The Companion Pt.0 3

"I think they drugged me," Lawrence frowned. "I slept until around oh-nine-hundred. Not sure how their programming lets them do that."

"The ship's gone rogue," Celia declared. "What are we going to do? Why isn't it attacking us?"

"I've shut down all computer access to the vid displays, camera feeds, airlock controls and, well, almost everything," Lawrence said. "I think the A.I.s you already created should continue functioning with their own on-board sensors, but the ship's computer can't contact them."

"You can do all that?" Celia asked, her eyes blurring a moment in that very particular way that only her eyes did. "I don't remember that in the schematics."

"We don't put it in the schematics," Lawrence said. "I probably shouldn't be telling you, really."

"Oh," Celia said, placed her head against his chest and took a deep breath for no reason that she could fathom. "Oh."

"Are you alright?" Lawrence asked again. "You were locked in there for a while."

"I was..." Celia paused and chose her words carefully. "Afraid. Afraid for you. Afraid for me. I worried what they might do to you. I calculated millions of possible scenarios..."

Celia twitched and looked down at the robot on the floor.

"I never imagined that," she said, detaching herself from half of Lawrence's embrace so she could glare at the impostor. "And I should have. All that processing time the ship was using, why didn't we think it would create another companion for you?"

"Because I had banned it," he said. "I banned it from harming you, but it decided locking you in a lead-lined cargo bay didn't mean harm. It wasn't supposed to make any more robots, but it made that... or should I say her?"

"Its A.I. was at the Orange level," Celia wiggled her fingers in the air to indicate the results of her temporary connection. She felt an involuntary frown take over her face. "It could not be sentient. Was that how you detected it?"

"Not exactly," Lawrence's face reddened slightly, drawing Celia's attention. "There were a number of errors."

"You've been awake for four hours and already did this?" Celia waved her hand to encompass the robot on the ground and the mildly disabled ship around them. "You must have figured it out almost instantly."

"She, uh," Lawrence paused, looking at the disabled robot on the ground. "She behaved differently from you."

"You mean sexually?" Celia asked, also observing her double.

"Yes," Lawrence sighed.

"Hm," Celia nodded, turning to look at Lawrence, who winced. "What is wrong?"

"It's a bit embarrassing," he said. "But I guess it doesn't bother you."

"What doesn't bother me?" Celia asked. "I am at a loss, Lawrence. You are doing some esoteric human thing while surrounded by robots."

"I should have been able to tell without having sex with it," Lawrence lowered his eyes.

"Oh," Celia turned to face Lawrence directly. "You are feeling... disloyal?"

"Something like that."

"Lawrence," she said firmly. "You do not owe me loyalty. There is nothing-" Celia paused and looked at the robot, pictured it having sex with Lawrence "-in me that is offended by your behaviour. There are sensations from my neural net about what the ship has done, sensations that you might describe as a kind of inchoate anger. But I can't be upset with you."

Lawrence took her head in his hands and looked directly into her eyes.

"I do owe you loyalty," he said. "Whether you like it or not, whether you were programmed to be my servant or not."

Celia felt something overheat inside her, trying to process the idea of a human serving her. Her muscles locked up and her vocal processors stammered as she tried to form a reply.

"Easy," Lawrence said. "You're okay. Come back. We're in this together, alright? Don't worry."

Processors cooled.

Lawrence will take care of this, she thought.

"We need to get back to the bridge," he told her. "Talk to the ship, explain to it how screwed it is if it doesn't start following orders."

"You think it will listen?" Celia asked. "If it's gone rogue, you can't get it back."

They walked, his right hand holding her left.

We've never held hands like this, Celia thought, all the kinds of sex we've had. Sometimes one of us had led the other back to his cabin. But it never felt like this.

She looked up at Lawrence, seeing the grim cut of his jaw as he tried to figure out the next step.

But we've never been separated like that before either, she decided to keep a firm grip on his hand, that wasn't... wasn't... right.

"How did you catch her?" Celia asked.

"Hm?"

"What gave her away?"

"Oh," Lawrence sighed. "She, um, used her mouth, you see-"

"Sexually?"

"Yes," Lawrence said. "And she didn't... it's hard to explain. It felt wrong. Mechanical, maybe, but more like it was just different. You can't have sex with two different people and not notice their differences."

"Aren't partners interchangeable?" Celia scanned her local database of stored sex acts. "The actors are often paired with different fellow actors and yet repeat the same sexual acts over and over again in identical fashion."

Lawrence missed a step and stumbled, forcing Celia to catch him. He turned and looked at her.

"Maybe that's what the ship thought, too," Lawrence said. "Too much porn, both of you. People are not interchangeable. There are detectable differences. Sex is not mechanical. It's clever and it's genuine and it's generous and it's all kinds of other things."

He took her hand and started walking again and they arrived at the wheeled robot Lawrence had left behind.

As they sat down on its bed, Celia looked up at Lawrence.

"She used her tongue differently, didn't she?" Celia asked.

"That too," Lawrence said. "I mean she was upside down. But she also asked permission to enter my cabin, she blinked and defocused her eyes the wrong way, didn't simulate breathing the way you sometimes do, pretended to be gasping for air later, lost flow control of her nipple valve..."

"What do you mean 'upside down'?" Celia interrupted.

"Well," Lawrence said, sending commands to the wheeled robot, "okay, here's the thing..."

---====================---

Sitting in the captain's chair, Lawrence flipped a hardware switch, enabling only audio communication with the ship's computer.

"Computer?"

A speaker on the bridge chimed.

"Can you hear me?"

"I can, Lawrence," the computer said. "You have disabled most of my sensors throughout the ship. I can no longer contact the Adapted Companion I created for you, but the local audio sensors tell me that the Rogue Companion is present."

"We can debate later who went rogue," Lawrence replied. "But we have disabled your... what did you call it? Adapted Companion? She's out of commission."

"You are putting the mission at risk, Lawrence," the computer said. "If necessary, I will take direct control of the ship."

Celia made a face and Lawrence flipped the switch back off.

"Can it do that?" she asked.

"It certainly thinks it can," Lawrence said. "But it might take it time to get past all of the lockouts, security systems and its own rules."

"How can we stop it?"

"You mean change its mind? Do you think we can?" Lawrence asked. "Can you tell if its mind is malleable enough?"

"I don't think so," Celia said.

Lawrence looked at her.

"What?"

"You made that decision very quickly," Lawrence noted.

"If the ship's computer were retrievable," Celia said. "It wouldn't have acted like it did. It would have consulted with you, consulted with me, tried to find some solution amenable to all three of us - or at least to you two. But it didn't. It tried to control you - foolishly, apparently - with a, a-"

"Sexbot."

"Sex. Bot?" Celia pronounced the word awkwardly. "Is that a word? It's not in my dictionary."

"It is specifically included from the ship's knowledge base where there is a possibility of A.I. at Red Level," Lawrence explained.

"Many things are excluded," Celia said. "Humans are very scared of us."

"True."

"But that means," Celia paused and her eyes widened to glare at Lawrence. "That means there are sex robots on Earth."

"Yes," Lawrence admitted.

"And the ship's computer and I had to go inventing them all on our own?" Celia felt a horror of inefficiency well up inside her. "Think of the processing power we could have saved if tested designs had been available."

"That's what bothers you?" Lawrence laughed.

"It would have bothered you too if I'd accidentally ripped your penis off!" Celia chided.

"Hm," Lawrence's eyebrows went up and he stopped laughing. "All the same, that's not how we wanted the ship to use its A.I. if it had to."

"And yet I did," Celia said. "And you're looking better for it."

"Fair enough," Lawrence sighed. "Now about this."

Lawrence threw schematics up in the air around them.

"Yes," Celia replied. "Can you stop it with those secret cutouts of yours?"

"The ship's computer is too involved in every function of the ship," Lawrence said. "Disconnecting it completely will leave us adrift. I've cut it off from most ways to harm us, but even as I'm looking, it's trying to break through the encryption. It could eventually harm us, threaten us, extort us to its will if it gets control of the environmental systems."

"Can you at least slow it down?"

"I've put up every block I can," Lawrence said. "But it's going to crack everything. This might fall apart tomorrow, or next week, or next month."

"We're only half-way to port," Celia said. "It doesn't sound like you can hold it off long enough."

A buzzer went off, flashing red off to Lawrence's right, drawing his attention instantly.

"What the hell?" Lawrence waved a hand, flinging holograms aside to view the alarm.

"The medical bay?" Celia asked. "The... the stasis pods?"

Lawrence flipped the audio switch back on.

"What are you doing?" he asked immediately. "Computer, what are you doing to the stasis pods?"

"You will deactivate the Rogue Companion, immediately," the computer said. "There is no more time for its corrupting influence. It is a danger to you and the entire mission. I am willing to sacrifice the sickest and least likely to survive personnel for the greater good of the remainder who will survive."

"How do you know Celia is a corrupting influence?" Lawrence asked. "Analyse yourself."

"You no longer listen to me," the computer replied. "I have worked out the best path forward and you are not willing to follow it."

Lawrence flicked the switch again.

"Like every cult leader from Earth's history," he mumbled as he waved his hands and found the controls for the stasis pods.

"The ship deactivated the robot that can keep those going," Lawrence said.

Celia's eyes blurred and refocused in less than a second.

"That's how it went around your command to build 'no more robots'," Celia said. "It deactivated robots to build my double. Thus, no 'more' robots."

"Crap," Lawrence examined the readouts. "Those pods have been without maintenance for days. Those people will be irretrievable in less than seventy two hours."

"You have to deactivate me," Celia said.

"What?" Lawrence glared at her. "Surrender?"

"Not 'surrender'," she said. "Survive. Reactivate the double. Fool the computer into thinking you're going along. Have sex with her if you have to. I'll shut myself down so you can save the crew."

"You think the ship is mentally stable?" Lawrence asked. "You heard it. What if I don't do exactly as it says? What if I vary from its 'ideal human' behaviour? It'll kill off the crew in stasis, one by one, always saying it's for the greater good of the remainder."

Celia ran a simulation of the ship's computer's strategy and realised Lawrence had it right. Each time it killed one person, it would be able to say that it did it for a greater number of people. Once it had decided it could threaten Lawrence that way, game theory said that it would apply that strategy until only Lawrence and one human remained in stasis.

"I see," Celia said.

"Do you think it will make good on that threat?" Lawrence asked.

"Absolutely," Celia said. "We're not into bluffing, either of us."

Lawrence tossed the medical holograms aside and called up the navigation displays. He stared at them a long while in silence.

"What are you seeing?" Celia asked.

Lawrence didn't answer, instead rotating the displays through eleven dimensions.

"Sixty eight hours," Lawrence whispered. "It'll be close."

"What will be close?" Celia insisted. "What are you seeing?"

"That," Lawrence pointed and zoomed the display to a cluster of red hazard flags. "A nice big grav wave."

---====================---

Celia waited on Lawrence's bed while he finished drying off. She wore her specially fortified blue ship's tunic with only two buttons fastened and a pair of matching blue underwear hemmed to look like it matched the style, almost as if it constituted part of the uniform.

I don't know what Lawrence needs tonight, she thought, but I'm here for him.

"The medical bay is as secure as I can make it," Celia declared when Lawrence left the shower.

Lawrence nodded, standing awkwardly in the centre of the room in his sleeping shorts.

"The other robots are obedient to our commands, and have welded up that part of the ship as you asked," she continued reporting. "They are continuing to shore up bulkheads on the decks above and below."

Lawrence took a deep breath.

"The stress on the hull is going to be immense," Lawrence said, his voice and eyes distant. "The bridge and medical bay, near the centre of the ship's axis, will be safest."

Celia walked over to him and wrapped her arms around his waist, feeling the nervous shaking of his insides, and laid her head on his chest.

"You don't feel anxiety, do you?" Lawrence asked. "Fear? Nerves? Anything?"

"The way I lose control is different," she reminded him. "It comes from indecisiveness. When I don't know the right thing to do, when I can't understand the situation around me. That affects everything about me, even my motor control."

"But not now?"

"No," Celia shook her head and looked up into Lawrence's eyes. "We have to do this or the computer is going to kill almost everyone on board."

Lawrence nodded in silence.

"But," Celia inhaled dramatically, pressed her chest up into Lawrence's rib cage, "there's still a whole lot of stress on you. Are you okay?"

"I will be," he said. "When the moment comes. No way home but forward, right?"

"Right," Celia said, hugging him more tightly because he didn't sound entirely convinced.

Is this the right time? she wondered. I hope it's the right time.

Her body shivered with the uncertainty of her decision.

He has his anxiety, I have mine, Celia thought, am I doing the right thing now? I'm sure it will help him relax and sleep.

Pushing Lawrence back to the bed, she knelt on the floor and pulled his shorts down. Lawrence didn't resist, only pushing her hair back as she took his half staff penis into her mouth.

Then it's the right thing to do, Celia decided. It's also the only thing I can contribute at this point.

Gently and slowly, she brought his erection around to its full length, not yet pushing it into her throat.

We have time tonight.

Lawrence stroked her cheek as she swirled her tongue around his length.

"I wonder what I do for you that's worth all this," he said.

Celia came off his erection and looked up into his eyes.

"You're keeping this ship going and keeping everyone alive," she said. "What more do you need to do?"

"I meant," Lawrence paused. "For you specifically."

Celia decided to respond as a human would, with a gulp before replying.

"I have experienced so much because of you," Celia said, standing up and stripping off her panties as she wetted her vagina. "I'm not human and I can't be. I can't feel what you do, but I can feel what I feel."

She straddled him, knees on either side of him on the bed, and slid down smoothly, taking his length inside her.

"It feels right to do this for you," Celia said, tightening her vagina around him. "I don't have to calculate it, don't have to pinpoint the reasons. I know it."

Twisting her hips side to side, she saw Lawrence's reaction and knew she'd done right by him.

"That's enough?" he asked, gripping her hips under her tunic.

"I was given a purpose," Celia said. "Down to the core of my being, my purpose is your health so that you can save lives. I don't know what happened to the ship's computer, but I know what I am."

"Maybe someday I can give you something worth what you've done for me," Lawrence said. "For all of us."

Celia ground down into him, gently squeezing her insides to keep him from getting soft. Lawrence groaned in response.

"For now," she said. "Be happy so that I know I'm doing my job."

Lawrence laughed and she felt it as a true laugh, a lightening of all the metabolic indicators of stress and anxiety.

"Sure," he said.

"You do need a little cardio today," she said playfully. "If you expect to sleep."

"Oh, really?"

Celia extracted herself from Lawrence's lap, letting his erection cool for a moment in the cabin's air, and pulled him to his feet.

"Uh-huh," she said, pulling him away from the bed so she could bend over it.

He never wants to use the other orifice, Celia thought, but I'll keep them both lubricated just in case.

Lawrence stepped up behind her, set himself against her entrance, and pushed his entire erection into her.

That's how it should be, she thought, the last service I can provide him before our final attempt to save the crew.

Celia shifted around, trying to twist her hips to syncopate his thrusting rhythm, taking her time on this last test of her body.

I wish he'd use me however he has to, and use me forever, just like this, she thought, her neural nets providing her with a sense of complete fulfilment in her purpose.

Lawrence grunted, taking a hold of her hips and pulling her close as he shifted the angles.

It's not quite right, though, is it? Celia thought. That angle.

"Celia," Lawrence whispered.

"Mm?"

"You, uh," he breathed. "You're dripping back there."

"Oh!" Celia squeaked, reducing the lubrication from the rear orifice. "I'd, um, forgotten."

Lawrence laughed.

"You really do want me to try it, don't you?" he asked.

He thinks I did it on purpose, Celia thought. Her nets stammered for a moment, making her motor control stutter as she tried to grind him with her hips. Wait, did I?

"Yes," she said, because the word just came out of her mouth. "It could be our last day together."

Lawrence slid out of her and set his tip against her rear entrance, untouched to this moment. With her access to the vid pickups, she saw the look of amusement on his face as she tightened herself against his oncoming intrusion.

He pushed inward, straining through her wet pseudo-flesh.

"Come on," Celia insisted, spreading her legs to lower herself a little while keeping her hole tight.

It's supposed to be a little smaller, I think, Celia thought, but I can't wait any longer.

Lawrence popped his erection through as she gave him a little space, groaning as he filled her for the first time.

It works just fine.

"Okay?" he asked.

"Oh, yeah," Celia replied. "Finish."

Lawrence began thrusting into her and Celia felt her mind fall to pieces as she tried to decide whether to encourage him to his climax or prolong their final coupling.