All of My Maids are Robots? Pt. 13

We came to the first intersection of the pirate ship's corridors and Mary whispered to me. "What is our plan?"

"Get to escape pods. Or the bridge," I said, then yelped as I saw that two more tuffians were walking down the side corridor, chatting to one another. My yelp, unfortunately, did not assist with the stealth. I know, weird, right?

"What the fuck?" one yelped.

"PEW PEW PEW!" I shouted, firing my blaster. The sun bolts zipped by the two pirates and they dove for cover, ducking behind the heavy duty pipes that ran along the walls. The blasts struck the walls, sending out sprays of sparks and I wished, really badly, that I had some kind of fencing foil. I actually knew what to do with that. But with the pirates ducked low, I grabbed Mary's hand and the two of us scampered down the corridor. A blast shot past my shoulder, hitting the wall to my left and I screamed. This was nothing like laser tag.

Bulk heads started to close as we ran. Mary and I got under one just before it slammed -- cutting us off from the two other pirates, who ran up to the bulkhead. I stuck my tongue out at them as they pressed up against the glass. "Get fucked, suckos!" I shouted at them. The two pirates glared at me and I turned around -- and saw three more pirates coming around from the other direction. One of them was a machine, but the other two were humans, with blasters in their hands. Mary sprang between me and them, so the blaster bolts all slammed into her. She fell back against me and I blazed back, not having enough time to say 'pew' even once.

One pirate was sent sprawling.

But then I got hit by two more stun blasts.

And it was even worse this time.

I was dragged through the ship, then plopped down right onto a seat on the bridge, where I was tied up just before my nerves started working again. Lord Thompson stood before me, scowling at me.

"You're..." he paused, then frowned. "Who is she working for?" he asked this of Mary, who groaned softly.

"What?" She asked.

"You escaped a fully locked cell," Lord Thompson said. "Your maid has been augmented with enhanced strength, enough to bend steel bars. Are you..." He paused. "Are you part of the Service? Applied Intelligence?"

"...yeah...we're onto you," I said, smirking slightly.

Lord Thompson snarled. "No...no, you can't have enough evidence to-"

"Oh please," I said, snorting. "The Regency was just waiting for you to fuck up -- and kidnapping me was the number one bigtime fuckery you could have done. Me and Mary were trying to escape to remove any...well, I know how stupid criminal assholes like you get when your back is up against the wall." I nodded, slightly. "But, you know, even disposing of our bodies won't get your ass out of the fire, bucko."

Lord Thompson's face paled. He looked like he was thinking furiously.

Then he paused. "...why is your pocket glowing?"

"..." I looked down at my pocket. It was glowing. One of the tuffians stepped forward, reached in, and drew out a shimmering orange orb. It was one of the Curios -- a copy that had just manifested because...fuck because...

The orb opened up and a glowing hologram of me appeared, flickering in the air. He was looking quite frowny, and he started speaking without preamble: "Lucy, I need you to get a copy of the LORD THOMPSON!?" He spluttered. Lord Thompson gaped at the...me. Well. Albert.

"You know me?" he asked. "What...kind of...a long ranged holographic communication device?"

"It's me! Albert!" Albert said, cheerfully. "I...oh. Right. The evil scheme."

"YOU KNEW IT WAS EVIL!?" I hissed.

"W-Well, I...I didn't think it was evil at the time!" Albert said, sounding defensive.

"And you didn't fucking tell me you absolute DICK!?" I shouted, squirming and bouncing in the chair.

"Excuse me, is this woman part of the secret service or not?" Thompson asked, gesturing to me.

"Secret service? No, she's a burger flipper who used to work at Five Guys," Albert said, sounding completely exasperated.

"Albert! Not! Helping!" I shouted, glaring at him.

"I, why not?" He muttered to himself. "The resolution on this end is terrib- there we go!" He said, his image focusing. Then he blinked as he looked around himself. "Come on, Ned, what the bloody hell are you doing with Lucy?"

"Albert..." Ned, I was never ever going to call him Lord Thompson again in my life, said through clenched teeth. "Albert. What. The. Bloody. Hell. Is. Going. On!?"

"...oh, you haven't...told him, have you," Albert said.

"Yeah. Cause of the EVIL PLAN!" I said.

"It's not an-" Ned shook his head, then waved his long, bony arms, as if he was calling or conducting for silence. "Albert, explain!"

"This alien curio swapped my mind and dimensionality with, ah, a commoner from another Earth," Albert said. "But...Ned...you need to turn back from the plan. It was foolish when I proposed it, and I can only now...really...see that. You have dreams, Ned, but they're the wrong dream. You saw-"

Ned shot the curio, pulling and firing the pistol in the same movement. I yelped as it exploded into a spray of fragments and some of them bounced against my cheek. I yelped -- and Ned put the gun against my forehead, glaring at me. "Now," he growled. "I realize, unfortunately, that you are my only option. And so, I am going to explain precisely what it is you will do...and if you do not..." The warm gun barrel moved from my head to Mary's. "I will slag your maid's computer core -- fuse her memories and render her permanently inoperable. Do you understand?"

I gulped. Nodded.

"Very well. You are going to go to the Mooreland-Burke's dinner party that is coming up this weekend and you are going to put every iota of your being into securing the hand of Marvin Mooreland-Burke in marriage. The boy is a weak willed fat virgin, you should handle it just fine." He frowned. "Then you will combine your stocks in the Most Honorable Royal Machine Company, so as you create a majority stake in the company."

I blinked a few times.

"Then...you will will the stock to me," Ned said, his voice a quiet little growl.

I nodded. "T-Two questions-"

"No! No questions!" Ned snarled. "You will DO it or your maid will DIE!"

"Okay!" I said, blushing. "...wait..." I frowned, slowly. "...you...want a control in the...machine company." I blinked. "And Albert was interested in machines. And programming machines. Oh my god, you fuckers want to reprogram the machines! You want to start making new machines that are...what, SUPER loyal to you instead of just regular loyal-"

"Loyal!?" Ned laughed. "Loyal!?" He scowled. "They run our factories. They grow our food. They deliver our messages. They fight our wars. They give us our little noble houses and our little moons and our peerages, and they let us wear the fancy hats and the fine clothes...but the decisions of the entire human species have been given over to unfeeling clockwork and chrome machines. Why, last year, there was a machine officer in the army! There are already machines running ships -- in the merchant marine and in the navy!" He shook his head. "Give them a few more decades, there will be a...a...collection of Donnell machines in parliament!" He laughed, a bit hysterical. "We've been enslaved and we don't even know it!"

I blinked.

"Holy shit, dude...holy shit, I...don't normally say this, but you really, REALLY need to be fucking enslaved. For, like, a fortnight," I said, nodding. "Cause, that's not being enslaved, that's fucking automated space luxury gay comulism, you lunatic maniac fuckstick!"

"It's a society without a future! A farce! A mockery!" he said.

"Yeah, I know, society is made up," I said. "It...it's all fake. Empire is fake. Money is fake. There's no reason to do anything beyond it being, like, nice or something." I blinked as something cold and sharp pierced into my neck. "Owowowowowowowowowo!" I hissed, then winced as a cold metal finger pressed to my neck. I looked to my right and saw that the machine maid that the pirate captain had had just stuck a needle into my neck. "What the frick!?"

"That was an injection of Aphasianta," Ned said, his voice cruel. "In five minutes, the retrovirus will bond to your language centers and render you unable to speak about me, the plan, or Mary. Attempting to do so will have...unfortunate side effects."

My brain started to tingle.

"You're a real asshole," I muttered.

Ned smirked as he stood before me. "We shall drop you off -- you will explain your escape however you wish..."

I nodded. "...what's that?"

Ned chuckled. "You think you can make me turn around, then try some hare brained escape attempt?" he asked as the glowing light behind him grew brighter and brighter. "You must have an incredibly low opinion of-"

The curio that popped into reality behind him cracked, displacing air in every direction -- and it was followed by a cascading crackling sound as dozens of curios snapped into being. They appeared, then dropped to the ground, clanking and clattering like steel rain. Pirates and Ned went scrambling away, lifting their arms and ducking low as curio copies dropped onto them. One bonked onto my head, rolled back, and dropped into my bound hands. I gripped it.

The world exploded with white light.

And when the light cleared, I was sitting, bound to my chair, in a darkened room. I blinked a few times, looking around in the near pitch blackness -- but then the door to the room opened and I realized I was hearing two things. The first was the faint chugga chugga chugga chugg of a train going choo choo to zoom. The second was a faint sound of conversation. But the most important thing was that the door had opened and I was looking out at...a Dora!

This particular Theodora Fusilier was dressed in a perfectly nice new uniform, without a single crease. Her eyes widened and she stood there, and if she had had lips to gawp with, she would be gawping like hell with them.

"Hey, Dorry!" A cheerful female voice added -- and another Dora stepped up. "Boxie, what are you WHOA!" The other Dora looked a bit more banged up, but she'd also had one of her eyes covered with a really cool eye patch.

"Patches..." Dorry whispered.

"Yeah, Dorry," Patches said.

"...there's a sexy human tied up in our cargo?" She whispered back.

I opened my mouth and tried to say: Holy shit I've been kidnapped and dimensionally booped over here by an alien curio and my maid Mary has been kidnapped my space pirates. Instead, my brain seized up and I swore, I tasted the color of the opening theme to The Brady Bunch. So, instead of making a noise, I instead went: "Hnn...ello!" I blinked.

"Get the Sarge!" Dorry said.

"Yeah..." Patches said. "...wait!" She whispered. "Wait...Tee! TEE!"

"Yeah?" Another Dora, this one a full head shorter than the others and with a really cute rainbow hair color that was currently cascading around her head, with her cap off and all that. She let out an eager wolf whistle. "Heyyyy! I didn't know they'd tie her up for me!"

I blinked.

"Wait...did you...really blow your entire pay on-"

"It's the dancer!" Tee said, excitedly. "Right?"

I tried to say no but my brain was literally short circuiting right now. I hadn't realized that the fucker would be THAT literal when he said that there'd be consequences. I had thought it'd be a headache. So, instead, the word that came out was: "Heyyy..." I tried to find a word I could say. "Ladies."

...yes, ladies still worked. Fucking...fantastic. Of course ladies worked.

Tee would have been beaming like a kid that had gotten a sweet new bike during her birthday party if she had lips, if kids still wanted bikes and not iPhones, and if machines had birthdays. Really, the only accurate part of my sentence was that I was pretty sure they were going to take me for a ride.

"Patches," Tee said. "Boxie-"

"Dorry!" Dorry whispered.

"Yeah, sure, whatever Boxie," Tee said. "Have you ever had a human?"

"No..." Patches cheeks were glowing.

"I've never had...I mean...I've totally had..." Dorry stammered.

Tee threw her arms around both of their shoulders and all three walked inside. Soon, they were carrying my chair out of the cargo container and Tee shouted: "All right everyone in my glorious regiment of Grenadiers!" she said and set me down in a train car that was about fifty feet long and full of burly, gorgeous, sexy robot soldier ladies. "I, your favorite Flag Corporal, have spent three months of my pay on the best thing that money can buy..." She ruffled my hair. "A human who really really really wants to see how the other side plays."

There were lots of eager looks.

"So..." Tee said, cheerfully. "Who wants to go first?"

Okay.

First things first.

How did I signal I was consenting really really hard while my brain couldn't say any words other than ladies or hey. I blushed...and then murmured. "...nice."

Oh, cool!

Three words.