Shall Machines Divide the Earth, Benjanun Sriduangkaew [large screen ebook reader .TXT] 📗

neck. “Even I make mistakes, jewel. But it is as I said, everyone who lives on Septet consents to this potential fate. Don’t think anything of it. No one is going to. Are you hungry? Let me treat you; I trust the kitchen staff hasn’t evacuated.”

Chapter Four

The air in the gym is frigid, and few other guests are about. Various machines line the sides, several resembling torture contraptions and medical cradles more than they do exercise instruments. Privacy spheres veil several. The space is so wide, all paneled wood and a floor-to-ceiling glass wall, that no one needs to be within twenty meters of each other if they don’t want to—which is how I prefer it. I attract no particular attention as I go through warm-up routines: in some places baring your chest in public is risqué or criminal, but Septet is not one of them.

I work my arms and shoulders until they’re supple, until my rotator cuffs and ulnas turn like well-oiled cogs and my muscles run as warm as a faultless engine. There is a careful balance to strike when most of one’s body is cybernetics—the organic parts must also be maintained, and there’s only so much my nanites can do. Metabolism, maintenance of the viscera, streamlining somatic processes. But to stay in fighting trim I still need to contribute my part.

The pull-up machine registers my body mass as I touch it, adjusting for my muscle index and my cybernetic-to-organic ratio. I grip the bar overhead, adjust my form, and begin. In my former profession, officers often prioritized their legs, but for recreation I’ve found it most satisfying to pit myself against gravity. The line of exertion I can feel clearly down my arms, shoulders, spine; my entire body works and bends itself to this one single goal. I pull. I pull until my feet are off the ground, and hold. Half a minute before I lower myself. The next time I hold a little longer, until I do so for a full minute in the air, aloft only by the power of my hands and arms. It demands the entire apparatus of the body, it stretches every tendon. Ascend, descend. Unnecessary thoughts recede: endorphins cleanse the mind, leaving my senses and perception with the clarity of new glass, of a clear morning.

I move on to leg lifts: less strenuous, since from the knees down I’m cybernetic. By the time I’m done, sweat soaks my breasts and stomach, collecting in the crooks of my elbows, the backs of my knees. Nanites flood through my augmentation couplings, lowering temperature where the pseudoskin doesn’t vent excess heat.

Daji brings me towels and a tray of drinks. She’s gone out of her way to put on a Vimana uniform, though her version is a little less modest—the neckline plunges deeper, the hemline floats shorter. Maroon stockings, burnished with hints of copper, sheathe her legs. “You’re such a vision,” she murmurs as she wipes me down, lingering on the dark seams where flesh blends into musculoskeletal couplings. “Do you suppose I could clean up all this salt with my tongue? It seems wasted on towels.”

“This is a little public. And my sweat contains trace coolant.” Not that she’d have issue ingesting that. The drinks she brought are chilled tea: assam, oolong, ceylon. I sip from each cup. Strong and fragrant, richly flavored, each full of bitter complexity. “I’m surprised you brought me such sober things, not cocktails.”

“I considered that but I got distracted when I found coconut rum in your suite’s sideboard.” She wrinkles her nose. “I thought of throwing it out, but on the off chance that you might enjoy such a freakish and unlovely concoction . . . ”

The idea an AI would have such specific dislikes amuses me. “And here I thought I was going to have you lap it up from between my thighs.” Half-teasing. I don’t know, yet, what to do about intimacy with Daji. Whether it should continue, whether I should indulge myself and her. I’m tending toward yes. Daji is less complicated than Recadat.

“Even for such a treat I’ll not stoop to coconut-flavored anything. I can make parts of my proxy dispense liquor, if you wish. I just need to learn what you like if I’m going to mix cocktails.”

An image, incredibly vivid, flashes through my mind. Of drinking sake straight from her mouth, or vodka from between her breasts and other such outlandish things. I set down one of the cups and put my knuckles under her chin. “My regalia. You’re such a hungry little thing.”

“Exclusively for you.” Daji’s hand strokes my bicep, circles around to my back; she cups her palm over a shoulder blade. “Look at you. Your musculature is made to be serviced by my mouth. In prehistoric times you’d be thought a demigod, a hero born of woman and divine flame.”

“And you’re an immortal seductress out of myth. The populace would throw themselves into boiling cauldrons if it’d amuse you. You would be declared the most gorgeous in all the land.” I cradle her jawline. It’s so easy to fall into this, to fall into her; more than that I want to. “Still would be; I like to think I’m a good judge of feminine beauty and no one I’ve ever met compares to you.”

“Flatterer.” But her smile is wide and genuine; guileless. Or it would be, if she were human. She sits down at my feet and puts her head on my thigh, heedless of the sweat-soaked fabric. I stroke her head as I would a pet, surveying the mostly-empty gym, wondering how much we could get away with.

Through the glass wall I spot a familiar figure stepping out to the pool—Ouru. Ze’s in a nacreous bodysuit, midriff and ankles bared. Ze is slightly soft around the middle, pleasant to look at, zer lower half a runner’s physique. Thighs and calves like the trunks of well-fed trees. Ze is not looking my way, though I have no doubt ze is aware of