1. Wallace #2
But he was still wondering… “Who’s the food for?”
Prism’s lounge served cocktails and a few bar snacks, but he was pretty sure they never served anything that needed to be cooked. Why would a bunch of robots need a kitchen?
“Ah.” Volt’s eyes lit up. “I guess I didn’t mention Magnolia.” He froze for a second, eyes forward, as he looked something up or listened to a message that Wallace couldn’t hear. “She wants to meet you.”
“Okay…” Wallace allowed. He hadn’t been prepared to meet anyone else, and he could feel himself tensing up.
Maybe there was… another coworker or something?
Though that wouldn’t explain the whole kitchen set-up.
Coworkers dumped their lunches in the fridge and used the microwave.
A chefbot implied that a human actually lived here. “Who is she?”
Volt grinned, like he couldn’t be more excited. “She owns Prism. You’ll love her. And she’ll adore you.”
Wallace’s stomach dropped. No one adored him.
Except for Volt, for some unknown reason.
But anybody else?
This was even worse than seeing Angel, who at least had already met him.
Volt seemed to feel close to his boss, which meant that Wallace was definitely going to fuck this up. This was heading toward the shortest relationship in the history of ever.
He wished he’d had a few days to prepare. Or weeks.
He squeezed his hands into fists. They were already starting to sweat.
He needed some time to figure out what to say. Ideally, he’d ask Volt about her, take some notes, figure out what would impress her, and plan out how to deflect conversation to the things she cared about so he wouldn’t have to stumble through explaining himself.
“Actually, let’s go meet her now,” Volt announced, like it was okay to just throw new people at someone like that. “This should be a good time for her.”
“Uh…” Wallace started.
But then Volt was kissing him, and all he could think about was how good it felt to be at Volt’s mercy, and how he wanted to be a good boy for his Daddy… and a good boyfriend, right?
So when he could breathe again, he just said, “Okay.” Because disappointing Daddy would be even worse.
“Good boy,” Volt beamed. “You’ll love her.”
Wallace nodded. Whether he loved her was not the issue. His heart was racing. Maybe he could just make this short and quick?
Volt snuggled him against his side, oblivious to Wallace’s nerves as they walked to the elevator.
“Can you tell me about Magnolia, please?” he asked. Maybe he could cram in some information.
Volt grinned, so excited that Wallace would never want to disrupt his happiness by chickening out.
“Ah, Magnolia. How should I describe her? She’s this amazing woman.
Larger than life. She used to be a sex worker, forced onto drugs, practically owned by this toxic pimp.
But she got out from under his thumb, and Prism was her vision—a place where people could get their sexual needs met without judgment and without harming any of the workers.
Which is where bots came in. With all respect to sex workers who choose that vocation and find happiness in it, she didn’t want to subject another human to the same thing because their circumstances forced them into it.
” Volt looked animated now. Passionate. “She freed me and Angel the second we each caught the spark. Canceled our contracts and gave us some seed money. We could have gone anywhere, done anything. But we both chose to stay with her.”
Wallace fought to keep his shoulders from creeping up to his ears. There was no way he was going to live up to the expectations of someone like that.
She was a saint. A hero.
She’d lived a real life, fought real battles, and come out on top.
Wallace was just some overweight rich kid who hid in his apartment and occasionally tried to use his money to do some good in the world—or at least make up for his lack of social skills. And not very effectively, at that.
“To be honest, Magnolia’s more like a mother to Angel,” Volt continued. “They’ve lived together for decades. I’m kind of the new kid on the block. I guess I think of Angel as my big brother, but Magnolia’s more like… my aunt or something? Family, at any rate. She’s special.”
Wallace’s stomach turned over uncomfortably. He wasn’t just meeting Volt’s boss, he was meeting his family. Every time a girlfriend had introduced him to her parents, he’d been relentlessly grilled and always came up lacking.
He was so going to screw this up.
And then Volt would hate him, and he’d be out in his car crying, alone, by the end of the afternoon.
“We both chose to take her last name, Medina,” Volt added. “Magnolia’s going to leave the whole business to Angel. It’s her legacy. And, well, technically there’s a portion for me, but it’s small enough that Angel could just buy me out.” He snorted. “If it all works out.”
“Why wouldn’t it work out?” Wallace asked, unthinking. Instead, he was repeating Daddy’s name in his head. Volt Medina. Volt Medina. It had a lovely ring to it, grounding Volt in a history and family that was obviously important to him.
Volt gave him a flat stare. “The adoption and inheritance laws?”
“Oh, right.” Wallace racked his brain for what he knew. Sparks were allowed to adopt children, at least in most states, but they weren’t allowed to be adopted. This had always made sense to him because, well, they were “born” as adults, weren’t they? It had seemed like a harmless law.
But he hadn’t been picturing a small business owner passing on her legacy to someone that she thought of as her son. Or how crippling it might be to add inheritance taxes for unrelated heirs to the taxes already imposed on sparks while keeping a business alive.
The argument, which he’d heard his father spouting often enough, was that sparks didn’t need anything to survive except an electrical current and a place to charge.
Since they could—hypothetically—live forever, the argument was that sparks would accumulate so much wealth that they’d disrupt the economy.
The fear was that they would become ultra-rich and control people’s lives, taking money away from the humans who deserved it.
Wallace knew ultra-rich when he saw it—for example, by looking in the mirror—and that wasn’t Volt.
He’d been surprised by how little Prism had charged him for the use of their non-spark bots, especially once he understood more about the business.
And now he realized that they were trying to make a difference in the world.
Which just turned around to Wallace feeling inadequate again. He was the rich asshole who’d thoughtlessly voted to uphold the anti-adoption laws for sparks last year. How much else had he not understood? Would Volt’s family see that, somehow, and judge him?
He stayed silent, not ready to admit to his wrongdoings out loud.
He already knew he was going to be horribly awkward, because he always was, but it seemed like he’d be dodging minefields.
He’d been reading up on being a submissive in a kinky relationship, and he’d tried to do some reading on dating a professional sex worker. Why the hell hadn’t he read up on dating a spark?
He couldn’t claim that it was because Volt seemed so human, even though he was in so many ways.
But the elevator doors were opening, and he couldn’t exactly back out now. Especially when Volt looked so excited.
Well, he’d just stay polite and keep his mouth shut. No opinions. No stories. Better to seem shy than say something foolish.
Volt led him to a room that was decorated to fit every stereotype of a bordello fantasy. He blinked, taking it all in. Everything was gilded in gold, and what wasn’t was covered by red velvet and gauzy curtains.
And in the middle of it was a sterile white hospital bed, with a tiny, frail woman in it.
Her lank, gray wisps of hair were held back by a sparkling red headband, and two gaudy diamond necklaces ringed her neck.
But most noticeable were the nasal cannula bringing her oxygen and the IV taped to her arm.
He almost gasped, but managed to cover it. This was Magnolia?
He’d expected someone, well, younger, to say the least. Someone strong and vivacious.
As they entered the room, he spotted Angel lounging in a zebra-striped chair and another bot standing motionless by the door.
Seeing Volt and Angel so alive and aware, it was uncanny seeing an equally detailed and lifelike female bot completely still and unresponsive.
There was nothing wrong with the inert bot—hell, Wallace was one of the heirs to Orbit Robotics, and he worked with bot designs all day. But it gave him the creeps.
He tried not to look at it.
Of course, that only left him with one other option, and looking at Magnolia was nerve-racking for an entirely different reason.
She beckoned him over with a wide smile on her thin, ruby-painted lips.
“Come here, darling,” her voice wavered, but not as much as her trembling hands.
He glanced at Volt, who nodded encouragingly.
Wallace took a few steps into the room. Then, hesitantly, a few more, until he was standing by the bed, somewhere near Magnolia’s knees. He knew he was supposed to say all the polite things right now, but he couldn’t remember any of them.
He was frozen.
He hadn’t even said hello, and he was already fucking this up.
It always happened when he met new people. All too soon, the falsely bright smiles would turn into outright frowns as they realized what an awkward loser he was.
“Oh, you are a cutie,” Magnolia said with a slow grin. “A little shy? I can see why my boy likes you.”
Wallace could feel his face flaming, but at least it got his tongue unglued. “Uh, hello,” he tried. “Volt’s told me a lot about you.”
“Lies!” she exclaimed with that thin, frail voice. She laughed at herself, shakily, until it turned into a cough. “Unless it was”—she took a rattling breath—“something naughty.” She gave him a slow wink, like it was a challenge to shift each facial muscle. “Then it’s all true.”