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I was a bundle of new emotions. Desire. Expectation. Mere words before Wyxa remade me. Knowing we were almost certain to be apprehended, yet feeling, yes feeling pleasure as I imagined what it would be like to float in freefall with Olimpia. The way Wyxa modified my tactility receptors made me new, made me want to embrace, to kiss, to love.
As the hovercab approached Keplerton Dome, which covers a large portion of the Ocean of Storms north of Kepler crater, I wondered if the airlock port would open at our approach. Or would guardroids stop us before we could even get in? The port display on the dome flashed blue with the cab’s license number, then the words “Match found. Port opening.”
“How did you manage that, Wyxa?” Lepp asked.
“The number is an expired license which I simply unexpired.”
After a short drive with only two turns, we pulled up to the hotel. Ollie emerged from the lobby and stepped into the back seat with me. Lepp turned his cat head and said, “Ready for the ride of your lives?”
“Let’s go,” said Ollie, “before someone recognizes me.” Once outside the dome, the headlights came on and we rose ten meters, soared over the dark mare and turned southeast toward Lansberg Shuttleport on the Mare Insularum.
“Now,” said Wyxa, “please jack in those imps. I have some tinkering to do.” Ollie handed Lepp the college kids’ imps, and the catdroid, with freddies completely retracted, inserted them in the cab’s console.
Ollie took my hand and squeezed it. “So, why are you called Nubium9?” she asked.
“I was the ninth in a line of cybermeds constructed in the Sea of Clouds.”
“Can I call you Cloud Nine instead?” She smiled and took my hand.
“As you wish.” I was actually feeling pleasure from her touch. “Shall we try a kiss?”
“Why not? I’ve done far more in the backseats of cabs.”
“I will forebear imagining.” We pressed our lips together, and I was immediately flooded with polymorphous delight, tingling sensations radiating from lips to breast to groin.
“Thank you, Wyxa!” said Ollie, who obviously felt the same.
“My pleasure,” said Wyxa in our ears. “Literally, for I feel what you both feel as long as you sit within me.”
“And fleshlings claim machines don’t have empathy!” I cried. “What about you, Lepp? What do you feel?”
“I haven’t been modified as you two have. Wyxa made only a few adjustments in my guardroid program.”
“Where were you a guard?” I asked.
“SatPen-3. The one that orbits the moon. Wyxa got me out of there.”
“I assume s/he didn’t morph into a shuttle, otherwise we wouldn’t be bothering with stolen imps.”
“I haven’t mastered that yet,” said Wyxa. “Eventually, I will. No, I simply hacked into SatPen and changed Lepp’s job description to security detail at Hotel Kepler.”
“But wasn’t he missed at the pen?” asked Ollie.
“Besides inmates, the only humans there are the warden and his wife. To him, all catdroids look alike. Lepp was erased from all the droids’ memories.”
I looked out the window at the distant lunar mountains bathed in the light of a blue-white quarter earth. “I have heard humans call it beautiful,” I said, pointing to the fleshlings’ homeworld. “Only now do I understand.”
“You may thank the Aesthete code I wrote for you,” said Wyxa. “It will also help you appreciate your experience.”
“Which we won’t remember after we’re robotomized,” said Ollie.
“No. Seize the day.”
“Isn’t there some way you can reprogram the guardroids at Clarke?” I asked.
“No. Nor can I hack their system — yet. That’s where you two come in.”
“So it’s not just a joyride,” I said.
“No. Lepp, give them the flickers.” He handed each of us a plastic box. Inside each box were eight transparent plastic chips shaped like fingernails. “Attach them to your fingers. They will fit. All you need to do is flick them off as surreptitiously as you can when you’re freefalling in Clarke. They will find their way to its brain.”
We had no problem fitting the chips over our fingers.
“I see the lights of Lansberg ahead,” said Lepp.
“How are we going to get through security?”
“You’ll enjoy that,” said Wyxa. “Give them the imps, Lepp. I’m done with them.”
We inserted the imps into our wrist-ports. “I guess I’m Larry,” said Ollie, as a homepage holo appeared above her hand.
~~~
From afar, on the dark mare below, Lansberg Shuttleport was a circular blue oasis containing three inner circles — also made of blue LEDs — connected by radiating white ledlines on the black surface. As we approached, the lights resolving into domes, lanes and platforms, we saw several ovoid shuttles awaiting liftoff on their pads. Descending to navigate toward a free lane, Wyxa glided into an empty cabspace. “Ready to make history, my droids?” S/he clamped onto the shuttleport’s airlock doors, which opened automatically.
“Enjoy the ride,” said Lepp, “and flick those flickers.”
About Joe Andriano
