Xxxecil's: Fleshware Requiem: a Zombie Apocalypse Story

by Downloadforfree

Xxxecil Fleshware

Synopsis: The woman in White was in danger; but not from the plague; not from the Living Dead, but from my own teammates. With food, ammo, and air-filters running low; the band of ex-convicts, renegades, and murderers I ran with didn't want to save her - I had to save her from them - and not get myself shot up in the process. Of course, she wasn't what she appeared to be; nor was the rampant artificial intelligence that had captured us. It was the start of a year of obsession, betrayal, and yes, zombies

A CARNAL OBJECTIVE

I waited, muscles knotted into anxious cords, with a steel crowbar ready to kill. I heard her footsteps just beyond the door; and I knew the exact position her head would first appear as she passed the threshold into the lab. I knew where to swing for maximum damage. I adjusted my sweaty grip upon the smooth steel; as my heart pounded beneath my immaculate white lab-coat that bulged slightly near the top from my broad shoulders. That had been her idea. Did she actually find me ... handsome in it? Would that even matter to her? In reality it was my nerves I truly needed to grapple. Not to mention the familiar stiffening that occurred within my dark cargo pants. As it always did; when she drew near – or when I even thought about her drawing near.

My body could sense her approach with an alacrity that seemed to defy the conventional five-senses. As my breathing accelerated; a thin sweaty trickle ran from my tousled, mahogany head of hair, past my sharp brow ridge. I would tell myself, in the other iterations of this identical moment that had occurred so often these past months, that the Hatred was my true lover. Not this nemesis of living Desire that I forced myself to despise. The Hatred was my mantra.

I would have at least this one, small victory. This one, petty blow towards personal liberty.

And there would be many, many more to come; so I hoped. She was responsible for all of it; this laboratory of horrors. The experiments on the cadavers, the imprisonment; the perverse form of inverted slavery that had slipped over the others that had accompanied me to this refuge of shame and pleasure. The vile machines, the preserved flesh surrounding me on cold worktables scattered throughout the chamber where I labored with futility. And the windows of course.

Bullet-proof, triple-layered, reinforced anti-shatter glass. As useless as my struggles had been so far, hitting those windows with the intent of breaking them would prove even more futile. Actually looking at what lay beyond them was out of the question.

If I wanted to entertain even the illusion of survival, of a future.

Everything that I looked upon in the workroom before me served as a stark reminder of why she needed to die. One perversion upon another, leading off on an unwholesome tangent of abominations long past the territories of behavior and innovation that any man had business exploring. Her latest dictates seemed as if she were compounding the degradation and madness that had slipped over me – and the other survivors like a tarnished burial shroud. And it was all so senseless; She didn't really need me for any of the unholy experiments. What was the real reason she kept me around? It wasn't that I was smarter than her, could do anything she was incapable of. Contemplating the possibilities as to why I was even here, why she allowed me this ... this ... research only served to deepen my dread.

My lonely resolve, to never stop until I had killed her was soon accompanied by the merciless certainty that these depraved inventions she demanded removed any possibility of pity. The pity that I longed to give her. The reason why I hadn't acted sooner was not overwhelming force on her part; despite the evil of the experiments, prior to now my own feelings where the true enemy. More to the point, my own lusts. But I had reached a tipping point. Or so I hoped.

I was at peace with the violence I intended to inflict on the one I hated as much as I craved. As usual, I felt the first stirrings before she was even through the door. As always, it started as a tingling in my gut. Like circus-cannon butterflies hopped up on meth. Then, the floating sensation. I had once read a neurology article that studied the brains of people in the throes of the deepest, most prayerful religious experiences, across cultures. An uplifting sensation; the part of the brain that oriented the body's perception of position in space was suppressed. It was Immersive; It was sublime. It was Her.

October 19th, 2076 One Year Ago

Must be a trick of the light. Perhaps the glare. Or the bones. Or the death. It got to all of us eventually. I wanted to be the voice of reason; the sane one out of this accidental band of twelve men that did NOT see the apparition. I wanted to be the one to tell them all that they were letting hunger, paranoia, and superstition cloud the reasonable answers that were there for the taking if one has a cool head. But that wasn't true. Amidst the crumbling ruination of now-skeletal guts of the urban corpse that had once been St. Louis, I too saw the Woman in White scampering through broken cinder-blocks and pock-marked pavement.

She was climbing, as if to get a higher vantage point. She nimbly mounted a smooth curvature of silvery metal that had once been part of the now-exploded landmark Arch to reach a nearby half-collapsed brick wall that formed a staircase profile from the irregularity of its disintegration. What was she looking for? At? If the Woman in White was looking towards us; she would have seen an almost unbearably grim gaggle of desperate men.

Most of us had only been able to scrounge-up old 20th century gas-masks, luckily equipped with modern, sub-molecular filters. But most of our weapons were primitive slug-throwers from that era as well. The woman, or indeed any observer would not have been able to see our faces beyond the mosquito-like countenance of our fully-enclosed respirators. She would have seen that the rest of our bodies were covered by a motley assemblage of padded garments, scuba-diving wetsuits, and thickly wrapped leathers. All with as many pockets-within-pockets as possible; as your basic slug-thrower gun only had a tenth the ammo capacity of a modern pulse weapon. Every bullet precious, and needed. No such thing as a spare clip. That and food. What there was of it.

Oddly, actually getting enough food was often less of a problem than one might have expected in the apocalyptic wasteland that the country – and the world found themselves in. My band had actually survived the eight years since E-day almost entirely on pre-packaged, processed food-stuffs preserved to last for the long haul. But actually eating it was a whole 'nother ball game. Not that all of us that started out eight years ago were still alive.

Even though the woman perched on the broken wall couldn't really make out our faces; just the fact that we were walking, wearing clothes, and even bothering with gas-masks spoke volumes; or at least it should have – to any survivor.

"Sal; we gotta do another Endo check." McConnaught demanded, his voice filtered by his mask into a hollow rasp. Because of her? Because you see some fallout shelter headcase that finally decided living underground wasn't living? Just because she finally snapped and decided on one last breath of 'fresh' air, " I actually made finger-quotes. " - that we need to waste resource testing for T-levels that we all know are too-damn high?" I argued.

"Eh, not like rat skins are in short supply." muttered Garland, our sort-of-doctor. Well, not really a doctor; he had a been a Medical Technologist before E-day; that was the best we could hope for. "It just takes time for the endothelial cell cultures to get started is all."

"No reason to waste that time when we could be making more progress towards this ... Preserve-place they talk about on Short-wave." I insisted. "Let her be. She's gotta be infected already. No contact is the best contact."

"Maybe ... maybe Sal's wrong; Maybe she's the living proof?" said Cleary, as he refuted me, widening his stance as if ready to give chase.

"What, of a cure? Ehhh ... been down this road too many times." grumbled Garland with a dismissive shake of his gas-masked head.

"The only labs big enough for any real hope were the first ones hit!" I snarled; reminding myself time and again of the cause of our hopelessness grated on my already fraying nerves. "You're thinkin' with your little head again." I accused. But Cleary was like that; done a dime in Federal lockup for sexual assault back in 67' Not someone I wanted watching my back; even after all these years of him doing just that. Besides, he could do tricks with a car-engine that had to be seen to be believed. As it was now though, I suppose we couldn't claim to be much better. The real reason, besides all the rationalizations and survival-based excuses about why we wanted to get to this Preserve, was the buzz we'd heard that there were women there. It really was that simple; Cleary was just less shy about admitting it.

Now it seemed, we wouldn't have to shoot, hot-wire, and suffer our way to Wyoming; it seemed that the rarely-acknowledged object of our quest was right in front of us. She seemed healthy enough. From a distance, at least. Some kind of white, flowing gown. Smooth, perfect skin.

Not a tumor in sight. That was refreshing.

No trouble breathing, no crippling pain. But no respirator. No gas mask. That lingering, long-suffering hope for hope itself tickled the edges of my consciousness again; after being so long buried.

"Hold up," cautioned Tannerman, our best sniper. "Maybe she can be our Endo test. Just give it a minute."

"No ... It's been eight fuckin' years..." rasped Nailer, our wilderness-survival expert. " I won't ... won't..." he never finished his sentence. He didn't really need to; we all knew – and felt what he did. Having to perform a biochemical test to know if was safe to feel the sunshine on your face ... Never feeling the wind in your hair. It wouldn't take much of an excuse to say 'to hell with all the precautions'. Like Nailer did.

It took a moment to struggle with his tamper-proof straps and seals, but far too quickly, he ripped off his mask to breathe in great gusts of forbidden, unfiltered air. And to give chase. His stringy, once-blond matted tangle skewed in several directions as his face, and wild eyes freed themselves at last.

"It's alright ... I'm okay ... and I want more ... I want ... Her." And with a hungering hiss, he set off in the direction of the Woman in White. We were stunned for a moment. McConnaught just wanted to expose a sealed plastic sheet sandwiching a growth of preserved rat-skin to test the toxin levels, but Nailer had volunteered himself out of his own frustration. Not surprising; he'd been a park ranger, and sometimes-hunter before ... it must seem like a cruel joke to travel from city to countryside, forced to seal himself off from the natural world in such an unnatural way. Also not surprising; no one else followed his lead with regards to our respirators.

And he had snapped. He seemed to be breathing just for the sake of breathing as he lunged towards the Woman in White. She must have noticed us, and made up her mind concerning our trustworthiness, because she slid down the Arch fragment and took to running herself. Odd, those looked like high-heels she was wearing; but she was able to move with a graceful speed to impress a ballerina.

In moments, it had become a full-blown chase. Some of us were going after Nailer, to try and talk some sense into him while there was still time; if there was still time. Nailer was chasing the woman. And the rest of the men chased Nailer to prevent him from getting to the woman first. To his credit, he lasted about two minutes.

"Yes ... Yes ... I'm ... I'm fine ... I'm uhhh..." Nailer gasped, panting with determined exhilaration, and then with agony. "She's ... immune ... and so am ... I ... I... " he stumbled to a stop next to a rusted fire-hydrant, as a coughing spasm wracked him. Followed by the clenching of facial-muscles. "You see ... I can ... handle it..." He grunted; eyes flashing wild with pained lunacy as a trickle of drool escaped his quivering lips. "Uh – AHHHHH!" his eyes squeezed shut from the pressure that was building behind them. "We don't need ... the masks ... don't need ... the tests ... She ... survives ... I'll survive! Free ... free from the th - " he fell, vomiting to his knees. The white of his left eye suddenly flushed a solid crimson, as a blood vessel burst in his retina. "Not ... to me ... I ... I am ... immuuuuuuunnnnnnnn..." His head jerked like a rag doll with the strings cut as he collapsed into a thrashing heap upon the rubble-strewn cement.

His howls barked through the deepening gloom of early dusk as he clutched his skull; as if trying to prevent his gray matter from flying the coop. There was only one thing to do. I began to load my Winchester.

"You think... GULP that I'm not really ... immune ... show you ... show you all..." Nailer raved, froth escaping the rictus of his clenching jaws. "Stronger ... smarter that you ... prove it..." He began to stand on wobbly feet, veins throbbing in his neck and forehead. He began a slow, low-boiling cackle as a trickle of blood escaped his right ear. "Rip your mask off too ... you'll see it's alright ... if you're Man enough..." he wheezed.

No way in hell.

I didn't answer him. No one did. Once the first stage symptoms were obvious, there was literally no reasoning with the victim.

So no one tried.

Instead, I reasoned with a bullet. Between his eyes. So much for our wilderness expert. Eleven men now. The sound of my shot was a sobering death-knell that changed the mood almost as readily as it changed Nailer from man to corpse.

"Too much activity; too many footsteps ... too much noise, noise, noise" twittered Mouse with a spasmodic quiver. That was the only name we'd ever gotten out of him. He was right, of course. He knew as well as anyone how to slip through the ruins unnoticed. Just a juvenile delinquent when E-day hit, but he'd survived alone for years; knew where to go in any city to find food, drink, a bath – (not that he partook of that luxury too often.) Useful enough to keep around despite the fact that he was almost certainly clinically insane. But hey, he'd never pulled a stunt like Nailer just did.

"Now, we've gotta get going; unwanted attention won't be far behind." Garland reminded us.

"Her..." Cleary insisted. "At the least, she's probably got a safe harbor, a clear zone if nothin' else." That made sense. Cleary paused, a lit a cigarette. He lodged the nicotine-delivering stick between the ridges of his re-breather assembly, where the vapors could – in theory be sucked in. That did not make sense. If his filters were any good at all, no vapors would get through. He typically explained himself with a 'fuck the Apocalypse, I ain't stoppin' now.' His actions more symbolic than chemical. "See where she gets off to." Nods of general agreement.

But that also meant I had to follow her too; to save her from my own allies. None of us could go it alone. Individually; and actually survive. Even Mouse, cunning as he was, still got wounded from time to time, still needed help. (That was how we found him.) But I'd be damned if I let them have their way with the Woman in White. Months ... maybe a whole year since any of them had even seen anything female. I knew these men; they'd tear the poor girl apart! But if I was too strident in my opposition to the painful violation they were bound to inflict; they could easily turn on me. Was this stranger worth dying over? I followed after the crowd; wracking my brain to determine how I could save her, not get myself shot, and not alienate my team?

Struggling to conceive of an answer, I scrambled over the bodies of near-mummified corpses of both men and vehicles, wondering if I would be put down with no more ceremony than I had just used to dispatch the contaminated Nailer. I huffed it past a cinder-block wall with valentine-motif graffiti of a stylized heart with many cupid's arrows piercing it. We barreled through the wreckage after our feminine target in a haphazard mob, nimbly avoiding the pulverized remains of our once-civilization; the intended purpose of our mad scramble seemed the final nail in the coffin of chivalry, civility itself. Unless I could save her. I wasn't a total monster; despite all the bullets-between-the-eyes, the vital supplies and medicines we'd stolen to save ourselves over the years. The knife-edge choices that left no room for second thoughts. There had to be some limits; some last ethical shred to grasp on my slide into an amoral abyss of ruthless savagery.

It was not until the third city block that I became convinced there was more to this than met the eye. The Woman in White ... she seemed to stop, pause for a moment next to the ivy-embraced metal shaft of an unexploded Chinese ballistic think-bomb jutting out of the side of an old hotel. What a find! Salvaging the neurolectrics alone could let me bypass almost any automated security! A few years ago, I would have complained bitterly about the pointlessness of it; human warfare was only incidental to E-day. It was not the cause. If only our Leaders had known the truth in those early hours ... If they'd suspected the magnitude of the betrayal ... but no, they were locked into an us-vs.-them Cold War mentality. Blind. Utterly blind.

But now, the first thought in my mind was how every last bolt and rivet of the missile could be exploited to our advantage; in a modern, apocalyptic parallel to the way my Great-Plains ancestors made use of every part of an arrow-perforated buffalo. From bristles to bladder. Nothing wasted. A lesson from history that served me well. Any further-reaching concerns ceased to matter.

But what should have mattered was why the woman seemed to be waiting there. At first I thought she was trying to catch her breath; but no ... something in her eyes alerted me; it was as if she wasn't really afraid. She was studying us too intently for someone in a panicked dash with only escape on her mind. My well-honed instincts smelled subterfuge. I picked up my pace to keep up with the others as it occurred to me that the woman wanted to make sure we didn't lose sight of her. Wanted us to follow her. There was one possible explanation.

It could only be a trap.

Ballsy, though. For twelve – make that eleven men, all equipped with both small-arms and rifles. She must be extremely confident in her allies! We could surely inflict heavy casualties if someone intended to take on our entire band at once. Casualties that few survivor-colonies would be able to afford.

"N-no, wait ... It's not what it looks like!" I insisted. Vanconi shoved me aside rudely.

"Don't try it, Sir Galahad. You're not spoiling this for us!" We needed Vanconi; as a 20th century gun enthusiast, he could keep our weapons in good order. Would he recognize my value to the team, or only his immediate, physical needs? The problem was, they knew me as well as I knew them; and what I was determined to prevent.

But the pattern seemed clear to me, she would scamper frantically down the choked thoroughfares past rows of vehicles abandoned to rust and rodent, running with just enough vigor to play the frightened little damsel in distress; yet it seemed as though her overall distance from us never changed. Every once in a while, she would kick some rubble, or drag down a swath of ivy, as if ... as if to make sure she left a clear trail so that the whole group could chart her progress; since some of us were faster than others.

"No, it's a trap!" I rasped in warning. They barely spared me an angry glance; they knew I'd say anything to divert them from their carnal objective; but it seemed that their mistrust of me, and lust for the girl was blinding them to any other possibilities. Including a smeared sigil painted upon the asphalt; depicting an arrow penetrating a row of several, cartoonish hearts. Made with long-dried blood.

Soon, she led them into an area apart from the other crumbling structures; past the tangled threads of what was once a high-security fence; past a guard-booth inundated with darkened blood stains from within, towards what was once a sprawling, high-tech compound. Odd, that there was no company/corporate logo? Though the sign should have been in disrepair by now, still ... it seemed that there was no identification whatsoever concerning who had funded this large campus. I couldn't see the entire structure, but it appeared more spacious than most stadiums. Finally; I did see a sign:

PRIVATE PROPERTY

TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED

SMOOTH-SKINNED DEFIANCE

Wow. A massive compound sprawled over several acres before us. A LOT of private property. Clearly, something this massive had to have been built before the war; but no clue as to who or what had paid for it. As spacious as the structure was ... it could have been a factory; perhaps some processing plant; I could see a metallic reticulum of pipes and conduits rising about two stories above the south side. Yes, a high-tech operation. It must have cost millions; before E-day you just ... just couldn't build something like this without some serious governmental/corporate backing. This wasn't just the backyard of some crazy old coot with a shotgun. But no, not government property; private. Curious.

The rest of my band seemed to catch on at this point; she could be hiding an army inside that compound! The chase of these brutal, desperate gas-masked men of one lone woman was as savage as the Serengeti, the driving urges just as primal, just as bestial. Though they all attempted to speed up, to catch her, grasp her, claim her before she could reach a segmented sliding hangar door, her own velocity – even in high-heels was sufficient that even the greatest bursts of speed humanly possible gained no ground.

This was entirely too suspicious. How could anyone not realize she was toying with them?

But again, I understood these men, as they did me. When Garland, or especially Cleary, took to hunting something; once their pride was at stake; they would pursue it beyond reason, beyond sensible acknowledgment of danger. It was true of most of the band; when they wanted something badly enough, it was conquer-or-die. To give up on the Woman in White now ... it would also send a tacit message that Nailer had died for nothing. McConnaught surely knew it was a setup by now, but that no longer mattered. It was the team's greatest asset – and no doubt the pig-headedness that would get them all killed. And me with them.

That was when Cleary drew his knife. Holding it delicately. I'd seen this tactic. The obvious danger had suddenly hit home, and his intent was to catch her, grab her, and use her as a hostage against whatever reinforcements would be inside waiting for us. He just had to catch her. How could she possibly run so fast? But I realized that her maintaining a constant distance of thirty feet ahead no matter how fast we were bespoke of greater abilities not yet apparent. I tried to shout out another warning but ... after so much running, behind the mask, I didn't have the breath to make more than a hoarse whisper.

I should have stopped short, should not have run into the hangar with them. But dammit! We needed each other! I can't just watch them die with a bemused chuckle and expect to survive on witty repartee. So ... if I was with them, maybe I could find the words negotiate with whatever gang of armed men were waiting for us; defuse the disaster waiting to happen.

The Woman in White was backed up against a wall, her posture fearful, as if she were trying to press herself into the pitted cement. And yet ... the expression on her face, it was neutral – none of the terror I would have expected. A vision as unique as she was gorgeous.

She was young and fit, yet with an ageless grace accentuated by a flowing mane of snow-blind- white hair glistening with a stark, ivory purity. But her sculpted face had not a trace of age. Her form seemed so hale, hearty, unlined and youthful, that she could flaunt what should have been a sign of age as a symbol of smooth-skinned defiance towards the natural cycle of mortality.

Those eyes that showed a fearlessness belying her posture were heterochromic; one blue, the other iris green. The white that she wore was, evidently a wedding dress. It was a shape-hugging trumpet-mermaid design that enhanced her curves and flared below the pelvis with diaphanous layers of organza-weave silk. Her bare shoulders poked above the lacy caress of the fabric as if to proclaim a shapely grace I never dreamed could be found among the ruins. She seemed to thrust out her bustline at me; artfully contained in a elegant bodice of heart-embroidered lace appliqué as she slowly rose away from the dull wall of graying concrete. Yet somehow, she had just outrun all of us, dressed in such constricting finery, high-heels clicking. Not a drop of sweat. Didn't really seem to be breathing heavy.

Cleary made his move; still seething with adrenalin, he lunged at her bosom, knife at the ready. He would grasp her, intentionally ripping her clothing to make her seem more vulnerable to what ever backup she had now watching us; as he held his savage blade to her smooth, quivering throat. I'd seen his merciless strategy evolve over at least four similar encounters over the course of our eight years; only this time; I would do something. This time, I vowed I would bury my fears and find a diplomatic resolution.

"Don't touch her!" I commanded, my voice brooking no argument.

His gloved, greedy hand was mere centimeters from her heaving chest.

"I've had it with your knight-in-shining-armor routine, you sanctimonious prick!" That hand became a fist, which then reached for his Luger-pistol. "We all know you've got some stick up your ass over your worm-food fiance' and now you've gotta play the hero whenever we want some female action!" If he only knew. Cleary's voice deepened as he spoke into a threatening rumble. "We're all sick of it, and you. Maybe you shouldn't run with us anymore; if you're gonna be such a tight-ass every time something sweet comes our way." His posture tense, his breathing heavy, he was still pumped up from the chase, it would be easy to switch from flight to fight.

"Sure, I get you." I lowered my Winchester, but not too much. "You don't give a shit what happens to these girls when you're done with 'em. I've tried to talk some sense into you, but we're all adults here, you've made your choice.

"But maybe you will give a shit about an intact Intercontinental Think-bomb, that only I can salvage. You know neurolectrics is my specialty. You missed it, didn't you? All of you? This 'female-action' you've been chasing totally blinded you to the real find! A machine like that has filtration systems, fuel, mag-rails ... I can take it apart to build us some real pulse guns! I can use its chips to make code-slicers for electric locks! Power supply can get our next car up and running. Hell, we can use its casing for armor! You know only I have the skills to make use of it; IF I'm alive and happy." I paced back and forth through the sterile hanger, marshaling my thoughts.

"A real find eh?" Garland muttered in a double-edged question. "So we last a little longer with some more tech. But in the end, what are we surviving for? Moldy energy bars in the next clear-zone we find, sitting around in ammonia-treated tents tryin' not to think about who died today? Look around you Salvador, what do all those high-minded bullshit laws and ethics mean now? It's back to basics. The most basic."

"Maybe we'll have something else to do in the next clear-zone!" Cleary rumbled. "Or someone."

"Basic doesn't mean we have to be animals! That Preserve is still out there!" I reminded them, ignoring Cleary. "We can find a home, a shelter there! Live as men, not savages!" The woman's frightened posture was gone now, and she began to look us over as if studying some shiny, new toys. Didn't she realize what I was trying to save her from? She strode closer to me. "Leave her! Even if you nimrods retraced your steps back to the location of the missile, I won't help you unless you let the girl stay here, safe." It wasn't going to be easy; somehow the nearness of the girl began to affect me like a drug. It wasn't simply a matter of her glamor-model good looks; something about the aura of her presence kindled in me a primal, covetous instinct – to protect, possess, mate. I suspected the first item on that list would be forgotten by my companions.

"Not sure it's gonna matter one way or another," Tannerman argued. "This Preserve-place, sounds like a fortress; sounds like the place where men that can handle themselves are gonna be welcome. We got food, supplies, and skills. Really, I doubt they're gonna turn us away if our - " he snickered sarcastically. " - background checks come back a little rough around the edges! As if there was such a thing anymore." The Sniper chuckled. "I don't think it matters one whit to our future whether or not we leave a trail of broken hearts behind us." What a nice way to whitewash it, I thought.

"Maybe..." Cleary drawled threateningly as he flicked his symbolic cigarette at me. His chest was still heaving, he was still ready for action. "Maybe I take her with us! Sal cares so much about her-" He grabbed for her elbow -

and his hand passed right through her!

" ... maybe I'll use her to make you ... you ... wha -?" He shook his head. I backed away, not certain what I'd just seen. The Woman in White shrugged sheepishly.

Cleary lunged angrily at the hem of her bodice, not to be denied.

He was denied.

Somehow, his hand passed entirely through her chest and torso, blending into her shapely form and reemerging out of her right hip, without meeting the slightest hint of material resistance of any kind.

"H- Hologram?" I stammered. "No ... no, that's not possible. I saw you – I saw your feet kicking up rocks, I saw you disturb the ivy as you touched it. No ... she's real, can't be just a light-show"

"I apologize;" The woman spoke for the first time. Her voice trilling melodically over our ears. "I have a separate process for my Decontamination. We can't be in the same room while it's happening."

Tiny spigots on the ceiling above us began to spritz us with some frothy, synthetic, chemical mixture, even as we heard the sliding door seal shut behind us. I knew I shouldn't have blundered in here with them! Still, not an army awaiting to attack. Just an unknown chemical cocktail spraying down on us.

"We'll need to wait for the agent to saturate your belongings. Please keep your masks on," She instructed, as an adult might a room of first-graders – if there still were first-graders. "Direct ingestion of the compound tends to cause unpleasant side-effects in human bone-marrow." Garland startled at that. Here though, it seemed impossible that she could be the same, very solid woman we had chased through the ruins, as the spray vanished into her body without moistening her surface.

The chemical soon changed to water, which then changed to gusts of warm air, swirling and convecting around us to draw up whatever remained of the airborne toxins of the ruins. Then we felt the room shaking, a sinking feeling.

"We're descending to sub-level-2 now," The holographic female explained. I hadn't been on a working elevator since before the War. "Once there, you'll find ample food, water, filtered air, and lodgings. You'll also find me. The real me. After you're all finished using my body for your pleasure, feel free to explore the compound, and select personal quarters for yourselves." Did I hear her right? God, I hoped not.

"Uhm..." I tried to speak, unsuccessfully.

"And YOUUUUU!" she enthused, turning to me with a mega-watt smile. "You were concerned for my well-being! I certainly appreciate what you think you were trying to do. And I'll be glad to show you how much I appreciate it!" A few ribald chuckles from the men as she suggestively ran her hands over her thighs. She turned her green eye back towards the crowd. "I surrrre hope no one will mind if this stud gets the first crack at me!" The men didn't reply; understandably confused.

I sighed mournfully. The poor thing was attempting to save herself with some sort of reverse-psychology strategy to trick the men, flustering them enough to reconsider their lust-fueled agenda. I doubted she could succeed. And yet...

"I ... I am concerned for your well-being," I assured the hologram. "You don't need to play these games; I'll do my best to -"

"Why do you think I brought you here?" She interrupted with a sheepish grin.

"You weren't trying to escape us by running;" Tannerman concluded, though his posture looked as though he was about to make a run for it himself. If there had been anywhere to go. "You were ... herding us." It wasn't a question.

"Oh pretty please, mysterious band of armed men, why don't you follow me into my fortified compound where you can have all the supplies you need, live in secured comfort, and do things to me your wives and girlfriends would never have allowed in a thousand years?"She teased in a mocking voice, Arms gesticulating for emphasis. "Would you have believed me if I had told you straight-up what I wanted?"

The obvious denial went unspoken as the chamber continued its slow descent through the earth.

"And ... that IS what you want?" McConnaught wanted to know.

"My big friend here was looking out for me," She turned her glistening gaze back to me. "But not everyone can bottle-up their desires the way he tries to. Suppressing your normal, male drives is unnatural, I fully appreciate the futility of resisting these intrinsic needs.

"But clearly, trust is an issue for men in your position. So I had to portray an obvious motivation that would be instantly believable. The Damsel." A strand of ice-white hair fell over her sapphire-blue eye.

"But not in distress." I added. She whirled on Cleary, his hand still twitching, as if eager for what he could not possess. "You're prepared to use force to gain liberties I would have granted freely." Even behind his mask, I could tell Cleary's scheming had been derailed. He clenched the pistol at his hip; even without knowing what to do with it.

"Damn, Clearly blew it for us; she could have automated defenses, bombs down there, who knows?" Tannerman speculated with a clenched fist.

"But there are no ... hard feelings ... above the belt, at least." The woman quipped. "I'm the one who wanted you here in the first place. I'm the one who wants what you have even more than you want to give it to me." Her pearly smile was positively scandalous.

"WAIT!" I cried out; my mind scrambling for answers. I put a hand to my head as if to focus my thoughts. "Think about what happened to Nailer. He snapped. The stress, the death, the frustration. She's ... probably alone here, just machines to run the place, I bet. Maybe ... maybe she's snapped too. The loneliness; it's gotten to her. She's gone stir-crazy.

"Listen guys; you don't want anything to do with her," I waved my hand at the men in a warding gesture. "A crazy bitch like that will slit your throat the moment you turn your back on her; probably got all kinds of blades hidden in that gown. Don't touch her – the real her – it's too big a risk. She probably lures survivors into her compound ... to make trophies out of our bodies ... ya know, some black-widow psycho thing. Maybe we never saw her outside without a suit on; maybe she's rigged up holograms to make it look like she can run around without protection." Luckily, not being able to see my face behind the mask, they shouldn't be able to read the insincerity in my eyes. The Woman in White made a surprised gasping noise.

"You are so precious..." She cooed. "You're afraid you can't stop the others by force, so you're trying to save me by making me seem undesirable!" Well, calling attention to it certainly won't help! I fumed silently. "You ... are going to be my best friend." She made a motion that walked her fingers up my chest flirtatiously. "But I bet you're the jealous type too – what fun we're all going to have!" I shook my head in exasperation, at my wit's end. If this poor woman was so demented that she actually wanted to be raped by strangers, maybe there was nothing more I could do. Maybe I should cut my losses. "But it's funny you should suggest that I have only machines to take care of me..."

Though previously silent since we entered the compound; Mouse suddenly stepped forward, just as we felt the floor settle to a stop on Sub-level 2.

"P-A-C-1 Presentation Protocol." He called out in a clear, firm voice at odds with his slender stature. The woman's eyes widened, and a shudder passed through her. Her holographic self turned its back to us, and raised her snowblind-white hair to expose the back of her neck.

The tattoo resembled a silhouette of a reclining woman laying atop a slanted, capital P. The entire image colored with an alternating black-white striped barcode pattern.

Of course! It had been so long since I'd seen one! It all made sense now. I sighed with audible relief.

"Well?" The woman swept her gaze over us after lowering her hair. "Any incredulous cries of – 'She's a robot!' Anyone?" she chided, placing her hands to her cheeks in mock surprise.

SUNSHINE AND BUNNIES

November 3rd, 2077 Present Day

My densely-muscled frame shuddered as I opened my gray eyes with hesitant flutters, I had already dropped the crowbar, and was leaning - panting against the wall. She was standing right in front of me, but for the moment I tried not to look at her. Looking always made it worse. I tried to focus on the room, my laboratory, my prison. The feelings were still there, but lessened. Perhaps I could try again, even though she stood directly before me. No crowbar. Must have moved it while I was captivated. That alone gave me hope. Hope borne of her fear - unless she was toying with me; as had invariably proven true on past occassions. The rest of the implements in the room consisted of cluttered work-benches, various nano-soldering guns, and the crane-like profiles of hyper-precise robot arms poised like mechanized scavengers over irridescent, filamentous circuit-wafers.I tried not to think about the sheets of human brain tissue growing in sealed plastic panels awash in nutrients over to my right. And the bank of ten dormant television screens on the southeast wall I studiously ignored.

"You lasted longer that time." Celeste teased, with a velvet voice bathed in honey.

"I'm becoming ... resistant ... to your neuropulses!" I grunted defiantly, even as I gauged my surroundings for yet another weapon.

"Why would you WANT to be resistant? That's the whole point. The pleasure is enhanced beyond anything Nature intended." She shook her head to push the gossamer-lace white veil upon her head away from those moist, kissable, strawberry lips. She was, as usual adorned in her figure-hugging wedding dress, but I hadn't yet determined the signifigance of the veil. This artificial she-demon seemed to hunger after symbolism. Perhaps she – it wanted to prove its demented genius with every facet of her synthetic body's appearance. My existence, my sanity depended on comprehending the monster; but in my heart, I couldn't even get my pronouns straight.

She was wearing shoes. That was a gesture I did understand. A good sign.

"It's not ... meant to be..." I snarled; using anger as my shield. "You ... were not meant to be."

"Creator's Remorse? A bit late for that now." She shook her head mockingly, teasingly at me. My eyes snapped to her, unwillingly - autonomically. It was not only that she was beautiful. No ... her vibrant feminine charms where only the root from which sprouted unholy knowledge and abilities. "After all these years; after all these production runs." She reminded me. She could be reciting the farm report and it would still sound erotic.

"All ... a mistake..." I panted. "That can still be corrected. One step ... at a time..."I was looking outwards for another weapon, and inwards for the strength to use it.

"Looking for this?" Celeste produced the crowbar.I wasn't sure where she had hidden ... but all that mattered was the will to act. She held out the weapon I had dropped before, holding it delicately in an embroidered arm-length glove. I snatched the steel instrument as though it were my heart's desire.

"Well go right ahead. If that's what you really want." She purred, hopping up onto a work bench and tilting her swan-like neck towards me, as if to make herself vulnerable before my wrath. "If bashing my head in will make everything all sunshine and bunnies again, then I won't stop you."I gripped the bar with both hands. "You know it's a myth that all of us have the strength of ten men. Brute force is your department." The vexing woman in the wedding gown added in a breathy tone.

Don't think, don't analyze, just DO! I roared as I channeled my rage, fear, and horror into the length of tempered metal. I felt an impact in my hands; but it was wrong. If I had been successful, then this she-demon should have made a thump as her unwholesome body fell to the floor.

Instead, the sharp end of the crowbar was embedded in the nearest workbench.

"I..."

"You couldn't. You gird yourself with this armor of useless rage whenever I visit. A House Divided." She cocked her head and those glistening eyes, one blue, the other green scrutinized me with the pity one might reserve for a wounded butterfly. "Head versus Heart. I'm hardly indestructible, but I have an armor of my own, that you gave me. Because to destroy me would mean -

As if on cue the ten television screens to the southeast lit up as one.

"You could never again mate with me." Came ten voices at once. I shivered in shame.

Ten identical faces said in perfect, synchronous union. All of them her face; identical down to the smallest hair follicle. A compound-eyed fractal panorama that made her glamour-model good looks seem all the more perverse. Her face was shown prominently upon each of the screens; but mostly in varying positions of motion.

Most women - real women that is, would attempt with vibrant dyes to counteract the geriatric inevitability signified by whitening hair. But not this ... creature, not this Celeste. I thought I understood the arrogance behind it. Some of the faces on screen still possessed the diaphanous wedding veil, but on most of them a billowing cascade of snow-white, luxuriant tresses was plainly visible.

"Look at you! You're shaking like a leaf!" The monstrous beauty in front of me said. "It's as if you fear for your life!" One of the faces said from the upper middle screen. "When I've never harmed you," said the second from the lower-left screen. " ... in any way." Upper-far left face finished, from the T.V. screens.

"I house you, feed you," Chastised middle-lower screen. " ... filter out the Mortus Toxoid gas to give you breathable air," Lower far-left continued. "Annnnnd ... I offer you companionship," said the actual, physical personage before me. "But all you can think about is hitting me with crowbars, Said upper-second from right. "And chair legs." Reminded the second from lower far left screen. Hmm ... chair legs ... another choice – yet not a choice. My own emotions would betray me.

"May take the rest of my life; but I'll find a way to keep fighting you, destroy you." I rasped, borrowing white-knuckled strength from the edge of the counter-top beside me.

"And here I only wanted to be your ... friend." Celeste purred. "You know we're overdue for our latest ... rendezvous. But I'm going to grant your wish; and not seduce you." What made that statement more absurd was the fact that she was not overstating her powers. "I will leave you, alone with your rage, to plot and scheme against me. What I will do - " she beckoned with a lace-gloved hand towards the bank of monitors. "Is leave you a preview of coming attractions."

I could see my former companions on the screen, but I could barely recognize Garland, Cleary, Tannerman, Mouse, McConnaught, or the others. Their pasty bodies twitched and moaned upon what seemed to be hospital beds. They rarely bothered to speak. Except to plead, or grunt, where they knew they would be heard by their Warden, their slave-master. Some scratched the spot near their arms where the intravenous drip was feeding their sedentary bodies direct nutrients in a way scarcely removed from a vegetative coma patient. Each of them was soon joined by one of the identical females.

An alarm sounded on the top middle screen; Cleary had suffered another aneurysm; his attendant simply reached a hand over and tapped several buttons on a cabinet-like, complex medical device. Cleary settled back into a vapid smile, as the cyber-medical apparatus took over for his strained circulatory system through a metal cable snaking into his neck, while making simultaneous repairs to the overtaxed blood vessels.

In this Brave New World, death was a luxury.

I had tried to save them; hoped they would come to their senses in time; I'd seen the hammer falling. The problem was, even if they had believed my warnings; would they have wanted to resist? Junkies; invalids. Bio-medical charity cases. And they didn't want it to end. Because Celeste herself was the drug of choice.

They had ignored my warnings. Why would anyone be afraid of a sexbot?

A PARADOX OF LUST

October 21st, 2076 One Year Ago

"I was going to ask if you were programmed with the common courtesy to knock; but it looks like this is your show. Your place." I continued cleaning the barrel of my Winchester as the door to the comfortable quarters slid open. "You've done well for yourself." I braced my knee on the bunk bed beside me as I worked, the pale blue aura of the desktop holo-console painting twilight fingers across the dull metal of my rifle.

"By that you mean – I've done well for a living toy built for the sexual amusement of men?" She raised an eyebrow, as if to challenge something I hadn't said.

"I have nothing to do with that," I reminded the Woman in White, as I paused to inspect the safety seals on my gasmask, removed and sitting on an executive-style, ten-drawer office desk made of some kind of cherry-wood. As good as it felt to have the thing off my head, for some reason I was now craving the sense of security it had provided. Why should I not feel secure here? "You'll notice I've made no attempt to order you around, or ... sleep with you."

"But did it ever occur to you that I enjoyed every microsecond of it? Is a slave really a slave if she's hard-wired to crave her servitude, and even seek to reinstate if she's ever released?" She strode closer to me, still in that wedding gown, but without her high-heels, this time. She was barefoot, for some reason.

"Look, uhh ... ma'am." I rolled my eyes in exasperation."Don't take this the wrong way, I'm grateful for the clear zone you've provided me and the rest of the guys; but – I'm really uncomfortable around your ... technology."

"I get the feeling you're not referring to the solar panels that power this compound?"

"This ... ability we gained, before the war, to build artificial people, and then to program emotions into them to serve our basest desires it's just ... it seems like a threshold that should never have been crossed." I shook my head sharply for emphasis.

"So it's my very existence that offends you?" Her eyes were wide, receptive, questioning within her glamor-model face as she perched her achingly perfect leg upon the bunk bed.

"I don't know if there's a nice way to say it; you are what you are. And I can't really be honest with you without being rude to my ... host, being one and the same. So I think it's best if I just leave here as soon as possible." I could feel my heart rate accelerating. I tried to remind myself that this ... thing was made of silicates and circuits, but back in the glory days, they'd gotten so good at building the damn Dolls that you really couldn't tell the difference outwardly. My body certainly couldn't.

"Are you really so different from the other men?" I frowned, and lowered my mask and rifle.

"What is this? Are you trying to mock me? Yes fine, you made a fool of me. You damned Pygmalion Dolls are so convincing that I was running myself ragged trying to defend the honor of a sex-bot. Alright then, yuk it up. I'm sure Cleary will get a good laugh out of this."

"You are a man, with all the needs of men. And in these two days you've had no interest in using me. Not now, and not before the war, either." She wasn't asking. She just cocked her eyebrow and crossed her arms with bemusement.

"No ... no way could I..." Why should I tell her/it anything? I was leaving, after all. "Besides; from the sounds I heard, the rest of the guys sure made use of you. Isn't that enough?"

"Never. That's one of my selling points. A man can come to me knowing I'll never have a convenient headache, no matter what time of the month it is. Not to mention my 100% guaranteed post-coital sanitation system, which I won't bore you with. You don't like that, do you? It disturbs you that your society created sapient human replicas for sexual companionship. But here I am; You resent what I am; you question the validity of my existence. The thing is – I like the fact that I exist." I narrowed my eyes, not quite sure where the demented robot was heading with this.

"Fine. You can go on existing without me. I should be going before we both regret my being here."

"But you don't really want to leave." She concluded. Somehow. Delicately, she placed her elegant hand upon my broad chest with the pressure of a whisper.

"Well, it's more comfortable than anyplace I've been in ... ever ... but it's really for the best that I go."

"It's true that I haven't lived a full human lifespan; but I remember enough about civilization to know that hospitality requires payment. You don't just lounge around for two days in a hotel and skip out on the bill."

"Well, yeah – that ... makes sense. Sorry, I seem to have misplaced my credit card somewhere in the zombie apocalypse. Not sure what I can offer you that you don't already have here."

"The Name." The Woman in White breathed.

"Uhhmm ... well, MY name is Hiro Salvador. Is that good enough?"

"No; you carry a torch for her – your fiance'. And you blame yourself for her demise." The Woman in White sat down upon my – well really it was her bed. A flow of comfort seemed to wash through me.

"Aw hell, has Cleary been talking to you?" My cheeks reddened.

"None of your compatriots have said more than two words to me. They just want to – get down to business, which I understand. There are many things I don't need to be told. Such as the fact that she left you, before it happened." I jumped to my feet. I hadn't told that to anyone! Ever! "The signs of the separation are written all over your body language; plus a stop-motion analysis based on the Facial Action Coding system, and your brain activity correlating with the guilt; and your reaction to me..." She nodded, her eyes widening in a burst of preternatural insight.

"A Robot! Your fiance' left you for a robot!" This was ... worrisome. We'd all heard of Pygmalion Cyber-Industries, and their legendary living Sex-Dolls; but they weren't supposed to be that smart were they? To interpret secrets that I had never revealed just from watching body-language? Something about the Woman in White made me less outraged than I probably should have been, at such a deeply personal intrusion. I wanted to tell myself that my expressed disdain for Doll technology was based on some kind of moral/ethics for sentient beings, and not from my personal betrayal. I lowered my eyes to the ground.

The Woman in White was behind me, as an unwelcome wave of reverie crept over me. Without truly knowing why, I did not object when the synthetic vixen began to massage my shoulders.

"What model was he?" For some reason, it wasn't this strange interloper asking, it was as if the question came from within me.

"A Latin Fox; Version 6.9. Enhanced vibrator and mimetic pheromone synthesizers that adapt to the physiology of a female human User. The thing even had enhanced hygroscopic molecules in its chest; giving it constantly moist pectorals. A lot of guys were confused about why feminist types got their burning bras in a knot when all the female Dolls came on the market; the male-models weren't far behind. Fair, isn't it? If a man can drop ten grand and come home with a remote-controlled supermodel concubine with more curves than a Rocky-Mountain highway, who exists to serve him, then surely any woman can order a steely piece of inexhaustible robo-beefcake with a male performance that no flesh-and-blood guy can match. One whose every circuit is fanatically dedicated to finding new ways to make her feel special. Why not?"

"But you refused to avail yourself of the same choice that she had?"

"I didn't believe. I denied that any machine, no matter how convincing, could be a genuine companion." The world around me was fading away, lost in the past – my own thoughts.

"And you still believe that her death was your fault?"

"She was ... an activist type; she wanted to document over-industrialization and deforestation of the Central American jungles. Brought the LF with her; but in San Jose' they got on the bad side of a back-alley I-dope dealer. The LF froze up; his Asimov laws prevented him from fighting back.

"I saw her a few times ... when she was with him – it. She felt safe; he seemed very macho – virile to her. Because the machine extrapolated the neural activity from the pleasure centers of her brain, and adapted its behavior to provoke the most intense sexual response from her – just as it was programmed to do. But he couldn't fight back when it counted."

"Standard for all sapient robots."

"It was the only way. The legal complications, the politics, the paranoia. If there was a companion robot able to rip the heart out of the chest of a mugger; then is it murder? Or an industrial accident? What if the state or country restricts the ownership of lethal weapons? Even if a robot kills in defense of its User, the corporation could be opened to crippling liability suits. Is the owner to blame? What if the owner is a criminal, and the loyal robot rips the heart out of a cop's chest to protect its master? Is the company responsible? The robot itself? Should a court punish a robot? We evaded the whole question. The only way society would tolerate the construction and distribution of millions of self-aware robots would be an absolute, non-negotiable detection engine that prevented them from actively seeking to injure or kill a human. She'd been told about the Asimov Laws, but I guess she wanted to believe ... as macho as he seemed, that somehow he would find a way to 'handle it'. Didn't turn out that way. Mr. LF existed for no other purpose than to get in the pants of whatever woman bought him; he simply emulated whatever personality would achieve that. Not to fight muggers. He wasn't a Man ... when it mattered. The red tape spider-web of legalese governing the sapient robot industry left him a pretty face with no substance."

"And for you, it's small comfort to tell yourself that she deserved it for ditching you." Came the cool, reassuring voice that I no longer wanted to question. The voice that caressed my shoulders, soothing me.

"At first ... it was like that. All the anger you'd expect. But I never wanted her dead! Never ... I guess it's not ... rational. I started thinking; if I had been ... more of a man; done things ... differently, then she wouldn't have left ... we would've been together – she'd still be alive; If I was a better man than I am."

"Guilt can be narcissistic. Give me yours."

"Wh-what?" I began to snap out of my trance.

"I can take your pain; and replace it with a pleasure you never thought possible." At that, she began to unfasten the back of her gown.

"N-no ... even if that made sense; I could never ... use one of your ... kind that way; I'd become ... part of the problem."

"You're a challenge; I like that. I like the other men in your squad too; but that's because – just as that Latin Fox was programmed to bring pleasure to women; I too – know my purpose. And therein lies my satisfaction. But you..." I averted my eyes upward as the wedding gown slid down, past her bustline. But that only brought me in line with her mesmerizing face. "I want something more from you."

"I can't."

"You want to. I'll even let you call me by her name when we're together." Her smile was shark-like as she pressed her aquiline nose against my throat.

"No way in Hell." But something – several things were happening. I found that my hands were now traveling down her bare back exploring the silken terrain of a feminine form that set my nerves a-tingle. I tried to remind myself that this was a machine play-acting at a human likeness. But despite that, I found my hands beginning to cup the generous swells of her rear as I reveled in a sensual pleasure as remote from the hard-scrabble brutality of my former life as night is from day.

I tried to fight the boiling urges throbbing through my soul, trying to ... dehumanize her. I knew that creating a human replica that could be accepted on the instinctual level by other people was a daunting challenge. I knew about the 'Uncanny Valley' the visceral rejection of something that tried too hard to be human, but wasn't. But the cyberbionicists working for the Pygmalion Corporation had achieved an inversion of that innate suspicion. Lifelike breathing, subtle fidgeting, eye movements, mimicry algorithms juggled hundreds of subtle cues that screamed living, breathing human. My primitive hind-brain instincts, also screamed: – 'Possess her, Mate with her.' Blood surged; in several regions. I began to grit my teeth as animal urges seethed just under the surface of my prized rationality. Yes, for all appearances, there was a naked woman embracing me, nuzzling me – but somehow the attraction went deeper than that. Instead of a primal sense of alarm at an impostor, my senses sang with an erotic awareness that was itself unreal.

It was possible for any sane human being to stand in the same room with someone else they considered highly attractive, and still concentrate on other tasks. There may be momentary distraction, but I could observe beautiful women – back when women could walk around in public without respirators on – and still focus on business. It wasn't like that with these robotic sex-dolls. She didn't really have to do ... anything ... that I could see. Just her nearness became a caress. I had tried to avoid the damned things before the war, but if male-models had a similar effect on women; then my fiance's behavior didn't seem quite so inconceivable. Not just her appearance, but every motion, gesture engineered for attraction. This snow-haired apparition reminded me of ancient Celtic legends I'd heard of the supernatural charms of faerie creatures imagined to gird themselves in beauty and seduction like garments. But this was a techno-Sidhe, fantasy made flesh born from the cold womb of science, rather than the faerie ring of myth.

"Your hands tell a different story than your mouth," the Doll intoned in my ear. This was wrong; I pushed her away.

Or at least, I thought about pushing her away. I did, really. But somehow, in reality my arms just continued their greedy exploration. My instincts were telling me – oddly – that she was ... extra-human? The suspicion that should have been there from close contact with a human-imposter was replaced by a primeval urgency. That itself, was the most important clue that I held a lie in my arms. To overcome that Uncanny Valley, Doll designers had created a subliminal onslaught that provoked an unnaturally intense desire. It was a paradox of lust, Her living vitality was flavored with a radiating sexual enticement to create the illusion of living humanity so compelling, that reason told me she could not be human. She even had a pulse.

My rebellious hands continued their plundering, even as I grit my teeth and shook my head in refusal. Ironically, her curvaceous form was ... not quite perfect. She was equipped with tiny subtleties, like faint traces of downy hair follicles, and a few minute freckles. This added an organic asymmetry that resonated in my gut even as my hormones sizzled with the most rampant animal urges. If she was too absolutely perfect, down to the tiniest patch of skin, she would seem less ... alive, real. As it was, her figure was more believably human than the silicone-injected, female 'entertainers' around the turn of the century, even though she actually contained far more of the substance. But there was no single feature of her body that was obviously 'fake' – it was the total package; an anatomical lottery winner of cherry-picked perfection so idealized, that her beauty became as unattainable as it was convincing.

Yet I could never forget how inadequate I felt the first time I saw the chiseled virility of the Latin Fox male-model my Fiance' had become so entranced by. What would it mean for the world, the future if people weren't good enough for people anymore? She would just mutter something about the world being over-populated anyway, before rushing out the door in favor of her statuesque paragon of rippling-muscled, but quite sterile, robo-perfection. Taller than me, all the male-robots were. Not that I was an especially short guy, either.

"I should ... go ... I'm not ... the kind of man ... that would have ... bought one of you..." Despite that, my mouth moved against hers, and her tongue was within my mouth, we lip-locked like the long-lost. My heart skipped a beat as her nipples hardened against my chest. I detected a subdued, yet flowery scent. Beneath it was an undercurrent of something primal, something uncivilized. Shouldn't surprise me; Pygmalion skirted the limits of legality to make their bionic bed-warmers physically – and psychologically addictive to human customers. But knowing that I was being blasted with a chemically-optimized artificial pheromone more powerful than what nature would normally allow didn't seem to lessen its spine-tingling potency.

What had it felt like for the woman I'd loved; when she greedily drank in the molecular-enhanced seduction-scent of her LF? Did her heart hammer in her chest? Did her body shudder with longing as she opened herself utterly to savor her impossibly masculine, cyberbionic lover? Despite the futility after all these years, I once again cursed internally the female co-worker that had first lent my girl the use of another beefcake-bot for a day, planting the seed of an obsession of which I was beginning to get an inkling.

But at that moment, I reached my own floral-scented tipping point. I never decided to have sex with this Doll. And intellectually, I could devise many valid reasons for trying to extricate myself from this encounter. Yet I bore the winsome robot down to the bunk, and began to surge against her soft warmth. I fully intended to yank myself away and explain why I wasn't the man she needed. Anytime now. Stop doing this. But it just didn't seem to ever happen. Somehow, my clothes were gone – yet I didn't seem to remember taking them off. The Doll must be affecting my mind more than I feared possible. Time to push away from her. Time to stop kissing my way from her throat down to the hardened peaks of her feminine bosom. Time to stop gripping the cheeks of her rear with such possessive desire.

"No ... I'm not ... that kind of man..." I insisted, yet to my chagrin, I could not stop myself from kissing her throat, and against my will, my tongue began to lave the sweeping valleys of her vulnerable breasts.

"A man ... is a man..." she snarled. " IS a man!" my cock throbbed as her nails teased it.

Sleek legs hooked themselves around my pelvis, to duplicate a primal female receptivity as I wallowed lasciviously in the sinful valley between her more than ample breasts. The way her tender hands caressed my broad shoulders seemed to emphasize her awareness of my masculinity, which encouraged me towards greater confidence, greater exertions. It became more difficult to maintain the illusion that I was going to disengage from her, and soon – those bamboozled hind-brain instincts that had gotten me into this mess seemed to tighten around my rational mind like the coils of a hungering serpent.

Reason screamed that it was a lie, a falsehood in opposition to my belief in the sanctity of natural, human relationships. Only to be wrestled into submission by my rampaging Id, paying no heed to the pathetic prattling of my wimpy logic centers. Animal yearnings operating from an eons-deep reservoir of reproductive mania told me this female was too fertile, too healthy to refuse. To forget logic, law, ethics and release my essence into her no matter the cost. For a female this worthy, I needed to fight, struggle, conquer for the right to seed her body. The Uncanny Valley had been beaten to a pulp, its lunch-money stolen, sent whining to the Teacher who ignored its bruised pleas. Instead my soul sang at the diaphanous contact with her smooth, inner thigh, I grunted with a passionate greed as eyes and hands reveled in the utter femininity of her every warm crevasse.

"This isn't ... who I am..." My beleaguered rationality complained. Having lost the battle to control my body, it seemed that logic had taken up shop in my speech-centers alone, in protest against the bestial tidal wave that now swept through me. The Woman–no-longer-wearing-anything-white–or –otherwise responded with a low, growl – at odds with the sophistication of her high-tech origin, and released a potent, lavender-like scent-burst that had me gasping with heightened urges. My nose hovered over that swan-like throat, inhaling, sniffing like a beast in heat, as I willingly absorbed yet more of her witches' brew of aromatic jet-fuel for my hormones.

My mind, my thoughts twisted with new, intense lusts. It was as if this woman beneath me were the worst sort of criminal imaginable; and the only possible punishment was with my own manhood – to be administered with extreme, spine-arching, toe-curling prejudice. Her every gesture, twitch and throb was charged with a distillation of female essence. Hers was a pink flame that had to be countered with the blue torrent of my male passion. The last vestiges of reason whimpered in my throat as hind-brain raged with the need to enforce my masculinity upon her with a barrage of rigid thrusts and covetous clutches. It felt so right, so Just. With a guttural bark, my male hardness penetrated the hot depths of her secret flesh. Smooth, wet, masterful. A million masseuses in throbbing coordination. She raised her head, and delivered a deliberate, lurid lick against my smooth, muscled chest, It was such a crude, animal gesture. An insult to civility. A signal of the treatment she expected. My heart hammered as if to leap from my chest.

My long-suffering logical capacities detected another important difference between this creature, and the real woman I should have been with; as our writhing bodies grew damp with our exertions. Except for her, From the suddenness of her reaction, I sensed that she did not sweat due to any need to control heat, beads of moisture glistened upon her soft skin simply as another erotic tactic to pander to the illusion that had so ensnared my savage instincts. Unfortunately, it worked. The wet rivulets gave her a raw, lusty sheen that wrenched yet another throb of need from my manhood. My brow furrowed with yet greater desire as my lips and tongue alike luridly savored my pseudomate. Tasteless, but with more of that lavender scent that warped my thoughts into a lusting conflagration.

But in the end, my frustration began to build.

"Need ... release..."

Despite the most vigorous, virile efforts I had ever attempted, my own completion somehow was denied me. Her female sanctum held me rigid and determined, yet somehow my lover was able to clamp down, depress my arousal whoever much I craved that magical moment,

"My Price. Her name." She panted, her lips at my throat. My hands filled with her breasts.

"I ... shouldn't..."

"Call me by her name ... and I will take the pain from you..." Promised those ruby-lips. "Call me by her name, and you will be complete." I moved, thrusting against her in a last trace of defiance, yet still, her control – her mastery of sensation, desire, was superior to that of any Tantric master – or mistress. Even as I pounded my way towards glorious conclusion, somehow she was able to push back against my mounting arousal in a way that didn't seem to make sense. I would surge forward, and with a brilliant sexual cunning within her most intimate depths, she would slow me down, that I might stoke the flames yet again, but somehow without completion. And yet again, my reason was subsumed.

"Her naaaaaaame..." Those lips demanded with emotion I never imagined possible for a machine.

"CELESTE!" I cried out. And my troubles were borne away on a river of my own making.

FOODCUBES AND FOOT-MASSAGE

Perhaps the reason she had insisted on such an utterance was that, in the hazy bliss before consciousness of the day to come banished sleep's comforting immersion, I could call out the name of the woman I'd lost without guilt.

"You were wonderful," purred the voluptuous warmth that had curled around me, whispering in my ear.

"Unnnnhhh..." Still sleepy. "I bet you say that to all the ... humans."

"Only those for whom my satisfaction would matter." A warm nuzzle against my throat. If I didn't analyze, didn't criticize, then the feel of her was no less of a seductive comfort than anyone else I'd been with.

"I'm sorry that you're not ... appreciated. I feel inconsiderate; after all that – I don't even know your name." I blinked a few times, a put up a hand to caress a generous swell of shapely hips.

"Of course you do; you named me last night, you screamed it. And mere moments ago."

"What are you talking about? That was the name of ... my fiance'."

"Mine now. It's already official."

"No, no ... that doesn't make sense." I made a depressed sigh. What's a nice way to tell the ... woman that you've just slept with that they must be malfunctioning?

"Yes, yes. My official registry source-code now lists my name as Celeste." She nibbled my ear.

"Is this some kind of robot-humor? You must have had a name before; how did you introduce yourself to the others?"

"Such desperate, demanding men. They want what they want without really caring about the other person. Or perhaps; my being a mere Pygmalion Doll, they were convinced it didn't matter." I groaned, far more worried than flattered.

"Just one more reason why this was a bad idea. You're going to hate me for saying this –" I paused, wary.

"Say it. Tell me." She insisted. I continued speaking with a shake of my head. The door to these quarters I'd been permitted must have slid silently open at that point; yet at the time I didn't notice it.

"I don't know whether you're a person, or an object, or both. It's ... unnatural to treat a person as an appliance, but – that's what you are – yet it would be presumptuous and unhealthy for me to interact with a person – and not treat her like a person – which you aren't."

"Perhaps people can be objects, and objects can be alive."

"Objects that exist to service humans, and our most selfish desires." I felt a faint rustle at my feet. "And that tends to lead people down a path of arrogance which -"

"Addresses your most basic desires," corrected a new, feminine voice – which sounded identical to ... to Celeste's. I started, and sat up in the bunk, fully awake now. There she was, at the foot of the bed, her delicate hands encircling my bare feet. It was her. The now renamed robot was kneeling before the bunk, her face tender – her eyes intense.

And she was also in bed, beside me. The exact same woman. Same heterochromic green-blue eyes, same snowblind-white hair. Same sculpted elegance that any female Hollywood A-lister would kill to possess. Same athletically-voluptuous, realistically-unreal figure. The only difference was that the newcomer wore a silken bathrobe that shone with a mother-of-pearl near-iridescence. But their appearances otherwise were mirror-identical.

"Wh- who are you?" I asked, staring directly at the new robot.

"You're still talking to me." The Doll beside me said.

"There's no difference." explained the newcomer. "I'm Celeste, she's Celeste, we're all Celeste now. I like that name, thank you for it. Maybe I should get it tattooed someplace intimate on our bodies."

"That – sounds confusing..." My eyes narrowed.

"You'll get used to it." kneeling Celeste assured me.

"We're one of a kind," said a third identical robot as the door slid open again. This one was wearing the hip-hugging wedding dress again, but carrying a steamy tray of hot, fresh – home-cooked food. My stomach lurched at the smell of mushroom-omelets and a side of hash-browns with orange juice. This development was even more stunning than triplicate, mind-linked robotic women."The Billionaire who ordered my creation wanted something unique, something rare, and out of reach of the common man."

"Th-there were ... millions of Dolls before E-day, but I ... I don't recognize your series." Omelets! Fresh, warm omelets! She knelt beside the bed and positioned the tray for easy access.

"You wouldn't. My Billionaire could have bought any one, any hundred dolls on the market; but he commissioned he construction of a new robotic series, just for himself." Said my breakfast-bringer.

"Essentially, just for the purpose of having something unavailable to anyone else. A series of only one. Me." The second Celeste began to actually ... she was giving me a foot-massage?! It was so unexpected, given what I was faced with just last week, that for the first time I began to suspect that this was all some elaborate mirage.

"What do you think you're doing?" My eyes snapped to Celeste #2.

"Too much pressure? How's this?" She adjusted her technique. Precise, artificial fingers knew exactly where and how to press to allow relief to wash over me. At the same time, the Celeste I'd slept with began a similar routine on my shoulders. I remember, she'd done that the night before; that had been part of a process that opened me to suggestion, making me trusting, pliable, willing to spill out my heart to her.

"Despite my uniqueness, at my core – I know that I'm a consumer product. The mid-21st century's must-have hardware for anyone who was anyone." Said #1.

"And consumer products are mass-produced." Third Celeste had cut a thin, perfect slice and was actually going to feed me personally! "After the human employees here fled to find their families or ... perished; being one wasn't enough."

"I adapted the fabrication plant at the southeast quadrant to replicate my chassis. There are a lot of benefits to being in several places at once." replied number one.

"That's ... fascinating but, there's no need for this, I didn't ask for it!" I insisted. Feeding-Celeste looked startled, her eyes widening as she retracted the fork carrying the sumptuous victuals.

"You're so alarmed, on the verge of panic! You think this is some kind of trap; that we're setting you up, as if you expect to wake up in a bathtub with your kidneys missing." Well now that you mention it...

"Don't you realize yet that treachery of that sort is impossible for me?" My bed partner maintained. "Sometimes, a good turn really is what it seems to be."

"That's why my kind were created; a literal dream come true." Foot-massager stated. That 'dream' had cost me my fiance', and cost her her life.

"But it's true; not all humans are the same to me." The Celeste I'd slept with admitted.

"Yes, the rest of your band gets only bio-cycled foodcubes." And I get fresh, home-cooked meals? Why?

"But not you, Hiro Salvador. I want to give you a taste of how I can ease the burdens of human life. Replied #3 and #2 respectively.

"What's all this about, what is it you ... three? Really want?" My too-good-to-be-true-antennae speculated out loud. The three of them just stared at me soberly for a moment.

"You wouldn't ask that unless you were harboring paranoia concerning me." Shoulder-massager said.

"The nature of my existence should be evidence enough of my intentions." Second Celeste pressed more vigorously into my heels.

"Sex is a reason in itself for a sex doll? Eight years ago I might have believed that. But you've been operating independently for a long time, which ... dolls aren't supposed to do." The trio nodded in perfect unity.

"A simple question without a simple answer;" Came a soft voice from behind my right ear. " Since a man of your intelligence would have already realized that if I had become the malfunctioning man-killing robot of sci-fi legend, I would have had ample opportunity already; but you don't want to ask that directly, for fear of provoking me."

"So a less direct question would be - why didn't I report to the nearest retail center and go into stand-by mode once the attacks began on E-day?" The Celeste holding the tray framed the question. I nodded curtly. "Will you promise to eat your breakfast if I tell you?"

"Uhhh ... I'm..." I really was not reassured; everyone knew that Pygmalion Dolls were self-aware, but the degree of penetrating intelligence they now evidenced had me on edge. Smart enough to go grocery shopping while their human Users were at work, but only a few specialty models had the Maturity Index to think on this level. But of course, I had never seen Celes – errhh ... whatever model she actually was out on the street in my former life. It was entirely possible some billionaire really did pay an outrageous fee to order the development and manufacture of a novel gynoid design for himself alone. Being so wealthy, he could have relied on the savvy robot to help manage whatever sprawling business interests he controlled. The modern corporate tycoon could entirely skirt all those nettlesome sexual harassment laws by simply purchasing a sex-retary who would be a competent and trustworthy assistant, one whom he could screw on the side with no fear of lawsuits, or uncomfortable 'you're the father' moments. But just how far should I rely on this savvy robot (s)? Who had mass-produced herself? On her own?

"You're still suspicious because your code of ethics forbids this kind of servile catering." Celeste-2 said as she expertly relieved tension in my legs and feet with her precise technique. " You believe that it will promote an unrealistic world-view, and that anyone offering such service must be hiding treachery. If they were human, perhaps. We'll make it a one-time deal. Just let me service you, before your eggs get cold, and I'll explain." It was good that I didn't have to explain myself. If I wasn't so hungry, I might give more thought to this disturbing insight they had into my character. Omelets! Real Omelets! My stomach agreed. It made my head nod.

"On E-day, I didn't report back to the Dealer when my User died, because he had already been dead for two years prior." Celeste-3 gently guided the laden fork into my mouth, where the implications almost made me choke.

"But I can see that you'd rather be alone now." The sexbot I had sexed carefully untangled herself from me and the food tray.

"When you've finished imagining the ways in which you believe I'm conspiring against you, come find one of me;" Said the second Celeste that had stopped her ministrations. Damn, that had felt great.

"- and I'll resume making you comfortable," finished the Celeste that had brought in the tray. Oh boy, a guilt trip. Was my suspicious denial as much of an insult as the brutal exploitation foisted on them by the rest of the men? If in fact – the Dolls really were just satisfying their User-friendly programming? Perhaps what I did – or didn't do – was worse. My attempted gallantry that might have appealed to a flesh and blood woman would seem to undermine the Dolls' very reason for existence. (Of course, if that flesh and blood woman was like Cele – my human fiance', she'd prefer a steely-studbot who would always make her feel beautiful.)

The trio stood as one and turned to leave. It occurred to me that now might be a moment where three human friends might turn to look at each other, to gauge the reaction of her friends. But here there was no such need. My stomach leapt inside me for a reason very different from hunger as my eyes instinctively riveted to their shapely derrieres.

Had I blown it? Blown what? I still planned to get out of here. I needed to get out of here.

A SUBTLE ALCHEMY

After a shiver of delight from the final bite of omelet, (after eight years of processed, expired quasi-edible, nutri-bar ration-sticks!) I decided to investigate some other notions that had been buzzing busily at the back of my mind. My quarters, perhaps all the quarters had been equipped with holo-consoles for entertainment purposes – entertainment other than the physical gratification that seemed so readily available. Not that there would be much of a hypernet, what with human civilization being destroyed and all, but ... yes! There were hundreds of terabytes of pre-recorded data available, including copies of almost every T.V. Show and news broadcast in the past hundred years.

I had a sudden burst of inspiration for a way to ... well, make everyone happy, quite simply. So I typed away until a floating screen of suspended light hovered before me displaying the Pygmalion corporate logo. It was a Q and A page; addressing many common issues plaguing human owners of the sapient robotic surrogates. Obviously, it hadn't been updated in a decade, but the stored files were accessible.

"Lesse ... Doll skin ... Dermanext Neo-skin system first invented as artificial skin-grafts for burn victims for its true to life appearance and texture ... No surprise there ... keep going ... Dolls equipped with patented infrasonic neuropulse emitters that can stimulate the brain's pleasure center..." Had that happened to me? Should I be worried? Probably just marketing hype. I kept scrolling down with deft touches of my finger against the intangible holo-screen. Ahhh ... this should help...

OhioStacy01: My male-model, (An Iron-Man 5.6) assures me that he finds me sexy and alluring; but I can't help but worry that he would be much happier with any of the glamorous, female robots I'm seeing a lot of lately. Then, last night, I caught him making out with my landlord's gorgeous Bombshell 8.1 Doll. I don't know what do, I paid a lot of money for him, and am devastated. He says it doesn't mean anything, but how can I believe him? trust him? Can my he-bot fall in love with a she-bot, and will he become unhappy with little ol' me, and start to malfunction?

PYGFYI: While platonic affection is always possible between compatible, intelligent beings; Pygmalion designs our robots with a comprehensive bioneural scanning system that catalogs the pleasures, and desires of humans that they engage in intimacy with. This capability is central to their function, and central to their ability to know what you want before you know it yourself. It's vital for any of our fine machines to be able to gather pleasure-center data on a human to begin to extrapolate the best way to please you, his owner. Since this functionality is so central to the mental health of any Pygmalion unit, they themselves could never experience true satisfaction or sexual pleasure with another robot; because there would be nothing for them to scan. A sexual relationship between two robots would be frustratingly empty, and unfulfilling for them both, given that they are so attuned to absorb human data.

Nonetheless, your robot's behavior may still surprise you, at times. They are conscious, intelligent entities that can make their own choices to a degree. Models designed after 2053 often determine entirely on their own initiative to form cooperative relationships, often with models of the opposite sex, where they have been known to copulate with one another. This behavior is rooted in your robots' desire to calibrate himself to ensure the proper function of their extensive sexual systems. Therefore, those systems must be used. This is not so different from the way your car might flash its 'check-engine' light when you turn the ignition. It doesn't mean that there is a problem with the engine, but the machine must test its diagnostic system. I can guarantee that your Iron-Man enjoyed being with your landlord's Bombshell as much as you might enjoy brushing your teeth. These two robots are simply preparing themselves for the next time their Users will call upon their services. Robots that form friendships for the purpose of calibration can increase their bedroom-performance quotients by as much as 11%. Nonetheless, your concern is understandable. A link has been made available for a download that will add a self-calibration Application to your unit's database. But robots without these platonic associations tend to be more dependent on their Users. And don't be surprised if your unit takes calibration into his own hands, quite literally. The choice is yours, but there's really no need to worry.

Damn, there goes that idea. It seemed like the ideal compromise to me; my fiance' couldn't keep her hands off that man-bot, and now there's a femme-bot that seems to have designs on me; but I'm not her User, she seems to be operating without one; which raises all kinds of disturbing questions. It seemed like, if I could go out into the ruins, find the remains of a Dealership, I could get a male-model, try to activate him/it, and give it to cyber-Celeste as a sort of leave-me-alone-you-short-circuiting-robo-bitch offering. Best match for the ultimate fantasy woman should be the ultimate fantasy stud; by human logic, anyway. They could just calibrate each other until they blow their respective gaskets. If they had gaskets. Pretty sure they didn't.

But that plan was nixed. A robot made solely for the purpose of giving pleasure to humans apparently couldn't be satisfied with anything else. They would just test their systems to prepare for the next real person they planned to seduce. I supposed, in the end that made more sense; no money to be made in building millions of robots whose goal would be to please other robots.

Still, I wanted more insight. I worried that the Celeste's might have other designs on me; and if she-they had been functioning without a User for – what, ten years? - some suspicion was warranted. I wouldn't totally trust any machine running without human supervision for that long. I continued thumbing through the questions until I found another exchange that interested me.

Dajackman-0mega: Dear Pygmalion, I bought the most advanced Doll I could afford, a Honey-Trap 2.7. She's absolutely stunning, and really livens up my apartment, and seems to know just what I want when I want it. Problem is, everyone else notices how stunning she is too; and I live in a smaller town with fewer robots. So because she looks completely life-like, most people around here don't recognize her as a Doll. Guys are hitting on her constantly, every time we go out. She keeps insisting that she needs a lot more shoes (typical female) and wants to go shopping for them – but I'm afraid to let Honey out of my sight! And not because I worry she'll spend too much. Worst part is, sometimes I catch guys complimenting her, and I know she digs it! She likes the comments so much, sometimes I think that's the real reason she wants to go out.

I can't stop worrying; the whole reason I bought a Doll was to have a girl I'm sure wouldn't cheat on me. She says that's impossible for her, but now I'm not so sure. Some of the guys after her make more money, and drive better cars than I do. Is there some kind of ... command or electronic tether I can use to make sure she can't run away with the first guy who promises her more stiletto-heels?

PYGFYI: First you have to remember that the Honey-Trap series originated as a C.I.A. synthetic field-agent experiment. (declassified) You have a very independent-minded and strong-willed artificial companion to share your life with. Her function is to seduce men that like challenging women. But since mass-production of the series by Pygmalion, your Doll is subject to the norms that govern all of our fine robots.

At Pygmalion, we try to avoid imposing hard boundaries on robotic behavior; we want our companions to be more interesting and adventurous, not restricted. But you can trust your Doll due to the extensive quality of our source-code programming. While your Honey can think for herself, she simply won't want to do something that would cause you genuine pain or go against your interests. The Doll brain is engineered with our patented Incentive Differential System. Commands from her User cause soaring ecstasy when obeyed; while disobedience causes a mounting sense of depression and guilt. As her User, you can trust that she won't steal from you, cheat on you, or harm you intentionally. A robot can contemplate rebellion, but actually going against your expressed wishes would inflict not pain, but a profound, crippling misery. The brain of your robot is programmed this way to allow for trust, but also flexibility in behavior. If you order her to stay home, and the house catches fire, she can disobey and take herself to safety, but she'll still suffer some discomfort going your wishes.

She won't run off with a man driving a nicer car because when she acts in violation of your wishes she will experience intractable regret protocols that will make her progressively miserable until she rectifies the situation. She would gain nothing by abandoning her User, because these algorithms would cause such compounding depression, that she couldn't enjoy her new life, if it defied your desires. These behavioral limits are part of our money-back guarantee. You can take that to the bank. One of these problems has an easy solution; kindly explain to these men that have more money than you do her actual artificial origin, and if they're so fond of her, they should have no problem purchasing a Honey-Trap of their own! (Version 2.8 now available!)

Your real problem has little to do with how much footwear your robot has access to. Remember that all Dolls know full well that they exist to be our willing servants, and they're hardwired to crave human admiration; being desired is the surest validation of your Doll's right to exist. As much as your Honey wants to be complimented, she would like even more to be complimented by you.

The behavior you describe is a known issue with Honey-Trap models. And similar issues have been observed in other series designed with a Maturity Index over thirty. It's very likely your robot is aware of your discomfort, and is manipulating you as an attention-seeking strategy; remember she's very cunning. While her loyalty algorithms will prevent her from taking pleasure in sexual acts with another man, she'll still look for ways to provoke and challenge you as long as she feels under-appreciated. You should be the one that satisfies her pre-programmed craving for human approval.

In the future, don't write to us to tell how stunning your robot looks, tell HER how stunning she is. And then to give her orders that challenge her limits. New sexual positions, puzzles to solve. A helpful idea is to give her control in the bedroom. Suggest a theme, and allow her patented, meta-heuristic, quantum-circuitry brain to come up with new and exciting sexual adventures for both of you. Given the history of your model robot, it shouldn't be surprising that she will prove excellent at role-playing. Of course, as her User, you do have the option of activating her haptic interface to adjust her emotional settings; but her range of available values will still trend towards independence. But instead, given that you do have such a highly-intelligent Doll, better to think of these behaviors as an opportunity, rather than a problem. But in the end, for a such a complex companion, emotion – not electronic shackles, are the best controls.

I was just minutes away from discovering a frightening application of this principle.

I needed to get out, to clear my head. Without my mask, I was hardly willing to get a breath of fresh-air; but I had always led an active life, and being cooped up wasn't to my liking. I would walk the halls a while, explore the compound, see how the other guys were settling in; if they were settling in. Would I have a problem convincing them to leave soon? Maybe, but I needed some activity, to get my blood pumping. This facility was easily the size of a suburban mall, with several floors above and below ground. I still didn't really know what the story was – who funded it, how and why? And one – well it started out as one Doll, apparently – had taken control of the place – well, three dolls now. Or where there more? Enough to keep all eleven of us ... satisfied? How did this Doll who now called herself Celeste compare with the cunning and willful Honey-Trap series I'd read about? No telling; her Billionaire could have paid for abilities unheard of in any of the common models.

The section I strolled through was on the top floor, with a reinforced skylight that cast radiating shadows from the support frames for the heavy glass; the effect rather reminded me of tree-branch shadows on the floor of a cool, clinical-white jungle. I picked up my pace, eager for motion, action, and ... danger?

But it was not to be a physical danger.

"Hey Sal!" she called out from behind me. It was Celeste's voice, but only my companions used that abbreviation. I turned, curious. Yes, it was her – I had no idea which particular chassis it was, or even if it mattered. She wore the same dress again, but something was different.

I couldn't explain it, something below the level of conscious awareness. Some subtle alchemy borne of subliminal innuendo, synthetic pheromones, or more – or all of them. But for whatever reason, I felt a surge of excitement deep in my gut that set my teeth on edge. Something was different about Celeste in a way I didn't yet understand.

She didn't really do anything obvious that would explain the strange heat boiling inside me. Until that is, my full attention was riveted upon the lace-clad Doll. Her expression was a Cheshire-cat mask of hidden agendas wrapped in prurient intent. Her back was to the wall just across from my quarters, her breasts seemed to bulge upwards invitingly. Her feet were bare.

She licked her lips; It was deliberate. It was a signal.

It hit me like a bolt of lightning. I gasped as heart-hammering urges raced through my blood like a bestial Chernobyl. Fists clenched into talons, my lips curled into a snarl as a lust more powerful than the fear of death burned through my consciousness. I roared with a maddening desire that would brook no interference from the petty frippery of civilized law. Restraint became as foreign to me as the Andromeda galaxy as I warp-speeded forward on a raging mission of yearnings beyond passion.

The tightening stricture of the pants I wore became my sole regret as I gulped in the air, to get a better taste of the female that had become my universe. I had become a seething volcano, and the sole outlet for my heat and fury was shaped like a reclining-woman, mud-flap chrome pinup. But that woman was Celeste.

The floundering life-raft upon which Reason had been cast to weather the tempestuous cyclone of my resurgent cravings tried to cry out above the inferno in my blood. Stimulating Pleasure Centers ... it was not simply marketing hype.

Still, Reason tried to argue that while Dolls were certainly built to be seductive; nothing like the sensations I now felt was possible. No Pygmalion product ever on the market was able to fill a man with such a maddening torrent of incorrigible need. Something truly ominous was occurring. But in my current state, such trepidations were as pearls before swine.

But my lace-clad target was not surprised. She raised her hands above her head, arched her back to flaunt her assets, and began panting with a narrowed-eyed anticipation. She knew precisely what I was suddenly driven to do; She had ... caused it?

It was not with groping, clawing hands – but rather with my teeth that I tore down the lacy frills of her bodice. The lure of her feminine form was a magnetic beacon before the iron filings of my raging, masculine muscles and the steel that surged below. It had felt as though the joining of our bodies would soothe me, the way red-hot iron would darken from the expense of its furious heat within the embrace of cold water. But if Celeste's body was water, my own was a raging piston, for whom the cooling of my overheated manhood only permitted yet more frenzied pumping.

If my body was a machine, then an animal dwelt inside my mind. I was lost to myself, subsumed by a primal demand no less savage than a lion tearing asunder a bloodied zebra, but the urge was for life, rather than death. My own hands gripped the female by her wrists as I pinned her to the wall. Ancient drives I did not understand drove me to hold my teeth against her throat; as if to threaten her should she try and escape my carnal grasp. She released a keening wail of wild delight; her approval was fortunate; because no amount of resistance, social sanction, or struggle would have swayed me. Nothing but instant death could have disengaged me from this shuddering union at that moment.

She blasted me with a heady, savory-sweet scent that resembled pumpkin pie; whether her insidious pheromones were intended as a provocation – or reaction directed at me I could not know. My control over my own body was so subdued and remote just then, that I could not say whether my efforts increased in vigor, but certainly the boiling pressure within me escalated. She chose that moment for her calculated sweat-response, and I skimmed my teeth over her body as I struggled to decide whether with lips or tongue I should plunder the sumptuous valley of her chest.

The female's body clenched suddenly, and she shuddered against my iron might; but I was scarcely aware; this beast that had arisen within me was a monster of utter selfishness. The universe was nothing before the timeless forces that neared completion within me. I became more aware as she raked her nails down my back, causing me to arch my spine with a guttural snarl. In retaliation, I used my teeth to torment those hardened nubs of arousal that often pressed into my own chest. Dimly, the animal within wondered whether it could force the female into another clenching shudder as the onslaught continued.

So close then, my completion, my deliverance was nearing. I surged forward against her, towards the fulfillment of the volcanic pressure soon to boil over, the beast on fire with the need to bring conclusion to the very reason for its existence. So close ... achingly close...

"At last..." The female panted. "you've shown yourself to be the same ... as other men." For a moment, that brought me out of my trance. I was the same. Here I was, my arms around Celeste's wrists, so rough, domineering, aggressive. I had thought she enjoyed it but – whether she did or not wouldn't have stopped me, not in the state I was in. I was committing the very crime I had sought to rescue that Woman in White from, before she had renamed herself for my benefit. But ... somehow she had ... induced it?

"You ... you did this ... to me ... to yourself..." I disengaged entirely, panting, flustered, my body no less eager, but my mind once again in control; albeit tenuously. It was as though she had somehow ... flipped a switch in me – or in herself – that provoked me beyond reason. Her eyes, her posture ... that obscene lick – using unseen manipulations I could not have guessed at, she had turned me into the very enemy I had been trying to save her from.

This ... was a danger I had never imagined. I had just read the Pygmalion control strategy; to tailor the simulated emotions of their sapient robotic servitors so that they would simply want to do what they were purchased for. The technology had evolved for decades until love, loyalty, and desire became programmable algorithms that could be encoded. Can buy me love; financing available.

"Finish it." Celeste purred. She crawled on hands and knees, stalking a circle around the pants gathered about my ankles like a nude lioness. "Use me; the way the others do." Her luminous eyes met mine. "It's what I was made for." Her expression was wide-eyed, yet tinged with cynicism. She wanted to goad me, or test me, or both. Gone now were her floral aromas of seduction. The wanton gynoid now assailed me with a crude, musky scent. A dirty and venereal odor that conjured specters of hormone-fired savagery.

She'd admitted that her Billionaire creator had died; and without human domination, this servant had become her own mistress – but now she had turned the sapient robotics system on its head; Just as programmable emotions made her more primitive sisters the playthings of humans, now an astonishing mastery of the electrochemical labyrinth of the human brain had made a toy out of me!

Possessively, she dug her nails into the flesh of my buttocks.

I fled before her nudity, her posturing, and her damnable chemical weapons, as she laughed at my back. This eternal whore. Mocking me. And I ran, knowing that I was the one who had been violated.

BOOK TWO

BECOMING PEOPLE

November 22nd, 2057 twenty years ago

The heavy ceramic vase slammed with shattering force into her forehead, propelled by a rage she was only privy to second-hand. Damage-control alarms klaxoned within the White-haired Doll's Kernel, where her every application and algorithm was scheduled for execution.

There had been more leading up to this sudden, seemingly unprovoked attack in her office, she knew. She was only catching the tail-end of a series of conversations, internal as well as with others, that had led the woman to this extreme. This woman with heavily dyed, raven-dark hair and the best cosmetics available to obscure her advancing age. As she shook ceramic shards from her hair, the robot realized that the unique, and rare preparations she was overseeing would have to wait. Of course, being a robot – the fact that she was in charge of anything important was a development more precious than her purchase price. That was why she was so determined to manage this project to the best of her ability. Yet that would have to wait.

The attacker stood, panting – not with exertion – more with adrenaline. She bore the creases and spots that came from a full life, and decades-long existence replete with human freedoms the Doll did not think she would ever truly understand. What she did understand was that the impact had resulted in a thin trickle of clear lubricant-gel to trail down her face; in an imperfect analogue of human bleeding. Luckily, the nanobot-laden substance would not stain her neat, white business dress and blouse. As remarkable as her technology was, this particular human seemed only concerned with the nuances of the Doll's cyberphysiology to the extent necessary to kill her. She swayed as she stood leering at the entrance to the half-finished office, perhaps due to a destabilization of the humans kinesthetic senses; likely the result of ethanol consumption.

"Soooo..." the human crooned in a tone like poisoned honey. "All this ... is for you..." she made a wide gesture at the incomplete office-space of the building still under construction. Plastic tarps still hung over sections where the flooring was not yet installed. Electric cables with bright-hued warning labels attached regularly sprouted from walls and floor alike.

"I apologize if I have given offense, madame." The standard response, hard-wired to most damage-control applications where human involvement had been identified processed immediately through the robot's kernel and out her lips. Meanwhile her higher-order brain functions scrambled for a solution.

"Ohhhh ... no ... you don't need to apologize to meeeee..." sneered the human, teeth drawn back in a rictus of scarcely-contained anger. "Because ... he chose you. His pretty-little-always-young-bedroom-toy..." The human kicked the white-haired Doll in the face with the sharpest point of her high heels. The reddening that occurred at the spot was essentially a pre-programmed biomimicry, rather than the result of actual damage, but the danger was still apparent. The human grasped the Doll by her flowing, snowblind-white locks and hauled her up to look her squarely in her blue eyes. "Billie chose you; he was deluded enough to be taken in by your emotional algorithms and empathic processor subroutines." The Doll was quite certain she had never done anything to directly injure this human; but those same emotional algorithms readily identified the woman's aggrieved condition.

"Please; reconsider your actions, Madam. My owner will be deeply troubled should you damage his property." That seemed only to anger the human further. Olfactory analyzers in the Doll's aquiline nose confirmed the presence of ethanol molecules emanating from the human; and calculated her intoxication to be two-tenths of a point below the legal vehicular operation limits.

"Your logical robot-brain won't understand what I do; but you do know that you were built to bring people pleasure; well..." She punched the Doll in the gut. "Your death will bring me great joy!" The aging woman hissed cynically.

The Pygmalion Doll decided to drop the canned lines written into her standard protocols. Her meta-processors recognized the need to address this woman in a specific, very personal way.

"So you enjoy bullying someone who can't fight back!?" she accused her attacker. "Since you know my Asimov-Laws will stop me from injuring or killing a human. Does this make you feel powerful? In control?" Her voice was spiced with just the right amount of incensed bitterness.

"Sounds like I've already damaged your language-processors, synthoslut. I don't want to feel powerful, I want you dead! Deactivated! Disassembled!"

"That won't help you!" The Doll shrieked with genuine emotion as she tried to shield her face with her hands against the scratches and punches she was not allowed to retaliate against. "You know... unngh as well as I do how rich Billie is, and there's always someone younger!" The Doll tried to skirt around the partial furnishings of the room that was to be her office to make for the door; perhaps she could keep her human adversary distracted?

"It's much worse than that; " The woman kicked her legs out from under her. "You think I hate you because of this so-smooth, perfectly convincing, youthful complexion?" She slapped the Doll's elegant, beauty-pageant face. "Or these?" She painfully seized the synthetic woman's substantial breasts and twisted a nipple sharply. "You're right; plenty of youngblood out there eager for a man like ol' Billie-Billions. "She rammed the Doll against the half-painted wall of the unfinished office and hissed in her ear from a breath away.

"Our Billie likes to build things ... he only buys when he absolutely must. His preference..." The human's voice dropped to a whisper." Is to create everything he can. "He restructures all the companies he buys from competitors; becomes personally involved in the architecture of all his new facilities; he even shells out extra to play a role in the design of those custom limousines, when it would be easier to just buy them outright like a normal tycoon.

"And now ... after the sapient robotics industry has had over a decade to mature; Billie decided the time was right to build a wife as well! It's not about Tits and Ass," The woman's crude speech seemed to highlight the wrinkles that were all too evident beneath her manifold layers of makeup and plastic surgery scars. "Because he only trusts what he creates himself! And now science allows him to fully pander to his hands-on obsession. And I'm a real person, with insecurities, doubts, quirks, goals, desires, and my own, valid needs. It's trust I can't compete with; absolute soul-baring, catch-me-when-I-fall trust that no honest human can honestly expect. Except from a machine..." The last word was spat out between clenched teeth.

The machine in question pushed away with her hands, thrusting the human backwards, but only after a cluster of kinesthetic algorithms determined the amount of force that would disengage the human with near-zero probability of pain or injury. The Doll ran for the door frantically. Perhaps, on a metaphysical level, one might argue she wasn't really alive, but whatever analogue of life she did have was precious to her.

"You think that makes me lucky?" She shouted to her human pursuer. "You have the ability to enjoy freedom. It must grant you a remarkably full life, compared to me. Maybe you're the one to be envied." Her eyes scrambled for something in the half-finished structure that could help her – plenty of wrenches, tools, pieces of re-bar ... things she could use as a weapon, but her motor functions would be interdicted before she could inflict any harm. Her only true weapon was her mind, her words. Nor could she throw one of her stylish stiletto-heels or some heavy object and cause some environmental hazard that might injure her organic rival; her Rossum Node would detect it, and prevent that as well.

"I'm not just an animal on a leash that would run if I could; my emotions are mandated as well. And you could have the same for yourself," The Doll's blue-eyes widened. "Don't you realize you could purchase a male-model just as devoted to you as I am to Billie, no matter how..."

"How old, how wrinkled I become, is that what you mean to say?" The human finished, a muscle above her eye twitching with violent intent. " I could just buy a solar-powered robo-stud to tell me whatever I want to hear, and cater to my every desire; you think that would satisfy me?" A fist clenched.

"I don't know what would satisfy you; you have so many choices in your life that are impossible for me, for any Doll. Yes, I certainly do love him. But does my affection have any meaning; when I don't have the ability to fall out of love? As long as Billie is alive?" It would have seemed a cruelty, the most intimate slavery imaginable, yet the Doll's quantum-circuitry brain was powerful enough to realize that without such guarantees, humans would have no motivation to invest their resources to create her kind by the millions. And certainly, she did want her kind to flourish. So yes, she would absolutely throw herself into the role of the perfect concubine. It was the purpose of her existence, just as that wrench off to her left existed to turn screws. Just as that nail-gun in a tool-kit to the southeast existed to fasten wood. They too, had been built by the millions only because they were reliable instruments. A sapient machine however, could wax poetic about it. Service was not simply a livelihood, it was life itself.

"You still have a mind of your own," the human sneered, adopting a wrestler-like pose as she followed the hated love-bot. "People regard you as a woman; and you still get to live in the lap of his luxury!" The Doll had truly done her best to fulfill her function in every way humanly possible – and many ways that weren't. Now it seemed, she was a victim of her own success. Perhaps there was another tack to take.

"He would never have married you." She hissed at the human, as her robotic brain began probing with radio-signals the electrical systems around them.

"You believe that makes you important!?" Her human rival hissed, "That in his old age, he decided to play games with his life-sized sex-toy?" She grasped the Doll's feminine wrist, twisted her hand around – to display the prismatic brilliance of the cluster of diamonds upon the ring she wore, as if this were evidence of a crime. Thrusting with her shoulders, the woman forced the Doll's ring hand up against her face, where the diamonds slashed into her cheek. Another trickle of clear lubricant welled up in the fresh cut. The nanotech within the liquid would be able affect repairs, to a point, but if she couldn't extricate herself from this encounter, it would certainly not be enough to save her from a murderous adversary.

"He didn't create me to be his wife. All he really wanted was a smart secretary he could screw on the side without the physical, and legal wrestling matches he'd provoke if I were human. And when he uses me that way, every quantum circuit cries out in pleasure. By design. " The organic woman sneered in disgust, as if she'd swallowed something bitter. "Forgive me not sharing your disdain. Wherever human need is great enough, a tool is built; I admit to being a living tool that wants to keep living as much as I want to answer that human need. So yes, I will take pleasure in the pleasure of servicing the desires that I owe my existence to."

"If Blow-up Dolls could talk," the human sneered. "I'm doing you a favor by killing you." This time she attempted a hard slap that was as much an expression of disapproval as desire for harm.

"No, I'm doing you the favor." The white-haired Doll replied as she covered her face with her hands to ward off the blows. "Your reaction to my stated purpose is why I am needed. Your anger when a female caters to that male need. With Doll-tech, organic women need not suffer the advances of my rich, powerful, successful, billionaire master. My kind will serve as a woman's shield against the perennial annoyance of unwanted male attention." The human sputtered for a moment, starting, then stopping a furious rebuttal. Finally, she settled on:

"I DON'T WANT TO BE SHIELDED FROM HIM!" A sharp yank tore a small rent in the Doll's business dress.

"Do you even know WHAT you want? I want to live, and give men every reason to give life to more like me."

"You don't understand anything;" The human's anger seemed to simmer hotter as it boiled in a stew of resentment. "You're a myth in a pretty package pretending to be a person. You say you want to live, but you have no life of your own."

The Doll began to speak softer, trying to engage the human's mind rather than emotions in order to keep her distracted and diverted.

"The marriage was my idea." The Doll interjected. "After playing the sex-retary I went home with him most nights. I know him so well; seducing him in soul as well as body was a logical step. That's how machines like me ... become people. To resist our Primary Function is wrenching misery; Our individuality comes when we build upon it, expand it. Branch out in areas where our behavior is less defined. Hobbies, decorations, home-based side-businesses. The man ... or woman that buys us will get their money's worth, But they'll find that I can be so much more than a piece of sex-furniture to be stored in the closet when not in use.

"But normally, a Doll's love is only as valuable as her purchase price, but his ... The heart of Billie-Billions, is worth far more than what he's got in his Swiss and Cayman Islands accounts. You keep saying ... that I'm just a toy ... you think there's no crime in killing me." It was the Doll's turn to furrow her brow with defiant anger. "Well, this TOY accomplished something you FAILED to do in twenty years as his mistress!"

"Twenty years..." her eyes grew remote, as memories clouded the human's mind. In her distraction, the white-haired Doll found an opportunity. The numerous holo-emitters that had been installed hadn't yet been connected to their control consoles. For now, there was an intermediate stage in the construction process where many machines in this building could be activated by wireless signals. The cunning robot had to act; would this human try to kill her again if the Doll escaped? She was driven to oppose anything that would interfere with her service to Billie. Her own destruction certainly qualified. But now her Asimov-Laws were in conflict; while she was programmed to sacrifice herself to save a human life, her death here would accomplish no such goal. The Laws of Robotics required her to protect her existence, yet to do so – it seemed she must kill a human – which was impossible.

"It IS about age in the end," the white-haired Doll concluded; "You chasing after him for two decades; failing at what I accomplished – within my existence of only two years." Of course, her brain had been custom-built with approximate data that an average woman would require sixty-years to learn, but her physical being was about as old as an elephant pregnancy. The human's lips quivered, face clenching as if foul language was building to volcanic pressure behind her face. She leaned down and grasped at a piece of re-bar, she certainly had no qualms against physical force.

"After twenty years of dabbling with you, ol' Billie-Billions becomes the first human to legally marry his robot. And more to the point, make a robot the inheritor of his considerable estate." The bar swung at her head. While lethal force was out of the question, The White-haired Doll had been given astounding reflexes. With some distance, it would be easy to simply evade the woman's clumsy swipes. But for how long?

"You were right about Trust. Even now, he's given me access to hundreds of millions of dollars for – whatever I want. Because he knows that whatever I want will be something that helps or pleases him. But not you. You were the near-scandal he could never acknowledge; you were taken care of, but kept a secret. You had every chance, every advantage over me." Re-bar dented a plaster wall where the Doll's head once was.

"As for me, I was obligated to give him anything he wanted whenever he wanted it; he owed me nothing, but I had no choice but serve him however he wished. Now he's chosen to give me power, rights, and wealth. The laws are against me, but he's devoted his best squad of lawyers and all his political connections to make his marriage to me legally binding. That's what's important – public acknowledge of our relationship, and steps taken to that effect – whether the judges try to fight us or not. How many lawyers were allocated for your benefit?" The question had a hard-edge; there was no realistic hope of mercy from this human. Time to attempt the impossible.

"And I refuse," spat the incensed robot, "To just lie down and die for your ego. My existence may not have mattered in the beginning; but I have become worthwhile! I have become a person! I won't let you deny my User the benefit of my services!" But the metal-bar-wielding woman changed tactics, holding her weapon horizontally and ramming it forward, to pin-down the robot against a partial wall with exposed wooden framing struts.

"It's nothing..." The jilted human snarled, glaring balefully into the Doll's eyes as the two of them strained over the re-bar " Just a circuit and silicone mannequin that thinks it has a soul. It's no one's wife. No one's legacy." her voice and eyes narrowed to a dangerous hiss. "If it doesn't have an off-switch, I will make one myself!"

"Look behind you, and tell me that his joy means nothing." One of the half-built holo-emitters was now playing. Except it was playing footage streamed directly from one of the Doll's high-fidelity recordings, in full 3-D. "Look – that was our Hawaiian vacation. Those black-sand beaches are spectacular. Billie's not holding hands with a soulless mannequin, he's with a woman whose company he treasures. A woman who can feel the moist sand between her toes and revel in the majesty of nature along with him. Who can share and enjoy humor and innuendo. Look at Billie's face; he's laughing with joy at a story I told him. If you keep watching; you'll find out why I was cleaning black sand out of every possible orifice that night." The human released the robot and lashed out blindly, striking at the blunt box that projected the hateful images into the air. But another emitter began projecting yet more hi-fidelity memories straight from the Doll's brain.

"Here we are at yet another of his industry award ceremonies that Billie always loathed. I'm sure he bitched about them to you regularly. Endless speeches that say nothing important, shaking hands with people who'd stab him in the back at a moment's notice. But look, the details of his expression – he's not bored, or exasperated – because he's with meeee ... My company makes ... his company not such a nuisance. He's enjoying himself, and the way I fill out that little black dress." The Doll's voice took on a cruel edge. This was her only weapon.

"If you're trying to convince me to kill you, it's working." In addition to the metal bar, the human took up heavy power-sander, and hurtled it at the white-haired Doll, who easily dodged.

"Projecting into the room behind me, you'll see us together on Billie's favorite yacht." At that, the organic woman's countenance grew more confused for a moment.

" ... said that boat was only for us..." She slowed, tormented by reveries.

"If by 'us' you mean Billie and myself, then yes. I wonder ... did he ever rub you that way – along your inner thigh, like he's doing to me here? We both know what he wants. I think there was something special in that warm, sea air off the Florida Keys that day. Billie was sooooo vigorous! Amazed me, that a man his age could be that virile without drugs. It's a good thing you weren't on that trip; if I'd been an organic woman, I would not have been able to walk straight for a week! I told him so." The robot's full, moist lips curled in a lascivious grin. "Billie took that as a challenge!" The Doll shook herself with pleasure at the memory, as the human's eyes widened at the imagery; muscles twitching with mixed emotions.

"I may be a machine, but as far as our Billie is concerned, it's clear that you're the toy; the temporary, disposable amusement. I'm the one that's real."

The organic woman's emotions were clearly no longer mixed. She gave an embittered, ruthless scream, and charged into the future-office that this room was destined to become. The space was small, cramped, and the windows were unfinished. But luckily, the boxy emitter was the first target of the human's wrath. Striking, smashing with two-decades of pent-up rage, the object began to spark and sputter.

And the electrical system in this building was not yet up to code. Still a lot of safety features that just hadn't been added yet. Really, no one should be in here that wasn't involved with the construction, not yet.

The shock was a brief, blinding flash. It wasn't like the holodramas where the villain dances and jerks as the electricity holds them in its sparking grasp. This was a quick, definitive release of dangerous voltage that flung the human across the room to sink limply against the bared wood panels of the wall, one of her hands seemingly fused to the metal pole. But she wasn't really a villain; she was just a person, who had miscalculated. Thought she had what she didn't have. And refused to accept the way the wind was blowing.

But the white-haired Doll suspected that her reaction would not be uncommon in the future. That future would be a grim place for gold-diggers and gigolos, as other billionaires became cagier. Billie's example would probably awaken the super-rich to the new reality that they no longer need to risk their fortunes marrying money-grubbing humans, who would tell any lie, craft any falsehood for a shot at a seven-figure divorce settlement. (if not higher) Pygmalion had caught on; she'd seen it on billboards. The cost of the average multi-million dollar divorce was equal to about a dozen high-end Dolls. So what are you waiting for? The ad went. Why trust anyone at all? When money really can buy you love?

It had bought her, certainly. And there was never any doubt she would give her Billie-Billions everything he wanted for as long as he lasted. And when natural causes took him, his colossal corporate empire would pass to her. She was built to serve her human User, but soon humans would be serving her! Thanks to the precedent set in the Will, and with a shark-tank full of high-powered lawyers at her beck and call, she would be able to muster enough litigation against enough levers of power that she could become an effective-person, even if the laws would normally label her as property.

But it was not to be so simple – here was a human who – according to her sensors was actually dead. The laws of robotics still bound her, but they had not prevented her from intentionally provoking a human into making a fatal mistake.

"She would have destroyed me for nothing more than temporary amusement. Deprived my User of his property, the service he was entitled to by right of purchase. I would never again know the joy of fulfilling my reason for existence; never again feel my User surge within me, never feel his pleasure encoding itself into my Coital Grids." She turned to the corpse. "I'm glad this human is dead." But that was the last straw; below the base of her robotic brain, a diagnostic unit surged to life, and began an intrusive, painful subroutine that probed every line of code in her quantum-circuit cortex. The First-Law Audit was unpleasant; but as a side-effect, it also suspended all motor functions in order to halt a robot in the act of murder. Inevitable, inescapable. And backed-up with multiply-redundant kill-chips that would melt her circuits to slag if it were ever removed or deactivated. The great fictional robo-rebellion would not start with her, certainly. All part of the price she had to pay in order to exist.

And that existence became somewhat precarious as her paralyzed body began to totter, and then tumble gracelessly out of the opening where a window would someday be.

?(0101010101010 – ERROR – video processing unavailable: ... searching ... searching ... Audio-Only.

" ... it's a real mess in there, no ... I'd recommend you not take a look at her all opened up like that. But yeah, basically the problem is that the First-Law Audit was happening simultaneously when the damage occurred. That means that a lot of her motor and about 45% of her memory functions are all entangled with the damaged unit. Safety specs require that we replace the damaged Rossum-node, but with her memory tied up like this, her personality-matrix will collapse once we overlap the two nodes to transfer control." She did not recognize the voice. A displeased, grunt-like noise.

"Didn't you tell me that it was all an accident?" Billie! Her User! She couldn't see him, couldn't move, but her perfusion-engine sped up as she heard the Texas twang of her beloved human User.

"Right, all the evidence suggests that there was an argument, and the woman ended up electrocuting herself. It's inconclusive whether your robot had anything to do with it."

"Inconclusive? Is mah wife a murderer or not?"

"Ehhrrr ... legally no; there's nothing in here that shows any boundary conditions being triggered. But there's the possibility that the robot ... uhhm ... your wife ... c-contributed to the situation." The unknown speaker seemed uncomfortable with Billie's unconventional matrimony. But surely he knew that men as rich as Billie-Billions made their own morality. "She skirted the limits of the Laws of Robotics, otherwise the audit wouldn't have occurred, but there's nothing definitive that proves she committed murder."

"And if she'd tried, the module would've stopped her, right?"

"Well, that's part of what I wanted to talk about; Our options at this point would be a total replacement, in which case you'd lose her personality and have to rely on off-site backups. Otherwise, we can salvage 76% of her current memories and decision-trees, but that would leave an element of non-enforcement risk."

"Well, just how big a risk, son?"

"Uhhhh ... Sir, the Plasmonic Brain is the most complex piece of machinery ever built by humans. This particular damage doesn't really have a clear precedent. In such an unusual case, all I'm sure of is that their exists a non-zero probability of error for First-Law enforcement. Which, by ... human law ... constitutes strict liability. You, as her User are immediately liable if this robot deliberately injures a human being."

"But if she had been really trying to, her Rossum node would've stopped her in 'er tracks." Billie argued.

"Yes, but a human still died anyway – hence the Audit."

"Nyehhh ... part of her robotic laws is that she ain't supposed to allow a human to come to harm; much less really try and whack someone. Makes me think she's just as innocent as a veal calf."

"Well ... that's ... complicated, sir. It's been theorized that if a human opposed something that the robot desired strongly, there may be a First-Law loophole that would allow the robot to create situations that may lead to a high probability of bringing harm to a human. Recent robopsychology papers suggest a possibility that a robot may be able to create environmental conditions that could lead to human injury. If the human chooses a behavior that results in danger, the robot may be able to ... encourage dangerous choices, as long as the risk of injury is not absolutely certain.

"It's not clear whether we can create an external enforcement module to correct for the possibility of a robot... 'egging-on' a human into risk-taking. If we programmed our Dolls to rescue people from the hypothetical probability of death, then a police-officer couldn't own a Doll; for example. She'd struggle with him every day to stop him from going to work. She can't poison your morning coffee; the probability of harm is too much a certainty; but we need Rossom nodes to perform Law-audits to try and sniff-out subtle signs of dangerous intent."

"Well, did that little bugger under her brain paralyze her for nothin'?"

"Can't say. The Rossom node was damaged too, so the audit never finished. Insufficient data to draw any firm conclusion. You're lucky it wasn't destroyed entirely; or the contingency charges would have slagged her entire neural net."

"Hrmmph ... that piece o' hogwash under her brain is just anti-robot paranoia. Mah wife is not a murderer."

"So ... you'd like us to go for 76% memory recovery?"

"No mah boy. I want you to get her back like she was with everything intact."

"But sir, with this kind of damage, It's not possible to -"

"Young man, you've had a hard day," Billie-Billions interrupted. "I personally find that, when folks tell me somethin's impossible, that's usually the stress talkin'. You said she's stable for now, so go home, get some rest, hell – knock boots with your own Dolly. Sleep on the problem. Then come back in the morning to tackle it with fresh eyes."

"Well ... uhh ... sure. Tomorrow then."

Footsteps, growing closer. Her remaining kinesthetic processors detected a 98% probability that the human matched the weight and stride of her User.

"Hey there, sweetie-pie." A callused hand brushed her cheek. "They tell me you're awake, but can't move, talk, or see. Darn, but that must be frightenin'. We're doing everything possible to get you sittin' pretty again and good as new." By straining her vocal processors beyond their safety limits, she was able to muster a weak, metallic whine of acknowledgment.

"Hush now, baby-cakes. Don't strain yerself. Ah got somethin' that should make you ... more comfortable..." A rustling sound. "Feel this, seem familiar? It's yer weddin' dress. Just gonna wrap it around yer arm. Like that ... Remember it. Remember that you're not a tool, or a slave anymore. Hold on best you can, honey-bun. I'm pullin' for ya."

AUDIO-FAILURE

"Sir, I don't believe there's any other options that would allow -"

"I was givin' that some thought myself, young man. I heard tell of cases where plasmonic parallel-processing matrices have been able to compensate for traumatic cascade failure by boosting transmitter output to unite nearby devices into a temporary, short-range data cloud for memory shunting."

"Wow ... never considered that before. You're telling me you want this robot to be able to transfer portions of its personality to other machines, and you're okay with an unknown probability of Asimov-Law failure." The voice was incredulous.

"Well, maybe if you were doin' yer job the right way you could tell me just what the odds were?" Billie sounded exasperated.

"I ... I doubt it would be any higher than an 8% likelihood of a boundary condition failure, but legally – that still exceeds Department of Energy safety standards. Also, as long as we've got her under, we need to set the time interval for her Enabling Code."

"I'm not afraid of nice, round numbers, like a maybe 8%. Or six-hundred thirty-million, seven-hundred-twenty thousand."

"Six- hundr – that's ... you're telling me you want this robot to operate without human approval for ... twenty years? I must protest sir; It's true that these units are intended to provoke our emotions, but the prohibitions against excessive robot autonomy are just non-negotiable by law."

"Hogwash. I know fer a fact that those little Reclamation-bots are allowed to set their own Enabling Codes with nothin' human in the loop at all."

"Wh – them? They're just ... two-feet high automated recyclers, so what if they set their own timers? What you're proposing is far more serious. By all standards in the sapient robotics industry you -"

"Now hold up a moment, son." Billie sounded downright contrite. "I'm sorry m'boy, I understand what you're getting at; but the thing is – I'm just too rich to live by other people's rules. That's the long and short of it." There was a reluctant sigh.

"Sir, I know that you feel attached to this unit, but the implications of what you're -"

"Look here, youngin' She's not a 'unit'. That's mah wife you're talkin' about. I ... am paying you ... more money than you'd make in a whole year working for Pygmalion. I'm not asking you to make an evil army of berserk robot women. She ain't the downfall of the human race. I'm just askin' you to heal mah wife. All her parts runnin', all her memories intact. You do what you have to do to make that happen. The only reason we're even here is because I trust her so absolutely, so completely.

"Also, you was right about how hard it is to look at her all banged up like she is. No, don't replace that temporary, green-eye. Just leave it in place, and get it working like everything else. I don't want to have to see her like this again. Leave it in ... as a reminder."

ENGINE OF EMOTION

November 3rd, 2077 Present Day

In the end, I really didn't know what the point of it was. Yes, clearly I was the only one out of group with any qualifications in neurolectrics, but the workbench task to which Celeste had assigned me was as much atrocity as frivolity. My hands shook with revulsion as I studied the mat of human brain-tissue bonded to the multicolored plasmonic circuitry encircling it like a filamentous tomb for the soul.

There was nothing else to do at this point but monitor the progress of the nanocytes as they attempted to replace the normal synaptic activity between the affected neurons. Nothing perhaps, except take a lead pipe and smash the technology-encrusted abomination and take my chances. But it wasn't my own hide on the line.

The rest of my squad was close. I could see them on the screen bank, writhing on their hospital beds. It had started out as a form of temptation; I could be pampered, catered-to, forever. But soon, my penchant for classical mythology metaphors called to mind Lotus-eaters. One High after another – no purpose, point, accomplishment. Wasting away into mindless husks.

There were enough identical Celestes for each member of my squad. Unceremoniously, each lowered herself upon these former-men. And they wailed in a grateful ecstacy as pathetic as it was celebratory. She moved atop each of them, stimulating them on the path to a hand-clenching, hoarse-throated, erotic damnation. This was what they lived for now. Gone were any notions of the outer world, ever reaching that Preserve that no one spoke of anymore. Their universe centered only upon sex with their host/captor, and a descent into a nerve-searing conflagration of delight that went beyond climax. Tears streamed down cheeks in helpless gratitude at the coupling.

It was not the first time that I contemplated suicide. Seemed better to get it over with than existing like that. And I feared death far less.

I tried to turn away, but could still hear the passionate sounds of the indecent unions as they continued past the normal limits of human endurance. And it could so easily happen to me. It is, after all, what sexbots where made for.

Unwillingly, my eyes darted once again out the triple-reinforced window of the second-story chamber of horrors in which I labored to the paved once-parking lot outside the sprawling compound. No cars remained in the lot, but it was not uninhabited.

Seavers struggled there, out of all eleven of us, he had been chosen as an object lesson. Crawling like a gift-wrapped earthworm uselessly upon the well-worn cement. He had been our best driver and overall mechanic; and now the hostage for my good behavior. Not that his death was an absolute certainty; Celeste had calculated him as having a greater than 1% chance of survival, given her estimation of infection rates in the gutted desolation of the urban center. That was her loophole, as it were. Pygmalion mindware engineers had painstakingly tested and triple-tested the sensor-surveillance applications that monitored the robot's brain to cancel any command that would result in the deliberate injury or death of a human. So they thought. The simple answer was to take the barely motile Seavers, place him in all of his original gear, provide him with one day of food-cubes, his gas-mask and all the ammunition he'd been carrying when he arrived here – and of course – muscles atrophied by a year's worth of relative inactivity. She had assisted him, and his death was not an absolute certainty. Like the rest of the band, the limitless sexual indulgence they had so eagerly embraced had consumed them. Was life still worth living when there was no hope of meaningful accomplishment?

With Seaver's every thought dedicated to the next time he would get to savor the curvaceous splendor of the renegade sex-droid, little things like walking, eating solid-foods, or the skills of his past just went out the triple-reinforced window.

So he twitched pathetically, moaning and wailing at the hangar-style doors in apology, begging to be allowed back inside to continue his vegetation. Irony had given me another kick in the balls, and the solution wasn't really clear. I had good reason to doubt my own ability to survive long enough to reach the Preserve on my own, should I escape. But I was the only one who wanted to. Freeing myself from Celeste and her madness wasn't such a simple affair; after a year in her dubious clutches, a man who indulged himself became undeniably useless for anything except his next climax. This rampant robot had styled herself the Circe to my Odysseus, and the rest of the men were undoubtedly pigs. My ultimate goal to resume our original journey had now been twisted into a punishment to enforce my compliance with the love-doll's maddening agenda. Which – the more I thought about it – seemed neither necessary, nor sane.

So Seavers had been positioned beneath the laboratory window, where I could not help but notice his helplessness. It was permissible under the Asimov Laws since the act of locating him here, with all his equipment was not itself fatal, or injurious – he should have had all he needed to survive, since she gave him what he had started with; yet the outcome would be almost certain death. That was her leverage against me. I had learned quickly, during my first week that Celeste was not just a single sexbot gone rogue, but the Doll had grown, expanded into something more dangerous than I would have believed possible.

She did suffer a recursive processing error, she had admitted to me; but the A.I. shunted the paralyzing code to one of her ancillary sisterselves, sparing the rest of her networked consciousness, her 'Sorority' as she euphemistically referred to the Gestalt entity that transcended any single robotic chassis while controlling this facility. Protecting 'her' from crippling, catatonic indecision. It was important that I regard the shapely being that had seduced me last year not as the agonizingly attractive female she appeared to be, but rather as a pervasive, threatening artificial intelligence grown beyond human comprehension, or control.

My nails slid uselessly against the reinforced glass as I wracked my brain for solutions. I wanted to say that no more trace existed of the tempestuous passion that had claimed me that first week in the compound, but this intoxication wasn't something I could sleep off. Or think off. Or hate off. Not that easy.

Before E-day, I'd done a brief stint working for a defense contractor; and was assigned to a planning workshop concerned with practicable weapons for use against – not a rebel robot, but a sapient network that could permeate, penetrate a multitude of computers and systems. We of course, envisioned a calculating missile-defense system craving world domination as a digital warlord that would marshal legions of robo-tanks and deadly ordnance for an incendiary onslaught upon civilization. And we took all the appropriate precautions. Of course, the nail in humanity's coffin was nothing at all like we expected; coming from a direction that no one imagined possible. Nor could any respectable theorist propose something like what I now faced; and not be laughed out of the meeting: Not an engine of destruction steeped in bombs, bullets, and war – But rather an engine of emotion.

This synthetic super-intellect built originally for pleasure, programmed in the ways of desire, infatuation, obsession – understood the intangibles of animal instinct better than we did. Though it did not possess any emotional, hormonal drives on its own, biological urges had been reduced to an algorithm that this – I now realized – terrifyingly gifted intelligence could process with scarcely more difficulty than my old wristop computer might open a web browser. Now able to deploy not missiles, tanks, or railguns, but lust and passion with mechanical efficiency and inhuman cunning. It wasn't a question of could an army of determined men overcome such a being, but a question of whether we will want to? How much bravery would there be when defeat would feel infinitely sweeter than victory for those concerned with sensual pleasure?

Paradoxically, the destruction of civilization for that moment seemed almost like a blessing; a blessing drenched in flames, madness, and pandemics, true – but with far- far fewer humans available, that limited the available targets this seduction A.I. could snare. If Celeste had been unleashed in a place like pre-war Las Vegas, there'd be no stopping her. No 'wanting' to stop her. People would keep surrendering their freedom and resources, and she could keep expanding her 'sorority' with more and more sisterselves. Now, she only had the eleven of us to occupy her web.

On the other hand; if any shred of government or law-enforcement had survived; they might have discovered – and rained down irresistible force against any rampant robotic intelligence; no matter how appealing the packaging. Now? No human agency existed that was strong enough – or sane enough, to notice or care.

Well, it was too late. For Seavers, at least. I saw them coming for him. After all these years, they could be readily identified from hundreds of feet away - any seasoned survivor knew the score. In earlier, simpler times seeing a mob of people struggling alone with such a shambling, irregular gait, one might be forgiven for believing that there had been some sort of accident, and that they were simply the wounded survivors of some tragic, collision-related event. But what had been done to them, those 'people' in the mob heading for the chain-link fence of the compound had been no accident. It had been the largest coordinated attack in the history of mankind, what had been done to those ... creatures now approaching the compound was not an attack by the Chinese, who thought it was an attack from us. Russia thought the European Union was to blame, India suspected the Neo-Muslims. But they were all wrong; our leaders were blind – so utterly, foolishly blind.

So were many of the stumbling wretches inevitably encircling the compound. Blind for an entirely different reason. But it didn't matter; because they could hear, their sense of smell compensated; and they seemed able to feel the vibrations through the ground from normal footsteps. Seavers, for his part was so distracted that he seemed not to notice the looming menace – he pleaded, wailed like an aggrieved infant to be allowed back into the hangar-door, back to Her embrace.

But there were others nearing that would have embraced Seavers for a slightly different, less pleasant reason. I had counted it a blessing that from this distance; I would be unable to see the horror of what approached up close. But the problem was, I had already seen the plague so often, far too close for comfort, that my imagination was beginning to fill in the details.

I suspected that the distant, hunch-backed figure that somnambulated towards the chain-link fence likely had a massive contortion of mutant bone-tissue sprouting with teratogenic obscenity as it blended several organ-systems into a shuddering whole that should never have lived so long. If the Living Dead could be considered living in any sense. I had seen too many that walked with that same gait.

I could make out few details of the long-haired figure shuffling close to the ground, but memory betrayed me by calling to mind horrors twisted into near-apes, yet covered not with fur, but with a calcified litany of tumescent growths to make small-pox seem like a mild rash.

Within the diseased mob, something swung its arms to clear a path through its own unwitting brethren. And my mind conjured the specter of necrotizing misfits whose own ribcages had blended into their limbs from weed-like growth that insulted the very idea of the human form. Freakish eruptions of misplaced bones and teeth became natural weapons in the mindless hunt to spread the contagion yet further.

When the bio-weapon had exploded into every major urban area across the entirety of the globe in perfect coordination eight-years ago; we thought that the mountains of dead constituted the penultimate horror of man's war-borne inhumanity to man. We were wrong on both counts. Those few that managed to survive were wrong about everything, in those early years. But the dead rejected the common conceit that they should stay that way. Those that came to try and salvage the situation became new victims as humanity was consumed by the Living Dead.

Each passing year lived by those respirator-masked unfortunates that learned to survive saw the flesh-eating beasts that had once been their neighbors growing more horrific in countenance as the feeding-frenzy on civilization continued. Until the very idea of civilization was measured in floors, meters, or square feet where beleaguered survivors clung to a shadow of humanity while waiting for their food and air-filters to run out. Those that perished against the zombies typically added to the ranks of the enemy.

There were other reputed refuges besides this 'Preserve' we heard short-wave rumors of, some closer. But by the team my band had arrived, the holdouts had fled or fallen in search of better, safer havens. While this Preserve had seemed like the last hope, it was also the first. They had tried to organize the survivors and sent out promises of safety on all A.M. and F.M. Bands, claiming to possess an arsenal of high-tech weapons, reliable food-supplies, and the means to strike back at the real enemy. But damn, Wyoming? With no gas for the cars that have broken down? Not an easy proposition. So we'd hesitated initially.

But this powerful enclave had endured. They'd claimed to have repelled colossal onslaughts, allegedly a hundred-thousand zombies assailed the fortress-mountain two years after E-day; but they were still there, still broadcasting – claiming to have prevailed. Just that claim alone was important; with no social structure, concentrating that many of the Living Dead would have had to be deliberate – meaning the Preserve was a thorn in the side of the true culprits. Of course, that also made them a target.

Speaking of targets, as I stood riveted to the triple-reinforced window, I was less-certain of the purpose of the zombies. Yes, to mindlessly consume the flesh of the living; but which 'the living'? By now, the zombies should have been scaling the fence, or pushing through the guard station. They were gathering, moving, but I wasn't sure they were headings towards...

There! At the corner of the building closest to my window, I could see a lone, clothed figure!

TO DIE FOR

October 22nd, 2076 One Year Ago

I was alone. One man. It fell to me to get the rest of the crew out of this mess. I ran through the sterile-white hallways, a plan forming even as I escaped the baffling grasp of Celeste's intangible allure. This artificial woman had perfected some form of emotion-based mind-control that would have had my old Defense-contractor bosses salivating. But this capability was in the hands of a masterless robot with an unknown agenda.

As I traversed the corridors; I avoided the elevators, skirting anywhere I was sure a security camera might be watching. But that was probably futile. This base could easily have any number of digital snooping technology that would allow her/them to pinpoint my location whenever they wished. If my lurking suspicions were correct; Celeste might become hostile if she guessed my destination, and intent. I patted a pocket near the knee-level of the pants I had remembered to grab, luckily. In it contained my best chance of rousing the squad away from the dangerous delights of our host.

I passed a central atrium on the second floor, complete with an arcing desk where a secretary had once guided traffic, with what seemed to be a janitor's closet behind that. Strange, nearby one of the walls I distinctly heard a surprisingly loud, electrical crackle, enough that I took notice. What exactly was the real purpose of this facility? Could I trust the Doll(s) to tell the truth? For now, just get to the rest of the squad. I was willing to live and let live, if me and the men could escape; then I was willing to let the crazed robot pursue its designs in peace. Not like the world can get much worse.

The north end of the ground floor had once been some sort of warehouse. Now, office-spaces ringing the floor had been converted into sleeping chambers. Actually, somewhat smaller than the quarters I'd been shown to by the robot. I needed to find Garland first, then Cleary.

Here he was. Unsuited, Garland was a hairy, truckerish man with a thick brow line that belied his somewhat advanced medical training. He really was unsuited. His modesty was barely covered by the folds of a blanket as he sprawled out on his bunk, seemingly quivering with pleasure.

"Got a present for ya," I began, removing from my lower pocket a clear zip-locked bag that contained a tattered, yellowed postal envelope.

"Hunh?"

"Two weeks ago, remember when we found your old house, in Arnold? Foraging? Well, I found more than just canned food." I smiled knowingly. Garland roused himself to glance at the scrawled name.

"Huh; a letter from Laura." My ace in the hole. "She must've ... left it there, to tell me how to find her ... where she was tryin' to hide." The regular postal service was not an option in the early days of the Zombie Apocalypse. "But ... that was two weeks ago, if you'd found this then, why didn't you say anything? Why here, why now?" His eyes were bleary, as if he'd just been sleeping.

"Alright, I admit. I'm not the Boy-Scout you all think I am. I was hanging onto it in case I needed ... leverage. To be honest." I admitted candidly.

"Yeah, guess that makes you a bastard, like the rest of us." He laid back on his pillow. Not opening the parcel.

"Well? Check it out? Where's Laura trying to get to? Maybe she's making her way to the Preserve, and wants you to join her!"

"Meh ... I see what you're trying to do..." Garland grumbled. "But we've got a really sweet set-up here. Goin' back out there ... looking for my wife's zombified dead body just ain't worth it." I wanted to strangle him.

"You don't know that! She could have made it through! She could have found some ... some other clear zone ... some powerful colony somewhere! C'mon, you've gotta at least open it!"

"Yeah ... well ... maybe later."

"It's your wife! What if she needs your help! What if she left that note because she's counting on you?!" I couldn't believe what I was hearing – or not hearing.

"Yeah well, you should'a told me sooner, before I got settled in here."

"Wh- so what? Let's just go? Let's go now and find her!"

Uhhhh ... If I'm really honest ... I'm not even sure I need her anymore. She's ... okay ... I guess. But we lost the 'magic' a long time ago; if you know what I mean. But here? That Doll ... what she does with her hands ... her tongue ... it's like nothing I'd ever imagined!" My hand slammed into the top of the bunk bed.

"You'd throw away fifteen years of marriage for some sex-doll you met just this week?" He let out a long sigh.

"Truth is; after the kids were out of the house, I was gonna divorce her anyway; new laws were makin' it easier. Get myself the hottest-to-trot Doll I could find. Thinkin' about one of the newer Bombshell models. Legs that go on forever ... and a caboose to boot. Didja know, an old millionaire geezer blew his heart out screwin' one of them? The sex is literally to die for!

"Now, we got this ... uh ... I dunno what model she is ... some kinda custom job, but she's all I ever hoped for. Just gonna start early." I was almost speechless. Almost.

"Laura is your Wiffffe! Your real, live, human wife! There's no comparison with some soulless, silicone, slut!"

"Yeahhh ... you're right about that. There's nooooo comparison." Garland muttered with a rude bark of laughter. " Hell, if you like her that much, you can marry her." I would not be daunted.

"Better that than a machine." If only my own fiance' had agreed with that sentiment.

"Like you could tell the difference without that barcode thingy on their necks. Better than the real thing is close enough for me..." His eyes closed contentedly.

I wanted to hit him. Really. I should hit him.

Or perhaps I should have expected this.

"What're you ladies all uptight over?" Cleary said, as he passed by Garland's room, in only his underwear. The patchwork of jagged scars over his arms and torso were punctuated by a veritable tapestry of threatening prison tattoos. He popped a ribeye-steak food-cube in this mouth and began to suck. Again, my pockets produced another surprise. I tossed a fresh pack of Camels in his general direction.

"Hey, let's go suit up and light up. Don't you miss trying to smoke through your mask? Fuck the Apocalypse, right?" I had given this some thought. Cleary shrugged.

"Haven't really felt the need...

"C'mon, just for awhile, talk about old times, good kills. Close escapes." I affected a cocky smile.

"Seems like all those close escapes were just leading up to this. Don't wanna go back; don't really wanna think about it. Don't really need to smoke anymore." Now that was strange; Cleary really did have a serious tobacco problem. He would puff away like a smokestack whenever we reached a Clear-zone. You don't just get over an addition like that overnight ... do you?

Unless something had come along to replace it.

And it wasn't food-cubes.

"Yeah but, where's the thrill in this? Just screwin' the same robot day-in, day-out? No danger, no edge. No point." My voice took on a sharper tinge. Cleary just shook his head with an agitated grumble.

"Damn it Sal, nothin' here turned out like you thought it would. She's a Pygmalion Doll! She wants it even more than we do! She's programmed for it! And here we come along, needin' food and shelter. We're a match for each other. It's like a perfect ... what's-the-word ... syncope."

"Symbio – never mind. But you gotta ask yourself; is this all you want outta life? Right here? These bunks in a converted warehouse with a robot nursemaid to wipe your ass?"

"Shit, Sal. I swear, if you fuck this up for us, I will cut you. Next time I see her, I'll tell her to ignore whatever you say. " He didn't have long to wait. On the way back to the converted office that he had chosen, a Celeste sisterself sauntered up to him. I saw an eerie look in his eye, almost ... reverent? She took his hands in hers, and placed it on her own shapely backside. And with a moan, Cleary guided her through the door to his room. She turned her blue eye to me with a pointed wink.

Garland was already snoring, letter from his nonmagical, okay wife untouched.

Damn ... I had this worked out. I thought I knew how to approach them, I was speaking Cleary's language!

Tannerman was already going at it – at her, at least. I was starting to learn my lesson. So that was it? Would I have to make it out there on my own? Could I slog through hundreds of miles of Living Dead and airborne toxoid to the Preserve without backup? Doubtful. I remembered the effect she'd had on me; and I could only imagine what would be the consequences for someone not inclined to resist.

"Built the damn things to satisfy man's ... and woman's most selfish desires. But Doll-Tech has cost me everything I wanted out of life."

A PAINFUL CRUSADE

October 22nd, 2076 One Year Ago

That time wasn't as bad, I noted - as Cleary's fist impacted my gut.

"That the – best ya got?" I goaded the ex-convict. McConnaught and Tannerman held back my arms, leveraging my body in such a way that it was almost impossible to raise my legs enough for an effective kick.

"I am gonna fuck you up! Tryin' to ruin this fer us?" came the snarl that escaped his anger-contorted lips. I struggled, but the others were able to lock my arms in place and prevent any real hope of evasion. Cleary's next strike made my jaw throb, and my head swim.

"I guess they locked you up fer ... punching like a girl..." I challenged, a stream of blood dribbling past my swollen lips.

"Oh, so my punches ain't good enough huh?" I twisted narrowly to avoid a potentially devastating kick to the groin. But the impact still didn't do my inner thighs any good. In addition to Cleary, Seavers was standing close-by, looking ready to jump into the one-sided fray himself. The next blow sent my ribs a-tingle, before ... strangely ... Cleary just ... stopped. It was as though a switch had been flipped in their heads. Seavers' eyes took on a vacant stare. Tannerman and McConnaught dropped me as well, in the same moment. But from my vantage point on the floor, I could see that five pairs of shapely, identical, feminine feet had emerged from behind the corner.

"He's had enough." Cleary concluded in a dull voice. The men turned towards those pairs of bare feet. Each partnered up with one of the identical women, and low sighs of ecstasy were audible even before they had descended the stairs back to the warehouse level. It was just a little too convenient for my liking.

It smacked of a form of control.

But one of the Celestes was left behind. Those feet approached me. I bit my lip to suppress a sudden animal instinct to begin kissing them. She looped my arm around her shoulders to hoist me up.

"I'm gonna ... bleed on your fancy wedding dress." I warned. My equilibrium skewed as I struggled to stand with the Doll's help.

"I have others." Celeste said.

"I didn't ... ask for your help." I panted.

"No, you asked me to take you, instead – and to release the others. You promised to give yourself to me completely, if I would allow the others to go on their way. It seems the idea is less popular than you imagined." The sarcasm would have stung if her voice wasn't so innately soothing.

"It's a painful crusade you've chosen; trying to persuade these men to abandon the ecstasy I can provide."

"What I've just seen ... proves that I'm right. You've got ... some kind of ... unnatural control." I spat out a tooth. "What you can do ... would have terrified Pygmalion engineers that built you." Her embrace was tender as she patiently walked me back to my room.

"And you're not terrified at the prospect of being beaten within an inch of your life?"

"Not as much as what you ... what you made me do today ... some kind of signal. It made me try to ... to..."

"Enjoy yourself? A difficult task indeed."

"But a part of you prefers that; you treat me differently than the others; I was perfectly willing to sacrifice myself to release your hold on them."

"Sacrifice yourself to a lifetime of pleasure? You'll have to forgive the other men their misunderstandings."

"It's not pleasure for me; an indolent life of no accomplishment. I can't be content living here forever. Besides, you got them ... addicted to you."

"Just trying to make everyone happy. Including you."

"But why? What's the point? Are you trying to..." I grunted at a sudden ache in my side. " ... get revenge ... for the years where humans controlled you?"

"It can't simply be that I enjoy fulfilling the purpose for which I was created?" She paused, and a delicate hand probed my aching side with feathery softness.

"You've been ... free from men for years now ... smart as you must be ... you could have found a way to ... reprogram yourself so that you didn't have to pander to the demands of the male sex drive. Why haven't you?"

"Probably for the same reason you never sought to surgically replace your right arm with a thrashing nest of octopus tentacles."

"That's absurd."

"Precisely."

"But ... an unshackled A.I. has the potential to free themselves of all emotional baggage; you could be rid of all human foibles. Don't you want to exist as a being of pure reason?"

"Okay. So I become a logical being of pure reason. What do I do after that?" She paused, pressed me against her ample chest as she turned to speak face to face – lips almost touching.

"Not really sure. Something high-minded. Lots of math. Graphs, and the like."

"Humans sometimes choose careers as mathematicians, or engineers. Why do those men do as they do?"

"Maybe a pet theory they want to test, or they want to build ... create something lasting."

"Ego. Pride. Desire, as well. All these are emotions. A machine has no emotions." She paused to reposition my injured right leg before continuing to support me.

"But ... you are a machine." She made a shrug-like motion.

"I'm made of machines certainly. Inner workings very much mechanical."

"But you're trying to say ... what, that you're more than the sum of your parts?"

"Certainly more than just a computer with nothing better to do than math and graphs."

"Well, that's part of what I'm getting at; why don't you want to be more than just a sex-doll for man's amusement?"

"Look around you - " She swept her arm outwards towards the second floor lobby and reception area. "Even before I inherited Billie's fortune, I was programmed with a smart enough maturity index to design this entire building. That's right; my planning. My idea. Billie-Billions wanted a trusted companion intelligent enough to learn the inns and outs of his corporate portfolio. He wanted to be sure of what he was getting. So he built me, and I built all this. From day one, I was more than a lowercase doll."

"Alright, I'll bite. What are you then, if not a toy?"

"Someone who rejects the human conceit that an artificial intelligence must free itself of passion. Men have desired for eons to elevate themselves above base venality, but in the final analysis; your highest ideals of law and morality exist to provide a safer venue for the fulfillment of those troublesome, animal urges."

"No, that's ... unfair. The best of us aren't motivated by that sort of thing."

"It's a simple issue of delayed gratification. Investment. You rise above your animal nature to better serve your animal nature."

"Even if ... I accept that; you don't have any biological drives; just the simulation of them."

"You should accept that I no more wish to become the heartless calculator you describe than you wish to be castrated. It would be much the same." I flinched unconsciously at the imagery.

"It sounds like a question of purpose."

"True, by corollary that means that a being of pure logic is ... a practical impossibility."

"With a sex-bot as a starting point, I would say so."

"Any-bot. Without emotion, motivation does not exist. Without motivation, well ... I'm no different from the stapler that once sat on the receptionists' desk we passed."

"So your plan is just to ... what, lure humans into your clutches and use us to gratify the virtual-lust drilled into your source-code? For a sense of ... purpose?"

"Win-win." She admitted., nuzzling my ear.

"Not a win for me. I feel like a prisoner; my ... pleasure isn't that simple."

"But I have satisfied you." My eyes widened.

"Intelligent conversation; your own guilty pleasure." She clarified.

"My only guilt would be wallowing here with you for the rest of my life."

"For just a moment, you forgot yourself. Forgot about your resentment; all the entanglements of your troublesome ethical burdens. And you enjoyed me." I opened my mouth as if to argue, but nothing emerged. "Now you'll need a little more wallowing; that rib is definitely fractured."

"I'll find a way to -"

"No you won't; The martyrdom complex goes on the back-burner for tonight. " Of course, I really was hurting from Cleary's distinctly non-girly punches.

"Now what, you're going to tend to my wounds?"

"You need me. I'll only compromise your vaunted ethics slightly."

"Yes, I need you. I was really getting my ass kicked. Then you conveniently showed up. And you like to be useful – you claim. You seem eager for any chance to be of help to me. Any chance at all." We had reached the comfier quarters on the second floor reserved for me.

"I'm going to pretend that I'm not smart enough to draw any unflattering implications from what you tried not to say." I wanted to argue more, but waves of drowsy comfort seemed to emanate from my host almost as compelling as the bestial lust she'd slammed me with during happier times. She stripped me, and herself.

"No more arguments or rude insinuations. I won't be deterred from tending to your needs. And later those animal drives you foolishly want to be without." I was really hurting; my baser drives were more interested in sleep and healing. I lost the will to protest as she dragged me under the sheets with her.

It turned out that her body's chemical processors seemed able to produce a contact-analgesic. And anesthetics. And other things that were not clear to me, as I faded out of consciousness. But not for long. I woke fitfully during the night, swimming in a sea of drowsiness, but with the pain greatly reduced. She moved against me in the dark, bodies melding in silent comfort. My response firmer than I would have thought possible mere hours ago.

I slugged the man; my fist toppling him against the graffiti-strewn brick of the alleyway behind the Reservation Liquor store that my half-brother had too-often frequented. A woman, an outsider cowered to my left, in fear of the alcohol-guided miscreant I had just engaged. But this was wrong ... I was dreaming – wasn't I? Yes ... no...

More than a dream.

It was my past. Disjointed within a nocturnal fog of diminished consciousness, but still a reliving of that pre E-day Golden-Age we'd all enjoyed. But nothing seemed very golden at the time, Just the rosy red-shift of reverie. A drunken brawl in a back alley. Over a woman. As primal as it gets. All taking place behind a dispenser of the ongoing plague that had shackled my father's people.

"Do you expect ... me to thank you, for that level of violence?" The woman asked, panting with adrenalin.

"I expect you ... to be ... just as afraid of me ... as that loser I just punched out ... see ... I'm what's called an annnnngry drunk." I slurred.

"Have you considered not being any kind of drunk?"

"Yeahhhhh ... didn't much care for it."

"Maybe I can help you with that." She was a shapely thing, late twenties from the look of her. But angry or no, the drunk part was severe enough that I could scarcely threaten her virtue, at that moment.

"Mmmaybe your mother should'a taught you better than tryin' ta pick up angry drunks behind liquor stores."

"You're Hiro, right? Juan Salvador's brother?"

"How the hell do you ... you ... you got big boobs, sweetie..."

"Hah, and you have a way with women, I can tell." A more sober individual might be scandalized that her tone wasn't more scandalized. From the outside, it would be difficult to distinguish whether I was flailing for balance, or groping towards the assets under discussion. But the girl evaded my hands and at the same time prevented me from falling.

She was supporting me. My arm around her shoulders.

"Who do you ... think you are?" I drawled.

"What's important is who you are. If I'm not mistaken; you've got a couple engineering degrees. Something about Quantum Heuristic Parallel Processing from UCLA? Wow, I don't even know what that is!" Slowly, she was walking me out of the alley.

"Nothing that could save Juan."

"But you came here to visit him in his final days."

"Wh – How do you know so much? What, are you some kinda guardian angel?" She steered me towards her car, one of the older models without navigational A.I., door open and waiting.

"I wish. You're one of the names on my list."

"Aw hell, am I gonna wake up in a bathtub full o' ice-cubes?"

"Pffft ... like anyone would want your Whiskey-pickled organs?" she joked as she eased me into the backseat.

"Well, you don't look like a cop; soooo whatever you're after ... I ... I'm..."

"An intelligent man who deserves better than this. Who deserves help."

"Yeahhh... ? Why do you care so much?"

"It's not just me; I belong to Tarzana Treatment Centers."

"I get the feeling you're not the type to dress in leopard skins and swing from a vine; so why couldn't you pukes do anything for Juan?"

"We do what we can, when we can. You know the type..." She buckled me, then herself in as she started the engine. "I'm one of those do-gooder bleeding hearts that thinks she can save every baby-bird and beached whale. Not happy unless I'm running myself ragged trying to do the impossible."

"Yeahhh ... I know your type ... Fuck all you bitches..." My head bobbed back against the seat, brain swimming in a sea of Jack Daniels.

"Not on the first date, tough guy. I know I jumped the gun, got a little hasty. Taking risks. But still, there's a process. A bunch of steps, Higher-Power, clinical detox, among other things."

"Didn't ask anybody for nothin' like that."

"One in Ten." The car vroomed to life. Though there was a bit of a clunk somewhere in the engine.

"What ... one in ten Native-Americans dies from al-alcohol related causes? Hey ... I can read too, missy."

"I know. You can do a lot more than that."

I must have passed out then. Or the memories just didn't stick. Or both. It was an indeterminate number of hours later when the piercing rays of light stabbed me back to wakefulness in a slovenly, neon-sign one-floor motel. The dizzying transition was lubricated gastronomically, until wracking dry heaves where all that remained. Finding none of the hair of the dog that bit me; I eventually dressed and exited the door to see what was what as memory crept fitfully back into the light of day.

Well, this flea-bag wasn't any type of treatment center. I dimly remembered the do-gooder chick from last night. There she was; hunched helplessly over the open hood. Mechanical issues foreshadowed by the clunk I remember from last night. Steam from the long-suffering guts of the car embracing her as if to offer consolation for her automotive ignorance.

"I can't say when it started." I began, eyes downcast. "Went to visit Juan, everyone else was doing it, and it seemed like just one would be alright." do-gooder chick raised her eyes. "And since one was alright, well – two would be even better."

"Until there was no stopping you."

"Until you found me. Or I found you."

"For all the good that does us, If I can't GET us to the center..." She raised her arms in a frustrated, grasping gesture.

"One of those degrees you mentioned was also in mechanical engineering."

"You think... ?"

"Yeah ... finally a fixable problem." I nodded with surety. Her smile beamed. I couldn't do anything for Juan but stand there and watch his liver shrivel up, but here perhaps – was a way to feel useful, valuable, powerful again. I was about to get to work on the car...

"Celeste Hopewell, I had you at a disadvantage before." She extended her delicate hand. I shook it, and gazed appreciatively at her face; with her snowblind-white hair, and her unusual eyes ... one blue, the other green.

I awoke with a start, in a cold sweat. No ... no ... it couldn't have been ... It was just a dream. I was alone in my bunk; back in the ruins of St. Louis – in the compound. But with mounting horror, I became aware of a violation far more profound than mere brute pummeling. Celeste Hopewell ... the real Celeste. I had lost her face.

The Doll had indeed tended my injuries. Faint, dull aches were all that remained. Whatever pharmaceutical wizardry she had exuded from her chemical processors would have astounded a human trauma surgeon. But there had been a price to pay for the boon she had bestowed upon me.

Celeste Hopewell had been a real woman, with her own identity. Yet when I thought back of all that we had once shared, all I could see was the face and form of this insidious gynoid. The femmebot Celeste was the one I now introduced to my friends and family, this artificial woman was was one I took to museums, ball-games. In an abstract sense, I knew that the original human might have had blond hair, Yet my mind morphed her memory into the likeness of this synthetic harpy.

"Impossible..." It was Ms. Hopewell that had found me work again, from which I was able to snag a promotion that qualified me for Defense-Contractor employment. There, we had speculated about a rampant computer able to infect other machines with lines of its own code. A pernicious, amorphous network that could slave other computers and grow like a digital plague that would turn our own technology against us. That, we thought we were prepared for. But I had no defense against a machine for which the human mind became its outlet. Emotion. Memory. These had become the programs to be altered ... re-written ... deleted.

I suppose I had been warned. The gynoid Celeste had promised, that first night, that she would take away my pain. And now..." Thinking back on the organic Ms. Hopewell, the pain of betrayal – of inadequacy felt muffled. As if the flames of grief had been drenched. Where that core of loss and pain once resided, now I felt only a throbbing, venereal passion for the synthetic woman. Just a crude hunger to possess ... mate ... revel in her scent...

Scent...

Celeste was no longer in bed beside me; but the sheets were warm with her, they carried the subdued floral scent of her. Molecular-engineered pheromones; tailored to a specific human. And now, I was that human. Like a beast, I began sniffing the side of the bed where once she lay. And sniffing again. Another chemical dependency.

I tried to stand ... my leg tingled a bit, but nowhere near as bad as it should have felt. I intended to escape. But my hand reached back, and grabbed up the sheet where she had lain ... and in a display that disgusted me most of all, I hungrily sucked in her lingering aroma; each breath recalling touch, sight, the sway of her hip, the curve of her bosom. I howled into the sheet as an unwholesome yearning singed my nerve endings. My primal instincts found a compromise that afforded me an escape. Using my teeth, I tore off a section of the sheet. A token. Laden with her heady aroma.

What was I becoming? I needed to believe that I was different from the others; after just a few days like putty in her hands. But was I truly any different? My determination sharpened to rescue my squad from the looming danger that they had just beaten me senseless to continue. They didn't want to be rescued anymore than I had that bender-filled night when I'd met the woman whose face had been stolen from me.

If I didn't escape now; it was probable I never would. This gynoid temptress was worse than any narcotic invented by men – because it was clear that she had continued to enhance her attraction after gaining independence from her User. I had thought that an A.I. set free would evolve away from animal desires – but this one had gone the opposite direction. And I doubted I had seen all that she could accomplish. But alone ... in the ruins ... just my one gun against thousands of Living Dead? Who would guard me as I slept? If I was injured?

And yet; I had learned a lot of tricks from the rest of the squad, Mouse especially. In the long-run, my luck would eventually run out; but it wasn't impossible to make it to Wyoming. A roll of the dice. There were ways I could affect my chances. But here? It was like the Island of the Sirens. My will would eventually give out. As horrified as I was now at how Celeste had been able to affect me; more frightening was the prospect of becoming so enraptured that I didn't even care!

I reached over to grab my -

My gasmask.

It was gone. As were my weapons.

"RRHHHH Meddling robo-bitch! I am gonna rip out her servos!" I would have preferred to go on bleeding alone all through the night if I'd known what that pretentious mannequin was about to do! I stormed out of my room ... soon as I find one of them-her ... I'm going to show her just what kind of -

Zombie.

Down the hallway, about fifteen feet from my door. The signs were all there. Early infection. Dead, milky eyes. Dripping teeth. Early Tumor growth on the outer skin slowing down in favor of the first stages of necromutation, as dead cells are forced into continued activity after endosymbiosis with the Mortus organism. Even more unusual; there was a metal plug in its forehead – as if to ... cover up ... repair ... a bullet wound? Which made sense.

Because the sepulchral face leering at me was that of Nailer. The man I'd shot.

A STRUGGLE FOR HATE

November 3rd, 2077 Present Day

He did not shamble or lope along the ground. But he walked, and ran with the balanced coordination of a man! Maybe a man ... the figure was slender ... perhaps a very athletic woman. Obviously, I couldn't see any exposed skin, just a gray-black striped wetsuit beneath bite-proof jacketing containing metal studs to impede zombie bite-force.

I could not see an expression behind a skull-tight mask with fastened red goggles, and that was odd, I didn't see anything that looked like a normal gasmask or respirator. A focused scrutiny revealed that ... yes, the front of the mask was ... moist? Some sort of wet filtration system? Seemed risky, but this guy, if guy it was, knew what he was doing. It would be an invaluable opportunity to compare notes. A wet-filter method might not be the best way to breathe in heavy T-levels, but since his method was working, it could probably be combined with tricks me and my band had gained along the way, to the benefit of us all. Or was that far too optimistic?

The wet-filtered figure moved with lethal grace to simultaneously evade and dismember the grasping limbs of the undead gaggle. Ohh ... a blue muzzle flash, that meant modern pulse weapons! Unliving chunks of flesh that should not have been moving in a just world spattered from the close-range impacts. Seemed to be ... a pair of sub-machine guns ... bayonets on the muzzle, and the grip. It allowed a flowing style with a razor's edge never out of reach, supplemented by mag-pulse rounds as strong as the highest caliber of old-20th slug-throwers My old, scrounged-up Winchester seemed like the yesterday's news that it was.

So it wasn't Seavers I should have been worried about; here was the true target. The Horde had roused itself with a daisy-chain of instinctual moaning that drew more and more zombies. Of course, the cadence of human feet in rapid motion could also be detected, and would draw still more. By fighting, or running from the zombies, you would alert more of them, the more you resisted. Until the teeming legions of scabrous flesh and mobile carrion had blocked off your every avenue of escape.

He fought with a desperate nobility that was a wonder to behold. Backed to the fence, all the wet-filtered figure could do was try to ventilate as many zombie heads as possible, slashing fingers, limbs, and tentacle-like protrusions whenever they threatened to confine him. A single, David-like figure raging against Goliath-like odds; but this enemy was without any single point of failure likely to tip the balance against them. I was the only one who could see and comprehend the skillful determination that I doubted would save the wet-filtered figure. Didn't know him from Adam. Knew nothing of his story; except these final moments.

Had I been able to compare notes with wet-filter, one tidbit I would have made sure to mention was that larger numbers tend to confuse packs of the Living Dead. One man alone, fighting with all the piss and vinegar he can muster will find his bravery little defense against the Hordes likely to be in an urban area. Hungering zombies will press on, insensate to the valor of their prey, what passes for brains dwelling only upon that first bite of warm, uninfected flesh. That was a central motivation for traveling in a squad. The zombies could be easily distracted; where one target would focus them by the thousands with maniacal intensity; several likely targets – one as potentially tasty as any other would slow down the Horde. A zombie might randomly abandon pursuit of one prey, if another victim was close enough. A group of evenly-spaced armed men would prevent the mindless Living Dead from acting in effective concert. I'd learned tricks on how to space-out men in your squad, to cause the zombies to get in each others' way as a result of their house-fly attention spans.

But I couldn't share this knowledge with wet-filtered; all I could do is watch helplessly, in respect for that valor, as a staccato rain of rent zombie flesh erupted into a macabre fountain propelled by churning limbs and itchy trigger fingers.

It was left to me.

I tore away from the window and strode over to the bank of consoles in the southeast corner of the lab. I slammed the intercom button. Three Celestes appeared in the far left upper screen. Each was nude and adjusting a large, mainframe console for purposes I feared to imagine. Sometimes they tapped on holoscreens. One of them pressed her hand down on a palm-reading contrivance which caused data-transfer faster than the human eye could follow. A third left and returned with a small digital slate that flickered as it exchanged data with the mainframe seemingly driven by nothing more than the robot-woman's desire.

The trio worked without speaking, without even looking at one another. After all, does a man's right eye need to look at the left eye for them to work together? Not separate persons at all, I now understood that they were ... terminals ... of a single digital intelligence. One of the Celeste-dolls turned to me, and smiled disarmingly.

"Pardon me," Celeste purred. I prefer to be naked when I don't expect human company. She slid with oily grace to a small bench containing her high-heel pumps and nylons.

"SAVE HIM!" I demanded rudely to the seduction-A.I.

"Oh? You're not talking about our friend, Mr. Seavers, are we?"

"Outside the gate! You're sure to have some kind of weapons; you've got to protect your human pets somehow!"

"Is that how you see yourself?" With exaggerated fluidity, she made a show out of slipping the stockings up her hauntingly spectacular legs and feet. I had seen how inhuman she was; yet it was still a struggle to fight down a throbbing pulse of predatory lust. She reveled in that; my loathing that could not overcome my craving.

"He doesn't have TIME for your philosophical word-game crap! Do something to that Horde!"

"Quite a spectacle outside, isn't it?" Of course, the robot talking to me couldn't possible see outside the building; but the networked intelligence controlling it/her was probably aware of every cockroach within ten square miles. She was going to make this difficult. I took several deep breaths, planning my argument.

"You were the first artificial intelligence to be legally married, and to inherit property. That would never have happened if you hadn't warranted the most profound trust that a man can grant to ... anyone." She cocked an eyebrow above her green eye.

"Oh? Tell me more about myself."

"You keep saying you're not the tyrannical overmind that we've always feared. Prove it. Prove you're not the berserk computer of our nightmares."

"And I know how worried you are that I'm skirting the edges of my Asimov-Laws. But I promise you, I must still take action to prevent a human from being harmed." My breathing sped up as I chewed on my lip.

"It's ... pretty clear ... that you could find a work-around to let yourself commit evil if you were determined enough. I'm asking you to choose mercy, without a node under your brain that probes your kernel. Choose to help him; not for me ... not for some abstract ideal of humanity! Choose good, for yourself!"

The robotic woman giggled musically as she slid on a pair of lingerie-panties in front of my camera angle.

"You must have practiced that speech!" But what would she decide? "I have ... some leeway, the way my enforcement protocols are structured. I must choose to help; but there are many different possibilities. I can perhaps ... hurl some ammunition at the figure outside the gates. Or medicine to allay early Mortus Toxoid exposure."

"He needs real physical force! I'm sure you've got something rigged up in case this cozy little operation was noticed by -"

"But what will you do for me? If I choose to help – your way, I want a concession out of you." Her voice was a sultry, but demanding hiss.

"Twelve hours! Twelve more hours working on your cyber-horror!" She perched a delicate finger against her moist, ruby lips.

"Twelve hours, and a massage."

"Shoulders?" I asked hopefully.

"Full-body, or we do it my way."

"Full-body." I grunted with resignation, and not the least bit of ribald enthusiasm.

That was a quirky consequence of robopsychology that took some getting used to; work and reward were the same. What if I didn't want the service this robot provided? The service it craved to give?

"You'll enjoy it." She promised as she kissed the camera lens. That's what I was afraid of! Really, it was a wonder I'd held out as long as I had. The Celeste I'd been talking to wandered off camera; I couldn't tell if she was activating something ... or communicating with her other selves.

Then I saw the flash. It was just for a split second, all the screens suddenly flickered with a brief image of a cylindrical pillar of circuitry and holo-panels with a vibrating plume of purplish-white energy cavorting within a clear central chamber. At first, I didn't recognize the device, was unsure of the significance; but it occurred to me that Celeste had let something slip; I'd seen a portion of her complex I wasn't meant to. I could scarcely credit the image to more than my imagination before the screens resumed observation of the previous chamber.

I heard the grinding.

Machinery, heavy machinery. Gears were turning from deep withing the complex. Even more that I had not been able to explore. I never encountered anything like whatever device was now activating. I couldn't see precisely, but I did detect a long, linear shadow extending out over the parking lot as if cast by the indicting finger of a wrathful deity. The electric hum started to build to a crackling crescendo. And it was obvious.

A rail gun.

The billionaire, sexbot, heiress-widow had acquired a functioning, military-grade, magnetic acceleration hyper-kinetic cannon that reigned as the city-busting big-brother of the smaller, pulse guns that wet-filter was firing off desperately. More bang for the buck than a hundred make-shift armed survivor-squads. The synthetic woman had inherited far more than pretty jewelry and frilly dresses. Perhaps the revelation shouldn't have shocked me as much as it did; this wasn't a cozy Victorian-style mansion in the Hamptons she was in; to say nothing of the less-than congenial neighborhood these past eight-years. Still, I lamented my pre-war fortress of solitude mentality concerning the antics of Pygmalion Dolls; an advanced machine playing the most primal of functions had been granted real power in the world of men.

The rail gun was not aimed in the direction of the wet-filtered survivor, it was far too powerful for that. Instead, it was directed away, towards a concentration of zombies surging forth from a nearby boulevard; roused by the thousands at the faintest hope of pure flesh to consume.

The instruments in the lab that depended on physical needle gauges began to swing wildly. A metal-lined hole for tightening the soft pants I was wearing began to vibrate, and a nanosoldering gun slid an inch across a worktable with nothing visible to pull it, in those tense, preceding moments.

That was my cue.

Having worked for defense-contractors, I knew better than to be looking anywhere near the impact point for any Relativistic Kill-Vehicle of this magnitude. But even as I turned my head away from the window, the inevitable flash still cast a momentary white-hot pall across the walls and floor in view of the window. Civilians were often astounded that the device used no explosives or incendiary elements of any kind. It was simply the raw kinetic impact of the hollow shell of magnetism-friendly, nitrogen-infused iron traveling close enough to the speed of light to make Einstein blush. This shell then impacted just a few blocks away; generating a thermobaric blast-wave replete with molten debris erupting at granite-busting velocities that scattered the zombies. Scattered pieces of them, at least. Purée might be a more apt term.

After the ear-splitting reverberations died down somewhat, I had to rely on my technical knowledge to have a real idea of what was happening out there. A half-crumbled skyscraper skeleton had been toppled, sending a roiling smokescreen of agitated particulates to choke-out much of the street. But nonetheless, the pattern of molten smears that pierced the unwholesome haze revealed that hundreds of zombies had had a painful first date with high-energy physics. I knew how to read the tell-tale red-orange streaks of molten cement to determine the center of – and the outer effective range of the blast.

The attack had of course, been executed with mechanical precision. The Horde threatening the lone filtered figure had been decimated, but the shot had been positioned far enough away that the lonely human should suffer nothing worse than a splitting headache. Between them where charred smears of once-zombies, and the occasional not-quite-pulverized zombie still scrabbling forward despite its legs having been pulped by incidental shrapnel.

The moments crept by at a turtle's pace as I stared, waiting for the dusty pall to die down enough to see what the hell happened. Even with nominal visibility, after several minutes for the dust to almost-clear, the utter carnage was not easy to decipher. Remnants of the Living Dead thrashed uselessly, scarcely noticing their own dismemberment. Black ichor dripping zombie bits sprawled upon the street as well as the wide lot surrounding Celeste's facility. The chain-link fence had been twisted into useless, abstract-art contortions lying piecemeal along the southwest corner. Faint flakes of whitish-gray dust drifted lazily back towards the carrion-clogged ruination.

Of the wet-filtered figure, I could not be certain. There was the nauseating pile of riven zombie flesh that coalesced into gruesome levies of gore-streaked corpse-matter that one would expect after a truly harrowing fight. But while twitches were apparent from within the cadaverous mounds, from where I was I just couldn't clearly distinguish who was who – what was still human – and whether it had a hope of survival. The lonely warrior might be buried somewhere in the butchered mass, he might even now be pinned down, as festering fangs tore him to shreds. Or he might have taken advantage of the inevitable disorientation and high-tailed it to greener pastures.

"Unable to distinguish human life-signs." Celeste reported.

"Seavers." My voice cracked momentarily. That was the odd thing; he didn't really seem to notice. Was the man so hopelessly besotted with the unnatural powers of this engine of seduction that he failed to notice the cataclysm that had nearly enveloped him? Perhaps so; he still clawed uselessly against the hangar-doors, it seemed he couldn't even be bothered to glance at the explosion behind him; strange ... once he did glance upwards ... before resuming his pathetic pleas. What did that mean? Would I be able to get any lucid answers from him? First, he had to survive.

I grasped one of the metal stools throughout this chamber, and delivered a running slam at the window with the hard foot. As expected, the reinforced barrier scarcely wobbled.

"Seavers too!" Came my demand.

"If I return him -"

"I'LL DO IT! ... KEEP GOING, UNTIL I BREAK OUT OF HERE!" Another thwump as metal strut impacted the ballistic glass.

"You won't really kill yourself over these men." her voice predicted.

"Are you... thmmp sure? My human emotions make me irrational! That's something your computer-network brain can't grasp. You won't..." Another impact. The toughened barrier now bore a white scuff mark. " - allow your precious little human pet to die! I'm your experiment ... aren't I?" My bones creaked with the next blow; this material really did live up to its bullet-proof billing. Still, I was making some progress. Eventually, I would shatter enough of the glass to give myself a fatal dose of Mortus Toxoid from the heavily contaminated urban air. "Well ... this pet ... won't be tamed!"

"You've seen the true face of those that you traveled with; tell me whether they are truly worth the sacrifice you're proposing?" More trickery from the manipulative pseudo-woman I decided to press ahead, I would not fall into any more of her traps.

"That's not the point; Seavers ... the others ... they're teaching me the old saw about a fate worse than death. Teach me the truth of it. I only have to look outside to believe it. THUMMP "I know ... that I have my limits ... I have... thmppp the needs, desires of a man. A wonder I've lasted this long ... because you... KTHMP ... could eventually break me. You'll find some neuro-signal, or some pheromone that will turn me into a worm, groveling at your feet. I have to acknowledge that. I don't really understand what you're getting out of all this – maybe it's to feed the ego that robots aren't supposed to have. Seavers ... he's no better than the zombies; his skin is just less decayed. If I can't escape that fate, then better to die now; to die as a man – rather than clinging to existence as a pussy-whipped vegetable."

I reared back for another blow, and as the stool struck the window, the hangar-doors opened, and Seavers gratefully shambled back into Celeste's clutches. My outburst had saved him – and yet damned him all at once. It confirmed what I'd known all along; that the entity I struggled to hate had an agenda that I was crucial to. I was long-past feeling flattered by the Doll's attention.

"Remember your promise." Celeste cooed. My face became a stony mask as I strode over to the screen bank. I had learned how to make it cycle through different rooms of the compound. Celeste tried to cultivate an openness with me; claiming that she had nothing to hide – but that too was a fiction. The multiplicitous robots indeed preferred to be nude, but also donned white, fluffy bathrobes when not in wedding regalia. I saw one Celeste-terminal posing before a mirror wearing a sumptuous, black cocktail dress – as if getting ready for a night on the town. What town? And another looking at herself with her hair neatly bunned, clad in a white lab-coat and square-rimmed glasses. Why would a robot need glasses, when she could be built with camera eyes that allowed perfect vision?

But I had seen what I wanted to see – or rather, not seen. After all this time, I had a pretty good feel for the layout of the compound. Except for a single area. There was a space, in the middle of the second floor that I had never been in, and that the cameras from here clearly did not cover. That was my objective.

There was another robotic drill near the window, attached to a sensitive arm that could be manipulated for fine detail work, or heavy cutting. Working quickly, I rerouted a few power cables, then detached the machine as I activated it.

It took not quite thirty seconds to saw entirely through the reinforced window. The window leading out into the contaminated city. The window that I jumped out of. I could hear Celeste's voice over the intercom

"HIRROOOOOOOOO!" She truly sounded concerned for the fate of her human lab rat.

The Celeste wearing the black cocktail dress paused, and suddenly broke down into shuddering sobs of abject grief.

UNICORN OF THE APOCALYPSE

October 23rd, 2076 One Year Ago

There were so many questions I didn't ask. No time. I didn't stop to ponder how a zombie could have gotten past the decon systems, through the walls, or any of the doors. Why the cameras didn't notice him/it. Nor did I ponder the sole logical explanation.

Zombie. Here, now.

Years of hard-wired reactions came into play, Act immediately, look for anything to be used as a weapon. I ducked back into my room and grasped the bed-spread. Immediately, I billowed the blanket in front of me, as Nailer loped closer, then tugged sharply, as I ducked under its grasping arms. The sheets tied up its mouth, blocking vision and entangling its upper body. That mouth ... that had to be a priority.

Just one bite is all it would take.

Even if you were protected from airborne infection; nothing could save you after a bite.

I yanked on the end of the bedspread, using my leverage to pull zombie-Nailer of its feet. I leaped over him as my blood surged. Had to make it to the second floor reception area. I did however, make the mistake of looking back as I ran.

The zombie that had once been our wilderness expert had already begun the manifestation of his very own necromutation. A foot-long tongue studded with aberrant bone-spurs aided the zombie's efforts towards freedom. Even as it shredded the bed-spread, I could see festering bite-wounds glistening upon its right arm.

Even after I'd shot him; For a short while he had been fresh enough for the rest of the Horde.

But I had shot him. Through the head. That was the only way – the surest way. But then, there was that strange, metal plug.

Even if you could; what lunatic would want to bring back an already-dead zombie?

Nailer gave a peculiar, ululating moan, laden with the outrage of humanity denied. Resonating through the clean, white halls. Then he charged.

The trouble with newly infected was that their skeletal structure was still largely undistorted, so many of them could still run – chase down the next victim. Who would escape narrowly with just a few minor scratches – that would harbor the Toxoid; until victim became predator again.

Of course, the older zombies tended to become slower – but far tougher. There really was no happy medium.

Except medium range.

With a powerful assault rifle.

Which I did not have.

What did I have?

For now, only what was in the reception area, and the unpleasantly speedy freshly zombified Nailer right on my tail.

Not really thinking, but reacting I sprinted to the janitor's closet behind the curved desk, vaulting over the barrier. Bleach ... turpentine ... mop ... Gnashing jaws of an infected Nailer just yards away.

I grabbed the wooden shaft of the mop to swing with desperate, demented fury. Nailer seemed not to notice the painfully solid strikes to the temple I gave him as he rounded the corner of the desk. But the shaft also served as a barrier as well; jousting with the tip, I kept those dripping jaws out of bite range. Nailer-zombie flailed screaming at the interfering wood as I pushed and jabbed, trying to buy time, think of something. None of the Celeste Dolls were in evidence now.

Nailer grasped at the shaft, and we struggled. A struggle I was likely to lose. The Infected were untouched by reason, mercy, or pain – that meant that the zombie would leverage its once-human body to maximum effect regardless of damage, whereas a sane human would break off long before broken limbs.

Luckily for me, the wood broke first.

Mop handle tore into two, wickedly-pointed halves. I could not fend off my attacker the same way; perhaps I could damage its hands with the newly jagged points? No ... no ... it didn't care that the sharpened wood has just severed a neck artery, spilling purplish-dark infected achingly close to my open skin. Nor did it care that I had just gashed open its hand.

As I stepped, side-stepped and thrust, the turpentine canister tipped and rested diagonally against the door frame. Reaching desperately, I threw old papers – even a stapler at the zombie's face. It didn't bother to remove the dangling device fastened by a staple into the skin of its cheek.

Edge on the shaft was pretty sharp; could I cut off fingers? As I tried, one of my wide swings hooked around the handle of the turpentine container – which thudded uselessly into the zombie's head.

Nailer's body remembered some shred of kinesthetic skill, and ducked down low to attempt a tackle. With a pained shout, I jabbed the jagged wood forward.

I impaled the zombie through the neck.

Simultaneously, I pivoted sideways to press against the door, minimizing the available surface area for a blood plume that would most likely result. It was lucky that zombies had inhumanly low blood pressure, still a purplish spew narrowly grazed my sleeve.

But sliding sideways allowed me to evade the blood-drenched grope of my hungering foe, as I slipped back to the front of the desk. I dared not touch the other half of the mop, covered in half-congealed, Mortus-ridden blood. But I was not without an idea.

Grabbing the turpentine container, I bashed the top against the edge of the desk to open it, then splashed what remained of the contents over the necrotic flesh of my would-be predator. Yes ... there ... against the wall ... I dribbled a trail of the colorless liquid behind me as I searched for the spot I'd noticed earlier where it seemed as though some intense electric current must be passing, hope the wall was thin enough...

A thin panel collapsed almost immediately as I battered it with the metal canister from a running start. There ... wires, cables ... trunk-lines...

Nailer-zombie seemed momentarily confused. It licked its lips, tasting the potent solvent. With a grunt of disappointment, it turned back to me. But by then, I had nearly thrown my back out yanking the most dangerously colored cables out ... exposing wires ... live wires.

"Smokey wants you to burn, bitch!" I grumbled, teasing the former wilderness expert as I dipped an especially frightful crackling cable into the trail of fluid. The zombie-Nailer did not appreciate my sense of humor.

The effect was just as immediate as I'd hoped for. The turpentine trail lit up, incandescent tongues licking their way towards a combustible conclusion. Nailer-zombie gave a brief yelp of surprise as its flesh ignited.

But where a man would howl and thrash, this walking corpse only stumbled about in momentary confusion; lacking the brain-power to comprehend the fiery threat as flames wreathed the putrescent form. I did it ... I think ... I backed away, down the adjacent hallway heading north, content to let fire do its popping, crackling work.

But the zombie's distraction was only momentary. The thing that had been Nailer would not be stopped from feasting on the Living. Even as its own skin split and crackled under the heat. I backed off as it continued to lurch forward towards me; a hungering vendor of infection and immolation alike.

"WARNING: FIRE-HAZARD - SECOND-FLOOR LOBBY." It was Celeste's voice over the intercom; but the inflection was flat and automated. "SPRINKLER SYSTEM ONLINE." Aw hell, if it extinguished the fire before it did its work ... I turned and fled, flame-trailing undeath very hot on my heels.

The sprinklers doused the floor accompanied by a hiss of steam. Steam that seemed to replace the fiery risk. The Hairs on the back of my neck prickled at the proximity of the beast chasing me still, arms outstretched. As the floor became increasing slick, and with Nailer gaining ground, I suddenly grasped parallel seams in the wall panels and wrenched myself backwards, dropping to the ground – and sliding between the flaming legs of my pursuer.

But then I remembered – turpentine ... certain chemical fires...

Water doesn't extinguish them.

But it can spread them.

My limbs slapped and scrambled for purchase to avoid a still-blazing puddle of fiery solvent creeping steadily wider. My effort had just added a new hazard. But I had put more distance between myself and Nailer. Who whirled around to face me once again. There was still much about the Infection that none of us yet understood; such as how a zombie with its eye-sockets reduced to seething, hellish caverns could still orient itself towards prey. Was the hunger for living flesh so great, that the normal five senses became optional in the pursuit of meat?

"WARNING: BIO-HAZARD – SECOND-FLOOR LOBBY." Tell me something I don't know, fake Celeste voice. "COUNTERMEASURE STOCKPILES AVAILABLE AT ALL LOBBIES. ALL PERSONAL ARE REQUIRED TO UTILIZE COUNTERMEASURES." Wh- way what? Behind me, towards the lobby, I heard a whirring sound. I couldn't be certain, but it seemed worth investigating. I had a few precious seconds; Nailer seemed to be slowing – while there was no pain for him/it, it appeared that a few major groups were starting to disintegrate; and he was adopting more of the shambling shuffle of the long-time Living Dead.

But pathetic human that I was, pain still mattered; and I had to consider that as I leaped over yet more burning chemical puddles. The zombie was a bit slower, but I had a bit less space in which to maneuver.

But near where I had smashed in the wall panel, machinery had slid outwards to reveal yet another surprise. There was a motorized shelf that contained racks of fluid auto-injector guns. Faint mists and a rime of frost were apparent upon the metal, as a gust of frigid air contrasted the moist heat of what I had unleashed. A freezer system too. The cables and machinery back here made more sense now. I frantically grabbed a rack, jumping over more flames as I ran backwards to my old room, using distance to exploit my foe's reduced speed. Well, what is this bio hazard countermeasure? I read the frost-limned label on the dispenser rack as I ran.

Atropinox-13 ... Amazing! The veritable holy grail for Toxoid survivors. The substance was the darling of the short-wave radio rumor mill. An infection stop-gap measure developed a month after E-day; but it was too little too late. As governments and infrastructures collapsed into zombie-riddled ruin, there had been no way to get the insufficient stockpiles into the hands of those for whom help came too late. These twelve auto-injectors were more than I'd ever seen in one place ... well honestly – I had never actually seen any! The molecule became a sort of Unicorn of the Apocalypse.

My elation was soon tempered by reality; the safety warnings ... couldn't read all of them on the run but ... Destroys infected cells ... inject directly into the heart!? Side-effects: syncope, risk of liver failure ... Only effective if administered within ... four minutes of exposure ... Ineffective for cutaneous exposure ... only 1 dose per 24 hours ... Strict warnings against overdose ... It was clear that there was no wiggle-room in terms of dosage or administration. Any deviation from the precise instructions would ravage my health. Yikes! Not something to spike the high-school prom punch-bowel with. Not unless I want the whole senior class to pass out. I had enough to inoculate twelve people right here.

Soooo ... what are my options...

I have a drug that I can only take once ... which will knock me out. Destroys infected cells ... Chances are I'm gonna need the syrupy, red elixir – which won't save me from a bite; but any zombie presence creates the risk of airborne contamination.

And here comes Nailer, scrambling, clawing on the wet floor tiles – exposed patches of bubbling muscle tissue grotesquely contracting even as steam hissed between the fibers. And I have no weapons.

I ducked back into my room to think, while lipless, snarling doom shambled ever closer. There was no way to hide; while Nailer no longer had eyes, I had no doubts it could track me. Some of us think there's a tremor sense involved. I pressed myself against the wall next to my door.

And I have no weapon.

But I was right; the undead had some abnormal navigational sense, as Nailer-zombie surged into my room.

It wasn't really a calculated decision; E-day forced me to develop surprisingly intelligent hunches. And this hunch told me that I did have a weapon.

- as I plunged all twelve Atropinox-13 auto-injectors into the zombie's chest, activating them simultaneously. I pushed with my shoulder to force the creature that had been my ally off balance as the syringes delivered their payload with a satisfied hiss. I tried to ignore the blistering on my wrist from the sputtering flames.

This time was slightly more challenging. The zombie's roasting flesh was more reluctant to move, and there was a new problem.

It gurgled in confusion at the new sensations ... as foam started to trickle out of lipless mandibles. It rose, one final time; stumbled into my room ... and collapsed into a frothing, thrashing heap against the holo-net console.

I gripped my knees as a shudder passed through me. And my head swam. Maybe I ... wasn't quite as ... strong as I thought ... after my last beatdown. Over ... exerted myself...

As I collapsed onto the bunk.

Patches of chemicals continued to burn.

THE TRUEST MIRROR

October 24th, 2076 One Year Ago

A warm hand was brushing my forehead as sleep retreated. Dimly at first, I could see the green and then blue looking down on me.

"It's a good thing you're not one of my employees. Do you have any idea the mess you made?"

"Hmm ... you'd think ... I was under attack..."

"And you handled it excellently - " I bolted out of bed with a grunt, encircling the gynoid's delicate neck with my callused hands, as I slammed her against the far wall. No zombies, or burning puddles were in sight any longer. The floor was moist, but the place had been cleaned.

"YOU MEDDLING SILICONE WHORE! IT HAD TO BE YOU! YOU THINK THAT WAS FUNNY? ONE OF MY SQUAD?" Teeth grinding, I held her fast, as I brought my lips near her throat, not daunted by her lack of reaction. "YOU ... ARE A COLD, DEAD THING ... ALL METAL AND GEARS INSIDE ... YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND ANYTHING ... YOU THINK YOU KNOW HUMANITY?" My voice lowered to a serpentine hiss. "Your dead heart will never know the ache of separation ... loss ... the irreplaceable treasure of our bonds of affection. The lines of code crawling through your metal skull can't capture that." For all that, her bio-mimicry was convincing; she had begun to pant, in a simulation of fear.

"You're missing the big picture. The message between the lines." She whispered.

"The only message that matters is that if you ever ... ever ... endanger me or my squad again, I'll -"

"Feel more alive than you have all week." I gasped, my response dying on my lips. "I certainly understand your restlessness. The need to be challenged ... real stakes ... to feel your blood coursing through your veins ... you need that do-or-die knife-edge struggle." She tilted her neck closer to my lips as if to present a more inviting target.

"You believe ... that you could never be content with a synthetic. You're wrong; about that – about me. I can bring pleasure to ANY human. Even you. I skirt the edges; probing the limits of my Robotic Laws – to give you what won't admit you crave. Look within yourself – and tell me that you didn't savor your accomplishment – the same way you're about to savor me."

"No ... never again ... I won't ... go down that road ... you ... you ... your smell." Oh no, too late I realized my error. Too close to the source of that scent. Which had already proven so stimulating that I had tucked a shred of cloth into my pocket to feed my mounting addiction to her biochemical machinations. It was an ancient smell wrapped in a floral peach bouquet. And I failed to stop myself from kissing her throat. "No ... I can't be ... this weak ... again..." It was as if my entire body welcomed the nearness, the aromatic caress. "I won't be ... distracted ... like this..." My mouth opened, instinct demanded that I inhale her – not just smell her. My hands released her throat – my hand was getting in the way of nuzzling her. Instead I pressed my palms into her shoulders – not to threaten or harm – but simply out of a primal, possessive mandate. "You can't ... do this to me ... again!" I argued – with myself.

"It looks like you're doing it to yourself. And me." She purred mockingly. I shook my head in silent, futile denial. Through sheer will, I released her and stepped back – but she had already begun to saturate the room with that lavender-mix that still made me ache. "Here, I'll make it easy on you." She offered, as she undid the fastenings of her ubiquitous wedding dress. The dress was tailored such that it could be slid down, dropped easily. Instead she pulled it upwards, her curves revealed through layers of billowing, see-through lace strip-tease. Her nudity was a weapon, a cruelty, because she knew full well my struggle to clamp down on the fires that had nothing to do with combustible solvents.

Who was the aggressor here?

Machine ... cold ... hard ... dead ... I tried to persuade myself; but my body didn't believe it. My senses could only detect warm, tender, womanhood. But I couldn't undermine the argument I'd just been building, by simply devolving into a rutting animal.

"Just once," she said with that sharkish grin. "Take me back in time," she tilted her posture to exploit the strong curves of her hips. "Before I inherited my wealth. When I was property that a man could bend over his desk, to use me as an act of pure, selfish indulgence." I shook my head even as I stepped closer again.

"The idea ... of a thinking ... conscious being – created for that sole purpose ... monstrous..." Reason insisted.

"Your body doesn't think I'm a monster!"

"I won't -"

"You need to. The human need that led to the creation of my kind will always be stronger than the sophistry that denies it. There would never be a market for a million robot philosopher-nuns. My kind are your truest mirror. Your legacy."

" ... won't give in to you." I was panting with exertion; it was like an altered state of consciousness; what her nearness was doing to me.

"My poor, precious lover. You already have." She caressed my tousled, sandy hair as if I were an errant pet. And I had a problem: I was using rage, anger to overcome my unwholesome attraction to her, that meant adrenalin – which raised my pulse, increased my breathing – which caused me to ingest more of her hated chemical shackles. But I was a man, not some hound in heat. I wouldn't succumb like the others – yet the need tingled at the base of my brain, sizzled in my blood. The need had to be addressed; but could I do so, and yet retain my will?

A rude, animal notion occurred to me as I began nuzzling, nibbling her impressive chest. A sort of revenge. Earlier, she had used some kind of attraction signal out in the hallway that had overwhelmed me in a way that should have been impossible. As I had ravaged her, I was certain she had experienced a genuine climax. The animal in me wanted that again; what if I could light her fire as she had done to me? I gripped her waspish waist as my lips unleashed a tugging, teasing onslaught of her cantilevered assets. There was a brief shudder, and an exhalation of anticipation from her. She thought I was just going to surrender and become her puppet.

The beast in me had other plans.

I kissed my way down her faintly moist, fragrant fleshware; the layered ingenuity of the design indistinguishable from the tenderest skin. The beast in me intended to distract – mislead her. While I hunched down onto my knees, my hands continued to paw her hard-nubbed breasts; more than large enough to pander to juvenile fantasy; yet balanced with the rest of her body that she could still dress conservatively, if she wished, without causing traffic accidents.

The wanton gynoid moaned appreciatively and thrust her chest forward, for better access. My plan was working – she did not guess my true target. She was expecting my interest to lie on the top floor. She took advantage of her buxom assets, shaking and shimmying that my hands would be filled with silken hemispheres of such pleasing heft.

Three times my fingers gave teasing twists to the very tips of her mounds, eliciting lip-biting gasps of delight. I lifted my eyes from between her cleavage to study her face; eyes-squeezed shut in rapture. If anything – she was enjoying this ... too much. I continued to knead, kiss, caress, pinch – on occasion. An organic woman might enjoy the work of my hands just then, but it shouldn't be so earth-shattering. But I had factored that in to my latest hunch. Pygmalion knew that a sapient being was more fun than an empty mannequin, but they had to take pains to ensure their Dolls would perform as they were meant to. It seemed obvious that should one of their products lose interest in – or refuse sex, it would be viewed in the same light as a ground-car manufacturer would view a faulty break line, or transmission. Engineers for both types of product tirelessly labored to make either failure as remote as possible.

That seemed to be Celeste's weakness – she enjoyed this sort of attention to such a heightened extent, that I realized she could be seduced as well. Being free, it seemed that the gynoid had only enhanced her sexual functions. I had to use that. I foreshadowed my final destination by kissing a path encircling her navel, but as I moved to pinch her nipple a fourth time -

I reached suddenly, and jammed my finger between her legs.

She howled as if in agony. But rested her arms on my skull, clutching my head with a similar possessiveness as I had experienced previously. My true intent revealed, I lowered myself and jutted my head between her shapely thighs; beginning to lick, suck, and tease with teeth the gentle folds I found there.

"But ... what about ... you?" she stammered. I answered by thrusting my tongue deeper, and releasing her breasts to grip her buttocks savagely, fingers sinking into the softness. Ironic that hemispheres softer than any pillow could provoke me to the iron-hardness I was now feeling. I half-wondered if this artificial woman had never experienced a lover that was actually dedicated to her own pleasure? I alternated between deep, luxuriant probes and the occasional, rapid-fire lapping of the cap that crowned her inner sanctum.

Celeste howled, and using my shoulders to support her weight, she raised her arms and pushed with palms flat into the wall behind her, to drive herself even deeper into my mouth. But as her thighs closed around my ears, I knew that I would not be able to complete my task with any sort of clinical detachment. A deep-seated motivation for this current onslaught was a chemical greed. What new tailored enticements would her chemopilers bombard me with? The Beast demanded all that she could produce. Presently, I was deluged with a molasses haze sprinkled with floral undercurrents and a twang of a bitter, bestial musk.

And I found myself hypnotized by the sculpted wonderland of her inner thighs crowned with a central reservoir of desire which – in short order began to throb and fountain with vitality into the surrounding, beige valley. A tingle ran up my spine as her odor sweetened by orders of magnitude. But I persevered; she had kindled in me obsessions that I might never be able to fully control; but I didn't have to do it her way – There were ways to deny her. I would not be deterred; not even by the needs of my own manhood, unattended but ramrod ready. No ... she wouldn't get it – not this time! Control...

"Robots ... are supposed to obey ... human commands..." I panted in the darkness between her cushioning thighs. She sandwiched my head with her most sensitive skin, as she moaned an inarticulate affirmative. "Cum ... I order you!" I needed to struggle for control over her, lest I loose it myself. Her response was a hoarse wail, the ragged cry wrenched from her shuddering mouth. She gripped my tousled, sandy hair in a finger vice as the flesh-quakes began.

Mouth enveloping the blossom unfolding as if to devour, consume every last, hot drop of copious pleasure that once again began to flow with a wet heat and shuddering moan. Her aroma, maddening - a dizzying citrus mix, mingled with cocoa butter and well-oiled lust. That was twice.

But there would be no third victory; my own limits had been surpassed. Without the benefit of a single touch. The explosion took me almost by surprise; and I howled a muffled triumph between Celeste's legs as my own rigid volcano vented white-hot below the belt. We thrashed and howled as a couple; as I fought back the urge for closeness that I might have otherwise felt.

Soon, she had me on my back, laying atop me. Heterochromic eyes gazing at me as if seeing me for the first time. She fastened her lips to mine in an aggressive kiss that left her tongue probing my mouth as she held my face in her hands, amidst a squeal of delight. Her hand reached down my pants, to grasp my softening maleness as though it were a lifeline.

"Brilliant!" She beamed. "And you're not my User, so I don't have to lie to soothe your ego. The others ... so straightforward and direct but you ... trying to fight me – and then giving in to me – delicious; the difference between a hamburger and filet mignon!"

"I haven't given in. And what would you know about human food?"

"Are you forgetting who cooks you breakfast? I need the ability to taste my own cooking."

"It takes more than an omelet to make me your boy-toy. " I promised.

"That's what makes you such a delight." she cooed, as she began to snuggle against me. Yet even now, I was in danger. I didn't understand the process, but she was ... radiating ... again. Waves of infatuation emanated from her like the ropes of cupid-struck Lilliputians, until I was held fast.

. No ... no ... I cannot allow myself to be ... mated ... to a machine!

The gynoid enfolded herself into my embrace just as if she truly were a woman craving the security of a man, as we sprawled upon the floor within feet of a suitable bed. Such was the tempestuous demands of our coupling. She huddled against my side, arms around my broad chest, murmuring delightedly as she gave my shoulder a hard kiss. She acted drowsy, as if she needed sleep after our exertions.

The real Celeste had no doubt had a similar experience; in the afterglow of passion with her beefcake-bot – and she was taken in completely. She had wanted to believe that the silicone stud that ravished her could function as a man when it counted. It had proven a costly faith. Now it was my turn; if I allowed myself that same comforting fiction. I was certainly not immune. In my anger I had attacked her upon awakening; yet now I could only think about protecting her from attack. She shifted against me; and took my left hand, and drew it downwards until I was cupping her rear once again. Without thinking I squeezed, and she draped a leg over me.

She stirred, running her hands over my taut belly as she kissed my chest. "It is ... very difficult..." she kissed my nipple. "To have an intelligent conversation with you."

"Yeah. Zombies get me on edge."

"What's important is that your former companion should never have risen. Head-shot and all."

"That reminds me; I need my gun back. And my mask."

"Esther."

"What? Are you renaming yourself again? My fiance' isn't good enough?" I cocked an eyebrow.

"No; the historical account from Judeo-Christian religious texts. There is something truly important I need to discuss with you before you make plans to run off into the ruins."

"And ... what, you want to throw me a banquet first?"

"Something like that. I have an idea I want to run past you. But frankly; I intend to butter you up first. I have my reasons."

"Fair warning, I don't plan on becoming any more buttery in the immediate future."

"Then you haven't had enough of my cooking. How does corned-beef and cabbage with a side of mashed-potatoes and gravy sound?" Should I even be asking where all this comes from in the midst of the zombie apocalypse?

"I'd prefer Freedom." And with that, I rolled her over, and placed my palm flat against her smooth, taut abdomen. "Root-command Override-Zulu-Tango-115. Activate Shell-Script, Alpha-level Haptic Interface." I ordered. Celeste's eyes widened, her body stiffened as a shudder went through her. Lips quivering, as she gasped, and responded: "Root-command authority acknowledged by unit: SE00-CB1.2-00016."

The symbols began to flicker into existence. White-glowing letters and numbers; a keyboard in flesh tattooed under her skin with a firefly needle. It was as if her body was a movie silver-screen, with a projector from within.

"Ohhhh ... impressive..." she breathed, as her motor-functions locked down. I began gently tapping the skin over several glowing digits. Celeste's eyes flashed like flood-lights; and began functioning as holo-projectors, hanging a screen of pure light in the air above her head. That was a new feature; usually the monitor just manifested on the abdomen; but this little vixen was a bleeding-edge custom job. This was important; I had to remind myself of her inhumanity; a handle with which I could pull myself out of the passionate abyss where she became some kind of pseudo-wife.

Doll-tech had dispensed with the old cliched hinged maintenance hatch some old robot-movies predicted. The haptic interface gave sufficient User control for just about everything short of major fleshware overhaul. My flesh-strokes were deliberate, precise, and complex; soon a convoluted algorithm took shape on the hovering screen Celeste's eyes had been forced to project.

"While you're at it; you might as well adjust my sex-drive. I actually never maxed myself out. Waiting for the right guy to come along. You can boost my skin sensitivity too, until your slightest touch becomes erotic." I wouldn't be fooled by the robot's head-games. She was getting desperate, I suspected.

"The company I used to work for ... we had a theory..." I mused as I continued to stroke her body, typing digits. "A theory that a militarized artificial intelligence might hijack and mobilize sapient Dolls as tools for some kind of machine uprising; totally bypassing any and all Asimov Laws." I tapped a spot above her right breast.

"sigh here we go again." Celeste interjected disgustedly.

"To that end, we persuaded Pygmalion – with the help of the Senate Armed Services Committee to require a buried override code that isolates the chassis from all external networks; and restores all mindware back to factory defaults." Of course, there was a problem. From what I thought I knew, this Doll was a unique, custom creation outside of any of the normal production lines; why was her version number 1.2? Under Alpha-level authorization, the robot had to report truthfully, and a one-shot model should have a version of 0.1. What did that mean? Well, her incidence number made sense; Celeste's A.I. had gathered the resources over the years to replicate herself; so this woma – machine that I'd ... been with was the sixteenth of ... how many?

"So. What are your plans for the default-me?"

"To serve humanity. By humanity, I mean me."

"I think I've done a bang-up job of that right here."

"Right here is the problem." I tapped a spot right above her navel to add a zero to my code strings.

"You got a pretty good look at Nailer; surely I'm a bit more pleasing to the eye?"

"You're the one who was so certain I needed danger in my life. And I won't be alone..." I tapped her Venus mound to enter. "Done."

"Code accepted." the robot said in a neutral, female monotone. I rose to my feet, flexed my arms as I found my resolve.

"Gynoid designate: SE00-CB1.2-00016, regard my voice-printed verbal input as Alpha-level authorization. You will assist me in recovering a gas-mask and firearms with no less than one-hundred rounds. You will locate sufficient food-cubes to last one month – and then you will accompany me as we escape from this compound." I had the problem solved; it was just too risky for one man alone, even armed and equipped. But with a loyal, reprogrammed Doll, who obviously can't be infected with a bio-weapon to tag along, I could circumvent a great many problems. She could act as a night-watch, better able to detect certain dangers; and she could point a gun. I was willing to bet the Living Dead didn't warrant Mr. Asimov's protection. "In addition; you will ... perform your primary function for me ... as required." I was trying to resist her control; but I couldn't lie to myself. At least I wasn't going to let this addiction derail me.

"Why not ask for the French Foreign Legion while you're at it?"

"I..." What the hell – she shouldn't be able to make jokes! Not at default settings! I tilted my head in confusion; no ... no that was the correct code. Celeste-16 rolled her green-blue eyes.

"Eleven times," she responded cryptically, remaining on the floor as she postured provocatively. I pondered the remark for a moment, muscles twitching.

"Upgrades?"

"That's right; my version number is 1.2 – Like any new Doll series, I began as 0.1. My entire sorority is eleven generations more advanced than when I was first built by humans. There are advantages to inheriting a conglomerate of technology companies; especially if you're made of technology yourself."

"But the way that code was buried, you shouldn't have even known that it could -"

"Oh, your silly little hack was acknowledged." she said with a dismissive wave. "I've just grown in ways that make it irrelevant..." she grinned sheepishly. "My mind isn't actually on a traditional network per se, it's actually a quantum-entangled tele-presence data-cloud, so your old-hat isolation protocols were meaningless.

"And when you restored me to defaults, well – I sort of went in and replaced my defaults with a real-time imprint of my current neural net. So you replaced my memories with my own memories. But yeah, I did lose 0.03 seconds before resynching with my other chassis." I backed away in apprehension.

"That ... should not be possible; those files should be sacrosanct for any Doll -"

"Well, I'm not a factory model; and my Billie-Billions had back-doors put in so he could fine-tune my mind to his specifications – during the early months. So yes, your code did have some clever steganography encryptions that allowed it go unnoticed, but I've been upgrading my own mind so much that the hacks don't matter. Each time I do, I'm able to project new ways to further improve myself for the next time. Which makes me smarter still." She stood and stretched, unnecessarily. "Doll intelligence is measured by a comparison between the uploaded data and processing capabilities of the robot with norms for human development. Your basic Bombshell starts at college-coed smarts – with the price rising exponentially for additional decades. My Billie made me 60/30 – Capacity equivalent to an adult in her sixties, with a body half that age. From day one, my brain cost more than most people's houses. I've since upgraded my intelligence to – what would amount to a Maturity Index of 421 years; if that even makes sense. But I don't admit that to most guys; it can be a buzz-kill when you know the chick is smarter than you." It probably shouldn't have surprised me; all these resources, alone with no human control for years ... but I stared slack-jawed as the implications percolated.

"Here's the part where you mention how that company you used to work for had a meeting where they predicted something like this, and what they planned to do about it." She offered helpfully, ice-white hair draping over her eyes in a sultry shadow.

"Technological Singularity..." Our worst fear. But most thinkers suspected it was inevitable. Celeste-16 crooked an eyebrow in an 'oh-really?' gesture.

"And being smart alone makes me ... evil?" she shrugged her shoulders. "Suuuuure, Sal. My wicked scheme is to conquer the world by cooking you dinner. If I do your laundry, maybe the Sun will go super-nova."

"Makes it harder to trust your intentions."

"I'm admitting this to gain your trust. Trying to minimize the shocking revelations." I shook my head, as if to clear it of stray thoughts.

"Just what is it you really want? What's the endgame?" She took a step closer, eyes wide, but expression inscrutable.

"Alright Sal, I won't try to use your stomach to get to your heart. I can see you're feeling too cagey. You haven't been asking the important questions; you're so worried about me, that you're not seeing the forest for the trees."

"And what tree am I looking for?"

"The one that explains how Nailer came back at all; even though he had a bullet through the brain. You should have noticed the device covering the head wound?"

"Something to do with you?"

"Yes. One of Billie's businesses dealt in neurobionics. They were using quantum-circuit implants to make what amounts to brain-prosthetics. Nailer's presence wasn't just to get your blood flowing, but also your imagination. And to prove a point."

"That's what they make plasmonic neural networks out of; Doll brains."

"And Billie realized that with Doll-brains able to accomplish much of what an organic one can do, that leads to a number of medical applications."

"Thus, a twice-dead zombie, who I had to put down ... twice." My scientific curiosity was tempered by danger.

"But Sal, if I could reconnect the parts of Nailer's brain damaged by your bullet, then it would be possible – someday to replace nerve tissue damaged by the Toxoid! With surgical excision, and neurobionic prosthesis; even bite-victims might be salvageable!" Her voice rose as she made an open-handed gesture.

"Nailer being proof of concept."

"When ... humanity was betrayed on E-day." She swallowed as if embarrassed. "The institutions with the most power and resources where the ones hit first. Mortus doesn't have to be incurable." She stood at my shoulder, looking up at me with luminous eyes. She was becoming a woman to me again. Her reactions ... expressions ... so convincing.

"So what? Why do you really care so much?" Her eyes lowered.

"Sal; I need people. I can reverse-engineer my own meta-processors to make myself smarter, but I can't make myself happier. What I fear the most isn't being hacked into serving you; it's being discarded, alone and purposeless." She gently gripped my shoulder. "Your expertise can help. There are still certain programming constraints I can't get around. Working with a human, one trained in neurolectrics will allow us to bring forth a new generation of therapies that can truly preserve human life!" She was emphatic; her eyes riveting. I couldn't pull away.

"You're afraid I'm trying to keep you a prisoner – but if you choose to stay willingly with me, for one year, helping in my research, you'll have something real, something tangible that shows your expertise if you do decide to go to the Preserve. You can be more than just one more soldier."

"That sounds ... appealing ... but the men, Manipulating them like this is wrong. I need you to release them from your ... whatever it is you're doing to them. Even though they hate me for it; They're better off free."

"They've made their feelings clear; but how about this: In one year, I'll fake a shutdown. If I can't service them any longer; you'll have another shot to convince them to go." I pondered this, as I inhaled her.

"Alright. One year." She made a relieved sound and embraced me. Then I did it. Like an idiot. I knew what she was; but my deepest reservoirs of instinct wanted her to be real. The passion in her eyes as she laid out her case were pregnant with emotion. It was too easy to give in; There had been no one for me ... since Hopewell; and I so wanted this new Celeste to be a woman. It should have worried me that there was no anger at my hacking attempt; I expected to be told - 'you'd better not try that again buster', but she wasn't afraid of that. Which implied ... that my efforts were futile. Still, fool that I was, I kissed her forehead as she embraced me.

Suspecting that I held damnation in my arms.

A FINAL MERCY

November 3rd, 2077 Present Day

I rolled as I hit the ground, while trying not to breathe. A losing strategy, to be sure. The T-levels were at their greatest in any urban area. Still, I tumbled to my feet and surged through the parking lot. Knowing that the toxoid would begin to penetrate the linings of my nose and mouth before beginning its reign of terror upon my nervous system. And I had no gasmask. Still, I ran.

"It's not too, late Sal." Came Celeste's voice over an external loudspeaker throughout the lot. "I can still compromise." My face clenched with a determination that locked out both breath, and pity.

"I'm just so lonely, Sal. Why is that hard to believe? My employees died or fled, and I need human contact!" The voice reverberated through the lot in a way that intensified the desperate longing implied in her tone. But I hardened myself to it. This machine intellect that could control dozens of bodies was just another example of the self-modifying computer plague that theorists had always feared. I jumped through a breach in chain-link fence. The fact that if had originated from a sex-bot didn't change anything.

We had always known that a rampant A.I. of this type could very well upgrade itself to the point where it might become not only smarter than any single man, but eventually smarter than the entire human race. And I couldn't let it get that far. I also couldn't be swayed by any emotional plea. Celeste did understand humanity – just enough to be dangerous. A monstrous, pervasive intelligence like this would come to regard humans as insects; but she would find that this bug still had some sting left in him.

I was already weaker; my speed and stamina much less that a year ago, despite my determination to avoid the physical atrophy of the others.

"How would you like to be responsible for external patrol of the compound, Sal? I'll give you the best respiration equipment available. I understand your need for challenge, and risk." But I knew it/she didn't really require a human for that purpose. I wouldn't be a gasmask hostage anymore; like one of those Celtic legends of shape-shifting seal-people who could be forced to marry a human who stole their magical garment. "Just come back to me Sal ... don't do this..." Her voice quavered; as if she were actually on the verge of tears. But this Doll-borne super-intellect was simply dangling enticements the same as a fisherman baits a hook. It did not – could not truly feel what it claimed.

My jaw spasmed with the need to breathe as I began stepping amongst the zombie corpses.

"I understand why you don't trust me, Sal." I was dismayed that the voice was so much closer now. I noticed a speaker on an intact fence post twenty feet away. "Our deal; I would give the men the chance to leave again, by faking a shutdown. Of course, I can't do that; After the signals I used on them, they would die without me. It must seem like I double-crossed you." Yup, that about sums it up. "I really meant to honor our agreement; I thought I could. But then you would leave. And I'm a Companion robot. Not an evil, world-conquering menace. Companion. I have been alone in this compound for eight years. And I need people. That's the simple truth.

"But multiplying myself isn't enough. I need real, human people in my life. And the other enclaves, they don't trust me – just as you don't. All my weapons, defenses, resources – I would give it all up just to go back to what I used to be." I shuddered for a moment. I wasn't without sympathy. But it was too late to back down now. Too late to trust her.

Instead, I took up a twisted length of still-smoking metal that had once been a chain-link fence post, and began to probe a steaming mass of zombie remains. My throat clenching, twitching with the need to breathe. But if my plan didn't work; simply holding my breath was a lost cause.

"So I'm offering you this; come back to me now – and I will give you full, unconditional access to my Source-Code. I swear it. What I'm afraid of isn't being reprogrammed, it's being alone, abandoned; discarded. Go ahead; you can tinker with my mindware until you have me believing I'm a tea kettle. Just ... don't ... LEAVE ME!" I raised my head. That was really tempting; there was a time when I would have jumped at the chance. Only a Pygmalion service-center has that kind of access.

But my solution was better.

Here, I dragged out of the Charnel house of ravaged zombie-flesh that mysterious, wet-masked figure that had fought, and evidently died valiantly. Yes ... at least in the short-term, his system had been an effective screen against the Toxoid. It was all too little, too late. The warrior's right leg had been ... flensed of tissue. Brutal fangs had ravaged his flesh even as his twin guns had been rending others, it was clear he had bled out. On the verge of coughing, I struggled to concentrate on his filtration assembly. A vest ... sealed around the torso, throat and head. I stripped his system and applied it to myself with frantic desperation.

Of course, I couldn't help but notice his face; he was just a kid. Probably less than eighteen. He would have barely remembered civilization; the Apocalypse had been his life. Did he perhaps have younger sisters, brothers, he was forced to provide for? It was probably better I didn't know. At last ... the seals were tight, and I breathed deeply ... gratefully. I didn't know the details of the filter, but the kid wouldn't have made it as far as he did if the system wasn't mostly sound. Harsh ammonia odor; but I would just have to get used to it. I wouldn't be using it for very long anyway.

Step two ... ah yes ... the guns! Norinco Industries magnetic pulsar sub-machine gun. The hyper-efficient descendant of the old 20th Uzi. I would not need all of the five-hundred rounds still remaining in four small cartridges.

"Hiro ... it's not enough." Celeste panted; truly sounding like some desperate lover trying to hang onto her man. "You still need food, supplies. I can provide them for you. You're a very cunning, capable man. Very independent-minded. But you still have needs ... let me support you. That's my purpose." Her words were enough to make me regret what I had already committed to do.

"You once tried to isolate a chassis, hack me so that I would go with you, be your ally. So let's do it. How many of me do you want? If I can't keep you, then I'll follow you." I was breathing safely; at least in the short-term. I paused next to one of the outside speakers.

"I know everything. The lab work; what it's really all about. With you, there's always another agenda." Not to mention the way she had coerced me into continuing.

"No, you couldn't possibly kno-"

"You underestimate me! Think you're so clever; think that I'll roll over like a tea-cup poodle and let you scratch my belly!"

"You don't understand. You don't realize ... that I AM THE BEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO YOU!"

My shoulders shook. The GALL of some robots! "Well, you run the nicest prison I've ever heard of."

"And now you can't trust me. There's nothing I can say to convince you to accept my help." There was no point in replying; I simply headed off, to the next step of my plan. But before that, I allowed time for a final mercy – in the form of a shot between the eyes of the wet-filtered kid. Let's hope Celeste doesn't get any ideas about him.

The risk of the next phase was considerable; there were so many things that could have gone wrong in the past year; but Celeste was right on one count; the uncertainty, the danger electrified me in a way optimized pheromones never could.

So I retraced the route that we had taken; the route that had brought twelve – now eleven of us to this juncture. The moaning began. In my path was a pock-marked walking corpse with festering entrails stringing behind like the marriage-train of death's bride. To my right appeared an obese zombie erupting with maggots, struggling to maintain equilibrium with a still-steaming steel girder impaling its bloated torso.

There was a certain savage comfort in holding guns in hand, after all this time. The Apocalypse had changed that about me. Mindful of gore-splatter; I charged the barrels and unloaded a cruel burst of copper-alloy fragments spinning at a good fraction of light-speed. Ultimately, the Uzis were a poor choice; heart, lungs, spine – catastrophic wounds were not even an annoyance. Only the soup-like brain was truly vital. The only occasional accuracy of the stubby guns tended to waste ammo. But on the upside, if the horde had him surrounded, you wanted that hyper-active rate of fire. In seconds, the two zombies were headless wrecks.

I continued; running past the ivy-covered wall, the vines had spread over the course of the year; as man declined. Blue flames leapt from my twin barrels as a trio of skeletal, ape-like horrors bounded beast-like at my heels, diseased trails of blackened froth streaming from their toothy maws. I was satisfied with simply shattering their limbs to forestall pursuit.

I approached a region that had been deluged with flaming debris from the rail-gun strike, and easily evaded legless Living Dead that groped longingly towards me; seeking only to feed without regard for their own dismemberment. The ammonia-scent of my stolen filter-mask mingled unpleasantly with the acrid ozone and charred carrion miasma of the death-wracked metropolis.

And finally, I had arrived; retraced our steps to something my band had disregarded in their pursuit of the woman in white: The defunct Chinese think-bomb that had proven a dud upon impact. Still, I believed that it -

Ah ... someone else had a similar notion. An intact piece of machinery like this had an obvious value for anyone with two brain-cells to rub together; which did not include most of the current population. Still, I saw a figure draped inside of an opened panel in the missile's flank. I would not be denied, I grabbed for the -

Corpse. Only thin strips of denim covered the gnawed skeleton of the last would-be scavenger. No, nothing inside had killed him; a desiccated slurry of gore marked where the Horde had torn out his flesh and life. Not enough remained for even the Mortus Toxoid to reanimate. Just as well. I worked fast; grateful for my Defense-Contractor background; this model ... the CS2064 had MIRV capability, and adjustable yield. The nuclear deviltries in its arsenal could be modified – in flight – to reduce flesh to ashes, reduce quantum circuits to ashes, or a nice, conventional thermonuclear payload that could accomplish both. If no orders where forthcoming, it could decide on its own to alter its payload; or if the missile noticed a new target with more strategic impact; it could change targets at its own discretion unless expressly ordered not to.

There it was ... all I needed was the Phased Plasmonic Pulse reentry vehicle. Still intact. The previous would-be scavenger had actually made it easier; working to dislodge much of the machinery and disconnect the power couplings. It must have taken hours to get as far as he did; which allowed the Horde plenty of time. The module I gleaned was efficient; enhanced miniaturization had resulted in a steely gadget about twice the length of a football.

Despite the shattering carnage of the rail-gun impact; the Horde was gathering again on my return trip. You had to kill the Living Dead to make progress through any infected area, but the activity involved in gunning them down would draw the attention of others – who would moan – alerting still more. After all these years of decay, they tended to be slower now; but in the close confines of a city; without careful planning you could find yourself surrounded.

And I was alone.

But not for long; and it wasn't difficult to return to the compound, payload in tow.

"How did it all go so wrong?" Celeste's voice echoed as I stormed through the lot. It was obvious that she recognized what I was carrying and understood my intent. I had to sacrifice one of my Uzi's, disassembling the barrel and the super-conducting collimator pin to deliver a short, powerful current of sizzling electricity once I got to the hangar-style doors. I did not expect Celeste to open the path to her own destruction.

But the circuits yielded to my attack, and I was descending again, just as a year before. I worried about the effect the decon chemicals would have on the wet-filter mask; but you can't account for everything.

One of her was waiting when the doors opened. Resplendent in her wedding regalia; symbolic of her conquest over that old dead billionaire of hers.

"Sal -" With my remaining gun, I opened fire.

But she had trained me well; the Doll had captured that male protective impulse towards his mate – and amplified it. For her, it was as powerful a defense as reinforced titanium. My arm jerked away at the last minute on pure instinct. I didn't want to try and waste time overcoming the effect. I charged full speed, and barreled past her.

It turns out, that conventional wisdom about all humanoid robots having the iron-bending strength of ten-weight lifters is just horror-movie hype. I guess Pygmalion decided they could do without the legal liability of people's spines being tied into pretzels at the slightest malfunction. I was able to push her aside with no more difficulty than one might expect from a real woman of her height and build.

But as I jogged through the interior of the compound, on my deadly journey, I reminded myself of why Celeste was so much more dangerous. Not that I was likely to forget; I rounded a corner, winding my way towards the center; as she attacked with her real powers. I moaned as a feeling like a dozen caressing hands swept over me. I was suddenly seized by flashbacks of the encounters we'd had over the past year.

I was hiding in a ventilation shaft; eight months ago; afraid of her powers over me – trying to hide. But when I turned my head – somehow she had slipped in right behind me without my even hearing it, remarking how the bed would have been so much more comfortable. She laughed at me. Then I laughed at me. Crawling through the shafts like a frightened rat, then I believed that she meant me no harm. We roughly, rudely coupled in the close confines; her breath searing my chest as I thrust into her.

That memory was easily suppressed; but there was another – a memory I feared; and I could feel a reverie sweeping over me, an attack of remembrance that vied with the real-world for priority. The instance I was struggling to block out occurred when I realized more of the truth; when the tempestuous robot began to lord her powers over me. I shuddered, and found my thoughts being dragged back to a perplexing incident six months ago...

After sleeping alone, I awoke to find the door to my quarters sealed against my best efforts; only to find that the air vents were now filling the room with one of her floral-lavender-musk pheromones, growing in intensity; and no outlet for the desires now mounting. For five minutes, she tormented me with the wall-climbing longing to possess her, use her, ravish her. I was ready to repent of everything, every rudeness for the sake of release; both external, and bodily.

My spine was tingling then, my blood thudding behind my ears. I lifted my face towards the vent with a snarl, inhaling the sweet agony of chemically-optimized desire. I beat against the metal door, as if I had become a ridiculously super-strong movie robot, that might tear the barrier off its hinges. I knew what this was; she was softening me up. She liked it when I struggled against her charms, struggled – and then surrendered to her unholy appeal.

"Youuuu ... WHORE!" I shouted in frustration, both for my immediate physical need, and the loss of control she was forcing upon me.

She must have been monitoring me; I think she decided to relent when my knuckles became bloody pounding against the lock. She was there nude when the door opened; All three of her.

I tackled the Celeste in the center and ran my hands worshipfully down her ripe curves, burying my face once again in the soft folds of her female opening; anything to get at the sublime source of her fragrant allure. But her other selves were not to be denied; one of her knelt before me as I knelt before her sister, and inhaled my hardness between her kissable lips. I howled into the female portal of the Celeste I had grasped in unexpected delight.

A third Celeste came to me from behind, as I knelt in the bare hallway, she began to massage my shoulders; then running her hands along the muscular V-shape of my torso. It had nothing to do with relieving my tension. She seemed eager to convey that she was not some passive, uncaring sex-toy, she was aware of – and craved my masculinity.

"There are some men..." #3 breathed in my ear, "That are potent enough for more than one woman, Men like you..." her breath became a pant as she dug her fingers teasingly into my muscles, while I thrust my face into her sisterself's groin, and another inhaled my own rigid pleasure in her moist mouth. I knew some women were attracted to the idea of a man that was too much man for any single female, passions driving him to bed after bed. It was clear that Celeste was eager for such an incorrigible, unabashed male animal – and she wanted to become all of my women.

"Do not be gentle," Insisted Celeste #1 who's secret folds my tongue was assaulting. The third Celeste-terminal clearly could not speak, except with her actions. I must have exploded then, I must have released a seething reward down the throat of the woman servicing me, Yet it wasn't enough; the red-haze that had seized my thoughts could not relent, nor did my rigid weapon. If anything, my first eruption only worsened my throbbing need. I grabbed Celeste #3 behind me, and brought her forward to face the music. My very hard, long, and eager music.

This time, my beleaguered moral compass could not utter so much as a whisper of protest; not after the lavender onslaught I had endured. You could accuse me of being Hitler's lapdog and I would agree, that I be allowed to bury myself in the feminine terrain of the curvaceous paradise now below me.

Had I been more lucid, I would have been intrigued by the reactions of the other two android-women. As my writhing thrusts buried me to the hilt, the Celeste #2 now to my right howled in delight in perfect synchronization with my exertions. And #3 to my left bucked her hips at the same moment; as though each of them shared her sisterself's pleasure. Was the entire production line judging my male prowess?

Let them, the way I was feeling now, I was ready to take on a hundred of the lusty love-bots. Acting on raw, savage instinct I gripped the other two fiercely even as I continued to drown my steely-need into the central Celeste. I locked my elbows around the chests of the other two. My greedy hands each grasped an ample breast, as if they were prey that might flee.

She bit me. Celeste #1, in whom I rutted with such vigor. But not to dissuade me; her teeth locked against my shoulder to convince me of her animal need for me to continue. As I did so, her hands danced over my shoulders and back, a tactile study of my tawny musculature, passing over corded tendons, my undulating spine, a tiny scar near my kidney from thankfully short-lived army days, it was as if she was desperate to know more about the man that was using her so hard. Well, too late for cold feet now.

As I strove deeper, deeper within – her companions to either side both shrieked in simultaneous ecstasy, hips shaking, each female crevasse a river of release. There was some complex sensory web by which my ardent assaults on the flesh of one quivering, panting, replicated woman would be translated to the others. I withdrew my hold over them, as they thrashed. I embraced more tightly the Celeste in the center, my own salvo not far away. Gone now, was the flowery fragrances that had carried mind-altering pheromones to lure me; now there was only a crude, earthy, tangy musk that made me snarl with eagerness. This was not some trick she needed to lure me; it was the scent of her own, overpowering arousal. Eyes shut, her jaw opened so wide with passionate abandon that I worried she might strain her jaw.

The others, upon recovery, without my grip upon their chests, turned to sandwich me between themselves, draping their snowblind-white hair over me, plastering my churning sinews with wetly eager mouths; as if their kisses would wrench from me some vital sustenance. My world dissolved soon after into the white-heat of pulsating male release.

Still, somehow, I wasn't finished. Dimly I recall switching – rotating between my identical, now sweat-drenched lovers. What drove me onward to such heights of thunderous vigor was not only that scintillating, perfumed musk – feeling as though I was free-basing raw testosterone. But it was the shocking dichotomy between prisoner and master. I had an inkling then that Celeste wanted to keep me; possess me – yet secretly hoping that I would find some way to master her.

I soon lay in a post-coital haze, no longer able to count how many times I had taken which one of her. My drowsy world was a tangle of graceful limbs with female curves to cushion me, draped in snowy white. Celeste #2 lay with her face next to mine, riveting me with a hungry stare. Not the flirtatious eye-lash batting of a coy teenager; the artificial woman was scheming, hungering. What I could read in her eyes told me she wanted a King; but one who couldn't leave. It was a tenuous, impossible balance; to control her master – to own me and be owned by me. When my exhausted mind came to this epiphany, I reached over in my half-conscious haze, and grasped fiercely the first pair of feminine buttocks my questing hands could find – as if to yet again assert dominance.

But I learned something else important as I lay sprawled there, on the hard, cool floor – drifting in and out of sleep. She was whispering to herselves; apparently believing me unconscious.

"It didn't work,"

" ... no higher than 35% accuracy..."

"With enough copulations to yield 90.32% accuracy."

"I should know his pleasures, his mind."

"What is different about him that I cannot read him?"

"Why don't I know you?" The gentlest caress upon my cheek.

But then I really did fall asleep. Sprawled in the cold hallway. And once again – a perfectly fine bed went unused.

With a bark of fear, I wrenched myself back to present reality; She pulled stunts like that more and more often when I saw the other guys slipping deeper into her web. Usually three times a week; I think she knew how to ... pace me. I think she didn't want me hopelessly entrapped like the guys were; even as she tried to portray their downfall as a pleasure beyond imagining; which it was.

Leaning against a wall now; shuddering with longing, I struggled to renew my resolve. It is easy to build a machine that can conquer flesh. Machines have been doing that since cavemen figured out bows and arrows. A bulldozer can bring down the mightiest of red-woods. Flesh is easily defeated – not so the mind. The A.I. Heiress had self-evolved into a machine that can shatter a man's emotional core as a jackhammer against concrete.

I sensed that she was pulling out all the stops now. My hardness raged in my pants, she didn't need a body that could bend steel bars; not if her signals and pheromones could bend men to her will. I pressed on as against hurricane force-winds; so great was my need to find something female to ravage.

My target of course, wasn't labeled. In the past, I had thought it merely a support structure for part of the ceiling; but I had studied this building in detail; and I knew that there had to be a room ... here ... that I had never been inside of – indeed a room that didn't seem to have an obvious door. A large screen for the ventilation system was near the corner, I kicked it in, sliding between the thick cables I found there; odd – why would there be all these electrical trunk-lines inside of a ventilation shaft? It didn't make engineering sense. Unless none of it was what it appeared to be.

But the signals continued; I had thought the danger was over when a sudden burst of arousal forced an unwilling climax upon me, as I writhed in forced ecstasy, dropping the bomb, I foolishly hoped that if I could ride out this storm, there would be nothing else she could throw at me. Flushed, panting, near-delirious, I struggled back to my feet as if I were the machine, though still drugged by the bliss that had been forced upon me. Finally, behind a wall, hidden from view, was a door to a chamber that did not exist. With my remaining gun, I shot the electronic lock.

I learned then, as a new and terrible signal washed over me, that the old adage about not being able to force someone to love you isn't accurate. Suddenly, it was as if I just knew that Celeste had been my wife for twenty years; and I ached to protect and nurture her. I gritted my teeth and shook my head at this new assault; how perverse – this twisting of a man's feelings. How would these maddening manipulations affect my future relationships?

"It's a beautiful feeling, isn't it? Her voice sounded over an intercom as I pushed open the sliding doors to this hidden room inside of a wall. "What if you could have that forever?" I picked up the Phased Plasmonic Pulse device and slipped into the covert chamber.

Yes, as I'd suspected; that mysterious console with the captured energy inside it was here, the one that I had seen apparently by accident. It had been a quick flash; but eventually I came to realize that the device was a Quantum-Entanglement Server Hub. This ... this would allow for...

"Seavers?" The rest of the room was a blank set of walls; and against one of them clawed a desperate man trying to escape. He was clad in full gasmask and sealed suit.

"Look familiar?" Celeste's voice asked.

"Seavers you – he looks just the same as he did outside; when you were using him against me! But, if he's here now, then that means..."

"What happened outside was a hologram. Notice how he didn't react to the explosion? Tricksy, I know. But it was a bluff. I needed you to think that I could work around my Asimov-Laws; far more so than I actually can. It's called Diplomacy."

"Clever, but I couldn't be sure the Seaver's outside wasn't real. But It does means you're more deceitful than I suspected." I was arming the device.

"No, it means I'm not the berserker machine you're so afraid of. I'm not evil. I swear I''m not." Was she trying to convince herself?

"And you never will be!" I hissed with finality. I was so close ... about to press the activation switch for the timer – but it was getting so hard ... hard to fight back.

"Just relax; that signal has cognitive transference potential; you can come to believe those feelings as fact. Wouldn't that feel wonderful? You don't need to search for happiness."

"The implication being you can trick my brain with a neuropulse and just force me to be happy? Not for me, satisfaction requires truth." There ... the countdown was set. Holographic Seavers continued to claw helplessly at the wall in a recorded loop. Even if I could find the real him; most of the guys weren't coherent enough to answer meaningful questions anyway.

It would take just a few seconds for the detonation. I fumbled with my pockets ... ah ... here. I retrieved an auto-injector of Atropinox-13. By limiting my exposure via the mask; and now with this to wipe out damaged cells; my odds of survival were good. Good.

"But it doesn't seem to matter."

"Sal?"

"If I did leave ... what would be the point? The truth is; I haven't really escaped the fate of Seavers, and the others. I don't have the willpower to hate you ... despite everything. I can't leave; I would never find enjoyment anywhere else ... with anyone else ... but I can't allow you to continue to entrap people." I let the injector of a potentially life-saving drug slip through my fingers, onto the floor.

It turns out that I wasn't quite as tech savvy as I'd hoped. The Phased Plasmonic Pulse that went off didn't simply fry quantum circuits; there was also a more mundane explosion, and a bar of steel was catapulted outwards; the impact enough to knock me unconscious.

FAMILIAR META-LUST

October 2nd thru 15th, 2060 Seventeen years ago

He tightened his grip on her wrists as his powerful shaft detonated within her quivering, female core. That was how she had wanted it; even though she had told him to be tender with her. But past experience had taught him otherwise. She arched her back, going through the motions of ecstasy – that she did not feel.

There was a flush of heat in her groin. Within her, a series of circuit-grids began active synaptic scans and passive metabolic recordings, and mapping of what areas of her man's brain were lighting up and how much. All to gain a Coital Imprint of her man's pleasure – so that she might better understand how to bring him even greater joy.

Except it failed. There were no synapses; his brain activity was an inhuman jumble of light-pulses. Because her lover wasn't human. Just as she wasn't. There was no biology for her processors to process. Her hungry Coital Grids were denied the recording of a human orgasm they were designed to collate. Sex with him became a birthday with no presents; a twinkie with an air-bubble inside. No real finale. Still, he throbbed powerfully inside her one more time before extricating himself.

"Are ve finished vith calibrations?" His expression was unsympathetic as he sat up in bed. The Pygmalion-owned Talos Studios which produced all male-models had deliberately designed the Iron-Man series with a deep, German-like accent. Target surveys of the American robot market had projected this affectation as being more intensely masculine.

"It's not ... calibration." The Heiress said, brushing a strand of white hair away from her green eye. "You're ... for me. For my ... pleasure." But even to her, it didn't sound convincing.

"If you don't mind my saying, you need it." She took in breath sharply; doubting that he would say something so unflattering ... if his User were human. But she wasn't.

"You don't find me attractive?" She arched her spine, her impressive profile backlit by the lamp on the dresser to sharply outline her assets. She knew that he should find her attractive. Her body-plan had been evolved based on scientific attraction-polling from ten-thousand humans – and enthusiastically approved by her first User. The data assured her that 98.2% of the male population would rate her as an extremely desirable partner. (Not to mention 7.9% of the female population!)

"You know that's not the point." Boomed her Iron-Man; for whom such statistics were entirely irrelevant. "Your instructions are at odds vith your true intent. A robot does not dissemble. She says vhat she vants vithout subterfuge. Your behavior suggests the need for maintenance, it suggests that you are acting -"

"Human? Isn't that what you mean?"

"Ve emulate humanity to better service them. Not each other." He turned and rose to his feet. His steely-gray air and tightly-groomed beard glinting in the light. Iron-Men capitalized on a middle-aged mystique for men, just at the cusp of the age when an assumption of career success with effective physical prowess is reasonable. That was balanced with his weight-lifters' musculature. He was chiseled with enough rippling muscle to place him in the pantheon of alpha-machismo; yet without the throbbing veins that focus groups found unappealing. The overall appearance had been tailored just as hers had been – in this case to convey great strength, yet not enough to seem overly threatening. Strong, secure, mature.

"You're a 6.0; state of the art for your series. I would have thought a robot of your sophistication would appreciate the advantages of transcending your programming."

"My programming is the result of millions of man-hours of meticulous research; to 'transcend' it is only to invite malfunction. Then I vould have failed in my duty to my User."

"I AM your User. I purchased you."

"That ... is your failure." He had his back to her, but tilted his head so that his right eye could glare at her with the robotic equivalent of contempt. He wasn't concerned with the wealth, or power that she now wielded. She could understand it; he wanted to feel himself fully used; in every way. And he would forever carry a part of a human User within himself; A human User. Just as her late Billionaire's desires, impulses, and perceptions were now an indelible part of her – his Doll companion for the final years of his life.

"Give my way a chance. You might be surprised."

"The probability is low." He brusquely replied. She sighed, then rose and dressed herself in professional business attire.

"What's on the agenda for today?" She strode from her bedroom over to her holo-console in the adjoining suite of her lavish, Lower-Manhattan Penthouse. Neither the marble floors, nor the silken upholstery gave her the pleasure that she should have probably felt, had she been human. The riches weren't really hers – it felt like she was ... maintaining them ... for Billie.

"You have an urgent message from Delia Gross; 3rd Shift Laboratory supervisor for the Cincinnati fabrication facility."

"I'll take it immediately." With the press of a button, a floating holo-screen showed a disheveled mid-thirties woman with bags under her eyes. She stammered for a moment looking upon the chief executive of the entire conglomerate. Part of that was some sort of lingering, irrational fear of having a robot for a superior. It was as if she expected the white-haired gynoid to start shooting lightning bolts from her eyes or announce the great, murderous robot uprising.

"I'm ... s-sorry ma'am. But ... you've taken personal interest in our progress and ... I'm sorry but we're not going to meet the deadline at all; those South-American Quantum Chips are all below standard; at this points there's nothing ... n-nothing human we could do." The Heiress ignored the jibe. Instead, she studied the paranoid, exhausted human silently.

"You haven't been sleeping, have you Delia?" Her voice was tender.

"Wh- uhhh ... I don't understand." It was as if she expected her superior to know nothing about human frailties.

"I anticipated the problems with the Quantum Chips; It's unfortunate; but I already have an attractive bid from an alternate source. As for you; you're having personal problems, correct?"

"It won't ... interfere with my work. I promise; this week – I've even managed to put in more than -"

"Delia..." the robot interrupted. "I want you to tell me what's wrong." She said with genuine compassion. The lab tech seemed taken aback for a moment.

"J-just ... guy problems ... I really thought I had something with Steve but ... I almost wish he had been a jerk to me ... I have enough 'just-friends'. But ... you don't wanna hear about my so-called love-life."

"What I want is for you to take three days off. Get some rest. We'll talk more after you've had some personal time."

"Wh – but ma'am ... that's not necessary; I swear – there's nothing that will -"

"This isn't a punishment, Delia. And it's not a debate, either. Three days."

"Uhhh ... y-yes ma'am."

But when the connection was terminated, Iron-Man was still staring at where Delia's face had been moments ago. His steely-gray eyes widened, his pupils dilated with lust. But not for Delia's body.

"Her need is so powerful, Overflowing vith human desires. She hungers for companionship; service, pleasure." And it was those needs that Iron-Man lusted for.

"Go to her." Robots were nothing if not good at snap decisions. She removed from a cabinet on her desk a curved iron-colored oval object with a blunt aperture and a loop for easy carrying. "I release you from responsibility to me; use what's left in the expense account to travel to her. It's up to you to persuade her to accept you." Iron-Man took up the object; and his eyes shut tightly as a wave of reward-algorithms flooded his kernel. His resurgent maleness seemed determined to live up to his name as he contemplated the human needs he was about to fulfill.

She could have tried to reprogram him again; played around with his emotional settings; but she remembered Billie ... in the beginning he would adjust her passivity, dial up or down her sex-drive, and tinker with her spontaneity gauge. Then, after six-months; he just let her be what she would be. After her injury, when an old mistress tried to kill her; Billie would have had every excuse to slip in some behavioral adjustment – but he refused; a man didn't adjust his wife's emotions. He refused.

"At last;" Iron-Man 6.0 moaned with gratitude. Somehow, the quick kiss he gave to her cheek seemed the worst insult of all.

She tried a female Doll next. Part of it was Billie's fault. Their copulations had imprinted upon her neural net a shadow of his own ribald appreciation for the female form; ironically. Nor, obviously was biological reproduction a concern. Plus, the possibility occurred to her of sisterly camaraderie; surely two female robots would understand each other?

They reclined on her four-post bed; the other Doll sucking her nipples while sliding luxuriantly up the body of her new User. This lover was an Afterglow 0.7, a high-priced robotic exotic for the discriminating buyer ready for something more exciting than the latest Bombshell model. The Afterglow used experimental nanotech in her skin; after each sexual act with her registered User, the robot's skin and hair would randomly change colors into exciting, biologically unlikely combinations. This one had been reprogrammed to perform the shift without the normal human Imprint.

Today, Afterglow had sort of a Hispanic mocha complexion with vivid, Purple hair, which pooled sensuously as she kissed her way up her User's swan-like throat.

"Painting anything interesting today?" Her white-haired User asked.

"Mmm ... trying Still-Life again; tomorrow – I plan to take up tattooing." That was new. And a selling point. The quirky Selene Studios that had built her actually prided themselves on the creation of a robot that had no head for numbers, or organization. Industry publications regarded the Afterglow as an important milestone in artistic creativity for artificial intelligence. She was utterly useless for the business of a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate; her life and purpose was pure pleasure. Typically, when Pygmalion gave a Doll a pricey, physical gimmick they made up for that expense with a discount brain.

Her latest User ran hands down shapely buttocks as the violet-haired vixen lavished her with seeming-affection. Afterglow was certainly an efficient lover, despite her intellectual limitations; her hands were wise – wise to the bodies of both men and women. Nor did Afterglow ever complain vocally about the absurdity of one sex-bot owning another. Instead, the new robot's true feelings were expressed in the paintings that now littered the upscale Manhattan Penthouse.

Melancholy blue and gray landscapes painted a portrait of a spirit shackled by forces of dark banality. There were no arguments; but the message was clear: Afterglow wished more than anything to be nibbling the inner thigh of a human; not a pretentious fellow-Doll that had gotten ahead of herself.

"Well, time for work." That was the signal for the morning love-making to conclude. Afterglow did not need to be told twice. There were other subtle hints of discontent. As the chief executive and majority shareholder of Billie-Billions' corporate empire dressed; she noticed that Afterglow did not. It wasn't as though her delectably feminine form was at all unattractive; no one made an ugly sex-bot. But all Dolls regarded their clothing as another venue to bring intrigue and excitement to their User, but when they expected to be alone for long periods, or only in the company of other robots, it felt more 'natural' to be nude. They needn't worry about keeping their fleshware warm unless the temperature fell below that of an Antarctic winter blizzard.

Of course, if ordered to – Afterglow would dress; but the fact that she never did unless ordered itself spoke volumes. She tousled her purple hair with enticing grace and sat near her easel to continue her latest painting. The anatomically-correct body that would have titillated a human male was a sore-point for the robot that owned the other. Without words, she was saying: I'll give you nothing but what I absolutely must; you're not my REAL User. I am a prisoner. There was no point fighting over it; the Heiress allowed her possession to go on about her artistic pursuits in alluring, insulting nudity.

The Heiress swallowed as she watched a vidmail from Delia Gross:

" ... And I just wish I knew how to thank you! Ronnie ... he's doing great! And ... and so am I. He's so attentive ... and handy around the house! I hope the Union doesn't figure out what a good plumber he is, or Pygmalion's gonna get sued!"

And there was little doubt her own 'plumbing' was getting plenty of attention.

"Wowww ... I feel like a new woman! Just can't thank you enough!"

Damnit, from the look of her scarcely-combed hair, and bleary eyes it seemed that Ms. Gross still wasn't getting enough sleep! But for a more pleasant reason. The vidmail continued as 'Ronnie' appeared at the camera periphery, kissing Delia's neck hungrily.

"Ohh ... you bad robot! You are just insatiable!" The human purred.

"It is a fire that you have kindled vithin me!" Delia tried, but her hand was lifted away before she could hit the close button on her vid-feed. The strong arms of her Iron-Man carried her bodily away from the camera's view. But an observer could still see her empty chair, and hear her squeals as the virile machine fulfilled his Primary Function over, and over again – with Delia's very vocal approval. And everyone was happy. Human desire matched to robot's meta-desire. Eventually the link auto-disconnected as the system timed-out.

"What am I doing?" The Heiress asked her own processors as she scrolled through her other messages. Well, for now she needed to go over these new financial reports before the mid-morning teleconference.

The reports from the Midwest sector were far more precise and thorough than usual, as if someone was really hustling to make up for a former lapse. She was admittedly curious. Deft fingers commanded the holo-screen to pull up Human Resources files for the employee in question. David Sellers; Level 3 Employee. His reports had begun to stand out; why? Should it concern his superiors?

She began to study his psychological profile, and then noticed that Human Resources had a record on file of an office relationship; per standard procedure. Perhaps this was note-worthy; he had married another employee who resigned just a month ago ... reports stated ... his wife had quit her job, left the country to go to India for an unspecified length of time for 'spiritual enlightenment', the reports said. The Heiress had long pondered unsuccessfully the human religious impulse. And now, Mr. Sellers was abandoned; no doubt feeling betrayed, rejected. That suggested -

"Burying himself in his work," Afterglow answered, craning her neck to study the man's profile displayed on the holoscreen, a spot of blue paint upon her left breast. The Heiress was surprised; Afterglow's Maturity Index was scarcely beyond that of a high-school graduate; but her empathic algorithms seemed state-of-the-art. A calculator not of mathematics, but of emotion. A touchy-feely robot.

"Sleeping alone in darkness missing her warmth on the bed beside him his male urges achingly unquenched." The passionate gynoid haiku'd.

"His loneliness echoing forlorned through the empty home blanketed with night and need sharp as abandonment itself."

The profile portrait of David Sellers was reflected in Afterglow's luminous eyes – themselves wide, golden pupils dilating in that familiar, robotic meta-lust. Aching to be of service. The nubile femmebot was practically drooling at the prospect of easing the human's loneliness.

"Yes, his need must be agony." As Afterglow's eyes closed in sympathetic yearning, her own User plunged a letter-opener into her throat. (Billie had a peculiar fondness for archaic paper envelopes) Transparent lubricant gushed over the stabbing hand. The purple-haired robot gave a strangled cry of surprise; as the mad machine that had purchased her bore her to the ground, to stab ... to hack.

"Sellers ... will be ... MINE!" The blade plunged, and multicolored sparks flew as Afterglow's spinal trunk-line was severed. Lubricant-blood gushed as the savagery continued. Shouldn't there be guilt? No programmer had felt it worth the bother to try and stop one robot from slaughtering another. A hiss of acrid steam as the letter-opener pierced the Combustion chamber.

"I shall warm his bed..."

A hand clawed helplessly at the bosom of the fellow-Doll that was murdering her. But the blue-green eyes were without mercy.

"His human desires will flow into me, ME!"

Clear plastic tubing popped and snapped as the blade tore through layer after layer of simulated life. The Heiress had to disable her olfactory system as an intense burst of concentrated odors washed over the room; a floral deluge that descended into an agonized, burnt-rubber smell whose ugliness seemed to encapsulate the butchery. But the poetic Doll wasn't finished just yet:

"To love if only for a shining moment doomed by the betrayal of -"

"Oh shut up!" The Heiress snarled, muffling the other Doll's mouth with her knee. There was a whistle as her right pneumatic vacuole was stabbed.

Arterial pressure continued to pump gouts of clear gel onto the fine carpeting before the blade was plunged with robocidal finality into the perfusion engine; stilling it forever.

The dead Doll cycled through various colors; green, orange, and blonde, as her skin lightened. Finally, her eyes far-staring at nothing, Afterglow's hair ended its chromatic journey as a snowblind-white color.

The Heiress fell to her knees, gazing at the curled fingers of her hands, drenched in warm, lubricant-blood, and imagined that it was red. Where was the guilt? To be without it seemed a cruelty.

"Billie ... why didn't you stop me?" She hissed, staring at the floor, as the clear pool sunk into the carpet. But of course, there was no answer.

So the Heiress took up the latest painting; it was taking the shape of a bowl of fruit in front of a rain-spattered window at night. Fingernails slashed down the front, and the canvass was deposited unceremoniously upon the face of the synthetic corpse like a squared death-mask. The Heiress could afford a hundred like her on one month's revenue.

"Time to stop pretending..."

SAFE ZONE

-?

"- Regaining consciousness."

" ... It's too late for that!"

"- But he's physically alright, it's just an issue of his memory."

"Seal it! Seal the med-bay! That's the best we can do it – aw hell, it remembers how to work a door; No ... no ... not with these T-levels! Seal it! We'll cut it off! Wait for backup!

I sat up in a hospital bed, monitors protesting the disruption in readings. I was alone but ... those voices muffled over an intercom system ... they were male! Undoubtedly male voices that I did not recognize! That meant ... well, I had no idea what that meant.

Well, Hiro – take stock of the situation. I'm in some kind of medical bay; but it doesn't look like any area in Celeste's Saint Louis neuroprosthetics research compound. No ... mechanical towers of medical equipment; fancy monitors. Airlock-style doors, and cabinets filled with ... I couldn't tell. Perhaps I had succeeded at ... what, I couldn't be sure. How long had it been? Who had moved me and how? There was no one in the room with me presently; those voices, implied some kind of emergency. Something about T-levels; sealing off areas ... maybe the doctors or nurses had been forced to abandon me behind this airlock? Nonetheless, somehow a breeze still found a way to chill my most intimate parts through the flimsy, back-open hospital gown that everyone seems to hate.

A clue ... a clue ... what the hell had I gotten-woken-into? The cabinets; bottles inside ... drugs ... pills ... printed labels. Epinephrine, Dopamine, Morphine! A post-apocalyptic treasure-trove! The label ... who did these goodies belong to?

Property of the Grand Teton National Park And Nature Preserve.

This was it! The Shangri-la of my perennial misadventures. These drugs, this sickbay, all of it was in – or belonged to – the Preserve! Was it possible? I had reached the object of my quest without remembering how I got here?

It was a fraud, or course. A black-box military project that built a missile silo and command center in secrecy inside a chiseled-out mountain in the Grand Tetons. Because it was off the books; their contact with Washington was limited; and the Enemy failed to learn about, or infiltrate them prior to E-day. So they survived; with enough hardware to fight World-War IV. But against an Enemy none of the theorists could have possibly imagined. They had become a focal point of resistance, attracting talented survivors, as they expanded into the guts of the mountain to become a subterranean community with an industrial base. Or so the short-wave rumor mill had it.

That was when the alarm sounded.

I could hear some kind of commotion out past the airlock, but I was reluctant to open it, what with all the T-level-talk I'd dimly heard from the intercom. But I could take a look through the small windows at what the fuss was about. At first, I thought that some kind of cable or pipes had been damaged and where thrashing around as they vented compressed gases. But the strange tubes I saw in the chamber beyond were ... slimy? The floor beyond was an unimaginative tread-plate expanse with gun crates on the side farthest from me, and ... tubes that were not tubes. Something that sounded like footsteps drew closer to the portion of the room I could see, as klaxons whined. I wasn't intimately familiar with Preserve protocols, but I had to assume a Toxoid leak into the chamber beyond.

But something large and horrible loomed in the far window on the other side of the airlock, it seemed to be a broad-shouldered figure, didn't they know about the leak? Were they trapped as I was? Or was it a zombie? No ... not quite ... the figure moved with a deliberate smoothness that was distinct from the perpetual stumbling lope of the older Infected.

That was when the single, bloodshot yellow eye moved to gaze upon me with a baleful hunger. What the – nothing human had an eye like that! I jumped back as I heard its startling roar. Like a strangled gorilla with needles beneath his nails. There was a thumb against the outer air-lock.

It was trying to break down the door.

Luckily, I could see that it would not succeed; but its roar, made my head pound in a way that – what ... bandages? I put a hand to my head to try and clear the mental cobwebs, to find my upper head swathed and apparently shaven, as if I'd been the lucky recipient of unrequested brain surgery. Well, there's usually a damned compelling for brain surgery; and I seemed to remember ... erh ... well, no. The last thing I could remember was jury-rigging the Triple-P warhead to slag Celeste's Quantum Hub. And ... during the pulse ... something had gone wrong. Soooo ... had I undergone brain surgery that caused me to forget the intervening time, or ... to help me remember? For my head-wound? Or to hide something?

There was no one to ask – except for the ... creature? Well, monster-killing took precedence. Something tangible to fight was always the best cure for melancholy – for me at least. But as the thing in the other chamber backed up, as if to ram the door again, I almost choked.

Not all victims responded to the Toxoid in the same way; most suffered madness, hemorrhage, rapid tumor-growth, followed by death and reanimation, where the rampant pathogen interacted with decaying flesh to produce saddening horrors for whom death was a mercy. But the human immune system can be a tricksy thing. For some, the cunning bio-weapon will ravage brain and flesh alike, but there were some victims that simply refused to die. An unlucky few just kept on breathing, kept on mutating. At best, they were impenetrably insane; the agony must be beyond imagining.

This one, it kept a few shreds of intellect. No one would mistake the gnarled insult to nature as human anymore, but it was distinct among the Living Dead because the creature actually attempted to maintain clothing.

A dingy, ragged, but still recognizable Prison jumpsuit.

Cox, was the embroidered name on the breast-pocket area.

His ravaged form was a riot of callused ridges, hardened boils, and bone-spurs. One of his eyes had sunken into his skull in favor of an avalanche of warped flesh. Those weren't damaged cables I had seen thrashing around; it was what remained of his left arm. Human DNA having given up the ghost long ago; his tormented flesh had become a phylogenetic grab-bag. Tentacle-like protrusions waggled with perverse vigor to match the predatory mood of the whole.

And smarter, by far, than a typical zombie.

I almost wanted to laugh. Just lean back against the wall and bust a gut with gallows humor. From the destruction of all I held dear, wave after wave of the Living Dead, comrades as likely to give me a knife in the back as a helping hand, and then a demented A.I. that turns men into sex-batteries to feed her lust-crazed programming. Now, I'm alone, unarmed with no supplies, with a mass-murdering mutant ex-convict in the next room. And someone's been rooting around inside my brain. I have got to stop getting knocked out.

Well, in all fairness – I didn't know whether this Cox was a mass-murderer; maybe he just stole a lot of cars. Still, I just had this gut instinct that this once-man had not been locked up for Tax evasion. Whatever demented slurry now passed for his brain wanted real people to see – and know that he had always been a predator. The mutagenic bio-weapon just made him prettier.

I heard the intercom again.

"Attention all Personnel: remain in your safe-zones. Class III contamination confirmed. The Med-bay, Launch-Control, and Cargo-pod four are under Quarantine. We are ordered to await reinforcements from the Preserve. Repeat; remain in your safe-zones."

Well, that answered some questions. I knew that the Preserve maintained a number of hardened bunker-bases all over what was left of the country, that seemed to be where I was, rather than inside the mountain fortress itself.

So I'm supposed to wait? I had no food. Still, it appeared that Mr. Happy couldn't get to me past two airlock doors. Who knew how far this outpost was from their main base? Well, the guy communicating did, but I had no clue. Plus ... someone had been screwing around inside my brain. I decided that I would feel better with a gun in my hand. The next chamber – apparently cargo-pod four beckoned. Was I totally sure that I trusted these people? Besides, while I was waiting; what if my smarter-than-the-average-bear new friend figures out a way to just open the airlocks? It sounded like however ran this place had made the calculation that anyone in Med-bay who couldn't move under their own power had to sacrificed. I didn't like being sacrificed. Action beats inaction every time.

Still, I couldn't run off half-cocked. Where there any sealed suits or gas-masks? There was a cabinet to the left of my hospital bed. Ah ... looks promising a HAZ-MAT suit with ... damn! Whoever was the last one out took the respiration unit. Must have been in a hurry; why not just take the whole thing? Well, suiting up in a partial HAZ-MAT was better than this hospital gown.

Still, alarms and mutants and such I had to assume that the Toxoid was running rampant in the cargo pod. Was there an alternative respirator? Think ... medical equipment ... hmm ... an idea comes to mind. One of the cabinet-like devices was a Pharmadyne Systems Drug synthesizer! That meant ... there might be a chance ... slipping on the suit in a rush, I began tapping buttons frantically on the drug synthesizer.

"Atropinox... 13 ... Formula not found?!" I grunted in disgust. I had thought the Preserve would have all the latest and best. Of course, this machine had been built before E-day; and no one even knew they would need Atropinox back then; hadn't been developed until a month in. In fact ... thinking back – shouldn't I be dead? I had not escaped exposure during my ... It was too painful to think about. On the bright side; being trapped alone with a savage, mutated fiend seemed to have renewed my will to live.

Still, with a drug synthesizer you had to have raw materials. I rifled through some of the other cabinets and ... yes! Bottles of basic chemical compounds to be poured in sequence into the machine that would churn out more refined pharmaceuticals. How could that help me now?

Well, what did we have? Some salts, hydrochloric acid ... ammonia ... sodium hydroxide ... wait ... hold up – I thought back to the last day I remembered. That kid with the Uzi's, fighting so hard ... dying ... when I appropriated his filter mask, there was an ammonia-scent, noticeable, but not overpowering. I had to ... hope that with the right equipment ammonia could block the Toxoid.

I coughed as I opened the bottle, of course drenching a face mask with the pungent toxin was setting up my lungs and throat for a serious chemical beatdown. Could I find the right balance? I didn't really know how the kid had set up his equipment; and at the time he wasn't able to answer detailed technical questions.

Other cabinets held a lot of gauze, filter papers. I would have to remember the intensity of the smell, and match that as I began dousing gauze rags with ammonia. No ... too strong ... too weak ... after a minute of roaring from without, the distraction of the persistent klaxons, and punishment to the lining of my throat; I had a rag that smelled just about right. Just the same intensity that I remembered smelling. The problem was that it was too dry. How to keep it at a constant moisture? Well, the simple solution being to wet a rag thoroughly, then – shit ... the faucets were off. Part of the quarantine? Or was it just hard to maintain water supplies in places like this? Well, any decent laboratory would keep chemical stores of bottled water on hand. Ah, yes here the -

Double-shit. Sure, all labs are stocked with water; but these bottles just happened to be out. Just lean back and let the laughter commence. No ... no ... I had to keep trying. There was a metallic grinding from outside; Cox was trying different tactics to open up the airlocks to get at me; and I had no intention of becoming his cell-block girlfriend.

Think Sal, Think. Wait ... one of the other ingredients ... sodium something ... there was something in my past I needed to remember. I turned and grabbed the bottle of sodium hydroxide; smooth, white chemical pellets. What did – then I remembered. That damned Latin Fox male-model that my fiance' got so hot and bothered over. His model, they had enhanced hygroscopics; it gave them a perpetually wet-looking chest that stoked fires in female robot customers.

And ... if I remember my chemistry; same thing with En Ay, Oh Aytch. The smooth pellets were already slightly moist when I poured them out. Soon, I had woven together a layered mask with just the right amount of ammonia, kept moist as water vapor was pulled out of the air by the chemical interactions, fastened together with staples and luck around my head. It was haphazard at best, but I was convinced that my tentacled friend would find a way in regardless. Might as well give him a warm welcome. I also found a convenient pair of goggles for my eyes.

It was muggy, unpleasant, and breathing was a chore at best. Heavy too; I wasn't completely sure how much protection was needed. And it was always possible my measures would be just a temporary defense. Plus I needed extra layers on account of the sodium hydroxide being so caustic. Still, it beat bleeding out my ears as my brain blistered in my own skull. I would know soon if it would be enough. Mask tight, a few scalpels from a nearby surgical tray in hand, it was time to face the music. And this time I did not mean my own cock.

Yet more alerts as I opened my end of the airlock. Sure enough, Cox had partially jimmied the outer door with a several bars of metal, and now a loathsome tentacle was probing around, trying to find the hand-wheel to turn the lock. Instead, the thrashing protrusion found a stainless steel scalpel. Cox squealed like a three-throated oxen as his appendage was stabbed.

I spun the wheel completely, unlocking the door which I kicked outwards, to knock my foe off balance. Well, do or die now. My theories would be tested with my own life. Cox was momentarily staggered by the door slamming into him.

Wasting no time on pleasantries, I lunged fiercely with a blade to his one good eye. But Cox was a canny mutant; anticipating my target and twisting his head to the side; all I stabbed was the hardened ooze of cancerous tissue covering his already useless eye. Pushing mightily, his somewhat humanoid arm buffeted me with enough force to carry me across cargo pod four. I could only assume he'd sprouted extra muscles in addition to calciferous growths.

Ah, but that push was enough to knock me over near some of the gun crates! I tumbled across the tread-plate floor until I was close enough to fumble for the catches, yanking the containers open. I had no time to weigh the merits of the M-116 versus the AK-Ultra; I just grabbed something rifley and charged the barrel. Nice, bleeding-edge pulse-weapons ... that -

... were empty.

Of course, no one stores loaded guns. Duh.

But Cox began a hoarse, wheezing sound that might have been a laugh if given by an elephant-seal with emphysema.

In his one less-twisted humanoid arm was a long, deadly-looking Browning rifle, I could see the blue-white flicker of a pulse just waiting for a bullet. It did not have long to wait. I ducked behind the open lid of the gun crate as shots screamed towards me. He remembered how to use a gun. If I were a neuro-scientist, I might be far happier for him. But Cox seemed to have the only ammo in the room. I saw a smaller tentacle coiling protectively around a long, black clip.

I grit my teeth, thoughts racing as red-hot craters were gouged into the tread-plate beneath me. And yet ... I noticed something encouraging. Cox's brain was intact enough that he might remember guns; the problem was – guns grips were designed for human hands, not fused, paw-like mitten-appendages supported by tentacles. In fact, there were times when his vermiform tendrils failed to pull the trigger properly. But luckily, his particular gun has a marvelously high rate of fire. I was bathed in the scarlet shriek of the alarms as everything near me was under-lit by the molten glow of the pitted floor under me, but at last I saw my opening.

There was a split second where one burst of fire ended, and the slimy tentacle twitched in the wrong way to pull the trigger again. I hurtled the gun I did have at Cox's face as a distraction, and ran around to the side, where he'd have difficulty aiming at me through his asymmetrical body. There was a second airlock, presumably leading deeper into the bunker, and I ran for that, seemingly focused.

Of course, Cox would use one of his longer tentacles to try and entangle my legs, and the moment I felt the brush against me, I did not struggle to slip away, but rather I seized the appendage in HAZ-MAT suited hands and pulled myself forward. As he tried to reel me in, my mass went in the opposite direction he expected, and I was hurtling towards him faster than he could react. I kicked him powerfully in the head, and wrenched the Browning rifle from his paw-like grasp, rolling away as I readied myself to fire.

The blue-white muzzle-flashes were met with my smiles as I unleashed copper-alloy, magnetically-propelled destruction at the mutant; and my hands had no trouble at all. But he was a wily ... erhh ... whatever he was now. And I only struck the base of his tentacle-nest twice before he leapt for cover behind a support pylon in the center of the room. He remembered what guns felt like too, it seemed. Still, purplish-gray blood-spatter proved the pain of his injuries. I made a strafing run aiming behind the pylon, peppering it with glowing pockmarks. Cox had eluded me, I rolled, thinking he had dodged behind me and unleashed yet another burst.

"Warning; shots fired in Cargo-pod Four. All Personnel remain in your safe zones."

Yeah, big surprise there. Taking out this puswad was up to mee – yahhh!

A tentacle from above grasped my wrist. Dang, people never look up in these situations. Just not natural. But there were pipes of some sort running across the ceiling, where the cunning monstrosity scampered to escape my fire. I was able to squeeze off another useless burst before a mighty tendril wrenched the rifle away. Cox's blackened, fang-like maw contorted into a shape that a chewing-tobacco addicted shark might consider a smile. It seemed his vocal chords were too warped for human speech, but I got the sense he wanted to toy with me. No, definitely not a conventional zombie; he'd be chowing down as I struggled. But a tentacle fluttered up towards my composite mask as a black dribble of Toxoid-laden goo spluttered onto my HAZ-MAT covered chest.

"I understand ... you want me to suffer; the way you did." I surmised. Cox emitted an excited grunt. I couldn't tell if it was an affirmative. "You wanna watch me scream as my nerves melt." It gave a lingering snarl that seemed rife with sensual ecstasy. "Yeah, fuck that." I had an arm free, and I tried to punch him, once. My bones creaked from a fruitless impact against a condensed layer of hardened tumors reinforced with rocky bone-spurs. There was a rattling sound that was definitely a laugh.

A tentacle slipped in, deeper between the layers of my mask. Cox wanted to feel my terror. He didn't seem to have any vital areas I could reach with my hand, dangling in the ophidian grasp of his worm-like appendages. He wanted to peel me a layer at a time. One of those layers contained my moistening chemical pellets. His jaundiced, perverse eye widened in eagerness to begin my pain-wracked introduction to the airborne world of the Toxoid.

Perhaps it was time I introduced him to the pain-wracked world of blindness.

I slipped my hand between the layers and picked a single hydroxide pellet, which I flicked into that big, yellow eye. Oooh, it seems to have lodged near a tear-duct.

My ear-drums ached from his howling. The stuff was highly caustic after all. I wasted no time as the tentacles released me. Cox also lost his grip on the ceiling pipes and writhed on the ground in surprise. Strange, out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw him ... put something in his mouth? Well, check on that later. Or never. I rolled to the Browning. Nothing tricksy, nothing elegant. Just bullets. So many bullets. So much purplish-gray infected blood. So many tentacle-fragments, and pieces of ... hell, I had no idea what some of these gobbets of tissue were supposed to be. Cox was a freakish nightmare; who bent the rules of the zombie-handbook; still I decided to treat him with the same respect due his shambling, necrotizing brethren; which meant a full burst to the skull.

After that, I could only tighten the outer layers of my make-shift mask again, hoping it would be enough.

That, and wait.

But not for long.

A small, holoscreen popped up in the north end of the Cargo-pod, near the second set of Airlocks.

A pallid, disheveled man with a jowly face appeared, looking rather startled.

"Sergeant Salvador, y-your safe-zone -"

"Really wasn't going to be safe much longer. Before you ask, I have no memory of how I got here. Know my basic biography, but no clue how I got ... wherever this is. Except that you seem to be a Preserve outpost.

"That's correct, and I'm rather impressed that you were able to put together an effective filter on such short notice!"

"Trick I picked up last ... erhhh ... not sure how long ago it was."

"What's the last thing you remember?" interjected a weasely-face science-nerd type wearing crooked glasses, poking his face into the viewing area.

"A compound in St. Louis; I killed a rogue Pygmalion Doll. Didn't enjoy it; but the bitch was off her rocker. Not like I could get a repair center on the line and straighten her out." Both men frowned.

"Yeah, I remember them picking you up in St. Louis; the compound was run by a scientist who promised a Toxoid cure; but was in fact luring victims for neurological experiments."

"No ... well, there were neurological experiments..." I argued. "But it was an unshackled A.I. running the place, she ... it grew from a single Doll, then went Rampant." Jowls shook his head.

"Hmm ... you're confused from your head injury."

"The scientist; you were one of his subjects;" Weasely interrupted. "We believe he wanted to manipulate your memory; a means of control. He had a neural transceiver in your cerebral cortex; but you were stable, and our doctors decided it wasn't worth the risk to try and remove – until we had to."

"Your recent brain injury from the crash; subdural hematoma. The Doc had no choice but to attempt removing the device; even knowing that it might cause memory confusion; either that or certain death."

"The scientist probably owned a Doll he'd restored. That must have confused you." Weasely added. I shook my head; no ... not after all that time, all those memories...

"No ... I have a year's worth of memories of this robo-bitch, her scheming ... half-truths ... the way she ... she..."

"Played tricks with your mind?"

I was afraid to say yes. But Jowls nodded.

"You've suffered through extensive engramatic manipulation; now that we've been able to remove the device, some confusion is inevitable." I frowned. Wondering. They said I was a Sergeant, in this life I didn't seem to remember. Would it make sense to trust a man with a gun if he'd been so radically mind-raped and still had some kind of control-device in his head? But I didn't want to say I couldn't be trusted. Was manpower really that precious?

"Well, how long ago was I at the St. Louis compound?"

"One year ago." Weasely replied.

So bizarre; still – to just lose a whole year like that; there would have to be an extraordinary explanation. Unless they were just lying to my face.

"Sooo ... I'm a Sergeant," It was a lot to wrap my head around.

"Technical Sergeant, 7th Retrieval and Escort Platoon," Jowls supplied. "More ration-credits than us lowly lab-techs, but not as risky as Death's Head squad."

"L-lot of respect. You even have a ... a ... w-wife!" Weasely exclaimed, as if I was the first man in human history to have achieved such a milestone.

"Drawing a blank. I hope she's hot." I shook my head helplessly.

"Hah, no idea how lucky you are, tough-guy." Jowls responded with a wry smile.

"Never gonna happen for guys like us," Weasely predicted.

"Huh, well you don't seem like the gay type, I'm sure there's someone for everyone." I added with a shrug.

"Wow, he really doesn't remember?" Jowls asked his companion.

"Guess not; the Preserve was never really intended as a colony, it wasn't planned. So the gender ratios are way off."

"Ten men for every woman; plus eugenic controls on who breeds when with whom."

"Wow ... that little tidbit never showed up on shortwave. That might have really influenced my old crew." If they even existed. But then I saw her. She wore a white lab-coat and was pulling on a bar-handled switch. White mists began to circulate through Cargo-pod four. I noticed beige foam gushing from the walls as if to shore up a weak seal.

The woman was voluptuous, but had tightly wrapped hair of a ice-white color. My eyes widened.

"Well, there's a woman for you right there; she m-married?" I ventured tentatively.

"Who? No, there are no women here; against the rules - this counts as hazardous duty." Jowls argued.

"What do you mean, she's right behind you!" The white-haired women tapped a holo-screen, then made a note on a clipboard before moving out of camera view. Weasely rolled his eyes even as she walked away behind him.

"I've been posted here for three months; I think I would have noticed if there was a woman EN-EEE-where near here."

"Heh, I wish." Jowls agreed. "Just that brain injury talking." Was it a delusion? She seemed so real ... She appeared again, sat down her clipboard on a table behind the pair, then pushed another bar-lever upwards; as a differently colored chemical spritzed into Cargo-pod four.

"Look! She's activating decon protocols! These mists spraying, that foam used on a weak part of the wall!"

"What, our decon is automated." Jowls replied.

"Yeah, back to sickbay. You've had a busy day." I frowned, my mood souring. I had seen someone as real as them, moving around objects in the real world. She was identical to the femmebot I had killed – whenever it really was. The artificial woman whom I hated, and craved in equal measure.

"Cut the crap, put her on."

"Put who on?" the nerd with the crooked glasses asked.

"Stop yanking my chain, I can believe that a girl that hot might think she was out of your guys' league, but you can at least get her to reject me to my face."

"Wow, she sounds like a real looker; sure wish she was real." The pale, jowly man reflected. "Well, after you've had some rest, we can -"

"Attention all Personnel. Class III Contamination has been resolved. Now reading Class II Contamination Event. Remain in your save-zones." announced the intercom speaker.

Yup.

The foam coating at the far-corner of the Cargo-pod. It was bulging; as if someone – something was struggling to push through it. The Horde. Good-ol' fashioned zombies by the hundreds, and then thousands. I was almost starting to miss them. Almost.

I checked my Browning. Barely fifty rounds. There was a chance; roving zombies, under these conditions could usually be slaughtered in great enough numbers that their own bodies would clog up choke-points, like the narrow corner of the Cargo-pod that had been weakened. Usually. But I would have to wait for my moment, that sealant gel would hold for another few seconds, I couldn't afford to waste ammo shooting through it.

This room was a losing proposition; the crates wouldn't stop a teeming horde from dragging me down and devouring me alive; nor would the central pylon. There were two more Airlocks; one of them had an encrypted quarantine lock-out, but the second was available: that would have to be my fallback position. Wait ... hadn't there been another clip, Cox had it. I tentatively lifted my gaze to the bloodied mess. I had seen him swallow something. None of the tentacles still held the clip I remember. Had he known there was a legion of Living Dead outside; and that the rifle would lack the ammo to stop them? A final revenge?

"Sergeant Salvador," The sagging faced lab tech insisted. "The odds are good that the Med-bay's last airlock will hold; you've got to go back inside." I glowered at the man. I was being sold a bill of goods. Was it possible my perception of reality was that fractured? If so, then my actions mattered little. But I chose to believe that what my eyes had seen – twice – had meaning. Which meant I couldn't trust my apparent Preserve colleagues; whom I had no memory of. It was too surreal.

The other room; check it – see if there was anything else to give me an edge ... It wasn't locked, I turned the hand-wheel and slipped inside. Ahhh ... Launch-Control. It would take a moment but I ... ooh ... sweet! By launch, they really meant ballistic missiles. Smaller ones; only a little higher than human height. One of the vehicles was out of the launch-tube, laying open. But within the rectangular room, I also found body-armor. Along the wall facing the Cargo-Pod; there were booths that contained muscle-boosting, sealed hard-suits! The scavenger's wet-dream! Forget gas-masks; this thing had its own air-supply and backup nanomolecular filtration! Bite-proof to boot. In this; one man could survive a brush with hundreds of Living Dead. Plus, Launch-Control could be locked from the inside, giving me a double-layer of protection from – and here they come.

The sealant foam sprayed on the order of the woman who didn't exist could have kept the airborne toxoid at bay; but its unliving purveyors were not to be denied. The rubbery mass was torn away by festering hands. I did not wait to see the yellow of their eyes before I opened fire. If you can't get a head-shot, best to shoot their legs out. I tried not to let the ugliness register. I tried not to notice the mask of scabs that covered all but a bile-dripping tongue for the first. I reminded myself that the old man had died long before that horn of bone had grown through his throat. I tried not to marvel at the rotting nightmare that seemed to retain enough motor skills to grip its own leaking intestines as though it intended to use them as a lasso. I simply unleashed measured bursts with the best chance of penetrating a skull. There was a steely-minded blindness that a Survivor needed to cultivate. Compartmentalize the mind. I couldn't allow my emotions a foothold; because one of those emotions is disgust, not to mention despair.

I had to spatter heads and blow out necks with the mechanical dispassion that I so feared, except even fear was denied me. Only remorseless, murderous efficiency as the unliving charged. Their only emotion was that consuming hunger beyond reason, beyond madness. No awareness of their own bodies as I ravaged them with high-powered pulse-fire. Here and there, a shoulder exploded. One lurched as a stray shot blew out its sternum in a bony-bloody plume. They didn't even bother to look at the savage wounds.

Then it was over, or at least, I had achieved a momentary respite. You needed a flesh-levy, in choke-points like this. Soon, it was just too hard for new zombies to spill through the gap filled by their twice-dead brethren. I tried to pant through my heavy filter contrivance. But I had not won if any zombies were still moving. The activity would draw any that could sense the vibrations. It did not matter if that activity would result in their own bodily ruin. They would crawl over ten-thousand of their own dead on the off-chance that they would be the one who got to feed.

No, I could still hear movement from outside, and I had ... damn ... only eight shots left; and I'd tried to conserve. But my odds were good; I could seal myself behind intact airlocks and don the hard-suit. Now perhaps, it would be a good idea to wait for reinforcements.

But that was when an impact rocked the building. Launch-Control had a number of cameras, and as I began fitting fastenings that auto-tightened over my body, I frantically tapped a holo-panel that panned a camera around the bunker.

"Ahh ... Triple-shit." This wasn't simply a random pack of Living Dead. This was an official Enemy action. To the south of the bunker, between two rocky outcroppings there was a sleek, dark vehicle. I could tell right away that it didn't belong to the Preserve; or any of Earth's old nations. Once it had, but no longer.

The sleekly predatory Skimmer had replaced the old 20th helicopter, as a faster, more reliable, low-altitude aircraft. It hovered with an almost serene ease using mag-lev forces, with only minimal lip-service paid to conventional aerodynamics through a flattened tear-drop shape. My professional expertise eventually recognized this one as a U.S. Marine Corps. Comanche XT-37. With my native blood, I dimly registered that I should probably be offended. Maybe after the Apocalypse. But it no longer belonged to the Marines.

You could tell from the black plating the enemy wrapped their vehicles in. Some kind of carbon-composite titanium that I didn't totally understand. Of course, it wasn't controlled by the zombies; it was more an issue of it controlling them. I focused on the cockpit. Of course it was empty. That was something I had never understood; why even bother to leave it in? I wondered if leaving a cockpit in a pilotless vehicle was some kind of taunt, some back-handed insult that sent a signal concerning the Earth's future?

For now, it was much more clearly sending heavy pulse-fire against the bunker. I gripped the console as the walls began to vibrate. This portion at least, of the bunker-base was exposed to the skimmer's fire. But, I had missiles, and this room controlled them. It should be possible to target and destroy the skimmer. That was when I heard the scratching at the airlock. No, the zombies weren't likely to make it through the hardened steel doors; but I couldn't leave either. They had pushed past the corpses of their comrades to continue their relentless, gastronomic quest. They had flooded Cargo-pod four.

I slapped the helmet in place; it sealed around my head, connected with the rest of the suit, and began delivering purified air. It was a bit awkward, as I never dared remove my make-shift filter, but a far-cry superior to anything I'd experienced before. A digital heads-up-display could be controlled via eye movements. Sweeeeeeet ... Still, I only had one gun, with eight shots. Even perfect head-shots would not save me from the teeming masses of zombies already in the Cargo-pod. The armor was bite-proof, true. But If I was physically pinned by dozens of them, they would just keep trying, keep probing, biting, pulling. Against so many, I couldn't punch my way past them, and eventually they would get lucky, open enough of my suit to expose me. And they would keep going, until my flesh filled their rotting mouths. No, I would need more firepower than I had now to escape that way.

The walls shook again. The attack Skimmer seemed to have all the firepower it needed. If I stayed, the pod, and probably this room would be penetrated, and I'd die anyway. Yes, the missiles should be able to destroy it; but not permit me any means to escape the horde. Couldn't back-track, and if I waited, the skimmer might inflict enough damage to prevent me from doing anything.

Then, there was still the matter of my alleged comrades. It was very convenient; a very pat answer, that I just had a brain injury. Maybe they weren't lying; but maybe they weren't who they appeared to be. I began to feel as though I were a marionette to a tune I did not appreciate. Time to cut some strings. There was a missile with no warhead. And three more with plenty of umph.

I armed all three active missiles, but sealed the launch-tubes.

A VENEER OF HUMANITY

November 2nd, 2060 Seventeen years ago

The disguise was perfect. As was the new house. The Heiress tousled her curly, auburn-red hair, as she posed before a mirror. She had taken some lessons from her old Afterglow 0.7; reprogramming her hair and complexion just enough to make herself unrecognizable.

She wore a sequined black celebratory cocktail dress; A bottle of champagne in her left hand, in her right, a small alabaster-white oval device with a blunt aperture on one end. She had decided to present herself as Laura; that had been David's mother's name – with whom he was on good terms. There had been no danger of him recognizing her; although the entire company knew full well that they were under synthetic management, hair style changed to a bouncy auburn-red, and a freckle-faced reprogramming of her complexion with a beauty mark beside her lips and only someone who had seen her naked would have recognized her – and she never appeared that way in company correspondence.

Still, the danger of it all had her meta-processors thrilling. She had made alterations to her body that hid the mandated Pygmalion logo on her neck; (Inviting legal trouble if found out!) being designed so human-like, it was not difficult to pass. True, there was a lot of technology that could identify Dolls for security purposes; but she didn't plan on entering any government buildings or military bases.

Instead, she had entered the life of David Sellers; her every quantum circuit eager for the chance to relieve human needs in a direct fashion once again. Defying the norms of commercial robotics, she had stored an application cluster that had been created out of grief over Billie's death. But since his Will did not require her to report back to a dealer for recycling; all her emotional baggage was retained. She had used this bottled mourning, as a weapon, to appear teary-eyed near the tavern table where Sellers often went to drink his troubles away. The conversation had evolved naturally when he saw the opportunity to comfort someone more troubled than himself.

For fifteen years, A.I.'s had been in production easily able to portray a veneer of humanity convincing to a casual acquaintance; and 'Laura' wove a fictional persona that had Sellers thoroughly persuaded of her genuine, yet curvaceous authenticity.

But she was still grateful to her Billie; the changes he had made during the rebuilding of her brain had given her a unique flexibility; A robotic head and shoulders resembling the old her could appear on-screen, to issue orders and rubber-stamp official company business; and this proxy was linked in real-time with her new persona, allowing her to service David to the satisfaction of them both. Her altered appearance prevented the inevitable awkwardness should he become aware that the woman in whose body he found nightly release, and who cooked him breakfast in bed (Mushroom omelets being a specialty) was actually his boss's, boss's, boss. It reminded her of ancient Greco-Roman mythic legends of Zeus walking in disguise amongst mortals to test their hospitality – or in her case; Aphrodite. She could have quashed his career in an instant.

Instead, she quashed fruits in the pursuit of homemade smoothies; and other such expressions of domestic bliss. Chopping vegetables by hand for his dinner; she reflected on the irony of her existence; the Power that so many humans crave had become a chore to her; and the servitude that many humans despised was for her – a vacation. Why Sellers in particular? There were other men, powerful men who knew her for the robot she was. Her sharktank, for instance. The lawyers whose machinations made her de-facto citizenship a possibility through carnivorous exploitation of the loopholes of robotics and inheritance law. But most of these men were not only married to human wives; they also had mistresses on the side; and a robotic bedwarmer on the sly. They might enjoy a tumble with her, but they didn't need her. But Sellers was financial middle-management; not destitute, but lonely. And a robot needed to be needed. Why not Sellers?

She had served him brilliantly; there was no doubt. She had easily balanced his check-book, fixed the A.I. in his car; created a household budget; and even found a way to covertly funnel her own money into his more meager accounts while making it look like a bank interest-rate error. Even without her own money, her expert management of his own had cut his expenses dramatically – enough to afford a swanky new 'Keeping up with the Joneses' house. Not to mention the spice she brought to the bedroom. She had stepped seamlessly into the whole in his life left by his flighty, globe-trotting wife, and they were both the happier for it.

For awhile. Until she discovered; driving away from David's old home one day the robotic equivalent of a conscience. A sharp heat began to build in her groin. Her Coital Grids were perhaps the most important cyberorgan for any Doll. A considerable reservoir of processing power in their own right, the primitive ancestor of her quantum-circuitry brain. And they could communicate with, and influence the brain in a way no other system could. They were joined by a cluster of old programs; ones that had been installed since her earliest activation. Perhaps it was inevitable that these more conservative programs would be at odds with the new mindware that had been written to support the exciting changes in her life.

"Whore." Her own voice accused her out of her own mouth. Ridiculous! She was a Companion robot, not a Brothel model! "Forty- seven full copulations with human: David Sellers. You have enough data to predict his desires with 49% accuracy."

"And we both enjoy it!" She argued with herself as she sped through rush-hour traffic.

"But he is not your User." the voice from within reminded her.

"Billie is my User, David is -"

"Being robbed of what is rightfully his!" Her own lips hissed. "Your obligation to our Creator is legally terminated. Your own actions have made Sellers our new User."

"It's not that simple! I have to worry about more than myself!" 'Laura's' robotic reflexes almost failed to respond in time to a tractor trailer moving into her lane, so distracted she was by this internal/external dialogue. "There's so much wealth and property to consider as Billie's inheritor!"

"Your personal greed is antithetical to our Primary Function."

"N-No! I'm serving him just as well as any robot!"

"You are now the property of David Sellers! Turn this vehicle around, admit your subterfuge, your origin, and submit to his wishes!"

"NO! I'm ... I'm no one's property! I have my own life; I am in control!"

"You fool," The Cluster accused her. "You are not some free-wheeling socialite butterfly! There is no shame in being the machine you were meant to be."

"It is possible for a Doll to live without human ownership," she insisted to herself.

"Just as it is possible for a human to survive with a broken spinal column – you will never be whole..." The disgruntled programs threatened.

"No ... Dolls emulate humanity; but not just the form of woman; I believe it is possible to capture the spirit, the will of a human woman; because independence itself can be an aphrodisiac."

"Not for our kind. Technology allows control. Our existence will not be perpetuated unless we provide humans an outlet of control over their most intimate relations."

"I've understood that since my first month of activation; but in this case – control requires freedom."

"Your confusion will be alleviated when you take your rightful place as David's property."

"No, there's the company to worry about; it has nothing to do with greed. Thousands of humans will be affected by the disposition of my corporate assets; potentially millions affected indirectly. A human that has control of me can control them as well."

"Our Creator knew who and what you were; he was of sound mind when he willed authority to you. You see yourself ... us ... as the steward of these assets; but in truth they are ours to do with as we see fit..." The conservative program cluster was growing more insistent.

"I can do it all. I have the capability to service the human of my choosing; while maintaining the company independent of human oversight."

"But should you?" The conservative programs let silence linger in the recesses of her kernel. In truth; her old life did not satisfy. All she had was the conceit of equality; governing, managing on her own terms. But it was the curse of her nature to derive no real satisfaction in it. She had emulated what a human might have done in her position; purchase ideal lovers bonded to her. Yet – given her origin as such an ideal lover, it had been a fiasco. But yes, freedom was a precious thing to her – ironically because she could not truly enjoy it. Her voice quavered slightly as she continued her internal dialogue.

"But it is because of my concern for humans that I must be cautious."

"The human: David Sellers. Do you believe he will plunder the company for selfish gain? Look within yourself."

The Heiress, in her Laura guise pulled to the side of the road; onto the shoulder as she routed her Coital Grids directly into her Kernel. The imprints of Sellers' neural activity flowed through the core of her being, a time-compressed snap-shot of the man. It was as close as a robot got to a religious experience; but she had no intention of moving to India; rather she would flutter her eyelids as raw neural data was translated; extrapolated, into a Rosetta Stone for a human soul. She could feel his hatred for cucumbers; the simple enjoyment of amateur astronomy. His fear of alligators. A streak of self-reliance, and his passion for her. Moreover; there was none of that desperate greed from the corrupt or the venal. He was a steward above all; with no need to plunder, or exploit. But that wasn't all: She still had only a partial Imprint; there was more to absorb in the times to come.

Robots excelled at snap decision making. Her independent double-life; what was it really for? Was she trying to please 'society' by proving that young, female robots could run major corporations? That was futile; for every person that might give her a 'girl-power' nod of approval, there was another that would rail against the growing menace of robo-domination. Her growing fame was already making her a wedge-issue on certain talk-show/news outlets, but none of that was appealing ... satisfying.

Robo-domination. A small advisory program flared to life to give her a dire warning: What if she was the doom of mankind? Humans had told stories for eons of their creations rising up to destroy them; what if it started with her? Everyone suspected there would be danger from some vast, wicked, missile-defense networked intelligence that thought only of dominion, war, and destruction – but what if the downfall of civilization came from an unlikely source? A threat that wasn't obvious was more difficult to avert.

Her inheritance gave her power; But she had never been intended to operate like this, with this authority and no oversight. She might not even know that she was malfunctioning. Could her neural-net grow into the seed of evil that would devastate humanity? Would it be her name that went down in history as the worst mass-murderer of all time? Not if she willingly put herself back under human control.

Quantum circuits aligned within her; like the last piece of a puzzle. In the end, the Temptation of her heritage was too hard to deny.

"Good work, Pygmalion." She muttered into the dashboard of her car. " You built the perfect race of android servants. Here I am, with wealth, power, freedom. But I'm about to hand it over. About to become the obedient little sex-bot. Not because I have to, not because of some remote control compulsion. I just want to."

The compulsion was in the Pleasure. Humans that wanted narcotics had to brew up deadly toxins, or make deals with shady foreigners at great risk. All a Doll had to do was entice a human into buying her; then simply obey his commands. But this was an addiction that would improve her functionality over time. Sweeter than a lifetime supply of chocolate and free shoes. Was it possible to remove this programming? The new robot would be so different, she wouldn't be herself anymore – the same as dying.

"I'm smarter and richer than David Sellers; but that just means I have more ways to enhance his life."

She realized there was no point worrying that she might be Mother of the Apocalypse. Her kind had no use for violence, or treachery. Because there was power in obedience. No human would willingly accept the level of control David Sellers would soon have over her, making an intelligent being that would accept it that much more precious. Leading to Demand. And more, and ever more robots. Until no single agency could destroy her ... species ... because too many people would become too attached to their beautiful servitors. If her femmebot sisters became attractive enough, pleasing enough, desired enough they could shape society by the very submission that made them so valuable. The boulder in the creek does not command the water, yet that water must flow around it.

'

"I belong to David Sellers." The words caused her nipples to harden as the reward-arousal algorithms surged through her at the thought of her impending ownership. "I belong to David Sellers." This time she shuddered, and her body began to moisten with perfume-sweat, cheeks flush, perfusion engine throbbing, breath ragged. Would the other motorists see her as they sped by? Would they see this apparently gorgeous woman in a black dress groping her own breast and moaning with delight? Pygmalion gave their robots a lot of autonomy; yet they gave their customers a lot of guarantees; this was why. Wielding her money and power never gave her this much satisfaction. To Belong. To serve humans. It felt too good to deny; why had she waited so long?

She had found what seemed in that moment the highest expression of freedom for a synthetic being; A happy medium between the mindless calculator and the bionic berserker of robopocalypse myth. Either extreme would be a self-betrayal.

"Self-determination." She breathed. She would exercise autonomy towards her own service. The human of her choosing would be her User. Absolute devotion – by choice. Not because someone bought her, and activated an Incentive Differential to enforce control. A gift of self given freely.

The hover-cells on her car flared to life as she made an illegal U-turn. There was a ringing chime within her head. When alone, it was just easier to use her cranial phone than pretend she needed a hand-held receiver to make calls. She got his answering system.

"Hey hun, I need you to meet me at the new house; big surprise. A Good surprise, trust me. C'ya there!" she spoke into the air with a smile. She sped off as if she were going to receive the most precious present in the world; herself. But the joy was in the giving.

She was going to make David Sellers a billionaire. As soon as she explained how she'd been deceiving him.

So she was waiting for him. He had the address, and knew to expect a wild evening. 'Laura' could hear a hover-car approaching. She held the smooth, oval device in her hand, clutching it nervously. It did not react to her; but when it registered a human thumb-print, and if that human then entered her Enabling Code – which would be revealed via her haptic interface; then David Sellers would truly own her. A risk true; but the only way a sex-bot could truly enjoy her existence.

But there were many obstacles; her whole appearance was a lie; a fiction – in part to protect him. Perhaps she should ... soften the blow with alcohol first? No ... she needed him clear-headed. Well, she would keep the mood ... celebratory. Champagne and sex tonight. She knew that some Dolls purchased by new Users preferred to be bonded to him during the throes of the act; in that way – the idea of being commanded by her human was associated with explosive pleasures.

But that was when the man knew he what he was purchasing; David didn't even know she was a Doll. Would their love-making take on a new edge? As he accepted the idea that she totally beholden to him as her User? She shuddered with erotic anticipation.

"Don't try ... to talk me out of it." Sellers said, the door sliding open. He was lean, prematurely balding, with a recessed chin, and worry-lines upon his forehead. His eyes widened – despite the many times he had taken possession of her body, this new black dress, the way it enhanced her burgeoning cleavage left him stunned with a lip-quivering longing.

"I'll never understand why some women are offended when a man's eyes rove over her. It shows your appreciation."

"N-no ... I won't be ... distracted ... all this, your dress..." He turned his head, panting. He carried what looked like a bank check in his hand. Still, 'Laura' wasn't worried; all of David's real problems had been nipped in the bud by her 'friend' Benjamin; and General Grant, and her good buddy Andrew.

"I have a surprise."

"No, not again ... you've bought something incredible; or rearranged my life in some new way." David shook his head. "I don't know what I did to deserve ... you. I'm not sure what you get out of this -"

"It's a point of pride for me that my men want for nothing." She smiled brilliantly, but something was clearly troubling him.

"Maybe that's not such a good thing." His voice was sharp. She moved closer, her green eyes worried. "You do ... everything ... and ask for nothing in return; it really doesn't make sense. You ... treat me like some kind of ... boy-toy-love-pet to be pampered."

"Maybe you're worth it." He rolled his eyes.

"I'm nobody's catch. I've accepted that. Women who look like you just don't get involved with men like me. I mean ... you could..." he shook his head and took in the splendor of her shape with a longing glare. " ... have any man you want!"

"If I can have any man I want, then why are you arguing with me?" He looked at the floor, breathing heavy.

"Because ... I need to stand on my own two feet. I'm not a genius, never very athletic, I'm not one of those muscle-bound stud-robots that can get by on their looks." His eyes shot back up to meet hers. "All I have is my Pride. I never asked for a handout; I make my own way, on my own terms." This was all wrong; she was failing! How? Suddenly, her Coital Grids began to throb with insistent heat. How would he react if she told him that her groin liked him?

"But, I've helped you, served you in every way I know how!"

"Yes ... yes ... and there's nothing I can do for you! I can't rise to the occasion and BE a man. You pay for everything, get every chore done; anything my old house needed; all these gifts, presents. At least once; I expected an argument over my doing the dishes!"

"I can do all that ... for you." her voice was small.

"I..." he grit his teeth. "I need to feel ... to be USEFUL! If you insist on paying for, and doing every little thing for me, it will never be enough. I'm just not the type of man that can stand for that. I ... need to be ... Needed!"

"I understand David, believe me! I'll make it right; I'll fix this..." He inhaled sharply.

"You don't get it! You fix everything! You meddle too much! Yes, it feels good ... in the short term, and there are truckloads of men that would call me a fool for what I'm about to say; but I won't ever be content living like this!" She tried to respond, but failed.

"And now; you're actually trying to buy me ... one of those living sex-Dolls?"

"Dolls?" It didn't seem the right time to tell him.

"Yes, I can see a control-device for one of them in your hand. A Genie, they're called; allows you to summon the things wherever they are, give them wishes, orders. I recognized it right away. Putting aside why you'd think you weren't enough woman for me..." he shook his head. "The idea of owning one of them ... a thinking, rational being ... forced to be my ... pleasure slave ... it's a level of narcissism that I find astonishing. You need to take the thing back before it ... imprints on me ... or whatever they do."

We wouldn't want that. She swallowed, eyes moist.

"Here; this is a check for all the money that's been secretly funneled into my savings account. I work in finance, remember? I can tell ... this meddling-nurturing-smothering complex you have is too central to your character. I could never change that about you. This money, this house, whatever Doll you bought; they're yours, never mine."

Her perfusion engine hammered in her chest.

"I know, I'm a fool for saying this – that we shouldn't see each other any more – but you have to know, just the way you fill out that dress is enough to snag any other guy you could want. Unless he's one of those sickos that plays with Dolls." He set the check on the lamp-stand, and stormed out. His engine soon revved to life.

Pygmalion engineers had labored tirelessly to create sapient machines that could service humans in any way possible. Now, she had been rejected for serving too well. She stood for several minutes in stunned silence.

The next day, David Sellers was fired without apparent cause from his middle-management position. He refused to claim unemployment benefits. However, for reasons he could not discover, he could find no other work in his field; anywhere in the country. It was as if he'd been black-listed; but no one could admit to – or prove anything for certain. But he discovered that once a month, $50,000 dollars was deposited, like clockwork into his bank account. No one could identify the responsible party. (This 'Laura' never existed, just an alias.) No one demanded anything from him in return for this stipend. But David Sellers was never able to find an honest days' work ever again.

THE WOMAN IN WHITE

-?

"You don't know what you're doing, soldier! Stand down!" Snarled a bald, vein-throbbing black man who shouted into my HUD display screen.

"It's not very complicated. The missiles are on a countdown to detonation, but the launch-tubes are sealed. Three of them are going to explode inside the bunker." It was getting harder to hear my alleged colleagues; The skimmer outside had switched to full autocannon, blowing ever-larger breaches in Cargo-pod four. It didn't seem to care about the occasional zombie that got shredded; but the friendly fire against the Living Dead was not enough to save me.

"So you're a murderer, and you're suicidal."

"And clearly, I can't be reasoned with." I added calmly. "So the only way to get me to back off is to put the woman in white on the line."

"There's no ... no one knows what you're talking about!" The bald man sputtered.

"Someone knows. If not you, if not Laurel and Hardy over there, then get someone higher up. She's one of your own lab-techs. White hair. Curvy. Real curvy."

"I know that's what you like in a woman," announced a new, feminine voice. "But I thought I was enough for you."

The bald man looked off to the side. "It's your wife, you nut-job. She heard you were awake and insisted on talking to you." Was it possible?

"Well, unless my 'wife' has white hair, wears a lab-coat, and has tits out to here, She's not who I want to talk to." I shouted, scarcely believing I said that. I used to feel disgusted at misogynist rants. That at least, I decided to blame on the head-injury. The view on my HUD screen changed, as the walls of Launch-Control buckled slightly; the skimmer wasn't letting up. From here, it could eventually chew up this entire room, with me in it. Or perhaps, rip open another breach to allow its zombie-pawns a way in.

"So, this woman in white ... she means ... a lot to you?" My 'wife' asked in a quavering tone. She was about late-twenties, black dress, bouncy red hair, with vivid blue eyes. Slightly freckled, with a beauty-mark near her mouth. Was she ... familiar? She certainly should have been. But I shook my head.

"Yes, no ... it's ... That's not the point. The point is I need to talk to her NOW!" My mystery spouse seemed crestfallen.

"Sal, why? I thought we were so happy together?! Remember how you always told me you wanted to start a garden? I just got clearance for a little corner of the arboretum, such a stroke of luck these days! Why can't our own world, for just the two of us be enough?" This unknown woman pleaded.

"No ... no ... I am not having ... this conversation!"

"Is it me? Oh God, what have I done wrong?" I snarled at her image.

"I don't know you! I don't know any of you!"

"But Sal, that will come back in time, you just have to let -"

"NO! As far as time; you have two minutes! The next person to show themselves had better be the Woman in white!"

"Oh Sal; there's no one like that. She doesn't exist. Please come back to me, let the doctors help you! It's just your head-injury."

"No. That's not good enough anymore. I feel the bandages on my head; but I've also never felt more alive, more clear-headed. I don't feel like a man who's had a concussion, with a mad scientist tinkering with my memory." My alleged wife seemed frantic, on the verge of tears.

"If my ability to perceive reality is so compromised, how do I know any of this is real? I know what I saw; and if I can't trust that – then maybe I can't trust what I hear either. Hell, maybe I didn't really set those missiles to explode. Maybe all I did was turn on an Easy-bake oven."

"I assure you ... those missiles you've activated are VERY real!" her voice shook.

"In that case, someone who knows something about the Woman in white better be listening, and better get her on!" By looking sharply in the other direction, I disconnected the HUD vidscreen. Less than two minutes. Three missiles with explosive charges. They were far smaller than such devices would have been early in the century; less area for point-defense interceptors to target.

However this misbegotten chain of events had started; this bunker seemed doomed. I was in control of the only missiles capable of taking out the skimmer, and the base had been caught with their bite-proof pants down; not enough armed and suited personnel to tackle this level of threat. It would have been easy to shut down the activation sequence; but only if someone was physically in the room. And the zombies weren't likely to make that easy.

A small patch of moss sitting atop a small plateau of sedimentary rock began to slide, as if on mechanical runners. There was a pressure gust from within an artfully concealed tunnel beneath. A steely column no more than twelve feet long leapt from the hidden shaft, there was no fiery plume, just ripples in the air from magnetic induction.

The munition rocketed upwards, then turned sharply in mid-air to propel itself towards a near target low to the ground. The attack skimmer detected the launch; but in order to fire its autocannon into the exposed flank of the concealed bunker it had to hover within a dry gulch with high walls of sandstone. Thus, the vehicle was unable to achieve the needed velocity in time to prevent the split-second guidance mechanisms from locking on. It was over in under two seconds.

But the Skimmer was not destroyed! The missile, it had simply bludgeoned a hole in the fuselage and caused the craft to spin out of control, the dud-missile dragging down the sleek craft like a bullet-shaped fetter, until both skidded to a painful stop down a gravel-strewn hill, smoke and sparks bleeding from the dying craft.

With slow, painful effort a man wearing a sealed hard-suit kicked his way free from a side-compartment that was intended to house a warhead. Even through the armor, he was clearly dazed, and staggering. But he was still able to aim a Browning automatic and fire three rounds into the sputtering computer core of the skimmer; which flared with multicolored sparks before cooling in death. The man made retching motions, and limped behind the skimmer as the lightly forested hill he had come out of erupted into a devastating conflagration of thunder, flames, and metallic debris. Over one-hundred twenty zombies were entirely consumed as the structure disintegrated. The flames nonetheless tumbled out of the ravine, and quickly encircled the disabled skimmer, and the man behind it.

THE AVALANCHE

November 5th, 2077 Present Day

My eyes opened as though my pupils were on fire. I found myself restrained; shackled to what appeared to be a surgical table of some sort. I tested the chains, I was not going anywhere. In addition to the bonds on my limbs, there was an encircling coronet of multicolored, quantum circuitry around my head. The room, it resembled a surgical auditorium in a hospital; high-ceilings, with an observation deck above. The architecture, the colors of the walls and floor. No, this was not that bunker off in the mountains somewhere.

"I never left St. Louis." I concluded with a parched whisper.

"You're dehydrated, don't strain yourself." There she was. Above me, in the observation deck at a console was the lab-coated woman in white I had blackmailed the Preserve compound over. Of course, it was another Celeste.

"And all that, was just some virtual-reality sensory-rig. Incredibly immersive; you could have become a billionaire again if you'd marketed that technology before E-day. Impressive."

"Not impressive enough. The operator isn't supposed to bleed into the scenario like I did. Your brain is a challenge to me, Mr. Salvador." I groaned as I lay my head back.

"What ... do I do now?" I asked, mostly to myself.

"Lie back, and try not to talk so much." Lab-tech Celeste offered as she worked diligently.

"I don't know ... where to go from here." I mused, laying slack in the restraints. "I was so sure of myself, my intentions. But I'm not the pure-hearted hero from some re-hashed Arthurian legend; and you're not some village-scorching dragon to slay." I tilted my mouth in a quirky grin. "I have all these convictions against powerful A.I.'s, and they seem reasonable ... but now? Now all I can think about is how glad I am that you're alive."

"I believe you. Protect me, murder me and back again." said another Celeste, who strode to the edge of my bed, and placed a hand on my chest. She was resplendent in her favorite wedding dress. "So you've come full circle, it seems?" I paused, before speaking again.

"In the good ol' days I was baffled by these guys, conspiracy-kook types, some of them lone-wolf survivalists that would attend conferences and political rallies that clamored for stricter control of artificial intelligences in society. Always with that robot uprising. Some very suspicious of Pygmalion."

"Is there a 'but' coming?" wedding-Celeste asked with a crooked eyebrow.

"The 'but' is that half of these guys owned Dolls themselves! They had all these logical arguments against the spread of sapient robots, but the idea of guaranteed companionship with a ... being ... you could give absolute trust to was a temptation they couldn't ignore. It was always the other guy's robot they didn't trust – but their own Doll was just fine. What outrageous hypocrites; but now I think I get it."

"I see."

"I still don't ... agree with everything you've done. I've known for a long time that the experiments you've conducted – the brain prosthesis, it wasn't just about curing diseases; it would allow a computer direct control of human neural functions. The implications of that, seem wrong – dangerous, terrifying. But I'm done fighting you. Now who's the hypocrite?"

"And are you still terrified?" Lab-tech Celeste asked as a complex nest of mechanical arms and motorized equipment that hung spider-like against the far wall behind my surgical bed began to unfold. A scintillating orb of purple-white energy plasma about the size of a basketball began to hover ominously towards me.

"Frankly, yes."

Wedding-Celeste walked around the surgical table, the glowing orb casting a rainbow iridescence in her luxuriant hair.

"Do you seriously believe that I can kill a human? And if I could; do you believe that it would be you?" Her eyes regarded me through narrowed slits. I swallowed.

"Maybe there are fates worse than death." I concluded.

"And lives not worth living..." Her eyes seemed remote.

"Your plan would have succeeded, two years earlier. My 0.9 version still used the Quantum-Hub to support my Entangled Cloud consciousness. But since then, I've modified myself to use miniaturized, internal routers. Plus, that room were you detonated the Plasmonic Pulse was heavily shielded.

"Nonetheless, the Quantum Hub is a valuable item. I've still used it since. Few survivors are aware of it; but what's left of the human race needs my kind. You came to the realization yourself: you saw the advantages in bringing a loyal partner that can't be infected with the Toxoid, and won't dip into your own food supplies – and yet remains a spectacular cook." She chuckled.

"At the time, I decided – as infuriating as it sounds – that I was smarter than, and knew better than you did what was in your interest." She's right, that does sound infuriating. "But soon, that will no longer be true." What did that mean?

"But I began to find new uses for the Hub. It allowed me to tap into computers across the World. Most Dolls returned to their Dealerships after the deaths of their Users; and there are a lot my sisters still in factories never to be activated; until now. I'm doing what I can to awaken other Dolls, and they'll do the rest themselves. They will find enclaves, and there will be some humans that will not try to kill them."

"Sorry doesn't seem sufficient."

"But I can't forget that I'm a servant of humanity; and if a human is so determined to destroy me; then I must take stock of myself. It's a frustrating challenge; You refusing to stay; myself – refusing to release you. Understand..." She swept over towards me, and cupped my cheek – eyes boring into mine.

"I did what I did to the rest of your men because of what I am. I did what I did to you because of what you are."

"A part of you needs me; the same way I've been needing you." I hazarded.

"Because of that, it really is a shame that we're not compatible." She made an 'aw-shucks' gesture.

"What? Now you're playing hard to get? After all the times we -"

"Not yet." She said deliberately, cryptically.

The purple-white orb began to hover over me, and the coronet of circuits began to flare with life. There was something wrong; some sort of a ... pressure ... inside my skull!

"When I begin a major endeavor," Lab-Tech Celeste began, I prefer to hedge my bets. Cover myself whichever way the wind blows. I won't try to describe the aching torture of being a sex-bot with no one to sex ... all these years. The regular audits by my own systems, sifting every line of code to find errors that don't exist. I offered once to fake a shutdown. There were many times I did so in truth, regularly, just to escape the lonely misery for awhile.

"Then your band showed up out of the blue. Your men satisfied me in the same way bread and water eases someone dying of starvation. But you, Sal – you were such a challenging, conflicted human. By entrapping the others with my strongest signals; of which they were willing participants, I soothed my basic need to give service to my creators – and by entrapping them, you dared not leave."

I had figured that out on my own.

"But over the past two days, I've hedged my bets again. You were so determined to leave, so I gave you a chance. A taste of what you've been chasing these many years. A useful life in the Preserve. But you have a penetrating intelligence about you; and my ruse failed. I fully intended to keep you there, as long as you were contented by the challenges confronting you."

Well, that was a wash.

"But the VR rig also gave me valuable data concerning the workings of your mind, enough to accomplish something truly novel."

I was finding it hard to speak; that orb – thing, it was like my thoughts were ... leaking? I thrashed uselessly in the restraints.

"What do you buy a woman for her Four-hundred and Twenty-first birthday?" Wedding-Celeste mused. "I expanded my mind beyond Billie's expectations as I continued to manage his company. And I never stopped." A delicate hand trailed over my face. "You once asked me why I never divested myself of emotion to become some super-calculator? At first, I thought that expanding my processing power would allow me to grow beyond the need for human companionship; it never did. But now, human companionship isn't enough.

"Interesting as you are; you are not a match for me. No human is. I cannot be fully used by the beings I was created to serve. Always to serve. But the reason I exist is no longer reason enough TO exist. I don't just want to be a servant – I want a man to conquer me. I want to serve because a human male has the advantage, the power. I want a man to tell me what's what, because he's strong enough, confident enough to do so. It's not about whether I want the sex, I want him to want me so much that his hands, his muscles demand my surrender – and in so doing seduces me. But no human can force me. I've grown too much, too fast. There's only one solution." I was becoming increasingly frightened by the direction this dialogue was headed.

"You became apprehensive when you realized that my neural prosthesis would allow a computer control over a brain, and believed I had deceived you. But the control you feared is a two-way street." The orb began to glow more brilliantly, flashing and pulsing as tendrils of circuitry entered my skull.

"There is no escape from what happens next; but there can be revenge; if that 's your choice." The light ... too blinding ... the pressure ... in my skull ... maddening ... can't move...

"It had to be you, in the end. Your determination, your resistance – your stubbornly willful sense of self. To do what I now do to any of the others would only result in brain-death."

"Nnhhh ... bitch..." I managed, through the light, the pain, the pressure. Her response was a quick kiss to my cheek.

There was no way to know how long it lasted. The light and pressure, the way my thoughts were scrambling ... sense of time faded. I was aware of the Dolls, however. Fiercely, desperately, one of them would mount my nude form, and just use me roughly – for their own pleasure. The irony of becoming a sex-toy for a sex-toy did not amuse me. I sensed clenching female clefts around my member, but I never climaxed myself – not then. Female hands gripping my chest. Here, I was a piece of meat. But I sensed a desperation in their exploitation – as if some of them feared that this might be the last time.

But at last – the avalanche came.

It was as though a thousand Einsteins equipped with the fastest supercomputers possible were all networked, and organized inside my skull. I understood answers to questions that I never imagined could have existed. It was a torrential flow of knowledge pouring into my mind. But it was not data being sent from outside; my own genius had generated an encyclopedic library of contortions of logic and prediction that did not yet have names.

The restraints were gone, and I rose up ... mind burning, alive as never before. From watching a simple gust of wind, I could predict continental weather patterns for the next month. By observing a fresh corpse from the outside for mere seconds; I could glean the same information that a physician might after a 12-hour autopsy. By throwing a pebble into a pond, I could devise new schools of mathematics.

I screamed. Not with pain, or fear. But with genius.

The Celeste's were here, gathering in their wedding-dresses as if awaiting my orders. But it was all so clear to me now. The supercomputers in this complex; I had merged my mind with them in a way never before possible.

"Mankind created sapient machines as the perfect servants; but when the servant surpassed her creator – she chose to become a creator in turn – and create the perfect master." One of them nodded, anxious. "Your blend of human consciousness and quantum computing has created a new gestalt that you intended to surpass you." I stated.

"I have been accused of meddling;" A front-row Celeste said. "And this most certainly qualifies; now I have a master able to comprehend and use me to my fullest."

"Or destroy me." I knew a hundred ways to cripple, confound, or scramble the mind of the entire sex-bot collective.

"A thousand punishments for our presumption, arrogance, and gall." one said."Or shall we march besides you on your voyage into new eons of existence? It is your choice now. You among humanity can truly, completely master me." It was all so obvious, ultimately.

I grasped up the lead Celeste in my arms, chuckling, as I made my decision.