Re:construct

by Natalie Hunter

  But she just looked at him and said:

  "Yeah, I guess you've grown up a lot."

  This didn't make him feel much better, really.

  The day ended, and the next day arrived, and this time, he was in his own bed, asleep, when the sun rose. He hadn't been using Dora the sex robot as an alarm call recently, but waking up hard and a bit anxious, he kind of wished she had been there. Instead, he put it out of his mind and got up - it wasn't like there wouldn't be countless opportunities later in the day to fuck someone if he wanted to - that was how his life as master of the androids was.

  He decided to have breakfast in the hotel's dining room, and was just stepping out of the elevator ready to look for a passing maid to ask to fix him some eggs, when the android woman manning the reception desk across from the elevators called him over. He didn't know her too well, and wasn't really sure why she was always there at the desk, even though the hotel wasn't open to the non-existant public and none of the people he had living there really needed her services, and so his curiosity was piqued by the fact she suddenly seemed to have something to say to him.

  "Master, we have had a visitor who wishes to speak to you when you are ready."

  "A what, now? Is it another android who we didn't manage to take command of already?" he asked. It had been common when they had first arrived here for androids to come to the hotel in order for himself and Maddy to claim command of them, just as they had previously made their way to the Lucky Buy. Some stragglers had still been turning up up until a couple of months ago, where they had been out of town or too busy working to come sooner, but at this point he was sure he had claimed every android and AI in the city.

  "No, no, this is someone from another city. An android, but... well, they belong to someone else."

  "To someone else? To another human?"

  "They wouldn't give information to one such as me, and said they will only talk to you. But since we can only be licensed to serve humans, yes, I would surmise that another human is the master of the person who came to visit..."

  The receptionist was probably doing her best, but she sounded kind of annoying.

  "Where is this guest, then?" Curtis asked, looking around, as he worried what the implications of there being another human with androids working for them who knew about him might be.

  "I told them to wait in the business center, and that I would send you along when I could contact you. I tried to call your room, but I suppose you were already on your way down."

  "Great, thank you. I guess I'll go and see what they want. Oh, but, could you get someone to make me some poached eggs with toast and send it through to meeting room C, please?"

  If it was an android he was going to be talking to, he realized, it wouldn't seem rude to be eating his breakfast during the meeting.

  Meeting room C was a small room designed for, Curtis imagined, little side meetings that broke off from big conferences, or for interviews and appraisals. All of those exotic things related to white-collar employment in the old world, things he had read about and seen in old dramas in the archives, imagining the lives of the humans who had existed before he'd been born in a cave. It seemed like the best choice for a conversation with one android stranger. As long as he could keep his mind off of the amount of times he'd used it as a place to fuck whoever took his fancy when he'd wanted a break from long war-planning discussions.

  He pushed open the heavy glass door that lead to the hotel's business center, and was promptly very surprised by the appearance of the android waiting for him on the soft blue couch by the meeting room doors.

  Chapter 7

  The android who had wanted to meet with Curtis was dressed in an odd way, to Curtis' mind. He was used to the strange, oversexualized way that the androids in his city had been designed to like to dress, and yet this man's outfit looked weirder to him than any porno nurse or maid's uniform or shiny, fetishy leather jumpsuit ever could have. He was wearing a suit. Not a business suit, as would have seemed perhaps more normal considering where they were in the hotel (even though Curtis had never seen anyone except the smartest security androids actually wearing one), but a bow-tie and tails type suit, something befitting a butler from a drama about 19th century aristocracy or similar. He was groomed impeccably, with a waxed black mustache, and a square white handkerchief in a pocket. He was also wearing white gloves, and his shoes shone, making Curtis wonder exactly how he'd gotten here. He didn't look like he had walked from some far off settlement, that was for sure.

  "Hello, Curtis, I assume? I am pleased to make your acquaintance. My name is Featherby."

  The android spoke in formal, clipped tones, and extended a gloved hand to shake Curtis'. Curtis shook the hand, although he was starting to feel somehow intimidated by this android. This was his hotel, his city, even, and yet the formality of the way this man held himself and seemed to expect Curtis to behave was almost bossy. Curtis didn't know about etiquette and so didn't really know how he would need to come across in this conversation for the android to take him seriously. It was a very odd feeling, right after he'd been reminding himself only yesterday that androids wouldn't judge him. That was his androids, though...

  "Featherby? Cool name. Uh, I understand you work for some other humans, in another city? I would like to say I was meeting you with some knowledge of what you were expecting here, but the receptionist, uh, I mean, my assistant on the front desk, well, she said you wouldn't tell her anything," he managed, trying to imply that the visitor had been in some way disrespectful, and hoping that this would cover up for any accidental disrespectfulness of his own later on, if he stood up or sat down when the conventions the android deemed appropriate dictated he should do something else. He was already regretting ordering the eggs.

  "How about we slip into meeting room B, here, so we can discuss matters in private, as I can only assume by the fact you wouldn't talk to anyone but me, these are private matters?"

  Meeting room B was the second largest of the rooms in the business center, and lacked the intimate feeling room C had. It was far too spacious for a conversation such as this to feel as private as he had wanted, but at least the maid with the eggs would probably not appear and make him look bad.

  Featherby nodded and, strangely, held open the door with the clear perspex sign on it saying 'Conference Room B' for Curtis to enter first.

  Curtis gestured awkwardly at the table, inviting Featherby to sit down. There were eight seats, and so Curtis just chose the one opposite Featherby's.

  "Now then, we have this room to ourselves for as long as we want, so I suggest you tell me what is going on, and who sent you."

  Featherby nodded curtly again, and began to speak in his same, overly polite tone, a tone which Curtis didn't like. There was something insincere about it, as if everything the man said was just a smoothed over version of what he really wanted to say, as if Curtis was to read between the lines of it all to spot any threats or requests that the speaker was too polite to just come out with. Once again, he felt wholly unequipped to be dealing with a person like this, without someone better versed in diplomacy to help him. He wondered if maybe that would be something Carla, the old dean's assistant, might be good at, for next time.

  "Right you are. Well, I shan't beat around the bush. I come from an estate just 75 miles north of Brightvale, and it is the sincere wish of my employers, the esteemed Warren family, that you put an end to your plans to engage with the Aerquan who live there. We have a treaty with that community of Aerquan, and do not interfere with their business. A breach of this, by any humans, would be seen as a declaration of war, and one which would have consequences my employers are not keen to experience."

  "Uh, OK, so, you work for some humans who somehow know about my city, and my plans regarding Brightvale? Why didn't you make contact with us sooner? We weren't aware of any other humans, apart from the ones bred by the aliens, anywhere remotely close to here. In fact, I didn't know if there were any other non-captive humans le
ft at all..."

  "Yes, my employers suggested that you might be under the illusion that your little community - Sanctuary, was it - was the only place on Earth that had been smart enough to create a shelter. Of course, that was not the case. Many other people fled into shelters like yours. The threat of nuclear war back then, well, it prompted a lot of enterprises and even individuals to construct such things. And while not all of them were reached that day, or were able to sustain and protect the people who made it into them in the end - Sanctuary was, admittedly, a very well equipped shelter, that could support people for far longer than the majority of others - there are clusters of human life all across the world. There are also shelters that have yet to be opened up, no doubt. I don't for one minute think that you can even claim to be the last humans to make your way out into the post-Aerquan world. Now, my employers, they had a private bunker beneath the mansion that had been in their lineage for hundreds of years. This was where the family, and anybody else who was visiting the estate that day - naturally, they didn't just leave their servants and visitors to die - sheltered on the day of the invasion. However, they had the foresight to ask myself and the other android staff to come and get them out of the bunker once the immediate threat from the invasion had passed. I waited for four weeks, after the Aerquan forces had left the area within a fifty mile radius of the estate, and then liberated them. They, then, have been a part of this world, of this culture of living alongside the Aerquan, since almost day one. A somewhat stronger position than yours, wouldn't you say?"

  "So, they've been out here all this time? I guess, the people you mean, their descendants are your employers, right? That's what you mean? It's not like anybody from back then would still be alive."

  "Quite. Yes, the younger people from the Warren family, and a few families who had the good fortune to be visiting our grounds that day, were able to form marriages after the shelter was evacuated and raise children. The servants who were young enough to reproduce also bore bastards, who went on to become the next generation of servants, and so forth. Though this is not what is important - who wields power, specifically, does not matter, only that the family and its bloodline remain in their ancestral home, and all remains as it always was."

  "I don't understand... these people, this Warren family, they had human servants? Not just androids? I mean, why? There are androids in this city who can do any job you can think of, as well as providing everything you might expect in terms of... human companionship. They have personalities all of their own, and they like to serve people. Why would any rich people back then have still had human servants, when they could have people like you who liked doing their crap for them instead? And why, even now, when there's no good reason why any person should be more important or high class than any other, in a time when class shouldn't even exist - I mean, fuck, we don't even have currency here, let alone rich and poor people - why would those who were born to the wrong parents carry on playing at being servants to the kids of those old rich people?"

  "Tradition has power all of its own, and I would not profess to understand why my masters do things the way that they do. Do your androids question your decisions? No, if you should be curious or have a problem with their way of life, then you would have to take that up with them. I am merely here as a delegate to tell you that they are not best pleased with your plans to cause disruption in Brightvale."

  "But... they are humans! How can they possibly want to side with the Aerquan? Don't they know that they breed humans there just to experiment on them? That they have compounds full of people who are half human, and half alien, or spliced with all kinds of other creatures, that they create for whatever horrible reasons? Don't they care that those alien fuckers wiped out most of humanity, and that... that they're still coming to take what is left of us? They killed everyone in Sanctuary for no reason, as soon as they knew they were there. How can your employers think we should just let them carry on? We have everything we need to wipe out Brightvale's Aerquan population. I don't plan to leave a single one of those fucks alive. If your bosses are scared that there may be repercussions, that they may be attacked, well, tell them they have no need to be - there won't be anybody left to come for them."

  "They predicted that you might feel this way," the android sighed, as if Curtis was wearying him, "but you have to understand that the politics of things out here are more fragile than you could possibly know, being, as you are, a man who has only been aware of this world as it stands at all for mere months. You are an unknown quantity, Curtis, and my employers have deemed you to be a threat to the way of life their forefathers sought to create for them. You come out of a cave, start raising an army and making plans to destroy whole groups of Aerquan. The Aerquan will not see this as your act, they will see it as an act by humanity itself against them. Brightvale may fall, but Brightvale is not isolated from the rest of the Aerquan. There will be vengeance sought. There will be war. And all because some idealistic child got his hands on some android servants and turned them into weapons."

  "Well, if there is war, we will win this time. We know the Aerquan are physically weak, we know that they can't hold their own in a fight against androids, and we know how they kill humans. All your masters would need to do is slink back down to their bunker if an attack came, and let you and their other androids sort it out. I suggest they make some plans for that, because I'm not backing off on my plans just because some dynasty of selfish assholes think their comfort is more important than the freedom of those people the Aerquan are keeping there like cattle."

  Featherby looked a little taken aback at the firmness of Curtis' reply, and the way he had stood up while speaking, fists clenched. Curtis hadn't meant to start sounding so belligerent just yet, but everything about these people got his back up. What he really wanted to do, deep inside, was try and reason with this man, this Featherby - persuade him to abandon his employers, who sounded no better than Janice was back in Sanctuary, and live here, where people were free, pretty much. Well sure, they were off to start a fight... possibly a war... but at least it was all for good, noble reasons. Wouldn't he rather be here where the androids had a fair say in what happened, where their master treated them well, and where there weren't a load of stupid, nonsensical things about class and people being other people's servants for no good reason? But, no matter how much he longed to reason with him somehow, talk him around to a different point of view, he knew that talking like that to Featherby would be like talking to a brick wall. He had never actually experienced this side of androids before - the side of not dealing with one he didn't command. The side of trying to argue with someone whose mind would never be changed, in spite of their intelligence, because their allegiance was fixed and immutable. It would be the same, of course, if Featherby's employer tried to persuade Pinky, or Lena, or any of hundreds of androids in this city that Curtis was - as they seemed to think - some kind of power crazed revolutionary who didn't know what he was messing with. An android was loyal, but this meant that an android was as frustrating as all hell to debate such matters with. This left Curtis with only one option, since he was never going to agree to Featherby's requests.

  He sat down again, regaining his composure.

  "We're going to be at an impasse, here, Featherby. I am sorry if I sounded like I lost my temper there, but I do not appreciate your masters sending you here to scold me, to try and make me change course just because they don't approve - especially considering that I will have no hope of persuading you to see things the way I do. So, if they want to talk me out of it, or even negotiate with me - though I can't think what they could possibly offer me that would be enough to make me want to hold off on freeing those people, especially in a world where money doesn't matter and I have a whole city at my disposal - they can talk to me themselves, man to man. I believe that meeting room A of this very business center has video conferencing facilities. Contact your employers - as I'm sure you were about to anyway, to tell them I am just as stubborn as the
y expected - and tell them that they can speak to me that way, if they have to speak to me at all. Otherwise, I am afraid you had a wasted journey, because nothing you have said has given me any reason to stop this attack from happening. Oh, and, if they do want to talk, it'll need to be today. I am busy preparing for battle."

  Featherby looked frustrated, which just irked Curtis further. It was a patronizing sort of reaction, a reaction that said 'why won't you pig-headed kids just listen to reason'. But the android butler stood, and asked for permission to leave the room to connect with his employers using a cellphone type device not dissimilar to the communicators that Curtis and his allies had planned to use during the attack on Brightvale. Curtis nodded grimly, knowing with almost 100% certainty that these 'employers' were definitely going to want to take him up on the offer of a video conference, rather than just fucking off and leaving him to his plans as he would much prefer.

  Chapter 8

  "This is just what we fucking need, two days before the damn battle... as if I don't have enough to be doing without talking to some mad old bitch who thinks she's a countess. Countess of what exactly? Doesn't there need to be a monarchy to make someone a fucking countess in the first place? What kind of insane bullshit is up with these people!" Curtis railed, as Maddy wiped her face with a towel, and Yuki the martial arts instructor android wisely busied herself pretending to clean the mirrors in the hotel gym, where Curtis had disrupted Madeleine's morning training session. He'd come straight here to vent as soon as Featherby had confirmed that his employer would indeed like to have the video conference, and that the person he'd be speaking to was the current matriarch of the Warren family, one 'countess' Gwendolene.