The Fall of Eva Pryor Ch. 01

It came as a surprise to me, at first. I've lived the years of my blossoming, my tender youth and first womanhood, untouched by unseemly desires, without or within. I was complimented, oh, how many times on my natural, ladylike chastity. And it did seem natural to me. I've never sought carnal pleasure, not even the pleasures of the marriage bed. I've been beset by offers, all curiosity-seekers, I am sure! But I let the years of my womanhood tick by. Twenty-seven, twenty-eight. A maid alone, for no reason they can fathom.

Heartless. Cold. Mechanical. They hear my servos hum and take me for nothing more than a Jacquard loom or a loading-arm from the dockyards. They do not, they cannot know that for me, metal is warm. Metal is within me. Still, even I did not quite grasp the extent of it until this last trip to Edinburgh, there to procure what I needed for my suit's latest adjustment, accommodating the weight of my grown woman's body.

It shocked me. I thought I was unflappable, but it shocked me to find myself in my late twenties walking along the Royal Mile, becoming suddenly very aware of the brace that runs between my legs like a chastity belt. Aware of it moving against me, the faint vibration of the current that powered it suddenly magnified. Aware of the conductivity of my suit, and of my body. At each step, kinetic force jolted me, the pelvic brace pressed deeper into me, evoking sensations of heat and tingling. I had never felt this before, and reasonably assumed it was a malfunction of my equipment. But if it was, I wanted it to continue. I must understand how every aspect of my brace works, so that I can control it and not be controlled by it. And so I decided to test it immediately, in case the effect were temporary.

Up ahead, I spotted a wynd, a close, barely that, a shoulder-width passage uninhabited for long years since the Plague. Fearing no common cutpurse or rogue, I slipped in, down, to the darkest point. I found a bricked-up doorway in the middle and sank to sitting with a muffled rasp of spine-shaft on stone.

Steepling my legs, I reached under my skirts and petticoats, unlacing the top of my drawers. The brace between my thighs was warm to the touch. I flicked it to gauge by sound the temper of the metal and nearly cried aloud as the vibration was communicated through to my most intimate area. Without a second thought, my nails began to tap out a muted rhythm, a counting-song in which each verse repeats, up tempo up tempo up tempo. With a sigh of steam my frame contracted automatically to fit my form as my muscles tautened. I let it. It felt as if the steam-suit itself were embracing me. Indeed, I reached one hand for the manual controls and took it in another notch, like lacing a corset. Between my legs too, it tightened, and I squirmed at the sensation of smooth metal there, slick as if freshly oiled.

'Of course, because it's my body, I lubricate it,' I thought in that moment with surprising rationality. 'That is how it moves me. The whole of me. I am the machine. The machine is me. No wonder! O, but so wondrous...!'

And then I stretched, arched my back, and a more delicious stretch I have never known, even on the cusp of sleep and waking. Silently, holding my breath, I gave myself to the machine that is my body.

Now I know that I have need of no other. I am wed to Science, and to what I make of it for myself. And why not? Who knows the complexities at the heart of the machine?'

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Eva, Eva. Still my mind is lost in your complexities.