Vignettes from a Corporate Family

[handle2]

Chapter 1 - A Gilded Cage

Where the author decides to go way more David Lynchian and fill in a world at thr same time with small random tales.

It certainly didn't seem like the place to start any sort of corporate dissent. Just a summer pool that converted into skate rink for a few weeks every winter. Somewhere in the middle were three men and a lady, seemingly enjoying the sun.

A lanky old Hispanic spoke up first. "They got you huh"
A rotund Chinese man snapped back. "You're one to talk, Rodrigo. They got you too."

"Lighten up, Francis." A Dominican built like a monk and even named Monk tweaked his sunglasses down to stare at his bickering friends. "They got us all good. And anyway where IS Chen?"

Francis (for that was what the chubby 40ish guy called himself) shrugged. "Too busy pounding the streets with Lipkinski. Some young dood he picked up from... I mean, in... logistics. Sent us his wife to apologise and accompany us again. Honestly, Monk... a corporate town this big is still hard to stay discreet in."

The brunette smiled dazedly, sloshing the waters near the edges of her swim bed. "I did think it was a good day for sunbathing. So I figured I'd come for the occasion."

Monk dropped his sunglasses and gazed upon Sheila's form... tanned Amazonian goddess.... then put his glasses back on. "Yeah, Chen was one of the first generation that put its backs into building this town up. I'd say he's entitled to that."

Rodrigo piped up. "Well, the pay is good..."

Francis yelped. "But it's in Arendtcoins! Sheila, would you kindly tell this gentleman what Arendtcoins are?"

Sheila's started whirring faintly for a few seconds... "Arendtcoins are a corporate currency used to facilitate assignments of resources within the Arendtcore family both as a corporate entity as well as within the corporate town of Little Sanctuary, Minnesota. This information is credited to Wikipedia."

Rodrigo deadpans. "Sheila, would you kindly tell this gentleman what 1000 Arendtcoins goes for currently in US dollars and where that roughly puts Arendtcore as a employer?

Sheila took a few more seconds to process this... "the current exchange rate at the Arendtcore Corporate Store for employees is 1000 Arendtcoin to 175 point 33 US dollars. Based on 2080 comparisons across the New United States of America, Arendtcore pays its employees better than 99% of other companies of similar size."

Francis stuttered "but they probably expect us to keep buying stuff from them. Isn't that the point of a corporate store?"

Rodrigo deadpanned. "Everything is designed to Lighten your wallet faster if that were the case. I'm still wearing shirts I bought decades ago and boots that still sing lullabies to my feet after years of weekend and holiday hikes. That's not cheap corporate crap is it?"

Francis whimpered. "But that Arendtcore logo from the early days was so cringe... I saw it on the corporate store when they reissued it on our free 60th anniversary kit and it looked so archaic."

Martin sighed. "Resorting to emotion when you've lost on fact is the defence of a debate loser. Besides, most of us wear ours with pride! Now can we ease up on the lookup tennis before we have to explain to Chen exactly why we're buying him dinner tonight?"

[handle2]

Chapter 2 - This much effort for jack shit?

Somewhere deep in Little Sanctuary, an interloper popped open a hatch and gently bounced into the entry lobby of a server... the hacker had scanned a few thousand Little Sanctuary servers and lucked into this particularly odd group of servers that connected deep into Arendtcore. possibly a top honcho's home workstation or external fileshares lazily added to the company's systems either behind the back of or over the heads of the IT security staff. This would be so profitable, he mused, wondering what could be had once he broke into Arendtcore proper.

the first sign he should have been more careful was when he crashed into the initial entry layer, He had sworn that the port was going to stay open... what he hadn't accounted for was how it kept randomizing across the surface he was trying to pass through. no, not just pseudorandomly... there was almost a strange sort of.... true randomness in whatever the heck was calling the shots, like an actual unbiased bingo game set.... it took several painful slams into ports closing at the last moment before he'd wiggled his way in.

What kind of devious maniac could have have done this?

===================

The butterfly was a beautiful purple and black as it fluttered across Elliot's closed eyes, his body casting ripples of shadows across the lawn alongside splashes of torn grass. On his ears, he wore a chunky pair of headphones, designed to somehow incorporate a music player within it. Mother Ammi had calmly handed him a music cartridge she had personally burnt and cracked the writeprotect tab on, along with the headphones, after their second dance practice session.

He suddenly opened his eyes right as the butterfly flew around, right in front of his face.

The Gdanzeland people did not follow many of the scales, beats or even sensibilities of Western or African music. They had slowly come up with forms the same way they always had, just sampling from mother nature and coming as close to it as they could in their art... their music, their dance, their sculptures.

It was beautifully ethereal. It was also wickedly random. A watcher process could do terrible things eavesdropping on the motion data from a little boy doing the Y'tole Lemme basic forms for practice... seed a random number generator that breathed down the neck of true randomness, for example. And that could be used for other nefarious deeds like...

=======
He did not like it.
The server map had promised a straight short route from here into Arendtcore. So why had it come to this? He was now running on some sort of hexagonal patterned carpet that already felt all wrong just from its look, having opened a door that for some inexplicable reason had become a sort of wooden elevator door.

"No problem, I'll just turn around and choose-" the interloper paused.

The elevator call buttons were gummies. No, not the soft smooshy type of switches they used on some throwaway cheap modern consumer stuff - actual soft candy rounds of jelly carefully tossed in sugar...

As if to emphasise something or other, the interloper stared as a pair of lips appeared around then started chewing on the gummies, making a soft set of purring noises, before burping... "What are you looking at, perv? Show's over. Get going before I call the Groo on you!"

As if on cue, the other lift doors opened, revealing... something indescribable, standing in a dark hallway, lit dimly and occasionally by bursts of erratic electrical lighting.

The interloper couldn't even begin to describe what it was. What he knew was that he didn't want to be right next to it. And as the distance between the doorway and the Indescribable grew smaller with each flash of lighting, he realised he could do only one reasonable thing.

He started running. This was going to start eating at his neural coherence if he over did it and was usually just reserved for emergency... well this was an emergency.

He kept going and going... perhaps he may have gone too far. He collapsed just an inch or two from the door at the end of the hallway he'd been trying to reach. Only the safeties in his gear had cut him off before he'd burnt the last embers of his NC...

He was going to have one hell of a vacation with the proceeds of this heist. Somewhere away from the dour Scottish gloom. Provencal, perhaps... he'd always wanted to try real wine and real food from a people who hadn't ruined their own farming...

That silly thought stabilised him as he grabbed the doorknob and pushed himself through and into the next room
≈==========
The interloper blinked again. And again. No. This room had forced a monochrome filter over his eyes and for some reason it disrespected even the emergency releases these virtualizations had normally. Still, it seemed safe... just a dark room, with a warm comforting sofa in front of a older pre-Despotic Years ... television set, that was what his pawpaw had always called them was it?...

He sat down on the sofa and as if on cue the TV started playing an old toy commercial for some doll named "Build It Bailey". It was oddly comforting as the singsong cheerfully announced the special qualities of the toy: a near-authentic overalls and shirt like those worn by construction workers of the era, right down to the mud stains. Several varieties of doll hair color. A very basic AI that did two things: it dispensed random construction-themed sweets if you told Bailey he was "neat", and launched into an animated song and dance about whichever tool the doll came packed with out of a possible 7.

As the interloper stretched a little, feeling better after a few loops of the ad had given way back to white noise, he noticed three things:

1. The door he had come in through was gone.
2. There was no other obvious way out.
3. There was a brand new condition Build It Bailey doll next to where he was sitting

The interloper considered his options, slowly deciding that he would take the L it needed by getting ejected automatically by the server's own timeout detection, in about 2 minutes. He looked at the doll... then decided to just have fun anyway. "I think you're pretty neat, Mr Bailey..."

"Thanks mate, have sweet. My dear mama freshly made." The doll fished in its overalls and handed the interloper a small cake of sorts shaped like a toy screw.

The interloper eyed the cake suspiciously - everything in this system was a representation of something. This could be a trap, or it could be... delicious? He blinked as he realised his body had just bit down on it without much pause. The faint texture of cranberry sauce on buttered shortbread lingered on his breath and fingers, crumbs on the sofa.

He wept... then bawled as the server finally called time and kicked him out totally. All that work for just a cranberry shortbread biscuit!?

.... it had been the best biscuit he'd ever tasted, real or virtualized, mind.

[Section_Eight]

Was honestly expecting his mind to be ripped to bits by SHODAN but a cranberry biscuit is good too.

A biscuit of doooooooooom!

[handle2]

I was going for "toy doll chainsaw of doom" then I realised... "Do I want that kind of downer?" I opted in the end for a more Buddhist parable-like ending (you'll notice a little bit of religion in my tales... this is not a coincidence, and that's technically not really a religion. you'll figure it out at the end.

[handle2]

Chapter 4 - A Directed, Soundtracked and narrated past

Just a word of warning here - Stephan and Martin may or may not really be the heroes of this story - there's a reason they've been expelled from the conventional studio systems of the world of Four Brothers...

Also: this tale is several chapters long on these Vignettes. I apologise for poorly separating my longer stories and supposed vignettes.

Stephan Alberg gritted his teeth furiously as he re-read the judicial judgement that had signalled only the beginning of his reputational downslide. He had managed to prove that the allegations of him being too handy with had been fabricated - he was free of the lie... or rather he should have been. In Hallerwood, lies like that had a habit of forever fouling one's career, even when one had proven themselves genuinely innocent by alibi, kept evidence and even investigative work that had placed the director's wife far far away from him when it had supposedly happened. She had continued the lie, and it would take time to litigate her out of his misery, even with the lower standards imposed in a civic trial (that he clearly could pass when it had been a criminal court case held against him by bribed officials)

Stephan sighed and sat down in his trailer. It had seen better days, but he had redirected craft and food services fees towards fighting what many had thought was a losing defence. The conditions reflected that neglect - he had piled up dirty laundry, and he had been living on food that had been far from healthy. Stephan had counted on the return of people to his door, begging him to produce their vidflix once again, even just short half-hour flix intended for the home streamer. He would NOT lower himself any further to doing nasty little five-minute or two-minute shorts...

Stephan opened another small bag of chips and wept. Perhaps he should just give up altogether, resettle in another place with a good film industry. Europe had several smaller but thriving places. India was rising. the Zealands had their own share of the home video and theater pies... Or even worse, he could just sell this trailer, walk out for good, and vanish into some other career. He'd always wanted to try his hand at book illustration. The earlier he decided, the more resources he had left over even after his hard won fight for justice that he could throw at his choices. And the clock was ticking - the later he'd left it, the less room he'd have to maneuver and refuse offers...

There was a knock on the door. The Craftwerks trailer park had a base level of services onto which various services could be tacked. It was all he could do to afford the basic rental which gave him the trailer space, a sparse amount of power, water and basic sanitation, and a listing by which others could find him in the filmography trades. That listing also doubled as a way to reach him with physical mail. In this case, a slightly thick handwritten letter. The envelope was pale blue, and a monogrammed logo had been stamped on it with a cursive "M.K." into a blob of dark blue satin wax, denoting it had been sealed somewhere, and delivered all the way to his doorstep. The M.K. could only belong to one actor he'd helped out a lot ages ago, back when he could afford to be generous with his advice and even his seed funding. Some of it had backfired, some of it had paid off... Martin Krauffer was a little autistic, but he had become a great director and kept his name up in lights for over three decades...

Then the little crazed man had suddenly announced he had a major new project that would change things, and fell right off the face of the earth. many had fondly remembered his lunacy, but in this town, they forgot you mostly after a matter of months. You vanished for almost everyone but the connoisseurs of fine film after a year or two.. Oh sure you could maybe have a comeback in the right circumstances - this was a weird town, but if you didn't keep your name up in visibility somehow, walking off the set was tantamount to a sort of suicide. It really hadn't been his own choice to commit said suicide, but he'd been so stressed gathering everything he needed to set the record straight, that his reputation had clearly withered away anyway from neglect even if he hadn't become vilified.

So what, really, was Martin Krauffer doing, summoning him? The director had suddenly written this letter with the wax seals and all... even spent extra postage on just writing his name and general state location down and leaving it to the postals to look up the local trades and find his name somewhere in the listings. Stephan hadn't exactly made himself very easy to find...

Dear Stephan,

It delights me so very much to hear that you have beaten the nasty and unfounded allegations. It has been a year since the judgement, I understand. You must be wallowing in so much work right now, the world now embracing you without the stench of those odious claims...

Or maybe you aren't exactly that fortunate. I do recall how many such good people fortunate to clear their names still don't clear the air enough to return to employability, or they may remain in a continued vendetta by those who got them into unemployment in the first place. Or perhaps... you aren't really as innocent as they claim, and only the high standards of criminal prosecution have spared you a prison term or fines... but not the continued opprobium of your peers.

I refuse to make such judgements. What I remember is a dazzling producer who could put together a great movie on the budget given, the people given, and the sets allowed. A man who lifted me up back in the good old days. It was such a shame we never got to work together before I left for Brazil.

I'd like to change that. I appreciate I'm not really helping much with the luggage allowances and the class of plane I've booked, but nobody has business or first class seats on the routes to Raijin Cove but the extremely monied on private flights... still, if you would kindly give me at least a few days of your time, I'd like to meet you on the set of that strange endeavor I once prided myself on joining. I am still lacking in regrets, and I want to share my good fortune with you, if you'll only let me.

Tickets attached on the next weekly flight path from California to Brazil and onwards to Raijin Cove. I look forward to your favorable reply, that is to say, meeting you in person. It is the least I can do for you now after all that you have done for me.

Yours in anticipation,
Martin Krauffer
Arendtcore HC Studios - Raijin Cove - Unit 3

Stephan Alberg blinked, then checked and found a slowliner ticket. Lacking in luxury, Martin had said. This was clearly bullshit - there were three reasons you took a slowliner into the skies - the high quality of services during the prolonged flights, the ability to reach places that could never host a Boeing takeoff or landing in any size airliner, and the immense economy of such a flight relative to a powered airliner.

Twelve days later, a slowliner touched down in the strange Chinajapese protectorate of Raijin Cove... home to a peculiar strain of creativity simultaneously embraced and yet also terrifying those who would take in its productions. He shrugged as he walked out of the lift that carried passengers into and out of the slowliner. Stephan's luggage contained several days of clothing that he'd managed to get laundered in the skies (part of the room service even at inner stateroom level), as well as a few favors.

It was time to see why Martin Krauffer had dragged his beaten down posterior all the way to this strange take on Casablanca. Hopefully it wasn't drugs.

He would soon find out it was something far better. And far worse.

===================

Just as he always had done before committing, Stephan had arrived a day ahead of his announced date of arrival, in order to case the joint that he would potentially be working at. He walked around, spoke to the locals, bought several rounds of the local main brew of choice Tsingtao Jiazui - a German style pilsner, flavored with a few legal but questionable additivies for an added kick.

To his credit, Stephan had stopped drinking it after the effects of his first draft, and now stuck to chilled chrysanthenum tea, which was known as a cheat that lacked the mule's kick of the brew, but not its warm yellow color when properly brewed and iced overnight. But that brew had loosened tongues, and he was impressed by what he'd put together.

The studio was constantly utilized most hours of most days. Aside from a few big sound stages, most production was done in the same trailers as in Hollywood, except upmodded to keep things dry and cool in them despite the heat and moistness of Raijin Cove. The compound was of similar size as other classic studios he'd worked at, but slightly larger to support a bigger pre- and post-production phase.

Much like the rest of the cove, they used a mix of English, Chinese, Japanese and Brazilian dialects to communicate their work needs and activities - if you knew at least one of those languages, there was possibly a place for you within its hallowed fencing. Some productions would call for other languages as well, and there was also always room for linguists in several other European and Asian languages specifically within the compounds of HC Studios...

The tech level was also bumped up several notches relative to most of Brazil - this was a sort of tech corridor as well - your modern smartdevice would do comms properly to the rest of the world, the water and sanitation were world-class, though the power occasionally cycled into brief moments of outage, Endeavors requiring more stable power were advised to pack a UPS in the middle to smooth out said glitches for durations of up to a day or two. The Chinajapese Empire was assisting the Brazil government to fix this small black mark on what was proving to be a very promising Free City governed away from the strictures of Brazilian law mostly. There was even talk of building actual apartments and purely-for-living homes at scale through a larger piece of the Cove.

The sky was the limit. And Stephan felt like he'd walked into a good place. Enough delays. Time to let Martin know he'd availed himself of his offer.
================
The gate guard had called for a cloth-roofed jalopy as soon as he'd produced the letter Martin had sent him. As they traversed a myriad of trailers, Location Houses, and various types of set houses, Stephan marvelled at how especially busy the studios were. Every street had at least some cargo transferring, gear being prepped, or even a sleepy FX artist tired from too many hours trying to make a effect work either on computer or as a practically deployed trick.

Eventually the jalopy dropped him in front of a subcompound of sorts filled with lots of the same things, just enclosed and in smaller numbers compared to the outside of the chain fencing. Just how big was Martin Krauffer in this town, Stephan had wondered... He took a deep breath and rang the bell button on the large gate in front of him, noting the use of "M.K - Unit 3" on a placard on one of the gate bollards.

He would get in. but getting out would eventually prove to be much harder. Not necessarily for unpleasant reasons, mind you....

[handle2]

Chapter 5 - The good Director And The Doctor of Unit 3

Martin Krauffer was playing a lute to a very young woman. She couldn't have been more than 18. In fact, given her gamine, youthful looks, it was quite possible her existence was on the wrong side of those tracks. Martin didn't care, he'd looked very fulfilled.

Stephan Alberg stumbled into this peaceful picture on an emptied out set, closed apparently for lunch - when these people had leisure they really went hard. A normal set would always have quite a few folks working at any time even during lunchtime except on special occasions. Here, it was just the director who had demanded his presence enough to pay for his slowliner fare both ways, in case Stephan found out that he did not want to be part of Unit 3 and wanted back home to Hallywood to slowly die in silence, and a short-haired brunette minx in workout pants and a sleeveless, collarless T-shirt. The girl turned her head to look at Stephan... "Martin, dear? we have visitors."

Martin stopped in mid lute riff, putting it back in its case. "Oh, do we now, Minnie? Why, it's Stephan Alberg. The man who helped make me all those years ago... here to see if he has a life in the Cove with us..." He got up and clapped hands on Stephan's arms, beaming happily. "We will make you a happier man than those bastards in Hallywood ever have. But where are my manners? you must meet the man who keeps us all healthy in this tropical hotzone... Doctor Selmuhng? Doctor Selmuhng... we have a visitor who needs your innoculations!"
A tired old man shuffled out of a nearby trailer in a worn doctor's coat, smiling. "And I keep telling you never to wake me up at lunchtime. a lot of us do want our siestas." Doctor Selmuhng paused to take stock of Stephan, before nodding. "Ah... just a word of advice, newcomer, I need you to visit my trailer during work hours at least once during the next few days. Raijin Cove has been mostly domesticated but we still get the occasional nasty in our veins and... well, it's a pain in the ass to have to medevac anyone out of this town when we only have two copters to fly people out of here immediately to the nearest hospital... three hours away."

Stephan looked relaxedly at the doctor. "And I don't suppose you have some... shot that can help keep us safe?" He asked, the heat and moistness of the local climate sapping most of his ability to worry.

Doctor Selmuhg nodded. "I do, but it has a pretty narrow window between being effective and being potentially deadly to half the crew here on top of the local pathogens. So they couldn't just plonk a bunch of syringes in a box and tell us to look after ourselves... That is why I'm here: to titrate the shots into an effective level for each and every unique individual in this little camp. I also act as your local GP as well... you can't be entirely sure you can trust the doctors outside this studio not to bilk your insurer with ineffective treatments or oversized bills your insurer will balk at for one reason or another."

as if on cue, misters opened up for a minute, spraying the air as if to bring down the humidity and the temperature to a slightly more comfortable level.

Stephan shook the Doctor's hand. "I'll visit your trailer after 2pm then?"

Selmuhg nodded. "Certainly, I have no appointments today at that time slot. Get it done, then get to work in this camp."
===========================
Stephan accompanied Martin as he showed off the facilities around his share of the studio compound - a few key sets for some commonly shot types of scene, a lightbox that dynamically glowed and provided keying data for post production for certain shots, one or two very large classic sound stages that could be converted into one of the other kinds of set if necessary. the usual lighting and crew support facilities... Stephan had noticed quite a lot of people walking around were accompanied each by fair maidens, none of who could possibly be older than 40, and most were probably half that age or even less.

Perhaps Raijin Cove had discovered how to fight back the demographic disaster that the world was facing... He needed to get some of that himself... He was a gentleman, but even he had needs himself, Stephan had mused.

Martin finally came to a cargo lift lodged in a shaft entirely on its own, shaded in its waiting area. "Now you'll notice some weird shit in this place..." Martin noted as he ushered Stephan into the lift. "We do keep a few normal camera drones around, but none of the bigger rigs... we seem to be exceptionally light on acting crew, and we don't have a union representative office." Martin pulled the manual shutter across the front of the lift and punched a call button that sent the ceiling-less cargo lift travelling down the shaft.

Stephan nodded slowly as the lift descended with a surprising alacrity. "I had noticed. Is that due to the permissive environment this Cove seems to have for many odder... behaviors?"

Martin shook his head as the lift stopped three basement floors down, motioning Stephan to follow him along the cool, dry corridors, kept somehow that way despite being deep in the dirt of a tropical jungle, like some sort of secret military base. He walked up to a set of double doors. "that's the root of it, yes, but the answer in detail lies behind these doors... And with that he threw open the door to a bizarre place.
=============
Stephan had been in prop storerooms before, and this had seemed to be one partly... but he also noticed lots of very lightly dressed people of various ages and genders and ethnicities lining the walls and lying down in racks, all of them individually tarped with transclucent plastic, each of them tagged up with various sorts of data. Two technicians were at one of the myriad of tables down the middle of the long corridor, discussing something over a naked brunette woman. It was not a living breathing human woman- her lungs had halted completely, and a small sliver of flesh had retracted away beneath her large-areolae 32DD breasts, exposing a series of memory cards and circuitry.

"And you say they only sent us two of these?" "I'm afraid so, the client was a cheapskate." "We can't take the bigger risks on the shoots for this particular client. Tell the Unit manager that we don't recommend the lion fight scene number 353 or the mega orgy scene number 662 on this since we have less spares for damages and more downtime for repairs projected."

Stephan blinked hard, these people were discussing shoot scheduling over... something that was not entirely human... "What the hell, Mr Krauffer.... what is all this stuff? I've produced many films over the years, but I've never seen such sophisticated props..."

Martin chuckled. "That's our dirty little secret, Stephan... we make memories for premium androids. Our upper subsidiary sends three or four of a unique robot, and a Psychoanalysis from their programmers, and we stage the scenes they specify with some room for creative uniqueness in each take... then we take the surround footage and run it through the premium androids and send back the two with the most response and neural generation from the shoots... and the rest become either spares or bit actors in other shoots...."

Martin watched as two techs with smart tablets carefully tapped away, watching a young boy carefully lick a lollipop while sitting in a sort of generic bodysuit. After a short while, the boy suddenly stood at attention and froze, allowing the techs to carefully relieve his lollipop before stuffing him into a container box labelled "Shoot: MARV-00430-Unit 02 - Shoot In Progress, do not ship out of Studios" and having a carrier drone slowly cart him away further into the rows of storage racks.

Martin smiled a little. "It's an interesting challenge turning out this much quality footage on a first-person view basis... yes, we wire them up to act as the very cameras in our productions rather than trying to approximate stuff with careful camera drone placement. But they never tire as long as we keep them charged, they'll never complain about taking 200+ retakes in our quest for the perfect memory, and more often than not we're surrounded by beautiful people and creatures of all kinds. When you're spending enough on a custom android to request this level of memory forging, it's usually never with visual beauty as an afterthought."

Stephan wanted to start yelling "what the hell" and storm out of this room and even out of Raijin Cove proper, but something seemed to be restraining him besides mere decorum and politeness... He rubbed his head briefly and then he saw it - two of the androids that had been set aside for bit acting or future use. He approached them slowly, murmuring a name...

"Cecilia..." But it couldn't be her. Her hair was almost the same prussian blue as the director's wife who had almost ensnared him. that same feminine beesting nose, those thin but rounded lips... her sybaritic face framed in a bob haircut that went from the top of her head to the edges where her arms and shoulders met.... her hips, her breasts, the same approximate size as Cecilia's had been. The moles were missing of course, and her belly was more washboard... but it was very much the same woman he'd been accused of molesting, even though he'd tried his hardest not to give in and get his paws all over, he had loved her so very much before he'd discovered that she was going to only hurt him again...

Stephan shook his head after a minute and continued walking and examining the rest of the storeroom, pretending the brunette in particular held no special interest for him... but he wasn't fooling Martin, who had briefly stopped to scribble some notes in his communicator. After a while, he decided the cavern was becoming too claustrophobic and had Martin escort him back up to ground level to leave the cargo lift shaft, watching as an extra set of doors swung up as a preventative measure against flooding in these jungles.

He felt oddly dizzy, and upset as well. Perhaps a visit to the doctor would be in order, aside from the recommended vaccine, he mused as he lurched away towards the doctor's offices

==========================

The two techs looked on in envy at their new work. They had both been through this phase before weeks or months ago. In fact, everyone in the studio who wasn't lucky enough to be in love with a real woman had been through it with satisfying results in virtually all cases.

One of the brunettes that Stephan had taken a fancy to had been stood up at attention, a panel retracted beneath her breasts. They had figured out bits of his past, drawn from one that had been a source of both pleasure and pain to him, and were now reprogramming the brunette to function as his adoring, truly loyal Cecilia, not the grubbing beauty trap harridian who had ruined his career in Hallywood.

Everyone in here was a badly damaged man in the film industry. Everyone was an incredible creative. This was the gift Arendt HistoryCreate Studios had set aside to specially bait all these hurt vidflix teamsters into producing the best first-person footage ever, and only one person would see the finished footage ever on each campaign of shots.

The ersatz brunette twitched a little. "Stephan, you seem tense tense tense tense tense-" Her voice slowly oscillated up through several octaves until one of the techs sighed and cut her power, causing her eyes to flicker as she fell silent again in mid-test. These people were all earnest, but they were not exactly anywhere near Bellamy Arendt in terms of competence with android programming. Still, they hoped their earnest well-wishes would fill the gaps in their knowledge...
===========================

The nurse had been nice to look at, Stephan would admit. it made the prophylaxis and basic doctor's visit easier, as he nursed the rawness of his freshly administed monthly vaccine while clutching a small bottle of rum. It didn't seem quite like the sort of thing a doctor ought to be prescribing in this day and age, but Doctor Selmuhg assured him that it had surprising medicinal qualities as a product of Raijin Cove's pharma and brewing microindustries. He would take the doctor at his word and drink it, especially as the Doctor had promised he would get another bottle every time he came in for a valid re-up on his prophylactic vaccine. It was one way to keep people from dying of whatever nasties this climate harbored, Stephan mused.

He walked into what had been designated as both the daily canteen as well as the mess on weekends, looking for a bite to eat. He had heard good things about the Thursday night buffet that was laid out for staffers and special visitors to this little studio, certainly a safer alternative than whatever random experiments were out there in the stalls and cafes... He helped himself to his usual of one handful of potatoes, one handful of chilled fruit, and one handful of some meat that was definitely real beef, plus some matching cutlery. He skipped the mulligawtny soup, it had seemed like overkill on top of the roast beef.

Stephan sat down and began to eat alone... but he would not be left alone. A voice he had long grown to associate with disaster in a courtroom after a whirlwind few weeks of torrid romance spoke up next to him."Mind if I join you?" Stephan looked up and down at the brunette who had accosted her with his own plate. "Certainly, Miss...?" "Cecilia Adams."

Stephan closed his eyes... the Director's wife who had ruined him was a Cecilia, but not an Adams. Still, old feelings began to simmer as the lady sat down next to her in her floral minidress and straw hat, removing the hat had in turn caused a small head of black hair to spill out. "Cat got your tongue?" She suddenly asked...

Stephan shook his head quickly. The Cecilia-Not-Adams lass continued eating, occasionally making conversation with him and him alone, making him feel once again like the centre of the universe. What had been a planned done-in-thirty-minutes-with careful chewing meal slowly became an hour long mix of talking and sharing their meal. It had seemed like a tragedy when it finally had to end.

"So uhm... when will I see you again, Cecilia?" Stephan had been a little too forward and honest about how he felt about this lass who had slammed headlong into his loneliness and put the first of what would become many holes into its hull.

She massaged her jet black hair a little with her finger tips. "I don't know... I just arrived three months ago at Unit 3. Today was my tenth shoot since."

"Newcomer, just arrived in the Cove only yesterday," Stephan had blurted out. He had hoped he would get a producer spot in Unit 3 so that he could work under Martin Krauffer as if entranced by a mix of loyalty and appreciation for getting him this possible source of income and even a way back into the credits of some new production. Sadly for Martin, Stephan had mused in a warm buzzy feeling, it was now just as likely he would root to get into Unit 3 for this... Cecilia...He shook his head again, a slight throbbing from what he assumed was the recent prophylaxis he'd gotten. Hopefully it would not recur next month...
============================
Cecilia version 2 stood at attention as one of the techs unbuttoned the front of her dress and carefully eased her bra open from the front, slowly mouthing the words he needed to say. "Cecilia 2. Would you kindly expose your control panel?"

The soft flesh beneath Cecilia 2's pert modest breasts slid in and upwards into the recesses of her chest, exposing her electronics without any sign that she was aware of her true nature. The tech typed at an adjacent computer, setting it up to take some audio input. Then he entered a command into the console.

Cecilia's panel flashed lights briefly, before she started chanting a seemingly random series of numbers. These were actually the sequences of vocal patterning and motions she had made in front of Stephan, as well as codified values of how he had responded. As she recited the numbers without any emotion at an even clip, the computer slowly built up a profile of Stephan, and a matrix of possible and ideal responses that Cecilia could offer to Stephan in future interactions...

"There's got to be an easier way to build these personalities," one of the techs lamented.

"A larger dataset informs a larger set of possibilities. It's not quite up to what our coding God all the way up there in Minnesota does, but I think this is pretty decent as emulations go..."

"we NEED to automate this stuff more. I don't care what you say about it needing to remain artisanal, there is no way we can scale it up."
"well, do you anticipate a regular flood of lonely young men into our offices?"
"..."
"I thought not. Real love is something they've waited a long time for. They can wait another few days." This final response had been pushed over with a startling lack of irony or self-awareness, given what they were doing in this deeper basement beneath the props storeroom.
=================
After half an hour of droning about nothing but numbers, Cecilia fell silent as the computer finished determining how best to satisfy Stephan Alberg in Cecilia 2's future interactions with him, spitting out a few data slats that would replace the generic testing program that had been run against him in the cafeteria. The technicians got to work, ripping out the test program's slats and replacing them with the new customised personality, as well as replacing her battery with a new 30-day power cell and making sure her new digester system was working properly. Then they sealed up Cecilia 2's control panel with a custom hard-to-see sealant designed to make her fully water-proof down to an unreasonable depth that would never possibly happen when the only river and beach waters accessible in this region only went to about a hundred metres at most.

They would only need to open her back up every so often to fetch detailed logs, maybe once a month. The techs took a deep breath and... punched the final sequence of commands to cut her off completely from the project mainframe, and make her come alive in a few minutes... for a few more minutes, Cecila 2 behaved robotically, grabbing her assigned luggage and walking in a sinuous manner to the lift that would take her from this secret basement floor to the ground level, before following a preprogrammed path in the middle of the night without actual sight, into a newly set out and furnished trailer, which had been nothing but an empty spot only two hours ago. There in the trailer, she halted, taking no further actions until about 6.43am the next morning. She whirred down slowly, awaiting her new life in the studios as Stephan Alberg's new assistant and lover...
==================

Stephan had a pleasant surprise as he got out of the visitor's trailer he'd been assigned for at least the duration of his visit to Arendtcore HC Studios. Standing somewhere in the godrays of the morning sun, a bob-haired woman had stood out in the open, carefully brushing her teeth with a mug of water. She was wearing only a half-buttoned T-shirt and a pair of pale pink panties.

Stephan was truly grateful for the view, but at the same time, a little uneasy too. He rubbed his own eyes, and blinked again.

The girl suddenly noticed him and stopped brushing, toothbrush still in her mouth and foam dripping out of her slightly opened mouth. It was Cecila. The Cecilia Stephan had had such a oddly lovely time with over dinner the night before, not the wretch who had threatened him to step aside on a project and hit him with the rape allegations when he had refused...

This Cecilia still offered violence, though, as the mug went flying into his face hard before splashing its contents across the concrete flooring of the pathway connecting the trailers here in Unit 3... Cecila ran back inside without reclaiming the simple blue plastic mug.

Stephan picked it up, feeling embarassed, but that woman had been so womanly without attempting the usual shortcut of being an hourglass or a major sexpot. She was... a breath of fresh air... also, someone he would need to apologise to later on and return a mug to. Right now he had to prepare for his first day under Martin Krauffer and whichever producer he'd worked with all this time.
===================
AWKWAAARD. Martin had introduced Stephan, and then Stephan paled as he'd realised Cecilia Adams was the other producer he would be understudying with.

Martin continued on matter of factly, ignoring the tension between them that had formed when Martin had lucked into Cecilia Adams while she was practically naked in morning prep outside her trailer, right next to his. Finally he left the two of them to their devices.

Stephan Alberg paled and looked away from Cecilia like a naughty little boy caught doing the bad things. "I erm... you left your brushing mug at my trailer this morning."

Cecilia surprisingly didn't seem to be holding much animosity. "It's on me, I got too relaxed and forgot I was living in a village, not some isolated boondocks spot. Why don't you bring it back to me after work, I'll be at my trailer... now let's focus on getting you up to speed here."

The rest of the day went by in a blur, with nothing else said about the morning's mugging incident. Again, the misters fired up briefly around lunch, a faintly minty smell filling the air around the studio. The food was just as lovely, so was Cecilia's company. She had seemed more animated today, like an entirely different person. Perhaps the previous day had tired her out, Stephan mused, as Cecilia enunciated the differences between the works of Paddy Almtree and his younger twin brother Ashburne Almtree.
=====================
The day of them as professionals ended at 5.30pm, with no overnight shoots planned by any of the directors in Unit 3. Stephan quickly returned to his trailer and grabbed Cecilia's mug. It would probably be just a quick walk down, handing her the mug, and that would be the end of things for the night.

Funny shit, life. You make plans, and then the vicissitudes of fate butt in, and you wind up fighting a rearguard action based on some plan you probably did not have laid out.
=====================
Cecilia had greeted him while dressed in a tight sleeveless shirt proclaiming that Paddy Almtree was awesome and that Ashburne Almtree was pretty good too in directing films, paired with a dark blue miniskirt covered in white polkadots, a pair of warm pink thigh-high stockings and a pair of sneakers, But she wasn't going out, just hanging back in her trailer for a quiet night watching a movie by Ashburne Almtree on her old video player/TV combo.

And soon, Stephan was inside the trailer as well, sharing in her popcorn and watching her laugh ever so often at Ashburne's brand of comedy, as a black cowboy taunted some racists by asking them where the white women were at. Cecilia had this strangely lovable laugh, not hoarsely ugly, not maniacal, just the soft girlish giggle of someone half her apparent age. She was revelling in the moment, enjoying everything absurdist the movie had to offer, including the oddly playing scene where the protagonists were talking to a librarian as she magically threw up each book into a slot in the shelf, occasionally huffing to get dust on a book as if it looked too new.

Cecilia pointed that bit out.... "You see, they shot the entire scene backwards, that means the lines were delivered in the exact opposite direction of how you'd expect that discussion would go in reality..."

Stephan smiled, but said nothing, simply appreciating Cecilia's infectious enthusiasm. He began to hope that nothing else about her was infectious but the good things....
===============================
Eventually the movie ended, and they just sat there amongst the cushions that covered the couches. it was only about 8pm at this point. way too early to just turn in and sleep. "So... what should we do next?" Cecilia Adams asked aloud.

"I dunno... maybe we kiss?" Stephan Alberg offered absentmindedly... then freaked out as he realised what the heck he was proposing.

"Kissing? In my trailer?" Cecilia yelped. Oh no, she was not pleased, surely! What happened next shocked Stephan, as Cecilia crashed herself into Stephan, parking herself between his legs and smiling, leaning backwards to share a small kiss with the producer. That was... totally unexpected... still Stephan started kissing back... he reached for the zip on the back of her shirt unconsciously, disrobing her and revealing a pair of pert feeders wrapped in warm pink lace bra, one that matched the panties Cecilia was wearing beneath her skirt. Oh, what a naughty girl this seemingly mousy producer was, Stephan mused, as they got friskier and friskier, Stephan's groping of her tits met with Cecilia's mischevious teasing of his erect cock with the denim of his trousers and the floral lace of her panties. Soon, actual penetration was a thing, Stephan's member riding upwards into Cecilia's wet pussy without much in the way of protection besides a condom Stephan had always kept refreshed in his pocket monthly in case of safe sex. Cecilia could no longer speak, her eyes closed as she let Stephan grab her wrists and slowly pump into her warm, wetting pussy, breath almost as warm and damp and deep as she moaned.

Stephan was so happy... This girl had been his first real lay since the night before he'd been trapped by the director's wife.... He was going to enjoy it... and so he did, for what seemed like a whole hour.

It eventually ended of course... Cecilia lingering in a kiss as they stood on the porch of her trailer, her skirt making a weak effort to conceal that she was still pants-less and riding on the high Stephan had given him. "Don't be late for work tomorrow, Stephy..." Cecilia had farewelled Stephan, before closing the door to her trailer tightly.

Stephan turned around and walked to his trailer, pausing only briefly to watch the lights burning in the glazed windows of Cecilia's trailer, before going into his own. He had a mess of his own to clean up, and if he was not careful, he might have to redo all that cleaning... He giggled at the thought.
===========================
Cecilia had turned into a different creature as soon as Stephan had gone out of earshot, her warm dazed post-coital smile fading suddenly as she disrobed entirely, before twisting the handle to her onboard shower in a different direction from what she normally would have turned it in to open it up. This caused a small glass wall to fold in from the floor into a watertight tube, into which she entered.

A set of robotic arms slid out from slots in the walls and ceiling with various cleaning implements as the glass cage slammed shut around Cecilia. She remained soulless as the arms parted her legs and started slamming warm soapy water into her vaginal cavity to clean it out, with more arms easing cleaning pumps into her mouth and grinding towelled implements around her entire body. Cecilia remaind silent,whirring only occasionally as the auto-cleaner did its job of keeping her hygienic at the end of the day. With the reflex actions being loaded in her personality, she now had no sexual response whatsoever to being pummeled and fondled all over her bits. Like how a good sniper felt only recoil from the overpressure of the gun being fired, the good love androiod now felt only pressure bumps that meant nothing as she was properly rammed into and towelled out for cleanliness.

The autocleaner whirred up as it sent drying warm air all over and inside of her, before the glass cage parted open to let Cecilia out. She proceeded to walk to her clothing cupboard and opening the underwear drawer, randomly selecting a set in black cotton with carefully lined out curves along her breasts, half-exposed ass cheek,sand pudenda in key lime green. She was deriving no pleasure from any aspect of this dressing whatsoever. It was merely in place to ensure that she did not blindly stumble out of her trailer totally naked if an emergency ensued. The stiffness of her nipples as they ran against the cotton fabric of her sports top were a involuntary reflex animation curve...

Cecilia turned out the lights of the trailer and slowly lowered herself across one of the couches, finding her way in the dimness with her night vision module. There was a sequence of beeps and whirrs as she triggered her shutdown programming for the night, setting herself up to wake at 6.42am the next morning. She had a certain quota of power use not to exceed in order to last the full 30 days on the label of her power cell without earlier recharging, and she was about 5% shy of exceeding it today...

She felt nothing about this - the power she had used was within the set limit. Her eyes focused briefly and then slowly unfocused into blindness as her mechanical body shut down for the night.

[handle2]

Chapter 6 - Backlash, justification of the direst idea

Stephan Alberg fell into a blissful career at HC Studios in the middle of Raijin Cove. Days of hard work on first-person memories for premium Arendtcore androids, days of exploring the things the cove had to offer its visitors and inhabitants. Stephan spent time alternatively working hard as a producer on a strange type of vidflix, getting slightly drunk, getting slightly high, meditating, and having fun times with his assistant Cecilia Adams. He had briefly worried about fraternizing with Cecilia, but a brief check with the HQ offices overseeing all the units had cleared him.

"Lighten up man, we ALL have side chicks in this town. If it was legal in our parent entity, why wouldn't it be legal in this wilder place?" The lawyer had basically said when they got back to him. "Also, as your legal representation in any arguments with a external entity due to work done for us... I want you to pass me some of those shrooms you gots there..."
==============================
There was inevitably going to be a backlash to all this calm and joy. and it came ahead of schedule for Stephan. It had been a Friday night after work, and Martin Krauffer and his girl Minnie had dragged Cecilia and Stephan into a game of low-stakes poker. Low in that everyone had basically a bunch of biscuits serving as chips. It was also strip poker. if you ran out of biscuits, you to basically 'overdraft' by removing a piece of clothing for a fresh pile of chips everytime you ran out.

Poor Cecilia had been quite terrible at poker. As a result she had had to avail herself of the 'overdraft', and her skirt and top that read "The Joy Of VidFlixing" were now carefully folded and piled on one side of the table, and she was wearing only a set of bodycon panties and bra to cover her modesty. She looked about ready to need a third overdraft, and everyone knew what that meant.

Stephan blushed heavily everytime he'd glanced at Cecilia's plight - he did understand that as an elite among the amateurs at the table, he was primarily responsible for the partial nudity of Minnie and Cecilia. Still, he wasn't going to let it spoil his game. In order to keep himself from overdrafting as well, he had kept himself away from munching on the biscuits being used as betting collateral, and opened a small bag of some new kind of shroom chip that a local entrepreneur had started selling called "Wakefulness Wonders." ... These ones he was chewing on were chicken salted, and they had a lovely texture on top of the way the shrooms sucked up the flavor of the chicken salt and made it their own.

The first few had caused no issues. But apparently it was an effective dose of something, and very soon these chips would be totally banned within the studio compound for most of its inhabitants...

=================================

The first sign that Wakefulness Wonders were going to be incompatible with the way the studios were run came on the fringes of Stephan's eyesight... the warm, friendly atmosphere seemed to be folding inwards into the middle of his eyeview, replaced with a dank, dull tinge on everything. a sort of reality wake up call.

The bottom fell totally out of the hole when he glanced at Minnie after a bit of this had gone on. Why... was there a sexdoll jerkily playing cards with them? It came with an sort of existential howl, equal measures of realising the demographic disaster was really running through their town like everywhere else, and of realising that two of the players at the table were just basic sex androids. The tics were obvious - their whirring, the occasional faint beep that had been inaudible for some reason all this while, the jerky movements that he hadn't noticed somehow. The seams on their bodies were far more obvious, shadows running along the grooves in their plastiflesh as the now dark-greenish light of the studios played across them. Things that had just been glossed over or taken as cuteness in lovable maidens suddenly became tell-tales of mental manipulation. Someone was fooling everyone in this camp into accepting these mechanical maidens into their hearts, a practice that he hadn't found disgusting at all for some apparent reason for the past 27 days...

He looked slowly over to Cecilia Adams, dreading what he would see.... even more of the same, but up closer... the scream of anguish that came was even louder, helped along by the fact that he had put his penis into that mechanical contraption so many times.

"What's wrong *click* Stephan? You seem a bit off." Cecila wondered allowed, her head tilting slightly at an angle Stephan now saw as unnatural rather than merely cute.

Martin was the first to offer a response that seemed to fully understand, punching a nearby giant red button and screaming. "Get Doctor Selmuhg and Security to the mess hall now! We got an Early Waker!"

He had responded fast. Sadly, however, he hadn't responded properly in time, as Stephan applied a support stick that had been awaiting a proper blunting and stabbed it right through Cecilia.

This had caused her to whirr and beep incessantly, her body running through various errors that any being, human or otherwise, would experience from being speared through the heart. Cecilia's eyes rolled upwards uselessly as she twitched away into failure-land, her voice garbling even harder as she begged. "Why, Stephan... Why would you do dissss to meeeee..." She jerked away as a few electrical sparks signalled the end of her ability to access her personality data, causing the ersatz woman to beep repeatedly as she fell limp, a strange sort of accusatory look spread across her plastic face.

The strange sight of reality shifting between a bloodied, gurgling Cecilia dying slowly as her heart occasionally spurted fresh arterial red, and a prematurely terminated lovedroid with fatally damaged circuitry sparking slowly, only helped Stephan go even crazier as he vacillated between realising he'd murdered a girl named Cecilia Adams he'd really liked and the 'good riddance' mood of having exposed and destroyed the fraudulent artificial robot designated Cecilia Adams.

After a few more minutes of Stephan screaming and shoving Martin's well-meaning concern away, one of the studio guards had applied a nice hard cosh to the back of Stephan's neck, knocking him out.
==================================

The first thing Stephan smelt when he awoke was that minty spray, the oddly scented chemical that had been applied through the entire compound once a day at lunch such that everyone faintly smelt it... apparently it was less diluted as it was now very smellable, complete with a sharp tang... He had been tied down on a bed... The nurse that had accompanied Doctor Selmuhng on his duties slowly approached Stephan... and he started screaming in terror again. The seams, the unnatural tics, the slightly off-human joint rotations here and there, the slightly plasticky voice she spoke in...

"Doctor Selmuhng, the pay-pay-patient has a-w-w-woken." The nurse spoke in a glitchy voice, a sign of her true nature.

"Doctor Selmuhng loomed into view, shaking the bag of shroom chips that Stephan had been eating at the poker table. "making the curative shrooms for my formula into actual fast food snacks... active counter-ingredient still effective at half of previous effective dosage after baking and chicken salt adulterations... Mental note, make Wakefulness Wonders a banned item within the studio compound. Keep eye out for further abuses of Cytronum Cytrallex aka come-down shrooms as food and drink ingredients and propose bans accordingly. research into detection methods recommended."

Doctor Selmuhg clicked a button, opening a new chapter in his recording. "Patient name is Stephan Alberg, Producer at Unit 3, HC Studios. patient showed no signs of degradation of prophylaxis effects prior to this incident, was on path to 30 days without incident and fresh application of vaccine... Cytronum Cytrallex destroys the neural splinting that allows for the project's success and must be kept away from all patients in HC Studios for their continued well being. countereffects are highly persistent- had to detox patient for two days under restraint after he broke his side-mate in a frenzy during the detox period. I believe the Cytronum Cytrallex no longer has any counteracting effects remaining from the dose the patient took in. I have readministered the prep psychoactive at double strength, will proceed with reintroducing monthly vaccine needed to create neural splinting followed by reintroduction of assigned side-mate to gauge effectiveness..."

Doctor Selmuhng clicked the recorder and put it back into his worn doctor duds, before carefully slotting a firing syringe into a dart gun, "I'm sorry this happened to you, Normally I keep enough spare time on the meter to administer the next month's dosage a day or two before it wears off... But you did consume those counteragents even though I was QUITE sure I had had them all eradicated from the Cove's natural vegetation."

Stephan looked around fearfully, then screamed as Cecilia walked back in jerkily, head twitching slightly ever so often even as she professed her love and concern. "Steph.... p-please... calm down. you've frightened me so much these past f-f-few days..." As if to underline the irony, her head rotated sideways at a slightly inhuman angle, not helping her case that she was a live and loving woman who just wanted her Stephan to get better.

Doctor Selmuhng "Vaccine titrated to patient's current body weight and safe maximum dosage for ... 31.5 days... Administering." He put the gun to Stephan's shounder and gave him a short and sharp pain as the orangey fluid entered Stephan's veins.

For a moment nothing happened... then small bursts of warmth crept over the dingy swampy-green lighting and specularities around the doctor's trailer... As if by magic, the same thing started happening to the nurse and Cecilia Adams. Cecilia's pleading voice slowly lost its mechanical whirring and beeping as the rasp went away, her adoring honeyed tones coming back from sonewhere. She blinked slowly, and just like that... the horrid mechanical android that she had been went away, replaced by the adoring sensual lanky number who had walked into Stephan's life and embraced his loneliness and told him she was his cure and and....

Doctor Selmuhg put away the syringe gun and continued making observations after taking the risk and untying Stephan. "Patient has calmed down. we see beginning of effect-sign. Exhibiting no signs of violence towards any of our female companionship..."

Stephan suddenly bawled and hugged Cecilia, as if awakening from a nightmare, while she gently ushered him out of the trailer, her soft warm skin redolent with that oddly soothing minty scent that pervaded the camp. He wanted her now, he needed her, he loved her... all the horror and anger she had elicited for the past few days felt like a fool's nightmare to Stephan as she gently ushered him towards her own trailer, clicking the lock shut for a little lovemaking session in privacy...

Doctor Selmuhg had a satisfied tone in his voice. "Patient has resumed at least good compliance with our project. Perhaps sterling."
=======================
Doctor Selmuhg found Martin Krauffer in his trailer shortly after. He sighed as he noted the first sign of non-compliance with the project. The entity known to everyone in Unit 3 as Minnie was slumped by Martin's side, her dress carefully unbuttoned on the front and its control panel exposed openly. The power button was glowing red, as Martin had shut her off for some personal quiet. He was calmly taking a drag on a vaping tool that nobody else besides him and the doctor were supposed to have in Unit 3. It contained Cytronum Cyrallex shavings that produced a counter agent to the mind-altering binary drug the camp profligately flung all over the place with the misters and followed every month with a booster 'vaccine'... The vaper allowed the user to escape the effects of the drug for a week or so after a few drags, but it had to be reapplied.

There had been good reasons for Selmuhg to keep themselves immunized against the drug that everyone else took to view the darkness of the camp and the robotic nature of their lovers at bay. For Martin, he had no such choice - he was naturally immune to the current formulations the Doctor had been titrating and changing daily. That had been a source of interest for Selmuhg, and it also made him a more effective enforcer of the drug's effects on other members of his unit. He still did the vape only because, and this had made the doctor laugh a little at first, "I like the flavor of mint and orange in the cartridges."

"I do wish you wouldn't do that." Doctor Selmuhg glanced over at Minnie's limp form, her eternally smiling joyful face frozen in shutdown mode. "It makes them feel even less real, and you already have problems with the medication..."

"Someone needs to be the jailors, and we can't be sampling our own wares, it causes problems handling the rest of us... Call this my... penance for my sins..." Known only to a few people, Martin had strangled a lovely teenage girl named Minnie years ago after she had refused to reciprocrate the disturbing love he'd had for her.

Martin hadn't been prepared to wait any longer to indulge in the original Minnie, once she had communicated her desire to no longer associate with Martin ever again, for being 'too old for her'. He discovered that he had some pretty strong grip in his hands the hard way. He had fled to Brazil to avoid extradition for the perversity he had inflicted on Minnie, and had moved to Raijin Cove when someone at an Arendtcore subsidiary had made an offer to help him control his urges, perhaps even eliminate them one day, in exchange for his brilliance at directing vidflixes which was something the project had required.

Doctor Selmuhg sat down next to Martin, sighing, he had sins of his own too. He had grown too fond of playing with the human mind using chemicals...

it had gotten out of hand when an entire church of peace-loving Mormons in Birmingham had sniffed a new drug he was testing and turned into stark raving violent menaces towards each other. In the end, only a well-dressed old man had barely survived, with some injuries, as he stumbled out of a charnel house numbering 157 other victim-aggressors under the influence of the drug.

Horrified by what he had done, he had resigned his well paying pharma company job and continued experimenting with more pharmacological possibilities in a randomly cobbled together lab in exile and denial of extradition in Raijin Cove. Again, Arendtcore had found and approached him to continue his work in a film studio. It had seemed a stupid idea until the first person requiring psychoactive drugs to overcome his raving anger and fear towards lovebots had fallen into love on the 'mist and vaccine'... It was now a sort of salvation to him, finding more effective and safer doses, and hopefully a way to permanently rewire such minds to accept and even love mechanical lovers like Minnie and Cecilia Adams...

Perhaps he could even save poor Martin with a working medication one day... They were both loners in a prison where everyone felt so good and loved, unable to access the same pathways that had enabled it easily in one out of every 50 men in this demographic disaster that had befallen the Earth....

"I think that shroom Stephan brought in to snack on by accident might... work. wwith the right treatments. You'll be able to love your Minnie truly soon. I just need to titrate and work out how to flip the script on its effects..." Doctor Selmuhng consoled Martin Krauffer, patting his shoulder as a mutual jailor and sufferer.

Martin smiled a little... It would be wonderful if he could get his paws on those slightly oversized breasts and make tender love to them without the sickening feeling that came with knowing, feeling that Minnie was merely a machine designed to simulate love... "Looking forward to that, doctor. I hope you'll join me when the time comes." He smiled as he took another puff of the pointless prophylaxis while looking up at the stars above Raijin Cove.

[handle2]

Chapter 7 - The Inspection Trip / A brief greeting from a man of importance / A most surprising Bodyguard

Paul North looked through his plans for the upcoming trip in his office one last time, checking the three cargo boxes he was going to bring on top of a few days of clothing. Satistisfied, he closed his suitcase and started walking out to the lifts. As he did so, the cargo boxes started floating thanks to the cargo drones built into their frames...

He did not have a clear road. Standing in front of the lift doors was Brotherhood Candidate Lishu. She had been a mere functionary in the planning offices for the company, but had displayed an incredible amount of chutzpah to him - the courage to question the ways that the company had gradually built up, the willingness to propose ideas that threatened and ran counter to his own plans right to his face...

If he had been Seamus Arendt, he would have immediately given her the silly lampshade and shot of questionable alcohol and declared her a new member of The Four Brothers. But Paul was an outsider, so delays had to be faked to give the impression of dealings between the remaining known brothers. He was certainly still itching to put Lishu in as a replacement for Aymee, but the delay also gave his contacts time to ferret around for potential compromises or Manchurian candidacy on her part.

Lishu had folded her arms together, looking sternly at Paul... "Sir, I must protest. You simply cannot go to Brazil. Especially not that.... that PLACE." She lodged her protest with the same lack of fear of Paul's position in the company.

Paul blinked hard, then sighed and tried to marshal his thoughts. "You of course, mean Raijin Cove. Relax, it's just a quick personal trip. three days, in and out."

Lishu stomped her heels. That was just so adorable, Paul mused. The psychopath in him was really looking forward to dash that streak out of her and reduce her to a firm loyalist to the Four Brothers' ideals, but he would enjoy her independence for quite a while.

Lishu yelled hard as if to make it clearer. "During which you have plenty of time to be blackmailed, poisoned, attacked, or even deaded."

Paul considered this with all the due respect it merited... which lasted all of about ten seconds as he started to walk past Lishu into the lift, which she followed him into. "I have a guide I can trust in the matter. Bellamy Arendt has the helm while I'm away. If you need me... don't call me. I left my main smartcommunicator and tablet back here to avoid compromise by their menagerie of hacksters."

The lift doors parted on the rooftop level, just as a long-distance copter pivoted its rotors and slowly landed on the roof. Paul motioned to the cargo boxes to float over and into the cargo hold doors at the back of the copter, checking over the throwaway devices he had put together for the trip. They were almost as capable as his usual toys, but lacked any direct ties or links back into Arendtcore's networks and computers - it was just a personal trip by a single man with a suspiciously large load of cargo on a unusually fast aircraft.

Lishu's protests continued to mount uselessly as she yelped away like a impudent puppy. There would be time to put her in her place as one of the juniors of the Four Brothers at some point. Right now though, it was all Paul could do to fob her off with one final set of instructions. "If Marcus, or any of our special-level clients need tech support, hand them over to Bellamy and Tech Support Team Omega. if you need access to emergency cash, invoke my name and the codes in my last email to you with Finance and they'll stretch to meet your requirements... within generous limits... and Above all, do check in with my nephew at the Manners House at least once a week, and document any oddities you sense. I'd die if anything bad happend to the Manners, but especially Elliot."

Paul smiled at the last bit. There were many things he could hive off or hide in his guise as Paul, but Seamus would always care for the little robot who had somehow become mostly a real live young man.

Lishu icily noted all of that down. "Crystal clear, Mr North... enjoy your... holiday."

Paul had a slight shiver as he heard that last word. He had remained single and solely dedicated to his grand works and shenanigans, both sensible and psychopathic, but this woman was DOING it for him. He briefly considered the possibility of adding marriage on top of christening her as a new member of the Brothers, then shrugged as if to acknowledge her farewell. That all could wait...

and with that, Paul walked aboard the copter as it sped off directly to its destination.
============================
The ride was a lot bumpier than the conventional slowliners that plyed the routes to Raijin Cove, but fast like lightning. It took only four hours on half-rate cooked rations and clear chilled water to arrive at Raijin Cove... not the main slowliner and boat port, but a smaller landing podium known only to a handful of the leaders-in-practice of Raijin Cove.

The biggest one of them was lazing next to a specially requested mini cargo hauler that would be Paul's to command for the next few days. His name to almost everyone else on the cove was Mister M.... Paul had been part of the initial arrangements to establish Raijin Cove, so he knew what the M truly stood for, it was [REDACTED]. Quite surprising to anyone who had known him in his previous incarnation - the man had been a scrawny conniver, not the majestic demigod in the red trenchcoat and prince nez glasses who saluted Paul.

Mr M looked up after bowing. "Good evening , sir, I trust that your trip was satisfactory." He smiled a little wicked smile, the kind that horrified people who truly knew what depths he could sink to even on his current leash.

Paul idly noted a few things. "Speed was unbelievable, but cabin was kind of uncomfortable especially on the smaller turns. Commissary was kind of lacking, but I understand you had to trim a lot of comforts to get that kind of speed and I'm okay with it. Eight out of Ten. Any improvements you could make would only happen if we actually worked out how to get hammerspace securely into the copter as anything but an unstable bomb."

Mr M chuckled and waved a hand briefly as he walked to the cabin of the cargo minihauler, which Paul North loaded with a brief gesture to his three cargo box drones, causing them to float onto the ramp and onto the sheltered bed at the back. "I will certainly forward your suggestions. I'm sure our cargo specialists might have some ideas."

Paul walked over and joined Mr M on the other side of the cargo hauler's bench seat. "Not holding my breath for it to happen anytime soon." Certainly, not when said cargo specialists used to be crazy maniacs with a fetish for various explosives including destabilised dimensional spaces.

Raijin Cove was a giant powder keg waiting to go off atop Brazil, and it was kept stable only under Mr M's careful sheparding as Colony Leader and the backing of the Chinajapese's diplomats underwriting its existence in the face of sensible Brazilian law and order. Paul North fished in his travel coat briefly and handed Mr M a small vial of glowing blue pills that everyone beneath the Raijin Cove flag would move heaven and earth for Mr M for.

Paul was still just a touch worried, but Mr M had proven himself mostly worthy of his trust with the scheme behind those pills. "I got you more... motivator rewards for the kids. You know, they do deserve that brief moment of joy in their specialties when it serves the benefit of mankind."

Mr M nodded as he stashed the bottle away. "Crystal clear, Mr North. motivators for jobs well done, shocks for attempts at fomenting disaster anywhere else that does not serve your purposes, and... " He left it unsaid, but they both knew the bombs lodged in the craniums of any inhabitant with a criminal past - including Mr M himself - were a last resort and not publicized. Here, the inmates were free to create their special blends of mayhem free from persecution as long as they attempted no escapes from the borders of the cove or harmed each other overtly.

The cargo hauler pulled along the narrow streets slowly, as Mr M hummed along to some local Brazilian rock music on the radio, eventually depositing them at a villa that had been set aside by the concern of Raijin Cove's leaders for a month. It was probably bugged and cammed to heck by the various factions of the Cove, but Paul had in turn sicced his own representation from the Imperial Chinajapese palace on it a few days ago....

it had been incredibly fascinating watching the video call of the ninjaxia calmly pouring out a big pile of listening and camming devices onto the garden ground and lighting it all on fire with a thermite bomb. The psychopath in him had delighted in imagining all the anguished and shocked faces losing thier surveillance in the villa, which was now clean.... probably.

Mr M hopped out and started making himself scarce. "Well, home sweet home for the next few days, You know, if you'd furnish your itinerary and intended activities for your trip to me, I could facilitate a lot of it..."

Paul tilted his head and gave Mr M that odd look of both respect and disrespect he had carefully cultivated as North. "I thank you for your service so far, but really, all I need is for you to keep the Cove sane and stable. and if you continue insisting on that itinerary? I will calmly tell you to go fuck yourself, Mr M."

Mr M laughed at Paul's chutzpah. "Hey, hey, it was just a friendly offer, no need to get so pissed, Mr North! I'll just post patrols as usual around the villa, and you can do anything you want in the Cove as long as it doesn't affect the safety and sanity of my people. Deal?"

North smiled as he hopped out to inspect the villa, just as lush and happy as he'd remembered it, before remembering and gesturing to the Cargo Box Drones to enter the secured back doors of the villa proper. "That was always part of the point of Raijin Cove. See you in five days."

Mr M gave a lazy wave as he saunted towards the main gate of the villa. "Don't blow something up or something, see you in five, yeah..."
================================
After ensuring the cargo was now stowed properly in the basement of the hacienda, Paul relaxed with a drink... these had been provided as mini-sized bottles of various liquors, and he had opted for a small shot of rum over ice. Just to be safe from local poisoners, he checked the seal had been left virginally unbroken before breaking open the seal and pouring it out, letting the warm rum and ice melt wash over his tongue, before swallowing. He had ingested a special Mahou No Te device Aymee had specially provided from her crafters, on board the aircraft- it would detect any of several thousand types of known poison and deadly chemical and break them down into pleasant micronutrients and harmless leftovers. Unfortunately, this included some actually safe spice blends - there would be no fully enjoying the impact of some of the local culinary specialties...

There had been one other gift from Aymee. Not specifically intended for this trip initially. In fact, he was fully aware of it, having worked on it himself on Aymee's orders and the credit of the Imperial Chinajapese Palace.

Paul finished the rum and poured away the ice to avoid any attempts at poisoning him via the leftovers in the glass, before sauntering downstairs to Cargo Box Number 1, carefully punching in the security code and standing back as the box walls parted and stowed to one side.He lifted the head of the android in the cargo packing out, the foam slowly sinking and deflating around as he did so.

Somewhere deep in that neural net had been an initial attempt at flashing a copy of a neural scan to provide personality and memories, and the donor had been Aymee. There were six other units awaiting completion based on the same concept kludged together by himself and Bellamy on Aymee's orders, this had just been one of two additional units specially gifted to the Four Brothers so that Aymee would always be around to back them up as muscle and legalistic mind (albeit one without any valid license to practice law - the rules had been very clear on non-transferability of her license even to a mostly perfect clone of herself).

Paul fished out his Fixit-microbar and sighed at the disassembled naked copy of Aymee's body, shrunk down slightly for portability and ease of lifting while powered down. It was time to put together his wingman. Which was a step he'd usually been able to omit with the original Aymee Ichigo, but explaining an extra person on the flight to Raijin Cove would have been too problematic. To work, to work...
========================
It was about two hours later before Paul stood back and looked at the completely assembled body and the portable charger pad that came with it. It would run off the 30-day battery installed inside of it, but given the potential power output of its motors, he might be lucky enough to get ten days out of it.... There was also the issue that this was the first practical test of the neural scan tech - it had worked okay in the lab in theory, but this was the first time he was going to run this unit in the field. For all he knew it would just fall down in a useless blabbering heap in practical full execution mode... He sighed and ran his fingers along the control panel exposed beneath the unit's breasts, causing it to slowly whirr and beep as the toned muscular human analogue flesh slid down and sealed watertight.

The unit stayed silent, merely breathing... Curses, it really was too complicated to make work in real conditions, right? Paul frowned and was about to reach over to shut it off when its eyes suddenly opened, smirking the same way Aymee had always done around them in the offices in the good old days. It looked around, tilting its head, before locking eyes on Paul North. "Heya, name's Aymee Ichigo", the reduced-size robotic clone declared . "But you can call me Aymee. What can I do for you today?"

Paul sighed. Definitely a failure... the real Aymee would never have been this subservient, something was wrong with the neural scan... it had failed to capture that sparkle that made her such a strangely alluring animal all these years with them-

Fake-Aymee (Faymee) suddenly reached over and punched Paul lightly in the shoulder, a still surprisingly painful action. "Relax, bro, just joshing you. I'm still me.... I think... or is this one of those copies I commisshed off you? I can't seem to tell the difference." She laughed throatily.... false alarm, this WAS a pretty good copy of Aymee.

Paul North blushed... Now that he thought of it, Aymee had always been a looker in that muscular boygirl sort of way, from the day she had called himself a man as she helped punch up a group of footballers for the rights to their frat house. He saw the attraction that the original had posed as that peculiar 'manly woman', just shrunk down maybe by a foot, and now just about as tall as Seamus Arendt... no, Paul North. He had to remember to keep in character while he wore the prosthesis mask or it would stop working as a disguise...

Faymee leaned in closer, allowing Paul to smell the scent of strong cologne that Aymee had insisted this particular pair of units closer to her original appearance rather than that of herself as Empress Eimu be designed to emit. It had been a scent intended for men, but somehow it only improved the way she came off to Paul. And she was... naked...

Paul gulped. It wasn't a betrayal, yeah. He wasn't Seamus Arendt, and Marcus was happily married to Julie. And this was Faymee, not Aymee. It was free play... right? right?
=========================
An hour later and several thousand extra in furniture repair costs, Paul was weakly wheezing. He was not in the habit of sampling his own wares, but the experience he'd just had was... godlike. Faymee and him had gone into a sort of wild tornado of sexual lust, hands all over as they crashed into the furniture randomly. Her heft had been sufficient to total a cupboard, two chairs, a decorative vase, and half-flatten the plastibottle Paul had just imbibed half from.... The television set would have tripled the additional bills, but fortunately, they'd fallen down right in front of it and continued more gently, if still firmly, for a few more minutes before Paul signalled surrender, causing Faymee to back off and enjoy the afterglow with him sitting atop her.

Faymee continued to play the part of Aymee very well, taking a post-coital swig from the half-finished bottle of rum, burping as her digester detected the poison in it and played the same kind of mass destruction tornado game her body had done with Paul, shredding dangerous proteins into limp fragments capable of nothing but being disposed of in the bathroom later. Not that they would have harmed her robotic body anyways.

Faymee swished the last dregs of the rum, then grinned. "That was fun, but seriously, I don't think you brought me out all the way here just to fuck around behind our bros' backs for a week. So what's the plan?"

Paul thought a bit.... "Well, I'm delivering two of our older Oven units to the local film studio, and also a purchase order someone's waited a whole four years for. Maybe drop by an old friend's from my Gdanzeland days."

Faymee was just as read in on anything Aymee was that had survived the neural scan. She teased Paul a little. "Ah, Uncle Seamy, could it be that it wasn't just a lust for spy hijinks that you picked up back there in Gdanzeland?"

Paul deadpanned and winced as Faymee used the one name he did NOT want associated with his current appearance. "You were there. You saved us on the first round, and as I recall, your ninjaxia team evacced me safely on the second round... Imagine my surprise when I found out you'd also secretly pranked the junta into setting Q'in Lu'fus free and brought him here to Raijin Cove. A roboticist in waiting and a talented bombmaker. Imagine what kind of disasters he could cause being left alone..."

Faymee ahems. "That wasn't me, you know, right? That was Aymee, not me, Faymee. And she also got a very good marksman in the bag too. That Diego whatshis name... trained Julie for the biathlon last year at the regionals? Godsis literally put everyone else to the torch in the ice. Guy was that good."

Paul nodded as he rested atop the muscularity of Faymee. Unlike other brands, he'd insisted that the muscles installed on this unit design put out the same kind of power as actual muscles would on a real human, on top of the in-line skeletal motors that came standard on all Arendtcore android designs. He traced a line along her deltoids, smiling. The attraction of that power was becoming obvious, and even he, the creator of this machine, was becoming strangely aroused by it.

Faymee did notice that, she was sharp enough to still notice even with the slight blurring of her mind caused by the inherent errors they hadn't weeded out from the neural scan process. "... I suppose we should look in on him if he's not away on a job." Paul idly noted. "I mean, we do have the time..."

Faymee grinned. "But do we have the time to get cleaned up right now.... or do you want to go another round?"

Paul gulped and got off Faymee slowly, peeling his penis out of her warm and firmly strong vagina. "I think we should just shower and look at the bazaar for some bargains... maybe dinner as well... my treat?" He had loved the lovemaking, but he would do anything - ANYTHING, not to sustain an actual injury on a second pass so soon!

[handle2]

Chapter 8 - Bargain hunting / An attempted hijack / A reaffirmation

By daytime Raijin Cove was a quiet place even with all the stealthy activities being conducted within the shadows of the jungle trees, components biological, electronic, mechanical, chemical,et al changing hands for the Arendtcoin that had somehow mysteriously become the main currency of Raijin Cove. Supposedly an unofficial and unsanctioned use, the occasional presentation of a payment terminal that could process the protocols that governed its use between authorised carriers and merchants and the use of the less secured QR Code methods for transfers of such coin that anyone could implement raised questions as to whether, perhaps, the company actually backed the economy of this backwater hideaway despite its official denials of being associated with Raijin Cove...

By night time it bustled even more. It was into this peculiar space, lit only by a wild eclectic mix of strings of banned incandescent bulbs and carefully tacked and cut strips of LED glowbits, that Faymee and Paul North strode into.

A funny little thought came into Paul North's mind as he looked at the wares - The current latest batch of Arendtcoins had been issued under Paul North's authority and was equally recognized within the company for resource allocation. Out here, however, the only Arendtcoins most people trusted were those issued from the wallet of a certain Seamus and Bellamy Arendt.

He had quite a few right now in his wallet, enough to live reasonably large for the next week or so, but he was keeping his spending tight and solely to the small tithe of Arendtcoin Mr M had slipped into his wallet while standing in their rental villa compound. Theoretically, he could mint any amount he wanted and spread it amongst these yokels to get anything he wanted, but the access to that particular minting wallet had been tightly locked down and requests to it within a multilayered virtual safe took hours, perhaps even an entire day, to approve, not to mention the time needed to generate the required code hashes for each coin being issued...

The god of fortune everyone kept an eye out for at their stores was now striding in silence amongst them, but he was a pauper. In terms of money, he did have a lot of money, but not the potentially infinite wealth he could have with a few hours' notice. That was Seamus Arendt's wealth. Right now, Paul North had to be judicious with his cash.

Which made it all the more interesting that his second purchase had been a small aquamarine 'pearl' of some sort on a necklace... He had had it fitted to hang slightly loosely around Faymee's neck, submerging slightly into the cleavage on display when Faymee had opted for a sundress rather than the suspenders, trousers and shirt / short tie combination she had always worn while identifying as a man.

Faymee had blushed and thanked him, but tried to make sure nothing else came of it. And Paul wouldn't really have wanted it any other way, as they tried a strange shellfish bake that seemed mostly safe because of the large queue in front of it and the lack of any Security breathing down their neck for mass poisoning. It had been some sort of odd sea slug/softshell crab hybrid. Perhaps a native of the local waters, or maybe a engineered combination trying for taste or ... some other factor. It had tasted briny and crunchy at least. Paul briefly considered locating a sustainable source of these creatures for Arendtcore Foods back home in Minnesota, if only to add a little variety to the dozens of "crabs and oysters" recipes the state had, making a mental note to send actual corporate scouts to locate more of this delicacy.
==================

They had danced in a square lit by wildly randomizing colored LED bulbs to a chunky salsa beat.

They had looked in askance for a clearly overpriced smart device communicator that the stall owner had brazenly declared contained a link to the Goddess of Existence herself. (it would later transpire much later that he wasn't shitting anyone, but the claim had been so brazen only a fool or someone in the know would have taken it even at the cheap price he quoted)

Faymee and Paul had tried a cocktail of sorts, Paul briefly tacking a few drops of it as a sample for later analysis - it wasn't just a bazaar, it was a arms war disguised as a smorgasbord of pleasures. It would later yield some surprising discoveries, but Paul was just doing it for shits and giggles right there and then. He mostly enjoyed it for the lime and barley flavor, ignorant of anything that couldn't get past his safety filter aside from the flavor and the odd feeling of satiety it brought.

Faymee had embarassedly tried some nail art, getting a warm satin pink manicure with smiling emojis on them. it wasn't just for show either, as the artist demonstrated its special capability with a few drops of something he claimed had date rape drugs in it (just for a demonstration, no need to call Security). Paul looked on interestedly as the smiling emoji slowly changed to a angry emoji against a hot red background, as if it was furious that someone had just tried to roofie Faymee.

That was technically impossible between her non-biological functioning and the isolated nature of her digester system, but it still made Faymee whistle. "Cool. Now I can safely drink that cocktail without worrying about date rape!"

Paul played along, frowning at her. "Oh, Faymee, honey, it's not a license to imbibe those sorts of drinks randomly. Besides, would you really be able to remember to drip them nonstop on your nails? and what if the drug isn't of the classes this emoji senses?"

The artist paled and looked away. "He does have a point, your boyfriend does.... I just sold this shit as a party favor, you should still be careful in the pubs and use a proper detector device with more sense points..."

Paul smiled and made a mental note to sneak a small reward to the nail artist for being honest with customers and not overselling it. Perhaps a small stash of Old Arendtcoins he had no memory of misplacing (because it had been given to him by someone else rather than being genuinely misplaced), or a lucrative magical work-and-leisure trip to Little Sanctuary at a rave-themed corporate party, even if nobody would seriously dare risk their membership in the family by spiking other employees' drinks...

Eventually, the bazaar started quieting down for the night - it never truly closed as a whole, but people needed to sleep especially after all the earlier hours they had spent prepping their businesses for the night. Faymee and Paul spent a few Old Arendtcoin on a shared fishburger meal, that felt oddly spicy, which Paul briefly noted but didn't pay much attention to. Faymee's vision had warned her of traces of tetradoxin, but their digestive systems were rigged at least for the night to treat it like just another marinade, and the amounts detected by her digester weren't liable to actually kill anyone healthy. Truly a case of "the dose makes the poison". She did make a mental note not to ever let anyone else eat more than what was in one or two burger patties. To the credit of the stall, it did indeed warn of possible tetradoxin paralysis in larger amounts on its signage.

This place was clearly off kilter if you had to stride right in with a filter just to safely enjoy its temptations. But she had enjoyed it. And as Faymee looked at Paul glancing at her with a smile, it occurred to her that he too was enjoying it.

But they really had to go home now. The only vehicle they had available was the cargo hauler and Paul didn't feel like being bilked for a local minitaxi jalopy, so they walked together hand in hand up the slope back to their villa. It was a mostly quiet walk under the stars of the cove at about 10ish at night, the kind of walk that promised as much intimacy as one could get with their clothes still on if done alone...

They were not alone.
=========================
Paul's growing sense of awareness since he'd 'died' and come back as Paul North started playing up when he felt the two people start walking right behind them.... The one guy in a dark blue anorak who showed up to block their path forward was the last straw. "L-look, guys," Paul offered, feigning weakness while preparing a party favor his Kindred contacts had given him for "engagements in the Physical Layer", "I see you folks are short on cash... would you like some Arendtcoins? The old kind, not that new fangled bullshit signed by that poseur Paul North..."

Somewhere deep inside of him, the psychopath roared in indignation - "How DARE YOU malign OURSELVES? Let me take care of these fools my way, maybe I'll forgive you for that tresspass." He blinked slowly, trying to calm down that dark side of himself with counteroffers of all sorts even as he had to try not to turn the night these idiots were having into hell on Earth.

The Anorak'd man in front of them licked his lips. "That's a really sweet machine you have for a girl, pops, mind if I take her for a test drive?" He grinned evilly as he pointed some sort of taser device at Faymee and pulled the trigger, sending a pair of bolts into her and transmitting some sort of code.

Paul North briefly cussed out his own generosity. Arendtcore had opensourced all its most major designs, in an effort to give every android it had ever produced a shot at practical immortality even if the company somehow failed and went away. It had spawned a market of copycats, and Arendtcore had survived because it represented quality and few or no corners cut.But now, something was sending code along known data lines into Faymee and it was probably not beneficent.

Faymee twitched and jerked hard, whirring and beeping away incessantly. She was being commanded to obey the assailant, who would probably then use her as a blunt hammer to bash Paul into a pulp while he fended off attacks from Anorak's accomplices.

This was about to turn into a bad night for both sides. For one thing, Paul had dropped a extensible and genuinely combat-capable baton into each of his hands from the sleeves of his coat. He had learnt quite a lot about close-in pain infliction from the real Aymee''s bodyguards over the past year of weekends and he was preparing to use it.

For another, while the hijack MIGHT have worked on a basic bitch with basic programming, Faymee wasn't programmed per se. She continued to remain utterly useless and unresponsive. "Er-ror/ Illegal instruction set det-detcted. Personality matrix refusing obedience.prog execution process... repeated attempts to execute obedience.prog detected. Possible Lock-up-upppp detected due to conflicting instruct-truct.... Paul. H-help me. Pain. Don't want to hurt. you you..."

Paul saw what Faymee had been reduced to, her eyes rolling randomly as her muscled body struggled against the hijack. He closed his eyes... He would honor her distressed plea. He reached deep into that dark side of himself, the psychopath who'd been bound up in chains by the careful watch of good friends and colleagues and judicious anti-psychopathy drugs and tapped three times. Exactly three times.

"What," that chasm had called back out gruffly, "The fuck do you want?"

"You wanted to go wild... Seamy?" Paul North fearfully but firmly asked. He was afraid - afraid that if he let his old self off the leash there would be no going back to the civilised, gentle old man he was trying so hard to become to others... But that old man was a wuss who couldn't even defend a damned french fry in his fingers let alone a good friend hurting badly. "Well, you got your wish." The faint sound of chains being dropped and of possible incoming regrets being forged in place of them filled his head... "Go. Stop them. and please let me leash you back when it's all safe.

"What a good boy, Mr North. and I tell you what, in return I'll try not to kill them. I'll even save your girlfriend for free... this time. Heck, you get me back on the leash... this time. Don't count on it happening this easily ever again, hear?" The guttural, hellish version of Seamus' voice came through... and then he opened his eyes. And then.... Paul North wasn't standing where he had been standing.

The two assailants who had approached from behind him suddenly felt a faint gust as something passed between them. "Good night, little children." it teased, before they felt the ground rushing up to meet them, thanks to a pair of hard baton swings. That had half emptied the oxygen out of Seamus' lungs, but the raw personification of his worst self was far from done yet.

Seamus(?) vanished again, reappearing in between Anorak and Faymee and calmly aiming the batons at Anorak before pulling the extending triggers, causing Anorak to fall down and drop the hijacker device as two balls of steel suddenly extended hard and cracked into either side of his head. He wouldn't die, but damn if he wasn't going to wake up with a major headache in the hallowed holding cells run by Cove Security...

Without conscious input on the trigger, the hijacker stopped working. And not a moment too soon, as a small arc of electricity ran up along Faymee's bare back, her body slumping onto its knees, whirring and beeping even harder. "I can-cannot hurt my my friend.... forcing shhh-shutdown of personal-lity to disable personality hi-jjjjaaack." She shuddered a little more before falling still, eyes wide open...

Seamus closed his eyes. growling. "Well, that's that, girl's mostly saved. Now if you'll be so kind, I'm going back to sleep. Try not to wake me up again too soon while you chain me back up.. It was fun, Mr North, but I think I'm beginning to treasure this silence and darkness more than I do the chaos I could cause..." And then Paul North woke back up.

Paul quickly rushed to Faymee's side as soon as he realised Seamus had gracefully yielded back the reins to him and let himself be chained back up in the dar. He began yelling into the night sky for someone to help them, reduced once again to a helpless mewling, a silent prayer of thanks given to his old self as he looked anxiously at Faymee's unresponsiveness.
================================
It had taken a bit long - several minutes, for a Cove Security Patrol to come by. They had been very helpful, possibly on Mr M's orders, agreeing to pick up the hijacker crew for detention as well as assist Paul to get Faymee back to the villa. It had been strangely painful to Paul - he had had years of looking at machines in owner command mode stiffly following spoken commands as one of the foremost developers of consumer robotics - so why had the sight of Faymee operating in that mode with no clear evidence of any other damage hurt him so much?

Paul didn't waste too much time on that thought for the moment, quickly disrobing Faymee as she lay on the dining table and manually forcing the control panel cover to slide down and reveal itself, before quietly reaching for his Fixit-microbar to start checking for damage and do whatever repairs he could.
===============================
There hadn't been much damage, truth be told, just some overvoltage from the initial taser hit. All the work had been script kiddy level bullshit, based on a review of Faymee's neural programming. He was no Bellamy, but just as Bellamy had picked up a few tips for working with android hardware from being around Seamus Arendt, he too had picked up some programming and basic code navigation and fix skills from Bellamy as well.

Barely an hour later, Faymee started blinking as Paul ran his fingers along her control panel to shutter the cover over it and return autonomy to her. She just sat there.... then suddenly bawled and hugged Paul, crying. "Bwaaa.... I'm so... sorry.... useless.... I'm a fraud, just a fake in the shape of someone you truly respected..... bwaaaagh.''

Paul let her cry herself hard on his shoulder. Eventually though, he decided to stomp on it. And no this definitely wasn't a moment of psychopathy from him. It was... something else... "Listen... Faymee... I know you named yourself that because you think it's a good contraction of 'Fake Aymee'... but can I ask something? How long have you been in standard operating mode? No admin stuff, no forced commands?"

Faymee sniffled. "About.... eight hours, forty two minutes... "

Paul kept pressing. "And in those eight hours, you have not synced to any other instances of Aymee's clones... you've diverged. A lot. And I have no plans to do a sync except to a nice fresh backup when we get home to Little Sanctuary, you need to know that.... you know what else I think?"

Faymee let go of Paul and sat there topless on the table, listening to whatever Paul wanted to say.

Paul thought very carefully... "You're Faymee. You're not a fake copy of Aymee anymore. You never were from the moment I cut off your connection to the other units . You're you. your own special you. And you tried so very hard not to just give in and mindlessly nail me with your great powers when those bastards hijacked you. You even cut yourself off to become a lifeless doll just to stop the hijack from hurting me as well..."

Paul leaned in and softly kissed Faymee. "And I love you so much for being you, even before you tried not to hurt me as a hijacked unit. You knew it was wrong and didn't give in, that makes me heart beat even harder for you... Now I want you to stop moping, go get a shower , and get on your recharge pad. I don't know that it's even made a dent in your power cell, but I think you need to rest and stop worrying about others and just focus on yourself tonight."

Faymee nodded as she got off the table quietly, holding herself together as she walked off to the nearest shower in the hacienda, Paul watching after her. He in turn decided to turn in for the night and let her pull herself together, but inside he knew it was a possibility he might wind up having to offer a shoulder - or more... the poor girl had just been through a sort of attempted rape, and while her original was a hardened baddie and legal nightmare, Faymee was a different creature now...

[handle2]

Chapter 9 - The Cult Their God Didn't Want

The next morning, Faymee seemed to have recovered mostly from the previous night's trauma. She was all smirky as the original article she was based on, flexing her suspenders and trousers combo in the same old white with small red tie and black trousers. "I.... I'm sure I can move on from last night, Paul..." She still seemed a little uncertain, her smirk fading when asked if she had truly gotten over what had happened to her the previous night.

Paul nodded a little. "I don't think you can. That kind of trauma's not that easy to get rid of when you can't exactly hit the reset button and wipe your memories... Look, if you ever need to talk about it again, speak to me, or ask me for a therapist. We're all here for you. I can't exactly speak for Bellamy or Marcus, but I'm sure being my.... bestest friend... with benefits even.... gets you benefits with them too... Well, different kinds of extra benefits, I mean. You can't exactly be horndogging every single one of us..."

Faymee considered this and nodded, but felt she had to qualify something. "Technically, Bellamy did fuck this unit once or twice while developing it, I think he didn't realise exactly when my neural patterns started to operate and store memories... And you... I mean, Seamus DID make a wife for Marcus using a copy of my physical and vocal scans. The ship has long sailed on that concern. In fact, I'm actually surprised it took making me a differentiated copy of Aymee so many years after we first met in order for you to ride the Brotherhood bike, as it were." Faymee nonchalantly noted this, but Paul could hear the amazement in her voice about how loose she had become after no longer pretending to be a man, merely dressing up like one.

Paul glanced over at Faymee embarassedly. "I hope you realise all those were one-offs. We're going to stay friends right? even without the sex?"

Faymee couldn't help but smile a little, blushing hard at Paul. "Mr North, I think you'll find that you and me, are pretty much past that point... The only reason I'm not trying to pull your pants off right now is because you're a busy man and I want to make myself useful to you... and right now, damaging more of this house isn't going to help. Maybe when we're bored together again?"

Paul felt a little weird in his pants at that declaration. "I.... erm... I'll have to take a rain check on that at least right now. But it's nice that the option is on the table.... hehe..... Anyways, we should get going to the HC Studios Lot now, I have an Oven that needs giving to some folks who want to do some... baking."

Faymee rubbed her head a little as she nodded. "I regret... my original ever cracked that joke. I thought you would be a little more upset with it."

Paul shrugged. as he made his way to the basement, and ordered the cargo box drone Number 2 to hop into the cargo minihauler for the trip, causing it to slowly start floating up and out the back doors. "Again, You're you, and she is her now. that's her cross to bear, not yours. And frankly, who doesn't want an oven that makes the pizza base, slathers on all the condiments and toppings and cheese, and then bakes it into a proper Pizza Chicago Deep Dish?"

Faymee rolled her eyes as she accompanied Paul North to the cab of the hauler and crossed over to take the other seat on the front bench of the hauler, reaching for the safety belts on her side to buckle in. "You know this isn't that kind of oven right?... Right? It isn't, right?"

Paul considered this while tapping in the destination in Raijin Cove he wanted the hauler to pull over to, causing it to hover and start out slowly through the gates of their rental hacienda."Well, actually, with the right configuration and food-safe ingredients you COULD use the Oven to make Pizza instead. I mean, it'd be a damn waste of most of its capabilities, but we did have a few Pizza Thursday Nights where we somehow could pull together enough pizza in three different flavors to feed the entire factory and office complex back home..."

Faymee stared blankly at Paul as flashes of old memories of Aymee happily eating the office megapizza innocently, unaware that it had been made on the same machine as an entire life-like android. There was a certain dissonance rising up from that realization, and probably only the fact that "Faymee is Faymee and Aymee is Aymee" stopped her from breaking down at "The pizza was made with the same machine as the plastic people".

Besides... the Hawaiian had been great. Arendtcore Economy Pizza was a possible subsidiary option if you fitted the basement with \the older version Ovens. All you had to do was fight off the same lunatics who'd turn it around and accuse them of 3d-printing little disposable boys and girls to milk Adenochrome from - and it was frankly a miracle they had persisted past the Despotic Years...

========================================

Faymee and Paul had plenty of time to contemplate that really warped episode in Arendtcore's undocumented history as the hauler complied with what few local regulations existed for traffic. A cop had attempted to stop them to extract a few Arendtcoins for "traffic infractions", but the moment he'd realised just how in Paul was with the leaders of the Cove, he backed off and even became their escort for the rest of the way into the Studio Lot.... The hauler hooked into the local locational beacons, which made autoparking it next to the cargo lift building easy as whole pizzas in an Oven.

A group of technicians were standing there, saluting Paul as he alighted. "All hail Paul North, Prophet and Deliverer of a Gift from our God!" One of them yelled as Paul got Cargo Box Drone 2 into the lift, keeping it held down until he was absolutey sure where it was supposed to go in the Studio Lot's basement.

Paul North blinked hard. Somewhere deep inside him, the old psychopath had started stroking himself off wildly to this ego boost. Seamus Arendt, a god? This was not what Paul had expected, but it was certainly DOING it for Seamus Arendt. "Erm... which floor do I send this gift down to?" He asked, attempting to ignore the weirdness he had just run into and certainly did not want, not as Paul North, no.

The technicians followed him and Faymee into the lift, scanning their IDs at an odd angle to trigger access to the inner sanctum of sorts tucked beneath the lowest visible stockroom floor. As the lift descended, they proceeded to surround the cargo box drone and raise their hands to the skies in some sort of prayer. "Seamus is great, Seamus is good. Seamus powers the miracles we see on this lot. Seamus Inside. Seamus RTX Must Always Be On. Seamus Arendt is God. Seamus..."

Somewhere inside, Paul North died. Somewhere deeper inside, Seamus Arendt was having the best day of his life since Paul had banished him for the sake of a little espionage. Paul blinked calmly and just watched, even as he was having one hell of a headache. This was a cult, its god was lurking right in front of them, and boy did Paul not want this to exist... still, he reserved judgement - he had to ascertain what exactly the seed gift of occasional deliveries of Arendtcore androids had yielded. And if it crossed the wrong lines... Well, he'd cross that bridge on a later visit if it came to that.

As they arrived at the fourth basement floor, the technicians donned matching hats to fit in with the rest of the staff on the floor, each emblazoned with exhortations as "Seamus Inside". "Preserve The World", and "The God Tech Stems From Seamus." The normally busy floor had quietened down as the cargo box and the Deliverer (aka Paul North) slowly moved over to a room that had been laid out for the Oven, the staff saluting the Box as it passed near each of them in the corridor.

Paul eventually eased the Box over to a space that the technicians had laid out in paint, near the water pipes and power supplies he had specifically asked for, and dialled in the secure code, causing the Cargo Drone to slowly retract and pile itself into a neat pile of box panels and hover engines for later reuse on other large cargo. The slightly last-gen Oven was ready to go, needing only a few instructions to be followed to properly supply it, the bag of starter feed for it resting next to the control interface jack. Paul took a deep breath and assumed these... cultists... had a deep enough bench to properly install, operate and service the Oven, but had left a priority code and a phone number to Arendtcore Tech Support Omega for additional aid... well, as long as the world and phone service lasted to support the existence of Arendtcore itself. And even if that fell over, he'd included enough plans and instructions that they could extend the Oven themselves with the right tooling and competencies...

A seemingly special Seamusian Cultist approached them, flanked by two guards with Fixit-microbars in their pockets. His hat included a facial shield that normally was used to protect the user from high-intensity arc flashes and lasers and other potential hazards to the face. But in this case it seemed to also have a cultish purpose, being that the plain surface had laser-etched into it some remarkably beautiful artistic flourishes that hopefully did not compromise its intended safety features. Faymee was starting to get a little antsy about the setup even at this point, hiding behind Paul North as if he could shield her from the insanity that was starting to rise above the horizon in this basement.

As it turns out, even Paul North had had the same idea with hiding behind Faymee herself... but she'd called dibs on her version of the idea, so Paul sighed a little and tried to stay strong and calm.

The Cultist bowed and raised a hand to his heart. "Greetings, Deliverer Paul North. I am your loyal worshipper in unity, Mid-Level Overseer Xarnnax and overseer of this branch of the World Preservers... All hail Seamus Arendt, God of the World and Supreme Leader of the World Preservation Effort."

Paul North pretended to be totally read in on this kookiness... "Arise, Overseer Xarnax... I did not merely come here to deliver this gift which our God Seamus Arendt has gifted you..." Somewhere deep inside Paul, Seamus was overly stuffed from all the ego stuffing that had happened for the past twenty minutes. "No, mommy... I can't eat another bite... not even an afterdinner mint...." The psychopath was actually heavily sedated, that he had quietened down to a faint buzz of happiness from another self. It was an oddly pleasant sensation, different from the usual emptiness that came when Paul North took the anti-psychopathy medication to silence his dark old self.

MLO Xarnnax paused for a moment... thinking about how he could best present the cult as it currently stood deep beneath Raijin Cove... then decided that yes, a floor tour was indeed in order. "Yes, my Deliverer and worshipper in unity... we are always ready to show the work we have done."
======================
The first sign that the cult was going to very weird and seemingly wrong places came as Paul watched a technician eat from a plate of cubes of some sort of beef as another carefully studied his consumption of the beef. So the cult had sourced some sort of beef, and presumably chicken somewhere else. Maybe even actual chicken eggs and milk if you pushed the possibility barrier enough... And Sure enough, they had.

MLO Xarnnax proudly gestured to the meat roast. "This was human flesh analogue. With extensive work, we have diversified it into many forms of animal flesh. Chicken, Beef, Wildebeest, kangaroo, even crocodiles.... though we try not to code for sharp teeth in the variations we have set aside for food cultivation... and we also have plant flesh analogues that replicate several formerly extinct crops like real bok choy, real onions, real fruits of several kinds, and even real durians..."

Paul North raised his eyebrow. "... I assume the durians come with the same weird odor and taste?"

Xarnnax sighed sadly. "I'm afraid so, we've found that that the flavor and odor and texture are inextricably linked, and yes, the damn fruit does stink up any smaller volume of enclosed air it's placed in... not to worry though, we did pack the durian we were going to gift you to take home, along with ten pounds each of of several of our variants of meat flesh analogues..."

Paul North quietly noted all this down in his communicator, taking care to flip it into privacy mode so that only he could view the scribbles directly. Faymee quietly examined the roast, then tried a piece of it.... "Mmm. Delish... could use some.... mushroom sauce."

MLO Xarnnax smiled behind his faceplate. "We already have a churnable and cheese-able analogue of cow's milk that supplies 95% of the same nutrients as the original thing. In fact, we have some samples of the entire cow already fully functional. As for fungi... we're still working out some overreplication issues - we keep our prototypes severely underclocked to prevent a Last Of Us scenario. All edible species only, you understand... and no airborne sporing - we haven't worked out things to that level yet for the fungi."

Paul North raised an eyebrow... those cows loitering in the wild just outside of the cargo lift building... weren't just animatronic dolls? They were actually producing edibles off of these... faux cows? He was growing both more skeptical and more curious about this specific attempt to fight the after-apocalypse... For starters, he would need to get these food-ready derivatives of human flesh analogue into a lab to make sure they weren't poisoning themselves or faking these ideas in the long term. This cult was a bit loopy, but already he had begun to see a frontrunner in the various pie-in-the-sky efforts to fight the end of humanity or surpass it that he had been bankrolling for the past half-century...

Paul wondered though... "And I suppose you are also engineering other animals?" He asked.

MLO Xarnnax had a note of pride in his voice. We do have another subproject that is attempting to replicate animals and insects... we do two species a month. We already have a platform that can selfreplicate using consumed real plant and meat matter or analogues depending on the diets of the original.... He paused to turn on the lights on a few long rows of various animals of all shapes and sizes: cows, chickens of various subspecies, bats, even a few animals he'd remembered seeing in the zoos as a kid long before the Despotic Years wrecked the Earth.He watched as the technicians ushered an unusually docile bear into a capsule and sealed it, causing it to freeze on its own, before wheeling it to another similar capsule with another brown bear.

MLO Xarnnax continued pointing things out. "We do have some issues with hive protocols for flocking insects, but the herds are ready to go. Elephants in the savannah, antelope, bison... We even have adders and some venomous creatures ready, as much as we would rather not go there."

Paul North nodded sagely as if he was read in fully, even though deep inside he was going "WHAT THE FUCK" at a rate that would cause a lesser android intellect to short out and explode and roll down the development room floor. "Every creature has its place on this Earth, even the ones that seem to only harm us."

MLO Xarnnax nodded slowly in agreement as he played a video clip of Seamus Arendt seemingly saying in a beatific manner "Every creature has its place on this Earth, even those that seem to only bear ill will towards us..."

Paul North said nothing to that, but inside, he was groaning hard. He had been commissioned to do a project for a church for one christmas, and Seamus had tried to convey to Bellamy exactly how he wanted the prophet to sound on stage for the show as they were building the looping animatronic show, back in the earliest days when Arendtcore was just four people trying all sorts of shit.... Who the heck had passed them that recording? It was so corny as fuck he wanted deep down inside to ask Seamus to scoot over a little so that he could lie down next to him and die a mutual death of embarassment.This was not wisdom. This was an ancient shitpost made from a candid moment on a recorder... It was meant to be destroyed or decayed by now, not preserved like some sort of religious tract.

For one brief moment, he even thought about just destroying this entire basement to be rid of this one college-era embarassment. Then he remembered all the good ideas he was seeing so far and restrained himself.

Faymee looked on in awe at the video, developing a new sort of admiration for Paul North... Paul sweated nervously. He did not need another blind-brained groupie, and certainly not one who had been based on his best wingman ever.

Paul tried to divert attention from this major embarassment as Xarnnax openly broadcast it, to the sounds of awe from the gathered cultists. "Erm... Overseer Xarnnax, What of our efforts here to preserve humanity?"

MLO Xarnnax ahemd.... "I'm not entirely proud of it at the moment... we've had do deal a little with some of the... eugenicists in this Cove..." There had been a loaded tone to that 'eugenicists', and it slowly dawned on Paul that he was actually talking about cutting deals with actual Nazis. But he would see what came of it first.

MLO Xarnnax walked them further down to a different set of racks, all filled with human embryos in the earliest stages of development. "The point of the project was to recover and revive humanity, so obviously we cloned and diversified some human embryos we secured from the... eugenicists... we've persuaded them that it was in their best interests to foster a variety of ethnicities so as to erm... establish the necessary depth to have actual ubermenschen and untermenschen. so they handed us a few hundred healthy embryos, enough to cover a wide variety of ethnicities from various Asians, to Africans, to Anglosaxons, even a couple of varied indigenous..."
""We of course noticed momentarily a slight overprovision of the anglosaxons, so we're taking some action to thin that bit down just in case this is their own attempt at using us to create an... erm... Aryan-centric world. Did the genealogical genetic testing and all even. all healthy down to just small minor variations here.... sightedness issues, autism, muscle over and under development, various intellect types and levels..." Xarnnax put up another slide, running through all the attempts to make sure that human 2.0 would be a balanced representation of the original humanity in some form.

Paul North sighed. "And I suppose you're also replicating the same old ideologies? The ones that basically fucked us all over in the first place?"

Xarnnax walked them down again,"Oh no, we're not picking winners and losers, we're just going to throw the entire Wikipedia at them, curated down to accurate information only, and doled out carefully." As they walked down further, Paul blinked as he saw a team work on a few androids of varying genders and ages and ethnicities, all anatomically accurate - at least, the parts that had been fully assembled. He saw enough of the inner workings to see an attempt to replicate human anatomy more closely in form as well as function, though the color of everything was probably way off from the actual article.

MLO Xarnnax stopped them there, gesturing to the robotics being put together and tested. "We have plans to seed certain... demigods around the world amongst our actual real human deploy... Planning for a 10 millennium or longer viable operating lifespan here... All of them will be loaded with the latest curated Wikipedia data, multilingual data and derivative techniques, and selected skillsets we deem essential and programmed to operate similarly to actual humans. similar emotions, similar motions and reflexes, just tamped down for stability or boosted for longevity and impressiveness as needed..."

Paul North silently watched as Xarnnax continued his spiel and briefly demonstrated just how accurate and lifelike the 'demigods' were. Pretty much a 18/19 on the Sibert Human-like Scale when fully assembled, as far as he could tell... unless... "I don't suppose you're going to try to get the Eugenicists to provide us a properly ethnic-diverse means to give these machines sustainable reproductive capabilities..."

MLO Xarnnax froze... "Well, we've heard rumors that they already have such tech ready to go... they're just not willing to share with us to that level, only giving us the embryos..."

Paul North made a mental note to find these eugenicists and these alleged reproductive system technologies... It was such a damn shame such major tech was being monopolized by Nazis, if it truly existed. A deniable smash and grab perhaps? Some espionage by the Chinajapese on the same demiability terms to compromise those who understood what was required to implement such a system? He furiously scribbled.

"I have noted your possibilities, and will pass them on to our God when we next meet. Perhaps he will have a way to... make these eugenicists more... amenable to sharing that gift..." Paul idly noted, as if he was even going to have to have a conversation with Seamus Arendt on whether upsetting Nazis was worth it... It was ALWAYS worth it, even with a lesser prize than actual human reproductive capabilities...

MLO Xarnnax bowed. "Thank you... and that was the extent of our work so far."

"Our god will most likely be impressed that you have reclaimed so much of our former lifesphere, even if in fully functional effigy only.... You shall be rewarded further, most likely, at a later date. I will remain in touch with you to erm... pass these new gifts along as he deems fit to dole them out." Paul North fudged together a glowing initial report to Xarnnax. He certainly would have a lot to do even if he didn't want to be unduly biased towards the success of this cult. A kooky bunch this lot, but their hearts were genuinely in the right place. Right intentions, hopefully right results, even if the workings were a bit wrong - truly a bunch emulating Seamus Arendt....

MLO paused... "Now if you'll come with us to the dining section, we have a lovely spread of banana-based foods.... we're still having some issues with overly high ambient radiation on the plant analogues for the bananas, but we already have a wider range of banana cultivars on file and the resulting recipes so far have been amazing this week in the kitchen labs... the banana bread is especially...."

Paul North and Faymee had tuned out already on "excessively high radiation in the bananas". "Erm... we appreciate the hospitality, but we really MUST be going back to report to Seamus on our findings so if we could just take delivery of those meat and plant analogue samples... chilled of course...
========================

Faymee and Paul were pretty much silent as they made their way back to their rental hacienda. The cargobox drone that had previously conveyed the older model Oven and its associated blueprints and instructions to the World Preservers cult was now repurposed to hold several dozen kilograms of meat and plant analogues for sampling and research back home in Minnesota... as well as a pair of slightly ripe durians, sitting in their airtight box like a pair of stink bombs waiting to go off in more ways than one.

Their thoughts briefly drifted through all that they had seen... Faymee briefly imagined holding a distended belly and telling Paul "Paul.... I am with child, your child," an actual living human baby slowly growing in her through the miracle of the reproductive tech that Middle-Level Overseer Xarnnax had teased the existence of... She blushed especially hard and glanced at Paul.

Paul was dreaming of the tech too, but from a different angle... Imagine a Arendtcore effort to defeat the demographic disaster. Millions of women seeded around the world capable of bearing children. raising them to respect all regardless of gender, preferences, creeds or ethnicity.... The scales tipped back in favor of humanity finally... On a more personal note, it would be nice to see Elliot as a grown up young man, having actual children of his own that didn't require his manual intervention or an Oven to create... putting one in the oven, so to speak... a different kind of oven... He smiled as he closed his eyes... These World Preservers had to be preserved one way or another. So much promise from multiple avenues...

They didn't share their fantasies with each other. They knew that reality would be the only way to have their dreams come true, and goddess forbid they should jinx it by openly sharing their wishes, even as they realised they probably knew what they were thinking...
========================

[handle2]

Chapter 10 - Faymee goes to town on ASFR fetishplay, a new Four Brothers franchisee

Writer's note: where in I try to cram in a few examples of what happens when an android with enough computing power to futz multiple sources of audio, holograms, and over-surface projections gets into the ASFR fetishplay schtick with full self awareness - Some of these may be too cartoony and for that I'm not apologizing... Also: potential spinoff root here

Faymee and Paul North had reached back to the vila and parked the hauler, finding a mail had been slotted in through the front door postal scanner. No known drugs, no known explosives or other potential hazards... Fishing in the envelope, Paul lifted up a sort of half-sized card with the words "Crime Victim Benefit - Jalopy booking" and a scan code of some sort printed on the other side along with a human-recitable code and an expiry date a week from that day they had mostly been through... A small letter was attached as well:

Heya, Mr North,

I just heard earlier today about what had happened to you last night.... You gots yourself some hefty new merchandise in the bazaar, correct? and some bastards tried to take it off you without fair trade in kind or coin? I want you to know that does NOT vibe at all with our official policies, and I am sorry that it happened to you.

We have generous aid packages for tourist and local victims of crime in this town that scales with the severity of the crime... You were an almost victim of a theft of property worth between 100,000 to 250,000 Old Arendtcoins, so the package is generous, even if it's been halved since it was an unsuccessful botch job. there should be another 5000 Old Arendtcoin in your name, check your wallet to claim it from the local Crimes Office... I also took the liberty of sending you the free taxijalopy pass good for any number of rides for a week from the claim date.... All the paperwork for it's been done, so you just need to think about spending those coins and using the pass to get anywhere you want safely in the Cove...

Once again, I'm so sorry that idiot ruined your night. We will be dealing with him in accordance with the laws of our Cove. You will want to know that een for such a minor crime it will not be a pleasant punishment, and that should satiate any desire for vengeance you may be harbouring. I hope the rest of your trip goes more pleasantly and hope you leave with pleasant memories mostly, whenever that may be...

Yours sincerely,
Mr M
Current (2089-2092) head leader of Raijin Cove Covenants

Faymee sulked a little as she read the letter from behind Paul... "I am not your property.... I'm your friend... with benefits. generous benefits." She scowled.

Paul waved Faymee off. "He means well, Faymee... and while I think the compensation for your trauma could have been better, I'd say we shouldn't look this gift horse in the mouth.... no way that'll happen again if we travel by taxijalopy while we're not in the cargo hauler... So... wanna ride to the bazaar?"
================================
Once again, they were at the bazaar for its nightly revels. New tastes, new sounds, new sights....

Paul soon discovered that Greater Minneapolis Rat was indeed delicious. someone had opened a new stall with imported Rat, and was flavoring it with something called Old Spice Bay Powder, some sort of Ancient recipe rediscovered and blended anew with fresh ingredients of a secretive nature. He made a mental note to see if the stall owner could be persuaded by Arendtcore Foods to sell or share the recipe of this spice blend with them for future potential products... it was certainly tangy and lightly hot.

There were plenty of other items of both a consumable and a reusable nature. Faymee had winced at a stall bragging they had a device that could be attached to any android to override their movement capabilities for a few minutes without their consent, like a remote control puppet. Paul steered her away from it quickly, but made a mental note to come back later and buy a set for... research. No, he wasn't going to use it on Faymee... he knew already that she had a massive phobia of losing control of her capabilities. He just wanted to take it apart to see what weaknesses it was exploiting and how they could be patched out of Arendtcore products.

Eventually, they were sitting by the fountain in the plaza, watching some musicians set up for the gig of the night. Finally Paul broached the issue of the day to Faymee. "That was an interesting idea, the human reproductive tech... but I think it should be left up to all parties involved, not just a decision by the man of the house."

Faymee shook her head. "Involuntary loss of self-control. Nuh uh , big problem in my books.But if it was voluntary... with some human man that I loved... I could imagine taking on that ability to have a pregnancy. Apparently, it does come with a lot of transient minuses to quality of life. barfing, odd mood and appetite swings, massive knocker growth, aches and pains..."

Faymee idly noted the irony, "and yet humans regularly had babies in such a way. Curious."

Paul North smirked. "please don't demand that humans make sense to you. They never will, Faymee... all you can do is be there for the one you do cherish and take care of them when they're forced into a bad time in the process."

Faymee tapped her noggin. "I think I've had enough years as a human in here to barely begin to get what you're saying... Perhaps we should drop it before we both end up curling up and mumbling emo poems like that time...."

Paul North quickly nodded. He still remembered the time the threat of Empress Eimu nee Aymee looming over their heads with a chopper figuratively sent the entire brotherhood into a death spiral of various forms of depression poetry. Still, in a convuluted way, that had given birth to Faymee... He nodded quickly anyway, stroking her hair briefly with affection before they continued their loitering trip in the bazaar.
=============================
It didn't take long before Faymee noticed something interesting and scooted over to one of the stalls. "Hrm... diagetic multichannel sound... multiple holograms and over-body overlays supported..." It sounded like a audio visual system, but there was a generic poser artwork of an android projecting various forms of art over its body and in the nearby vicinity with sound bloops overlaid here and there extolling the features of the product. "A.... Dirges Robotics Mod product for most quality modern androids, requires one free Hiband interface at least for all basic features, interactivity may require additional Hiband interface..."

The owner of the stall certainly had high hopes and aspirations. "Yeah... it took a lot of finagling with some of the other stalls for me to put that together along with the interfacing code... it's all industry open-standard and quality stuff," Dirges bragged. " I just had this wonderful idea... what if you could make an android more expressive. Of course, with the limited imagination of most android owners and the lack of onboard generative AI most Androids have I haven't had much luck trying to sell this... just a few boxes so far.... and it's been depressing how generic they've all been. looping circles of text, virtual pets, skintight clothing that suddenly blows right off with a bang..."

Dirges wept slowly into the countertop. "I want to find an artist. I want to see someone make full use of every single bit of this kit. I even threw a good SDK thrown together from all the open-source shit I used, plus some cool custom UI work!..."

Paul North was about to just say no, thank you, good luck, and leave him wallowing in his misery. If his work and connections building was this good he would bounce back and build something better in the future and more in demand, it was all up to him... Then he glanced at Faymee and could almost see her eyes all twinkly with possibility. Marcus had unfortunately instilled a love of classic cartoons in Aymee, and Aymee had also enjoyed hobnobbing with many of the artistic and fetish fan communities within Minneapolis Institute of National Tech (MINT). Stacking these historical bits into an android who had Hiband interfaces for days was ... about to result in disaster. or a miracle.

Faymee looked at Paul. "Let's help him out with a try. Buy this. Put it in me. Let's see what happens."

Paul North was a little leery of the idea of turning Faymee into a light and sound show. "We're going to have to set some limits on what you do with this, Faymee... definitely... there's a lot of possibility for fun ideas, but... also misunderstandings... Also, you just burnt the rest of our evening here, because that's what I'm going to have to spend to get cooking with this kit, I should think."

Faymee took hold of one of Paul's hands. "Don't just think, Mr North... why not try doing? It's amazing what happens when you... do... stuff."

Paul North gave a loud ahem, then fished his wallet out to begin tapping it on the payment terminal of Dirges Robotics Mods, somewhere in Raijin Cove, before bagging the kit and going home to the hacienda... but not before first grabbing more of those tingly spicy Flamefish burgers, tetradoxin micro-poisoning be damned. With some caviar poutine fries, and a huge cup of something fizzy but felt a bit off for being soda. They were delicious indeed.
=====================

Five hours later, Faymee stirred a little as she awoke from being shut down. Paul was hovering over her, sealing one final aperture for the mod kit and standing back to tap on his communicator to run the app plugin for the kit as well as to record his impressions... "Impressive coding... kids behind this are the real deal... initial testing with covers off yields promising results. Let's see what happens with the examples..."

Faymee watched in wonder as her unclothed hip was covered in baize where she wasn't wearing any white clothing or skin-toned stuff, before a small hole briefly appeared and deposited a few billard balls. Paul stared at this display... "I think I left my snooker cue at home, Faymee." Still, he reached a finger out and tapped the white ball, sending the rest of the colored balls bouncing around. One slowly swirled around and around on Faymee's pudenda before slipping in between her legs and vanishing with a snooker table rack sound...

Faymee grinned a little. "Ooh, you naughty little boy, you just had to sink one in the pink for testing, eh?

Paul calmly ignored that remark, it couldn't be professional to snap back while he was testing and reviewing this kit... "Snooker Example has surprising interactivity. Hard to film example, but physics are all there right down to what happens when a snooker ball falls into a outhole..." He paused, put the communicator down into pause mode, and briefly marvelled at what he had just done... and how hard it was going to be to generate PG-rated, let alone family-safe examples. "Moving on!"

an hour later of making snakes unravel off Faymee's arms and glare menacingly at him, bouncing balls that respected her topology but treated her entire body as a source of gravity, and even the obviously generic DVD bounce but with the Arendtcore logo traversing her skin, along with Faymee occasionally moving and watching how the holographic generation system was taking her movements and the way it deformed her skin and clothing into account, she demanded to be let in on the fun with the devkit... Paul reluctantly agreed and gave her leeway to do anything she wanted on a small separated partition from the generous free space left in her memory after stuffing in operating code and her neural scans converted to a slightly-inefficient personality matrix... to which she had now added a copy of the SDK manual for the device and was calmly reading through it while doing a few basic tutorials in the writing...

Five minutes later, Faymee grinned and stood up in only her bra and panties, grinning wickedly. "Hey, Paul, watch this!" She suddenly started moving robotically, whirring and beeping erratically in a way that Paul barely recognised as not being a real malfunction.

Faymee talked in a flat monotone. "Error. Error. Overload. Overlooooooad...." Her voice trailed off as a small smoke trail rose from behind her right ear, as she stood folornly like a broken machine, one eye somehow rotating around like a pendulum ball despite the physical inability of her eyes to focus or move in separate directions. A small square hatch parted from her skin and fell to the floor, before another inner hatch that clearly should not exist opened further inside, revealing a panting, sweaty cartoon hamster. The hamster squeaked tiredly, before looking at Paul.

Paul stared back at the hamster that had just half-exited from within Faymee apparently. They stared at each other in suspense for a few more seconds, before the hamster suddenly spoke up.

"Erm, hey dude," the hamster squeaked in a voice that was clearly Faymee's voice but lowered several octaves. "I'm kinda thirsty and tired right now, could I stop pedalling the wheel in here for a few minutes, maybe get some water, a sprig of celery? Cos damn if doing this job 20/7 isn't hell."

=========================

After the initial shock of Faymee's first attempt at selfprogramming the holographic system with a faked malfunction and some random comedy, Paul and her agreed on some ground rules. There would always be a small visible if subtle cue that Faymee wasn't actually malfunctioning or breaking for real in whatever she chose to project. Nothing too scary that would upset the kids unless literally upsetting an adult for a good cause in an emergency was the point. She would get a slightly larger partition to sandbox her tricks in, but it would never be more than a modest chunk of her free memory, no stealing stuff from other critical software components or data storage. Anything she could come up with within the decency rating the immediate vicinity suggested would be allowed, but she wasn't going to be allowed to do anything overly racy or tasteless in public. Paul rigged up an emergency stop that cut off all power to the projection system if her power reserves for the day were about to go beneath 20%, or if he hit a censor button on the control app...

Paul stretched and looked at the grandfather clock in the living room. They had had so much fun that it was like 1am in the morning. "I'm going to bed. You too. and I don't want you fooling around with your new toy all night.

Faymee nodded eagerly as a pair of angelic white wings and a toy angel's halo appeared fron nowhere. "Scout's honor..." She said as she crossed her fingers in front of Paul. Paul was about to turn away from Faymee when she noticed a small dark red devil's tail swirling behind Faymee's butt. "... and for god's sake, stop overusing it. I don't know how long exactly the Meantime between failures on these components is yet, and folks won't take you seriously if you overuse overt effects with that thing!"

Faymee grinned a little, her teeth subtly sharpened with fangs. "Who, me? never!" The weird new effects vanished immediately right down to her fangs, and Paul rolled her eyes. Suddenly Faymee was way more immature than Elliot, and that kid was only barely getting to the bit where he was 13 years old next year after decades frozen in a state of being a young boy. Perhaps just like the old 3d filmmakers who preceded holographic flixing, she would eventually mature her way out of this state of obsession with the tech she now had on her... or maybe never. Who would be able to tell him?
========================================

Dirges was still very depressed the next morning when he looked through the red ink on his statements. He had overcommitted just a tad on the Dirges Robotics Full Reality Overlay System mod, and now he was looking at a stack of unsold boxes of the install. He would survive writing it off, maybe downgrade to barely healthy ramen meals with sprigs of limp vegetables and cheap crab meat instead of the eggs that he loved... He would survive, but he would not like the bumpy scraping landing and what it would do to his arse until he hit on another potentially profitable idea.

A small blue butterfly landed on the table next to Dirges' statements, briefly glitching, the tell-tale sign of an attempt to merge holographs onto geometry in the real world being scanned on the fly. Dirges blinked and looked up as another butterfly landed on his nose, glitching a little as it struggled to track with the movement of his head... he looked up further and saw Faymee, covered in a myriad of simple-colored butterflies. grinning wickedly. She said just one thing... "Cool, innit?"

Paul slowly eased himself past Faymee, sending a few of the butterflies scattering from her shoulder into air and fading once they got too far. "Mr Dirges, let's put on a live cartoon show tonight. You'll be sponsoring. I need a few things from you basically, and the guys you brought on board for this mod system so far... maybe a comedian who knows how to adapt."

Dirges grinned. "My cousin Daphneesh needs the work and he hasn't quite hit it off at the comedy club down the road. He's good at physical comedy as well... will that suffice?"

Paul had gotten infected with the same insanity as Faymee, and it was now gradually spreading to Dirges... Paul made a gesture of pointy fingers and nodded. "That's what I'm talking about. GET HIM. NOW. and let's rent the plaza stage. We are going to do a major reversal of your fortunes on this toy... Oh, and maybe two or three friendly video bloggers you know. "
========================
That day, Paul had in his enthusiasm and recurring psychopathy just sent a message to a certain long-suffering winemaker extraordinare... The delivery he had expected would be delayed a day, maybe two. Also, come to the plaza stage tonight... A copy on cardboard had been hammered into the plaza stage as well as the light pole next to Dirges Robotics Mods. Practice was being done to perfect timing, as Paul focused on coaching Dirges into a basic PR showman and met with the other tinkerers who had contributed to the system.

Faymee had played a small guess the card game with a derpy but surprisingly agile Daphneesh The Aspiring Comedian. The game was rigged of course, Faymee was rendering every card involved with her projector even as she shuffled and cut the cards, the sound of slightly oversized card-board being worked over hard playing from her hands.
"And now I'm going to show you the card you chose earlier," Faymee smiled as she showed the preview audience a Ace of Clubs and then showed it to Daphneesh. Something seemed to be wrong with the card however - with most poker decks the ace of clubs was not a face card that had people on it... This Ace of Clubs had a disgruntled looking soldier on it clutching cubs in the usual symmetry that such face cards had.

Daphneesh stared, then looked at Faymee. "I did choose the Ace of Clubs, but most glorious Miss Faymee... this is NOT the design I remember!"

Faymee looked away innocently, as the soldier on the card suddenly materialized partially out of the card. "IT IS NOW!" He roared, before flooring Daphneesh with a cartoony crack of his club onto Daphneesh's head. There had been no real physical impact to Daphneesh but for a slight pat of wind on his head, but Daphneesh reacted as if he'd been violently discombobulated, swaying like a living cartoon as he briefly lodged a protest. "That was... not fair play, Miss Faymee..." *faint*

A few kids who had paused to watch Faymee and Daphneesh practice roared loudly with laughter. Faymee and Daphneesh had worked out that he would faint just so that his head was within projection range of her holographics, allowing her to add to the chaos with a small circle of stars and birds flying in an orbit above poor Daphneesh's head.

This was going to be a hit, like the first talkies, Paul thought...
===========================

They did hit a snag at some point, as Faymee's holographics suddenly glitched out and shut down... Paul brought her into the backstall of Dirges' stall in concern, followed by basically the entire dev team for the mod... They checked her out briefly, then came to the same conclusion: the really big effects put a strain on the passively cooled modules for the holograph system, especially the poor underclocked graphics and audio processors... It would need better cooling for prolonged use at scale, which they did not have time to properly rig up, that and better graphics and audio processors. Magesha quickly scribbled down notes - the processing had been his work, and he wanted, no needed to improve the way it was cooled and how fast it operated... Dirnov also followed suit, as the whole point of the system was the holographic emitters...

Paul thought carefully about this with Daphneesh. Daphneesh spoke up first. "Timing is everything, Paul... we're going to need to rework the show a bit. those big bits with lots of space for her to cool down between them with traditional comedy, subtler elements on the projector system..." Daphneesh was surprisingly take-charge for someone who was supposedly just a failing comedian. "My most glorious Miss Faymee, can you do that in our remaining time before the show?"

Faymee nodded hesitantly. "I know I can, and please, just call me Miss Faymee. I'm not that glorious!"

Daphneesh grinned wickedly. "After tonight, you can call yourself anything. I think. It's still going to be a hit, I can feel it in my bones."

=========================
The time for the event came eventually. The curiosity of the adverts hastily drawn and slapped up for the show had resulted in a surprisingly large number of eyeballs watching, waiting....

Faymee oddly enough never had any stage fright despite being a total amateur to this. Aymee had done plenty of high pressure presentations in her years as a lawyer and an Empress, and surprisingly that had provided solid ground for her diverged clone. After all, could it not be said that the only difference between a jury trial and a comedy club was the type of emotions you wanted to elicit from the audience?

She took a deep breath as she adjusted her performer's coattails and skirt, watching from backstage as Dirges stuttered a little while introducing the conceit of the show - a cartoony comedy show as well as a tech demo of something nobody had ever truly seen before. She had retimed a lot of elements to give a careful balance between keeping the holographics functional, borrowing a few practical elements from a disgraced fakir who had watched the daytime preview and fallen in love with her grace in performance to mix it up.

She nodded to Paul, who motioned to the AV crew member he had borrowed to fire up a gramophone that played some jaunty old music as Faymee walked out in full view of the bright lights, smiling as she spread her hands, then frowning as a pair of bunnies hopped out of her sleeves and away from the lights. Actual physical bunnies.... keep them guessing, then deploy the holographics when there was absolutely no way to fake it with the fakir's magic tricks. She frowned as she 'realised' she had screwed it up, lifting her top hat and scratching her head. Briefly, a burst of holographics showed a worried bunny, who silently shushed the audience and raised a sign: "DON'T TELL HER I'M STILL HERE!"

A few kids in the audience just couldn't stop laughing at the imagery, as Faymee sighed and put her hat back on in resignation, motioning to Daphneesh to come down to the stage for their little Ace of Clubs routine....

=================================
Fifty years later...
A very tired old man in a glittery showman's suit was sitting in a comfy chair, doing an interview... The interviewer eased him into it as the cameras carried on...

The interviewer asked suddenly. "Everyone remembers the standout performance you did back on Raijin Cove in 2092, all those years ago... with a pretty young girl from out of town... on some sort of live IT demo cum comedy improv... That was the first time you really brought down the house ever... it's been upwards most of the time since then. How do you feel now after so many years of great hits and even three Comedy Stars awards?"

The old man thought back to all those years... he wept a little, then he smiled. "Has it really been upwards? Truth be told, Mr Osworth, I feel like everything else since that night hasn't been magical... She really did magic on that stage.Most of it was obvious stuff a fool could do with magician training, but there were bits... bits that no man could have pulled off even with trickery. And she had a smile, the most infectious smile. And a laugh that demanded you laugh along or that you were going to be alone and boring... And the tricks.... I know very well how they worked - that was the point of the tech demo, but sometimes, I think back to that night, and I watch the old vidflixes they saved from the event, and it still feels like for one short hour, I'd stepped into another world where everything was possible."

Daphneesh lookoed down at his polished shoes, looking like all the remembering was weighing him down like a ton of bricks. "The great glorious Miss Faymee, we called her... That wasn't grand enough. I miss her. I would throw every accolade I've ever gained these years, every star, every prize... just for one more performance on that stage with her. Just... one... more... magical moment..."

Daphneesh broke down in tears, necessitating a break to hopefully recombobulate him.
======================
at that moment though, Miss Faymee didn't know how big of an effect she would have on Daphneesh. Ony that the audience was rapt. They gasped. They laughed, They tilted their heads in confusion, as she strung them along with a hastily reforged routine that was a mix of "anyone could do that", "anyone with enough practice could do that." and "WHAT. IN THE WORLD" ... eventually her hour was up after a torrent of holographics, practical effects and plain good timing, as she bowed and tilted her hat at the audience... The bunny that had started it all on her head popped out of the hat and briefly raised a sign saying "That's really it. Go home now." sending the audience laughing and clapping as the limelight shut off.

Miss Faymee slowly descended down the stairs, relying on her night vision to avoid tripping in the darkness. She stopped briefly... then popped a holographic generator to create a floating lamp by her shoulder to light the rest of the way... It was not part of the job, just a little joke... But she had broken Daphneesh from that moment...

Daphneesh dropped to his knees and watched this... comedic magician minx, strolling casually off the stage with a magical lamp hovering by her side to provide a dim light. even as the surrounding bulbs did most of the work as they flared back on post-show.... "My most glorious... beautiful... amazing Goddess Faymee.... How do you do this? How do you do all this?"

Faymee gave a small ulp. She had just been bullshitting her way the whole day and night... Now she was expected to give Daphneesh some sort of revelatory philosophy out of nowhere? She thought very carefully... the wrong words could ruin his life... She took another deep breath to compose herself, before slowly getting on one knee to look at Daphneesh eye to eye... Perhaps the same kind of stuff she'd said to Paul when she wanted him to buy this toy?

She said it again. It would prove to be the thing that helped Daphneesh pick himself back up in comedy, and yet also the biggest millstone for the rest of his life.

"Mr Daphneesh... why not try doing? It's amazing what happens when you... do... stuff."

===========================
Paul was not interested in Daphneesh's little breakdown. He was calmly explaining things that were important in the warm afterglow of the wildly successful tech demo."You cannot sell this thing on its own."

Dirges paled. "But... but I want to make hay while the sun shines."

Paul shook her head. He had done tech for so long as Seamus Arendt, he felt qualified to sit this boy down and lead him safely along a treacherous path... "No, you want to launch a sustainable company. We're all aware this system needs to ride atop a quality android platform to even begin to lift its weight. There will be plenty of people you will have to disapppoint by turning them down, just so you can avoid the even bigger disappointment of the thing not working ... oh, and the current first version has a few issues, we can gradually improve the product to reap more sales. Better coprocessing on the board... better cooling... more cool examples for the kids... lessons on wielding the devkit for newcomers... " He paused... hrm... "Maybe I should work out some deals with a few android companies for upgrades to support the weight of this system... Oh, and tech support and installers - this is not a plug-and play system yet..."

Paul spent the rest of his night drowning the first members of what would become Raijin Corp's second homegrown MNC DirgesTek in the advice that only an old sherpa of several decades could offer the budding coglomerate of random folks become a forged collective... a Brotherhood of sorts. He mused briefly that maybe he should also collect franchising fees, then dismissed it... He wasn't the first leader of a Brotherhood, and this team had a whole lot more brothers and even more than one sister - it would be bigger than Arendtcore if they played right and fair and true...
=======================
Paul and Faymee had spent the entirety of next day sleeping in the sun, enjoying the warm glow of what they had pulled off - rather, Faymee had spent the requisite few hours recharging, before slow-discharging in the sun while hugging Paul, a happy smile on her face.

A small butterfly briefly alighted on Faymee's cheek... Unlike the butterflies that she had brought to DirgesTek, this one was real... Faymee opened her eyes on feeling the small white glowy creature flap on her cheek, before it flew off... before closing them again. She was feeling so alive, and it had only been 40ish hours since she'd first booted up and snapped away from the rest of the Aymee Clones...

It felt good.

[handle2]

Chapter 11 - "Just how medieval did you want your BDSM story? - handle2" - Part 1

there will be some pretty weird shifts in tone and style in this tale - I previously warned in earlier stories about Raijin Cove that this place was potentially an asylum keeping some of the oddest minds occupied and not causing trouble in Brazil and the rest of the world... and that may translate to some odd mental processes amongst the inmates.
Enjoy!

Richelieu stretched and yawned in his canopy bed as he awoke, twirling his majestic moustache a little as he hopped out of bed and threw open the curtains to reveal... the dank, tired vibes of Raijin Cove. Being perched almost entirely on the border between stable lawlessness and Brazilian Law, he certainly had a good wide view of the cove. another bonus had been the ability to lobby to add a few extra square kilometres to his estate and to the cove that the Brazilian authorities hadn't been bothered to enforce... by the time they noticed and started protesting, it had been too late - Squatters Rules, Brasilia drools.

On this extra land, he paid the usual tithes to the Council of Raijin Cove. in fact, the land pretty much ensured he was one of the most heavily taxed inhabitants in the Cove in terms of land ownership rates. On the flip side, that onerous taxation brought incredible pull with the Council so long as he could make the money needed to pay those rates, on pain of losing the land. There were no income taxes to speak of, only taxes on select items that the Council had declared potentially deleterious but not completely necessarily harmful to the Cove as a whole.

That had led to the second set of taxes to be paid quarterly on the same terms of taxation equalling representation... A small vineyard of various grape cultivars. But unlike sensible winemakers elsewhere who usually fought hard to keep away the mould and other pathogens that would ruin a grape crop, Richelieu had carefully chosen to infect all his grapes with an assortment of carefully selected moulds and pathogens... The result were grapes that teetered on the edge between an unnatural exquisite flavor and being actual poison, one that he had had the nose to navigate successfully, most of the time.

The follow on result with careful selection, crushing, and long-term fermentation were a series of wines officially shunned and banned from polite competitions and society, yet were carefully secreted away by those in the know and carefully savored in the brief few hours between uncorking and vinegarization. Even modern preservation and serving systems bought at best a day or two before the potently drinkable wine turned to rancid vinegar capable of stripping even the gold out of a nugget.

Lighting Wine, they were all called. good flavor that came out like a flash, but easily left the bottle and fled in a matter of hours or even minutes after. And Business was good even at the exhorbitant rates he'd charged for even a small pint bottle... and he sold a lot of pint bottles and even the more normal large sizes. even in a healthy individual, they were rumored to be able to briefly stop the heart as the imbiber went on a journey of flavor, possibly forever and right into a coffin.

There had been demerits with the location of course.... negotiating the services of a certain kind of purveyor of fetish had proven especially tricky. Even with the warm scent of the wine yeasts at work and the aftersmell of bottled Lightning, no woman would deign to camp out here in the dinky two floor mansion that was Richelieu Chateau for more than a few days, mainly during the harvest season when the grapes were traditionally crushed by the bare feet of virginial maidens. Some customers swore it doubled the flavor and endurance of the wine, some begged to say it was just a waste of time and useful only to ogle bare naked legs dancing in the mash and skirts staining with red and green grape muscat...

That had all changed four seasons ago.
=======================================

The costs of summoning yon fair maidens to do the mashing dance had quadrupled due to COVID-2080, a major contagion that swept through the cove and almost ended it. The cove had recovered from it - its own flavors of poisons, pharma and pathogens were a danger to many pandemics themselves - but not everything had gone back to normal entirely. It had become impossible to lure virginal backpacking maidens into Raijin Cove for the harvest dance, however much Richelieu bumped up the payments and lodging add-ons for those who would divert briefly from their traipsing through that bit of the Brazilian coast into the cove itself, a fact not helped by how the Brazilian authorities had worked to discourage such diversions.

As we mentioned earlier in this tale, Richelieu was taxed at greviously onerous rates... but they were paid back with tolerance of his winemaking practices, and the ability to demand help in dire times of some form or other... though he would not be able to necessarily gain the exact type of help he desired. They might offer him something else instead, it would at least be somewhat effective, that was the promise - if not fully effective. Richelieu had feared that exact outcome as he stormed the Council of the Cove's chambers, surprising the present Senior members who oversaw the cove's wellbeing and stability.

"Prithee!" He had yelled forth, his voice loaded with the grief and worry that was plaguing him, "I require the services of four young maidens, ideally all virginal, though that could be negotiatied away with... but they MUST be beautiful to at least a modest degree. They need to reside in the rooms my chateau and perform the annual harvest rite of the grape muscat dance! I will pay them handsomely, and they will be free to leave after the four weeks of the rite are done and the muscat is delivered to my works to be treated, cooked and prepared for another fine harvest!"

A prince nez'd gentleman in the middle of the table on the far end, heading the Council, adjusted his pince nez... "Are there any other requests the honored Count Richelieu desires, pray tell?"

"Ah, great Lord M[EXPUNGED], I ah... I have certain other slightly more prurient desires... nothing absolutely beyond the pale. merely that though I be one of the elite, I too wish to be occasionally laid low. I would appreciate it if at least one of desired maidens be versed in the art of taking a man as close to hell with various implements before... bringing them back through purgatory and up into the lower heavens, if only for a few hours at a time."...

===========
Mr M listened to Richelieu's florid Old Englishe demands, thinking slowly. "Ah... at least one BDSM expert... ooh... that's going to be a tough call isn't it, Frankie?"

Another Council member, this one a suspiciously effeminate man in a dress who took great effort to pass himself off somewhat as female for very obvious reasons, nodded. "BDSM experts tend to be either young and incompetent, or aged and experienced.... There is a gradual slide between the two, and throwing grape mashing dance into the mix rules out even more candidates, even if only one or two need to be good at it..." Frankie apologised sadly. "Perhaps one of you has a way to offer Richelieu what he needs?"

The room fell silent for a while. Not particularly, no... Richelieu had made a very hard ask. it seemed possible they might even have to refund at least part of his taxes with a little extra thrown in for an apology... That was not a palatable thought as they looked at Richelieu in his strangely ancient garb... Then Mr M almost gave off a soft ping as a lightbulb figuratively went on in his head.
=====================================
"Oh great day, Richelieu," Lord M suddenly addressed him thus. "I may know a friend of a friend who might be able to solve your problem." At this Richelieu was pleased.

Lord M cut into his joy abruptly... "However, be forewarned, the manner in which he solves your quandry may not necessarily take the exact form you envisioned. You will at least be satisfied in one aspect of your quantry, if not both. This much we are willing to guarantee. Are you willing to accept this help from us, or will you attempt to make your next season's payments without the aid you required?"

Richelieu paled briefly, considering the issue. He could either take the help and the reassurance that nothing would be held against him if the help failed to resolve his need, or do nothing and possibly lose the vineyard from not being able to meet nthe demands of the Cove next season... He decided in the end that it would be worth trying the help Lord M was offering, regardless of how it appeared.

A week later, a middle aged man of messy hair and sorrowful mien arrived, dressed in peculiar rags. This was the help Lord M had promised, and already Richelieu began to feel a pang of regret in his worried heart and mind. How was this ragamuffin supposed to deal with his quandry? It looked like a lost cause...
==================================
Bellamy Arendt looked around the Chateau, it was a bizarre mishmash of modern comforts and medieval stylings... a sort of winemaker's estate that was keeping it real by using methods from very ancient times with a few cheats from modern technology here and there such as pasteurization for selected batches intended for longer term storage and slower degradation at the cost of a slight bastardisation of taste.... There had even been a basic harvesting drone system to gather the grapes from the vineyard properly and deposit the muscat into the winemaking process proper. If there was already some modern equipment even in this Chaucerian setup, perhaps one more bit of modern tech wouldn't hurt. He had just the project in mind...
=================================

The ragamuffin introduced himself as "Bellamy Arendt" and surveyed the lands which Richelieu had worked so hard to obtain and keep hold of, witnessing the pride with which Richelieu had kept to the traditions of winemaking that produced Lightning Wine, and even tried a sip or two. It had been an eye opening experience. Perhaps it had even opened up some sort of third eye in Bellamy, as he produced some sort of small handheld contraption and began typing out some sort of missive, and waiting a bit before reading from the device, before typing another missive back and repeating the wait and read. After about half an hour standing in the corridors between the lower floor bedrooms, kitchens and bathroooms, as well as the basement access to yonder winemaking processes, The ragamuffin roared in a sort of satisfaction, some sort of language I had never heard of before, and suspect will never hear again. "Rejoice, my lord, your problems will soon be solved, just in time for the rites you described in four months' time! But there may be a price to be paid. some of your requests are unsual, and I shall need to remain upon ye to ensure the solution does not worsen thy woes in any way... are you amenable to this, or shall I withdraw my services upon thy disagreement?"

Richelieu was desperate, but even the language and the way in which Bellamy had spoken thus raised some concerns. Still, a drowning man will cling to even the Devil. And so it was that Richelieu gave Bellamy the run of the stables, the brewing room, and the lower floor rooms. Richelieu had been a solitaire, and this agreement changed little to him, or so he thought then.

In a few phases of the moon, he would learn otherwise.
=================================

"yes, dammit, Mr North... I'm saying I've finally found a use for that networked effect brain you hated so much as well as that failed experiment in programming empathy into robots rather than naturally evolving it over years of living. No, it's a real touch and go thing here, but if you would kindly bust your sorry arse to get them to me on the next express copter, I would be be very appreciative of being able to get cracking on it fast. I only have about three months, if you take a safety margin of a month before his weird dance... " Bellamy had spoken into the smart tablet he'd carried alomng with his Fixit Microbar. Anything more might upset Richelieu's obsession with medieval times. at least these two implements could be explained away...

He thought for a moment, then asked again. "And we had a few crates from that failed project the medieval park defaulted on, could you send those as well? I finally think I have a use for them too." Bellamy put his smattering of hardware engineering to use, planning on running clean water and electricity into the bedrooms on the groundfloor while attempting to maintain a semblance of medieval style in the whole project. This was going to be... really interesting. BDSM androids in a networked configuration, to be ready for some sort of harvest rite and hopefully on a longer term basis, if not permanently ensconed within this medieval-with-hidden-benefits Chateau.

It was one pretty farking weird challenge... but that was the thing that had made Arendtcore what it was now... the innermost sanctum LOVED weird challenges to their coding, engineering and artistic senses... oh yes, the legal shit too, though it had always been harder for Aymee Ichigo to share that bag with the rest of them even when she was still in the Sanctum and not an Empress...

He cracked his knuckles and started laying out plans on his tablet as Richelieu left him to his devices.

[handle2]

Chapter 12 - Strange Dealings With The Devil / Bellamy starts building what he needs at Richelieu Chateau.

A few days later, the ragamuffin Bellamy Arendt had begun construction of a most interesting series of structures within the bedrooms on the ground floor. He doth remove all the furnishings and smeared the floor with some concoction, adding drainage to each of the rooms as well as pipings to convey various fluids and motive forces into the rooms a day later after the concoction hath dried and faded from visible eye. To each room he added the same items... Some sort of wood and glass chamber which could close either its glass or glass and wood elements into a closed closet, a sort of screen painting that kept moving and showing indecipherable items, a sort of board full of keys labelled in incomprehensible ways that glowed faintly in the dark, and a large box that through some form of mechanics locked and opened by itself. To these boxes, Bellamy hath added various items of fair maiden's clothing, but amongst them were strangely wicked items of clothing and odd implements.

When Richelieu confronted Bellamy Arendt spoke thus:

"Hark, my Lord. I mean you no distress or harm to your estate, but the maidens I hath summoned will arrive soon, but I shall not be able to retain their services and health without these arrangements I am making upon your estate. I apologise for the oddity and the heavy use of space, but they are necessary to meet the demands you have placed upon me. Each of these former bedrooms now doth contain the necessary unuugents and implements for them to dress presentably and meet the needs of thy wine estate. I would ask that you refrain from interfering with these fixtures I hath placed, though you are welcome to view them without touching anytime. These fair maidens hath been drawn from lands where certain concepts we consider to be natural are far from normale to them. They mean no offense, and in return, you should not take too much advantage of their graces and naivete..."

At that time, Richelieu hath accepted the ragamuffin's peculiar explanations. Subsequent events would send him on a strange roustabout of different opinions, some more positive, some far worse...
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Bellamy wiped his brow as he finished putting together some prototype code to unify the four androids he was about to install into the winemaker's estate. He had also developed a slight throbbing headache since stepping into the estate, surely nothing wrong was happening to him from continued exposure to the estate's environment? He took a small swig of a rum that had been prescribed by a Doctor Salmuhg, claiming that it would protect him from the worst effects of Richelieu Chateau's fumes, if only for a reasonable period...

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Things got weirder gradually.... Four coffins had arrived at the estate in some sort of brownish material - some sort of wood pray tell - Richelieu had no knowledge of.... The ragamuffin had immediately claimed them all and stowed one into each of the ground floor bedrooms and ordered him not to enquire for a while as he prepared them, locking the doors to all of them before opening the first one and shutting himself inside... he had however neglected to lock this door as he worked, and he was all too focused on the work he was performing within, allowing Richelieu to peek in and survey the work being done by Bellamy... He gasped a little.

A most beautiful golden-haired maiden doth stand in repose in the wooden chamber. at various areas of her body, holes hath been carved out of her anatomy, exposing delicately shaped natomies and other strange indescribables. In the middle of her chest lay a sort of puzzle board with various unknown holes and tabs and glowy runes that kept shifting. Bellamy calmly introduced some sort of piping into the board and proceeded to punch the board beneath the moving screen painting with his fingers at a rapid pace... After a while, yon fair maiden awoke slowly.... She had the bluest of eyes to match her long gosssamer gold hair, and when she opened her mouth, a cacophony in a language Richelieu had no comprehension of spewed forth, her lovely lips parting and closing erratically. This had allowed Richelieu to view the woman's bare body, as prurient a desire as it may have seemed. If one omitted the strange parts and holes, there was much to bring Richelieu joy- her form, her clefts, her rounded forms, her face, all spoke of perfection...

Bellamy licked his lip in some sort of strange ritual motion and muttered. "And thy name shall be Donna... yes... Donna soundeth like a most appropriate name for this contraption..."

The fair maiden suddenly began to speak in a way that made some sense to Richelieu. "My name be Donna. My lordth be Lord Richelieu, my sole place shall be the grounds of the Chateau Richelieu, where I now stand and wherefore I have had a map defined of where I shall linger. I shall serve, honor and obey his desired requirements and additional needs, even while I protect the sanctity of this estate. I will love, honor, and obey. Warning: occasionally I shall lay him low as he desires, but he will always be my lord otherwise, just as he be the lord of my other... three... sisters..."

Richelieu eased the door shut and clutched his heart as he retired to the corridor. This Donna was a mere maiden, but her declarations were almost knightly and pierced his heart. He needed to be the best lord he could to her... and to the other three maidens, if their intentions and hearts were just as pure...

After a short while, Bellamy Arendt doth leave Donna's room, "That is one down", he sayeth in a puzzling formation of the language, a reminder that he is not from these parts... "But I cannot continue my works for the moment. Something about the vapors of this place ill-fitteth my humors, I must adjourn to the lowlands to recuperate for the night. Be not afraid, I shall return henceforth tomorrow to continue my preparations for your ritual... And with that, he started walking out the gates of the Chateau towards the town beneath us...
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Doctor Sahlmung watched with attention as Bellamy dropped the efferverscent tablet that he had been prescribed into a mug of chilled water, drinking it down slowly and feeling the swimmy feeling in his head go away slowly, just in time as a preselected buffet of roasted veggies and roast meat was placed in front of him with actual modern sauces and cutleries. "Oh god... what was that feeling? It was weird..."

Doctor Sahlmung nodded and patted his shoulder. "That estate is home to some pretty virulent fungi and pathogens. two or three days won't affect you much, but I've brought out people who stayed in there a bit longer and their lingual centers and concepts of the world had been totally frakked, Mr Bellamy... they literally begin to think like medieval folks and speak and listen to stuff in the same context. No absolute idea why. it's a total puzzle I'm always interested in, even if there's actually no permanent solution for it."

Bellamy considered this, then paled... "And my client has been staying in that estate nonstop for... years... Oh no...."

Doctor Sahlmung shrugged. "It doesn't seem to be too deleterious once your leave the estate for a day or two and drink down this counteragent I use regularly for neural impacts... I've seen him speak and dress normally like modern us down here, but he spends too much time while preparing his wines and he falls right back in just like..." he made a woosh sound and parted his hands like his brain was exploding. "Anyhow, you seem unnaturally well prepared for this job you're doing..."

Bellamy bit into the roast. whatever meat it was made from it was DELISH! ... "How do I put it in layman terms.... oh yes, we took some old code and hardware from various older projects we once did.... the robots we're using came from a client named Eldos Productions... some major porn concern that wanted to expand a themepark for adults called "Eastworld"... we 'd just started on the first four prototypes for their new medieval quarter when weird shit started happening that threatened me and my bros, so we exercised our right to terminate and left the site just before it all went to some sort of hell. They still did pay us for pre-production and the prototypes and initial fittings, but we never got to fulfil that giant Camelot thing we wanted to build. Pity, really...." He raised his glass and chugged more of the counteragent fizzing away... "Wow, this tastes like pretty decent blueberry soda... is it safe to drink without actually curing ... you know, any neural issues building up?"

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Richelieu tested the door to Donna's room and foundeth it unsecured while Bellamy hath excused himself, so he decided to peek in again.

Donna hath had all her various holes patched up, and now resembled a fair normal human maiden of gossamer gold hair and warm blue eyes. She stared straight ahead, uncognizant of her lack of modesty and total nudity as she stood in the wooden chamber, a glass door of some sort formed over the wooden chamber to seal her in. Richelieu touched nothing - he had given his oath to Bellamy not to touch anything in this room. He did not commit not to watch though, and watch he did... this lovely maiden, kept away from him by a layer of glass. this allegedly loyal, perfect woman-

Donna suddenly spoke. "Hark. I see the approach of Lord Richelieu. How may I assist you?" So she could hear and speakth!

Richelieu fell silent as he watched Donna watch him watch her, trying to compose a proper reply to a lady... "I doth require nothing of you at this moment. There will be tasks in the days ahead, important tasks. I thank you and your sisters for answering my summons, but am most curious about some things... what, pray tell be your sisters' names?"

Donna doth put forth a series of unnatural sounds, sounds that seemed strangely beautiful and yet not human... "Lord Richelieu, our names are Donna and... Donna and... Donna and... error. thy knowledges hath not been fully formed, please completeth thy knowledges before making such a query of me again..." What a peculiar response, but that gentle voice doth be like honey to a bee, however incomprehensible her answers became.

Richelieu attempted to steer the discussion. "Earlier, I heard that thou wouldst serve me loyally without question, obey me, and see to my needs. is this truly an oath you are prepared to swear, or mere empty words?"

Donna made more of those unnatural noises, before responding again. "Yes, my lord, we have all sworn or are being prepared to swear such an oath. Caution: my lord hath requested that I may inflict certain desired forms of pain. I am still not fully aware as to the extent of what sort of pains you desire, and I may accidentally injure or harm you. For that I apologise and beg your forgiveness in advance..."

Richelieu twitched and almost went against the glass casing. "Ah, Donna my dearest... if your other sisters are of the same mind as you I fear I shall not want for all the pain I desire and all the needs I need met! You seem at times like an angel, yet at others like a demon.... mayhaps you be a succubus sent to damn me? Or an angel to bring me to heaven? Nay, perhaps both at the same time, though that soundeth like madness"

Donna started making more of those unnatural noises, now longer in duration."... Lord Richelieu, my lord... I am merely Donna. your servant and one of four. Nothing more. Nothing less. Please refrain from asking such protracted things....

Richelieu backed away gradually. "We shall speak of other things later. Perhaps we may even have a chance to know each other more..." He said as he opened the door, perchance to exit this maddening yet lovely vision and sound.

Donna blinked slowly, as one does. "Farewell for the moment, my lord. we shall speaketh again when the time is ripe..."

And then, the room doth fell silent save for the noises emitted by the screen painting and the wooden chamber, Donna standing straight in repose as one may do....