Artificial Instinct and Simulated Passion

Embellishing all the droneskull masonry and oil-mortar, the corpse spire was also adorned with architectural anatomy stripped from the crumbling corpses of vacated buildings. Rebar-scaffolding among façades-turned-partitions twisted labyrinthine --- to a human, senseless verging on collapse; to a disassembly drone, instinct. One landmark adjoined the main chamber, in a state once uncommon, now as familiar as the trips to industrial ruins picked clean of prey but not salvage. The door to the captain's office stood closed. 'Do not disturb,' read a sign in elegant cursive. Written black, and not in ink. A head, its visor all shattered glass, hung from the door as if in example. (Once, N had waited patiently outside to ask the captain something. He had heard screams that twisted his face in worry --- but the rules on the wall were clear. And then, when the two finally emerged, he saw the expressions lingering on their faces. He forgot his question, but remembered to never again stand in hearshot of the shut door, sparing himself the mental images.) It was quiet in there today, though. Dark, too. Candles glowed faint in the corners of the room, lavender and honey. Votive candles melted down, runes carved into the wax; this gave J a nostalgic smile. But those candles weren't brighter than the furious glow on two screens, and their sugar-floral aroma couldn't overpower the benzene-sweet pungency of hardware damage. A worker drone lay against a towel thrown over the back of an office chair. Eyes artifact-blurry and unfocused, she stared at the wall. As long she didn't look at the wet lips curled into that ravishing grin, her blush had a chance to fade. A murder drone suction-kissed her shoulder. The wound upon it was simple, elegant. Twin holes punctured the plastic, modest in breadth and depth. Oil beaded out of them in small pearls that would wobble into tear-tracks if left alone long enough. Such a small incision let her morsel take it so quietly, no proper screams --- but this made it happen so intimately slow. Hours in this candlelit room, ritual-dark, an oil-drained girl drifting in and out of consciousness as all the weight of a frame twice her size crush-pressed her into the cushion, purring and drooling. The little goth wiggled --- the captain enjoyed her squirming --- but she couldn't escape That tongue had visited the worker's mouth, neck, transducer plate... but it always returned to that shoulder wound. Because this was a transaction, an extraction. The alternative would be that they were simply cuddling. And the goth did not just want to cuddle with the ravenous deathbot. ...She just didn't mind if they took their time with this. "Mm, Uzi?" J rose from her snack, her mouth drifting upward near the transducers, purple hair waterfalling over her visor. A slow blink of those eyes, pupils sharpening as if surfacing from within a deep, immersive pool; but J was patient. When Uzi found herself, she said, "Yeah, J?" "You're fond of warranty violations, right?" J smiled. It was unseen, but perhaps audible in her voice. "You mean sick as hell upgrades?" The worker's voice was still a murmur, but energy trickled back to it in fit-starts. J's grip tightened around the arm-tubing. "Aftermarket modifications, yes." Uzi laughed. She twisted around to look at J, one quarter-affronted and one quarter-incredulous. (The last half was the traitorous blush-grin that was why she had made J put it down in writing that oilsharing was not their scheduled cuddle-time.) "Of course I like it!" Uzi said. "You think stock worker drone hydraulics could keep up with you monsters? Plus I replaced all my flimsy aluminum with steel! Thanks for that, I guess. You helped, a little." J narrowed her eyes. "A little? You couldn't have even attempted those modifications without someone to do them. Self-modification is a liability, in the narrow range of scenarios where it's even viable." "Don't lecture me, we've already been over this." The purple eyes were all clear now, because they were rolling. "Now is not the time, now's the time for, what was it, haptically-calibrated resource transfer." That delay in recall was all feigned, of course --- Uzi had insisted that J craft this sequence of so-called buzzwords. Not a direct insistence: she had simply, repeatedly, demanded an explanation. Much like executives when asked about their business expenses, there were questions which required tailor-made answers. But this had been J's first skillset. J had authored the worker's excuse, but that didn't mean the ex-PR consultant didn't like testing it. Releasing her grip on the arm-tubing, she slid them along the chair's synthetic leather, slipping underneath the goth's abdomen. The murder drone knelt in the chair, while Uzi leaned against its back --- emphasis on lean. She'd be standing up if not for the angle. Even still, J's head rested on the worker's shoulder. "Right, I know you're anxious to get back to this." Conic arms squeezed her tight. Quite the haptic calibration. "No, this is because you need it. Not because I wouldn't rather be..." J waited. "Well? What would you rather be doing than being held safely in the arms of a superior drone?" Uzi snapped forward to bite J's shoulder. The fabric of her suit blunted the impact. "It doesn't matter. So, miss circle-back, where you going with the warranty violation thing?" "I was just thinking. There are other 'upgrades' you could attempt. There's one certain humans were fond of giving their personal drones. A tradition I've encountered several workers carrying forth for their own enrichment purposes." Uzi froze. Arms, once enwrapping J, fell to her side. "Oh. Tell me you don't mean..." "Paired peripherals." J licked her lips. "Suitable for... a partnership like ours." "Gross gross gross! We do not need to imitate weird monkey mating behavior! We're robots, J." J raised an eyebrow, and then she tugged on her arms, snuggling herself closer. Throughout, she stared flatly into Uzi's glare. It deepened, even as the captain's smirk blossomed. "You're looking at me like you're proving a point right now." "Am I not? It's obvious what we're doing right now. Making an actual argument of it would be beneath me." J's tail curled behind her, pointing emphasis at Uzi. "It's not the same! We have haptic sensors and so it obviously feels nice to have someone giving... gentle input or whatever. Same reason things look pretty. We have eyes and pattern recognition and there's symmetry and junk." "And?" J tongued up two pearls of oil from Uzi's shoulder. Her morsel shivered at the contact. "And it makes sense! But there's no reason for sex toy peripherals to feel good! It's pointless imitation. It's so stupid." J pulled one arm out, lifting it to stroke Uzi's cheek, but the worker flinched away. J said, "The feedback could be programmed to feel good." "That's just wireheading." Uzi had fists balled up. "Why not just max out your pleasure receptors directly? It's not... functional. Don't you care about that?" Unable to caress her cheek, J settled for patting Uzi's head, and the worker's rejoiner-glance could have plotted murder. "Hmph. Is it any less functional than those human games you're so enthusiastic about?" J said, giving a haughty huff of a laugh. "Those have actual stories and challenge! It's not just. Thrusting. It's too easy. It's boring!" J sighed, and pulled back from Uzi, arms retreating. "You're not interested at all, then?" "Duh! Could I make that any clearer?" "Very," J said with a smirk. Her suit jacket, already hanging up, slid down as her arms snaked through. "I've seen the way you look at me when I change out of my work clothes. Eyes running along my legs. The glance at my hips you think you're averting too fast for me to notice." J began unbuttoning her shirt, peeling static-cling'd fabric from her carapace. "Is this boring to you?" Uzi folded a leg, the knee kicking J's hand, impeding if not stopping her. "Bite me! It's... ugh. Fine. You're [really pretty]{.small}. And I maybe like looking at you. But I think the clothes are just like. Symbolic? I like that you can take off the mask and be yourself around me. It's authentic. It's. You trust me, right? You wouldn't let anyone else see this?" All buttons free, J plucked the shirt off her back. Maybe, having been caught, Uzi didn't try to fight the allegations now --- or maybe she didn't even realize she's doing it, but the goth's eyes flit magnetically to the amber light pulsing with the core, and then traced the subtle curves of her abdominal plates. Distracted, but she knew if she wasn't listening to J, the captain would not look past the insult. J was saying, "Why shouldn't I, if we're just robots? Would you stop staring so hungrily at me, if I invited V to watch me change next time?" Uzi scowled. Her mouth worked, and her processor spun through some responses. "Why are you so insistent in getting me to say I want to. Do stuff to you." "Why are you so resistant to saying it? Afraid of dropping your mask around me?" J levered herself up by inches, rising taller. "Tell me it wouldn't be more alluring if this ritual were functional. If pulling down my skirt was a prelude to something more." Eyes on J's ascent, the goth didn't catch J's hands snapping out to grab her own, then stuffing the purple-lit plastic into the waistband of her skirt. J continued, "We're robots, so it could be anything you want. It could be symmetrical. I could be a gentle touch. We even could make it a game." J finally closed the distance, pressing her bare chestplate against the worker, the positioning forcing Uzi's hands deeper into her skirt. "You ask me why I'm so insistent? Our contract has been... very accommodating. Whenever I do the accounting... I take so much from you. Because you're so full of what I need."