70
While he was getting more comfortable with the dwarven alphabet, Milo was still not as close to understanding the meaning behind the words.
This left him in the Security Room for most of every day, watching recording after recording of dwarves complaining, shouting, or showing off their latest creation.
He was also lucky to find a few which looked like instructional recordings.
Where the dwarf would stand in front of some component and slowly point out what it did and how it worked.
Sometimes he’d pull it apart to show its insides.
These recordings were gold to Milo. He sat with a notepad and pencil, scribbling words and scratching out previous ones as he tried to get lists of words which might help create phrases.
It was an exhausting process.
And one which left him mentally broken almost every night. His mind would simply refuse to work any more. At that point, one of his golems would gently help him to his room.
He was grateful for that.
They seemed to recognize he couldn’t understand anything by then and quietly helped him get into his bed. In the morning, they’d drag him to the bath and then to breakfast.
Then they’d let him plod back into the Security Room to do it again.
Ket grabbed him more than once to tell him she’d been asked by the teachers why he wasn’t going to any classes. He used to at least pop his head in now and then. But, given there was another dungeon coming, shouldn’t he be getting ready for it?
Milo told Ket he was, and ignored the recommendation to at least stick his nose through the door.
His interactions with the little Hall Monitor were strange.
She acted twitchy around him. Especially if Tania was with him. Those times, she’d avoid him like the plague and refused to even look at the golem.
He’d asked Tania about it, but she said there was no problem.
Trusting that, he let it go.
Women, he thought, had their own mysterious ways that no man could hope to understand. It was better just to let them do their thing.
Which was a thought that made him frown deeply.
The golems understood that woman thing. That understanding helped them fit into the Academy’s culture better than he did. He felt like an outsider.
But they flitted through the Academy and socialized with other women without any hint of anyone suspecting they weren’t human.
He was pretty sure if it was announced that he was a golem, everyone would say they always knew there was something inhuman about him. But would they believe it if any of his golems were actually exposed?
It showed how meticulous the dwarves were in replicating life.
Or was there something else happening? Was he missing some vital key? No matter how he thought about it, it seemed impossible to believe they could act so perfectly like a woman when the other golems seemed so basic.
Even Stonks wasn’t complicated in his personality.
And the spider golems were skittish and simple in their outlook.
Yet, the leap between them and Tania was immense. A gap of impossible size.
Tania had given him a hug one night as she lay him into bed. She’d smoothed back his hair. She’d told him how worried she was for him. That they were all worried he was working too hard.
“There’s no time limit, Milo. You don’t need to do everything within a week.”
He hadn’t been able to respond at the time. His mind was dull. His body was already sinking into sleep.
But her words had brushed against his heart and left him wanting to reach out and hold her back.
But he didn’t.
Because he was still so focused on the problem of what she was.
Shaking that thought out of his head, Milo plucked one of the crystals out of the slot and put another in. A now-familiar dwarf with glossy black beard and bald head, was standing in front of the same slab that was in the Workshop.
He blinked as he recognized that place.
On the slab was a golem. It was covered in golemskin, and looked similar to Selma. Muscular in an athletic way, and beautiful.
The dwarf didn’t look happy.
He lifted one leg and pulled it apart, before beckoning the viewing device to come closer. Milo suddenly realized he was talking to a spider golem. The view was aimed squarely between the golem’s legs.
Milo winced.
Then the dwarf started shouting angrily.
He jabbed a finger at the crease between her legs and then slowly prised it apart before pointing at it and making demands.
The dwarf’s complaint made Milo feel uncomfortable, and he reached out to remove the crystal when a word popped out of the recording so sharply it made him freeze.
“Coochieyah!”
Coochieyah?
Coochie-ah?
Whatever, it sounded like he’d said coochie, which was a word Tania constantly used to describe her privates. It was a word Milo had heard growing up, but it wasn’t something commonly used.
Not because it was rude.
It was just an old word no one used.
Yet, the dwarf clearly seemed to be using it over and over as he described his problem with the golem.
Then he stuck his finger in.
Wiggling his finger dramatically, the dwarf growled about the coochie and then kept saying the dwarf word for screw over and over.
Coochie.
Screw.
Milo felt a cold sliver of dread and disbelief slide down his spine. Were these perverted little old men using the word screw to talk about sex?
He remembered some of the young clocker apprentices had similar sniggering ways to describe the act. But it was only while the dwarf was demonstrating moving his finger in and out that he started hearing a few of the words he’d thought were more engineering terms.
Suspiciously, he used his new alphabet to spell them out as he thought they might be spelt. Then he picked up the book he’d been hoping to translate.
For a few minutes, he flipped from page to page before he found what he’d been hoping wasn’t true.
Just as the door opened and Tania came in with Selma while holding a plate.
Milo scowled up at them and waved the book at the two golems. “This is blasted dwarf porn!”
The two golems broke into laughter. Selma had to put the plate down and hold herself against the wall while she collapsed into heavy laughter which came from her belly.
Tania subsided into giggles.
Then Mila skipped up behind them, looking past Tania’s shoulder. “What’s going on?”
Selma held up a hand, while holding her stomach. “I won!”
“What?”
“I won,” she wheezed. “Milo just figured out what the book was. I was closest.”
“You all knew?” Milo growled. “And didn’t tell me?”
Tania patted his cheek and grinned. “You should read it, Milo. Ya might learn a thing or two about how to adjust some of our intimate settings.”
Selma choked on a chortle.
“I can’t believe it.” He sighed, tossing the book to the ground. “Do you have any idea what my people think about the dwarves? They’re thought of like an ancient race of gods who reached the pinnacle of existence and then disappeared. They’re mysterious and awesome.”
“Smart people like sex, too, Milo.”
“Yeah, but…” He glanced down at the book in disappointment. “I wanted to learn the secrets of their constructs. Not… Not that.”
Tania glanced at the other two and then gently touched his cheek.
“Milo,” she said. “Look at us. We are the pinnacle of what they created. Everything about us was their final big achievement.”
“I know that,” he said. “That’s why-”
“Maybe you’re thinking about this all wrong,” she said carefully. “Instead of looking at the how, look at the why. Why did they squirrel their porn away with their blueprints? Ain’t that a strange place to put your stash?”
He hadn’t thought of that part yet.
But now she said it, it was a bit weird.
He remembered her telling him there were no female dwarves, too.
If so, how did they breed?
He opened his mouth to throw questions at her, but she tapped his chin to shut it.
“Unlock the Prime fully,” she said knowingly.
He groaned in frustration.
“Don’t be sad, Milo,” Mila peeped.
“Yeah.” Selma picked up the plate. “We brought some sandwiches.”
“We all helped make them,” Mila said proudly. “That one’s mine. Feed him mine, Selma!”
Milo leaned back in his chair, overwhelmed by how close the three of them were as they pushed against his knees. Selma scooped up a sandwich and pushed it in front of his face.
“Say ah!”
He blinked at her.
“Are we still doing this?”
“Ah, Milo,” Tania purred.
He looked from one to the other.
Shy little Mila, staring at him in eagerness to see if he liked her sandwich.
Selma looking down at him, long blonde hair framing her beautiful face as her lips parted just a little. Anticipating him telling her he liked hers the best. Her eyes sparkling more as his gaze fell on her.
And Tania.
Confident and amused. Her hands on her hips.
No.
Not on her hips.
Sliding down now his gaze had dropped.
To lift her skirt and show her underwear.
He lifted his gaze with a snap and rolled his eyes at her.
Then he said to them all; “I’m not going to tell you whose sandwich I liked the most. I don’t care what you say. I like them all.”
“You don’t need to tell us, Milo,” Selma said. “We already know mine are your favorite.”
“No, they aren’t,” Mila pouted. “He likes mine!”
“Just open up and say ah, Milo,” Tania cooed.
He shook his head.
Opened up.
Said ah.