She just didn’t believe that, though. She remembered every moment she’d spent with him and there had been nothing at all to indicate that he was defective in any way.
He was so far from defective it was ludicrous to consider such a possibility.
Truthfully, one of the reasons she was so frantic to reach him and retrieve him wasbecausehe was a cyborg. He would not defend himself against the people who took him. He wouldn’t understand that hecouldrun or should. He hadn’t really been given much in the way of a sense of self-preservation—any more than Jared or Kane had.
She couldn’tbearto think of them taking him apart! She didn’t know how the company could consider anything like that! Sure, beneath all that beautiful flesh and muscle was an alloy chassis and computer chips, but he was flesh and blood everywhere that it really counted!
Especiallythere!
So what if she was attached to him and he was a machine! So everybody would think she was a crazy woman! What did she care? She didn’t care if every single thing he’d done and every single thing he’d said had been programmed into him, was completely simulated! He’d made her feel like she mattered to him. He’d made her feel beautiful, like the most desirable woman in the universe! She couldn’t just abandon him to such a horrible fate!
He had feelings. She didn’t care what anybody else thought about it. She knew he did! Jared and Kane did! And if they did, then Damon did!
Currently, Jared and Kane were sulking and slamming around tools while they worked on the ship. Maybe that was simulated, too, but if it was, they were damned good at simulating ‘totally pissed off male’!
Her brain signed off for a handful of moments as she watched them. She didn’t know why, but the play of all those lovely muscles in their arms and shoulders and backs just put her into zen meditation every time she saw it.
Jared turned to scowl at her, jerking her out of her trance. She glared back at him, plunking her hands on her hips.
Their disapproval irritated the shit out of her. She’dtoldthem they were her best buddies and she wasn’t going to get them involved and risk having them hauled in! What more did they want?
No doubt they’d picked up that behavior from the two crewmembers they’d replaced, she thought irritably.Theyhad complained every time they were asked to actually do something around the ship—which was why her and her father had agreed they didn’t need them anymore once Jared and Kane were functioning well enough to take over their duties.
She debated, briefly, trying to sweet talk them out of their anger and finally dismissed it. “You think you guys can hold it down on the noise for a while? I need to get some sleep before we hit port. No telling what I’ll have to deal with to get Damon.”
They both paused long enough to glare at her again and then went back to banging with their wrenches.
Frowning with a mixture of thoughtfulness and irritation, she headed to her quarters. Jared and Kane were nothing at all like Damon, regardless of their claims, now, to the contrary. She’d been struck by that from the very first, had actually wondered if they really were the same series for a while. Then she’d realized that it only stood to reason that Damon’s programming was completely different from the programming that would have been used for the soldiers—completely different objectives! Damonneededsocial skills, after all. Women weren’t going to pay to get banged by a Neanderthal! They wanted seduction, flirtation—even if they were paying for it!
Granted, up until Damon, and then Jared and Kane, she’d never even come close to a cyborg. She’d heard about them, but the S series were top of the line—designed for the wealthy and the government. The only time an ‘average’ person was likely to come into contact with them was on a battlefield—or in the occasional bordello.
Jared and Kane had taken a lot of getting used to when her first experience with a cyborg had been a pleasure droid. Despite her sympathy for their condition when they were first recovered, they were downright scary even when they were having trouble getting around and weren’t overtly aggressive—she supposed because the pair had seemed to automatically assume that her and her father were their commanding officers.
They’d unnerved the hell out of her until she’d gotten used to being around the hulking, taciturn brutes. They’d scared the pure piss out of their crew—which was why they’d bailed at the first opportunity after they discovered she and her father had decided to keep the cyborgs.
Shehadgotten used to them, though, and more than that. She’d come to value them a great deal and not just for their skills as crewmembers and salvagers. They’d done their best to protect her and her father when they’d been attacked. She didn’t think she would be alive now if not for them and beyond that, she’d come to value them as companions, to think of them more as friends than machines.
She’d thought she knew and understood them as well as anyone possibly could.
And it still seemed to her that Jared and Kane were acting just a little strange even for them. How bizarre was it that they’d suddenly taken it into their heads to convince her they had the same programming that Damon had?
Not that she was likely to believe that! But their logic circuits should have told them that she wasn’t likely to believe it. Their programming should have prevented them from telling an outright lie if it came to that.
So, did that mean it was true and they actuallyhadbeen programmed as pleasure droids? It seemed to her that it must. She could actually believe that easier than she could believe that they’d become capable of lying, that the company had simply saved time and money by designing them all the same and giving them the same programming until they made the sale and it was determined what their use would be.
She was more inclined to think, though, that they’d only been given rudimentary programming—or, possibly, that the AI they all had made the big difference. Damon, Jared, and Kane all had the same programming, but then Damon had ‘learned’ to be a pleasure droid and Jared and Kane had ‘learned’ to be soldiers.
That made perfect sense and explained why Damon was so different in behavior than the other two.
It didn’t explain why they’d suddenly decided to inform her of it or volunteer for extra ‘duty’, but she decided it must be because she’d never mentioned it before.
And it was still a little weird, but they did have AI, she reminded herself. They’d been given that to help them adjust to changes in their situation, and there was no getting around the fact that they’d begun to seem just a little temperamental after their exposure to the other crewmembers. Thankfully, they hadn’t picked upallof their nasty habits!
Of course, they were probably exposed to similar behavior with the soldiers. From her experience, human soldiers tended to be very aggressive males themselves and prone to brawling, especially when they weren’t under the watchful eyes of their superiors, which was the only time she’d been around them—in bars while they were on leave from duty.
Maybe their AI was sophisticated enough that they felt personally threatened by her interest in Damon? Or at least understood it well enough to exhibit that kind of behavior?
She felt her chest tighten at the thought. How could they think for a minute that she would abandon them because of Damon, she wondered? Sure they’d had plenty of time to grasp that humans in general weren’t to be trusted, but she thought they should know by now thatshecould be trusted.Shewas loyal.
