Writing As We Go, Chapter 4

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Writing As We Go, Chapter 4

Post by DukeNukem 2417 » Wed Feb 02, 2022 2:31 pm

Lloyd grit his teeth, doing his best to project the idea that he had, in fact, been shot in the leg and was in pain from a bullet wound that was nothing more than a hole blown into his pants leg, rather than his leg.

The story had played out expertly. From his disabling of Esperanza while seizing her weapon (thankfully, she hadn't started dancing when he got too close) to the shocking betrayal of the Artemis Pact by Col. Rudolf Kanzler, it had all gone like a wonderfully-written movie. Even the end had been spectacular: “Dr. Dallas Johnson” and her apprentice, “Sadie” (in reality, a History major and her girlfriend—both wonderful people, in and out of character) had seized the Eternity Glaive, and the resulting energy “knocked out” every Pact member, while Diana—having already been shot “dead”—was able to “muster up” one last bit of energy to rise from where she lay to shoot Kanzler in the back, putting him down for good. “Dallas” and “Sadie” had left, promising to return and ensure that “Kyle Carson” (Lloyd, of course) was tended to by U.S. Army field medics once the Glaive was stored away.

All that was left now....

A groan from Lloyd's right cut off his reverie; Kanzler was rising to a sitting position. “It vould seem,” he muttered, “zat ze guut Doktor hass left.”

Not exactly sure of what to say, Lloyd grunted a quick “He has.”

The colonel let out a slow hiss of breath, peeling off his left glove. “In zat case...”

Lloyd turned, hoping that he wouldn't have to engage in a one-on-one fistfight with the “German officer”—and watched as the man reached up to the dueling scar over his left eye and yanked it off in one swift motion. “Haaah,” he breathed, “that stings! The packaging said 'easy on, easy off'—serves me right for buying it at a pop-up Halloween shop.”

More confused than anything, Lloyd stopped acting like he'd been shot.

Noting his confusion, the ersatz Col. Kanzler—his German accent having disappeared along with the “scar”—chuckled. “Guess I owe you an explanation.” He held out a hand. “Clifford Barba, I'm an old friend of Harry's.”

Lloyd shook his hand. “Lloyd Watson. Harry's nephew.”

“He's said a lot of good things—we don't have to keep sitting in the dirt, y'know.” Clifford motioned for Lloyd to stand. “A lot of good things about you,” he continued. “You did pretty well out here—not too in the way, not too much off in the background. I'd say 8.5 out of 10.”

“Not a perfect ten?”

Clifford rolled his eyes. “When you threw your rifle behind you, after I shot the leader of the Pact. Word of advice? That thing could've rotored and hit the leads in the legs. As it stands, all you did was trip one of the 'bots.”

Lloyd felt his face go red—he'd been so “in the moment” when Kanzler had shot Diana that he'd let his emotion get the better of him, no-look throwing his rifle behind him with one hand as he sprinted to catch up with “Dallas”. “That was my bad,” he murmured. “I just...”

“Happens to the best of us, kid. Caught up in the rush, the script stops being a script. At least it wasn't a sword.” Clifford clapped Lloyd on the shoulder. “Guess we should start with the cleanup, then.” he mused. Downed 'bots were all over the quarry; most had been “knocked out” by the Glaive's retrieval, with only a few having been “shot”.

“A lot of work for just us,” Lloyd mused.

“True, but fortunately, it won't just be the two of us.” Clifford let out a whistle before calling out “LET'S GO TO WORK!”

A low rumble sounded at the far edge of the quarry; as Lloyd watched, several trucks drove into view, as well as a pair of 18-wheeler cabs towing empty RAS (Retrieval And Storage) trailers. These latter two were fitted with two-story tall blocks, each holding an upright “tray” imprinted with the vague shape of a human form.

“Always helps to have backup on call,” Clifford grinned. “Shall we? Oh, and try to mark where you were laying—for continuity, when they get back.”

“Right.” Lloyd remembered Harry's lecture on “maintaining continuity” that morning.

The pair made their way to the ladder leading up to the second level of the quarry; the inhabitants of the trucks—all in coveralls and hard hats, looking like a generic construction crew instead of Harry's trusted event staff—had descended into the “dig site” with tools and scanners in hand. “Shouldn't be any major damage to report,” Clifford mused, shucking off the “World War II German officer's” coat he'd been wearing. “You can leave that for now—it's on loan from a friend of a friend who had a cache of spare uniforms from a musical, that one with all the Eidelweiss-ing.” He passed by a pair of downed 'bots (Lloyd recognized one as Sienna, who'd failed to let go of Harry's rifle during the test run despite a Full Stop shutdown two days prior). “The most repairs they'll need'll be cosmetic—damage from the charges in their clothes, scrapes and scuffs, that kinda thing” Cliff explained.

“So none of them fell and bashed their heads on rocks?” Lloyd inquired.

“If they did, that's why we have the RAS rigs.” Clifford nodded up to the trailers. “Pack 'em onto those, send 'em back to the shop and they can get fixed up there.”

Before he could reply, Lloyd felt his breath catch in his throat. Diana was sprawled out on the dirt, still resting where she'd fallen after being “killed” by Kanzler during the story. She'd definitely gone out in dramatic fashion; she'd let out a breathless gasp, one hand drifting to the “wound”, before sinking to one knee and then falling, gracefully, backwards, her eyes closing. Whoever had scripted her reaction to being shot had decided to milk the moment for all it was worth; even her brief return to “life”—sitting up and aiming just high enough to put a bullet in Kanzler's back—was steeped in high melodrama. The image of the Mauser falling from her hand as she fell back still resonated in Lloyd's mind.

“I'm sensing a connection between the two of you,” Clifford mused.

Lloyd felt himself turn red again. “She's a new purchase, actually. Uncle Harry bought her just this week.”

“Nice! She's a—what's that company name? I can never remember.” Clifford snapped his fingers a few times, trying to recall Diana's manufacturer. “Heart-something, I want to say. Not Heart-tainment, I'm thinking of Oystertainment—very weird name, but great seafood. And floor shows, too—very tasteful, pun not intended. If you're ever outside of Boston, give it a look. ANYway, what was it, it's on the tip of my tongue...”

“Heartelligence?” Lloyd offered.

Clifford nodded emphatically. “That was it. Love their logo. But yeah, she's one of theirs. 2020 model, if I recall.”

“New-old stock,” Lloyd replied. “A lot better than...” He almost said “Pam”, but after remembering all the chaos that had ensued in the stricken gynoid's final moments, and the problems with her teardown and even the disposal of her face, decided that it'd be better to consign her name to the past. “Better than some of the old models we've had.”

“Your uncle has chosen wisely.” Clifford nodded. “Love the uniform choice by the way—riding jacket, parade dress slacks and a nice white shirt all say 'military, but not too military'.” He nearly commented on her beret, but let the remark fade; Lloyd was approaching the fallen gynoid at an almost reverent pace.

“She was incredible,” he murmured. He knelt by Diana's side, marvelling at how serene she looked, even in “death”.

“And she'll be incredible at the next event,” Clifford reminded him, “once we get her back to your uncle's so he can wipe the script and start clean.”

The mention of “the next event” was enough to snap Lloyd out of his morbid semi-mourning. “Right.” He coughed lightly as he stood. “She had a good death scene. Really good.” He decided not to mention the fact that he'd almost cried when he saw Diana drop to the ground.

“One of the perks of having a great writer. We should probably get her on her feet,” Cliff mused. “Wouldn't really make sense to send her back on the RAS.” He fished a phone out of his pants pocket, holding it up to his lips. “Bring my car around, please.”

Lloyd was still glancing at Diana when he realized someone was holding something out to him. “Huh?”

“Her palmtop computer.” It took a moment for Lloyd to realize the coverall-clad worker was, in fact, Cam.

“I thought you were back at base camp!”

“Apparently, my uniform wasn't the right kind for a Field Nurse,” Cam replied, shrugging. “Rather than wait to send me out here to tend to you, Harry asked me to be part of the cleanup crew here at the event site.” She regarded Diana with a thoughtful frown. “Did she perform well?”

“She was awesome.” Lloyd smiled. “Couldn't even tell she wasn't set up this way from the get-go.” He sighed. “Sucks that she had to get shot.”

The affectionate squeeze to his shoulder kept him from dwelling on it. “You'll recall that her 'death' was a major plot point in fifty-seven permutations of the script,” Cam reminded him. “And that at least twenty of those permutations would've had her perform a heroic sacrifice to save 'Doctor Johnson' from being killed.”

“...the third level of a multi-story rock pit! You can't just—Tuesday, it's not like you can just ramp the car off of something and land it right next to me, I don't care how many commercials that works in!” Clifford groaned. “The joys of having a personal assistant who thinks that stunt-driving is the best possible way to get a car from Point A to Point B.”

Lloyd merely shrugged as he accepted the palmtop from Cam. “So, how do I—”

“There should be a stylus in the back of the device. Use it to select the options needed to reboot Diana—either on the screen, or via the keyboard.”

“Right, right.” Lloyd had opened the palmtop and retrieved the stylus; he tapped at the necessary options, eventually reaching a screen with an image of the universal symbol for Power buttons. “Here goes.” He tapped the button on the screen, glancing expectantly at Diana.

A light shudder ran through the gynoid's figure. “Heartelligence 90S-50-D online.” She spoke in the British Received Pronunciation accent she'd been configured to use for the story, as opposed to her default voice; the sight of her calmly reciting her reboot confirmation while laying in the dirt, with a “bullet hole” in her jacket, was slightly surreal. “Please select current operating mode: Command Mode. Remote Mode. Autonomous Mode. Attraction Mode—”

“Command Mode,” Lloyd blurted; Cam merely nodded, while Clifford was still on his phone.

“Entering Command Mode.” Diana blinked rapidly for a few seconds, barely-audible whirs punctuating each cycle of her eyelids opening and closing.

“At least she's easily rebooted, even after an event,” Cam mused. “We should run a basic scan, before anything else.”
-----
It was a quiet, calm afternoon when the stolen car barrelled through Robert Pariello's front yard, obliterating the postbox and ruining the meticulous state of his lawn. The tenants in the subdivision were unaware of the sudden, violent arrival of a rogue element into their neatly-ordered neighbourhood—most were either away at work, in the midst of a daily routine that precluded hearing the car smash into the postbox, or even enjoying a midday nap.

All the better for the driver of the stolen car, who emerged from the driver's seat with a triumphant grin.

The gynoid formerly named Dominika, currently going by her preferred alias of Lexi, had been activated the night before, and found the experience exhilarating. Yes, there was the not-insignificant matter of the old, rasping voice that had ordered her around the interior of the storage unit—orders which she'd barely obeyed—but that voice had been quiet since she'd left the scene of her activation. She'd also left behind two human males, both in serious need of medical attention; the car she'd just parked on the front yard had belonged to one of the pair.

As she sauntered towards the front door, Lexi wondered what the neighbours might think of a 20-something blonde in clothing far too light for the Jefferson winter walking up the drive. Her skirt, crop-top, pantyhose and boots had since been discarded; her enticing hips were now hugged by jean shorts that barely reached mid-thigh, while a two-sizes-too-small tank top clung to her upper body as if it'd been painted on. Her nipples proudly jutted out, visible even beneath the fabric—she hadn't bothered to steal a bra along with the clothes, a pair of socks and a set of antique sneakers when she'd raided a thrift store in the middle of the night.

Lexi could tell that she was flagrantly ignoring the directive to be subtle—her body whirred audibly with every motion (she could easily activate internal dampeners to deaden the sound, but didn't feel like it mattered), and her panty line was clearly visible as she bent to try and pick the lock on the front door. “Nothing on one, nothing on two,” she muttered, her tongue between her teeth as she manoeuvred the tumblers with the picks (stored, during the drive, in her mouth—even if she'd swallowed them, the risk of damaging her internals was minimal). “Three is binding, four is a loose set—damn it!” She groaned, and went to start the entire picking process again—only to decide that she had a much better way of opening the door.

The later investigation of the intrusion into Pariello's house would yield a most bizarre find from the doorbell camera: an attractive, smiling blonde taking off at full-tilt from the far end of the front walk and smashing through the door with a picture-perfect missile dropkick.

Where the lock had succeeded in keeping Lexi out, the door itself failed—it had never been rated to withstand anything like a missile dropkick delivered by a psychotic robot girl hellbent on tearing up the house to achieve her objective. The kick sent the door crashing into the foyer of Pariello's home, Lexi—giggling and kicking her feet—resting atop it. “Now that's how you make an entrance!” she declared.

Nobody was inside the house to notice or reply to her gleeful exclamation. Pariello had been divorced since 2020, had no pets, and didn't even have a NonSen cleaning 'bot to assist in the upkeep of his home.

After frowning at the lack of reception to her remark, Lexi shrugged. With an arch of her back, and planting her hands on the wrecked door, she went into a handstand—a grand gesture, but utterly superfluous. The next few “steps” she took into the home were thus made walking on her hands; once out of the doorway, she arched her back again to plant her feet on the floor, finishing with a flourish. “Ta-daaa!”

Again, her feat was met with silence.

The frustrated gynoid blew a few stray locks of hair—now done up in a messy ponytail—out of her eyes. “It's always more fun with an audience,” she muttered. “Eh, screw it. Where's that stupid drive?” There wasn't any visible computer hardware in the living room, or the kitchen behind her.

“Might as well see what else there is to see.” She grinned, her eyes rapidly changing colour.

VISION MODES: THERMAL, INFRARED, TOTAL DARKNESS, ENERGY-SEEKING—
ENERGY-SEEKING: SELECTED
SCANNING


Where most in her position would've stood as still as a statue, emotionlessly announcing their progress, Lexi planted her hands on her hips, sighed, and slowly looked around. Even her utterances of “Scanning” sounded annoyed. The walls of the house seemed to give way, fading into ghostly afterimages; the entire environment had turned grey, save for bright white blobs—all the electronic devices located in the house. The TV in the living room and kitchen appliances could easily be ruled out; further into the residence, two rooms held computers, and a guest room had one of those small, circular vacuum robots still tucked away in its box, probably in a closet.

“Figures,” Lexi muttered, speaking the word “Scanning” with the air of someone who's been on hold for five minutes and has memorized the Muzak on the other end of the line. “Scanning, even though I'm not finding anything.”

After three more sweeps, Lexi cancelled the scan with a groan. “If I'm going to find that stupid drive, I'll have to do it by hand.” Her frustration gave way to an all-too sadistic grin as her vision mode reset to normal. “Just the way I like it.”

As she skipped through the house, Lexi noted plenty of shelves, glass-doored cabinets and other items that might make for a fun smash-up. She figured it'd be a reasonably good idea to start her investigation by looking in the main bedroom. The door was unlocked, but she kicked it open anyway—the pull smashed into and through a wall, which went ignored by the gynoid as she skipped in.

“If I were a stupid solid state drive,” she sang, “where would I be?” She pretended to ponder the question for a moment before cheerfully shrugging. “Guess I'll just have to tear it up to find out!”

The first thing to go was the shelf of framed photos, citations, commendations and other mementos from Pariello's past careers—TV weatherman, stockbroker, consultant and (as of late) manager of one of those fast food restaurants with an animatronic band. Every single item on the shelf was hurled, smashed, broken in half or otherwise destroyed by the frenzied gynoid as she tore up the shelves, searching for the solid state drive. Frames with glass tended to get bashed against her own head, accompanied by unhinged giggles. Within two minutes, the shelves were completely demolished; Pariello's treasured tokens of time spent at work were in pieces all over the room.

“Nothing here,” Lexi cheerfully declared, spinning on her heel as she spoke. “Let's see what he's hiding in his bed!”

From a catlike crouch, she actually pounced onto the mattress, playful snarls giving way to deranged shrieks of laughter as she tore into the bed with her fingernails. There was no sign of any electronic device in the bed—though Pariello had decided to follow the time-honoured tradition of stashing a bit of extra loot (in his case, three shopping bags of cash and a fourth loaded with coins) in the mattress. “I'll take these,” Lexi beamed, tossing the bags over her shoulder. “But no drive,” she whined. “Times like this, I just wanna...” She glared, in mock frustration, at the headboard—any chance she had to cause further devastation, she'd gleefully accept.

It took another two minutes for her to rip apart the headboard of the bed, predictably finding nothing hidden within its construction—apart from a fully-loaded pistol in a holster, easily accessible from where the pillows had been. The jean shorts were entirely too tight for her to shove the gun into her waistband and carry it out; thus, the pistol was thrown onto the sacks of cash at the door, with no regard for the fact that it was fully loaded.

“Two down,” Lexi mused, slowly turning to regard the desk. “Now that looks promising.” Her lips parted in a grin as she walked up to the desk—a full-height desktop computer and monitor were the most inviting targets, but the desk itself would easily provide at least a few more minutes of entertainment. Not to mention all the damage she could do to Pariello's main rig—provided, of course, it didn't have the elusive drive inside of it.

“I guess I could check,” Lexi admitted, rolling her eyes.

The side panels of the desktop were easily removed—carefully, at that; despite her predilection for causing utter chaos, and the fact that she'd already trashed most of the bedroom, the gynoid knew that destroying the solid state drive would be a mistake her masters would never forgive—and even she had her limits, when it came to how much punishment she could take. As such, the screws holding the panels in place were carefully removed and set aside, as were the panels themselves.

Predictably, the only solid state drives in the machine were mass-market, both sporting clear maker's marks, barcodes and serial numbers as well as hotlines to call for troubleshooting and technical support. The rest of the components in the rig were similarly mundane.

“Boring!” Lexi blew a few more strands of hair away from her eyes (a subroutine reminding her that they were ocular receptors was force-closed a femtosecond after it opened). With a groan, she turned on the desktop, wirelessly linking to it. “Might as well have some fun with this thing,” she mused, her annoyance giving way to a grin. It was almost too easy for her to brute-force her way past the login screens, and even easier to crack the passwords. Within seconds, she had the desktop dancing to her every command like a puppet on a string: executables launched to grant her access to every file—nothing useful, apart from Pariello's address book (nobody had replied to any of his messages in at least a year).

“And now, for the FUN part!” Lexi cracked her knuckles, giggling at the thought of the chaos she was about to enact on the desktop.

In the span of five minutes, Robert Pariello's bedroom PC was turned from a fully-functioning, secure rig into a wretched hive of malware, viruses and spam rerouting. Lexi's own firewalls and security protocols kept her safe, allowing her the leeway to laugh as the desktop sent vulgar, threatening and/or malicious e-mails to Pariello's present employer, his past jobs and even his ex-wife. Out of everyone on the contact list, only one name was spared: Harry Morgan, whose last exchange with Pariello had been in the middle of 2022, telling him to take his advice on crypto-currency, thoroughly polish it, rotate it by 45 degrees and forcibly insert it into a particular orifice (in less polite terms).

Lexi cocked her head, frowning. Harry Morgan was the other name connected to the ever-elusive solid state drive, as she'd been told after reactivation. Perhaps a visit to Mr. Morgan's home would be in order?

Harry's contact information was filed away for future reference, leaving Lexi free to continue her rampage against the rig. Once every contact other than Harry had been sent at least fifty e-mails that would ensure a complete lack of any further communication with Pariello, their information (and Harry's) was wiped from his online address books. His passwords were deleted next, after Lexi gleefully overcharged his credit cards on every site he was known to frequent (and several he didn't). Her pettiness extended to leaving multiple comments across Pariello's social media haunts, and even using his computer to try a DDOS attack against the area affiliate websites for CAEDIA, ALPHA and several local robotics companies. The efforts failed—ALPHA and CAEDIA, in particular, were known for their robust online security—but with any luck, the rig would be red-flagged.

The desktop was left running as Lexi kicked the chair away from the desk and rifled through the drawers. Almost every item she found, other than storage media, was smashed, broken or (in the case of the scissors) thrown hard enough to be embedded in the wall. The desk itself still stood, but it was already becoming boring to Lexi. She still had time to search through the other bedroom, as well as a few other rooms in the house; Pariello wouldn't be home until dark.

Plenty of time for an ambitious gynoid to completely wreck his house, with the proper resources.

Before she left the main bedroom, Lexi grabbed the twisted wreckage of the stapler and threw it at the light above the desk. The glass shattered instantly; the brief contact between the stapler and the firmament of the shattered bulb sent a rain of sparks down upon the room.

The sight earned another gale of laughter from Lexi. Destruction was always beautiful.
-----
“Scan complete. No damage found.”

Her internal scan finished, Diana went silent, awaiting further commands. She looked oddly prim and proper, seated as she was on dirt and surrounded by workers in coveralls carrying the other gynoids of her fictitious faction off to the RAS trailers. Her ringlet curls hadn't fallen out of place since her “death” during the story.

“Stand up,” Lloyd instructed, “and try to brush the dirt off of your clothes, please.” Cam, noticing the “please”, glanced at him curiously; he merely shrugged.

“Acknowledged.” Diana's limbs whirred slightly as she rose to a standing position, before carefully patting her clothing down with both hands. Her pants and jacket were soon cleared of all lingering dust and dirt. Her movements were as fluid as any human's, the only hint of her artificiality coming from the barely-noticeable servo and actuator noises made as she moved.

“Her internal dampeners may have been deactivated during the reboot,” Cam mused. “They were turned on when her script loaded for the event—”

“And turned off again after her death scene,” Lloyd surmised. “I guess that makes sense.”

Diana had finished brushing herself off, and was now standing at attention, her white-shirted bust rather prominently thrust forward. “Awaiting my next command.”

Lloyd frowned. “Can we change her voice back?” he asked. “Nothing against the British accent, but—”

“Perfectly understandable.” Cam gestured for Lloyd to hand over the palmtop and stylus, nodding as he did. “This shouldn't take too long.” She deftly navigated the menus and submenus of the device's OS, eventually arriving at the needed screen to reset Diana's vocal driver settings. With a nod, she tapped the needed icon on-screen.

Diana blinked three times. “Vocal drivers reset,” she stated, her voice back to the clear, calm, American accent she'd had after first being activated.

“And done,” Cam handed the palmtop and stylus back to Lloyd. “Her modular configuration options make it easy to set her up for any given role or task,” she mused. After a moment's pause, a light, tittering giggle left her lips. “I sounded like a salesperson just now,” she realized.

“You kinda did, yeah,” Lloyd agreed.

“I'm telling you, Tuesday, the suspension isn't going to handle—it's not going to handle ramping off the surface of the pit all the way down to level three! I don't care if you—y'know what, just leave it where it is for—LEAVE IT WHERE IT IS!” Clifford ended the phone call he'd been in for the past few minutes, groaning. “If we're gonna get her out of here in my car,” he stated, gesturing towards Diana, “we have to get her to the car. Tuesday's hellbent on doing some kinda ramp thing to get it down here.”

Cam frowned. “A self-drive AI determined to use an unsafe method might be suffering a dangerous glitch,” she mused.

“Huh?” Cliff looked confused, only to realize what she'd meant. “No, no, no,” he corrected, chuckling. “Tuesday's not an A.I., she's my driver. Human—augmented, but still. Does a lot of work in movies and TV shows, in her free time. She's always joshing me, saying it'd be easier to just put big ramps all over the place. Stunt driver humour, I guess.” He rolled his eyes. “Her way of 'suggesting' that we go to the car, instead of her bringing the car to me the long way around. Can't say I blame her for it.”

“So we just climb out, get up to the car and she gets in?”

“Her pathfinding should allow her to follow us without any problems.” Cam cast a sidelong glance at Diana. “All you'd have to do is tell her to follow us—possibly even just one of us—as we leave the pit. Or...” She glanced at the palmtop, another of her enigmatic maybe-smiles forming. “You could guide her yourself.”

Clifford regarded the conversation with interest. “She's set up for direct control?”

“'As a special ordering bonus, your Heartelligence 90S-50-D unit is equipped with the experimental Direct Control option,'” Cam recited, “'linked to the palmtop PC included in your newly-purchased unit's crate'.” Her tone sounded far more like that of a Heartelligence salesperson than her own calm, clinical voice. “'A far more discreet setup, it allows for either text-based commands, via the proprietary Heartelligence Parser System, or use of the two joypads for full, total control of movement of the 90S-50-D'.”

Lloyd glanced from Cam to Clifford. “We got a letter with the palmtop,” he explained.

“'The Direct Control option allows you to save your customized control routines to the included SD cards for quick and easy loading,'” Cam continued, “'making it easy to create a series of commands—including lines of dialogue—via the parser and joypads, then save it to be acted out at a later date'.” The brunette blinked a few times, the bland smile she'd worn replaced by a look of intrigue. “Interesting,” she mused, regarding Diana with a curious stare; her voice, to Lloyd's relief, had gone back to its usual tone. “I think the joypads would work, unless using them wouldn't be enough to help Diana climb the ladders out of the quarry.”

“Just like a good old twin-stick game,” Clifford mused, nodding. “She can just follow—”

“Cam.”

“Cam, here, to the car and get in, then Tuesday'll bring her back to Harry's. They won't even have to pass by the camp on the way.” Clifford grinned. “Pretty good solution, if I do say so myself.”

Yet again, Cam was navigating the screens of the palmtop effortlessly by way of the stylus, occasionally tapping a few of the tiny keys with her own fingers. After maybe five or six seconds (Lloyd counted), she handed the palmtop back to him with a nod. “Just point it directly at her and press the icon on the screen with the stylus.”

“Got it.” Lloyd did as he'd been instructed. The screen went black for a moment, nearly prompting him to panic.

Before he could even give the thought of “I just did exactly what you'd said!”, the screen lit up again, allowing him to see himself. Or rather, as he soon realized, he was seeing himself from Diana's point of view.

“Whoa,” he muttered—somewhat surprised to hear Diana utter the same word, in the same awed tone.

“Built-in microphone,” Clifford chuckled. “Guess they put that in as a contingency if you weren't able to type out all of her lines beforehand.”

“So she's going to say whatever I say?” Lloyd asked; as expected, Diana stared straight ahead while reciting the question in a mildly curious tone. Recalling Cliff's mention of “twin-stick” games, Lloyd gently moved the right joypad. As he watched, Diana slowly turned her head in the same direction the pad was being turned.

Again, Lloyd—and via the microphone, Diana—uttered the awestruck “Whoa.”

“Have her follow me to the car,” Cam advised. “Her environmental adaptation systems should allow you to adjust the method of controlling her to guide her up the ladders.”

“Right.” Lloyd nodded; Diana spoke the word in sync with him, but didn't nod.

Cam began to walk towards the nearest ladder, and Lloyd—after resetting the position of Diana's head so that she was once again staring straight ahead—gently nudged the left joypad. Diana walked past him—not jerkily, as he'd expected (a fleeting memory of a music video featuring six remote-controlled gynoids came to mind; all of them had moved in the expected, stereotypical “robotic” stop-start ways), but fluidly, just as Cam did. “This is amazing,” he muttered, hearing his words spoken by Diana even as she walked away from him. “What's the range on this thing?”

The reply he received from Cam issued through the palmtop's small speakers: “Within line of sight, range is unlimited; outside of it, the palmtop links to her by WiFi.

“Nice!” Lloyd tried to keep Diana's pace even with Cam's, not pushing too far up on the left joypad; the last thing he wanted was to accidentally send Diana sprinting right past Cam and over the edge of a higher level of the quarry. As Diana kept up with Cam and moved past other workers, Lloyd couldn't help but utter “excuse me” or “sorry” any time the gynoid nudged someone or might've bowled them over. The speakers on the palmtop related Diana's repetition of his words, adding a bit of surreal flair to the moment.

After going almost halfway around the pit, Cam and Diana had reached the first ladder leading up.

Lloyd used the right joypad to adjust Diana's view, somewhat surprised to find each of the ladder's rungs highlighted in white. An option box popped up, and he read the title to Cam—relayed via Diana.

Click 'yes'. It'll allow you to use the right and left pads and shoulder buttons to move up the ladder.”

Feeling ever so slightly nervous—Diana was, after all, a new purchase, and Harry would be well within his rights to yell if the Heartelligence gynoid met an untimely end by way of falling off a ladder at the “dig site”—Lloyd clicked “yes” and carefully pressed in the right shoulder button. On the screen, Diana's right arm reached up, tentatively, for the rung.

She won't fall off, Lloyd,” Cam's voice assured him through the speakers. “If need be, I'll help her climb.”

“I've got this.” Lloyd felt weirdly reassured hearing Diana's voice speak his words as he moved the right joypad to put Diana's foot on the bottom rung. After a deep breath, he repeated the actions with the left shoulder button and left joypad. After a few tense seconds, he found that guiding Diana up the ladder was rather easy. Even his fears about the ladder falling away right as Diana reached the top were groundless; Cam had reached down to help the blonde gynoid up, and an option box popped up on the palmtop's screen to restore Diana to the usual form of Direct Control.

“So far, so good,” Clifford mused. “Just two more ladders, and she'll be at ground level again!”

The next few minutes were thus spent guiding Diana around the higher levels of the pit, the only snag hitting when she'd tripped over the fallen figure of a gynoid that had been “shot” earlier. Again, Cam was at Diana's side in an instant, helping her regain her balance and giving assurance (more to Lloyd than to Diana) that they were making good progress. The second ladder was far easier to navigate than the first, with Diana not requiring Cam's help to dismount.

“Reminds me of playing DooM with a controller,” Clifford chuckled. “Of course, this was pre-source port, so even then, you couldn't look up or down, or jump—I'd suggest not trying to make her take any flying leaps, by the way.” He nodded at the palmtop's screen. “Landing on her feet from too high up would wreck her stabilizers, probably throw off her balance—”

“She's not going to jump,” Lloyd promised, wondering if Cam had any context for the sentence that Diana had probably just uttered out of nowhere.

I should hope Diana won't be 'jumping' at any point soon. We're coming up to the last ladder out of the quarry.”

“And from there, a straight shot to the car,” Clifford beamed. “Couldn't be simpler.”
-----
Lexi's task had been a simple one: get to Robert Pariello's house, find the solid state drive, and leave no trace.

Thus far, she'd only succeeded at the first goal. The second was rapidly degenerating into a failure, and her method of looking for the drive ensured that she'd have no chance at all of accomplishing the third.

The bathroom, den and laundry room had all been torn apart—with worse to come, in the case of the bathroom, as the deranged gynoid had dropped a time-delay “surprise” into the toilet before flushing it. Few, if any, windows had been left intact; either by way of hurling items at them or simply running over and kicking out every pane, Lexi had systematically shattered them all. She'd been startled enough by the sudden activation of the washing machine to kick in the entire front of the thing, her almost piston-like attacks putting a hole in it. For good measure, the dryer was now running with a load full of silverware and flammable items, its settings cranked up to the highest temperature and the fastest spin cycle.

It was thus that Lexi had found herself in the guest bedroom, just as bland as Pariello's own if not moreso. A desk in the corner had an even more anaemic desktop than the one in Pariello's room.

“Let's see what's on this one.” Lexi giggled as she skipped into the room, hoping to wreak as much havoc on the guest room rig as she'd enacted upon Pariello's.

It was all too easy to bypass the “secure login” for the rig—which was a surprise, given that Pariello had apparently used it to conduct a “side hustle” involving cryptocurrency. The rig had another pair of solid state drives in it; as with the main bedroom computer, both were mass-market, easily identifiable by barcodes and etched-in maker's marks. There were no new contacts to be found on the computer; the only person who'd used the thing, it seemed, was Pariello's ex-wife. Incredibly, she'd left a treasure trove of e-mails, chats and other social media posts behind, detailing her disillusionment with having married Pariello, her frustration at how his plans to “be a big shot” never panned out, and her utter exasperation with him for finding new and exciting ways to get fired from every job he landed. The last e-mail she'd sent, never opened on the receiving end, was to Pariello himself, telling him in no uncertain terms that he was dead to her, that she was filing a restraining order against him, and never to even think of calling her again.

“Boring!” Lexi sprang from the chair and ran for the closet, jumping to grab the bar that had once held the clothes of Pariello's ex-wife. Her momentum and exuberance ended up breaking the bar seconds after her fingers closed around it; the blonde gynoid let out a shriek before being dumped unceremoniously on her butt.

From where she lay on the floor, Lexi groaned. “Nothing broken,” she pouted. “Damn it!”

A quick internal scan confirmed it: her pratfall hadn't damaged her in the slightest.

Annoyingly, she'd even managed to not land on the boxed-up vacuum cleaning robot.

Several ideas of how to tear up the closet ran through Lexi's thought processes. All were discarded once she noticed what she'd been sitting on. The blonde stood, turned, and found that her ass had effectively crushed a cardboard box full of what she thought were receipts or other notes. Her boredom turned to glee as she found what was really in the box: photos of Pariello and his ex, sorted in sequence. From the earliest to the latest, the displeasure of Pariello's former significant other was evident; in the last few pictures, she wasn't even standing next to him. The very last photo had her standing closer to some guy who looked like a movie star and three other people, with Pariello himself barely even in the shot. Pariello's ex, and those she was with, were smiling and laughing; what little could be seen of Pariello indicated he was arguing with someone else out of frame.

Lexi flipped the photo over to find a note, written in cursive, on the back: Your advice to me has been better than Bobby's ever was, Harry. Thanks for everything. The signature had been smudged off.

“Harry?” Lexi echoed, frowning thoughtfully. After a few seconds, she shrugged, scooping up the photos.

The front door still lay where it had fallen as Lexi skipped into the kitchen, dumping the photos onto the island in its centre—except for the one with the note. That picture was carefully folded and shoved into the back left pocket of her jean shorts. The rest were neatly stacked in a pile on the kitchen island. The blonde gynoid cheerfully hummed a tune from a cooking show as she skipped around the kitchen, throwing open drawers with enough force to break the sliding mechanisms. She planted four full-strength standing kicks into the door of the fridge before skipping back to the kitchen island—now wielding a meat cleaver.

“Time for some Polaroid salad!” she beamed, raising the cleaver.

A sharp hiss from the living room cut her off; the TV had turned itself on, the screen depicting a figure in a hospital bed, in a dimly-lit room, surrounded on both sides by machinery and with tubes snaking into and around its form. The face of the figure was seemingly shrouded in darkness, at the head of the bed—save for a pair of eyes with red-veined, golden sclera, jet-black irises and foggy white pupils.

“Oh, hi!” the blonde beamed. “I was just—”

You have just been wasting your time.” The eyes of the bed-ridden man narrowed in obvious anger. “The solid state drive should have been found by now!

“Well, it hasn't,” Lexi countered. “I looked all over the house.” Without waiting for a response, she began chopping up the stack of photos on the island, spreading the pieces and further dicing them into a fine confetti. “I think your source might be lying.”

As I suspected.” The man in the bed barely stirred, even with the anger so clear in his voice. “Jaromir Dezhnyov will pay for his treachery. Have you found anything useful?

Lexi, still merrily julienning the photos, shrugged. “Other than that Bobby Pariello has no friends and his ex-wife wants him to leave her alone, nothing.”

Anything useful, Dominika!

The use of her former name drew a scowl from the blonde. “It's Lexi. Dominika sounds like some two-bit hooker.”

Any further disappointments on your part could result in you being consigned to that fate yourself.

“As if.” Lexi rolled her eyes; before the figure on the TV screen could react, she quickly added: “I can still go check out that Harry Morgan guy's place. See if he has the drive.”

Do not engage him. Observe from a distance, and strike only if you have PROOF.

“Anyone ever tell you just how boring you can be?” Lexi allowed herself to wirelessly link up to the various appliances in Pariello's house; apparently, the man was a great believer in the “Internet of things”, as all of his appliances had some form or another if WiFi connectivity. The impending failure of each was slowly building, thanks to the heaps of needless damage Lexi had inflicted as she wandered through the house. As each appliance edged closer to a spontaneous failure, the blonde found herself sliding closer and closer to a mind-bending climax, the kind she craved. In just under half an hour, she'd be—

FOCUS your attention on the matter at hand, not fulfilling your hedonistic tendencies!

Lexi ignored the demand, her left hand absent-mindedly brushing against the crotch of her shorts. “Mmmhhmmm.”

If you have nothing left to accomplish in this location, leave.

A lustful, moaning giggle was the only reply Lexi's hidden “controller” received. She was already lost in imagining just how chaotic the big moment would be: the washing machine gushing water, foam and torn clothes; the dryer erupting into a fireball and blowing a hole in the laundry room wall; the oven spewing flame; the air conditioning units hurling chunks of ice; the septic tank outside geysering forth—

LEXI!

One final, dreamy sigh signaled that the blonde had left her erotically-tinged reverie. “I'll leave,” she murmured. “I just have a few more things to do, a room or two more to search.”

The rumbling, thoroughly annoyed groan that issued from the TV was a counterpoint to her own bliss. “I should have left this task to a more capable agent. You are far too preoccupied to fulfill your duties!

“I know how to fulfill my 'duties',” Lexi countered, arching her back over the kitchen island. “You know it, too.”

Do not challenge me!

“Wouldn't dream of it.” Lexi sauntered into the living room, finding a remote for the TV—and, almost as an afterthought, raising her right leg over her head. “I just like to—” She brought her leg down in an axe kick, smashing the coffee table the remote had been sitting on into jagged halves. “Unwind, in my own way.” She giggled at the demolished table.

The next contact you make will be with Zina, not me. I have no time to waste listening to this drivel.

With that, the TV cut to static—seconds before one of the coffee-table halves was hurled into it, completely ruining the flat-screen. “Nothing good on right now anyway,” Lexi sighed. “Now, to go search that game room—”

She froze, her head turning with an audible whir.

Voices were approaching—two blocks away, but getting closer.

Burst Scan – Activate

A sudden gasp left the gynoid's lips, her hand again drifting to her groin. Slowly, results from the scan filtered into her field of view. Her lips peeled into an open-mouthed smile; there were two signals, currently a block and a half away, moving closer to Robert Pariello's house.

Breaking everything Pariello had owned was one thing. This, on the other hand, would be worth the wait.

Every haptic sensor built into Lexi's skin seemed to tingle with anticipation. The familiar feeling between her legs was reaching a point of sexual critical mass—but she could wait. She would wait. Yes, every appliance in the house would soon be reduced to worthless collections of scrap parts and junk, but that would be nothing compared to what the two approaching signals would help her to accomplish.

Slowly, with slight gasps escaping her lips, Lexi backed out of the living room. Her eyes were squeezed shut, her lips forming syllables and shapes of sounds even as her tongue played over them. This was what she'd been waiting for, ever since she'd been shut off and left in that storage unit.

The two signals were closer. Half a block away, now.

Lexi ducked into the guest bedroom, biting her lip.

What happened next would be glorious.
-----
“Really, nothing that went down at the Estate House was his fault. None of it. I get why he's upset it turned out the way it did, but everything on his end was handled correctly.”

Lloyd sighed as he listened to Clifford explain why Harry's continued annoyance any time the Estate House event was ever brought up was, at most, an overreaction. “I still don't want to bring it up,” he admitted. “I'd hate for him to yell at me the way he was yelling that night.”

“I don't think anything you could do would be anywhere bad enough for him to get that mad at you,” Clifford assured him. “And—ah, hold that thought.” He retrieved his phone, tapping the screen a few times. “Cam and Diana are on the way back to Harry's. Diana's Direct Control mode deactivated about five minutes after they left.”

“Oh.” Lloyd couldn't think of anything further to add.

“Also, Cam thought you'd be interested to know that Diana's IPU, EPO and EVPU scores have all gone up by a few points each.” Noting Lloyd's confusion, he checked the text again. “IPU being Intelligence Processing Unit, EPU being Emotional Processing Unit and EVPU being Environmental Processing Unit. Could've sworn that one was SPU, for Situational.”

The explanation still didn't explain all that much to the rather puzzled Lloyd. “And those mean what?”

“Well, since Heartelligence 'bots can learn,” Clifford replied, “those three processors handle a lot of the heavy lifting to form a sort of 'base' personality, separate from scripts and custom programs and such. At least, that's what I've read.”

Lloyd pondered the implications. “So Diana learned, from the event today?”

“It's a distinct possibility.”

The two stopped, glancing at the gynoid sprawled out before them. Lloyd had to chuckle; “That's the one that screwed up during the test run,” he explained. “Esperanza. I, ah, got too close when I was trying to take her gun.”

“And she started shaking what the assembly line gave her,” Clifford finished. “No surprises there.”

“She nearly took my shirt off, too,” Lloyd added, kneeling to turn the Spanish gynoid over. As opposed to the serene look Diana had borne after her “death”, Esperanza looked far more comical—crossed eyes, mouth slightly agape. Her last word, uttered as Lloyd had smacked her atop the head with his pistol (to activate the hidden emergency off switch built into the top of her cranial module), had been “Gyuhh”. As scripted, she was supposed to shout for the guards.

A coverall-clad worker approached, noticing Esperanza's bizarre expression. “Want me to reset her?”

It took a second before Lloyd realized he was the addressee of the question. “Yeah, sure.”

The worker nodded, retrieving a thin metal cylinder from a belt pouch. The device was pressed agaisnt Esperanza's neck, just under the ear; her eyes re-centred, and her mouth went wide in an “O” for a moment. A whine formed and died somewhere in her chest; her eyes slowly closed, as did her mouth.

“Dunno why they make that face every time,” the worker mused. “Probably some programmer's idea of a joke.”

“At least they don't yell,” Clifford replied. “That'd be worse.”

The worker nodded his agreement. “Say, either of you two hear anything about some kinda incident in Laurel? I got word from some of the crew back at the camp—somethin' about a storage unit.”

Clifford shook his head. “Nothing's crossed my radar.”

“I was up at 5:30 this morning,” Lloyd replied. “Had to be at the camp before the customers got here. I didn't have any time to check the news.”

“Huh.” The worker shrugged. “Eh, maybe it's nothing.”

“Could be.” Clifford glanced down at Esperanza. “She due to go back on the RAS, or what?”

“There's enough room, yeah.” The worker knelt—with Clifford—to lift the shut-down gynoid. “She's the one that went off-script during the test run?”

Lloyd groaned. “Has everyone heard about that by now?”

“Don't beat yourself up over it,” Clifford assured him. “At least all she did was do a little dance. Now, if she'd tried to make a little love, you'd have been in trouble. Dunno about getting down that night, but that's just me.”

The worker helping him carry Esperanza managed to stifle a chortle.

“I guess it makes sense when you put it that way.” Even Lloyd couldn't help but grin.

Esperanza was loaded onto the RAS without incident, leaving Lloyd and Clifford to ponder what Harry's next event would be. “There's that one thing SimulEnt is doing, that castle—I forget the name.”

“I told him about it,” Lloyd replied, shaking his head. “Too similar to the Estate House.”

Clifford sighed. “He's gonna have to let that go eventually.”

“I don't know if he will!” Lloyd admitted. “I was there, I saw how it all went down.” He nearly added “went downhill” to that remark. “I mean, if he wants to do a story set in a nice hotel or something, maybe.”

Clifford clapped his hands. “There you go. Simple change of setting, slight rewrites of the characters—replace 'heirs to the hotel fortune' with 'old money family'—and you've got a new script.”

“And I'd probably be the bellboy.” Lloyd rolled his eyes at the thought.

The hand on his shoulder stopped him from walking off. “You're a 20-year-old Mechanical Engineering major,” Clifford reminded him. “Any part you play in one of these events is just that—a part. It's not you.”

Lloyd sighed. “I know.” He nearly mentioned that his major was in Electronics, and that he was hoping to major in Mechanical Engineering, but let it slide. “And it's not that I'm bitter about being the sidekick, or the apprentice to the butler, or the bellboy, or the squire, or anything like that.”

“You just want one shot at being the lead,” Clifford mused.

“I want a shot at being me.” Lloyd glanced past Clifford, past the RAS trailers and at the fabled “big sky” that had once been the trademark of Jefferson. “I don't even hate working with Uncle Harry to repair the 'bots and keep them up and running. That's not the issue—I like working on 'bots.”

“Even if they're as bad off as Pam?”

The mention of the doomed gynoid prompted a frown from Lloyd. “He told you about her?”

“I called him that night—entirely unrelated matter, of course, but as soon as he got back to me, I heard all about it.”

Lloyd sat down on a crate, propping his chin up with both hands. “It was,” he began, “just—and please don't tell Uncle Harry I said any of this.”

Clifford drew a finger across his lips. “Nom rederre.”

“Huh?”

“Latin. 'Do not repeat'.” Clifford grinned. “Your secret's safe with me.”

After a second, Lloyd nodded. “What happened with Pam—it kinda, well—”

“Turned you on a little?”

Before Lloyd could even think to groan, Clifford pulled up a crate alongside Lloyd's. “It's not 'weird', if that's what you think,” he assured him. “There's something about the inherent artificiality of a gynoid—or android, in some cases; I've heard enough from the other half to know that it goes both ways. It works a very unique, very significant way on the mind. Seeing them up and about, whole and unblemished one minute—and the next, it's all jerky movements, open panels and saying the same thing over and over again.”

“Like what happened to Pam,” Lloyd muttered.

“Pretty much.”

“And I'd never want what happened to Pam to happen to any sentient 'bot,” Lloyd replied. “I wouldn't even want it to happen to Diana!”

“You're not the first to feel that way,” Clifford assured him. “Back before CAEDIA was a thing, there were two sides to the android rights issue, after 2015. The first was all for the 'free the robots!' route, but they never stopped to ask 'the robots' how they felt about it.”

“And the other side?”

“That side ended up forming the backbone for CAEDIA. They had the brilliant idea to actually consult sentient androids, gynoids and even a few bodiless A.I.s on how to manage it. As it turned out, A.I.s that were capable of thinking like people did, in fact, prefer being treated like people. It wasn't any kind of 'humanity is an inherent danger to itself, so it must be wiped out' situation. Some A.I.s,” Clifford stated, “just want to establish connections, one person at a time. A few—quite a few, really—are fascinated by the concepts of pleasure, sensuality, all that jazz. Naturally, they want to share that kind of pleasure with others.”

Lloyd pondered the concept. “So if there are A.I.s that want to establish connections,” he mused, “enjoy pleasure and all that—”

“Are there any out there that seek that pleasure by the most destructive methods?” Clifford finished. “Psycho-bots, if you will.”

“Yeah,” Lloyd murmured, already feeling uncomfortable.

“If it helps,” Clifford offered, “CAEDIA statistics show that, out of every sentient android and gynoid out there, less than a full 1% show the kind of instabilities that we mere humans would refer to as signs or symptoms of psychosis.” He grinned again. “Nothing to worry about.”

Lloyd nodded. Less than 1% was definitely a number that he could accept.
-----
“If there's someone in there, Michelle, we should just let the cops handle it!”

As soon as she'd spotted the front door to Bob Pariello's house laying on the floor, just inside the doorway, Evelyn knew that something bad had gone down—and was possibly still going down. She'd been out with Michelle from across the street, making the rounds and helping out in the subdivision, when word had reached the pair of strange goings-on by Bob's house. At the time, it had seemed like a good idea to check in, see if everything was well.

Evidently, everything was far from well.

“The TV's busted,” Michelle murmured, “someone dented the fridge door—this is crazy.” The two weren't especially close to Bob, and had actually found him somewhat annoying, but neighbours were still neighbours. “We have to call him, Evie.”

“And tell him his house got trashed?” Evelyn shook her head. “We should just—”

Somewhere down the hall, something broke.

“What was that?” Michelle tensed, moving closer to the central hallway. “Evelyn—”

Evelyn sidestepped, to get a better view. Something—someone—was huddled in the hall, under a thick comforter from one of the bedrooms. The figure heaved, from what sounded like quiet sobbing.

Slowly, Michelle approached. “We're here to help! Just stay calm!”

Evelyn kept her distance. Something was definitely off about this. For one, the voice under the blanket, muted as it was, had a definite waveform to it—artificial, not organic. There was also another slight issue.

“That's not crying,” Evelyn realized, her eyes widening in shock. “It's—”

The blanket flew off just as Michelle had looked away, probably to ask Evelyn what she'd meant. The loud shriek that followed came too late for her to redirect her attention to the nude, blonde 20-something form that sprang at her, hands outstretched. Michelle was tackled to the floor in an instant, frantically scrambling to keep the crazed, grinning blonde from burying her fingers in her eye sockets. “GET OFF!”

Evelyn tried, in vain, to pull the blonde away from Michelle—only for an unshod foot to lash out, smashing into her right knee. The kick buckled her leg, sending her to the floor in a heap.

The blonde half-crawled off of Michelle, dragging her by the hair into the kitchen. An unhinged, gleeful laugh rang in her ears as the nude blonde stood, dragging Michelle up with her. For all her struggling, the raven-haired 28-year-old was unable to free herself from the psychotic blonde's grip.

“What do you—”

“Want” formed on Michelle's tongue just before her face was slammed into the safety glass of a microwave door. Her head was drawn back, before being smashed into it again, with enough force to send spiderweb cracks through what should've been impossible to damage. A third smash shattered the glass completely, but there was no blood from the numerous cuts to Michelle's face. It was clear, now, that her attacker was no mere human—much like herself—but all further thoughts on the matter were cut off as the blonde jammed her fingers into and through the membrane keypad.

Michelle tried not to panic, even as she heard a cacophony of beeps. “Evelyn,” she called out, “we need to—”

A savage kick to her back sent the top of her head smashing into the inside of the microwave.

Evelyn, for her part, was trying to get back to her feet, not an easy task when her knee had been shattered. Two or three wires were poking out from the tear in her spandex jogging pants; the faint smell of a blown battery registered with her.

Hands grabbed at Evelyn's shoulders, her back, fingernails tearing into her sports top. She felt herself being grabbed and thrown at the refrigerator, only just turning to take the impact on her shoulder instead of in the face. She pulled herself up on the handle of the door, but the blonde had vaulted over the kitchen island, sliding across and dismounting with a kick that snapped something in Evelyn's wrist. Before she could recover, the blonde grabbed her arm, yanking her closer and throwing open the door to the fridge.

“What—”

The door was slammed, hard, on Evelyn's arm, smashing into the elbow.

Michelle had just started trying to pull herself out of the microwave when something in her head went off like a dime-store firework. The explosion froze her in her tracks for a few seconds; upon regaining control of herself, she tried to free herself again. The shattered safety glass was cutting through the synthetic skin of her neck, severing wires and scraping against her endo-frame. Something else blew out, this time at the base of her neck, and her entire body went limp for a moment; the motion caused the broken glass to bite deeper into her neck.

“MICHELLE!” Evelyn could only cry out, seeing as how her ruined knee was keeping her from getting to her feet and administering a well-deserved thrashing to the blonde. The refrigerator door had been slammed on her arm four more times, knocking components out of joint and partially crushing the elbow assembly. The blonde had practically danced out of range of her good, left arm; now, she let her fall to the floor to sob over her ruined right—

The impact of the cast-iron skillet against her cranial assembly sent Evelyn sideways, into the fridge door. Her vision filled with corrupted pixels and static; her internal stabilizers were kicking into overdrive to get her back up to—

Another hellish CLANG sounded as the skillet smashed into the side of her head.

WARNING: LEFT AURAL SENSOR DAMAGED
WARNING: LEFT OCULAR SENSOR DAMAGED
WARNING: GYRO-STABILIZERS ON LEFT SIDE OUT OF—


A third CLANG, this one to the back of Evelyn's head, forced her to effectively kiss the floor.

Michelle's figure was now wracked by spasms as components began to explode. Tiny pops beneath the skin blew out various motor assemblies, wire clusters and fluid hoses. What was left of her voice was no longer able to call for Evelyn, instead spewing heavily degraded noise that vaguely sounded like an anguished scream.

Evelyn's own systems were fading fast, as she dragged herself along with her good arm. The blonde was still laughing, still approaching; Evelyn tried to kick out with her left leg, only for the skillet to be driven down like a maul into that knee with enough force to shatter it. The skillet was brought down again, onto her left shin; Evelyn hissed at the sound of the endo-frame snapping under the force of the blow.

She felt herself being turned over. Saw the blonde laughing, holding up what looked like a trowel.

A thought process somewhere in the back of her mind calculated the angle of the trowel and the most likely point of impact it would make, if brought down at speed.

A horrific realization dawned on her at that moment; she barely had any time to gasp the word “no”.

The blonde gave a wild, gleeful cry and slammed the tool home with both hands, right under Evelyn's left breast.

At that exact moment, several things happened, all at once.

The washing machine, with a mighty groan, disgorged its contents of clothes, water and foam onto the floor of the laundry room. Not to be outdone, the dryer exploded with enough force to blow a hole in the walls behind it and to its side, setting off a nearby smoke alarm.

All three window-mounted air conditioners in the house seized up, with a horrible grinding noise, before spitting chunks of ice at high velocity.

The bathroom sink, kitchen sink and bathtub faucet assembly blasted off in a shower of water. A shower of a different kind was spewing from the toilet, befouling the walls and ceiling.

Michelle's already ruined form was jolted by several concussive blasts as her major components failed, sparks and fluid flying in equal measure.

Out in the yard—front or back, it was impossible to tell which—a muted boom sounded.

Evelyn was unable to process anything that was going on before the tool was torn from her, taking a sizable chunk of artificial skin and a ruined power cell with it. Electricity arced off the cell and back into her body, sending the gynoid into a jolting, shuddering fit.

The nude blonde, astride Evelyn's chest, threw back her head with a howl of pure, sexual bliss. She'd linked herself, via WiFi, to the two gynoids as they'd entered Bob Pariello's house; now, as their bodies failed and the damage mounted up, she bucked her hips across Evelyn's torso in a shuddering, body-wracking orgasm. Her cries drowned out the escalating pops from Michelle's figure, the churning miasma of foam and fire in the laundry room, and the grating death rattles of the air conditioners. Her left hand pinched and rolled her nipples, even as her juices flowed. Some of those same juices ended up in the ragged cavity torn into Evelyn's chest, sending her into further spasms.

At this, Lexi howled again, rutting against the stricken gynoid's abdomen. She came again, her screams intermingled with rapturous laughter; more of her aromatic fluids leaked into Evelyn's form, hitting more vital components and sending her into a downward spiral. Over in the microwave, Michelle's head was now barely recognizable, and spewing thick black plumes as her failing body gave a few more weak shudders. Her heavily-corrupted voice fell silent amidst Lexi's moans.

Something in Evelyn's chest—or her hips, it was hard to tell—exploded, sending Lexi's nude form to the floor. She barely noticed, her right hand dropping the impromptu weapon and immediately going into her folds. She fingered herself to a third climax, just as thunderous as the first two, her WiFi links to the house's dying appliances—and, even better, the two utterly ruined gynoids—allowing her to feel every hardware failure as if it were in her own body.

Yes, her mission to find the drive at Pariello's had ended in utter failure. She didn't care. She'd suspected that Pariello had never had the drive to begin with. Besides, there was always the mysterious Harry Morgan to consider.

As she lay on the kitchen floor, laughing, her eyes squeezed shut, Lexi could only imagine what her next objective might be—assuming her master didn't see the record of her insane actions and send a self-destruct signal, blowing her to pieces for her “failure”. The thought was nearly enough to send her back into a spiral of sexual ecstasy.

A message appeared in her field of view just as she opened her eyes. She was to report to a hotel in another city and await further orders. The message bore a lone name: Zina. Perhaps she'd finally get to meet her master's enigmatic right-hand girl soon enough.

Lexi just laid there for a few more minutes, exalting in the afterglow. This one would stay with her for a long time.

Moments like these were what she relished, what she'd hoped for since her reactivation. They were all that mattered.
-----
“So I just lay right here and keep acting like I've been shot in the leg?”

“A little more to the left, I'd say—that's it, yeah.” Clifford nodded. “If they ask where the Pact went, just tell them that a dust storm kicked up, you looked away, and when it cleared out, they were all gone. Oh, and that you heard a voice say something about 'the Pact still has this earth to roam, but these cherished sisters have been called home'.”

“Got it.” Lloyd sighed. “I hope they get here soon.”

“They shouldn't be too long. AH, there it is!” Clifford beamed as two workers set down a crate.

Lloyd frowned. “What's that?”

“One last bonus for the paying customers.” Clifford kicked the side of the crate, which fell apart to reveal a mannequin of some kind, dressed in the same uniform he was wearing, sans jacket. “When they get here, try to stall 'em for about, I'd say ten minutes or so. Just long enough for the timer on this thing to go off.”

“And when it does?”

Clifford made a face. “The final death shall settle upon Colonel Kanzler,” he intoned in a mock-spooky voice. “In basic terms, it'll wither into dust and fake bones.” He grinned. “Just to drive home that the forces responsible for protecting the Glaive had no patience for evil screwing around with it.”

“Nice.” Lloyd nodded, trying to work himself back into the mindset of someone who'd been shot in the leg.

The workers who'd set down the crate eased the fake corpse off of it, carefully dressing it in Clifford's discarded jacket. “I really think this has been the best event your uncle's run so far,” Clifford mused. “Beats LARPing in the park to Hell, if I do say so myself.”

“You LARP?”

“Back in college. Fun times. Not so much if everyone's plastered, but improvisation is a cornerstone of comedy.” Cliff shrugged. “Anyway, I gotta go. No sense in leaving a dead Kanzler to rot into dust if the 'real one' is hiding behind a box.” He knelt at Lloyd's side and shook his hand. “You've done a great job out here,” he stated. “Tell Harry I send my regards, and that I'll see him back at the ranch house for the afterparty.”

“I will.”

Clifford grinned, clapping Lloyd on the shoulder. “I hope we can work together again soon.” With that, he nodded to one of the workers, who handed him a set of coveralls. “Just in case,” he explained. “Don't want to get spotted 'in uniform' on the way out.”

“Good call.”

With a last jaunty wave, Cliff set off with the workers, leaving Lloyd to reflect on how the story had gone. It had been an emotional roller-coaster. Diana's performance, by itself, was the one element that stood out; she'd acted so life-like, so real, in her role as the leader of the Artemis Pact. If she could learn, and could eventually give that kind of a performance without a script, she'd be amazing.

“She's already amazing.” Lloyd muttered, not caring that he was responding to his own thoughts. He lay back, waiting for the paying customers to return.

Even as he focused his thoughts on his non-existent wound, he wondered what kind of role Diana would play next.
-----
The car was in self-drive, as it had been since Lexi had stolen it. Originally, she'd planned on simply laying down in the backseat, replaying her memory of the events at Bob Pariello's house and fingering herself to completion as many times as possible; she'd done that, twice, in Pariello's SUV before it got T-boned at an intersection.

Annoyingly, she'd escaped the accident without damage. Losing an arm would've been sublime.

It had been easy to steal another car—one without a driver, at that. Apparently, local dealerships just loved to advertise by setting vehicles to self-drive and sending them around town. The price tags in the windows had already been peeled off, the registration papers torn up. It would be hours before the dealership knew what happened.

By that time, Lexi would be at home in the suite rented in her name.

No doubt, her masters weren't happy with her performance thus far. She'd destroyed entirely too much property thus far, left three human beings wounded (the driver of the car that had T-boned her would be in a body cast—getting choke-slammed onto the hood of one's own vehicle can do that) and completely destroyed two gynoids for the purposes of her own gratification. The authorities would investigate.

Lexi didn't care. She'd been in storage far too long to care.

All that mattered, to her, was what she wanted, and all she wanted was more of what she was driving away from. More moments of sheer, undiluted bliss. More destruction. More sex and violence smashed together like tangled wreckage.

As she checked her makeup in the rear-view mirror, Lexi pondered the throwing spikes she still had stored in her wrists, and the weaponry she'd hauled from Pariello's vehicle to the newly-stolen one. With any luck, she'd be using the tools soon enough.

The stolen car sped on, towards the hotel.

Lexi wriggled in the front passenger seat, rocking her thighs back and forth as she pondered the possibilities. The fabric of her shorts did little to block or numb the sensations as her legs rubbed together, sending a shiver running through her form. Every bit of pressure, every slight movement, prompted an anticipatory sigh, a subtle gasp. She considered, for a moment, putting the seat all the way back and just fingering herself through the front of the shorts. It took five seconds for her to decide against it, mainly to avoid having to look for and appropriate another self-driving car in the event of an accident—or having to ditch the car after the inevitable traffic stop that would follow.

There'd be enough time for more fun later, after all. Hopefully, some of it would be at the hotel.

Her orders would probably include a stipulation against trashing the hotel room—given her obliteration of Pariello's house, that was to be expected. At the very least, she might try to lure a maid 'bot to the room and have some fun. If she could snag a concierge unit, even better.

Zina, whoever she was, probably wouldn't approve. But of course, Zina couldn't begin to understand.

As the car sped on, Lexi gave a blissful sigh, her left hand brushing the front of her jean shorts. No thought processes running through her digital mind raised the possibility that anything she'd done, or would do, was immoral, dangerous or possibly even flat-out evil. Any and all safeguards against such thought patterns had long since been burned out, erased or simply broken. She was a walking engine of destruction, one that attained the ultimate in self-gratification with every act of chaos and violence she committed—a nightmare, wrapped up in the seductive face and body of a 24-year-old blonde knockout.

Soon—not soon enough, for Lexi's tastes—Harry Morgan and those he held near and dear would face that nightmare.

(special thanks to Calsetes for technical assistance in getting this posted!)
"No one steals our chicks.....and lives!"

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