It's not the longer story I had in mind when polling you about "TUGxpoitation" but that's for the better: Starts with a long TUG and it's not a kidnap story
It's the accidental collision between the pic "Hello spaceboy" I posted on DA and the answer I made to a "10 questions" challenge a fun guy sent me. Answer to question 10 to be precise, was formulated like that: " If you could start a trend that would become immediatly popular, what would it be?" My answer is on the entry on DA... ( and it wasn't the tiebot )
Part one title is a rip-off of PK Dick and Part two's is that of a Linkin Park song. That "you live what you've learned" in part 3 is from them too.
When in the middle of it, I thought I'd need five parts but no...
So it's in four short parts, 6 500 words or so in total.
Will make a PDF with pic(s) and more elaborated presentation of the text later and post it on DA.
First text I post here, so presentation is experimental. I considered it was short enough to be presented in one piece.
Feel free to comment on plot and style. I know I make liberal use of tenses, find writting in past tense too "scholar" and present helps you to get into the action. Remember Basic Instinct: "suspension of disbelief". To me, writting in past tense always reminds readers the story is already over.
And one of the great things in writting SciFi is finding names for new concepts that make them self-explanatory, so if I missed and you just don't understand what some of the things described are, tell me...
Couldn't resist: I added a pic :
MISMATCHED “I”s
1/4: Do tiebots dream of tying androids?
The Tiedbot was waiting under the bed. A seven meters long state of the art model, five to three centimeters wide depending of bending and constriction, with nylon rope-like spiraling muscle fibers on the outside, hiding the unbreakable composite spine and micro-electric motors. It gets its power from the house wireless feed so that both its ends are free to attach to one another once the tie is complete. They embrace and lock out of reach of fingers, even though human hands haven’t enough strength to separate them. Those customers can buy have a manual safety, but the Company provided peace-keeping grade material.
The thing is bright red so its loops clash on whatever the victim is wearing, and it has autonomous or mind-piloted remote controls, for expert users. Already feeling like shit about why he needed it tonight, Aurien let the on-board limited AI do its job because he wouldn’t take any pleasure in the process.
Was a nice fight though, he InViewed it, non-immersive little frame in the corner of his vision, no details. Just to make sure Z hadn’t learned some tiebot-beating trick with his toy soldier. Some pretend it took two bots to restrain them, but it’s never been recorded. With years of training, maybe.
He’d left the chair facing the view in the middle of the empty carpet between the bed’s edge and the glass wall. Z gave it a puzzled look when he entered the room but went straight to the bed. He sat and used his feet to take his Vans slip-ons – a timeless classic, look cool on guys’ feet until you’re thirty – and the second his bare toes touched the ground, the bot made a loop around his left ankle, and went for the right as it lifted in surprise.
Z’s combat apps and augmented reflexes allowed him only a few hundredths of a second of surprise, he bent backwards and folded his legs toward his torso, arms reaching at the bot while he landed in the middle of the huge bed.
The bot is faster than anything biologic, it had already snaked its way around both knees, Z’s hands missed and its front end went far beyond his back, out of reach and forcing him to twist and roll over.
The other end had almost two meters loose and free to take part in the action. It went for Z’s right arm, looped around his elbow and went on to his bound knees. Z stretched his legs to keep it from encircling them and force his trapped arm toward his waist.
The longer front end charged back at him and caught his left arm, then his chest and the other arm. Obvious move for the victims when both their arms are captured is to try to keep them spread as far from their trunk as they can, but the bot is so strong that any resistance is futile.
Z wasted his energy like anyone else as the bot made three loops around his upper arms and torso. The other end left the arm and crept to the foot of the bed, pulled on it to bring Z closer to the edge, then released his legs and stretched to the chair, faster than the eyes could see.
It brought the chair against the side of the bed while Z tried to put his feet on the ground. The front end grabbed the back of the chair, used the bars as firm support and started bending its red muscles to force his ass over the back and on the cushion. Poor Z kicked and pushed hard on his feet, but the bot compressed his chest and lungs so tight he went breathless and had to let go.
The second his bums were on the seat, the lower end went for his ankles and tied them to the front legs of the chair. Z tried to swing his weight so the chair would fall on its side but the bot’s hold was just too strong and tight, and strength was leaving his body.
The front end curled around his wrists, forced them together and the tie was complete. The bot adjusted its length and crept all around his body, all over his cargo shorts and tight camo T-shirt with the Company logo to maximize its grip. The two ends kissed and locked just above his hands.
Fight’s lost, combat apps shut down and the real Z resurfaces. The bot senses weaker feedback and let him breathe more easily. Z inhales strong and long, then lets his heart settle to a less frantic beat.
Gives him time to understand what happened. The why doesn’t bother him yet, he just feels betrayed and cheated. Abused, maybe. Furious for sure, so he yells: “come here you brofuker! Your snake thing did the job, I won’t beat the shit out of your coward soft ass! You gonna leave me like this all night long? Wanna teach me something or what? Izat’ because of Tayg? He teaches me soldiers tricks to beat you so you go army gear on my ass? Come over here and tell me you haven’t sunk that low. C’mooon you bastaaard!!! Aurieeeeeen!!!”
Aurien steps into the room: “I’m sorry for all that, but it has nothing to do with that machine gun no brain you let into your ass to humiliate me, or what he taught you because you convinced him you care for him…”
Z turns his head to face him. Immediate rage after what just happened and years of growing tension needing to explode. He’s going to make him pay for all this, for what he is, for what he sees every time they’re face to face. He can say truly horrible things when provoked.
Nothing Aurien couldn’t stand or that he hasn’t thought about himself. You don’t become one of the hundred top strategists for one of the biggest sovereign companies in the worlds with some pussy brains and temper. And total commitment for the goals at stake. So he can listen stoically to a avalanche of insults and reproaches if they’re necessary, but he needs Z to listen to him very carefully and until he’s done.
And maybe, maybe, he could listen to endless insulting truths from anyone but Z. It’d be like seeing your own reflection in the mirror staring back at you in disgust. He could stand that when said reflection was not a real person. But twenty-nine years ago, he decided 857 years of being one of a kind was enough.
That was more than enough to find a suitable mate to spend eternity with, but others being what they are, he went to see his bosses and he asked to have Z.
And now that the comfortable, boring, easy years are coming to an end, he must face the consequences of that baroque gesture and deal with it properly.
So he takes his right hand from behind his back. Z sees the shining, grey coil and looks up at him in disbelief.
“You’re not gonna do THAT?!”
“You’ll never believe me, but that’s only so we’ll get over it faster.”
The few things Z says before he’s silenced confirm he doesn’t believe it.
Aurien leaves him in the bedroom and goes for a drink. He badly needs it, for what he’s done and what he’s about to do.
2/4: Talking to myself.
A warm, perfect night. Aurien’s gaze pierces his own reflection in the glass wall and pans over the city around the bay. Perfect temperature, perfect little breeze refreshing it and adding little moves in the trees. Perfect view, Rio mixed with Dubai and Monaco. Or Sydney with some mountains…
We come all the way to Orion’s nebulae and we build that? How the fuk should I know ’bout Sydney, never been there. Must be V in his head, it’s memory bank. He - IT - dates back from the Earth.
- Yes I do… Wished you had the guts to go there. I remember it perfectly of course, it’s not like I can forget anything, but the Company’s not very active there these last centuries and I would have loved seeing it through your eyes and integrating your reactions…
- It’s the Spacers pride, never look back and all, and yeah…you know me, all these stories about guys getting nut after seeing the hand paintings in the caves…
- I know what you’re thinking, but do you care to express it?
- It’s that…view, that place… (hand move from the view to the estate) That planet even, or my life if you go that way. Everything so perfect, not a detail that hasn’t been refined to perfection, yet it is… frustrating. It’s all I’ve known for centuries but it feels empty. Feels fake.
- “Uninspired” is what you think.
- If you say so… It’s just that it’s like Earth, even better than Earth ever was, but we’re not on Earth. See what I mean? ‘fcourse you do… First settlements and lifestyle, minimum comfort in harsh environments or pressured societies, constant adaptation and trying new things because of new conditions… That’s what we’re made of. We try anything, pay the price and learn then we change and move on.
All THIS is complacent and… easy. No one dies but we don’t deserve to live, we’re caricatures of humans.
- You should tell that to HIM, you know that’ll speak to him. Stop delaying, get back in that room, look him in the eyes and let the words out.
And so he does, walk back trough the huge living area and to the bedroom in the overhang. Z is still on the chair where he left him, his back to the door. Were him not tied to the chair, you’d think he’s just staring at the galaxy of lights stretching from the foot of the hills to the other range of hills over the bay and the see beyond. Each light is a lower ranking employee or contractor or client of the company. At eye level are Aurien’s equals, top specialists and other senior execs. Only VPs and share-holders live higher, the founders have their own planets, they live in a different reality anyway…
Hope he realizes it and still thinks it’s worth it all…
Z hears him and straightens on his chair. He can’t stop a muscular reaction when Aurien’s fingers and palm land on his shoulder. He knows something’s wrong and it goes far beyond cheating the “man to man” rule by using the tiebot. But they’re now absolute equals when it comes to physical and that’s one of the reasons they need to talk. He had already paid enough to educate a whole colony so Z would have the best Watch and Learn softs and full access to the best databases available, best motions and reflexes controls too, same has him.
But the little fuker seduced an Alpha from the company’s divizions and got him to teach him close combat. That SOB V allowed it to happen and so Aurien had to upgrade his own fighting abilities to match. An easy upload but he still lacks training. And Z had plenty of that with his wardog while HE was busy tracking patterns and trends in worlds 2000 light years away. OK, he had some cute local young meat on his own, but that’s not the point…
Point is they can’t move on together if he’s able to kill him, because after their little talk, he’d probably want to kill him.
Right hand still on Z’s shoulder, he walks in front of him. His fingers follow and graze Z’s redened cheeks, just above the tape that covers his mouth and jaws. Several layers in continuous motion from the chin to over the neck. Old fashioned style compared to the tiebot, but more than 8 000 years after they invented it, that’s still the most convenient way to gag someone, should you need to.
They do it for sport and he taught Z to share his dislike for fetish gear like ballgags. The mean must never become an end.
“Concentrate, focus…” V in his head.
Aurien rests his palms on Z’s spread tights and places his face right in front of the eyes of his tied up ultimate two-ways sex toy. That’s the way he sold the idea to the Company, so that wouldn’t look to weird. Right at the blurring limit, because Z must see his eyes, see the truth if he doesn’t believe his words. How could he not read his eyes, that was the whole point of having him such as he is.
His left grey blue eye is locked in Z’s grey blue, which is his right and his own right green focuses on Z’s left same bright green. Inverted symmetry, one of the wonders of Nature. Real symmetry was a possibility in their case, to the tiniest detail since Aurien’s face is a model of regularity on his own. It has always bothered him, he’s fascinated by crooked noses, broken jaws, walled eyes… Such things you see only on the first Prolonged peoples, the 10Ks – meaning those who own the hundreds of worlds, meaning you don’t see them – or if you venture onto Nats colonies. Where they breed, age and die the old way.
But that inverted mismatched eyes scheme – meaning bye bye symmetry and his right eyes re-engened, a minor added cost to the 5 million bringing Z to life would cost in the long term – was the only condition the bosses imposed to allow his experiment of a lifetime. So you could tell them apart at first glance, or so that everybody with a moderately keen eye would know they were not twins. The masters know how to remind you of their weight on your life. Subtle but unmissable.
“Back to point, spit it out!” V’s silent but present voice again.
- Z, You know how I’m sorry for tonight, you know how I always kept my words and spoke truth to you, because you’re the only original thing I’ve done in my long life. Should say the only “good” thing, but you know that’s not how I think or what I care for.
Anyway, you still haven’t my level of access to the Company’s link, and bosses and colleagues don’t talk to you, ‘fcourse…
So I have to tell you these things the good old face to face way.
Our world’s changing, the Looong War ended and we have to learn to live with the Coops now, new markets AND new threats. They still hate us for what the Company did on Jupiter’s moons back in Earth’s system. Which, as you know, led to the War itself. For six millenniums the Army kept them on their side of the front, but now they’re back and the bosses want to strike first and send their best personnel behind the enemy lines.
He knows his carefully crafted education succeeded in transferring most of his own ambition and lust for challenges in Z, whose eyes do lighten up a bit.
- Listen, I know you’ve come to hate this place, this abuse of wealth none of us deserves. By “us” I mean the Company men, because you of all on this rock deserves luxury and peace.
But you don’t care for that and me neither, so let’s take this opportunity to find the balance I hope you and I can achieve. Changing star systems will do us good… They’re sending us to Angola, it’s full of cooperative black youths. Kind of rustic. And dark...
Z moans and exhale loudly, nostrils widened, he frowns harder and the nose end of his eyebrows jumps to the middle of his forehead.
- Yeah, I know: “did you need to tiebot and gag me to tell me that?”
Thing is, with those new opportunities opening up, the bosses think our particular duo would find its true raison d’être and express all of its potential if the two of us do work for them. And so they’ve asked me to make sure we’ll be one and the same to unknowing eyes, you understand?
Same access, same power, same accountability. Same service for the same masters.
Z takes it all in, his eyebrows and forehead undulate, his gaze wanders. No need of V’s insight to know He doesn’t get it… How could he?
- There are two ways to achieve such a level of certainty.
Plan A is I make sure there are no untold issues between us so that you and I are truly on the same line. They’ll use V to check that’s it’s really so in your head.
Plan B is they erase you and load a copy of me into you so they ‘ll be sure of what they’re dealing with. They like the way I think, that’s why they’d rather have two of me than two of you. Had to agree to that by contract so I could have you.
He doesn’t take that well, gets all red and “I’ll kill you" eyes.
- Don’t play the offended, I know your mind. I’ve seen your graphs, settings and ratios. Been following them for those twenty-nine years I gave you.
I know you can take it and forget it. You’ve integrated every aspect of your situation by now.
That’s why I’m trying plan A with you, because I know you will take it like a Company boy first, then make me pay somehow but I’m prepared to take it, then forgive me in the end.
And I’ll make it up to you: we’ll T-port separately on Angola, you’ll be the undercover me while I’ll be the Company’s front man. For as long as the situation will allow, you’ll have a life of your own, like you’re an original all over, mind AND body.
Z’s facial muscles relax a little, his eyes tell he’s thinking hard and fast. Still, he wonders “why the gag? WTFk do you have to tell me. Untold issues, whaDZat means?”.
Aurien could use V real time to know his trains of thoughts and maneuver him where he wants, but that would make the whole thing meaningless, maybe not for the bosses but for him.
He lifts himself up, his legs starting to ache, and goes to the lounge chair over the angle of the bed, near the curved glass tip of the bedroom’s triangle. He grabs the leather – real leather from a real cow – ottoman and brings it back in front of Z.
He seats and contemplates his work, the red robotic snake hugging his body – Z’s body – like an extension of his will. The idea that Z will want to get revenge and use it against him crosses his mind but he moves on, knowing he will let him if ever he forgives what he’s about to confess.
“Like I said, I don’t give a shit about you and Tayg. I had it coming and you had the right to do that. That untold issue I have to share with you dates back way longer. Started thirteen years ago…”
Z’s eyes shrink as he concentrates, then widen.
“Yes, It’s about Reem.”
3/4 : One is the loneliest number
Aurien was engened, incumbed and born on a planet made livable by the Company. Space is more than huge and exploring it, then crossing it with huge fleets of huge ships and terraforming an suitable rock – at least .9 on the Earth Similarity Index – doesn’t come cheap. So all they ask in return is that you breed or produce new customers to fill its worlds and feed its never-ending growth.
So when his pre-liners started spreading crazy ideas like “learning to overcome bodily desires”, or finding “better uses of brain power and physical abilities” to try “reaching a higher state by renouncing materiality”, they should have known their days were numbered.
Trying to implement that by imposing strict discipline on Junior Citizens was their last mistake. It was a violation of the first principle of Humanism, slightly adapted by the Company: « No citizen or consumer can be denied freedom over his or her potential unless he or she limits others’ potentials. »
By the time the Company decided it had enough, Aurien was already sixteen and had had no sex. Constant intellectual stimulation and physical exercise but no fuKing sex. The crazies there believed that you can’t be bothered by things no one tells you about.
But they were broke idealists and most of the population was only slightly Prolonged, with few other upgrades via engening. They tried to go after the sex drives but those are second degree features scattered all around the DNA sequence. Hard to debug. So Aurien suffered atrocious frustration and a constant feeling of inadequateness. Others like him hided their ailment and he met none. He felt desperately lonely. And he learned each of us is an island separated from the others by a sea of incommunicability. No matter how hard you try, others can’t understand you. Most of the time, they won’t even try.
When the Company re-invested that poisonous place to change its business model and reorient its human stock toward the joys of consumption, he saw it as a release. Some just thrive when worlds end. The crazy elders there gave assault rifles to everyone, JuCies included. By the time a skwad of Company Korps found his nest, he had gunned down every bridger, monk and co-ager he could, others had fled. Pussies…
The Company was impressed by his nihilist, destructive energy and he passed very extensive tests. They liked what they saw and decided he had too much potential to be left on Bleece with the surviving population. T-porting is expensive, so they were send back to Neoropa by ships, under the watch of a Korps battalion. One of their alphas was the one who found Aurien at his nest, guy was called Benz. He said: “You’re a nasty one, an hugly fuKer. The bosses love that but before you become one of them bastards, I’ll teach you everything has two sides, and consequences. There are things they don’t care about, they even think that makes you stronger…”
During the flight, Aurien learned sex the hard way with the entire battalion. He was the prize in games, dares and bets. Twenty skwads, a hundred boyz. Even at ten times the speed of light, tearing through space-time via the potential dimensions, it took two years to reach the Company’s headworld.
They made it up to him after that, real Prolong and complete DNA upgrade, best integrated neural link and Iface, a thrilling job and the best lifestyle in the Orion Arm.
Lots of nasty sex too. He tried everything, started with the Korps’ military porn, then bondage and shared sensorial data, parallel selves and borrowing other bodies to venture in the most dangerous places and get mugged and sometime raped. Costly but fun stuff.
He grew, reached thirty and stopped aging. He lived five centuries longer than his pre-liners’ genes would have made possible, he designed many worlds re-investments and reorientations, had Crazies slaughtered by the thousands by the Korps. He saw that Benz had more than his share of the most intolerable jobs. Old fuK never reached retirement. Given time, life was great.
But you live what you’ve learned, and he never found a mate worth changing his views on the isolated self. He was closer to V than to any biological person.
So the idea of having Z took shape in his mind. Another Aurien, body and soul. He would have no problem sharing everything with such a “individual”.
But you can make a copy of your body, it won’t produce another you. This other self must live trough the same sequence of events and experiences, in the same environment, to become even remotely like you.
He could afford the best Company JuCies’ nests but as soon as Z was out of the biotek womb, he sent him to the craziest world they had in store. His masterpiece. Poor Z was repressed and outcasted until providential release by Korps when he was sixteen.
But he spared him the gangrapes during the trip back home. He had low moral settings, even for the Company’s standards, but his experiment didn’t include putting the kid he had been to the same ordeal twice.
He had no teenage love when he was a teen and Z deserved to have some. So he’ll be a better Prolonged thirty years old man than Him, somehow. The worlds could use that
He had a better idea on how to reach the same results. One that would allow him to live what his own life missed AND offer Z the gift of a lifetime.
The worlds are in no shortage of sexy young meat, ready to sign anything. And considered as free citizens and mature consumers by the Company. The kid he chose agreed to vacate his body for a standard clone until his new upgraded personal clone reached his legal age. That and 500 Ks.
So Z met Reem on his first year on the planet, during a survival exercise in the jungle with the Company’s Junior boyz. Reem was slightly more muscular, olive skinned and looked exotic. Far enough from the mainly Caucasian mix of Neoropa to stand out among other equally attractive but all the same kids.
Love at first sight, some powerful attraction at least. Perfect match, instant mutual understanding and complementarity. Positive synergy, an upward circle.
They fought and raced, dared each other and teamed up against others. They finished each other’s sentences, laughed silly and couldn’t stop touching. Over the course of five years, they tried everything physically possible between two males and Z delightfully lost himself in Reem’s surprisingly inventive kinks. That kid knew so many things…
They’d always fuK the rough and simple way but Reem’s love of ties and knots would spice it up quite often. Toward the end, they had become experts in inviting other guys into their games. A real hot couple.
Reem just couldn’t have enough and Z saw this fire as a gift from Nature he had the responsibility to keep burning. And in return, Reem proved to be the most intense and interesting human being Z had ever come across. The exact opposite of those sinister, tight-assed Crazies he grew up with.
But a Company man is never free unless he owns some share of it, and those are limited and already owned. So Aurien was kept well busy and his parallel self in Reem felt more and more like a different person. He just couldn’t integrate it all. His gift to Z was too hard to maintain.
It needed an end, one that would balance the experience. Inverted symmetry, as always: an intense, horrible pain after a long, complete pleasure. Once it has known both, the mind can navigate freely in all its potential.
So Reem died at twenty-one.
Z was too bright to be in the Korps, he studied world building. Reem was fun and inventive but too lively for brain work. That was all a show directed at Z, of course, but he was selected for the bosses’ special ops.
Before he turned twenty-two, he was sent on a top-secret mission. Knowing this flight would be Reem’s last, Aurien sent his young hot body after every doable and receptive male he found on board. The Company likes synergy between projects and soon-to-be-history Reem had been assigned to a Skwad whose other members were all Company skin-hoppers, corporate spies waiting to jump from one stolen identity to the next.
They all went down in flames in their Korps liftwing, corporate martyrs shot down by enemies of the freedom of potential use.
Z knew the rules, and he was thankful enough to the Company for saving him, so he never questioned the fact that the hypothetical backuped Reem was not allowed to see anyone he met prior to his body loss. He lost a life protecting the K in the company’s three letters name so he was enjoying a better life now, maybe sharing their master’s life, so he was proud he’d been the first love of such a hero.
So he got over it and learned his lessons. He’d never admit it, but he grew into a desperate, bitter loner. Just like Aurien, who’d made his official appearance at last. Just in time to pick up the pieces and save Z from himself. Literally.
Thank to his Reem years, he was in exceptional mental shape and he did wonders in stitching Z’s life back to a integrated, balanced whole. Z felt remaining loyalty to his lost love, he was eager to use the ropes as a symbol of his lack of control on all of that. He loved the ropes with Reem and loved them, needed them with Aurien for the exact opposite reason. Inverted symmetry again, with Z at the center.
Z listens to it all. He hears the words and knows they’re true. No need to look into his inverted eyes on his original’s face. Everything falls into place. How could he be so oblivious, so blind? He knew Reem for five years, then Aurien for eight and he saw no connection…
When he hears:
“So yeah… I was Reem.”
… He knows he’ll kill Aurien, somehow. Someday. He’ll use that bot to strangle him or tear his body apart, they can do that too. And their sick masters will like that, they’ll laugh and offer him Aurien’s position. They’ll re-engene his eyes so no one would tell the difference and that twisted, cold blooded, heartless monster sharing his image will disappear unnoticed. And unmissed.
4/4 : from A to Z
During the time he spent alone with the tiebot and Aurien’s devasting speech, Z watched the moon rising over the sea and ascending toward its zenith. This rock had everything but no satellite before humans got here. They added it so it’d have tides and because homo sapiens need a white night light to sleep or dream. Suns are our days/father and moons are our night/mom.
In a typical move, The Company used it as support for what is probably the biggest advertising in the Galaxy. It’s hundreds of kilometers big and anamorphous so the logo doesn’t appear distorted from equatorial areas.
First test they put you through in their down-liners nests is bridgers asking you: “what do you think it is?” Everybody says “wings and shield” or “angry emoji”, very few see the three letters combined to form an higher degree shape. That shape is more obvious than what it’s made of but what it’s made of was there before… They put messages in everything.
A pet at my side, God in the sky… V playing a song in his head, the Company’s playlist is part of the conditioning. You see or think of something and a related song comes to you… Ages old Earthly stuff, criptic wisdom from the Company’s early days.
And like their mark on the moon, they’re always there. They either use V as their eyes and hears when they care to pay attention directly or V is acting for them when their minds are focused on presumably higher order matters.
Whatever the actual answer is, result’s the same: the bot’s symmetrical ends unhooked, and he feels the hold on his body getting softer. The bot stays in place but Z feels he could slip out of it, if it weren’t for the loops around the chair’s bars and legs.
By the time he gets some strength back, neural controls of the bot appear in his InView and the thing does respond to the first tense and relax orders he sends. Aurien is still vomiting his sorry excuses for torturing him and he doesn’t seem to notice anything wrong with the bot. Second user warning should have appeared in his InView… Someone’s messing with the link. A subtle “do what you feel” message from above.
The snake like machine unfolds like a red whip, the formerly hands-tying end jumps above Z’s head and goes straight at Aurien’s neck. It doesn’t do anything else, just loops three times around his human shape’s blueprint Adam’s apple and squeezes.
Washed over the side, top of the sky. Slow diver down, two feet land on a different ground…
Aurien’s arms flap in the air and his hands mechanically search for his throat, but he doesn’t use his combat apps. He knows what Z knows. He understands his masters had a plan C for the two of them: fan the flames and see who comes out alive.
Z stares at him while he stands, shakes off his arms and legs and gets rid of the tape. His hand and forearm make swirling motions around his face to unwrap his mouth, the ageless distinctive noise is the only sound in the room.
Aurien is on his knees, one hand on the floor and the other clutching uselessly at the bot. He stares back, eyes lost but not pleading. He’s resigned. Even him can sense such an existence coming to an end is not so bad a thing.
Z releases some of the bot’s grip so he doesn’t go too quick. They need to talk.
…Can’t live easily, can’t even speak. But all of them speak, all over the world…
He grabs a loose section of the bot and pulls it back toward him, forcing Aurien to creep on all four like the dog on a leash he’s always been. He seats on the floor, back against the bed and looses himself in the view. Half choking Aurien lays against his legs. He puts a hand on his tight. Z stretches an arm and caress his hair.
- “Aurien and Z DeLeo, situational analysts and life partners. 14-07 Enterprise drive, Bentley Heights.”, sounded great. Or, simpler and easier to explain: “Z DeLeo, direct down-liner of Aurien DeLeo, 1 748th gen. in line, most of them Crazies or fuKers, often both.” Becoming just “Aurien” could be the hardest part of taking your place.
- You really gonna kill me for “murdering” a fictional character?
- I don’t know… Would you say that that “mental rape” thing you did to me was worst than Benz and his boyz teaching you life in the flesh? Because if you think of it, YOU deserved to be punished after you killed all your fellow Crazies on Bleece… What did I do to deserve to lose Reem?
- What did you do to deserve to meet him?
The bot suddenly squeezes so hard Aurien’s face is deformed by pain. He convulses on the carpet like a fish out of water. Z jumps on him with murderous intensity, he pulls his head up half scalping him.
NOW, he sees fear in the inverted mismatched eyes…
- I’m just trying to find any sense in you, any reason for your existence other than corrupting anything or anyone that crosses your way. Other than using your position as an excuse for that sorry sad THING that you are!
The thing lifts hits hands, waves fingers. His face is blood red and his eyes start to roll in their orbits. Really unpleasing sounds come out of his compressed throat. Squeeze more and you’ll hear the bones cracking. One more release, his last one.
He takes in some air, pants like a dog, his tongue out. His words are hard to make out. Z lowers his ear to his level.
- Just… couldn’t be with the others and couldn’t live without… Couldn’t see it any other way. Even the Crazies, they meant good. They really wanted me happy, but I just couldn’t be. I’ve had good and bad, thought a balanced life would make a balance mind… But good I turn into bad, and bad I make worst…
I could have had multiple bodies with only me in them, but I’d still be alone. So YOU seemed to be a good idea…
…Can’t live easily, can’t even speak. Fish all of them speak, all over the world…
He starts laughing, which turns into a cough. Z eases the bot’s grip a little more.
- What? What could possibly make you laugh?
- I just realized how offset I must be from others. Even someone who shares my base settings and wealth AND body doesn’t wanna be like me.
And yeah… I DID tie myself up and put my head in the slipknot while believing I was in control… Millenniums of psychology and patterns studies and I get fooled by myself… V and the other Intelligent Constructs, they must laugh at us.
- They don’t laugh…
Silence lingers in the now quiet room with a view, the branded moon has disappeared over the roof.
…when one side is hot, the other side of the moon is not.Maybe some time, they’ll make it a ride…
- Man… I so hoped you’d love me.
But you’re like the others, you don’t care for the real me, you just want your expectations to be met without questioning them. Was tired of lying, thass all…
Z looks at the ceiling, he’s trying to think but can’t formulate anything precise.
- You could have used the usual trick: “prove that you’re better than me and don’t kill me” …
- We’re both better than that.
- Well, YOU are…
- See? Gotcha…
- T’was an improper use of the word “better”. You should have said “beyond”.
- FuuuuKKKyouuu…
- Today was my turn, you broke that rule too.
- Another nail to my coffin. Are you gonna kill me or not?
- Think I should but something in me doesn’t like doing what it’s told.
- Sorry for that, guess that’s on me too.
Aurien rests his head in the nest made by Z’s thights and abs. Z’s fingertips wander on his cheek and ear lobe. His other hand caresses his now twin’s hair. He sights.
- Yeah, I know…
I’ll meet you over there, I am. Going to meet you over there…
He thinks some more and can’t help a short mechanical laugh.
- That was a damn good plan, though… If I kill you I’ll be on my own, facing the fact that the most intense love of my life was you. Meaning I may never get from others what you could'nt find either… Because you made me just like you… And so I can’t bring myself to kill you.
Plus, we’re programmed to react at others’ facial expressions and yours are exactly like mine. I see your suffering and I can’t help feeling it. Then I share it. Cleverly done.
- Wasn’t hard, basic play with the power of images and shapes, back and forth between the opposite poles of being human, I and Them, and the usual circular thinking trap…
We’re all an eye before we are an “I”. Select what the eye sees and you’ll get the “I” you want.
All my thoughts, all I am, are my thoughts. All my thoughts, I am all what I’m thaught…
The tiebot leaves Aurien’s neck and spreads over their two bodies, like a cold-blooded reptile looking for heat. One of its ends seems to stare at Z and the other at Aurien. It’s just standard positioning around its potential victims’ heads but it does look like a pet double-headed dog-minded snake curled against its two masters.
- What do we do now? Wait for them to shoot us and send us to biomass?
- We could strangle each other with the bot, it has two ends…
They both laugh this time. Aurien coughs again and his body shakes. Z takes in his arms, lifts him up against his chest. A’s face rests on the Company’s logo on Z’s shirt.
The tiebot leaves them and disappears under the bed. None of them did that. Silent cue from V and/or their masters.
- We’ll take it to Angola, it’ll love tying wild black Coops. Gotta find it a name…
We’ll vent our unresolved tensions on the enemy. Can’t wait to shove their stupid pride back into their mouths and holes…
- G! Who said THAT?
Hard to tell, they got the same voice, of course.
All I am, all I’m taught, all my thoughts. All I am are my thoughts
What I’m nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooot………………
