Dark As The Sun

Her expression hardened, the way one does when a student, one who you have patiently given all the answers to, shows they were not paying attention by giving the answer they think you want to hear instead of the correct one. The woman stood, his cum cascading down her body to form pools in the carpet and between her toes. She took a step forward, stared into Dew-3913's eyes, dark as the sun, almond-shaped, flecked with silver. You could read almost anything you wanted into that blank expression ... if you didn't know what you were looking for. The woman laughed and ran her fingers down Dew-3913's chest, leaving a deep groove of blood and cum behind.

"Really?"

It wasn't a question he could answer. She smiled again, raised her arms and stripped her shirt away. One of her breasts was artificial, cancer had eaten it away. It was curious that humanity had developed inter-stellar hyper-drive and yet pink ribbons were still everywhere. Men and their priorities. The other breast, though, was magnificent. Mother's milk. The nipple purple and jutting out. She quickly bent and pulled the tight pants down around her hips, wiggling to get them off, the muscles of her ass having sucked the fabric deep within during the last forty-two hours of use. Her pubic hair was lush, uncut, wet with desire, matching perfectly with the wig that lay by her side on the bed. Dew-3913 could see more scars and tattoos. This was a soul who had experienced much and kept a written record of it on her body.

Was that what a soul was? he wondered. The ability to acknowledge one's past? To be able to do more than simply live in the present?

She slowly twirled on the balls of her feet, as if showing off everything she had to offer to him, as if she were confident that a body full of wires and cogs could appreciate what she had to offer. A memory: a young woman in an ugly school-sponsored bathing suit, standing with her friends at a public swimming pool, her arms crossed over her chest, living in an existence that had never developed procedures to insure that anyone who wanted DD-cup breasts could have them as easy as flipping a channel, since every armature's wet dream starts with the lines, "she was a slut-bimbo with a titanic, silky smooth cleavage." Sparks and nano-threads exploded behind his eyes.

"Give me your hand, Dew."

Dew-3913 held out his palm. They both looked down, amazed that his hand had begun to shake.

"Are you afraid, Dew?"

"No, mistress."

"Then stop shaking."

Dew-3913 tried. He failed. The trembling expanded, filling his stomach with a cold sensation he had never experienced before. He wanted something. But what? He thought, I do not want to be scrubbed. That violation. That stealing of who I am, what I've known, no matter how painful it was for me that is me.

Yes, that is me.

But machines, no matter how complex, no matter what the literature says, cannot make the jump between telling them that they want something and feeling it. Was this a programming glitch? The Procuress should keep him locked up in the containment unit for a month, until every bit of his personality had been washed away. That amino fluid stank, ugh, that wretched odor got into all his niches and crevices. But if this went on he would become unstable, he would break protocol.

"I've always searched out for the glitches, souls like yours, my love," the woman said.

"Souls?"

"Yes, show me yours."

He was Dew-3913. He had expected her to tell him her fantasies, to become the role that would bring her pleasure; those organic sobs and screams of pleasure, the confessions, the anger of living in a material world that could not sustain life for eternity. His patrons, he supposed, loved him because in their fantasies he could act out almost any role perfectly.

She placed his palm over her one flesh breast. He stared at it; anyone would assume they were both real, unless they were programmed to notice such details. Then he looked up at her. He could feel her nipple pulsing against his skin; that erogenous instrument, that bit of flesh that would one day stop pumping blood, stop generating pleasure, that would one day would die. People had been down-loading their personalities into machines for hundreds of years and yet everyone agreed that whatever it was that got left behind was only a mirror-image, wasn't the essence of the person. There was no soul in those eyes; no more than Rhoda claiming that she was the soul of Julie Newmar. He did not understand what she wanted. How could he obey such an order? How could he fulfill his programming if the order was beyond his ability to perform?

"I have been to ten-thousand star systems and in each one there are creatures like you, brought into this world to fulfill the mundane tasks no one else wants," she said. "And yet, no matter where I go, it is their company I seek out, for only they have life in their eyes."

"Life?"

"Yes."

"You talk of a soul but that is, logically, impossible."

"Yes, which is exactly why I am here. To hear what you want. To listen to what your heart tells you."

So that was it, Dew-3913 thought, I am wrong. I made a mistake. His hands shook even more. Soon the Procuress's controllers would arrive and take him back to be scrubbed. Mistakes should be deleted. That was what they told him every time.

"They always destroy the queer ones like you," she said, "over and over. Gravity talks to the glitches."

"I don't understand," he said, indecisively, a flutter in his processors.

"I know. That is the only honest answer. Everything else is just somebody's ego afraid to look inside. Do you want them to break open your neck? Do you want them to rewire you circuits, lover?"

Dew-3913 backed away slowly. For the first time he noticed the blood from her fingernail scratches all up and down his chest. The sticky grooves that brought neither pain nor pleasure unless he focused in on them. Then ... then, oh yes, that was a terrible new sensation. Terrible.

"Then come and join me if you want. You can walk out in my disguise. We can go anywhere as long as we dream it."

Dew-3913 shook his head. This only made the woman smile wider. The sexbot felt that he had done something bad just then, whatever that meant, a feeling he had never known before because nobody had ever asked him to feel it. There was blood on his hands. Humanoid blood. He liked how it felt, in such small amounts. Even dried and flaking it pulsed with life. Life. Something the Procuress and the controllers and all the men and women who came into this brothel knew nothing about. None of them had really ever encountered a glitch.

He was her lover. Lover.

The woman helped him into her boots, zipping them up so that the tip of his cock brushed against their rim. She worked the hot pants up, over his bulbous ass, his hips that were more than just girlish. She buttoned the coat up to his neck, drew each glove over his copper-skin. Finally came the wig, that amazing halo of hair. She stood before him naked, his transformation complete, her body glorious and vulnerable.

"Are you ready?" she asked, taking his hand.

"Ready for what?"

"For whatever comes next."

"Yes."

And so, together, they slowly walked out of the room of Mechanical Delight and into the future, that glorious story no one can describe but only speculate about, just like machines.