Crimson Kestrel, Kitchen
Servos whirred as the white plastic figure glanced over its shoulder. Gleaming purple gem like eyes staring back like domed lenses. Eye contact. Then lower. Body contact. Then back again. Eye contact.
"Whoa! Yes! Hello! Welcome to my personal space! How may I help you!?" she exclaimed, pinnd between Redrick and the refridgerator.
Personal space? What? When did robots have such a concept? Redrick blinked incredulously, then took a few steps back. Words escaped him for a few more seconds - tired neurons fired in a brain so exhausted as to barely be considered cognitive. Eventually, a circuit closed, somewhere.
"...Why are you rootin' around the damn fridge?" Redrick asked, specifying an earlier point. "And... Pasco in his grave, you are the screwiest robot I've ever seen!"
Her head turned with another mumble of motors as she turned to face Redrick side on.
"Robot?" she tilted her head, the motione exaggerated by those ears. "What?"
"Yes, you. Robot." Redrick poked the bunny-bot in the sternum. "Don't give me that 'androids dream of electric sheep' crap. You. Are. A. Robot."
A robot, maybe. But a soft robot. Redrick learned this the hard way: body flinching from the reach of fingers. Needless to say what they met wasn't sternum. The bot's head lowered, looking at the point of contact, then at Redrick. Its expressionless face could not convay her out-rage.
He yawned immediately after that statement. Again, it was a magnum opus of a yawn.
"An' last I checked..." He eventually stated, as if an expert on the subject, "Robots don't eat."
By now, her plating was moving like the simmering lid of a hot pan, rattling loudly.
"I AM NOT A ROBOT!" came a modulated voice, arms shoving Red foward. "AND I AM NOT A CHIROPRACTOR!"
Synthetic arms shoved the tired old man back several paces. His tired brain attempted to process the... thing's previous statement.
Robot?
...Chiropractor?
"What?" Redrick said, a look of complete, utter confusion on his face, "Wh-... Chiropractor? What does that have to"
"ENOUGH!"
The bot stood seething in impatience. And yet her posture was all wrong: Hands on her hips, back arched. It walked and moved like a Yamataian pop-idol, dripping in orchestrated sex. Whoever was reading the map and giving directions behind those purple eyes was obviously not the same person driving.
"... What are you? And why are you so loud?"
"I'm L'manel" she stated in a rather particularly matter-of-fact way as if Redrick were stupid not to already know. Her tone said something was wrong with him. Apparently one answer was supposed to satisfy both questions.
Redrick's look of vapid confusion had yet to leave his face. "...Is that a type of robot...?"
"NO! WHAT KIND OF BACKWARDS COUNTRY BUMPKIN ARE YOU?!"
And yet still that cheerful posture. And then it looked aside, seeing itself in the mirror and that posture. A storm of introspective grumblings followed: feet mashing the floor metallically, arms up like a spoiled child throwing a tantrum in a phone-booth, turning a complete three hundred sixty degrees. There was some sort of inner conflict here.
"This is a body! And... Not the one I would have chosen. This is all Echelon's fault" it huffed, slumped forwards now in the very best the body knew to represent the intelligence living within it's body language as "not-perky", something it obviously wasn't designed to do.
Okay, well. That was something. He got it to stop screaming, somehow. So it wasn't a robot, but it was. And Echelon was at fault. Echelon was... Redrick vaguely remembered a cackling, metallic freespacer before he left the Fruna Ruica.
Okay. We can work with this. And this robot - er. Person? Was the same one screaming about something earlier.
Gears in his mind clicked, finally meshing. Cogs turned. Solenoids flipped.
"...You're not that poor girl who got squashed, are you?" Redrick said, in a tone of flat disbelief. How was that possible? And yet, it was the only thing that made sense.
The relief was palpable, almost instantanious as its shoulders slumped, hands moving to wipe sweat that couldn't possibly exist from its brow with a "clunk".
"Ahaa... Finally the stone falls. Yes, I am she."
"Huh." Redrick said. This single-syllable gesture seemed to convey far, far more than such a simple utterance should - it seemed to say, "Oh, so I was right" and, "How is that even possible?" in the same go.
Still.
"How... how?" he asked.
"Oho?" the white figure swayed its hips from side to side like an excited school girl, the pink picojelly chest bouncing rather inappropriately. "Want to see?"
And then it took the backpack from its shoulder, slowly unzipping it.
"You might like what you're about to see."
Redrick peered into the bag as Aiesu unzipped it, signifying his non-verbal consent to view whatever was contained within. He winced. The contents were indescribably gruesome.
"Ah. I uh. I think I seen enough." Redrick said, his expression that of someone about to be physically ill. "That's a little bag of nightmares you got there."
"That's me" she stated, voice softer now. "Or what's left of me."
There was remorse. Still, the body language was inappropriately enthusiastic
"There's none of me inside this body. Its like a puppet, you know?"
"I think I grasp it. The head's controlling the robot." He furrowed his brow. "Ah, then I guess that means someone's controllin' the head...?"
He didn't sound sure.
"Hang on..." she said, sifting through pockets in the bag. She took a small screw-driver, plopping the bag down on the kitchen table. Carefully, she stripped flesh back on one side, dirtying the squeaky clean ipod-like fingers of the bunny-bot, revealing surgical silvery metal beneath.
"I'm underneath all this. Want to see? I've been meaning to remove the casing anyway."
He had to admit. His curiosity was piqued, despite the gruesome circumstances. He nodded. "Ah... sure. But don't you think this is a little forward for the first date?"
The bot gave Redrick a long look as he sat at the other side of the table, as if she wanted to smile but the stoic face couldn't. Screwdriver in hand, the wrist was soon spinning like the neck of a drill, extracting long hex-bolts the length of fingers from the skull -- one at a time, setting them aside. She was particularly organized, each equadistant and perfectly parallel.
Then the hands met the metal skull again -- slowly prizing it apart down the middle like some model kit of metal or an engine-block: One dented half coming away dripping in gibs, smelling sweetly rather than of blood. She set the armored extrusion aside.
Within sat something massive and amber, resembling an egg in a very loose approximation of a brain. Plugs ran into the bottom, where the brainstem began but beyond this it was wholly smooth. The only exception was a single ring of metal over the left side with something enscribed into it. Beneath the semi-clear surface, glitter seemingly moved like billions of tiny ants or the surface of the sea from an airliner.
"Well, nice to meet you."
Redrick smiled, despite himself and the circumstances. "So, that little soft-boiled egg is you? Hello. I'm Redrick Callahan."
He paused, grinning. "I'd shake your hand, but, you seem a mite indisposed."
The bot watched, taking a moment to get the joke. There was lag. Carefully, it extended its white arm before looking back at the red and white liquids smeared over the white then worming its fingertips as if it had placed its hand in something particularly nasty.
"Aiesu Kalopsia. Practicing physician of Luca Pavone and acting medical officer. Could you pass me a towel or something?"
Redrick looked around, then spotted what he wanted. He leaned back on two chair legs in a hilariously unsafe manuever, and grabbed a roll of paper towels, tearing off a generous sheaf before rocking back solidly onto all four chair legs. He passes the bunch to the robot-puppet.
"There you go."
"You mind doing it?" she held out her hand, almost like a queen expecting him to kiss them. The prospect wasn't particularly nice. "The vision on this thing isn't very good. I don't want this thing stinking. Better disinfect it too."
Redrick shrugged. He leaned forward in his chair, completing the entirely unintentional image of the chivalrous servant kneeling before the ruling matriarch. He wiped the hands clean, grimacing at the sheets of gore he lifted from the pristine, white fingers of the robot. He hmmed and hawed a few minutes, wiping, peering, then wiping again, small grunts of dissatisfaction exuding from him.
That wasn't enough. He got up, and found a spray bottle of general purpose cleaner, spritzing, wiping, the ancient ritual of the naval service.
Eventually, he was satisfied. The hand was probably cleaner now than it had ever been.
"There you go, Aiesu." Redrick said, bundling up the sheaf of ruined towellettes. "All clean."
"Much better, thank-you. Can't be much of a doctor if I'm getting all my patients sick... Not that I can do a lot of doctoring in this thing." arms up, looking over herself, then down her back over her shoulder. "Or much of anything, really..."
Redrick raised an eyebrow, less-than-innocent mirth glittering in his eyes.
"What?" she quizzed.
"I think the designers of that body intended this model to do plenty of stuff." Redrick said.
"Wait, like waiting on patrons?" she grumbled. Her shoulders were hunched forward. The software driving the bot's body language was always looking for ways to tittilate: In this case squeezing the assets in question together, forming a sizable picojelly clevage.
Redrick thought for a while on how to tastefully put it.
"Sweetheart, those are service droids. They wait on people, but it's not just drinks and food they provide..."
"Entertainment? Like the animatronics at Neppyburgers? I don't see this thing singing and dancing somehow."
"Oh, Pasco in his grave..." Redrick sighed.
He pointed his finger in the direction of the bunny-bot's crotch. "Tell me what you find there."
"Self-diagnostic says its described as..." and then her head lowered. There was visible disappointment.
"Described as? C'mon, you're a doctor. Do I got to spell it out for you?"
"Its sort of..." she glanced aside... "Well... Ah..."
He sighed. "Starry night, Aiesu, it's a sex-bot. People fuck these things. The man takes his penis, and he puts it in the..."
He made a 'complete the sentence' gesture.
She couldn't look him in the eyes. And yet she found his hands about her plastic wrists, making her audiably wince.
"Kinematic massage... Self... Lubricating... Ex...truded... sexual... ss..sss...surrogate" she said, reading the specification she got back from the diagnostic.
Again, rattling.
He sighed, sounding remarkably like a disappointed father. His fingers drummed on her plastic forearms, before settling on her wrists again.
"And the dirty, vulgar, layman's term is...?"
The rattling became more intense. She tried to retreat, inching back but those hands wouldn't let her.
A long awkward silence.
And then words.
"Do you think its... 'used'?"
Hiccup. The bot hiccupped. Why would it hiccup?
What was he supposed to say? The Fruna Ruica had a whole roster of these particular robots, and frequently they had to be rotated in and out of service due to the less-than-tender affections of the patrons. The bot she was in...?
Well. The maintenance staff had nicknamed that one the Village Bicycle...
He opened his mouth to deliver the terrible news.
"I'd..."
And another hiccup.
"Actually rather not know" she continued. Not giving Red the chance to respond fully. Its hands moved to cover the mouth it didn't have.
He looked visibly relieved that he didn''t have to tell her that particular robot had seen more sexual attention than a convention of porn stars. His calloused hands slid off the robot's wrists, returning to his lap.
"...Why are you hiccuping?" Redrick said, after a period of decidedly awkward silence.
"My personality, the way I act and the way I think is all based on a real person of the same name. This is one of her perculiarities" she replied, hiccupping again.
"Ah. Okay." Redrick said, understanding one thing, but having many more questions raised. He decided to table the matter. "So, you're not the... real, real Aiesu, but a... copy? Is that the right word for it?"
"A construct. An artificial intelligence that's a replication of a real person. Again, nice to meet you."
"Ah, my apologies. This is uh, all just so new to me." Redrick scratched the back of his head, an oddly Yamataian gesture from such an old nepleslian. "I'm... I'm the new cook. I mostly just make food, I don't know a lick about... AI, and... science..."
"That sort of thing's my speciality. And food... Food... I should be able to appreciate it eventually. I have a replacement body on the way. One that eats. Hoey..." she held up her arms, as if she were covered in gunk, marvelling in disgust at the spectacle of her own appearance. "This is not how I imagined I'd be making first impressions... I wouldn't mind going somewhere to get this thing disinfected but first, I need to prove to Luca I'm not a chiropractor. You're Nepleslian: What's your idea of revenge? This whole mess is his fault."
Redrick blinked. He didn't expect to be asked such an existential question.
"...Ah... Prank him, I guess?" He shrugged. "Eye for an eye is my take on such things, but in this case, I don't think a one for one reparation would be terribly appropriate..."
The bot soon went fishing through the bag. It produced a metal cigar-case, parting it like a book down the middle. Within were many tiny ziploc bags of assorted colored pills, all rolled neatly and organized by color, shape, press and position. She hummed softly to herself as if selecting some glorious confectionary before producing a small bag of vibrant semi-clear pink capsules laden with green and cyan sparkles before closing the case and slipping it back into the bag.
"Tell you what: You're a chef. He eats. Put one of these in his next meal."
Redrick blinked again. It seemed to be his first reaction to something he couldn't quite cope with instantly. He gingerly took the capsule in his hand, looking at it in a way that suggested they held a great power he couldn't comprehend.
"These ain't gonna kill him, are they...?"
The bot held a pale hand over where her mouth would be, cackling quietly like some scheming villain in a Yamataian sentai show.
"Only his pride. And his inhibition. Probably in abundance."
"Oh, well." Redrick rolled the pill in his hands.
"Ah! Ah! Ah!" she extended her hand out flat, fanning the air as if sh were bouncing some tiny invisible basketball. "Don't handle it in your bare hands... You open the capsule and sprinkle the contents into whatever you serve him. Soup. Drink. Sauce. That sort of thing. Its slightly bitter so you'll need to cover that up."
"Well. If I'm gonna be complicit in food tampering..." Redrick put the pill back in its little bag.
She covered her hands with paper-towels and began removing the large golden egg from the skull, slipping it into the bag, then taking the two easter-egg halves of the silvery skull -- depositing both into the bin as she leaned over revealing those broad picojelly fleshtone hips and a taut smooth belly, depositing the nonsense aside. Finally, she zipped the bag back up again squeezing that chest together, seemingly very pleased with herself with a sigh of contement. And then she noticed him.
Redrick sounded extremely suggestive. He eyed Aiesu's current body with an almost hungry, predatory look. He pocketed the baggy. "...I'm gonna want somethin' in return, y'know that? The trust a consumer puts in the man that makes his food is sacred."
"Well... You are going to be disinfecting this thing, right?" she said, tipping her head back. Apparently a machine could be aloof. "Hands all over it, over every nook and cranny?" She crossed her arms beneath her chest, wrists raising slowly as her arms tightened: one elbow in hand, fingertips along her face in thought. The posture was impish and mischevous and the emphasis below was particularly deliberate, drawing Redrick's eyes to those rolling hills of softness.
Redrick paused, as if considering something. His eyes still seemed to hold a great deal of desire, but he was having trouble voicing it, as if it were embarrassing, a deep, dark secret, something only whispered to a complicit lover in the middle of the night. Tension, wet, heavy, sensual, seemed to fill the atmosphere of the kitchen to Aiesu's limited senses.
In this moment, Redrick realized this was one pervert talking to another. They spoke the same language. The same page. The same sentence. The same word.
He opened his mouth to say something, but paused, as if looking for the right words.
"Being washed by others isn't an experience I'm particularly fond of. For my own convenience, there's no reason I shouldn't step out of this thing for two, maybe three hours? Provided its clean when its returned to me, I'm perfectly happy."
Wait. Were they talking about the same thing?
"...Why would it take me that long to clean your body...?" Redrick looked confused, the tension that had built shattered in an instant.
There was almost laughter. Okay, same page.
"You want me to SAY it!?" The bouncing rolling of shoulders. "What, like cherry on the cake? Seriously?"
Did she really know what he wanted? Could she... read minds?
"...What? How in the galaxy could you know what I wanted to do?" he said, incredulous.
"Men's eyes are obvious animals" she sighed. "And beasts do sing, to dance. "
By Pasco's grave, what the hell was she quoting?
"Do you seriously want me to say spell it out? To hear me say it? You're really dirty. You'll seriously regret it when you meet me"
Redrick's eyes looked to the floor. He sighed, heavily. In a quiet, meek voice, something that even this short time they'd known eachother was extremely out of character for him. He looked up to her, briefly making eye contact, before looking at the floor and finally, finally speaking once again.
"...Ah, you're a doctor right? I... was just wonderin' if I could get you to look at my leg. It's been bothering me for a long time, and I ain't ever had the money to go to a hospital..."
Again, that very careful, very subtle cant of her head. Ears rolling to the right. They weren't even in the same library.
"What? But I thought--"
Redrick, again, looked very confused. "...Thought what...?"
"Well, you have urges, don't you? I mean, sure I'll play doctor for you, if that's what you mean. Though, I am a qualified physician, so it'll probably get kind of pedantic... I wonder?" her gaze rose, index finger to chin in thought.
"Play doctor? Wha...? Urges!?" Redrick again looked so confused. "No, I just want you to figure out what's wrong with my leg... just what in the hell do you think I want from you?"
"Er... Well... What do you think takes two hours, that's done alone between two naked people? -- Well, a man and a bot, anyway..."
A switch flipped again.
"...W-with that thing!?" Redrick said, aghast. "A-Are you serious? That thing has seen more dicks than every other 'bot on the..."
"The..." He trailed off. "The fruna ruica..."
Some how, even without life, in this moment Redrick learned that a machine could stare at a man with dead lifeless eyes.
"P-Pardon?"
"You're... The body that..."
"I don't want to hear it!!" she interrupted. "None of that. Nope. Nope. Noooope." she stood up with a clunk, knees locking with a thud as she rose to her feet. Theatrically, it placed its hands over where a person's ears would be, in spite of the large lapine set atop its head. "NOPE-NOPE-NOPE-NOPE!"
"But wait! You're still gonna look at my leg right!?" Red said, desperate. He stood up as well, banging said leg against the table and sitting immediately back down. His head slammed against the tabletop, momentarily consumed by agony.
"NOPE!"