphrodites's children who came from the union of her and Ares.
Oh boy. The hair on my arms stood on end, and quite a few folks at the table sat straighter at the energy Eros and Zeus were putting out.
If they kept it up, there would be another incident at Love and Lust Inc., and this time we’d all be screwed.