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"I'm already regretting this. You two better not break anything in there. You should have just brought me along instead."
"Unfortunately, sister, the conditions of your house arrest prevent such field trips."
The speaker on Simon Blackquill's phone crackled with an irritated hiss.
"Don't worry, Aura!" Athena said, leaning closer to Blackquill so that she could be heard on his phone. "We'll be super careful! You don't need to worry about anything!"
"Ugh," said the phone. "I don't want her touching anything in there. I don't see why the little princess had to be involved at all."
"Be reasonable, Aura. She's part of your defense team," Blackquill said flatly. "I do not think you want to have the prosecutor's office as the only ones investigating your crimes."
"Fuck you too, Simon," said the phone — and Athena, still leaning close, was jolted by the tangle of emotions in Aura's voice. There was irritation and frustration, of course, but in the middle was a sturdy rhythm of trust and affection.
"I'm hanging up now, Aura," Blackquill said. "Thank you for the access code. We will call back if we need anything further from you."
His tone was cool and brusque and business-like — but buried inside was the same staccato beat of happiness that Athena had heard in Aura's voice.
They love each other, Athena thought, not for the first time. And they're so weird about it.
Blackquill gave her a sidelong glance. "Shall we?"
Athena nodded. "Once we've looked through this room, we'll have checked every one of Aura's labs for clues."
In addition to her main laboratories, it turned out that Aura had squirreled away her equipment in numerous auxiliary labs throughout the Cosmos Space Center — including its dreary subterranean levels, which was why Athena and Blackquill were now three floors below ground in a concrete labyrinth of corridors that almost nobody ever visited any longer. The Space Center employee who had been assisting them earlier had bailed two floors ago. I think you'll be able to find your own way from here, he had said. Good luck! You can let yourself out when you're finished. No need to come find me, haha.
"I hope there's some clues here," Athena added. "It would be nice to find some clues."
Blackquill said nothing to this. He had been quietly trailing in her wake all day as Athena tramped from lab to lab. Athena suspected he was probably bored but too disciplined to show it. Athena half-regretted asking him to accompany her — but she had suspected that she would run into Aura's security measures during her investigations, and she had also suspected that Blackquill was the only one who could easily get Aura to cough up any secret passcodes to her lab doors.
She had not confessed this ulterior motive to Blackquill when she called him and requested his presence. He had not asked why she was inviting him to visit the scene(s) of his sister's crime(s). Instead, his voice level and low on the phone, he had merely said, "It would be my pleasure, Athena. I'll be there by one o'clock."
Neither of them was entirely sure how to act around the other, Athena had thought a little gloomily at the end of the call. They knew each other to an almost painfully intimate degree, and yet they were simultaneously near-strangers, polite and formal and distant. Every interaction they had seemed to flicker and hum with a strange dissonant charge.
Now Blackquill pressed the buttons of the door's access panel, and Athena glanced at him sidelong. "I'm surprised that this part of the center doesn't use handprint-readers."
"This part of the space center is older. From back when they used a different security system," he said absently as he pressed the pound sign on the keypad. "It was originally part of the suite of labs used by your mother. Before she moved upstairs."
"Have you been here before?" Athena asked with surprise.
"Yes," Blackquill said. "I helped Aura move things in here, back when Metis moved out."
The door to Sub-Laboratory No. 3 slid open. It was dark inside, until Blackquill took a step inside and triggered the motion sensor that activated the lights overhead.
"Huh," Athena said, looking past his shoulder. "This is...quite a jumble of stuff."
There were heaps of old machinery lying between stacks of bankers boxes. One side of the room was taken up by a darkened screen. There was a boxy docking station on the floor against one wall.
"A trash heap, just as Aura said," Blackquill said. "She always used this room as storage for old experiments."
"Yeah," Athena said slowly. "But she kept winking and doing air-quotes with her fingers when she was saying that. So her defense attorneys suspected she was not being particularly forthcoming with us on the subject." She slid past Blackquill and stepped into the room. "Not that she's particularly forthcoming with us about anything."
Behind her, Blackquill gave a dry laugh. "To be fair, Aura still does not see the point of having defense attorneys. She feels they are superfluous after she has already confessed to everything."
"That's not important."
"Not to mention the fact that she is guilty of everything of which she has been charged." Blackquill's voice was ironic and cutting, but Athena could hear the quiet little tremble of pain as he spoke. He was the one who had hired the Wright Anything Agency to defend his sister in court.
"Any guilt remains to be determined," Athena said as she picked her way through the room. "We're going to get her a fair trial, whether she wants it or not."
"What exactly are you hoping to find?" Blackquill crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall. Beside him, the door quietly slid shut. "After all, this was not where Aura kept any of her hostages. There's unlikely to be any...clues here."
Athena shrugged. "Gotta check it out if I wanna cross it off our lists. Gotta be thorough." She leaned down to peer at the label of one of the boxes — and as she did so, she brushed something with her foot. There was a rustling noise and a low little beep, and a robot appeared, rolling forth from a pile of seemingly broken objects beside Athena.
Athena took an involuntary step back. "What...?"
The robot was built in a similar manner to Ponco or Clonco, but smaller. Much, much smaller. It barely came up to Athena's shins.
"Hello," it chirped in a synthesized voice. "I am the FT-5000. You have activated me from sleep mode. Please wait while I update my systems and charge my back-up battery."
On its little wheels, it rolled toward the docking station fixed to the lower part of the wall.
Athena looked up at Blackquill. "I'm surprised that Aura kept one of her robots down here."
"She probably forgot about it," Blackquill said. "She has always been careless with her toys."
The robot had reached the docking station and pushed itself against it. "Updating operating system for the FT-5000. Updating parameters for the FT-5000."
Athena cocked her head to the side. "I wonder how it got that name. Were there four thousand, nine hundred, and ninety-nine eff-tees before it got made?"
"Query," the little robot chirped. "Answer. I am the first model of the FT-5000 that was produced. My name is a quote unquote joke from my quote unquote creator."
"A hilarious name," Blackquill said flatly. "An absolute knee-slapper of a name."
"Response. Error. We have not yet gotten to the joke part," the robot said.
There was a moment of silence.
"Okay...?" Athena said. "What is the joke part about your name?"
"Response. It is an abbreviation. Pause for laughter."
Athena glanced at Blackquill, who shrugged. "My sister's sense of humor has a very specialized audience," he said. "And I don't think we are it."
Athena scanned the room: the jumbles of computer parts, the boxes, and the little robot charging at his dock. Dust was thick everywhere, and it was clear that nothing had disturbed this room in quite some time. "I guess nothing here is connected to our case."
The corner of Blackquill's mouth tilted up. "But still. It was good to check. You've got to be thorough."
Athena regarded him narrowly. She could tell from his voice that he was making fun of her — but under that familiar vocal pattern was something else, another emotion that Athena could not quite place.
It might have been pride.
Athena felt her cheeks grow warm. "I guess we should get going. If there's nothing else to see, I need to bring my findings back and consult with the rest of the agency."
"All right," Blackquill said. "Let's go." He turned and pressed the button next to the door labeled OPEN.
The door did not open.
He pressed the button again.
The door still did not open.
He stabbed the button with his finger with murderous force.
Nothing happened.
"Um..." Athena said.
"After enough pause for laughter," chirped a little robot voice, "continue with the joke. It's an abbreviation for FuckTron-5000."
Athena saw a glimpse of genuine alarm in Blackquill's eyes as he turned to face the room. "What?"
"Query. Response. Repetition for clarification. I am FuckTron-5000. My creator made me for one purpose. I am a love machine. Pause for laughter."
"Um," Athena said, "Mr. FuckTron, are you keeping the door shut right now?"
"Query. Response. Affirmative. My protocols will not allow me to disengage the door locks and release the subjects until my primary directive has been achieved."
"Subjects," Athena repeated. "Subjects?"
"I'm going to call my sister," Blackquill said grimly.
"My primary directive," the little robot continued helpfully, "is to enable and facilitate sexual intercourse."
"With...you...?" Athena asked gingerly.
"Query. Response. Negative. I am not made from non-toxic or body-safe materials. Please do not insert me into any orifices. I cannot be used for sexual gratification. I am merely made to watch. Pause for laughter."
The speaker on Blackquill's phone crackled to life. "Whazzat? Are you done? That was fast. But after all, I did tell you—"
"Aura," Blackquill said, and even though he was not literally grinding his teeth as he spoke, Athena could hear the prelude to teeth-grinding in his voice. "We're inside, and we're talking to something that calls itself the....FT-5000."
"Oh, shit," said the phone. "Shit shit shit. I forgot about that thing. You didn't let it plug itself into the wall, did you? Is the door closed?"
"The door is closed," Blackquill said with awful solemnity. "And our little friend has plugged himself into the wall."
"Shit, Simon. You're fucked." There was a pause, and then Aura continued, "Literally, too, I guess. Is the princess in there with you?"
"Yes," Blackquill growled. "Why do you ask?"
"Why do you think? I assume the FT-5000 has explained itself by now."
"It has mentioned a raison d'être. It's not one that I understand."
"Don't play dumb, Simon."
"I'm not the one playing dumb, Aura. What is this loathsome machine that you've created?"
"It was an early experimental prototype," the phone said grudgingly. "I was still at university. It seemed funny at the time. And an interesting way to test context-recognition regarding visual patterns vis-a-vis certain generic forms. It was a total goof but in a cutting-edge kind of way. A real hoot at parties. Some of that design ended up being a dead-end. We moved away from purely visual identification for later iterations. It was a little too error-prone. But in the end—"
"Aura," Blackquill interrupted. "How do we turn off the robot and unlock the door?"
"You can't," said the phone. "You let it dock, and now it has uploaded its directive to the room's security system, and there's no way to interface with that from inside the room. Even if you destroy its shell, you won't be able to unlock the door."
"Then how do we unlock the door?"
"By satisfying its primary directive. You gotta fuck in front of it. I didn't call it the FuckTron-5000 for nothing."
Blackquill's eyes darted up to look at Athena — which was a mistake, since Athena had a hand pressed against her mouth and was obviously trying, very hard, not to laugh.
"This is not funny," he snarled at her.
Athena closed her eyes as suspicious wheezing noises slipped between her fingers.
"Aura," Blackquill said, "I need you to call the security office of the Cosmos Space Center and tell them that we've gotten locked in—"
"They won't be able to do anything. That whole block of rooms runs on a different security system, remember? It's why you needed my passcode in the first place. They can't override any of it. They don't have the credentials to do so. I mean, nobody does. Even if I could come down there, I wouldn't be able to let you out. And that place is solid concrete. Built to withstand a direct missile attack. It's almost impossible to break out of there. Much easier just to fuck. That'll satisfy the FuckTron-5000's programming and get the door unlocked."
Blackquill took a deep breath. "Aura, I swear to God, I'm going to—"
"Hey, hey, hey," the phone said hastily. "You don't have to really fuck each other. I mean, its pattern recognition only has so much sophistication. It's possible to fool the FuckTron-5000. You just have to pretend. Put on a little play. You don't even have to take your clothes off. I designed the optical system to recognize body movements, not nakedness. And I really worked hard on the visual dictionary. It doesn't just recognize missionary. You can do it doggy-style, against a wall, sixty-nine, just about everything. But you gotta do it in stages. I did program in some progression expectations. You'll have to make out and do some heavy petting before you start thrusting away."
Athena, bent double, had covered her entire face with her hands as her whole body trembled. Her muffled giggles were edging into something close to hysteria.
"This is a nightmare," Blackquill intoned.
"Look, do you think I'm happy about this? Do you think I want you groping that stupid little princess? She's barely legal. Think of the age gap. If I had remembered the FuckTron-5000 was in that lab, I never would have let you and her walk inside together. This is my personal nightmare, Simon."
"Truly, you are the one most injured by all of this," Blackquill said.
"I'm glad you recognize that. Do you want me to stay on the line? I guess I could help you simulate moaning, but—"
"That won't be necessary," Blackquill said. "I'll...I'll call back if we need any information from you."
"Like about the birds and the bees? Geez, Simon, I thought by now you would have learned about all that stuff—"
"Goodbye, Aura," he said firmly as he clicked off the call button.
Athena was on the floor now, curled up into a ball, her face pressed against the carpet. She was still laughing, helplessly and hopelessly.
Blackquill watched her silently. He did not move from his position against the wall.
"Waiting for input," the little robot chirped. "Waiting for input."
When Athena finally rose from the floor, she was no longer laughing, but her eyes were bright and her face was slightly flushed. "Okay. So now we know there's only one way out of here."
"Allegedly," Blackquill said. He was still watching her carefully.
"Allegedly," Athena repeated. She briskly rubbed her hands together. "Mr. FuckTron, how close do we need to be to your sensors before we, uh, start making love?"
"Query. Response. Not close. You can be anywhere in this room. My visual sensors have a zoom function. My creator designed me to be a voyeur-bot. Pause for laughter."
She turned to Blackquill and took a step in his direction. "I'm not sure your sister really understands how jokes work."
"You don't have to do this." Blackquill's expression was grave.
Athena continued forward. "Our alternatives are limited, I think." She wrinkled her nose. "And I do not want to be trapped here overnight. It's not like there's a bathroom in here with us."
Blackquill's eyes darted around, as if he was hoping to suddenly discover a hidden exit in the room that they had simply missed seeing before now.
Athena was standing an inch away from him. "We just have to pretend, right?" She reached up and gave him a friendly pat on his shoulder. "And that's something we're both pretty good at, right, Simon? We're pretty good at pretending when needed."
Blackquill looked down at her, and something in his expression softened almost imperceptibly. "Yes, Athena. That's true."
She smiled. "Mr. FuckTron, can you see us okay?"
"Query. Response. I have a sufficient visual coverage of both subjects."
"Mr. FuckTron," she said sweetly, "can you narrate what he and I are doing?"
"Query. Response. A verbal account of actions in my surroundings is within my capabilities."
"Okay, then. Please narrate what we're doing, Mr. FuckTron."
She brought up a hand and slid it behind Blackquill's head. Blackquill was standing so still he might as well have been a statue — but when Athena pulled his head toward her, he moved without resistance.
She brought his face within an inch of her own — and then she stopped, their mouths close but not touching.
"Look at the two of us," she said loudly. "Making out and kissing and stuff."
"Statement. Error. The two subjects are not in physical contact. According to this system's data, mouths must be in continued physical contact to satisfy a requirement of kissing. Waiting for input. Waiting for input."
A mutinous expression crossed Blackquill's face. "Just pretend, she said. It's an unsophisticated system and you can just pretend. When I get out of here, she and I are going to have some serious words about some things."
"Oh, well," Athena said easily. "I guess there's no help for it." She pressed forward and lightly kissed him.
She felt him stiffen in surprise. His mouth was hard and closed.
"Input received. Subject 1 is kissing Subject 2. Subject 2 is doing nothing. This does not satisfy my protocols. My creator has designed me to require consent."
"Simon," she murmured against his mouth. "A smidge more pretense. Please. For the benefit of the mandatory consent sex machine."
For a moment longer, he remained defiantly unresponsive. Then a shiver ran through him, and he tilted his head slightly to the side, and he began to kiss Athena back.
Athena felt something unexpected jolt alive inside her.
"Input received. The two subjects are kissing each other. Subject 2 is embracing Subject 1. Subject 1 is stroking the back of Subject 2's neck."
Athena ran her fingers along the taut strands of Blackquill's hair, bound into a thick tail at the back of his head. Blackquill was pressing himself against her. His lips were open now, and his tongue was in her mouth.
"Input received. Subject 2 is rubbing the buttocks of Subject 1. Subject 1 is making sounds of sexual excitement."
Through her clothing, Blackquill kneaded the flesh of her ass, and Athena moaned against his mouth.
"Input received. The two subjects are rubbing themselves against one another. Subject 2 has an erection."
Blackquill abruptly went still. He pulled his face back. His expression, when he spoke, was grim and resolute.
"We can pretend now," he said. "This is the part where we can pretend. Aura said her system can't tell the difference."
Against her belly, Athena could feel the thick bulge of his erection through the layers of clothing that separated them.
"We can pretend," she said slowly. Her hand was still pressed against the back of his neck, and she could feel his sweat against her palm. "We can, but we don't have to." She pressed forward so that his erection was grinding against her stomach. "We could do this part for real, Simon."
He raggedly inhaled. "Are you sure?"
His voice was perfectly cold, perfectly controlled — but under that shell, Athena could hear the wild notes of lust and longing.
She smiled up at him as she released his neck and reached for the buckle of his belt. "I'm sure. I want it for real."
"Input received. Subject 1 is putting their hand inside the clothing of Subject 2. Subject 1 appears to be holding Subject 2's erection."
Blackquill breathed heavily. His eyes were unfocused. "Athena."
"Simon," she purred as she stroked him with one hand. With the other hand, she reached up under her skirt and began to push down the waistband of her leggings. "How do you want to do this?" She kicked off her left shoe. "Should I lie down on my back?" She kicked off her other shoe. "Get on my hands and knees?"
As she spoke, she could feel his cock growing even taller in her hand.
He helped her wiggle out of the last of her leggings. Her underwear fell against the floor a few seconds later.
"No," he panted. "No, I want you here. Like this. Upright."
"Input received. Subject 2 is picking up Subject 1. Subject 2 is turning."
He held her against the wall, and her bare legs rose to wrap around his waist. She reached down to clasp his cock again and place its head against her center.
"Input received. Subject 2 is pressing their erection inside Subject 1."
"Athena, you are so beautiful," he said, and she trembled at the sound of his voice, which was commanding and anxious and loving and worried and hungry and adoring. He pushed further inside her.
"Keep talking," she whispered as she squeezed her thighs against him. "Please, keep talking. Let me hear your voice."
"All right. I can talk about you for hours. Days." He pressed deeper, but his voice seemed to rub inside her even further: into her belly and under her ribcage and inside her skull.
"That's good," Athena gasped. "Because I'm very vain." She kissed the side of his neck. "Very, very vain."
"No, you're not. You have no idea of what you're worth. You're so precious."
"Input received. Subject 2 is beginning to thrust their hips against Subject 1."
"I've missed you," Athena wound her arms around his neck. "Ever since the trial ended. I've wanted to see you so much."
"You should have called me, then." Blackquill rocked against her. He was deep inside her now. "For anything. If you had called me about anything, I would have come. I was so happy to hear you on the phone today."
Athena groaned. "Oh, Simon, your voice, I love your voice, it is so—"
"Input received. Subject 1 is making sounds of sexual excitement. Subject 2 is making sounds of sexual excitement."
Blackquill pressed his face against the side of Athena's neck. She felt him tremble and come inside her.
"Input received. According to my programming, both subjects have had orgasms. According to my programming, this is one sign of completed sexual intercourse."
Athena could feel the rapid thunder of Blackquill's heartbeat in all the places where he was pressed against her. As the waves of her pleasure began to subside, she reached up once again to tenderly rub the back of his neck.
"Statement. The primary directive of FuckTron-5000 has been satisfied. Disengaging security protocols. Powering down. Going into sleep mode."
Beside the two of them, the door slid open.
Deep in Blackquill's pocket, his phone was vibrating.
For a moment, they breathed together.
"In a way, he was sweet," Athena said. "Kind of charming. Such an earnest little robot."
"He is a monster, and he is dangerous, and he deserves to be destroyed," Blackquill said. "Not that I can trust my sister to do the responsible thing. She never does."
His voice was stern and uncaring — but underneath, Athena could hear the rushing currents of amusement and affection and relief, and she felt her heart throb in response.
"No, no, he's just misunderstood. He's just a sweet little monster," she said, laughing. "I'll protect FuckTron-5000 with my life."