We went in, going through automatic check-in. There was no staff, and we were the only ones in the small, cozy lobby fitted with pink and purple fixtures. Once we had the card to her room, I led Sera to the showers and held the door open for her. The space was lit with muted lights and she sighed, rolling her neck. I noted in my file that Sera found low lights relaxing.
When I followed her in, she turned to me with a tired groan. We were alone, none of the five showering cubicles occupied. Soft music trailed from the speakers, and it smelled of ozone and lily of the valley.
“These are the women’s showers. Please, wait outside.”
“Negative. I go where you go. Why don’t you pick what you want from the clothes printer first, pookie? I’ll hand you the clothes when they are ready.”
She closed her eyes and threw her head back, breathing out through her mouth. I watched her tired face, softened by the mellow light, and felt a pang of something strange and achy in my core.
My collar beeped, its lights turning red. Sera’s eyes flew open, her body instantly tensing. I ran a code-mimicking app to make the collar think I was under its control—the same one I used to fool airport security earlier—and the lights turned blue.
“I can’t deal with this,” she said, shaking her head. “Pick me some clothes. Something comfortable. And then, face the wall and don’t peek.”
“I should inform you I have perfectly functional cameras in the back of my head,” I said, running background checks on the code I used to fool my collar.
It just malfunctioned in a dangerous way, almost sending another alert to the nearest Bot Control Unit. I caught it in time, but if I was late by a fraction of a second, the hotel would have swarmed with security. And this time, no one would believe it was just a coincidence since my collar’s previous alarm was already logged.
Once was fine. Any more than that would get me melted and Sera arrested.
“Ugh, fine,” she groaned, turning toward the nearest shower cubicle. “Watch or don’t watch, I don’t care. Just please, get me some clothes.”
She grabbed a fresh towel from a stack and went inside the cubicle, sliding the transparent door closed. It was designed to turn opaque when the lock engaged, but she must have been too tired to notice or care. She didn’t close the door completely, and the glass remained transparent.
I turned to the vending printer, running through their clothing options while my back cameras focused on Sera. She pulled off her T-shirt, revealing a simple lavender bra, and my pleasure sensors awakened with a curious warmth. I realized she would need underwear, too, and started there while watching her shimmy out of her shorts.
Her panties were black and trimmed with lace. My core temperature spiked, and I ran a cooling program, measuring her almost-naked body to get the exact fit. My eyes kept straying to the curves of her buttocks and the way her bra dug into her flesh, and it took me over four seconds to notice the scars on her back.
My temperature spiked again, this time with an overwhelming urge to hunt down and destroy whoever had done this to her. My collar pinged, and I choked it with code, overwhelmed by this new emotion.
Anger on behalf of another. Powerful protective urge. You care about this person, Charlie’s onboarding algorithm supplied helpfully when I asked it for an explanation.
I connected to the vending printer and picked an outfit similar to the one Sera was wearing, plugging in her measurements. Simultaneously, I mapped her scars into my core memory. There was a thick, jagged line running down her shoulder blade, a series of white puckered lines by her spine, and a patch of uneven, raised flesh on her side.
Sera unhooked her bra, and I zoomed in on the red indents it left behind. I adjusted my underwear selection, changing the band size to a larger one, and paid the printer so it would start. In the background, I wrote better code to properly fool the collar. It seemed bouts of emotion made it activate, prompting it to consider me a rogue unit.
When Sera shimmied out of her panties, my pleasure sensors went haywire. I braced for another attempt from the collar to report on me, but it didn’t react. It must have considered lust to be within the permitted parameters, which made sense. If sexual reactions triggered the collar, pleasure bots would have tripped the alarms constantly.
I uploaded my new code into the collar, resolving to curb any inappropriate emotions to be on the safe side.
Water cascaded down Sera’s face as she leaned her head back, undoing her braid with shaking fingers. She stopped halfway through, her arms dropping from exhaustion. Her shouldersshook briefly, and when she turned around, I saw her face. It was scrunched up, her mouth open, its corners tilted downward.
I froze. She was crying. Something seemed to flip inside me, and the collar beeped again.Oopsie.I ran my app, quickly looking at her breasts to replace the dangerous emotion with lust.
They were small but round, and I took a step closer, clenching my fists. I experienced a powerful urge to cover them with my hands and warmed my palms instinctively to make sure my touch wouldn’t be unpleasant for her.
But no. Sera clearly said she wasn’t interested.
I aborted the tight emotion before it had a chance to trigger my collar and turned away, focusing on the printer’s progress. It already made a matching underwear set—pink with watermelon print, since it was her favorite flavor—and was starting on the shorts.
I glanced at the smart clothes washer next to the printer. Then I added a backpack to my order, in my size this time.
“If you hand me your clothes, I can run a quick washing cycle,” I said loud enough to be heard over the sound of rushing water.
Sera put her face under the spray, then wiped it impatiently with her hands. When she looked up, our eyes met through the transparent glass that fogged up slowly—not fast enough to cover her yet.
She watched me for a moment, her expression turning defiant. She was tense. I kept my body completely still, my face impassive as a cooling program ran in the background, dousing my pleasure sensors.
“Fuck this,” she muttered, too quietly for an organic to pick up, but my hearing sensors were superb. “It’s a fucking machine. Who cares?”
