Dr. Monsa’s garden was enormous, although it was more of a collection of smaller gardens than one large one. There was the English garden with its traditional, orderly plots of roses and symmetrical walkways; the Japanese garden with its stonework, well-manicured tree branches, and hidden brooks; the French garden, sporting dense hedges sculpted into ornate geometrical patterns; and a walled-off paradise garden that featured waterworks like fountains, canals, ponds, and waterfalls. As it were, these labels were little more than vague descriptions, as the gardens contained very few original plants from those olden times; this was fitting considering that the nationalities themselves-English, Japanese, and French-had long since faded into irrelevance.
Many of the plants found in the garden had been designed in the inner sanctum itself and were either being tested or served as living reminders of past successes. The priest pretended to lead the tour, but it soon became evident that the child-framed clone girl named Pueet was the most knowledgeable, and she would often cut in whenever the priest seemed to stammer over the answers to questions.
Although the entire garden was nothing short of spectacular, perhaps the most glorious of the plant life were the colossal nectar trees. These marvels of engineering were ten stories high and bore massive trunks and beefy branches that supported immense orbs of leaves and flowers. The soothing hum of countless collectors buzzing or crawling about was always present. These insects were designed to harvest the abundant sugars produced by the nectar trees and bring this precious juice by way of a pheromone trail to a place determined by their master. After taking their fill, the coin-sized insects set off, bobbing uncertainly under their load, along the chemical trail set down for them. Once they reached the invisible trail end, they would deposit their load into catch tubes, and the sugars were then shunted off to locations where they could be metabolized.
The dro-vine that made up House Monsa required a constant supply of food. It needed energy to regulate its temperature and to optimize its air quality and humidity. Whatever the house did not eat could be fed to the countless creatures that inhabited it, including those people who were either too frugal or too busy to obtain food in some other manner. There was no shame in eating and drinking nectar. Indeed, nectar optimized for animal consumption came in many flavors and contained all the essential proteins and vitamins for optimum health. Even the highest scoring players did not shun nectar, although it did become boring over decades of consumption. Nectar could even be used to fuel organic machines like familiars or robots that were responsible for mundane industrial work. However, such machines typically consumed the most potent nectar (and most terrible tasting to humans), which was super-compressed into dense cubes.
It was the heavy demand for variety in nectar production that drove much of the point revenue of House Monsa. Any new strain of nectar that, for example, offered a different taste, was metabolized more easily, or simply came from an aesthetically pleasing tree would find a ready market. Indeed, nectar trees were so common on earth-and increasingly on other planets and moons-that a house could expect to sell millions, if not billions of trees with every new variety it created.
Beside the grove of nectar trees were the fast-growing poplar trees that set off a soft and even melodious groan as their trunks rose up nearly fast enough for the naked eye to watch in action. Although most dwellings were grown rather than built, the wood these trees produced was still used in a variety of classic products, from paper to furniture.
While one could spend hours alone examining the astonishing variety of trees in Monsa’s gardens, there were just as many impressive varieties of flowers in every color imaginable and with equally impressive uses. There were flowers that emitted light at night, flowers that ate pesky insects (but not the helpful ones, such as collectors), flowers that were processed into all manner of drugs for both human and product consumption, and even flowers for the very old yet still profitable perfume trade. Pueet, their little hostess, explained in a clear voice. “The flowers in the inner sanctum are not for production use; they are just prototypes. We have many production labs distributed throughout House Monsa and her subsidiaries.”
Although plants made up the bulk of the life in the gardens, there were more active denizens that walked, crawled, slithered, or flapped. The most conspicuous products were the general humanoid laborers sprinkled everywhere, their purpose to keep the garden tidy. They did most of their work using only old-fashioned hand tools rather than modern ones, as the doctor preferred the aesthetic of old-time gardening.
Despite this handicap, the massive gardens were immaculately kept, and it was no wonder. The gardeners were remarkably productive, oblivious to the heat of the midday artificial sun and indifferent to the cold of night. They required only two hours of sleep per day, and when they slept they needn’t walk back to any sleeping quarters; instead, they would simply lie down under the shelter of some luxurious plant. Nor did such workers require breaks to eat because there was plenty of fruit and enormous, plump, and delicious bugs of all sorts, which they scooped up deftly as they worked.
All of the workers were identical in appearance. They were hairless men with dark skin weathered by exposure, and every one of them carried around their neck a small blue vial containing repellant against the garden cullers. When Lyra pointed out the vials, Pueet informed them that when the workers got old or otherwise outlived their usefulness, the doctor would simply cut off their supply of repellant. However, such turnover was low since the food in the garden on which the workers subsisted was chock-full of goodies that slowed the aging process.
Among the human-based products that attracted the most attention from the men in the party were the concubines. A full harem of women, spectacular in their nudity, lounged about in a silver-pooled grotto. They stared back at the voyeurs, some of them demurely, some intensely. Djoser asked if these prototypes required any further “testing,” volunteering for the job with a lewd smile. Pueet warned him to leave them alone, as the same traits that mimicked passionate love could easily turn to violence.
Pueet went on to say how Sara, Dr. Monsa’s personal concubine, the one who the night before had stuck a fork in another dinner guest’s hand, was one of the doctor’s early and unsuccessful attempts in this line of work. “But Sara formed an imprint bond with Father, and despite her madness, he grew fond of her,” she said. “Well, maybe not exactly fond of her, but affectionately familiar with her over the years.”
Pueet then informed the tour group that the concubines were not allowed out of their plexi cage. “We used to allow them to wander freely, but eventually they would get bored and try to seduce the garden workers or whoever else they could find. It was shamefully disruptive.”
“What about rent-a-boys? Do you grow them as well?” Lyra asked while elbowing Djoser in the ribs.
Pueet laughed girlishly. “Yes, although we lock them up also, away from the concubine protos. Otherwise they would simply wear each other out. In the early days we actually lost a few of them from exhaustion. We do still allow controlled visits for testing purposes.”
Spurred by Lyra’s interest, Pueet showed them the rent-a-boy sphere. Like their female counterparts they were nude, exposing their perfectly shaped and muscular bodies. Upon seeing the visitors, some of the products whistled at Lyra and Pueet and shouted out invitations over one another. Others leaned stoically against the plexi as though posing. A few smiled shyly and hid themselves. Apparently, there was a type of man for all tastes.
“I noticed you do not separate them from one another,” D_Light commented. “Do they get along so harmoniously all the time?”
Pueet pointed to three small empty spheres off in the distance. “No, occasionally we get a violent phenotype or one whose copious sexual urges are misdirected at others in the cell. However, as you can see, the isolation spheres are empty now. We rarely make such rookie mistakes in our designs anymore.”
“Misdirected sexual urges?” Djoser asked. “You do not make homosexual rent-a-boys and concubines?”
“Oh, there really isn’t much of a market for those,” Pueet answered while twisting her mouth slightly. “The rampant genetic engineering of humans leading up to the time of the bottleneck-coupled with modern fetus incubation tanks-has nearly wiped that market out.”
“Interesting,” D_Light said. “I had no idea.”
Pueet nodded. “Yeah, House Yi-LingYu specializes in that niche market, and Father does not think the potential profits are worth the extra R amp;D it would take to challenge Yi-LingYu’s strong position.” Pueet sighed. “I’ve thought of putting a line together myself. It would be a fun game, but I do not know if I will ever get around to it.”
Pueet then took the tour party to see House Monsa’s most advanced and expensive product line, the analysts. Like Hal, the analyst they had met the night before, the male analysts looked very similar to the common garden worker products in that they were hairless, and they were remarkable only in that they did not resemble anyone in particular. It was as though they were merely templates of a person. The women analysts were hairless also, making them somewhat repulsive to D_Light. The analysts were one of the most driven products. When looking into their eyes one might at first think that they were dull, given their blank stare; however, in reality they were simply in a state of unbroken trance. They were so committed to their thoughts that nothing in the silly “real” world mattered a pin to them.
Like Hal, many of the analysts had tubes that sprung up around them like wet quills of a porcupine, the skin folding circularly like an anus where the tube interfaced with their body. Nectar, drugs, and other substances that D_Light did not ask about flowed in through some tubes, and dark liquid waste trickled out of others. Unlike the ebony tans of the garden workers, the skin of the analysts was nearly translucent from their subterranean existence. Their domicile was deep within a windowless dro-vine mound. They stood in long bays, one after the other. Their mind interface chips were hooked directly to machines, but this apparently did not provide enough input because their otherwise minimalist bays had dozens of monitors which displayed a great deal of things that D_Light could not even guess about. Pueet told them that the monitors were as much for those supervising the analysts-the proctors-as they were for the products themselves. Since these analysts were prototype models, it was important for proctors to observe, measure, and validate their work.
The proctors also appeared to be products. One proctor was another of Dr. Monsa’s cloned daughters, identical to Pueet, Love_Monkey, Curious_Scourge, BoBo, and every other “daughter” they had seen, except that this one had a dark ribbon in her hair. The girl ignored the tour group as she scanned the monitors, and the analysts, likewise, were oblivious to her. Another proctor was an analyst himself, presumably a graduated one. This one was walking along with his tubes hooked into a hovering machine that trailed behind him, always staying just close enough to stay out of his way while still maintaining some slack.
Pueet explained that most of the analysts were playing ultra-complex strategy games against one another, as well as against others outside House Monsa. “It can be expensive to hire independent agents to pit wits against our prototypes, but it is necessary to vet the optimum designs. Those consistently successful might be grown for commercial production.”
“What about those that fail? Do you destroy them?” Djoser asked.
“Soul no! They are too expensive to design, grow, and train to just throw them away. Instead, we sell them at a steep discount to houses that could not otherwise afford them.”
As repulsive as the analysts were, D_Light knew that he was in the Fort Knox of the modern world. If you had a tough problem, a quandary of great magnitude, the best thing you could do was set one of these babies loose on it. They were the greatest weapons a player could get hold of. D_Light would have loved to get one of these for himself-even a reject-but such merchandise was way out of his price range. Individual players did not buy analysts. Only major families had pockets deep enough to own even one.
D_Light was a little surprised that he and his teammates were trusted to be here, seemingly unguarded. D_Light and Djoser were armed, and Lyra herself was a 120-pound weapon. One madman with a blade could slit one throat after another. No doubt the analysts would just stand there like cows in the slaughterhouse, he thought. Billions of points of damage could be done! D_Light had no such insane intention, nor could he imagine this of anyone else on his team. Perhaps some analyst had already foretold this fact beyond all reasonable probability, which is why they were here.
Pueet ushered them on. “There is much more to see, more than you can see in a day. More than you could see in a lifetime.”
The party was well worn out by the time they stumbled in for dinner. Dr. Monsa was present, as was Sara and her rent-aboy reject playthings from the night before. Several of the clones were there. Djoser did not remember which was which, but Moocher, with his precise memory, identified them by their distinctly colored bows and told him the present company was Curious_Scourge, BoBo, Love_Monkey (who was apparently back from the groksta), their guide for the day, Pueet, along with a new daughter who had not yet been introduced.
As usual, the clones surrounded Lily and her nubber. The nubber was carrying a few worse-for-wear flowers in one paw while holding onto the hem of Lily’s dress with its other. Lily’s dress was a frilly thing covered with flower prints and lace, similar to the ones worn by the clone girls.
Djoser had only seen flowered dresses on women (or men) who were making fun of themselves. The antiquated fashion and its supposed virtue was a joke to any mainstream player. Nevertheless, it suited Lily. Djoser marveled at the perfect skin of her arms, throat, and face, such delicate proportions. And the natural innocence and sincerity with which she carried herself was captivating. She had been designed perfectly for her purpose.
He imagined what it would be like to hold her down on her back, screaming and thrashing under him. How he would forcefully penetrate her. And as he violated her, he wondered what it would look like when he bit into her pale, flawless skin, first her forearm as she tried to fend him off, then her neck, followed by her cheek. And just as he was finishing, he would stab into one of her beautiful blue eyes and pry it out. What would that be like? How would I feel? Such an experience would be like none he had ever had before in his eighty-seven years of existence.
“It’s really not fair how pretty you are in this,” BoBo said to Lily as she pinched the fabric of Lily’s dress.
“Do you seek her approval with your exclusive chitchat simply because she is comely?” the good doctor nearly shouted across the table.
“Father, don’t embarrass me,” BoBo hissed between clenched teeth. “I was merely making an observation.”
Dr. Monsa spoke to the group with a weary voice. “A weakness in my girls. Although they are old enough to know better, they share the primitive trait of desperately wanting to please those who appear to be worth pleasing. Notice how they gravitate toward the Caucasian girl and not the lovely Lyra?”
Lyra was startled by hearing her name and turned away from Djoser to listen.
“You are sooo embarrassing!” Curious_Scourge lamented.
The doctor ignored her remark and said, “My girls have always found beauty in things that resemble themselves. I used to think it was vanity, but perhaps it is something more primitive. Like attracts like. Conceivably a useful feature in our early evolution, but a bothersome vestige in this modern day. I haven’t tracked down the genes responsible for this vestige. It is rather complex.”
BoBo pounded a small fist into the table. “My Soul, can’t I just have a conversation and you mind your own business?”
“But I too am merely making an observation,” countered the doctor.
BoBo’s face flushed. “An observation? You think I like her just because she is a pretty white girl. You think me so simple? Maybe I find her fascinating for the same reason you do!” BoBo grabbed Lily’s hand which sat limp, cupped in the little porcelain hands of the child-woman. Lily’s face was pale and her eyes glistened.
“Because of what she is,” BoBo said. “What a rare event it is to have a specimen like her in our domicile!”
BoBo stroked Lily’s hair with one hand. “Or maybe it isn’t just the fact that she is white like me or that she is a camper, but that she is a woman? I can see in her my approximate future. Oh, but wait…no such future awaits me because someone trapped my sisters and me forever in a prepubescent shell!” With that, BoBo stood, sending her chair backward and over with a crack on the hard stone floor, and then she stormed off.
BoBo’s dramatic exit sparked an end to dinner. The other girls fell in with BoBo’s lead and stomped off with their sister. Lily asked to be excused with her teddy bear. After snacking all day in the garden, D_Light could not eat another bite, and so he excused himself as well. Walking down the path, he discovered Lily, who was talking to her bear. “What a silly boy you are,” she said as the nubber tried clumsily to climb a tree from which oval milky fruits hung overhead.
“Deja vu,” D_Light said. “Have you noticed that dinnertime here is really awkward?” he asked.
Lily laughed softly. “Yeah, maybe I should just pack a picnic for my dinner tomorrow night.”
“That sounds good,” said D_Light. “Maybe I could join you and we could watch the pretend sunset together.”
Lily smiled and nodded. And then, abruptly, she walked up to only a few inches from his face. “D_Light, why don’t you tell me about yourself? Tell me about how you grew up.”
D_Light felt the urge to either step back or step into her, but he remained where he was. “I…sure, I’ll have-”
“I don’t want to talk to your robot,” she said with a note of irritation. “I don’t want it to send me anything. I want to hear you say it.”
D_Light agreed and suggested they take a walk. The pair wandered along a winding path and out into the vast garden below. They had no destination, the only goal being to put distance between themselves and the others. As they walked, D_Light told Lily about his birth, how he was grown in a nursery, although he, of course, could not remember this. He told her how he and thirty other children were raised by a variety of child-rearing gamers and that his nursery mates would come and go-a typical childhood.
Lily asked many questions related to this. “Where was your mother? How did your caretaker manage so many?”
D_Light told her how it was wasteful for a bio-parent to take care of a child. Their time could be better spent doing something productive. On the other hand, a nursery grinder, also known as a “naga,” as his foster mother was called, could score very high in the Game by raising large quantities of quality players. Many immortals started out as nagas.
D_Light was surprised by the plethora of questions about his bio-parents. Yes, he knew who they were, but it did not matter. They received a small percentage of the points he scored, so he was important to them, but not vice versa.
Lily then explained how mothers in her tribe raised their own daughters. Of course, many daughters lost their mothers to “the running time,” at which point a foster mother would be selected from the tribe. D_Light thought it was a poor design and cruel to have the campers carry their daughters to term in the womb. He knew that humans used to do this and that sideliners still often did, but he always thought it absurd. It was always a mystery to him how mammals managed to survive throughout the ages carrying their unborn like that. Slowed down and vulnerable, the fetus was nothing more than a bonus meal to some hungry predator. Even worse was the way they delivered the infant. Sadistic is nature!
Artificial night was falling and the photoflowers were beginning to bloom, spawning soft globes of light in an otherwise darkening garden. There was a statue of a nude, curvaceous woman looking over her shoulder at a brook that gurgled though a grassy clearing. The pair sat on the grass and regarded the statue. Smorgeous suggested that it best matched examples of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty, and D_Light announced that this was, in fact, who the statue depicted, as though he had known this himself.
Lily’s soft features glowed in the warmth of the photoflowers’ light as she told D_Light about the god of her tribe, the Great Stag. According to legend, long ago when her people were first created, there was a magnificent stag that lived in their forest. He was a kind creature who could speak, and this stag taught the tribe of the Star Sisters and the tribe of the Sons how to gather fruit and hunt. There was abundant fruit, and the game was plentiful. But one day the queen of the Star Sisters and the king of the Sons decided that they no longer had a use for the stag.
Using an imperious tone of voice, Lily quoted the characters of her story. “‘The stag’s pelt will make a fine blanket to warm me at night,’ said the queen. And the king said, ‘The stag’s head will make a fine trophy over my throne.’”
Lily then told how a team of the best hunters from both the tribes brought down the mighty creature, and the queen got her pelt and the king got his trophy. But what they did not know was that the stag was the true life-bringer of the forest. With his breath he made the fruit grow and the game multiply. And so in his absence, the fruit rotted away and the game disappeared, and the people of the tribes began to starve.
Lily tilted her head and lifted her brows. “And after many had perished, the stag was reborn and came back. The tribes begged the stag to save them, and he consented, but the tribes needed to pay for what they had done. Forever forward, every moon, one woman from the tribe of the Star Sisters and one man from the tribe of the Sons were selected to run, to be hunted as the Great Stag himself had been hunted. Some would return by the next moon, and some would not.”
“That’s awful,” D_Light said. “Lily, you know that is a lie, I mean a myth, right?”
“Yes, I know that,” she said. And then, more softly, she added, “I know that now.”
“How does your tribe choose? Choose who is to be hunted, I mean?” D_Light asked.
“Each tribe has an elder who chooses, although there are often volunteers.”
“ Volunteers? Who would volunteer?” D_Light asked incredulously.
“People who want a better life. People like me.” She smiled faintly and lowered her head. Looking at Lily sitting motionless on the lawn next to him, her sculpted legs drawn in tight, D_Light thought she appeared to be a statue herself, the photoflowers casting soft shadows in all the right places. She was a statue of innocence and virtue, a work of art from which he could not pull himself away.
Following a long pause, Lily returned to her story. “Whenever one of us goes on a run, we are allowed to cast a stone with our mark into a jar. Every four years the elder reaches into the jar and pulls out a stone. If it is your stone, then the Great Stag will save you.”
“A lotto,” D_Light whispered.
She shrugged. “Yes, so the more often you run, the better your chances of salvation.”
This D_Light understood. It was no different than the Game. The higher your lifetime score, the better your chances at becoming one of the chosen-one of the immortals. This one fact was the underlying current that influenced every action taken by every player every day in the Game. “Believe it or not, we’re not that much different, you and I,” he told her.
Lily felt an inexplicable desire to tell D_Light all there was to know about her even though it went against everything she had been taught about humans. She wanted to go on to tell him how, after being chosen, she was no longer allowed to sleep in the same den as her sisters and daughters, that she had to sleep alone. She wanted to talk about how two nights after the lotto she had been awakened by the elder, who led her silently through the forest for hours until they reached a cave, which they proceeded to navigate for miles in the dark with only the light of a tiny lamp. She wanted to share the memory of emerging on the other side of the cave into a different world, one with marvelous trees and beautiful flowers, a paradise where she assumed the forgiving Stag would meet her and speak to her with kindness and love. And she wanted to reveal to D_Light her feelings of disillusion and despair when her god never came, how her only anchor was Todget, the one chosen from the tribe of the Sons, who led her away to her new life, a life much like the last-full of fear and events outside of her control.
Lily wanted to share these things but didn’t. She didn’t tell D_Light how she had found work at the university as a test subject, how Professor SlippE who hired her did not mind that she was a demon because it meant she came cheap. She didn’t tell him that it was this professor who implanted her mind interface chip or how he conducted experiments on her that caused bizarre images and voices to crash into her psyche-some ideas created, others destroyed. It was then that she began to dream for the first time, began to imagine death as something other than eternal peace and darkness. Now death had become a curious and frightening unknown, and despite feeling that she could trust D_Light, she was not yet ready to fully reveal her feelings of alienation and vulnerability. There was so much in this new world that she still did not understand, including why it made her smile when she looked at this man at her side and he returned her gaze.
Slowly, Lily lifted her eyes to the stars above. “So much space, so vast. It is so cold,” she said with a quiver in her voice.
“They’re fake, just a projection on the invisible dome.”
Lily laughed. “You must think I’m a fool, a ‘nOOb,’ as you call it. It’s not what they are, it’s what they represent.”
“Well then, I suppose you could call it ‘vast,’ and space is certainly cold. But it is beautiful too. You could live a billion lifetimes and not fill up that space.”
“And your OverSoul, your god, will give you that opportunity?” Lily asked. She fixed her eyes back on the statue.
“For a billion lifetimes? Soul willing, yes.”
“Maybe one lifetime lived well is enough.”
D_Light repressed the urge to roll his eyes. It was the sort of thing sideliners and expired players said to make themselves feel better about dying, but he refrained from saying those things aloud. Lily was no coward. She was in a land of monumental complexity, a world that did not care for her one pin. Indeed, she was fodder for the petty desires of others, and yet she sat there serenely, gorgeous and resolute, and as he gazed at her near the statue, she too looked like a goddess-one stripped of all her power, perhaps, but not of her divinity.
“It used to terrify me,” D_Light said. “That.” He pointed up into the starry night.
Lily squinted as though looking for something specific. “When I was little,” D_Light said, “I slept by myself in a tiny, windowless room away from the other children. My bedroom was out on the roof of our nursery, and so on the clear nights I would gaze up at the stars before going to bed. I continued this routine until one night, as I lay in my bed…” D_Light paused because he was not sure how to explain. “As I lay in my bed, I felt infinity.” He looked into Lily’s eyes to see if he had already lost her, but she appeared focused and intrigued, so he continued. “I realized I was a speck in time, a time that went on forever without end. I felt like I was already gone and that my life, me, the person I was, my soul as it were, had no meaning on such a stage-in a universe without end.”
Lily placed her hand atop D_Light’s, and the two returned their gaze upward to the stars.
“It terrified me,” D_Light said, his eyes still fixed on the night sky. “It terrified me to be nothing.” Then he chuckled.
“So I stopped looking up on my way to my bed, and I started sleeping with the light on.”
Lily smiled at his solution. “I always slept near my sisters and daughters until that was no longer an option. Why did you sleep alone?” Lily asked softly.
“My naga did not allow any of us to sleep together.” D_Light recited a hymn: “In the Game of Life, we all play alone.”
“What a strange thing to say,” Lily declared. “I don’t think that is even true. Sure, we are born alone and we die alone, but as we live, we live together. It seems like the living is the important part.”
D_Light did not bother to explain that the meaning of the hymn was more subtle than that. Sure, players gained by cooperating, at least as far as such relationships were beneficial, but in the end only individuals received salvation. One had to make one’s own way.
“Anyway, it isn’t about whom I slept near,” D_Light said.
“This fear was deeper than that. Maybe the distraction of others would have stopped me from realizing this truth-”
“The truth of your oblivion?” Lily questioned.
“Right.”
“And you found solace in the OverSoul’s promise to make you timeless?”
D_Light’s voice rose. “It’s more than a promise, more than a myth. I mean, you see them-the immortals. They walk among us. You ate dinner with one of them!”
“Dr. Monsa? You want to be like him?” Lily asked.
“Maybe not like him exactly,” D_Light replied, and they both laughed at this.
The two fell silent for a short time. Smorgeous had observed where the servants kept the nectar wine and suggested D_Light acquire some for his company. The familiar reminded him that alcohol had, historically, served him well with the ladies. D_Light told his familiar to shut up.
D_Light crossed his arms and rubbed his shoulders as though to keep warm, causing an undesirable slithering sound as his hands ran across the microlenses of his skinsuit, breaking the dense but pleasant silence. Lily looked over and put her arm around his shoulders and pulled him close. It was not the jerky, awkward, or hurried motion of someone making a sexual advance, the way Lyra had come on to him the night before. Sitting so closely, their bodies gently touching, he could feel the slow and steady rise and fall of her breath. He let his head tilt down and rest on her soft shoulder. She wrapped her arms around him tighter, and he could feel her heartbeat, which was steady and strong. It was hypnotic, and he allowed himself to listen for the longest while. In that moment, D_Light was feeling something that he had never before felt, and it was both exciting and terrifying at the same time.
“Someday I would like to take you sailing,” he announced.
“Sailing? Ah, I’ve seen the little white sails of the boats on the lake near our…near my old home.” She paused. “It looks very peaceful. Like birds in flight.”
“Ha, everyone I know thinks it’s pointless-a waste of time.”
Lily nestled her warm face into his chest. “I would go sailing with you, D.”
“We could go anywhere, you know. I’d rent us an old-fashioned sloop, one with a cabin that we could sleep in. So many islands for us to anchor off of. We could just keep going and going.”
Lily nodded.
“We could take your nubber. We could train him to work the deck.”
Lily laughed. “I don’t know what ‘working the deck’ is, but I’m sure he would look adorable doing it.”
They both looked over at the nubber. It sat as though mimicking the humans; however, sitting forward was difficult for a pudgy bear, and so it rocked back and forth, always threatening to fall backward. When it noticed it had the humans’ attention, it crawled over and joined in the snuggling, which set off a series of coos and awws from everyone.
Eventually, Lily spoke softly. “There is a lake nearby.”
“Yeah, we’re sitting under a giant lake,” D_Light said.
“Yes, but I mean another smaller lake, here, in the inner sanctum. BoBo showed it to me yesterday. If we have time tomorrow, would you like to go for a swim? You humans are all competitive, right? We could race, if you prefer.”
Time. All this talk of infinite time and he suddenly felt like he did not have any to spare. Lily, apparently thinking along the same lines, asked, “Why haven’t they come for us? Come for me, I mean? They must know we’re here.”
D_Light just turned his head, found her cheek, and kissed it. Her skin was warm and pliant to his lips.
“Let’s take that swim now,” he said with a comforting smile.
It was not long before the companions found a small lake that shimmered subtly under the soothing colors of nearby photoflowers. They swam, laughed, and raced to the point of exhaustion. Naked and entwined, they fell asleep atop a soft mound of moss as they dried in the warmth of the inner sanctum’s night air.
D_Light awoke again to find PeePee staring at him with a blink request from Lyra, which he accepted. Good morning, Dee. Her thought signature was amused.
This isn’t exactly what it looks like, D_Light stammered. We took a swim and then-
Forget it. I think it’s great that you’re getting along so fabulously with all of your teammates. A real morale builder you are. Unnervingly, the ferret simulated Lyra’s laugh, and its little snout snapped open and shut as it did so.
There was little D_Light could do but take her teasing in good humor. Lily awoke also and was predictably unhappy about yet another voyeur robot making her business its own.
The rest of the day went on in a similar manner as the last. The girls whisked Lily away, and D_Light, Lyra, and Djoser went on their own excursion.
First on the trio’s to-do list was to visit Amanda, who was recovering on a bed atop an immense boulder that overlooked much of the sunken English garden. With Lyra at the lead, they made their way up a set of stairs that snaked around the girth of the boulder. Once at the top, they could see a medical bot tending to the patient, along with a pink-bowed clone daughter of Dr. Monsa’s, presumably the only clone the group had not yet met. This girl did not introduce herself or pay the visitors any attention at all until Djoser, nearly shouting, demanded Amanda’s health status.
The girl sighed and directed her attention to the visitors. “The damage to the product’s body was significant, as you can see by the number of skin grafts on her body, but she is making excellent progress in her recovery and is already walking.” Djoser caressed the white artificial skin that held his servant together. It was oily to the touch.
The group would have chatted with Amanda, but concubine bodyguards were not conversationalists. She simply said that she hoped to be fully functional within a day or two. It only took a few minutes for D_Light and Lyra to become bored and want to move on, but Djoser lingered. After all, he had been away from his concubine for two nights now. Lyra and D_Light left him to her. Descending the stairs from the boulder, D_Light was not sure if he was disgusted or mildly impressed that the coddled nobleman was willing to perv with something in that state; he quickly realized that it was disgust. The clone would have stayed as well, perhaps for some research purpose, but Djoser insisted that she give them a few minutes alone.